book review: fjelstad, k. & nguyễn, t. (2011). spirits without borders: vietnamese spirit mediums in a transnational age aseas 4 (2) 348 349 rezensionen / book reviews fjelstad, karen & nguyên, thi hiên (2011). spirits without borders: vietnamese spirit mediums in a transnational age. new york: palgrave macmillan. isbn: 978-0-230-11493-7. x + 219 pages. citation pokorny, l. (2011). book review: fjelstad, k. & nguyên, t. (2011). spirits without borders: vietnamese spirit mediums in a transnational age. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 4(2), 349-351. in 1986, the vietnamese government entered the era of đổi mới (renovation), entailing a resurgence of popular religiosity, in particular after the adoption of liberal reforms in the early and mid-1990s. this ‘re-enchantment’ of contemporary vietnamese society has not only aroused the interest of numerous local scholars, producing a vast amount of ethnographic research, but has attracted attention among a number of foreign anthropologists who embarked on introducing vietnamese religions to a western audience. until recently, religionists were only (somewhat) familiar with institutionalised religion in vietnam (cao đài and phật giáo hòa hảo), whilst the plethora of folk-religious beliefs remained widely uncharted. in the previous years, various scholars (k. endres, k. fjelstad, b. norton, q. phạm, o. salemink, p. taylor, and others) have thus attempted to shed light on the popular religious landscape. the rich pantheon of vietnamese folk traditions is often seen to be represented by đạo mẫu, the ‘mother goddess religion’, which comprises a variety of beliefs and practices, associated with legions of deities and spirits. central to đạo mẫu is lên đồng, a spirit possession ritual that is slowly overcoming political proscription and social ostracism, and, despite re-emerging urgent concern by the authorities, seems to develop into a veritable ‘cultural heritage’ (di sản văn hóa). đạo mẫu and lên đồng have strikingly evolved amid the vietnamese diaspora, thereby turning into a transnational religious phenomenon that gradually extends to the non-vietnamese population. the study at hand endeavours to investigate the concomitant ritual and doctrinal transformation of this cross-border expansion. the authors aim at providing a sophisticated ethnographic account of đạo mẫu and lên đồng, as encountered in the united states among overseas vietnamese (người việt hải ngoại), highlighting the amlukas pokorny book review: spirits without borders d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -4 .2 -1 2 . ~ ~ ` aseas 4 (2) 350 351 biguous, and yes, estranged relationship between vietnamese (người việt) and american vietnamese (người mỹ gốc việt) spirit mediums. karen e. fjelstad, a phd graduate from the university of hawai’i at manoa (1995), is a lecturer in anthropology at san josé state university (united states) and a distinguished expert of vietnamese spirit mediumship, focusing her research on the diaspora in california. nguyễn thị hiền, a phd graduate from indiana university (2002), is a researcher at the ministry of culture, sports, and tourism in hà nội, and a specialist in vietnamese folklore. fjelstad and nguyễn’s latest collaboration is an impressive and needed continuation of their previous work.1 the first chapter (pp. 1-16) sets the agenda, briefly delineating the theoretical backdrop and rationale of the study, whilst chapter 2 (pp. 17-38) depicts the authors’ personal involvement in the subject and introduces the research setting including a number of protagonists. the following section (pp. 39-75) lays the foundation for the subsequent discussion, portraying key themes such as the pantheon of đạo mẫu, lên đồng and its topography, and the changing socio-political and legal framework. the authors put an emphasis on the adaptability and flexibility of đạo mẫu, which, they reason, is decisive for survival in times of rigorous suppression and persecution of lên đồng practitioners. chapter 4 (pp. 77-98) overviews several conversion narratives and exhibits how people are called to be initiated as spirit mediums (căn đồng). the next chapter (pp. 99-136) proceeds to the crucial part of the study, examining the history, transformation, and characteristics of đạo mẫu and lên đồng in silicon valley (california). the authors stress the step-by-step metamorphosis of the religious/cultic context in the light of modernisation, americanisation, and ‘rejuvenation’, that is, the emergence of a second generation of overseas vietnamese spirit mediums who were largely or entirely socialised in the united states. chapter 6 (pp. 137-168) continues with an intriguing discussion of đạo mẫu and lên đồng ‘in a transnational age’. it is shown in which ways various (cultural, doctrinal, and ritual) challenges need to be met when us-based mediums encounter their vietnam-based coreligionists. skilfully weaving together multiple facets of this tense relationship, the authors underline the fact that religion is always being altered and adapted in 1 see fjelstad, karen and thị hiền nguyễn, ed. 2006. possessed by the spirits: mediumship in contemporary vietnamese communities. ithaca, ny: cornell southeast asia program publications. aseas 4 (2) 350 351 keeping with a changing environment. the concluding chapter (pp. 169-185) finally accentuates the amenability and portability of đạo mẫu by referring to the ‘concept of flooding’ that serves as an overarching metaphor. in fact, lên đồng can be performed by a spirit medium (thanh đồng) at any given time (provided that the most basic ritual supplies are at hand), and – as many mediums suggest – irrespective of place and ethnicity, making đạo mẫu a truly universal religion. in terms of formality, this study lives up to the demands of high-quality research, being indeed a valuable contribution to our understanding of transnational religions (p. 184). the volume contains excellent and refreshing recent scholarship by two leading academics in their fields, providing a multitude of vivid and instructive information for scholars and the general reader alike. i thus highly recommend this book to anybody who brings along sound interest in spirit mediumship and vietnamese religions in general. lukas pokorny university of aberdeen, united kingdom lukas pokorny book review: spirits without borders rezensionen / reviews (aseas 3-1) aseas 3(1) 112 rezensionen / review aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften / austrian journal of south-east asian studies seas gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften / society for south-east asian studies www.seas.at heidbüchel, esther (2007). the west papua conflict in indonesia: actors, issues and approaches. gießen, deutschland: johannes herrmann j&j-verlag. isbn: 978-3-937983-10-3. 223 seiten nach dem sturz des langzeitpräsidenten und ehemaligen generals suharto im jahr 1998 fand einer der langwierigsten konflikte der geschichte indonesiens zunehmend internationale beachtung. das interesse der weltöffentlichkeit wurde nicht zuletzt durch die innenpolitischen veränderungen in der post-suharto-ära geweckt. in dieser wurde west-papua 2001 eine sonderautonomie zugestanden, und es erfolgte eine teilung in die zwei provinzen papua und irian jaya barat (später in papua barat umbenannt). eine reihe an vorwiegend politikwissenschaftlichen arbeiten beschäftigte sich seitdem mit der darstellung des nach wie vor aktuellen konflikts. die hier rezensierte publikation ist eine davon. in der einführung ihres buches „the west papua conflict in indonesia“ stellt esther heidbüchel ihre zielsetzung dar, nämlich die gegenwärtige komplexität des multidimensionalen papuakonflikts im rahmen eines „empirisch-analytischen“ ansatzes zu entschlüsseln. ihre arbeit bezeichnet sie als interdisziplinär. die auf die akteurinnen des konflikts zentrierte analyse, die bis in die mitte des jahres 2006 reicht, ist hauptsächlich in der politikwissenschaft und in der konfliktforschung angesiedelt. in geringem maße greift die autorin auch konzepte aus den kommunikationswissenschaften, der sozialpsychologie und der anthropologie auf. trotz dieses interdisziplinären ansatzes dominiert ein politikwissenschaftlicher jargon. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ aseas 3(1) 113 rezensionen / reviews die autorin nähert sich der thematik mit einer konfliktgenese, in der sie die wesentlichsten historischen ereignisse in chronologischer reihenfolge nachzeichnet und sich in die allgemein gängige geschichtsschreibung einreiht, die den papuakonflikt als separatistisch und ethnopolitisch klassifiziert. das wesentliche augenmerk bezieht sich dabei auf die heftig umstrittene eingliederung west-papuas in den damals jungen indonesischen nationalstaat. dieser im rahmen der dekolonisierung des ehemaligen niederländisch-indiens entstandene territorialstreit zwischen den niederlanden und indonesien wurde unter der mitwirkung der vereinten nationen 1969 mit dem „act of free choice“ endgültig zugunsten indonesiens entschieden und bildet den historischen auslöser des in seiner komplexität seither gewachsenen konflikts. um dieser komplexität gerecht zu werden, entwickelt die autorin für ihre analyse eine „multi-level-structure“ und unterteilt den konflikt in drei „meta levels“, nämlich in „the international, the national indonesian and the local papuan level“ (s. 28). jene drei metaebenen bestimmen im wesentlichen die drei analytischen abschnitte ihrer arbeit. der erste abschnitt beinhaltet eine bestandsaufnahme der unterschiedlichen akteurinnen und interessen, der zweite stellt eine konfliktmatrix vor, in welcher einzelne konfliktbereiche identifiziert, den „meta levels“ zugeordnet und überschneidungen aufgezeigt werden, und der dritte untersucht konfliktlösungsstrategien. die autorin verortet zunächst die akteurinnen innerhalb der einzelnen metaebenen. auf internationaler ebene jene mit sicherheitsspezifischen und wirtschaftlichen interessen (australien, usa) und beobachterinnen (die niederlande, die un und in geringem ausmaß die eu). auf nationaler ebene jene der zentralregierung und der provinzregierungen, den vom konflikt profitierenden sicherheitsapparat bestehend aus polizei und militärtruppen sowie („spontane“) transmigrantinnen. sie fasst diese unter dem titel „the actors on the indonesian side“ zusammen. diese klassifizierung erweist sich jedoch als problematisch, da die beiden provinzregierungen von papua und irian jaya barat, die mittlerweile zunehmend von ethnischen papuas dominiert werden, sowie andere einrichtungen auf provinzebene somit einer indonesischen seite zugeschrieben werden. eben dies passiert mit transmigrantinnen, welche die autorin als „closed community“ bezeichnet. auch diese behauptung ist kritisch zu hinterfragen, bedenkt man die heterogenität innerhalb dieser gruppe. die lokale ebene bildet mit ihrer vielzahl an akteurinnen schließlich die weitaus dichteste ebene dieser bestandsaufnahme. in einer umfangreichen auflistung werden hier aseas 3(1) 114 die politischen, studentischen, zivilen, religiösen u.a. organisationen erwähnt und teilweise ausführlich beschrieben. auch dieser analytische schritt ist nicht gänzlich nachvollziehbar, scheinen doch auf dem „local level“ nur papuas zu agieren. um die charakteristika der unterschiedlichen „levels“ zu veranschaulichen führt heidbüchel eine weitere unterteilung ein, nämlich die in eine horizontale und eine vertikale dimension. sie schreibt dazu: „the vertical dimension is concerning the conflict between the indonesian central government and the west papuan directly involved actors. the horizontal dimension deals with the current emergence and aggravation of conflicts on the local papuan level. here the issues are socio-economic by nature, whereas the issues of the vertical dimension are political” (s. 112). durch solche formulierungen entsteht der eindruck, dass die papuanische lokalebene einer politischen dimension entbehrt. des weiteren erarbeitet die autorin eine konfliktmatrix, in der sie „conflict issues“ identifiziert, beschreibt, deren zugrunde liegende ursachen bestimmt und sie in ihrer „multi-level-structure“ verortet. der komplexität des konflikts entsprechend umfasst diese analyse eine vielzahl unterschiedlicher bereiche und prozesse, wie sicherheitsinteressen, die geschäfte des staatlichen sicherheitsapparats, rechtliche unsicherheit und defizite in der implementierung der sonderautonomie, menschenrechtsdiskurse, korruption, ressourcenausbeutung und die herausbildung einer papua-identität, um nur einige zu nennen. es folgt eine analyse unterschiedlicher konfliktlösungsansätze, wozu zwei weitere unterscheidungsebenen eingeführt werden, nämlich das „factual, objective level, which entails the hard facts and political demands“ und das „relational, subjective level, which is dealing with the emotional frame related issues such as fear and trust“ (s. 8). angst und gegenseitiges misstrauen prägen die gegenseitige wahrnehmung der involvierten akteurinnen, wie heidbüchel berechtigt feststellt, was sie zu der schlussfolgerung führt, dass der konflikt nicht nur auf rein politische weise gelöst werden kann, sondern auch der berücksichtigung des „relational levels“ bedarf. heidbüchels resümee lautet wie folgt: der rahmen des gegenwärtigen konflikts kann in drei übergangsphasen gesehen werden: (1) der demokratisierungsprozess indonesiens, in dem es um das supremat ziviler kräfte über das militär geht, das einer friedlichen lösung des konflikts als „most powerful veto actor“ im weg steht; (2) west-papuas übergang von der „totalen unterdrückung“ zur „relativen aseas 3(1) 115 sonderautonomie“. hier spricht die autorin von einer großen herausforderung für die indigenen papuas, da diese bis vor kurzen vom politischen leben ausgeschlossen waren und daher nicht genügend papuas über die fähigkeiten verfügen, politische verantwortung zu übernehmen. dies führt schließlich zu misswirtschaft staatlicher gelder und zu korruption; (3) die kulturellen veränderungen innerhalb der indigenen bevölkerung, ausgelöst durch die „ankunft der moderne“ in einer von der autorin verallgemeinernd als traditionell dargestellten indigenen gesellschaft. den schlüssel zur konfliktlösung entdeckt heidbüchel in einem ansatz, den sie als „trinity approach“ bezeichnet und der aus den komponenten dialog, vertrauen und versöhnung besteht. die wahl dieses terminus, der bewusst der christlichen terminologie entnommen wurde, begründet sie u.a. mit einem durch christliche werte geprägten kulturellen hintergrund der bevölkerung west-papuas. dass die bevölkerung west-papuas jedoch auch aus muslimischen immigrantinnen und zu einem geringen teil muslimischen papuas besteht, wird mit diesem ansatz nicht berücksichtigt. die autorin trägt allerdings der interreligiösen dimension des papuakonflikts rechnung, wenn sie das von der katholischen diözese in jayapura ins leben gerufene, interreligiös ausgerichtete konzept des „tanah damai“ (land des friedens) beschreibt und als mögliche plattform einer beginnenden konflikttransformation auf lokaler ebene ansieht. mit „the west papua conflict in indonesia“ legte esther heidbüchel ein umfangreich recherchiertes buch vor, welches sich vor allem durch die deskriptive darstellung der zahlreichen in den konflikt involvierten akteurinnen, konfliktbereiche und lösungsstrategien kennzeichnet. die autorin verschafft den leserinnen einen überblick und ersten einblick in eine komplexe und dynamische konfliktlandschaft. die analytische seite dieser arbeit zeigt jedoch in einigen bereichen schwächen. eine reduktion der akteurinnen des konflikts auf eine indonesische und eine papua-seite kann nicht im interesse einer konfliktanalyse sein, die auf eine konfliktentschärfung abzielt. die feststellung, dass ein derartig vielschichtiger konflikt wie in west-papua nicht nur politisch gelöst werden kann, wird wohl kaum jemand bestreiten und ist keine wirklich neue erkenntnis, obwohl heidbüchel damit zumindest über den tellerrand einer enger gefassten politikwissenschaftlichen betrachtungsweise hinausblickt. in ihrer conclusio gewinnt der begriff kultur, den sie nach kevin avruch als „actor related concept“ definiert, eine zentrale bedeutung: rezensionen / reviews aseas 3(1) 116 „culture matters. the west papua conflict can not be solved politically only due to the highly differing cultures which collide in west papua. the cultural backgrounds determine the frames used for the cognitive processing of the situation and the perception of respective issues“ (s. 191). mit dieser formulierung schließt die analyse, die an huntingtons „clash of civilizations“ erinnert und in der ein kulturbegriff zur anwendung kommt, der kulturen als statische, in sich geschlossene, homogene einheiten begreift. eine konfliktanalyse, die nahe legt, dass hier eine vermeintlich unteroder weniger entwickelte papua-kultur auf eine moderne indonesische kultur trifft, reproduziert nur stereotype und wird der komplexität der gegenwärtigen gesellschaftlichen prozesse in west-papua nicht gerecht. christian warta österreichische akademie der wissenschaften chua, christian (2008). chinese big business in indonesia: the state of capital. london and new york: routledge. isbn: 978-0-415-45074-4. 192 pages this book considers itself to be about the political economy of chinese big business in indonesia. of the biggest business groups, most are either owned or headed by persons belonging to the ethnic minority of sino-indonesians. in his book christian chua attempts to illustrate why down to the present day there are almost no big corporations owned or controlled by members of other ethnic groups. as chua outlines within the first few chapters of his work, he attempts to fill a gap in present literature on the chinese ethnic minority in indonesia, which either tends to pursue a culturalist or a structuralist approach. the culturalists, to put it in a somewhat simplified way, try to explain the present situation from a point of view mainly focusing on ethnicity. they consider economic networks within south-east asia as a mere web of trust and connections based on cultural and ethnic likeness, which leaves them somewhat unable to explain the very special indonesian situation. the structuralists on the other hand, chua states, insist on the idea of a chinese minority as a capitalist class, eliminating the culturalist point of view. this, however, made it possible for them to look much deeper into the state-business relationship (p. 13). but both approaches, as chua never wearies of stressing, fail in the attempt to the myanmar literature project – starting with an investigation into the nagani book club aseas 1 (1) the myanmar literature project starting with an investigation into the nagani book club hans-bernd zöllner aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften / austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 1 (1), 2008 seas gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften www.seas.at 1 general information the project is about the intellectual and literary heritage of mainland south-east asia’s biggest country. due to the decades of problems concerning the country’s connections with the world, this issue hitherto has received almost no attention – neither academically nor outside of the academic realm. the project, therefore tries to connect these aims –  it intends to document the publications of the nagani book club founded in late 1937 which was a landmark in the burmese struggle for independence and is almost unexplored in the western academic world;  it wants to shed light on the role of burmese/myanmar literature as a medium between the world and the county’s society from the beginning of the 20th century until today;  it seeks to establish a network of people who are interested in burma's/myanmar's intellectual and literary life past, present and future both inside and outside of present day myanmar.  it aims at the implementation of training courses in the fields of literary, historical and social sciences for scholars and students of myanmar studies. 91 aseas 1 (1) 2 starting point: the nagani book club the nagani (red dragon) book club was founded in �9�7 in rangoon by some burmans after the model of victor gollancz‘ left book club in london. the most prominent of the founders was thakin nu, who later became the first prime minister of independent burma. the purpose of the club was to publish books in the burmese language containing the essence of the contemporary international literature, history, economics, politics and science at a low price. till �94�, the club issued more than 70 (or some �00, if the books published by the co-founder of nagani tun aye are included) books and a monthly newsletter. the club was popularised by a song still well-liked today that was sung by a film star and may be regarded as burma’s crypto national anthem of the educated class. the club was closely linked with mostly young burman nationalists, particularly from the thakin-movement. the thakins formed the core of the burmese army and the political body that achieved burma’s independence in �948. the nagani book club linked the burmese independence movements with the contemporary international “world of knowledge”. it was dedicated to serve the purpose of establishing a cultural and political revolution in burma that benefited the masses of the burmese population. 3 state of research independent burma has been isolated from the international world for a long period of time. this fact has affected research on burma badly – both on the national and the international level – including the study of the nagani book club. filling this gap may shed some light upon the antecedents of independent burma’s particular role in the family of nations. the nagani book club was founded at a crucial period of burma’s struggle for independence between the introduction of a constitution for burma as a distinct part of the british empire separated from british india, which came into effect in april �9�7, and the outbreak of the war in europe in september �9�9. the establishment of the club lies on the intersection of two lines of tradition. with the foundation of the club, the demand for abolishing and replacing the british “slave education” was taken up, a demand that formed a golden thread through burma’s independence movements since the end of the �9th century. on the other hand, the club by familiarising its readers with current international developments, knowledge and literature placed burma into an international context and took up the demand of the british administrators that the burmese had to be educated and burma had to be modernised as a prerequisite to the country’s independence. 92 hans-bernd zöllner the myanmar literature project aseas 1 (1) thus, it can be expected that the study of the nagani book club, its origins, its impact on the making of independent burma and its role as a symbol of burma’s struggle for independence until today will contribute to a better understanding of burma’s political culture before and after the re-gaining of independence in �948. 4 the project’s history the project was implemented in january 2005 with the financial assistance of the german friedrich-ebert-foundation. people inside and outside myanmar were asked to write book reports on the books published by nagani. the reviews were intended to be published together with commentaries and additional material in english. the response was great. up to today, some �40 reviews on more than 70 nagani books have been submitted by some 70 contributors. that opens the prospect of getting a satisfactory overview about the publication of the club as well as an insight into the way burmese people concerned with the intellectual and literary heritage of the countries are reporting on the publications and interpreting as well as assessing the legacy of the book club. at the burma studies conference in singapore (july ��-�5, 2006) the project together with some first reflections of the role of literature for the development of burmese society was presented by participants in the project from myanmar. south-east asian studies at the university of passau publishes a series of working papers containing the project’s results.. seven volumes of working papers are currently available. no. 10:1, an introduction into the nagani book club no. 10:2, material on thein pe, biography of saya lun and royal advisers no. 10:3, material on ba hein, the world of capitalists no. 10:4, material on thein pe, student boycotters (two volumes) no. 10:5, material on ba khaing, political history of burma no. 10:6, material on nu, gandalarit no.10:100, papers, presented at the burma studies conference in singapore 2006 they are accessible through the website of the university of passau: http://www.iseap.de/ content/view/89/. it is planed to publish one more paper each month. 93 aseas 1 (1) 5 call for participants the project’s success depended and still depends on the readiness of people to take interest and participate in it. some books still need to be reviewed, many book reports have to be translated from burmese into english and a lot of reports have to be commented upon. anybody interested in the subject is invited to participate in the project by • writing comments and reviews on the contents of the volumes already published; • contributing essays on burmese/myanmar literature as a medium between the international world and burmese society; • providing material, which sheds more light on the nagani book club, its context and impact on burmese intellectual and literary life; • offering assistance as translator, commentator, or assistant editor. for more information, please contact: dr. hans-bernd zöllner universities of passau and hamburg phone: +49-40-8317961 email: habezett@t-online.de 94 hans-bernd zöllner the myanmar literature project südostasienwissenschaften publizieren: open-access, thematischer pluralismus, internationalität / publishing south-east asian studies: open access, thematic pluralism, internationality aseas 1 (1) südostasienwissenschaften publizieren: open-access, thematischer pluralismus, internationalität publishing south-east asian studies: open access, thematic pluralism, internationality alfred gerstl & erwin schweitzer aseas redaktion aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften / austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 1 (1), 2008 seas gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften www.seas.at auf ihrem bildschirm – oder ausgedruckt – sehen sie die erste ausgabe der neuen österreichischen zeitschrift für südostasienforschung/austrian journal of south-east asian studies (aseas). aseas stellt hehre ansprüche: es will eine forschungslücke in österreich schließen, wo sich zwar eine vielzahl von disziplinen – politikwissenschaft, wirtschaftswissenschaft, ethnologie/ sozialanthropologie oder geografie – mit südostasien beschäftigen, der region aber gleichzeitig auf einer institutionellen ebene nicht die ihr gebührende aufmerksamkeit geschenkt wird. weder ein universitäres department noch eine außeruniversitäre forschungseinrichtung beschäftigen sich ausschließlich mit dieser region. die gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften/society for south-east asian studies (seas), die herausgeberin von aseas, widmet sich seit ihrer gründung der förderung der südostasienwissenschaften in österreich durch wissenschaftliche und öffentliche weiterbildung, vernetzung und kommunikation. das neue journal ist als logische fortsetzung dieser arbeit zu verstehen. aseas stellt einen meilenstein in der etablierung der wissenschaftlichen auseinandersetzung mit südostasien in österreich dar, existiert doch nunmehr erstmals eine plattform, die es forscherinnen – österreichischen wie nicht-österreichischen – ermöglicht, qualitativ hochwertig aktuelle ergebnisse der südostasienwissenschaften zu publizieren, und zwar kostenlos und 01 aseas 1 (1) weltweit zugänglich. in diesem sinne bezieht sich „österreichisch“ im titel des journals auch nur auf den standort der redaktion, sagt aber nichts über die herkunft der autorinnen aus. im gegenteil, aseas will die bedeutung der südostasienforschung in österreich fördern, indem es bewusst auf das wissen der internationalen akademischen gemeinschaft aus diversen disziplinen und perspektiven zurückgreift. daher erscheint aseas auch als open-accesszeitschrift. für diese innovative form der publikation haben wir uns entschieden, um explizit einen freien und öffentlichen diskurs in der südostasienforschung zu pflegen, da wir davon überzeugt sind, dass sich diese art der kommunikation für den wissenschaftlichen fortschritt im allgemeinen und die weiterentwicklung der südostasienwissenschaft in österreich im besonderen als beste alternative erweist. um auch im rahmen dieser publikationsform wissenschaftliche standards zu garantieren, entsteht die zeitschrift im peer-review-verfahren: jeweils zwei anonyme, von der redaktion ausgewählte gutachterinnen („reviewer“) sichern die qualitätskontrolle. qualität in den südostasienwissenschaften äußert sich aber nicht nur in der strengen überprüfung wissenschaftlicher kriterien, sondern auch in ihrem thematischen pluralismus. dass sich verschiedene disziplinen mit je spezifischen, teilweise unterschiedlichen, teilweise überlappenden perspektiven mit der region südostasien befassen, halten wir für einen großen vorzug, den aseas sich zunutze machen möchte. aseas ist deshalb geflissentlich als eine offene wissenschaftliche zeitschrift konzipiert – offen für beiträge von forscherinnen aus verschiedenen disziplinen und ländern, offen für die unterschiedlichsten thematiken, methoden und theorien, offen auch in geografischer hinsicht, wurde und wird doch gerade die subregion südostasien stärker von externen einflüssen geprägt als andere erdteile. offen aber auch im technischen und vor allem gesellschaftlichen sinne von open-access. sein zustandekommen verdankt aseas dem ehrenamtlichen engagement einer kleinen gruppe von jungakademikerinnen und studierenden aus verschiedenen disziplinen, die sich in seas organisiert haben. doch auch eine ehrenamtliche tätigkeit kann sich bezahlt machen: in form einer ersten ausgabe von aseas, das eine breite palette von hervorragenden beiträgen enthält. so eröffnen uns die autorinnen in dieser ausgabe, entsprechend der programmatischen ausrichtung des journals, die unterschiedlichsten disziplinären, regionalen und thematischen perspektiven. die inhaltliche bandbreite reicht dabei von religion, politik und literatur in indonesien über ethnische minderheiten in burma und südostasiatische diaspora-gruppen in den usa in unserer rubrik aktuelle südostasienforschung. im forum südostasien informieren zwei journalistische respektive feuilletonistische beiträge über wirtschaftbeziehungen zwischen österreich und südostasien bzw. über das apec-treffen in sydney im herbst 2007. darüber hinaus berichtet ein beitrag im bereich netzwerk südostasienforschung über ein aktuelles forschungsprojekt zu burma. mit dieser ausgabe zeigen wir exemplarisch das ziel alfred gerstl, erwin schweitzer südostasienwissenschaften publizieren 02 alfred gerstl, erwin schweitzer südostasienwissenschaften publizieren aseas 1 (1) von aseas auf: einen rahmen zu schaffen, mit dem sich verschiedene betrachtungsweisen zu einem kohärenten, sich wechselseitig bereichernden gesamtbild einer interdisziplinären südostasienforschung verknüpfen lassen. mehrheitlich gehen die beiträge dieser ausgabe auf die zweite internationale südostasienwissenschaften-konferenz im juni 2007 in wien zurück, die von der gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften mit unterstützung des graduiertenzentrums der sozialwissenschaftlichen fakultät, des instituts für geographie und regionalforschung der universität wien, der wirtschaftskammer österreich (wko) und der philippinischen botschaft wien organisiert wurde. weitere aufsätze, die im rahmen dieser konferenz zum thema „regionale kooperation und integration in südostasien“ präsentiert wurden, werden in der zweiten aseas-ausgabe im sommer 2008 erscheinen. abschließend möchten wir den gutachterinnen und den mitgliedern unseres beirates einen großen dank aussprechen. unseren leserinnen wünschen wir eine anregende und bereichernde lektüre. über kritik, feedback, anregungen und wünsche per e-mail würden wir uns sehr freuen. wien, 02/2008 03 kindersextourismus: ein südostasiatisches phänomen? im dialog mit astrid winkler von ecpat austria aseas 4(1) 172 173 im dialog / in dialogue kindersextourismus: ein südostasiatisches phänomen? im dialog mit astrid winkler von ecpat austria michelle proyer1 universität wien, österreich / aseas redaktion citation proyer, m. (2011). kindersextourismus: ein südostasiatisches phänomen? im dialog mit astrid winkler von ecpat austria. aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften, 4(1), 173-178. sonne, meer, tempel nicht allen touristinnen scheint das genug zu sein, wenn sie sich auf die reise nach thailand machen. lange zeit schien sexuelle ausbeutung von kindern in form von prostitution und anderen strafrechtlichen vergehen auf den südostasiatischen raum beschränkt. medien vermittelten den eindruck, dass vor allem thailand und kambodscha beliebte reiseziele für jene wären, die in ihrem urlaub nach möglichkeiten für sex mit minderjährigen suchten. ein gespräch mit der geschäftsführerin der ngo ecpat (end child prostitution, child pornography and traffi cking of children for sexual purposes) österreich, astrid winkler, macht deutlich, dass regionale einschränkungen fernab der realität sind, kindersextourismus nie auf den südostasiatischen raum beschränkt war. sun, sea, temples not everybody travelling to thailand seems to be content with that image. sexual exploitation such as prostitution as well as other forms of crime against children seemed to be focused on south-east asia. the media have conveyed the impression that especially thailand and cambodia are favoured holiday destinations for those seeking sex with minors respectively. an interview with the director of the non-governmental organisation ecpat (end child prostitution, child pornography and traffi cking of children for sexual purposes) austria, astrid winkler, shows that regional limitations are not consistent with reality and that child sex tourism has never been restricted to south-east asia. michelle proyer: jemand, der ecpat nicht kennt, sollte wissen … astrid winkler: ecpat steht für end child prostitution, child pornography and trafficking of children for sexual purposes und ist eine internationale kinderrechtsorgani1 michelle proyer ist universitätsassistentin am institut für bildungswissenschaft der universität wien und mitglied des redaktionsteams von aseas. das interview wurde am 22. märz 2011 im büro von ecpat österreich durchgeführt. michelle proyer kindersextourismus: ein südostasiatisches phänomen? d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -4 .1 -1 2 aseas 4(1) 174 175 sation, die auf bekämpfung von sexueller ausbeutung von kindern in den zentralen ausprägungsformen kinderprostitution, kinderpornographie, kindersextourismus als sonderform der kinderprostitution und kinderhandel spezialisiert ist. proyer: zur organisation … winkler: ecpat ist eine ngo. die organisation gibt es in über 80 ländern. der hauptsitz befindet sich in bangkok, wo sich die organisation ende der 1980erbzw. zu beginn der 1990er-jahre als kampagne gegen den kindersextourismus in asien entwickelt hat. ursprünglich stand das akronym für end child prostitution in asian tourism. die beteiligten organisationen der kampagne erkannten allerdings bald, dass das phänomen komplexer ist, kinderprostitution im tourismus nur eine manifestation ist. in der zeitspanne zwischen 1990 und 1996, als der erste weltkongress gegen die sexuelle ausbeutung von kindern in stockholm in kooperation mit unicef und der schwedischen regierung stattfand, wurde der tätigkeitsbereich ausgeweitet. der sprung von der kampagne zur organisation wurde vollzogen. in österreich gibt es die organisation seit 2003, seit 2006 als eingetragenen verein. davor war ecpat österreich ein informelles netzwerk, das in der organisation respect [institut für integrativen tourismus und entwicklung, anm. m.p.], quasi als fachbereich integriert war. proyer: schwerpunkte von ecpat österreich in südostasien … winkler: derzeit gibt es diese im südostasiatischen raum nicht, weil es an ressourcen mangelt. die frage ist: woher sollen die finanziellen mittel herkommen? die schwerpunktarbeit von ecpat liegt bei der arbeit im eigenen land. diese besteht aus lobbying und advocacy für verbesserungen im bereich der prävention und betreuung von sexuell ausgebeuteten kindern, monitoring der nationalen gesetzgebungen, um zu sehen, wie diverse internationale instrumente umgesetzt werden, so zum beispiel die kinderrechtskonvention, und natürlich auch sensibilisierung und bewusstseinsbildung, etwa durch schulungen und workshops. wichtig sind für ecpat kooperationen und netzwerkarbeit und die beteiligung von jugendlichen. im ecpat österreich jugendbeirat engagieren sich jugendliche zwischen 18 und 25 jahren und führen eigene aktivitäten, wie z. b. peer-to-peer workshops durch. ein wichtiger partner mit historischer tradition ist die tourismuswirtschaft, aber auch andere privatwirtschaftliche sektoren wie beispielsweise internetserviceprovider. und nicht zu vergessen sind aseas 4(1) 174 175 aktionen wie die derzeit laufende internationale kampagne stoppt sexhandel mit kindern in kooperation mit dem internationalen kosmetikunternehmen the body shop. proyer: vernetzungsaktivitäten im deutschsprachigen raum … winkler: derzeit gibt es eine trilaterale kampagne, die in erster linie auf regierungsebene passiert. die zuständigen ministerien von deutschland, österreich und der schweiz haben diese kampagne ins leben gerufen, eine bisher einmalige kooperation. es handelt sich um einen video-spot, der von reiseveranstaltern, hotelketten (z.b. accor österreich), der austrian auf langstreckenflügen und im öffentlichen raum gezeigt wird. in diesem werden reisende bzw. die bevölkerung dazu aufgerufen, vergehen an kindern zu melden, um ermittlungsbehörden zu unterstützen. generell muss man davon ausgehen, dass ein paar tausend österreicherinnen jedes jahr im ausland minderjährige sexuell missbrauchen und ausbeuten. man ist auf zeuginnen und opferaussagen angewiesen, deswegen ist es sehr wichtig, diese sensibilisierung durchzuführen und menschen hinweise zu geben, wohin sie sich wenden können. proyer: kontakt mit österreichischen reiseveranstaltern … winkler: es gibt positive erfahrungen mit einigen wenigen. zehn jahre nach der unterzeichnung des verhaltenskodex2 durch den österreichischen reisebüro verband (örb), der ungefähr 60 mitglieder zählt, wäre es wünschenswert gewesen, dass mindestens 80 prozent der mitglieder sichtbare schritte gesetzt, also in ihrem aktionsradius mögliche maßnahmen des kodex umgesetzt hätten. informationen auf der webseite zu veröffentlichen, um über die kampagne zu informieren, wäre das mindeste. jene, die eigene kataloge haben, könnten ein inserat abdrucken. wirklich sichtbar ist der verhaltenskodex nur bei jumbo touristik, tui österreich, thomas cook und teilweise verkehrsbüro. es bräuchte hier ständiges monitoring. vielleicht 10 prozent der reiseveranstalter haben sichtbar etwas umgesetzt. proyer: zur datenlage … winkler: in den „hotspotgebieten“, wie den tourismuszonen von bspw. kambodscha, thailand, den philippinen, kenia, brasilien, sri lanka etc. ist kindersextouris2 code of conduct for the protection of children from sexual exploitation in travel and tourism, im folgenden auch nur als kodex, kinderschutzkodex oder child protection code bezeichnet. michelle proyer kindersextourismus: ein südostasiatisches phänomen? aseas 4(1) 176 177 mus sehr offensichtlich. sehr junge prostituierte kann man überall finden. es handelt sich nicht um ein verstecktes phänomen. wirklich versteckt ist die prostitution von kleinen kindern. einschlägige pädophile netzwerke haben hier eigene kontakte. teilweise erhalten wir auch von im tourismus tätigen (hotelangestellte, taxifahrerinnen etc.) einschlägige informationen. vereinzelt findet man aber auch noch – eher unbekannte – reiseveranstalter, die in diesem segment gewinn machen wollen. weiters gibt es ein sehr dichtes netzwerk an ecpat-partnerorganisation oder affiliates, die daten erheben. das sind keine statistischen daten, da solche in diesem bereich schwer zu erheben sind. es werden lokale assessments erstellt, die informationen darüber enthalten, wo sich hotspots befinden. jeder/m touristin könnte kindersextourismus auffallen, es bedarf keiner speziellen schulung. proyer: tendenzen in der gesetzgebung der betroffenen länder und regionen… winkler: es ist eine eindeutige tendenz zu beobachten, dass die gesetzgebungen strenger werden. das problem ist die umsetzung der gesetze, die korruption. ein weiteres problem stellt das faktum dar, dass die ausbeutung oft im einverständnis mit der lokalbevölkerung oder der familie passiert. das phänomen ist sehr vielschichtig und die sicht aus unterschiedlichen perspektiven notwendig. so gering teilweise das unrechtsbewusstsein unter den reisenden oder unter gelegenheitstäterinnen ist, gibt es dieses fehlende unrechtsbewusstsein auch auf der anderen seite. proyer: ende des kindersextourismus wegfall einer wichtigen einnahmequelle … 1. einführung einer firmenphilosophie (leitbild), welche sich eindeutig gegen die kommerzielle sexuelle ausbeutung von kindern ausspricht. 2. sensibilisierung und ausbildung der mitarbeitenden/beschäftigten im herkunftsland und im zielland der reisenden. 3. aufnahme von klauseln in den verträgen mit leistungsträgerinnen, welche die gemeinsame ablehnung von kommerzieller sexueller ausbeutung von kindern deutlich machen. 4. informationsvermittlung an die kundinnen und kunden betreffend die kommerzielle sexuelle ausbeutung von kindern mit dem faltblatt »kleine seelen – große gefahr« oder anderen geeigneten mitteln. 5. zusammenarbeit (informationsvermittlung) mit den destinationen. 6. jährliche berichterstattung über die durchgeführten maßnahmen kriterien des kinderschutzkodex quelle: the code (o.d.) aseas 4(1) 176 177 winkler: wenn die polizei ermittelt und zeuginnen sagen dinge wie: „da war nichts, der/die hat nur schulgeld bezahlt“, wird es schwer die sachlage vor gericht zu bringen. andererseits haben viele länder, zum beispiel kambodscha, nicht zuletzt aufgrund der starken präsenz einer ngo, die nicht zum ecpat-netzwerk gehört, extreme fortschritte gemacht, auch in bezug auf die strafverfolgung. proyer: verschiebung der hotspots … winkler: kindesmissbrauch ist nichts neues. das phänomen hat im lauf der zeit und in unterschiedlichen kulturen unterschiedliche ausprägungen angenommen. alle kulturen haben dafür rationalisierende erklärungen gefunden. ansonsten geht er einher mit steigenden tourismuszahlen. rasche tourismusentwicklung übt einen gewissen sog aus. es gibt ein klares sozio-ökonomisches gefälle zwischen reisenden und der gesellschaft vor ort. in vielen destinationen hat kindersextourismus eine lange tradition. sexuelle straftaten gegen kinder sind bei weitem nicht mehr auf asien beschränkt. dieses bild, dass es nur in thailand oder hauptsächlich in südostasien ein problem ist, hat sich aber ganz tief eingeprägt. proyer: der/die typische kindersextouristin … winkler: es gibt keinen steckbrief, der den typischen kindersextouristen oder die typische kindersextouristin charakterisiert. nicht jede/r steigt als kindersextouristin ins flugzeug. täter verbinden mit der urlaubsillusion und -vorstellung sex. es gibt eine relativ große zielgruppe, zu der auch geschäftsreisende gehören. prostituierte oder escortservices gehören manchmal zum ganz normalen „after-business-vergnügen“ und werden teilweise von den geschäftskolleginnen vor ort organisiert. häufig genügt es, wenn ein/e reisender so etwas nicht ausschließt. der nächste schritt ist dann ein relativ kleiner. es kommen bestimmte faktoren dazu: man ist weit weg vom sozialen umfeld, also von der normalen sozialen kontrolle befreit. sand, sonne, alkohol – man gönnt sich mal was, was man sonst vielleicht nicht machen würde… proyer: das reiseziel… winkler: es gibt natürlich bestimmte problemziele, die bekannt sind. diese sind aber definitiv nicht auf den südostasiatischen raum beschränkt, auch die karibischen inseln, etwa kuba, gehören dazu. in südostasien gibt es neuerdings meldungen aus michelle proyer kindersextourismus: ein südostasiatisches phänomen? aseas 4(1) 178 179 myanmar. dort soll mittlerweile vieles möglich sein. man kann das phänomen also wirklich nicht auf bestimmte regionen einschränken. proyer: aktivitäten im bereich des tourism child protection code… winkler: die wichtigsten partnerinnen, die den kodex in österreich unterzeichnet haben, sind der örv (österreichischer reisebüro verband) – dieser hat als verband den verhaltenskodex für alle seine mitglieder unterzeichnet – und accor österreich. ecpat erwartet sich von der trilateralen kampagne auf regierungsebene, wo ecpatorganisationen aller drei länder eingebunden sind, zusätzlichen anstoß. weiters hat erstmals auf der ferienmesse in wien ein corporate social responsibility (csr)-tag stattgefunden, wo ecpat in rahmen einer kooperation eingebunden war und die es auch im kommenden jahr wieder geben soll. ecpat nützt also jede gelegenheit. international gesehen ist es wichtig, dass die itb berlin (internationale tourismus-börse) (itp) als messe den child protection-code im märz 2011 unterzeichnet hat. proyer: zukunft des kinderschutzkodex (child protection code) … winkler: es konnte ein großer erfolg beim fundraising erzielt werden, um eine professionelle struktur aufzubauen. noch 2011 wird ein headquarter in bangkok eingerichtet, da hier auf langjährige erfahrung zurückgegriffen werden kann. weiters sollen bald drei regionalstellen für voraussichtlich europa, afrika und die amerikas entstehen. die größte herausforderung für die kommenden jahre, neben strukturschaffung, wird darin bestehen, ein praktikables und standardisiertes prozedere für internes und externes monitoring der umsetzung der sechs kriterien des kinderschutzkodex zu entwickeln. proyer: vielen dank für das gespräch. bibliographie the code. (o.d.). code of conduct for the protection of children from sexual exploitation in travel and tourism. zuletzt zugegriffen am 30.mai 2011 unter http://www.thecode.org ecpat international. (o.d.). webseite. zuletzt zugegriffen am 1.juni 2011 unter http://www.ecpat.net ecpat österreich. (o.d.). webseite. zuletzt zugegriffen am 1.juni 2011 unter http://www.ecpat.at aseas 1-2 final (außergottowik).indd aseas 1 (2) rezension / review sidel, john t. (2006): riots, pogroms, jihad. religious violence in indonesia. ithaca and london: cornell university press. isbn: 0-8014-7327-6. xvii + 279 seiten martin slama forschungsstelle sozialanthropologie, österreichische akademie der wissenschaften / social anthropology research unit, austrian academy of sciences aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften / austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 1 (2), 2008 seas gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften www.seas.at john t. sidel, professor für internationale und vergleichende politikwissenschaft an der london school of economics, legt mit riots, pogroms, jihad ein buch vor, das die konflikte und gewaltausbrüche, die in indonesien im zeitraum von 1995 bis 2005 auftraten, in einen analyserahmen stellt. dieser ansatz unterscheidet riots, pogroms, jihad von den zahlreichen in den letzten jahren erschienen arbeiten, die sich auf einzelne phänomene wie „ethnische konflikte“ oder „islamischer terrorismus“ in indonesien konzentrieren – gewaltphänomene in jener kritischen phase, in der das land eine transformation vom autoritären suharto-regime in eine demokratischere ordnung vollzog. für sidel sind die gewaltausbrüche nicht von religion zu trennen, die er nicht als glaubenserfahrung oder als „kulturelles system“ untersucht, wie dies etwa der kulturanthropologe clifford geertz tut, sondern als ein feld im sinne pierre bourdieus, das durch institutionen, machtbeziehungen, materielle produktion und akkumulation, dispositionen (habitus) und durch die distribution von symbolischem kapital bestimmt ist. des weiteren geht sidel historisch vor, indem er bis in die kolonialzeit und das frühe unabhängige indonesien zurückgeht, als sich das religiöse feld in indonesien konstituierte, um die diskontinuitäten und verschiebungen in der positionierung von religion in indonesiens öffentlichkeit festzustellen. 197 das religiöse feld und seine überschneidungen mit den beiden anderen zentralen feldern der macht, nämlich der politik und wirtschaft, stellt für sidel den strukturellen rahmen der religiösen gewalt dar, die er als kollektive physische attacken definiert, die gegen personen oder deren eigentum gerichtet sind und die religiöse dogmen, grenzen, institutionen, traditionen, oder werte lautstark verteidigen oder preisen und bei denen religiöse symbole und slogans eingesetzt werden. das erste kapitel zeigt bereits, dass die ab den 1990ern aufgetretene gewalt in indonesien – von den sogenannten anti-chinesischen unruhen über die konflikte zwischen muslimen und christen in ostindonesien bis zu den islamistischen terroranschlägen – immer religiöse konnotationen aufwies. seinem theoretischen ansatz gemäß hält sidel jedoch nicht viel von erklärungsansätzen, die in der religion an sich das problem sehen. er sieht im gegenteil religion bzw. in konkreten fall den islam eingebettet in klassenbeziehungen, in beziehungen zum staat und generell zu säkularen institutionen, die die grenzen und den grad der autonomie des religiösen feldes mitbestimmen. die verschiedenen formen religiöser gewalt reflektieren laut sidel vielmehr die sozialen und politischen veränderungen in indonesien und somit die rahmenbedingungen dafür, die religion der mehrheit, nämlich den islam zu artikulieren, zu repräsentieren, sich für ihn einzusetzen bzw. durch ihn zu mobilisieren. in kapitel 2 untersucht sidel die spezielle klassenstruktur, die im kolonialen indonesien ihre form annahm und kapital in den händen der chinesischen minderheit konzentrierte, die sich – bis auf wenige ausnahmen – nicht zum islam bekennt. dieser kapital besitzenden klasse stand die mehrheit der einfachen, meist muslimischen bevölkerung sowie die einheimische politische elite gegenüber, die sich zunächst hauptsächlich aus der lokalen aristokratie speiste und für deren reproduktion moderne bildungsinstitutionen immer wichtiger wurden. sidel zeigt hier parallelen auf zwischen dem holländischen system der organisation der gesellschaft in „säulen“ (verzuiling), d.h. in eine protestantische und eine katholische säule, die über ihre institutionen, vor allem im bereich der bildung, in den niederlanden staatstragende netzwerke formten, und dem in indonesien als aliran (strömung) bekannten phänomen, das die aufgliederung der gesellschaft in islamisch traditionelle, islamisch modernistische und säkular/christliche (sowie bis in die sukarno-zeit kommunistische) solidaritätsnetzwerke beschreibt. in der folge (kapitel 3) beschäftigt sich sidel damit, was aus dieser klassenstruktur und den aliran in suhartos sogenannter neuen ordnung (1966–98) wurde. er unterscheidet hier zwei phasen: die erste dauerte vom beginn der neuen ordnung bis in die späten 1980er jahre, die zweite umfasste die 1990er jahre bis zur abdankung suhartos. die erste phase charakterisiert sidel als „capitalism with a chinese face“, in der suharto eine kleine gruppe chinesischer unternehmer protegierte, die dadurch zu großem reichtum gelangten, und als 198 martin slama john t.sidel: riots, pogroms, jihad. religious violence in indonesia aseas 1 (2) „authoritarianism with a christian sword“, da er sich im politischen feld und vor allem im militär auf christliche und säkulare netzwerke stützte. diese „ordnung“ der neuen ordnung ließ sich jedoch in den 1990ern, in denen der islam als identitätsmarker für indonesiens wachsender mittelklasse immer bedeutender wurde (nicht zuletzt auch aufgrund dessen, dass die neue ordnung in anti-kommunistischer absicht die religionen allgemein förderte ), nicht mehr aufrecht erhalten. suharto machte so einen schwenk von den christlichen netzwerken zu den islamisch modernistischen, während das islamisch traditionelle lager unter der führung des späteren präsidenten abdurrahman wahid (1999–2001) von sich aus eine größere distanz zu dem nach wie vor autoritären regime einnahm. aufgrund dieses nicht zu übersehenden schwenks suhartos gewann der islam eine stärkere position in indonesiens öffentlichkeit, und prominente vertreter der islamisch modernistischen strömung konnten in die politische elite des landes vorstoßen. in dieser zeit der neustrukturierung des politischen feldes mitte der 1990er jahre ereigneten sich auch die ersten gewaltausbrüche, die dieses buch unter der kategorie „riots“ analysiert. in kapitel 4 geht sidel konkret auf die unruhen in den jahren 1995 bis 1997 ein, die sich hauptsächlich gegen chinesische geschäfte und kirchen richteten und denen meist dispute zwischen muslimen und chinesen bzw. gerüchte über respektloses verhalten von chinesen dem islam gegenüber vorausgingen. in dieser zeit wurden die klassenunterschiede unter den musliminnen indonesiens immer sichtbarer. die neue islamische mittelklasse nahm einen ähnlichen lebensstil an wie ihre chinesischen und christlichen pendants, die nun gemeinsam die einkaufszentren der städte bevölkerten, mit ihren scheibengetönten autos die straßen verstopften und in bewachten wohnsiedlungen lebten. diese entwicklungen erzeugten ambiguitäten und spannungen, was die position des islam in indonesien betrifft, der bisher von vielen seiner anführer als (alternative) identität für die einfache bevölkerung präsentiert wurde. vor diesem hintergrund des entstehens neuer (widersprüchlicher) islamischer identitäten und klassenlagen sowie der nach wie vor starken chinesischen ökonomischen elite sieht sidel die zahlreichen unruhen dieser jahre. dem höhepunkt dieser anti-chinesischen gewalt geht sidel in kapitel 5 nach. im zuge der abdankung suhartos nahm diese einen charakter an, der der islamischen elite, die mit b.j. habibie als suhartos nachfolger und vorsitzender der islamischen intellektuellenorganisation ikatan cendekiawan muslim indonesia (icmi) plötzlich im zentrum der macht angelangt und zuvor mit anti-chinesischer und anti-christlicher rhetorik aufgefallen war, zu weit ging. diesmal wurden nicht nur chinesische geschäfte und wohnhäuser angezündet, sondern auch chinesische frauen vergewaltigt. diese gewalt konnte nun nicht mehr als „islamisch“ interpretiert werden, als der volkszorn einfacher muslime, der sich gegen nicht-muslimische kapitalisten richtet, und verstärkte die zweifel und ambiguitäten bezüglich der position des 199 islam in indonesien, die auch die post-suharto-ära bestimmen sollten, in der neue formen religiöser gewalt zum vorschein kamen. kapitel 6 behandelt diese formen von gewalt der jahre 1999 bis 2001, die sidel „interreligious pogroms“ nennt. in dieser periode verlor auch die islamisch modernistische elite einen beträchtlichen teil ihres politischen einflusses, denn habibie, ihr patron, wurde ende 1999 als präsident nicht wieder gewählt, sondern abdurrahman wahid von der islamisch traditionellen strömung, der 2001 wiederum von der säkularen megawati sukarnoputri, der tochter des staatsgründers sukarno, abgelöst wurde. diese politischen turbulenzen und die damit verbundene unsicherheit waren vor allem in jenen östlichen provinzen indonesiens zu spüren, in denen sich die christliche und muslimische bevölkerung ungefähr die waage hält und religiöse netzwerke für die lokalen machtaufteilung eine große rolle spielen. im bezirk poso in zentralsulawesi und in den provinzen der molukken und nord-molukken, die diesem bild entsprechen, brachen die interreligiösen pogrome schließlich aus. im letzten kapitel stellt sidel das dritte muster religiöser gewalt in indonesien vor, das sich beträchtlich von den anderen beiden (unruhen und pogrome) unterscheidet. beim jihad handelt es sich nicht um die relativ spontane gewaltausübung ganzer bevölkerungsgruppen, sondern dieser wird von wenigen, genau planenden spezialisten getragen. sidel versteht unter dieser kategorie islamische milizen, die von java in die krisenherde in ostindonesien geschickt wurden, sowie terrorgruppen, die von 2000 bis 2004 indonesien mit bombenattentaten in atem hielten. der verheerendste anschlag wurde am 12. oktober 2002 auf einen nachtclub in bali verübt, bei dem über 200 menschen den tod fanden. diese anschläge auf vermeintlich westliche ziele wie nachtclubs, hotels und botschaften reflektiert laut sidel die veränderungen in der konstellation zwischen religiösem und politischem feld (s. 214): „this new constellation was one in which the space for the promotion of islam in the national parliamentary arena had dramatically shrunk, and in which the channels of quiet collaboration between jihadi activists and sympathetic elements in the state and the political class were rapidly being closed down.“ weit davon entfernt, den islam der mehrheit der musliminnen indonesiens zu repräsentieren, wurden die anschläge der jihadisten als sektiererische gewalt wahrgenommen, die auch eine delegitimation der nicht-gewalttätigen islamisten zur folge hatte (was z.b. auch im wahlergebnis von 2004 reflektiert ist; parteien mit einem prononciert islamistischen programm konnten bei diesen wahlen nicht reüssieren). die terroranschläge 2000 bis 2004, folgert sidel, sind die traurigen ausläufer eines gescheiterten islamistischen projekts, das sich nach dem fall suhartos chancen auf die macht in indonesien, dem land mit der weltweit größten islamischen gemeinschaft, ausgerechnet hatte. aus der perspektive von 2006, als dieses buch erschien, und auch aus heutiger sicht gehört die von sidel beschriebene religiöse gewalt – und zwar alle drei formen – der vergangenheit an, 200 martin slama john t.sidel: riots, pogroms, jihad. religious violence in indonesia aseas 1 (2) obwohl religiöse spannungen in manchen teilen indonesiens nach wie vor zum alltag gehören. nichtsdestotrotz ist der „triumph for mulitfaith tolerance or secularism“ (s. 223), den sidel am ende seines buches verkündet, nicht als ein solcher zu werten. denn in den letzten jahren versuchten islamistische kräfte in indonesien nicht durch gewalt, sondern auf provinzund distriktsebene in den lokalparlamenten, die nach suharto aufgewertet wurden, oder auch durch die staatlich anerkannte organisation der islamgelehrten (majelis ulama indonesia) ihre agenda durchzusetzen. das im moment relativ gewaltfreie tauziehen zwischen islamistischen und säkularen bzw. christlichen kräften hat noch lange nicht mit einem sieg von letzteren ihr ende erreicht. sidel ist jedoch zuzustimmen, wenn er die religiöse gewalt von 1995 bis 2005 als einen prozess beschreibt, aus dem die islamisten geschwächt hervorgegangen sind. hier kommt die stärke von sidels ansatz zum tragen, die nicht nach unmittelbaren gründen für die gewaltakte sucht, sondern mit der analyse der verschränkungen der religiösen, politischen und wirtschaftlichen felder ein umfassendes bild der gesellschaftlichen strukturen und soziopolitischen konstellationen indonesiens zeichnet. diese strukturen und konstellationen, in denen die gewalt verankert ist, frei zu legen, ist das große verdienst von sidels buch. 201 aseas 1-2 final (außergottowik).indd aseas 1 (2) 01 editorial belinda helmke & alfred gerstl aseas redaktion / aseas editorial board aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften / austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 1 (2), 2008 seas gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften www.seas.at welcome to the second issue of the austrian journal of south-east asian studies. the majority of contributions in this publication have resulted directly from the third annual conference of the society for south-east asian studies (seas), entitled “(in)equalities in southeast asia”. the presentations at this meeting in june 2008 in vienna covered a wide spectrum of themes and countries in the region. the conference demonstrated that the dominant focus in south-east asia remains on internal issues, such as economic, social, political, and cultural challenges. in addition, it also illustrated the need for transnational cooperation in different political spheres. willkommen zur zweiten ausgabe der österreichischen zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften. die mehrheit der beiträge in dieser veröffentlichung sind das direkte resultat der dritten alljährlichen konferenz „(in)equalities in south-east asia” der gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften (seas). die präsentationen, die anlässlich dieser tagung im juni 2008 in wien gehalten wurden, decken ein weites spektrum an themen und ländern in der region ab. die konferenz demonstrierte, dass der beherrschende schwerpunkt in südostasien weiterhin auf internen angelegenheiten, wie wirtschaftlichen, sozialen, politischen und kulturellen belinda helmke & alfred gerstl editorial 02 currently, in south-east asia the spotlight is on the recent core concern in the region: the global financial crisis and its potential political and social implications. the economic disaster which emerged in autumn 2008 is forcing regional organisations worldwide to rethink banking, trade, currency and credit policies. in south-east asia the idea of a regional monetary union, including a central bank and a fund to counter the financial crisis, has been floated. asean s̀ member states recall all too well the events of the previous decade when the region’s economies were hit hard by the asian financial crisis. the current crisis shows that even wealthy states are not immune to largescale economic meltdown. rolf jordan in his article examines how poverty and increasing social disparity have even affected the prosperous city-state of singapore. a missing safety net in form of social security is always problematic, particularly in times of economic hardship. social inequality, however, is also an important issue in other south-east asian countries. the so-called urban revolution, including strong population growth and fast growing cities, has lead to numerous social problems. hannah von bloh and martin noltze in their respective articles examine such social difficulties brought along by urbanisation in vietnam. von bloh focuses on the inequality among local herausforderungen, ruht. zudem wurde der bedarf für transnationale kooperation in den verschiedenen politischen bereichen aufgezeigt. die gegenwärtig größte herausforderung für die länder südostasiens liegt in der globalen wirtschaftskrise und ihren potenziellen politischen und sozialen auswirkungen. das wirtschaftliche desaster, welches im herbst 2008 auftrat, zwingt regionale organisationen weltweit dazu, ihre politik in bezug auf handel, bank-, währungsund kreditwesen zu überdenken. in südostasien ist die idee einer regionalen währungsunion, inklusive einer zentralbank und eines fonds zur bekämpfung der wirtschaftskrise, vorgelegt worden. die aseanmitgliedstaaten können sich nur allzu gut an die ereignisse des letzten jahrzehnts erinnern, als die region schwer von der asiatischen finanzkrise betroffen war. die momentane krise zeigt, dass selbst wohlhabende staaten nicht unbedingt immun sind gegen den groß angelegten wirtschaftlichen kollaps. rolf jordan untersucht in seinem artikel, wie armut und steigende soziale disparität selbst den wohlhabenden stadtstaat singapur betroffen haben. ein fehlendes soziales sicherheitsnetz in form eines sozialversicherungssystems ist immer problematisch, vor allem in zeiten wirtschaftlicher not. soziale ungleichheiten sind jedoch auch in anderen südostasiatischen ländern ein problem. aseas 1 (2) 03 actors in the country’s rural areas. she argues that small urban centres can simultaneously promote development in the rural hinterland and reduce the strain on urban centres, therefore enabling a more sustainable and equal development. noltze examines the position of migrant workers in this urbanisation phenomenon, particularly with regard to greater ho chi minh city. he argues that the promotion of alternative housing finance schemes can be an integrative solution in supporting the empowerment and development of rural migrants in such an urban society. both articles also demonstrate that grassroots participation and intermediary institutions can promote democracy in the nominally communist vietnam. urbanisation and globalisation have not only brought challenges to social structures but also tremendous change to many workplaces. niklas reese examines the phenomenon of transnational working places in form of international call centres in the philippines. employees in this industry work in line with north american time rather than their own, pulling them out of the social rhythm of their remaining society. based on this case study reese introduces the concept of a “glocalized intermediary class” and identifies the sense of citizenship which exists within the philippine’s globally exposed and connected middle class. south-east asia’s potential for internal political unrest based on issues such as die sogenannte urbane revolution mit ihrem starken bevölkerungswachstum und schnellwachsenden städten hat zu einer vielzahl von sozialen problemen geführt. sowohl hannah von bloh als auch martin noltze analysieren diese sozialen herausforderungen am beispiel der urbanisierung in vietnam. von bloh konzentriert sich auf die ungleichheit zwischen lokalen akteurinnen in den ländlichen gebieten vietnams. sie argumentiert, dass kleine urbane zentren gleichzeitig entwicklung im ländlichen hinterland fördern und die ballungsgebiete entlasten und somit eine nachhaltige und gleichwertige entwicklung fördern können. noltze erforscht die stellung von gastarbeiterinnen im urbanisierungsprozess in ho chi minh city. er sieht die förderung von alternativen finanzierungsprogrammen für das wohnungswesen als eine integrative lösung für die selbstermächtigung und entwicklung der ländlichen einwandererinnen in solch einer urbanen gesellschaft. beide artikel zeigen, dass die beteiligung „von unten“ und intermediäre institutionen demokratie in dem nominell kommunistischem vietnam fördern können. urbanisierung und globalisierung stellen nicht nur große herausforderungen für soziale strukturen dar, sondern können auch grundlegende änderungen für viele arbeitsplätze mit sich bringen. niklas reese beleuchtet in seinem beitrag das phänomen 04 des transnationalen arbeitsplatzes am beispiel internationaler callcenter in den philippinen. die arbeitnehmerinnen in dieser dienstleistungsindustrie haben zeitlich synchron mit den usa zu arbeiten, was mitunter zur folge hat, dass sie aus dem sozialen rhythmus ihrer eigenen gesellschaft gerissen werden. basierend auf dieser fallstudie führt reese das konzept einer „glocalized intermediary class“ ein. diesbezüglich zeigt er auf, welches konzept von nationaler und gesellschaftlicher zugehörigkeit sich teile der philippinischen mittelschicht schaffen, die über solche arbeitsverhältnisse in internationale kontexte und kommunikationsstrukturen eingebunden sind. die anfälligkeit südostasiens für interne politische unruhen aufgrund sozialer ungleichheit, separatistischer bestrebungen, fehlender staatlicher autorität und politischer machtkämpfe wird regelmäßig sichtbar, zuletzt in thailand. dennoch sind sicherheit und konflikt themen, die von asean oft gemieden werden. eine ausnahme stellt das asean regional forum (arf) dar, dessen gründung laut alfred gerstl nicht zuletzt als reaktion auf chinas wirtschaftlichen und politischen aufstieg zu sehen ist. laut gerstl wird die einbindung des weltweit bevölkerungsreichsten landes in dieses forum helfen, die existierende ordnung in der region zu stabilisieren. die bekräftigung mulitlateraler anstelle social inequality, separatist aspirations, missing governmental authority and power struggles is regularly visible, most recently in thailand. yet, security and conflict are themes often avoided by asean. an exception is the asean regional forum (arf) whose creation was according to alfred gerstl not at least a reaction to china‘s economic and political rise. gerstl argues that engaging the world’s most populous country will help stabilize the existing order in the region. the endorsement of multilateralism, as opposed to unilateral approaches, is promoted as increasing the relative gains of all participants. despite of these important transnational issues, further contributions in this publication show that local concerns are of similar importance and cannot be neglected. sebastian koch, heiko faust and jan barkmann study local power structures and struggles regarding access to natural resources in central sulawesi (indonesia). also in indonesia, volker gottowik examines the resurgence of religious activities and rituals in bali, while kristina großmann analyses women activists in aceh. all of the contributions in this issue show that in order to achieve stability, equality and prosperity throughout south-east asia, the range of existing inequalities on a local, national and regional level must be addressed first. newly-created in this issue is our section belinda helmke & alfred gerstl editorial aseas 1 (2) 05 “research workshop”. here we aim to offer young researchers the opportunity to present a broader public the results of their master or doctoral theses. using the aceh conflict as a case study, robert heiling shows the limits and chances of external mediation. according to him, it is crucial for the success to regard conflict resolution as stages of a process which must also include the concrete implementation. bettina volk describes her first hand experiences of social tensions between the small (protestant) dia’ang ethnicity and their neighbours in pantar (indonesia). in the category “forum south-east asia”, günter spreitzhofer analyses the ambiguous effects of backpacking tourism in khao san (thailand). he points out how strongly “lonely planet” has changed its philosophy in the last 30 years – and how fundamentally this backpacker bible has changed khao san. christian wawrinec, one of our aseas editors, has interviewed the now singapore-based sociologist geoffrey benjamin. benjamin talks about his fieldwork in malaysia in the early 1960s when he studied the temiars. not only anthropologists will find his stories about the (logistic) difficulties of his early fieldwork fascinating. unfortunately, our reviewers have to remain anonymous – yet not unthanked. once again their contributions were tremendous. and as the authors will agree, unilateraler ansätze scheint zudem dem nutzen aller teilnehmenden staaten zu entsprechen. trotz all dieser wichtigen transnationalen belange zeigen weitere beiträgen in dieser ausgabe, dass lokale angelegenheiten oft ähnlich große auswirkungen haben können wie nationale oder regionale ereignisse und dementsprechend nicht vernachlässigt werden dürfen. sebastian koch, heiko faust und jan barkmann untersuchen die regelung des zugangs zu natürlichen ressourcen in zentralsulawesi (indonesien) im lichte lokaler machstrukturen. ebenfalls in indonesien analysiert volker gottowik das wiederaufleben religiöser aktivitäten und riten in bali, während kristina großmann das thema frauenaktivistinnen in aceh erforscht. alle beiträge in dieser ausgabe zeigen, dass eine vielzahl von existierenden ungleichheiten auf der lokalen, nationalen und regionalen ebene adressiert werden müssen, um stabilität, gleichheit und wohlstand südostasienweit zu erzielen. neu in dieser ausgabe ist unsere rubrik „forschungswerkstatt“, in der wir nachwuchswissenschafterinnen die möglichkeit bieten, die ergebnisse ihrer diplomarbeit oder dissertation einer breiteren öffentlichkeit zu präsentieren. am beispiel des konflikts in aceh zeigt robert heiling die grenzen wie chancen externer mediaton auf. entscheidend für den erfolg ist laut ihm, die konfliktlösung 06 belinda helmke & alfred gerstl editorial the revieweŕ s contributions resulted in an remarkable increase in quality regarding the first and final version of the submitted papers. it is with great pleasure that we hereby can present the second issue of aseas. vienna, december 2008 als mehrstufigen prozess zu betrachten, der auch die konkrete implementation beinhalten muss. bettina volk beschreibt dagegen ihre persönlichen erfahrungen mit sozialen spannungen zwischen der kleinen (protestantischen) dia’ang-ethnie und deren nachbarn in pantar (indonesien). in unserer kategorie „forum südostasien“ analysiert günter spreitzhofer den mehrdeutigen effekt des rucksacktourismus in khao san (thailand). er zeigt auf, wie stark sich die „lonely planet“-philosophie in den letzten 30 jahren verändert hat – und wie fundamental diese bibel des rucksacktourismus im gegenzug khao san verwandelt hat. christian wawrinec, einer unserer aseas-redakteure, hat den nun in singapur ansässigen soziologen geoffrey benjamin interviewt. benjamin spricht über seine feldforschung in malaysia während der frühen 1960er jahre, in denen er bei den temiars forschte. seine erinnerungen an die (logistischen) schwierigkeiten früher feldforschung werden nicht nur anthropologinnen faszinieren. anonym müssen leider unsere rezensentinnen verbleiben – anonym, aber nicht unbedankt. wieder einmal war ihre mitwirkung ganz wesentlich: wie die autorinnen bestätigen werden, hat die qualität der endversionen der beiträge dank des ausfuhrlichen feedbacks stark zugenommen. mit großem vergnügen dürfen wir hiermit die zweite aseas-ausgabe präsentieren. wien, dezember 2008 aseas 2-2 editorial 01 editorial christian wawrinec aseas redaktion / aseas editing board aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften / austrian journal of south-east asian studies seas gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften / society for south-east asian studies www.seas.at due to the truly international feedback and submissions to our austrian journal of south-east asian studies (aseas), this fourth issue will for the first time since the establishment of our journal consist of english language articles only. we are proud that within only two years we were able to address a global audience. at the same time we are amusingly curious whether the increase of submissions by australian authors is due to the similar naming of both our in anerkennung der internationalen ausrichtung der österreichischen zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften (aseas) werden in dieser vierten ausgabe erstmals ausschließlich englischsprachige beiträge gedruckt. wir sind stolz, nur zwei jahre nach der gründung von aseas vermehrt auch ein globales publikum anzusprechen, und wundern uns, ob das vermehrte interesse australischer autorinnen am ähnlich klingenden namen unserer beiden länder liegt. was christian wawrinec editorial aseas 2 (2) 02 countries. the “a” in aseas still stands for “austrian”, hence we look forward to revive our journal’s bilingual format in future issues. this issue includes some of the presentations held during the fourth viennese conference on south-east asian studies on june 19 and 20, 2009, as well as articles submitted in response to our call for papers (topic “transnational crises, conflict resolution and nontraditional security threats in southeast asia”). opening this issue, ramses amer (stockholm university) examines the deliberately limited role of the association of south-east asian nations (asean) in the management of conflicts amongst its member-states. in doing so, he looks at the core elements of the asean conflict management model and its impacts on (border) disputes within south-east asia. in her analysis of the mekong region susanne schmeier (berlin graduate school of transnational studies) argues that resource management of international rivers need not always lead to rivalries and conflicts. rather, as she shows, river basin organizations had a share not only in the establishment of cooperation structures in various policy fields, but also pushed forward regional auch immer der grund dafür ist, das „a“ in aseas steht weiterhin für „austrian“, und es wird uns auch in zukunft ein anliegen sein, weiter deutschsprachige beiträge zu publizieren. das vorliegende heft beinhaltet sowohl einige vorträge, die am 19. und 20. juni 2009 im rahmen der vierten wiener südostasienkonferenz gehalten wurden, als auch artikel, die uns auf den call for papers (thema „transnationale krisen, konfliktlösungen und nicht-traditionelle sicherheitsbedrohungen in südostasien“) hin zugesandt wurden. zunächst untersucht ramses amer (stockholm university) die bewusst zurückhaltende rolle der vereinigung südostasiatischer nationen (asean) im konfliktmanagement zwischen ihren mitgliedstaaten. dabei betrachtet er die kernelemente des asean-konfliktmanagementmodells sowie dessen auswirkungen auf zwischenstaatliche streitigkeiten innerhalb südostasiens. susanne schmeier (berlin graduate school of transnational studies) verweist in ihrer analyse der mekong-region auf die transnationale dimension des ressourcenmanagements der dortigen flüsse. sie erläutert, wie flussbeckenorganisationen dabei mithalfen, kooperationsstrukturen in diversen politikfeldern aufzubauen und damit einen beitrag zur aseas 2 (2) christian wawrinec editorial 03 development. in his second paper, ramses amer together with nguyen hong thao (vietnam national university) present settled and unsettled border disputes of cambodia, laos and vietnam, as well as trends in managing these conflicts. also, the two authors address the political challenges that come with the implementation of legal agreements in relation to these unsettled disputes. oliver pye (bonn university) deals with the palm oil expansion in southeast asia as a multiple crisis. based on his research on malaysian palm oil producers and on global campaign coalitions against the agrofuel policies of the european union, he shows the transnational dimensions of the palm oil crisis. malaysia’s security legislation and its use since 9/11 are the focus of andrew humphrey’s (university of wollongong) contribution. he argues that malaysia’s internal security apparatus remained largely unchanged during the socalled “war on terror”. however, after the 2001 terrorist attacks in the usa, western governments notably reduced their criticisms of the repressive use of force against opposition elements inside malaysia. ming hwa ting (university of entwicklung der region leisteten. der zweite beitrag ramses amers, diesmal zusammen mit nguyen hong thao (vietnam national university) verfasst, analysiert beigelegte und fortdauernde grenzstreitigkeiten kambodschas, laos und vietnams sowie sich abbildende trends in der bearbeitung eben dieser konflikte. die beiden autoren gehen dabei auch auf politische herausforderungen ein, die einer umsetzung rechtlicher vereinbarungen zur schlichtung noch ungelöster konflikte im wege stehen. oliver pye (universität bonn) behandelt in seinem beitrag die palmölexpansion in südostasien als multiple transnationale krise. seine studie über die malaysischen palmölproduzenten und globalen kampagnenkoalitionen gegen die agrotreibstoffpolitik der europäischen union machen die transnationalen dimensionen der palmölkrise verständlicher. malaysias sicherheitsgesetze und ihre anwendung seit 9/11 stehen im mittelpunkt von andrew humphreys (university of wollongong) artikel. der staatliche sicherheitsapparat malaysias blieb seiner analyse nach im laufe des sogenannten „krieg gegen den terrorismus“ größtenteils unverändert. westliche regierungen kritisieren den einsatz repressiver gewalt gegen oppositionelle aseas 2 (2) 04 nunmehr jedoch weniger als vor den terroranschlägen in den usa im jahr 2001. ming hwa ting (university of adelaide) betrachtet singapurs und indiens verhältnis zueiander und stellt dabei fest, dass sich die bilateralen beziehungen seit dem ende des kalten krieges nicht nur im wirtschaftlichen bereich, sondern auch in der politischen, militärischen, sozialen und kulturellen sphäre rapide verbesserten. aus dem diplomatisch distanzierten verhältnis beider länder während des kalten krieges wurde eine enge zwischenstaatliche beziehung, die jener während der kolonialzeit nicht unähnlich scheint. param cumaraswamy spricht in dem von christian bothe (aseas) geführten interview über die stärkung der menschenrechte in südostasien und seine eigene rolle als mitglied malaysias in der regionalen arbeitsgruppe zur entwicklung eines asean-menschenrechtsmechanismus. inzwischen aus der taufe gehoben, kommen einem solchen südostasiatischen menschenrechtsgremium hohe erwartungen entgegen, die angesichts seines beschränkten mandats nun skeptisch überprüft werden müssen. als premiere bieten wir in dieser ausgabe einen beitrag in der rubrik „südostasien sehen“. alexander trupp (universität wien) und kosita butraadelaide) examines the singapore-india relations and observes that since the end of the cold war, bilateral contacts (and cooperation) improved significantly not only in the economic field, but also in the political, military, social, and cultural sphere. what during the cold war was diplomatically distant became a very close bond – and steadily similar to the relationship the two countries had during the colonial period. param cumaraswamy, in his interview with christian bothe (aseas), talks about strengthening human rights in south-east asia and his own role as a malaysian member of the regional working group for an asean human rights mechanism. his interview displays hopes and expectations towards the newly founded and heavily criticized asean human rights institution. for the first time this aseas issue also features a contribution in our section “south-east asia visually”. alexander trupp (university of vienna) and kosita butratana (suan dusit rajabhat university) present documentary photos as well as background information on hans manndorff’s ethnological field research in northern thailand (1961-65) as well as efforts to make his archive accessible to an interested audience. as the deputy editor-in-chief let me aseas 2 (2) christian wawrinec editorial 05 encourage you to publish with us in the future – both german and english submissions are welcome. enjoy reading our present issue! vienna, december 2009 tana (suan dusit rajabhat university) präsentieren dabei dokumentationsaufnahmen zu hans manndorffs ethnologischer forschung in nordthailand (196165) sowie hintergrundinformationen zu seinem fotoarchiv und bemühungen, dieses einer interessierten öffentlichkeit zugänglich zu machen. als stellvertretender chefredakteur wünsche ich ihnen viel spaß bei der lektüre der interessanten beiträge und ermuntere sie, zukünftig mit uns – in deutscher oder in englischer sprache – zu publizieren. wien, dezember 2009 book review: phraxayavong, v. (2009). history of aid to laos: motivations and impacts aseas 4 (2) 338 339 rezensionen / book reviews phraxayavong, viliam (2009). history of aid to laos: motivations and impacts. chiang mai, thailand: mekong press. isbn: 978-611-90053-0-3. 322 pages. citation schippers, l.-k. (2011). book review: phraxayavong, v. (2009). history of aid to laos: motivations and impacts. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 4(2), 338-342. with his book history of aid to laos: motivations and impacts, viliam phraxayavong offers an outstanding and insightful analysis of the impact of more than fifty years of development assistance on laos. it can be regarded as a soon-to-be classic for anyone from students and academics to development practitioners interested in understanding foreign aid in laos. the book emanates from phraxayavong’s phd thesis at the university of sydney, australia, and much of the book’s authority can be attributed to phraxayavong’s personal experience in the field of development assistance in his former position as director of international economic co-operation in the royal lao government (rlg) from 1965 to 1975 and as aid co-ordinator under the lao pdr government from 1981 to 1984. therefore, his personal life and work experience strongly inform his writing. phraxayavong embeds his analysis in a sophisticated discussion of development assistance. debates surrounding dependency, conditionality, poverty alleviation, and governance are consulted and serve as his framework of interpretation. he thereby draws a complex picture of the motivations and impacts behind more than half a century of foreign aid to laos. the outstanding achievement of this book is the empirically rich analysis of how aid was (and indeed still is) tied to different external interests during different periods and the mapping of the various conflicting interests between the donor agents. in phraxayavong’s words “the lao political battlefield” (p. xvii) is characterised by antagonistic external interests. however, the author manages to overcome a one-sided analysis of the dynamics of external assistance by shedding light on the motivations of the different lao governments in receiving aid. instead of solely focusing on the d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -4 .2 -1 0 aseas 4 (2) 338 339 external interests vis-à-vis the lao state, the motivations of the lao elite in receiving aid are considered as well. phraxayavong thereby deconstructs the “hidden agendas of giving and receiving aid” (p. 277). the first chapter aims at clarifying the various theoretical concepts about development assistance. aid is conceptualised as a mirror of the donor’s commercial and political interest, and it is generally tied to specific interests and conditions (p. 32). phraxayavong’s critical stance towards foreign aid is made clear by the following statement: “foreign aid has therefore been a force for anti-development in that it retards growth through reduced savings and worsens income inequalities” (p. 41). hence, the negative effects of foreign aid on laos receive special investigation in this publication. after discussing theoretical concepts in the first chapter, the following chapters of the book are chronologically divided into four blocks to which phraxayavong attributes the major turning points in the history of aid to laos. phraxayavong describes the first phase from 1950 to 1954 as being characterised by the changing spheres of influence to laos. in 1949, laos became independent from france, albeit still a member of the french union as an associated state. during this phase the financial dependence of the rlg towards france was still strong and accompanied by us economic assistance. the focus of assistance was in the field of military aid, and development aid only played a minor role. the geneva conference in 1954 gave independence to the indochinese states of vietnam, cambodia, and laos, and forced france to withdraw from these countries. yet, the discontentment with years of french colonialism led to insurgencies by the lao issara (‘free lao’) movement. the subsequent instable political situation drove the rlg into the arms of foreign, especially us, assistance. as a result, us aid became highly influential in laos in the mid-fifties. the strength of the analysis in the next chapter lies, first, in uncovering the consequences that us political involvement had on the internal political stability of laos, and second, in the detailed discussion of the various sources of aid to laos, as well as the highly diverging objectives and rationales behind giving aid. the second turn in the history of aid relates to the phase from 1955 to 1975. this period was marked by the attempt of the us and its allies to contain communism in the region and to exclude the communist pathet lao movement from the governing lan-katharina schippers book review: history of aid to laos aseas 4 (2) 340 341 coalition. during the 1960s us aid was still mainly understood as military aid. the us financed the royal lao army (rla) and the cia created a hmong clandestine army in order to create a military force against the pathet lao and the northern vietnamese communists. additionally, some kind of “parallel government” (p. 129) was installed. the author’s discussion of the congressional hearings of 1971 reveals the appalling fact that a large amount of official us aid was actually diverted to cia’s paramilitary efforts in laos. thus, the us used the financial dependency of the rlg and rla “as a tool to shape laos’ politics and government” (p. 78). phraxayavong depicts how accepting aid from the us forced laos into the secret war with its disastrous consequences for the lao people. when the pathet lao took over state power in 1975, the us agency for international development’s mission to laos closed down with the result that the entire lao state and economy collapsed. together with other stark examples, phraxayavong proves with impressing detail how dependent the rlg was on the us interest in the region. he even claims that because of aid mismanagement, the pathet lao eventually replaced the rlg, although this claim might seem a bit overstretched. an additional strength of the chapter is the discussion of the various bilateral as well as multilateral donors and their diverging interests vis-à-vis laos. the author presents an elaborated and precise account of the various motivations behind aid giving and also considers the economic, social, and political impacts of foreign assistance on laos. the third major transformation in the history of aid occurred from 1976 to 1985 and is linked to the communist regime and its dependence on aid. the communist leaders depended heavily on foreign assistance from the very beginning. the assistance from the council of mutual economic assistance (cmea), also known as the ‘communist bloc’, was crucial for its survival. especially revealing is that aid was not given out of mere socialist solidarity, but loans were expected to be paid back and the commercial and business interests attached to aid were not any different from ‘western’ donors. communist vietnam took a special role in lao political affairs and the author illustrates well the different forms of aid aimed at securing its influence. the fourth turning point relates to the period from 1986 to 2005 with the transition from a centralised economy to a market economy. with the adaptation of the new economic mechanism (nem) in 1986, the influence of ‘western’ donors and aseas 4 (2) 340 341 international financial institutions increased again. finally, with the collapse of the soviet union, the lao government mainly relied on development assistance from donors such as the various un agencies, the bretton woods institutions (international monetary fund, world bank), the asian development bank (adb), and bilateral organisations. the author again presents an in-depth analysis of the impact of various interests articulated through the manifold bilateral and multilateral development programmes. accepting foreign aid did not only prove beneficial for laos, rather the author makes clear that each apparent ‘benefit’ was also accompanied by a detriment. yet, phraxayavong holds foreign actors as well as the lao elite responsible for the failure of the development agendas to bring about social improvement to the lao people. throughout the book phraxayavong takes a critical stance towards the continuing dependency on aid. his point of view is that the various commercial interests and ideological visions inscribed in the foreign development agendas have made laos especially prone to foreign interest. at the same time, however, the lao elite has been using aid to pursue their own personal, economic, and political objectives. in his conclusion, phraxayavong draws a grim picture of the possibility for laos to lessen its dependency on aid. in his opinion, laos has become a “tool of the donor” (p. 280). it is very questionable, however, if such a labelling is appropriate, as any victimisation of ‘laos’ oversees that there are actually parts of the lao society that highly benefit from the condition of aid dependency. although phraxayavong at times adheres to such a differentiated analysis, sometimes the analysis of who benefits and who loses from the condition of dependency does not go deep enough. to sum up, despite such minor shortcomings, phraxayavong lives up to the expectation he raises at the outset of the book. the impressive empirical data used to support his thesis come along with an excellent analysis of the impact that development aid had on laos. the central tenor of the book is that “for laos, aid brought considerable harm to the country and the people as a whole. for almost fifty years, the impacts upon laos were unimaginable and their costs immeasurable” (p. 30). this reproach still holds true today, especially in regard to the controversial aid-funded mega-projects such as in hydropower, transportation infrastructure, and mining with their inestimable consequences for generations of lao people. lan-katharina schippers book review: history of aid to laos aseas 4 (2) 342 343 the fact that development assistance has a major influence on the functioning of most states in the global south make it a topic of continuous attention. phraxayavong’s history of aid to laos: motivations and impacts is a prime example of a critical investigation and indeed can serve as an impetus for similar well-grounded analyses in other parts of the world. lan-katharina schippers university of vienna, austria research on south-east asia in austria: department of geography and regional research, university of vienna aseas 3(2) 274 275 netzwerk südostasienforschung / network south-east asia research research on south-east asia in austria: department of geography and regional research, university of vienna karl husa1 & alexander trupp2 university of vienna, austria university of vienna, austria & aseas editorial board citation husa, k. & trupp, a. (2010). research on south-east asia in austria: department of geography and regional research, university of vienna. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 3(2), 274-277. asia has witnessed dynamic economic, demographic, and social transformations during the last few decades. especially india and several countries in east and southeast asia have already become important global players, while only a few decades ago most of them were considered to be backward and dominated by agriculture. increasingly complex economic interrelationships between the more developed countries and the so-called asian newly industrialised countries (nics), as well as the soaring attractiveness of developing (mass) tourism destinations, have led to a growing demand for regional experts, for example as consultants on economic matters, politics, international development co-operation, tourism, or mass media. for these reasons, at the department of geography and regional research, university of vienna3, we offer the possibility of specialising in ‘development studies/development co-operation’ within the ‘master of geography/regional research’ curriculum. we provide a regional focus on asia, especially south-east asia. geographical research on asia at the university of vienna started about one hundred years ago. until the 1970s, however, geographical studies mainly focused on the middle and the near east. starting at the beginning of the 1980s, the department 1 karl husa is associate professor and head of the asia research group at the department of geography and regional research, university of vienna, and a member of the aseas advisory board. contact: karl.husa@univie.ac.at 2 alexander trupp is university assistant at the department of geography and regional research, university of vienna, and a member of the aseas editorial board. contact: alexander.trupp@univie.ac.at 3 please find more information on the departmental website: http://asien.univie.ac.at/ aseas 3(2) 274 275 shifted its research and teaching focus towards east and south-east asia. at that time, asia’s economic boom aroused worldwide attention. so did its economic bust in the late 1990s. in this context, issues of spatial and social inequalities came into focus. moreover, the region has been experiencing rapid changes in the context of demographic development, urbanisation, internal and international migration, tourism development, and economic-agrarian development. the department’s curriculum is designed to strengthen knowledge and understanding of this dynamic region using social science approaches and qualitative and quantitative research methods. biannually, the department organises, in cooperation with our partner universities in south-east asia, a field excursion where students apply a combination of theoretical and empirical approaches on location. current research interests and teaching activities within the scope of the research clusters ‘demographic and socioeconomic transformations’ and ‘megacities, globalisation, and migration’, dynamic processes of demographic, economic, social, cultural, and political transformations in southeast asia are discussed and analysed. the study of structures and movements of populations has been a core element of human geographical research. when the department launched its regional focus on south-east asia in the 1970s, governments and international organisations alike considered the ‘baby boom’, with its high fertility rates causing rapid population growth, to be the main dilemma of population development. today we can demonstrate that birth rates have dropped and dramatic changes in population age structure are putting great pressure on the countries of south-east asia. another phenomenon that influences population structures is the ongoing development of internal and international migration, whose causes, processes, and dynamics are still insufficiently documented. in this context, the department principally focuses its research on transnational labour migration, rural-urban interactions, ethnic entrepreneurship, and ‘third world’ megacities. a leisure-orientated form of mobility is tourism. despite a series of shocks (e.g. political crises, tsunamis), south-east asia has experienced impressive growth in both international and domestic tourism. a complex travel industry offering various forms of tourism – ranging from sss karl husa & alexander trupp department of geography and regional research, university of vienna aseas 3(2) 276 277 (‘sun, sea, sex’), cultural, ethnic, and nature tourism to urban, health, and retiree tourism – has emerged. current research projects of the department analyse host perspectives and power relations at various travel destinations, and study the causes and impacts of ‘amenity migration’ and second home development. modernisation and globalisation have brought benefits to parts of society; simultaneously, however, regional disparities and social inequalities between mainstream society and minority groups are increasing. demographic and socioeconomic transformation processes • spatial disparities and social inequality • fertility decline, demographic ageing, and their consequences • ‘searching for paradise’: european ‘amenity migration’ and second home development in south-east asia • ethnic tourism: uncovering intercultural encounters in destination communities • dynamics and impact of mass tourism; new forms of sustainable travel megacities, globalisation, and migration • international migration in south-east and east asia: dynamics, structure, and changing patterns • rethinking rural-urban migration: changing impacts on city and countryside? • ‘third world’ megacities: development, globalisation, and migration • the role of ngos and cbos (community-based organisations) in new forms of urban governance in megacities • low-cost housing in asian megacities: participatory approaches and their effectiveness. aseas 3(2) 276 277 selected publications of the department staff feldbauer, p., husa, k., & korff, r. (eds). (2003). südostasien: gesellschaft, räume und entwicklung im 20. jahrhundert. vienna: promedia. husa, k., nissel h., & wohlschlägl, h. (eds.). (2011). asien im blickfeld. vienna: abhandlungen zur geographie und regionalforschung. husa, k., & wohlschlägl, h. (1997). „booming bangkok“: eine megastadt in südostasien im spannungsfeld von metropolisierung und globalisierung. in p. feldbauer, k. husa, e. pilz, & i. stacher (eds.), megacities. die metropolen des südens zwischen globalisierung und fragmentierung (pp.113-150). frankfurt am main, germany & vienna: brandes & apsel, südwind. husa, k., & wohlschlägl, h. (1999). vom “emerging market” zum “emergency market”: thailands wirtschaftsentwicklung und die asienkrise. in c. parnreiter, a. novy, & k. fischer (eds.), globalisierung und peripherie – umstrukturierung in lateinamerika, afrika und asien (pp. 209-236). frankfurt am main, germany & vienna: brandes & apsel, südwind. husa, k., & wohlschlägl, h. (2002). southeast asia: a new global player in the system of international labour migration. beiträge zur historischen sozialkunde (englische sondernummer 2002: international migration – problems, prospects, policies), 16-28. husa, k., & wohlschlägl, h. (2007). globale märkte – lokale konsequenzen: arbeitsmigration in südostasien seit der mitte des 19. jahrhunderts. in k. husa, a. kraler, v. bilger, & i. stacher (eds.), migrationen. globale entwicklungen seit 1850 (pp. 171-198). vienna: mandelbaum. husa, k., & wohlschlägl, h. (2008). from “baby boom” to “grey boom”? southeast asia’s demographic transformation and its consequences. geographische rundschau – international edition, 4(1), 20-27. husa, k., & wohlschlägl, h. (eds.). (2009). südostasien – gesellschaft im wandel. themenheft, geographische rundschau, 61(10). spreitzhofer, g. (2003). from farming to franchising: current aspects of transformation in post-crisis metro-jakarta. asien, 87(3), 52-64. spreitzhofer, g. (2008). zwischen khao san und lonely planet. aspekte der postmodernen backpackingidentität in südostasien. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 1(2), 140-161. trupp, a., & butratana, k. (2009). images of hans manndorff’s anthropological research on the ‘hill tribes’ of northern thailand. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 2(2), 153-161. trupp, a., & trupp, c. (eds.). (2009). ethnotourismus. interkulturelle begegnung auf augenhöhe? vienna: mandelbaum. karl husa & alexander trupp department of geography and regional research, university of vienna constructing the ‘red’ otherness: the role and implications of thainess on polarised politics aseas 3(2) 240 241 forum südostasien / forum south-east asia constructing the ‘red’ otherness: the role and implications of thainess on polarised politics poowin bunyavejchewin1 university of hull, united kingdom citation bunyavejchewin, p. (2010). constructing the ‘red’ otherness: the role and implications of thainess on polarised politics. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 3(2), 241-248. introduction i think the red shirts are not thai people because they destroyed things, they destroyed bangkok, they destroyed thailand. (“bangkok races to erase traces of protest,” 2010) the above statement was made by a dress-shop owner whose shop was located near the site of the destruction caused by the riot in may 2010. his statement is interesting in that he identified the red shirts, members of a political alliance opposing the current government, as not being thai. while the red shirts and their supporters were accused of not being thai due to violent behaviour, what about the yellow shirts, a group likewise formed in opposition to the former governments, who seized the international airport in 2008? are they thai? the question is: what constitutes being thai or a thai nationhood? has thainess really existed for a long time? if not, who constructed it for what purpose, and for whom was it constructed? in this article, i will give some background information on current politics in thailand and review theoretical concepts of nation and nationhood as well as conceptualising thai nationhood or thainess. in addition, the role of thainess that has been used by prime minister abhisit and his patrons – the current power holders – will be explained, and i will demonstrate the implications of the application of 1 poowin bunyavejchewin obtained his ba with honours in political science from thammasat university, thailand, in 2010 and is now an ma candidate at the department of politics and international studies at the university of hull, uk. he would like to thank songdet for his assistance with a fi nal proofreading. contact: bpoowin@hotmail.com aseas 3(2) 242 243 thainess for thai politics. this article argues that social scientists, when examining socio-political phenomena in thailand, cannot neglect thainess as both a norm of exclusion and a political weapon used by the power holders. brief background of polarised politics democracies come in many forms, but their minimal basis is holding free and fair elections. without such an electoral process, it cannot be claimed that there is democracy. in thai political discourse, democracy is often negatively equated with the political dominance of the majority, i.e. people deemed unqualified to make the right decisions. moreover, as the parliament is not recognised as the main mechanism for achieving political resolutions, power holders rather resort to the application of undemocratic means such as military interventions. for this reason, the political regime in thailand is bureaucratic-authoritarian since it has experienced coups d’état both by military force and political means in recent years. bureaucratic authoritarianism is an approach used to explain political phenomena and regimes in africa, asia, and latin america in the late 1960s (wiarda, 2000, pp. 87-89). in my opinion, in the case of thailand, it would be easier to understand bureaucratic authoritarianism if we call it ‘the military in politics’ to indicate that the military carries out a coup d’état and has a significant leadership role in politics. however, the military cannot mount a successful coup d’état without support from civilians. the military and its allies, the civilian elite, always base the legitimacy of their intervention in politics on the corruption of politicians. however, co-operation of the civilian elite alone was not enough to overthrow a democratic government in the context of contemporary thailand. a signal from the palace was also a necessary element. the thai bureaucratic-authoritarian regime requires the control of the lower classes in order to maintain its power. the political order of thailand has returned to a bureaucratic-authoritarian regime since the coup of 19 september 2006, which was led by general sonthi boonyaratglin. the coup was also strongly supported by the bangkok-based middle class, royalists, aseas 3(2) 242 243 and the network monarchy2, with general prem tinsulanonda, the head of the privy council, being its principle symbol. despite the fact that two democratic governments had been established through elections, neither could bring the military under control. on the contrary, the military had more influence than the governments. the 19 september 2006 coup was a de jure coup d’état; however, a de facto coup d’état came about after that time. the main reason that prime minister thaksin shinawatra was ousted from office in 2006 was neither corruption nor capital cronyism, but the need to break the de facto rule of thainess of which royal nationalism, the mainstream political ideology in thailand, is the core element. his behaviour and policies challenged the traditional manner of thai politicians; for example, thaksin’s populist policies were suspect because it was thought that that they might replace projects in rural areas that had been under royal patronage. subsequently, two democratically elected governments, i.e. those led by samak sundaravej and by somchai wongsawat, could again not govern the country, since they were also perceived as thaksin’s nominees. as their governments were also treated as threats to thainess, both had to leave office. the de facto coup d’état occurred late in 2008 after the dissolution of the people’s power party. this coup was led by general anupong paochinda, the commander-inchief of the royal thai army. general anupong invited politicians to have a meeting with him about the political situation, leading to a change in political factions in the house of representatives, and opened the stage for abhisit vejjajiva to become the prime minister of thailand. there is no doubt that the government led by abhisit is backed by the military, royalists, and network monarchy. however, it has stirred up animosity and sparked a massive protest by the partly pro-thaksin camp, which consists of rural residents and anti-coup protesters. this camp has been called the red shirts; however, the official name is ‘national united front of democracy against dictatorship’ (udd). apart from the red shirts, there are the yellow shirts or the ‘people’s alliance for democracy’ (pad). this group consists of the bangkok-based middle class, royalists, and network monarchists who supported the coup by the military in order to protect 2 for further details on the term ‘network monarchy’, see (among others) mccargo (2005). poowin bunyavejchewin constructing the ‘red’ otherness aseas 3(2) 244 245 the mainstream ideology and the palace. the yellow shirts held massive protests from 2005 through 2008. in addition, besides the red shirts and the yellow shirts, there is a group called the multi-coloured shirts, who are in general not different from the yellow shirts since its campaign can ultimately be seen as an effort to institutionalise the sacred concepts of ‘nation, religion [buddhism], and monarchy’. the massive protests have been out of control since 2009. the red shirts started them in bangkok and have resorted to escalating violence. because of casualties from this political violence, especially caused by the military forces, some academics have stated that they consider the situation, especially in april and may 2010, not just a riot but a civil war. after heavy subjugation by the government, the red shirts officially ceased their protests. however, the leaders could not control the protesters, and the aftermath was not only the destruction of many buildings and department stores in bangkok but also the burning of city halls in many provinces, especially in the country’s northeast. moreover, there were several unusual cases of arson there and in the north. although the government has attempted to call for unity, especially in television broadcasts, its efforts do not appear to be working because its repression of the protesters was enforced through terror. therefore, it was pointless to cry out for unity without investigating what was really causing the deaths. the government presented the ‘third hand theory’, claiming that there were terrorists camouflaged as protesters. however, many photos and clips of video footage by both news agencies and the protesters themselves make it difficult to accept such claims. many protesters and other people are still questioning the government’s responsibility for the deaths, although the government has made many efforts to show its sincerity. for instance, the government has appointed commissions to investigate the incidents and find the truth, but these were accused of prejudice. it is clear that the government cannot regain its legitimacy as long as it is trying to eradicate its opposition. while the government has been calling for unity, it has used a powerful tool to polarise thai society into those who conform and those who do not. that powerful tool is ‘thai nationhood’, also known as thainess or kwampenthai. aseas 3(2) 244 245 what is thainess? most people take the concept of a nation for granted and suppose that it has existed for a long time. however, according to anderson (2006), a nation is an imagined political community. the concept of nationhood is similar to that of a nation in that it is not a natural entity, but a social construct. thus it is problematic because it is not static or monolithic. as soon as a nation is constructed, some will be excluded despite living within the state’s boundaries. nationhood divides people into ‘us’ and ‘them’ or ‘ourselves’ and ‘others’. the ‘other’ is in danger because nationhood has been made to be sacred, and therefore the ‘other’ is seen as an iconoclast. in this sense, nationhood is very similar to a religion that aims to make people believers or conformists without doubt and question. thai nationhood or thainess is highly problematic. thongchai winichakul, a prominent thai historian, noted that thainess has never clearly been defined. however, what is not thai or un-thai is often identified. from this point of view, thainess is obviously apparent when otherness or un-thainess can be identified. therefore, the latter is essential to the former. thongchai called this process “negative identification” (thongchai, 2004, pp. 5-6). apart from negative identification, there is ‘positive identification’, which refers to the selection of some elements or norms, such as political ideology, by power holders in order to define thainess. for example, king vajiravudh declared that the monarchy was the most important element of thai nationhood (thongchai, 2004, p. 4); thus, vajiravudh’s version of thainess gave precedence to kwamjongrakpakdi or loyalty to the royalty. even though the power holders prescribed what thainess was, negative identification is still important to enhance the obvious appearance of thainess. thainess is an efficient political tool of the power holders for maintaining and expanding their power and interests, which is the real function of thainess (pavin, 2005, pp. 4-6). for instance, king chulalongkorn attempted to popularise his version of thai nationhood in order to enhance the legitimacy of his throne and his fixed status among rulers and subordinates (pavin, 2005, p. 5). thus, the function of thainess is not only preserving and increasing the power and interests of the power holders. instead, it is also used as a powerful weapon for eradicating political opposition without any doubts or arguments. like any former power holders, abhisit and his poowin bunyavejchewin constructing the ‘red’ otherness aseas 3(2) 246 247 patrons, the elites and network monarchy, have used their own version of thainess to legitimise their regime and power as well as to eliminate the red shirts, their political opposition. thainess and its role in the abhisit regime right now, [a lack of] unity in the northeast is a major problem that obstructs the efforts to develop the region and the country as a whole. if we restore national reconciliation, this will bring immense benefits to the isan people [population of thailand’s north-eastern region]. (general prem tinsulanonda quoted in “gen prem urges people of northeast to restore unity,” 2009) unity or kwamsamakki is very important to thai power holders because in their view it leads to stability by demanding conformity of thought, belief in royal nationalism, and interest in top-down control. by trying to remove all differences in thinking, it maintains the current structure of political relations. it is important to note that unity differs from harmony or kwamprongdong in that harmony respects differences and accommodates interests while unity does not. however, there is a close similarity in the use of these two words in the thai language. the concept of ‘unity’ has often been used by thai power holders, especially when they were confronted with a political crisis. abhisit is no exception to his predecessors, although he has been eulogised exaggeratedly by many thai elites, for example, general prem and the thai middle class. abhisit and his patrons have constantly called on the thai people for unity since the red shirts started their movement. pavin chachavalpongpun, a singapore-based thai political scientist, has also demonstrated that there is an attempt to merge the unity discourse with the concept of thainess (pavin, 2010, p. 333). from this perspective, therefore, the abhisit version of thainess has created disunity as being un-thai or the ‘other’. abhisit’s thainess functions as a ‘weapon’ against the threat of the red shirts, who have been polarised from ordinary thais and labelled as ‘disunity makers’ and ‘supporters of the plot to overthrow the monarchy’. in other words, they are being used to exemplify otherness. as the ‘other’, they are in danger or are in a ‘state of exception’ in the terminology of agamben (2005). the state of exception is “the legal form of what cannot have legal form. on the other hand, if the law employs the exception that is the suspension of law itself” (agamben, 2005, p. 1). the emergency decree on public administration aseas 3(2) 246 247 in emergency situations (emergency act), which was declared by abhisit on 7 april 2010, is the declaration of the state of exception that binds and abandons the red shirts and their supporters as being against the law. their lives are no longer under the protection of normal law. agamben (2005) calls this kind of living a “bared life”. in addition to being excluded from normal protection, their deaths are ungrievable. according to butler (2004), a post-structuralist philosopher, lives are made ungrievable through the function of norms. because those lives do not conform to the norms, they are negated from the outset. for this reason, their deaths cannot be mourned because their lives were negated to begin with. thus, in the thai context, the red shirts’ lives are ungrievable because they fall outside the norms of thainess, and many victims who opposed the abhisit regime or thainess have not received mercy or mourning. furthermore, the red shirts live under social sanctions. for example, kantoop, a female teenager who joined the red shirt protests and disagreed with adherence to the monarchy, was deprived of her right to study in silpakorn university. silpakorn’s representative claimed that she was not paying respect to the monarchy, therefore her belief and behaviour disqualified her according to the university’s rules. apart from this moral crime legally determined by university regulations, she is vastly stigmatised in cyberspace through forwarded e-mails and facebook posts. thus, her life has become a ‘bared life’. thai nationhood or thainess has become a weapon to legally and morally eradicate the political enemies of abhisit and his patrons. as elaborated above, it is a very simple method: simply construct one’s opponents as being the ‘other’. after that, they can be easily killed in a lawful and ethical manner in defence of the sacred thainess. conclusion this article elaborated on the role of thainess as a political tool for thai power holders and particularly for the abhisit regime. although the focus was on the use of thainess by abhisit and his patrons to eradicate their political enemies, it should not be concluded that others, including the exiled former prime minister thaksin, have not acted in the same way. however, abhisit has obviously used thainess to maintain poowin bunyavejchewin constructing the ‘red’ otherness aseas 3(2) 248 249 power by destroying the opposition. i believe that thainess will continue to be used as a weapon by thailand’s power holders in the future. thai nationhood or thainess is a construct of the elite to serve their own power and interests as well as to sustain the power structure. references agamben, g. (2005). state of exception (k. attell, trans.). chicago: university of chicago press. anderson, b. (2006). imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. london: verso. bangkok races to erase traces of protests. (2010, may 24). the times of india. retrieved 24 november 2010, from http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/rest-of-world/bangkok-races-to-erase-traces-ofprotests/articleshow/5966505.cms butler, j. (2004). precarious life: the powers of mourning and violence. london: verso. gen prem urges people of northeast to restore unity. (2009, january 11). bangkok post. retrieved 24 november 2010, from http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/9515/gen-prem-urges-people-ofnortheast-to-restore-unity / mccargo, d. (2005). network monarchy and legitimacy crises in thailand. the pacific review, 18(4), 499519. pavin, c. (2005). a plastic nation: the curse of thainess in thai-burmese relations. lanham, md: university press of america. pavin, c. (2010). “unity” as a discourse in thailand’s polarized politics. in d. singh (ed.), southeast asian affairs 2010 (pp. 332-342). singapore: institute of southeast asian studies. thongchai w. (2004). siam mapped: a history of the geo-body of a nation. chiang mai, thailand: silkworm books. wiarda, h. j. (2000). introduction to comparative politics: concepts and processes. fort worth, tx: harcourt. editorial 131 with this issue aseas starts a new series of articles aiming to introduce austrian research institutes working on south-east asian topics. we begin with the department of geography and regional research at the university of vienna that has since the 1980s been examining topics such as socioeconomic and demographic transformations, migration, tourism, and the regional effects of globalisation in asia, mainly focusing on south-east asia. the current issue again offers outstanding contributions to current research on south-east asia. in line with our call for papers on gender research and women’s studies, niklas reese (university of passau/university of bonn) elaborates on the crucial role of women in civil society as well as in formal politics in the philippines. he demonstrates the importance of gender equality in civil society dialogue mit der vorliegenden ausgabe startet aseas eine neue beitragsserie, in der österreichische forschungseinrichtungen, an denen zu südostasien gearbeitet wird, vorgestellt werden. den anfang bildet das institut für geografie und regionalforschung der universität wien, wo seit den 1980er-jahren intensiv themen wie sozioökonomische und demografische transformationen, migration, tourismus sowie regionale auswirkungen von globalisierung in asien, vor allem südostasien untersucht werden. natürlich bietet die aktuelle ausgabe auch wieder exzellente beiträge der aktuellen südostasienforschung. unserem „call for papers“ zum schwerpunkt genderund frauenforschung folgend, geht niklas reese (universität passau/universität bonn) in seinem beitrag der bedeutenden rolle der frauen in der philippinischen zivilgesellschaft wie auch in der formalen editorial alfred gerstl & christian wawrinec aseas redaktion / aseas editorial board citation gerstl, a., & wawrinec, c. (2010). editorial. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 3(2), 131-135. aseas 3(2) 132 133 and the actual representation of women in politics. yet he also shows that the patriarchal superstructure has changed only to a minor degree and that women still face the challenge of various cultural and social beliefs. alimatul qibtiyah (griffith university/ uin sunan kalijaga yogyakarta) examines the topic of feminism and gender activism at indonesian universities. the author analyses why only a fifth of all her study respondents identify themselves as feminist. thereby she demonstrates that the interviewed partners hold very different views about the term and the role of feminists within indonesian society. outside the gender focus, but also highly important is melanie pichler’s (university of vienna) contribution on palm oil in indonesia and the effects of the european union’s agrofuels policy on the respective industry and labour conditions in that country. indonesia, the biggest exporter of palm oil, is, as melanie pichler shows, in need of a sustainable policy to stop forest degradation and the loss of biodiversity and to reduce poverty and social conflicts (primarily about land). subsequently, alexander lautensach (university of northern british columbia) and sabina lautensach (human security institute) discuss the extent to politik nach. er zeigt, dass geschlechtergerechtigkeit im zivilgesellschaftlichen diskurs eine hohe bedeutung hat und viele frauen in politischen ämtern vertreten sind. gleichzeitig stellt er jedoch fest, dass sich an der patriarchalischen superstruktur wenig veränderte und der selbstbestimmung der frauen noch immer zahlreiche kulturelle und soziale einstellungsmuster entgegenstehen. alimatul qibtiyah (griffith university/uin sunan kalijaga yogyakarta) behandelt in ihrer analyse das thema feminismus und frauenaktivismus an indonesischen universitäten. die autorin geht dabei der frage nach, warum nur knapp ein fünftel der studienteilnehmerinnen sich selbst als feministin bezeichnet. dabei macht sie deutlich, dass die befragten höchst unterschiedliche vorstellungen über den begriff und die rolle von feministinnen in der gesellschaft hegen. außerhalb des geplanten schwerpunkts, aber nicht weniger interessant, stehen indonesiens palmölindustrie und die auswirkungen der agrartreibstoffpolitik der europäischen union auf die produktionsbedingungen im land im mittelpunkt von melanie pichlers (universität wien) beitrag. indonesien ist der weltweit größte palmölexporteur, und wie aseas 3(2) 132 133 alfred gerstl & christian wawrinec editorial which certain dimensions of the human security concept could be prioritised and applied on south-east asia. thereby they emphasise the ecological pillar that, according to the authors, heavily influences the economic and health-related dimension of human security. human rights, in particular the political rights, play only a minor role in asean’s discourse on human security, as eduardo t. gonzalez (university of the philippines) and magdalena l. mendoza (development academy of the philippines) argue in their contribution on the philippines. asean emphasises the developmental dimension of human security. however, due to the growing influence of civil society, the elites in the philippines and other south-east asian countries are under pressure to allow more participation in political decision-making processes. in the section ‘forum’, poowin bunyavejchewin (university of hull) analyses the role and implications of ‘thainess’ on the polarised politics in the kingdom. he regards this concept as a construct of the thai elites, aimed at legitimising their hold on power ideologically and to exclude the opposition legally and morally from the political process by labeling it as nonpatriotic. marginalised are in thailand pichler zeigt, wäre eine nachhaltige entwicklungspolitik notwendig, um die abholzung von regenwäldern und den verlust von biodiversität zu verhindern sowie armut und soziale konflikte (vor allem um land) zu reduzieren. alexander lautensach (university of northern british columbia) und sabina lautensach (human security institute) diskutieren anschließend, inwieweit bestimmte elemente innerhalb des konzepts von menschlicher sicherheit priorisiert und für südostasien angewendet werden können. dabei arbeiten sie die bedeutung der ökologie heraus, die laut ihnen die wirtschaftliche und gesundheitspolitische dimension von menschlicher sicherheit wesentlich beeinflusst. dass menschenrechte, vor allem politische rechte, im asean-diskurs zu menschlicher sicherheit nur eine geringe rolle spielen, demonstrieren eduardo t. gonzalez (university of the philippines) und magdalena l. mendoza (development academy of the philippines) in ihrem beitrag zu den philippinen. asean rückt in erster linie die entwicklungspolitische dimension menschlicher sicherheit in den vordergrund. aufgrund des wachsenden einflusses der zivilgesellschaft werden machthaber jedoch zur zulassung von mehr partizipation in politischen aseas 3(2) 134 135 entscheidungsprozessen gezwungen. in der rubrik „forum“ befasst sich poowin bunyavejchewin (university of hull) mit der rolle und den implikationen des „thaiseins“ auf die polarisierte politik im königreich. er sieht in diesem konzept ein konstrukt der thailändischen eliten mit dem ziel, deren machterhalt ideologisch zu legitimieren und die als unpatriotisch abgestempelte opposition legal wie moralisch auszugrenzen. ausgegrenzt werden in thailand auch homosexuelle wie santi leksakun (sem pringpuangkeo foundation) am beispiel der auseinandersetzung zwischen homosexuellen und diese ablehnende aktivisten in der stadt chiang mai zeigt. „im dialog“ mit regina gerlach (goethe-universität frankfurt) erläutert yuniyanti chuzaifah, direktorin der indonesischen kommission zur bekämpfung von gewalt gegen frauen, dass patriarchalisches verhalten in indonesien immer noch weit verbreitet ist. einerseits überwacht ihre organisation die menschenrechtssituation in indonesien, andererseits führt sie geschlechterspezifische informationskampagnen für die breite bevölkerung durch. in einem zweiten interview spricht pascal honisch (seas) mit der von den philippinen nach wien emigrierten arlene castañeda über ihre also homosexuals, as santi leksakun (sem pringpuangkeo foundation) illustrates, using the conflict between homosexuals and activists opposing overt homosexuality in the city of chiang mai. ‘in dialogue’ with regina gerlach (goethe university frankfurt), yuniyanti chuzaifah, director of the indonesian national commission on violence against women, explains that patriarchal behaviour is still widespread in indonesia. on the one hand her organisation monitors the human rights situation in indonesia, on the other hand it conducts gender-sensitive information campaigns for the broader population. in the second interview pascal honisch (seas) speaks to arlene castañeda, who emigrated from the philippines to vienna, about her cultural and language transfer projects. we are again pleased to present impressive pictures in our section ‘south-east asia visually’. philip jablon (chiang mai) introduces his project (started in 2008) on south-east asian movie theatres which are threatened by abandonment or demolition. the current aseas issue will be completed by three book reviews. the first deals with co-operative security in the asia-pacific and in particular the asean regional forum (julio s. aseas 3(2) 134 135 alfred gerstl & christian wawrinec editorial amador iii), the second with timorleste’s path towards independence and its effects on the politics, economy, and society of the small nation (julia scharinger), and the third with co-operation between china and vietnam, for example on the mekong river (ramses amer). kulturund sprachvermittlungsprojekte. auch dieses mal haben wir wieder das vergnügen, eindrucksvolle fotos in der rubik „südostasien sehen“ präsentieren zu können. philip jablon (chiang mai) stellt sein projekt zu südostasiatischen kinos vor, bei dem er seit 2008 vom verfall oder abriss bedrohte kinos dokumentiert. abgerundet wird die vorliegende ausgabe von drei buchrezensionen zu kooperativer sicherheit in asien-pazifik und speziell dem asean regional forum (julio s. amador iii), timor-lestes weg zur unabhängigkeit und den auswirkungen auf politik, wirtschaft und gesellschaft des kleinen landes (julia scharinger) sowie kooperation zwischen china und vietnam am beispiel des mekong-deltas (ramses amer). aseas 1-2 final (außergottowik).indd forschungswerkstatt / research workshop religion und identität bei den dia’ang auf pantar, indonesien: eine ethnographische fallstudie eines gewalttätigen konfl ikts1 religion and identity among the di‘ang on pantar, indonesia an ethnographic case study of a violent confl ict bettina volk2 museum für sepulkralkultur in kassel, deutschland / museum of sepulcral culture in kassel, germany aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften / austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 1 (2), 2008 seas gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften www.seas.at anfang 2007 brachen auf der insel pantar im osten indonesiens unruhen zwischen zwei ethnien, den mauta und den bara aus. durch die betroffenen, aber nicht beteiligten dia’ang wurden diese ausschreitung als religiös motiviert gedeutet. diese interpretation spiegelt die angst der dia’ang wider, aufgrund ihrer christlichen konfession opfer von angriffen zu werden. diese deutung zeigt, wie fragil das scheinbar friedliche zusammenleben zwischen muslimen und christen auf pantar ist und welche tiefen spannungen hinter dieser idyllischen fassade bestehen. schlagworte: identität, ethnizität, konfl ikt, indonesien, pantar at the beginning of 2007 a violent confl ict broke out between the mauta and the bara, two ethnic groups of the pantar island in eastern indonesia. the not involved but by the consequences affected dia’ang interpreted this into religious motivated riots, which refl ects their fear of being attacked because of their christian religion. this reinterpretation shows how fragile the seemingly peaceful coexistence of muslims and christians is on pantar and how deep the tensions behind this image are. keywords: identity, ethnicity, confl ict, indonesia, pantar 1 soweit nicht anders gekennzeichnet, beruht dieser artikel auf daten, die ich während meines bisher 18monatigen feldforschungsaufenthaltes in muriabang erhoben habe. mein forschungsschwerpunkt liegt hierbei auf den lebenszyklischen ritualen und nicht auf konflikten. der vorliegenden artikel erhebt daher keinen anspruch auf eine theoretische einbettung in die konfliktforschung. 2 nach abschluss ihres magisterstudiums der ethnologie begann bettina volk 2005 die arbeit an ihrer promotion an der universität passau. zur produktion von indigener moderne in den totenritualen der dia’ang forschte sie bisher 1,5 jahre stationär auf pantar in indonesien. 162 bettina volk religion und identität bei den dia‘ang auf pantar, indonesien forschungswerkstatt / li i d d i aseas 1 (2) einleitung die insel pantar im ostindonesischen alor-archipel ist noch immer ein nahezu weißer fleck auf der ethnographischen landkarte. nachdem 1932 ernst vatters berühmtes buch „ata kiwan“ über seine reise durch die ostindonesischen archipele erschienen ist, wurden nur noch wenige artikel zu pantar veröffentlicht3. ethnologischen feldforschungen wurden auf pantar bis in die 1990er jahre, als susanne rodemeier in munaseli forschte, überhaupt nicht durchgeführt. als ich 2005 meine eigene stationäre ethnologische feldforschung4 in muriabang auf pantar begann, stand mir also nur wenig hintergrundwissen speziell zur situation im gewählten forschungsgebiet zur verfügung. meine anfangsannahme zum verhältnis der anhängerinnen von islam und christentum zu einander, die auf persönlichen gesprächen mit susanne rodemeier sowie der vorhanden literatur zu pantar und den umliegenden inseln beruhte, war, dass es zwischen den musliminnen und christinnen des alor-archipels, im gegensatz zu der situation auf den molukken oder flores, zu keinerlei spannungen aufgrund der unterschiedlichen religionen komme. ganz im gegenteil leben sie friedlich zusammen, heiraten häufig untereinander, wobei die konversion eines der partner zur religion des anderen keine konflikte zwischen den familien hervorrufe (vgl. pampus 2006; rodemeier 2006). schon in der anfangsphase meiner feldforschung wurde deutlich, dass dieses idyllisches bild nicht auf die dia’ang und ihre nachbarn zutrifft. vielmehr herrscht hier ein tiefes misstrauen zwischen den anhängerinnen beider religionen, das im alltag hinter einer fassade scheinbar harmonischen zusammenlebens verborgen ist. diese spannungen sind so ausgeprägt, dass sie in bestimmten situationen zu gewalttätigen konflikten führen können. im vorliegenden artikel soll einer dieser konflikte vorgestellt werden, der anfang 2007 ausbrach und bis jetzt schwelt. zur ethnographie der dia’ang die dia’ang sind eine kleine ethnische gruppe, der etwa 1000 menschen angehören. sie leben größtenteils im muriabang-gebiet im bezirk pantar mitte (kecamatan pantar tengah). pantar ist eine der ärmsten regionen indonesiens. in muriabang gibt es bisher weder asphaltierte straßen, noch strom oder fließendes wasser, telefon oder mobilfunk. die hygienischen bedingungen sind genau wie die medizinische versorgung5 schlecht. es gibt keine geschäfte, 3 zum forschungsstand und zu publikationen zu pantar bis 1992 vgl. rodermeier (1992). 4 neben der teilnehmenden beobachtung arbeitete ich hauptsächlich mit narrativen und teilstrukturierten interviews sowie gruppeninterviews. 5 die erste krankenstation (puskesmas) in maliang, einem der beiden hauptdörfer muriabangs, wurde 2006 eröffnet. 163 lediglich einige kleine kioske und wöchentliche märkte, um die menschen mit den nötigsten dingen für den täglichen bedarf zu versorgen. die tägliche ernährung besteht aus mais, gekochten bananen oder süßkartoffeln, seltener aus reis. gemüse und obst sind selten, fisch für die dia’ang, die selbst nicht angeln, teuer und daher selten. fleisch gibt es in der regel nur auf festen. gerade bei kindern sind folgen dieser mangelernährung häufig. malaria ist endemisch. die dia’ang sind bauern, die eine erweiterte subsistenzwirtschaft betreiben. sie produzieren also hauptsächlich für den eigenen bedarf, verkaufen jedoch eventuellen überschuss auf den wöchentlichen märkten. saisonal verkaufen sie kopra, cashewnüsse sowie lichtnüsse. das soziale leben der dia’ang ist durch eine ausgeprägte geschlechterspezifischen rollen und arbeitsaufteilung ebenso geprägt, wie sie auf dem prinzip der seniorität, primogenitur und dem patrilinealen verwandtschaftssystem beruht. in den dreißiger jahren des 20. jahrhunderts wurden die dia’ang missioniert und traten, nahezu kollektiv, zum protestantismus über. dies hatte jedoch zunächst nur wenig auswirkung auf ihr indigenes glaubenssystem, das unter anderem mit ahnendienst einhergeht, an dem sie weiter festhielten. erst in den 1960ern, als die meisten von ihnen aus ihren bergdörfern an die küste zogen, wo sie zwei neue dörfer – maliang und tamakh– gründeten, begann der protestantismus die traditionelle religion mehr und mehr abzulösen. heute ist das christentum eines der hauptcharakteristika ihrer identität6, obwohl sie sich in krisensituationen nach wie vor der indigenen religion zuwenden. während das traditionale glaubenssystem oft mit rückständigkeit in verbindung gebracht wird, steht das christentum für die dia’ang ebenso für moderne wie für ihre muslimischen nachbarn, die bayang und die bara, der islam.7 ethnische identität der dia’ang auch wenn es sich bei den dia’ang nur um eine kleine ethnische gruppe handelt, haben sie doch eine ausgeprägte ethnische identität, die in der oralen geschichte und in mythen definiert wird und sich auf ihre eigene sprache – das dia’ang tra –, ihr eigenes territorium – das muriabang-gebiet –, ihre eigenen traditionen – adat – und ihrem christ-sein gründet. diese gleichsetzung von dia’ang-sein8 und christ-sein geht so weit, dass ein dia’ang, der zum islam konvertiert, quasi aus der ethnie ausgeschlossen wird. zwar wird dies niemals so 6 susanne schröter beschreibt ähnliches auch für bestimmte regionen sumatras (schröter 2006: 366) und für die ngada auf flores (schröter 2002: 37). 7 diese verbindung der traditionalen religion mit rückständigkeit und der weltreligionen mit modernität ist nichts pantar-spezifisches, sondern in weiten teilen indonesiens der fall (vgl. sakai 2002). 8 im folgenden werde ich mich bei allgemeinen aussagen zu den dia’ang auf die männliche form beschränken, weibliche dia’ang sind, soweit nicht anders gekennzeichnet, in diese einbezogen. 164 bettina volk religion und identität bei den dia‘ang auf pantar, indonesien aseas 1 (2) ausgesprochen, doch im alltag zeigt sich dies deutlich. normalerweise kommt es aufgrund einer interreligiösen heirat zu einem religionswechsel. dieser geht als äußeres zeichen nicht nur mit einem namenswechsel einher, bei dem die betreffende person ihren christlichen namen ablegt und einen muslimischen annimmt, sondern auch mit einem wohnortwechsel, da das paar nach der hochzeit bei der muslimischen familie leben wird. dies bedeutet oft ein verlassen des territoriums der dia’ang. für einen mann hat der übertritt zum islam noch weitere konsequenzen: seine nachkommen werden in der regel nicht in die genealogien, die jeder männliche dia’ang auswendig kennen sollte, aufgenommen, so dass sein familienzweig in den stammbäumen ausstirbt. hiermit stirbt seine familie im gedächtnis der dia’ang aus und er hat keine chance, ein ahne zu werden. interreligiöse interaktion zwischen den dia’ang und ihren nachbarn die dia’ang leben in enger nachbarschaft mit den christlichen mauta und den muslimischen bayang – alle drei ethnien habe einen gemeinsame mythos über die ankunft auf pantar und den ursprung bzw. die manifestierung verschiedener ethnien, lange bevor islam und christentum einzug auf pantar hielten. während es zwischen den dia’ang und den mauta kaum zu spannungen kommt, sind misstrauen und konflikte zwischen den bayang und den dia’ang ebenso häufig wie zwischen den bayang und den mauta. gleiches lässt sich zur koexistenz mit den muslimischen bara feststellen, die ebenfalls in der nachbarschaft der dia’ang leben. diese spannungen zeigen sich besonders in stresssituationen, sind aber auch im normalen alltag deutlich zu spüren. im ganzen gebiet herrscht eine große furcht vor schwarzer magie. man hat angst, mit fremden zu essen, zu trinken oder betelnüsse zu teilen, wenn diese von dem fremden zu bereitet oder gereicht werden, da sie als vehikel für schwarze magie genutzt werden könnten. in der regel wird es als unbedenklich angesehen, mit fremden der eigenen religion speisen, getränke und betelnüsse zu teilen. man geht davon aus, dass man sicher ist, weil man als angehörige/r der eigenen religion keinerlei schwarze magie verwendet, so etwas tun nur die anhängerinnen des anderen glaubens. es wird also von beiden seiten mit einer starken unterscheidung zwischen „wir“ und „den anderen“ gearbeitet, wobei „die anderen“ jeweils als ein unkalkulierbares risiko angesehen werden, die noch an den alten mächten festhalten, die heute mit satan in verbindung gebracht werden.9 wenn ein mensch schwer erkrankt oder eine andere katastrophe eintritt, wird dies oft mit schwarzer magie in zusammenhang gebracht, 9 oberhofer (2006) betont, dass hexerei bzw. schwarze magie nicht nur innerhalb einer ethnischen gruppe relevant für das zusammenleben ist, sondern gerade auch für den umgang von ethnien untereinander. 165 die jeweils von „den anderen“ ausgeübt wurde. schwarze magie kann von den opfern entweder in träumen10 oder durch einen traditionellen heiler bzw. eine heilerin erkannt werden und dann von diesem bekämpft werden. bestimmte menschen können besondere gebete sprechen, die heilung bringen und den weg für weitere magische attacken verschließen (tutup jalan). diese angst vor schwarzer magie erschwert die kommunikation zwischen christinnen und musliminnen in muriabang erheblich, da jede ernsthafte konversation durch gemeinsames trinken und kauen von betelnüssen eröffnet werden sollte. in beiden fällen von interreligiöser heirat, die während meiner feldforschungsphase auftraten, kam es über die frage, wer zu welcher religion konvertiert, zu ernsthaften konflikten zwischen den familien. die heiraten wurden von allen beteiligten familien abgelehnt und in beiden fällen durch die schwangerschaft der jungen frauen erzwungen. in einem fall kam es sogar zu gewalttätigen auseinandersetzung und dem einschreiten der polizei. zwischen den anhängern beider religionen besteht eine grundsätzliche einigkeit darüber, dass man innerhalb der eigenen religion heiraten sollte. wenn über die jeweils andere religion und deren anhänger gesprochen wird, werden immer die unterschiede betont. die religion wird als identitätsstiftend und mittel zur abgrenzung gegenüber anderen gruppen wahrgenommen. eine andere religion wird häufig auch als erklärung für moralisch verwerfliches handeln angesehen. dennoch schaffen die dia’ang, bayang, bara und mauta einen äußeren schein von harmonischen zusammenleben und guten nachbarschaftlichen beziehungen in der täglichen interaktion. dies zeigt sich etwa, wenn christinnen ihren muslimischen nachbarn bei der renovierung ihrer moschee helfen oder sie gegenseitig zu den trauerfeiern erscheinen, selbst wenn der verstorbenen/die verstorbene der jeweils anderen religion angehörte. der konflikt aus sicht der dia’ang im januar 2007 brachen zwischen den muslimischen bara und den christlichen mauta gewalttätige unruhen aus. aus sicht der dia’ang stellte sich der konflikt folgendermaßen dar11: eine junge muslima war auf ihrem weg nach hause von flores nach baranusa. bei einem zwischenstopp der fähre mit landgang verbrachte sie ihre pause nicht etwa mit ihren freundinnen, sondern entschied sich mit einem jungen mauta auf seinem motorroller zu einem 10 man kann die bedrohung schon im vorfeld in träumen erkennen, die dann durch einen oder eine traumdeuter/ in (dukun tapsir) gedeutet werden müssen. der bedrohung kann man dann entgehen, indem bestimmte menschen gebete sprechen, die den weg für den magischen angriff versperren (tutup jalan) und diesen unmöglich machen. 11 die nachfolgende version des ursprungs des konflikts beruht auf den erzählungen aus muriabang. bei den mauta in puntaro, wo gary holton zur gleichen zeit eine sprachwissenschaftliche forschung durchführte, weicht die version in details ab. (persönliche kommunikation im august 2008) (vgl. volk 2008). 166 bettina volk religion und identität bei den dia‘ang auf pantar, indonesien aseas 1 (2) imbissstand zu fahren, um etwas zu essen zu kaufen. da der junge mann angetrunken war, vergaß er den weg zum imbissstand. die junge frau geriet in panik, da sie dachte, er nehme den falschen weg, um sie zu vergewaltigen. so sprang sie vom fahrenden motorroller, brach sich den arm und zog sich schwere verletzungen im gesicht zu. wieder auf der fähre, rief sie ihre familie in baranusa an und berichtete, was geschehen war. als die fähre in baranusa anlegte, hatte sich ihre familie schon im hafen versammelt und verprügelte den jungen mauta, als er die fähre verließ. die schlägerei war noch in vollem gange, als ein verwandter des jungen mannes vorbei kam, ihn erkannte und daraufhin die angreifer wüst beschimpfte, woraufhin auch er verprügelt wurde. als man in den dörfern der mauta hiervon hörte, versammelten sich sofort die männer, bewaffneten sich mit macheten sowie pfeil und bogen. bevor sie sich auf den weg nach baranusa machten, um rache zu nehmen, beteten sie zusammen für den sieg und führten ein altes ritual durch, das ihnen glück im kampf geben sollte. auf ihrem weg nach baranusa trafen sie auf ein ehepaar aus baranusa, das fisch verkaufen wollte. sie schlugen sie zusammen und zerstörten ihren motorroller. in baranusa angekommen, begannen sie häuser nieder zu brennen, ungeachtet der tatsache, dass sich in ihnen noch personen befanden. glücklicherweise konnten sich die menschen retten. es kam zu straßenschlachten, bei denen etliche personen verletzt wurden, und zu auseinandersetzungen mit der polizei. jeder versuch, die beteiligten zu beruhigen und die situation zu entschärfen, scheiterte. in den folgenden tagen kam es immer wieder zu gewalttätigen zusammenstößen zwischen den beiden gruppen. schließlich errichtete eine der konfliktparteien nachts straßensperren, so dass die straße von baranusa nach muriabang nahezu unpassierbar wurde. der bootsverkehr, der normalerweise muriabang mit baranusa verbindet, wurde eingestellt. dies bedeutete für die dia’ang, die so zwischen die fronten geraten waren, dass sie keine möglichkeit hatten muriabang bzw. pantar zu verlassen, und dass sie auch keinen nachschub für ihre kioske erhielten, so dass es innerhalb kürzester zeit kein öl für lampen, benzin, reis etc. zu kaufen gab. auch kamen die bara nicht mehr, um fisch zu verkaufen, und die wochenmärkte wurden für fast zwei monate geschlossen. reaktion der dia’ang auf den konflikt in muriabang reagierte man mit panik auf die unruhen, die sich über wochen hinzogen. die männer bewaffneten sich, pfeile wurden hergestellt, nachts patrouillierten die jungen männer durch das dorf, frauen und kinder wurde verboten, ohne begleitung die häuser zu verlassen, und die arbeit auf den feldern, die richtung baranusa liegen, wurde eingestellt. nachdem es neben immer wieder aufflammender gewalt bei – gescheiterten – friedensverhandlungen zu 167 einem angriff auf den bezirksvorsteher (camat) und dessen frau gekommen war, verstärkte sich die angst der dia’ang, in diesen konflikt hineingezogen zu werden, weiter. die wenigen jugendlichen dia’ang, die sich an den unruhen beteiligt hatten, waren vorsorglich sofort nach alor geschickt worden, damit es nicht zu einer eskalation zwischen den bara und den dia’ang käme. zu groß war die angst vor ausschreitungen wie etwa auf den molukken. es ging das gerücht um, dass die bara an einem bestimmten datum das gebiet der dia’ang überfallen würden, um alle dia’ang zu töten, da sie christinnen seien. einige männer schickten daraufhin ihre familien in die berge in die alten dörfer, bis die gefahr vorüber wäre. weiter bestärkt sahen sich die dia’ang und auch die im muriabang lebenden mauta durch die bekannten religiösen unruhen auf den molukken, flores und anderen gebieten indonesiens. man begann, die muslimischen nachbarn im dorf möglichst zu meiden, und forderte gerade die kinder und jungen erwachsenen immer wieder auf, vorsichtig im kontakt zu sein. auch als der festgelegte tag des angenommenen massakers vorüber war und niemand das gebiet angegriffen hatte, legte sich die angst nicht völlig, sondern war noch immer spürbar, als ich im august 2007 pantar verließ. nachdem die dia’ang zwei monate lang fast vollständig von der außenwelt abgeschlossen waren, wurden die straßensperren entfernt, der bootsverkehr wieder aufgenommen, und schleppend liefen auch die wochenmärkte wieder an, die allerdings bei meinem verlassen der insel immer noch nicht wieder ähnlich gut besucht waren wie vor den ausschreitungen. zwar wurden immer wieder versuche gemacht, offiziell frieden zwischen den mauta und bara zu schließen. nach mehreren gescheiterten anläufen verlegte man sich darauf, diesen nach dem adat mit einem lego-lego12 zu beschließen, doch im august 2007 war es hierzu noch nicht gekommen. schlussbetrachtung obwohl es aus der oralen geschichte und auch in der näheren vergangenheit etliche zusammenstöße zwischen den mauta und den bara bekannt sind, reinterpretierten die dia’ang diesen konflikt, der ja letztlich auf einem missverständnis beruhte13, in religiöse unruhen.14 hierbei sehen sie die muslimische bara als die ersten aggressoren an und sind überzeugt, dass 12 lokale form des rundtanzes bzw. eines festes mit dem genannten tanz. 13 nach der version des konfliktes, die in muriabang erzählt wurde. 14 hierbei handelt es sich nicht um eine religiöse rhetorik, die zum zweck der mobilisierung der massen in nicht primär religiös motivierten konflikten eingesetzt wird, wie schröter (2006) für andere gebiete indonesiens beschreibt. ganz im gegenteil wollten die dia’ang möglichst nicht in den konflikt hineingezogen werden, auch wenn sie ganz klar partei für die mauta ergriffen. nicht nur sind sie durch allianzen mit einzelnen klanen der mauta verbunden, sondern sie handeln so auch genau nach den gleichen, oben beschriebenen, strategien, die sie auch in alltäglichen situationen im umgang mit muslimen an den tag legen. 168 bettina volk religion und identität bei den dia‘ang auf pantar, indonesien aseas 1 (2) diese sich mit allen anderen muslimen in der gegend verbünden werden, um die christinnen auf pantar auszulöschen. hierbei lassen sie den tatsächlichen auslöser des konflikts, nämlich den vermeintlichen angriff eines jungen mauta auf die ehre einer jungen bara, völlig außer acht. ebenso wenig ließen sie sich von den musliminnen, die in muriabang leben, beruhigen15, die einen religiösen hintergrund immer bestritten haben, ebenso wie die bara, mit denen ich im laufe des konflikts sprechen konnte. diese interpretation der ausschreitungen zeigt nicht nur, wie tief die angst vor ähnlichen ausschreitungen (vgl. schröter 2008) wie auf den molukken, auf flores oder vielen anderen orten indonesiens sitzt, sondern auch, dass die these des spannungsfreien zusammenlebens von anhängern beider religionen für muriabang falsch ist. die idyllische fassade der friedlichen koexistenz der beiden religionen ist stattdessen ausgesprochen fragil und kann schnell in offenes misstrauen, angst und gewalt umschlagen. hiermit unterscheidet sich der bezirk pantar mitte deutlich von alor und ternate, aber auch von munaseli auf pantar. rodemeier beschreibt für munaseli auf pantar einen völlig spannungsfreien umgang mit religiösen unterschieden und interreligiösen heiraten (rodemeier 2006). wellfelt berichtet über alor, dass „instead of being a cause of conflict, religious diversity is presented as a benefit“ (wellfelt 2007: 4). in ihrer arbeit zu ternate kommt wellfelt zu dem schluss, dass im gegensatz zum öffentlichen diskurs, interreligiöse heiraten zwar zu spannungen zwischen den betroffenen familien führen, diese aber nicht eskalieren. so führe religion auf ternate zwar auch zu abgrenzungsprozessen, die aber über eine definierung der eigenen identität als einheimischer ternates aufgefangen würden. so sehen sie adat als wichtiger als religion an (wellfelt 2007). warum diese strategien bei den dia’ang keine anwendung finden und warum hier religiöse unterschiede so stark gewichtet werden, hat seinen ursprung vermutlich in der lokalen geschichte der dia’ang und ihrer nachbarn. in jüngster vergangenheit kam es etwa in den 1960ern zu ausschreitungen zwischen bara und dia’ang, als die dia’ang aus den bergen an die küste umsiedelten. nach den dia’ang wollten die bara ihnen ihr land streitig machen. in der oralen geschichte der dia’ang finden sich außerdem immer wieder ereignisse, die sie als angriff der muslimischen nachbarn auf ihre christliche identität interpretieren. so etwa berichte über konvertierung ganzer familien zum islam oder von menschen, die sich geweigert haben, das christentum aufzugeben. von besonderer bedeutung sind sicherlich die geschichten, die sich um ihren letzten könig ranken, der einige jahre in baranusa in einer art gefangenschaft lebte. es wird berichtet, dass man ihn schon fast zermürbt hatte und er zum islam übergetreten wäre, wenn nicht in letzter minute eine seiner ehefrauen ihn davon abgehalten hätte. er besann sich und konnte nach muriabang zurückkehren. in der oralen 15 eine direkte kommunikation zu diesem thema zwischen den dia’ang und ihren muslimischen nachbarn fand nicht statt. 169 geschichte der dia’ang spiegelt sich, dass sie sich im hinblick auf ihre identität als christinnen nicht nur während der beschriebenen unruhen von ihren muslimischen nachbarn bedroht fühlen, sondern dies schon lange der fall ist und anfang 2007 lediglich einen neuen höhepunkt fand. bibliographie oberhofer, m. (2006). hexerei und ethnizität. das beispiel der jã ana und ihrer nachbarn in burkina faso. mainz: johannes gutenberg universität mainz. pampus, k.-h. (2006). sieben tage auf pantar. eine erkundungsreise auf ernst vatters spuren. paideuma, 52, 127-156. rodemeier, s. (1992). lego-lego-platz und naga-darstellung. jenseitige kräfte im zentrum einer quellenstudie über die ostindonesische insel alor. unveröffentlichte magisterarbeit. ludwig-maximiliansuniversität münchen. rodemeier, s. (2006). tutu kadire in pandai munaseli. erzählen und erinnern auf der vergessenen insel pantar (ostindonesien). münster: lit-verlag. sakai, m. (2002). modernising sacred sites in south sumatra: islamisation of gumai ancestral places, (s. 103-131). h. chambert-loir & a. reid (hrsg.) the potent dead. ancestors, saints and heroes in contemporary indonesia. honolulu: university of hawaii press. schröter, s. (2002). jesus als yams-heros die aneignung des katholizismus in einer indonesischen lokalgesellschaft. petermanns geographische mitteilungen 146, 36-41. schröter, s. (2008). religiöser pluralismus in indonesien (s. 1-22). in f. schulze & h. warnk (hrsg.). religion und identität: muslime und nicht-muslime in südostasien. wiesbaden: harrasowitz. schröter, s. (2006). politisierung von religion und sakralisierung von politik. lokale und nationale konflikte zwischen moslems und christen in indonesien, (s. 357-374). in m. franzmann, c. gärtner & n. köck (hrsg.). religiosität in der säkularisierten welt. theoretische und empirische beiträge zur säkularisierungsdebatte in der religionssoziologie. wiesbaden: vs verlag für sozialwissenschaften. vatter, e. (1932). ata kiwan. unbekannte bergvölker im tropischen holland. ein reisebericht. leipzig: bibliographisches institut ag. volk, b. (2008): lokale interpretationen eines gewalttätigen konfliktes auf pantar, ostindonesien. pacific news, forthcoming. wellfelt, e. (2007). diversity & shared identity. a case study of interreligious relations in alor, eastern indonesia. master thesis. göteborg: school of global studies. göteborg university. 170 bettina volk religion und identität bei den dia‘ang auf pantar, indonesien demokratisierung, sicherheit und gerechtigkeit: einleitende anmerkungen zu aktuellen trends in südostasien 01 since the start of the new millennium, so-called colour revolutions have developed in various parts of the world – serbia in 2000, followed by georgia in 2003, ukraine in 2004, as well as kirgizstan and lebanon in 2005. in early 2006, ‘yellow-shirted’ demonstrators of the people’s alliance for democracy (pad) protested in thailand, accusing the then prime minister thaksin shinawatra of corruption and demanding his resignation. as a matter of course, civil protests in south-east asia have not just suddenly appeared in the last few years. in 1997-98, hundreds of thousands demonstrators peacefully mit beginn des neuen jahrtausends traten sogenannte farbrevolutionen in verschiedensten teilen der welt auf – serbien im jahr 2000, gefolgt von georgien 2003, der ukraine 2004 sowie kirgisistan und dem libanon 2005. anfang 2006 gingen dann auch in thailand „gelbe“ demonstrantinnen der volksallianz für demokratie (pad) auf die straßen, den damaligen premierminister thaksin shinawatra der korruption anklagend und lautstark seinen rücktritt fordernd. selbstverständlich sind bürgerproteste in südostasien keine erfindung der letzten jahre. 1997/98 begehrten in indonesien hunderttausende menschen friedlich gegen das autoritäre christian wawrinec editorial editorial demokratisierung, sicherheit und gerechtigkeit: einleitende anmerkungen zu aktuellen trends in südostasien democratisation, security, and justice: preliminary remarks on current trends in south-east asia christian wawrinec aseas redaktion / aseas editorial board aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften / austrian journal of south-east asian studies seas gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften / society for south-east asian studies www.seas.at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ aseas 3(1) 02 went to the streets in indonesia, bringing an end to the authoritarian suharto regime (cf. aspinall, 2005). also the philippines has experienced successful, albeit bloody, protests and incidents of civil unrest going back to 1986, when the ‘people power’ revolution under corazon aquino led to the overthrow of dictator ferdinand marcos, who himself had started his career as the great democratic hope (cf. thompson, 1995). under the burmese/myanmarese military dictatorship, as many as 3,000 people were killed in rangoon and other cities during the 1988 protests, even though the exact number of casualties could never be verified (fink, 2001, p. 56). the last anti-government rebellion, with buddhist monks at the forefront and referred to as the ‘saffron revolution’, was bloodily suppressed too. earlier mass uprisings in thailand oscillated between success and defeat – joy about the triumphal uprising of 14 october 1973 was brought to an end by the bloodbath of 6 october 1976, when student protests at thammasat university were brutally put down by the army, police, and paramilitary militias. during the ‘black may’ of 1992, again hundreds of people were shot in the streets of bangkok and thousands of civilians were wounded. suharto-regime auf und brachten es zu fall (vgl. aspinall, 2005). die philippinen kennen erfolgreiche, wenngleich blutige bürgerrevolten und zivilgesellschaftliche proteste, die bis 1986 zurückreichen, als der „people power“ aufstand unter corazon aquino zum sturz von diktator ferdinand marcos führte, der seine politische karriere einst als demokratischer hoffnungsträger begonnen hatte (vgl. thompson, 1995). in der militärdiktatur burma/myanmar kamen 1988 an die 3.000 menschen während protestmärschen in rangun und anderen städten des landes ums leben, wobei die zahl der toten niemals genau bestätigt werden konnte (fink, 2001, s. 56). auch der letzte größere aufstand, die von mönchen mitgetragene „safranrevolution“, endete 2007 blutig. frühere massenproteste in thailand pendelten zwischen erfolg und niederlage – die euphorie des triumphalen aufstandes vom 14. oktober 1973 endete spätestens mit dem blutbad vom 6. oktober 1976, als studentische proteste am gelände der thammasat universität von armee, polizei und paramilitärischen milizen brutal niedergeschlagen wurden. im „schwarzen mai“ 1992 wurden tausende menschen in den straßen bangkoks erschossen und hunderte weitere zivilisten verletzt. denaseas 3(1) christian wawrinec editorial 03 despite, or rather because of these events, the years following were a period of democratisation in thailand: the military’s weight in politics was pushed back by the 1997 constitution (baker & pasuk, 2005, ch. 9), and only resurged with its 2007 amendment. indonesia experienced an impressive rise of democracy after suharto’s resignation in 1998, even though the violent conflicts inside the country (aceh, moluccas, papua, sulawesi) and the attacks against the civilian population in the course of the east timorese declaration of independence should not be ignored (concerning the achievement of accountability for the human rights atrocities and the east timorese reconciliation process; see madalena pampalk’s paper). especially, developments in thailand illustrate that the tide in a quite successful process of democratisation may indeed turn rapidly. even though thaksin came to power by procedurally democratic means, his style of leadership was authoritarian and his rule was accompanied by human rights violations. that it was not these things, but rather corruption and misgovernment that he was accused of, meant that further infractions of human and civil rights under future governments noch, oder gerade deswegen, waren die darauf folgenden jahre eine zeit der demokratisierung thailands: die bedeutung des militärs in der politik wurde durch die verfassung von 1997 zurückgedrängt (baker & pasuk, 2005, kap. 9) und erst die novelle von 2007 stärkte das militär wieder. auch indonesien erfuhr nach dem rücktritt suhartos 1998 einen grundsätzlich bemerkenswerten aufschwung der demokratie, wenngleich die gewalttätigen unruhen innerhalb des landes (aceh, molukken, papua, sulawesi) und die blutigen übergriffe auf die zivilbevölkerung im zuge der unabhängigwerdung osttimors keineswegs ignoriert werden sollten (zum thema strafrechtliche verantwortung für die menschenrechtsverletzungen und zum versöhnungsprozess in osttimor siehe den beitrag von madalena pampalk). gerade thailand veranschaulicht, dass sich das blatt in einem solchen, recht erfolgreichen demokratisierungsprozess wieder schnell wenden kann. prozedural war thaksin mit demokratischen mitteln an die macht gekommen, doch sein führungsstil war autoritär und seine regierungszeit von menschrechtsverletzungen geprägt; dass diese nicht hauptpunkt der anklage gegen ihn waren, sondern korruption und missaseas 3(1) 04 wirtschaft, ließ ähnliche bürgerund menschenrechtsverletzungen unter zukünftigen regierungen vorausahnen. der militärputsch vom 20. september 2006 brachte mit thaksins absetzung zwar das von der pad geforderte ergebnis – ruhe im politischen geschehen des landes kehrte jedoch keine ein (vgl. ferrara, 2010). nach der besetzung des bangkoker flughafens durch die pad vom 25. november bis 2. dezember 2008 (siehe marja-leena heikkilä-horns beitrag) und der umstrittenen regierungsübernahme durch die demokratische partei unter premierminister abhisit vejjajiva, weitete die 2006 nach dem putsch in opposition zu den „gelbhemden“ gegründete nationale vereinigte demokratiefront gegen diktatur (udd) (auch als „rothemden“ bezeichnet) ihre proteste aus. die auseinandersetzungen eskalierten an den songkranfeiertagen 2009, dann erneut am 10. april 2010 und zum zeitpunkt der drucklegung dieses leitartikels (17. mai 2010) werden erneut zusammenstöße mit mindestens 30 toten, unter ihnen der militante udd-stratege generalmajor khattiya sawasdipol (‚seh daeng‘), in zentral-bangkok gemeldet. demokratie ist ein gängiges schlagwort beider bewegungen, während man sich gegenseitig der diktatur were highly likely to occur. even though the pad’s requests were met when the 20 september 2006 coup d’état dismissed thaksin, there has still been no solution to the political turmoil (cf. ferrara, 2010). after the pad occupation of bangkok airport from 25 november to 2 december 2008 (see marja-leena heikkilä-horn’s paper) and the controversial transfer of government to the democrat party under prime minister abhisit vejjajiva, members of the ‘red-shirted’ united national front for democracy against dictatorship (udd), founded in 2006 in opposition to the ‘yellow shirts’, intensified their protests. conflicts escalated around the 2009 songkran holidays, on 10 april 2010, and, at the time when this editorial goes to print (17 may 2010), once again at least 30 fatal casualties, among them the militant udd strategist major-general khattiya sawasdipol (‘seh daeng’), have been reported from protest sites in central bangkok. democracy is a common keyword of both movements, and the other side is regularly accused of siding with dictatorship – a dictatorship of the masses, the elite, or of money. yet it is obvious that since the 2006 coup thailand’s politics is again increasingly being influenced by military aseas 3(1) christian wawrinec editorial 05 interventions and that a far-ranging curtailing of civil rights in the name of ‘law and order’ as well as ‘national security’ has taken place. accordingly, the globally surveyed freedom of the world index 2010 (freedom house, 2010) designates indonesia as the only free democracy in south-east asia. east timor, singapore, malaysia, thailand, and the philippines are classified as partly free, while the remaining south-east asian countries are still authoritarian. for these reasons, on a regional level, jakarta – followed by manila – is the most credible advocate of a further democratisation in south-east asia. not only have indonesian and filipino members of parliament criticised the military junta in myanmar, jakarta is also an active proponent of ‘human security’. should this trend of southeast asia-wide democratisation continue, donald emmerson considers it possible “[that indonesia] will draw more support from fellow members for enlisting regionalism, carefully and cautiously, in support of democracy in a reasonably ‘liberal’ form – or in support of human rights, better governance, and the rule of law without reference to the contentious ‘l’ word” (emmerson, 2008, p. 54). while ‘human security’, despite its beschuldigt – der diktatur der masse, der elite oder des geldes. offensichtlich ist jedoch, dass es seit dem putsch von 2006 wieder vermehrt zu interventionen des militärs in den politischen entscheidungsprozess und zu weitreichenden einschränkungen der bürgerinnenrechte im namen von „recht und ordnung“ sowie „nationaler sicherheit“ in thailand kam. entsprechend bezeichnet der weltweit erhobene freedom of the world index 2010 (freedom house, 2010) indonesien als die einzige wirklich freie demokratie in südostasien. osttimor, singapur, malaysia, thailand und die philippinen werden als teilweise frei klassifiziert und die übrigen südostasiatischen staaten als autoritär. auf regionaler ebene ist deswegen auch jakarta, gefolgt von manila, der glaubwürdigste anwalt einer weiteren demokratisierung in südostasien. nicht nur haben indonesische und philippinische parlamentarierinnen kritik an der militär-junta in myanmar geübt, jakarta ist auch als aktiver verfechter von „menschlicher sicherheit“ aufgetreten. sollte der demokratisierungstrend in südostasien anhalten, so hält donald emmerson es für möglich, „[that indonesia] will draw more support from fellow members for enlisting regionalism, carefully and cauaseas 3(1) 06 tiously, in support of democracy in a reasonably ‘liberal’ form–or in support of human rights, better governance, and the rule of law without reference to the contentious ‘l’ word“ (emmerson, 2008, s. 54). während „menschliche sicherheit“ trotz seiner vielschichtigkeit ein angemessenes theoretisches konzept zu sein scheint, um die neuen, nichttraditionellen herausforderungen zu analysieren, welche die menschen in südostasien bedrohen (seien es klimawandel, umweltkatastrophen, vogelgrippe, finanzkrise oder terrorismus; siehe dazu die beiträge von alfred gerstl und naila maier-knapp), ist es aus politischer sicht umstritten. dieses vom united nations human development report 1994 popularisierte konzept beinhaltet nämlich neben eher unpolitischen aspekten wie sozioökonomischer entwicklung auch eine starke politische dimension: für eine erfolgreiche nachhaltige entwicklung benötigen menschen, so sagt es etwa der wirtschaftsnobelpreisträger amartya sen (1999), politische rechte, um sowohl ihre eigenen ansprüche formulieren als auch kontrolle über die durchführung entwicklungspolitischer programme ausüben zu können. die gewährleistung politischer rechte ist jedoch für autoritäre regime complexity, seems to be an appropriate theoretical concept for analysing the new non-traditional security challenges in south-east asia (be they climate change, environmental catastrophes, avian influenza, financial crises, or terrorism; for more on this, see the papers of alfred gerstl and naila maier-knapp); from a political point of view, the concept is disputed. popularised by the united nations human development report 1994, besides such non-political aspects as socioeconomic development, this concept also includes a strong political dimension: for successful sustainable development, according to economics nobel laureate amartya sen (1999), humans also need political rights to formulate their own demands and control the implementation of development programs. however, for authoritarian regimes in south-east asia – just as in other parts of the world – guaranteeing political rights is a sensitive topic. correspondingly, the term ‘human security’ did not enter the 2007 association of southeast asian nations’ (asean) charter. national and transnational civil society organisations have harshly criticised this omission and, hence, it has become clear that ‘human aseas 3(1) 07 in südostasien – wie auch in anderen teilen der welt – ein heikles thema. dementsprechend fand der begriff „menschliche sicherheit“ keine erwähnung in der charter der vereinigung südostasiatischer nationen (asean) von 2007. nationale und transnationale zivilgesellschaftliche organisationen haben dieses versäumnis scharf kritisiert und damit deutlich gemacht, dass menschliche sicherheit ein konzept ist, das nicht von oben verordnet werden kann, sondern von den bürgerinnen durchgesetzt werden muss. security’ is a concept which cannot be enacted top-down, but has to be achieved by the citizens themselves. bibliographie / references aspinall, e. (2005). opposing suharto: compromise, resistance, and regime change in indonesia. stanford, ca: stanford university press. baker, c., & pasuk p. (2005). a history of thailand. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. emmerson, d. k. (2008). critical terms: security, democracy, and regionalism in southeast asia. in d. k. emmerson (ed.), hard choices: security, democracy and regionalism in southeast asia (pp. 3–56). stanford, ca: stanford university shorenstein aparc. ferrara, f. (2010). thailand unhinged: unraveling the myth of a thai-style democracy. singapore: equinox publishing. fink, c. (2001). living silence: burma under military rule. london: zed books. freedom house. (2010). freedom of the world index 2010. retrieved 12 may 2010, from http://www. freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=363&year=2010. sen, a. (1999). development as freedom. oxford, uk: oxford university press. thompson, m. r. (1995). the anti-marcos struggle: personalistic rule and democratic transition in the philippines. new haven, ct: yale university press. christian wawrinec editorial aseas 11(2) | 161 editorial: forced migration in southeast asia gunnar stange & patrick sakdapolrak ► stange, g., & sakdapolrak, p. (2018). forced migration in southeast asia. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 11(2), 161-164. the current issue of aseas, 11(2), focuses on the highly topical theme of forced migration in southeast asia. historically, the region is known for the so-called boat people crisis in the aftermath of the vietnam war between 1975 and 1995, when almost 800,000 vietnamese fled their country by sea in fear of persecution. currently, southeast asia is experiencing its second major forced migration crisis with nearly one million rohingya people who have fled myanmar in fear of an ongoing genocide committed by the armed forces of myanmar (tajuddin, 2017). thus far, we know little about the current state of refugees and internally displaced persons in southeast asia, and we have only estimations on the actual number of people that migrate involuntarily to or within the region. however, the united nations high commissioner for refugees (unhcr) reports approximately 3.37 million of the 68.5 million forced migrant population worldwide were hosted by southeast asian countries in 2017 (unhcr, 2018). at the same time, in 2017, southeast asian countries accounted for nearly six million internally displaced persons (idp) due to ongoing domestic armed conflicts, recurring natural disasters, as well as aggressive developmental politics (internal displacement monitoring center, 2018). southeast asia has one of the weakest protection frameworks for refugees and asylum seekers worldwide. only cambodia, the philippines, and timorleste have ratified the 1951 refugee convention and its 1967 protocol. although the asean human rights declaration mentions asean’s and its member states’ commitment to guarantee the right to seek asylum (asean, 2013), thus far, the member states’ way to address the issue of forced migration has been rather unilateral. this is mainly due to asean’s very strong rules of cooperation, namely respect of state sovereignty, non-interference in the international affairs of member states, consultation, and consensus (amer, 2009). at this point, it is highly unlikely that asean and the region as such will decide to adopt a joint regional framework for, or approach to forced migration any time soon (petcharamesree, 2016). thus far, there exists only very limited knowledge on how the low protections standards in most southeast asian countries specifically affect the lives of refugees and asylum seekers and their coping and adaptation strategies respectively. the contributions to this issue address this research gap as they are primarily concerned with the question of how the life realities of refugees and asylum seekers are being shaped in socio-political environments that have no or very low protection standards for this highly vulnerable ‘group’ of persons of concern. this includes themes such as self-organization in the absence editorial w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 04 162 | aseas 11(2) forced migration in southeast asia of access to education, registration practices in the absence of asylum frameworks, as well as refugees and asylum seekers management practices on the municipal level in the absence of support from the national level of government. the current research section of this issue opens with a contribution by thomas mitchell brown (2018) focusing on refugee-led education initiatives in cisarua, a small town in west java, indonesia. based on ethnographic research, the author documents refugee resilience and self-reliance, tracing the emergence of refugee-led education initiatives, detailing their form, function, and benefits to the community, and analyzing the contextual factors that drove their emergence and proliferation. the article is an important contribution to understanding the living conditions and needs of an estimated 14,000 asylum seekers and refugees who live in protracted transit in indonesia due to the restrictive australian immigration policy in recent years. brown shows that although refugees are oftentimes portrayed to be passive agents in need of outside assistance, they are, in fact, highly capable of constructively addressing their collective needs. in her article, jera lego (2018) scrutinizes the politics and practices of refugees’ and asylum seekers’ registrations in malaysia and thailand. based on extensive field work, lego traces the cases of registration exercises along the thai-myanmar border and mobile registration in kuala lumpur until around 2013. in doing so she analyses the mechanisms and technologies employed by the unhcr in cooperation with non-governmental organizations for registering and identifying refugees from myanmar. lego argues that both the registration and non-registration of refugees and asylum seekers can be understood in terms of competing rationalities of the various actors involved, their incongruent programs, and uneven technologies that serve to actively construct and assert knowledge and information concerning the existence of refugees, or to conceal and deny their presence. antje missbach, yunizar adiputera, and atin prabandari (2018) focus on the sub-national level of refugee protection in indonesia. their article responds to changes initiated by the 2016 indonesian presidential regulation on handling foreign refugees, which delegated more responsibility for managing refugees to the sub-national levels of the administration. the authors discuss the case of refugee management in the city of makassar, known for its welcoming attitude towards refugees. by examining the current living conditions of asylum seekers and refugees in makassar and comparing them to other places in indonesia, the authors ask whether the concept of ‘sanctuary city’ is applicable in a non-western context to enhance current discussions of creating alternative models for refugee protection beyond the national and regional level. claudia seise’s (2018) contribution goes beyond the specific thematic focus of this issue as it refers to the broader historical context of migration to southeast asia, and in this case to indonesia. in her article, she looks at maulid celebrations – held to remember the prophet mohammad’s birthday – among the alawiyin in palembang, south sumatra, who are descendants from hadhrami immigrants. maulid celebrations organized by the alawiyin in palembang are separated along gender lines. the author shows how female-only maulid celebrations enable muslim women to express their emotions and allow for bodily expressions during the actual maulid event. seise argues that, in these celebrations, women express the religious emotions that they aseas 11(2) | 163 gunnar stange & patrick sakdapolrak wish to show, but also express those emotions that are expected from them as signs of their love for the prophet muhammad. emotional practices, such as these, seise argues, are part of an understanding of islam internalized by the alawiyin. the in dialogue section features an interview with the indonesian peace and conflict advisor shadia marhaban on conflict transformation in southeast asia, conducted by gunnar stange (2018) in vienna, in june 2018. shadia marhaban speaks about her peace-building work all over southeast asia and her experiences in violence prevention work in the city of marawi, mindanao, philippines, in the aftermath of the mass exodus of hundreds of thousands of people during the so-called siege of marawi in 2017. in the network southeast asia section, kristina großmann (2018) reports on the kick-off workshop of the transdisciplinary research project “futuren: governance, identities, and future along categories of differentiation” in palangkaraya, central kalimantan, indonesia. the project explores environmental conflicts, especially those related to coal mining, focusing on the nexus between ethnicity, gender, and status in central kalimantan. the workshop aimed at discussing diverging future visions regarding coal mining on an intersectoral expert level. großmann finds that the participants mainly profited from the space for exchange and networking that the workshop provided. the challenge, however, for a similar workshop to be held in the future will be to achieve a stronger involvement of actors from the local private mining sector.  references amer, r. (2009). the association of southeast asian nations’ (asean) conflict management approach revisited: will the charter reinforce asean's role? austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 2(2), 6-27. association of southeast asian nations. (2013). asean human rights declaration (ahrd) and the phnom penh statement on the adoption of the ahrd. jakarta: the asean secretariat. brown, t. m. (2018). building resilience: the emergence of refugee-led education initiatives in indonesia to address service gaps faced in protracted transit. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 11(2), 165-181. großmann, k. (2018). workshop report: central kalimantan in the year 2030: natural resources, social justice, and sustainable development. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 11(2), 231-233. internal displacement monitoring centre. (2018). country profiles. retrieved from http://www.internaldisplacement.org/countries lego, j. (2018). making refugees (dis)appear: identifying refugees and asylum seekers in thailand and malaysia. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 11(2), 183-198. missbach, a., adiputera, y., & prabandari, a. (2018). is makassar a ‘sanctuary city’? migration governance in indonesia after the ‘local turn’. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 11(2), 199-216. petcharamesree, s. (2016). asean and its approach to forced migration issues. the international journal of human rights, 20(2), 173-190. seise, c. (2018). women remembering the prophet’s birthday: maulid celebrations and religious emotions among the alawiyin community in palembang, indonesia. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 11(2), 217-230. stange, g. (2018). from frustration to escalation in marawi: an interview on conflict transformation in southeast asia with the indonesian peace and conflict advisor shadia marhaban. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 11(2), 235-241. 164 | aseas 11(2) forced migration in southeast asia tajuddin, a. (2017). statelessness and persecution of the rohingyas in myanmar: time for serious international intervention. social science spectrum, 3(3), 128-140. united nations high commissioner for refugees. (2018). gobal trends. forced displacement in 2017. retrieved from https://www.unhcr.org/globaltrends2017/ about the authors gunnar stange currently holds a position as assistant professor in human geography at the department of geography and regional research, university of vienna, austria. he received his phd from the department of social and cultural anthropology, goethe university, frankfurt am main, germany. his research interests include peace and conflict studies, development studies, and forced migration. his regional focus is on southeast asia. ► contact: gunnar.stange@univie.ac.at patrick sakdapolrak is professor in population geography and demography at the department of geography and regional research, university of vienna, austria. his research field is at the interface of population dynamics, environmental change, and development processes, with a focus on the topics of migration and displacement as well as health and disease, mainly in southand southeast asia and east africa. ► contact: patrick.sakdapolrak@univie.ac.at rezensionen / book reviews aseas 3(2) 290 291 concepts and theories. these would have been helpful in providing a common point of departure among the chapter contributors. overall, the book is an outstanding addition to the literature on the arf and security co-operation. policymakers can use the lessons in the book to understand the reason why there are tensions surrounding the arf’s future directions. students and scholars of the asia-pacific, south-east asia, and asean security and international relations would do well to have this book in their collection as it might end up as a classic due to the breadth of its coverage and the depth of its analysis. julio s. amador iii center for international relations and strategic studies foreign service institute, the philippines kingsbury, damien (2009). east timor: the price of liberty. new york: palgrave macmillan. isbn: 978-0-230-60641-8. 246 seiten. seit 2002 unabhängig, ist timor-leste einer der jüngsten nationalstaaten der welt. der weg zur unabhängigkeit verlief, wie auch in vielen anderen fällen, alles andere als friedlich. mit welchen vielschichtigen problemen und herausforderungen timor-leste auf dem weg in die unabhängigkeit konfrontiert war und ist, steht im mittelpunkt der arbeit mehrerer wissenschafter und forscher. einer von ihnen ist der politologe und koordinator der australischen beobachtungsmissionen von 1999 und 2007 damien kingsbury mit seinem jüngsten werk east timor: the price of liberty. in acht kapiteln setzt sich der autor mit der geschichte timor-lestes, den präkolonialen strukturen, portugiesischer und indonesischer fremdherrschaft sowie der anschließenden un-verwaltung und der zeit der unabhängigkeit auseinander. kingsbury befasst sich dabei mit lokalen widerstandsbewegungen und dem regionalpolitischen kontext der postkolonialen phase um schlussendlich, vor allem bezug nehmend auf die unruhen von 2006 und den machtwechsel bei den wahlen 2007, die frage zu stellen, ob timor-leste als failed state zu bewerten sei oder gefahr laufe, einer zu werden. nach einer einführung in politikwissenschaftliche konzepte wie „staatliche rezensionen / book reviews aseas 3(2) 292 293 legitimität“ oder nationhood widmet sich kingsbury im darauffolgenden kapitel präkolonialen und kolonialen politischen, ökonomischen und sozialen strukturen timor-lestes, um diese dann klar und detailliert mit jüngsten ereignissen, wie etwa den unruhen von 2006, in beziehung zu setzen. die portugiesische kolonialisierung als ausgangslage nehmend, bespricht kingsbury die indonesische invasion, die ausrichtung der ökonomie nach den bedürfnissen der kolonialmächte, die unterdrückung und den widerstand der timoresen sowie reaktionen und strategische interessen der internationalen gemeinschaft – besonders der un, usa, australiens und später portugals. im rahmen der indonesischen okkupation (kapitel 3) zeichnet kingsbury den weg nach, den sich timor-leste in richtung unabhängigkeit bahnte. so setzt er sich eingehend mit jenen politischen parteien, ideologien und zentralen personen innerhalb der widerstandsbewegung auseinander, welche entscheidend zur unabhängigkeit des landes beitrugen und in der folge wesentlichen einfluss auf das politische system sowie auf die entwicklung des landes ausüben sollten (z.b. falintil, crrn, xananas gusmão oder josé ramos-horta). zudem beschäftigt er sich mit der relevanz von marxismus, guerilla-taktik und internationaler mediation. dem gegenüber stellt er die indonesischen motive für die besetzung, indonesiens selbstwahrnehmung als rechtmäßigen politischen akteur in timor-leste und die maßnahmen zur unterdrückung des timoresischen widerstands. im santa-cruzmassaker im november 1991 sieht kingsbury einen wendepunkt der indonesischen okkupation, da der internationalen gemeinschaft aufgrund der anwesenheit internationaler medien die illegitimität und brutalität der indonesischen besetzer vor augen geführt und von medialer sowie zivilgesellschaftlicher seite ein eingreifen gefordert wurde (s. 63). die asienkrise 1997/98, deren ökonomische auswirkungen und die dadurch bedingten innenpolitischen machtkämpfe in indonesien ermöglichten in der folge ein referendum über den zukünftigen status timor-lestes. im rahmen dieses referendums stimmte die bevölkerung der indonesischen provinz osttimor klar für die unabhängigkeit. die abstimmung stellte gleichzeitig die ausgangslage für die ereignisse des darauf folgenden black september – den ausschreitungen und massakern der indonesischen besetzer und pro-indonesischen timoresen an der lokalen bevölkerung und der zerstörung der infrastruktur – dar. diesen punkt behandelt kingsbury leider nur in geringem ausmaß. ausführlicher aseas 3(2) 292 293 widmet er sich im zusammenhang mit dem black september und den nachfolgenden entwicklungen der rolle der un. wie einige andere wissenschafter kritisiert auch kingsbury, vorwiegend in kapitel 4, deren rolle in timor-leste und geht sogar so weit, hierbei von einer dritten phase der kolonialisierung zu sprechen (s. 77-79). hierbei den begriff „kolonialisierung“ zu wählen, schmälert die argumentationskraft kingsburys beträchtlich. eine entsprechend vorgebrachte kritik ist zwar vor allem bei postkolonialistischen autoren durchaus häufig zu lesen, tritt jedoch meist als generelle systemkritik in erscheinung und zielt weniger auf speziell von der un gesetzte aktionen im bereich von humanitärer intervention und des state building ab. kingsbury kritisiert hier in einem zug die kompetenzanmaßung der un, weist ihr jedoch gleichzeitig aufgrund fehlender lokaler infrastruktur und kompetenzen die primäre verantwortung für den wiederaufbau timor-lestes zu: having assumed responsibility for east timor’s referendum on independence and promising that it would not leave in the postindependence period, it was clear to all, in the un and the rest of the international community, that following the destruction of east timor and the mass deportation of its people, the un had primary responsibility for the situation that east timor now found itself in (s. 78). geht es in seinen beispielen um die unmittelbare arbeit der un-mitarbeiter in timorleste, wirkt kingsburys kritik, z.b. hinsichtlich fehlender beruflicher kompetenzen, mangelndem respekt gegenüber timoresischen kollegen und unzureichenden oder nicht vorhandenen sprachkenntnissen, wiederum durchaus angebracht. besonders treffend erscheint seine feststellung, dass langfristige anforderungen des state building nicht verstanden wurden und man vor allem bestrebt war, die dauer der mission so kurz wie möglich zu halten. so konzentrierte sich die un eher auf die wiederherstellung und gewährleistung der öffentlichen sicherheit durch unmitarbeiter, anstatt den fokus auf die partizipation timoresischen personals zu legen (s. 79-88). lokale demokratisierungstendenzen, eigeninitiative und das ökonomische potential timoresischer kapazitäten und ressourcen wurden dadurch außer acht gelassen, was zur weiteren verarmung und exklusion der timoresen vom state building-prozess und dadurch auch zu fehlender nachhaltigkeit führte. in kapitel 5, transition to independence, konzentriert sich kingsbury dann auf die timoresische bevölkerung. er skizziert die herausbildung und entwicklung der ersten (unabhängigen) regierung, ihre marxistische ideologische ausrichtung, die auswirkungen der zeit im exil in mozambique und natürlich besonders die probleme rezensionen / book reviews aseas 3(2) 294 295 sowie herausforderungen, mit denen sie vor und nach der unabhängigkeit zu kämpfen hatte und hat. darunter fallen unstimmigkeiten über die zukünftige ökonomische und politische ausrichtung timor-lestes innerhalb des regierungskabinetts, grenzstreitigkeiten mit australien und indonesien, korruption, patronage, schmuggel und das fehlende staatliche gewaltenmonopol. im kapitel 6, capacity and conflict, arbeitet sich kingsbury langsam an die unruhen von 2006 heran. kingsbury verdeutlicht hier, dass diese nicht nur auf die ethnische trennlinie zwischen firaku, bewohnern des östlichen teils, und kaladi, bewohnern des westlichen teils, welche die unruhen 2006 vermeintlich enorm verschärfte, oder die konkurrenz von polizei und militär zurückzuführen seien, sondern sich vielmehr aus einem komplexen zusammenspiel verschiedenster politischer, ökonomischer und sozialer faktoren entwickelten (s. 131-141). so beschäftigt er sich mit armut, unterentwicklung und frustration innerhalb der bevölkerung, aber auch mit themen wie schmuggel, grenzstreitigkeiten und erdölvorkommen in timoresischen gewässern sowie mit konflikten, korruption und klientelismus innerhalb des regierungskabinetts. aus kingsburys analyse wird hier deutlich, wie vielschichtig und teilweise schwer fassbar jene umstände sind, welche aus einem anfänglichen streik der timoresischen sicherheitskräfte zu besagten weit verbreiteten und lange andauernden unruhen führten. mitunter etwas verwirrend und schwer nachvollziehbar beschreibt er schlussendlich jene herausforderungen, mit denen postkoloniale und sogenannte post-conflictgesellschaften in ihren transformationsund demokratisierungsprozessen zu kämpfen haben. er arbeitet in diesem zusammenhang heraus, dass die eintreffenden internationalen stabilisierungskräfte (isf) zwar die direkte gewalt eindämmen konnten, es jedoch die timoresen – sowohl regierung als auch zivilbevölkerung – brauchte, um die unruhen zu beenden und die demokratisierung voranzutreiben. in diesem sinne weist kingsbury in kapitel 7 auch auf die bedeutung der präsidentschafts und parlamentswahlen 2007 hin, mit denen sich nicht nur ein machtwechsel einstellte, sondern auch ein großer schritt hin zur weiteren demokratisierung des landes gesetzt wurde. als entscheidenden meilenstein dieser entwicklung betrachtet kingsbury in kapitel 8 den tod des desertierten majors reinado, der timor-leste von 2006 bis 2008 mit seiner rebellengruppe durch anschläge, feuergefechte mit den isf und der androhung eines bürgerkriegs in atem hielt. letztendlich wurde reinado aseas 3(2) 294 295 bei einem versuchten anschlag auf präsident ramos-horta und premierminister gusmão getötet. nach kingsbury ermöglichte dies neue wege aus der politischen sackgasse, weil dadurch mit der auflösung der von den unruhen stammenden camps für internally displaced persons (idps) begonnen werden konnte. außerdem wurde mit den petitionären verhandelt und politische legitimität sowie handlungsfähigkeit zurück gewonnen (s. 191 und s. 207-208). die derzeitige amp-regierung („allianz der parlamentarischen mehrheit“, 20072012) stehe nun vor den großen herausforderungen, ihre staatliche autorität und legitimität zu restaurieren, unterentwicklung und arbeitslosigkeit zu minimieren, korruption und klientelismus einhalt zu gebieten und das justizsystem zu stärken – besonders in hinblick auf die strafverfolgung der verbrechen der unruhen von 2006 und 2007 (s. 194-196). ausgehend von der frage nach effektiv funktionierenden institutionen bewertet kingsbury timor-leste als keinen failed state, da 2006 zwar teile der staatlichen institutionen versagten, ihre legitimität und funktionalität jedoch nach und nach zurückerlangten und mittlerweile die gefahr eines bürgerkriegs oder des zusammenbruchs jeglicher staatlichkeit gebannt zu sein scheint (s. 190-191). wie kingsbury in seiner einleitung anmerkt, sei die intention des buches, politische themen und ereignisse herauszuarbeiten, welche besonders nach der unabhängigkeit 2002 für die weitere entwicklung des staates relevant waren. damit wolle er aktuelle ereignisse in den historischen kontext timor-lestes einbetten und somit den transformationsund demokratisierungsprozess der jungen nation nachvollziehbar und bewertbar machen. tatsächlich zeigt sein werk eine immense fülle an informationen und besonders auch die persönliche anteilnahme des autors. es gelingt ihm, komplexe politikwissenschaftliche themenfelder – z.b. state building, failed states, die bedeutung von wahlen im timoresischen kontext oder der einfluss zentraler einzelakteure auf politische prozesse – mit aktuellen entwicklungen in verbindung zu setzen und zu veranschaulichen. diese detailreichen schilderungen führen kingsbury allerdings auch immer wieder in versuchung, anekdoten einzuwerfen und vom kern der sache abzuschweifen, was das buch teilweise sehr unstrukturiert und schwer nachvollziehbar erscheinen lässt. im gegensatz zur überaus detaillierten ausführung mancher argumentationslinien werden andere gedanken und themen nur sehr oberflächlich behandelt. kingsburys eher einseitige beschäftigung mit der un oder strafverfolgungsmaßnahmen rezensionen / book reviews aseas 3(2) 296 297 hinterlassen exemplarisch einen bitteren beigeschmack. in der nur dürftigen auseinandersetzung mit transitional-justice-prozessen suggeriert der autor beispielsweise, es gäbe keine weiteren bemühungen hinsichtlich strafverfolgung, vergangenheitsbewältigung oder versöhnung seitens timor-lestes. damit lässt kingsbury einen wesentlichen aspekt des demokratisierungsprozesses in timorleste außer acht, was umso bedauerlicher ist, da genau dieser prozess ja das primäre thema des werkes wäre. east timor: the price of liberty besticht vor allem durch seinen breiten theorierahmen, der praxisgerecht ausgeführt wird, durch aufschlussreiche hintergrundinformationen sowie wertvolle, weiterführende themenund fragestellungen in bezug auf die politische zukunft timor-lestes. als einstieg in die thematik scheint es jedoch wenig geeignet, da komplexe historische, politische und soziale zusammenhänge oft unklar formuliert werden und sich somit nur lesern erschließen, die mit der thematik vertraut sind. für letztere wiederum fehlt dem werk eine umfassende und tiefgehende analyse der entwicklungen in timor-leste, da entscheidende faktoren ausgelassen oder nur unzureichend behandelt werden. dem kenner öffnen sich somit leider nur wenige bisher unentdeckte pfade auf der suche nach neuen zugängen zur thematik. julia scharinger gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften (seas), österreich hensengerth, oliver (2010). regionalism in china-vietnam relations: institution-building in the greater mekong subregion. (routledge contemporary asia series 19). london & new york: routledge. isbn: 978-0-415-55143-4. 212 + xi pages. this book by oliver hensengerth addresses two interlinked research topics, namely relations between china and vietnam and collaboration within the greater mekong subregion (gms). the author aims for a comprehensive approach to the two topics and studies the importance of the gms collaboration in the china-vietnam relationship as well as the policies of china and vietnam, respectively, with reference to the gms. aseas 1-2 final (außergottowik).indd aseas 1 (2) 95 the barong wants to go out again krisis moneter and the resurgence of rituals in indonesia1 volker gottowik2 goethe-university frankfurt/main, germany aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften / austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 1 (2), 2008 seas gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften www.seas.at the economic and monetary crisis (krismo) at the end of the nineties has changed indonesia in many respects. while the political transformations in the wake of suharto’s step back seem all too obvious, changes in religious activities are seldom taken into account. this paper refers to the impact of krismo on ritual performances connected with the famous barong fi gures in bali. these impacts are twofold: the democratization of indonesia led not only to a revival of cultural activities of ethnic chinese of which the reappearance of barongsai dance troupes after more than 30 years of oppression is only one feature; the economic crises also raised the demand for new barong masks on the side of the local balinese people and fi nally caused a boom of ritual activities connected with these sacred fi gures. against this background it will be demonstrated that krismo led not only to a revitalisation of the barong cult in bali, but also became itself a topic of particular barong performances. therefore it is argued that economic events have religious impacts and vice versa. but how is krismo as a topic taken up by ritual discourse and what kinds of message do the local actors disseminate through the medium of barong? keywords: religion, bali, masks, chinese, representation 1 this is a slightly extended version of a paper given on the third south-east asia conference in vienna on june 13, 2008, organized by the gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaft (seas). 2 associate professor (“privatdozent”) at the institut für historische ethnologie, goethe-university in frankfurt/main.; field research in indonesia (16 months) and ghana (6 months); guest lectureships in denpasar (indonesia), trenton/nj (usa) und accra (ghana); chair of the south-east asia section of the deutsche gesellschaft für völkerkunde (dgv); applicant and member of a dfg-sponsored scientific network for the investigation of the religious dynamics in south-east asia. this paper reflects on – what in general terms could be called – the relation between religion and society. i would like to demonstrate that religion is not an obstacle to social development and economic growth. i will rather argue that religion and ritual activities are means to deal with social conflict and economic crisis (cf. hornbacher/gottowik 2008). the relation between religion and society is, however, not a one way road as the saying “armut lehrt beten” (“poverty teaches to pray”) seems to suggest. ritual activities also have an impact on the social and economic level. but only if one depicts religion as a symbol system – as clifford geertz (1966), victor turner (1982) and mary douglas (1970) among others have demonstrated – its dialectic relation to society comes to the fore. in spring 1998 – all of a sudden – prices started to rise in indonesia. everything became more and more expensive and no end of inflation was in sight. at this time, i was for my third time in bali and could follow in detail what the later so called krisis moneter meant on the local level and for the local people. when i arrived in the village in southeast bali, where i used to stay, my landlord took me directly to the market in the city of gianyar. there he directed my attention to the explosion of living costs in indonesia: prices for food had increased about 300 percent; eggs and chicken were even more expensive and already unaffordable for the majority of people. therefore many people had to restrict themselves to two meals per day, sometimes consisting only of plain rice or soup. the elders continued to go to their favourite food stall (warung) in the evening like they always did. but most of them came only for a chat (not for a drink) since they could not afford the amount of 500 rupiah (the equivalent of 5 euro cent) for a cup of tea or coffee anymore. the situation in bali was depressing and tense. from other parts of indonesia came news about riots and violent clashes between different social and ethnic groups and finally – on may 14, 1998 – suharto, the president of the republic of indonesia, had to step down. his resignation from power happened on the peak of violence with hundreds of victims – most of them of chinese origin. chinese women in particular became victims of mass rapes in jakarta and other major cities in indonesia (cf. haubold 1998). these violent acts caused hundreds of chinese families to escape to places, where they felt secure. and they escaped to australia, singapore or – bali. but what is it that makes bali a rather secure place for the ethnic chinese in indonesia? why is the relationship between chinese and balinese different when compared to other ethnic groups in indonesia? against this background, i would like to direct the readers’ attention to a balinese mask, which represents a chinese woman. the balinese entertain – in other words – a mask that represents a female chinese character. and my research guiding question 96 volker gottowik the barong wants to go out again aseas 1 (2) in this context is as follows: what is this mask able to tell us – on a symbolic level – about the social relationship between the balinese and chinese communities on bali? or to say it in other words: even when this paper deals with masks, my interests are not in masks, but in the interethnic relations that are represented through the medium of masks (cf. also gottowik 2006). first of all, let me give you some details about these masks: the chinese woman or putri cina who is represented by a white mask never makes her appearance never alone. she is always accompanied by a black male fellow. therefore we can say that she is part of a couple that is not only heterosexual, but also interethnic or – if you prefer – biracial: it is a black-and-white partnership. the lady is known as jero luh, the guy as jero gedé. together – as a couple – these two masks are called barong landung. what does this name indicate? barong is a generic name for powerful magic masks on bali of which barong ket (a mixture of dragon and lion) is probably the most famous; but the origin of the word barong is unclear (cf. zoete/spies 1938, belo 1949). and landung is balinese and means high. barong landung-figures are high, since the balinese wear these masks not in front of their faces, but as head masks of giant puppets which they lift upon their shoulders. these giant puppets have a powerful magic and appear on different ritual occasions (details about the ritual contexts of barong-figures are given in gottowik 2005). more interesting for our purpose are the different myths and legends that are connected with these figures. only few balinese know about these stories. therefore one has to look for experts. but if you ask – let us say – five experts about barong landung, you will receive at 97 jero luh (without headdress) as displayed in the office of her ethnographer, august 2008 jero gedé, the consort of the white lady (all photos by volker gottowik) least four different versions of these myths and legends. yet all versions clearly indicate that the white lady is of chinese origin. the identity of her black companion is – on the contrary – less obvious: according to some experts he is a prince from india; according to others he is a balinese king (raja); and according to others again he is a demon from nusa penida, a small island offshore bali. but all versions indicate that the beautiful white lady and the ugly black guy were married. most versions also indicate that she was a buddhist, while he was a hindu. and according to some experts – but not according to all – she was not only older than him, but also unable to give birth to a child (anymore). therefore she is also called “the barren lady” or “dewi mandul”. procession with barong landung, march 1998 according to my interpretation, this unequal and contradictory couple indicates two things at the same time: first of all it indicates that since historical times chinese and balinese, buddhists and hindus belong together – like a married couple. on the other hand, it indicates that balinese and chinese should stay apart, since this particular marriage has a strong stigma or defect: there are no offspring – and childlessness is one of the worst bad blows a balinese couple can imagine. therefore i would like to conclude, that the major characteristic of this unequal couple is ambivalence: it is – to use clifford geertz’ notions – a model of and a model for interethnic 98 volker gottowik the barong wants to go out again aseas 1 (2) relations between balinese and chinese (cf. geertz 1966). but if this exemplary couple is a model of a successful partnership (that was able to overcome all obstacles, even childlessness) or a model of a failed partnership (that was unable to produce descendants and regulate succession properly) is open to debate. and indeed, there is a kind of ongoing debate; there is discourse and counter discourse and what could be called politics of interpretation: when i did research on this white lady and her rustic consort, it became clear, that different ethnic and social groups in bali prefer different versions and interpretations of this mixed couple. these differences were expressed on the level of stories (myths and legends) told by different social and ethnic groups; but after the fall of suharto it also became obvious on the level of performance (ritual and theatre). the resurgence of barong activities when suharto had to withdraw and the republic of indonesia turned itself in breathtaking velocity into a democratic political system, a lot of discriminating laws against the chinese minority were confiscated. already under the new presidents habibie and wahid, the chinese were allowed again to organize themselves and to celebrate cultural events like the famous chinese new year’s day in public. as a result, for the first time after 30 years the barongsai dragon dance was performed again in the streets of jakarta, medan and other major cities in indonesia. but it was not only the chinese minority in bali that contributed to a resurgence of barong activities; under the impression of krisis moneter, the balinese themselves directed their attention again to barong figures which were well known for their protective power. old masks almost fallen into oblivion were reactivated, and new masks were ordered after years of a steady decline – as bali’s most famous mask carver, cokorda raka tisnu from the village of singapadu, confirmed. in other words: many new barong masks were ordered in these days of political and economic insecurity. the resurgence of barong activities is also reflected on the level of performance: at the beginning of the 1990s members of the art college in denpasar (sekolah tinggi seni indonesia/stsi) began to collect the myths and legends about the beautiful white lady and her black companion in order to create a play or drama out of theses stories; this play, which was finally called “sendratari dalam balingkang”, was performed at least two times on the “bali arts festival” in denpasar. and immediately after the fall of suharto a chinese cultural organisation (paguyuban sosial marga tionghoa indonesia/psmti) also created its own version of the story that is connected to this mixed couple. and the differences were striking: while 99 the performance of the balinese artists (stsi) emphasized ambivalence (in the way i described it at the beginning), the performance of the chinese artists (psmti) tried to give this story a particular meaning. this was clearly expressed in a review of the chinese performance in “the jakarta post” form july 15, 2001: “the main message of the show was indeed about the brotherhood of mankind. that two different ethnic groups living harmoniously together is not an unreachable dream, or beyond human capability. king jayapangus [the balinese king] and kang ci wie [his chinese wife] had demonstrated it, and all the people who were involved in sendratari legenda balingkang proved it once again” (juniarta 2001: 2). this statement about “the brotherhood of mankind” has to be seen against the background of violence and mass rapes that happened only two years before in many parts of indonesia. the chinese actors referred to this balinese king and his chinese wife – to use geertz’ terms again – as a model of and a model for: as a model of a successful interethnic partnership from the past and as a model for a successful interethnic partnership for the future. against the background of violence against the ethnic chinese in indonesia this model became highly significant again. as a result of its new significance, not only new masks were ordered and theatre performances with these masks created for the first time ever. this violence as well as the economic decline connected with krismo also became a topic on the level of ritual. libation in front of barong landung, september 1997 100 volker gottowik the barong wants to go out again aseas 1 (2) krismo as a topic on the ritual level on april 15, 1998, only few weeks before violence in jakarta and other major towns in indonesia demanded the life of approximately 1.200 people, most of them of chinese origin, i could witness a dialogue spoken through the masks of the white lady and her black companion. they referred to a popular folk story about a young man, his name is sampik, who has fallen in love with a beautiful girl called ingtai. this love was unhappy and sampik suffered tremendously. against this background, the white lady that everybody identifies as a chinese character, asks her black companion: “is it possible that sampik stopped eating and lost weight, not only because of his unhappy love. may be there are other reasons why he looks now like a dried frog?” – and the black guy answered: “yes you are right, maybe sampik has nothing to eat anymore, maybe he starves because of this economic crisis we are all confronted with.” and then he added: “but we should not allow our thoughts to be occupied by this crisis too much. let’s focus our energy to overcome this crisis together.” this dialogue, spoken between these two masks on ritual occasion, reminds me very much on the great french anthropologist emil durkheim. according to durkheim (1912), not god speaks through rituals and masks to the people, but the society to its members. in this particular case, masks that represent a multiethnic couple reminded in a situation of crisis everybody on particular virtues and ideals of society. and these ideals have to do with solidarity – as the only way to overcome this krisis moneter. that the ideal of solidarity was emphasized in dialogue with a mask that refers to a chinese character gives this message a particular significance. a similar message comes across when on other ritual occasions the chinese character reminds the balinese on principles of their religion. one particular principle is called tatwam asi. it derives from sanskrit and is translated in different ways; but in general, the balinese translate it as “aku adalah kau”, as “you are as i am”. this message transmitted by the white mask, which refers to a chinese character, has some remarkable implications: it reminds everybody that cultural and linguistic differences characterise mankind only at the surface; in the end, when we face god, we are all equal. 101 veneration of barong landung in a house temple, april 1998 this is not to say, however, that barong landung-figures have a particular message or meaning. i only want to emphasize, that on the peak of krismo in 1998, they reminded the balinese on equality and solidarity. but in general, they are – as i tried to highlight at the beginning – ambivalent and morally neutral. they are used as a medium for internal communication and could – even when it actually appears unlikely – also be employed for social segregation and apartheid. finally it remains unclear, what the white lady and her black companion did in 1965/66, i.e. after the military coup against suharto, when a witch-hunt broke out against everything communist and chinese. according to eyewitness accounts the worst massacres against the chinese minority took place in bali. between 40.000 and 80.000 people were killed, shops ransacked and their owners chased away: “some towns in which the chinese were dominant became deserted overnight, like nevada ghost towns” (hughes 1967: 200). even when the last quote refers to java, the situation in bali was similar if not worse and puzzled everybody familiar with the people on this island. how could this massacre happen? unfortunately, we do not know what kind of message the barong landung-figures disseminated under these historical circumstances. since up to the present day, no research has been done on these black and white masks. they were only mentioned in some ethnographic classics from the 1930s, and a detailed description of their appearance is given in “dance and 102 volker gottowik the barong wants to go out again aseas 1 (2) drama” by beryl de zoete and walter spies (1938). but even these ethnographers conducted no systematic research on barong landung-figures: they did not observe them in different ritual occasions, they did not collect the myths and legends related to them and they did not even translate the songs and dialogues performed by them in public. they only stated, that the white mask appeared to them “like an english maiden aunt in her garden” and that her particular outlook gives her “a very chinese air” (zoete/spies 1938: 275). if the balinese shared this interpretation, if the white mask appeared to them as chinese too, remains completely unclear. this lack of knowledge is a pity, considering the significance that at least this paper gives to barong landung-figures as a model of and a model for the right attitude towards the chinese minority in bali. what is simply missing are early ethnographic reports “from the native’s point of view” that would allow to analyse historical shifts in the symbolic meaning of these figures for the balinese. only such an approach would be able to find out, if the trauma of the 1965/66 massacre finds its symbolic expression in the current message of barong landung. conclusion as a reaction to krismo, violence and mass rapes in indonesia, barong figures on bali went through resurgence on at least three different levels: first, the confiscation of discriminating laws against the chinese minority brought barong and barongsai dance troupes back into the public; second, against the background of violence against the ethnic chinese in indonesia, the myths and legends related to barong landung gained significance and were performed as theatre plays on stage level for the first time ever; third, on the village level, the balinese ordered new masks and used them for internal communication; the message on the peak of krismo was, not to look for scapegoats but to overcome this crisis in solidarity. with this example, i tried to demonstrate that economic events like krismo have impacts on ritual activities and vice versa. economic crisis and political violence lead to an increase of ritual activities; and these activities reminded all participants how this crisis should be managed. that there was violence against the chinese all over indonesia, but not in bali, indicates that the balinese have understood the current message of the white lady and her black companion. 103 references belo, jane (1949). bali: rangda and barong. new york: augustin. douglas, mary (1970). natural symbols. explorations in cosmology. london: barrie & jenkins. durkheim, emile (1912). les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse. paris. geertz, clifford (1966). religion as a cultural system. in c. geertz (1973). the interpretation of cultures, (pp. 87-125). new york: basic books. gottowik, volker (2005). die erfindung des barong. mythos, ritual und alterität auf bali. berlin: reimer. gottowik, volker (2006). vergegenwärtigte ahnen: zur symbolischen ordnung der masken auf bali. in patrick eiden et al. (eds.), totenkulte. kulturelle und literarische grenzgänge zwischen leben und tod (291-312). frankfurt am main/new york: campus. haubold, erhard (1998). „weil du eine chinesin bist, mußt du vergewaltigt werden.“ indonesien setzt sich mit seiner jüngsten vergangenheit auseinander. das tiefe trauma einer minderheit. frankfurter allgemeine zeitung of july 21, 1998. hornbacher, annette und volker gottowik (2008). die transformation des religiösen. südostasiatische perspektiven. zeitschrift für ethnologie, 133 (1), 19-30. hughes, john (1967). indonesian upheaval. new york: david mckay. turner, victor (1982). from ritual to theatre. the human seriousness of play. new york. zoete, berly de & spies, walter (1938). dance and drama in bali. london: faber and faber. 104 volker gottowik the barong wants to go out again aseas 11(2) | 235 “from frustration to escalation in marawi”: an interview on conflict transformation in southeast asia with the indonesian peace and conflict advisor shadia marhaban gunnar stange ► stange, g. (2018). from frustration to escalation in marawi: an interview on conflict transformation in southeast asia with the indonesian peace and conflict advisor shadia marhaban. austrian journal of southeast asian studies, 11(2), 235-241. shadia marhaban has been actively involved in international peace mediation, capacity building, and human rights activism for more than 20 years. she is from aceh, indonesia, where she joined the free aceh movement (gam) in the early 2000s. she was an advisory member of gam’s peace negotiating team during the 2005 helsinki talks that brought an end to nearly 30 years of armed conflict. after her return to aceh, she became a founding member of the aceh women’s league (lina). the ngo was involved in reintegration programs for female ex-combatants and provided democracy education trainings. in recent years, her work has focused on facilitating dialog between conflicting parties in many regions of southeast asia affected by armed conflict. in her work, she is mainly engaged with resistance and liberation movements and their political transition. she believes that considering the dimensions of identity, religion, and culture is key to successful war-to-peace transitions and the achievement of sustainable modes of conflict resolution. with a background in political science and international relations, she is a fellow at the weatherhead center for international affairs, of harvard university and has been teaching classes on mediation and conflict transformation at universities in austria, indonesia, and the us. in this interview, conducted by gunnar stange in vienna in june 2018, shadia marhaban speaks about her peace-building work all over southeast asia and her experiences in violence prevention in the city of marawi, mindanao, philippines. keywords: conflict transformation; forced migration; marawi; mindanao; philippines  gunnar stange: during the last ten years, you have been working with armed resistance and liberation movements to support their transition from ‘arms to politics’. in which countries and with what groups have you been working and how successful has your work been? shadia marhaban: for the past ten years, i’ve been working in conflict affected areas in southeast asia such as in the philippines, myanmar, and south thailand, as well as in conflict affected areas outside the region, like nepal and northeast india (nagaland). i’m working with a multi-level approach from the combatant fronts up to the leadership and decision-making levels of these resistance and liberation movements. aside from the direct engagement with the armed liberation fronts, i also work with civil society organizations that are aligned with im dialog  in dialogue w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 07 “from frustration to escalation in marawi” 236 | aseas 11(2) these movements, especially in the crafting of frameworks for peace negotiations with governments. in the philippines, for example, i work with women, youths, or religious leaders to create an inclusive platform by which civil society organizations and other stakeholders can actively participate in the negotiations and the peace process through empowerment and awareness building. we organized international peace forums with leaders of liberation fronts, such as the moro islamic liberation front (milf)1 and the moro national liberation front (mnlf)2 in the philippines, that tackled issues and concerns that arise in many peace process efforts all around the world. this includes support in the post-agreement stage to smoothen the transition of revolutionary armed groups to the political and development arena, to build up political parties, to prevent the abuse of power once empowered politically, and to establish transition mechanisms. the primary aim is to learn from experiences of non-state armed groups that have been engaging in peace processes in other countries. it is quite difficult to measure the success of such efforts. governments must also be committed to adopt positive changes in order for the agreements and other efforts to be successful. political agreements are just an instrument to transform revolutionary organizations to be part of or lead a responsive government. however, there are visible changes in the awareness of the stakeholders that we work with. these changes can be best described as gradual shifts from individual, personal, and parochial perspectives to more organized and unified engagements with relevant stakeholders in the post peace agreement setting, such as the government, international organizations (io), and civil society organizations (cso). we aim at raising awareness for the political transition through capacity building by, for example, forming institutions that conduct trainings and employ mediation approaches. stange: as all over the world, we see a new turn to authoritarianism in some parts of southeast asia. what are the implications of these political trends for the resolution of armed conflicts in the region? marhaban: the trend towards authoritarianism affects the process of peace efforts, especially in the philippines and thailand. in the philippines, the at first promising political order of the duterte administration3 finally transformed the political system from a largely democratic government into an authoritarian one. this had some positive and some negative implications for the country. the campaign of president duterte against illegal drugs and the extrajudicial killings of drug suspects demonstrate the authoritarian turn of the government. it is a manifestation of impunity. 1 the milf is engaged in an armed secessionist campaign in the southern philippines aiming for the establishment of an independent islamic state in large parts of the island of mindanao. the organization broke away from the more secular oriented moro national liberation front (mnlf) in 1978 (abuza, 2005). 2 the mnlf started its insurgency against the government of the philippines in 1972. the movement’s ultimate aim was the establishment of an independent nationstate for the muslim population in the mindanao region (noble, 1976). 3 rodrigo “rody” roa duterte was elected the 16th president of the philippines on 9 may 2016. shortly after he had taken office, he initiated the so-called philippine drug war. thus far, this campaign has led to the extrajudicial killing of thousands of alleged drug traffickers and users by the philippine national police, death squads, and ‘vigilant’ individuals (johnson & fernquest, 2018). gunnar stange aseas 11(2) | 237 the rule of the ruler prevails over the rule of law. the campaign spread fear amongst the people and silenced human rights advocates. it also divided the filipino people – some are resisting these developments, but the majority is supporting the campaign. regarding the peace talks between the milf and the government of the philippines, the authoritarian leadership of president duterte and his strong political commitment sped up the process that led to this year’s passage of the proposed bangsamoro basic law (bbl) into law, also known as the bangsamoro organic law (bol)4. the signing of the bol into law by the president is a big leap in putting the armed conflict in mindanao to an end. it is a new dawn for the bangsamoro people who have been struggling for their right to self-determination for more than four decades now. it signifies the commitment of the government for the installation of a new political entity for muslim filipinos in the southern part of the country. with the signing of the bol, the current autonomous region in muslim mindanao (armm) will be replaced by the new bangsamoro autonomous region in muslim mindanao (bar). stange: coming back to aceh, the place where your career started: how sustainable is the peace in aceh 13 years after the signing of the peace accord in helsinki? 5 marhaban: i think the sustainability of any peace effort depends on its acceptability for the stakeholders and the commitment of the conflicting parties to implement signed agreements. after the signing of the peace agreement between gam and the government of indonesia in 2005, aceh’s political landscape started to transform into a more democratic political system that facilitates people’s participation in the government as well as the equal access of the people to the state’s basic services such as health care, education, and infrastructure development. this can be considered a peace dividend that benefits the people of aceh. albeit the helsinki agreement was not perfect, it provided the basis for the establishment of a peaceful and more developed aceh. i would say the agreement will be sustained as long as the involved parties abide by it faithfully. stange: are there lessons to be learned from the aceh peace process for other peace processes and ongoing armed conflicts in the region? marhaban: yes! the aceh process became model and inspiration for other countries in southeast asia for the past 10 years. aceh provided space for exchanges of experiences, knowledge sharing, and best practices. the key lesson to be learned is that the sincerity of both parties in implementing agreements is the main ingredient for a successful transformation from armed struggle to development. the political 4 the bol (republic act no. 11054), signed by president rodrigo duterte on 26 july 2018, is the legal implementation of the “comprehensive agreement on the bangsamoro” – the peace agreement between the government of the philippines and the milf that was signed in 2014 (internation crisis group, 2018a). 5 on 15 august 2005, gam and the government on indonesia signed the so-called memorandum of understanding (mou) in helsinki, finland, after eight months of negotiations. the peace agreement ended nearly 30 years of armed conflict in aceh and provided the basis for a renewed regional autonomy of the province of aceh within the indonesian nation state (stange & patock, 2010). “from frustration to escalation in marawi” 238 | aseas 11(2) will of the parties, especially the government, to end violence is very important at all stages of peace negotiations. challenges are always waiting somewhere along the way. therefore, parties must be open and ready to face those challenges, use them as a tool in exploring new approaches and perspectives to sustain the installed political settlement and other peace mechanisms that are already working on the ground. stange: you are actively involved in violence prevention activities in the city of marawi in the southern philippines. the city was overrun in may 2017 by the so-called maute group, a pro-islamic state group, and could only be liberated in october 2017 by the philippine’s army and police. in how far was the event connected to the still unresolved mindanao conflict that involves several armed groups? marhaban: looking deeper into the emergence of new moro6 armed groups in mindanao, it appears the main reason for their formation was frustration. let me revisit the emergence of the bangsamoro islamic freedom fighters (biff) in 2010, led by commander umbra kato. kato was an active supporter of the peace talks between the milf and the government of the philippines from the very beginning. his hopes for the establishment of a government that would address the grievances of the moro people was very high during the drafting of the memorandum of agreement on the muslim ancestral domain (moa-ad) under the administration of president gloria macapagal-arroyo. unexpectedly, some political leaders in mindanao filed a petition against the moa-ad that led the supreme court of the philippines to declare the agreement “unconstitutional” the night before the official signing in kuala lumpur in october 2008. due to the ruling of the supreme court, the signing was instantly aborted by the government. the hopes of umbra kato for having his ideal government turned into hatred because of his frustration over the failed signing of the agreement. he lost his trust in the peace process, split from milf, and established a new armed group called the biff with an even more radical islamist agenda. the maute group consists of former members of the milf under the command of abdullah macapaar, also known as commander bravo. its members were actively involved in the milf’s efforts to continue the peace talks in the early 2010s. however, due to the dragging process combined with the influence of the global jihadi ideology, they separated from the group of commander bravo and set up their own group. they started to recruit members by capitalizing on the incapability of the government to address the grievances of the moro people in mindanao. they talked to other frustrated members of milf, aggressive and idealist youths, especially out-of-school youths. they established their forces’ visibility and gained support from the local communities of butig municipality in the province of lanao del sur (mindanao). in the middle of 2016, the maute group started to attack government establishments and military check points in the locality. in december the same year, they attacked the town butig, lanao del sur. they successfully took over the old municipal hall of butig, raised the isis7 flag, and declared their group a local front of isis in the 6 the term “moro” was initially used by the spanish colonial regime referring to the predominantly muslim population in the southern philippines. nowadays, the term is used as a self-designation by most muslims in and from the southern philippines. 7 isis stands for the "islamic state in iraq and syria" to which the group had pledged allegiance. before gunnar stange aseas 11(2) | 239 philippines. around 1,000 families were displaced because of this incident. schools, houses, and other civilian properties were damaged. after the butig war, the maute group moved to the city of marawi to expand their operation. they established their base in the heart of the city. out of frustration, they started again to promulgate incompetency of the milf and the government in addressing corruption and vices in the “islamic city of marawi”. they claimed that they were the ones who cleaned the city from sin and from the vices of corrupt leaders. finally, on 23 may 2017, the siege happened! it caused the displacement of more than 200,000 residents. tall buildings, mosques, and malls were completely destroyed. the crowded city turned into a ghost town. you could not see a single soul walking in the streets for months. stange: as you said, during the siege of marawi, more than 200,000 residents were internally displaced. what were the humanitarian implications of this, and has this crisis been resolved? marhaban: the loss of lives and livelihoods as well as damaged and destroyed infrastructure are the more visible consequences of the crisis. however, there are deeper implications, not only for the internally displaced persons (idp) but also for the maranao8 people as a whole. the crisis generated mistrust towards the government and the peace process. it also divided the people, not only the maranaos but also the larger bangsamoro people. new dynamics emerged between the clan of maute and other maranao clans – they started to accuse each other of being the real culprit in destroying marawi. the crisis also exposed children, youths, and women to threats such as recruitment to armed groups, child labor, and abuses. these vulnerable groups of the community are the most affected by the crisis. children cannot go to school because their schools are destroyed. mothers lost their children during the crisis and are struggling to recover from physical and mental wounds. children lost their parents. relationships and families broke apart. these are the deeper humanitarian implications of the crisis. there are ongoing efforts in addressing the humanitarian crisis. various government agencies are working together in addressing the recovery needs, reconstruction, and rehabilitation of marawi. they set up the so-called task force bangon marawi (tfbm)9. tfbm drafted a recovery and rehabilitation plan for the affected areas. however, the implementation of the plan is slower than expected. aside from the slow implementation, the maranaos are questioning the inclusivity of the plan. according to them, tfbm drafted the plan without proper consultation with the victims. the tfbm intervention is mainly focusing on infrastructure related development – housing, clearing of debris in the ground zero, and provision of temporary shelter for the idps. local ngos, with support of international ngos, are engaging in psycho-social recovery work with the victims. pledging allegiance to isis, the maute group operated as private militia headed by the matriarch farhana maute that backed local politicians by the use of coercion and extorted local businesses (international crisis group, 2018b). 8 maranao (the people of the lake) is the official designation for the predominantly muslim population originally living in the area of lake lanao on mindanao island. they are part of the moro group. 9 task force to re-build marawi. “from frustration to escalation in marawi” 240 | aseas 11(2) stange: how would you describe the situation in marawi today, and how long will it take to rebuild the city and rehabilitate the victims? marhaban: many of the victims are now in diaspora. you can find them in the vicinity of marawi but also anywhere in the philippines. they were forced to leave marawi and settle somewhere else in the country to survive. i think it will take time for marawi to totally recover from this havoc. the government may manage to reconstruct the damaged houses of the civilians, but the broken identity of the maranao people will be difficult to ‘repair’. there are deep scars in their hearts brought by the crisis. it needs serious efforts in transitional justice to help reconstruct the torn social fabric of the people. we need to address the following questions: why and how did the crisis happen? who are the victims, and who are the perpetrators? what is adequate justice for the victims? how about reparations for the damaged properties? and, last but not least, how to ensure that the same will not happen again? finding answers to these questions is how i try to contribute to the rehabilitation of marawi and the maranaos. however, this effort needs a lot of resources and commitment of both the government and the victims. further, there should be a working coordination mechanism to ensure interventions and engagements are complimentary to each other and not overlapping or even contradicting. stange: last but not least, what kind of measures would it need to prevent a crisis such as the ‘siege of marawi’ from happening again? marhaban: first, it will be important to carefully evaluate the recovery and rehabilitation interventions for marawi to make sure that they do not trigger part two of the siege. it is important to have a comprehensive and inclusive rehabilitation plan for the city – a plan that ensures that all important stakeholders are involved in the process to avoid deprivation and division of the people. the marawi siege brought multiple layers of damages to the maranao people – physical, emotional, political, and spiritual. those layers need to be considered in the attempt to rehabilitate the city. the failure to contemplate on any of these layers may deviate results of any intervention to something else. to prevent this from happening again in marawi or in other part of the world, there must be a strong foundation of good governance from the local government units (lgus) up to the national government. people must feel the presence of the government through an equal access to basic services, meaningful participation, and the representation of important sectors of society in decision-making processes, especially decisions that affect people’s personal views and beliefs. functioning information mechanisms should also be established in the local government units to ensure that the efforts of the government are transmitted to the people. the people, on the other hand, should be able to report security issues, calamities, disasters, and other information to the government for appropriate responses and actions. however, this cannot be done by the government alone. this also requires active community participation. there should be a platform from the municipal government down to the local barangay10 units on which people can freely 10 the village level. smallest administrational unit in the philippines. gunnar stange aseas 11(2) | 241 share and listen to information on issues like security threats and corruption. i think civil society organizations can play a role in establishing this platform. hard work is needed for this platform to gain legitimacy from the community and the government. stange: shadia, thank you very much for taking the time for this interview.  references abuza, z. (2005). the moro islamic liberation front at 20: state of the revolution. studies in conflict & terrorism, 28(6), 453-479. international crisis group. (2018a). latest updates. philippines, july 2018. retrieved from https://www. crisisgroup.org/crisiswatch/july-2018#philippines international crisis group. (2018b). philippines: addressing islamist militancy after the battle for marawi. retrieved from https://www.crisisgroup.org/asia/south-east-asia/philippines/philippines-addressingislamist-militancy-after-battle-marawi johnson, d. t., & fernquest, j. (2018). governing through killing: the war on drugs in the philippines. asian journal of law and society, 1-32. retrieved from https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/asianjournal-of-law-and-society/article/governing-through-killing-the-war-on-drugs-in-the-philippines/87 8bffb53e2705befd2373cdac3e84f4 noble, l. g. (1976). the moro national liberation front in the philippines. pacific affairs, 49(3), 405-424. rudolph, r. m. (2016). transition in the philippines: the moro national liberation front (mnlf), the moro islamic liberation front (milf) and abu sayyaf ’s group (asg). in a. van engeland & r. m. rudolph (eds.), from terrorism to politics (pp. 165-184). london & new york: routledge. stange, g., & patock, r. (2010). from rebels to rulers and legislators: the political transformation of the free aceh movement (gam) in indonesia. journal of current southeast asian affairs, 29(1), 95-120. about the author gunnar stange currently holds a position as assistant professor in human geography at the department of geography and regional research, university of vienna, austria. he received his phd from the department of social and cultural anthropology, goethe university, frankfurt am main, germany. his research interests include peace and conflict studies, development studies, and forced migration. his regional focus is on southeast asia. contact: gunnar.stange@univie.ac.at wirtschaftsbeziehungen in südostasien, austrian economic relations to south-east asia aseas 1 (1) österreichs wirtschaftsbeziehungen in südostasien austrian economic relations to south-east asia reinhart zimmermann mag. reinhart zimmermann ist regional manager in der wirtschaftskammer österreich, außenwirtschaft für südund südostasien aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften / austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 1 (1), 2008 seas gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften www.seas.at der südund südostasiatische raum befindet sich im aufholprozess. der anhaltende wachstumstrend geht einher mit der steigenden nachfrage aus den industriestaaten sowie dem binnenmarkt und führt auch zu erhöhtem bedarf an infrastruktur. auch die österreichische wirtschaft profitiert vom asien-boom. dies zeigt das stete wachstum österreichischer warenexporte in die region, der anstieg heimischer direktinvestitionen sowie die wachsende präsenz österreichischer firmen. ziel der österreichischen wirtschaftsvertreterinnen ist es, die tigerstaaten südostasiens mehr aus dem schatten der aufstrebenden wirtschaftssupermacht china zu holen und die österreichische wirtschaftsverflechtung mit diesen ländern zu intensivieren. the south and south east asian area has been catching up with the developed world. the sustained economic growth trend goes hand in hand with a higher demand from industrialized nations and a stronger internal demand, pushing for better infrastructure. the austrian economy is also benefiting from booming asia, underscored by the steady increase of austrian exports to this region, the rise of foreign direct investment and companies doing business in these countries. the austrian business community would like to see the south east asian tiger states more out of the shadow of the new super power china. the overall objective is to intensify the economic integration with south and south east asia. 79 aseas 1 (1) ausgangssituation südostasien zählt mit einer gesamtbevölkerung von rund 5�0 millionen nach china und indien zu den bevölkerungsreichsten wirtschaftsräumen der welt. dabei liegt das pro-kopfeinkommen nach wie vor über jenem von china und deutlich über jenem von indien. durch die association of south-east asian nations (asean) verbunden stellen die zehn länder einen wirtschaftlich bedeutenden faktor im welthandel dar. der vorhandene rohstoffreichtum, verstärkte integration untereinander und zunehmender wirtschaftspolitischer pragmatismus sind dabei jene faktoren, die auch von internationalen investoren geschätzt werden. übereinkommen wie afta (asean free trade area), eine reihe bilateraler freihandelsabkommen (fta) sowie verstärkte anbindung an andere asiatische märkte (z.b. asean+�) werden eine intensivierung der wirtschaftlichen vernetzung im gesamten fernostraum sicherstellen. der süd und südostasiatische raum befindet sich im aufholprozess. der anhaltende wachstumstrend geht einher mit der steigenden nachfrage aus den industriestaaten sowie dem binnenmarkt und führt auch zu erhöhtem bedarf an infrastruktur. auf grund der globalisierung läuft ein teil der exporte über nachbarländer wie singapur. projekte werden oft über regionale tochterfirmen abgewickelt. diese positive entwicklung bestätigen auch die wachstumszahlen von asean und der south asian association for regional cooperation (saarc), den zwei wichtigsten süd und südostasiatischen wirtschaftsgemeinschaften, mit jeweils 6 bzw. 8 %-igem wirtschaftswachstum (2005). diese neuen wachstumsmärkte mit ca. �,5 mrd. (saarc) bzw. 5�0 mio. (asean) menschen und jeweils einem bip von rund 800 sowie 700 mrd. eur werden eine neuerliche welle von portfoliound direktinvestitionen aus europa nach asien auslösen. das handelsvolumen verdoppelte sich in den letzten zehn jahren. auch österreich profitiert von den aufstrebenden volkswirtschaften in asien: schließlich beträgt sein handelsvolumen mit asean bereits 2,� mrd. eur bzw. mit saarc immerhin �,� mrd. eur. wirtschaftliche verflechtung österreichs mit der region südostasien zu den wichtigsten österreichischen handelspartnern der region zählen singapur und malaysia, dem gegenüber steht indonesien mit noch relativ geringer handelsverflechtung zu österreich, dafür umso größerem potenzial. österreich verfügt über ein handelsdefizit gegenüber den asean-ländern: während die exporte 0,9 % des österreichischen gesamtexports betragen, liegt der import mit �,� % deutlich voran. es besteht aber noch einiges potenzial in der intensivierung der handelsbeziehungen mit den asean-staaten. so liegen die größten 80 reinhart zimmermann österreichs wirtschaftsbeziehungen in südostasien aseas 1 (1) wachstumschancen des österreichischen exports in thailand und singapur. bei den importen gibt es vor allem in indonesien und den philippinen viel wachstumspotenzial. singapur zeigt absolut betrachtet in der region das höchste warenexportpotenzial für österreichische firmen (hub-funktion für die ganze region), während die philippinen und indonesien geringes potenzial aufweisen. relativ betrachtet besteht für österreich das größte wachstumspotenzial in den ländern malaysia und philippinen, da unser marktanteil noch niedrig ist. in eur einfuhr ausfuhr 2005 2006 +/% 2005 2006 +/% brunei �9.8�� ��9.0�0 60�,6 56�.�0� �.596.6�7 54�,0 indonesien �58.�46.48� �67.�89.620 5,7 ��2.75�.0�7 ��9.7�9.564 -9,8 kambodscha 2�.47�.��5 28.5��.650 �2,8 702.�65 488.��0 -�0,5 laos �.48�.700 �.757.0�8 7,8 27.�69 �7.622 -�5,� malaysia 256.092.587 �77.��9.767 47,� 20�.298.007 2�6.077.�5� �6,� myanmar 9.77�.767 �0.428.869 6,7 4.955.797 5.�82.�57 8,6 philippinen 7�.82�.540 ��2.��7.764 56,4 54.44�.705 70.544.457 29,6 singapur �24.855.6�8 �28.529.74� 2,9 �87.�07.748 28�.607.027 5�,6 thailand 285.7��.754 �28.86�.707 �5,� �24.642.�89 �5�.049.9�8 22,8 vietnam �49.�45.624 �90.005.�7� 27,4 �5.082.�57 55.456.258 58,� asean �.080.542.20� �.�46.884.��7 24,6 74�.57�.257 927.959.�0� 24,8 welt 96.498.905.742 �04.200.577.�29 8,0 94.705.447.��0 �0�.74�.778.�8� 9,5 österreichs außenhandel mit asean, 2005 und 2006 (statistik austria) ebenso besteht auch bei österreichischen direktinvestitionen (fdi) aufholbedarf, wo der abstand zu vergleichbaren eu-staaten wie dänemark, schweden und finnland teilweise eklatant ist. teils auf grund der asiatischen finanzkrise �997 befinden sich die europäischen direktinvestitionen noch immer auf einem sehr niedrigen niveau. eine steigerung in diesem bereich kann österreich besonders in indonesien (holz), den philippinen (papier und elektronikprodukte) und malaysia (energie und naturressourcen) erreichen. anzahl der firmenniederlassungen brunei 0 indonesien �0 kambodscha 0 laos 2 malaysia �� myanmar � philippinen �2 singapur 62 thailand �57 vietnam �6 asean ��� österreichs direktinvestitionen in asean, 2006: anzahl der firmenniederlassungen (wkö-awo) 81 aseas 1 (1) zu den wichtigsten angebotsgruppen österreichs in südostasien zählen elektronik und elektrik, maschinenbau und anlagentechnik, energiewirtschaft und naturressourcen sowie metalle und metallverarbeitung. das stärkste wachstum erreichen die positionen energiegewinnung und eisenbahnmaterial, da asien im infrastrukturbereich stark investiert. hier sind auch in zukunft hohe zuwachsraten zu erwarten. auf grund des booms in industrieproduktion wie bevölkerung vergrößern sich die umweltprobleme. der druck auf die behörden, in die verbesserung der umweltsituation zu investieren, steigt. lieferungen von maschinen aller branchen und funktionen sowie elektro und elektronikgeräten bzw. komponenten bewahren ihre hohe dynamik. bearbeitete waren aus metallen, papier und holz finden vermehrt absatz. der konsumgüterexport wird durch den aufholbedarf einiger wichtiger verbrauchermärkte etwas weniger stark steigen. zunehmend werden die märkte auch von produktionsniederlassungen in asien (auch china, südkorea) beliefert, was zu lasten der exporte aus österreich geht. chancen und risiken bei allen positiven entwicklungen im südostasiatischen raum existieren jedoch noch einige handelshemmnisse nicht-tarifärer art, aber auch durch zölle. weitere handelshindernisse sind untransparente und häufig wechselnde regulierungen, die enorme bürokratie (v.a. in indonesien, singapur, malaysia), langwierige rechtsdurchsetzung und korruption. des weiteren sind auch die verzögerung und die teilweise mangelnde transparenz öffentlicher ausschreibungen sowie partielle importverbote und das verbreitete problem des immer wieder vernachlässigten schutzes geistigen eigentums wenig förderlich für die österreichisch/ europäisch-asiatischen wirtschaftsbeziehungen. die region bietet daher sowohl großartige chancen, aber auch viele zu beachtende hindernisse. die anhaltende integration der größten volkswirtschaften asiens zu einer zollfreizone stimmt positiv (asean, asean-china bis 20�0, asean-indien bis 20��). saarc plant, dieser entwicklung zu folgen. durchwegs positive stimmung führt zu einem gegenseitigen aufschaukeln des wirtschaftswachstums, privatkonsums und der investitionen aus dem in und ausland. die eu und asean streben ein eu-asean-freihandelsabkommen an (geplanter beginn der verhandlungen anlässlich des eu-asean commemorative summit im oktober 2007) und hat mit indien eine strategische partnerschaft abgeschlossen (eu-india-fta-verhandlungen wurden im juni 2007 offiziell aufgenommen). die oben genannten handelshemmnisse sollen im rahmen der fta-verhandlungen sukzessive abgebaut werden, wobei der abschluss einige 82 reinhart zimmermann österreichs wirtschaftsbeziehungen in südostasien aseas 1 (1) jahre in anspruch nehmen wird. es wird allerdings nicht leicht sein, die interessen zwischen den aseanund eumitgliedern auf gemeinsame nenner zu bringen. zu unterschiedlich sind doch die voraussetzungen auf seite der asiatischen partner. und auch die eu-mitgliedsländer verfolgen teils voneinander abweichende strategien. dennoch, die tatsache, dass europa und südostasien sich wirtschaftlich näher kommen, ist unbestritten. das handelsvolumen zwischen den beiden wirtschaftsregionen bewegt sich bei über �20 mrd. eur. mit direktinvestitionen von 76 mrd. eur (2004) ist die eu der größte investor im asean-raum. das beträchtliche expansionspotenzial ist dabei aber noch lange nicht ausgeschöpft. asien wird trotz leichter abschwächung die attraktivste region der welt für investitionen und handel bleiben – auch durch den weiteren ausbau der infrastruktur, laufende privatisierungen von staatsbetrieben und den steigenden konsum der eigenen bevölkerung. ein weiterer hoffnungsträger sind außerdem die starken wachstumsmärkte china und indien, welche die ganze region dynamisieren. dem gegenüber stehen jedoch auch risiken, wie die von staat zu staat verschieden ausgeprägte politische instabilität, der hohe schuldenstand einiger länder, aber auch die gefahr eines unkontrollierbaren überhitzens der chinesischen wirtschaft, welche enormen einfluss auf die region hat. zudem ist auch die starke wirtschaftliche abhängigkeit der meisten südostasiatischen länder von den usa problematisch. potenzialorientierte arbeitsschwerpunkte der region am stärksten präsentieren sich zukünftig die angebotsgruppen umwelttechnik, energiewirtschaft und naturressourcen, kraftfahrzeugkomponenten und zulieferungen sowie bau und infrastruktur. vor allem bei umwelttechnik bestehen ausgezeichnete chancen für den warenund dienstleistungsexport inklusive finanzierungen, da hier viel nachholbedarf besteht und die bevölkerung selbst immer mehr druck ausübt. gleiches gilt für den sektor energiewirtschaft und naturressourcen, wo auch investitionen aus österreich guten boden finden. für kfz-zulieferungen ist durch den steigenden bedarf ein höheres exportpotenzial zu erwarten, auch für technologietransfer und forschungskooperationen mit lokalen partnern. güter der bau & infrastrukturbranche werden verstärkt nachgefragt, in kombination mit finanzierung und beteiligungen, durch die weiter dynamische wirtschaftsentwicklung, landflucht und steigende ansprüche der bevölkerung. die angebotsgruppen maschinen und anlagenbau, gesundheit und medizintechnik, beratung und engineering, elektro und elektronik, papier und zellstoff sowie nahrungsmittel und getränke sollten zukünftig guten absatz finden, wenn auch weniger dynamisch als obig 83 aseas 1 (1) zitierte branchen. die fortsetzende verlagerung von produktionen in diese region und die steigende binnennachfrage bieten diesen sektoren gute wachstumschancen. grundsätzlich werden für industrieund investitionsgüter – die stärke der österreichischen exportwirtschaft und das gros der exporte in diese region – auch für die nächsten jahre die besseren chancen gesehen. in malaysia bestehen zusätzlich chancen für den export von konsumgütern sowie technologietransfers bzgl. neuer technologien. thailand betreffend liegt zusätzlich gewicht auf den export von verpackungen, kunststoffen, metallwaren, transport und logistik. der indonesische markt sollte auch für investitionen im holzsektor und textileinkauf interessant sein. ausblick der ausblick für die österreichische wirtschaft bleibt sehr erfreulich: das erwartete anhaltende wachstum österreichischer warenexporte in die region (+�0 % im asean-raum) und der anstieg heimischer direktinvestitionen (+7 %, d.h. insgesamt ��0 firmen im asean-raum) sowie die wachsende präsenz österreichischer firmen (allein 2.�50 in den asean-ländern, +�0 %) bis 20�0 zeugen davon. das jahr 2007 führt die letzte erfolgsgeschichte ungebrochen weiter, wobei gerade unsere exporte in die bedeutenderen absatzmärkte in südostasien boomen: in eur einfuhr ausfuhr �. hälfte 2006 �. hälfte 2007 +/% �. hälfte 2006 �. hälfte 2007 +/% brunei 9.50� �5.096 269,� �.0�5.�70 6�4.940 -79,7 indonesien 80.84�.6�9 76.�0�.7�2 -5,9 66.5�2.4�5 89.777.807 �4,9 kambodscha ��.428.548 �0.965.028 -4,� 220.655 ��5.966 -�8,4 laos �.48�.295 �.702.�99 �4,8 �4.�55 ��.47� -6,� malaysia �95.849.6�8 �5�.449.790 -2�,6 �28.5�9.�76 �28.840.709 0,� myanmar 4.725.286 4.78�.09� �,2 2.95�.279 2.920.949 -�,� philippinen 50.778.294 69.279.4�0 �6,4 �7.26�.6�2 �5.679.902 -4,2 singapur 60.�50.4�� 50.6�7.769 -�5,8 ��4.756.800 �64.070.�22 4�,0 thailand �5�.4�7.6�9 �79.0�7.706 �6,7 74.255.4�9 92.0�4.505 2�,9 vietnam 94.44�.00� �04.954.690 ��,� �8.��7.867 �6.764.464 �00,7 asean 65�.�45.276 650.928.7�� -0,� 445.866.968 550.852.8�7 2�,5 welt 50.75�.�82.69� 54.647.�77.5�9 7,7 50.40�.786.494 55.584.48�.�56 �0,� österreichs außenhandel mit asean, 1. jahreshälften 2006 und 2007 (statistik austria) dennoch: das rapide wachstum chinas mit dem vordergründig unbeschränkten reservoir an billigen arbeitskräften und einem ungeheuren, relativ homogenen absatzpotenzial droht die südostasiatischen länder im bewusstsein vieler österreichischer firmen in den 84 reinhart zimmermann österreichs wirtschaftsbeziehungen in südostasien aseas 1 (1) hintergrund zu drängen. diese situation mag zwar verständlich sein, wird aber den gegebenen marktchancen keineswegs gerecht. tatsache ist natürlich, dass die südostasiatischen länder eben kein mit den usa oder der eu vergleichbarer homogener wirtschaftsraum sind und somit eine bearbeitung und betreuung jeweils getrennt erfolgen muss. um das zweifelsfrei gegebene wirtschaftliche potenzial der region österreichischen unternehmen verstärkt ins bewusstsein zu rufen, verfolgt die aussenwirtschaft der wirtschaftskammer österreich mit ihren fünf außenhandelsstellen in der region entsprechende ziele. gleichzeitig soll eine verbesserte und abgestimmte koordination die attraktivität von regionalen veranstaltungen deutlich erhöhen: • erhöhung des informationsstandes in österreich, um eine erhöhte aufmerksamkeit auf die region südostasien zu lenken • intensiveres informationsangebot an einen weiter gestreuten adressatenkreis (firmen, banken, verbände, anwälte, medien etc.), um multiplikatoreffekte zu nutzen • erhöhung der attraktivität des leistungsangebots der außenhandelsstellen der region durch bündelung und koordination von veranstaltungsund sonstigen angeboten • koordination der veranstaltungen, um entweder veranstaltungen zu bündeln oder themenbzw. terminüberschneidungen zu vermeiden • aufbau eines sich ergänzenden leistungsspektrums (z.b. wirtschaftsmission und marktsondierungsreise), um einen mehrwert für österreichische firmen zu kreieren. 85 book review: hitchcock, m., king, v. t., & parnwell, m (eds.) (2009). tourism in southeast asia: challenges and new directions aseas 4(1) 190 191 rezensionen / book reviews hitchcock, m., king, v. t., & parnwell, m. (eds.). (2009). tourism in southeast asia: challenges and new directions. copenhagen, denmark: nias press. isbn: 978-87-7694-033-1. 358 pages. citation dolezal, c. (2011). book review: hitchcock, m., king, v. t., & parnwell, m (eds.) (2009). tourism in southeast asia: challenges and new directions. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 4(1), 191-195. the increasing importance of tourism in the countries of south-east asia and its changing nature from, amongst others, social, political, or anthropological points of view have created the grounds and necessity for a publication that brings together – as the title illustrates – current challenges and new directions in tourism in south-east asia. after their previous co-editing of tourism in south-east asia (1993), hitchcock, king, and parnwell have published a fundamental book for academics, researchers, and friends of south-east asia with a fine selection of contributions. the volume comprises sixteen chapters, with contributions on different southeast asian countries, e.g. thailand, indonesia, or vietnam, written by authors from various disciplines. despite the variety of topics, the regional focus seems to be put primarily on indonesia, especially bali – taking away room from other countries such as malaysia or burma. still, the topics covered are broad, ranging from anthropological insights and arts to policy-making, sex tourism, political ecology, gender, and terrorism. instead of referring to widely researched aspects of those topics, the authors surprise with interesting, for the reader maybe even unknown, issues. gender issues and sex tourism in the borderlands of china and vietnam for example – as focused on by yuk wah chan in chapter 10 – illuminate a different perspective on sex tourism compared to the thai sex industry and offer a glance at some of the new challenges the region faces. a special emphasis is put on culture, especially in the first two chapters. victor king’s work offers an immersion into anthropology and tourism in claudia dolezal book review: tourism in southeast asia: challenges and new directions d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -4 .1 -1 5 aseas 4(1) 192 193 south-east asia, building on key researchers in the area, such as erik cohen or michel picard. his contribution raises interesting questions about authenticity, agency and the dynamics of culture, power and identity. it concludes with the claim that anthropology should “embrace . . . the study of culture at the local, national, and the global levels” (p. 68). hence the study of anthropology gains new importance in tourism research, where it faces challenges within the complexity of the tourism systems. kathleen adams continues with her investigation of handicrafts and art in indonesia and the forces they are exposed to through buyers and sellers in the age of globalisation and modernity. the commoditisation of handicrafts seems to be a common phenomenon in the countries of south-east asia with fake sculptures, statues, and manufactures luring the authenticity-seeking tourists into spending money. however, instead of a loss in value, culture experiences the transformation of meanings and handicrafts seem to be “inspired by foreign tourists’ expectations of what ‘tribal art’ should look like” (p. 81). adams underpins her research by the use of various pictures – regrettably the only author doing so in the whole book. the next two chapters focus on the bali bombings of 2002 with i nyoman darma putra and michael hitchcock looking at tourists and their feelings of insecurity on the one hand and illuminating the motives of the bombers and the political context on the other hand. they locate the reason for the terrorists choosing tourist areas for their attacks in their aspiration for international publicity, which did indeed result from tourists being the target of those bombings. the chapter offers a broad and comparative approach to viewing the bali bombings as they are connected with the bombings in 2005. subsequently, michel picard’s contribution offers insights into the balinese culture and people, with the latter attributing the reasons for the bombings to their society: the mere fact of opening the country to globalisation through – above all international tourism – is considered by many balinese as the major cause for the attack. the new ajeg bali tourism strategy, which was created in the aftermath of the bombings, therefore mirrors the rising determination of the balinese “to avoid being overcome by the cultural hegemony of globalization, with its trail of consumerism, commercialism and commodification” (p. 113) and to rediscover their ‘balinese-ness’, i.e. their balinese identity. generally speaking, several of the contributors focus on bali, concentrating largely on the bali bombings, which can be partly redundant for the reader. equally, the 2004 tsunami constantly serves as a basis for the analysis in aseas 4(1) 192 193 various chapters, which raises concerns about a better linking between the contents of the individual contributions. the book continues with some chapters highlighting economics and policy-making in south-east asia. furthermore, challenges are discussed, including catastrophes such as the tsunami in 2004 or sustainability issues, which need to be dealt with not only on a local but more on a global level and demand the cooperation of and effort from various nations. in chapter 7, jonathan bennett continues with a focus on the private tourism business in vietnam, highlighting power redistributions from the central government to the regional level and the difficulties associated with these developments. due to the vague wording of government directives and regulations, the interpretation is left to regional authorities, so-called ‘provincial people’s committees’, making quan he xa hoi – the cultivation of social ties to those officials – of central importance for entrepreneurs in vietnam. in the following chapter david harrison and steven schipani present laos as a positive example of how tourism can serve as a tool for development and poverty alleviation by means of, amongst others, international cooperation between players such as the central government and aid agencies (for example snv, the netherlands development organisation). the fact that laos is only as of recently experiencing growth rates in tourism means that it can still learn from the mistakes its neighbouring countries (such as thailand) made in tourism development. shinji yamashita’s analysis of japanese tourists in south-east asia presents a rather new perspective on tourism in the region (chapter 9). from healing tourism in bali to lifestyle tourism in thailand, the chapter outlines the motivation of japanese to visit south-east asia. even though japanese tourists consider the region to be less oriental than some western tourists, they regard it as “a nostalgic place where they can find what they have lost in japan’s modernization” (p. 201). this is particularly relevant and valuable, as western publications often tend to ignore a more regional viewpoint due to their eurocentric perspective. chapter 10 brings to light gender issues in the china-vietnam borderlands: yuk wah chan’s research shows that the sexual relationships between chinese men and vietnamese women cannot be condemned instantly without a closer investigation of the underlying meanings and without putting it into the broader context of modernity and globalisation. the topic of sex tourism is included in the volume with a claudia dolezal book review: tourism in southeast asia: challenges and new directions aseas 4(1) 194 195 contribution by heidi dahles who discusses the phenomenon of women looking for male gigolos and sexual encounters. she moves away from the usual angle of female prostitutes in thailand and uses a case study of yogyakarta to illustrate ‘romance tourism’. by introducing a rather novel perspective on sexual commercial relations, she undoubtedly contributes to research in this area. nevertheless, the sex-tourism dilemma in countries such as thailand is not a major issue in the book. the last chapters of the volume are dedicated to environmental and policy issues with michael parnwell looking at how political frameworks can work to achieve sustainable tourism development in south-east asia. he considers sustainable tourism as a phenomenon based on cooperation between private and public entities, ngos, and others to focus on new forms of tourism, such as ‘pro-poor’, ‘eco-’, or ‘community-based’ tourism. according to parnwell, a shift in power distribution has taken place, which has contributed to capacity building and empowered communities. however, tourism actors in south-east asia still have to implement various measures in order to contribute to fair and equal tourism development. the ecotourism sector is further discussed by janet cochrane, who addresses its challenges as well as realities in indonesia. from a political ecology perspective, cochrane focuses on commercialisation and selling ecotourism as a product based on nature. thereby the importance of community participation is often overlooked. henning borchers (chapter 14) continues the regional emphasis on indonesia with a discussion of tourism development in komodo national park. he points to the importance of money generation to national parks as an engine for survival and sustainability and discusses the significance of community involvement. in the case of komodo national park “there has been a disproportionate emphasis on meeting the goals of resource protection, conservation and development of nature tourism, to the disadvantage of the livelihood needs of local communities” (p. 285). mark and joanna hampton finally assess the environmental impacts of backpacker tourism on the fragile island of gili trawangan in indonesia. they name repercussions, both on the terrestrial area as well as on coral reefs, and suggest stricter regulations in terms of conservation. regulations seem necessary due to the upcoming shift from backpacker to conventional or mass tourism, which could damage the environment immensely and contribute to a loss of its attractiveness. the conclusion by the editors presents a perfectly adequate ending to the work aseas 4(1) 194 195 and elucidates the status quo of research undertaken in the respective disciplines included. also, it compares the editors’ 1993 book with this new publication by pointing to the similarity in topics, which have been further explored in the meantime. therefore the angle has shifted to current challenges and developments of tourism in south-east asia. by focusing amongst others on east asian tourists travelling to south-east asia, tourism in southeast asia: challenges and new directions shows a necessary shift away from a eurocentric perspective. one might argue that a focus on disciplines such as economics or history is missing; however, the editors have still chosen a good selection of contributions and specify the limitations of the volume in the introduction as well as the conclusion. the capture of the phenomenon of globalisation is an essential feature of the volume, whose excellence is due to the interconnectedness of the chapters and disciplines, but also due to the accentuation of future developments and research necessities. overall, tourism in southeast asia: challenges and new directions is a comprehensive publication contributing to tourism research and should not be missing from the bookshelf of academics or friends of south-east asia interested in the tourism discourse. claudia dolezal university of brighton, uk society for south-east asian studies, austria claudia dolezal book review: tourism in southeast asia: challenges and new directions rezensionen / reviews (aseas 3-1) aseas 3(1) 120 gainsborough, martin (ed.) (2009). on the borders of state power. frontiers in the greater mekong sub-region. london & new york: routledge. isbn: 978-0-415-41465-4. 114 + ix pages. this volume edited by martin gainsborough deals with a relevant geographical area and with interesting research issues. the research problems addressed are both interesting and relevant. thus, the starting point of the volume is promising. the ambition as expressed in the first chapter by the editor is commendable. in this review the way in which the research issues and problems are addressed in the volume will be assessed. the review will also evaluate if the editor’s ambition as outlined in the introduction chapter has been achieved. the structure of the book is as follows. chapter 1 by the editor martin gainsborough is the introduction to the volume (pp. 1-11). chapter 2 by emmanuel poisson deals with the interplay between kinh and ethnic minority rule on the sino-vietnamese frontier from the fifteenth to twentieth century (pp. 12-24). chapter 3 by bradley c. davis discusses the collaboration between china and vietnam in pursuing bandits in the border area in the aftermath of taiping rebellion in china (pp. 25-34). chapter 4 by stan b-h tan tackles government policies aiming at controlling land grabbing in the central highlands of vietnam during the first republic of vietnam (1954-63) (pp. 35-50). chapter 5 by miwa hirono deals with ‘community development’ in a village on the chinese side of the border between china and myanmar and the interplay between villagers, oxfam and the chinese authorities (pp. 51-59). chapter 6 by kyoko kusakabe examines impacts of the politics of ‘opening up’ on female traders in the borderlands of cambodia, laos, myanmar, and thailand (pp. 60-74). chapter 7 by holly high investigates the mobility of the marginal in the borderlands between laos and thailand (pp. 75-100). chapter 8 by andrew walker is a conclusion centred on the question “are the mekong frontiers sites of exception?” (pp. 101-111). the first impression of the volume is that it is very short for an edited book. this is not due to the number of contributions, but due to the fact that the vast majority of them are very short. it appears that the editor faced problems even getting this short version out and hence to argue for more contributions would not have been an option. instead, the question is why such short contributions? with the exception of chapter 7, the other contributions range between eight and fifteen pages in length. aseas 3(1) 121 the shortness is not motivated by the issues that are studied, all of which could have been studied in more depth. in fact they should have been studied in more detail in order to adequately deal with the issues that each of the chapters are devoted to. the introduction provides a good overview of the process leading up to the book and delivers insights into the various contributions. it also sets out that borders, globalisation and the state are the three key issues that are studied in the book and that they are studied in historical context. the problem is that gainsborough does not address the changing nature and definition of borders through history. the same applies to the concept of the state and relations between states in historical context. nor does he clarify how the concept of globalisation applies to historical processes and developments. furthermore, gainsborough’s attempt to relate chapters 2 and 3, which deal with developments along the border between china and vietnam in history, to studies dealing with other borders in the region in the present day is not convincing. chapters 2 and 3 both address highly relevant issues relating to the situation in the border areas between china and vietnam. both would potentially have generated a considerable amount of new knowledge had the chapters been developed to their full potential. empirically the information is relevant but leaves a number of unanswered questions. in chapter 2, poisson manages to cover developments during more then five centuries in a few pages and this is far from satisfactory. the fact that he does not define the changing nature of the concept of border between china and vietnam during these five centuries diminishes the relevance of his study. the reader is left wondering what the status of the sino-vietnamese border within the context of the tributary relationship between china and vietnam actually was. chapter 3 is more detailed than chapter 2 given that it deals with a shorter period of time and hence provides more data and information about the collaboration between china and vietnam in combating bandits in the border area after the taiping rebellion in china. a shortcoming is that the chapter ends without any information on whether the broader problem of bandit activity was resolved in the area. as in the earlier chapter, davis does not address the nature of the relationship between china and vietnam and in particular not such key questions as status of the border from the perspectives of both sides. furthermore, he uses the term “sovereignty” in the vietnamese case without defining its meaning in the particular context of the historical period that rezensionen / reviews aseas 3(1) 122 he studies. in chapter 4, tan has a declared ambition to prove that the diem administration in the republic of vietnam (rov) (south) 1954-1963 made major efforts to curb land grabbing in the central highlands of the rov (pp. 35-36). in his attempt to do so, he selects the province of lam dong and studies the situation in this province and the government policies to curb land grabbing. the problem relates to land rights of ethnic minorities and state formation as well as relations between ethnic minorities and the majority ethnic group, i.e. kinh. the study is well documented and shows that the government in the rov did try to combat land grabbing through various pieces of legislation. the author takes this as proof that the government supported the land rights of the ethnic minorities (pp. 36-38). however, this is not evident from the facts presented in the study. these facts rather indicate that the goal was to enhance state control over land transfer in the central highlands, which is not the same as ethnic minorities’ rights. the chapter leaves the reader with one important unanswered question, namely was the government successful in its attempts or not? given the stated aim of the chapter to leave that question pending implies that the chapter falls short of its aim. chapter 5 deals with a very important issue, namely the relations between centre and periphery in china and the activities of international ngos, in this case oxfam. although some interesting observations are made, they are not elaborated on in detail. also the interviews referred to are vague since there are no notes to indicate when they were conducted. the overall impression is that the chapter is more a short report than a substantive academic study. in other words the potential has not been fully realised by the author. the eight pages including two notes and half a page of references are not in any way sufficient for a chapter in an academic book in the social sciences and humanities. chapter 6 provides an insight into the fate of female traders in the three border areas cambodia-thailand, laos-thailand and myanmar-thailand, and into the impact of economic liberalisation in the opening up of these border areas. thus, the chapter deals with an interesting interplay between formal state structure and policies and more informal structures through which the female traders operate. the chapter offers interesting information about the situation in each of the three border areas, but it does not compare them with each other. furthermore, the issues addressed in aseas 3(1) 123 each of the border areas are different from one area to another. thus, the section on “strategies of resistance” deals only with the cambodia-thai situation (pp. 68-70) and this is not satisfactory since the existence or non-existence of such strategies in the lao-thai and myanmar-thai areas ought to have been analysed in the chapter. chapter 7 is the most detailed of all contributions to the volume. it is the chapter that makes the most comprehensive attempt to address the issues that are researched. it seeks to both identify the aspirations of the inhabitants of don khiaw island located in the mekong in the south of laos and the impact of relations between laos and thailand – with special emphasis on the border area – on the inhabitants of the island. the chapter provides some very interesting insights into the perceptions and aspirations of the inhabitants of the island, many of whom have been or want to go to thailand to work. the author outlines how increased government control makes movement across the border between laos and thailand more difficult. the chapter also contains an essay on the history of the region as well as on lao-thai relations (pp. 79-88). this overview is unfortunately both biased and overlooks key periods of internal development in laos. the bias lies in the broadly positive presentation of thai policies towards laos in historical times (pp. 79-83). this can be contrasted with the criticism of thailand for collaborating with laos in the current period (pp. 88-91). the author should be given due credit for her efforts in addressing the studied issues in a comprehensive way, in particular compared to other contributions to the book. however, to deal with an academic discipline different from a researcher’s own area of expertise – in this case an anthropologist dealing with history – is a challenging task, as can be seen in this chapter. chapter 8, the concluding chapter, makes a serious attempt at identifying some of the major findings and arguments from the other chapters in the book and also at framing the analysis around the both relevant and interesting question: “are the mekong frontiers sites of exception?” based on the evidence provided in the volume this question cannot really be answered but the discussion in the chapter is interesting. the drawback with the chapter is that the author refers to his own book repeatedly. in fact the starting point of the chapter is derived from his earlier book and not from the edited volume that he is contributing to. to summarise this review, the volume deals with an interesting problem and a number of relevant issues but it is too limited both in terms of content and in rezensionen / reviews aseas 3(1) 124 terms of length to properly address the problem and its issues. given the major weaknesses outlined in this review and the shortcomings in addressing the stated objectives of the volume, the conclusion of this review can only be that the book is not recommended reading. ramses amer stockholm university, sweden grabowski, maike, herold, heike, & jordan, rolf (hrsg.). (2009). sicherheit kontra menschenrechte: antiterrorpolitik in asien. köln, deutschland: horlemann verlag. isbn: 978-3-89502-284-5. 206 seiten die tatsache, dass die sicherheit der allgemeinheit und die (scheinbare) stabilität des systems oft im konflikt mit den individuellen rechten der betroffenen bürgerinnen stehen, wird seit langer zeit beobachtet und erörtert. die terrorismusdebatten nach 9/11 rückten dieses altbekannte dilemma wieder in den fokus öffentlicher diskussionen. dabei ging es im politischen „westen“, also regionen, die sich – durchaus zu recht – immer noch als vorreiter und -kämpfer der menschenrechte sehen, allerdings primär um die bedenkliche aushöhlung der eigenen rechtsstaatlichkeit. wie aber sieht es in teilen der welt aus, in denen rechtsstaatliche prinzipien nie so recht fuß fassten? welchen einfluss hatten die terroranschläge in new york und washington auf noch andauernde demokratisierungsprozesse? der auf beiträgen einer tagung des (essener) asienhauses im mai 2008 basierende sammelband „sicherheit kontra menschenrechte: antiterrorpolitik in asien“ beleuchtet dieses thema von zentralasiatischen ex-sowjetrepubliken wie usbekistan über indien, bangladesch und ostasien bis südostasien, das mit den philippinen, malaysia, singapur, indonesien und einer betrachtung der asean-politik klar den schwerpunkt des buches darstellt. in insgesamt zehn beiträgen gehen die autorinnen der frage nach, wie es um bürger und menschenrechte in ausgewählten ländern asiens steht und präsentieren diese entwicklungen zumeist in relation zu den anschlägen des 11. septembers 2001. dabei wird klar, dass die westliche und insbesondere amerikanische terrorismusdebatte, welche seit diesem datum massiv zugenommen hat, nicht ohne weiteres auf asien aseas 1-2 final (außergottowik).indd aseas 1 (2) im dialog / in dialogue an interview with geoff rey benjamin1 christian wawrinec university of vienna, austria & aseas editorial board aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften / austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 1 (2), 2008 seas gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften www.seas.at geoffrey benjamin received his phd (social anthropology) from the university of cambridge. his academic employments have been at the university of singapore (1967-76), the australian national university (canberra, 1976-81) and the national university of singapore (1981-2000). since 1999 geoffrey benjamin is associate professor in the division of sociology at nanyang technological university (ntu) in singapore. he has also held visiting appointments at (among others) the cnrs (paris, 1985) and the iias (leiden, 1997). geoffrey benjamin has conducted research on various orang asli groups, malay, singaporean and indonesian society, as well as on mon-khmer and austronesian linguistics. in 2002 he co-edited with cynthia chou a collection of papers named “tribal communities in the malay world”. 1 the interview took place at prof. benjamin’s office (division of sociology, school of humanities and social sciences, nanyang technological university) in singapore on 11 june 2008. some questions and answers have been slightly edited for improved clarity. christian wawrinec would like to acknowledge the financial support (forschungsstipendium fnr.180) by the university of vienna. 187 christian wawrinec: for those readers who do not know yet about your research in south-east asia – could you give some information on your academic background? in your curriculum vitae you mention that you did your ba in both the natural and the social sciences. geoffrey benjamin: well, my first degree was in biological sciences (botany, zoology, biochemistry). then i switched to social anthropology with linguistics. finally i went straight to a phd in social anthropology. cw: what were the reasons why you did not continue within the biological sciences? gb: i did not particularly enjoy the laboratory work. if i had continued i would probably have gone into animal behaviour. although i went to university intending to become a biochemist, that interest dried up after a while. but i discovered while i was there that anthropology contained a lot of things i was interested in, although those topics (linguistics and ethnomusicology) were rather peripheral in terms of what was taught in cambridge. however, after studying the subject a little – especially with edmund leach, who was my supervisor – i really got interested in the central areas of social anthropology too. cw: why did you decide to do your research in south-east asia? gb: two reasons, i think. first of all, edmund leach himself. he was my tutor in cambridge and he was a long-time south-east asian specialist who worked in different parts of the region. as an undergraduate i took the course on south and south-east asia that he taught, with just one other student attending. the second reason is that an expedition of the old-fashioned kind was arranged to go to malaysia, by a malaysian student studying at cambridge, and i agreed to go along as the ethnologist. it never took place, but by then i already had begun reading up the little material there was at that time. edmund leach and i thought that one particular group, the temiars, would make a good topic. there was initial work on them done in the 1930s and edmund leach himself had thought of continuing that. the temiars seemed to exhibit several of the things that were interesting in anthropology at that time. one was swidden farming, another was cognatic kinship structures. (it later turned out that they had something that edmund leach denied existed, namely cognatic descent groups.) the added interest for me was their mon-khmer language, which gave me a chance to actually do some linguistic fieldwork and get the grammar and vocabulary. it worked out because i had also been a student of john lyons before he became well-known as a linguist. i had not been in south-east asia before and in those days – these plans were taking place in 1963 – you could 188 christian wawrinec an interview with geoff rey benjamin aseas 1 (2) not fly there unless you were extremely rich. i went there by ship and came back by ship at the end of the fieldwork. that is how i got started. cw: your initial fieldwork took place between 1964 and 1965. could you tell me about your memories on those days? gb: recently, i have written some of this up because nus press is planning to publish two books of mine based on my work – one on temiar society (benjamin forthcoming a) and one on temiar religion (benjamin forthcoming b). in the foreword i have tried to provide some of the background. i was working in a very remote area – indeed, so remote that i had to go in by helicopter and my food had to be literally parachuted in once a month by courtesy of the various military agencies then operating. this was during the vietnam war and my research area was in a part of malaysia where the communist emergency had not in fact ended. it was a tightly controlled area. there was a flying doctor service, so once a month i could get letters out, but it took many weeks to receive a reply. nowadays you can drive into this area in a normal car, but i was really isolated in those days. it was two days’ walk to the nearest town, gua musang, which was then only on the malayan railway, not on the road. now it is a big town on the highway. things have changed a lot. i did not speak much malay in those days but it was my contact language. within six weeks i forced myself to switch to temiar, which is completely unrelated to malay. after about three months i got reasonably fluent, but it was two or three years before i finally correctly phonemicised the language. it took a long time. cw: so what exactly were your tasks during this first year of fieldwork? gb: it was more than one year – it was eighteen months. during that time i got basic material on social organization, religion and language. although i had a home village i also travelled into many other valleys. i was not particularly fit when i started, but i was very fit when i ended. then i went back to cambridge to write up the phd thesis. it took me about a year to decide on temiar religion as the topic. in the meantime i wrote some of the basic papers on the temiars that were later published. after i had finished, within the same week of the oral exam of my phd i was back in singapore for a newly opened position at the old university of singapore in the then brand-new department of sociology. cw: some of those essays you have published during the last decades will now be included in your two books? 189 gb: yes, four of those early essays on aspects of temiar social organization will be chapters in one of the new books. there will be some later material too. since i have been going back to the field in the last two years after a very long gap, recent changes will be dealt with as well. and the changes have been quite massive. it is not really a tribal society anymore: some individuals are tribal, others are rural proletariat, and so on, but with a great deal of internal differentiation. modern politics has entered, and i was able to look at the campaigning amongst the temiars during the recent malaysian general election. the religion has very much changed: now it is not a matter of temiar religion in the singular, but of temiar religions in the plural. there have been adoptions of world religions like islam, christianity or bahai, and there have been revivalist cults from within their own tradition. i should nevertheless point out that, although my main ethnographic focus has been on the temiars, i have worked in one way or another on all the orang asli groups. i have also worked on malay culture and linguistics. cw: in your curriculum vitae you also mention bio-sociology as one of your fields of interest and expertise – what exactly is meant by that? gb: i guess it is what would otherwise be called biological or physical anthropology. it is a passive interest, not something i do active research in. i try to keep up with the literature and i do keep in active touch with at least some of the people who are doing research of that kind in malaysia and indonesia. i am also prepared to teach human evolution and human variation at a very elementary level. but in terms of active research – no, i do not do that. i have done some language classification work and i have done some work on the ethnohistory and prehistory of the malay peninsula in which the linguistic data have figured quite highly. others have since tried to see if the things i have said made any genetic, biological or archaeological sense. cw: talking about interdisciplinary studies. do you think “interdisciplinarity” is just a fashionable talk nowadays or is there more on that? what do you think can the various disciplines that you actively pursue contribute to interdisciplinary research? gb: i have a quite definite view on this. for me disciplines are teaching devices, and not really research devices. they are very useful for getting students orientated to train their minds, but when it comes to real-world research i think disciplines should be put aside and people should focus on problems. of course, they will bring their specialist training to their work but they must keep their mind open to all the other things that feed in. i have – apart from the period 190 christian wawrinec an interview with geoff rey benjamin aseas 1 (2) when i was in the prehistory and anthropology department at anu – always been in a sociology department. i have never felt it strange not being in a social anthropology department. any research today inevitably involves aspects of culture, social organization, political science, history and geographical issues, and even linguistics. (linguistics does require a bit more of specialist training, which unfortunately most anthropologists in the british tradition do not have. in the american tradition they do.) interdisciplinary research brings in music too. there is a central core area of social science where we do not need to distinguish disciplines, and then there are ancillary areas where you can spread out into things like language and music, or – if you are interested – representational art, architecture and so on. in the real world these things are not separate from each other. cw: coming to the austrian tradition of research in south-east asia – you wrote an introduction to the reprint of paul schebesta’s “among the forest dwarfs of malaya” (1973). have you been influenced by this austrian anthropologist? gb: yes, i wrote a short introduction to the reprint of his urwaldzwerge book based on my own short ethnographic researches among various semang groups, but i was not exactly influenced by that book, as it does not have a great deal of material in it on my primary concerns. it is his big three-volume work “die negrito asiens” (1952–1957) which contains his most detailed material. (there is a human relations area files translation of this. those files are difficult to get, but there is a set at the national university of singapore library.) there are aspects of schebesta’s work from which one could learn quite a lot of things. he worked mainly on the semang, whom i have also worked on. these groups, who neighbour the temiars, were – traditionally at least – nomadic hunter-gatherers. one thing i liked about schebesta’s work was that he was a quite honest researcher. he was sent out to find amongst the semang people evidence for urmonotheismus, the idea of an original monotheism, and indeed his expedition [in 1924] was financed by the then pope [pius xi.]. but he later admitted in his writings that there was no such thing and that the semang were thoroughgoing polytheists. he had to give up the idea of primitive monotheism, but in doing so he nevertheless gathered a lot of information, including some quite valuable linguistic material. cw: do you think that those old texts still contain important information for young scholars? gb: well, there has been quite a lot of research in recent years and we have a bibliography on orang asli studies put together by lye tuck-po (2001) which has many hundreds of items 191 in it. i would say almost every orang asli group by now has had at least some study done of them. some of this has not been published unfortunately, even though some people worked there 30 years ago or so. but there is now a substantial body of workers. we get on very well with each other and have our own newsgroup to exchange information. an archive has been set up in keene state college2 where rosemary gianno works, and there is another archive in malaysia run by colin nicholas at the centre for orang asli concerns3. there are also a few orang asli themselves who are scholars and contribute quite seriously. cw: was there any special reason why you did not go back to the uk to take a university position after finishing your phd studies? gb: i just seem to be happy in this part of the world (which includes australia, where i was for six years). i have nothing against the uk, but i have been closer to my field area here. i sort of settled down here and i am perfectly happy in south-east asia. it is not as opposed to anywhere else – it is just that, in its own terms, it suits me. cw: as a final question – do you have any practical advice for young students just trying to figure out what subject to choose for themselves? what should they pay their attention to? gb: that is a little bit difficult. i mean, let’s face it – a lot of students come into university, especially in this part of the world, with some kind of vocational aim in mind. some parents tend to push them into subjects they believe their children can easily get a job in. the actual situation is not like that, and i would say that most of our students spend at least some of their time stretching their minds. that means not coming up to the professors asking ‘what is it that we need to know to pass the exam?’, to which i always reply ‘there is no limit: the more you can put into what you do, the higher grade you are going to get.’ i find that students these days do not read as much as students were previously expected to read. this may be because there are other competing sources now, like the internet and television. it is only about ten percent of students who really do read the large amount of material that students traditionally were asked to read. but even if they cannot manage that, i feel that from time to time they should deliberately tackle some quite difficult material from the original literature. they should not just read in the textbooks. they should read the sort of material that professional social scientists and researchers have written for other researchers to read. when they start on such a reading they think they will never understand it. then, as 2 orang asli archive, keene state college, nh, usa. http://www.keene.edu/library/orangasli/ 3 centre for orang asli concerns, subang jaya, malaysia. http://www.coac.org.my/ 192 christian wawrinec an interview with geoff rey benjamin aseas 1 (2) they proceed they achieve a little personal victory and realize that after all they are getting their minds stretched. of course, the majority of graduates do not become professional social scientists but go into quite different areas. that is fine: it will be all the better for them to have done something that does enlarge their outlook. the only other advice i can actively give students is: make sure to do something that interests you. in the final analysis, most employers do not want people who already think they know what is what. they want people with good classes of degrees who they can further train on the job. so if you want to get a good class of degree – do something that interests you. references benjamin, geoffrey (forthcoming a). temiar society. singapore: nus press. benjamin, geoffrey (forthcoming b). temiar religion, 1964-2008. singapore: nus press. benjamin, geoffrey and cynthia chou (eds.) (2002). tribal communities in the malay world: historical, social and cultural perspectives. leiden: international institute of asian studies (iias) and singapore: institute of southeast asian studies (iseas). lye tuck-po (ed.) (2001). orang asli of peninsular malaysia: a comprehensive and annotated bibliography. cseas research report series no. 88. kyoto: centre for southeast asian studies, kyoto university. schebesta, paul (1952-1957). die negrito asiens. (vol. i: geschichte, geographie und anthropologie der negrito, 1952; vol. ii part 1: wirtschaft und soziologie, 1954; vol. ii part 2: religion und mythologie, 1957). wien-mödling: st. gabriel-verlag. schebesta, paul (1973). among the forest dwarfs of malaya. second impression. kuala lumpur: oxford university press. introduction by geoffrey benjamin. (orig.: bei den urwaldzwergen von malaya. leipzig: f. a. brockhaus, 1927.) 193 aseas 2-1 im gespräch mit marco bünte aseas 2 (1) im dialog / in dialogue im gespräch mit marco bünte an interview with marco bünte simon weiss1 universität wien, österreich / university of vienna, austria aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften / austrian journal of south-east asian studies seas gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften / society for south-east asian studies www.seas.at dr. marco bünte, geboren 1970, ist wissenschaftlicher mitarbeiter für die politik südostasiens am giga institut für asien-studien in hamburg und mitherausgeber des journal of current southeast asian aff airs (früher südostasien aktuell). seine forschungsschwerpunkte sind entwicklungen von demokratisierung, dezentralisierung und politischen konfl ikten, u.a. in thailand, indonesien und myanmar. simon weiß: wann und warum haben sie begonnen, sich wissenschaftlich mit südostasien zu beschäftigen? marco bünte: akademisch bin ich in münster groß geworden. dort habe ich mich im rahmen der transitionsund demokratisierungsforschung unter anderem für thailand, die philippinen und indonesien interessiert. ich habe dann auch thailand das erste mal für längere zeit besucht, als ich mich im rahmen meiner magisterarbeit mit fragen der konsolidierung der demokratie in thailand beschäftigt habe. ich habe 1 simon weiß war zwischen september 2007 und juni 2008 praktikant bei seas und studiert internationale entwicklung, politikwissenschaft und arabistik an der universität wien. das interview fand am 28. februar 2008 in dr. büntes büro in hamburg statt. 97 simon weiß im gespräch mit marco bünte aseas 2 (1) damals am institut für politikwissenschaft in münster gearbeitet. wir haben im rahmen eines größeren forschungsverbundes der deutschen forschungsgemeinschaft (dfg) gelder akquiriert und eine forschergruppe eingerichtet, an der auch ethnologen, historiker und soziologen involviert waren. ich habe in diesem rahmen zur dezentralisierung in indonesien promoviert. ich habe über 10 monate in indonesien gelebt, im wesentlichen in jakarta, zentraljava, yogyakarta und padang. im anschluss war ich dann ein halbes jahr gastlektor in helsinki, ehe ich als wissenschaftlicher mitarbeiter am german institute of global and area studies (giga) in hamburg angefangen habe. alles in allem war es schon ein stück zufall, dass ich mich geographisch auf die region südostasien festgelegt habe, mein eigentliches interesse galt den demokratisierungsprozessen. sw: was sind ihre derzeitigen forschungsschwerpunkte? mb: ich arbeite hier im wesentlichen zu fragen der demokratischen stabilität thailands und indonesiens und zu fragen der politischen dezentralisierung in der region. in nächster zeit werde ich mich verstärkt mit fragen der stabilität der autoritären länder in der region beschäftigen, vergleichend und am beispiel von myanmar. ich werde auch zu fragen der effektivität der sanktionen gegenüber myanmar arbeiten, zusammen mit einer burmesischen kollegin aus perth (australien), die ich im sommer letzten jahres dort besucht habe. sw: was zeichnet das giga institut aus? mb: das institut hier in hamburg nennt sich das giga institut für asien-studien. es ist ein außeruniversitäres forschungsinstitut. wir sind institutionell nicht an die universität angebunden, sondern werden vom bund und von der stadt hamburg finanziert. das giga institut rückt zwar mittlerweile immer enger an die universität heran, beispielsweise durch gemeinsame doktorandenprogramme, forschungsprojekte und unsere lehrtätigkeit, aber wir sind vor allem ein forschungsinstitut. giga ist im übrigen der zusammenschluss der früher einzelnen regionalinstitute (institut für asienkunde, institut für afrikakunde, institut für nahoststudien, institut für lateinamerikaforschung). im bereich der asienstudien ist china mit sieben wissen98 aseas 2 (1) simon weiß im gespräch mit marco bünte schaftern am stärksten vertreten. zu südostasien forschen hier mit andreas ufen, howard loewen und mir drei wissenschafter (genau so viele wie zu japan), zu indien forscht ein wissenschafter. hinzu kommen eine ganze reihe von doktoranden und projektmitarbeitern. so haben wir ein dfg-projekt zu fragen der zivilgesellschaft in vietnam, eines zu sozialpolitik in indien und ein weiteres zu innovation in ostasien. sw: welchen platz nimmt asien im vergleich zu den anderen instituten ein und wie funktioniert der austausch zwischen den instituten? mb: das asien-institut ist das größte regionalinstitut im verbund. der austausch funktioniert über unsere drei forschungsschwerpunkte, in denen überund interregionale forschung erfolgen soll (comparative area studies). die drei forschungsschwerpunkte nennen sich „legitimität und effizienz politischer systeme“, „gewalt, macht und sicherheit“ sowie „transformation in der globalisierung“. ein vierter forschungsschwerpunkt, der sich mit fragen der globalisierung und neuen globalen machtverteilung beschäftigt, wird momentan eingerichtet. innerhalb dieser forschungsschwerpunkte gibt es eine reihe von arbeitsgruppen, in denen die einzelnen mitarbeiter der regionalinstitute zusammenarbeiten. es gibt beispielsweise im ersten forschungsschwerpunkt „legitimität und effizienz politischer systeme“ eine arbeitsgemeinschaft „autoritäre regime“, in der man über die stabilität autoritärer regime arbeitet. von hier aus werden gemeinsame aktivitäten, wie forschungsprojekte oder tagungsbesuche, geplant. wir haben auch andere projekte, wie beispielsweise „neopatrimonialismus in nicht-oecd regionen“, in dem länder südostasiens (philippinen und indonesien) mit ländern in afrika und lateinamerika verglichen werden, oder das projekt „neue regionale führungsmächte“. sw: wie werden ihre ergebnisse publiziert? mb: die wissenschaftler sind gehalten, in hochrangigen, peer-reviewed zeitschriften zu publizieren. darüber hinaus veröffentlichen wir jedoch auch für die allgemeine öffentlichkeit. dazu dient im wesentlichen der giga focus im internet, in dem wir unsere forschung einem breiten publikum zugänglich machen und auch aktuelle ereignisse wissenschaftlich einordnen. ein beispiel wäre mein beitrag im oktober 2006, 99 aseas 2 (1) der einen monat nach dem putsch gegen den damaligen thailändischen premierminister thaksin erschien und den gründen, ursachen und folgen des eingreifens des militärs nachging (siehe bünte, 2006). neuere ausgaben zu asien fragen nach den folgen der finanzkrise für china oder japan oder nach der bedeutung der wahlen für indonesiens weiteren weg (burgschweiger, 2009; schüller, 2009). der giga focus dient jedoch zum teil auch der politikberatung. die fokusanalysen zu südostasien werden im übrigen auch noch in unserer zeitschrift abgedruckt, dem journal of current southeast asian affairs (früher südostasien aktuell). diese gibt es neuerdings auch als open-access-zeitschrift im internet. dort können jedoch alle wissenschaftler publizieren. sw: und das ziel der politikberatung ist öffentlichkeitsarbeit, sie richtet sich nicht gezielt an akteure der politik? mb: wir haben neben diesen allgemeinen veröffentlichungen auch veranstaltungen speziell für politiker oder das auswärtige amt. so findet möglichst einmal im jahr ein rundtischgespräch mit dem auswärtigen amt statt. darüber hinaus kommen auch häufiger bundestagsabgeordnete ins haus oder wir fahren nach berlin, um über aktuelle entwicklungen zu informieren. sw: das giga institut hieß früher übersee-institut, laut der homepage wurde es „auf initiative des deutschen bundestages und des auswärtigen amtes gegründet“. was war der politische hintergrund oder welche absichten verfolgte die regierung mit dieser gründung? mb: das institut wurde 1956 gegründet, und man muss sich vor augen halten, dass wir in den 1950er jahren kaum über informationen über nicht-oecd-länder verfügten. d.h. die kontinuierliche beobachtung der region war natürlich die wesentliche aufgabe des instituts bei seiner gründung. das haben wir bis vor 5 oder 10 jahren gemacht: länderanalysen aufgrund von beobachtung. [er zeigt auf die ordner im regal.] sie sehen ja hier, das ist noch ein relikt aus dieser alten zeit: indien 1964, indien 1963, eine art dokumentation. nur muss man natürlich sehen, dass sich das ganze heutzutage grundlegend gewandelt hat. wir haben zwar immer noch mit informationsmangel zu 100 aseas 2 (1) simon weiß im gespräch mit marco bünte tun, aber es geht eben sehr viel mehr um die einordnung von informationen. es geht von der dokumentation mehr hin zur wissenschaftlichen analyse, so könnte man die entwicklung in den letzten 50 jahren beschreiben. sw: wie würden sie die aktuelle lage der südostasienwissenschaftlerinnen in deutschland charakterisieren? mb: die südostasienwissenschaft ist in deutschland im umbruch. das hat nicht nur mit der einführung der neuen studiengänge in deutschland (bachelor, master) zu tun, sondern auch mit der stärkeren zentrenbildung und konzentration von wissenschaftsstandorten. neben den sozialwissenschaftlich orientieren fachdisziplinen sind auch die auf die sprachausbildung fokussierten lehrstühle stark unter druck, sich den neuen herausforderungen anzupassen. hinzu kommt der generationswechsel, der sich langsam an den lehrstühlen vollzieht. so haben in den letzten jahren passau, köln und bonn ihre lehrstühle für das festländische und insulare südostasien neu besetzt, auch frankfurt ist dabei ein neues ostasienzentrum aufzubauen, und auch hamburg und berlin werden eine neue ausrichtung bekommen. sw: haben sie in südostasien kooperationspartnerinnen? mb: institutionell kooperieren wir im wesentlichen mit dem institute of southeast asian studies (iseas) in singapur. dazu kommen aber die persönlichen netzwerke eines jeden forschers. ich habe beispielsweise kontakte zur chulalongkorn universität in bangkok und zum indonesian institute of sciences (lipi) in jakarta, andreas ufen arbeitet mit dem centre for strategic and international studies (csis) in indonesien und dem freedom institute in malaysia zusammen. herr loewen ist in den philippinen gut vernetzt. jeder bringt in der regel seine kontakte in die region mit, weil er auch über eine längere zeit in den ländern geforscht hat. sw: wie ist denn ihre einschätzung der deutschen südostasienwissenschaften gegenüber der britischen oder amerikanischen? mb: ehrlich gesagt, weiß ich zu wenig über die usa, um das richtig vergleichen zu 101 aseas 2 (1) können. ich glaube, man steht vor den gleichen problemen, vielleicht etwas zeitversetzt. wenn man sich die entwicklungen in den usa anschaut, so hat die politikwissenschaftliche beschäftigung mit südostasien kürzungen erfahren und daher abgenommen. die länderforschung steht unter großem druck der quantitativ orientierten sozialforschung. in großbritannien hat man in den letzten jahren ebenfalls eine zentrenbildung versucht, ohne dass sich hier neben der school of oriental and african studies (soas) andere große zentren herausgebildet haben. sw: gibt es im internationalen vergleich in gewissen bereichen spitzenunis oder führende forschungseinrichtungen, vielleicht in den usa? mb: jede weltregion hat ihre führenden forschungseinrichtungen, im sozialwissenschaftlichen bereich sind dies in den usa vielleicht das asia pacific center in stanford, im regionalwissenschaftlichen bereich die cornell university. daneben gibt es auch an einer reihe anderer universitäten in den usa spitzenforschung. in australien sind die führenden universitäten in canberra (australian national university) und in sydney. auch in europa gibt es eine reihe von spitzeneinrichtungen für südostasien, wie soas, leeds, lund, aber auch in holland gibt es eine reihe von kleineren instituten, die zu südostasien arbeiten und wichtige netzwerkfunktionen übernehmen (leiden, amsterdam). und nicht zu vergessen in südostasien selbst: die national university of singapore ist eine erstklassige adresse. sw: ist ein trend erkennbar, dass die fördermöglichkeiten für südostasienwissenschaften sinken, während gleichzeitig die bedeutung der region wächst? mb: sagen wir mal so: die südostasienwissenschaften haben es generell schwerer als andere wissenschaften. das liegt zum einen an der region selbst, die ja sehr heterogen ist und deshalb zum vergleich nicht gerade einlädt. jedes land hat seine eigene sprache, wir finden in der region alle weltreligionen, die region ist ökonomisch wie kulturell äußerst heterogen. all das macht vergleichende studien methodisch schwerer, man muss auf jeden fall eine regionalsprache sprechen, um vernünftig forschen zu können. das macht es schwieriger, in südostasien zu forschen als beispielsweise in lateinamerika (wo fast überall spanisch gesprochen wird). so kann 102 aseas 2 (1) simon weiß im gespräch mit marco bünte es schon sein, dass die ökonomische und politische bedeutung der region zunimmt, die fördermöglichkeiten aber auf der stelle treten. wir befinden uns im wettbewerb um eingeschränkte ressourcen und sind immer wieder mal von stellenstreichungen betroffen. die regionalstudien sind in den letzten jahren in die kritik der quantitativ arbeitenden wissenschaften gekommen. den area studies ist beispielsweise abgesprochen worden, eine richtige wissenschaft zu sein, weil sie nicht hinreichend zur theoriebildung beitragen kann. dies hat sich aber in den letzten jahren auch wieder etwas geändert, und spätestens seit dem 11. september 2001 ist die regionalforschung wieder verstärkt ins interesse gerückt. die terroranschläge und auch die finanzkrisen haben gezeigt, dass kenntnisse über die lokalen und regionalen verhältnisse wichtig sind. dazu beigetragen hat auch das politische lobbying, wie beispielsweise die aufrufe der deutschen gesellschaft zur asienkunde (dga) im jahr 2004, das freiburger memorandum zur regionalforschung aus dem jahr 2006 oder die stellungnahme der hochschulrektorenkonferenz aus dem letzten jahr. sw: eine persönliche frage: kommen in den giga publikationen kritische beiträge vor? kann also, anders ausgedrückt, trotz der verbindung zum auswärtigen amt über alles geschrieben werden? mb: es kann natürlich alles geschrieben werden. wir sind da ganz der wissenschaftlichen freiheit verpflichtet. natürlich kann man auch mal anderer meinung sein als die damen und herren vom auswärtigen amt, was die beurteilung einer politischen situation angeht. aber das auswärtige amt würde sich nie bei uns einmischen. man ist dort vielleicht besonders an bestimmten themen interessiert, an anderen themen wiederum weniger. wir müssen halt sehen, dass die themen, die wir anbieten, dort ankommen. sw: gibt es da auch einen laufenden austausch mit anderen institutionen? mb: da gibt es auf institutioneller ebene natürlich einen laufenden austausch mit zahlreichen forschungsinstitutionen, aber auch zu den uns fördernden institutionen. wir bieten auch einiges für die wirtschaftsbehörde in hamburg, bei der wir ange103 aseas 2 (1) siedelt sind. so findet einmal jährlich eine tagung mit dem asien-pazifik-ausschuss der deutschen wirtschaft statt. darüber hinaus wird in zusammenarbeit mit dem ostasiatischen verein in hamburg jedes jahr das wirtschaftshandbuch asien-pazifik herausgegeben. das ist unser service für die wirtschaft. wir schreiben dort einmal jährlich etwas zur wirtschaftsentwicklung in bestimmten sektoren, zum außenhandel und zu beziehungen der länder mit deutschland. sw: sind sie auch in der lehre tätig? mb: wir sind angehalten, als forschungsinstitut mit der universität zusammenzuarbeiten. das geschieht bei den fachwissenschaften, aber auch beim asien-afrikainstitut. ich habe beispielsweise in den letzten jahren im asien-afrika-institut der universität hamburg seminare zur politik in thailand sowie bei den politikwissenschaftern seminare zur demokratisierung in ostasien bzw. zur persistenz autoritärer regime in ostasien angeboten. wir versuchen auf diese weise, lehre und forschung miteinander zu verbinden. sw: herr bünte, vielen dank für das interview! bibliographie bünte, m. (2006). putsch in thailand: rückkehr des militärs in die politik? giga focus 10/2006. zuletzt zugegriffen am 4. mai 2009 unter http://www.giga-hamburg.de/dl/download.php?d=/content/publikationen/pdf/gf_asien_0610.pdf burgschweiger, n. (2009). japan in der globalen finanzkrise. giga focus 3/2009. zuletzt zugegriffen am 4. mai 2009 unter http://www.giga-hamburg.de/dl/download.php?d=/content/publikationen/pdf/ gf_asien_0903.pdf schüller, m. (2009). china in der globalen finanzmarktkrise: wirtschaftspolitische strategien und strukturprobleme. giga focus 4/2009. zuletzt zugegriffen am 4. mai 2009 unter http://www.giga-hamburg.de/dl/download.php?d=/content/publikationen/pdf/gf_asien_0904.pdf 104 clasdisa – classifi cations of disabilities in the field of education in different societal and cultural contexts: insights into the current state of research aseas 4(1) 158 159 forschungswerkstatt / research workshop clasdisa – classifi cations of disabilities in the field of education in diff erent societal and cultural contexts: insights into the current state of research michelle proyer1, margarita schiemer2 & mikael luciak3 university of vienna, austria citation proyer, m., schiemer, m., & luciak, m. (2011). clasdisa – classifications of disabilities in the field of education in different societal and cultural contexts: insights into the current state of research. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 4(1), 158-165. the research project classifications of disabilities in the field of education (clasdisa) investigates which environmental factors facilitate or restrict activity and participation of 8to 12-year-old children with disabilities4 in the field of education in different societal and cultural contexts. the following report about this international research project provides insights into the research design, the first phase of field research, and the projects’ current progress with an emphasis on research activities in thailand. given that previous research pertaining to education and disability in thailand has been rather unsystematic and fragmentary, particularly qualitative research (cheausuwantavee, nookaew, & cheausuwantavee, 2010), this study aims 1 michelle proyer studied education in vienna and berlin. she is assistant professor (universitätsassistentin) at the department of education (research unit special needs and inclusive education), university of vienna, austria and member of the aseas editorial board. currently, she is working on her phd thesis in the area of comparative special needs education within the clasdisa project with a focus on thailand. contact: michelle.proyer@univie.ac.at 2 margarita schiemer studied education in vienna and amsterdam and global studies in vienna and sydney. she is assistant professor (universitätsassistentin) at the department of education (research unit special needs and inclusive education), university of vienna, austria. she has spent several months in mozambique in the course of an hivaids project initiated by the austrian development agency. currently, she is working on her phd thesis in the area of comparative special needs education within the clasdisa project with a focus on ethiopia. contact: margarita. schiemer@univie.ac.at 3 mikael luciak studied education in vienna, counseling at san francisco state university, and social and cultural studies in education at uc berkeley. he held positions as assistant professor (universitätsassistent) at the vienna university of economics and the university of vienna and currently is a post-doc researcher at the department of education (research unit special needs and inclusive education), university of vienna, austria and a board member of the international association for intercultural education (iaie). his research focuses on the schooling of migrants and ethnic minorities in comparative perspective, inclusive education and equity, as well as disability studies. contact: mikael.luciak@univie.ac.at 4 deviations due to severe disabilities or late schooling of children might occur within the sample. d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -4 .1 -1 0 aseas 4(1) 158 159 to identify and describe factors that are influencing children with disabilities in thailand’s capital more thoroughly. background of the project and research focus how disability is conceptualised and defined differs over time and varies in different societal and cultural contexts. classifications and their underlying models of disability have implications for professional practice and support systems, and determine political decision-making processes, legislation, and policies. underlying assumptions about what constitutes a disability have important consequences in the field of education. thus, the daily lives of people with disabilities, if and how they are educated, if and where they work, and their social and familial life, in large part are determined by models of disability. perhaps, most important, models of disability exert a powerful influence on the public perception of disability and the public’s response to people with disabilities. (smart, 2009, p. 3) the international classification of functioning disability and health (icf) is based on a biopsychosocial model of disability. thus, disability is not just regarded as a medical condition of the individual in need of treatment and rehabilitation, but also as a social phenomenon. contextual factors, such as the physical environment and attitudes towards people with a disability, play an important role. this is illustrated in figure 1. based on the international classification of functioning disability and health, children and youth version (icfhealth condition (disorder or disease) body functions & structure participationactivity environmental factors personal factors source: who, 2001, p.16 figure 1: framework of the icf michelle proyer, margarita schiemer, & mikael luciak clasdisa: classifications of disabilities aseas 4(1) 160 161 cy), which was released by the world health organization (who) in 2007, the clasdisa researchers address barriers and facilitators for activity and participation of children with disabilities at schools in the capitals of austria, ethiopia, and thailand. the rationale for choosing the different countries is based on their varied cultural and societal contexts (different religions, values, beliefs, and institutional and structural factors) as well as varied economic and developmental backgrounds (according to the human development index). the decision to select these three countries was also based on already existing contacts to respective special needs departments and the prospect of efficient cooperation. following two years of preparation, the research proposal for the project was rated as excellent in the course of the austrian science fund’s (fwf, project number p22178) review process, which in turn led to three years of financial funding. the research project started in february 2010 and will end in january 2013. a team of three researchers from the university of vienna conducted the first phase of field research. each focused on one of the capital cities and was supported by research assistants in thailand and in ethiopia. besides cooperation with local scientific teams from the department of special education at srinakharinwirot university in bangkok and from the department of special needs education at the university of addis ababa, two experts in the field of special needs education, lani florian from the university of aberdeen and judith hollenweger from the school of education at the zurich university of applied sciences, support the research process. research workshops will be held after each phase of field research involving all researchers associated with the project. methodological framework the empirical data for this study will be collected in the course of two phases of field research, lasting three months each, and undertaken simultaneously in the three capitals: bangkok, addis ababa, and vienna. data collection is supposed to result in a sample of 16 ‘cases’, each case consisting of one child, one parent/legal guardian/ (primary) caretaker and one teacher. the children’s disabilities must be allocated to one of the following disability categories: aseas 4(1) 160 161 1. visual disability 2. auditive disability 3. physical disability 4. intellectual disability by using a mixed-methods approach (creswell & clark, 2007), qualitative research based on grounded theory (glaser & strauss, 1967) is complemented by data gained quantitatively (i.e. questionnaires for parents and teachers). the development of research instruments draws on the icf-cy’s chapter on environmental factors. the icfcy is a coding instrument that is supposed to be universally applicable, a claim that is at times challenged by researchers (üstün et al., 2001). the unit of classification is, therefore, categories within health and health-related domains. it is important to note, therefore, that in icf persons are not the units of classification; that is icf does not classify people, but describes the situation of each person within an array of health and or health-related domains. (who, 2007, p. 8) several authors have stressed the relevance of the icf-cy regarding classifications of disability (florian & mclaughlin, 2008). based on the icf-cy and assumptions about what affects activity and participation, the researchers developed interview and observation guidelines as well as questionnaires for the first phase of field research. through interviewing children, teachers, and parents, the researchers aim to gain insight into micro-, meso-, and macro-systems affecting children with disabilities in terms of their educational biographies, including the societal and cultural conditions they are confronted with. furthermore, the project includes three innovative aspects. first, the research project investigates relations between society, culture, disability, and education. second, it is applying the icf-cy in the field of education, including a critical examination of this classification system. finally, during the research process, adequate research methods are developed through international scientific cooperation in the field of special needs education. the latter includes the development of adapted methods for interviewing children with disabilities. aside from interim and final project reports, the research is intended to result in four doctoral theses, three focusing on the individual countries, as well as one in michelle proyer, margarita schiemer, & mikael luciak clasdisa: classifications of disabilities aseas 4(1) 162 163 which quantitative results are to be summarised and compared. current localisation the development of instruments for qualitative and quantitative data collection was complicated by the language diversity in each of the societal and school contexts. questions regarding quality assurance arose while the intended research instruments initially had to be translated from german into three other languages (english, thai, amharic). the research team in vienna developed instruments in german and translated them, with support of a native speaker, into english. the research teams in thailand and ethiopia translated the questionnaires, interview guidelines, and informational materials from english into thai and amharic. this step was followed by retranslation (from thai and amharic into english) by professionals in order to ensure quality and consistency (van de vijver & hambleton, 1996). overall, these linguistic issues pose substantial challenges for the development of research instruments and research implementation as well as for the process of data analysis. after the pre-testing phase, the first phase of field research took place in thailand, in ethiopia, and in austria. currently, qualitative interviews are being translated and qualitative data from the three countries are being prepared for computer-based analysis. the processing of quantitative data, which was collected during the first phase of field research, is nearly completed. in addition, a methodological framework as well as research instruments for the second phase of field research are being developed. source: authors figure 2: methodological framework 3 phases of research 1st phase of field research november 2010 january 2011 pretesting march june 2010 november 2011 january 2012 2nd phase of field research aseas 4(1) 162 163 reflections on research in bangkok the research team in thailand established initial contacts with schools and organisations during a visit to bangkok in june and july 2010. in bangkok, almost all of the targeted schools and institutions offered support and showed interest in the research and its findings, even though the framework of the study, to many of the experts and parents involved, appeared highly complex. only two institutions postponed or denied cooperation. overall, 92 interviews were conducted and 124 questionnaires were collected at 15 institutions during the first phase of field research between november 2010 and january 2011. the local partners’ support in regard to interviewing, translating, and organisational tasks was very helpful. researchers observed a tendency that teachers expected them to interview either the least disabled or best students in their classrooms. the relevance of targeting a wide variety of children including those with severe disabilities had to be explained several times. interviewing children with a wide range of disabilities and filling in a complex questionnaire with parents, who are in part nearly illiterate, posed particular challenges. this led to discussions within the research team in thailand as well as with colleagues working in ethiopia and in austria. it appeared that the time and resources for filling in questionnaires had been underestimated, given that nearly half of the parents needed support due to either not understanding the questions or to limited reading or writing skills. during the first phase of field research most participants spoke and understood central thai or a close dialect. however, occasionally a sign language interpreter supported the research team in thailand. starting mid-november 2011, the research team aims to interview as many of the persons as possible who had already participated in the first field research phase for a second time. also, interviews with additional experts and more observations in classrooms are planned. questions for this second phase will be developed based on data analysis of the first round of data collection. it will be further investigated and discussed whether research materials might need to be translated into other languages apart from thai and english (such as those of migrant workers). only broad indications relating to further research foci can be given at this stage of the research process. since the analysis of the data has not been completed, it is michelle proyer, margarita schiemer, & mikael luciak clasdisa: classifications of disabilities aseas 4(1) 164 165 inherent in the methodology of grounded theory that researchers avoid premature conclusions and progressively generate new theoretical concepts and insights (charmaz, 2006). still, an initial assessment of the empirical data at hand implies that, among other issues, the relevance of religion and belief in a transitory society (taylor, 2003) and their impact on understanding disability and attitudes towards people with disabilities (miles, 2002) needs to be explored in-depth. for example, data from the first phase of field research in thailand suggests that almost all parents interviewed sought counselling or support from monks or institutions of worship at some stage during their child’s development. in addition, the relevance of particular educational policies and current developments in inclusive schooling are to be further examined. references charmaz, k. (2006). constructing grounded theory: a practical guide through qualitative analysis. london, uk; thousand oaks, ca & new delhi, india: sage. cheausuwantavee, t., nookaew, s., & cheausuwantavee, c. (2010). research on disability in thailand: meta-analysis and qualitative analysis. the international journal of interdisciplinary social sciences, 5(1), 311-321. creswell, j. w., & plano clark, v. l. (2007). designing and conducting mixed methods research. thousand oaks, ca: sage. florian, l., & mclaughlin, m. j. (2008). disability classification in education: issues and perspectives. thousand oaks, ca; new delhi, india; london, uk & singapore: sage. glaser, b. g., & strauss, a. l., 1967. the discovery of grounded theory: strategies for qualitative research, chicago, usa, il, aldine publishing company. miles, m. (2002). disability in an eastern religious context: historical perspectives. journal of religion, disability and health, 6(2/3), 53-76. smart, j. f. (2009). the power of models of disability. journal of rehabilitation, 75, 3-11. taylor, j. (2003). cyber-buddhism and changing urban space in thailand. space & culture, 6(3), 292-308. üstün, t. b., chatterji, s., bickenbach, j. e., trotter ii, r. t, room, r., rehm, j., et al. (eds.). (2001). disability and culture: universalism and diversity. icidh-2 series. published on behalf of the world health organisation. seattle, wa: hogrefe & huber. van de vijver, f., & hambleton, r. k. (1996). translating tests: some practical guidelines. european psychologist, 1(2), 89-99. aseas 4(1) 164 165 who. (2001). icidh-2. international classification of functioning, disability and health. geneva, switzerland: world health organization. who. (2007). international classification of functioning, disability and health. children & youth version. geneva, switzerland: world health organization. michelle proyer, margarita schiemer, & mikael luciak clasdisa: classifications of disabilities editorial: tourismus im fokus / tourism in focus 1 some years ago, as a young student, i was travelling to the burmese shan state together with three friends. we believed the burmese dictatorship to be politically isolated, hardly socioeconomically developed, and receiving comparably few international tourists. therefore we expected to experience still ‘real’ and ‘authentic’ cultures. bound to european summer holidays, we arrived at our desired destination in the shan state in august. on arrival, we easily found a promising trekking guide to lead us through the jungle to see traditional villages and authentic ethnic groups. fired with enthusiasm, we started our tour the next morning, but after just one hour of hiking, our spirit of adventure declined as heavy monsoon rain started and numerous leeches turned up. as we arrived at the eagerly awaited ethnic minority village, we experienced another disvor einigen jahren reiste ich als junger student mit drei freundinnen in den shan state von burma/myanmar. das diktatorisch geführte regime, so waren unsere gedanken damals, sei politisch isoliert, sozio-ökonomisch wenig entwickelt und weise eine vergleichsweise sehr niedrige anzahl von internationalen touristinnenankünften auf. wir erwarteten daher, dort noch „echte“ und „ursprüngliche“ kulturen zu erleben. an die ferienmonate des europäischen sommers gebunden, erreichten wir anfang august die angestrebte stadt im shan state, wo schnell ein reiseführer gefunden war, der uns eine mehrtägige dschungelwanderung zu traditionellen dörfern und ursprünglichen bevölkerungsgruppen versprach. am darauffolgenden morgen starteten wir hochmotiviert in richtung berge, doch schon nach einer stunde marsch verflog un editorial: tourismus im fokus / tourism in focus alexander trupp aseas redaktion / aseas editorial board citation trupp, a. (2011). editorial: tourismus im fokus / tourism in focus. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 4(1), 1-8. d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -4 .1 -1 alexander trupp editorial: tourismus im fokus / tourism in focus aseas 4(1) 2 3 appointment: instead of traditional houses made of natural materials, we caught sight of corrugated iron houses and heard radio voices. we were invited to one of the houses in order to talk to a ‘traditional shaman’ but when he asked us for aspirin, our hope for a special and ‘exotic’ experience was definitely abandoned. this travel experience mirrors some central aspects of international longhaul tourism: first, one of the main travel motivations; that is the quest for authenticity (maccannell, 1973) and exoticism as well as the search for another world that seems to have been lost in our own society. second, the tourist gaze (urry, 1990) which is constructed through media such as postcards, travel brochures, or documentaries, but also through stories of friends. such factors strongly influence our expectation of journeys and we are disappointed if these constructed expectations are not fulfilled. tourists compare their ‘pre-designated’ tourist gaze with real experiences and impressions during the trip. therefore they do not assess their tourist experience according to reality, but reality according to their pre-constructed images (steinbach, 2002, p. 42). finally, this narration reflects a limited perspective on the phenomenon of toursere abenteuerlust, da heftiger monsunregen einsetzte und blutegel zu unseren ständigen begleitern wurden. als wir mit verspätung am nächsten morgen das ersehnte minderheitendorf erreichten, folgte eine weitere enttäuschung: anstatt traditioneller häuser aus naturmaterialien erblickten wir wellblechhütten aus denen radiostimmen tönten. wir wurden in ein haus eingeladen, um mit dem so vorgestellten „traditionellen medizinmann“ zu sprechen. als dieser um ein aspirin fragte, war unsere hoffnung auf ein besonders „exotisches“ erlebnis endgültig begraben. dieses reiseerlebnis spiegelt einige zentrale aspekte des internationalen ferntourismus wider: erstens, eines der hauptmotive von reisenden, nämlich die suche nach authentizität (maccannell, 1973) und exotik, nach ursprünglichkeit und somit nach einer welt, die in unserer eigenen gesellschaft offenbar verloren gegangen ist. zweitens, die touristische perspektive (tourist gaze) (urry, 1990), die durch medien wie etwa postkarten, reisebücher, reportagen, aber auch durch erzählungen von freundinnen geprägt wird und so die touristische erwartungshaltung bestimmt. werden während der reise die konstruierten vorstellungen nicht erfüllt, sind aseas 4(1) 2 3 alexander trupp editorial: tourismus im fokus / tourism in focus ism. tourists want the cultures and places they visit to remain as authentic and traditional as possible while in our own culture, socio-economic and cultural changes are self-evident. such a viewpoint implies a static model of culture and totally avoids the fact that the visited persons are active agents who re-negotiate their own culture and ethnicity in the context of tourism. these outlined aspects of international tourism have been developed by western scholars in the context of western travel experiences and are not necessarily applicable to the analysis of travel motivations of asian tourists (alneng, 2002). evrard and leepreecha (2009) mention that domestic tourists in the highlands of northern thailand favour sanuk (fun) over authenticity (p. 250). in addition, the majority of tourist studies are concerned with the phenomena of international tourism (winter, teo, & chang, 2009), even though domestic tourism for many countries plays a crucial role as well. vietnam, for instance, counted 4.2 million international tourist arrivals in 2009 (unwto, 2010) while simultaneously registering 25 million domestic travellers. huong thanh bui (griffith university) and lee jolliffe (university of west indies) start off this special istouristinnen zumeist enttäuscht. sie vergleichen ihre vorbestimmten bilder der touristischen perspektive mit ihren realen erlebnissen und eindrücken und beurteilen somit „nicht das abbild nach der realität, sondern die realität nach dem abbild“ (steinbach, 2002, s. 42). schließlich reflektiert die erzählung auch eine eingeschränkte perspektive auf das phänomen tourismus. bereiste kulturen und orte sollen so ursprünglich wie möglich bleiben und dürfen sich im gegensatz zu unserer eigenen kultur nicht verändern. das dabei unterstellte statische modell von kultur negiert die tatsache, dass die bereisten aktive akteurinnen sind, die im touristischen kontext kultur und ethnizität neu verhandeln. die genannten aspekte des internationalen ferntourismus wurden von westlichen autorinnen im kontext westlicher touristinnen-erfahrungen entwickelt und haben nicht unbedingt gültigkeit für die analyse von reisemotivationen asiatischer touristinnen (alneng, 2002). evrard und leepreecha (2009) erwähnen, dass sich inländische touristinnen im nordthailändischen hügelland weniger nach authentizität, sondern eher nach sanuk (spaß) sehnen (s. 250). außerdem beschäftigt sich die große mehrheit der tourismusstudien mit phänomeaseas 4(1) 4 5 nen des internationalen tourismus (winter, teo, & chang, 2009), obwohl für zahlreiche länder der inlandstourismus eine mindestens ebenso zentrale rolle spielt. so wies vietnam im jahr 2009 etwa 4,2 millionen internationale tourismusankünfte auf (unwto, 2010), während die anzahl der inlandstouristinnen 25 millionen beträgt. huong thanh bui (griffith university) und lee jolliffe (university of west indies) eröffnen mit ihrem beitrag über reisemotivationen vietnamesischer inlandstouristinnen die aktuelle schwerpunktausgabe tourismus in südostasien. sie weisen unter anderem die signifikante rolle der von unternehmen gesponserten reisen (bien che) sowie von familienurlauben nach. achariya nate-chei (chiang mai university) untersucht in ihrer ethnographischen studie die interaktionen der bereisten und der reisenden in ausgewählten white tai-dörfern im nordwestlichen hügelland von vietnam und argumentiert, dass deren beziehungen sowie die wahrnehmungen der bereisten bevölkerung nur verstanden werden können, wenn klassische konzepte von authentizität und kommodifizierung erweitert werden. am beispiel der thailändischen ferieninsel phuket illustriert bianca gantner (universität wien) entwicklung sowie sue on tourism in south-east asia with a contribution on travel motivations in vietnamese domestic tourism. the authors highlight the significant role of family holidays as well as of the employer sponsoring the trip (bien che). using an ethnographic approach, achariya nate-chei (chiang mai university) explores the interactions between hosts and guests in selected white tai villages in the north-western highlands of vietnam. she argues that host-guest relations and villagers’ perceptions can only be understood if one looks beyond classical concepts of authenticity and commodification. using the example of the thai holiday island phuket, bianca gantner (university of vienna) illustrates the development of tourism’s informal sector as well as its network of actors and its supply structure, and analyses the interdependencies between formal and informal sectors. critics often argue that the fast tourism development in south-east asia has caused negative ecological and social problems including the exclusion of local people in the context of tourism decision-making processes. alternative forms of travel such as community-based tourism aim to enhance the local people’s participation and minimize negative ecological effects. christian byczek aseas 4(1) 4 5 (tourism expert und graduate of the university of bonn) examined a community-based ecotourism project on the island of bali, indonesia. he deals with the question of to what extent such a type of tourism may constitute a sustainable alternative to the dominating forms of mass tourism. in the section ‘forum’, two quite contrasting tourist attractions in thailand are presented. claudia dolezal (university of brighton/seas) discusses the concept of authenticity as well as prevailing power relations by reference to a community-based tourism project. she calls for a holistic approach that integrates both dynamic concepts of culture and the problems of unequal power relations. alexander trupp (university of vienna/aseas) discusses colonial forms of ‘human zoos’ in which inhabitants of ‘remote’ countries were exhibited for money, and compares these with ethnic tourism attractions that can be visited in twenty-first century thailand and southern china. aseas aims to support young researchers by making their work more visible. thus, the section ‘research workshop’ also features two master’s thesis projects. christian wollnik (university of marburg) presents his study on timor-leste (east timor), a country angebotsund akteursstruktur des touristisch informellen sektors und analysiert die interdependenzen zwischen formellem und informellem sektor. oftmals wird kritisiert, dass die touristische entwicklung in südostasien zu rasant verläuft und somit negative ökologische und soziale folgen, wie etwa den ausschluss lokaler bevölkerungsgruppen an der touristischen entwicklung, mit sich bringt. alternative reiseformen wie gemeindeorientierter tourismus sollen der einheimischen bevölkerung mehr mitspracherecht ermöglichen sowie ökologisch negative auswirkungen minimieren. christian byczek (tourismusexperte und absolvent der universität bonn) untersuchte ein gemeindeorientiertes ökotourismusprojekt auf der insel bali, indonesien und beschäftigt sich mit der frage, inwieweit diese tourismusform eine alternative zum dominierenden massentouristischen angebot darstellen kann. in der rubrik „forum“ werden zwei sehr gegensätzliche touristische erscheinungsformen in thailand vorgesellt. claudia dolezal (university of brighton/seas) diskutiert am beispiel eines gemeindeorientierten projekts das konzept von authentizität sowie die vorherrschenden machtverhältnisse zwischen den touristischen akteualexander trupp editorial: tourismus im fokus / tourism in focus aseas 4(1) 6 7 rinnen und plädiert für einen denkansatz, der einen dynamischen kulturbegriff ebenso integriert wie die problematik bestehender machtungleichgewichte. alexander trupp (universität wien/aseas) diskutiert die kolonialen formen von „menschenzoos“, in denen bewohnerinnen „ferner“ länder gegen eintrittsgeld zur schau gestellt wurden, und vergleicht diese mit heutigen ethnotouristischen attraktionen in thailand und südchina. aseas hat sich zum ziel gesetzt, die nachwuchsforschung in den südostasienstudien zu fördern und sichtbarer zu machen. daher werden in der rubrik „research workshop“ diesmal auch zwei diplomarbeitsprojekte vorgestellt. christian wollnik (universität marburg) beschäftigt sich mit timorleste (osttimor), einem land das noch am beginn der touristischen entwicklung steht. im gegensatz zu anderen südostasiatischen ländern wie etwa thailand oder indonesien, wo eine zu rasante und unkontrollierte touristische entwicklung stattgefunden hat, bestünde in timor-leste die chance, ein nachhaltiges tourismuskonzept von anfang an zu implementieren. julia jöstl und birgit wieser (universität wien) behandeln das phänomen der altersmigration nach thailand. das beliebte reiseland bietet viele annehmthat has just started out on tourism development. in contradistinction to thailand or indonesia, which experienced fast and uncontrolled growth in tourism, timor-leste has the opportunity to implement a sustainable tourism concept from the beginning. julia jöstl and birgit wieser (university of vienna) elaborate on the phenomenon of ‘amenity/retirement migration’ to thailand. the popular travel destination offers several amenities for ‘longterm tourists’, but the question of whether this development benefits both hosts and guests is controversial. ‘in dialogue’ with michelle proyer (university of vienna/aseas), astrid winkler, director of ecpat austria, explains that child sex tourism, contrary to popular media representations, is not limited to thailand and cambodia, the countries that are commonly associated with this problem. this special issue will be completed by two book reviews concerning tourism in south-east asia (claudia dolezal) and heritage tourism in southeast asia; both volumes are edited by hitchcock, king, and parnwell. outside the tourism focus, otto von feigenblatt (millenia atlantic university) analyses governance structures and the conflict in the south of thailand which is mainly populated by aseas 4(1) 6 7 lichkeiten für „langzeittouristinnen“, doch die frage, ob diese entwicklung für beide seiten eine „win-win“-situation darstellt, wird kontrovers diskutiert. „im dialog“ mit michelle proyer (universität wien/aseas) erläutert astrid winkler, geschäftsführerin von ecpat österreich, dass kindersextourismus entgegen medialer repräsentation nicht auf die vielfach genannten länder thailand und kambodscha beschränkt bleibt. der themenschwerpunkt dieser ausgabe wird mit zwei buchrezensionen zu tourismus in südostasien (claudia dolezal) bzw. heritage-tourismus in südostasien (kerstin schiele), beide werke herausgegeben von hitchcock, king und parnwell, abgeschlossen. abseits des tourismus-schwerpunktes analysiert otto von feigenblatt (millenia atlantic university) die governance-strukturen und den konflikt im von der malaiischen minderheit bewohnten südthailand. er kritisiert, dass beträchtliche möglichkeiten zur wirtschaftlichen, politischen und sozialen entwicklung aufgrund fehlgeleiteter politischer maßnahmen ausgelassen wurden. in der rubrik „research workshop“ stellen michelle proyer, margarita schiemer und mikael luciak (universität wien) ihr vom the malay ethnonationality. he makes the criticism that, due to misguided governance policies, considerable economic, political, and social opportunities for development are being lost. in the section ‘research workshop’, michelle proyer, margarita schiemer, and mikael luciak (university of vienna) outline their asf-funded research project that aims to explore classifications of disabilities in the field of education in thailand, austria, and ethiopia. furthermore, aseas continues the introduction of austrian research institutes working on south-east asian related topics: petra dannecker and wolfram schaffar present the department of development studies of the university of vienna. finally, kosita butratana (university of vienna) and alexander trupp (university of vienna/ aseas) provide some impressions of thai communities in vienna, which constitute austria’s second biggest immigrant group from south-east asia. we hope to be able to continue this pilot project in order to enhance the representation of south-east asia in vienna. alexander trupp editorial: tourismus im fokus / tourism in focus aseas 4(1) 8 9 fwf gefördertes projekt zu klassifizierungen von behinderungen im bildungssystem in thailand, österreich und äthiopien vor. außerdem wird in der rubrik „netzwerk südostasienforschung“ die vorstellung österreichischer forschungseinrichtungen, an denen zu südostasien gearbeitet wird, fortgesetzt: petra dannecker und wolfram schaffar präsentieren das institut für internationale entwicklung der universität wien. mit einem beitrag zu thailändischen communities in wien liefern kosita butratana (universität wien) und alexander trupp (universität wien/aseas) des weiteren einige visuelle eindrücke zur zahlenmäßig zweitgrößten südostasiatischen bevölkerungsgruppe in wien. wir hoffen, in den nächsten aseas-ausgaben diesen pilotversuch zur stärkeren repräsentation von südostasien in wien fortführen zu können. bibliographie / references alneng, v. (2002). the modern does not cater for natives. tourist studies, 2(2), 119-142. evrard, o., & leepreecha, p. (2009). staging the nation, exploring the margins: tourism and its political implications in northern thailand. in t. winter, p. teo & t. chang (eds.), asia on tour. exploring the rise of asian tourism (pp. 239-252). london, uk & new york, ny: routledge. maccannell, d. (1973). staged authenticity. arrangements of social space in tourist settings. american journal of sociology, 79(3), 589-603. steinbach, j. (2002). tourismus einführung in das räumlich-zeitliche system. oldenburg, germany: wissenschaftsverlag. unwto. (2010). unwto tourism highlights 2010 edition. retrieved 2 may 2011, from http://www.unwto. org/facts/menu.html urry, j. (1990). the tourist gaze. leisure and travel in contemporary societies. london, uk; thousand oakes, ca & new delhi, india: sage publications. winter, t., teo, p., & chang, t. c. (eds.). (2009). asia on tour: exploring the rise of asian tourism. london, uk & new york, ny: routledge. rezensionen / reviews (aseas 3-1) aseas 3(1) 116 „culture matters. the west papua conflict can not be solved politically only due to the highly differing cultures which collide in west papua. the cultural backgrounds determine the frames used for the cognitive processing of the situation and the perception of respective issues“ (s. 191). mit dieser formulierung schließt die analyse, die an huntingtons „clash of civilizations“ erinnert und in der ein kulturbegriff zur anwendung kommt, der kulturen als statische, in sich geschlossene, homogene einheiten begreift. eine konfliktanalyse, die nahe legt, dass hier eine vermeintlich unteroder weniger entwickelte papua-kultur auf eine moderne indonesische kultur trifft, reproduziert nur stereotype und wird der komplexität der gegenwärtigen gesellschaftlichen prozesse in west-papua nicht gerecht. christian warta österreichische akademie der wissenschaften chua, christian (2008). chinese big business in indonesia: the state of capital. london and new york: routledge. isbn: 978-0-415-45074-4. 192 pages this book considers itself to be about the political economy of chinese big business in indonesia. of the biggest business groups, most are either owned or headed by persons belonging to the ethnic minority of sino-indonesians. in his book christian chua attempts to illustrate why down to the present day there are almost no big corporations owned or controlled by members of other ethnic groups. as chua outlines within the first few chapters of his work, he attempts to fill a gap in present literature on the chinese ethnic minority in indonesia, which either tends to pursue a culturalist or a structuralist approach. the culturalists, to put it in a somewhat simplified way, try to explain the present situation from a point of view mainly focusing on ethnicity. they consider economic networks within south-east asia as a mere web of trust and connections based on cultural and ethnic likeness, which leaves them somewhat unable to explain the very special indonesian situation. the structuralists on the other hand, chua states, insist on the idea of a chinese minority as a capitalist class, eliminating the culturalist point of view. this, however, made it possible for them to look much deeper into the state-business relationship (p. 13). but both approaches, as chua never wearies of stressing, fail in the attempt to aseas 3(1) 117 explain the present situation beyond a certain point, because they refuse to absorb certain aspects of each other theories. setting the very start of his work in pre-colonial times, he utilises economic, political, cultural as well as ethnic arguments as his means to depict the particular indonesian case as a construct, used by the ruling class of each historical period to keep others, mostly the masses, out of power. so even before the european colonists, first the portuguese and after them the dutch, arrived, a small group of ethnic chinese present in what once would become indonesia was being used by rulers to keep the local gentry from accumulating economic power. by cultivating a chinese class of capitalists and entrepreneurs, these monarchs, due to the lack of support among the main ethnic groups for the chinese foreigners, could easily keep the chinese from gaining means of power beyond the economic; thus they gained two advantages: first, by restricting the chinese to the field of trade and economy, rulers assured a major part of resources remained in the hands of a group subjected to their will; and second, the local gentry, which would have support in opposing the king, would have a hard time allocating resources (p. 30). the very concept, as chua notices, is somewhat similar to the way jews in medieval europe were “allowed” to deal in money-lending. when the european colonial powers arrived and incorporated the indonesian islands, they absorbed the existing system, though not by intention as it seems. as years passed, they obviously felt increasingly uncomfortable with the chinese minority gaining more and more economic power. they were troubled enough to massacre most of them, which was not only a shocking crime but also turned out be a major mistake since it caused the economic life in the colony to break down (p. 32). after resettling chinese migrants to revive the economy, they were just as before restricted from gaining social and political power to suit the needs of the new rulers, and keep the indigenous aristocrats from power. the best part of the book now is not concerned with the history, even if one gets the impression chua deems it to be path-breaking, but with the rule of the new order, the regime general soeharto led in indonesia for more than thirty years. chua puts much of his effort into detailing the scheme of the relationship between the ruling militarybureaucratic class and the chinese minority, focusing on their business elite. he never seems to tire of asking how it was possible for a small ethnic group to pool most of a rezensionen / reviews aseas 3(1) 118 nation’s wealth within their ranks, especially within a country led by the military and bureaucrats who rather often stress economic disequilibrium, calling for measures to redistribute wealth and let indigenous entrepreneurs have their share. whilst others blame the cultural background of the non-chinese indonesians, ineffective governmental actions against the big players or corruption, chua favours the idea of the specific role of chinese businessmen, which had its antecedents in the economic and social structures of colonialism. they were subordinate to and dependent on the political elite, regularly harassed by populist rhetoric and measures, and subject to extortion. they proved to be the ideal henchman any absolutist politico-bureaucrat could ask for. they were the perfect scapegoat. whenever opposition against golkar, the ruling party of soeharto, appeared, public opinion was easy to distract by blaming chinese businessmen for economic and social unfairness, being the very root of most problems. furthermore, by accumulating capital they prevented potential competition by well-off indigenous entrepreneurs as non-chinese merchants could hardly rise to a significant level. to survive in such an environment, a chinese businessmen had to pick a patron. not only would he gain security from the regular anti-chinese harassments, he also could use this connection to get governmental contracts yielding profits beyond imagination, which needless to say he had to split with his mentor. to even top that, the politico-bureaucrats could use ethnic chinese to start building their own capitalist class, by having them assist in promoting family-owned or family-controlled business-groups up to the ranks of big business (p. 56). chua spends half of his work on revealing how this symbiosis was set up in particular. the other major part is concerned with the fall of the new order, the events surrounding the asian financial crisis at the end of the twentieth century, and with what happened in particular to chinese big business corporations after the crisis. accumulating ever more capital, the chinese business-groups embedded within the new order, due to the need for foreign investment, were allowed to, first, start internationalising, and second, go into the banking business. following this process the former indonesian big business groups became big enough to be fully-fledged international players no longer depending fully on their polito-bureaucratic patrons: this rather complicated process was catalysed and speeded up by the financial crisis. the chapters concerning this very scene deserve mentioning. aseas 3(1) 119 the author manages to set the stage for a complicated play involving the international monetary fund, the world bank, international investors, the collapsing indonesian regime and chinese big business. the situation after these events was no longer the same. not only was the old regime gone, the former scapegoats were rid of the bonds inflicted on them. at first it seemed like they were to vanish due to the absence of their lucrative politico-bureaucratic network, but they soon became accustomed to the new environment. one of the prerequisites for international help was to abandon the anti-chinese legislation, which put the chinese in an advantageous position. while the bureaucrats could now no longer exploit them in the old fashioned way, the chinese on the other hand were not bound by such obligations. as soon as they adapted to the way of bribing the now much more feeble government officials, they had the upper hand. no longer with a strong autocratic regime, the whole country seemed to turn into a playground for capitalists (p. 114). they took control of the print and other media and where they could not gain power by means of capital, according to chua, certain business groups turned to the more direct way of intimidation by means of brute force. to complete his work, chua looks at what happened to chinese big business after the crisis by interviewing very prominent actors and analysing two case studies: first, the lippo group, which according to the author moved in a dubious kind of direction, sometimes reminiscent of organized crime, and second, the salim group, indonesia’s biggest corporation both under the new order regime and after the asian crisis. chua’s conclusion and argument that with capitalism unleashed after the financial crisis, indonesia did not become the democracy hoped for, but drifts ever further into becoming a plutocratic form of capitalism, becoming one of the most corrupt countries, is quite convincing. it is a very up-to-date work, thoroughly argued, in parts repetitive and circuitous, yet still suitable for political and economical graduate seminars. altogether it is an excellent piece of research on indonesia. gerhard kraft rezensionen / reviews islamismus in indonesien der erfolg der gerechtigkeitsund wohlfahrtspartei und seine möglichen auswirkungen / islamism in indonesia the success of the justice and welfare party and its possible impacts aseas 1 (1) islamismus in indonesien der erfolg der gerechtigkeitsund wohlfahrtspartei und seine möglichen auswirkungen islamism in indonesia the success of the justice and welfare party and its possible impacts matthias heilmann universität passau. lehrstuhl für südostasienkunde1 aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften / austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 1 (1), 2008 seas gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften www.seas.at the 2004 parliamentary elections in indonesia delivered some striking results. among these, the enormous success of the islamist justice and welfare party (pks) represents one of the most interesting developments of indonesia‘s young democracy. having increased their number of mps by over 500 percent (from 7 to 45), the pks is now considered to be a rising political power which is decidedly promoting an islamic agenda. now arousing public interest, the party has become an object of analysis by domestic and international observers, which come to an array of different conclusions and judgements about this apparently controversial party. the success of the pks is based on its populistic political communication which aims at establishing the image of a moderate and pragmatic party of problem-solvers, and its social welfare programs. but this is only one view at the pks, as it also appears as a cadre party of strict ideologists that are obviously borrowing their basic ideas from the muslim brothers. thus, it is this janus face that might encourage differing judgements about the pks. � die hier aufgeführten analysen und einschätzungen beruhen auf der forschungsarbeit des autors im rahmen seiner diplomarbeit mit dem titel “islamismus in indonesien – die wohlfahrts und gerechtigkeitspartei (partai keadilan sejahtera)”, eingereicht am lehrstuhl für südostasienkunde i der universität passau im mai 2007. 18 aseas 1 (1) einleitung vergleicht man die ergebnisse der indonesischen parlamentswahlen in den jahren �999 und 2004, so fällt vor allem der wahlerfolg der partai keadilan sejahtera (pks) ins auge. war sie �999 als partai keadilan (pk) noch an der zwei-prozent-hürde gescheitert, so gelangte sie nach ihrer – dadurch erzwungenen – umbennung2 bereits im nächsten anlauf in die liga der mittelgroßen fraktionen. aus ihren sieben mandaten waren 45 geworden, was einer zunahme der fraktionsgröße um über 500 % entsprach und folglich einiges aufsehen erregte. noch dazu war die pks die einzige islamische partei, die einen zuwachs an stimmen verzeichnen konnte; sonst gewannen nur die säkularen parteien an wähler (s. abb.). das lief dem trend zuwider, nach dem die islamischen parteien seit der gründung der republik konstant an zustimmung verloren, und galt deshalb auch als indiz für eine (re-)islamisierung der indonesischen politik. eigene darstellung. quelle: http://www.kpu.go.id/suara/dprkursi.php, abgerufen am �4.�2.2007. die pks rückte also in das bewusstsein der einheimischen und ausländischen beobachterinnen und analystinnen des politischen geschehens in indonesien, wobei ihr nicht immer einheitliche 2 nach damaligem indonesischen wahlrecht durfte eine partei, die nicht mindestens zwei prozent der gültigen stimmen erreichte, zwar ins parlament einziehen, jedoch bei der daraufolgenden wahl nicht mehr teilnehmen. die betroffenen parteien umgingen diese hürde, indem sie eine neue partei mit ähnlichem namen gründeten, um dann mit dieser zu fusionieren, was faktisch einer umbenennung gleichkam. 19 aseas 1 (1) bewertungen zufielen. für einige ist sie eine “moderate islamistische partei“, die sich der demokratie verschrieben habe und eine alternative zu den “radikalen islamisten“ darstelle (collins 2004: �5). manche räumen ein, dass einem der aufstieg der pks nicht ganz geheuer sein könnte, sehen ihn jedoch selbst als eine potenziell günstige entwicklung an, die sogar zu den wichtigsten der islamischen welt gehöre (fox 2004: �9). wiederum andere betrachten ihre mitglieder als “radikale“ auf den spuren der inspiratoren von al qaida, die eine bedrohung für indonesien darstellten (dhume 2005: �9). für einige ist die pks gar “eines der interessantesten phänomene der zeitgenössischen indonesischen politik“, weil sie innerhalb des politischen islam neue ansätze verfolge, für die es in der geschichte indonesiens so gut wie keine beispiele gebe (fealy im vorwort zu machmudi 2005). warum ist die pks so erfolgreich? und warum wird sie so unterschiedlich bewertet? der erfolg der partai keadilan sejahtera gründet auf ihrer populistischen politischen kommunikation, die auf die herstellung des images einer pragmatischen und moderaten partei von “problemlösern“ abzielt. ihr slogan “bersih dan peduli“ (in etwa “sauber und fürsorglich“) weist dabei auf die beiden wichtigsten pfeiler dieser strategie hin, nämlich erstens die bekämpfung der korruption und zweitens die durchführung sozialer hilfsprogramme (vgl. dazu u.a. die ausführungen von aziz (2006) und komarudin (2006)). die abgeordneten und regierungsmitglieder schaffen es immer wieder in die indonesischen medien, weil sie einen bescheidenen lebensstil pflegen und regelmäßig korrupte praktiken der politischen elite aufdecken; nach einer internen untersuchung haben die pks-politikerinnen zwischen �999 und 200� insgesamt 7�9,6 milliarden rupiah (ca. 60 mio. euro) für die staatskasse “gerettet“ und mindestens 5,� milliarden rupiah (ca. 400.000 euro) bestechungsgeld ausgeschlagen (banjari in waluyo 2005: �45). darüber hinaus verfügt die pks über ein weitgespanntes netz an umfeldorganisationen, die sich um die bedürfnisse der bevölkerung kümmern; von computerkursen bis denguefieber-prophylaxe, von katastrophenhilfe bis rechtsberatung, von integrierten islamschulen bis flohmärkten die partei versucht, möglichst alle lebensbereiche mit ihren aktivitäten zu erfassen und die menschen zu unterstützen und weiterzubilden (u.a. komarudin 2006: 59ff.). die pks weckt damit besonders in den wirtschaftlich schwächeren sozialen schichten große hoffnungen auf eine grundlegende reform des indonesischen politischen systems hin zu größerer partizipation, transparenz, effizienz und verantwortlichkeit. diesen anspruch drückt auch das umfassende und detaillierte parteiprogramm aus (wahono/hamzah/siddiq 2004). 20 matthias heilmann islamismus in indonesien aseas 1 (1) die partei ist professionell und (prozessual-)demokratisch organisiert und verfügt über ein streng hierarchisches ausbildungssystem, das sich strukturell und inhaltlich an den methoden der ägyptischen muslimbruderschaft orientiert. sie versteht sich als “kaderpartei“, deren mitglieder einer mindestens elf jahre dauernden ideologisch-religiösen und politischen indoktrination in zellenartigen kleingruppen unterzogen werden (heilmann 2007: 7�-80; tim departemen kaderisasi dpp pk sejahtera 200�). nach einer vielzahl von “katharsischen“ meditations und beichtnächten, lehrvorträgen, koranrezitationskursen, quasi-militärischen übungen und dergleichen mehr nehmen die pks-mitglieder die islamistische ideologie der partei an und setzten sie in ihrem leben um, indem sie beispielsweise ihre familien und freundeskreise an die neuen vorstellungen “anpassen“ (prayitno 2005a: 289f.). nach ansicht der pks ist eine politische partei nur ein instrument für die islamische mission (da’wa), deren ultimatives ziel die verwirklichung der globalen ummah als ideale menschliche gemeinschaft und vollendung des göttlichen willens sei (dewan syariah pusat pk sejahtera 2006: �8�). auf dem weg dorthin müsse jedoch die “zeit der dunkelheit“ (jahiliyya) überwunden werden, die sich vor allem in der “westlich-zionistischen weltverschwörung” der feinde des islam sowie der abhängigkeit und rückständigkeit der islamischen welt manifestiere (prayitno 2005a: �28, �55). beides müsse durch innere moralische “reinigung“ und politische und wirtschaftliche stärkung der ummah überwunden werden. dies sei jedoch nur mit pragmatischen mitteln zu erreichen, die möglichst nicht zu kontroversen führen sollen; man müsse sich den herrschenden politischen, sozialen und kulturellen bedingungen anpassen, um die gesellschaft und den staat wirksam “von unten“ bzw. “von innen“ verändern zu können (prayitno 2005a: 260ff.). dieses vorhaben stützt sich auf ein duales menschenbild, dass die ideologen der partei vertreten; demnach sehen sie auf der einen seite die frommen, rechtgeleiteten, intelligenten und kundigen wahren muslime, und auf der anderen die bösen, verführten, dummen und unwissenden ungläubigen. aus dieser vorstellung und ihrer intellektuellen und der daraus oftmals resultierenden sozialen überlegenheit (die sie jedoch eher als lohn für ihre frömmigkeit deuten), leiten die gelehrten der pks einen erziehungs und erlösungsauftrag gegenüber dem (dummen) volk ab (prayitno 2005a: 287ff.). entsprechend liegt dem “technischen” politischen programm der partei, das sich hauptsächlich mit den themen korruptionsbekämpfung, verwaltungs und sicherheitssektorreform und wirtschaftspolitik sowie der schaffung oder umstruktierung von institutionen beschäftigt, ein sozio-kulturelles programm zu grunde, das auf die umerziehung der gesellschaft abzielt. diese “wertepolitik“ ist in allen bereichen enthalten, denn nur auf der basis einer neuen kultur könne indonesien aus sicht der pks genesen. schlüsselbegriffe sind dabei “religion“ und “sozialer zusammenhalt“. auch wenn die pks in ihrem programm höchst selten von “islam“ und “scharia“ schreibt, so lässt sie doch an vielen stellen durchscheinen, dass ihre politik eine 21 aseas 1 (1) “islamische politik“ ist, und die “neue kultur“ eine islamische werden soll (heilmann 2007: 86-95; wahono/hamzah/siddiq 2004). die zwei gesichter der pks die pks zeigt damit zwei gesichter – das einer pragmatischen und reformorientierten partei, die das potenzial hat, die indonesische politik nachhaltig zu verändern, und das einer islamistischen bewegung mit dem anspruch, vor dem hintergrund eines paranoiden feindbildes über die umerziehung der bevölkerung zu “neuen menschen“ einen idealzustand zu erreichen, der dem “ende der geschichte“ nach allahs vorstellungen (bzw. ihrer interpretation von diesen) entspricht. aus dieser doppelgesichtigkeit, die von den funktionären der partei durch zweideutige aussagen möglicherweise bewusst aufrechterhalten wird, erklären sich die verschiedenen bewertungen, die der pks zufallen (heilmann 2007: ��5f.). dabei ist es fraglich, ob die pks als „demokratisch“ bezeichnet werden sollte; denn obwohl sie sich systemkonform verhält, erkennt sie der demokratie ihren ideologischen aussagen nach keinen intrinsischen wert zu. diese ließe sich nämlich nicht aus sich selbst heraus legitimieren, sondern lediglich als geeignete staatsform für eine gottgefällige ummah, sofern sie auf den gesetzen allahs gründe (prayitno 2005a: 2��). letztlich sind die mitglieder der pks von der existenz einer einzigen wahrheit und eines einzigen gemeinwohls überzeugt, zu denen es keinerlei akzeptable alternative gebe. ihre ideologie lässt sich sogar durchaus als ein reservoir revolutionärer und totalitärer ideen betrachten, das gepaart mit dem feindbild die grundlage für die radikalisierung junger indonesischer muslime und musliminnen bilden könnte. auch wenn man über die adäquanz von bezeichnungen wie “fundamentalistisch”, “anti-pluralistisch” oder “islamistisch” geteilter meinung sein kann, so sollten die ideologischen ziele der pks und die ausgestaltung der von ihr angestrebten staatsund gesellschaftsordnung bei der bewertung der politischen und sozialen aktivitäten der partei – die gemäß ihrer politischen strategie hauptsächlich auf eine breite gesellschaftliche akzeptanz abzielen – nicht vernachlässigt werden. dies ist vor allem deshalb besonders relevant, weil die pks einen wandel ihrer strategie hinsichtlich der forderung nach formeller einführung der scharia hinter sich hat, die von vielen mit einer veränderung ihrer ideologischen ziele gleichgesetzt wurde. hatte sie sich �999 noch dafür eingesetzt, die “jakarta charta”� in die indonesische verfassung aufzunehmen, � die sieben worte der “jakarta charta” fordern von jedem muslim, nach der scharia zu leben. (“... dengan kewajiban menjalankan syariat islam bagi pemeluk-pemeluknya”) und sollten nach dem wunsch von vertretern des politischen islam dem ersten punkt der pancasila als grundlage der indonesischen verfassung hinzugefügt werden, welcher jedoch weder bei deren erster verkündigung noch bei allen weiteren änderungen von den anderen politischen kräften berücksichtigt wurde, u.a. aus sorge um die gleichberechtigung aller religionsgruppen und die 22 matthias heilmann islamismus in indonesien aseas 1 (1) enthielt sich die pks schon wenige jahre später in dieser frage und forderte vielmehr, mit der einführung der scharia solange zu warten, bis die gesellschaft “innerlich” für diesen schritt bereit sei. auf diese weise konnte sich die partei als “moderat” positionieren, obwohl sie nie von ihren urspünglichen zielen einer – auch formellen – islamisierung indonesiens abrückte (vgl. aziz 2006: ��4). die taktisch kluge distanzierung von formalismen bei gleichzeitiger treue zu ihren grundsätzen fällt der pks nicht besonders schwer, weil sie ein sehr umfassendes verständnis von scharia hat; der begriff steht sowohl für ein werteund rechtssystems als auch für eine lebensform sowie ein politisches und wirtschaftliches programm und letztlich die lösung für alle probleme, weil sie gute menschen und die beste gemeinschaft auf erden hervorbringe. dabei ist ein leben nach den vorgaben des islam eben ein “scharia-treues“ leben nicht nur das ziel der pks, sondern auch ihr weg. kurzum bedeutet “scharia“ angewandter islam à la pks. dennoch könnte und würde die partei von einer zumindest teilweisen umsetzung der konkreten rechtgrundsätze, gebote, verbote und auch strafen, die in den texten der offenbarung erwähnung finden, möglicherweise nicht abrücken, wenn sie dazu gelegenheit hätte (vgl. u.a. prayitno 2005b: �54f., �9�; machmudi 2005: 95ff.). ein gewisser pragmatismus spiegelt sich auch im verhalten der pks auf der politischen bühne jakartas wider; weil die parteistrategen wohl davon ausgehen, dass es nicht möglich sein wird, mit bloßer oppositionspolitik irgendwann die regierungsmehrheit zu erlangen, versuchen sie mit pragmatischen positionen, sich für möglichst viele parteien als koalitionspartner attraktiv zu machen, auch wenn das zur folge haben sollte, dass sie bezüglich ihrer ideologischen “reinheit“ kompromisse eingehen müssen. diese haltung würde jedoch eventuell von einem rückzug auf ihre ideologischen kernpositionen abgelöst werden, wenn sie erst einmal die absolute mehrheit gewonnen haben und den präsidenten stellen sollten. wechselnde regierungen, koalitionen, konstruktive opposition und politische zugeständnisse sind für die partei möglicherweise nur mittel zum zweck; an einem mehrparteiensystem, das all dies notwendig macht, hat sie – zumindest ihrer ideologischen orientierung nach – gar kein interesse. ihr ziel ist die einheit der ummah unter der leitung einer politischen klasse, die sich nach den vorstellungen der pks durch ihre besondere qualifikation und ihr verantwortungsbewusstsein auszeichne, nicht jedoch durch interne zerstrittenheit, worauf die existenz mehrerer parteien hinweisen würde. demzufolge würde die partei wohl darauf hinarbeiten, den staat und seine angestellten (wozu dann auch die politiker als “diener des volkes“ zählten) ihren vorstellungen anzupassen (vgl. dazu heilmann 2007: 99ff.). einheit des landes. bis heute gilt die debatte um die jakarta charta als symbol für die auseinandersetzung um die orientierung des indonesischen staates in fragen zur stellung des islam (und – für ihre gegner – zur religiösen toleranz) und ist entsprechend ideologisch aufgeladen. 23 aseas 1 (1) chancen und risiken vor dem hintergrund dieser ambivalenten beurteilungen stellt sich die frage, welche chancen und risiken die pks für indonesien bergen könnte. es sind durchaus szenarien denkbar, nach denen die partei eine vorteilhafte wirkung für die indonesische gesellschaft und das politische system entfalten könnte; sollte die pks nämlich ihren stimmenanteil bei regionalen und nationalen wahlen nach ihrem bisherigen erfolgsrezept weiter steigern und damit anderen parteien immer mehr wähler entziehen, wäre eine mögliche reaktion dieser “geschädigten“ konkurrenten, sich der erfolgreichen strategie der pks anzupassen. das würde vor allem bedeuten, dass sich die anderen parteien ebenso intensiv um das volk kümmern müssten, was die responsivität des indonesischen systems deutlich erhöhen könnte. auch das moralische verhalten der abgeordneten und regierungsmitglieder der pks als bescheidene “retter des geldes“ im kampf gegen die korruption könnte von anderen kopiert werden, was auf dauer zu mehr transparenz führen könnte. um jedoch im gleichen maße soziale programme durchführen und auf das verhalten ihrer parteimitglieder einfluss nehmen zu können wie die pks, müssten die anderen parteien ihre organisationsstruktur verändern. es wäre wohl nicht unbedingt notwendig, ein kadersystem nach dem vorbild der pks zu etablieren, aber die professionalisierung der parteiverwaltung, die institutionalisierung der internen wahlund entscheidungsprozesse und die ausrichtung auf ein politisches programm wären wichtige voraussetzungen, um zu verhindern, dass sich personen (und ihre sozialen netzwerke) mit spezifischen eigeninteressen in die parteien (und damit oft in parlamente und regierungen) “einkaufen“ und dabei weder vor der parteibasis noch vor einem verbindlichen grundsatzprogramm rechenschaft ablegen müssen. und es sind besonders diese praktiken nicht selten mit korruption verbunden -, welche die populistische moralpolitik der pks so erfolgreich werden lassen; so ist es nicht sonderlich schwer, sich innerhalb der indonesischen politischen klasse ein saubermann-image aufzubauen. wenn es den politikerinnen der anderen parteien nicht gelingen sollte, dieses image zu zerstören, werden sie mit wachsendem erfolg der pks notgedrungen ihr verhalten ändern müssen. auf diese weise könnte die politik der pks möglicherweise wie ein katalysator wirken und zu einer stärkeren institutionalisierung des parteiensystems, zu mehr responsivität und transparenz des politischen systems (verbunden mit einer deutlichen verringerung der korruption) und zur aufnahme von werten wie verantwortlichkeit und gemeinwohlorientierung der politischen führung in die politische kultur indonesiens führen. diesen potenziellen chancen stehen jedoch riskante entwicklungen gegenüber, die ebenso möglich scheinen. schließlich versucht die pks ihrer ideologie gemäß, die indonesische gesellschaft zu einer einheitlichen gemeinschaft frommer menschen umzubilden, die sich 24 matthias heilmann islamismus in indonesien aseas 1 (1) dann an einen festgelegten kodex von (islamischen) normen und gesetzen halten müssten, welche zum teil einen tiefen eingriff in das politische, wirtschaftliche, kulturelle und vor allem religiöse leben der indonesierinnen bedeuten würden. dabei ist es nicht unwahrscheinlich, dass sich zumindest einige teile der heterogenen indonesischen gesellschaft dieser bevormundung, die sich aus dem selbstgewählten elitären erziehungsund erlösungsauftrag der pks ergibt, (weiterhin) widersetzen werden. nicht jeder mag einverstanden sein mit der enge des rahmens, den die pks der persönlichen freiheit und selbstbestimmung in fast allen lebensbereichen mit hilfe der staatsgewalt setzen will. in einem politischen system nach den vorstellungen der pks wäre darüber hinaus eine bestimmte gruppe möglicherweise klar bevorzugt; so hätten im allgemeinen die männlichen gebildeten (“orthodoxen“) muslime und im besonderen die mitglieder der pks mit ihrem speziellen (religiösen) wissen wohl eindeutige vorteile bei der einflussnahme auf die allgemein verbindlichen entscheidungen, die alle indonesierinnen betreffen. der zugang zum politischen system würde sich auf diese weise (noch weiter) verengen; gesellschaftliche partizpation wäre dann nur noch über den “transmissionsriemen“ einer kollektiv-paternalistischen partei von islamgelehrten mit strengen hierarchien möglich und an die voraussetzung gebunden, mit deren vorstellungen übereinzustimmen. das würde die (ohnehin prekäre) aufrechterhaltung der sozio-religiösen gewaltenteilung und die politische integration von minderheiten (noch weiter) erschweren. auch in der internationalen politik würde die republik indonesien unter führung der pks wahrscheinlich eine distanziertere oder sogar konfrontative position zu den “westlichen“ ländern, allen voran den usa, einnehmen, was sich unter anderem negativ auf den umfang der ausländischen investitionen und damit auf die wirtschaftliche entwicklung indonesiens auswirken könnte. das paranoide feindbild der pks wäre als handlungsanleitung für eine indonesische regierung wohl nicht sehr hilfreich bei der verständigung mit nicht-islamischen staaten. als politische vorkämpferin einer puritanischen “säuberungsbewegung“ besitzt die pks außerdem das potenzial, sich auf der grundlage ihres reservoirs an totalitären und revolutionären ideen zu radikalisieren, sollte ihre pragmatische strategie zur übernahme des indonesischen staates langfristig nicht erfolgreich sein. eine solche entwicklung würde wohl zu einer stärkeren polarisierung des parteiensystems führen (also koalitionen erschweren) und möglicherweise die zunahme politischer gewalt bewirken. sollte sich die pks nicht ideologisch mäßigen, sondern ihre bisherigen ziele beibehalten und gleichzeitig mit ihrer gegenwärtigen strategie immer erfolgreicher werden, so steht dem politischen system und der gesellschaft indonesiens mit einiger wahrscheinlichkeit ein grundlegender wandel bevor. im indonesien der pks-gelehrten stünde dann einem 25 aseas 1 (1) möglicherweise transparenteren, responsiveren, professionellerem und stärker am gemeinwohl (nach den vorstellungen der pks) orientierten politischen system eine wohl polarisiertere oder aber gleichgeschaltete, in ihren partizipationsmöglichkeiten und persönlichen freiheiten stärker eingeschränkte und international isoliertere gesellschaft gegenüber. es stellt sich jedoch die frage, ob nicht die indonesische politik und gesellschaft mit all ihren besonderheiten und erfordernissen die pks langfristig wirksamer verändern werden als umgekehrt. in diesem fall wäre sie nicht die erste “heilsbringende“ bewegung, die im riesigen inselreich ihre revolutionäre kraft verloren hat. bibliographie aziz, abdul (2006). pola komunikasi politik partai keadilan sejahtera pada kampanye pemilu 2004 di wilayah jakarta timur. master’s thesis, universitas indonesia. burhani, ahmad najib (2004). piagam jakarta dan piagam madinah. retrieved march 20, 2007, from http://www.kompas.com/kompas-cetak/04��/�0/opini/�402740.htm collins, elizabeth fuller (2004). islam is the solution. dakwah and democracy in indonesia. retrieved march 26, 2007, from www.classics.ohiou.edu/faculty/collins/islamsolution.pdf damanik, ali said (2002). fenomena partai keadilan. transformasi 20 tahun gerakan tarbiyah di indonesia. bandung: teraju. dewan syariah pusat pk sejahtera (ed.) 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(2004). currents in contemporary islam in indonesia. paper presented at harvard asia vision, 29 april � may 2004, cambridge/massachusetts. retrieved february 2�, 2007, from rspas.anu. edu.au/papers/anthropology/04_fox_islam_indonesia.pdf. furkon, aay muhamad (200�). pengaruh pemikiran al-ikhwan al-muslimun terhadap gerakan politik islam indonesia (�998-2000): studi kasus partai keadilan. master’s thesis, universitas indonesia. 26 matthias heilmann islamismus in indonesien aseas 1 (1) heilmann, matthias (2007): islamismus in indonesien – die wohlfahrtsund gerechtigkeitspartei (partai keadilan sejahtera). diplomarbeit, universität passau. komarudin, ujang (2006). strategi partai keadilan sejahtera dalam memenangkan pemilu legislatif 2004 di provinsi dki jakarta. master’s thesis, universitas indonesia. machmudi, yon (2005). partai keadilan sejahtera. wajah baru islam politik indonesia. bandung: harakatuna. nuh, muhammad and mochamad bugi (eds.) (200�). mereka melawan korupsi. jihad wakil rakyat. pk sejahtera. jakarta: pustaka saksi. prayitno, irwan (2005a). kepribadian dai. bahan panduan bagi dai dan murabbi. jakarta: pustaka tarbiatuna. prayitno, irwan (2005b). kepribadian muslim. panduan bagi da’i dan murabbi. jakarta: pustaka tarbiatuna. setiawan, bambang and bestian nainggolan (eds.) (2004). partai-partai politik indonesia. ideologi dan program. 2004-2009. jakarta: kompas. tim departemen kaderisasi dpp pk sejahtera (ed.) (200�). manajemen tarbiyah. anggota pemula. bandung: pt syaamil cipta media. tim departemen kaderisasi dpp pk sejahtera (ed.) (2005). profil kader partai keadilan sejahtera 2009. bandung: harakatuna. trotter, lydia (2006). islam, women and indonesian politics. the pks challenge to substantive theories of democracy. master’s thesis, university of sydney. wahono, untung, fahri hamzah and mahfudz siddiq (eds.) (2004). menyelamatkan bangsa. platform kebijakan partai keadilan sejahtera. dpp pk sejahtera. waluyo, sapto (2005). kebangkitan politik dakwah. konsep dan praktik politik partai keadilan sejahtera di masa transisi. bandung: harakatuna. yunanto, sri (2005). demokratisasi gerakan fundamentalis moderat islam di indonesia: studi kasus partai keadilan sejahtera. master’s thesis, universitas indonesia. interviews interview mit agus sujadmiko, leiter der jugendabteilung des verwaltungsrates der pks-provinzzentrale (dpw) in jakarta. 27.��.2006, jakarta. interview mit arif rahman hakim, mitglied der pks-fraktion im provinzparlament von yogyakarta. �2.��.2006, yogyakarta. interview mit diah, studentin an der universitas indonesia. 22.��.2006, jakarta. interview mit ma’mur hasanuddin, mitglied der pks-fraktion im nationalen parlament (dpr). 24.��.2006, jakarta. 27 aseas 1 (1) interview mit abdul muiz, leiter der kaderbildungsabteilung der nationalen pks-zentrale (dpp). 28.��.2006, jakarta. interview mit mohammad natsir, mitglied im himpunan mahasiswa islam. �6.��.2006, jakarta. interview mit rifkoh abriani, leiterin der frauenabteilung des verwaltungsrates der pks-provinzzentrale (dpw) in jakarta. 27.��.2006, jakarta. interview mit rudianto, jungmitglied der pks. 28.��.2006, jakarta. interview mit untung wahono, mitglied der pks-fraktion im nationalen parlament (dpr). 2�.��.2006, jakarta. 28 matthias heilmann islamismus in indonesien editorial: grenzregionen und border studies in südostasien / borderlands and border studies in south-east asia 203 the present aseas issue presents current work on borderlands and border studies in south-east asia. it concentrates on different facets and approaches to highlight the contributions of this emerging field to the social sciences. the contributors find border studies a powerful tool to deconstruct the geographical demarcations and national ideology of the nation state and to question a perspective that implicitly accepts and reconfirms the nation by limiting itself to the study of social transformations inside a country. borderlands have their own specific political spaces in which citizenship, law, and sovereignties are contested. while they are integrated into nation states, governments’ rule is being negotiated there – not least by the local elites and government offidie vorliegende aseas-ausgabe bietet eine übersicht über aktuelle forschungsarbeiten zum thema grenzregionen und border studies in südostasien. unterschiedliche aspekte und theoretische zugänge werden präsentiert und heben die bedeutung dieses neu entstandenen feldes für die sozialwissenschaften hervor. die autorinnen sehen in border studies ein wertvolles instrument zur dekonstruktion geografischer grenzen und nationalstaatlicher ideologie. es erlaubt perspektiven zu hinterfragen, die das konzept der nation implizit akzeptieren und bestätigen, indem sie sich auf die erforschung sozialer transformationen innerhalb eines landes beschränken. grenzgebiete verfügen über eigene spezifische politische räume, in denen staatsangehörigkeit, rechtsstaatlichkeit und souveränität angefochten editorial: grenzregionen und border studies in südostasien / borderlands and border studies in south-east asia alexander horstmann aseas-gastredakteur / aseas guest editor citation horstmann, a. (2011). editorial: grenzregionen und border studies in südostasien / borderlands and border studies in south-east asia. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 4(2), 203-214. d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -4 .2 -1 alexander horstmann editorial aseas 4 (2) 204 205 cials who often enough share profits from border economies. some people like to talk about a borderless world in the context of globalisation. yet, borders continue to exist and show the presence and impact of the state in people’s lives. in a way, this impact of the state and state influence in the contributions that follow is immense and has important consequences on livelihoods and identity discourses. almost all of the contributors to this issue can draw on rich ethnographical fieldwork to capture the agency of people crossing or contesting different borderlands. they describe borderlands as exceptional and liminal spaces where various sovereignties and laws are competing with each other. nevertheless, the relatively weak presence of states in borderlands does not mean a stateless society: interference, and sometimes outright repression, by the states can be felt by people crossing and inhabiting these borderlands. how do the contributions now intervene into the burgeoning field of border studies? first, they describe the connecting processes of territorialisation, de-territorialisation, and reterritorialisation. where borderlands are connected to each other, local, national, and global spaces can overlap werden. wenngleich grenzgebiete in nationalstaaten integriert sind, wird die macht der staatlichen regierungen dennoch verhandelt – nicht zuletzt von lokalen eliten und regierungsbeamtinnen, die aus wirtschaftlichen aktivitäten in den grenzregionen gewinne erzielen. im kontext der globalisierung wird gerne von einer grenzenlosen welt gesprochen. grenzen sind jedoch weiterhin existent und staaten beeinflussen das leben der menschen. wie die folgenden beiträge hervorheben, nehmen staatlicher einfluss und staatliche unterdrückung mitunter enorme ausmaße an und bringen bedeutende konsequenzen für die lebensbedingungen und identitätsdiskurse der lokalen bevölkerung mit sich. beinahe alle autorinnen dieser ausgabe stützen sich auf reiches ethnografisches material, um die handlungsfähigkeit jener menschen zu erfassen, die in der einen oder anderen form ihr leben in unterschiedlichen grenzregionen bestreiten. grenzgebiete werden als liminaler raum beschrieben, in dem verschiedene souveränitäten und rechtsformen aufeinanderprallen und miteinander rivalisieren. die relativ schwache präsenz des staates ist jedoch nicht mit dem fehlen staatlicher kontrolle gleichzusetzen: menschen, die grenzgebiete durchqueren oder dieaseas 4 (2) 204 205 alexander horstmann editorial and conflate – together shaping the specific topography of border spaces. local, national, and global actors have vested interests in and sometimes compete over, sometimes collaborate on the control of areas and people in the borderlands between states. often enough, local people have to make alliances with local elites, humanitarian ngos, local governments, or criminal networks. this special issue’s first article by kazi fahmida farzana (national university of singapore) sheds light on struggles and hardships of muslim rohingya refugees between burma and bangladesh by analysing their artistic expressions. the author is not satisfied with only documenting human rights abuses but rather interested in the rohingya’s agency. she interprets and explores artistic performances and artefacts such as music, drawings, and poetry of the muslims as everyday forms of resistance, drawing among others on the work of james c. scott. artistic works are central expressions in the people’s lives, highlighting humiliations and human rights violations. farzana argues that the rohingya use these artefacts to restore and maintain their dignity and cultural identity against the odds of repression and forced migration se bewohnen, erfahren eingriffe und manchmal offene repression seitens des staates. in welcher form tragen nun die autorinnen dieser aseas-ausgabe zum aufstrebenden feld der border studies bei? erstens veranschaulichen ihre dokumentationen prozesse von territorialisierung, de-territorialisierung und re-territorialisierung. wo grenzgebiete miteinander verbunden sind, können lokale, nationale und globale räume überlappen und verschmelzen. zusammen formen sie dann die spezifische topografie von grenzräumen. lokale, nationale und globale akteurinnen haben eigeninteressen an der kontrolle zwischenstaatlicher gebiete und ihrer bevölkerungen – machtkämpfe werden dafür ausgetragen, aber auch kooperationen eingegangen. in vielen fällen muss die lokale bevölkerung einen weg durch diese konfliktlandschaft finden, indem sie allianzen mit lokalen eliten, humanitären ngos, lokalen regierungen oder kriminellen netzwerken schließt. im ersten artikel dieses themenhefts beleuchtet kazi fahmida farzana (national university of singapore) durch eine analyse künstlerischer ausdrucksformen den kampf und die entbehrungen der muslimischen rohingya-flüchtlinge im grenzland zwischen aseas 4 (2) 206 207 burma und bangladesch. das interesse der autorin liegt nicht nur in der dokumentation von menschenrechtsverletzungen, sondern vor allem bei den handlungsfähigkeiten der rohingya. sie interpretiert künstlerisches schaffen wie musik, malereien und gedichte der muslime als alltägliche formen des widerstandes und bezieht sich dabei unter anderem auf die arbeiten von james c. scott. künstlerische arbeiten sind im leben dieser menschen zentrale ausdrucksformen, um erniedrigung und menschenrechtsverletzungen aufzuzeigen. farzana argumentiert, dass die rohingya, konfrontiert mit unterdrückung, zwangsmigration und ausgrenzung aus dem öffentlichen leben, diese ausdrucksformen zur wiederherstellung ihrer würde und kulturellen identität verwenden. auf diesen einsichten aufbauend, ist farzana in der lage, über einen phänomenologischen zugang die transnationalisierung der existenzgrundlagen der rohingya in burma und bangladesch zu illustrieren. im zweiten beitrag nähert sich michael eilenberg (aarhus university) über eine diskussion von gesetzlosigkeit und selbstjustiz dem malaysischindonesischen grenzgebiet auf borneo. er veranschaulicht seinen zugang anhand eines falls, in dem die lokale iban-bevölkerung aufgrund mangelnand resist their exclusion from public life. the production and exchange of artefacts gives insight into the development of livelihoods, and farzana is able to illustrate by means of phenomenological data the trans-nationalisation of rohingya livelihoods in burma and bangladesh. in the second contribution, michael eilenberg (aarhus university) explores the malaysian-indonesian borderland in borneo by a discussion of lawlessness and vigilantism in this region. he illustrates his argument by showing how in one instance the local iban population did not trust an indonesian court, taking justice in their own hands by killing the murderer of a clan member. eilenberg continues with a discussion of a case from the logging business: after having lost a source of income due to logging bans, the iban again turn against state authorities. for the state, it seems impossible to prosecute the iban without creating further conflict with them. eilenberg’s paper stresses the ambiguity of law in the borderlands and the relative lawlessness emerging in post-new order indonesia in the context of a weakened and decentralised state. borderlands essentially have their own laws. alexander horstmann (mahidol university & max planck institute for aseas 4 (2) 206 207 the study of ethnic and religious diversity) then explores the spiritual and political construction of a karen nation in the liminal space between burma and thailand. horstmann contends that protestant christianity has become a crucial vehicle for political mobilisation. refugee camps and their educational systems have become centres for the reproduction of karen nationalism as well as protestant christian proselytisation. the author argues that the knu’s insurgency, taking the civil population a political hostage, has been enabled and nourished by humanitarian aid. at the same time, evangelical and missionary networks provide a corridor across the border and emergency relief to some displaced and suffering people. horstmann is interested in demystifying refugees, showing that different people have different access to resources and varying vested interests in institutions (such as church) and networks. instead of talking about ‘the refugee’ we should rather talk about different transitions in people’s livelihood and about their aspirations. in the fourth paper of the section ‘current research on south-east asia’, akm ahsan ullah (the american university in cairo) and mallik akram hussain (rajshahi university) provide den vertrauens in die indonesische rechtssprechung das gesetz selbst in die hand nahm und den mörder eines clan-mitglieds tötete. eilenberg veranschaulicht auch anhand einer fallstudie aus der holzwirtschaft, dass die iban sich, als wegen eines verbots von holzfällereiaktivitäten ihre haupteinkommensquelle verloren ging, einmal mehr gegen die staatsobrigkeit wenden. dem staat scheint es unmöglich, die iban strafrechtlich zu verfolgen, ohne den konflikt mit diesen weiter zu schüren. eilenbergs artikel betont die unklarheit der gesetzgebung in grenzregionen und die relative gesetzlosigkeit, die in indonesien nach dem ende der „neuen ordnung“ im kontext eines geschwächten und dezentralisierten staats erwuchs. grenzgebiete verfügen im grunde genommen über ihre eigene gesetzgebung. alexander horstmann (mahidol university & max-planck-institut zur erforschung multireligiöser und multiethnischer gesellschaften) präsentiert im anschluss die spirituelle und politische konstruktion einer karen-nation im liminalen raum zwischen burma und thailand. horstmann argumentiert, dass das protestantische christentum ein entscheidendes vehikel zur politischen mobilisierung wurde. flüchtlingslager und deren bildungssysteme alexander horstmann editorial aseas 4 (2) 208 209 wurden zu zentren der reproduktion, sowohl von karen-nationalismus als auch von christlich-protestantischer missionierung. der autor argumentiert, dass humanitäre hilfe den aufstand der karen national union (knu), welche die zivilbevölkerung teilweise zu politischen geiseln machen, erst ermöglichte und nährte. gleichzeitig bieten evangelische und missionarische netzwerke jedoch einen korridor und soforthilfe für die vertriebenen und notleidenden menschen. horstmann möchte zu einer entmystifizierung von flüchtlingen beitragen, indem er aufzeigt, dass unterschiedliche menschen unterschiedlichen zugang zu ressourcen und variierende eigeninteressen an institutionen und netzwerken haben. anstatt von „flüchtlingen an sich“ zu sprechen, sollte seiner meinung nach über die verschiedenen einschnitte in die existenzgrundlagen der menschen und über deren aspirationen gesprochen werden. im vierten artikel der kategorie „aktuelle südostasienforschung“ berichten akm ahsan ullah (the american university in cairo) und mallik akram hussain (rajshahi university) über menschenhandel in der greater mekong subregion (gms), wohin eine große zahl junger frauen, insbesondere aus verarmten gebieten in burma, kamboa coherent account of human trafficking in the greater mekong subregion (gms). a huge amount of young women are trafficked there, especially from the impoverished parts of myanmar, cambodia, laos, and vietnam into thailand. many women are forced into sex work and kept in slavery-like conditions. while the information provided in the article is well known, the authors provide a systematic approach to the subject by taking the life histories of sex workers into account. their research is thus an important contribution to the study of human rights violations against young women tricked into sex work. finally, natalie boehler (university of zurich) gives an intimate account of the creative presentation of landscape, nature, and the jungle in the works of apichatpong weerasetakul. unlike other artists who present rural landscapes as romantic and tranquil, the well-known thai filmmaker apichatpong uses the image of the jungle to open a space for transgressions, sensual and secret contacts, encounters with the foreigner, and with the spirit world. in his awarded film uncle boonmee who can recall his past lives, apichatpong uses bonnmee’s encounters with the spirit world to confront his audiences with the violence imaseas 4 (2) 208 209 dscha, laos und vietnam, illegal nach thailand geschafft wird. viele frauen werden zu sexarbeit gezwungen und unter sklavenähnlichen bedingungen festgehalten. der wert dieses artikels liegt in der systematischen annäherungsweise an den gegenstand, der die lebensgeschichten der sexarbeiterinnen berücksichtigt. ihre forschung ist somit ein wichtiger beitrag für die dokumentation und analyse von menschenrechtsverletzungen an jungen frauen, die gegen ihre absicht in die sexarbeit gedrängt wurden. im darauf folgenden beitrag setzt sich natalie böhler (universität zürich) mit der kreativen darstellung von landschaft, natur und dschungel in den werken apichatpong weerasetakuls auseinander. im gegensatz zu anderen künstlerinnen, die ländliche gebiete tendenziell als romantisch und ruhig darstellen, benutzt der berühmte thailändische filmemacher apichatpong das bild des dschungels dazu, einen raum für grenzüberschreitungen sowie orte zu kreieren, an denen geheime und sinnliche treffen möglich werden und begegnungen mit fremden und der spirituellen welt stattfinden. in seinem preisgekrönten film uncle boonme who can recall his past lives verwendet apitchatpong boonmes begegnungen mit der spirituellen welt dazu, sein puposed on villagers in the past and with that one felt by foreign migrant workers in the present. boehler finds the metaphor of the border helpful for her account of apichatpong’s art. the contributions of farzana and boehler connect well with each other: while farzana describes claims to a shared cultural identity and cultural rights for the rohingya, boehler is concerned with artistic expression and the role of media. in the films of apichatpong, the images of rural thailand are not used to glorify the simple life of the farmers but to create a space for cultural productivity and resistance. apichatpong is sceptical about the use of nature in claims of authentic thai culture and national ideologies and instead presents images of the wilderness to create a space of freedom and subversion. at the same time, farzana is also interested in processes of territorialisation from below. as a matter of fact, all articles to the section ‘current research’ deal with one or more of the following topics: processes of inclusion and exclusion, the notion of the stranger and the question of self-identification in relation to strong external pressure, affections of place and social space, and the reconstruction and re-imagination of community in the contested alexander horstmann editorial aseas 4 (2) 210 211 blikum mit der gewalt zu konfrontieren, der die dorfbewohnerinnen in der vergangenheit ausgesetzt waren und die arbeitsmigrantinnen heute noch erleben. böhler findet in der metapher der grenze einen wertvollen zugang in ihrer auseinandersetzung mit apichatpongs künstlerischem werk. die beiträge von farzana und böhler können gut miteinander in verbindung gesetzt werden: während farzanas arbeit die forderungen nach einer gemeinsamen kulturellen identität und kulturellen rechten für die rohingya zum gegenstand hat, beschäftigt sich böhler mit künstlerischen ausdrucksformen und der rolle künstlerischer medien. in den filmen apichatpongs werden die bilder des ländlichen thailands nicht zur glorifizierung des einfachen lebens der bauern und bäuerinnen verwendet, sondern zur erschaffung eines raums für kulturelle produktivität und widerstand. apichatpong steht der verwendung von natur zur konstatierung einer authentischen thailändischen kultur und nationaler ideologien skeptisch gegenüber und präsentiert stattdessen bilder der wildnis, um einen raum von freiheit und subversion zu schaffen. farzana ist ebenfalls an prozessen der territorialisierung von unten interessiert. neben diesen gemeinsamkeiten haben alle artikel aus der rubrik „akspheres of the borderlands. agency is another important theme. trafficked women in ullah and hossain’s article are mostly described as victims, whereas horstmann strongly emphasises that victims of state persecution can also become actors of violence – sometimes even against their own people. eilenberg documents cases in which state authorities are reluctant to pursue the state’s governance, and the iban turn against state authorities and follow their own customary law to achieve their claims on resources. for both sides involved, local arrangements are more practical than relying on arbitrary laws from the far-away centre. ullah and hossain also show how little states are prepared and willing to help victims of organised trafficking. in fact, government or police officials are sometimes even involved in different border businesses. the repression by the burmese state in the borderlands of the karen and rohingya is not an indicator of a strong state but rather shows the state’s incapability to win the hearts and minds of the people. religious affections and solidarities play a growing role for the selfidentification of the karen and the rohingya in a cultural environment dominated by theravada buddhism. aseas 4 (2) 210 211 tuelle südostasienforschung“ auch die beschäftigung mit einem oder mehreren der folgenden themen gemeinsam: prozesse der inklusion und exklusion, die vorstellung des fremden und die frage nach der selbstidentifizierung in bezug auf starken externen druck, die verbundenheit zu orten und sozialen räumen und die rekonstruktion und re-imagination von gemeinschaften in den umkämpften sphären von grenzregionen. handlungsfähigkeit ist ein weiteres zentrales thema. die vom menschenhandel betroffenen frauen aus ullahs und hossains artikel werden zumeist als opfer beschrieben, wohingegen horstmann betont, dass opfer von staatsverfolgung auch selbst zu gewaltakteurinnen werden können, die sich manchmal sogar gegen ihre eigenen leute richten. eilenberg dokumentiert fälle, in denen die staatsobrigkeit bei der durchsetzung von gesetzen zögert und die iban sich gegen staatliche autoritäten wenden und ihrem eigenen gewohnheitsrecht folgen, um ihren anspruch auf ressourcen geltend zu machen. für beide seiten scheinen lokale arrangements besser geeignet zu sein, als sich auf die oftmals widersprüchliche gesetzgebung eines weit entfernten zentrums zu verlassen. ullah und hossain zeigen auch, dass nur eine at the same time, in one of the works of apichatpong discussed by boehler, the intensive communication with his ancestral spirits who are presented as real beings gives the film’s main character the opportunity to meet his relatives once again and to get relief and consolidation before passing away and probably joining the spirit world. while the dying film character crosses the boundaries of life and death, the karen and rohingya refugees also draw and refer to their emotions and affections in relation to their social suffering and existential struggles to negotiate the boundaries of their community. in addition to the presented research papers, this special issue contains an interview with chayan vaddhanabhuti, director of the regional centre for social science and sustainable development (rcsd) at chiang mai university, thailand, conducted by napakadol kittisenee (chiang mai university). chayan has long been active on development issues and engaged himself extensively with ethnic groups both within thailand and beyond, sharing his expertise on border studies in the thai context, integration in the gms, and challenges to the social sciences in the globalised world. in summary, the contributions give alexander horstmann editorial aseas 4 (2) 212 213 geringe anzahl von staaten bereit ist, opfern des organisierten menschenhandels zu helfen. tatsächlich sind regierungsbeamtinnen oder polizistinnen manchmal sogar in unterschiedliche grenzgeschäfte verwickelt. die unterdrückung durch den burmesischen staat in den grenzregionen der karen und rohingya ist kein indikator eines starken staats, sondern zeigen vielmehr die unfähigkeit desselben, die herzen der menschen für sich zu gewinnen. religiöse ansichten und solidarität sind für karen und rohingya von identitätsstiftender bedeutung in einer kulturellen umgebung, die vom theravada buddhismus dominiert ist. gleichzeitig bietet die intensive kommunikation mit den geistern seiner vorfahren, die als reale wesen präsentiert werden, der hauptfigur eines von apichatpongs werken eine möglichkeit, seine verwandten noch einmal zu treffen und linderung und stärkung zu erfahren, bevor er stirbt und wahrscheinlich in die spirituelle welt eintritt. während der sterbende filmcharakter die grenzen zwischen leben und tod überquert, beziehen sich die karenund rohingyaflüchtlinge auf ihre emotionen und zuneigungen in bezug auf ihr soziales leiden und ihre existentiellen kämpfe, um die grenzen ihrer gemeinschaft auszuhandeln. insights into the contested sovereignties in south-east asian borderlands by providing detailed case studies on how the actors negotiate their livelihoods with the states and thus also regard the state in a new light. accordingly, the state is not seen as a rational or omnipresent institution but as an agency with its own interests and local presence. the contributions emphasise that ethnic minorities in the borderlands also aspire and indeed establish their own political and moral orders. thus, this special issue encourages more research in a very important field. outside this special issue’s focus on borderlands and border studies, rolf jordan (university of kassel) analyses the results of singapore’s 2011 general election. despite the fact that the long-term ruling people’s action party (pap) has won 81 out of 87 seats in parliament, the author states that opposition parties have received significant gains in parliamentary representation. the still high number of members of parliament sent by the ruling party is not so much a reflection of voters’ actual choices but rather distorted by singapore’s system of majority representation. in fact, with only 60 percent of votes, the pap was able to fill 93 percent of parliamenaseas 4 (2) 212 213 zusätzlich zu den präsentierten forschungsbeiträgen beinhaltet die vorliegende aseas-ausgabe ein von napakadol kittisenee (chiang mai university) geführtes interview mit chayan vaddhanabhuti, dem direktor des regional centre for social science and sustainable developement (rcsd) an der chiang mai university, thailand. chayan arbeitet seit langer zeit zu fragen von entwicklung und trägt durch seine expertise zu ethnizität und border studies im thailändischen kontext, integration in der gms und den herausforderungen der globalisierung zur sozialwissenschaftlichen forschung bei. alles in allem tragen die arbeiten der autorinnen mit ihren detaillierten fallstudien zum verständnis bei, wie akteurinnen ihre existenzen mit staatlichen autoritäten aushandeln. die resultierenden einsichten in umkämpfte souveränitäten in südostasiatischen grenzregionen helfen, den staat in neuem licht zu betrachten. folglich ist der staat nicht als rationale oder allgegenwärtige institution zu sehen, sondern als handlungsmacht mit eigenen interessen und lokaler präsenz. die beiträge betonen, dass ethnische minderheiten in den grenzregionen auch nach eigenen politischen und moralischen gesetzen streben und diese tatsächlich zu etablieren vermögen. somit ermutigt tary seats. future elections will show whether opposition parties will be able to convince voters and challenge the ruling party. finally, as in previous aseas issues, there is another exciting visual contribution on life in south-east asia: kuba ryniewicz presents his work on indian photo studios in singapore. alexander horstmann editorial aseas 4 (2) 214 215 diese ausgabe weitere forschung in diesem wichtigen feld. außerhalb des schwerpunkts beinhaltet diese aseas-ausgabe eine analyse der ergebnisse der parlamentswahlen 2011 in singapur von rolf jordan (universität kassel). trotz der tatsache, dass die seit langem regierende people’s action party (pap) 81 von 87 sitzen im parlament gewann, argumentiert der autor, dass die oppositionsparteien einen deutlichen zuwachs an unterstützung erhielten. die große zahl an parlamentsabgeordneten, die von der regierenden partei gestellt werden, ist weniger eine reflexion der eigentlichen entscheidungen der wählerinnen, als ein durch singapurs mehrheitswahlrecht verzerrtes ergebnis. tatsächlich war die pap mit nur 60 prozent der wählerstimmen imstande 93 prozent der parlamentssitze zu füllen. zukünftige wahlen werden zeigen, ob oppositionsparteien die wählerinnen überzeugen und die regierende partei herausfordern können. schließlich gibt es, wie auch in vorangegangenen aseas-ausgaben, zusätzlich einen informativen visuellen beitrag über das leben in südostasien: kuba ryniewics präsentiert seine arbeit zu indischen fotostudios in singapur. „normalisierung“ der verhältnisse? eine analyse der parlamentswahl 2011 in singapur aseas 4 (2) 304 305 forum südostasien / forum south-east asia „normalisierung“ der verhältnisse? eine analyse der parlamentswahl 2011 in singapur rolf jordan1 universität wien, österreich citation jordan, r. (2011). „normalisierung“ der verhältnisse? eine analyse der parlamentswahl 2011 in singapur. aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften, 4(2), 305-313. überblick zur parlamentswahl 2011 trotz weiterer stimmenverluste hat die seit der unabhängigkeit singapurs unangefochten regierende people’s action party (pap) auch in der jüngsten parlamentswahl am 7. mai 2011 81 der insgesamt 87 sitze und damit eine komfortable parlamentsmehrheit errungen. gleichzeitig verzeichnet die seit jahrzehnten eher schwache opposition mit dem gewinn von 6 parlamentssitzen einen als historisch zu bezeichnenden wahlerfolg. dies umso mehr, als es der workers’ party (wp) erstmals gelang, den sieg in einem gruppenwahlkreis (group representation constituency/grc), in dem gleich fünf kandidatinnen aufgestellt werden müssen, zu erringen. lange zeit galt die einrichtung solcher gruppenwahlkreise als eine der vielen maßnahmen, mit der die regierende pap – bisher sehr erfolgreich – versuchte, die wahlchancen der opposition zu behindern. denn kandidaturen in solchen grc mit ihren je nach wahlkreiszuschnitt bis zu sechs aufzustellenden kandidatinnen, die noch dazu aus allen ethnischen gruppen2 stammen müssen, bündeln eine hohe zahl an politischem personal, über das die opposition bisher nur in begrenztem maße ver1 rolf jordan ist politologe und soziologe mit schwerpunkt südostasienwissenschaften und lehrt am institut für geographie und regionalwissenschaften der universität wien kontakt: rojordan@uni-kassel.de 2 nach angaben des statistischen amtes singapurs sind von den ca. fünf millionen einwohnerinnen des stadtstaats 76,8 prozent chinesinnen, 13,8 prozent malaiinnen und 7,9 prozent inderinnen, während 1,4 prozent keiner dieser ethnischen gruppen zugeordnet werden. rolf jordan „normalisierung“ der verhältnisse? eine analyse der parlamentswahl 2011 in singapur d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -4 .2 -7 aseas 4 (2) 306 307 fügte. in früheren parlamentswahlen stellten oppositionsparteien zwar in allen einzelwahlkreisen (single member constituencies/smc), kandidatinnen auf, allerdings nur in einer begrenzten zahl an grc. und bisher war es oppositionsparteien auch nur in einzelwahlkreisen gelungen, parlamentssitze zu erringen. dies schränkte die möglichkeiten der oppositionsparteien auf nennenswerte sitzgewinne bei parlamentswahlen bereits von beginn an deutlich ein. hier zeigt sich auch einer der wesentlichen unterschiede zu früheren parlamentswahlen: erstmals hat die opposition in nahezu allen gruppenund einzelwahlkreisen kandidatinnen aufgestellt und damit die regierende pap umfassend herausgefordert. lediglich im grc tanjong pagar, traditionell der wahlkreis des früheren premierministers lee kuan yew und seines kandidatinnenteams, stellte die opposition auch 2011 keine gegenkandidatinnen auf. damit wurden aktuell für 82 der 87 zu vergebenden parlamentssitze oppositionskandidatinnen aufgestellt. 2006 waren es nur 47 der seinerzeit 82 sitze. begünstigt wurde dieses erstarken der oppositionskräfte vor allem durch eine große zahl junger, gut ausgebildeter kandidatinnen, die 2011 für oppositionsparteien antraten und das vertrauen der wählerinnen in die politischen fähigkeiten der opposition stärkten („victory in singapore“, 2011). dieser umstand führt jedoch dazu, dass sich die stimmengewinne der opposition und damit auch die stimmenverluste der regierungspartei nur sehr begrenzt mit den ergebnissen der letzten parlamentswahl vergleichen lassen. 2006 konnten noch lediglich 56,5 prozent aller wahlberechtigten in ihren wahlkreisen zwischen kandidatinnen der regierungsund mindestens einer oppositionspartei wählen. 2011 waren es nur noch knapp sechs prozent im wahlkreis tanjong pagar, die keine wirkliche wahl zwischen unterschiedlichen kandidatinnen hatten. lediglich hier kam es zu einem so genannten walk-over, einer automatischen wahl der pap-kandidatinnen, die bei früheren wahlen für viele wahlkreise die normalität darstellte. gleichzeitig macht auch die erneute veränderung der zahl und der zuschnitte der wahlkreise (vgl. jordan, 2007) einen direkten vergleich der ergebnisse der jüngsten parlamentswahl schwierig. waren es 2006 noch 14 gruppenwahlkreise mit fünf bzw. sechs aufzustellenden kandidatinnen und 9 einzelwahlkreise,3 so war für die parlamentswahl 2011 wieder ein trend zu kleineren wahlkreiszuschnitten zu beobachten. 3 in neun dieser gruppenwahlkreise waren dabei jeweils fünf, in den anderen fünf grc jeweils sechs kandidatinnen aufzustellen. aseas 4 (2) 306 307 neben nun 12 einzelwahlkreisen gab es auch insgesamt verkleinerte gruppenwahlkreise.4 dies hat die möglichkeiten der opposition in nahezu allen wahlkreisen kandidatinnen zu nominieren zusätzlich begünstigt. es ist ein – vor allem für die opposition – wichtiges ergebnis, dass der amtierende premierminister lee hsien loong auch in der zweiten parlamentswahl seiner amtszeit deutliche stimmenverluste seiner regierungspartei pap zu verbuchen hat. bereits 2006 verzeichnete die pap verluste von nahezu 9 prozent; 2011 fiel ihr stimmenanteil abermals um 6,5 prozent von 66,6 prozent auf nun noch 60,1 prozent. dass die pap trotz dieses niedrigen wählerzuspruchs weiterhin die ganz überwiegende mehrheit der parlamentssitze beanspruchen kann, verdankt sie einzig dem herrschenden mehrheitswahlrecht, das die bisher noch schwache opposition in besonderem maße benachteiligt. in dieser hinsicht ist es besonders bemerkenswert, dass die opposition der pap auch in anderen wahlkreisen zum teil sehr knappe siege bescheren konnte. neben den einzelwahlkreisen potong pasir und joo chiat, wo sich die pap mit 50,5 prozent bzw. 51 prozent nur knapp behaupten konnte,5 fielen die siege der regierungspartei auch in gruppenwahlkreisen wie east coast (mit 54,8 prozent) und marine parade (mit 56,6 prozent) nur bescheiden aus.6 in weiteren gruppenwahlkreisen, wie etwa tampines und sembawang, verzeichnete die pap stimmenverluste von mehr als 10 prozent. bereits bei der letzten parlamentswahl verfolgte die opposition die strategie, durch eine partielle bündelung der kräfte – etwa durch die allianz zweier weiterer oppositionsparteien in der singapore democratic alliance (sda)7 – und absprachen über die aufstellung von kandidatinnen zur vermeidung von konkurrenzsituationen 4 zur parlamentswahl 2011 gab es nur noch zwei gruppenwahlkreise mit jeweils sechs kandidatinnen, weiterhin fünf grc für gruppenkandidaturen von jeweils fünf kandidatinnen, und weitere zwei grc, in denen teams von jeweils vier kandidatinnen nominiert werden mussten. 5 in potong pasir hatte bei der parlamentswahl 2006 die oppositionelle singapore democratic alliance (sda) mit einem ergebnis von 55,8 prozent der stimmen einen parlamentssitz erringen können. der abgeordnete chiam see tong trat 2011 nicht mehr in potong pasir, sondern als kandidat der singapore people’s party (spp) in einem anderen wahlkreis an. der einzelwahlkreis konnte 2011 nur knapp von der pap zurück erobert werden. 6 marine parade ist der wahlkreis von goh chock tong, der im november 1990 den langjährigen premierminister lee kuan yew im amt ablöste und seinerseits im august 2004 von dessen sohn, dem jetzigen premierminister lee hsien loong, abgelöst wurde. 7 2006 hatte die sda, zu der seinerzeit auch die national solidarity party (nsp) und die spp gehörten, knapp 13 prozent der stimmen und einen parlamentssitz erringen können. 2011 haben die drei oppositionsparteien zusammengenommen ihren stimmenanteil zwar auf 17,9 prozent steigern können, aber lediglich die nsp konnte mit 12 prozent der stimmen einen nennenswerten anteil verbuchen, während spp und sda mit 3,1 prozent bzw. 2,8 prozent nach der auflösung der parteienallianz wieder deutlich schlechter dastehen. parlamentssitze konnte keine der drei parteien erringen. rolf jordan „normalisierung“ der verhältnisse? eine analyse der parlamentswahl 2011 in singapur aseas 4 (2) 308 309 in einzelnen wahlkreisen ihre chancen zu erhöhen. auch 2011 gab es mit punggol east nur einen einzigen wahlkreis, in dem gleich zwei oppositionsparteien gegen die pap antraten („opposition makes,“ 2011). aus der wahl ist die wp unter ihrem generalsekretär low chia khiang eindeutig als stärkste oppositionskraft hervorgegangen. die wp konnte sich nicht nur im einzelwahlkreis hougang behaupten, dessen parlamentsmandat sie bereits seit jahren innehat, sondern auch die fünf mandate des gruppenwahlkreises alljunied erringen und dabei dem pap-kandidatinnenteam unter george yeo, einem führenden pappolitiker,8 eine niederlage zufügen. bereits 2006 hatte sich die pap in alljunied nur knapp gegen die wp behaupten können, 2011 erzielte sie in dem wahlkreis nur noch wenig mehr als 45 prozent der stimmen. in hougang konnte die wp ihren stimmenanteil von 62,7 prozent (2006) auf nun 64,8 prozent weiter erhöhen. für die anderen oppositionsparteien bedeuten die zum teil guten wahlergebnisse in ihren wahlkreisen allerdings keine mandatsgewinne, auch wenn oppositionspolitiker wie james gomez, der für die singapore democratic party (sdp) angetreten war,9 der people’s action party mit seinem team im gruppenwahlkreis sembawang einen deutlichen stimmverlust von minus 12,8 prozent bescherte. einen ähnlich hohen gesamtstimmenanteil wie die workers’ party, die auf 12,8 prozent aller abgegebenen stimmen kam, erzielte aber allenfalls noch die national solidarity party (nsp) mit einem anteil von 12 prozent, während die singapore democratic party, die reform party (rp) von kenneth jeyaretnam,10 die singapore people’s party (spp) und die singapore democratic alliance demgegenüber nur sehr geringe stimmenanteile zu verbuchen hatten. zentrale themen der parlamentswahl zu den zentralen themen der aktuellen parlamentswahl gehörten die steigenden le8 georg yeo war zur zeit der wahl amtierender außenminister singapurs und hat sich in reaktion auf seinen mandatsverlust unmittelbar nach der parlamentswahl aus der aktiven politik zurückgezogen. 9 der generalsekretär der sdp, chee soon juan, konnte, wie schon 2006 auch 2011 nicht als kandidat für seine partei antreten, da er zuvor zu einer hohen geldstrafe verurteilt worden war, weil er ohne erlaubnis der behörden in der öffentlichkeit gesprochen hatte. aufgrund der tatsache, dass er die geldstrafe nur mit hilfe von spendenmitteln seiner unterstützerinnen begleichen konnte, wurde er offiziell für bankrott erklärt, was ihn von einer kandidatur für das parlament ausschließt (vgl. jordan, 2008). 10 kenneth jeyaretnam ist mit der von seinem im september 2008 verstorbenen vater, dem langjährigen und bekannten oppositionspolitiker joshua b. jeyaretnam, erst im juni 2008 gegründeten partei im gruppenwahlkreis west coast angetreten und konnte dort bereits im ersten anlauf 33,4 prozent der abgegebenen stimmen erringen. aseas 4 (2) 308 309 benshaltungskosten in singapur, die nicht nur die unteren einkommensgruppen, sondern zunehmend auch mittlere haushaltseinkommen betreffen, und eine wachsende arbeitsmarktkonkurrenz durch eine anhaltend hohe zahl ausländischer arbeitskräfte („singapore to hold,“ 2011). weitere themen waren die weiterhin fehlenden parlamentarischen kontrollen in einem seit jahrzehnten von der pap dominierten regierungssystem, aber auch die im internationalen vergleich hohen vergütungen von ministerinnen und anderen hohen staatsbeamtinnen in zeiten, in denen viele singapurerinnen lohnund gehaltsverluste zu verzeichnen haben. mit einem anstieg des bruttoinlandsprodukts um 14,5 prozent gehörte singapur 2010 zu den am stärksten wachsenden ökonomien asiens. doch für die meisten haushalte bedeutet diese hohe wachstumsrate vor allem auch steigende lebenshaltungskosten und einen spürbaren verlust der kaufkraft. zwischen mai 2010 und mai 2011 sind die preise für lebensmittel nach angaben des statistischen amtes singapurs um 2,8 prozent angestiegen. ohne kosten für wohnen verzeichnete der index der verbraucherpreise in diesem zeitraum einen anstieg um 3,3 prozent, unter einbeziehung der wohnkosten betrug der anstieg sogar 4,5 prozent.11 im april 2011 stiegen darüber hinaus die preise für elektrizität landesweit um ca. 6,5 prozent. insgesamt erreichte die inflationsrate in den monaten vor der wahl die marke von sechs prozent, was zu einer massiven entwertung der kaufkraft, vor allem von mittleren und unteren haushaltseinkommen, beitrug (seah, 2011). gleichzeitig sehen viele menschen in singapur durch diese entwicklung auch den wert ihrer ersparnisse und vor allem ihrer altersversorgung gefährdet. die verzinsung ihrer rücklagen in der staatlichen altersversorgung, dem central provident fund (cpf), lag mit zuletzt jährlichen 2,5 prozent deutlich unter der inflationsrate. vor allem bezieherinnen niedriger einkommen, die ohnehin nur mit knappen altersversorgungsbezügen rechnen können, müssen nun mit einer noch einmal deutlich niedrigeren altersrente rechnen, die angesichts der steigenden lebenshaltungskosten kaum zum leben reichen könnte. die wachsenden risiken der verarmung immer größerer teile der bevölkerung wurden von allen oppositionsparteien in ihren wahlkampagnen aufgegriffen und als ein wichtiges wahlkampfthema gegen die regierende pap genutzt. dies umso mehr als es die pap bisher versäumt hat, auf diese problematik 11 alle angaben nach: department of statistics singapore (http://www.singstat.gov.sg). rolf jordan „normalisierung“ der verhältnisse? eine analyse der parlamentswahl 2011 in singapur aseas 4 (2) 310 311 angemessen zu reagieren, etwa durch die verabschiedung von mindestlohnregelungen zum schutz unterer einkommensgruppen („ruling people’s action party,“ 2011). zu dem enormen wirtschaftswachstum beigetragen hat nicht zuletzt auch die große zahl ausländischer arbeitskräfte, die aufgrund vereinfachter zulassungsbestimmungen in den letzten jahren zugang zum singapurer arbeitsmarkt gefunden haben. allein zwischen 2007 und 2009 vergab die regierung jährlich bis zu 130.000 arbeitsgenehmigungen für ausländische arbeitskräfte, sowohl im unteren als auch im oberen beschäftigungssegment, sodass 2010 bereits mehr als 1,3 millionen ausländerinnen im stadtstaat lebten – bei einer gesamtbevölkerung von ca. 5,1 millionen. eine folge dieser starken zuwanderung von arbeitskräften ist eine wachsende arbeitsmarktkonkurrenz, auch für die insgesamt gut ausgebildete mittelschicht, deren angehörige zunehmend schwierigkeiten haben, eine ausreichend gut bezahlte beschäftigung zu finden. gleichzeitig sind vor allem schlechter qualifizierte arbeitnehmerinnen durch die zuwanderung von arbeitsmigrantinnen mit stagnierenden einkommen konfrontiert, die kaum noch ausreichen, die steigenden kosten für wohnen, transport und vor allem lebensmittel zu decken. kandidatinnen verschiedener oppositionsparteien, und hier vor allem der nsp, der sdp und der rp, aber auch der besonders erfolgreichen wp, haben entsprechende ressentiments in der bevölkerung im wahlkampf erfolgreich aufgegriffen und mit ihrer kritik an der politik der regierenden pap um wählerstimmen geworben. angesichts der tatsache, dass die opposition dieses thema massiv für ihren wahlkampf nutzte, sah sich die regierung bereits vor der wahl zu der ankündigung gezwungen, die zahl der jährlich zu vergebenden arbeitsgenehmigungen für ausländische arbeitskräfte in den kommenden jahren drastisch zu reduzieren. ob es der regierung mit diesem schritt gelingen wird, verlorenes wählervertrauen zurück zu gewinnen, ist eine offene frage. auf jeden fall wird eine halbierung der jährlichen arbeitsgenehmigungen, wie sie von der regierung nun angekündigt wurde („singapore concerned,“ 2011), auswirkungen auf die zukünftige wirtschaftliche entwicklung des stadtstaates haben. in diesem kontext ist sicherlich auch die stärkung der position des alten und neuen finanzministers, tharman shanmugaratnam, zu sehen, der im aktuellen kabinett auch die führung des arbeitsministeriums von premierminister lee hsien loong übernommen hat und zugleich in den rang des stellvertretenden vorsitzenden der aseas 4 (2) 310 311 rolf jordan „normalisierung“ der verhältnisse? eine analyse der parlamentswahl 2011 in singapur pap aufgerückt ist. damit verfügt tharman nach ansicht von expertinnen über ausreichende kompetenzen, um sowohl die drängenden probleme einer drohenden inflation anzugehen als auch die möglichen folgen der jüngsten restriktionen bei der zuwanderung von arbeitskräften zu bearbeiten. beide problembereiche werden nicht nur für die weitere wirtschaftliche entwicklung des stadtstaats, sondern auch für die zukünftigen wahlchancen der pap von großer bedeutung sein. entscheidend dürfte im hinblick auf zukünftige wahlchancen aber auch die ankündigung sein, die hohen einkommen der kabinettsmitglieder zu beschneiden. unmittelbar nach vereidigung des neuen kabinetts richtete die regierung eine kommission zur überprüfung der ministerinnengehälter ein, die aktuell zwischen 1,5 und 3 millionen singapur-dollar betragen und damit zu den höchsten weltweit zählen („singapore cabinet,“ 2011).12 eher kosmetischer natur erscheint dagegen eine weitere reaktion auf die hohen stimmenverluste der regierungspartei: nur wenige tage nach der wahl legten mit dem ersten premierminister lee kuan yew und seinem amtsnachfolger, goh chok tong, zwei führende pap-politiker ihre parlamentsmandate nieder, um – so die offizielle begründung – einer jüngeren generation von politikerinnen innerhalb der partei den weg frei zu machen („lee senior’s departure,“ 2011; „ruling people’s action party,“ 2011). auf dem weg zu mehr demokratie? insgesamt müssen die sinkenden stimmanteile der regierenden pap als deutliches anzeichen für einen schwindenden rückhalt der regierung in der bevölkerung gedeutet werden. eine einschätzung, die auch durch eine telefonumfrage des institute of policy studies unmittelbar nach der wahl bestätigt wurde. auch hier zeigte sich eine hohe unzufriedenheit der befragten mit steigenden wohnungspreisen, stagnierenden einkommen und einer anhaltend hohen zahl an arbeitsmigrantinnen im stadtstaat. offensichtlich wachsen die zweifel daran, dass die pap in der lage (oder auch gewillt) ist, diese probleme adäquat zu bearbeiten, denn gegenüber 2006 ist ein rückgang der zustimmung zur politik der pap-regierung von 87 prozent auf 73 prozent zu verzeichnen („ruling people’s action party,“ 2011).13 12 dies entsprach im mai 2011 umgerechnet 850.000 bis 1,7 millionen euro. 13 beim institute of policy studies handelt es sich um einen politikwissenschaftlichen think tank der lee kuan yew school of public policy an der national university of singapore (nus). aseas 4 (2) 312 313 einzig das mehrheitswahlrecht stellt sicher, dass die pap trotz eines stimmenanteils von lediglich rund 60 prozent noch immer 93 prozent der mandate und damit eine äußerst komfortable parlamentsmehrheit verbuchen kann. die zum teil sehr knappen ergebnisse in einigen wahlkreisen machen aber deutlich, dass es der opposition bereits bei der nächsten wahl gelingen könnte, in weiteren gruppenwahlkreisen zu gewinnen und damit die zahl ihrer mandate so weit zu erhöhen, dass die pap die absolute parlamentsmehrheit, und damit auch die möglichkeit verfassungsänderungen durchzuführen, verlieren könnte. dies hätte auch auswirkungen auf die bisherige politik der pap, durch wahlrechtsänderungen oder die neustrukturierungen von wahlbezirken die wahlbeteiligungsmöglichkeiten der opposition einzuschränken. die pap bleibt auch nach den stimmverlusten in der jüngsten parlamentswahl die politisch dominante kraft im stadtstaat. gleichwohl hat die workers’ party mit dem erstmaligen sieg einer oppositionspartei in einem gruppenwahlkreis ihre position als wichtigste oppositionspartei weiter gefestigt. und möglicherweise markiert das jüngste wahlergebnis auch bereits eine veränderung in richtung einer stärker demokratischen kultur und einem zweiparteiensystem in singapur. politische kommentatoren, wie der singapurer soziologe chua beng huat, sprechen in diesem zusammenhang bereits von einer „normalisierung“ der politischen verhältnisse. aber weder die tatsache, dass erstmals in nahezu allen wahlkreisen oppositionskandidatinnen zur wahl antraten noch das insgesamt sehr gute abschneiden der oppositionsparteien können darüber hinwegtäuschen, dass sich die opposition gegenüber der regierenden pap insgesamt weiter in einer position der schwäche befindet. nur wenn es der opposition gelingt, aufgrund klarer politischer zielsetzungen für potenzielle wählerinnen als wirkliche alternative zur pap wahrgenommen zu werden, wird es ihr gelingen, auch in zukünftigen wahlen stimmengewinne zu verbuchen. aseas 4 (2) 312 313 bibliographie jordan, r. (2007). singapur. globale stadt und autoritärer staat. bad honnef: horlemann. jordan, r. (2008). im kampf gegen lügner und schwindler. oppositioneller chee soon juan unterliegt erneut vor gericht. südostasien. politik – kultur – dialog, 3, 50-52. lee senior’s departure signals reform. (2011, 15. mai). afp/agence france presse. zuletzt zugegriffen am 9. november 2011 unter http://www.singapore-window.org//sw11/110515af.html opposition makes election breakthrough. (2011, 8. mai). afp/agence france presse. zuletzt zugegriffen am 9. november 2011 unter http://www.singapore-window.org//sw11/110508af.html ruling people’s action party losing some credibility among s’poreans, survey finds. (2011, 8. juli). ap/ associated press. zuletzt zugegriffen am 9. november 2011 unter http://www.spp.nus.edu.sg/ips/docs/ media/yr2011/post-election/ap_ruling%20peoples%20action%20party%20losing%20some%20credibility%20among%20sgpreans_080711.pdf seah chiang nee. (2011, 2. april). feeling the pinch of higher prices. the star. zuletzt zugegriffen am 9. november 2011 unter http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2011/4/2/focus/8398644&sec=focus singapore cabinet to cut pay under reform pledge. (2011, 22. mai). afp/agence france presse. zuletzt zugegriffen am 9. november 2011 unter http://sg.news.yahoo.com/singapore-cabinet-cut-pay-underreform-pledge-033001452.html singapore concerned about rising food prices. (2011, 10. januar). ap/associated press. zuletzt zugegriffen am 9. november 2011 unter http://finance.yahoo.com/news/singapore-concerned-aboutapf-1383988176.html?x=0 singapore to hold general election on may 7. (2011, 19. april). afp/agence france presse. zuletzt zugegriffen am 9. november 2011 unter http://www.singapore-window.org//sw11/110419af.html victory in singapore. (2011, 10. mai). wall street journal. zuletzt zugegriffen am 9. november 2011 unter http://www.singapore-window.org//sw11/110510ws.html rolf jordan „normalisierung“ der verhältnisse? eine analyse der parlamentswahl 2011 in singapur gender politics in indonesia recent developments: an interview with yunianti chuzaifah aseas 3(2) 254 255 im dialog / in dialogue gender politics in indonesia recent developments: an interview with yuniyanti chuzaifah ricarda gerlach1 goethe university frankfurt, germany citation gerlach, r. (2010). gender politics in indonesia recent developments: an interview with yunianti chuzaifah. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 3(2), 254-264. yuniyanti chuzaifah is one of the founders of ‘voice of concerned mothers’ (suara ibu peduli or sip2) and later joined the ‘coalition of indonesian women’ (koalisi perempuan indonesia or kpi3). she studied at the universities of leiden and amsterdam in the netherlands, and later returned to indonesia. since march 2010 she has been the director of the ‘indonesian national commission on violence against women’ (komnas perempuan4). this interview was conducted on 15 march 2010 at the organisation’s premises in jakarta. ricarda gerlach: how did the work of komnas perempuan start and how did the organisation develop? yuniyanti chuzaifah: in the orde baru5 there were two different mainstream women’s organisations: wanita organisations [established by the state] 6 and perempuan organisations, which were founded by women close to the opposition. the definition of the concept wanita is that of the orde baru’s: a woman’s status is based on that of her husband. the woman is a housewife who cares for the family and ideally engages in voluntary work. a woman’s rank in the state-founded organisation dharma wanita 1 ricarda gerlach is a phd candidate and researcher on the project ‘redefi ning gender in contemporary indonesia’ (director: prof. susanne schröter) at goethe university frankfurt, germany. her research focuses on international and asian politics, ngos, transnationalism, and gender. 2 suara ibu peduli was founded in 1997 in order to protest suharto’s politics and the economic crisis. the organisation distributed food (especially milk for babies and children) to mothers, as those commodities were hardly available to poorer indonesians at that time. its members also joined demonstrations against the regime. 3 koalisi perempuan indonesia is one of the biggest and most influential women’s organisations in indonesia. 4 komisi nasional anti kekerasan terhadap perempuan indonesia. 5 new order (orde baru) – the suharto era in indonesia (1965 until 1998). 6 additions in square brackets were later added by the author. aseas 3(2) 254 255 is according to her husband’s position in the administration.7 the perempuan organisation’s basis is the progressive muslim and it defined itself in opposition to the mainstream of the new order and the wanita organisations. by that time we had learnt the lesson that we needed to develop a big organisation, not only a small foundation. we really had to think big to make any progress and to achieve change. i was one of the founders of koalisi perempuan indonesia (kpi) and suara ibu peduli (sip) during the reformasi era. our dream was to create a big, influential organisation. we referred to ‘human rights’ also in that period, but sometimes we had to be careful when talking about these with certain communities. for example when we worked in aceh, we avoided using the terms ‘human rights’ or ‘gender’ and still do so. these concepts are considered political terms, so we had to be sensitive. it is a bit contradictory; on the one hand we feel it is a universal value and basic human rights principle, but on the other hand there is islam or religion in general and cultural interpretations. if we avoid these terms we preserve the allergic culture concerning this vocabulary in some areas. if we have more time to discuss the issues in the communities we finally use the terms ‘gender’ or ‘human rights’ to further the understanding of these concepts. but if we do not, we avoid using these words. gerlach: what is your conception of ‘gender’? chuzaifah: gender is like a microscope – the strategy is always based on our experience. what happens about the violence or the discrimination in our daily lives? to explain the concept of gender in the communities we say: “look it [injustice or violence] happens to your mother, your daughter, your sister.” we do not use the word human rights or ham8, but talk about the concepts. after a while we introduce the words and tell them this is also called ‘human rights’ or ‘gender’. but if you do not like these words or are not familiar with them, you do not have to use them. and gradually we can go further about the principles. you really have to be smart to use these words, especially in aceh. but among the people who are more secularoriented, it is quite common to use these terms nowadays. 7 dharma wanita was the state organisation for the wives of administrative staff during suharto’s new order regime. 8 hak asasi manusia (ham) is indonesian for ‘human rights’. ricarda gerlach an interview with yuniyanti chuzaifah aseas 3(2) 256 257 i became director of komnas perempuan recently. we focus on certain complicated issues which are not dealt with by other organisations, like political and strategic issues. for example we do not handle cases of domestic violence case by case, one by one. here we refer these cases to other organisations. we use our own strategy of documenting cases of violence in indonesia for government institutions and offering shelter. and we collect and provide reports on kdrt [kekerasan di rumah tangga; ‘domestic violence’]. we handle cases which meet certain criteria. when the state is involved in violence, e.g. police officers, then we focus on that. our task is to defend human rights: when they are violated, we want to guarantee prevalence in the public debate. gerlach: can you give an example, please? chuzaifah: of course. recently, we had a case in the academic sphere: a professor at the university of indonesia had abused students and we wanted to have the perspective of the victims. this abuse happened many times with different students. we chose this case to amplify and improve our mechanism, so it can be more systematic in the future. we sent a letter to the director of the university and built an alliance with the fact-finding team. we urged the university leaders to establish a system to protect the students and to implement precautions for the future. and furthermore, we gave advice on how to establish an example of good practice – how to deal with such cases in general – so that, as a result, the victims’ rights are respected. we work on improving the police’s management of such cases, so that stigmatisation of the victim does not occur, and we enforce documentation and ensure that the curriculum is based on our suggestions. gerlach: what do you think about the progress? does the mechanism work? was it difficult to establish it or was there any resistance? chuzaifah: previously we have had a lot of cases related to one police officer. we developed a conceptual strategy and out of this case we tried to develop a national aseas 3(2) 256 257 strategy. we co-operate with lemhannas 9, the department to educate the bureaucrats and high-level administrators. through this we want to ensure that the curriculum of lemhannas includes our expertise and uses it and spreads it. gerlach: how is your co-operation with the ministry of women’s empowerment [mowe]? do they accept your recommendations and implement them? chuzaifah: i think there is some progress. komnas perempuan is a national state body, but at the same time the staff here has a strong background as political activists. that creates a different dynamic. we had a perpres [peraturan presiden: ‘presidential decree’] based on the fact that we still have enough flexibility to create our own organisation. we still have the possibility to hire staff from ngos; we don’t have to take the civil servants like komnas ham for instance. this is based on the law, so they have to employ civil servants – this circumstance influences the atmosphere there. here, in komnas perempuan we employ around seventy former political activists. the co-operation with mowe and the government is very changeable. the thinking of the new order is still prevalent in some people’s minds in mowe. sometimes our cooperation is a bit sensitive: we need to work with them, but at the same time we have to criticise them – it is sometimes an uneasy position. we have to be independent on human rights – this is our obligation. on the one hand our task concerning the government is to control it and to observe human rights violations. on the other hand we depend financially on the government and for our status as well. this dependency is still there and concerns the extension of our staff’s contracts, so this is sometimes a bit critical. our mandate is to ensure the government’s policy about a debate and discourse on human rights and to publish human rights violations. this is only possible if we are independent. we have to give input to the policy-making process, so we need to criticise and co-operate. we really have to be smart in the way we operate. we do a lot of documentation, which is based on data and on evidence. usually we use the diplomatic and polite way and we try to establish a mutual respect with the government, so that they appreciate our input. but sometimes we also use the critical approach, for example via the press. if there are hundreds of cases and 9 lembaga ketahanan nasional (national resilience institute of the republic of indonesia). ricarda gerlach an interview with yuniyanti chuzaifah aseas 3(2) 258 259 there is a national debate about it, yes, we do interviews with the press to express our point of view. we express explicitly, that we are disappointed and name the points which are not being fulfilled or which are violated. gerlach: can you please specify that? chuzaifah: our strategy at komnas perempuan is to act as a bridge between society and the government. we provide data from society to the government: for instance migrant workers’ cases and human and women’s rights violations. our main demand is that the government provides shelter and defines what an appropriate shelter is. furthermore the government should improve its relationships with embassy staff and government members of the receiving countries who have a good gender perspective. the embassy’s staff should help the migrant workers to handle administrative issues and support them. sby [susilo bambang yudhoyono] did not react to this demand, but we also have documentation about discriminatory by-laws, and we have demanded that sby revise these. gerlach: that sounds interesting. do you also refer to the cedaw10 in your argumentation concerning the discriminatory by-laws? chuzaifah: yes, of course, and to pluralism and to shari’a, too. in fact sby reacted only in relation to the administrative approaches. we criticised that publicly. not all our demands became his priority. but at the same time in his yearly speech he quoted our data – it became national data then. take the case of pki [partai komunis indonesia; ‘indonesian communist party’] for example. the president accepted the demand that there should be compensation for the victims. historically we have to revise the stigmatisation. sometimes he reacts positively, but he wants these issues to be dealt with by his departments. gerlach: for which policies does linda gumelar, the recent minister for women’s affairs, stand for? 10 cedaw is the ‘convention on the elimination of all discrimination against women’, which indonesia ratified in 1984. aseas 3(2) 258 259 chuzaifah: compared to others she is very skilled in public relations. she is less bureaucratic. when we want to meet her it is easy – that is good for our co-operation. i think at certain important moments, she came and delivered her speech, recognised some criticisms, and benefited from the expertise of ngos. we co-operate and have some similar policies. but we have also different approaches. when they want to implement gender mainstreaming they discuss the implementation of the cedaw report, for example, and then they invite us as well for discussion. we are independent and both make our own report but refer to the data of the other as well. gerlach: how do you assess the gender mainstreaming process? are there any obstacles? chuzaifah: the government wanted to draft a bill about implementing gender mainstreaming in different departments. it is very tiring, because if there is a change, e.g. a different officer or director, then they have to start again from the beginning. many people in the administration are not very gender-sensitive or aware of gender mainstreaming processes. i have a background in the women’s movement. after reformasi i was working on women’s empowerment and that means i was focusing on the secular approach which is not sufficient. we have a guarantee in our national bill that women and men have the same rights to be leader or head of the country. but in fact the most important influence is via the mosque or in the church: when the preacher says it is not allowed by religion, and then many people will believe it. and all the secular approaches automatically land in the bin. at the same time, we notice that we have to start at the basis of islam; we start to embrace islamic ngos but not only women’s ngos. we start from really apolitical issues, for example reproductive rights. then we invite important ulama [preachers] to talk about these issues. it sounds apolitical, but it means we start from the body politics, gradually talking about other issues like democracy, politics, everything about women and politics. we work with islamic women’s organisations concerning various issues as well. so it becomes more important for us in general to study women’s issues and religious interpretations. and then there is a debate on women’s politics and islam. ricarda gerlach an interview with yuniyanti chuzaifah aseas 3(2) 260 261 gerlach: how do you assess the situation in indonesia? would you say that the islamic influence has increased? do more people follow religious rules now? chuzaifah: yes, i think so. actually during the new order, according to islamist groups, they tried to get back their supremacy. during the suharto era they discriminated against islamic hardliners so there were a lot of victims and political prisoners out of these groups and furthermore there was no supremacy of the ulama. their strategy in the beginning was, because the political oppression was very strong, to start the publication of books from iran and the middle east. if you go to a bookshop now you will see that these books are there, much more in numbers than the progressive books. so we decided to write a book about women and islam to compete with these books. the book should be spread from aceh to papua and easy access should be given to all people: it should be simple and cheap and it should be possible to be acquired everywhere. we train a lot of people on topics like the foregoing, but we need more money. the radical islamist groups do not need a lot of money: for example when they hold an islamic gathering, an ulama is speaking, and it is very effective and cheap. everybody will follow. their strategy is completely different. theirs is effective, easy, and massive, and we have only a couple of people, we need money. so we have to review our strategy. gerlach: why do people follow the ulama so easily? chuzaifah: in islamic culture, we have the saying that the ulama are the continuation of the prophet. because the prophet has already died, it means that these people who continue his legacy are very powerful, very much respected, and authorised to interpret the qur’an and the hadith. so the ulama’s heuristics combined with feudalism – and in indonesian culture feudalism is very prevalent – sometimes leads to interpretations which do not conform to our understanding of human rights. gerlach: so you think people want to follow a strong leader? chuzaifah: yes, that is why we have to work and communicate with islamic and islamist groups. prior, i was the gender advisor of the islamic university in jakarta aseas 3(2) 260 261 (uin)11; we tried to be creative, we trained the preachers, we discussed with them, and we also tried to revise the curriculum in the university and in the pesantren [islamic boarding school] based on human rights, gender, and environmental issues. gerlach: what was the response? chuzaifah: it was quite positive. just a few of the pesantren are led by hardliners. in the media, its [islamic radicalism’s] presence is massive and overrated. people who have never been to indonesia think it is a huge movement, but in fact it is not. i graduated from a pesantren boarding school. the director of that pesantren was very progressive. he preached pluralism, he was good friends with priests from other religions – like christian preachers, hindu and buddhist priests – and we invited them and discussed religion and pluralism. most of the pesantren are like that. unfortunately the media prefers to cover the sensational, dramatic things. in fact, there are a lot of progressive pesantren out there. gerlach: so probably, at the centre of the issue, is the discussion about a pluralist or autocratic conception of islam? chuzaifah: nahdlatul ulama12 (nu) was liberal and now some of them have become radical traditionalists. muhammadiyah in the beginning was progressive, and although modernist on women’s issues, lately has become more progressive on women’s issues than nu. gerlach: is it possible to state that women’s rights can be promoted within a religious/islamic frame? does it just depend on the interpretation? what is komnas perempuan’s strategy on dealing with religion? chuzaifah: yes, of course. in islam you have a thousand colours. you can find a range of very liberal, progressive people, and you can find fundamentalists. they have different policies, totally different perspectives about islam and its interpretation. 11 universitas islam negeri (uin). 12 nahdlatul ulama (nu), a traditionalist muslim organisation promoting the existence of a ‘javanese’ islam. ricarda gerlach an interview with yuniyanti chuzaifah aseas 3(2) 262 263 you can have hardliners in theology who do not care about politics, and there are religious hardliners who strictly oppose violence. there are also different meanings about the interpretation of the word jihad. it is a misleading term. my father – he was an ulama – interpreted jihad as struggle. according to him jihad is the struggle to make the society better. just lately it started to hold the connotation of violence. there are a lot of interpretations of jihad. my father was a very devout ulama, but once he said, “i did not want to go on a pilgrimage to saudi arabia, mecca, on the hajj, before my daughter and my son graduated from university.” he meant to say that welfare of the family is more important than religious duties. so, i have an islamic background but i am working with a secular women’s organisation. sometimes this is an advantage. i can talk even with the hardliner community – using their symbols and language, like arabic terms, makes them feel comfortable. for example, when i translate gender into arabic, it means musawah. that can be translated as equality. when i use that word they feel comfortable. if you use arabic words, they are associated with having an islamic perspective and even an islamic experience. so this is important for communicating and to not be excluded by them immediately. i try to talk with them even about human rights as universal phenomena, a universal principle. but if you talk with real hardliners, do not talk about the differences, just talk about the common ground. the most extreme situation i experienced was after the riot of may 1998. it was a discussion about the rape of chinese women. i was talking with some muslim hardliners and they said that the women’s movement ruins islamic values. and i replied, “i am muslim and proud of it.” at the time i wore a scarf for that meeting and i was part of the women’s movement. we talked about our concerns, and about the victims. i said: “whoever they are, chinese, japanese, muslim, even you, from the hardliners, if you are one of the victims of that human rights violation by the state or whoever, we need to protect you. do not see the background – victims have to be protected.” i confronted them with that. after a while they agreed. at the beginning they said they wanted to catch certain women activists who publicly said that the rapists should be prosecuted and punish them. but in the discussion it turned out that the problem with secular activists is that they are sometimes busy with the term itself and not strategic enough. of course, people can be trained to aseas 3(2) 262 263 discuss with hardliners. the contradiction should not get stronger because of the way of communicating and the advocacy of certain values. gerlach: so it is probably important to speak the language of the group you are addressing? chuzaifah: it is very important and also the sign language. the real benefit i get from the secular and islamic women’s organisation is that there are different kinds of people in the communities with whom you have to speak in different ways. we have to be very careful about which words we use. we use local language and if you talk to the government it is again very different. we really have to know who we are talking to. lately we were invited to a juridical review at the constitutional court about the issue of not discriminating on the basis of religion. i suggested case studies about the ahmadiyah based on our data and from our experience and the experience of other victims of the discriminated beliefs. and some members of the islamist groups were attending, sitting on the balconies and shouting: “you are pki! you are pki!” 13 but i did not mind. later i said to the leader of the group: “okay, we can have another strategy and different views on this matter. but we can communicate and we should. we can talk in a polite way with each other.” some of our friends were very afraid to face this group, but i said it is okay. usually there is the reflex that you want to avoid discussions or meetings with them and they treat women sometimes quite disrespectfully, like they use certain names of parts of the female body in a very rude way to silence women speakers. but i think they are afraid. we really have to be ready to face this problem. in komnas perempuan usually human rights are always an issue which is discussed as well in europe, the us, and asia-pacific. but in the middle east, there is a different perspective and it is not discussed over there. i think we should discuss with the activists from the middle east at least about the migrant workers – because there are many indonesian women who work there. we should talk about human rights with them. i consider indonesia to have a strategic position. we consider ourselves as a bridge: we are not hardliners like in the middle east, 13 they meant to say: “you are a communist!” ricarda gerlach an interview with yuniyanti chuzaifah aseas 3(2) 264 265 but we have a network with western societies as well. we have a lot of experience in human rights and we are the biggest muslim country in the world. so we can legitimately talk about islam. we should develop this. we have the knowledge, so why do we not talk together? even if we have a lot of problems in indonesia, we can talk about general and global issues. if you talk about the global terrorists there are two different worlds: islam and the west. indonesia is in between. we constitute transnational meetings with other human rights organisations in other countries like pakistan, switzerland, india, bangladesh, and iran. but saudi arabia is limited; it is very difficult to enter into the scene there. gerlach: that is very interesting. what do you think then – which reforms are due in indonesia? chuzaifah: the general gender role model is that the wife should obey and follow the husband and serve him. the culture is still very patriarchal and many people are very critical of the concept of gender equality. for them gender is linked to feminism. they say it is a product of western countries, which does not belong to the indonesian culture. it is considered as haram [forbidden] by religious muslims. also the recent enactment of the anti-pornography law is a setback for women’s rights as the law is designed to target women rather than men and criminalises the female body. the problem is that the terms are not defined sufficiently and that people are allowed to act arbitrarily to punish possible violators. yet, a ‘real’ law should be implemented because on the streets and on the internet porn is available easily. also children can consume it. there need to be reforms concerning the marital rape for example. a new draft was recently rejected in parliament. but a successful reform was the implementation of the marriage law 2003-2004. domestic violence was considered as a violation of the law. a general lack in indonesia is that there are rights and laws, but they are not upheld in public and by the police. then you do not need any laws, if no one is following them. this is a challenge for the future. gerlach: thank you very much for your time! community-based tourism in thailand: (dis-)illusions of authenticity and the necessity for dynamic concepts of culture and power aseas 4(1) 128 129 forum südostasien / forum south-east asia community-based tourism in thailand: (dis-)illusions of authenticity and the necessity for dynamic concepts of culture and power claudia dolezal1 university of brighton, uk / society for south-east asian studies, austria citation dolezal, c. (2011). community-based tourism in thailand: (dis-)illusions of authenticity and the necessity for dynamic concepts of culture and power. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 4(1), 129-138. introduction touristic consciousness is motivated by its desire for authentic experiences, and the tourist may believe that he is moving in this direction, but often it is very difficult to know for sure if the experience is in fact authentic. (maccannell, 1999, p. 101) thailand is undoubtedly growing in popularity as a tourist destination and is advertised in multiple tourism brochures and travel guidebooks. despite its exotic appeal, a large number of tourists decide to experience it from inside all-inclusive hotels and resorts with little contact with the local population. nonetheless there are a growing number of individual travellers trying to discover the country’s treasures off the beaten track, equipped with backpack and camera on the search for ‘the untouched’. research in tourism has shown that tourists increasingly demand ‘authentic’ experiences (butcher, 2003, maccannell, 1999, & wang, 1999). still, there is not only a shift in tourist expectations to a closer contact with locals, but also in terms of tourism development and planning (mowforth & munt, 2003). neoliberal politics were at the forefront of an intrusion by multinational companies based in foreign, mostly developed, countries focusing on economic gain with high proportions of leakage and few 1 claudia dolezal studied tourism management at the imc krems, austria, and is currently doing her masters in tourism and international development at the university of brighton, uk. she is also member of the tourism study group of the society for south-east asian studies in vienna, austria. contact: claudia.dolezal@seas.at claudia dolezal community-based tourism in thailand d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -4 .1 -7 aseas 4(1) 130 131 benefits for local people (potter, binns, smith, & elliott, 2008). the dependency those companies and financing support of the international monetary fund (imf) and the world bank (wb) created is increasingly sought to be reduced in tourism politics and planning. hence more alternative forms of tourism, such as ‘pro-poor’, ‘sustainable’, ‘eco-’ or ‘community-based tourism’ (cbt) are central to tourism planning, also because the negative economic, ecological, and socio-cultural impacts of conventional tourism are being realised (archer, cooper, & ruhanen, 2005). this article explores cbt as an alternative form of tourism in thailand from a socio-cultural perspective. the intangible nature of cultural repercussions adds to the difficulty in attributing importance, which is why it is felt that not enough attention is being given to culture in tourism planning. a case study of a homestay programme the author participated in depicts both the tourists’ desire for authenticity as well as their interaction with hosts. it is thus tried to not only identify socio-cultural impacts but to focus on a more holistic approach, bridging tourist expectations with the situation of hosts and investigating the concept of authenticity and power relations. front and back regions in the host-guest encounter and cbt the theoretical basis for this article is provided by the model of ‘front’ and ‘back’ regions, explained by maccannell (1999) who adopts the concept of goffman (1959). the front is herein made up of what is obviously presented to the tourist, whereas the back is the area of the locals’ private lives. however, it has to be considered that “just having a back region generates the belief that there is something more than meets the eye” (maccannell, 1999, p. 93). it is assumed that the back is the area of the authentic and untouched and is thus especially interesting for tourists as it embodies the ‘real’ life and not a simple ‘show’ (maccannell, 1999). it is an honour to get admitted to the back and intimate zone as tourists “are motivated by a desire to see life as it is really lived, even to get in with the natives, and at the same time, they are . . . always failing to achieve these goals” (maccannell, 1999, p. 94). he even argues that so-called ‘false backs’ deceive the tourist by pretending to grant access to the authentic, which in fact is not gained. the quest for authenticity is anchored in modernity, a process making the existence of authenticity in the west seemingly aseas 4(1) 130 131 impossible – mainly through technological progress (taylor, 2001). this involves a production of self-identity, a motive which is common amongst tourists and which needs ‘the other’ to reassure one’s own identity (galani-moutafi, 2000). with the division into ‘self’ and ‘other’ the author is referring to edward said’s (1978) famous book orientalism and post-colonial traces in tourism. authenticity turns out to be essential for this piece of research as cbt and homestay programmes do involve a close contact with the host and a motivation of the tourist to discover the authentic and untouched. according to boonratana (2010) various definitions for cbt exist, however most of them exclude some of the aspects essential for its viability. he goes on and depicts the difficulties in defining cbt: it turns out that not all projects sold under the name of cbt are based on participation and there is a lack of awareness amongst tourists concerning the concept. almost every type of tourism that is somehow connected to indigenous peoples is sold as community-based in thailand. boonratana (2010) finally defines cbt as economically, environmentally, socially, and culturally responsible visitation to local/indigenous communities to enjoy and appreciate their cultural and natural heritage, whose tourism resources, products, and services are developed and managed with their active participation, and whose benefits from tourism, tangible or otherwise, are collectively enjoyed by the communities. (boonratana, 2010, p. 286) in defining cbt, culture also plays an essential role with “host communities retain[ing] a traditional way of life and culture that is of interest to tourists” (boonratana, 2010, p. 284). it is thus a community asset used for the tourist product, which creates the assumption that cultural authenticity is awaiting the tourist throughout the stay in the community. homestay programme in ban talae nok participative observations were undertaken in february 2009 during a three-day homestay programme in ban talae nok – a village situated in ranong province, which belongs to the area severely affected by the tsunami in 2004. the author undertook overt unstructured observations, noting any aspect that appeared to be essential for the research. this included activities undertaken by tourists and hosts, their commuclaudia dolezal community-based tourism in thailand aseas 4(1) 132 133 nication, and above all interactions with each other. the observations are described as objectively as possible in order to avoid personal bias. however, it is still important to keep in mind that the experiences are applicable to those particular days and might differ depending on the participants or other influencing factors. concerning the homestay, it can generally be defined as room or space within the private homes of community members, offered to guests for a nominal fee, who expects to experience simple rural living or traditional lifestyles, and to interact and have cultural exchanges with the host family, therefore providing a meaningful learning experience for both host and visitors. (boonratana, 2010, p. 288) the cbt project was arranged by the organisation ‘andaman discoveries’ which is based in phang-nga province and the neighbouring province of ranong. the organisation puts an emphasis on empowerment, training, and education, and seeks to actively involve villagers in their projects (andaman discoveries, n.d.) rather than seeing them as passive assets. tourism is supporting the community financially, which gained special importance during the time after the tsunami. apparently, as locals were afraid of losing their traditions and culture to tourism, cbt was proposed – a more sustainable form of income that allows the generation of money without sacrificing locals’ culture and lifestyle (andaman discoveries, n.d.). nevertheless, it is the thai culture, traditions, and ways of living that serve as an attraction to tourists (boonratana, 2010). the exotic obviously appeals to tourists and is used for marketing on their web site (www.andamandiscoveries.com) with phrases such as “discover traditional culture”, “interact and engage with people and environment”, “experience the real thailand”, and “untouched thailand”. those slogans attract the authenticityseeking tourist but might ring the alarm bells of anthropologists. it is questionable if those phrases are true or simply used for marketing purposes luring curious tourists to the area. most importantly, advertisements, also for alternative forms of tourism, appeal to the tourists’ desire to find the authentic they themselves have already lost due to industrialisation and modernity (taylor, 2001). in order to gain a better understanding of the homestay in ban talae nok, a description of activities for each of the three days is provided: • first day: on arrival at the office in kuraburi tourists received a briefing on the organisation and major issues named in the pre-departure guide. the four aseas 4(1) 132 133 tourists and a translator were brought to ban talae nok where they were shown their room, which was located in one of the houses of the village. this was followed by a tour through the village with the chance to ask questions. in the afternoon they participated in the so-called ‘waste management’, consisting of picking up garbage with local children. after some free time they had dinner, which was cooked and served by the host family. • second day: after breakfast the tourists had the opportunity to try producing typical thai batik; in the afternoon they participated in mangrove restoration. they went on an excursion in the mangrove forest by longtail boat and planted trees where the tsunami had caused severe devastation. the thai massage session that followed offered the participants the opportunity to give massages to locals. for dinner they had a barbecue at the beach with some of the villagers before dressing up in muslim clothes, which was called “cultural exchange”. • third day: as the material for soap making was not available, the participants went fishing with some of the villagers. after lunch, the author left the village and went back to the office in kuraburi for a feedback session. discussion of findings when it comes to interpreting the observations gained, there are various issues worth mentioning. first of all, the briefing beforehand turned out to be helpful insofar as it supported participants in providing knowledge and understanding of the people they were going to stay with. also, the programme brought thai traditions closer to the tourist and can indeed serve as a bridge between locals and tourists, and as a tool for bringing about understanding and respect. nevertheless, upon a closer look at the interaction between hosts and guests, one gets the impression that not everything turns out to comply with the ideals of a perfectly sustainable homestay. the activities undertaken were often insufficiently explained and the visitors sometimes doubted their purpose. mangrove restoration was in fact solely practiced by tourists as the villagers have not planted any trees for years (e. rogers, personal communication, 18 february 2009). despite the fact that the tourists were staying with thai families, there was little interaction. this minimal direct contact is (besides language barriers) due to the fact that tourists were having meals on their own with locals claudia dolezal community-based tourism in thailand aseas 4(1) 134 135 serving them. in the end it seemed to the guests that locals were doing their jobs – an impression, which somehow collides with the expectation of finding ‘the authentic’. each encounter the tourists experienced seemed to be planned and part of an overall schedule. still, the fact that tourists were part of the locals’ everyday life to a certain extent makes it hard to decide whether they actually gained access to the back – the ‘real’ area – or whether their experiences were part of staged activities – a simple job performed weekly. cohen (1988) even argues that tourists are being deluded as to the authentic nature of their experiences, which are in fact staged events. if this were true, would this assumption mean anything negative for either the guest or the tourist? it should not be forgotten that the fact of presenting the front and a staged life could even help to keep traditions alive while maintaining privacy for local people (stanton, 1989). to understand socio-cultural aspects in tourism and intercultural communication it is crucial to move away from a simplistic ‘good versus bad’ judgement with its emphasis on the negative effects on ‘pristine’ cultures. repercussions of tourism – such as the widely researched demonstration effect (that is hosts aspiring to tourists’ possessions and wealth), acculturation (that is one culture adopting parts of another, mostly more powerful culture) or commoditisation (that is culture being used as an economic good for consumption) (holden, 2006) – should not be doubted. however, what is often overlooked is that culture is not static but dynamic as well as constantly evolving and developing (burns, 2001). the fact that culture is sought to be preserved and kept ‘untouched’ (taylor, 2001; ivanovic, 2008) furthermore evokes the impression of superiority over ‘the savage’. tourism for development seems to allow advancement, but only to a certain extent to prevent threats to the exotic and keep its appeal for tourists. this view restricts a culture from developing, a concept which is hard to achieve as globalisation and foreign influences might provoke cultural changes as well (van der duim, peters, & wearing, 2005). hence it would be wrong to criticise restricted access to the ‘back’– if at all the division exists. hosts do probably keep a distinction between work and private life, and are not aware of the existence of terms such as staged authenticity or commoditisation. this critique does not try to condemn cbt due to its potential intrusion into private space and hegemonic motives of western tourists wanting to experience ‘the other’. it is to be stressed that cbt does bring benefits for communities in less develaseas 4(1) 134 135 oped countries (telfer & sharpley, 2008). central to this is involvement and teaching people to be active agents in shaping the tourist product and experience. the usage of local products helps to bring maximal profits to the area, a financial support that was above all needed after the tsunami in 2004. cbt is indeed a beneficial form of tourism, given it is planned carefully and its implementation complies with the operational definition. also, it leaves tourists with an extraordinary thai experience, a precondition for mutual understanding and sensitisation. it even stages activities more subtle than conventional tourism does, which mostly satisfies the authenticityseeking tourist (maoz, 2006). lastly the way cbt is organised can help strengthen culture and traditions through fostering respect (telfer & sharpley, 2008). it would be essential, though, to also consider the viewpoint of the host. ultimately – from a socio-cultural perspective – it is most important to ensure that people in the areas visited do still feel like human beings and not like part of a human zoo. this is where cbt can make its contribution by ensuring equal meeting grounds for people without a voyeuristic approach by tourists. probably the most important task is to eliminate feelings of superiority and hegemony with one culture being superior to the other (van der duim, peters, & wearing, 2005). it is necessary to ensure a more equal distribution of power, which is omnipresent on various levels in tourism and constantly changing (cf. cheong & miller, 2000, who are investigating power according to foucault’s ideas). this also involves asking who ultimately has the power to decide what is authentic (taylor, 2001) and having a close look at what participation really means in cbt (mowforth & munt, 2003). it has even been found that the usage of culture in tourism by communities has the potential for their empowerment (cole, 2007). it is extremely difficult to balance power asymmetries in communication and human encounters due to the nature of tourism per se. tourists as such are trying to escape everyday life (burns, 1999), to get away from westernised culture and homogeneity and increasingly look for the exotic and pristine, which is – for them – rarely to be found in the industrialised world. there is a search for meaning and values (reid, 2003), which in turn connects to the striving for authenticity, leading back to suppression as “the whole notion of authenticity . . . comes to us constructed by hegemonic voices” (spivak & gunew, 1993, p. 195). still, communication can help to return the gaze (taylor, 2001) and make locals as well as tourists learn from each claudia dolezal community-based tourism in thailand aseas 4(1) 136 137 other without feelings of suppression or superiority (van der duim, peters, & wearing, 2005). through examinations of power it is increasingly realised that a ‘local gaze’ does exist as well and includes staging events as a response to tourists’ power (maoz, 2006). conclusion the intention of this article was to depict the concept of authenticity and cultural preservation in cbt in thailand. using the example of a homestay case study in ban talae nok the concept of ‘authenticity’ and the division into ‘self’ and ‘other’ were critically investigated. the basis is formed by tourists’ motivation to participate in cbt stemming from the desire to experience the exotic and authentic, which is supposed to be found in the back area of communities. despite the economic gains cbt brings and the respectful way that tourists deal with hosts, the impression of hegemony in interactions is still existent. there is a division between ‘i’ and ‘the others’ and power levels seem to be uneven. most importantly, tourists should not be disappointed if their experiences are not a hundred percent authentic, as it cannot be assumed that all tourists are accepted and treated as part of the family. also the language barrier and the tour guide who plays a major role between the two groups will always reduce interaction. it was also found that the utmost challenge is not necessarily cultural preservation, but a shift to a more symmetric power distribution. hence staging authenticity and making tourists believe that the front is actually the back region they desperately try to enter might be a justified way to attribute more power to hosts and make the tourist experience a more equal one. cbt does involve power from below (van der duim, peters, & wearing, 2005), which is certainly one step into the right direction. however, it is – in addition to that – necessary to ensure a cultural approach stemming from below as well. it is mostly self-evident in tourism planning to preserve culture and authenticity – as it is also shown by the definition of cbt – although it is not sure that hosts indeed share this viewpoint (trupp & trupp, 2009). hence it is crucial to reinvent the role of culture in tourism planning – a concept that needs to be regarded as dynamic and based on power relations – to make community-based tourism a blessing for hosts and an enriching experience for tourists, even if accompanied by some degree of authentic disillusion. aseas 4(1) 136 137 references andaman discoveries (n.d.). andaman discoveries history. retrieved 26 january 2011, from http:// www.andamandiscoveries.com/andaman-history.php archer, b., cooper, c., & ruhanen, l. 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(2011). flouting the law: vigilante justice and regional autonomy on the indonesian border. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 4(2), 237-253. after the asian economic crisis in 1997 and the fall of president suharto’s authoritarian regime in 1998, rural and urban indonesia experienced a surge in vigilante killings and the rise of non-state forms of authorities working within the twilight of legality and illegality, assuming the role of the state. institutional uncertainty, large-scale decentralisation reforms and the deterioration of formal legal authority in post-new order indonesia encouraged these processes. this apparent ‘lawlessness’ became especially evident along the fringes of the indonesian state where state authority has continuously been contested and in a state of fl ux. this paper argues that observing these processes of lawlessness and vigilantism from the borderlands provides us with an exceptional window to understand the ambiguous relationship between law and order in post-new order indonesia. keywords: vigilantism; illegality; borderlands; kalimantan; indonesia nach der asienkrise 1997 und dem sturz des autoritären regimes präsident suhartos 1998 waren sowohl in den ländlichen regionen indonesiens als auch in den städten eine zunahme an bürgerwehrmorden und ein anwachsen nicht-staatlicher behörden zu beobachten. zwischen legalität und illegalität übernahmen sie vielfach die rolle des staates. institutionelle unsicherheiten, groß angelegte dezentralisierungsreformen und die verschlechterung der formellen rechtssprechung förderten nach dem ende der „neuen ordnung“ diese prozesse. diese scheinbare gesetzlosigkeit wurde besonders in den grenzregionen des indonesischen staates deutlich, wo die staatliche autorität permanent in frage gestellt wird und umstritten bleibt. in diesem artikel argumentiere ich, dass die beobachtung dieser „gesetzlosigkeit“ und selbstjustiz in grenzregionen eine außergewöhnliche möglichkeit bietet, die mehrdeutige beziehung zwischen recht und ordnung in indonesien nach dem ende der „neuen ordnung“ zu verstehen. schlagworte: selbstjustiz; illegalität; grenzregionen; kalimantan; indonesien 1 michael eilenberg is assistant professor at the section for anthropology, department of culture and society, aarhus university, denmark. his research is based on serial fi eld visits to indonesia and malaysia from 2002-2011 and deals with the particular social and political dynamics taking place along the indonesian-malaysian border on the island of borneo. contact: michael@eilenberg.dk michael eilenberg flouting the law d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -4 .2 -3 aseas 4 (2) 238 239 introduction2 for those living in the borderland, it is a zone unto itself, neither wholly subject to the laws of states nor completely independent of them (abraham, 2006, p. 4). borderlands have long been the sites of violence, the consequence either of government incapacity or disinterest in marginal regions, or of occasional attempts by states to assert control over ‘recalcitrant’ border peoples. borderland lawlessness, or the ambiguous space between state laws, often provides fertile ground for activities deemed illicit by one or both states – for example smuggling and tax-evasion (tagliacozzo, 2002; 2005). border space may also allow the growth of local leadership built on those illegal activities and maintained through patronage and violence (mccoy, 1999; sturgeon, 2005; walker, 1999). in such situations, border peoples often enjoy a fair measure of autonomy from state interference, which may further complicate their already ambiguous relations with either state (martínez, 1994a). this paper examines issues of lawlessness and autonomy in indonesia along the stretch of the west kalimantan borderland inhabited by the ethnic iban, focusing on incidents of vigilantism and gangsterism, and how the ambiguity and separateness engendered by the border promote and enhance these practices. vigilantism here refers to the taking of or advocating the taking of the law into one’s own hands (that is, the circumvention of established channels of law enforcement and justice) in the face of the apparent failure of state authorities to deal effectively with criminal matters. according to abrahams, acts of vigilantism often appear in ‘frontier zones’ and here constitute a criticism of ineffectual and corrupt state institutions (abrahams, 1998, pp. 1-9). while organised vigilante groups seem to have been on the rise throughout indonesia since the late 1990s, as a result of the indonesian state’s inability to tackle crime, such acts of vigilantism often come with state recognition and are integrated into the broader state apparatus of surveillance and social control (barker, 2007). most of these vigilante groups are to an extent legitimated by state authorities, either by assuming the role of informal neighbourhood policing units or by serving as tools of political manipulation of religious and 2 this paper is a revised version of an article co-authored with reed lee wadley and first published in the kyoto review of southeast asia (wadley & eilenberg, 2006). aseas 4 (2) 238 239 nationalist sentiments for economic or ideological gain, often with implicit police approval. vigilante groups in indonesia have multiple underlying motivations that rely on moral rectitude based on ethnicity, class, and religious affiliation (wilson, 2006). vigilante groups are also widely used in conflict areas as paramilitary units (see east timor, maluku, papua) (coppel, 2005; hedman, 2008; thorning, 2005; wilson, 2010). however, as i will elaborate on below, acts of vigilantism are not necessarily recognised by the state but instead viewed as disorderly and illicit acts that challenge state authority. along the fringes of the indonesian state, where state authority is especially weak, local moral codexes and norms have long collided with formal legal standards resulting in acts of vigilantism. reinforced by the fragmentation of state authority, such self-help efforts frequently resulted in extra-judicial violence and executions of suspected criminals in the remote borderlands of indonesia during the first decade following the regime shift in 1998. michael eilenberg flouting the law major road international border provincial border city/town kuching pontianak lanjak putussibau betung kerihun national park kapuas river sarawak n west kalimantan source: author figure 1: map of the west kalimantan-sarawak border aseas 4 (2) 240 241 historical heredity persons who find it politic to hurriedly shift from one side of the border to the other can hardly be considered as valuable citizens of either state.3 beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, with their efforts to suppress cross-border headhunting and define colonial citizenship, british and dutch colonial authorities on borneo partitioned the kalimantan iban from the larger population in sarawak, malaysia. the iban borderland was often the focus of contentious inter-colonial relations, and the iban did their best to take advantage of differing terms and conditions that colonial rule offered on either side; for example, by using the border to escape taxes and resist colonial authority (wadley, 2004). the independence of indonesia and the formation of the malaysian federation in the mid-twentieth century only furthered the partition, particularly under the heavy militarisation along the border during confrontation in the early 1960s and the subsequent communist insurgency into the 1970s (eilenberg, 2011). it was not as if this cut off border populations or the rest of the province from the other side; on the contrary, cross-border flows continued largely as they had for decades. however, the building of a road network along the border in the 1980s to 1990s facilitated an increased flow of people and goods – legal and illegal – back and forth across the border (wadley, 1998). nonetheless, along with the remoteness of the region from indonesian centres, the economic disparities between indonesia and malaysia that developed during this period kept the kalimantan iban economically oriented toward malaysia, reinforced by their cultural and historical roots in sarawak. the asian economic crisis of 1997 and the dramatic political changes it spurred in indonesia, including de-militarisation of the border, have only intensified this orientation (fariastuti, 2002; riwanto, 2002; siburian, 2002). the iban position on the borderland, adjacent to a more prosperous and politically stable neighbour, has meant that their interests lie partly across the border, where they find temporary employment and occasionally immigrate to permanently (eilenberg & wadley, 2009). as part of the fallout of the central indonesian government’s loss of power, the on-going boom in ‘illegal’ logging has also figured 3 quote from sarawak gazette (1 october 1895) in report from assitant resident burgdorffer, 2 december 1914, verbaal 20 augustus 1915 no. 41, politieke verslagen en berichten uit de buitengewesten van nederlands-indië (18981940), ministerie van koloniën, algemeen rijksarchief, the hague, netherlands [hereafter ara]. aseas 4 (2) 240 241 into a mixed, local economic strategy. yet a critical element in this boom has been the presence of malaysian chinese timber entrepreneurs with their local sawmills, logging operations, and malaysian iban workers (wadley & eilenberg, 2005). however, the term ‘illegal’ poses a semantic problem. especially when understood from the point of view of borderlanders, it glosses too easily over a complex picture (schendel & abraham, 2005). ‘illegal’ implies a sense of wrongdoing, which may be quite adequate for state-level concerns, but it does not necessarily “represent the ways in which border residents proudly stake their economic claim in transborder trade movement” (flynn, 1997, p. 324). on the contrary, although aware of being involved in something defined by distant politicians as illicit, borderlanders may feel no moral wrongdoing and regard such laws as unjust and unreasonable (schendel, 2006). thus, what is illegal as defined by state law is usually straightforward for agents of the state (though they too may circumvent their own laws), while borderlanders may more routinely engage state regulation with flexibility, not feeling as beholden to adhere to laws they see as imposed from the outside and against their interests (schendel, 2006). this is most clearly seen in logging operations in the borderland since 1998 – deemed illegal by the state but legitimate by local communities now back in control of their traditional forests. case 1: vigilantes the border area is faced with many problems; in order to deal effectively with these problems i was elected as local judge in settling these local matters. people here do not trust the police and government judges. they believe in customary rule (hukum adat) (temenggong4 in lanjak, personal communication, 25 march 2007). the above quote clearly illustrates local suspicion towards external legal authorities, a suspicion that more often than not leads to the internal resolution of local disputes. state law is only recognised to the extent that it is considered to fit local norms of fairness and justice. as i will describe in the case below, when state law and local norms collide, local communities are not slow to actively resist encroachment upon their legal orders. 4 the temenggong is a dayak tribal-head/adat leader. michael eilenberg flouting the law aseas 4 (2) 242 243 in early december 2000, a courtroom in putussibau, the district capital of kapuas hulu, became the scene of murder as a group of around 300-400 men, armed with shotguns and bush knives, avenged the death of their kinsman.5 the victim, a malay man named usnata, was on trial for the january 2000 murder of an iban moneychanger named sandak. the courtroom killing hit the national press as the first vigilante killing inside an indonesian courthouse. then-president abdurahman wahid met with the victim’s family, and provincial officials promised to bring the perpetrators to justice (“400 massa bersenjata”, 2000; “keluarga usnata lapor”, 2000; “malaysia belum tanggapi”, 2000). yet in the following months and years, the incident fell ‘off the radar’ of local and national authorities, and no one of the several hundred who participated has ever been, nor will likely be, charged in the murder. at its surface, this appears to be another case of amuk massa, the seemingly spontaneous killing of people accused of petty crime in the context of an ineffectual justice system (colombijn, 2002). but its underlying structure and motivation, something not addressed in the press, reveals the interplay of borderland identity, diminished state power, and official corruption.6 sandak, the iban moneychanger, was in fact related by marriage to usnata, the latter having married sandak’s cousin. it was understandable then that sandak, his bag filled with 70 million rupiah from his transactions on the border, would board a speedboat with usnata. on the long journey to the bank, usnata and the driver, a padang man named edi, apparently killed sandak and dumped his body overboard. it was only after several months that sandak’s body was discovered, and the police began to suspect usnata (edi having fled the province): not only was he one of the last people seen with sandak, but he had also purchased expensive consumer goods after sandak disappeared. sandak’s iban kin demanded that usnata pay pati nyawa or blood money in accordance with iban customary law (adat). he refused, and so the case was passed to the district court for trial. after the first day of the trial, the iban decided that usnata would likely be acquitted as they suspected he had bribed the presiding judge, and so they organised the attack, drawing iban connected to sandak from both sides of the border. part of their rationale, besides revenge, was that the court was corrupt 5 the police, who had been on hand to prevent the rumoured attack, were out-numbered and hence retreated. they later negotiated with the vigilantes after the killing and persuaded them not to cut off the victim’s head. 6 the following account comes from correspondence with local iban who were not involved in the incident. aseas 4 (2) 242 243 and justice from the government unattainable; they were also incensed that usnata had refused to adhere to iban adat. indeed, had he paid the pati nyawa, usnata would probably still be alive. thus, though stemming from common perceptions of an ineffectual and corrupt criminal justice system, this vigilante killing is far different from the usual amuk massa killings in places like java, which occur almost spontaneously when someone identifies a thief or similar petty criminal on the street or marketplace; amuk massa killings are rapid and immediate following identification and accusation. in contrast, usnata’s killing was planned and organised over several days, involved a force of men mobilised from a wide social and geographical network, occurred in a court of justice which is unique to vigilante killings in indonesia, and involved direct but nonviolent confrontation with police. case 2: gangsters in january 2005, a team of 26 government officials7 and one television journalist were investigating illegal logging in the vicinity of the betung kerihun national park on the indonesian side of the border (“kail sesali pembiaran”, 2005; “wartawan tv5”, 2005). six weeks prior to this, police had arrested three malaysian chinese involved in crossborder logging and confiscated both equipment and timber (“empat warga malaysia”, 2004), though the ‘ringleader’, a malaysian chinese timber boss named apeng (“tangkap apeng”, 2004; “tangkap apheng”, 2004), had escaped. the new team set out with the hopes of apprehending apeng but found that their kijang vehicles could not negotiate the bad roads. so, they commandeered toyota land cruisers (with malaysian license plates) that were among the equipment confiscated earlier. after the team had stopped to make camp for the night, two pick-ups with malaysian license plates and carrying around 20 armed men approached. the leader of the group, a local iban man, began to interrogate the team, apparently unintimidated by its police and military members. upon discovering the team’s purpose and its use of confiscated vehicles, the man grew angry and blamed them for the loss of local jobs. he ordered his men to seize the vehicles in order to leave the team on foot. but in 7 these officials included district forest rangers, prosecutors, police, and military personnel, some of them wellarmed. michael eilenberg flouting the law aseas 4 (2) 244 245 a curious twist, the team negotiated transport to the local subdistrict police headquarters in lanjak, to which the local group agreed. upon arrival in lanjak, the locals refused to return the vehicles and fled with them across the border to malaysia. the journalist was dumbfounded by the inability or unwillingness of the police and army to intervene; he reported that the security force members of the team had agreed with the iban leader not to step in, perhaps to avoid further conflict with local communities. indeed, district officials later told him that the incident was a local matter, with no need to involve outside parties and that there was no need to make it public. meanwhile, the provincial coordinator of kail kalbar (an anti-illegal logging consortium) expressed his lack of understanding of how locals could be more loyal and cooperative to a foreigner (apeng) than to their own government. he suggested that the provincial police would have to take over from the district police if the latter were unable to perform their proper duties. perhaps the kail kalbar coordinator had ‘inside knowledge’, because within two months, provincial and national police launched operasi hutan lestari, resulting in the arrest of several malaysians and indonesians (chinese, iban, and malays) involved in cross-border logging. the operation also placed a ban on transporting already cut timber across the border, a move that upset locals who had derived income from the trade. they sent a large delegation (around 200 people) to the district capital, putussibau, to promote a lifting of the ban, arguing that the timber came from community forests (hutan adat) and that indonesian markets were prohibitively distant. to date, there has been no resolution; the border towns that had boomed from the cross-border flow of people and goods have become ghost towns. the indonesian minister of forestry, m. s. kaban, has said that local communities have no legal basis to permit commercial timber cutting (“masyarakat kapuas”, 2005; “masyarakat perbatasan”, 2005; “warga protes”, 2005). vigilantes and gangsters in wider perspective these two cases illustrate important processes of borderland life that must be understood in order to address the economic and social problems facing the border area in general. but the principal motivations of these instances of ‘people’s justice’ are embedded in a long history of legal autonomy as a consequence of weak state aseas 4 (2) 244 245 authority in the borderland. the kalimantan iban have become accustomed to considerable autonomy in dealing with local civil and criminal matters and have not been bashful in challenging attempts to reduce that autonomy. a late nineteenth-century dutch official referred to them as een levendig en strijdlustig volk (a lively and pugnacious people),8 and though we should be cautious about an essentialised perspective such as this, it does speak to a certain cultural vitality and confidence that has been fostered, in no small part by the unique relationship the iban on both sides of the border have crafted with the state over the past century and a half. it is no accident that the iban-inhabited stretch of the border between dutch west borneo and british sarawak produced the most continuous border tensions between the colonial powers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,9 because the iban were so difficult to contain and pacify (kater, 1883; niclou, 1887). even after formal pacification in 1886, the colonial governments treated the iban with caution in order not to antagonise them. for example, on both sides of the border, iban paid less in taxes than other native peoples – in sarawak, because they were obligated to serve on government expeditions, and in dutch west borneo, probably to keep things equivalent with sarawak practice.10 in addition, the system of dutchappointed leaders – temenggong and patih – became increasingly autonomous over time, particularly during the great political turmoil and transition of the 1940s to 1950s. furthermore, the kalimantan iban’s special affinity for sarawak was encouraged by the sarawak government: in 1882, charles brooke, the second british ruler of sarawak, unsuccessfully offered to take the kalimantan iban under his control, “even if a certain portion of the land adjoining the frontier where these dyaks are located, were transferred to the sarawak rule”11 – a fact that is retained within iban historical narratives. it is not surprising then to see the kalimantan iban asserting their interests in particular situations, even when it may be dangerous: during the counter-insurgency militarisation of the border in the 1960s to 1970s, the iban rejected the indonesian 8 letter to ni governor-general from resident tromp, 10 june 1891, openbaar verbaal 12 june 1894 no.13, ara. 9 letter to ni governor-general from resident tromp, 4 april 1894, openbaar verbaal 6 june 1895 no. 12, ara. 10 the official reason was that iban “earning capacity” was lower, but this makes no sense as other dayak groups in the upper kapuas district were also poor and distant from good markets (letter to ni governor-general from resident tromp, 4 april 1894, openbaar verbaal 6 june 1895 no. 12, ara). 11 letter to ni governor-general from charles brooke, 25 september 1882, mailrapport 1882 no. 1066, ara. michael eilenberg flouting the law aseas 4 (2) 246 247 military’s order to turn in their shotguns. descending on the army headquarters in full ritual regalia and led by their temenggong and patih, the several-hundred-strong group of men said that they would turn in their guns if the army promised to post soldiers in their fields to protect them against marauding forest pigs and monkeys. to this day, the three subdistricts dominated by the iban are the only places in kapuas hulu district, and perhaps the province of west kalimantan, where citizens are allowed to keep their shotguns at home and not registered at the local police stations (eilenberg, 2012). in light of this, and in the context of de facto governmental decentralisation, and demoralisation of the police and military following the fall of suharto in 1998, the revenge killing of usnata makes much more sense, and we see a number of historical continuities: the strong sense of cultural autonomy is particularly apparent, customary law should precede national law locally, and the forceful pursuit of iban interests is deemed entirely legitimate. the ability of the iban to mobilize rapidly also figures prominently and finds its historical parallel in nineteenth-century headhunting expeditions that could number in the hundreds and thousands (freeman, 1961). although changes in indonesian political life provided them additional space to operate after 1998, the iban involved in the usnata incident would not have been able or willing to engage in it without the benefit of these historically precedent qualities. with regard to the case of gangsterism, three additional factors have been at work. first, as a result of national decentralisation processes, district governments throughout indonesia have had more power than they ever had. second, kapuas hulu district officials have seen cross-border logging as a good opportunity to develop the borderland economy, which had been long neglected by the central government (eilenberg, 2009). third, many local iban (along with some district officials) did and still do not share central and provincial government views on the legality of current logging activities, and they see the interference of ‘outsiders’, such as the government operation described above, as a breach of local autonomy. the passivity of the local district police and military can be seen then as a careful response to the economic benefits they have derived from logging and a healthy respect for the ability of local iban to take action. 12 12 local civilian, police, and military officials are, by and large, not ‘locals’ themselves but come from a variety of places – elsewhere in the province or well beyond, such as java and bali. given the link between cross-border activities and illegality, it is difficult to assess how or if local officials are involved beyond simply facilitating and aseas 4 (2) 246 247 following the fall of the new order government in 1998, malaysian chinese timber entrepreneurs crossed the long and porous border into west kalimantan in order to set up local logging operations. they have routinely co-operated with local communities in need of income and with unofficial approval of district governments. in addition to the economically and politically conducive climate and an international demand for tropical timber, easy access across the border through an improved road network (originally justified by national security concerns) has facilitated such operations. for their part, local communities have viewed the forested areas along the border as their own traditional managed forest, and the harvest of that timber as the result of locally negotiated agreements.13 to make their businesses run smoothly, the timber entrepreneurs have bribed important district and subdistrict officials, including police, military, and immigration agents at the border, a fact widely known by local borderlanders. in the kapuas hulu district, such processes involving malaysian entrepreneurs (known locally as tukei) and local iban have been widely in play. as a consequence of their long cultural and economic affinity with sarawak and having been long marginalised by their own central and provincial governments, many iban borderlanders have a weak sense of commitment to their own state (wadley & eilenberg, 2005). they have seen no dilemma in cooperating with the more familiar malaysian tukei14 (and their malaysian iban employees), who know much more about iban customs and language than indonesian government officials. local iban have thus felt comfortable dealing with the tukei and their cross-border cousins. in addition, because the kalimantan iban have long engaged in wage labour across the border while their sarawak kin have felt no similar pull from kalimantan, these activities have introduced a new set of connections among the partitioned iban, strengthening the long tradition of cross-border ethnic relations (eilenberg & wadley, 2009). in the years following the initial onset of cross-border logging, the provincial and national press reported only sporadically about these undertakings in the remote kapuas hulu (bider, 2003; “illegal logging”, 2003; “mafia illegal logging”, 2003; ranik, collecting fees on such activities on their side of the border. 13 although communities have been divided on the question of timber harvesting and cooperation with malaysian timber bosses, most communities were initially happy with the arrangement, although tensions have risen as the side-effects of logging have appeared, such as water pollution (“warga perbatasan”, 2004). 14 prior to their operations in west kalimantan, the malaysian tukei operated for decades in sarawak iban areas and preferentially hired local iban, having learned to trust their honesty and work ethic. michael eilenberg flouting the law aseas 4 (2) 248 249 2002). but later, as the volume of cross-border smuggling increased and the loss of resources and state revenue became too high to ignore, media attention was once more directed towards the remote border area.15 the theme then became the malaysian exploitation of west kalimantan resources, with provocative headlines such as “malaysia eats our fruit, while indonesia swallows the sap” (“lika-liku praktik”, 2003) and “when will malaysian ‘colonization’ of the kalbar border end?” (“kapan ‘penjajahan’ malaysia”, 2004). the stronger nationalist tone to these later reports also included an explicit criminalisation of cross-border activities: the tukei and their malaysian workers were now seen as gangsters armed with guns, intimidating local communities, with ‘gengster cina malaysia’ becoming the buzz phrase (“belum ada fakta”, 2004; “‘gangster’ bersenjata”, 2004). as a consequence of this change, national and provincial politicians demanded that district officials take prompt action. despite district government assurances on dealing with these ‘malaysian gangsters’, early attempts to crack down on illegal logging in the border area were few and half-hearted, and the people arrested were mostly “small fry” (“cukong kayu illegal”, 2003; “operasi wanalaga ii”, 2003), especially as district officials were in no hurry to end the lucrative cross-border connections. it seemed that the ‘gangsters’ would continue their activities unabated, supported by district officials and local communities (“dukung kapolda”, 2004; “pengiriman kayu illegal”, 2004). operasi hutan lestari, however, altered the previous state of affairs. indeed, what we now see is a national and provincial attempt to wrest control of revenue streams from the districts and domesticate the ‘unruly’ and ‘defiant’ borderlands and their inhabitants (eilenberg, 2012). conclusion located on the fringes of the indonesian state and in close proximity to a neighbouring state with which they have long maintained cultural and economic relations, the feeling of being different is predominant among west kalimantan iban – a sense of separateness and otherness from the heartland and its population, economically, culturally, and historically. in addition, one of the general characteristics that per15 several incidents over the last several years of border transgressing have also served to keep things ‘hot’ in the media as well as diplomatically (“malaysia belum tanggapi”, 2000; “sengketa perbatasan”, 2000). aseas 4 (2) 248 249 meate iban borderlander life is the feeling of being pulled in several directions at once, but the strength of the pull depends on the degree of interaction and relations on both sides (martínez, 1994b). indeed, the borderlanders with the weakest loyalty to their own national state are often those with the strongest cross-border ties. politically, the kalimantan iban belong to a state that demands their unswerving loyalty but ethnically, emotionally, and economically, they often feel part of another, nonstate entity (baud & schendel, 1997), the bulk of which is located in another state. for many iban, the connections across the border remain stronger than those with their own nation state, resulting in a weak sense of national belonging or identity (lumenta, 2005). often, border populations maintain cross-border economic links although they may subvert national law; in many cases, they have little other choice because their national governments have failed to integrate the borderland into the larger national economy (driessen, 1999). borderlanders thus exhibit a tendency to bend, ignore, and breach laws that they see as interfering with their interests and special way of life. rigid laws governing international borders that restrict cross-border interaction may lead to diverse conflict and rule bending (abraham, 2006). furthermore, the sense of otherness towards the state as experienced by borderlanders is increased because their interests often diverge from and conflict with national interests. seeing themselves as being marginal to a larger national unity, many iban often feel that the distant political centre does not understand the special circumstances of living in a borderland. its ambiguous nature of both uniting and dividing characterises the special environment of the border. by its very nature in dividing two separate states with their often different administrative and regulatory regimes, the border thus may generate an ‘opportunity structure’ for activities, such as smuggling and immigration that both states deem illicit (anderson & o’dowd, 1999). smuggling and illicit trade is often described as “the borderland occupation par excellence” (rösler & wendl, 1999, p. 13). for example, wilson and donnan (1999) note how international borders can be both ‘used’ (trade) and ‘abused’ (smuggling). on the one hand, borders bring economic opportunity and generate a two-way flow of goods and people, but on the other hand they facilitate economic gain through illegal import and export, such as we have seen with the smuggling of timber from west kalimantan. such illicit processes michael eilenberg flouting the law aseas 4 (2) 250 251 form “the subversive economy of borderlands” (wilson & donnan, 1998, p. 87), often highly important for the livelihoods of many borderlanders and sometimes the most important economic force in the border region. yet this typical ‘borderland’ scenario presents us with only part of the picture with regard to the iban borderland, as it cannot be fully understood without reference to the special affinity west kalimantan iban have developed for sarawak. not only are they a minority group within their own province, partitioned from a much larger population in a visibly more prosperous country across the border, they have also received special treatment by successive colonial and national governments on both sides of the border. this has allowed them considerable space to develop a strong sense of autonomy, heightening the sense of separateness that appears ubiquitous with borderlands. under the circumstances following the asian economic crisis of 1997 and the fall of the suharto regime in 1998, it is perhaps not surprising to see events turn out as they have, given this critically important historical precedent. references note from the author: not all newspaper articles listed here are available online. for antara news agency, equator news, kompas, media indonesia, pontianak post, sinar harapan and suara pembaruan, the online links to the articles no longer work. i hold copies on file. 400 massa bersenjata serang pn kapuas hulu. (2000, 14 december). pontianak post online. abraham, i. (2006). illegal but licit. international institute for asian studies, iias newsletter, 42, 1-4. abrahams, r. (1998). vigilant citizens: vigilantism and the state. cambridge, england: polity press. anderson, j., & o’dowd, l. (1999). borders, border regions and territoriality: contradictory meanings, changing significance. regional studies, 33(7), 593-604. barker, j. (2007). vigilantes and the state. in t. day (ed.), identifying with freedom: indonesia after suharto (pp. 87-94). new york, ny: berghahn. baud, m., & schendel, w. v. (1997). toward a comparative history of borderlands. journal of world history, 8(2), 211-242. belum ada fakta gangster malaysia kuasai perbatasan. (2004, 25 april). media indonesia online. bider, b. 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(2002). entikong: daerah tanpa krisis ekonomi di perbatasan kalimantan barat-sarawak. antropologi indonesia, 67, 87-93. aseas 4 (2) 252 253 sturgeon, j. c. (2005). border landscapes: the politics of akha land use in china and thailand. seattle, wa & london, england: university of washington press. tagliacozzo, e. (2002). smuggling in southeast asia: history and its contemporary vectors in an unbound region. critical asian studies, 34(2), 193-220. tagliacozzo, e. (2005). secret trades, porous borders: smuggling and states along a southeast asian frontier, 1865-1915. new haven, ct: yale university press. tangkap apeng, kenapa baru sekarang. (2004, 9 august). equator news online. tangkap apheng: masyarakat masih tunggu janji kapolda. (2004, 14 september). equator news online. thorning, r. (2005). civil militias: indonesia and nigeria in comparative perspective. in d. j. francis (ed.), civil militia (pp. 89-109). aldershot, england: ashgate. wadley, r. l. (1998). the road to change in the kapuas hulu borderlands: jalan lintas utara. borneo research bulletin, 29, 71-94. wadley, r. l. (2004). punitive expeditions and divine revenge: oral and colonial histories of rebellion and pacification in western borneo, 1886-1902. ethnohistory 51(3), 609-636. wadley, r. l., & eilenberg, m. (2005). autonomy, identity, and ‘illegal’ logging in the borderland of west kalimantan, indonesia. asia pacific journal of anthropology, 6(1), 19-34. wadley, r. l., & eilenberg, m. (2006). vigilantes and gangsters in the borderland of west kalimantan, indonesia. kyoto review of southeast asia. last retrieved on 21 november 2011, from http://kyotoreviewsea.org/wadley_eng.htm walker, a. (1999). the legend of the golden boat: regulation, trade and traders in the borderlands of laos, thailand, burma and china. surrey, england: curzon press. warga perbatasan diteror cukong kayu. (2004, 22 december). suara pembaruan online. warga protes operasi hutan lestari. (2005, march 23). kompas online. wartawan tv5 dan tim olah tkp digelandang massa di pontianak. (2005, 15 january). kompas online. wilson, i. (2006). the changing contours of organized violence in post-new order indonesia. critical asian studies, 38(2), 265-297. wilson, i. (2010). the rise and fall of political gangsters in indonesian democracy. in e. aspinall & m. mietzner (eds.), problems of democratisation in indonesia: elections, institutions, and society (pp. 199-218). singapore: institute of southeast asian studies. wilson, t. m., & donnan, h. (1998). border identities: nation and state at international frontiers. cambridge, england & new york, ny: cambridge university press michael eilenberg flouting the law callabero-anthony, maly/emmers, ralf und amitav acharya (hrsg.) (2006): non-traditional security in asia: dilemmas in securitisation aseas 1 (1) 95 callabero-anthony, maly/emmers, ralf und amitav acharya (hrsg.) (2006): non-traditional security in asia: dilemmas in securitisation. london: ashgate. isbn 0-7546-4701-3. 257 seiten. rezension / review alfred gerstl aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften / austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 1 (1), 2008 seas gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften www.seas.at seit ende des kalten krieges hat sich der sicherheitsbegriff im wissenschaftlichen wie politischen sprachgebrauch grundlegend gewandelt: wurde “sicherheit” von den anfängen der disziplin internationale beziehungen (ib) nach dem ersten weltkrieg bis in die frühen �980er jahre rein militärisch verstanden, so erweiterte die friedensforschung vor mittlerweile mehr als zwei jahrzehnten den fokus um friendens und entwicklungspolitische fragestellungen. militärische bedrohungen der nationalen sicherheit, also gewaltsame konflikte und kriege zwischen zwei oder mehr staaten, spielen in der forschung nach wie vor eine wesentliche rolle, doch im letzten jahrzehnt hat sich die wissenschaft der internationalen beziehungen verstärkt mit sogenannten nicht-traditionellen, also nicht-militärischen, konflikten auseinandergesetzt. der sicherheitsbegriff erfuhr somit sowohl eine konzeptionelle erweiterung als auch eine analytische vertiefung, etwa in form der konzepte regime-, wirtschaftliche, gesellschaftliche, energie-, umweltoder menschliche sicherheit. ein besonders vielversprechender forschungsansatz stammt von der copenhagen school. die prominentesten vertreter dieses in seiner vielfältigkeit nicht zu unterschätzenden aseas 1 (1) konstruktivistischen konzeptes sind barry buzan, ole wæver und jaap de wilde. ihr spezielles interesse gilt der frage, wie ein thema im politischen, gesellschaftlichen oder medialen diskurs von einem politischen problem in die sicherheitspolitische oder militärische arena erhoben wird – oder, umgekehrt, diesen rang verliert (securitization respektive desecuritization). buzan, wæver und jaap de wilde verstehen unter sicherheit eine existenzielle bedrohung des staates, wobei sie fünf kategorien von sicherheit postulieren: eine militärische, ökologische, ökonomische, gesellschaftliche und politische. eine bedrohung ist für sie dann “sekuritisiert” worden, wenn diese von der lobby-gruppe der allgemeinheit oder einer bestimmten (betroffenen) gruppe erfolgreich als existenziell gefährlich präsentiert wurde, zu deren bewältigung es rascher maβnahmen ausserhalb der angestammten politischen prozesse bedarf – allerdings, dies ist ein zentraler punkt, innerhalb der angestammten staatlichen strukturen, mit der regierung als dominanter akteurin. die diesem ansatz nachgesagten theoretischen und empirischen lücken schlieβen will der von mely callabero-anthony, ralf emmers und amitav acharya herausgegebene sammelband “non-traditional security in asia: dilemmas in securitisation”. asien ist als regionaler schwerpunkt bestens gewählt, ist hier doch das umfassende, traditionalle und nicht-militärische bedrohungen einschließende sicherheitskonzept (“comprehensive security”) besonders weit verbreitet. am deutlichsten zeigt dies die auf die gewährleistung des soziökonomischen wachstums und damit der regime-legtimität ausgerichtete chinesische auβenpolitik. zentral ist für sie die sicherung des zugangs zu externen rohstoffen und energieträgern. zunehmender beliebtheit erfreut sich in asien, wo die zwischenstaatlichen beziehungen in der regel mit realistischen theorienansätzen untersucht werden, auch der human securityzugang. dieser richtet den blick auf politische, wirtschaftliche, umweltpolitische und vor allem entwicklungspolitische bedrohungen der individuen, ohne einfluss und verantwortung des staates zu leugnen. ziel dieses buches ist nicht nur, nicht-traditionelle sicherheitspolitische krisen zu untersuchen, sondern zur theoriebildung des ansatzes der copenhagen school beizutragen. verschiedene theoretische mängel machen callabero-anthony und emmers in ihrer einleitung geltend. an erster stellen nennen sie das versäumnis, zu untersuchen, aus welchen gründen überhaupt ein thema diskursiv zu einer sicherheitspolitischen bedrohung gemacht wird. es geht mithin um die politischen motive und interessen, welche die unterschiedlichen partizipanten verfolgen. weiters sehen sie einen mangel an empirischer forschung und kritisieren die europa-zentriertheit. als vierten schwachpunkt sehen die beiden die fehlende auseinandersetzung mit den effektiven folgen der securitization: trägt sie dazu bei, dass die “sekuritisierte” nicht-traditionelle sicherheitspolitische herausforderung politisch besser gelöst wird oder erschwert diese neue prominenz sogar den umgang mit diesem problem? 96 alfred gerstl non-traditional security in asia: dilemmas in securitisation rezension / review aseas 1 (1) ausgehend von dieser kritik skizzieren callabero-anthony und emmers knapp ihr forschungsprogramm, das als raster sämtlichen beiträgen dieses buches zugrunde liegt. warum, wie und für welches zielpublikum ein risiko in den rang einer sicherheitspolitischen bedrohung erhoben wird oder zu einem politischen herabgestuft wird, bildet ihre ausgangsfrage. besonderes augenmerk gilt auch ihnen dem diskursiven prozess der securitization oder desecuritization: welche staatlichen und zivilgesellschaftlichen akteure sind beteiligt? gibt es einen konsens über art und umfang der bedrohung? auf welchen sicherheitspolitichen konzepte basieren die urteile der verschiedenen beteiligten? ganz im sinne der copenhagen school konzentrieren sie sich dabei ebenfalls auf den speech act, die art und weise, wie die schlüsselpersonen die sicherheitspolitische sprache verwenden, um ihre anliegen durchzusetzen. um die folgen einer “sekuritisierungsdebatte” abzuschätzen, schlagen sie erstens vor, das politische ausmaß der securitization zu untersuchen (gradmesser sind z.b. finanzielle mittel, neue gesetze oder institutionen). zweitens wollen sie untersuchen, inwiefern die securitization oder desecuritization zur lösung beiträgt. als letzten punkt zählen callabero-anthony und emmers verschiedene rahmenbedingungen auf, die die “sekuritisierung” oder “entsekuritisierung” beeinflussen. neben internationalen normen und dem spezifischen einfluss der verschiedenen akteure nennen sie hier auch das nationale politische system. ein wesentlicher unterschied besteht, wie amitav acharya in seiner abschlieβenden analyse “securitiziation in asia: functional and normative implications” aufzeigt, zwischen demokratischen und autoritären staaten. angesichts des zumindest eingeschränkten öffentlichen diskurses fällt es einem nicht-demokratischen regime naturgemäβ viel leichter, ein thema zu “sekuritisieren”, z.b. politische autonomiebewegungen als terroristische bedrohung darzustellen. dieser umstand, so gibt acharya zu bedenken, wirft erhebliche normative probleme für anhänger der idee auf, dass die versicherheitspolitisierung eines problems ein schritt zu dessen lösung ist. intellektuell und analytisch sehr wertvoll ist die einbeziehung der innenpolitische dimension durch die herausgeberinnen. sie widerspiegelt die häufig, etwa von (neo)liberalen forscherinnen geäuβerte kritik am (neo-)realismus, wonach dieser konzeptuelle schwierigkeiten hat, die zusammenarbeit von staaten zu erklären – und ganz besonders von kooperationen zwischen staatlichen und nicht-staatlichen akteuren. indes: ihr modifiziertes konzept der copenhagen school ist zwar realitätsnah, aufgrund seiner komplexität gleichzeitig aber auch schwer operationalisierbar, bzw. droht es, in seiner analytischer aussagekraft banal zu werden. die vorzüge, aber auch schwächen machen die neuen fallstudien deutlich. sie reichen von untersuchungen, wie sich ngos erfolglos dagegen einsetzten, dass aus migrantinnen aus bangladesh aufgrund der securitiziation in südasien “enemy aliens” wurden (priyankar 97 aseas 1 (1) upadhyaya), wie malaysia, singapur und das international maritime bureau die piraterie in südostasien zu “(de)sekuritisieren” versuchten (jn mak), wie krankheiten und seuchen in asien dank “sekuritisierung” in den status von sicherheitspolitischen herausforderungen erhoben und damit effizienter bekämpft werden könnten (beiträge von peter chalk und ilavenil ramiah) oder welche regionalen sicherheitspolitischen effekte der von china forcierte ausbau der wasserkraft im mekong-delta zeitigt (evelyn goh). dass ngos in staaten mit mangelnder politischer autorität und unzureichender administrativer infrastruktur eine wesentliche rolle bei der unterstützung der bevölkerung spielen (können), ist kein neuer befund. aufschlussreich ist hingegen, wie bob hadiwinata in seinem beitrag “poverty and the role of ngos in protecting human security in indonesia” darlegt, wie der diskursive rückgriff auf das human security-konzept entwicklungs oder umweltpolitische ngos in legitime sicherheitspolitische akteure verwandeln kann. hadiwinata streicht jedoch den spezifischen indonesischen kontext heraus, in dem ngos, die basisdemokratische bewegungen initiieren und in ihren speech acts das versagen des staates bei der armutsbekämpfung anprangern, vom regime wie teilen der bevölkerung mitunter der destablisierung bezichtigt werden. sein fazit: zwar gelang es zwei augewählten ngos, das problem der armut zu thematisieren, ja sogar zu politisieren – zu einer sicherheitspolitischen bedrohung ist armut in indonesien jedoch noch nicht geworden. wie wesentlich für den erfolg des “sekuritisierungsdiskurses” die wahl des richtigen zielpublikums ist, illustriert jn mak in “securitizing piracy in southeast asia: malaysia, the international maritime bureau and singapore”. zur jahrtausendwende scheiterte der versuch des international maritime bureaus (imb), gegenüber der regierung in kuala lumpur die piraterie in der strasse von malakka als eine existentielle bedrohung darzustellen, die nur durch eine internationalisierung – und somit eine de-facto-unterminierung der souveränität malaysias – gelöst werden könnte. dies nicht zuletzt deshalb, weil es diese interessensorganisation der schifffahrt verabsäumte, die perspektive der besonders betroffenen lokalen fischer einzubeziehen, die zusätzlichen politischen druck hätten ausüben können. so war es der regierung möglich, die pläne der imb zurückzuweisen und piraterie nach wie vor als einen kriminelles akt zu behandeln, dem nicht mit sicherheitspolitischen, sondern mit einer kombination aus polizeilichen maßnahmen und sozioöonomischen entwicklungsrezepten beizukommen sei. wie mak zeigt, ist der internationale kontext ganz wesentlich: der terroranschlag auf das world trade centre erleichtete es vielen regierungen ihrer bevölkerung oder anderen staten gegenüber, eigentlich rein kriminelle gefahren als terroristische zu präsentieren, denen nur mit auβerordentlichen maβnahmen begegnet werden könne: erst als singapur nach 9/11 die piraterie mit dem terrorismusproblem verknüpfte, baute dies ausreichend internationalen 98 alfred gerstl non-traditional security in asia: dilemmas in securitisation rezension / review aseas 1 (1) druck auf kuala lumpur (und jakarta) auf, um hand zu einer art internationalisierung light (gemeinsame patrouillen von singapur, malaysia und indonesien) zu bieten. der autor belegt mit diesem letztlich geringen politischen effekt, dass weder das imb noch singapur das zielpublikum – die malayischen eliten – vom charakter der piraterie als existenzieller bedrohung zu überzeugen vermochten, da dieses eine andere risikobewertung sowie eigene nationale (und vermutlich auch persönliche) interessen hatte. in maks worten: “threats are therefore constructed not only by securitizing actors, but interpreted and reconstructed by the target audience.” mit dieser aussage illustriert mak einen vorzug des (modifizierten) ansatzes der copenhagen school: die fundamentale bedeutung, welche der wahrnehmung und bewertung einer bedrohung durch die entscheidungsträgerinnen wie deren politischen zielsetzungen zukommt. doch er macht damit zugleich auf eine groβe schwäche aufmerksam: weder durch eine analyse von reden und handlungen, noch durch interviews oder teilnehmede beobachtung lassen sich die wahren interessen, interpretationen und werthaltungen von individuen oder gruppen völlig erschlieβen. der forscher oder die forscherin kommt nicht umhin, die aussagen, einschätzungen und handlungen der verschiedenen akteure zu interpretieren oder zu dekonstruieren. 99 aseas 2-1 editorial 01 editorial belinda helmke1 & christian wawrinec aseas redaktion / aseas editing board aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften / austrian journal of south-east asian studies seas gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften / society for south-east asian studies www.seas.at 1 dr. belinda helmke is a member of the aseas editing board and a visiting scholar of the centre for peace and conflict studies, university of sydney. her research focuses primarily on international law and international relations, particularly the use of force and armed conflict. with this volume we celebrate the second year of the austrian journal of south-east asian studies (aseas). in the present issue, which for the first time does not include a thematic main focus, the contributors analyze a wide range of political, social and economic topics in the region, with three authors giving attention to indonesia and one article dealing with thailand and laos. in the latter one, oliver tappe from the max planck institute for social anmit dem vorliegenden heft feiern wir das zweite jahr des bestehens der österreichischen zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften (aseas). die beiträge innerhalb dieser ausgabe, die zum ersten mal nicht unter einem schwerpunktthema steht, behandeln eine große spanne an politischen, sozialen und wirtschaftlichen themen in indonesien, thailand und laos. oliver tappe (max-planck-institut für ethnologische forschung in halle) belinda helmke, christian wawrineceditorial aseas 2 (1) 02 thropology in halle examines events in south-east asia’s politically most tumultuous country in recent months – thailand – and looks at the long running dispute with its neighbour laos by focusing on one of the most well-known episodes in the relationship between the two countries: the struggle of chao anuvong, king of vientiane, against the siamese suzerainty in the nineteenth century. the article demonstrates how this crucial period of lao-thai history continued to influence, and in many ways taint, the relations between the two nations. tappe traces the development of this relationship and explains how, today, this hostility has been replaced by a close political and economic cooperation. coming to indonesia, laurens bakker, currently based at leiden university’s van vollenhoven institute, examines the impact of direct bupati (district head) elections on local politics in kalimantan’s district paser. against the background of indonesian political reform, bakker focuses on the position and influence of non-governmental organizations in local political disputes. his article demonstrates how important the direct involvement of local stakeholders has been in the problem-solving process of the region. bakker exemplifies this by looking at two disputes over land rights betrachtet eines der derzeit politisch turbulentesten länder südostasiens – thailand. anhand eines zentralen historischen ereignisses, dem aufbegehren des königs von vientiane, chao anuvong, gegen die siamesische oberherrschaft im 19. jahrhundert, analysiert tappe die langjährigen auseinandersetzungen thailands mit dem nachbarstaat laos. der autor demonstriert den einfluss dieser ausschlaggebenden periode der laotisch-thailändischen geschichte auf das danach mitunter prekäre verhältnis zwischen den beiden staaten. tappe geht den historischen entwicklungen dieser beziehung nach und legt dar, wie die historischen feindseligkeiten einer heute engen politischen und wirtschaftlichen kooperation wichen. in seinem beitrag zu indonesien untersucht laurens bakker (van-vollenhoven-institut der universität leiden) die auswirkungen der direktwahlen des bupati (distriktsvorstehers) auf die politische lage innerhalb des bezirks paser (kalimantan). vor dem hintergrund landesweiter politischer reformen konzentriert sich bakker auf die einflussnahme diverser nichtregierungsorganisationen auf die lösung lokaler politischer auseinandersetzungen. er demonstriert die bedeutenden beiträge lokaler interessensgruppen zur problemlösung in der aseas 2 (1) belinda helmke, christian wawrineceditorial 03 between the local paserese population and two non-local (i.e. national) companies, an oil palm plantation and a coalmine respectively. monika arnez from the asia-africa institute at the university of hamburg analyzes a similar interesting interplay of cultural and economic aspects by looking at indonesia’s second largest employer, the clove cigarettes industry. she traces the historical development of clove cigarettes (kretek), including its close connection to indonesia’s colonial past, and demonstrates just how supportive governments have been of the industry. this has been particularly evident in the governments’ reluctance to implement a functioning system of tobacco control and consumer protection. tobacco-related revenues are of major importance for the state’s income and a downturn in sales in the kretek industry is equated to a loss of jobs, taxes and investment. this is a threat the indonesian government is extremely weary of, especially in light of the current volatile economic situation. günter spreitzhofer from the university of vienna’s department of geography and regional research has chosen indonesia’s capital jakarta and its peripheries as the topic of his contribution. spreitzhofer examines regional developregion und veranschaulicht dies anhand zweier landrechtskonflikte zwischen der lokalbevölkerung pasers und zweier nicht-lokaler (d.h. nationaler) unternehmen, einer ölpalmplantage und eines kohlenbergwerks. monika arnez (asien-afrika-institut der universität hamburg) analysiert ein ebenso interessantes zusammenspiel kultureller und wirtschaftlicher aspekte in ihrer betrachtung von indonesiens zweitgrößtem arbeitgeber, der nelkenzigaretten-industrie. die autorin verfolgt die historische entwicklung der nelkenzigaretten (kretek) und deren enger beziehung zur kolonialgeschichte indonesiens. die unterstützung diverser regierungen für diese industrie ist insbesondere durch deren zurückhaltende einführung von systemen zur tabakkontrolle und mangelnden konsumentenschutz offenkundig. einkünfte aus dem verkauf von tabakprodukten sind von enormer bedeutung für indonesiens staatskasse und ein rückgang des verkaufs von erzeugnissen der kretekindustrie wird gleichgesetzt mit dem verlust von arbeitsplätzen, steuereinnahmen und investitionen. die indonesische regierung ist sich dieser gefahr bewusst, vor allem angesichts der derzeitigen instabilen wirtschaftlichen situation. aseas 2 (1) 04 günter spreitzhofer (institut für geographie und regionalforschung der universität wien) beschäftigt sich in seinem beitrag mit der regionalentwicklung der größten städtischen agglomeration innerhalb der region: mit indonesiens hauptstadt jakarta und ihrem urbanen umland. der autor konzentriert sich dabei auf die themen regionalplanung und raumordnung, marginalisierung, suburbanisierung, kampung-räumung und entwicklung neuer (satelliten-)städte. während viele beobachterinnen diese entwicklungen ursprünglich positiv wahrnahmen, argumentiert spreitzhofer, dass die städtische transformation und das rapide bevölkerungswachstum weitere sozialen spannungen und umweltzerstörung mit sich brachten, und dass die mangelnde lokale kooperation und unzureichende regionale governance zu einem immer weiter auseinander driftenden gefälle zwischen arm und reich führte. spreitzhofer prognostiziert signifikante wirtschaftliche auswirkungen für die region, da die metropole sowohl für nationale als auch für internationale investorinnen immer unattraktiver wird. zusätzlich zu den genannten beiträgen bat simon weiß (diplomstudent an der universität wien und ehemaliger seas-mitarbeiter) herrn marco bünte ment in the region’s largest urban agglomeration, metro-jakarta. particular interest is given to aspects of regional planning, marginalization, suburbanization, kampung clearing and new town development. while many originally viewed these issues as positive developments, the author shows that the urban transformation and rapid population growth have led to increased social unrest and environmental degradation. in addition, the lack of local cooperation and insufficient governance in the region has led to a widening gap between the rich and poor. spreitzhofer goes so far as to claim that there might also be significant economic repercussions, as the city will become a less attractive production location for national and international investors alike. related to the above-mentioned contributions, university of vienna diploma student and former seas staff member simon weiß interviewed marco bünte, an academic at the giga institute of asian studies in hamburg and co-editor of the journal of current southeast asian affairs. bünte specialises in democratisation and decentralisation processes, as well as political conflicts in thailand, indonesia and myanmar. in his interview bünte discusses both his past and present research projects and his views aseas 2 (1) belinda helmke, christian wawrineceditorial 05 on the role of asian research institutes compared to other regional study centres. the importance of research into south-east asian issues has, once again, be exemplified at the june 2009 fourth viennese conference on south-east asia organized by the society of south-east asian studies (seas) in vienna. the conference was titled “national and transnational crises and conflicts in southeast asia”, and readers can look forward to the next issue of aseas (scheduled publication in december 2009), which will bring together some contributions of this conference. in the meantime please enjoy the exciting articles of this issue. vienna, july 2009 vom giga institut für asien-studien in hamburg und mitherausgeber des journal of current southeast asian affairs zu einem gespräch. büntes forschungsinteresse gilt demokratisierungsund dezentralisierungsprozessen sowie politischen konflikten in thailand, indonesien und myanmar. bünte disktutiert vergangene sowie gegenwärtige forschungsprojekte und seine standpunkte zur rolle der asien-forschungsinstitute im vergleich mit anderen regionalinstituten. durch die von der wiener gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften (seas) organisierte und im juni 2009 veranstaltete vierte wiener südostasienkonferenz wird abermals die bedeutung der erforschung südostasiens vorgezeigt. die diesjährige konferenz stand unter dem titel „nationale und transnationale krisen und konflikte in südostasien” und einige vortragende werden die möglichkeit haben, ihre beiträge in der nächsten ausgabe von aseas, die voraussichtlich im dezember 2009 erscheinen wird, zu publizieren. in der zwischenzeit wünschen wir allen leserinnen viel vergnügen mit den spannenden beiträgen dieser ausgabe. wien, juli 2009 aseas 11(2) | 243 book review: vatikiotis, m. (2017). blood and silk: power and conflict in modern southeast asia. london: weidenfeld & nicolson. isbn 9781474602006. 352 pages. ► lego, j. (2018): book review: vatikiotis, m. (2017). blood and silk: power and conflict in modern southeast asia. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 11(2), 243-244. michael vatikiotis’ blood and silk: power and conflict in modern southeast asia is an impassioned commentary on the state of affairs in a region that appears phenomenal for its rapid economic growth but at the same time perplexing because of intractable corruption and conflict. the author raises questions and highlights paradoxes regarding problems of governance and democratization and then tries to address these questions by citing colonial legacies and failures in institution building, as well as anecdotes from his experience as a journalist, mediator, student, and long-time observer of the region. the book is divided into two sections. part i: power covers the geopolitical features and the long sweep of precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial history that has led to the present state of what he calls a “demi-democracy” (p. 295), characterized by a persistence of violence, personality-driven and clientelistic politics, pernicious graft and corruption, lack of institutional integrity, and little respect for laws. part ii: conflict deals with what vatikiotis considers the most pressing concerns for the region – unresolved conflicts borne of contested identities, growing religious sectarianism and extremism, and the (re)emergence of a powerful china that is “no longer hiding its strength” (p. 282). vatikiotis asks, for instance, why southeast asian countries rank poorly in freedom and good governance indices despite social and material progress, and why democracy has proven hard to establish. he dispels the notion that this is because social change has lagged behind political transformation, reasoning that southeast asians are better educated than ever. instead, he points to the weak institutional roots of democratic reform and shallow, personality-based politics that drive change, if any. related to this, he poses the often repeated but seldom satisfactorily answered question of why graft and corruption persist and offers several answers including the fact that governments are poorly financed, that bribery serves to maintain deeply entrenched social hierarchies, and that this ultimately serves to control the elite and fuel systems of patronage. this is consistent with much of the literature on southeast asia highlighting elite-driven, clientelistic, patronage relationships as characteristic of politics and governance in the region. vatikiotis’ assessment of the influence of colonial legacies on the present state of affairs seems accurate, though not new to students of the region. “the seeds of subnational conflict lie in the process of modern state formation, which involved the disruption of precolonial autonomous principalities and the birth of the cohesive, centralised nation state” (p. 201), he writes of deeply rooted conflicts in rezensionen  book reviews w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 08 244 | aseas 11(2) book review: vatikiotis, m. (2017). blood and silk: power and conflict in modern southeast asia. southern thailand and aceh. “the shallow basis for this unity,” moreover, “was built on an administrative framework steeped in colonial exigency and historical prejudices. imperfect integration and forced assimilation became the conductors of grievance that eventually generated violence […] as new states struggled to establish themselves, rebellions erupted along poorly defined borders and fault lines of social and ethnic division” (p. 204). indeed, contemporary fractures in malaysia and myanmar, for instance, can be traced back to the colonial administrative divisions under british rule, as discussed in most textbooks dealing with the colonial history of the region. however, in attempting to distill conclusions about such a diverse region, vatikiotis risks overly generalizing and seeing the region as more exceptional than it might be. writing again about unresolved conflicts, vatikiotis declares that motives ascribed to sovereignty only disguise selfish personal interest – compromise in southeast asia is seen as a sign of weakness and loss of face (p. 224). this however may be just as true in hierarchical societies of northeast asian countries with deep cultural sensitivities related to “losing face”. he writes of the “perpetual selfishness of southeast asian elites” (p. 286) and how, “more than any other part of the world today that claims to adhere for the most part to democratic principles of government and has the gdp to do so, southeast asia fails chronically to deliver on the promise of popular sovereignty” (p. 286). one might be harder pressed to identify any part of the world where elites unselfishly gave up power and delivered popular sovereignty at no cost to their privilege. elsewhere, the author may verge on exaggeration. he describes thailand as “a singularly archaic state” (p. 290) that has managed to perpetuate elite power and privilege through a strong military and much revered monarchy. surely, there are other regions of the world where more antiquated practices survive even though thailand’s military and monarchy are indeed profoundly influential if it were to be compared to modern liberal democracies. this is perhaps one problem of vatikiotis’ and many others’ approach to understanding southeast asia – the assumption that economic growth would lead to liberal values and democratic governance. indeed, some contemporary academic discussions on the politics of southeast asia have evolved from asking why democratization has failed, to why nondemocratic forms of governance persist. in other words, much of the contemporary discourse has evolved to the question of durable authoritarianism – something that the author fails to mention. the book takes the reader on a fascinating but exasperating journey informed by history and established scholarship on the politics of southeast asia. however, it does not necessarily reveal anything new or challenge any existing studies. rather, it reads more like a personal lamentation by an ardent follower. “as someone who has never really felt attached to a particular country in the patriotic sense, watching the simple ceremony”, vatikiotis writes of an independence day celebration in indonesia, “i catch myself feeling a tinge of attachment, a desire to belong to this ambitious, somewhat improbable nation” (p. 288-289). vatikiotis certainly does not pretend to be a detached observer but, in doing so, he may well convert a casual observer to a dedicated advocate for political change in such a pivotal region. jera lego international christian university, tokyo, japan aseas 1-2 final (außergottowik).indd netzwerk südostasienforschung / network south-east asia research anthropologie in die öff entlichkeit kultur refl ektiert die maske – zeitschrift für kulturund sozialanthropologie anthropology goes public refl ecting culture die maske journal for cultural and social anthropology die maske redaktion / die maske editorial board aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften / austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 1 (2), 2008 seas gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften www.seas.at die maske ist ein gegenstand, der auf jedem kontinent vorkommt und bezüge zu vielen teilbereichen der anthropologie erlaubt. sie steht für die menschliche vielfalt und betont dennoch die großen gemeinsamkeiten. masken erfüllen vielseitige aufgaben in unterschiedlichen (kulturellen) kontexten, sie bieten einen rahmen, innerhalb dessen etwas erprobt werden kann. so verhält es sich auch mit der zeitschrift die maske, die seit 2007 ehrenamtlich von studentinnen und absolventinnen der anthropologie in wien herausgegeben wird. als herausgeberinnen und herausgeber wagen wir auf gut 92 a4-seiten pro heft den brückenschlag zwischen wissenschaftlichem erkenntnisgewinn und einer interessierten öffentlichkeit. artikel, forschungsberichte, reportagen, interviews und essays werden von professorinnen, studierenden und von journalistinnen verfasst. auch englischsprachige beiträge von internationalen autorinnen sowie transdisziplinäre zugänge sind in jedem heft vertreten. das experimentieren mit schreibstilen ist dabei erwünscht. die maske basiert dabei auf der arbeit eines enthusiastischen teams und den hochwertigen beiträgen, die kostenlos zur verfügung gestellt werden. das projekt begann im herbst 2006 unter der leitung von norma deseke, mitbegründerin des kulturvereins pangea. die erste ausgabe erschien im juni 2007 mit einer auflage von 194 die maske anthropologie in die öff entlichkeit aseas 1 (2) 300 stück und war schnell vergriffen. sie wurde primär im universitären rahmen rezipiert und erreichte hier ein ausgezeichnetes echo. mit der zweiten ausgabe, die im jänner 2008 mit einer auflage von 700 stück erschien, gelang es, auch außerhalb der universität bekannt zu werden. mit der dritten ausgabe (juni 2008) wurde eine weitere auflagensteigerung auf 1000 stück gewagt, neue vertriebswege wurden erkundet, werbemaßnahmen folgten und auch renommierte österreichische medien wurden langsam auf das projekt aufmerksam. die maske wendet sich an eine leserinnenschaft, die sich für die komplexe vielfalt menschlicher organisationsformen interessiert und darüber hinaus deren gemeinsamkeiten kennen lernen möchte. das credo: das wissen, das die kulturund sozialanthropologie erarbeitet, darf nicht im universitären elfenbeinturm bleiben! das ziel der redaktion ist ein wissenschaftsjournalismus, der für eine breitere öffentlichkeit verständlich ist und gleichzeitig auch für fachexpertinnen spannend bleibt. das spannungsfeld zwischen lokalem lebensraum und globalen wirkungszusammenhängen soll dargestellt, kulturelle vielfalt diskutiert werden. die maske steht hier für transparenz, kontinuität, benutzerfreundlichkeit und tiefgang. kulturwissenschaftlerinnen erarbeiten und eröffnen heute mehr möglichkeiten denn je, sich den herausforderungen der globalisierung zu stellen, geerdet durch die lange theoriengeschichte des faches und sensibilisiert durch einen eurozentrismus-kritischen diskurs. die maske bietet einen schauraum dieser entwicklungen, einen ausgewählten und vielstimmigen querschnitt, der sich nicht zu einem repräsentativen aussagenbündel zusammenschließt, sondern das komplexe themenspektrum zeitgenössischer sozialund kulturanthropologischer inhalte aufnimmt. 195 kultur? zeitschrift für kultur und sozialanthropologie die maske wagt den brückenschlag zwischen wissenschaftlicher diskussion und einer interessierten öffentlichkeit. mehr infos und bestellmöglichkeit unter: www.diemaske.at die maske unterteilt sich in folgende rubriken: der „salon“ bietet platz für theoretische überlegungen zu einem von der redaktion • festgelegten thema oder phänomen. die rubrik „fachgebiete“ stellt ein bestimmtes arbeitsund themenfeld der disziplin • vor. interessant sind hier z.b. artikel, die ein neues forschungsfeld öffnen oder die ihre themen in den aktuellen forschungsstand einbetten. auch analysen empirischer beispiele passen gut in diese rubrik. die dritte rubrik „region“ ist, neben dem von uns vorgegebenen geographischen bezug, • inhaltlich sehr frei gehalten und soll raum für empirische forschungen, überlegungen und erfahrungen ermöglichen. des weiteren gibt es noch die rubriken „wiener institut“ und „vernetzung“ – hier • werden u.a. diplomarbeiten, projekte, initiativen, sowie wissenschaftliche literatur vorgestellt. daneben werden wissenschaftliche beiträge auch gerne mit journalistischen kolumnen bzw. essays abgerundet. die maske erscheint derzeit zweimal pro jahr, ein viermaliges erscheinen und eine weitere auflagensteigerung ist angedacht. die vierte ausgabe erscheint im jänner 2009 und widmet sich den schwerpunkten „individuum“ (salon), „stadtforschung“ (fachgebiete) und „ostasien“ (region). die fünfte ausgabe wird sich in kooperation mit „ethnocineca“ dem schwerpunktthema „anthropologischer film“ (fachgebiete) widmen und aller voraussicht nach bereits im mai 2009 erscheinen. folgende schwerpunktthemen für 2009 sind außerdem angedacht: konsum (salon), afrika (region). artikelvorschläge sind bereits willkommen, wir freuen uns zudem sehr über konstruktive kritik, ideen, tipps, zusammenarbeit und vernetzung. weitere informationen findet sich auf der plattform www.diemaske.at. hier ist die maske auch online bestellbar. 196 die maske anthropologie in die öff entlichkeit the gay and the city aseas 3(2) 248 249 forum südostasien / forum south-east asia chiang mai: the gay and the city santi leksakun1 sem pringpuangkeo foundation, thailand citation leksakun, s. (2010). chiang mai: the gay and the city. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 3(2), 249-253. chiang mai has been one of thailand’s top vacation destinations for both international and domestic tourists. many tourists from around the world visit this magnificent city located in the midst of mountainous landscapes, with a natural environment, kind people, and a rich culture. yet, it is not only traditional culture that attracts tourists. as mentioned in the popular gay guide book ‘spartacus’ 2, chiang mai is also a well-known place for gay culture and therefore a popular destination for gay tourists: “thailand is a gay and a tourist paradise … thais do not use the artificial western way of putting us all into classifications like ‘gay’ or ‘straight’. the most heterosexual young man may readily make love with you if he likes you” (stamford, 1980). during the last decade, the gay population in chiang mai has increasingly revealed itself. gays nowadays openly identify themselves as such at schools, universities, and workplaces. gay, ‘ladyboy’, transgender, and lesbian people can be found everywhere in the city, even in the religious institutions. it is claimed that homosexuality seems to be accepted by the local people, but it must be carefully reconsidered whether this really holds true for the city of chiang mai. this article aims to take a closer look at the local experiences relating to the relationship between the city (of chiang mai) and the marginal group of gay people. it does so by describing the attitudes of advocates of ‘traditional culture’ towards 1 mr santi leksakun is project coordinator at sem pringpuangkeo foundation, a non-profi t organisation that facilitates the provision of scholarships as well as other supportive activities for aids orphans in chiang mai, thailand. contact: alextoihoi@gmail.com 2 stamford, j. (1980). spartacus 1980 international gay guide for gay men. amsterdam: spartacus. aseas 3(2) 250 251 gays, and the prejudices, constraints, and struggles the gay community is confronted with. anti-gay: self-identified ‘gay activists’ and ‘gay politicians’ during the last two years, chiang mai, the capital of the former lanna kingdom, has seen the appearance of many movements against gays, ironically led by activists who are gay and call themselves ‘gay politicians’ or ‘gay activists’. one striking example was the gay pride parade in downtown chiang mai in 2009. during the parade, local politicians (including ‘gay politicians’) argued that ‘those people’ [gays] were ravaging the decent cultural heritage of the city. also, red shirt demonstrators opposed the event, and finally the parade organisers decided to cancel it as they feared riots and violence. after the gay pride parade, the same group of ‘gay activists’ came up with similar accusations against the owner of the biggest gay hotel in chiang mai, since they found out that his hotel was being promoted as a place where gay tourists would be able to meet handsome and charming local young men. such an advertisement, they argued, is not suitable for the ‘decent cultural heritage’ of chiang mai. being a tourist city, chiang mai offers a wide variety of recreational and entertainment facilities. the city offers entertainment places for gays as well as for straight people, and there are several gay clubs, bars, and saunas. previously most of these facilities kept a low profile or were even kept secret. only people informed of their whereabouts – mostly gays of course – would recognise and find these places. once these facilities stepped into the public sphere, they received unexpected and even invidious reactions towards their customers and owners. the cruelest comments were put forward by ‘gay activists’. their argument was that chiang mai’s cultural focus should rest with the old lanna traditions and nature. that way, chiang mai would promote the natural and historical beauty of its region as well as the suavity, hospitality, and generosity of its people. being gay, however does not seem to fit into this image. in the perspective of conservative local politicians, the local chiang mai tourism industry would not only easily go without gay-oriented tourism, however, the latter distracts or obstructs the concept of a cultural and tourism capital as they define it. promoting chiang mai aseas 3(2) 250 251 or lanna with the uniqueness or the sexiness of lanna boys to – as they would say – ‘sexually deviant’ tourists, would damage chiang mai’s tourism reputation. however, for the attentive thailand traveller and tourist, it will not stay unrecognised that in the whole country more and more gay people nowadays openly display their identity and meet acceptance. even though there is no reference to gay people or a specific protection clause in the thai constitution, there is a widespread acceptance and respect for members of the gay community. rationale behind the so-called ‘gay activists’ so what is the rationale behind this group of so-called ‘gay activists’, who ironically campaign against people who share their own sexual orientation in chiang mai? apparently one reason is for them to publicly distance themselves from their own sexual orientation, and furthermore their criticism of other gays seems to be grounded in a general fear of oppression based on sexual orientation stemming from mainstream society. even though there seems to be a widespread acceptance of gay culture in thailand, sometimes gays are still demonised and scapegoated, have become victims of police brutality and housing isolation, and suffer from informal exclusion from and access to certain jobs. another problem seems to be one of a linguistic nature. gays in thailand openly use the description of ‘gay’ for themselves; what they however fear, is being called kathoey, a thai word describing a hermaphroditic person as well as an effeminate, transvestite man. in thai kathoey is a word that carries negative connotations and that means ‘transvestite’ or ‘transsexual’. in contrast, the english word ‘gay’ positively embraces the idea of being a masculine-identified homosexual. for most thais this sounds much more positive and not too effeminate like kathoey. however, the thai language did not borrow the english notion of straight or masculine-identified to connote the concept of kathoey. especially gays of a higher socio-economic or educational status are afraid of being called kathoey since they feel this term would stigmatise them in thai society and complicate their lives. in the thai media and television shows, kathoeys are portrayed as queer clowns who are noisy, rude, and inferior to ‘ordinary people’. so besides sexual deviance there is also an element of low social status linked to the term kathoey. santi leksakun chiang mai: the gay and the city aseas 3(2) 252 253 especially since chiang mai defines the origins of its own richness as based on a diversity of ethnicity and culture, it has to deeply re-examine whether it fulfils the character it likes to display – and whether it provides openness and tolerance towards all its inhabitants and guests, regardless of them being ‘different’ to mainstream culture or sexual preference categories. recently at the loy krathong festival3 2010, one of the most important cultural events in chiang mai, ladyboys and gays were banned from taking part in the krathong street parade. the organisers argued that since the obvious aims of the parade would be the beauty of the parade participants and decorations, only ladies and gentlemen would fit as participants. if there was any controversy about parade applicants, they would not be permitted to join the parade. only after filing a complaint to the administrative court was an injunction given that led to a temporary allowance for gays and kathoey to join the chiang mai loy krathong festival. these are just some highlights of how gays and kathoeys are still facing difficulties in expressing themselves and openly participating in cultural life in chiang mai. even though one could speak of a general mood of tolerance towards gays and people of alternative sexual identities in thailand, there apparently still are some specific shortcomings if one turns an eye to chiang mai and especially its formal concept of cultural identity. apparently it is the latter which leads to a situation that tries to exclude gays and kathoeys from social and cultural life and stimulates others to depict them as disgusting and abnormal. the old chiang mai tradition and the way forward: a personal outlook in my personal view, the difficulty in expressing sexual preference and tolerance of this is the consequence of the lack of education and knowledge about how gender or sexuality is produced. it appears as a lack of respect for the diversity of chiang mai’s various inhabitants and visitors who however are all entitled to equal rights. chiang mai is a growing city with many development plans that aim to enhance the quality of life. those plans, however, seem to give priority to mainstream tourist businesses rather than to the people living in the city. chiang mai heavily promotes 3 the loy krathong festival is a time to accumulate/generate merit, and some of thailand’s most elaborate celebrations can be seen in chiang mai. the festival is believed to originate from an ancient practice of paying respect to the spirit of the waters. aseas 3(2) 252 253 a staged culture of old lanna traditions for tourists. it thereby overlooks the point that the development of the cultural sphere must be seen as part of a long term inclusionary process mixing old and new, incorporating traditional aspects as well as leaving space for development and creativity which rely to the social reality on the ground. culture in that sense does not only consist of cultural artefacts such as temples, ruins, and old lanna traditions, but also of changing and diversified lifestyles, attitudes, and behaviour. those people who often refer to the ‘the old chiang mai tradition’, ‘the uniqueness of lanna’, ‘the decent and proud culture’ do not realise that the ‘true cultural city’ should be a city that is open to different cultures, different people, different ethnicities, and definitely different gender and sexual preferences. aside from educating its people to quit using plastic bags, the city should as well start promoting and respecting gender diversity, especially in such a way that gender is not limited to being only masculine and feminine, gay or lesbian, but also includes other, alternative sexual orientations which are even greater in their complexity. today one can see that there is some space in thailand for gays to articulate and express themselves. when they are however suspected of bringing any kind of “disgrace to the social rules”, a lot of people will be tempted to quickly revert to the notion of “gays” and “normal people” as an instrument to distance themselves, or as a means of exclusion. as things now stand it appears there is still a long way to go to reach a situation where persons of diverse sexual preferences are able to selfconfidently claim and express their own identities. chiang mai’s people, however, can already grow and live together more peacefully by calling for greater analytical attention, by respecting and tolerating cultural and personal rights of identity and expression, and by allowing some space for alternative ways of life. santi leksakun chiang mai: the gay and the city die rohingyas konstruktion, de-konstruktion und re-konstruktion einer ethnisch-religiösen nationalen identität the rohingyas in myanmar. construction, de-construction and re-construction of an ethnic identity aseas 1 (1) die rohingyas konstruktion, de-konstruktion und re-konstruktion einer ethnisch-religiösen identität the rohingyas in myanmar. construction, de-construction and re-construction of an ethnic identity hans-bernd zöllner aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften / austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 1 (1), 2008 seas gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften www.seas.at die rohingyas, die im staat rakhine (arakan) im westen des heutigen myanmar leben, bilden eine große geschlossene muslimische bevölkerungsgruppe an der grenze zu bangladesh. in den vergangenen jahrzehnten gab es mehrere fluchtbewegungen über die grenze und aktionen der rückführung. bei alledem ist der status der rohingyas umstritten. die organisationen, die ihre interessen vertreten, sehen sie als indigene bewohner des landes, die sich auf eine mehr als 1000jährige geschichte berufen können. von seiten buddhistischer arakanesen und der zentralregierung myanmars werden sie als ausländer angesehen und behandelt. das papier untersucht die historische genese der konstruktion einer ethnischen nationalität der rohingyas vis à vis der buddhistischen bevölkerung in arakan und gesamtbirma sowie die bestreitung dieses anspruchs und gibt dabei einen überblick über die muslimische einflüsse auf die geschichte und kultur des über jahrhunderte unabhängigen königreichs arakan. the rohingyas living in the state of rakhine (arakan) in western myanmar form a great en bloc community muslim community on the border to bangladesh. in the past decades, great numbers of people fled the country and were repatriated later. the status of the rohingyas is a controversial issue. the organisations representing their interest consider them as indigenous people of myanmar looking back at a history of 1000 years in arakan. buddhist arakanese as well as the central government of myanmar, however, regard and treat them as foreigners. the paper examines the historical genesis of the construction of a national rohingya identity vis-à-vis the buddhist population of rakhine and the whole of burma/myanmar as well as its contradiction. in addition, an overview on the muslim influences on history and culture of the kingdom of arakan will be given. 53 aseas 1 (1) 1 einleitung dieser beitrag hat in mehrfacher hinsicht mit einem grenzfall zu tun. die gruppe von menschen, von denen hier die rede sein soll, lebt auf zwei seiten einer grenze. sie hat sich in den letzten jahrhunderten herausgebildet, verschiedene entwicklungen durchlaufen und ist dabei im laufe der zeit gewissermaßen immer fester geworden. heute ist es die grenze zwischen rakhine (arakan), dem westlichen staat myanmars,� und bangladesh. auf ihrer nord-westlichen seite leben – teils in flüchtlingslagern, teils in elendsquartieren – einige zehntausend menschen, die vom flüchtlingshilfswerk der vereinten nationen (unhcr) unter dem begriff „rohingyas“ geführt werden. in myanmar gibt es einige hunderttausend personen der mit diesem namen bezeichneten gruppe, die aber im lande selbst offiziell nicht so genannt werden dürfen. den menschen auf beiden seiten der grenze ist gemeinsam, dass sie muslime sind, dass sie und ihre vorfahren eine längere vorgeschichte von teils freiwilligen, teils gewaltsam erzwungenen migrationen hinter sich haben und dass sie in beiden ländern unwillkommen sind. die durch den fluss naaf bezeichnete ländergrenze trennt gleichzeitig die disziplinen der südasien und der südostasienforschung. die „rohingyas“ bieten also anlass, traditionelle forschungsgrenzen zu überschreiten. weiter wird es im folgenden darum gehen, inwieweit sinnvoller weise von den rohingyas als einer durch bestimmte merkmale von anderen abgegrenzten gruppe gesprochen werden kann, also um ein problem, das neben einer politischen auch eine erkenntnistheoretische meta-ebene impliziert und somit die südasien wie die südostasienerforscher fragt, auf welcher ebene der wirklichkeit das angesiedelt ist, was sie im zusammenhang mit dieser gruppierung – und darüber hinaus – erforschen. schließlich hat dieser beitrag eine forschungspolitische komponente. birma/myanmar ist eine der regionen südostasiens, die notorisch unterforscht sind. in diesem beitrag werden zuerst die elemente benannt, die zur konstruktion einer rohingyaidentität beigetragen haben, dann wird die de-konstruktion der diese identität stützenden argumente vorgestellt und schließlich erfolgt als zusammenfassung die re-konstruktion einer „negativen rohingya-identität“, gefolgt von einer kleinen schluss-pointe. ausgangspunkt ist ein kurzes zitat aus einem kürzlich erschienenen sammelband zum islam � die seit �988 regierende militärjunta verfügte �989, dass das ganze land international mit dem begriff „myanmar“ zu bezeichnen sei, der intern schon vorher üblich gewesen war. der begriff „birma(ne)“ (englisch: „burma(n)“) und seine ableitungen sollten danach für die ethnische mehrheit des landes verwandt werden. diese sprachregelung ist von der regierung der vereinigten staaten und verschiedenen oppositionsgruppen gegen das regime nicht übernommen worden. im folgenden wird für die zeit vor �989 das wort „birma“, für die zeit danach das wort „myanmar“ verwendet. – die umbenennung betraf auch andere geographische bezeichnungen wie rakhine – arakan und yangon – rangun. 54 hans-bernd zöllner die rohingyas aseas 1 (1) in südostasien, herausgegeben vom renommierten institute of southeast asian studies (fealey & hooker 2006). da werden vier gruppen von muslimischen gemeinschaften in myanmar unterschieden, wobei die rohingya als eine untergruppe der in arakan lebenden muslime genannt werden. an dem folgenden zitat ist, wie im weiteren gezeigt werden soll, je nach betrachtungsweise fast alles falsch und doch zugleich auch wieder fast alles richtig. the rohingyas probably first migrated eastwards to burma in the fifteenth century when a nominally muslim kingdom ruled an empire that at its ascendary stretched from dacca … to moulmein. (lamprecht 2006: 25) hier wie in anderen publikationen2 wird zusammenfassend ein – wahrscheinlicher – zusammenhang zwischen der geschichte der rohingyas und der des heutigen myanmar formuliert. diese historische zuordnung lässt sich als ergebnis eines komplexen prozesses der allmählich erfolgten konstruktion einer rohingya-identität verstehen. 2 bausteine der konstruktion einer ethnisch-religiösen identität wie andere ehemalige kolonien, ist auch der heutige staat myanmar aus einer mischung unterschiedlicher traditionen von staatlichkeit entstanden. auf der einen seite stehen die traditionen der reiche und gemeinschaften, die es in den grenzen des heutigen myanmar im laufe der geschichte gegeben hat. zu den reichen gehören die königreiche, die von verschiedenen birmanischen dynastien beherrscht wurden, sowie das über jahrhunderte unabhängige königreich arakan� und seit beginn des �9. jahrhunderts das britische empire. zu den gemeinschaften gehören muslimische gruppierungen unterschiedlicher ethnischer herkunft, die in diesen reichen dauerhaft sesshaft geworden sind. elemente dieser verschiedenen staats und gemeinschaftsverständnisse ergeben die bestandteile, die zusammen zur konstruktion einer rohingya-identität beigetragen haben. diese konstruktion erfolgte, wie in der herausbildung kollektiver identitäten üblich,4 im gegenüber zu anderen 2 so findet sich in einem im rahmen des lehrforschungsprogramms der universität bielefeld verfassten forschungsberichts folgender passus: „die rohingyas sind die größtenteils muslimischen bewohner des gebietes arakan im heutigen staat myanmar. ihre vorfahren sind die arabischen händler, die arakan und bengalen besucht hatten, sich niederließen und mit der schon ansässigen bevölkerung vermischten. arakan ist historisch von vielen verschiedenen eroberern heimgesucht und beherrscht worden. im 9. jahrhundert nach christus kam arakan unter die herrschaft des indischen subkontinents. später, während der zeit der muslim-könige im �5. jahrhundert, wurde arakan unabhängiges königreich. nach den drei anglo-burmesischen kriegen im �9. jahrhundert war burma unter britischer herrschaft und arakan offiziell teil von burma. ab �9�7 wurde arakan zunächst als zu indien gehörig geführt, kurz darauf aber aus verwaltungstechnischen gründen burma wegen der schwierigen geographischen lage wiederangegliedert: die trennung durch den naf-river vom übrigen bengalen und die chittagong hill tracts als schwierig zu durchquerende und schlecht kontrollierbare gegend“ (hering 2000: 8). � arakan wurde �784 vom birmanischen könig bodawphaya erobert und in das birmanische reich eingegliedert. 4 siehe giesen �999 und distelrath (u.a.) 2007. 55 aseas 1 (1) gruppierungen auf beiden seiten der heutigen staatsgrenze. im folgenden werden drei dieser elemente näher erläutert, die für die herausbildung einer kollektiven „rohingya-identität“ konstitutiv sind. 2.1 religiös bestimmte ethnizität nachdem die britische east-india company nach dem ersten anglo-birmanischen krieg im jahr �826 neben tenasserim im südlichen teil des birmanischen reiches auch arakan in ihre indischen besitzungen eingegliedert hatte, begann sie ihr neues territorium zu katalogisieren. dabei wählten sie in ihren ersten zählungen der bevölkerung kategorien sowohl ethnischer wie religiöser natur. �872 wurden im größten distrikt arakans, akyab, der an bengalen angrenzte, als eine von �0 gruppen unter den insgesamt 276.67� einwohnern 58.255 „mohamedans of pure or mixed blood“ identifiziert (gazetteer �98�: �6).5 mit dieser formulierung wurde darauf angespielt, dass muslime im unterschied zu den hindus frauen anderer religionen und volksgruppen heirateten und dass verbindungen aus diesen verbindungen dann ebenfalls muslime waren.6 damit war die basis dafür gelegt, „die muslime“ arakans als eine durch religion „homogenisierte“ ethnische gruppierung zu betrachten. „mohammedaner“, wie die muslime anfang des �9. jahrhunderts vor dem zeitalter der political correctnis und der geschlechtergerechten formulierungen von den britischen beamten genannt wurden, werden so zu einem teil der bevölkerung der von der kolonialmacht neu konstituierten einheit arakan. sie erhalten den status einer gruppe unter anderen in dem distrikt lebenden gruppen und dadurch ein potenzielles recht auf gleich berechtigte anerkennung. „muslim-sein“ erhielt eine bis dahin nicht gegebene quantitativ messbare qualität gegenüber den gegebenheiten unter der herrschaft der arakanesischen (bis �784) und birmanischen (ab �784) könige, vorher waren alle ethno-religiösen gruppen im lande im sinne der buddhistisch begründeten herrschafts-ideologie dem jeweiligen herrscher untergeordnet.7 die beziehungen zwischen den einzelnen gruppierungen wurden also letztlich alle über die beziehungen zur spitze der herrschaftspyramide definiert. 5 die größte gruppe waren die arakanesen (�7�.6�2), es folgten nach den „mohammedanern“ verschiedene „hill tribes“ (�8.577), birmanen (4.6�2) und hindus (2.655). von allen anderen gruppen (europäer und amerikaner, eurasier und indo-portugiesen, chinesen, afghanen und schan) wurden weniger als �000 personen gezählt. 6 “one noticible difference between hindoo and mussulman immigrants was that the latter intermarry freely with the women of the country who, nominally at least, become muslims” (gazetteer �98�: �7). 7 siehe zur königs-ideologie arakans leider (�998) zu birma lieberman (�984: 6�-92). 56 hans-bernd zöllner die rohingyas aseas 1 (1) 2.2 rückwirkende historische verknüpfung es dauerte mehr als ein jahrhundert, bevor die arakanesischen „mohamedans“ auf der bühne der weltgeschichte wahrgenommen wurden.8 entscheidend waren dafür die ereignisse des jahres �978, als zwischen märz und august als spätfolge der entstehung des staates bangladesh und der verstärkung der bemühungen der birmanischen regierung um eine „homogenisierung“ des landes etwa eine viertelmillion muslimischer bewohner arakans nach bangladesh flüchteten.9 sie wurden im laufe der nächsten jahre repatriiert. ihr geschick wurde im dezember desselben jahres auf einer vom islamic council of europe veranstalteten konferenz über muslimische minderheiten in nicht-muslimischen staaten in london zur sprache gebracht.�0 dabei wurde festgestellt, dass die muslime bürger birmas seien und seit mehr als 500 jahren in der region lebten (islamic council �980: 75). diese historische ableitung hatte zur voraussetzung, dass es im zeitalter der nationalstaaten zur identität einer gruppierung, die sie von anderen gruppierungen unterscheidet, gehört, dass ihr eine geschichte zugeschrieben werden kann (vgl. anderson �99�: 42-4�). die in dem konferenzband skizzierte „rohingya-geschichte“ wurde später in publikationen und internetpräsentationen�� wiederholt und in dem sinne ausgebaut, dass arakan bis zu der eroberung durch die birmanen im jahr �784 ein muslimisches königreich gewesen sei. damit wird zugleich der exodus von �978, der sich �99� und �992 wiederholte, in eine reihe mit einem die geschichte der die region prägenden birmanischen expansionismus gestellt. 2.3 namensgebung schließlich wird auch der name der gruppe, rohingyas, historisch abgeleitet und damit legitimiert: „it is a historical name of a community living in arakan. historically the old name of arakan is rohang and her people are rohingyas.”�2 damit ist die identifikation der 8 in der geschichte des “modernen birma” von j.f. cady (�965) kommen die arakanesischen muslime gar nicht vor. in tinkers analyse der ersten jahre der birmanischen unabhängigkeit wird nur die �948 ausgebrochene mujahidrebellion erwähnt, deren teilnehmer so charakterisiert werden: „[…] bands of muslim adventurersin the extrem north of arakan, whose terrorist activities were […] beyond government control, activities ostensibly devoted to the creation of a separate muslim state“ (tinker �957: �4). 9 siehe zum folgenden: yegar (2002: 54-67). �0 siehe islamic council �980. aus dem tagungsprogramm (s. �58-�62) geht hervor, dass das geschick der birmanischen muslime auf der konferenz mehrmals thematisiert wurde. in dem konferenzband ist nur ein vortrag enthalten, der einzelheiten zu dieser frage enthält. in den resolutionen der konferenz wird die „brutale verfolgung“ von muslimen in birma ausdrücklich erwähnt. außerdem werden äthiopien, eritrea, die philippinen, thailand und kambodscha erwähnt (s. �65). �� auf der website der free rohingya campaign (2005) ist zu lesen: „arakan was an independent sovereign muslim kingdom up to �784 ad in which year it was colonized by burmese king bodawphaya. it is a multi-national country with two major communities of rohingyas and maghs. rohingyas are muslims and maghs confess buddhism.” �2 free rohingya campaign (2006). diese definition findet sich fast wörtlich in einem internet-dokument des flüchtlingshilfswerks unhcr (2000). 57 aseas 1 (1) muslimischen bevölkerung arakans mit dem früheren reich arakan komplettiert. die rohingyas tragen den ursprünglichen namen der region weiter und repräsentieren somit den ursprung einer nation mit eigener geschichte, kultur und sprache, die – wie andere unterdrückte nationen auch – um die anerkennung ihrer legitimen rechte kämpft. 3 de-konstruktion die rohingyas lassen sich somit unter die „imagined communities“ einreihen, die kennzeichen einer nation aufweisen. sie haben ihre geschichte rückwirkend nach-erzählt (vgl homi bhabha �995). diese erzählung und die daraus abgeleitete konstruktion werden aber nun auch – von vertretern anderer vorgestellten gemeinschaften – bestritten. dabei sind buddhistisch-arakanesische nationalisten besonders aktiv. rohingyas als ethnische gruppe zu bezeichnen, sei eine fälschung (fake), wird gesagt (arakan information website 2007a). zur untermauerung ihrer ansicht werden – wie von den vertretern der rohingyas – die arbeiten von wissenschaftlern angeführt.�� im folgenden wird kurz zusammengetragen, wie sich mit der wissenschaft entlehnten argumenten eine behauptete rohingya-identität de-konstruieren lässt. 3.1 der name: ein produkt aus der zeit der unabhängigkeit für den begriff „rohingya“ gibt es sehr verschiedene ableitungen. außer der schon angeführten kann der begriff so gegensätzlich übersetzt werden wie „die mitleid erfuhren“ und „die tapferen“ (yegar �972: 25, anm. �)�4. eine dritte und vierte version leitet den namen von dem eines muslimischen prinzen namens rahin oder einem sultanat namens roang ab (khin maung saw �994: 9�-95). ergiebiger als die klärung der etymologie des wortes ist die frage, seit wann der begriff in breitem maße verwendung findet. dabei ergibt sich, dass das erst spät der fall ist. vor dem ende der 50er jahre des vorigen jahrhunderts taucht der begriff kaum auf.�5 vor allem finden �� siehe für die buddhistischen arakanesen: arakan information website (2007b) unter „scholars column“, für die rohingyas: arakan rohingya national organisation (2007) unter „history“. vgl. aye chan (2005). �4 vgl. fleischmann �98�: 24-25. beide autoren berufen sich auf einen artikel in der birmanischen zeitung the guardian magazine aus dem jahr �960. der autor, ba tha, war wahrscheinlich ein muslim, der einen birmanischen namen angenommen hatte (mündliche auskunft von khin maung saw, berlin). �5 francis buchanan, ein englischer arzt im dienste der east india company, der �795 eine delegation an den birmanischen hof in ava begleitete und �798 eine erkundungsreise „through the provinces of chittagong and tiperah …, in order to look out fort he places most proper fort he cultivation of spices“ unternahm, erwähnt in einem artikel aus dem jahre �80� den namen „rooingyas“ als eine linguistische bezeichnung einer gruppe, die sowohl muslime wie hindus umfasst (buchanan �80�). 58 hans-bernd zöllner die rohingyas aseas 1 (1) sich in den berichten der britischen kolonialbeamten aus dem ende des �9. und dem anfang des 20. jahrhunderts keinerlei hinweise auf eine bezeichnung, die auch nur eine entfernte ähnlichkeit mit dem namen „rohingya“ aufweist. im blick auf die „mohammedaner“ wird zwischen verschiedenen gruppen differenziert, die zu unterschiedlichen zeiten ins land gekommen sind, wobei bei den muslimen bengalischer herkunft zwischen nachkommen von sklaven aus früheren zeiten und einwanderern aus der gegend von chittagong unterschieden wird, die sich zum teil nur in der erntesaison in arakan aufhalten (gazetteer of burma �880: 2-�).�6 all das spricht dafür, dass der begriff „rohingyas“ in den schwierigen, von bürgerkrieg und politischen auseinandersetzungen, sowie versuchen, die einheit des landes zu bewahren, geprägten 50er jahren, entstanden ist.�7 es ist möglich, dass er in zusammenhang mit dem aufstand muslimischer rebellen, den mujahids, in arakan entstanden und verbreitet worden ist.�8 3.2 die vorgeschichte: migrationen, mischehen und galactic polities der name, unter der die mehrzahl der muslimischen bewohner arakans heute bekannt ist, ist also eng verbunden mit der geschichte des unabhängig gewordenen birma sowie seiner westlichen nachbarn ost-pakistan beziehungsweise ab �97� bangladesh. die „rohingyaproblematik“ ist ein post-koloniales problem, das – grob gesagt – eine doppelte vorgeschichte hat. in der kolonialzeit, die in birma im februar �826 mit dem ende des anglo-birmanischen krieges anbrach,�9 wurden die voraussetzungen für die migration zahlreicher bewohner indiens – und darunter besonders vieler aus dem an arakan angrenzenden bengalen – geschaffen. die vorangegangenen kriege hatten dazu beigetragen, dass dies gebiet besonders dünn besiedelt war. nun gab es rückkehrer sowohl aus dem birmanischen kerngebiet mit dem �6 während hier auf den nördlichen distrikt akyab bezug genommen wird, wird im blick auf den südlicher gelegenen distrikt sandoway (thandwe) zwischen abkömmlingen muslimischer soldaten, die anfang des �9. jahrhunderts auf grund einer hungersnot aus aus ava gekommen waren, und den „kaman“ unterschieden, die nachkommen von soldaten shah shujas, der in den thronstreitigkeiten nach dem tode shah jahans nach bengalen floh und am hofe des königs von arakan zuflucht suchte (gazetteer �98�: 6�9). �7 siehe zu dieser zeit tinker (�957: �4-6�). – einer quelle zufolge wurde der begriff von u nu, dem ersten premierminister gebraucht: „in november �959 the late prime minister u nu, during a hectic campaign, in the mayu district, arakan near then east pakistan, now bangladesh, mistakenly uttered the word rohingya. since then politically motivated bengali muslims have been taking advantage of this by discarding their identity as bengali to become a new race called rohingya. these political islamists have been working very hard for world acceptance of them as a new race (arakan information website 2006). – aye chan (2005) meint, dass es bengalische intellektuelle waren, die den begriff anfangs der 50er jahre erfunden haben. �8 so die theorie von khin maung saw (�994: 96-97). �9 in dem den krieg beendenden vertrag von yandabo vom 24.2.�826 wurden die provinzen tenasserim und arakan an die ostindische kompanie abgetreten. vgl. dazu allott (�994). 59 aseas 1 (1) zentrum in ava wie aus dem angrenzenden bengalen.20 es handelte sich hier, wie im restlichen birma auch, teils um wanderarbeiter, teils um menschen, die sich auf dauer wieder oder zum ersten mal niederließen und familien gründeten. dabei trafen sie im lande auch auf muslime unterschiedlicher ethnischer herkunft, die sich in früheren zeiten hier niedergelassen hatten und teilweise einheimische frauen geheiratet hatten, deren nachkommen als muslime aufwuchsen, sich aber sonst kaum von der lokalen bevölkerung unterschieden (yegar 2002: 2728).2� diese tradition der „mischehen“ wurde von einigen der neuen zuwanderer fortgesetzt, womit sich, wie oben schon beschrieben, die „indischen muslime“ von den „indischen hindus“ unterschieden.22 während in dieser zeit die grundlagen für die entstehung einer zahlenmäßig großen gruppe von muslimen auf birmanischem boden gelegt wurde, die durch migration und mischehen ethnisch gemischt, aber religiös homogen war, gab die geschichte arakans vor der kolonialzeit anlass, davon zu sprechen, dass arakan „schon immer“ muslimisch gewesen sei. zum hofe von mrauk-u, der hauptstadt des königreichs arakan, das bis �666 auch die bengalische hafenstadt chittagong umfasste, gehörten menschen verschiedener ethnischer und religiöser herkunft, die allerdings allesamt dem buddhistischen herrscher zur loyalität verpflichtet waren (leider �998). der könig arakans drückte umgekehrt seine verpflichtung gegenüber den muslimen seines reiches dadurch aus, dass er auch einen muslimischen namen in seinem königstitel aufnahm und dass dieser name auch – aber nie allein – auf münzen geprägt wurde. weiter wurde am hofe bengalische literatur gepflegt (bhattacharya 2002). all das geschah im system einer galactic polity (tambiah ), deren zentrum von beginn der blütezeit arakans in mrauk-u lag und eindeutig von einem buddhistischen herrschaftskonzept bestimmt war, in dem auch die idee eines cakkravartin, eines gerechten buddhistischen weltherrschers vorkam. 4 re-konstruktion: negative identität mit den rohingyas wird somit eine gruppe von muslimen bezeichnet, die heute im blick auf ihre gruppenidentität zwischen baum und borke leben. in bangladesh werden sie als flüchtlinge aus myanmar angesehen, in myanmar als menschen, die fälschlicherweise behaupten, ihre geschichte sei ein teil der geschichte arakans und könnten daraus das recht ableiten, 20 „when arakan was first ceded it was found to be almost depopulated but immigration soon flocked in, composed mainly of persons who had been driven out by the burmese or who had escaped during the war and who came back to there homes from chittagong and other neighbouring districts, and as the country became more settled, the immigration increased“ (gazetteer �98�: �5). 2� yegar benutzt für diese schon vor �826 in arakan lebende „mischbevölkerung“ den begriff „rohingyas“, ohne einen beleg für eine zeitgenössische verwendung dieses begriffes anzuführen. 22 der gazetteer von �880 schreibt über die schon länger in arakan lebenden muslime: „they differ but little from the arakanese except in their religion and in some customs which their religion directs; in writing they use burmese butr among themselves employ colloquially the language of their ancestors” (gazetteer �98�: �6). 60 hans-bernd zöllner die rohingyas aseas 1 (1) myanmar als ihre heimat zu betrachten. in der volkszählung von �98� wurden sie folglich als „bangladeshis“ gezählt.2� für diese negative und fremdbestimmte festlegung der identität der rohingyas – und vieler anderer in myanmar lebenden menschen mit einem indischen hintergrund – ist entscheidend, dass das birmanische staatsbürgerrecht, das �982 auf den grundlagen der bestimmungen von �948 neu formuliert wurde, eine historische dimension hat.24 eine uneingeschränkte staatsbürgerschaft wurde dabei nur den bewohnern des landes zugesprochen, die zu den „national races“ gehören. dabei wird das jahr �82�, also das jahr vor ausbruch des ersten anglo-birmanischen krieges, als zeitliche grenze genannt.25 für angehörige von ethnischen gruppen, die später ins land kamen, ist ein antragsverfahren vorgesehen, das verschiedene abstufungen von staatsbürgerschaft vorsieht. mit dieser regelung wurden und wird von allen, die nicht ohne weiteres als ethnische birmanen anerkannt werden, und das sind alle bewohner des landes indischer abstammung, eine einzelfallprüfung zur zuerkennung ihrer birmanischen staatsangehörigkeit verlangt und somit eine „gruppenidentität“ ausgeschlossen. dieser historische hintergrund erklärt zu einem großen teil den streit um die historische rolle der muslime in arakan und die verankerung des begriffs „rohingyas“ in der frühen geschichte des landes.26 es ist bemerkenswert, dass in dieser juristischen festlegung der anfang einer birmanischen nation auf das datum vor beginn der kolonialzeit zurückverlegt wird. damit wird eine einbeziehung der zahlreichen ethnischen gruppen, die in den grenzen des heutigen myanmars leben, erreicht, aber um den preis der ausgrenzung aller bewohner indischer herkunft, die gezwungen werden, sich in individuellen verwaltungsakten die staatsangehörigkeit zu beantragen. die identität der rohingyas ist also „dazwischen“, sie ist virtuell, der realität nachgebildet wie ein avatar in den virtuellen welten des internet. zugleich ist die behauptung einer rohingya-identität aber auch höchst real, denn es ist gerade die bestreitung der anerkennung der eigenen gruppenidentität, die gemeinschaft schafft.27 eine solche virtuelle bzw. „hybride“ realität ist nun durchaus nichts außergewöhnliches. 2� lamprecht 2006: 25. 24 siehe zum gesetz von �948 fleischmann (�98�: 86-89); zum gesetz von �982 yegar (2002: 58-59). 25 absatz � des gesetzes in der fassung von �982 lautet: „nationals such as the kachin, kayah, karen, chin, burman, mon, rakhine or shan and ethnic groups as have settled in any of the territories included within the state as their permanent home from a period anterior to ��85 b.e., �82� a.d. are burma citizens.” 26 nach abschluss der arbeit an dem text wurde ende juli 2007 berichtet, dass �5000 rohingyas von den behörden myanmars identitätsausweise bekommen werden. nach aussagen des vertreters des flüchtlingshilfswerks der vereinten nationen (unhcr) in yangon bekommen die antragsteller einen temporary registration certificate (trc) genannten ausweis. die kosten für die anfertigung der fälschungssichereren dokumente, die den aufenthalt der inhaber in myanmar legalisiert, ohne dass sie damit die vollen bürgerrechte bekommen, werden von den vereinigten staaten finanziert. nach aussagen des unhcr-vertreters gibt es an die 200.000 rohingyas, für die ein solcher ausweis hilfreich sein könnte als ein möglicherweise erster schritt zur anerkennung der vollen staatsbürgerschaft (irrawaddy, 24. juli 2007). 27 vgl. dazu das konzept des „dritten raums“ von bhabha (�995). 61 aseas 1 (1) die rohingyas teilen sie mit anderen ethnischen gruppen, deren hauptkennzeichen darin besteht, dass sie auf grund von nicht-anerkennung „bedroht“ sind wie etwa die kurden und die palästinenser. im unterschied zu den genannten gruppen, die seit jahrzehnten um ihre anerkennung als nationen kämpfen, bilden die rohingyas eine gruppe, aus der heraus sich bisher innerhalb myanmars noch keine zivile organisation hat herausbilden können.28 damit ist sowohl die „rohingya-identität“ sowohl in ihrer negativen version des ausschlusses aus dem birmanischen wie dem arakan-staat wie der positiven version durch die unterstützer der dieser gruppe angehörenden menschen mehrheitlich fremdbestimmt. schluss-pointe die ausgrenzung von teilen der bevölkerung durch einen staat ist aber auch eine bedrohung für dessen eigenen status. das gilt mit besonderer deutlichkeit für den staat, dem die rohingyas ein bürgerrecht abtrotzen wollen. das heutige myanmar ist ein staat, aber – noch – keine nation. die versuche der regierenden, dem land eine nationale identität zu verordnen, sind ähnlich konstruiert und werden ähnlich de-konstruiert wie das hier für die muslime arakans zu zeigen versucht wurde.29 so wie sich die regierung myanmars weigert, den begriff „rohingyas“ zu benutzen, weigern sich die vereinigten staaten und viele oppositionsgruppen gegen die militärregierung des landes, den von ihr �989 verordneten namen „myanmar“ zu verwenden. aber das ist eine andere geschichte. bibliographie allott, anna (�994). the end of the first anglo-burmese war: the burmese chronicle account of how the �826 treaty of yandabo was negotiated. bangkok: chulalongkorn university press. anderson, benedict (�99�). die erfindung der nation. zur karriere eines folgenreichen konzepts. frankfurt/new york: campus verlag. arakan information website (2006). statement by arakanese american. aufgerufen am 2�.5.2007 von 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[u.a.]: lexington books. 64 hans-bernd zöllner die rohingyas prioritising the variables affecting human security in south-east asia aseas 3(2) 194 195 aktuelle südostasienforschung / current research on south-east asia prioritising the variables aff ecting human security in south-east asia alexander k. lautensach1 & sabina w. lautensach2 university of northern british columbia, canada human security institute, canada citation lautensach, a. k., & lautensach, s. w. (2010). prioritising the variables affecting human security in southeast asia. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 3(2), 194-210. human security is usually framed as a multidimensional concept that depends on socio-political, economic, health-related, and ecological ‘pillars’. an assessment of human security requires an analysis of the nested relationships between those variables. focusing on south-east asian countries we illustrate how those relationships can be used to prioritise determinants of human security. such priorities are important because policies directed at promoting human security require defi nite starting points and targets. what emerges is a collage of nested systems in which global and regional environmental patterns exert the dominant infl uence. we assess the long-term human security prospects of south-east asian countries by comparing their ecological footprints. south-east asia’s major ecosystems have not yet been overly incapacitated by the impact of its human populations. human security policies could be much improved by addressing the growing inequities in ecological footprints and by public education campaigns on the signifi cance of ecosystem health. keywords: human security, environmental security, ecological footprint, sustainability, overshoot menschliche sicherheit wird für gewöhnlich als multidimensionales konzept charakterisiert, das auf sozio-politischen, ökonomischen, gesundheitsbezogenen und ökologischen „säulen“ basiert. eine untersuchung menschlicher sicherheit erfordert demnach die berücksichtigung der wechselwirkungen zwischen diesen variablen. anhand der südostasiatischen länder illustrieren wir, wie diese wechselwirkungen genutzt werden können, um die determinanten menschlicher sicherheit zu priorisieren. derartige prioritäten sind notwendig, da eine politik zur stärkung von menschlicher sicherheit klar defi nierte ausgangsund zielpunkte benötigt. es entsteht eine art collage von ineinander greifenden systemen, in denen globale und regionale ökologische muster einen bestimmenden einfl uss ausüben. wir untersuchen die langfristigen perspektiven von menschlicher sicherheit in den südostasiatischen staaten durch einen vergleich ihrer ökologischen fußabdrücke. südostasiens wichtigste ökosysteme sind bisher relativ wenig durch menschliche aktivitäten in mitleidenschaft gezogen. menschliche sicherheit in südostasien könnte also stark verbessert werden, wenn den zunehmenden unterschieden der ökologischen fußabdrücke entgegen gewirkt wird und öff entli1 assistant professor, school of education, university of northern british columbia, terrace, bc, canada 2 director, human security institute, terrace, bc, canada. contact: salaut@gmail.com aseas 3(2) 194 195 che kampagnen zur bewusstseinsbildung für die bedeutung der ökosysteme betrieben werden. schlagworte: menschliche sicherheit, umweltsicherheit, ökologischer fußabdruck, nachhaltigkeit, raubbau conceptualising human security human security as a concept first surfaced in the early 1990s when it became increasingly clear that the end of the cold war would not be accompanied by an end to armed conflict but that instead the nature of violent conflict was changing, away from traditional interstate war towards intrastate conflicts fuelled by ethnic, religious, or ideological divisions. the discourse about security became enriched with the new insight that states are not the only entities whose security ought to concern us. regions, communities, families, and individuals can only feel secure if they have reason to believe that their continued functioning is not going to be threatened at every turn. furthermore, the security of the state largely depends on the security of regions, communities, families, and individuals. and occasionally states fail to fulfil their obligations as security guarantors, even to the point of threatening the security of their own citizens. it was realised that a primary requirement for human security was not merely the absence of war but the absence of structural and personal violence (galtung, 1969). these realisations informed a shift in perspective from the state as the subject and object of security policy to the human individual as the centre of security considerations – from state security to human security (griffin, 1995). and since human beings, unlike states, are capable of sensations and emotions, human security was recognised as partly contingent on those particular states of mind that we tend to associate with human well-being. it follows that human security depends on variables that extend beyond what has traditionally been regarded as the political arena. the absence of violent conflict is only one of many determinants of human security, including a relative safety from acute infectious disease, minimum complements of safe fresh water and adequate nutrition, and a formal guarantee of basic human rights and dignity. concern for security also became extended further into the future. it became acceptable to alexander k. lautensach & sabina w. lautensach prioritising the variables affecting human security in south-east asia aseas 3(2) 196 197 express concern about the future well-being of one’s children, and, from middle age onward, with the well-being of their children, and so on. this long-term humanitarian concern has gradually come to inform the agenda of human security, as indicated by some common definitions of sustainability (wced, 1987; un millennium project, 2005). with those concerns in mind, how, then, should we define human security? development agencies operating under national, super-national, or non-governmental umbrellas have adopted these extensions of the security concept into environmental and ethical dimensions. this re-conceptualisation is evident in several key policy documents of the united nations. in the secretary general’s millennium report the un’s security agenda is defined as ‘freedom from fear’ and its development agenda as ‘freedom from want’ (united nations, 2000). thus, the un’s guiding principles on security are paraphrased in negative terms as freedom from a condition that is evidently undesirable. similarly, alkire (2002, p. 2) defined the objective of human security as ‘to safeguard the vital core of all human lives from critical pervasive threats, and to do so without impeding long-term human flourishing’. elsewhere (lautensach, 2006) we suggested that those definitions are unhelpful, an argument which we can only summarise here. first, negative definitions are always fraught with logical difficulties. second, ‘freedom’, ‘fear’, and ‘want’ are highly subjective and emotive concepts: the extent to which individuals will experience those sensations depends on differential metabolic states, emotional states, situational and associative contexts, as well as cultural backgrounds. an absence of wants or needs can also be caused by an absence of self-confidence, a negative self-image, or a defeatist self-concept. it is also not possible to reduce those wants and needs to minimum requirements for survival. another objection to those popular definitions states that the focus on ‘freedoms’ blinds the observer to the problem of limits or of scale. in any given quasi-closed system (such as an island, a desert oasis, or a planet) the extent to which the human inhabitants’ needs and wants can be satisfied depends on the population size. other variables, such as individual affluence and technological sophistication also apply, but only temporarily. for example, the same freedom from water shortage for a region in sub-saharan africa can be achieved without much effort for a population of a few thousand while remaining utterly unachievable if that population measures aseas 3(2) 196 197 in the millions. in order to arrive at a definition of human security that might realistically allow us to promote it in specific contexts, it is helpful to first examine what sources of insecurity might threaten the global citizen. because of the subjective nature of human security, such an examination must involve consultation with the people in question. multinational opinion surveys3 point towards criminal violence, armed conflicts (civil or international), terrorism, infectious disease, and ‘natural disasters’ as the events that people are most concerned about. the latter include extreme weather events, climatic aberrations, pest invasions, famines, floods, landslides, earthquakes and volcanism, and meteorite impacts. other sources of insecurity include economic collapse, personal bankruptcy, personal accidents with traumatic health effects, and chronic health problems. of course all of those factors potentially give rise to acute wants and needs in the individual. but by focusing on those sources of insecurity we eliminate some of the ambiguity and heterogeneity associated with the abovementioned ‘freedoms’ while gaining the advantage of focusing on more clearly defined targets. this would better facilitate proactive and preventive policy planning and enable us to enlist a host of descriptive-analytical sciences for our planning efforts. returning to the example of water security, by focusing on possible causes of water shortage and on the systemic requirements for water security, the observer would be forced to take into account the limits of the local system, an essential requirement for the design of long-term effective and sustainable policies. to summarise so far, the most useful definitions of human security tend to focus on sources of insecurity because they allow us to eliminate unreasonable, unjust, and counterproductive demands from our scope of targets – demands that are often formulated by security providers rather than by the victims of insecurity. while these definitions may not give us a more objective notion of what human security means, they enable us to more clearly identify the most deserving targets for countermeasures. given the added strength of source analysis with regard to problems of scale we feel justified in advocating it as the superior conceptual 3 for example, one survey conducted in the uk identified crime and ill health as the greatest concerns (cf. http:// www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewitem/itemid/8084). of course such surveys are biased by the influence of media, the entertainment industry, and momentary scaremongering. but taking them into account decreases the extent of paternalism in security policies, where people are often told what their security needs are by a small number of individuals holding relatively secure positions in society. the same consideration applies at the international scale in the context of ‘development aid’. alexander k. lautensach & sabina w. lautensach prioritising the variables affecting human security in south-east asia aseas 3(2) 198 199 approach. focusing squarely on the sources of insecurity obliges us to pay attention to areas that lie beyond the scope of peace research in galtung’s (1969) sense, namely the absence of personal violence and the presence of social justice. the reason is that some of those sources are situated outside of the social realm and are shaped by the ecological interactions between our species and its biotic and abiotic environment, beyond ethics and justice. thus, human security in its expanded meaning includes more than peace. a survey of the sources of insecurity suggests that a comprehensive definition of human security needs to include four broad areas which we refer to as the ‘four pillars’ of human security (lautensach, 2006). they include the traditional area of military/ strategic security of the state; economic security, particularly the contribution made by heterodox models of sustainable economies; health-related security, informed by epidemiology and the complex determinants of community health and health care priorities; and environmental security that models the complex interactions between human populations and their ecological support structures, the source and sink functions of their host ecosystems. environmental security is defined as security from ‘critical adverse effects caused directly or indirectly by environmental change’ (barnett, 2007, p. 5). elsewhere (lautensach, 2006) we elaborated on how each pillar can contribute to our understanding of the sources of human insecurity and enables us to mitigate their effects. we shall now show that environmental security plays a special role among them. the significance of environmental security since the inception of the four pillar model and other similarly multidisciplinary models (such as the united nations development program’s [undp] seven dimensions [undp, 1994, pp. 24-33] which cover the same areas as the four pillars), it has become increasingly clear that the most intriguing and challenging questions in human security deal with the interrelationships between the four pillars. numerous case studies suggest that sources of insecurity have roots in more than one area. those different roots tend to affect each other, sometimes reciprocally in a positive feedback pattern. a well-known example is the causation of violent conflict that is often situated in social injustice, economic destitution, and environmental scarcity (homer-dixon, aseas 3(2) 198 199 1999). any increase in one of those variables tends to stimulate the others, which leads to a general worsening of the situation unless drastic interventions lead to simultaneous improvements in more than one of them. any sustainable solution to the crisis requires improvements in all three areas of causation. the current situation in sudan exemplifies this problematic. the example also illustrates the significance of sustainability in addressing human security issues, a requirement that appears as self evident as the frequency with which it gets ignored by policymakers and theorists alike. sustainability is defined by the balance between efforts to support the quality of life for a human population and the continued functioning of its environmental support structures, namely ecosystems.4 ecosystems consist of local communities of species and their physical environment. they serve as sources of food, raw materials, and energy, and they recycle the population’s wastes. complex ecosystems that are rich in species (occurring especially in the tropics) tend to be more resilient to disturbances, whereas ecosystems that consist only of a few species tend to be more fragile. human populations, like all other animal populations, obtain their sustenance from ecosystems which provide food, raw materials, and energy, and which recycle organic wastes back into biomass. human populations are special in that they employ technology to maximise the benefits of those ecosystem processes. but regardless of this technological windfall, the capacities of local ecosystems remain limited. generally, the environmental impact i of a human population on local ecosystems is described by the i=pat formula, where p means population size, a stands for the affluence or economic means per capita, and t represents the technological impact per capita (ehrlich & holdren, 1971; york, rosa, & dietz, 2003). the maximum sustainable impact, also referred to as carrying capacity (curry, 2006, p. 126) is thus described as the product of the three variables: it can be reached by small populations with a high-impact lifestyle or by larger populations where each individual demands less in terms of support services. when a population exceeds the maximum sustainable 4 we use the term only in its original environmental meaning and do not refer to other, secondary interpretations such as cultural or social sustainability. lemons (1996, p. 198) defined sustainability as “the continued satisfaction of basic human physical needs, such as food, water, shelter, and of higher-level social and cultural needs, such as security, freedom, education, employment, and recreation”, along with the “continued productivity and functioning of ecosystems”. we regard the popular ‘brundtland’ definition of sustainability (wced, 1987) to be quite useless because of its lack of conciseness, inattention to meta-ethical considerations, and its neglect of fundamental ecological limitations. a more useful definition, attributed to steve goldfinger (chambers, simmons, & wackernagel, 2000, p. 2), states that a sustainable community is one that converts resources into waste no faster than ecological support structures can convert the waste back into resources. alexander k. lautensach & sabina w. lautensach prioritising the variables affecting human security in south-east asia aseas 3(2) 200 201 impact it enters into overshoot, whereby the services of the local ecosystem are being overtaxed and, depending on their fragility, may undergo irreversible structural changes (catton, 1980; mcmichael, 2001; meadows, randers, & meadows, 2004; wackernagel et al., 2002). inevitably the consequence for the population is such that various biological regulatory mechanisms lead to a decrease in population size, below the system’s carrying capacity. numerous precedents from animal populations have allowed ecologists to characterise and predict those dynamics with impressive accuracy. the environmental impact can also be expressed in terms of the area of productive land required to support a population’s lifestyle. this is referred to as that population’s ecological footprint (wackernagel & rees, 1996). a population whose footprint exceeds the amount of accessible land is clearly in overshoot. this may not always have immediate negative consequences for their security as they may obtain the shortfall from other regions that are either underpopulated, defenceless, or otherwise disempowered. it is, however, often unjust and supports unsustainable patterns of consumption. to summarise this sequence of causation, unsustainable practices sooner or later lead a population into overshoot, which in turn erodes environmental support structures and decreases their capacity to deliver resources and to accept wastes. this means that the environmental security of the population is threatened, which can manifest itself in shortages of food, energy, or other commodities, or in elevated levels of pollution. such changes invariably compromise population health and lead to economic decline, civil disorder, and vulnerability to external enemies. evidence is provided by the historical precedents of cultures that disappeared as a result of this sequence of effects (diamond, 2005). the upshot is that whatever safeguards may be in place to protect the economic security of a population, its public health, its national security, and the rule of law – they seem of little help in the long term unless sustainability and environmental security are guaranteed. this resonates with barnett’s (2007) finding of a mutual dependence between environmental security and peace, and it reaffirms norman myers’ (1993; myers & kent, 2004) original thesis that all security ultimately depends on environmental security. it also brings the ‘four pillar’ metaphor into question – more appropriate would be one in which environmental security forms the basis from which the three pillars of economic, aseas 3(2) 200 201 socio-political, and health security support human security as a whole. this does not imply that the ultimate causes for all security threats are necessarily environmental; it does mean that mitigation efforts directed at the pillars will be ineffective if the ultimate cause lies in the base, and that mitigation directed at the base may well end up solving certain problems in the pillars. this revised model informs a different approach towards assessing the human security of countries and regions, at least in the long term. if human security in the long term depends first and foremost on environmental security, then it can be assessed by examining the extent to which sustainability is evident. the easiest way to verify whether a community or country is living sustainably is by examining the population’s ecological footprint, although other approaches are being developed by experts in the new field of pherology (ponton, 2001), the science of human carrying capacity. we will now illustrate this approach on the example of south-east asia. assessing human security through sustainability in south-east asia we have seen that the four determinants of human security interact and reinforce each other and that environmental security forms an essential baseline because sustainability represents a sine qua non condition for the other aspects of human security, at least in the long term. focusing now on the region of south-east asia we shall apply this conclusion in order to assess its prospects for long term human security. as explained above, the ecological footprint of a population or country is equivalent to the total bio-productive land area required to sustain its consumption of resources (food, energy, raw materials) and the processing of its wastes. it is calculated by complex algorithms that are still being refined to take into account further pherological details (wackernagel et al., 1997). table 1 shows the footprints of the twelve south-east asian countries as well as their respective land areas. normally, in order to assess whether a country is in overshoot, its footprint is compared with its available bio-productive land area in the manner of an economic comparison of demand and supply (wackernagel et al., 1997; ronsin, newman & dubois, 1999). however, in this case data on bio-productive land were either not available or based on unclear definitions. alexander k. lautensach & sabina w. lautensach prioritising the variables affecting human security in south-east asia aseas 3(2) 202 203 sources: nationmaster, world wildlife fund, cia world factbook, living planet report, global footprint network (gfn), redefining progress table 1: demographic and biogeographical comparisons of south-east asian countries: sustainable countries, at risk countries and comparison countries population [thousands] (year) 50,020 (2009) 14,805 (2009) 6,320 (2009) 6,732 (2009) 240,272 (2009) 28,318 (2009) 91,983 (2009) 4,998 (2009) 67,764 (2009) 88,069 (2009) 599,281 (2009) 495,000 (2010) 33,931 (2010) 309,186 (2010) 6,818,500 (may 2010) area [ha] 67,657,800 18,103,500 23,680,000 46,284,000 190,456,700 32,984,700 29,976,400 73,232 51,312,000 33,121,000 493,649,332 420,000,000 998,467,000 982,663,000 14,894,000,000(10) individual footprint [ha/person] (2009 data) 1.07 0.83 0.91 1.40 1.48 3.68 1.42 4.2 2.70 0.95 1.60 (0.83 – 4.2) 4.99 – 9.88 av. 5.1 (2005) 7.66 12.22 2.1 (2005) collective footprint [ha](5) = claimed footprint 53,521,400 12,288,150 5,751,200 9,424,800 355,602,560 104,210,240 130,615,860 20,991,600 182,962,800 83,665,550 959,034,160 2,524,500,000 259,911,460 3,778,252,920 14,318,850,000 sustainability quotient(6) 0.79 0.68 0.24 0.20 1.87 3.16 4.36 286 3.57 2.53 1.94 6.01 0.26 3.84 0.96 annual gni per capita [usd](7) < 975 (est.) 640 760 1,040 1,880 7,250 1,890 34,760 3,670 890 2,644(9) 38,839 43,640 47,930 8,654 country burma / myanmar cambodia laos papua new guinea indonesia malaysia phillippines singapore thailand vietnam south-east asia(8) eu (27) canada usa world sustainable countries at risk countries comparison countries aseas 3(2) 202 203 we therefore resorted to a simple comparison of national footprint to national territory, giving a sustainability quotient (sq). we consider this simplification acceptable for two reasons. first, south-east asia does not include extensive regions of non-productive land such as deserts or alpine mountains, making it likely that a country’s area of bio-productive land approaches its total territory minus urban areas which are not extensive, relative to other regions. second, this simplified comparison produces an optimistic estimate of sustainability, in the form of the sq as the ratio between the two areas. an optimistic estimate might preclude some of the criticism that such comparisons invariably attract. we will address some possible objections below. the ratio between collective footprint and available productive land area, i.e. the sustainability quotient, provides a measure of the effort required of each country to reach the goal of sustainability. the most extreme situation is obviously that of singapore, with a footprint 286 times its territory (which is largely not bioproductive). however, as a city-state it carries a separate status, one of obligatory ecological dependence on surrounding lands, a circumstance which evidently has not impeded its growth so far. for singapore, sustainability can only ever be reached with significant help from its neighbours, malaysia and indonesia. this example also illustrates the limits of an analysis based solely on national statistics; many aspects of environmental security are more clearly described by data across bio-geographical regions. the significance of national sq values is that they directly relate to national polities. the other eleven countries form a continuum ranging from clearly sustainable (burma, cambodia, laos, papua new guinea [png]) to clearly unsustainable situations (with the philippines and thailand being the worst off), as listed in table 1. not unexpectedly the sq values seem to correlate inversely with per capita gdp, which suggests an interesting relationship, namely that poverty might somehow facilitate 5 the collective ecological footprint is calculated as the footprint per person multiplied by the population size. 6 the sustainability quotient (sq) is calculated as the collective national footprint divided by the area. 7 annual gross national income per person was reported in the oecd atlas, october 2009. 8 south-east asian totals and means were calculated without timor-leste and brunei. 9 this figure is reported for east asia and the pacific. for south asia it is only usd 963. 10 the number represents the total planetary land area. a more appropriate number for footprint analysis is 13.4 billion ha of biologically productive land and water area (gfn, 2005), although that, too, probably represents an overestimate. most of the more detailed analyses suggest that the critical sq of 1.0 was already exceeded during the mid-1980s and has steadily increased ever since (mab, 2005). alexander k. lautensach & sabina w. lautensach prioritising the variables affecting human security in south-east asia aseas 3(2) 204 205 sustainability. we do not mean to imply causality but a correlation seems to be evident. however, several clarifications are in order. average per capita statistics are quite an unreliable measure of poverty as they say nothing about the differences between urban and rural communities, nor do they say much about the poorest section of the population – and even if they did, such a number would only measure spending power which often does not reflect at all how those people perceive their own ‘poverty’ in terms of the quality of their lives. also, table 1 shows high values of gdp correlating with low degrees of sustainability. we hold this to be a direct result of the growth ideology, the belief that greater affluence represents a worthwhile goal in itself and must be pursued by all possible means through ‘economic growth’. following that ideology, most development agencies regard low-gdp countries as natural targets for remedial action. sadly, most development aid programs and associated agencies have taken this ideology on board quite uncritically, resulting in ‘development’ towards increased consumption and away from the goal of sustainability (myers & kent, 2004). we also derive some encouragement from those numbers insofar as they show the potential of south-east asia to get it right in time. the comparison of the regional mean with the data for north america and the eu shows the extent to which those ‘developed’ countries are still entrenched in their colonialist tradition of extracting their livelihood from other parts of the world. clearly they are very far from being able to satisfy their demands from the resources of their own territories. thus they are the main contributors to humanity’s global overshoot, estimated at about 40 percent (sq = 1.4) (wackernagel et al., 2002); by the late 1990s humanity appropriated 40 percent of the biosphere’s net primary photosynthetic productivity (vitousek, mooney, lubchenko, & melillo, 1997). south-east asia, on the other hand, although sharing some culpability, does not face the same daunting obstacles on its path towards sustainability. we wish to emphasise that nature inevitably makes populations reach sustainability one way or another: their co-operation merely renders the transition less painful. thus, the major good news emanating from this analysis it that south-east asia’s transition, although traumatic in terms of reversing economic trends that have by now assumed the status of a crypto-religion, is unlikely to bring as much hardship as other regions will face. aseas 3(2) 204 205 in our analysis of numerical data we have not commented on several possible objections to the pherological approach, which we wish to rectify in closing. one frequent objection rests on the claim that human populations are incommensurable with other animal populations because of their use of technology. we know of no evidence suggesting that the advent of agriculture and other technology has changed the principle of our basic dependency on ecosystems; however, it did result in maximum sustainable impacts being more closely approached or even increased, and it served to obscure the fact of our dependency. agriculture has led to profound modifications of supplier ecosystems, which increased their yield and decreased their complexity (rees, 2004). adaptive technology has allowed for a much wider range of habitats to be colonised by humans at a global scale, and it has helped us establish trade links to transport resources and wastes between distant locations. what it has not done and cannot do is to change our status as a consumer species, as opposed to producers and decomposers. certainly the exceptionalist ideals of the pervasive anthropocentric ethics do not make it so. another objection states that the consumption patterns of a modern community or country, its global trade and migrations, are too complex to be expressed merely as a land area. most developed countries, especially urban centres, are deeply dependent on daily infusions of food, fuel, fresh water, and other supplies and services from its trade partners. this is illustrated in table 1 by the extreme sq value for singapore, and it reflects an extreme economic and ecological dependence that resulted from profound ecological modifications. what portions of local ecosystems in such ‘highly developed’ places that have not been paved over have long been changed into intensive agricultural production systems, which many endemic species could not accept as their habitat, resulting in their extinction. while it is true that all local populations and ecosystems are connected with neighbouring regions and with the biosphere through complex biogeochemical cycles and migrations, the human situation represents merely a quantitative extension, not a qualitatively different situation. furthermore, footprint analysis is equipped to take such exchanges of goods and services into account. lastly, we wish to engage with the argument that this kind of analysis merely points to an area of inadequacy without offering much help towards mitigating the situation. a detailed analysis of the components that contribute to a country’s footprint, based alexander k. lautensach & sabina w. lautensach prioritising the variables affecting human security in south-east asia aseas 3(2) 206 207 on data that are not shown in this paper but that were instrumental in the footprint calculations published by others, itemises and quantifies the areas of consumption. it readily allows for specific measures directed at reducing specific demands. it does not, however, address the problem of unrealistic costing as evident, for example, in the ubiquitous practice of not including environmental costs in transport and fuel use. should those fuels ever become scarce as the ‘peak oil’ scenario suggests, or should their use become restricted as part of mitigation measures to address climate change, the impact of the resulting reality check can be mitigated through timely and directed restrictions to the most expendable areas of consumption. also, at the international scale, comparisons of national footprints can identify the transition needs for rich and poor countries and guide appropriate transition initiatives promoting distributive justice. voltaire’s dictum that “the rich require an abundant supply of the poor” certainly holds true at the global scale as well; in this situation, however, the poor will be able to advise the rich on how to cut their consumption with minimal trauma. our moderately optimistic conclusion that south-east asian countries are relatively secure from threats emanating from unsustainable practices also requires a few qualifications. first, our comparison of national footprints against national territory inevitably leads to an underestimate of risk. this is clearly seen in the sq of canada, where the bio-productive area is obviously far smaller than the total area. secondly, although footprint analysis addresses an important aspect of human security – we believe that it is the most important one in the long term – it does not reveal sources of human insecurity relating to the other three ‘pillars’ of the model, nor can it identify environmental problems that are not dependent on the population’s impact, such as climate change. the recent unrest in bangkok and the underlying problems with corruption and autocracy shows that some threats to human security are only very tenuously and indirectly linked to environmental security. moreover, national footprints are based on average levels of consumption: in countries with extreme stratification such as the us and many developing countries, such numbers only touch the surface of the underlying internal problems of inequity. a national average also does not reflect territorial inequity, as in the case of continental and insular malaysia. in the long term, however, the findings provide valuable insights for the designers of development policies. in some countries, especially laos, burma, cambodia, and png, neither population growth nor current economic ‘growth’ poses a threat to long aseas 3(2) 206 207 term human security as of yet; excessive economic dependency is not in evidence which makes the transitions to sustainability easier. in other countries, such as the philippines and thailand, the two trends need to be tackled together with great urgency, but differentially in urban and rural areas. we believe that educational reform offers huge potential in mobilising the coming generations to take an active part in the required transition to sustainability (lautensach & lautensach, 2010). the united nations recognised this to some extent in 2002 by naming 2005-2015 the ‘un decade of education for sustainable development’. every child and teenager needs to understand what ecological footprints can tell them about their future, and how important ecosystem health and a stable population are for the future security of their families and communities. besides education, direct intervention and re-direction of economic policies will be necessary in the countries with the highest sq values in order to ease them into sustainable modes of zero growth (daly & cobb, 1994; myers & kent, 2004). this would include the philippines, thailand, mainland malaysia, and vietnam. however, taking into account data on economic stratification would allow policymakers to determine those communities where a large footprint is caused only by the excessive consumption of elite minorities, which should be politically easier to tackle; economic growth would merely need to be slowed, not reversed. the overarching political emphasis of those interventions should be on the protection, strengthening, and expansion of ecological support systems on the one hand, and the stabilisation of population growth and consumption on the other. with their environmental security thus secured, the citizens of south-east asian countries will have the opportunity to ensure that economic security, public health, and socio-political stability will ensue. overall, the comparison of south-east asian sq values with north america and europe indicates that the region has a little more time to deal with those problems, compared to other parts of the world where the number of options seems much diminished. considering the massive ideological obstacles on the path to sustainability11 11 as we elaborated on elsewhere (lautensach & lautensach, 2010), those obstacles consist mainly of beliefs, attitudes, ideals, and values that are dominated by the ideology of progress. they rely on our propensity to create myths and to rely on those myths for conceptual explanations and for normative justification and evaluation (rees, 2004). specifically, those myths include the intrinsic value of economic growth and the belief in its indefinite continuation (also referred to as cornucopianism) (ehrlich & holdren, 1971), an ill-informed optimistic outlook on historical developments, scientism, moral nihilism and materialism, consumerism, and the ideal of dominion over nature informed by cartesian dualism and anthropocentrism (lautensach & lautensach, 2010). it is the guiding influence of myths that chet bowers (bowers, 1993, p. 99) referred to when he asserted that “humans are essentially cultural beings (in thought, communication and behaviour), and it is as cultural beings that they interact with the alexander k. lautensach & sabina w. lautensach prioritising the variables affecting human security in south-east asia aseas 3(2) 208 209 a little extra time to influence the course of events may make all the difference. references alkire, s. 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(2003). stirpat, ipat and impact: analytic tools for unpacking the driving forces of environmental impacts. ecological economics, 46(3), 351-365. aseas 1-2 final (außergottowik).indd aseas 1 (2) backyard living – integrative policies towards migrant workers: housing microfinance in greater ho chi minh city, vietnam martin noltze1 department of human geography, university of göttingen, germany aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften / austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 1 (2), 2008 seas gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften www.seas.at the urban agglomeration of the vietnamese southeast industrial driving force ho chi minh city (hcmc) has become the most outstanding benefi ciary of the remarkable economic growth and foreign investments in the vietnamese economy since the start of a comprehensive economic reform process in the mid 1980s. the notable development towards the foremost economic centre led to a high infl ux of migrant workers. in the course of an ongoing expansion process towards a megacity of tomorrow, the defi cient provision of adequate housing remains one of the most challenging problems of rural migrants in greater hcmc. however, a future-oriented sustainable megacity concept is strongly dependent on the successful integration of migrants into the urban society. within this context, the housing market is considered to be a key aspect of comprehensive urban planning. hereby, housing microfi nance (hmf) will be presented as an alternative housing fi nance scheme meeting the demand of a noteworthy number of poor and low-income people. thereby hmf can do both: focus on specifi c needs of migrants with respect to their current life situation and enhance its outreach to a potential target group. keywords: ho chi minh city, vietnam, housing, migrants, microfi nance 1 during the last years, martin noltze has researched urban development and social issues in vietnam. he worked under the german federal ministry of education and research’s (bmbf) funding programme “research for the sustainable development of megacities of tomorrow” (research title: “the balance of urban growth and redevelopment in ho chi minh city/vietnam – sustainable housing policies for mega-cities of tomorrow”). contact: martin_noltze@yahoo.de 19 die metropolregion ho chi minh city (hcmc) hat seit beginn umfassender wirtschaftsreformen mitte der 1980er jahre enorme wachstumsraten und investitionen an sich gezogen. das wirtschaftszentrum vietnams wurde dadurch zum anziehungspunkt für eine stetig wachsende anzahl von arbeitsmigranten. bisher konnte das rasante stadtwachstum der vergangenen jahre einer ausreichenden wohnraumversorgung nicht entsprechen. die hohe nachfrage auf dem wohnungsmarkt stellt eine besondere herausforderung für ankommenden migranten dar. eine erfolgreiche integration ländlicher arbeitskräfte bildet jedoch die grundlage für ein zukunftsorientiertes megastadtkonzept. in diesem zusammenhang wird der wohnungsmarkt als ein schlüsselaspekt für umfassende stadtplanung gesehen. in der vorliegenden abhandlung wird mikrofi nanzierung von wohnraum als ein innovatives finanzinstrument zur wohnraumversorgung vorgestellt, mit dem es gelingen kann, dem bedarf von teilen der untersten einkommensschichten zu entsprechen. dabei kann sich dieser ansatz sowohl auf die zukunftserwartungen der arbeitsmigranten beziehen als auch die entwicklung des mikrofi nanzsektors insgesamt vorantreiben. schlagworte: ho chi minh city, vietnam, wohnraum, migranten, mikrofi nanzierung introduction the year 2007 symbolises an important milestone on the scale of human settlements. for the first time the number of the urban population worldwide exceeds the amount of rural residents in total. the demographic analysts of urban development declared the new urban millennium (un-habitat 2006). this trend is dominated by the urban agglomerations’ annual growth rates of 4.58 percent in africa and 3.82 percent in asia (un-habitat 2006: 4; world bank 2006: 2). the so-called urban revolution is mainly due to an exploding development of urban agglomeration regions in developing countries (un-habitat 2003). besides strong population growth, fast growing cities have to deal with urban poverty, social inequality, scarce housing, slum settlements, insufficient sanitation and missing waste collection services causing extreme environmental deficiencies. following global trends, the vietnamese metropolis ho chi minh city (hcmc) is on its way to achieving the status “megacity of the early 21st century”, facing all above-mentioned challenges. the prospering industrial region became the national spearhead of urban development. by the economic reform process (doi moi) and the opening up for foreign direct investments (fdis) hcmc is pushed within the ongoing transition from socialist planning towards a market-oriented economy (cf. nestor 2007). nowadays, the basic export-led industrialisation strategy is accompanied by growing domestic consumption and investment spending. although hcmc denotes the highest average income on a national scale, it also incorporates strong social polarisation and spatial fragmentation (waibel, eckert, bose, & martin 2007: 60). both aspects are extremely visible within the housing market. even though 20 martin noltze backyard living integrative policies towards migrant workers aseas 1 (2) vietnam has achieved a remarkable decrease of overall poverty and confidently steps towards the fulfilments of the un millennium development goals (mdgs), a recent increase in urban poverty could be revealed.2 vietnamese urban growth is strongly related to rural-urban migration. generally the field of housing symbolises a strong integrative aspect for migrants into an urban society. however, low incomes, remittances and fewer savings, as well as a restrictive registration system, make it extremely difficult for rural migrants to participate in the housing market, which is strongly characterised by high land and housing prices. furthermore, the insufficient access to the formal financial system intensifies this incapacity, as the access to housing strongly depends on the access to financial services. this paper examines in how far the promotion of alternative housing finance schemes might be an integrative strategy to support the empowerment and development of rural migrants in an urban society. population growth, migration dynamics and urbanisation processes dynamic migration streams and permanent re-distribution of population are deep-rooted characteristics of the vietnamese history (n. dang 2005). within the last two decades new migration phenomena are appearing in the course of the overall market-oriented social and economic reform process. at the same time the policy agenda constitutes a notable shift from previous ideologically motivated anti-urban policies to an ongoing urban-centred economic development (jenkins, smith, & wang 2007: 282) (cf. table 1). following the new strategy, hcmc claims the national pole position. 2 according to ciem (2006: 91) the urban poverty rate increased from 6.6 percent in 2002 to 10.8 percent in 2004. 21 year 1986 1990 1995 2000 2003 2005 2015** number of urban spaces 480 500 550 649 656 urban population (in million) 11,87 13,77 14,94 19,47 20,87 22,44 30,50 urban population (in percent) 19,3 20,0 20,8 24,7 25,8 26,4 31,6 * data related to national definitions ** data on the basis of the average deviation of extrapolation source: p.n. dang (2005); undp (2007) table 1: urbanisation trends in vietnam since the beginning of the doi moi reform process* within the last two decades the population of hcmc grew by 60 percent from 3.92 million in 1989 (niurb 1994: 19) to 6.24 million in 2005 (statistical office of hcmc 2006: 17). additionally, it is estimated that more than 1.9 million temporary migrants currently reside in the innerurban districts and surrounding provinces (vet 2005: 31; hiep 2005: 1). the ongoing population pressure is mainly a result of the potential employment opportunities in various industrial and export processing zones. these industrial areas are primarily located in the rural-urban fringe and cause remarkable growth rates in suburban districts. the high increase in population doubled the size of the settlement area from 1986 to today. taking the industrial corridor of the adjoining provinces dong nai, binh duong and ba ria – vung tau into calculation, a mega-urban region with more than 10 million inhabitants is already in existence (waibel et al. 2007: 61). suburbanisation is predominantly pushed by urban upgrading programmes in the city centre and eviction processes in previous slum settlements. furthermore, an overall transformation of living space into business space in the inner city intensifies population movements to suburban districts.3 generally the considerable celerity of population growth hinders comprehensive investments into consistent urban development. this is mostly visible in a lack of technical and social infrastructure. these circumstances are causing conflicts with sustainable housing policies in the course of ongoing urbanisation processes. the disregard of these fields by public authorities has dramatic consequences for the economic, administrative, social, cultural and ecological livelihood of all city dwellers, especially for the poor. the deficient supply of housing remains one of the most challenging problems for poor and low-income people in urban hcmc (martin & kennel 2006: 1). migrants’ life in the “new urban context” the financial perspective of higher incomes is the primary motivation of rural migrants who seek employment in one of the multiple factory compounds. on site, so-called boarding houses are the leadoff destination for migrants in the new urban context. boarding houses are rental and sharable informal housing units which are located close to industrial zones at the backyards of local landlords, nearly invisible from the street front. this type of housing is characterised by a standardised architecture, cheap construction material and lack of technical infrastructure. thereby most housing units violate all construction laws. furthermore, boarding houses are generally overcrowded and very expensive. residents find themselves in precarious living 11 from 1999 to 2005, the suburban district 12 (+77 percent), thu duc (+64 percent) and binh tan (+58 percent) registered the highest rates of population growth (gurby & huong 2002: 9; statistical office of hcmc 2006: 17). 22 martin noltze backyard living integrative policies towards migrant workers aseas 1 (2) conditions where drug abuse, prostitution and strong environmental impacts are common. thus boarding house agglomerations are considered to be the new slums of greater hcmc (waibel & thanh 2007: 11). the nation-wide 2004 migration survey of the general statistical office (gso) and the united nations population fund (unfpa) marked the housing situation in vietnamese cities as the most pressing problem for migrants. in either case boarding house units lead to strong exclusion effects and spatial segregation. two-storey boarding house building in the province binh duong in front of an industrial compound (north of hcmc) (photo by m. noltze, 2007) rural migrants who enter the urban context are primarily young, single and female. however, chain migration phenomena can be perceived in workers’ accommodations. chain migration processes enable migrants to use prearranged paths of previous migrants and primary social networks to enter the urban context (macdonald & macdonald 1964: 82). whole village communities find themselves within the same boarding house units, bringing parts of their families and cultural idiosyncrasies into the urban society. in this regard, migrants are involved in strong networks. although higher income perspectives are the major pull effect for migration processes in vietnam, especially in ho chi minh city migrants do have considerably lower incomes in contrast to non-migrants (gso & unfpa 2005: 5). in addition to the insufficient financial power, the vietnamese ho khau registration system does not allow non-permanent residents (kt3, kt4) to participate fully in the real estate market until they have achieved a permanent residency (kt1, kt2).4 generally, the ho khau policy restricts migrants’ access to basic social and technical infrastructure including education, health care, jobs and financial 4 the residential system is divided into four nation-wide categories from kt1 (officially registered permanent residents with all rights a vietnamese citizen has at his home-place), kt2 (permanent registered residents who do not live in the district where they are registered and who have full rights), kt3 (families who are considered as migrants and do have a residency for 6 to 12 months and who have very restricted rights) and kt4 (“floating” migrants who live in guesthouses and temporary dwellings and who have the least rights within the ho khau hierarchy). 23 services. consequently migrants use informal ways to achieve land property. they rely on non-professional and doubtful financial services provided by private moneylenders, relatives, friends or neighbours. nevertheless, a rethinking of the restrictive registration system by the authorities can be detected in recent times. this is mostly noticeable in the 2007 new law on residency, which softens previous restrictions. rural-urban migrants constitute a significant share of the vietnamese poor, even though it is nearly impossible to document this by absolute figures as migrants are generally not registered in nation-wide statistics. although migrant workers are not considered to be the poorest of the poor, they are facing an extreme risk to fall below national and international poverty lines5. insecure employment contracts, hard working conditions and a heavily polluted environment are reasons for seasonal unemployment, health risks and stress. the average monthly incomes exceeds 60 usd. however, high expenditures lower potential savings and remittances. the foremost expenditures include high rents, exceptional rates for water, electricity and waste collection services. recently these circumstances are additionally accompanied by high inflation rates in overall vietnam. the restrictive ho khau hierarchy intensifies the financial disparity between permanent and non-permanent residents. besides the inability of migrants to enter the state-owned economic sector they do have considerably lower payments for equal work in contrast to non-migrants (adb 2006: 6). boarding house in the backyard of local landlords in the urban district thu duc (photo by m. noltze, 2007) boarding houses are the physical manifestation of the socio-economic exclusion of migrants. high taxes for basic infrastructure and a gap between the demand and the supply of public services intensify their deficient living conditions. according to the 2004 vietnam migration 5 the international poverty line includes the one-(or two-)dollar-a-day definition by the world bank, national poverty lines by the gso measure poverty by the proportion of household expenditures and a daily food consumption basket and vary due to regional differences between urban, rural and mountainous regions. 24 martin noltze backyard living integrative policies towards migrant workers aseas 1 (2) survey, 40 percent of migrants stated a worsening of their living situation compared to their place of origin (gso & unfpa 2005: 4). additionally, of all social groups, migrants have the least access to social security such as health insurance. furthermore, gender-related differences are detectable. especially the group of migrant women suffer from exhausting working conditions in labour-intensive industrial employments (adb 2006: 6). housing microfinance (hmf) the united natioń s declaration of 2005 as the “year of microfinance” and the awarding of the 2006 nobel price for peace to mohammad yunus, founder of the grameen bank in bangladesh, underlined the impact of microfinance as a successful tool within the general development debate. microfinance means the provision of financial services to the “unbankable” poor, who are traditionally excluded from formal finance schemes. today microfinance is not only about (micro-)credit anymore. it includes a wide range of various financial instruments and is on its way to becoming an “inclusive financial system” implementing the integration into the formal financial system and expanding its outreach to large numbers of poor and low-income people (cf. helms 2006). the group of microfinance clients predominantly range from the “unbanked” poor to the vulnerable non-poor. within the last decades world-wide approaches have proven that banking for the poor is able to achieve both financial independence as well as institutional sustainability. during the last two decades adapted hmf schemes turned into a noteworthy tool in order to upgrade living space and to fight overall housing shortage in rural and urban contexts, especially in developing countries (serageldin 2000: 25). the potential market segment for microfinance institutions differs significantly from traditional home lenders and the public sector. the former focus predominantly on high income groups, the public sector gives substituted loans to federal employees. in order to meet the demand of poor and low-income people it is necessary to integrate diverse financial proposals of various actors, including non-governmental organisations (ngos), governmental authorities and microfinance institutions. according to mitlin (2003: 11), (1) ngos concentrate most on communal activities, infrastructure and housing programmes, (2) governmental institutions are relevant for the provision of land of moderate prices supported by housing programmes for poverty reduction and (3) microfinance institutions do focus on the provision of microcredits. besides financial instruments, it is particularly necessary to integrate aspects like land tenure, the supply of basic infrastructure and the official registration process into the concept. in distinction to other traditional microfinance instruments hmf implies high sums (on average 500-5,000 usd) over 25 long periods of time (3 to 10 years). in this regard hmf implies high risks for both the donor and the borrower hence there is a requirement for financing securities. these instances illustrate the reasons for the limited worldwide appliance of today’s hmf. furthermore, traditional mortgage loans are only partly accessible for the poor. as a consequence mechanisms of social control obtain importance. thereby the strong involvement of individuals within networks guaranty group pressure and social solidarity. generally the logic of microfinance relies on group-based approaches. it uses social structures as a guarantee. in the field of hmf this can only be applied partly, but land tenure is also a sustainable foundation for neighbourhood relations. innovative hmf approaches include financial aspects as well as social, communal and economic development components. two basic approaches can be distinguished: (1) the neoliberal approach which assumes spill-over effects from loans for income generating activities towards housing, and (2) the advocacy approach which concentrates on the representation of interest of poor people regarding the access to land tenure, basic services and infrastructure facilities (cf. serageldin 2000). the first one implies a strong connection of living space and business space and focuses primarily on traditional microfinance schemes6. the second one strongly concerns community development and socio-political emancipation. housing microfinance in vietnam even though experience from worldwide application of hmf shows high potentials in meeting the demand of the poor, microfinance remains a neglected topic within vietnam. the formal financial system is dominated by huge state-owned commercial banks, which claim more than 70 percent of the total market share (trinh 2007: 13; world bank 2007: 25). further shares are held by diverse joint stock banks. within the course of the doi moi process the banking sector renewed its outreach and diversification. this development follows the liberalisation of interest rates and the enhancement of the general legal framework. since the overall breakdown of the credit-cooperatives in the mid 1980s new banking forms have been developed. in comparison to other south-east asian countries microfinance plays only a minor role in the vietnamese context so far. the sector is dominated by state-owned suppliers such as the vietnam bank for agriculture and rural development (vbard) and the vietnam bank for social policies (vbsp)7. today vbard can be seen as the most important microfinance institution in 6 the so-called shophouses are one of the most visible housing forms in vietnam, they include both living space and business activities. in this regard this approach is extremely capable in the vietnamese context. 7 vbard includes more than five million borrowers with an average loan size of 405 usd, vbsp more than three million borrowers with an average loan size of 125 usd (doan 2005: 5). 26 martin noltze backyard living integrative policies towards migrant workers aseas 1 (2) vietnam. however, both do not exclusively target the poor. the formal providers are generally supported or enhanced by political mass organisations such as the vietnamese women union (vwu), which also acts as a microfinance institution itself. the semi-formal market is characterised by a few regional organisations such as the capital aid fund for employment of the poor (cep) in hcmc or international ngos8. at last informal actors like the rotating saving and credit associations (rosca), friends, family and neighbours do play an important role for the poor, but do not officially count as microfinance institutions on the basis of their informal and insecure capacity. it can be assumed that the limited legal outreach of semiformal institutions, which are not coercively owned by the state, is pivotally depending on the comprehensive market-control-strategy of the vietnamese ministry of finance and the state bank of vietnam. so far international and domestic microfinance institutions are only allowed to provide financial services exclusively in cooperation with political mass organisations or state-owned agencies. this aspect reflects the political dimension of financial services in vietnam. on the one hand local authorities want to operate as much as possible through state-owned institutions to maintain social control and power relations. on the other hand the deep-rooted networks within the socialist system of vietnam can be used as a solid foundation for group-based microfinance schemes by all actors. a future-oriented development of the vietnamese microfinance landscape will require a dialogue between the government, institutions in the sector, donors and the national mass organisations. especially the formal microfinance industry and huge parts of the semi-formal sector are strongly dependent on subsidised lending.9 this is mainly related to poverty reduction programmes of the vietnamese government and inefficient structures of institutions. thus market-orientated and demanddriven providers face high competitive pressure. in this process highly subsidised state-owned market supply hinders the development of a sustainable microfinance landscape. the banking system within the financial market is pivotally responsible in how far investments are distributed and who has access to capital. the national capital stock of vietnam is quite tight, which means that institutions have only limited capital available. this has extreme consequences for the capital-intensive real estate market. so only the most lucrative and high-end projects get financed by the formal sector, including business space, high standard hotel rooms and luxury apartments. in this situation banks focus on the high end of the market and hmf has a good chance of dealing successfully with the potential poor and low-income segment. however, there is only very limited information about the outreach and the demand available. it can be assumed that specialist housing finance products for the poor are almost non-existent. so far, mostly semi-formal institutions focus on housing finance 8 for example save the children/us, world vision international or habitat for humanity international vietnam. 9 the vbsp offers below-market interest rates, on average 6 percent per annum (doan 2005: 7). 27 for the poor. in greater hcmc, the world bank, cep and habitat for humanity international vietnam provide housing finance instruments for specific target groups. however, these semiformal institutions face considerable constraints due to their status within the vietnamese financial landscape and have only limited outreach. “microfinanced” housing in hcmc (by the cep)10 at the “sites & services” project site of the pmu 415/ belgium technical cooperation in binh hung hoa, distrikt binh tan (photo by m. noltze, 2007) even though hmf in hcmc might be able to prosper in the near future it is still a neglected topic in vietnam. only a few pilot projects are run by microfinance institutions so far. these projects mainly focus on target groups who emerged from eviction processes in the course of urban upgrading programmes. the national microfinance industry focuses predominantly on income generation activities. however, especially in vietnam both fields are strongly related to each other and it is unclear in how far business loans are already constantly transferred to housing matters. the lack of available data regarding the demand of the poor for housing aggravates the immature market situation. institutions need to conduct their own analyses which are generally quite costly. but the lack of data does not imply a lack of a potential demand. furthermore, there is a need for the integration of saving products to complement housing loans. this aspect requires strong financial institutions but supports the economisation of existing systems. innovative approaches promote a step-by-step construction procedure11, combining construction cycles and loan rounds which make both aspects more suitable for the poor. 10 in the course of the tan hoa – lo gom (thlg) canal upgrading project, funded largely by the belgian technical cooperation, 57 households were resettled to the pilot project site. the “sites & services” included hookups for electricity and water and access to roads. resettled households could use their compensation to purchase a plot at 60 percent of the official market value. for house construction they could get a long-term loan of up to 22 million vnd at 10 percent interest per year, provided by the cep. 11 for example the first loan round is linked to the construction of the core housing unit (including walls and roof), the second loan round to the construction of different rooms (kitchen, bathroom, etc.). 28 martin noltze backyard living integrative policies towards migrant workers aseas 1 (2) migrant workers – city dwellers of tomorrow? the hard working conditions in industrial zones accompanied by low income-expenditure ratios, a restrictive registration system and a lack of adjusted future-orientated policies hinder the socio-economic integration of migrants in greater hcmc. even though migrants achieve higher incomes compared to where they come from, many of them fail to leave poverty relations. hereby migrants are the expression of the urbanisation of poverty (jenkins et al. 2007: 293). industrial zone workers in hcmc contribute significantly to the fast growing economy but cannot fully make use of the outcomes and advantages of the prospering development. the apparent awareness of this gap is lately expressed by an increase of strike-waves and high fluctuation of employees on the run for better working conditions. regarding financial markets, migrants in hcmc are extremely excluded from services. consequently, they rely on informal networks, particularly family and friends. although high expenditures lower their net incomes, migrant workers are thoroughly able to have remarkable savings. comparably high savings are mainly a result of their current abstemious life situation. therefore a high demand on financial services does exist for both remittances to the places of origin to support families and for personal investments or savings for their life in hcmc. potential savings make migrants highly creditworthy. furthermore, migrant workers in hcmc are not immigrated individuals but rather embedded in strong social networks. this makes them extremely qualified for microfinance approaches, which deal predominantly with group based systems. additionally, their housing related future aspirations are considerably realisable with hmf approaches in vietnam, including low plot sizes (m=40m²), standard services and basic infrastructure. even though a significant share of migrant workers will return to their places of origin after a period of time, it can be expected that many of them will try to stay in hcmc. the longterm access to the city is strongly dependent on the registration status and the bureaucratic formalisation process. only a permanent residency guaranties full social welfare for young migrants and their children. for this purpose migrants need the reliance of local landlords and authorities. furthermore, the individual future plan will depend on the economic prosperity or failure. on the one hand the labour-intensive export sector employments are particularly linked to the well-being of the world economy. on the other hand low wages are facing current domestic price storms. both aspects make migrants extremely vulnerable. considering the obvious gap between current living circumstances and future aspirations it can be assumed that migrants with stable incomes will leave the industrial backyards of today and move into the urban society of tomorrow. many of them will try to find new business opportunities in 29 the inner-city. in the face of the impressive number of migrant workers who are currently employed in the industrial zones and factory compounds of hcmc, integrative strategies for this specific target group are urgently required to guarantee the future well-being of all city dwellers. thereby the field of housing is seen as the most important aspect of sustainable integrative policies. hmf in hcmc can do both, strengthen its outreach to the potential target group of the poor and assist migrants’ entry into the urban society. even though today this might only be possible for a very limited number of people. conclusions the relationship of migrants and non-migrants in the urban context of greater hcmc is strongly characterised by high inequalities. it can be expected that this gap might even widen in the near future as migrants face high barriers to prosper socially and economically. thereby inequality has a strong spatial dimension. workers’ accommodations are mostly located in the backyard of local landlords in close proximity to industrial zones in suburban areas of the agglomeration region. the exclusion from public services and urban neighbourhood underline the impact of the rural community. within these circumstances, migrants conserve rural lifestyles and traditions. the social dimension of inequality is mostly visible by the constraints given by the law on residency that aggravates further emancipation and hinders comprehensive development. however, new residential policies are coming up and constraints seem to diminish. thereby the adherence to the ho khau hierarchy can be seen as a constitutive element of transitional vietnam. even though strong inequalities still exist, it can be assumed that a significant share of migrant workers will apply for a permanent residency in the near future, declaring hcmc to their new home. although migrant workers are not the poorest of the poor, their current living situation is strongly characterised by poverty. the insufficient access to formal financial services intensifies this instance, as migrants are dependent on informal and insecure networks. on the one hand migrants can be seen as a potential target group for microfinance institutions. on the other hand microfinance institutions in hcmc are potentially able to provide financing schemes to migrant workers. thus hmf enables migrants to leave boarding houses, which are the physical manifestation of poverty. notwithstanding these facts, more crucial questions need to be addressed including land use rights, infrastructure and basic services. regarding this aspect, microfinance institutions have to link up with international ngos, domestic institutions and local authorities to develop comprehensive concepts. the expansion process of microfinance in hcmc does strongly rely on the general development of the vietnamese 30 martin noltze backyard living integrative policies towards migrant workers aseas 1 (2) banking system. thereby the ongoing reform process and the admission to the world trade organisation (wto) in january 2007 open new opportunities for microfinance providers and ngos to contribute to the vietnamese financial market. furthermore, it can be expected that the microfinance industry will flourish in the near future as latest policies12 only lack implementation. however, the financial intermediation concerning migrants is estimated to lag behind this development. so far only a few providers are disposed to focus on this specific target group. the expansion of depth and outreach of microfinance in vietnam requires strong reform processes of both the overall banking system and the microfinance industry itself. the transformation of the vietnamese microfinance industry towards a sustainable market has to overcome the microfinance-as-charity approach of today in favour of a demand-driven regular financial landscape of tomorrow. in order to develop a prospective city concept, it is strongly recommended to raise attention to migrants’ lives and their potential for a sustainable urban development of hcmc. considering the fact that deficits in urban planning are strongly related to the ongoing expansion process of the megaurban region and that the deficits cross administrative borders, it is necessary to improve the cooperation of hcmc and its surrounding provinces. a successful integration of migrants into the urban society is pivotally dependent on the access to affordable housing. the reduction of the significant housing deficit can only be advanced through various approaches, such as the integration of housing supply by means of industrial zone planning or the further promotion and development of alternative housing finance schemes. thereby all actors have to concentrate on the demand of the poor. furthermore it is necessary to implement and enhance the 2007 new law of residency, which offers new opportunities to reduce inequalities between migrants and non-migrants. after all it is required to continue the vietnamese banking sector reform process to develop comprehensive strategies especially for the non-state sector. in regards to the above-mentioned challenges, microfinance institutions have to expand both outreach and depth of their services for all poor and low-income people in order to reduce inequalities within vietnamese society. 12 since 2005, the decree 28/2005/nd-cp of the vietnamese government regulates the transformation of current semi-formal providers into regular microfinance institutions. the requirements are quite high for small organisations, including minimum capital, compulsory savings, etc. (cf. world bank 2007: 36). 31 references asian development bank (adb) (2006). vie: poverty assessment. strategy and program 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(2003). the challenge of slums. global report on human settlements 2003. nairobi. villes en transition viet nam (vet) (2005). impacts of existing residence registration policy on urban poverty alleviation. two case studies in hanoi and ho chi minh city. hanoi and ho chi minh city. waibel, m., eckert, r., bose, m. & martin, v. (2007). housing for low-income groups in ho chi minh city between re-integration and fragmentation approaches to adequate urban typologies and spatial strategies. asien, 103, 59-78. waibel, m. & thanh, l. v. (2007). the balance of urban growth and redevelopment in ho chi minh city. sustainable housing policies for megacities of tomorrow. action field 4. housing market and provision. second interim report. april 30, 2007. world bank (ed.) (2006). housing finance in east asia. new york. world bank (ed.) (2007). vietnam: developing a comprehensive strategy to expand access [for the poor] to microfinance services. promoting outreach, efficiency and sustainability. volume i: the microfinance landscape in vietnam. new york. 33 aseas 2-1 tobacco and kretek: indonesian drugs in historical change aseas 2 (1) aktuelle südostasienforschung / current research on south-east asia tobacco and kretek: indonesian drugs in historical change monika arnez1 university of hamburg, germany / universität hamburg, deutschland aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften / austrian journal of south-east asian studies seas gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften / society for south-east asian studies www.seas.at the clove cigarettes (kretek) industry is the second largest employer in indonesia, after the indonesian government. between 4 and 17 million people are employed in this industry, including areas such as cultivation, trading, transport, advertisement and production of clove cigarettes. the indonesian government depends on the kretek industry because of its important economic function. this paper contributes to tracing the historical development of kretek, considering economic, social and political aspects. the article raises the question which factors have determined the consumption behaviour of smoking? why has betel chewing increasingly been replaced by smoking kretek cigarettes? which steps has the kretek cigarette taken since its invention and what factors have mechanization, political intervention, tobacco control and advertisement played for the development of the kretek industry? what image do kretek cigarettes have today, what are its patterns of consumption and what infl uence do multinational enterprises have on the development of kretek? keywords: tobacco, clove cigarettes, history, social and political aspects, advertisement die industrie der nelkenzigaretten (kretek) ist im laufe ihrer historischen entwicklung zum zweigrößten arbeitgeber indonesiens nach der indonesischen regierung avanciert. die anzahl an beschäftigten in dieser branche wird auf zwischen 4 und 17 millionen menschen geschätzt und umfasst bereiche wie anbau, handel, transport, werbung und produktion der nelkenzigaretten. aufgrund ihrer bedeutenden ökonomischen funktion ist die indonesische regierung von der kretekindustrie abhängig. dieser artikel möchte einen beitrag dazu leisten, die historische entwicklung der kretek unter berücksichtigung spezifi scher ökonomischer, sozialer und politischer aspekte nachzuzeichnen. dabei wird insbesondere folgenden fragen nachgegangen: welche faktoren haben dazu beigetragen, dass der habitus des betelkauens zunehmend durch das rauchen von (kretek-)zigaretten ersetzt wurde? welche wesentlichen stationen hat die kretek-zigarette seit ihrer erfi ndung durchlaufen und welche auswirkungen hatten faktoren wie mechanisierung, politische intervention, tabakkontrolle und werbung auf die weitere entwicklung der industrie? welches image haben kretek-zigaretten heute, welches konsumverhalten ist feststellbar und welchen einfl uss haben multinationale unternehmen auf die entwicklung der kretek-industrie? schlagworte: tabak, nelkenzigaretten, geschichte, soziale und politische aspekte, werbung 1 monika arnez is juniorprofessorin at the university of hamburg, asia-africa-institute, department of southeast asian languages and cultures, austronesian languages and cultures. contact: monika_arnez@yahoo.de 49 monika arnez tobacco and kretek: indonesian drugs in historical change aseas 2 (1) substituting tobacco for betel2 in south-east asia and melanesia chewing betel was a wide spread practice for thousands of years. according to louis lewin (1931) betel was the widest spread narcotic in the history of mankind. in the twentieth century tobacco use largely replaced betel chewing.3 this substitution happened in a relatively short period, roughly between 1900 and 1950. in 1900 still a common practice, betel chewing was almost completely replaced by cigarette smoking in 1950. as anthony reid (1998, p. 538) has shown in south sulawesi, practically all adults chewed betel in 1900, whereas almost nobody consumed this drug in 1950. in java, bali and sumatra a similar tendency can be observed. betel chewing was also largely replaced by tobacco use in these regions. substantial causes for the replacement of betel by cigarettes are the changing image of modernity and education in the nineteenth century, significantly influenced by dutch colonial policy. in the eyes of the dutch colonial rulers betel chewing signified the inferiority of the indonesians. they rejected the habit of spitting betel on the roadside, and associated cigarette smoking with modernity, cultivation and education. in the course of changing colonial policies at the beginning of the twentieth century the dutch placed more emphasis on the education of indonesians. for instance, starting in the 1900s more schools for civil servants were built (osvia)4 and doctoral schools (stovia)5 were not reserved to the indonesian aristocracy anymore. the medium of teaching at these schools was dutch. since 1892-93 indonesians were allowed to attend european lower schools, a prerequisite for being admitted to the osvia (ricklefs, 1993, p. 158). the improved access to education and the increasing influence of dutch ideas on young indonesians were two factors accounting for the readiness with which young people adapted dutch models of modernity and cultiva2 i thank two anonymous reviewers of aseas for their comments on an earlier version of this paper. furthermore, i thank yvonne chan for co-editing this paper. however, the responsibility for this article is my own. 3 though this replacement is a trend, we can observe strong regional differences. for instance betel culture still is important in some regions, especially in east indonesia. susanne schröter, for instance, has observed in her fieldwork with the ngada (1994-1998) that both elderly men and women regularly chew betel, whereas young men and women only do so on special occasions. this form of betel culture is also documented for other peoples of east indonesia (schröter, private communication). 4 opleidingscholen voor inlandsche ambtenaren or school for training civil servants. 5 school tot opleiding van inlandsche artsen or school for educating native doctors. 50 aseas 2 (1) monika arnez tobacco and kretek: indonesian drugs in historical change tion. since they wished for better educational opportunities, more acceptation and prestige in society, they also replaced narcotics, which the dutch regarded as outmoded and backward, by drugs seen as modern and trendy. access to education was furthermore a factor that determined the consumer behaviour of men and women with regard to betel and tobacco. men gave up betel chewing earlier than women and replaced it by using tobacco because smoking white cigarettes was a symbol of keeping pace with development. smoking gave them new perspectives and opportunities for advancement and prestige. in contrast, women did not see any advantage in replacing betel by tobacco. first, they felt that tobacco could not substitute the indulgence and relaxing effect of betel. second, smoking tobacco did not offer them any perspectives, such as social advancement, so they saw no reason to prefer the new product. despite the wish for education, which raden ajeng kartini (1879-1904), the daughter of one of the most enlightened javanese bupati, and the ethical director of education (1900-1905) j. h. abendanon urgently put forward, women still did not have access to education. furthermore, smoking cigarettes symbolized masculinity and was thus associated with the male sphere. in contrast, women still preferred chewing betel for a long time, although men often did not approve of this habit, arguing that chewing betel affects the looks as it colours the teeth black.6 whereas chewing betel was a habit, which both sexes shared, consuming tobacco symbolized men’s access to education and their control of the economy (reid, 1998, p. 542). in this sense the replacement of betel by tobacco also indicates a gradual shift from an agrarian market economy to a modern industrial economy. in many regions of indonesia this shift happened within the time frame of 1900 until 1950. tobacco and the beginnings of the kretek industry tobacco was introduced to asia in 1575, when the spanish brought it to the philippines from mexico, and in 1601 it was introduced to java. in the mid-seventeenth century the javanese started to use tobacco in pipes and in indigenous cigarettes. 6 the concern about the black coloured teeth of the lover or wife is also found in different indonesian narratives. an example of pre-war literature is tenggelamnya kapal van der wijck (the sinking of the ship van der wijck, 1938) by hamka, in which the protagonist zainuddin ponders on forbidding hayati to chew betel if they marry. 51 aseas 2 (1) both women and men throughout indonesia used it as an additive to the betel squid (columbijn, columbijn, & columbijn, 2001, p. 53). indigenous cigarettes were made of shredded tobacco wrapped up in dried cornhusk, banana or palm leaves. they were later called klobot or kelobot (husk, bracts of the corn ear) in javanese or strootje in dutch. the first western cigarette wrapped in paper was imported to batavia in 1845. as budiman and onghokham (1987, p. 173) and reid (1998, p. 539) have shown, the british american tobacco (bat) company opened the first factory for the local manufacture of conventional cigarettes in cirebon in 1924, and a subsequent one in semarang. the strootjes made a comeback by mixing tobacco with clove buds. although there is evidence that in the seventeenth century cloves were already mixed with tobacco, clove cigarettes did not turn into a merchandise success before the twentieth century. the first person making a step in that direction was an inhabitant of kudus (central java), who popularised clove cigarettes among his friends around 1870.7 after he had first rubbed clove oil on his chest, attempting to alleviate his asthma, he had the idea to mix tobacco with cloves and to inhale the mixture. when he realized that he could breathe more easily, he propagated the new product as an efficacious remedy against asthma. he started to sell the hand-rolled cigarettes through pharmacies and coined the new product rokok cengkeh (clove cigarette). however, he did not have the chance to further commercialise these cigarettes because he died in 1880. after his death several other kudus inhabitants started to produce their own clove cigarettes. other than in the current kretek industry the clove cigarettes of that time were not wrapped in paper but in cornhusk. a variant of kelobot were klembak menyan, which used tobacco leaves, klembak (a kind of root) and incense. at that time there were no brand names or packaging associated with special brands. people rolled the kretek at home and disseminated them in the immediate environment. however, they did not exclusively try them for medical purposes only, but started to use them as a new relaxant and narcotic (hanusz, 2000, p. 30). the new product gradually became popular outside kudus. it was mainly a home 7 there are various versions of this name in different sources. exact details of his life are likewise unknown. lance castles (1967, p. 33) gives the name as hadji djamasri, referring to an interview with an informant. parada harahap (1952, p. 145) gives the name as djamhari, budiman & onghokham (1987, p. 106) and hanusz (2000, p. 30) call the inhabitant jamahri. 52 aseas 2 (1) monika arnez tobacco and kretek: indonesian drugs in historical change industry, using hand-operated rollers. the factories were the places, where the product was collected, controlled, packed and distributed. at first, the javanese dominated the kretek industry, most of them were muslims living in kudus and the surrounding environment. later, chinese entrepreneurs were attracted, too. the increasing competition among the companies led to an outbreak of violence in 1918: factories and houses were destroyed and some people even killed (columbijn et. al., 2001, p. 54). after the indigenous culprits had been imprisoned, the chinese manufacturers were able to strengthen their position (budiman & onghokham, 1987, pp. 105-108; tarmidi, 1996, p. 86). thus, the chinese firms gained a competitive advantage at an early stage of the kretek industry. indonesian chinese entrepreneurs have played an important role in the history of the largest kretek companies (djarum, bentoel, gudang garam, sampoerna). kretek recipes: tobacco plus saus the currently produced kretek8 consist of tobacco, crushed cloves and saus (sauce), which serves to give a special aroma to the cigarettes. the idea of mixing cloves with spices is not new in indonesia. this practice was (and in some indonesian regions still is) part of betel culture and serves to intensify the taste of the product. the earliest recipes of the sauce are unknown. scholars disagree about whether or not the saus was added to the mixture of tobacco and cloves right from the beginning of their production. whereas tarmadi (1996, p. 86) assumes that originally kretek were produced from tobacco and cloves and that larger firms added the sauce later to give them a special taste, columbijn et. al. (2001, p. 53) indicate that kretek already consisted of tobacco, clove buds and saus in the 1870s. however, the reason why kretek firms nowadays add the sauce to the clove-tobacco mixture is that the unique flavour of the cigarettes gives them a chance to get a competitive advantage over other companies. in addition, the sauce serves the purpose to moderate the bitter taste of tobacco leaves and to stabilize and preserve the tobacco taste as a whole. the respective mixture of the spices used for the sauce 8 the word kretek is onomatopoetic and derives from the crackling sound the cloves the cigarettes produce when smoked. 53 aseas 2 (1) is different and especially depends on the sales strategies of special kretek brands. at the beginning of the kretek industry the producers mainly used natural flavours such as banana, cinnamon, vanilla and jackfruit. as the industry grew and diversified, the firms increasingly added artificial flavours from europe because they hoped for a competitive advantage. since the recipe for the sauce is seen as an important aspect deciding on the success or failure of a kretek brand on the market, the enterprises keep the detailed recipe of the sauce secret (hanusz, 2000, p. 95). they only disclose parts of this secret. the kretek company djarum, for instance, gives the following ingredients for the sauce: licorice, chocolate, maple candy, plum skin, coffee, dried jackfruit and other dried fruit.9 the ‘kretek king’ nitisemito and the role of marketing concepts nitisemito was the first indonesian who produced kretek cigarettes on a larger scale. since he set standards for the later development of the kretek industry with his company bal tiga (‘three balls’), today he is known as ‘kretek king’ (“jamahri, nitisemito, dan kudus”, 2003). nitisemito was born in 1863 as eldest son of the family haji sulaiman, a village head in jagalan, kudus. as a young man he went to malang, east java, where he worked as a tailor. although his business expanded, he contracted more debts than he could pay back and was forced to sell his company. back in kudus he pursued different activities, none of which were particularly successful. around the turn of the century he went into the kretek business after he had married a woman called nasilah. she produced handmade clove cigarettes at home and sold them to workers. twelve years after his marriage with nasilah, in 1906, he started to sell klobot kretek under the brand name bal tiga and called his company nv10 bal tiga nitisemito in 1908.11 in addition to the quality of the product the company’s formula for success was based on its innovative marketing and sales strategies. nitisemito produced the packaging in japan and placed great emphasis on a visually attractive design. further9 djarum: kretek recipe. retrieved september 21, 2008 from http://www.djarum.co.id/en 10 naamloze vernootschap or company with limited liability. 11 this paragraph is based on the biography of nitisemito (see nitisemito, 1980). 54 aseas 2 (1) monika arnez tobacco and kretek: indonesian drugs in historical change more, since 1920, he started to disseminate expensive and exotic promotional gifts among the people, all printed with the characteristic three green balls. he toured through indonesia with a large bus, in which the free gifts were stored. nitisemito saw to it that on every larger festivity or night fair (pasar malam) there was a stand of bal tiga. on festive occasions, people could exchange italian teapots, bikes or even a car in return for a specific number of empty kretek packs. he hired stambul groups, popular theatre troupes which travelled from town to town staging their performances on stages painted in the colours of the trademark (budiman & onghokham, 1987, pp. 128-129; saptari, 1996, p. 182). here, a specified number of empty kretek packs would be the entrance fee for the performances (hanusz, 2000, p. 42). in 1930 the company fell into a crisis from which it never completely recovered until it went bankrupt in 1953. among the factors accounting for the company’s failure were the keen competition of other kretek companies, dissonance within the family, power struggles and the effects of the japanese occupation. in the mid-1920s the competition among the kretek firms became fierce, especially in kudus, where numerous producers located themselves. in addition, internal conflicts divided the company. nitisemito, who wanted to retire, already had prepared his son-in-law karmain for the top position. nitisemito’s grandson akuan markum, however, took advantage of the fact that the dutch colonial government obliged kretek companies in 1932 to affix a tax stamp to each cigarette pack. a short time later akuan reported karmain to the police, arguing, he had manipulated the new regulations. when karmain was released from prison, his reputation had suffered badly and he had to leave the company. since nitisemito did not trust in akuan, he took bal tiga over again until he decided in 1945 that his son soemadji should become the head of the company. at that time, however, the firm was already in a desolate condition; during the japanese occupation the best part of the company property had been confiscated. from this desolate starting position soemadji did not succeed in returning the former success to the company. in 1953 bal tiga filed for bankruptcy (hanusz, 2000, pp. 47-49). although the company did not survive until the present, it was an important model for later advertisement strategies, as will be shown below. 55 aseas 2 (1) effects on the kretek industry: mechanization and governmental intervention until 1968, kretek cigarettes were rolled by hand. even today, this kind of production is still practiced. handrolled kretek account for one third of the market share for clove cigarettes. in indonesia three kinds of handrolled kretek are available on the market: customary handrolled kretek without filter12, handrolled kretek with filter13 and k(e)lobot. in 1968 the kretek industry started mechanizing (simandjuntak, 1982, p. 82). three smaller companies located in solo and kudus had begun to mechanize at that time, as well as bentoel, one of the current brand leaders. most of the larger enterprises started mechanizing in the 1970s and 1980s: djarum in 1976, gudang garam in 1978 and sampoerna in 1983 (tarmidi, 1996, p. 90). there are several reasons why the kretek companies decided to mechanize. first, at the end of the 1960s, firms such as bentoel faced a labour shortage. at that time many new kretek companies were established and the request for workers increased considerably. second, filter cigarettes became more popular among the consumers (saptari, 1992, p. 14). third, mechanization promised to be an effective method to increase production. mechanization had a significant impact on the further development of the kretek industry. one important result of mechanization was that the gap between largeand small-scale kretek producers was further widened. whereas big companies were able to strengthen their market position, smaller enterprises were affected by the negative consequences of governmental intervention in the field of mechanization. large companies especially profited from mechanization since they were able to significantly increase production and cut down labour costs. gudang garam and djarum each held 31 percent of the market share in 1989, bentoel 12 percent, and sampoerna 5.5 percent (tarmidi, 1996, p. 97). the success of the large enterprises was at least partly based on governmental policy. indonesian governments have generally supported the local tobacco industry, particularly under general suharto’s authoritarian regime (lawrence & collin, 2004, 12 sigaret kretek tangan (skt). 13 sigaret kretek tangan filter (sktf). 56 aseas 2 (1) monika arnez tobacco and kretek: indonesian drugs in historical change p. 98). however, large companies, which significantly contribute to the government’s tax revenue, often benefited more from governmental intervention than smaller ones. the former were rarely affected by governmental regulations. for instance, the regulation issued by the directorate general for customs and excise in 1979, limiting the production of machine kretek to a proportion of 1:2 machine to handrolled output, did not include large enterprises.14 they, in contrast with the small kretek companies, were still allowed to mechanize. gudang garam, bentoel, djarum and sampoerna, which were among the first to mechanize, profited from the regulation. until the early 1980s they were the only kretek companies that had a licence to mechanize. this gave them a competitive advantage over the others (simandjuntak, 1982, p. 88).15 this regulation originally meant to secure employment and to protect the market segment of the small and medium-sized handrolled kretek companies by inhibiting growth in machine kretek production, de facto caused problems for small and medium-scale kretek firms since they were not permitted to mechanize (tarmidi, 1996, p. 101). furthermore, corruption and nepotism influenced the kretek industry and mostly harmed small enterprises. one prominent example is the effort of president suharto’s youngest son, hutomo mandala putra, to get the monopoly on cloves in indonesia. he established the bppc16 in 1990, arguing that it would protect farmers from wide fluctuations in clove prices (pisani, 1990). in reality, the bppc bought up cloves at a much lower price than their market value but charged the kretek manufacturers nearly five times as much for their supplies (hanusz, 2000, p. 70). their practice of dramatically underpaying clove farmers and mismanaging the supply of cloves led to the bppc being disbanded under pressure from the international monetary fund in 1998 (lawrence & collin, 2004, p. 98). the effect on the kretek industry was that smaller kretek manufacturers went bankrupt due to the short supply of cloves and the corresponding hike in prices. in contrast, the large enterprises, who had reserves of the spice set aside, survived the practices of bppc. 14 since the enterprises often violated this regulation, the directorate general revised the ratio in 1983 to 2:3. 15 this was not the first time that the small kretek companies were more heavily affected by governmental intervention than big enterprises. governmental regulations had already harmed small-scale kretek production in colonial history. for instance, in 1932 the dutch colonial government had already issued a regulation, demanding that both small and big companies had to separate the sales location from the place of production. since family enterprises did not have the financial resources to build a separate location, many of them went bankrupt (see saptari, 1992, p. 8). 16 badan penyangga dan pemasaran cengkeh or clove support and trading board. 57 aseas 2 (1) this imbalance was mitigated to some extent in the 1980s and 1990s. for instance, in 1987 the government introduced a tax regulation that had a negative effect on big companies. machine-made kretek were far higher taxed than handmade kretek (35-37 percent of the price tag for machine-produced kretek, 5-7 percent for handmade kretek). in addition, a regulation passed in 1991 required the kretek industry to put more kretek cigarettes into each pack. due to these new regulations the large companies especially were forced to raise the prices for their products resulting in many consumers choosing firms of middle or small size. currently there are three types of taxes on tobacco products: the ad valorem excise taxes that depend on the type of tobacco product and the size of the industry, the 8.4 percent value added tax (vat) flat rate imposed on all types of tobacco products, and a specific tax excluding non-cigarette products. all of the taxes are applied per cigarette. the excise taxes for machine-made clove and white cigarettes are still far higher than for hand-made kretek, but compared to the 1980s and 1990s, the gap has narrowed between the two. the excise taxes for machine-made cigarettes range from 26 to 40 percent, and from 4 to 22 percent for hand-made kretek. the variation depends on the type of cigarettes, whether machine or hand-rolled, and the production scale. the specific tax, which took effect on july 1, 2007, is imposed only on cigarette products and varies depending on the size of the industry. comparing tobacco taxes among southeast asian countries, hana ross of international tobacco research of the american cancer society criticizes the mechanism of the specific tax and ad valorem tax as not beneficial. the researcher expects that due to this system, manufacturers might produce lower-price and lower-quality products to pay less tax (nurhayati, 2008). tobacco control and consumer protection even though the currently existing tax system might have holes through which manufacturers of kretek cigarettes can escape or at least minimize their expenses, the cigarette industry still is a big contributor to excise tax annually. since it was the only sector not hit by the financial crisis of 1997/1998, the indonesian government 58 aseas 2 (1) monika arnez tobacco and kretek: indonesian drugs in historical change 59 source: achadi, suroyo, & barber (2005, p. 81) figure 1: sections on advertisement, sponsorship, and promotion in the regulations no. 81 (1999), 38 (2000), 19 (2003), draft bill uu 2007aracteristics regulation (pp) number 81 (1999) advertisements restricted to print and outdoor media advertisements must neither encourage people to smoke, nor describe or persuade people that smoking has health benefits. no pictures or writings of cigarettes or people smoking. children or pregnant women not allowed to be targeted. producers must mention that advertised product is cigarette brand. health warnings must be included in advertisements manufacturers, advertisers,and retailers can be fined up to idr 100 million (usd 10,000) or five years in jail for violation of advertising restrictions article bans content & design health warnings penalties & enforcement regulation (pp) number 38 (2000) advertisements permitted in electronic media in addition to print and outdoor media same as previous pp same as previous pp same as previous pp regulation (pp) number 19 (2003) same as previous pp additional restriction: advertisements must not violate any norms in society in addition to health warnings (15 percent of advertisement size), every ad must disclose nicotine and tar levels sanctions for violations were eliminated draft law (uu) 2007 prohibition of direct and indirect advertising, of print and outdoor media sponsorship, in electronic media, and of cigarette promotions; print, electronic and other media prohibited from showing people smoking not applicable not applicable violations of direct or indirect advertising and promotion of cigarettes: a maximum of 5 years in jail and a maximum fine of idr 1 billion (usd 100,000); violations of prohibitions on showing people smoking in print, electronic other media: a maximum of 3 years in jail and fines up to idr 500 million (usd 50,000) aseas 2 (1) has been rather reluctant to implement regulations on smoking. for many years, only hesitating steps were taken to introduce tobacco control policies on the political and public health agenda. in the last decade more regulations have been issued for tobacco control. the first tobacco control regulation number 81/1999 passed in 1999, succeeded by regulations number 38/2000 and number 19/2003 and a draft bill in 200717 (achadi, suroyo, & barber, 2005, p. 81). one important aspect of these decrees is regulations for advertisement, sponsorship and promotion. the preceding overview (fig. 1) shows the number of regulations for this sector since 1999, including bans, content and design, health warnings, and penalties and enforcement. another step taken in the context of consumer protection was to restrict the content and style of cigarette advertisements. somewhere in the ad, for example, there has to be a standardized health warning on the potential health risks of smoking. since regulation 81/1999 the authorized warning is: ‘smoking can cause cancer, heart attacks, impotence and harm pregnancy and fetal development’. the draft bill of 2007 further regulates the visibility of health warnings, demanding that ‘written and/or pictoral health warnings must be placed on both sides of each pack, comprise 50 percent or more of the package, in large letters, clear, visible, and convincing, and rotated’ (achadi, suroyo, & barber, 2005, p. 81). however, in reality, people do not stick to the regulations since the implementation of the respective regulations and bills has been weak. the companies do not necessarily follow the advertisement regulations and are not punished for their violations, as the example of the following case reveals. in a lawsuit concerning a series of cigarette commercials which were aired from june to december 2001 on rcti and sctv in both the morning and afternoon18, including from the kretek enterprises djarum and sampoerna, the judges ruled in favour of the cigarette industry and even ordered the plaintiff to issue a public apology to the accused (“judges rule”, 2003). the plaintiffs claimed that the commercials violated government regulation no. 38/2000, the judges, however, defended the cigarette industries, explaining that they had no 17 another measure taken so far was the implementation of bylaw no. 2/2005 on air pollution control in february 2005 by jakarta governor sutiyoso. the bylaw bans smoking in enclosed public places, and requires property management companies to provide special smoking areas. sutiyoso has also issued gubernatorial regulation no. 75, which marks offices, train stations, shopping malls, bus terminals, airports, hotels and restaurants, as well as schools and places of worship as smoke-free zones. the regulation also prohibits smoking in public transportation vehicles such as trains, taxis, buses and public mini buses (yuliandrini, 2005a). 18 according to the governmental regulation 38/2000 cigarette advertisements may only be aired between 9.30 pm and 5 am. 60 aseas 2 (1) monika arnez tobacco and kretek: indonesian drugs in historical change connection with the broadcasting time but only contracted third parties to promote their products. the government does not have any sincere interest in protecting indonesians from the dangers of smoking, as the following example of 2008 reveals. four ngos brought a law suit against the executive branch and the house of representatives in june in 2008 to force the two branches to consider ratification of the world health organization’s framework convention on tobacco control (fctc). the ngos, the jakarta residents forum (fakta), the indonesian consumers foundation (ylki), the institute for combating smoking (lm3) and the coalition for a healthy indonesia (kuis), accused the state institutions of failing to protect indonesians from the dangers of smoking. the ngos asked the government to ratify the fctc and the house to include a bill to control tobacco impact in their 2008-2009 legislative agenda. the fctc was opened for endorsement in geneva in 2003, and 157 countries have ratified it but indonesia is still not among them. the ngos blame the government, arguing that indonesia has drafted a bill for the law but has not implemented it because of the house’s legislative body, which has deemed it ‘not a national priority’ (winarti, 2008). the case is still not solved since in the fifth hearing in october 2008 the government representatives did not show up. the backing of the kretek companies within indonesia can clearly be explained with the success of the kretek industry on the market and its impact for the indonesian economy. this success has resulted in new developments in the kretek industry including fusion with multinational enterprises. recent developments in the kretek industry: multinational enterprises and diversification in its recent history the kretek industry has become an attractive investment for international corporations. us-based companies have especially seized the opportunity to step into the kretek market. the most striking example is the us giant philip morris which took over pt hm sampoerna on may 18, 2005. in an agreement with pt hm sampoerna, philip morris offered to pay usd 2 billion to buy a 40 percent stake of the company from the enterprise, making a public tender for the remaining 60 per61 aseas 2 (1) cent (greenlees, 2005). now, sampoerna also distributes the well-known us-brand marlboro in indonesia. the move to take over sampoerna highlights the importance of indonesia to the future of global tobacco companies. compared to the usa and europe, where cigarette sales are declining, in indonesia and also in other asian countries they are still increasing. in indonesia, where 90 percent of the consumers are smoking kretek cigarettes, the entrance into this market is essential for the success of multinational companies there. as a result of this development, however, some local kretek companies are having more difficulties to survive. one example is gudang garam. in july 2008 there were rumours for a potential takeover of this enterprise. in 1997 gudang garam still controlled 49 percent of the national cigarette market, but was overtaken by sampoerna for the first time in the first quarter of 2007. since then, sampoerna has held 24 percent of the country’s market, followed by gudang garam at 23 percent and djarum at 20 percent (“gudang garam,” 2008). the likelihood of a potential sale of gudang garam to a multinational tobacco company has increased due to the decline of gudang garam’s market share following sampoerna’s acquisition by philip morris. not all local companies, however, seem to have come under pressure of multinational enterprises, especially large ones which have successfully diversified. the hartono brothers of djarum, for instance, gained more influence by acquiring interests in other companies, marketing different products and entering the real estate market. since the fall of suharto in 1998, djarum made use of the fact that property previously owned by the suharto and allied salim families was privatized. at that time the hartono brothers, who inherited the enterprise from their father oei wie gwan, a chinese native, joined a partnership to acquire majority control of bank central asia (bca), the largest private bank in indonesia, formerly in the hands of the suharto clan. they bought a 51 percent stake in bca, thus gaining control of the banking group. in 2001 the enterprise took part in the consortium which acquired the salim oleochemicals in surabaya, a producer of palm and coconut oils for shampoos. in 2003 the company joined the bidding to acquire the management contract of two landmark indonesian hotels, hotel indonesia and hotel wisata, both in downtown jakarta. djarum won the contract in 2004, after promising to spend more than usd 200 million to renovate the two hotels. a year later djarum acquired 75 percent of pt grand indonesia, a 7-hectare complex, including a hotel, apartments, a shopping mall 62 aseas 2 (1) monika arnez tobacco and kretek: indonesian drugs in historical change and offices in the city centre. the complex (worth usd 230 million) was built on the property of the hotel indonesia and hotel wisata. djarum will operate the complex through a 30-year built-operation-transfer (bot) agreement with the government (yuliandini, 2005b). the big kretek companies do not only invest in increasing wealth by diversifying, but also in enhancing its prestige by sponsoring activities for society such as big sports events and concerts. sampoerna and djarum are some of the biggest sponsors of sports and entertainment events in the country. djarum is also known as a company that awards scholarships to students. although kretek companies are fought by some groups, especially by ngos, for damaging indonesian people’s health, on the whole they enjoy high prestige in the country. consumption, image, and advertisement it should be noted here that in the historical development of the kretek industry, kretek did not always have the same image and prestige. the changing image of the product was closely related to changing patterns of consumption. this depends on the meanings of the kretek to the people, which are determined by various factors, reaching from income, to concepts of nationalism and modernity, to political aspects. it has been part of the strategy of kretek advertisement to influence these meanings. vice versa the people’s connotations of the product also affect the slogans. the changing image and prestige of kretek cigarettes can clearly be seen, when we compare consumer behaviour of the 1960s, the 1970s and the present. from independence to the early 1960s, the income of the average smoker was comparably low and many people smoked cheap brands of locally made cigarettes. mostly men of the lower classes like bicycle taxi drivers and workers in the informal sector consumed kretek cigarettes. the hand-rolled cigarettes wrapped in white papers were much cheaper than customary white cigarettes. the kretek were efficient to distract from problems in everyday life, especially in a society where the poor did not have promising future prospects. furthermore they served as a way to strengthen the feeling of solidarity among the poor and their identity as indonesians. the author mochtar lubis illustrates this in his novel twilight in jakarta, which is 63 aseas 2 (1) set in jakarta in 1956. in this novel, the shared kretek cigarette is the highlight of the day for the contract workers saimun and itam because the kretek is the only pleasure they can afford. mochtar lubis contrasts the kretek with the expensive brands of white foreign cigarettes. the message is that wealthy people do not enjoy these luxury cigarettes but only smoke them for reasons of prestige but easily get bored by them, whereas for the indonesian lower classes smoking kretek means to enhance the awareness of life. for the contract workers “to smoke a kretek […] was just like a grand ceremonial”, whereas the wealthy suryono “took out a pack of lucky strike cigarettes, lit one and after only two puffs threw it on the floor and crushed it with his shoe” (lubis, 1963, p. 17, pp. 29-30). the side blow at the behaviour of indonesians smoking white luxury cigarettes serves to highlight that after 1965, with the establishment of the new order regime under president suharto, the standard of living began to rise and the patterns of smoking changed as well. wealthy people bought expensive cigarettes imported from abroad since consuming foreign products was more prestigious than smoking domestic kretek. in the 1970s, however, the emerging middle class and the upper classes started to consume kretek again. the kretek companies became more popular at that time for several reasons. first, many indonesians preferred kretek over white cigarettes because of protectionist policies adopted by the suharto regime after it had come to power in 1965. by the 1990s, kretek accounted for more than 90 percent of all cigarette sales and increasingly became a symbol of indonesian culture. second, the advertisement strategies also changed, adapting to consumer demands. the companies started to choose a fancy appearance and expensive packaging for their products, imitating western trademarks. the ideas of advertisement and its forms were copied from western cigarette companies. this copying of western promotion techniques per se gave the kretek a high status (columbijn et. al., 2001, p. 55). in addition, the concept introduced by nitisemito in the 1920s, letting the consumers exchange a specified number of empty kretek packs for free gifts, was copied in the 1970s. in contrast to the 1920s the gifts were not as generous. for example, glasses were exchanged for a number of kretek packs. however, this concept was very popular so that in the late 1970s the glass factories in jakarta and surabaya could not meet other orders anymore. at present, the image of each company and their 64 aseas 2 (1) monika arnez tobacco and kretek: indonesian drugs in historical change brands is carefully designed and responds to the currently existing cultural values and desires of the day. the most important images currently used in kretek slogans are related to modernity, hard work or leisure, respect for indonesia, tradition and nationalism. although female consumers were already identified as a potentially growing market in the 1980s, the present promotion campaigns are still mostly directed at men, especially adolescent boys (reynolds, 1999, p. 85). according to ‘the tobacco atlas’, published by the world health organization (who) in 2002, 59 percent of indonesian men smoked, whereas only 3.7 percent of indonesian women did so (mackay & eriksen, 2002, p. 97). since 70 percent of smokers in indonesia start smoking before they are 19 years of age, the cigarette industries aggressively target adolescents. adolescent girls are not a target market. columbijn et al. (2001, p. 57) state that in a research project’s theoretical sample on children’s smoking behaviour about half of the boys and none of the girls smoked. this result also corresponds with other results on smoking behaviour in indonesia. in 1995 only 2.6 percent of all smokers in indonesia (occasional and regular smokers aged 20 years or older) were female, and the number of women smoking has only slightly increased, rising to 3 percent in 2007 (barraclough, 1999, p. 327; graham, 2007). since smoking is not popular among indonesian women, advertisements only in rare cases show young women smoking a kretek. one important reason explaining the imbalance between the number of men and women smoking is that there are traditional strictures against women smoking. many indonesians culturally disapprove of women smoking, associating it with moral laxness19 and westernization. referring to advertisements in the 1990s, barraclough (1999, p. 331) revealed that although women appeared in some advertisements, they were shown in a group of men, who smoked. as catherine reynolds has stated, advertising is having “a very real impact in increasing the number of indonesians who smoke – especially those in younger age groups who are still so focused on their identity formation and who are being targeted as key contributors to indonesian tobacco companies’ future profits” (1999, p. 85). 19 this image is partly motivated by the fact that a significant part of women, who smoke in public, are prostitutes. 65 aseas 2 (1) conclusion the cultural tradition of adding spices to drugs, as was the case with betel leaves20, has also born the first kretek. however, in contrast to betel chewing, smoking kretek primarily was a male custom from its very beginning. from its origins, when a kudus inhabitant used kretek as a medicine against asthma, the kretek industry has experienced great historical, cultural and political changes. in the course of its history the handrolled kretek has since then mostly been substituted by machine-produced kretek. governmental intervention has significantly influenced the development of the kretek industry, often giving large enterprises a competitive advantage over smallscale companies. just like former governments, the present indonesian government is supportive of the kretek industry and reluctant to implement a functioning system of tobacco control and consumer protection. one reason for this is that tobacco-related revenues are crucial to the national finances, ranking as the third-largest revenue source.21 although in the last decade there have been some efforts to restrain smoking (regulations issued in 1999, 2000 and 2003 and a draft bill to ban advertising and sponsorship by tobacco companies in 2007), and the government increasingly supports medical research on the health impacts of smoking, it is not likely that these steps will result in effective tobacco control. the tobacco lobby in indonesia is still particularly strong, and the government fears loss of jobs, taxes and investment if the industry is selling a lesser number of kretek. the backing of the cigarette enterprises was also revealed in the case, where the judges ruled in favour of the kretek industry, which had obviously violated the legally allowed broadcasting time for tobacco-product advertisements, and in the reluctance of the government to ratify the who convention. given the weak implementation of laws in indonesia, it is fairly improbable that even if the law were passed, it would be policed. a further important factor that has strengthened the dominant position of the kretek industry is advertisement. starting with free gifts promotion campaigns as a strategy for the ‘kretek king’ nitisemito to promote his product in the first half 20 among ingredients added were cloves, cardamom, nutmeg, nuts, dried fruits and flower extracts. 21 on march 1, 2007 taxes on cigarettes in indonesia were raised by 7 percent, for instance for 2007 total tobaccorelated tax income was expected to exceed idr 42 trillion (usd 4.6 billion) (see graham, 2007). 66 aseas 2 (1) monika arnez tobacco and kretek: indonesian drugs in historical change of the twentieth century, the advertisement strategies have become more sophisticated in the twenty-first century. they carefully direct advertisements at specific target groups, mainly adolescents (particularly boys but sometimes also girls), coaxing them with witty and humorous slogans. as research carried out by the national commission for child protection has shown, promotion campaigns have a strong influence on teenagers in indonesia. according to them, more than 90 percent of young, mainly male, teenagers are affected by late-evening smoke advertisements carried on mainstream television. second to exploring issues associated with modernity, kretek ads still rely on the value of tradition to promote its products among a different target group. the kretek industry, which, in its beginnings, was chiefly in indonesian hands, now is dominated by ethnic chinese companies or us-american ones. a recent development is that the kretek industry has attracted international companies like philip morris, who bought sampoerna. philip morris has made use of the fact that indonesia is one of the largest markets for cigarettes in the world. local companies, however, have also found strategies to cope with current challenges. they mainly reacted to this development by diversifying their products to minimize their risk. if we compare the consumption patterns of kretek and white cigarettes, we can easily see the importance of kretek in indonesia. although kretek are said to have even worse effects on people’s health than regular cigarettes due to its higher percentage of tar and nicotine (according to schwarz [1990, pp. 32-33] the average kretek has 56 mg tar and 2.8 mg nicotine per cigarette), the kretek remains dominant in indonesia. as graham (2007) points out, 83 percent of smokers still prefer clove cigarettes to socalled white cigarettes. thus, we can assume that despite historical and structural changes of the kretek industry, kretek is going to remain an important economic sector and a symbol of indonesian (male) culture and identity. 67 aseas 2 (1) references achadi, a., soerojo, widyastuti, s., & barber, s. 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(2005a, december 26). enforcing smoking ban goes up in, well… the jakarta post. retrieved april 16, 2009 from http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2005/12/26/enforcing-smoking-bangoes-well.html?1 yuliandini, t. (2005b, october 28). grand indonesia offers new shopping experience. the jakarta post. retrieved april 16, 2009 from http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2005/10/28/grand-indonesia-offers-new-shopping-experience.html 69 aseas 11(2) | 183 making refugees (dis)appear: identifying refugees and asylum seekers in thailand and malaysia1 jera lego ► lego, j. (2018). making refugees (dis)appear: identifying refugees and asylum seekers in thailand and malaysia. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 11(2), 183-198. thailand and malaysia together host hundreds of thousands of refugees and asylum seekers even while neither of the two countries has signed international refugee conventions and there exist little or no formal national asylum frameworks for distinguishing refugees and asylum seekers from other undocumented migrants. scholars who have explored this situation and the precarious condition of refugees and asylum seekers have yet to question how refugees and asylum seekers are identified in light of this legal ambiguity. this paper follows the cases of registration exercises along the thai-myanmar border and mobile registration in kuala lumpur until around 2013 in order to explore the mechanisms and technologies employed by the office of the united nations high commissioner for refugees in cooperation with non-governmental organizations for registering and identifying refugees from myanmar. it argues that both the registration and non-registration of refugees and asylum seekers can be understood in terms of competing rationalities of the various actors involved, their incongruent programs, and uneven technologies that serve to make refugees both appear and disappear, that is, to actively construct and assert knowledge and information concerning the existence of refugees, or to conceal, deny, if not altogether dispense of the presence of refugees. keywords: governmentality; malaysia; refugee; refugee status determination; thailand  introduction many southeast asian countries have long been producing, receiving, and serving as transit points for forced migrants without the benefit of national asylum frameworks. between 1975 and 1995, some three million refugees and asylum seekers fled cambodia, laos, and vietnam in what came to be known as the indochinese refugee crisis. since the early 1980s, various ethnic minorities from myanmar have also been fleeing to its neighboring countries. at the height of the influx of forced migrants from myanmar, malaysia was host to more than 270,000 so-called persons of concern2 to the united nations high commissioner 1 this paper is based on a phd dissertation entitled constructing the refugee category: sovereignty, ambiguity, and governmentality, submitted to the international christian university in tokyo, japan, in 2016. it uses data gathered from interviews with unhcr staff, non-governmental organizations, refugees, and refugee community leaders in bangkok and mae sot in thailand in 2013, and in kuala lumpur, malaysia, in 2010 and 2013. 2 this includes refugees, persons living in refugee-like situations, asylum seekers, stateless persons, aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 02 184 | aseas 11(2) making refugees (dis)appear for refugees (unhcr) in 2014, while the border consortium (tbc) recorded more than 153,000 refugees and asylum seekers living in the nine camps along the thaimyanmar border in 2006 (the border consortium, 2007). despite the large presence of refugees and asylum seekers, neither thailand nor malaysia has signed the 1951 convention relating to the status of refugees nor its 1967 protocol, and there exists no formal national asylum frameworks for distinguishing refugees and asylum seekers from other undocumented migrants. that these refugees and asylum seekers live precarious lives has not gone unnoticed (amnesty international, 2010; human rights watch [hrw], 2012; international federation for human rights & suara rakyat malaysia, 2008; jesuit refugee services, 2012; united states committee for refugees and immigrants, 2006). scholars have explored this situation and characterized the condition of refugees and asylum seekers as one occupying “an indeterminate space, an unsettled socio-legal location” (nah, 2007, p. 56) in which the operation of borders remains unclear. others have commented on how governmental responses towards refugees and asylum seekers serve to perform and reify states and borders (hedman, 2008). such literature, however, has yet to specifically question how refugees are identified when no national asylum framework exists in the first place. roger zetter’s (1991) influential article considers how the refugee label is formed, transformed, and politicized in the case of greek-cypriot refugees. his analysis, however, focuses on the labeling of refugees in contexts where formal legal frameworks exist and where refugee norms are institutionalized. crisp’s (1999) working paper entitled “who has counted the refugees?” is highly informative and suggests various factors involved in registering displaced persons and in collecting statistics concerning these populations. he finds, for instance, that logistical problems matter in the decision whether or not to individually register refugees, that states for various reasons may try to inflate or deflate refugee figures, or that at times registration is resisted by refugees themselves, state actors, or even the unhcr’s operational partners. the situation in southeast asia since the 1980s is absent from crisp’s (1999) account, and he does not attempt to relate his findings to a more generalized understanding of the state, international organizations (ios), and other actors involved in the regimes of governing forced migration. this paper aims to fill these gaps by exploring efforts to register and thereby identify refugees and asylum seekers in cases where formal national asylum frameworks are absent. why does it matter how refugees are identified? first, it matters from the perspective of the rights of forced migrants. registration as an asylum seeker serves as the starting point for gaining recognition as a refugee and all the rights that accrue to it under international law. second, it matters for understanding the process of norm creation and of constructing the refugee category. how refugees are identified in the absence of national asylum frameworks could reveal the strategies employed by the various actors involved, the effectiveness of those strategies, and the possibilities for strengthening and internalizing refugee norms in host countries. since, by definition, the refugee category exists in relation to states and the international system of nation-states (haddad, 2008), practices that contribute to creating it promise to reveal insights into the exercise and practice of state sovereignty and international and other uncategorized groups described simply as “others of concern to the unhcr” (unhcr, 2015). aseas 11(2) | 185 jera lego politics, and of state sovereignty within international politics. third, and related to this, it matters for revealing the complex dynamics between the state, the unhcr, non-government organizations (ngos), and forced migrants. this paper focuses on the second and third reasons and aims to shed more light on the dynamics between southeast asian states, the unhcr, ngos, and forced migrants. southeast asian states have been accused of rejecting refugee norms as eurocentric and unsuited to the southeast asian context (davies, 2008), or of being preoccupied with sovereignty and economic development at the expense of protecting human rights (mcconnachie, 2014). on the other hand, the unhcr is seen as one of the “gold standards” in the so-called international humanitarian order (barnett, 2010), an epistemic resource and norm entrepreneur, albeit with its own pathologies (barnett & finnemore, 2004), whose practice of conducting refugee status determination (rsd) procedures is inherently problematic (kagan, 2006). caught between southeast asian state authorities, the unhcr, and the ngos that may seek to provide material and non-material resources, care, and/or compassion are those forced migrants seen as either hapless victims or survivors with agency. do the governments of southeast asian states simply reject refugee norms as eurocentric and irrelevant or are they merely illiberal, corrupt, and erratic in responding to refugees and asylum seekers? how does an influential io like the unhcr promote and implement refugee norms in relation to such states? what role do ngos and forced migrants then play? to answer these questions, this paper takes the case of two of the largest refugee populations in southeast asia, namely, those in peninsular malaysia and on the border between thailand and myanmar, and it examines the mechanisms for registering those populations until around 2013. the two cases serve an interesting contrast between largely urban-based refugees, in the case of malaysia, and a protracted refugee situation in a non-urban area, in the case of the thailand's border. approaching the absence of national laws in the absence of national asylum laws, it is necessary to use a framework that elaborates on the ways that power is articulated through other mechanisms and practices. here, governmentality, a way of examining collective activities and organized practices as deliberate schemes through which subjects are governed or rendered governable (dean, 1999), is instructive. lippert (2005) distinguishes between three concepts deployed when using a governmentality approach: technologies, programs, and rationalities. technologies are “the material and intellectual means, devices, and mechanisms that make different forms of rule possible” (lippert, 2005, p. 4). programs are those “imagined projects, designs or schemes for organizing and administering social conduct” (lippert, 2005, p. 4) within which various technologies are assembled. rationalities include, but are not limited to, moralities, ideologies, “notions of the appropriate forms, objects, and limits of politics, and the right distribution of governing duties within secular, religious, military, and familial sectors” (lippert, 2005, p. 4). organized practices that tend to be taken for granted therefore become clues to understanding larger programs of governance borne of particular mentalities or rationalities of rule. 186 | aseas 11(2) making refugees (dis)appear rationalities, moreover, differ greatly depending on what michel foucault (2007) refers to as mechanisms of power. mechanisms of power may be pastoral, sovereign, governmental, or disciplinary, each of which is underpinned by different rationalities that constitute their subjects in different ways. the sovereign conceives of its subjects in territorial terms, the governmental in terms of populations, the pastoral in terms of the life or soul of the individual, and the disciplinary in terms of the bodies of individuals. these rationalities tend to utilize particular mechanisms of government toward different ends. sovereign rationality is mainly expressed through the imposition of laws and the use of force, while governmental rationality deploys forms of knowledge and expertise. the sovereign, moreover, is the ultimate source of authority; it is characteristic for its capacity to determine states of exception, as carl schmitt (1985, p. 1) has famously written. governmentality, on the other hand, is articulated precisely in terms of governmentalization of the state, that is to say the elaboration of bureaucratic regulations and procedures separate from the person and the activity of the sovereign (foucault, 2007). in addition, governmentality, seeks “to structure the field of possible action, to act on our own or others’ capacities for action” (dean, 1999, p. 14). in other words, it presumes that the individual who constitutes the population is a locus of freedom. thus, governmentality studies are often seen as a preoccupation for understanding liberal governments where sovereign power is understood to have receded. as dean (1999, p. 147) argues, however, liberalism itself contains elements of despotism for those who are deemed not to possess the attributes required of the autonomous and responsible subject, and that, conversely, it is also possible to think of governmentality under authoritarian forms of rule. this paper attempts to take up this challenge, to consider governmentality under less or non-liberal forms of rule, such as in thailand and malaysia, and to examine the ways in which sovereign rationalities are articulated as they overlap, compete, or perhaps collaborate with other forms or modes of government in the context of identifying refugees and asylum seekers. in the same vein, the paper argues that the unhcr can be understood as being motivated by governmental rationalities, and ngos, including aid agencies and refugee community organizations (rcos), as being guided by pastoral rationalities. ios and ngos are therefore understood as sources of governance imbued with radically different rationalities underpinning their respective programs and mechanisms for implementing these programs. at this point, we may already begin to address some of the questions raised in the previous section. for one, it can be argued that disregard for human rights and refugee norms does not have to come at the expense of a preoccupation with sovereignty, nor does a more liberal form of rule guarantee the protection of human rights, as the surge of xenophobic, populist politics in western democracies in recent years has shown. liberal governmentality contains elements of despotism, as mentioned earlier, while sovereign power’s exceptionalist tendencies to assert itself can exist alongside particular forms of governmental rule. meanwhile, ios exhibiting ‘pathologies’ is not surprising given governmentality’s tendency to homogenize populations, which runs counter to the underlying principle of refugee norms that must take into consideration the multiple and complex circumstances refugees and asylum seekers face. on this premise, this paper argues that efforts to register and/or cease registration of refugees and asylum seekers can be understood as an outcome of competing aseas 11(2) | 187 jera lego rationalities of the various actors involved, their incongruent programs, and uneven technologies that seek to make refugees both appear and disappear. the thai and malaysian states, the unhcr, and its partner ngos are each animated by sovereign, governmental, or pastoral rationalities that shape the various programs for governing refugees, constituted as either populations or communities through different mechanisms. these programs then serve to make refugees appear, in the sense of being made visible on official records or in the public discourse, or disappear, in the double sense of having them leave the territory through resettlement and (sometimes forcible) repatriation, or of limiting the numbers of those visible on official records. the identification of refugees thus serves as a rich site for understanding multiple forms of governmental rationalities. the use of the terms appear/disappear rather than visible/invisible is deliberate as the latter suggests that something that exists is hidden from plain sight. instead, appearance/disappearance indicate the need, on the one hand, to actively construct and assert knowledge and information concerning the existence of refugees or, on the other hand, conceal, deny, if not altogether dispense of the presence of refugees within a given territory. registration in malaysia malaysia has seen its fair share of refugees and asylum seekers: from filipino muslims fleeing into sabah in the 1970s, to the so-called vietnamese ‘boat people’ and cambodian cham muslims during what came to be known as the indochinese refugee crisis, to thai muslims who had fled into kedah and perak in the 1980s, to bosnian muslims in the early 1990s, and indochinese as well as acehnese fleeing throughout the 1990s and into the mid-2000s. temporary residence permits were granted to some of these groups on the basis of exemption from provisions of the immigration act granted at the discretion of the minister of home affairs. in most cases, these permits were granted on humanitarian grounds, serving as “humanitarian exceptions”, which simultaneously appropriate for the malaysian state a noble role while distancing itself from the language of rights and any obligation it invokes (lego, 2012). apart from these, there are no national asylum frameworks that provide protection for refugees as understood in international law. except during the indochinese refugee crisis, under the 1989 comprehensive plan of action (cpa), registration and rsd conducted by the unhcr in malaysia has been ad hoc and irregular, at least until the early 2000s. alice nah (2007) argues that an incident involving high profile arrests of over 400 acehnese asylum seekers outside the unhcr compound in kuala lumpur in 2003 was a highly symbolic event that reinforced an internal change in the unhcr. since that event, and under a new representative, volker turk, unhcr-malaysia was restructured and repositioned, increasing its capacity to fulfill its mandate of protection and assistance. from having previously adopted a relatively meek and submissive role, it began to engage proactively with the malaysian government, with civil society groups, and with the media on the issue of protection. operationally, it increased and amended its registration and rsd processes. it also defended the identity documents it produced by intervening when registered persons of concern were arrested. it made appeals for their release, ar188 | aseas 11(2) making refugees (dis)appear ranged for legal representation in court, organized medical services for those in detention, and processed more cases for resettlement. it lobbied for change through every step of the law enforcement system. (nah, 2007, p. 49) it also happens that these enhanced operations occurred, as nah (2007) pointed out, at the same time that the malaysian government had begun to more strictly regulate immigration flows in response to the growing number of undocumented migrant workers arriving since the 1980s, when the malaysian economy experienced rapid economic growth. the malaysian government enacted harsher immigration laws allowing for fines of up to 10,000 myr (roughly 2,000 usd), imprisonment of up to five years, corporal punishment, frequent immigration crackdowns, and broader police powers. it could thus be argued the unhcr was prompted to elaborate and enhance its mechanisms to more effectively implement its programs for managing refugee populations in response to the state’s actions to assert its sovereignty and enforce its borders by criminalizing those who may be seeking asylum. the arrests were particularly galling for the unhcr because not only were they an excessive show of sovereignty that disregards international refugee norms, they also very blatantly preempted the possibility that the unhcr could register and then determine whether those asylum seekers could be recognized as refugees. in other words, those actions prevented the possibility of making those 400 arrested acehnese appear as either refugees or not. mobile registration one innovation, developed by the unhcr as early as 2004 as part of its efforts to enhance its mechanisms, was the implementation of mobile registration exercises in which unhcr staff would head to refugee settlements in jungle areas to seek out and register refugees and asylum seekers. informants narrated how the unhcr would typically inform rcos when and where these mobile registration exercises would be held. in the beginning, these were held in so-called jungle settlements, but later on, they were also held in urban areas, often in church facilities. the unhcr then headed to these locations, where they gathered and recorded information from those with asylum claims. one of the first groups to be registered under these mobile registration exercises was a group of 600 refugees from aceh seeking refuge in western malaysia’s penang island (unhcr malaysia, 2004). since then, several other mobile registration exercises were implemented on an ad hoc basis. between 2008 and 2010, with funding from the australian government, the unhcr in malaysia was able to register some 75,000 asylum seekers (crisp, obi, & umlas, 2012). the chin refugee committee (crc), one of many rcos, considered these mobile registration exercises to be extremely beneficial. the crc annual report narrates how, prior to mobile registration exercises, refugees and asylum seekers had been seeking refuge in jungles. there, they would set up tents or small huts in groups of 100 to 300 people in each camp for fear of raids conducted by the ikatan relawan rakyat (rela)3, immigration officers, and police forces in urban areas. since the mass mobile 3 rela (people’s volunteer corps) is a civilian volunteer group established in 1972 under the emergency (essential powers) act of 1964 to “help maintain security in the country and the well-being of its people” (gom1964 emergency [essential powers] act, cited in hedman, 2008, p. 375). it has been criticized for aseas 11(2) | 189 jera lego registration exercises conducted by the unhcr in early 2009, many of those refugees left their settlements in the jungles and moved to urban areas where they felt safer. nevertheless, some jungle camps still remained in some areas, such as the cameron highlands in pahang state, as of 2012 (chin refugee committee, 2012, p. 31). a blog by the rco known as the voice of chin refugees (vocr), announcing one such mobile registration, offers revealing insights on the nature of these exercises (see figure 1). for one, the unhcr’s mobile registration exercises gather detailed and regularized information, such as dates of birth, parents’ names, date of arrival in malaysia (point #3), and only one particular place of registration where they must remain with the knowledge of local community leaders (point #4). asylum applicants must be able to provide documented asylum application statements, otherwise the unhcr will not accept their application (point #5). the guidelines also reveal that asylum seekers are not guaranteed protection from arrest by virtue of having lodged an asylum application. asylum applicants are warned that malaysian state authorities may disregard refugee norms by arresting and detaining them. the unhcr promises not to provide protection in the event of an arrest if the asylum applicant arrested had failed to follow certain guidelines (point #1). finally, restrictions apply to asylum for extended family members (points #6 & 7). harsh immigration crackdowns, arbitrary detention, and other abuses. figure 1. announcement of mobile registration exercise to be conducted by the unhcr. (screenshot by the author; vocr blog, 2018). 190 | aseas 11(2) making refugees (dis)appear this announcement by an rco interestingly reveals the unhcr’s governmental compulsion to rationalize information on refugee populations, which in turn underpins a program for fixing these populations to particular places. this can be problematic given that mobility is often a survival strategy for refugees and documentation is not readily available due to their circumstances. rcos serve as the conduit for the distribution of information as well as for monitoring any changes in the data gathered from refugees and asylum seekers. the extent of the unhcr’s governmental power is revealed in its capacity to withhold protection and assistance depending on an asylum seeker’s ability to conform to their guidelines. dependence on rcos, however, could also pose some problems. according to some ngo workers, the unhcr learns about the presence and location of asylum seekers in the country through rcos. not all refugee groups, however, are as close-knit and organized as others. for example, most of my informants from various ngos were unanimous that the rohingya are the least organized among the refugees originating from myanmar. nor did sri lankans and afghans have the kind of community organizations that many of the ethnic groups from myanmar had at the time of the interviews4. regular registration and refugee status determination (rsd) asylum seekers who know about the unhcr and who have the means make the trip to the unhcr’s kuala lumpur office, even though they run the risk of being stopped by the authorities along the way. there, they register with the unhcr and the long process of applying for refugee status ensues. elsewhere, i have documented the different steps that asylum seekers had to go through as of 2010 (lego, 2012). upon registering with the unhcr office in kuala lumpur, asylum seekers typically received a so-called ‘under consideration’ (uc) card as proof that they were persons of concern. then, they would undergo rsd interviews in which a unhcr officer carefully examines an asylum seeker’s account, cross checks this with information about the country of origin, and makes an assessment of the credibility of the asylum claim. getting an appointment for rsd took anywhere between three months to a year, except in cases of extreme vulnerability, such as in the case of an unaccompanied minor, for whom an appointment could be made within a month. rsd interviews lasted between half a day and more than a day. asylum applicants may have to return several times for an rsd interview. the entire process from registration to receiving the results of rsd took anywhere from one to three years. difficulties at each stage are rife. crisp (2010) warns that the difficulties posed by proximity and access to registration could lead to a situation of “survival of the fittest”, whereby refugees who have the most contact with the unhcr are not the most vulnerable but are the most articulate, entrepreneurial, and able. nah (2007) wrote that documents issued earlier by the unhcr did not appear “official” enough, and authorities tended to disregard them. laminated, tamper proof cards issued towards the end of 2004 appeared more “professional”, and were more readily accepted by authorities. she adds that it was possible that by that time authorities may have gained greater awareness of the unhcr and its function, leading to the better recognition 4 most of the interviews took place in august 2013. aseas 11(2) | 191 jera lego of the new identification-card format (nah, 2007, p. 54). while unhcr documentation has started to afford some protection, even those who became ‘recognized’ refugees are still vulnerable to arrests, detention, corporal punishment, and deportation. as malaysia’s national human rights commission (suruhanjaya hak asasi manusia or suhakam) admitted in its 2009 annual report, “refugees/asylum seekers are vulnerable to arrest even if they possess a unhcr card” (suhakam, 2009, p. 35). at that point, ngos had become crucial as they alert the unhcr, alert the human rights commission, and send protest letters. as an informant working for an ngo that provides health services for refugees and asylum seekers explained, they also submit names of possible persons of concern to the unhcr when they encounter them during visits to prisons and detention centers. the unhcr’s governmental rationality is evident in its response to incidences of the state’s disregard for refugee norms and in its efforts to make refugee populations more legible. the unhcr’s mobile registration exercises, in particular, served to make visible those refugees who would otherwise remain invisible in jungle settlements and urban dwellings. in addition, the unhcr actively asserted the presence of refugees by protesting and seeking release from arbitrary arrest and detention. also evident is the malaysian state authorities’ sovereign compulsion to assert its prerogatives in its periodic raids, indiscriminate arrests, and detentions, which the unhcr may or may not be able to negotiate. finally, the pastoral function of ngos and rcos to know and watch over community members was also revealed when the unhcr sought to alert communities for mobile registration exercises, in the ways that rco leaders disseminated information about these exercises, and in the various ways that ngos assisted in alerting the unhcr to persons of concern in detention. registration on the thai-myanmar border many of the areas along the border between thailand and burma/myanmar had been under the control of various ethnic nationalities such as the karen, karenni, kachin, chin, shan, and mon. a consortium of ngos on the border known as the border consortium (tbc) has been and continues to be the main provider of food, aid, and other forms of material assistance to refugees and asylum seekers. tbc’s annual reports contain a history of the populations on the border. in 1984, a major offensive by the burmese military sent some 10,000 karen to the thai side of the border that have since been unable to return. as burmese military offensives continued, the population on the border grew to some 80,000 by 1994, 115,000 in 1997, and more than 120,000 as of june 2013 (the border consortium, 2017). according to tbc, the first camps were established in 1984, when thailand’s ministry of interior (moi) invited a number of bangkok-based christian agencies (who were working with indochinese refugees at that time) to provide emergency assistance. these agencies eventually formed a consortium and became the main provider of food and shelter. from the outset, the consortium worked with the karen refugee committee (krc) – a rco established by karen authorities to oversee the refugee population – and with a karen committee for coordination of services to displaced persons in thailand (ccsdpt) subcommittee to coordinate response with other ngos. the moi likewise set policy and administered assistance programs through this subcommittee. 192 | aseas 11(2) making refugees (dis)appear as the burmese army overran other parts of the border, the consortium extended assistance to karenni refugees who had fled into mae hong son province through the karenni refugee committee (knrc) in 1989 and to mon refugees in kanchanaburi province through the mon national relief committee (mnrc) in 1990. the moi gave formal approval for ngos to work with these new populations in may 1991, and new guidelines were set up which confirmed previous arrangements that limited assistance to food, clothing, and medicine, and restricted agency staff to the minimum necessary. three ngos provided assistance under this agreement: tbc provided around 95% of food and non-food items; the catholic office for emergency relief and refugees (coerr) provided most of the balance; and medicines sans frontiers (msf) operated as the main health agency (the border consortium, 2012, p. 122). as refugee numbers grew, so did the number of agencies providing services. in may 1994, the moi extended the ngos mandate to include sanitation and education services. new procedures were established and ngos were required to submit formal program proposals, apply for staff border passes, and submit quarterly reports via the provincial authorities (the border consortium, 2012, p. 122). it was not until the first half of 1998 that the thai government gave the unhcr an operational role on the border. after an exchange of letters of agreement in july 1998, the unhcr was able to establish fully operational offices in the provinces of mae hong son, mae sot, and kanchanaburi by early 1999 (the border consortium, 2012, pp. 122-123). according to a field officer at the unhcr in mae sot, the working arrangement between the unhcr and the royal thai government stated that (1) the unhcr would be allowed access to the border, (2) their mandate would be international protection and not the provision of basic needs (a service already being met by ngos on the border), and finally that (3) the unhcr must seek “durable solutions” (unhcr field officer, meo sot, 25 july 2013). durable solutions, in unhcr parlance, refers to three options: repatriation to the country of origin, resettlement in a third country, or integration into the host country. the thai government officially denies the possibility of local integration. universal registration (1999-2005) the first universal registration of the border population was undertaken in 1999. a mechanism called the provincial admissions boards (pabs) was set up to determine the status of new asylum seekers. according to a unhcr field officer in mae sot, the pab is composed of six to seven members, including the governor of each province, the defense chief, the communication chiefs, military chiefs, representatives from the prime minister’s office, representatives from immigration, and the unhcr. when it was first established, the pab screened asylum seekers based on whether or not they left burma/myanmar “fleeing fighting and the consequences of civil war” (hrw, 2012, p. 20) – a broader definition than that contained in the 1951 un convention relating to the status of refugees.5 the 1999 exercise allowed for the registration of more than 5 article 1 of the 1951 convention relating to the status of refugees defines refugees as those who are unwilling or unable to avail of the protection of their country owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion (united nations general assembly, 1951/1967). it is a definition that emphasizes individualized aseas 11(2) | 193 jera lego 100,000 persons but was discontinued at the end of 2001, and for three years there was a “no new arrivals” policy, or in other words, no registration of newly arriving asylum seekers took place (the border consortium, 2005, p. 2). registration was resumed in 2004, when another border-wide registration exercise was implemented. this time, the criteria for assessing asylum claims were extended to include those fleeing burma/myanmar for “political reasons” (hrw, 2012, p. 20). this resulted in the reregistration of 101,992 persons from 1999 and the identification of 34,061 others who had arrived since that time, a total of 136,053 persons (the border consortium, 2011, p. 6). all refugees officially registered during the 2004/2005 re-registration process, and those subsequently approved by pabs have been eligible for resettlement to third countries. as of the end of 2012, tbc had recorded 80,637 departures to third countries, 78% of which have been resettled in the us (the border consortium, 2012, p. 12). universal registration by the pabs has ceased since november 2005. when asked why, the unhcr field officer opined that thai officials believed registration could lead to resettlement in a developed third country. they feared this would serve as a strong pull factor for asylum seekers to cross over the border and to enter the camps. he believed the thai government was deeply frustrated that a large population of refugees and asylum seekers continued to remain on the border despite the implementation of registration and resettlement. an officer at one of the ngos on the border agreed that the prospect of resettlement did draw asylum seekers into camps and that this influenced thai authorities to suspend registration activities (ngo officer, mae sot, 24 july 2013). non-universal registration (2005–2013) while a “no new arrivals” policy has been in place since 2005, the so-called pab fast-track has been operational for family members of those who were previously resettled, in accordance with the principle of family reunification, and for extremely vulnerable cases, such as those suffering from a serious medical condition (unhcr field officer, mae sot, 25 july 2013). as of july 2013, some 1,100 individuals had been registered under fast-track pab, and most of them had been resettled (unhcr it officer, bangkok, 16 july 2013). registration of new births to prevent statelessness was made possible under thailand’s civil registration act published in february 2008 and implemented in september 2011. unhcr conducts birth registration activities in the various camps every month and then forwards this information along with copies of delivery certificates to thai district authorities for them to issue birth certificates. these birth certificates serve as official records of birth but do not confer nationality to the newborn. according to an officer at tbc, since december 2012, “thai authorities are not allowing providing birth certificates to babies born to parents who are both unregistered. so, you can only get a birth certificate in the camps now if one of the parents is registered with the unhcr or the ministry of interior” (tbc officer, 24 july 2013). persecution rather than more generalized causes. 194 | aseas 11(2) making refugees (dis)appear in lieu of any universal mechanism for registering new arrivals, refugee camp committees have taken it upon themselves to implement some type of screening procedure. the officer at tbc refers to it as “indigenous registration”, or “self-registration” of refugees: each refugee camp committee establishes a new arrivals committee. . . . they are responsible for deciding, for collecting information, and deciding whether they have the right to asylum. . . . most people are accepted, there’s very few people who are screened out, and they would be for very clear reasons, and so this new arrivals committee would then provide lists every month to tbc, say, here was the original list, these are the people we screened in, these are the people we screened out, and we would then use that to update our population statistics, demographics, and everything, but also that feeds into the whole process of ordering food for the next month so, a hundred twenty new mouths to feed. . . . unhcr is not keeping statistics on unregistered persons. so, anyone who’s entered the camp in the last eight years, about 60,000 people, are not on anyone’s books. the only books that they’re on are the refugee camp committee’s books and our own books. (tbc officer, 24 july 2013) it appears that the unhcr does not approve of this self-registration conducted by refugees. the unhcr field officer described this as illegal, saying that only the unhcr and/or state authorities have the right to decide who gets asylum. the unhcr seems to be of the impression that self-registration by the refugees lends itself to abuse by members of the so-called ‘new arrivals committee’ who prioritize friends and relatives over others who seek access to camps. finally, to monitor changes in the population, unhcr and other authorities conduct spot checks. one officer at the unhcr in bangkok described how he came up with a list of persons estimated to be over 100 years old, which unhcr field offices then used to verify whether these persons were still living (unhcr officer, bangkok, 16 july 2013). hrw also describes other headcount or screening activities conducted by the tahan phran (paramilitary force in charge of security outside the camps) and the or sor (volunteer corps in charge of internal camp security) under the direction of the camp commander known as the palad (a deputy of the district chief under the moi). hrw reports one case in 2008 in which the tahan phran entered ban mae surin and mae ra ma luang camps, conducted brief interviews, and a few days later, deported dozens of refugees and asylum seekers to ei tu hta camp for internally displaced persons (idp) in burma/myanmar (hrw, 2012, p. 27). other incidences of deportation have also been documented. thus, from the outset, provision of aid and assistance on the border was made possible through the services of ngos, making use of preexisting rcos, but under clear guidelines and agreements set by the thai state authorities. these guidelines reveal that the thai government’s program for managing refugees has always been short-term, the nature of the welcome afforded to those displaced persons temporary, barring the possibility for local integration. it is also quite revealing how the unhcr’s presence has been limited – a move that arguably dissociates those persons on the border from the refugee label, thereby casting much ambiguity over whether those populations can be ‘legitimately’ considered refugees or displaced persons. the aseas 11(2) | 195 jera lego unhcr’s governmental compulsion is once again evident in subsequent efforts to implement universal registration. although the unhcr has adhered to the thai government’s orders suspending universal registration, it continues to deploy alternative mechanisms, such as family reunification and consideration of vulnerable cases. meanwhile, indigenous registration has emerged among rcos as an effort to maintain care for their communities even as various state authorities conduct random deportations. the interplay between the pastoral, governmental, and sovereign rationalities of ngos and rcos, the unhcr, and thai state authorities are thus evident. ngos and rcos are the primary providers of care and compassion through personal and community networks represented by rcos. the unhcr has sought time and again to rationalize knowledge of refugee populations but has been restricted by thai authorities, who prefer to minimize the number of refugees on record, whether through suspending registration, or conducting spot checks and deportations. the situation of various ethnic groups and communities on the thai-burma/ myanmar border over the last three decades is vastly complex. it has as much to do with the varied histories of these communities as it does with the actions and inactions of a multiplicity of state and non-state actors. however, insofar as we can problematize the identification of refugees by looking at the continuities and discontinuities of border registration and the ambiguous figures that emerge, we can at least conclude that the state and international governmental organizations (in this case the unhcr) are engaged in competing programs to either diminish the presence of refugees or to make it evident and legible. on the one hand, the unhcr’s governmental compulsion to gather and systematize information on refugee populations is evident, while, on the other hand, the thai government’s sovereign rationality to reify its borders, control the presence of refugees and asylum seekers, and obscure, if not minimize, their numbers can also be inferred. the unhcr’s minimal involvement with refugees from burma/myanmar compared to other ngos and its discontinued and minimal registration activities all reflect the preponderance of the thai state authorities’ heightened sovereign sensibilities. meanwhile, non-government ngos and rcos, motivated by pastoral rationalities, serve to fill a gaping need for social services, even giving birth to indigenous registration activities that allow these organizations to better care for refugees and asylum seekers living in the camps. conclusion: making refugees (dis)appear this paper has shown that in the case of both thailand and malaysia, the unhcr has sought to make refugees ‘appear’ in the sense of making them visible, their presence known, and knowledge of them legible by gathering detailed and standardized information and by elaborating on registration and status determination procedures, even as they are restricted in their reach and resources. rcos, with their intimate knowledge of their community members, serve to complement and fill some of these limitations faced by the unhcr. all this is made possible by the acquiescence of the state, even as the different arms of the executive variously suspend, permit, or undermine the unhcr’s programs. what appears as erratic state behavior on the part of the thai government in allowing and then disallowing universal registration, 196 | aseas 11(2) making refugees (dis)appear can be understood in terms of an evolving ambivalence towards refugee norms and a fundamental concern for reducing the presence of refugees whether by resettlement or repatriation, whichever is more effective. the malaysian government’s apparently contradictory behavior of allowing the unhcr to conduct rsd procedures while simultaneously enforcing immigration crackdowns can be attributed to the malaysian state authorities’ sovereign compulsion to assert its prerogatives over its migrant population without necessarily acknowledging the presence of refugees. the unhcr is at times a vital figure able to make important interventions in an otherwise inhospitable immigration program, while, at other times, it is severely constrained and forced to discontinue its programs for registering newly arriving refugees. asserting the presence of refugees is therefore an outcome of a struggle among competing rationalities and programs of the various stakeholders. it is a struggle that is largely tilted in favor of the state but nonetheless a struggle in which other actors are sometimes able to achieve certain objectives. to address the questions i raised in the introduction, it is not simply that thailand and malaysia reject refugee norms as eurocentric because they have, on several occasions, permitted the observance of these norms, particularly when it contributed to the objective of reducing the number of refugees on their territory. state responses to refugees can neither be reduced to a factor of illiberality nor to a factor of dysfunction. the state is inherently motivated by sovereign rationality, and it is precisely in allowing and deciding on states of exception within the ambiguous socio-legal space inhabited by refugees and asylum seekers that thailand and malaysia unambiguously assert this sovereignty.6 the unhcr, motivated by governmental rationality, first and foremost seeks to create and assert knowledge about refugees and asylum seekers. but since the ‘refugee’ construct is inextricably linked to territory and territorialized states, the unhcr cannot implement any program without taking into consideration the states’ sovereign reach. ngos and rcos embedded in communities and networks are sometimes able to transcend territories but are nonetheless subjected to the state’s use of force. understanding the interplay between the state, the unhcr, and ngos in terms of varied rationalities serves to highlight: (1) the extent to which states, when focused on asserting their sovereign power, can disregard refugee norms, even as they interact and accommodate ios and rights groups; (2) the importance of the unhcr’s continued functioning; and (3) the crucial role that ngos play in supporting forced migrants given the unhcr’s tendency to homogenize refugee populations by virtue of its nature as a governmentalizing agent.7 it is hoped that the unhcr, ngos, and rcos are continuously empowered, and that the state is socialized not just into adopting refugee norms but also away from an excessive focus on its sovereign sensibilities. unfortunately, this does not seem likely under the current political climate.  6 for a discussion on how giorgio agamben’s notion of states of exception can be conceived in terms of a ‘humanitarian exception’ employed by states to simultaneously adopt a noble role while distancing itself from the language of human rights, see lego (2012). 7 elsewhere, i have discussed in more detail the unhcr’s relationship with the malaysian state (lego, 2012). aseas 11(2) | 197 jera lego references amnesty international. 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(2018). unhcr office in malaysia has started mobile registration [blog entry]. retrieved from http://vocrnews.blogspot.com/2009/07/unhcr-office-in-malaysia-has-started.html zetter, r. (1991). labelling refugees: forming and transforming a bureaucratic identity. journal of refugee studies, 4(1), 39-62. about the author jera lego is a research associate at an international research institute based in tokyo. her research interests include forced migration, southeast asian politics, and global governance. she was recently adjunct lecturer on southeast asian politics and international relations at international christian university, tokyo, japan. ► contact: jera.beah@gmail.com acknowledgements the paper is based on research done by the author for her dissertation submitted in january 2016 to the international christian university, tokyo, japan. the author thanks two anonymous reviewers and gunnar stange for their helpful comments. gendering cross-border networks in the greater mekong subregion: drawing invisible routes to thailand aseas 4 (2) 272 273 d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -4 .2 -5 aktuelle südostasienforschung / current research on south-east asia gendering cross-border networks in the greater mekong subregion: drawing invisible routes to thailand akm ahsan ullah1 & mallik akram hossain2 the american university in cairo, egypt rajshahi university, bangladesh citation ullah, akm a., & hossain, m. a. (2011). gendering cross-border networks in the greater mekong subregion: drawing invisible routes to thailand. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 4(2), 273-289. this article discusses human traffi cking within the greater mekong subregion (gms) in relation to the strengthened inter-state economic and infrastructural co-operation and connectivity, taking the life history of sex workers in thailand into account. over the last decades, thailand became known as a hub of entertainment sectors. traffi ckers often use socio-economic integration in the gms to their advantage. a large number of traffi cked women ends up in the thai entertainment industry doing sex work in confi ned conditions similar to slavery. poor women are often lured by false promises of well-paid jobs abroad and pay exorbitant fees to agents for such an opportunity. intermediaries introduce family members to agents who promise to make arrangements for the relevant documentation and transportation across borders. traffi ckers use their own marked routes to transport their prey which are more invisible than generally could be imagined. keywords: traffi cking; borders; geopolitics; greater mekong subregion; thailand der vorliegende beitrag betrachtet den menschenhandel in der greater mekong subregion (gms) unter berücksichtigung der stärkung zwischenstaatlicher wirtschaftlicher und infrastruktureller kooperation und vernetzung. dabei nimmt er lebensgeschichten prostituierter in thailand genauer unter die lupe. im laufe der jahre wurde thailand als drehscheibe des unterhaltungssektors berühmt. es ist jedoch weitgehend unbekannt, dass eine großzahl der opfer des menschenhandels in der sexarbeit und in der sklaverei ähnlichen arbeitsverhältnissen landet. menschenhändler nützen die sozioökonomische integration in der gms zu ihrem vorteil. diese studie zeigt, dass von armut betroff ene frauen in der regel durch falsche versprechungen gut bezahlter arbeitsplätze ins ausland gelockt werden und für solche gelegenheiten exorbitante gebühren an ihre agenten bezahlen. vermittler bringen familienmitglieder und agenten zusammen, welche die entsprechenden unterlagen vorbereiten um den transport über den grenzübertritt möglich zu machen. menschenhändler nutzen eigene markierte routen, um ihre beute zu transportieren – wege die unsichtbarer sind, als man sich allgemein vorstellt. schlagworte: menschenhandel; grenzen; geopolitik; greater mekong subregion; thailand 1 akm ahsan ullah is associate director at the centre for migration and refugee studies, and assistant professor at the school of global affairs and public policy, the american university in cairo, egypt. contact: aullah@aucegypt. edu 2 mallik akram hossain is associate professor of geography at rajshahi university, bangladesh. contact: ahmallik@ yahoo.com akm ahsan ullah & mallik akram hossain gendering cross-border networks in the greater mekong subregion aseas 4 (2) 274 275 background the past decades have witnessed a rapid economic growth in the greater mekong subregion (gms) brought about largely by trade and tourism. geopolitical changes in the region’s borderlands and border economy have resulted in efforts to strengthen formal inter-state economic and infrastructural connectivity.3 this rapid growth, however, has led to a massive socioeconomic disparity within the region and created conditions conducive to population mobility within and beyond the region’s borders. today, trafficking in women is one of the most significant offshoots. the general trend of trafficking in women in the region is from myanmar, the lao pdr, cambodia, and vietnam into thailand (lao people’s democratic republic, 1997). since many of the trafficked women and children end up in the sex industry (jayagupta, 2009) there is a correlation between the thriving sex industry in thailand and the phenomenon of trafficking. the sex industry in thailand became known when american troops used thailand as a hub for recreation from the war in vietnam (pollock, 2007). since then, the movement of people and goods has been vastly facilitated by unprecedented advancement in communications and transportation. however, despite positive impacts of communication advancement, trafficking of human beings is often considered to be the result of such contemporary globalisation. differing understandings of human trafficking have a profound impact on the way both perpetrators and victims are viewed and treated. therefore, it is crucial to differentiate between smuggling (as related to illegal immigration) and trafficking, in order to better distinguish between victims and willing participants. though the origins of the trafficking debate date back to the end of the nineteenth century (derks, 2000), there was no internationally accepted definition of trafficking until the signing of the december 2001 ‘united nations’ protocol to prevent, suppress and punish trafficking in persons’ (bajrektarevic, 2000; ullah, 2005a). trafficking of human beings, internationally agreed upon as a criminal offence, is a serious human rights violation (department of justice canada, 2008). south-east asia acts as an important hub in many global trafficking networks, particularly for the purpose of sexual exploitation (bateman, ho, & chan, 2009; 3 thailand shares about 1,810 km of borders with the lao pdr, about 800 km with cambodia, 1,800 km with myanmar, and 503 km with malaysia. aseas 4 (2) 274 275 ecpat & sallie, 2010; larsen, 2010; piper 2005). south-east asia is thus notoriously known as a transit region, significant source, and origin of trafficked people. as part of the migration continuum, many trafficked people consent to the initial movement. some of them realise only at the last leg that they have been deceived and are being exploited (larsen, 2010). human trafficking has been linked to the spread of hiv/aids in south-east asia and operates by exploiting the weaknesses of many poor, homeless, and displaced individuals by promising them a better life. a victim is therefore a person who is subjected to exploitation of a kind that goes beyond what other illegal migrants might experience. a key point is that exploitation is part of the process of trafficking (unodc, 2003). most individuals are trafficked as migrant workers, domestic slaves, sex workers and sweatshop workers. in general, victims are moved across international borders. however, domestic trafficking is less likely to be detected due to definitions of trafficking more restrictive than for international trafficking. most reported cross-border trafficking activity is between countries of the same region, particularly between neighbouring countries. however, global trafficking is also widespread: according to the unodc (2009), victims from east asia were “detected in more than 20 countries throughout the world, including europe, the americas, the middle east, central asia and africa” (unodc, 2009, p.11). the typologies of trafficking coined by world vision (2010) should be considered at this point in order to better frame this discussion. world vision has distinctively divided trafficking into eight categories: labour trafficking; bonded labour; involuntary servitude; involuntary domestic servitude; forced child labour; sex trafficking and prostitution; child soldiers; and child sex tourism (world vision, 2010).4 however, not a lot of research takes the severity of the vulnerability of victims along these catego4 “labour trafficking is defined as forced labour which does not always involve an economic component. most instances of forced labour occur as unscrupulous employers take advantage of gaps in law enforcement and legal frameworks to exploit vulnerable workers. bonded labour as a form of force or coercion is the use of a bond, or debt, to keep a person under subjugation. in the situation of involuntary servitude people become trapped in involuntary servitude when they believe an attempted escape from their situation would result in serious physical harm to themselves or others, or when they are kept in a condition of servitude through the abuse or threatened abuse of the legal processes. in the case of involuntary domestic servitude, domestic workers may be trapped in servitude through the use of force or coercion, such as physical (including sexual) or emotional abuse. forced child labour is defined as the sale and trafficking of children and their entrapment in bonded and forced labour are clearly the worst forms of child labour. child soldier is defined as the use of children as soldiers involves the recruitment or abduction of children, through force, fraud, or coercion, in order to exploit them as fighters, labourers, or sex slaves in conflict areas. sex trafficking and prostitution involves the harbouring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act. sex trafficking would not exist without the demand for commercial sex that is flourishing around the world. child sex tourism involves people who travel from their own country to another for the purpose of engaging in commercial sex acts with children” (world vision, 2010). akm ahsan ullah & mallik akram hossain gendering cross-border networks in the greater mekong subregion aseas 4 (2) 276 277 ries to be exploited into account. three significant instruments were formed between 1999 and 2000 in order to address this evolving issue. the ‘international labour organisation’s (ilo) convention no.182’ is one of them, and concerns the prohibition and immediate action for the elimination of the worst forms of child labour (dottridge, 2008). the ‘optional protocol to the convention on the rights of the child’ on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography was adopted in 2000 and came into force in january 2002. the most significant one is the ‘un protocol to prevent, suppress and punish trafficking in persons, especially women and children (the un trafficking protocol), supplementing the un convention against transnational organised crime’.5 despite the existence of legislation, protocols, and international pressure, it has obviously become challenging for all the countries (party to the protocols) to combat human trafficking. however, the financial incentives associated with trafficking make it a difficult activity to diminish, if not eradicate. it has been argued that 200,000 to 225,000 women and children from south-east asia are trafficked annually (derks, 2000; us state department, 2011), the region making up one-third of the total amount of global trafficking in women and children, with south asia having the second largest number of internationally trafficked persons (derks, 2000; htay, 1998; ullah, 2005b). cambodia, yunan province of china, the lao pdr, myanmar, thailand, and vietnam, which make up the gms, are all recognised as major trafficking areas within south-east asia. in addition, a large number of women who have fled from the regime in myanmar to thailand have fallen into the hands of traffickers (derks, 2000). human trafficking within and from south-east asia is likely to remain substantial in the coming years in view of the region’s recent slow economic recovery from the global economic crisis, and its weak and porous inter-state borders (unodc, 2008). supang (2003) argues that human trafficking from south-east asia started in the 1960s during the presence of the united states in indochina, and that clients of the sex trade at that time were american soldiers who used thailand as a relaxation point, with some also seeking temporary partners. even after the withdrawal of 5 “article 3 of the un trafficking protocol contains a definition of human trafficking which applies to cases of both transnational and internal trafficking (although the protocol supplements a convention about transnational crimes). the definition is different for adults and children (whom the protocol specifies as anyone less than 18 years of age, whatever the age of adulthood specified by national law). it addresses a range of forms of exploitation (for which people are said to be trafficked), including “the exploitation of the prostitution of others” and “other forms of sexual exploitation” (united nations, 2000). aseas 4 (2) 276 277 the us forces from indochina in 1975, some women remained in the trade, i.e. some women entered the trade willingly, while others were deceived into believing they would simply have work and/or opportunities abroad. however, they ended up in the sex trade (supang, 2003; william, 1999). thus, over the years, thailand has become a prominent hub in the conglomeration of entertainment sectors. however, the fact that a large number of trafficked victims end up in sex work in confined conditions similar to slavery is largely unknown. indeed, thailand is one of the major source, transit, and destination countries for trafficking in women and children (piper, 2005). with the increasing economic integration of the gms since its formation in 1992 as a development project by the asian development bank, the clandestine nature of human mobility has been on the rise across porous and increasingly loosely managed inter-state borders. in some countries, for example cambodia, vietnam, and thailand, economic growth has brought about greater socio-economic disparities and job competition, leading to an increase in black market economic activities such as trafficking. piper (2005) argued that trafficking has even gone hand in hand with the economic strengthening and development policies of some countries in south-east asia. evidently, it is about demand and supply. the population of myanmar has been facing severe social, political, and economic hardships. many myanmarese resort to thailand for survival. thousands have been escaping to thailand from the repression against ethnic nationalities by the tyranny. generally, potential migrants resort to brokers to get to thailand in order to facilitate navigating the numerous checkpoints and landmines between their home and the border. this is one of the principal ways by which they become vulnerable to trafficking (pollock, 2007). also, as the dynamics of the connectivity and human mobility in the region change, traffickers have successfully explored fresh avenues of trafficking in humans, across as well as within the borders of countries in the gms. borders have significant impacts on the economy, culture, and environment of any borderland. however, the majority of the extensive scholarship on the relations between thailand and the other gms states considers the impact of the boundary on the borderlands far less than the topic deserves. although research projects, published scholarly papers, and reports on the dynamics of trafficking in humans in the region are available, there is a lack of systematic research and reliable data. this akm ahsan ullah & mallik akram hossain gendering cross-border networks in the greater mekong subregion aseas 4 (2) 278 279 is largely due to the clandestine nature of trafficking (jayagupta, 2009). while the united nations inter-agency project on human trafficking (uniap) produces a lot of important research based on empirical information, the estimates always remain anecdotal. i refer to one study of uniap saying that “the actual figure of trafficking incidence is believed to be somewhat larger than the number stated” (uniap, 2011, p.6 & p.19). what is not sufficiently known is by what kinds of promises and premises the victims are motivated to set off, what trans-border networks they take to get to destinations, how long it takes to get there, what hardships they suffer en route, and where a sizeable number of trafficked victims ends up. this paper attempts to answer these questions based on empirical information and conceptual supplementation. the primary purpose of our research has been to better understand the routes taken by the respondents to get to thailand. the fundamental argument the paper puts forward is that economic and social integration within the region has proliferated and intensified the web of regional networks of trafficking. all of these factors are of crucial importance for the economic integration and transportation connectivity in the region. one of the sufferings pertaining to trafficking was enlightened by the study of lisborg and sine (2009), in which they assert that in debt bondage many of the victims eventually resigned themselves to the situation when they fail to escape. exorbitant amounts of money, often surreptitious at the initial stage, and artificial debts “well beyond the actual costs of travel and seldom known or agreed to by the woman” (lisborg & sine, 2009, p.15) were a significant method of control. lisborg and sine argue that even when migrants enter prostitution consensually, it becomes sexual exploitation when a woman is forced to accept unreasonable debt. they obviously experience “physical, psychological or sexual abuse or some other form of labour abuse, including confinement with threats, coercion or force” (lisborg & sine, 2009, p.24 & p.33). according to one of unodc’s (2009) studies in 52 countries on the form of exploitation, 79 percent of the victims were subjected to sexual exploitation. “while it remains likely that labour exploitation and male victims are relatively under-detected, the over-representation of sexually exploited women is true across regions, even in countries where other forms of trafficking are routinely detected” (unodc, 2009, p.3). clearly, the paucity of data on trafficking is largely attributed to the clandestine aseas 4 (2) 278 279 nature of this phenomenon. laczko and june (2003) claim, however, that the police cannot be relied upon to deliver even the trafficking data needed to help fight trafficking. law enforcement agencies tend to give a low priority to combating trafficking due to inadequate or unimplemented legislation (laczko & june, 2003, pp.4-5). however, human trafficking is becoming a political priority. in september 2002, the european union (eu) conference on ‘preventing and combating trafficking in human beings’ resulted in the brussels declaration, drawing policy recommendations to the eu on trafficking. the united states made trafficking a prioritised political agenda. various institutions and groups have made efforts on multiple fronts to combat the human trafficking problem. legislators, law enforcement, prosecutors, immigrant advocacy organizations, legal advocates, faith-based organizations, victim advocates, and social service providers have responded with a range of prevention, intervention, and treatment strategies to address the crime. (clawson, dutch, & cummings, 2006, p.3) the ‘trafficking victims protection reauthorisation act’ (tvpra) of 2003 requires that foreign governments provide the us department of state with data on trafficking investigations, prosecutions, convictions, and sentences. this act provides the foreign governments with the opportunity to be considered in full compliance for akm ahsan ullah & mallik akram hossain gendering cross-border networks in the greater mekong subregion figure 1: global law enforcement data 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 prosecution conviction victims identified source: us state department (2011, pp. 38-39) aseas 4 (2) 280 281 tier placement6 with the tvpa’s minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking (us tip report, 2011). figure 1 shows the global data on prosecution, conviction and victims identified. methodology a well-designed checklist was used to conduct in-depth interviews prior to which a field-testing was conducted. the selection of respondents was based on their meeting some of the following requirements: a stay in thailand of at least one year; nationals of asean countries; having resorted to and/or been trapped by traffickers or agents to get to their destinations. the selection of interview spots rested on the decision of tuktuk drivers.� for example, we were approached by such a driver in bangkok’s sukhumvit road to get us to a so-called ‘massage parlour’. we then sought his assistance in doing our research. we explained the purpose of the research, and he comfortably agreed to help us out. we selected him for his good conversational skills in english and lao, and because thai was his mother tongue. we recruited four experienced research assistants (from cambodia, myanmar, vietnam, and indonesia) for conducting interviews with the respondents from each respective country. they were selected at the asian institute of technology (ait) in thailand. the researchers had a conversational level of command in thai. they conducted interviews of the thai and laotian respondents, again with the help of the tuktuk drivers. deliberately excluded were those who were not from the asean region, stayed less than a year, and/or came on their own to their destination. as table 1 shows, the study is based on primary information collected through a survey of 6 “us department of state places each country in the 2011 tip report onto one of three tiers, as mandated by the tvpa. this placement is based more on the extent of government action to combat trafficking than on the size of the problem. the extent of governments’ efforts to reach compliance with the tvpa’s minimum standards for the elimination of human trafficking determines which tier the respective country would be placed. while tier 1 is the highest ranking, it does not mean that a country has no human trafficking problem. rather, a tier 1 ranking indicates that a government has acknowledged the existence of human trafficking, has made efforts to address the problem, and meets the tvpa’s minimum standards. each year, governments need to demonstrate appreciable progress in combating trafficking to maintain a tier 1 ranking” (us tip report, 2011, pp. 404-405). table 1: sample distribution countries of origin cambodia lao pdr myanmar vietnam indonesia total f 29 24 19 15 7 94 % 31 25 20 17 7 100 source: authors’ field data aseas 4 (2) 280 281 94 female respondents living in thailand. the tuktuk driver hired for initiating the interviews claimed to be familiar with a number of places in bangkok (pahurat, silom, sukumvit, mo chit, and lumphini), where trafficked victims operate in confined and restrictive conditions. we were estimating to meet more than 150 potential respondents during the six month-period of research. however, we ended up with interviewing only 94. many more were interested in sharing their experiences, but we had to exclude them, as they did not satisfy the set out criteria. generally, multiple visits were required as respondents were not able to spare long stretches of time required for the interview. some respondents requested to be revisited as they wanted to say something in absence of their ‘madam’ or ‘pimp’, under whose control they operate. for some cases, we attempted to revisit the respondents who made such a request and whom we thought had a wealth of information to impart. however, in only two cases we were successful in gaining access again. other prostitutes were either busy with their clients or overseen by their madam or pimp. however, the second visits were, in fact, requested, as it was later revealed, to share their woes, and they wanted to know if there were ways they could out of their current predicaments, which were remotely linked to the research objectives. in some cases, the madam/pimp offered us access to talk to the respondents when they were assured that the information to be provided would be used only for research purposes. some of them agreed on conditions that we pay for the time we took talking to them. we would term this condition as normal however, in some cases we experienced verbal harassment and were simply turned down on the gate when we explained our purpose. in order to analyse the data, qualitative techniques were used and some descriptive statistics were applied to show the magnitude of the phenomenon. as for the major challenges in the research, respondents in many cases were not able to recollect the names of the specific spots/points where they were handed over to another group of traffickers, and the routes they took; some of them also failed to recall how long it took for them to get to thailand. since this research involved human subjects, ethical approval was obtained. it was made sure that the consent of the respondents was given voluntarily. they were given the assurance before the consent was given that they could withdraw from the interview anytime. their psychological issues were taken care of. akm ahsan ullah & mallik akram hossain gendering cross-border networks in the greater mekong subregion aseas 4 (2) 282 283 findings thailand, located in a strategic position in south-east asia, has long been attracting tourists and entertainers. the entertainment industry has given new height to the reputation of thailand among world tourists. however, what is generally known about thailand entertainers is different from the picture this study has revealed. women are lured abroad by false promises of well-paid jobs as dancers, waitresses, and domestic workers and have to pay a fee to an ‘agent’ for these opportunities. generally, provincial intermediaries introduce members of families to agents who promise to arrange the relevant documentation and transportation across borders (for more see ullah, 2009). traffickers specifically target individuals who are vulnerable women because they are often easiest to recruit and control and are least likely to be protected by law enforcement. most of the respondents were lured out of their localities by traffickers with the help of local illicit agents. the findings of this study resonate with the findings of many other research projects (saboreidin, 1993; lin, 1998; kabeer, 2003). most of the women and girls caught in trafficking and forced prostitution in thailand are caught in debt bondage. debt bondage makes the trafficked person dependent on their traffickers, since victims often need to pay back the debt, which consequently make some women and girls susceptible to being forced into prostitution (jayagupta, 2009). once out of their home country, agents confiscate their documents and they are then sold or taken, by prior arrangement, to brothel owners who force them to work as sex workers. in order to recover their documents they are obliged to pay the ‘debt’ incurred for their procurement, transportation, food, and housing. most women are hard pressed to pay for their freedom, whilst some find themselves resold. as mentioned before, the study subjects differ from generally perceived sex workers in thailand as they do not have choice or freedom and they operate clandestinely under the strict vigilance of their leaders/pimps. they are stripped of their agency and as a result they cannot protest, refuse demands or disobey. thailand’s immigration act is often used not to keep returnees from entering thailand, but to ensure compliance and obedience once they are there. this is particularly true in the case of women and girls trafficked into prostitution, who enter thailand under the knowledge of border guards and police (hayes, 1999; reddi, 2003). aseas 4 (2) 282 283 any kind of integration helps build trust among neighbouring nations making human mobility trouble-free.7 today in the gms, socio-economic integration and connectivity, in its myriad forms, have become synonymous. illicit traffickers often use this integration to their advantage. this study demonstrates that poor women are generally lured by false promises of well-paid jobs abroad, and pay exorbitant fees to agents for such opportunities (ullah, 2009). it demonstrates that the majority of the respondents (68 percent) were promised better jobs either in thailand; or in east asian countries (south korea, hong kong or taiwan) or europe (29 percent). most of the respondents (62 percent) were caught in trafficking, forced prostitution, and debt-bondage. most of them had their documents confiscated by their agents or taken away by owners who forced them to engage in sex work. their position was made vulnerable to ensure that they remain at the mercy of their employers. cross-border networks and trafficking routes the migration route is a significant part of the migration process. a great part of migrants’ journeys from their home countries to their points of departure for their destinations is inevitably facilitated with the help of networks (ullah, 2009). however, trafficked-victims’ routes are generally not the same as those of other migrants. thailand’s prosperity attracts migrants from neighbouring countries who flee conditions of poverty in the lao pdr, indonesia, and cambodia and in some circumstances military repression such as in myanmar. significant illegal migration to thailand presents traffickers with opportunities to force, coerce, and/or defraud undocumented migrants into involuntary servitude and/or sexual exploitation. women and children are trafficked from myanmar, cambodia, the lao pdr, and the people’s republic of china, vietnam, russia, and uzbekistan for commercial sexual exploitation in thailand (ullah, 2009). a large proportion of these individuals, especially from indonesia, cambodia, the lao pdr, and vietnam, are trafficked through thailand’s southern border sometimes through third countries like malaysia (especially through johor bahru) into thailand for the purpose of sexual exploitation. one study by ullah (2009) discovered a number of routes trafficked victims travelled to get to 7 as is true today within the asean and european union and to some extent in the saarc. akm ahsan ullah & mallik akram hossain gendering cross-border networks in the greater mekong subregion aseas 4 (2) 284 285 kota bahru, malaysia, through which they can easily get to thailand. while many women and children are trafficked into exploitative circumstances, there are also men who go abroad and suffer a similar destiny, which, however, is not considered to be trafficking (iom, 2004:13).8 ethnic minorities who have not received legal residency or citizenship are especially at risk for being trafficked both internally and abroad (ullah, 2009). children from myanmar, laos, and cambodia are trafficked into forced begging and exploitative labour in thailand. four key sectors of the thai economy, fishing, construction, commercial agriculture, and domestic work, rely heavily on undocumented migrants from myanmar, including children, as cheap and exploitable labourers (iom, 1998). this study has mapped out nine routes the respondents travelled to get to their destinations: cambodia-through junglethrough seathailand; cambodia-through thai borderthailand; indonesiathrough malaysiathrough junglethrough seathailand; indonesia-sea-singaporethrough mountainous jungle-malaysia-thailand; myanmar-through lao pdr-through sea-thailand; myanmar—through thai borderthailand; lao pdr-through thai border-thailand; lao pdr-through sea-through mountainsthailand; and vietnam-through lao pdrthrough sea-thailand. the routes identified by the study demonstrate that the respondents did not have any direct routes to take to their destinations. in addition, the treacherous and difficult nature of the routes provide evidence that supports the impossibility of denying the fact that trafficked victims suffer countless hardships on the routes through which they are forcedly transported. at new transit points, the victims were handed over to new groups of traffickers. of the most dangerous routes, as high as 9 percent of the total respondents (n=94) were trafficked through them from myanmar; 23 percent from cambodia, 6 percent from indonesia and 16 percent from vietnam (table 2). across source countries, the forms of routes vary.9 8 “trafficking in persons” shall mean the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring, or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability, or of the giving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.” the definition of trafficking in human beings, included in the 2000 united nations protocol to prevent, suppress, and punish trafficking in persons, especially women and children (supplementing the convention against transnational organised crime) illustrates the process character of the phenomenon. this process is a continuum of events taking place in many locations, involving internationally linked criminal operators contributing their “services” (recruitment, transport, accommodation, document forgery, pimping, intimidation etc.) in various stages (united nations, 2000). 9 two main overland routes are currently used most often; they are keng tung-tachilek-mae sai chiang mai route and a route connecting myawaddy and the thai border town of mae sot, six miles across the moei border river. the main border outposts along the thai side of the border are mae sai, mae hong son and mae sariang in chiang rai province, mae sot in tak province, and kra buri and ranong in the southern tip of thailand (derks, 2000; bajrektarevic, 2000). aseas 4 (2) 284 285 of the total, 63 percent reported being sexually abused on their routes; 29 percent reported being verbally abused, 57 percent reported being served meagre food; and 36 percent reported receiving threats from the traffickers. the respondents were also handed over to many groups of people at different points. of the total respondents, 32 percent reported to have been handed over to at least two groups of people who they had never met before at two different points; and 43 percent reported that they had been handed over to other groups at three to four points in the dead of the night. the data show that 12 percent of the respondents from cambodia, 58 percent from the lao pdr, 41 percent from myanmar and 12 percent from indonesia reported to have taken one to five days to get to their destinations; and that 67 percent cambodians, 21 percent laotians, 29 percent myanmarese and 12 percent indonesians took five to 10 days to get to their destinations. of the total respondents, 23 percent spent more than 20 days to get to their destinations.10 obviously, they did not take the 10 whilst on the burmese side of the border there have been areas where official state functionaries have not dared to set foot, on the thai side any movements across the border are quickly picked up by the thai police. akm ahsan ullah & mallik akram hossain gendering cross-border networks in the greater mekong subregion table 2. routes travelled (multiple response) routes cambodia < jungle / sea > thailand* cambodia < thai border > thailand* indonesia < malaysia / jungle / sea > thailand* indonesia < sea / singapore / mountainous jungle / malaysia > thailand* myanmar < lao pdr / sea > thailand* myanmar < thai border > thailand* lao pdr < thai border > thailand* lao pdr < sea / mountains > thailand* vietnam < lao pdr / sea > thailand* f 22 7 5 2 11 8 9 15 15 % 23 7 4 2 12 9 9 16 16 source: authors’ survey * refers to most dangerous routes. we consider those routes dangerous by taking some variables into account such as: time taken to get to destination; abuse en route; how smooth was the journey in terms of food supply, obstacles by law enforcing agencies, border guards etc. respondents often mentioned that it took 10 days to one month to get to the destinations. they were forced to take deep jungles and mountain to avoid the gaze of law enforcing agencies at the dead of night. they reported being bitten by big leeches; had either major or minor wounds by running into trees or stumbling on their way at night. many others suffered dehydration and some suffered fever and jaundice. the majority reported weaknesses due to lack of sufficient food and due to mental stress, fear and uncertainty (ullah, 2009). aseas 4 (2) 286 287 time normally expected. here, normal expectation is explained by two factors: first, the promise given to them about the time to be spent on the way by the traffickers and second is the optimal time required in a normal case. most of the respondents were told it would take one to three days, at best. the ordeals they had on the way were in no way projected and expected. the complex routes speak well as to why the respondents took so long to get their destinations. conclusions and policy implications border crossing by illicit traffickers is not a new phenomenon. no region in the world goes without experiencing trafficking. interestingly, while european nations saw a declining trend in the inter-state trafficking of humans, despite the strengthening of economic relations, a reverse picture appears in the sea region regardless of a similar regional economic relationship. therefore, it is arguable that borderland geopolitics has tended to work in favour of traffickers. in human trafficking the exploiter takes the form of a recruiter who is generally the person who makes initial contact with the victim and makes the promise of a better life. the victims are highly vulnerable due to a combination of factors, including lack of legal status and protections, limited language skills, poverty and migration-related debts, and social isolation. traffickers are often from a similar ethnic or national background as the individuals they victimise. the victims are then frequently dependent on the traffickers for employment and/or financial support in the foreign country of destination. pimps and sex traffickers target young children, as they are skilled at manipulating the children and maintaining control, and can often gain their loyalty through a combination of affection and violence. traffickers use their own marked routes to transport their prey, which are often more invisible than generally imagined. the economic, environmental and cultural geography of borderlands are all greatly influenced by their proximity to the boundary (prescot, 1987). the most important finding of the study is that when all the source countries (in the study) share borders with thailand, the respondents spent seven days to get to thailand on average, and obviously en route they were exposed to various forms of abuse. widespread complaints from the respondents were directed against the border guards and police who allowed traffickers to continue their aseas 4 (2) 286 287 trade. indeed, the trafficking of women and girls into thailand was done with the knowledge and complicity of border guards and police. the phenomenon of borderlands next to open international borders deserves further attention by geographers. this study has crucial policy implications regionally as well as globally. however, it is evident from the limited academic literature that it is time to undertake more research initiatives to explore the impact of such invisible routes on neighbouring economies, border relations, and human rights. trafficked victims need to be acknowledged and entitled to protection, assistance and redress in their own right, regardless of their willingness or capacity to press charges and/or give testimony against their traffickers. it is still very difficult to prosecute those who are responsible for the trafficking of persons due to the clandestineness and networking that occurs whilst people are moved from one place to another. references bajrektarevic, a. 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(2009). going back moving on: a synthesis report of the trends and experiences of returned trafficking victims in thailand and the philippines. bangkok, thailand: ilo regional office for asia and the pacific. last retrieved 1 december 2011, from http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/--asia/---ro-bangkok/---sro-bangkok/documents/publication/wcms_116030.pdf piper, n. (2005). a problem by a different name? a review of research on trafficking in south-east asia and oceania. in international organization for migration (ed.), data and research on human trafficking: a global survey (pp.204-233). geneva, switzerland: iom. pollock, j. (2007). thailand in global alliance against trafficked in women. in global alliance against traffic in women (ed.), collateral damage: the impact of anti-trafficking measures on human rights around the world (pp.171-202). bangkok, thailand: gatw. prescott, j. r. v. (1987). political frontiers and boundaries. london, england: allen and unwin. reddi, p. (2003). women working to make a difference. paper presented at the iwpr’s seventh international women’s policy research conference, washington, dc, 22-24 june 2003. sabaroedin, s. (1993). matrix of a country report on trafficking of women in indonesia. in coalition against trafficking in women-asia pacific (ed.), proceedings of the human rights conference on the trafficking of asian women, 2-4 april 1993 (pp. 56-68). quezon city, philippines: coalition against trafficking in women-asia. supang c. (2003). cross-border migration and hiv vulnerability at the thai-cambodia border. bangkok, thailand: asian research centre for migration & institute of asian studies, chulalongkorn university. aseas 4 (2) 288 289 ullah, akm a. (2005a). destiny of the trafficked in women and girls: some theoretical and critical issues. empowerment, 12, 75-84. ullah akm a. (2005b). the empirical profile of the sex workers in bangladesh. international journal of women’s studies, 7(2), 111-22. ullah akm a. (2009). theoretical rhetoric about migration networks: a case of a journey of bangladeshi workers to malaysia. international migration (early view). doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2435.2009.00579.x united nations office on drugs and crime. (unodc). (2003). distinguishing between human trafficking and people smuggling. vienna, austria: author. united nations office on drugs and crime. (unodc). (2008). human trafficking: an overview. vienna, austria: author. united nations office on drugs and crime. (unodc). (2009). global report on trafficking in persons. vienna, austria: author. united nations interagency project on human trafficking (uniap). (2011). analysis on human trafficking. the case of an giang province. bangkok, thailand: author. us state department. (2011). tip report: global law enforcement data. washington, dc: author. williams, p. (ed.). (1999). illegal migration and commercial sex: the new slave trade. london, england & portland, or: frank cass publishers. world vision. (2010). about human trafficking. washington, dc: author. wyatt, dk. (1984). thailand: a short history. new haven, ct: yale university press. akm ahsan ullah & mallik akram hossain gendering cross-border networks in the greater mekong subregion santi asoke buddhism and the occupation of bangkok international airport aseas 3(1) 31 aktuelle südostasienforschung / current research on south-east asia santi asoke buddhism and the occupation of bangkok international airport marja-leena heikkilä-horn1 mahidol university international college, thailand aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften / austrian journal of south-east asian studies seas gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften / society for south-east asian studies www.seas.at thailand experienced dramatic political turmoil from february 2006 to november 2008 culminating in the occupation of the bangkok international airport. the demonstrations against then prime minister thaksin shinawatra and his political allies were organised by the people’s alliance for democracy (pad). one of the pad leaders, major-general chamlong srimuang, is an active member of the buddhist santi asoke group. the group is controversial as it is not under the state buddhist authorities and has implicitly criticised the thai state buddhist monks for moral corruption. known as the ‘dharma army’, hundreds of santi asoke monks, nuns and lay people participated in pad demonstrations. this paper analyses what the santi asoke buddhist group represents, what the ‘dharma army’ is, how its reality differs from media images, what the ideological reasons for asoke to initially support thaksin were, and why the group finally turned against him. the paper argues that the group cannot be viewed as a monolithic community. instead, it should be considered as an amalgamation of monks and nuns, urban and rural temple residents, lay followers of asoke monks, practitioners of organic agriculture in asoke village communities, students and former students of asoke schools, and supporters of major-general chamlong srimuang. representatives of all these networks participated in the demonstrations albeit with different intensity. keywords: thailand, santi asoke, dharma army, people’s alliance for democracy (pad), chamlong srimuang zwischen februar 2006 und november 2008 stand thailand unter dem zeichen tiefgehender politischer unruhen, die in der besetzung des internationalen flughafens ihren höhepunkt fanden. organisiert wurden diese demonstrationen, die sich gegen den damaligen premierminister thaksin shinawatra und seine politischen verbündeten richteten, von der volksallianz für demokratie (pad). einer ihrer anführer, generalmajor chamlong srimuang, ist aktives mitglied der buddhistischen santi asoke gruppe. da sich santi asoke nicht der staatlich kontrollierten buddhistischen ordnung beugt und solche mönche implizit der moralischen verdorbenheit 1 assistant professor dr marja-leena heikkilä-horn lectures at mahidol university international college, salaya campus, nakhon pathom, thailand; contact: marlehei@loxinfo.co.th marja-leena heikkilä-horn santi asoke buddhism and the occupation of bangkok international airport http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ aseas 3(1) 32 beschuldigt, hängt ihr ein kontroverser ruf an. unter der bezeichnung „dharma armee“ nahmen hunderte anhänger von santi asoke, darunter mönche, nonnen und laien an den paddemonstrationen teil. inhalt dieses artikels ist daher die analyse der hintergründe und ziele der santi asoke gruppe und der „dharma armee“, unterschiede zwischen medialer darstellung und vorgefundener realität sowie die motive der anfänglichen unterstützung thaksins durch santi asoke und ihre spätere abkehr von ihm. dabei wird argumentiert, dass die gruppe nicht als monolithischer block verstanden werden kann, sondern in ihrer vielfalt, zusammengesetzt aus mönchen, nonnen, einwohnerinnen städtischer und ländlicher tempel, laien, anhängerinnen biologischer landwirtschaft in asoke-dörfern sowie unterstützerinnen von generalmajor chamlong srimuang begriffen werden muss. repräsentantinnen all dieser netzwerke nahmen, wenn auch in unterschiedlicher intensität, an den demonstrationen teil. schlagworte: thailand, santi asoke, dharma armee, volksallianz für demokratie (pad), chamlong srimuang the buddhist asoke group of thailand2 santi asoke as a name is a misnomer. santi asoke is just one of the many asoke temples and communities in thailand. santi asoke is a temple on the northeastern outskirts of bangkok. it accommodates a vegetarian restaurant, two multi-storey apartment buildings housing laypeople, a school building and a huge unfinished temple in concrete, a publishing company with a printing press, a public library, one dormitory for laymen, another for laywomen and school girls, several meeting halls, a kitchen, a dental clinic, a small hospital, a supermarket and some 50 kutis for the housing of monks and nuns known as sikkhamats. there are several asoke temples located in various parts of thailand; the oldest ones are pathom asoke in nakhon pathom, sisa asoke in sisaket, sima asoke in nakhon ratchasima, sali asoke in nakhon sawan and ratchathani asoke in ubon ratchathani. there are also asoke communities in chiang mai, chiang rai, trang, chumphon, khon kaen, chaiyaphum, petchabun and other places.3 although some of the centres are very modest, such 2 an earlier version of this paper was presented at the fourth viennese conference on south-east asian studies “crises and conflicts in south-east asia”, 19-20 june 2009, vienna, austria. i would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments, which i have tried to accommodate. i would also like to thank ms pat norman for the language revision. 3 there were 27 asoke centres in thailand in 2007; five in central thailand, 13 in northeastern thailand, five in northern thailand and four in southern thailand (personal communication in santi asoke, 16 november 2007. there are two important centres in the north; lanna asoke in downtown chiang mai and phu pa fa naam (mountain, forest, sky, water) on the mountains in the same province. descriptive thai-language names became popular in thailand after the financial crisis in july 1997. the centre in chaiyaphum is called hin pa fa nam (rock, forest, sky, water). aseas 3(1) 33 as family-run vegetarian restaurants with a few regular customers, the number of asoke centres has been increasing over the last twenty years. the group consists of followers of bodhiraksa, who was ordained as a monk more than 30 years ago. he was a famous tv entertainer in the 1970s, became vegetarian and started to preach first as a layman, but was later ordained into the royalist thammayut nikai4 sect in the state-controlled buddhist sangha (monastic order). the thai buddhist sangha is divided into two different sects. thammayut nikai was established by king mongkut (1804-1868), who was a monk for 26 years before assuming the throne as king rama iv of the presently ruling chakri dynasty in 1853. thammayut nikai is perceived as more “orthodox” in its behaviour, adopting the teachings of ethnic mon monks, who in thailand are still regarded by others as well as by themselves as more “orthodox.” the concept of “orthodoxy” is complex in buddhism. the interpretation of vinaya rules, for instance, varies from one country to another and “orthodoxy” guides behaviour rather than belief.5 bodhiraksa was not impressed with the thammayut nikai and the monastic authorities could not tolerate his criticism concerning their non-vegetarianism, involvement in magic rituals and lax following of the monastic vinaya rules. bodhiraksa was re-ordained in the mahanikai sect, which literally refers to the majority of the monks. the thammayut nikai has since mongkut’s time controlled the state buddhist organisation known as the supreme sangha council or the council of elders (mahatherasamakhom). the mahanikai consists of both urban and rural monks and some forest monks, who are involved in rural community development projects or in teaching meditation. the official thai buddhist interpretation is that these two groups do not differ from each other. however, there is no space for a third “nikai,”6 so when bodhiraksa left his last temple with a group of followers they became a de facto free non-state-controlled group.7 there was some propaganda against the group throughout the 1980s, but when major-general chamlong srimuang was elected as the governor of bangkok (1985) 4 thammayut nikai refers to the sanskrit word dharma and pali word dhamma meaning buddhist doctrine. nikai comes from the pali nikaya – meaning a sect. i have chosen to transliterate the thai names according to the most common form in maps, media and literature. 5 see hansen’s (2007) discussion on reforming and purifying the khmer sangha. 6 neighbouring burma has nine different nikayas, whereas both cambodia and laos have traditionally had two nikayas as both have been influenced by thai buddhism. 7 based on this exclusion, some regard asoke as a “semi outlawed sect” (“chang noi”, the nation, 15 september 2008). marja-leena heikkilä-horn santi asoke buddhism and the occupation of bangkok international airport aseas 3(1) 34 and later showed interest in joining national politics (1988), the stage was set for a systematic campaign against and demonisation of “santi asoke” as the media insists upon calling the group. chamlong was extremely popular as a governor, regarded as a “mr clean,” who lived modestly according to the asoke teachings, ate one vegetarian meal a day, rejected tobacco and alcohol, and did not gamble or visit night-clubs. in other words, chamlong was an eye-catching exception among his contemporaries in thai politics (mcvey, 2000)8. there were obvious reasons to assume that as a prime minister, chamlong would not have been positive towards the various lucrative but shady business deals that the military politicians and the sino-thai business elite were involved in. in order to prevent chamlong from taking to the national stage in politics, his buddhist affiliations needed to be declared illegal. bodhiraksa was detained in june 1989 and all the asoke monks and nuns were detained for one night in august 1989. a court case was commenced against them that year lasting until 1996. they were accused of not being buddhist monks, based on the fact that they had been excluded from the state buddhist organisation. after nearly seven years of on-going court hearings (heikkilä-horn, 1996, pp. 6467), approximately a hundred monks and nuns were given a suspended sentence of two years. there was plenty of confusion of who was and who was not accused. the nuns or sikkhamats were cleared of all charges, as they did not claim to be fully ordained theravada buddhist nuns or bhikkhuni. the asoke nuns are ten-precept nuns, which means that they depend on the lay people for their food, shelter, clothing and medicine. after the court case the asoke group was tolerated by the authorities9 and expanded rapidly. new buddhist centres were established. new restaurants and shops selling organic products were opened. the economic crisis in 1997 boosted the interest in the asoke group, which had always been critical of capitalism (thunniyom) and had been promoting its own buddhist economics known as “meritism“ (bunniyom). the king of thailand, in his birthday speech in 1997,10 indicated that thailand 8 analysis of the political tradition in thailand can be found particularly in sombat (2000) and ockey (2000). 9 the monks and the sikkhamats had to report regularly to the correction office. the asoke monks are by law not regarded as bhikkhu, and hence cannot be addressed as phra but as samana. the monks had been forced to wear a white robe as a sign of lay status since their arrest. they switched back to brown in 1998 after the two-year period of suspended sentence was over. 10 the speech was further clarified in december 1998 in another birthday speech. the speech was further clarified in december 1998 in another birthday speech. aseas 3(1) 35 should not concentrate all her efforts in an export-oriented economy but should secure self-sufficiency in food and the basic needs of the population. he suggested that whatever the people produce, they should keep one-third for themselves, while allotting one third for the domestic market and one-third for the export market. the king’s philosophy is known as “sufficiency economics” and has been faithfully propagated ever since by every thai government – whatever the government’s real policies may have been.11 ironically, the asoke group had been promoting similar economic ideas since the 1970s, but it had gone somewhat unnoticed due to the harsh criticism against other issues concerning the asoke, such as the asoke group’s strict vegetarianism, which has remained one of the major controversies with the state buddhist sangha. according to the state sangha, the buddha himself never suggested that his monks should be vegetarians – common though it must have been among the hindus in india that time. asoke members argue that they want to follow the first precept, which recommends that one should refrain from “destroying life.” the asoke group had an opportunity to preach their economic ideas to the rural population when prime minister thaksin shinawatra delegated to the asoke groups the government-financed training of tens of thousands of indebted farmers in asoke centres in 2001.12 farmers came in groups of about one hundred and stayed for five days. they learnt about organic farming, recycling and reusing, and were obliged to listen to sermons on the virtues of vegetarianism and bunniyom. almost all centres were running these training courses, nearly a course per week. there were breaks in the training courses only when the asoke people themselves gathered for their five annual weeklong retreats. this means that in five years hundreds of thousands of peasants have been trained at the asoke centres.13 many of the farmers attended the training courses rather reluctantly because, obviously, they had been forced to attend them. in exchange, their debt was 11 undp report (2007) outlines the philosophy of sufficiency economy in “sufficiency economy and human undp report (2007) outlines the philosophy of sufficiency economy in “sufficiency economy and human development.” see undp thailand human development report 2007. 12 the bank of agriculture and agricultural cooperatives (baac) financed the training courses from may 2001 to the bank of agriculture and agricultural cooperatives (baac) financed the training courses from may 2001 to march 2004. from april 2004 to 2007, the training courses were financed by the government’s health department (thamrong sangsuriyajan from the organic farming network of thailand, personal communication at santi asoke, 16 november 2007). 13 mr thamrong sangsuriyajan estimates that some 60,000 peasants were trained between 2001 and 2004, and mr thamrong sangsuriyajan estimates that some 60,000 peasants were trained between 2001 and 2004, and another 100,000 between 2004 and 2007. a new programme of training courses started in 2007. twenty-four asoke centres were given funds to continue the training courses (thamrong sangsuriyajan, personal communication, 16 november 2007). marja-leena heikkilä-horn santi asoke buddhism and the occupation of bangkok international airport aseas 3(1) 36 postponed for three years.14 some participating farmers were visibly uncomfortable, not because of the rather simple conditions under which people live in the asoke centres – those are the same conditions the farmers came from – but because of the lack of alcohol, cigarettes, gambling and other entertainment.15 some participants in the training courses, however, became quite enthusiastic about organic agriculture and returned to learn more. during those five years, asoke started to build up a considerable base among the ordinary thai peasants, particularly in northeastern thailand (isan), which has remained the poorest area in thailand and where asoke has three major temples and several small experimental farms, communities and shops selling asoke products.16 some of this goodwill among the northeastern farmers was lost when the asoke monks, nuns and lay people joined the anti-thaksin demonstrations in february 2006. thaksin had been particularly popular in the northeast and the asoke group had initially supported him. buddhism and politics always mix the asoke group had always been political to a certain extent, but it would be naïve to claim that the other monks and temples in thailand remained apolitical. the state sangha organisation parallels the state bureaucracy and the three sangha acts of 1902, 1941 and 1962 all place the sangha hierarchy under the secular hierarchy. also, there have always been rebellious monks, sometimes as leaders of phumibun uprisings or so-called holy-men uprisings against the centralisation policies carried out by the state authority on the periphery. several individual monks are known to have been in conflict with the state: phra phimontham in the 1960s, who protected the rights of the “suspected communists” to join the monkhood; buddhist monks were active in the early 1970s, when the left-wing student movement was also active (somboon, 1976; 1982); several monks who have been trying to protect the forests against illegal logging have been threatened, forcibly disrobed or killed (taylor, 1993); even one of 14 the debt of peasant families varies between 30,000 to 60,000 thai baht. the average income of a farmer is between the debt of peasant families varies between 30,000 to 60,000 thai baht. the average income of a farmer is between 1,500 to 3,000 baht per month. based on my survey in april 2002 at sisa asoke. 15 observations at sisa asoke from 2001 to 2006. observations at sisa asoke from 2001 to 2006. 16 many asoke monks originate from northeastern thailand and are fluent in the local lao and other dialects spoken many asoke monks originate from northeastern thailand and are fluent in the local lao and other dialects spoken there. there is great diversity among the asoke people and it is not easy to give exact estimates of their ethnic and class background. a survey was conducted in the 1990s. see heikkilä-horn (1996). aseas 3(1) 37 the most respected thai buddhist monks, buddhadasa bhikkhu, was several times accused of being a communist during the long years of military dictatorship in thailand during the cold war period.17 there have also been several ultra-reactionary right-wing monks willing to support the corrupted military elite. the best known is phra kittiwuttho, who in the heat of the civil war in thailand in the 1970s announced that it is not “demeritorious to kill a communist.”18 several monks have been closely linked to notorious military commanders and ministers, publicly giving their blessing to these people. one monk wanted the thai people to donate their savings in gold to pay the international monetary fund (imf) debt that the government had taken in the aftermath of the 1997 financial crisis. another controversial buddhist group, dhammakaya19 temple, offered its premises to prime minister thaksin shinawatra and his supporters during the final stages of the anti-thaksin demonstrations. the buddhist sangha simply has never been apolitical: it either supports state policies or it opposes them. it has been a persistent myth that buddhism and politics do not mix, but the myth has repeatedly been proven illusory.20 the asoke group had a complex relationship to prime minister thaksin shinawatra. thaksin had been a protégée of major-general chamlong srimuang since thaksin joined palang dharma (moral force) party and became foreign minister. he was accused of promoting his own private business interests in that post. later on in barnharn silpa-archa’s government, thaksin was deputy prime minister and promised to solve the notorious traffic problems of bangkok within six months. fortunately for him, the government was dissolved a few months later. thaksin also was a deputy prime minister in general chavalit yongchaiyudh’s government in 1997 until the asian financial crisis forced that government to resign. thaksin established his own political party in 1998.21 before contesting the elections, 17 buddhism and politics have been thoroughly discussed by ishii yoneo (1986), stanley tambiah (1976), trevor ling buddhism and politics have been thoroughly discussed by ishii yoneo (1986), stanley tambiah (1976), trevor ling (1979), somboon suksamran (1976, 1982) and peter a. jackson (1989), but the issue remains sensitive and some thai experts might have preferred to overlook these studies for the sake of their research permits. 18 “demeritorious” referring to the word “ “demeritorious” referring to the word “baap” in thai or “papa” in pali as opposite to “bun” and “puñña.” 19 also known as wat thammakaai in the northern outskirts of bangkok, with ambitions to become the world also known as wat thammakaai in the northern outskirts of bangkok, with ambitions to become the world buddhist centre. see their website www.dhammakaya.net. 20 younger generation thai experts are slowly breaking down the myth of an apolitical younger generation thai experts are slowly breaking down the myth of an apolitical sangha (see jerryson, 2009; mccargo, 2009). both authors argue strongly that such authorities as charles keyes and donald swearer have depoliticised the buddhist sangha by presenting buddhism as a “civic” or “civil” religion. 21 for critical assessments of thaksin’s policies, see mccargo & ukrist (2005), who label thaksin as “opportunistic; for critical assessments of thaksin’s policies, see mccargo & ukrist (2005), who label thaksin as “opportunistic; motivated by pursuit of wealth” (p. 20) and the party as applying “marketing policies; no ideology”(p. 79). marja-leena heikkilä-horn santi asoke buddhism and the occupation of bangkok international airport aseas 3(1) 38 he gathered together a team of former communists, ngo activists and supporters of chamlong and santi asoke. he travelled with them to northern finland to draft a programme for his thai rak thai (thai loves thai) party.22 the trt party became an anti-imf nationalistic party, promoting both the royalist and asoke “sufficiency economy.” thaksin’s first speech as a prime minister in a meeting of the asia-pacific economic cooperation (apec) in shanghai came as a shock to the international business community as thaksin explained that thailand would start “looking inward to our original strengths.”23 the speech was allegedly written by a former close assistant to chamlong srimuang, sunai setboonsarng, who had published a study on asoke economics in the 1970s.24 the foreign minister of thailand was forced to rephrase thaksin and try to convince the international investors that thailand would remain as open as it had always been to foreign investment. thaksin rapidly did a turnaround and started to negotiate and push forward several free-trade agreements (fta), particularly in the field of agriculture, that the ngos and farmers’ organisations bitterly opposed. there had been several important radical social movements before thaksin came to power. one of the largest was the assembly of the poor, established in 1995. it included networks of small-scale farmers, fishermen and urban slum dwellers from all over thailand. in 1997, the assembly staged its most spectacular protest by camping for ninety-nine days outside the government house in bangkok. the protesters were demonstrating against a dam in the northeast that threatened the livelihood of the people in the area, yet the movement clearly had a broader agenda for grassroots democracy and social justice. for the first time since the 1970s, the thai poor challenged the thai state hegemony by demanding that the ruling elites address their grievances. the democrat-led government systematically discredited the assembly, and the assembly was encouraged by sympathisers to form a political party to contest the next elections. thaksin – supported by the ideas of his activist advisers – addressed in his election campaign some of the grievances by granting a debt moratorium, village funds and cheap health care. with his “pro-poor rhetoric”25 22 his trip to finland and meeting with “santa claus” became front-page news in thailand in 2006. see his trip to finland and meeting with “santa claus” became front-page news in thailand in 2006. see matichon 2-8 june 2549 b.e. (2006). 23 economic review bangkok post (30 december 2002, p. 121) 24 sunai’s book has recently been reprinted and translated into english. schumacher’s (1973) chapter on “buddhist sunai’s book has recently been reprinted and translated into english. schumacher’s (1973) chapter on “buddhist economics” is also regarded as an inspiration to the asoke group. 25 kevin hewison (2003) labels thaksin’s approach as “pro-poor rhetoric” and regards thaksin’s government as a kevin hewison (2003) labels thaksin’s approach as “pro-poor rhetoric” and regards thaksin’s government as a aseas 3(1) 39 thaksin managed to domesticate this radical social movement. when in power, thaksin marginalised and eliminated the social activists, environmentalists and defenders of human rights.26 asoke is a politically and socially engaged buddhist group which seeks to find a remedy to the moral and social ills of global capitalism within the capitalist framework by establishing economically autonomous village communities. the asoke group addresses economic and social justice from a radical buddhist perspective by promoting an alternative economic system to global capitalism. its aim is to teach the people to follow the moral buddhist path, which would ultimately transform the capitalist society into a bunniyom society. with these “utopian” ideas the asoke buddhist economic development plan is inherently populist. this is the same populist approach found in thaksin’s rhetoric.27 what endeared thaksin to the asoke group was the community development approach in his rural policies. somchai (2006) regards the “community culture” as a “variant of populism”. populism may criticise “big business” and capitalism generally, but promotes neither radical structural change in land ownership nor a progressive taxation system. the thai community culture school blames the “imported” western capitalism for destroying the economy of the idealised thai village community.28 asoke continued supporting thaksin until february 2006. there had been some critical voices against him inside asoke – both bodhiraksa and chamlong condemned thaksin on moral grounds when he played with the idea of buying liverpool football club in mid-2004.29 asoke adherents also demonstrated in august 2005, when the beer chang company was to be listed on the stock exchange of thailand. this was seen as promoting both drinking and gambling. “government by and for the rich” (hewison, 2003, p. 140). for a similar assessment, see divjak & symonds (2001). 26 for critical assessments on thaksin’s approach to the rural poor, see bell (2003), missingham (2003), somchai for critical assessments on thaksin’s approach to the rural poor, see bell (2003), missingham (2003), somchai (2006) and ungpakorn (2003). “chang noi” presents a list of the assassinated social and environmental activists in his column “shooting the messenger” (chang noi, 2004). 27 for earlier discussion on the “community culture school”, see chattip (1991). authors like apinya (1993), olson for earlier discussion on the “community culture school”, see chattip (1991). authors like apinya (1993), olson (1983), sombat (1988) and suwanna (1990) see the asoke group as “utopian.” some recent studies on asoke communities discuss their economic policies in more detail; see essen (2005) and kanoksak (2008). 28 for somchai’s critique on the “community culture approach”, see somchai, 2006, pp. 62-64. for somchai’s critique on the “community culture approach”, see somchai, 2006, pp. 62-64. 29 “pm’s mentor raps reds bid. thaksin ready to give up, sees success in having ‘humbled’ ex-colonial power” ( “pm’s mentor raps reds bid. thaksin ready to give up, sees success in having ‘humbled’ ex-colonial power” (the nation, 1 june 2004). marja-leena heikkilä-horn santi asoke buddhism and the occupation of bangkok international airport aseas 3(1) 40 the different networks of asoke asoke is not a monolithic community,30 but rather an amalgamation of monks and nuns, urban and rural temple residents, lay followers of asoke monks, practitioners of organic agriculture in asoke village communities, current and former students of asoke schools, and admirers of major-general chamlong srimuang. it could be argued that the asoke group consists predominantly of a network of four major wings engaged in spiritual, agricultural, social and political activities. what unites the wings is their self-identification as disciples of bodhiraksa. the nucleus of the spiritual group consists of monks and the nuns including the novices and aspirants. the monks and the nuns act primarily as advisers. they preside over all possible meetings from the primary school students’ meetings to the political meetings. their advice is spiritual and is derived from their interpretation of buddhist teachings. they do not give practical advice on solving problems, but try to encourage the person to find a solution by applying buddhism. many lay people prioritise spiritual study, which means that they are not actively engaged in the other groups. the decision to join in the anti-thaksin demonstrations was fairly unanimous in the spiritual group as the asoke opposition to thaksin was based predominantly on moral grounds. on the first day of the demonstration, 26 february 2006, practically all asoke monks, nuns and novices were present, with only those who were sick not attending. after the first day, the numbers started to dwindle. there were health reasons quoted and there were references to the workload in the temple – writing articles for the magazines, working at the printing house or at the radio station were the most common reasons for leaving the demonstration site. the monks, nuns and lay people returned to the streets of bangkok for the second round of demonstrations in late may 2008. the issues had changed: the demonstrators opposed the new pro-thaksin government led by samak sundaravej, who had proudly declared that he was thaksin’s “nominee.” the demonstrators specifically opposed any amendments to the constitution to pardon prime minister thaksin and the one hundred and eleven thai rak thai members of parliament banned from politics 30 inside the asoke, asoke group ( inside the asoke, asoke group (klum asoke) refers to all the followers of bodhiraksa. asoke communities (chumchon) are the villages and centres (sathan) in various parts of thailand. the group is organised into several associations and foundations. for more details, see heikkilä-horn (1996, pp. 147-150). aseas 3(1) 41 by the constitutional court in may 2007. also this time the numbers of the asoke demonstrators – particularly the number of the monks and the nuns – dwindled very rapidly and at the end, when pad was occupying the government house, there were only a handful of asoke monks and nuns left out of the over one hundred monks and twenty-five nuns. when bangkok’s suwarnabhumi international airport was seized in november 2008 for about a week, only a few asoke monks – and no nuns – took part. the second wing of the asoke network is the agricultural group, which consists of the temple residents in the rural asoke temples, particularly in the north and northeast. according to the asoke teachings, it is important for a buddhist to choose carefully her or his profession. this is a part of the noble eightfold path, where point five emphasises “right livelihood” or “right occupation” (samma ajiva). according to buddhism, it is not recommended that a buddhist engages in selling weapons, intoxicants, human beings, animals or meat. the opposite of these destructive activities is nurturing life, and as a consequence of this thinking, being a farmer is the best choice for every asoke member. if one cannot be a farmer, one can at least try to be a gardener. hence, there is a passionate interest within asoke in everything concerning plants, soil, seeds, herbs, insects, and fruit trees. this group is interested in agricultural politics, and in 2004, santi asoke organised together with greenpeace a roundtable discussion on genetically modified crops and subsequently issued a statement against the gm crops.31 the agricultural group found it difficult to leave their farms and gardens, and hence were not at the forefront of the demonstrations. many of them left after a couple of days to return to the rural asoke centres. the third wing of the asoke network could be called the socially engaged group working in education and health care. all major asoke centres have primary and secondary schools, sometimes also vocational schools.32 hundreds of students have studied at these schools, which have changed their status throughout the years from non-formal education to formal education and vice versa. all teachers are volunteers, some with teacher’s qualifications from state schools and some without. most of the 31 “santi asoke to oppose gmo foods. buddhist group says modified crops not natural” ( “santi asoke to oppose gmo foods. buddhist group says modified crops not natural” (the nation, 10 june 2004). 32 each school has approximately 50 to 100 students, but the numbers vary from year to year. more about the each school has approximately 50 to 100 students, but the numbers vary from year to year. more about the education in asoke schools in essen (2005) and heikkilä-horn (1996). marja-leena heikkilä-horn santi asoke buddhism and the occupation of bangkok international airport aseas 3(1) 42 students have a parent or a relative staying at the asoke centres. another social activity in the asoke communities is the healthcare provided by volunteer nurses and dentists in most of the asoke villages.33 the teachers and healthcare volunteers are educated to secondary or tertiary level and many of them participated in the demonstrations in the beginning. teachers and students returned after some weeks back to their villages, whereas many of the nurses remained to provide services at the demonstration site. the fourth wing of the asoke movement could be called the political wing. the group consists of urban and rural asoke members, people particularly from the urban santi asoke community, and people closely affiliated with the activities and groups in santi asoke. there are also politically active people particularly in sisa asoke and in ratchathani asoke, where bodhiraksa resides. these people were pictured in the media as the core of the “dharma army”. dharma army actually refers to gongthub dharm foundation,34 which owns and maintains all the vehicles – vans and pick-up trucks – of the asoke group. the chairman of the foundation is chamlong srimuang. the political network consists of the supporters of chamlong srimuang. some of them may be former members of palang dharma party, and many of them have taken training courses in chamlong’s leadership school. it does not, however, necessarily mean that all the demonstrators can be associated with the chamlong srimuang foundation. the politically engaged network tends to be urban, better educated, often of ethnic sino-thai origin, whereas the agricultural network tends to be less educated and more often of ethnic lao origin. the boundaries are fluid: there are some well-educated sino-thais who prefer to live in the rural centres and experiment with agriculture.35 there was some criticism in the thai media of asoke monks, nuns and lay people taking part in the demonstrations, particularly after 7 october 2008, when the tense situation between the anti-thaksin “yellow-shirts,” pro-thaksin “red-shirts” and the riot police escalated into violence leaving one person dead and many injured.36 the 33 many centres also are engaged in producing herbal medicine, which is sold in the asoke shops. many centres also are engaged in producing herbal medicine, which is sold in the asoke shops. 34 this is the romanised version written on all asoke vehicles. there are considerable irregularities in the romanisation this is the romanised version written on all asoke vehicles. there are considerable irregularities in the romanisation of thai words. “thamma” or “tham” is the thai pronunciation of sanskrit “dharma” and pali “dhamma”. 35 see heikkilä-horn (1996) for an ethnographic survey. recent observations based mainly on my visits to sisa asoke see heikkilä-horn (1996) for an ethnographic survey. recent observations based mainly on my visits to sisa asoke in sisaket from 2001-2009. 36 see sanitsuda ekachai in her column “a solution is possible” ( see sanitsuda ekachai in her column “a solution is possible” (bangkok post, 16 october 2008). sanitsuda had earlier aseas 3(1) 43 asoke comment on this criticism was that if the monks and the nuns had not been there, then the more violent elements of the pad might have taken over. the presence of monks and nuns in the pad groups perhaps deterred the “red-shirts” from violent attacks.37 in 2000, the asoke people established a new party called pue fah din (for heaven and earth). its leaders are based in sisa asoke. however, in the march 2006 elections the party fielded samdin lertbusya, who for many years has been in charge of the fah aphai publishing company in santi asoke. a rather unique characteristic of this party is that the candidate does not want to campaign, as he feels that campaigning involves making false materialistic promises, thus breaking the buddhist precepts.38 the political network is closely linked to chamlong’s leadership school in kanchanaburi, which trained various groups of employees from both the private and public sector throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. the training lasted over the weekend or sometimes longer and consisted of physical exercise in the early morning hours, aggressive propaganda in favour of vegetarian food and critical lectures about corruption and other social ills in thai society. these courses served as a blueprint for the asoke training courses for farmers.39 the political network was also flirting with the idea of establishing a green party in thailand already in the late 1990s.40 the plans were buried with the financial crisis in 1997 and the emergence of thaksin’s thai rak thai party in 1998. it was the political network of asoke people which had worked most closely with the organisers of the demonstrations from 2006 to 2008, and with the pad. to what extent their interests and values coincided with the other leaders of pad is debatable. only as long as chamlong is part of pad will the adherents of the asoke movement remain a part of pad. sondhi limthongkul, one of the most prominent pad leaders, has tried to reach opined in a column “politics and religion do mix”: “interestingly, the presence of the quiet, stoic santi asoke monks and nuns also helps provide a sense of restraint to counter the dangerously strong emotions in the rallies.” (bangkok post, 9 march 2006). 37 there were some attacks against rural asoke centres interpreted as a reaction by thaksin supporters. sisa asoke there were some attacks against rural asoke centres interpreted as a reaction by thaksin supporters. sisa asoke lost about 1/4 of their temple land when local officials claimed that asoke had illegally encroached upon the land (sikkhamat chinda tangpao, personal communication in sisa asoke, 27 february 2009). 38 “moving heaven and earth. little-known party eschews campaigning” ( “moving heaven and earth. little-known party eschews campaigning” (bangkok post, 20 march 2006). pad has established a new party called heng thien tham (candles of righteousness). this party faded away and a new party new politics party (npp or in thai: phak kan muang mai) was established in 2009. 39 based on my observations over some weekend training seminars in 1997-98. based on my observations over some weekend training seminars in 1997-98. 40 the author was interviewed by some asoke members about the policies of the european green parties in 1997. the author was interviewed by some asoke members about the policies of the european green parties in 1997. marja-leena heikkilä-horn santi asoke buddhism and the occupation of bangkok international airport aseas 3(1) 44 out to the asoke group for support.41 he has, however, been involved in various well-publicised animistic and hindu rituals, which the asoke group totally rejects. asoke buddhist teachings shun all magic practices – the monks and the nuns are not involved in the sprinkling of “holy water” or predicting the winning lottery numbers, something with which many thai monks are preoccupied. the popular thai belief in ghosts and spirits is strongly refuted in asoke; bodhiraksa has repeatedly emphasised that if people persistently claim to see or hear ghosts and spirits, it is because those creatures live inside these people’s own heads. as bodhiraksa is the founder of the group, this makes him the most senior monk in asoke and he is highly venerated by all asoke members. he is, however, not the abbot of any of the asoke temples; his function remains mainly advisory. bodhiraksa still delivers his buddhist sermon every evening through a video-link to all the asoke temples.42 all four major networks – spiritual, agricultural, social and political – are united in their asoke buddhist beliefs and values. they all respect bodhiraksa as their spiritual guide and leader; they all have to be vegetarians; and they all have to practise bunniyom and live modestly. conclusion this paper argues that it has always been a misconception to perceive theravada buddhism – or any other religion for that matter – as apolitical. buddhism has been an important part of the legitimacy of the kings and prime ministers. it has been an important part of the nation-building processes of thailand and other theravada buddhist countries. furthermore, the buddhist monks have also been an important element in protesting against military dictators, corruption of the ruling elite, and the centralisation of power in the capital city. concerning the controversial santi asoke buddhist group, the paper argues that the group cannot be treated as a monolithic entity, as it consists of at least four 41 the other leaders beside chamlong and sondhi were suriyasai katasila, a former student leader and democracy the other leaders beside chamlong and sondhi were suriyasai katasila, a former student leader and democracy activist; somsak kosaisuk, a labour leader and somkiat pongpaibul a democrat party mp. sondhi has become leader of the new politics party, which consists of pad supporters. the pad and the npp are, however, beyond the scope of this article. 42 observation in sisa asoke, 27-28 february 2009. observation in sisa asoke, 27-28 february 2009. aseas 3(1) 45 major networks: spiritual, agricultural, social and political. it is particularly the political network which was most actively involved in the demonstrations. the political network is closely connected with chamlong srimuang, who is the president of a foundation called the dharma army. the dharma army that was seen in the demonstrations consisted of people engaged in the four asoke networks. the spiritual wing, dominated by monks and nuns, took part in the demonstrations with lesser intensity than the social and political wings. the agricultural network also participated in the demonstrations during the initial days of the protests but quickly left the scene to tend their rice fields and fruit orchards. the social and particularly political wings participated in the street demonstrations and camped at the various demonstration sites throughout the turmoil. the media image of the dharma army was somewhat reductionist as the local print media often showed pictures of school children and students of asoke schools. it is, however, obvious that the ties binding bodhiraksa to major-general chamlong srimuang since the 1980s have seriously undermined the spiritual and social message of the asoke group among the rural poor. one of the main reasons why the asoke group joined the anti-thaksin demonstrations was their loyalty to chamlong srimuang. when chamlong turned against thaksin, most of the asoke people turned against thaksin. these political links between bodhiraksa and chamlong have been used by the competing elites against the asoke group leading, for instance, to the court case described above. ironically, the recent political affiliation through chamlong to the “yellow-shirts” and pad has endangered the relationship of the entire asoke group with the very people whom their anti-capitalistic bunniyom economy and training courses in organic agriculture were supposed to benefit. the fact that a large number of indebted farmers have chosen thaksin shinawatra as their “saviour” has forced the asoke group in the current situation to re-establish itself among the wider rural population – without simultaneously severing its ties to the political activists who joined the “yellow-shirts.” references apinya, f. (1993). empire of crystal and utopian commune: two types of contemporary theravada reform in thailand. sojourn, 8(1), 76-116. marja-leena heikkilä-horn santi asoke buddhism and the occupation of bangkok international airport aseas 3(1) 46 bell, p. f. (2003). thailand’s economic crisis: a new cycle of struggle. in g. ungpakorn (ed.), radicalising thailand (pp. 41-74). bangkok, thailand: institute of asian studies, chulalongkorn university. chang noi. (pseudonym) (2004, april 26). shooting the messenger. the nation. republished in chang noi. (2009). jungle book: thailand’s politics, moral panic, and plunder 1996-2008 (pp. 198-200). chiang mai, thailand: silkworm books. chattip, n. (1991). the community culture school thought. in c. manas & a. turton (eds.), thai constructions of knowledge (pp. 118-141). london: school of oriental and african studies, university of london. divjak, c. & symonds, p. (2001). new thai cabinet loaded with businessmen, bureaucrats and ex-generals. retrieved 20 february 2001, from http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/feb2001/thai-f20.shtml essen, j. (2005). “right development”. the santi asoke buddhist reform movement of thailand. lanham, md: lexington books. hansen, a. r. (2007). how to behave. buddhism and modernity in colonial cambodia 1860-1930. chiang mai, thailand: silkworm books. heikkilä-horn, m.-l. (1996). santi asoke buddhism and thai state response. turku, finland: åbo akademi university press. hewison, k. (2003). crafting a new social contract: domestic capitalist responses to the challenge of neoliberalism. in g. ungpakorn (ed.), radicalising thailand (pp. 120-151). bangkok, thailand: institute of asian studies, chulalongkorn university. kanoksak, k. (2008). an “imagining” community: the case of sisa asoke, sisaket province. in s. tanabe (ed.), imagining communities in thailand (pp. 59-82). chiang mai, thailand: mekong press. ishii, y. (1986). sangha, state and society. thai buddhism in history. (transl. peter hawkes). honolulu, hi: university of hawaii press. jackson, p. a. (1989). buddhism, legitimation and conflict. the political functions of urban thai buddhism. singapore: iseas. jerryson, m. (2009). appropriating a space for violence: state buddhism in southern thailand. journal of southeast asian studies, 40(1), 33-57. ling, t. o. (1979). buddhism, imperialism and war. burma and thailand in modern history. london: allen and unwin. manas, c. & turton, a. (eds.). (1991). thai constructions of knowledge. london: london: school of oriental and african studies, university of london. mccargo, d. & ukrist p. (2005). the thaksinization of thailand. copenhagen, denmark: nias press. mccargo, d. (2009). the politics of buddhist identity in thailand’s deep south: the demise of civil religion? journal of southeast asian studies, 40(1), 11-32. mcvey, r. (ed.). (2000). money and power in provincial thailand. chiang mai, thailand: iseas/silkworm books. aseas 3(1) 47 missingham, b. d. (2003). the assembly of the poor in thailand. from local struggles to national protest movement. chiang mai, thailand: silkworm books. ockey, j. (2000). the rise of local power in thailand: provincial crime, elections and bureaucracy. in r. mcvey (ed.), money and power in provincial thailand (pp. 74-96). chiang mai, thailand: iseas & silkworm books. olson, g. (1983). sangha reform in thailand: limitation, liberation and the middle path. chapter vii. the people of asoke: purity through strict discipline and vegetables. unpublished ma thesis, university of hawaii. pasuk, p. & baker, c. (2009). thaksin. chiang mai, thailand: silkworm books. schumacher, e. f. (1973). small is beautiful: a study of economics as if people mattered. london: harperperennial. sombat, c. (2000). local godfather in thai politics. in r. mcvey (ed.), money and power in provincial thailand. (pp. 53-73). chiang mai, thailand: iseas & silkworm books. somboon, s. (1976). political buddhism in southeast asia. the role of the sangha in the modernization of thailand. new york: st. martin’s press. somboon s. (1982). buddhism and politics in thailand. singapore: iseas. somchai, p. (2006). civil society and democratization. social movements in northeast thailand. copenhagen, denmark: nias press. sunai, s. (2007). the new paradigm of development and poverty reduction based on the sufficiency economy philosophy (a case study of santi-asoke) group in thailand. bangkok, thailand: fah aphai. suwanna, s. (1990). religious movements in contemporary thailand. buddhist struggles for modern relevance. asian survey, 30(4), 395-408. tambiah, s. j. (1976). world conqueror and world renouncer. a study of buddhism and polity in thailand against a historical background. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. tanabe, s. (ed.). (2008). imagining communities in thailand. ethnographic approaches. chiang mai, thailand: mekong press. taylor, j. l. (1993). buddhist revitalization, modernization, and social change in contemporary thailand. sojourn, 8(1), 62-91. ungpakorn, g. (ed.). (2003). radicalising thailand. new political perspectives. bangkok, thailand: institute of asian studies, chulalongkorn university. marja-leena heikkilä-horn santi asoke buddhism and the occupation of bangkok international airport research on south-east asia in austria: department of development studies, university of vienna aseas 4(1) 178 179 netzwerk südostasienforschung / network south-east asia research research on south-east asia in austria: department of development studies, university of vienna petra dannecker1 & wolfram schaff ar2 university of vienna, austria citation dannecker, p., & schaff ar, w. (2011). research on south-east asia in austria: department of development studies, university of vienna. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 4(1), 179-182. the department of development studies at the university of vienna was founded in 2010. it originated out of the project international development, which was initiated in 2002 by a group of lecturers and professors interested in establishing a study program focusing on ‘development’. within a short period of time, international development became highly popular and today about 3,000 students from more than 50 countries are enrolled in the programme. the aim of the department, which is supported by various faculties at the university, is the establishment of international development studies in teaching as well as in research. the premise that ‘development’ is a phenomenon which can only be taught and analysed transdisciplinarily is the basis for the department’s approach and distinguishes it from other institutions in europe and around the world, where development studies are mainly based on economics or social sciences only. transdisciplinarity as a methodological concept means that our study programs 1 petra dannecker is professor for international development studies and head of the department of development studies at the university of vienna, austria. she was trained as sociologist and is working on development politics, globalisation, and migration processes, as well as islamisation processes in south and south-east asia. other focuses of her research are gender studies, international gender politics, and gender and migration, as well as the sciencepolicy nexus. contact: petra.dannecker@univie.ac.at 2 wolfram schaffar is professor for international development studies at the university of vienna, austria. he was trained in political science, south-east asian studies, and japanese studies. he is working on social movements, democratisation, and state theory, with a regional focus on south-east asia, especially thailand and myanmar/ burma. he is also doing research on social security systems, the welfare state, and globalisation, as well as on questions of new media and democratisation. contact: wolfram.schaffar@univie.ac.at petra dannecker & wolfram schaff ar department of development studies, university of vienna d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -4 .1 -1 3 aseas 4(1) 180 181 and research activities combine social, political, historical, cultural, and economic approaches to development and to global and local inequalities. such an approach requires a multidisciplinary team. our staff members as well as our lecturers, therefore, have different disciplinary backgrounds and experience in doing research on different regions of the world. we are glad to introduce our department to the readership of aseas as prof. petra dannecker and prof. wolfram schaffar, two full time staff members at the department, have specialised in south-east asian studies at earlier stages of their career and feed in their experience to the development of the new department. although we do not pursue an area studies approach – as much as we insist on the combination of different disciplinary approaches, we focus on a global perspective rather than on specific regions – south-east asia is now strongly represented in the teaching as well as in the research programme. this used to be different before the establishment of the department. back then, it was rather latin america and africa that featured prominently in the programme – latin america because of its dynamic political development and the traditionally close links to concerned scholars, and africa, since the project international development was born out of the institute for african studies. still, it has always been possible for students to specialise in south-east asian issues since a number of lecturers (for example dr silvia michal-misak, ms yuki seidler, and mr valentin seidler) as well as the cooperation with other departments (prof. rüdiger frank from the department of east asian studies, prof. karl husa and prof. helmut wohlschlägl from the department of geography) made it possible to visit seminars focusing on south-east asia and even choose aspects of south-east asian development as topics for diploma theses. with petra dannecker and wolfram schaffar, however, two permanent staff members are now representing south-east asian issues in teaching and research. petra dannecker received her phd from the department of sociology at the university of bielefeld, germany, where south-east asia was one of the focal regions of study. wolfram schaffar previously worked as a lecturer at the department of south-east asian studies at the university of bonn, germany, and at the faculty of political science at chulalongkorn university in bangkok, thailand. in her research, petra dannecker focuses on migration – in particular on banglaaseas 4(1) 180 181 deshi migrant workers in south-east asia and the economical, political, social, and cultural transformation and development in the countries of origin and destination which are triggered and influenced by migration processes. the theoretical framework draws on concepts of transnational migration as well as on new approaches which deal with temporary and circular migration. central issues which are pursued in a transdisciplinary research group are the construction of masculinity and femininity as well as the negotiation of local cultures and islamic identities through transnational activities and networks. another research focus with reference to south-east asia is the negotiation of ‘global’ concepts of development, first and foremost in malaysia. the focus is on the construction of new social spaces by ‘global’ concepts of development and the embeddedness of these construction processes in translocal networks like transnational women’s organisations. this research aims at revealing the complexity of social relations between regions in order to question usual dichotomies like local versus global and islamic versus western. wolfram schaffar is working on democratisation processes, social movements, and constitutionalism in south-east asia with a focus on thailand and burma/myanmar. a research project on social movements’ perspective on the process of democratisation and constitution drafting in thailand is currently under review by a research funding agency. this study focuses on the tension between the movements’ quest for the protection of fundamental rights on the one hand and the rejection of a judicialisation of politics on the other. as such, the project aims at an investigation of contested democratisation processes which are relevant not only for thailand but also for the most recent developments in the arab world. wolfram schaffar is also member of a research group on statehood and concepts of the state in countries of the global south. the group is currently drafting a research project in which aspects of so-called ‘failed states’ will be analysed and interpreted from different perspectives – the fragmentation of the state in myanmar/ burma, with its numerous ethnic insurgency groups, state formation in palestine, or situations of so-called ‚weak‘ or ‚failed states‘ in west and east africa. not only for these research projects, but also in order to provide new opportunities for our students, our department is preparing exchange programmes with universities and research institutions in south-east asia. negotiations for a joint study petra dannecker & wolfram schaffar department of development studies, university of vienna aseas 4(1) 182 183 programme with chulalongkorn university in bangkok, thailand, where wolfram schaffar used to teach in the ma in international development studies programme are under way. we are optimistic that more contacts will follow as soon as the process of consolidation of our department’s ba and ma programmes is completed. in the end, what makes the department of development studies a dynamic place for studying south-east asian issues are our students and their commitment. we are currently supervising diploma theses on issues such as coffee plantations in the central highlands of vietnam, which go back to a development cooperation project between the german democratic republic (east germany) and the socialist republic of vietnam, the role of the internet in the democratisation process in malaysia, the concept of ‘sufficiency economy’ in thailand, or the situation of burmese migrant workers in thailand. the successful consolidation process of our department during the past couple of months gives us every reason to be optimistic that our department will soon be another important institution for the study of south-east asian issues in austria. selected publications of the department staff dannecker, p. (2009). rationalities and images: temporary labour migration from bangladesh to malaysia. international migration, 49, 1-20. dannecker, p. (2011). transnationale räume und die konstitution von lokalen räumen zur aushandlung von entwicklung und geschlechterverhältnissen. gender. zeitschrift für geschlecht, kultur und gesellschaft, 1, 47-64. dannecker, p., & spiegel, a. (2007). let’s not rock the boat“: frauenorganisationen und demokratisierung in malaysia. internationales asienforum, 37(3-4), 297-319. pye, o., & schaffar, w. (2008). the 2006 anti-thaksin movement in thailand: an analysis. journal of contemporary asia, 38(1), 38-61. schaffar, w. (2009a). hiv-positive in thailand: der lange kampf um zugang zu medikamenten. in u. hoering, o. pye, w. schaffar & c. wichterich (eds.), globalisierung bringt bewegung: lokale kämpfe und transnationale vernetzungen in asien (pp. 86-103). münster, germany: westfälisches dampfboot. schaffar, w. (2009b). demokratiebewegung in myanmar: bewegungsveterane, mönche und farbrevolutionäre. in u. hoering, o. pye, w. schaffar & c. wichterich (eds.), globalisierung bringt bewegung: lokale kämpfe und transnationale vernetzungen in asien (pp. 152-169). münster, germany: westfälisches dampfboot. schaffar, w. (2011). organisierung und soziale bewegungen: die kunst, nicht regiert zu werden. in m. bruch, w. schaffar & p. scheiffele (eds.), organisation und kritik (pp. 137-169). münster, germany: westfälisches dampfboot. rezensionen / reviews (aseas 3-1) aseas 3(1) 124 terms of length to properly address the problem and its issues. given the major weaknesses outlined in this review and the shortcomings in addressing the stated objectives of the volume, the conclusion of this review can only be that the book is not recommended reading. ramses amer stockholm university, sweden grabowski, maike, herold, heike, & jordan, rolf (hrsg.). (2009). sicherheit kontra menschenrechte: antiterrorpolitik in asien. köln, deutschland: horlemann verlag. isbn: 978-3-89502-284-5. 206 seiten die tatsache, dass die sicherheit der allgemeinheit und die (scheinbare) stabilität des systems oft im konflikt mit den individuellen rechten der betroffenen bürgerinnen stehen, wird seit langer zeit beobachtet und erörtert. die terrorismusdebatten nach 9/11 rückten dieses altbekannte dilemma wieder in den fokus öffentlicher diskussionen. dabei ging es im politischen „westen“, also regionen, die sich – durchaus zu recht – immer noch als vorreiter und -kämpfer der menschenrechte sehen, allerdings primär um die bedenkliche aushöhlung der eigenen rechtsstaatlichkeit. wie aber sieht es in teilen der welt aus, in denen rechtsstaatliche prinzipien nie so recht fuß fassten? welchen einfluss hatten die terroranschläge in new york und washington auf noch andauernde demokratisierungsprozesse? der auf beiträgen einer tagung des (essener) asienhauses im mai 2008 basierende sammelband „sicherheit kontra menschenrechte: antiterrorpolitik in asien“ beleuchtet dieses thema von zentralasiatischen ex-sowjetrepubliken wie usbekistan über indien, bangladesch und ostasien bis südostasien, das mit den philippinen, malaysia, singapur, indonesien und einer betrachtung der asean-politik klar den schwerpunkt des buches darstellt. in insgesamt zehn beiträgen gehen die autorinnen der frage nach, wie es um bürger und menschenrechte in ausgewählten ländern asiens steht und präsentieren diese entwicklungen zumeist in relation zu den anschlägen des 11. septembers 2001. dabei wird klar, dass die westliche und insbesondere amerikanische terrorismusdebatte, welche seit diesem datum massiv zugenommen hat, nicht ohne weiteres auf asien aseas 3(1) 125 übertragen werden kann, da sowohl terrorismus wie auch aus menschenrechtlicher und sicherheitspolitischer sicht sehr fragwürdige praktiken und gesetzgebungen seitens der betroffenen regierungen zur bekämpfung real existierender und angeblicher staatsfeinde lange tradition haben und keineswegs rezente erscheinungen sind. daher unterscheiden sich sowohl gründe, auslöser als auch mit staatlichen reaktionen einhergehende problematiken gänzlich von jenen im westen. in vielen fällen stammen konflikte ebenso wie besonders rigide antiterrorgesetze gar aus der kolonialoder gründungszeit der jeweiligen staaten; die bedrohung durch al-quaida spielt dagegen außer im diskurs mit dem westen kaum eine rolle. der innere widerspruch gerade postkolonialer gesellschaften liegt für die meisten autorinnen nun darin, dass trotz der freiheitskämpferischen vergangenheit dieser regierungen – weitaus mehr noch als in den gesellschaften der einstigen kolonialmächte – häufig zu höchst repressiven mitteln gegriffen wird (vgl. den beitrag von thorsten otto, s. 35). rechtfertigung dafür ist in der regel die „notwendigkeit zur stabilisierung der gesellschaft in der übergangsphase“, bis dann einfach von terrorismus die rede ist – wobei der amerikanisch-britische „war on terror“ diesen regimen rhetorischen vorschub und argumentative unterstützung leistete. tatsächlich handelt es sich im urteil einiger autorinnen dieses sammelbandes aber um die fortsetzung bisheriger kämpfe und repressalien im rahmen einer neuen, politisch opportunen begrifflichkeit. neu erlassene antiterror-gesetze dienen hauptsächlich der einschüchterung größerer volksgruppen, zur abschreckung möglicher sympathisantinnen friedlicher oder gewalttätiger opposition, legitimierung staatlicher gewalt und der aushebelung internationaler und verfassungsmäßiger grundund menschenrechte, nicht aber unbedingt zur gezielteren verfolgung terroristisch aktiver personen oder gruppen. so legt thorsten otto etwa die indische sondergesetzgebung der 1950er, 1970er und 1980er jahre dar, welche nicht nur klar den anschlägen vom 11. september 2001 vorausgehen, sondern ihrerseits auf noch älteren britischen kolonialgesetzen basieren. ähnlich verhält es sich in bangladesch, welches – wie mitherausgeber heiko herold und bernhard hertlein ausführen – trotz lippenbekenntnissen zu verschiedensten menschenrechtskonventionen die tradition der verfolgung regierungskritischer personen ungebrochen aufrechterhält. unter dem deckmantel des „global war on terror“ werden so lokale rezensionen / reviews aseas 3(1) 126 unabhängigkeitsbewegungen oder politische gegner, gewerkschaften und unzufriedene bauern verfolgt, die nicht im geringsten zusammenhang mit al-quaida stehen. die neben der „hauptfront“ im nahen osten viel zitierte „zweite front“ gegen den terror in südostasien wird somit oft zum politischen schauspiel; nationale interessen haben stets priorität gegenüber dem kampf gegen gemeinsame, globale bedrohungen. allzu oft existieren dabei widersprüche von formal vorbildlichen gesetzen (siehe ottos beitrag, s. 33, oder herold & hertleins beitrag, s. 47) und deren umsetzung. doch selbst wenn viele der beanstandeten gesetze in ähnlicher form durchaus auch in rechtsstaaten wie deutschland oder österreich existieren, liegt der bedeutende unterschied in der art und – vor allem aufgrund der fehlenden demokratischen tradition dieser länder – der extremen unverhältnismäßigkeit in der anwendung. vage definitionen machen aus, der regierung unliebsamen, nichtregierungsorganisationen schnell „terroristische vereinigungen“ – mit vielfach tödlichen folgen für die betroffenen und selten rechtlichen konsequenzen für beteiligte exekutivorgane. durch diese instrumentalisierung und ausweitung des terrorismusbegriffes (siehe grabowski, herold & jordans vorwort, s. 7) auf jegliche oppositionsbewegungen und die damit oftmals einhergehende, massive einschränkung der meinungsund pressefreiheit sowie restriktive informationspolitik wurde gerade in gesellschaften mit noch weitgehend ungelösten sozialen, politischen oder wirtschaftsdistributiven problemen die diskussion um ursache und legitimität politischen widerstands – auch gewalttätiger natur – großteils abgewürgt, was zu einer kriminalisierung und entpolitisierung der jeweiligen problematiken führt. tatsächlich greifen mehrere autorinnen des bandes dieses thema auf, wobei besonders michael clarkes beitrag zur verschärfung chinesischer gesetze mit dem impliziten ziel der unterdrückung der uiguren hervorsticht, da er sich nicht nur inhaltlich ähnlich wie andere – um nicht zu sagen repräsentativ –, sondern auch sichtlich bewegt und argumentativ überzeugend damit auseinandersetzt (s. 73). angesichts der tristen lage in den beschriebenen ländern argumentiert der großteil der autorinnen recht normativ, wobei die sympathien klar auf seite der jeweiligen aufständischen oder oppositionellen liegen und mitunter die frage der legitimität bewaffneten widerstandes gegen die regierungsgewalt in den vordergrund gestellt wird. der europäische konsens hinsichtlich der prinzipiellen aseas 3(1) 127 ablehnung von folter und willkür unabhängig von der schuldfrage der inhaftierten wird dabei oft überlagert; bei manchen argumenten scheint es so, als meinten die autorinnen, es wäre es bloß inakzeptabel „unschuldige“zu foltern oder zu töten. wiewohl eine stellungnahme zugunsten unterdrückter gruppen von menschlichem und menschrechtlichem standpunkt aus verständlich sowie teils auch argumentativ nachvollziehbar ist – und die im vorwort klar geäußerte intention der beeinflussung „politisch interessierte[r] und multiplikatoren“ (s. 9) widerspiegelt – stellt sich bei einigen beiträgen doch die frage, inwieweit sie wissenschaftlich beschreibender und erklärender natur sind oder vorrangig einer normativen agenda folgen. noch mehr gilt zu überlegen, ob die internierung und befragung professor song du-yuls bei seiner einreise nach südkorea durch geheimdienst und staatsanwaltschaft – so unerfreulich und juristisch bedenklich diese auch sein mögen – tatsächlich zwei artikel (jene von song du-yul selbst und von herold) in einem sammelband von nur zehn beiträgen rechtfertigen. so diese episode aber systematischen charakter hat, sollte dies expliziter und klarer dargelegt werden; begriffe wie „bizarr“, „absurd“ und „realitätfremd“ (song, s. 91) innerhalb nur eines satzes erwecken kaum den eindruck wissenschaftlicher distanz zum erlebten. insbesondere leidet der wissenschaftliche anspruch des bandes aber, so verwendete theorieansätze nicht deklariert werden oder schlicht und einfach nicht vorhanden sind. lobend hervorzuheben sind hierbei die beiträge des mitherausgebers rolf jordan über die menschenrechtslage in malaysia und singapur in einem expliziten vergleich der lage vor und nach 9/11 sowie des aseas-redakteurs alfred gerstl, der – ähnlich wie auch andere autorinnen des bandes, aber mit klar präzisiertem theorieansatz – die entpolitisierung von terrorismus am beispiel asean betrachtet. beide beiträge gehen ausgesprochen balanciert auf verschiedene aspekte und perspektiven der problematik ein, ohne dabei aber die groben menschenrechtsverstöße zu relativieren oder ignorieren. die von den herausgeberinnen grabowski, herold und jordan formulierte leitfrage des bandes nach den auswirkungen neuer gesetzgebungen vor dem hintergrund der vermeintlichen zäsur 9/11 (s. 8) wird vom großteil der autorinnen gestellt, zumeist aber mit dem hinweis auf rhetorik, um westliche unterstützung zu erhalten, oder nur gradueller verschlechterung bereits existierender fragwürdiger menschenrechtslage beantwortet. nicht die anschläge von new york und washington, sondern ereignisse rezensionen / reviews aseas 3(1) 128 davor und danach erklärten die entwicklungen in asien. bei allem informationsreichtum, aus wissenschaftlicher hinsicht ist die etwas divergierende qualität der beiträge ein wermutstropfen. für die im vorwort deklarierte zielgruppe – und hierbei gerade für südostasien-interessierte – bietet „sicherheit kontra menschenrechte“ aber eine interessante und wertvolle bestandsaufnahme. harald krebl gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften (seas), österreich beyond commodifi cation and politicisation: production and consumption practices of authenticity in the white tai tourist market in the uplands of vietnam aseas 4(1) 30 31 aktuelle südostasienforschung / current research on south-east asia beyond commodifi cation and politicisation: production and consumption practices of authenticity in the white tai tourist market in the uplands of vietnam achariya nate-chei1 chiang mai university, thailand citation nate-chei, a. (2011). beyond commodification and politicisation: production and consumption practices of authenticity in the white tai tourist market in the uplands of vietnam. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 4(1), 30-50. this paper is based on an ethnographic enquiry conducted over the last four years and shows the setting of a close interaction between hosts and guests in the white tai villages in mai chau district, in the northwest uplands of vietnam. the author argues that tourism is utilised as a medium to demonstrate a culture of hospitality. a new trend in tourism production and consumption is brought into discussion; in relation to this, this paper looks at what is really happening in the tourism spaces of the white tai villages through the experiences not only of tourists but also of villagers. the author identifi es several types of host-guest relationships and argues that there is a transformation of the host-guest relationship within these tourist spaces, a transformation evident in the new production and consumption practices of the market. such relationships must be understood by looking beyond conceptions of commodifi cation and politicisation of ethnicity. keywords: ethnic tourism, tourist market, authenticity, production and consumption, vietnam basierend auf einer vierjährigen ethnographischen feldforschung schildert dieser beitrag die interaktionen zwischen bereisten und reisenden anhand von white tai-dörfern im mai chau-bezirk im nordwestlichen hügelland vietnams. die autorin argumentiert, dass tourismus als medium zur demonstration von gastfreundlichkeit eingesetzt werde. neben einer diskussion zu touristischer produktion und konsum, werden in diesem artikel auch die erfahrungen und wahrnehmungen der touristinnen und dorfbewohnerinnen analysiert sowie verschiedene typen von beziehungen zwischen gastgeberinnen und gästen identifi ziert. es wird dabei argumentiert, dass im kontext touristischer räume eine transformation dieser beziehungen stattfi nde, die in den neuen produktionsund konsumpraktiken evident sei. solche beziehungen können nur verstanden werden, wenn ein altbekanntes verständnis von kommodifi zierung und politisierung von ethnizität erweitert werde. schlagworte: ethnotourismus, tourismusmarkt, authentizität, produktion und konsum, vietnam 1 achariya nate-chei is a phd candidate at the department of sociology and anthropology, faculty of social sciences, chiang mai university, thailand, and an assistant professor at the department of sociology and anthropology, faculty of social sciences, naresuan university, phitsanulok, thailand. her current project on white tai ethnic tourism in vietnam is conducted with fi nancial support from naresuan university. she would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers appointed by aseas for their helpful suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper, prof. anan ganjanapan for his thoughtful instructions, and roger and thang long for their assistance with the fi nal proofreading. contact: achariyach@gmail.com. d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -4 .1 -3 ) aseas 4(1) 30 31 introduction the notion of commodification currently dominant among academics sees the tourist product (that is ethnic authenticity) as a sign of value. in other words, a variety of meanings of ethnic authenticity are created by tourist actors. in addition, since the late twentieth century, postmodern society has been categorised as a consumption society. this means that through consumption, consumers construct and express their identity. on the other hand, ethnic tourism can be seen as a tool of production which consists of produced representations of ethnic authenticity. that product is created by the second producers (tour agencies, the state, and so forth) including economic victors who are not from a local minority group (michaud & turner, 2006, p. 785). that product is subsequently contested by first producers through a manipulation of ethnic identity that helps local people base their claims to power as shown in many ethnic tourism studies in south-east asia and southern china (adams, 1984; 2006; cohen, 2001; cole, 2007; 2008; king, 2008; su & teo, 2008; wherry, 2006; yang & wall, 2009; zhihong, 2007). such an attempt at simplifying the complexity of market relations into cultural sign values or symbolic interaction reduces ethnic relations to an instance of minority politics. nonetheless, in the context of a rapidly globalising market, the cultural economy of ethnic tourism is seen in this paper as integrating both production and consumption of ethnicity in complex and multiple ways. in the process of negotiating authenticity, production and consumption do not remain isolated: rather than exclusively by the primary producers (villagers, tour agencies, and the state), the tourist product is co-produced by the consumers themselves (that is the tourists) in the process of consumption. in order to sustain these ideas, this paper looks at processes of production and consumption of ethnicity within the space of a village homestay in which hospitality plays an important role. even though the relevance of notions such as ‘commodification’ and ‘politics of ethnic minority’ is not denied, reaching beyond such notions, and reflecting the achievements of the ethnic tourist market, the paper concludes on a positive note regarding the establishment of these ‘new social relationships’. this paper presents the illustration of a white tai (in vietnam, this group is called thai trang) ethnic minority site in the north-western uplands of vietnam, popular achariya nate-chei beyond commodification and politicisation aseas 4(1) 32 33 nowadays as an ethnic tourism attraction. the two villages studied, ban lac and ban pom cong in chieng chau commune, are located in a valley in mai chau district, hoa binh province. before the colonial period, mai chau district was a town (muong) of sipsong chau tai. since the first half of the 1990s, the ‘tourist market’ has held an increasing importance for villagers’ livelihoods; it has become the main source of income for most households, especially in ban lac, the main tourist village. the tourist market here is not in the hands of outsiders. villagers have rapidly grasped the opportunities brought by the tourist market as a means of changing their economic situation. the popularity of the site is not only due to the beautiful landscape, but also to the traditional hospitality of the white tai people in charge of the homestay business. whereas outsiders have attempted to commodify this culture as a ‘cultural product’, the villagers have moved beyond that by taking this opportunity to transcend the economic rationality of the tourist market. the villagers construct their new identities with the aim of claiming dignity as well as power to control and manage cultural resources. in addition, through the interactions between hosts and visitors the mai chau tourist space creates a new kind of relationship. this paper attempts to overcome accepted notions of ‘commodification’ and ‘minority politics’, and looks for more adequate explanations. as a researcher who has gained a fair degree of skill in speaking, reading, and writing vietnamese and white tai, i collected the primary data during 2007-2010 from mainly informally talking with the informants and long-stay observation in a variety of roles (bruner, 1995; crick, 1995). such roles include being a tourist, a student studying white tai in mai chau, and finally a researcher. commodification of mai chau in a similar way to many other tourist places in vietnam, mai chau has been promoted as an ‘ethnic tourism community’ by many tourism organisations, including state and local authorities, hotels and tour agencies located in the old city of ha noi, the national television channel for ethnic minorities (vtv5), websites, and even by lonely planet (the world famous travel guidebook). in this promotion, mai chau is often referred to as the beautiful valley of rice fields where the white tai people live. it is a place for exploring the ethnic minorities’ cultures and livelihoods, and for enjoying aseas 4(1) 32 33 nature trekking. furthermore, as the main tourist villages of mai chau district, ban lac and ban pom cong are promoted as homestay villages where visitors can enjoy the tai stilt houses, local fabric weaving, and cultural performances. at present, mai chau is known as a romantic place for couples, a site of eco-sightseeing (trekking), an ethnic cultural attraction for vietnamese and foreigners, and a research site for university lecturers and students. every weekend, kinh couples (‘kinh’ is the ethnographic name of the vietnamese majority), and large groups of kinh and particular ha noi students, as well as foreigners including backpackers, flock to the villages. in short, the success of mai chau’s commodification lies in its representation in terms of a traditional and exotic culture and way of life, a representation determined by the notion of ‘otherness’. we can see that the commodification of mai chau carried out by outsiders is mainly based on a certain representation of mai chau (even the way of life of ethnic minority is also seen as a production of place). the exception is the representation of hospitality, which brings a sense of social relations. however, villagers, especially those who are involved in the tourism business, overlook being represented as primitive. actually, they attempt to differentiate themselves from the kinh, and see themselves as more than just another different and exotic ethnic group and culture: in relation to their interaction with tourists, the white tai here feel that they are better than the kinh. they will say, for instance, “we are better-hearted and more moral.” furthermore, they see themselves more skilful in any craft-making, and forming a more peaceful community than the kinh majority. even though they engage with processes of modernisation and vietnamisation, the tourist market of the white tai in mai chau has allowed them to construct a new moral identity which moves beyond the image of a primitive community. villagers proudly present themselves as modern: in the villages, there are satellite dishes, washing machines, cars, concrete roads, and modern toilets with water heaters. certainly, they are reluctant to dress in white tai traditional costume when government officials or other guests ask for it. this tourist site also offers a combination of modern economic rationality and traditional white tai moral values. in this way, villagers are able to maintain their old ways of hospitality, while at the same time diversifying their products and services. therefore, far from the images constructed by outsiders, villagers are willing to achariya nate-chei beyond commodification and politicisation aseas 4(1) 34 35 construct their village as a space of cultural richness with not only tangible but also intangible elements, such as honesty, modesty, and hospitality. of course, this commodification of ethnicity is not only aimed at making money, but also at stating a claim for ethnic dignity, and for power to keep their authority over the management of their ‘places’ as both tourist spaces and agricultural lands. certainly, that construction is not based on temporary transactions which depend on the mechanisms of the market, but rather on a more elaborate and complex relationship which goes beyond the framework of minority politics. local cultures and habits in the ethnic tourism market before examining how complex host-guest relations are constructed and experienced in the context of the tourist market, it is necessary to understand the cultures underlying such relations. those driving forces are hospitality and the morality of money. hospitality customarily, the white tai always welcome outsiders who pass through their villages. their villages are more likely to be chosen for a homestay than other ethnic sites in the same area. in the past, villagers offered visitors a night in their houses and a meal for free even if they were strangers. white tai society has a saying, “hach peng khach ma huon”, which means “love whoever visits your house.” according to white tai custom, if someone arrives at a house, the house owner must first ask “how are you and your family?” and then serve the visitor a drink. while talking with their visitors, white tai people always ask them, “could you have a meal with us?” according to trong (2007), after this, if the visitors show their desire to eat, the host will be happy to serve them food, and family members and guests will sit around the table and have a meal together (p. 27). sharing good food and drink is the best way to get acquainted and cement a lasting friendship (trong, 2007, p. 91). anyone who shares a meal with a white tai family is considered to be their guest. this means that foreign tourists brought by tour agencies are not treated as guests, because they usually do not share meals with their hosts. another basic point about the villagers’ perceptions of their visitors or guests is aseas 4(1) 34 35 that, even though the terms ‘guest’ or ‘visitor’ can be translated in general as khach in white tai, there are many kinds of khach, and villagers will treat them differently. the guests mentioned directly above are sometimes called khach huon (meaning the guest of the home or khach nha in vietnamese); however, they would not be considered as ‘close guests’ (or ‘khach than tinh’ in vietnamese), i.e. non-paying guests in the social sense, as opposed to paying guests or ‘customers’. in most cases they are from the same ethnic group, i.e. any tai (or in most of the remaining cases, a h’mong trader whom the villagers know well, or otherwise in several cases they are from other ethnic groups such as muong or lao, coming from villages in other locations in vietnam or even other countries such as thailand or laos for whatever reason but not as tourists. meanwhile, vietnamese tourists are referred by the hosts as only khach or khach ma inn (ma inn means visit; this kind is known as khach du lich or khach vang lai in vietnamese). it is a term expressing the normal feelings towards a visitor. foreign backpackers, in turn, are called by the more derogatory term tay ba lo (tay means westerner; ba lo means backpack). in contrast, the foreign tourists who are brought in by tourist agencies are perceived as high-class visitors and known by the term khach tay. in the villages, it is possible to hear stories about locals cheated by tay ba lo which seem to demonstrate the untrustworthy character of such visitors. however, we may ask what the difference then between a ‘guest’ and a ‘visitor’ is. a guest relationship is understood to be a long-term connection, based on a close or kinship relationship, even if the connection is for market business. besides this, in host-guest relationships, the two parties treat one another on an equal basis. the host-visitor relationship, on the other hand, is just a temporary interaction. regarding their business relationship, it is an asymmetrical transaction where it is actually expected that participants will try to take advantage of each other. for that reason, not all visitors are treated as guests; they will not be perceived as such if they do not share a meal with the host, especially the khach tay. even though the host family lives in the homestay venue, the host-visitor relationship is not very different from that of a hotel – because they do not communicate directly. the tour guide acts as an intermediary, quite in the same manner as the front desk clerk of a hotel would do. however, according to white tai culture, whether you are a guest, a visitor, a customer, or a friend, you are warmly welcomed by villagers. according achariya nate-chei beyond commodification and politicisation aseas 4(1) 36 37 to custom, once a guest or a visitor comes into the house, the host must act in a specific way. firstly, the host cannot ask, “what’s the matter, why have you come here?”; second, the host must say “hi” followed by “how are you?” before the visitors do so, then invite them into the house and serve them tea or plain water. letting visitors say “hi” before the hosts will be considered impolite. third, if the visitors or guests are likely to stay long (one hour or more), the host must invite them to stay longer and prepare to have a meal together; fourth, once the guests have finished their meal, the host must invite them to take a nap in the house; fifth, if the guests are travelling to a distant destination, the host must invite them to stay overnight and provide them with dinner and a takeaway breakfast. as for the guests, if they know in advance that they are going to eat with the host, they may bring some food or fruit to the house, however if they have nothing to share with the host family, it does not matter. according to all this, many white tai villagers maintain that white tai hospitality is run by the ‘heart’ – that is to say, hospitality is part of the traditional culture of the white tai. this is unlike other ethnic groups living in the same district who do not welcome strangers: only relatives, friends, and people introduced by relatives and friends are welcomed. the morality of money generally, white tai vendors usually say “i beg you” and “thank you” when receiving the money from customers. when they ask customers to buy their goods, they usually say in pidgin english “helping buy for me”. i have tried to use these white tai idioms when dealing with the kinh selling food in the mai chau market: they sneered at me and they felt it was strange because they understood i was trying to ‘help’ a vendor sell their bread. kinh vendors do not usually say “i beg you” and “thank you” after taking the customer’s money, unless they are much younger than their customer. from these (“i beg you” and “helping buy for me”) i assume that money is not just a symbol of wealth for the white tai, but can be the basis of a relationship that expands beyond mere business. talking about this, an old and educated man explained to me that the white tai perceive that their goods should actually be sold at a cheaper price, or even given for free to guests whom they appreciate. when they sell goods at market price, they feel aseas 4(1) 36 37 obliged to thank the buyers for the extra money. if the buyer does not bargain, the seller should return some money to them. for instance, knowing that i did not have much money, after buying two traditional pillows, the seller returned some of the money to me (the white tai usually give pillows as presents to guests they appreciate). the old man previously mentioned also noted that the white tai have a saying concerning the handing over of money: “(i) do (sell goods) similar to the muong and kinh (sell at the market price) in this way; (i) beg you,” in order to make clear to the buyer that the transaction is an economic and not a social one and thus takes place at the correct market price and not at a lower price. in addition, according to my long-stay observation in the village, compared with other merchants, white tai merchants are quite honest. they are much less shrewd at selling, and they usually do not inflate prices. some of them even protect tourists from being cheated by kinh tour guides. many tour guides think that villagers cannot understand english or french; then they normally translate the prices asked by villagers to their customers increased two or three times. some villagers understand what the tour guides say, but pretend that they cannot. then, there are also many ways in which a host may respond to this misbehaviour on the part of the tour guides. on one occasion, the host wrote the correct prices on paper to inform the tourists when the tour guide was absent. as a result, the tour guide got involved in a quarrel with the tourists; then came back to argue with the host, who simply pretended she cannot understand english, so she had no way to tell the truth to the tourists. however, as proved by the research, the morality of trading is very complex; depending on the relationships between the host and the tour guide, as well as on the character of the guests, and many other conditions which i will refer to in the following section. production and consumption practices of hospitality unlike other tourist spaces such as shopping, sightseeing, cycling, and so forth, hospitality is a good setting for close interaction between host and guest. this section draws out the social implications involved in these interactions in a particular homestay which provides accommodation, food, and drink. as pointed out, these relationships are not just seen as a temporary exchange for consuming goods and services; rather, at the sites under study the tourist market has been built on long-term and achariya nate-chei beyond commodification and politicisation aseas 4(1) 38 39 close interactions. five instances will be used to illustrate different types of social relationships that may take place within the mai chau tourist market. two of these examples include vietnamese tourists, who normally visit the villages in groups of between 10 and 20 people. the other three illustrations are concerned with foreign tourists: firstly, those who travel with tourist companies; then, those who are longterm residents in vietnam; and finally, backpackers. vietnamese tourists vietnamese tourists normally arrive at the villages in groups of about 10 to 20 people. they usually travel during the weekend. the activities they participate in mai chau; such as playing cards, enjoying cultural shows, partying, sightseeing, or shopping, are related to leisure. it seems that they also engage in the consumption of ‘ethnic authenticity’ by gazing at the locals, even if vietnamese tourists rarely put any effort in trying to discover something authentically ‘tai’ by trekking out of the villages, as many foreign tourists do. generally speaking, vietnamese tourists are very noisy, drink alcohol, and often drop litter on the ground. white tai villagers do not appreciate their behaviour at all, and feel annoyed about it. a common saying by homestay hosts is that “the kinh likes to talk much and loudly; the kinh is dirty.” however, villagers show patience towards this behaviour or simply stay away from the tourists; they consider themselves more quiet, gentle, and clean; and, in short, more civilised than the kinh. additionally, vietnamese student tourists like to enjoy night parties, dancing to the sound of amplifiers, and campfires. they are often organised in large groups of around 50, and up to 160 people. regularly arriving at the villages every weekend, these tourists may cause the villagers and other tourists some trouble; and so the villagers have arranged that any party and noise-making must stop by 10 p.m. in winter and 11 p.m. in summer. as villagers respect each other, they themselves force their visitors to stop, and consequently this rule works efficiently. apart from the tour guides and the drivers, vietnamese tourist groups do not share any meal with their hosts, except in the case of small groups of tourists requesting to do so. for tour guides and drivers, only at the white tai villages it is possible to get accommodation and meals (plus beers) free of charge, so they can spend aseas 4(1) 38 39 their travel money at other tourist sites. as reported by some homestay owners, none of them appreciates what they get for free from their white tai hosts. according to the interpretation of the latter, these tour guides and drivers think that the white tai provide them with free accommodation and meals because of the benefits they will get from the guides when they bring the tourists to the villages. based on his own belonging to vietnamese culture, one of my vietnamese friends interpreted the attitude of tour guides and drivers in the sense that “they think that they can exploit the backward culture; in other words, they think it is not wise to give things free of charge” (vietnamese scholar, personal communication, march 2010). nevertheless, white tai homestay owners act in the same way, regardless the number of tourists, which is sometimes as few as only two. in terms of economic rationality, accommodating and giving meals for free to both tour guide and driver bringing only two visitors cannot bring any benefit to the hosts. moreover, the food they serve the tour guides is as good as the food they give to tourists, and even better than the food they consume themselves. when i asked them about loss, a 67-year-old woman, mother of a homestay host, justified this behaviour: “don’t think about the loss, we are always hospitable to anyone visiting our place.” therefore, the tour guide with such kind of negative thinking cannot act as a cultural broker for a relationship that moves beyond market rationality. apart from this, another channel for the close interaction between villagers and tourists is the cultural show. apparently, most tourists enjoy the cultural show, some of them even join the dancing once the show team invite them to do so. yet, this space functions as a simple cultural product which hardly holds any potential to create a quality relationship, but may actually lead to a hostile interaction, as some kinh tourists occasionally make advances towards young dancers, or show their contempt towards them as ‘ethnic minority’ members. while gazing at the locals, vietnamese tourists also try to show their political and economic power. for many of them, being served by the white tai reinforces their view of the villagers as uneducated and backward people. such point of view is determined by biased discourses of ‘otherness’. in general, vietnamese tourists’ actions show their belief in the possibility of purchasing hospitality. for instance, many of them behave inappropriately in the villages: shooting fish in the host’s pond, using a washing machine without the owner’s permission, gambling, trampling on the house’s floor, and shouting at the host for any request. white tai hosts may respond achariya nate-chei beyond commodification and politicisation aseas 4(1) 40 41 to this behaviour simply enduring it, or calling the attention of visitors towards some cultural taboo. villagers expect visitors to stay merely a few days, while they may still use them as a way to expand their own networks: villagers may pretend to admire such visitors in the hope of attracting other wealthy customers. in any case, and without doubt, those visitors holding negative stereotypes about the white tai will hardly be able to break free from traditional discourses of otherness and understand the ‘other’. at the same time, they are often unwittingly utilised by the villagers, who contest these discourses of economic rationality and otherness giving in turn their visitors a name card and asking them to bring other tourists to their homestays. ordinarily, white tai hosts are patient and gentle when dealing with tourists. unlike people in other tourist villages, they do not put too much effort in convincing visitors to have a meal at their homestay, buy their souvenirs or their local liquor, or hire their trekking tours, or their motorbike taxi service. they give free pots of hot tea to their visitors; something which always costs a price in vietnamese society. moreover, making guests and visitors feel entertained is considered an important part for sustaining their homestay business. white tai hosts will do anything for visitors to feel comfortable at their place. this is why homestay owners would ask their guests if they want to enjoy a cultural show at their home, without being paid any fee by the local show team. those who do not know how to entertain visitors and guests well will gradually lose them, and those kinh who rent white tai houses to carry on a homestay business themselves will also see these businesses fail, as what they offer is not a ‘real’, run-by-heart tai hospitality. the buzzing among tourists afterwards recommends visitors to bypass these homestays. besides, making acquaintances is a common experience in white tai villages: as a custom, white tai villagers show their welcome whenever vietnamese tourists pass by their houses, or stop at their souvenir shops. if the villagers like the visitors, they will invite them into their house, then serve them tea, and keep on chatting with them. this makes an impression on some vietnamese tourists, since in kinh tourist communities everything will be given at a price. besides, some tourists, especially the adults, will talk to the hosts in order to learn more about their living. however, once the tourists see the villages and their inhabitants are civilised and modern (as previously stated in the section concerning the ’commodification of mai chau’), they may react in two ways. they may react negatively, complaining that aseas 4(1) 40 41 the white tai are becoming kinh, which means they are becoming ‘modern’. some interviewed tourists explained this as follows: all roads in the village are made of concrete, villagers use modern electronic appliances and satellite dishes, they do not wear white tai traditional costume in their everyday activities. according to this perception, rather than becoming modern, white tai culture must remain traditional and primitive. in relation to this, the accepted image of the white tai as cleaner, quieter, and gentler than the kinh majority is publicised in vietnamese-written articles on many tourist websites and newspapers, together with the interviews. last but not least, vietnamese tourists are surprised by the business abilities of white tai villagers. such reaction in turn brings a feeling of ethnic dignity to the villagers: on the one hand, it makes white tai villagers proud of themselves, on the other, the view of the white tai as backward and uneducated people and other stereotypes constructed by outsiders are shaken off. there are also positive reactions on the part of vietnamese tourists: visitors recognise the falseness of their images of white tai villagers as backward and primitive. they are surprised by the fact that white tai villagers can cook delicious food, weave beautiful textiles, are educated and clean, and possess a nice personality. some tourists even ask their hosts about the school where they study how to cook, only to learn that the hosts were self-trained. as a result of this, some tourists tell each other to avoid looking down on the villagers. since white tai businesses work very well, some of the vietnamese tourists come to suspect locals receive subsidies from the government or non-governmental organisations (ngos) to help them establish their businesses – as it happens in many other tourist sites. once these suspicions are proved wrong, the tourists respect the white tai even more. through these interactions, hosts and visitors can not only become business partners, but also come to respect each other. as a result, visitors are more willing to learn about white tai culture. for instance, there are articles on many tourist websites admiring white tai villagers for their friendly and hospitable manners, or their skill at constructing and managing a community-based tourist market. even though some of those articles still represent the white tai as ‘primitive’, they at least reflect their ability to manage both traditional and modern values smartly. achariya nate-chei beyond commodification and politicisation aseas 4(1) 42 43 foreign tourists i differentiate between three types of foreign tourists visiting the white tai villages. the first category are mostly westerners between 40 and 60 years of age. they often come in small groups of between 6 and 15 people. in this case villagers engage in a ‘vertical relationship’ in relation to their visitors, to the tourist agencies in ha noi, and to the tour guides acting as cultural brokers. in such relationships, tourists are not treated as guests, but rather as clients or visitors, while house owners adopt the role of servants. there are no opportunities for hosts and visitors to share a meal, or just a chat. most house owners opt for staying away from these tourists, except during the time they must serve them food and drinks. obviously, this distant interaction, together with the role tour guides play as intermediaries, does not allow for a direct contact. even though some tourists in this category will join the dance of the cultural show team, the relationship cannot move further beyond: white tai culture remains a cultural product or simply an object for the tourists’ gaze. the relationship between hosts and the second type of foreign visitors is based more on expectations sprung from traditional forms of relationship. most visitors in this category are working or studying in vietnam; they can speak some vietnamese and are therefore more familiar with vietnamese culture. house owners therefore treat these visitors as guests who bring them not only money but also friendship. if these tourists visit the villages alone or as a couple rather than a group, the host will sit down and talk with them. sometimes, for instance on a special day, they will all share meals or drink beers together; furthermore, the hosts often come to talk to these guests, take special care of them, lend them their bicycles, and show other signs of hospitality. consequently, a long-term relationship often emerges. some tourists are known for returning to the villages every year, for example an american family and a spanish man who came back frequently for 4 or 5 years. one german man, married to a vietnamese woman and owner of an alcohol export company, stayed one month at the village in order to learn how to produce local liquor. in another case, three american tourists and a group of western students joined the villagers cultivating rice. these guests are very familiar with many of the households in the village. for instance, an american tourist could identify the names of many of the villagers after conversing aseas 4(1) 42 43 about their health and living situation with a host. this guest is friendly to everyone in the villages: smiling, greeting, or even teasing others who just know him as a tourist. a german man keeps regularly in touch with his former host; when that host went to ha noi, where the german man has his own house, the host also received accommodation without charge. lastly, a spanish man came back to the village to say goodbye to his old host before returning to his home country. the market space, perceived by many people as a space for temporary transactions (for instance, bargaining, swindling, and so forth), can be re-created as a space that produces and experiences a quality relationship in terms of both business and social understanding. a spanish guest, who is the director of an under-construction muong ethnic tourist village in the same province of hoa binh, used to visit the white tai villages; after learning about the management abilities of white tai homestay hosts, he brought a group of 30 muong ethnic people with him to be trained in catering with the white tai homestay hosts. he still keeps in touch with the villagers and returns regularly to the same homestay with his family. while sightseeing, a villager who is not a homestay owner, spots him and his family. even if they had never talked to each other before; the villager recognised him and invited the whole family into his house, served them tea, and talked. all members of the household joined in to welcome the guests. this made an impression to the spanish man’s wife. the interaction between host and guest can become determined by generosity, with no expectations of material return. this is also the circumstance of an australian man who came to ban pom cong every year for five years and paid the labour costs for the house of a family living in a mountainous area next to the villages. some tourists also asked their tour guide to come back to the village and donate things to children on their behalf. if hosts and guests come to appreciate each other, they often exchange gifts regardless the value of the objects exchanged. one incident in which it was the host who was impressed is that of grandfather nham – the pioneer of the homestay business in the villages. a group of 20 american tourists who were war veterans stayed overnight at his homestay. one of them told him he regretted having dropped bombs over vietnam during the war, and showed his surprise at the fact that no villager seemed to hold any hostile feeling towards them. “now you come here for vacation, there is no reason to hit you; but if you hit vietnam again, i would fight you again,” replied grandfather nham. the american achariya nate-chei beyond commodification and politicisation aseas 4(1) 44 45 man then apologised to him. also, some french tourists said sorry to him for the same reason. backpackers differ significantly from the second type of foreign guests. the second type of foreign guests know how to relate to the villagers; the backpackers, on the contrary, since they are unable to interpret the behaviour of locals, do not know how to deal with them. a dutch woman said she would like to convey her feelings of gratitude to the villagers, but was afraid of acting inappropriately and offend the villagers. eventually, she decided to keep silent, and did nothing other than stick to the usual economic exchange. she did not understand villagers’ actions; for example, because only a few people had said “hello” to her, she felt she had received a generally cold welcome from the villagers. due to the temporary character of their stay and the fact that they usually do not return to the villages, in the eyes of the villagers, the backpackers or tay ba lo are not guests, but merely visitors; it is therefore not useful to try to establish any long-term relationship with them. importantly, many backpackers bargain with villagers; trying to take much and paying little in return, sometimes cheating locals. it is possible to hear a few stories about villagers cheated by tay ba lo, which shows their mistrust of this group of visitors. homestay hosts often say in vietnamese things like: “ho rat kho tinh,” which means “they are very difficult [to deal with].” for example, two japanese backpackers who had just met their host tried to bargain with him. for the white tai, visitors who have just arrived at the house must sit down, be greeted by the hosts, drink tea; only after that it will be possible to talk business. however, in general, hosts give their hospitality to whoever stays in their houses; this host, therefore, did not listen to the bargaining, but concentrated to prepare a mat for those tourists to sit down, and took a hot pot of tea to serve them; even though in his mind they were not really his guests. because of this, the tay ba lo were ultimately satisfied with the way the host catered for them. obviously, and especially compared to the second type of foreign tourists, hosts tend to keep distant from the backpackers. apart from money transactions, hosts will rarely become concerned about backpackers. a negative example of this deals with one host who built a homestay business with a motorbike taxi service and usually receives backpackers. he knows about backpackers’ stereotyped behaviour, so he tries to take control of the situation by holding their passports – something other aseas 4(1) 44 45 homestays will not normally do. he also usually convinces them to buy his trekking tour, and to use his motorbike taxi service. in addition, he is very skilled in dealing with backpackers, even cheating them in order to get more money. on another occasion, a homestay owner cheated a singaporean backpacker by getting him to pay almost twice the usual price for the service. analysis and conclusions first, the interaction between host and visitor can be creative or hostile. according to erb (2004), there are varieties of culture-based anticipation and interpretation that tourists often inherit, and that lead to the divergence of interaction between the two different worlds of the host and the visitor (pp. 5, 86). in her words, the tourist encounter may be a space of redefining and shaping such interpersonal relations. interpersonal relations, as shown by erb’s study (2000), can unexpectedly become hostile, despite initial hospitality. nonetheless, they can also be friendly, or something even beyond; as it happens in mai chau. the second point is that the hospitality of the white tai tourist villages in mai chau is not generally involved in ‘power relations’, in the sense of the host controlling tourists’ behaviour; as some researchers have argued (tucker, 2003, p. 126). it seems to be an equal relationship, which allows for the transformation of temporary relationships into long-term or quality ones. within host-visitor interactions there are many kinds of relationship being manipulated and transformed (mcintosh & johnson, 2005). according to the understanding of the white tai, the relationships between host and visitor can be divided into several types: (a) host-guest, (b) host-normal visitor, (c) host-strange visitor. the first type is represented by those vietnamese tourists responding positively to the interaction (the second type of vietnamese tourist) and those foreign tourists staying in vietnam (the second type of foreign tourist). the vietnamese tourists responding negatively to the interaction (the first type of vietnamese tourist), and the foreign tourists travelling with tour agencies (the first type of foreign tourist) represent the host-normal visitor category; while the host-strange visitor is represented by the backpackers. the first factor differentiating these types is not ethnicity (foreigner or vietnamese); but the setting, so to say, the homestay and its hospitality, including how close host-visitor interactions are, and how long they last. the setting where tourists deachariya nate-chei beyond commodification and politicisation aseas 4(1) 46 47 pend on the tour guides does not lead to the production of new relations. moreover, images and stereotypes concerning visitors like the backpackers hardly facilitate hosts to open their minds. in addition, ethnic stereotypes of backwardness and primitiveness constrain some vietnamese tourists and lock them in the iron cage of ethnic bias. these factors are seen as obstacles to constructing a new, transformed relationship. in the context of ethnic tourism market formation in mai chau, the differentiation of relationships is important for the purpose of economic rationality. unwittingly or not, the first relationships are formed over the long term, since tourist business partnerships can expand their market networks, whereas the latter category is seen only as a framework for making profit. besides this, villagers take the opportunity brought by the tourist market to construct new identities while claiming ethnic dignity and power to control and manage cultural resources. this can be seen as a kind of ‘ethnic minority politics’ which actually works to transform power relations. furthermore, because the second type of both vietnamese and foreign tourists are not influenced by discourses of otherness and ethnic stereotypes, since they experience something new in relation to one another, they can be liberated from the world of cheating and exploitation, and engage in a transformed relationship which may go beyond economic and political relationships, to become something i call a relationship of mutual respect. surely, this can become a space of understanding the other; which can help tourists transcend the notion of consuming ethnicity, and can help locals transcend the notion of a minority politics. for this reason, the culture of hospitality is not perceived as an object for consumption, but rather as a kind of setting for a close host-tourist interaction. it can be manipulated and transformed into a space which emancipates tourists from the usual consumption of commodified cultural products. the ‘object’ of consumption can be defined and constructed in different ways: as the direct core of the consumption process in postmodernist discourse, or as a focal point for interpersonal actions, according to either the interpretative (that is, consuming as experience) or the constructive approach (that is, consuming as integration and classification) (sharpley, 2002, pp. 313-315). accordingly, i have attempted to elaborate here on the impasse implied by these interpretations of social relations in ethnic tourism. the ’impasse’ comes from the presently prevailing emphasis on aseas 4(1) 46 47 the social life of things, which forgets almost completely the ‘interpersonal relation’ itself. of course, things have meanings, and can express social relations and power struggles. however, we can consume experience through interpersonal actions, without depending on things. interpersonal actions, with regard to both consuming as play and consuming as classification, must stay at the heart of the research on consumption, rather than the ‘object‘ alone. tourists may interact with villagers by utilising objects as a resource or as a base for an interaction which expands beyond that object’s experiential characteristics. by taking the object of consumption in their hands, villagers have a chance for a broader achievement. equally, the tourist encounter may be a means to share experiences. tourists, by holding communal interaction with the object of consumption, will be able to communicate or experience communitas, which is often the result of sharing collective experiences. in both ways of dealing with the consumption process, however, the communally social nature of the consumption experience, rather than the object of consumption at the final stage, is emphasised. through highly valued experiences, those kinds of interaction are detached from the dependency on things (sharpley, 2002, p. 315). postmodernism is often blind to all such notions. slater (2002) has pointed out the postmodernist introduction of the cultural sign value in the form of ‘symbolic product/interaction’ in place of ‘market features/actions’ (that is, production and consumption processes) (p. 60). this is similar to the way in which postmodernists argue against modernists and realists’ notions of commodification, reducing such notion to the form of a simple material relation. this dichotomy inspired me to look at ideas of existential authenticity in ethnic tourism (wang, 1999; 2004, pp. 210-234). wang draws the idea of existential authenticity adopting the existential philosophy of heidegger. heidegger’s philosophy, in contrast to postmodernism, is never concerned with the representation of ‘things’ (mulhall, 1996; 2005, p. 484). rather, it is concerned with how humans understand themselves in relation to things, and therefore with how the decision to be authentic or not is taken in the very existential moment; that is, in a moment of fundamental self-understanding, tourists do not construct the meaning of the object (reisinger & steiner, 2006, p. 72 & p. 79; steiner & reisinger, 2006, p. 304). meanings, therefore, do not lie in experience. yet, burch (2002) suggests a meaningful process of reflective comprehension of experiences. in this sense, reisinger and steiner (2006) believe that the more tourists can embrace all achariya nate-chei beyond commodification and politicisation aseas 4(1) 48 49 experiences (that is, good or bad, authentic or fake, as the gifts of tourism), and do not travel with a head full of expectations, the more pleasant the experiences they may enjoy. otherwise, they will certainly be disappointed 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(2007). ethnic identities under the tourist gaze. asian ethnicity, 8(3), 245-259. aseas 2-2 palm oil as a transnational crisis in south-east asia aseas 2 (2) oliver pye palm oil as a transnational crisis in south-east asia aktuelle südostasienforschung / current research on south-east asia palm oil as a transnational crisis in south-east asia oliver pye1 bonn university, germany aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften / austrian journal of south-east asian studies seas gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften / society for south-east asian studies www.seas.at this paper discusses the recent palm oil expansion as a multiple crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, and (failed) development. it draws on recent research on the malaysian “palm oil industrial complex” and on transnational campaign coalitions around palm oil to explore the transnational dimensions of the palm oil crisis. it argues that a new campaign coalition around the issue of agrofuel policies in the european union has emerged that links social and environmental struggles in indonesia and europe. this new transnational activism not only rejects the palm oil development paradigm, but also points to possible alternative development futures. keywords: palm oil, climate change, agrofuels, transnational activism, indonesia & malaysia dieser beitrag analysiert die gegenwärtige palmölexpansion in südostasien als multiple krise von klimawandel, biodiversitätsverlust und (gescheiterter) entwicklung. forschungen zum malaysischen “palmöl-industriellen komplex” und zu transnationalen kampagnenkoalitionen um das thema palmöl werden herangezogen, um die transnationalen dimensionen der palmölkrise zu skizzieren. es wird gezeigt, dass eine neue kampagnenkoalition gegen die agrotreibstoff politik der europäischen union entsteht, die soziale und umweltbezogene bewegungen in indonesien mit europäischen netzwerken verbindet. diese transnationale kampagne lehnt das palmöl-entwicklungsparadigma ab und zeigt mögliche alternativen auf. schlagworte: palmöl, klimawandel, agrotreibstoff e, transnationale kampagnen, indonesien & malaysia 1 dr. oliver pye is a researcher at the department of oriental and asian studies, bonn university, germany. his research focus is on globalization, social movements and socio-environmental relations in south-east asia. currently he works on transnational dimensions of the palm oil controversy and heads the dfg project “entstehung sozialer bewegungen im kontext von prekarisierung und transnationalität in südostasien”. contact: oliver.pye@uni-bonn.de 81 aseas 2 (2) introduction over the last couple of years, palm oil has become a widely and controversially discussed topic in europe. this is not so much because of the plant itself, which is actually quite useful, but because of the rapid expansion of oil palm plantations across south-east asia which is seen as causing the destruction of rainforests (buckland, 2005; goossens et al., 2006; nellemann, miles, kaltenborn, virtue, & ahlenius, 2007), as well as a lot of social problems (wakker, 2005; marti, 2008). the really contentious issue, however, is the idea that burning palm oil for energy and for fuel can be part of the solution in combating global warming (hoijer, silvius, wösten, & page, 2006; greenpeace, 2007). in this paper, i will attempt to analyze these issues as a multiple crisis of capitalism, one in which the crisis of climate change is connected to that of biodiversity loss but also to a crisis of development. i am using the term crisis in the sense of a deep and prolonged problem of catastrophic proportion to which currently adopted answers provide no solution. the climate crisis, therefore, is the combination of the problem of global warming that is progressing towards a tipping point2 that could lead to rising sea levels, substantial changes in weather patterns, drought etc. (intergovernmental panel on climate change [ipcc], 2007, pp. 44-54) with the fact that the rate of growth of global emissions (as the primary cause) has increased between 1995-2004 (ipcc, 2007, p. 14), i.e. since the adoption of the united nations framework convention on climate change (unfccc) in 1992, which aimed to reduce emissions. similarly, the biodiversity crisis is a combination of the extinction of species3, with the fact that the “threats to biodiversity are generally increasing” (secretariat of the convention on biological diversity [scbd], 2006, p. 3), despite the convention on biological diversity (cbd) being in place for seventeen years. as i will argue below, although palm oil is promoted as a development strategy in south-east asia, the current expansion is creating new poverty, leading to a development crisis in which the pursued model is undermining development. at the same time, i will try to analyze palm oil as a transnational crisis. i am 2 commonly associated with a greenhouse gas concentration of 450ppm of co 2 -eq. (ipcc, 2007, p. 67). 3 for example, for south-east asia, sodhi and brook (2006, p. 143) predict the loss of 24 to 63 percent of endemic species within the next century if current trends continue. 82 aseas 2 (2) oliver pye palm oil as a transnational crisis in south-east asia using transnational not in the colloquial sense of global or international, but in the more specific sense developed by (among others) basch, schiller, & szanton blanc (1994), castles (2004), pries (2001; 2008) and vertovec (1999; 2009). rather than using the “national container state” (pries, 2001, pp. 3-33) as the term of reference, the transnational approach looks at the reconfiguration of and changing relation between spatial, economic, social, cultural and political spaces in which transnational communities are “based in two or more countries and engage[d] in recurrent and significant transactions, which may be economic, political, social or cultural over long periods” (castles, 2004, p. 25). accordingly, i will try to very briefly identify the transnational economic, social and political spaces that shape the palm oil crisis. global warming, eu climate policy and agrofuels at the heart of the multiple crisis is the failure of capitalism to deal seriously with climate change. in order to stabilize greenhouse gas (ghg) concentrations at 450 ppm co 2 -eq., an 80 percent reduction in global emissions will be necessary (ipcc, 2007, p. 67). this requires a shift towards a low-carbon economy in the key sectors responsible for emissions (energy, transport, industry, agriculture, forestry), i.e. an end to fossil fuel use (responsible for 56 percent of emissions), a fundamental shift in agriculture and an end to deforestation. the necessary change is deepest in the industrialized north (particularly the usa and europe) where per capita emissions stand at sixteen tonnes compared to four tonnes in the global south (ipcc, 2007, p. 37). however, not only are the emission reduction targets (8 percent compared to 1990 levels) set out in the kyoto protocol wholly inadequate to even slow down global warming, the mechanisms adopted – in particular emissions trading and the clean development mechanism (cdm) – ensure that the necessary break with the fossil fuel economy does not take place. as lohmann (2006, pp. 101-136) conclusively argues, emissions trading, by awarding the largest emitters the most emission permits and by treating every emission cut as the same, “locks in” existing technologies rather than encouraging structural changes which would accelerate the shift away from fossil fuels. in addition, the offsets involved in cdm projects in the global south prevents 83 aseas 2 (2) changes in the north (instead of cutting emissions in the north, the projects cut emissions in the south), and, in many cases, contribute directly and indirectly to increased emissions (lohmann, 2006, pp. 219-328). inaction on climate change is not a technical problem. already, we have at our disposal the technology that could usher in a solar, low-carbon era. the energy from the sun “provides 15,000 times more energy a day than the earth consumes” (scheer, 2006, p. 1), and the potentially harnessed 1 percent of that would still provide six times the current level of energy consumption (greenpeace & european renewable energy council [erec], 2007, p. 60). leaving wind, wave and geothermal energy and autonomous photovoltaic units aside, areas as small as 11,000 km² (in europe) and 6,000 km² (in south-east asia) covered with solar thermal power stations could be sufficient to provide all energy needed by these two regions (greenpeace & erec, 2007, p. 63). at issue are rather the specific “social relations of nature” (gesellschaftliche naturverhältnisse) (görg, 1999) involved in the way energy production is organized in late capitalism. on a fundamental level, the basic dynamics of capitalist production, i.e. the drive towards capital accumulation, market competition and the rate of profit, work against introducing solar energy. the amount of investment required means that – in competition with other energy sources such as coal – solar energy is more expensive and that the rate of return on investment is lower. despite the huge future costs that societies will have to bear because of climate change, for a private energy company, it is still cheaper to dig up coal and burn it than to invest significant amounts in solar thermal power stations (greenpeace & erec, 2007, p. 33). in addition, the particular historical development of capitalism has led to fossil fuel industries dominating the commanding heights of industry. this leads to a concentration of capital and of political power in industrial conglomerates which have an inbuilt interest to resist a shift away from fossil fuels, as their business is in selling more oil, cars etc.4 this can also be seen by the way in which oiland coal, automotive, energy and mining corporations form coalitions to prevent climate 4 see for example lohmann (2006, p. 121): „major oil corporations such as bp and shell, both enthusiastic initiators of internal trading schemes, have never voiced any serious intention to curb their main activities of oil exploration or production at any time. although it has changed its name to ‘beyond petroleum’, bp committed itself in 2002 to expand its oil and gas output by 5.5 percent per year over the succeeding five years. its emissions in 2001 were equivalent to almost two years’ carbon dioxide emissions from the uk.“ 84 aseas 2 (2) oliver pye palm oil as a transnational crisis in south-east asia policies which could restrict future profits.5 in germany, industry lobbying led to the (cost-free) allocation of emission permits of 44 million tonnes above the total emissions of the industries involved in the emissions trading scheme (brunnengräber, 2009, p. 410). these interests are then reflected in the negotiating positions of national states within the climate negotiations of the unfccc and in their national policies. for example, germany, although rhetorically in favour of measures to mitigate climate change, resisted attempts within the european union (eu) to impose more restrictive emission targets for newly built cars and responded to the financial crisis by introducing the so called abwrackprämie, which subsidises car-owners to trade-in their old car and buy a new one. a visionary and carbon-neutral transport strategy is something else, as the abwrackprämie is not based on co 2 emission rates of cars. rather than using the economic crisis and state investment to encourage the conversion of the automotive industry towards electric cars or public transport, the government is thereby “unnaturally” extending the lifeline of the car industry. the bottom line of climate change policies corresponds to the role as “national competition states” (hirsch, 1995). these three inter-related dynamics explain the emergence of the “biofuels agenda” in europe leading us to the first transnational connection to south-east asia. in december 2008, the european parliament agreed upon a new renewable energy directive (european parliament, 2008), in which a mandatory target of 10 percent renewable energy for the transport sector was adopted. although the definition of “renewable energy” has been broadened, most of the 10 percent target will be met by so-called “biofuels”6, i.e. petrol made from alcohol (i.e. from sugar cane or maize) or diesel made from vegetable oils (including palm oil). the agrofuel agenda was developed by a corporate-dominated commission that was initiated by the eu: the biofuels research advisory council (biocraf). in 2006, biocraf put forward a report which called for an expansion of “biofuels” to 25 5 one example is the dominant influence of the australian industry greenhouse network (aign), a group of coal, oil, chemical, mining and automotive companies, on australian climate change policy. the group gave itself the name “greenhouse-mafia” (mazure, 2009). 6 the critics of biofuels, to whom i belong, use the term “agrofuels” which captures the large-scale industrial agriculture nature of petrol and diesel made from food crops better than the term “biofuels,” which has ecologically sustainable connotations that are unjustified. in this article, therefore, i use the term agrofuels, unless i am referring to statements by proponents of agrofuels, in which case i use biofuels in inverted commas. 85 aseas 2 (2) percent of transport sector fuel by 2030. the commission (which has subsequently been reformed as the european biofuels technology platform) was made up of three automotive companies (peugeot, volkswagen and volvo), three oil companies (neste oil, shell and total), representatives of the biotechnology and food industries, and various associated research institutes (corporate europe observatory [ceo], 2007). for these fossil fuel industries, agrofuels offer a way of reaching eu emission reduction targets whilst continuing with the same basic transport system (combustible engines, petrol, roads). agrofuels are simply added to the 90 percent standard diesel or petrol, thereby ensuring that oil production, refineries, petrol stations, car manufacturing etc. can all remain in place. rather than scaling down and ultimately breaking with the fossil fuel transport system, therefore, agrofuels contribute to expanding its life expectancy. furthermore, the political creation of a huge and politically guaranteed market for agrofuels is having repercussions around the world, particularly in south-east asia. the palm oil industry calculates that the 10 percent target could translate into a volume of nine million tonnes7 of “biofuels” which would need to be imported, and is keen to fill the gap with biodiesel from palm oil (basiron, 2008a, p. 14). eu climate policy is thereby contributing to an unprecedented expansion of oil palm plantations across south-east asia. the palm oil industrial complex and the double environmental crisis even before the advent of a “biofuels” market, the palm oil industry had seen enormous growth. in malaysia, the area devoted to oil palm doubled during the pre1997 boom to nearly three million hectares. since the economic crisis of 1997, the key area of expansion has been sumatra and kalimantan in indonesia, with plantations expanding from 2.5 to nearly 6 million hectares in 2005. the prospect of agrofuel markets in the pre-2009-crisis years induced a frenzy of investment and mergers and to predictions of a further expansion of up to 25 million hectares for the region by 2020 (colchester et al., 2006, pp. 24-26). the expansion of oil palm plantations is driven by two distinct groups of companies 7 a considerable amount, when compared to a total malaysian production of 17 million tonnes. 86 aseas 2 (2) oliver pye palm oil as a transnational crisis in south-east asia in indonesia and in malaysia, in which transnational corporations play a leading role. in indonesia, these tend to be large-scale conglomerates which were formerly involved in logging as well as pulp and paper plantations, and for whom palm oil is a relatively simple continuation of the business of cutting down forests and replacing them with industrial tree plantations. for this reason, the indonesian corporations tend to focus more on the “upstream” side of production, with plantations and palm oil mills, refineries and the production of crude palm oil (cpo). key indonesian players include astra, sinar mas, raja garuda mas, musim mas, and the salim group/indofood, many of which had close links with former indonesian president suharto and his family, leading one analyst to write of „palm oil nepotism“ and of „suharto’s palm oil oligarchy“ (aditjondro, 2001). according to aditjondro (2001), these political-economic linkages also extended to malaysian and singaporean corporations who formed joint ventures with “companies controlled by four suharto siblings, namely bambang trihatmodjo, tommy suharto, titiek prabowo, and siti hutami adiningsih.” ten years after the overthrow of suharto, a similar oligarchy (minus the suharto clan) controls the production and trade of palm oil through the state corporation ptpn i-xiii (the largest plantation company with over 600.000 hectares of plantations) and private plantations. after the asian economic crisis in 1997 and the international monetary fund (imf)-prescribed liberalisation of investment in the palm oil sector (ginting, 2005), the transnational regional expansion of palm oil accelerated. a key role is played by malaysian palm oil corporations. casson (2000, pp. 41-43) lists 45 malaysian investors who, together with their indonesian partners, already controlled 1.3 million hectares – nearly half of the total area at that time – in 1998. currently, the share of malaysian companies in the indonesian palm oil plantation area is estimated at between 30 and 40 percent. key malaysian players are the state corporations sime darby and the federal land development agency (felda), and the private corporations ioi8, kuala lumpur kepong berhard and the ganteng group (asiatic development berhad). the malaysian palm oil corporations have a longer and slightly different history than their indonesian counterparts. in contrast to indonesia, the malaysian industry emerged from the 8 ioi derives its acronym from industrial oxygen incorporated, when the company was founded as a distributor of industrial gas, but is now just known as ioi. 87 aseas 2 (2) colonial rubber plantation industry which was nationalized during the “new economic policy” of the late 1970s. they also tend to have a much deeper control of transnational production chains: apart from their regional investment in plantations in indonesia (and more recently in africa and latin america) they also dominate “downstream” production, for example in oils and fats, oleochemicals and cosmetics. the palm oil industry is a key plank in malaysia’s development strategy and the influence of the state surpassed the kind of corrupt nepotism found in indonesia. the state not only controls significant investment and some of the biggest companies directly, it has also actively intervened to forge a kind of “palm oil industrial complex,”9 linking state and private corporations, ministries and palm oil sector organizations in the national interest. under the ministry for plantation industries and commodities, the malaysian palm oil board (mpob) not only regulates the industry, but it is also heavily involved in research and development with hundreds of scientists working on improved plant material, processing technology and pioneering work in the “biofuels” industry (malaysian palm oil board [mpob], n.d.). another key institution is the malaysian palm oil council (mpoc), which was set up in response “to a campaign against tropical oils in the usa in the 1980s” (teoh, 2002, p. 106) in order to “promote the positive image of malaysian palm oil in order to maximize returns to the malaysian palm oil industry” (malaysian palm oil council [mpoc], 2007, p. 2). the mpoc embodies the global reach of the malaysian palm oil industrial complex (with offices in beijing, cairo, chicago, dhaka, durban, lahore, new delhi, sao paulo and vienna,) and the close nature of this “public-private-partnership”: board members include haji sabri amad (the former chairman of golden hope), carl bek-nielson (united plantations) und lew yeow chor (ioi corporation) (mpoc, 2007, p. 6). its chairman is lee oi hian, the owner of kuala lumpur kepong berhad and one of the richest men in malaysia. epitomizing the palm oil industrial complex is the recent merger of the three biggest state palm oil corporations – golden hope, kumpulan guthrie and sime darby – to form one of the two biggest palm oil corporations in the world. the merger was politically instigated and had the backing of the ministry for plantation economics 9 the term is an adaptation of president eisenhower’s “military-industrial complex.” in his farewell address to the us nation in 1961, eisenhower warned against “the grave implications” of the “conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry” whose “total influence (economic, political, even spiritual) is felt in every city, every state house and every office of the federal government”, arguing that “we must guard against unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex” (eisenhower, 1961). 88 aseas 2 (2) oliver pye palm oil as a transnational crisis in south-east asia and commodities and of the then prime minister abdullah ahmad badawi, who gave the key-note speech at the ceremony at which the new name of the company – sime darby – was revealed (sime darby plantation, 2008, p. 3). the new sime darby has assets of around ten billion usd and produces around 6 percent of global palm oil. over half of its 545,000 hectares of oil palm plantations are in indonesia. it also owns the former unilever oils and fats processing plant unimills b.v in holland and the oleochemical company cognis. an important role in the emergence of a transnational palm oil industry is played by singapore, which functions as a financial and trading hub for the sector. the singapore-based corporation wilmar is a good example. wilmar was formed in 2007 as a merger between the palm oil operations of the powerful malaysian agribusiness kuok group, the indonesian millionaire martua sitoris, and the us corporation archerdaniels-midland (adm). aside from its 570,000 hectares (the greater part of which are in indonesia [milieudefensie, lembaga gemawan, & kontak rakyat borneo, 2007, p. 15]) it can process around 10 million tonnes of crude palm oil in its 33 refineries. in the financial year 2007, wilmar accounted for one quarter of global trade in crude palm oil (wilmar international, 2008, p. 19). the symbiosis of economic and political power located within the palm oil industrial complex has important ramifications for the way in which palm oil expansion is conducted across the region. state and corporate interests are combined in such a way that environmental or social concerns are subjugated beneath a general strategy of development and accumulation linked to a continuous growth of the sector. so, although both malaysia and indonesia have ratified the cbd and the unfccc, the expansion of the palm oil sector usually overrides the goals of both conventions, exacerbating the double environmental crisis of climate change and biodiversity loss. the contribution of palm oil to global warming is primarily connected to the conversion of peatland forests. peatland, which can reach a depth of up to 12 metres in south-east asia, is a huge carbon sink. when drained for conversion to plantations, peat is exposed to aerobic decomposition, and burning drained peatland can lead to smouldering fires that can last for days. an influential report by wetlands international, wageningen university and delft hydraulics (hoijer et al., 2006, p. 29) estimated the total area of peatland in south-east asia at over 20 million hectares and the total amount of carbon stored at 42,000 megatons. the report calculated 89 aseas 2 (2) a total annual carbon emission rate from draining and burning peatlands of 2,000 megatons, putting indonesia “in 3rd place (after the usa and china) in the global co2 emission ranking” (hoijer et al., 2006, summary). rather than reducing carbon emissions, agrofuels from palm oil therefore contribute to increased emissions. a recent report (danielson et al., 2008, p. 353) calculated that it would take 75 to 93 years for the emissions caused by converting rainforest into palm oil plantations to be compensated by avoided emissions from fossil fuels. in the case of peatland forest, this would take up to 600 years. in addition to contributing to climate change, the conversion of forests to palm oil plantations is worsening the biodiversity crisis. despite claims by the malaysian palm oil industry that oil palm is only established on former rubber and coconut plantations, much of the more recent expansion in sabah and sarawak has converted rainforests. according to a report by friends of the earth (2008, p. 29) on sarawak, “the new area opened up for oil palm plantations in the 1990-2005 period (929,000 ha) nearly matches the reported natural forest cover loss in malaysia over the same period (913,000 ha).” the planned expansion of up to 15 million hectares of additional plantations in indonesia will invariably take place by converting forestland. even though much of this forestland has been logged and is degraded, the biodiversity implications are still tremendous. research has shown that the conversion of formerly logged or degraded forest into oil palm plantations can lead to a reduction of bird and butterfly species by 60 to 80 percent (danielsen & heegaard, 1995; wilcove, 2008). the impact of many and large plantations in changing the totality of a landscape and the resulting fragmentation of forests has even more severe effects on the long-term viability of populations of larger mammals such as the orang-utan (buckland, 2005; goossens et al., 2006; nellemann et al., 2007). the transnational nature of the palm oil industry is often neglected, particularly in the discussion of the environmental consequences of the palm oil boom. this is evident in the way the recurring problem of forest fires and haze is framed. although haze is seen as a transboundary problem this is understood as a regional or inter-national problem, i.e. the fires occur mainly in indonesia but affect malaysia and singapore (e.g. quadri, 2001). the role of transnational corporations is not acknowledged, with the result that mitigation efforts are expected from the national policies and measures of indonesia (albeit with regional support), and this could be one reason why indonesia 90 aseas 2 (2) oliver pye palm oil as a transnational crisis in south-east asia has not ratified the association of southeast asian nations’ (asean) agreement on transboundary haze pollution. the role of malaysian and singaporean companies in forest burning has been documented. for example, a recent police investigation into three wilmar subsidiaries in landak, west kalimantan, found that they “were guilty of burning land intentionally and systematically with the intent to clear land for plantation development” (milieudefensie, lembaga gemawan, & kontak rakyat borneo, 2007, p. 26). palm oil and the development crisis the malaysian palm oil industrial complex is particularly proactive in responding to environmental criticisms firstly by comparing palm oil with other oils (i.e. palm oil compares favourably with soy and rape seed because it has a longer life-span and is more productive) and secondly by asserting the right to development. at a recent conference on “sustainable palm oil,” the ceo of the malaysian palm oil council, yusof basiron, claimed that “attacks from overzealous ngos on palm oil may damage the oil that has served the world to provide food oil and income for the poor in producer countries” (basiron, 2008b, p. 10). at the same conference, s. paramanthanan (2008), a retired official from the ministry of agriculture, argued that the development of peatland was necessary in order to eradicate rural poverty and to uplift the standard of living of indigenous peoples. the right to development is often framed in an anticolonial discourse. in contrast, many ngos criticise oil palm plantations for worsening rural poverty, and agrofuels in particular have been linked to the food security crisis. in 2008, a world bank report linked speculation around agrofuels to 75 percent of the increase in food prices (mitchell, 2008, p. 17). in her detailed study of three dayak communities in central kalimantan, orth (2007) shows a significant reduction of food sovereignty for those villages in the vicinity of a recently established oil palm plantation. the expansion of oil palm plantations is frequently accompanied by land conflicts. small-scale farmer groups organized in the serikat petani indonesia (spi) oppose largescale plantations because of food sovereignty issues. indigenous groups organized in the aliansi masyarakat adat nusantara (aman) reject the further expansion of oil palm plantations because they encroach on their forestlands. in a recent conflict 91 aseas 2 (2) in west kalimantan, for example, one indigenous group issued a declaration which stated “the semunying jaya community call upon you to respect the sovereignty of our land, the protection of our water and forest resources as we inform you that we still refuse any oil palm plantation in our area, in whatever from or shape it may be” (marti, 2008, p. 50). at the same time, many local communities accept oil palm plantations to their area because they hope that they will be able to generate a higher income as smallholders and because of the promise of new jobs. in theory, subsistence and forest-based livelihoods are exchanged for higher income through cash crop production and for salaried positions, and this is the development paradigm that is being offered by government and the palm oil industry. however, many of these expectations are not met. in 2006, smallholders formed a union called the serikat petani kelapa sawit (spks) because of ongoing problems of indebtedness, low prices paid by the company and land issues (serikat petani kelapa sawit [spks], 2006, pp. 16-17). since the collapse of palm oil prices at the end of 2008 these problems have become more severe. as for the jobs created by the new industry, the low wages are not conducive to eradicating rural poverty but rather to cementing it. according to marti (2008, p. 79), workers doing back-breaking work as harvesters or health-impairing work spraying herbicides usually earn the minimum wage or less, i.e. in 2006, 66 percent earned less than 400,000 indonesian rupiah or around 30 euros a month. although official wages in malaysia are significantly higher at around 70 to 180 euros a month (malaysian palm oil association [mpoa], 2005), official figures have been contradicted by the indonesian consulate, who claimed that indonesian workers were often receiving less than two euros a day (marti, 2008, p. 83). indonesian plantation workers and their networks contribute to the formation of a transnational social space made up of migrant workers from (predominantly) indonesia in the malaysian plantations. foreign workers now make up the bulk of the 500,000 plantation workers (mpoa, 2005, pp. 16-17), because local malaysians do not want to work there. the main reason is that although the wages are attractive from an indonesian perspective, they hardly provide for a decent living wage in malaysia. but low wages are not the only problem faced by the migrants. they have the status of “guest workers,” i.e. they are supposed to work for a period of three years (with an employer option to extend twice with a one-year contract) and then go 92 aseas 2 (2) oliver pye palm oil as a transnational crisis in south-east asia back home. accordingly, they have no rights as a citizen, cannot organize, and are dependent on the employer who owns their work permit and who in some cases retains their passport as an additional measure to stop them “absconding” (daud, 2006, p. 46). the newly amended immigration act of 2002 prohibits family members from joining the workers, leading to intense loneliness. when workers do bring their families (often in quiet agreement with management who see this as a stabilizing influence) they now face the problem that their children are now prohibited from going to malaysian schools. it is ironic that the palm oil industry uses an anti-colonial rhetoric to justify a development strategy that was introduced by colonialists. indeed, many practices in the industry today are reminiscent of colonial times, from the recruitment strategy of workers through agents (under the british, this used to be called the kangany system), to their temporary status and limited political rights through to the “primitive accumulation” involved in taking land – often by force – from indigenous peoples. scepticism towards this kind of development strategy seems justified. serge marti, for example, who has conducted research into the labour conditions of plantation workers in indonesia, asks “whether indonesia’s policy-makers intend to keep a large labouring class in low-paid, low-skill jobs as the rest of the country develops, or whether the country anticipates inviting millions of workers from even less fortunate countries to work on their plantations in future” (marti, 2008, p. 84). a crisis of legitimacy the double environmental crisis of climate change and biodiversity loss and the development crisis connected to palm oil have all given rise to various social movements and ngo campaigns. because of the specific links between south-east asia and europe, economically along the global supply chains and politically because of the eu’s agrofuel policy, these activities occur in a transnational political space in which the palm oil controversy takes centre stage. important protagonists in this transnational political debate are the palm oil industrial complex, large european end-users of palm oil such as migros, sainsburys and unilever, large international environmental ngos such as the wwf, greenpeace and friends of the earth, the european commission’s directorate-generals for energy and transport (dg tren) 93 aseas 2 (2) and for environment (dg env), and a wide range of local and transnational activists from both south-east asian and european countries. two key transnational campaigns have emerged. the first was initiated by the larger environmental ngos such as the wwf who used consumer awareness campaigns to put pressure on the larger brands and banks in europe, who then negotiated with the palm oil suppliers in malaysia to develop more sustainable management practices. the result was the foundation of the “round table on sustainable palm oil” (rspo) in 2002 as a stakeholder initiative dedicated to propagating “sustainable palm oil.” as a stakeholder initiative, the rspo was singularly successful in integrating a large part of the industry and a few ngos around a set of principles and criteria embedded within the paradigms of sustainable development and corporate social and environmental sustainability. the criteria include the commitment to “zero-burning,” the conservation of “high-conservation-value forest,” the respect of land rights and the right to union representation. however, lack of implementation of rspo criteria and the fact that the rspo supported the agrofuels agenda has undermined the legitimacy of the rspo and given rise to a second campaign called the “campaign coalition for a moratorium on agrofuel targets in the eu” (econexus, 2007). rather than targeting companies in the hope that they could become sustainable, the campaign focused on the political decision at the european level to set a mandatory target for agrofuels in order to stop a demand-driven further expansion of oil palm plantations. this new coalition is not led by ngos but involves a large number of different social movements, networks and local initiatives. in south-east asia, most of the local initiatives and struggles arise from the social issues connected to palm oil expansion, particularly land rights but also labour conditions etc. and are therefore mainly located in indonesia. as mentioned above, local groups of indigenous peoples, small scale farmers and workers are organized in national federations, some of which are members of transnational social movement organizations (tsmos, see smith, 1997, pp. 42-58) such as la via campesina and the international union of food workers (iuf) which are important in the controversy surrounding palm oil. despite the palm oil industry’s depiction of the environmental ngos as a kind of neo-colonial (protectionist) intervention from the north, forest destruction and biodiversity loss are key concerns in south-east asia, and the indonesian 94 aseas 2 (2) oliver pye palm oil as a transnational crisis in south-east asia 95 environmental network wahana lingkungan hidup indonesia (walhi) plays a central role in the transnational campaigning around palm oil. walhi operates as a network of different local ngos and activists but is at the same time a member of friends of the earth international, and has direct links with sister organizations in the netherlands, germany and the uk. on the european side, friends of the earth member organizations are also important, but there is a whole number of smaller forest ngos such as the brussels-based fern, or the german rettet den regenwald involved as well. the environmentalists are joined by citizen initiatives such as the bürgerinitiative „kein strom aus palmöl!“ in saarlouisdillingen or the arbeitskreis heckenschutz in lüchow dannenberg, by various northsouth solidarity groups and by local chapters of the altermondialist network attac. the european groups were quite successful in influencing public opinion, with media coverage shifting against agrofuels within a two-year period10. however, although some of the modifications in the european directive might be a result of campaigning work, the coalition did not manage to stop the 10 percent target. interestingly, however, the range of actors involved in the campaign brings together different paradigms, combining concerns over biodiversity loss and a critique of the fossil fuel economy with the demand for climate justice and food sovereignty. this has politicized the debate around palm oil beyond the single concern for the rainforest and orang-utans. whereas the rspo is firmly within the dominant paradigm of global environmental governance, sustainable development, stakeholder initiatives and corporate responsibility, the new campaign coalition rejects it. indeed, it has even given birth to a new declaration criticizing the rspo for “greenwashing” the palm oil industry (“international declaration,” 2008). the key role played by environmental activists in walhi and friends of the earth ensure that the forest issues are not framed in terms of conservation project management but within a frame that stresses social issues and human rights. the involvement of small-scale farmer organizations and la via campesina ensure that 10 media was particularly critical in the united kingdom and in germany. for example, german television aired a whole series of palmoil-critical films by altemeier and hornung in 2007 and 2008, including “hier bio dort tod: vom sterben des orang utans”, ndr, phoenix; “der palmöl-skandal wie stromkunden umweltvernichtung finanzieren”, br report münchen; “der letzte wald der orang utans”, ard w wie wissen 2007, “umweltsünde biosprit”, orf – weltjournal; “mogelpackung biodiesel”, ard – monitor; “ohne rücksicht brandrodung für biodiesel”, ard tagesthemen 13.12.07; “die biosprit-falle”, swr-auslandsreporter (see http://www.globalfilm.de). the negative publicity was seen as a serious threat by the malaysian palm oil industry. for example, errol oh (2009) argued in the malaysian tabloid star, that “fuelled by a cocktail of environmental issues, the anti-palm oil lobby in the west is gaining traction, and failure to counter this well can be costly.” aseas 2 (2) a perspective of food sovereignty (small-scale production for subsistence and local and regional markets rather than industrial production for a global market) is part of picture. organizations involved in the globalization-critical movement such as attac bring their critique of corporate-led neoliberal globalization into the campaign. as these movements fuse together, they could lead to a crisis of legitimacy for the current model of action – or lack of it – regarding climate change. conclusion the palm oil boom in south-east asia represents a multiple crisis, linking the crisis of climate change to that of biodiversity loss, of development, and ultimately, of legitimacy. this multiple crisis unfolds in south-east asia through a number of transnational processes. firstly, the rapid expansion of palm oil across the region is fuelled in part by european climate policy and particularly the role that agrofuels are hoped to play in reaching kyoto and post-kyoto emission reduction targets. secondly, transnational corporations (tncs) from malaysia, singapore and indonesia have created global supply chains that link plantations with refineries and manufacturing. these tncs are driving the spatial expansion of palm oil in the region. thirdly, migrant networks of indonesian palm oil workers are creating a new transnational social space between indonesia and malaysia. and fourthly, the controversies surrounding the rapid expansion of palm oil plantations have given rise to a political space connecting south-east asia to europe in which transnational campaign alliances intervene. these transnational linkages are important for an assessment of the controversy surrounding the palm oil boom. rather than resulting from conflicting interests between nation states, with a contradiction between conservation goals of europe versus development goals of south-east asia, two transnational alliances have emerged which unite protagonists in both europe and south-east asia around opposite agendas. the first alliance, linking tncs in europe (i.e. biocraf) and south-east asia (i.e. the palm oil industrial complex) promotes palm oil based agrofuels as a solution to the crisis of climate change, and as a viable development model. the second alliance, linking civil society groups in both regions, sees agrofuels as exacerbating climate change and the related expansion of palm oil as underwriting a development model which undermines indigenous land rights and which is based on a low-wage flexible 96 aseas 2 (2) labour regime. the renewed politicization of palm oil in connection with the agrofuel agenda shows that the attempt to incorporate criticism of the practice of palm oil production into a governance model based on corporate social and environmental responsibility – in the roundtable on sustainable palm oil – has failed to defuse the conflict. in the run-up to the conference of parties of the climate convention in copenhagen, the transnational campaign alliances around palm oil are using the experience from south-east asia to challenge the “false solutions” put forward by the european union. in turn, this is contributing to the formation of a global movement around the paradigm of “climate justice” which links the double environmental crisis of climate change and biodiversity loss to the dominant development model of the north, and its repetition in the south. alternatives being explored within this movement, 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(2005). greasy palms. the social and ecological impacts of large-scale palm oil plantation development in southeast asia [monograph]. retrieved 18 june, 2007, from http://www.foe.co.uk/ resource/reports/greasy_palms_impacts.pdf 100 aseas 2 (2) oliver pye palm oil as a transnational crisis in south-east asia wilcove, d. s. (2008). biodiversity and oil palm: understanding the conflicts and finding opportunities for cooperation. paper delivered at the “international palm oil sustainability conference”, 13-15 april 2008, sutera harbour resort, kota kinabalu, malaysia. wilmar international limited. (2008). asia and beyond. a leading agribusiness group. wilmar annual report 2007. retrieved 2 june, 2008, from http://www.wilmar-international.com/investor/2007%20-%20 ar.pdf 101 rezensionen / book reviews aseas 3(2) 286 287 rezensionen / book reviews haacke, jürgen & morada, noel m. (eds.) (2010). cooperative security in the asia-pacifi c: the asean regional forum. oxon, uk and new york: routledge. isbn: 978-0-415-46052-1. 280 pages. regional security architecture is one of the asia-pacific region’s pressing issues at this moment. the need to manage, if not resolve, the multifarious issues besetting the region has been pushed by advocates of regional arrangements as the reason for re-evaluating where the region is and the future directions that it should take. this book is an excellent contribution to that debate. edited by jürgen haacke of the london school of economics and noel m morada of the asia-pacific centre for the responsibility to protect, cooperative security in the asia-pacific: the asean regional forum brings together in one volume the most authoritative analysis to date of the asean regional forum (arf) by a set of scholars and analysts who have been contributing to the analysis of asia-pacific regional institutions and issues. the book has twelve chapters, a bibliography, an index, and, mercifully, a list of abbreviations necessary for readers to navigate the alphabet soup that asean and related processes constantly generate. the various chapters are divided into overviews, securityor issue-related discussion, and country studies of participantstates’ relations with the arf. the first chapter by haacke and morada provides a summary of the other contributions to this volume and also sets forth the aims of the book. haacke and morada discuss the concept of co-operative security, which has been closely associated with the arf and its role in forging regional order. they also seek to frame the discussion within the context of the security environment in which the arf finds itself. the second chapter, by morada, is an overview of the origins and evolution of the arf. he places the beginnings of the arf in the context of a post-cold war world and its influence over the asean member states to create a multilateral security framework encompassing the asia-pacific region. he also investigates the reason why asean has the leading role in the arf, its security agenda, the impacts of 9/11 and the bali bombings on the arf’s institutional and security concerns, and the expansion of aseas 3(2) 288 289 its activities after 2001. morada’s main thesis is that the arf has not progressed into a true regional institution and towards preventive diplomacy because of the conflict between the activist participating states, who seek the implementation of security co-operation agreements, and those states which are fearful of losing a portion of their sovereignty if they engage in such activities. this has affected and will continue to affect the future directions of the arf. brad glosserman, executive director of the pacific forum csis, authors the third chapter on the united states’ engagement with the arf, which he describes as a delicate balancing act. glosserman traces the us’s engagement with the region since the cold war up to the second bush administration. he emphasises that the us remains suspicious of multilateral institutions that may seem to constrain it (p. 46) and that it will continue to strengthen its bilateral alliances where it has the advantage. however, the us has also been keen in promoting track ii engagements and the council for security cooperation in the asia pacific (cscap). its us committee (or uscscap), is active in ensuring the flow of information between it and the us government. the fourth chapter, by christopher hughes (lse), focuses on china and its participation in the arf. his main argument is that china’s participation in the arf is more complex than the common assumption that it was asean’s way of socialising china into its ‘way’. rather, when china perceives that its national security is being compromised, the arf becomes of little value to it. the forum’s main use for china is that it is able to use the principles on which the arf is built to articulate and advance its national interests. in the fifth chapter, takeshi yuzawa (jiia) tackles japan’s relationship with the arf. according to yuzawa, japan was enthusiastic in participating in the arf at its inception because it was a means for lessening suspicion of its potentially active role in asia-pacific security. also, japan believed that after the cold war the time was ripe for the region to expand political and security cooperation. however, it eventually lost its enthusiasm for the arf because of the lack of progress in addressing what japan sees as security concerns in the region. kuniko ashizawa (oxford brookes university) then discusses the australian-japanus trilateral strategic dialogue (tsd) and its potential impact on the arf. she argues that these states’ growing disenchantment with the arf has led them to experiment with a new type of relationship called ‘minilateralism’. while new political leaders in these states have led to the eventual watering-down of active dialogues among aseas 3(2) 288 289 the three, defence and military officials have found the tsd a useful avenue for consultation and dialogue on their particular remits. in the seventh chapter, rizal sukma of the jakarta-based csis takes a critical stand towards asean’s role as the driver of the arf, labelling it as only accidental. for sukma, asean’s claim to centrality is tenuous and resented by other participants. sukma sees that there will be no significant change in the arf’s future because of asean’s own inability to consolidate its internal political and security co-operation. the eighth chapter by haacke on the asean regional forum and its response to transnational challenges focuses on the challenge of securitising certain transnational issues and the problems of their adoption at the national level. haacke provides a discussion of securitisation theory and applies this to a whole range of issues being discussed in the arf. participating states have only moved towards full securitisation of international terrorism but have remained wary of securitising other issues such as migration, maritime security, and disaster management. the ninth chapter, by morada, on the arf and counter-terrorism examines the arf’s response to international terrorism after 9/11 in the us and the bali bombings in indonesia. for morada, asean’s perception of terrorism found re-articulation in the arf statements (p. 151). while there was initial convergence between the us and asean on co-operation in combating terrorism using the arf as platform, they eventually diverged because of the unilateral invasion of iraq by the former. asean and like-minded participating states found themselves opposing the us through the arf. nevertheless, the arf continued with the dialogues and initiatives in countering terrorism. in the next chapter, jn mak, an independent analyst, discusses maritime security in the context of the arf. his main issue with the arf is its focus on dialogue rather than action. for a forum with many participants which are maritime or at least coastal states, the arf should have been at the forefront of maritime security, however the arf has had a limited maritime agenda. there are differing conceptions of maritime security within the arf as maritime states tend to be at odds with coastal states over the critical uses of the ocean. for mak, maritime security is an area where national interests produce deep conflicts among participant states in the arf. since the arf uses asean norms, especially consensus decision-making, inevitably progress in maritime co-operation is lost at the arf level. in the eleventh rezensionen / book reviews aseas 3(2) 290 291 chapter, david a boyd and jörn dosch of the university of leeds examine the potential impacts of securitisation practices at the national level on the management of security challenges at the wider regional level: in asean and the arf. choosing indonesia and the philippines as case studies, they try to determine whether security practices in the two states’ national affairs have affected asean and the arf’s regional responses to security challenges, finding that the two states’ proactive position on transnational challenges do have an impact on asean’s security co-operation agenda. however, the links between national security discourse and securitisation in the arf are not established because securitisation moves are reflective of government perceptions of structural challenges and possible impact on national interests. haacke and morada provide a concluding chapter in which they ask if there is only more of the same with regard to arf and co-operative security. there are many contradictory positions and stances on security issues in the arf. major powers themselves are divided on the future directions of the arf. asean still has to effectively provide leadership in the arf, otherwise it will be eventually relegated only to the role of confidence builder. the arf has engaged in practical co-operation on some transnational challenges such as terrorism and disaster management. haacke and morada contend that preventive diplomacy is not necessarily a barrier to further security co-operation but the question is how to promote it under the arf (p.224). in the evolving regional security architecture, the arf is limited in its role as major powers have their own agenda in developing alliances and bilateral co-operation. in conclusion, they posit the question: what if the arf did not exist? perhaps the region would not be the same. clearly, this book is a heavy read. it is full of empirical detail and sophisticated analysis of the complex security environment of the asia-pacific region. the book’s main strength is its readability: jargon expressions are explained well and the authors make the effort to ensure that their main points are understood. the ordering of the chapters also allows people without a background on the arf to understand the context around which the discussions in the more complex chapters revolve. the book also covers the essentials of the arf: the complex relationship among participating states, the security challenges in the region, and the role of regional organisations and the major powers. the book could have been improved with a separate chapter on securitisation theory and a discussion of regional security aseas 3(2) 290 291 concepts and theories. these would have been helpful in providing a common point of departure among the chapter contributors. overall, the book is an outstanding addition to the literature on the arf and security co-operation. policymakers can use the lessons in the book to understand the reason why there are tensions surrounding the arf’s future directions. students and scholars of the asia-pacific, south-east asia, and asean security and international relations would do well to have this book in their collection as it might end up as a classic due to the breadth of its coverage and the depth of its analysis. julio s. amador iii center for international relations and strategic studies foreign service institute, the philippines kingsbury, damien (2009). east timor: the price of liberty. new york: palgrave macmillan. isbn: 978-0-230-60641-8. 246 seiten. seit 2002 unabhängig, ist timor-leste einer der jüngsten nationalstaaten der welt. der weg zur unabhängigkeit verlief, wie auch in vielen anderen fällen, alles andere als friedlich. mit welchen vielschichtigen problemen und herausforderungen timor-leste auf dem weg in die unabhängigkeit konfrontiert war und ist, steht im mittelpunkt der arbeit mehrerer wissenschafter und forscher. einer von ihnen ist der politologe und koordinator der australischen beobachtungsmissionen von 1999 und 2007 damien kingsbury mit seinem jüngsten werk east timor: the price of liberty. in acht kapiteln setzt sich der autor mit der geschichte timor-lestes, den präkolonialen strukturen, portugiesischer und indonesischer fremdherrschaft sowie der anschließenden un-verwaltung und der zeit der unabhängigkeit auseinander. kingsbury befasst sich dabei mit lokalen widerstandsbewegungen und dem regionalpolitischen kontext der postkolonialen phase um schlussendlich, vor allem bezug nehmend auf die unruhen von 2006 und den machtwechsel bei den wahlen 2007, die frage zu stellen, ob timor-leste als failed state zu bewerten sei oder gefahr laufe, einer zu werden. nach einer einführung in politikwissenschaftliche konzepte wie „staatliche rezensionen / book reviews aseas 1-2 final (außergottowik).indd the china factor in regional security cooperation the asean regional forum and the shanghai cooperation organization alfred gerstl1 macquarie university, sydney, australia aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften / austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 1 (2), 2008 seas gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften www.seas.at this article argues that regional security cooperation in south-east asia, mainly promoted by the association of southeast asian nations (asean), is a response to chiná s economic rise. although china is not regarded as a military challenge, beijing’s ascension threatens to undermine the regional balance of power. the emerging insecurities threaten the stability of the regimes whose power is based on output legitimacy. cooperation, the thesis states, can reduce these uncertainties. yet, whereas collaboration in the asean regional forum (arf) offers beijing incentives for the strengthening of its “enlightened” multilateralism, regional cooperation in the shanghai cooperation organization (sco) will not change china’s behaviour. the reason is that this cooperation is based on realpolitik motives. offensive realism seems therefore well suited to analyse the central asian power relations. even though the dimension of cooperation has not been included in john mearsheimer’s approach, this article demonstrates that it can conceptually be integrated into offensive realism without contradicting its core theses. for this, however, its adherents must accept two assumptions: first, that the domestic political logic – in case of beijing the output legitimacy of the communist party – must be integrated. second, that there exists no automatism in international politics. otherwise one would have to speak of the tragic of offensive realism: policies, based on this perception, does not offer china suffi cient incentives to further pursue multilateralism. keywords: regionalism, regional cooperation, security, china, asean, asean regional forum, shanghai cooperation organization 1 dr. alfred gerstl, mir is lecturer and researcher at the centre for policing, intelligence and counter terrorism (pict), macquarie university, sydney, and aseas editor-in-chief. this article discusses some of the results of his research project on the effects of china’s rise and the us security policies on regional cooperation in east asia. the project is financed by macquarie university’s new staff research grant scheme. 118 alfred gerstl the china factor in regional security cooperation aseas 1 (2) in diesem aufsatz wird argumentiert, dass die regionale sicherheitspolitische integration in südost und nordostasien, primär von der südostasiatischen staatengemeinschaft asean vorangetrieben, eine reaktion auf chinas wirtschaftlichen aufstieg verkörpert. dieser droht das regionale kräftegleichgewicht zu untergraben, wodurch er unsicherheiten weckt und damit eine gefahr für die auf stabilität angewiesenen regime darstellt, die ihre macht auf output-legitimation gründen. kooperation, so die these, kann diese unsicherheiten reduzieren. doch während die zusammenarbeit im rahmen des asean regional forum (arf) pekings außenpolitik anreize zur stärkung seines aufgeklärten multilateralismus bietet, sind entsprechende verhaltensänderung von der regionalen zusammenarbeit in zentralasien nicht zu erwarten. dies weil die shanghai cooperation organization (sco) nach wie vor rein auf realpolitischen motiven basiert und weshalb offensiver realismus bestens zur analyse der machtverhältnisse zentralasiens geeignet scheint. die dimension kooperation ist in john mearsheimers ansatz zwar nicht vorgesehen, wie dieser aufsatz zeigt, kann sie jedoch konzeptionell in den offensiven realismus integriert werden, ohne dessen kernthesen zu widersprechen. allerdings müssten vertreterinnen des offensive realismus dafür zwei gedankliche erweiterungen akzeptieren: zum einen, dass die innenpolitische logik im falle pekings die output-legitimation der kommunistischen partei integriert werden muss. zum anderen, dass es keinen automatismus in internationaler politik gibt. andernfalls müsste von einer tragik des offensivem realismus gesprochen werden: politik, basierend auf dieser anschauung, bietet china nicht genügend anreize, um weiterhin eine multilateralen kurs zu verfolgen. schlagworte: regionalismus, regionale kooperation, sicherheit, china, asean, asean regional forum, shanghai cooperation organization 1. introduction after the first decolonisation wave in the 1950s and early 1960s, the newly independent nations in asia, africa and latin america were, at least verbally, committed to strengthening their economic and political cooperation with their neighbours. similar to europe, regional collaboration was driven both by internal and external rationales, though the negatively defined security motives dominated. hence regional collaboration was regarded as a strategic means to secure the survival of the fragile new regimes by reducing external interferences in the processes of nation-building and socioeconomic development. wary of protecting their sovereignty and usually distrusting their neighbours, cooperation was – despite the overarching security goals – limited to economic, technical and cultural affairs. even integration advocates agreed to this cautious, evolutionary approach as many of them regarded limited functional collaboration as the first step in the direction of (sub-)regional political unity. thus from the 1960s on, regional cooperation was formalised and institutionalised throughout the third world through regional treaties and intergovernmental organisations such as the organization of african unity (oau) or the association of southeast asian nations (asean) and on sub119 regional level (e.g. the economic community of west african states or the andean pact). regional economic cooperation was en vogue in the 1960s, though very limited, due to the complimentary character of the involved economies and the dominance of import-substitution industrialization (bhalla & bhalla 1997: 1–9). in one region, though, regional cooperation has been elusive ever since: in north-east asia, which lacked multilateral structures till the early 1990s (ikenberry & tsuchiyama 2002: 70). even in south-east asia, though, till the late 1980s it was more appropriate to speak of regionalization – transnational and regional collaboration promoted by the market forces, especially multinational companies, or transnational active ethnic networks – rather than of regionalism, i.e. the deliberate political steering of regional cooperation in different political spheres (fawcett 2004: 431–434; dent 2003: 121). only in the late 1980s did the south-east asian governments, organized in asean, respond proactively to the external security and economic challenges with a deepening of their integration efforts. nevertheless, asean was on the forefront of the second wave of regionalism that gained momentum in the mid-1980s. fuelled by the rising economic interdependence, the fears of (western) trade blocs and globalization, this new regionalism tends to be open, non-discriminatory and inclusive (liu 2003a: 13; bhalla & bhalla 1997). since the early 1990s asean is the key promoter of regional cooperation, even in the sensitive realm of security, and this both in south-east and north-east asia. what has not changed, though, is the domestic logic of regional collaboration: the governments regard it as a means to mitigate external influences that could endanger economic development. as the legitimacy of the semi-democratic or authoritarian regimes in south-east asia is primarily based on their ability to deliver economic benefits to their citizens rather than on respect for due democratic processes – output instead of input legitimacy –, an economic downturn could be a direct threat to their survival (cf. cheng 2006: 91). to secure a stable regional political order is therefore a conditio sine qua non for economic growth, trade, foreign direct investments and tourism. the main thesis of this article argues that due to the political primacies of output legitimacy and regional stability, regional security cooperation in south-east and north-east is a reaction to today’s single most crucial challenge for stability and the balance of power in south-east and north-east asia: chiná s economic, political and military rise to a great power. yet, the argument is, that china’s rise does not raise fears of a military dominance in east asia. rather beijinǵ s ascension still causes feelings of uncertainty in regard to chiná s perceptions and strategic long-term intentions (chung 2008: 172; ong 2007: 721; dillon & tkacik 2005). in order to diminish these uncertainties, asean attempts since the mid-1990s to engage and even “socialize” beijing through multilateral cooperation. 120 alfred gerstl the china factor in regional security cooperation aseas 1 (2) the research question asks, first, whether regional security cooperation in east asia has altered china’s diplomatic behaviour. secondly, it will be assessed if offensive realism (mearsheimer 2003) is conceptually able to explain regional security collaboration. therefore asean ś (chapter 2) as well as chiná s motives for cooperation in the asean regional forum (arf) will be analysed, examining beijing’s adoption of multilateralism in the mid-1990s (chapter 3). in addition, the reasons for regional security collaboration in east asia will be compared with the cooperation logic in the central asian shanghai cooperation organization (sco) (chapters 3.2.1 and 3.2.2). it will be demonstrated that, unlike in the sco, the china factor or the “china threat” played a decisive role for the creation of the arf. despite the focus on two multilateral institutions as promoters of regional collaboration offensive realism rather than liberal institutionalism (dunne 2008; keohane & martin 1995) will be applied (chapter 3.2). the reason is that neorealist approaches seem best suited to explain the competitive strategic landscape both in east and central asia. yet while offensive realism is a realistic approach to conceptually frame china’s rise, it is analytically limited to examine great power relations. in addition, it regards cooperation only as a tool for the governments (mearsheimer 2003: chap. 2). as regional collaboration is a reality both in east and central asia, it will be asked if the dimension of cooperation can be added to the conceptual frame of offensive realism, without contradicting its basic theoretical assumptions. 2. regional cooperation in south-east and north-east asia 2.1 external motives in asean’s integration process after the end of the ideological and military superpower rivalry in 1989/91, the perspective of a political power vacuum – and in particular the perception that japan or china might aim to fill it – threatened security in the asia-pacific. moscow, after the demise of the warsaw pact, lacked the political will as well as the financial and diplomatic resources for pursuing an active east asia policy. washington, the hegemonic power since 1945, downgraded its political engagement (gershman 2002: 60–61). among certain asian nations this gave rise to the perception of a strategic retreat of the us (leifer 1999: 34). after the terror bombings of september 11, 2001, when the new bush administration started to view south-east asia as the second front in the war on terror, washington once again intensified its strategic commitment. yet, its focus on security issues and bilateral cooperation with key allies conflicts with “the region’s priorities of domestic economic development and political stability” (economy 2005: 411; cf. interviews in singapore and kuala lumpur, december 2008). 121 the looming power vacuum was especially dangerous in north-east asia, as in this region multilateral collaboration was the exception, not the rule (liu & régnier 2003). the south-east asian nations were since the 1960s used to cooperation in a broad area of policy fields, although the collaboration was not deep reaching till 1992. like in other world regions, cooperation has been mainly driven by external factors and domestic logics: the primary motive for bangkok, jakarta, kuala lumpur, singapore and manila for establishing the association of southeast asian nations in 1967 was to reduce outside interferences into their socioeconomic development and nation-building, be it from their asean partners, east asian or outside actors (kahler 2000: 551). at this time, asean’s main external threats were the negative security impacts of the vietnam war and communist infiltration. with two security orientated initiatives, the zone of peace, freedom and neutrality (zopfan) in 1971 and the treaty of amity and cooperation (tac) in 1976, asean subsequently aimed to insulate itself “from great power maneuverings” (garofano 2002: 514). moreover, the tac was also a proactive attempt to order south-east asia according to the principles of the “asean way” and the start of closer cooperation with the us, japan and the united nations to resolve the indochina crisis. facing the common threat posed by vietnam, in the early 1990s asean’s diplomatic conflict resolution approach in indochina proved highly successful, also due to hanoí s new doi moi policies and superpower détente. however, even at this time asean was divided whether vietnam or china should be regarded as the bigger security threat (leifer 1999: 30). the end of the superpower rivalry, though, also questioned asean’s raison d étre. in dire need of a new political purpose, asean decided at the singapore summit in 1992 to use economic tools to deepen its integration (capie 2003: 154–155). the asean free trade area (afta) was a response to the european community’s single market project and the north american free trade area (nafta) but also a symbol for asean’s inability to agree on a common security policy able to address the new transnational security menaces (cf. antolik 1992: 144 and 147–151). in 1997, though, the asian financial crisis uncovered the deficiencies of asean’s cautious integration approach. the institution seemed politically paralyzed and lacked the authority to enforce the afta commitments (dent 2007: 24). accusing washington and the western dominated international monetary fund (imf) of prescribing the wrong cure, many east asian politicians turned to beijing for support. indeed, china played a positive role in resolving the crisis (cheng 2006: 94), in particular in asean plus three which connects asean institutionally with china, japan and south korea. initially limited to financial collaboration, asean+3 evolved into the most important multilateral forum in east asia, covering strategic, political and economic issues (beeson 2003, stubbs 2002). however, as the logic of regional cooperation is an economical one (wanandi 2005: 324), it comes as no surprise that the main achievement 122 alfred gerstl the china factor in regional security cooperation aseas 1 (2) of this comprehensive collaboration is economical: the china-asean free trade area (cafta). yet there is also a crucial psychological and political outcome: an increase of mutual trust. in initiating cafta and, in particular, offering the lesser developed asean partners significant economic concessions (“early harvest”), improved its image and credibility in south-east asia (cf. interviews in singapore and kuala lumpur, december 2008). in retrospect, the financial and political crisis of 1997 was also a catalyst for deeper integration. acknowledging the limits of the “asean way” (asean eminent persons group 2000), in 2003 asean announced its ambitious plans for an asian community by the year 2015, based on an economic, security and socio-cultural pillar (bali concord ii). yet, these objectives remain to be filled with concrete policies. overall, regional cooperation in south-east asia – a region that has always been successful in accommodating external influences (sardesai 2003) – can till the early 1990s be best described as “reactionary regionalism” (beeson 2003: 251). although economic motives dominated, the notion in south-east asia has always been that mutual economic progress facilitates a stable and peaceful regional order. in the early 1990s, though, the regional political and economic dynamics did profoundly change (shambaugh 2005: 64), with chiná s perceived quest for regional dominance being the core strategic challenge for north-east and south-east asia (collins 2000: 133). asean’s strategic and institutional response – its initiative for creating the asean regional forum – symbolizes the adoption of a more proactive approach. 123 table 1: periodization of asean‘s integration process period 1967–1975 1976–1992 1992–1997 1997–2002 2003– overall orientation domestic domestic, increasingly regional domestic and regional regional pan-regional type of regionalism reactionary or negative limited, “diplomatic” neutral, “bandwagon” cautious proactive proactive driving forces external: security security; market trade, security economics, “asianness”, china’s rise china’s rise, output legitimacy, “asianness” source: own compilation. 2.2 the asean regional forum: dialoguing, socializing, befriending in the 1990s, there was – and still is – no shortage of unresolved disputes in east asia. inter alia, the tensions on the korean peninsula, the sino-taiwanese relations or the island disputes in the south chinese sea could escalate into a regional military conflict. on the other hand both abstract and concrete transnational threats have increased. these include, for instance, piracy, illegal trafficking of drugs, weapons and people, social inequalities, the spread of mass diseases or environmental degradation (rüland 2005). the main fear in the 1990s, though, was that a vague feeling of insecurity in the region, rooted in mutual distrust, could hamper the national socioeconomic development processes. this in a region where the legitimacy of the majority of the governments is based on their ability to create and distribute wealth (cheng 2006: 91). even though many governments in east asia acknowledged the need for multilateral regional security cooperation after 1989, the priority for sovereignty and non-interference, the unresolved conflicts among many nations and the lack of a clearly definable common threat overshadowed all hopes for a big institutional bang such as the conference on security and cooperation in europe (csce) mechanism (acharya 1997: 321). the creation of the arf in 1994 thus reflects a compromise – and the fairly moderate expectations of the governments in regard to security collaboration. yuen foong khong’s pointed summary of michael leifer’s (1996) “line of reasoning” still sums up best the intentions of the arf: “(t)o keep (a) the united states in, (b) china and japan down, and (c) asean relevant and safe (…)” (khong 1997: 290). in addition, the new security structures should provide possibilities for regular meetings, exchange of information, dialogue and confidence building measures to decrease mutual distrust and uncertainties through the acquaintance with different ways of strategic thinking (kawasaki 2006; arf 1995). accordingly, the focus of the loosely institutionalized arf is, unlike in the highly institutionalized western security institutions, on cooperative, not on collective security. security is defined in comprehensive terms, including traditional as well as non-traditional threats. regarded as an honest (asian) broker, the other east asian nations allowed the political and military comparatively weak asean to take the leadership role in institutionbuilding in east asia. basically, the arf is an extended multilateralized version of the asean post-ministerial conferences (pmc) that asean holds with key dialogue partners after its foreign minister meetings. hence the guiding asean principles of non-interference, nondiscrimination, pragmatism, voluntarism, informal and consensual rather than rule-based majority decision-making – the (in-)famous “asean way” (acharya 2001: 172–179; acharya 1997: 328–333; kawasaki 2006: 222–223) – are reflected in the arf. chaired by asean, it is 124 alfred gerstl the china factor in regional security cooperation aseas 1 (2) also the asean secretariat in jakarta that oversees the work of the arf which has no own bureaucracy. overall, as amitav acharya (2004: 259) puts it: “the arf imitates asean’s organizational minimalism.” in many senses, not only asean and the arf but also the arf and the broad asia-pacific economic cooperation (apec) can be regarded as twins. notwithstanding the justified criticism, the establishment of the arf reflects a major political breakthrough, as in 1994 both beijing and washington were committed to a bilateral rather than multilateral approach. in addition, the shortand mid-term focus of asean as the arf architect was fairly ambitious: to install a process of dialogue and confidence-building that both broadens and deepens over time. only after the institution has reached a more mature stage, an evolution into a more robust conflict resolving institution seemed political feasible for asean (arf 1995). and in fact, since 1994 the security organization has gradually progressed institutionally and normatively: annual ministerial meetings evolved into more frequent senior official and military expert meetings, and the civil society participation in the “track two” mechanism has been strengthened, as have the confidence building measures. highlighting the political logic behind the arf process, chien-peng chung (2008: 172) writes: “the essential idea behind the arf is that the process of dialoguing should lead to socialization of member states’ behavior, which in turn ought to result in the dissolution of conflicts of interests.” overall, the arf approach combines the balance of power concept, the principle of inclusive regionalism, the notion of conflict resolution together with, not against certain countries and the idea of socializing or even befriending the partners (cf. acharya 2001: 173). although the arf is today the only organisation in east asia with an exclusive security focus, it is politically far from resembling a regional security system. the prospects for the evolution into a “security community” in karl w. deutsch ś sense remain even more remote (rolfe 2008: 106–107; wanandi 2005). this the case due to severe political obstacles such as the exclusion of the sino-taiwanese and the north korean dispute but also because of the restricting “asean” diplomatic values (acharya 2001: 178; khong 1997: 292). the next step in the arf ś evolution would be to go behind confidence building and adopt preventive conflict resolution. overall, in its present form the arf cannot resolve asean’s main concern: while the asean members do appreciate china’s new multilateralism, they remain skeptical in regard to beijing’s true long-term intentions and ambitions. all these shortcomings raise serious questions in regard to the ability of the arf to contain or assimilate the rising china. though this is, according to john mearsheimer, a political necessity. the strategic regional – and global – impacts of beijinǵ s possible strive for hegemony in east asia have been conceptualized in his theory of offensive realism. 125 3. beijing’s new multilateral credentials: engaging in the arf and the sco 3.1 china ś rise and its new multilateral credentials in 1978, deng xiaoping succeeded in the post-mao internal power struggles of the communist party of china (cpc). replacing the economic principles of self-reliance and inward-orientation with the market principle and integration into the world market, the new momentum of the chinese economy elevated chiná s position in the regional and global distribution of economic and political power. in the first phase, the regime focussed on achieving economic growth, accepting tremendous social inequalities especially among rural and urban citizens. politically beijing opened up to the outside world too: having played a “destabilizing and negative” (limaye 2007: 459) role in east asia after 1949 (e.g. support for communist insurgents), china started to redefine its political and economic relations with north-east and south-east asia (india discovered its east asian neighbourhood only in the late 1990s). though, in accordance with deng’s credo, it kept a low profile in regional (and global) politics (wang 2005: 675). till the mid-1990s, it pursued its interests bilaterally. once diplomatic relations has been established with jakarta and singapore in 1990 and seoul in 1992, chiná s trade with the respective countries boomed. from 1991 on, beijing and asean gradually improved their relations too, starting with scientific, educational, trade and economic collaboration (lijun 2003: 2). the new charm offensive in east asia was not at least a strategic response to the diplomatic isolation china faced in the western world after the tiananmen massacre in 1989. acknowledging the demise of the communist ideology as the main source for its legitimacy, the cpc leadership, divided in the aftermath of “tiananmen”, adopted the concept of a rationalauthoritarian order and technocratic leadership (guo 2003: 11–16). it started to increasingly base its legitimacy on its ability to furthermore ensure socioeconomic development, i.e. output legitimacy (national intelligence council 2008: 28–29; wang 2005: 681–686). subsequently, as the domestic aims of the chinese reform policies have become logically increasingly connected to the foreign policy sphere, the fears of social and political unrests at the domestic front triggered a fundamental change in beijinǵ s foreign policy: already in the mid-1990s, it reduced its bilateralism in favour of multilateralism (qinggong & wei 1997). the “fourth generation” under hu jintao, in charge since 2002, has further embraced multilateralism – and pragmatism: the party has realized that a favourable (“harmonious”) regional and global environment, created through multilateral collaboration, is the conditio sine qua non for the creation of a modestly rich, harmonious society with a more just income distribution hu jintao envisions (information office of the state council of the people’s republic of china 126 alfred gerstl the china factor in regional security cooperation aseas 1 (2) 2005: chap. v). such a middle class society would also be a political insulator against possible nationalist sentiments that could trigger a more aggressive, nationalistic foreign policy. yet exactly because of its burgeoning economic power its neighbours – and the world in general – remain skeptical in regard to the true intentions of the cpc. the chinese leadership, though, knows that it must reduce this distrust. thus in 2004 the then prime minister wen jiabo claimed china would never seek regional hegemony (xinhua news agency 2004; cf. li zhaoxing 2006), painting the picture of a status quo power. overall, the new doctrine from 2003 states that beijinǵ s rise is peaceful (heping jueqi) – and beneficial for the whole world. for its socioeconomic development china needs the world (zhang 2008: 16–17; ong 2007: footnote 13), in particular secure access to raw materials in south america, africa, central asia or australia. but, as the self-assured leadership adds, the world also needs china. in this view, china’s peaceful rise offers a win-win situation for humankind. accordingly, under hu the cpc has officially further embraced multilateralism and “is using a sophisticated blend of trade, confidence building measures, and even development assistance to establish itself as an important regional leader” (economy 2005: 413). paradoxically, the more beijing increases its multilateral credentials, the more the chinese leadership is confronted with a strategic and political dilemma: while the west demands clear words and actions from china, notably where it clearly yields political influence, such as in burma, north korea or sudan (cf. rice 2008), the cpc’s response to the distrust if faces is to keep a low profile in global politics (shi 2008: 25–26). chiná s conceptual answer is to project the image of a soft power which is engaged in multilateral cooperation and abstains from the use of force. as this concept stresses the non-military, especially the economic and cultural abilities of a state to influence international politics, it is theoretically an ideal political response of the cpc to the “china threat” perceptions of the outside world (cf. yu 2007: 118–119; yang 2007). yet, while the soft power label seems an adequate description of the potential and the limits of the european union in international politics, it gravely underrates china’s current political and military might: beijing has already developed into a powerful smart power. 3.2 theoretical conceptualization of china’s rise: offensive realism responding to the fundamental structural changes after the demise of the stable cold war order and the perceived limits of kenneth waltź (defensive) neorealism (mearsheimer 2004: 109–112), john mearsheimer developed a security orientated approach that has become popular in international security studies. contradicting defensive realist assumptions that due 127 to the anarchic international system states aim to increase their security, yet aspiring only an “appropriate” amount of power that does not lure others in an arms race, mearsheimer believes that the great powers must seek as much power as possible. he poses that this is a rational response of the governments which, undisturbed by domestic logics, simply “read” the “objective” incentives and constraints of the international system, but can never trust the (future) intentions of other nations. similar to a classical greek play, tragedy is inescapable: the more power one of the great nations acquires relative to others, the more pressure do the others face to maximize their might (mearsheimer 2003: 35). global dominance, though, mearsheimers believes, is not feasible anymore because geography still limits global power projection. being rational actors in a self-help world, it is thus wise for (potential) great powers to strive for regional hegemony. furthermore, mearsheimer (2003: chap. 2) postulates that great powers must check rising nations in other world regions too – otherwise they would rather sooner than later see themselves challenged in their very own hemisphere by their opponent (mearsheimer 2003: 2 and 41). china’s rise, he claims, fits into this classical great power pattern. consequently, it is only a question of time until beijing starts to translate its economic might into military and political power, aiming to dominate east asia. yet, based on his solely structural reading of the international system, mearsheimer predicts that “it is unlikely that china will pursue military superiority so that it can go on a rampage and conquer other asian countries, although that is always possible. instead, it is more likely that it will want to dictate the boundaries of acceptable behaviour to neighbouring countries (…)” (mearsheimer 2005: 14). as the chicago professor deliberately limits the scope of his theory to great power relations he necessarily views washington as the only counterweight. believing that many other east asian nations fear beijing’s increasing power, he claims they would join a us-led attempt to contain beijing and slow down its economic growth (mearsheimer 2003: 402; layne 2008: 16–17). logically, in mearsheimer’s worldview, the prospects for cooperation are limited. collaboration is an instrument for the great powers to counter-balance their rivals, for smaller nations to either bandwagon or join a counter-alliance of one of the great powers (cf. snyder 2002: 164–167 and 172). mearsheimer stresses the neorealist belief that relative gains consideration and cheating undermine all cooperation efforts (mearsheimer 1995: 12; but cf. keohane & martin 1995: 43–46). another crucial obstacle for him is the impossibility of governments to judge the true (future) intentions of their counterparts. possible positive incentives of the domestic systems for international cooperation are also excluded in mearsheimer’s approach, so are prospects for policy-learning, based on successes and rewards achieved through absolute gains cooperation. institutions, in the neoliberal institutionalist 128 alfred gerstl the china factor in regional security cooperation aseas 1 (2) view quasi-independent facilitators for state cooperation, are regarded as dominated by governments, reflecting their national interests (mearsheimer 1995: 13). yet, i believe, that the dimension of cooperation can be conceptually included into offensive realism, without contradicting its fundamental assumptions. mearsheimer’s theory is pessimistic, yet it does not necessarily stipulate an automatism that leads to war. containment like during the relative stable cold war era is a possibility. though, the containment strategy in europe was based on a multilateral political, economic and military cooperation, even an alliance between north america and western europe. furthermore, despite moscows predominance and the character of forced cooperation, even the eastern block nations collaborated in a depth that exceeded the classic counter-alliance or bandwagon concepts. due to the economic interdependence and superpower détente, from the 1970s on the two blocks used multilateral negotiations, in particular the confidence-building csce process, as means to decrease their tensions. overall, this cooperative security mechanism did not end the regional and global rivalries of the superpowers but it contributed to a peaceful settlement of the conflicts in europe. one of mearsheimer’s key assumptions, however, would be challenged if it could be demonstrated that cooperation can change the behaviour of states, for instance, to make them more inclined towards peaceful multilateral cooperation or towards the notion of sharing the economic or security benefits with their neighbours. the next chapters will examine whether china has really embraced regional cooperation in east and central asia. 3.2.1 china’s rationales for its engagement in the arf to engage china in the arf was a tremendous achievement for asean, yet without beijinǵ s explicit will to become a player in arf, asean would not have succeeded. thus it has to be asked why the chinese leadership – till the 1990s not used to multilateralism – has commited itself to the arf process. fearing the internationalization of the taiwan conflict or of the territorial disputes in the south chinese sea and the institutionalisation of the us dominance in east asia, beijing viewed the arf very skeptical initially. it feared that asean, during the cold war regarded as a western dominated, anti-communist institution would promote washingtoń s interests. in the mid-1990s, due to intensified relations, china quickly learned that regional cooperation is not directed against beijing. it increasingly acknowledged asean ś role as an honest (asian) broker that embraces similar diplomatic values such as sovereignty, non-interference and consensual decision-making (cf. interviews in singapore, december 2008). moreover, beijing 129 and asean share the notions of output legitimacy and comprehensive security, and both reject the western advocacy of human rights and democracy. the chinese leaders could therefore regard the arf, inter alia, as a tool to counter-balance the united states and western influences in general (cf. cheng 2004: 260–261). another motive for joining the arf was its institutional weakness – its lack of power to sanction members in case of misconduct suited beijing. as the arf strengthened its confidence building measures, thus increasing mutual trust through dialogue and transparency, beijing deepened its commitment. the concrete work in the arf required an adaption of the chinese foreign policy and military experts who were not as familiar with multilateral diplomacy as their east asian partners. in the late 1990s certain observers (johnston 1999; foot 1998; cf. heller 2005: 141–142) noticed a transformative effect of china’s participation in the arf, reflected not only through a “tremendous change” (ba 2003: 622) in the sino-asean relations since 1989 but in beijinǵ s new commitment to multilateralism in general. for instance, in 2002 china signed the tac and in 2003 agreed to multilateral cooperation to resolve the territorial disputes in the south chinese sea (yet notably the conflict with vietnam remains) and transnational threats such as health, environmental degradation, migration or drug trafficking (economy 2005: 417–418 and 421–423). hence it is no coincidence that at the same time as beijing multilateralized its policies in east asia, it also started to actively promote regional cooperation in central asia. 3.2.2 china’s rationales for its engagement in the sco strategically located at the crossroads of asia and europe, central asia has always been a theoretical paradise for realist international relations scholars: already in 1904, halford j. mackinder has in his heartland theory postulated the global dominance of the power that controls this region. national interests and the attempt to create spheres of influence – in other words: power politics – can still explain the regional dynamics in this resource rich region. since the 18th century under russian control, the decline of moscow ś power after the end of the cold war has led to a power vacuum in this former buffer zone. both washington and beijing were eager to fill this void, deepening their political, military and economic relations with the newly independent nations. initially focusing on securing their access to oil and gas fields, because of 9/11 and the war against the taliban regime in afghanistan the united states increased its military presence; for instance, it rented military bases in uzbekistan. moscow, on the other side, has in the last years reclaimed its place in its “near abroad”. hence the logic of offensive realism seems striking: both china and russia, two longstanding 130 alfred gerstl the china factor in regional security cooperation aseas 1 (2) rivals, need to become the regional hegemon in central asia at the otheŕ s expense, whereas the united states attempts to prevent the regional ascendancy of both countries. accordingly, cooperation can only be applied selectively and as a tool for achieving hegemony, for counterbalancing or bandwagoning. subsequently, it will be tested whether this instrumental view can explain the evolution of intergovernmental collaboration in a region that has once again become geostrategically and geoeconomically vital. like in east asia, multilateral collaboration started only in the mid-1990s with the shanghai five mechanism at its core. in 1996 the shanghai five provided a forum for resolving longstanding biand multilateral border conflicts among the members china, russia, kazakhstan, kyrgyzstan and tajikistan as well as for strengthening their border control mechanisms to tackle illegal trafficking of people, drugs and weapons. as the traditional security cooperation has proven surprisingly successful, in 2001 the shanghai five members agreed to let it spill over into other non-traditional security affairs and transformed the mechanism into a cooperative security institution, the shanghai cooperation organization. the collaboration, though, remains strictly intergovernmental and under-institutionalized, because the sco members deliberately do not envision supranational integration (bailes & dunay 2007: 4–5; cf. chung 2006). the governments thus control the cooperation processes – the secretariat is weak and the national parliaments lack control rights –, and the objectives are based on their national security interests. the dominant players, of course, are the two great powers, while the smaller nations are at best partially successful in influencing china or russia in siding with one of them against the other. still, they are strategically better off in a situation in which they can deal in a multilateral forum rather than bilaterally with these two key players. while the security definitions of the sco and the arf are very similar, the collaboration in the sco is far more concrete. for the sco, security encompasses socioeconomic development, energy and environment and includes complex, yet very real transnational non-traditional risks such as terrorism, organized crime, illegal trafficking of people, weapons and drugs, the latter in particular via afghanistan (cornell & swanström 2006). also in a reaction to the war in afghanistan, china and russia, both suspicious of washingtoǹ s military engagement, promoted stronger common counter-terrorism efforts, loosely institutionalized in the regional anti-terrorist structure (rats). the sco members also agreed to insulate the subregion from the spread of democracy, enabling them to individually and collectively dismiss even legitimate claims for democratization and autonomy as separatism or terrorism. the main difference between chinà s participation in the arf and the sco is that from the beginnings of the central asian cooperation, china has been in the driver’s seat. the “shanghai spirit” of cooperation, albeit compatible with the “asean way”, is clearly a “chinese” one. china initiated the central asian cooperation because it recognized that the main non131 traditional security menaces can best be resolved in a multilateral manner. in general, beijing needs a peaceful central asian neighbourhood to achieve its energy security objectives and to develop its vast western province. it also succeeded in regionally outlawing the uighur separatist movement, notably the east turkestan islamic movement (etim), thus ending the support the etim has allegedly received from its central asian neighbours. in regard to the evolution of the sco, beijing is far more ambitious than moscow: whereas the chinese side promotes a deepening of trade and economic collaboration, russia is reluctant, as it regards the sco primarily as a means to pursue energy security (cohen 2006: 2). this because it already posses forums in central asia that it exclusively dominates, such as the commonwealth of independent states (cis) and the collective security treaty organization (csto). and not at least does russià s distrust of china limit collaboration. among many russian politicians and scholars beijing is not only perceived as a strategic rival but, for the first time in centuries, as more powerful than moscow, raising fears that russia is becoming dependent, possibly even china’s vassal (mohanty 2007: 255). despite the shared goal of reducing washington’s influence in this crucial region and fighting separatism and terrorism, the strategic rivalry between china and russia reduces the prospects of a deepening of cooperation in central asia (li 2007: 484–487). accordingly – and notwithstanding the increased sino-chinese military cooperation that includes russian weapons sales to china and even military manoeuvres –, the prospects of the evolution of the sco into an authoritarian central asian nato that strongly opposes western influences and values are dim. rather it will remain a surprisingly successful forum for discussing and even resolving some of the most dangerous transnational non-traditional security risks in central asia on a case by case basis. whether the sco can develop into a reliable regional security institution that interlinks central asia politically and institutionally with the existing transatlantic, south, south-east and north-east asian organizations (cf. lanteigne 2007: 620–622; luzyanin 2007) will depend on the future sino-russian relations as well as on the general western russian and western chinese relations. to sum up, national interests and power politics – and thus neorealism – still explain best the successful but limited collaboration in central asia. the sco members have never intended to use collaboration as a tool to change their diplomatic values or behaviour. 4. conclusion regional cooperation in south-east asia has always followed economic rationales and been externally and in particular security driven. consequently, the emergence of the china factor 132 alfred gerstl the china factor in regional security cooperation aseas 1 (2) as a new external driving force for increased cooperation is not a new phenomenon per se. fundamentally new, though, is that beijing’s economic, political and military rise to a great power undermines the hegemonic position of the united states, thus changing the traditional balance of power in east asia. aiming to engage china and keeping the united states involved in order to stabilize the existing regional order, asean succeeded in establishing the arf, a broad security forum in regard to the membership and the security topics covered. in the mid-1990s all arf participants accepted asean ś leadership. though, today in order to remain the key institutional driving force in east asia with the regional powerhouses china, japan and india, asean has to deepen its own integration (wanandi 2005: 330). just like in north-east asia, regional collaboration is a recent phenomenon in central asia. while in the case of the arf the “china threat” is a “negative” driving force, in the sco china is the active leader that engages the other great power russia and the smaller central asian nations in a successful cooperative security mechanism. similar to the arf, the sco is strictly intergovernmental and based on a comprehensive definition of security and an evolutionary approach. however, unlike in the arf, the collaboration is focused on concrete projects and has already yielded results (the resolution of border disputes, energy and infrastructure collaboration, increased economic relations). nevertheless, the cooperation in the sco still follows the principle of power politics and, consequently, has not altered the diplomatic attitudes and the actual behaviour of the sco members. a prediction based on offensive realism suggests that cooperation will only prevail as long as the governments regard it as useful. the case study of the arf has demonstrated that regional security cooperation promoted by an alliance of smaller nations is feasible and viable. the main insecurity the south-east and north-east asian nations have to cope with is that they cannot predict whether chinà s rise will remain to be peaceful. through multilateral cooperation in the arf, but also in asean+3, they can get insights into the strategic and diplomatic thinking and perceptions of their chinese counterparts who today seem to have embraced multilateralism. for china, cooperation clearly has an instrumental value – a peaceful regional order facilitates its socioeconomic development. moreover, multilateral collaboration is also a strong political message against washington’s unilateralism. overall, one can speak of an enlightened multilateralism beijinǵ s pursues, in particular in east asia. though does cooperation also has an intrinsic value for the chinese leadership? referring to constructivist, sociological and neoliberal institutional approaches, certain scholars believe in chinà s new multilateralism (heller 2005: 141–142; johnston 1999; foot 1998), even that it sticks to the “asean way” (cf. interviews in singapore, hanoi and kuala lumpur, december 2008). others dismiss the notion that beijing has truly embraced multilateralism 133 (mearsheimer 2005; cf. economy 2005: 413). they see a pattern of hegemonic aspirations in the chinese history (ong 2007: 721) or remain cautious, claiming that it is still too early to judge whether chiná s socialization in the arf has been successful (chung 2008: 172). yet time is not the sole crucial variable. social science approaches in general struggle to explain how and why decision-makers view the world in a certain manner and are why some are more inclined towards cooperation than others. scholars and politicians who regard the chinese foreign policy through the lense of offensive realism can logically never be convinced of beijinǵ s multilateral commitments. offensive realism postulates the inability of states to demonstrate their peaceful aims, as other governments can never be sure of their true beliefs and future plans. would this approach consider domestic political logics – the cpc̀ s output legitimacy requires a stable regional order for chinà s socioeconomic development – and the asian “ideology” of pragmatism, it would see that beijing clearly has inducements for multilateral collaboration. to conclude, cooperation can be included without contradicting the core assumptions of offensive realism. for this, however, offensive realists have to accept that there is no structural automatism or tragic script the world leaders have to follow. cooperation certainly has the potential to alter perceptions as well as the actual behaviour of states, though mearsheimer̀ s approach is conceptually not suited to prove this 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(2018). women remembering the prophet’s birthday: maulid celebrations and religious emotions among the alawiyin community in palembang, indonesia. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 11(2), 217-230. in palembang in south sumatra, indonesia, maulid celebrations are considered an important religious event in the lives of many muslims. over the past twenty years, there has been an expansion of activities, the driving force behind which has been a young generation of alawiyin in palembang. maulid celebrations organized by the alawiyin in palembang are separated along gender lines. in this paper, i show how female-only maulid celebrations enable muslim women, and especially the sharifat, to express their emotions and allow for bodily expressions during the actual maulid event. i will argue that, in women-only celebrations, women express religious emotions which they wish to show but also which are expected from them as the expression of love for the prophet muhammad is part of the islamic understanding internalized by the alawiyin. keywords: alawiyin; islam; maulid; muslim women; religious emotions  it is the islamic month of rabi-ul-awal – the month of the prophet muhammad’s birthday. everywhere in indonesia muslims celebrate this important event called maulid. i have been invited to attend several maulid events in palembang, the capital city of the province of south sumatra. as i arrive at the first location of maulid celebrations, i can hear simple music and the beating of hand drums. young women with face veils stand lined up to greet each individual visitor. the space is decorated with colorful curtains and posters with pictures from the two holy cities, mecca and medina, and with verses from the qur’an. the stage is decorated with red and gold, the traditional palembang colors, and with plants and small flags with the 99 names of allah. more and more women, young and old, come and sit down in front of the stage. around one thousand women attend this special celebration. in the following paper, i focus on the celebrations remembering the prophet muhammad’s birthday in indonesia. i closely observe two maulid celebrations held especially for muslim women who claim descent from the prophet muhammad, and who are called sharifat, in palembang, south sumatra. as a 1 a preliminary version of this article was presented as a conference paper at the 8th euroseas conference held at the university of vienna in 2015. aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 05 218 | aseas 11(2) women remembering the prophet’s birthday female muslim researcher, i was granted permission to attend two women-only maulid events by the organizing committee in 2014. in the following, i will provide a short introduction to islam and the alawiyin group especially in indonesia, and islamic teachings and practices in palembang in particular, before turning to the maulid celebrations. my main argument in this paper is that female-only maulid celebrations enable muslim women, especially the sharifat, to express their religious emotions and allow for bodily expressions during the actual maulid event. furthermore, i would like to propose that maulid events and specifically female-only maulid celebrations are a means to strengthen alawiyin identity and their interpretation of islamic practices. however, further research needs to be conducted to support this hypothesis. islam and the alawiyin community in indonesia indonesia has the largest muslim population in the world. around 200 million muslims form 88% of the country’s population. located between the indian and pacific ocean, the archipelago has been part of important trading routes for centuries, and thus part of translocal networks spanning the indian ocean long before the formation of modern nation states (freitag, 1997; freitag & oppen, 2010). this resulted in a vibrant culture that accommodates six major religions, nowadays encompassed by the national ideology of pancasila, which states the belief in “the one and only god” (ketuhanan yang maha esa). indonesia is also home to different local beliefs and syncretic forms of worship. it is known for its religious pluriformity in general and its islamic pluriformity in particular (houben, 2015; seise, 2017). especially since the reformasi, a period of transition after decades of authoritarian rule, this pluriformity has increased.2 the diversity of islamic practices in indonesia ranges from syncretistic forms interwoven with non-islamic traditions, rituals, and beliefs, to reformist islam inspired by the egyptian reform movement and the ikhwanul muslimin; and from fundamentalist forms of islam like salafi wahabism, aiming at purifying islamic practices from anything not in line with their interpretation, to political islam in various forms ranging from moderate to radical. additionally, the indonesian decentralization reforms resulted in the implementation of shari’ah law in aceh and in bulukumba, south sulawesi (azra, 2013; barton, 2004; bruinessen, 2008; bubalo & fealy, 2005; burhani, 2013; burhanuddin & van dijk, 2013; hefner, 2013; houben, 2015; lukens-bull, 2005). although often perceived as being located in the muslim periphery by the rest of the muslim world (eickelman & piscatori, 1990), indonesia is seen as a center of islamic knowledge by many indonesian muslims (lukens-bull, 2005; seise, 2017; srimulyani, 2012; woodward, 2011). various local islamic scholars were known beyond indonesia and especially in the centers of islam in mecca and cairo (azra, 2004; 2 different scholars have attempted to give names to the islamic pluriformity found in indonesia, among others geertz (1976), woodward (1989, 2001), riddell (2001), ali (2007), van bruinessen (1999, 2008, 2009). the categories range from santri versus abangan to traditionalist vs. modernist, political versus cultural muslim, fundamentalist versus liberal, great tradition versus little tradition, and local versus global islam (ali, 2007). other categories include normative and mystically inclined islam (woodward, 1989). woodward (2001) proposed that there exist five basic islamic orientations: indigenized islam, traditionalism, modernism, islamism, and neo-modernism. riddell (2001) suggests almost the same categories: modernism traditionalism, radical islamism, and neo-modernism. neo-modernism, similar to neo-traditionalist inclinations, aims to bridge traditionalism and modernism. aseas 11(2) | 219 claudia seise laffan, 2011). it is in different places around indonesia, especially in the thousands of local boarding schools, or pesantren, and informal study circles as well as in the family where islamic knowledge is transmitted and learned (bruinessen, 1994, 2008; hadar, 1999; lukens-bull, 2005; madjid, 1985; srimulyani, 2012). palembang is the fourth largest city in indonesia. it is located in the province of south sumatra. historically, we can find three different teachings of islam in palembang. the first were the shattariyyah teachings, which were similar to those found in java, which combined javanese mysticism with islam. the second consisted of the sammaniyah tarekat and what azra (2004) describes as neo-sufism which, compared to the shattariyyah teachings from java, placed a stronger emphasis on the observance of shari’ah. these teachings, which included the thoughts of scholars like al-palembani (probably died 1789)3, and teachings that were largely based on the perspectives of al-junayd (died 909/10), al-qushayri (986-1072), and al-ghazali (1058-1111), were sponsored by the palembang sultanate in the 18th century (azra, 2004). they basically replaced the shattariyyah teachings. the third type of teachings of islam found in palembang are the teachings and practices brought by hadhrami migrants, who claim to be descendant of the prophet muhammad, referred to as alawiyin. they came to palembang before the founding of the indonesian nation in 1945, mainly in the 19th and early 20th century. however, migration on a large scale started already in the middle of the 18th century. with the founding of the nation-states, hadhrami migration to southeast asia came to a halt (slama, 2005). until today, the islamic practices and teachings observed by the alawiyin are very similar to the islamic practices found in the hadhramaut in contemporary yemen. these include annual islamic festivities like the maulid or ziarah (alatas, 2008, 2014, 2016), as well as personal islamic practices like dzikir and social practices like, for example, the strict separation of men and women and a gendered division of the public and domestic domains (slama, 2012). it is important to note that historically, hadhrami migrants played an “important role in the growth of the tradition of islamic learning in the region”, and “encouraged the sultans of palembang to pay special attention to religious matters” (azra, 2004, p. 112). this influence of the hadhrami migrants on the sultans of palembang resulted in the acceptance and spread of the shari’ah based neo-sufism, which is very similar to the islamic understanding adhered to by hadhrami migrants and which, until today, is taught, learned, and practiced by the majority of palembang muslims. this is why the islamic tradition of the alawiyin, the descendants of former migrants, plays the second major role in established islamic practices in the city of palembang. for the alawiyin, the religious and societal life in the hadhramaut is regarded as religiously exemplary (slama, 2005), and for the majority of the traditional, non-alawiyin muslim community in palembang (excluding different reformist movements, like the irsyadis), the alawiyin are considered as religious examples. ustad taufiq hasnuri, for example, a non-alawiyin scholar in palembang, always refers to his alawiyin teachers 3 historically, palembang is home to several well-known so-called jawi scholars. the most famous of them is probably shaykh abdul samad al-palembani, written as al-falembani in arabic sources. his most famous work in the archipelago is probably his hidayah al-salikin, which was written in jawi malay (malay with arabic letters), and is an explanation and commentary of imam al-ghazali’s bidayah al-hidayah. his hidayah al-salikin is still read in different study circles around palembang. 220 | aseas 11(2) women remembering the prophet’s birthday and praises their good character, piety, but also their lineage as descendants of the prophet muhammad. ustad kailani, a lecturer from the islamic state university in palembang who passed away in 2017, expressed similar praise. besides the adoption of shafi’i fiqh, one of the four legal schools of islamic law, different islamic rituals and practices are adopted from the tradition of the alawiyin in palembang and incorporated into everyday life. one example is the celebration of maulid, the prophet’s birthday, which has been extended, consisting of festivities lasting over 40 days. another important ritual introduced by the alawiyin community is the ziarah kubro. while maulid is a celebration in which men and women take part, although at separate events, ziarah kubro is traditionally for men only. ziarah kubro has been initiated by the alawiyin community, but now involves different layers of society. it includes the visitation of the tombs of mostly local ulama who descended from the prophet muhammad, but also of non-alawiyin ulama, and the palembang royal family. ziarah kubro, like the maulid, is an outreach dakwah (islamic proselytization) activity by the alawiyin community toward the general non-alawiyin palembang muslim community. at the same time, it is an activity that unites palembang muslims through their religious heritage, the ulama, that shaped the islamic teachings and interpretations found in palembang. in addition, it is a strengthening and reinforcement of cultural practices from hadhramaut, where ziarah and hawl (also haul, i.e. annual visits to the tombs and remembrance of the death of ulama and so-called saints) celebrations form established cultural and religious practices. celebrations of the prophet’s birthday celebrating the prophet muhammad’s birthday is a significant islamic annual ritual in muslim countries all over the world. starting around the 13th century, the collective performance of the maulid celebration has been widely practiced in sunni islamic countries. one of the main characteristics of this festival is the communal reading and singing of pious literature in both prose and verse. this literature is called maulid and is the source of the festival’s name. on a theological level, maulid celebrations have been subject to harsh debate throughout the centuries. until today, muslim scholars debate whether celebrating the prophet’s birthday is permitted or not and whether it is an impermissible innovation that muslims should refrain from. however, most mainstream sunni scholars consider it to be a good innovation, also called bid’ah hasana (gori, 2010). with regards to this tension, holmes katz (2008) remarks how one given ritual can be construed both as ‘folk religion’ and as following correct or ‘orthodox’ islam by different groups of muslim scholars and their followers. it thus reflects the different interpretations of islamic orthodoxy as well as accepted islamic practices. this discourse can also be found among the different factions of islamic thought in indonesia where maulid is both vigorously defended as well as condemned as an unlawful innovation (bid’ah say’iah). one group that opposes the celebration of maulid is the reformist organisation al-irsyad (jam’iyyah al-islah wa al-irshad al arabiyyah, or the arabic organisation for reform and guidance, founded in 1914), whose founders and members are hadhrami arabs who do not trace their genealogies to the prophet muhammad. they are not referred to as alawiyin and criticize the alawiyin for their traditional religious practices (slama, 2005). a whole body of contemporary popular literature has developed around aseas 11(2) | 221 claudia seise this topic in indonesia and regularly fills the pages of different islamic magazines. in the case discussed below, the maulid celebration is considered to be a good innovation and, at the same time, belongs unquestionably to the islamic orthodoxy and orthopraxy of the majority of the muslim population in palembang. different places throughout the muslim world celebrate the prophet’s birthday differently, often incorporating local culture(s) and traditions and special needs of the practitioners. a study by holmes katz (2008) of maulid performances by women in sanaa, yemen, reveals that women have special demands in their expression during the celebrations. an interesting account of the incorporation of local traditions in a maulid is also given in hamdani’s (2012) article about the celebration of maulid in cirebon, west java, where slametan (ritual feast) and sekaten (traditional festival) form important parts of the celebration, similar to the official maulid celebrations held by the kraton – the sultan’s palace – in yogyakarta. sila (2015) provides another detailed account of local maulid celebrations in south sulawesi and links them to the spiritual inclination of the local alawin community to tasawwuf (sufism) and argues that they celebrate maulid to obtain union with allah. according to sila (2015), the celebration of maulid in south sulawesi can be traced back to the historical figure of sayyid jalaluddin al-‘aidid from hadhramaut, whose descendants still live in cikoang and ujung pandang in south sulawesi and jakarta. the link to tasawwuf could also be observed in the celebration of maulid in palembang, especially among people belonging to the ba’ alawi tarekat. the most widespread, and according to van bruinessen (1998) “the most popular text throughout the archipelago, second only to the qur’an itself ” (p. 1), is the maulid text known as barzanji. it is read not only in celebrations of the prophet muhammad’s birthday on the 12th of the islamic month rabiul awal, but it is also used for other important occasions throughout the islamic year as well as life cycle ceremonies. there are, however, numerous other maulid texts, some more popular than others, including the syaraful anam (written by syihabuddin ahmad al-hariri), ad-dibai (written by abdurrahman ad-diba’i), al-azabi (written by mohammad al-‘azabi), and simthud durar (written by habib ali bin muhammad al-habshi). all of these texts can be seen as united by their shared description of the prodigies that are connected to events before and immediately after the birth of the prophet muhammad. in addition, they recount certain episodes from the prophet’s biography, for example the miraculous night flight from mecca to jerusalem and the ascent to heaven known as isra miraj. other indispensable elements are the praises to the prophet in the form of so called sholawat. in addition, gori (2010) argues that maulid texts convey a “very refined theological message” (p. 52), which is the assertion that the light of the prophet muhammad was created by allah before the entire universe was created. after the creation of the world, the light of the prophet muhammad passed through several generations of different prophets until it was finally manifested in the prophet muhammad himself. celebrating maulid in palembang traditionally, the center of the maulid celebrations has been the mesjid agung, the main mosque in the administrative and economic center of palembang. celebrations of maulid among the alawiyin have existed side by side with the centralized celebration in the mosque. however, for over 20 years, maulid celebrations have been held at 222 | aseas 11(2) women remembering the prophet’s birthday various locations, mosques, and private homes over a period of 40 days4. the driving force behind this extension of festivities is the young generation of alawiyin living in palembang through their organization majelis maulid arba’in. translocal connections with their ancestor’s homeland in yemen play a crucial role in the valorization of maulid. the majlis maulid arba‘in organizes the maulid celebrations for both men and women. women usually gather in the morning before noon, while men celebrate in the evenings. celebrations are strictly divided according to gender lines, and as i will explain in the following, this imposed separation is the only way for many women, especially the sharifat, to partake and express their religious emotions during these celebrations. as a hypothesis, i also suggest that celebrations serve as a tool to safeguard traditional alawiyin identity. in palembang, the community of alawiyin claim to be 39th or 40th generation descendants of the prophet muhammad via their paternal lineage and consider themselves as belonging to the ahlul-bait, or the family of the prophet muhammad. for the ‘arab community’ in palembang, which is how they are referred to by the local population, the month of the prophet’s birthday is a time of reverence, remembrance, and intense community activity. for them, apart from being a religious and spiritual ritual, celebrating maulid bears the meaning of their special relationship to the prophet muhammad and his family. commemorating maulid is a way to express their love and longing for the prophet as well as a way to strengthen the spirit of their islamic practice. it is likewise a time for the community to come together and to enjoy the festive atmosphere. however, these celebrations are also used to express alawiyin identity. when i asked habib mahdi why alawiyin in palembang celebrated the maulid for 40 consecutive days while traditionally it is celebrated on the prophet’s birthday only, his first explanation was that the number 40 has a special significance in islam: in islam the number 40, as some muslims have understood it, can be considered a sacred number (angka kermat). and there exist many signs from the prophet that the number 40 has indeed a special meaning. for example, one hadith explains the stages through which a fetus develops in the mother’s womb. it is in steps of 40 days. in addition, there are several hadith that explain that any good deed that is done consecutively for 40 days will become a part of that person (akan meresap ke dalam dirinya). this inspired our young people and their teachers to conduct the 40 days of maulid. . . . most of the attendees of the nightly maulid celebrations are young people, usually around one thousand of them. so, with the 40 days of maulid celebrations, listening to the life story of the prophet muhammad again and again, we hope that the prophet will become the idol, the model example (uswatun hasanah) to our young people. . . . our goal is packaged in the form of these celebrations, so that it is more appealing. habib mahdi continued to explain that what i translate as ‘goal packaging’ is actually something taught by the auliyah (the friends of allah) and earlier islamic scholars. by packaging one’s goal in an interesting event, habib mahdi argues, it is easier to attract the young generation. while religious seminars, discussions, or study circles 4 according to local sources, it was habib umar bin ahmad syahab who instructed his student habib muhammad rafiq al-kaff to start conducting the 40 day maulid celebrations in the year 1995. interestingly, the 40 day maulid celebration has spread to other parts of indonesia as well. aseas 11(2) | 223 claudia seise are less frequented, well-packaged dakwah activities reach not only the younger generation but most lay muslims in indonesia. women celebrating maulid throughout the centuries, maulid celebrations have always attracted women to participate. because of the traditionally strict gender separation in many muslim majority countries, muslim women used to celebrate maulid amongst themselves, often in domestic ceremonies. in syria, for example, the observance of a women’s maulid can be traced back to the 15th century (holmes katz, 2008). maulid celebrations, holmes katz (2008) argues, “sidestepped issues of ritual purity and mosque access [and this] provided a religiously meaningful framework for women’s sociability” (p. 468). apart from issues of ritual purity, i argue, that women-only celebrations open up the possibility for a less restricted freedom of movement in terms of covering the aurat5 as well as bodily expressions that would usually be considered inappropriate in mixed gender celebrations in an islamic environment. therefore, the importance of a religious space of their own incorporates the need for spiritual, emotional, and physical expressions within an environment that exists within the boundaries of shari’ah compliance and established traditions. i argue that, similar to how saba mahmood (2012, p. xv) describes pious subjects and the relationship between outward bodily acts (including rituals, liturgies, and worship) and inward belief (state of the soul), the women who attended the female-only maulid celebrations in palembang could express the state of their soul and their emotions because the outward prerequisites of being screened from any male attention enabled them to express that state through bodily actions. in palembang. the taxi follows a long muddy road. it has rained, and part of the lane is flooded. to my right and left the rainwater has formed small lakes. the taxi driver grumbles that this place is where the jin dispose of their children. this is a common expression in palembang for a place that we might describe as being somewhat at the end of civilization. at the end of the lane is an archway bearing the phrase ‘rubath al muhibbien’. this is the entrance to an islamic boarding school (pesantren) founded by a local alawiyin ulama with the name habib umar bin abdul aziz. this is the first location for this year’s celebration of the prophet muhammad’s birthday among the alawiyin community. it is the 15th of january 2014, the 13th day of the islamic month of rabiul awal and one day after the actual birthday. today marks the maulid celebration reserved especially for women. no men are allowed. it was the day before that men flocked to the pesantren to celebrate their prophet’s birthday. while women were allowed, their celebrations were confined to a separate building. simple music and the beating of hand drums can already be heard. outside of the actual location of the celebration is the only place where some men can be seen, directing visitors and cars. closer to the location young women with face veils stand lined up to greet each individual visitor. . . . most of them wear 5 aurat is the part of the women’s body that has to be covered according to islamic teachings. this is usually everything except face and hands. according to the hanafi school of law, feet are also excluded. the covering of the face with a veil or niqab is subject to debate across the different schools of law and thought. 224 | aseas 11(2) women remembering the prophet’s birthday a black dress with a colorful headscarf. i, instead, wear a long beige dress and a light rosé colored headscarf. one of my male informants, a lecturer at the local university who is closely affiliated with the alawiyin community, has told me that it is proper to wear white during the maulid celebration.6 the atmosphere is rather informal and women are still chatting with their neighbors and distributing snacks among the children. but suddenly, all women rise to their feet, raising their hands in a prayer pose, some still holding the small recitation book, some holding a little child. it is the climax of the celebration. praises to the prophet muhammad (sholawat) as well as prayers are recited for about five minutes. some women sway right and left, some raise their hands above their head, while others close their eyes and sway back and forth. whereas some women were still talking earlier, in these moments full concentration is given to the text, as every moment is cherished. some women have tears running down their cheeks. it is a very special moment, the love for the prophet muhammad flowing into the unseen, and also touching my heart. i argue that these moments were a time of controlled ecstasy during which women were able to express their religious emotions, their love for the prophet, or simply their sympathy for the musical rhythms of the ceremony without the worry that they would displease allah by opening their aurat in front of men outside of their family, or with physical movements that are otherwise frowned upon in the public sphere. only due to the historically cultivated practice of gender separation, which is still widely practiced among the alawiyin community in palembang, did the female attendees feel comfortable to express their inward state and emotions through bodily expressions. ibu7 sara, an attendee at the maulid, confirmed: “i feel very comfortable here at the maulid. i can move freely. only women are here. that is why i feel comfortable to dance a little bit (karena itu saya enak joget-joget sedikit.)”. another woman, ibu maja, told me that: “here at the maulid are only women. i don’t have to feel ashamed (malu) to express my true feelings”. she further explained that she is not used to attend events where men and women gather together. “in our tradition we don’t mix (tidak campur)”, she added. when i asked her why, ibu maja explained that allah does not like us to mix with non-relative men. in addition, i could observe that several women who had arrived at the maulid celebrations with their faces covered removed their niqab after they felt safe that no man could see them. the peak of the maulid, which was marked by the standing up (qiyyam) of the attendees in honor of the prophet’s birth, was at the same time the ceremony’s closing point. after the singing of the maulid, the female students of the pesantren performed a short play telling the story of asma, the daughter of the prophet’s companion abu bakr. a woman next to me explained that the story of asma was supposed to remind the women that even in difficult times one should always turn to allah. before the meal was served an ustadzah8 talked about the importance of the maulid celebrations and their significance for a person’s spiritual growth. 6 it seems that my informant was not aware of the fact that it is only men who wear white during the celebration, and that women traditionally wear black, following the example of the prophet’s daughter fatima. 7 the indonesian term ibu (literally mother), is used to honorably address elderly women. 8 ustadzah is the female form of ustad and stands for a person considered an islamic teacher or scholar. aseas 11(2) | 225 claudia seise the second maulid celebration i attended was held in a huge private home in the center of palembang owned by an alawiyin family. the building reflected the wealth of its residents. the sequence of events was similar to the first celebration except that the play was omitted. the women whom i met during this event were the same as at the first location. three elderly women were reading the surah yasin, the part of the qur’an that is considered to be its heart and that is traditionally read in indonesia at different life cycle ceremonies, on thursday nights, and at other important events. it is supposed to bring special blessings (barokah) to the attendees as well as to the event. during this maulid, i could observe an additional ritual that was not practiced during the previous maulid celebration. during the qiyyam (standing up), several young women distributed perfume and small fragrant cut flowers to the visitors. upon my inquiry, a fellow visitor, ibu tini, explained that the qiyyam is the peak of the maulid and at the same time is the deepest expression of love for the prophet muhammad. further, because the prophet muhammad is known to have particularly liked fragrant perfumes, it is good adab (good etiquette) to apply perfume while reading sholawat and performing doa. religious emotions, haya, and expressions of alawiyin identity religious emotions and the bodily expressions connected to them played an important part in the sharifat’s celebration of the maulid in palembang. in their book the sociology of religious emotion, riis and woodhead (2010) argue that scriptural and theological traditions include religious emotions in the central objectives of religious life. this implies that religious emotions belong to a believer’s religious reality. moreover, they argue, that “neither the bible nor the qur’an – nor the hebrew scriptures – draws the typically modern contrast between reason and emotion, or subordinates the latter to the former” (p. 3). riis and woodhead (2010, p. 2) speak of the qur’an as an emotionally self‐aware and self‐reflective source [that] repeatedly insists on the importance of feeling, and contains intra‐textual prompts on the emotions that it is intended to inspire. ‘believers’, it says, ‘are those who, when god is mentioned, feel a tremor in their hearts, and when they hear his signs rehearsed, find their faith strengthened, and put (all) their trust in their lord’ (see qur’an 8: 2). religious emotions such as those described above, like love for the prophet muhammad, and the bodily expressions connected to it, such as tears and closed eyes while swaying back and forth, belong to the religious reality, tradition, and teachings of the muslim women who attend the maulid celebrations in palembang. in further reference to riis and woodhead (2010), the love for the prophet muhammad that was expressed during the maulid celebrations described above in the form of ecstatic praying (doa), tears, heartfelt praising of the prophet (sholawat), and the use of fragrance can be linked to the islamic principle expressed in the islamic teachings about loving the prophet. it is said that a muslim should love the prophet muhammad more than his or her father, mother, or children and even more than 226 | aseas 11(2) women remembering the prophet’s birthday himor herself; this love brings a believer closer to allah.9 therefore, the different emotions that were expressed and felt by the women during the maulid celebrations were just as personal as they were expected from them by the emotional regime inherent in the islamic teachings they have internalized. i further argue that the need for a women-only environment to be able to express these religious emotions reflects the deeply inculcated sense of piety (taqwa) and value of modesty/shyness (haya) among the women present at the maulid celebration. women like ibu sara or ibu maja, who have grown up in the tradition of the alawiyin community and who consider the strict segregation of men and women (which in indonesia traditionally is not practiced to such an extent) as belonging to their special status and identity as descendents of the prophet muhammad, would arguably behave much more reservedly and with much more haya in a mixed gender gathering. more likely, i assume many of them would not even attend such a gathering. therefore, to hold a maulid especially for women enables these sharifat to act without the feelings and embodiment of haya and piety expected of them in public spaces or at mixed gatherings. for example, i noticed that on the occasion when i and my husband visited an alawiyin home, the women of the house would not join us for tea and snacks. rather, they would hand the tea and snacks to their husbands through a curtain. it was the husband who then entertained us as guests. this again illustrates the strict understanding of haya that is expected of the sharifat. the women at the palembang maulid acted out the religious norms and values which they have come to internalize. this is somehow different from what saba mahmood (2012) discussed in her study on the politics of piety about how haya is acted out and embodied by the subjects in her study in order to cultivate and display a more pious self. the women studied by mahmood chose to actively learn how to embody religious norms and especially haya in order to become more pious muslims. the sharifat at the maulid gatherings in palembang, however, chose to attend a female-only event in order to avoid having to embody the haya expected from them by the alawiyin interpretation of islam. in a mixed male and female gathering they would be obliged to embody the haya. attending a female-only maulid celebration therefore meant that they were able to protect their piety while still expressing their religious emotions through bodily expressions. they did not feel obliged to conform to the strict haya expected of them in mixed gender gatherings. therefore, unlike the women in mahmood’s study who learned how to embody haya, the sharifat in palembang chose the female-only maulid event in order to avoid having to conform to the expression of haya expected of them. furthermore, i argue that to hold femaleonly maulid celebrations is in itself a sign of the strict haya and piety expressed by the 9 these teachings are based on narrations traced back to the prophet muhammad: (1) narrated via abu huraira: “allah’s messenger said, ‘by him in whose hands my life is, none of you will have faith till he loves me more than his father and his children.’” (hadith from the collection of sahih al-bukhari); (2) narrated via anas: “the prophet said ‘none of you will have faith till he loves me more than his father, his children and all mankind.’” (hadith from the collection of sahih al-bukhari). the importance of loving the prophet muhammad is also derived from the following qur’anic verse: “tell them, (o prophet): ‘if your fathers and your sons and your brothers and your wives and your tribe and the riches you have acquired and the commerce of which you fear a slackening, and the dwellings that you love, if they are dearer to you than allah and his messenger and striving in his cause, then wait until allah brings about his decree. allah does not guide the evil-doing folk.’” (surat 9, ayat 24) aseas 11(2) | 227 claudia seise alawiyin community, while at the same time allowing for the personal expression of women’s religious emotions. according to my observations, traditional non-alawiyin religious events in indonesia, even the maulid, are oftentimes held for both men and women simultaneously. however, inside the gathering, seating arrangements usually separate men and women. therefore, i propose an understanding of the embodiment and expression of haya and piety in the separation of the genders during the maulid celebrations in palembang as a marker of alawiyin identity. this does not mean that this expression of haya and piety does not exist in other groups and places across indonesia. however, in palembang, it appears to be both internalized (embodied) and instrumentalized by the alawiyin in the course of establishing and maintaining their unique identity. this hypothesis opens up a field of further research, which i will shortly touch upon below. unlike the majority of maulid celebrations around indonesia that read barzanji, a new maulid text from the above-mentioned habib umar bin hafiz was read at the maulid celebration which i attended in palembang. this shows a shift from the traditionally read maulid texts to lyrics composed by a contemporary ulama that is of the same descent, stressing the re-discovery of the alawiyin identity. essential to the alawiyin identity is their reference to the prophet muhammad, his daughter, fatima, his son-in-law, ali, and his two grandsons hasan and husein. as was explained to me by a woman who attended the maulid celebrations, alawiyin tradition dictates that alawiyin women wear black dresses during maulid celebrations, whereas men usually wear white. both dress codes were seen as following the sunnah, the transmitted practice, of the prophet muhammad. however, alawiyin women put greater stress on the example of the prophet’s daughter fatima who, they explained, used to wear black as well as a niqab – a face veil. that is why black is preferred, especially during the celebrations of the prophet’s birthday, as a form of love and respect. important in connection with the expression of the alawiyin identity among alawiyin descendants, is the rising consciousness about the unique identity of the alawiyin among non-alawiyin members of the muslim society in palembang. this includes following the alawiyin’s tradition, taking them as religious role models, and taking part in their religious events such as the maulid, the ziarah kubro, or even going on ziarah to the hadhramaut to visit the tombs of famous saints or scholars. conclusion i have shown that maulid celebrations initiated by the alawiyin community are an essential part of islam as it is practiced in palembang. women-only celebrations are held separately from those for men and serve the need for expression of religious emotions in an environment that makes women feel comfortable to express these emotions in ways that are acceptable in terms of shari’ah regulations or, in the words of an alawiyin woman, “what is liked or disliked by allah”. i have also argued that women-only celebrations appear to support the expression of women’s religious emotions, but which are also expected from them as one of the central components in their understanding of islam, since the expression of love for the prophet muhammad is part of the islamic practice internalized by the alawiyin. the sharifat in palembang 228 | aseas 11(2) women remembering the prophet’s birthday chose the female-only maulid events in order to avoid having to conform to the expression of haya expected from them in mixed gender gatherings by the alawiyin interpretation of islam and female piety. i further argue that to hold female-only maulid celebrations is in itself a sign of the strict haya and piety expressed by the alawiyin community, while at the same time giving space for the personal expression of women’s religious emotions. in future research, it would be interesting to further look into how the maulid and especially the women’s celebrations of maulid in palembang also serve to build and strengthen the alawiyin identity. it also seems that religious celebrations, such as the maulid, held by the alawiyin community in palembang serve to reinforce their special status as religious role models among the muslim population in this city, which they have inherited through their status as descendants of the prophet muhammad. finally, the maulid also serves to promote dakwah among both alawiyin and non-alawiyin muslims in indonesia. how this form of dakwah further shapes alawiyin identity in relation to the broader muslim society in indonesia is also a question for further ethnographic research.  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(2005). indonesian hadhramis and the hadhramaut: an old diaspora and its new connections. antropologi indonesia, 29(2), 107-113. 230 | aseas 11(2) women remembering the prophet’s birthday srimulyani, e. (2012). women from traditional islamic educational institutions in indonesia: negotiating public space. amsterdam: amsterdam university press. woodward, m. (2011). java, indonesia and islam. heidelberg: springer. woodward, m. (2001). indonesia, islam, and the prospect for democracy. sais review, 21(2), 29-37. woodward, m. (1989). islam in java: normative piety and mysticism in the sultanate of yogyakarta. university arizona press. about the author claudia seise obtained her phd in southeast asian studies from humboldt university berlin. her dissertation is entitled religioscapes in muslim indonesia: personalities, institutions and practices. she currently works as an assistant professor at the international islamic university malaysia. ► contact: claudia@seise.de acknowledgements research for this article was conducted during my time as a doctoral fellow (2012-2016) at the berlin graduate school for muslim cultures and societies and financially supported through a scholarship funded by the excellence initiative of the german federal and state governments, and by the freie universität berlin. aseas 2-1 donald k. emmerson: hard choices: security, democracy and regionalism in south-east asia aseas 2 (1) rezension / review emmerson, donald k. (ed.) (2008). hard choices: security, democracy, and regionalism in southeast asia. stanford: shorenstein asia-pacifi c research center, stanford university. isbn: 1931368139. xxi + 399 pages alfred gerstl1 aseas redaktion / aseas editing board aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften / austrian journal of south-east asian studies seas gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften / society for south-east asian studies www.seas.at since the mid-1990s, regional cooperation in southeast asia has increased even in a traditionally sensitive area: security. the first non-traditional transnational threats the association of southeast asian nations (asean) identified in the mid-1990s as priority issues were drug smuggling and terrorism. due to the distrust among the asean members, the concrete collaboration is still very limited; usually, it is bior minilateral rather than truly regional. nevertheless, asean as an institution has been on the forefront to pursue the notion of comprehensive security which includes conventional as well as non-conventional threats such as underdevelopment, poverty, migration, people and drug trafficking, infectious diseases or environmental degradation. yet asean has not been known as an organization that would actively promote democracy and human rights. consequently, the linkage between regionalism, security and democracy – and in particular how they interact – is a new research area. “hard choices: security, democracy, and regionalism in southeast asia”, edited by donald k. emmerson, director of the southeast asia forum (seaf) 1 dr. alfred gerstl is lecturer and researcher at the centre for policing, intelligence and counter terrorism (pict) at macquarie university, sydney, and editor-in-chief of aseas. 105 alfred gerstl donald k. emmerson: hard choices: security, democracy and regionalism in south-east asia aseas 2 (1) at stanford’s shorenstein asia-pacific research center (aparc), offers more than initial thoughts to close the existing gap. the ten contributions from renowned international experts also illustrate the wide spectrum of opinions in regard to how security, democracy and regionalism are – or should be – linked. in his introduction, emmerson establishes the framework for the following analyses of the difficulties asean faces. he argues that asean is confronted with new hard choices – hard choices in order to remain a relevant international institution but also to improve the sake of its peoples. thereby he follows the good american tradition of presenting concise definitions of all the highly complex and adjective-rich key terms. in regard to “security” he has – untypical for many us scholars – a very positive view of constructivist approaches. like the copenhagen school he believes that security is highly subjective: “anything that is valued can warrant concerns for its 'security' on the part of whoever values it” (p. 6). security encompasses for emmerson human, non-traditional and intrastate security as well as better governance and effective democracy. important is his distinction between state and human security: in the third world context it is indispensable as it is very often the state that endangers the security of its citizens, be it that the government is criminal or even murderous or that due to bad governance undermines the socioeconomic development. logically, from a moral point of view, a humanitarian intervention to topple the regime might be in certain cases the only solution to guarantee human security. in case of asean, however, this scenario is absolutely unlikely. first, the asean way stresses the founding principles of sovereignty and non-interference into domestic affairs. secondly, the majority of the asean members are non-democracies. theoretically, this might not be an obstacle for the promotion of democracy: as certain other authors argue in „hard choices“, the problem with asean is the lack of implementation rather than of existing norms. thus even if asean would have agreed on the draft version of the eminent persons group (epg) for the new charter with a surprisingly strong emphasis on human security, democracy and human rights, this would not necessarily lead to any changes on the ground. the asean charter, adopted in july 2008, is despite many shortcomings in regard to human rights and democracy a crucial step in asean's political and institutional development; it can be regarded as a kind of constitution that codifies asean's norms and rules. consequently, the majority of the contributions in “hard choices” 106 aseas 2 (1) alfred gerstl donald k. emmerson: hard choices: security, democracy and regionalism in south-east asia deal with the charter. even though the different views offer interesting insights, the analyses are sometimes too repetitive. concluding his introduction, emmerson is realistic when he claims that liberal democracy will not be the core concern of southeast asian regionalism. the furthering of good governance, human rights, the rule of law and human security, though, could be part of the agenda. in regard to asean's previous record, this would be a remarkable progress. jörn dosch (university of leeds) points out that regionalism is today much more complex than during the relatively stable cold war era: the security discourse has shifted from hard security (and anti-communism) to more people oriented approaches. the asian financial crisis in 1997 as well as the environmental damages, in particular the haze problem and the 2004 tsunami, have illustrated that security must include the human and individual dimension. human security implies at least debates on the necessity of human rights and increased participation of the civil society. dosch sees a clear link between security, democratization and regionalism: his argument is that democratization has opened the space for academics and civil society groups which advocate a more people oriented understanding of security. this participation has triggered a new notion of security – which, in turn, has “changed the way the asean states, both individually and collectively, perceive and respond to security challenges” (p. 62). even though asean's security discourse might now be more open and inclusive and the governments are much more accountable, the problem is the lack of implementation and of collective mechanisms to enforce the existing rules and norms. consequently, dosch remains very cautious: “(n)ational sovereignty still rules” (p. 90), and accordingly, realism, he correctly states, is still the dominant paradigm for the individual governments. the governments are also very pragmatic and use all possible instruments to increase their security – not at least economic development, as dosch, mely caballero-anthony (nanyang technological university, singapore) and david martin jones (university of queensland) claim but do not analyze in depth. rizal sukma (centre for strategic and international studies, jakarta), who is an intellectual key force behind indonesia's furthering of regional respect for human rights and democracy since the end of the suharto regime, concedes that the charter 107 aseas 2 (1) falls short of many expectations. in particular the idea of a human rights body raises many questions, and the civil society dimension is not as strong as many have hoped. no wonder, the charter reflects a typical political compromise, as termsak chalermpalanupap (asean secretariat, jakarta) writes: “what made its way into the text was not necessarily what was most desirable. more often than not, it was what no one could object to” (p. 129). thus the analysis of surin pitsuwan, the current asean secretary-general – a role that has been strengthened by the charter –, seems overly optimistic: in his foreword, he stresses that for the new asean “democracy and human rights are no longer taboo topics . . . . the days when domestic political controversies could not be discussed in regional settings are over” (p. xx). hence at least on paper, the legally binding charter enables asean to react timely and speak with one voice to resolve crises and conflicts. interestingly, both sukma and jones believe that the promotion of democracy would not (necessarily) improve security in southeast asia. on the contrary, the imposing of democratic procedures by asean could lead to resistance and even unrest in the affected member countries. this could even lead to the disintegration of asean, as jones fears, because the promotion of democracy would undermine the basic norm asean is build on: the sovereignty of its members. thus sukma postulates: “forcing democracy is something the association has not done, cannot do and should not try to do” (p. 136). due to the various domestic and international constraints the asean members face, democracy is for him, at best, only one means to strengthen regional security in southeast asia. to promote democratization, asean needs to start with introducing good governance and further the respect for human rights, sukma argues. to reduce conflicts in southeast asia, asean should use the charter “to institutionalize, step by incremental step, a nonpartisan, eventually enforceable, and regionally acceptable rule-of-law regime” (p. 147). based on an excellent analysis of asean’s institutional and organizational development since 1967, termsak chalermpalanupap is as skeptical as sukma. he believes that asean is not yet prepared to translate the high flying plans for an east asian community into reality: “asean was designed for confidence-building, not community-building” (p. 92). therefore asean needs to reinvent itself. stressing the need for rules and legally binding decision-making, he believes that the charter which is logically linked to the community concept can change asean in a positive 108 aseas 2 (1) alfred gerstl donald k. emmerson: hard choices: security, democracy and regionalism in south-east asia direction. in the realm of security, however, neither the charter nor the blueprint for the political-security community foresee a joint foreign or security policy. asean's security policy is still merely the sum of the ten national security policies. in her insightful contribution, mely caballero-anthony concentrates on nontraditional security threats like pollution or illegal migration which she believes have contributed to the changing nature of regionalism in southeast asia. in the context of the asean way, however, she demonstrates that comprehensive security is a statecentric concept. a major means to achieve state security is economic development. the asian financial crisis in 1997 changed this state-centric view, as it became clear how much the peoples were affected by the economic downturn and how closely economics and security are interlinked. jakarta's proposal for a security community and its championship for increased respect for democracy and human rights after the political liberalization in indonesia reflected a new spirit in the region, not at least among the civil society: the new transnational challenges demand regional responses and increased collaboration; the sovereignty norm should therefore not serve as an excuse. as the organization has since 1997 strengthened its belief in human security, “democracy and human rights, however controversial they may be, are becoming southeast asian regionalism's next policy frontier” (p. 207). a case study to assess asean's true beliefs in human security and democracy is myanmar. in his outstanding analysis of the political situation in asean's “pariah” member and how the institution deals with the crisis, kyaw yin hlaing (city university of hong kong) shows that the ruling junta is much more heterogenous than thought but united in the wish to maintain its power. aware of the lack of public support, the generals promote the concept of a “disciplined democracy” with a new constitution at its heart – a constitution that legalizes the political predominance of the military. for the junta, the asean membership, gained in 1995, was regarded as positive: as an instrument to broaden its international and economic relations and to reduce the dependency on china and the negative impacts of the economic embargo of the us. the benefits of the membership outweigh the criticism even asean partners do increasingly raise – as long as they do not actively promote regime change. for asean, on the other side, geopolitical reasons (the sheer size of the country and the length of the borders it shares with thailand) as well as the hope to increase its leverage to change were crucial motives for admitting myanmar. though these 109 aseas 2 (1) hopes have faded, and even malaysia, once the strongest advocate for myanmar's membership, is today extremely critical of the junta. yet, the argument that in case of an expulsion of myanmar, asean would lose even its limited leverage is hard to dismiss. in particular as china, india and russia are still supporting the junta politically, economically and militarily to promote their own strategic and economic interests. in order to ease the transport of oil and gas – to secure the access to energy resources is one of the main aims of the chinese leadership –, china is building a pipeline through myanmar, thus less oil needs to be shipped through the malacca straits. therefore the relations between myanmar and china can be described as one of mutual dependency. though, as kyaw points out, thailand and singapore also have strong economic interests in myanmar. as the author demonstrates, asean had some visible and less visible influence: highly acclaimed was that the junta abstained from chairing asean in 2007. also in regard to the promotion of human security asean was after the cyclone nargis in 2007 successful: unlike western relief organizations, asean relief teams could access “sensitive” regions. though, as emmerson argues in his introduction, the price for this success was a retreat from the criticism the singaporean chair and a few other asean members have uttered before. asean's traditional concepts of state security and respect for sovereignty and non-interference have therefore at least compromised asean's engagement for human security. in addition, on the international level myanmar's membership has proven negative for asean too. as kyaw argues, this negative aspect for its international relations is asean ś main concern – myanmar's domestic situation is not regarded as a danger for regional stability and security. under the presidents clinton and bush, washington has refused to deepen its relations with the organization because of myanmar ś membership. the european union uttered strong criticism on myanmar too but did not freeze the asia-europe meeting (asem). in the last years, “brussels” acknowledged the limited influence both the eu itself and asean have on the junta. conceding that a “constructive dialogue” with the junta is more appropriate than a total boycott, the eu has deepened its relations with asean. despite the new charter kyaw believes that asean lacks “both the moral authority and the political will to advocate democracy in myanmar” (p. 186). according to the author, the organization, is forced to react, because it does not have an idea of how 110 aseas 2 (1) alfred gerstl donald k. emmerson: hard choices: security, democracy and regionalism in south-east asia to resolve the problem. he recommends that asean should pressure the junta to increase the political space for civil society organizations and aung saw suu kyi in the lead-up to the parliamentary elections. the organization should also try to convince china to actively facilitate a political transition. though, kyaw concludes, that the most positive influence asean could have on the situation in myanmar would be leading by example: a democratization of the other asean countries. to sum up, “hard choices” offers sound analyses of the interplay of security, democracy and regionalism. donald emmerson is honest enough to concede that there remain “unfinished thoughts”, and exactly because of the existing controversies, not at least among the ten contributors, this book is an excellent starting point for further innovative research on this interlinkage. there are only two minor omissions. one non-traditional security threat that would have deserved a deeper analysis is terrorism. asean's counter-terrorism policies demonstrate its constructivist notion of security: regarding terrorism as a transnational crime, asean has in fact depoliticized terrorism in order to deal with it on an unpolitical technical level. this allows cooperation (of a pressure group) in sensitive areas of domestic politics. therefore all members could agree on the asean counter terrorism convention (2007), one of the few binding asean treaties, though not all states have ratified it yet. similar to asean's other counter-terrorism resolutions, the convention puts emphasis on a comprehensive approach to resolve the economic, social and even political root causes for terrorism; it is therefore surprisingly close to the idea of human security. another criticism is that the economy as a potential driving force for regional security or democracy is not discussed in more detail, even though certain authors stress the catalytic effects of the asian financial crisis in 1997 on the popularization of human security. the reviewer believes that the common view among many asean politicians that increased regional wealth and trade promotes regional peace and stability might be naïve and could be realized only in the long run. yet, as a specific security concept that shapes the actions of decision-makers, it cannot be dismissed that easily – even though emmerson ś correct counter-argument would be that asean as a whole lacks a common definition of security, except the need to engage all outside powers. the ten contributions in “hard choices” show that the new asean charter does 111 aseas 2 (1) link security to regionalism – but that it neither links democracy to security or democracy to regionalism. in addition, even though the charter views security in transnational, non-traditional terms it does not clearly define it in the sense of human security. the latter approach, however, seems conceptually well suited to link not only security to democracy but security to democracy and regionalism. the reviewer agrees with emmerson's view that it is the notion of security that asean adopts and the way it translates it into practical politics that will shape the future of regionalism in southeast asia. while a more people-oriented interpretation of security can be regarded as the political catalyst for the promotion of democracy and human rights in the region, regionalism is the concrete means to improve human security. 112 vom multilateralismus zum bilateralismus: das apec-treffen in sydney im september 2007 from multilateralism to bilateralism: the apec-meeting in sydney, september 2007 aseas 1 (1) vom multilateralismus zum bilateralismus: das apec-treffen in sydney im september 2007 from multilateralism to bilateralism: the apec-meeting in sydney, september 2007 alfred gerstl dr. alfred gerstl ist aseas-chefredakteur und forscher am centre for policing, intelligence and counter terrorism (pict), macquarie university, sydney, australien. aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften / austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 1 (1), 2008 seas gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften www.seas.at das gipfeltreffen der asia-pacific economic cooperation (apec) in sydney vom 7.–9. september 2007 bedeutete eine art heimkehr, hatte doch das allererste treffen 1989 in canberra stattgefunden. es war nämlich australien, das mit starker unterstützung japans das multilaterale wirtschaftsund handelsforum ins leben gerufen hatte. doch auf der anderen seite markierte der sydney gipfel gleich in doppelter hinsicht einen abschied: die ursprünglich als zentral betrachteten handelsfragen rangierten ganz unten auf der agenda, und bilaterale abkommen zwischen den apec-partnern ersetzten multilaterale. in erinnerung wird das apec-gipfeltreffen vom september 2007 den einwohnerinnen sydneys in erster linie wegen des verkehrschaos bleiben, das die schutzvorkehrungen für die 2� staats und regierungschefs aus asien, ozeanien, nord und lateinamerika in australiens einziger global city verursacht haben. nicht nur verschwand die innenstadt für eine woche hinter einem drei meter hohen zaun – sogar das abschlieβende feuerwerk vor dem opera house fand unter ausschluss der öffentlichkeit statt. selbst gipfelteilnehmerinnen wunderten sich über das ausmaß an polizeilichen kontrollen, welche die nahezu obsessiv mit tatsächlichen und (oft sehr) vermeintlichen bedrohungen der nationalen sicherheit befasste konservativ-nationale regierung angeordnet hatte. 86 aseas 1 (1) an greifbaren politischen oder wirtschaftlichen ergebnissen brachte der gipfel dagegen wenig. doch die erwartungshaltung ist bereits im vorfeld sehr niedrig gewesen, da auf internationaler ebene die freihandelsgespräche im rahmen der doha-runde der welthandelsorganiation (wto) nach wie vor blockiert sind. zum anderen scheint us-präsident bush politisch ganz vom irak-fiasko vereinnahmt zu werden. weiters durfte nicht erwartet werden, dass die assoziation südostasiatischer nationen (asean) vor ihrem dezember-gipfel weitreichenden handelspolitischen liberalisierungen zustimmen würde. und schlieβlich lieβen die bevorstehenden australischen parlamentswahlen erwarten, dass die regierung eher einen foto-gipfel als offene kontroversen über ambitionierte, aber umstrittene zukunftsprojekte anstrebte. zwar bildeten handelsfragen ein traktandum, doch auf mehr als ein bekenntnis zur unterstützung der doha-verhandlungen konnten sich die staatsmänner und -frauen, die über 40 prozent der weltbevölkerung und fast 60 prozent der globalen wirtschaftsleistung repräsentieren, nicht einigen. am konkretesten scheint noch die einrichtung einer apec policy support unit, welche einen schritt in richtung institutionalisierung des forums bedeutet. wie groβ deren spielraum sein wird, ist jedoch offen. erwartungsgemäß spielte der krieg gegen den terrorismus nur eine untergeordnete rolle, da die vereinigten staaten in ostasien traditionell eine politik des bilateralismus verfolgen. abkommen mit schlüsselpartnern wie singapur, malaysia, thailand oder den philippinen über verstärkte zusammenarbeit und informationsaustausch von justiz und sicherheitsorganen erscheinen der bush-administration erfolgversprechender als ein umfassender regionaler ansatz. angesichts des bestehenden erweiterungsmoratoriums war es nur konsequent, interessierten lateinund mittelamerikanischen oder asiatischen nationen, allen voran indien, weiterhin die mitgliedschaft zu verwehren. die politisch wichtigste vereinbarung betrifft den klimaschutz. erstmals akzeptierten die weltgröβten emittenten von treibhausgasen washington, peking und jakarta sowie australien in der sydney declaration richtwerte für den co 2 -ausstoss für ein post-kyoto-abkommen. doch konkrete quantitative zielvorgaben nannten sie keine – dies sei aufgabe der kommenden klimakonferenz der united nations framework convention on climate change (unfccc) in bali im dezember 2007, erklärten die politikerinnen. zusätzlich wurde das bekenntnis zu „mutigen“ klimaschutzmassnahmen durch die verknüpfung von klimaschutz mit wirtschaftswachstum und der sicherung von energieressourcen relativiert. der fokus liegt eindeutig auf der steigerung der energieeffizienz durch neue technologien, und auch die nuklearenergie leistet dazu laut der declaration einen beitrag. insgesamt ist die declaration nicht mehr als eine auf die nationalen wählerschaften gerichtete pr-aktion, die von klimaschutzaktivistinnen sofort entsprechend vehement kritisiert wurde. 87 aseas 1 (1) von konkreten resultaten im zusammenhang mit dem apec-treffen ist dennoch zu berichten. allerdings kamen diese im vorfeld oder am rande des gipfels zustande – und dann auch noch auf bilateraler ebene. beispielsweise hatte der russische staatschef putin vor seiner landung in sydney zwischenstation in jakarta gemacht, wo er mit seinem amtskollegen yudhoyono einen vertrag über einen kreditrahmen in der höhe von einer milliarde us-dollar für russische rüstungslieferungen – u-boote, panzer und helikopter – vereinbarte. doch die lukrativsten abkommen schloss ohne zweifel australien. so unterzeichnete premierminister howard mit putin einen vertrag zur lieferung von uran an russland. china erhält bereits jetzt, indien demnächst australisches uran für seine (zivile) nuklearindustrie. in den schatten gestellt werden alle vereinbarungen jedoch vom abkommen, das der australische woodside-konzern mit petrochina über die lieferung von verflüssigtem gas (liquefied natural gas, lng) in der höhe von �0 bis �8 milliarden us-dollar abschloss – der bislang lukrativste exportdeal für ein australisches unternehmen. bezeichnenderweise hatte der chinesische staatschef hu jintao seinen aufenthalt auf dem fünften kontinent im rohstoffreichen westaustralien begonnen und eine reihe von chinesischen wirtschaftsführern in seinem tross. dazu passte, dass – nahezu unbemerkt von der öffentlichkeit – australiens neuesten handelsstatistiken zeigten, dass china erstmals japan als australiens gröβten handelspartner abgelöst hatte. der rohstoffhunger des reiches der mitte lieβ australiens wirtschaft in den letzten jahren stärker wachsen als den oecd-durchschnitt. die wirtschaft läuft zwar auf hochtouren, der export von ressourcen wie kohle, eisenerz, gold oder uran boomt, und die arbeitslosenrate beträgt lediglich 4,� prozent, doch die steigenden zinsen belasten das volk von hausbesitzerinnen stark, weshalb sich die konservativen nicht auf ihren wirtschaftlichen lorbeeren ausruhen können. allerdings bezahlt canberra für die handelspolitische abhängigkeit von china einen zunehmend hohen politischen preis. während australien gegenüber den kleineren staaten in südostasien, aber auch gegenüber indonesien, zu dem traditionell gespannte beziehungen bestehen, menschenrechtsverletzungen oder den mangel an demokratie und good governance beklagt, gibt man sich gegenüber der regierung in peking auffallend kleinlaut. auch kevin rudd, der labor-führer und mutmaβliche neue regierungschef, sprach mit hu jintao in bezug auf die menschenrechtsverletzungen des regimes nicht klartext – obwohl er ausgezeichnet mandarin beherrscht. bezeichnenderweise beeilte sich howard auch, eine anti-chinesische stossrichtung der im märz 2007 geschlossene sicherheitspolitische quasi-allianz mit japan in abrede zu stellen. dieses bei einem treffen mit dem japanischen ministerpräsidenten am rande des apec-gipfels konkretisierte abkommen sieht verstärkte kooperationen bei der wahrung der regionalen 88 alfred gerstl vom multilateralismus zum bilateralismus aseas 1 (1) sicherheit vor, konkret will man bei der bekämpfung des terrorismus und bei friedenserhaltenden maβnahmen zusammenarbeiten, den informationsaustausch intensivieren und gemeinsame manöver durchführen. abgesehen von den jeweiligen bilateralen abkommen mit washington begründet dieser quasi-pakt für beide seiten die engste bilaterale sicherheitspolitische partnerschaft. bereits gibt es spekulationen, dass sie sich zu einem bündnis zwischen den usa, japan, australien und indien entwickeln könnte – mit dem unausgesprochenen ziel, china strategisch einzudämmen. so selbstverständlich es heute scheint, dass der fünfte kontinent – zumindest in ökonomischer hinsicht – teil ostasiens ist, so heftig umstritten war die ausrichtung an ostasien zur zeit der gründung von apec. es war die damalige labor-regierung, namentlich der schatzkanzler und spätere ministerpräsident paul keating, die ein forum im asiatisch-pazifischen raum schaffen wollte, das erstmals einen strukturierten und regelmäβigen austausch mit den ostasiatischen politikerinnen – unter einschluss der usa – ermöglichen sollte. dagegen betonen die konservativen traditionell das primat der sicherheitspolitischen allianz mit den vereinigten staaten, und premierminister howard fand nie einen unverkrampften zugang zu ostasien. ende der �980er jahre existierten dank der südostasiatischen staatengemeinschaft asean in südostasien, nicht jedoch in nordostasien multilaterale strukturen. nach dem ende des kalten krieges bestand jedoch ein bedarf nach kooperativen mechanismen, drohten doch auch in dieser weltregion durch den ost-west-gegensatz eingedämmte konflikte aufzubrechen. ein mindestmaß an regionaler einigkeit war auch nötig, um als ostasiatischer block in einer tripolaren weltordnung eine relevante rolle spielen zu können: ende der �980er jahre schien der internationale trend eindeutig in richtung der bildung von (wirtschafts-)blöcken zu gehen, wie das eu-binnenmarktprojekt oder die nordamerikanische freihandelszone nafta belegten. ob australien – kulturell fest im westen verankert und zusehends stärker amerikanisiert – politisch und wirtschaftlich zu ostasien gehört, war in den achtziger jahren auch in einigen südostasiatischen ländern umstritten. speziell malaysia und indonesien standen engeren beziehungen mit australien (und den usa) kritisch gegenüber. anfang der neunziger jahre lancierte der damalige malaysische ministerpräsident mahathir mohammed gar die idee einer binnenorientierten ostasiatischen wirtschaftsgemeinschaft (east asian economic grouping, eaeg) unter ausschluss der usa, australiens und neuseelands. doch selbst tokio, dem mahathir die führungsrolle in diesem block eingeräumt hatte, lehnte – auch, aber nicht nur – auf druck washingtons ab. dagegen war apec von anfang an als ein multilaterales, offenes und nicht-diskriminierendes forum gedacht, in dem westliche und östliche, industrie und entwicklungsländer im geiste von handelsliberalisierungen zusammenarbeiten sollten. geografisch ist die asia-pacific economic cooperation beim gipfeltreffen in sydney im 89 aseas 1 (1) september 2007 zwar zu ihren wurzeln zurückgekehrt. politisch haben sich die staatsund regierungschef aber von der ursprünglichen zielsetzung eines multilateralen vorgehens meilenweit entfernt. mit 2� mitgliedern scheint die de facto nicht-institutionalisierte apec einfach zu groβ geworden zu sein – und zu viele zu unterschiedliche themen finden sich auf der traktandenliste. für apecs eigentliche raison d‘être – die vereinbarung multilateraler handelsliberalisierungen in der region asien-pazifik – ist der spielraum hingegen sehr klein geworden, geht der internationale trend doch eindeutig in richtung bioder subregionaler freihandelsvereinbarungen, wie das china asean free trade agreement (cafta) oder australiens abkommen mit den usa oder singapur vorzeigen. auf regionaler ebene scheint es nach der einigung beim bogorgipfel �994 auf das ziel, bis 20�0 zwischen den industrialisierten, bis 2020 auch zwischen den entwicklungsländern einen weitgehenden zollabbau (auf unter 5 prozent) zu verwirklichen, kein visionäres projekt mehr zu geben. doch solange nicht eine neue generation von politischen führerinnen apec auf einen neuen fokus und eine innovative, zukunftsgerichtete politik, etwa im bereich entwicklung, umwelt oder klimaschutz, einschwört, scheint der wert von apec nur darin zu bestehen, als forum für den abschluss bilateraler wirtschaftlicher und politischer abkommen zu dienen. 90 alfred gerstl vom multilateralismus zum bilateralismus a friend in need. a friend in deed? asean-eu interregionalism in the light of non-traditional security crises in south-east asia aseas 3(1) 76 aktuelle südostasienforschung / current research on south-east asia a friend in need. a friend in deed? asean-eu interregionalism in the light of non-traditional security crises in south-east asia naila maier-knapp1 university of canterbury, new zealand aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften / austrian journal of south-east asian studies seas gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften / society for south-east asian studies www.seas.at the aim of this article is to assess the european union’s (eu) engagement with and within the association of southeast asian nations (asean) member states in the field of non-traditional security (nts) between 1997 and 2009, prior to the lisbon treaty becoming effective. the analysis concentrates on the eu’s response to five nts crises and the interregional level of interaction from a sector-specific governance and social-constructivist approach. these crises are the avian influenza, the political conflict and the tsunami in aceh, the bali bombings and the asian financial crisis (afc) in south-east asia. the case studies illustrate eu nts action and gauge eu nts actorness from a south-east asian perspective to substantiate the eu’s interregional interaction and external actorness quality in specific fields of governance in a region so far away. keywords: european union (eu), association of southeast asian nations (asean), non-traditional security (nts), interregionalism, actorness dieser artikel analysiert die zusammenarbeit der europäischen union (eu) mit den mitgliedsstaaten der vereinigung südostasiatischer nationen (asean) im bereich nicht-traditioneller sicherheit (nts) zwischen 1997 und 2009, also noch vor inkrafttreten des vertrages von lissabon. fünf nts-krisen (vogelgrippe, politischer konflikt und tsunami in aceh, bombenanschläge auf bali sowie asien-finanzkrise), die reaktionen der eu auf diese, sowie die entsprechenden interaktionen auf der interregionalen kooperationsebene stehen im mittelpunkt der analyse, welche einen sozialkonstruktivistischen und sektorspezifischen governance-ansatz verfolgt. die fallstudien legen die nts-aktivitäten der eu dar und bieten eine einschätzung ihrer akteursqualität aus südostasiatischer perspektive. des weiteren wird versucht, die qualität der interregionalen europäisch-südostasiatischen interaktionen und der eu-akteursqualität in ausgewählten governance-bereichen in einer derart weit entfernten region darzustellen. schlagworte: europäische union (eu), vereinigung südostasiatischer nationen (asean), nichttraditionelle sicherheit (nts), interregionalismus, akteursqualität 1 naila maier-knapp is phd candidate at the national centre for research on europe (ncre), university of canterbury, new zealand. contact: nnk10@uclive.ac.nz http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ aseas 3(1) 77 introduction i believe that the eu and asia, and asean in particular, have continued to build upon a warm and enduring friendship, based on shared values and interests and common understanding. and i remain convinced, that over the longer term, the solid foundations of this lasting friendship may prove to have been a much better basis on which to construct a stronger future economic partnership, rather than a sudden whirlwind romance leading to a potentially equally quick and acrimonious divorce! (o’sullivan, 2006, pp. 9-10) solidarity, partnership and friendship are among the many terms in the european union’s (eu) rhetoric towards the association of southeast asian nations (asean). the question here is whether this rhetoric of amity translates into factual and tangible interaction of a true friendship2. or are these merely flowery phrases that are actually not substantiated by eu agency beyond economically motivated action? is the eu a friend in deed and not merely a friend in rhetoric? to substantiate the eu’s actorness3 when south-east asia is in need, the analysis will focus on a selection of distinctive cases of non-traditional security (nts) crises in south-east asia that have had a devastating impact prompting external assistance. the article will examine co-operation in the multilateral frameworks of the aseaneu dialogue and the asia-europe meeting (asem), and allude to other multilateral institutions where the two regional organisations and their member states meet, to draw conclusions on actual european nts actorness and visibility and the interregional asean-eu level of contribution to tackling the crises. the asean member states constitute the sociological other of the eu’s interregional interaction defining eu security actorness according to their security conceptualisation. this perspective is adopted by the article and serves as the reference point for measuring the eu’s actorness. in this context, actorness is the eu’s quality of having an impact on and shaping the asean members’ state of affairs. it goes beyond mere action and is linked to the visibility and general perceptions by the sociological other. the succeeding paragraphs will define other central concepts and provide the setting for the subsequent analysis. 2 this term is to be understood as a rhetorical means and not as an ideal variable for gauging the relationship. 3 in this article the concept of ‘actorness’ is understood along the lines of jürgen rüland’s definition, which identifies an international entity as displaying actorness if it is identifiable and if it can aggregate and formulate its interests and implement these in its decision-making. naila maier-knapp a friend in need. a friend in deed? aseas 3(1) 78 interregionalism this article assumes heiner hänggi’s definition of interregionalism as the classification of a group-to-group type of interaction associated with old interregionalism4 (hänggi, 2000, p. 4) and extends it to eu nts interaction of today. this implies that the interregional actorness relates to both the eu as a political entity represented by either the member states in the intergovernmental common foreign and security policy or by the european commission (ec) in conjunction with asean member states. interregionalism can be in the form of the intergovernmental european security and defence policy (esdp) representing the eu in the case of the aceh monitoring mission (amm) or on a supranational basis building on the ec’s community competences such as in the shape of the instrument for stability or referring to the asean-eu joint cooperation committee. since elaboration on the internal dimension of the eu’s external policy-making in the following case studies would extend the scope of this paper, the author regards the interplay of the eu institutions and their involvement in the eu external policy-making procedures and the institutional problems associated with this process as given. in addition to the emphasis on the interregional dimension, the article will also take into account bilateral responses between the individual asean and eu member states in order to contextualise the interregional activities. non-traditional security in south-east asia, alongside the importance of traditional military security, nts is playing an increasingly important role in the light of the vulnerabilities of asean member states to unconventional threats (acharya, caballero-anthony, & emmers, 2006; caballero-anthony, 2009; dosch, 2003). nts is a relatively new security concept that has been introduced to capture the broadening and deepening of the security and threat agenda after the end of the cold war (buzan, waever, & de wilde, 1998). it describes security related to any form of threat perception that is short of the traditional state versus state pattern. accordingly, nts threats have a diverse nature. for instance, they can be ecological, terrorist and pandemic among others. in theory, 4 in general, old interregionalism is correlated to the first wave of regionalism linked to the european community’s trade and aid activities with regional groupings starting in the 1970s. for a detailed discussion of this form of interregionalism see, for instance, hänggi (2006) or söderbaum & langenhove (2006). aseas 3(1) 79 nts redefines the security referent and thus necessitates new non-military security approaches.5 in south-east asia the redefinition of the individual as the security referent is less prominent and paul evans explains the resistance to connecting non[-]traditional security to human security is declining, though some remain worried that at least the narrow conception of human security is either inappropriate to asia or will slow progress in getting state action in addressing the non-traditional security agenda. what is distinctive about many of the approaches to non[-]traditional security is (1) that they are ambiguous about whether the referent of security is the state or the individual and do not dwell on tensions between the two; and (2) that its advocates normally emphasi[s]e the state and state-centric means as the best ways of responding to these threats, normally preferring to address these issues within their own states rather than on a regional basis (evans, 2004, p. 277). despite the potential of nts to shift the security referent focus away from the state towards the individual in society and to open possibilities of non-military or civilmilitary solutions, there still appears to be stateand military-centrism regarding nts within asean member states. ongoing asean member state rivalries and the “omni-enmeshment”6 of external powers are among the prominent variables shaping a security environment in line with the realist paradigm of hard power and state centrality. given this security environment in south-east asia that revolves around statecentrism and hard security, one may wonder what security role there is for the eu to play in a region so far from europe. the non-traditional security opportunity nts crises present an opportunity for the eu to play a stabilising role in the region. this role does not draw on hard power and strategic actorness in the narrow military sense. instead, the eu assists, engages and achieves normalcy, security and stability predominantly through non-robust and civilian means that are not necessarily considered to be security instruments. despite some eu scepticism towards the concept, nts renders it possible for the eu to help asean member states with its full panoply of assistance measures. these range from development and humanitarian assistance to military assistance and allow the eu to be perceived as a security actor by the other side, although the european perspective does not rate all asean nts 5 this redefinition of the security referent and the general individualisation of post-cold war security have been described in detail by hoadley (2006). 6 a term coined by evelyn goh to characterise south-east asia’s security order, e.g. in goh (2005). naila maier-knapp a friend in need. a friend in deed? aseas 3(1) 80 categories as security threats (eu high representative javier solana, 2003). hence, one may observe that from a south-east asian perspective the eu already naturally behaves in an ‘identity-guided’ way; that is, it acts as an nts crisis manager according to a pacifist and co-operative rationale that is guided by the founding values of the eu itself (european union member states, 2007, title v, article 1.1.4). the friends the interregional partnership between the european economic community and the asean member states dates back to the 1970s. during the cold war, asean showed great interest in the then european community’s integrationist, economic and external trade qualities. back then the european community seemed less interested in asean. however, since hans-dietrich genscher’s inauguration as west germany’s foreign minister in 1974, the european political co-operation’s external dimension went beyond the middle east and discovered asia, and with it asean. the asia strategy of 1994 marked the eu’s post-cold war rediscovery of asia and asean. it was a comprehensive document that ranged from economic to political and security to cultural co-operation reflected in the various dialogue fora in which both regional organisations meet. in spite of the multitude of newly initiated dialogue fora and the expansion of the agenda, the quality of the specific asean-eu relationship had changed and become sidelined or rather a small puzzle piece in a pan-asian approach. in the european commission’s (ec) document on south-east asia of 2003, the ec explicitly stated that the “[p]olitical dialogue should, to the extent possible, concentrate on region to region subjects of interest and concern, leaving global issues to asem” (european commission, 2003, p. 13). in addition to this, another critical aspect is that despite the advancement of the eu’s relationship with asean and its member states to a multi-sectoral and multi-dimensional friendship that echoes traces of a common lifeworld7, one rightly wonders about the eu’s true colours; not least, because of its 7 jürgen habermas argues that the social actors who interact dialectically by seeking mutual understanding of the situation, intention, and action in order to agree to a reasoned consensus as the goal of the interaction must share a lebenswelt (lifeworld). habermas defines lifeworld as “the transcendental site where speaker and hearer meet, where they can reciprocally raise claims that their utterances fit the world (objective, social, or subjective), and where they can critici[s]e and confirm those validity claims, settle their disagreements, and arrive at agreements… speakers and hearers come to an understanding from out of their common lifeworld about something in the objective, social, aseas 3(1) 81 nebulous way of expressing its normative and material interests. the squabbles over myanmar, human rights, and eu double standards have contributed to an obscure picture of the eu as a value-lecturing economic actor in the region (asean member state official, personal communication, 21 november 2008). self-proclaimed role concepts ranging from soft power to civilian power sometimes appear incongruent with the eu’s external actions. eu officials themselves admit that the eu is not clear in its external relations. it is explained, however, as a necessary aspect for the eu’s external relations in maintaining its international competitiveness on the one hand while living up to its values and normative standards on the other (eu official, personal communication, 16 february 2009). the current partnership and cooperation agreement negotiations with individual asean countries – after the eu’s interregional approach failed – verifies that the eu is indeed to some extent consistent in projecting its core founding values (asean member state official, personal communication, 15 december 2008). however, these negotiations have also displayed the failure of the interregional dimension with asean and an alleged increasing flexibility in wording on the eu side. this alleged flexibility in wording does not signify the corruption of the eu’s core values but can be, for example, a different nuance in the formulation of eu values and principles (eu official, personal communication, 16 february 2009). interacting with the eu remains a confusing experience from time to time. in general, the eu’s external relations are a balancing act between interests and values and norms depending on the counterpart’s bargaining power, the issue-area of the dialogue, the type of dialogue forum (e.g. bilateral versus multilateral), and other elements the discussion of which would extend the scope of this article. important for this paper are not the individual elements but the mere premise that the eu considers that these materialist and ideational factors and their interplay to be vital in the eu’s decision-making process for the outside world. it appears that the official eu rhetoric of friendship and its insistence on ideational commonalities with asean are more forced than natural. in spite of the eu’s long-standing and comprehensive interregional relationship with asean that or subjective worlds” (1987, p. 126). when communicating, the actors make truth or validity claims and refer to the common lifeworld as their source of justification. depending on the degree of divergence of the lifeworlds, international actors will find it easier or harder to come up with a shared normative pre-understanding in order to establish an arena for meaningful interaction and a deep and long-term co-operation. naila maier-knapp a friend in need. a friend in deed? aseas 3(1) 82 has managed to survive the myanmar and east timor issues and other cases of ideational disagreements, asean-eu interregionalism has not progressed to a deep dialogue and channel of co-operation of major priority to either side. asean’s postcold war orientation has shifted mainly to the regional powers in its neighbourhood. in particular, china has been increasingly engaged in various bilateral, regional and sub-regional dialogue structures and co-operative projects. from the eu perspective, asean and its member states have always lived in the shadow of others, be it african countries when it comes to the eu’s development policy or be it, formerly, japan and currently, india and china when it comes to the eu’s external trade policy with asia. in the last decade, some asean member states have found it difficult to cope with the various forms of nts crises that have struck the region. these crises and, in particular, the tsunami of december 2004 have raised the eu’s awareness of asean and have displayed a niche where the eu as a latecomer can gain ground in the region. in fact, evans has already observed an increase in both european track 1 and 2 involvements in the region since 1996 (evans, 2000). the eu’s accession to asean’s treaty of amity and cooperation (tac), its non-strategic nature in south-east asia, its emphasis on the soft security paradigm and its possession of humanitarian, civilian and crisis management capabilities with which it can face a broad spectrum of nts threats make the eu, in theory, a suitable partner for asean member states in this field. moreover, nts crises within asean are ideal opportunities for the eu to provide assistance, display its multi-headed and -dimensional actorness, and exert influence as a new type of political and security actor and to demonstrate the real quality of this interregional friendship. true colours of a friend the eu is one of the most advanced regional organisations with regard to preparedness for transnational and nts crisis scenarios. the following case studies will outline the eu’s activities with and within asean member states after nts crises in south-east asia and analyse whether the eu has managed to translate its nts potential into tangible actorness. aseas 3(1) 83 avian influenza in the case of a pandemic influenza or other communicable and pathogenic diseases the regional comparative studies on pandemic influenza preparedness suggest that the eu model of co-ordination with the individual national plans can be exemplary for other regions. among others, the world health organisation (who) has been recommending the european model in terms of legislation, contingency planning, approaches to surveillance and veterinary services for the asia-pacific region (coker & mounier-jack, 2006, p. 26). the who and others believe that the asia-pacific and other regions can learn from the european model and experience. in 2003, an avian influenza outbreak threatened south-east asia. the individual member states were affected differently and effective national responses were dependent on the degree of development of each member state. regional coordination among the asean member states was marginal in the immediate aftermath of the crisis. international organisations such as the who were vital in tackling the crisis. in 2006, the who established a regional pandemic preparedness plan to complement national poultry control plans as well as human epidemic plans. until now, there are asean member countries such as vietnam which continue to experience this form of influenza (world organisation for animal health, 2009). there are a variety of factors ranging from poverty to culture to political institutions that aggravate the containment of, fight against, and the development of preparedness for communicable diseases in the majority of asean member states. in the case of the avian influenza, the eu possessed the expertise and resources to provide assistance to affected asean member states. in comparison to asean member states’ national activities that were mainly funded and supported by the international community, the eu’s direct support to asean member states in the form of ec and bilateral member state to member state assistance appeared to be more like a drop in the bucket (european commission, 2008). beyond the marginal amount of technical and financial assistance to affected asean members (e.g. the study on gender aspects of the avian influenza crisis in laos, vietnam and thailand; an eu experts’ delegation and financial support to vietnam etc.), the eu’s main activities to support affected asean member states were on the international level. the ec collaborated and continues to co-operate with various international partners naila maier-knapp a friend in need. a friend in deed? aseas 3(1) 84 such as the who and other third parties on aid for south-east asia concerning the avian influenza. at the international pledging conference on avian and human pandemic influenza from 17-18 january 2006 in beijing, the eu made available eur80 million mainly to affected asian countries. this amount was channelled through the avian and human influenza facility of the world bank. so far, the eu has allocated approximately eur413 million of the total international contribution of usd2.8 billion that is available for the international avian influenza crisis response (european commission, 2008). hence, the eu is the second largest donor. this case shows that the eu has played a crucial financial role in increasing the level of preparedness within the asean region and elsewhere in the world. the eu’s involvement with helping south-east asia predominantly takes place through the world bank. this alleviates the eu’s administrative burden and reinforces the eu’s preference for multilateralism. however, being part of a bigger international coalition degrades the eu’s actual visibility and actorness on site. specific examples of eu actorness in the form of dialogue, the provision of expertise, bilateral financial assistance and research in the region has been limited. the eu’s impact in combating the avian influenza has been virtually invisible for the south-east asian counterpart. furthermore, this case shows that the eu did not take full advantage of its issuespecific expertise, financial capacity, and goodwill to project its level of regional preparedness into other regions. this is linked to many reasons such as the patchy nature of the crisis itself, which affected the asean member states unevenly. in addition, the underdeveloped regional cohesion in the counterpart region also played an inhibiting role for interregional action and responses. development and humanitarian assistance the oldest form of european nts assistance, which is implied in the above case, has been the ec’s and the eu member states’ development policies which indirectly target nts threats. they pre-empt and defuse potential outbreaks of nts crises via tackling core vulnerabilities. in spite of the eu’s and its member states’ increased efforts of mainstreaming the development-security nexus in development policies, this “appears to be more of a conceptual battleground pitching the development aseas 3(1) 85 and security communities against each other” (young, 2008, p. 422). for the ec’s aid agency, europeaid, this linkage has not changed its primary objective, which is to achieve the millennium development goals (mdg) and not security (eu official, personal communication, 17 february 2009). arguably, the europeaid official refers to state-centric forms of security since the mdgs coincide with the concept of human security, which is a recognised security concept in the eu (european council, 2008). this shows that the eu is struggling to strike a balance between its commitments to comprehensive security and the securitisation of policy sectors that an efficient response in south-east asia demands. the programmes financed by europeaid provide a long-term dimension concerned with sustainable development and attaining the basal requirements for human security, eliminating the breeding grounds that contribute to nts crises. in addition to the ec’s development assistance, there are also other communitarian non-security policy sectors that have specific external programmes and both indirectly and directly address the long-term dimension in the prevention of nts crises. in accordance with the european security strategy (ess) “in pursuing [its] strategic objectives[, the eu] applies … the full spectrum of instruments for crisis management and conflict prevention at [its] disposal, including political, diplomatic, military and civilian, trade and development activities” (eu high representative javier solana, 2003). in rhetoric, the eu’s development policy and other policy areas complement the goals of the ess. this strategy paper and its follow-up document of december 2008 imply that the eu’s comprehensive understanding of and approach to security is linking it with other non-security policy fields beyond the development-security nexus. from a european perspective, this does not signify a factual securitisation of the non-security policy fields but the recognition of the interconnectedness of achieving stability and security via a cross-sectoral approach. for instance, the contemporary securitised debate on climate change has led to a linkage of climate change and international security whereas a decade ago environmental issues were mainly associated with sustainable development. in the environmental field, asean and the eu have been active dialogue partners on this on both informal and formal levels such as within the asean-eu ministerial meeting (aemm) framework. by 1996, the asem dialogue framework provided a second channel to the asean-eu dialogue forum, in which this topic could be discussed in a naila maier-knapp a friend in need. a friend in deed? aseas 3(1) 86 wider asian context between both sides. at asem 2 in london in 1998, the chairman’s statement said to take forward work in co-operation on environmental disaster preparedness including both short and long-term programmes, such as dipecho [disaster preparedness european commission humanitarian aid office], to strengthen environmental disaster management capacities in south-east asia to enable countries to cope better with the threats posed by disasters affecting the natural environment including forest (asem member states, 1998, para. 22). this statement indicates the eu’s view that south-east asian states are having difficulties managing natural and environmental crises. it emphasises the importance of the eu’s apolitical dipecho programme, launched by the european commission humanitarian aid office (echo) in 1996, in increasing disaster preparedness in the region. already since 1992, echo has been active in giving humanitarian assistance in south-east asia and reducing the impact of earthquakes, floods typhoons, landslides, but, also of political conflicts in the region. the tsunami at the end of 2004 was such an event where within a week echo had its assistance mobilised and, seemingly, the eu has inverted its low interest in conflict-prone aceh. tsunami and political conflict in aceh echo distributed financial assistance to un agencies but also to non-governmental organisations that were on site. on the day of the tsunami, the ec immediately granted financial support to the international committee of the red cross and activated the community civil protection mechanism which co-ordinated experts from various eu member states. within the first weeks after the catastrophe, the ec allocated humanitarian assistance to the who, the un children’s fund and other big agencies. the financial contribution was co-ordinated by the un’s office of humanitarian affairs to alleviate the suffering caused by the tsunami. by february 2005, echo had given eur103 million for humanitarian assistance (european commission humanitarian aid office, 2008). by april 2005, the ec had activated three rapid reaction mechanisms (rrm) for post-tsunami recovery. alongside the immediate humanitarian responses, the ec also aimed for long-term sustainable recovery responses. the ec and the eu member states were leading financial contributors to the multi-donor trust fund (mdf) of eur440 million (85 percent of the total budget for indonesia’s post-tsunami recovery was donated by the eu and its member states) for indonesia’s recovery aseas 3(1) 87 and an important expertise provider for sustainable reconstruction and increasing the early-warning capacity and general preparedness of aceh (delegation of the european commission to indonesia and brunei darussalam, 2009). the delegation of the european commission to indonesia and brunei darussalam states a total of €871.4 million has been provided and committed by the ec and eu member states for relief efforts, reconstruction assistance and the peace process in aceh. these contributions were provided through the mdf and direct bilateral aid through united nations agencies, government of indonesia and non-governmental organisations (delegation of the european commission to indonesia and brunei darussalam, 2009). here again, the ec’s substantial financial contributions did not translate into the adequate proportional actorness visibility that one would expect given the amounts involved. nevertheless, with regard to the ec’s flanking projects and the establishment of the europe house in aceh, the eu was able to make its mark as a humanitarian and normative actor committed to the province. in fact, according to the perceptions study of the eu in asia by the national centre for research on europe in new zealand, the indonesian public was the only society in south-east asia that perceived the eu as a normative actor and democracy promoter (national centre for research on europe, 2006-ongoing). parallel to the tsunami recovery measures, the ec as well as javier solana were supportive of former finnish president martti ahtisaari and the crisis management initiative who brokered the peace negotiations and mediated a peace agreement between the two conflicting parties in aceh (schulze, 2007, p. 5). the ec funded the mediation between the free aceh movement (gam) and the government of indonesia (goi) as well as the initial monitoring presence of the esdp in aceh. the tsunami compelled the goi to welcome humanitarian aid from outside, which among other factors facilitated the mediation process between the gam and the goi leading to the amm implemented by the esdp and five asean member states. the tsunami provided the opportunity for the eu to distinguish itself as a global nts player in response to the natural and political crises in aceh. the political conflict in aceh presents a different case to the previous examples of eu nts crisis actorness in south-east asia due to two distinct features. first, the amm drew on the intergovernmental esdp instrument. second, it was launched in response to man-made violence, namely an ethno-political crisis of thirty years with naila maier-knapp a friend in need. a friend in deed? aseas 3(1) 88 various impacts. since the end of the suharto administration there were two attempts at peace-talks and ceasefires prior to the eu’s engagement and both failed. in 2000, the switzerland-based henri dunant centre negotiated a humanitarian ceasefire and in 2001, the indonesian parliament passed a special autonomy law for the territory. this legislation allowed aceh to manage a considerable extent of its own affairs and defined a greater share for aceh of natural resources revenues. despite these developments gam and the security forces continued to make individual attacks. in a second attempt to stop the violence the henri dunant centre mediated the cessation of hostilities agreement between the goi and gam on december 9, 2002. its implementation was monitored by delegates from thailand and the philippines. both ceasefires negotiated by the henri-dunant centre were brittle and did not work since they lacked the genuine support of the antagonists. on the gam side, the ceasefires were only welcomed for the purpose of recovery. on the goi side, the indonesian military and the security forces did not have an interest in creating peace with the ‘terrorists’ and had managed to contain gam activities over two decades. in comparison to the previous peace processes, the advantage of the amm was that it was based on an actual memorandum of understanding (mou) that had been agreed to by both parties to the conflict as the basis of action. the mandate was clear and designed to monitor the demobilisation of gam and monitor and assist with the decommissioning and destruction of its weapons, ammunition and explosives; monitor the relocation of non-organic military forces and non-organic police troops; monitor the reintegration of active gam members; monitor the human rights situation and provide assistance in this field in the context of the tasks set out in points (a), (b) and (c) above; monitor the process of legislation change; rule on disputed amnesty cases; investigate and rule on complaints and alleged violations of the mou and establish and maintain liaison and good cooperation with the parties (council of the european union, 2006, para. 5.2). this then became the basis for the european council’s joint action. the mission has been completed and is considered to be a success since the mandate had been implemented in all its aspects to a more or less satisfying extent.8 most importantly, there is still peace in aceh and the region is undergoing a democratic transformation with the first parliamentary elections in 2009. the case of the amm is different from the previous cases because it shows the eu as the essential actor in operationalising and implementing the mou in an impartial 8 for a detailed assessment of the individual tasks please read schulze (2009). aseas 3(1) 89 manner and thus effectively addressing an nts crisis within an asean country. the impact of the eu during the course of the crisis is clear and of high significance postmou. the amm is the first case of the eu having drawn on its specific esdp toolkit and sending civilian troops to south-east asia whereas in the cases of the pandemic and environmental external co-operation, the ec has been the main force behind the eu’s action. these previous nts issue-specific cases show that the communitarian measures have been mainly in the form of verbal support through dialogue and financial and technical assistance. the amm shows a different facet of eu actorness in south-east asia because the eu deployed intergovernmental civil-military staff and capabilities to implement peace. the success of the amm and the clear contribution of eu nts actorness would have been less likely had there not been several transnational and nts crises in the southeast asian region. these crises have paved the way for this engagement by contesting the utility of upholding the principle of non-interference so cherished by asean states. in 1997, following the coup d’état in cambodia, acting prime minister anwar ibrahim raised concerns about asean’s adherence to the non-interference principle. he argued that in a time where national problems can spill over onto the regional level there should be a change of principle towards constructive intervention (haacke, 1999, p. 582). however, anwar ibrahim did not receive any support from other asean members. in june 1998, thai foreign minister surin pitsuwan received more support in his reassessment of the non-interference principle but could not weaken suharto’s influence and hard stance on this matter (haacke, 1999, p. 582). nevertheless, these instances show that prior to the tsunami a marginal, but nonetheless significant, erosive process of the principle of non-interference has set in. asian financial crisis (afc) the case of the afc9 was the key transnational and nts crisis which had devastating economic and financial effects on asean markets and led to the above critical selfreflection of some asean member state officials on how the contagious effect of 9 the afc can be considered as an nts crisis in the broadest sense with regard to the current global financial meltdown and the rising prominence of the concept of financial security. since the incidence of the afc, financial security has become an acceptable concept exhibiting the tight enmeshment of the socio-economic and security fields. despite its socio-economic categorisation, the afc and the international financial crisis (ifc) of 2009 illustrate that financial security is a concept linked to human security and the stability and security of a political entity. naila maier-knapp a friend in need. a friend in deed? aseas 3(1) 90 the crisis could have been mitigated. this implied an increasingly critical view of the normative core of asean’s modus operandi. the asean way of intra-mural cooperation and, in particular, the principle of non-interference were questioned in connection to the transnationalisation of stability issues and security threats. the afc broke out in thailand and became a contagious implosion of the financial markets throughout the south-east asian and the wider east asian region. in response to the crisis and complementing national, regional and international efforts, the ec and its member states channelled usd154 billion through international financial institutions (ifi) to support the affected countries (brittan, 1999, p. 492). this amount accounted for 18 percent of the total sum that was allocated to ifis. only japan provided more financial help in this crisis (brittan, 1999, p. 492). another east asian power that contributed to the recovery was china. its assistance was less financial and it continued to threaten south-east asia on territorial matters in the case of the spratly islands, but by not devaluating its currency it played a major role in upholding a certain degree of stability of the markets in the region (bowles, 2002, p. 239). despite the eu’s major financial contribution through the imf, concrete eu or asean-eu initiatives were scarce. the crisis occurred at a time when asean-eu interregional dialogue and co-operation were at a low-point because of myanmar’s accession to asean in 1997. alternatively, asem provided a channel of communication for the two sides to meet. at asem 2, the eu came up with the asem asia financial crisis response trust fund, a european financial expertise network and a trade and investment pledge (asem member states, 1998). furthermore, the kobe research project was initiated at the third asem finance ministers’ meeting on 13-14 january 2001 in kobe. in spite of these european signs of solidarity with asean countries and others in the region, these activities appear to be little more than a drop in the bucket. indeed, the eu has provided considerable financial support, but the imf and the world bank have been the visible actors. these organisations’ actorness is borne by the international community’s financial contributions and thus also by the amount given by the eu and its member states. eu-associated assistance and impact was visible only in relation to the asem framework. however, in this connection, the asian side considered the asem-related activities marginal because the eu’s visibility was limited by the world bank’s administrative control over the asem asia financial crisis response trust fund i and ii. ‘brand eu’ as a financial security and stability aseas 3(1) 91 payer in the region cannot be shaped if the eu contributors are only marginally involved in fund projects and are non-visible on site and only receive reporting. conclusively, the major visible actors which have influenced the recovery phase were the imf, the east asian neighbours, and the national authorities within asean. the latter have played a very important role in creating post-afc national financial preparedness and resilience. this post-crisis resilience in many affected asean member states was facilitated and conditioned by the imf. however, it was the protectionist measures of national authorities such as the malaysian government that among other reasons contributed to the relative low-key impact of the global financial crisis in 2008 within asean countries (asian think tank representative, personal communication, 10 november 2008). the afc clearly displays, yet again, that in cases of regional crises in a specific sector of governance and of international concern the eu deems it appropriate to act within the issue-specific multilateral and international framework concerned. so far, this paper has elaborated on the eu’s post-crisis security impact on nts cases in the broadest sense where, due to the policy sectors, the ec has been identified to be the major force behind eu actorness. this indicates that the eu and its member states are de facto on the right path in mainstreaming security and providing a comprehensive toolkit for nts responses to south-east asia. in view of the european council being the major body for external security and stability in the form of the eu’s foreign and security policy, additional cases of an eu intergovernmental response to that of the amm can shed more light on both the specific role competences as well as the interplay between communitarian and intergovernmental nts instruments. in this paper, the amm has been the only case elaborated, where the european council played a crucial security role. the following and final case study will highlight another nts case dealt with by national authorities and the intergovernmental mode of response. the next example is the impact of the bali bombings on october 12, 2002. bali bombings terrorism and extremism have been brought to the top of the international and interregional security agenda since the september 11 terrorist attacks. in spite of naila maier-knapp a friend in need. a friend in deed? aseas 3(1) 92 the usa having dubbed south-east asia as its second front on its war on terror, the asean member states did not want to succumb to american pressure and face any intrusion upon their national prerogative to combat terrorism and extremism. furthermore, the terrorist threat within individual asean states has been regarded as an ethno-nationalist concern (acharya & acharya, 2007, p. 80). the muslimdominated societies of malaysia and indonesia were initially reluctant to be part of the second front: notwithstanding their sensitivity about the us role in regional counterterrorism efforts, asean members such as malaysia and indonesia have been receptive to us assistance that does not involve direct us military engagement. after malaysia’s initial misgivings about the rmsi [regional maritime security initiative], which it saw as a pretext for us enforcement operations in southeast asian waters, it expanded cooperation with the united states and others... (acharya & acharya, 2007, p. 88). the bali bombings in 2002 and president bush’s visit to indonesia in 2003 were decisive in mitigating the resentments. since then, the usa, australia and a number of affected asean member states have been active in co-operating on the fight against terrorism and extremism. australia’s engagement is not least due to its proximity to indonesia and the high death toll of australians in the 2002 bali bombings, which left 202 people dead and 209 injured (australian federal police, 2008). the impact of this attack increased securitisation in asean countries and stimulated various intra-asean and asean member states-usa counter-terrorist co-operation projects addressing the strategic and operational dimension of the jihadist trend. the philippines, indonesia, malaysia and thailand became the main addressees of international counter-terrorist co-operation in south-east asia (us official, personal communication, 4 december 2009). in contrast to the usa and australia, the ec and the eu member states have taken a less direct approach in counter-terrorist-related activities with asean member states, such as efforts to improve border management and document security, interfaith dialogues, anti-money-laundering, and intelligence sharing within the frameworks of asean-eu and asem. any regional responsive action or declaration regarding the bali bombings would fall under the umbrella of the european council. in fact, one must admit that given the national centrality of counter-terrorism, the ec can, according to its restricted competence, only contribute minimal relevant funding and expertise provision and thus a truly interregional approach to this highly sensitive matter is aseas 3(1) 93 impossible and, in the light of the varying degrees to which asean member states are affected, inadequate. the majority of tangible european counter-terrorist assistance has been a patchwork from specific eu member states to specific asean member states. it has been, in particular, the british, dutch, french, spanish, and danish that have sponsored and provided expertise, for instance, for direct counter-terrorist training seminars and workshops.10 immediately after the attacks, the ec offered anti-money-laundering assistance under the rrm to indonesia. javier solana responded with a statement of condemnation of the bombings and on 18 october 2002, the european council published its conclusions on the attacks, which recommended ways the eu could assist indonesia but neglected human rights concerns. however, whilst the eu may well be correct in supporting the indonesian efforts to implement measures in conformity with security council resolution 1373, the eu should take account of the indonesian government’s very poor record in human rights and respect for the rule of law in the management of its internal affairs (gregory, 2005, p. 113). the response was limited and remained declaratory. this is unsurprising in view of the eu’s considering other regions such as the middle east and central asia to be the areas of priority in connection to terrorism and extremism (eu official, personal communication, 13 february 2009). asean-eu counter-terrorist activities are mainly long-term oriented and have been initiated after the fire-fighting phase post-bali bombings. they have been limited to specific niches that provide added value to other international counter-terrorist projects with asean member states. beside the asem and asean-eu declarations on combating international terrorism, verbal commitments, and interfaith dialogues targeting the cultural and ideological basis of extremism and terrorism, the socalled other eu or european activities are not necessarily to be regarded as distinct interregional or eu initiatives. they complement the american and australian western counter-terrorist projects with supplementary efforts consisting of bilateral euasean and bilateral member state-to-member state contributions. noteworthy also is the co-operation that has been sparked in the policing sector by the co-operation agreement between the asean chiefs of police (aseanapol) and the international 10 for further details please view e.g. the course overview of the international law enforcement academy (http:// www.ileabangkok.com), jakarta centre for law enforcement co-operation (http://www.jeclec.com) and the southeast asian regional centre for counter-terrorism (http://www.searcct.gov.my). naila maier-knapp a friend in need. a friend in deed? aseas 3(1) 94 criminal police organisation (interpol). it provided for a database-sharing project between these two police intelligence agencies and other agencies such as the european police office (europol). eu non-traditional security actorness and implications for asean-eu interregionalism the discussion of the case studies to show the eu’s true colours from an nts perspective has revealed that the eu draws on a vast range of supranational and intergovernmental, shortand long-term, responsive and pre-emptive instruments. the conglomeration of different types of action illustrates seven central features of eu nts actorness in south-east asia. first, the overall tenor of the case studies and other crises within the asean region demonstrates that the eu has tended to recourse to echo’s humanitarian assistance most frequently in response to these nts crises, but also to conflict-related humanitarian crises. furthermore, it emphasises the importance of long-term eu development assistance to defuse crises and pinpoints the different conceptions of security and development of the two regions. second, it becomes evident that the different interests and development stages of the various nation-states as well as the different degree of integration of the regional organisations limit co-operation. in general, one also has to consider that the logic behind eu actorness and co-operation follows a pattern of rationality which takes into account a number of action-inhibiting variables. for example, the eu policymakers contemplate the variety of existing multilateral fora, the global distribution of power, existing crisis-response measures on various levels, national sensitivities, and other obstacles that could impair any form of asean-eu interregional action. following this process of contemplation the eu then decides if and how to respond to crises abroad. third, it reveals that the problems of shared competences within the eu structure are also reflected in the eu’s external relations and that shared external representation minimises the collective actorness perception by the sociological other. fourth, since the eu is by definition multilateralist, the preferred framework of action appears to be within a multilateral framework on varying levels depending aseas 3(1) 95 on the issue and the spread of the negative impact. in most cases, the eu’s crisis response was limited to financial and technical assistance under the aegis of an international organisation specifically concerned with the issue-area. on the one hand, this alleviates the eu’s administrative burden and allows the eu to circumvent conflicts with the receiving country should the recipient disagree on the conditions of assistance. on the other hand, this weakens the visibility and actual impact of the eu’s actorness in south-east asia. the eu needs to re-evaluate its priorities regarding actorness and rebalance security and image-building costs and benefits. at the moment, it seems unable to translate its major share in technical and financial assistance into factual visibility, influence and power presence. it appears to be more a security payer than a security player, an assessment that applies to the eu’s activities in other parts of the world such as in the middle east peace process. fifth, the case of terrorism indicates the potential of the functional approach for eu nts actorness as in the case of aseanapol’s international co-operation. sixth, alongside the various eu efforts to promote indonesia’s leadership role in asean, the presence of the eu in aceh probably also contributed to the indonesian public’s perception of the eu as a normative power and democracy promoter. hence, increased on site engagement in south-east asia and the establishment of a permanent presence such as the europe house in aceh may enhance and differentiate the eu’s visibility and thus, its actorness. finally, the case studies suggest that asean-eu interregionalism in the field of nts is not an established layer in the pyramid of global governance, but rather a vaguely defined and blurry interface of the global and regional level. depending on the nature of the nts crisis the eu will choose its level of response. this has exposed the asean-eu level as a weak and declaratory remedy. in fact, the only case in which the eu managed to make a significant impact on the crisis situation and contribute to the strengthening of the asean-eu interregional level has been the amm. in this case, it and the five asean member states have managed to alter a situation of violence and high vulnerability to a situation of ongoing peace and reduced armament. furthermore, it ignited an enhanced asean-eu interest in deepening this interregional dialogue format. this was illustrated by the aemm agenda in nuremberg and the following plan of action in 2007 (asean-eu member states, 2007). the eu appears to have interest in the region and has become sporadically engaged naila maier-knapp a friend in need. a friend in deed? aseas 3(1) 96 in direct activities that reveal its presence and solidarity. however, the eu and its member states have not made any visible substantial impact as a collective actor – whether interregional or in any other form – in tackling the previously mentioned crises and in assisting asean member states to become more crisis-prepared and less vulnerable. as discussed above, in the majority of the cases, the eu is in a queue with other international helpers, and has not been able to set itself apart. it has distinguished itself as a major development player, which, from an asian perspective, is part of nts. however, with regard to nts crises, when vulnerabilities become aggravated to the point of being matters of life and death, the eu has not established its role as either an nts or general security actor in south-east asia. moreover, in most of the cases it took the role of a financial and flanking presence rather than an active shaper of the recovery. as partially listed above, there is a broad range from cultural to structural to materialist to systemic inhibitors that constitute this underachievement. the eu’s preference for international and multilateral frameworks when appropriate, the eu’s strategic geographical areas of priority, the interests of other actors (e.g. us american power politics), and the normative sensitivities of the counterpart epitomised in the asean way are among the most prominent reasons in the case studies. in spite of its overall sporadic engagement, this patchwork of individual cases of eu actorness is interlocking with the eu’s overall cross-sectoral external security strategy and does illustrate a specific, albeit restricted, type of eu nts actorness within asean after nts crises. the eu is an unconventional multi-headed actor whose concept of security is based on a comprehensive understanding of security and a soft security approach drawing on preferably holistic, multilateralist and non-robust instruments. the eu does not think in terms of power politics in south-east asia and therefore it is not really perceived as a traditional security actor among the leaders of asean member states. in their opinion, it possesses the security culture and means to become a recognised nts actor in relation to human security (former secretary general of asean rodolfo severino, personal communication, 24 november 2008). the dipecho programme, the eu’s involvement in the first-ever arf voluntary demonstration of response on disaster relief from 4-8 may 2009, the various arf seminars and workshops on nts such as the arf seminar to enhance maritime security from 5-6 march 2009, in surabaya (eu-indonesia), or the arf seminar on aseas 3(1) 97 international security implications of climate-related events and trends in phnom penh from 19-20 march 2009 (eu-cambodia), and numerous other nts-related activities of the asean-eu indicative lists of activities 2007-2008 and 2009-2010 pursuant to the nuremberg declaration and plan of action suggest that the eu has recognised the potential of increased actorness in certain nts niches. these niches are namely climate change and disaster management and emergency response. with particular regard to the asean-eu level, the nuremberg meeting has stimulated a dynamic that stresses interregional nts activities in accordance with the asean community blueprints. the lists of activities in the field of political and security co-operation indicate that both sides are building on the nuremberg momentum and are aiming to develop the asean-eu level to a meaningful dialogue sphere with tangible and not merely rhetorical outcomes that contribute to asean’s integration and, eventually, stimulate further co-operation and joint positions in other fora on the regional and global level: exploit the potential of multilateral fora 1.1.4. develop asean-eu consultations/cooperation in multilateral fora, including in the united nations and other bodies within the un system as well as in asia-europe meeting (asem), in order to strengthen the multilateral system and, where appropriate, to develop joint positions; and 1.1.5. enhance the role of multilateral cooperation in asia, including through the accession of the eu/ec to the treaty of amity and cooperation in southeast asia (tac) (asean-eu member states, 2007). conclusions in the light of the broad spectrum of responses to and cases of transnational and nts crises, the eu’s actorness manifests itself inconsistently, patchily, and on a case-bycase basis. in general, the vast and cluttered choice of prominent cases of nts crises in this article emblematises and reflects the ephemeral and sporadic nature of the eu’s nts interregional actorness. there exists ambition for increased interregional dialogue and co-operation on specific nts issues. furthermore, it can be seen that a putative area for increased eu actorness may be more hypothetical than feasible. on the one hand, it may be evidence of a lack of, or the mere rudimentary existence of, a common lifeworld that impedes deeper interaction. on the other hand, there are a variety of internal and external variables that limit eu nts actorness and these are more relevant than the asean-eu interregional level. internal and external naila maier-knapp a friend in need. a friend in deed? aseas 3(1) 98 hurdles need to be overcome on both sides for a more tangible and meaningful asean-eu interregional political and security partnership and friendship shaping global governance. furthermore, this prospect appears to be confined to the future exploration of co-operation within small niches of nts, on which the eu has already embarked. in the long term, the eu might then become more consistent and pronounced in its nts actorness after crises in south-east asia and be perceived as more than merely a regional model and fair-weather friend who in view of the success of the amm indeed can be relied on as a friend in deed. references acharya, a., & acharya, a. 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(2009). peacekeeping and peace-building: the case of the aceh monitoring mission. paper presented at the berlin conference on asian security, stiftung wissenschaft und politik, berlin, germany, 30 october 2009. söderbaum, f. & langenhove, l. van (2006). introduction. in f. söderbaum & l. van langenhove (eds), the eu as a global player: the politics of interregionalism (pp. 1-14). london: routledge. world organisation for animal health. (2009). update on highly pathogenic avian influenza in animals. retrieved 11 may 2010, from http://www.oie.int/downld/avian%20influenza/a_ ai-asia.htm young, r. (2008). fusing security and development: just another euro-platitude? journal of european integration, 30(3), 419-437. book review: hitchcock, m., king, v. t., & parnwell, m (eds.) (2009). heritage tourism in southeast asia aseas 4(1) 196 197 rezensionen / book reviews hitchcock, m., king, v. t., & parnwell, m. (eds.) (2010). heritage tourism in southeast asia. copenhagen, denmark: nias press. isbn: 978-87-7694-060-7. 322 pages. citation schiele, k. (2011). book review: hitchcock, m., king, v. t., & parnwell, m (eds.) (2009). heritage tourism in southeast asia. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 4(1), 196-200. heritage tourism is one of the issues most recently discussed within the tourism discourse. tourism influx in south-east asia and domestic tourism within the region has intensified in the last two decades. along with this, there has been an increase in listings of world heritage sites by unesco, and a more intensive awareness-raising of national heritage issues throughout the region can be discovered as well. these developments make this book a timely contribution to heritage tourism in the academic discourse. the editors who had previously collaborated on the book tourism in southeast asia: challenges and new directions provide more precise and up-to-date information on the topic of heritage in their recent book, entitled heritage tourism in southeast asia. the promotion of heritage for tourism issues by the states in southeast asia is ubiquitous. but what is heritage? what is promoted? cultural and natural heritage, an imaginary construct, is part of a wide political discourse and of the tourism industry throughout the region, and deals with the perception of the past, the transformation of cultural and natural heritage, and their adoption in the present. various scholars and researchers have contributed to the highly complex subject matter. the book is concerned with this complexity by providing analyses of different theoretical streams and explanations of many issues related to heritage tourism. the volume contains 13 chapters, 12 of them based on empirical research, an index, and a bibliography. the first chapter by the editors provides an introductory definition of heritage as a term and its connection with other problematical and arguable issues like identity, globalisation, management and policies, and its interrelation with nature, culture, and, of course, tourism. d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -4 .1 -1 6 aseas 4(1) 196 197 in the second chapter, entitled courting and consorting with the global, kathleen adams (chicago university) outlines the historical and colonial role of ke’te’ kesu’ in sulawesi, indonesia, the beginning of tourism, and how locals deal with and perceive their own heritage in the context of tourism. furthermore, this case study contains local, national, and global perspectives on the involvement of unesco and ke’te kesu’s fall from international celebrity as a tourism destination through its rejection as a mixed – both natural and cultural – site. in the chapter on reconstruction of atayal identity in wulai, taiwan, mami yoshimura and geoffrey wall (university of waterloo) point to the relationship between culture, identity, and tourism, and the atayal people’s identity shifts within various colonial periods, and how tourism can be of benefit for the indigenous group’s heritage. the theoretical framework of identity provided here is helpful for understanding the shifts in atayal identities. moreover, nick stanley (cambridge university) and michael hitchcock (university of luzern) describe the role and importance of ethnographic museums in indonesia and taiwan, and how the museums contribute to nation-building, but also in which ways they are instrumentalised by the two states. the ‘living museums’ as described in this chapter reflect a special kind of museum which is in “part [an] open-air museum” to educate visitors and in “part [a] theme park” to entertain – thus realising the “edutainment” idea (pp. 72-73). heritage tourism in south-east asia as a field of study yields many different analysable examples, so there is actually no need to hark back to extra-region case studies like taiwan in the last two chapters. despite the authors’ giving reasons for adding the case studies to this volume, austronesian languages as well as some common cultural features with south-east asia are not in this reviewer’s opinion sufficient reasons for their inclusion. the next chapter, written by can-seng ooi (copenhagen business school), illustrates the phenomenon of ‘re-making singapore’ by discussing attempts to ‘orientalise’ and ‘asianise’ the city through three different museums which are located in the city state. he builds his argument on a theoretical discussion of edward said’s concept of ‘orientalism’. each of the museums discussed in the text traces a special aim of the government’s ‘re-orientalisation’, ‘self-orientalisation’, as well as the ‘reasianisation’ process within the region and in tourism issues (pp. 96-97). the national kerstin schiele book review: heritage tourism in southeast asia aseas 4(1) 198 199 museum of singapore reflects the attempt to build a singaporean identity, whereas the singapore art museum and the asian civilisations museum present a regional identity and therefore inadvertently convey an imperialist attitude. keiko miura (waseda university) provides a comparative chapter of two world heritage sites: angkor in cambodia and vat phou in laos – both ‘living heritage sites’, meaning that locals reside there – are explained on different levels of interplay between conservation and tourism management. the paper also points out the problems each site faces, and improvements and lessons the persons with responsibility for vat phou learnt from angkor, where some effective changes, especially for locals, took place. nigel worden (university of cape town) portrays the construction of ‘malayness’ by means of the most important historical city in malaysia, melaka. he underlines melaka’s cultural heritage in a historical and colonial context, how it contributes to develop a ‘malayness’ identity, and how this cultural heritage is conditioned for domestic as well as international tourists. george town’s development and the problems this malaysian city faces are explained in the eighth chapter by gwynn jenkins (university of hull). she describes the ongoing urbanisation, decreased population, and the social change taking place in the context of the city’s world heritage site nomination. this has caused a touristic influx and various consequences for “multi-cultural users and producers” (p. 153) of the urban space and for conservation efforts. the subsequent four chapters deal with different heritage issues in vietnam. mark johnson (university of hull) refers to john urry’s classic tourist gaze while analysing how differently the researchers and tour guides at the hue monuments conservation centre portray the world heritage site to tourists in an “on-going ideological struggle . . . in the present about the past” (p. 175). he also focuses on the various kinds of tourists and concludes that the interests and intentions for visiting the site differ considerably among domestic tourists, which also contrast with those of international tourists. the authors of the tenth chapter, wantanee suntikul (macau), richard butler (strathclyde university), and david airey (surrey university), demonstrate the nationalistic, patriotic, and symbolic character of three hanoian monuments and the politicisation of the past for international and especially domestic tourists. the anaseas 4(1) 198 199 cient quarter, hoa lo prison, as well as the ho chi minh mausoleum have stood as symbols of national identity and “cultural anchor[s]” in a “period of transition” (p. 219) in vietnam since the beginning of doi moi (renovation) era. nguyen thi thu huong, who was project manager of the handicraft centre in hai duong, and simone wesner (london metropolitan university) reflect on the role of handicrafts sold in one of vietnam’s numerous traditional handicraft villages in hai duong as cultural heritage. handicrafts as heritage became a notable tourism product when the number of tourists greatly increased. as a result, copying and cultural adaptation is taking place. the authors underline that the real heritage is displayed more in the abilities of the producers than in the final product. michael parnwell (university of leeds) shows in his comparative study the contradictions of heritage and tourism in the case of tourism management at ha long bay, vietnam, and phang nga bay, thailand. whereas the latter is not an unesco world natural heritage site like ha long bay, it faces similar environmental problems through tourism and mismanagement of the site. hence, being a world heritage site can be a burden – for the people and the site itself. according to the author, heritage conservation and tourism should be in a state of equilibrium. recently the authorities have become aware of these problems. in the final chapter, the editors outline problems of different perceptions of heritage and the fact that it is rather a european concept. further research should emphasise more the views and perceptions that south-east asians have about cultural and natural heritage, as well as their meaning to the local people and the connections they have with the site. the editors point out the necessity of more comparative studies of different heritage sites. this volume brings up various theoretical concepts and approaches such as nation-building, tourism development, cultural change, democratisation, participation, and nationalism – all tightly linked to heritage tourism and therefore clarifying the complexity of this subject within each case study. it shows the instrumentalisation of heritage in order to strengthen nationalism and national identity, and to develop tourism. on the other hand, the same intricacy allows the different approaches to merely be superficially debated so that it is challenging for non-scholars to follow the arguments. instead of discussing more of the diverse examples of heritage in the philippines, kerstin schiele book review: heritage tourism in southeast asia aseas 4(1) 200 201 thailand, or other south-east asian countries, extra-region case studies, although highly interesting, were included in this volume. except for the case study on tourism management in thailand and vietnam, there is a lack of analyses of natural heritage sites, e.g. national parks, though the environmental preservation of the sites is extremely necessary for tourism. despite these little deficiencies, the book is well researched and provides compelling reading for researchers of social sciences, tourism, or area studies as well as for students. it contributes to a deeper awareness of tourism and heritage-related problems and their complexity. each case study is well examined and well grounded in heritage tourism issues. the book is therefore not only a timely but also an essential contribution to the academic discourse. kerstin schiele university of bonn, germany rezensionen / book reviews aseas 3(2) 296 297 hinterlassen exemplarisch einen bitteren beigeschmack. in der nur dürftigen auseinandersetzung mit transitional-justice-prozessen suggeriert der autor beispielsweise, es gäbe keine weiteren bemühungen hinsichtlich strafverfolgung, vergangenheitsbewältigung oder versöhnung seitens timor-lestes. damit lässt kingsbury einen wesentlichen aspekt des demokratisierungsprozesses in timorleste außer acht, was umso bedauerlicher ist, da genau dieser prozess ja das primäre thema des werkes wäre. east timor: the price of liberty besticht vor allem durch seinen breiten theorierahmen, der praxisgerecht ausgeführt wird, durch aufschlussreiche hintergrundinformationen sowie wertvolle, weiterführende themenund fragestellungen in bezug auf die politische zukunft timor-lestes. als einstieg in die thematik scheint es jedoch wenig geeignet, da komplexe historische, politische und soziale zusammenhänge oft unklar formuliert werden und sich somit nur lesern erschließen, die mit der thematik vertraut sind. für letztere wiederum fehlt dem werk eine umfassende und tiefgehende analyse der entwicklungen in timor-leste, da entscheidende faktoren ausgelassen oder nur unzureichend behandelt werden. dem kenner öffnen sich somit leider nur wenige bisher unentdeckte pfade auf der suche nach neuen zugängen zur thematik. julia scharinger gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften (seas), österreich hensengerth, oliver (2010). regionalism in china-vietnam relations: institution-building in the greater mekong subregion. (routledge contemporary asia series 19). london & new york: routledge. isbn: 978-0-415-55143-4. 212 + xi pages. this book by oliver hensengerth addresses two interlinked research topics, namely relations between china and vietnam and collaboration within the greater mekong subregion (gms). the author aims for a comprehensive approach to the two topics and studies the importance of the gms collaboration in the china-vietnam relationship as well as the policies of china and vietnam, respectively, with reference to the gms. aseas 3(2) 296 297 hensengerth also examines regionalism – and, more specifically, new regionalism – with special reference to “subregional” co-operation in the context of the theoretical discussion in the book. this comprehensive ambition deserves recognition. the structure of the book is as follows: chapter 1 is an introduction to the book (pp. 1-5). chapter 2 is devoted to explaining “subregional” co-operation in the context of the mekong basin (pp. 6-29). chapter 3 is devoted to formulating an analytical framework for the gms within the context of water co-operation, security, and international regimes (pp. 30-46). chapter 4 is devoted to the history of mekong co-operation and its linkage to the china-vietnam dichotomy (pp. 47-74). chapter 5 deals with current developments and institutional arrangements in mekong basin cooperation (pp. 75-97). chapter 6 looks at the gms and foreign policy through border co-operation between china and vietnam (pp. 98-141). chapter 7 is a concluding chapter devoted to china’s and vietnam’s foreign policies and “subregionalism” in the gms (pp. 142-151). the appendix encompasses several tables, including ‘table a1 institutionalization processes in the gms 1991-2005’ and ‘table a2 high-level meetings between vietnam and china, 1989-2008’ (pp. 152-177). the strength of the book is undoubtedly the parts dealing with collaborative attempts relating to the mekong river and the gms. the various collaborative arrangements are addressed through their origins, developments, and current characteristics. the differences in membership, mandate, and also modes of operation between the various collaborative initiatives are outlined. the parts of the book dealing with such initiatives are comprehensive, with ‘table a1 institutionalization processes in the gms 1991-2005’ being particularly helpful. the sections of the book dealing with the broader theoretical literature are solid and comprehensive. the author displays a good understanding of this literature and his presentation of the main features of the literature is sound. the problem is that the theoretical approach is not tied to the analysis of the empirical developments in a satisfactory way. to be more explicit, the theoretical approach is not operationalised into hypotheses that are tested against the empirical evidence. thus the explanatory value of the theoretical approach is not assessed. this implies that the author has a solid theoretical presentation and discussion and then an empirical study with an analysis that is not explicitly linked to his theoretical approach. this is a common problem which seems to be linked to prevalent preferences in methodological rezensionen / book reviews aseas 3(2) 298 299 approaches in the social sciences. the way in which the pattern of developments of the china-vietnam relationship is addressed is uneven, with some periods and issues being addressed comprehensively while others are not addressed in a satisfactory way. the section dealing with cooperation along the china-vietnam land border is the one that provides the best overview of any aspect of the china-vietnam relationship. it is most coherent and inclusive in addressing the subject matter (pp. 127-139). the most serious shortcoming relating to key dimensions in the bilateral relationship is the lack of attention paid to the territorial issues in the period since the normalisation of relations between china and vietnam in late 1991. this can partly be attributed to the fact that the author has disregarded the existing literature specifically devoted to this issue. while hensengerth acknowledges that the issues exist, they are addressed neither in a comprehensive nor in a coherent way in the book. hence, the reader cannot grasp the nature of the problem, the degree to which it has affected the bilateral relations, the progress made in addressing territorial issues, and the remaining challenges. given the fact that territorial issues have been the major cause of tension in bilateral relations since full normalisation in late 1991, they ought to have featured prominently and more coherently – but they are not. even more alarming is the fact that the author presents incorrect facts concerning agreements reached between the two countries relating to the gulf of tonkin. in ‘table a2 high-level meetings between vietnam and china, 1989-2008’ it is noted that on 25 december 2000 the two countries reached “accords on the demarcation and fisheries cooperation in the gulf of tonkin” (p. 169). then, in reference to jiang zemin’s visit to hanoi from 27 february to 1 march 2002, it is stated: “no resolve of the issue of gulf of tonkin (boundaries, fisheries agreement)” (p. 170). subsequently, it is noted that on 15 june 2004 “vietnam’s national assembly ratifies the gulf of tonkin agreements” (p. 171). finally, it is indicated that on 30 june 2004: “both deputy foreign ministers sign the demarcation agreement on the gulf of tonkin, regarding territorial waters, exclusive economic zone, and continental shelf, plus fisheries for the gulf. both agreements were originally concluded on 25 december 2000, but come into effect only now with the signature of 30 june 2004” (p. 172). this is contradictory. if agreements have been signed then there is a settlement of the disputes. also, how can vietnam ratify agreements on 15 june 2004 when the author claims that the two aseas 3(2) 298 299 countries did not sign a “demarcation agreement” until 30 june 2004? hensengerth appears not to have understood the process and hence misinterprets the information in the primary sources he has consulted. the correct course of events is as follows: on 25 december 2000, china and vietnam signed the ‘agreement on the delimitation of the territorial seas, exclusive economic zones and continental shelves in the gulf of tonkin’ settling their maritime boundary disputes in the gulf. on the same day the two countries signed an agreement on fishery co-operation in the gulf of tonkin. the maritime boundary agreement relating to the gulf of tonkin entered into force on 30 june 2004, when the two countries exchanged documents relating to the ratification of the agreement in hanoi. the ratification process and the entry into force of the agreement were made possible by the completion of the talks on an additional protocol to the agreement on fishery co-operation. the additional protocol and the regulations on preservation and management of the living resources in the common fishery zone in the gulf of tonkin were signed on 29 april 2004. this agreement also entered into force on 30 june 2004.1 the author would have avoided the factual mistakes relating to the gulf of tonkin if he had thoroughly consulted the leading journal ocean development and international law.2 despite the stated goal of studying the linkages between collaboration in the gms and the china-vietnam relationship, the author does not offer an explanation as to why the mekong river is not an issue on the official agenda for high-level talks between the two countries. he appears not to have systematically examined the joint statements and joint communiqués issued in connection with such high-level meetings. given the ambition of the book, this aspect ought to have been addressed in both the empirical overview and in the analysis. to summarise, ‘regionalism in china-vietnam relations’ is an interesting contribution with its focus on the collaboration in the gms linked to the chinavietnam relationship. the strength of the book is the parts dealing with collaborative attempts relating to the mekong river and the gms. the way in which the author 1 see nguyen h. t. & amer, r. (2007). the management of vietnam’s maritime boundary disputes. ocean development and international law, 38(3), 309-310 and 312-313; and amer, r. & nguyen h. t. (2005). the management of vietnam’s border disputes: what impact on its sovereignty and regional integration? contemporary southeast asia, 27(3), 431 and 434. 2 this journal published two articles specifically dealing with the gulf of tonkin in early 2005: zou k. (2005). the sinovietnamese agreement on maritime boundary delimitation in the gulf of tonkin. ocean development and international law, 36(1), 13-24; and nguyen h. t. (2005). maritime delimitation and fishery cooperation in the tonkin gulf. ocean development and international law, 36(1), 25-45. rezensionen / book reviews aseas 3(2) 300 301 addresses the broader china-vietnam relationship is not as innovative. furthermore, the way in which this relationship is presented is uneven in quality. thus, readers are advised to consult further existing literature on china-vietnam relations, both the sources used by the author and those that have been overlooked in his bibliography. ramses amer stockholm university & swedish institute of international affairs, sweden national institute for south china sea studies, china aseas 1-2 final (außergottowik).indd aseas 1 (2) diff erences in power structures regarding access to natural resources at the village level in central sulawesi (indonesia) sebastian koch1, heiko faust2 & jan barkmann3 university of göttingen, germany aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften / austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 1 (2), 2008 seas gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften www.seas.at the mountain forests of the indonesian province of central sulawesi include core areas of the global wallacea biodiversity “hotspot”. remote sensing data indicated that deforestation rates around central sulawesi’s lore-lindu national park differ more strongly between villages than could be explained by differences in the individual characteristics of the village households as assessed by quantitative village censuses. this setting provided the background for a study into inter-village differences in power structures regarding access to natural resources. our results are abstracted from 3*10 semi-structured, qualitative interviews with key informants from the leading groups of autochthonous and migrant households of three contrasting villages. in village a, nearly feudal power relationships are exerted by a group of local “fi rst settler” families that dominate formal village leadership as well as the infl uential council of traditional leaders (lembaga adat), and that restrict deforestation and land transactions. no such institutional restrictions exist in village c. traditional power relationships are replaced by economic power based on petty capitalisttype production of the international agricultural commodity cocoa. deforestation is much higher in village c. in village b, traditional institutions and power structures still appear in place although land transactions are less restricted than in village a, resulting also in high deforestation rates. while contrasting problematic social effects, our study highlights the potential effi cacy of traditional institutions in the regulation of access to resources. keywords: deforestation, common pool resources, village institutions, indonesia 1 department of agricultural economics and rural development, environmental and resource economics & institute of geography, human geography, georg-august-universität göttingen, germany; corresponding author; contact: skoch@gwdg.de. 2 institute of geography, human geography, georg-august-universität göttingen, germany. 3 department of agricultural economics and rural development, environmental and resource economics, georg-august-universität göttingen, germany. 59 die bergregenwälder zentralsulawesis sind teil des globalen wallacea-biodiversität “hotspots” und beheimaten viele endemische tierund pfl anzenarten. die entwaldung im bereich des dortigen lore-lindu nationalparks unterscheidet sich zwischen umliegenden dörfern stärker, als dies durch quantitative haushaltsdaten zu erklären ist. darauf aufbauend untersuchten wir unterschiede in den machtstrukturen bezüglich des zugangs zu natürlichen ressourcen zwischen einzelnen dörfern. unsere ergebnisse basieren auf 3*10 halbstrukturierten, qualitativen interviews mit schlüsselinformanten und führungspersonen der autochthonen und der hinzugezogenen bevölkerung aus drei sich unterscheidenden dörfern. untersuchungsdorf a ist gekennzeichnet durch feudale machtstrukturen ausgehend von einer gruppe autochthoner familien, die nahezu alle positionen der formalen dorfführung und des traditionellen dorfrats (lembaga adat) innehaben und die entwaldung und landverkäufe begrenzen. solche institutionellen restriktionen bestehen im untersuchungsdorf c kaum. die traditionellen und formalen machtverhältnisse wurden hier weitgehend durch ökonomische machtverhältnisse ersetzt, welche sich wiederum auf den erwerbsanbau der internationalen handelsware kakao gründen. die abholzungsraten sind hier deutlich höher. im dorf b sind die traditionellen machstrukturen oberfl ächlich noch vorhanden, landverkäufe sind aber weniger stark begrenzt – und die abholzungsraten ebenfalls recht hoch. zusammenfassend belegt die studie die relative effektivität traditioneller institutionen, den zugang zu natürlichen ressourcen zu regulieren, deckt jedoch auch deren problematische soziale auswirkungen auf. schlagworte: entwaldung, allmendegüter, dorf-institutionen, indonesien introduction in spite of more than three decades of scientific discussion amongst environmental and resource economists, the driving forces of tropical rainforest conversion continue to be a matter of debate (barbier & burgess 2001; kaimowitz & angelsen 1998; barraclough & ghimire 1995). in addition to large-scale deforestation, for example, for timber extraction and palm-oil plantations, small-scale forest conversion accounts for a significant proportion of current deforestation (sunderlin & resosudarmo 1996). institutions play a decisive role in the sustainable or non-sustainable utilization of many natural resources (acheson 2006; stern et al. 2002; ostrom 1990). institutions are defined as any form of constraint that shapes human interaction (north 1990: 4). formal institutions include laws, official regulations, and administrative procedures while informal institutions include private conventions, non codified norms and modes of behavior, customs and traditional values. one institutional 60 sebastian koch et.al. diff erences in power structures regarding access to natural ressources at the village level in central sulawesi (indonesia) aseas 1 (2) arrangement affecting tropical deforestation is an ill-defined property rights structure which rewards individual resource exploitation while damaging overall resource availability (mishan 1969). for cases of a non-sustainable exploitation of common pool of resources (“tragedy of the commons”; hardin 1968), local self-governance is frequently cited as a potential solution at the institutional level. here, the resource needs to be considered as subject to common property rights instead of as an ‘open-access’ good which may be exploited by anyone (acheson 2006; mckean 2000; bromley 1992; ostrom 1990). numerous case studies have examined design principles for an effective governance of common pool resources suggested by ostrom (1990). these studies generally support the soundness and effectiveness of the suggestions (quinn et al. 2007; gautam & shivakoti 2005). however, the propagation of local self-governance has its critics. empirically, it is not clear, yet, to which degree positive findings concerning resource conservation can be extrapolated (barraclough & ghimire 1995). furthermore, the cultural and human dimensions of effective, but often very restrictive local resource management regimes are frequently ignored (cooke & kothari 2007; o‘riordan & stoll-kleemann 2002; campbell et al. 2001). for a more comprehensive view of local self-governance of common pool resources, a close investigation of the interaction of population characteristics and the environment is required at the local level (gibson et al. 2000: 3). these analyses should include an observation of the effect of power and status on resource access (agrawal 2003: 258). against this background, our systematic case study explores institutional inter-village differences, with a special focus on the driving forces of natural resource utilization and on imbalances of power between “village elites” and dependent smallholders. the study took place in three villages in the vicinity of lore-lindu national park (llnp) in central sulawesi (indonesia), which contains extensive forest areas and provides conservation core areas for the wallacea biodiversity “hotspot”4 (myers et al. 2000)5. we used results from census analyses as well as informal interviews with key informants in order to select households that appeared likely to belong to the village elite considering land holdings/wealth, prominent social position in the village community, and perceived success in agriculture. with the heads of these 3*10 households, qualitative interviews were conducted in 2007. the outline of this paper is as follows: first we will briefly review the general literature on natural resource exploitation. second, a background on common pool resource management 4 the concept of biodiversity “hotspots” was originally developed by myers (1988). a hotspot is a biogeographic region with a significant reservoir of biological diversity which is threatened by destruction. according to myers et al. (2000), it must contain at least 0.5 percent or 1,500 of the world’s 300,000 plant species as endemics. the wallacea biodiversity hotspot encompasses the central islands of indonesia east of the wallace line (mainly sulawesi, the maluku islands and nusa tenggara) but west of papua. 5 the research is part of dfg-funded collaborative research center sfb 552 – storma “stability of rainforest margins in indonesia”. we would like to thank dfg and otto vahlbruch-stiftung for funding. 61 and their relation to social and environmental justice will be given. after a short description of the three study villages in the llnp area, methods and data collection are explained. next, our empirical results on local power structures and access to natural resources in the three contrasting villages are presented. we close with a critical discussion of our findings, and some possible policy recommendations. natural resource exploitation the conversion of tropical rainforests into arable land can be viewed as a highly degrading utilization of a precious natural resource. thus, the search for appropriate management institutions is a highly important challenge at present (berkes 1989; mccay & acheson 1987). garrett hardin (1968) explained the economic rationality behind a paradigmatic type of natural resource overuse involving a pasture and local herders in his influential article “the tragedy of the commons“6. from the perspective of a self-interested individual, it appears as a promising resource use strategy to use as much as possible from the pasture to grow oné s own sheep or cattle. while the profits from intensive utilization of the pasture accrue completely to the individual, possible negative effects on the quality of the pasture (externalities) must be born by the whole community of users of the pasture. if such behavior is wide-spread, it easily leads to over-exploitation and final depletion of the pasture – with negative long-term effects for everyone (hardin 1968). this divergence between individual rationality and group rationality was customarily explained after hardin with the specific attributes of many natural resources as common pool goods (berkes & folke 1998: 6). 6 hardin built up his theory on former thoughts of william forster lloyd (1833) “two lectures on the check to population”, who analyzed medieval village land holdings and population growth. however, the origin of the theory dates back to aristotle. 62 sebastian koch et.al. diff erences in power structures regarding access to natural ressources at the village level in central sulawesi (indonesia) source: slightly modified according to mckean (2000: 29) table 1: type of good, by physical characteristics exclusion easy private goods (trees, sheep, fish, chocolate) club or toll goods (cable tv, festive atmosphere at a party) rivalry in consumption non-rivalry in consumption exclusion difficult or costly open access goods (forest, pasture, fishery) pure public goods (n2 in air, national defense) aseas 1 (2) from a systematic perspective, common pool resources share characteristics with private goods and with open-access goods (table 1). open-access goods are defined by rivalry in consumption and non-excludability (gibson et al. 2000: 6). rivalry in consumption means that a unit of the resource “consumed” by one user cannot be consumed by another. nonexcludability means that it is very difficult or prohibitively costly to exclude a potential user of the resource from actual consumption. rivalry in consumption and excludability are necessary categories to classify goods because a simple differentiation between public and private goods is not sufficient for the characterization of natural resources (mckean 2000: 28 et seq.). pure public goods (no rivalry, non-excludable) and (pure) private goods (rivalry in consumption and excludable) are only two extreme cases of a 2x2 matrix of types of goods (table 1). many forests, pastures, or fisheries are managed as common pool resources, and display rivalry in consumption while potential users are difficult or just very costly to exclude – if no institutional mechanisms exist that effectively govern access and use of the resources (mckean 2000: 29). thus, it was claimed that the establishment either of private property rights or of government control are crucial to a sustainable use of natural resources (demsetz 1967; smith 1981). however, several studies published over the last two decades concluded that neither privatization nor government control necessarily lead to sustainable resource use because the establishment of effective control remains a challenge for goods for which users are structurally difficult to exclude (dietz et al. 2003; ostrom et al. 1999). in contrast, there is growing evidence that certain types of joint local management institutions with clearly defined rules can be successful in averting the tragedy of the commons (see next section). local self-governance of common pool resources – effectiveness versus justice? along the lines of resource economic analysis, the research tradition on common pool resources started with questions on the sustainability of resource utilization (stern et al. 2002: 457). particularly in low income countries, however, concern on the sustainable use of a particular set of natural resources is only one of several socio-ecological and socio-economic concerns. consequently, there is criticism that strictly enforced common property rights regimes may lead to social destabilization and fragmentation, and may exclude and marginalize at least parts of the local population (e.g., agrawal 2003; bardhan 2001). in fact, many respective institutions emerged from conflicting claims about common pool resources, but not from concern of sustainability (mccay 2002: 372). thus, an overview of the effectiveness of local self-governance of common pool resources needs to be complemented by an overview of such 63 human dimension issues. resource conservation effectiveness based on intensive research on sustainable governance of natural resources, policy makers turned away from mainly “expert”-driven top-down approaches to natural resource management towards the inclusion of local communities as central actors (agrawal 2003). key arguments for this paradigm shift were provided by the seminal analysis of resource management institutions by ostrom (1990: 90). she points out that the successful long-term management of common pool resources by local communities is historically characterized by certain design principles, among them (1) resource extraction monitoring, (2) graduated sanctions in case of violations of local resource use regulations, (3) minimal recognition of rights to local resource governance. more than thirty design principles have been identified ever since (agrawal 2002: 65). more abstractly speaking, institutions need to be established that manage access to the resources in order to alleviate the rivalry in consumption problem by suitably limiting overall resource extraction (berkes & folke 1998: 5et seq.). furthermore, if such institutional arrangements are applied by traditional communities, the complexity of property right structures is often striking. property rights can include distinct use rights, rights to exclude others, management rights, and rights to sell (aggarwal 2006). the rights can be exercised by privileged individuals but are mostly held by the local community (bromley 1992: 4; gibbs & bromley 1989: 31). the diversity of potential institutional arrangements and their differing effectiveness suggest that intermediate forms of resource access may exist between common pool resources and open access resources (cf. campbell et al. 2001). agrawal (2003: 248) points out, that even the three most important works on the commons, ostrom (1990), wade (1994) and baland & platteau (1996), “pay relatively little attention to features of resources that affect sustainable governance”. also, a thorough integration of impacts of demographics, market access or technology adoption – which are central topics of classical agroand development economic analysis (e.g., barbier & burgess 2001; kaimowitz & angelsen 1998; shively 2001) is still missing (agrawal 2003). these are potentially relevant influences also for the llnp area in central sulawesi, where maertens et al. (2006) documented that technology adoption can increase forest loss. in sum, local self-governance of common pool resources appears as a promising approach to an effective natural resource management, although the robustness of current prescriptions in the face of adverse external factors is unclear (agrawal 2003; agrawal 2002: 71). 64 sebastian koch et.al. diff erences in power structures regarding access to natural ressources at the village level in central sulawesi (indonesia) aseas 1 (2) social aspects humans depend vitally on the provision of environmental goods and services, particularly those who live in rural areas of low income countries or emerging economies. for the rural poor, natural resources such as forests, rivers, or fisheries often play decisive roles for their livelihood strategies (bardhan 2001: 281). according to the theorists of the commons, the emergence of strong and effective local institutions is central for sustainable resource management (see key-principles above). however, successful enforcement, tends to be coercive, and in reality often constrains mostly those with the least power (agrawal 2003: 257). but even during the establishment of the resource management regime, it can be expected that institutional choices are predominantly influenced by the most powerful local groups disadvantaging marginal and less powerful groups. in consequence, strict enforcement secures an unequal allocation of natural resource benefits. such a domination of institution building by local elites tends to result in social fragmentation, and impedes social progress (bardhan 2001: 281 et seq.). although literature has long highlighted the importance of participation in the design of institutions governing common pool resources (stern et al. 2002: 470), it is still a moot topic how participation really works (e.g. cooke & kothari 2007). theoretically, participation aims at an equal appraisal of the voices and interests of all affected individuals in a practical discourse free of domination (habermas 1992). in fact, participative processes often only maintain or even reinforce existing status, power and patronage relationships perversely justifying them by recourse to (formal) participation (hailey 2007: 94). with respect to customary law as a typical form of local natural resource management institutions, hodgson (2004: 86) writes: “another risk regarding customary law is that it is often taken to be inherently democratic, egalitarian, equitable and therefore to deserve support in contrast to formal law and regulations issued from distant capitals, which are not. this kind of romantic view is false. there is ample evidence that customary law frequently reflects unequal power relationships in local communities. such relationships greatly affect the ways in which land and water are distributed and managed.” similar to customary law, “local knowledge” may be impregnated by the views, values and interests of those locally in power (hildyard et al. 2007: 56ff; mosse 2007: 19). in sum, a socially critical analysis of local self-governance of natural resources from a justice and equality point of view is as much a pressing issue as the concern for the sustainable use of the resource itself (cf. agrawal 2003). the relative lack of empirical research on these broader human dimension issues guides our specific investigation of power relationships in three contrasting villages in the vicinity of lore-lindu national park (llnp). 65 study area located in the humid tropics in central sulawesi (1º 03’1º 57’s, 119º57’120º 21’e), lorelindu national park covers some 2,290 km2 of montane, cloud and monsoon forests from ~2002,610 m a.s.l. (figure 1). the llnp area is characterized by rift valleys and a steep rainfall gradient from 500 to 2,500 mm per year. first established as an unesco man & biosphere reserve in 1978, it was declared a national park by the indonesian ministry of agriculture in 1982. however, until 1993 llnp was not officially recognized, and its permanent borders were not fixed until the end of the 1990s. approximately 136,000 citizens, mainly agricultural smallholders, live in 119 villages within the study area of 7,220 km2 around llnp (erasmi et al. 2004; maertens 2003: 22 et seqq.). central sulawesi is one of the poorest provinces in indonesia, and the llnp area is – similar to other remote upland regions – considered as a distant, disadvantaged place with fragile ecosystems and poverty stricken villages (li 1999: 34; li 2007). 66 sebastian koch et.al. diff erences in power structures regarding access to natural ressources at the village level in central sulawesi (indonesia) figure 1 (continues next page) aseas 1 (2) as one of the first activities of the indonesian-german research center stability of rainforest margins in indonesia (storma)7, 12 villages were selected for intensive socio-economic research by stratified random sampling with population density, share of migrants of the village population, and distance to the road as stratification criteria (zeller et al. 2002). these 12 villages encompass great variation in ecological conditions, as well as land-use patterns, socio-cultural and socio-economic conditions. the three contrasting villages used in our study were identified on the basis of household surveys conducted in the 12 villages as well as additional qualitative research on cultural landscape change, migration, ethnicity and ethnicity impact on land-use (weber 2006; faust et al. 2003). a census in the three villages later documented a gradient of migration intensity and, consequently, ethnic composition. with respect to migration dynamics, the villages were categorized as traditional, transitional and post-transitional (weber & faust 2006). in the following, we refer to these villages as village a, b, and c. village a represents a relatively static, traditional village type with low immigration, and a high share of autochthonous ethnics (~68 percent8 although several different ethnic groups are present). the village is one of the oldest settlements in the llnp area and has a strong emphasis on traditions. in addition to a council of traditional leaders (lembaga adat), an indigenous women’s organization is active here since the 1990s (organisasi perempuan adat ngata toro/opant). it fosters the traditional use of natural resources in the sense of a conservation agenda in collaboration with the village government. land use is characterized by a large amount of wet rice fields at the valley bottom. additionally, seasonal mixed cropping and agroforestry systems (mainly coffee and cacao) are widespread. village a is almost an enclave inside llnp. free and accessible land is limited as access to land and all 7 see www.storma.de 8 this calculation includes one hamlet (dusun v), located at the main road approximately five kilometers away from the village center. it is officially part of village a. differing from the main village hamlets, however, dusun v is mainly inhabited by rampi ethnics from south sulawesi. dusun v inhabitants participate only little in village a community activities. the percentage of autochthonous inhabitants is much higher in village centre. 67 figure 1 (continued from last page) forest resources was officially suspended in 1982 with the declaration of the national park (fremerey 2002: 13; burkard 2002: 9 et seq.). as the result of negotiations with the national park administration, village a was granted far-reaching self-governance rights to about 23 km2 of forest land in 2001. in this community forest, village authorities monitor and regulate forest resource utilization. village b is less static and traditional than village a. it was relatively recently established at the southern end of the main asphalt road west of llnp. because of the less suitable topography, wet rice cultivation is of little importance while agroforestry dominates village agriculture. the population of village b doubled within the last ten years displaying high demographic dynamics with a significant proportion of migrants particularly from southern sulawesi buginese. thus, village b is a representative of a transitional village type, in which immigration has started to impact village life but is not dominating it. village c is a young post-transitional village, located in the dynamic region of the palolo valley at the northern edge of llnp. local migrants from surrounding villages were the most important group of first settlers before and during the 1970s when the palolo valley was sparsely populated in contrast to the lower palu valley (see figure 1). the local migrants cleared the existing lowland forest for the establishment of wet rice fields. at the onset of the cacao boom in central sulawesi the 1980s (revolusi cokelat; sitorus 2004), palolo was a favorite destination for a high influx of regional migrants, mostly buginese well versed in cacao cultivation, which has a longer tradition in south sulawesi. today, village c’s agriculture consists predominantly of intensive cacao plantations. the census data had also indicated strong differences in average land acquisition patterns of the single households between the three villages (koch et al. 2008). the census data show that 29 percent of all agricultural plots are bought in village a, whereas 55 percent are inherited, and 6 percent are cleared from primary forest inside llnp. in village c, in contrast, 56 percent are bought, only 18 percent are inherited and 13 percent are cleared from forests inside llnp. in village b, 35 percent are bought, 41 percent are inherited and 14 percent of the plots are cleared from community forest close to but outside llnp. high levels of forest conversion (villages b, c) are related to the sale of land by locals to buginese migrants (p<0.01). methods and data in the three villages, a household census (n=898) focusing on household characteristics including livelihood strategies, resource access and social position in the village was conducted in 2004. 68 sebastian koch et.al. diff erences in power structures regarding access to natural ressources at the village level in central sulawesi (indonesia) aseas 1 (2) based on extensive background analysis including the census data, the first author conducted informal interviews with key informants in the villages to select ten households per village that appeared likely to belong to a village “elite”. without a formal definition (see dasgupta & beard 2007, for example), we considered land holdings/wealth, prominent social position in the village (member of formal or traditional leadership), and perceived success in agriculture as criteria to select “elite” households. with these 3*10 households, semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted from march to june 2007. the interviews followed a “problemcentred interview” (pci) approach (witzel 1989: 227fet sqq.) focusing on natural resource use patterns. they included questions on village-level institutions and the related power structures that govern infra-village resource access and use decisions. the 2004 census had already generated quantitative estimates on issues such as household forest conversion and land transactions. for this study, we chose a qualitative research methodology as a complement as the capacity of quantitative surveys to obtain meaningful information on potentially sensitive topics such as (technically illegal) deforestation is limited due to standardization requirements (cf. berg 2007; miles & huberman 1994). furthermore, we hoped that a qualitative approach would provide us with deeper insights into processes and background influences on village level resource management. the interviews were structured by a flexible interview guide allowing, e.g., for nonstandardized comments and explanations, as well as the incidental coverage of additional aspects when deemed necessary by the interviewer. all interviews were either conducted in indonesian (or in rare cases in a local language) supported by an indonesian assistant. the interviews were recorded in full. in a second step, the complete material was transcribed and subsequently translated into english. we are aware that any translation results in a loss of information. however, we were primarily interested in processes and structures in the village community that can be described in very plain language. a more in depth analysis onto underlying psychological factors behind resource use decisions may have required different observational and interview techniques. furthermore, shortly after finishing an interview, relevant outcomes and the circumstances of the interview situation were jointly discussed with the assistant and documented. unclear parts of the interview or potential misunderstandings were immediately clarified. since we are interested in specific issues with regard to natural resource use patterns, a rule-guided systematic coding following mayring’s (2007) qualitative content analysis approach was applied. “for a content analysis to be replicable, the analysts must explicate the context that guides their inferences” (krippendorff 2004: 24). therefore, the coding system was developed based on an interplay of inductive and deductive procedures (witzel 1989: 233). 69 results in the traditional village a, all interviewed individuals highlighted the strong influence of local institutions mainly exerted by the council of traditional leaders (lembaga adat). a clan of families belonging to the first settlers in village a dominates almost all positions in the formal village leadership. besides the lembaga adat, its members also occupy the positions of the village head (kepala desa) and the custom institution (badan perwakilan desa/bpd). to be a member of the village government, i.e. factually one of the three institutions, candidates must be indigenous. “[…] the members of village government should be the indigenous of kulawi” (teacher; indigenous, village a). although the village head and the traditional leaders are elected, positions are often passed from one family member to another. this is particularly true for the members of the lembaga adat that has a strong role in village a (see below). furthermore, only the indigenous people are allowed to participate in the elections. generally, the others are merely informed about the results. these power inequalities are also reflected in land holdings. members of the village government, often stemming from the families of the first settlers, possess large land holdings – some of them even more than they are able to cultivate. these local institutions are effectively in control of access to local natural resources, i.e. mainly to the forest resources assigned to the village. if a household has too little land to cover its basic needs, the head of the concerned household will appear at a lembaga adat meeting, explain his/her cause, and hope for the appropriation of a forest plot. in addition to access to land and forest plots, the lembaga adat grants permissions for the extraction of timber and non-timber forest products (ntfp) such as rattan or dammar. regularly, punishments are imposed by the formal village leadership if villagers violate lembaga adat resource use regulations. the same procedures apply principally to migrants intending to settle in the village. poor, recent migrants are discriminated against, however. this is most obvious in cases of smaller land appropriations, or more restricted access to other forest resources: ”[…] some people are being pressured not to take forest products while others were allowed to do. so sometimes i intend to ask where the justice is!” (migrant, village a). in addition to the inability to acquire a position in the traditional leadership, some respondents also report that migrants are discriminated against by restrictions in the use of public spaces in village a. the land assigned to households in need stems from a community forest located inside llnp for which the formal village leadership negotiated “traditional” – restrictive – use rights from the llnp administration. since there is no “free” land any more, the community forest serves as the only source for land expansion. as a result of land scarcity and land use restrictions, 70 sebastian koch et.al. diff erences in power structures regarding access to natural ressources at the village level in central sulawesi (indonesia) aseas 1 (2) some villagers already moved to other places in search of land. the community forest is divided into six zones. in one zone, for example, cultivation is strongly prohibited because it serves as a habitat for scarce flora and fauna and as a water source. in a traditional use zone, shifting cultivation with up to 25 years of fallow can be practiced. immigration by members of other ethnic groups is strictly discouraged by very restrictive regulations on land purchases. the village government hinders villagers in obtaining private land titles – which are seen as a prerequisite for land purchases by the most successful regional migrants, the buginese. differing from other villages in the research area, land transactions must be reported in advance to the kepala desa. together with the lembaga adat, the village head will decide whether any proposed land transaction will be allowed or not. furthermore, the size that could be sold is restricted by the lembaga adat. finally, it is not allowed to resell formerly purchased plots to others except to the erstwhile owner. village b is to some degree similar to village a. traditional institutions and power structures appear to be still in place. the lembaga adat serves as the guardian of the customary institutions. it grants access to a community forest outside llnp only to autochthonous households. also village regulations concerning natural resource use and designed by village head and lembaga adat exist. the regulations do not exist in written form, and are not fully implemented. notwithstanding rules and regulations, there is a lack of monitoring and enforcement mechanisms in the village. therefore, fines and punishments are rarely imposed. similar to village a, migrants are completely excluded from any kind of position in the formal village government. “[for] migrants it is impossible to be involved in traditional leadership” (village official, local, village b). however, some economically successful cacao farmers who are migrants were invited to participate in village meetings on agricultural development. this was done because several local farmers were also interested to turn from subsistence agriculture to market-oriented cacao cultivation. most local cacao farmers adopt cultivation technologies from successful buginese migrants well-versed in more intensive cacao cultivation. since timber trade is officially prohibited in the lore lindu area, only fuel wood and timber for private construction purposes – but not for sale – are allowed to be extracted. the regulations forbid agriculture on steep slopes >45º because of the possibility of landslides and to preserve the headwaters to secure the village’s water provision. however, land scarcity induces some poorer local households to extract forest products, such as rattan, as an important source of cash income. in contrast to village a, land transactions are not restricted in village b. because migrants are not allowed to convert forest into new agricultural plots, buginese migrants – as well as 71 better-off autochthonous households – acquire land via purchase from poorer, local households. groups of autochthonous, partly land-stripped households (15-20 persons) collectively prepare new agricultural land via conversion of uphill (primary or secondary) forest. this is mostly done in the area of the community forest located outside of llnp. in combination with the absence of effective monitoring and sanctioning of perpetrations of formal and customary law, this two step conversion patterns results in high rates of forest conversion and natural resource depletion. although excluded from traditional leadership positions, migrants are not as discriminated against as in village a. according to the former village headman, differences between autochthonous and migrants should be diminished in favor of a unified village community: “the one from ujung pandang or toraja, never [should] think that they are buginese, torajanese [; they should] claim themself as lempeleronese” (former kepala desa, local, village b). in migration dominated village c, traditional power relationships are replaced by economic power structures dominated mostly by buginese migrants from south sulawesi who are substantially more prosperous than the autochthonous households due to more effective cacao cropping. the village headman and the bpd are the formal governance organizations, and even a lembaga adat exists. however, neither the formal nor the customary institutions are as powerful as in villages a or b. it appears completely possible for migrants to hold a position in the formal village government (kepala desa, bpd). the low importance of these institutions is reflected by the fact that formally important legal village representatives (bpd) are not even known by many inhabitants of village c, be they migrants or locals. autochthonous as well as buginese interviewees agree that a widespread laissez-faire attitude on natural resource use prevails. every household is regarded as responsible for itself. no specific written village regulations exist to date. “there are no regulations about the use of the forest and its products in this village” (kepala desa, village c). rules and regulations with regard to the national park exist only at the regional and national level. locally, neither monitoring nor sanctioning is established. the bpd and the village headman drew up some regulations about natural resource use. for example, an extraction fee for rattan and timber of 25.000 idr/m³ materials was envisioned to be paid to the village government. however, these regulations are only partly enforced. in addition, there are attempts to dissuade smallholders from farming steep slopes inside llnp. in absence of forest resources and “free” land outside llnp, these regulations are disregarded more often than honored. virtually without institutional restrictions, buginese migrants – as well as some better-off local households – acquire land via purchase from poorer, local households. the land-stripped local households, in turn, acquire new land by illegally clearing primary forest inside llnp. these new plots are of inferior land use quality, and of a highly precarious tenure status. 72 sebastian koch et.al. diff erences in power structures regarding access to natural ressources at the village level in central sulawesi (indonesia) aseas 1 (2) in contrast to village a or b, newly converted plots are reported to the kepala desa only after establishment because permissions from the village leadership are not needed9. “it is common here that everybody goes to the forest without permission” (local, village c). furthermore, while our respondents report that fines and punishments were imposed in the past, this is not the case today. discussion & conclusion in this concluding section, we first synthesize the results from the three villages with a special emphasis on the questions, how the differences in local resource governance between the three villages influence their effectiveness, and their social impact. in the introduction, we singled out three characteristics of historically successful resource management regimes: (1) resource extraction monitoring, (2) graduated sanctions in case of violations of local resource use regulations, (3) minimal recognition of rights to local resource governance. although more characteristics may be important, we will focus on these three to determine if an ineffective 9 in order to minimize land conflicts within the community, the kepala desa usually issues a letter that documents the establishment of a certain plot for a small fee. 73 source: own compilation table 2: social and resource conservation aspects regarding village institutions resource conservation aspects social aspects village a enforced common pool resources: local institutions strongly preserve natural resources in llnp (low forest conversion rate) feudal, traditional power relationships strong & effective discrimination against migrants incl. land transactions village b partly enforced common pool resources: local institutions only prevent migrants from conversion of community forest outside llnp (high forest conversion rate) traditional power structures in transition partly-effective discrimination/ exclusion particularly; not effective regarding land transactions village c factual open access resources: neither official legal nor local customary institutions protect llnp forests (high forest conversion rate, landslides & floods) economic power structures progressing socioeconomic exclusion of poor locals after land sell-off open access situation or a potentially effective common pool situation with respect to access to forest land dominates. village a is ruled by a group of families relying on local and traditional institutions for controlling natural resource access. all three of the above characteristics are in place in order to render the – rather restrictive – regulations effective. villagers must ask the local village leadership for permission for any natural resource extraction, particularly for the assignment of forest land, and perpetrators are punished. the local institutions – as well as the exclusive use of rights in favor of the village a community – are acknowledged by the (national level) national park authorities. although it is unclear if the negotiated use rights inside llnp are actually compatible with official national park law, the agreement with the village government is honored by the central sulawesi national park administration. this has enabled the leadership institutions of village a to exercise a relatively effective monitoring of their common property rights with respect to outside settlers and resource extractors as well as with respect to locals. one “objective” effect of the combination of restrictive procedures for granting access and a reasonably effective monitoring is the low forest conversion in comparison to villages b and c. only 6 percent of all plots covered by the census in 2004 were cut by their owners from the original forest. from an effectiveness point of view, village a can be regarded as a relatively successful case of local self-governance of natural resources. at first glance, the situation appears similar in village b from an institutional point of view. also, traditional institutions (lembaga adat, local regulations for land access) are in place. as in village a, migrants are denied access to forest land. because the village possesses a community forest outside llnp, there was no need, however, to negotiate restrictive use rights from the national part administration or other state or province authorities. as a result, local smallholders enjoy relatively open access to the land of the community forest. in this situation, there is no immediate need for strict monitoring or for imposing sanctions against locals who illegally use llnp land on part of the village government. while higher level administrations acknowledge village b ś rights to their community forest, the village is not responsible for llnp land. although migrants are effectively excluded from the conversion of forest land in the community forest, it is a small difference in local land regulations compared to village a that additionally fosters forest conversion: locals are allowed to sell their land to agronomically often more successful migrants. because locals possess the social capital – i.e., here, a little restricted access right – to covert new forest, they have an incentive to improve their short-term lot by selling their land and acquiring new forest plots that are cleared. these circumstances explain the high percentage of 14 percent of all plots being cleared from original forest. in contrast to villages a and b, no traditional village-level institutions limit access to natural 74 sebastian koch et.al. diff erences in power structures regarding access to natural ressources at the village level in central sulawesi (indonesia) aseas 1 (2) resources and forest land in village c. after local flooding and increasing land slides, there are recent attempts by the official village leadership (kepala desa, bpd) to establish some restrictions on the utilization of llnp land, for example on the steepest slopes. however, implementation of monitoring is weak, and perpetrators are not punished at present. in face of the massive intrusion into llnp land (13 percent of all land cleared from original forest), it is doubtful if the llnp administration will back any local claim to the self-governance of natural resources including access to forest land. as in village b, land transactions from locals to migrants with more highly developed cacao cropping technology are not inhibited, and locals enjoy nearly open access to new forest. legally, access is not open of course. but the llnp administration does not muster the repressive force that would be necessary to substantially halt or even revert deforestation. in sum, all highlighted institutional preconditions for a successful self-governance of natural resources are missing in village c. as suggested for woodland management in zimbabwe (campbell et al. 2001), the differentiation between common pool resource and open access resources is useful for explaining some differences in the sustainability of resource use (village a versus village c) but not all: in spite of a common property community forest, deforestation rates are very high in village b. if looking in detail at the resource use institutions of the three villages, further differences regarding the existence of monitoring, sanctions in case of violations, and recognition of rights to local resource governance become obvious (ostrom 1990). our case study documents how the interplay of these three factors can differ in adjacent villages at the margin of the same national park. although the differences in the percentage of agricultural plots cleared from original forests is certainly also influenced by other factors, our analysis clearly documents the decisive role that such local institutions play for resource conservation effectiveness. the question who establishes and/or maintains the local resource use institutions leads to the second main research question of this paper. is successful local self-governance of natural resources associated with problematic social impacts, particularly under equality and exclusion aspects? in none of the three investigated villages, we encountered substantial participatory or democratic processes that justified or legitimized existing (or non-existing) local resource access institutions. in fact, it appears justified to describe this aspect of village governance as being nearly completely dominated by the respective village “elites”. their importance for local natural resource governance in the project area was also highlighted by burkard (2002: 38). he investigated villages at the eastern margin of llnp. until very recently, village leaders had the power to distribute resources as they liked. this is partly an inheritance of suharto’s new order era policies during which village leaders could behave like “little gods” (faust et al. 2003: 13; tsuyoshi 1989). they could allocate land at their own will, and 75 rather freely take financial advantages of their position. studies from java (indonesia) show, however, that such elite capture depends on the structure of a community (dasgupta & beard 2007). communities where both elite and non-elite households participate in self-governance demonstrate an ability to reduce elite capture. the village elites are structured differently, and local resource use institutions as well as social outcomes differ strongly. in village a, nearly “feudal” power relationships enforce strict limitations regarding access to natural resources including land conversion. this power is exerted by a group of autochthonous “first settlers” forming a traditional village elite that makes use of a highly influential council of traditional leaders (lembaga adat) besides formal leadership structures. through denying villagers full property rights even to their existing non-forest land (strongly limited fungibility), a key process that enhances forest conversion and immigration is substantially tamed: very little land is sold to economically successful migrant cacao farmers. in concert with this restriction, (poor) migrants particularly from non-autochthonous ethnic backgrounds are severely discriminated against in terms of land appropriation, access to leadership positions, and general integration into the local community. in village b, also traditional institutions and exclusive leadership structures are in place, and migrants are not allowed to clear land in the community forest. still, strong recent migration occurred which was facilitated by lacking restrictions of land sales by locals. in effect, agronomically successful migrants are increasingly recognized as valuable members of the village community. this transition is reflected by statements from within the local village elite that favors a united village community spirit. as of now it is unclear if the situation will develop into full equality of the autochthonous population and migrants, or if tensions will rise when the group of successful migrants starts to demand equal rights. in contrast to villages a and b, all traditional power relationships appear replaced by economic power based on petty capitalist-type production of agricultural commodities in village c. while it would be possible in village c for a (better-off) migrant household to convert forest land inside llnp, the economically powerful migrant households prefer the purchase of better land at the valley bottom for which land titles can also be issued. in effect, the two-step conversion forest process also described from village b is likewise operating in village c – however converting forest inside llnp. although no traditional or local institutions are effectively in place, poor local households are spatially and socially marginalized. the majority of scholars on the commons assert that (local) communities will manage their natural resources in a sustainable manner, ensure egalitarian access and equitable distribution among their members (e.g., ostrom 1990; feeny et al. 1990). this paper gives additional weight to critical voices that claim that local self-governance of natural resources 76 sebastian koch et.al. diff erences in power structures regarding access to natural ressources at the village level in central sulawesi (indonesia) aseas 1 (2) does not necessarily result in egalitarian access and equitable distribution (agrawal 2003; hodgson 2004: 86), particularly if institution building is strongly influenced by local elites as in our case study villages (cf. bardhan 2001: 281 et seq.). in village a, it can be observed that successful enforcement tends to constrain some of those with the least power (agrawal 2003: 257). similar trends were found in nepal where the poorest inhabitants benefited less from common property forest than less poor inhabitants (adhikari et al. 2004). however, the absence of effective self governance in the project region (village c) displays a complementary social problem: the socio-economic marginalization of poor autochthonous households who – not hindered by non-democratic institutions – sold out their land to economically successful migrants. in conclusion, we find a very complex reality even at the level of only three adjacent villages that provides evidence for both positions: local self-governance of natural resources can be an effective means of sustainable • resource management if some essential design characteristics are implemented. local self-governance of natural resources may have less egalitarian and pro-poor • outcomes that envisioned even if effectively implemented. additionally, we document that already a small loophole in traditional institutions (village b) can be sufficient to jeopardize the success of a principally well-‘designed’ set of local governance rules. with regard to the specific situation in central sulawesi characterized by cash-crop driven smallholder encroachment and deforestation, the fungibility of land (or its restrictions: autochthonous inhabitants may not sell land to migrants) turned out to be a decisive factor. with regard to practical implications of our study, we can address only one point here. the governance situation has generally improved with the introduction of the new village constitution (bpd) in central sulawesi in comparison to the suharto era. our results show, however, that the introduction of the bpd does not result necessarily in more legalistic, participatory or democratic resource management procedures. in fact, the bpd system is too weak to prevent deforestation in villages b and c, and too weak to prevent undemocratic social exclusion based on ethnicity in village a and partly village b. in fact, local elites based on traditional and/or economic power decisively influence access to natural 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(ed.), qualitative forschung in der psychologie. grundfragen, verfahrensweisen, anwendungsfelder, (pp. 227-256). heidelberg: asanger. zeller, m., s. schwarze & t. rheenen (2002). statistical sampling frame and methods used for the selection of villages and households in the scope of the research programme on stability of rainforest margins in indonesia (storma). storma discussion paper series, no. 1, göttingen and bogor. 81 aseas 2-2 singapore-india relations: a return to history aseas 2 (2) aktuelle südostasienforschung / current research on south-east asia singapore-india relations: a return to history ming hwa ting1 university of adelaide, australia aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften / austrian journal of south-east asian studies seas gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften / society for south-east asian studies www.seas.at michael leifer observes singapore-india relations to be ‘diplomatically distant’. this observation was correct during the cold war when diff ering political ideologies made it diffi cult for these two countries to develop close relations. with the end of the cold war, bilateral relations improved rapidly, especially on the economic front. consequently, most literature focuses on the economic interaction between them, at the expense of other signifi cant developments on the political, military as well as social and cultural fronts. in order to better understand singapore-india relations in the present, a well-rounded approach is necessary. hence, this article addresses this lacuna in the present scholarship by providing a comprehensive overview that takes into account developments in both the areas of high and low politics. in so doing, this article argues that singapore-india relations are now no longer ‘diplomatically distant’, but instead mirror the close relations they had during the colonial period, and so represent a ‘return to history’ instead. keywords: international relations, cold war, collaboration, singapore, india michael leifer beschreibt die beziehungen zwischen singapur und indien als „diplomatisch distanziert“. diese beobachtung war während des kalten krieges korrekt, als unterschiedliche politische ideologien eine enge zusammenarbeit dieser beiden länder erschwerten. mit dem ende des kalten krieges verbesserten sich bilaterale beziehungen – vor allem im wirtschaftlichen bereich – rapide. aus diesem grund konzentrieren sich die meisten publikationen auf die wirtschaftliche interaktion der beiden länder und vernachlässigen gleichzeitig weitere wichtige entwicklungen in der politischen, militärischen, sozialen und kulturellen sphäre. um die beziehungen zwischen singapur und indien besser zu verstehen, ist ein vielseitigerer ansatz notwendig. der vorliegende artikel versucht diese lücke gegenwärtiger forschung zu schließen und einen umfassenden überblick der entwicklungen in den bereichen high politics und low politics zu geben. dabei wird argumentiert, dass die beziehungen zwischen singapur und indien nicht mehr länger „diplomatisch distanziert“ seien, sondern – im gegenteil – die enge beziehung der beiden länder während der kolonialzeit widerspiegelt. demnach repräsentieren sie eine „rückkehr zur geschichte“. schlagworte: internationale beziehungen, kalter krieg, zusammenarbeit, singapur, indien 1 ming hwa ting is a doctoral candidate at the centre for asian studies, the university of adelaide, australia. he is also the inaugural bill cowan-barr smith library fellow, and a member of the pacifi c forum-csis ‘young leaders’ program. contact: ming.ting@adelaide.edu.au 122 aseas 2 (2) introduction michael leifer’s authoritative work on singapore’s foreign policy describes singaporeindia relations to be ‘diplomatically distant’ (leifer, 2000, p. 129). a survey of works on singapore’s foreign policy also supports leifer’s belief since ‘india’ only appears sporadically in the indexes (ganesan, 2005; latif, 2007; regnier, 1991; b. singh, 1999). this lack of scholarly interest was understandable during the cold war, when differing ideologies prevented the two countries from developing warm bilateral ties even though they were historically very close. however, with the cold war over, both states are now making up for lost time as demonstrated by the great strides made in their bilateral relations, especially on the economic front. predictably, most scholarly attention has focused on this issue (asher & raja, 1994; yahya, 2008), at the expense of significant developments in other aspects of their bilateral relations. this article addresses this lacuna in the literature by presenting a comprehensive overview of their bilateral relationship that takes into account not only developments on the economic front, but also developments on the political, defence, as well as social and cultural fronts. arguably, such rapid improvements are possible because they are congruent with singapore’s objectives of achieving a hospitable regional order through the establishment of a balance of power, and distancing itself against allegations of being a sinic outpost. singapore’s present engagement of india therefore echoes the previously close links between them, and so represents a return to history. india-singapore relations: a primer singapore’s present closer links with india are not unexpected as their ties have ‘ancient and deep roots’ (shanmugaratnam, 2007, para. 2). britain founded singapore to service the lucrative india-china trade route. as was to be expected, during british rule, singapore’s government, as well as its penal code, were based on the indian model. furthermore, due to the presence of economic opportunities, many ethnic indians sought employment in singapore. hence, it is clear that singapore had close links with india since its founding. singapore did not forget its ‘debt’ to india after becoming independent in 1965. on indira gandhi’s 1966 visit to singapore, ming hwa ting singapore-india relations: a return to history 123 aseas 2 (2) prime minister lee kuan yew affirmed the important similarities between them. correspondingly, in 1970, when v. s. giri visited singapore, the first by an indian president, singapore’s president benjamin sheares also emphasized their historically close links. however, even though bilateral relations at the official level remained correct, they were neither substantial nor warm during the cold war due to ideological differences. bilateral relations only improved after the cold war as both states made a conscious commitment to increase their interactions. hence, george yeo, in his former capacity as singapore’s minister for trade and industry, was able to emphasize the close historical links between singapore and india and stated it was logical for them to cooperate in the contemporary context (yeo, 2004, para. 3). elaborating on yeo’s observation, raymond lim, singapore’s minister of state for trade and foreign affairs, provides a more detailed explanation as to why singapore and india are developing closer bilateral relations so rapidly after the cold war by outlining singapore’s ‘4c’ value proposition – capital, connectivity, capabilities, comfort – to india. as a regional financial hub, singapore’s banking and financial markets are welldeveloped and make it easier for indian companies to raise capital. given singapore’s excellent geographical position, it has extensive transport links with many states, making it a good transport hub for indian exports. furthermore, singapore also has a dense network of free trade agreements (ftas) that stretches from asia to europe and to north america, providing indian firms in singapore access to major markets. without any natural resources except for the human variety, singapore has invested much attention into improving its human capital, a move that complements india’s role as a major actor in a knowledge-based economy. the above three factors are very important. however, they can also be found or replicated in neighbouring states. comfort, therefore, holds the most value. comfort arises due to the long history of contact between singapore and india during the colonial period. consequently, indian culture, values and cuisine have taken root in singapore and this high level of familiarity is a big pull factor (lim, 2004, comfort, para. 1). “just as india has looked east, singapore has looked west towards india. our ties are intertwined through history, language and culture” (goh, 2004, para. 5). hence, this new wave of interaction between india and singapore after the cold 124 aseas 2 (2) war can be characterized, in kagan’s parlance (2008), though out of context, as an optimistic ‘return to history’. india’s cold war foreign policy the current close relations between singapore and india are in sharp contrast to their distant relations during the cold war. when india became independent in 1947, it regarded non-alignment as a manifestation of its sovereign ability to implement its foreign policy that was formerly under british control. with india’s professed commitment towards non-alignment, it had strong reservations against policies that entailed involving foreign powers in asia. consequently, india opposed the establishment of multilateral institutions such as the southeast asia treaty organization (seato). india perceived seato, which was modelled after nato as a continuation of western presence in asia and was anathema to what india stood for (ayoob, 1990, p. 10; jain, 2008, p. 31). this was because western states such as australia, france, new zealand, the united kingdom and the united states were members of this organization. seato’s primary objective was to block communist gains by establishing a system of collective defence. with pakistan as a member, india naturally felt threatened. at the same time, india’s soviet links also meant that inherent antagonism was present. during this period, although singapore was not a member of seato, it identified more closely with western states such as the united states and britain, which india did not have good relations with. due to such differences, it was politically difficult for india to have close diplomatic relations with newly independent south-east asian states such as singapore that was pro-west during the cold war. apart from political considerations, india’s inward looking economic policy further reduced interaction between india and south-east asian states. upon its independence in 1947, india used import substitution to start the industrialization process and be less economically dependent on western states (desai, 1972). india’s decision to do so resulted from its experience with the british east india company (eic) during the colonial period. then, large-scale importation of british manufactured goods undermined the viability of small-scale indian enterprises (clark, 2007, pp. 319327; hagerty, 2005, p. 14). in the words of karl marx, “england has broken down ming hwa ting singapore-india relations: a return to history 125 aseas 2 (2) the entire framework of indian society, without any symptoms of reconstitution yet appearing” (marx, 1965, p. 25). elaborating, marx notes that the “hand-loom and the spinning wheel … were the pivots of the structure of that society… [and it] was the british intruder who broke up the indian hand-loom and destroyed the spinning wheel” (marx, 1965, p. 27). furthermore, dependency theory, which advocated newlyindependent states to decouple their national economies from the world market was en vogue then. due to the combination of these two factors, it was unsurprising that india developed reservations towards integrating itself with the global economy, one that western states dominated. ironically, india needed external assistance as it lacked the indigenous capacity to develop its heavy industries. given its wary attitudes towards the west, india sought assistance from the soviet union instead, whose help was instrumental in india’s establishment of the steel and heavy machines plants in bhilai and ranchi. a sign of the closer bilateral relations was that the soviet union became a major destination of indian exports during the 1960s and 1970s. during this period, the percentage of indian exports to britain fell drastically, from 26.9 percent in 1960 to 11.1 percent in 1971, while its exports to the soviet union increased from 4.5 percent to 13.7 percent within (nayyar, 1976, p. 29), which was unsurprising since they signed a treaty of peace, friendship and co-operation in 1971. the objective of this treaty was to allow the soviet union to establish a strong geopolitical presence in south asia, which checked american and chinese involvement in the region, most notably during the conflict between india and pakistan in the same year. these closer links between india and the soviet union came about after the united states supplied arms to pakistan during the 1965 indo-pakistan war. to counter pakistan’s offensive, india looked towards the soviet union for the sale of advanced weaponry. over time, india developed a ‘weapon dependence’ on the soviet union (jain, 2008, pp. 110-111). india’s political alignment with the soviet union through aligning with the soviet union, india was attempting to minimize british and american influence in the sub-continent. in addition, india also sought to prevent china developing closer ties with the soviet union and pakistan. india’s objective of cultivating ties with the soviet union was therefore to deny or restrict china’s 126 aseas 2 (2) diplomatic presence in south asia, which india regards as its traditional sphere of influence (jain, 2008, p. 21). however, india’s soviet links were detrimental to its relations with south-east asian states such as singapore. during the cold war, the threat of communist expansion, as reflected by military situations in cambodia, laos and vietnam, meant that southeast asian states considered india, with its soviet relations, to be politically suspect. in december 1979, the soviet union’s invasion of afghanistan became another obstacle for the normalization of relations between india and south-east asian states as soviet action went against the association of southeast asian nations’ (asean) commitment to non-intervention and respect for sovereignty (koh, 1978). india’s formal recognition in july 1980 of the vietnamese-backed heng samrin regime that overthrew the khmer rouge government in cambodia also strained its relations with south-east asian states (latif, 2008, pp. 72-73). although the khmer rouge government committed genocide against its own people, singapore consistently maintained that the lack of effective internal governance standards did not justify vietnam’s military intervention that infringed upon cambodia’s sovereignty (koh, 1980). india’s recognition of the heng samrin regime was therefore a serious political faux pas that led to a further deterioration of their ties (warbrick, 1981, pp. 238-239; yong & rao, 1995, pp. 28-29). senior singapore diplomats such as tommy koh and sinnathamby rajaratnam officially condemned these “aggressive” acts in various multilateral organizations such as the united nations and the non-aligned movement. as a miniscule state, singapore has heightened sensitivity towards any challenge to a state’s sovereignty. given singapore’s stance against external intervention (rajaratmam, 1979, pp. 637638; koh, 1978; 1980), india’s association with, and tacit approval and support of soviet policies minimized any opportunities for constructive engagement between singapore and india; relations were therefore mutually “uncomfortable and insecure” during this period (devare, 2006, p. xi). india’s ‘look east’ policy however, this period of poor bilateral relations, in hindsight, proved to be an interlude. with the soviet union’s dissolution, the cold war ended. india was, according to c. ming hwa ting singapore-india relations: a return to history 127 aseas 2 (2) raja mohan, “in deep mourning” (mohan, 2007, p. 102). it lost a valuable and long-time political and economic ally. a stark choice confronted india. it could either “persist with an inward-looking policy that marginalizes the country and slides it inexorably into increasing international irrelevance. or it can take a good hard look at itself and at other former developing countries that have achieved success essentially by dint of their own efforts” (thakur, 1992, p. 165). hence, manmohan singh, the then-finance minister, introduced economic liberalisation to overcome the problems associated with the previously autarkic policy. one of the most significant new initiatives introduced in the wake of india’s changing orientation was the ‘look east’ policy that sought to increase india’s economic interaction with south-east asian states through pursuing economic liberalization the ‘look east’ policy was not entirely new. before the cold war ended, india had already begun to make overtures to south-east asian states through its ‘look east destiny’ policy (shaumian, 1988, p. 1167). during the late 1980s and early 1990s, south-east asian states such as singapore, malaysia and indonesia were experiencing rapid and sustained economic growth. in contrast, india’s economic performance was very poor. prime minister narasimha rao then launched the ‘look east’ policy in 1992 to increase india’s engagement with these economically dynamic states, especially singapore, so as to learn from their economic and development experiences (mahbubani, 2008). apart from reaping economic benefits, india also wanted to improve its bilateral relations with them as well so as not to remain diplomatically isolated after the cold war. china was increasing its presence in south-east asia after deng xiaoping introduced economic reforms in 1978. having lost a major ally in the soviet union, it was not in india’s interest to have china dominate the region, especially one that is so geographically close. furthermore, china also gained significant diplomatic momentum and by the early 1990s, it had established formal relations with economically vibrant asian states such as south korea, indonesia and singapore. india had to respond to such geopolitical changes. at the end of the cold war, apart from membership in the south asian association for regional cooperation (saarc), india was not party to any other economic blocs. by implementing the ‘look east’ policy, india planned to leverage on its new ties with south-east asian states to gain membership in various groupings such as the asia-pacific economic co-operation (apec) and the asia-europe meeting (asem) that 128 aseas 2 (2) would be economically and politically beneficial for india (gupta, 1997, p. 307; institute of southeast asian studies [iseas], 2003, p. 42). india’s fundamental objective was to first establish an economic presence in the region, a conduit that could then lead to an increased political presence at a later stage (mohan, 2003, pp. 211-213). when india first implemented its ‘look east’ policy, it focused most attention on singapore. apart from singapore’s excellent geographical location and its national role conception as a trading state, it is also the economically most developed state in south-east asia, and so it was natural for the city-state to be india’s focal entry point into the region. manmohan singh believed that to “market new india, [we] would have to begin in singapore” (m. singh quoted in goh, 2008, para. 23), india’s post-cold war interaction and engagement with singapore provided the former with access to the region, and laid the foundations for the later establishment of the mekongganga cooperation and the bimstec forum, which entrenched india’s presence in south-east asia. with deepening levels of interactions, india is rapidly becoming a major actor in south-east asia. hence, manmohan singh believes “the ‘look east’ policy is more than a slogan, or a foreign policy orientation. it has a strong economic rationale and commercial content. we wish to look east because of the centuries of interactions between us” (m. singh, 2004b, para. 4). economic developments michael leifer (2000, p. 14) observed that: “singapore is primarily about the business of business”, and for singapore to carry on with its business, yusuf ishak, singapore’s first president, opined that: [i]n the long run, our viability depends upon having the widest spread of economic links with the largest number of countries, that is, the world, so that the economic levers will not be in the hands of a few governments (ishak quoted in b. singh, 1999, p. 26). this observation is hardly surprising since singapore is a trading state. apart from not wanting a rising china to dominate the region politically, singapore also does not want china to dominate the region economically. this is because china implemented its economic reforms before india did and so enjoys a substantial advantage. furthermore, singapore’s attempts at breaking into the chinese market have not ming hwa ting singapore-india relations: a return to history 129 aseas 2 (2) been very successful. singapore’s experience in cooperating with china to set up the suzhou industrial park (sip) is instructive. despite having the professed support of the chinese government as well as perceived cultural affinity between them, the project did not pan out the way singapore envisioned. despite receiving endorsement and support from the two governments, singapore discovered that china’s business, as well as its political climates, were very different from singapore’s. cooperation was difficult due to the diffusion of control over the project from the central government to the local government. the sip was supposed to receive preferential treatment but the local suzhou government set up a similar industrial park – suzhou new district – modelled after the sip nearby, and competed directly with the sip for investments and funding, which caused lee kuan yew to admit that this joint project was ‘a chastening experience’, and at best, ‘a partial success’ (lee, 2000, pp. 723-724). even though singapore had close links with china, singapore was still not as close as either hong kong or taiwan were – their guanxi with chinese businesses are more developed as compared to singapore (kumar, siddique, & hedrick-wong, 2005, pp. 29-63). consequently, singapore does face significant barriers in its entry into the lucrative chinese market. furthermore, as economic competition increases in major chinese cities, it becomes increasingly difficult for singapore to differentiate itself from the competition. at the same time, singapore is also unable to match the pace and size of investments from hong kong and taiwan into major chinese markets, and so it is difficult for the city-state to play a prominent role in the rapidly maturing, and therefore increasingly competitive, chinese economy (okposin, 1999, p. 177). given the problems singapore faced in china, it has been active in exploring new and emerging markets. during the early 1990s, india was one such market. apart from gaining economic benefits through closer commercial links with india, these also play a significant geopolitical role in promoting a hospitable regional order for singapore. it allows singapore to project a multi-ethnic image rather than a mono-ethnic image, which re-assures neighbouring muslim states that it is not overly enthusiastic in capitalizing on the chinese economic bandwagon. india is a good candidate as it has the second largest number of muslims in the world after indonesia, which allows singapore to distance itself from the regional perception that it is a “third china” (b. singh, 1994, p. 122) by cultivating closer relations with india, singapore is thus not only able to re-assure its own malay minority, it is also able to reduce tension with 130 aseas 2 (2) ming hwa ting singapore-india relations: a return to history 131 malaysia and indonesia, making for a win-win situation (asher & raja, 1994, p. 1). with the introduction of india’s ‘look east’ policy, singapore recognized and seized the opportunity to increase economic interaction with it. expectedly then, economic links constitute the foundation of singapore-india relations, and on may 27, 2003, prime ministers vajpayee and goh chok tong commissioned a joint study group to examine the viability of the two states in signing a closer economic cooperation agreement (ceca) to foster greater economic cooperation. after 13 rounds of formal negotiations, it was concluded on june 29, 2005. this agreement was significant as it represented the first time india had entered into such a comprehensive economic agreement with another state; likewise, it was singapore’s first such agreement with a south asian state. a sign of the rapidly developing economic integration after signing the ceca is that india became singapore’s eleventh largest trading partner in 2007, and the 2007 bilateral trade figures stood at sgd 23.9 billion, which were almost 20 percent higher than the 2006 trade figures (singapore government, 2008, para. 4), and the general upward trend can be seen in graph 1. the singapore-india ceca therefore represented the first step in economic integration between south and south-east asia. as prime minister lee hsien loong sgd millions 30,000 25,000 20,000 15,000 10,000 5,000 source: own compilation from the singapore department of statistics graph 1: singapore’s trade with india 1990 – 2008 1989 1991 1993 1995 1997 1999 2001 2003 2005 2007 aseas 2 (2) noted, “ceca is a strong signal that india is committed to continuing economic liberalization and market reforms. it heralds further moves by india to engage the outside world, not just asean, but also with major partners” (“the inside story,” 2005). vivian balakrishnan, minister of state for trade and industry for singapore, regards the ceca as “a pathfinder for the asean-india fta” (balakrishnan, 2003, singapore-india ceca, para. 2), representing a step in the right direction as india aims to increase and formalize its economic interaction with the region. signing an india-asean fta is important. it establishes the framework for future economic activities and allows all states involved greater ease into the respective markets, thereby increasing mutual interaction within a rules-based environment that makes for enhanced regional order and stability in the long-term. political developments apart from tapping into economic opportunities present in india’s vast domestic market, singapore’s early engagement of india was a reiteration of the city-state’s consistent belief of having a balance of power in the region. in order to achieve this objective, all legitimate actors must be present. given india’s territorial size and its geographical proximity to south-east asia, it is one such actor. hence, it is imperative for singapore that india is able to participate meaningfully in regional affairs as china is becoming increasingly influential in south-east asia through adroit diplomacy and the lure of access to its vast domestic market, as well as that of the greater china region. the association of southeast asian nations (asean) is the pre-eminent regional multilateral institution, and india’s participation in the regional structures constitutes a concrete step to realize the aim of a stable balance of power. singapore, as india’s former country co-ordinator, was to act as a sponsor for india’s involvement with the region. singapore has therefore played a leading role in ensuring india’s inclusion in asean, first as sectoral dialogue partner (at the singapore summit in 1992) and then as full dialogue partner (bangkok summit, december 1995), which in turn ensured india’s membership in the asean regional forum (arf) and in india’s inclusion in the east asia summit (eas) [in 2005]. singapore has also supported india’s participation in the apec working groups and india’s candidature in other multilateral fora, including un organizations” (high commission 132 aseas 2 (2) of india in singapore, 2008, para. 5). due to singapore’s efforts in involving india with the region, its links with asean have improved considerably. for instance, india proposed holding annual asean-india summits to increase the number of communication channels between them. southeast asian states welcomed india’s initiative and the first such summit was held in phnom penh in 2002. as devare (2002, p. 71) notes, the venue for the first aseanindia summit in cambodia is very significant. after all, it was india’s stance on the cambodian issue that was responsible for the delay in normalizing relations between them. hence, holding the inaugural session in cambodia effectively demonstrated that south-east asian states and india have moved on, which augurs well for their future relations. these annual asean-india summits have fostered greater interaction and cooperation between asean states and india in a number of diverse areas, and is in sharp contrast to their relations during the cold war period. judging from the rapid pace in the improvement of their bilateral ties, the prognosis for future bilateral ties is optimistic. despite china’s head start in engaging the south-east asian states, india’s recent success indicates that it is possible for the latter to close the gap and catch up with china, and serve as a counterweight to the latter. in a highly symbolic act to demonstrate india’s geographical continuity with southeast asia, “draw dramatic attention to [their] geographical proximity” (vajpayee quoted in ong, 2004, para. 3), as well as to “rediscover the essential oneness of our integrated region” (m. singh, 2004a, para 4), india proposed an asean-india overland rally. this idea was welcomed by the south-east asian states, and it was held in 2004 to coincide with the third asean-india summit. the rally started in guwahati, capital city of assam, traditionally india’s gateway to south-east asia, and went through laos, vietnam, thailand, malaysia, singapore, and concluded in indonesia, via a ferry ride to batam. the rally demonstrated the pace and extent of the improvement in bilateral ties since india implemented its ‘look east’ policy. east asia summit as a hedge against possible chinese domination, singapore lobbied for india’s inclusion in the inaugural east asia summit (eas) in 2005. asean states, as the ming hwa ting singapore-india relations: a return to history 133 aseas 2 (2) primary proponents of this new grouping that also included china, korea and japan, as well as australia, new zealand and india, outlined the three main conditions for inclusion. firstly, states must have substantive relations with south-east asian states; secondly, they must have already achieved full dialogue partner status in asean; and lastly, they must have acceded to the treaty of amity and cooperation (tac). directly supporting india’s membership in the eas, singapore’s foreign minister george yeo stated that “india obviously qualifies on all three counts and it will be included in the first eas”. yeo also reiterated that asean states retained the prerogative to decide on the membership of this regional bloc “to ensure that [it] remains in the driver’s seat of the eas process” (“india included,” 2005). more importantly, india’s inclusion signals to china the asean states’ collective commitment to stand firm against domination by any one state within this grouping (malik, 2006a, p. 208). the eas was intended to be a regional institution that fostered interaction and cooperation in asia-pacific. however, mohan malik argues that given the historic rivalry between states such as japan, china, and india, this new regional organisation “created more discord than accord” (malik, 2006b, p. 1), as demonstrated by china’s behaviour at the inaugural summit. then, china attempted to reduce india’s potential influence in the eas by proposing that the existing members of the asean plus three (apt), of which it was a member, and not the newly-expanded 16-member eas grouping to “control the formation of any asian community-building exercise” (malik, 2005). china’s objective was to undermine india’s ability to dilute chinese influence within this fledgling regional organization, and to confine india to an outsider role in east asia, an area china perceives to be its historical sphere of influence (iseas, 2004, p. 37; iseas, 2008, p. 52; international institute for strategic studies, 2005, p. 1). just as china wants to consolidate its position, india is also very keen to establish a strong presence in south-east asia “because of the uncertainties in the future, and especially out of her deep concern towards china’s role, the indian government wants to see a multi-lateral security order in asia-pacific region through building partnerships with asean” (latif, 2004). india therefore attaches much importance to its participation in the eas, which prime minister manmohan singh describes as “one of the most ambitious exercises of community building and integration ever attempted in asia” (ministry of external affairs, 2007, para. 4). from singapore’s perspective, it was important for india to be involved in the eas 134 aseas 2 (2) from its inception. for a balance of power to be present, no single state can be the preponderant power. without a hegemonic power, inter-state interactions are more likely to be regulated in a manner acceptable to all states involved. by insisting on india’s participation at the outset despite chinese opposition, singapore has sent a clear message that regional states did not wish for china to dominate the grouping. lee kuan yew elaborated: it happened in an unplanned, almost accidental, way. abdullah badawi, the prime minister of malaysia, offered to host an east asia summit: asean plus three – the three being china, japan and south korea. china’s premier wen jiabao, then offered to host the second summit. that would move the center [sic] of gravity away from southeast to northeast asia and make some countries anxious. we agreed that we should also invite india, australia and new zealand and keep the center [sic] in asean; also india would be a useful balance to china’s heft. this is a getting-together of countries that believe their economic and cultural relations will grow over the years. and this will be a restoration of two ancient civilizations: china and india. with their revival, their influence will again spread into southeast asia. it would mean great prosperity for the region, but could also mean a tussle for power. therefore, we think that it best that from the beginning, we bring all the parties in together … it’s a neater balance (lee kuan yew quoted in elegant & elliott, 2005, para. 2). hence, it is clear that bilateral relations improved so rapidly due to the dovetailing of their respective strategic interests, which was also aided by their historically close links during the colonial period. defence developments apart from increased economic and political links between singapore and india, bilateral defence relations have also shown rapid improvements, which also demonstrate the strides made in bilateral ties. they are significant, as high levels of trust are needed prior to their establishment. as early as 1994, singapore and india have conducted annual naval training operations codenamed anti-submarine warfare (asw) as part of the singapore-india maritime bilateral exercise (simbex). on the tenth anniversary of the asw, singapore ministry of defence affirmed the exercise’s importance as a “platform for the in (indian navy) and the rsn (republic of singapore navy) to interact professionally” and in the process, has also managed to “foster closer relations, mutual understanding and goodwill between the two navies” (ministry of defence, 2003). given the two nations’ mutual interest in maintaining the security of the regional sea lanes, naval cooperation has proved to be ming hwa ting singapore-india relations: a return to history 135 aseas 2 (2) mutually advantageous. the close naval collaboration between them was therefore a confidence-building mechanism that later became a model for cooperation among other branches of their militaries. in 2003, the conclusion of the defence cooperation agreement again improved bilateral defence ties as it facilitated the ensuing establishment of the annual indiasingapore defence policy dialogue. the dialogue aims to provide a regular forum for both sides to discuss defence cooperation as well as regional and defence issues. the first such meeting was conducted in singapore in march 2004. due to the presence of these confidence-building mechanisms, singapore and india were able to further their defence cooperation. in 2004, sindex 04 was held in central india. in 2005, new grounds were broken when both militaries conducted their first joint artillery and armour exercises codenamed ‘ex bold kurukshetra’ and ‘ex agni warrior’ that were held at deolali and babina respectively. another sign of the maturing defence ties between them was the signing of the 2007 joint military exercises agreement. it allows the singapore air force to train at indian military bases in kalaikunda, west bengal, for five years, in return for payment and the understanding that the singapore air force maintains and upgrades the indian facilities provided (shekhar, 2007). this military agreement is significant because it is the first time the indian government has allowed the stationing of foreign troops on its soil. in november 2008, a three-week long joint air force training exercise was conducted, which singapore’s ministry of defence considered as yet another significant milestone in bilateral defence relations (saad, 2008). in august 2008, both states entered into another bilateral defence agreement that allowed their infantry forces to undertake joint training exercises in india (ministry of defence, 2008). more significantly, india’s willingness to allow all three branches of the singapore military to train there is a strong indicator of this rapidly developing bilateral relationship. in less than 30 years, singapore-india defence relations have gone from virtually non-existent to being characterized by close and enduring cooperation between all three branches of their military in the present. the establishment of close defence ties indicates the presence of a high level of trust between the two states, and augurs well for even better singapore-india relations in the future. 136 aseas 2 (2) social and cultural developments improved bilateral ties are not just confined to areas of high politics discussed in previous sections; they are also evident in areas of low politics as there are now more people-to-people contacts between the two states. for instance, there is increased demand for indian education by indian expatriates in singapore, which made it necessary to establish indian international schools. the establishment of indian international schools is significant – it not only indicates the sizable presence of indian nationals in singapore, but such high demands also indicate that indian expatriates expect to be based in singapore for extended periods. as of september 2009, there were three indian international schools in singapore. furthermore, in december 2008, singapore press holdings launched a new weekly newspapertabla! that targets indian nationals based in singapore. with the global trend of newspapers companies shutting down due to falling readership, the launch of an indian weekly therefore provides strong evidence of high levels of people-to-people interaction between singapore and india in the present context. apart from an increasing expatriate population, the number of indian tourist arrivals to singapore has also increased as reflected in graph 2. likewise, just as there are increasing numbers of indian nationals in singapore, there are increasing numbers of singaporean nationals in india as well (teo, 2008). ming hwa ting singapore-india relations: a return to history 137 800,000 600,000 400,000 200,000 source: own compilation from the singapore department of statistics graph 2: total number of indian visitors to singapore 1991 1993 1995 1997 1999 2001 2003 2005 2007 aseas 2 (2) in 2005, the indian high commission issued 60,000 business and travel visas to singaporeans, and this figure increased by more than 30 percent in just two years to 80,000 in 2007. these healthy numbers indicate that the people-to-people links between singapore and india are very strong, and augurs well for the future of their official bilateral ties. singapore’s asian civilisation museum staging of the ‘nalanda trail’ exhibition in 2007 also supports the above argument that there is increased social and cultural interaction between the two states. the exhibition was a landmark event as it was the first time since 1947 that india had sent such priceless historical artefacts abroad (ramesh, 2007). this exhibition was possible as the two governments concluded an agreement in 2003 for the loan of such artefacts from the archaeological survey of india and the national museum, new delhi. singapore, once again, was the first state to have concluded such a long-term agreement with india (high commission of india in singapore, 2003, p.1 ; ministry of information, 2003). as another sign of their rapidly developing bilateral ties on the social front, the indian government invited singapore’s deputy prime minister jayakumar to be the chief guest of the 2007 pravasi bharatiya divas conference for indian diasporas and he expressed an interest in hosting the event. just a year later in 2008, india selected singapore to be the host – the first time the event had been held in another asian country. to choose singapore as the host for this international conference ahead of other asia-pacific states provides more evidence that bilateral ties between singapore and india are rapidly becoming closer (ramesh, 2008). aware of such improvements in their bilateral relations, the singapore and indian governments established the india-singapore joint ministerial committee in order “to take stock of bilateral initiatives, exchange views on regional and international issues, as well as to identify new areas for cooperation” (ministry of foreign affairs, 2008, bilateral relations, para. 2). this joint initiative shows that political elites from both states attach much importance to exploring new ways to consolidate and increase the present levels of cooperation between them. given the developing diplomatic, economic and people-to-people contacts between singapore and india, it is more accurate to describe their interactions in the present context as “deep and multifaceted” (lim, 2004, para. 2), and not as ‘diplomatically distant’. in a concrete sign of singapore’s devoting more importance to the indian sub-continent, the national 138 aseas 2 (2) university of singapore set up the institute of south asia studies in july 2004. this new institution “reflects the increasing economic and political importance of south asia, and the strong historical links between south asia and southeast asia” (institute of south asian studies, 2009, background, para. 1). in another bid to strengthen ties with the region, this institute set up a new project in november 2009 – south asia link –, the brainchild of president nathan to “make singapore the focal point for the 30 million members of the south asian diaspora around the world” (“project to link south asians,” 2009). conclusion during the cold war, singapore and india did not have substantive contact with one another. therefore it is fair to argue that they were not vital to each other since the more than 40 years of political divergence between them did not affect either state. the sustained period of division indicates that singapore and india were not inherently pre-disposed to having excellent bilateral relations in the post-colonial context. the current reversal means improvement in their bilateral relations arises from the conscious efforts of both states. advancements in the bilateral relations mainly arise from their joint recognition that they share common interests that could be furthered through conscious cooperation. the potentially negative developments arising from china’s rise is arguably the fundamental factor that causes the convergence of their national interests. this is because both states are desirous of establishing a stable and durable balance of power to promote order in asia: singapore does not want to be dominated by a hegemonic state; india does not want to be marginalized. concurrently, singapore’s closer engagement of india also allows singapore to distance itself from the image of being a sinic outpost that identifies with china. given the regional ethnic composition, such a policy that distances itself from its ethnic identity is necessary to maintain a hospitable regional environment for singapore, which is the only south-east asian state to have an ethnic chinese majority. china implemented its economic reforms in 1978, more than a decade before india’s ‘look east’ policy and so the former had a significant lead over india and has a more prominent economic presence in south-east asia. singapore is aware of this ming hwa ting singapore-india relations: a return to history 139 aseas 2 (2) development. thus, it has consciously worked on improving its bilateral relations with india after the cold war. through closer ties with india, singapore seeks to dilute chinese influence on itself and in south-east asia as well. to increase india’s presence in the region, singapore has been keen in not only developing channels to increase its interaction with india, but also to ensure that these channels, once formed, 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(2010). self-identified feminists among gender activists and scholars at indonesian universities. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 3(2), 151-174. being a self-identifi ed feminist is controversial among women’s rights activists and scholars. this relates to diff erent interpretations of and positive and negative associations with the term ‘feminist’ in society. the research presented here discusses the diff erent ‘feminist’ identities and other labels among activists and scholars at indonesian universities and explores what ‘feminist’ means for them. respondents come from pusat studi wanita (centres for women’s studies) or pusat studi gender (centres for gender studies) at six universities in yogyakarta, indonesia. many respondents acknowledge that western feminists are able to raise awareness of gender issues, strengthen feminist identity, and build up faith in islam. the paper, however, also addresses the question of why some reject the ‘feminist’ label. keywords: indonesia, islamic feminism, feminist identity, women studies, gender studies die selbstidentifi kation als feministin ist unter frauenrechtsaktivistinnen und wissenschafterinnen ein kontroverses thema. in erster linie liegt dies wohl an unterschiedlichen interpretationen und positiven wie auch negativen assoziationen die geläufi gerweise mit dem begriff „feministin“ verbunden sind. die hier präsentierte forschung untersucht wie sich aktivistinnen und wissenschafterinnen an indonesischen universitäten innerhalb oder gegenüber dem begriff feminismus selbst verorten und analysiert die den jeweiligen inhalt und die bedeutung, welche der begriff s „feministin“ für die befragten personen einnimt. die datenerhebung erfolgte an pusat studi wanita (zentren für frauenforschung) bzw. pusat studi gender (zentren für genderforschung) sechs verschiedener indonesischer universitäten in yogyakarta. viele befragte unterstreichen die bedeutung westlicher feministinnen für die bewusstseinschaff ung für geschlechtsspezifi sche probleme, für die stärkung feministischer identität sowie islamischen glaubens. diese untersuchung behandelt jedoch auch gezielt die frage, warum der begriff „feministin“ widerum von anderen abgelehnt wird. schlagworte: indonesien, islamischer feminismus, feministische identität, frauenforschung, genderforschung 1 alimatul qibtiyah is a phd student in international business and asian studies (ibas) at griffi th university, brisbane, australia. the research presented here is part of her dissertation research for which griffi th university’s ethical clearance has been obtained. the research fi ndings in this paper are based on the fi rst and second round of fi eld research and data collection in yogyakarta for six months in 2010. feedback and critiques from readers will be highly appreciated. contact: alimatulq@hotmail.com aseas 3(2) 152 153 women and gender studies in indonesia2 the women’s movement in indonesia has a long history, an early example being raden ayu kartini.3 more than 70 women’s organisations, such as putri merdeka, isteri sedar, ‘aisyiyah, gerakan pemuda islam indonesia putri, muslimat, keutamaan istri, pawijatan wanito, followed (qibtiyah, 2009). however, the appearance of a movement of indonesian muslim women that acknowledges and adopts some western ideas about feminism in a broader movement is a quite recent development. in indonesia, the 1990s were an important decade for muslim women because new forums, new organisations, and new islamic books with more liberating ideas for women were launched in this period. some books were concerned with the topic ‘gender equality’, for example women in islam by fateema mernissi and women in the qur’an by amina wadud, were published in bahasa indonesia in 1994 by pustaka bandung. in the same year, ulumul qur’an (qur’an, 1994a; 1994b), a prestigious islamic journal in indonesia, published a special edition on women’s rights issues, feminism, islamic feminism, and anti-feminism. women activists had an opportunity to read and discuss directly with some prominent islamic feminists from other parts of the islamic world, such as asghar ali engineer, rifat hasan, and amina wadud (jamhari & ropi, 2003). according to arimbi (2006), the 1990s witnessed the shift from ‘state ibuism’4 to a feminist discourse in indonesia, including islamic feminism, which challenges patriarchal culture, furthers equality and justice for women as an expression of her or his islamic faith that is based on the islamic texts (the qur’an and hadith), and promotes a happy and democratic family (mawadah, warahmah, and maslahah). during the late 1980s, the government of indonesia established pusat studi wanita (‘centres for women’s studies’ or psw) at prominent universities across the country as a way of supporting the government policy of women’s empowerment and gender equality (burhanudin & fathurahman, 2004; kementerian pemberdayaan perempuan republik indonesia, 2004). one of psw’s functions is to help the process of developing 2 i would like to thank all my supervisors, dr julia d. howell, dr catherine burn, and john butcher, who have helped me through this arduous task. their useful guidance and brilliant ideas as well as their spirit and support gave me confidence to write this paper. many thanks as well to all respondents for their insightful ideas, without which this research would not have been successful. 3 many sources mention ra kartini as the first indonesian feminist. 4 the new order government of former president suharto (1968-1998) started promoting ‘state ibuism’: the roles of wife and mother (ibu) were mandated for women and government guidelines for those roles were implemented nationally. aseas 3(2) 152 153 methodologies and theoretical foundations for research with women (committee on women’s studies in asia, 1995). according to sadli (2010), the main objective of these centres is to provide research data on women’s issues such as women’s rights and women’s needs relevant to specific provinces. she asserts that it is good to have psw and pusat studi gender (‘centres for gender studies’ or psg) for several reasons: they constitute an awareness raising process for decision makers at ail [all] levels of which majority are men. in particular they help to raise their awareness that women’s issues should be given adequate attention in program development, and that women should be part of the decision making process in developing these programs … adequate funds should be allocated in the provincial budget to do research on women and further on to develop relevant programs for women. these centres are therefore also good vehicles to stimulate university-government-community partnership (sadli, 2010, p. 366). looking at the historical development of the role of psw, it seems that in the early decades they acted more as new order government tools focusing on maintaining traditional gender roles.5 from 2000, particularly after the launching of new forums, new organisations, and new islamic books that redefined women and gender roles, some psw in islamic universities began to reformulate some programs that promoted women’s interests, such as challenging patriarchal culture and providing new egalitarian interpretations on gender in islam. these centres conducted research on ‘misogynist’ islamic texts, by implementing historical and hermeneutics approaches6 to get the relevant meaning of the texts and reformulate the egalitarian interpretations. they published these new egalitarian interpretations and used them as important references in their training for islamic leaders and judges. in 2000, the indonesian government led by abdurrahman wahid made an important contribution to the gender equality movement by issuing a presidential instruction (inpres no. 9/2000) on ‘gender mainstreaming into national development’.7 this policy had a significant impact on the development of psw in terms of subsequent female participation in education and other institutions. for instance, kull (2009) 5 some programs were based on gender stereotype, such as giving sewing machines and cooking utilities to women, and holding cooking competitions for women. 6 the historical approach considers the influences of place and time on the revelation and recording of texts, understanding them as shaped by the social, cultural, and geographical conditions. it follows the principle of fallibility of human knowledge (abdullah, 2002). the hermeneutic approach focuses on three aspects of the text: the context in which the text was written, the grammatical composition of the text, and the world-view of the text (amina, 1999). 7 gender mainstreaming is a major strategy to ensure that women and men gain equal access to, and participate equally in, the benefits of development. this instruction applies to all the ministries, the armed forces, the police force, the high court, the heads of local governments and the heads of all other governmental agencies. it aims to mainstream gender in the planning, formulation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of all national development programmes (surbakti, 2002). alimatul qibtiyah self-identified feminists among gender activists and scholars aseas 3(2) 154 155 found that the number of female students enrolling in higher islamic education has continuously increased for several decades, and currently female enrolments often constitute up to 50 percent of the students at these institutions. the number of females as postgraduate students, researchers, and teachers across all educational levels has also increased. looking at the attitudes and identities of the members of psw is one way to research how widespread feminist identification in indonesia is now and what feminism means to the indonesians. psw members are considered important actors in the area of gender equality in indonesian academia; for example, some of them act as cultural brokers, crucial opinion makers, and academic multipliers, and are at the forefront of introducing feminist writings from the west, the middle east, and asia. they are considered agents of change by spreading information, research findings, and new interpretations about women’s rights in islam throughout indonesian muslim society, both in academia and at the grassroots level (jamhari & ropi, 2003). since 2002, psw iain/uin yogyakarta has been considered one of indonesia’s most active islamic research institutions on islam and gender (doorn-harder, 2006). one important issue for both gender activists and feminist scholars is identity. ‘feminist’ as a term of identity has been more controversial than the term ‘feminism’. most authors of islamic feminism literature adamantly rejected being labelled as ‘islamic feminists’ (badran, 2008). being a self-identified feminist is controversial among women’s activists both in the west and the east. this includes indonesian feminists. in the western context, some young generation ‘third wave’ women activists are reluctant to identify themselves as ‘feminist’, stating that “i am not a feminist but …” (caro & fox, 2008; gromisch, 2009). in the indonesian context, the reluctance to identify as a ‘feminist’ stems from the stigma attached to the feminist label: ‘feminists’ are linked to either leftist (communist) or liberal tendencies (suryakusuma, 2004; wieringa, 2002) that allegedly promote individualism, selfishness, and ‘immoral’ behaviour such as premarital sex (doorn-harder, 2006). identifying as a ‘feminist’ is also regarded as being anti-men, and sympathetic to lesbianism (sadli, 2002). in addition, a feminist is often seen as someone who is against female natural attributes (kodrat8) and is anti-male, who destroys islamic principle (aqidah), rebels 8 kodrat is a power; the ability or capacity to do a particular thing; aptitude; everything that men and women have that have been determined by god and that humankind cannot change or reject. aseas 3(2) 154 155 against domestic tasks, and even challenges islamic law (syariah). because of these negative associations, some indonesian women’s organisation members make the disclaimer that “even though we struggle for women’s rights, we are not feminists” (suryakusuma, 2004, p. 271). the debate over feminist identity also comes from the notion of compatibility between feminism and islam. the debate is based on the historical polemic between the islamic world and the west, between islam and so-called christianity-colonialists, a frequent muslim assumption that colonialists were usually from the west and christian (safi, 2003). there are two positions taken by people engaged in the debate. 1. the first group argues that islam lies on the line of faith, while feminism is a secular term; therefore islam and feminism are not compatible. hammed shahidin (as cited in moghadam, 2002; mojab, 2001) points out that ‘islamic feminism’ is problematical and an oxymoron in the islamic world. furthermore, this group argues that muslims do not need to import western terms or values into islamic society, since muslims have their own religious texts that are more relevant and culturally appropriate than those of the west. 2. the second group asserts that islam and feminism are harmonious. contemporary scholars who are in favour of the term ‘islamic feminism’, such as laila ahmed, riffat hassan, and fatima mernisi, argue that feminism fits into islam. according to moghadam (2002), islam does not inherently contradict feminism because islam values the promotion of equality between men and women, although in practice this principle has been misused in order to justify the subordination of women. majid (1998) also asserts that islam and feminism are not necessarily two opposing terms or contesting with each other. majid criticises those who limit the term ‘islamic’ to a pure religious belief. from these debates are generated the self-identity among women activists in indonesia. according to doorn-harder (2006), the younger indonesian women are more comfortable being called feminists than the older generation. one of the older generation activists, saparinah sadli, says that “i am reluctant to use indonesian feminism because i am not sure that we have developed an indonesian theory of alimatul qibtiyah self-identified feminists among gender activists and scholars aseas 3(2) 156 157 feminism” (sadli, 2002). however, she calls musda mulia an indonesian islamic feminist (mulia, 2005). another impact of the debate is on self-identified feminists: whether they identify themselves as ‘islamic feminists’ or ‘muslim feminists’. according to cooke (2001), ‘islamic’ is more relevant than muslim, because ‘islamic’ means there is an islamic tradition of feminism whereas muslim feminism just refers to feminists who embrace islam but who do not necessarily practise the islamic tradition. furthermore, cooke describes an islamic as a particular kind of self positioning that will then inform the speech, the action, the writing, or the way of life adopted by someone who is committed to questioning islamic epistemology as an expansion of their faith position and not a rejection of it (cooke, 2001, p. 61). this paper shows the prevalence of controversial ‘feminist’ identity among muslim gender activists and scholars in indonesian universities based on quantitative and qualitative data. it also reveals various understandings they have about western feminists and feminism. the discussion on feminist identity presents the percentages of (1) people who claim to have or dispute having a feminist identity, (2) the different feminist identities among respondents at the public and islamic universities, and (3) the different feminist identities among the male and female respondents. furthermore, in the feminist identity section, i explore what ‘feminist’ means for both people who identify themselves as ‘feminist’ and for those who do not, and for the latter, why they reject that identity. i also seek out what are the most and the least popular preferred labels for those two groups. the second section explores the various understandings of western feminists’ ideas among muslim gender activists and scholars in the indonesian universities surveyed. i show which western feminist ideas have been incorporated into muslim gender activists’ understanding, and show which ones have not been and why some members of psw and psg disagree with these ideas. in this paper i argue that self-identifying as ‘feminist’ among muslim gender activists and scholars in indonesian universities has been influenced by the ways of understanding the term ‘feminist’, which has both positive and negative connotations in indonesian society. furthermore, i will show that muslim gender activists and scholars in indonesian universities have a range of understandings about western aseas 3(2) 156 157 feminist ideas which can be adapted to the indonesian context. most hold that universal values such as gender equality, gender justice, and the recognition of women as equal human beings are grounded in the islamic tradition (quran and hadith) and in local tradition. those values are not imported from western feminists. however, some respondents acknowledged that western feminist concepts and strategies have influenced their views, their thoughts, and their strategies for dealing with gender issues in indonesia. the research was conducted through a case study involving psw and psg at six universities in yogyakarta, indonesia. three of them are islamic: uin sunan kalijaga yogyakarta, indonesian islamic university (uii), and muhammadiyah university yogyakarta (umy). three of them are public universities: gadjah mada university (ugm), the state university of yogyakarta (uny), and the university of national development (upn). the total number of respondents is 165, including 70 males and 95 females. 105 are from islamic universities and 60 are from public universities. all respondents have been involved in psw or psg and all self-identify as muslims. indepth interviews were conducted with 25 respondents across all categories. this paper uses pseudonyms to ensure the confidentiality of all respondents. research findings on feminist identity one of the important issues among indonesian muslim feminists is that of identity. although all respondents of my study are gender activists or people who are concerned with women or gender issues, not all of them identify themselves as ‘feminists’. figure 1 illustrates that the overall percentage of respondents who are self-identified ‘feminists’ is lower than that of those self-identified ‘non-feminists’. however, an analysis based on sex shows that the percentage of male respondents who are selfidentified ‘feminists’ is slightly higher (22 percent) than those who are self-identified ‘non-feminists’ (21 percent). conversely, the share of female respondents who are self-identified ‘feminists’ is significantly lower (22 percent) than the share of those self-identified ‘non-feminists’ (35 percent). this is an interesting finding because feminism mostly deals with women’s issues. it was predicted that generally more women would identify themselves as ‘feminists’ than men, but in this research finding this is not the case. alimatul qibtiyah self-identified feminists among gender activists and scholars aseas 3(2) 158 159 the reason why more women than men did not identify themselves as ‘feminists’ could be related to the connotation of the term ‘feminist’. this term is usually attached to women rather than to men, and implies someone who is against women’s kodrat, who is a man-hater, who wants to dominate men, and who accepts lesbianism. therefore, if a woman labels herself as a ‘feminist’, she would be seen to possess those negative attributes held by certain members in the society. conversely, those negative associations will not attach to men. in other words, self-identification as ‘feminist’ implies a higher risk for women than for men in indonesian society. figure 1 also presents that males and females form the same proportion of the total of self-identified feminists (22 percent). these findings help us to understand how both male and female activists have become involved in gender and feminist activism in indonesia (cf. nuruzzaman, 2005). they also help us to understand the fact that male core members have been involved in all six selected psw and psg since their establishment. another argument is that the social structure in traditional indonesian communities is bilateral and this local kinship may shape contemporary values. from my literature review, it is evident that the position of women has been relatively elevated, with a high status (atkinson & errington, 1990; goody, 1976). some of the women held leading positions in their societies. javanese women have enjoyed more freedom to venture into public space than their sisters in arab countries (arimbi, 2006; white, figure 1: respondents by sex and identity source: own compilation male 22% 21% 22%35% female 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% self-identified feminist self-identified non-feminist n=165 aseas 3(2) 158 159 2006) and have had more rights than some african women (goody, 1976). in some arab countries women have not been allowed to go out and drive a car by themselves; most indonesian women have been free to drive and go everywhere by themselves. in terms of inheritance, indonesian women have been able to inherit land and other property; however, certain african women have been able to inherit only houses and other property but not land, since production from the fields is reserved for male offspring (goody, 1976). using an ‘independent samples t test’ analysis, my research shows that being affiliated with islamic rather than public universities does not affect self-identification as ‘feminist’. table 1 below illustrates the significance (2-tailed) score as .072 and .069 (p>.000), which means that there is no significant difference between those who selfidentified as ‘feminist’ in islamic and public universities. research shows that the type of university is not the determinant social factor for feminist identity. it can be perceived that in the indonesian context, the public and islamic university backgrounds do not necessarily influence someone’s religiosity. around 71 percent of female respondents from public universities also wear a hijab as a symbol of islamic identity and most of the respondents have been engaged in islamic women’s organisations such as 'aisyiyah, nasyiatul 'aisyiyah, or muslimat. many male respondents from public universities also have been involved in muhammadiyah or nahdatul ulama. therefore, islamic and public university staff are considerably similar in their religiosity. alimatul qibtiyah self-identified feminists among gender activists and scholars source: own compilation table 1: respondents' affiliation with islamic or public university t y p e o f u n i f 12.734 sig. .000 t -1.814 -1.832 df 163 159.555 sig. (2-tailed) .072 .069 mean difference -.1362 -.1362 std. error difference .07511 .07436 lower -.28455 -.28310 upper .01207 .01062 95% confidence interval of the difference equal variances assumed equal variances not assumed t-test for equality of means levene's test for equality of variances aseas 3(2) 160 161 the sex of the respondents does not differentiate self-identification as ‘feminist’ and ‘non-feminist’. table 2 clearly shows that the significance (2-tailed) scores are .112 and .114 (p>.000), meaning that there is no significant difference between feminist identification and sex. the finding that the sex of respondents does not associate with self-identification as ‘feminist’ could be perceived as related to the heavily bilateral social structure of traditional indonesian communities. this helps us to understand jayawardena’s observation that third world countries, including indonesia, “have had a history of active and militant feminism, as well as early movements for women’s emancipation, supported by women and men reformers” (jayawardena, 1982, p. v). respondents who identify themselves as ‘feminist’ are predominantly those who have considerable knowledge of feminism, have less prejudice toward the term ‘feminism’, and have a more progressive approach9 to gender in islam. this means that the influential aspect of gender awareness is not the level of education in general, but rather the knowledge of gender issues or feminism due to special interests, trainings, or workshops. in fact, although in society there are many people who have graduated from a higher education institution and hold the title of master or doctor, if they have never learnt about or studied gender and feminism, they will usually continue to have a gender-biased perspective. 9 progressive muslims have produced a growing body of literature that re-examines islamic tradition and addresses pluralism and gender issues at both a theoretical and a practical level. they argue that a fresh interpretation of islamic sources and a reformulation of islam is urgently needed (esposito, 1998). source: own compilation s e x f 5.225 sig. .024 t -1.598 -1.591 df 163 151.965 sig. (2-tailed) .112 .114 mean difference -.1236 -.1236 std. error difference .07734 .07767 lower -.27630 -.27703 upper .02913 .02986 95% confidence interval of the difference equal variances assumed equal variances not assumed table 2: respondents' sex t-test for equality of means levene's test for equality of variances aseas 3(2) 160 161 self-understanding of indonesian gender activists and scholars there are various understandings of the term ‘feminist’ among the respondents. the group of self-identified feminists obviously do not associate a negative understanding with the term ‘feminist’. however, they define the term in a diverse way. respondents who do not identify as ‘feminists’ explain that there are two meanings of the term ‘feminist’, one being negative, the other being positive. for example, according to dullah, a self-identified feminist, “a feminist is someone who has awareness that there is inequality experienced by women and who has notion that women are human beings” (dullah, personal communication, 8 february 2010). nova defines a feminist as “someone who has an intention to give rooms for marginalised groups, including for women by having either direct or indirect activities” (nova, personal communication, 24 february 2010). maman, a self-identified nonfeminist, expresses his view that the different treatment between the sexes is part of the ‘natural order’, and therefore it is unproblematic: i see that the position between men and women is natural, so for me that should be just like that … treat men and women proportionally without making the ideas [gender relationship] an ideology. this is my understanding [about the gender relationship] that is grounded from my islamic teaching … i fell that my family and neighbourhood do not find any problem about this issue (maman, personal communication, 5 may 2010). furthermore, according to some self-identified feminists, ‘feminist’ does not simply imply the awareness that women have capabilities, rights, and goals just as men do, it should also be followed by actions such as empowerment for themselves and others. also a ‘feminist’ is not necessarily someone who participates in demonstrations or joins women’s ngos. someone who is concerned about gender equality and women’s issues through teaching or publishing his or her academic work is also a feminist. an example for this notion is presented by gizela: a feminist is someone who is aware of inequality and endeavours to empower her or himself and others ... a feminist is not necessarily an activist or ... goes down to the street. a philosopher who gives an egalitarian interpretation between men and women is also a feminist (gizela, personal communication, 5 may 2010). in contrast, according to some self-identified non-feminists, a ‘feminist’ is someone alimatul qibtiyah self-identified feminists among gender activists and scholars aseas 3(2) 162 163 who struggles for gender equality, has a deep concern and knowledge of women’s issues, and joins women’s ngos. as dama and hera said: i don’t want to call myself a ‘feminist’, because … in my understanding a ‘feminist’ is someone who really has a deep knowledge on those issues … so someone can be called a ‘feminist’ if she or he really gets involved not only just sympathetic ... (dama, personal communication, 12 june 2010) i only write something … that relates to feminist thought … i want to be a feminist but not yet … a feminist struggles in the ngo or doing real research … because i have ever conducted research [about women and economic] and i was disappointed about the result, so i was like a failed feminist (hera, personal communication, 1 june 2010). in addition, according to sita, ‘feminist’ depends on a person’s mindset, neither being a man or woman. therefore, a man can be a ‘feminist’. although there is an idea of a women’s way of knowing,10 meaning that only women have direct experience of what it means to be a woman, this does not mean that men cannot help to solve women’s problems (sita, personal communication, 3 june 3 2010). a similar idea is presented by tria, a self-identified feminist: a feminist for me can be a man or a woman who sees inequality relationship between men and women and there is an effort to deal with that inequality problem ... for me, i believe that actually men also feel oppression ... for example, the idea that to be a head of family, the husband has to have more income than the wife (tria, personal communication, 20 may 2010). interestingly, some people who reject a feminist identity define the term ‘feminist’ in a positive way. however, because there are many different beliefs in society about the term ‘feminist’, including the negative association mentioned previously, these people do not identify as ‘feminist’ as part of their strategic positioning. abdullah and zihan, self-identified non-feminists, reported: the definition of ‘feminist’ in positive manner is that someone who struggles for the equal position between men and women, therefore there will be an ideal life and an equal gender relationship in the society and in the family (abdullah, personal communication, 22 may 2010). socially i don’t have to call myself ‘feminist’ because there are many negative associations on that term in the society, but personally i don’t have any problem with feminist identity as far as the meaning is someone who struggles for the equality between men and women (zihan, personal communication, 19 may 2010). 10 belenky, clincgy, goldberger & tarule (1986) also present similar idea in the book women’s ways of knowing: the development of self, voice, and mind that women have a different experience from men, and only women themselves could experience and feel it. aseas 3(2) 162 163 other reasons people reject feminist identification are that they define ‘feminist’ negatively and because some of them have misunderstood the term. negative associations of the term ‘feminist’ respondents mentioned include: that a ‘feminist’ is too extreme and radical (dama, personal communication, 12 june 2010); that ‘feminism’ is against women’s kodrat, such as demanding that women want to become boxers or football players (ana, personal communication, 5 february 2010); or that a ‘feminist’ wants to dominate men, wants men and women to be exactly the same, does not want to experience child birth, and accepts lesbianism. several misunderstandings about the term ‘feminist’ reported by some selfidentified non-feminists are that ‘feminist’ is motherhood or womanhood and ‘feminist’ is something that relates to a woman’s personality and femininity. one male respondent, lida, states that “a feminist is someone who has women’s attitude, characteristic, and personality” (lida, personal communication, 24 february 2010). “feminist for me is someone who has motherhood or womanhood characteristics, because of that i am not a feminist” (joko, personal communication, 24 may 2010). in summary, the range of definitions according to self-identified feminists includes that a feminist could be a man or a woman who is concerned with women’s issues, who holds the notion that women are human beings and have the same capability as men do, and who is aware of gender inequality, but who does not necessarily participate in demonstrations or join women’s ngos. although some self-identified non-feminists define ‘feminist’ in a positive manner they do not identify themselves as ‘feminists’ for four types of reasons: 1. to be a ‘feminist’, someone needs advanced knowledge, takes part in certain types of activities such as demonstrations or joining women-related ngos, and also actively advocates and gets involved in issues dealing with women and gender publicly. 2. in society there are many understandings about the term ‘feminist’, including the negative associations such as being too extreme, too radical, a men-hater etc. thus, some people reject identifying themselves socially as ‘feminist’, although they personally or internally may not have any problem with a ‘feminist’ identity. the rejection of self-identification as a ‘feminist’ is therefore a part of strategic positioning in society. alimatul qibtiyah self-identified feminists among gender activists and scholars aseas 3(2) 164 165 3. while some people do believe that the term ‘feminist’ is associated with negative connotations (see above), the different position and roles of the sexes are a common phenomenon and for them part of the natural order. hence for them, different positions and roles do not need to be conceptualised as problematic. 4. there are misunderstandings about the term ‘feminist’: sometimes it is perceived as motherhood or womanhood and something that relates to a woman’s personality and femininity. the most and the least popular preferred labels in the survey, respondents who identified themselves as ‘feminists’ were then asked to reflect on more specific identity labels. four choices were offered in order to identify the most and the least popular preferred labels among these respondents: ‘islamic feminist’, ‘muslim feminist’, ‘islamic feminist and muslim feminist’, and ‘others’. likewise, four choices were offered to respondents who are self-identified ‘non-feminist’ to observe their ways of identifying themselves: ‘gender activist’, ‘women’s activist’, ‘gender activist and women’s activist’, and ‘others’ figure 2 shows that ‘muslim feminist’ is the most popular self-label (18 percent) among the self-identified ‘feminist’ group, while the least popular label for this group is ‘islamic feminist and muslim feminist’ (only 7 percent). 10 percent of respondents identified themselves as ‘islamic feminist’. in the self-identified ‘non-feminist’ group, the survey result shows that the ‘others’ label is the most popular choice (27 percent). only 1 percent of the respondents chose both ‘gender activist and women’s activist’. during their in-depth interview, some respondents differentiated between the labels ‘islamic feminist’ and ‘muslim feminist’. gizela, for example, described an islamic feminist as someone who has the autonomy, power, and capability to reinterpret fundamental values about gender equality within islam, whereas a muslim feminist is anyone who embraces islam (called a muslim in islam) and is not necessarily concerned with islamic teaching on gender. gizela identifies herself as ‘islamic feminist’ and differentiates ‘islamic feminist’ from ‘muslim feminist’ as follows: aseas 3(2) 164 165 a muslim feminist … embraces islam and printed in a personal identity formally and becomes muslim without challenges, without having access to learn deeply and even she or he might not be practicing. for me … i would say that i am an ‘islamic feminist’ not a ‘muslim feminist’ because i teach tafsir qur’an [qur’anic exegesis] and hadith, so i have access to read the basic islamic teaching to build islamic values, so i have an access and capability to reconstruct islamic teaching based on gender equality (gizela, personal communication, 5 may 2010). another respondent, sita, labels herself as ‘muslim feminist’. she defines a muslim feminist as a person but islamic feminism as a discourse. sita reported that: if ‘islamic’ is an attribute to the religion. i said that i am a ‘muslim feminist’ because i am a person who embraces islam which in islam we call a muslim … i think the discourse is an ‘islamic feminism’ and the person is a ‘muslim feminist’ (sita, personal communication, 3 june 2010). however, figure 3 now shows the variety of labels in the ‘others’ option among ‘nonfeminists’. these data help us to understand that although the ‘others’ label is the most popular option, it comprises respondents who held various understandings. this also implies that the ‘gender activist’ option, chosen by 18 percent of total alimatul qibtiyah self-identified feminists among gender activists and scholars figure 2: identity labels among feminists and non-feminists others 10% 18% 7% 36% 'islamic feminists' 'muslim feminists' 'islamic & muslim feminists' source: own compilation 'gender activists' 'women's activists' 'gender & women's activists' 1% 27% 9% 10% 18% self-identified feminist self-identified non-feminist n=165 aseas 3(2) 166 167 respondents among those self-identified as ‘non-feminist’ (figure 2), is actually the most preferred label among people in this group. indonesian muslim gender activists’ and scholars’ understanding of western feminist ideas one of the research questions probed the various understandings about western feminists’ ideas among muslim gender activists and scholars in indonesian universities. the research has found that, for various reasons, not all western feminist concepts are adopted by respondents at the selected psw or psg. there are many types of western feminists such as radical, liberal, marxist, psychoanalyst, standpoint, and postmodern feminist (lorber, 2001). although all of them have the same goal of improving women’s lives, they have different concepts of how to identify the sources of women’s problems. having discovered different root causes, they have different strategies for responding to women’s issues. therefore, in this research, respondents were asked about western feminist ideas in general rather than being asked which particular western feminist ideas they identified with. respondents have different views on which western feminist ideas can be applied in the indonesian muslim context. mostly, they argue that universal values such as gender equality, gender justice, and the recognition of women as equal human 10% 2% 2% 1% 7% 5% 27% source: own compilation caring about gender issues (peduli or pemerhati persoalan gender) researcher on women studies (peneliti tentang perempuan) good muslim (seorang muslim yang baik) gender equality concept user (pengguna konsep keadilan gender) other names abstain figure 3: self-identified non-feminist 'others': variety of sub-labels in total identity label 'others' of self-identified non-feminists among respondents aseas 3(2) 166 167 beings are derived from their own sources in the islamic tradition (the qur’an and hadith) and are not imported from western feminists. some of them even mention that traditional indonesian social structures have been egalitarian. however, some reported that western feminist concepts and strategies have influenced and shaped their thoughts and strategies on dealing with women and gender issues in indonesia. for example, gizela argues that ‘feminists’ have existed in indonesia since the queens of aceh in the sixteenth century, and therefore western feminism is only for strengthening feminist identity, particularly after experiencing ‘competing identity’ following the development of the indonesian islamist movement in the 1970s. gizela explained as follows: actually since ra kartini, … even since ratu sima … queens in aceh in the 16th century … there were many feminists around in indonesia, because those women got involved in the war and social political activities … and then it seems that the appearance of feminism in indonesia just happened in the 80s … in my opinion if we trace back in the 80s … ikhwanul muslimin has become stronger in indonesia … particularly after soeharto collapsed there were many islamic symbols everywhere … also many friends, activists, in the 80s graduated from the west … and read feminist literature … so, non-indonesian feminists [including from the west] strengthening of the feminist identity … because there is competing identity [from islamist group]. so we do have the values of equality since ratu sima … (gizela, personal communication, 12 june 2010). in contrast, rama and darma, both self-indentified feminists, argued that muslims do have gender equality values, but many muslims still read islamic texts on gender literally. as a result, its egalitarian values do not usually manifest themselves when reading these texts. in other words, muslims need a different approach for rereading and reinterpreting the gender-related texts in a way relevant to the present. therefore, the approaches western feminists employ for understanding texts contextually is one they agree with. they explained: western feminists contribute to implement the islamic values into real life easier, so it is like a tool to put the existing of islamic values into ground. honestly, i think we still recite the qur’an and hadith by memorising, sometime we don’t understand the meaning … (rama, personal communication, 11 june 2010). western feminists influence two things the discourse … and raise our awareness … what i mean by influencing the smart discourse is not transferring their values into indonesian, but the feminist discourse make aware that what they have done in the west is also stated in the qur’an … and the most important thing is … that nowadays western [succeed] because there is an effort to ‘dismantle’ [reinterpret] the religious texts based on what they need … that is the one that inspires indonesian muslim to do the same thing … so the discourse in the west … gets muslim closer to their faith (iman) (darma, personal communication, 9 may 2010). alimatul qibtiyah self-identified feminists among gender activists and scholars aseas 3(2) 168 169 by implementing the historical and contextual approach that some indonesian gender activists learned from western feminists, some respondents reported that the contribution of western feminists is strengthening their faith and belief. indonesian gender activists have used the contextual approach as a tool to explore and understand how these values and beliefs become more tangible and more empirical. also the approach encourages them to be more critical and to explore the impact of the islamic doctrine on women. other ideas that most indonesian gender activists and scholars in this research agree with western feminist ideas are the issues that almost all women in the world experience similar discriminative and oppressive problems (wira, personal communication, 8 may 2010) and the ideas of women’s independence, persistence, and openness (rama, personal communication, 11 june 2010). furthermore, one respondent also mentioned that she has been inspired by the concept of gender or women’s issues not only at the individual level but also at the collective level of western feminist ideas (aibar, personal communication, 3 june 2010). in addition, western feminists have also encouraged the indonesian discourse and understanding of feminism, such as the concept of patriarchal culture, equal work for equal pay, reproductive and sexual health and rights, women’s rights, and other rights of marginal groups. within this discourse, it is important to note that western feminists introduced new terms such as gender, autonomy, feminism, and patriarchy to the indonesian islamic feminists. there are also various views among indonesian muslim gender activists and scholars in academia regarding western feminist ideas that are not incorporated into their understandings. the self-identified non-feminist group shows that most of them lack knowledge relating to feminist literature. they are not sure whether their statements represent western feminist concepts. some western feminist concepts that they disagree with include the rejection of the family as an institution; the notion that men and women must have the same rights in all aspects of life; the idea of challenging and questioning the religious notion of women leadership in prayer and in the family; the acceptance of lesbianism; and the concept of men as an enemy. as noted here, many western feminists also disagree with these ideas. for example, abdullah asserts that he does not agree with some radical notion about the rejection of family institution. “few feminists do not need marriage institution aseas 3(2) 168 169 and then they are against that institution and create many things including [women] do not need men” (abdullah, personal communication, 22 may 2010). another example is presented by joko: in my understanding so far that western feminists want [men and women] to be exactly the same…in everyday life we face a real life...sometime we cannot treat [men and women] exactly the same. so, for me we don’t need to treat men and women exactly the same, as far as [the different treatment] is for the best interest for both men and women (joko, personal communication, 24 may 2010). both self-identified non-feminists and self-identified feminists have concerns about lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (lgbt) rights and the anti-male attitude. in respect to lgbt rights, respondents assert that in the indonesian context it is difficult to accept them legally. marriage occurs between man and woman. moreover, they do not agree that lesbianism should be promoted through a political or ideological movement. thus, tono observed: homosexuality and lesbianism, for radical feminist are fine but in islam they do not have room yet in islamic jurisprudence. however, as human beings they have rights to live that need to be supported, whatever their sexual orientation is. in addition, islamic teachings value the behaviour not on the attitude, meaning that if it is only on orientation [unobservable] not in behaviour is fine. furthermore, if lesbianism become a political and ideological movement it is inappropriate in indonesian context (tono, personal communication, 9 may 2010). another issue that some of the self-identified feminists disagree with is the radical and confrontational approach applied by a small number of western feminists. darma argues that “western women [feminists] tend to employ a conflict approach [galak dan melawan] to achieve their goals” (darma, personal communication, may 9, 2010). based on a literature analysis, in indonesia there are some women’s ngos outside the universities, such as perempuan mahardika, who also would not use the soft approach. for example, perempuan mahardika condemned the banning of the international lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex association (ilga) congress in surabaya on 24 march 2010 (pmn committee, 2010). the idea of the family institution in indonesia differs from that in the western concept. according to sita (personal communication, 3 june 2010), in the western context, family is the representation of capitalism that supports or complements public life and productive activities. indeed, the standard assumption in the political economy is that gender equality can only be achieved when women participate in alimatul qibtiyah self-identified feminists among gender activists and scholars aseas 3(2) 170 171 the formal labour market, as a consequence, the economic and social significance of household labour is ignored (ross, 2008). therefore, positions, roles, and activities in the public sphere are more important than the private or domestic sphere. marxist feminists challenge their non-marxist counterparts on the greatly different valuations of these two spheres (lorber, 2001). in addition, sita argues that in islam the core value is not within the public sphere but in the family. therefore, public activities must support the existence of the family. the family is the microcosmos of the society. a solid family foundation is the basis of a strong society (ummah). as a result, management of reproductive activity within the family unit is the most important aspect in the islamic concept for community development. the family has a strategic function to strengthen the community by having natural regeneration in the family. strengthening and empowering the family institution by creating equal rights among family members is one of the main goals of islamic feminists. the family is a core value and not a commodity as in the capitalist model. when sita discusses how she negotiates between her feminism and her family, she said “they both fit, because my feminism is the foundation of my family, and my family is a foundation of my feminism” (sita, personal communication, 3 june 2010). this kind of notion is similar to what amina wadud (2010) articulates in her article the “f” word: feminism in islam: islamic feminism is not just about equality in the public space but also in the family, where most gender roles are prescribed and gender inequality is fixed. islamic feminism takes responsibility for our souls and our bodies, our minds and our contributions at every level. we take inspiration from our own relationships with the sacred and with the community to forge a way that enhances the quality of our lives and the lives of all others (wadud, 2010, p. 1). another issue concerns the concept of power. power in the west according to sita often relates to hierarchy and is played out mostly in the public domain (sita, personal communication, 3 june 2010). individualism shapes the idea of power, and therefore power relationships tend to be top-down. sita asserts that the concept of power in indonesia has been shaped by the idea of collectiveness, and therefore power sharing in indonesia is quite common. however sita’s notion is a simplification, because in the west power can also be the medium by which collective interests may be realised, including class interests (olderma & davis, 1991). an equally important point relating to the concept of power is that commonly indonesian women have more aseas 3(2) 170 171 power in terms of managing the financial aspect of the family than their husbands. therefore, the concept of power in indonesia resides not only in the public but also in the domestic domain. as a consequence, the rigid segregation between public and private sphere is not compatible with indonesian culture. many indonesian women choose to be housewives; according to some respondents this does not matter because their choices are based on their individual conscious decision and free will, and because in domestic life some indonesian women have their own power. similar ideas have also been asserted by suzanne april brenner (1998). she argues that the domestic sphere is, according to the laweyan community (surakarta, central java), the source of power and prestige, while traditionally western discourses claim that the public sphere is the main source of political power. in terms of the relationship between men, women, money, and desire, brenner points out that a wife should control the family money because the husband could not manage the money. usually if the husband handles the money he will jajan (visit a prostitute) or go gambling. therefore, the good husband should trust his wife to control his desire by giving her the authority to manage the money. however, in some cases there were many laweyan women who had more freedom to express their sexuality in a negative way when they had more power in controlling money. again, brenner argues that women did that based on economic and family concerns, not to fulfil their nafsu (sexual desire) like men. conclusion in indonesia, identifying oneself as a ‘feminist’ remains a controversial issue for people who are concerned with women’s and gender issues. this relates to the various understandings surrounding the term ‘feminist’. it is associated with both positive and negative connotations within the society. because of this, for strategic reasons, some gender activists do not publicly identify themselves as ‘feminist’, although personally or individually they do identify themselves as ‘feminist’. the negative connotations mostly attached to women – that a feminist is against women’s kodrat, she wants to dominate men, she accepts lesbianism – make self-identification as ‘feminist’ a higher risk for women than for men in indonesian society. in terms of what western feminism has shaped and been thought relevant to the alimatul qibtiyah self-identified feminists among gender activists and scholars aseas 3(2) 172 173 indonesian context, most respondents argue that the universal values such as gender equality, gender justice, and the recognition of women as human beings are based on their own sources in the islamic tradition (the qur’an and hadith) and local tradition, not imported from western feminism. however, some respondents reported that there are many western feminist concepts and strategies that have influenced and shaped their thoughts and strategies in dealing with women and gender issues in indonesia, such as challenging patriarchal culture, the contextual approach that encourages the indonesian gender activists to be more critical and use gender and feminism as a tool of analysis for gender power relationship. many respondents acknowledge that western feminists are able to raise awareness of gender issues, strengthen feminist identity, and build up faith in islam among indonesian muslim gender activists. some indonesian muslim gender activists disagree with some western feminist ideas which they claim are not relevant to indonesian context. these include the rejection of the institution of family, the notion that men and women must have the same rights in all aspects of life, the idea of challenging and questioning the religious notion of women’s leadership in prayer and in the family, the notion of lesbianism, and the concept of men as an enemy. the biggest difference between indonesian and western feminists according to my research findings is that in indonesia the concept of having a family is non-negotiable (and this is borne out in reality), whereas in western countries, feminists are often single women who also do not necessarily have a family. references abdullah, a. 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(2002). sexual politics in indonesia. new york: palgrave macmillan. blessings for all? community-based ecotourism in bali between global, national, and local interests – a case study aseas 4(1) 80 81 aktuelle südostasienforschung / current research on south-east asia blessings for all? community-based ecotourism in bali between global, national, and local interests – a case study christian byczek1 citation byczek, c. (2011). blessings for all? community-based ecotourism in bali between global, national, and local interests – a case study. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 4(1), 81-106. as a major island destination in south-east asia, bali has won a global reputation as one of the last paradises on earth. as one of the largest industries in the world, global tourism is utilised by the governments of many developing countries as an agent for development and national integration. however, local communities level the criticism that mass tourism has not only brought economic growth but also caused ecological and social costs. in reaction to the excessive developments of the past decades, local balinese have started to actively implement community-based tourism. the ecotourism village-network jaringan ekowisata desa seeks a more sustainable approach to tourism through stronger ownership and the minimisation of negative ecological impacts. the case study presented is based on fi eldwork which took place in 2010. it aims to fi nd answers to the questions of whether and to what extent community-based ecotourism initiatives may constitute a sustainable alternative to the negative eff ects associated with mass tourism. keywords: bali, ecotourism, community, sustainability, agriculture bali gilt innerhalb der tourismusindustrie als inbegriff von exotik und als eines der letzen paradiese auf erden. seit jeher werden die vielfältigen auswirkungen des tourismus auf der insel kontrovers diskutiert. während vornehmlich eliten an der in nationalem interesse forcierten tourismusentwicklung der südostasiatischen top-destination profi tieren, kritisiert die einheimische bevölkerung unzureichende mitspracherechte und die vernachlässigung von nachhaltigkeitskriterien. in reaktion wurden seitens der balinesen projekte des gemeindebasierten tourismus ins leben gerufen. das ökotourismus-dorf-netzwerk jaringan ekowisata desa ist eine solche initiative, die sich der lokalen eigentümerschaft und der minimierung negativer ökologischer folgen verschreibt. anhand der hier präsentierten fallstudie zu dem zivilgesellschaftlichen projekt soll beantwortet werden, inwiefern gemeindebasierter ökotourismus eine alternative zu den in zusammenhang mit massentourismus in verbindung gebrachten übeln darstellt. schlagworte: bali, ökotourismus, gemeinde, nachhaltigkeit, landwirtschaft 1 christian byczek received his masters degree (diplom) from the university of bonn, germany. the presented paper is based on the research conducted in the course of his thesis. living in south-east asia, he is currently engaged as a tourism professional and expert on sustainable tourism development. d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -4 .1 -5 christian byczek blessings for all? community-based ecotourism in bali between global, national, and local interests aseas 4(1) 82 83 1. bali and the making of an indonesian tourism destination the tropical island of bali is considered one of the last paradises on earth. the images associated with it combine traits of ancient indian civilisations with the erotic mystery of the south seas (vickers, 1989, p. 1). blessed with spectacular landscapes, smooth beaches, limestone cliffs, deep forests, and lush rice terraces on the volcanic slopes of majestic and still active mount agung, the island is located in the midst of the mega-diverse archipelago of indonesia (dalem, 2002, p. 85). bali has not only earned its fame through its superb setting but also with its unique culture and people, well-known for their artistic talents and great virtuosity in flamboyant dances and ceremonies. for almost a century tourists have been attracted to the island, making the province today better known than the republic of indonesia it belongs to (picard, 1996, p. 11). since the early explorers, anthropologists, artists, and officials of the dutch colonial regime had settled here, there have been apprehensions about the future of the island. in 1928 genin feared that the name of bali would “remain the reminiscence of a lost paradise when the green of the gentle hills disappears, giving way to factories and chimneys” (genin, 1928, pp. 216-217, author’s translation). with affordable long haul travel in the developed countries after world war ii, bali has throughout the past decades evolved as one of south-east asia’s most frequented island destinations. since the birth of the republic of indonesia in the 1950s, the government has built on the exotic images of the 1920s to promote tourism with the aim of national and economic development (dowling, 2000, p. 3). at the end of the 1960s the official strategy for bali was ‘cultural tourism’ in combination with a large-scale enclave resort concept at nusa dua on the southernmost bukit peninsula. through the use of predefined excursion routes the balinese were supposed to be protected from the direct impact of tourism. the donor-funded master plan and the nusa dua project were intended as countermeasures against anticipated ‘ills’ of uncontrolled development, which however, still occurred at many other places on the island (wong, 2004, p. 423). the extensive kuta-legian strip along the south-western coast with thousands of hospitality facilities is just one such example. despite its intentions, both the concept of ‘cultural tourism’ and the concentration strategy became heavily criticised and finally abandoned in 1988 (hobart, ramseyer, & leemann, 2001, p. 216; picard, 1996, pp. 46-47, p. 49 & p. 75; shepperd, 2001, p. 75; waldner, 1998, aseas 4(1) 82 83 p. 122). despite a moratorium and lower than predicted arrival figures, a construction boom in the 1990s led to several controversial mega-projects, such as the bali nirwana resort and the garuda wisnu kencana project 2. these projects were even more heavily criticised than their predecessor model, the nusa dua venture. 2. mass tourism versus alternative tourism in bali a new generation of public intellectuals, activists, environmentalists, artists, and religious and community leaders had began opposing the capitalist lobbies, investors, and elites from jakarta that were backed by the local and national governments. the elites were criticised for benefiting from the projects while the local population bore the ecological and social costs (howe, 2005, p. 17; picard, 2003, p. 109; telfer & sharpley, 2008, p. 205). throughout the 1990s an increase from one to two million international direct arrivals occurred. the two-and-a-half million arrivals of today stand against the backdrop of the unresolved question of the carrying capacity of the island which is with three-and-a-half million inhabitants densely populated (picard, 2009, p. 101). by the 1990s tourism was perceived as an industry that marginalised the people (picard, 2003, p. 112). some of the abovementioned civil society actors among the balinese were calling for the preservation of their ‘balineseness’ (kebalian) – a term that had for example taken new turns under the name ajeg bali (bali erect), a movement that can be traced back to the early beginnings of tourism under the ‘gaze’ of the dutch in colonial times (hitchcock & putra 2007, p. 114; koch, 2007, p. 90; picard, 2003, p. 111 & p. 195). it addresses the issue of an outsider arriving on the shores and gaining control: a common theme also among pacific island societies such as those in tahiti and hawaii (reuter, 1999, p. 163). as the proto-destination of indonesia, bali developed under technocrats and conglomerates in the ‘national interest’, and decisions were made by the national government in the capital city. critics had often caricatured the island as having become “jakarta’s colony” (suasta & connor, 1999, p. 101; aditjondro, 1995). a major concern among local people who had raised their voice was that control had been taken over by the global tourism industry, and that the development and the future of bali is no longer controlled by the balinese themselves, 2 the former is a luxury golf resort perched above the important sea temple of tanah lot. the latter is a huge statue in the form of a national symbol with adjacent cultural centre (uncompleted to this day). christian byczek blessings for all? community-based ecotourism in bali between global, national, and local interests aseas 4(1) 84 85 who have been subjected to mass-touristic exploitation and national integration. there have not only been protests and debates, but also a number of alternative tourism concepts have been actively established in response to the developments outlined above (rieländer, 2000, pp. 41-43; waldner, 1998, p. 122 & pp. 126-128). among them, community-based tourism (cbt), ecotourism, and agritourism became the most prominent forms in bali. such are usually labelled as responsible, controlled, small-scale, people-to-people, or green (backes & goethe, 2003, p. 17; beyer, 2006, p. 128; fennel, 2008, p. 5; telfer & sharpley, 2008, pp. 11-13 & p. 27). in 2002 the community-based ecotourism (cbet) village network jaringan ekowisata desa (jed) was established by four village communities on the islands of bali and nusa ceningan. in opposition to conventional mass tourism, the grassroots initiative aims at creating tourism “by and for the people” (jed, 2007). its major goal is to establish tourism development which is planned and managed by the local community. minimal negative social and environmental impact is sought in combination with generation of incomes and funds for community-development. further, the initiative aims at fostering cross-cultural understanding through discussions between hosts and guests. the present article and case study is based on fieldwork that took place in bali for six weeks from january to february 2010. it looks at the development of communitybased ecotourism from the perspective of social sciences and south-east asian studies. thereby it examines the research question of whether and to what extent cbet initiatives such as jed constitute a sustainable alternative to the predominant mass tourism developments for a tropical island such as bali. with the ‘brundtland report’ in 1987 and the birth of the concept of sustainable development as a new paradigm, various existing forms of alternative tourism in the 1990s converged in the term ‘sustainable tourism’ (cf. shaw & williams, 2002, p. 302). sustainable development is defined by the wced as a development that “meets the goals of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (wced, 1987, p. 48). in accord with this definition, the united nations world tourism organisation (unwto) and the united nations environmental programme (unep) define sustainable tourism as “tourism that takes full account of its current and future economic, social and environmental impacts, addressing the needs of visitors, the industry, the environment and the communities” (unwto & unep, 2005, p. 12). it should make optimal use of environmental resources, respect aseas 4(1) 84 85 the socio-cultural authenticity of host communities, provide socio-economic benefits to all its stakeholders and guarantee their participation through strong political leadership. however, tourism has so far played a very controversial role in development with manifold effects upon host destinations. thus, before the research question is addressed, an overview of the effects of tourism in bali and respective challenges for the sustainable development of the island shall be outlined in its economic, social and ecological dimensions. within this, differing global, national, and local interests shall be taken into consideration. 3. tourism’s effects on the island sustainability issues between global, national, and local interests 3.1. the effects of tourism in the dimensions of sustainability 3.1.1. economic dimension the tourism industry is one of the largest industries in the world. employment, foreign exchange, and multiplier effects are major reasons for developing country governments to utilise it as a development agent (radetzki-stenner, 1989, pp. 24-26; waldner, 1998, pp. 25-26). in indonesia, it is the country’s second largest foreign exchange earner; the island of bali has the major share of that (united nations development programme & world bank (undp & wb), 2003, p. i). the ‘invisible export’ industry has a relatively long supply-chain with several corporate intermediaries; but a high leakage rate caused by the import of goods for tourist consumption is one among the undesired effects (forbes, 2007, p. 153; strasdas, 2001, pp. 79-80). yet, there is no doubt that the tourism industry has induced a significant rise in living standards and incomes through entrepreneurial action and employment generation on the island (ostrom, 2000, p. 113; rieländer, 1998, pp. 55-57; vickers, 1989, pp. 199-200). before the downturn in tourist arrivals caused by the 2002 and 2005 terrorist attacks, bali’s poverty rate was at only 4 percent compared to 16 percent for indonesia as a whole (undp & wb, 2003, p. i). on the other hand, the economic development causes pressures, for example on farmers because of a competition for resources such as land and water. the decrease in agricultural land and the shift from the primary to the tertiary sector also had serious consequences with regards to the self-sufficiency of christian byczek blessings for all? community-based ecotourism in bali between global, national, and local interests aseas 4(1) 86 87 agricultural products on the island (cf. latimer, 1985, p. 32 & p. 41; utama, 2007, p. 6). another disadvantageous structural aspect of tourism as a developing agent is that economic mono-structures are being established, with a strong dependency on the success of the tourism industry. this consequently increases the vulnerability in the case of economic or political crises that lead to a downturn in tourist arrivals, as observed in bali twice after 2002 and 2005 (beyer, häusler, & strasdas, 2007, pp. 20-21). a matter of heavy debate is the question whether generally larger, internationally operated resorts or smaller, local-run hospitality enterprises contribute to a more equitable distribution of wealth among the broader society (cf. fuchs & lengefeld, 2005). 3.1.2. ecological dimension the development of tourism and related activities also has manifold impacts on ecosystems including man-made ones such as agriculture. also in bali, economic benefits have come with environmental costs (cukier-snow & wall, 1993, p. 197). stress to the natural environment is caused through dedicated infrastructures, changes in land-use, the consumption of resources, and the generation of waste (fennel, 2008, p. 52). with insufficient waste management schemes on the island, pollution is rampant. waste can be found while walking along river gorges or while swimming in the ocean. low awareness further adds to the problem. additional ‘imported’ waste for the tourism industry in combination with the unresolved question of its processing is a major environmental problem (fennel, 2008, p. 52; larenz, 2005; waldner, 1998, pp. 379-380). traffic, poor air quality, and noise in urban areas add to this. also coastal degradation and coral reef destruction are well recorded (wong, 2001, pp. 218-219). these latter problems have resulted from the mining of the reefs for building material during the construction boom (hitchcock & putra, 2007, p. 24). freshwater is among the most pressing issues, with golf courses and hotel swimming pools evaporating immense amounts of it and holiday makers using several times the daily amount of water they would use at home (ties, 2006, p. 1; wong, 2004, pp. 427-429). in bali this poses not only serious threats to crop and rice cultivation, but has led to subsiding groundwater levels and salt-water intrusion which continues to threaten mangrove forests (cukier-snow & wall, 1993, p. 197; forbes, 2007, p. 153; waldner, 1998, p. 31 & 361 & 367). experience has shown that sprawling tourism development aseas 4(1) 86 87 goes along with the destruction of biotopes, deforestation, a loss in biodiversity and wildlife habitats, erosion, reductions in the resource base, and environmental pollution (shaw & williams, 2002, p. 305). the ecological consequences of mass tourism in bali are strikingly threatening the sustainable development of the island destination. 3.1.3. socio-cultural dimension tourism also affects social dimensions. changing consumption patterns, the creation of new inequalities, the destruction of traditional values and social stability, the profanisation and the commodification of cultural customs, and even prostitution and crime are often mentioned as being, at least partially, caused through it (neudorfer, 2006, pp. 63-64; radetzki-stenner, 1989, p. 55; strasdas, 2001, pp. 82-84; wall & matieson, 2006, pp. 242-244 & p. 259). in bali, there are also tensions caused by the rising influx of immigrants from other regions in indonesia. a prominent discourse on tourism and society has evolved in bali since tourism’s early beginnings and turn until today on concerns over cultural commodification and the question of whether the balinese culture is able to survive the vigorous changes associated with tourism (cf. picard, 1996, p. 22 & p. 91). it has been feared, for example, that through shortened dance performances for tourists the line between sacred and profane may be lost and that the balinese would lose their ‘balineseness’ (kebalian) (picard, 1996, pp. 134-163; shepperd, 2001, p. 71). in opposition, scholars such as wood claim that tourism has immense potential to let traditions prosper through the attribution of economic value to it (wood, 1980, p. 567). a stronger solidarity among banjar3 and more extensive ceremonies and offerings have indeed been observed since tourism has flourished (mctaggart, 1980, p. 464; williams & putra, 1997, p. 6). already in the 1990s, when the debates addressed the outcomes of the master plan and the nusa dua venture, picard disclaimed the static view of culture and society, that tourism is a purely external force that impacts a community. instead, the balinese played an active role in the process of “touristification” (picard, 1996; also rubinstein & connor, 1999, p. 2). many scholars conclude that tourism has neither 3 banjar are social organisations on the neighbourhood-level. yet they are not necessarily territorial structures. usually it is married men who become members, and are presided over by a banjar head. a banjar is regarded as the most important reference group in the life of the balinese. members have legal, fiscal, and ritual responsibilities towards the customary institution. christian byczek blessings for all? community-based ecotourism in bali between global, national, and local interests aseas 4(1) 88 89 destroyed nor revived the balinese traditional culture, but that it has created consciousness among the balinese with regards to their identity and to tourism development (hitchcock, king, & parnwell, 2009, pp. 13-19; king, 2009, p. 46). generally, reactions to tourism development among host societies may cover the full range from euphoria to apathy and antagonism (fennel, 2008, p. 47). even the occurrence of social conflicts at host destinations is observed. yet, their roots also need to be considered in connection with other dimensions, such as the ecological or economic aspects, when they occur around natural resources or land-use issues for instance (wong, 2004, pp. 427-129). 3.2. diverging interests on the global, national, and local level in all three dimensions – the economic, the social, and the ecological – there are both positive and negative effects. those that remain unclear are subject to heavy debate or have brought about blatant contradistinctive empirical evidence (stradas, 2001, p. 77 & 79). while the economic effects of tourism development could be considered, if not necessarily leading to equitable benefits, at least predominantly positive, the social effects are heavily discussed, while the ecological effects tend to be primarily negative, apart from existing potential for environmental protection and conservation. however, there are diverging and conflicting interests on the global, national and local levels. during the ‚modernisation paradigm’ developing country governments together with the global tourism industry were eager to utilise tourism as a means for economic development and national integration. in the first development decades after world war ii, tourism was understood as a ‘smokeless’ industry that would cause a trickle-down effect distributing wealth among the broader society. however, economic growth turned out not to be tantamount to a rising real income of local people, and ecological and social impacts were higher than expected (sahli & nowak, 2007, p. 426). supporters of the dependency theories saw reasons for the ‘underdevelopment’ of the respective countries in structural aspects not only within but also between the developing and the developed countries. they described a situation of exploitation of weaker countries by stronger ones in a neo-colonial sense. finally, both paradigms were ousted by economic neo-liberalism. usually it is governments aseas 4(1) 88 89 that are in charge of setting the legal framework, and thus directing the development process and the planning of respective strategies for the tourism sector. especially in many developing nations, legal frameworks and enforcement are still weak. global or transnational corporations in the tourism business experience a power-gain through their cross-border operation. thus, it is often civil society organisations and ngos that not only fulfil a watchdog and advocacy function, but also become actively involved in promoting sustainable forms of tourism and building initiatives and respective projects (scheyvens, 2002, pp. 210-223). 4. the community-based ecotourism village-network jaringan ekowisata desa martha honey defines ecotourism as comprising travel to fragile, pristine, and usually protected areas that strives to be low impact and (often) small scale. it helps educate the traveller, provides funds for conservation, directly benefits the economic development and political empowerment of local communities, and fosters respect for different cultures and for human rights. (honey, 2008, pp. 32-33) reasons why communities want to become involved are for example tourism development related growth, awareness of the values of natural assets at the locale, empathy for conservation, or a perceived need for sustainable tourism practices at the destination (wearing & neil, 2009, p. 119). the focus of community-based tourism (cbt) lies on ownership and decision making power within the sphere of the community (scheyvens, 1999, p. 245; telfer & sharpley, 2008, p. 117). suansri defines it as tourism that takes environmental, social and cultural sustainability into account. it is managed and owned by the community, for the community, with the purpose of enabling visitors to increase their awareness and learn about the community and local ways of life. (suansri, 2003, p. 15) it aims at the economic self-reliance of communities, their ecological sustainability, self-determination, and local control, meeting individual needs and fostering the respective culture (telfer & sharpley, 2008, p. 123). the community-based ecotourism (cbet) village network jaringan ekowisata desa (jed) is one of the initiatives that emerged in response to mass tourism developments christian byczek blessings for all? community-based ecotourism in bali between global, national, and local interests aseas 4(1) 90 91 in bali. the communities were cooperating with the ngos wisnu foundation4 and kehati foundation5 on environmental protection and biodiversity issues when they became affected by conflicts with private interests over local resources in connection with the development of tourism facilities (atmaja, 2002, p. 41 & p. 81; warren, 2005, p. 33). in response to that, and following the idea of developing a communitybased form of tourism, local interests were becoming promoted instead of being ignored. the grassroots project was officially founded in 2002 under the legal form of a cooperative consisting of farmers from the villages and the local ngo wisnu foundation. the project is rooted in the customary organisations of four balinese village communities, among them social and religious organisations such as the various banjar, subak6, and temple congregations. it aims to be “a strong statement from four communities who want to decide for themselves the future of their people, their culture and their environment” (jed, 2007). the products are marketed through a jed sales office in seminyak. visitor figures can thus be controlled. cooperation with the private sector is being considered, but has not yet been decided on. the sale of tours generates individual income as well as collective funds for community development and environmental conservation. those are understood as a supplement rather than an entirely new source of income. also networking, education, and cross-cultural understanding between hosts and guests are facilitated. an important principle is the transparent and democratic decision making process on the local level. the minimisation of negative environmental impacts is sought through the use of existing facilities and by keeping the project “by and for the people”, that is to say small-scale and in accordance with visitors’ and communities’ needs (jed, 2007). from 2002 to 2009 jed has received 449 visitors (jaya, 2010). the network comprises kiadan pelaga in central bali, dukuh sibetan and tenganan pegringsingan in east bali, and nusa ceningan, a small islet 12 kilometres off the southeast coast. those remote areas within about two to three hours of driving from the tourist centres in the island’s south are often referred as ‘the traditional bali’. the mainstay of the local economy here is agriculture, and living standards are low. in 4 http://www.wisnu.or.id/ 5 http://www.kehati.or.id/ 6 a subak is a socio-religious association of land owners, mortgagees, tenant farmers, and share-croppers. a subak’s main function is usually the irrigation of wet-rice land belonging the respective water-temples. also the elaboration of regulations regarding general agricultural land-use and conflict resolution are important functions. lansing has extensively researched and published on the subak system (e.g. lansing, 1991). aseas 4(1) 90 91 kiadan pelaga there is not even running water for each household, but only communal water spigots. all villages offer trekking tours, demonstrations of local farming practices, arts and crafts production, insights into and involvement in everyday life, local food, and, with the exception of tenganan, accommodation at home-stays to their guests. in kiadan pelaga guests visit plantations and learn how organic coffee is produced. in dukuh sibetan the cultivation of snake-fruit is demonstrated. tenganan is famous for its cloth production and for its palm leaf writing technique lontar. guests to the ancient village learn about its history and its unique cultural practices. on nusa ceningan tourists join farmers in their boats on the coral reef to see the farming practices for seaweed. a strong focus in the visitor experience is its educational component. during a visit of the village environs, gardens, plantations, and forest trails, guests receive explanations on agricultural production, resource management, and environmental issues. agriculture is performed in accordance with the tri hita karana philosophy. this balinese concept aims at bringing about human wellbeing through regulating the spheres of relationships between humans and gods, among humans, and between humans and their natural environment and other creatures (hauser-schäublin, 2000, p. 145). this comprises the sustainable use of natural resources. one of the respondents during a field survey said, “we do not take too much; people know that if we destroy our environment, there will be no land to let us make our offerings” (farmer and stakeholder from kiadan pelaga, personal communication, 22 january 2010). also organic farming practices, for example the shadegrowing of coffee in mixed-crop gardens with reduced fertiliser and pesticide use, are understood as a more sustainable approach to agriculture. 5. fieldwork and methodology in order to evaluate how far jed constitutes a sustainable alternative to the predominant mass-tourism developments on bali, an intensive literature review has been combined with three empirical instruments applied during the field phase: participant observation, a community survey, and a client survey. at the beginning of each field trip the author participated as a tourist, experienced the product, and observed whether it matched with the descriptions found in information material and literature. christian byczek blessings for all? community-based ecotourism in bali between global, national, and local interests aseas 4(1) 92 93 while the participant observation was intended to be merely a first approach in order to get a better understanding of the field, the community survey aimed at analysing whether community needs and environmental requirements as basic prerequisites for sustainable tourism development are met. for this purpose, the performance was measured against the principles identified by honey (1999) for ecotourism and by suansri (2003) for cbt. this comprised aspects of environmental protection and impact minimisation, economic aspects of the initiative as well as social aspects, cultural issues, ownership, decision making, participation, and institutional aspects. the community survey in the four villages was conducted within a time frame of two weeks. as baseline data was not available and a quantitative survey would have neglected social and cultural dimensions, a qualitative survey was done in the form of guided interviews with stakeholders involved with jed. most of them were farmers; some had other occupations such as teacher or nurse. some acted purely in their role as an individual, others also held official roles as banjar head, village priest, or leader of an agricultural cooperative. with regards to jed they were engaged as guides, cooks, or home-stay owners. access was established with the help of the wisnu foundation. as not all persons in the respective communities had sufficient knowledge, a theoretical sampling process with reliability of data as relevant criterion for the selection of respondents was chosen (cf. flick, 2002, p. 102-105). a total of 16 interviews (n=16) was generated across all villages of the network: 16 percent of the about 100 people who are involved directly with jed. the interviews with respondents were performed in the national language bahasa indonesia with the help of an interpreter. in order to evaluate the overall fulfilment of tourists’ needs a qualitative client survey was performed. as the field period did not allow for an independent survey with an amount of questionnaires that would allow for significant results, existing evaluation questionnaires provided by jed were analysed. they are part of jed’s quality control and serve marketing activities. they provide a visitor typology and assess client satisfaction. the former is generated through general demographic and personal information such as age, sex, nationality, number of visits to bali, and the length of stay. the latter is achieved through ratings of different aspects of the product quality, such as satisfaction with guides, gained knowledge, interaction, food, trekking experience, and value for money. the questionnaires also comprised section with opportunity to provide suggestions and open answers. the 165 analysed aseas 4(1) 92 93 questionnaires had been collected by jed from december 2007 to december 2009. the sample size accounts for 37 percent of jed’ total visitors as at the end of 2009 (byczek, 2011, p. 96). 6. outcomes of the case study 6.1. the participant observation the participant observation showed that descriptions existing in information material and the literature broadly correspond with the reality of the tourism product. insights into local life were plenty and compared to many other ecotourism products the knowledge and awareness gained on environmental and social issues at the visited villages were inspiring. 6.2. the community survey the community survey revealed remarkable achievements, especially when taking into consideration the limited funds and the basal presuppositions (byczek, 2011, p. 102). often the criticism is made that small-scale and grassroots initiatives lack knowledge on the workings of the tourism industry and marketing skills or are unable to control tourism development (scheyvens, 2002, p. 124; schmitz, 2005, p. 193; strasdas, 2001, p. 244). for jed, such a lack cannot be attested. on the contrary, there is much awareness among the stakeholders about tourism and its consequences. one respondent mentioned that “the most important thing is awareness and knowledge of the people about tourism and ecotourism; before, they did not even understand what tourism is” (stakeholder from dukuh sibetan, personal communication, 31 january 2010). economic gains through ecotourism activities are generated in all of the four villages. a share of the profits is divided among community institutions, such as the banjar, agricultural co-operatives, or temple congregations. they are used for the renovation of facilities, collective work, meetings or ceremonies. depending on the community, 10 to 21 individuals get recurring employment through jed. these comprise local guides, cooks, farmers, home-stay owners, or community members receiving incentives for the use of their property or for demonstrations. the incomes christian byczek blessings for all? community-based ecotourism in bali between global, national, and local interests aseas 4(1) 94 95 account for usd 3-15 per assignment, which is irregular due to a rotation system. the fact that local guides are employed is indicative for empowerment. one of the respondents mentioned that everything is “owned and managed locally and for the local people” (stakeholder from nusa ceningan, personal communication, 15 february 2010). also the example of nusa ceningan exemplifies such processes. the respondents explained that they have fought off an investor that was intending to privatise the island and resettle the population. a local resident comments on the – at least temporary – discontinuation of the plans: “would the company have bought it [the island] the local people would have lost their land and culture” (farmer and stakeholder from nusa ceningan, personal communication, 16 february 2010). also he mentions that, instead, “with a locally owned tourism model the farmers do not need to ask the investor for beach access” (farmer and stakeholder from nusa ceningan, personal communication, 16 february 2010). the issue of empowerment in many communities in bali turns on the conflict and debates on the path of large-scale tourism development. it is actually a conflict over entitlements to natural and cultural resources decided through the form of control over them. with regards to the environmental dimension, jed’s outcomes are still somewhat limited. asked for active measures of environmental protection at the project sites many respondents did not name concrete measures. still, negative impacts are minimised in line with what the criteria for ecotourism demand. only existing facilities are used and the activities are kept small-scale. a respondent said in this connection, “we do not want to change the environment, we want to remain farmers; we do not want to change all to tourism” (farmer and stakeholder from kiadan pelaga, personal communication, 21 january 2010). a positive mechanism that hampton notes also for other places in indonesia is that cbet encourages the cleaning of village environs and establishment of local waste management schemes (hampton, 2003, p. 93). as a major topic, a strong connection to their ‘land’, or rather to land-use and sustainable agricultural practices, was established by the respondents, for example by saying, “according to some people tourism means money – they sell their land; we still need to improve local awareness, for our heritage, which is a sustainable way of life” (farmer and stakeholder from kiadan pelaga, personal communication, 21 january 2010). with the culture and the human-ecology system in bali based on agriculture, the religious practices, ecological concerns, and debates have to be understood in aseas 4(1) 94 95 connection with cultural practices, concerns, and debates (picard, 1990, pp. 1-2). this fact helps to explain why these issues in bali cannot be considered separately and why quantitative indicator frameworks for the analysis of such topics would not made much sense. despite certain constraints with regards to active protection, the minimisation of those negative environmental impacts through tourism development is well fulfilled by jed. cbt needs to raise the quality of life, promote community pride, and divide roles fairly between men and women and young and old (sunasri, 2003, p. 22). according to honey, ecotourism needs to respect local culture (honey, 2008, pp. 29-31). suansri differentiates this into the encouragement of respect for different cultures, the fostering of cultural exchange, and the embedding of development into the local culture (suansri, 2003, p. 22). especially the softer notions in many comments of respondents revealed that such aspects needed to be understood in a holistic sense. many respondents reported that the most important gain is that of awareness and knowledge and that through the pioneering approach their community is considered as the “leading . . . of all the banjars in the village” (farmer and stakeholder from dukuh sibetan, personal communication, 30 january 2010). this concerns also the attention of the local governments and their planning activities. even though it is hard to always demonstrate concrete and measurable results, many positive outcomes have been and are being achieved. the length of stay with jed is usually quite short, with daytrips and two-day trips being offered. the criticism can be made that there is not enough time for exchange and a deeper understanding between the cultures (cf. suansri, 2003, pp. 19-20 & p. 71). in this regard the interviews brought mixed results. generally, the culture of the guests and their behaviour are described as positive. as the clientele has higher educational levels, interaction and mutual exchange is well fostered. grounded in the united nations millennium development goals, gender equality is an important indicator for sustainable development. in balinese society, women and men are regarded as equal but different counterparts, as reflected in the expressions made by the respondents (cf. ariani & kindon, 1995, p. 513). such statements are often criticised, as in practice the genders take over different responsibilities and, as banjar and subak members, only men take part in the decision-making process (ariani & kindon, 1995, pp. 511-512; cukier-snow & wall, 1993, p. 201). in contrast to banjar meetings, the regular stakeholder meetings of jed invite females christian byczek blessings for all? community-based ecotourism in bali between global, national, and local interests aseas 4(1) 96 97 to join, express their opinion, and actively take part in decision-making. even though to a lesser extent than men, women also take part in tourism activities. a female respondent confidentially commented, “i myself do cooking and home-stay; i could not become a guide, because of my job as nurse, but i would be interested; unfortunately i speak little english, but i can offer accommodation” (stakeholder from nusa ceningan, personal communication, 16 february 2010). participation is a general prerequisite for the expression of human needs and thus a key element of any cbt initiative (beyer et al., 2007, p. 47). in the context of bali, the decision-making process is based upon consensus. final choices are usually made by the heads of the respective organisations, e.g. the banjar after hearing the opinions of all members. examined with the eyes of palm (2000), who has been doing research on participation issues in cbt, such an approach would have to be graded among the higher levels of participation considered when analysing different approaches in tourism. there are no foreign advisors implementing the activities, but it is the community members themselves consulting each other and taking proactive measures. with the mentioned constraints with regards to gender equality in mind, the initiative could thus be considered as a democratic movement in itself, as stipulated by honey (2008, pp. 29-31). 6.3. the client survey the client typology of jed revealed the typical age structure, interests and duration of stay of what can be considered an ‘ecotourist’. usually this is a tourist of middle to senior age, from a developed nation, with likely a tertiary education, a higher than average income, an intrinsic rather than extrinsic motivation to travel, and a longer duration of stay. the clientele does frequently consist of opinion leaders that function as multipliers (stradas, 2001, p. 135; ties, 2006, p. 3; wearing & neil, 2009, p. 196-198; weaver, 2001, p. 40). the countries of origin correspond with the major ecotourism markets. however, ecotourism is a broad phenomenon with many nuances. guests of jed are usually picked up at ‘starred’ resorts. and of course, the fact also needs to be acknowledged that the carbon footprints of their flights have a negative contribution to the overall eco-balance and that their stay in bali further puts pressure on the carrying capacity of the island as a whole (cf. johnson & cottingham, aseas 4(1) 96 97 2008, pp. 1-6). visitor satisfaction is positive throughout (byczek, 2011, pp. 119-125). with 77 percent the great majority of guests rate the quality of the services as either very good or good. local guides, food and drink, as well as trekking were appreciated most. agriculture and religious ceremonies also attracted among the highest levels of positive response. suggestions and open answers indicated that jed should “keep up the good work”. also some weaknesses, such as remaining garbage in some areas of the villages were mentioned as well as possible improvements to product and service quality. in conclusion, a great job has been done by the stakeholders of jed in establishing a superb tourism product that fulfils the needs of the communities as well of those of the tourists to a high degree without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. the economic gain is still small. but in any case it is meant to be a supplement and diversification of the community income rather than an entirely new source creating also new dependencies. active environmental protection is constrained but impact minimisation in the development of tourism has been considered. the use of only existing facilities in combination with sustainable land-use and resource management fulfils this criterion well. further, the number of visitors is under the control of the initiative’s own sales office. negative social impact is also largely avoided in this way. through being based on customary social organisations, the decision making process offers a high degree of empowerment on the local level. local balinese institutions have proven suitable in fulfilling the criteria of sustainable tourism. 7. community-based ecotourism for bali blessings for all? fieldwork in bali has shown that alternative tourism is perceived in stark contrast to mass tourism. yet in fact, mass tourism and sustainable tourism are not strictly opposites, but overlapping and interrelated (fennel, 2008, p. 4 & pp. 15-16). besides that, unsustainable practices can be found in ecotourism and sustainable practices can be found in mass tourism. tourism is first and foremost an industry, and like any other industry it is dependent on the exploitation of resources. in the case of jed, the initiative even lives on mass tourism. cases have been observed where cbt has served as ‘launch pad’ for mass tourism (pleumarom, 2002, p. 7). this happens when people christian byczek blessings for all? community-based ecotourism in bali between global, national, and local interests aseas 4(1) 98 99 cannot oversee or control the consequences of tourism development (strasdas, 2001, p. 244). the history of jed in bali has shown that the opposite can also be the case. the network has been established in response to already existing mass tourism. the link between tourism development and environmental protection in the case presented has been rather weak and of an indirect nature (byczek, 2011, p. 106). however, the maintenance of sustainable farming practices and the retention of land among stakeholders are strong factors preventing negative effects usually associated with uncontrolled development. with their cbet initiative as alternative to the mega-projects of the conglomerates, the farmers have gained much awareness among their communities and contributed to the creation of an ‘agency’ for sustainability in bali, as described in similar ways by king (2009, p. 53). a farmer says in this regard, “some of us have become a pioneer on the island in this field” (stakeholder from nusa ceningan, personal communication, 15 february 2010). often it is discerned that less negative impacts also mean less positive impacts – a connection commonly identified as the “tourism development dilemma” (telfer & sharpley, 2008, p. 28). alternative tourism has been criticised as being no more than “just that: an alternative, rather than a solution, to the ‘problem’ of mass tourism” (telfer & sharpley, 2008, p. 41). aside from the fact that a separation between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ forms of tourism is already controversial, jed also cannot be a solution to the problems associated with mass tourism in bali. however, it is still an alternative that fosters sustainable development and bears potential to serve broader social interests. as an alternative to mass tourism, cbet development can and should only be a supplement for local communities to achieve development. first, it cannot be expected that farmers or fishermen can quickly advance into typical tourism occupations, such as guiding or hospitality operations (wearing & neil, 2009, p. 127). second, it would be immoderate to expect that small-scale tourism operations can solve the structural problems of a whole industry. and third, the goal behind the initiative is a diversification of income rather than the creation of new dependencies through mono-structural and crisis-prone industries. sustainable development also requires other institutional and structural conditions to be favourable (fariborz, sarjit, & farshid, 2010, p. 158). adept legal frameworks and feasible master plans are important instruments (strasdas, 2001, p. 61 & aseas 4(1) 98 99 pp. 65-69; apostolopoulus & gayle, 2002, p. 115). unfortunately, in the course of the recent indonesian decentralisation and democratisation tendencies of the reformasi era, authority was not given to the provincial governments, but to the authorities on the regency level (kabupaten). this resulted in a competition between the regencies for tax income through the attraction of new tourism developments and again in a strong increase in the development of tourism facilities in bali throughout the past decade (connor & vickers, 2003, p. 173; picard, 2003, p. 115). regional autonomy in this connection has missed its goal for sustainable tourism development in bali as it hinders the understanding of tourism as a provincial asset (koch, 2007, pp. 92-92; picard, 2003, p. 115; undp, 2003, p. 60). the planned privatisation of nusa cenignan was one such example for investments that had been backed by the local government until a long conflict between the island community and the property developers led to a reassessment. similar conflicts had existed in all of the four jed villages. the people of nusa ceningan were able to – at least for the time being – avert the acquisition of plots of public land by private investors and the construction of a mega-resort. by implementing small-scale and low-impact cbet activities they have gained additional income that stays entirely in the community instead of losing their access to the seaweed-farms and their livelihoods to the benefits of cash-rich non-balinese investors and ‘big men from jakarta’. in tourist areas, there are often “fundamental conflicts between land as a symbol and cultural resource on the one hand and its pivotal role as a commodity in neo-liberal economic development agendas on the other” (warren, 2005, p. 31). agriculture, once the mainstay of the balinese economy, has become neglected during tourismdriven development. this process has separated many balinese from their cultural and spiritual roots (mcrae, 2005, pp. 209-211 & p. 227; tambunan, 2007, p. 22). by implementing cbet the people of bali and nusa ceningan have created a lobby against external interests that are conflicting with community needs and local livelihoods. the rather philosophical question raised by vorlaufer of whether projects like jed are a form of cultural renaissance or are instead a struggle for survival of the ‘traditional sector’ is hard to answer (vorlaufer, 1999, p. 42). for sure, jed needs to be understood also in connection with what warren describes as ‘adat7 revival’, aiming at an 7 adat is mostly translated as customary traditions or customary law. in the indonesian use of language, the meaning of adat is very comprehensive, further including customs, practices, and habits. christian byczek blessings for all? community-based ecotourism in bali between global, national, and local interests aseas 4(1) 100 101 increase of local control over resources and the restoration of local adat authority after a long phase of “indonesianization” (warren, 2005, p. 29 & 32). tourism is “one of the dimensions of globalization par excellence”, as hitchcock, king, and parnwell (2009, p. 28) put it, and bali has thereby become a real ‘global’ island. thus, the debates about outside agents of change are also closely linked to what is criticised in indonesia as globalisasi, referring to forces that remain largely out of the control of the people (apostolopoulos & gayle, 2002, p. 156 & 181; ostrom, 2000; rubinstein & connor, 1999, p. 5). thus, jed can be understood not only as an opposition to urges for tourism development by the local and national governments and the international “tour operator hegemony” (apostolopoulos & gayle, 2002, p. 156 & 181) but also to globalising forces in connection with tnc’s, the wb, imf, and the wto, as atmaja notes (atmaja, 2002, p. 148). it is also an attempt to redraw the “imaginary map of colonial and neo-colonial relations”, as allon refers to tourism development on bali generally (allon, 2004, p. 38). linking the connections between tourism, the environment, and globalisation, wong cites pleumarom by saying, with reference to south-east asia, that authority over resources for tourism and any kind of development is to be maintained by governments vis-à-vis the powerful interests of the global tourism industry, and, equally important, needs to be handed down to local communities, before sustainable tourism alternatives can be delivered. (wong, 2001, p. 217) jed has successfully fostered voice and decision-making at the local level. social capital lacking in many other initiatives has in bali resulted from the project being rooted in customary social organisations such as the banjar and proven very successful (jones, 2005, p. 305 & pp. 319-320; suansri, 2003, p. 24). to this extent it is a big step in the right direction with regards to sustainable tourism development in bali (atmaja, 2002, p. 145). the wisnu foundation is currently preparing a plan for additional communities to create an island-wide cbet network under the name bali dwe (bali dwe, 2010). the benefit of an initiative such as jed goes beyond direct and easily measurable economic, social, and environmental impacts. the results of the field research have shown that it is necessary to link the initiative theoretically to the broader discourse and debates on tourism development in bali. as tourism is a ubiquitous phenomenon aseas 4(1) 100 101 on the island, it always needs to be seen in the wider context. the gain in consciousness among the broader population constitutes a presupposition for future political agendas and empowerment. references aditjondro, g. 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(2004). tourism development in southeast asia. patterns, issues and prospects. in l. s. chia (ed.), southeast asia transformed. a geography of change (pp. 409-442). singapore: institute of southeast asian studies. aseas 4(1) 106 107 wood, r. e. (1980). international tourism and cultural change in southeast asia. economic development and cultural change, 28(3), 561-581. rezension: schröter, s. (hrsg.) (2010). christianity in indonesia: perspectives of power aseas 4 (2) 342 343 rezensionen / book reviews schröter, susannne (hrsg.) (2010). christianity in indonesia: perspectives of power. münster, deutschland: lit verlag. isbn: 978-3-643-10798-5. 420 seiten. citation warta, c. (2011). rezension: schröter, s. (hrsg.) (2010). christianity in indonesia: perspectives of power. aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften, 4(2), 343-348. der sammelband christianity in indonesia ist das resultat der 2003 an der goetheuniversität frankfurt abgehaltenen, gleichnamigen konferenz, deren resultate, wie die herausgeberin susanne schröter bemerkt, in abstimmung mit ihrem damaligen mitveranstalter edwin wieringa, nicht publiziert wurden. der grund dafür war die schwierigkeit, aus unterschiedlichsten wissenschaftsrichtungen kommende beiträge in einer publikation zu vereinen. stattdessen entschied sich die herausgeberin für einen sammelband aus sozialanthropologischer perspektive „in the broadest sense“ (s. 5), der auf der besagten konferenz aufbaut und im laufe der jahre durch zusätzliche beiträge ergänzt wurde. schröters anspruch blieb jedoch bestehen, nämlich sozialund kulturwissenschaftliche, politikwissenschaftliche, philosophische, historische und letztendlich auch theologische zugänge im rahmen eines interdisziplinären ansatzes mit sozialanthropologischem fokus zu vereinen und dadurch neue erkenntnisse zum christentum in indonesien bereitzustellen. das ergebnis ist ein thematisch äußerst weitgefasster sammelband, dessen beiträge sich nicht nur qualitativ unterscheiden, sondern auch die grenzen des regionalgebiets indonesien sprengen. trotz der etwas schwierig nachvollziehbaren auswahl der beiträge und den nicht immer zu erkennenden zusammenhängen beurteile ich den vorliegenden sammelband gerade aufgrund seiner vielfältigen zugänge als durchaus lesenswert und bezeichne ihn als einen ersten gewagten schritt in die interdisziplinäre beschäftigung mit dem christentum in indonesien. bevor ich näher auf den inhalt eingehe, bedarf es noch einer kurzen erklärung zur anthropologie des christentums: innerhalb der sozialanthropologie entwickelte sich in den letzten jahren ein zunehmendes interesse am christentum, was an einer christian warta rezension: christianity in indonesia d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -4 .2 -1 1 aseas 4 (2) 344 345 vielzahl an publikationen sichtbar ist und fenella cannell 2006 dazu veranlasste eine anthropology of christianity zu etablieren. dieses interesse entsprang unter anderem debatten über die rückkehr des religiösen als reaktion auf die globalisierung und den damit verbundenen umbrüchen bestehender weltordnungen. in diesen durchaus kontroversen auseinandersetzungen wird nicht nur das fortbestehen des nationalstaats in frage gestellt, sondern auch ein ende des säkularen zeitalters thematisiert. folglich befasst sich die anthropologie des christentums vorzugsweise mit transnationalen, politisch-religiösen kräften, die, in lokalen kontexten analysiert, als einzelstudien zum gesamtbild eines sich neu formierenden christentums beitragen. besonderes augenmerk gilt dabei den religiösen bewegungen in postkolonialen gesellschaften. in manchen regionen, beispielsweise in melanesien, manifestierte sich das christentum oft auch in sogenannten ethno-theologien, die von westlichen theologischen auslegungen abweichen, sich jedoch wesentlich an biblischen inhalten orientieren und diese auch zur grundlage politischen handelns machen. in diesem umgestaltungsprozess, in dem sich traditionelle religiöse vorstellungen mit christlichen arrangieren, spielen neuere transnationale religiöse bewegungen, wie beispielsweise das charismatische pfingstlertum, eine bedeutende rolle. letzteres kennzeichnet sich teilweise durch eine relativ stark ausgeprägte intoleranz gegenüber anderen religiösen auffassungen, was sich auch in indonesien in einem zunehmend angespannten verhältnis zum islam bemerkbar macht. in verbindung zu diesen transnationalen religiösen kräften ist auch die landesweite revitalisierungsbewegung von tradition und brauchtum (adat) zu sehen, die seit dem erzwungenen rücktritt von präsident suharto im jahre 1998 im rahmen der derzeitigen dezentralisierungspolitik zunehmend an einfluss gewinnt. interessanterweise ist die revitalisierung von adat dort am stärksten, wo der islam vergleichsweise schwächer ausgeprägt ist, was sich auch in den ethnographischen beiträgen dieses sammelbandes reflektiert, von denen sich die meisten mit ethno-religiösen konflikten im osten indonesiens beschäftigen. wie sich transnationale religiöse strömungen gepaart mit der revitalisierung von adat auf die zukunft indonesiens auswirken und mit dem pluralistischen nationalstaat vereinen lassen, ist daher die primäre frage der gegenwart. vor diesem hintergrund sollte christianity in indonesia gelesen werden. bereits in der einleitung wird deutlich, dass der sammelband auf religiöse konflikte fokussiert. nach einem kurzen historischen überblick führt das überblickskapitel aseas 4 (2) 344 345 in die gegenwart, wo es mit einer darstellung der revitalisierung des indonesischen islam und damit verbundenen interreligiösen spannungen abschließt. spätestens hier wäre die erwähnung eines sich ebenfalls „revitalisierenden“ und keineswegs passiven christentums wünschenswert. eine genauere auseinandersetzung mit der geschichte des christentums bieten die ersten drei kapitel. den mit über 50 seiten längsten beitrag verfasste der theologe olaf schuman, der nicht nur indonesien, sondern auch malaysia und brunei miteinbezieht. schuman zeigt vor allem die verflechtungen von kolonisierung und missionierung auf, betont aber gleichzeitig, dass diese keine neue erkenntnis sei. diesem kirchengeschichtlich durchaus interessanten und detaillierten beitrag folgt eine exkursion ins britische malaya der jahre 1890 bis 1928. auch dieser vom südostasienwissenschafter holger warnk verfasste text, der sich der produktion von malaiischen schulbüchern widmet, zeigt auf anschauliche weise, wie koloniale bildungspolitik und mission sich ergänzten, nicht zuletzt um westliche werte und konzepte zu verbreiten. mit dem beitrag des interkulturellen theologen karel steenbrink verlagert sich dann der fokus – dem buchtitel entsprechend – wieder auf indonesien. mit hauptaugenmerk auf die katholische kirche thematisiert steenbrink die macht des geldes. dabei zeigt er auf, wie die katholische kirche sich durch internationale entwicklungsprojektgelder einen weitgehend autonomen status aufbauen konnte und zu einer mächtigen institution in den schlüsselbereichen bildung, gesundheit und medien heranwuchs. internationale finanztransfers, die dies lange zeit ermöglichten, wurden 1978 von der regierung strikten reglements unterworfen und mehr oder weniger zur staatsangelegenheit gemacht. steenbrink erwähnt in seiner conclusio auch die islamischen bildungseinrichtungen, die seit den 1990er-jahren zunehmend mit den kirchlichen institutionen gleichziehen und gibt seiner verwunderung ausdruck, dass diese auffällige konkurrenz im innerkirchlichen dialog bisher kaum erwähnung fand. damit kündigt steenbrink auch schon den schwerpunkt des zweiten teils dieses sammelbandes an, nämlich die gegenwärtige konkurrenz von islam und christentum in indonesien. zuvor aber betonen die beiträge von susanne schröter und raymond corbey die innerchristliche konkurrenz und die unterschiedlichen auswirkungen protestantischer und katholischer missionstätigkeit auf lokale religiöse vorstellungen. während christian warta rezension: christianity in indonesia aseas 4 (2) 346 347 schröters ethnographische studie zum indigenisierten katholizismus der ngada auf der insel flores die toleranz der katholischen kirche gegenüber traditionellen glaubenselementen positiv hervorhebt und darin einen wesentlichen unterschied zur protestantischen kirche erkennen lässt, greift corbey in seinem undifferenzierten, historischen beitrag das bereits ausführlich behandelte thema der destruktiven auswirkungen missionarischer tätigkeit auf. im gegensatz zur eher indirekten befassung mit religiösen konflikten im ersten teil des bandes, weist der zweite teil bereits in der überschrift explizit auf diese hin: lokale konflikte, religiöse rhetorik und praktizierter pluralismus in indonesien sind behandelte themen. die kulturanthropologischen beiträge von susanne rodemeier und dieter bartels betonen vorerst die rolle des lokalen adat und sehen dieses als grundlage friedlicher koexistenz. während rodemeier den verlust einer auf gemeinsamen ahnenvorstellungen aufgebauten identität als mögliche ursache für zukünftige religiöse konflikte im alor-pantar-archipel interpretiert, zeigt dieter bartels anhand der molukken, wie der regulierende einfluss des lokalen adat mit zunehmender staatlicher und religiöser institutionalisierung zu schwinden begann, und erkennt darin auch die primäre ursache für den im jahre 1999 zwischen christinnen und musliminnen ausgebrochenen molukken-konflikt. die sozialund kulturanthropologin birgit bräuchler untersucht hingegen die repräsentationen des molukken-konflikts im internet. deutlich zeigt die autorin auf, wie ethnische zugehörigkeiten durch religiöse identitäten überlagert wurden und die ursprünglich für ihre guten interreligiösen beziehungen bekannte bevölkerung sich entlang religiöser linien spaltete. moderne kommunikationstechnologien spielten dabei eine wesentliche rolle, denn sie ermöglichten nicht nur allianzen mit außenstehenden akteurinnen, sondern auch ein forum für die repräsentation des konflikts im virtuellen raum. über die lokale ebene und den einfluss des staates hinaus beeinflusste das strategisch eingesetzte internet nicht nur den konflikt selbst, sondern ermöglichte auch die betonung religiöser identitäten auf nationaler und transnationaler ebene. bräuchlers beitrag ist äußerst zeitgemäß und richtungsweisend, obwohl er bereits in ähnlichen versionen internationale bekanntheit erlangte. konflikte werden heute zunehmend auch über das internet ausgetragen und können daher nicht mehr als lokale, von globalen einflüssen unberührte, phänomene verstanden werden. insofern wäre es wünschenswert, wenn bräuchlers zugang auch in anderen aseas 4 (2) 346 347 christian warta rezension: christianity in indonesia konfliktregionen anwendung finden würde. mit muslimisch-christlichen rivalitäten und religiös gefärbten nationalistischen ansprüchen beschäftigt sich der informative beitrag der kulturanthropologin lorraine v. aragon, die davor warnt, den in den späten 1990er-jahren ausgebrochenen poso-konflikt in zentral-sulawesi als rein religiös motiviert zu interpretieren. vielmehr definiert die autorin transmigrationsbewegungen und den kampf um natürliche ressourcen als wesentliche grundmotive. dabei beschränkt sich ihr blick keineswegs auf das lokale, sondern betrachtet auch nationale und transnationale faktoren, um zu verstehen, wie migration, wirtschaftlicher druck und staat auf die unterschiedlichen religiösen gruppen einwirkten. aragon zeigt hier hervorragend auf, dass lokale phänomene erst durch diesen transnationalen blick erklärbar werden. einen ähnlichen weitblick weisen auch die beiträge des kulturanthropologen sven kosel und des islamwissenschaftlers hasan noorhaidi auf, die sich beide mit themen beschäftigen, die heute das östliche indonesien in bewegung setzen. sven kosel geht der frage nach, inwieweit die vorwiegend christlichen minahasa im norden von sulawesi aufgrund ihrer religiösen und ethnischen identität eine unabhängigkeit von indonesien anstreben. dazu konzentriert er sich auf religiös-politische bewegungen, insbesondere auf christlich-paramilitärische gruppen. diese sehen sich selbst als verteidiger des durch die pancasila-staatsideologie garantierten religiösen pluralismus und formieren sich gegen eine befürchtete islamisierung. kosel relativiert hier das bild eines defensiven christentums und zeigt am beispiel von nordsulawesi, was auch in papua für zündstoff sorgt, nämlich die verbindung von christentum und unabhängigkeit. hier schließt auch der beitrag von hasan noorhaidi an, der sein augenmerk auf die christianisierungsvermutungen fundamentalistischer islamischer gruppierungen legt. noorhaidi kommt auf die vorwiegend im östlichen indonesien verbreiteten verschwörungstheorien einer gegen den islam gerichteten jüdisch-christlichen allianz zu sprechen. die annahme einer globalen zionistisch-christlichen verschwörung, so der autor, dient radikalen islamischen gruppierungen als legitimation für ihr gegen das christentum gerichtetes auftreten. davon, dass derartige gerüchte nicht nur in nordsulawesi, sondern auch in den molukken und papua zirkulieren, konnte ich mich bei meinen aktuellen forschungen selbst überzeugen. auch in diesem hervorragenden beitrag werden die essentiellen zusammenhänge von lokalen konflikten und nationalen bzw. transnationalen bewegungen ersichtlich. aseas 4 (2) 348 349 religionsfreiheit wird heute mehr denn je infrage gestellt, resümiert schließlich der philosoph und jesuit franz magnis-suseno, der im schlusswort dieses sammelbandes über den religiösen pluralismus in indonesien reflektiert. ob bzw. wie die wahrheitsansprüche abrahamitischer religionen mit dem ideal einer pluralistischen gesellschaft vereinbar sind, werde die zukunft der indonesischen gesellschaft wesentlich mitbestimmen. noch sieht magnis-suseno die lange tradition der interkulturellen und interreligiösen koexistenz als wichtigste gesellschaftliche kraft für ein friedliches miteinander. inwieweit religiöse radikalisierung dieses miteinander in ein gegeneinander umkehren kann, werde laut magnis-suseno davon abhängen, wie sehr korruption die schere zwischen arm und reich noch öffnen wird. die herausforderung dieses vielfältigen und lesenswerten sammelbands liegt nicht zuletzt bei dem auf die sozialanthropologie fokussierten, jedoch interdisziplinären anspruch der herausgeberin. ein derartiger ansatz ist wichtig, denn die ansicht, dass eine anthropologie des christentums von der zusammenarbeit mit anderen wissenschaftsdisziplinen profitiert, setzt sich immer stärker durch. nicht nur in der postkolonialen welt durchläuft das christentum heute grundlegende veränderungen – die zahlreichen nordamerikanischen evangelikalen megakirchen, deren einfluss auch in indonesien von bedeutung ist, stellen dies lebhaft unter beweis. einen beitrag zu evangelikalen, prophetisch-charismatischen, pfingstlerischen strömungen vermisse ich in diesem sammelband. ebenso wünschenswert wäre es gewesen, wenn papua etwas mehr erwähnung gefunden hätte, zumal es sich bei dieser region im wahrsten sinne des wortes um eine von den transnationalen strömungen betroffene religiöse frontier handelt. zweifelsfrei macht sich im heutigen zeitalter der globalisierung und im zuge des neoliberalismus ein trend zum religiösen bemerkbar, der als reaktion auf sich verändernde normen und ordnungen zu verstehen ist. davon ist auch indonesien nicht ausgeschlossen, wo lokale konflikte keineswegs unabhängig von nationalen und transnationalen religiösen bewegungen zu verstehen sind. insofern lese ich christianity in indonesia primär als eine interdisziplinäre auseinandersetzung mit religiösen konflikten, denn darin erkenne ich den roten faden, der die unterschiedlichen beiträge verbindet. christian warta école française d’extrême-orient aseas 1-2 final (außergottowik).indd aseas 1 (2) agents of change frauenaktivistinnen in aceh agents of change women activists in aceh kristina grossmann1 goethe-universität frankfurt/main, deutschland / goethe-university frankfurt/main, germany aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften / austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 1 (2), 2008 seas gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften www.seas.at aceh befi ndet sich seit der dezentralisierungspolitik indonesiens ende der 1990er jahre, der tsunamikatastrophe 2004 und der unterzeichnung des memorandum of understanding (mou)2 2005 in einer politischen, kulturellen und gesellschaftlichen transformation. die situation der frauen in aceh ist geprägt durch repressionen aufgrund der einführung der scharia, durch einfl ussnahme von internationalen hilfsorganisationen nach dem tsunami und durch die neuordnung der region acehsseit den autonomieverhandlungen. der transformationsprozess bringt große herausforderungen für die frauen in aceh mit sich und beinhaltet zugleich die chance zur mitgestaltung. so entwerfen frauenaktivistinnen innerhalb des spannungsfeldes islamische religiosität, traditionell-kulturelle strukturen und westliche wertevorstellungen, positionen und strategien, um ihren wunsch nach geschlechtergerechtigkeit durchzusetzen. mein artikel beleuchtet die frage, welche rolle frauenaktivistinnen innerhalb des transformationsprozesses einnehmen und welche chancen, möglichkeiten und hindernisse es gibt, um einfl uss auf politische und gesellschaftliche prozesse zu nehmen. schlagworte: indonesien, aceh, gender, partizipation, islam aceh, indonesia’s westernmost province is in a process of political, social and cultural transformation, which is caused by three main factors. first, the process of decentralisation, launched by the government of indonesia starting from the end of the 1990s and as a consequence of the implementation of sharia bylaws since 2001, second, the tsunami calamity 2004 and third, the peace process starting with the signing of the memorandum of understanding (mou) 2005 between representatives of the government of indonesia and the acehnese freedom movement gam (gerakan aceh merdeka). today’s situation of women in aceh is infl uenced by repressions due to a conservative interpretation of islam, by the impact of international aid organisations, which entered aceh after the tsunami and by the political, social and cultural reconstruction of aceh since the beginning of the peace process. the transformation process causes huge challenges for women and at the same time provides a 1 die autorin ist doktorandin am institut für ethnologie und im exzellenzcluster „die herausbildung normativer ordnungen“ an der goethe-universität frankfurt/main. 2 am 15. august 2005 wurde das mou in helsinki zwischen vertretern der regierung indonesiens und der acehnesischen befreiungsbewegung gam (gerakan aceh merdeka) unterzeichnet und ein friedensschluss besiegelt. 105 wide range of opportunities for participation and modelling the new province aceh. in this vibrant atmosphere, where tensions between islamic religiosity, traditional-cultural structures and western values are immense, women activists design positions and strategies to aim their desire of gender justice, equity and women’s rights. the present impact of the multiple efforts of women activists to take infl uence in the political and socio-cultural area can be described as opening a window of opportunities. they could benefi t from emancipative objectives of international organisations and from the national and international monetary funds. women activists could develop capacity and raise their bargaining power through the networks with international organisations. hurdles in the long-term success of implementing the aims of woman activists are the short time-frames of the aid-programmes and the top-down approach of most programmes. the power of the political elite in aceh and of religious leaders is strong and the agendas of woman activists are constrained by socio-political and religious acceptance. keywords: indonesia, aceh, gender, participation, islam einleitung acehnesischen frauenaktivistinnen, die sich, züchtig mit kopftuch bedeckt, für geschlechtergerechtigkeit und frauenrechte einsetzen sind für westliche beobachter befremdliche bilder. obwohl indonesien das bevölkerungsreichste muslimische land ist, steht der moderate islam im multikulturellen indonesien für toleranz und synkretismus mit lokalen und westlichen werten. so gab indonesien stets ein bild von vielfältigen kleidungs und lebensstilen ab, unter denen orthodox islamische lebensentwürfe nur einer von vielen war.3 das hat sich in einigen gebieten stark verändert. in den letzten jahren sind in über 60 städten und distrikten rechtsprechungen gemäß der scharia eingeführt worden. aceh4 ist die erste provinz, in der seit 2001 eine rechtsprechung gemäß der scharia angewendet wird. die pflicht zu züchtiger kleidung entsprechend orthodox islamischen vorbildern ist seitdem unter androhung von strafe auferlegt und wird von ortsansässigen moralhütern überwacht. zu ihrem eigenen schutz, so argumentieren befürworter der scharia, dürfen frauen nach einbruch der dunkelheit nicht mehr auf der straße unterwegs sein.5 die einführung der scharia ist aber nur eine herausforderung, mit der sich acehnesische 3 das kopftuch im arabischen stil, d. h. unter den kinn geschlossen, ist erst seit den 1990er-jahren in schulen offiziell erlaubt. 4 aceh ist die nördlichste provinz der insel sumatra. 98 prozent der bevölkerung gehören formal dem islam an. die konservative islamische identität der bevölkerung in aceh nährt die unabhängigkeitsbestrebungen gegenüber der nationalregierung in jakarta. 5 diese einschränkung ist vor allem für den großen teil an berufstätigen und weniger gut verdienenden frauen prekär und verdrängt sie zunehmend aus der öffentlichkeit. der weg von oder zu der arbeitsstätte, sei es das reisfeld, der markt oder die fabrik, wird oft zu fuß oder mit öffentlichen verkehrsmitteln in der dunkelheit zurückgelegt. 106 kristina großmann agents of change aseas 1 (2) frauen konfrontiert sehen. der 30-jährige unabhängigkeitskampf und die folgen des tsunami 2004 zerstörten die lebensgrundlage vieler acehnesen und acehnesinnen. die anschließende befriedung des sezessionistischen kampfes brachte erleichterung und hoffnung. frauenaktivistinnen sehen chancen und möglichkeiten, bei der politischen, sozialen und kulturellen neuordnung acehs mitzubestimmen und setzen sich in vielfältiger weise für mehr gerechtigkeit und gleichheit ein. dabei bewegen sie sich zum einen im rahmen des orthodox islamischen moralkodex und argumentieren gemäß dem islamischen katechismus, um ihre glaubwürdigkeit und ihre einflussmöglichkeit nicht durch den vorwurf von apostasie und „verwestlichung“ zu verspielen. andererseits orientieren sich frauenaktivistinnen an internationalen normen, wie den allgemeinen menschenrechten und die konvention gegen diskriminierung von frauen, welche 1984 von indonesien ratifiziert wurde. (un-)gleichheit der geschlechter die gesellschaft der acehnesen hat traditionell eine matrizentrische sozialstruktur, in die der islam integriert ist. das machtzentrum von frauen liegt demnach im informellen sektor, d.h. im familienklan und in der dorfgemeinschaft. acehnesische frauen sind eigentümerinnen von haus, grund und bewirtschaftbaren feldern und leben in subsistenz, männer verdienen traditionell hauptsächlich geld durch handel in städten oder im ausland (meurantau). die familie wird durch eine männliche person, meistens den bruder der frau (mamak), rechtlich nach außen vertreten. traditionell ist das geschlechterverhältnis in aceh symmetrisch (siapno 2002), da die besetzten machtfelder und der zugang zu zentralen dörflichen institutionen, zum beispiel zu streitschlichtenden instanzen (tuah empat) in der balance sind. seit der niederländischen kolonialisationszeit ist das traditionell symmetrische geschlechterverhältnis in aceh im wandel begriffen. die bürokratische organisation der kolonialherren verlangte eine umwandlung der matrizentrischen und somit auf klanbesitz basierenden sozialstruktur in kleine einheiten einer kernfamilienstruktur mit männlichem haushaltsvorstand. das system von privatbesitz entsprach der niederländischen besteuerungspolitik und war leichter zu kontrollieren (siapno 2002). während der autokratischen regierung suhartos von 1966 bis 1998 wurden frauen systematisch entpolitisiert und in den häuslichen bereich zurückgedrängt. mit dem konzept kodrat wanita wurde frauen, gemäß ihrer „natürlichen bestimmung“, die rolle der sorgenden hausfrau und unterstützenden ehefrau zugeteilt. frauenorganisationen wurden kooptiert und konnten nur als verlängerter arm der staatspartei golkar agieren (blackburn 2004). die staatspropaganda und die autokratische regierung suhartos untergruben den einfluss 107 von lokalen, traditionellen sozialstrukturen, indem zum beispiel entscheidungen und beschlüsse gemäß der ortsüblichen rechtsprechung adat limbago nicht anerkannt wurden. 1976 gründete hasan di tiro die „bewegung freies aceh“ (gerakan aceh merdeka/gam. die anfänglichen ziele waren eine größere kulturelle, politische und ökonomische autonomie acehs gegenüber der nationalregierung, später forderte gam die unabhängigkeit acehs von indonesien; ab den 1990er jahren wurde der konflikt massiv militarisiert. neben der enttäuschung einer zentralistischen politik der nationalregierungen indonesiens zuungunsten der idee eines föderalen staates war der ausschluss di tiros bei der vergabe von förderlizenzen großer gasfunde in aceh der initialfunke für den bewaffneten untergrundkampf (sulaiman 2006). innerhalb des unabhängigkeitskampfes gegen den indonesischen nationalstaat waren nur wenige frauen am aktiven kampf beteiligt oder mitglied der politischen und militärischen elite. acehnesische frauen hatten jedoch im informellen bereich machtvolle positionen als versorgerinnen, reproduzentinnen, informantinnen, unterstützerinnen des passiven widerstandes und in informellen verhandlungen mit dem militär. die rolle von acehnesischen frauen während des bürgerkrieges als versorgerinnen und reproduzentinnen ist nicht nur im materiellen und biologischen sinne zu verstehen, sondern fand auch auf der symbolischen ebene anwendung. so wurden frauen als physische und kulturelle reproduktionskraft und als protektorinnen der nationalen und ethnischen identität dargestellt. die strategie der gam-kader, acehnesische kultur und ethnizität zu betonen und symbole einer glorreichen acehnesischen geschichte wiederaufleben zu lassen oder zu erfinden, fand auch eingang in das geschlechterverhältnis. männer als tapfere kämpfer für die unabhängigkeit und frauen als reproduktive unterstützerinnen – das waren die von der gam propagierten dichotomen stereotype. so wurde erst 1998 ein frauen-bataillon ins leben gerufen. nach aussagen von frauenaktivistinnen verschiedener organisationen lebten, während des unabhängigkeitskampfes, mehr als 50 prozent des gam-kaders in polygynen ehen.6 acehnesische frauen trugen maßgeblich zur bildung einer kollektiven acehnesischen identität gegenüber der regierung in jakarta bei und fungierten als metapher für kulturelle authentizität und integrität. der seit den 1990er jahren zu beobachtende druck auf frauen, eine züchtige kleiderordnung einzuhalten, ist im zusammenhang mit dem erstarken einer acehnesischen islamischen identität in abgrenzung zu einem moderaten islam des nationalstaat indonesiens zu sehen. die schaffung einer ikonisierten, guten muslima, die sich für die unabhängigkeit acehs einsetzt, drängt frauen in die passivität und politisiert geschlechterverhältnisse. 6 manche aktivistinnen sprechen sogar von über 70 prozent polygynen ehen währende des unabhängigkeitskampfes. vor dem friedensschluss 2005 lag die zahl von polygynen ehen in der provinz aceh bei etwa 12 prozent. heute liegt die zahl bei etwa 25 prozent. 108 kristina großmann agents of change aseas 1 (2) scharia als fehlgeschlagene konfliktlösungsstrategie mit dem dezentralisierungsgesetz 1999 sind in einigen distrikten und provinzen lokale bestimmungen bezüglich religiösen und kulturellen angelegenheiten erlassen worden, die islamischem recht größere geltung verschafft. die einführung einer lokalen rechtsprechung, die sich an der scharia orientiert (qanun), ist ein ausdruck des staatsimmanenten konfliktes zwischen islamistischen und laizistischen kräften in indonesien. aufgrund eines erlasses zur sonderautonomie für aceh 2001 wurde dort eine regionale rechtsprechung gemäß der scharia eingeführt.7 die indonesische regierung versuchte auf diese weise erfolglos, den sezessionistischen konflikt im mehrheitlich muslimischen aceh beizulegen. vertreter der gam wiesen die formalisierung der scharia als ungewolltes geschenk der zentralregierung zurück, unternahmen aber, trotz ihrer beteiligung an der provinzregierung, keine fruchtbaren schritte, um die lokalen gesetze zu entschärfen.8 obwohl entscheidungen über religionsangelegenheiten der zentralregierung zugewiesen sind, ist in aceh eine lokale rechtsprechung entstanden, die oft im gegensatz zur nationalen gesetzgebung steht. gegenüber diesem rechtspluralismus stellt sich die nationalregierung jedoch blind. so konstatiert khairani arifin von der frauenorganisation „freiwillige frauen für humanitäre aktionen“ (relawan perempuan untuk kemanusiaan/rpuk) in aceh, dass eine klage an das oberste verfassungsgericht in jakarta bezüglich des urteils eines scharia gerichts in aceh zurückgewiesen wurde. als begründung wurde angeführt, dass die zeitliche frist zur einreichung von verfassungsklagen nicht eingehalten wurde. die inhalte der scharia gesetze orientieren sich an konservativen islamischen werten und normen und betreffen die bereiche verhaltensund kleidervorschriften und bekämpfung der kriminalität. die hoffnung, dass die implementierung der scharia zur lösung der multidimensionalen ökonomischen und sozialen probleme in aceh beitragen kann, wurde aufgrund der konservativen und symbolträchtigen umsetzung durch islamische autoritäten enttäuscht. so sind bei verstößen gegen die scharia-gesetze demütigung, gewalttätige übergriffe und benachteiligungen vor allem gegenüber frauen im öffentlichen und privaten bereich zu beobachten. die rigorose durchsetzung islamischer verhaltensund kleidervorschriften betrifft frauen unverhältnismäßig stark. vor allem im urbanen raum ist zu beobachten, dass, bezugnehmend auf den koran, die autorität von männern im haus in den vordergrund rückt, frauen aber keinen machtzuwachs in anderen bereichen haben. 7 neue institutionen, die die neuen regelungen formulieren und für deren umsetzung sorgen, sind schariaämter (dinas scharia), ein beratender ulama-rat (majelis permusyawaratan ulama) und scharia gerichte. 8 irwandi yusuf, seit 2006 gouverneur von aceh und der ehemaligen gam nahestehend, versprach bei seinem amtsantritt, bestimmte diskriminierende passagen innerhalb der qanun zu überarbeiten und zu revidieren. 109 frauenorganisationen, die durch die umsetzung der scharia-gesetze die menschenrechte verletzt sehen, antworten mit dem angebot von rechtsbeistand und dem schwer umsetzbaren versuch, bei den formulierungen der lokalen gesetzgebung mitzubestimmen. offene kritik an der umsetzung der regionalen scharia-gesetze ist für frauenaktivistinnen in aceh jedoch selten möglich, weil die angst vor dem vorwurf von blasphemie und unrespektvollem verhalten gegenüber dem islam groß ist. tsunami als katalysator in folge der tsunamikatastrophe 2004 kamen viele internationale organisationen nach aceh. die wiederaufbauund förderprogramme infolge des tsunami waren mit großen finanziellen budgets ausgestattet9 und hatten zeitlich eng gestrickte zielvorgaben. in kurzer zeit entstanden zahlreiche kooperationen mit lokalen organisationen, um die hilfsprogramme zu implementieren. lokale ngos, die sich für frauenrechte einsetzten, wurden finanziell unterstützt und etablierten sich strukturell und personell. genderspezifische forderungen konnten somit auf die internationale bühne gehoben und erfolgreicher durchgesetzt werden. der genderspezifische aspekt innerhalb der soforthilfemaßnahmen nach der tsunamikatastrophe wurde von westlichen und lokalen organisationen als wichtig erachtet, anfänglich aber stark vernachlässigt. so wurden die waschräume in den behelfsunterkünften erst nach den forderungen lokaler frauenorganisationen nach geschlechtern getrennt und frauen verstärkt in die planung von neuen wohnräumen einbezogen. nach der zerstörung durch den tsunami wurde in vielen fällen das eigentum von haus, grund und feldern auf männer übertragen und hilfsgelder an das offizielle, also männliche familienoberhaupt vergeben. dies lässt sich durch die schwache rechtliche position von frauen und der traditionell festegelegten vertretung in der öffentlichkeit durch männliche familienangehörige begründen. der enteignung von frauen wurde mit programmen zur einbeziehung von frauen in entscheidungsgremien, die bei der neuordnung von grundeigentum in zerstörten gebieten mitbestimmen, entgegen gesteuert. durch die hilfsprogramme der internationalen organisationen wurden ziele der entwicklungszusammenarbeit transportiert, die im westen entwickelt wurden und sich an den vorstellungen der vereinten nationen von geschlechtergleichheit orientieren. gender equity, gender mainstreaming und woman’s empowerment tauchten in den programmen der acehnesischen frauenorganisationen auf, die wege suchten, diese begriffe im acehnesischen kontext umzusetzen. durch die systematische entpolitisierung von frauen während der ära 9 insgesamt wurde 4.9 milliarden euro an hilfsgelder bereitgestellt. ungefähr ein drittel von der indonesischen regierung, ein drittel von internationalen geldgebern und ein drittel von nichtregierungsorganisationen. ende 2007 waren bereits 90 prozent der hilfsmittel vergeben (kleine-brockhoff 2007). 110 kristina großmann agents of change aseas 1 (2) suhartos und der stärkeren einflussnahme eines patriarchal ausgelegten islam wurden die machtfelder von frauen und ihr zugang zu institutionen reduziert. vor diesem hintergrund sind frauenaktivistinnen vor die herausforderung gestellt, programme zu entwickeln, die frauen unterstützen, ihren machtbereich auf informeller ebene wieder zu erweitern und sich zugang zu formellen einflussebenen zu erschließen. die internationalisierung und finanzielle förderung von genderspezifischer arbeit in aceh hat die auseinandersetzung über geschlechterbeziehungen auf eine breite öffentliche bühne gehoben. diskussionen über gender und die rolle von frauen finden nicht nur in den büros der organisationen statt, sondern haben auch vor allem unter der jungen bevölkerungsschicht einen großen stellenwert bekommen. so gibt es z.b. lebhafte diskussionen, welchen vorbildern acehnesische frauen folgen sollen, den heroinnen aus einer glorreichen acehnesischen vergangenheit, wie cut njak dhien oder den als emanzipiert und fortschrittlich geltenden frauen aus westlichen kulturkreisen. innerhalb der kurzen zeit nach 2004 ist es lokalen frauenorganisationen zwar nur ansatzweise gelungen die bedürfnisse von frauen an der basis zu eruieren und spezifische strategien zu ihrer durchsetzung zu entwickeln, jedoch sind erste schritte hinsichtlich der verschiebung der frauenrolle von passiven bürgerkriegsopfern zu aktiven mitgliedern der zivilgesellschaft getan. so entwerfen frauenaktivistinnen innerhalb des spannungsfeldes islamische religiosität, traditionell-kulturelle strukturen und westliche wertevorstellungen, positionen und strategien, um den wunsch nach geschlechtergerechtigkeit durchzusetzen. die forderungen und ziele von netzwerken, kongressen und workshops zeigen emanzipative positionen, die sich an westlichen vorstellungen von geschlechtergerechtigkeit orientieren (crisis management initiative 2006: 18; kamaruzzaman 2004) aber auch den besonderen acehnesischen traditionell-kulturellen werten und normen und der islamischen religiosität rechnung tragen (blackburn 2004: 108; parawansa 2002: 72). zum beispiel ist öffentliche kritik an der umsetzung der regionalen scharia gesetze für frauenaktivistinnen in aceh nicht möglich, da die aktivistinnen diffamiert und als unglaubwürdig abgestempelt werden (crisis management initiative 2006). „agents of change“ im transformationsprozess die genderspezifische betrachtung von transformationsprozessen ist in der wissenschaftlichen betrachtung lange vernachlässigt worden, gewinnt jedoch zunehmend an bedeutung (derichs 2005; waylen 2007). frauenaktivistinnen als zivilgesellschaftliche akteure werden als wichtige change agents innerhalb von transformationsprozessen angesehen und haben aufgrund ihrer perspektive, ihrer handlungsmöglichkeiten und ihrer erfahrungen eine wichtige rolle in 111 systemveränderungen (derichs 2005: 1; mulligan 2005; ng, mohamad, & tan 2006; waylen 2003, 2007). ihre rolle besteht darin, ideen zu entwickeln und zu verbreiten und als kritikerin, vorbild und gesellschaftliche anwältin einfluss auf staatliche handlungen und den politischen und gesellschaftlichen diskurs zu nehmen (derichs & heberer 2006). die einbeziehung von frauen in den friedensprozess in aceh wird als wichtig erachtet und vielfach eingefordert (gender working group 2007; kamaruzzaman 2000; unifem 2005). so können sie als multiplikatorinnen im topdown-prozess, als wichtige verbündete im monitoring des friedensprozesses, als hoffnungsträgerinnen und als vermittlerinnen zwischen identitätsgrenzen fungieren (crisis management initiative 2006). während des unabhängigkeitskampfes während des unabhängigkeitskampfes von 1976 bis 2005 war die arbeit von frauenaktivistinnen schwer durchführbar. das hauptziel des engagements war der kampf für frauenrechte als menschenrechte und die hilfe für kriegsopfer. die versorgung von kriegsvertriebenen und die unterstützung und rechtliche beratung von betroffenen sexueller übergriffe waren die hauptsächlichen betätigungsfelder. ein großes problem der frauenrechtsarbeit war, von den kriegsparteien anerkannt zu werden. das indonesische militär und die gam betrachteten die aktivistinnen als spione der jeweils anderen seite und gewährten oft keinen zugang zu betroffenen. khairani arifin erzählt, dass sie sich oft vorkam, wie zwischen den stühlen zu sitzen und dass wertvolle zeit und energie durch die verhandlungen mit dem militär und der gam verloren gingen. 1990 bis 1998 wurde aceh zum „speziellen militärischen gebiet“ (daerah operasi militer/dom) erklärt. innerhalb der militäraktion „rotes netz“ (jaring merah) wurde der konflikt stark militarisiert und menschenrechtsverletzungen von beiden seiten verübt. in dieser zeit entstanden viele frauenorganisationen, die vor allem kriegsflüchtlingen halfen. nach dem sturz suhartos 1998 verschärfte sich die situation weiter. die reformasi 1999 und die abspaltung ost-timors von indonesien gaben den bestrebungen nach unabhängigkeit in aceh neue nahrung. die erwartung gegenüber frauen, sich als gute muslima für die unabhängigkeit einzusetzen, stieg und erhöhte den druck, sich einer züchtigen kleiderordnung zu unterwerfen. zwischen 1999 und 2004 fanden razzien statt, im rahmen derer die orthodox islamische kleiderordnung kontrolliert wurde, sogenannte razia jilbab. die agenda der frauenaktivistinnen konzentrierte sich auf die durchsetzung von frauenrechten als menschenrechte. suraya kamaruzzaman, die leiterin der international bekannten frauenorganisation „flower aceh“ nahm ihr kopftuch als protest gegen die verstärkte diskriminierung von frauen auf der basis des islams ab und verurteilte die politisierung von religion. aktionen von zivilem ungehorsam 112 kristina großmann agents of change aseas 1 (2) sind in aceh jedoch schwer umzusetzen und haben ausgrenzung aus familiären und sozialen zusammenhängen, bestrafung von seiten der scharia-polizei (wilayatul hisbah), öffentliche diffamierungen und einen verlust der glaubwürdigkeit zur folge. meistens wird von frauen, die keinen jilbab tragen möchten, ein kompromiss bevorzugt, zum beispiel ein tuch, das locker um kopf und schultern geworfen wird (slendang), um keine angriffsfläche zu bieten. nach dem tsunami und dem friedensschluss infolge des tsunamis 2004 und nach beendigung des unabhängigkeitskampfes 2005 stieg die anzahl von nichtregierungsorganisationen und die tätigkeitsbereiche von frauenaktivistinnen erweiterten sich. durch die internationalisierung der konfliktregion aceh wurde eine finanzielle und ideologische basis geschaffen, auf der es frauen vermehrt möglich war, sich für frauenrechte einzusetzen. die einbeziehung von frauen in den friedensprozess in aceh wird international als wichtig erachtet und von regierungen und nichtregierungsorganisationen vielfach eingefordert (gender working group 2007; kamaruzzaman 2000). die unterzeichnung des memorandum of understanding zwischen der acehnesischen unabhängigkeitsbewegung gam und der indonesischen zentralregierung 2005 beendete den 30-jährigen bürgerkrieg in aceh und öffnete die tür zu einem friedensprozess mit offenem ausgang. die jüngsten attentate auf ramos-horta, den präsidenten des seit 2002 von indonesien unabhängigen ost-timors, sind ausdruck der instabilen politischen und gesellschaftlichen lage von post-konflikt-gesellschaften. die frage nach der politischen und ethnoreligiösen positionierung acehs vor dem hintergrund des nation-building-prozesses indonesiens, welches das konzept der „einheit durch vielfalt“ propagiert, gewinnt erneut an bedeutung (schröter 2007). im zuge der aktuellen politischen und ethnoreligiösen neuordnung acehs haben frauen, die aus dem kontext der unabhängigkeitsbewegung gam kommen, 2006 die frauenorganisation liga inong aceh (lina), die frauenliga aceh gegründet. sie fordern aktive mitbestimmung beim wiederaufbau, bei der rehabilitation und bei der ausrichtung der ethnoreligiösen positionierung acehs und suchen wege aus ihrer passiven rolle. die nähe zur derzeitigen politischen elite acehs, die sich aus gam-nahen funktionären bildet, vergrößert zum einen die einflussmöglichkeiten dieser frauenaktivistinnen, begrenzt zum anderen ihre ziele im sinne der konformität zur politischen patronage. mit der ausfertigung des autonomiegesetzes „law on the governing of aceh“ (loga) im august 2006 wurden die grundlagen für eine selbstregierung acehs geschaffen. die politische und gesellschaftliche neuordnung eröffnet frauen die möglichkeit, aktiv bei der neugestaltung 113 acehs mitzubestimmen und die passive rolle abzugeben. die netzwerke „woman‘s policy network“ (jpuk) und „woman‘s peace network“ (jpud) beteiligten sich an der erstellung einer liste mit 15 forderungen zur geschlechtergerechtigkeit, die bei der erstellung des loga berücksichtigung finden sollten. sechs dieser punkte wurden miteinbezogen (crisis management initiative: 2006). im juni 2005 fand, mit internationaler unterstützung, der „all acehnese woman’s congress“ statt. 400 frauen aus repräsentativen positionen versammelten sich und gründeten den „aceh woman’s council“. dieser beirat reichte forderungen bezüglich der förderung und des schutzes von frauen bei der acehnesischen „behörde für wiederaufbau“ (badan rekonstruksi dan rekreasi/brr) ein. eine forderung liegt im bereich capacity building und betrifft den wiederaufbau und die pflege von „häusern für frauen“ (balai inong) in denen frauen sich versammeln, zusammen arbeiten und sich informieren können. eine weitere forderung ist der aufbau eines rechtshilfesystems bezüglich besitzund landrechten und bei unrechtmäßigen verurteilungen gemäß den scharia gesetze. die bildung von zivilgesellschaftlichen institutionen ist wichtig, da frauen in politischen strukturen stark unterrepräsentiert sind. im aktiven wahlkampf der direktwahlen des gouverneurs im dezember 2006 spielten frauen eine untergeordnete rolle. nur zwei von 22 kandidaten für das gouverneursamt waren frauen, sie wurden im vorfeld der wahl disqualifiziert, weil sie einen für die registrierung benötigten test, den koran richtig zu zitieren, nicht bestanden (holthouse 2007). in dem 69 abgeordnete zählenden provinzparlament sind lediglich zwei frauen vertreten (dinkelaker 2008). bei der besetzung der distriktvorsteher und bürgermeisterposten war nur eine frau erfolgreich, 37 weitere posten nahmen männer ein. die stellvertretende bürgermeisterin der stadt banda aceh, illiza sa’aduddin djamal, genießt die tatkräftige unterstützung ihres männlichen mitkandidaten mawardy nurdin und musste sich nach eigener aussage gegenüber kritik von frauengruppen verteidigen, die bedenken anmeldeten, ob eine frau in der lage sei, eine stadt zu führen (ded 2007). illiza sa’aduddin djamal wird unter anderem von dem deutschen entwicklungsdienst (ded) beraten und unterstützt. sie steht für eine gemäßigte gender-mainstreaming-politik und möchte die rechte von frauen durch gesetze und capacity building stärken. ihr persönliches ziel ist der aufbau eines informationszentrums für frauen, in dem sich frauen über themen wie familie und haushalt, aufbau von kleinunternehmen oder politische betätigungen informieren können. acehs bürgermeisterin setzt die befolgung von religiösen grundsätzen und der gesetzgebungen gemäß der scharia als grundlage für den aufbau einer neuen gesellschaft in aceh voraus, betont jedoch die befolgung eines „reinen islams“ (islam murni), zu dem sie z.b. auch die pflicht zählt, gegen korruption vorzugehen (ded 2007). 114 kristina großmann agents of change aseas 1 (2) hürden im friedensprozess ein wichtiger aspekt eines nachhaltigen friedensprozesses beinhaltet die aufarbeitung von kriegsverbrechen. systematische vergewaltigung als strategische mittel zur demoralisierung und die umsiedelungspolitik in den 1990er jahren führten zu massiven frauenrechtsverletzungen. frauenaktivistinnen, menschenrechtsorganisationen und opferverbände klagen an, dass noch keine wesentlichen schritte unternommen wurden, um die menschenrechtsverletzungen in aceh systematisch aufzuarbeiten. sie fordern die staatliche menschenrechtskommission komnas ham auf, sich engagierter für eine regionale wahrheitskommission einzusetzen, doch die indonesische nationalregierung kommt ihrer politischen und ethischen verantwortung nicht nach. zivilgesellschaftliche organisationen und rechtsexperten appellieren an die provinzregierung in aceh, ein regionales gesetz für eine regionale wahrheitskommission zu erlassen. auch die reintegration von ehemaligen gam-kombattanten und die materielle entschädigung der konfliktopfer laufen schleppend und intransparent. mangelnde alternative erwerbsmöglichkeiten für ehemalige guerillakämpfer und die schwierigkeit, sie in gesellschaftliche strukturen zu integrieren, führen zu einem anstieg von raubüberfällen ehemaliger gam-kämpfer. zur entschädigung der familienangehörigen verstorbener opfer wurde durch die nationalregierung indonesiens ein programm zur wiedergutmachung eingeführt. die angehörigen der opfer bekommen von der regierung ein blutgeld von 350.000 rupiah, was etwa 30 euro entspricht, und sollen im gegenzug den tätern vergeben. bestimmte gruppen sind jedoch von der rehabilitation und den kompensationszahlungen ausgeschlossen, was den unmut und somit die gewaltbereitschaft von personen dieser gruppen fördert. weibliche ex-kombatanten, nicht-kombatanten, z.b. sex-arbeiterinnen und zivile opfer haben bis jetzt wenig oder keine entschädigung bekommen. dieses eindimensionale und mangelhafte system der entschädigung entspricht nicht den bedürfnissen der opfer nach wahrheitsfindung, entschuldigung und gerichtliche verfolgung der täter massiver menschenrechtsverletzungen. die organisation rpuk entwickelte ein konzept des „community memorandum of understanding“, um den prozess der wiedergutmachung in gang zu setzen und kriegsbedingten traumatisierungen einen ersten ausdruck zu ermöglichen. dieses konzept beinhaltet ein treffen von vertretern der gam, des indonesischen militärs und der dorfgemeinschaft, um forderungen nach wiedergutmachung zu artikulieren und lösungsmöglichkeiten zu suchen, die den bedürfnissen der dorfbewohnerinnen zugute kommen. partizipative schritte der kriegsbewältigung und prozesse der wiedergutmachung, in denen traumatisierungen benannt und zumindest ansatzweise aufgefangen werden können, sind 115 wichtig, um eine gesellschaft zu fördern, die stabil genug ist, alternativen zu der gewohnten spirale der gewalt entwickeln zu können. ausblick das ende des offiziellen wiederaufbaus acehs 2009 wird den rahmen des komplexen transformationsprozesses verändern. der abzug internationaler hilfsorganisationen und die beendigung von nationalen programmen entlassen die provinz einen schritt mehr in eine autonomie, die für viele freiheitskämpfer einen kompromiss darstellt. inwieweit die politischen machtspiele in aceh, vor allem die fehlende personelle veränderung innerhalb der einflussreichen elite und die vorhandenen sezessionistischen bewegungen, den friedensprozess destabilisieren werden, wird sich in zukunft zeigen. die nationalen, regionalen und lokalen parlamentswahlen mitte 2009 werden als indikator für eine konsolidierung der demokratie in aceh gesehen. die neu gegründete lokale frauenpartei „partei der volksallianz acehs für frauenangelegenheiten“ (partai aliansi rakyat aceh peduli perempuan/para) hat die voraussetzungen für die zulassung zur wahl 2009 nicht geschafft. grund hierfür ist ein mangel an personeller und finanzieller kapazität. es war para nicht möglich, genug regionale büros mit repräsentantinnen und repräsentanten aufzubauen. para wurde aufgelöst und die mitglieder haben sich auf andere parteien, die zur wahl zugelassen worden sind, aufgeteilt.10 da der politische wille der entscheidungsträger in aceh bezüglich der umsetzung von frauenrechten und einer geschlechtergerechten demokratie weiterhin fragwürdig bleibt, ist die stärke und die einflussnahme von zivilgesellschaftlichen institutionen von zentraler bedeutung. die starke gesellschaftliche und politische ausgrenzung während des sezessionistischen unabhängigkeitskampfes und unter der ära suhartos drängte frauen in die passivität und beschränkte ihre machtfelder auf den informellen bereich. die orthodoxe und patriarchale auslegung der scharia-gesetze durch konservative autoritäten schlagen in dieselbe kerbe und enttäuschten die hoffnung auf die verbesserung der angespannten sozio-ökonomischen lage in aceh. die agenden der frauenaktivistinnen sind immer noch abhängig von ihrer soziopolitischen und religiösen akzeptanz. trotz dieser hindernisse haben frauenaktivistinnen ihre chancen wahrgenommen, um ihren forderungen lautstärke zu geben. durch die hilfsprogramme nach dem tsunami und den systemwechsel nach der unterzeichnung des mou konnten frauenrechtsorganisationen ihre kapazitäten ausbauen und öffentliche diskussionen über 10 insgesamt haben sich neben den nationalen parteien 20 lokale parteien in aceh gegründet. nur sechs davon konnten die zulassungsbestimmungen erfüllen. insgesamt treten 43 parteien, also 37 nationale und 6 lokale zur regionalen und lokalen wahl an. 116 kristina großmann agents of change aseas 1 (2) geschlechterverhältnisse anstoßen. die ergebnisse von frauenspezifischen kongressen, tagungen und netzwerken stellen einen wichtigen input bezüglich politischer und gesellschaftlicher prozesse dar. im rahmen des sich konsolidierenden demokratisierungsprozesses in aceh wird zu sehen sein, wie sich der output in form von verbindlichen zusagen der politischen elite an zivilgesellschaftliche gruppen gestaltet und vor allem, welche outcomes, das heißt, welche konkreten auswirkungen bezüglich geschlechtergerechtigkeit festgestellt werden können. bibliographie blackburn, s., (2004). woman and the state in modern indonesia. cambridge: university press. crisis management initiative (cmi) (2006). the aceh peace process. helsinki. ded (2007). zeitschrift des deutschen entwicklungsdienstes, 44.jahrgang. bonn. derichs, c. & heberer, t. (hrsg.) (2006). the power of ideas. intellectual input and political change in east and southeast asia. copenhagen: nias. dinkelaker, s. (2008). frauen in aceh, tsunami – friedensprozess – scharia. suara 1/2008. gender working group (2007). evaluation on woman in aceh in 2006, entwurf. holthouse, k. (2007). aceh election. inside indonesia 2/2007. kamaruzzaman, s. (2000). woman and the war in aceh. inside indonesia 4/2000. kleine-brockhoff, m. (2007). the shadows of the past. asia pacific times. dezember 2007. eingesehen, 18. dezember 2008 unter http://www.asia-pacific-times.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=vie w&id=538&itemid=17. schröter, s., 2007: acehnese culture(s). plurality and homogeneity. in graf, a., s. schröter, & e. wieringa (hrsg.). aceh. culture, history, politics. singapur: isas, (im druck). siapno, j., a. (2002). gender, islam, nationalism and the state in aceh. the paradox of power, cooption and resistance. london: routledge. sulaiman, m. i. (2006). from autonomy to periphery: a critical evaluation of the acehnese nationalist movement. in reid, a. veranda of violence. singapore: nus press. waylen, g., (2007). engendering transitions: womań s mobilisation, institutions and gender outcomes. oxford: university press. 117 aseas 1-2 final (außergottowik).indd aseas 1 (2) 07 small towns as interfaces for interaction, exchange and transition in vietnam hannah von bloh1 institute of southeast asian studies ii, university of passau, germany aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften / austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 1 (2), 2008 seas gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften www.seas.at small towns present a critical link between urban systems and rural landscapes and are thus relevant for the understanding of regional development processes. in this context, an integrative analysis of the dynamics of interaction and negotiation on the local level and their correlation with higher-level structures and processes is insightful. the analysis draws on the concept of the social interface which is here applied to encounters between actors of various fi elds and levels within the arena of the small town. this approach is exemplifi ed by an outline of processes of negotiation and mediation along political and economic interfaces in small vietnamese towns. while the approach remains to be verifi ed and elaborated in practice, it promises to provide a more complex and holistic view of current development trends. keywords: small towns, vietnam, regional development, social interface, urbanisation kleinstädte stellen eine entscheidende verbindung zwischen städtischem und ländlichem raum dar und sind somit wichtig für das verständnis regionaler entwicklungsprozesse. hier verspricht eine integrative analyse des zusammenhangs zwischen lokalen interaktionsund verhandlungsprozessen und überregionalen prozessen und strukturen aufschlussreiche einsichten. die analyse verwendet das konzept der „gesellschaftliche schnittstelle“ (social interface) in bezug auf begegnungen zwischen akteuren unterschiedlicher bereiche und ebenen innerhalb von kleinstädten. dieser ansatz wird beispielhaft anhand von interaktionsprozessen entlang politischer und ökonomischer schnittstellen in vietnamesischen kleinstädten skizziert. dieser ansatz bedarf noch einer überprüfung und ausarbeitung in der praxis, verspricht aber eine komplexere und vollständigere erfassung aktueller entwicklungstrends. schagworte: kleinstadt, vietnam, regionalentwicklung, schnittstelle, urbanisierung 1 hannah von bloh is research assistant and lecturer at the university of passau. this article presents some initial thoughts from the author̀ s ph.d. thesis. introduction: small towns, an underrated category of regional development current publications on global urban trends tend to emphasize an “invisible but momentous milestone” (unfpa 2007: 1). this is namely the (now well-worn) fact that over 50 percent of the world population today lives in urban areas. a different fact, however, receives much less attention: the global urban trend is not restricted to the large metropolises. today 52 percent of the urban population worldwide resides in urban centres of less than 50.000 inhabitants (unfpa 2007: 9). not only the size of the population living in such smaller urban centres indicates that their role is widely underestimated. the growth rate of these centres, too, suggests that there are dynamic processes on the local level which potentially have farreaching consequences for regional development. between the years 2000 and 2015, small and intermediate urban centres are expected to account for about half of the urban population growth (unfpa 2007: 9). this population increase will be concentrated largely in lowand middle-income nations (tacoli 2004: 2). small and intermediate urban centres are particularly important for regions undergoing rapid transformation. due to their size and structure, such centres have the potential to deal with problems of urbanisation and development in a more flexible way than megacities. given the necessary resources, they are, for example, more adjustable concerning territorial expansion, questions of decision-making, the usage of local resources and in using the advantages of their respective location to attract investment (unfpa 2007: 10; satterthwhaite & hardoy 1986: 401). while rural development projects require a longer time to have a visible impact on the living conditions of the target group, smaller urban centres are quick to take up impulses for development. rapid urbanisation is then accompanied by accelerated economic growth and a change in lifestyle. various new chances open up to the local population with regard to education, employment, health care etc. as increasingly important regional nodes of political, economic and social networks, the development of smaller urban centres in consequence has an impact on its rural hinterland. a focus of the discourse on smaller urban centres thus presents itself as a promising new approach for developmental policies.2 small towns present a critical link between the progressively more interwoven rural and urban regions, engaging in regional and global flows of people, goods, finances and information (hoang et al. 2005: 6). secondary centres and their linkages are in consequence increasingly regarded as playing an important role for spatially even development, with the potential of making a substantial contribution to the creation of opportunities for poverty 2 this idea is present in recent publications of various institutions dealing with questions of development. see undp (2000), unfpa (2007: 43), pedersen (2003), satterthwhaite & tacoli (2003a), tacoli (2004). 08 hannah von bloh small towns as interfaces for interaction, exchange and transition in vietnam aseas 1 (2) reduction, economic resilience and equal development (douglass 2001: 5). by virtue of their intermediate position in the cities̀ system, the development of small towns can make these centres attractive alternative destinations for migrants, keeping them in their region and thus reducing pressure on larger urban centres. small towns as a linkage between urban and rural worlds can promote the development in the rural hinterland by enhancing the integration of rural areas into the regional flow of resources. they play a crucial role in supplying their respective region with administrative, economic and social goods and services (titus & hinderink 1998: 212; satterthwhaite & hardoy 1986: 398). small towns generate offfarm employment opportunities, on which an increasing number of rural households depend to secure their livelihood (satterthwaite & tacoli 2003b: 13). as a service centre for the rural hinterland, small towns also provide access to educational, health and administrative facilities which in turn allows for a more equal access to goods and services. in addition, small urban centres are politically relevant as nodes of exchange and encounter. they are places of decision-making, gathering of information and channels to voice local demands and interests. as small urban centres represent the local administrative level, they also play a key role in the processes of interaction and negotiation between the state and the people. on the local level, the state institutions and its representatives are commonly known in person. such face-to-face encounters between citizens and state have far-reaching implications, not only concerning participation, but also with regard to the question of who will assert their interests and who will not. an analysis of local processes in small towns thus not only promises a better understanding of the dynamics of regional development, but also of processes of decision-making and power structures on a level which directly affects the everyday life of a large percentage of the population. in the following, the article will provide a brief overview of the academic discourse on small towns before proposing a new approach to the analysis of secondary urban centres. in this context, the concept of the social interface will be introduced. the third part of the article will illustrate this alternative approach using the example of selected interfaces in small vietnamese towns. small towns in the academic discourse two approaches to small towns dominate the academic discourse. on the one hand, there are various studies with a macroeconomic or developmental thrust, discussing the role of small towns within a wider cities̀ system. depending on the dominating development discourse, the 09 studies come to different conclusions concerning the character of small towns.3 however, they all share a common perspective: they regard small towns as an object of external dynamics which is primarily shaped by external economic impulses and the repercussions of national politics rather than by local actors and resources (satterthwhaite & hardoy 1986; titus et. al. 1998). the weakness of this approach is that it provides highly generalized statements based on a dichotomic view of urban and rural worlds. the approach does not account for the complex interrelations between actors of various levels and the increasingly blurred boundaries of urban and rural worlds. furthermore, this perspective presents a static view of correlations between different units of a system and provides little insight into the on-going processes of interaction between and within the units. a second set of studies approaches small towns from the sociological, ethnological or psychological angle. these studies focus on social stratification, patterns of behaviour and social interaction within selected western communities.4 they provide valuable insight into structures and processes of interaction within communities. however, they do not take into account external factors, interdependencies with external structures or how the given community is imbedded within a larger context. the approach consequently does not offer insights into possible interrelations between local processes and larger-scale structures. the author would like to propose a more integrative approach, linking local and regional perspectives in order to analyse the correlations between local dynamics within small towns and the centreś role within regional development processes. in reference to a. giddens̀ concept of the duality of structure, this approach is based on the assumption that local processes of interaction influence and are in turn influenced by developments outside the respective community (giddens 1988: 215). an approach which enables the integration of structural and actor perspectives is the concept of the social interface. the train of thought which n. long follows in introducing the concept can very well also be applied to the questions raised concerning small towns: “a more dynamic approach to the understanding of social change is therefore needed which stresses the interplay and mutual determination of ‘internal‘ and ‘external‘ factors and relationships, and 3 the modernization theoretical approach emphasizes the positive role of small towns as regional service clusters and growth centres. according to this perspective, innovations, services and other prerequisites of modernity spread through the urban hierarchy via small towns down to the rural areas due to a trickle-down effect (rondinelli 1983b). a different approach in line with dependency theory, on the other hand, regards small towns as “parasitic islands of privilege in a sea of rural poverty” (schatzberg 1979: 173). they are said to contribute to the urban bias, enforce the exploitation of the rural poor by political and economic elites and thus impede rural development (southall 1979; titus & hinderink 1998; van lindert & verkoren 1997: 12; tacoli 1998). more recent studies, in turn, avoid a generalizing statement concerning the role of small towns and focus on individual case studies (van lindert & verkoren 1997: 12). they consider these centres as territorial entities in their own right, whose role within the respective region depends on the given local conditions, resources and demands (titus & hinderink 1998; satterthwaite et. al. 1986). 4 see warner on “jonesville”/ usa (warner 1949), warner and lunt on “yankeetown”/ usa (warner & lunt 1942), laumann on “altneustadt”/ germany (laumann 1976), arensberg and kimball on “ennis”/ ireland (arensberg & kimball 1968) and elias and scotson on “winston parva”/ great britain (elias & scotson 1990). 10 hannah von bloh small towns as interfaces for interaction, exchange and transition in vietnam aseas 1 (2) which recognises the central role played by human action” (long 2001: 13). long regards social interfaces as a “critical point of intersection between life worlds, social fields or levels of social organisation where social discontinuities [...] are most likely to be located” (long 2001: 243). such interfaces are characterized by disparities regarding the distribution of resources and differences in lifestyles – attributes also applying to the intermingling of urban and rural life in small towns. the concept of interfaces can thus help grasp the impact of linkages between the small town and other centres within the urban system, these linkages being flows of people, money, goods or information (hoang et al. 2005: 6). whereas long regards social interfaces primarily as “social situations”, viewing small urban centres as interfaces also implies a spatial dimension (long 2001: 241). interfaces with and within small urban centres then become concrete in space as place, object and expression of interaction and power differentials. in focus: small towns and social interfaces in vietnam vietnam presents itself as a suitable location for an exemplary study on small towns. during the past two decades the country has been undergoing a rapid transformation. the challenges emerging from this situation and which, as has been argued above, make the role of small towns a particularly relevant question, are markedly visible here. current policy debates in vietnam concerning spatial planning also deal with the role of small towns within the cities' system. with the “orientation master plan for urban development to 2020” of 1998, the government of vietnam set itself the goal “to manage rural migration by promoting economic development in secondary cities” (coulthart et. al. 2006: 1)5. steps towards more decentralization which grant the regions more autonomy and scope of action are part of this strategy (coulthart 5 the planning of urban development processes involves various actors at different state levels. spatial plans, one of the government’s main planning tools, are drawn up at four levels of administration for the area the respective authorities hold responsibility for. these include “orientation plans” (national policy), “regional plans” (introduced in 2005), “master plans” (province or city), and “detailed area plans” (ward, industrial zone, or project) (coulthart et al. 2006: ix). the development of “the orientation master plan for the development of vietnam’s urban centres until 2020” in 1998 was the result of an effort on behalf of the government of vietnam to formulate an integral national urban development strategy. the document states that “medium and small centres shall assume the functions of economic, cultural and service hubs of regions” and that “townships shall be economic, cultural and service centres for communes or clusters of communes in order to step up the process of rural urbanization and building of new rural areas” (prime minister of the socialist republic of vietnam decision no.10/1998/qd-ttg, reviewed in coulthart et. al. 2006). the master plan also formulates the objective “to manage rural migration by promoting economic development in secondary cities” (coulthart et. al. 2006: 1). however, rather than establishing feasible and clear guidelines, the orientation master plan appears in many ways to contain primarily the authorities’ and planners’ idealized visions. there are no detailed policies as to how the formulated objectives should be achieved. the task of working out detailed strategies is left to the administration at the regional, provincial and local levels, which, however, for the most part lack the necessary resources, capacities and authorities to realize the plan. in addition, in order to improve both skills and experiences, officials at the local levels would need to be taking on more responsibilities and tasks (coulthart et. al. 2006). presently, few organisations concern themselves with capacity-building at local level, one being the association of vietnamese cities. 11 et. al. 2006: ix). for these government incentives to have the desired effects, however, it is necessary to gain a better understanding of small towns, their potentials, local dynamics and the factors which make them attractive sites for citizens and investors alike. despite their potentially important role, there has not yet been much research on small urban centres in vietnam and their linkages on local, national and regional levels. this problem is not uniquely vietnamese. as stated by satterthwhaite and hardoy more than twenty years ago, but still valid today: “there is a relatively poor understanding of, for instance, how public action can steer urban growth and development away from the major cities, of the very real limitation faced by governments in market or mixed economies in being able to do so, of what measures must be taken to stimulate the growth and development of small and intermediate urban centres, of the costs and benefits of doing so, and of who benefits from the proposed measures” (satterthwaite & hardoy 1986: 5). vietnam is currently experiencing a swift urban transition. the united nations population fund (unfpa) predicts an urbanisation rate of 3 percent annually for the years 2005 to 2010 (unfpa 2007). large urban centres benefit from the influx of capital and resources which currently accompanies the rapid economic development in vietnam. however, the swift urban development and the inflow of migrants are placing the urban administration under increasing pressure. non-registered migrants from rural areas currently pose 15 to 25 percent of the urban population in larger urban centres (coulthart et. al. 2006: 6). the rural areas, on the other hand, are experiencing a drain of capital, manpower and other resources. due to the promotion of mono-cropping, the rural livelihood is increasingly dependent on and vulnerable to external influences. all this contributes to the danger of spatially unequal development (douglass 2001: 11; hoang et. al. 2005: 5). despite rapid economic development, the poverty rate in the countryside remains significantly higher than in the urban areas (general statistics office 2005). presently, 70 percent of the gross domestic product (gdp) in vietnam is generated in urban centres, although these only account for 27 percent of the countrý s population (coulthart et. al. 2006: v). the still comparatively low level of urbanisation in vietnam6, however, offers the chance for new policies to impact on geographic and demographic trends in favour of more sustainable and equal development. the national classification system for urban centres7 assigns small towns a key role as “provincial centre to promote the district and/or rural centre development” (coulthart et. al. 2006: 58). according to official calculations, small urban centres of the category “class 6 in comparison, the average degree of urbanisation in south-east asia is currently estimated to be at 45 percent (unfpa 2007). 7 the national classification system distinguishes six categories of urban centres based on criteria such as population size and density, structure of income sources, infrastructure as well as regional role of the centre. small towns represent the category of the smallest urban centres or “class v”-urban centres. these are centres of 4.000 to 50.000 inhabitants, a population density of more than 2.000 per km² and more than 65 percent occupation outside the agricultural sector. 12 hannah von bloh small towns as interfaces for interaction, exchange and transition in vietnam aseas 1 (2) v” represent the bulk of urban centres within the national classification system: 612 of the 703 recorded urban centres in vietnam belong to this category. while small towns do not accommodate the mass of the urban population nor experience the highest urban growth rates, they are nevertheless, due to their wide dispersal and close proximity, crucial for the integration of the countryside – which still is home to 73 percent of the vietnamese population. hence in vietnam, too, small towns are potential critical interfaces at which rural and urban life worlds, state and citizens meet and negotiate. a highly relevant interface also with regards to transformations within the vietnamese society is the encounter between the state and its citizens. the district level, on which small towns are located, represents the lowest level of jurisdictation. in accordance with their assigned administrative role, small towns, especially district capitals, feature a sizeable public sector. local state representatives link local and national levels, translating and implementing many of the laws, programmes and policies issued by the central government. due to their central position between the central government and the population in the exercise of state power, the local government is thus attributed “a significant level of influence” (sikor 2004: 168). historically, “the district magistrate (tri huyen) was at the coalface of vietnam ś monarchical system, expected to enforce quotas set by higher echelons, dispense local justice, monitor economic conditions, look for signs of unrest [...] (a) resourceful district magistrate made himself part of the local political scene, [...] cultivating allies, dispensing as well as receiving favours” (marr 2004: 33–34). today, civil servants and representatives of the communist party function as mediators between the local population (which they themselves are a part of) and the state (which they represent) (sikor 2004: 189). they are in charge of developing programmes and policies according to local needs as well as implementing reforms (including the important task of allocating land use rights to rural households). in this context, they interpret government guidelines according to their own priorities and can thereby create space for personal interests (sikor 2004: 189). balancing personal, state and local interests becomes challenging when they conflict with each other. whether local level or state interests are given priority in the case of conflicting interests depends on whether the horizontal linkages to the local level or vertical linkages to the central authorities are stronger. a common background or shared ethnicity, common economic and social interests or a shared view on legitimate authority can strengthen horizontal ties (sikor 2004: 169). in sum, local state representatives and the population interact in what has been termed the “mediation space that exists in the penumbra of party-state domination” (koh 2006: 15). recent studies provide examples of such processes of negotiation between local authorities and the population8. 8 one example is presented in a study conducted in a rural district in the northwestern highlands. it describes 13 a second interface within small towns which qualifies for further scrutiny concerns encounters in the economic sector. the economic sector within small towns is crucial for their role as regional centres of production and distribution. especially the small trade sector is an important source of off-farm income and thus vital for the economic development of small towns and the surrounding rural region. for much of the local population, off-farm employment is a necessity, rather than a way to increase profits (rigg 1998: 502; hoang et. al. 2005: 1). it is likely that participating in small trade requires access to key resources and at the same time makes available certain important resources. an analysis of the small trade sector can thus give insight in structures of power, distribution of resources and social organisation in small towns. the economic sector features both vertical linkages between central state, local authorities and citizens as well as horizontal linkages such as between the political (legislative and executive organs) and economic (suppliers, industrial consumers, local customers, kinship supplying capital etc.) sectors. at social interfaces, those actors hold key positions which can make external knowledge available locally (burt 2000: 1). entrepreneurs are one group which qualifies for the role as mediator or broker. they rely on good networking in order to secure access to financial capital, labour, information and other strategic resources resources, which appear to be particularly scarce in small towns (long 2001: 135). the linkages entrepreneurs establish allow them to act as economic brokers between networks which link the local market to regional and national structures, local consumers to supra-regional producers (long 1977: 121). small enterprises and those in the informal sector often form clusters in order to secure their position on the market. larger, supra-regional enterprises, on the other hand, revert to the local networks of small-scale enterprises to improve the distribution of goods and services (pedersen 2003: 41). these linkages allow entrepreneurs to act as economic brokers between producers and consumers of various levels and destinations. this is particularly important for rural regions in which the majority of the population commonly lacks mobility and has few supra-regional links of its own to draw upon. if actors functioning as brokers along interfaces, e.g. entrepreneurs, are well-integrated in local social structures, they not only benefit from the social capital gained from their position between networks, but also from their position within local networks. as local actors with various social linkages to draw upon, these actors can also benefit from network closure, an important source of social capital (coleman 1990). network closure has the effect of facilitating sanctions, thus strengthening mutual trust and improving cooperation within the group (burt 2000: 8). network closure, however, also implies how the people ś committee of the district “reinterpreted” the guidelines of the province against logging (according to which larger areas where to be exempted from agricultural use) by excluding paddy from the regulation (sikor 2004: 182). for further examples see koh (2006) on mediation space at ward-level and fforde (2004) on the interaction between farmers and rural planners/extension service. 14 hannah von bloh small towns as interfaces for interaction, exchange and transition in vietnam aseas 1 (2) the possibility of exclusion. as elias and scotson show, social cohesion can become an important local resource, when certain actors use this as an instrument of power to exclude others as outsiders from networks and the distribution of resources (elias & scotson 1990: 11; coleman 1990). in this context, the structure of the economic sector in small towns points towards clear power differentials. the labour market in small urban centres is highly fragmented regarding qualifications, income, security etc. there is a strong competition for attractive positions, which are often distributed according to kinship relations, ethnicity or other criteria within a small elite (titus & hinderink 1998: 212). socially marginalized households are at a disadvantage here, as the access to employment opportunities depends to a large extent on social networks. actors who lack access to crucial social networks may be forced to engage in more unprofitable occupations and thus be excluded from the opportunities and benefits of regional development (tacoli 1998: 10). who remains outsider and is largely excluded from the distribution of key resources, may be based on various criteria. groups may be excluded based on their ethnicity, education, income or duration of stay in the community etc. (elias & scotson 1990). these processes of interaction, exclusion and integration also impact on the surrounding region in so far as they determine how resources are distributed within the region, and how the rural population is integrated into the development. outlook an assessment of the role and developmental potential of small towns should be an integral part of any comprehensive urban development strategy. this requires not only a closer look at present government policies and administrative structures, but also at the dynamics within the urban centres themselves and their relations with their hinterland as well as with national and regional levels. the analysis of power differentials and the distribution of resources in small towns can indicate challenges and potentials of regional development. this in turn may indicate a starting-point for development policies that can influence the given dynamics in favour of more equal, integrative and sustainable regional development. for this analysis, an approach is needed which can integrate both complex local interrelations as well as take into account the broader regional context. it should allow for the local particularities in processes of interaction but should still able to provide results of general validity. in this context, a promising concept is that of the social interface. how interaction along interfaces takes place has an impact on the distribution of resources and consequently power both within the urban centres and between the urban centres and their respective hinterland. in the analysis, rather than trying to grasp the complex dynamics and forms of interaction within small urban 15 centres as a whole, it makes sense to pinpoint a smaller field or node within a given centre for further scrutiny. this was exemplified here by a brief outline of local-level encounters along political and economic interfaces in vietnam. vietnam, in its current phase of rapid transition, provides a good example of the potentials and challenges inherent in small towns as a ruralurban link interface. in addition, changes in policies and on-going administrative reforms in vietnam demand for a better understanding of local-level dynamics and how these are connected to higher-level processes and structures. this article presents only a brief sketch of possible correlations. further research and in-depth studies with a more narrow scope will be necessary needed to validate the theoretical approach and deliver more concrete insights. in this context, a comparative study of conditions 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(1949). democracy in jonesville. a study in quality and inequality. new york: harper. 18 hannah von bloh small towns as interfaces for interaction, exchange and transition in vietnam editorial: determinants of health in south-east asia / umfeldfaktoren öffentlicher gesundheit in südostasien 1 das vorliegende themenheft der österreichischen zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften präsentiert einen überblick zum thema „gesundheit in südostasien“. gesundheit, krankheit und wohlbefinden spielten schon immer eine rolle im leben aller menschen. die neue perspektive auf öffentliche gesundheit (public health) zeigt, dass krankheit, gesundheit und wohlbefinden auf individueller, gruppenspezifischer und kommunaler ebene vordergründig von einer vielfalt an komplexen persönlichen, sozialen, kulturellen, ökologischen und wirtschaftlichen faktoren sowie durch das gesundheitssystem bestimmt sind (australian institute of health and wellbeing [aihw], 2010). diese werden auch this special issue of the austrian journal of south-east asian studies has its focus on ‘health in south-east asia’. health, illness, and well-being have always played a part in the life of all human beings, and situated within the new public health perspective, health, illness, and the well-being of individuals, groups, and communities are determined by a diverse range of complex personal, social, cultural, environmental, and economic factors as well as health care systems (australian institute of health and wellbeing [aihw], 2010). this is also referred to as determinants of health (liamputtong, fanany, & verrinder, 2012; marmot & wilkinson, 2006; taylor, editorial determinants of health in south-east asia / umfeldfaktoren öff entlicher gesundheit in südostasien pranee liamputtong1 & michelle proyer2 citation liamputtong, p. & proyer, m. (2012). editorial: determinants of health in south-east asia / umfeldfaktoren öffentlicher gesundheit in südostasien. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 5(1), 1-9. 1 pranee liamputtong is professor at the school of public health and human biosciences, faculty of health sciences, la trobe university, melbourne, australia. as a qualitative researcher her central foci are related to topics regarding the interrelations between health issues and gender, hiv/aids, immigration, as well as reproduction. regionally, she is focusing on south-east asia and the health situation of asian females immigrating to australia. contact: pranee@latrobe.edu.au 2 michelle proyer studied education in vienna and berlin. she is assistant professor (universitätsassistentin) at the department of education (research unit special needs and inclusive education), university of vienna, austria and member of the aseas editorial board. currently, she is working on her phd thesis in the area of comparative special needs education within the clasdisa project with a focus on thailand. contact: michelle.proyer@univie.ac.at d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -5 .1 -1 pranee liamputtong & michelle proyer editorial aseas 5(1) 2 3 als gesundheitsdeterminanten bezeichnet (liamputtong, fanany, & verrinder, 2012; marmot & wilkinson, 2006; taylor, 2008). konzeptionell liegt der fokus dieser perspektive auf den faktoren, welche die gesundheit von menschen beeinflussen und bestimmen können, anstatt auf gesundheitszuständen und gesundheitlichen prognosen. dementsprechend wird auch die prävention im verhältnis zur messung von krankheiten hervorgehoben (keleher & murphy, 2004; rumbold & dickson-swift, 2012; taylor, 2008). gesundheitsdeterminanten sind eigenschaften oder faktoren, die einen einfluss auf den individuellen und gemeinschaftlichen gesundheitszustand haben können. dieser kann positive, aber auch negative auswirkungen haben (liamputtong et al., 2012; taylor, 2008). die determinanten beinhalten biologische und genetische faktoren, gesundheitsbewusstsein (riskante lebensführung, alkoholmissbrauch oder zigarettenkonsum), soziokulturelle und sozioökonomische faktoren (gender, ethnizität, bildung, einkommen und beschäftigung) und umweltfaktoren (unterkunft, wohlfahrtssysteme, soziale anbindung, geographie und klima). ressourcen sowie der zugang zum gesundheitswesen, zu gesundheitspolitik und zu medizinischer versorgung wir2008). conceptually, the focus of this perspective is on factors which could influence and determine the health of people, instead of on the state and outcomes of their health. it also underscores the prevention of ill health, rather than the measurement of illness (keleher & murphy, 2004; rumbold & dickson-swift, 2012; taylor, 2008). the determinants of health are characteristics or factors which can bring about a change in the health and illness of individuals and populations, either for better or for worse (liamputtong et al., 2012; taylor, 2008). these determinants include biological and genetic factors, health behaviours (such as risky lifestyles, abuse of alcohol, and cigarette smoking), sociocultural and socio-economic factors (such as gender, ethnicity, education, income, and occupation), and environmental factors (including housing, social support, social connection, geographical position, and climate). resources and systems such as access to health services, health care policy, and the health care system also have effects on the health and well-being of individuals and populations (liamputtong et al., 2012; najman, 2001). the important connection between the environment in which individuals aseas 5(1) 2 3 ken sich ebenfalls auf die gesundheit und das wohlbefinden von individuen und gruppen aus (liamputtong et al., 2012; najman, 2001). die wechselbeziehung zwischen dem umfeld, in dem individuen leben und daraus resultierenden auswirkungen auf ihre gesundheit und ihr wohlbefinden wird seit längerem beobachtet (griffith et al, 2010;. mcmichael, 2001; nicholson & stephenson, 2009). ursprünglich standen umweltbedingte gefahren für die gesundheit der menschen mit problemen von „unterentwicklung“, beispielsweise unzureichender wasserqualität, dem fehlen sanitärer einrichtungen und schlechter wohnverhältnisse, in verbindung. wenngleich diese „traditionellen“ bedrohungen in wohlhabenden regionen erfolgreich bewältigt wurden, gibt es weiterhin probleme für sozial benachteiligte und von sozialer benachteiligung bedrohte gruppen – sowohl in „entwickelten“ staaten wie auch in den ärmeren weltregionen, zu denen auch die meisten länder südostasiens zählen. gegenwärtig entdecken wir zunehmend „moderne“ bedrohungen, die durch überkonsum und überentwicklung in den industrieländern entstehen. moderne bedrohungen wie klimawandel oder das risiko von elektronischem müll sind mittlerweise globale gefahren, wobei südostasien eine live and their health and well-being has long been observed (griffith et al., 2010; mcmichael, 2001; nicholson & stephenson, 2009). historically, environmental dangers to people’s health tended to be related to issues of underdevelopment such as insufficient water quality, the absence of sanitation, and poor housing. although these ‘traditional’ threats have been managed successfully in the more affluent areas, there are still problems among socially disadvantaged and vulnerable groups of developed nations and also in the poorer countries of the globe, including most of southeast asia. nowadays, we see ‘modern’ threats, which have emerged because of overconsumption and overdevelopment in industrialised nations. these modern threats, including climate change and risk from e-waste, have now become global hazards. southeast asia is one of the regions that is also highly susceptible to the impacts of these modern threats. the papers in this special issue point to the many issues that we have suggested above. nadine reis (munich school of philosophy) and peter p. mollinga (university of london) examine the effectiveness of microcredit programmes for rural water supply and sanitation in the mekong pranee liamputtong & michelle proyer editorial aseas 5(1) 4 5 delta in vietnam. they show that the programme has improved the conditions regarding safer disposal of human excreta and the water quality in rivers and canals. however, it has only a minimal effect on poverty reduction because it mostly benefits better-off households who have already had access to clean water. armin ibitz (wenzao ursuline college of languages) presents the case of waste from electrical and electronic equipment in asean nations. it is suggested that economic progress in asean countries has also brought about huge environmental deterioration and risk to human health. this is particularly so for the rapid growth of volumes of waste from electrical and electronic equipment (e-waste). severe water and soil contamination are the marked outcomes of inadequate treatment of discarded electric and electronic appliances. despite this massive problem, asean seems to be unable to find a common solution for this urgent issue. ibitz attempts to find the determining factors that have prevented asean to agree on a common policy for dealing with e-waste. globally, we are now living in a risk society (giddens, 1991). in their paper, seth tuler (social and environmental research institute), uma langkulsen region ist, die von deren auswirkungen stark betroffen ist. die beiträge in der vorliegenden aseas-ausgabe behandeln einige der themen, die wir oben angeführt haben. nadine reis (hochschule für philosophie münchen) und peter p. mollinga (university of london) untersuchen die effizienz eines mikrokreditprogrammes für ländliche wasserund sanitäre grundversorgung im mekong-delta in vietnam. die autorinnen zeigen, dass das programm die sichere entsorgung von fäkalien und die wasserqualität in flüssen und kanälen verbesserte, jedoch nur einen begrenzten beitrag zur armutsbekämpfung leisten kann, da hauptsächlich finanziell besser gestellte haushalte erreicht werden, die bereits zugang zu sauberem wasser haben. armin ibitz (wenzao ursuline college of languages) präsentiert seine forschungsergebnisse zu elektroschrott in asean-mitgliedern. der wirtschaftliche fortschritt in diesen ländern führte zu weitreichenden umweltschäden und gesundheitsrisiken. durch unzureichende entsorgung elektrischer und elektronischer geräte kommt es zu massiven verunreinigungen von gewässern und böden. eine dringend notwendige regionale koordinierung wurde von asean noch nicht in angriff genommen. der beitrag geht der frage nach, warum auf aseas 5(1) 4 5 regionaler ebene keine einheitlichen lösungsansätze zu dieser problematik zu erwarten sind und definiert die faktoren, welche die asean-mitglieder hindern, eine gemeinsame politik für den umgang mit elektroschrott zu finden. wir leben in einer globalen risikogesellschaft (giddens, 1991). seth tuler (social and environmental research institute), uma langkulsen (thammasat university), caron chess (rutgers university) und nuntavarn vichit-vadakan (thammasat university) behandeln in ihrem beitrag den informationsaustausch zu gesundheitsrisiken in thailand. sie untersuchen die wahrnehmungen von mitarbeiterinnen in einem öffentlichen amt, der umweltschutzbehörde. es ist essentiell, dass gesundheitsund umweltämter informationen über gesundheitsrisiken an die lokale bevölkerung weitergeben. kommunikationstheorien in diesem bereich basieren jedoch auf einem westlichen konzept, und es ist mitunter schwierig, diese in unterschiedlichen kulturellen kontexten anzuwenden. der artikel bietet eine tiefgehende analyse über die verantwortung der mitarbeiterinnen und beamtinnen für den informationsaustausch zu öffentlicher gesundheit in thailand sowie darüber, wie diese ihre verantwortung wahrnehmen und umsetzen. (thammasat university), caron chess (rutgers university) and nuntavarn vichit-vadakan (thammasat university) write about health risk communication in thailand. they examined the perceptions of staff and officers about risk communication in a single regulatory agency in thailand – the pollution control department. it is argued that it is essential for health and environmental agencies to communicate information about health risks to local people. risk communication is a western concept and it is problematic when using it in a different cultural context. their paper provides an in-depth understanding about the ways that staff and officers within a national agency, who have important responsibilities for health and environmental risk communication in thailand, make sense of their responsibilities and how to accomplish them. south-east asia has been a site of many infectious diseases. recently, we have witnessed the devastating impact of the sars epidemic and h1n1 pandemics. these infectious diseases are the outcomes of complex dynamic systems where biological, social, ecological, and environmental factors are interconnected (coker et al., 2011). how do south-east asian nations deal with these epidemics and pandemics? pranee liamputtong & michelle proyer editorial aseas 5(1) 6 7 lai yu-hung allen and tan teck boon (national university of singapore) discuss the evolution of public health control measures from 2003 sars to 2009 hini in singapore. their paper attempts to identify the measures which have been taken to manage the pandemics and the learning process regarding policy adaptation for pandemic preparedness planning. in the section ‘forum’, marina wetzlmaier (foodfirst information and action network) provides an overview on the past and current debates concerning the reproductive health bill in the philippines. michael reckordt (philippinenbuero) also covers this controversial topic. in the section ‘research workshop’, he summarises different perspectives presented during a workshop in essen, germany, in march 2012. on a different subject matter, muhammad anshari, mohammad n. almunawar, patrick k. c. low and zaw wint (universiti brunei darussalam) explain the results of their study on social network-based customer relationship management in healthcare organisations in brunei, which adds valuable insights to the possible impacts of new media on health care systems. furthermore, kanvee viwatpanich (thammasat university) südostasien wurde zum schauplatz vieler infektionskrankheiten. erst kürzlich erlebten wir die verheerenden auswirkungen der sars-epidemie und der h1n1-pandemie. diese infektionskrankheiten sind ergebnisse komplexer dynamischer systeme, bei denen biologische, soziale, ökologische und umweltfaktoren miteinander verwoben sind (coker et al., 2011). wie bewältigen südostasiatische nationen diese epidemien und pandemien? yu-hung lai und tan teck boon (national university of singapore) diskutieren die entwicklung von kontrollmaßnahmen im gesundheitsbereich in singapur von sars 2003 bis h1n1 2009. in ihrem artikel identifizieren sie die maßnahmen, die ergriffen wurden, um den ausbruch der pandemien zu bewältigen, und den politischen lernprozess zur besseren vorbereitung für zukünftige pandemien. in der rubrik „forum“ erläutert marina wetzlmaier (foodfirst information and action network) die vergangenen und aktuellen debatten über das gesetz zu reproduktiver gesundheit auf den philippinen. auch michael reckordt (philippinenbüro) behandelt dieses kontroverse thema. in der rubrik „forschungswerkstatt“ dokumentiert er unterschiedliche perspektiven, die während eines workshops in essen, deutschland, im märz 2012 präsentiert wurden. aseas 5(1) 6 7 analyses the nutritive values and food consumption patterns of mon food, therefore highlighting the connection between food and health issues. in addition, this special issue contains two interviews. first, lan-katharina schippers talked to dr. michael runge, gynaecologist and professor at the university of freiburg, germany, about his over 25 years of experience in improving women‘s health in south-east asia, particularly lao pdr and vietnam. secondly, anna-sophie tomancok interviewed max santner and gerlinde astleithner on the activities of the austrian red cross and the international red cross and red crescent movement in south-east asia, particularly myanmar, lao pdr and timor-leste. outside this special issue’s focus on health, cassandra wright and belinda lewis (monash university) provide an analysis of tourism and development in eastern indonesia, particularly on rote island. within the context of globalisation and indonesia’s ongoing transitions in governance, the future direction for rote is a hotly debated topic amongst community members, development workers, businesses, and other stakeholders. finally, as in previous issues, aseas continues the introduction of austrian muhammad anshari, mohammad n. almunawar, patrick k. c. low und zaw wint (universiti brunei darussalam) präsentieren die ergebnisse ihrer studie zu customer-relationship-management in bruneis gesundheitswesen und den möglichen auswirkungen neuer medien und sozialer netzwerke auf gesundheitssysteme. des weiteren analysiert kanvee viwatpanich (thammasat university) die nährwerte und konsummuster von mon-lebensmitteln und beleuchtet die verbindung zwischen ernährungsund gesundheitsfragen. darüber hinaus enthält das themenheft zwei interviews. lan-katharina schippers diskutierte mit michael runge, gynäkologe und professor an der universität freiburg, deutschland, über seine mehr als 25 jährige erfahrung in der entwicklungszusammenarbeit in südostasien, vor allem im bereich frauengesundheit in laos und vietnam. außerdem sprach anna-sophie tomancok mit max santner und gerlinde astleithner über die tätigkeiten des österreichischen roten kreuzes und der internationalen rotkreuzund roter-halbmondbewegung in südostasien, insbesondere in myanmar, laos und timor-leste. außerhalb des themenschwerpunkts „gesundheit“ analysieren cassandra wright und belinda lewis (monash university) tourismus und entpranee liamputtong & michelle proyer editorial aseas 5(1) 8 9 research institutes working on southeast asian related topics: sri tjahjani kuhnt-saptodewo presents the collection ‘insular south-east asia’ at the museum of ethnology in vienna. in south-east asia, a region showing constant economic growth, health continues to be a central issue and current insights into advances as well as into enduring problems present valuable components for further analysis of prospective solutions. certainly, the articles in this aseas special issue will provide valuable insights and hopefully contribute to the rising interest in further research and co-operation. wicklung auf der insel rote in ostindonesien. im kontext der globalisierung und indonesiens aktuellem politischen wandel ist die zukünftige richtung für die entwicklung rotes ein viel diskutiertes thema zwischen mitgliedern der lokalbevölkerung, entwicklungshelferinnen, unternehmerinnen und anderen interessensgruppen. schließlich stellen wir, wie schon in früheren aseas-ausgaben, ein weiteres österreichisches forschungsinstitut vor, an dem zu südostasien gearbeitet wird: sri kuhnt-tjahjani saptodewo präsentiert die sammlung insulares südostasien des museums für völkerkunde in wien. in südostasien, einer region mit konstantem wirtschaftswachstum, wird gesundheit weiterhin ein zentrales thema bleiben. aktuelle einblicke in fortschritte sowie herausforderungen in diesem bereich sind wertvolle voraussetzungen für die weitere analyse potenzieller lösungsansätze. die artikel des vorliegenden themenheftes liefern wertvolle ideen und werden hoffentlich zum steigenden interesse an der weiteren forschung und zusammenarbeit beitragen. aseas 5(1) 8 9 pranee liamputtong & michelle proyer editorial references / bibliographie australian institute of health and welfare (aihw). (2010). australia’s health 2010 (australia’s health series no. 12). cat no. aus 122. canberra, australia: australian institute of health and welfare. coker, r. j., hunter, b. m., rudge, j. w., liverani, m., & hanvoravongchai, p. (2011). emerging infectious diseases in southeast asia: regional challenges to control. the lancet, 377, 599-609. giddens, a. (1991). modernity and self-identity: self and society in the late modern age. cambridge, uk: polity press. griffith, l., raina, p., wu, h., zhu, b., & stathokostas, l. (2010). population attributable risk for functional disability associated with chronic conditions in canadian older adults. age and ageing, 39(6), 738-745. keleher, h., & murphy, b. (eds.) (2004). understanding health: a determinants approach. melbourne, australia: oxford university press. liamputtong, p., fanany, r., & verrinder, g. (2012). health, illness and well-being: an introduction. in p. liamputtong, , r. fanany, & g. verrinder (eds.), health, illness and well-being: perspectives and social determinants (pp. 1-17). melbourne, australia: oxford university press. marmot, m., & wilkinson, r. g. (eds.) (2006). social determinants of health. oxford, uk: oxford university press. mcmichael, a. j. (2001). human frontiers, environments and disease: past patterns, uncertain futures. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. najman, j. (2001). a general model of the social origins of health and well-being. in r. eckersley, j. dixon, & b. dixon (eds.), the social origins of health and well-being (pp. 73-83). melbourne, australia: cambridge university press. nicholson, r., & stephenson, p. (2009). natural environments as a determinant of health. in h. keleher & c. macdougall (eds.), understanding health: a determinants approach (2nd ed., pp. 112-133). melbourne, australia: oxford university press. rumbold, b., & dickson-swift, v. (2012). social determinants of health: historical developments and global implications. in p. liamputtong, , r. fanany, & g. verrinder (eds.), health, illness and well-being: perspectives and social determinants (pp. 177-196). melbourne, australia: oxford university press. taylor , s. (2008). the concept of health. in s. taylor, m. foster, & j. fleming (eds.), health care practice in australia (pp. 3-21). melbourne, australia: oxford university press. auf der suche nach dem paradies? einblicke in eine studie zu „amenity migration“ in cha-am und hua hin, thailand aseas 4(1) 166 167 forschungswerkstatt / research workshop auf der suche nach dem paradies? einblicke in eine studie zu „amenity migration“ in cha-am und hua hin, thailand julia jöstl1 & birgit wieser2 universität wien citation jöstl, j., & wieser, b. (2011). auf der suche nach dem paradies? einblicke in eine studie zu „amenity migration“ in cha-am und hua hin, thailand. aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften, 4(1), 166-172. altersmigration („amenity migration“ bzw. „retirement migration“) ist ein phänomen, das in westlichen gesellschaften in den letzten jahren immer mehr an dynamik gewonnen hat. ausschlaggebend für den drastischen anstieg der anzahl älterer migrantinnen, die ihren lebensabend außerhalb ihres heimatlandes verbringen wollen, ist einerseits der rasch voranschreitende demographische alterungsprozess in westlichen gesellschaften, andererseits aber auch das meist niedrige pensionsalter gepaart mit steigendem wohlstand und relativ niedrigen kosten für fernreisen. parallel dazu hat auch das wissenschaftliche interesse an solchen semi-permanenten bzw. permanenten mobilitätsformen, deren ursachen, struktur und folgen (primär für die zielgebiete, aber auch für die gesellschaften in der herkunftsregion) zugenommen. während der großteil der altersmigrationen in den letzten jahrzehnten auf längerfristige wohnstandortverlagerungen innerhalb der vereinigten staaten aus den nördlichen landesteilen in die klimatisch begünstigten gebiete des südens und im bereich europas ähnliche tendenzen von nord-süd-gerichteten altersmigrationen entfiel, zeichnet sich in den letzten jahren zunehmend ein neuer trend ab: ein anwachsen der „retirement migration“ aus dem westen in zielländer, die einen niedrigeren sozioökonomischen entwicklungsstand aufweisen. zwei räumliche schwer1 julia jöstl ist diplomandin am institut für geographie und regionalforschung der universität wien. kontakt: julia.joe@gmx.at 2 birgit wieser ist diplomandin am institut für geographie und regionalforschung der universität wien. kontakt: birgitwieser@gmx.at d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -4 .1 -1 1 aseas 4(1) 166 167 punkte zeichnen sich diesbezüglich ab: (1) zuwanderungen aus nordamerika in die karibik oder in manche staaten mittelamerikas und (2) ein wachsender zustrom von altersmigrantinnen in südostasiatische staaten, insbesondere nach thailand und die philippinen. während über das phänomen „amenity migration“ innerhalb europas und nordamerikas bereits zahlreiche studien vorliegen, ist über die neue variante – nämlich diese form der migration von wirtschaftlich hoch entwickelten in wirtschaftlich weniger entwickelte teile der welt – noch wenig bekannt. das interesse der forschung zu diesem thema entstand in den usa und die wissenschafterinnen dort befassen sich hauptsächlich mit den mobilitätsprozessen der nordamerikanerinnen. es kommt zur abwanderung in den sunbelt der usa, teile lateinamerikas (vor allem costa rica und mexiko) sowie auf einige karibische inseln. in europa tritt die altersmigration vor allem in den letzten 50 bis 60 jahren vermehrt auf. bei betrachtung der literatur zum thema ist festzustellen, dass südeuropa ein beliebtes auswanderungsziel ist. an erster stelle stehen dabei spanien, südfrankreich, die toskana, malta und die algarve (müller, 2002). dabei ist zu erkennen, dass es sich überwiegend um eine nord-südgerichtete mobilität handelt. für die region südostasien ist die literaturgrundlage nicht sehr umfangreich. zu erwähnen sind die arbeiten von howard (2008, 2009), welcher anhand einer onlinebefragung motive, erfahrungen und wohlbefinden der westlichen pensionistinnen in thailand erfragte. koch-schultes’ (2008) empirische fallstudie untersucht die stadtentwicklung in udon thani unter besonderer berücksichtigung des sextourismus und der entstehung von zweitwohnungen. anhand von qualitativen interviews untersuchte veress (2009) in ihrer diplomarbeit die männliche altersmigration in cha-am und hua hin, wobei die relationen zwischen altersmigration und sextourismus im zentrum der forschung standen. mit einer untersuchung im rahmen der diplomarbeit zum thema „amenity migration“ in cha-am und hua hin möchten die autorinnen einen empirischen beitrag zu diesem vergleichsweise wenig erforschten phänomen leisten. die aus zwei fallstudien bestehende diplomarbeit trägt den titel „auf der suche nach dem paradies? das phänomen „amenity migration“ – eine fallstudie am beispiel von cha-am und hua hin“ und die empirischen daten wurden im rahmen eines viermonatigen forschungsaufenthaltes im untersuchungsgebiet gesammelt. ziel der arbeit ist die erstellung eines soziodemographischen und ökonomischen profils der julia jöstl & birgit wieser auf der suche nach dem paradies? einblicke in eine studie zu „amenity migration“ aseas 4(1) 168 169 westlichen altersmigranten3 sowie die analyse der bedeutung dieses phänomens für wirtschaft und gesellschaft vor ort. im rahmen der untersuchung sollten antworten zu den fragen „warum kommen expats4 nach cha-am und hua hin?“, „welche soziale herkunft weisen sie auf?“ und „welchen lebensstil führen sie?“ erforscht werden. eine qualitative, explorative erhebungsmethodik diente dazu, einen einblick in die lebenssituation der ausländischen migranten zu erlangen. damit wird der frage nachgegangen, ob es sich bei den untersuchungspersonen im raum cha-am und hua hin um eine problemgruppe oder einen unverzichtbaren ökonomischen faktor handelt. altersmigration in thailand eine neue, aufstrebende destination der internationalen „amenity migration“ ist das südostasiatische königreich thailand. hauptmotive für eine reise nach thailand sind im allgemeinen die freundliche bevölkerung, die reichhaltige kultur, geringe lebens(erhaltungs-)kosten, warmes klima, strand, sportund freizeitmöglichkeiten sowie nicht zuletzt die verfügbarkeit von attraktiven (sexual-)partnerinnen (howard, 2008, s.149). thailand ist mit 15,94 millionen internationalen ankünften im jahr 2010 (department of tourism, 2011) neben malaysia spitzenreiter in der region südostasien. die annehmlichkeiten, die dieses land bietet, machen es für langzeittouristinnen und expats interessant. die sehnsucht nach einem besseren leben, „dem paradies“, die möglichkeit, dem alltagstrott im herkunftsland zu entfliehen sowie die steigende flexibilität und mobilität auch älterer bevölkerungsgruppen führen zu einer zunehmenden verwischung der grenzen zwischen den beiden (mobilitäts-)phänomenen tourismus und migration. so schätzt howard (2008), dass sich im durchschnitt 98.000 migrantinnen aus den westlichen industrienationen in thailand aufhalten, wobei etwa 10.000 bis 15.000 das pensionsalter erreicht haben. verlässliche statistische angaben über die anzahl von altersmigrantinnen in thailand sind leider nicht 3 aufgrund der tatsache, dass während der untersuchung 91 prozent männliche probanden befragt wurden, wird im text in diesem zusammenhang die männliche form von personenbezogenen hauptwörtern verwendet. 4 die bezeichnung „expatriate“, kurz „expat“ bezieht sich auf personen, die außerhalb ihres heimatlandes leben. der begriff meint permanente migrantinnen, wird aber in der praxis wie etwa innerhalb der thailändischen expatgemeinschaft genauso für saisonale oder temporäre zuwanderer verwendet. (williams, king, & warens, 1997) im zusammenhang mit dieser fallstudie werden daher die begriffe „expats“ und zuwanderer synonym verwendet. aseas 4(1) 168 169 verfügbar. fakt ist, dass das land nicht nur eine wichtige zieldestination für den internationalen tourismus ist, sondern auch neue längerfristige erscheinungsformen der mobilität in den letzten jahren boomen und thailand als land zum sesshaftwerden immer beliebter wird (libutzki, 2003). dies ist nicht selbstverständlich, da neben den bereits angeführten pull-faktoren auch erhebliche kulturelle und sprachliche barrieren, zahlreiche bürokratische und gesetzliche hürden – wie zum beispiel die komplizierten visabestimmungen sowie restriktionen für ausländische personen, land zu besitzen – einem längerfristigen aufenthalt von ausländerinnen im königreich entgegenwirken. datengrundlage der diplomarbeit im rahmen der studie wurden qualitative, explorative interviews mit zufällig ausgewählten mitgliedern der expat-bevölkerung von cha-am und hua hin durchgeführt. zur teilnahme an den interviews war ein mindestaufenthalt von drei monaten am stück pro jahr im untersuchungsgebiet erforderlich. von besonderem interesse im rahmen der befragung waren die attraktivität des standortes und die standortentscheidung, die wohnsituation, das verhältnis zur thailändischen kultur und sprachkenntnisse sowie das sozioökonomische profil der zuwanderer. die fragen wurden anhand eines strukturierten leitfadens gestellt, der den interviewpartnerinnen genug raum für eigene reflexionen und freie antworten ließ. so variierte die dauer der interviews von 20 minuten bis zu 2 stunden, meist bewegten sie sich im rahmen von 30 bis 45 minuten. insgesamt wurden 130 interviews auf englisch oder deutsch aufgezeichnet. die befragten füllten überdies zwei polaritätsprofile aus, welche sich als geeignetes mittel erwiesen, um images und einstellungen gegenüber dem zielland und der eigenen bevölkerungsgruppe darzustellen. zusätzlich wurden die probandinnen ersucht, ihren wohnstandort im untersuchungsgebiet auf einer beigefügten karte einzutragen, um eventuell vorhandene räumliche segregationstendenzen der expats aufzuzeigen. die befragungsaktion ergab schlussendlich 112 interviews, die transkribiert, kodiert und mithilfe von maxqda, einem programm zur analyse qualitativer daten, sowie spss für die statistische analyse ausgewertet wurden. julia jöstl & birgit wieser auf der suche nach dem paradies? einblicke in eine studie zu „amenity migration“ aseas 4(1) 170 171 die expats in cha-am und hua hin bereits nach wenigen tagen recherche wurde offensichtlich, dass sich expats an ganz bestimmten plätzen der stadt aufhielten – häufig in einkaufszentren, restaurants und bars im touristischen viertel und in der thai-sprachschule von hua hin. diejenigen, die sich zu den interviews bereit erklärten, waren meist sehr interessiert an der thematik, offen und auskunftsfreudig. nicht selten erzählten sie von ihren privaten problemen, enttäuschungen und hoffnungen – beweggründe, weshalb sie schlussendlich nach thailand gekommen waren – oder von emotionalen erlebnissen, die sie erst dort hatten. die zunehmende beliebtheit thailands als ziel der internationalen altersmigration spiegelt sich zusätzlich in der altersstruktur der befragten wider: der großteil (42 prozent) der probanden war zwischen 60 und 70 jahre alt. ebenso wenig überraschend war die tatsache, dass fast ausschließlich männliche interviewpartner befragt wurden (91 prozent). die verteilung der befragten nach nationalitäten sowie deren geschlechterproportion stimmen mit den aufzeichnungen des immigrationsbüros von hua hin (n. satitnathitham, persönliches gespräch, 8. september 2010) überein. die größte gruppe stellen expats aus großbritannien dar, gefolgt von skandinavien (schweden, norwegen, dänemark, finnland), der schweiz, deutschland und den usa. mit der zahl der zuwanderer steigt die nachfrage nach angemessenen wohnmöglichkeiten, weshalb der immobilienmarkt in cha-am und hua hin wächst. zahlreiche bauprojekte unter ausländischem management wurden bereits verwirklicht, zumeist handelt es sich um so genannte „gated communities“, die auf die bedürfnisse westlicher kunden – und dabei speziell auf ein älteres klientel – zugeschnitten sind. die angebotsseite wurde ebenfalls in die untersuchung miteinbezogen: durch besichtigungen und gespräche mit managerinnen diverser projekte konnte ein überblick über die anzahl bereits fertig gestellter sowie gerade entstehende immobilienprojekte gewonnen werden. weiters wurden die grundbuchämter beider städte aufgesucht, um sowohl einen räumlichen als auch quantitativen überblick über die immobilienprojekte und die entwicklung der landpreise zu bekommen. ein eigens erstellter interviewleitfaden für die bürgermeister von cha-am und hua hin sollte helfen, auskünfte zu aktuellen und zukünftigen planungsmaßnahmen für die wachsende expatbevölkerung zu erhalten. die meinung der betroffenen, warum das untersuchungsaseas 4(1) 170 171 gebiet ein so beliebtes ziel für den zuzug von expats darstellt, wurde erfragt. während die befragung der expats gut voran ging, erwies sich die datenbeschaffung bei den verschiedenen behörden als deutlich schwieriger. die „tourism authority of thailand“ (tat) führt zwar präzise tourismusstatistiken, jedoch keine spezifisch zum thema „long-stay-tourists“. ebenso problematisch erwies sich die datenlage im hinblick auf die zuwanderung von ausländerinnen in das untersuchungsgebiet. im immigrationsbüro von hua hin und bangkok waren die gewünschten daten entweder nicht aufbereitet oder nicht zugänglich. eine weitere hürde bei der arbeit mit den thailändischen behörden stellte wie erwartet die sprachbarriere dar. ohne die hilfe von übersetzerinnen war die informationsgewinnung, angesichts der geringen thaikenntnisse der forscherinnen und der oft mangelhaften kenntnisse der englischen sprache auf thailändischer seite, selten von erfolg gekrönt. es bleibt allerdings zu hoffen, dass die bestehenden sprachlichen hürden aufgrund der steigenden bedeutung der aus dem ausland zugezogenen bevölkerungsgruppe in naher zukunft abgebaut werden. gerade weil die tendenziell eher wohlhabenden zuwanderer große wertschöpfung in die region bringen, wird es zunehmend wichtiger, diese entwicklungen zu kontrollieren, da konflikte bei so unterschiedlichen sozioökonomischen gruppen leicht auftreten können. aufgrund der tatsache, dass die thailändische regierung mit ihren „retirement visa“ auch zukünftig auf ein älteres klientel ausgerichtet ist, es jedoch immer mehr zu einem auseinanderklaffen zwischen der lebensweise der expats und der lokalen bevölkerung kommt, sollten die entscheidungsträger eine „win-win“-situation für beide seiten erlangen. die verfasserinnen hoffen, mit ihrer arbeit, welche im herbst 2011 fertig gestellt wird, einen wichtigen beitrag zur verbesserung des forschungsstandes in bezug auf dieses noch relativ unerforschte phänomen „amenity migration“ sowie zur verbesserung der kommunikation zwischen der lokalen bevölkerung und den expats zu leisten. julia jöstl & birgit wieser auf der suche nach dem paradies? einblicke in eine studie zu „amenity migration“ aseas 4(1) 172 173 bibliographie department of tourism, ministry of tourism and sport (2011). tourist arrivals in thailand. year 2010. zuletzt zugegriffen am 04. april 2011 unter http://www.tourism.go.th/2010/en/statistic/tourism. php?cid=31 howard, r. w. (2008). western retirees in thailand: motives, experiences, wellbeing, assimilation and future needs. ageing and society, 28, 145-163. howard, r. w. (2009). the migration of westerners to thailand: an unusual flow from developed to developing world. international migration, 47/2, 193-225. koch-schulte, j. (2008). planning for international retirement migration and expats: a case study of udon thani, thailand. ma thesis, university of manitoba, canada. libutzki, o. (2003). strukturen und probleme des tourismus in thailand. in c. becker, h. hopfinger, & a. steinecke (hrsg.), geographie der freizeit und des tourismus (s. 679-691). münchen, deutschland & wien, österreich: oldenburg verlag. müller, d. k. (2002). german second home development in sweden. in c. m. hall & a. m. williams (hrsg.), tourism and migration (s. 169-185). dordrecht, niederlande: kluwer academic publishers. veress, k. (2009). „vom sextouristen zum strandpensionisten?” eine fallstudie zur männlichen altersmigration nach thailand am beispiel von hua hin und cha-am. diplomarbeit, universität wien, österreich. williams, a. m., king, r., & warens a. m. (1997). a place in the sun. international retirement migration from northern to southern europe. european urban and regional studies, 4(2), 115-134. soziale netzwerke philippinischer migrantinnen in österreich: ein interview mit arlene castañeda aseas 3(2) 264 265 im dialog / in dialogue soziale netzwerke philippinischer migrantinnen in österreich: ein interview mit arlene castañeda pascal honisch1 universität wien, österreich citation honisch, p. (2010). soziale netzwerke philippinischer migrantinnen in österreich: ein interview mit arlene castañeda. aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften, 3(2), 265-273. arlene castañeda emigrierte nach ihrem pädagogikund englischstudium vor 20 jahren von den philippinen nach österreich, wo sie translationswissenschaft an der universität wien studierte. neben ihrer hauptberufl ichen tätigkeit beim opec fonds für internationale entwicklung (opec fund for international development oder ofid) unterrichtet sie seit 1995 an der volkshochschule brigittenau in wien. sie ist hauptorganisatorin der österreichisch-philippinischen kulturund sprachwoche, die erstmals vom 2. bis 6. august 2010 stattfand. als mutter dreier kinder engagiert sich castañeda vor allem für die erhaltung philippinischer kultur und sprache unter jugendlichen in der österreichischen diaspora und interessiert sich für den österreichisch-philippinischen soziokulturellen austausch. pascal honisch: frau castañeda, sie organisierten im sommer 2010 eine philippinische kulturund sprachwoche in wien, mit der sie gleichermaßen deutsch wie philippinischsprachige interessentinnen aller altersgruppen ansprechen wollten. wie wurde diese aufgenommen? arlene castañeda: sehr positiv. die teilnehmer und teilnehmerinnen haben uns nach der abschlussfeier gefragt, was wir in der folgenden woche machen würden, und die eltern wollten wissen, wann die zweite kulturund sprachwoche stattfinden wird. das ist ein sehr schönes kompliment. das hauptziel des zentrums für 1 pascal honisch studiert kulturund sozialanthropologie an der universität wien und ist von oktober 2010 bis februar 2011 praktikant bei seas. das interview wurde am 2. november 2010 im sas palais hotel, 1010 wien, geführt. aseas 3(2) 266 267 österreichische und philippinische kultur und sprache (sentro ng kultura at wika ng pilipinas at austria) ist, den kindern und jugendlichen die muttersprache und kultur der eltern näherzubringen und die wichtigkeit der beiden kulturen zu betonen. unsere kinder wachsen philippinisch und österreichisch bzw. europäisch auf. es ist uns ein großes anliegen, beide kulturen und sprachen zu präsentieren und auf einer gleichberechtigten ebene zu vermitteln. durch die kulturund sprachwoche ist uns das gut gelungen. fünfzig prozent der kinder und jugendlichen, die an dieser veranstaltung teilgenommen haben, entstammen interethnischen beziehungen und ehen, bei denen die mutter filipina und der vater österreicher ist. es waren zehn mädchen und 8 buben im alter von 6 bis 17 jahren in jener woche anwesend. die kinder und jugendlichen wurden gemeinsam von zehn österreichischen und philippinischen trainern betreut. eine kulturund sprachwoche bietet nicht nur kulturelles an. die teilnehmer lernen neue leute kennen und machen gemeinsam in einer schulischen, aber dennoch lockeren umgebung eine „reise“ in das heimatland der mutter bzw. der eltern, bei der sie den tagesablauf mitgestalten dürfen. der inhalt des lehrplans wird durch spiele und musik belebt. alle trainer und trainerinnen beherrschen mehrere sprachen und gehen liebevoll mit den kindern um. während der kultur und sprachwoche wurde das thema integration durch einfache beispiele für kinder verständlich aufbereitet. respekt für einander wurde groß geschrieben. die kleinen lernten das wort ate (anrede für ältere schwester). die großen übernahmen während des mittagsessens die verantwortung für die kleinen, und diese halfen wiederum gerne beim aufräumen. ich denke, selbstständigkeit und zugehörigkeit verstärken die persönlichkeit jedes kindes – und das gute war, dass die trainerinnen jedem kind viel zeit widmen konnten. honisch: welche themenbereiche umfasst eine solche kulturund sprachwoche? castañeda: in der kulturund sprachwoche wurde auf die bedeutung der muttersprache der teilnehmer eingegangen. das themenspektrum wurde umfangreich gestaltet: von geschichte, geographie, malen, selbstverteidigungstechniken, singen und spielen bis hin zu tanzen – sehr viel philippinisches, aber auch österreichisches. die kinder malten die österreichische und philippinische flagge und lernten dabei die philippinischen namen der farben. sie studierten den philippinischen volkstanz aseas 3(2) 266 267 kalapati ein, übten einfache tricks der philippinischen kampfkunst eskrima, kochten philippinische nachspeisen und spielten sungka, ein beliebtes gemeinschaftsspiel. dabei zeigten sie viele emotionen, als wir über das thema „ich bin ein austrofilipino“ diskutierten. dieses modul wurde in den ersten zwei stunden von zwei österreichischen und einer philippinischen jugendlichen mittels selbsterfahrung und beobachtung geleitet. jedem wurde die frage gestellt: was macht eine oder einen österreicher bzw. österreicherin oder einen filipino bzw. filipina aus? was unterscheidet österreicher von filipinos? also, welche gemeinsamkeiten und unterschiede haben die österreichische und philippinische kultur? dieses thema wurde dann von einer österreichischen trainerin und einem philippinischen trainer weiter vertieft. am letzten tag der kulturund sprachwoche präsentierten die kinder bei der abschlussfeier die gelernten volkslieder und -tänze sowie die gedichte und zeichnungen vor ihren eltern und verwandten. anschließend wurden sie mit zertifikaten, die von der botschafterin maria lourdes o. yparraguirre überreicht wurden, ausgezeichnet. die gemalten bilder der kinder bestätigen viele gemeinsamkeiten und zeigten doch zahlreiche unterschiede der beiden kulturen. honisch: was genau waren diese gemeinsamkeiten und unterschiede? castañeda: gemeinsamkeiten wie die wichtigkeit der familie, freundlichkeit, gastfreundschaft, hilfsbereitschaft, zugehörigkeit und fleiß. bilder von schneebedeckten alpen bis zum weißen strand von boracay. das farbenfrohe barrio fiesta beispielsweise, das wichtigste fest für jeden filipino im inland und ausland, ist österreichischen dorffesten sehr ähnlich. hier hört man schon einmal einen jungen filipino seinen selbstkomponierten deutschen rap vortragen. allen kindern schmeckt reis mit schnitzel. sie tunken äpfel in salz ein, so wie es die einheimischen auf den philippinen machen. die philippinen sind ja auch nach dem habsburgischen könig philipp ii. von spanien benannt. ferdinand blumentritt, ethnograph und philippinenexperte zu lebzeiten, ist der berühmteste österreicher auf den philippinen, und jedes schulkind kennt ihn. er war mit dem philippinischen nationalhelden dr. jose p. rizal befreundet. all das und viel mehr verbindet österreich und die philippinen. pascal honisch ein interview mit arlene castañeda aseas 3(2) 268 269 honisch: sind für die zukunft ähnliche veranstaltungen in bezug auf kulturund spracherhalt in der diaspora in wien geplant? castañeda: ja. wir haben schon die zweite kulturund sprachwoche in planung, die voraussichtlich im august 2011 stattfinden wird. unser ziel dabei ist, die zahl der teilnehmer und unterstützenden vereine zu verdoppeln. die erste wurde anfang 2010 auf eigeninitiative organisiert, und 80 prozent der gesamten ausgaben waren selbstfinanziert. leider konnte ich keine finanzielle unterstützung von seiten der stadt wien beantragen. das projekt wurde von mabuhay accounting services, pinoy relax, t-mobile, asian bakehouse, pinas first, philippine national bank austria gmbh, sipsundo filipino martial arts, rizal-blumentritt society und der botschaft der philippinen unterstützt. zudem war die zusammenarbeit und hilfsbereitschaft aller eltern sehr groß. wir planen auch einen vortrag im frühjahr, bei dem wir philippinenexperten aus deutschland, österreich und den philippinen zum thema „the global filipino youth: what is his personal identity?“ einladen. honisch: existieren noch weitere ähnliche veranstaltungen mit philippinen-bezug in österreich? wenn ja, wer organisiert sie? castañeda: es gibt circa 60 philippinische vereine und organisationen hier in österreich, die meisten davon in wien, von denen jeder eine bestimmte herkunftsregion repräsentiert. sie organisieren karitative veranstaltungen und sammeln kleine spenden für die ärmsten oder opfer von taifunen auf den philippinen. keiner kann genau sagen, welchem verein wie viele angehören, da jeder in verschiedenen vereinen gleichzeitig mitglied sein kann. derzeit leben laut angaben der botschaft der philippinen circa 30.000 filipinos in österreich. die hälfte davon sind kinder und jugendliche. die genaue zahl, wie viele mitglieder dieser gemeinschaft in wien leben, ist mir leider auch nicht bekannt. honisch: was sind die ziele und aufgabenbereiche solcher vereine? castañeda: das zusammensein. jeder verein bietet so etwas wie einen familienersatz für seine mitglieder. alle filipinas und filipinos, die hier leben, aber deren verwandtaseas 3(2) 268 269 schaft und freundeskreis auf den philippinen ist, geht zu einem solchen verein, um sich geborgen zu fühlen. außerdem kann man so landsund provinzleute kennenlernen. die philippinischen vereine sind geographisch gegliedert. jeder verein repräsentiert bestimmte regionen. das allgemeine ziel ist es, ein netzwerk, zusammenkunft oder einfach das gefühl der zugehörigkeit zu schaffen. die „philippinische gottesdienst gemeinde“ sammelt spenden für die bildung der armen kinder und organisiert projekte mit themen wie orientierung oder selbstfindung für austro-filipinische jugendliche. die botschaft der philippinen bietet im sommer wochenendmodule zu themen wie geschichte, volkslieder, tänze, spiele und sprache des landes an. dieses projekt wird größten teils von der philippine community ehrenamtlich unterstützt. honisch: bleiben wir gleich beim thema „leben in der diaspora“. welche bedeutung hat die muttersprache der eltern für die kinder hier? castañeda: sie ist sehr wichtig. es ist weder für die eltern noch für ihre kinder einfach, kultur und sprache zweier länder in einen paritätischen lernprozess unterzubringen. es ist unheimlich tragisch, dass die wenigsten ihre kinder mit ihrer ursprünglichen sprache vertraut machen. die kinder und jugendlichen sprechen, wie die meisten migrantinnenkinder, untereinander deutsch. das finde ich in ordnung und ganz natürlich. dennoch denke ich, es ist unsere aufgabe als eltern, den kindern zu zeigen, wie wichtig die muttersprache ist, beispielsweise indem wir mit ihnen diese sprache bewusst leben und auch ohne zwang sprechen. natürlich kann ein kind auch mehr als eine muttersprache haben. es ist wissenschaftlich erwiesen, dass je besser ein kind seine muttersprache bzw. -sprachen beherrscht, es umso einfacher ist, eine zweit oder weitere fremdsprachen zu erlernen. das geschieht am besten zu hause mit der familie und den verwandten oder freunden. achtzig prozent der teilnehmerinnen meiner kurse in der volkshochschule sind zurzeit jugendliche aus mischehen. vor fünf jahren waren es nur 20 prozent. die meisten damals waren österreichische väter. das ist eine bestätigung, dass kinder an der muttersprache und kultur der eltern sehr interessiert sind. ich finde, es ist sehr hilfreich, in der muttersprache tagalog, bisaya oder ilokano zu sprechen. kinder fragen viel über grammatik, syntax, vokabeln, und es ist natürlich nicht immer einfach, diesen wissensdurst zu stillen, vor allem wenn man berufstätig ist. ich würde am anfang nicht allzu viel davon pascal honisch ein interview mit arlene castañeda aseas 3(2) 270 271 erklären – das würde ihr interesse dämpfen. ich versuche beispielsweise mit meinen kindern jedes wochenende eine philippinische geschichte oder ein märchen auf filipino zu lesen. wir hören sehr oft tagalische musik und sehen filme in tagalog an. auf diese weise lernen sie nicht nur die sprache kennen, sondern auch ein bisschen kultur und literatur und bekommen ein bild vom philippinischen alltag. meine muttersprache ist ibanag, und diese wird in den provinzen isabela und cagayan auf nordluzon gesprochen. allerdings spreche ich mit meinen kindern tagalog, die basis der nationalsprache filipino, damit sie sich im idealfall überall auf den philippinen, wo es circa 171 sprachen gibt, verständigen können. meine kinder sind 16, 11 und 10 jahre alt. ich habe zwei töchter und einen sohn. meine älteste tochter hat bis zum dritten lebensjahr tagalog gesprochen. dann begann sie plötzlich deutsch mit mir zu reden. die geschwister sprechen untereinander natürlich auch deutsch, aber wenn wir auf den philippinen sind, sprechen sie flüssig mit den großeltern und verwandten tagalog. honisch: können probleme auftreten, wenn man mehrsprachig aufwächst? castañeda: natürlich gibt es diverse schwierigkeiten, vor allem wenn die eltern nicht konsequent bleiben und ihre sprachen mischen. meiner meinung nach entsteht dadurch eine unordnung im kopf des kindes, und es kennt sich nicht mehr aus. man muss zumindest seine sätze einsprachig halten. dann können sich kinder mit der zeit optimal an die verschiedenen sprachsituationen anpassen. jetzt spricht das kind englisch, dann österreichisch und philippinisch – code switching fällt ihnen also dann sehr einfach. honisch: wie würden sie die tagalog-kenntnisse der zweiten generation bzw. der aus interethnischen beziehungen entstammenden kinder einstufen? castañeda: die zweite generation kann gut tagalog sprechen. untereinander unterhalten sie sich in deutsch und tagalog. viele rappen und singen oder schreiben ihren verwandten und freunden auf den philippinen in tagalog und englisch. kinder aus mischehen können allerdings kaum die sprache ihrer mutter, da zu hause fast nur deutsch oder englisch gesprochen wird. manche haben die sprache verlernt oder verlernen diese, sobald sie in den kindergarten gehen – und hier beginnt das dilemma aseas 3(2) 270 271 für kind und mutter, wenn tagalische und deutsche wörter in einem satz verwendet werden. honisch: in gewisser weise thematisieren sie damit ja auch den mangel an philippinischem in den soziokulturellen institutionen dieses landes. wie funktioniert denn überhaupt die vernetzung der philippinischen gemeinschaft innerhalb österreichs und mit dem heimatland? castañeda: oft gibt es gemeinschaftliche veranstaltungen von und für filipinos und filipinas, beispielsweise geburtstage, hochzeiten etc., in deren rahmen man sich austauschen kann. kinder von – zumindest teilweise – philippinischen ehepaaren kommen mit und bringen ihre freunde. so lassen sich kontakte herstellen. jeder verein lädt den anderen ein. eine der besten gelegenheiten, um kontakte zu anderen filipinos zu knüpfen, wäre wohl in der kirchenmesse. die größte zusammenkunft ist das barrio fiesta – sowohl im inland als auch im ausland. das ist eine jährliche feier anlässlich der unabhängigkeit der philippinen von spanien. dieses fest bringt die filipinas und filipinos vom norden bis zum süden des landes zusammen. durch moderne medien sind sie heutzutage natürlich auch weltweit verbunden und erreichbar. durch chatcommunities wie facebook, skype usw. werden alte high-school-freunde wieder vereint. per sms oder telefon sind die filipinos im ausland immer auf dem neuesten stand der politischen lage des heimatlandes. per videotelefon sehen die großeltern auf den philippinen sofort ihr neugeborenes enkelkind in wien. honisch: das „enkelkind in wien“ ist ein gutes stichwort. welche faktoren, meinen sie, sprechen für filipinas und filipinos, nach österreich zu ziehen, um sich hier ein neues leben aufzubauen? castañeda: ökonomische, familiäre oder studienrelevante. wenn die möglichkeit zur emigration gegeben ist, wird sie zumeist auch ergriffen. der export von arbeitskräften garantiert geldüberweisungen und somit eine wichtige devisenquelle für das land. natürlich hat diese entwicklung nicht nur vorteile. ein problem, das so entsteht, wäre beispielsweise das des braindrain. die gebildeten leute und akademiker kehren dem land den rücken, um im ausland eine bessere zukunft zu finden. dieser prozess findet pascal honisch ein interview mit arlene castañeda aseas 3(2) 272 273 schon seit 40 jahren statt. eigentlich ist das nichts schlechtes. das beunruhigende dabei ist aber die darauffolgende oft unterqualifizierte beschäftigung vieler dieser migranten im zielland. circa 80 prozent haben einen universitäts-, kollegoder highschool-abschluss, müssen hier aber in teilweise äußerst anspruchslosen berufsfeldern ihr geld verdienen. die ersten arbeitskräfte kamen anfang der 1970er-jahre von den philippinen nach österreich. mittlerweile haben die ersten von ihnen auch schon österreichische enkel. viele der migrantinnen werden heutzutage in arbeitsfelder gedrängt, die von ihnen nicht gewollt sind. sie nehmen eben einfach, was da ist. ein philippinischer praktischer arzt, der in seinem heimatland eine eigene ordination hatte, darf hier nicht einmal als assistenzarzt arbeiten, sondern allerhöchstens die krankenpflege übernehmen. ein philippinisches medizinstudium wird hier nicht anerkannt. honisch: kann man an diesen umständen etwas ändern? castañeda: auf der einen seite gibt es leider viele filipinos, die nicht gut deutsch sprechen, selbst wenn sie bereits seit mehreren jahren in österreich leben. auf der anderen seite arbeiten viele in österreichischen firmen sowie im krankenpflegebereich oder tourismus, wo sehr gute deutschkenntnisse eine voraussetzung sind. in der kulturund sprachwoche wurde deutsch para sa mga migrante [deutsch für philippinische migrantinnen] angeboten – leider wurde die gewünschte anzahl an teilnehmern nicht erreicht. es hängt alles sowohl vom willen wie auch von der möglichkeit zur integration ab. über 300 filipinas und filipinos arbeiten in internationalen organisationen wie uno, iaea, ctbto, unov, opec und diversen botschaften und missionen. die meisten haben sich sehr gut in ihrem adoptivland integriert. die krankenschwestern und -pfleger sind sehr beliebt und geschätzt. honisch: umgekehrt hört man auch immer wieder von österreicherinnen und österreichern, die auf die philippinen ziehen. auch als urlaubsregion sind sie sehr gefragt. planen sie ihren lebensmittelpunkt irgendwann wieder dorthin zurück zu verlegen oder haben sie in österreich nun ihr zuhause gefunden? castañeda: wenn ich in pension gehe, würde ich im winter auf den philippinen bleiben und im sommer hier in österreich. es gibt jetzt viele günstige angebote aseas 3(2) 272 273 für balikbayan [expatriates] und österreicher, in den bau von immobilien auf den philippinen zu investieren. es ist wohl eher der touristische wert des landes und die eigene finanzielle situation, die den ausschlag geben, im hohen alter dorthin zu ziehen. man kann sich dort dann auch leicht eine eigene krankenschwester oder einen krankenpfleger leisten, weil die arbeitskraft im vergleich zu österreich wesentlich günstiger ist. auf dem lande ist hektik ein fremdwort. die sonne scheint jeden tag, und trotz eines vorbeiziehenden sturmes lächeln die menschen. ich hatte das glück, nach österreich zu kommen, und das privileg, hier bleiben zu dürfen. aus meinen erfahrungen und erlebnissen in beiden ländern ist ein neues selbstbewusstsein und eine neue identität in mir entstanden, geprägt von stärken und schwächen beider kulturen – eine sehr gute mischung. meine kinder sind stolz darauf, austro-filipinos zu sein. meine heimat war und werden die philippinen bleiben, aber im moment ist hier mein zuhause. ich könnte mir zurzeit nicht vorstellen, woanders zu leben. wir fühlen uns sehr wohl in österreich. honisch: vielen dank für das gespräch. pascal honisch ein interview mit arlene castañeda aseas 2-2 the association of southeast asian nations’ (asean) conflict management approach revisited: will the charter reinforce asean's role? aseas 2 (2) 06 aktuelle südostasienforschung / current research on south-east asia the association of southeast asian nations’ (asean) conflict management approach revisited: will the charter reinforce asean’s role? ramses amer1 stockholm university, sweden aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften / austrian journal of south-east asian studies seas gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften / society for south-east asian studies www.seas.at the main aim of this study is to assess the role played by the association of southeast asian nations (asean) in the management and resolution of disputes between its member-states in the south-east asian region. the asean approach to confl ict management is outlined and the context in which it has developed is presented. the achievements and challenges that asean has faced and is still facing in the fi eld of confl ict management are identifi ed. asean’s contribution to confl ict management in the south-east asian region is recognized, although the nature of the contribution and the role played by the association is debated. asean’s model and approach to confl ict and dispute management and the possible impact of the approach on the confl ict situation in the south-east asian region are examined from three main dimensions: (1) the core elements of the approach; (2) the role played by the association in terms of confl ict management; (3) the possible impact of the asean approach in managing disputes among its member-states. the possible impact of recent developments within asean – the asean charter in particular – is analyzed in assessing the role that the association can play in promoting confl ict management. keywords: association of southeast asian nations, confl ict management mechanisms, asean charter, treaty of amity and cooperation (tac) 1 dr. ramses amer is associate professor in peace and conflict research and senior research fellow at the center for pacific asia studies (cpas), department of oriental languages, stockholm university, sweden and coordinator of the swedish network of peace, conflict and development research. contact: ramses.amer@orient.su.se or ramsesamer@gmail.com aseas 2 (2) ramses amer the association of southeast asian nations’ (asean) confl ict management approach revisited 07 hauptziel dieser studie ist, zu untersuchen, welche rolle die vereinigung südostasiatischer nationen (asean) im management und in der bewältigung von konfl ikten zwischen ihren mitgliedstaaten spielt. aseans verständnis von konfl iktmanagement und streitschlichtung wird dargestellt – ebenso der hintergrund, vor dem es entstand. weiters werden aseans errungenschaften wie herausforderungen im konfl iktmanagement behandelt. im allgemeinen sind aseans erfolge in südostasien anerkannt. aseans beitrag und ihre rolle dabei wird jedoch debattiert. in diesem artikel wird das asean-modell für konfl iktmanagement und streitschlichtung sowie die möglichen auswirkungen auf konfl iktsituationen in südostasien aus drei blickwinkeln analysiert: (1) kernelemente des asean-ansatzes; (2) die rolle aseans im management von konfl ikten zwischen mitgliedstaaten; (3) mögliche implikationen des aseanmodells auf regionale konfl ikte. potenzielle auswirkungen jüngerer entwicklungen innerhalb aseans, vor allem der asean charter, werden analysiert, um die rolle, die asean im regionalen konfl iktmanagement spielen kann, besser abschätzen zu können. schagworte: vereinigung südostasiatischer nationen, konfl iktmanagement-mechanismen, asean-charter, freundschaftsund kooperationsabkommen (tac) purpose and structure the main purpose of this study is to assess the role played by the association of southeast asian nations (asean) in the management and resolution of disputes between its member-states in the south-east asian region. the asean approach to conflict management is outlined and the context in which it has developed is presented. the achievements and challenges that asean has faced and is still facing in the field of conflict management are identified. asean’s model and approach to conflict and dispute management and the possible impact of the approach on the conflict situation in the south-east asian region are examined from three main dimensions: first, the core elements of the approach, second, the role played by the association in terms of conflict management, and, third, the possible impact of the asean approach in managing disputes among its member-states. the possible impact of recent developments within asean – the asean charter in particular – is analysed in assessing the role that the association can play in promoting conflict management. aseas 2 (2) the study is structured in the following way. first, the mechanisms of the asean approach for conflict management are outlined including the asean charter. second, the role of asean, the attitude of member-states and the degree of success of asean are outlined. third, some concluding remarks are outlined relating to asean and conflict management. mechanisms for conflict management within asean introduction the mechanisms for conflict management are drawn from seven key asean documents: the ‘asean declaration’ (bangkok declaration), the ‘declaration of asean concord’, the ‘treaty of amity and cooperation’ (tac), the ‘rules of procedure of the high council of the treaty of amity and cooperation in southeast asia’; the ‘declaration of asean concord ii’ (bali concord ii), the ‘asean security community plan of action’, and the ‘charter of the association of southeast asian nations’ (asean charter). these key documents are examined in chronological order based on the dates of adoption by asean. the asean declaration the asean declaration, adopted on august 8, 1967, spells out the overall goals and aims of asean and set the stage for a process aiming at defining the way in which the association should function and the mechanisms by which the goals and aims of the association should be achieved. the references to conflict management in the declaration are general in character as can be seen from the expressed desire to “establish a firm foundation for common action to promote regional cooperation in south-east asia in the spirit of equality and partnership and thereby contribute towards peace, progress and prosperity in the region” (asean declaration). also in the part relating to the aims and purposes of the association the paragraph dealing specifically with the promotion of ‘regional peace’ is general rather than specific in its wording, as can be seen in the following: “to promote regional peace and stability through abiding respect for justice and the rule of law in relationship 08 aseas 2 (2) ramses amer the association of southeast asian nations’ (asean) conflict management approach revisited among countries of the region and adherence to the principles of the united nations charter” (asean declaration). the declaration of asean concord the evolution that followed during the so-called ‘formative years’2; that is 1967 to 1976, led to the signing of the declaration of asean concord on february 24, 1976, in connection with the first summit meeting of asean held in bali. the declaration of asean concord relates to the member-states of asean. the declaration of asean concord contains both general principles relating to the overall goals of the association and principles relating to the specific goal of managing disputes and expanding co-operation among the member-states. one of the stated overall objectives is the ambition to establish a zone of peace, freedom and neutrality (zopfan) in south-east asia.3 emphasis is also put on the respect for the principles of “self-determination, sovereign equality and non-interference in the internal affairs of nations” (asean concord 1). the treaty of amity and cooperation (tac) the tac was also adopted on february 24, 1976, in bali. it provides specific guidelines in the field of conflict management, particularly so in relation to the peaceful settlement of disputes. according to article 18 the tac “shall be open for accession by other states in southeast asia”; that is in addition to the five founding members of asean, which are indonesia, malaysia, the philippines, singapore, and thailand. in chapter i, dealing with ‘purpose and principles’, article 2 outlines the fundamental principles that should guide the relations between the signatories to the treaty. the principles are: a. mutual respect for the independence, sovereignty, equality, territorial integrity and national identity of all nations; 2 askandar argues that the first summit meeting marked the end of the ‘formative stage’ of asean regionalism and that the signing of the declaration of asean concord and the tac marked the beginning of the ‘second phase’ (askandar, 1994, p. 68). 3 the asean member-states adopted the kuala lumpur declaration on november 27, 1971. it called for the creation of a zopfan in south-east asia. the declaration of zopfan states asean’s peaceful intentions and its commitment to build regional resilience free from interference from external powers (zone of peace). 09 aseas 2 (2) b. the right of every state to lead its national existence free from external interference, subversion of coercion; c. non-interference in the internal affairs of one another; d. settlement of differences or disputes by peaceful means; e. renunciation of the threat or use of force; f. effective co-operation among themselves (tac). the principles include three main factors for managing inter-state relations; noninterference in the internal affairs of other countries, peaceful settlement of disputes, and, overall co-operation. in chapter iii, dealing with ‘co-operation’, the areas in which mutual co-operation can be established and expanded are outlined and the linkages between co-operation, peaceful relations and non-interference are displayed. the latter is most evidently shown in article 12, which states that, the signatories: in their efforts to achieve regional prosperity and security, shall endeavour to cooperate in all fields for the promotion of regional resilience, based on the principles of self-confidence, self-reliance, mutual respect, co-operation and solidarity which will constitute the foundation for a strong and viable community of nations in southeast asia (tac). in chapter iv, devoted to ‘pacific settlement of disputes’, article 13 outlines the way in which the signatories should behave in situations in which there is a risk that disputes may arise or have arisen. it stipulates that the signatories “shall have the determination and good faith to prevent disputes from arising. in case disputes on matters directly affecting them shall refrain from the threat or use of force and shall at all times settle such disputes among themselves through friendly negotiations” (tac). article 14 is devoted to the creation and envisaged role of a ‘high council’. the council shall be made up of a representative at the ministerial-level from each of the signatories. the role of the council should be to take “cognisance” of existing disputes or situation, which could potentially threaten regional “peace and harmony” (tac). the high council is envisaged as “a continuing body”, i.e. it should have been established in 1976. article 15 deals with the mediating role of the council, a role that it can assume in the event that no solution to a dispute is reached through ‘direct’ negotiation between the parties to the dispute. the council can assume the role as mediator by recommending to the parties to a dispute appropriate means of settlement; i.e. good offices, mediation, inquiry, or conciliation. it can also ‘constitute itself into a 10 aseas 2 (2) ramses amer the association of southeast asian nations’ (asean) conflict management approach revisited committee’ of mediation, inquiry or conciliation (tac). article 16 displays some limitations to the mediating functions of the council by stating that the provisions of articles 14 and 15 shall apply to a dispute only if the parties to the dispute agree to their ‘application’. literally this implies that only the high council can decide on mediating in a dispute if the parties agree to the ‘application’ of the provisions in articles 14 and 15, but that the parties to the dispute cannot bring the matter to the high council. however, among some officials and researchers in the south-east asian region another interpretation has been put forward, namely that the high council can only assume role of mediator in a dispute if the parties involved agree on bringing it to the council.4 article 16 also states that signatories who are not parties to such a dispute can offer assistance to settle it and the parties to the dispute should be “well disposed towards such offers” (tac). the rules of procedure of the high council on july 23, 2001, in connection with the 34th asean ministerial meeting (amm) held in hanoi, the member-states of asean adopted the rules of procedure of the high council of the treaty of amity and cooperation in southeast asia. the rules of procedure consist of ten ‘parts’ encompassing 25 ‘rules’ (rules of procedure). in the following the most relevant provisions will be outlined with a focus on the dispute settlement procedure. in part i, ’purpose’, rule 1, it is stated that in the “event of” a conflict between any provision of the rules of procedure and a provision of the tac the latter should prevail (rules of procedure). in part iii, ‘composition’, rule 3, paragraph a, it is stated that the high council shall comprise one representative at ministerial level from each of the “high contracting parties” that are south-east asia countries. according to rule 5 there shall be a chairperson of the high council. the chairperson shall be the representative of the member-state that holds the chair of the standing committee of asean. or “such other” representative of a member-state of asean “as may be decided by the high council in accordance with these rules” (rules of procedure). in part iv, ‘initiation of dispute settlement procedure’, rule 6, paragraph 1, it is 4 this can be exemplified by the fact that this interpretation was prevalent in the author’s discussions with officials and researchers in malaysia in august 1998. 11 aseas 2 (2) stipulated that the high council “may take cognisance over a dispute or a situation provided for in articles 14 to 16 of the treaty”, that is the tac. in paragraph 2 it is stated that the “dispute settlement procedure” of the council “shall be invoked only by a high contracting party which is directly involved in the dispute in question”. according to rule 7, paragraph 1, a high contracting party seeking to invoke the dispute settlement procedures must do so by written communication through diplomatic channels to the chairperson of the council and to the other high contracting parties. rule 8 stipulates that once such written communication has reached the chairperson, the latter shall seek written confirmation from all other parties to the dispute that they “agree on the application of the high council’s procedure as provided for in article 16 of the treaty”. of crucial importance in this context is rule 9 in which it is stipulated that: “unless written confirmation has been received from all parties to the disputes in accordance with rule 8, the high council may not proceed further on the matter.” if the precondition set forward in rule 9 is met then the high council can proceed with the implementation of the dispute settlement procedure. if this is successful and the council is to make a decision then part vii – ‘decision-making’, rule 19, stipulates that the council has to take all its decisions by consensus at “duly” convened meetings (rules of procedure). the declaration of asean concord ii (bali concord ii) the declaration asean concord ii, adopted on october 7, 2003, in connection with the ninth asean summit held in bali, displays the continuity in the development of collaboration within asean. in its preamble part it is confirmed that the fundamental values and principles are still very much in evidence as displayed by the fact that it is stated that the member-states are: “reaffirming the fundamental importance of adhering to the principle of non-interference and consensus in asean cooperation” (asean concord 2). the pre-eminence of the tac is also in evidence as displayed by the fact that the member-states are: “reiterating that the treaty of amity and cooperation in southeast asia (tac) is an effective code of conduct for relations among governments and peoples” (asean concord 2). this is further emphasized in the part of the declaration of asean concord ii in which the asean member-states issue ten 12 aseas 2 (2) ramses amer the association of southeast asian nations’ (asean) conflict management approach revisited declarations. declaration 5 states that tac is “the key code of conduct governing relations between states and a diplomatic instrument for the promotion of peace and stability in the region”. declaration 4 stresses the commitment of the asean member-states to “resolve to settle long-standing disputes through peaceful means” (asean concord 2). the declaration of asean concord ii also includes a part in which the memberstates adopt a framework to achieve a: “dynamic, cohesive, resilient and integrated asean community”. to achieve this overarching goal the association will strive to create an ‘asean security community’ (asc), an ‘asean economic community’ (aec), and, an ‘asean socio-cultural community’ (assc) (asean concord 2). in the field of conflict management the asc is the most relevant to examine and it contains twelve points. point 3 relates to the fact that asean shall continue to promote regional solidarity and cooperation and in this context it is stated that “member countries shall exercise their rights to lead their national existence free from outside interference in the internal affairs.”5 point 4 also relates to this dimension but is more general and it states that the asean security community shall abide by the un charter and other principles of international law and uphold asean’s principles of non-interference, consensus based decision-making, national and regional resilience, respect for national sovereignty, the renunciation of the threat or use of force, and peaceful settlement of differences and disputes (asean concord 2). of interest is that point 7 is devoted exclusively to the high council and it is stated that “the high council of the tac shall be the important component in asean security community since it reflects asean’s commitment to resolve all differences, disputes and conflicts peacefully” (asean concord 2). the declaration also seeks to be innovative or at least forward looking in setting the stage for the further development of its conflict management mechanisms. this can evidently be seen in point 12 that states that “asean shall explore innovative ways to increase its security and establish modalities for the asean security community which include, inter alia, the following elements: norms-setting, conflict prevention, approaches to conflict resolution, and post-conflict peace building” (asean concord 2). 5 outside interference should be understood in the broad sense both by other member-states of asean and other powers. 13 aseas 2 (2) the asean security community plan of action6 the process aiming at establishing the asc was reinforced at the 10th asean summit held in vientiane in late november 2004 when asean adopted the asean security community plan of action. this plan outlines that the asc should be based on “shared norms and rules of good conduct in inter-state relations; effective conflict prevention and resolution mechanisms; and post-conflict peace building activities.” it also clarifies that the asc is to promote an “asean-wide political security and cooperation in consonance with the asean vision 2020 rather than a defence pact, military alliance or a joint foreign policy.” the plan also stresses that the asc process shall be “progressive” and that it shall be guided by well-established principles of non-interference, consensus based decision-making, national and regional resilience, respect for the national sovereignty, the renunciation of the threat or the use of force, and peaceful settlement of differences and disputes which has served as the foundation of asean cooperation (asean security). thus, the plan clearly displays a high degree of continuity and adherence to established principles for inter-state collaboration in asean. it also states that asean shall not only strengthen existing “initiatives” but also launch new ones and set “appropriate implementation frameworks” (asean security). the plan includes seven sections; i. political development, ii. shaping and sharing of norms, iii. conflict prevention, iv. conflict resolution, v. post-conflict peace building, vi. implementing mechanisms, and, vii. areas of activities. in the section on shaping norms it is stated that the aim is to achieve a standard of “common adherence to norms of good conduct among the members of the asean community” and in any norm setting activity the following principles must be adhered to: 1. non-alignment, 2. fostering of peace-oriented attitudes of asean member countries; 3. conflict resolution through non-violent means; 4. renunciation of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction and avoidance of arms race in southeast asia; and 5. renunciation of the threat or the use of force (asean security). 6 unless otherwise stated all factual information in this section is derived from the text of ‘asean security community plan of action’ (asean security) and ‘annex for asean security community plan of action’ (asean security annex). 14 aseas 2 (2) ramses amer the association of southeast asian nations’ (asean) conflict management approach revisited in the field of conflict prevention it is stated that the objectives of conflict prevention shall be: 1. to strengthen confidence and trust within the community; 2. to mitigate tensions and prevent disputes from arising between or among member countries as well as between member-countries and non-asean countries; and 3. to prevent the escalation of existing disputes (asean security). in terms of conflict resolution the plan stresses that disputes and conflicts involving asean members shall be resolved in a “peaceful way”. of great relevance in the context of regional mechanisms is the following: while continuing to use national, bilateral and international mechanisms, asean member countries shall endeavour to use the existing regional dispute settlement mechanisms in the political and security areas and work towards innovative modalities including arrangements to maintain regional peace and security so as to better serve theirs as well as collective interests of all members for peace and security (asean security). in the field of post-conflict peace building the plan states that the aim is to create conditions for sustainable peace in conflict affected areas and to prevent the reemergence of conflicts. in the context of implementing mechanisms the primacy of the amm in taking the necessary follow-up measures to implement the plan of action is emphasized. finally, the areas of activities refer to the ‘annex’ of the plan and that asean shall “endeavour to work towards the implementation of the areas of activities” (asean security). this annex deserves some attention in relation to the areas highlighted above. in relation to shaping and sharing norms the following measures are identified: the strengthening of the “tac regime”, working towards the development of an “asean charter” to reaffirm the goals and principles of asean in inter-state relations, to resolve outstanding issues to ensure an early signing to the protocol of the southeast asian nuclear weapon-free zone (seanwfz) treaty by “nuclear weapon states”, to establish an “asean treaty on mutual legal assistance (mal) agreement”, to establish an “asean extradition treaty” – as envisaged in the ‘declaration of asean concord’ of 1976, to ensure the implementation of the ‘declaration on the conduct of the parties in the south china sea’ (doc)7, and the establishment of an “asean 7 the measures outlined are to establish an ‘asean-china working group on the implementation of the doc’, to establish a review mechanism on the implementation of the doc; and to work towards ‘the adoption of the code of 15 aseas 2 (2) convention on counter terrorism” (asean security annex). in relation to conflict prevention the following measures are outlined: strengthening confidence building measures including working towards convening an annual “asean defence ministers meeting (admm)”, strengthening preventive measures, strengthening the asean regional forum (arf) in support of the asc, enhancing cooperation on non-traditional security issues, strengthening “efforts in maintaining respect for territorial integrity sovereignty and unity of member countries”, and, strengthening co-operation to address “threats and challenges” posed by separatism (asean security annex). in relation to conflict resolution the first measure relates to the strengthening disputes settlement mechanisms by: a. the use of existing modes of pacific settlement of disputes such as negotiations and consultations, good offices, conciliation and mediation by all asean member countries, or use of the high council of the tac as a preferred option; and b. if the high council so requires, it may establish on an ad hoc basis an experts advisory committee (eac) or an eminent persons group (epg), which may extend assistance to the high council to provide advice or counsel on the settlement of disputes upon request, in accordance with the rules of procedure of the high council of tac (asean security annex). furthermore, measures to develop regional co-operation for the maintenance of peace and stability are outlined as well as developing support initiatives such as the possible establishment of an “asean institute for peace and reconciliation” (asean security annex). in relation to post-conflict peace building, the annex calls for strengthening of asean humanitarian assistance, for the development of co-operation in post conflict reconstruction and rehabilitation, and, for the establishment of a mechanism to mobilise resources (asean security annex). the charter of the association of southeast asian nations 8 the charter of the association of southeast asian nations (asean charter) – adopted on november 20, 2007, in singapore and in force since december 2008 – reaffirms a conduct in the south china sea (coc)’ (asean security annex). 8 unless otherwise stated all factual information in this section is derived from the text of ‘the charter of the association of southeast asian nations’ (asean charter). 16 aseas 2 (2) ramses amer the association of southeast asian nations’ (asean) conflict management approach revisited number of fundamental principles governing inter-state relations among its memberstates. in paragraph 7 of the preamble it is stated: “respecting the fundamental importance of amity and cooperation, and the principles of sovereignty, equality, territorial integrity, non-interference, consensus and unity in diversity” (asean charter, p. 2). the importance of peace is also evident as stated in paragraph 6 of the preamble and also explicitly outlined in article 1 ‘purposes’ of chapter i ‘purposes and principles’ which states that the first purpose of asean is “to maintain and enhance peace, security and stability and further strengthen peace-oriented values in the region” (asean charter, p. 3). in article 2 ‘principles’ both non-interference, peace, and dispute settlement are highlighted as displayed by the following principles that asean member-states should “act in accordance with”: (a) respect for the independence, sovereignty, equality, territorial integrity and national identity of all asean member states; (b) shared commitment and collective responsibility in enhancing regional peace, security and prosperity; (c) renunciation of aggression and the threat or use of force or other actions in any manner inconsistent with international law; (d) reliance of peaceful settlement of dispute; (e) non-interference in the internal affairs of asean member-states; (f) respect for the right of every member state to lead its national existence free from external interference, subversion and coercion […] (k) abstention from participation in any policy or activity, including the use of its territory, pursued by any asean member state or non-asean state or any non-state actor, which threatens the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political and economic stability of asean member states (asean charter, pp. 5-6). the non-interference dimension is extensive and explicit in these principles. the strict adherence to the provisions of the charter of the united nations relating to the prohibition of the “threat or use of force” in inter-state relations is also notable. in the context of settlement of disputes chapter viii is of direct relevance as it deals with ‘settlement of disputes’ and it encompasses seven articles – 22 to 28. the chapter deals both with disputes relating to “specific asean instruments” and with other kind of disputes. the ‘general principles’ in article 22 stresses that the asean member-states “shall endeavour to resolve peacefully all disputes in a timely manner” (asean charter: 23). the role of asean is to “maintain and establish dispute 17 aseas 2 (2) settlement mechanisms in all fields of asean cooperation” (asean charter, p. 23). in article 24 – ‘dispute settlement mechanisms in specific instruments’ paragraph 2 states that “disputes which do not concern the interpretation or application of any asean instrument shall be resolved peacefully in accordance with the treaty of amity and cooperation in southeast asia and its rule of procedure” (asean charter, pp. 23-24). in article 24 the issue of “unresolved disputes” is addressed and it is stated that if a dispute is not “resolved” after the application of the “preceding provisions of this chapter” then it “shall be referred to the asean summit, for its decision” (asean charter, p. 24). in relation to the asc it is stated in preamble paragraph 11 of the asean charter that the association is “committed to intensifying community building through enhanced regional cooperation and integration, in particular by establishing the asean community comprising the asean security community” (asean charter, p. 2).9 conflict management in asean the examination of the conflict management dimension in practice is divided into two parts the first relating to the establishment of the association in the 1960s and the second relating to the conditions and developments in an expanded asean, i.e. developments since the mid-1990s – vietnam joined in 1995, laos and myanmar in 1997, and cambodia in 1999.10 conflict management in the formation of asean11 the creation of asean was the result of efforts by some south-east asian states to establish an association that could provide the framework for successful management 9 the asean charter refers to the “asean political-security community council” in paragraph 1, article 9 ‘asean community councils’, chapter iv ‘organs’ (asean charter, p. 12). in accordance with asean political-security community blueprint the relationship between the asc and the apsc is as follows: “the apcs blueprint builds on the asean security community plan of action.” it also states: “the asean security community plan of action is a principled document, laying out the activities needed to realise the objectives of the” apsc (apsc, p. 1). 10 for details on the expansion process of asean and the main factors behind it see amer (1999, pp. 1031-1048). 11 for a more extensive analysis see amer (1998, pp. 34-35). 18 aseas 2 (2) ramses amer the association of southeast asian nations’ (asean) conflict management approach revisited of disputes among them. the creation of asean can be seen as determined by the desire of its original member-states, i.e. indonesia, malaysia, the philippines, singapore, and thailand,12 to handle existing and potential inter-state disputes through peaceful measures and minimise the risk of militarized conflicts. there was in other words a desire to secure a peaceful and co-operative environment in the sub-region of southeast asia and this was the decisively contributing factor to the creation of asean. thus, asean was from the outset an association for conflict management. empirical evidence lends support to this interpretation of the process of formation of asean. during the first half of the 1960s deep conflicts erupted between indonesia and malaysia and between malaysia and the philippines, respectively. furthermore, the then existing sub-regional organisations in south-east asia – the association of southeast asia (asa) created in 1961 with the then malaya, the philippines and thailand as members, and, maphilindo created in 1963 with malaysia, the philippines and indonesia as members – failed to contain the two conflict situations. the limitations and shortcomings of asa and maphilindo clearly indicated that there was a need for a broader and more efficient association as a vehicle for regional co-operation and conflict management. to bring about a broader membership base in the new association all the major non-socialist countries in south-east asia, except the republic of vietnam (south), established asean together with singapore in 1967. conflict management in an expanded asean13 if conflict management within asean is examined from the perspective of the prevention of inter-state military conflicts the track record of asean is impressive since no dispute has led to such conflicts between the original member-states since 1967. in fact earlier research suggests a high degree of success in managing conflicts between the original member-states of asean.14 however, this does not imply that all the disputes have been resolved or that disputes in general do not occur. on a less positive note in the midst of the asian financial crisis in the late 1990s disputes among some of the asean-members re-emerged.15 one example was the 12 brunei darussalam was admitted as the sixth member of asean in 1983. 13 this section draws on the approach used in amer (2003, pp. 111-131). 14 for a more detailed argumentation along this line see amer (1998, p. 41). 15 for a broad overview of bilateral tensions within the association with a focus on the original five members and 19 aseas 2 (2) increased tension between malaysia and singapore in 1998 which centred over three main issues namely, water, malaysian workers’ savings and railway land, most of which have been in evidence for years without causing such a level of tension.16 it seems likely that this heightened tension had its roots in national mobilisation in the face of the economic crisis on both sides rather than the issues as such. the expansion of asean membership in the 1990s brought additional disputes into the association, thus further complicating the task of managing them. among the disputes involving the new member-states, some have been settled while others remain unsettled. for example the level of tension relating to the unsettled border disputes varies considerably. in terms of conflict management strategy the memberstates of asean have displayed a preference for bilateral talks and dialogue on the disputes with other members of the association.17 however, in the 1990s indonesia and malaysia agreed to refer the sovereignty disputes over pulau sipadan and pulau ligitan to the international court of justice (icj) and malaysia and singapore did likewise with regard to the sovereignty dispute over pedra branca/pulau batu puteh.18 this displays a willingness among some asean members to seek international arbitration when bilateral efforts to resolve disputes are not sufficient to bring about a solution to the disputes. the bilateral efforts to manage and settle disputes can be facilitated and/or supported by the mechanisms for conflict management created by asean. this relates to asean’s role as facilitator rather then as an active third-party mediator in the disputes. however, it does not preclude that the role of asean itself can be enhanced as long as it is within the limits set by the asean framework for conflict management. there is also a need for a political consensus among the parties to the disputes that asean should play such a role. in this context it is important to assess the possible role that the asean framework for conflict management can play in the context of the disputes among its memberstates. the question is how to enhance the framework’s relevance in meeting the challenge of disputes. the first step in such a process would be to establish the brunei darussalam see ganesan (1999). 16 for a broad overview of relations between malaysia and singapore see ganesan (1998, pp. 21-36). 17 this is most clearly displayed in relation to the way in which border disputes among the member-states are managed. for studies on these issues see amer (1998, pp. 33-56; 2000, pp. 30-60; 2001-2002, pp. 81-96). 18 for details see amer (1998, p. 43; 2000, pp. 43-44; 2001-2002, p. 85 and pp. 94-95). 20 aseas 2 (2) ramses amer the association of southeast asian nations’ (asean) conflict management approach revisited high council. this has proven to be a difficult task as it took 25 years after the adoption of the tac before asean managed to adopt the rules of procedure of the high council of the treaty of amity and cooperation in southeast asia in 2001. this is an important step towards the possible establishment of the high council and it was the most important formal development relating to the asean framework for conflict management since the expansion of membership in the 1990s. the importance of the high council has been reaffirmed in the provisions aiming at establishing the asc both in the declaration of asean concord ii and in the asean security community plan of action. this plan calls on the asean member-states to “endeavour to use existing regional dispute mechanisms and processes” and in its ‘annex’ the memberstates are urged to “use the high council of the tac as a preferred option” (asean security annex). the long period needed in order to reach an agreement on such rules indicates that the informal and formal political co-operation among the asean-members could be enhanced in order to remove the lingering feelings of suspicion about the intentions of other members of the association. another factor that has to be taken into consideration is that a high council created on the basis of the provisions of the tac could have considerable power through decisions it could make relating to disputes. making the high council a decision-making body would increase the degree of institutionalisation within asean and this would be a step away from the more informal approach preferred within the association. an additional dimension is concerns about the possible multilateralization of bilateral disputes. this would not be an attractive scenario for member-states that are involved in disputes with other asean-members. or for states which would fear that the opposing party to a dispute has a higher degree of diplomatic influence or leverage within the association. reverting back to the adoption of the rules of procedure for the high council it can be said that the agreement on such rules indicate that the asean member-states are committed to the establishment of the council and to strengthen the regional conflict management mechanisms. this has been reaffirmed in the context of the provisions aiming at establishing the asc contained in the declaration of asean concord ii and in the asean security community plan of action. by adopting the rules of procedure the asean member-states have mitigated the earlier fears among some of them with regard to the potentially considerable powers 21 aseas 2 (2) of the high council and about the possible negative impact of the multilateralization of a dispute. as stipulated in the rules if any party to a dispute does not agree on the application of the high council’s procedure then it cannot proceed further on the matter. thus, the high council can only initiate dispute settlement procedure if all parties to a dispute agree to it. furthermore, at least one party to a dispute must bring the matter to the high council. finally, since all the member-states of asean are entitled to one representative in the high council no decisions can be taken against the will of any given party to a dispute, that is any given member of the association. in fact this amounts to a veto power of any member-state involved in a dispute. in the current context the de facto veto power of a party to a dispute will be retained. even if asean would adopt a model of consensus minus one principle in other fields it is highly unlikely that it will apply in the settlement on inter-state disputes. through the adoption of these rules of procedure asean has brought about conducive conditions for the establishment and activation of the high council. a council to which the member-states could turn for assistance in resolving border disputes if negotiations between the parties to the disputes fail. such a high council, if established, may be attractive as an alternative to the icj. this should not be understood as an argument implying that parties to a dispute should not bring such disputes to the icj no matter the circumstances. on the contrary, the icj can still be used as an alternative if the bilateral and regional conflict management approaches and efforts fail to lead to settlement of a dispute that is acceptable to the parties to the dispute. the adoption of the rules of procedure implies that the member-states of asean have established regional mechanisms that can be utilized for managing disputes between the member-states if bilateral and/or multilateral efforts by the parties to a dispute are not adequate or sufficient to manage and/or resolve the dispute. whether or not the high council will be activated and be allowed to assume such a role will depend on the willingness and readiness of the member-states of asean to bring disputed issues to such a regional body. the rules of procedure ensure that the council cannot be used against a member-state. the latter was most probably a necessary condition in order to secure the adoption the rules and it is likely to be a key factor in enabling a future activation of the council itself. only when it will 22 aseas 2 (2) ramses amer the association of southeast asian nations’ (asean) conflict management approach revisited be established will it be possible to assess how effectively and how often the high council will be used by the asean member-states in dealing with inter-state disputes affecting them. in this context it is necessary to clarify that asean is not intended to formally act as a third-party mediator in the disputes involving its member-states unless it is ascribed to do so or asked to do so by the member-states. instead the association is intended to serve as a vehicle to promote better relations among its member-states. this is done by creating conducive conditions for increased interaction through the overall co-operation carried out under the asean-umbrella. another role that asean can play is through the formulation and adoption of mechanisms, which can be utilized by the member-states to manage their disputes. asean can also establish principles for how its member-states should behave towards each other and this has been done through the declaration of asean concord and the tac of 1976 and the declaration of asean concord ii of 2003. these mechanisms are also in evidence in the asean security plan of action and in its annex. also of relevance is the strong emphasis put on dispute settlement in the asean charter. this implies that in order to achieve peace and stability in the region the memberstates of asean must act in such a way as to peacefully manage the existing and potential inter-state disputes among them. consequently, failure to do so can be attributed to the member-states involved in the disputes and not to the association as such. furthermore, asean can urge its member-states to seek peaceful solutions to such disputes, but it cannot force them nor directly intervene to try and halt a dispute unless the parties to the dispute ask asean to intervene in such a manner. both the declaration of asean concord ii with its provisions for the establishment of an asc and the more detailed asean security community plan of action reaffirm and expand the conflict management mechanisms available to the member-states of asean in dealing with inter-state disputes. in doing so they serve both as vehicles for continuity and innovation in field of conflict management. however, as with other asean agreements the efficiency of the asc will depend on the policies and actions of the member-states. the same applies to the future utilisation of the regional mechanisms for conflict management.19 19 for an analysis of the asc carried out after the adoption of the declaration of asean concord ii but before the adoption of asean security community plan of action see severino (2004). 23 aseas 2 (2) the asean charter not only reiterates the continued relevance of prior documents but also puts strong emphasis on the peaceful settlement of disputes among the member-states of asean. concluding remarks as observed above, in order to properly understand and assess what asean does and could possibly do in terms of conflict management it is necessary to clarify that asean is not intended to formally act as a third-party mediator in the disputes involving its member-states unless it is ascribed to do so or asked to do so by the memberstates. instead the association is intended to serve as a vehicle to promote better relations among its member-states. this is done by creating conducive conditions for increased interaction through the overall co-operation carried out under the asean-umbrella. another role that asean can play is through the formulation and adoption of mechanisms, which can be utilized by the member-states to manage their disputes. asean can also establish principles for how its member-states should behave towards each other and this has been done through the declaration of asean concord, the tac of 1976 as well as the declaration of asean concord ii of 2003 and through the asean charter adopted in 2007. the envisaged asc will further reinforce both the principles and mechanisms and strive to develop new ones. another important aspect is that the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other states prevents member-states for intervening in internal conflicts in other member-states. this implies that only if a member-state requests assistance or the intervention of asean, selected member-states and/or individual member-states, can they intervene. the nature of such intervention can differ depending on the request and on the role that asean or the member-states are willing to provide. it can also be noted that the asean approach to conflict management is geared towards the inter-state level and not the intra-state context. this can best be understood by taking into consideration the context in which asean was established and the paramount importance for the then leaderships to safeguard their political survival in the face of major internal challenges. this implies that in order to achieve peace and stability in south-east asia the member-states of asean must act in such a way as to peacefully manage the existing 24 aseas 2 (2) ramses amer the association of southeast asian nations’ (asean) conflict management approach revisited and potential inter-state disputes among them. consequently, failure to manage inter-state disputes among the member-states of asean can be attributed to the states involved in the disputes and not to the association as such. furthermore, asean can urge its member-states to seek peaceful solutions to such disputes, but it cannot force them nor directly intervene to try and halt a dispute unless the parties to the dispute ask asean to intervene in such a manner. the same applies to conflict situations within member-states, i.e. asean can only act if so requested by the member-state affected by the conflict. the relevance of the regional mechanisms for conflict management as developed and formulated through collaboration within asean would be considerably enhanced if the member-states of asean would more actively seek to utilise them when managing and settling disputes. the fact that the high council has yet to be activated and that no dispute has been brought to it indicates that regional mechanisms for dispute settlement are – after more than 40 years – not yet the preferred option when the member-states fail to reach a bilateral agreement in a dispute situation. to make regional mechanisms the preferred option would be a major boost to asean efforts aiming to strengthen dispute settlement in the region and a key step towards establishing an asc and also in establishing the asean community. the above overview and analysis have displayed that asean puts considerable efforts into promoting the peaceful settlement of disputes among its member-states. the approach of asean has been to adopt principles and to create mechanisms that are available to the member-states when dealing with disputes. thus far asean has not assumed the role of directly intervening in such disputes. what then can be said about the role of the asean charter? the role is not one of being innovative, but instead it reaffirms the importance of conflict management though peaceful settlement of disputes. it also reaffirms the established principles and mechanisms established in earlier asean documents, in particular in the tac. the continued importance of the latter is in evidence in the provisions of the asean charter. as noted above, the charter puts strong emphasis on peaceful settlement of disputes among the asean-members. thus, the asean charter both reaffirms and assures continuity in the conflict management approach of the association. 25 aseas 2 (2) references amer, r. 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(n.d.). retrieved 13 november, 2008 from http://www.asesansec.org/3639.htm the asean declaration (bangkok declaration) bangkok, 8 august 1967 (asean declaration). (n.d.). retrieved 13 november, 2008 from http://www.aseansec.org/1212.htm treaty of amity and cooperation in southeast asia (tac). (n.d.). retrieved 13 november, 2008 from http://www.asesansec.org/1217.htm zone of peace, freedom and neutrality declaration. kuala lumpur declaration (zone of peace). (n.d.). retrieved 13 november, 2008 from http://www.asesansec.org/3629.htm 27 aseas 1-2 final (außergottowik).indd aseas 1 (2) forschungswerkstatt / research workshop confl ict resolution in aceh in light of track one and a half diplomacy robert m. heiling1 university of vienna, austria aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften / austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 1 (2), 2008 seas gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften www.seas.at this paper analyzes the role of mediators in the resolution of the aceh confl ict within the framework of a three-step process. two separate mediation efforts, one conducted by the centre for humanitarian dialogue from 1999 until 2003 and a second one led by martti ahtisaari and his crisis management initiative in 2004/2005, attempted to solve the aceh confl ict. the author shows that beside contextual factors such as ripeness of the confl ict and advantageous relations between and characteristics of the confl ict parties, the success of ahtisaari’s engagement can be further explained by procedural factors. these include mediator behaviour and mediation strategies. furthermore the mediator’s ability to use contacts with offi cial track one actors was crucial in securing the signing as well as the implementation of the present peace agreement. keywords: confl ict resolution, mediation, track 1.5, aceh, indonesia der artikel analysiert die rolle von mediatoren in der lösung des aceh konfl ikts mittels eines dreiphasen modells von konfl iktlösung. zwei voneinander unabhängige mediationsverfahren, jenes des centre for humanitarian dialogue von 1999 bis 2003, und ein weiteres geleitet durch martti ahtisaari und seiner crisis management initiative in 2004/2005, zielten darauf ab den konfl ikt zu lösen. der autor zeigt, dass neben kontextuellen faktoren wie einer “ripeness” des konfl ikts sowie günstigen veränderungen auf seite der konfl iktparteien, prozedurale faktoren für den erfolg ahtisaaris entscheidend waren. diese faktoren beziehen sich auf das agieren und die strategien des mediators. die fähigkeit des mediators, kontakte zu offi ziellen “track one” akteuren aktiv während des mediationsprozesses zu nutzen, bildete einen schlüsselfaktor darin einen friedensschluss und im weiteren verlauf eine weitgehend erfolgreiche umsetzung des aktuellen abkommens zwischen den ehemaligen konfl iktparteien zu erreichen. schlagworte: konfl iktlösung, mediation, track 1.5, aceh, indonesien 1 robert m. heiling is currently a magister candidate at the university of vienna. the present article is based on findings of his diploma thesis, titled “track one and a half diplomacy in aceh”, which deals with mediation efforts in the aceh conflict. robert m. heiling is expected to finish his magister studies in early 2009. 171 introduction this paper seeks to outline and analyze the contribution of mediation processes to the resolution of the aceh conflict. despite the fact that a few researchers have already dealt with various aspects of the resolution of this longstanding conflict, the author believes that there has not been enough attention paid to all stages of conflict resolution as a whole. therefore the author intends to elaborate on the periods of pre-negotiation, negotiation, and the stage of implementation. the author also believes that the concept of track one and a half diplomacy presents a particularly useful concept to describe the role of mediators in the resolution of the aceh conflict. this concept helps in highlighting qualities of this process of conflict resolution that have been neglected in previous analyses. after a brief elaboration on the historical roots of the conflict, the author will compare two separate mediation initiatives which took place in aceh by drawing on the subsequent stages of a conflict resolution process. among others, walter (2002) has pictured conflict resolution as a three-step process. according to this view on conflict resolution, it is particularly important to include the stages of reaching an agreement as well as its following implementation when analyzing conflict resolution alongside the conflict parties’ decision to start or participate in negotiations. theories on mediation and conflict resolution shall be applied to these stages of conflict resolution. looking at the pre-negotiation stage, these shall be theories on the timing of mediation (ripeness), as well as on characteristics of conflict parties. during the following stage of negotiation, ideas on mediation strategies will be considered. at this point the procedural factors of mediation – the behaviour and characteristics of the involved mediators – in contrast to contextual factors like the ripeness of conflict, shall be analyzed. finally the author will look at the characteristics of the two mediation initiatives as processes of track one and a half diplomacy. the paper concludes that besides contextual factors, like a ripe moment as well as advantageous developments on the side of the conflict parties, procedural factors, in the shape of mediator activity, played a major role in bringing about peace in aceh. alongside an efficient mediation strategy, martti ahtisaari and cmi’s successful involvement can further be explained due to their usage of contacts to official state actors. thus, the author interprets conflict resolution in aceh as a track one and a half conflict resolution process. in the course of this process, private, informal non-state actors, as well as official state actors shared responsibility through the course of their engagement 172 robert m. heiling confl ict resolution in aceh in light of track one and a half diplomacy aseas 1 (2) history of an intractable conflict the conflict of aceh is a long-time secessionist conflict, fought between the free aceh movement, commonly referred to as gam2, and the indonesian state, over the independence of the north-most sumatran province of aceh. the root causes for the conflict date back to dutch colonial rule in indonesia. unlike other regions in indonesia, which gradually became part of the dutch east indies from the early 17th century on, aceh remained an independent sultanate with substantial regional influence until late 19th century. the territory was incorporated into the dutch east indies through the netherlands’ most violent and costly war in dutch colonial history, and violence in aceh remained at a high level for the duration of dutch rule (reid 2006). nevertheless, aceh played an active and important role in the indonesian war for independence. its leaders, however, were alienated by its outcome. the subsequent merger with north sumatra into a larger province and the set-up of indonesia as a quasi secular, centralized state caused upheaval and led to the formation of an acehnese rebellion. under the leadership of acehnese governor daud bereuh the rebels formally joined the darul islam movement of west java. its goal was the transformation of indonesia into a federal islamic state. the rebellion was soon to be crushed by jakarta (aspinall 2006). rebellion in aceh broke out again in 1976 under the banner of gam, this time fighting not for the transformation of the current national political system of indonesia, but for complete independence from it. causes for the rebellion included further increased grievances due to worsened centre-periphery relations between the resource rich province and jakarta in the context of the even further centralized development regime of suharto (kell 1995: 5159). since then the movement was led by tengku hasan di tiro, a us-educated businessman and grandson of a well-known acehnese ulama. gam started as a small guerrilla movement comprised mainly of intellectuals, which was soon to be defeated by the indonesian military (tni)3. the movement’s leadership fled, forming an exile government in sweden. in the early 1980s the rebellion broke out again with the help of libyan trained guerrilla fighters, this time gaining wider support among the population due to repressive actions by the tni. again the rebellion was to be defeated officially, only to re-emerge in the late 1990s (schulze 2004: 4-5). after the fall of suharto and the steady growth of democratic and free conditions in indonesia, the frame of the conflict changed significantly. a wide civil society movement emerged in aceh of which many groups supported gam in its claim for independence. gam likewise changed its strategy, calling for a referendum concerning the future of the province, 2 indonesian acronym for gerakan aceh merdeka. 3 indonesian acronym for tentara nasional indonesia. 173 inspired by the recent breakaway of east timor from indonesia. gam adopted the so-called east timor blueprint as its main strategy, aiming at gathering support from the international community to pressure indonesia on acehnese independence. the following years saw a significant increase of gam control over aceh as well as the involvement of new political leaders on the indonesian side (schulze 2006: 225-244). renewed outbreak of the conflict led to two sequential but separate international mediation efforts, the first international involvement in the history of the conflict. the two initiatives, both conducted by private nonstate actors, differed decisively in approach, style, strategy and, last but not least, outcome. the mediation process of the centre for humanitarian dialogue (hdc)4 from 1999 to 2003 achieved only temporary mitigation of the conflict, followed by a backlash of violence. the effort by martti ahtisaari and his crisis management initiative (cmi) on the other hand was initiated in 2004 just prior to the occurrence of the tsunami which devastated aceh among other regions in the indian ocean. this mediation attempt finally led to a comprehensive and lasting peace agreement, the helsinki memorandum of understanding (mou), which is still in effect today. although the two mediation efforts can be regarded as one long process, since hdc started a process of internationalisation and because cmi had the advantage of drawing on the experiences of its predecessor, for the purpose of analysis it is fruitful to look at the two efforts as separate processes in a comparative manner. moment of ripeness? the way the two organisations got involved in the aceh conflict could not be more diverging. for hdc aceh was the first case for the young organisation ever to deal with. its engagement in aceh thus represented its first step onto the international arena and was based on the conclusion of a fact-finding mission to indonesia, with the aim of spotting a possible area of involvement5 (huber 2004: 20). ahtisaari and cmi on the other hand were not actively pursuing involvement in aceh but were contacted by a finnish businessman on behalf of the indonesian government (kingsbury 2006: 15-21). these decisively divergent methods of involvement can already be seen as an indicator for what was to come. moreover, the situation on the ground had changed between 1999/2000 and 2004 and thus hdc and cmi faced slightly different conflict environments. 4 hdc was founded as “henry dunant centre”, later the organisation adopted the official name of “centre for humanitarian dialogue”. the organisation however is still commonly referred to by the acronym of hdc, which will be used in this paper as well. 5 this fact-finding mission took place during the crisis in east timor and was encouraged by debates over a possible break-up of indonesia. hdc decided to engage in the aceh conflict due to an already large number of humanitarian actors involved in east timor. furthermore, in comparison to other conflict torn regions like papua or maluku, in the case of aceh the mediator was able to deal with clear representatives on the side of the rebels. 174 robert m. heiling confl ict resolution in aceh in light of track one and a half diplomacy aseas 1 (2) one prominent theory of conflict research focuses on the question of timing for the involvement of a third party in an intractable conflict. zartman (1991) has brought forward the concept of ripeness, calling for a mediator to recognize the moment of ripeness when starting a mediation initiative. he concludes that a political or military stalemate between conflict parties can constitute such a moment that he labels as mutually hurting stalemate. this originates from the parties’ exhaustion; thus, the lifespan of the conflict is decisive as well. one central aspect of a mutually hurting stalemate is that both conflict parties actually perceive their situation as such a stalemate. a mutually hurting stalemate leads to a moment where both conflict parties realize that they cannot achieve their aims through confrontation anymore. as a result the adversaries develop a “conciliatory mentality” in contrast to a “winning mentality” and decide to enter negotiations (zartman 2000: 226-229). on the characteristics of the conflict parties researchers agree that balanced power relations between them, as well as an internal cohesion of the adversaries, are advantageous contextual factors for mediation of a third party (bercovitch & houston 1996: 20-22). as a result of balanced power relations or power symmetry, similar to the idea of a mutually hurting stalemate, conflict parties will not enter negotiations if they perceive themselves to be in a superior, advantageous position. internal cohesion of conflict parties on the other hand is important to reduce the chance of spoiler activity. the situation prior to hdc involvement in aceh in 1999/2000 can be interpreted as a military stalemate, yet not as a mutually hurting stalemate as defined by zartman. neither of the conflict parties had been able to defeat their adversary militarily, nor had they been able to achieve their political goals through military means. however for gam maintaining a costly confrontation for indonesia already meant success in itself and gam was further encouraged by the emergence of a civil society in aceh, which supported gam in its claim for independence (schulze 2005: 32). thus gam did not perceive its situation in 1999/2000 as a stalemate. the indonesian side on the other hand was marked by retreat, while gam increased its control over the province (schulze 2005: 35-36). the picture that evolves is one of a near power symmetry between the two adversaries. the reasons for the conflict parties entering negotiations in 1999/2000 can be found elsewhere. for gam participating in talks which were mediated by an outside third party meant that it was able to expand its strategy of internationalisation. the negotiations were thus functioning as a tactical interlude, and gam was not ready to compromise on its main goal of independence (mortif 2007: 115). until 2004 the situation, however, had altered. after the collapse of the hdc brokered cessation of hostilities agreement (coha) in 2003, the indonesian side had launched its largest military operation in aceh with the aim of defeating gam once and for all. although not reaching their ultimate goal, the operation had caused severe damage to the military structure of gam (icg 2005b: 4-6). in addition to this military aspect, by 2004 gam found itself isolated 175 on the international stage – in comparison to 2000 (mortif 2007: 119). since the end of the first mediation effort in 2003, the international community withdrew its interest in the aceh case, while in 2000 indonesia had been given extensive international attention due to its shaky transition from suharto rule and the breakaway of east timor. thus, the balance of power between the two opponents had shifted between 2000 and 2004 with a grown asymmetry. while in 2000 the situation was marked by a near symmetry, in 2004 the asymmetry between gam and the indonesian side had grown decisively with gam being in a weaker and defensive position (icg 2005a: 1-2). nevertheless, in both cases the conflict parties decided to engage in mediated negotiations. in addition to the new power relations between the two sides, one of the parties had changed in composition and cohesion. gam remained united throughout both mediation processes, and loyalty to the gam exile government in sweden remained intact despite approaches by the indonesian government to offer honeymoon deals to local gam military commanders (mortif 2007: 122). the indonesian side, however, saw a change in terms of cohesion from 2000 to 2004. indonesian presidents faced a complex situation in jakarta, with outspoken opposition to a non-military approach among their own ranks coming especially from tni. this concerned both president abdurrahman wahid, who endorsed hdc-facilitated negotiations with gam as a means of conflict resolution, as well as his successor megawati sukarnoputri, who set an end to the negotiations mediated by hdc by declaring martial law (aspinall & crouch 2003: 13). the succeeding government of president susilo bambang yudhoyono (commonly referred to as sby) however not only understood the necessity of keeping spoiler elements in jakarta in check, but also succeeded in doing so. by 2004 the control of the government over the indonesian armed forces had increased. thus it can be argued that the sby administration represented a far more unified indonesian actor than the previous governments (mietzner 2006: 51). the situation in 2004 cannot by any means be described as a stalemate between the conflict parties and thus the ripeness model of zartman of a mutually hurting stalemate does not apply. however the situation in 2004 showed a different kind of ripeness, since both sides developed something close to a conciliatory mentality, which zartman sees as a necessary element of ripeness. on the gam side this was caused by its weak military position while on the indonesian side elements within the government favouring the negotiation option were strengthened by the election of the sby administration. even though the tsunami did not play a role prior to the conflict parties’ decisions to enter negotiations (the adversaries actually decided to participate in talks days before the tsunami occurred) this event certainly added a ripeness to the conflict, which did not exist before. the massive response by the international community by providing relief and reconstruction aid, and the involvement of un organisations, international ngos and donor countries, first of all led to an opening-up of the 176 robert m. heiling confl ict resolution in aceh in light of track one and a half diplomacy aseas 1 (2) province. since the conflict posed a serious threat to relief and reconstruction work, donors and international ngos were aware that a resolution of the conflict was crucial. thus this “humanitarian context” put significant pressure on both the indonesian government as well as on gam to resolve the conflict (sukma 2005: 9). even though this was not the driving force in bringing the conflict parties to the negotiating table, as many commentators stated after the signing of the mou6, this context had a major effect during the stage of negotiations by urging the conflict parties to take the upcoming negotiations seriously. both in 1999/2000 and in 2004 the international situation was favourable for mediation efforts. before 1998 criticism against jakarta’s aceh policy only came from human rights organisations, whereas the international community remained indifferent about the conflict. yet with the fall of suharto and the east timor crisis, international attention shifted to aceh (heiduk 2006: 21). this resulted in support for the hdc-facilitated mediation by several countries, in particular the united states. since the early 1990s us-indonesian relations were strained by us congressional restrictions on military cooperation, due to human rights violations committed by tni (sukma 2006: 225). however after 9/11 the us gradually began to re-establish military ties with indonesia. indonesia became a major ally in the war on terror and the us thus asserted less pressure on the government to resolve the aceh case peacefully (martin 2006: 86-88). after the coha agreement failed the international community again withdrew interest in aceh. yet with the occurrence of the tsunami at the end of 2004 international attention nonetheless shifted back to aceh, preparing the ground for a second mediation attempt (heiduk 2006: 21). negotiations under mediator auspices since the concept of ripeness focuses on the timing of mediation entry only, it is necessary to take a closer look at the subsequent stages of conflict resolution. as zartman himself admits “ripeness is only a condition: it is not self-fulfilling or self-implementing. it must be seized, either directly by the parties or, if not, through persuasion of a mediator” (2000: 227). there exist a large number of definitions for the term “mediation”. a general definition by bercovitch describes mediation as “a form of conflict management that involves an outsider, or third party, who is not directly a disputant” and further involves “various forms of assistance and facilitation, short of judicial or coercive steps, designed to help parties reach an acceptable outcome” (1991: 3). writing on the discussion on the controversial question of the need of mediator impartiality, smith has distinguished between two main types of mediation, 6 see for example time magazine: the light that came from darkness. 01.08.2005. 177 depending on the variables coercive potential and the mediator’s stake in the outcome (1994: 446). smith is drawing on fisher and keashly who distinguished mediation or pure mediation, which basically constitutes a facilitating, rather passive form of mediation, from mediation with muscle or power mediation, where the mediator is using carrots and sticks (1991: 33). other distinctions among mediation types, for instance by touval and zartman (1985) or kressel and pruitt (1989), follow similar distinctions, depending on whether mediators try to influence negotiations through less coercive means like the improvement of communication and procedures, or whether mediators use a more directive, power based strategy. the former type can particularly draw on trust and confidence-building measures. both being non-state actors, the mediation efforts by hdc and cmi belong to the group of less-coercive forms of mediation. hdc’s strategy was based on humanitarian aspects, which griffiths described as “new humanitarianism” (martin 2006: 75). the main idea of this strategy was to combine elements of both humanitarian and conflict resolution approaches. this new style of third party intervention is explained best by griffiths’ professional background. prior to building up hdc, griffiths had gained experience in various un organisations such as unicef, and in humanitarian ngos as well as in the british foreign service. griffiths’ style as a mediator was further characterised by his attempt of building up a personal relationship with the representatives of the conflict parties (martin 2006: 85). as a first step, hdc aimed at reaching a ceasefire, decreasing the violence in aceh and thus preparing common ground for the political solution of the conflict based on trustbuilding measures. this approach, however, led way to the exclusion of fundamental political disagreements from the early stages of the mediation process, left only to be addressed at a later occasion. this further caused the two conflict parties to interpret a possible final outcome of the ongoing mediation process according to their own aspirations. while the indonesian government saw the mediation process as a confirmation of its view of aceh remaining an integral part of indonesia, gam regarded it as a track in the direction of independence (djalal & djalal 2006: 70-74). additionally, it seems that hdc’s open, long-term approach, aimed at building trust between the conflict parties, had indeed the opposite effect, providing space for spoilers to act, in particular for groups from both tni and gam that benefited from an ongoing conflict. as mortif points out, the ongoing negotiations from 2000 to 2003 rather “created a legacy of suspicion more than a foundation for enduring peace” (2007: 115). besides hdc’s humanitarian approach, griffiths pursued a strategy of empowerment. this strategy, which aims at strengthening the weaker conflict party, is common yet likewise controversial among mediators (ropers 1995: 20). hdc for instance supported gam in transferring itself into a political party, and organised meetings for gam members with politicians abroad (kay 2003). by doing so hdc was clearly not acting neutral and became 178 robert m. heiling confl ict resolution in aceh in light of track one and a half diplomacy aseas 1 (2) vulnerable to criticism from the indonesian side. thus in the long run hdc lost its very legitimacy as a neutral mediator. on the other hand, ahtisaari and cmi’s approach differed significantly from hdc’s. ahtisaari’s personal mediation approach was very much characterised by his own professional background, which primarily lies in the finnish foreign service, in the united nations and in his former capacity as president of finland. ahtisaari met the negotiators during talks often with brusque directness, but showed clear preferences for state actors as it became obvious at the start of the negotiations. also regarding mediation strategy ahtisaari’s approach differed. instead of preparing the ground for a comprehensive final agreement by first reaching agreements on ceasefire and on cessation of hostilities, ahtisaari made it clear from the first round of the helsinki talks that cmi’s direction was going the opposite direction. this very approach was marked by ahtisaari’s phrase “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed” (kingsbury 2006: 26). the negotiations mediated by cmi were not about reducing violence in aceh alone but were headed toward a complete and final political agreement. additionally they took place in a rapid fashion and were concluded after only six months. although the tsunami of december 2004 had altered the situation in aceh and made a resolution of the conflict even more urgent – thus putting pressure on both parties – it seems that tni operations against gam continued until the helsinki mou was signed by both the indonesian government and gam in august 2005.7 at the beginning of the negotiations it was ahtisaari asserting pressure on gam to give up its claim for independence (kingsbury 2006: 23-27). by doing so, ahtisaari as a mediator left the sphere of neutrality in the course of his engagement, like griffiths before. yet he did not pursue a strategy of empowerment of the weaker party but instead supported indonesia in its insistence on aceh remaining an integral part of the country. in a way he exploited the grown asymmetry to keep negotiations on track. at this point the negotiations nearly collapsed. however ahtisaari did not solely put pressure on gam to give up its claim for independence but chose flexibility in terms of agenda setting. this allowed gam to bring forward the concept of “self-government” (kingsbury 2006: 79-80). by discussing self-government as a political solution for aceh, the negotiators were able to steer the way between “special autonomy”, as initially insisted upon as a precondition by the indonesian government, as well as gam’s wellknown demand for complete independence. in fact, the concept of self-government was to serve as an empty cartridge in which to fill with content only in the course of the negotiations. this allowed gam to develop a type of autonomy that went beyond the highly sensitive term “special autonomy” without using the actual term (kingsbury 2006: 31-45). as a result the former win-loose situation, characteristically for secessionist conflicts, was transferred into a win-win situation. 7 confidential interview, may 2008, banda aceh. 179 negotiators frequently pointed out that the formula of nothing is agreed until everything is agreed developed its very own dynamic during the negotiations. the negotiating teams frequently put issues aside where no common ground could be found in order to focus on others. soon the participants realized that on 70 percent of all political issues, compromises had been reached easily. this had the effect that, when negotiations nearly collapsed just prior to the signing ceremony, gam members agreed that in the face of how much had been achieved in the duration of the talks, it would have been irresponsible to drop the whole effort for just one remaining disagreement.8 moreover, in the case of cmi negotiations, the two conflict parties were engaged in direct talks. these circumstances had the effect of functioning as highly efficient trust building measures during the negotiations. the mediation style of ahtisaari and cmi differed fundamentally in two further ways from the griffiths/ hdc approach. ahtisaari had far more substantial influence on the content-related outcome of the negotiations. at many points ahtisaari refused to discuss issues which were not put on the agenda. on the other hand he is responsible for the inclusion of several other issues. furthermore, at various occasions in the course of the talks ahtisaari threatened to leave the negotiations. this was, for instance, the case at the beginning of the negotiations when the question of autonomy vs. independence constituted a major obstacle for the continuation of the talks (awaluddin 2008). therefore it can be said, that ahtisaari showed a much higher degree of coercive potential as well as stake in the outcome as defined by smith (1994). it can further be argued that in comparison to griffiths and hdc, ahtisaari applied directive strategies, whereas the former were limited to communication and procedural strategies. the fact that a private, non-state mediator like ahtisaari possessed these powers is closely related to a higher political leverage that ahtisaari brought in. implementation of agreements it is particularly important to include the stages of reaching an agreement as well as its subsequent implementation when analyzing conflict resolution beside the conflict parties’ decision to start or participate in negotiations. thus, as a third step, conflict parties have to decide for and perhaps be supported in implementing the signed agreements, for instance through security guarantees provided by a third party (walter 2002). it is the concluding phase of conflict resolution where the weakness of the hdc’s and the strengths of the cmi’s efforts become especially obvious. when the conflict parties signed the cessation of hostilities agreement in early 2003, hdc transformed itself from a pure mediation organisation into an 8 interview with gam negotiators bakhtiar abdullah and nur djuli, may 2008, banda aceh. 180 robert m. heiling confl ict resolution in aceh in light of track one and a half diplomacy aseas 1 (2) organisation responsible for implementation and related security issues. apart from problems deriving from human resource difficulties, the institutions that were built up in accordance with the implementation plan, in particular the joint security committee (jsc), were lacking the enforcing mechanisms to support the implementation of the coha. consequently, after more than three years of negotiations and the signing of two ceasefire deals, as well as an agreement which foresaw the starting of a political dialogue, the hdc mediation effort broke down in the end. a structural weakness of the jsc combined with an increasingly powerful role of spoilers within the ranks of the conflict parties caused the collapse (huber 2004: 3040). in the case of the ahtisaari/cmi engagement on the other hand, the mediator was able to commit the european union (eu) to monitor the implementation of the helsinki mou. among eu member states the question of an eventual european involvement was controversial due to the risky nature of peace processes and because of the minor importance of the aceh conflict for the eu. “but the ‘tsunami effect’, the desire for the eu to play a political role, institutional competition and the persuasive power of ahtisaari translated into new political momentum”, says eu policy director antje herrberg from cmi (herrberg 2008). with the quick commissioning of the eu-led aceh monitoring mission (amm) a vacuum between the signing of the mou and the implementation of its security-related regulations was avoided. international and local observers agree upon regarding amm as highly successful, especially concerning its responsibilities on decommissioning and redeployment of gam and tni troops. in comparison to the hdc’s implementation structures, amm also provided far stronger institutions and brought in much higher political leverage in this highly sensitive and thus equally important concluding phase of conflict resolution. furthermore amm together with cmi functioned as the supreme authority in a case of dispute, unlike in the case of hdc where a final authority was missing. this condition led to the avoidance of deadlocks on disputes between the conflict parties in the stage of implementation (schulze 2007). mediator involvement as a process of track one and a half diplomacy further distinctions of mediation types focus on the level where mediation takes place, whether among official state or private actors. according to mcdonald joseph montville coined the term track two diplomacy in 1982 in order to define the latter form.9 track two diplomacy usually refers to an informal approach which aims at dealing with the underlying roots of conflict. official state diplomacy on the other hand is called track one. mapendere 9 see http://imtd.org/cgi-bin/imtd.cgi?page=msg (retrieved on 08.06.2008). 181 has elaborated on the concept of track one and a half diplomacy10, which was originally brought forward by susan a. naan, describing a mode in between track one, comprised of official actors, and track two diplomacy. he defines track 1.5 diplomacy as “peacemaking activities undertaken by non-political third parties between high political representatives of warring groups, or governments” (mapendre 2000: 66). track 1.5 diplomacy is supposed to combine the positive aspects which both track one and track two diplomacy have to offer. in general it is applied by private, unofficial, third party actors who provide connections to the track one level and use these connections in the course of their engagement. according to mapendre advantages of track 1.5 diplomacy are to be able to “fill the gap between the two tracks” providing “diplomatic agility” and facilitating communication where no communication links exist. last but not least track 1.5 diplomacy can give leaders an “honourable way out of their problems” since a mediator operating in a track 1.5 sphere brings in prominence and trustworthiness while lacking real political power (mapendre 2000: 72-73). as an example for an actor, mapendre mentions the carter center, which describes itself as an organisation working in the sphere of track 1.5 diplomacy. however, beside mapendre’s definition, others see track 1.5 diplomacy as a process that distinguishes itself from track one diplomacy merely by its informal character, not by the type of mediator (see berghof foundation for peace support 2007). in the course of this analysis, nonetheless, we shall draw on mapendre’s definition. the two mediation efforts in aceh both fit under the label of track 1.5 diplomacy. both were conducted by a private third actor and both initiatives utilised connections to track one actors during the mediation process. apart from this common ground, the two efforts differed decisively concerning their usage of track one contacts for the sake of the peace process. hdc certainly had backing from the international community. apart from financial support, this became especially obvious through the engagement of prominent outside experts in 2001, the so-called three wise men. the main purpose of their involvement was to give political leverage to hdc, which, as it was becoming more and more obvious, the young organisation was lacking. as griffiths however admits it was not the organisation itself suggesting the involvement of the three wise men, but the us state department (martin 2006: 85-86). despite the fact that hdc received support by the international community and by the us, this very example shows that it was not hdc making usage of their contacts to the track one level, but the organisation being driven by the interests of a state actor. ahtisaari and cmi by contrast were able to use their contacts to official actors actively and at the right moment in time. cmi stayed in close contact with eu representatives from an early stage of the negotiations on. the eu further began to fund the negotiations itself. by bringing in the eu to monitor the implementation of the helsinki mou, ahtisaari secured 10 due to practical reasons the notation “track 1.5” will be used in this paper. 182 robert m. heiling confl ict resolution in aceh in light of track one and a half diplomacy aseas 1 (2) an efficient way of providing security guarantees for the conflict parties. by agreeing on an eu led monitoring mission as early as halfway during the talks, the leverage of the mediator himself was strengthened in the process of negotiations. thus, besides the primary function of amm to monitor the implementation of the agreement, the prospect of an eu led mission also supported the mediator in the course of the negotiations. in the case of hdc, a relatively small and inexperienced ngo was responsible for the whole process of conflict resolution: from starting the negotiations to reaching agreements to finally implementing them. in the case of cmi a different kind of (and as it seems the right kind of) actor was in charge at all three stages. during the prelude to negotiations one willing conflict party, the indonesian government with the support of private citizens was the driving force. the fact that one of the conflict parties initiated the peace talks can be interpreted as a sign of sincerity of this particular actor. the negotiations then were mediated under auspices of an experienced, influential and aspiring private mediator, ahtisaari and cmi. in light of the dramatic occurrence of the tsunami, talks mediated by a private and prominent mediator like ahtisaari presented the perfect opportunity for both conflict parties to solve the conflict without losing face. besides only an informal actor would have been able provide the discrete environment for talks necessary at this stage of conflict resolution. finally, implementation of the outcome of the negotiations was monitored by an external regional body, the european union, being a track one actor and therefore providing capacity, essential political leverage and necessary security guarantees. as the previous attempts by hdc have shown, the involvement of a track one actor at the final period of conflict resolution seems to be a highly precious and most necessary condition for succeeding in implementing a reached peace agreement. conclusions contextual factors were crucial in preparing the ground for a possible mediation initiative in 2004. on the one hand the conflict showed internal ripeness already prior to the tsunami, such as governmental change on the indonesian side. alongside a grown power asymmetry between the conflict parties that proved favourable for mediation, despite the common assumption that an asymmetry has the opposite effect. on the other hand, by shifting attention of the international community to the conflict after the occurrence of the tsunami, the conflict showed international ripeness as well. beside these significant contextual factors however, procedural factors played a major role in successfully reaching an agreement and in implementing it. these procedural factors are comprised of ahtisaari‘s successful mediation 183 style, consisting of the nothing is agreed until everything is agreed formula as well as of applying directive strategies in the course of the negotiation, by asserting pressure on the conflict parties, in particular the weaker one. they are further comprised of ahtisaari’s access to influential track one actors, which were ready to guard the implementation of the agreement reached under cmi mediated negotiations. others have already elaborated on implications of the successful resolution of the aceh conflict. the former amm head of mission pieter feith has pointed to the eu’s positive role opening a new dimension of effective european common foreign and security policy (feith 2007). mortif (2007) on the other side has highlighted the implications of the peaceful resolution of the conflict for the process of democratisation in indonesia. yet the author believes that the success in aceh should cause further incitement concerning the role of mediators. due to its successful outcome, ahtisaari and cmi’s involvement in aceh, in partnership with other involved third party actors, in particular the european union, can be regarded as an interesting example of a track one and a half mediation and implementation process. both track one and informal tools have been applied at the right stage of the peace process and thus full use was made of all the advantages which formal and informal diplomacy have to offer. one should elaborate further on the question of whether the partnership concept as conducted successfully in aceh, between a private organisation like cmi and an official actor like the eu, sharing responsibility in the course of conflict resolution, can be adapted and applied on similar conflicts. references aspinall, e. 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(2005). resolving the aceh conflict: the helsinki peace agreement. background paper 4a. csis jakarta. sukma, r. (2006). indonesia and the tsunami: responses and foreign policy implications. australian journal of international affairs 60 (2), 213-228. touval, s. & zartman w. i. (1985). introduction: mediation in theory. in touval, s. & zartman w. i. (eds.), international mediation in theory and practice, (pp. 7-20) boulder: westview press. walter, b. (2002). re-conceptualizing conflict resolution as a three-stage process. international negotiation 7, 299-311. zartman, w. i. (1991). conflict reduction. prevention, management and resolution. in deng, f. m. & zartman, w. i. (eds.), conflict resolution in africa, (pp. 299-319). washington: brookings institution. zartman, w. i. (2000). ripeness: the hurting stalemate and beyond. in stern, p. & druckman, d. (eds.), international conflict resolution after the cold war, (pp. 225-250). washington: national academy press. 186 robert m. heiling confl ict resolution in aceh in light of track one and a half diplomacy aseas 2-2 regional cooperation efforts in the mekong river basin:mitigating river-related security threats and promoting regional management aseas 2 (2) aktuelle südostasienforschung / current research on south-east asia regional cooperation efforts in the mekong river basin: mitigating river-related security threats and promoting regional development susanne schmeier1 berlin graduate school of transnational studies at the hertie school of governance, germany aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften / austrian journal of south-east asian studies seas gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften / society for south-east asian studies www.seas.at the development of international rivers is often perceived as leading to confl icts or even water wars. however, as the development of the mekong river shows, cooperation has not only prevailed in the last decades, but river basin organizations (rbos), established to mitigate river-related confl icts and/or develop the river basin, have also contributed to the emergence of more general cooperation structures, mainly by creating spill-over eff ects in other issue-areas, bringing cooperation to policy fi elds beyond the river itself. this article assesses the contribution of the mekong river commission (mrc) and the greater mekong sub-region (gms) to the sustainable development of the mekong region as well as to the promotion of regional cooperation in mainland south-east asia in general. keywords: environmental security, shared natural resources, international rivers, mekong river basin, river basin organizations die entwicklung grenzüberschreitender flüsse wird oft mit konfl ikten oder gar kriegen um wasser assoziiert. wie jedoch die entwicklung im mekong-becken zeigt, waren die vergangenen jahrzehnte nicht nur von kooperation gezeichnet, sondern flussbeckenorganisationen konnten außerdem dazu beitragen, weitreichendere kooperationsstrukturen zu entwickeln, die sich auf andere politikfelder ausdehnen. dieser artikel beschäftigt sich mit dem beitrag der mekong river commission (mrc) und der greater mekong sub-region (gms) zur nachhaltigen entwicklung in der mekong region sowie zur förderung allgemeiner regionaler kooperation im festländischen südostasien. schlagworte: umweltsicherheit, gemeinsame natürliche ressourcen, internationale flüsse, mekong-einzugsgebiet, flussbeckenorganisationen 1 susanne schmeier is a phd candidate at the berlin graduate school for transnational studies at the hertie school of governance (hsog) in berlin, germany. her research focuses on international environmental politics, transboundary natural resources and international rivers, particularly in south-east asia. contact: schmeier@transnationalstudies. eu 28 aseas 2 (2) susanne schmeier regional cooperation eff orts in the mekong river basin 1. introduction while the political map of the world is structured according to nation states, the earth is composed of ecosystems, not necessarily matching with national boundaries. this holds particularly true for international rivers. the use of a river by one riparian necessarily affects the opportunities of other riparians, creating externalities or common pool resources situations leading to international collective action problems. since international rivers provide 60 percent of the world’s freshwater flow and their basins cover 45 percent of the world’s surface, inhabiting 40 percent of its population (wolf, 2004, p. 2), the emergence of opposing interests and strategies is likely. environmental security approaches (homer-dixon, 1991, homer-dixon, 1994; bächler, böge, klötzli, libiszweski, & spillmann, 1996; gleditsch, 1998; carius & lietzmann, 1999) have emphasized the strong link between environmental degradation and conflicts. they argue that increasing stress on natural resources and the environment is likely to lead to an intensification of collective action problems, possibly responded by vulnerable states through conflict or even war. especially in the early 1990s, water was perceived as one of the resources the most prone to conflict, with various authors forecasting the emergence of water wars (starr, 1991; bulloch & darwish, 1993; frey, 1993; gleick, 1996; butts, 1997). although most of the water war studies focus on the middle east, the mekong river basin (mrb) has also often been referred to as a basin likely to experience major conflicts (wolf, yoffe, & giordano, 2003). however, reality in international basins has shown that collective action problems are more likely to serve as incentives for cooperation, particularly when riparian states realize that cooperation can generate benefits and lead to positive-sum-games: out of the 1832 events coded by the transboundary freshwater dispute database (tfdd)2 for the second half of the twentieth century, 1228 have been cooperative. and out of the remaining 604 conflictive events, only 37 involved any form of violence, all of them below the threshold of war (wolf, 1998; wolf et.al., 2003). this also holds true for the mekong river basin, where cooperation on river-related issues has prevailed 2 the tfdd events database coded every event on international rivers since the late 1940s. additionally, the level of conflict or cooperation has been measured on the basis of so-called “basins-at-risk”-intensity values, ranging from -7 (highest level of conflict, i.e., war) to 7 (highest level of cooperation, i.e., voluntary merging of countries due to water) (see tfdd, n.d.; wolf et.al., 2003). 29 aseas 2 (2) in the last decades. international institutions play an important role in turning water-related conflicts into cooperation, with the mekong river commission (mrc) and, although to a smaller extent, the greater mekong sub-region (gms) being the most important ones in mainland south-east asia. besides the direct contribution to the resolution of river-related conflicts, they advance regional cooperation in more general terms by creating spill-over effects in other issue-areas and extending cooperation beyond the river. thereby, spill-over effects play a decisive role: originally developed by neofunctionalist theories of regional integration (haas, 1980), the more general concept of spill-over describes the phenomenon that increased cooperation in one specific policy field leads to the emergence of more cooperation in other issue-areas as well. the creation of interdependencies and increased regional cooperation or even integration will then limit the opportunities for unilateral actions and the likelihood of conflict. the main question of this paper focuses on whether and to what extent riverrelated collective action problems in the mrb are cooperatively managed through river basin organizations (rbos) and, more importantly, whether and to what extent they have contributed to regional cooperation beyond the river, enhancing socioeconomic development and political stability. the paper is structured as follows: the first part introduces the different riparians’ interests in developing the mrb and the potentially arising conflicts; the following part focuses on existing institutionalized cooperation efforts, namely mrc and gms. 2. conflict and cooperation in the mekong river basin running through mainland south-east asia for 4,900 km, the mekong river is the region’s largest waterway, with a catchment area of more than 800,000 km2 in six riparian states (see fig. 1). it can be divided into the upper mekong (mainly the chinese river stretch and the lao-myanmar border stretch), and the lower mekong basin between laos and the river’s mouth. hitherto, the river is largely undeveloped, particularly if compared to other large river basins in the world. only since the 1990s, riparian states have increasingly recognized the mekong as a great potential for their socioeconomic development (mrc, 30 aseas 2 (2) susanne schmeier regional cooperation efforts in the mekong river basin 2002, p. 7; menniken, 2006, p. 14): the river is the most important resource for irrigation (with agriculture accounting for 85 percent of the entire river use) in a region largely depending on (irrigated) agriculture for food production and exports. it is essential for fisheries, significantly contributing to the daily protein needs of riparian communities and to riparian states’ exports (with an average contribution to the gdp of 5 percent). moreover, fisheries and agriculture employ nearly 75 percent of the population in the lower mekong basin and contribute to growth, development and the reduction of poverty. and the river is increasingly important for industrial and household purposes, particularly in fast industrializing and urbanizing riparian states such as china, thailand and vietnam. the generation of hydropower is another important use, providing electricity for the rapidly growing riparians. and the mekong – although not entirely navigable – is an important transport route, especially in those riparian countries still lacking sufficiently developed railway or road networks. 31 fig. 1: map “the mekong basin and its riparian countries” aseas 2 (2) 2.1. riparian states’ interests – between river development and protection 2.1.1. china china is the most upstream state and controls half of the river’s length. its interests in exploiting the mekong and its resources are all aimed at fostering the country’s socioeconomic development: first, the central government wishes to develop the southwestern provinces tibet and yunnan, which has so far not experienced the same levels of economic growth as the east, by integrating their markets with their southeast asian neighbors. the western regional development plan (2000) emphasizes the importance of links between china and the other mekong riparians, with the mekong acting as a main transport axis. an ‘agreement on commercial navigation on the mekong-lancang river’ has been signed with myanmar, thailand and laos in 2000, aiming at improving the navigability of the upper stretches of the river. the first passenger connection between thailand and china was opened in june 2006 by a chinese company (“china to thailand,” 2006). the first ships transporting oil to the chinese port of simao followed in december 2006 (“sparks fly,” 2007). since navigability is still restricted, the chinese government is working with its neighbors on more projects, aiming at blasting more rapids and falls and creating a transport route on the entire length of the river. china furthermore has an ever-growing need for hydropower: the government aims at developing a cascade of at least eight dams, which are able to generate electricity for yunnan’s future economic development and for electricity exports to eastern provinces and south-east asian neighbors (especially thailand and vietnam). while the first dams were constructed in the 1980s (starting with the manwan dam in 1984, operational in 1993), hydropower activities increased enormously in recent years. in addition, china invests in other mekong riparians’ hydropower facilities (particularly myanmar, laos and cambodia). due to its powerful upstream position, china’s salience and vulnerability to the river are relatively low. the country therefore has little interest in engaging in regional river basin management efforts, especially if the latter imply the establishment of binding principles – a policy the chinese government opposes altogether. this 32 aseas 2 (2) susanne schmeier regional cooperation efforts in the mekong river basin has become obvious when china was one of only three states rejecting the 1997 un convention on the non-navigational use of transboundary watercourses. still, china has increased its engagement in mekong-related cooperation in an informal and market-driven form. as such, china is increasingly involved in the gms not only as a participant but also as a donor. china has become an important investor in other mekong riparian countries, particularly in laos, where it invests in the nam mang iii dam and is willing to provide financial guarantees for the nam theun ii project in case of the world bank pulling out. overall, the chinese policy towards the other mekong riparians is not focused solely on natural resources, but is embedded in a more general foreign policy strategy, being more cooperative than a pure focus on the river and its resources might suggest. therefore, the chinese position towards downstream mekong riparians can only be understood in the context of the country’s general foreign policy strategy and its increasing rapprochement towards its south-east asian neighbors, namely in order to (re-)establish its regional hegemony and its economic relations (hilpert et.al., 2005, pp. 31-35; shambaugh, 2005; möller, 2006). since china opposes any form of binding rules that would restrict its river development, but has realized the benefits of good relations with its neighboring countries and with river basin management initiatives, the future balance of china’s resources needs and the importance it attributes to its relations with neighboring states will, therefore, be decisive for the mekong’s future development. 2.1.2. myanmar the mekong is only a border river for myanmar with laos for approximately 200 km. so far, the country has shown little interest in developing its stretch of the river and, in fact, lacks the capacity to undertake any major development projects. nevertheless, the country’s large hydropower potential on the mekong has received the interest of political leaders and external investors, particularly from china and thailand. first efforts have been undertaken to develop myanmar’s hydropower potential, mainly as a source of income for the internationally isolated military government. in 2002, the department of hydroelectric power was established within the ministry of energy which has so far identified 268 potential sites for dams (graecen & palettu, 33 aseas 2 (2) 2007, p. 105). in 1997 and 2005, myanmar signed memorandums of understanding with thailand on the potential export of electricity. in the coming years, large-scale projects might be set up, which would affect both downstream riparians as well as the myanmar population, namely since the government has been known for violently relocating local communities without any compensation. being internationally isolated, myanmar does not play an important role in regional cooperation. however, the country depends on china’s development aid and economic cooperation (especially in the area of gems and timber exploitation). therefore, it has “approached the rank of a sino satellite” (stoett, 2005, p. 17) and is unlikely to oppose any chinese development projects or to join further downstream states’ efforts in establishing regional mechanisms to restrict unilateral resource exploitation. 2.1.3. laos laos is one of the least developed countries in the region and – with 95 percent of its territory in the mekong basin – largely depends on the mekong. fishery and agriculture account for more than 52 percent of the country’s gdp, contribute more than 40 percent to its foreign currency income and provide employment opportunities for more than 85 percent of the population (öjendal, 2000, p. 134; molle, 2007, p. 13). the government therefore aims to develop so far non-existent irrigation schemes and using the river’s water for potentially increasing industrial and household demands. in addition, land-locked laos relies on the mekong as an axis of transport. hydropower is by far the most important mekong resource laos is interested in. electricity is one of the main export goods – particularly to thailand, which already imports 2 percent of its total electricity from laos and has signed new treaties guaranteeing electricity supply at least until 2017 (graecen & palettu, 2007, p. 86). according to this strategy, the lao government is engaged in further developing large-scale projects. to become the “battery of southeast asia”, existing hydropower facilities (the nam ngum, xeset, theun hinboun, hoay ho and nam leuk dams) will be complemented by more dams, with at least 28 projects being planned until 2010, seven of them directly on the mainstream (gajaseni, heal, & edwards-jones, 2006, pp. 53-55; herling, 2006, p. 23; middleton, garcia, & foran, 2009, pp. 31-36). along with increa34 aseas 2 (2) susanne schmeier regional cooperation efforts in the mekong river basin sing activity in the hydropower sector, new investors from thailand, china, russia, vietnam and malaysia push into laos. for example, chinese companies are currently involved in two hydropower projects under construction, vietnamese companies participate in feasibility studies on the luang prabang dam and a malaysian company signed an agreement for project development on the don sahong dam. since laos fears dependency from thailand, it welcomes new investors as yet another means to counter dependency besides the diversification of exports towards china and vietnam. such projects are likely to create various adverse effects on more downstream lao regions (which already suffer from the effects of chinese dams) and on cambodia and vietnam. this has also called the attention of ngos (most recently against the nam theun ii project), with large protests leading as far as international donors reconsidering their engagement in the projects, which has traditionally been very high and has helped the country to justify its intensive river development projects regionally and internationally. since laos is characterized by an abundance of unexploited water resources and a large contribution to the river’s flow, it has a crucial position in the mekong’s future development. its position towards regional structures is ambiguous: while it is likely to be negatively affected by chinese developments on the mekong, it depends on its own hydropower projects for socioeconomic development and is therefore unlikely to join any efforts to regulate the river’s use in a more binding way. laos acknowledges the importance of regional cooperation mechanisms – particularly for their financial contribution to development projects and their role in increasing regional trade and development – but is neither completely willing nor capable to comply with their requirements. 2.1.4. thailand although one third of the country is situated in the mrb, the mekong has – other than the chao praya – never played an important role in the country’s history. only recently, the mekong’s great potential for developing the country’s dry and underdeveloped northeast and for guaranteeing water supply to bangkok has been realized: large irrigation projects in the isaan region and initiatives to transfer water 35 aseas 2 (2) to bangkok have been designed in the last years. yet, political and economic turmoil has prevented implementation so far. once political stability and economic growth will return to the country, there could be a renaissance of those plans, increasing conflict potential in the region. furthermore, thailand needs to ensure its growing demand for electricity (expected to double until 2021; middleton et.al., 2009, p. 24). since domestic hydropower opportunities have either been already exploited or massive protests from the civil society impede further developments, thailand is interested in supporting the development of hydropower facilities in neighboring countries, especially in laos and china. with both countries memorandums of understanding have been signed on electricity trade. moreover, thailand is interested in increasing its trade and investment ties with neighboring countries by using the mekong as its “gate to indochina”: in the search for new markets for thai export products, new sources for natural resources, new opportunities for thai border towns in the country’s northern part and new investment opportunities for thai companies, thailand actively promotes further economic integration among riparians (masviriyakul, 2004, pp. 308-310). this is mainly done through infrastructure development (i.e. funding of mekong bridges and the improvement of roads and ports) in neighboring countries. however, recent economic and political instabilities have slowed down thai engagement. economic integration, together with security cooperation, is, thus, the main interest of thailand, making issues beyond the river the most likely to push thailand towards a more cooperative behavior. however, thailand has little interest to further institutionalize regional cooperation, especially if they established more binding water use principles or even veto rights for downstream countries. in this context, thailand favors the integration of china into regional institutions, hoping to build coalitions against potential efforts of downstream countries to prevent large-scale development upstream. 2.1.5. cambodia with more than 85 percent of its territory in the mekong basin, cambodia is one of the most vulnerable countries. the river and its resources are not only decisive for the living of riparian communities, but also provide development opportunities 36 aseas 2 (2) susanne schmeier regional cooperation efforts in the mekong river basin for the entire country, which is still struggling with the consequences of war, the reestablishment of a democratic system, and a high dependence on external aid. agriculture is the country’s main economic sector – accounting for more than 50% percent of its gdp and employing more than 90 percent of the population – with the mekong and the tonle sap providing most of the water. as irrigation systems are largely missing or have been destroyed in years of conflict, the cambodian government aims at developing new irrigation schemes in the next years. in addition, fishery is important for the food security of local communities as well as for exports. moreover, the mekong is an important transport route in a country with an insufficient road. in addition, the development of tourism – regarded as one of the main new sources of income – largely draws from the mekong. cambodia also aims to develop its own hydropower facilities, although its capacities are relatively limited and largely found on mekong tributaries. while the most important project, the sambor falls dam, financed by thai, malaysian and chinese investors, has received much attention, most other projects are likely to focus on domestic supply only, thus being relatively small in scale (graecen & palettu, 2007, p. 110). overall, cambodia’s dependence on the river explains its large interest in sustainable river development, with regional cooperation structures being perceived as helpful. moreover, the cambodian government hopes to further integrate the country in regional cooperation structures which might foster the economic development or even provide financial and technical resources for development projects. cambodia fosters the establishment of more directly river-related cooperation initiatives within the mrc, for example by hosting the mrc flood management and mitigation program’s regional flood centre and the mrc fisheries program. still, cambodia lacks the means and capacities to actively engage in the promotion of joint river basin management or to even push for more binding rules. 2.1.6. vietnam as the most downstream riparian, vietnam is extremely vulnerable to upstream river development activities. and although only 20 percent of the country lie within the mekong basin, it is of great importance for vietnam’s overall development. while only 25 percent of the population lives in the mekong basin, the region produces 37 aseas 2 (2) 50 percent of all the country’s agricultural products, including 80 percent of the country’s rice crops and 90 percent of its rice exports, and contributes 50 percent to its seafood exports (backer, 2007, p. 43). in order to do so, it is dependent on sufficient water flow from upstream to guarantee irrigation and to prevent salinity intrusion from the south china sea. additionally, severe floods have caused significant damage in recent years and are likely to worsen as a consequence of global climate change, requiring elaborated flood monitoring and management. therefore, vietnam has a high interest in regional river basin management, particularly through data exchange, joint flood protection and the establishment of binding rules on water quantity and quality. additionally, vietnam perceives regional cooperation initiatives as means of its regional foreign policy strategy, focusing on increased regional integration in political and economic terms. on the other hand, vietnam also has an interest in developing further hydropower facilities (in addition to the already existing drayling and yali dams on mekong tributaries), especially to provide electricity to the economically growing region around ho chi minh city. since the country’s electricity demand will quadruple until 2015 (middleton et. al., 2009, p. 24), the prime minister announced in the national strategy for electricity in 2004 (vietnamese prime minister’s decision 677/2004/qd-ttg; see dan sinh nguyen vo, 2008), that vietnam will further increase its hydropower capacity from 39 percent in 2006 to 62 percent in 2020. therefore, another 17 projects are currently in the planning stage. most of them are likely to affect cambodia, which lies downstream to the vietnamese central highlands. along with other investors, the asian development bank (adb) and the world bank have made important contributions to those projects. besides dams in the central highland, vietnam also finances and builds projects in laos and cambodia which, besides the long-term supply of electricity, are also thought to increase the competitiveness of vietnamese construction companies. moreover, vietnam buys electricity from chinese mekong hydropower plants, only being possible through the second power grid developed through the gms (hensengerth, 2008, p. 117). however, in doing so, vietnam indirectly supports projects it suffers from. the high dependence of most riparian states and the importance of the river and its resources for their socioeconomic development and, thus, for their overall national security has turned the mekong into a central issue of regional politics – far 38 aseas 2 (2) susanne schmeier regional cooperation efforts in the mekong river basin beyond river basin management. hence, “the mekong is an inescapable variable in 39 source: own compilation table 1: riparian interests main interests in river development • development of yunnan province (western regional development plan) • hydropower generation (cascade on mainstream and tributaries) • improvement of river navigability (navigation between simao and luang prabang) • hydropower generation (sale to thailand and china), but not yet developed • hydropower generation (for sale to thailand, china and vietnam) • integration into region (through infrastructure, growth triangles) with help of regional bodies • fishery/irrigation potential of mekong decisive for population and development • water diversion for irrigation/ agriculture, water supply in bangkok • hydropower generation and purchase of electricity (from laos) • avoiding major environmental degradation • maintenance of water flow and water level in tonle sap region guaranteeing fishery, agriculture, navigation, etc. • hydropower (with aim to export to thailand and to substitute oil imports), but not yet developed • hydropower generation in upper highlands on mekong tributaries • irrigation in mekong delta (including avoiding saltwater intrusion) and aquaculture country china myanmar laos thailand cambodia vietnam strategic position on the river low salience/ upstream hegemon low salience/ weak/ low capacity high salience/ low capacity limited salience/ midstream power high salience/ low capacity high salience/ downstream power foreign policy strategy towards the region/mekong strategy of „peaceful development“, integration into regional cooperation networks for economic benefits (but no willingness to surrender to supra-national decisions), problematic relations to vietnam, rather good relations to thailand international isolation under military government, no interest in integration into regional networks integration into regional cooperation network that provides major economic benefits (but still limited opening), traditionally good relations with vietnam, strong relations to cambodia, improving relations to china, conflictive relations with thailand good relations with neighbors and strong asean (but, foreign policy disrupted due to recent domestic political developments), favorable perception of china, tight relations to myanmar, complicated relations with cambodia, laos, and vietnam integration into regional cooperation networks for the country‘s socioeconomic development/reconstruction after civil war; however, difficult relations to vietnam and thailand regional cooperation in economic terms/integration into asean (balance chinese influence), difficult relations with china (and cambodia), strong relations with laos, competition with thailand over regional lower mekong hegemony aseas 2 (2) the foreign policy planning of all southeast asian countries” (stoett, 2005, p. 169). existing and emerging collective action problems in the river basin are, therefore, often thought to lead to conflicts among riparian states. this will be elaborated in the following chapter. 2.2. conflict or cooperation as the previous sections have demonstrated, the mrb is characterized by a complex structure of interests and strategies. therefore, international collective action problems are present, which – according to proponents of environmental security and water-war concepts – can lead to conflicts among riparian states. the specific upstream-downstream structure, with china as an upstream hegemon, tends to intensify existing problems, since upstream unilateral development projects are difficult to obviate. moreover, the fact that competition for resources is not related to geophysical scarcity but rather to geopolitical and socioeconomic scarcities (that is, situations in which the opportunities of use of otherwise abundant resources by further downstream states are significantly reduced due to political power constellations and/or unequally distributed developments; gleick, 1996, p. 6) tends to increase the conflict-conduciveness of river-related collective action problems. the development of hydropower projects, one of the most contested issues in the basin, illustrates this perfectly: with a capacity of 200,000 million kw/year in the lower mekong basin and 300,000 million kw/year in china (dinar, dinar, mccaffrey, & mckinney, 2007, p. 237), hydropower provides great development opportunities for the region. especially upstream countries are interested in exploiting this potential for their development. on the other hand, the development of large hydropower projects has severe impacts on the river. as the manwan and dachaoshan dams in china have already made clear, large dams can affect the river’s flow, reduce the availability of water for irrigation and the content of sediments, cause severe floods and droughts, and negatively impact on fish populations. especially downstream states are affected, potentially being restricted in their development opportunities and, hence, their national security perception. moreover, other factors can further increase the likelihood of conflict in shared basins. among them, economic asymmetries and problematic relations between ri40 aseas 2 (2) susanne schmeier regional cooperation efforts in the mekong river basin parian states in issues other than water have a particularly high likelihood of adding fuel to existing flames (wolf, 2006, p. 25). although all riparian states (with the exception of myanmar) have experienced exceptionally high gdp growth rates in the last years, ranging from 4.8 percent in thailand to 13 percent in china in 2007, their levels of development differ highly. despite thailand’s suffering from an economic downturn in the last decade, it is still the most advanced country with a gdp per capita of 3,400 usd in 2007 and a high level of human development. cambodia and laos, on the other hand, recently experienced high growth rates, but still lack basic human development. vietnam managed to translate its high growth rates into a broader development and the reduction of poverty, nevertheless, far more has to be done. similar findings hold true for yunnan, which – despite the enormous growth rates of china – still struggles with various insufficiencies in terms of development, not least due to its relative marginalization in china (world bank, 2009). moreover, those countries compete on international markets, with economic competition outnumbering complementarities among them. in addition, relations between the different riparian states are often problematic. rooted in the 1000-year long chinese occupation of vietnam and ideological differences related to the sino-soviet conflict in the 1960s and 1970s and the chinese support to cambodian khmer rouge during the vietnamese occupation of cambodia 1979 to 1989, vietnam remains suspicious of any chinese attempts to re-establish regional hegemony. although all land border issues could be solved in 2008, disputed territories in the gulf of tonkin and the south china sea remain a major challenge. still, china is increasingly interested in good relations to its south-east asian neighbors and has recognized vietnam as a key player. vietnam also has complicated relations to cambodia, mainly due to the vietnamese occupation and the increasing vietnamese influence in cambodia. however, significant improvements could be made in recent years, particularly due to increased economic cooperation and a joint perception of being the mekong’s most downstream states. vietnam and thailand, being old rivals in the region and having experienced major conflicts in the 1970s and 1980s, mainly following the vietnamese invasion in cambodia and the thai support to the khmer rouge, have different perceptions concerning the regional order in mainland south-east asia, occasionally producing irritations in their relations (hensengerth, 2008). the very different positions on the mekong’s development are likely to deterio41 aseas 2 (2) rate this problem, possibly leading to “the most intense rivalry” in the mekong basin (dinar et. al., 2007, p. 239). another major conflict line is found between thailand and laos. following historic confrontations due to the thai support to the us while laos was following a communist way, relations between the two countries today are characterized by unresolved border issues (despite the establishment of a border commission in 1997) that have led to occasional outbreaks of violence (with a short war erupting in the 1980s on border and refugee issues). moreover, the increasing lao economic dependence on thailand has become an issue of conflict, particularly as thailand largely benefits from the purchase of natural resources and electricity from laos. unresolved border issues also characterize the relations between thailand and cambodia, particularly in the northwest of cambodia where borders remain contested despite the establishment of a border commission in 2000. this led to occasional outbreaks of violence, particularly in the area of the preah vihear temple, where gunfire was exchanged in 2008. additionally, thai business communities have been regularly accused to be involved in the (illegal) exploitation of natural resources and the promotion of gambling and sex labor in cambodia. relations imploded in 2003, when cambodian demonstrators attacked the thai embassy and thai businesses in phnom penh. despite those adverse circumstances cooperation prevailed in the last decades. not only did the number of interactions among the mekong’s riparian states increase in general, but cooperative events also increased far more than conflictive ones, the latter only showing a very low level of conflict, usually in the form of verbally expressed disagreement (see table 2). thus, cooperation has clearly dominated the mrb. similar to what general findings on water conflict and cooperation suggest (wolf, 1998; wolf et. al., 2003), water has helped to provide incentives for cooperation even in times of hostile relations between riparian states (for example, cooperation on electricity export from laos to thailand prevailed despite ideological differences in the 1970s and 1980s). with institutional capacity in a river basin being a decisive variable for turning water-related collective action problems into conflict or cooperation (wolf et. al., 2003, p. 43), regional organizations have played a decisive role. 42 aseas 2 (2) susanne schmeier regional cooperation efforts in the mekong river basin 3. institutionalized cooperation efforts in the mekong river basin as early as the 1950s, joint river basin management efforts developed in the mrb, particularly through initiatives of the us and un economic commission for asia and the far east (un-ecafe). although those two actors had different positions on how regional cooperation in mainland south-east asia should look like – with the us being led by a functionalist logic of regionalism and the idea of pushing back communism, preferring a light and little institutionalized way, and un-ecafe opting for a more tightly knit and binding network – river basin management was seen as “one of the major means of accomplishing economic growth and social change” (sewell & white, 1966, p. 5). in line with general development concepts of the 1950s and 1960s, the mekong committee (mc), founded in 1957, had the task to “promote, coordinate, supervise and control the planning and investigation of water resources development projects” (statute of the committee). in its early years, the mc was very active in fulfilling those high expectations, undertaking several studies on the opportunities to exploit the mekong in order to foster growth. the indicative basin plan (1970) proposed a strategy for more development projects until the year 2000. however, cooperation soon fell to the vicissitudes of regional conflicts, with institutionalized cooperation practically ending when cambodia withdrew from the mc in 1975. until 43 data provided by the tfdd events database. table 2: bar-values mekong timeframe bar scale events in the mekong region average barvalue -7 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1950-1959 1960-1969 1970-1979 1980-1989 1990-1999 2000-2008 all years -6 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 -5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 -4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 -3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 -2 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 -1 0 0 0 0 2 12 14 0 0 1 0 0 3 1 5 1 0 1 0 4 17 30 52 2 3 1 0 0 28 2 34 3 5 1 0 4 11 4 25 4 3 20 0 4 12 8 47 5 0 1 1 0 0 0 2 6 1 1 0 0 2 0 4 7 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0,80 1,73 0,07 0,80 5,07 3,80 aseas 2 (2) the early 1990s, cooperation remained mainly bilateral, focused on low political issues and pragmatic projects only. institutionalized cooperation did not come to a renaissance until the early 1990s, when mrc and gms were founded. this development must also be seen in the context of a generally more cooperative regional environment, where other regional institutions, namely asean and several related initiatives such as the asean regional forum (arf), (re-)emerged as well. 3.1. the mekong river commission – intergovernmental river basin management the mrc was established through the agreement on the cooperation for the sustainable development of the mekong river basin, signed by laos, thailand, cambodia and vietnam in 1995. negotiations on the agreement had been very difficult due to disagreements between thailand and vietnam on potential veto rights and on binding principles of water use. only the active promotion of negotiations by the united nations development program (undp) finally made an agreement possible (browder, 2000; menniken, 2006; dinar et. al., 2007, p. 239). the mrc consists of a council, responsible for policy decisions on the highest level, a joint committee, operationalizing the council’s general strategy into specific projects, and the mrc secretariat, providing technical and administrative services and implementing projects. its task is to promote, support, cooperate and coordinate in the development of the full potential of sustainable benefits to all riparian states and the prevention of wasteful use of mrb waters, with emphasis and preference on joint and/or basin-wide development projects and basin programs through the formulation of a basin development plan (mekong river commission, 1995, chap. 3, art. 2). therefore, its work focuses on eight key areas, namely irrigation and drought management, navigation, hydropower, flood management, fisheries, watershed management, environment and tourism. despite its emphasis on key principles of water use, such as the equitable and reasonable use, the maintenance of flow in the dry season, and the exchange of information and data, the 1995 agreement is less binding than previous rules; namely the 1957 agreement and the 1975 joint declaration of the mc contained explicit veto rights and the respective prior notification principles for riparian states against 44 aseas 2 (2) susanne schmeier regional cooperation efforts in the mekong river basin unilateral projects. even the adoption of an ‘agreement on data and information sharing’ in 2001 and the ‘regulations on prior notification and consultation’ as well as the ‘agreement and the regulations on supervision of the use of the mekong river water’ in 2003, providing guidelines on how to manage the river according to international river basin management principles, has not been able to establish truly binding rules for the river’s development. this is not least due to the fact that thailand refused to sign them in 2004, arguing that they would be useless without chinese participation anyway. in 2002, china and the mrc signed an agreement on technical cooperation, which became operational in 2004. it mainly deals with data sharing from two hydrological stations on the upper mekong, aiming at improving flood forecasting and flood protection for downstream states. so far, cooperation is taking place, albeit not satisfyingly. data is only delivered in the dry season and china retains the right to restrict the data for strategic reasons, which, indeed, occasionally happens. moreover, information from two stations only is not sufficient for comprehensive flow monitoring. similar to previous institutions in the region, funding largely comes from international donors. undp’s contributions are of particular importance. although important for mrc’s capacity, the high dependence on donor funding negatively affects ownership at the institution. in 2008, contributions from member states were only usd 0.95 million, while donors contributed more than ten times as much (mrc, 2008, p. 2). therefore, the mrc has introduced a “riparization policy” (mrc, 2006, p. 35), aiming at substituting donor funding for its core budget (that is, all costs except for project costs) by riparian’s resources until 2014. as until today, less than 10 percent of mrc’s budget is funded by its member countries, this target is far too optimistic. altogether, mrc’s contribution to sustainable river basin management and the promotion of regional cooperation, peace and security is ambiguous. it clearly has contributed to institutionalizing cooperation structures in mainland south-east asia, particularly by providing a forum of negotiation for river-related collective action problems and by engaging in various cooperation projects, ranging from the promotion of infrastructure development to the protection of transboundary natural resources and the environment. on the other hand, it “cannot be claimed to have a decisive impact on the members’ management of the basin’s natural resources” (backer, 2007, p. 44). besides the lack of institutional capacity of the mrc, this is due to the fact that 45 aseas 2 (2) elites in member states still lack the acknowledgement of the importance of mekong cooperation in general (will, 2009, p. 39). since the implementation of policy recommendations from the mrc rests with member states and is not binding, copious achievements have been rare so far. moreover, many “riparian member states prefer the mrc to be a rather toothless organization that identifies development projects and attracts external funds, whilst control of the development remains with the states themselves” (backer, 2006, p. 38). as long as member states “continue to lack the will to commit to a strict regime with specified procedures to establish a flow regime” (backer, 2007, p. 45), the mrc is unlikely to contribute to the establishment of binding principles and rules that will guarantee the river’s sustainable development. moreover, the non-participation of china in the mrc further decreases its capacities. although china increasingly cooperates on minor issues (such as data sharing, or navigation), it remains unwilling to commit to more than its observer status. nevertheless, the mrc has made important contributions not only to water-related cooperation and the sustainable management of the mekong, but also to confidence building and intensified cooperation among riparians in issue-areas other than water management. 3.2. the greater mekong sub-region – economic integration beyond the river the gms was established among all mekong riparian states in 1992 at the conference of mekong riparian states initiated by the adb. from the very beginning on, the gms was understood as a loosely connected group of countries linked to each other by the mekong. similar to the concept of sub-regional growth triangles (masiriyakul, 2004; kongkraew, 2004; dosch & hensengerth, 2005), geographic links are thought to make economic integration beneficial for all states and to foster further integration. while the mrc focuses on the sustainable development of the river, emphasizing the river as the key variable of cooperation, the gms’ approach centers around economic development and market-driven exploitation of natural resources, particularly through infrastructure development. according to its wide and market-led concept, the gms is organized in a loose institutional structure, consisting of the meeting of prime ministers (every three years), yearly ministerial conferences and working groups (in addition, national co46 aseas 2 (2) susanne schmeier regional cooperation efforts in the mekong river basin ordination committees manage cooperation projects within the member states). the adb itself holds an important position within the gms framework. it is the single most important actor in gms cooperation, providing not only funding, administrative and technical support, but also functioning as the gms secretariat. in line with its integration-centered approach, gms focuses on the promotion of trade liberalization and fdis, the removal of trade barriers, and the development of physical links between the participating states, led by the idea of “enhancing competitiveness through connectivity” (gms, 2007). the vientiane action plan 2008-2012 (gms, 2008) identifies nine key sectors (transport, energy, telecommunication, agriculture, environment, tourism, human resources development, trade, investment). the economic corridors, linking china, thailand and vietnam (north-south corridor), myanmar, thailand, laos and vietnam (east-west corridor) and thailand, cambodia and vietnam (southern corridor) are of particular importance, since the development of physical links is regarded as one of the most important prerequisites for economic integration. in recent years, especially since the 10th gms summit in phnom penh 2002, which reemphasized gms’ commitment to fostering regional cooperation and proposed the greater mekong subregion strategic framework 2002-2012, the gms has expanded in its projects, covering more issue-areas (such as energy, biodiversity, health, transnational crime, flood and drought management, and human resources development). gms is increasingly turning towards non-traditional security threats in the region, acknowledging that they can have severe negative effects on the socioeconomic development of mekong riparians. overall, “the wide range of cooperation efforts as part of the gms and related intergovernmental activities has had an impact on fostering subregional peace and stability” (dosch, 2007, p. 134). gms projects can be perceived as “multi-dimensional confidence-building measures” (dosch & hensengerth, 2005, p. 272). particularly the integration of china into mekong-related cooperation and the high relevance china attaches to the gms, the gms thus being „a core element of beijing’s policy outlook“ (dosch & vuving, 2008, p. 15), has allowed to establish a basin-wide cooperation structure. on the other hand, the gms could not (yet) achieve all its goals and even in its core focus area, the promotion of regional economic integration, results remain small. for example, trade between the chinese province of yunnan and other 47 aseas 2 (2) gms states has decreased despite major infrastructure and trade promotion projects, while trade between yunnan and non-gms states significantly increased in the 1990s (poncet, 2006). especially less developed countries such as cambodia and laos do not benefit from economic integration as much as they expected. moreover, the gms deals with a large number of planning and implementation problems: the development of joint projects only requires the participation of at least two states, with other countries not even being asked for their approval – a practice likely to worsen collective action problems related to river-basin development, particularly in the hydropower sector, instead of enhancing security in the region. however, gms’ contribution to a more cooperative environment in mainland south-east asia – and particularly its potential to improve this further – should not be neglected. 4. conclusion overall, conflict and cooperation in the mrb revolves around three different, yet interdependent issues: the exploitation of natural resources, the protection of the river basin, and the promotion of economic integration. the main contribution of institutionalized cooperation efforts in the mekong region has been the creation of a stable and peaceful environment in which collective action problems related to the river can be peacefully mitigated. the establishment of cooperative projects on the river and beyond – ranging from joint flood protection mechanisms to the active promotion of cross-border trade and investments – has led to growing interdependence among riparian states. as tfdd events data shows, conflictive actions have decreased compared to cooperative ones and average barvalues did significantly increase in the 1990s in the context of the establishment of institutions (see table 2). institutionalized mechanisms have made an important contribution to mitigating conflicts, even in the context of otherwise complicated relations between riparian states. furthermore, water-related issues have helped to generate cooperation in issue-areas beyond the river as well, starting with infrastructure developments and environmental protection, increasingly spilling over to economic and even political cooperation. although significantly contributing to regional security, neither mrc nor gms can (yet) be perceived as a security community in the proper sense of the term, since 48 aseas 2 (2) unresolved conflicts persist in the region and existing cooperation remains at a low level and riparian states are not integrated in a tightly knit net of security-related interdependencies. mrc’s and gms’ contribution to the establishment of regionalization building blocks can, however, be perceived as important contributions to an improvement of regional security in the mekong river basin, even beyond the issuearea of river basin management. generally speaking, it can be summarized that mrc and gms did, indeed, contribute to a large extent to the resolution of water-related conflicts and the promotion of regional cooperation beyond the mekong river itself, thus contributing to the overall security in mainland south-east asia. however, several improvements need to be achieved to not only enhance regional cooperation and generate cooperation benefits, but to also make cooperation more effective – thus establishing a resilient framework of cooperation that is able to sustainably enhance the overall security in the region both 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(2009). world development indicators. washington, dc: world bank. retrieved february 9, 2009, from http://web.worldbank.org/wbsite/external/datastatistics/0,,contentmdk:21725423~pa gepk:64133150~pipk:64133175~thesitepk:239419,00.html 52 lieber bhutan als bali? perspektiven nachhaltiger tourismusentwicklung in timor-leste aseas 4(1) 150 151 forschungswerkstatt / research workshop lieber bhutan als bali? perspektiven nachhaltiger tourismusentwicklung in timor-leste christian wollnik1 philipps-universität marburg, deutschland citation wollnik, c. (2011). lieber bhutan als bali? perspektiven nachhaltiger tourismusentwicklung in timor-leste. aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften, 4(1), 150-157. als einer der jüngsten staaten der erde versucht timor-leste (osttimor) sich auf der touristischen landkarte südostasiens zu positionieren und möchte dabei den weg einer nachhaltigen touristischen erschließung und entwicklung beschreiten. das hier präsentierte forschungsvorhaben hat zum ziel, die perspektiven einer nachhaltigen tourismusentwicklung in timor-leste zu beleuchten. erste zwischenergebnisse zeigen, dass viele touristische unternehmen zumindest teilweise über ein „nachhaltigkeitsbewusstsein“ verfügen, wobei nur in seltenen fällen auch tatsächlich ökologisch nachhaltig gewirtschaftet wird. weiterhin offenbaren sich erhebliche mängel auf institutioneller und planerischer ebene: es besteht nahezu keine kooperation zwischen touristischen betrieben, engagierten ngos und der regierung. dies wird insbesondere im falle des massiven „expat-tourismus“ deutlich, da mit dem abzug der vereinten nationen (un) und ngos auch der entstehende tourismussektor zusammenzubrechen droht, weshalb dringend zukunftsweisende strategien und konzepte diskutiert werden müssten. 1 christian wollnik studiert diplom-geographie an der philipps-universität in marburg, ist mitglied der deutschen osttimor gesellschaft (dotg e.v.) und war stipendiat des deutschen akademischen austauchdienstes (daad) zur feldforschung in timor-leste (dezember 2010 bis februar 2011). thema der diplomarbeit: „perspektiven nachhaltiger tourismusentwicklung in timor-leste“. kontakt: wollnik@students.uni-marburg.de d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -4 .1 -9 aseas 4(1) 150 151 timor-leste: eines der neuen „urlaubsparadiese“? in den letzten jahren weisen vermehrt artikel in deutschsprachigen und internationalen zeitungen, magazinen und online-portalen2 auf die schönheiten des bis 2002 im kriegszustand befindlichen timor-leste hin: es sei ein echter „geheimtipp“, wie beispielsweise welt online schreibt: das land war erst eine portugiesische kolonie und dann indonesisches besatzungsgebiet. der widerstandskampf machte den zipfel land . . . zur ‚no-go-gegend’. das ergebnis: die landschaft ist nicht durch rohstoffausbeutung verschandelt, die kilometerlangen sandstrände nicht mit hotels zugepflastert, die korallenriffe nicht durch kommerzielle fischereimethoden mit dynamit zerstört. („was wissen sie“, 2008) auch die osttimoresische regierung ist sich der touristischen potentiale ihres landes bewusst. in ihrem politischen leitwerk, dem plano estratégico de desenvolvimento, benennt sie die zentralen ziele wirtschaftlicher, gesellschaftlicher und politischer entwicklung bis zum jahre 2030. dem tourismussektor wird dabei eine hohe bedeutung beigemessen: 2030 soll er den wichtigsten wirtschaftszweig neben der ölund gasindustrie darstellen und als „jobmotor“ dienen (vgl. governo de timor-leste, 2010). trotz dieser ehrgeizigen ziele betont das nationale direktorat für tourismus3, sich lieber an „bhutan als bali“ (blinda, 2006) und dementsprechend am leitbild einer nachhaltigen touristischen erschließung und entwicklung zu orientieren. die touristische entwicklung steht zwar weit oben auf der politischen agenda, kann aufgrund der vielschichtigen probleme des jungen staates derzeit jedoch nicht oder nur bedingt umgesetzt werden: auch nach der hart erkämpften unabhängigkeit von indonesien ist das land politisch instabil. massiven innenpolitischen unruhen 2006 und 2007 folgten 2008 versuchte mordanschläge auf präsident ramos-horta und premierminister gusmão.4 darüber hinaus bestehen nach wie vor elementare probleme in der grundversorgung der menschen mit nahrungsmitteln und trinkwasser, insbesondere im ländlichen raum abseits der hauptstadt dili. die arbeitslosigkeit, vor allem die der jungen schulabgängerinnen, ist hoch – schätzungen gehen 2 zum jetzigen zeitpunkt existieren nur wenige wissenschaftliche veröffentlichungen zum tourismus in timorleste, insbesondere rocha (2007) sowie cabasset-semedo (2009), friese (2006) und malta (2003). 3 direcção nacional do turismo; dem ministério do turismo, comércio e indústria untergeordnet. 4 zu den politischen unruhen von 2006 vgl. schmitz (2006); zu den attentaten auf präsident ramos-horta und premierminister gusmão von 2008 vgl. borgerhoff (2008). christian wollnik lieber bhutan als bali? perspektiven nachhaltiger tourismusentwicklung in timor-leste aseas 4(1) 152 153 von einer arbeitslosenquote von rund 40 prozent in dili und umgebung aus (vgl. cia world factbook, 2011). ohne die initiativen und unterstützung der entwicklungszusammenarbeit wäre der staat nicht handlungsund überlebensfähig.5 in anbetracht dieser herausforderungen ist das budget, das dem direktorat als zentralem staatlichen akteur im tourismus zur verfügung steht, äußerst gering. so belief es sich für das jahr 2009 auf rund 900.000 usd (governo de timor-leste, 2008). der hauptanteil des budgets wird für die vermarktung von timor-leste auf internationalen reisemessen, beispielsweise der itb und dem pata travel mart6, verwendet. ein post-konflikt-staat mit enormen touristischen potentialen: eine chance im sinne der nachhaltigkeit trotz der vielen anderen politischen probleme und herausforderungen sollte die touristische planung und entwicklung seitens der staatlichen institutionen, in kooperation mit touristischen dienstleistungsunternehmen und aktiven ngos vor ort, bereits jetzt erfolgen. die besondere ausgangssituation als touristisch de facto unerschlossener post-konflikt-staat muss hier als chance im sinne einer vielfach postulierten nachhaltigen entwicklung im tourismus begriffen werden: während in anderen destinationen die aufgabe zumeist darin besteht, die vielseitigen negativen auswirkungen unkontrollierter touristischer expansion ex post mittels verschiedenster „nachhaltigkeitsinitiativen“ einzudämmen, besteht für timor-leste die chance, solche negativen folgen von vornherein durch eine kontrollierte, angepasste und nachhaltige entwicklung des tourismussektors zu vermeiden. forschungsfrage und forschungsdesign ziel der hier präsentierten diplomarbeitsforschung ist eine umfassende evaluierung der perspektiven nachhaltiger tourismusentwicklung in timor-leste. nachhaltigkeit ist dabei in zweierlei aspekte zu differenzieren: zum einen bedarf es nachhaltigkeit auf institutioneller, planerischer ebene, d.h. langfristige kooperation 5 einen guten überblick über aktuelle herausforderungen und das engagement der entwicklungszusammenarbeit bieten verschiedene artikel in borgerhoff & schmitz (2008). 6 itb internationale tourismusbörse, jährlich in berlin; pata (pacific asia tourism association) travel mart, jährlich an verschiedenen standorten in südostasien. aseas 4(1) 152 153 und partizipation aller touristisch relevanten akteurinnen (vgl. baumgartner, 2006, s. 140-147; hein, 2006, s. 140-141). zum anderen muss es das ziel sein, ausmaß und gestalt des tourismus gemäß des leitbildes der nachhaltigkeit zu entwickeln, um negative folgen unkontrollierter touristischer erschließung wie umweltverschmutzung, wirtschaftliche ausbeutung der lokalen bevölkerung oder akkulturation zu verhindern (vgl. aderhold, kösterke, von laßberg, & vielhaber, 2006, s. 25-46). dafür wird vor allem ein hohes maß an nachhaltigkeitsbewusstsein seitens der touristischen dienstleistungsunternehmen benötigt, ganz gleich, ob es sich um lokale oder ausländische investorinnen handelt. aus dem spannungsfeld tourismus – entwicklung – nachhaltigkeit lassen sich spezielle herausforderungen und zielkonflikte für eine nachhaltige tourismusentwicklung ableiten7, die in dieser arbeit analysiert werden, unter anderem: • ausländische investitionen vs. schutz und entwicklung lokaler anbieterinnenstrukturen • staatliche leitlinien/strategie (top-down) vs. partizipation und kooperation (bottom-up) • vermittlung eines nachhaltigkeitsbewusstseins • dark-tourism-potentiale nutzbar machen (positiver umgang mit der geschichte)8 um zu analysieren, wie derzeit mit diesen herausforderungen und zielkonflikten umgegangen wird, wurden mit personen aller relevanten akteursgruppen des sich entwickelnden tourismussektors persönliche interviews durchgeführt (expertinneninterviews), die je nach rolle der akteurinnen innerhalb der touristischen wertschöpfungskette durch einige quantitative fragen, wie etwa des geschätzten prozentualen anteils von gästen der un und ngos, ergänzt wurden. insgesamt wurden 31 gespräche mit personen folgender akteursgruppen geführt: • staatliche institutionen (ministerium, tourismusdirektion, eventbüro des staatspräsidenten) • im tourismus engagierte ngos und organisationen der entwicklungszusammenarbeit (lokale wie haburas oder roman luan und internationale wie die 7 für allgemeine literatur zu diesem themenkomplex vgl. insbesondere aderhold et al. (2006), baumgartner (2008) und beyer (2002). 8 unter zielen des dark-tourism sind orte des schreckens und der trauer zu verstehen, die sich zu touristischen zwecken nutzen und entsprechend vermarkten lassen (vgl. steinecke, 2010, s. 109-123). christian wollnik lieber bhutan als bali? perspektiven nachhaltiger tourismusentwicklung in timor-leste aseas 4(1) 154 155 deutsche gesellschaft für internationale zusammenarbeit oder development alternatives inc.) • internationale organisationen (z.b. unwto, pata) • anbieterinnen touristischer dienstleistungen (hoteliers, tourenanbieterinnen, transportunternehmen etc.)9 dazu wurden sechs weitere internationale expertinnen zu rate gezogen, beispielsweise reisebuchautorinnen und ehemalige tourismusberaterinnen der osttimoresischen regierung, die sehr persönliche, „externe“ sichtweisen auf die entwicklungen der letzten jahre offenbarten. zwischenergebnisse bisher wurden zwei zentrale hemmnisse der touristischen entwicklung timor-lestes identifiziert: zum einen ist dies die mangelhafte (verkehrs-)infrastruktur, die das reisen außerhalb der hauptstadt dili während der regenzeit mühsam bis teilweise unmöglich macht. auch die anreise nach dili gestaltet sich schwierig, da lediglich flugverbindungen mit darwin (australien), singapur und denpasar (bali/indonesien) bestehen und die flugpreise aufgrund des fehlenden konkurrenzkampfes deutlich höher sind als im restlichen südostasien. zum anderen ist die mangelnde investitionsbereitschaft seitens aktueller und potentieller lokaler unternehmerinnen aufgrund der nach wie vor angespannten sicherheitslage zu nennen. die gespräche haben gezeigt, dass viele anbieterinnen touristischer dienstleistungen (hotels, restaurants, reiseagenturen) der meinung sind, dass von einer entwicklung des tourismussektors in erster linie die lokale bevölkerung wirtschaftlich profitieren sollte, und der markt somit weiterhin vor hohen ausländischen investitionen zu schützen sei. viele streben eher eine langsame, stetige entwicklung des tourismussektors an, die von lokalen unternehmen getragen werden soll. es wird jedoch stark bemängelt, dass es seitens der regierung keine maßnahmen oder programme gibt, die eine lokale unternehmenstätigkeit fördern. ebenso wird befürchtet, dass die regierung nicht die geduld haben wird, den tourismus entsprechend des postulierten leitbilds zu entwickeln. zu groß erscheint der druck, arbeitsplätze für die stetig 9 die mehrzahl der betriebe liegt aufgrund strenger investitionsbedingungen für ausländische investorinnen in osttimoresischer hand. kleinere ausländische unternehmen entstanden vor allem zur zeit der un-übergangsregierung von 1999 bis 2002 (untaet united nations transitional administration for east timor). aseas 4(1) 154 155 wachsende zahl an jungen schulabgängerinnen zu schaffen. offensichtlich ist ein fehlendes ökologisches bewusstsein der anbieterinnen: so verfügen beispielsweise nur etwa 10 prozent der besuchten beherbergungsbetriebe über ein organisiertes abfallund abwassermanagement. die im tourismus engagierten organisationen versuchen, die wichtigkeit ökologischen wirtschaftens zu vermitteln, jedoch gestaltet sich dieser prozess schwierig. auf institutioneller, planerischer ebene zeigen sich erhebliche mängel in bezug auf kommunikation und partizipation. es besteht nahezu kein austausch zwischen touristischen dienstleisterinnen und der regierung. dies ist auch auf die tatsache zurückzuführen, dass es keine intakte gemeinsame interessensvertretung der touristischen dienstleisterinnen mehr gibt: mit dem rückzug treibender kräfte aus der a.t.t.l.10 fanden auch ihre aktivitäten – darunter immerhin ein gelegentlicher austausch mit direktorat und ministerium – ein ende. auch die ngos werden seitens der regierung kaum zu rate gezogen. insgesamt erscheint so das von der regierung bemühte postulat „lieber bhutan als bali“ mehr als notlösung denn als wahre strategie. der junge staat versucht sich derzeit als „nischendestination“ auf der touristischen landkarte südostasiens zu positionieren. aber: trotz aller kritik sind an dieser stelle auch die budgetrestriktionen des tourismusdirektorats zu berücksichtigen. soll sich der tourismus in naher zukunft zu einem der wichtigsten wirtschaftszweige des landes entwickeln, müssen die finanziellen mittel deutlich erhöht werden. ein massives problem könnte der expat-tourismus darstellen: nahezu 90 prozent der nutzerinnen touristischer dienstleistungen sind mitarbeiterinnen von in timorleste tätigen internationalen ngos und den vereinten nationen, oder zumindest angehörige dieser angestellten. so steht zu befürchten, dass mit dem abzug der unmit11 und dem sukzessiven rückzug von internationalen ngos auch der sich langsam entwickelnde tourismussektor wieder in sich zusammenbrechen wird. die touristischen anbieterinnen scheuen diese düsteren aussichten und hoffen kurzfristig vor allem auf eine verlängerung des unmit-mandats12. auch die regierung scheint sich mit dieser problematik bis dato kaum auseinandergesetzt zu haben. sie verfolgt ebenfalls eine „strategie des verdrängens“, anstatt in kooperation zu versuchen, strategien 10 associação de turismo de timor-leste 11 united nations integrated mission in timor-leste; aktuelle un-mission in timor-leste (seit den unruhen von 2006; un-resolution 1704). die derzeitige einsatzstärke umfasst ca. 3.000 personen. 12 das aktuelle mandat läuft bis zum 26. februar 2012. christian wollnik lieber bhutan als bali? perspektiven nachhaltiger tourismusentwicklung in timor-leste aseas 4(1) 156 157 und konzepte für die zukunft des tourismus in timor-leste zu entwickeln. ein kurzes zwischenfazit zu den perspektiven einer nachhaltigen tourismusentwicklung in timor-leste kann zum jetzigen zeitpunkt nur lauten: enormes potential, gleichzeitig aber enorme schwächen auf institutioneller ebene – und aufgrund des expat-tourismus ist ein baldiger einbruch des noch jungen tourismussektors zu befürchten. endergebnisse die abgeschlossene diplomarbeit wird im letzten quartal 2011 auf der homepage der deutschen osttimor gesellschaft (dotg e.v.) unter http://www.osttimor.de zum download bereitgestellt. bibliographie aderhold, p., kösterke, a., von laßberg, d., & vielhaber, a. 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(2003). cultura e ambiente: elementos para a elaboração de uma estratégica de desenvolvimento ecoturístico para timor lorosa’e. coimbra, portugal: actas do 1° encontro de turismo em espaços rurais e naturais. rocha, l. m. l. (2007). ecoturismo: uma oportunidade de desenvolvimento no timor leste. brasília, brasilien: universidade de brasília. schmitz, m. (2006). osttimor in der krise. südostasien aktuell, 4, 35-45. steinecke, a. (2010). populäre irrtümer über reisen und tourismus. münchen, deutschland: oldenbourg verlag. united nations world tourism organization [unwto] (2009). world tourism barometer. world tourism barometer, (7)1. was wissen sie eigentlich über osttimor? (2008, 24. september). die welt online. zuletzt zugegriffen am 17. august 2010 unter http://www.welt.de/reise/article2487362/was-wissen-sie-eigentlich-ueberosttimor.html christian wollnik lieber bhutan als bali? perspektiven nachhaltiger tourismusentwicklung in timor-leste “still working on it”: an overview on the current state of public activism of women in the philippines aseas 3(2) 136 137 aktuelle südostasienforschung / current research on south-east asia “still working on it”: an overview on the current state of public activism of women in the philippines niklas reese1 university of passau & university of bonn, germany citation reese, n. (2010). “still working on it”: an overview on the current state of public activism of women in the philippines. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 3(2), 136-150. this paper gives an overview on to what extent public activism in the philippines is still gendered and how far it, therefore, disadvantages women. the paper consists of three major topics: (1) observations on women and the public space, (2) an outline of women and formal politics, and (3) a glimpse into gender within civil society and social movements in the philippines. keywords: civil society, gender roles, women’s movement, public space, philippines dieser artikel behandelt die frage, inwiefern aktivismus von frauen im öff entlichen raum in den philippinen noch immer geschlechtsspezifi sch defi niert ist und ob frauen dadurch benachteiligt werden. der artikel ist in drei abschnitte gegliedert: (1) beobachtungen zu frauen und öff entlichem raum, (2) überblick über die rolle der frauen in der formellen politik und (3) eine annäherung an geschlechtsspezifi sche fragestellungen in zivilgesellschaft und sozialen bewegungen in den philippinen. schlagworte: zivilgesellschaft, geschlechterrollen, frauenbewegung, öff entlicher raum, philippinen introduction the filipin@s2 are known for their vivid civil society and their massive street protests (named ‘edsa-revolutions’, after the main traversal in the capital metro manila), which have led to the downfall of now two presidents, marcos in 1986 and estrada in 1 niklas reese is a lecturer in south-east asian studies at the university of passau and a researcher at the university of bonn, germany. he has headed the philippinenbuero, a germany-based information centre on the philippines, from 2000 to 2004 and has been involved with educational and journalistic work on development issues since 1998. he has studied social sciences and spent his childhood in hong kong and davao. he is also an alumnus of our lady of fatima academy, davao city, the philippines. 2 filipin@s is a gender-sensitive term, which includes filipinos as well as filipinas. it is copied from a social movement practice in latin america. aseas 3(2) 136 137 2001. women have up to now taken a significant role in prominent social movements. furthermore, according to a world economic forum survey (“rp among the best”, 2009), the philippines is rated number 9 in the world in terms of promoting equality among the sexes. does this imply that the public sphere is no longer male territory as the traditional patriarchal setup considers it to be? this paper has an exploratory character, seeking to identify to what extent reality and discourse on public activism and citizenship in the philippines are (still) gendered and how far they disadvantage women.3 though there is some first-hand research included (reese, 2009), the claim of this paper is modest: it attempts to provide a general overview on the state of gender and politics in the philippines and to associate different arenas of gender politics – from the private to everyday resistance and outer-parliamentarian political activism to formal politics. thereby, i suggest that all these different spheres are ruled by a similar paradigm. the results presented here have been written to provide women’s rights activists in the philippines and elsewhere with a kind of ‘state description’ rather than contribute to an academic discourse (especially as the theoretical integration of the article had to be withdrawn due to space constraints). therefore, it would be far too ambitious if this paper were to be understood as a conclusive state description of gender and politics in the philippines. because of this, the research focused on observing and participating in the public discourse and everyday life in the philippines. bases for the paper have been (1) a re-reading of academic and everyday literature on democratisation and gender in the philippines, (2) participant observation and indepth interviews during various field trips to the philippines since 1998, and finally, (3) 14 interviews and group discussions with several women (and a few men) involved in social movements and political work in the philippines, conducted in 2009 and 2010. private women and public men? gender regime in the philippines the philippines seems to be very progressive in regard to gender equality and female presence in politics. that is why there are claims made, especially by men, that 3 the notion of citizenship i want to draw on expresses itself in (a) political agency and (b) a sense of entitlement to social and public services. so it is not necessarily linked to a sense of nationalism and a clear identification with one nation state, still common despite a growing literature on transnational and post-national citizenship. niklas reese “still working on it”: an overview on the current state of public activism of women in the philippines aseas 3(2) 138 139 patriarchy is only a kind of icing with women pulling the strings in the background. it happens that filipino men portray themselves as takusa (short for takot sa asawa, meaning ‘scared of the wife’). in this spirit, castillo and guerrero described in 1969 the philippines to be “a male-dominated society (in the public eye) managed by females (in private)” (castillo & guerrero in medina, 2001, p. 156). but this suggestion lacks empirical evidence. it seems to be much more appropriate to describe the philippines as a society “that revolves around male privilege on one hand and female acquiescence on the other” (tan, 2003; also cf. reese, 2006). the normative ideal that wives should stay home and care for the family is still very prevalent. nevertheless, many women have joined the labour force.4 the feminisation of migration may be the most visible way of seeing how women have crossed the border from private to public space, the latter being traditionally considered male territory, especially if one considers that migration not only leads to the overcoming of poverty but also is a way of “getting to know the world and linking with it” (martínez, 2001, p. 41). the feminisation of migration has also resulted in more and more women being the main breadwinners of their families, which contradicts the still in-force patriarchal model of the “male as breadwinner” and forces men to “remake their masculinities” (pingol, 2001). glass ceilings though are still prevalent in the philippines. this is the same as in other countries where the higher the position, the fewer women can be found. and what speaks even more against the myth of gender equality in philippine society is that there has only been little rupture of the gender-specific division of labour. while one can witness the entry of women into the public sphere, there is only little entry of men into the private sphere, as this is still widely considered to be a female domain. working women receive only minimal acknowledgment and understanding, even though they may also prove themselves as good family guardians. shattered family relations and ‘problem kids’ are solely blamed on mothers and wives (parreñas, 2002). women often call their employment ‘helping out’, sometimes even if they are the main breadwinners in monetary terms (cf. paguntalan, 2002, p. 174). they consider this to be an “extension of her wife and mother role which demands that she contributes her share for the economic survival of the family” (medina, 2001, p. 4 some occupations, though, are still nearly completely male-dominated. you would still hardly see any female drivers or construction workers in the philippines. aseas 3(2) 138 139 201). being a good mother, a good wife, and a good caretaker are still the primary responsibilities of a filipina and, for most of them, their main identity as well: to be a ‘whole women’ to most of them means to be married and have children (doyo, 1998). because of the resulting double burden, lack of time is the most important everyday life restriction of working mothers.5 the entry into the public space reflected in the higher ratio of female employment is not necessarily a sign of higher acceptance of women in the public (rights driven), but may rather be especially for lower class women out of economic necessity (needs driven). traditionally, patriarchy also manifested itself in the public space reserved for men. women had no business being there if not for their specific female business: bata, bahay, baboy, and bana (children, house, ‘pig’ for supplementary income, and husband). they should not be seen in pubs or seen smoking and drinking in public in order not to be mistaken for a mujer publica, as prostitutes were called in spanish times, and considered walang hiya (without decency).6 but then again, there have always interesting ‘traces of women power’ within patriarchy. many filipinas may behave mahinhin (decent) towards strangers and in public, but according to my observations they indeed display a high zest for action, entrepreneurship, assertiveness, and firmness in spaces perceived as ‘private’. managing the household and family affairs and caring for a responsible spending of the scarce resources (romanticised as ‘power of the purse’) alone expresses a high incidence of female agency.7 at the same time, this is not yet proof of the incidence of female political agency. of course, times have changed: the philippines has had two female presidents in only two decades and there are more women governors, congresswomen, mayors, and local councillors in the philippines than elsewhere in asia. the philippines was in 5 the women union leader i interviewed (reese, 2009) was even president of a male-dominated union for more than ten years. making her president was a strategic move by the union, as the factory owner hired goons but would not have deployed them against a women leader. she was considered brave, but another major reason was that she was single at that time. she had no double burden, could attend to a ‘male timetable’ and would not have left a family behind in case the goons killed her. 6 the dualism of either ‘madonna’ or ‘whore’ is again simplified. there have been other roles, such as the healer (babaylanes or mananambal) or the lesbian, that women could take on allowing them to deviate from traditional notions of femaleness. but the dichotomy of maria clara (the prototype of a decent woman) or ‘the other mary’ seem to be the dominant field of tension within which most women up to now have to develop their own womanhood (ellwood-clayton, 2006). 7 considering that ‘citizenship’ is not only attributed to rights but to duties and responsibilities as well (communitarian and republican tradition), the high sense of responsibility of women for their “loved ones” (tan, 2003) can been seen as another expression and base of women’s citizenship and agency. niklas reese “still working on it”: an overview on the current state of public activism of women in the philippines aseas 3(2) 140 141 1995 one of the first countries worldwide to adopt a policy providing for gender and development (gad) in its national budget through the women in development and nation building act, which requires all government agencies to set aside five percent of their budgets for gender and development activities. another much cited law is the ‘anti-violence against women and their children act’ of 2004. and several cities in the philippines have followed davao city in passing its ‘women development code of 1997’. finally, media projects non-traditional women’s roles and gender relations into nearly every household, which makes alternative self-concepts for women imaginable. given these circumstances, did an agency of women in public develop during the last decades? to find this out, i first had a look at the micro-politics of everyday gender relations, assuming this to be a significant indicator for the broadening of the political agency of women in general as without a change in the life-world setup, an empowerment of women in ‘formal politics’ will hardly be sustainable. (herewith, i also followed the approach of foucault and gramsci, who consider social institutions such as the family and practices such as sexuality the places where subjects are ‘educated’ and ‘governed’ to do what is ‘desirable’.) during my field research in 2009 and 2010, i encountered five areas of everyday gender relations that seem significant to give an answer to the question of female agency: (1) the distribution of household chores and child raising, (2) the presence of women in public, especially for leisure purposes, and the way they are expected to dress in public, (3) courtship rules, (4) decisions regarding contraception, birth control and sex frequency (women asserting the right to their own body), and, finally, (5) ‘daring’ to end an abusive or even a disenchanting relationship or marriage. in all five areas, it can be said that changes have occurred, although they seem to be minuscule especially in regard to contraception decisions: still 80 percent of filipino men have never used a condom, and 58 percent have never used any other contraceptive (health management and research group foundation [hmrg] inc., 2009, p. 39).8 likewise, the redistribution of household chores and child raising only happens at a snail’s pace, mainly where women become the main breadwinner, no 8 even a lot of women think that “condom use interferes with the future-orientated view of a sexual partner, with condoms signifying a lack of fidelity and intruding into intimate settings as decidedly unromantic” (ellwood-clayton, 2006, p. 15). she comes to the conclusion that “negotiating safe sex is culturally incongruous to maria clara norms of femininity [which] means that women defer to boyfriends, and later to husbands, in their sexual decision-making” (ellwood-clayton, 2006, p. 23). aseas 3(2) 140 141 other woman is at hand to take over, and husbands agree to take care of the children and, to a lesser extent, of the household. again, women have come to terms with this reversal of roles (pingol, 2001; surveys by the author in 2009).9 courtship rules and the access of women to leisure space may have changed most (reflecting amongst other things the generational causation of changing gender relations), although this again is more strongly pronounced in an urban setting. frowning upon women going out at night (often without a male companion but nearly always with female companions) has decreased, as long as ‘she’ is not yet married. (it seems that the expectation that women ‘stay at home’ as soon as they are married is still predominant.) only young women, for example, can be seen wearing spaghetti straps. and (urban) women are no longer required to play pakipot (hard to get) once a male courts her. at times, she actually has to show assertiveness for courting to proceed. however, to make the first move when attracted by a man would only be dared by a very few women, even if they no longer submitted to the underlying gender ideology and perceived it as symbolic violence. “the filipino men are not ready for that and most would consider you to be cheap girl and desperately seeking ... we cannot afford to be commented on like that; it would be shameful”, as respondents said during a focus group discussion (reese, 2009). the patriarchal gaze seems hard to escape or to resist, just like foucault’s panopticon. so most women can only act to the extent of being pahiwatig, hinting their interest in a man by nonverbal signs or verbal goofing around (‘joke lang’ as one often says in the philippines). even ‘manila girls’, who are seen to be the most progressive in their behaviour, consider it to be inevitable to comply with the dominant sexual conservatism (dubbed ‘family values’ in the philippines) and the passivity it ascribes to women in order not to lose their respectability. finally, more women than ever are putting an end to abusive and violent relationships and marriages instead of staying in them. and this is despite the fact that separated wives are often treated as second-class women (ellwood-clayton, 2006, p. 6). while women often think “good for you” and are even somewhat envious, men consider them fair game, as they “have been used already”, so they are placing 9 several women are reluctant in handing over household chores to their partners, as they do not meet their standards in exercising them. even more, they hesitate to entrust their children to their husbands, especially if they are still young. activists jokingly call this behaviour ‘obsessive-compulsive disease’ (the ‘d’ in ocd actually stands for ‘disorder’) and observe it amongst themselves as well (reese, 2009). niklas reese “still working on it”: an overview on the current state of public activism of women in the philippines aseas 3(2) 142 143 themselves more at risk of experiencing unwelcome advances and harassment (personal communication, in reese 2009). not only men but also women, above all the mothers-in-law (pingol, 2001), react when women depart from traditional behaviour and enter the public space. “my [mother] in law is my number one critic”, as one female trade unionist said (reese, 2009). formal politics and gender in the philippines traditionally, women have mainly appeared in the political sphere as supporters of their male kin – their sons, brothers, or fathers, but especially their husbands. wives are usually “partners in politics” (roces, 1998, p. 7), running the charity work, organising community projects, and sharing the political work of their politician husbands. roces even assumes that “an active wife or a female kin was generally necessary for the success of the male politician” (roces, 1998, p. 30). but even if wives function as the politicians’ “number one advisor” (gina de venecia, the wife of ex-speaker jose de venecia, in roces, 1998, p. 54), they are exercising these tasks informally and consider themselves in a role where they ‘just help out’. this supportive role still seems to be the prevalent one that women occupy today, not only in the sphere of institutional politics but within civil society as well (see below). however, somewhat in contradiction of this, one also finds more women directly involved in (formal) politics. the terms of two women presidents have normalised the political activity of women (for more on arroyo and aquino, see veneracion, 2009).10 being formally politically active – although still the exception – has become a role for women which is tolerated by more and more men and seen as a positive role model by women. yet, women have to be mindful not to create the impression that they are overpowering or upstaging men and putting them down or ‘polluting the minds of women’, an apprehension feminists of the first generation were considered to have triggered.11 it seems that the model of women speaking up and acting in public 10 both women came to presidency in times of crises, times in which women are called to fix – just like germany’s angela merkel in 1998. “it seems that in crisis, there seems to be a natural course of action to take women to lead. there is a general sentiment that they can be trusted (mapagkatiwalaan)”, as jun naraval observes (reese, 2009). but usually when the crisis is over, women feel the pressure from men to hand power back to them. 11 this correlates with the experience of activists when conducting gender sensitivity training. these only lead to lasting changes within gender relations when such training is conducted for men as well. otherwise, “even if trained aseas 3(2) 142 143 has become possible, although it still leads to irritation and even negative feedback. they are still reminded “you cannot shut up and listen” (personal communication, in reese, 2009). furthermore, the public commitment of women is often only feasible because of the “yaya sisterhood”, as coronel (2005) calls the division of labour between “madam and maid” (young, 1999). where women lack the time to shoulder the double load of family and job, rarely men and husbands step into the breach (even if they are underemployed or unemployed). better-off households employ women from the lower classes as domestic workers or nannies ( yaya); in poor households, usually other female relatives fulfil this role. this is true for ‘emancipated households’ as well, although one can find a few cases of househusbands in this context.12 as mentioned before, many women are involved in politics, but have been mainly elected or appointed into these positions not because of (or even despite) their being women but because of kinship ties (next to being famous actresses or beauty queens). most of them come from powerful families, and many of them took over a post from a male relative who can no longer run due to term restrictions. this is one expression of how families rule political affairs (a feudal trait of politics) not individuals. wives and female kin get identified with the incumbent male (partly as they acted as supporters before), so that they appear to be their alter ego and natural successors in office. this also implies that they have to pursue the interests of their clan first and are less geared towards a pro-women agenda dissolving patriarchal structures, putting an end to the socio-economic and cultural discrimination of women, or bringing more women into the corridors of power. women who leave their role of a ‘supporter’ within the framework of informal politics ‘behind the scenes’ and enter the ‘open transcript’ (scott, 1990) of the public arena then usually make use of female scripts. they act the role of mothers, be it as caretakers, as guardians of morality, or as martyrs for the greater good. while the ‘hard issues’ and influential committees are still taken care of by men, women and enlightened, women go home and they submit to the decisions of the male”, a (male) gender trainer told me, as men insist on their role as the head of the family and the women attach more importance to peace in the family than to their own equality. “it is very difficult to empower women if you leave the men behind” (reese, 2009; cf. hmrg, 2009, for more on gender sensitivity training for men). 12 men who take over traditional female roles or work in all-women environments all report to have gone through a time of adjusting to these unfamiliar roles, and also to get used to self-confident, outspoken, and assertive women cracking lots of ‘green’ jokes (reese, 2009; on househusbands, cf. pingol, 2001). niklas reese “still working on it”: an overview on the current state of public activism of women in the philippines aseas 3(2) 144 145 politicians are given the responsibility for ‘female issues’ like welfare, health, children, housing, beautification, orderliness, and cleanliness (and as a ‘logical extension of that’, environmental issues [roces, 1998, p. 55]), thereby extending their caretaker role to the ‘national family’, although after 1986, some women were also assigned to fields like diplomacy, economics, and law. even women activists believe that women can be a cure for ‘dirty politics’ (inhabited by trapos, traditional politicians a.k.a. ‘dirty rugs’), ‘cleaning’ it through moral behaviour by being more human and nurturing and emphasising negotiations and dialogue (reese, 2009), even if the ‘dirtiness of politics’ is an argument exploited to keep women out of politics because it could be considered to defile their purity. women activists and politicians often capitalise on feminine assets and make use of ‘womanly wiles‘. they strategically use a soft (but persistent) tone, do not openly antagonise, and charm to get the necessary resources for their projects, or display lambing-lambing (lambing, meaning ‘to fondle’), act cariñoso (affectionate) to ‘convince’ their husband or a male colleague of their submissiveness. they are also assigned roles by male leadership where they are expected as women to be more successful than men (in the case of protest politics for instance, deceiving the authorities with female wiles). however, this is done in the expectation that these women can be ‘managed’ and act the way the male leaders advise. this style of female politicking is often singled out, but it is not the only style that can be observed. the anthropologist michael tan (2009) has isolated different “pinay [leadership] archetypes”: next to the tita (aunt) style, which most resembles the moral mother type and has been embodied by former president corazon aquino, he discovered the ate (strict oldest sister) archetype in former president macapagalarroyo’s way of leadership. arroyo’s (self-declared) framework was that of a “strong republic” (matatag na republika), which makes veneracion (2009, p. 112) call her an “iron lady”, and activists consider her to be “only woman in physical but macho in action” (reese, 2009). arroyo has been under harsh attack for years, and this again has a gender aspect only because she acts ‘macho’, so she can be attacked and criticised like a man. finally, tan distinguishes the madam type, which he finds in imelda marcos, “for whom life is one big continuing performance, with the imeldas as director, producer and leading actress” (tan, 2009). there might even be more than these three archetypes mentioned by tan: the aseas 3(2) 144 145 manang (old spinster) or amazon type personified by senator miriam defensor santiago, very vocal and critical and not only harsh but pitiless and insulting at times, a woman who can ‘take on’ men. another is the lola type, a type which is very motherly but decisive and ruling at the same time and “whom you should not answer back” (one respondent in reese, 2009). still another is grace padaca, provincial governor of isabela from 2004 to 2010. she may belong to a further group, the moral guardian, which is rather situated in the extra-institutional opposition and has been most significantly embodied in the nuns of the anti-marcos dictatorship struggle (discussed in the next section). the sense of this enumeration at this point is only to illustrate that the mother archetype is not the only one at hand for women entering formal politics. but most of the mentioned female politicians not (dominantly) performing the mother archetype perform their role within the logic on female politics as well or, like macapagalarroyo at times, “reinvent” (roces, 1998, p. 112) themselves and resort to female images to improve their chances. norms and realities: gender and the progressive forces origins of feminism in the philippines feminism as a social movement in the philippines is a rather young and still a peripheral phenomenon. within families, the church, the media, and the educational system, the traditional gender setup is still largely reproduced. according to my observations, ‘liberated women’ are usually understood as ones who are ‘cheap’ and ‘easy to get’. “patriarchal ideology is so strong that a counter-hegemonic movement can only hope to develop pockets of resistance, even within the progressive movement” (raquiza, 1997, p. 181). many women advocating feminist concerns therefore feel uneasy about being named ‘feminists’ and rather speak of themselves as ‘woman rights activists’ (cf. roces, 2010, for parallels all over asia). the times of martial law altered the images of women in public and female power with two new images evolving: the militant nun and the woman warrior within the armed/national democratic (nd) anti-dictatorship struggle. while the first was formative for the public image, the latter stayed marginal (cf. roces, 1998). niklas reese “still working on it”: an overview on the current state of public activism of women in the philippines aseas 3(2) 146 147 the radical nuns put their life at risk, protected men who were victimised by martial law, political prisoners, workers on strike, and indigenous people who were in danger of losing their ancestral domain (roces, 1998, p. 123). this model became especially graphic during edsa i, also known as the ‘rosary revolution’, when nuns ‘armed’ solely with rosaries confronted the military. the non-violent nuns were exercising moral power, suffering and sacrificing themselves for the greater good. but they did not claim formal power. (i know of no nun who turned politician, unlike former priests who populate the political ranks.) the parallels to the anti-dictatorship struggles in latin america are stunning. as in the case there, one may understand the image of the militant nun as a ‘politicisation of motherhood’ (kron, 2008). most militant nuns turn out to be very conservative in gender and reproductive matters, as i witnessed, but again, it has been nuns who acted as the ferment of feminism. a nun (sister mary john mananzan) founded the first academic woman’s centre at st scholastica college, facilitated the founding of the political woman’s networks pilipina and gabriela, and up to now has been one of the key figures of radical feminism in the philippines. the militant nuns can be considered the cradle of feminism in the philippines, being the first and, still to today, the most confident in labelling themselves ‘feminists’ (roces, 1998, p.133). but at the same time, they refrained from claiming official/formal power. women in civil society feminist issues and organisations taking on a feminist agenda only acquired full priority in 1986 after the end of the anti-dictatorship struggle and its more seemingly pressing issues, as before “tensions between feminism and nationalism prevented any sophisticated theorising of feminism and its adaptation to the philippine cultural matrix” (roces, 1998, p. 148). nowadays, the presence of women and women’s groups in social movements, civil society, and people’s organisations is manifold because of the global departure of feminism in the last decades, the growing pressure of women within progressive movements to extend the paradigm of liberation and empowerment to the sphere of gender relations, the grassroots women’s quest for self-determination and, last but not least, the top-down influence of government and (international) funding agencies promoting gender issues. can we observe that this aseas 3(2) 146 147 does not only lead to much ‘gender talk’ but to ‘walking this talk’ as well? on the one hand, the (often dominant) participation of women in civil society goes beyond the membership in women’s (rights) groups, especially extending to groups dealing with traditional women’s issues like health, children or consumer issues. but men usually dominate organisations with mixed gender membership, even if most members are women. in mixed gender discussions, usually men dominate the talk, while women most of the time keep low key and only listen. they would only speak up and ‘push the wall’ when ‘female issues’ come up.13 in philippine ngos and people’s organisations, above-average men are occupying symbolically prized positions such as president, while women execute the labourintensive tasks. they are secretaries, treasurers, or bookkeepers, as well as in charge of cooking, catering, and the decoration committee. men make decisions, while women put them into effect. gender-sensitivity training for women – and nowadays even for men – has only been able to change this slowly. and where women assert leadership positions in civil society organisations (csos), they mainly have a middleand upper-class background, even within ‘people-oriented’ leftist movements, while the staff consists mainly of lower-income professionals with a middle-class and petty bourgeois background. the informal working class is largely excluded from active participation in csos, and if men and women from lower classes are to be found, then they act mainly as clerks, caretakers, and street workers, or simply as part of the ‘warm bodies’ (as the participants of mass rallies are called in the philippines) and the grassroots of the csos. the number of persons with underclass origin that have made careers within civil society is very limited despite the pro-poor rhetoric that dominates civil society discourse. women from the lower echelons of society feel treated in a disrespectful way by middle-class people, academics, and intellectuals. “even if we do not hear them say these things [downgrading terms] we feel it … they are smiling, but they put the alcohol [cleaning their hands]” (women trade unionists, personal communication, in reese, 2009). gender issues are still often considered to be ‘side contradictions’ in progressive circles, with men withdrawing once these are raised in discussions – just like in the times of the anti-marcos struggle, when the objectives of feminism were perceived to 13 this is a reason why many women’s rights activists do insist on ‘all-women spaces’, as they consider them to be an arena where women can develop assertiveness and leadership skills, which they finally can also use to ‘voice out’ in mixed gender settings even if this would mean entering into a conflict (reese, 2009). niklas reese “still working on it”: an overview on the current state of public activism of women in the philippines aseas 3(2) 148 149 be in conflict with the aim of national liberation and social revolution, and the (male) leadership of the liberation movement gave the issues of social injustice and class struggle priority. within the ‘national democrats’, gabriela tried to strike a balance between socialist and feminist ends, but met widespread reservations, especially amongst the male cadre, as they were accused of being divisive. they supported the issue of violence against women, an issue that was prevalent within ‘politically mobilised’ households as well. conclusion while there has been a massive entry of women into the public sphere (labour, politics, and leisure space), the gender superstructure has remained stable within the traditional patriarchal setup. women in the public sphere therefore still have to be more open and forthright in their assertion to be there, even though it is still not really considered their place. women activists experience that some officials would rather listen to men than to women when certain concerns are ventilated, and that officials at times are turned off if women just put facts on the table, not playing on the ‘women’s keyboard’ and using the tools of informal politics. women’s rights activists and women’s citizenship rights still have a long way to go. reproductive rights are still contested by the catholic hierarchy, even if the reproductive health bill finds large support amongst the populace (which in western terms is still rather conservative), with 78 percent supporting it and only nine percent opposing it (mangahas, 2009) – or are ‘still working on it’, as rural women activists once responded when i asked them how they struggle free from the powerful culture of traditional gender relations. women’s presence in the public sphere is more accepted nowadays but still contested. so, a rollback is hardly to be expected, even if the society’s economic dependency on women makes their working indispensable. sooner or later, this tension between social reality and ideological expectations may fracture and thereby weaken the patriarchal superstructure. aseas 3(2) 148 149 references coronel, s. (2005). a nation of nannies, i report no. 2, philippine center for investigative journalism. retrieved 28 september 2009, from http://www.pcij.org/i-report/2/yaya.html doyo, m. c. (1998, march 31). women saying no, philippine daily inquirer, pages unknown. ellwood-clayton, b. (2006). maria clara, manila girl & the other mary. premarital sex in the catholic philippines: constructions of seduction. pilipinas, 46, 1-27. health management and research group foundation (hmrg) inc. (2009). mr gad. men’s responsibilities in gender and development. davao city, the philippines: hmrg. kron, s. (2008). prácticas de ciudadanía y migración transnacional. notas sobre la zona fronteriza guatemalteco-mexicana. in g. herrera & j. ramírez (eds.), américa latina migrante. estado, familia, identidades (pp. 393-421). quito, ecuador: flacso ecuador. mangahas, m. (2009, september 25). local support for the rh bill is piling up, philippine daily inquirer. retrieved 25 september 2009, from http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view/20090925226924/local-support-for-the-rh-bill-is-piling-up martínez, a. (2001). “para los hombres, las heridas son flores” – cuerpo, trabajo y memoria en pindal. in x. andrade & g. herrera (eds.), masculinidades en ecuador (pp. 29-45). quito, ecuador: flacso ecuador. retrieved 25 september 2009, from http://www.flacso.org.ec/docs/samasmartinez.pdf medina, b. t. (2001). the filipino family. quezon city, the philippines: university of the philippines press. paguntalan, a. (2002). nimble fingers, clenched fists. dynamics of structure, agency and women’s spaces in a manufacturing company. quezon city, the philippines: center for women’s studies. parreñas salazar, r. (2002). the care crisis in the philippines. children and transnational families in the new global economy. in b. ehrenreich & a. r. hochschild (eds.), global women. nannies, maids, and sex workers in the new economy (pp. 39-54). london: granta books. pingol, a. (2001). remaking masculinities. identity, power, and gender dynamics in families with migrant wives and househusbands. quezon city, the philippines: ateneo de manila university press. raquiza, a. (1997). philippine feminist politics disunity in diversity? in m. c. ferrer (ed.), civil society making civil society (pp. 171-186). quezon city, the philippines: university of the philippines press. reese, n. (2006). wir leben doch im matriarchat! geschlechterkonzepte und geschlechterverhältnisse [in den philippinen]. in n. reese & r. werning (eds.), handbuch philippinen (pp. 134-144). bad honnef, germany: horlemann verlag. (a nearly identical article can be retrieved at http://www.asienhaus.de/ public/archiv/genderfrage-philippinen-nreese.pdf) reese, n. (2009). field notes. interviews and participant observation on the issue of gender and (political) agency. davao & metro manila, august september. (including the feedback given during validation workshops early 2010.) roces, m. (1998). women, power and kinship politics. westport, co: praeger publishers. roces, m. (ed.). (2010). women’s movements in asia: feminisms and transnational activism. london: routledge. niklas reese “still working on it”: an overview on the current state of public activism of women in the philippines aseas 3(2) 150 151 rp among the best in gender equality. (2009, october 29). business world. retrieved 29 november 2009, from http://www.bworldonline.com/bw102909/content.php?id=004 scott, j. (1990). domination and the arts of resistance. new haven, ct: yale university press. tan, m. (2003, september 30). male privilege and violence, philippine daily inquirer, pages unknown. tan, m. (2009, july 8). tita, ate, madam, philippine daily inquirer. retrieved 29 september 2009, from http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view/20090708-214396/tita-ate-madam veneracion-rallonza, l. (2009). a spectacle of masculine and feminine images of political leadership: a feminist reflection on the current crisis of leadership in the philippines. in a. ayaz & a. fleschenberg (eds.), the gender face of asian politics (pp. 99-117). oxford, uk: oxford university press. young, b. (1999). die herrin und die magd globalisierung und die re-konstruktion von “class, gender and race”. widerspruch, 38, 47-59. islam pribumi. der islam der einheimischen, seine „arabisierung“ und arabische diasporagemeinschaften in indonesien / islam pribumi. the islam of the natives, its “arabisation“ and arab diaspora communities in indonesia aseas 1 (1) 04 islam pribumi der islam der einheimischen, seine „arabisierung“ und arabische diasporagemeinschaften in indonesien islam pribumi the islam of the natives, its “arabisation“ and arab diaspora communities in indonesia martin slama forschungsstelle sozialanthropologie österreichische akademie der wissenschaften aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften / austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 1 (1), 2008 seas gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften www.seas.at junge intellektuelle, die mehrheitlich der größten islamischen organisation indonesiens, der nahdlatul ulama, nahe stehen, setzen sich heute für einen „islam der einheimischen“ (islam pribumi) ein, der sich in indonesien im laufe der jahrhunderte entwickelte und sich vor allem vom islam, wie er in der arabischen welt praktiziert wird, in mehreren aspekten unterscheidet. es handelt sich hierbei um einen sehr selbstbewussten diskurs, der die eigene religiöse und kulturelle praxis betont und sich von „arabischen“ traditionen, die als fremd wahrgenommen werden, abgrenzt. dieser diskurs wird mit der führenden rolle von arabisch-stämmigen indonesiern in radikalen islamischen organisationen in beziehung gesetzt, die aus der sicht der jungen intellektuellen der nahdlatul ulama eine „arabisierung“ indonesiens betreiben. der artikel untersucht in der folge diese arabisierungsthese, indem näher auf die position der arabischen gemeinschaft in der indonesischen gesellschaft eingegangen wird. young intellectuals close to indonesia’s biggest islamic organisation, the nahdlatul ulama, are advocating an “islam of the natives” (islam pribumi) which has developed in indonesia over the past centuries and differs from islam as it is practiced in the arab world in many ways. this selfconfident discourse emphasises indonesian cultural and religious practice and distances itself from “arab” traditions perceived as foreign. the article explores this discourse in the light of the role indonesians of arab descent play as leading figures in radical islamic organisations, which, according to the young intellectuals of the nahdlatul ulama, carry out an “arabisation” of indonesia. the article investigates this thesis of an arabisation by analysing the position of the arab community in the wider indonesian society. aseas 1 (1) einleitung1 die arabische sprache, die sprache des koran, sowie die arabisch-nahöstliche welt im allgemeinen, die die spirituellen zentren des islam beherbergt, stellen für viele indonesierinnen eine fremde welt dar, auch wenn sie sich selbst zum islam bekennen. diese durchaus ambivalente beziehung zwischen indonesien und dem nahen osten soll in diesem artikel anhand einer aktuellen debatte beleuchtet werden, die von folgender frage angetrieben wird: inwieweit sollen sich indonesische musliminnen in ihrer religiösen praxis und in ihrem lebensstil an der arabisch-nahöstlichen welt orientieren bzw. inwieweit sollen sie an lokalen traditionen festhalten? diese debatte gewinnt an komplexität, wenn man sie mit der tatsache in verbindung bringt, dass es in indonesien eine arabisch-stämmige minderheit gibt, die teil einer diaspora ist, welche sich ursprünglich rund um den indischen ozean ausbreitete und die heute darüber hinaus weite teile der welt umspannt. weiters gibt dieser diskurs auskunft über die richtungskämpfe innerhalb des indonesischen islam. es geht sozusagen um die deutungshoheit dieser religion in indonesien. doch möchte ich zunächst allgemein den islam im indonesischen kontext beleuchten, indem ich das verhältnis zwischen religion und staat sowie jenes zwischen islam und lokalkulturen kurz thematisiere. in indonesien leben ungefähr 200 millionen menschen, die sich zum islam bekennen, das sind knapp 90% der gesamtbevölkerung des landes. damit ist indonesien der staat mit der größten anzahl an musliminnen – nicht der größte „islamische staat“, wie manchmal behauptet wird. denn die verfassung indonesiens basiert nicht auf dem islam, sondern auf den fünf prinzipien der pancasila (fünf säulen), wobei das erste prinzip den glauben an den einen, höchsten gott vorschreibt. indonesien ist damit zwar offiziell monotheistisch, nicht aber islamisch. die amtssprache indonesiens ist die aus dem malaiischen hervorgegangene bahasa indonesia, indonesisch – und nicht arabisch. hinzu kommen hunderte regionalsprachen, die eigentlichen muttersprachen vieler indonesierinnen.2 für die bevölkerung stellt arabisch eine fremdsprache dar. viele musliminnen in indonesien lernen das rezitieren des koran, d.h. sie können zwar die arabische schrift lesen, aber kaum ihre bedeutung entschlüsseln, geschweige denn auf arabisch im alltag kommunizieren.� die beherrschung des arabischen bleibt religiösen spezialisten überlassen, die meist eine besondere ausbildung in religiösen internatsschulen in indonesien, den sogenannten pesantren, oder sogar im nahen osten erfahren haben. das � ich danke ilse mirnig und zwei anonymen reviewern von seas für die korrekturen und die inhaltlichen kommentare. die verantwortung für die endfassung des textes liegt selbstverständlich alleine beim autor. 2 die meisten indonesierinnen erlernen indonesisch erst in der schule. in multi-ethnisch geprägten urbanen gebieten, vor allem in jakarta, setzt sich das indonesische auf kosten der regionalsprachen jedoch immer mehr durch. eine wichtige rolle dabei spielen die indonesischen medien, die überwiegend die nationalsprache verwenden. die sprache der jungen menschen greift heute auch weniger auf regionalsprachen zurück, es entwickelte sich vielmehr ein urbanes jugendidiom des indonesischen, das auch zunehmend von den medien aufgegriffen wird. � zur spirituellen und emotionalen bedeutung des koranlesens und der zunehmenden popularität von koranlesewettbewerben in indonesien siehe gade (2004). 05 aseas 1 (1) arabische ist somit vor allem eine ritualsprache, die nur von wenigen wirklich beherrscht wird. in indonesien trifft der islam aber nicht nur auf sprecherinnen unterschiedlicher sprachen, sondern taucht auch in kulturelle kontexte ein, die jenen der arabischen halbinsel bzw. der nahöstlich-islamischen welt sehr verschieden sind. die unter indonesiens musliminnen verbreiteten religiös-spirituellen praktiken und weltbilder decken sich oft nicht mit jenen in den islamischen kulturen des nahen ostens. weiters sind unterschiedliche verwandtschaftsorganisationen, erbregeln, residenzformen, konzeptionen von geschlecht, von öffentlichen und privaten sphären etc. zu nennen, die die lebenswelten der musliminnen indonesiens von jenen im nahen osten unterscheiden.4 als der islam in indonesien mit lokalen traditionen in kontakt trat, beeinflusste er diese, brachte sie aber nur in den wenigsten fällen zum verschwinden. vor allem auf java mussten die frühen vertreter des islam beachtliche kompromisse eingehen, um die neue religion erfolgreich zu verbreiten. eine schlüsselrolle dabei spielten der legende nach charismatische prediger, die so genannten „neun heiligen“ (wali songo), die vor circa 500 jahren den lokalen gegebenheiten stark angepasste missionsstragien verfolgten. sie verwendeten etwa das javanische schattenspiel zur verbreitung des islam oder ließen vor-islamische, hindu-buddhistische architekturelemente in den moscheebau einfließen (fox �99�, chambert-loir 2002). von der lokalisierung des islam zum islam der einheimischen diese frühe lokalisierung des islam in indonesien wurde in den �980er jahren vom späteren präsidenten abdurrahman wahid, der zu dieser zeit noch der größten islamischen organisation indonesiens, der nahdlatul ulama, vorstand, zum thema gemacht. wahid (200�:��7-��6) prägte ende der �980er jahre den begriff „pribumisasi islam“ – wörtlich übersetzt hieße dies die „einheimischmachung“ oder „vereinheimischung des islam“; pribumisasi leitet sich von pribumi ab, was so viel wie „einheimische/r“ bedeutet. für wahid werden die essentiellen lehren des islam erst durch diese „vereinheimischung“, wie sie etwa von den neun heiligen einst durchgeführt wurde5, für die breite bevölkerung zugänglich gemacht, da dabei auf die lokalen kulturellen bedürfnisse eingegangen wird. er ging sogar so weit, vor einer „arabisasi“ 4 die diskussion in der kultur und sozialanthropologie indonesiens über das spannungsverhältnis zwischen lokalen traditionen und dem islam hat sich im anschluss an clifford geertz (�960) klassischer darstellung des islam auf java besonders auf diese region konzentriert (vgl. u.a. woodward �989, beatty �999). zum besonderen verhältnis von lokalen genderkonstruktionen und islam siehe die arbeiten von suzanne brenner (�996, �998), weiters robinson (200�) und die artikel in ong/pelletz (�995). 5 vertreter der nahdlatul ulama beziehen sich oft auf die neun heiligen und betonen ihren vorbildcharakter für einen islam, wie er in indonesien gelebt und gelehrt werden sollte. die organisation unterstützt deshalb auch die ohnehin schon sehr populären pilgerfahrten zu den gräbern dieser heiligen. 06 martin slama islam pribumi aseas 1 (1) (arabisierung) der indonesischen gesellschaft zu warnen. denn eine identifikation mit der kultur des nahen ostens würde die indonesierinnen von ihren kulturellen wurzeln trennen (ebd. ��9). diese worte fielen in den �980er jahren vor dem hintergrund der damals stark steigenden popularität des islam in der städtischen mittelschicht indonesiens – vor allem unter studentinnen. nachdem das suharto-regime ende der �970er jahre die universitäten, von denen aus immer wieder protestbewegungen organisiert wurden, unter seine kontrolle gebracht hatte, blieb die religion, d.h. vor allem der islam, die einzige sphäre, die nicht vollkommen vom regime beherrscht wurde. diese innerindonesischen politischen entwicklungen fielen zeitlich mit einer renaissance des islam in der islamischen welt zusammen, die bis indonesien ausstrahlte und die durch die revolution im iran �979 eine besondere dynamik bekam.6 dieser islam der studentinnen bzw. der städtischen mittelschicht unterschied sich jedoch vom islam der nahdlatul ulama, die ihre basis in der einfachen landbevölkerung – vor allem in ostjava – hat. immer mehr arabische begriffe, nahöstliche kleidung, darunter das kopftuch in einer verhüllenderen variante als bisher, begannen in die alltagskultur indonesiens einzufließen, was wahid zu thematisieren versuchte. er erregte zu dieser zeit jedoch weniger aufsehen mit seinem akademisch gehaltenen begriff „pribumisasi islam“, sondern mit seiner aussage, dass indonesische musliminnen sich nicht mit „assalamualaikum“ begrüßen müssten, sondern dass das indonesische „selamat pagi“ (guten morgen) oder „selamat siang“ (guten tag) reichen würden (vgl. baso 2002: 8). abdurrahman wahid dominierte die nahdlatul ulama fast zwei jahrzehnte lang, lotste sie durch die schwierige zeit der letzten jahre des suharto-regimes und stieg schließlich ende �999 selbst für kurze zeit zum präsidenten der republik indonesiens auf. doch obwohl er immer mehr einfluss in der politischen arena bekam, schritt die von ihm kritisierte „arabisierung“ weiter teile der indonesischen gesellschaft stetig voran. nach der jahrtausendwende kam es daraufhin zu einer renaissance der pribumisasi-debatte, die diesmal nicht von abdurrahman wahid selbst, sondern bereits von der nächsten generation junger intellektueller der nahdlatul ulama getragen wurde. im grunde könnten jedoch wahids ausführungen zu „pribumisasi“ bereits als renaissance bezeichnet werden, denn, wie van dijk (�997: 6�-65) zeigt, wurde das thema bereits in den �9�0er jahren in der kolonialzeit in lokalen medien diskutiert. so gab es etwa den fall eines siebzehnjährigen schulmädchens aus yogyakarta, das sich weigerte ein kopftuch zu tragen „… reasoning that java is not arabia, and following islam does not mean complying with arab rules“ (dijk �997: 65).7 die jungen intellektuellen der nahdlatul ulama 6 für das wechselhafte verhältnis zwischen den islamischen bewegungen und dem suharto-regime in den �980er und 90er jahren und besonders für deren rolle beim erzwungenen rücktritt suhartos �998 siehe hefner (2000). 7 ricklefs (2007, vor allem kap. 7) untersucht in seiner neuesten publikation die genealogie dieser anti-arabischen und zum teil anti-islamischen diskurse in der kolonialzeit. weiters gilt es hier festzuhalten, dass in südostasien 07 aseas 1 (1) sind jedoch hauptsächlich von wahid inspiriert, wenn sie vom islam pribumi, vom islam der einheimischen sprechen. die junge generation der nahdlatul ulama stellt sich gegen all jene auffassungen, die die beziehung zwischen der universalen religion des islam und lokalen kulturellen traditionen per se als widersprüchlich definieren. sie wollen hingegen eine brücke zwischen religion und kultur bauen (rahmat et. al. 200�: 9, übersetzung durch den autor): die idee einer lokalisierung des islam [pribumisasi islam] wird von uns weiterentwickelt zu einer idee vom islam der einheimischen [islam pribumi] als antwort auf einen authentischen oder reinen islam, der eine arabisierung jeder islamischen gemeinschaft in allen ecken der welt durchführen möchte. der islam der einheimischen hingegen bietet die möglichkeit einer vielfalt von interpretationen im religiösen leben in den unterschiedlichen regionen. damit wird der islam nicht mehr als einheitlich, sondern als vielfältig gesehen. es ist schluss mit der auffassung, der islam des nahen ostens sei der reine und einzig wahre islam […]. diese deutlichen worte zeigen, dass sich die junge generation noch offensiver als wahid gegen jene interpretationen des islam richten, die nicht auf lokale traditionen rücksicht nehmen. in der post-suharto-ära, also nach �998, drängten diese strömungen im indonesischen islam auch immer stärker an die öffentlichkeit. politische parteien, organisationen und bewegungen mit einem islamistischen programm wurden neu gegründet bzw. ältere revitalisiert, von denen manche durch gewaltaktionen in erscheinung traten (vgl. bruinessen 2002). diese politischen parteien, organisationen und bewegungen unterscheiden sich untereinander vor allem aufgrund ihrer strategien: manche wollen eine islamische gesetzgebung einführen, also den indonesischen staat zu einem islamischen machen und in der folge mittels staatlicher gewalt die indonesische bevölkerung zum „wahren“ islam „bekehren“; andere wiederum konzentrieren sich in ihren bestrebungen auf die religiöse praxis und den lebensstil der indonesischen musliminnen und lassen das politische feld erst einmal außer acht in der hoffnung, dass der staat der gesellschaft, wenn diese einmal ihren vorstellungen entspricht, schon folgen werde. all diesen bewegungen ist gemein, dass sie den koran möglichst wörtlich, also fundamentalistisch, auslegen und andere interpretationen ihrer religion wie andere religionen überhaupt verdammen. doch nicht nur diese fundamentalistischen bewegungen, auch konservative kreise des religiösen establishments wie die versammlung der islamgelehrten indonesiens (majelis ulama indonesia), ein die regierung beratendes organ, fuhren nun eine härtere linie gegen „abweichende“ interpretationen des islam als auch gegen andere religionsgemeinschaften. hinzu kam, dass zu beginn des neuen millenniums in teilen indonesiens gewaltsame konflikte entlang religiöser linien, d.h. zwischen muslimen und über die „arabisierung“ der einheimischen kultur nicht nur in indonesien diskutiert wird. für malaysia sind die diskussionsforen der folgenden internetseiten repräsentativ: http://web.islam.gov.my und http://www.freeanwar. com (erstere wird von der malaysischen regierung betrieben, letztere von den anhängern des oppositionellen anwar ibrahim). ich danke helmut lukas, der mich auf den malaysischen diskurs aufmerksam machte. 08 martin slama islam pribumi aseas 1 (1) christen, ausbrachen (vgl. sidel 2007). auf dieses sich radikalisierende klima in indonesien stellt der islam-pribumi-diskurs eine antwort dar, wie seine vertreter auch selbst immer wieder betonen (vgl. rahmat et al. 200�: ��-�5). der islam-pribumi-diskurs ist aber nicht nur als politische intervention zu verstehen, sondern auch als ein intellektuelles projekt. als solches hat der islam der einheimischen methode – im wahrsten sinn des wortes: er stützt sich nämlich auf eine bestimmte interpretationsmethode der zentralen islamischen texte. die vertreter des islam pribumi stellen den koran und die sunna (die überlieferten aussprüche und taten des propheten) in einen historischen und kulturellen kontext. sie untersuchen den koran auf seine arabischen wurzeln hin und stellen die frage, inwieweit der koran eine antwort auf die situation der arabischen gesellschaft zur zeit des propheten ist. mit diesem hermeneutischen zugang wollen die indonesischen exegeten die universalen lehren der islamischen grundtexte, ihre grundwerte sozusagen, von ihrem spezifisch arabisch-kulturellen ausdruck trennen. das ist ein wichtiger strategischer schritt. denn damit erscheint die arabische kultur zur zeit des propheten als eine von vielen möglichen islamischen kulturen. dies impliziert, wie ein vertreter des islam pribumi schreibt (mun’im 200�: 7, übersetzung durch den autor), dass [...] das kulturelle erbe indonesiens ebenfalls zum rechtmäßigen kulturellen erbe des islam zählt. die historische erfahrung indonesiens, sowohl der vor-islamischen als auch der islamischen zeit, sollte daher in die historische erfahrung des islam selbst integriert werden. oder, wie andere vertreter des islam pribumi etwas polemischer formulieren (rahmat 200�: xvii, übersetzung durch den autor): muss das, was als authentisch bezeichnet wird, unbedingt arabisch sein? muss der wahre islam unbedingt streng sein gegenüber dem, was als nicht aus dem islam kommend angesehen wird, wie lokale traditionen und die moderne? in ihrer opposition zu den islamisten stützen sich die verfechter des islam pribumi also nicht nur auf die integrität lokaler traditionen, sondern auch auf moderne grundwerte, die für sie mit den grundlehren des islam, besonders mit seinem zentralen wert der gerechtigkeit (adil), in einklang stehen. die vertreter des islam pribumi engagieren sich daher auch für die demokratisierung indonesiens, für eine gerechtere verteilung materieller güter, für egalitäre gender-beziehungen, für die rechte von minderheiten etc. vor diesem ideologischen hintergrund werden auch lokale traditionen bewertet (rahmat et. al. 200�: �9, übersetzung durch den autor): gegenüber lokalen traditionen, die repressive, hegemoniale und ungerechte praktiken ausüben, wird der islam pribumi seine kritik äußern [...]. währenddessen wird er lokale traditionen, die soziale gerechtigkeit und wohlstand garantieren, sehr schätzen. 09 aseas 1 (1) für die vertreter des islam pribumi muss also nicht alles, was einheimisch ist, gut sein, aber vieles, so scheint es, was aus arabien kommt, ist für sie zumindest mit vorsicht zu genießen oder wird überhaupt abgelehnt. denn vieles, was die vertreter des islam pribumi als „arabisch“ identifizieren, also meist das, was von fundamentalistischen gruppierungen als genuin „islamisch“ propagiert wird, entspricht nicht ihren vorstellungen von gerechtigkeit und gehört ihrer meinung nach auch nicht zum universalen repertoire des islam. die arabische diaspora in indonesien nun muss man aber nicht von indonesien in den nahen osten reisen, um arabische gesellschaften kennen zu lernen, sondern kann durchaus im archipel bleiben. im ethnisch vielfältigen indonesien gibt es nämlich auch, wie oben bereits erwähnt, eine arabischstämmige minderheit, die heute in den meisten größeren städten indonesiens vertreten ist.8 diese formierte sich bereits in der kolonialzeit, als besonders nach der öffnung des suez-kanals (�869) und der einführung der dampfschifffahrt migranten vom südlichen rand der arabischen halbinsel, genauer vom hadhramaut im heutigen yemen, nach südostasien auswanderten. hadhramitische araber kamen in kleineren gruppen jedoch schon viel früher nach südostasien, wo sie sich als händler in den wichtigsten hafenstädten niederließen, als islamische gelehrte auftraten, in lokale herrscherhäuser einheirateten und im �8. jahrhundert sogar selbst, wie in siak und pontianak, sultanate gründeten (riddel �997: 220). die vorfahren fast aller indonesierinnen arabischer abstammung kamen aus dem hadhramaut. es handelte sich praktisch nur um auswanderer, also um männer, die zunächst frauen aus den lokalen gesellschaften heirateten, dann aber vorzugsweise nachkommen anderer arabischer einwanderer heirateten bzw. ihre töchter neuankömmlingen aus dem hadhramaut zur braut gaben. so entstanden im damaligen niederländisch-indien relativ stabile diasporagemeinschaften, deren angehörige – wie auch im fall der chinesischen diaspora – hauptsächlich im handel tätig waren, aber auch als religiöse gelehrte auftraten (siehe die artikel in freitag/clarence-smith �997 und jonge/kaptein 2002). in diesen arabischen gemeinschaften ist auch heute noch eine starke orientierung hin zur endogamie feststellbar, sodass sich viele der in der kolonialzeit eingerichteten araberviertel in den größeren städten indonesiens bis in die gegenwart erhalten haben (jonge �997). hinzu kommt, dass in den �990er jahren, nachdem das kommunistische regime im südjemen abdanken musste und 8 der begriff minderheit verdient hier eine fußnote: da in indonesien keine ethnische gruppe eine absolute mehrheit für sich beanspruchen kann, gibt es auf der nationalen ebene nur relative mehrheiten. auf lokaler ebene kann man jedoch sehr wohl von mehrheiten bzw. minderheiten sprechen. zu letzteren zählen auch die im archipel verstreuten arabergemeinschaften, die zum beispiel in den javanischen städten solo, pekalongan und surabaya eine signifikante minderheit gegenüber der javanischen mehrheitsgesellschaft darstellen. 10 martin slama islam pribumi aseas 1 (1) sich der nordund südjemen vereinigten, wieder vermehrt verbindungen in den hadhramaut aufgenommen wurden, was der diasporaidentität der indonesischen araberinnen eine neue dynamik verlieh (vgl. slama 2005). in den vierteln der arabischen minderheit wird auf das einhalten der gebote des islam besonderen wert gelegt. die indonesierinnen arabischer abstammung sehen sich auch oft als frommer als der rest der muslimischen bevölkerung an, als die vertreter des islam in indonesien. so meinte etwa ein prominenter araber in der kolonialzeit, dass die zukunft des islam in java von der zukunft der araber abhinge (affandi �999: �70). diese sicht wurde auch von der kolonialmacht gestärkt, die die araber verdächtigte, pan-islamische ideologien in niederländisch-indien zu verbreiten (dijk 2002) und ihnen aufgrund ihrer religiösen autorität einen besonderen einfluss auf die lokale bevölkerung zusprach (mandal �997, 2002). auf diese arabergemeinschaften in indonesien wird im islam-pribumi-diskurs nie explizit bezug genommen. trotzdem, möchte ich hier argumentieren, sind sie in ihm präsent. denn die bekanntesten, d.h. medial sichtbarsten kontrahenten der vertreter des islam pribumi kommen aus den reihen der indonesischen araber. die anführer der drei vielleicht radikalsten islamistischen bewegungen indonesiens der letzten jahre sind alle indonesier arabischer abstammung: abu bakar ba‘asyir von der majelis mujahedin indonesia, der versammlung der mujahedin-kämpfer indonesiens, rizieq shihab von der front pembela islam, der front der verteidiger des islam, und ja‘far umar thalib vom laskar jihad, den jihad kriegern. diese organisationen betreiben ein programm, das genau der von den islam-pribumi-intellektuellen kritisierten „arabisierung“ entspricht: intoleranz sowohl gegenüber lokaler religiöser praxis und lokaler alltagskultur als auch gegenüber modernen lebensstilen, hierarchische anstatt egalitäre gender-beziehungen bzw. eine strikte segregation der geschlechter; schließlich idealisieren sie die zeit des propheten und der damaligen arabischen gesellschaft, an die die indonesische gegenwart angepasst werden soll (azra 200�, hasan 2006, turmudi/sihbudi 2005). araber, pribumi und arabisierung arabisieren also die araber indonesien? diese frage, die natürlich einen polemischen charakter hat, drängt sich an dieser stelle fast auf. inwieweit repräsentieren diese arabisch-stämmigen indonesier die arabische gemeinschaft im land? unterstützen die indonesischen araberinnen mehrheitlich ihr programm? diese fragen lassen sich relativ einfach beantworten. denn ein genauerer blick auf die anführer dieser radikalen organisationen verrät sehr bald, dass diese in ihrer eigenen arabischen gemeinschaft nicht reüssieren konnten. sie engagierten sich fast 11 aseas 1 (1) alle einmal in den islamischen organisationen der arabischen minderheit (zu diesen siehe mobini-kesheh �999, abu shouk 2002), von denen sie sich jedoch verabschiedeten, um ihre eigenen wege zu gehen. abu bakar ba‘asyir war in den �970er jahren im zentraljavanischen solo in der von arabern ins leben gerufenen organisation al-irsyad aktiv, verließ diese aber, um gemeinsam mit seinem mitstreiter abdullah sungkar die internatsschule al-mukmin in ngruki, einem vorort von solo, zu gründen, die in den letzten jahren in die schlagzeilen kam, weil eine reihe ihrer absolventen in terroranschläge verwickelt waren (international crisis group 2002: 6). ba‘asyir bewegte sich damit auch räumlich aus der arabischen gemeinschaft hinaus. denn al-irsyad unterhält ebenfalls eine schule, die ihren sitz im araberviertel solos hat und natürlich auch von kindern arabischer abstammung besucht wird. auf ba‘asyirs almukmin treffen diese charakteristika hingegen nicht zu. ja‘far umar thalib war ebenfalls in einer bildungseinrichtung von al-irsyad aktiv – und zwar im zentraljavanischen salatiga. doch auch er verließ die organisation und gründete in den �990er jahren seine eigene internatsschule in yogyakarta (hasan 2002, 2006). sowohl thalib als auch ba‘asyir kommen aus einer bestimmten gruppe der arabischen gemeinschaft: ihre abstammung wird nämlich auf stammesgruppen und familien von rechtsgelehrten im hadhramaut zurückgeführt. ihnen gegenüber steht eine andere gruppe indonesischer araberinnen, die eine genealogie besitzt, die bis zum propheten mohammed zurückreicht, und die die religiöse elite im hadhramaut bildet. diese beiden gruppen indonesischer araberinnen stehen meist in konkurrenz zu einander, sodass der niederländische sozialanthropologe huub de jonge (2000) die indonesierinnen arabischer abstammung als eine „gespaltene minderheit“ (divided minority) bezeichnete. die gründung der organisation al-irsyad im jahre �9�4 richtete sich auch gegen die gruppe der nachkommen des propheten, speziell gegen deren vorherrschaft in religiösen fragen. von den anführern der drei radikalen organisationen kommt nur rizieq shihab aus jener gruppe der religiösen elite. er nennt sich deshalb auch habib rizieq shihab und verwendet damit einen titel, der nur unter den nachkommen des propheten üblich ist. die nachkommen des propheten, die eine sufi-bruderschaft, die tariqat al-alawiyyah, führen (vgl. alatas �999), erreichten ihren elitären status im hadhramaut als männer der religion, die die waffen abgelegt hatten und als vermittler zwischen stämmen und interessensgruppen fungierten. gewaltlosigkeit hat also einen zentralen stellenwert für die identität dieser gruppe – in indonesien wie im hadhramaut. rizieq shihab und seine organisation verstößt jedoch gegen dieses prinzip der gewaltlosigkeit, was ihn zwar zu einer berühmtheit in indonesiens medienlandschaft, aber zum außenseiter unter den nachkommen des propheten macht. denn konkret ist die front pembela islam darauf spezialisiert, besonders im fastenmonat ramadhan bars, cafés und diskotheken zu stürmen, wo sie „unislamisches“ bzw. „unmoralisches“ verhalten vermutet (vgl. umam 2006: �0-��). 12 martin slama islam pribumi aseas 1 (1) warum verließen also diese drei indonesischen araber ihre gemeinschaft? ihre biografien weisen alle eine gemeinsamkeit auf, die uns zur beantwortung dieser frage führt: alle drei waren längere zeit im ausland bzw. erfuhren ihre religiöse ausbildung nicht nur in indonesien. rizieq shihab studierte in saudi-arabien an der könig muhammed ibn saud universität (riyad) und lernte dort den islam in seiner wahhabitischen interpretation kennen, die lokal-religiösen praktiken und modern-westlichen lebensstilen besonders ablehnend gegenübersteht. ja‘far umar thalib studierte am maududi islamic institute in pakistan, hielt sich zeitweise in afghanistan und später dann im jemen und saudi-arabien auf, wo er den kontakt zu führenden wahhabitischen gelehrten suchte (hasan 2002). abu bakar ba‘asyir floh in den �980er jahren nach malaysien, als er vom suharto-regime wegen seines eintretens für eine umwandlung indonesiens in einen islamischen staat verfolgt wurde. diese längeren aufenthalte im ausland bzw. die dort bestimmenden ideologischen einflüsse trugen sicher zur entfremdung von der eigenen gemeinschaft bei. bei den anführern der radikalen organisationen handelt es sich also um arabisch-stämmige indonesier, die kaum mehr in ihrer gemeinschaft verankert sind bzw. nur mehr eine marginale stellung in dieser einnehmen. in der führungsriege und unter den anhängern der von ihnen angeführten organisationen finden sich demnach auch kaum araber, sondern vor allem pribumi, einheimische.9 die meisten anhänger und strengsten verfechter der „arabisierung“ indonesiens sind also nicht indonesier arabischer abstammung, sondern pribumi – eine aussage, die auch noch dadurch gestützt wird, dass die drei hier beschriebenen radikalen organisationen natürlich nicht die einzigen dieser art sind, die sich im post-suharto-indonesien etablieren konnten; es gibt eine reihe von gruppen, die nicht von arabisch-stämmigen indonesiern angeführt werden (vgl. azra 200�; turmudi/sihbudi 2005). betrachtet man das soziale umfeld der radikal-islamistischen bewegungen indonesiens, so wird das bild noch klarer: keine einzige ist in den arabergemeinschaften verankert, die – wie bereits erwähnt – ihre eigenen organisationen unterhalten. letztere vertreten zum teil zwar auch einen islam, der eine möglichst wörtliche auslegung der grundtexte verlangt, distanzieren sich aber von politischen radikalismen, was nicht sonderlich überraschen kann: handelt es sich doch bei den arabischen diasporagruppen indonesiens um eine händlerminderheit (trading minority), die zuallererst an politischer stabilität, die geschäfte machen erst ermöglicht, interessiert ist. es ist zwar nicht zu leugnen, dass, wie gesagt, in den arabischen gemeinschaften bestimmte lokale religiöse praktiken und vorstellungen abgelehnt werden und stärker auf die basistexte des islam bezug genommen wird, dass frauen tendenziell einen geringeren 9 zur sozialen herkunft der anhänger dieser organisationen und ihrer motive siehe vor allem hasan (2002, 2006), azra (200�) und turmudi/sihbudi (2005). 13 aseas 1 (1) handlungsspielraum haben als in den „einheimischen“ gesellschaften bzw. dass hier auch die beziehungen zwischen den geschlechtern hierarchischer konstruiert sind, also alles das zutrifft, was die vertreter des islam pribumi unter „arabisierung“ subsumieren. nichtsdestotrotz sind die radikalen organisationen für die arabisch-stämmigen indonesierinnen wenig attraktiv, für andere indonesische musliminnen, die einen anderen ethnischen und sozialen hintergrund haben und die dann den „wahren“ islam für sich entdeckten, aber sehr wohl. also nicht die araber „arabisieren“ indonesien, sondern die pribumi „arabisieren“ sich selbst, indem sie dem islamismus bzw. fundamentalistischen interpretationen des islam folgen, die auch, aber bei weitem nicht nur von außenseitern der arabischen gemeinschaft propagiert werden. schlusswort abschließend möchte ich noch die frage stellen, ob uns der begriff „arabisierung“ weiterhilft, um diese radikalen strömungen in indonesien zu verstehen. meines erachtens tut er das nicht. denn was die vertreter des islam pribumi mit dem begriff „arabisierung“ eigentlich ablehnen, sind bestimmte interpretationen des islam, wie jene des wahabismus, der salafiyyah oder der muslimbrüderschaft, von denen eine reihe islamischer organisationen in indonesien beeinflusst sind, darunter auch die oben genannten, und die – das steht hier außer zweifel – alle in der arabischen welt ihre spezifischen ursprünge haben (vgl. bruinessen 2002). aber es handelt sich hier in erster linie um ideologien, um ideoscapes, könnte man mit arjun appadurai (�996) sagen, die heute vielleicht einfacher nationale grenzen überwinden können und auf lokaler ebene aufgenommen und operationabel gemacht werden. von „arabisierung“ zu sprechen bedeutet jedenfalls, bestimmte auslegungen des islam zu ethnisieren, so als ob araberinnen den islam nur auf diese fundamentalistischen weisen interpretieren und leben würden, so als ob ihr kultureller hintergrund nur diese interpretationen zuließe. die arabischen wurzeln der zentralen texte des islam hermeneutisch zu erschließen ist eine sache, heutige radikalismen und fundamentalismen als „arabisierung“ oder „arabismus“�0 zu klassifizieren, ist eine andere. und letzteres tun die vertreter des islam pribumi eben auch. obwohl sich ihre schriften nicht – etwa in einer xenophoben art und weise – explizit gegen „die araber“ und schon gar nicht gegen die arabisch-stämmigen indonesierinnen richten, beinhalten sie etwas stigmatisierendes, indem intolerante und radikale haltungen, selbst wenn diese von nicht-arabern propagiert werden, als „arabisch“ �0 so trägt die ausgabe der von der nahdlatul ulama herausgegebenen zeitschrift tashwirul afkar, aus der in diesem artikel zitiert wurde (vgl. mun’im 200� und rahmat et al. 200�), den titel “der islam der einheimischen. den arabismus ablehnen, den indonesischen islam suchen” (islam pribumi. menolak arabisme, mencari islam indonesia). 14 martin slama islam pribumi aseas 1 (1) klassifiziert werden. dies wird besonders deutlich, wenn man den islam-pribumi-diskurs aus der perspektive der arabischen diasporagemeinschaften betrachtet. denn dann wird auch die nähe zu stereotypen sichtbar, die die jungen intellektuellen der nahdlatul ulama zwar nicht äußern, die aber in der indonesischen bevölkerung durchaus verbreitet sind und sich gegen die arabischen gemeinschaften richten. eines der häufigsten dieser stereotype bezeichnet „die araber“ (orang arab), was jetzt nicht mehr überraschen kann, als „fanatisch“ (fanatis) in ihrer religionsausübung; die arabisch-stämmigen anführer der oben vorgestellten radikalen organisationen bestätigen natürlich solche vorurteile. der islam-pribumi-diskurs zeigt meines erachtens vor allem eines, nämlich wie ambivalent die arabische welt in indonesien wahrgenommen wird. auf der einen seite ist sie die quelle der religion, zu der sich immer mehr indonesische musliminnen immer selbstbewusster bekennen, auf der andere seite ist der arabische raum eine fremde welt, die man so nicht nach indonesien transferiert haben möchte. so schätzen auch manche indonesierinnen islamische gelehrte aus der arabischen gemeinschaft ganz besonders, andere wiederum stehen diesen überaus ablehnend gegenüber und sehen in ihnen primär „fanatiker“. vielleicht wird gerade deshalb der islam pribumi, der vor der arabisierung warnt, als diskursive strategie erfolg haben – vor allem unter jenen indonesischen musliminnen, die die varianten eines lokalen islam auch leben und sich dessen auch immer mehr bewusst werden. für die arabischen diasporagemeinschaften könnte dies jedoch bedeuten, dass sich die 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(2005). islam dan radikalisme di indonesia. jakarta: lipi press umam, saiful (2006). radical muslims in indonesia. explorations in southeast asian studies, 6 (�), �-26 wahid, abdurrahman (200�). pergulatan negara, agama, dan kebudayaan. depok: desantara woodward, mark r. (�989). islam in java. normative piety and mysticism in the sultanate of yogyakarta. tucson: the university of arizona press 17 rethinking conceptions of borders in the greater mekong subregion: an interview with chayan vaddhanabhuti (rcsd) aseas 4 (2) 314 315 d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -4 .2 -8 im dialog / in dialogue rethinking conceptions of borders in the greater mekong subregion: an interview with chayan vaddhanabhuti (rcsd) napakadol kittisenee1 chiang mai university, thailand & spirit in education movement, cambodia citation kittisenee, n. (2011). rethinking conceptions of borders in the greater mekong subregion: an interview with chayan vaddhanabhuti (rcsd). aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 4(2), 314-324. dr. chayan vaddhanabhuti is director of the regional centre for social science and sustainable development (rcsd), thailand. the rcsd was established in 1998 at the faculty of social sciences, chiang mai university, in response to the need for integration of social science and natural science knowledge in order to gain a better understanding of sustainable development in upper mainland south-east asia. chayan vaddhanabhuti has long been dedicated to the fi eld of social sciences, development issues, and engaged himself extensively with ethnic groups both within thailand and beyond. in this interview he introduces the work of rscd and discusses the changing perceptions of the concept of ‘border’ in the context of thailand and the greater mekong subregion. napakadol kittisenee: we recognise that the ‘border’ has emerged in the forefront of social sciences as one of the promising themes among scholarly debates. according to the experiences of rcsd, both in terms of academic and activist involvement, what is and how do you make sense of this popular term? chayan vaddhanabhuti: i think we have to understand that before thailand became integrated into the greater mekong subregion in 1995, most thai scholars tended to carry out their studies within the national boundary. it was an effort to understand our own society maybe with different perspectives, we can say, the perspectives of the ‘insiders’ as opposed to the perspectives of the ‘outsiders’ as studied by scholars from overseas universities. this led to an ignorance of what happened in the neighbouring countries. we did not pay much attention to history, culture, and 1 at the time of the interview napakadol kittisenee was a research fellow at the regional centre for social science and sustainable development, chiang mai university, thailand. currently he is working as a project coordinator at the ngo spirit in education movement (sem), cambodia. contact: napakadol@gmail.com aseas 4 (2) 314 315 society for example in laos, vietnam, cambodia, and burma. and again, during that time – during the cold war – most of the countries in the mekong region were undergoing drastic change – they became socialist countries. i think academia has kept itself distanced from those socialist countries. moreover, socialist countries often did not allow researchers to carry out fieldwork. when we started to develop the regional centre for social science and sustainable development in 1998, we thought that it would broaden our understanding if social scientists crossed the border to do research or to learn about those countries which were moving towards development and modernity, linking more with the market economy, like thailand. also, we realised that this particular region is geographically and ethnically much related. so, if we would like to understand ourselves in thai society, we should also study what has happened to laos, cambodia, vietnam as well as burma. we should understand those neighbouring countries. i believe that we can learn a lot from looking at how, for example, vietnamese, lao, and cambodian governments deal with issues like resource management, culture, ethnic minorities, or even health and media. we can learn more about these issues and, particularly, we will be able to learn how the history, of both each country and the region, has an impact on thailand, on the way thailand tries to position itself, or on the way thailand has been trying to define its national identity. napakadol: it is remarkable that within rcsd’s name, two parts or themes are encapsulated: ‘social science’, for the first part, is a category of knowledge or conceptual level while the latter, ‘sustainable development’, deals with practical issues or activism. is that the proof of the ‘border’ rcsd has been trying to cross, travelling back and forth between the two sides? chayan: there are two spaces. first, we put ‘social science’ in the name because we experienced that most of the times when we talked about development, economic, political, or sometimes ecological aspects were emphasised while we did not see the people. people as social actors have not been much recognised in the discourse of development. our intention is to create a dialogue between social science and non-social science or physical science by adding social perspectives to the analysis and understanding the issues of development. and second, of course, we value both napakadol kittisenee an interview with chayan vaddhanabhuti aseas 4 (2) 316 317 ‘theory’ and ‘practice’. theory about the social world comes from training and has to be learned. we think that if we want social science to be powerful, if we want it to be used as a means to understand the world – the social world, we need to emphasise the theoretical part, the theoretical knowledge of the society at large. but, at the same time, we cannot remain in academia or the ivory tower, we should also try to link theories and concepts to practice or the other way around, bringing some practical phenomena and everyday practices into theoretical discussion. we should move back and forth between these two spaces, these two worlds. the border between theoretical understanding and practical enquiry should be crossed back and forth to enrich each other; and we hope that by reflecting upon this kind of relationship, we would be able to come up with an idea on sustainable development. napakadol: as some may discern that ‘border’ has been playing important roles in shaping and transforming or even affecting lives of the people in this region, according to rcsd’s experiences, what does ‘border’ mean to this region? chayan: we have to recognise that this region has been divided into nation states mostly after world war ii and, as you know, prior to that in thailand the border was not conceived of as a static or a concrete border. the borderline was imposed by the colonial powers. since then, the border has become something that prevented connections between the countries in the region, preventing the movement of people and preventing the movement of goods despite the fact that people, who live in the borderland, share the same culture or a similar ethnic background and also trade with each other. the border has become something like a barrier for those people. so i think it was in 1989, when prime minister chatchai chunhawan came up with the slogan ‘turning battle fields into market places’. this slogan also said something about how the border has become an obstruction for economic co-operation, for the flow of goods, and the movement of people. napakadol: did such a policy affect the areas beyond the mekong region, for example peninsular south-east asia? aseas 4 (2) 316 317 chayan: even though there was no battlefield in the area of our south, there was the national security concern during the cold war period. thailand was very much concerned about the communist party of malaya and also the separatist movement dating back to the 1970s and 1980s in the deep south of thailand. therefore, during that time the border became not only a barrier for communication, interaction, and connectivity among these countries and people living in these areas, but it also reinforced the national identity and nationalism, so people started to feel that they are the people from the north-east of thailand while other people felt that they are from the lao pdr despite the fact that they speak the same language, eat the same kind of food, share similar cultural practices, and believe in the same religion, that is buddhism. in the case of thailand’s deep south, there was an attempt to separate the melayu muslims from the malay people in malaysia due to security reasons: napakadol: now the border seems to be more open and flexible, especially in the context of gearing up towards asean re-integration in 2015. what do you think about this campaign that promotes a free trade area within the asean countries? chayan: i think it was in 1995, when the gms or greater mekong subregion was proposed as a plan to integrate this particular region. we have seen a diminishing role of the border where the respective countries changed their concepts towards national boundaries, allowing people to move across borders. particularly in response to the expansion of the thai economy and industry, thailand’s policy has allowed free movement of labourers from burma, laos, and cambodia. the thai fishing industry, and the agricultural production of certain cash crops like corn, cassava, and sugarcane, all of these activities needed more workers. the same phenomenon of this new interpretation of the ‘border’ holds true for the expansion of the construction industry where many workers from thailand’s neighbouring countries are employed. we also have to keep in mind, however, that irregular migration and informal labour play an important role. another important sector for thailand and the whole region is the international and asian tourism sector. thailand attempts to attract more tourists whereas at the same time thai tourists increasingly cross the border to places like luang phrabang in laos, ha long bay in vietnam, or angkor wat in cambodia. thus, thailand tries to open up the border as well as set up many check points along the napakadol kittisenee an interview with chayan vaddhanabhuti aseas 4 (2) 318 319 thai border with laos, burma, and cambodia to allow the flow of people and thai commodities. all of these countries are more or less buyers of thai commodities, ranging from motorcycles to fish sauce or plastic sheets. consumers in our neighbouring countries like these products and the value of trade has increased much since the opening of the border. napakadol: so let us say not only the border has an impact on our lives but also do our lives define how we look at the border? chayan: yes. opening up the border in this particular region has led to more investment by foreign investors, namely from china, korea, singapore, japan and so forth. infrastructure has been built to link different regions through so called north-south and east-west corridors in order to facilitate the flows of commodities and people. and more than that, we have observed that in the last almost twenty years, because of the opening of the border, there have been many kinds of investment which have led to the intensification of the use of natural resources. you have heard about dam projects in the mekong river, rubber plantations in laos, thailand, and cambodia, or the expansion of corn production by thai businessmen in laos, cambodia, and burma. all of this leads to a greater exploitation of natural resources. moreover, we have also observed that there is something what we call extractive economy. there have been attempts to extract more natural resources, namely oil and some minerals, for example potash. there are plans to set up potash plants in udon thani, thailand, bauxite mining in laos and cambodia as well as gold and coal mining in laos and burma. all of these resources have been exploited in order to support the growing economy, not only within the region but also for countries like china and also thailand which need more energy and more natural resources for industrial development. so we maybe start to see that what is called ‘regional integration’ does not bring positive aspects. the economic integration of this region needs to be questioned as it has also led to a non-sustainable use of natural resources. another issue concerns the increasing flows of cross-border migrant workers. there is a large migrant population in chiang mai, mae sot, and ranong. you can find migrant workers in several provinces in thailand, and they do not come alone but bring with them their children and family. who is going to be responsible for the education of their aseas 4 (2) 318 319 children, who is going to be responsible for their health service? these are questions we need to answer. more than that, there is an issue of human trafficking. there is an increased number of persons who have been trafficked. napakadol: you mentioned prior to the interview that you are going to mae sot, the borderland between thailand and burma, in order to facilitate a project initiated by rcsd under the name of ‘burma concern’. can you tell us more about this project? chayan: when we talk about opening up the border, it means that the border becomes more important. the borderland becomes something we should look at. in mae sot, where we have conducted a research project on the issue of displaced persons, these displaced persons came here after the election in burma in november 2010. it was estimated that at the beginning there were about 22,000 persons staying along the border but now this number is reduced to 10,000 persons. these displaced persons are hiding because they might be sent back or pushed back to burma by thai authorities. we also know that even though there is a civilian government in burma now and many groups of people are trying to promote what is called ‘reconciliation’, the fighting is still going on along the border. many parts of the borderland on the burmese side are mined. you can find landmines in these areas, so the displaced people cannot go back to their home villages as they are afraid of landmines. napakadol: during your work in the last decades, you might have seen other cases of displacement, migration, and refugee issues. there was also a case of cambodian refugees along the thai border thirty years ago. how is it different from what is currently going on at the thai-burma border? chayan: the situation along the burma-thai border is rather different from the khmer refugee issues thirty years ago. at the borderland of mae sot, we have observed that there are three layers of activities or phenomena. first, people living along the borderland are connected. they cross the border visiting each other very often, they belong to the same ethnic group, only a small river separates them. in everyday life, they benefit from collecting forest products, vegetables and growing rice at the borderland. some of the thai karen people go to the burmese side to grow rice. some of napakadol kittisenee an interview with chayan vaddhanabhuti aseas 4 (2) 320 321 burmese karen people come to the thai side to buy goods or to work for thai farmers and thai landowners. that is one layer of the phenomenon. another is the political layer: this area was formerly controlled by the karen national union (knu). today, it is not the knu anymore but the democratic karen buddhist army (dkpa), so the area has been controlled by karen armed forces for a long time. these groups are fighting with each other and with the burmese groups or the burmese state peace and development council (spdc). the lives of the people are constantly in danger because they do not know when the fighting is going to break out and they do not know where the landmines are. on top of this, you can see the borderland which becomes expanded agricultural area owned by mostly thai businessmen growing corn and so forth. you will see that these three layers are going on all the time, making life there quite dynamic as well as sometimes dangerous if you do not know how to avoid the fights between the two armed groups. so the borderland area has become contested, not only among the armed groups but also among business people who want to invest in the production of corn and cassava and at the same time want to make use of cheap labour from burma. i do not know much about the situation along thai-khmer border thirty years ago, but i suppose there was not be much economic activity there. was there any? napakadol: there was some. chayan: but was it illegal? napakadol: yes. chayan: so the aim of the project in mae sot is to understand the complexity in the borderland area as well as to demystify the notion of displacement. if we understand the context, we will see that people whom we call ‘refugee’ or ‘displaced person’ are not just the ones who run across the border; they have been in contact with different groups of people, they have participated in cash crop economy or contract farming. i thus hope that this project will help to understand people at the border in a better light. aseas 4 (2) 320 321 napakadol: in a more realistic one? chayan: yes, not just simply as those who fled across the border, leaving everything back home, the way they have often been painted by certain organisations. napakadol: so let us move further to the south. since you have mentioned life in danger along the borderland, lives of the people over there also seem to be at risk. what is there about rcsd projects dealing with this issue? chayan: the situation in the south may be the same. it has often been told that the conflict in southern thailand is caused by the ‘separatist movement’ or the ‘clash of civilizations’, as samuel huntington termed it. we thought that if we take another look at the situation in the south, trying to understand everyday practice among the local people, particularly those who are melayu muslims, depending on natural resources, for example, small fishermen in patani bay, rice farmers in the middle zone or farmers who engage with plantations a kind of what they call ‘orchard’ in the forest, suan somrom, or suan duzong meaning mixed garden, then we may have a better understanding of how the lives of people in the deep south have been affected by the imposed development scheme of the central government. my hypothesis is that people in the deep south have not only been looked at as the ‘muslim other’, but their lives have more or less been shaped by a development policy which neither derived from the local need, nor from the understanding of their culture, or raised as a result of the problems they had. the development projects have been designed by the central thai government, and then subsequently assigned to the government officers who do not understand their context, culture, and ecology. most of the development projects tend to fail. so our project there is called ‘kampong research project’, which means that the research project is done for the village community of the melayu muslim people and through participation by the local people. napakadol: as you address the term ‘kampong’, referring to the village community in the deep south of thailand, this term can not only be found in southern thailand but is also prevailing in the malay world, which does not only mean malaysia, but also indonesia, for example. so what happened when the borderline was imposed on napakadol kittisenee an interview with chayan vaddhanabhuti aseas 4 (2) 322 323 the southern thai borderland? did it cut off the connection among the malay people? chayan: i think the border in the deep south seems to be much more porous than in the other parts. maybe it is similar to the burma-thai border because of what we call ‘ethnic integration’ or ‘ethnic linkages’ – ethnic ties among the melayu muslims in the southern part of thailand and their malaysian counterparts. there has been a long relationship through economic activities. for example, people in the southern part of thailand, when they need to get some amount of money they go to work in malaysia. since they speak the language, they can seek employment over there, particularly working at thai restaurants, working in rice cultivation or rice harvest. they become wage labourers and during the religious ceremonies such as ramadan, we can find people travelling back and forth across the border. so they have a lot of connections and activities going on. these are everyday life practices among the local people. napakadol: last but not least, we have just recently heard through media and academic writings about the slogan: ‘the world without border’ or ‘the borderless world’. plus, these campaigns come in the same fashion as the promotion of the idea of ‘asean+3’ which means the much more solid integration and co-operation among most south-east asian countries plus china, japan, and korea. you made an observation earlier regarding the regional integration, but within this particular context, what do you think about these campaigns? chayan: i would not say that we have a ‘borderless world’ but there will be something what we call ‘new regulations’. we still have borders but with new mechanisms allowing the flow of people, commodities, and information to cross borders. of course, this is a part of what we understand as ‘globalisation’. for some of us, we look at this as ‘neoliberalism’, to loosen up the border, allowing more connections between people and nations. my observation is that we seem to have the illusion of the positive side of economic integration without understanding that we are dealing with unlimited flows of investment, and new forms of capitalism. and i would like to emphasise that when we talk about the capitalist development in this particular region, it is not something like the ‘free market’ as adam smith argued. it is capitalaseas 4 (2) 322 323 ism which allows depending on or making use of several forms of politics different forms of informality and different types of mechanisms which can facilitate capital. you can have corruption as a part of capitalism. you can have a group of people who can monopolise natural resources and at the same time they can displace people from the land they have subsisted on. because of capitalism you can exploit ‘cheap labour’ from the neighbouring countries. you can build up new dams so that you can have more energy to support industry or even the rapid train that china is proposing. we will see the economic integration for what? such a kind of capitalism may not benefit a large number of people, such a kind of capitalism allows certain groups of people to reap the benefit from this neoliberal market but at the same time exploit natural resources, labourers, and especially women and children. so i am very concerned and quite sceptical about what is called asean economic community, which will happen in the year 2015, because when they talk about asean economic community they do not talk about inequality. asean economy is not going to eradicate poverty, on the contrary: it will make a group of people richer whereas other people have to be sacrificed. napakadol: my home town is in nong khai, a thai-lao border province, that has recently been looked at as a new channel or opportunity for economic activities after a long period of ‘sleeping border’ since laos became a socialist country and the border got strictly controlled. the local people now have been informed that in post-asean 2015 they will have the golden age of border trade again. now we have seen more investments there, for example, china has pushed huge economic activities in laos plus several proposed ‘development’ plans for the near future. there is a saying that nong khai border will be ‘boiling up’ with commerce. some people may regard this as the chance for the periphery to become the centre. do you think the ‘border’ could become the ‘centre’ both in terms of economy and politics? chayan: i am not sure whether i understand the term ‘centre’ here properly but i would say the social scientists and scholars should pay more attention to borderlands because this is where the intersection of market, culture, and people happens. also, the border is more or less the peripheral area of the country, so not many people are interested in looking at borderlands closely. many things can happen, as napakadol kittisenee an interview with chayan vaddhanabhuti aseas 4 (2) 324 325 i said, the interaction between legal and illegal activities, between armed groups, between people from different cultures and from different ethnic backgrounds. it has to be the ‘centre’ of our attention, and the centre of studies in the next decade since it has been left out for a long time, so centre in that sense. and you may have heard that there are trends that have been coined as ‘economic zone at the border’ like in trat province… napakadol: yes, connected to cambodia… chayan: trat province now becomes what is called ‘cp empire’ creating big investments there such as shrimp farming, meaning that the mangrove forest there will be destroyed or that some parts of it have already been destroyed. the new airport is being built by bangkok airways to host the tourists before going to koh chang. mae sai is also the economic zone at the border as well as tavoy in burma. so not only from an academic perspective but also from economic, cultural, and political aspects you can realize that borderlands become increasingly important as the arena for contestation, investment, and exploitation. napakadol: thank you very much for your time. aseas 11(2) | 165 building resilience: the emergence of refugee-led education initiatives in indonesia to address service gaps faced in protracted transit thomas mitchell brown ► brown, t. m. (2018). building resilience: the emergence of refugee-led education initiatives in indonesia to address service gaps faced in protracted transit. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 11(2), 165-181. following recent changes in australian immigration policy, and in the context of an increasing global refugee crisis, more than 14,000 asylum seekers and refugees now live in protracted transit in indonesia, spending years awaiting resettlement through the united nations high commissioner for refugees to a third country. despite the increasing length of time refugees are spending in indonesia, they live in a state of limbo, prohibited from working and having limited access to education. although refugees in such situations are commonly perceived to be passive agents resigned to helplessness and in need of outside assistance, refugee communities are challenging this notion by working together to independently address their collective needs. as such, the question emerges: how and to what extent do refugees self-organize to overcome barriers in access to basic services and rights while living in protracted transit in indonesia? in cisarua, a small town in west java, the hazara refugee community has responded by banding together and mobilizing their skills and experiences to independently provide sorely-needed education services for their own community. this article documents this example of refugee resilience and self-reliance, tracing the emergence of these refugee-led education initiatives, detailing their form, function, and benefits to the community, and analyzing the contextual factors that drove their emergence and proliferation in cisarua. keywords: asylum seekers; education; indonesia; refugees; resilience; self-organization  introduction while refugees and asylum seekers living in host countries are typically pictured living in detention centers and camp environments, separated from the local population, an increasing number of the world’s refugees and asylum seekers now live in urban environments among the host community. more than half of the world’s refugees now live in urban centers (unhcr, n.d.). life in developing host countries like indonesia presents a range of challenges for asylum seekers and refugees. despite living in relative safety, their basic human rights and economic, social, and psychological needs often remain unfulfilled. thus the question emerges: how and to what extent do refugees self-organize to overcome barriers in access to basic rights and services while living for extended periods in urban environments in developing host countries such as indonesia? aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 01 166 | aseas 11(2) building resilience this paper seeks to explore this question through a detailed study of how hazara refugees living in cisarua, west java, have self-organized to provide education to refugee children and adults in indonesia. in recent decades, indonesia was used as a transit point for asylum seekers, typically from the middle east and south asia, who sought to reach australia by boat. in 2013, australia enacted toughened border policies to ‘stop the boats’, which have all but ceased the flow of asylum seekers reaching australian territory. however, this policy has created a bottleneck effect, with indonesia left to play host to a burgeoning number of asylum seekers and refugees who now spend years, rather than months, in the country. at the end of 2016, there were 14,405 asylum seekers and refugees in indonesia registered with the unhcr, approximately half of which were from afghanistan, with significant populations from other countries including somalia, myanmar, iraq, nigeria, and sri lanka, among others (unhcr indonesia, 2016a). around 6,000 asylum seekers and refugees live independently in the community, largely in the city of jakarta and in cisarua, a small town in west java (kemenko polhukam, 2017). the remainder live in some form of detention, or community housing provided by the international organisation for migration (iom), with facilities spread across the indonesian archipelago but with large populations in the cities of medan and makassar (hirsch & doig, 2018; iom, n.d.; kemenko polhukam, 2017; missbach, 2017). indonesia is not a signatory to the 1951 refugee convention or the 1967 protocol, but the government has authorized the united nations refugee agency (unhcr) to be responsible for refugees during their stay in indonesia, and has decreed that refugees may be allowed to remain until they can be resettled in a third country. however, indonesia offers no pathways for refugees to settle permanently or naturalize in the country. as such, more than 14,000 asylum seekers and refugees live for years in indonesia as they await resettlement through the unhcr to a country that will accept them (unhcr indonesia, 2016b). with such obstacles to onward mobility and no possibility of local integration, indonesia has shifted from its traditional role as a transit country to one where asylum seekers and refugees live in a state of indefinite transit, limbo or ‘stuckedness’ (gleeson, 2017; missbach, 2015). with limited resettlement options and a growing global refugee population, the resettlement process for refugees in indonesia is becoming more challenging, and waiting times continue to lengthen. during their prolonged stays in indonesia, refugees are not permitted to work and have limited access to education services, with a relatively small proportion of refugee children able to enter the indonesian education system due to a range of barriers (missbach, 2015; unhcr indonesia, 2017b). some two and a half thousand asylum seekers and refugees living in indonesia have settled in cisarua, a small urban town in west java near the city of bogor. the cisarua refugee population consists mostly of ethnic hazara refugees from afghanistan, iran, and pakistan (unhcr indonesia, 2017a). a culture of self-support, resilience, and resourcefulness can be observed in this refugee community as they band together to navigate their protracted and uncertain situation. in particular, faced with the prospect of children missing years of education at a critical stage of their development, groups of hazara refugees in cisarua have pooled their skills and expertise to independently initiate a number of informal education centers to serve their community. this paper maps the emergence of these initiatives and explores the reasons for this phenomenon aseas 11(2) | 167 thomas mitchell brown occurring at this time and in this place in indonesia. in particular, it is argued that the significant numbers of women and family units in cisarua and the absence of external support in the area provided the necessary motivation, whilst the relative freedom and ability to self-organize that refugees in cisarua enjoy (compared to those in detention or community housing), together with the experience and expertise of many refugees in cisarua, provided the capability to execute the ideas. finally, the strong social capital that has developed among hazara refugees in cisarua is highlighted as crucial in spurring action, by providing points of connection between this motivation and capability. this paper provides an illustrative case study of self-organization among urban refugees living for extended periods in developing host countries. the study has implications for how refugees can be viewed as agents of change, and the potential that refugee community organizations hold for improving the lives of refugees the world over. by focusing on a community situated outside of africa and the middle east, this research adds geographic and cultural breadth to the body of knowledge on urban refugees in developing host countries. furthermore, this paper adds a rich case study to the emerging literature on self-organization of refugees and provides a much-needed perspective on how refugees in indonesia have responded to the new context of protracted transit that has emerged since 2013. research methodology the supporting data for this paper was collected between 2015 and 2018 through participatory research and semi-structured interviews with founders, managers, and teachers of refugee-led education centers and the wider refugee community in cisarua, west java. fieldwork was conducted for a period of six weeks in october and november 2015, involving immersive participatory observation of the hazara refugee community while living with a group of eight men from afghanistan and pakistan. these men became the entry point to the refugee community in cisarua, and snowball sampling was used to recruit additional research participants (atkinson & flint, 2001). time spent in refugee education centers offered opportunities to access respondents from more varied backgrounds – in particular young refugees, women, and families. this immersion in refugee communities in cisarua allowed for meaningful participatory observation, and led to the development of rapport with respondents. since this major block of fieldwork, several short return visits have been undertaken in 2016 and 2017, and regular correspondence, including informal interviews, were maintained with key respondents remotely via email and phone, as refugee-led initiatives have undergone changes and new education centers have emerged. background: refugee-led community education initiatives in urban spaces rather than taking an individualistic attitude to survival, most refugees work together, establishing community organizations and helping each other. (koizumi & hoffstaedter, 2015) while not always highly visible, it is commonly understood that refugee communities across the globe work together to overcome common challenges. this phenomenon 168 | aseas 11(2) building resilience directly challenges the perception that refugees and asylum seekers are passive agents resigned to the protracted situations they face and in need of help from outsiders (fiddian-qasmiyeh, 2016). kirsten mcconnachie (2014), a leader in the study of self-organization amongst refugees, has observed significant refugee-led governance and justice systems in refugee camps along the thai-burma border. however, mcconnachie’s research focuses on closed-off camp environments, where homogeneous refugee communities live separately from the host population. there has been little detailed research conducted on refugee self-organization in urban refugee environments. the emerging literature on urban refugees living in developing host countries largely concentrates on african cities, with a few isolated additional case studies from jordan, lebanon, syria, india, and pakistan (lyytinen & kullenberg, 2013). in addition to limitations in regional scope, there are also literature gaps in the study of social structures of refugees in urban environments. while some authors have looked at social interaction between urban refugees and host populations, none have explored concepts of self-organization as deeply as mcconnachie’s research on camp environments (calhoun, 2010; kobia & cranfield, 2009; koizumi & hoffstaedter, 2015; lyytinen & kullenberg, 2013; world vision, 2015). there are many formal and informal refugee-led organizations working to assist refugee communities in urban and refugee camp contexts across the world, but few have been the prime focus of intensive field research. as such, this paper fills an important gap in the literature. malaysia provides additional examples of refugee self-organization in a refugee host country that has similar characteristics to indonesia. like those in indonesia, refugees in malaysia face periods of protracted transit as they await resettlement, being allowed to stay with limited rights until they can be resettled (gleeson, 2017; jesuit refugee service, 2012). in 2009, unhcr malaysia initiated the social protection fund, providing small grants for projects run by refugee communities to support skills training, income generation, community development, and service delivery (unhcr, 2010a, 2010b, n.d.). the social protection fund has supported some 120 refugee-led projects in malaysia, with an estimated 20,000 individuals benefitting from refugee-led initiatives ranging from community centers and sports halls to credit facilities, day care services, schools, shelters, and tech-focused enterprises (unhcr, 2010a). one example is the chin refugee committee (crc) – a community organization promoting the protection, empowerment, and development of chin refugees in malaysia. the crc provides a variety of services for the community, ranging from support with asylum seeker registration to newly arrived persons, health care and housing services, establishing small enterprises such as stores to serve the refugee community, and engaging in public relations on behalf of the chin community in malaysia (crc, 2012). despite similarities in legal protection frameworks, differences in context can explain why such unhcr support for refugee self-organization has emerged in malaysia but not in indonesia. firstly, malaysia hosts some 150,000 asylum seekers and refugees, far more than indonesia (unhcr malaysia, 2015). as such, the capacity of unhcr indonesia is much lower due to funding constraints. secondly, the phenomenon of refugees facing prolonged stays in the host country is relatively new in indonesia but has been an issue for decades in malaysia, prompting awareness of the need for self-reliance. aseas 11(2) | 169 thomas mitchell brown this research also makes an important contribution to the existing literature on refugees in indonesia, which has a range of foci – from international law and protection to international relations and refugees in detention (hirsch & doig, 2018; kneebone, 2017; mcnevin, missbach, & deddy, 2016; missbach, 2015, 2016, 2017; nethery & gordyn, 2014; nethery, rafferty-brown, & taylor, 2012; tan 2016; taylor & rafferty-brown, 2010). in the last five or six years, indonesia has transformed from a staging post for irregular movement to australia to a host country where refugees spend an indefinite period of time waiting to be resettled. what little in-depth primary research that does exist on refugees living in the community in indonesia was mostly conducted before this crucial change (missbach, 2015; sampson, gifford, & taylor, 2016). as such, this paper provides much-needed perspective on the experience of refugees in the current context and is the first to provide a detailed case study of the refugee-led education initiatives that have emerged since indonesia’s transition to a long-term transit country. cisarua: the unassuming home of a refugee self-help movement within the refugee communities, there is a wealth of knowledge and skills for project implementation . . . . they best know the needs of their communities for their day-to-day survival. (letchimi doraisamy, unhcr malaysia social protection fund, cited in unhcr, 2010b) the urban area of cisarua in the mountains of west java has in recent years become home to some two and a half thousand asylum seekers and refugees, mostly ethnic hazaras from afghanistan, pakistan, or iran (unhcr indonesia, 2017a). refugees in cisarua remain relatively close to the unhcr indonesia central office in jakarta, while benefitting from a cooler climate and more affordable cost of living. unlike other refugees in indonesia, who may be supported by international or local caretaker groups, or who live in detention or community housing, refugees in this urban area live with relative independence, relying on personal savings or remittances from family members who live overseas. as of the end of 2017, there were five refugee-led education centers in cisarua, in addition to a women’s group and a karate club run by a refugee woman. at the same time, a range of informal self-support activities were taking place in the community. this phenomenon has only emerged in the last four years, and has done so exclusively amongst the hazara refugee population in the urban locality of cisarua. this may have been driven by a number of factors that make the refugee community in cisarua distinct from those in other parts of indonesia, an in-depth analysis of which will be presented in the following section. whatever the cause, the phenomenon points to strong inter-refugee relations and the emergence of a culture of self-support, solidarity, and entrepreneurship in response to an increasingly protracted situation faced by refugees in indonesia. refugee leaders in cisarua are able to mobilize the skills and expertise of the refugee community to serve those members who face barriers in access to services. at this stage, the range of services offered by refugee organizations in cisarua is not as expansive as those seen in neighboring malaysia, and typically focus on survival and self-improvement, with particular attention towards education. 170 | aseas 11(2) building resilience the current movement of refugee-led education initiatives began in 2014, when four hazara men founded the cisarua refugee learning centre (crlc) to address the lack of education options available to children in the refugee community. of these four men, one was a photographer, one was a journalist and had run a media company, another worked as a researcher, and one was a young, intelligent and enthusiastic teenager who soon became the figurehead of crlc. the school soon attracted the attention of foreign supporters and a benefactor group, cisarua learning limited, was established by a group of australians. the group supports the school by connecting them with australian teachers, students, academics, and journalists who wish to offer support, as well as by organizing an online fundraising campaign each year. the center offers courses from a range of disciplines with a particular focus on english instruction. the staff is comprised of volunteer teachers, who are typically women, and male administrators and media specialists from the refugee community. the school has seven classrooms, 12 teachers, six administration staff, and nearly 200 students (crlc, 2017). in march 2015, another school following a similar model, the refugee learning nest (rln), was established by seven refugees with the support of the swiss-australian non-profit same skies (rln, 2018). same skies held a community consultation with refugees in the area which revealed that expanding access to education for children was the highest priority for refugees. in particular, refugees in cisarua saw that the crlc model was successful, but could only accommodate a limited number of students. same skies then financed the opening of rln as well as providing training and capacity building through site visits and remote mentoring. in 2015, it had a staff of 15 volunteers, 10 teachers, and five administrators catering for around 45 students (volunteer at rln, 15 october 2015). in addition to formal classes for children, english classes for women as well as a handicraft class were held. the rln also has sports facilities which are used regularly and support football teams and a saturday morning taekwondo class. in september 2015, some of the leadership team from crlc created a new school, the refugee learning centre (rlc), again increasing the overall capacity of refugee education in cisarua. they received a small grant from same skies for initial setup costs, but were quickly able to fundraise additional means independently through their effective use of social media, photography, and videography, and through contacts with sympathetic groups and individuals, often from australia. the rlc staff consists of six male managers and 17 mostly female teachers who provide education for 110 children as well as 50 adult women (rlc, 2017). they offer students opportunities to learn english, mathematics, history, science, geography, and art. in response to community demand, two additional education centers have subsequently been established in the area – cipayung refugee educational centre (crec) and hope learning centre (hlc) (crec, 2017; hlc, 2017). as such, there are now five refugee education centers operating in cisarua, all following the same basic model established by crlc in 2014 – organizations serving refugees that are operated by refugees themselves but that rely on donations from individuals, charities, and other groups outside the refugee community. altogether, the five refugee schools serve hundreds of primary school to junior high school aged children as well as adults. refugees who volunteer to be managers, aseas 11(2) | 171 thomas mitchell brown administrators, and teachers at the education centers are able to put their skills to use and have an impact on their community while gaining useful experience and expertise. the schools also support a range of additional activities that benefit the wider refugee community, such as english classes for adults, sports programs, communitybased health workshops, vocational skill-sharing programs, and arts and handicraft classes for women. in general, the activities are based on the particular skill-set that a member of the refugee community is able to offer as a volunteer. these include individuals with knowledge of visual art, english, mathematics, science, or sports, which they are willing to teach onto others. english is often a focus of the learning activities, since most refugees hope to be resettled to a country where english is the national language, or at least a common lingua franca. it should be noted that these initiatives emerged despite considerable barriers to self-organization in the refugee community, in particular, the poor protection framework in indonesia, ambiguous guidelines on what activities refugees can and cannot engage in, and crackdowns on refugees who do engage in work in indonesia. during fieldwork conducted in 2015, respondents indicated that many refugees in cisarua feared that volunteering or starting organizations could be perceived as working or engaging in entrepreneurship, which has the potential to create issues with authorities or to harm their resettlement case with the unhcr. since no clear guidelines on permissible behavior were available, rumors were rife in the community, creating a sense of paranoia and confusion. as a result, many refugees were reluctant to engage in activities that would benefit both themselves and their community, preferring to ‘play it safe’. given that there are now five learning centers in cisarua, it appears that the reluctance to self-organize witnessed in 2015 has since been, to a significant extent, overcome. as will be seen in the discussion, this can be seen to result from the precedence of the initial learning centers that have operated without incident and that have provided visible benefits for the community. cisarua’s education centers benefit volunteers and the refugee community at large, including those who are not direct recipients of the services. those who volunteer and lead these initiatives are empowered by putting their skills to use and making an impact on their community, while also developing their capacity by gaining experience. abdul khalil payeez, a refugee who has been in indonesia for five years and is now the managing director of crlc, states that rather than having nothing to do and just sleeping all day, “i spend my time positively, doing something for others, and getting to know lots of people from different countries and communities” (a. k. payeez, managing director crlc, 22 april 2018). working on a positive initiative like this gives volunteers purpose and takes their minds off the uncertain and difficult situations they face as refugees that are so often the cause of serious mental health issues in refugee communities in indonesia and elsewhere (jayadi, 2018). it can also alleviate the sense that their stay in indonesia is simply a ‘wasted time’ and give them a sense of purpose and identity outside of just being a refugee waiting for resettlement: “i can say i am khalil, not that i am a refugee” (a. k. payeez, managing director crlc, 22 april 2018). it became evident during the field study that the education centers act as community hubs, providing much-needed places for socialization and community activities for refugees from all walks of life. members of the community, including parents, are often called upon to lend their skills, whether in 172 | aseas 11(2) building resilience cleaning, maintenance, or building activities, and are involved in decision-making within the schools through regular meetings. the initiatives give structure and hope to the lives of all those involved – not just the pupils and volunteers, but also the parents and the broader community. as one respondent put it, “this is not just a school, it is a house of hope” (n. karim, volunteer teacher at crlc, 22 april 2018). a number of respondents indicated that the refugee community in cisarua is now stronger and more interconnected as a result of the learning centers. in addition to the education centers, there are two other refugee-led initiatives operating in cisarua that focus on women’s empowerment and sports. the refugee women support group indonesia (rwsgi) is a group run by a female hazara refugee who previously worked for various ngos in pakistan, and has a focus on textile and jewelry making. the group also runs workshops on women’s issues, including health and hygiene, reproductive health, sexual and gender-based violence, and family planning. most recently they have started indonesian language classes for women and children (rwsgi, 2017). the group sells their textile products at stalls in jakarta as well as in australia through a melbourne-based ngo (beyond the fabric, 2017). another refugee-led organization is the cisarua refugee shotokan karate club (crskc), established by a young hazara woman who was a professional karate athlete in afghanistan and fled the country after threats from extremist groups related to the mixed-gender karate school she operated (crskc, 2017; harvey, 2016). the club runs regular karate classes for adults and children. these initiatives offer social and mental health benefits to refugees akin to those of the education centers as discussed above. whilst the refugee-led organizations are impressive examples of self-organization amongst refugees, it is also important to recognize the strength of the less visible informal activities of self-support that exist in the community in cisarua. it became evident during fieldwork in 2015 that a strong culture of mutual support was emerging in the refugee community in cisarua, in particular for learning english and playing sports. many refugees with a strong grasp of english would travel to private houses to teach groups of adults or adolescents who are over the age serviced by the refugee schools. often these students would then in turn teach younger students or those with a lower level of english competency. sporting activities were another wellestablished pastime amongst hazara refugees in cisarua and also acted as important community gatherings. most men, who typically had little to do otherwise, played soccer or worked out every day. there were a number of indoor soccer facilities and gyms which were used almost exclusively by refugees. these activities offered space for community gatherings, not only for the participants but also for the spectators, who gathered to watch the soccer matches. a number of schools have tapped into this, with refugee men acting as coaches to student teams, giving some girls their first chance to play. the schools support regular training and matches, benefitting the mental wellbeing of teachers and students alike. these are important examples of how the refugee community informally self-organizes to manage the difficulties that come with living in a state of protracted transit in indonesia. in late 2017, the phenomenon of refugee-led self-support initiatives appeared to have spread to jakarta – the other major center in indonesia for urban refugees living independently in the community. the health, education and learning program aseas 11(2) | 173 thomas mitchell brown (help) was established by two refugees from the hazara community in cisarua. these hazara refugees sought to bring the refugee learning center model to jakarta in order to address the lack of services available to the refugee population there. the help center reflects the diversity of the refugee population in jakarta, with volunteer teachers from afghanistan, ethiopia, somalia, and yemen, and 140 students (both children and adults) from nine different countries (help, 2017). one of the co-founders reported in april 2018 that, initially, it had been difficult to facilitate learning across so many language and cultural groups, but that things were improving and that children as well as parents from different backgrounds were becoming more connected as a result of the center (m. b. bayani, 23 april 2018). the center also has seven foreign and ten indonesian volunteers, which is possible in a cosmopolitan large city but would be a challenge to achieve in the small town of cisarua (m. b. bayani, 23 april 2018). discussion: factors that enabled the initiation and expansion of refugee-led initiatives in cisarua despite their uncertain situation, refugees in cisarua exercise a high degree of agency in their ability to band together to surmount difficulties faced while in transit. through their ability to mobilize their own social capital to independently initiate community organizations, members of the hazara refugee community challenge the commonly held perception that refugees are passive and resigned to their fate. yet, this phenomenon is not unique to refugee communities in indonesia. indeed, the international ngo urban refugees claims to have established a network of refugeeled initiatives in some 40 countries (urban refugees, 2017). urban refugees living in developing countries across the world face many of the same challenges as those in cisarua, and indonesia, in relation to access to rights, services, and livelihoods whilst in protracted transit (church world service, 2013; gleeson, 2017; kobia & cranfield, 2009; koizumi & hoffstaedter, 2015; lyytinen & kullenberg, 2013). as such, it is important to ask why and how the phenomenon of self-organization to overcome such challenges emerged in this specific context. such an analysis will identify the key supporting conditions that contributed to the initiation and expansion of refugee-led initiatives in cisarua, which are likely to also be applicable to other urban refugee communities in developing host countries outside indonesia. this discussion is presented in four sections. the first three sections cover motivation, capability, and the connection between these two in relation to the emergence of self-organization in cisarua. the final section comments on the rapid expansion of refugee-led initiatives in cisarua and their recent spread to jakarta. motivation: changing conditions and the lack of external service provision the first contextual factor to discuss in terms of motivation to self-organize is the recent change in indonesia’s role as a host country for refugees. changes to australian immigration policy introduced at the time of the 2013 federal election, combined with a declining number of resettlement places available to a growing number of refugees globally and the refugee crises in europe and bangladesh, have significantly changed 174 | aseas 11(2) building resilience indonesia’s position in relation to refugees in recent years (gleeson, 2017; missbach, 2015). in the past five or six years, hopeful asylum seekers and refugees have seen indonesia transform from a staging post for irregular movement to australia, to a transit country with relatively fast resettlement to third countries available, to a host country where refugees face protracted and uncertain waits. such protracted situations are not uncommon for urban refugees living in developing host countries across the world (gleeson, 2017; koizumi & hoffstaedter, 2015; loescher & milner, 2006). during fieldwork conducted in 2015, many refugees in cisarua were beginning to confront the uncomfortable reality that they would be in indonesia for long periods of time. this required a shift in mindset, away from the conditions that the refugees had understood when they had initially decided to travel to indonesia. through this acceptance, many who had been reluctant to make long-term plans in the country were beginning to ponder how they could develop themselves and their community. the long, uncertain wait for resettlement that refugees now face in indonesia may have created their very motivation to self-organize in order to address the community’s immediate needs and to ensure that time in indonesia is not simply ‘wasted’. this effect of australia’s recent immigration policy on refugees in indonesia has yet to be explored in detail as most primary in-depth research on urban refugees living in the community in indonesia was conducted before this change (missbach, 2015; sampson et al., 2016). it may be that protracted situations in host countries are a necessary precondition for the emergence of refugee-led initiatives, given the precedent in countries like malaysia and the fact that such groups had only started to emerge in indonesia since onward travel to australia became impossible (gleeson, 2017; unhcr, 2010a, 2010b, n.d.). the situation for refugees in indonesia has become even more dire since 2015, with unhcr indonesia now telling refugees that they should expect more prolonged stays in the country, and that some would be unable to be resettled to a third country in their lifetime (unhcr indonesia, 2017c). interestingly, unhcr indonesia is now actively encouraging refugees to volunteer and undertake other activities that would enrich their lives whilst in indonesia (unhcr indonesia, 2017c). the open statement of this hard truth and the explicit authorization from unhcr to engage in volunteer activities may see further expansion of refugee selfhelp initiatives in the future. refugee leaders in cisarua cited the presence of many families and children without education as the principal motivator for the emergence of refugee-led education initiatives. of the 2,735 asylum seekers and refugees registered with unhcr in the region of west java (encompassing cisarua) in 2016, 490 were adult women and 708 were children and adolescents under the age of 18 (unhcr population statistics, 2016). while these proportions are similar to those for the general refugee population in indonesia, refugees outside cisuara, living in detention or community housing under the care of iom and other caretaker groups, benefit from support and the provision of certain services (hirsch & doig, 2018; iom, n.d.; missbach, 2016, 2017). as such, they “have a lot of expectations from the responsible organizations” (n. karim, volunteer teacher at crlc, 22 april 2018). even if they are not receiving adequate services, “they are waiting and waiting for someone to do it, or something to happen” (a. k. payeez, managing director crlc, 22 april 2018). indeed lyytinen and kullenberg (2013) indicate that, in some cases, humanitarian agencies may, through aseas 11(2) | 175 thomas mitchell brown their programming, stifle self-organization and self-reliance by inadvertently marginalizing existing refugee-initiated community structures in urban environments, either by failing to recognize them or by creating new parallel structures. the situation is mixed in jakarta, where a limited number of refugees receive support from caretaker groups and some are also able to form relationships with sympathetic individuals and civil society groups. by contrast, the complete lack of support organizations in cisarua appears to have encouraged self-organization and self-reliance since there was no expectation of outside intervention. that is to say, there is an understanding in cisarua that assistance can only come from within the community itself. abdul khalil payeez, managing director of cisarua’s first learning center, summarizes the situation neatly: “necessity is the mother of invention . . . because there is no organization working here, like iom, unhcr, we feel it is our responsibility. we don’t have to wait for others to do, we can do it ourselves” (a. k. payeez, managing director crlc, 22 april 2018). the factors that motivated refugees in cisarua to self-organize, in particular a lack of access to services whilst living in protracted transit – are also faced by many urban refugees in developing host countries outside indonesia. whilst the motivation for refugee-led education initiatives in cisarua is clear, it had to be supported by sufficient capability in the refugee community to drive action. capability: experience, expertise, and the freedom to self-organize in cisarua, refugees have had both the freedom and the capacity to self-organize around their motivation to provide education to the many refugee children in their community who would otherwise go without schooling. one refugee believed that the reason refugee-led initiatives were able to emerge in cisarua, and later jakarta, is that refugees there were “totally independent” (a female refugee leading programs in both jakarta and cisarua, 23 april 2018). refugees in cisarua live ‘freely’ among the host community, independent of support or direct oversight from any organization. in contrast, refugees in detention or community housing face restrictions on their freedom of movement, are under surveillance, and are often provided with certain services by caretaker groups (hirsch & doig, 2018; iom, n.d.; missbach, 2017). indeed, if refugees in detention or community housing want to do something to help one another, “there are a lot of requirements they have to fufill, . . . have to ask authorities to start any small initiatives” (a female refugee leading programs in both jakarta and cisarua, 23 april 2018). as such, these refugees face many barriers to selforganization that are not shared by the refugees in cisarua. another factor important to the success of refugee-led education initiatives has been the large number of refugees with high capacities living in cisarua. the refugees involved in the education centers had previously been teachers, journalists, entrepreneurs, or had held other white-collar professions in their countries of origin. it is also important to note that refugees in cisarua are economically distinct from the majority of refugees in indonesia in having the ability, through savings or remittance networks, to support themselves financially whilst they live in indonesia. in fact, those refugees living in cisarua who run out of money often move to jakarta in search of assistance from organizations there. others are forced to surrender themselves to authorities and be placed in detention or community housing outside of java in order to be 176 | aseas 11(2) building resilience provided with food and shelter (kemenko polhukam, 2017; smith, 2014). it follows that many of the refugees living in cisarua are middle-class and educated. as such, they may have greater capacity and confidence to initiate community organizations. however, it must be noted that there are highly capable refugees all over indonesia and other parts of the world who have not initiated such groups and services. this is the case even within cisarua: “i have quite capable friends in cisarua . . . who have worked in afghanistan and pakistan and have knowledge to offer . . . but they don’t have either the will or the courage to help” (a. k. payeez, managing director crlc, 22 april 2018). this may signal a simple lack of interest or motivation to offer their time and capabilities or may be a symptom of the mental health issues that plague refugees living in protracted transit, often robbing them of their motivation (jayadi, 2018). therefore, the simple presence of qualified refugees is not sufficient for the emergence of refugee-led self-support initiatives. the same is true for freedom to self-organize: many urban refugee communities in developing host countries enjoy relative freedom but do not initiate the kind of community groups seen in cisarua (gleeson, 2017; koizumi & hoffstaedter, 2015; lyytinen & kullenberg, 2013). while freedom and high capacities of refugees are necessary preconditions for the emergence of refugee-led initiatives, they are not sufficient. only in connection with a strong motivation can this capability be translated into action. the role of social capital in connecting motivation with capability the large population of hazara refugees living together in the small town of cisarua and the strong social capital that has emerged amongst their community have provided the crucial point of connection between motivation and capability that explains the emergence of refugee-led initiatives. thousands of refugees and asylum seekers live in close proximity in cisarua. the vast majority are hazara, sharing a common language, culture, and history that has allowed them to develop strong social capital. hazara refugees are often neighbors, and organically befriend one another and socialize actively. as such, individuals are generally known to one another and are able to keep up with happenings throughout the refugee community in cisarua. there are even routine meetings, known as chanda, of hazara refugees living in the same localities. groups of 50 or 60 refugees will meet weekly or monthly for religious and cultural activities as well as to provide a platform to discuss common issues facing the community (a male refugee leader assisting with education initiatives in cisarua, 23 april 2018). these meetings provide an organic way for people to raise issues and priorities for the community and find potential solutions and have been used to discuss initiating new learning centers as well as the performance of existing ones. indeed, one respondent suggested that these groups allowed parents to ask educated or skilled refugees in the community to initiate new learning centers to serve their children (a male refugee leader assisting with education initiatives in cisarua, 23 april 2018). however, communication and cooperation are not limited to these small groups, with strong social capital existing in cisarua’s broader hazara refugee community. thus, it can be seen that refugees in cisarua possessed the unique combination of motivation, capability, and strong social capital needed for the emergence of refugee-led education centers. aseas 11(2) | 177 thomas mitchell brown the case study of cisarua demonstrates that social capital is a crucial factor in enabling refugee communities to identify common issues and mobilize people to work together to overcome them. the extent to which urban refugee communities develop social capital varies greatly in different contexts. in particular, calhoun (2010) demonstrates how the strength of social capital amongst urban refugees not only varies from location to location, but also amongst different nationality groups of refugees living in the same locality. whilst refugees in detention centers and community housing in indonesia live close to each other and may also be from the same country of origin, they face clear barriers to self-organization and may also lack motivation due to existing supporting services. in jakarta, despite living with freedom, the refugee population is geographically dispersed in a megacity of 10 million people. in addition, the refugee population in jakarta is much more diverse than in cisarua, comprising refugees from many different countries of origin (unhcr indonesia, 2017a). distance and diversity make communication and the development of social capital in this case more difficult. the spread of education-oriented refugee initiatives in urban settings since the establishment of indonesia’s first refugee learning center in cisarua in 2014, there has been a rapid expansion of similar initiatives in cisarua and more recently to jakarta. as discussed above, one major barrier to the emergence and spread of the centers was the perception that engaging in volunteer activities had the potential to damage cases with unhcr or to create issues with indonesian authorities. none of the refugee-led organizations established in cisarua since 2014 has encountered any trouble from authorities to date, as was initially feared, and after a number of years without incident, more risk-averse members of the refugee community have become involved with refugee-led organizations. abdul khalil payeez confirms that by the time crlc and rln were established “everybody in cisarua got to know that there are learning centers now, and there is no problem . . . so people got more confident and started volunteering in different places. then rlc was established, cipayung [refugee educational centre], and hope [learning centre]” (a. k. payeez, managing director crlc, 22 april 2018). furthermore, since 2014 the refugee community has been exposed to the success of the learning centers, creating more demand for these services and encouraging more refugee leaders to provide them. in combination with the contextual factors highlighted above, the increased confidence in the hazara community that these activities are permitted as well as the visible benefits they provide to the community can explain the increasing number of refugee-led education centers in cisarua and beyond. jakarta holds many of the characteristics that made the emergence of refugeeled initiatives in cisarua possible: the presence of children in need of education; the freedom to self-organize; and, presumably, refugees who can offer their skills and experience in a voluntary capacity. yet, because refugees in jakarta are geographically dispersed and have less commonality of language and culture, the strong social capital that enabled the almost ‘spontaneous’ emergence of self-organization in cisarua is not present to the same extent in jakarta. this may explain why help was initiated not by refugees within the jakarta community, but by two hazara refugees 178 | aseas 11(2) building resilience from cisarua who were then able to find refugee volunteers in jakarta willing to help. despite these challenges, the capital city does offer benefits to refugee-led organizations, as there are more indonesians, foreigners, and civil society groups who are sympathetic to refugee issues and willing to help. for instance, help was able to more easily find indonesian and international volunteers and establish a localized base for fundraising than organizations in cisarua. hence, the larger and more cosmopolitan urban environment of jakarta may represent a favorable location for the mobilization of support for more refugee-led initiatives in the future. conclusion through a detailed case study of a refugee community in indonesia, this paper demonstrates how urban refugees living in a developing host country can overcome gaps in service provision through self-organization and self-reliance. in cisarua, an unassuming urban town in west java, the hazara refugee community has led a movement to independently provide education to those in their community who would otherwise go without. over the last four years, members of the community have independently initiated five refugee-led education centers that serve hundreds of children and adults. all the centers loosely operate on the same model – they are led by refugee volunteers but rely on financial assistance from individuals and groups outside the community. in addition to benefitting the pupils directly, the centers also serve to empower and build the capacity of refugee volunteers and can be seen to benefit the broader refugee community by providing much-needed places for socialization and community activities. with the acceptance that they will be living in indonesia for some years due to shifting geopolitical contexts and the knowledge that external support is not forthcoming, refugees in cisarua are motivated to build self-reliance and provide educational services for the large number of children in their community. furthermore, the refugee inhabitants of cisarua have the capability needed to implement these initiatives, with the independence and freedom to self-organize and the presence of well-educated refugee leaders with valuable experience and expertise to offer. yet, without the strong networks within the hazara refugee community that existed and continue to exist in cisarua, it is less likely that their motivation and capability would have come together to produce action. the strong social capital observed in cisarua – a product of refugees living in close proximity and sharing a common language, culture, and history – provided the lynchpin for the emergence and expansion of the refugee-led learning centers in cisarua. this study complements the emerging literature (calhoun, 2010; kobia & cranfield 2009; koizumi & hoffstaedter, 2015; lyytinen & kullenberg, 2013; mcconnachie, 2014) on urban refugees and refugee self-organization by not only providing a detailed case study of a new geographic area and community, but also by tracing the history of the community’s self-organization efforts, investigating the forms and functions that refugee-led initiatives may take, and analyzing the factors that explain the emergence and proliferation of such initiatives in specific contexts. in doing so, it highlights the agency and resilience that refugees exercise in the context of protracted transit in developing host countries where they face a lack of formal rights and of access to services and livelihoods. these findings imply that refugees can be viewed as agents aseas 11(2) | 179 thomas mitchell brown of change and serve to highlight the potential that refugee-led organizations hold for improving the lives of refugees the world over. the implications of refugee-led organizations will be of interest not only to scholars but also to practitioners and policymakers concerned with effecting change on forced migration issues. as one of the first studies to explore in-depth how refugees in a certain locale in indonesia are adapting to a new political context that has emerged since 2013, this paper provides a basis for future scholarship on the contemporary situation of refugees in indonesia. its importance is further enhanced by the fact that the political context mentioned above – in which indonesia has become a location of protracted transit for refugees, whereas it once was a staging post – looks to be here to 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(2014, july 21). indonesia’s asylum hub, where desperate hungry people try to bribe their way into detention. the guardian. retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/21/-spindonesias-asylum-hub-where-desperate-hungry-people-try-to-bribe-their-way-into-detention tan, n. f. (2016). the status of asylum seekers and refugees in indonesia. international journal of refugee law, 28(3), 365-383. taylor, s., & rafferty-brown, b. (2010). difficult journeys: accessing refugee protection in indonesia. monash university law review, 36(3), 138-161. united nations high commissioner for refugees. (2010a). global report 2010: malaysia. retrieved from http://www.refworld.org/pdfid/4e523fc8d.pdf united nations high commissioner for refugees. 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(2017c). information on comprehensive solutions. retrieved from http://www.unhcr.org/id/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/2017/10/poster-oncomprehensaive-solutions-echo-oct-2017.pdf united nations high commissioner for refugees indonesia (2016a). indonesia factsheet, december 2016. retrieved from https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/indonesia-fact-sheetdecember-2016.pdf united nations high commissioner for refugees indonesia. (2016b). monthly statistical report, december 2016. jakarta. united nations high commissioner for refugees malaysia. (2015). malaysia country office fact sheet. retrieved from http://www.unhcr.org/protection/operations/56167f6b6/malaysia-fact-sheet.html united nations high commissioner for refugees population statistics. (2016). retrieved from http:// popstats.unhcr.org/en/demographics urban refugees. (2017, 20 december). our global strategy. retrieved from http://www.urban-refugees. org/our-global-strategy/ world vision. (2015). social cohesion between syrian refugees and urban host communities in lebanon and jordan. retrieved from http://www.wvi.org/disaster-management/publication/social-cohesionbetween-syrian-refugees-and-urban-host-communities about the author thomas brown is a researcher who has focused on forced migration and development issues in indonesia for the last three years. ► contact: thomas.mitchell.brown91@gmail.com acknowledgements this research was conducted during a guest fellowship at universitas katolik parahyangan in bandung, indonesia. the author would like to thank antje missbach for her mentoring and support over the years and the hazara refugee community for their hospitality and openness. accountability for serious crimes and national reconciliation in timor-leste: progress or wishful thinking? aseas 3(1) 08 aktuelle südostasienforschung / current research on south-east asia accountability for serious crimes and national reconciliation in timor-leste: progress or wishful thinking? madalena pampalk1 university of vienna, austria aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften / austrian journal of south-east asian studies seas gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften / society for south-east asian studies www.seas.at in 1999 – after 24 years of indonesian occupation – the people of timor-leste voted for their independence. however, timorese anti-independence militias and the indonesian military reacted with widespread and systematic attacks against the civilian population in the form of murder, rape, torture and deportation. in order to achieve accountability for the human rights atrocities and reconciliation, various mechanisms at the international, national and regional level were established in timor-leste and indonesia. despite this multi-layered approach, including courts and alternative justice mechanisms such as truth commissions, justice failed to be delivered. drawing from the achievements and shortcomings of these institutions, this paper explores why many expectations were left unmet and highlights the influence politics had on the functioning of the organisations. yet, some hope can be drawn from recent developments that justice for the atrocities committed in timor-leste will not be denied for good. keywords: timor-leste / east timor, accountability, reconciliation, justice, human rights nach der 24 jahre andauernden besetzung durch indonesien stimmte die bevölkerung timorlestes 1999 für die unabhängigkeit. timoresische milizen und das indonesische militär reagierten darauf mit ausgedehnten und systematischen übergriffen auf die zivilbevölkerung, unter anderem durch ermordungen, vergewaltigungen, folter und deportationen. um strafrechtliche verantwortung für die menschenrechtsverletzungen und versöhnung zu schaffen, wurden zahlreiche institutionen auf internationaler, nationaler und regionaler ebene in timor-leste und indonesien errichtet. trotz des komplexen zusammenwirkens dieser organisationen, einschließlich gerichtshöfen und wahrheitskommissionen, wurde keine gerechtigkeit hergestellt. ausgehend von den errungenschaften und unzulänglichkeiten dieser institutionen untersucht dieser artikel, warum die erwartungen vieler unerfüllt blieben, und zeigt auf, wie politische entscheidungen die arbeit der institutionen beeinflussten. zugleich kann aus jüngeren entwicklungen hoffnung geschöpft werden, dass in hinblick auf die ahndung der gräueltaten gerechtigkeit nicht endgültig verwehrt bleiben wird. schlagworte: timor-leste / osttimor, strafrechtliche verantwortung, versöhnung, gerechtigkeit, menschenrechte 1 madalena pampalk is a research assistant and lecturer at the department of criminal law, university of vienna, austria. her research focuses on transitional justice, international criminal law, and human rights. contact: lena.pampalk@univie.ac.at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ aseas 3(1) 09 1. brief history of the conflict and intervention of the united nations from the sixteenth century timor-leste2 was under the colonial rule of the portuguese. in 1975, shortly after timor-leste declared its independence from portugal, neighbouring indonesia, which considered the internal conflict over authority in timor-leste a security threat, invaded and occupied the country for the following 24 years.3 the united nations (un) never acknowledged indonesia’s annexation of timorleste as its 27th province.4 however, in light of the growing power of communism in south-east asia, the us and other western nations supported the annexation.5 during this period, the brutal conflict between the timorese resistance and the indonesian military and police, assisted by a timorese minority, caused more than 100,000 deaths. over 80,000 of these deaths resulted from hunger and illness as an effect of the conflict (cavr, 2005, part 6, paras 8 and 49). despite widespread awareness of the conflict and human rights violations, the international community did not intervene. in august 1999, about one year after the end of the regime of former dictator suharto in indonesia, the un administered a referendum in timor-leste on independence.6 seventy-eight percent of the timorese voted in favour thereof. however, shortly after the ballot, anti-independence timorese militias, orchestrated by the indonesian military and police (un security council, 1999, para. 14), reacted with a violent “scorched earth campaign”. the attack caused over 1,000 deaths, the displacement of more than 400,000 people, and vast destruction of the infrastructure in timor-leste (un special rapporteurs, 1999, paras. 20, 37 and 38). these atrocities finally stopped due to the intervention of the un international force in east timor (interfet)7 in september 1999. in october 1999, after indonesia had withdrawn, the un transitional administrat2 until its full independence in 2002 timor-leste’s official name was east timor. for reasons of consistency, in this article the present name will be used also when referring to the period before 2002, except when east timor is used as the proper name of an institution. 3 for detailed information on timorese history see, e.g., taylor (1991). 4 the un security council called upon all states to respect the territorial integrity of east timor and on indonesia to withdraw its forces from the territory of timor-leste (resolutions 384 [1975] and 389 [1976]). see also the general assembly resolution 31/53 (1976), which rejected indonesia’s claim that timor-leste had been integrated into its territory. 5 see, e.g., sforza (1999, pp. 488-489). 6 the popular consultation was organised and conducted by the united nations mission in east timor (unamet) which was established by the security council (resolution 1246 [1999]). 7 interfret was authorised by the un security council and mandated to restore peace and security in timor-leste (resolution 1264 [1999], para. 3). madalena pampalk accountability for serious crimes and national reconciliation in timor-leste aseas 3(1) 10 ion in east timor (untaet) was established by the security council as a peacekeeping operation with complete administrative authority over timor-leste during its transition to independence (un security council, res. 1272 [1999]). its mandate included the maintenance of law and order, the establishment of an effective administration, and assistance in the capacity-building for self-government and development of civil and social services. untaet was authorised to take all necessary measures to fulfil its broad mandate. it acted in lieu of and gradually partly with timor-leste’s government until the country’s full independence in may 2002. the new government was handed authority over judicial matters and untaet was replaced by a smaller peacekeeping mission, the un mission of support in east timor (unmiset). it had the mandate to provide assistance to the timorese authorities in executing their new responsibilities (un security council, res. 1410 [2002]). in may 2005, unmiset was downsized and transformed into a political mission, the un office in timor-leste (unotil). its mandate was to support the development of the police and other state institutions and to provide training in observance of human rights and democratic governance (un security council, res. 1599 [2005]). in august 2006, after a political, humanitarian and security crisis, unotil was replaced by un integrated mission in timor-leste (unmit) with the task of supporting the government and relevant institutions, in particular the national police efforts and the judicial system, until february 2010 (un security council, res. 1704 [2006], 1802 [2008] and 1867 [2009]). 2. accountability and reconciliation processes in respect of the atrocities of 1999 2.1 processes in indonesia the national commission of inquiry and the ad hoc human rights court in indonesia a national commission of inquiry on human rights violations in east timor (kpp ham) was set up by the indonesian commission on human rights (komnas ham) in september 1999. the commission of inquiry had the mandate to investigate the gross human rights violations committed in timor-leste between the indonesian government’s january 1999 announcement to hold a popular consultation aseas 3(1) 11 and the withdrawal of its forces in september 1999. it was a political decision that the commission would not carry out investigations of the far larger number of crimes committed in the prior 24 years. the commission’s report discloses that the violations in 1999 were conducted systematically and indicates a close link between the indonesian military and police with the militia groups who had committed the majority of the crimes (kpp ham, 2000). the names of 32 officials and militia leaders were cited as allegedly responsible. in reaction to the report, the ad hoc human rights court for east timor was established in 2001 within the national court system. undoubtedly international pressure and jakarta’s intention to avoid the creation of an international court influenced this decision. the ad hoc court had the mandate to try indonesians and timorese responsible for the atrocities committed in timor-leste in april and september 1999. in january 2002 indictments were issued against 18 suspects of whom merely eight were on the list of the kpp ham. of the 18 people tried, six were convicted at first instance. five of the six were subsequently acquitted on appeal. eurico guterres, former militia leader, was the only person whose conviction was upheld by the appeals court and supreme court. however, in march 2008 the supreme court reversed the decision it had made two years earlier and acquitted him.8 the final outcome of no convictions and the fact that the indictees did not include senior indonesian officials9 reflect the political unwillingness in indonesia to bring the persons responsible for the crimes in 1999 to justice.10 furthermore, the ad hoc court was strongly criticised for its limited temporal and geographic jurisdiction; its selection of only indonesian judges, not all of whom were qualified; the lack of independence of and the performance of the prosecution; insufficient victim and witness protection; and an intimidating courtroom atmosphere.11 while the commission of inquiry had conducted its investigations independently and impartially (un commission of experts, 2005, para. 167), this cannot be said 8 for further information see, e.g., international centre for transitional justice (2008). 9 only four out of the 13 cases mentioned in the kpp ham report were taken up by the prosecutors of the ad hoc court. most notably general wiranto, former commander in chief of the indonesian army and minister of defence, was not indicted. 10 despite the democratic reform indonesia had experienced in 1998, its judiciary remained characterised by a despite the democratic reform indonesia had experienced in 1998, its judiciary remained characterised by a strongly corrupted military-hierarchical culture. after decades of such a culture, it would be unrealistic to expect judges and prosecutors to have been independent and impartial only one year later. see cohen (2003, pp. 39-46). 11 see, e.g., human rights watch (2003), office of the united nations high commissioner for human rights [un see, e.g., human rights watch (2003), office of the united nations high commissioner for human rights [unohchr] (2002) and amnesty international & judicial system monitoring programme (2004). madalena pampalk accountability for serious crimes and national reconciliation in timor-leste aseas 3(1) 12 for the proceedings, despite the security council’s call for indonesia to “institute a swift, comprehensive, effective and transparent legal process, in conformity with international standards of justice and due process of law” (un security council, 2000). the indonesian proceedings did not help achieve accountability and justice (un commission of experts, paras 370-375) but rather seem a failed attempt to calm the international community. 2.2 processes in timor-leste commissions of inquiry a commission of inquiry was also set up in timor-leste. unlike the commission in indonesia, the commission of inquiry on east timor, established by the secretarygeneral on the recommendation of the human rights commission, was of international nature.12 it had the mandate to investigate possible human rights violations and breaches of international humanitarian law (ihl) committed in timorleste from january 1999. the commission co-operated with the joint mission of the un special rapporteurs of the commission on human rights to east timor. the reports of both the commission of inquiry and the special rapporteurs revealed a pattern of serious violations of human rights and ihl in timor-leste (un-ohchr, 2000, para. 142; un special rapporteurs, 1999, para. 71). consequently, the commission of inquiry called for the establishment of an international independent investigation and prosecution body and an international human rights tribunal (un-ohchr, paras. 152 and 153). moreover, the special rapporteurs recommended the establishment of an international criminal tribunal “unless, in a matter of months, the steps taken by the government of indonesia to investigate tni involvement in the past year’s violence bear fruit, both in the way of credible clarification of the facts and the bringing to justice of the perpetrators” (un special rapporteurs, para. 74 [6]). the serious crimes process despite these recommendations, the security council decided not to establish another ad hoc international criminal tribunal like the – certainly very costly – ones for the former yugoslavia and rwanda. while adequately addressing human rights violations 12 this was done pursuant to the un commission on human rights resolution 1999/s-4/1 of 27 september 1999. this was done pursuant to the un commission on human rights resolution 1999/s-4/1 of 27 september 1999. aseas 3(1) 13 was a major concern of the international community, the un and especially the united states did not want to jeopardise their friendly relations with indonesia, a powerful state with the world’s largest muslim population – even more so given the beginning of the ‘war on terror’ (cf. cohen, 2002, p. 4). therefore, indonesia’s assurance of its determination to bring individuals in indonesia to justice through the national judicial mechanism (indonesian minister of foreign affairs, 2000) was accepted. instead of establishing an international ad hoc tribunal, untaet, acting as interim government in timor-leste, created timorese district courts and a court of appeal in march 2000 (untaet reg. no. 2000/11, in particular secs 7 and 14). special panels with exclusive jurisdiction over so called ‘serious criminal offences’ were established within the dili district court and the court of appeal (untaet reg. no. 2000/15, secs 1.1 and 1.2). these were genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity committed at any time, as well as murder, sexual offences, and torture committed between 1 january and 25 october 1999 (reg. no. 2000/11, secs 10.1 and 10.2). these special panels for serious crimes (spsc) were composed of two international judges and one timorese judge (reg. no. 2000/15, secs 22.1 and 22.1). unlike the internationalised courts in sierra leone and cambodia, which were established through contracts between the un and the respective governments, untaet made these decisions on its own as there was no national government at that time to contract with. the review and endorsement of the national council of timor-leste resistance (cnrt) was of a rather superficial nature (handl, 2007, p. 111; reiger & wierda, 2006, p. 13). in june 2000 untaet also established a public prosecution service for timor-leste with an ordinary crimes unit (ocu) and a serious crimes unit (scu). the principal official for the investigation and prosecution of serious crimes and therefore the effective head of the scu was the deputy general prosecutor for serious crimes (dgpsc) (untaet reg. no. 2000/16, secs 14.6 and 14.3). in accordance with security council resolutions 1543 (2004) and 1573 (2004), the serious crimes process was terminated in may 2005. by then, the scu had indicted 392 persons in 95 indictments (office of the dgpsc, 2005, p. 2). the mandate left open the question of who should be prosecuted. hence the scu’s prosecution strategy changed over time. while in the beginning of its work the scu mainly indicted timorese militia members for simple murder, from 2002 on it focused more madalena pampalk accountability for serious crimes and national reconciliation in timor-leste aseas 3(1) 14 on charging high-level military officers and political leaders in timor-leste and indonesia with crimes against humanity. most outstanding was the indictment of general wiranto, former minister of defence and commander of the armed forces, in february 2003.13 the spsc conducted 55 trials against 87 accused, of whom 85 were convicted (un secretary-general, 2006, para. 9). while this is a respectable number for a short period of time, the quality especially of the earlier decisions has been deservedly criticised.14 as the mandates of scu und spsc only applied to serious crimes committed in 1999, the atrocities which occurred between 1975 and 1998 were not dealt with. the high discrepancy between the persons indicted and those who faced trial derives to a great extent from the fact that with respect to the execution of warrants for the arrest of accused persons located in the territory of a foreign state and their extradition, the spsc was dependent on the co-operation of that state. many of the indictees were in indonesia, which refused to co-operate despite an agreement it had signed with untaet (memorandum of understanding, 2000, esp. secs 2 (c) and 9). as a consequence, those convicted by the spsc were perpetrators of rather low-level crimes, while those who bore the greatest responsibility did not face justice. while it is comprehensible that timor-leste was not in a position to pressure indonesia, the international community could have intervened. one possibility would have been a security council resolution demanding indonesia’s co-operation.15 it seems that political considerations in terms of keeping friendly relations with indonesia were ranked higher (see also lanegran, 2005, p. 115, and hirst & varney, 2005, p. 25). the scsl and the scu had to cope with very limited resources. the shortage of funds also became manifest in the lack of qualified legal services for the accused. before the defence lawyers unit (dlu) was established in september 2002 by unmiset, the rights to adequate representation and equality of arms16 were clearly infringed upon. however, even after its creation, the dlu could not fully safeguard 13 deputy general prosecutor v. wiranto and others, district court of dili, special panels for serious crimes, case no. 5/2003, 23 february 2003. regrettably, both the un and the timorese government distanced themselves from the indictment of the general issued in 2004 (see unmiset, 2003; gusmão, k., he the president, 2003). 14 see, e.g., de bertodano (2003, pp. 232-233) and braun (2008, pp. 188-189). see, e.g., de bertodano (2003, pp. 232-233) and braun (2008, pp. 188-189). 15 the un security council had done so in the case of kosovo when it demanded the full co-operation of the federal the un security council had done so in the case of kosovo when it demanded the full co-operation of the federal republic of yugoslavia (resolution 1244 [1999]). 16 the principle of ‘equality of arms’ requires that defence and prosecution are given a reasonable opportunity to the principle of ‘equality of arms’ requires that defence and prosecution are given a reasonable opportunity to present their cases without placing any party at a substantial disadvantage vis-à-vis the opponent. aseas 3(1) 15 these rights due to the deficit of expertise and experience of some of its lawyers (burgess, 2004, p. 140). other problems resulting from the lack of resources include the inadequate translation and interpretation services and the severe shortcomings with respect to witness and victim protection and support (hirst & varney, 2005, p. 22; reiger & wierda, 2006, pp. 29 and 39). furthermore, there was no comprehensive plan providing for capacity building of the local justice system. apart from having a timorese judge on each panel, the spsc did not engage in further efforts with the objective of disseminating expertise. in 2002 the scu, composed of international staff except for the timorese translators, began to conduct training programmes for a small number of national investigators, prosecutors, police officers and supporting staff. most of the former scu trainee prosecutors subsequently worked at the ocu (office of the dgpsc, 2005, p. 7 and 2003, p. 2).17 these capacity building efforts on part of the scu were certainly important measures, but still a lot more could and should have been done if there had been strategic planning and necessary funding from the beginning (cf. hirst & varney, 2005, p. 24-25; reiger & wierda, 2006, p. 35-36). of course, all these drawbacks have to be seen in the light of the difficult circumstances in which the spsc and the scu were operating. when untaet took over its mandate in 1999 after the withdrawal of the indonesian troops and all judicial officers, no justice system existed and there were practically no legal professionals. thus, a new court system with an internationalised court within a national court had to be build from scratch. scu and spsc issued a decent number of indictments and judgements. in doing so, they helped establish an historical record of many of the atrocities which took place in timor-leste in 1999 and of the context in which they were committed. also the substantive legal provisions of the rome statute of the international criminal court, which had been copied nearly verbatim by untaet, were used for the very first time worldwide (bertodano, 2004, p. 86). the scu had to close before it had concluded its work, leaving hundreds of murder cases and other serious crimes without investigation. therefore, the serious crimes investigation team (scit) was created in february 2008 with the mandate to assist the office of the general-prosecutor (ogp) in completing the investigations into 17 the programmes were funded by the norwegian government and the united states agency for international the programmes were funded by the norwegian government and the united states agency for international development. madalena pampalk accountability for serious crimes and national reconciliation in timor-leste aseas 3(1) 16 unsettled cases of serious crimes committed in timor-leste in 1999. the international staff members of the scit also have the task to provide training to their national counterparts working in the team and to other organisations and offices such as the national police.18 unlike the scu, the scit only conducts investigations and makes recommendations. filing of indictments and prosecuting the alleged perpetrators lie within the exclusive mandate of the timorese opg. by january 2010, scit had concluded investigations in 110 out of 396 outstanding cases (un secretary-general, 2010, para. 10). the commission for reception, truth and reconciliation in order to complement the prosecutorial tasks of the serious crimes regime, untaet (reg. no. 2001/10) also established a truth finding and reconciliation mechanism: the commission for reception, truth and reconciliation (comissao de acolhimento, verdade e reconciliacao de timor-leste, cavr). cavr was created after extensive consultation with the timorese society and with approval of the cnrt as an independent timorese institution (cavr, 2005, part 1, sec. 1.2). cavr had the mandate to establish the truth regarding the human rights violations which took place in the context of the political conflicts in timor-leste between 1974 and 1999. in contrast to the serious crimes process, the commission therefore did not only deal with crimes perpetrated in 1999. cavr’s task included identifying the factors that led to such violations and those involved in committing them; refering cases of human rights violations to the ogp with recommendations for the prosecutions; promoting reconciliation; assisting in restoring the human dignity of victims; and supporting the reception and reintegration of individuals who have committed minor criminal offences through community-based reconciliation mechanisms (reg. no. 2001/10, secs. 3.1 and 13.1 [a] [iii]). in respect of its truth-seeking function, the cavr had broad inquiry-related powers, including requesting information from relevant authorities within timor-leste and abroad, and ordering a person to appear before the commission to answer questions (reg. no. 2001/10, sec. 14 [g], [h] and [c]). in october 2005 the cavr submitted its over 18 section 2 ‘agreement between the united nations and the democratic republic of timor-leste concerning section 2 ‘agreement between the united nations and the democratic republic of timor-leste concerning assistance to the office of the prosecutor-general of timor-leste’, signed by the deputy special representative of the secretary-general and the prosecutor-general of timor-leste on 12 february 2008, in accordance with para. 4 (i) of un security council resolution 1704 (2006). aseas 3(1) 17 2500-page report on its findings and recommendations to the then president gusmão who thereon handed it over to the timorese parliament and the un. the commission found that the government of indonesia was responsible for massive human rights violations and members of the indonesian security forces had committed crimes against humanity and war crimes (cavr, 2005, part 8, pp. 5-8). in order to assist the reception and reintegration of people into their communities, the cavr conducted community reconciliation processes (crp) by which criminal and civil immunity was granted to offenders of crimes not considered serious if they performed certain acts of reconciliation (untaet reg. no. 2001/10, secs. 22 and 32). deponents wishing to participate in the crp had to submit a statement to the commission describing the acts he or she had committed (sec. 23.1). copies of such statements, in total 1,541 (cavr, 2005, part 9, para. 102), were provided to the ogp which decided whether the person had allegedly committed a serious crime and would in this case exercise its exclusive jurisdiction (reg., secs. 24.5 and 24.6). if the ogp decided not to do so,19 the deponent took part in a crp hearing, conducted by a local panel in a traditional manner (cavr, part 9, sec. 9.3.6) followed by a community reconciliation agreement (cra) between the panel and the deponent on an appropriate act of reconciliation. such an act could include community service, reparation, public apology, and/or another act of contrition (reg., sec. 27).20 the cra was issued as an order of the district courts following their approval (sec. 28). the crp managed to successfully complete the cases of 1371 (cavr, 2005, part 9, para. 102) perpetrators of minor crimes such as theft, minor assault, and arson which did not result in death or injury in less than two years. as the processes were conducted in and by the local communities, the sense of ownership was strong (para. 159). offering victims and perpetrators an open forum where they could express sorrow, give explanations and ask forgiveness helped improve their relationship, which in return facilitated the reintegration of the deponents into the communities (paras 118-119). in fact, the crp became so popular that it could not cope with all 19 the ogp refused its approval in 85 cases. thirty-two additional cases were forwarded to the ogp by the crp the ogp refused its approval in 85 cases. thirty-two additional cases were forwarded to the ogp by the crp committee because during the deponent’s hearing credible evidence of the commitment of a serious crime arose, or because the deponent was not accepted by the community (cavr, 2005, part 9, para. 102). however, of these more than 100 cases retained by the ogp, less than 20 were indicted (see hirst & varney, 2005, p. 13). 20 these acts are similar to those imposed in the course of the process of diversion which is applied, these acts are similar to those imposed in the course of the process of diversion which is applied, inter alia, in many european countries, several states in the usa, and australia as a formal alternative to prosecution for first time offenders and perpetrators of minor crimes. diversion is especially used for juvenile offenders and in respect of drug-related crimes. comparable to the crp, the objective here is to facilitate the offender’s social rehabilitation by not convicting him/her and relieving courts of petty cases. madalena pampalk accountability for serious crimes and national reconciliation in timor-leste aseas 3(1) 18 those wishing to participate (para. 167). at the same time, the crp did not interfere with, but rather supported the prosecution of those who committed serious crimes. however, while several hundreds of low level offenders of minor crimes participated in the crp, the vast majority of those who committed serious crimes did not face justice due to the lack of co-operation from indonesia and the limited resources and time span of the scu and spsc. the low threat of prosecution probably encouraged some perpetrators to refrain from giving their statements to the crp in the first place (reiger & wierda, 2006, pp. 34-35). in any case, the dearth of effective prosecution caused a state of unequal accountability which was understandably criticised by the victims and the crp deponents (cavr, 2005, part 9, para. 170). in this respect, the commission’s final report included recommendations on the reestablishment and amendments of the scu and the spsc and on the establishment of an international tribunal should justice fail to be accomplished otherwise (cavr, 2005, part 11, secs. 7.1.1-7.1.10 and 7.2.1). 2.3 joint processes the commission of truth and friendship in december 2004 the presidents of timor-leste and indonesia jointly declared their intention to create a commission of truth and friendship (ctf). the terms of reference (tor) of the ctf were agreed upon and made public in march 2005. while the cavr had operated as a national institution with broad temporal mandate, the ctf was an intergovernmental entity with the objective of establishing the conclusive truth in regard to the events of 1999 in order to further promote reconciliation and friendship (tor, art. 12). it was composed of half indonesian and half timorese commissioners. unlike the cavr, but similar to the south african truth and reconciliation commission, the ctf’s mandate included the power to recommend amnesties for perpetrators of human rights violations who co-operated fully in revealing the truth and rehabilitation measures for those wrongly accused of human rights violations (art. 14 [c] [i] and [ii]). as this was not further specified, it would comprise recommending amnesties for perpetrator of crimes against humanity and war crimes. on this account the tor were strongly criticised by civil society and human rights organisations and aseas 3(1) 19 the un even denied its co-operation with the ctf (un news service, 2007).21 the ctf’s processes were tasked to emphasise institutional responsibilities and explicitly not to lead to prosecution (tor, art. 13 [c]). the commission was excluded from recommending the establishment of any new judicial body (art. 13 [e]). this reflects the decision of the leaders of the two countries to promote their bilateral relations by means of ceding prosecutorial processes (cf. art. 10 [preamble]). this shift away from achieving accountability on the part of the then president gusmão and his successor, the former foreign minister, ramos-horta in spite of the strong calls for justice in timor-leste was of a pragmatic nature.22 the recent experiences and developments had shown quite plainly that timor-leste was not capable of prosecuting the perpetrators who were most responsible and that the international community was not willing to step in and establish an international tribunal despite several recommendations including those by un bodies.23 at the same time, timor-leste was in urgent need of support in terms of economic and political development from indonesia and was therefore inclined to opt for the improvement of diplomatic relations with its powerful neighbour. in order to reveal the truth with regard to the atrocities of 1999, the ctf reviewed materials documented by the kpp ham, the ad hoc human rights court on east timor in jakarta, the spsc and the scu, and the cavr. in addition to its document review and research, the commission conducted six public hearings. these were, however, strongly criticised, in particular because of their failure to procure the truth und to treat victims adequately.24 the ctf submitted its final report in july 2008.25 the commission concluded that widespread and systematic attacks against the civilian population in the form of murder, rape, torture, deportation, and other inhumane acts were committed in timor-leste in 1999 (ctf, 2009, p. 283). members of the militia, the indonesian military and the indonesian civilian government bear responsibility for these crimes against humanity. it also found that pro-independence groups systematically captured and 21 this was in accordance with the advice of the un commission of experts (2005, paras 355 in conj. with 353). this was in accordance with the advice of the un commission of experts (2005, paras 355 in conj. with 353). 22 then president gusmão stated that “peace, stability and progress in timor-leste greatly depend on the relationship then president gusmão stated that “peace, stability and progress in timor-leste greatly depend on the relationship we will forge with the republic of indonesia” (gusmão, k., he the president, 2003). see also hirst (2008, pp. 10-12) and kingston (2006, pp. 234-239). 23 see un-ohchr, 2000, paras 152-153; un special rapporteurs, 1999, para. 74 (6); un commission of experts, 2005, see un-ohchr, 2000, paras 152-153; un special rapporteurs, 1999, para. 74 (6); un commission of experts, 2005, paras 525 in conj. with 515-524. 24 for a detailed study of the public hearings see hirst (2008, pp. 22-36). for a detailed study of the public hearings see hirst (2008, pp. 22-36). 25 for a through analysis of the ctr final report see hirst (2009). for a through analysis of the ctr final report see hirst (2009). madalena pampalk accountability for serious crimes and national reconciliation in timor-leste aseas 3(1) 20 illegally detained people, although due to the lack of evidence the precise nature and extent of these crimes could not be finally determined (pp. 271-275). the ctf (2009, p. 297) refrained from recommending amnesties because that “would not be in accordance with its goals of restoring human dignity, creating the foundation for reconciliation between the two countries, and ensuring the nonrecurrence of violence within a framework guaranteed by the rule of law”. in fact, it recommends improving institutions which investigate and prosecute human rights violations (p. 298).26 however, the wording seems to reflect the diplomatic intention of the report which would imply that these mechanisms should deal with future violations rather than with those of 1999. the findings and recommendations of the final report were endorsed by both heads of state at the ceremony in july 2008. since then, four senior officials meetings (som) between the two states have taken place in order to discuss the implementation of the ctf’s recommendations and in particular of a joint plan of action with short and long term programmes.27 however, the plan is focused on programme delivery in timorleste rather than in indonesia, which reflects how indonesia apprehends its role in the process. thus, indonesia has enhanced its co-operation and support in the social, economic and security sectors (see som delegation, 2010). the recommendations relating more directly to the conflict in 1999, such as establishing a commission for disappeared persons and a document and conflict resolution centre, are still to be implemented. furthermore, progress is slow in implementing the long-term recommendations on promoting institutional reforms which enhance the authority and effectiveness of institutions charged with the investigation and prosecution of human rights violations. without doubt the promulgation of the decree of the chief of the indonesian national police on the implementation of human rights principles and standards is commendable.28 nevertheless, the indonesian attorney general’s refusal to follow up cases on human rights violations concluded by the national commission 26 other recommendations included establishing a commission for disappeared persons, a document and conflict other recommendations included establishing a commission for disappeared persons, a document and conflict resolution centre and training programmes for human rights, reforming the armed forces in a way that would ensure their operation under the rule of law, and promoting long-term co-operation in various fields such as education, health, the economy, and security (ctf, 2009, ch. 9). 27 a fifth som is scheduled for the second half of 2010 in dili. a fifth som is scheduled for the second half of 2010 in dili. 28 regulation of the chief of the indonesian national police regarding implementation of human rights principles and standards in the discharge of the duties of the indonesian national police, 8/2009. aseas 3(1) 21 for human rights (komnas ham) impedes the bringing of such cases before the human rights court (asian human rights commission [ahrc], 2009, p. 20). hence, reform of law enforcement institutions, in particular the police and the attorney general’s office, are imperative. moreover, the indonesian military law which assigns the military courts far-reaching exclusive powers and thus precludes the police from investigating human rights violations committed by military personnel has not yet been amended, facilitating a culture of impunity (ahrc, 2009, p. 25). in timor-leste, some positive developments can be observed, such as the entry into force of a new penal code in june 2009 which includes a detailed section on genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.29 in december 2009, four years after the final report of the cavr had been submitted, the timorese parliament finally began the process of implementing the comprehensive recommendations of the cavr and the ctf reports.30 the resolution it passed emphasised the need to ensure reparations to victims and requested the parliamentary committee on constitutional affairs, justice, public administration, local government and government legislation to prepare a draft bill with concrete measures on the implementation of the recommendations, including the establishment of an institution for this purpose.31 the draft bill shall be submitted by march 2010 and will subsequently be debated and decided upon by the assembly of the parliament. earlier the parliament had decided that the implementing body would receive a budget of usd250,000 (east timor and indonesia action network, 2009). the indonesian edition of the cavr’s final report will be published by a subsidiary of indonesia’s largest publishing house in 2010 (p. walsh, senior adviser of the post-cavr technical secretariat, personal communication, 6 february 2010). the dissemination will help increase awareness of indonesia’s role in the timorese conflict and enhance consideration, primarily by scholars, politicians, the media, and the commission on human rights and in turn by the general public. 29 decreto lei governo 19/2009, decreto lei governo 19/2009, jornal da república i/14, suplemento, livro ii, título i. 30 more than a year earlier, in june 2008, the parliamentary committee for constitutional issues, justice, public more than a year earlier, in june 2008, the parliamentary committee for constitutional issues, justice, public administration, local power, and government legislation had prepared a resolution on the implementation of the recommendations of the cavr (available at http://www.cavr-timorleste.org/updatefiles/english/draft%20 resolution%20cavr%20080515%20english%20final.pdf> accessed 10 february 2010). however, it was never debated in the assembly of the parliament. 31 national parliament of timor-leste, ‘projecto de resolu�ão, implementa�ão das recomenda��es da comissão de national parliament of timor-leste, ‘projecto de resolu�ão, implementa�ão das recomenda��es da comissão de acolhimento, verdade e reconcilia�ão e da comissão de verdade e amizade’, no. 34/ii, 14 december 2009. madalena pampalk accountability for serious crimes and national reconciliation in timor-leste aseas 3(1) 22 3. developments after the accountability and reconciliation processes in respect of the atrocities of 1999 even after the accountability and reconciliation processes relating to the atrocities of 1999, the state institutions in timor-leste remained weak, the leadership divided, and as a result the rule of law frail. this became evident when a crises occurred in april and may 2006 triggered by a dispute within the timorese military (falintil-for�as de defesa de timor-leste, f-fdtl). in order to investigate the incidents, including their causes, and to clarify who was responsible the un established an independent special commission of inquiry.32 the commission concluded that the riots claimed the lives of around 40 people and caused widespread property damage and the displacement of approximately 150,000 people (un independent special commission of inquiry, 2006, paras 100-101). it recommended that those responsible for criminal acts be held accountable by means of judicial process in the national court and cited the names of persons whose investigation or prosecution it suggested (paras 225-226 in conj. with 113-134). the list included the former ministers of the interior and defence. although progress is slow, a final judgment has been rendered in a few cases; other cases are being investigated or are being tried (see un secretary-general, 2009, para. 30 and independent comprehensive needs assessment [icna], 2009, p. 83). the state institutions were again challenged when the president and the prime minister of timor-leste were attacked on 11 february 2008, by an armed group led by the former military police commander of the f-fdtl. unlike the incident two years earlier, the state institutions responded appropriately and a new destabilisation of the country was avoided (see un secretary-general, 2008, paras 3-5 and 16). however, a problematic development in timor-leste is political interference with the judicial system. motivated by reconciliation and in particular by fostering a good relationship with its powerful neighbour indonesia, the timorese president has granted pardons, commuted sentences, and prompted conditional releases, inter alia, of persons convicted for serious crimes by the spsc.33 as result only one of the 85 individuals the panels convicted before their close in 2005 remains in prison (unmit, 32 following an invitation from the then minister for foreign affairs of timor-leste, the secretary-general requested following an invitation from the then minister for foreign affairs of timor-leste, the secretary-general requested the un high commissioner for human rights to establish such a commission and communicated this to the security council (see un doc s/pv.5457, 13 june 2006). 33 decreto presidente 53/2008, indulto presidencial de 20 de maio, decreto presidente 53/2008, indulto presidencial de 20 de maio, jornal da república i/20. aseas 3(1) 23 2009, para. 52). similarly, the president halved the sentence of the former minister of the interior, who despite having been found guilty of distributing weapons to civilians in 2006 was consequently granted parole (unmit, 2008, para. 50). more recently, the rule of law was undermined by political intervention in the case of maternus bere who had been charged in 2003 by the scu with crimes against humanity and other serious offenses allegedly committed in 1999 (see icna, 2009, pp. 56-58, and un secretary-general, 2009, para. 33-34). an arrest warrant was issued, but due to bere’s residence outside of timor-leste it could not be executed until august 2009 when he came for a visit. subsequently, he was ordered to be held in pre-trial detention by the district court. yet, soon after that, submitting to pressure from indonesian authorities, the timorese prime minister ordered bere’s release, by-passing the judicial process according to which release of a detainee could only be ordered by a judge. this breach of judicial independence constitutes a violation international principles as well as the constitution of timor-leste.34 the prime minister’s ‘political decision’35 triggered broad debate and criticism.36 in september 2009, a ‘motion of no confidence’ against the prime minister was introduced in parliament by the revolutionary front for an independent east timor (fretilin). following a day-long debate in parliament in october broadcast live on radio and television, the motion was rejected by 39 to 25 votes. even if the debate was “a positive step in ensuring that critical issues of national interest are channeled through the national parliament with meaningful participation from the opposition” as stated by the un special representative of the secretary-general for timor-leste (2009, para. 4), the underlying problems are perturbing. clear messages are being sent to victims and perpetrators alike that – at least for now – there is no political will to hold those charged with serious crimes accountable. moreover, disrespect for judicial independence and the separation of powers, for economic or whatever other reasons, severely undermines the rule of law and thus jeopardises the public’s confidence in the judicial system. 34 art. 69 of the timorese constitution provides for the principle of separation of powers, art. 121 for judicial independence. 35 an afp release on 8 september 2009 quotes the minister of justice as stating: ‘it is a political decision that must an afp release on 8 september 2009 quotes the minister of justice as stating: ‘it is a political decision that must be taken by the government to resolve this issue because it is related to our country’s problems.’ 36 see, e.g., east timor ngo forum (2009) and amnesty international (2009), criticising the indonesian and timorese see, e.g., east timor ngo forum (2009) and amnesty international (2009), criticising the indonesian and timorese governments. madalena pampalk accountability for serious crimes and national reconciliation in timor-leste aseas 3(1) 24 4. conclusion and outlook after several years of failure to act and as a response to the growing international pressure, the un, indonesia and timor-leste – with different motivations and levels of commitment – implemented various mechanisms at the international, national and regional level with the mandate to deal with the post-conflict situation in timorleste. the unique, multilayered approach to accountability and reconciliation taken comprised courts and alternative justice mechanisms such as truth commissions in timor-leste and indonesia, thus combining restorative and retributive justice. the un and timor-leste aimed for full accountability for the human rights violations of 1999 by means of the timorese serious crimes process and the crp in conjunction with trials in indonesia. this objective, however, was only achieved to a very limited degree. the flawed trials at the indonesian ad hoc human rights court failed to deliver justice. through the serious crimes process in timor-leste only a few of the indicted, who happened to be low-level offenders who had not left the country, could be prosecuted. while the crp assisted in achieving accountability for offenders for non-serious crimes, their ultimate success was dependent on the effective prosecution of the other perpetrators, which was effected only marginally. as result, the perpetrators most responsible and most of those at an intermediate level did not face justice and the expectations of victims and of low-level offenders who had been held accountable were not met. accountability for the numerous crimes committed from 1974 to 1998 was not addressed at all. the truth commissions, i.e. cavr and the ctf, were set up to establish the truth and accomplish reconciliation. while they revealed the facts and causes of the atrocities committed in 1999 and the cavr in addition identified those responsible for the crimes from 1974 on, their contribution to achieving reconciliation is disputable. crp certainly enhanced grassroots reconciliation and reintegration of offenders of nonserious crimes. however, as long as the recommendations of the commissions, in particular reparations, are not implemented, reconciliation is impeded. furthermore, reconciliation is closely connected with justice. hence, if victims do not see justice done, as is the case in timor-leste, it will be difficult to achieve true reconciliation. the fact that accountability was not achieved was influenced by a number of circumstances and decisions involving various participants. indonesia proved to be aseas 3(1) 25 unwilling and unable to take up its primary responsibility of holding its military and civilian government accountable for the crimes they had perpetrated in timor-leste. for political and financial reasons, the un opted against establishing an international ad hoc court. they did not change their mind even when the compromise approach, with national and internationalised courts in indonesia and timor-leste prosecuting perpetrators of atrocities, did not deliver justice. of course, it is doubtful that indonesia would have co-operated with an international court. still, as can be seen by the international criminal tribunal for the former yugoslavia, the outcome would have been significantly different. in timor-leste, apart from the lack of judicial capacity, there is no political will to continue the serious crimes process by prosecuting the perpetrators of the atrocities. in fact, measures are actually taken to reverse part of the accountability which has been achieved. this was clearly shown by recent political decisions such as commutations of sentences and releases from prison. despite the persisting call for justice by the timorese people,37 the most high-ranking leaders in timorleste decided to foster a working relationship with their powerful neighbour indonesia, and that prosecutions were not in the national interest given the urgent socioeconomic challenges. while it is understandable that the support of indonesia is very important for the development of timor-leste, political interference which violates the principles of separation of powers and judicial independence severely undermines the rule of law and erodes public confidence in the judicial structures. ultimately, the underlying problem of the quest of achieving accountability in the timor-leste case seems to be the conflicting interests of politics and justice. as can be observed in many other cases throughout the world, holding the politically powerful accountable is very difficult and sometimes not attainable at all, giving way to a rule of double standards. does this mean there is no solution for this dilemma? despite the continuing call in timor-leste and abroad for an international court, it is unlikely that the un will establish one. while the un is continuing its essential assistance to timor-leste in developing democratic governance and the necessary fundamental structures, including a functioning judicial system, the decision regarding achieving 37 see, e.g., timor-leste national alliance (2010). see, e.g., timor-leste national alliance (2010). madalena pampalk accountability for serious crimes and national reconciliation in timor-leste aseas 3(1) 26 accountability has to be made within timor-leste. this would require a change in the political direction of its leaders, which would probably entail compromising the friendship with and the financial support of indonesia. the un can and should encourage such a decision by sending a clear message to timor-leste and indonesia that they will adequately support any further mechanisms to hold those bearing responsibility accountable. this implies providing international judicial personnel to assist the national judiciary and sufficient financial resources, including substitution of any development funds which indonesia could cut. even so, timor-leste could not hold accountable any perpetrators on indonesian territory without that country’s cooperation. in this regard, it is desirable that indonesian authorities genuinely deal with the crimes committed by its institutions. while it was a significant accomplishment that indonesia acknowledged its responsibility by endorsing the findings of the ctf report, prosecutions cannot be expected as long as representatives of the old order remain powerful and the military is above the law. as unrealistic as the achievement of accountability in the near future may seem, recent positive developments raise hope that justice for the atrocities committed in timor-leste will not be denied forever. in this respect, enhancing the dialogue and co-operation between timor-leste and indonesia and starting the implementation of the cavr’s and ctf’s recommendations, including reforms of the respective justice sectors, are important first steps. references amnesty international. 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(2011). vietnamese domestic tourism: an investigation of travel motivations. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 4(1), 10-29. this article approaches domestic tourism in vietnam from a native asian perspective aiming to examine vietnamese domestic travel motivations. this quantitative study is based on a self-administered questionnaire to survey 230 vietnamese domestic travellers. results highlight the signifi cant roles of the employer sponsoring the trip, family, travel promotion, and favourable weather in determining travel, in addition to their motivations to seek time for leisure and recreation. moreover, the study detected a perception gap between the tourist’s demand and the travel agent’s supply. the behaviour of vietnamese domestic travellers refl ects the characteristics of a transition economy and reveals certain aspects which are also peculiar to other asian countries. keywords: domestic tourism, travel motivations, social tourism, urban tourism, vietnam die hier präsentierte quantitative studie untersucht reisemotive vietnamesischer inlandstouristinnen mittels eines an 230 probandinnen gerichteten fragebogens. die ergebnisse heben neben dem motiv der freizeitgestaltung und erholung die signifi kante rolle der reisefi nanzierung durch arbeitgeberinnen, der familie, der tourismuswerbung sowie der wetterbedingungen für die reiseentscheidung hervor. außerdem ergab die studie, dass sich die touristischen motivationen vom angebot der reiseagenturen unterscheiden. die autorinnen argumentieren, dass das urlaubsverhalten vietnamesischer inlandstouristinnen charakteristika eines im wirtschaftlichen umbruch befi ndenden landes widerspiegelt sowie aspekte aufzeigt, die auch in anderen asiatischen ländern eine wichtige rolle spielen. schlagworte: inlandstourismus, reisemotive, sozialer tourismus, städtetourismus, vietnam 1 huong thanh bui is a phd student at the department of tourism, leisure, hotel and sport management at griffi th university, queensland, australia and a former lecturer of the faculty of management and tourism at hanoi university, vietnam. her phd research interests cover anthropology of tourism, tourism development in south-east asia, particularly in vietnam, and youth tourism. contact: j.bui@griffi th.edu.au 2 lee jolliff e is the almond chair in tourism and hospitality management, and director of the cave shepherd tourism research and documentation centre, university of the west indies, barbados, and a visiting professor at hanoi university, vietnam. she has a research interest in various aspects of cultural heritage and tourism in canada, the caribbean and north atlantic islands, and south-east asia. contact: lee.jolliff e@cavehill.uwi.edu d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -4 .1 -2 aseas 4(1) 10 11 introduction over the last two decades, south-east asia, east asia, and the pacific have experienced the most rapid growth in regional tourist arrivals in the world, averaging 9.2 percent per annum (hitchcock, king, & parnwell, 2009). since the 1990s tourism has become one of south-east asia’s foremost industries (hitchcock, king, & parnwell, 1993). the world travel and tourism council (wttc, 2010) estimates that travel and tourism contributed usd59 billion to the region’s gdp, and created 8.2 million jobs in 2010 and expect an average growth rate of 6.6 percent per annum between 2010 and 2020. tourism in the region has gradually recovered from the asian financial crisis in 1997, the severe acute respiratory syndrome (sars) epidemics in 2003 and the massive earthquake and tsunami in 2004 that seriously shrank international demand. the significant growth of regional tourism despite these crises and disasters has proven that the tourism industry in south-east asia has not been over-dependent on international arrivals and indeed has greatly benefited from its massive domestic demand. vietnam’s tourism development also shares similar attributes (suntikul, butler, & airey, 2008). vietnam has been recognised as an emerging economy with a significant and growing tourism market (bennet, 2009). the country has undergone radical economic reform since 1986 (berger, 2005), turning since the 2000s into an emerging low-cost destination for international tourists. besides this significant increase in international arrivals, vietnam has a population of 89 million people, with one in every three residents travelling domestically in 2009: this made for a total of 25 million domestic travellers (vnat, 2010). while the significance of this huge domestic market is ignored by government policy, planning, and promotion efforts, there has been some attention paid to the emergence of domestic tourism in vietnam in the literature (gillen, 2008; 2010). the current western approach to tourism as a subject of study in south-east asia, and to vietnam in particular, often places domestic travel in a marginal position, as alneng (2002a) claims in the modern does not cater for the native. this treatment of native tourists coupled with the negligence of the local government in recognising this sector has hindered the progress of research on domestic travel in south-east asia. despite the potential challenge of mismatching western travel theory to native huong thanh bui & lee jolliffe vietnamese domestic tourism: an investigation of travel motivations aseas 4(1) 12 13 (south-east) asian travellers, and the lack of well-established theories to fully explain the behaviour of (south-east) asian travellers, it is now timely to investigate this relatively under-researched topic of domestic travel in south-east asia through the case of vietnam. this research thus views vietnamese domestic tourism within the context of the transition from a centrally planned to a market-driven economy; providing an analysis of vietnamese domestic tourist motivations from a native asian perspective. one author was born and raised in vietnam and both authors have had training and consulting experience in tourism-related institutions in vietnam. in addition, the survey instrument was in vietnamese, and was carried out with vietnamese participants, blending the unique characteristics of vietnamese tourism with existing western theories. addressing the lack of reliable statistics on domestic tourist behaviours, the researchers conducted an empirical study to elaborate motivations and travel patterns, complementing simple descriptive government tourism data. understanding the characteristics of domestic tourists is vital to comprehending the challenges for the emerging tourism industry in vietnam in particular and in south-east asia in general. literature review the review aims to provide contextual and theoretical grounds for the study. it starts with an overview of tourism studies in the context of south-east asia and points to the limitations of existing approaches. this is followed by reviews of current research on domestic tourism in asia and vietnam, highlighting research gaps to be addressed. finally, a theoretical foundation for the study is built upon the existing literature on tourist motivation, identifying some influential socio-cultural factors. south-east asia regional studies – tourism in context the term ‘south-east asia’ was created primarily during world war ii to impose conceptual, geographical, and strategic order on a medley of territories lying to the east of india and south of china (kratoska, raben, & nordholt, 2005). the south-east asia region includes singapore, malaysia, indonesia, the philippines, brunei, laos, aseas 4(1) 12 13 vietnam, cambodia, myanmar and latterly east timor. tourism within a regional boundary is a well-justified subject of south-east asian studies according to hitchcock, king and parnwell (2009). first, there is an official tourism region of ‘south-east asia’ recognised by the pacific asia tourism association (pata). second, the traditions of the colonial era in the region make tourism here a favourable topic for study in western literature. south-east asia, as a part of the developing world, has been addressed in the tourism literature largely from an economic angle where tourism contributes to the local economy and in the context of host-guest relations between the rich, mainly touristgenerating regions of the north, and the poor, mainly tourist-receiving regions of the south (ghimire, 2001; selwyn, 1990; winter, teo, & chang, 2009a) including vietnam (biles, lloyd, & logan, 1999, lloyd, 2003; 2004). the region is known for its diverse cultures, rich heritage, and inexpensive tourism services, making it a favourite destination for young western backpackers seeking authentic experiences with a limited budget (cohen, 2004; 2006; richards & wilson, 2004). from an anthropological perspective, south-east asia is seen as an indigenous society that primarily creates a kind of fantasy to motivate travelling here amongst westerners (burns, 2004; van egmond, 2007). this approach to south-east asian studies reflects a colonial view that places the northern rich tourists at the centre. however, over the last several decades, south-east asia’s economy has dramatically developed, leading to an expansion of the tourism industry (hitchcock et al., 2009, winter et al., 2009a) helping to reposition the region on the world tourism map. consequently, domestic tourism in south-east asia has increasingly been recognised as a novel topic in tourism research (singh, 2009), adding a new perspective to the existing colonial, western-centric view on south-east asia tourism (winter, teo, & chang, 2009b). domestic tourism in asia domestic tourism is defined as “journeys and visits within a person’s home country” (singh, 2009, p. 1) and the domestic tourist is understood as “any person residing in a country who travels to a place within the country, outside his/her usual environment for a period not exceeding 12 months” (untwo, 1995, p. 4). indeed, from the academic and policy perspective, domestic tourism is a poor and undervalued huong thanh bui & lee jolliffe vietnamese domestic tourism: an investigation of travel motivations aseas 4(1) 14 15 cousin to international tourism, particularly in asia (richter, 1989). earlier research on the domestic tourist in asia was initiated by richter’s (1989) seminal work the politics of tourism in asia. it focuses on the unique circumstances that characterise tourism in asian countries. more recently, domestic tourism in asia edited by singh (2009) brings the asian domestic tourist into the centre of the discussion, as do winter et al. (2009a) in asia on tour: exploring the rise of asian tourism. china and india, the most populous countries in the world, also have the two largest domestic tourism markets. consequently, research on domestic tourism cannot ignore these markets. pilgrimage travel is popular amongst indian domestic travellers (edensor, 1998; ghimire, 2001; singh, 2005) as well as for the vietnamese (alneng, 2009) while research on chinese domestic tourists reveals a focus on different motivations such as family togetherness, company-sponsored trips (chan, 2006) and normative destination choices (nyiri, 2006). the ongoing growth of asian tourism demands a reappraisal of how tourism is analysed and conceptualised (winter et al., 2009b). for example, alneng (2002a) states that some patterns of asian domestic travellers may be different to those of their western counterparts. studying the symbolism of the world heritage site the taj mahal that appeals to the native indian tourist, led edensor (1998) to conclude that western travel behaviour theories might be little applicable to asian tourists. in addition, chan (2006, p. 205) calls the behaviour of searching for modernity by chinese travellers “inadequacy”, which is similar to what oakes (1998, p. 229) labels “false modernity” in comparison to western assumptions. another study of a chinese scenic spot by nyiri (2006) records a reverse perception of destination attributes when domestic tourists are compared to their western counterparts. similarly, gillen (2008) addresses these points directly in relation to vietnamese. these findings from previous studies may provide some indication of what the vietnamese domestic tourist might be like in terms of behaviour, beyond the explanations offered by existing western travel theories. an overview of domestic tourism in vietnam vietnam obtained membership in the association of southeast asian nations (asean) in 1995, the asia-pacific economic cooperation (apec) in 1998 and the world trade aseas 4(1) 14 15 organisation (wto) in 2007. these memberships hastened vietnam’s integration into the world economy, and facilitated vietnam’s active participation in regional integration initiatives, including tourism. tourism in vietnam has thus been the focus of a number of anthropological studies addressing host (vietnamese) and guest (foreign tourist) perspectives (alneng, 2002a; 2002b; chan, 2006; michaud & turner, 2006). in criticising the anthropological approach as a superficial ‘looking glass’, alneng (2002a) calls for addressing a more comprehensive picture of the vietnamese as tourists. his latest publication (alneng, 2009) on zen tourism is a pioneering attempt to understand pilgrimage tourism in vietnam. michaud & turner (2006) discuss the blend between market-driven demand and centrally-planned command economies that produce a form of social tourism sponsored by their employers called bien che. this occurs when the person who is on the permanent payroll of an organisation receives a company-sponsored holiday as part of the organisation’s employment package. from the standpoint of the south-east asian tourism industry, domestic travellers are seen as a primary market, now and in the future. in vietnam, economic achievements have led to the emerging urban middle class being a driving force for consumption. as a matter of fact, with the global recession in full swing, tourists are trying to save money yet still travel, so travel within their own country is an attractive option. in addition, domestic tourists can stimulate the local economy by reducing overseas travel. as a consequence, the number of domestic tourists in vietnam has increased almost threefold in 15 years, peaking in 2009 at 25 million tourists (figure 1), nearly reaching the projection by the vietnam national administration of tourism (vnat) of 30 million domestic trips by 2010 (vnat, 2007). this spectacular growth in domestic travel and tourism has been caused by both economic and social factors. vietnam has the sixth largest population in asia with 89 million people in 2009, of which 68.3 percent lies within the working age of 15-64 and 29.6 percent are urban residents, according to the general statistics office (gso, 2006b). in terms of economic development, the gdp per capita of vietnamese has increased sevenfold over the last 15 years, resulting in usd700 in 2007. the continued increase in disposable income opens additional opportunities for the development of domestic tourism. a 2005 survey (gso, 2006a) reveals that the majority of domestic visitors travelled independently, arranging their own itineraries (88.1 percent). the average expenditure huong thanh bui & lee jolliffe vietnamese domestic tourism: an investigation of travel motivations aseas 4(1) 16 17 per domestic tourist travelling independently was usd118 for an average of 3.5 days, around usd35 per day. the major problems with existing tourism databases in vietnam are that the patterns of domestic tourists are much more complicated than reported, well beyond the simple descriptive statistics in national surveys and official government documentation. this gap signifies the need to conduct an empirical study informed by a framework based on theories of travel behaviours. theoretical foundations the theoretical framework for this study is drawn from a functional approach to travel demand, including economic factors together with a socio-psychological approach dealing with intrinsic factors. ryan (2003, p. vii) has confirmed it is necessary to adopt both in an approach to the study of recreational tourism: “in one sense economic factors enable holiday choice to be exercised while the social and psychologifigure 1: domestic tourists in vietnam (1995 – 2009) source: vietnam administration of tourism (vnat, 2010) 0 5 10 15 20 25 6.9 7.3 8.5 9.6 10 11.2 11.7 13 13.5 14.5 16.1 17.5 19.2 20.8 25 200920082007200620052004200320022001200019991998199719961995 millions aseas 4(1) 16 17 cal variables help to shape the nature of choice to be made … the factors are interdependent”. these factors such as income, availability of time, and favourable weather primarily determine the propensity to travel. ryan (2003) defines economic factors as level of income and the cost of travel. several studies have confirmed the impacts of income in generating travel demand (crouch, 1995; lim, 1997; morley, 1992). similarly, leiper (2004) states that to turn needs into demand, the persons must have enough money. in addition, the impacts of time, in regards to seasonality and weather conditions, are specified as influencing travel demand (goh & law, 2002). there is also growing debate on climatic impacts on travel demand (de freitas, 2005; hamilton & tol, 2004; lise & tol, 2002). specifically, martín and belén (2005) consider the influence that climate and weather exert on the geographical space, demand, supply, and market agents of the tourism system. from the social and psychological perspectives, the theoretical framework of the study is therefore grounded in various theories of tourist motivations. western motivational theory in tourism is marked by a seminal empirical study by dann (1977) who introduces ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors. iso-ahola (1982; 1980) defines the key components of a satisfactory experience as both intrinsic motivation, i.e. psychological rewards from participation in leisure activities, and extrinsic motivation, i.e. the pressures of daily life. mayo and jarvis (1981) mention two types of motivation: physiological and psychological. motivation for travel and tourism changes with experience as a longitudinal dimension, labelled as a ‘travel career’ by pearce (1988). he also proposes a travel-need model based on maslow’s hierarchy of needs. further work by pearce on the social role of tourist has an emphasis on the role of reference groups (2005). in the study of domestic vietnamese travel patterns, it would be erroneous not to mention the socio-cultural background of these tourists that influences their behaviour (nash, 1996). vietnam shares many characteristics of asian culture, placing great value on family relationships (reid, 1999). family ties are one of the factors strongly influencing asian travellers (chan, 2006; guo, 2006). the deep value placed on family in asian societies can be hypothesised to influence the vietnamese domestic traveller’s behaviour. the economic background of the country should also be noted. the tourism system in vietnam reflects certain characteristics of a transitional economy transforming from a centrally-planned to market-oriented system (bennet, 2009; berger, 2005), huong thanh bui & lee jolliffe vietnamese domestic tourism: an investigation of travel motivations aseas 4(1) 18 19 for example in the type of tourism products and experiences, such as the resort visit discussed below. thus, in this study the researchers incorporate various social, cultural, and economic elements of contemporary vietnam into the design of the instrument. methodology this exploratory study aims to generate a profile of vietnamese domestic travellers by highlighting their demographic characteristics, travel patterns, and motivations through the use of a quantitative questionnaire. the methods used to conduct the study will be discussed in terms of the development of the survey instrument, the choice of participants, and the data analysis. the instrument the study adopted three different strategies to increase the validity of the survey instrument. firstly, the items on the travel demand and motivational scales were informed both by existing theories in the literature and by qualitative interviews with a number of domestic tour operators. secondly, in order to be comparable to previous surveys of the gso, the categorical design of questions in the demographics and the travel patterns sections were based on categories commonly used in the gso’s travel survey. finally, the survey items were reviewed and amended through several discussions with tour companies for their feedback. based on the suggestions of tour operators, a new element of travel demand was hypothesised: the influence of promotional campaigns by the tour companies. the questionnaire consisted of four main sections arranged into three pages presented in vietnamese. the first section asked about the travel patterns of the travellers. the second part investigated the demographic characteristics of the travellers. the major part of the questionnaire covered six scales to measure demand and motivation, including the factors of weather, timing, promotional activities, economic factors, reference group influences, and psychological factors. each factor included five smaller statements that were divided into five point scales (1 – ‘highly disagree’ to 5 – ‘highly agree’). the survey items are in table 3. aseas 4(1) 18 19 the participants the participants were vietnamese who travelled to thac da resort for a weekend visit. thac da is an all-inclusive resort located some 70 kilometres from hanoi. this mountainous destination resort has increasingly become a popular destination for city residents from hanoi to spend their weekend at. the survey was carried out in vietnamese over a three-week period in october 2007. of the 300 questionnaires distributed there were 244 usable surveys, while 14 were incomplete, leaving a response rate of 81 percent. participant demographic details are in table 1. the analysis the data was analysed using spss 15. the demographic characteristics and travel patterns were analysed descriptively. factor analysis was used to explore travel demand and motivational factors. there were 26 motivational items for factor analysis with the principal component method and promax rotation. there were 230 cases available for analysis, which imposed a limitation because factor analysis should include 10 respondents for each item (nunnally & bernstein, 1994; pett, lackney, & sullivan, 2003). however, the sample was not too far from the desirable 260 cases (for 26 motivational items). an exploratory factor analysis was used. eight factors emerged from the initial solution. items with low communality (less than .50) and items with a less than .40 loading on any one factor were removed one at a time. two factors were found to be trivial factors with only one item, therefore these were removed from the analysis. after removing each item, another factor analysis was run to fine-tune the results. the final six-factor solution retained 16 items, accounted for 66 percent of the variance. summated scale was computed and rescaled (1 to 5). means and standard deviation for these summated scales were calculated (table 3). findings and discussion the findings from the survey are structured into three parts. the first part describes the demographic characteristics of the respondents (table 1), followed by the second part highlighting their travel patterns (table 2), with finally the results of factor huong thanh bui & lee jolliffe vietnamese domestic tourism: an investigation of travel motivations aseas 4(1) 20 21 analysis on 26 items on demand and motivation being presented (table 3). with regards to the demographics of the respondents, the proportion of male and female respondents was 41.3 percent and 58.7 percent respectively. regarding employment, 46.1 percent were employed in the public sector, with the rest in the private, foreign-invested, and selfemployed sectors (25.7, 12.2, and 16.1 percent respectively). more than 80 percent of the respondents were within the 20-49 years age range, the working and childbearing period. those age groups under 50 make up the majority of the current and potential future domestic market in vietnam tourism. distribution of annual gross income was 25.2 percent for “under vnd10 million” (equivalent to usd700) and 17.4 percent for “vnd10-19.9 million” (usd700-1,200) income groups. the potential lucrative market for tourism is the income group of vnd20 million (usd1,200) and over, with 15.2 percent with an average annual income of “vnd2039.9 million” (usd1,200-2,400), 20 percent with “vnd40-59.9 million” (usd2,400-3,600), and 8.7 percent with “vnd60-79.9 million” (usd3,600-4,800). based on these responses, the representation of source: authors’ survey table 1: sociodemographic characteristics of respondents male female under 20 20 – 29 30 – 39 40 – 49 50 – 59 over 59 city small town (near city) rural town other manager/director professional (doctor, lawyer, teacher, etc.) technical (technician, nursing, etc.) office worker/administration service/salesperson worker/peasant farmer/manual worker student other state-owned private (non-foreign-invested) foreign-invested self-employed under 10m vnd 10 – 19.9m vnd 20 – 39.9m vnd 40 – 59.9m vnd 60 – 79.9m vnd 80 – 99.9m vnd 100 – 119.9m vnd over 120m vnd n 95 135 10 112 33 47 22 6 196 13 7 14 29 24 11 62 18 16 49 21 106 59 28 37 58 40 35 46 20 11 10 10 percent 41.3 58.7 4.3 48.7 14.3 20.4 9.6 2.6 85.2 5.7 3.0 6.1 12.6 10.4 4.8 27.0 7.8 7.0 21.3 9.1 46.1 25.7 12.2 16.1 25.2 17.4 15.2 20.0 8.7 4.8 4.3 4.3 gender age residency occupation economic sector annual income aseas 4(1) 20 21 the sample is applicable to the overall population found in the gso’s 2005 survey. however, the sample reflects an imbalance in the frequency representing occupational groups. as seen in table 1, almost half of the sample was in the office worker or administration and student categories. there is a disparity of average income between the surveyed respondents and the gso’s samples. in terms of the travel patterns, the majority (72.6 percent) of respondents choose july, august, and september as a time to travel. this information is congruent with the high season of vietnamese domestic tourism. the next most popular travel periods were from april to june, and from january to march, (13.5 and 8.7 percent respectively). these periods are the shoulder seasons in vietnamese tourism. holiday travel was often organised with family (42.6 percent) or friends (29.1 percent). domestic tourists travelled with partners (11.7 percent), and other regular contacts, such as colleagues (9.1 percent). a few domestic tourists went alone (6.1 percent) and only 1.3 percent participated in organised tours or group travel. vietnamese domestic tourists prefer to organise their own tours as opposed to purchasing package tours (59.6 and 40.4 percent respectively). the major source of travel information was from friends (40.4 percent), followed by the internet (28.3 percent), past experience (25.2 percent), and guidebooks (21.3 percent). travel agents, tour operators and brochures played a very minor role (less than 15 percent) in travel decisions. these figures do not deviate from the general domestic travellers’ survey by the government (gso, 2006b). the purpose of factor design for the survey is to identify factors that influence travel demand and motivation of vietnamese domestic tourists. the source: authors’ survey table 2: travel patterns jan – mar apr – jun jul – sep oct – dec alone your partner family (with children) family (no children) friends a tour group other tour package independent friends past experience internet tour operator travel agent television magazine brochure guidebook other n 20 31 167 12 14 27 69 29 67 3 21 93 137 93 58 65 3 33 37 41 34 49 21 percent 8.7 13.5 72.6 5.2 6.1 11.7 30.0 12.6 29.1 1.3 9.1 40.4 59.6 40.4 25.2 28.3 1.3 14.3 16.1 17.8 14.8 21.3 9.1 travel time travel partners travel arrangements source of information huong thanh bui & lee jolliffe vietnamese domestic tourism: an investigation of travel motivations aseas 4(1) 22 23 six-factor solutions include: weather, timing, promotions, income, reference groups, and a psychological element. the result from the analysis revealed a different sixfactor structure. two original factors, time and reference groups were diluted. two valid items of the time factor (when i have free time, children have school holidays) were retained but merged into other two different factors. in a similar fashion, two items in reference groups (employer sponsorship and family suggestion) were retained but became two different new factors. two new factors were formulated capturing the influence from employer and family on travel motivation. items in the company factor were employers arrange holiday and employer’s sponsorship. in the newly formed family factor, three items are family suggestion (designated under the reference group), strengthen family togetherness (designated for the psychological factor) and children have school holidays (designated for the time factor). the dissolution of the timing and reference group factors suggested that these elements might not be determinants of travel motivation. the formulation of two new factors showed that the family and the employer played a more important role than previously anticipated in travel decision-making. the most stable factor was promotions and travel cost, which retained three out of five items. the weather factor retained only two items. the psychological factor had two original design items and a new item (when i have free time), so the factor was renamed as ‘relaxation’. detailed results of the factor analysis are shown in table 3. the first factor is called ‘employer sponsorship’. this factor relates to the practice of social tourism that michaud and turner (2006) called bien che and accounted for the largest variance (21.24 percent). as 80 percent of the respondents were in the working age group, this might explain the significant role of their employer. the employer involvement in an individual’s travel decision has been measured by both the dimensions of timing, when the employer arranges the holiday, and the financial sponsorship of the trip. this characteristic type of travel results from the pre-market economy socialist era, when all aspects of a state employee’s life were taken care of by their employer, whose duty was to keep the worker’s spirits high. the findings also reflect an ongoing tradition inherited from the communist era before 1986 when the state owned enterprises (soe) were the most powerful sector in the economy and which had the money, power, and contacts to be able to offer employees free travel in the summer holidays. despite of the changing role of soes in vietnam after ‘doi moi’, aseas 4(1) 22 23 this ‘employer sponsorship’ tradition still plays a crucial role in building corporate culture and given birth to an unique corporate tourism product in vietnam termed ‘team building’. the destination for the employer-sponsored trip as part of social tourism is usually selected collectively or by the head of the unit (michaud & turner, 2006). this free trip motivates individuals to travel with co-workers. it is a chance for employees to get to know each other and become closer in order to foster a shared organisational culture. in the new post-socialist vietnam this bien che terminology truly reflects the purpose of employersponsored holiday, which is no longer only limited to government workers and soes. this practice as a motivational factor has been discussed on a limited basis in western tourism literature, perhaps simply because it was an exclusive product of a marriage between socialist philosophy and market-driven demand. vietnamese employers have utilised the company trip as a fringe benefit for workers and also to strengthen the team spirit and collectivism – a vital part of eastern business culture that is comparable to similar patterns of chinese travellers found by chan (2006). source: authors’ survey table 3: factor analysis of motivational items empoyers’ sponsorship .employer-arranged holidays .employers’ sponsorhip relaxation .change of everyday routine .when i have free time .reduce stress promotion .advertisements are attractive .new products launched .great discount and promotions cost .travel greatly affects my income .sharing cost with a group .free trips from my company family .family suggestion .strengthen family togetherness .children have school holidays weather .safe enough to travel .fit the form of travel mean 3.05 3.32 3.23 2.59 2.77 3.75 sd 0.8 0.93 0.87 0.86 0.87 0.72 loading 0.86 0.81 0.84 0.8 0.63 0.92 0.75 0.6 0.83 0.68 0.49 0.78 0.67 0.63 0.83 0.8 variance 21.24 12.56 9.12 8.76 7.42 6.98 huong thanh bui & lee jolliffe vietnamese domestic tourism: an investigation of travel motivations aseas 4(1) 24 25 the second factor, named ‘relaxation’, includes the items of change of everyday routine, when i have free time, and reduces stress, accounting for 12.56 percent of the variance. it corresponded to iso-ahola’s (1982) theory that travelling is primarily a mode of escape. in a state of disequilibrium, people either try to find more or less stimulation to satisfy their needs and return balance to their life. in today’s vietnamese society, people can be over-stimulated by stress at home or at work, thus they often try to free themselves from daily hassles and to seek a sense of relaxation and renewal. the third factor ‘promotion’ and the fourth factor ‘cost’ explained 9.12 percent and 8.76 percent of the total variance. these factors reflected the way in which income and financial arrangements affect travel decisions. the importance and relatively high mean value of the ‘promotion’ factor (3.23) corresponded to a moderate degree of the agreement of tourists to the price discounting strategy used by domestic tour operators. however, low mean value of the ‘cost’ factor (2.59) inferred a low propensity to save money in travelling amongst the customers. in other words, while vietnamese domestic tourists may value opportunities to get discounted prices via travel promotions, this factor might not greatly affect their travel decision since the propensity to save on travel costs is rather weak. these findings can be explained by the fact that nearly 75 percent of the respondents who participated in the survey had annual incomes well above the average of usd700. these findings, in conjunction with the average expenditure of usd118 per trip reported by the gso survey (2006), have confirmed that vietnamese domestic travellers have a great propensity to spend on travel. theoretically, this confirms leiper’s (2004) statement that enough money, time, and freedom from constraints such as family or health were determinant factors in turning needs into travel demands. it appears that, in our study the results from these two factors reflect a perception gap between tour operators and tourists, where the former expect positive responses to travel promotions focusing on price while the latter may be willing to pay more than the operators anticipated. the fifth factor ‘family’ can be categorised as a part of the ‘social’ factor, the influence of kinship group specified by pearce (2005). however, the cluster of three items originally designed under time, psychology and reference group hang together and formed a new factor explaining for 7.42 percent of the variance. in reference to the respondents’ majority age group (between 25 and 49), it is the child-bearing and aseas 4(1) 24 25 child-raising period. the formation of the ‘family’ factor reveals unique characteristics of the vietnamese, who are strongly influenced by confucianism’s emphasis on good family relationships (reid, 1999). the family orientation in travelling is in line with the findings of guo (2006). it also somewhat matches the statements regarding family togetherness of chinese travellers to vietnam (chan, 2006). the final factor determined the role of weather, which had the highest mean value (3.75). the important role of weather in travel decisions found in this study supports the argument that weather conditions have significant effects on tourism and its relevant activities (de freitas, 2005; hamilton & tol, 2004; lise & tol, 2002). practically, the weather in vietnam is perceived to be good and safe for domestic tourist travel in the three summer months in the middle of the year. in the study, the peak period starts from july and continues through september, accounting for more than 70 percent of domestic trips. apart from the fact that the weather is good, children are off from school in summer. this mid-year time is also convenient for parents since there is less work pressure. to draw a conclusion from the findings, the relatively young, working, and childbearing age characteristics of the respondents reflect the strong influence of employer and family on travel decision-making. the domestic vietnamese predominantly travel for leisure purposes. their travel motivation can be affected by promotions by travel agents but they were also looking for value-for-money trips. weather is also a travel determinant. conclusion domestic tourism in vietnam is rapidly expanding. the domestic travellers are ‘pushed’ towards tourism by disposable income, a sense of family togetherness, and motivated by the prospect for relaxation facilitated by their employer’s sponsorship. in the meantime, the tourists are ‘pulled’ by destination weather conditions, and promotional efforts of tour operators. the role of employer sponsorship as a travel motivation facilitator has been discussed and elaborated upon. fitting the picture of domestic tourists into a wider context of socio-cultural and economic development in vietnam, some unique behaviour has emerged. in detail, the main influence of family values is reflected in vietnamese domestic travel patterns. the role of employhuong thanh bui & lee jolliffe vietnamese domestic tourism: an investigation of travel motivations aseas 4(1) 26 27 er sponsorship in shaping individuals’ travel decisions reflects a distinctive model of corporate travel (or social tourism) in the transition period from a central-planned to a market economy. the study also identified a perception gap between tour operators who focus on promotion while most travellers seek value for money rather than low cost travel. the findings from this research can benefit both academic and tourism practitioners. destination managers can use the result of this study in developing communication materials that appeal to domestic travellers that address the need to relax and the need to be with family. more important, corporate travel is a very important marketing channel for attracting vietnamese domestic travellers. such corporate travel should include various activities to serve the goal of building corporate culture while meeting the needs of individuals and their families. in terms of research implications, this study has explored travel patterns of vietnamese domestic travellers. despite the fact that the study took a functional approach to studying the phenomenon, the results revealed that the travel motivations of vietnamese domestic travellers could be a subject of study beyond 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(2010). travel and tourism economic impacts 2010 south-east asia. london, uk: world travel and tourism council. huong thanh bui & lee jolliffe vietnamese domestic tourism: an investigation of travel motivations research on south-east asia in austria: the project sea-eunet at the centre for social innovation (zsi) aseas 5(2) 369368 netzwerk südostasien / network south-east asia research on south-east asia in austria: the project sea-eu-net at the centre for social innovation (zsi) florian gruber, alexander degelsegger & cosima blasy1 citation gruber, f., degelsegger, a., & blasy, c. (2012). research on south-east asia in austria: the project sea-eunet at the centre for social innovation (zsi). aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften, 5(2), 369-371. with the realisation that international cooperation in science and research was essential for the development of an active “european research area”2, the european commission launched a series of calls for networking projects between europe and other world regions. with regard to this effort, the project sea-eu-net (www.seaeu.net) – dedicated to enhancing cooperation between europe and south-east asia – started in 2008 with the participation of 22 ministries, funding agencies, academies of science, and research organisations related to science, technology, and innovation (sti) from both regions. the scope of this project is manifold. in the first place, it brings together european and south-east asian sti stakeholders in cases where consistent interaction had been rather rare previously, especially at a bi-regional level. in this regard, the project – as a positive side effect – facilitates access to south-east asia, especially for small european countries like austria or hungary, which have few traditional ties with the region and limited resources to develop and maintain a separate science policy. by contrast, countries such as the united kingdom, which are adept in connecting scientists with the region, can contribute their networks and experience to the project. the coordinator of the project, the international bureau of the german ministry for education and research, is particularly active in harnessing the project, as demonstrated by the multitude of funding possibilities for joint research between south-east asia and germany, which were newly created on the basis of the sea-eu-net project. 1 the authors are social scientists and project managers at the department for research policy and development, centre for social innovation (zsi), dealing with science, technology, and innovation analysis aspects in projects mainly related to south-east asia, south asia, and austria. contact: gruber@zsi.at 2 see for example “a strategic european framework for international science and technology cooperation. communication from the commission to the council and the european parliament” (european commission 2008; to be updated 2012). d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -5 .2 -1 3 aseas 5(2) 371370 besides supporting the sti policy dialogue and cooperative activities, the southeast asian partners in the project also benefit from the information provided with regard to european funding possibilities for scientists. this information is disseminated by web 2.0 media and the creation of a network of so-called national contact points (ncps) in the countries. additionally, scientific conferences and workshops on thematic areas of interest to both regions, such as vector-borne diseases or energy efficiency, have been organised in order to network and initiate cooperative research projects. the centre for social innovation (zsi) is the work package leader for analytical support within the project, the third pillar of the project’s activities and crucial for both the s&t policy dialogue and networking. zsi coordinates a team of european and south-east asian organisations such as the royal netherlands academy of arts and science (knaw), the german institute of global and area studies (giga) or the national science, technology and innovation policy office (sti) in thailand. until now, the following major analytical activities have been undertaken3: • a review of national s&t statistics and statistical capacities in south-east asia • an analysis of international s&t strategies of the south-east asian countries • a mapping of key institutions and high-profile researchers in south-east asia • an analysis of existing funding programmes and barriers to cooperation • a report of global challenges to europe-south-east asia cooperation • a foresight study for sti cooperation between the two regions • a study on research strengths in south-east asia and cooperation patterns with the european union, based on an extensive bibliometric assessment, in cooperation with the united nations university institute in macao. the regional focus on south-east asia is rather new for zsi. formerly, the department of research policy and development was mainly engaged in the region of south-east europe, dealing with science policy analysis and hosting three austrian science offices (ljubljana, slovenia; sofia, bulgaria; and brno, czech republic). besides the analytical support, zsi specialises in project management and related services, such as public relations and dissemination work. 3 all results are freely available at www.sea-eu.net or www.zsi.at. aseas 5(2) 371370 since the start of sea-eu-net, zsi has further expanded its activities to regions such as south asia, east asia, and south america. with the end of sea-eu-net in december 2012, a successor project – sea-eu-net ii – has been funded by the european commission. with a runtime of four years, zsi is again the primarily responsible organisation for analytical support. selected publications degelsegger, a., & blasy, c. (eds.) (2011). spotlight on: science and technology cooperation between southeast asia and europe. vienna, austria: zsi. degelsegger, a., & gruber, f. (2011). co-publication map: s&t cooperation between europe and india. new indigo project. vienna, austria: zsi. degelsegger, a., gruber, f., & wagner, i. (2011). towards professionalising ‘international s&t cooperation foresight’: epistemological and methodological challenges and how to overcome them. efp brief no. 201. retrieved 28 august, 2012 from http://www.foresight-platform.eu/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/efp-briefno.-201_sea-eu-net-foresight.pdf gruber, f., & degelsegger, a. (eds.) (2009). spotlight on: excellent researchers from southeast asia; results of a sea-eu-net mapping study. vienna, austria: zsi. gruber, f., & trienes, r. (2010). policy recommendations for enhancing science and technology cooperation between the european union and southeast asia. retrieved 28 august, 2012 from https://zsi.at/attach/dreistetten%20paper%20-%20final.pdf saeed-ul hassan, haddawy, p., kuinkel, p., degelsegger, a., & blasy, c. (2012). a bibliometric study of research activity in asean related to the eu in fp7 priority areas. scientometrics, 91(3), 1035-1051. schüller, m., gruber, f., trienes, r., & shim, d. (2008). international science and technology cooperation policies of south east asian countries. consultation paper prepared for the eu commission on the occasion of the first bi-regional science & technology policy dialogue, eu-asean, 19-20 november 2008, paris. retrieved august 28, 2012 from https://zsi.at/attach/consultationpaper.pdf florian gruber, alexander degelsegger & cosima blasy centre for social innovation (zsi) aseas 11(2) | 231 workshop report: central kalimantan in the year 2030: natural resources, social justice, and sustainable development kristina großmann ► großmann, k. (2018). workshop report: central kalimantan in the year 2030: natural resources, social justice, and sustainable development. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 11(2), 231-233. the one-day kick-off workshop that took place in palangkaraya – the provincial capital of central kalimantan, indonesia – is part of the transdisciplinary research project “futuren: governance, identities, and future along categories of differentiation: the case of coal mining in central kalimantan, indonesia”.1 this project explores environmental conflicts, especially those related to coal mining, focusing on the nexus between ethnicity, gender, and status in central kalimantan.2 the aim of the workshop was to elaborate on diverging future visions regarding coal mining on an intersectoral expert level and to find correspondences between different scenarios. the workshop organizers – kristina großmann, alessandro gullo, pinarsita juliana, marko mahin, semiarto aji purwanto, and meta septalisa – invited representatives of relevant groups on the provincial level, including representatives from the government, the business sector, universities, and civil society organizations.3 in the further course of the research project, kristina großmann plans to conduct a series of workshops in murung raya, the northernmost district of central kalimantan, where coal mining is prevalent. the closing workshop is again to be held in palangkaraya. during the workshop, two discussion groups were formed and discussed the following four guiding questions relating to central kalimantan: • how is the status quo regarding the social, political, ecological, and economic situation? • what will the future look like in 2030? describe utopias and dystopias! • how do we get there? describe pathways towards utopia and dystopia! • who might be relevant actors? point out actors, their relationships, and their power relations! 1 the workshop was conducted on 20 march 2018. 2 the three-year project (2017-2020) is funded by the german federal ministry of education and research (bmbf) and led by kristina großmann. 3 alessandro gullo works as a student assistant in the project. dr. semiarto aji purwanto is associate professor of anthropology at the university indonesia (ui) in jakarta. dr. marko mahin is professor of anthropology at the universitas kristen in palangkaraya, a protestant priest, and head of an indigenous peoples’ rights organization. pinarsita juliana and meta septalisa have both worked for several international and national civil society organizations in the field of environmental transformations, gender, and community development in palangkaraya. netzwerk südostasien  network southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 06 232 | aseas 11(2) workshop report: central kalimantan in the year 2030 we applied actor-network analysis to identify and map out actors and to estimate each actor’s influence in the field. about 30 participants from universities, civil society organizations, the local newspaper, and two government officials attended the workshop and avidly discussed central kalimantan’s future. status quo and future: environmental degradation, land conflicts, and the loss of local knowledge all participants described the current and future situation as increasingly worrisome (semakin memprihatinkan). deforestation and environmental degradation were interlinked with increasing social injustice, a loss of culture and local knowledge (kearifan lokal), and a declining local economy. all agreed that central kalimantan is rich in natural resources (sumber daya alam) but performing poorly with regard to social, political, and economic development. the low level of development was related to a weak government dominated by companies resulting in a poor level of implementation and application of state policies and laws as well as low tax revenues. conflicts in the last decades had arisen mostly as the result of changes in the status of land use (peralihan fungsi tanah) and of a loss of access, control, and management of land (pengelolaan tanah). other difficulties stated were the lack of means of production and financial capital as well as dependencies on the global market and low prices for local products. participants particularly stressed the intertwinement between environmental degradation and a loss of culture. a central point was the ongoing discrimination, exclusion, and loss of local knowledge, local identity, and local economy. these aspects, however, were considered important for maintaining local livelihoods and a sustainable use of natural resources in the light of an increasing domination of and competition with global market players. road maps, actors, and power: strengthening civil society organizations participants argued that the civil society is (still) weak because community members and activists are excluded from relevant processes. women’s rights activists condemned the lack of women’s influence due to their underrepresentation in decision-making. participants described not only the marginalization of opposition as a problem, but also the strong profit-seeking mentality and lack of courage among politicians, villagers, and members of civil society organizations. politicians and members of the village elite have not spoken out against companies as they continued to receive bribes. participants mentioned that some activists were hesitant to reveal information about the socio-ecological damage caused by companies due to the lack of legal support by their organizations. moreover, most participants expressed strong disappointment with the government: “if we were to trust the government it would lead us into a nightmare-like situation”. also government representatives stated that they have too few capacities to respond to all complaints they receive from villagers. participants saw opportunities for change in the establishment and strengthening of civil society organizations, which should challenge, control, and change the executive and the legislative branches of government. foremost members of environmental aseas 11(2) | 233 kristina großmann and human rights organizations were very specific in formulating concrete steps. they suggested to educate the young generation and people in remote areas in order to improve awareness and knowledge. further steps included taking action in the form of advocacy, hearings, audits, demonstrations, and land reclamation to increase the self-determination of the local population and to push for a functioning auditing system. concrete programs that were mentioned in order to enhance social justice and sustainable development and to improve the local management of natural resources were social forestry and the agrarian reform program, recently launched by the current president joko widodo that aims to reduce land conflicts and land deprivation by mapping land, distributing land certificates, and acknowledging customary land rights. the representative of the indigenous land management scheme dayak wake up (dayak misik) promoted this scheme, while other participants criticized it for being less effective due to overlapping land rights, legal insecurity, and the lack of measures to prevent deforestation. all agreed that for a strong civil society it would be necessary to improve synergetic cooperation among networks to assure knowledge transfer, to mutually support (gotong royong) each other, as well as to place critical people in the political realm in order to increase influence, and to establish “agents of change” in the communities. impacts of the workshop: networking and a space for critical discussion the discussions at the workshop were lively, open, and constructive. participants profited from a space for exchange and networking, which might otherwise have not been possible. some revitalized old networks and, at the same time, established new connections. thus, for all participants the major positive outcome of the event was networking for future collaborations and mobilization. the workshop also enabled joint reflections, discussions, and a shared understanding of current and future socioecological conflicts and potential solutions to them. the main weakness of the workshop was the absence of powerful stakeholders, as only two state representatives and no representative from the business sector took part. consequently, major conflicts and potential solutions could not be addressed in the way originally intended by the organizers. therefore, a next step would be to invite relevant actors to take part in a focus group discussion (fgd) of a maximum of ten participants to hopefully be able to elaborate on more disputed topics.  about the author kristina großmann is assistant professor at the chair of comparative development and cultural studies with a focus on southeast asia at the university of passau, germany. her main research interests are environmental transformations, dimensions of differentiation in ethnicity and gender, and civil society organizations in southeast asia. ► contact: kristina.grossmann@uni-passau.de aseas 2-2 institutionalizing human rights in south-east asia an interview with param cumaraswamy aseas 2 (2) im dialog / in dialogue institutionalizing human rights in south-east asia: the birth of asean’s intergovernmental commission on human rights an interview with param cumaraswamy christian bothe aseas redaktion / aseas editing board aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften / austrian journal of south-east asian studies seas gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften / society for south-east asian studies www.seas.at param cumaraswamy is a malaysian member of the regional working group for an asean human rights mechanism. he is also the former un rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers. together with his colleagues in the regional working group, he worked on proposals and recommendations on the design of the projected human rights body, its principles, composition and powers. the working group describes itself as a coalition of national working groups from asean states which are composed of representatives of government institutions, parliamentary human rights committees, academia and ngos.1 the interview consists of two parts: a fi rst part was conducted in summer 2009 while the deliberation and negotiation on mandate and power of a to-be institutionalized human rights body was still in process. on october 23, 2009 in cha-am & hua hin, thailand, the asean heads of states and governments concluded an agreement, i.e. the terms of references and respectively inaugurated the so-called asean intergovernmental commission on human rights (aichr). this latter part of the interview therefore deals with the fi nal outcome of this strongly politicized process. 1 http://www.aseanhrmech.org/aboutus.html (20 dec 2009) christian bothe an interview with param cumaraswamy 145 aseas 2 (2) part 1 (july 2009) bothe: mr. cumaraswamy, why does south-east asia as a region need a human rights mechanism? why are national human rights mechanisms not enough? cumaraswamy: if we go back in history and if you look at the regions in the world, asia is the only region which has no regional mechanism of human rights. with the vienna declaration of 1993 the united nations member states agreed, that regions and sub-regions should try to set up regional mechanisms to address human rights violations in the particular region. now insofar asean is concerned – asean, as you may recall was founded in 1967 as a very loose economic caucus by five asean members: singapore, malaysia, indonesia, philippines and thailand. they are what we call the senior asean members. but it was a very loose economic arrangement. it was not rights-based. there was no formal institution as such, no charter, no treaty, no whatsoever. subsequently asean expanded. now we have ten countries forming the asean caucus. as a result of the vienna declaration in 1993 the asean foreign ministers met in singapore and said that asean would consider setting up a human rights mechanism. but that was in 1993. it was in the period after this, that we formed a group of ngos in that region, a grouping among ourselves, very informally, to realize a human rights mechanism for asean. we call it regional working group for an asean human rights mechanism. it formed in 1995.the process started gradually and this regional working group began to interact with state representatives, reminding them of their promise made in singapore and following the vienna declaration. finally it got materialized. what happened was that asean realized that it needed to institutionalize itself as a rule-based body. so it needed a charter or a kind of treaty. hence an eminent persons group was set up to draft a charter. first to study the contents of the charter and thereafter a group was set up to draft the charter. finally the charter was adopted by the heads of governments of asean in 2008. it is now in force. but this regional working group of ngos calling for an asean human rights mechanism interacted with this eminent persons group and the people who drafted the charter to already provide in the charter for the establishment of a human rights mechanism. 146 aseas 2 (2) bothe: so the establishment of the human rights mechanism would go hand in hand with a steady process of political integration? cumaraswamy: asean is already a political institution as such. the charter provides for a real political institution, as a rule-based body now. it can now speak with one voice in international forums. before this, asean did not have a single voice. they had to speak individually. now they can speak as asean, under the asean umbrella. the charter provides among its purposes and principles for recognition of democratic values and good governance, rule of law and especially international humanitarian law. it is due to these notions in the charter for strengthening democracy, and the notion and protection of human rights that a human rights body is now going to be set up. for that purpose, last year a ten member group, one from each country was set up to draft the terms of reference. and those terms of reference are now finished. next week we will have a meeting in bangkok. the foreign ministers will be meeting one week later and it is expected, that the terms of references for the human rights mechanism body will be approved by the ten foreign ministers and then by the heads of government in september or november. thereafter the body will be set up. for the purpose of the human rights mechanism, the two groups, the eminent persons group and the group who drafted the charter, had a lot of access to the european commission in brussels and also in strassbourg and recently they also went to geneva to the human rights high commissioner’s office to discuss various matters, related to the setting up of this body. hence, there is some european influence in this whole process and we expect the human rights body to be established by the end of the year. unfortunately, it will not be the kind of body that we would like to see. though the charter provides a notion of promotion and protection of human rights we feel that it is just going to start off as a promotional body. with for instance educational programmes to be integrated but without the power to investigate. that is our concern. but some of the asean governments like burma, laos or vietnam, they feel that they will not reach a comfort level as the others, malaysia, singapore and so on. christian bothe an interview with param cumaraswamy 147 aseas 2 (2) bothe: do you think that considering the human rights situation in countries such as you mentioned, the human rights mechanism can still be regarded as a success? cumaraswamy: i think we need to start off. what we see is that, if we, if the civil society groups oppose this, because it does not have investigative powers or protective powers as such, we will not be able to further keep a foot in the door. it took a long time for this body to be set-up. it has been established now and we will over the years give it the teeth. the charter also provides that the body and its processes will be reviewed after five years. hence, we will see how it functions, we will see how the appointment processes will be made, who will be the commissioners, whether they will develop credibility, whether they will have a human rights background and not be diplomats or civil servants sitting there keeping the seats warm. hence we feel that this process – using the asean language – will be implemented “step by step”. but it is indeed a step forward, because human rights were never on the agenda of asean for nearly 45 years. different from its founding in 1967, asean is now a rule-based body, and has a human rights body, which is rule-based as well, with proper terms of reference. and in addition to this, what is going to emerge is also a commission on women and children because the ten asean countries feel a little uncomfortable on the rights of women and children because they all have ratified the un treaty on women and also the convention of the rights of the child. whereas many of the ten have not ratified the convention against torture, the international covenant on civil and political rights or the international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights [i.e. two of the most basic human rights conventions; c.b.]. bothe: taking in mind the overall very inhomogeneous human rights situation in the region, could we expect that some nations would bior multilaterally expand their human rights commitments, in other words form a coalition of the willing? asean also has its formula for this, the “3plusx”. cumaraswamy: no, that will not be acceptable to asean. asean goes by consensus – also for human rights. i cannot possibly imagine them going in any other way. as far as asean is concerned till now, everything has to be by consensus. and we heard that even over the terms of reference for the body there has been a lot of what you call 148 aseas 2 (2) horse-trading which went on. some governments are very firm and you can imagine that burma will never do certain things. and if burma does not agree, there is no asean agreement as well, because there is no consensus. this is a small set-back with regard to decision making processes. the suggestion that those who are ready to start a process and others catch up later is not an option for asean. but if there are serious shortcomings they will be exposed by the civil society. and there is one good thing that is happening now: there is consultation with civil society groups. though, many of the civil society groups are not very happy with the kind of body that is going to be set up. and as you see in the charter, this document provides promotion and protection, and i say there can be no protection without investigation because without investigation, we do not know, whom to protect. gradually there will be a process that the human rights body will write to the governments concerned and asking for an explanation. this is of course a very diplomatic way of calling for some accountability of the governments but this is how it will start. i do not think that this will be made public so we will only partly see how it will develop. but the important thing is that it takes off. part 2 (december 2009) bothe: for the first time in its history asean institutionalized a human rights body, called the asean intergovernmental commission of human rights (aichr). much attention has been drawn to the final decisions on the terms of reference (tor)2, the working guidelines of this commission, which specify its mandate and powers. how pleased are you with the outcome? cumaraswamy: though the tor is not a perfect document to meet the needs of such a regional mechanism, yet in the context of asean it is a beginning. i am quite pleased. 2 asean. (2009, september 09). terms of reference of asean intergovernmental commission on human rights. retrieved december 22, 2009, from http://www.aseansec.org/doc-tor-ahrb.pdf christian bothe an interview with param cumaraswamy 149 aseas 2 (2) bothe: although the preceded asean charter, which in its art.1 specifically identifies “respect for and protection of human rights” as one of its core purposes and “respect for fundamental freedoms, the promotion and protection of human rights, and the promotion and protection of social justice” as a core principle under art.2, the aichr has not given powers to monitor, investigate or report on human rights records, it rather has a mandate to “promote” than to protect human rights. its role is therewith in a way limited to an advisory body for the asean secretariat, its influence and work will presumably be conducted on an informal level and behind closed doors hence, how much the issue of human rights will be strengthened will depend on the personal skills and endeavour of the commission’s members who will be selected by the asean member states. what can you say about the way the selection process was done and the credibility these representatives will receive? cumaraswamy: yes, the tor does not provide for investigation and protection. however, the terms of the charter could over the years be read into the tor. that will depend on the quality, character and personality of the commissioners. the selection of commissioners was left entirely to the states with no uniform guidelines on the process. save for thailand and indonesia, the process of selection was not transparent and credible. bothe: considering the commission’s present mandate and powers, its budget, its routine of only meeting twice a year and its consensus-based approach to any decision-making, what can be expected as likely matters the commission will deal with and what would you suggest as a focus for its start? cumaraswamy: the initial focus will largely be on promotion which will be more educational and creating awareness of rights and responsibilities. bothe: due to several unique provisions deriving from the asean charter and the aichr terms of reference, the mode of operating of the aichr will be quite different to other regional or global human rights mechanism. how do you expect cooperation between the aichr and other institutions will take place and how much interaction or influence with and from other bodies can be expected? 150 aseas 2 (2) cumaraswamy: despite the shortcomings in the aichr, yet i am quite positive that there will be considerable interactions with other regional mechanisms and the un. aichr has a lot to learn from the other regions and the un. bothe: how is the mood and stance of the majority of the south-east asian human right civil society towards this body? will they consider it a credible partner and will there be enough venues for cooperation or can it rather be assumed that the commission as in its present form will be largely conceived as an object of criticism and opposition? what could however be strategies for the civil society to strengthen the commission? cumaraswamy: it is the civil society organizations (csos) in the region who will be the key players in giving teeth to the aichr. though the tor does not meet with the expectations of the csos in the region yet, there will be space for the csos to express and work with the aichr. the commissioners who ignore csos´ concerns will do damage to the credibility and integrity of the aichr. bothe: could you imagine a possible link between the dogma of economic development and cooperation, which is still by far the most prominent driving force in the asean integration process and on the other hand the strengthening of a human rights regime? a situation when one becomes crucial or at least spurring for the other? cumaraswamy: no doubt economic development will continue to have priority among the governments. however, with the establishment of aichr there will be attention drawn to indivisibility, interdependence and interrelatedness to all human rights. hence promotion of political and civil rights will have to be given equal importance with promotion of economic rights. bothe: although the set-up of a human rights mechanism and therewith securing the issue of human rights on asean’s agenda can be regarded an important step forward, many observers are reluctant to cheer the new commission, describing it as a toothless tiger. even thai prime minister and asean chair abhisit vejjajiva called 151 christian bothe an interview with param cumaraswamy aseas 2 (2) it (only) “a start” and said the commission’s “teeth” would be strengthened down the road. what would be your hope for the development over the next years? how could the council become a tiger with teeth? what would be future milestones in the development of this commission to establish itself as a credible regional mechanism and help close the gap between human rights rhetoric and the reality on the ground? cumaraswamy: the tor does not provide any negative terms. in five years it can be reviewed. in the meantime, the vibrant csos in the region would remain vigilant and eventually give the required teeth to the toothless tiger. remember, the first preamble to the charter describes it as the peoples’ charter. though intergovernmental, yet governments must meet with the aspirations of the asean people. bothe: mr. cumaraswamy, thank you for this interview. 152 sacred spaces of karen refugees and humanitarian aid across the thailand-burma border aseas 4 (2) 254 255 aktuelle südostasienforschung / current research on south-east asia sacred spaces of karen refugees and humanitarian aid across the thailand-burma border alexander horstmann1 mahidol university, thailand & max planck institute for the study of ethnic and religious diversity, germany citation horstmann, a. (2011). sacred spaces of karen refugees and humanitarian aid across the thailand-burma border. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 4(2), 254-272. in this article, i demonstrate that the karen national union (knu) was able to manipulate and politicise humanitarian aid in the thailand-burma borderland. i contend that in the context of the civil war in eastern burma, protestant christianity provides a crucial vehicle for political mobilisation. the article shows that refugee camps in the thai borderland become centres of proselytisation, and that protestant evangelical and missionary networks open up passages across the thai-burmese border. the article thus considers a case where a homeland is constructed in the liminal space between two nations. illegal emergency aid that doubles as missionary project reinforces the image of a helpless victim being vandalized by evil burmese army. keywords: karen; nationalism; civil war; refugees; humanitarian aid dieser artikel zeigt auf, wie es der karen national union (knu) gelungen ist, die humanitäre hilfe im grenzgebiet zwischen thailand und burma für eigene ziele zu manipulieren und zu politisieren. ich argumentiere, dass das protestantische christentum ein entscheidendes vehikel zur politischen mobilisierung im kontext des bürgerkriegs in ost-burma darstellt. der artikel zeigt, dass die flüchtlingslager im thailändischen grenzgebiet als zentren der missionierung dienen und dass die protestantisch-evangelikalen und missionarischen netzwerke territoriale korridore durch die thailändisch-burmesische grenze öff nen. wir sehen hier ein fallbeispiel, wie eine imaginierte nation in der grenzerfahrung zweier nationen konstruiert wird. soforthilfe, die mit protestantischer mission doppelt, verstärkt das bild hilfl oser opfer, die von der burmesischen armee vandalisiert werden. keywords: karen; nationalismus; bürgerkrieg; flüchtlinge; humanitäre hilfe 1 alexander horstmann is visiting professor at mahidol university in salaya, thailand, and senior research partner at the max planck institute for the study of ethnic and religious diversity in goettingen, germany. contact: cralexander@mahidol.ac.th d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -4 .2 -4 aseas 4 (2) 254 255 introduction2 in november 2010, i assisted in a meeting in which karen pastors and intellectuals from thailand and burma as well as other karen came together in a bible school in chiang mai in order to read the bible in a special way, ‘through karen eyes’. over two days, this circle tried to make sense of their ‘fate’ and to find ways to explain and to overcome the suffering of the karen population in eastern burma. the meeting also involved political discussions on the future of the karen state. some christian intellectuals in attendance served as mediators aiming to negotiate a ceasefire and peace between the karen national union (knu), the democratic karen buddhist army (dkba), and the burmese government. they questioned whether violence on the karen’s side was a way to peace. until now, the knu sticks to armed struggle and the mantra of never surrendering, although negotiations with representatives of the burmese government for a ceasefire are underway. other leaders regard the conflict as a spiritual warfare and see themselves as spiritual leaders and staunch nationalists.3 although debating in a context of a federal union of burma solution, the national narrative of a unified karen ethnic group remains stronger than ever. in this article, i argue that the karen example provides a case where a nation is constructed, imagined, and contested in the context of displacement and political exile in the margin of two nations (dudley, 2007). while the physical space of a karen homeland, the kawthoolei, has been gradually lost, the spiritual idea of a ‘homeland’ is still alive. in fact, nationalism and national identity are reproduced in the mission and the ‘migration schools’ for karen migrant children. although the karen churches have an independent, theological agenda, and their own programs of biblical education and extensive mission, karen protestant christianity provides a crucial vehicle for political mobilisation (keyes, 1979). in the following, i theorise moving borders in a new way. the border has moved as 2 in this paper, i draw on ongoing fieldwork on religious spaces and self-identification of karen migrants across the thailand-burma border. ethnographic research and survey research on christian, theravada buddhist, and animist movements was done in north-western thailand and in eastern burma. co-researchers in a research project funded generously by the thailand research fund include kwanchewan buadaeng and samak kosem, department of anthropology, chiang mai university, thailand. the first draft was presented in marseille, france, for the international burma studies conference, 6-9 july 2010. 3 for an exciting perspective on buddhist spaces and networks in karen state, see hayami (in press). alexander horstmann sacred spaces of karen refugees and humanitarian aid across the thailand-burma border aseas 4 (2) 256 257 the control of the territory and the border itself has shifted between thai or burmese authorities and the karen, a people that lives in both thailand and burma. i contend that religious networks and social support structures, civil society, church networks, and christian protestant communities as well as evangelist and missionary ministries create corridors, passages, and spaces of reconstruction in the third space of the liminal, extreme niche in the thai borderland (horstmann & wadley, 2009; south, 2010). different factions within the knu, dkba, and burmese army fight and compete fiercely over the control of territory and business licences, and religious spaces support consistent efforts of competing warlords to control areas and people. christian missionary work therefore competes with buddhist pagoda-planting and buddhist charismatic authority. the refugee camp, largely controlled by the indigenous knu refugee committee and upheld by humanitarian aid, becomes a centre of proselytisation and reproduction of karen nationalism (dudley, 2007; gravers, 2007; horstmann, 2011). thus, displaced karen become part of globalising political and spiritual projects as national and protestant christian members of a global karen community. after reconstruction in the thai borderland, these politicised humanitarian projects re-enter the conflict zone inside eastern burma to support the karen national liberation army (knla), to support the churches or in the form of humanitarian, yet nationalistic organisations, to support the internally displaced karen in the karen state and to provide spiritual worship and emergency aid to them. christian spirituality, militarism, and nationalism go hand in hand to fuel the karen cause, the ideology of reconstruction in the thai borderland, and the narrative of spiritual warfare. refugees do not only cross a political boundary but also a religious one. the literate, elite, and intellectual circles of the baptist karen become realigned and reordered in political exile. the holy bible and the missionary karen script provide the basis for christian interpretation of the national narrative and the transformation of the physical space of karen land into a transcendent notion of a karen land. this perspective of a christian nation conceals the internal diversity of the karen in burma, where religious affiliations vary according to region and village (e.g. gravers, 2007). christians make up no more than one third of the karen population while the majority of the pwo karen is ancestral buddhist. however, the christian skaw karen aseas 4 (2) 256 257 are mostly in an economically better situation and better educated than the buddhist pwo. from the karen point of view, christianity is not seen as a non-karen tradition but as a new ritual practice or a new worship. neither is it looked at as a change in tradition or custom. “christianity and buddhism have been converted into genuine karen traditions, replacing former rituals and prayers” (gravers, 2007, p. 232). the literate nationalist circles emerging in the nineteenth century, described skilfully by womack (2005), have realigned and are extended to political exile, resettled karen diaspora in the west and to the internet. reading the bible through karen eyes also means reading the past anew and planning for the future. in this article, i discuss the role of baptist networks in the politics of reconstruction in a contested borderland in the context of forced migration. displaced karen who cross the border depend on religious networks as social support structures and are politically mobilised by these. i argue that the emerging religious and national narrative cannot be separated from the context of civil war that has plagued the karen since the escalation of the armed insurgency. it is the thesis of this paper that the emergence of a militarised karen national union in the context of the insurgency has consolidated a particular ethno-political national narrative associated with distinctive territorial claims. the knu claims that the burmese regime is committing ‘genocide’ against them and that the karen have to defend and protect themselves. in this context, i am interested how missionary and evangelical networks respond to the humanitarian crisis in eastern burma. not only have their evangelising missions met the refugees when they are in their most vulnerable position, they also mobilise inside the conflict zone across the border and proselytise on the thai border. thus, i see missionary efforts on the thai border as a continuation of earlier efforts of karen protestant and catholic proselytisation in burma. contested sovereignties across the thailand-burma border in burma, some ethnic minorities (shan, mon, karenni, kachin, and chin) in the borderlands have developed their own nationalities and ethnic militia (gravers, 2007). the burmese state on the other hand has established a regime of differential citizenship in which some people are granted citizenship rights while these are denied to others. the burmese army has also waged a protracted and brutal war against the alexander horstmann sacred spaces of karen refugees and humanitarian aid across the thailand-burma border aseas 4 (2) 258 259 ethnic nationalities’ armies at the frontiers (south, 2008). it is important to note here that it is the civil population that has to bear the casualties and terrible consequences of the war. the effects of the war are difficult to bear: they include systematic terror, burning of villages and rice barns, campaigns of relocation, arbitrary arrest and intimidation, summary executions, forced labour, sexual abuse, and rape (grundy-warr & wong, 2002; smith, 2007).4 thousands of people are forced to leave the villages as a result of these severe human rights violations, find themselves in the jungle, on the mountains, roaming around without food and medical attention, and struggle to make their way to the thai-burmese border. hundreds of thousands of people are internally displaced, inhabiting the burma-karen frontier region without much hope to return home. the suffering, wounding, casualties, and trauma are immense.5 while ngos and humanitarian agencies in thailand and in the west report these human rights violations extensively, little is known about the violations on the part of the knu. the villagers now find themselves intimidated and pressured from several sides and are threatened not only by burmese soldiers but also by the dkba and knla which demand food, protection, and even soldiers. the protracted conflict also has its own dynamic and there is a number of warlords and war entrepreneurs who compete for business licenses and resource extraction and who do not care much about what side they are fighting for. the knu regards itself as an army of angels and as a democratic institution, yet individual human rights abuses and extortion also occur on the side of the knla brigades. in the war zone of eastern burma, burmese citizenship has probably lost much of its practical value as social welfare and educational infrastructure collapse. while in the past the knu-controlled territory used to function as a convenient buffer zone between thailand and burma, with the knu being a conservative anti-communist force under the leadership of bo mya, nowadays the knu has become a burden in the diplomatic re-approachment between thailand and burma. today, the borderlands are highly contested, while the burmese army is constantly building new alliances with break-away factions of the ethnic nationalities factions and is trying to instrumentalise these by transforming them into regular border guard forces (south, 2008). rajah (1990) pointed out that the karen rebel movement is highly unusual in that 4 see the very informative current reports of human rights watch, karen human rights group, or thailand burma border consortium (tbbc). 5 see the very insightful report by tbbc (2011) on displacement and poverty. aseas 4 (2) 258 259 it is a largely christian movement in a largely buddhist environment. visitors who work with the karen are welcome, as the karen hope that foreigners will publicise their ‘cause’. this has led to a lack of detachment on the part of travellers, activists, and scholars who have identified with the goals of the karen. this identification has led to biased reports on the conflict, as western scholarship, with notable exceptions (south, 2011), sympathised with the knu that they saw as a democratic organisation with humanitarian goals (rogers, 2004). the documentation of human rights violations committed by the burmese army against the non-combatant civil population in the 1990s led to the rise of humanitarian assistance along the thai border and to the identification of humanitarian aid workers with the knu. consequently, critical studies on the everyday life of the refugees, the karen insurgency movement, and the political administration of the refugee camps are still rare.6 this paper presents an attempt to contribute to this field. humanitarian organisations did not only identify the indigenous refugee committee as their natural partner but also depended on it for the implementation of welfare projects. the knu was able to manipulate humanitarian aid and to channel the resources into nationalist and christian education. in this way, the aid industry building up at the thailandburma border provided crucial support and positive media coverage for the knu that controlled and recruited from the camps, and benefitted from taxes (donations) and supplies from the thailand burma border council (tbbc). later, the knu also benefitted from the remittances from the resettled karen communities in the west. many humanitarian aid organisations uncritically supported the knu during the civil war and thus kept the military machine of the knu alive (south, 2011). saying this, i do not position myself for or against the knu or the kawthoolei karen baptist convention or the thai karen baptist convention but simply contribute to revealing the facts that have been kept silent in the numerous reports of karen human rights organisations and the knu.7 6 for a similar case of a lack of critical studies on the shan see jirattikorn (2011). 7 there is a slight danger of essentialising karen refugees in the academic exercise of demystifying and deconstructing karen national or karen christian protestant identity (malkki, 1992; 1996). alexander horstmann sacred spaces of karen refugees and humanitarian aid across the thailand-burma border aseas 4 (2) 260 261 protestant christianity and karen nationalism in most analyses, religion has not been part of the picture, although it provides a privileged lens to study the identity processes of refugees. religion and religious networks critically relate to mobility on the thai-burmese frontier. most of all, missionary networks and humanitarian activism are characterised by movement. missionaries cross the border against all odds: while kawthoolei was widely accessible, the back pack health workers and the missionary free burma rangers (fbr) today, for instance, take considerable risks by entering the conflict zone to provide emergency relief. movement across the border can thus be interpreted as a religious commitment. the interconnections of missionary work, humanitarian crisis, and forced migration also allow a fresh angle on the movement in the borderland. where humanitarian organisations cannot enter the conflict zone in eastern burma, christian protestant networks fill the gap. as many of the ethnic minorities have become partly christianised, the identity marker of religion becomes key in the conflict as the baptist and catholic churches operate in a nation state environment where buddhism is not a state religion but the predominant one, and where popular karen buddhist movements vie with karen christian networks for hegemony in the villages. in present burma, the issue of religion is much politicised as christianity is regarded with suspicion by the burmese state authorities. in thailand, by contrast, the christian church of thailand is fully recognised by the thai government and benefits from religious freedom. this political tolerance has motivated the presence of multiple christian missionary agencies in northern thailand, from where they operate in the politically much more sensitive environments of the neighbouring countries. baptist and seven day adventist networks are not the only missionary networks in humanitarian aid and relief welfare, the catholic church is very well established through the presence of churches, schools, and catholic centres. in addition, pentecostal churches and evangelical networks, from the us, south korea, and taiwan, now have established a presence in northern thailand as well and have begun to work with the poorest segments of the population, hill tribe minorities, drug addicts, and refugees. they have used the same community churches or established their own churches and have especially attracted young and underprivileged people to their worship services and summer camps. aseas 4 (2) 260 261 historically speaking, american baptist missionaries played a central role in the development of karen national imagination (keyes, 1979). catholic missionaries and catholic relief welfare organisations by contrast are not tied to the knu and the insurgency in the way that baptist pastors were and are. the largely christian karen rebel movement used to control large tracts of territory in eastern burma, operating from bases in north-western thailand. this situation changed dramatically in the 1990s when the deterioration of the military situation and the large inflow of refugees, karen civil population, and burmese students required a change in strategy. the control of the refugees by the thai government was heightened and refugees are not allowed to leave the refugee camp, although leaders of the committees go in and out.8 in the documentation of the karen, there is a bias on christianity, although the christians – in several denominations – are in the minority. in access to humanitarian assistance and resettlement to third countries, notably the us, christians are privileged against non-christians. clearly, the ethnic cleansing of the karen population in eastern burma was instrumentalised to further the interests of the karen rebel movement. yet, it is the armed rebellion that caused the retribution by the tatmadaw, the burmese army, on the civil population that endures incredible suffering. moreover, the competition of christianity and buddhism has become a key issue. the largely christian knu is not only in fight with the burmese army, but also with the buddhist democratic karen buddhist army (dkba) that has allied with the tatmadaw. the retreat of the knu from its bases in eastern burma resulted in the dkba’s control of the border. the ongoing factionalism within the karen rebel movement and the withdrawal and growing dependence of the knu on thailand has resulted in further fragmentation. international ngos and a sophisticated network of religious and non-religious organisations and groups provide the social welfare wing of the insurgency movement (horstmann, 2011; south, 2011). at the same time, the camp provides a site for mobilisation of young soldiers for the ‘revolution’ of the karen. this is why the camps have become dangerous sanctuaries: in various instances, burmese military and dkba soldiers stormed the camps, shelling them and burning houses, and searching for knla soldiers. karen nationalism and christianity are intimately intertwined, reinforcing each other. 8 the best introduction on the history of the camps remains lang (2002). see also the recent booklet by the tbbc (2011). alexander horstmann sacred spaces of karen refugees and humanitarian aid across the thailand-burma border aseas 4 (2) 262 263 many scholars suggested that evangelical protestantism is an attractive religious option for many marginal ethnic groups. for karen displaced people from burma, this is not entirely convincing as a substantial proportion of the karen in burma maintain their local spirit beliefs. but the baptist minority assumes a hegemonic position in the thai-burmese borderland because of the organisational, financial, and communicative strength of protestant churches and the many karen non-governmental organisations (ngos) that are operated by christians. this becomes particularly evident in the refugee camps where the christian missionary networks dominate religious life. the knu and the knla recruit soldiers and supporters from the camps. while the baptist church in burma is not directly associated with the karen national union, most of the leadership of the knu is christian and many pastors preach directly for the knu. in the words of their leaders, the baptist church provides the spiritual umbrella for the ethnic nationalist movement. furthermore, in the refugee camps administered by the knu and by the thai army, the karen refugee committee is made up of knu-pastors. when the refugee camps were established in 1984, the karen refugee committee emerged as a natural partner for the evangelical missionary networks that were directly involved in providing emergency welfare and assistance to the karen people crossing the border. moreover, the first refugee camps emerged from the villages of the knu families. while the population of the camp has become more diverse, the karen make up the large majority, and churches as well as the bible school are central institutions of cultural life in the camp. while many ecumenical christian and non-religious international ngos have since joined the consortium, religious networks play a very important role in assisting the displaced people by providing them with food, clothes, and shelter. the knu has thus established a network in which it is associated with many civil associations and ngos. but while national identities – burmese/thai – do not fit the context in the borderland, where people are neither burmese nor thai, the karen stick to the idea of a karen homeland and a karen nation. this is a case of the construction of karen intellectual circles and publics and the imagination of karen state spaces. these circles and the public focus on senior church leaders, represented by the theological seminaries on the thai border and in burma. the idea of a karen nation governed by the knu is now reproduced in and extended to the diaspora. old karen war veterans go to church with traditional clothes and full national and knu regalia. before the aseas 4 (2) 262 263 fall of the garrison of mannerplaw in 1995, the knu controlled vast territorial tracts in eastern burma and thus constituted a quasi state and buffer state. the gate read ‘welcome to kawthoolei’ and the knu comprised its own army, its own schools and hospitals, as well as its own townships, bureaucracy, and flag (rajah, 1990). the knu raised substantial resources by taxing the karen population and the illicit border market and by exploiting the teak forests. after the military defeat of the knla and the resettlement of christian karen families to the usa, australia, and europe, the religious reconstruction of a karen imagined community gained importance. the knu, individual families, and churches gained new income through remittances following this new diaspora. religious interpretation of the bible was used to justify a war that is perceived to be ‘just’. metaphors of refugees being ‘saved on noah’s ark’, ‘god’s mysterious plan’, as well as the promise of the ‘promised land’ and ‘eternal life’ were extensively used by christian leaders to encourage each other. the portrayed heroic behaviour of the knu was underlined by delivering emergency health services and prayer worshipping to the internally displaced persons in the war zone. in a sense, the imagination of a christian nation is mentally transported to the refugee camp. evangelical christianity can thus be seen as a replacement of the dwindling homeland in south-eastern burma. evangelisation and proselytisation facing massive persecution and violence, and given their loss of citizenship, the karen from eastern burma are marginal to thai modernity. in this situation, the humanitarian aid organisations emerge as crucial allies for the knu’s reorganisation in the camps and contribute to the making of ‘ethno-fiction’ by the karen themselves, international humanitarian organisations, and academic scholarship (rajah, 1990). far from being passive victims, evangelical karen become important agents of proselytising, who use their cultural capital to reach out to their relatives, friends, and to the community of christians. the karen church not only provides a large selection of services, welfare, and relief; in addition, christians are able to re-enter the humanitarian space as soldiers-medics-missionaries in a war zone largely inaccessible for international humanitarian ngos. fuelled by global alliances with american christian churches, south korean pentecostals, and international advocacy networks, this alexander horstmann sacred spaces of karen refugees and humanitarian aid across the thailand-burma border aseas 4 (2) 264 265 project of evangelisation and reconstruction is still in the hands of the educated christian leadership. i also do not replace ethnic labels with new ones, but look at how identities are constructed in religious and nationalist movements, and contested in ‘economies of power’ that constitute the ‘field’. by forging the ethno-fiction of a united karen nation, the knu conceals vast internal differences within the karen population. i argue that the invention of a united karen leadership is a very recent one and that this leadership was imposed on an extremely diverse population. while the baptists constitute a very eloquent minority within the karen population, the buddhists are in the majority. in the karen state, the ethnic and religious composition can vary from village to village. in the knu, the leadership is mostly made up of christians, while the foot soldiers are for the great majority buddhists. the frustration of being locked up in the lower level of the knu’s hierarchy was effectively used by the buddhist monk u thuzana who instrumentalised the status gap by mobilising these grievances to found his own breakaway army, the dkba (gravers, 2007). religious developments in the karen state have always been very dynamic and conversion to christianity was never a straightforward, uniform movement, but was instead characterised by ups and downs and may have encapsulated some villages and regions but not others. many karen villages remain animist and follow autochthonous karen traditions, while indigenous millenarian buddhist movements developed in parts of the karen state. in some areas, there was intensive religious competition and that dynamic remains until today. in a landmark study, william womack showed that this competition of social networks and intellectual circles centred on the development and appropriation of the karen script and on the contested imaginations of a karen ethnicity (womack, 2005). by examining christian, buddhist, and syncretised literary groups in the nineteenth and twentieth century in different regions of eastern burma, womack shows that the missionary karen sgaw script was only one among 11 different scripts, albeit the most influential one. competing scripts were reproduced in the churches, monasteries, and among syncretic groups such as the lekke and telekhon, mixing buddhist, christian, and autochthonous elements. the nationalist christian leadership of the knu is, according to martin smith, only a recent phenomenon (smith, 1991; 2007). however, this does not make the link between christianity and the insurgency less important. religion provides a very aseas 4 (2) 264 265 interesting lens to look at the contestation of karen representation and territorial spaces in the borderland. but womack’s work makes the perspective of karen nationalism more diverse and cautions us not to make the mistake of producing a unitary perspective where there is none. south (2007) points out that many syncretic karen in burma identify neither with the knu nor with the dkba but are drawn into a vicious cycle of violence. womack is certainly right to state that the nationalist narrative is filtered to foreign researchers by the knu, the karen refugee committee and karen ngos. while this diversity remains in burma, i argue that the baptist christian network has the strongest lobby in the refugee camps and that the domination of the administration of the camps is reflected in the christian teaching in the camp schools. of course, christianity is not a unified entity either. from the beginning, american baptist missionaries proselytised along catholic missionaries, and the christian landscape of today is characterised by the co-existence of baptist, anglican, seven day adventist, and catholic community churches. in addition, other denominations compete with the dominant baptist stream, the seven day adventist church being second place. i claim that the privileged position of the evangelic baptist church and its close association to the knu in the refugee camp results in a campaign to missionise refugees, and that this is what happens. refugees, buddhist and animist, who are socialised in the migrant schools and in the humanitarian networks are exposed to and often convert to christianity. the reasons for conversion are complex, though, the main reason is that individual refugees want to be part of the collective body of the karen characterised by faith and nationalism. christianity symbolises modernity and cosmopolitanism. not least, conversion to christianity grants access to social welfare and better access to humanitarian aid and social mobility. inside the karen state, the dkba also offers a perspective and the knu and dkba now aggressively compete over the symbols of nationalism. in both guerrilla armies, religious affiliation has become a key symbol and the dkba is involved in building pagodas and temples while the baptist network is eager to plant churches. the karen are not just recipients of humanitarian aid. unlike former vietnamese refugees who converted to christianity, the christian karen are old christians who have a tradition of proselytising among their own ethnic group and other ethnic minorities. christian missionary networks are not the only religious networks in town. the cultural hegemony of the karen alexander horstmann sacred spaces of karen refugees and humanitarian aid across the thailand-burma border aseas 4 (2) 266 267 in the thai borderland in north-western thailand excludes the subaltern buddhist, islamic, and autochthonous karen communities that construct their own religious landscapes in thailand and in burma. state of the field my research on the transnational religious lives of the christians adds to and complements important research on the economic, political, and cultural practices of transnational refugees. brees (2010) in particular provides very valuable research about the remittance strategies of refugees and the practical difficulties they face. another important contribution comes from sandra dudley whose work on the exiled karenni in the thailand/burma borderland focuses on the transformation of karenni refugees into modern, educated subjects, karenni identification, and the rise of a karenni nationalism (dudley, 2007, pp. 77-106). the karenni (red karen) identity is born in the refugee camp and, similar to karen identity, conceals internal diversity, contradictions, tensions, and plurality in favour of a united, christian dominated karenni-ness. in a recent full monograph on the karenni refugees in thailand, dudley uses a material culture lens to analyse the formations of preand post-exile karenni identity (dudley, 2010). this article can thus be read in convergence with dudley’s important work. the work of michael gravers who focuses on the messianic and buddhist traditions of the karen has been decisive for my thinking on sacred spaces of the karen. this paper thus complements gravers’ path-breaking on-going work on indigenous buddhist millenarian movements (gravers, 2007; 2011). theoretical considerations castells (1996) argues that the world is reconstituting itself around a series of networks strung around the globe based on advanced communication technologies. he claims that the network is the signature of new society. networks are driven by modern communication technologies and reorganise geographical space by creating a new material foundation of time-sharing. networks are social ties that allocate and control resources. they are not simply amalgams of nodes and ties, but are always organised around projects, goals, and values. each network constitutes its own social aseas 4 (2) 266 267 world, and it is the bundle of material and immaterial resources and flexible, yet, coordinated communication, which makes action possible. clearly, i want to argue that religious networks very much spread through the network logic. in the thailand/burma borderland, the karen baptist convention is a network that is organised around the political project of spreading karen nationalism and protestant christianity that is based on a set of material and immaterial religious resources, and that is bound together by use of advanced electronic communication on a local and a global scale. the question of inclusion and exclusion is one of the most fundamental in network society. as castells writes, the network also acts as a gatekeeper. inside networks, opportunities are created while outside of them survival is increasingly difficult (castells, 2000, p. 187). indeed, for many people outside the existing karen structures, survival becomes a daily struggle collecting garbage, working in factories, or as labourers under the minimum wage, while christian networks provide shelter, food, and security in a hostile environment. the concept of a transnational social formation gives a more coherent frame for explaining the dynamics of durable transnational exchanges. a concise overview of transnational social formations is provided by stephen vertovec (1999; 2009). in arguing that the christian karen community provides a case study for the trans-nationalisation of the social world, i follow vertovec’s definition of transnational social formations and his proposition for empirical research on transnationalism. the christian protestant community is a transnational social formation with a special type of consciousness and national identity of an exiled but ‘chosen’ people that extends to the thai borderland and to the karen diaspora in the west. the project of the karen community is kept alive through remittances from transnational humanitarian organisation and church networks and from the growing diaspora. transnationalism is an arena for transnational advocacy networks, ngos, websites, and ethno-political formations in the diaspora. the transnational social formation has a durable spatial location in the karen state, in refugee camps, in the countryside of the thai borderland, in the migration schools, in the border town of mae sot, and in the karen communities in the usa, scandinavia, and australia. the consciousness of a christian karen identity in a durable transnational space makes the exiled karen diaspora a transnational social formation par excellence. this transnational formation takes up the social figuration of an ethnic and religious commualexander horstmann sacred spaces of karen refugees and humanitarian aid across the thailand-burma border aseas 4 (2) 268 269 nity. the refugee camps, the orphanages and migrant schools are important spaces of proselytisation. the organisation of the refugees in missionary networks often, but not always, collides with the interests of the national order and contributes to what salemink (2009) calls the ‘cosmopolitisation’ of the refugees. cosmopolitisation here means a greater awareness of the world and participation in the public sphere, but does not necessarily translate in de-ethnicisation. while the state puts severe constraints on the movement of the refugees in the borderland by confining them to this area, christian missionaries present themselves as saviours as they provide crucial access to humanitarian aid, social services, transnational networks and global ideologies that are closely associated with modernity and education. unlike many other forgotten ethnic minority groups, the karen have succeeded in reaching substantial public awareness and solidarity in the west. the re-entry of christian refugees into burma christian refugees in north-western thailand establish strategies to make a living, assist friends and relatives in thailand and burma and decrease their vulnerability in thailand, depending on faith-based organisations. family-splitting strategies are among the means to spread opportunities and incomes. it is very important to realise that all the different spaces in which the refugees make a living are closely intertwined and that the church provides an institutional umbrella for activities of the diaspora in thailand. for many christian refugees, it is not enough to care for their own survival, but the educated karen activists use their institutional resources in thailand to re-enter burmese territory and to actively support displaced people in the karen state. diaspora groups, karen human rights organisations and middleclass activists collect a mass of information on human rights violations and supply international organisations and ngos in europe and in the usa with these information. these international groups channel resources to the activists on the ground coordinating education and health services to displaced people. one example is the karen teacher working group, which comprises volunteers from the communities who had to walk three weeks in the jungle to transport school materials and medicine to schools in war-torn eastern burma. the karen baptist convention also uses institutional resources to assist the refugees at the border and displaced people in aseas 4 (2) 268 269 burmese territory. thus, pastors and evangelists who have an intimate knowledge of the area re-enter burma by foot to distribute the bible, spread the word, and to assist in church services. the back pack health workers literally walk into burma and provide emergency relief, in addition to many other secular and faith-based initiatives and grassroots efforts. the karenni social and welfare centre collaborates with the tbbc and the burma relief centre to provide emergency relief and training and to document human rights abuses. another prominent example is the free burma rangers. the fbr was founded by a former us army special envoy who started the operation to provide emergency relief to displaced people in war zones. fbr is a nonarmed humanitarian group that prepares nurses to walk into war zones protected by the knla or ethnic armies. the volunteers undergo intensive health care training and are able to immediately help people who suffer from illness, starvation and violence. video cameras and voice recorders are used to document human rights abuses. in the usa, fbr runs a campaign to collect donations and christmas presents for displaced people in burma. the fbr is a missionary agent that makes no secret that it operates based on the bible, but emergency work has been extended to the nonchristian population. in the war zones, the fbr organises a ‘good life club’ in which the volunteers entertain the children and try to encourage them. the fbr also prays together with the displaced people and provides church service for them. international prayer requests and prayer sessions are organised for burma. the images that the fbr disseminates in cyberspace provide material for a powerful narrative of the christian community on the suffering of the karen and play a central role in mobilising advocacy networks and donations for the work of karen groups. concluding remarks in describing the agency of karen refugee leaders in the thai-burmese borderland, i used a concept of borderlands as active spaces that spoke of interconnections as much as of geopolitical boundedness. rather than seeing borders as fixed zones, it is more productive to see the border as constantly built up and contested through the actions of local agents (horstmann & wadley, 2006). in the nightmarish experience of the civil war, the christian landscape at the thai-burmese border uses education as a crucial resource to socialise karen refugees. efforts of spreading the gospel in the thai alexander horstmann sacred spaces of karen refugees and humanitarian aid across the thailand-burma border aseas 4 (2) 270 271 borderland and in the growing diaspora are directly following earlier efforts of christianisation in burma from which the karen emerged as keen evangelists who brought the word to other ethnic minorities. the cognitive model and map of kawthoolei was imposed on the karen and ignores their internal diversity. in the refugee camp, it is the image of the common ‘enemy’ and the narrative of suffering that have been exhausted by the karen. in a hostile environment, and harassed by the state, unable to return home to burma, the baptist church provides a key location for mobilising the resources for a better life, solidarity with other refugees and a vision. far from being passive recipients of humanitarian aid, refugees make careers in the church and emphasise their aspirations by actively participating in evangelical efforts. while the future of kawthoolei remains locked, christian baptist missionaries see new opportunities for spreading the faith. religious networks have established a presence and remain active on both sides of the border and organise many of the people who become internally displaced, migrants, and refugees. in that sense, the border has indeed moved much closer to the sanctuaries in thailand and has made returning to burma ever more difficult for knu-related activists. the vision of kawthoolei is an imaginary construction of territorialisation and i argue re-tribalisation in which the suffering and the humanitarian aid provide necessary tools for the reinvention of the karen as chosen people who make references to a shared history and a shared memory to justify their claims to a country of their own. references brees, i. (2010). refugees and transnationalism on the thai-burmese border. global networks, 10(2), 282-299. castells, m. (2000). the rise of the network society (2nd ed. vol. 1: the information age: economy, society and culture). oxford, england & cambridge, england: blackwell. dudley, s. (2007). reshaping karenni-ness in exile: education, nationalism, and being in the wider world. in m. gravers (ed.), exploring ethnic diversity in burma (pp. 77-106). copenhagen, denmark: nias press. gravers, m. (2001). cosmology, prophets, and rebellion among the buddhist karen in burma and thailand. moussons, 4, 3-31. gravers, m. (2007). conversion and identity: religion and the formation of karen ethnic identity in burma. in m. gravers (ed.), exploring ethnic diversity in burma (pp. 227-258). copenhagen, denmark: nias press. aseas 4 (2) 270 271 grundy-warr, c., & wong, e. (2002). geographies of displacement: the karenni and the shan across the myanmar-thailand border. singapore journal of tropical geography, 23(1), 93-122. hayami, y. (in press). pagodas and prophets: contesting sacred space and power among buddhist karen in karen state. journal of asian studies. hefner, r. w. (1993). conversion to christianity. historical and anthropological perspectives on a great transformation. berkeley, ca: university of california press. horstmann, a., & wadley r. l. (eds.). (2009). centering the margin: agency and narrative in southeast asian borderlands. oxford, england & new york, ny: berghahn horstmann, a. (2011). ethical dilemmas and interactions of faith-based humanitarian organizations in the myanmar-thailand borderland: the example of the karen refugee crisis. journal of refugee studies (special issue on faith-based humanitarianism in contexts of forced displacement), 24(3), 1-20. jirattikorn, a. (2011). shan virtual insurgency and the spectatorship of the nation. journal of southeast asian studies, 42(1), 17-38. keyes, c. f. (1979). ethnic adaptation and identity. the karen on the thai frontier with burma. philadelphia, pa: ishi science center. lang, h. l. (2002). fear and sanctuary. burmese refugees in thailand. ithaca, ny: cornell university press. malkki, l. (1992). national geographic: the rooting of peoples and the territorialization of national identity among scholars and refugees. cultural anthropology, 7(1), 24-44. malkki, l. (1996). speechless emissaries: refugees, humanitarianism, and dehistoricization, cultural anthropology. cultural anthropology, 11(3), 377-404. rajah, a. (1990). ethnicity, nationalism and the nation-state. the karen in burma and thailand. in g. wijeyewardene (ed.), ethnic groups across national boundaries in mainland southeast asia (pp. 102-133). singapore: iseas. rozenberg, g. (2010). renunciation and power: the quest for sainthood in contemporary burma. new haven, ct: yale university southeast asia studies press. smith, m. (1991). burma. insurgency and the politics of ethnicity. london, england & new york, ny: zed press. smith, m. (2007). state of strife. the dynamics of ethnic conflict in burma (policy studies institute no. 36 southeast asia). washington, dc: east-west centre. south, a. (2008). ethnic politics in burma. states of conflict. london, england & new york, ny: routledge. south, a. (2011). burma’s longest war. anatomy of the karen conflict. amsterdam, the netherlands: transnational institute/burma centre netherlands. stern, t. (1968). ariya and the golden book: a millenarian buddhist sect among the karen. journal of asian studies, 27(2), 297-328. thailand burma border consortium (tbbc). (2011). displacement and poverty in southeast burma/myanmar. chiang mai, thailand: tbbc press. alexander horstmann sacred spaces of karen refugees and humanitarian aid across the thailand-burma border aseas 4 (2) 272 273 vertovec, s. (1999). conceiving and researching transnationalism. ethnic and racial studies, 22(2), 447462. vertovec, s. (2009). transnationalism (key ideas). london, england & new york, ny: routledge. womack, w. (2005). literate networks and the production of sgaw and pwo karen writing in burma, ca. 1830-1930. unpublished phd dissertation, school of oriental and african studies (soas), university of london, england. book review: yahuda, m. (2011). the international politics of the asia-pacific (third edition). aseas 5(1) 194 195 d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -5 .1 -1 5 rezensionen / book reviews yahuda, michael (2011). the international politics of the asia-pacifi c (third edition). london, uk and new york: routledge. isbn: 978-0-415-47480-1. xvi and 368 pages. citation gerstl, a. (2012). book review: yahuda, m. (2011). the international politics of the asia-pacific (third edition). aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 5(1), 194-197. in his speech to the australian parliament in november 2011, barack obama emphasised that he has directed his national security team to make the united states’ presence and mission in the asia-pacific a top priority. unlike european politicians, their australian counterparts were pleased to learn that the reductions in us defence spending would not come at the expense of the asia-pacific. however, as readers of michael yahuda’s outstanding study will understand, obama’s announcement has not marked a significant policy shift: since the end of world war two, washington has been the hegemonic power in the asia-pacific in the realms of security and economics. yet, as yahuda, professor emeritus of international relations at the london school of economics, demonstrates, china aims to challenge the united states’ dominant position. this development is likely to change the fundamental dynamics in the region. accordingly, beijing’s dramatic economic and military ascent over the last 35 years, and particularly during the last decade, and washington’s relative decline during the same period, have given the author an incentive to re-write major parts of the international politics of the asia-pacific. the book consists of eleven chapters, organised into two sections (1945 until 1989, and the post-cold war period). while the first part, presenting a thorough analysis of the main political, economic, and security developments from 1945 until 1989, remains more or less unchanged compared with previous editions, the second part offers new, updated insights into the major trends since the end of the cold war. this is especially valuable, as the author missed out on some of these trends in the second edition of his book. yahuda’s theoretical and methodical approach is eclectic as he draws on neorealaseas 5(1) 194 195 ism, neoliberalism, and constructivism to describe the overall pattern of cooperation and competition in the asia-pacific. despite this mainstream approach, yahuda’s analysis is highly complex: first, he includes an assessment of the national systems of the us, china, japan, and russia to demonstrate how international, regional, and domestic developments influence each other in the asia-pacific. secondly, even though the main geographical focus rests on north-east asia, the other asian sub-regions are also covered in depth and their interlinkages highlighted. in the historical part, yahuda provides an excellent analysis of the strategic interests of the us, the soviet union, china, and japan after 1945. he demonstrates the paramount importance of the korean war (1950–53) for the establishment of the regional cold war order: wary of the sino-soviet alliance, washington was keen to normalise its relations with tokyo. due to the peace treaty of san francisco in 1951, japan re-entered the political and economic sphere in the asia-pacific. as yahuda shows, the us-japanese axis became the main structure in the region and bilateralism the method of choice. still distrusting tokyo, australia, new zealand, and the philippines successfully pressured washington to make political and military concessions in their bilateral defence treaties. these agreements further cemented the us predominance. similarly to europe, the cold war was the dominant regional political, military, and economic structural force shaping the politics of all nations. unlike in europe, however, in the asia-pacific the cold war was a hot one, culminating in the indochina war. the alliance system was further complicated after the collapse of the sino-russian alliance in the mid-1950s, when the communist parties in the asia-pacific had to side either with moscow or beijing. due to geography and ethnicity, the majority of the south-east asian communists turned to china. both moscow and beijing supported rival communist rebels, particularly in south-east asia (e.g. malaysia, indonesia, the philippines). ideological rivalries but also distrust dating back to the colonial period were also responsible for multilateral cooperation remaining elusive, even among staunch western allies such as south korea, taiwan, thailand, the philippines, singapore, and australia. however, tokyo indirectly laid the seeds for regional collaboration in the mid-1970s: due to the increasing labour costs in japan and the appreciation of the yen, japanese companies started to shift labour-intensive production processes to alfred gerstl book review: the international politics of the asia-pacific (third edition) aseas 5(1) 196 197 south-east asia. gradually, the complex production networks of today emerged, interlinking various economies in the asia-pacific. the second part of the international politics of the asia-pacific starts with a study of the new power relations since 1989 while the other three chapters deal with the us, china, and japan. similarly to europe, the importance of multilateral institutions and norms is growing and regional collaboration has increased. even though yahuda stresses the importance of the association of southeast asian nations (asean) for furthering regionalism in the asia-pacific, he is critical about asean’s real power, labelling it a “diplomatic community” (pp. 213-218). despite the 2008 asean charter, regional cooperation remains limited in south-east asia – yet it is still much deeper than in north-east asia. the reason is that the dogma of sovereignty and non-interference prevails in the charter. in fact, more important for the promotion of regionalism in the asia-pacific are china’s multilateralism and a general trend toward comprehensive security. similarly to washington’s hub-and-spokes approach, until the mid-1990s china pursued its interests bilaterally. since then, however, it has increasingly joined the multilateral institutions established by asean. in common with the association, “china’s cooperative security approach was well suited to addressing these new security matters” (p. 211). realistically, due to china’s geographic size and economic power, transnational threats such as climate change, terrorism, organised crime, and migration can only be resolved with beijing’s involvement. this, however, further strengthens its regional influence. while economically all nations in the asia-pacific have become increasingly dependent on china, strategically the majority of them still rely on america’s engagement. therefore, even during president george bush’s heavily criticised one-dimensional ‘war on terror’, washington’s leadership has not been contested. as yahuda points out, both a conflict and a condominium between the us and china would be detrimental for the resident nations. while he predicts sharper diplomatic exchange and growing military tensions in the south china sea, he does not believe that a full-scale war is likely to break out (pp. 341-346). beijing, as yahuda convincingly argues, relies heavily on a peaceful international climate to promote trade, investment, know-how, and technology transfer for its economic growth. however, china’s future domestic political and social development raises many questions, in particular aseas 5(1) 196 197 anxieties about growing nationalism which, once unleashed, can be difficult to control even for an authoritarian leadership. apart from china’s rise, two other developments have gained pace in the last two decades: india’s re-engagement with asia and russia’s increasingly marginal position. yet, as yahuda shows, not only have the traditional power relationships in the region changed, but also the region itself: globalisation, increased trade, and multilateral fora have had a significant impact on the geographic boundaries of the asia-pacific as they have “become less precise’ as central and south asia increasingly impinge on southeast and northeast asia” (p. 341). the international politics of the asia-pacific is a well-written textbook that offers both experts on the asia-pacific and readers less familiar with this part of the world a comprehensive and concise analysis of the major developments since the end of world war two. the analysis of south-east asia is precise, and both the analysis and its length, compared to the parts on north-east asia, demonstrate that for most of the time since 1945, south-east asia has been an ally but also a dependent partner of the great powers with limited strategic influence in actively shaping politics in the asia-pacific. yet it forms a crucial part of a dynamic region where multilateral collaboration has increased but obstacles for a peaceful future still remain. the future direction of strategic relations between beijing and washington is written in the fate of this dynamic and promising region. alfred gerstl university of vienna, austria alfred gerstl book review: the international politics of the asia-pacific (third edition) das philippinische gesetz zur reproduktiven gesundheit und seine bedeutung für feministische sowie entwicklungspolitische (bildungs-)arbeit aseas 5(1) 160 161 forschungswerkstatt / research workshop das philippinische gesetz zur reproduktiven gesundheit und seine bedeutung für feministische sowie entwicklungspolitische (bildungs-)arbeit michael reckordt1 citation reckordt, m. (2012). das philippinische gesetz zur reproduktiven gesundheit und seine bedeutung für feministische sowie entwicklungspolitische (bildungs-)arbeit. aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften, 5(1), 161-165. das philippinenbüro arbeitet im bereich der politischen bildungsarbeit seit jahren zu themen, die die philippinische zivilgesellschaft bewegen. der 1987 gegründete verein kann auf eine vielzahl an seminaren und publikationen zurückblicken, in denen er themen der philippinischen zivilgesellschaft identifizierte und versuchte, eine sensibilisierung für diese diskussionen im deutschsprachigen raum zu erreichen. ziel der politischen bildungsarbeit ist ein reger austausch sowie ein gegenseitiges verstehen und lernen. selten zuvor war ein thema so schwer aufzuarbeiten, wie das seminar zu reproduktiver gesundheit in den philippinen, welches am 24. und 25. märz 2012 abgehalten wurde. bereits bei der vorbereitung dieses seminars war es schwieriger als sonst, referentinnen und geldgeberinnen von der notwendigkeit einer diskussion über die reproductive health bill in deutschland zu überzeugen. unserer ansicht nach ging es dabei weniger um die relevanz des themas in der entwicklungspolitischen debatte, wie die betonung der millenniumentwicklungsziele2 vielfach zeigt, als darum, dass einzelne organisationen und personen befürchteten, zu einer positionierung gezwungen zu werden. außer der stiftung umverteilen und dem ake bildungswerk vlotho ließen sich daher keine partnerinnen gewinnen. zur einstimmung des seminars „die diskussion um das philippinische reproduc1 michael reckordt ist geograph und arbeitet seit 2008 im philippinenbüro, dessen geschäftsführer er seit 2009 ist. im rahmen einer philippinenreise im jahr 2011 führte er viele interviews mit aktivistinnen zum thema reproduktive gesundheit. kontakt: michael.reckordt@asienhaus.de 2 das fünfte millenniumentwicklungsziel behandelt die verbesserung der gesundheitsversorgung von müttern und möchte zwischen 1990 und 2015 die sterberate von müttern um drei viertel senken sowie bis 2015 einen allgemeinen zugang zu reproduktiver gesundheit erreichen. d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -5 .1 -1 0 aseas 5(1) 162 163 tive health gesetz – ursachen und die bedeutung für feministische sowie entwicklungspolitische (bildungs-)arbeit“ wurden thematisch passende fotoimpressionen aus den philippinen gezeigt. viele kirchen, religiöse einrichtungen und einzelpersonen zeigen ihre ablehnung durch großflächige plakate, während die befürworterinnen des gesetzes ihre unterstützung ebenfalls sichtbar mit demonstrationen auf die straße tragen. nach dem visuellen einstieg führte maitet ledesma von pinay sa holland-gabriela, einem niederländischen netzwerk philippinischer migrantinnen, das der philippinischen partei gabriela nahesteht, in den gesetzesentwurf und die damit verbundene diskussion ein. sie zeigte die historischen kontinuitäten der probleme und sozialen kämpfe um dieses gesetz auf. in einem vergleich mit anderen ländern in der region südostasien fielen vor allem die hohe sterberate von müttern bei der geburt, die hohe anzahl an illegalen schwangerschaftsabbrüchen sowie der wunsch vieler frauen nach einer besseren familienplanung auf (siehe dazu auch den beitrag von marina wetzlmaier in der vorliegenden aseas-ausgabe). in der anschließenden diskussion wurde die rolle der katholischen amtskirche thematisiert, die die stärkste opposition gegen das gesetz stellt. die diskussion ist in den philippinen hochgradig emotional aufgeladen und selbst personen wie der jesuit john carroll, der sich als vermittler anbieten würde, wird für seine positionierung drastisch angegriffen. obwohl einige ordensgemeinschaften größere freiheiten bei einer positionierung zu dem gesetz haben, äußern sie sich ebenfalls nur sehr vorsichtig. in der diskussion wurde auch angemahnt, dass progressive bischöfe gestärkt werden müssten. um das thema nicht allein aus der philippinischen perspektive zu diskutieren, sondern auch einen bezug zum politischen diskurs in deutschland herzustellen, berichtete jutta kühl, ehemalige referentin für feministische politik der partei die linke, im anschluss an den vortrag von maitet ledesma über reproduktive gesundheit in deutschland. aus ihrer sicht sind debatten im bundestag, welche diese thematik betreffen, in der regel entideologisiert und der fraktionszwang ist aufgehoben. das ist auf der einen seite positiv, weil die meinungsbildung mit offenerem ausgang geschieht. auf der anderen seite wird somit aber auch die diskussion stärker entpolitisiert, da sich keine konservativen, sozialdemokratischen oder linken positionen identifizieren lassen und die entscheidungen der politikerinnen individualisiert werden. dadurch wird die (frauen-)politische dimension aus der diskussion genommen, einaseas 5(1) 162 163 zelne politikerinnen aus denselben parteien können gar entgegengesetzte meinungen vertreten und ethische argumente dominieren. für die wählerinnen bedeutet dies auch, dass sie de facto durch ihre stimme für eine bestimmte partei die diskussion nicht mit gestalten können. doch nicht nur die entpolitisierung der diskussion ist zu bemängeln. tatsächlich haben sich durch die hartz iv-gesetzgebung und umgestaltungen in der gesundheitspolitik für frauen in deutschland einige grundlegende dinge verändert. so ist zum beispiel die pille als verhütungsmittel für frauen ab dem 20. lebensjahr nicht mehr kostenlos erhältlich. die betroffenen frauen müssen sowohl praxisgebühren als auch die kosten für die pille selbst übernehmen, was vor allem für ärmere bevölkerungsschichten, die auf sozialleistungen angewiesen sind, eine finanzielle hürde darstellen kann. im endeffekt führt es dazu, dass familienplanung für ärmere familien schwieriger wird. ein anderer punkt ist, dass in deutschland der zugang zur „pille danach“ eingeschränkt ist. diese pille ist keine abtreibungspille, sondern lässt den zyklus schneller beginnen und sorgt zum beispiel nach gerissenen kondomen oder vergewaltigungen dafür, dass eine unfreiwillige schwangerschaft verhindert wird. in vielen europäischen ländern ist diese pille in apotheken frei zugänglich, in deutschland ist sie immer noch verschreibungspflichtig, obwohl dies 2002 von der eu und 2003 von einem sachverständigenrat kritisiert wurde. vor allem in regionen mit niedriger ärztinnendichte und für frauen ohne dokumente kann dies zu ungewollten schwangerschaften führen. am 25. märz 2012 stellten eleanor koch und elsie joy dela cruz die positionen der migrantinnen in deutschland sowie die position der united church of christ in the philippines (uccp) vor. eleanor koch von philnetz, einem verein, der sich aus der philippinischen diaspora in deutschland gegründet hat und als netzwerk an themen zur integration und entwicklungszusammenarbeit arbeitet, zeigte anhand ihrer eigenen biographie kontinuitäten in der diskussion auf. zur zeit des kriegsrechtes in der marcos-diktatur arbeitete sie als lehrerin auf den philippinen, nahm an fortbildungen teil und wurde zur gesundheitsarbeiterin ausgebildet. in diesem zusammenhang wurden trainingsworkshops angeboten und auch verhütungsmittel wie kondome verteilt. marcos hatte 1967 die population control bill unterschrieben, ein projekt, das von der united states agency for international development (usaid) finanziert worden war, um das bevölkerungswachstum einzudämmen. in diesem politischen ziel ist gleichzeitig der hauptwiderspruch zum heutigen gesetzentwurf zu sehen, denn es michael reckordt das philippinische gesetz zur reproduktiven gesundheit aseas 5(1) 164 165 geht den aktivistinnen von organisationen wie likhaan eine philippinische ngo, die gesundheitsversorgung für marginalisierte frauen anbietet und deren mitglieder sich aktiv für die rh bill einsetzen oder gabriela aktuell darum, frauen und ihren familien die wahlfreiheit zu ermöglichen, wie viele kinder sie bekommen möchten, und nicht darum, der bevölkerung eine ideale familiengröße aufzuzwingen. der slogan lautet „freedom of choice“ ohne staatlichem zwang zu einer zwei-, dreioder vier-kindpolitik. eleanor koch berichtete auch, dass in der philippinischen diaspora in deutschland die unterstützung für das gesetz überwiegt. dennoch sei die diskussion eine sehr persönliche sache und es mangele vor allem an informationen über das gesetz als auch über verhütungsmethoden. zum abschluss referierte elsie joy dela cruz über die position der uccp. sie ist pastorin der uccp und freie mitarbeiterin bei der vereinten evangelischen mission (vem) in deutschland. die uccp ist eine sogenannte mainline church, eine moderate protestantische kirche, deren theologische ansätze als offen für gesellschaftliche veränderungen gelten. im gegensatz zur katholischen amtskirche unterstützen viele protestantische kirchen offiziell das gesetz und somit die frauenrechtsgruppen. die vertreterinnen der uccp haben sich mehrfach öffentlich, in zeitungen oder durch presseerklärungen für die reproductive health bill ausgesprochen. elsie joy dela cruz stellte übereinstimmungen mit vielen positionen der frauenrechtsgruppen vor, betonte auf der anderen seite aber auch, dass das thema nicht im zentrum der politischen arbeit der uccp stehen würde. im anschluss an den vortrag wurde die rolle der kirchen thematisiert und einige der teilnehmenden konnten aus ihrer eigenen biographie – und vor allem aus dem besuch von religiösen schulen – die diskussion bereichern. eine teilnehmerin sagte, dass deutschland und die philippinen in verschiedenen zeiten leben würden. eine andere teilnehmerin widersprach dem vehement und betonte, dass dies vielleicht für den religiösen konservatismus stimme, jedoch die mittelschicht in den urbanen zentren der philippinen, die eine durchschnittliche anzahl an kindern habe, die mit europa oder den usa vergleichbar ist, im bezug auf die rh bill mit sicherheit nicht rückwärtsgewandter sei. zum abschluss folgte eine diskussion, inwieweit auch die teilnehmerinnen in deutschland in die diskussion eingreifen, partnerinnen in den philippinen unterstützen und informationsarbeit zu dem thema entwickeln können. dem philippinenbüro aseas 5(1) 164 165 wurde vor allem der auftrag erteilt, weiter an diesem thema zu arbeiten sowie informationsmaterialien zu erstellen und zu verteilen. ein möglicher ansatzpunkt, diese arbeit besser zu verankern, könnten die millenniumsentwicklungsziele sein, die bis 2015 erreicht werden sollten. auch die erfahrungen und der austausch von feministischen aktivistinnen in deutschland und den philippinen könnten eine möglichkeit darstellen, durch gegenseitiges lernen reproduktive gesundheit als thema in den fokus der öffentlichkeit zu bringen. weitere informationen, der seminar-reader sowie die präsentationen sind allen interessierten online unter www.philippinenbuero.de zugänglich. michael reckordt das philippinische gesetz zur reproduktiven gesundheit globale diaspora der hmong global diaspora of the hmong aseas 1 (1) globale diaspora der hmong global diaspora of the hmong grit grigoleit m.a., universität passau aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften / austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 1 (1), 2008 seas gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften www.seas.at gegenwärtige diaspora-konzeptionen führen die bewahrung der identität in der fremde vor allem auf folgende interne faktoren zurück: eine institutionalisierte globale vernetzung, die konstruktion einer heimat und eine rückkehrorientierung. diaspora-gemeinschaften werden dabei als in sich geschlossene, homogene kollektive kontextualisiert. externe faktoren wie der einfluss des gastlandes, der eine stratifizierung nach sozialen klassen, gender oder generationen zur folge hat, sind dagegen bisher wenig beachtet worden. die in der diaspora lebende ethnische gruppe der hmong versucht gleichermaßen ihre identität zu bewahren. die us-amerikanische gemeinschaft entwickelte zudem diverse heimatkonzeptionen, die eine differenzierung nach generationen zulassen. in diesem beitrag werden antworten auf folgende fragen zur diskussion gestellt: welche unterschiede lassen sich in der konstruktion der heimat zwischen der einwandergeneration und in den usa sozialisierten generationen feststellen? gibt es analog zu eisenstadts trägergruppen für die konstruktion der nationalen identität ebenso erkennbare kollektive in der us-amerikanischen hmong gemeinschaft, die eine diasporische identität inaugurieren und prägen? einleitung die teilnahme der in laos lebenden ethnie der hmong am secret war zur unterstützung us-amerikanischer truppen hatte zur folge, dass mit der beendigung des krieges �975 65 aseas 1 (1) mehrere tausende hmong als politische flüchtlinge in westlichen ländern zuflucht suchten.� hauptaufnahmeländer, die asyl boten, waren unter anderem die usa, frankreich, australien und kanada.2 derzeitigen schätzungen zufolge leben gegenwärtig in den usa 250.000, in frankreich �0.000, in französisch-guyana �.000, in australien 2.000, in kanada 800 und in deutschland zirka 80 hmong (leepreecha zitiert nach tomforde 2005: �4�).� die ab �975 einsetzende zwangsmigration der hmong von südostasien in die westliche hemisphäre ließ eine situation entstehen, die als diaspora bezeichnet werden kann. die bedeutung des aus dem griechischen stammenden wortes diaspora ist zerstreuung oder verbreitung (mayer 2005: 8). es bezog sich ursprünglich ausschließlich auf die lebenssituation religiöser gemeinschaften, die inmitten einer andersgläubigen umwelt siedelten. die aus den erfahrungen der in der fremde lebenden juden und urchristen abgeleiteten einsichten wurden später auch auf nicht-religiöse gemeinschaften übertragen. in diesem in den kultur und sozialwissenschaften verankerten diskurs verwies diaspora nicht nur auf religiöse, sondern nun auch auf ethnische gemeinschaften, die sich durch vertreibung oder emigration von einem realen oder imaginierten heimatort auf mindestens zwei oder mehrere geografische orte, nationen oder regionen verteilten, in denen sie fortan zumeist als minderheit lebten (safran �99�: 8�; mayer 2005: ��; braziel, mannur 200�: �). die einzelnen mitglieder des diasporischen kollektives zeichneten sich dabei durch ein bewusstsein über den zustand des absoluten ‚zerstreut-seins’ aus. dieses bewusstsein war unter anderem geprägt von einer historizität der entwurzelung und des leidens, einer meist kollektiven und idealisierten konstruktion der heimat, die sich durch eine institutionalisierung im aufnahmeland manifestierte und damit oftmals eine heimatorientierung verband (safran �99�: 8�; cohen, r. �997: 26). im falle der hmong liegt diesem begriffsverständnis nach eine besondere diasporasituation vor. sie verfügten zu keinem zeitpunkt in ihrer geschichte über ein eigenes territorium oder über einen eigenen staat, aus dem eine vertreibung erfolgte. von den ursprünglichen siedlungsgebieten entlang des gelben flusses in china zogen tausende hmong in die nahezu unzugänglichen bergregionen der südwestlichen provinzen yunnan, guizhou, hunan und guangxi, um dem zunehmenden sinisierungsdruck der politik und gesellschaft dominierenden ethnischen han-chinesen auszuweichen. im �9. jahrhundert erstreckten sich die migrationsbewegungen einzelner hmong clans bis in die gebiete des heutigen südostasiens (yang, d. �99�). auf der suche nach neuem lebensraum stellte laos für sie eine neue wahlheimat dar, in der sie neben einer vielzahl ethnischer gruppierungen als minderheit � die rolle der hmong im vietnamkrieg vom ersten kontakt �959 der hmong mit den u.s. special forces bis zur formierung der hmong special guerilla units durch die cia ab dem jahre �96� wird in der entsprechenden literatur ausreichend diskutiert. vgl. dazu schanche �970; hamilton-merritt �99�; morrison �998; quincy 2000; mccoy 200�. 2 eine erste einführung in die jeweilige situation und den werdegang der hmong in den westlichen aufnahmeländern findet sich in yang, k. 200�. � die angegebenen zahlen entsprechen aufgrund nicht vorhandener statistischer angaben derzeitigen schätzungen. vgl. auch culas, michaud 2004: 92; yang, k. 200�: 277. 66 grit gigoleit globale diaspora der hmong aseas 1 (1) in den bergen lebten. gleiches traf auf thailand oder auch vietnam zu. eine erzwungene emigration als voraussetzung einer diaspora erfolgte jedoch nur aus laos. mit dieser zwangsmigration entstand eine nationale grenzen überschreitende zerstreuungssituation, die eine im sinne von benedict anderson imaginierte gemeinschaft entstehen ließ. andersons (�98�) einflussreiche these der imagined communities lässt sich von der vorstellung der nation als eine imaginierte politische gemeinschaft auf diasporische kollektive übertragen. da sich die einzelnen mitglieder mit einem diasporischen großkollektiv verbunden fühlen, dessen angehörige sie niemals sehen, ihnen begegnen oder von ihnen hören werden (anderson �99�: 6), sind diasporische kollektive gleichermaßen imaginiert. dennoch hat jeder einzelne volles vertrauen in ein anonymes und gleichzeitiges handeln des kollektives (anderson �997: 48). das großkollektiv hmong als eine imaginierte gemeinschaft versteht sich als ein verbund von gleichen (vgl. anderson �99�: �7), der durch die gemeinsame erfahrung der vertreibung in der vergangenheit und den neuanfang in einem anderen land maßgeblich geprägt wurde. entscheidend hierbei ist die größe des kollektives damit es sich nicht nur als eine imaginierte, sondern auch als diasporische gemeinschaft konstituiert (safran 2004: �7). der demografische faktor bedingt die entstehung von institutionen, die beispielsweise sprache, religion und traditionen der diasporischen gemeinschaft auch in der fremde bewahren und das kollektive wissen an die nachfolgenden generationen vermitteln. mittels dieser primordialen elemente wird eine diasporische identität, in der sich das großkollektiv hmong als eine ethnische einheit erachtet, betont und aufrechterhalten. das bestreben nach einer uniformen, die hmong vereinenden identität drückte der in australien lebende hmong gary yia lee in einer programmatischen rede anläßlich des zweiten internationalen symposiums der hmong �995 folgendermaßen aus: „the hmong, no matter where they are, need to know that the total sum is always bigger than its parts: the overall global hmong identity is greater than its many local differences and groups. [...] the biggest challenge for all hmong is how to apply their joint skills, [...], to turn our diverse language and customs into one unified and one hmong/miao identity“ [...] (lee, g. 1996: 14). wie aus dem zitat deutlich hervorgeht, soll dabei eine kollektive hmong identität erschaffen werden, welche die unterschiedlichen kulturellen merkmale zu einer allgemein gültigen norm formt. im folgenden werden die einzelnen mechanismen diskutiert, die eine konstruktion einer vermeintlich homogenen identität ermöglichen. neben der errichtung familialer als auch informeller netzwerke, welche die hmong über die kontinente hinweg miteinander verbinden, dient vor allem auch die konzeption von heimat und ursprung als identitätsund konsensstiftendes element. 67 aseas 1 (1) konstruktion und bewahrung der hmong identität living locally – acting globally: transnationale netzwerke die bewahrung einer einheitlichen hmong identität wird durch die weltweite vernetzung der diasporischen hmong gemeinschaften ermöglicht. hierbei lassen sich zunächst zwei arten der vernetzung voneinander unterscheiden. zum einen gibt es ein familiales netzwerk, das sich auf basis der clanzugehörigkeit formiert. der clan, xeem, als die größte soziale einheit bildet die basis jeglicher sozialer interaktionen.4 auch nach der umsiedlung in westliche aufnahmeländer hielten zahlreiche hmong trotz der weiten geografischen distanzen soziale beziehungen mit familienmitgliedern in thailand und anderswo aufrecht und nahmen aktiv am sozialen und ritualen leben der erweiterten familie beziehungsweise des clans teil. roberta julian (2004-05) führte in ihrer untersuchung über die us-amerikanische und australische hmong gemeinschaft aus, wie ein familiales netzwerk soziale bindungen stärkt, stabilität schafft und unter gegebenen umständen eine transnationale solidarität mobilisiert. aktivitäten des alltagsleben, festivitäten wie beispielsweise das traditionelle neujahrsfest (peb caug) oder auch rites de passage wie geburt, hochzeit und tod stellen dabei gelegenheiten dar, um neue verbindungen und soziale beziehungen über geopolitische grenzen hinweg zu schaffen und zu konsolidieren. transatlantische hochzeiten, die beispielsweise einzelne hmong familien aus frankreich mit französisch-guyana (clarkin 2005) oder auch aus deutschland mit den usa (yang, t. 200�) verbinden, zeugen ebenso von einer hohen mobilität und erweitern die soziokulturellen verbindungen. angesichts verbilligter reisemöglichkeiten wächst die bedeutung solch geschaffener sozialer netzwerke weiter an. neben dem informellen, familialen , entwickelte sich mit dem vermehrten einsatz elektronischer medien auch ein offizielles netzwerk zwischen der westlichen diaspora und südostasien, das gleichermaßen generationen umspannend wirkt. neue kommunikationsmöglichkeiten, wie beispielsweise virtuelle gesprächsräume im internet, begünstigen eine sofortige verbreitung von informationen und lassen zudem neue soziale multilokale räume entstehen. auf eigens eingerichteten websites und internetforen werden weltweit aktuelle probleme der hmong, insbesondere verstöße gegen die menschenrechte, diskutiert. ebenso lassen sich ankündigungen zu den kulturellen aktivitäten einzelner hmong gemeinschaften oder auch spezielle hinweise über reisemöglichkeiten und visabestimmungen finden. dieser augenblickliche austausch von nachrichten und neuigkeiten führt dabei zu einer besonderen dynamik und mobilität innerhalb der einzelnen hmong 4 die exakte anzahl der clans variiert je nach untersuchter quelle. so spricht thao, p. (�999: �2-��) beispielsweise von ursprünglich �2 clans in china, die sich im laufe der zeit in �8 clans ausgeweitet und heute noch in dieser form bestand haben. aufgrund der zahlreichen untergruppierungen ist es jedoch schwierig eine eindeutige abgrenzung und zugehörigkeit zu einen bestimmten clan zu vollziehen. 68 grit gigoleit globale diaspora der hmong aseas 1 (1) gemeinschaften. analog zu benedict andersons (�99�) ausführungen über printmedien, die ein gemeinsames nationales bewusstsein auch ohne face-to-face beziehungen erzeugen, wird mittels des einsatzes elektronischer medien im großkollektiv hmong ein entsprechendes zusammengehörigkeitsgefühl konstruiert, das jedoch von einem ausgeprägten bewusstsein der „globalen zerstreuung“ gekennzeichnet ist (anthias 200�: 6��; clifford �994). neben der in allen diasporischen gemeinschaften stattfindenden vernetzung sind die möglichkeiten der konstruktion einer homogenen identität und deren bewahrung immer in abhängigkeit zur sozialen und politischen umgebung des jeweiligen aufnahmelandes zu sehen und können dabei unterschiedliche ausdifferenzierungen annehmen (anthias �998; safran 2004). milton esman (�986 in: hutchinson, smith �996: ��8) benennt in diesem zusammenhang drei faktoren, die für ausmaß und intensität der identität von bedeutung sind: materielle, kulturelle und organisatorische ressourcen; die strukturellen möglichkeiten des gastlandes sowie die motivation, solidarität und empathie mit mitgliedern der gruppe in anderen aufenthaltsländern aufrechtzuerhalten. übertragen auf die diaspora der hmong gelang es vor allem der us-amerikanischen gemeinschaft, diese drei faktoren umzusetzen. konstitutionell verankerte rechte und freiheiten sowie die politisch multikulturelle ausrichtung der usa ermöglichten es dem kollektiv der hmong diverse einrichtungen und formale zusammenschlüsse zu bilden und ihrer identität damit einen sichtbaren ausdruck und zugleich permanenz zu verleihen. solche mechanismen lassen sich vor allem in der enklave von minneapolis/saint paul im bundesstaat minnesota finden. mit mehr als 40.000 hmong weisen die schwesterstädte die höchste urbane bevölkerungsdichte auf und bilden damit das soziokulturelle und politische zentrum in den usa. ein indikator ist beispielsweise die entstehung einer ethnischen medienlandschaft, die, trotz der geografischen distanz, anteil an der politischen und wirtschaftlichen entwicklung in südostasien nimmt. lokale, von hmong herausgegebene wochenzeitungen wie die hmong today und hmong times sowie diverse hmong radiostationen berichten regelmäßig in hmong und englisch über aktuelle geschehnisse in laos und thailand. aber auch die gründung eines akademischen (hmong studies journal) sowie eines literarischen journals (paj ntaub voice), eines archivs zur bewahrung des hmong erbes (hmong archives), eines an der concordia universität integriertes center for hmong studies oder auch das auf die bildung von jugendlichen ausgerichtete hmong cultural center sind beispiele einer weitreichenden institutionalisierung der hmong diaspora in den usa. einzelne programme und initiativen folgen dabei oftmals einem monolithischen kulturverständnis. die verstärkte betonung traditioneller aspekte wie beispielsweise die ausbildung von klassischen heiratsvermittlern führt häufig zu einer retraditionalisierung in der westlichen diaspora und lässt das bild einer statisch erscheinenden hmong kultur entstehen. kollektive erinnerungen werden immer wieder synchronisiert und 69 aseas 1 (1) vereinheitlicht (mayer 2005) und gelten fortan als standardisierungen in dem bestreben nach einer einheitlichen hmong identität. die auswirkungen der nutzung verfügbarer ressourcen und struktureller möglichkeiten sowie des letztgenannten faktors, solidarität und empathie mit den mitgliedern in anderen exilgemeinden zu teilen, lässt sich an folgendem beispiel aufzeigen und zusammenfassen. im oktober 2005 und den folgemonaten lief eine welle des protestes durch die us-amerikanische hmong gemeinschaft. anlass war die meldung, dass die leichname von in wat tham krabok5 verstorbenen hmong nach der offiziellen schließung der siedlung im mai 2005 exhumiert worden waren. nach einer anordnung des thailändischen gesundheitsministeriums wurden schätzungen zufolge bis zu �027 grabstellen ausgehoben, um eine verschmutzung des grundwassers und damit die verbreitung von krankheiten in den angrenzenden dörfern zu verhindern (asian american press, 27.0�. 2007). die exhumierung erfolgte nach einem buddhistischen ritual, das die physische und spirituelle reinigung der knochen beinhaltete, einer im anschluss von mönchen durchgeführten weihung sowie die von gebeten begleitete kremation. nach traditioneller hmong religion stellte dies jedoch eine schändung der verstorbenen dar. mit der zerstörung der physischen hülle des körpers, wurde der seele des verblichenen das freie geleit ins jenseits versagt und folglich der zyklus der wiedergeburt empfindlich gestört. die empörung über die nach der religiösen vorstellung der hmong unsachgemäßen und würdelosen behandlung der gräber war demzufolge beachtlich. es setzte eine politisierung der gemeinde ein, als mit hilfe von menschenrechtsaktivisten des human rights program der universität von minnesota, demonstrationen und unterschriftensammlungen an den us-kongress, an die regierung, die botschaft und das königshaus thailands sowie un-beauftragte für religiöse intoleranz und gegenwärtigen rassismus auch die öffentliche aufmerksamkeit massiv auf die lage in wat tham krabok gelenkt und medial ausgewertet wurde.6 wie dieses beispiel verdeutlicht, wurde ein lokales, auf zentralthailand begrenztes ereignis zum mittelpunkt des allgemeinen interesses einer global vernetzten diaspora. ressourcen und strukturelle möglichkeiten in den usa ließen eine politische mobilisierung einzelner mitglieder zu. die us-amerikanische hmong gemeinschaft schöpfte dabei aus dem vorhandenen repertoire an politischen strategien der einflussnahme wie beispielsweise ein gemeinsames lobbying, um ein konkretes ziel – die beendigung der exhumierung – zu erreichen. die nutzung 5 nach der offiziellen schließung der flüchtlingslager in den �990er jahren in thailand, bildete die als drogenrehabilationszentrum bekannte buddhistische tempelanlage wat tham krabok eine zufluchtsstätte für die noch in thailand verbliebenen hmong flüchtlinge. nach dem tod des abtes wurden die hmong im april 200� unter die aufsicht des thailändischen militärs gestellt. im dezember 200� verkündete das us-state departement in einer offiziellen erklärung, dass letztmalig zirka �5.000 hmong aus wat tham krabok im sinne einer familienzusammenführung die einreise in die usa gewährt wird. bis ende 2005 wurde die mehrheit der flüchtlinge vornehmlich in den hmonggemeinden kaliforniens und des mittleren westens eingegliedert. 6 die ereignisse wurden besonders von den wochenzeitungen der hmong gemeinde hmong today, hmong times und die panasiatische gemeinde betreffende asian american press in minneapolis/saint paul emotional aufgewertet und dokumentiert. 70 grit gigoleit globale diaspora der hmong aseas 1 (1) moderner kommunikationstechnologien verband des weiteren die transnationalen aktivitäten der einzelnen gemeinschaften in den usa mit thailand. die einzelnen mitglieder beteiligten sich dabei sowohl in der herkunfts als auch in der residenzgesellschaft über familiäre bande hinaus. das gemeinsame auftreten als eine interessengruppe erlangte internationale beachtung (vgl. brah �996: �95) und förderte zudem die solidarität und empathie unter den mitgliedern der diaspora. gleichermaßen stärkte das gemeinsame vorgehen die wahrnehmung einer kollektiven hmong identität trotz der globalen zerstreuungssituation. heimatländer der fantasie? reale und imaginierte heimatkonzeptionen neben dem bewusstsein der zerstreuung ist die identität von diaspora-gemeinschaften oftmals von rivalisierenden zugehörigkeiten und loyalitätsbekundungen zwischen dem lokalen (aufnahmeland) und dem globalen (heimatland) geprägt (anthias 200�; clifford �994). in diesem spannungsfeld steht einer im aufnahmeland erreichten akkomodation ein zumeist kollektives konstrukt der fernen „heimat“ und des ursprungs gegenüber. der grundsatz „to stay and to be different“, mit dem james clifford (�994: �08) die parität zwischen anpassung und gleichzeitiger kultureller abgrenzung der schwarzen diaspora in großbritannien kennzeichnete, zeigt, dass eine zugehörigkeit oftmals nicht eindeutig verortet werden kann. ein gemeinsamer, zumeist mythifizierter ursprung trägt ähnlich dem konstrukt der nation auch bei einer diasporischen gemeinschaft zu einem identitätsstiftenden zusammenhalt bei (smith �986: 24; cohen �997: 26). die konstruktion des ursprungs und der heimat ist hierbei ein dynamischer prozess, der multiple lokalitäten in form von realen geografischen plätzen oder imaginierten räumen entstehen lässt. die in dieser form konstruierte heimat bildet dann den ort mit dem spirituelle, emotionale und kulturelle zugehörigkeiten assoziiert werden (safran 2004: ��) und damit einen wichtigen symbolischen als auch physischen referenzpunkt für die diasporische gemeinschaft. die heimatkonstruktionen der hmong sind ebenso multilokal (schein �999). für die in südostasien verstreut lebenden hmong diente die vorstellung eines imaginierten heimatlandes (rushdie �992) in china als ein vereinendes symbol. in zahlreichen legenden mythifiziert und romantisiert, versinnbildlichte es die symbiose zwischen den hmong als ethnie mit einem spezifischen territorium (smith �986: 28; schein 2004: 27�). während china als ein abstraktes ideal einer nostalgisch verklärten vergangenheit – das land der ahnen und traditionellen kultur – konzeptualisiert wird, bildet laos hingegen ein heimatland, das aus konkreten individuellen erinnerungen und vorstellungen geformt ist (schein �999: 706; yang, k. 200�: 295). trotz der durch den vietnamkrieg verursachten zerstörung, der aufgabe des agrarischen lebensstils 71 aseas 1 (1) und der traumatischen flucht nach thailand wurde laos zum referenzpunkt der westlichen diasporischen gemeinschaft (tomforde 2005: �45). die konstruktion einer heimat wird gemäß den diaspora-konzeptionen (cohen, r. �997: 26) von der gesamten gemeinschaft getragen. in solch einem diskurs werden diasporische gemeinschaften als in sich geschlossene, homogene systeme erfasst (vgl. safran 2004). nicht ausreichend reflektiert wird dabei, dass es sich um heterogene kollektive handelt, die beständigen einflüssen der jeweiligen aufnahmeländer unterliegen und demzufolge eine stratifizierung beispielsweise entlang von sozialen klassen, gender und generationen zulassen (anthias �998; julian 2004-05: 9). im falle des us-amerikanischen hmong kollektives lässt sich eine differenzierung nach generationen in der konzeption von heimat, ursprung und verortung nachzeichnen. vorstellungen über die lokalität der heimat und die damit verbundenen sozialen und emotionalen beziehungen variieren hierbei beträchtlich. analog zu den von shmuel eisenstadt (�99�: 2�) konzipierten trägergruppen, welche die konstruktion einer nationalen identität inaugurieren und prägen, sind es auch bei den hmong nur bestimmte gruppen des kollektives, die eine heimatkonzeption formieren. der kulturellen intelligenzia aus eisenstadts modell entsprechend ist es vor allem eine akademisch orientierte, gebildete mittelschicht des hmong kollektives, das china als symbolisches zentrum einer traditionellen hmong kultur wahrnimmt. ökonomisch und sozial in der amerikanischen mehrheitsgesellschaft integriert, ist es diesem, wenngleich auch sehr kleinem segment möglich, sich auf kulturelle spurensuche in china zu begeben. eine stetige zunahme an dissertationen, videodokumentationen, wissenschaftlichen artikeln sowie eigens initiierten forschungsreisen zu hmong dörfern, manifestieren china neben dem überlieferten anspruch auch im akademischen bereich als die vermeintlich kulturelle heimat der hmong (julian 2004-05).7 neben der trägergruppe der bildungselite konstruierte jedoch vor allem die ältere generation, als folge der umsiedlung in drittländer, aus der fülle individueller erfahrungen heraus ein ‚heimatland der fantasie’ (rushdie �992), das in laos lokalisiert ist. es entstand hierbei ein bild eines prärevolutionären laos’, in dem sie frei und unabhängig von politischen dominanzbestrebungen lebten. ein laos, das in dieser form nie existierte und den sozialpolitischen realitäten nur ungenügend entsprach (vgl. cohen, r. �997; vgl. beck-gernsheim 2004). dennoch verfügte es als imaginiertes heimatland über genügend anziehungskraft, so dass zahlreiche hmong zunächst die ausreise aus den flüchtlingslagern in ein westliches aufnahmeland verweigerten und später ernste rückkehrabsichten bekundeten. 7 das center for hmong studies an der concordia university, st. paul, usa, beispielsweise bot im november 2000 erstmalig eine studienreise nach china an, welche im januar 2007 wiederholt wurde. für eine vollständige auflistung über wissenschaftliche artikel, thesen und dissertationen über hmong in china siehe die von pfeiffer erstellte bibliografie unter www.hmongstudies.com/hmongchina.html. 72 grit gigoleit globale diaspora der hmong aseas 1 (1) die entwicklung einer rückkehrbewegung wird in den diaspora-konzeptionen wie bei robin cohen (�997: 26) von der gesamten diaspora-gemeinschaft getragen. in der vorliegenden untersuchung war dies jedoch nur für ein bestimmtes segment der hmong gemeinde zutreffend: bei den veteranen. zahlreiche ältere hmong ließen eine zumeist nostalgisch verklärte rückkehrorientierung erkennen.8 diese war jedoch nicht ausschließlich symbolisch zu verstehen, um soziale widrigkeiten und marginalisierung im aufnahmeland zu ertragen und sich darüber hinaus von der mehrheitsgesellschaft abzugrenzen (vgl. beck-gernsheim 2004: 22). laos vom kommunismus zu „befreien“ und im anschluss ähnlich der biblischen analogie in das „gelobte land“ einzuziehen, etablierte sich zu einer konkreten vorstellung, die große unterstützung fand. wie eine dreiteilige reportage der lokalen tageszeitung star tribune von minneapolis und saint paul, mn, vom juli 2005 ausführte, konnte der im vietnamkrieg zu ruhm und ehre erlangte general der hmong vang pao sich auf den heimkehrmythos berufen, um eine rückbehrbewegung nach laos zu realisieren. vang pao vertraute dabei auf eine loyale anhängerschaft, die ein solches vorhaben finanziell großzügig unterstützen würde. gedanken an glorreiche zeiten und alte ideologische überzeugungen mobilisierend, gelang es ihm mit dem verkauf von militärischen rängen und monatlichen kollekten mehrere millionen dollar für seine �98� gegründete geheimorganisation neo hom (united front for the national liberation of laos) zu erwirtschaften, um diese rückkehrabsicht im bewusstsein allgegenwärtig zu halten. als im laufe der zeit jedoch immer deutlicher wurde, dass eine militärische rückkehr nach laos nur schwer umsetzbar ist, ließ auch die bereitschaft zahlreicher hmong veteranen sich finanziell zu beteiligen zunächst einmal nach.9 im juni 2007 wurde jedoch ein erneuter versuch von vang pao öffentlich bekannt. in einer am 4. juni vom justizministerium, dem bureau of alcohol, tobacco, firearms and explosives (atf) und dem fbi gemeinsam herausgegebenen presseerklärung wurde die vereitelung eines von ihm geplanten putschversuches mitgeteilt. gemäß der strafrechtlichen anklageschrift plante vang pao mit dem kauf von waffen, munition und abwehrraketen im wert von zehn millionen us-dollar die durchführung des sturzes der kommunistischen regierung in vientiane.�0 einzelne regierungsgebäude sollten dabei in einer analogie zum terroranschlag vom ��. september 200� in new york dem erdboden gleich 8 clarkin (2005) zog für seine schriftliche befragung der hmong in französisch-guyana als vergleichsgruppe �08 hmong individuen im alter von �8-5� aus den bundesstaaten rhode island, massachusetts, wisconsin und minnesota hinzu. die frage nach einer rückkehr nach laos, um dort für immer zu leben, wurde von 44,8% der usamerikanischen hmong mit „ja“ beantwortet (im vergleich zu �2,9% [entspricht �78 personen] der befragten in französisch-guyana). 9 als im rahmen einer staatsanwaltschaftlichen untersuchung bekannt wurde, dass zahlreiche spenden veruntreut bzw. für private angelegenheiten der familie vang pao genutzt wurden, führte dies zu einer spaltung der hmong gemeinschaft in den usa. �0 vang pao sowie acht seiner mitstreiter wurden am 04. juni 2007 in kalifornien verhaftet. neben der anklage der verschwörung wird vang pao vor allem des vergehens nach dem neutrality act bezichtigt, der konspirative, militärisch ausgerichtete tätigkeiten gegenüber einem land mit dem sich die usa im friedensverhältnis befindet unter strafe stellt. 73 aseas 1 (1) gemacht werden und symbolisch die handlungsschwäche der kommunistischen regierung laos’ demonstrieren. der geplante putschversuch ließ damit nicht nur die rückkehrorientierung wieder erheblich an bedeutung und aktualität gewinnen, sondern zeigte zudem deutliche tendenzen in der entwicklung eines wie benedict anderson (�998: 7�-74) formulierte „longdistance nationalism“ auf. aus der sicherheit des aufnahmelandes usa heraus, war es vang pao möglich, mit spendengeldern us-amerikanischer hmong die anfänglichen überfälle entlang der thailändisch-laotischen grenze zu initiieren und einen putschversuch zu planen. die auswirkungen und konsequenzen des vereitelten coup werden sich für die in laos hinterbliebenen hmong jedoch weitaus dramatischer gestalten als für vang pao und seine gefolgsleute in den usa. in dem spannungsfeld der verortung der heimat steht der einwandergeneration die junge in den usa sozialisierte generation der hmong gegenüber. die konzeption der heimat laos trägt für die junge generation nicht die assoziationen von freiheit und selbstbestimmung, sondern wird stark von der us-amerikanischen soziokulturellen und politischen umgebung beeinflusst. die erfahrungen der adoleszenz in einem hoch technologisierten, postindustriellen land, ließen eine wahrnehmung von laos entstehen, das sich im vergleich zu den usa durch armut, korruption und rückständigkeit auszeichnet. attribute, die laos als heimat wenig attraktiv erscheinen lassen und folglich keine soziale, politische oder auch kulturelle identifikation zulassen (vgl. safran �99�: 9�). william safran (2004: �5) bezeichnete diesen vorgang als „entdiasporisierung“, da die einzelnen merkmale wie beispielsweise das kollektive bewusstsein der zerstreuung, der heimatmythos und kulturelle elemente wie sprache oder religion abnehmen und an bedeutung für die junge generation verlieren. durch externe ereignisse in der heimat (erneute vertreibung) oder auch im aufnahmeland (marginalisierung) lässt sich das diasporische bewusstsein jedoch re-mobilisieren. die bindungen der jungen generation an das diasporische kollektiv können dabei unabhängig von der durch das generationsgefälle bedingten antagonistisch ausgeprägten zuordnung von zugehörigkeiten sporadisch wiederbelebt werden und entsprechende handlungen hervorrufen. radhakrishnan (200�: ��9) verweist in diesem zusammenhang auf die notwendigkeit zu unterscheiden zwischen der reinen aufnahme von informationen und kenntnissen über das heimatland und einer tatsächlichen emotionalen beteiligung, die erst eine re-mobilisierung der diasporischen identität bestärkt und eine identifikation zulässt. in der reaktion auf die jeweiligen ereignisse zeigt sich neben dem generationsgefälle zwischen vergangenheitsund zukunftsorientierter gesinnung die authentizität und das ausmaß, in dem das diasporische bewusstsein der jungen generation revitalisiert werden kann. exemplarisch lässt sich dies veranschaulichen an den im dezember 2004 ratifizierten miscellaneous trade and technical corrections act of 2004 (h.r. �047), wodurch die 74 grit gigoleit globale diaspora der hmong aseas 1 (1) �997 initiierten bilateralen handelsbeziehungen der usa mit laos zu normalisierten handelsbeziehungen (ntr) ausgeweitet wurden (lum 2004). konservative und mehrheitlich ältere hmong lehnten nicht nur dieses vorhaben, sondern jegliche zusammenarbeit mit der kommunistisch orientierten regierung in vientiane entschieden ab, da dies einem verrat gleichkäme (vgl. yang, k. 200�: 285). in saint paul protestierten daraufhin zirka 400 hmong und ethnische laoten vor dem büro der kongressabgeordneten betty mccollum, die das vorhaben im kongress unterstütze. im gegensatz dazu stand das kollektiv vornehmlich jüngerer und liberal orientierter hmong, die die wiederaufnahme von handelsbeziehungen als einen ersten schritt einer demokratisierung laos’ verstand. zukunftsorientiert erhofften sie eine weitere liberalisierung des landes und vor allem die einhaltung von menschenrechten, in deren folge bestehende repressalien der regierung gegenüber den sich noch im dschungel versteckt haltenden hmong familien aufgehoben werden könnten.�� auch wenn dieses ereignis zunächst erst einmal entgegengesetzte reaktionen innerhalb des hmong kollektives erzeugte, erfolgte dennoch eine grundsätzliche bestärkung der diasporischen identität. die einzelnen mitglieder, unabhängig des alters, zeigten nicht nur interesse, sondern ebenso eine emotionale beteiligung. das bewusstsein der sozialen zugehörigkeit zu einem diasporischen kollektiv wurde gestärkt und ließ eine identifikation zu, die das weitere denken und handeln motivierte. gleichermaßen wurde – wenn auch auf unterschiedliche art und weise – versucht, einfluss auf weltpolitische entwicklungen zu nehmen. schlussbetrachtungen wie in den vorangehenden absätzen deutlich wurde, ist das kollektiv der hmong bemüht, seine identität auch in der diaspora aufrechtzuerhalten. mittels langjährig erprobter mechanismen der vernetzung ist trotz einer globalen zerstreuung ein enger sozialer und spiritueller zusammenhalt zwischen einzelnen gemeinschaften zu verzeichnen. das bewusstsein um und das bemühen nach einer einheitlichen hmong identität vereint die mitglieder zusätzlich. diese identität zeichnet sich dabei durch einen rückzug auf vertraute, aus der heimat bekannte, traditionelle symbole aus. mittels der bewahrung dieser standardisierungen und �� im jahre 2002 veröffentlichte die hmong aktivistengruppe fact finding commission eine dokumentation („the u.s. secret war veterans and their families“), die erstmalig über die überlebenden und die nachkommen der sich seit kriegsende �975 in der saisomboun special zone im dschungel versteckt haltenden hmong berichtete. seitdem haben auch zahlreiche westliche journalisten („welcome to the jungle“ in: time magazine, 28. april 200�; „report on the situation in the saisomboun special zone, mai 2006) versucht, die aufmerksamkeit der weltöffentlichkeit auf die geschätzten 800-2.000 vermeintlichen rebellen zu lenken, die beständigen angriffen des laotischen und vietnamesischen militärs ausgesetzt sind. die laotische regierung weist jedoch bis dato jegliche vorwürfe eines erneuten genozides an den hmong vehement zurück (siehe auch lee, tapp 2005). 75 aseas 1 (1) den loyalitätsbekundungen zum konstruierten heimatland ist es möglich ein leben in der fremde zu führen, sich aber dennoch dem großkollektiv hmong zugehörig zu fühlen. die dabei oft stattfindende überbetonung als rückzugsstrategie führt häufig zu einer re-ethnisierung der gemeinschaft (vgl. beck-gernsheim 2004). gleichzeitig – und das scheint auf den ersten blick ein paradox zu sein – zeichnet sich das konstrukt der homogenen identität durch ein hohes maß an flexibilität und adaptionsfähigkeit aus. wie das mediale netzwerk der hmong deutlich zeigt, werden besonders technologische innovationen bereitwillig aufgenommen (vgl. leeprecha 2004), wenn diese zu einer stärkung der eigenen identität beitragen. die strategie der bewusst eingesetzten selektiven adaption ermöglicht es dem großkollektiv hmong, eine homogene identität auch in der fremde zu konstruieren. den diskurs dominierend ist dabei die us-amerikanische gemeinschaft (vgl. julian 200405). hier bleibt vor allem abzuwarten, inwieweit es diesem kollektiv gelingt, die internen einflüsse, wie beispielsweise der putschversuch von vang pao, als auch externe faktoren wie der ntr zwischen den usa und laos, miteinander zu vereinen. eine besondere herausforderung dürfte zusätzlich in der einbeziehung der jüngeren generationen bestehen. der vereitelte putschversuch vang paos scheint seit langer zeit erstmalig wieder die generationen in einem dialog miteinander zu vereinen. in welche richtung aber wird sich die identitätskonstruktion entwickeln, wenn es einmal keine führungspersönlichkeit wie vang pao oder die gemeinsame feindvorstellung einer kommunistischen regierung in vientiane mehr geben wird? wofür wird sich die junge generation entscheiden und wer wird dann die führungsrolle übernehmen? welche verschiedenen ausprägungen werden die heimatkonstruktion dann aufweisen? diese aus dem empirischen kontext der hmong entstandenen fragen erfordern nicht nur weitere untersuchungen, sondern verlangen zugleich nach einer differenzierteren konzeptionalisierung von diaspora-gemeinschaften, da diese keine statischen gruppen bilden, sondern wie alle kollektive beständigen einflüssen unterliegen. bibliografie anderson, b. (�99�). imagined communities. reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. london: verso. anderson, b. (�998). the spectre of comparisons: nationalism, southeast-asia and the world. london: verso. anthias, f. (�998). evaluating ‘diaspora’: beyond ethnicity?. sociology �2(�), 557-580. anthias, f. (200�). new hybridities, old concepts: the limits of ‘culture’. ethnic and racial studies 24(4), 6�9-64�. 76 grit gigoleit globale diaspora der hmong aseas 1 (1) beck-gernsheim, e. (2004). wir und die anderen. frankfurt am main: suhrkamp verlag. brah, a. (�996). cartographies of diaspora – contesting identities. london, new york: routledge. braziel, j., a. mannur (200�). nation, migration, globalization: points of contention in diaspora studies. in j. braziel, a. mannur (hg.), theorizing diaspora, (s. �-20). oxford: blackwell publishing ltd. clarkin, p. (2005). hmong resettlement in french guiana. hmong studies journal 6, �-27. clifford, j. (�994). diasporas. cultural anthropology 9(�), �02-��8. cohen, r. (�997). global diasporas – an introduction. london: routledge. culas, c., j. michaud (2004). a contribution to the study of hmong (miao) migrations and history. in n. tapp et al. (hg.), hmong/miao in asia (s. 6�-97). chiang mai: silkworm books. eisenstadt, s. (�99�). die konstruktion nationaler identitäten in vergleichender perspektive. in b. giesen (hg.), nationale und kulturelle identität – studien zurentwicklung des kollektiven bewußtseins in der neuzeit (s. 2�-�8). frankfurt am main: surkamp verlag. esman, m. (�986). diasporas and international relations. in j. hutchinson, a. smith (hg.), ethnicity (�996). oxford, new york: oxford university press. hamilton-merritt, j. (�99�), tragic mountains: hmong, the americans and the secret wars for laos 19421992. bloomington: indiana university press. julian, r. (2004-05). hmong transnational identity: the gendering of contested discourses. hmong studies journal 5, �-2�. kokot, w. et al. (2004). introduction. in w. kokot, k. tölölyan, c. alfonso (hg.), diaspora, identity and religion – new directions in theory and research. london und new york: routledge. lee, g. (�996). cultural identity in post-modern society: reflections on what is a hmong?. hmong studies journal �, �-�4. lum, t. (2004). laos: background and u.s. relations. crs report for kongress. mayer, r. (2005). diaspora – eine kritische begriffsbestimmung. bielefeld: transcript verlag. mccoy, a. (200�). the politics of heroin: cia complicity in the global drug trade. chicago: lawrence hill books. morrison, g. (�989). sky is falling – an oral history of the cia’s evacuation of the hmong from laos. jefferson, n.c. und london: mcfarland and company, inc., publishers. quincy, k. (2000). harvesting pa chay’s wheat – the hmong and america’s secret war in laos. spokane: eastern washington university press. radhakrishnan, r. (200�). ethnicity in an age of diaspora. in j. braziel, a. mannur (hg.), theorizing diaspora (s. ��9-��2). oxford: blackwell publishing ltd. rushdie, s. (�992). heimatländer der phantasie – essays und kritiken 1981-1991. münchen: kindler verlag. 77 aseas 1 (1) safran, w. (�99�). diasporas in modern societies: myths of homeland and return. diaspora �, 8�-99. safran, w. (2004). deconstructing and comparing diasporas. in w. kokot, k. tölölyan, c. alfonso (hg.), diaspora, identity and religion – new directions in theory and research. london und new york: routledge. schanche, d. (�970). mister pop. new york: mckay. schein, l. (�999). diaspora politics, homeland erotics, and the materializing of memory. positions 7(�), 697-7�0. schein, l. (2004). hmong/miao transnationality: identity beyond culture. in n. tapp et al. (hg.), hmong/ miao in asia. chiang mai: silkworm books. smith, a. (�986). the ethnic origin of nations. oxford, uk: blackwell. thao, p. (�999). mong education at the crossroads. lanham: university press of america. tomforde, m. (2005). the hmong mountains: cultural spatiality of the hmong in northern thailand. hamburg: lit verlag. yang, d. (�99�). hmong at the turning point. minneapolis: world bridge associates, ltd. yang, k. (200�). hmong diaspora of the post-war period. asian and pacific migration journal �2(�), 27�-�0�. yang, t. (200�). hmong of germany: preliminary report on the resettlement of lao hmong refugees in germany. hmong studies journal 4, �-�4. zeitungsartikel hmong times 0�.0�.2006, „senator mee moua hosts second meeting on hmong graves“. asian american press 2�.05.2005, “rebuilding relations with lao pdr”. �0.0�.06, “families act on grave desecration”. 27.0�.2007, “wat graves desecration committee reports progress”. star tribune – newspaper of the twin cities 0�.07.2005, “the convert wars of vang pao”. 04.07.2005, “special report: reality gets in the way of loyalty to general”. 05.07.2005, ”ex-guerilla’s gamble for peace backfires”. 78 grit gigoleit globale diaspora der hmong water supply or ‘beautiful latrines’? microcredit for rural water supply and sanitation in the mekong delta, vietnam aseas 5(1) 10 11 aktuelle südostasienforschung / current research on south-east asia water supply or ‘beautiful latrines’? microcredit for rural water supply and sanitation in the mekong delta, vietnam nadine reis1 & peter p. mollinga2 citation reis, n., & mollinga, p. p. (2012). water supply or ‘beautiful latrines’? microcredit for rural water supply and sanitation in the mekong delta, vietnam. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 5(1), 10-29. around half of the mekong delta’s rural population lacks year-round access to clean water. in combination with inadequate hygiene and poor sanitation this creates a high risk of diseases. microcredit schemes are a popular element in addressing such problems on the global policy level. the present paper analyses the contradictory results of such a microcredit programme for rural water supply and sanitation in the context of the mekong delta, vietnam, through a qualitative study primarily based on semi-structured interviews in rural communes of can tho city. we come to the conclusion that the programme has a positive eff ect regarding the safer disposal of human excreta as well as surface water quality, but a marginal impact on poverty reduction as it only reaches better-off households already having access to clean water. the paper shows how the outcome of rural water supply and sanitation policies are strongly infl uenced by the local ecological, technological, and social settings, in particular by stakeholders’ interests. the authors challenge the assumption that water supply and sanitation should be integrated into the same policy in all circumstances. keywords: water; sanitation; microcredit; mekong delta; vietnam etwa die hälfte der ländlichen bevölkerung des mekong-deltas hat nicht das ganze jahr über zugang zu sauberem wasser. zusammen mit unzureichender hygiene und mangelnder sanitärer grundversorgung erhöht diese situation das krankheitsrisiko. auf globaler ebene sind mikrokreditprogramme eine gefragte strategie, um diese probleme zu behandeln. der vorliegende artikel analysiert die widersprüchlichen ergebnisse eines solchen mikrokreditprogramms für ländliche wasserund sanitäre grundversorgung im mekong-delta in vietnam im rahmen einer qualitativen studie, die auf halbstrukturierten interviews im raum can tho city basiert. die studie kommt zu dem schluss, dass das programm eine positive wirkung in bezug auf die sichere entsorgung von fäkalien und die qualität des regenwassers hat, jedoch nur einen begrenzten beitrag zur armutsbekämpfung leisten kann, da hauptsächlich fi nanziell besser gestellte haushalte erreicht werden, die bereits zugang zu sauberem wasser haben. der artikel zeigt, dass die wirkung von ländlicher wasserund sanitärer grundversorgung maßgeblich von lokalen ökologischen, technologischen und sozialen verhältnissen beeinfl usst wird, allen voran von den unterschiedlichen interessensgruppen. die autorinnen stellen die annahme in frage, dass wasserund sanitäre grundversorgung unter allen umständen in die gleiche politische strategie integriert sein sollten. schlagworte: wasser; sanitäre grundversorgung; mikrokredit; mekong-delta; vietnam 1 nadine reis has completed her phd in development sociology at the university of bonn, germany. she is currently a researcher at the institute for social and development studies, munich school of philosophy, germany. contact: nadine.reis@hfph.de (corresponding author) d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -5 .1 -2 aseas 5(1) 10 11 introduction3 microfinance instruments in poverty alleviation programmes have classically been geared towards the provision of midget credits with which the borrowers are able to finance small-scale business activities and thereby improve their livelihoods. recently, the approach has been transferred to other areas of development policy (saywell & fonseca, 2006). due to the pressure to meet the millennium development goals (mdgs) and the popularity of cost recovery policies, microcredit is now also applied in the water supply and sanitation (wss) sector (mehta & knapp, 2004; saywell & fonseca, 2006). for sanitation it is seen as a useful approach because the supplydriven strategy of building toilets with household subsidies often resulted in unused facilities (mehta & knapp, 2004, p. 10). the paradigm shift in global sanitation policy has been described as a shift from “financing sanitation facilities” to “funding sanitation promotion and leveraging resources” (mehta & knapp, 2004, p. 16). as an element of its national rural water supply and sanitation strategy (nrwss)4, and with the support of an international donor consortium, the vietnamese government approved a loan programme for rural water supply and sanitation (rwss) in april 2004. this aims to “increase quickly the rate of rural households having access to clean water and hygienic constructions” (vietnam bank for social policies [vbsp], 2008). however, research on water and sanitation has pointed out that “policy debates and often generalised, globalised arguments that underpin them often remain disconnected from the everyday experiences of poor and marginalised women and men”, while current approaches fail to address “the patterns of complexity and interaction between the social, technological, and ecological/hydrological dimensions of water and sanitation systems” (mehta et al., 2007, p. 2). this paper analyses the microcredit component of the vietnamese government’s rwss policy. first, it aims to assess the programme’s effectiveness in reaching its goals. in doing so, it contributes to the question if and in which way microfinance 2 peter p. mollinga is professor of development studies at the school of oriental and african studies, university of london, uk. 3 this paper is an edited version of an article first published as a working paper at the center of development research, university of bonn (reis & mollinga, 2009). 4 the nrwss was approved by the prime minister in 2000. the main responsible agency for its implementation is the ministry of agriculture and rural development (mard), including its sub-branches and departments. the national goal is to provide all rural people with sufficient clean water and hygienic latrines by 2020 (moc & mard, 2000, p. 11). nrwss is supported by a consortium of international donors (denmark, australia, the netherlands, and recently, the uk). nadine reis & peter p. mollinga water supply or ‘beautiful latrines’? aseas 5(1) 12 13 is a useful approach for solving the financing gap in rwss. second, the paper goes beyond mere policy evaluation by showing how the local outcome of rwss policies is strongly connected to the socio-political dynamics in complex water supply and sanitation systems, particularly with the interests of involved stakeholders.5 research was carried out during a one-year stay in can tho city6 in 2008/2009 as part of the bmbf7-funded interdisciplinary research project water-related information system for the sustainable development of the mekong delta, vietnam (wisdom). the paper draws on 28 semi-structured interviews with officials on four administrative levels (commune, district, province, and national government), staff of donor agencies as well as households in three rural communes of can tho city.8 study communes were chosen based on selecting typical cases that represent a larger number of communes as well as geographical distribution. interviews were conducted with the aid of interpreters and analysed by using qualitative data analysis software. water supply and sanitation in the mekong delta the vietnamese mekong delta is an area where water is naturally abundant. in spite of that, the population faces increasing problems with regards to domestic water supply. because of the settlement pattern, which follows the delta’s dense network of rivers and canals, rural households almost exclusively used rain and river water for domestic purposes until recently. river water is usually filled into buckets, transported to the house and stored in jars. since the 1980s, surface water has been polluted through the intensification of agriculture, the establishment of industrial parks, the rise in industrial fish production, and population growth. therefore, it has become popular to drill private wells, which is, however, expensive due to groundwater depths of 60 to 100 metres and only affordable for relatively wealthy households. the government agency responsible for managing water supply in the rural areas, centre for rural water supply and environmental sanitation (cerwass), exclusively focuses on the construction of 5 for general discussion on water management in the mekong delta, see kakönen (2008), miller (2003), and molle (2005). for a discussion on the politics of donor policy in the vietnamese water sector, see molle & hoanh (2007). 6 in spite of can tho’s administrative status as city, many areas remain peri-urban or rural, with a large share of the population depending on agriculture for their livelihoods. 7 bmbf = german ministry for education and research. 8 the communes are thanh quoi in vinh thanh district, truong long in phong dien district, and truong xuan in co do district. aseas 5(1) 12 13 small-scale piped water supply schemes which abstract groundwater. this approach has so far not been able to solve the problems the rural population faces. this is related, firstly, to the difficult economic situation of the piped water systems, which prohibits the comprehensive coverage of all areas with water supply stations and the connection of all households to the networks.9 secondly, the use of groundwater is ecologically not sustainable due to the fast depletion of the resource (monre, 2009; nuber et al., 2008). our assessment is that official government statistics significantly underestimate the percentage of rural households that lack year-round access to clean water (for a detailed discussion on the compilation of statistics, see reis, 2012, pp. 134-142) based on an evaluation of numerous interviews with local authorities, water supply station managers, and households, our estimate is that around 30 to 50 percent of the population lack year-round access to clean water in the rural areas of can tho city. the situation is especially problematic in areas without public water supply networks and in the dry season when rainwater is not available (reis, 2012, pp. 56-59). for sanitation, people traditionally use fishpond or river toilets. only 26 percent of households are reported to have hygienic latrines in the mekong delta (ministry of health & united nations children’s fund, 2007). a fishpond toilet consists of two planks, installed above the fishpond that rural households very commonly have near the house, surrounded by a visual cover made of leaves, plastic sheets or other materials. people believe the excreta make the fish grow faster. the water of fishponds is regularly released into the river or canal for exchanging the water. according to authorities, about one third of the waste is eaten by the fish and two thirds are released into rivers and canals. if the household has no fishpond, the excreta are directly disposed into the river or canal. current sanitation practices pose a health risk as excreta contaminate the water resource used for drinking and other domestic activities. the question is whether the rwss microcredit programme is a useful instrument for improving access to clean water and hygienic sanitation in the delta region. how is policy “digested” (molle, 2005, p. 25) when it meets the complex socio-political, technological, and ecological local setting? 9 that piped water supply is economically not feasible in the study area is related to different factors. most importantly, the diversity of water sources available in the rural areas of can tho implies that, unlike in many other areas of the world, piped water supply does not have a ‘natural monopoly’, as it is not an exclusive good but instead ‘competes’ with other water sources, in particular rainwater and private well water (cf. spencer, 2005). moreover, the administrative division of urban and rural water supply impedes subsidising the unprofitable rural areas with revenues from densely populated, profitable areas (for detailed discussion, see reis [2012, pp. 90-101]). nadine reis & peter p. mollinga water supply or ‘beautiful latrines’? aseas 5(1) 14 15 the vbsp microcredit programme on rwss the vietnam bank for social policies (vbsp) was established in 2003 and is charged by the government with implementing microcredit programmes.10 the vbsp loan programmes are group-based lending schemes, which are usually operated through the vietnamese mass organisations. besides the farmers union (fu), veterans union (vu), and youth union (yu), microcredit programmes are most often administered by the women’s union (wu). in order to receive a microcredit in the rwss programme, which is meant to go towards constructing water supply and sanitation facilities, a household has to join a local credit group that is managed by a credit group leader. the credit group decides which households can take a loan, and the amount and terms of the loan (cuong, 2008, p. 156). after the commune people’s committee has approved the list of the demanding households, it is sent to the vbsp on district level. the vbsp approves the list and asks credit group leaders to make the credit contracts. in order to make sure that the money is spent for the right purpose, local credit officers stated that they have made arrangements with construction companies. local companies provide the construction material to the assigned households for three days without payment. during this time, 30 to 40 percent of the construction has to be completed. then the credit group leader and the staff from local health stations check the quality of the construction. if it complies with the standards, the credit officers of the local vbsp branch disburse the money. the microcredit programme for rwss started in 2004. initially, it was run as a pilot project in ten provinces; from 2006 on it was implemented throughout the country (government of vietnam [gov], 2004; ministry of agriculture and rural development [mard] & vietnam bank for social policies [vbsp], 2005). beneficiaries of the programme should be households that do not have water supply and sanitation constructions yet, or that have constructions that do not meet the national standards. according to the regulations, households can take a loan of maximum vnd 8 million (ca. eur 329), if they implement both a water supply and a sanitation con10 the former vietnam bank for the poor under the bank for agriculture and rural development was closed in 2003 and the new vbsp was established, when the government decided to expand loan programmes for the poor (cuong, 2008, p. 155). the vbsp’s funds derive from legal capital, income surplus, savings, loans funds under the programmes for poverty reduction and other social policies, and official development assistance funds (an, 2004, p. 4). aseas 5(1) 14 15 struction, whereas the maximum for one construction is vnd 4 million (ca. eur 165). the loan period can be adapted to the debt paying ability of the household but may not exceed 60 months. together with the vbsp, the ministry of agriculture and rural development (mard), including its departments and offices, is the main responsible agency for implementing the credit programme. the departments of mard are also responsible for issuing feasible wss models including the technical design and the estimated construction cost. on provincial level, cerwass and the centre for preventive health (cph) are the two government agencies assigned to carry out the loan programme in collaboration with vbsp and the mass organisations. since the government established the vbsp as an institution that is supposed to carry out humanitarian programmes with a focus on assisting the poor, interest rates charged by the vbsp are very low and the loans subsidised (lenhart, 2000, p. 6). for 2009, the interest rates were negative because they were lower than the inflation rate.11 under commercial circumstances, the interest rate would be substantially higher. some microfinance experts point out that subsidised interest rates undermine the viability and sustainability of the lending institution because they often affect repayment rates and breed “under the table payments” to credit officers (h. d. seibel, personal communication, 15 july 2009; seibel, 1992, p. 93). however, it has also been pointed out that most microfinance programmes rely on subsidies as “it remains far more costly to lend small amounts of money to many people than to lend large amounts to a few” (morduch, 1999, p. 1609). besides, morduch has asked why microfinance should not continue to be subsidised “if money spent to support microfinance helps to meet social objectives in ways not possible through alternative programs” (morduch, 1999, p. 1571). does the rwss microcredit programme meet such social objectives in can tho? 11 at the beginning of the programme, the monthly interest rate was 0.65 percent, in 2008 it was increased to 0.9 percent, i.e. a yearly rate of 10.8 percent. considering the high inflation rate of 24.4 percent in 2009, the real interest rate was minus 13.6 percent. nadine reis & peter p. mollinga water supply or ‘beautiful latrines’? aseas 5(1) 16 17 microcredit in rwss: the politics of policy in can tho city loans disbursed at the time of the field research the programme was implemented in four rural districts in can tho. up to may 2008, 68 percent of the constructions implemented within the programme were for sanitation and 32 percent for water supply. based on official data, between 12 and 18 percent of all households in the rural communes had taken a loan before the end of 2008. national statistics indicate that the programme reached more and more households over time.12 the total amount of money borrowed in can tho in 2008 was vnd 61.130 billion (ca. eur 2.5 million), with the average loan for one household lying between vnd 4.4 million and 6.4 million (ca. eur 181 to 264).13 sanitation the cph regularly sends two staff out to the communes in order to inform local authorities about the hygienic latrine models. they hold a meeting, which they invite the people’s committee, members of mass organisations, hamlet leaders, and staff from local health stations to. at these meetings, the cph staff also provide information about other water and hygiene related issues. it is the responsibility of local authorities to spread the information. there are four latrine models that the ministry of health (moh) classified as hygienic and can be constructed with the loan (moh, 2005). 1. double vault latrine: the latrine is operated without water (‘dry option’). one vault is used for around six months until it is full (in a household with six persons), then it is covered and the second vault is used. after six months, the remains can be taken out and used as fertiliser. the liquid residues flow into 12 while in 2006 84,192 households took a loan, in 2007 the number was already 158,207 and in 2008, 248,145 households (figures were obtained from the national vbsp office in hanoi). 13 calculated with data from vbsp can tho for the number of implemented constructions in 2008 (14,011), and the amount of money that was borrowed for these constructions (vnd 61,130 million). the average loan would be vnd 6.4 million if it was assumed that 32 percent that implemented a water supply construction are included in the 68 percent that constructed a hygienic latrine because they took a loan for both constructions. the average loan would be vnd 4.4 million if it was assumed that every household took the loan only for one construction. aseas 5(1) 16 17 a separate tank and can be used to water trees immediately. this latrine is relatively cheap to construct with only ca. vnd 1 million. however, the latrine is inconvenient to handle, as ash must be applied every time it is used, and the latrine has to be covered after use. moreover, people in south vietnam are reluctant to use human excreta as fertiliser. hence, the double vault latrine is not considered a suitable model for the mekong delta by the cph in can tho. 2. vip latrine: a simple latrine type with a tank/hole in the ground; air flows out into the open through a pipe. when the tank is full, a new hole has to be dug. according to cph in can tho, it is cheap but inconvenient because of the smell. 3. pour flush water seal latrine: this latrine is recommended by the cph in can tho because with a cost of only ca. vnd 1 million it is cheap to construct. it has one tank with small holes, where bacteria in the underground decompose the organic substance. liquids are disposed through the holes. after ca. five years the residues have to be dug out and put into another hole.14 4. septic tank latrine: it is the type of latrine that is common in cities. it is operated with water (‘wet option’) and the excreta are decomposed in a large tank that is installed under the house. however, the residues cannot be fully decomposed and the tank has to be pumped out every few years (varying between 5 and 20 years, depending on the size of the tank and the number of people in the household). it is considered to be the safest and cleanest latrine, but it is also the most expensive one. according to the cph, it can be constructed with the 4 million loan, but local people said that meanwhile (due to the high inflation rate) it is not enough and they have to add own money. only models number 3 and 4 are considered feasible by the can tho cph and are introduced to the local authorities. however, data from the three study communes suggests that in practice, only the septic tank latrine is constructed with the loan. no other hygienic latrine type was observed, and officials from the vbsp as well as union representatives take it as a matter of course that ‘hygienic latrine’ means ‘septic tank latrine’. this is illustrated by the fact that in all study communes and also at district level vbsp branches, respondents complain that 4 million is not enough to construct a latrine. 14 the effluent is still potentially dangerous as it always contains fresh faeces (i.e. there is a risk to ground water pollution in areas with high groundwater tables). nadine reis & peter p. mollinga water supply or ‘beautiful latrines’? aseas 5(1) 18 19 statements from interviewees like the following suggest that there is a lack of cheap models for hygienic latrines that people consider better than the conventional fishpond or river toilets: “the health station also informed about another latrine type, which costs around vnd 500,000 to 600,000. but the people want to have a sustainable construction and only invest once.” (wu representative from thanh quoi commune, vinh thanh district, personal communication, 13 january 2009)15 though informed about models such as the pour flush water seal latrine, people consider the difference between that latrine and a traditional toilet too small to spend money. the septic tank latrine is the only model for which there is demand. the interviews showed that the ‘modernity’ factor is a major incentive for rural households regarding the construction of a new latrine. this observation is in line with the study conducted by herbst et al. (2008). this study found that 77 percent of surveyed respondents were satisfied with their traditional sanitary situation, while in the course of in-depth interviews conducted later in the same study, it was found that the same people could still imagine having a ‘modern’ toilet. having a septic tank latrine plays the role of a status symbol, which a simple latrine model cannot fulfil. this is also illustrated by the term ‘beautiful latrine’, which was often used by interviewees to describe their new toilets, and by the pride with which households presented them. as latrine coverage has increased between 12 and 18 percent due to the rwss microcredit programme, it can be assumed that the direct disposal of human excreta into the surface water has been reduced to the same degree. however, what remains unclear is the future disposal of the residues in septic tanks. in urban areas, the tanks are emptied on demand by trucks of the can tho urban public works company (upwc). according to cph, the same company is responsible for rural areas. however, cars or trucks cannot enter the narrow rural paths and the staff from upwc does not seem to have a solution. asked about the construction of latrines in rural areas and how they would be pumped out if the streets were this narrow, the vice office manager of upwc replied: they will pump them out by hand. they have double-vault latrines, so it takes five to ten years until they are full. . . . [for the disposal of the waste,] maybe they will call the company, or they will use the waste as fertiliser. (vice office manager of upwc can tho, personal communication, 4 december 2008) 15 for a similar finding see kar & pasteur (2005). aseas 5(1) 18 19 it also occurred that rural households were not aware of the fact that the tanks have to be pumped out or do not consider this question relevant. it is not necessary [to discharge the waste], the latrine cannot be full. it is a two vault septic tank latrine. if it is full, maybe it takes 15 or 20 years. (representative of a household in truong xuan commune, co do district, personal communication, 21 october 2008) neither households nor authorities have paid attention to this issue so far. water supply during field research on the rwss loan programme, local authorities only presented latrines but no facilities for water supply. on the question what households do with the loan for water supply, the interviewees gave evasive responses. in some cases, it was stated that the money had been used for digging wells. however, it is no longer allowed to dig wells with the loan as wells are said to pollute groundwater resources.16 in vinh thanh and phong dien districts, the staff from the vbsp stated that the loans were used for constructing water filters or containers for rainwater. however, in thanh quoi not a single such construction could be found constructed with a loan. in another commune of phong dien, one water filter construction at a household was presented but people said there were “only very few” such filters in the area. in truong xuan, wu representatives explained that the loan budget was only for sanitation. the fu had a budget for water supply in the beginning of the programme but since 2008, the budget was only for sanitation. “previously, the vbsp gave a 1 million loan for connecting to the water supply station, but now there are only loans for latrines.” (wu representative of truong xuan commune, co do district, personal communication, 23 october 2008). asked for the reason, a fu representative again answered in an evasive manner: the budget of the government is not enough, so they give priority to the poor households. . . . i do not know [why the government gives priority for latrines and not for water supply], but the decision is related to the area served by the water supply stations.” (fu representative of truong xuan commune, co do district, personal communication, 21 october 2008) 16 digging wells is not generally prohibited. it is very common that households that have the financial resources dig their own well. however, the vbsp loans cannot be used for it anymore. nadine reis & peter p. mollinga water supply or ‘beautiful latrines’? aseas 5(1) 20 21 when officials were asked directly which percentage of the loans was for water supply and which for sanitation, nearly all of them said it was mostly for sanitation. if not, they would say something like “it depends on the local areas’ demands”. one vbsp representative explained: “around 90 percent are for sanitation. the rate is higher because the demand for beautiful and good latrines is very high.” (vice director of vbsp district level, personal communication, 25 september 2008) some other reasons were also given for using loans mostly for latrines. “most loans in the rwss programme are for latrines because the budget is higher.” (pc president, truong long commune, phong dien district, personal communication, 28 october 2008) the households can supply water on their own, contain it in jars. but for sanitation, they do not have enough money. (director, vbsp district level, personal communication 22 september 2008) however, it was found that the main reason why rwss loans are not used for water supply is that there are no models introduced by provincial authorities, like this representative from the fu stated: no, they have no models. they only offer the loan for the ones that live in the station network area but do not access the station. (fu representative of truong xuan commune, co do district, personal communication, 10 march 2009) only after a long investigation it was revealed by a government official that cerwass does not fulfil its responsibility to introduce suitable models for water supply to the local authorities: “actually it is the responsibility of cerwass, but in reality the vbsp introduced the systems to the local authorities.” (anonymous, personal communication, 5 march 2009) vbsp staff attempted to source feasible models from local companies which they introduced in some communes, but “the technology is not very good, it cannot meet our expectations. . . . when constructing a filter system, the people research how to construct on their own, they were not informed much.” (anonymous, personal communication, 5 march 2009) a large share of rural households relies on using polluted river or canal water for their daily activities, and it is financially and ecologically unlikely that all of these households can be connected to piped water supply schemes in the near future (reis, aseas 5(1) 20 21 2012, pp. 90-101). hence, household water treatment facilities may be the only way to increase the rate of households with access to clean water. in an giang province, the province north of can tho, a model for household water treatment was developed by a local consultant who was hired by the rwss ntpii.17 the model could be feasible as it can be constructed with locally available materials and is easy to operate and maintain. according to the consultant, the filter delivers sufficient water for one household, and the cph in an giang qualified the water quality as good. the filter is made of sand, charcoal, and gravel, and is able to remove organic waste and even pesticides and other chemicals from the river water. the price for construction was estimated vnd 2.25 million by a private company; hence it would be possible to finance the model with a vbsp loan. however, also in an giang, cerwass has not made progress in realising such household water treatment facilities as solutions to the water problem in rural areas. an interviewee with insider knowledge about cerwass said the following about the agency. sometimes they know the idea is good, but they do not like it . . . they see that the filter is good, but they prefer the schemes. . . [because] the benefit is for them . . . the filter is a benefit for the people. . . . it is very sensitive [to say why cerwass is not interested in introducing the household filter system], it is difficult to answer. (anonymous, personal communication, 11 december 2008) the reason why household water treatment models are beyond the interest of responsible agencies is related to the hybridisation of bureaucracy and private business, which has intensified since the economic liberalisation in 1986 (doi moi) (evers & benedikter, 2009, p. 18; gainsborough, 2005a; 2005b; 2007; 2009). in the course of the economic liberalisation and privatisation in vietnam, the old planned economy of state-owned enterprises was taken over by a “new form of state-interventionism” (gainsborough, 2009, p. 258). the interests of government agencies as well as officials as private persons are highly interwoven with the business interests of private enterprises that are contracted to carry out public tasks. in his study about strategic groups in the water sector in can tho, benedikter (personal communication, 20 february 2009) found that several cadres from cerwass have invested private capital into a company that constructs water supply stations and sells water-purifying technology. an interviewee with close relations to the political leadership in can tho put it very directly: 17 an giang is one of the nine pilot provinces for ntpii in vietnam, which were selected in the beginning of the donor support and receive additional funding and consulting from international experts. nadine reis & peter p. mollinga water supply or ‘beautiful latrines’? aseas 5(1) 22 23 nowadays, the people in high government positions all become very rich. . . . [at cerwass] the director, vice director, all have own companies that implement the constructions. (anonymous, personal communication, 30 september 2008) developing household water treatment models is currently beyond the interest of responsible agencies because it does not offer a business opportunity. government officials are currently doing their business in the construction of piped schemes and are therefore not keen on implementing policies that take a different approach to rural water supply. household water treatment systems are so far not considered a potential income source for cerwass officials in can tho. as a result, there is a lack of action with regard to water supply in the rwss microcredit programme, and local authorities and households are not informed about suitable water supply models that could be implemented with the loan. there is also evidence that the available data on the distribution of loans for water supply and for sanitation within the microcredit programme is unreliable. according to the data obtained on provincial level, 7,963 sanitation constructions and 3,522 water supply constructions were implemented in can tho between january and may 2008. however, it was found in all three study communes that, against the regulations, more than vnd 4 million were disbursed to households for implementing only one construction, i.e. a septic tank latrine. for example in thanh quoi commune, the interviewed households received vnd 6 or even 8 million for constructing a latrine. considering that the average loan in vinh thanh district was already vnd 5.3 million in 2008 if it is assumed that all households implemented only one construction18, and that models for water supply constructions are unavailable, it is questionable whether loans declared for water supply were not in fact used for sanitation. summarising, the data suggest that the largest share of funds in the rwss microcredit programme is spent for the construction of septic tank latrines, whereas the water supply component is mostly neglected. allocation of loans among rural households local mass organisations, especially the wu, are very actively promoting the rwss microcredit programme, as shown by the high adoption of the loan programme. 18 2,336 constructions were implemented in vinh thanh with a budget of vnd 12,345 million. aseas 5(1) 22 23 many interviewees also stated that the demand for participation in the programme was very high. however, many people said that the funding from the vbsp was not sufficient to give a loan to all households on the demand list. before the credit group leader compiles the list of households, the vbsp informs the local authorities about the available budget, i.e. it is already known to the credit group leader how many households can receive a loan in one period. moreover, credit group leaders stated that credit officers from the vbsp would only take households off the lists if they did not possess legal residence permits or identification documents. dufhues et al. (2002, p. 10) also found that credit officers usually approve the lists that they receive from commune people’s committees. consequently, the decision about who has access to a microcredit loan is taken at the commune and hamlet level. the first and most important mechanism to select the households that get to participate in the programme is the creditworthiness of a household. credit groups and the commune people’s committee are highly responsible for the repayment of credit group members (cuong, 2008, p. 156), and local authorities and mass organisations are careful in selecting the households, like a vbsp officer explained: “the authorities are afraid of giving money to the people because the unions are afraid that they will not pay the money back.” (director of vbsp, district level, personal communication, 16 september 2008) moreover, the officer explained that the local unions receive a certain percentage of the monthly interest rates as a service fee, which is calculated with a formula included in the contract between the unions and the vbsp. in the case that a household does not pay the money, they will lose the service fee. a local wu manager stated that poor households are generally not taken into account when it comes to setting up a list of demanding households. only the nearly poor can become member of the women’s union. poor households19 cannot become members, because the vbsp is afraid that they cannot pay back the money. dolisa20 will take care of them. (wu representative, truong xuan commune, co do district, personal communication, 22 october 2008) it remained unclear whether this was a regulation decided on by local wu groups, or 19 the official poverty line fixed by the can tho city people’s committee is vnd 200,000 (ca. eur 8.20) per person per month. local authorities decide which households are given a poverty certificate (reis, 2012, p. 82). in this context, however, it remains unclear what defines a “nearly poor” household. 20 dolisa = department of labour, invalids and social affairs. households classified as poor receive certain benefits from the government, such as reduction of school fees, or in the case of rwss, free connection to piped water schemes. however, poor households are often not connected to water supply networks in practice (reis, 2012, pp. 81-85). nadine reis & peter p. mollinga water supply or ‘beautiful latrines’? aseas 5(1) 24 25 whether the interviewee just referred to the common practice. in any case, it seems to be contradictory to the stated aim of the vbsp to be an institution that serves the poor. cuong (2008) and dufhues et al. (2002) also found that poor households in most cases lack access to the vbsp’s credits. they are not only considered as a credit risk but are in addition excluded from the powerful social and political network that determines the access to information about available credit funds (2002, p. 10). the selection process further considers whether the household had previously received a loan in another programme. several credit group leaders mentioned that this was a criterion for being considered for the rwss programme, like this group leader in thanh quoi commune: “the other women [in the group] already got a loan for breeding, so i gave the loans to those that had not received a loan yet.” (local wu group leader of thanh quoi commune, vinh thanh district, personal communication, 13 january 2009) moreover, interviewees explained that households belonging to the lower income groups would give priority for a loan with which they could directly increase their income, such as a loan for raising animals. the focus on septic tanks is another issue that plays an important role in determining which households are reached by the programme. as demonstrated earlier, the largest share of the budget is used by households that construct septic tank latrines. these households usually have access to tap or well water because the latrine requires a lot of water for flushing. none of these households lacked access to tap or well water. this indicates that the programme mainly reaches medium-income and better-off households, for which clean water supply is mostly not problematic. conclusion the analysis has shown that the rwss microcredit programme within the ntpii has a positive impact on the latrine coverage in can tho and thus contributes to the safer disposal of human excreta and improved water quality in rivers and canals. in this sense, the programme also has an indirect impact on poverty reduction as it improves the water sources of the poor. however, it is still unclear how the remaining waste in septic tanks will be disposed of when that issue becomes relevant in a few years. it has to be ensured aseas 5(1) 24 25 that – given the lack of possibilities for disposal – the waste is not dumped into rivers and canals. moreover, while increasing the latrine coverage is an important element of improving the water quality of surface water, it is only one of the causes of water pollution in the mekong delta. the disposal of large amounts of pesticides and artificial fertilisers, solid waste, residues from animal husbandry and fish farming, and untreated wastewater from industrial parks into rivers and canals are very complex problems that remain unsolved. in addition, the central government irrigation policy, focused on the construction of large-scale infrastructure, exacerbates the scarcity of clean water in the rural areas of can tho (reis, 2012, pp. 50-52). considering the number and intensity of other causes of water contamination, increasing the number of hygienic latrines can only have a limited impact on the improvement of domestic water sources. this suggests firstly that the outcome of rwss policy is strongly interlinked with and dependent on other policies. for can tho, it is particularly essential to include urban wastewater and solid waste management into rwss policy, if it is to have any success in improving surface water quality. besides the moderate impact on surface water quality, the programme has a marginal impact on poverty reduction as it reaches only better-off households that already have access to clean water. there are several reasons for this. first, there are no models for water supply that could be implemented with the loan, while it is the poor that are in need of such models. the present approach of constructing groundwater based piped schemes is not a sustainable way of ensuring access to clean water for the rural population (reis, 2012, pp. 90-101). microcredit for household water treatment systems carries the potential for achieving the goals of the nrwss, but that potential has not been utilised in can tho so far. secondly, there is also a lack of cheap latrine models acceptable to the local population, which do not require access to tap or well water and additional own funds, like the septic tank latrine does. experience from other world regions shows that affordable and acceptable latrine designs are a key success factor in microfinance for sanitation (saywell & fonseca, 2006). it is therefore likely that the demand for loans within the present programme will come to an end as soon as all better-off households have been covered. the third reason lies in the exclusion of poor households from the microcredit scheme because they are not considered creditworthy and they do not have the social relations that determine the access to vbsp credits. this result stands in contrast to the idea of donors and the government to subsidise the loans because they are nadine reis & peter p. mollinga water supply or ‘beautiful latrines’? aseas 5(1) 26 27 targeted to the poor, and also to the fact that poor water and sanitation is particularly problematic for the poor. a study carried out by the australian agency for international development (ausaid) in 2004 found that in contrast to the past, when poverty was a mass phenomenon in vietnam, it is now focussed on particular groups such as landless and ethnic minority groups. those poor have become “harder to reach” (ausaid, 2004, p. 18).21 the present study has shown that this assessment is highly relevant for the rwss microcredit programme, which has currently no mechanisms for pro-poor targeting and thus misses to reach those that lack access to safe water. as pointed out by mehta et al. (2007), local wss systems are characterised by the interaction of complex environmental, technological, and social dimensions. the case of can tho has illustrated how locally specific water supply and sanitation systems affect the outcome of rwss policies. socio-political factors, in particular the construction interests of local political elites, play a key role in the adaptation of policies framed on the national and global level. the programme reaches its limit at the point where it requires procedural changes at cerwass, which may interfere with or be unsuitable for officials’ business interest. national policy provides models for hygienic latrines that can be implemented within the microcredit programme, but implies that provincial authorities develop models for water supply that are adapted to the local conditions. however, it is – at least until now beyond the interest of bureaucratic elites to engage in finding smallscale solutions for water supply. hence, only the sanitation part of the programme is implemented. the combination of water supply and sanitation into one programme thus leads to the canalisation of money and resources towards the wealthier rural population that already has access to clean water. as a result, the programme misses out the water supply needs of the poor. the present case supports the point made by weber that while “microfinance was developed as an instrument to fight global inequality in practice it turns out often to exacerbate adverse social conditions” (2002, p. 132). this paper’s findings do not implicate that it is useless, or even counterproductive, to emphasise the importance of improved sanitation facilities for development. especially as groundwater is not a sustainable option for water supply in can tho, it is in the long term essential to counter the pollution of surface waters with human excreta. the findings do, however, challenge the common trend in policy making that water supply 21 moreover, wisdom project research has found that landless people in the mekong delta face an increasing pressure on their livelihoods due to declining fish resources, on which they most often depend (gerke & ehlert, 2009). aseas 5(1) 26 27 and sanitation should under all circumstances be integrated into the same programme. moving “the sanitation crisis to the top of the agenda” (united nations development programme, 2005, p. 166) should not mean that the problem of insufficient emphasis on sanitation within rwss policies is turned upside down. many reports and donor staff argue that an increased focus on sanitation is necessary as it usually falls behind the planning for water supply. it has been shown that the implementation of sanitation policies, in particular if they are not clearly pro-poor22, can also be at the expense of improving the water supply of the poor. references an nguyen thanh. (2004). notes from preliminary review on micro-finance for poverty reduction in vietnam. retrieved 30 may 2012, from http://www.microfinancegateway.org/gm/document-1.9.25784/25697_file_ ford_notesonmicrofinanceinvietnam.pdf australian agency for international development (ausaid). (2004). mekong delta poverty analysis. retrieved 25 july 2009, from http://www.ausaid.gov.au/publications/pdf/mekong_poverty_report_04.pdf cuong n. v. (2008). is a governmental micro-credit program for the poor really pro-poor? evidence from vietnam. the developing economies, xlvi(2), 151-187. dufhues, t., oanh, n. q., dung, p. t. m., hanh, h. t., & buchenrieder, g., & buchenrieder, g. (2002). fuzzy information systems in rural financial intermediation in northern vietnam. paper presented at the international symposium ‘sustaining food security and managing natural resources in southeast asia – challenges for the 21st century’ from 8-11 january 2002, chiang mai, thailand. evers, h.-d., & benedikter, s. (2009). strategic group formation in the mekong delta the development of a modern hydraulic society (working paper no. 35). center for development research, university of bonn. gainsborough, m. (2005a). between exception and rule. ho chi minh city’s political economy under reform. critical asian studies, 37(3), 363-390. gainsborough, m. (2005b). rethinking vietnamese politics – will the real state please stand up? retrieved 20 february 2008, from http://www.bristol.ac.uk/politics/grc/bvp/bvpworkingpapers/rethinking.doc gainsborough, m. (2007). globalisation and the state revisited – a view from provincial vietnam. journal of contemporary asia, 37(1), 1-18. gainsborough, m. (2009). privatisation as state advance: private indirect government in vietnam. new political economy, 14(2), 257-274. gerke, s., & ehlert, j. (2009). water livelihoods in the mekong delta. local knowledge as a strategic resource (working paper no. 50). center for development research, university of bonn. retrieved 14 december 2011, from http://www.zef.de/fileadmin/webfiles/downloads/zef_wp/wp50_gerke-ehlert.pdf 22 a counterexample is established by first experiences with the community-led total sanitation (clts) approach in north vietnam, which has considerably improved poor households’ sanitation and hygiene awareness (snv, 2010). nadine reis & peter p. mollinga water supply or ‘beautiful latrines’? aseas 5(1) 28 29 government of vietnam (gov). (2004). decision no. 62/2004/qd-ttg. decision of prime minister on credit for implementation of rwss strategy. hanoi, 16 april 2004. herbst, s., benedikter, s., koester, u., phan, n., berger, c., rechenburg, a., & kistemann, t. (2009). perceptions of water, sanitation and health – a case study from the mekong delta, vietnam. water science & technology, 60(3), 699-707. käkönen, m. (2008). mekong delta at the crossroad: more control or adaptation? ambio, 73(3), 205-212. kar, k., & pasteur, k. (2005). subsidy or self-respect? community led total sanitation. an update on recent developments (ids working paper 257). brighton, uk: institute of development studies. retrieved 20 april 2012, from http://www.ids.ac.uk/files/wp257.pdf lenhart, k. (2000). the influence of donors on microcredit sustainability. a case study of three microcredit programs in vietnam: the vietnamese bank for the poor, save the children-uk, and nike. daniel j. evans school of public affairs, university of washington. retrieved 25 may 2012, from http://www.microfinancegateway. org/gm/document-1.9.25914/microcredit_vietnam.pdf mehta, l., marshall, f., movik, s., stirling, a., shah, e., smith, a., & thompson, j. (2007). liquid dynamics: challenges for sustainability in water and sanitation (steps working paper 6). brighton, uk: steps centre. mehta, m., & knapp, a. (2004). the challenge of financing sanitation for meeting the millenium development goals. nairobi, kenya: wsp. retrieved 25 june 2009, from http://www.wsp.org/wsp/sites/wsp.org/files/publications/af_finsan_mdg.pdf miller, f. (2003). society-water relations in the mekong delta: a political ecology of risk. doctoral book, division of geography, university of sydney. ministry of agriculture and rural development (mard), & vietnam bank for social policies (vbsp). (2005). instruction no. 472/vb-lt-bnn-nhcs. implementation of decision no. 62/2004/qd-ttg dated april 16th, 2004 of the prime minister regarding the credit implementation of the ntp on rural water supply and sanitation. hanoi, 4 march 2005. ministry of construction (moc), & ministry of agriculture and rural development (mard). (2000). national rural clean water supply and sanitation strategy up to year 2020. retrieved 15 february 2008, from http://www. cerwass.org.vn/english/index_e.htm ministry of health (moh). (2005). decision no. 08/2005/qd-byt dated 11.03.2005 regarding issuing the sector standards: hygiene standards for various types of latrines. ministry of health (moh), & united nations children’s fund (unicef). (2007). a summary of national baseline survey on environmental sanitation and hygiene situation in vietnam. hanoi, vietnam: moh & unicef. ministry of natural resources and environment (monre). (2009). experts warn that southern vietnam aquifers seriously depleted. retrieved 1 july 2009, from http://www.monre.gov.vn/monrenet/default. aspx?tabid=255&itemid=67935 molle, f. (2005). irrigation and water policies in the mekong region: current discourses and practices (research report 95). colombo, sri lanka: international water management institute. molle, f., & hoanh, c. t. (2007). implementing integrated river basin management. lessons from the red river basin, vietnam. retrieved 23 november 2007, from http://www.sea-user.org/download_pubdoc.php?doc=4167 morduch, j. (1999). the microfinance promise. journal of economic literature, 37(4), 1569-1614. aseas 5(1) 28 29 nuber t., stolpe, h., vinh, k. q., & nam, v. v. (2008). modelling the groundwater dynamics of can tho city – challenges, approaches, solutions. in sansed project (ed.), decentralised water treatment systems and beneficial reuse of generated substrates. proceedings of the international sansed workshop, 15-18 april 2008, can tho university, vietnam. netherlands water partnership (nwp), & international water and sanitation centre (irc). (2007). microfinance for water, sanitation and hygiene. an introduction. retrieved 23 june 2009, from http://www.waterland. net/showdownload.cfm?objecttype=mark.hive.contentobjects.download.pdf&objectid=19ce8b1e-de1eb77e-09d6d4ac29ccade9 reis, n. (2012). tracing and making the state. policy practices and domestic water supply in the mekong delta, vietnam. berlin, germany: lit verlag. reis, n., & mollinga, p. p. (2009). microcredit for rural water supply and sanitation in the mekong delta: policy implementation between the needs for clean water and ‘beautiful latrines’ (working paper 49). bonn, germany: centre for development research, university of bonn. saywell, d., & fonseca, c. (2006). well factsheet: microfinance for sanitation. retrieved 23 june 2009, from http://www.lboro.ac.uk/well/resources/fact-sheets/fact-sheets-htm/mcfs.htm seibel, h. d. (ed.). (1992). the making of a market economy: monetary reform, economic transformation and rural finance in vietnam (kölner beiträge zur entwicklungsländerforschung 19). saarbrücken, germany & fort lauderdale, fl: breitenbach. snv. (2010). snv vietnam sanitation demand creation. a strengths-based review. retrieved 11 march 2012, from http://www.communityledtotalsanitation.org/resource/snv-vietnam-sanitation-demand-creationstrengths-based-review spencer, j. h. (2005). natural water and natural monopolies: competition for and within the market for clean water in can tho, viet nam. paper prepared for ‘regenerations: new leaders, new visions in southeast asia’, 11-12 november 2005, yale university, usa. united nations development programme. (2005). health, dignity and development. what does it take? un millennium project, taskforce on water and sanitation. retrieved 11 july 2009, from http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/documents/watercomplete-lowres.pdf vietnam bank for social policies (vbsp). (2004). instruction no. 1411/nhcs-khnv. specialist knowledge of rural water supply and sanitation program. hanoi, 3 august 2004. vietnam bank for social policies (vbsp). (2008). report on rural water supply and sanitation programme. 4 years (2004-2007), up to 30/06/2008. (unofficial translation). nadine reis & peter p. mollinga water supply or ‘beautiful latrines’? südostasien in österreich: dreikönigsaktion, hilfswerk der katholischen jungschar österreichs aseas 6(1) 217216 d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -6 .1 -1 4 netzwerk südostasien / network south-east asia südostasien in österreich: dreikönigsaktion, hilfswerk der katholischen jungschar österreichs philipp bück1 citation bück, p. (2013). südostasien in österreich: dreikönigsaktion, hilfswerk der katholischen jungschar österreichs. aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften, 6(1), 217-222. die dreikönigsaktion (dka) ist das hilfswerk der katholischen jungschar österreichs und mit über 80.000 aktiven kindern die größte kinderorganisation österreichs. neben dem sternsingen als solidarischem handeln von kindern werden von den jungschargruppen auch entwicklungspolitische themen spielerisch-kreativ mit freizeitpädagogischen methoden aufgegriffen. während der jährlich stattfindenden sternsingeraktion wurden im jahr 2012 österreichweit spenden im wert von eur 15,3 millionen gesammelt. um diese spenden wirksam einzusetzen, ist seit den 1960er jahren die dka als entwicklungspolitisches hilfswerk der katholischen jungschar entstanden. als kirchliches hilfswerk umfasst unser auftrag das solidarische engagement zugunsten benachteiligter menschen, basierend auf der un-charta und allgemeinen erklärung der menschenrechte sowie dem prinzip der option für die armen, dem zentralen bestandteil der kirchlichen soziallehre. die erfahrungen und selbstbestimmung benachteiligter menschen in der von ausbeutung und ungerechtigkeit bestimmten gesellschaft stehen im zentrum unseres engagements. in südostasien unterstützt die dka seit den 1960er jahren hauptsächlich projekte und initiativen in den philippinen.2 seit 1991 sind die philippinen mit einem budget von insgesamt eur 1,1 millionen ein schwerpunktland unserer projektförderung. derzeit werden etwa 50 projekte finanziert. neben der projektförderung bietet die jungschar/dka einen jährlichen lerneinsatz, ein einmonatiges exposure-programm für 1 philipp bück hat einen master in englisch und philosophie der university of aberdeen und einen master of science in violence, confl ict, and development der school of oriental and african studies in großbritannien. von 2005 bis 2009 war er geschäftsführer des philippinenbüro e.v. im asienhaus und mitinitiator des aktionsbündnis menschenrechte – philippinen in deutschland. seit 2009 ist er projektreferent für philippinen und papua-neuguinea bei der arbeitsgemeinschaft projekte der dreikönigsaktion der katholischen jungschar (dka) und katholischen frauenbewegung (kfb). kontakt: philipp.bueck@dka.at 2 in einzelfällen hat es in der vergangenheit unterstützungen in indonesien, malaysia, thailand, vietnam, myanmar sowie bis 2006 regelmäßige projektförderungen in osttimor gegeben. aseas 6(1) 219218 entwicklungspolitisch interessierte, sowie solidareinsätze3, das sind mehrmonatige praktika und volontariate bei philippinischen partnerorganisationen, an. in unserer projektförderung unterstützen wir ausschließlich lokale, nicht-staatliche organisationen, meist aus dem kirchlichen umfeld. in den philippinen teilt sich die dka mit der katholischen frauenbewegung (kfb) ein projektreferat über die arbeitsgemeinschaft projekte. die philippinenreferentinnen der dka betreuen daher auch projekte der kfb4. regional konzentriert sich die projektförderung derzeit auf die regionen nord luzon, die administrative region der cordilleren (car), die region infanta, den großraum metro manila sowie vereinzelte gebiete in den visayas. in mindanao sind die schwerpunktregionen davao (davao city, davao del sur, davao oriental), zentralmindanao (maguindanao, provinz nord cotabato) sowie caraga (nordostmindanao). hier sind über die jahre erfolgreiche netzwerke und projektpartnerschaften entstanden. die meisten partnerorganisationen leisten basisarbeit im ländlichen raum, daneben unterstützt die dka auch einige überregional anwaltschaftlich arbeitende ngos und netzwerke. inhaltlich bewegt sich unser projektpartnerspektrum in fünf themenfeldern. diese wurden in 2008 in folge einer systematisierung auf basis bestehender kooperationen und zukünftiger herausforderungen identifiziert. gesicherte lebensgrundlagen ländliche armut ist in den philippinen von kleinbäuerlicher (subsistenz-)landwirtschaft, ausbeuterischen pachtverhältnissen, mangelhafter infrastruktur, starkem bevölkerungsdruck, überschuldung, geringem mechanisierungsgrad und schlechtem marktzugang und unzureichendem zugang zu sozialen dienstleistungen geprägt. häufig spielen auch bewaffnete konflikte im zusammenhang mit landreformen, landnahme oder bergbau eine rolle. die dka unterstützt daher gezielt projekte, die gesicherte lebensgrundlagen durch ökologische kleinbäuerliche landwirtschaft mit integrierten und lokal angepassten ansätzen schaffen. 3 nähere informationen zu voraussetzungen und auswahlkriterien für lernund solidareinsätze finden sich unter: http://dka.at/globales-und-lernen 4 die kfb hat in den philippinen ein budget von derzeit eur 250.000. aseas 6(1) 219218 die don bosco foundation for sustainable development ist beispielsweise auf mindanao tätig. sie bietet mit dem umstieg auf biodynamischen anbau seit den 1990er jahren bauernfamilien eine möglichkeit, aus der teuren und in armut und abhängigkeit führenden konventionellen landwirtschaft auszusteigen. neben der beratung in nachhaltigen landwirtschaftsmethoden haben sich ökologische kleinbauern und -bäuerinnen in einer kooperative zusammengeschlossen. sie werden bei der saatgut und produktentwicklung sowie vermarktung von don bosco unterstützt. menschenrechte und zivilgesellschaft die menschenrechtssituation in den philippinen ist durch einen grundsätzlich guten normativen gesetzlichen rahmen, jedoch ebenfalls durch mangelhafte umsetzung desselben gekennzeichnet. insbesondere rechtlose räume und straflosigkeit im hinblick auf morde, verschleppungen und gewalttaten durch staatliche sicherheitskräfte oder privatarmeen einflussreicher personen werden von menschenrechtsverteidigerinnen seit jahren kritisiert. die philippinische zivilgesellschaft ist zudem ideologisch komplex und von internen konflikten durchzogen. bei der projektauswahl wird daher auf gewaltfreiheit, transparenz und politische offenheit geachtet und in der anwaltschaftlichen arbeit unserer partnerinnen spielen rechtsberatung und die durchsetzung von rechten benachteiligter gruppen eine zentrale rolle. in der provinz casiguran, aurora, wird zur zeit die sonderwirtschaftszone aurora pacific economic zone and freeport authority (apeco) errichtet. sie umfasst 12.427 hektar und betrifft fünf gemeinden in casiguran, aurora. das apeco-projekt wird von der einflussreichen angara-familie, einer bekannten politischen familie, getragen. widerstand gibt es vor allem von seiten der kirche und der indigenen bevölkerung. es ist bereits zu mordanschlägen, vertreibungen und missachtung von konsultationsprozessen gekommen. die task force anti-apeco lobbyiert auf nationaler ebene gegen das apeco projekt und wird dabei von der dka unterstützt. philipp bück südostasien in österreich: dreikönigsaktion, hilfswerk der katholischen jungschar österreichs aseas 6(1) 221220 bildung bewusstseinsbildung spielt in vielen integrierten entwicklungsprogrammen eine zentrale rolle, um marginalisierte gruppen zu selbstbestimmtem handeln zu ermächtigen. eine wichtige rolle spielt in unserer projektförderung die unterstützung indigener bildungsprogramme. vernetzung und gemeinsames lernen sowie prozesse, die die übergreifende reflexion von entwicklungsfragen der lokalen gemeinden stärken, sind für den erfolg von entwicklungsprogrammen in ressourcenarmen, marginalisierten gemeinden von entscheidender bedeutung. das tribal center for development arbeitet mit einem integrierten bildungsprogramm in entlegenen mehrheitlich von indigenen agta bewohnten gemeinden in den provinzen quezon und aurora. kernbestandteile sind zehn schulen mit kulturangepasstem lehrplan, stipendienprogramm und ergänzenden programmen zur ernährungssicherheit, ausbildung von gemeindeund gesundheitsarbeiterinnen sowie anwaltschaftlichem engagement für landrechte und gegen mehrere großprojekte in den sierra madre bergen. außerdem werden forschungsund dokumentationsmaßnahmen zur indigenen sprache und kultur sowie kapazitätenbildungsmaßnahmen für indigene lokale organisationen durchgeführt. stärkung von kindern und jugendlichen die unterstützung von präventivprogrammen und kinderrechtsinitiativen sowie die begleitung von kindern und jugendlichen in krisensituationen sind ein wichtiger fokus unserer projektförderung. neben der unterstützung anwaltschaftlicher programme zur einforderung und umsetzung von kinderrechten, sind das empowerment von kinderund jugendgruppen zur lokalen politischen beteiligung und persönlichen entwicklung als zukünftige entscheidungsträgerinnen wichtige ansätze der projektarbeit unserer partnerinnen. so setzt sich zum beispiel die ngo child alert in den städtischen slums von davao city für die politische beteiligung und ermächtigung von kindern und jugendlichen auf der ebene der lokalregierung ein. aseas 6(1) 221220 kirche im dienst an den menschen die katholische kirche hat auf den philippinen eine sehr große bedeutung und viele unserer projektpartnerinnen sind organisationen aus dem kirchlichen bereich bzw. umfeld. derzeit konzentrieren sich viele projekte in diesem themenfeld auf die kinderund jugendpastoral sowie auf die zusammenarbeit mit diözesen für den aufbau von basisgemeinden und sozialpastoraler arbeit. daneben spielt die unterstützung philippinischer pastoraler institute bei der ausund weiterbildung von pastoral arbeitenden personen aus dem gesamtasiatischen raum eine wichtige rolle. der marinduque council for environmental concerns (macec) wurde in den 1980er jahren von der diözese boac gegründet. nach dem großen bergbauunglück auf marinduque im jahr 1996 beteiligte sich macec maßgeblich an den anwaltschaftlichen aktivitäten der betroffenen bevölkerung, seither ist die organisation von der diözese mit der anwaltschaft für umweltfragen und der unterstützung für die geschädigten der umweltkatastrophen betraut. macec ist eine vorreiterorganisation, was die bewusstseinsbildung in bezug auf die negativen folgen des bergbaus betrifft. neben unserer projektförderung werden viele projektpartnerinnen von lokalen experteninnen inhaltlich und organisatorisch begleitet. zu diesem zweck arbeiten wir mit integrated pastoral development initiatives (ipdi), einer auf projektbegleitung spezialisierten lokalen ngo, sowie nach bedarf mit weiteren lokalen beraterinnen zusammen. der bedarf wird hierbei durch die inhaltlichen und organisatorischen herausforderungen der projektpartnerinnen bestimmt. das projektmonitoring wird zudem auf regelmäßigen projektreisen der zuständigen länderreferentinnen geleistet, mit bedarfsweiser unterstützung durch lokale beraterinnen. eine stärke der dka in den philippinen ist die intensive partnerinnenbetreuung. durch vorortbegleitung durch ipdi und regelmäßige projektreisen können projektpartnerinnen durch trainings im inhaltlichen und organisatorischen bereich, über die reine projektfinanzierung hinaus gestärkt werden. auf die nutzung von synergien über bestehende zivilgesellschaftliche netzwerke wie zum beispiel über masipag (magsasaka at siyentipiko para sa pag-unlad ng agrikultura, oder farmer-scientist partnership for development) im bereich der ländlichen entwicklung, wird wert gelegt. zudem sind wir mit anderen nationalen und internationalen hilfswerken vernetzt und in den philippinen an verschiedenen formen der kofinanzierung beteiligt. hier philipp bück südostasien in österreich: dreikönigsaktion, hilfswerk der katholischen jungschar österreichs aseas 6(1) 223222 sind häufig enge absprachen zur sicherstellung der geldgeberinnen-kohärenz notwendig. angesichts des rückgangs an spendenmitteln in folge der wirtschaftskrise, der hilfswerkspolitischen neuorientierung vieler internationaler hilfswerke, sowie des anhaltend schwachen euros im vergleich zum peso sind viele unserer partnerorganisationen mit einem rückgang an projektfinanzierung konfrontiert. zukünftig spielen daher maßnahmen zur stärkung der finanziellen nachhaltigkeit, sowie zu einer besseren nutzung von synergien mit anderen hilfswerken und lokalen fachorganisationen eine wichtigere rolle. außerdem wird im zuge des zu erwartenden wirtschaftlichen aufstiegs der philippinen und in der hoffnung auf eine verbesserte umsetzung des normativen gesetzlichen rahmens die befähigung von lokalen basisorganisationen zur politischen mitsprache bei der umsetzung staatlicher projekte und programme wichtiger. als hilfswerk steht die dka hier vor der herausforderung, diesen bedarf an zusätzlichen kapazitäten bei unseren projektpartnerinnen in einem umfeld zurückgehender kooperationen anderer hilfswerke mit der philippinischen zivilgesellschaft zu decken. aseas 1-2 final (außergottowik).indd armut im wohlstand zunehmende soziale disparitäten in singapur poverty in a state of wealth social disparities in the city-state of singapore rolf jordan1 universität kassel, deutschland & universität wien, österreich / university of kassel, germany & university of vienna, austria aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften / austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 1 (2), 2008 seas gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften www.seas.at der folgende beitrag zeigt, ausgehend von der aktuellen sozialen und wirtschaftlichen situation, wichtige aspekte sozialer ungleichheit in singapur auf und diskutiert die seit jahren sich verschärfenden einkommensdisparitäten vor dem hintergrund der nur unzureichend entwickelten sozialstaatlichen strukturen. die argumentation wird dabei von der these geleitet, dass die fehlende oder nur mangelhafte soziale unterstützung wesentlich zu den sozialen problemen eines wachsenden teils der bevölkerung in dem von großem wohlstand geprägten stadtstaat beitragen und ein ausbau sozialstaatlicher strukturen eine voraussetzung darstellen sowohl für die lösung der aktuellen sozialen probleme als auch für eine längst überfällige demokratisierung singapurs. schlagworte: singapur, armut, ungleichheit, soziale sicherheit singapore is the wealthiest nation in south-east asia today. but behind its high-rise buildings and modern shopping malls rising social disparities and a growing number of poor households cast a shadow on an otherwise successful economic development. shrinking incomes and rising prices for housing and energy have increased the number of those who are struggling life in one of the most expensive cities in pacifi c asia. the situation is further complicated by a just rudimentary social security system that is not adequately designed for the needs of poor households. the following paper gives a brief insight into the current state of economic and social development in singapore and its impact on the social fabric of the singapore society. the lack of an adequately structured social security system for those households and the lower end of the income strata in general contribute most to the rising social disparities is what characterises singapore’s social development today. keywords: singapore, poverty, disparities, social security 1 rolf jordan ist promovierter politikwissenschaftler und arbeitet seit jahren zu sozialen und politischen entwicklungen in singapur, malaysia und anderen staaten südostasiens. forschungsschwerpunkte: politischer wandel und demokratisierung, zivilgesellschaftliche entwicklung, migration, stadtentwicklung. lehrtätigkeiten an der universität kassel sowie an der universität wien. außerdem im vorstand der südostasien informationsstelle und des asienhaus fördervereins. kontakt: rojordan@uni-kassel.de. 82 rolf jordan armut im wohlstand armut im wohlstan zunehmende soziale poverty in a state of w aseas 1 (2) einleitung mit seinen modernen einkaufszentren und weithin sichtbaren wolkenkratzern markiert singapur das reiche, wohlhabende extrem in einer region, die von scharfen (entwicklungs-) disparitäten gekennzeichnet ist. in kaum einem land der region wird der eigene reichtum so sehr zur schau gestellt wie hier, und nirgends hat der wirtschaftliche erfolg der letzten jahrzehnte zugleich so sehr die selbstund fremdwahrnehmung geprägt wie im stadtstaat singapur. doch hinter den glitzernden fassaden der tropical city of excellence2 bleiben die auch hier bestehenden sozialen ungleichheiten und die armut einer nicht geringen zahl von menschen zumeist verborgen – auch weil dies eben nicht ins (selbst-)bild einer prosperierenden metropole passt. erst auf den zweiten blick lässt sich erkennen, was sich an sozialer differenzierung und disparität hinter der erfolgsgeschichte des stadtstaats verbirgt: eine große zahl von haushalten mit niedrigem einkommen, eine wachsende zahl von menschen ohne dauerhafte und sichere beschäftigung und ein sich nicht zuletzt in folge demographischer veränderungen verschärfendes problem der altersarmut. waren es vor wenigen jahren noch – als verspätete folge der asienkrise – sinkende einkommen und zunehmender arbeitsplatzabbau, die zu einer verschärfung sozialer ungleichheit und einer zunahme von armut geführt hatten (jordan 2007), so sind es aktuell vor allem rapide steigende lebenshaltungskosten und eine anhaltend hohe inflation, die besonders einkommensschwachen haushalten das leben und überleben in singapur erschweren. auch für den flüchtigen beobachter sichtbare hinweise auf das problem wachsender armut im reichen singapur finden sich auf den märkten der vor allem älteren housing estates, wo seit jahren einzelne garküchen und marktstände vergünstigtes essen für sozial schwache anbieten. in solchen angeboten für einkommensschwache bevölkerungsgruppen werden jene sozialen probleme sichtbar, die den stadtstaat besonders seit ende der 1990er jahre kennzeichnen, als in folge der asienkrise auch hier immer mehr arbeitsplätze nicht nur im industriebereich, sondern auch in den dienstleistungssektoren verloren gingen. mehr und mehr menschen sind seither von arbeitslosigkeit, von unterbeschäftigung und von niedrigen löhnen betroffen (jordan 2007). der folgende beitrag zeigt, ausgehend von der aktuellen sozialen und wirtschaftlichen situation, wichtige aspekte sozialer ungleichheit in singapur auf und diskutiert die seit jahren 2 die tropical city of excellence gehört seit anfang der 1990er jahre zu den zentralen begriffen der staatlichen entwicklungsplanung, wie sie etwa von der urban redevelopment authority in einer ihrer planungsentwürfe 1991 entworfen wurde (ura 1991). 83 sich verschärfenden einkommensdisparitäten vor dem hintergrund der nur unzureichend entwickelten sozialstaatlichen strukturen. die argumentation wird dabei von der these geleitet, dass die fehlende oder nur mangelhafte soziale unterstützung wesentlich zu den sozialen problemen eines wachsenden teils der bevölkerung in dem von großem wohlstand geprägten stadtstaat beitragen und ein ausbau sozialstaatlicher strukturen eine voraussetzung darstellen sowohl für die lösung der aktuellen sozialen probleme als auch für eine längst überfällige demokratisierung singapurs. steigende lebenshaltungskosten verschärfen die armut nachdem in den letzten monaten die zahl jener menschen gestiegen ist, die karitative angebote in anspruch nehmen müssen, erfährt das thema „armut“ nun auch eine verstärkte aufmerksamkeit in den lokalen medien des stadtstaats. dazu beigetragen hat der umstand, dass seit einigen wochen immer mehr menschen täglich zur singapore buddhist lodge kommen, um die kostenlosen mahlzeiten der einrichtung, die sich im zentrum singapurs befindet, zu nutzen. waren es nach angaben des tempels ende letzten jahres noch etwa 3.000 menschen täglich, die dieses angebot in anspruch nahmen, ist ihre zahl mittlerweile auf mehr als 5.000 angestiegen (afp 2008a). und auch andere tempel und kirchliche einrichtungen verzeichnen mittlerweile einen deutlichen anstieg der zahl deren, die ihre angebote einer günstigen versorgung mit lebensmitteln nutzen. solche initiativen sind ein deutlicher hinweis auf die zunehmend prekäre situation, in der sich viele haushalte in singapur befinden. eine wesentliche ursache für die für viele haushalte derzeit sehr angespannte finanzielle lage ist in dem seit beginn des jahres auch in singapur zu beobachtenden drastischen anstieg der lebenshaltungskosten zu sehen. im ersten quartal des jahres verzeichnete der stadtstaat nach angaben der statistikbehörde des landes eine inflationsrate von mehr als sieben prozent und damit den höchsten preisanstieg seit mehr als 25 jahren (reuters 2008). besonders der enorme anstieg der energiekosten und die preissteigerungen bei lebensmitteln tragen zu dieser entwicklung maßgeblich bei (associated press 2008). schon zuvor waren auch die preise auf dem wohnungsmarkt angestiegen, so dass die anhaltend hohen kosten längst die finanziellen möglichkeiten einer großen zahl von haushalten übersteigen. bereits in den letzten jahren hatte die zahl der überschuldeten haushalte deutlich zugenommen und die jüngste teuerungswelle verschärft die situation weiter.3 während anhaltend hohe energiepreise weltweit zu einem anstieg der lebenshaltungskosten 3 entsprechende hinweise auf einen anstieg bei privatinsolvenzen fanden sich unter anderem ende 2002; so in meldungen von afp (vom 3. oktober 2002) und associated press (vom 2. dezember 2002). 84 rolf jordan armut im wohlstand aseas 1 (2) führen, wird die lage in singapur zusätzlich verschärft, da der stadtstaat in vielen bereichen von lieferungen aus den nachbarländern abhängig ist. vor allem aus dem benachbarten malaysia bezieht singapur einen großteil seiner lebensmittel, aber auch teile seiner wasser und energieversorgung. während es in den letzten jahren gelungen ist, die abhängigkeit von wasserlieferungen aus dem nachbarstaat zu verringern, bleiben lebensmittellieferungen aus malaysia für die märkte in singapur weiterhin von elementarer bedeutung. doch in malaysia ist es zuletzt zu einem rapiden anstieg der treibstoffpreise gekommen, nachdem die regierung in kuala lumpur angesichts der hohen rohölnotierungen einen stopp der staatlichen treibstoffsubventionen verkündete.4 seither steigen in singapur die preise für importierte lebensmittel und baumaterialien aus dem nachbarland noch weiter an. nicht viel besser ist die situation im südlichen nachbarland indonesien, wo die einstellung staatlicher subventionen für treibstoff mittlerweile zu gewaltsamen protesten führte. auch hier schlagen sich steigende energieund lebensmittelpreise direkt in steigenden lebenshaltungskosten in singapur nieder, die – wie in den nachbarländern auch – vor allem die haushalte mit niedrigem einkommen treffen. marktexperten vermuten, dass die hohen preise etwa für lebensmittel – allein beim reis verzeichnete der stadtstaat zuletzt einen preisanstieg von mehr als 50 prozent – auch in den nächsten zwei bis drei jahren bestand haben werden. 4 der stopp staatlicher subventionen durch die regierung führte in malaysia anfang juni zu einem sprunghaften anstieg der treibstoffpreise um mehr als 40 prozent. durch den stopp erhofft sich die regierung einsparungen in höhe von umgerechnet 4,3 milliarden dollar (reuters 2008). 85 armut im wohlstand und die zunahme von ungleichheiten offizielle statistiken weisen seit beginn der asienkrise 1997 ein absinken der durchschnittseinkommen um nahezu drei prozent aus, und besonders bei den unteren beschäftigungsgruppen ist nach informationen der oppositionellen singapore demoratic party (sdp) ein rückgang auf nahezu die hälfte des vormaligen verdienstes festzustellen.5 seither sind immer mehr bevölkerungsschichten von stagnierenden oder auch sinkenden einkommen betroffen. diese entwicklung ist selber folge veränderter ökonomischer rahmenbedingungen, die sowohl zu einer verlagerung vor allem arbeitsintensiver produktionsbereiche in andere länder der region, als auch zu einem erhöhten druck auf die löhne in den unteren beschäftigungsbereichen geführt haben, die durch ein niedriges qualifikationsund produktivitätsniveau gekennzeichnet sind. vor allem zwischen 2000 und 2004 wurden im industriesektor mehrere 10.000 stellen abgebaut und ganze produktionsbereiche der computerindustrie ausgelagert. am stärksten betroffen waren vor allem niedrig qualifizierte beschäftigte, die auch von der angestrebten restrukturierung der wirtschaft, etwa durch den seither staatlich geförderten ausbau im biotechnologiebereich, kaum profitieren konnten. niedrige lohnkosten zeichnen den industriestandort zwar schon seit den späten 1960er jahren aus, doch seit der asienkrise ist es besonders für menschen mit nur geringer bildung immer schwieriger geworden, noch ein adäquates einkommen zu erzielen – wenn sie überhaupt noch eine beschäftigung finden. trotz dieser entwicklung werden forderungen nach einer mindestlohnregelung aber seit jahren von der regierung immer wieder abgelehnt (asher & rajan 2000). zwar beträgt die arbeitslosenrate nach angaben der regierung derzeit lediglich zwei prozent, nachdem sie zwischenzeitlich höchstwerte von nahezu sieben prozent erreicht hatte, doch hinter den statistiken verbergen sich vielfältige formen der unterbeschäftigung, unsichere beschäftigungsverhältnisse und sinkender einkommensmöglichkeiten für einen wachsenden teil der bevölkerung. nach ansicht des regierungsunabhängigen think centre lag gerade in manchen älteren anlagen des öffentlichen wohnungsbaus (hdb) die arbeitslosenrate zeitweise bei fast acht prozent.6 arbeitslosigkeit und der rückgang der realeinkommen gerade in den unteren beschäftigungsbereichen haben nach ansicht vieler beobachterinnen zu einer weiteren spreizung der einkommensschere in singapur geführt. die verteilung des wohlstands, den ein über jahrzehnte hinweg hohes wirtschaftswachstum möglich gemacht hat, erfolgte dabei auch schon vor der asienkrise sehr ungleich und hatte bereits in den 1990er jahren zu einer 5 vgl. hierzu die unter www.singaporedemocrat.org von der sdp zusammengestellten informationen. 6 vgl. hierzu die vielfältigen diskussionsbeiträge unter www.thinkcentre.org. 86 rolf jordan armut im wohlstand aseas 1 (2) zunahme sozioökonomischer disparitäten geführt (davidson, drakakis-smith 1997; rodan 1997). in den letzten jahren ist der gini-index7 für singapur jedoch immer weiter angestiegen und verweist mit einem wert von derzeit 48,5 (afp 2008b) auf eine weiterhin zunehmende ungleichverteilung des gesellschaftlichen wohlstandes.8 nach ansicht vieler kritikerinnen der sozialen situation in singapur ermöglichen die einkommen von nahezu einem drittel aller haushalte keinen angemessenen lebensstandard, und bereits die volkszählungsdaten des jahres 2000 zeigten, dass etwa jedem achten haushalt weniger als s$1.000, umgerechnet etwa 472 euro, im monat zur verfügung stehen (jordan 2007). zugleich lagen in weiten bereichen der wirtschaft die durchschnittseinkommen so niedrig, dass lediglich ein drittel aller beschäftigten lohnund einkommenssteuer zahlte (asher & rajan 2000). an dieser situation hat sich seither nur wenig geändert und aktuelle statistiken zeigen, dass haushaltseinkommen von s$700 im monat zur sozialen realität in einem stadtstaat gehören, dessen durchschnittliches pro-kopf-einkommen mit knapp s$53.000 im jahr angegeben wird.9 7 statistische kennzahl zur messung von wirtschaftlicher konzentration, besonders in den bereichen der einkommensund landverteilung. der in der regel zwischen 0 und 100 – in einigen publikationen auch zwischen 0 und 1 – liegende wert zeigt den grad der abweichung der einkommensoder landverteilung von der völligen gleichverteilung an, wobei der wert (bzw. 1) dessen vollständige ungleichverteilung signalisiert. 8 während der anteil der reichsten 20 prozent am gesamteinkommen der gesellschaft nahezu 50 prozent beträgt, entfallen auf die ärmsten 20 prozent der gesellschaft weniger als drei prozent des gesamteinkommens (chan 2002). 9 zur situation der bezieher niedriger einkommen siehe u.a. den afp-artikel vom 4. mai 2006; angaben zum pro-kopf-einkommen: statistics singapore (www.singstat.gov.sg). 87 von einiger bedeutung sind in diesem zusammenhang seit jeher fragen der unterschiedlichen entwicklung der einkommen zwischen den ethnischen gruppen, die immer wieder zu öffentlichen diskussionen über die ungleiche verteilung des wohlstands und der sozialen kosten der wirtschaftlichen entwicklung singapurs geführt haben und auch weiterhin führen. vor allem in den 1970er jahren, einer phase rapiden wirtschaftswachstums, kam es zu einer deutlichen ungleichverteilung der durchschnittseinkommen zwischen der chinesischen und der malaiischen bevölkerungsgruppe. in diesem zeitraum stieg der anteil der bezieher von niedrigen einkommen bei den malaiischen haushalten auf zwei drittel an, während er bei den chinesischen haushalten auf weniger als die hälfte zurückging. aufgrund ihres insgesamt schlechteren bildungsniveaus fanden sich malaien wesentlich häufiger in den schlechter bezahlten beschäftigungsbereichen der industrie und des dienstleistungssektors, als dies bei chinesen der fall war (davidson, drakakis-smith 1997). an dieser situation hat sich bis heute nur wenig geändert, und so zeigen auch neuere daten, dass malaien noch immer überdurchschnittlich häufig in den unteren einkommensgruppen anzutreffen sind. lag das durchschnittliche monatliche haushaltseinkommen malaiischer familien anfang der 1990er jahre noch bei ca. 73 prozent des durchschnittlichen einkommens aller haushalte in singapur, so ist dieser wert seither weiter zurückgegangen und beträgt mittlerweile nur noch etwa 64 prozent, wie die letzten volkszählungsdaten zeigen.10 öffentliche auseinandersetzungen über soziale disparitäten zwischen den unterschiedlichen ethnischen gruppen, wie sie zuletzt etwa in malaysia zu gewaltsamen zusammenstößen zwischen demonstranten und polizei geführt haben, bleiben in singapur aber weiterhin tabu.11 staatliche unterstützung bleibt die ausnahme die jüngste entwicklung verdeutlicht einmal mehr, dass die kluft zwischen sinkenden einkommen und steigenden lebenshaltungskosten zunimmt und dass sich die lebensbedingungen für immer mehr menschen in singapur zunehmend verschlechtern. trotz der sich seit jahren verschärfenden sozialen probleme, von denen ein wachsender teil der bevölkerung betroffen ist, versteht sich singapur nicht als wohlfahrtsstaat, der seinen bürgern staatliche unterstützung in sozialen notlagen garantiert. weder weisen die wenigen bestehenden sicherungssysteme mechanismen der umverteilung des gesellschaftlichen wohlstands zwi10 angaben nach: census of population 2000. statistical release 3: economic characteristics; publiziert vom singapore department of statistics, 2001. 11 im november 2007 organisierte die nichtregierungsorganisation hindraf in kuala lumpur eine demonstration, um auf die sich seit jahren verschlechternde sozioökonomische situation der indisch-stämmigen bevölkerung malaysias und ihre nur schwache repräsentation in den politischen institutionen des landes aufmerksam zu machen. die protestveranstaltung wurde von der polizei mit gewalt aufgelöst und fünf führende mitglieder der organisation wurden verhaftet. 88 rolf jordan armut im wohlstand aseas 1 (2) schen den verschiedenen einkommensgruppen im staat auf, noch existieren rechtsansprüche auf angebote sozialer grundsicherung (williams 1996). angesichts fehlender oder nur geringer staatlicher unterstützung sind viele menschen vor allem auf die hilfe ihrer familie angewiesen, die noch immer die wesentliche instanz sozialer absicherung in singapur darstellt. offizielle statistiken weisen einen konstant niedrigen anteil der staatlichen sozialausgaben am bruttoinlandsprodukt aus, und ein großteil der ausgaben für soziale sicherheit wird weiterhin direkt von den beschäftigten selber getragen (asher & rajan 2000; kwon 1998).12 gleichzeitig steigt im gesundheitssystem die zahl jener, die im krankheitsfall nur noch unzureichend abgesichert sind. steigende kosten im gesundheitswesen auf der einen und eine in teilen unzureichende finanzielle absicherung auf der anderen seite haben dazu beigetragen, dass eine nicht unerhebliche zahl von menschen nur noch eingeschränkten zugang zu den vielfältigen angeboten der gesundheitsversorgung hat oder im krankheitsund behandlungsfall mit ernsten finanziellen problemen konfrontiert wird. auch bei der altersversorgung, dem herzstück der sozialen sicherung in singapur, führen sinkende einkommen und steigende ansprüche einer auch hier von alterungsprozessen gekennzeichneten gesellschaft zu einer unzulänglichen absicherung immer größerer teile der bevölkerung. vor allem jene niedrig qualifizierten arbeitnehmer, die in den wirtschaftlichen boomzeiten singapurs in nur schlecht entlohnten bereichen der fertigungsindustrie und den unteren segmenten des dienstleistungssektors beschäftigt waren, liegen heute mit ihren rentenbezüge oftmals kaum über den existenzminimum, und viele von ihnen sind auch noch im hohen alter gezwungen, einer kleinen beschäftigung nachzugehen, um überleben zu können. deutlich wird der niedrige grad sozialstaatlicher absicherung der bevölkerung auch daran, dass trotz einer sich seit einigen jahren abzeichnenden strukturellen arbeitslosigkeit bei jenen bevölkerungsgruppen, die nicht über ausreichende qualifikationen verfügen, die einführung einer arbeitslosenversicherung von der regierung weiterhin strikt abgelehnt wird. dies drängt nach ansicht von kritikern vor allem niedrig qualifizierte in beschäftigungsverhältnisse mit schlechten arbeitsbedingungen und niedriger entlohnung. in diesem beschäftigungssegment ist daher seit jahren, zusätzlich verschärft durch eine hohe zahl niedrig qualifizierter arbeitsmigrantinnen, die arbeitsplatzkonkurrenz besonders hoch.13 es ist jedoch zugleich festzuhalten, dass auch in singapur der staat – trotz aller gegenteiligen rhetorik – seinen bürgern in sozialen notlagen eine, wenn auch minimale, unterstützung 12 1997/98 betrug der anteil der sozialausgaben am bruttoinlandsprodukt 6,3 prozent und stieg bis 2000/01 auf 6,9 prozent an. drei viertel der ausgaben entfallen dabei auf arbeitnehmerund arbeitgeberbeiträge zu gesetzlichen und privaten sozialversicherungen, und lediglich ein viertel der ausgaben entfällt auf haushaltsmittel der regierung (asher & rajan 2000: 235). 13 bereits im letzten herbst vermeldeten die behörden, dass mittlerweile mehr als eine million ausländische arbeitskräfte in singapur beschäftigt sind – und damit mehr als ein drittel aller beschäftigten stellen. bei einem großteil der migrantinnen handelt es sich um niedrig qualifizierte arbeitskräfte aus südund südostasiatischen staaten, die in den unteren beschäftigungssegmenten der industrie und des dienstleistungssektors arbeit finden (jordan 2007). 89 gewährt. entsprechende leistungen auf der grundlage des public assistance scheme zielen jedoch auf eine sehr begrenzte zahl von bedürftigen und beinhalten in der regel nur maßnahmen zur linderung unmittelbarer not (ramesh 2000). hierzu gehören vor allem von armut betroffene ältere, behinderte und chronisch kranke, für die nicht mehr durch die familie gesorgt werden kann, aber auch jene familien, die nach offiziellen kriterien unterhalb der armutsgrenze leben (williams 1996). dagegen bleiben andere bevölkerungsgruppen von staatlichen unterstützungsleistungen zumeist ausgeschlossen oder finden nur sehr bedingt staatliche hilfen. das public assistance scheme sieht dabei nicht nur eine sehr strenge prüfung der bedürftigkeit der empfänger staatlicher unterstützung vor, sondern gewährt im jeweiligen fall auch nur sehr geringe leistungen. für alleinstehende betragen sie nur etwa s$200, und auch für eine vierköpfige familie reichen sie kaum über s$500 hinaus. diese von ramesh (2000) in seiner studie zur sozialpolitischen situation in singapur angeführten unterstützungssätze liegen dabei deutlich unter jenen s$950, die von der regierung als existenzminimum angesehen werden. dabei bleiben auch diese geringen unterstützungen eingebettet in ein enges netz sozialer kontrolle, mittels derer die regierende people’s action party (pap) ihren herrschaftsanspruch bis in den alltag der menschen hinein deutlich macht. die gewährung von unterstützungsleistungen an soziale bedürftige erfolgt durch einrichtungen und institutionen, die aufs engste mit der regierungspartei verbunden sind. über die staatliche people’s association (pa) werden die anfragen nach sozialer unterstützung an constituency secretariats im jeweiligen 90 rolf jordan armut im wohlstand aseas 1 (2) wohnumfeld weitergeben, wo mitglieder der pap-wahlkreisbüros gemeinsam mit vertretern anderer basisorganisationen über die zu gewährende unterstützung entscheiden. eine endgültige bewilligung von leistungen erfolgt schließlich durch das jeweils zuständige citizen’s consultative committee (ccc) und damit im direkten wohnumfeld der bedürftigen (asher & rajan 2000). das verfahren entbehrt nicht nur der transparenz hinsichtlich der bewilligungs oder ablehnungsgründe, sondern setzt die um unterstützung bittenden menschen auch der direkten kontrolle ihrer sozialen situation und der ihrer familie durch ihre nachbarn aus. staatliche unterstützung kann zugleich auch über eine reihe freiwilliger wohlfahrtsorganisationen erfolgen. neben unterorganisationen des gewerkschaftsdachverbandes ntuc zählen eine reihe von selbsthilfegruppen und kleinere, zumeist ethnisch oder religiös orientierte wohlfahrtsorganisationen zu diesen so genannten voluntary welfare organizations (vwo). da die zahl dieser organisationen jedoch nur sehr gering ist, erreichen sie nur etwas mehr als ein fünftel der bedürftigen haushalte in singapur. während auch diese unterstützungsleistungen oftmals vollständig auf staatliche mittel zurückgreifen, erfolgt die ebenfalls strenge prüfung der bedürftigkeit und die mögliche ablehnung der hilfe durch die wohlfahrtsorganisationen selbst, so dass staatliche stellen hier nicht offen in erscheinung treten (ramesh 2000). freiwillige wohlfahrtsorganisationen spielen damit gleichzeitig eine wichtige rolle in den bemühungen der regierung, soziale unterstützungsleistungen von rechtsansprüchen auf staatliche leistungen zu entkoppeln. 91 eine wesentliche folge dieser seit jahrzehnten nahezu unveränderten politischen situation ist das fehlen einer eigenständigen verbändestruktur, wie sie etwa für europäische wohlfahrtsstaaten in unterschiedlicher form charakteristisch ist. weder der gewerkschaftsdachverband ntuc noch die durchaus existierenden wohlfahrtsorganisationen verfügen als institutionen über mitsprachemöglichkeiten im (sozial-)politischen raum. die menschen treten ihnen ähnlich wie den wohlfahrtsstaatlichen einrichtungen des staates im bereich des wohnens, der bildung und der gesundheitsversorgung einzig als kundinnen gegenüber, die spezifische dienstleistungen in anspruch nehmen, nicht aber als bürgerinnen, die über diese institutionen zugleich einfluss auf die ausgestaltung sozialpolitischer programme und damit auch auf grundsätzliche fragen der (um-)verteilung gesellschaftlichen wohlstands nehmen können (und dies auch tun). die organisation und artikulation von interessen in unterschiedlichen sozialverbänden stellt ein wesentliches element politischer partizipation und damit demokratischer entwicklung in den westlichen industrienationen dar, das in singapur nahezu gar nicht anzutreffen ist und dessen herausbildung von den politischen eliten auch weiterhin unterbunden wird. fazit „you get what you pay for“ – das ist die unmissverständliche botschaft, mit der die regierung singapurs ihre ablehnung umfassender sozialstaatlicher strukturen untermauert. die ökonomische absicherung der beschäftigten und ihrer familien – eine folge der rapiden wirtschaftlichen entwicklung der letzten vier jahrzehnte – geht nicht einher mit einer für wohlfahrtsstaaten westlicher prägung noch immer charakteristischen „sozialen solidarität“ (kwon 1998). für ramesh (2000) begründet dies das zentrale dilemma der allenfalls formal demokratischen strukturen des politischen systems singapurs. während die regierung auf der einen seite ein umfassendes und auf rechtsansprüchen basierendes sozialstaatliches system ablehnt, greift die regierende people’s action party (pap) immer wieder zu einzelnen staatlichen sozialprogrammen für soziale schwache, um sich eine breite unterstützungsbasis in der bevölkerung zu sichern. dies wurde zuletzt bei den parlamentswahlen 2006 deutlich, als die regierung im vorfeld der wahlen neue programme zur ausund weiterbildung für niedrig qualifizierte und von arbeitslosigkeit betroffene arbeitskräfte mit einem finanzvolumen von nahezu einer milliarde singapurdollar ankündigte (associated press 2006).14 fehlende absicherung der beschäftigten im fall von arbeitslosigkeit, rudimentäre staatliche 14 die fördermittel von umgerechnet 473 millionen euro waren teil einer kampagne des seit sommer 2004 amtierenden premierministers lee hsien loong, der sich 2006 zum ersten mal zur wahl stellte. 92 rolf jordan armut im wohlstand aseas 1 (2) unterstützungsleistungen in sozialen notlagen und eine altersund gesundheitsversorgung, die nahezu ausschließlich auf den individuellen einkommensmöglichkeiten der versicherten beruht, dies alles verweist auf einen deutlichen widerspruch zwischen dem erreichten entwicklungsstand und wohlstand, der den stadtstaat heute auszeichnet, und dem – auch im internationalen vergleich – niedrigen grad an sozialpolitischer absicherung der bevölkerung singapurs. selbst in den wenigen fällen, in denen menschen in sozialen notlagen finanzielle unterstützung gewährt wird, ist die regierung darum bemüht, diese als einmalige hilfe erscheinen zu lassen, aus denen keine rechtsansprüche auf staatliche unterstützung abzuleiten sind (ramesh 2000). noch ist offen, wie die regierung auf die aktuelle situation reagieren wird, und ob es angesichts der sich für eine wachsende zahl von menschen verschlechternden sozialen bedingungen zu einer ausweitung sozialstaatlicher maßnahmen kommt. wahrscheinlicher ist jedoch, dass sie auch im aktuellen fall eher auf einmalige, die akute problematik aufgreifende hilfsangebote zurückgreifen wird, die jedoch weder zur dringend notwendigen umverteilung gesellschaftlichen vermögens zugunsten einkommensschwacher haushalte, noch zur herausbildung verbindlicher wohlfahrtsstaatlicher ansprüche seitens sozial schwacher führen werden. es ist nicht zu erwarten, dass sich singapur in naher zukunft in einen wohlfahrtsstaat verwandeln wird, der den bestehenden sozialen disparitäten mit einer aktiven sozialpolitik zu begegnen bereit ist. bibliographie afp (2008a). longer queues for free food in wealthy s’pore: charities. singapur, 14. april 2008. afp (2008b). free meals salvation for poor in wealthy singapore. singapur, 4. mai 2008. asher, mukul; rajan, revathi (2000): social protection in singapore. in adam, erfried; von hauf, michael; marei, john (hrsg.). social protection in southeast & east asia, (s. 231–268). singapur: friedrich-ebertstiftung. associated press (2006). singapore proposes s$1 billion package for low-wage workers. singapur, 12. jan. 2006. associated press (2008). s’pore inflation hits 26-year high in march on food, oil. singapur, 23. april 2008. chan, raymond k. h. (2002). the welfare system in southeast asia: development and challenges. in chan, raymond k. h.; leung, kwan kwok; ngan, raymond m. h. (hrsg.), development in southeast asia. review and prospects, (s. 131–162). aldershot: ashgate. 93 davidson, gillian; drakakis-smith, david (1997). the price of success: disadvantaged groups in singapore. in dixon, chris; drakakis-smith, david (hrsg.), uneven development in southeast asia, (s. 75–99) aldershot: ashgate. jordan, rolf (2007). singapur. globale stadt und autoritärer staat. bad honnef: horlemann verlag. kwon huck-ju (1998). democracy and the politics of social welfare: a comparative analysis of welfare systems in east asia. in goodmann, roger; white, gordon; kwon huck-un (hrsg.), the east asian welfare model. welfare orientalism and the state, (s. 27–74). london & new york: routledge. ramesh, mishra (2000). the politics of social security in singapore. the pacific review, 13 (2), 243– 256. reuters (2008). s’pore not in recession, but high prices to stay. singapur, 9. juni 2008. rodan, garry (1997). singapore: economic diversification and social divisions. in rodan, garry; hewison, kevin; robison, richard (hrsg.). the political economy of southeast asia. an introduction, (s. 148–178). melbourne: oxford university press. urban redevelopment authority (ura) (1991). living the next lap – towards a tropical city of excellence. singapur. williams, jeremy b. (1996). rapid economic development in singapore and the future of the pap. journal of contemporary asia, 26 (2), 164–179. 94 rolf jordan armut im wohlstand südostasienforschung in österreich: die sammlung insulares südostasien des museums für völkerkunde wien aseas 5(1) 186 187 d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -5 .1 -1 3 netzwerk südostasien / network south-east asia südostasienforschung in österreich: die sammlung insulares südostasien des museums für völkerkunde wien sri tjahjani kuhnt-saptodewo1 citation kuhnt-saptodewo, s. t. (2012). südostasienforschung in österreich: die sammlung insulares südostasien des museums für völkerkunde wien. aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften, 5(1), 186-189. das museum für völkerkunde wien gehört zu den bedeutendsten völkerkundemuseen der welt. hervorgegangen aus der anthropologisch-ethnographischen abteilung des naturhistorischen museums befindet sich das 1928 gegründete museum seither im corps de logis in der neuen burg, einem teil der hofburg am wiener heldenplatz. die ältesten bestände des museums gelangten bereits im 16. jahrhundert nach österreich. heute umfasst die sammlung um die 200.000 objekte und repräsentiert den kulturbesitz außereuropäischer bevölkerungsgruppen aus afrika, amerika, asien, australien und ozeanien. der sammlungsbestand der abteilung insulares südostasien beläuft sich auf etwa 21.000 objekte. als ich 2005 meine tätigkeit als kuratorin begann, startete ich das projekt sharing cultural memory. die grundintention dieses projektes war, im gegenseitigen austausch mit indonesien und den philippinen das gemeinsame erbe der ethnographischen objekte (cultural heritage) zu erschließen und einer größtmöglichen anzahl von interessentinnen verfügbar zu machen. die aufarbeitung und kontextualisierung der objekte wurde und wird mit den kulturangehörigen und lokalen museen im ursprungsland der objekte durchgeführt, um so die „biographie“ der objekte erschließen zu können. die objekte sollten auch mit interpretationen aus den insider perspectives (der source communities) beleuchtet und somit in der gegenwart kontextualisiert werden. diesbezüglich ist beispielsweise 2005 eine kooperation mit dem museum 1 sri tjahjani kuhnt-saptodewo wurde in jakarta, indonesien, geboren und studierte völkerkunde und afrikanistik an der ludwig-maximilians-universität in münchen. im jahr 2003 habilitierte sie sich an der humboldt-universität zu berlin zum thema „getanzte geschichte: tanz, religion und geschichte auf java“. seit 2005 ist sie leiterin der sammlung insulares südostasien am museum für völkerkunde in wien. kontakt: sri.kuhnt@ethno-museum.ac.at aseas 5(1) 186 187 siwalima in ambon, indonesien, entstanden und 2012 wurde dazu eine gemeinsame publikation der kollektionen beider museen veröffentlicht. das projekt hat gezeigt, dass eine ganze reihe von kulturartefakten in wien erhalten geblieben ist, die auf den molukken vollkommen verschwanden und daher auch in den sammlungen des museums in ambon nicht vorhanden sind. andererseits befinden sich im museum siwalima objekttypen, für die es im museum für völkerkunde in wien keine entsprechung gibt. die historischen molukken-sammlungen in wien und die – zumeist jüngeren – sammlungen des museums siwalima in ambon ergänzen sich deshalb hervorragend und zeichnen gemeinsam ein ganzheitliches und vollständigeres bild der kulturellen ausdrucksformen und deren veränderungen auf den molukken. ein anderes projekt betrachtete das werk des sammlers frantizek czurda (18441886), der in südsulawesi, indonesien, arbeitete. die sammlung war gegenstand des einjährigen formuse-projekts sharing cultural memory, das von juli 2009 bis juli 2010 durchgeführt wurde. czurda wurde in pisek, südböhmen, geboren und war von 1867 bis 1882 auf java, sumatra und sulawesi (celebes) als militärarzt stationiert. er verbrachte drei jahre auf sulawesi und unternahm mehrere inspektionsreisen in das innere des landes, wo bis dahin keine europäerinnen vorgedrungen waren. seine arbeit beschrieb er folgendermaßen: ich war auf süd-celebes bemüht, eine vollständige sammlung systematisch anzulegen, gegenstände zu bekommen, die das häusliche wie das gesellschaftliche leben in zusammenhängender folge vor die augen des beschauers bringen, uns über die phantasie, die geistige entwicklung, sowie über die mechanischen fertigkeiten belehren, mit einem worte den ganzen menschen, mit allem, was er hervorzubringen vermag, vor uns stellen. . . . durch die vollständigkeit hat diese sammlung von süd-celebes wissenschaftlichen werth, und meines wissens ist in keinem museum europas, vielleicht das zu leyden ausgenommen, dieser inseltheil so reich vertreten als in der vorliegenden (czurda, 1883, s. 111). 1883 übernahm das wiener museum diese kollektion (820 objekte), während ein kleiner teil der sammlung (etwa 200 objekte) ins náprstek-museum nach prag ging. bis heute ist czurdas sammlung die weltweit vollständigste kollektion zu sulawesi und sein originalkatalog gilt als der erste ethnographische katalog indonesiens überhaupt. die aufbereitung der umfangreichen sammlung wurde in kooperation mit dem naprstek-museum in prag und halilintar latief, einem vertreter der source community aus sulawesi, durchgeführt. wir konnten den originalkatalog von czurda ins englische und indonesische übersetzen und die gesamte kollektion von wien und sri tjahjani kuhnt-saptodewo die sammlung insulares südostasien des museums für völkerkunde wien aseas 5(1) 188 189 prag digitalisieren. das projekt sharing cultural memory kann somit als eine „digitale rückführung“ in das herkunftsland der objekte (source communities) betrachtet werden, weil den kulturangehörigen auch die möglichkeit eröffnet wird, weitere forschung über die objekte ihrer kultur zu betreiben, die sich in europa befinden. eine sensationelle entdeckung der werke des deutschen malers walter spies und des balinesischen malers i gusti nyoman lempad führte vom 2. februar bis 30. april 2010 zu einer spontanen sonderausstellung „bali. kunst im wandel“, die in kooperation mit der botschaft der republik indonesien durchgeführt wurde. die werke wurden 1935 von der österreicherin helen potjewyd nach wien gebracht und 1946 dem museum für völkerkunde geschenkt. dank ihrer guten beziehungen zu dem russischdeutschen künstler walter spies (1895–1942) konnte helene potjewyd (1872–1947) eine repräsentative auswahl von skulpturen und zeichnungen der „neuen balinesischen schule“ nach österreich bringen. unter ihnen befinden sich auch einige bisher unbekannte meisterwerke i gusti nyoman lempads (1862–1978), einem der renommiertesten künstler balis, die hier erstmalig präsentiert wurden. die kürzlich wiederentdeckten lamak-skizzen von walter spies machen den gemeinsamen dialog zwischen balinesischen und europäischen künstlern der 1920erund 1930er-jahre auf dem weg in die moderne deutlich. die ausstellung wurde auch in zusammenarbeit mit soemantri, dem kurator des puri lukisan museum in ubud, gestaltet, der die ausstellung 2013 auch nach bali holen wird. ein anderes projekt, das mir wichtig ist, ist die arbeit mit den diaspora-communities in wien. das museum für völkerkunde wien arbeitet in diesem zusammenhang im eu-projekt read me 2 mit anderen museen europas (musée du quai branly in paris, royal museum für central africa in tervüren und museo nazionale reistorivo etnografico „luigi pigorini“ in rom) zusammen, um ein verhältnis zwischen ethnographischen museen und communities aufzubauen bzw. dieses zu verbessern. das thema migration nimmt in den letzten jahren in der internationalen museumslandschaft einen immer wichtigeren stellenwert ein und wird zunehmend in ausstellungen und projekten thematisiert. in diesem sinne ergibt sich für uns eine verknüpfung zu den museumsbeständen: gerade das museum für völkerkunde verwahrt „migrierte“ objekte, deren bezug zu subjektiven erlebnissen in den meisten fällen verloren gegangen ist. deshalb soll der stellenwert unserer bestände mit in österreich lebenden menschen aus den herkunftsländern der objekte diskutiert und so einigen davon aseas 5(1) 188 189 eine neue geschichte oder deutung verliehen werden. als institution befasst sich unser museum mit der kulturellen vielfalt der welt und bietet sich daher als geeigneter ort für eine auseinandersetzung mit der diversität in unserer gesellschaft an. diesbezüglich könnte das museum auch als eine „kontaktzone“ der kulturen fungieren. als ersten schritt dieses projektes laden wir interessierte mitglieder der diasporacommunities in wien ein, fotos von sich mit einem objekt zu schicken, die eine beziehung zur eigenen herkunft herstellen. am thementag, dem 28. juli 2012, werden wir den ganzen tag veranstaltungen zum thema „museum und migration“ abhalten, zu denen wir alle mitglieder der communities in das museum einladen. mit den angeführten projekten stellen wir uns den anforderungen der zeit, uns nicht nur mit objekten, sondern auch mit den kulturangehörigen selbst zu befassen. das museum für völkerkunde in wien zeigt damit, dass die sammlung österreich ein kulturelles erbe präsentiert, das es gemeinsam zu erschließen gilt. ausgewählte publikationen czurda, f. (1883). catalog mit erklärungen der etnografischen privatsammlung des dr. f.a.j. czurda in postelberg (böhmen). wien, österreich: wilhelm braumüller. kuhnt-saptodewo, s. t., pospisilova, d., & hesser, p. (hg.). (2010). sulawesi and beyond: the franticek czurda collection. wien, österreich: museum für völkerkunde wien. kuhnt-saptodewo, s. t., bohle, b., brandl-straka, u., & moiseanu, o. (hg.). (2009). the philippinies: early collections. wien, österreich: museum für völkerkunde wien. kuhnt-saptodewo, s. t., brandl-straka, u., maurer, r., & tuarissa, t. (hg.). (2012). maluku: sharing cultural memory. wien, österreich: museum für völkerkunde wien. kuhnt-saptodewo, s. t., mittersakschmöller, r., kartasasmita, g., & reinthaler, l. (hg.). (2010). balinese art in transition. wien, österreich: museum für völkerkunde wien. sri tjahjani kuhnt-saptodewo die sammlung insulares südostasien des museums für völkerkunde wien hall, derek, hirsch, philip, & li, tania murray (hrsg.). (2011). powers of exclusion. land dilemmas in southeast asia. aseas 6(1) 229228 d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -6 .1 -1 6 rezensionen / book reviews hall, derek, hirsch, philip, & li, tania murray (hrsg.). (2011). powers of exclusion. land dilemmas in southeast asia. honolulu, hi: university of hawaii press. isbn: 978-0-8248-36030. vii + 257 seiten. citation kastenhofer, m. (2013). rezension: hall, d., hirsch, p. & li, t. m. (hrsg.). (2011). powers of exclusion. land dilemmas in southeast asia. aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften 6(1), 228-231. angetrieben von wirtschaftlichem wachstum, industrialisierung und weitgehender urbanisierung finden in südostasien seit den 1980er jahren drastische landnutzungsveränderungen statt, in deren folge große flächen an agrarland für kommerzielle, industrielle, touristische und infrastrukturelle zwecke umgewandelt werden. als konsequenz des steigenden drucks zur kommerzialisierung von land, kombiniert mit einem boom in der nachfrage nach landwirtschaftlichen erzeugnissen, sind heute auseinandersetzungen zwischen lokalen gemeinschaften, staaten und privaten akteurinnen rund um die frage von zugang zu und kontrolle über land allgegenwärtig. mit powers of exclusion. land dilemmas in southeast asia widmen sich die autorinnen derek hall, philip hirsch und tania murray li diesen ländlichen transformationsprozessen und erforschen, wer die daran beteiligten akteurinnen sind, wie prozesse der ländlichen exklusion funktionieren, welche dilemmas und debatten durch besagte transformationen provoziert werden und wer dabei schließlich als gewinner oder verlierer hervorgeht. finanziert durch das kanadische forschungsprogramm chatsea (challenges of the agrarian transition in southeast asia) kombinieren die drei autorinnen ihre durch extensive feldforschung in den untersuchten gebieten (kambodscha, indonesien, laos, malaysia, philippinen, thailand und vietnam) erworbene expertise mit ihren unterschiedlichen akademischen hintergründen in politikwissenschaft (hall), humangeographie (hirsch) und anthropologie (li). im gegensatz zu vielen bisher erschienenen werken rund um den zugang zu land, setzen die autorinnen von powers of exclusion ihren fokus nicht auf den zugang (access) zu, sondern auf den ausschluss (exclusion) von land. dabei begreifen sie exclusion nicht als negativ konnotierten prozess oder zustand, der „den schwachen“ von „den mächtigen“ auferlegt wird, sondern definieren exclusion als „the ways in which people are prevented from benefiting from things (more specifically, land)” (s. 7). damit aseas 6(1) 229228 kehren sie jesse ribot und nancy peluso’s definition des begriffes zugang um, den sie in ihrem einflussreichen artikel „a theory of access” (2003) als „the ability to benefit from things” definieren. der ausschluss von bestimmten akteurinnengruppen ist bei dieser neuen definition eine an sich neutrale notwendigkeit für jede art von landnutzung, wobei sie in der praxis oft mit enteignung verbunden ist und zu ungleichheit führt. die autorinnen nähern sich der frage, durch wen solche formen des ausschlusses perpetuiert werden, zunächst durch eine analyse der antworten von betroffenen. werden diese nach den gründen ihres ausschlusses von einem bestimmten stück land befragt, lauten die häufigsten antworten, dass erstens der zugang schlicht nicht erlaubt wäre, dass man es sich zweitens nicht leisten könne, dass man drittens bei dem versuch verletzt werden würde und viertens, dass es schlichtweg falsch wäre. aufgrund dieser antworten schließen die autorinnen auf folgende vier primären kräfte (powers) in der ausübung von exclusion: (1) regulierung (regulation), (2) der markt (the market), (3) kraft/gewalt ( force), und schließlich (4) legitimierung (legitimation). die autorinnen heben allerdings hervor, dass es keine festen grenzen zwischen den besagten kräften gibt, dass sie oft ineinander übergehen und dass vielfach auch andere soziopolitische kräfte an der ausübung von exclusion beteiligt sind. anhand dieser powers of exclusion analysieren hall et al. sechs schlüsselprozesse, die in transformationsprozessen um den zugang zu und ausschluss von land in südostasien eine treibende rolle spielen. jedem dieser schlüsselprozesse widmen die autorinnen ein kapitel. als ersten schlüsselprozess identifizieren die autorinnen licensed exclusions, worunter die titulierung von land, landreformen und die allokation von land fallen. sie heben hier die rolle des staates mit seiner regulativen macht als hauptakteur in den besagten prozessen hervor und zeigen das beispielsweise an der formalisierung von grundbesitz auf dorfniveau in laos, wo durch das programm für landund waldallokation versucht wurde, grenzen zwischen wäldern und agrarland und einem dorf und dem anderen zu setzen. als nächsten schlüsselprozess führen hall et al. ambient exclusions an, die sich in erster linie als landreformen im namen des umweltschutzes manifestieren. in südostasien sind diskurse über den umweltschutz seit den 1990er jahren allgegenwärtig – in der tat hat sich umweltschutz als leitendes grundprinzip in der landschaftsmarion kastenhofer rezension: powers of exclusion. land dilemmas in southeast asia aseas 6(1) 231230 planung etabliert. hall et al. zeigen, dass dies oftmals auch zum ausschluss einer großen anzahl von bewohnerinnen von land führt, denn durch die konzipierung einer landschaft als umweltschutzgebiet – ein an sich durchaus lobenswerter und notwendiger prozess – werden wiederum zahllose ortsansässige von der agrarischen nutzung dieser gebiete ausgeschlossen. die durch crop booms verursachten änderungen im zugang zu und ausschluss von land beschreiben die autorinnen als volatile exclusions und zeigen damit ihren dritten schlüsselprozess auf. crop booms werden durch steigende warenpreise, neue anbautechniken und politische interventionen verursacht und sind ein immer wieder auftauchendes phänomen in südostasien. die drei im buch untersuchten boom crops sind palmöl in malaysia, shrimps in thailand und kaffee in vietnam. zwar hätten diese entwicklungen millionen südostasiatischer bauern und bäuerinnen erfolg und wohlstand gebracht, eine ähnlich hohe anzahl an bürgerinnen bliebe allerdings von den vorteilen, die crop booms bringen, ausgeschlossen. als vierten schlüsselprozess sehen die autorinnen post-agrarian exclusions, im rahmen derer große landwirtschaftliche flächen in nicht-landwirtschaftlich genutztes land umgewandelt werden. hall et al. analysieren, wie jene menschen, die die konvertierten länder für agrarische zwecke genutzt hatten, nun von den konvertierten ländern und den durch die konvertierungen neu generierten profitmöglichkeiten ausgeschlossen werden, bevor sie sich dem fünften schlüsselprozess – intimate exclusions – zuwenden. diese manifestieren sich dadurch, dass miteinander vertraute bürgerinnen sich gegenseitig zu zwecken der kapitalakkumulation den zugang zu land verwehren. als sechsten und letzten schlüsselprozess sehen hall et al. counter exclusions, in denen sich gruppen mobilisieren, um land von staatlichen behörden oder anderen gruppen zurückzufordern, womit sie auch ihre eigenen rechte auf ausschließung anderer fordern. legitimierung spielt dabei eine zentrale rolle; besagte gruppen sichern sich unterstützerinnen und fordern ihre rechte auf das land mittels argumenten wie beispielsweise ihr recht auf lebensunterhalt, soziale gerechtigkeit oder territoriale zugehörigkeit ein. bei der näheren untersuchung einiger solcher mobilisierungen kommen hall et al. zu der feststellung, „that people want the right to exclude, but don’t want to be excluded“ (s. 188). powers of exclusion argumentiert durchgehend, dass ausschluss von land weder ein neues phänomen ist, noch eines, das vermieden werden kann, da schließlich jede aseas 6(1) 231230 produktive nutzung von land den ausschluss anderer menschen voraussetzt. bei so rapiden und facettenreichen landtransformationen, wie sie in den letzten jahrzehnten in südostasien stattgefunden haben, ist es von großer bedeutung, das „wer“ und „wie“ dieser veränderungen zu verstehen und zu analysieren, und powers of exclusion gelingt dies mit größter sorgfalt und besonnenheit. das buch brilliert durch seine übersichtliche struktur, die es durchgehend einfach macht, den überblick zu bewahren. auch quantität und qualität der fallbeispiele begeistern. unterschiedliche akteurinnen werden behandelt, von lokalen dorfbewohnerinnen über staatliche institutionen, ngos und soziale bewegungen bis hin zu agrarunternehmen. die vier powers of exclusion bewähren sich bei der analyse der verschiedenen schlüsselprozesse als treibende kräfte, wobei oft auch andere faktoren, wie zum beispiel technischer fortschritt oder umweltveränderungen, eine wichtige rolle spielen. die autorinnen erkennen allerdings auch mehrmals an, dass ihre powers weder exklusiv noch isoliert wirken, und im endeffekt erscheinen diese als logisch und auch außerhalb der untersuchten regionen anwendbar. für akademikerinnen, die sich für prozesse landschaftlicher transformation interessieren und dafür, wie durch diese ökologische, ökonomische und soziopolitische bedingungen neu definiert werden, ist powers of exclusion durchaus zu empfehlen. marion kastenhofer universität wien, österreich marion kastenhofer rezension: powers of exclusion. land dilemmas in southeast asia discussing the social entrepreneurial movement as a means of provoking normative change in west kalimantan, indonesia: an interview with kinari webb aseas 6(1) 189188 d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -6 .1 -1 1 im dialog / in dialogue discussing the social entrepreneurial movement as a means of provoking normative change in west kalimantan, indonesia: an interview with kinari webb bethany d. kois1 citation kois, b. (2013). discussing the social entrepreneurial movement as a means of provoking normative change in west kalimantan, indonesia: an interview with kinari webb. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 6(1), 188-194. kinari webb is a yale-trained physician and currently runs the healthcare and environmental nonprofi t organization alam sehat lestari (asri) that is based in sukadana, indonesia. she has lived and worked near gunung palung national park in indonesian borneo for 20 years. in this interview, conducted through email correspondence in march, 2013, kinari talks about the social entrepreneurial movement, provides background on social and legal norms as they relate to illegal logging in west kalimantan, indonesia, and discusses the structure and methods used by asri to provoke positive societal change. kinari webb ist eine in yale ausgebildete ärztin und leitet derzeit die gemeinnützige gesundheits und umweltorganisation alam sehat lestari (asri) in sukadana, indonesien. für 20 jahre lebte und arbeitete sie in der nähe des nationalparks gunung palung in borneo, indonesien. in diesem interview, das mittels e-mail-korrespondenz im märz 2013 durchgeführt wurde, spricht kinari über die soziale unternehmensbewegung, gibt hintergrundwissen über soziale und gesetzliche normen und deren bezug zu illegaler abholzung in west kalimantan, indonesien, und diskutiert die struktur und methoden der organisation asri für die förderung eines positiven sozialen wandels. bethany d. kois: william drayton said, “the job of a social entrepreneur is to recognize when a part of society is stuck and to provide new ways to get it unstuck. he or she finds what is not working and solves the problem by changing the system, spreading the solution, and persuading entire societies to take new leaps.”2 as a social entrepreneur yourself, how do you define social entrepreneurism? kinari webb: i love that definition. however, i think it suggests that the entrepreneurs come up with all the ideas and execute those ideas themselves. in my experience, idea creation 1 bethany d. kois recently returned from volunteer work with alam sehat lestari in sukadana, indonesia. she holds a bachelor of science in biology from iowa state university and a juris doctor from william mitchell college of law. she is currently studying normative change strategies and the effect of social entrepreneurs on law, policy, and society. contact: bethany.kois@wmitchell.edu 2 leviner, n., crutchfield, l. r., & wells, d. (2007). understanding the impact of social entrepreneurs: ashoka’s answer to the challenge of measuring effectiveness. ashoka working paper. retrieved from https://www.ashoka.org/sites/ ashoka/files/understandingtheimpactchapterpdf.pdf aseas 6(1) 189188 doesn’t happen like that – and if it did, the ideas wouldn’t be as good as those that are created collaboratively. i define social entrepreneurism a little differently. for example, i’m good at creating a space where great ideas happen. i’m good at recognizing when an idea is potentially game-changing and at working together with others to bring those ideas to fruition. i think we need to be careful about supporting drayton’s definition of social entrepreneurism because it encourages people to work individually and not truly honor the communities and staff they work with. in my experience, the best ideas always come from the people who are experiencing the problem. we need to support collaborative idea creation and social entrepreneurs can, absolutely, facilitate that type of action. kois: social entrepreneurial ventures are increasingly targeted towards sweeping, longterm change instead of immediate, small-scale effects. why do you think that is? webb: because sweeping long-term change is what is necessary. we cannot view world issues as a series of discreet problems solvable on their own. we exist in an interconnected web of culture, economics, and law. if we fail to recognize that, we can actually make things worse. for example, working towards decreasing poverty in a way that results in lowered human health and higher environmental degradation will not improve a community’s well-being in the long run. making one thing better by making others worse is not a sustainable solution. i think that’s why many people are working to tackle these problems on many fronts. kois: let’s talk numbers. in the 26 countries studied by the johns hopkins comparative nonprofit sector project, citizen organizations now employ 19 million workers and engage the equivalent of another 11 million full-time volunteers.3 the un human development report estimates that one in five people participate in a citizen organization.4 what do you think is driving this explosive growth? webb: i think there are two things. first, i just read the brilliant book better angels of our nature by steven pinker. he persuasively argues that throughout all human history our circles of compassion have been expanding – from family, to tribe, to ethnic group, to nation, and then slowly beyond those borders to encompass all humanity. i would also argue that we are expanding our compassion to include other life on earth and even the earth itself – the global boat that we all share. that is the first reason i think we care more about others. the second reason is that, for the first time in human history, many of us no longer have to worry about our basic needs. people are realizing that material things do not, in fact, bring happiness. if that doesn’t bring happiness and meaning, what does? the answer i, and millions of others, have found is that working to make the world a better place is fulfilling in a way that nothing else is. 3 center for civil society studies at johns hopkins institute for policy studies. (2004). global civil society: dimensions of the nonprofit sector (vol. 2). retrieved from http://ccss.jhu.edu/research-projects/comparative-nonprofit-sector/ cnp-publications 4 united nations development programme. (2000). human development report 2000. retrieved from http://hdr.undp. org/en/media/hdr_2000_ch0.pdf bethany d. kois an interview with kinari webb aseas 6(1) 191190 kois: salamon has observed that “we are in the midst of a ‘global associational revolution’, a massive expansion of structured citizen activity outside the boundaries of the market and the state.”5 do you think this movement has the capacity to provoke widespread societal changes? webb: absolutely! i agree that an almost unseen revolution in the way the world is governed is taking place. people are removing power from governments and, in many cases, governments are struggling to keep up with changes that have already taken place. and we mustn’t forget that much of what is happening on a global scale is also happening across national boundaries. globally, people are working together on issues they care about. this is possible today largely thanks to technology. for example, here in borneo, global communities are partnering with the local communities to protect a national park that is home to 10 percent of the world’s remaining orangutans. this is happening partially because the indonesian government does not have the capacity to protect it. what amazes me is that the world has not woken up to how powerful a force this kind of citizen action can be, but they will. it gives me enormous hope for the future. kois: you work in west kalimantan, indonesia, in an area near gunung palung national park. from my understanding, there has been extensive deforestation in this area in recent years. can you tell us about illegal logging there? webb: twenty years ago, when i first came to west kalimantan to study orangutans, it was said that an orangutan could go from coast to coast without touching the ground. that is no longer the case. borneo has had the fastest rate of deforestation the world has ever known, with more wood coming out in the 1980s than from all of south america and africa combined. sadly, this has left the few national parks as islands of forest and made their conservation even more critical. but, in reality, these parks are just paper parks and a few major factors have led local people to continue cutting down the forest. first, the lack of education means that local populations have few alternatives to logging, even though one of our village surveys suggests that 100 percent of village loggers would prefer alternative work. second, there are very few local sources of liquidity. if people need money for health care or education, one of the easiest ways to get it is through illegal logging. ninety-nine percent of the people around the park want to protect it, but what choice do they have if they need to log to pay for their child’s health care? having to choose between long-term and short-term well-being is a horrible choice. third, there are now few sources of timber outside the park. this drives villagers to enter the park to get timber for income. kois: it seems that the traditional approach to illegal logging, through the indonesian legal system, doesn’t adequately address these local problems. could you describe the methods that asri uses to stimulate and produce societal change? do you work toward creating new social norms that provide social sanctions to villagers who continue illegal logging? 5 salamon, l. (2002). the state of nonprofit america. washington, dc: brookings institution press. aseas 6(1) 191190 webb: in a round-about way, yes. we work to harness social pressure using a variety of methods. first, we employ local leaders to monitor the logging of their villages and to advocate for a reduction in logging. we call these local leaders forest guardians. this program was the idea of the local communities. there is a forest guardian for every hamlet that borders gunung palung national park. they work together with individual loggers – most of whom are their childhood friends – to find alternative livelihoods. second, while locals can always access care in our clinic, patients that come from non-logging villages are provided a 70-percent-reduction in the cost of their health care services. rainforest conservation donors provide the funds to cover the remainder of the bills. the bill reduction determination is, thus, made on a village level, not on an individual level. this is partly because we could never get data on an individual level, but also because the whole community has to deal with the negative effects of deforestation, not just the loggers. therefore, we hope the whole village will work together to stop it. third, we provide community education on the importance of protecting the forest for people’s long-term well-being. however, our experience is that we are often preaching to the converted and sessions are more a time for people to talk about how they value the forest and want to protect it. people talk about how critical the trees are as a watershed to prevent flooding and that malaria seems to increase in logged areas. kois: do you think your efforts begin to change the logging behavior of villagers? webb: our data suggests that it is. we have taken various village level surveys to try to understand how our methods have impacted the community. sixty-two percent of the people we surveyed and who knew about the health care discount had discussed it with others. and 95 percent of the people who discussed it believed that our methods were decreasing logging in their village. as for the forest guardian program, in its first year of operation, we found that 60 percent of the loggers who had worked with a guardian stopped logging and another 25 percent were considering stopping. kois: it seems that asri doesn’t condemn illegal logging with inflammatory rhetoric or personal attack of villagers. is this an intentional strategy? webb: yes, it is absolutely intentional. we do not see our relationship as confrontational, but rather as a partnership. together we are seeking solutions where both people and nature benefit. all the best ideas have come from the communities themselves. one man once said to me, “some conservation organizations just tell us what to do. don’t they realize we are trying to do that? it seems like they don’t care about us. but we know that everyone at asri truly cares about us and wants what is best for us. that is why we like working with you. we have also never experienced a program where we feel like we own it. we get to design what happens.” kois: can you see the asri model being effective at producing positive societal change, introducing new social norms, and improving compliance with environmental law in other places as well? bethany d. kois an interview with kinari webb aseas 6(1) 193192 webb: absolutely. we believe the key elements could be universal. truly listening to the communities for what the best solutions are, working together to bring in skills and resources from outside when they are not available locally, and seeking ways to enhance both environmental and human well-being at the same time. our plan is to replicate next in indonesian papua. ideally, people all over the world could address the problem of unsustainable practices in this way. kois: what social or legal norms would improve asri’s effectiveness? webb: if the rule of law actually worked in indonesia and people who violated the law could be prosecuted, that would be a wonderful thing. in every nation on earth there are cheaters and people who think only of themselves. even a tiny bit of negative reinforcement would go a long way. recently, one of the biggest exotic animal traffickers was caught and prosecuted. that is a wonderful thing. it remains to be seen whether he will be sanctioned or just pays to be released. i am very much in support of indonesia’s efforts to combat corruption. when corruption is not tolerated, both socially and legally, it is a huge help. as an organization, we also work to change corruption. we never pay bribes. my co-founder, hotlin ompusungu, has an effective way of responding to a request for a bribe. when asked for one, she lovingly turns the conversation around and instead asks for a donation so we can continue helping people who have no other source of healthcare. we haven’t got any donations yet, but they do back-pedal and promise to help us without ‘extra’ fees. it’s interesting, the head of our regency recently told us how much he liked working with our organization because of how ethical we are. it is likely that he is directly or indirectly involved in corruption, but still the norms are changing and even someone participating in the system does not like corruption. i think this is progress for indonesia and i hope it continues. kois: how has asri evolved since its foundation in 2007? webb: well first off, we have grown from 8 staff to over 90. we estimate that we have had direct contact with about 25,000 of the 60,000 people around the park and with many more indirectly. but this is just the beginning. changing social norms, improving people’s lives, and protecting a precious biological treasure is not a short-term project. our results are impressive so far. our surveys indicate a 68 percent decline in logging households and an increase from 6 to 10 out of 30 villages that have completely stopped logging over the last year and a half. health improvement indicators suggest an 18 percent decline in infant mortality and a 49 percent decline in diarrhea rates. we now have enormous social capital. we have begun to see success in our organic farming program, the forest guardians are seeking solutions with their communities, and the health of the community is improving as we improve access to care, immunizations, water, sanitation, and health care knowledge. kois: from a leadership perspective, what have been some critical challenges you have overcome that significantly contribute to the success of asri? aseas 6(1) 193192 webb: a year and a half ago, i was stung by a highly venomous jellyfish and almost died. after that, i had residual damage to my autonomic nervous system. i am still not back to full capacity. that was pretty terrifying. i wasn’t sure if my team could go on without me. but everyone rose to the challenge. hotlin has done a fabulous job running the program and taking over managing the staff and grants. one of our indonesian doctors, nurchandra bunawan, took over the clinic operation and the training of all our young indonesian doctors, as well as the volunteer medical students and residents. we sent him to yale for further training and they were so impressed with him they gave him a lectureship position. a young woman from the village, who had only a grade school education and had never used a computer when we hired her, is now doing almost all the accounting after taking a correspondence course and learning what i could teach her. truthfully, they are now running the program better than i did and i am now able to focus on replication. it has been a joy to watch them succeed. kois: besides from more capital or other tangible assets, what are some intangibles you need in order to be successful? webb: it used to be said of a woman in the 1800s that her most precious possession was her reputation. after living out here, i totally understand that. asri has a reputation for listening, for carrying through on its promises, for caring about people, for integrity, and for honoring all ethnicities, religions, and national backgrounds. that reputation is our most precious possession. we guard it jealously. kois: what’s next for the social entrepreneurial movement? what needs to happen to continue to build support for and interest in social entrepreneurship? webb: i think an awareness of how powerful small citizen organizations can be – possibly more powerful than governments – is important. recognition of this truth, research studies that show it, and funding of people who are working on bottom-up solutions is critical. when we first came here, the biggest obstacle was getting our staff and the communities to believe that change was possible and that they could do it themselves. they used to be pessimistic, felt disempowered, and cynical. the change five years later is amazing both in the communities and with our staff. they can’t wait to tackle the next issue and are proud to receive global attention for their success. my wish is to give this sense of empowerment to everyone on the planet. kois: what’s next for you? webb: replication first, but i also want to think about social change on a global scale. we are at a critical time in the history of humanity. population growth and climate change threaten all life on earth. the big question is whether the twenty-first century will be a great turning or a great ending, as bill plotkin calls it. i worry that there are not enough people talking about the possibility for us as humans to create great change. i have spent the last bethany d. kois an interview with kinari webb aseas 6(1) 195194 seven years watching it happen on a small scale. i want to convey hope and encouragement to others. we don’t have much time left and, if we are going to save our planet, we have to expand our circle of compassion to include the whole earth. each of us has to work on personal, community, and global scales. on a personal level, we have to honor others and the planet that gives us life. on a community level, we have to work on finding ways to live together more sustainably. and, on a global level, we have to be willing to work across the planet, offering our skills, passions, and resources wherever they are needed. my experience is that what is needed in one place happens to be excess in another. by working together we can do it. kois: thank you for participating in this interview. it was wonderful talking with you! webb: and wonderful to get to think about your great questions! thank you. thailand in the face of the 1997 asian crisis and the current financial crisis: an interview with johannes dragsbæk schmidt aseas 3(1) 101 im dialog / in dialogue thailand in the face of the 1997 asian crisis and the current financial crisis: an interview with johannes dragsbæk schmidt julia scharinger society for south-east asian studies (seas), austria aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften / austrian journal of south-east asian studies seas gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften / society for south-east asian studies www.seas.at johannes dragsbæk schmidt studied international relations and development studies at aalborg university, denmark. since 1993, he has been associate professor in the department of history, international and social studies. prof dragsbæk schmidt has held visiting research fellowships in australia, thailand, malaysia, indonesia, the philippines and poland, and was a visiting professor at the institute for political economy, carleton university, canada in 2009. additionally he has been a consultant to unesco, the world bank and the irish development agency. prof dragsbæk schmidt has a broad spectrum of research interests, varying from globalisation and international division of labour via refugees and human rights to social and welfare policy and state regulations with a focus on east and south-east asia. the interview was conducted by e-mail on 3 april, 27 april and 4 may 2010. julia scharinger: in your article ‘financial crisis, social crisis and unequal development in the republic of korea and thailand’ (dragsbæk, 2008) you mention major long-term impacts of the asian financial crisis in 1997 on thai society, such as a transition to flexible and informal jobs and growing social inequality. could you briefly sketch how these factors arose and how they transformed the labour market throughout the duration of the crisis? johannes dragsbæk schmidt: in the aftermath of the crisis, although with some variations, thailand introduced or expanded a host of labour market interventions and social protection programs. this could be seen as a re-active response to the massive julia scharinger an interview with johannes dragsbæk schmidt http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ aseas 3(1) 102 layoffs of regular workers in all sectors and the dramatic increase in poverty. had it been pro-active, the government and public sector would have been prepared for the massive social costs. another effect of the crisis was a significant shift from contractbased regular employment to non-standard or informal work. this informalisation of the labour force was aggravated by the bailout conditionalities attached to the ifis’ [international financial institutions’] intervention where also the demand for increasing labour market flexibility was introduced. the promotion of flexible labour market regulation was an attempt by the ifis to enhance ‘competitiveness’. however, thailand encountered important social problems connected with uneven development, inequality and challenges regarding the lack of policy responses towards distributional problems even before the crisis. social policies and labour market regulation had evolved against the backdrop of political stability, ‘full employment’, high household savings, and what was perceived as strong and resilient family and community ties, which gave governments an excuse for not planning for eventual downside risks. according to the view of the ifis, even during times of economic growth three issues were already challenging the social context: persistent pockets of poverty and rising inequality, protected labour market policies and industrial relations with job security, and rising needs for formal mechanisms to support household security. looking back, the world bank noted in 1998 that growth masked those problems but when the crisis stripped this mask away, the region’s persistent social vulnerabilities were sharply revealed. the ultimate impact of the ifis’ interventions was more job insecurity, a lowering of wages and increased competition among a growing pool of unemployed and informalised workers for a smaller number of jobs, a reduced role for organised labour, and a reduction in bargaining strength of industryand economy-wide unions. migrant labourers became scapegoats and in some cases were virtually thrown out of the country. this also had an important gender dimension as women were laid off first and had to bear the heaviest burden for the restructuring of industrial relations. i agree with andrew brown, who recently noted that the thai experience shows that there have been efforts to manage labour tensions in new ways that bypass and further undermine ideas of representation and cognate institutional structures that have historically been linked to collective class-based action and organisation (brown, 2004). aseas 3(1) 103 julia scharinger an interview with johannes dragsbæk schmidt scharinger: which strategies did civil society use to overcome the crisis of 1997? dragsbæk schmidt: civil society in thailand is not that different from other countries. it is split between civic and progressive forces and a more conservative – and in some cases anti-democratic and illiberal – sector. the new social policy of the post-washington consensus deliberately uses the liberal language of participation and empowerment as a strategy of ‘anti-politics’. this is a conscious strategy leading to marginalisation of political contestation. unlike earlier governance programs identified with structural adjustment, it envisages a more active role for the state as a regulator for civil society seeking to promote the disciplines of the market. this also became clear in the aftermath of the financial crisis in thailand where the “maintenance approach” developed by the ifis was devoted to a specific and strengthened role of civil society organisations and their ideological imperative as the pre-eminent measure for ameliorating the social impacts of the crisis, along with flexible labour markets. it leaves the important question in thailand whether civil society is in fact undermining the key functions and social responsibilities of the state in terms of delivering public collective goods. the fact that the ifis’ policy of dumping social services onto ngos means they should take over the work without a corresponding transfer of funding and the development of a mutual relationship with the state – the split in civil society ultimately laid the ground for the present chaos and political turmoil in thai politics and it can be argued that the danger of a civil war in late april 2010 can be traced back to the actions of civil society, the state and the aristocratic elite’s rejection of the accommodation of the then prime minister chuan leekpai’s approach towards the ifis’ “maintenance ” approach”. scharinger: both crises, back in 1997 and today, were majorly influenced by the financial markets, linked to huge credit schemes and quickly surpassed national borders – and had an impact on a regional or global level. could you give some more of your thoughts on how the current crisis resembles or matches the crisis of 1997? dragsbæk schmidt: in the wake of the 1997 financial crisis, when thailand entered the imf programme, they were told to tighten their monetary and fiscal policies by raising interest rates, getting and keeping fiscal budget surpluses and nationalising troubled banks. the programmes of today bear some resemblance to the 1997 aseas 3(1) 104 response, but there are differences as well. the crises in 1997 and 2009 demonstrated the fragility of the over-reliance of the thai economy on export-orientation and a major sell-out of thai assets to foreign capital. today, listed firms in thailand trade at 11.9 times estimated 2010 earnings, making bangkok the second cheapest market in asia after pakistan. this entails a danger that even more thai assets could shift hands. scharinger: after the current crisis hit the global economy, major economic indicators and growth rates were in free fall. growth rates in export-nations such as germany dropped to an all-time low, while giants such as china could at least stabilise at a low, although greatly lessened, growth rate. in comparison to such developments, how was and is thailand affected and how is it performing in the current financial crisis? dragsbæk schmidt: the thai case shows that crises can set in motion events that cause institutions to deteriorate. the 2009-2010 crisis has increased distrust and fear, and weakened the prospects for democratisation. today the thai economy is in low gear with slow growth and sluggish demand. this is also connected to the political situation, which remains unresolved. the problems of the important tourism sector are not so much related to the crisis as such, but are a result of the clashes between proand anti-thaksin forces. scharinger: compared to the impacts of the financial crisis back in 1997 on thailand’s society, what are the major problems and challenges of today’s crisis to the average citizen? dragsbæk schmidt: the growth prospects of the thai economy depend on the economic prospects at the global and regional level. at present there are no signs showing that the western economies may be beginning to bottom out. like in the case of the 1997 crisis, even if the economy bottoms out, this does not mean that the problems are over. trade with china is steadily growing, but it remains to be seen whether the chinese market can absorb and replace eu and north american demand. thailand bottomed out after about five to six quarters from the start of the 1997 crisis, but it took five years before output got back to the pre-crisis level. aseas 3(1) 105 the decline in non-performing loans ratio to below the level of 10 percent took even longer; about eight years. thus, in the case of the present crisis, a quick return to business as usual appears to be out of the question. these measures and changes beyond the policy-makers’ and average thai’s control have had a huge impact on the daily life of thai citizens in the form of growing poverty and unemployment, and especially a growing informalisation of the labour market. scharinger: after the crisis in 1997, thailand’s politicians took measures toward the future protection of its economy and financial stability. do you think thailand has gleaned anything from the former crisis and actually adopted strategies which are able to protect them now – not only concerning financial stability, but also in light of growth, exports, secure jobs or tourism? dragsbæk schmidt: this is a highly political and perhaps ideological question. it seems that the democrats tend to rely on a classical short-term strategy while the thaksin camp wants to promote a more keynesian inspired type of demand driven economic policy approach. it is true that the thaksin administration used an expansionary fiscal policy in 2001 in an attempt to enhance economic growth. in its first term there was a focus on boosting rural incomes and development, but infrastructure development was declared the priority for the second term and this was on the whole seen as a success. in the beginning thaksin relied on protectionism, a shift away from exclusively relying on export-orientation (eoi) towards the domestic market; a focus on social policies, and in general a populist and nationalist discourse. at the moment most of the policy responses to the crisis coming from the abhisit government are directed toward the short-term need to shore up the economy. fiscal injections are expected to generate greater domestic consumption that will ease the pain of domestic producers and consumers and there is certain degree of copycat economic policies in the sense that some social policies initiated by thaksin have been continued by the democrat-led coalition government. however, it appears that not much attention has been paid to how to make the fiscal injections sustainable. even less thought has been given to what a new “rebalanced growth path” for the country might look like and how it can be achieved. julia scharinger an interview with johannes dragsbæk schmidt aseas 3(1) 106 scharinger: regarding those protectionist strategies, how do you assess the current situation and vulnerability of thailand’s society in light of the financial crisis? dragsbæk schmidt: the thai crisis in 2010 is more a political crisis than an economic one, but behind this fault line is a structural problem related to re-distribution and inequality. there is a fear among the elite that the hegemony of the traditional paternalist thai aristocratic elite is coming to an end. the challenge from the rebellion of the poor and marginalised – symbolised by billionaire thaksin as a leadership figure – threatens to tear apart thai society and, in the worst-case scenario, it will end in a civil war. the protectionist strategies promoted by thaksin stand in sharp contrast to the fact that he also tended to act in a kleptocratic and autocratic fashion by expropriating public property and selling off his huge conglomerate for his and his family’s own benefit. the levels of corruption and kleptocracy amongst members of the elite appear to have reached endemic heights – and this includes both camps: the royalist aristocrats and the more neo-liberal oriented, but social-protection aware, camp of thaksin. scharinger: which strategies is civil society using to deal with the current crisis? are there any observable strategies yet? dragsbæk schmidt: civil society appears to be paralysed by the present political crisis and can be characterised by its anti-thaksin doctrine. both camps in civil society supported the military coup against thaksin as both see him as a corrupt politician and an unreliable person. for some he is even seen as an anti-monarchy politician and a threat to national unity. scharinger: in response to the current crisis, the thai government introduced an economic stimulation package meant to protect its economy and stimulate the consumption rate of people with low incomes. do you think this package could fulfil its expectations, or do you see alternative instruments as necessary to secure income and domestic consumption? dragsbæk schmidt: i do not see this package as sufficient. it appears that there are many structural problems in the thai economy which needs to be addressed. these aseas 3(1) 107 problems are of a more long-term nature related to access to improved education, skills upgrading, increased taxation especially of the rich, and the implementation of propoor policies – the last could be in the form of re-distribution and the establishment of social welfare entitlements. the present political turmoil also appears to be a competition between two interpretations of “buddhist economics” in the form of what has been called “sufficiency economics”. sufficiency economics is a concept that was invented by king bhumipol during the cold war and the communist insurgency in the northeastern part of thailand. in a number of speeches he explained “that the centre of his view was the modern maxim promoted by king vajiravudh: every citizen’s paramount duty is to the unity of the nation under the king”. in the same vein he noted that part of the problem of thailand’s lack of unity was selfish capitalism, which lacked morality and was by nature divisive. capitalism did not reward most the hardest workers or those who performed their duty. it rather benefited those who took advantage of others, and this eroded unity. bhumipol said trader and land speculators who took advantage of peasants “may be on side of terrorists.” he further noted that rural development should be carried out with a high degree of ability, wisdom and intelligence coupled with honesty without any thought of financial gain. he concluded that modern government had been imported from the west and was not appropriate for thais. these remarks are reflected in the tenth national economic and social development plan (2007-2011), which set the target of reducing poverty from 13 percent in 2004 to 4 percent by 2011. it also targets a ratio of the richest quintile to the poorest quintile of no more than 10 times. very much inspired by bhumipol’s self-sufficiency approach, the development plan also emphasised implementation of the “good living and happiness society strategy” which consists of five development plans: (i) a sufficiency economy plan aimed at building up knowledge and creating occupational skills; (ii) a community development and opportunity creation plan focusing on reducing household expenditures (e.g. use of organic fertilizer and vegetable home gardening) and creating market opportunities for community products; (iii) a rehabilitation plan for natural resources; (iv) a vulnerable people and senior citizen assistance plan; and (v) a provision plan for basic services (e.g. health, education, and vocational training). the plans will be implemented through projects jointly designed and implemented by community leaders, local governments, provincial governments and the central julia scharinger an interview with johannes dragsbæk schmidt aseas 3(1) 108 government. thaksin had also used the concept in a strategic way to pursue what was termed his populist spending programmes in the sense that his support for local initiatives was a way to exploit rural dissidence, protest which evolved into a rural movement – but once he came into power he revealed his lack of interest in the rural and local causes. his main strategy for rural change was to pump in capital funds. he had no interest in land reform, land-to-the-tiller programmes, tax reforms, or other policies to shift the structural position of peasants within the national economy. one needs to be reminded that 70 percent of the population live in the countryside and more than 500,000 farmer households are landless in a situation where there still is plenty of arable land available. in reality thaksin only paid lip service to the ideas of sufficiency and self-reliance. his economic policies and his true feelings were clearly diametrically opposed. sufficiency economics, with its inward-looking strategy stressing selfreliance at the grassroots level and the creation of stronger ties among domestic economic institutions, was the ideological device which acted as oppositional tool to overthrow thaksin. in fact, it was the accusations about corruption and popular support for the notion of sufficiency economics around which a considerable number of social movements, ngos and labour groups against privatisation could gather and find a common cause against thaksin. scharinger: from your analysis, which parts of society will be affected the most? is there a classical winner and loser divide? dragsbæk schmidt: this depends on the outcome of the current clashes between the red and the yellow shirts. the current problems are no longer closely related to the global meltdown but have become more domestic in nature. a quick look at recent thai history would tell us that the progressive and pro-poor forces in civil society will lose and we will soon see a military coup or a military clamp-down on the protesters. the winners will be the middle class and the pro-us and conservative elite. another scenario is a compromise between the factions of the thai elite and a re-imposition of a weak but democratically elected government unable to touch the privileged minority elite. the losers in both scenarios are the peasantry and poor working people. aseas 3(1) 109 scharinger: what needs to be done to protect the citizens from the current crisis? what should politicians do and what could be done by the citizens themselves? dragsbæk schmidt: this is indeed a difficult question to answer. basically it is up to the thai people to decide their own destiny. my personal view is that thailand must re-think its current overreliance on eoi and foreign capital. to address the issue of social justice, which is one of the most pertinent structural problems in thai society, by the introduction of a fair tax and redistribution policy including a variety of social protection programmes and to lift restrictions in the thai legal system which obstruct the establishment of free and autonomous trade unions and political parties which adopt a social profile are two ways to overcome the impacts of the present and future crises. another important issue is related to the draconian and anachronistic lèse majesté laws, which prohibit any discussion about the role of the monarchy in thai society and politics. one of the results of the 1997 crisis was the introduction of thaksin’s social policies and his courting of the heirs to the throne. in reality the competition between benevolent elite-directed discourses is a question about winning the hearts and minds of the rural poor – especially in the northeastern isan region; in this equation thaksin became a threat to the old conservative elite and this threat is still very influential in thai politics. it seems that the majority of ordinary citizens vote for social change and it is important to keep in mind that organisation according to (economic) interests as opposed to other lines is one important avenue of change and a way to avoid the social pitfalls of crises. scharinger: what is your perspective on the social and political instabilities in thailand? does it make civil society more vulnerable to impacts of the crisis? does it contribute to the spread of the crisis? are the rising instabilities even an effect of the crisis? dragsbæk schmidt: advocates on both left and right have relied on the idea that civil society can replace the role of the state. the basic argument i want to make is that civil society, at least in its mainstream understanding, cannot replace the state, but should make a greater effort to pressure the state to take up basic responsibilities and enhance developmental and social regulatory state capacities in accordance with julia scharinger an interview with johannes dragsbæk schmidt aseas 3(1) 110 its level of development. there is great danger that the current overemphasis on civil society detracts or hijacks the focus away from what is of immediate importance in any country with high levels of poverty, inequality and social crisis. if civil society includes social groups and strata like organized labourers and the peasantry, it probably makes more sense. recent examples have shown that the labour movement has been relatively successful in pushing for the social security act despite resistance from the entrenched politico-business alliance – the elite. in fact the experiences with thaksin, the military, and the present democrat-led government illustrate the problem with the very idea that thai civil society can act as a progressive force at the national level. civil society is per definition undemocratic and not elected by anybody. it is furthermore contested terrain where anti-democratic ‘dark’ forces at least in the thai context seem to have the upper hand when it comes to issues of democratisation and real representation of the poor. the major problem is the weakness of the political system itself, which makes political representation in accordance with class and other social and political interests difficult if not impossible. the other problem is that thai ngos in some cases have become too powerful and actually reduce the strength of adequate social movements which could act as mobilisers for progressive social change and democratisation. scharinger: you seem to place a great emphasis on thaksin’s past administration and his current supporters. in the aftermath of the financial crisis in 1997 he played an important role. how do you estimate his direct or indirect influence now? dragsbæk schmidt: thaksin’s thai rak thai party was in fact partly born out of strong progressive civil society sentiments characterised by the introduction of a coherent social policy, increased protectionism, and nationalism. since the imposition and hegemony of the thaksin regime and later on the military coup in september 2006, civil society has been identified by the split between the progressive red shirts (united front for democracy against dictatorship or udd) working for social change and the royalist and more conservative yellow shirts (the anti-thaksin people’s alliance for democracy or pad). the confrontation between the two is still unresolved but it seems there is a danger that it can end in a violent and bloody solution unless a compromise is offered by the government. aseas 3(1) 111 it is too early to judge whether thaksin can return to thai politics or not. he remains an important political and symbolic figure for the udd red shirts in the sense that he stands for social and political change. as long as the stalemate continues, thaksin and his supporters must be included in a compromise – and it is not impossible that the puea thai party will win the next election. however behind it all is the question about succession to the throne. the thai monarchy is in crisis partly because thaksin became a rival and interfered in the succession and partly because the crown prince is disliked by many thais. as long as this issue cannot be debated openly, thaksin, the udd and the puea thai party will remain a formidable opposition to the ruling elite. scharinger: for the final question: how long do you think the crisis will last? how long will the impacts of the crisis be recognizable in thailand’s society? dragsbæk schmidt: this is difficult to answer. the political crisis could in principle end tomorrow if king bhumipol intervenes and imposes a compromise. the economic and social crises will last much longer and cannot be solved overnight. references brown, a. (2004). labour, politics and the state in industrializing thailand. london: routledge. dragsbæk schmidt, j. (2008). finanzkrise, sozialkrise und ungleiche entwicklung. in: k. küblböck & c. staritz (eds.), asienkrise: lektionen gelernt? finanzmärkte und entwicklung. (pp. 143-158). hamburg, germany: vsa-verlag. handley, p. m. (2006). the king never smiles: a biography of thailand’s bhumibol adulyadej. new haven, ct: yale university press. hewison, k. & jayasuriya, k. (2004, january). the anti-politics of good governance: from global social policy to a global populism? working paper 59, hong kong: southeast asia research centre. julia scharinger an interview with johannes dragsbæk schmidt music and artistic artefacts: symbols of rohingya identity and everyday resistance in borderlands aseas 4 (2) 214 215 kazi fahmida farzana music and artistic artefacts d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -4 .2 -2 aktuelle südostasienforschung / current research on south-east asia music and artistic artefacts: symbols of rohingya identity and everyday resistance in borderlands kazi fahmida farzana1 national university of singapore citation farzana, k. f. (2011). music and artistic artefacts: symbols of rohingya identity and everyday resistance in borderlands. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 4(2), 215-236. this study looks at the creation of music and art by rohingya refugees in bangladesh as a symbol of social resistance and identity. ethnographic research on the rohingyas’ use of music and art suggests that these non-conventional means play an important role in communicating their coherent identity and expressing their resistance to the discrimination and oppression experienced in their country of origin as well as in their exile in bangladesh. this informal resistance is used to keep their memory alive, to transmit that history through verbal and visual expressions to the new generations, and to communicate information about themselves to outsiders. this article posits that these forms of expression, while suggestive of their identity and everyday resistance, occur mostly in an informal and indirect form, rather than in direct confrontation and protest. these informal means also refl ect the rohingyas’ pragmatism and coping strategies for living in the borderlands. keywords: music; art; rohingya refugees; bangladesh; burma/myanmar die vorliegende studie untersucht die bedeutung der musik und kunst der rohingya-flüchtlinge in bangladesch als symbole sozialen widerstands und ausdruck ihrer identität. ethnographische forschungen zur rohingya-musik und -kunst lassen darauf schließen, dass diese nicht-konventionellen mittel eine wichtige rolle bei der vermittlung ihrer kohärenten identität spielen und ihren widerstand gegen diskriminierung und unterdrückung in ihrem herkunftsland als auch im exil in bangladesch ausdrücken. der informelle widerstand wird dazu verwendet ihre erinnerung lebendig zu halten, ihre geschichte mittels verbaler und visueller ausdrucksformen weiterzugeben sowie mit der jungen generation und außenstehenden informationen über sich selbst zu teilen. der artikel postuliert, dass diese ausdrucksformen – wenngleich suggestiv in ihrer identität und im alltäglichen widerstand – meist in informeller und indirekter form auftreten und nicht mittels direkter konfrontation und protest. die informellen mittel spiegeln auch den pragmatismus der rohingyas und deren bewältigungsstrategien für das leben in der grenzregion wider. schlagworte: musik; kunst; rohingya-flüchtlinge; bangladesch; burma/myanmar 1 kazi fahmida farzana is a phd candidate in the south asian studies programme, faculty of arts and social sciences, national university of singapore. she wishes to thank vineeta sinha, carl grundy-warr, shapan adnan, and alexander horstmann for their support and guidance while writing the draft version of this article. she also wishes to extend her thanks to the two anonymous aseas reviewers for their insightful comments. contact: k.f.farzana@nus.edu.sg aseas 4 (2) 216 217 introduction social science scholars have always been keenly interested in studying social movements and resistance movements by minorities and disadvantaged groups in society. the focus of such studies has mostly been on certain forms of action which lead to the organisation and active participation of individuals with their group interests in mind (dunaway, 1996; hughes, mladjenovic, & mrsevic, 1995; mcadam, 1982; morris, 1984; rubin, 1996; rapone & simpson, 1996; robinson, 1995; rupp & taylor, 1987). however, some scholars have focused on the more informal and alternative forms of resistance (adams 2002; adas, 1981; goldstone, 1991; jasper, 1997; kerkvliet, 1986; luke, 1992; scott, 1985; staggenborg, eder, & sudderth, 1993-1994; szombati-fabian & fabian, 1976). disadvantaged groups have tended to use informal means such as music, the arts, and artefacts to express themselves and avoid direct confrontation with their oppressors. this non-conventional form of resistance is more humble, but distinct, in nature; this is especially powerful for disadvantaged groups such as displaced communities and refugees who would rarely be given an opportunity to express themselves. therefore, it is important to understand this aspect of resistance from the perspective of ordinary individuals. this article examines the rohingyas’ music and art, documenting their lives as a marginalised group of refugees living in bangladesh by the naff river, which flows through myanmar (burma)2 on one side and bangladesh on the other.3 this border area is significant for several reasons. first, it is where two political regions – south asia and south-east asia – adjoin. second, it has political significance for the neighbouring states, as it constitutes the boundary interlinked to national security for these states. third, it has social significance to the people who live on both sides of the naff river. the rohingya refugee problem has been a longstanding issue and involves the question of an ethnic minority’s identity. the rohingyas are an ethnic minority group in the northern arakan (currently rakhine) state of myanmar. commonly known as muslim arakanese, the rohingyas trace their historical roots in the arakan region 2 the term ‘myanmar’ and ‘burma’ are used interchangeably in this article to indicate the same country. most scholars still tend to refer to myanmar as ‘burma’. 3 the two neighbouring countries share an international border of 270 km; the adjoining regional units are cox’s bazar district, 150 km south of chittagong city in bangladesh, and the arakan state, located on the western coast of burma. aseas 4 (2) 216 217 from the eleventh century to 1962 (yegar, 1972, pp. 1-25). the arakan was not always part of myanmar. in the pre-colonial history, arakan (or the maruk-u kingdom) was once an independent kingdom, separated from the burmese kingdoms in the irrawaddy delta and central burma as well as from bengal and the mogul empire to the west. its land area, however, extended as far as chittagong (including the teknaf and cox’s bazar areas), which is now part of bangladesh. geographically, the area is separated by a range of mountains, the arakan yoma, from central burma (oberoi, 2006, p. 172). there is no such physical barrier between arakan and chittagong. therefore, bengali influence in arakan is obvious.4 during the colonial period, from 1886 to 1937, burma was a province of british colonial india, and this stimulated intra-regional labour flows (taylor, 2009, p. 156). the enduring legacies of this historic movement of people include millions of chinese and indian labourers in the region, many of whom stayed on in burma even after the british had left. on this basis, the post-independent burmese governments claimed that the rohingya muslims were more recent migrants who had come to the region from south india during the british colonial days. the military government’s official stand on the issue is even more radical: it regards the rohingyas as more recently arrived ‘illegal immigrants’ from bangladesh. therefore, the military government refused to grant the ronhingyas citizenship. it also declined to differentiate between the arakanese muslims who had been in the region for centuries – long before the arrival of the british – from the migrant muslims who came only in the later part of burma’s colonial history. that was how the rohingya community became stateless in their own country. because of discriminatory policies and military operations, the whole community is affected, being either internally displaced or forced to become international refugees in the neighbouring countries. currently, there are approximately 326,500 rohingyas in various parts of bangladesh, primarily in teknaf, ukhia, and cox’s bazar, many of whom have been there for about two decades. the aim of this study is to analyse rohingya arts and artefacts as textual clues to how the refugee community continues to nurture their identity in the borderland, to see how the ordinary rohingyas use these materials, under what circumstances, and for what reasons. the remaining part in the article is divided into three main sec4 as bhattacharya noted, “in history . . . the arakanese king basapyn occupied chittagong in 1459 and we know that since then it was ordinarily in arakanese hands till 1666. the influence of bengal is, however, apparent till 1638 from the mahomedan names and persian and nagri characters on the coins” (1927, p. 141). kazi fahmida farzana music and artistic artefacts aseas 4 (2) 218 219 tions: first, the methodology and data used in this research; second, an examination and analysis of the documentary records of music and artwork; and finally, a reflective analysis of arts and artefacts in refugee life. this article posits that music and the arts play a significant role in communicating the rohingyas’ coherent identity and expressing a more informal form of resistance against the discrimination and oppression they have experienced. methodological approach adopted the data for this article is from fieldwork conducted in 2009 and 2010 as part of a larger study on the documented and undocumented rohingya refugees in various parts of teknaf,5 in the south-eastern corner of bangladesh adjacent to burma. the primary data i used for this article are three songs and two drawings produced by the refugees.6 using these documents as a basis for reflecting and contemplating, i conducted in-depth interviews7 with the refugees to ascertain their personal stories, thoughts, feelings, and interpretation of the meanings and processes in their country of origin as well as their current life in bangladesh.8 while doing individual interviews, my primary attention was on the refugees’ responses to my questions, but i found myself looking into issues i had not originally intended to examine. for example, the rohingyas’ behaviours, different symbols, communication systems, and so forth. therefore, besides the interview method, i also included ethnographic participant observation as part of my data collection. this then opened the door to other ‘non-conventional’ aspects such as drawings and music in refugee life. i noticed that ordinary rohingya refugees9 frequently used visual means of communication which are particularly expressive and helpful in il5 teknaf is an upazila (sub-district) of cox’s bazar, bounded by cox’s bazar district on the north, the bay of bengal on the south and west, and the naff river and the arakan region of myanmar on the east. i chose teknaf as my field site as it is one of two officially registered refugee camps and likely the main centre for undocumented migrants from arakan. 6 for a more extensive project, i collected 15 drawings, seven poems, and 16 songs (taranas) produced by the refugees. because of space constraints, i selected only a few representative works to discuss in this article. 7 non-probability selection techniques of sampling were utilised for this study. questions were mostly descriptive in nature. questions were memorised and discussed with the respondents so as to make the interview sessions friendly and less formidable. i took a semi-structured, informal, and more open-ended approach. 8 besides several fieldtrips to teknaf, i continue to maintain constant communication with several refugee individuals and families via mobile phone to get their updates. i am very much indebted to the refugees for their selfless generosity in sharing their stories and information. 9 these songs and images were produced by ordinary refugees from every strata of life – both male and female, registered and unregistered, single mothers, rickshaw pullers, daily labourers, and beggars. aseas 4 (2) 218 219 lustrating aspects of their collective sense of self and culture. here, i worked on the premise that these are valuable data, and i present these unconventional documents as text, as an original, documentary record of a marginalised group’s experiences in the form of visual productions as a powerful means of social resistance. the context of refugee life the rohingya refugee population live in bangladesh as documented or undocumented individuals. the documented refugees, estimated at 26,500, live in two officially registered refugee camps, while the vast majority of undocumented refugees10, estimated to be between 200,000 and 300,000, live among the host population in scattered settlements in teknaf, ukhia, and cox’s bazar. in teknaf sub-district, the main areas are jaliapara, naitongpara, mitha panir chora, nayapara official unhcr refugee camp (section i and ii), leda, shamlapur, and shah porir dip. in the ukhia sub-district, they are more dispersed in the plains and hill villages, and in the kutupalong official unhcr refugee camp surrounded by makeshift camps. in cox’s bazaar district, many live in semi-urban slums in nazirartek, samitipara (near the port and coast), and gunarpara (in the hills near the town). the reason for selecting the upazila-border in teknaf is that ,the largest number of undocumented rohingya refugees as well as the registered unhcr refugee camp nayapara are located within this area of bangladesh. the nayapara registered refugee camp was established on 19 november 1992. the refugees living in this camp are those who had crossed the border into bangladesh from november 1991 to june 1992. the total area of the nayapara camp is 3.234 km2. the actual number of the refugee population is in dispute. according to the bangladeshi government’s ‘quick facts of nayapara refugee camp’, the total refugee population (based on estimates as of 13 july 2009) was 14,287 individuals from 1,771 families.11 however, the unhcr (2008) suggests that the total refugee population in nayapara camp in 2008 was 17,022.12 life in the refugee camp is strictly regulated 10 undocumented rohingya refugees are those who are not registered with the office of the united nations high commissioner for refugees. 11 the camp has seven residential blocks with 474 tin sheds (203 new sheds and 271 old sheds), 875 latrines, 365 bathhouses, 24 garbage pits, and 45 points of water distribution. 12 unhcr estimates suggest a total of 28,004 refugees living in two registered refugee camps – nayapara and kutupalong. kazi fahmida farzana music and artistic artefacts aseas 4 (2) 220 221 by multiple layers of security installations, which control entry, exit, and in-camp activities. the registered refugees live on allocated food rationing and are subject to restrictions on movement, behaviour, activities, and their relationship with the authorities. they live a miserable life, subject to the control and mercy of the authorities, alongside internal power politics of discrimination and exploitation. the self-settled, undocumented rohingya refugees are even more vulnerable. they remain unprotected by the bangladeshi government and international organisations. as in myanmar, they are viewed by the bangladeshi government as ‘illegal immigrants’. some of them live among the local community, while others hide in remote areas in the hills near the town. their living conditions are varied. some are so poor they have only an assortment of tree branches and plastic paper to cover and make tents for families of 8 to 10. for food, water, and work, they have to find their way to the nearest town. many find themselves in low-skilled and menial work such as rubbish collection or cooking and selling fried food, dried fish, and so forth. as there is no protection afforded them, many find themselves in a cycle of abuse, exploitation, and arrest. documentary record of music music plays an important role in the life of a displaced community like the rohingyas. an analysis of one form of their spoken arts known as tarana (poems/songs) suggests that these are highly significant for their collective memory. this section looks at their poetry and songs, especially those commonly available among the ordinary refugees (both documented as well as undocumented), telling of their experiences on both sides of the naff river. the concept of despair the following tarana is from aleya banu, a 39-year-old housewife and mother of five, living in a shabby thatch, hiding with other rohingya families at the hilltop close to naitong para (village).13 she had come with her family to bangladesh from the 13 all names of the rohingyas used in this study are pseudonyms. aseas 4 (2) 220 221 buthidaung township of arakan in 1991. as she explains the song in her language: this song tells about what we encountered in arakan. our life . . . our memory about our homeland. we could not tolerate the persecution (julm) any more. . . . we had to leave our place. this tarana is all about that feeling. although the context of this song is about life in arakan, it was later reproduced by their popular local singers to depict their displaced life in bangladesh in a bid to keep their memories alive. to aleya, this song reflects her own life in arakan. watching her sing, it was difficult to overlook the intensity of her facial expressions and emotional involvement with the song, magnifying her frustration and insecurity in life, and her resentment articulated as the song’s lyrics. the word dor (fear) is used eight times in this song, in nearly every stanza, to explain why they had to spend a lifetime crying in their own homeland. specific sources of fear mentioned are the torture at the hands of the burmese government, the military men, and kazi fahmida farzana music and artistic artefacts source: author’s field research arkani original kandi kandi din katailam kandi kandi din katailam mog bormar vitore helom pori no parilam hokumote dore kani kandi buk vashailam arkan nor vitore helom pori no parilam hokumote dore gura gura doodhor jadu gura gura doodhor puain puashsha kene more pori thori no parilam hokumote dore kandi kandi din katailam mog bormar vitore helom pori no parilam hokumote dore mogor puain dui class pori chori dhori thake valor puain ba pass hoile panor khili beche gura gura doodhor puain puashsha kene more helom pori no parilam arkan not dore helom pori no parilo biyaginor dore gura gura doodhor puain na khai kene more helom pori no parilo biyaginor dore helom pori no parilam militarir dore kandi kandi din katailam mog bormar vitore helom pori no parilam hokumote dore english translation we spent our life crying we spent our days crying surrounded by the mogs in burma so we’ve left behind homeland fearing torture of the government we spent our life crying in a home called arakan so we’ve left behind homeland fearing torture of the government tender babies and charming lovely kids why should they starve to death? so we’ve left behind homeland fearing torture of the government we spent our life crying surrounded by the mogs in burma so we’ve left behind homeland fearing torture of the government mogs attend elementary yet they pick the stick to rule, but we get to sell betel leaves even if we earn a ba* tender babies and charming lovely kids why should they starve to death? so we’ve left behind arakan so we’ve left due to fear of everyone tender babies and charming lovely kids why should they starve to death? so we’ve left due to fear of everyone so we’ve left due to fear of military men we spent our life crying surrounded by the mogs in burma so we’ve left behind homeland fearing torture of the government *higher degree above school rohingya song 1 aseas 4 (2) 222 223 the mogs (rakhines). it raised the issue of difficulty living in a land surrounded by buddhist rakhines who are entitled to all the economic, social, and political facilities in life, while the muslim rohingyas remained completely deprived. in particular, it raised the issue of hunger caused by poverty, especially when watching their babies starve to death. it also indicates their joblessness and poor economic condition in life due to discrimination in education and job opportunities between the rakhine and rohingya communities. all these indicators of discrimination painfully exemplify the hierarchical relationship between the powerful and the powerless in society. the song is a perfect reflection of their stateless life. it illustrates the traumatic experience of why and how they were forced from their homeland. it clearly expresses their sorrows and frustrations in life, and certainly shows their resentment towards the burmese government and its military as well as towards the local rakhines. it challenges their domination, especially in asking the question “why”. this mode of articulation certainly shows that something went very wrong for them. it serves as a painful memory of their homeland and how their lives have changed. the song is targeted at refugees who share similar experiences. the concept of identity the following tarana came from an undocumented female refugee named tonima, a 32-year-old housewife and mother of two living in a mountainous area close to naitongpara in teknaf with a family of eight. she came to bangladesh with her parents in 1998 when she was 19. her family tried to get a place in the unhcr registered refugee camps but failed, so they moved to the fishing community of jaliapara where many other undocumented refugees live. aseas 4 (2) 222 223 the text of the tarana reads: the song sounds almost like a prayer calling upon ‘merciful’ god and seeking his refuge and help. the song appears to be based on their stateless situation and the suffering experienced by having to hide in the jungles of arakan and on the mountain in teknaf, bangladesh. the song is for the rohingyas who face constant fear and persecution. this is reflected in the lyrics, “we remained adrift suffering from tortures”. their struggles and sufferings in life are also expressed in the plaintive, “for how long will you make us eaten by insects?” the song ends by wishing all a peaceful arakan, if god is willing. it is amazing to note that they were able to cope despite their adverse situation in life and to keep their hopes alive. perhaps a tarana works as a form of meditation for them, or, as tonima noted, it was like their “normal everyday prayer”. a song can entertain and satisfy their heart on that level. the song is a medium for a non-literate community to keep alive their history, given that they are unable to notate or transcribe the music or lyrics. oral transmission of feeling, sentiment, and emotion through songs is thus an excellent means of preserving identity and displaying passive resistance. it is passive because these people have no means to directly confront their oppressors. for them, tarana is a way out of that frustration as well as a means to express it. kazi fahmida farzana music and artistic artefacts source: author’s field research arkani original ara hoilam porbashi oh allah gafure-rahim, ara hoilam porbashi ara hoilam refugee (ii) ei murar vitore allah ar koto kal rakbi puker, juger horani ar hoto din hadabi (ii) julumer doriyot pori roilam bashiya bashi oo khuda tui chaile paroj arar arakanor shanti, arar mog bormar shanti (ii) english translation we have become refugees oh god, forgiving and merciful we are in exile we have become refugees (ii) for how long will you keep us in this mountain caves for how long will you make us eaten by insects (ii) we remained adrift suffering from tortures oh god make our country peaceful if you wish (ii) rohingya song 2 aseas 4 (2) 224 225 the memory of home for the refugees, songs are used as a glue for community bonding. besides singing individually, refugees in nayapara occasionally camp out, once or twice a month, for small singing programmes, usually on a moonlit night, within their small boundary between huts and only with the consent of the camp-in-charge.14 at these gatherings, they use their traditional instruments ( juri and tobla) and sing country songs, religious or philosophical songs, and songs that represent their everyday issues in the camp. although the group performances in camp are mostly by men, women are welcome as well. as these gatherings take place within the spaces between huts, the women can also enjoy it from inside their rooms. such occasions not only provide them with entertainment: the impact is greater as they pronounce their frustrations together, recall their memories, transmit them to the new generation, and bond themselves together. the next song was shared by a group of refugees as they express their love and longing for their ‘home’. this extremely melodious and rhythmic song was popular with the crowd and drew much attention as refugees at that gathering stopped talking and some joined in the chorus. 14 the camp-in-charge of nayapara is a representative of the bangladeshi government, responsible for law and order as well as the daily operation of the camps. he is assisted by several camp officers. source: author’s field research arkani original bangladeshot hijrot gorilam boyonda ghor feli chalot chaile choyer bora khetit chaile moricher hora ghoror dhuare khande kutta girich giya feli, bangladeshot hijrot gorilam, jati vai boli! deha geli puber thinki, desher monot orer chinki haire ma-bap hore geli? arare bangladeshot hijtor gori hijrot gorilam burma desh feli (ii) english translation we migrated to bangladesh leaving behind our beautiful homes on our rooftop there was dried food in our field we had fresh chillies we migrated to bangladesh leaving everything behind thinking that we are of the same (muslim) brotherhood now when we look back to the east, we remember many things of the past o, where are my beloved parents? you sent us to bangladesh we migrated leaving behind the country burma (ii) rohingya song 3 aseas 4 (2) 224 225 it is all about their memory of ‘home’. here, the word ‘home’ has a dual meaning: their current home in the village as well as their home in the sense of their motherland, arakan. this song does not talk about their reasons for migrating; rather, it is recalling and cherishing the thought that they had to migrate to bangladesh “leaving behind … our beautiful homes”. a home is considered a peaceful place where everyday activities take place. memories of dried food on the rooftop and, in the back yard or in the field, those fresh green chilli gardens are all symbolic of that concept of life, that stability or peacefulness in life, which the rohingyas had lost at some point in the past. now in exile, they do not have the chance to settle down, have their own place, and tend their gardens. their life today is very different from anything they could have imagined before coming to bangladesh. when they were forced to come to bangladesh, leaving behind everything, the rohingyas thought they would have a peaceful life in this new country; after all, they thought, they belong to the ‘same religion’. but that did not work in reality. the politics of state superseded religious sympathy. instead of accepting them as citizens, bangladesh recognised only a few thousand refugees and labelled the rest of the undocumented refugees as ‘illegal economic migrants’; this subjected the stateless community to constant exploitation and threat. so those memories of ‘home’, ‘dried food’, and ‘fresh chillies’ are now precious memories of a past that was peaceful but is lost now. when the refugees look to the east from bangladesh towards arakan and the mountain range of arakan yoma, they ‘remember many things of the past’. many families were split up. parents had sent their young children outside of arakan to save their lives while they themselves chose to stay and die in their homeland. these are the painful memories the refugees hide as they go about their daily lives; they continue to cherish these memories in their minds and sustain them by composing songs. they still feel nostalgic for their homeland. perhaps this tarana served as a constant reminder of their past. based on the above discussion of taranas, it is clear that, to a large extent, music has been used as an effective means in the rohingyas’ displaced life to keep alive their memories of the past. being a non-literate community, the songs have become a medium for them to save their history and pass it on to the younger generations. it is a medium that allows them to avoid direct confrontation with their persecutors and oppressors while at the same time enables them to express their resentments kazi fahmida farzana music and artistic artefacts aseas 4 (2) 226 227 and frustrations. they are primarily doing this for themselves, but at the same time it can give outsiders an in-depth understanding into their life in exile, their identity, and their culture. documentary record of arts arts, drawings, paintings and so on are strong means of history, social movements, and resistance. this section presents and analyses some drawings that came from individual refugees of nayapara camp. although the use of the visual arts is not so widespread among the rohingyas, it is nevertheless noticeable. in my research, i found that the refugees were not doing these drawing intentionally or with the purpose of sending them on to the authorities as coded messages, as the rohingyas did not socially construct this as resistance.15 they are simply doing this to tell their stories to their children and to those outsiders interested in their case. this section, therefore, aims to reflect on the refugees’ self-perception and possibly their perception of other people and institutions as depicted in their own amateur drawings. it argues that these artworks demonstrate the rohingyas’ identity and express a different form of everyday resistance without protest. the first drawing (drawing 1) was from abdul jobber, a 44-year-old documented refugee from nayapara camp. he and his family came to bangladesh in 1991 from andang village of maungdaw town but were originally from paththor killah of akyab. as abdul jobber explains his picture: this is in akyab, my birthplace. not only mine, this is the birthplace of my father and grandfather. the military first destroyed our village (paththor killah), and forced us to move to another para [village] in the maungdaw township. how can we not move … everything happened at gunpoint! they literally hold the gun here on my forehead. in maungdaw, we were given small huts, row by row, to stay there. they have taken our farm land, but in return we were not given any land in maungdaw. we were forced to stay in those small huts. we were given just one room for each family. there were no job opportunities for us. we used to cut bamboos, trees for the fuel. sometimes we sold those to the bazar. i was married then and i had a child. my wife was pregnant then. we rarely had two meals in a day. the military put restrictions on our movement. we were not allowed to visit even the village next to our place. rakhine villagers also beat us if they get a chance. then security forces started to visit us according to their wish to the newly located area. they used bad words humiliating my wife in front of us. they 15 perhaps they will notice and realise after a considerable time has elapsed. aseas 4 (2) 226 227 could humiliate anyone they wanted to. families with young girls were often the target for them. and then one day, they announced in our para that we cannot stay there longer. we don’t belong to burma. we should leave for bangladesh. this artwork illustrates what many refugees complained about, i.e. forceful eviction from their villages and serious persecution in those relocated ‘model villages’. as the drawing shows, the villages are becoming empty as the mogs (local rakhines) beat the rohingyas using long sticks, humiliating their females by dragging and physically hurting them in front of their families, and chasing them towards the ‘model villages’. moreover, there were military operations, as abdul jobber mentioned in his narrative, which ultimately evicted and displaced thousands of rohingya families from their villages and forced many to relocate to those ‘model village’ areas in mangdaw and buthidaw. life in those slum-like areas was basically like in prison. in the picture, the shades in rows represent those areas. it also demonstrates that those areas were kazi fahmida farzana music and artistic artefacts drawing 1: eviction from villages and torture in the ‘model village’ area aseas 4 (2) 228 229 heavily surrounded by the burmese security forces as they carry weapons. having no legal rights, these stateless rohingyas again were subjected to torture, humiliation, beating, killing, and rape within their own country. examples of the eviction of minorities and their forceful relocation to ‘model village’ areas can also be found in other parts of south asia and south-east asia. as roxana waterson noted, in the case of the chittagong hill tracts, bangladeshi government also evicted indigenous people from their lands by moving 400,000 muslim settlers to the areas. many indigenous people were also forcefully relocated into ‘cluster villages’ where military and paramilitary forces were involved in various human rights violations (1993, p. 14). in cambodia, under pol pot’s regime, hundreds of thousands of ethnic minorities became victims of genocide, relocation, and displacement. the burmese army’s brutal military operations against the arakanese rohingya muslims, their forceful resettlement into new satellite towns, the demolition of their religious sites, and the confiscation of their lands were reported by many un and humanitarian organisations. by explaining the origins of such injustice, this above artwork was effectively exposing a system of domination as well as subordination. it illustrates that although the ruling power enjoys the control of material resources and puts constraints onto the lives of the subordinates, it could not extend its domination into their culture and ideology. that is why they can present their struggle through these drawings, which allows them to escape fully from the sphere of control of the dominant. the second drawing was by mohammad ismail hossain, 37, who had come to bangladesh in 1991. during his exile in bangladesh, he married a rohingya woman and became a father of six. his father had died of natural causes in the camp in 2005. his elderly mother is currently staying with him, and nine other siblings live in the huts next to his in the same nayapara camp. he explains his drawing thus: this picture shows that julum became severe during 1988. that was the time when we were evicted from our own land. military came and announced in our village that we got to leave this area in seven days. how could we just leave everything? then one day the military attacked our village. they came to our house. the top left of the picture shows women and children running away on seeing the military. they beat the men and women, disgraced our women and forcefully evicted us from our homes. to escape this julum, and to save our lives, we crossed the naff river, and came here [bangladesh]. immediately after reaching here, we faced bangladeshi military! they put us in one place [refugee camps]. and the picture on the right side shows those camps. many police and military are always guarding this area. here again we suffer julum and humiliation. aseas 4 (2) 228 229 this piece of art illustrates their life from 1988 to 2009 (as written on top of the picture). it shows that their well-ordered lifestyle, with houses surrounded by trees, with a garden and a tube well, was disrupted by the presence of burmese military and security forces (nasaka), whose identity is distinct in the picture as they wear military uniforms and carry heavy guns. they entered those personal premises and forced the rohingyas from their homes. during and after the 1990s election, persecution in the form of physical and mental torture such as beatings as well as killings, abduction and rape, economic exclusion, and restrictions on physical movement threatened their livelihood security and physical security to the extant that it forcefully displaced thousands.16 moreover, there is a thin river line that offers an easy bor16 all the people i talked to, documented and undocumented, complained about persecution, fear, and insecurity in kazi fahmida farzana music and artistic artefacts drawing 2: life on both sides of the border: the naff river aseas 4 (2) 230 231 der crossing facility creating an escape route for the rohingya people from myanmar. this generated hopes in their minds while they were still in their homeland about an imagined safe life across the river. however, once they crossed the border, they encountered the crude reality of harsh security forces and camp life which bring them to see the reality of their exile life. as shown in this drawing, the living space on the bangladesh side consists of congested tin-sheds and is surrounded by heavily armed security forces. the security forces not only confine the living space of the refugees but also control the entry-exit flows. while living in exceptional places like refugee camps or in scattered settlements, the refugees encounter serious life-threatening dangers such as getting killed by police firing on them, beatings and rape, torture, being tied up with ropes, and so forth.17 as mentioned earlier, the rohingyas’ production of art forms has not yet reached the level of altercation with the authorities because it would be more dangerous and costly for them.18 therefore it remains at the stage of raising their consciousness (denisoff, 1983, p. 5; qualter, 1963, p. 99). yet, such drawings evidently show the power of the visual symbols, as they successfully explain that the arakani rohingyas are caught between the politics of two sovereign states – myanmar and bangladesh. their right to exist in their homeland was not accepted by myanmar, and their right to stay in the borderland was also never accepted by bangladesh. they have been forcibly displaced from their homes and many have crossed the border several times. such forcible relocation and involuntary movements have been driven by systematic acts of violence and/or coercion, which have made the community fearful for their existence and which have affected their socio-economic security. after talking to the refugees and observing their verbal expressions, body language, and opinions, it was clear that, while living in the borderlands, the refugees maintained a psychology of strong attachment to their homeland. although they were forced to flee in fear for their lives, the homeland across the river remains visible in their mind’s eye. drawing 1 shows a sun that is hidden behind the hill (signifyarakan/rakhine. a displaced person, who arrived in nayapara refugee camp i in 1990, noted: “continuous harassment and economic hardships makes life impossible to live in arakan. it is just like a jail for us.” 17 having no rights before the law, they are not entitled to education, health care, or even to seek help regarding any injustice and violence they suffer. 18 kerkvilet, in his study on everyday resistance to injustice in a philippine village, shows that with everyday forms of resistance the target might not necessarily be aware of it. as he mentions: “the target may eventually discover what the resister has done but that need not be the intention of the ones resisting. indeed, those resisting, often perceiving themselves to be extremely vulnerable [sic]” (kerkvilet, 1986, p. 109). aseas 4 (2) 230 231 ing their past). the sun is shining brightly. the river is seen as the pathway between their past and their present, and the fact that the past (sun) seems so close makes the pain (of their memories) even more poignant. this makes them even more homesick for their homeland. their drawings tell powerful stories of their struggles and sufferings and explain their frustration with the authority, who continue to torment them. in their displaced state, they feel both attached to and yet alienated from their homeland and their past. without a sense of identity in the present, they seek to find identity in (and through) their music and drawings. the music and drawings also play another role: to depict the crimes they have encountered (abuse, etc.) at the hands of the authorities. music and art as symbols of resistance and identity resentment and resistance are not always necessarily violent and physical. they can be intellectual and expressed in artworks such as music, the visual arts, and songs. this ethnographic research on the rohingygas’ musical (verbal) expression and artistic (visual) expression suggests that these texts are highly meaningful. they raise the concept of emotion in people’s minds and are able to transmit messages which are central to their displaced life. two things are common in all these documentary records: one is the domination by the powerful, who have power and influence; and the other is the subordination of the less powerful group. here, these documents assert the rohingyas’ own perceptions about their situation and experiences. it serves to make the suffering of a stateless life in arakan as well as in bangladesh very real and alive. these also serve to inspire a feeling of connectedness with the displaced community in a way more effective than any printed statistics could. in this way, these documents can convince outsiders that the conditions of life in arakan were intolerable, and being stateless, the situation in bangladesh is also not much different. therefore, something must be done. a number of points and arguments can be made using the data presented in the preceding sections. first, these artistic expressions used a certain kind of language. for example, the particular words in their songs such as jala, julum, dukh, koshto, or nirjato are indicators of oppressions. when a refugee says “ara kichu korti no pari, biyagin shojjo kazi fahmida farzana music and artistic artefacts aseas 4 (2) 232 233 goron poribo” (“we cannot do anything, everything has to be accepted”), this refers to their subordinate status and their frustration at all the oppression they suffer. in this regard, james c. scott in his book, weapons of the weak, brought to light the importance of everyday resistance by looking at various signs and symbols, and examining the vocabulary of exploitation. according to him, such everyday forms of resistance occur in the form of “footdragging, dissimulation, false compliance, pilfering, feigned ignorance, slander, arson, sabotage and so forth” (1985, p. 292). when a refugee said, “we [the rohingyas] are like people without knees”, he was referring to their powerless condition in which they are not able to say or do anything against those who have displaced them from their homes and made their lives miserable. indeed, these musical items and drawings are actual living stories of the rohingyas’ struggle and social experience, of their agony and hatred towards those who cause them to suffer. what these documents convey is resistance, not only to their socio-economic and political conditions, but also resistance to the attributed identity that has been imposed on them from above, making them subjects without protection and outside the law.19 second, the songs, artworks, and poems have a certain spirit that helps sustain the rohingyas for many years in a foreign land. the refugees produce and memorise them as they typically find them reflections of their own experience. they can also send emotional messages through these songs and artworks which are able to work as a communication bridge among the rohingyas. their resources or opportunities to resist openly are less than minimal, but their spirit remains alive and is expressed through these artistic creations. without these media, it would have been difficult for an illiterate community to keep their memory, identity, and history alive. by engaging in these media, they are also able to communicate with the outside. third, this medium of expression shows some kind of action that keeps these people active. these simple things of everyday life, such as music and art, are tools that have been used by the ordinary rohingyas to show consciousness and awareness about their situation. simultaneously, they clearly express negation of the system of domination. weitz (2001, p. 670) referred to these as “actions that not only reject subordination but do so by challenging the ideologies that support that subordination”. 19 hanna arendt defined statelessness as a situation when people “left their homeland they remained homeless, once they had left their state they became stateless, and once they had been deprived of their human rights they were rightless” (arendt, 1966, p. 267). aseas 4 (2) 232 233 moreover, it is these people who have complete authority over these artistic productions, and no one else can control or subjugate their songs and artworks (brodsky, 1992, p. 220). fourth, these artworks especially break the complicity of silence. it shows one form of psychological warfare against domination as it provides a sense of opposition (hollander & einwohner, 2004, p. 538; hughes et al., 1995). we have seen that refugees are raising questions through their songs about the discrimination towards them in jobs, educational opportunities, and power sharing. another example was in drawing 1, where the word ‘raping’ depicts a military man raping a female at gunpoint. these drawings are more expressive than words. these are certainly observable as expressions of resistance, yet not necessarily recognised by the target (the powerful dominants). the intention here is to negate that domination, talk about the persecution, and effectively expose the songs and drawings to shame the oppressors. this is the voice of the oppressed. it is their form of resistance, and that makes it very significant. fifth, these documents exhibit a non-conventional form of resistance which is covert in nature. similar to scott’s analysis of resistance that is accomplished through symbolic behaviour, the ordinary rohingyas use music and artworks as symbols of their form of resistance. when a refugee sings “where should i go”, not only is it referring to their uncertain destination as a stateless being, it also serves as tools of opposition asking for a social change. according to brodsky (1992, p. 221), “art is a form of resistance to the imperfection of reality, as well as an attempt to create an alternative reality, an alternative that one hopes will possess the hallmarks of a conceivable, if not an achievable, perfection”. sixth, it allows the refugees to escape for a while from the sense of despair by overcoming it not so much through political efforts but through music and art. this modest form of struggle is neither a collective defiance nor rebellion, rather, these should be seen as individual acts of resistance. this form of resistance does not wait for recognition (mccann & march, 1996; scott, 1985). because these are people “who have experienced tragedy [but who] do not see themselves as protagonists and do not really care about the means by which tragedy is expressed, being themselves their embodiment” (brodsky, 1992, p. 221). the rohingyas are primarily performing these music and artworks for themselves. although their music and arts are oppositional, kazi fahmida farzana music and artistic artefacts aseas 4 (2) 234 235 they are deliberately hidden from public view because it could be dangerous for their safety and security. they avoid direct confrontation to stop escalating further persecution. they are opportunistic and accommodate things that suit their situation best. therefore, it can be argued that the rohingya refugees’ use of texts in the form of music and art clearly exhibits resistance to the reality they have experienced. the logical question that arises out of this is: can this form of resistance bring any positive change to the life of the refugees? this covert form of resistance may not bring any revolutionary change in the life of the rohingyas, yet these are valuable documents, because these have a certain spirit that helps sustain the people who create them: these are expressions of their consciousness of their situation and also expressions of negation of the system of domination, and this allows them to escape from the sense of despair, at least for a few moments, and this is what makes such informal resistance effective and significant. as mentioned before, the refugees create these works for themselves, to vent their frustration, to show their coherent identity, to keep their memory alive, to break the complicity of silence, and to speak out against the injustices that have happened and are still happening to them. such a humble form of resistance, according to scott, is perhaps the only “spirit and practice that prevents the worst and promises something better” (1987, p. 452). the real intention of this form of resistance has always been “the hope for survival and persistence” for ordinary people. conclusion non-conventional resistance using arts and artefacts is increasingly visible in social research on social movements. the article has provided an in-depth understanding about how a displaced community uses music and art to express their resistance. ethnographic research on the use of music and art by the rohingya refugees in bangladesh suggests that it plays a very important role in communicating their coherent identity and displaying an unconventional form of resistance to discrimination and oppression. they use music and art to keep their memory alive, to transmit that history to the new generations, and to communicate information about themselves to outsiders. this might be a different approach to protest, but it is their everyday form of local resistance and is central to rohingyas’ life. this approach is important to aseas 4 (2) 234 235 consider – not only to understand the weaker groups and their activities, 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(1982). political process and the development of black insurgency, 1930-1970. chicago, il: university of chicago press. kazi fahmida farzana music and artistic artefacts aseas 4 (2) 236 237 mccann, m.w. & march, t. (1996). law and everyday forms of resistance: a socio-political assessment. studies in law, politics, and society, 15, 207-236. oberoi, p. (2006). exile and belonging: refugees and state policy in south asia. new delhi, india: oxford university press. qualter, t. h. (1963). propaganda and psychological warfare. new york, ny: random house. rupp, l. j., & taylor, v. (1987). survival in the doldrums: the american women’s rights movement, 1945 to the 1960s. new york, ny: oxford university press. rubin, j. w. (1996). defining resistance: contested interpretations of everyday acts. studies in law, politics, and society, 15, 237-260. rapone, a., & simpson, c. r. (1996). women’s response to violence in guatemala: resistance and rebuilding. international journal of politics, culture, and society, 10, 115-140. robinson, t. (1995). gentrification and grassroots resistance in san francisco’s tenderloin. urban affairs review, 30, 483-513. scott, j. c. (1985). weapons of the weak: everyday forms of peasant resistance. new haven, ct: yale university press. scott, j. c. (1987). resistance without protest: peasant opposition to the zakat in malaysia and to the tithe in france. comparative studies in society and history, 29(3), 417-452. staggenborg, s., eder, d., & sudderth, l. (1993–1994). women’s culture and social change: evidence form the national women’s festival. berkeley journal of sociology, 38, 31-56. szombati-fabian, i., & fabian, j. (1976). art, history, and society: popular painting in shaba, zaire. studies in the anthropology of visual communication (society for the anthropology of visual communication), 3, 1-21. taylor, r. h. (2009). the state in myanmar. singapore: national university of singapore press. unhcr. (2008). annual report. retrieved 26 april 2011, from http://www.unhcr.org/4b506e6c9.pdf waterson, r. (1993). what to celebrate in the united nations year of indigenous peoples? (working paper: no 117). singapore: national university of singapore. weitz, r. (2001). women and their hair: seeking power through resistance and accommodation. gender & society, 5(5), 667-686. yegar, m. (1972). the muslims of burma: a study of a minority group. wiesbaden, germany: otto harrassowitz. ) book review: pye, oliver & bhattacharya, jayati (eds.) (2013). the palm oil controversy in southeast asia. a transnational perspective aseas 5(2) 377376 rezensionen / book reviews pye, o. & bhattacharya, j. (eds.) (2013). the palm oil controversy in southeast asia. a transnational perspective. singapore: iseas publishing. isbn978-981-4311-44-1. xxi + 283 pages. citation pichler, m. (2012). book review: pye, o., & bhattacharya, j. (eds.) (2013). the palm oil controversy in southeast asia. a transnational perspective. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 5(2), 376-380. with 50 percent of all products in european supermarkets containing palm oil and a rising demand for biofuels in the eu, palm oil has emerged as the fastest growing monoculture in the world. while consumption is spreading all over the world, production is basically centred in malaysia and indonesia, which account for more than 80 percent of the global production. the edited volume the palm oil controversy in southeast asia. a transnational perspective focuses on this single commodity from a transnational perspective, highlighting some of the most contentious issues around palm oil expansion in the region, and linking them to emerging resistance and campaigning against the social and environmental costs of the boom. edited by the social scientists oliver pye and jayati bhattacharya, the book comprises an introduction and 11 chapters as an outcome of a joint workshop between the university of bonn, germany, and the institute of southeast asian studies (iseas), singapore, in 2009. the workshops brought together academic researchers, ngo campaigners, policy makers, and company associates to discuss the palm oil controversy. thus, the volume is a brisk composition of different approaches in addressing a contentious model of agricultural expansion. in the first chapter, oliver pye introduces a transnational perspective as a guiding framework for the book, which means to “understand the emergence of connected and overlapping but distinct economic, social, and political spaces which cross and connect nation states without necessarily becoming a general, global phenomenon” (p. 5). with regard to the palm oil industry, pye identifies three major transnational processes: (1) a transnational turn of the palm oil industry, (2) a transnational labour regime, and (3) the emergence of transnational environmental activism. d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -5 .2 -1 5 aseas 5(2) 377376 with regard to the first pattern, teoh cheng hai shows that the transnational turn of the palm oil industry has been mainly triggered by malaysia in the 1990s. since then, the malaysian palm oil industry has shifted from nationally oriented plantation development to a transnational expansion of malaysian investments, mainly to indonesia for upstream industries (plantation companies) and to europe, china, and india for downstream industries (palm oil processing companies). at the same time, vertically integrated “mega palm oil based corporations” (p. 29) emerged through concentration processes and have become major players in controlling the commodity chain. reversing the picture, norman jiwan links the malaysian expansion to the indonesian experience. jiwan refers to the liberalisation policies stipulated by the imf during the asian crisis as a major enabling factor for the expansion of malaysian plantation companies to indonesia in the late 1990s. despite the role of international donors, jiwan highlights the important function of the indonesian state (both at the national and regional scale) in enabling and promoting palm oil expansion, which is linked to devastating environmental consequences (biodiversity loss, deforestation, water and soil pollution) and social conflicts over land, indigenous rights, and working conditions in the plantations. on a local level, junji nagata and sachiho w. arai complement the picture of the changing palm oil industry with a contribution on the plantation sector in riau. the sumatran province occupies the largest share of palm oil plantations in indonesia with 24 percent of the working population directly linked to this industry. mary luz menguita-feranil geographically moves the view east to the palm oil expansion in the philippines that has generally eluded attention so far. menguita-feranil argues that although the ambitious expansion plans of the philippine government have not materialised yet, malaysian investments as well as national biofuel policies may be an important trigger in the future. following the second transnational pattern, the next two chapters focus on the transnational labour regime in the south-east asian palm oil industry. johan saravanamuttu highlights the enormous reliance of the malaysian palm oil industry on migrant work, currently 90 percent of the foreign workers in malaysia come from indonesia. saravanamuttu characterises the malaysian palm oil industry as a “flexible foreign labour regime” (p. 131) that is based on exclusivity and transience. thus, migrant workers have to enter the destination country alone (i.e. without their family) and need to return ‘home’ after the contract expires. furthermore, migrant workers melanie pichler book review: the palm oil controversy in southeast asia. aseas 5(2) 379378 are often sent back home in times of economic downturn or when ‘causing trouble’ in the form of strikes or unionisation. while saravanamuttu focuses on more general and quantitative data on migrant labour in malaysia, fadzilah majid cooks and dayan suria mulia link the transnational labour regime in malaysia with a more detailed picture of the situation in the province of sabah. following a qualitative research agenda, they analyse the perceptions of the sabahan population towards indonesian migrants and the role of the latter in nationalist politics in sabah. cooke and mulia show that the dominant view articulated in the media and often supported by political elites and companies is based on the construction of “cultural dilution” presenting migrants “as a homogenous group, prone to breaking the law and criminal activities” (p. 147). not surprisingly, the concrete experiences of people working with labour migrants in the plantation industry (sabahan taxi drivers and plantation workers) show a much more differentiated picture of the situation. the third part of the volume analyses the emergence of transnational environmental activism as an important outcome of a palm oil industry that transcends national boundaries. oetami dewi starts with a focus on the kalimantan border oil palm mega project where 1.8 million hectares of land on the indonesia-malaysian border were supposed to be planted with oil palm. controversially, the project collided with the world wide fund for nature (wwf) promoted heart of borneo project, a plan to allocate a cross-border conservation area over parts of malaysia, indonesia, and brunei. both an outcome of transnational strategies, dewi argues to transcend the dichotomy between plantation development and conservation areas, which both tend to ignore local communities’ rights, and argues for an alternative approach that guarantees control over land for local communities. from a more analytical perspective, oliver pye analyses major differences in transnational environmental activism on the basis of two major campaigns that have emerged around the palm oil controversy, namely the formation of the roundtable on sustainable palm oil (rspo) and the call for a moratorium on biofuels in the eu. pye argues that transnational activists connect local protests, initiatives, and ngos in south-east asia with concerned consumers, activists, and campaigns in europe. however, these transnational activists are no homogenous group. thus, a differentiation between international ngos, transnational social movement organisations (tsmos), and transnational advocacy networks (tans) proves helpful for analysing different strategies and aims in melanie pichler book review: the palm oil controversy in southeast asia. aseas 5(2) 379378 transnational campaigning. according to pye, international ngos have been major contributors to the formation of the rspo, focusing on the certification of palm oil. on the other hand, tsmos and tans in the campaign for a moratorium on biofuels have transcended the strategy of market-based instruments and call for a rethinking of the current plantation system as such. focussing more on the former part of transnational activism, eric wakker introduces a concrete research tool for ngos to analyse the complex involvement of different actors in the palm oil industry. the resource trade cycle analysis (retrac) can start from either a specific product (e.g. palm oil, biodiesel) or a certain actor (e.g. plantation company, investment bank) to investigate the “linkages between consumption and production of natural resourcebased products” (p. 224) and develop subsequent ngo strategies. with regard to the specific transnational links to europe, joana chiavari discusses the eu biofuel policies and their possible impact on south-east asia, and patrick anderson completes the volume with a contribution on indigenous peoples and the palm oil boom in indonesia. although anderson analyses the indonesian state as a major actor in the conflict, he stresses the role of the international movement for indigenous rights as well as the rspo in politicising the topic and influencing struggles on the ground. the volume at hand is an appreciated contribution to research about natural resource extraction in the global south and the linkages to europe, both with regard to investments and incentives as well as to environmental activism. whereas most studies about palm oil focus either on specific case studies or the connection between plantations and deforestation and the disappearance of orang-utans, this book tries to shed light on a more complex and diverse picture of palm oil development and campaigning in south-east asia and beyond. the volume stresses the importance of transnationalisation in the palm oil production without neglecting the crucial role of the nation state. although national laws and regulations in support of a transnational palm oil industry are in place, they often lag behind with regard to social and environmental safeguards and transfer these responsibilities to international marketbased instruments like the rspo. the book benefits from contributions from both academic and non-academic research and marks some broader research lines for future studies on conflicts about large-scale agricultural investments, not only on palm oil in south-east asia but also melanie pichler book review: the palm oil controversy in southeast asia. aseas 5(2) 381380 on other commodities and in other geographical regions. although the transnational perspective systematically outlined in the introduction is not always coherently realised in the individual chapters, the book provides excellent starting points for both researchers and activists who are interested in natural resource extraction from a transnational perspective. melanie pichler university of vienna, austria, & aseas editorial board the jungle as border zone: the aesthetics of nature in the work of apichatpong weerasethakul aseas 4 (2) 290 291 d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -4 .2 -6 aktuelle südostasienforschung / current research on south-east asia the jungle as border zone: the aesthetics of nature in the work of apichatpong weerasethakul natalie boehler1 university of zürich, switzerland citation boehler, n. (2011). the jungle as border zone: the aesthetics of nature in the work of apichatpong weerasethakul. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 4(2), 290-304. in thai cinema, nature is often depicted as an opposition to the urban sphere, forming a contrast in ethical terms. this dualism is a recurring and central theme in thai representations and an important carrier of thainess (khwam pen thai). the fi lmmaker apichatpong weerasethakul off ers a new take on this theme. signifi cant parts of his work are set in the jungle, a realm radically diff erent from the agricultural sphere that the mainstay of thai representations tends to focus on. in apichatpong’s work, the wilderness becomes a liminal space, on multiple levels. this paper focuses on how this liminality translates into apichatpong’s aesthetics of the jungle and on how this aesthetics and the fi lms’ narrations negotiate thai nationhood via the perception of the spectators. keywords: film studies; thai cinema; identity politics; cultural studies; thailand im thailändischen film wird natur oft im kontrast zu urbanität gezeichnet. dieser gegensatz wird dabei auch auf eine moralische ebene übertragen. er ist ein wiederkehrendes, zentrales motiv in thailändischen repräsentationen und ein wichtiger träger der sogenannten „thainess“ (khwam pen thai), der nationalen identität. der filmemacher apichatpong weerasethakul nähert sich diesem motiv anders an. zentrale passagen seines werks spielen im dschungel, der einen gänzlich anderen bereich darstellt als die domestizierte natur der üblichen landschaftsdarstellungen. im werk apichatpongs wird der dschungel auf mehreren ebenen zu einem grenzbereich. dieser artikel untersucht, wie sich dieser grenzstatus in apichatpongs ästhetik widerspiegelt und wie diese fi lmische ästhetik und narration das thailändische konzept des nationalstaates kommentieren. schlagworte: filmwissenschaft; kino; identität; kulturwissenschaften; thailand 1 dr. des. natalie boehler has recently completed her ph.d. on narrative and aesthetic characteristics of contemporary thai film at the university of zürich, switzerland, switzerland. she writes for the swiss film yearbook cinema, works as a programmer for arthouse cinema, and is a lecturer at the university of zürich. her field of research is cultural globalisation as well as transnational and south-east asian cinema. contact: natalieboehler@gmx.net aseas 4 (2) 290 291 introduction in an article on the thai director apichatpong weerasethakul’s film tropical malady, film critic graiwoot chulphongsathorn wrote about his impressions after the film’s premiere: after the credits ended, i wanted to embrace the film and slowly melt into it. momentarily, i did not exist and felt no different from the wind in the middle of the jungle at night. every time i close my eyes, the images of the jungle still haunt me (graiwoot, 2006). it is characteristic for apichatpong’s work that this vivid, sensory experience described as dissolving into the film takes place during a scene set in the jungle. landscapes and nature play a pivotal role in his films, especially the jungles and forests of isarn, the north-east of thailand. this border region has long had a status of marginality and otherness in relation to central thailand, the seat of the capital, the nation’s centre of power and the region that defines the official version of national identity. among the various figurations employed to establish and reinforce this sense of state-proposed national identity and locality, nature is an important, recurrent trope. in state-approved, conservative mainstream representations, nature is typically depicted as domesticated or as exotic. the jungle, on the other hand, stands opposed to this mode of representation. as arjun appadurai has pointed out, localities, in the sense of relational, contextual communities, are made up of neighbourhoods as social forms. these are often defined in opposition to their other: the production of neighbourhoods is always historically grounded and thus contextual. that is, neighbourhoods are inherently what they are because they are opposed to something else and derive from other, already produced neighbourhoods. in the practical consciousness of many human communities, this something else is often conceptualised ecologically as forest or wasteland, ocean or desert, swamp or river. such ecological signs often mark boundaries that simultaneously signal the beginnings of nonhuman forces and categories or recognizably human but barbarian or demonic forces. frequently, these contexts, against which neighbourhoods are produced and figured, are at once seen as ecological, social and cosmological terrain (appadurai, 1996, p. 183). in this sense, the north-eastern jungles in apichatpong’s films form a cultural and political other to the centralised state power and the nation. their liminality is aestheticised and narrated in a way that offers an experience of liminality to the viewer, positioning him or her in a decentred way, producing an alternative point of view to natalie boehler the jungle as border zone aseas 4 (2) 292 293 the official one conforming to central thai state authorities. this paper explores the ways that apichatpong’s films as aesthetic and narrative systems create a liminal experience for the viewer. it starts out by sketching a background of more current, compliant modes of landscape and nature depictions found in thai mainstream cinema, that contrast with apichatpong’s idiosyncratic depiction of the jungle, continuing to examine the cinematography and framing, the plot structures as well as the depiction of the supernatural. the main focus is on the feature films tropical malady (sud pralat!, 2004), blissfully yours (sud saneha, 2002) and uncle boonmee who can recall his past lives (loong boonmee raluek chat, 2010). my interest lies in the way this liminal positioning of the viewer reflects and comments on various figurations of the border zone: the mindscapes of the characters, the aesthetic design and its sensory implications, and the region of isarn. i conclude by asking about the implications of the spectator’s positioning as enabling transgression of official nationhood and citizenship and as creating an alternative locality and identity. idealised, domesticated, and exotic: nature in thai mainstream cinema the idiosyncrasies of apichatpong’s depictions of nature become more evident when seen in the context of thai mainstream nature representations. as a starting point, i shall therefore sketch out two modes of prevailing landscape representations to provide a backdrop to the following discussion. the aestheticised depiction and description of nature is a recurrent figure in various thai intellectual and artistic traditions. a frequently employed motif is that of country life and the agricultural, often depicted as rustic paradise or utopia. the bucolic abundance and purity of nature are opposed to the sphere of the metropolis. as thai scholar may ingawanij explains in her study on this topic, the bangkok-rural divide is a fundamental contrasting trope in thai intellectual, literary, and artistic traditions . . . . in modern thai cinema, this contrast has above all been articulated in ethical terms: through devices such as characterization and mise-en-scene, the ideal of inherent rural goodness, morality and beauty is configured as a limited form of ethical critique of the metropolis (may, 2006, p. 81). in the moral dichotomy formed by country life and the urban sphere, the city is typiaseas 4 (2) 292 293 cally equalled with materialism, capitalism, human coldness, westernised modernity, and ecological decay; it is usually a vile and corrupt place lacking basic human values. country life, on the other hand, is shown as a peaceful, idyllic, holistic way of being, where humans exist in harmony with nature. the rural village is an idealised home, characterised by moral goodness, egalitarian cooperation, and simplicity of life. nature provides for the humans who clearly position themselves at the centre of this innocent and pure world; the natural is idealised and domesticised.2 the appeal of the motif of rural utopia has turned it into a feature employed in various ideological discourses, even by some as opposing as radical left-wing intellectuals and royalist-nationalists (may, 2006, p. 81). it has become an essential cornerstone for the construction of khwam pen thai, the sense of national identity usually translated as thainess. in its official, state-propagated, conservatively nationalist version, this identity often evokes the mythic rural ideal, used as part of a retro rhetoric to conjure nationhood. in this ‘heritage’ discourse, also found in modern cinema, the idealisation of country life is linked not only with patriotic love of the land but also with the fantasy of self-sufficiency and autarchy.3 it nostalgically reimagines a pre-modern past and constructs it as an element of ‘authentic’ thainess, as opposed to hybrid cultures of globalised modernities. in this narrative, the imagined ideal thai village represents the idealised nation state, characterised by unity and traditionalism. another mode of nature depictions often employed by modern thai cinema is the self-exoticisation of landscape. as yinjing zhang has observed about so-called world cinema and its position in the global film market, the visual beauty of landscape has become an important selling point of non-western films to a western audience (zhang, 2002, p. 32.). this development goes hand in hand with the commodification of landscape and nature for tourism that has come up since the late 1960s, with the rise of mass tourism and traveller culture. accordingly, thai films often revel in the country’s natural beauty, presenting iconic images of beaches, palm trees and paddy fields that seem to cater to the gaze of foreign tourists. according to rachel harrison, many western films on thailand 2 on the imagined ideal thai village, see hirsch (2002, p. 262). 3 on the heritage discourse and heritage films, see may (2007). natalie boehler the jungle as border zone aseas 4 (2) 294 295 incorporate a . . . set of fantasies in their exploitation of a view of thailand that has been lodged in the western imagination and fostered by the tourism authority of thailand’s promotion of an “amazing thailand”: one of exotic landscapes, verdant nature, vibrant colours, serene spirituality, explosive cuisine, balletic martial arts, bucolic peacefulness, total relaxation and sensual pleasures. as thai cinema of the 21st century seeks increasingly to appeal to international audiences, it is this set of images which it perforce takes as the necessary ingredients for their entertainment (harrison, 2005, p. 326). the self-exoticising representation has been a feature of thai cinema since the 1970s, when thai cinema first travelled abroad to european festivals, and is found in the work of directors such as vichit kounavudh and cherd songsri. apichatpong describes the impact of the landscape depictions by these directors as follows the two directors used scenes from the thai landscape beautifully. even when they filmed buffalo, they were beautiful. when they filmed the villagers, some fully clothed, some not, you could smell the earth. it was as if i was seeing the beauty of this jungle where i lived for the first time (apichatpong, 2009, p. 107). thus, nature becomes a signifier for thainess in this representation mode as well, not only for a foreign audience and market but also for a domestic gaze. although landscape is, in these films, typically shown as savage, primitive and exotic, it is at the same time semi-domesticated, being commodified and made accessible by the tourism industry. isarn and the nation’s borders apichatpong’s films are set in a geopolitical border zone: isarn, the north-east of thailand. the region has a complex history of migration. before the definite establishment of the border at the beginning of the twentieth century, the borderline was not mapped out and thus more fluid. after the definition of the border in the 1893 treaty between siam and french indochina, the region was annexed and became siamese territory, forming a buffer zone toward the french colonies. its inhabitants were now newly identified as siamese, regardless of their ethnic or regional background (thongchai, 1994, p. 165). thus, the newly demarcated border created a frontier area with a new identity and a new classification system for its population. the process of incorporating the region into the nation state continued throughout the twentieth century. in a campaign for ‘thaification’ during the 1940s that aimed to homogenise the nation’s identity, while omitting the diversification of ethaseas 4 (2) 294 295 nic origins, isarn’s lao origins were ‘deemphasised’: the central government forcibly replaced the lao language and alphabet with thai. at the same time, the region remained socioeconomically underdeveloped and, being an agricultural area with harsh climate conditions, very poor; the building of infrastructure was neglected, and isarn people were discriminated against by the population of the central regions. as thongchai winichakul has pointed out, the thai border is not only a demarcation line between nations but also becomes a symbol of separation between a constructed we-self and otherness, a system of binary oppositions that have at their centre the dichotomy of internal and external (thongchai, 1994, p. 164 & p. 169). due to its remoteness and its closeness to the external, the north-east was seen as a critical region in terms of opposition to the centralised power in bangkok and of resistance in terms of the defence of local identity (baker & pasuk, 2009, p. 173). during the cold war, isarn was perceived as a breeding ground for communism by the government. it served as a hiding place for members of the communist party who fled from state repression to the north-eastern jungles. in the official discourse propagated by thai state authorities, communism is situated as belonging to the other, as external, since it is perceived as a major enemy of the state and of thainess (thongchai, 1994, p. 169). regarding communism in isarn, the ‘external’ was, in fact, perceived as internal and the region as a potentially dangerous place for the nation’s unity. the border patrol police and the army oppressed local communities, suspecting them of sympathising with communism [in rural areas,] the term “border”, as it turns out, signifies the demarcation of otherness from thainess, rather than signifying a geographical definition. the discourse on the geobody provides an effective figuration to equate the subversive elements within the thai society with the external threat. thus the border patrol is the force to safeguard the border of thainess against the enemy – who are definitely outside such a border, no matter where they really locate. as it happens, this police force can be found operating anywhere from the border areas, among the minorities . . . in a village of thai peasants well inside thai territory . . . to an urban centre like chiangmai. . . . the “external” may not really be external; the “internal” can be made alien or external. in every situation, the discursive domain of thainess remains homogeneous and unified. in turn, moreover, the terminology of the geographical discourse, terms such as border, becomes ambiguous. it may signify something other than space or geography (thongchai, 1994, p. 170). until today, isarn retains the status of backwardness, marginality and potentially renegade. while it is not as disconnected from the perceived unity of the nation as to be considered non-nation, it nonetheless is often perceived as not-quite-nation, as a natalie boehler the jungle as border zone aseas 4 (2) 296 297 region of otherness separated from the official thainess of bangkok and the central region. apichatpong’s films address the liminality of this region: the rural setting, the distance from the nation’s centre, and the cultural otherness are mirrored in various elements of the films such as the importance of local beliefs, the characters’ accents, and the departure from official state order. the world of his films is that of small provincial towns with idiosyncratic everyday culture: the style of restaurants, temples, and open-air shows indicate a clear distance from the nation’s centre.4 the fluidity of the nation’s border in this region is present as well in apichatpong’s work. in a scene at the beginning of uncle boonmee who can recall his past lives, the protagonist boonmee and his sister discuss the region’s language and its lao roots as well as the fact that it is hard to understand for central thais. the border issue reappears later in the film when boonmee visits migrant workers from laos employed on his farm. in blissfully yours, min, an illegal burmese immigrant, is a figure of otherness. while he spends peaceful time with roong, his thai lover, the border between the nations seems to dissolve. of all of apichatpong’s films, perhaps uncle boonmee who can recall his past lives touches on the issue of isarn marginalisation most directly. it is shot in nabua, an isarn village with a history of violence: during the communist persecutions of the 1960s and 1970s, its male population was tortured and murdered by state security forces. this traumatic past is echoed in the film’s location, in boonmee’s memories of fighting against communists as well as in the fact that the film was made in the context of a larger project called ‘primitive’ that touches on the subjects of remembering and reconstructing the brutal treatment of the isarn population during this period. the presence of nature is a pervasive topographical feature of isarn. sparsely populated, the region is a rural area spotted with provincial towns and scattered villages. in apichatpong’s films, nature is highly visible – neither as an agricultural landscape nor as the iconic tourist spots that often figure in thai film but in the form of the jungle. 4 on apichatpong himself as an isarn native and a liminal figure in the global film industry, see may & macdonald (2006). aseas 4 (2) 296 297 splitting storylines: the jungle as sphere of the other in apichatpong’s work, the jungle becomes crucial for action and a key element that sets the very tone of the films. it is a radically different world, populated by spirits, mysterious beings, and half-animals. it is the realm of dreams, the non-rational, of secrets and desires. whoever enters it leaves the safe communal space of the town or home and faces the unknown. while isarn is a liminal region, the jungle appears as an extension and intensification of this liminality; as the sphere of small towns is still ruled by societal conventions and communality, it is in the jungle that individuality becomes foregrounded.5 as apichatpong (2009) explains in an interview, “emotions are revealed by the jungle, it becomes a kind of mindscape. sometimes it is a character. it is also a stage” (p. 126). apichatpong’s cinematographic framing depicts landscape as a territory utterly unmarked by civilisation. there are frequent panoramic shots devoid of humans and of any icons of civilisation such as telephone poles, cross-country roads, or distant farmhouses. the countryscape appears as a wild, pre-modern land not yet staked out as anyone’s territory. its unspoiltness is of a much more untamed nature than that of the agricultural rural idyll discussed previously that centres on humans; landscape here is savage, autonomous, and sprawling without a centre. the narrative structures emphasise the jungle’s otherness. in some way or another, the films all feature a shift from a town, a house or a village – a domesticated space – into the wilderness, or vice versa. these shifts structure the films, breaking them into halves and changing their mood. besides being a change of setting, the shift is also a move into irrationality, into a radically different space where the familiar order of society is no longer valid. apichatpong’s first fiction feature blissfully yours sets out in a provincial town, showing min and roong, an illegal burmese immigrant and a young thai woman, preparing to leave town for a day trip. after various errands and preparations, they drive to a nearby forest where they spend the day wandering about, eating, swimming, and having sex. with this transition, the film shifts in setting, and the mode of togetherness between the protagonists changes. the forest enables their being to5 for an in-depth discussion of liminality and the jungle in blissfully yours, see may & macdonald (2006). natalie boehler the jungle as border zone aseas 4 (2) 298 299 gether without having to hide min’s illegality; it becomes a space where lovers from two different sides of a highly problematic border – the thai-burmese one – can be together without restrictions (may & macdonald, 2006). tropical malady is evidently split in two parts. the first half of the film focuses on the budding love story between keng and tong, two young men living in a provincial town. after more than 50 minutes, this storyline abruptly ends, and a new part begins, clearly marked with a black shot, credits, and a title (the spirit’s path). the film now follows a young forest ranger (who might be tong) in search of a tiger spirit (who might be keng) in the jungle. during this search, he gradually assimilates to the jungle, gradually losing his soldier’s clothes, his weapon, and his sense of identity. finally he confronts the tiger spirit: shaking with fear, he recognises his own self in it and surrenders, or succumbs, to it. the split is equally remarkable in syndromes and a century that sets out in a provincial hospital, depicting a series of episodes. after roughly the first half of the film, the mood and tone change suddenly, as does the setting: another hospital appears, this time technologically up-to-date and with modern decoration. while some of the characters and dialogue echo the first part, the episodes change. the lush verdant exteriors of the first half are substituted by the stark white interiors of the modern hospital. in this sense, syndromes and a century reverses the shift from civilisation to nature found in the other films. uncle boonmee who can recall his past lives tells the story of a dying elderly man who returns to his farm in the countryside to spend his final days there. after encountering the ghost of his wife, who passed away years ago, and his son, who has turned into a monkey spirit, he wanders into the nocturnal jungle in their company and lies down in a cave where he dies. the shift into nature here marks the beginning of his transition from life to death. inner wildernesses: obscurity and the soundscape the shift from a space of communality and civilisation into the space of nature is a break in the storyline, not merely in terms of geographic relocation; it also marks an inner shift of the protagonists’ mental and emotional states. leaving societal conventions behind and immersing themselves in solitude, the jungle becomes a boraseas 4 (2) 298 299 der zone where the protagonists access their inner worlds and open themselves to changes. they experience various kinds of existential borderlines: boonmee meets supernatural beings and confronts death; min and roong from blissfully yours each open up to someone from a foreign country and escape the societal restrictions this relationship faces (may & macdonald, 2006); in tropical malady, the ranger follows his obsessions, fears and desires, looking into his own soul. in these physical and psychic transgressions, the jungle is at once a catalyst and a mirror of inner states. as apichatpong explains, this idea stands at the very centre of tropical malady. everything is a part of the landscape, the jungle. the jungle leads us beyond social and cultural codes, to a state of nature where humans must confront themselves to find themselves. society increasingly makes us forget our inner lives and concentrate on the outer ones. in the second half of the film, the jungle is omnipresent, darkness reigns, and the heightened awareness of the soundscape lets mental images arise. in the first half, daylight and the sense of sight dominate. this coexistence of two very different, incompatible spheres and the tension between them is the idea behind and the topic of the film, it shows in its structure. (mandelbaum, 2004, p.21; translation by n. boehler) darkness is in fact a remarkable feature in the jungle scenes. there are many night shots and even in broad daylight, the dense foliage filters the light. the murkiness of the images makes it hard to discern the action at times. while sight is the primary human sense and the sense most addressed by the medium of film, apichatpong’s cinematography in the jungle scenes seems to subvert this primacy. its obscurity makes us rely much more on the aural than on the visual. as if entering a different sensescape, the characters and we as spectators must adjust to the darkness, letting our awareness shift to the soundscape. many elements of the soundtrack are recorded with a microphone held very close to the objects. this lends the scenes a strongly textured sound quality and a highly visceral feel: the closeness and three-dimensionality of the sound heighten our awareness of the cinematic space and of the corporeal. if, as michel foucault has pointed out in discipline and punish (1977), the dominant, rationalising mode of seeing links the gaze with power, supervision and control, the obscurity of the jungle here can be understood as its other, the irrational and sensual. thus, the inner shifting that the protagonists experience also happens on the level of the senses: the soundtrack is accented while the image, which usually is cinema’s prioritised level of expression, is obscured, causing visual disorientation. this disorientation is further emphasised by natalie boehler the jungle as border zone aseas 4 (2) 300 301 the soundscape’s frequent use of an indefinable, diffuse noise as ambient sound. its source is unclear, not located in the image. this lends the images an intense depth of space and, at the same time, makes this space highly diffuse and puzzling in terms of orientation.6 thus apichatpong, by realigning the usual channels of sensual perception and confusing spatial orientation, enables us to renegotiate our use of the senses, much in the way his characters renegotiate their sense of self. transgressions: decentred characters being such a different sphere than the characters’ everyday world, the jungle requires a slow approach. getting there is a journey, entering it a transgression from the familiar into the wild and unknown. accordingly, apichatpong shows these transgressions at length and with attention to atmospheric detail. a recurrent element of his films is long drive scenes in which the characters’ faces are shown in close-up shots, framed by car windows and the landscape zipping by. typically, these scenes are accompanied by music and have a dreamy feel, evoked by the characters’ silence and pensive gazes. another typical element is shots of the characters walking into or wandering around in the jungle. the style of these shots is consistent throughout several films: the characters are typically shown from a distance, appearing small amidst the magnificent vegetation. they are framed by the camera in a decentred way – in the frame’s corners, along its edges –, adding to the impression of their marginalisation. while classical cinema style basically centres on the human figure, these non-anthropocentric images seem to suggest a decentring of the human world on a figurative level: entering the jungle, the protagonists face a sort of higher being which they are subjected to. the cinematography underlines the characters’ marginalisation by painting these scenes in monochrome colour schemes that sometimes even let the characters appear camouflaged. appearing in brown and green tones and low lighting, the characters seem to disappear into the foliage as if being absorbed by nature or perhaps uniting with it. both the driving scenes and the scenes showing wanderings in the jungle typically appear hypnotic, almost trance-like. 6 on the use of surround sound as disorienting, see flückiger (2001, p. 320). aseas 4 (2) 300 301 spirits: the jungle and the supernatural the decentredness of the human character in the frame is echoed in the cosmology that organises the world depicted in apichatpong’s work. in thai folk belief, which is rooted in local animism, nature is strongly linked to spirit belief: all natural beings have a soul, a spirit, and can thus connect to the human world. nature and its spirits form a higher order that pervades human life, nourishing and influencing it. the fact that there exist essentially good and bad spirits shows a strong ambivalence towards spirit life. the relationship between humans and nature, and human communication with the spirits of animals and plants are crucial to thai folk belief and the attitude towards nature: man is not opposed to but assimilated into his natural environment via the spirits, both benevolent and malevolent (phra anuman, 2009; suvanna, 2004a; 2004b). in this way, the jungle is a liminal sphere where the human and the spirit world meet. the borderline between the natural and the supernatural is fluid; humans can transgress it. the strong connectedness between humans and nature spirits stems from local non-dualist belief systems that originate from before the introduction of buddhism and its establishment as state religion. in apichatpong’s work, the jungle is inhabited by spirits and ghosts. animals and animal spirits interact with humans. in tropical malady’s second part, the tiger spirit plays a crucial role. he lures the male protagonist tong through the jungle appearing in various ways: as a human figure with a tiger’s tail, a mysterious man-like creature, and a tiger. besides, tong meets a monkey during his search that advises him, speaking to him in monkey language, which tong magically understands – unlike the spectator who must rely on the subtitles the film provides. later on, tong is guided along his path by a firefly and by the ghost of a dead cow. nature seems to watch over and lead him. in uncle boonmee who can recall his past lives, boonmee is reunited with his son, boonsong, who has gone missing years ago and now returns to him as a monkey ghost, a half-human, half-monkey character. after telling him about his transformation, boonsong accompanies boonmee during his last days and his journey to his final resting place. another episode in the same film tells the story of a princess who mourns her lost youth and is consoled and seduced by a catfish that makes love to her in a forest pond. natalie boehler the jungle as border zone aseas 4 (2) 302 303 the non-anthropocentrism that appears in the films’ decentred framing of the human figure also shows in sequences that focus on animals, casting them as characters and as agents in the films’ plots – such as the catfish and the monkey mentioned above. another animal protagonist appears at the very beginning of uncle boonmee cho can recall his past lives: we see a water buffalo grazing in a field, then breaking loose and running into the jungle until it is finally found by its owner. it is not entirely clear to us how this sequence is linked to boonmee’s story. eventually, we figure out that the buffalo might have been one of his past lives. however, this is never clarified. this unspecified status of this episode renders it all the more mysterious and establishes the buffalo as an independent protagonist of its own, self-contained short story in which it plays the main role as a non-human agent. remarkably, both spirits and animals are integrated into the image and the narration with utter casualness. they seem to inhabit their own space in the narrative alongside human characters, not rivalling them nor being of minor importance, either: the narrative treats them as equal, without the hierarchisation of humans over other beings. also, there is a very sparse or sometimes even non-existent marking of the supernatural. the usual filmic codes such as fades, whoosh sounds, shock effects or similar, are hardly employed. instead, apichatpong’s aesthetic cultivates a kind of naturalism of the supernatural. ghosts and spirits appear on screen without much spectacle. the tiger spirit in tropical malady simply emerges, just as the firefly and the cow ghost. in uncle boonmee who can recall his past lives, boonsong, the protagonist’s long-lost son, comes home for a family dinner as if he had never gone missing. it is in the same manner that he is greeted: ‘have something to eat’, he is told, and asked, ‘why did you let your hair grow so long?’ by juxtaposing the supernatural beings and the humans, the narratives stress the co-existence of both. the naturalist aesthetics, meanwhile, emphasises the casualness with which the films let their spectator see the invisible, immaterial, letting the spectator partake in the liminal position of the films’ characters, human and supernatural. being the sphere of the supernatural, the jungle becomes the realm of pre-modern, local belief systems that exist alongside buddhism, which is by state declaration the official religion and a strong carrier of the state-proclaimed version of national aseas 4 (2) 302 303 identity. forming a sphere different from this identity, the jungle here becomes a carrier for local identity, that of a marginalised region. the jungle and the spirits that populate it transport local cultural memory that returns through the liminality of the jungle. conclusion: alternative aesthetics, unofficial identities in apichatpong’s work, the jungle becomes the figuration of a border zone on multiple levels. besides being set in an actual geopolitical frontier region, the films address the border zone between the living and the dead, the human and the non-human, the modern and the pre-modern, and between thainess and the non-nation. the boundaries between these dichotomies are not rigid but instead appear fluid and at times even dissolving. the jungle as non-domesticated landscape is an in-between space that invites liminality, providing a setting for the transgression of these boundaries. its role refers to that which is, in official discourse, usually marginalised and othered: obscurity, the irrational, the repressed, and the sensual. apichatpong’s aesthetics of the jungle emphasise obscurity, the aural, and the decentredness of the protagonists, recreating an experience of liminality through the positioning of the spectator. with this defamiliarisation of nature, apichatpong creates an alternative mode of representation that resists the conventional gaze on thai landscape and strongly differs from the aesthetic of nature depictions in recent mainstream cinema, where nature is shown as domesticated, beautified, and anthropocentric, or as exoticised. the alternativeness aligns itself with the status of isarn as a border region seen as ethnic and cultural other and discriminated against by the central thai government. in this way, the films confront official thainess with localness and otherness, making alternative identities visible that are rooted in a pre-modern age before the establishment of the modern thai nation state. these alternative localities, in appadurai’s sense, revise the concept of the nation from a peripheral perspective, from which the traumas inflicted onto the marginalised by state power become speakable. natalie boehler the jungle as border zone aseas 4 (2) 304 305 references apichatpong w. (2009). ghosts in the darkness. in j. quandt (ed.), apichatpong weerasethakul (pp. 104116). vienna, austria: synema. appadurai, a. (1996). modernity at large. cultural dimensions of globalization. minneapolis, mi: university of minnesota press. baker, c., & pasuk p. (2009). a history of thailand (2nd ed.). cambridge, england: cambridge university press. flückiger, b. (2001). sound design. die virtuelle klangwelt des films (zürcher filmstudien 6). marburg, germany: schüren. graiwoot c. (2006, 27 october). monster!: i survive through other people’s memories. criticine. retrieved 21 november 2011, from http://www.criticine.com/feature_article.php?id=35 harrison, r. (2005). amazing thai film. the rise and rise of contemporary thai cinema on the international screen. asian affairs, 36(3), 321-338. hirsch, p. (2002). what is the thai village? in c. j. reynolds (ed.), national identity and its defenders: thailand today (pp. 262-276). chiang mai, thailand: silkworm books. kong r. (2010, 28 may). of monkey ghosts and men. bangkok post. retrieved 3 june 2010, from http:// www.bangkokpost.com/entertainment/movie/37872/of-monkey-ghosts-and-men mandelbaum, j. (2004, 4 august). apichatpong weerasethakul, cinéaste: „tout est parti du paysage“. le monde, p.21. may a. i. (2006). transistor and temporality. the rural as modern thai cinema’s pastoral. in c. fowler, c. helfield, & g. helfield (eds.), representing the rural. space, place and identity in films about the land (pp. 80-97). detroit, mi: wayne state university press. may a. i. (2007). nang nak: thai bourgeois heritage cinema. inter-asia cultural studies, 8(2), 180-193. may a. i., & macdonald, r. l. (2006). blissfully whose? jungle pleasures, ultra-modernist cinema and the cosmopolitan thai auteur. new cinemas: journal of contemporary film, 4(1), 37-53. phra anuman r. (2009). essays on thai folklore (3rd ed.). bangkok, thailand: chulalongkorn university press. suvanna k. (2004a). folksong and socio-cultural change in village life. in siraporn n. (ed.), thai folklore, insights into thai culture (2nd ed., pp. 143-168). bangkok, thailand: chulalongkorn university press. suvanna k. (2004b). thai folk beliefs about animals and plants and attitudes toward nature. in siraporn n. (ed.), thai folklore, insights into thai culture (2nd ed., pp. 169-188). bangkok, thailand: chulalongkorn university press. thongchai w. (1994). siam mapped. a history of the geo-body of the nation. chiang mai, thailand: silkworm books. zhang, y. (2002). screening china. ann arbor, mi: university of michigan press. book review: fauzia, a. (2013). faith and the state: a history of islamic philanthropy in indonesia aseas 6(2) 399398 dayana parvanova book review: faith and the state d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -6 .2 -1 3 rezensionen / book reviews amelia fauzia (2013). faith and the state: a history of islamic philanthropy in indonesia. leiden, netherlands: brill. isbn: 9789004233973. i-xxxi + 346 pages. citation parvanova, d. (2013). book review: fauzia, a. (2013). faith and the state: a history of islamic philanthropy in indonesia. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 6(2), 398-401. amelia fauzia’s thorough analysis of islamic philanthropic practices in indonesia from the early decades of islam in the archipelago to today is more than a timely review of a tradition that both perpetuates and influences state-civil society relations. given their historical continuity, cultural tenacity, and social, political, and economic relevance, these practices – also referred to as zakat (almsgiving), sedekah (donation, giving), and waqf (religious endowment) – play a vital role in indonesian society today. as a lecturer of islamic history and civilization at the syarif hidayatullah state islamic university in jakarta and holding a phd in indonesian history and islamic studies from the university of melbourne, amelia has been working on the topic of islamic philanthropy since 2002, when she engaged with a global research project on “philanthropy for social justice in muslim societies”. this project brought together researchers from six different countries under her leadership, supported by a team of experts at the center for the study of religion and culture (csrc) in jakarta (including chaider s. bamualim and irfan abubakar, with whom she co-edited filantropi islam dan keadilan sosial [islamic philanthropy and social justice] in 2006). following several publications on the above-mentioned topics as well as on islamization, islamic identity, and civil society, faith and the state is the subsequent publication of her phd thesis – an extensive review and detailed analysis of the practices of zakat, sedekah, and waqf in indonesia and their role in shaping the relationship between the state and muslim civil society. her central argument is that islamic philanthropic activities, including the establishment of educational institutions, the provision of community services, or the financial support of community development projects, represent an element of a strong civil society and grow in the face of a weak state (p. 7). amelia maintains this idea throughout her book without ignoring the complexity of the specific historical, socio-political, and cultural contexts. aseas 6(2) 399398 faith and the state deals exclusively with islamic philanthropic practices in indonesia and their development from the early centuries of islamization to the more recent events of the post-new order regime. it looks at the social and cultural consolidation of different forms of giving against the background of islam and at various processes of reformation, (re)organization, and legislation of these practices. islamic philanthropy is presented as a dynamic and a highly contested space between the private and the public realm, between faith and the state (p. 6). both a part of civil society (following kathleen d. mccarthy, author of the american creed: philanthropy and the rise of civil society) and “an indicator of the state-civil society relationship” (p. 9), philanthropy renders a neat separation between the private and public as well as between the state and society hard to achieve. avoiding structural and conceptual dichotomizations, amelia indicates how, regardless of the role played by muslim elites, religious authorities, or the state, islamic philanthropy will never be fully formalized or regulated, mainly because of its authentic origin in the “altruistic and reciprocal nature of people” (p. xvii) and in the collective awareness and “concern for the welfare of others” (p. 1). and, although islamic philanthropic activities are every so often used as a tool to communicate advanced ideas of social justice and to promote social change, the majority of philanthropic practices remain mostly traditional and selfcontained, performed by muslims motivated mainly by their faith. the book is chronologically structured around three major periods in the history of indonesia. starting with early islamization and a pre-modern period of “muslim monarchs and islamic kingdoms” (p. 6) from the thirteenth until the nineteenth century (part one) – a period in which the “state” is present in the set of various political institutions other than today’s idea of a modern nation-state – amelia continues her analysis of philanthropic practices in the subsequent colonial period under the rule of a non-muslim government that rarely interfered in religious matters (part two). her analysis eventually covers the post-independence, old and new order, reformasi, and post-reformasi periods, all of which reflect a time of political and economic turbulence in the efforts of a muslim government to establish a secular or, in the sense of pancasila, a “religiously neutral” (p. 12) state (part three). methodologically, the book blends a historical approach with a sociological analysis, drawing upon a variety of sources, such as islamic authoritative texts (i.e. the qur’an and the prophetic tradition), legal texts, and reports as well as oral history and public surveys. dayana parvanova book review: faith and the state aseas 6(2) 401400 throughout her book, amelia illustrates the practices of zakat, sedekah, and waqf as “living traditions that have been dynamically developed by ruler, ‘ulama and society through a ‘reading’ of . . . fundamental islamic texts” (p. 31), thus focusing on concrete practices and comprehensive case studies rather than on legal and theological aspects of these institutions. with a strong emphasis on the historical, socio-political, cultural, and religious contexts, the author shows how certain tendencies and aspirations of both the government and religious elites have shaped and continue to shape state-civil society relations and, along these, the form and extent of muslim philanthropic practices. despite the lack of data and the gaps in available resources, it is safe to assume that islamic philanthropic practices entered the indonesian archipelago along the introduction of islam and other religious practices, and soon became a sign of generosity and religious piety, particularly among the royal circles (pp. 31-74). a central element in the politics of islamization, the practice of zakat was soon encouraged and regulated by the ruler as a tax on crops and trade commodities – an instance of “top-down islamisation” (p. 77) evident during the reign of the acehnese sultan iskandar muda (1607–1636); the practice of zakat supported both the sultan’s legitimacy and the steady influx of muslim traders to the province of aceh (pp. 76-94). a similar orientation towards the state and the formalization and legal regulation of zakat, emerging from a different historical background and in a different sociopolitical constellation, is the more recent trend towards an islamic philanthropy reform. this reform strives to bring the state back to the center of zakat collection and thus aims at reviving an islamic tradition, in which zakat is viewed as “a total economic and social solution” (p. 63). this trend, as well as divergent tendencies to adopt ideas of social justice, religious non-discrimination, and gender equality, based on an interpretative reading of and a contextualized approach towards islamic authoritative sources, are analyzed in the sixth chapter of the book. an instance of a stronger orientation towards the muslim community and civil society is presented in the second part of the book, which focuses on the state-civil society relationship during the colonial period. under the dutch colonial government, which rarely interfered in religious and philanthropic matters, both traditional islamic philanthropic practices in rural areas and modern philanthropic institutions among urban islamic organizations increased in number, significantly contributing to the development of a strong islamic identity, which was important during the aseas 6(2) 401400 later period of independence struggle. a strong concern for the social welfare and the “needs of the poor” (p. 141) combined with a firm stance against state corruption and the lack of transparency drove zakat management away from the state and into the hands of local voluntary committees. the strong commitment on the part of civil society exposed existing conflicts among various religious groups and organizations, presented in the argument between the two largest muslim mass organizations in present day indonesia, muhammadiyah and nahdlatul ulama (p. 157-167). the fact that the basis of their conflict consisted not only in their theoretical orientation and interpretation of the islamic authoritative sources, but in their contradicting position with regard to the state’s support and interference, is yet less observable. the close study of islamic philanthropic practices in indonesia, analyzed in their particular historical, socio-political, and religious contexts, clearly reveals the fundamental tension in the relationship between the state (and its various forms) and civil society (and its various manifestations). islamic philanthropy is thus not simply an aspect of a strong muslim civil society, neither an expression of religious piety or social concern, but rather an indicator of the state’s presence and role in prevailing socio-political constellations as well as religious ideologies and orientations. faith and the state presents an exceptional historical review and a detailed analysis of islamic philanthropic practices in indonesia and thus an excellent starting point for anyone with an interest in the topic of philanthropy in muslim societies, and particularly in the specific relationship between islamic philanthropic practices, faith, and the state in south-east asia. the focus on the institutionalization and legal regulation of the simple act of giving provides valuable insights in both state-civil society relations and socio-political and religious ideologies at stake. dayana parvanova university of vienna, austria dayana parvanova book review: faith and the state kunst, kosmos, kaste. weibliche körperinszenierungen, tanz und aspekte der bewahrung balinesischer kultur in oka rusminis tarian bumi art, cosmos, caste. female stagings of the body, dance and aspects of preserving balinese culture in oka rusmini‘s tarian bumi aseas 1 (1) kunst, kosmos, kaste. weibliche körperinszenierungen, tanz und aspekte der bewahrung balinesischer kultur in oka rusminis tarian bumi art, cosmos, caste. female stagings of the body, dance and aspects of preserving balinese culture in oka rusmini‘s tarian bumi monika arnez postdoc bayefg, universität passau, institut für südostasienkunde aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften / austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 1 (1), 2008 seas gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften www.seas.at immer mehr indonesische autorinnen haben insbesondere seit dem sturz präsident suhartos die literarische bühne erobert. viele ihrer bücher wurden bestseller, mit bis zu 100.000 verkauften kopien. diese zunehmende popularität hängt vor allem mit tendenzen der liberalisierung, aufhebung der zensur und einer redefinition der rolle der frau zusammen. einige schriftstellerinnen machten in der letzten dekade durch die offene thematisierung von sexualität und begehren der frau auf sich aufmerksam, ein tabuthema, das während der neuen ordnung nicht in dieser weise hätte diskutiert werden können. die meisten dieser autorinnen, deren literatur in den medien oftmals mit dem umstrittenen begriff sastrawangi (duftliteratur) bezeichnet wird, wählen als handlungsschauplätze ihrer erzählungen urbane zentren javas. dieses paper diskutiert den roman tarian bumi (erdentanz, 2000) von oka rusmini, die den diskurs um den weiblichen körper und sexualität de facto noch vor der ‚pionierin’ der sogenannten sastrawangi eröffnet hat, ayu utami. das paper möchte einen beitrag dazu leisten, die verflechtungen von weiblichen körperinszenierungen, tanz und aspekte der bewahrung der balinesischen kultur aufzuzeigen. ein besonderes augenmerk liegt auf der frage, wie die körperinszenierungen genutzt werden, um die rolle der frau in der balinesischen gesellschaft innerhalb des spannungsfeldes des hinduistischen kastensystems, der hierarchie und vor dem hintergrund der problematik von tourismus, postkolonialer kritik und bewahrung balinesischer kultur im wandel der zeit zu charakterisieren. 29 aseas 1 (1) an increasing number of indonesian women authors have entered the literary stage since the fall of suharto. many of their books have become bestsellers, selling up to 100.000 copies. reasons for this rising popularity of literature by women authors are tendencies of liberalization, lifting of censorship and a redefinition of women’s role. some female authors have attracted attention by openly discussing female sexuality and desire, a taboo topic, which would not have been able to discuss during the new order. most of these writers, whose literature is often termed sastrawangi (fragrant literature), choose urban centres of java as settings for their narratives. this paper discusses the novel tarian bumi (earth dance, 2000) by oka rusmini, who has opened the discourse about the female body and sexuality even before the ‘pioneer’ of so-called sastrawangi, ayu utami. the paper wants to contribute to point out links between female stagings of the body, dance and aspects of preserving balinese culture. the paper directs special attention to the question, how stagings of the body are used to characterize women’s role in balinese society between the poles of the hindu caste system and hierarchy and against the backdrop of tourism, postcolonial criticism and preservation of balinese culture in the course of time. einleitung one of the distinctive new trends to emerge since 1998 […] has been the dominant role of female authors in setting new directions in indonesian literature. there has never been another period in the history of indonesian literature when women writers have played such an important role in setting new trends (campbell 2002: 67). das abrupte ende des autoritären suharto-regimes kam indonesischen autorinnen, wie auch bildenden künstlerinnen und anderen kulturschaffenden, zu gute. obwohl die schriftstellerinnen zumeist schon in den jahren vor dem sturz präsident suhartos aktive literaturschaffende waren, gestaltete sich die platzierung ihrer literatur am markt diffizil. als grund dafür ist insbesondere die ideologie der kodrat wanita (natürliches schicksal) zu nennen, der zufolge frauen sanfte geschöpfe sind, deren natur sie für aufgaben innerhalb des hauses wie die unterstützung des ehemannes und die erziehung der kinder prädestiniert. bestrebungen von frauen, sich in der literatur oder der kunst einen namen zu machen, wurden während der regierungszeit suhartos in keiner weise unterstützt. zwar nutzten schriftstellerinnen auch in jener zeit schon manche schlupflöcher, die ihnen tradition, islam und staatliche ideologie boten, sie konnten dies aber immer nur innerhalb der grenzen der kodrat wanita tun (niehof 200�: �78). die fiktionalen texte, die seit den späten �990er jahren von indonesischen autorinnen publiziert wurden, zeigen, dass die althergebrachten normen sich allmählich ändern und ehemalige tabus hinsichtlich der konzeptualisierung und selbst-repräsentation von frauen herausgefordert werden (hatley 2002: �78). nicht zuletzt haben in der post-suharto-ära auch 30 monika arnez kunst, kosmos, kaste aseas 1 (1) strukturelle veränderungen im politischen und kulturellen bereich, aber auch im verlagswesen, einen beitrag zu einem neuen verständnis der rolle der frau geleistet. zu nennen sind hier beispielsweise die aufhebung der zensur, die größere offenheit weiblichen künstlerinnen gegenüber und ein rapider anstieg an literarischen produktionen. letzterer hängt auch damit zusammen, dass viele neue verlage auf den markt drängten, die erkannten, dass schriftstellerinnen bislang sehr wenig raum gegeben worden war und beabsichtigen, diese marktlücke zu schließen. zudem realisierten sie, dass sich mit dem sturz präsident suhartos neue märkte eröffneten, die mit dem wachsenden bedürfnis innerhalb der indonesischen gesellschaft in verbindung standen, ehemalige tabuthemen wie sexualität, einschließlich homosexualität und polygamie, militärischer gewalt und kommunismus, aufzugreifen und explizit zum diskussionsgegenstand zu machen. aber auch große etablierte verlagshäuser wie gramedia witterten ein geschäft mit früheren tabuthemen und sprangen auf den zug auf. die erste indonesische autorin, die mit dem tabubruch der sexualität einen mediendiskurs auslöste, ist ayu utami. in ihrem episodenhaft erzählten roman saman (�998) konzentriert sie sich in einem der beiden haupthandlungsstränge auf die beschreibung der erfahrungen der vier jungen frauen yasmin, laila, cok und shakuntala. alle außer yasmin haben gemeinsam, dass sie die gesellschaftliche norm der ehe nicht erfüllen. yasmin ist zwar verheiratet, begeht aber später ehebruch mit einem ehemaligen priester. cok wechselt häufig die partner, shakuntala hat lesbische neigungen und ist in laila verliebt. anders als in früheren romanen, in denen weibliche sexualität mit hilfe von metaphorischer sprache dargestellt wurde, werden in saman die sexuellen bedürfnisse der frauen unverblümt angesprochen und diskutiert. es ist insbesondere diese offene darstellung der weiblichen sexualität, die bei der rezeption des romans immer wieder zu einer ablehnenden haltung geführt hat (hatley �999). er wurde als nicht feminin, sondern bisweilen sogar als pornographisch bezeichnet (harimurti 2006). bei der indonesischen leserschaft war der roman jedoch sehr beliebt und demzufolge wurden die romane saman und sein nachfolger larung bestseller. allein von saman wurden �00.000 exemplare verkauft. ayu utami wird als die autorin genannt, die den diskurs über sexualität und den weiblichen körper eröffnet hat.� de facto jedoch hat oka rusmini diese thematik jedoch bereits vor ayu utami aufgegriffen, mit einem „geist der rebellion“, wie danerek es formuliert (2006: �9�). ihr roman tarian bumi (erdentanz / tanz der welt, 20002) wurde ursprünglich im jahre �997, also ein jahr vor der publikation des romans saman, als fortsetzungsroman in der tageszeitung republika veröffentlicht. oka rusmini nimmt innerhalb der jungen autorinnen, � sie wird als pionierin der so genannten sastrawangi (duftliteratur) gesehen, ein hauptsächlich von den medien propagierter begriff mit derogativer konnotation, der auf das aussehen der autorinnen anspielt und gleichzeitig die qualität der werke anzweifelt. 2 meine übersetzung. der roman wurde ins deutsche übersetzt und im jahre 2007 im horlemann-verlag mit dem titel ‚erdentanz’ veröffentlicht. 31 aseas 1 (1) die seit ende der �990er jahre die literarische szene betraten, eine besondere stellung ein. ihre beschäftigung mit dem weiblichen körper und sexualität findet nicht, wie bei den meisten anderen von autorinnen publizierten fiktionalen texten, im setting urbaner zentren auf java statt, sondern der von ihr gewählte handlungsschauplatz ist bali. diesen umstand nimmt sich dieser artikel zum anlass und stellt die frage, auf welche weise der weibliche körper, der in dem roman tarian bumi von oka rusmini eine zentrale rolle spielt, inszeniert wird, und welche rolle tanz dabei spielt. anhand der hauptfiguren des romans und der einbettung in ihr soziales umfeld soll analysiert werden, wie die körperinszenierungen genutzt werden, um die rolle der frau in der balinesischen gesellschaft innerhalb des spannungsfeldes des hinduistischen kastensystems, der hierarchie und vor dem hintergrund der problematik von tourismus, postkolonialer kritik und bewahrung balinesischer kultur im wandel der zeit zu charakterisieren. des weiteren soll erläutert werden, wie repräsentationen des weiblichen körpers an ideologische diskurse und gegendiskurse um kolonisierung und patriarchie anknüpfen. die autorin und synopsis des romans oka rusmini wurde am ��. juli �967 als kind balinesischer eltern in jakarta geboren. die autorin verbrachte einen großteil ihres lebens auf bali. sie ist durch ihre werke, die dichtung, kurzgeschichten und romane umfassen, sowohl national als auch international anerkannt. sie hat bislang zwei gedichtsammlungen, monolog pohon (baumdialog, �997�), und patiwangi (200�), publiziert sowie zwei romane, kenanga (200�), und tarian bumi (2000). oka rusmini verfasste den roman kenanga bereits in den jahren �990-�99� und veröffentlichte ihn als fortsetzungsroman in der zeitschrift tempo im jahre 2002. ihre jüngste publikation ist malaikat biru kota hobart: suara dari bali (der blaue engel der stadt hobart: stimmen aus bali, 2004), eine sammlung von lyrik und essays. oka rusmini erhielt bisher mehrere auszeichnungen für ihre werke. für ihren roman tarian bumi, der bereits im jahre �997 als fortsetzungsroman in der tageszeitung republika veröffentlicht wurde, erhielt sie im jahre 200� einen preis des sprachenzentrums der abteilung für nationale bildung. die indonesische frauenzeitschrift femina zeichnete die novelle sagra im jahre �998 mit dem preis für die beste fortsetzungsgeschichte aus. diese erzählung wurde zusammen mit anderen kurzgeschichten in der anthologie sagra (200�) publiziert, u.a. mit der erzählung ‘putu menolong tuhan’ (putu hilft gott), die femina im jahre �994 als beste kurzgeschichte auswählte und ‘pemahat � die gedichtsammlung ist bisher nicht ins deutsche übersetzt, ebenso wie die sammlung von lyrik und essays malaikat biru kota hobart: suara dari bali. 32 monika arnez kunst, kosmos, kaste aseas 1 (1) abad’ (bildhauer der ewigkeit), die von der literaturzeitschrift horison den preis für die beste kurzgeschichte der jahre �990-2000 erhielt. im jahre 2002 bekam oka rusmini den sih preis der zeitschrift jurnal puisi. im jahre �997 nahm sie am asean-schreibprogramm teil, war zum winternachten literaturfestival in den haag und amsterdam eingeladen und war gastschriftstellerin an der universität hamburg (200�). oka rusmini arbeitet als journalistin bei der zeitung bali post. ins zentrum ihrer fiktionalen texte, deren mehrheit bali als handlungsschauplatz hat, stellt sie die balinesische frau und ihre schwierige position innerhalb der familie, die aus hierarchischen unterschieden zwischen den hindu-kasten resultieren, den weibliche körper und sexualität. die autorin kritisiert in ihren texten die untergeordnete stellung der frau in der balinesischen gesellschaft, die nur sehr schwer aufgebrochen werden kann, da das balinesische adat, kultur und religion kaum möglichkeit dafür bieten (dwinanda 2007). in einer vielzahl ihrer fiktionalen werke prangert sie die aus dem adat resultierende bevorzugung von männern in erbschaftsangelegenheiten an, kritisiert die tatsache, dass balinesische hindu-frauen im falle einer scheidung das sorgerecht für die kinder abtreten müssen (blümel 2004). in einem interview äußert sich die autorin zu ihren intentionen folgendermaßen: auf bali ist einiges im umbruch. daran ist auch der tourismus maßgeblich beteiligt. und einflüsse, die von den jüngeren leuten kommen, die das rigide religiöse system zunehmend ablehnen. doch wenn ich zum beispiel die benachteiligungen anspreche, die den meisten frauen hier widerfahren, dann muss ich ausgesprochen vorsichtig sein! das sind heikle themen, die ich in eine schöne rahmenhandlung einbette, um das ganze eingängiger zu machen. natürlich merken die leute trotzdem, worauf ich hinaus will – und das sollen sie ja auch! aber es ist schwer, sehr schwer, die balinesischen leser für solche themen zu gewinnen (zitiert nach: blümel 2004). oka rusminis ausgeprägtes interesse an dem themenkomplex der schwierigen position der frau auf bali ist zumindest teilweise durch ihre eigene biographie motiviert, insbesondere durch ihre heirat mit dem ostjavaner arif b prasetyo. diese ehe brachte ihre familie so sehr gegen sie auf, dass sie von diesen enterbt wurde. ihre familie war der ansicht, dass die ethnische zugehörigkeit und religion des dichters prasetyo einer heirat mit oka rusmini entgegenstünden. ihre eigene als ungerecht empfundene behandlung hat der autorin einen weiteren grund geliefert, mangelnde gleichberechtigung der geschlechter in ihren werken zu thematisieren. in den romanen kenanga und tarian bumi wird deutlich, dass die ambitionen und wünsche der frauen oftmals mit den hinduistischen traditionen balis konfligieren, die insbesondere im griya, dem bereich und die häuser, wo die mitglieder der kaste der brahmanen leben, noch sehr stark sind. dies führt zu spannungen, sowohl im familiären wie auch im außerfamiliären umfeld. der roman tarian bumi erzählt die geschichte von insgesamt vier generationen balinesischer frauen mit vielen vorund rückblenden. demgemäß entstehen mitunter lange 33 aseas 1 (1) zeitabstände zwischen den einzelnen kapiteln. der roman wird von einer heterodiegetischen erzählerin entfaltet, aus der narratologischen perspektive von ida ayu telaga, einer frau in ihren �0ern. ein wichtiger punkt, in dem sich die weiblichen charaktere unterscheiden, sind ihre unterschiedlichen ziele im leben. telagas mutter luh sekar, die in eine gewöhnliche sudrafamilie4 geboren wurde, hat bereits als kind als einziges ziel vor augen, die frau eines brahmanen zu werden und damit ihrem niedrigen sozialen status sowie den ärmlichen verhältnissen, in denen sie lebt, zu entfliehen. schließlich trifft und heiratet sie einen brahmanen, und ihr bisheriges leben ändert sich unwiderruflich. trotz der schwierigkeiten, die ihr neuer status für sie mit sich bringt, versucht kenanga ihrer tochter telaga die bedeutung und verpflichtung der zugehörigkeit zur höchsten kaste nahe zu bringen. sie macht telaga stets darauf aufmerksam, wie sie sich gegenüber den anderen mitgliedern des griya angemessen zu verhalten hat. insbesondere nach dem menek kelih5 ritual, der geschlechtsreifezeremonie innerhalb der brahmanenkaste, die den übergang in die erwachsenenwelt markiert, weist sie telaga auf korrektes benehmen hin, auf die notwendigkeit, unüberlegtes reden zu vermeiden und sich angemessen zu kleiden (s. 5�, 52). im gegensatz zu ihrer mutter hat telaga keinerlei interesse an hohem status, sondern sie möchte eine liebesheirat. sie verliebt sich in den maler wayan sasmitha aus der sudrakaste und setzt eine heirat mit ihm durch, widersetzt sich sowohl ihrer mutter als auch ihrer schwiegermutter. nach der hochzeit mit wayan betrachtet telagas eigene mutter sie als tot, da sie eine heirat unter ihrem stand als skandalös ansieht. auch telagas schwiegermutter stellt sich gegen die beziehung, da sie der auffassung ist, dass die nicht standesgemäße heirat unglück über ihre familie bringen wird. der soziale abstieg gestaltet sich für telaga in mehrfacher hinsicht schwierig. sie hat probleme mit der ausführung ihrer täglichen pflichten, die sie nicht gewohnt ist, und muss die ablehnung ihrer schwiegermutter täglich ertragen. als wayan an herzversagen stirbt, bleibt ihr nur noch ihre tochter. für ihre schwiegermutter ist telagas unvermögen, sich an die lebensweise einer familie der sudra anzupassen, ein sicheres anzeichen für die unheilige allianz telegas und wayans. als ihr sohn plötzlich an herzversagen stirbt, fühlt sie sich noch mehr in ihrer annahme bestätigt. um das unglück endgültig von der familie abzuwenden, fordert telagas schwiegermutter sie am ende des romans auf, eine adat-zeremonie zu vollziehen, die ein mitglied der brahmanenkaste offiziell seinen status verlieren lässt, die patiwangi6. telaga empfindet die vollständige transformation zu einer frau der niedrigsten 4 sudra ist die niedrigste kaste 5 abgeleitet von den balinesischen wörtern menek (aufsteigen, hinaufsteigen), und kelih (erwachsen werden, heiratsfähig sein) 6 der begriff kann wörtlich mit ‘das parfum töten’ übersetzt werden. während der zeremonie wird das ‚parfum’, das heißt, der hohe status der brahmanin, rituell abgewaschen. 34 monika arnez kunst, kosmos, kaste aseas 1 (1) kaste als befreiung, obwohl die patiwangi-zeremonie selbst erniedrigend ist. telaga muss dabei hinnehmen, dass ihre schwiegermutter sich während der zeremonie die füße unmittelbar über ihrem kopf wäscht. dieser symbolische akt resultiert aus der tatsache, dass das verhältnis der mitglieder der höchsten kaste (brahmanen) zu den sudra sich in der relation des ‚kopfes’ zum ‚fuß’ ausdrückt (duff-cooper: �988). indem sie die rollen von ‘kopf’ und ‘fuß’ symbolisch vertauscht, stellt telaga die ‘natürliche ordnung’ wieder her, die durch ihre heirat unterhalb ihres standes gestört worden war. dies ist in übereinstimmung mit dem balinesischen konzept zu sehen, dass eine heirat idealerweise ethnisch endogam und kasten-hypergam7 ist und damit die hierarchischen positionen des himmelsvaters und der mutter erde bestätigt werden. dadurch wird die kastenund gender-hierarchie als ‚natürliche ordnung’ reproduziert (bellows 200�: 4). im folgenden soll nun anhand zentraler motive des romans analysiert werden, auf welche weise die verschiedenen konzepte der agierenden zentralen figuren von körper, sexualität und schönheit dargestellt werden. weibliche körperinszenierungen zwischen taksu, schönheit und kommerz ein kernmotiv in tarian bumi ist der tanz. der titel erdentanz lässt sich als hinweis auf das untrennbare zusammenspiel von mikround makokosmos lesen, als beziehung zwischen dem (tanzenden) individuum und der welt, die laut balinesischer vorstellung nicht als zwei vollständig unabhängig voneinander existierende stücke, sondern als eine ganzheit anzusehen sind: „bodies and the world are not separate but affect one another. so dance, in instantiating momentary mastery, helps order the world […]” (hobart 2007: �22). dieser erdentanz wird als ein element des göttlichen schaffensprozesses gesehen. die beziehung zwischen dem tänzer und dem göttlichen erdentanz wird insbesondere anhand von taksu demonstriert. der balinesische begriff taksu wird als ‚mysteriöse kraft, die intelligenz und macht gibt, wunder zu bewirken’ übersetzt (shadeg 2007: 464). gleichzeitig kann sich der terminus auch auf den geist beziehen, der zwischen den göttern und der gemeinschaft kommuniziert, oder den gott bezeichnen, dem die schreine in einem brahmanentempel gewidmet sind (tataksu) (ibid). im kontext von kunst beschreibt i made suparta taksu als ‚a sort of inner power which shines forth as intelligence and beauty. it can also be extended to mean genuine creativity’ (suparta: 2000). dibia und ballinger fassen taksu als ‚spirituelles charisma, als höhepunkt der energie, nach der jeder balinesische künstler strebt’ (dibia / ballinger 2005: 8). diese kraft und dieses spirituelle charisma werden nach balinesischer 7 die frau darf einen mann mit höherem status heiraten, aber nicht umgekehrt 35 aseas 1 (1) überzeugung durch die seelen verstorbener übertragen, die als boten des sang hyang widhi, des allmächtigen gottes, fungieren. demgemäß glauben die auserwählten mädchen in tarian bumi auch daran, dass sie von den seelen verstorbener tänzerinnen besucht worden sind, die ihnen ihr wissen vermittelt haben. auf die erfolgreichen tänzerinnen des romans, telaga, luh sekar und luh kambren, ist taksu übergegangen. die verschiedenen konnotationen und implikationen von taksu werden insbesondere anhand der beziehung der tanzlehrerin luh kambren und telaga und anhand des werdegangs ihrer mutter sekar illustriert. die autoritäre lehrerin luh kambren bemerkt gleich zu beginn der tanzstunden, die sie telaga erteilt, dass das mädchen ein außerordentliches talent zum tanzen besitzt. ihr wird mit einem mal klar, dass telaga von den göttern zum tanzen auserwählt wurde und dass sie selbst dazu bestimmt ist, taksu, die mysteriöse kraft, die ihr als junge frau zuteil geworden war, an telaga weiterzugeben. luh kambren erzählt im rückblick auf ihre eigene jugend, dass sie damals von krankheit gezeichnet und auch körperlich äußerst unattraktiv war (s. 59). nachdem eines tages die dorfschamanen die eingebung hatten, einen tempel zu ehren der götter des tanzes zu erbauen, da dieses dorf früher einmal künste von unsagbarer schönheit hervorgebracht habe, änderte sich das leben für luh kambren grundlegend. nach der einweihungszeremonie des tempels konnte sie plötzlich gut tanzen und schöne balladen singen, und ihre opfergabe, ein entenei, war als einzige gabe der auserwählten mädchen nach einer woche noch intakt. dies wurde als eindeutiges zeichen gewertet, dass taksu auf kambren übergegangen sei, dass sie von der göttern auserwählt sei, um ihr leben dem tanz zu widmen. ebenso ist ihre plötzliche physische attraktivität ein indikator für den übergang der mysteriösen kraft auf luh kambren. unmittelbar nachdem sie taksu von den göttern bekam, legte sie ihre krankheit ab und erhielt ein frisches und jugendliches aussehen, das bis ins alter hinein erhalten blieb. luh kambren verdeutlicht in ihren gesprächen mit telaga, dass taksu zwar auf einen tänzer übergehen kann, dies aber stets an bedingungen gebunden ist. es wird als schwieriger angesehen, taksu dauerhaft zu erhalten, als es einmalig als gunst der götter zu bekommen. für die einmalige gewährung von taksu muss eine tänzerin ein mal im tempel beten und opfergaben darbringen. für eine dauerhafte erhaltung muss sie regelmäßig bei jedem vollmond und neumond opfergaben darbringen und beten (s. 70). außerdem, wie luh kambren erklärt, sind wichtige voraussetzungen dafür, taksu dauerhaft zu erhalten, die bewahrung der ernsthaftigkeit und hingabe beim tanz, eigenschaften, die telaga ihrer meinung nach auf sich vereinigt: weißt du, seit jahrzehnten wollte ich niemanden mehr im tanzen unterrichten. zu ermüdend. weil sie [die schülerinnen] oftmals nicht mit ernst bei der sache waren. du hast den legong in nur zwei tagen beherrscht. außergewöhnlich! (s. 70) 36 monika arnez kunst, kosmos, kaste aseas 1 (1) hier bezieht sie sich auf die balinesische vorstellung, dass es von zentraler bedeutung ist, den eigenen körper in vollendung zu beherrschen. gemäß dieses konzepts ist der körper porös und kann dementsprechend leicht von anderen kräften missbraucht werden (hobart 2007: �22). um zu verhindern, dass eine tänzerin von bösen mächten besetzt wird und dass ihr körper keine harmonische einheit mehr bildet, ist es von zentraler bedeutung, dass die götter die tänzerin mit taksu segnen. dieses balinesische konzept der beherrschung des körpers im zusammenspiel mit dem göttlichen steht, so die mittels der figur der luh kambren geäußerte kritik, in starkem gegensatz zu den anforderungen an eine vom tourismus geprägte insel. luh kambren, hier als sprachrohr der autorin, kritisiert die bereitschaft des eigenen volkes, ihre kultur an die ausländer zu verkaufen und die tänzerinnen zum reinen profit zur schau zu stellen: sie wissen nicht, auf welche weise die inspiration aus einer tanzchoreographin herausbricht und ihre gedanken beherrscht. ihnen genügt es, das ergebnis zu verkaufen, uns vor den ausländern zur schau zu stellen. sie haben aber nicht von ihnen gelernt, wie man die wertvollen hinterlassenschaften einer zivilisation rettet. eine zivilisation, die man mit nichts kaufen kann (s. 71). in dieser textpassage wird besonders die kommerzialisierung der tänze angeprangert. diejenigen, die die tanzschulen leiten, so die kritik, haben lediglich interesse am lukrativen verkauf der tänze, ohne daran zu denken, geschweige denn konkrete ideen zu sammeln, wie kultur und althergebrachtes wissen für die zukunft weiter entwickelt werden können. sie selbst haben in ihrer ausbildung lediglich gelernt, bereits vorhandenes know-how in geld zu verwandeln. taksu, so luh kambrens argumentation, gehe verloren, wenn man sich von den wurzeln, dem ursprünglichen zweck der tänze, zu weit entferne. die derzeitige verschulte form von tanz stünde im kontrast zu den ursprünglichen balinesischen tanzformen, bei denen das zubereiten von opfergaben, beten und tanzen im rahmen von religiösen zeremonien alltägliche aufgaben waren, und tanz als integraler bestandteil von zeremonien im tempel gehörte: früher haben die leute nicht zwischen der tätigkeit an sich und der im künstlerischen sinne unterschieden. sie tanzten, weil es zeremonien im tempel gab. und jetzt? es hat sich alles verändert. ich wurde geboren, um das taksu des tanzes zu bewahren. taksu, das nach und nach von den leuten zerstört wird, die zu lange zur schule gegangen sind (s. 71).. an dieser stelle beklagt kambren den verlust dieser ursprünglichen arten des tanzes im kontext der religion, der sich aufgrund komplexer sozialer und kultureller änderungen vollzogen hat. aufgrund des zu sehr verschulten systems, so kritisiert sie, haben sich die tänzerinnen von den wurzeln des tanzes weit entfernt. tanz und religiöse verpflichtung sind für viele tänzerinnen nicht mehr eng miteinander verwoben. hinzu kommt, dass sich 37 aseas 1 (1) die jungen mädchen durch ihre schulische ausbildung oftmals nicht mehr an ihre rituellen verpflichtungen gebunden fühlen, die mit einem modernen lebensstil nur schwer zu vereinbaren sind (rein �998). auch die verschulung an den universitäten wird kritisiert. luh kambren beschreibt sie als einen faktor, der letztlich in der zerstörung von taksu resultiert. denn sogar an der hochschule, wo sie ehemals unterrichtet hatte, seien die studentinnen lediglich daran interessiert gewesen, die prüfungen zu bestehen, hätten aber keinen wunsch gehegt, darüber hinaus zu gehen, tiefer zu forschen. obwohl sie den anschein erweckt hatten, ihr studium ernst zu nehmen, so deutet luh kambren an, verspürten sie kein wirkliches interesse am tanz, keine echte hingabe (s. 7�). ohne diesen einsatz jedoch, so die über luh kambren vermittelte kritik, gehen ureigene elemente des tanzes verloren, zu dem taksu als wichtiger bestandteil gehört. der tanz bleibt dann ohne inneres leben, ohne kreativität und innovation. luh kambren selbst hingegen wird im roman als inbegriff dieser attribute beschrieben. die heterodiegetische erzählerin weist auf ihren speziellen, ganz eigenen, nur schwer kopierbaren tanzstil hin (s. 72). jedoch wird auch deutlich, dass sie lediglich über telaga die möglichkeit hat, ihr wissen weiterzugeben, die einzige, die ohne vorbehalte wie etwa den wunsch nach kommerzialisierung oder dem reinen ziel eines universitätsabschlusses, mit hingabe tanzt. an dieser stelle wird ebenfalls angedeutet, dass der intensive kontakt, der auf der dörflichen ebene zwischen der tanzlehrerin und ihrer schülerin besteht, eine bessere voraussetzung für das erlernen der tänze ist als die hochschule, wo man heute das tanzen in großen gruppen erlernt und wo man den zugang zu diesen schulen nicht mehr durch begabung, sondern durch geld reguliert (hornbacher 2005: 25�-254). körperinszenierung als ‚heilung’: sozialer aufstieg und historische bewältigung anders als bei telaga dominieren bei luh sekar, ebenso wie bei den von luh kambren beschriebenen schülerinnen (außer telaga), ebenfalls motive, die mit der freude am tänzerischen ausdruck nicht unmittelbar zusammenhängen. bei ihr stehen insbesondere persönlicher ehrgeiz im vordergrund, die absicht, ihrem eigenen dorf zu erfolg zu verhelfen, und vor allem der wunsch, ihren eigenen status durch eine heirat mit einem brahmanen zu erhöhen. dies, so glaubt luh sekar, wird ihr leichter gelingen, wenn sie sich im joged, einem tanz, welcher den unterhaltungstänzen (seni tari balih-balihan) zugeordnet wird, als herausragend profiliert. sie ‚erkämpft’ sich taksu, indem sie entschlossen mit ihrer freundin kenten um mitternacht im tempel betet und opfergaben darbringt. anschließend arbeitet sie unermüdlich an ihrer körperlichen perfektion, die sie neben der mithilfe der götter als die 38 monika arnez kunst, kosmos, kaste aseas 1 (1) wichtigste voraussetzung für erfolgreichen tanz sieht. ni luh sekar möchte um jeden preis die schönste der tänzerinnen sein, avanciert durch ihren starken willen und ihre göttliche gabe schließlich zum star der joged-gruppe. es wird bald deutlich, dass telagas mutter nicht bereit ist, mit anderen zu teilen und auch kein schlechtes gewissen dabei empfindet, wenn männer ihr beim tanzen geld zustecken: dieser mann [ngurah pidada] steckte ihr immer, ohne das wissen der joged-gruppe, zehntausendrupiah-scheine ins kostüm. weil niemand davon etwas wusste, betrachtete auch sekar das geld als ihr rechtmäßiges eigentum. sekar hatte den anderen tänzerinnen gegenüber nie ein schlechtes gewissen. normalerweise, wenn die mädchen vom publikum geld zugesteckt bekamen, teilten sie es immer der leiterin der tanzgruppe mit. dann wurde das geld gleichmäßig unter den tänzerinnen, gamelanspielern und priestern verteilt [...] (s. 18). sekar bekommt das geld von ngurah pidada hauptsächlich dafür, dass er ihre brüste berühren darf, wenn sie tanzt (s. �8). die tänzerin findet nichts anstößiges dabei, ihren körper für wohlstand, prestige und ruhm zu verkaufen. sie verfolgt das ziel, ihren status zu erhöhen, konsequent. die perfektion ihres ‚schönen körpers’ (s. �9) und vor allem seines einsatzes bei den tanzaufführungen scheint ihr ein probates mittel, dieses ziel zu erreichen. um ihre wirkung auf das publikum realistischer einschätzen zu können, lässt sie sich, nackt ausgezogen, tanzend von ihrer freundin kenten begutachten. da sie kein gespür für das gefühlsleben anderer hat, weil sie sich innerlich vorwiegend mit ihren eigenen zielsetzungen beschäftigt, bemerkt sie nicht, dass kenten in sie verliebt ist und es ihr geradezu körperliche pein bereitet, sekar nackt tanzend zu sehen. luh kenten stand still, konzentrierte sich darauf, den donner, den sie immer stärker in sich aufkommen spürte, zu besänftigen. sie fühlte, zwischen ihren beinen tropfte bereits ein fluss und durchnässte langsam ihre unterwäsche. dieser fluss beunruhigte sie zunehmend. kenten hielt es nicht mehr aus. sie umarmte sekars körper ganz fest. ihr atem war nun nicht mehr zu überhören. „tu dies nie wieder vor mir, sekar. tu das nicht! wenn du uns noch als freundinnen betrachtest, wirst du meine bitte sicherlich akzeptieren“, sagte sie mit stockender stimme. luh sekar lachte und verstärkte ihre umarmung noch. „sag mir, bin ich die schönste?“ (s. 33). obwohl luh sekar als begnadete, schöne tänzerin dargestellt wird, scheint ihr etwas wesentliches zu fehlen, was kenten mit ‚leblosem blick’ und abwesenheit bezeichnet (s. �4). das innere strahlen, ein wichtiger teil der schönheit telagas, die im gegensatz zu ihrer mutter einen intensiven blick hat, fehlt ihr. schönheit ist bei luh sekar rein physischer natur, ein hinweis darauf, dass ihr seelenleben nicht harmonisch, unausgewogen ist. ihr umgang mit anderen menschen trägt dieser tatsache rechnung. luh sekar verfolgt ihre ziele geradlinig, in egoistischer manier, drängt anderen menschen ihren willen auf, sowohl kenten als auch später ihrer tochter telaga. sie akzeptiert neben ihrer eigenen meinung keine anderen standpunkte und ist auch nicht zu kompromissen bereit, und es mangelt ihr an einfühlungsvermögen. 39 aseas 1 (1) sie ist zu einer harten frau geworden, die taksu als mittel für die perfektion ihres körpers nutzt. ihre vorstellung von tanz korrespondiert nicht mit luh kambrens definition einer begnadeten, hingebungsvollen tänzerin. luh sekar rückt die wirkung ihres tanzes auf andere in den vordergrund, möchte „alle augen verbrennen, die meinen körper tanzen sehen“ (s. 27). ihre physische schönheit wird von höchster bedeutung für ihren status. sie weiß, dass sie nur ein star werden kann, wenn sie ihre körperlichkeit geschickt inszeniert. sie wählt deshalb auch den joged, einen unterhaltungstanz mit erotischen elementen, bei dem die unmittelbare interaktion zwischen den tänzerinnen und dem publikum im vordergrund steht und der in der forschung in den kontext von erotik, sextourismus und pornographie gerückt wird8. ein wesentlicher grund für ihren ‚leblosen blick’, ihr kompromissloses verhalten und ihren brennenden wunsch nach prestige, so suggeriert die erzählerin, liegt in der vergangenheit ihrer familie begründet. luh sekar nutzt ihren körper als kapital, als mittel für sozialen aufstieg. sie inszeniert ihren körper als instrument gegen soziale ächtung. die tatsache, dass ihr vater in die kommunistische partei indonesiens (pki) involviert war, sieht sie als großen makel für ihre familie, als auferlegte bürde, die ihre familie stigmatisiert hat. ihrer ansicht nach war es die schuld ihres vaters, dass luh dalem, ihre mutter, von mehreren dorfbewohnern vergewaltigt wurde. letztere hätten sich, so denkt sie, für die mitgliedschaft ihres vaters in der pki an luh dalem gerächt (s. �4). sekar glaubt, dass sie körperliche schönheit dazu nutzen kann, ihrer familie nach der langen zeit der sozialen isolierung und diskreditierung endlich respekt zu verschaffen. der körper wird hier zu einem probaten mittel für sie, ihre familie von in der vergangenheit begangenem unrecht ‚rein zu waschen’. sekar betrachtet die erotische kraft und schönheit ihres körpers als möglichkeit für einen befreiungsschlag gegen die auswirkungen historischer prozesse, die ihrer meinung nach das wohl ihrer familie zerstört haben. sie sieht sich als opfer der geschichte, personifiziert in der figur ihres vaters: die leute haben mich verstoßen. sie sagen, ich sei das kind eines verräters. ein pki kind!9 unter den taten meines vaters haben meine familie und ich bis heute zu leiden. manchmal denke ich, sollte ich diesen mann jemals treffen, werde ich ihn umbringen! […] ich habe es satt, arm zu sein, kenten. das musst du wissen. hilf mir, suche mir einen ida bagus. koste es, was es wolle, ich bin bereit dazu! (s. 16/17). sie hat offensichtlich die offizielle indonesische geschichtsschreibung internalisiert, nach der alle kommunisten nach dem putschversuch gerakan 30 s kategorisch als verräter, kriminelle und mörder dargestellt und verurteilt wurden. diese offizielle darstellung der kommunisten als verbrecher war jedoch vor allem ein schachzug präsident suhartos und seiner berater, mittels der von ihm als legal dargestellten säuberungsaktionen gegen die kommunisten seine 8 siehe hierzu: atmadja 2005. 9 pki ist die abkürzung für partai komunis indonesia (kommunistische partei indonesiens) monika arnez kunst, kosmos, kaste 40 aseas 1 (1) macht zu legitimieren. indem suharto das feindbild des kommunisten entwarf, präsentierte er einen sündenbock, den es zwecks wiederherstellung von recht und ordnung mit hilfe des militärs zu bekämpfen galt (arnez 2002: �00).�0 mit hilfe der darstellungen der erlebnisse luh sekars kritisiert die erzählerin zum einen die offizielle geschichtsschreibung, die viele menschen in eine opferrolle versetzt hat, aus der sie sich nur schwer befreien können. zum anderen erfüllen ihre eigene und telagas lebensgeschichte die funktion, wenn auch in unterschiedlicher hinsicht, die probleme des hierarchischen kastensystems und der balinesischen adat-regeln bezüglich der eheschließung darzulegen. diese regelungen verhindern, dass die tiefe kluft triwangsa and sudra�� geschlossen wird. betrachtet man die heirat von luh sekar und ngurah pidada, so wird deutlich, dass erstere ihr gefühlsleben für ihren höheren status aufgibt, indem sie einen mann heiratet, den sie nicht liebt. nach ihrer heirat spielt joged, der tanz, der ihr leben bisher dominiert hat und durch den sie ihre gefühle und träume ausleben konnte, keine rolle mehr für sie. ngurah pidada und sekar haben keinerlei berührungspunkte miteinander, beide leben ihr eigenes leben. obwohl es sekar nun gelungen ist, selbst einen höheren status zu erlangen und auch telagas status abzusichern, wird sie niemals zu einem voll akzeptierten mitglied der brahmanenfamilie. die mitglieder des griya erwarten von sekar, sich den dort vorherrschenden regeln unterzuordnen, aber sie behandeln sie weiterhin als frau zweiter klasse. gleichzeitig erwarten sie von ihr, ihre verbindung mit ihrer sudra-vergangenheit zu lösen. des weiteren muss sie nach ihrer heirat ihren früheren namen luh sekar ablegen, und wird fortan jero kenanga genannt.�2 dies korrespondiert mit balinesischem adat, nach dem der titel jero, kombiniert mit einem blumennamen, einer frau aus einer niedrigen kaste zugewiesen wird, die einen adligen geheiratet hat.�� nachdem sekar eine tochter geboren hat, verbietet ihre schwiegermutter ihr, zusammen mit dem kind die großmutter mütterlicherseits zu besuchen. zusätzlich erlauben die mitglieder des griya sekar noch nicht einmal, nach dem tod ihrer mutter den leichnam zu waschen oder für ihn zu beten. da sekar weder erfüllung in ihrer ehe noch in der familie findet, die ihr weitestgehend ablehnend gegenübersteht, beginnt sie zunehmend, ihre eigenen vorstellungen von körperlicher �0 kommunisten werden auch heute noch stigmatisiert. im märz 2007 wurde ein dekret erlassen, nach dem �� schulgeschichtsbücher des jahres 2004 vom markt genommen und verbrannt wurden, weil sie nicht den während der suharto-zeit offiziellen begriff für den militärputsch ‚g�0s / pki’ benutzten, sondern lediglich ‚g�0s’ und damit die pki nicht automatisch als einzigen verursacher des militärputsches von �965 beschrieben hatten. die schulbücher gefährdeten die sicherstellung der öffentlichen ordnung, so der generalstaatsanwalt. er beruft sich auf ein gesetz, das die verbreitung von kommunistischem gedankengut unter strafe stellt (suparman, 2007; o.v., �0.04.2007). �� die kasten des adels sind: brahmanen, ksatria, wesia. �2 einige weitere bedeutungen von jero sind das haus eines ksatria oder wesia, der haushaltsschrein und der königspalast und die anrede ‚du’, die man verwendet, wenn man die adressierte person nicht kennt und wenn sie nicht offensichtlich zu einer hohen kaste gehört. in letzterem fall dient der gebrauch von jero dazu, soziale ambiguität zu vermeiden. �� kenanga (canangium odoratum) ist ein baum mit grüngelben duftenden blüten. 41 aseas 1 (1) perfektion und status auf ihre tochter telaga zu übertragen. sie forciert die tanzkarriere ihrer tochter gezielt und achtet darauf, dass diese sich strikt an den verhaltenskodex im griya hält. ihr ziel ist es, einen ehemann aus der kaste der brahmanen für telaga zu finden und damit zu gewährleisten, dass das junge mädchen ihrem eigenen vorbild folgt. der einzige, der sekar davor warnt, telaga ihren willen aufzuzwingen, ist ihr großvater. er erklärt ihr, sie solle vorsichtig damit sein, telagas leben bestimmen zu wollen, und zeigt ihr die möglichen folgen ihrer einmischung auf: lass sie sich entwickeln, kenanga. deine pflicht ist nur, ihr zu raten, wenn sie es braucht. wenn du telaga weiterhin maßregelst, wird sie rebellieren (s. 96). der großvater hinterfragt das verhalten sekars kritisch, gibt ihr durch seine ratschläge jedoch gleichzeitig die möglichkeit, ihren kurs zu ändern. sekar befolgt seine worte jedoch nicht, und kurze zeit später trifft die prognose des großvaters ein. telaga, im gegensatz zu ihrer mutter, widersetzt sich den adat-regeln. sie ignoriert die proteste ihrer familie und heiratet wayan sasmitha, ein mitglied der sudra-kaste, weil sie ihn liebt. bis zu seinem unerwarteten frühen tod führt sie eine beziehung mit ihm, die auf liebe, gleichberechtigung und harmonischem sex basiert. obgleich auch telaga die harten konsequenzen ihrer entscheidung tragen muss, in ihrem fall den bruch mit ihrer familie, statusverlust und armut, opfert sie weder ihr gefühlsleben noch ihren esprit für ihre entscheidung. die erzählerin verdeutlicht, dass, im starken gegensatz zu luh sekars beziehung mit ngurah pidada, tanz immer eine wichtige rolle in der beziehung zwischen telaga und wayan gespielt hat, ohne kommerzielle interessen: immer wenn es ein fest im dorf gab, tanzten wayan und telaga. in solchen momenten spürte wayan, wie ihn seine ganze energie durchströmte. er fühlte einen mut, von dem er niemals wissen würde, woher er stammte. zusammen mit telaga hatte das leben leuchtendere farben (s. 90). hier wird tanz zum symbol der fruchtbaren einheit des paares, die sich speziell durch emotionale stärke und sinnlichkeit auszeichnet. diese interpretation wird durch die tatsache untermauert, dass wayans vater ihm und telaga bereits einige zeit vor ihrer hochzeit angeboten hat, sie beide in der kleidung des oleg-tanzes zu malen, dem ‘tanz der liebe’ (s. 87). indem sie den ‘tanz der liebe’ tanzt, betrügt telaga ihre eigenen gefühle nicht, wie luh sekar. ihre körperinszenierung wird zu einem instrument, ihre innersten gefühle auf ehrliche art und weise auszudrücken. dies wird auch am ende das roman verdeutlicht, als sie die patiwangi zeremonie vollzieht: ich habe nie um die rolle als ida ayu telaga pidada gebeten. wenn das leben mich weiterhin zwingt, diese rolle zu spielen, muss ich eine gute schauspielerin werden. und das leben muss die monika arnez kunst, kosmos, kaste 42 aseas 1 (1) verantwortung für meine glänzende darstellung der telaga übernehmen (s. 139). obwohl aus dem text die sympathie für telagas entscheidung, liebe über status zu stellen, spricht, fungieren ihre erfahrungen, wie auch die luh sekars, als kritik an der tatsache, dass balinesisches adat eine heirat zwischen sudra und triwangsa regelrecht unmöglich macht. die autorin nimmt luh sekar und telaga als diametral entgegen gesetzte beispiele her, um zwei fundamental unterschiedliche arten zu zeigen, mit den schwierigkeiten für frauen im balinesischen sozialsystem umzugehen. sie kritisiert, dass adat-regeln balinesische frauen in eine untergeordnete rolle zwingen und ihren handlungsspielraum massiv einengen, insbesondere nach der heirat. sowohl sekar als auch telaga müssen sich nach ihrer jeweiligen heirat den für sie neuen regeln ihres umfeldes unterwerfen. beide frauen sind innerhalb der familie durch das adat ihrem mann, aber auch ihren jeweiligen schwiegermüttern untergeordnet. des weiteren bedeutet balinesisches adat für beide frauen den verlust des kontaktes zu der familie, in der sie vorher gelebt haben, da ihnen dieser untersagt wird. die autorin plädiert deutlich für eine aufhebung sozialer zwänge, die insbesondere die heirat zwischen sudra und triwangsa betreffen. die vorführung der drastischen folgen für das familiäre zusammenleben, sowohl für die sozial aufsteigende luh sekar als auch für die sozial absteigende telaga, legt nahe, dass die autorin die interpretation der warna (farbe, kaste) unterstützt. warna ist die gegeninterpretation zu kasta (abgeleitet von kaste) und scheut die idee einer abstammungsbasierten hierarchie.�4 sie beruht vielmehr auf dem prinzip des aufstiegs durch individuelle leistung, während gemäß kasta die organisation von gruppen in einer hierarchischer ordnung von überlegenheit und unterordnung verstanden wird, die sich aus dem jeweiligen bezug ihrer abstammungslinien auf die prä-kolonialen herrschenden familien ableitet. laut kasta wird die geburt in die jeweilige gruppe für den respektiven titel als entscheidend betrachtet. demgegenüber bekommen menschen gemäß warna titel gemäß der funktionen, die sie innerhalb der gesellschaft ausüben, so dass titel eher mit berufsständen in verbindung gebracht werden als mit geburt und abstammungsgruppen und demzufolge auch nicht vererbt werden sollten. ‚in its most radical form, warna is an essentially egalitarian interpretation which calls for an end to all those gentry privileges which the kasta ideology supports’ (howe 200�: 80). kasta, so wird suggeriert, ist, symbolisch gesehen, ein hindernis für den ‚tanz der liebe’. dies lässt sich auch anhand der entscheidung der romanheldin untermauern, am ende die patiwangi-zeremonie zu vollziehen und damit ihren titel ida ayu, den sie von geburt an trägt, abzulegen. im folgenden soll nun analysiert werden, wie körper und schönheit in tarian bumi in den �4 die autorin knüpft hier an den diskurs um die natur des sozialsystems auf bali an, die in akademischen texten balinesischer intellektueller und in den leitartikeln der zeitung bali post geführt wird (howe 200�: 79-80). 43 aseas 1 (1) kontext von kolonisierung und patriarchalischer kritik gerückt werden. der weibliche körper, schönheit und begegnungen mit dem westen die motive weiblicher körper und schönheit werden in tarian bumi auch im kontext von begegnungen mit dem westen thematisiert, insbesondere der ambivalenten beziehungen zwischen balinesischen tänzerinnen und westlichen männern, anhand der figuren luh dampar und kambren. diese beziehungen werden aus weiblicher sicht geschildert, die männliche perspektive bleibt im text unberücksichtigt. luh dampar wird als sehr gute, aber arrogante tänzerin geschildert. sie bildet sich ein, schöner zu sein als alle anderen tänzerinnen, und auch durch ihren kontakt mit ausländern, die sie unterrichtet, glaubt sie, mehr prestige zu haben. die begegnung mit einem deutschen, einem künstler, der schon lange zeit auf bali lebt und der eine eigene kunstgalerie besitzt, hat für sie jedoch fatale folgen. kambren findet nach dem tod luh dampars, die sich in folge ihrer sexuellen demütigungen im atelier ihres mannes erhängt hat, videoaufnahmen, auf denen luh dampar an ein bett gefesselt zu sehen ist und fünf männer gleichzeitig ihren körper ablecken. außerdem hat der fremde viele aktbilder von luh dampar gemalt, er hat die frau auch vor seinen freunden nackt vorgeführt und ihren körper als motiv für postkarten benutzt. trotz dieser respektlosigkeit, die der deutsche durch die skrupellose zurschaustellung luh dampars demonstriert hat, steht er in der öffentlichen meinung hoch im kurs. seine repräsentation weiblicher körper wird als besonders empfindsam gewürdigt. jedoch steht, wie kambren bemerkt, diese vermeintliche empfindsamkeit in starkem kontrast zu seinen augen, aus denen pure lüsternheit und respektlosigkeit sprächen: ich hasse die augen dieses mannes. du siehst ja selbst, wie er frauen anstarrt. so respektlos. er sagt, er sei künstler, ein anbeter des schönen. welche schönheit kann denn aus solchen augen geboren werden? (s. 75). der deutsche, so die kritik kambrens, ist lediglich an der sexuellen ausbeutung der tänzerinnen interessiert, nutzt sie als objekte für seine persönlichen sexuellen phantasien, die er als kunst deklariert und verkauft. dadurch, dass er grenzen der ästhetik, des anstands und der moral überschreitet, in diesem fall speziell durch den missbrauch des weiblichen körpers, trifft das lob der ästhetik seiner werke als ‚universal schön’ laut kambren nicht zu (s. 77). luh dampar wird lediglich als lustobjekt für männliche phantasien ausgebeutet und als lukrative geldquelle ausgenutzt. die tatsache, dass die galerie nach ihr benannt ist, hat kambrens meinung nach lediglich finanzielle ursachen: durch diesen schritt muss der fremde monika arnez kunst, kosmos, kaste 44 aseas 1 (1) künstler weniger steuern zahlen und muss sich nicht so vielen administrativen formalitäten unterwerfen (s. 78). an dieser stelle übt kambren kritik an der dreistigkeit, mit der manche ausländer auf bali geschäfte machen. zudem wird der imperialistische anspruch der westler angeprangert, die, in kolonialistischer manier, sämtliche ressourcen des landes, hier die körper der tänzerinnen, skrupellos ausbeuten. ein weiteres beispiel für die negative repräsentation westlicher männer�5 in tarian bumi ist die beziehung zwischen kambren und dem franzosen jean paupière. sie findet seine ‚stechenden augen’ interessant, spürt aber gleichzeitig, wie sie ihr sämtliche energie rauben, sie innerlich leer werden lassen (s. 74). es sind die vielen kontraste zwischen ihr und jean, die für kambren interessant sind. sie liebt ihn immer noch, obwohl sie seine sexuellen praktiken, die sie zufällig auf einem video mit dem mann von luh dampar entdeckt, abstoßend findet. ebenso wie bei dem namenlosen deutschen sind es auch bei jean paupère wieder die ungezügelte sexualität und der unangemessene blick, mit denen männliche westler in oka rusminis roman charakterisiert werden. die mit den plakativen beschreibungen des sexuellen verhaltens der westler verfolgte intention ist die entkräftung eines anderen klischées, das viele westler von balinesischen tänzerinnen haben: ihre angebliche freizügigkeit. kambren demonstriert, dass tanz, westliche vorstellungen über balinesischen tanz, die körper der tänzerinnen und balinesische sexualität eng mit kolonialer macht verwoben sind, wie vickers veranschaulicht hat. er macht darauf aufmerksam, dass es in wahrheit die sexuelle freiheit der westler ist, die als sexuelle freizügigkeit der balinesinnen gedeutet wurde (vickers n.d.: 22). die anmaßenden blicke, die respektlosigkeit und die unethische, unmoralische art und weise, wie die ausländer mit dem körper balinesischer tänzerinnen umgehen, so die kritik in tarian bumi, symbolisieren die postkoloniale macht der fremden auf bali. die vermeintliche sexuelle freizügigkeit von luh dampar beispielsweise, die sich nackt in der öffentlichkeit präsentiert, wird im roman nicht als freiwillige entscheidung ihrerseits beschrieben, sondern als eine folge der machtausübung des deutschen ihr gegenüber. kambren legt nahe, dass er damit seine eigenen sexuellen bedürfnisse und phantasien mittels seiner fragwürdigen videoinstallationen befriedigt. hier prangert die erzählerin an, dass ausländer die angebliche sexuelle freizügigkeit balinesischer tänzerinnen oftmals nutzen, um ihre eigenen sexuellen phantasien auszuleben. da dieser perspektive keine zusätzliche positive sichtweise hinzugefügt wird, wirkt die durch kambren geäußerte kritik um so schärfer. man kann an dieser stelle argumentieren, dass die autorin durch diese einseitige sichtweise riskiert, westler in einer ähnlichen art und weise auf ein stereotypes sexualverhalten festzulegen wie dies westliche männer auch oftmals mit �5 es ist an dieser stelle auffällig, dass nur westliche männer negativ dargestellt werden, nicht aber westliche frauen. kambren ist beispielsweise mit einer niederländerin befreundet. 45 aseas 1 (1) balinesinnen getan haben. um das klischée der vermeintlichen sexuellen freizügigkeit der balinesischen tänzerinnen weiter zu entkräften, identifiziert der roman ein weiteres problem für die frauen: die romantisierung von körper und tanz, bei der walter spies eine entscheidende rolle spielte. bei dieser romantisierung sind aspekte der ‚natürlichkeit’, ‚harmonie’ und ‚biegsamen körper’ der balinesen von großer bedeutung, die auf den bereich des tanzes übertragen werden: there is, however, an obvious excuse for devoting a special study to dancing, for their movement, even more than their physical beauty, is the first thing that strikes one about balinese people… wherever he may be…squatting naked on a rock in the river in the act of making offerings to the stream…the balinese is so perfectly in harmony with his surroundings and so graceful in his poise that we almost have the impression of a dance. certainly the balinese child has from infancy its limbs trained and persuaded to become perfectly pliant… (de zoete and spies 1938: 5) wenn auch die körperliche schönheit der tänzerinnen in tarian bumi nicht explizit als natürlich und harmonisch beschrieben wird, so knüpft der text dennoch an den diskurs um die bewahrenswerte, außergewöhnliche kultur balis an, die sich hier in der konstruktion der schönheit der tänzerinnen als markenzeichen des ‚ureigenen’ bali manifestiert. der wunsch, körperliche schönheit, die auch mit den attributen ‚fremd’ und ‚exotisch’ assoziiert ist, nicht nur als inhärenten teil balis anzusehen, sondern sie auch nach außen hin vorzuzeigen und weit über bali hinaus zu vermarkten, wird insbesondere anhand der luh kambren vorgeführt. ihre schönheit wird als markenzeichen des ‚wahren’ bali angesehen und als solches über ausländische filmemacher verkauft: als viele ausländer begannen, filme über das leben der tänzerinnen zu drehen, wurde kambren stets zur vorzeigetänzerin. sie sagten, kambrens ganzer körper verkörpere die schönheit balinesischer frauen. die fremden glaubten immer, bali manifestiere sich geradezu in kambrens körperlicher erscheinung (s. 74/75). ausländer, so wird deutlich, versuchen, die reinheit und unschuld der balinesischen tänzerinnen, hier symbolisiert durch den körper kambrens, als romantisiertes ideal zu erhalten und zu vermarkten. mit ihrer erklärten rolle als bewahrer von tradition legitimieren sie ihren zugang zu der ressource ‚schönheit’, d.h. zu den tänzerinnen. diesen umstand, so die kritik, nutzen sie jedoch lediglich dazu aus, die tänzerinnen sexuell auszubeuten und ihre rolle als postkoloniale, patriarchalische machthaber zu legitimieren. mit der inhärenten kritik an postkolonialen machtstrukturen knüpft der roman an den diskurs um ajeg bali an, der in den letzten jahren über die medien verbreitet und nach meinung vieler balinesen auch von ihnen erfunden wurde (allen 2005: 242)�6. der terminus, �6 ein prominenter vertreter des ajeg bali ist satria naradha, chef der mediengruppe bali post (kmb) und höchster vorgesetzter von oka rusmini. monika arnez kunst, kosmos, kaste 46 aseas 1 (1) bei dem es um eine rückwendung zu balinesischer kultur und religion geht, bezeichnet eine reaktion auf die globalisierung und externe, fremde einflüsse (kerepun 2004), und die romantisierung des begriffs kann eine rückkehr zu dörflichen werten und lebensweisen beinhalten (allen 2005: 24�). einige verstehen das hauptanliegen von ajeg bali daher auch als schutz der balinesischen kultur gegen störende einflüsse von fremden neuankömmlingen, sowohl westler als auch bewohner anderer inseln des archipels. ajeg bali fungiert auch dazu, sich gegen eine zunehmende islamisierung und auch christianisierung der insel abzugrenzen, und dient als maßnahme, sich vor marginalisierung durch migranten anderer regionen zu schützen (arsana 200�: �4). seit den bombenanschlägen auf bali im jahre 2002 hat der diskurs um die islamisierung noch an dringlichkeit zugenommen. denn durch diesen anschlag ist bali in ein ungleichgewicht geraten, das nur mit einer rückbesinnung auf traditionelle elemente beseitigt werden kann: an atmosphere of desperation and uncertainty over the future descended upon the island such that only a return to the past could remedy: in order to restore the balance destroyed by the terrorist attacks, the balinese must re-establish a lost harmony, between themselves and the rest of the universe (canonica-walangitang 2006). ajeg bali steht also im kontext einer autochthonen ‚balinesischen identität’, dient als instrument zur einigung des balinesischen volkes und als schützende abgrenzung gegen gefährliche einflüsse von außen. ajeg-diskurse haben in unterschiedlicher gewichtung traditionalistische, protektionistische, nationalistische, religiöse und philosophische werte hervorgehoben. der protektionistische, nationalistische charakter von ajeg bali wird jedoch als kernelement betont. mit ajeg bali wird die besondere, starke und robuste kultur balis bezeichnet, die nach ansicht der verfechter dieses konzepts gerettet werden müsse (nordholt 2007: �87). in tarian bumi äußern sich elemente des ajeg bali diskurses vor allem in der beschreibung der westler als gefahrenpotential für die balinesische kultur. die kritik lautet, dass der vermeintliche wunsch der westler nach bewahrung balinesischer kultur und tradition sich de facto in einer festigung ihrer rolle als postkoloniale machthaber manifestiert. die durchweg negative repräsentation westlicher männer in tarian bumi, insbesondere ihre sexuelle ‚lüsternheit’ und ihr streben nach kommerzialisierung der balinesischen kultur, lässt den schluss zu, dass oka rumini dafür plädiert, die prominente stellung der westler auf bali nicht zu unterstützen. im gegenzug fordert der roman eine rückwendung zu balinesischer kultur und religion, im sinne des ajeg bali, das den einfluss von westlern einzudämmen versucht, und des taksu, das die verbindung der tänzerinnen zur göttlichkeit beinhaltet, die als unvereinbar mit reiner kommerzialisierung erscheint. 47 aseas 1 (1) schlussfolgerung tarian bumi ist ein realistischer, ethnologischer roman, mit dem anspruch, soziale missstände in der balinesischen gesellschaft aufzuzeigen. er entspricht entwicklungen der balinesischen literatur der �990er jahre, die größtenteils problembewusst ist, bisweilen besorgt und düster. kultur, entfremdung und desillusionierung sind motive, die von mehreren balinesischen dichterinnen und dichtern der �990er jahre verstärkt gebraucht werden.�7 tarian bumi ist ein glaubhaftes kritisches soziales dokument, fast ausschließlich aus der sicht von frauen geschildert, das den blick auf die probleme lenkt, die sich aus dem hierarchischen kastensystem und dem balinesischen adat für die definition der rolle der frau ergeben. der roman porträtiert balinesinnen im spannungsfeld zwischen tradition und erscheinungen der globalisierung wie tourismus und damit einhergehender kommerzialisierung. als symbol für die autochthone kultur balis steht in dem roman das taksu, eine übernatürliche verbindung zu den göttern, und dessen ausprägung im tanz. dessen schwinden, das auf verschiedene, miteinander verwobenen entwicklungen auf individueller wie gesellschaftlicher ebene zurückgeführt wird, versinnbildlicht die zunehmende entfremdung der balinesen von ihren traditionen. als haupttreiber dieser entwicklung auf gesellschaftlicher ebene wird vor allem die durch den tourismus ausgelöste kommerzialisierung identifiziert. die anlehnung an den ajeg bali diskurs verdeutlicht, dass die autorin die erhaltung des balinesischen kulturellen erbes fordert. gleichzeitig kritisiert sie, dass diese bewahrung der autochthonen, hier tänzerischen balinesischen kultur, weder der wunsch der indigenen bevölkerung noch der fremden ist. der roman veranschaulicht, dass der vermeintliche wunsch nach bewahrung dieser kultur von männern vermarktet wird, sowohl von fremden als auch indigenen einwohnern, im letzteren fall vor allem die leiter der tanzschulen, denen nur wichtig ist, dass die tänze dem publikum gefallen und sich gut vermarkten lassen. konzepte der inneren schönheit und der individuellen ausdruckskraft, die mit dem konzept des taksu einhergehen, treten dabei völlig in den hintergrund. jedoch streben männer, sowohl aus dem ausland als auch aus bali selbst stammend, nach macht, erhaltung patriarchalischer strukturen und wahrung finanzieller interessen, so der vorwurf. der roman beschreibt, wie die vermarktung dieser ressource für fremde als legitimation postkolonialer herrschaftsansprüche und gleichzeitig der auslebung ihrer sexuellen bedürfnisse dient und wie die balinesen die schönheit ihrer tänzerinnen kommerzialisieren. problematisch ist, dass die autorin dem stereotyp der balinesischen tänzerin als freizügig mit dem stereotypen urteil von westlern als sexuell ungezügelt begegnet, da diese sichtweise �7 beispiele sind i wayan arthawa, putu fajar arcana, alit s. rini, k. landras syaelendra, and widiyazid soethama monika arnez kunst, kosmos, kaste 48 aseas 1 (1) durch keine weitere positive perspektive ergänzt wird. durch diese eindimensionale repräsentation der fremden kann oka rusmini der vorwurf gemacht werden, in dieselben muster der stereotypisierung zu verfallen, deren gebrauch sie für balinesische tänzerinnen ablehnt. anhand der hauptfiguren des romans werden die auswirkungen der entwicklung der kommerzialisierung speziell auf ihren tanz dargestellt. die zunehmende profitorientierung entfremdet die tänzerinnen von den kulturellen und religiösen wurzeln, der tanz dient zunehmend nur der unterhaltung. der tanz und die physische schönheit der tänzerinnen wird sowohl für indigene einwohner als auch für fremde zu einer ressource, einer hübschen ‚verpackung’, die es mit größtmöglichem gewinn zu verkaufen gilt. gleichzeitig, so zeigt tarian bumi, haben sich auch die meisten tänzerinnen selbst von den wurzeln des tanzes weit entfernt, indem sie ihre kunst nicht mit der hingabe ausführen, die als voraussetzung für die erhaltung des göttlichen geschenks taksu notwendig ist, die religiösen pflichten nicht mehr als notwendigen bestandteil des tanzes ansehen oder das tanzen vollständig aufgeben. als eine wichtige ursache für diese entfernung von der balinesischen kultur identifiziert der roman die konflikte, die sich aus dem starren kastensystem und den patriarchalisch geprägten geschlechterrollen ergeben.�8 die hauptfiguren versuchen diese konflikte durch ihre weiblichen körperinszenierungen zu überwinden. jedoch sind diese körperinszenierungen letztlich als moderate waffe im kampf der frauen um mehr gleichberechtigung zu bewerten. denn trotz der zielstrebigkeit und konsequenz, mit der die weiblichen hauptfiguren ihre zielsetzungen verfolgen (sekar soziales prestige, telaga liebe und eine gleichberechtigte partnerschaft, kambren persönlichen ausdruck durch tanz und weitergabe der mystischen kraft taksu), und der inszenierung von körper und schönheit für diese zwecke erreichen die frauen ihre ziele nur teilweise. vor allem müssen sekar, telaga und kambren alle einen hohen preis für ihre entschlossenheit bezahlen: soziale ächtung und einsamkeit und in telagas sowie auch in kambrens fall armut. oka rusmini demonstriert mit diesem roman, dass vor allem die fesseln von kastenhierarchie und adat der persönlichen entfaltung der frauen entgegen stehen. sie müssen sich, so die kritik, nur allzu oft in ein enges soziales korsett pressen lassen und haben kaum möglichkeiten, ihren eigenen weg zu gehen. beim ‚erdentanz’, auch eine anspielung auf den ‚tanz der welt’ des shiva, der die welt erhält und die seelen erlöst, spielen balinesische frauen trotz aller individueller anstrengungen und bemühungen immer noch eine untergeordnete rolle. mit tarian bumi macht oka rusmini auf die vielfältigen probleme balinesischer frauen aufmerksam und bringt sie einem größeren publikum nah�9. indem sie den kampf der frauen, �8 sie werden als treibstoff für individuelle entwicklungen gesehen, die zum schwinden des taksu führen, in sekars falle z.b. durch aufgabe jeglichen tanzes. �9 es ist hier zu bemerken, dass oka rusminis werke im ausland auf mehr interesse gestoßen sind als auf bali 49 aseas 1 (1) ihren eigenen weg in einer patriarchalischen gesellschaft zu gehen, beschreibt, leistet sie einen beitrag zu der debatte über geschlechterrollen und körperinszenierung und regt weitere diskussion über wege zur verbesserung der perspektiven für balinesische frauen an. bibliographie allen, pamela & palermo, carmencita. 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this paper is an attempt to highlight some aspects of postmodern backpacking, which has come to be more appreciated by south-east asian governments as a development tool after the decrease of package tourist arrivals due to terrorism, diseases and natural disasters. special focus has been put on backpacking performance, perception and transformation within the region, where the accumulation of youthful travellers has been obvious for more than three decades, when the fi rst underground guidebook for independent travellers was published in the 1970s. special attention has been given to the increasing commercialization (lonely planet) and the booming urban infrastructure (khao san) of this “anti-tourist” travel style, which seems to attract a new comfort-, shoppingand fun-oriented backpacker clientele rather than the ideologically-minded anti-consumerism backpackers of the early 1980s. however, apart from regional development opportunities and disparities, backpacking offers a wide range of personal development chances for postmodern mobile professionals, who seem to be more interested in western lifestyle traveller enclaves and self-fulfi llment than in exploring and understanding foreign cultures. keywords: backpacking, alternative tourism, lonely planet, khao san road, lifestyle & transformation 1 mag. dr. günter spreitzhofer, lehrbeauftragter am institut für geographie und regionalforschung (universität wien). arbeitsschwerpunkte: südostasien; tourismus, urbanisierung, soziokultureller wandel, umwelt und ressourcen. kontakt: guenter.spreitzhofer@univie.ac.at 140 günter spreitzhofer zwischen khao san und lonely planet forum südostasien / fo aseas 1 (2) im mittelpunkt dieses beitrages steht eine diskussion von aspekten des rucksacktourismus („backpacking“), den zahlreiche südostasiatische staaten als entwicklungsmotor entdeckt (und akzeptiert) haben, nachdem die zahl der pauschaltouristen aufgrund von terrorangst, umweltkatastrophen und regionalen seuchen drastisch gesunken ist. besonderer schwerpunkt wurde auf die regionale manifestation und perzeption von backpacking an der wiege des rucksacktourismus gelegt, wo die erste einschlägige reiseliteratur seit den 1970ern die anfangs anti-touristischen reiseströme bündelte. die zunehmende kommerzialisierung der backpacker-infrastruktur in den quellländern (fallbeispiel: lonely planet, ein reisebuchverlag) und zielländern (fallbeispiel: khao san road, eine backpackerenklave in bangkok/thailand) wird ebenso thematisiert wie der rollenwandel der einst anti-konsumorientierten billigreise zum fun-orientierten lifestyle-event vor exotischer kulisse, das persönlicher selbstfi ndung und egozentrierter wellnessund adventure-hype vorrang vor der befassung mit fremden kulturen und gesellschaftsformen gibt. schlagworte: rucksacktourismus, alternativtourismus, lonely planet, khao san road, lifestyle & transformation „die khao san ist [...] erste anlaufstelle für rucksackreisende, globetrotter, individualtouris, hippies (und deren enkel) in bangkok [...]. das treiben auf der road wirkt bisweilen wie eine große uniparty unter dem motto: ‚wir spielen asien‘, die etwas aus dem ruder gelaufen ist [...]. das wahre asien, das wahre thailand (gibt‘s das?) fangen einen oder auch ein paar tausend kilometer weiter an. einen kulturschock bekommen neuankömmlinge allenfalls, wenn sie das refugium der road verlassen [...]“ (www.thaiminator.de, 2.3.2008). 1. zwischen selbstfindung und selbstwahrnehmung: einführende überlegungen zu (k)einem neuen phänomen das stetige erstarken des individualtourismus in südostasien (siebert 2002) wird heute weder von reiseveranstaltern noch von lokalen behörden weiter ignoriert, die über jahrzehnte pauschaltourismus als devisenbringer bedingungslos hofiert (erb 2000; hall 1997; hampton 1998; loker-murphy & pearce 1995) und „andere“ reiseformen bestenfalls geduldet, nicht aber goutiert haben – diese waren „at best tacitly ignored, at worst actively discouraged in official tourism planning“ (hampton 1998: 640). seit dem erlahmen der regionalen tourismusdynamik ende der 1990er jahre (wto 2006) wurden jedoch gerade individualreisende zum hoffnungsanker einer schwächelnden 141 wirtschaftsbranche, die durch zahlreiche – teils medial dramatisierte – schlüsselereignisse gesundheitlicher (sars, vogelgrippe), naturräumlicher (tsunami: malaysia, myanmar, indonesien, thailand 2004; vulkanausbrüche: indonesien 2006; zyklon: myanmar 2008) und politischer natur (terroranschläge in indonesien, regionale unruhen in südthailand und auf den philippinen, u.a.) dramatische einbußen vor allem im pauschaltourismus verzeichnet, während der boom des rucksacktourismus nahezu unvermindert anhielt. romanverfilmungen wie „the beach“ (garland 1997), eine backpacker-saga ohne happy-end, trugen das ihre dazu bei, die thematik ende der 1990er einer breiten öffentlichkeit zugänglich zu machen und – nicht zuletzt dank hollywood-stars wie leonardo di caprio – einblicke in das südostasiatische „traveller“-leben zu vermitteln, die bis dahin gruppenzugehörigen insidern vorbehalten waren. der folgende beitrag versucht eine kritische analyse eines umstrittenen konzeptes im definitorisch schwer fassbaren schnittbereich von (jugendlicher) mobilität, „billigleben“, „selbstfindung“ und „völkerverständigung“, das sich in frühesten anfängen auf die grand tour der adeligen und die walz der handwerksburschen vergangener jahrhunderte zurückführen lässt und in rasantem wandel begriffen ist. sind immer noch bildung & arbeit, oder doch eher fun & sun die reisemotive postindustrieller twens (welk 2003)? ist die mehrzahl der rucksackreisenden des 21. jahrhunderts tatsächlich noch von verweigerung der konsumwelt geprägt, von neuen (alternativen) lebenskonzepten und anti-touristischen visionen abseits massentouristischer erscheinungen, wie bereits vor langem antizipiert wurde (butler 1990)? die rolle des rucksacktourismus als wegbereiter des pauschaltourismus wird seit jahrzehnten diskutiert (butler 1990; loker-murphy & pearce 1995; richard & wilson 2004, tüting 1978; westerhausen 2002; u.a.), ist mittlerweile unbestritten und wird in diesem beitrag nicht weiter ausgeführt. „‘travellers’ are thus often the spearhead of masstourist penetration of an area“, argumentierte cohen bereits vor zwei jahrzehnten (1989: 134), die „wegbereiter demokratischer massenströme“ (mäder 1987: 132) sind sich ihres einflusses auf lokale wertesysteme und ihrer soziokulturellen vorbildwirkung jedoch weiterhin selten bewusst. anspruchslose „drifter“ (auf der suche nach sich selbst) werden vermehrt zu komfort suchenden „travellern“ (auf der suche nach shopping, events und entertainment), wie anhand der entwicklung der prototypischen travellerenklave khao san (bangkok/thailand) belegt werden soll. die individualtouristischen trampelpfade durch südostasien wiederum ergeben sich nicht zufällig, wie am beispiel des medienriesen lonely planet aufgezeigt werden soll, der seit über drei jahrzehnten die reiseströme durch die region lenkt und seinen informationsgehalt gezielt neuen backpackergenerationen und veränderten nachfragemustern anpasst. fragen der motivstruktur, der kritikpunkte am ferntourismusaufkommen sowie der 142 günter spreitzhofer zwischen khao san und lonely planet aseas 1 (2) soziokulturellen auswirkungen auf die zielländer wurden in früheren arbeiten des autors ausführlich behandelt und werden nur exemplarisch angeschnitten. die lange regionale travel-tradition südostasiens hat zunehmende integration auf sozialer wie transnationaler ebene bewirkt, neue (informelle) beschäftigungsmöglichkeiten geschaffen und dennoch die idealisierte völkerverständigung nicht erbringen können. spätestens die jüngsten terroranschläge (2002, 2005) in kuta (bali/indonesien), einer der vielen enklaven westlicher wie billigtouristischer lebensweise im großraum südostasien, haben aufgezeigt, dass idealisiertes und weitgehend einseitig angestrebtes verständnis für die lebensweise der einheimischen kein harmonisches zusammenleben zwischen „host“ und „guest“ (= arm versus reich) bewirken muss, das die väter des alternativtourismus in den 1970er jahren propagiert haben. der rucksack allein, namensgeber besagter „billiger“ (?) reiseform, kostet – damals wie heute – oft genug den jahreslohn der bereisten und führt die hehre these der völkerverständigung („gleich trifft gleich“) nach wie vor ad absurdum. die anfängliche romantisierung der meist jugendlichen „abenteurer“ fernab der standardrouten des internationalen tourismus ist längst kritischer betrachtung gewichen, die ihrerseits in einen weitgehend entemotionalisierten, nüchternen diskurs überzugehen scheint (conlin 2007, westerhausen 2002). rucksacktourismus zu beginn des 21. jahrhunderts ist längst eine etablierte reiseform für sich, spiegelbild der gesellschaftlichen individualisierung der gegenwart und chance für einkommen und entwicklung auf „grassroots level“ (baskin 1995). 2. vom alternativtourismus zum backpacking: die transformation einer identität 2.1. drifter oder explorer, eliteoder off-beat-touristen? eine soziologische annäherung cohens touristentypologie, die den meisten soziologischen abhandlungen zum wesen des rucksacktourismus bis heute zugrunde liegt (vgl. binder 2005), beinhaltete 1972 neben massentouristischen ansätzen erstmals auch „non-institutionalized tourist roles“, offenbar eine reaktion auf die hippiebewegung der späten 1960er jahre. während in cohens vierteiligem, auf dem jeweiligen kommerzialisierungsgrad beruhenden konzept der „organized“ und der „individual mass tourist“ die institutionalisierten rollen übernehmen, stellen „drifter“ und „explorer“ die individualtouristischen gegenspieler dar. drei jahrzehnte später gilt cohens typologieansatz nach wie vor als basis der vorhandenen empirischen untersuchungen: während der „explorer“-typ reiseorganisation und fortbewegungsart selbst bestimmt und arrangiert, stellt er gleichzeitig mindestansprüche an komfort, hofft auf routine, regelhaftes 143 und bekanntes (z.b. essen) und verfügt über einen fixen zeitund routenplan. im gegensatz dazu zeigt der „drifter“-typ verstärktes interesse am lebensstil der bereisten kulturen/ regionen, den er zu teilen versucht. aus der mitteloder oberschicht stammend, gilt er als unpatriotisch und ideologieverachtend, der reiseantritt als freiwillig, bei vorherrschenden fluchtmotiven neigt er zu anarchie und hedonismus (zit. nach riley 1988: 315). einen weiteren kategorisierungsansatz bietet cohen auf der grundlage touristischer erfahrungswerte. unterschieden wird zwischen „recreational“, „diversionary“, „experiential“, „experimental“ und „existential“ (cohen 1979: 185-192). dieser gliederung zufolge sind alternativtouristen – in stohrbecks (1990) übertragung – als experimentierund existenztypen definierbar: erstere suchen „nach alternativen lebensentwürfen und wertvorstellungen, [...] geben sich nicht damit zufrieden, (scheinbar) authentisches leben in anderen kulturen und gesellschaften zu beobachten, sondern versuchen vielmehr für einige zeit in andere kulturen integriert zu werden“ (stohrbeck 1990: 336); die zweitgenannte gruppe wiederum hat ihre optimal-adäquate alternative lebensweise bereits gefunden, kann sie jedoch nur auf der reise verwirklichen. andere typologien basieren auf der touristenzahl und ihrer anpassung an lokale normsysteme (vgl. auch smith 1977: 11ff). für die vorliegende fragestellung von bedeutung scheinen vor allem die konzepte des „elite-touristen“ und der „off-beat-touristen“, die „durch die benutzung lokaler verkehrssysteme, unterkünfte und gaststätten kaum soziokulturelle überformung“ (krippendorf 1984: 59) bewirkten – zumindest vor beginn der „vermassung“ (cohen 2003: 98) individueller reiseströme, die in ihren wurzeln auf den ersten punktuellen freakzentren der hippie-ära der späten 1960er fußen, deren zeitresistente bedeutung als hochburgen des individualtourismus bis heute unbestritten ist. 2.2. globetrotter oder backpacker, trekker oder traveller? eine perzeptionelle annäherung seit beginn der 1980er jahre ist der begriff alternativtourismus inhalt und schwerpunkt zahlreicher publikationen, die jedoch weitgehend die sichtweise der reisequellstaaten dokumentieren. adäquate empirische studien aus den südostasiatischen zielgebieten des rucksacktourismus fehlen weitgehend, was die langjährige negation dieses phänomens durch staatliche behörden wie wissenschaftliche institutionen vor ort zu unterstreichen vermag. allgemeine übereinstimmung besteht in der tourismusliteratur nur über ambiguität und vieldeutigkeit dieses konzeptes, das als schlagwort und zauberformel die tourismustheorie über jahrzehnte beherrschte (vgl. tüting 1978, welk 2003, u.a.). insgesamt schien sich jedoch allmählich ein synonymisierungseffekt zu rucksacktourismus 144 günter spreitzhofer zwischen khao san und lonely planet aseas 1 (2) (backpacking) durchzusetzen (freyer 2001). einige autoren forderten sogar explizit die ersetzung des begriffes alternativtourismus durch rucksacktourismus (kienecker 1987: 328) bzw. hybridtourismus (rotpart 1995: 27ff), um das scheitern der illusion eines „anderen“ tourismus auch terminologisch zu untermauern. gemeinsamer nenner sämtlicher begriffsannäherungen ist die abgrenzung zu (massenhaftem) pauschaltourismus: „... no social group is more snobbish and dismissive about tourists ... the worst thing that can be said about a place is that it is too touristy“, argumentierten turner und ash (1975: 257) bereits vor beginn jedweder massenhaftigkeit von rucksacktourismus, der damals wie heute als übergangsritual von der jugend in das erwachsenenalter interpretiert wird (cohen 1973 und 2003). verbindend für diese inhomogene gruppe scheinbar „anders“ reisender war stets die völlige ablehnung der touristischen rolle (scherrer 1986: 76) auf der suche nach authentischen erlebnissen, eine terminologische begleiterscheinung zur ausgeprägten opposition zu massentouristischen erscheinungsformen. mowforth und munt (1998: 135) betonen die arroganz betont anti-touristischer „ego-tourists“, die sich über soziale normen hinwegsetzen und – im hochgefühl anonymer freiheit – westliches verhalten leben (noronha 1999): „this seems to be a problem particularly in backpacker ghettos or enclaves, places where large numbers congregate to experience home comforts (from good phone and internet services to familiar foods, such as the ubiquitous banana pancake) and the company of tourists of similar mind“ (scheyvens 2002: 147f). 2.3. mittelschicht, männlich und massenhaft mobil? eine sozioökonomische annäherung „[…] contemporary backpackers are engaging in a self-centered form of poverty-tourism, traveling around shrouded from the ‘real third world“ by the backpacker ghettos which provide the major stepping stones along their well-trodden route” (scheyvens 2002: 150). zahlreiche feldforschungsaufenthalte des autors auf den spuren der backpacker-pfade durch südostasien erbrachten seit den frühen 1990ern einblicke in den sozioökonomischen hinter-grund der reisenden, ihre reiseziele und -routen sowie in die (informelle) individualtouristische infrastruktur, die lokale anbieter vor ort offerieren. mit hilfe teilnehmender beobachtung, tiefeninterviews und kartographischer erhebungen von einschlägigen backpacker-enklaven ist das heterogene bild zumindest der „long-term budget traveller“, langzeitreisenden auf billigbasis, auf einige grundlegende charakteristika eingrenzbar, die hier lediglich bezüglich ihrer aktualität und relevanz nach der jahrtausendwende genannt werden sollen, da sozioökonomische aspekte, politische akzeptanz, routing und aspekte der interkulturellen begegnung schon in früheren arbeiten ausführlich diskutiert wurden (1995b, 145 1996a, 1998, 2004). die ergebnisse der jüngsten erhebungen lassen vermuten, dass rucksacktourismus in südostasien weiterhin durch die dominanz west-, mittelund nordeuropäischer, nordamerikanischer, australischer, neuseeländischer und israelischer (überwiegend männlicher) traveller gekennzeichnet ist, deren durchschnittsalter von knapp unter 30 jahren deutlich höher als in südosteuropäischen zielländern (griechenland, türkei) zu liegen scheint (vgl. auch loker-murphy & pearce 1995: 832). die führenden quellstaaten des auf südostasien gerichteten rucksacktourismus unterscheiden sich hier offenkundig von den offiziellen daten der welttourismusorganisation, die japan und taiwan – ostasienweit ist pauschaltourismus die traditionell-etablierte reiseform – quantitativ deutlich voran sehen (wto 2006). die kontinuierlich steigende zahl (süd-)ostasiatischer backpacker ist eine junge entwicklung der späten 1990er jahre, die das aufkommen zahlungskräftiger mittelschichten und die übernahme westlicher freizeitmuster dokumentieren (uthoff 1998). auch der überdurchschnittlich hohe ausbildungsstand der befragten rucksackreisenden – etwa zwei drittel haben zumindest matura (abitur), studieren oder haben ein studium abgeschlossen – deckt sich tendenziell mit ähnlichen studien (dearden & harron 1994; malam 2003; riley 1988). rund die hälfte der befragten hat (oder wurde) vor reiseantritt gekündigt. neben persönlichen krisensituationen schienen aspekte der selbstverwirklichung die hauptrolle für die (meist) mehrmonatige, seltener mehrjährige „flucht“ zu sein, die vorwiegend alleinreisend erfolgte. die wahl von reisepartnern auf zeit – zur kostenreduzierung, als moralische stütze – erweist sich jedoch nach wie vor als gängige praxis. die untersuchungsergebnisse zum informationsverhalten schienen die dominanz informeller (mündlicher und digitaler) informationsquellen zu belegen. persönlicher erfahrungsaustausch mit „fellow travellers“ (geheimtipps!), meist in traveller-enklaven mit einschlägiger, eurozentrierter billiginfrastruktur (guest houses mit englischsprachigen videovorführungen; restaurants mit westlicher menupalette; message-boards mit schwarzmarktund „schnorrer“tips; traveller-chat-plattformen), garantierte den befragten weitgehende aktualität (vgl. auch adkins & grant 2007: 188ff). als basisinformation schlechthin dienen jedoch weiterhin einschlägige individual-reiseführer, wobei die quasi-monopolposition des australischen verlages lonely planet augenscheinlich ist. 3. die infrastruktur des rucksacktourismus: quellstaaten und zielregionen die folgenden fallbeispiele dokumentieren exemplarisch die verfestigung der oben genannten trends. der (punktuell und allmählich linear beobachtbare) rucksacktouristische 146 günter spreitzhofer zwischen khao san und lonely planet aseas 1 (2) massentourismus der gegenwart kulminiert in zumeist urbanen traveller-enklaven, die als ausgangspunkt für informationsbeschaffung und streifzüge in die südostasiatische peripherie dienen (murphy 2001: 61f): diese sind ihrerseits durch entsprechende reiseliteratur weitgehend strukturiert und gelenkt, womit von selbsttätigkeit und unverhoffter begegnung oftmals keine rede mehr sein kann. 3.1. backpacking-kommerz, teil 1: lonely planet und co „we’ve been an influence in some of these places, but people would go there anyway. i worry about it in some respects but i don’t lose sleep over it […]“ (tony wheeler, zit. nach gray 1998). „[...] von den idealen der alternativtourismusbewegung wird man nicht satt“, kommentierten fahrenholtz und lorenz (1986: 136) bereits vor zwei jahrzehnten die heranbildung einer spezifischen alternativtourismusindustrie in den westlichen quellstaaten des internationalen tourismus. zumeist von (ehemaligen) travellern initiiert und organisiert, ist das florierende geschäft mit dem rucksack heute keineswegs mehr ableger und mitläufer etablierter unternehmen des massentourismus, sondern ein eigenständiger marktsektor mit einem anteil von 5-10 prozent am gesamten reisemarkt (freyer 2001: 395). symptomatisch für den rasanten wandel vom insiderverlag für billigreisende traveller zum reiseführer für alle reisestile und -budgets ist die entwicklung des australischen verlages lonely planet: „across asia on the cheap“, eine (teils in bangkoks khao san road, vgl. kap. 4.2.) maschinengetippte beschreibung des überlandweges von england nach australien, wurde 1973 zum prototyp von praxisbezogenen reiseführern im allgemeinen und zum vorläufer des weltweit meistverkauften individual-reiseführers im besonderen. „southeast asia on a shoestring“, die „gelbe bibel“ (verlagsdefinition) der backpacker und billigtouristen, wurde zum ersten bestseller des verlagsgründers tony wheeler und geht seit ihrer erstveröffentlichung (1975) bereits in die vierzehnte (aktualisierte) auflage (märz 2008; 988 seiten). anfangs noch familienbetrieb (eigenrecherchen, eigenpublizierung) beschäftigen „lonely planet publications“ heute ein internationales autorinnenteam aus über 150 mitgliedern. dominierte in den anfangsjahren noch die „shoestring“-serie (informationsgehalt ausschließlich auf billigtouristen ausgerichtet), die mehrere länder(gruppen) überblicksmäßig erfasst, so gewannen in den 1980er jahren die länderspezifischen „travel survival kits“ vermehrte bedeutung, die zusätzliche information für finanzkräftigere klientel bieten konnten. seit einigen jahren ist die differenzierung zur gänze entfallen. billigstinfrastruktur, einst kerninhalt der einschlägigen reiseliteratur der anfangsjahre, wird mittlerweile nicht mehr erwähnt: eine reaktion auf das nachfrageverhalten neuer reisender, die rucksacktourismus nicht mehr unbedingt mit absolutem billigreisen gleichsetzen? (vgl. the flashpacker 147 2006). „lonely planet ... aim to inspire people to explore, have fun, and travel often. […] travel can be a powerful force for tolerance and understanding. as part of a worldwide community of travellers, we want to enable everyone to travel with awareness, respect and care“ (www.lonelyplanet.com; 7.5.2008) – die kluft zwischen hehren ansprüchen und realer nutzermentalität ist frappierend. mit bislang fast einer million verkaufter exemplare war der nunmehr quantitativ und qualitativ wesentlich erweiterte südostasien-reiseführer zugpferd des prosperierenden medienriesen, dessen verlagsprogramm derzeit bei über 600 büchern liegt (1992: 100), die mittlerweile vielfach auch in deutsch, französisch, italienisch oder koreanisch übersetzt wurden und die erde flächendeckend erfassen. eigene tv-serien, bildbanken, digitale informationsplattformen (thorntree forum) und multimediale websites runden das bild eines travel-imperiums ab, das mit seinen anfängen wenig gemein hat. mit jährlichen wachstumsraten von 20 prozent und knapp drei millionen verkauften büchern per anno kann von alternativer reiseliteratur kaum mehr gesprochen werden: „even well-heeled americans, who wouldn’t be caught dead with a backpack, now tuck them in their designer luggage“, konstatierte gray (1998: 2) bereits vor einem jahrzehnt. 3.2. backpacking kommerz, teil 2: khao san road dass der vorspann zu alex garlands backpacker-saga „the beach“ in thailands hauptstadt bangkok angesiedelt ist, erscheint angesichts der langjährigen bedeutung ihres touristischen billigviertels als wenig verwunderlich. die khao san road (auch kao san oder kao sarn), seit den 1970er jahren mit anderen urbanen traveller-enklaven (singapur: beach road; jakarta: jalan jaksa; u.a.) wegbereiter und metapher für individualtouristische erschließung in südostasien, symbolisiert den wandel von alternativer gegenwelt zum hedonistischen partyzentrum der gegenwart. in unmittelbarer nähe des thailändischen königspalastes gelegen, nimmt die genannte straße (und die straßenzüge im stadtteil banglampoo rundum) hinsichtlich homogenität und ausprägungsgrad backpackerspezifischer nachfragepräferenzen eine uneingeschränkte spitzenposition im raum südostasien ein. begünstigt durch die zunehmende bedeutung bangkoks als internationaler flugknotenpunkt war der bedeutungsaufschwung zur schaltstelle des überregionalen individualtourismus im lauf der letzten jahrzehnte nur eine frage der zeit. anfang der 1980er jahre in der einschlägigen reiseführerliteratur als eines von insgesamt drei billigquartiervierteln bangkoks nur kurz erwähnt (vgl. wheeler 1982: 372ff), fand die 148 günter spreitzhofer zwischen khao san und lonely planet aseas 1 (2) fortschreitende konzentration des billigtourismussektors auf den bereich khao san road bereits in den nächsten ausgaben der „gelben bibel“ ihren niederschlag. banglampoo gilt bereits kurz danach als führende travelleragglomeration (wheeler 1989: 585ff): „khao san rd. is an amazingly cosmopolitan place these days. back in the old asia overland days of the early 70s there were the three ‘ks’ – travellers‘ ‘bottlenecks’ where you were bound to meet up with anybody travelling trans-asia. these days you could substitute khao san for kabul to make it three with kuta and kathmandu. all along the road there are little signs indicating it‘s a travellers‘ ‘hangout’ – countless small guest houses, restaurants with fruit salad and muesli on the menu, at night they spill out first across the sidewalk and then right into the street. loud rock booms out from the cassette sellers, clothes are sold from shops and sidewalk stalls, books are bought and traded, travel agents offer cheap tickets and fake student cards, there are places to store your baggage or wash your clothes, buses and taxis seem to come and go constantly, disgorging one band of backpackers and picking up another, who are patiently waiting with their packs by the roadside. this one block of intense activity is definitely the travellers‘ centre of bangkok.” seit 2004 ist die khao san fußgängerzone, informelle straßenhändler sind nur mehr zu bestimmten tageszeiten geduldet, und die konsumorientierte kommerzialisierung hat eine neue ausprägungsqualität erreicht. die angebotspalette ist vielseitig und reflektiert den bedarf individualreisender backpacker. abbildung 1: khao san road/banglampoo (bangkok) quelle: www.thaiminator.de; 7.5.2008 149 neben leistungen in den bereichen unterkunft und verpflegung bietet das system khao san eine abgeschlossene welt in sich, ausschließlich ausgerichtet auf erwartungen und bedürfnisse westlicher billigund billigstreisender, die aus verschiedensten motiven station in banglampoo machen: gemeinsames bindeglied ist ohne zweifel die attraktive vielfalt von angebot und leistung am unteren ende der budgetpyramide (piadaeng 2002), die spätestens mitte der 1990er qualitativ und quantitativ adäquates westliches erwartungsniveau erreicht haben. die fluktuation unter den anbietern ist naturgemäß groß; bei mietpreisen von 8.000 bis 20.000 baht/m2/monat und erdrückender konkurrenzsituation wird die abwanderung von anbietern der ersten stunde verständlich. der verstärkte zustrom von ortsfremden händlerschichten ist ein unübersehbares phänomen. filialen etablierter ketten aus textil und schmuckbereich prägen zunehmend das straßenbild und geben der ursprünglichen „undergroundkultur“ mit tauschund second-hand-kaufcharakter reiseessentieller güter (zelt, schlafsack, kamera) ein völlig neues gesicht. die khao san road war bereits anfang der 1990er jahre auf dem weg zu einer shoppingstraße europäischen zuschnitts. diese umfasste 2006 über 150 betriebe (exklusive mobile stände und guest houses), die großteils im besitz von drei chinesisch-thailändischen investorengruppen standen (www.thaiminator.de; 4.12.2007), was in krassem widerspruch zum idealisierten mythos der verdienstmöglichkeiten für private kleinunternehmer durch individualtouristen steht. abbildung 2 gibt einen einblick in die gegenwärtige branchenstruktur der khao san road, die seit den ersten untersuchungen des autors (1995a,b; 1996b) eine rapide transformation zur party-, funund shopping-zone erkennen lässt, welche ihrerseits die (alternativ-)touristische billiginfrastruktur der frühen 1990er jahre weitgehend verdrängt hat. die aktuelle lokale entwicklung scheint symptomatisch für den wertewandel im reiseverhalten individualreisender (spreitzhofer 2004). die feindbilder und kontrapunkte der anti-konsumorientierten alternativtourismusszene der 1970er jahre waren bereits in den 1990er jahren in billigtouristischen schaltzentralen präsent und akzeptiert (spreitzhofer 2002a: 27ff); ein beweis für weitgehende neuorientierung und zunehmende verwestlichung, was das gros der bangkok-backpacker allerdings zu goutieren scheint. die (zumindest vorgegebenen) reisegründe der alternativtouristen der ersten stunde, nämlich flucht vor der westlichen konsumund leistungsgesellschaft, sind zu reisegründen ihrer nachfolger geworden, die konsum (shopping, fun, events) nicht nur nicht scheuen, sondern aktiv anstreben. billigreisen und gleichzeitiges billigeinkaufen, von designerhemden zu maßanzügen, ist kein widerspruch mehr. auch rafting-touren (vgl. laos, thailand), trekking (thailand, laos, vietnam) oder tauchkurse (vgl. thailand, vietnam) werden verstärkt von backpackern nachgefragt und über agenturen in der khao san oder vor ort zu preisen gebucht, die für lokale interessenten wohl vielfach unerschwinglich wären – ‚live as the locals do’, credo der alternativtouristischen 150 günter spreitzhofer zwischen khao san und lonely planet aseas 1 (2) anfangsphase, ist nicht mehr die hauptmotivation der mainstream-backpacker in südostasien, die zwar keine pauschaltouristen sein wollen, aber backpackerspezifische pauschaltouristische angebote in travellerzentren dennoch vermehrt wahrnehmen – ein indiz sowohl für vermehrte verflechtungstendenzen auf (über-)regionaler individualtourismusebene wie auch des offenkundigen perzeptionswandels im eigenen reisestil. so sind langstreckenfahrten im netzwerk der backpacker-reiseveranstalter der khao san road nach nordthailand (chiang mai; trekking), südthailand (krabi, ko samui; strand) oder kambodscha (angkor wat; kultur) nicht nur problemlos buchbar, sondern auch vielfach billiger und komfortabler als öffentliche transportmittel. der einstige geheimtipp der 1980er jahre ist längst digital präsent: ergaben sich auf der suchmaschine google im jahr 2004 bei eingabe „khao san road“ 316 treffer (zugriff: 20.3.2004), so hat sich die zahl der einträge seither auf 69.100 (zugriff: 2.11.2005) bzw. 201.000 (zugriff: 10.6.2006) und 1.480.000 (zugriff: 24.5.2008) vervielfacht; dass der khao san längst auch auf www.wikipedia.org ein kapitel gewidmet ist, erscheint somit nicht weiter verwunderlich. seit 2004 besteht eine eigene website (www.khaosan.com) für die größte traveller-agglomeration südostasiens, die neben zahlreichen anderen sprachen auch in deutscher version zugänglich ist, online-buchungen ermöglicht und die gesamte bandbreite billigtouristischer nachfragemuster abdeckt. sextourismus spielt hier nach wie vor keine relevante rolle (bly 2000) und ist, im gegensatz zu einschlägigen stadtvierteln bangkoks (patpong, u.a.), kein hauptmotiv für aufenthalt und (männliche) unterhaltung. die geheimtipps der backpacker werden längst digital verbreitet, aspekte der persönlichen befindlichkeit und spartipps geben ein bezeichnendes bild für die reisemotivation vieler rucksackreisender, denen begegnungen und kontakte mit ihresgleichen bedeutsamer erscheinen als die konfrontation mit neuem. 151 abbildung 2: khao san road: geschäfte(macher) für billigtouristen? quelle: www.thaiminator.de; zugriff: 7.12.2007 4. rucksacktourismus und seine auswirkungen 4.1. völkerverständigung und interkulturelle kommunikation? das lange scheitern einer illusion „travellers being primarily concerned with relaxation, drugs and having a good time in their own company, rather than with the native people and their culture“ (cohen 1989: 132) – der vorwurf fehlender völkerverständigung und authentischen interkulturellen kontakts, erklärtes (theoretisches) ziel und grundlage individualtouristischen reisens, wird in den späten 1980er jahren zum kernpunkt tourismuskritischer literatur aller lager. die heutige massenhaftigkeit der anfänglich durchwegs links-alternativem gedankengut verpflichteten (kleinmaßstäbigen) traveller-szene führt nach becker (1990: 587) bereits ende der 1980er jahre zur überlastung der gerade aktuellen alternativen reiseziele, zum durchsetzen des eigenen lebensstils, zur ausbeutung traditioneller gastfreundschaft sowie zur kommerzialisierung und veränderung der dorfstrukturen. wie würden becker, riley, tüting und andere der ersten skeptiker dieses reisestils wohl die weiterentwicklung der szene goutieren und heute kommentieren? trifft dieser kritikansatz in vollem ausmaß zwar nur auf die urbanen travelleragglomerationen und einige periphere subzentren des untersuchungsraumes zu, so scheinen verbindung und übergang zu massentouristischen erscheinungsformen auch für die „explorer“-formen nur eine frage der zeit. lokal/regional begrenzte geheimtipps wurden früher oder später (etwa durch leserzuschriften und digitale reiseplattformen) bestandteil der einschlägigen reiseführerliteratur und programm von pauschalreiseveranstaltern. als beispiel sei die insel ko samui, idyllischer geheimtipp der rucksackszene der 1970er, genannt, die längst über einen eigenen flughafen verfügt und zur internationalen massentourismusdestination geworden ist. die backpackerszene zog sich daraufhin auf die nördlich anschließenden inseln ko phangan und ko tao zurück und begründete dort ein subkulturelles insiderzentrum. die vollmondparties vor ort sind legendär: „… [a] carnivalesque space, where intense interactions between thais and tourists often occur, particular opportunities opened up for exploring the intertextualities of space, identity and power“, befindet malam (2003: 3) in ihrer untersuchung zum rollenverhalten thailändischer beach boys in backpackerenklaven. gefordert wird vermehrte einsicht in travellerkreisen selbst, die bis dato großteils kritiklos (sozio-)kulturellen entwicklungen in den dritt-welt-zielländern gegenüberstanden (murphy 2001) und ihren teil zur „coca-kolonisierung“ (krippendorf 1984: 182) auch peripherer regionen beitrugen. ludmilla tüting, tourismuskritikerin der ersten stunde, schätzte 80 prozent der rucksackreisenden als gewöhnliche länderkonsumenten ein, „die völlig unreflektiert vor 152 günter spreitzhofer zwischen khao san und lonely planet aseas 1 (2) allem entwicklungsländer abhaken und genauso wie pauschaltourismus zu den negativen auswirkungen des massentourismus beitragen“ (zit. nach kienecker 1987: 330). 4.2. positive beiträge zur regionalentwicklung? die möglichkeiten der partizipation die hippies sind vergangenheit, geblieben sind die backpacker. seit ende der 1990er jahre wird zumeist nicht mehr über die unmoral der ersten alternativtouristen lamentiert, sondern vielfach das potenzial des individualtourismus diskutiert, der – anders als pauschaltourismus – keine rückläufige tendenz erkennen lässt. trotz terrorangst, sars und vogelgrippe blüht das geschäft mit den rucksackreisenden, die sich von der derzeit reiseunfreundlichen grundstimmung nicht von reisen nach südostasien abhalten lassen. bereits zu beginn der 1990er jahre war jeder sechste international reisende zwischen 15 und 29 jahren alt; über 50 prozent der trekker in nordthailand sind individuell unterwegs (dearden & harron 1994). längst wird langhaarigen männern nicht mehr die einreise nach singapur oder malaysia verwehrt wie noch in den 1960er jahren, doch der positive beitrag dieser art von tourismus (zumindest) zur ökonomischen entwicklung dringt erst allmählich ins bewusstsein der politischen entscheidungsträger, die diesem reisesegment – das sie weder steuern noch stoppen können – bislang wenig abgewinnen konnten. so war individualtourismus in indochina (kambodscha, laos, vietnam) bis in die späten 1980er völlig tabu, in myanmar wurde seit mitte der 1990er fits (foreign individual tourists) bei der einreise ein offizieller zwangsumtausch (zu regierungsfreundlichem wechselkurs) von us$300 abverlangt, vor dem pauschaltouristen verschont blieben. individualtourismus ist stetig im wachsen begriffen und deshalb auch quantitativ von bedeutung (hall 1997, westerhausen 2002). doch weder gibt es einschlägige (aktuelle), von regionalen institutionen erstellte empirische studien zu potenziellen zusammenhängen zwischen backpacking und lokalentwicklung, noch lassen sich oft mehr als bloße absichtserklärungen und signale – etwa weitgehende aufhebung (lockerung) der visapflicht für staatsbürger touristischer quellländer – der politischen entscheidungsträger erkennen, um individuelles reisen zu fördern. internationale fallstudien zeigen eine reihe (möglicher) positiver auswirkungen von rucksacktourismus auf: holden (1995) und malam (2003) betonen die informellen verdienstmöglichkeiten der lokalbevölkerung, während baskin (1995) und loker-murphy und pearce (1995) die streuung der einkommenseffekte für periphere regionen hervor streichen, etwa durch die nutzung lokaler unterkunftsmöglichkeiten (wall & long 1996). backpacker kaufen eher lokal produzierte produkte als pauschaltouristen, nicht zuletzt aufgrund höherer aufenthaltsdauer (hampton 1998; wheeler 1999). tabelle 1 listet exemplarisch ansätze und 153 chancen für ökonomische und außerökonomische entwicklung auf, die – zumindest abseits der urbanen traveller-ghettos – auf das (oft gering geschätzte) wirtschaftsund kaufkraftpotenzial durch backpacking zurückzuführen sind, dem auch potenzielle positive transformationsimpulse auf soziokultureller ebene nicht völlig abzusprechen sind. 4.3. eine chance zur persönlichen entwicklung? soft skills und mobile professionals viele der langzeitreisenden stehen nach ihrer rückkehr vor dem materiellen nichts und einem neubeginn auf beruflicher wie persönlicher ebene – schon aus gründen der (unbewussten) selbstrechtfertigung wird die reise vielfach glorifiziert, der psychologische erfolgszwang des „positiven“ der reise zwingt zur verdrängung negativ empfundener begebenheiten im reiseverlauf. doch die wiederaufnahme eines geregelten berufslebens muss nicht traumatisch enden, was mit einer allgemein veränderten haltung zu leben und reise einhergeht. die in südostasien angestrebte gegenwelt der frühen alternativtouristen ist für die heutigen traveller kaum mehr von bedeutung. „actually, the clear-cut identification of explorer types and drifter types does not seem to be applicable any more, since the backpacking of the late 1990s appears to 154 günter spreitzhofer zwischen khao san und lonely planet tabelle 1: rucksacktouristen und ihr beitrag zur entwicklung modifiziert nach: scheyvens 2002: 152 ökonomische entwicklungskriterien längere reisedauer erbringt höhere • ausgaben einkommensquelle für marginalisierte • sozialgruppen und periphere regionen (gewinnstreuung) geringe nachfrage nach luxus • bewirkt verstärkte nachfrage nach lokalen produkten und leistungen (unterkunft, verpflegung, transport) geringer kapitalaufwand und know-• how („learning on the job“) multiplikatoreneffekt• nicht-ökonomische entwicklungskriterien lokale kontrolle durch • kleindimensionierte unternehmen im eigenbesitz erhöhtes selbstwertgefühl der • lokalbevölkerung möglichkeit der gezielten förderung von • lokaltourismus („community power“) verringerte abhängigkeit von • internationalen veranstaltern revitalisierung von kulturellen • traditionen geringer ressourcenaufwand• aseas 1 (2) be no longer a phenomenon of a minority of well-defined hippie dropouts on the one hand and bourgeois adventurers on the other“, weist scheyvens (2002: 147f) auf die veränderte anwendbarkeit der oben angeführten terminologischen konstrukte hin. cohen (2003: 107ff) zufolge ist die entwicklung des rucksacktourismus ein spiegelbild von entwicklungsprozessen und lebenshaltungen der postindustriellen zeit. die gesellschaftlichen rahmenbedingungen und die reaktionen auf sie haben sich jedoch seither massiv verändert: die westliche lebenswelt ist mit neuen strukturen der arbeitswelt konfrontiert. die motivation des driftens – mit offenem reiseausgang und reiseziel – per se ist nicht völlig obsolet, wenngleich der großteil der backpacker des 21. jahrhunderts gegenteilig unterwegs ist. für viele ist die reise nach südostasien ein einmaliges, geplantes ereignis zwischen zwei lebensabschnitten: „das driften ist terminiert, begrenzt und hat seinen festen platz in der individuellen spätmodernen (erfolgs-)biographie“, resumiert binder (2005) das sich-treibenlassen und spielerische umgehen mit temporären neuen herausforderungen in räumlich und zeitlich limitierten wahrnehmungsbereichen: „driften […] stellt eine möglichkeit dar, mit den konflikten umzugehen, die gegenwartsgesellschaften ausmachen, sowie sich auf dem arbeitsmarkt neu zu positionieren. […] der homogene hintergrund, dem die meisten rucksacktouristen entstammen, […] ermöglicht ein relativ einfaches […] einfügen in die (jeweiligen) gruppe(n), ohne dass gleichzeitig aus dem gemeinsam entwickelten, adaptierten lebensstil langwierige verpflichtungen entstehen würden, denn das projekt reise ist auf flexibilität, mobilität, innovationskraft und spontaneität ausgerichtet“. softskills, die fähigkeit sich flexibel auf neue situationen einzulassen, werden vermehrt als essenzieller bestandteil der persönlichen weiterentwicklung betrachtet (vgl. auch caprioglioo’reilly 2006, pearce & foster 2007). gewonnene persönliche erfahrungen stellen qualifikationen dar, die für viele berufsprofile der gegenwärtigen arbeitswelt von großer bedeutung sind. backpacking erfüllt demnach zwei ziele: qualifizierung, die einen wiedereinstieg nach der reise in bestimmten berufsfeldern eher erleichtert als erschwert, und selbstverwirklichung. cohen selbst bezweifelt in neueren arbeiten, dass soziale ungebundenheit zu größerer experimentierfreudigkeit führt: „the ‚freedom’ pursued by backpackers does not lead to personal individualisation of travelling styles [...] rather, the freedom most backpackers desire is that of unrestrained permissiveness found in the enclaves, which enables them to pursue similar hedonistic enjoyment, experimentation and self-fulfillment under relatively simple (and affordable) circumstances“ (cohen 2003: 102). driften scheint – in soziologischer betrachtung – als auszeit von der ernsthaftigkeit des alltags darstellbar, der durch zunehmende individualisierung gekennzeichnet ist (murphy 2001: 52ff). risiko, in form von grenzerfahrungen, wird demzufolge mit bereicherung gleichgesetzt, da es zu keinem (persönlichen) versagen kommen kann. „rucksacktourismus stellt einen umgang mit spätmodernen lebensformen in komplexen, reflexiven gesellschaften dar, mit 155 gleichzeitiger qualifikation für diese […]. dabei ist es insgesamt von peripherer bedeutung, ob sie „die fremde“ wirklich kennen lernen oder nicht, bzw. ihr subjektives erleben ein standardisiertes massenphänomen ist oder nicht […]“, kommentiert binder (2005) die ignoranz zahlreicher traveller, deren reisestil mit nachhaltigem tourismus wenig gemein hat. 5. (budget) travel is trendy – ein resumee rucksacktourismus in südostasien erweist sich zu beginn des 21. jahrhunderts zumindest punktuell als zunehmend massentouristische erscheinung, begünstigt und gesteuert durch boomende alternativindustrien (reiseliteratur, outdoor-shops) in den (westlichen) herkunftsländern und adäquate infrastruktur in den zielländern (restaurants, beherbergung, transportnetzwerke). die konsumverachtenden ideologien der hippie-ära sind lange schon vergangenheit: rucksackreisen heute reflektieren den trend zur individualisierung von lebensformen in postindustriellen gesellschaften. das einstige postulat der völkerverständigung scheint obsolet und wird in der einschlägigen aktuellen literatur auch nicht mehr thematisiert. die flucht vor persönlichen krisensituationen ist weiterhin hintergründiges reisemotiv nahezu aller backpacker, deren reisedauer erheblich höher ist als die pauschalreisender ist. egozentrierte motive der selbstbestätigung und -findung prägen nach wie vor das individualtouristische tun. die länder des südens werden zumindest für langzeitreisende zur spielwiese der selbsterfahrung, einheimische scheinen zur kulisse degradiert und werden – in der funktion informeller verkaufsund vermittlungstätigkeit – nicht selten als störend wahrgenommen. traveller statt tramper, shopping statt drugs – für die bereiste bevölkerung bleiben sowohl terminologische diskussionen (drifter versus explorer versus off-beat-tourist versus existenztyp, u.a.) ebenso entbehrlich wie unerheblich, solange die außereuropäischen enklaven westlicher (jugend-)kultur zum schauplatz der initiationsriten zum – mittlerweile weitgehend akzeptierten und nicht mehr grundsätzlich abgelehnten – berufsleben danach darstellen. der rites-of-passage-ansatz ist damals wie heute unverändert (cohen 2003: 105ff), auch etablierte grundtypologisierungen (vgl. kap. 2.1.) scheinen weiter anwendbar. adaptiert auf transformationsprozesse, die postindustrielle gesellschaften durchlaufen, ist lediglich der gegenwelt-ansatz aus hippiezeiten modifiziert zu betrachten. der anspruch der mainstream-backpacker scheint sich in richtung „explorer“ (vgl. kap. 2.1.) zu verlagern, „drifting“ einer minderheit vorbehalten zu sein – nicht zuletzt eine folge der nahezu flächendeckenden erschließung der region durch adäquate infrastruktureinrichtungen, 156 günter spreitzhofer zwischen khao san und lonely planet aseas 1 (2) die nicht nur (zeitlich) neue generationen, sondern auch (sozial) neues zielpublikum bindet, das weder prioritär reisen an ungeplante (und unplanbare) erlebnisse koppelt, noch vorrangig komfortarm und „billig“ reisen will wie seine vorväter. die preiswahrnehmung „billig“ verlagert sich zunehmend auf den vergleich mit anfallenden kosten in den herkunftsländern und hat mit billigreisen nach den maßstäben der zielländer wenig mehr gemeinsam. die nachvollziehbarkeit von rucksackreisen wird vielfach zum prestigeträchtigen muss, ist entsprechend aufbereitet und vorgefertigt (reiseliteratur und internet-informationsplattformen), stützt sich auf (meist urbane und distributiv agierende) zentrale backpackerenklaven und ermöglicht größtmögliche freiheit vor (scheinbar) authentischer exotischer tropenkulisse auch in peripherregionen südostasiens, wo lonely planet mit seinen quasimonopolistischen (zwangsläufig subjektiven) hotel-, restaurantund transportempfehlungen seit jahrzehnten einen beitrag zu disparitärer regionalentwicklung leistet. aus soziologischer sicht scheinen zumindest viele traveller die profiteure der (interkulturellen) begegnung zu sein; aus entwicklungspolitischer betrachtung bleibt die kluft zwischen „host“ und „guest“ unverändert, wobei die zunehmende massenhaftigkeit des rucksacktourismus durchaus vermehrte einkunftsmöglichkeiten für größere teile der bevölkerung zu schaffen vermag als bisher. dass die häufigere konfrontation mit elementen der westlichen spaßgesellschaft zu verstärkten soziokulturellen spannungen führen wird, scheint jedoch kaum zu bezweifeln: fun & friends stehen vor der befassung mit dem fremden, heute vielleicht noch deutlicher als in den 1970er jahren. die anhaltende elitäre selbsteinschätzung von travellern als anti-touristen scheint somit kaum haltbar. auch die aufgeklärten, überdurchschnittlich gebildeten, globalisierten rucksackreisenden der gegenwart sind „nur“ touristen, die drittwelt-gesellschaften unbewusst vielfach nachhaltiger zu prägen imstande sind als organisierter, punktuell begrenzter pauschaltourismus, der vergleichsweise an bedeutung verliert und als entwicklungsmotor in den hintergrund tritt, während das postulat der individuellen freiheit und grenzenlosen mobilität um jeden preis die postmoderne prägt. lonely planet, der einsame, unerschlossene und unschuldige backpacker-planet, ist südostasiatische historie. 157 bibliographie adkins, b. & grant, e. 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(1999). in defence of backpackers. focus (spring), 15-16. world tourism organization (wto) (2006). yearbook of tourism statistics. madrid. 161 customer empowerment in healthcare organisations through crm 2.0: survey results from brunei tracking a future path in e-health research aseas 5(1) 138 139 d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -5 .1 -8 forum südostasien / forum south-east asia customer empowerment in healthcare organisations through crm 2.0: survey results from brunei tracking a future path in e-health research muhammad anshari1, mohammad n. almunawar2, patrick k. c. low3 & zaw wint4 citation anshari, m., almunawar, m. n., low, p. k. c., & wint, z. (2012). customer empowerment in healthcare organisations through crm 2.0: survey results from brunei tracking a future path in e-health research. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 5(1), 139-151. introduction the idea of customers’ empowerment in healthcare emerged in response to the rising concern that customers or patients should be able to play a critical role in improving their own health. in traditional healthcare practices, a patient is the recipient of care as well as medical decisions. however, a paradigm shift has taken place – that is, a change from patients who merely receive care to those who actively participate in their healthcare. this change emerged in the 1960s and has spread throughout the entire healthcare industry as a social movement characterised by the right to act based on informed choice, active participation, a self-help perspective, and full engagement in critical processes (kieffer, 1984). traditionally, healthcare providers have made most of the decisions on treatments. indeed, the lack of participation of patients in healthcare processes was the main obstacle to the empowerment of patients as customers. nevertheless, there will always be circumstances in which patients choose to hand over responsibility for 1 muhammad anshari is a phd candidate at the faculty of business, economics, and policy studies, universiti brunei darussalam. contact: anshari@yahoo.com (corresponding author) 2 mohammad n. almunawar is a senior lecturer and a deputy dean of faculty of business, economics, and policy studies, universiti brunei darussalam. contact: nabil.almunawar@ubd.edu.bn 3 patrick k. c. low is is a professor and an associate at the university of south australia. contact: patrick_low2003@yahoo.com 4 zaw wint is a senior lecturer at the paprsb institute of health and the acting director of graduate studies and research offi ce, universiti brunei darussalam, brunei darusssalam. contact: zaw.wint@ubd.edu.bn aseas 5(1) 140 141 decisions about their healthcare to providers due to the difficulty in selecting available options or the time needed to understand the health problem and the options. however, this does not undermine the proposition that customers’ empowerment will promote efficiency and that decisions should also be made from the perspective of customers (segal, 1998). the utilisation of information and communications technology (ict), especially the internet, in the healthcare sector is frequently referred to as electronic health or e-health. the main purpose of e-health is to improve healthcare management for the mutual benefit of patients and healthcare providers. one important aspect of e-health is how to manage relationships between a healthcare provider and its customers (patients) in order to create greater mutual understanding, trust, and patient involvement in decision making. therefore, healthcare organisations are implementing customer relationship management (crm) as a strategy for managing interactions with their patients (anshari & almunawar, 2012). the recent web technology (web 2.0) facilitates customers to generate contents to accommodate both patienthealth provider and patient-patient interactions. crm enriched with the web 2.0 (also called crm 2.0) provides the capability for the intensive interactions mentioned above (anshari, almunawar, & low, 2012). besides, it can be considered a technology and strategy at the same time, raising hope for the advancement of e-health initiatives around the world. the main goal of this paper is to introduce a promising future research direction which may shape the future of e-health systems. in this paper, we examine customers’ expectations concerning the process of empowerment through crm 2.0 to make customers more proficient in dealing with their own healthcare issues. a preliminary survey regarding empowerment in e-health services was conducted in brunei darussalam (brunei). the internet density in brunei is high with over 75 percent of the population having access to the internet, and there is a very narrow digital divide in brunei (aiti, 2010). internet literacy in brunei is high, and so are people’s expectations to be empowered through e-health. however, it has to be noted that the development of e-health in brunei is still in its infancy. the future developments within the scope of e-health services in brunei should therefore significantly focus on patients’ empowerment as one of the important features required by the people. the rest of this paper is organised as follows: the following section presents the background of aseas 5(1) 140 141 the study, followed by the research methodology. we then discuss the results of the study in relation to a crm 2.0 model we propose based on this investigation. study background many researchers have discussed the issue of empowerment in healthcare organisations. for instance, empowerment can be analysed from the perspective of patienthealthcare provider interactions (dijkstra, braspenning, & grol, 2002; paterson, 2001; skelton, 1997; van dam, van der horst, van den borne, ryckman, & crebolder, 2003), or from the point of view of the patient alone (anderson et al., 1995; davison & degner, 1997;; desbiens et al., 1998; mccann & weinman, 1996), or analysis can encompass both above mentioned perspectives (golant, altman, & martin, 2003; maliski, clerkin, & letwin, 2004; mcwilliam et al., 1997). however, research that specifically discusses the issue of empowerment through crm, and particularly crm 2.0, is still very limited in the domain of e-health. australia, a pioneer on this matter, has adopted a personally controlled electronic health record (pcehr) system, which stands out as an example for empowerment through e-health services (nehta, 2012). a significant element of patients’ empowerment was achieved by allowing them to view their medical information electronically. however, pcehr only enables patients to view their electronic health record (ehr); it has not utilised features of crm 2.0, which allow collaboration and conversation among patients or between patients and their healthcare providers. therefore, our research primarily aims to develop a system that utilises features of crm 2.0 in order to meet significant challenges in patients’ empowerment in the domain of healthcare. customer relationship management the fact that customer expectations in healthcare services are high poses a serious challenge to healthcare organisations as they have to meet customers’ requirements and make an exceptional impression on every customer (anshari & almunawar, 2011). crm can be used by healthcare organisations both as a tool and a strategy to meet their customers’ expectations. the terms of social crm and crm 2.0 are used interanshari, almunawar, low, & wint customer empowerment in healthcare organisations through crm 2.0 aseas 5(1) 142 143 changeably; both signify a new approach in crm by allowing intensive interaction between customers and organisations and among customers by utilising web 2.0. hence, both share new distinct capabilities of social media and social networks that provide new approaches and potential which surpass the scope of traditional crm. cipriani (2008) described the fundamental changes offered by crm 2.0 in terms of relationship, connection, and generated value. the most significant feature of crm 2.0 for e-health is the extensive network among customers and healthcare providers. this network is beneficial for customers as it provides multiple ways of interactive communication that enables sharing experience and knowledge electronically. furthermore, it accommodates both the interaction between provider and patient, and between patient and patient. it also enables patients to generate contents of their personal health records. with regard to these new features, table 1 summarises the difference between crm 2.0 and the precedent crm 1.0 based on the type of relationship, connection, and generated value. crm 1.0 mainly focuses on the individual one-way relationship, either customer to customer (c2c) or customer to business (c2b), whereas crm 2.0 offers a collaborative relationship and thus supports the engagement in a more complex relationship network. consequentially, crm 2.0 enables customers to take a greater role in forming relationships. the connection types in crm 1.0 present a limited view of the customer which has an adverse effect on their narrow information. on the other hand, crm 2.0 enables multiple connections which allow customers to gain additional knowledge. in terms of generated value, crm 1.0 is restricted to targeted messages, whereas crm 2.0 offers more diverse value generation resulting from informal conversations of customers within social networks. a healthcare provider must consider the essential role of the conversation among patients as recent ict enables them to share experiences without barriers. for example, the conversation that takes place among patients on a social network on healthcare services may influence the image of the healthcare provider. shared experience of unprofessional treatments or services to patients can easily lead to distrust (almunawar et al., 2012). with all its features and benefits, crm 2.0 can enhance the sense of control, improve self-care practices, and increase the scope of utilisations of healthcare services. the role of crm 2.0 in empowering customers within healthcare organisations is further explored in the next section. aseas 5(1) 142 143 empowering customers empowerment is well supported in the healthcare literature and related to customers and healthcare services over the past decade (dijkstra et al., 2002; paterson, 2001; skelton, 1997; van dam et al., 2003). in the organisation, empowerment implies the provision of necessary tools to staff in order to be able to resolve, on the spot, most problems or questions faced by customers. besides, staff can deal with customers directly and so reduce the number of dissatisfied customers who would otherwise have complained, but now simply switch brands (low, 2002). according to mcwilliam et al. (1997), empowerment is a result of both interactive and personal processes, where caring relationships facilitate the emergence of power (or potential). empowerment as an interactive process suggests that power is ‘transferred’ by one person to another, whereas empowerment as a personal process suggests that power is ‘created’ by and within the person. although the expected outcome is the same, i.e. the gain of more power over one’s life, the nature of the two processes is very different (aujoulat et al, 2006). the first case entails that power can emerge through active co-creation and collaboration in an empowering relationship. since crm 2.0 facilitates interactions and collaborations, it can be used as a tool to implement empowerment. in the second case, when the process of empowerment is perceived from the point of view of the customers, it is considered as a process of personal transformation. table 1: comparison crm 1.0 and crm 2.0 crm 1.0 focus on individual relationship (c2c, c2b) limited view of the customer & his/her community preferences, habits, etc. targeted messages generate value type relationship connection generated value crm 2.0 focus on collaborative relationship (engaging a more complex relationship network) multiple connections allow better understanding of the customer and his/her community conversation generates value source: cipriani, 2008 anshari, almunawar, low, & wint customer empowerment in healthcare organisations through crm 2.0 aseas 5(1) 144 145 figure 1 presents three features of crm 2.0 that can be embedded in e-health systems: online social networks, empowerment of electronic medical object (emo), and online health educators. online social networks present a facility for patient to patient interaction; emo entails the ability of patients to access their specific medical record, which is empowered by healthcare organisations; online health educators are provided by a healthcare provider to facilitate the interaction between healthcare organisations and patients. details of each component will be highlighted in the model discussion. methodology with all the promises and benefits offered by empowerment, the research attempts to utilise crm 2.0 as both a tool and a strategy to empower customers in healthcare scenarios. for this purpose we single out potential features offered by crm 2.0 to support customers’ empowerment and prove these features in a survey. we use the purposive sampling methods in which respondents were intentionally selected from patients, patients’ family, or medical staff from hospitals and homecare centres across the country. questionnaires were developed based on the extracted features of crm 2.0 (see figure 1). there were 366 respondents participating in the survey which was conducted from february to march 2011. attributes of empowerment through crm 2.0 were interrogated and analysed in order to gain preliminary responds from the potential users in brunei. data gathered from the survey was examined, interpreted and eventually converted in requirements to develop a prototype of crm 2.0 for healthcare as shown in figure 3. the prototype will be tested for the development of a system and for future recommendations. figure 1: crm 2.0 features source: authors’ compilation online social networks empowerment (emo) online health educator improve customer satisfaction improve health literacy crm 2.0 in e-health aseas 5(1) 144 145 analysis and discussion to analyse the reliability of the questionnaire items used in this study, cronbach’s alpha is used to measure internal consistency (1). cronbach’s alpha5 measured 0.80 for 363 items which indicates a relatively high internal consistency and therefore reliability of the study. table 2 shows the demographic characteristics of the samples. important to note here is that respondents between the age of 20 to 50 years are the most potential users of crm 2.0 notably because of their basic internet literacy which is the critical success factor for the empowerment through crm 2.0. table 3 below shows the results of the survey in percentage. interestingly, the survey reveals that the expectations of customers toward empowerment through crm 2.0 are very promising. 5 cronbach’s alpha determines the internal consistency or average correlation of items in a survey instrument to gauge its reliability. table 3: empowerment features in crm 2.0 empowerment of emo request appointment online view electronic medical record (emr) update personal medical activities view health promotion online record health activities online view payment online online health educator prescription online referral online paying service online consultation online emr only for trusted doctors social networks discuss health service in social network control of own emr discuss health status in social network discuss with patients same condition 83% 79% 69% 81% 76% 84% 77% 78% 50% 73% 92% 62% 77% 72% 76% source (both tables): authors’ survey results table 2: demographic characteristics of sample employment private government gender male female age 20 years or younger 21 30 31 40 41 50 51 years or older education did not complete high school completed high school only completed more than high school internet usage at least daily daily to weekly weekly to monthly 42% 58% 46% 54% 13% 38% 19% 18% 12% 10% 31% 59% 63% 18% 9% anshari, almunawar, low, & wint customer empowerment in healthcare organisations through crm 2.0 aseas 5(1) 146 147 the proposed crm 2.0 model based on the literature review and the survey results, we propose a crm 2.0 model to accommodate the features of patients’ empowerment. crm functionalities are composed of marketing, sales, and customer service, which are operated to achieve the business strategy of a healthcare organisation. for example, a marketing strategy should accommodate social marketing to promote public health and commercial marketing to acquire more customers coming for services. customer service will offer distinct value for each activity. crm 2.0 accommodates various features and components of empowerment in healthcare systems, as its central role entails selfmanaged data and authorisation to encourage customers to provide full information in relation to their health. this is very important to healthcare organisations as it also enables customers to access more information especially on emo. organisations will benefit from the strategy of marketing, sales, and customer service, while customers will benefit from an empowerment which promises better customer satisfaction and health literacy. figure 2 presents a proposed model of crm 2.0 in healthcare organisations. it offers a starting point for identifying possible theoretical mechanisms that might account for ways in which crm 2.0 provides one-stop service for building relationships between a healthcare organisation, patients, and community at large. the framework is developed from enterprise social networks, internal social networks, listening tool interfaces, and healthcare value configuration. the term social networks refers to any web 2.0 technology accessed by patients or their families. we focus on two different types of interconnection: enterprises social networks and internal social networks. the enterprises social networks refers to external and popular web 2.0 applications such as facebook, twitter, linkedln, myspace, friendster etc. which may serve as platforms for interaction between patients. the dashed line connecting enterprises social networks and crm systems means that none of these networks has control over the other directly. however, constructive conversation and information from enterprises social networks should be captured for creating strategies, innovations, better services and, at the same time, respond accurately to emerging challenges. furthermore, the model involves internal social networks that are operated, managed, and maintained within the healthcare organiaseas 5(1) 146 147 sation’s infrastructure. the pivotal target is a conversation between internal patients and their families with regard to similar health problems and illness. for example, patients with diabetes will be motivated to share their experience, process of learning, and knowledge with other patients. in general, the aim for having external and internal social networks is to engage patients and export ideas, foster innovations of new services, and ensure quick response/feedback for existing services and technologies from people inside and outside the organisation. both provide a range of roles for the patient or his/her family; this is in line with the survey results presented in table 3. source: authors’ compilation figure 2: proposed model of crm 2.0 in healthcare web 2.0 enterprise facebook, twitter, linkedin, etc. web 2.0 internal social networks n1, n2, n3 patient / family c onversation self managed data & query multi channel interactions, call center, email, feedback form, etc. listening tools listening tools social crm retrieve & respond retrieve & respond data data data marketing & sales customer services patient data (contact details, insurance, etc.), profiles, history (medical treatment, genetic medicine consumption, family history, medical images, x-ray, etc.), preferences, transcations, payment/ billing data, activities, health promotion, email appointment, friends in networks, logfile activities, etc. r eg is t r a t io n d isc h a r g e p a t ien t c a r e m a r k e t in g ser v ic e health educator health promoter social commercial marketing team / / online health educatorempowerment emo social networks anshari, almunawar, low, & wint customer empowerment in healthcare organisations through crm 2.0 aseas 5(1) 148 149 crm 2.0 empowers patients (and their family) to control their own data. once the patient registers for the service from the healthcare provider, it will enable him/her to enjoy the benefits of a personalised e-health system with crm 2.0 as the frontline of the system. authorisation will be provided for each patient. hence, the authorisation and self-managed account/service grant the access to all applications and data offered by the system. technical assistance is provided by the manual or by a health informatics officer (just like any other customer service in business/organisation), who is available online and assists patients and their family in utilising the system. furthermore, since all information (medical record) can be accessed online anywhere and at any time, it can contribute to a collaborative treatment in telemedicine. this feature refers to the empowerment through emo (see figure 1 and table 3). the model adopts a modular approach; it will assist a healthcare provider to initiate empowerment by stages, and measure the performance gradually. some of the features available to the users include the update of personal data, access to medical records and history (medical treatment received, medicine consumption history, family illness history, genetic, medical imaging, x-ray and so forth), preference services, transaction, payment/billing data, activities, personal health promotion and education, e-mail, appointment, friend in networks, forums, chatting and so forth. finally, a healthcare business scenario is a critical process that affects personal health as much as it affects healthcare organisations. it is important for healthcare organisations to ensure that crm 2.0 is fully utilised by their customers. patients need to collaborate with healthcare providers in order to gain sufficient know-how to use electronic and online services effectively. to support this function, we propose an online health educator which enables patients to attain a better knowledge and control over their health data, and yet, contributes to the basic communication between patients and healthcare providers. additionally, the online health educator determines the success of the implementation as it ensures that there is a group of staff dedicated to guarantee that e-health services are managed in a professional way. aseas 5(1) 148 149 conclusion patient expectations in healthcare are high, and this creates a serious challenge for healthcare providers. in this article, we suggest a model to address patients’ demand by combining the concept of value chain and value configuration in healthcare organisations, crm, and social networks. the model incorporates customer empowerment through healthcare organisation to patient as well as patient to patient relationships. recent web technology offers a broader outlook on customers’ empowerment in many ways and levels depend on the needs and policies of the organisations. these range from digitalising medical records to the customers’ ability in accessing their ehr. we conducted a survey to verify our empowerment features established in the crm 2.0 model. the result of the survey confirms that customers prefer the empowerment features deriving from the model. they prefer to have control over information on their health and over applications that may affect their health. moreover, it also confirms that the availability of an online health educator proposed in the model is important in order to achieve the goals of e-health in educating and promoting better health to customers. crm 2.0 shares the exceptional capabilities of social media and social networks that provide a new approach which transcends traditional crm. the majority of respondents agreed that both social networks and social support online should be part of an e-health system. the future direction of the study is to design a prototype based on our model. the prototype will be used to validate our model and to confirm that the empowerment featured in an e-health system is essential and highly recommended. anshari, almunawar, low, & wint customer empowerment in healthcare organisations through crm 2.0 aseas 5(1) 150 151 references aiti 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(1997). creating empowering meaning: an interactive process of promoting health with chronically ill older canadians. health promotion international, 12(2), 111-123. nehta (2012). what is a pcehr. retrieved 12 may 2012 from http://www.nehta.gov.au/ehealth-implementation/what-is-a-pcher paterson, b. (2001). myth of empowerment in chronic illness. journal of advanced nursing, 34(5), 574-581. segal, l. (1998). the importance of patient empowerment in health system reform. health policy, 44(1), 31-44. skelton, a. m. (1997). patient education for the millennium: beyond control and emancipation? patient education and counselling, 31(2), 151-158. van dam, h. a., van der horst, f., van den borne, b., ryckman, r., & crebolder, h. (2003). provider– patient interaction in diabetes care: effects on patient self-care and outcomes. a systematic review. patient education and counselling, 51(1), 17-28. anshari, almunawar, low, & wint customer empowerment in healthcare organisations through crm 2.0 rezension: schneider, helmut, jordan, rolf, & waibel, michael (hrsg.) (2012). umweltkonflikte in südostasien aseas 5(2) 373372 rezensionen / book reviews schneider, h., jordan, r., & waibel, m. (hrsg.) (2012). umweltkonfl ikte in südostasien. berlin, germany: horlemann. isbn: 9783895023309. 234 seiten. citation gärtner, j. (2012). rezension: schneider, h., jordan, r., & waibel, m. (hrsg.) (2012). umweltkonflikte in südostasien. aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften, 5(2), 372-375. in den letzten jahrzehnten ist weltweit eine deutliche zunahme von umweltkonflikten zu beobachten. nicht zuletzt aufgrund des erheblichen wirtschaftswachstums in südostasien haben sich solche konflikte in der region verstärkt. das buch umweltkonflikte in südostasien, herausgegeben von helmut schneider, rolf jordan und michael waibel, nimmt mehrere fallbeispiele aus verschiedenen ländern unter die lupe, um die jeweiligen umweltkonflikte in bezug auf ihre sozio-ökonomischen und politischen kontexte zu untersuchen. der sammelband ist in ein einführungskapitel und sechs fallbeispiele gegliedert, insgesamt 14 autorinnen stellen ihre forschungsergebnisse vor. den herausgebern zufolge wird durch die wachstumsorientierte, kapitalistische produktionsweise das ausmaß der auswirkungen von umwelteingriffen verstärkt. dass sich diese produktionsweise negativ auf die umwelt auswirkt, ist heute zwar allgemein bekannt, ändert allerdings noch wenig am verhalten von konsumentinnen und produzentinnen. dies bewerten die herausgeber besonders kritisch, da immer deutlicher wird, dass umweltprobleme nicht lokal begrenzt sind, sondern zunehmend zu einem globalen problem werden und auf unterschiedlichen ebenen ineinandergreifen. die autoren des einleitungskapitels argumentieren, dass sich umweltkonflikte in zukunft weiter verschärfen werden. diese hypothese wird vor allem mit verweisen auf wachsende umweltschäden, steigende rohstoffund nahrungsmittelpreise sowie zunehmenden landraub untermauert. zudem machen der klimawandel und der druck zur inwertsetzung von natürlichen ressourcen, der von den finanzmärkten ausgeht, eine verschärfung von umweltkonflikten wahrscheinlich. da umweltkonflikte meist multikausal bestimmt sind, ist es besonders wichtig, die konflikte in ihrer komplexität zu betrachten und in ihren jeweiligen gesellschaftlichen, politischen und ökonomischen kontext einzubetten. hier verweisen die herausgeber auf das „forschungsprogramm der politischen ökologie“ (s. 16), das als analyserahmen für die einzelnen beiträge des sammelbandes dient. d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -5 .2 -1 4 aseas 5(2) 373372 im ersten fallbeispiel behandelt rolf jordan den konflikt um wasser zwischen malaysia und dem stadtstaat singapur. in den 1960er jahren schloss singapur zwei verträge über wasserlieferungen mit malaysia ab, von denen einer 2011 endete. malaysia verlangte daraufhin mehr geld für die von ihnen bereitgestellten wasserlieferungen. um die komplexität des konflikts zu verstehen, muss beachtet werden, dass malaysia selbst ein zunehmendes wirtschaftswachstum und somit einen erhöhten wasserverbrauch verzeichnet. es handelt sich dementsprechend um einen mehrebenen-konflikt: zum einen der zwischenstaatliche konflikt der beiden länder, zum anderen der konflikt zwischen haushalten und industrie sowie zwischen dem industrieund agrarsektor innerhalb malaysias. singapur erkannte das problem und bemühte sich schnell, unabhängiger von den wasserlieferungen malaysias zu werden. es wurden technologien mit besonderer effizienz und niedrigen kosten entwickelt und die regierung leistete zusätzlich aufklärungsarbeit, um der bevölkerung die neuen technologien vorzustellen und ein bewusstsein für die wasserknappheit des staates zu schaffen. in diesem sinn kann der konflikt durchaus als ein positives beispiel verstanden werden, wie nationalstaaten probleme friedlich lösen und durch kluge technologische konzepte lösungen für das spannungsverhältnis zwischen wirtschaft und umwelt finden können. helmut schneider behandelt im anschließenden kapitel einen innerstaatlichen konflikt in kambodscha um die nutzung des boeng kak sees in phnom penh, in dem deutlich wird, wie der staat und erfolgreiche unternehmen ihre macht zulasten der bevölkerung nutzen können. in einem weiteren beitrag behandeln rüdiger korff und stefanie wehner die verflechtung von lokaler, nationaler und globaler ebene in konflikten um land in der mekong-region. während landkonflikte in dieser region aufgrund verschiedener anbaumethoden und ethnischer gruppen keine neuheit sind, wurden solche konflikte bis in die 1980-er jahre „nicht immer friedlich, aber doch auf lokaler ebene gelöst“ (s. 122). ab den 1980-er jahren wurde die region zunehmend in den weltmarkt eingegliedert, wodurch lokale strukturen an nationalstaatliche gegebenheiten angepasst werden mussten. diese entwicklung hatte oft negative auswirkungen auf die bevölkerung, da sie dadurch an entscheidungsmacht verlor. die autorinnen zeigen, dass es in diesem zusammenhang nicht nur um wirtschaftliche interessen ging, sondern auch um umweltschutzprogramme und initiativen zur armutsminderung, die zur systematisierung der gewohnheitsrechtlich geprägten lebensweise der bevölkerung beitragen sollten. jessica gärtner rezension: umweltkonflikte in südostasien aseas 5(2) 375374 besonders anschaulich schildern sie dieses problem am beispiel der ausweisung lokaler bevölkerungsgruppen aus nationalparks zum schutz der wälder. dadurch kam es teilweise zu einer „kulturellen diskriminierung“ (s. 125), denn „die lokalen ressourcen wurden der lokalen kontrolle entzogen“ (s. 124). dieses beispiel zeigt, dass die komplexen interessen von unterschiedlichen akteurinnen (ngos, nationalstaat, internationale konzerne, lokale bevölkerung) oft schwer bis gar nicht zu vereinbaren sind. im nächsten kapitel widmen sich melanie pichler und oliver pye der expansion von palmölplantagen in indonesien und deren auswirkungen auf umwelt und gesellschaft. als treibende kräfte hinter dieser expansion werden insbesondere die europäische union, die durch eine verpflichtende beimischung von agrotreibstoffen die palmölexpansion weiter antreibt, transnationale konzerne aus malaysia und singapur, die großen einfluss auf die palmölindustrie in indonesien ausüben, und indonesische konglomerate genannt. die monokulturelle palmölproduktion in indonesien führt zu komplexen sozialen und ökologischen problemen. insbesondere landkonflikte durch die missachtung der traditionellen rechte indigener bevölkerungsgruppen sind hier von bedeutung. während die autorinnen den durch die zunehmenden konflikte entfachten diskurs um nachhaltiges palmöl als unzureichend bewerten, werden soziale netzwerke und lokaler widerstand als zentrale aspekte für veränderungen identifiziert. im darauffolgenden kapitel analysieren gunnar stange, kristina großmann und roman patock die auswirkungen des tsunamis im dezember 2004 auf den seit 30 jahren anhaltenden konflikt zwischen der provinz aceh und der zentralregierung indonesiens. dabei legen die autorinnen besonderen wert auf die „kontextspezifische[n] handlungsspielräume und handlungsstrategien von akteuren“, die sie als agency bezeichnen (s. 169) und analysieren die asymmetrische einbindung von frauen, sowohl in internationalen hilfsprogrammen als auch auf lokaler regierungsebene. im letzten kapitel thematisieren sebastian koch, jan barkmann und heiko faust die unterschiedlichen ebenen des landnutzungskonflikts in zentralsulawesi, indonesien. in diesem zusammenhang werden die expansion des kakaoanbaus und die etwa zeitgleiche gründung des lore lindu nationalparks im jahr 1982 als zentrale konfliktbedingungen analysiert. angelehnt an die theorie der politischen ökologie verweisen die autoren auf die interdependenz der interessen der verschiedenen akteurinnen. zum einen geht es um die interessen der globalen gemeinschaft in bezug auf den umweltschutz. die fehlende einbeziehung der lokalen bevölkerung in die planung des nationalaseas 5(2) 375374 parks führte allerdings in vielen fällen zu konflikten und wirkte sich zum teil nachteilig auf die in sulawesi lebende bevölkerung aus. auch die interessen der internationalen kakao-konsumentinnen haben nur teilweise positive folgen für die produzentinnen. diese entwicklung steht in zusammenhang mit einem nationalen konflikt, da durch die entstehenden arbeitsplätze mehr menschen in dieses gebiet migrieren, was negative folgen für die lokalen kleinbauern und –bäuerinnen haben kann. obwohl das buch durch den fokus auf umweltkonflikte viele probleme aufzeigt, schaffen es die autorinnen, auch positive entwicklungen zu benennen. durch den fokus auf lokale widerstandsgruppen in den diversen ländern wird darauf aufmerksam gemacht, dass marginalisierte bevölkerungsgruppen nicht in unmündigkeit verharren müssen. allerdings wird auch deutlich, dass die machtverhältnisse nach wie vor asymmetrisch verteilt sind und sich viele benachteiligte bevölkerungsgruppen kaum gegen ungerechtigkeiten wehren können. die herausgeber machen bereits in der einleitung des sammelbandes darauf aufmerksam, dass sie sich nicht nur auf eine theoretische analyse der fallbeispiele einlassen, sondern konkrete lösungsvorschläge aufzeigen wollen. das konzept der politischen ökologie gilt als analyserahmen für die einzelnen kapitel und der konfliktbegriff ist wesentlicher ausgangspunkt für die fallbeispiele. trotzdem fehlen leider konkrete vorschläge zur konfliktlösung. die ursachen der umweltkonflikte und die interessen der verschiedenen akteurinnen werden schlüssig dargestellt, jedoch ohne neue ideen zur bewältigung dieser probleme vorzustellen. trotzdem gibt das buch interessante einblicke in die komplexität von umweltkonflikten. der hinweis auf die teilweise ambivalenten programme von umweltschutzund menschenrechtsorganisationen ist besonders im hinblick auf die zukunft der internationalen entwicklungszusammenarbeit interessant. jessica gärtner universität wien, österreich mobilities in south-east asia aseas 6(2) 2358 editorial mobilities in south-east asia alexander trupp1 & claudia dolezal2 citation trupp, a., & dolezal, c. (2013). editorial: mobilities in south-east asia. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 6(2), 235-241. in the current age of time and space compression, one finds people (e.g. tourists, migrants, refugees, researchers) as well as material and immaterial objects or resources (e.g. capital, vehicles, information, ideas) to be increasingly on the move, leading to the idea that we are living in an “age of mobility [,which] has replaced the sedentary age” (rolshoven, 2007, p. 17). for more than two decades, this shift has been noted in various academic disciplines (such as geography, anthropology, and sociology, to name a few), and most importantly in the field of migration and tourism studies – areas of study where a pronounced interest in issues of mobilities has emerged (husa, trupp, & wohlschlägl, 2014). for some decades now, south-east asia has been characterized by rapid economic and socio-cultural transformations involving large movements of people and goods within and between countries as well as rural and urban areas (rigg, 2003). in addition to classical spatial mobility patterns of rural-urban migration, international labor migration, and international tourism becoming increasingly dynamic, forms of multi-local household arrangements, skilled migration, transnational communities or long-term tourism and domestic tourism have emerged. in this context, one can observe a number of interdependent forms of mobility, including the physical movement of people for reasons of work, leisure, family, or lifestyle as well as the physical movement of objects from and to producers, consumers, retailers, and the different places where people live, work, or go on holidays (larsen, urry, & axhausen, 2006). 1 alexander trupp studied theoretical and applied geography in vienna. he is currently assistant professor (universitätsassistent) at the department of geography and regional research, university of vienna, austria, and member of the aseas editorial board. he specializes in tourism and migration in asia. contact: alexander.trupp@univie.ac.at 2 claudia dolezal is a doctoral researcher at the university of brighton, uk. her phd project looks into community empowerment in community-based tourism in bali. claudia has a background in tourism and international development with a focus on south-east asia and contributes to the work of the society for south-east asian studies, i.a. as a member of the aseas editorial board. contact: c.dolezal@brighton.ac.uk d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -6 .2 -1 aseas 6(2) 237236 the prevailing “mobility turn” (cresswell & merriman, 2011) and the “mobilities paradigm” (sheller & urry, 2006) criticize the notion of sedentarism, which locates bounded places, regions, or nations as the fundamental basis of human identity and experience and thus, the main unit of social research analysis. in contrast, the mobilities paradigm “emphasises that all places are tied into at least thin networks of connections that stretch beyond each such place and mean that nowhere can be an ‘island’” (sheller & urry, 2006, p. 209). although different forms of mobility have always shaped human life, academia only recently (re)discovered the importance and value of including notions of mobility in research. this emerging emphasis brought with it not only the acknowledgement of an increasing movement of people and objects, but also broader “transformat[ions] of social science, generating an alternative theoretical and methodological landscape” (büscher, urry, & witchger, 2011, p. 4). in recent years, an increasing number of empirical and theoretical studies dealing with mobilities in asia have focused on international forms of movements. important research areas in this context are tourism (hitchcock, king, & parnwell, 2009) and transnational migration flows (hewison & young, 2005; yeoh, willis, & fakhri, 2003). nevertheless, we cannot ignore that a large number of people moves within the borders of their country of birth (skeldon, 2006, p. 17). therefore, the “dominance of ‘transnational migration’ as an object of study over and above other forms of mobility in the region [in asia] is somewhat at odds with its numerical importance” (elmhirst, 2012, p. 275). based on this argument, olwig and sorensen (2002) seek to redirect “migration research away from the narrow focus on international population movements” and instead call for “a broader investigation of mobile livelihoods and the fluid fields of social, economic and political relations and cultural values that these livelihoods imply” (p. 2). elmhirst (2012) suggests that the popularity of transnational (and international) migration on the international research agenda can be traced to political fears that this type of migration provokes in the context of global security as well as the possibilities that come with it, such as in the context of economic remittances. moreover, we should not forget that despite a seemingly interconnected world without borders, constraints on people’s mobilities continue to exist, mainly through the presence and impact of states aiming at controlling or preventing migration (carling, 2002; horstmann, 2011). alexander trupp & claudia dolezal editorial: mobilities in south-east asia aseas 6(2) 237236 the present collection of articles addresses a variety of issues concerning mobilities in south-east asia, including case studies that involve moving people and objects in or from indonesia, thailand, the philippines, and vietnam. erik cohen, by focusing on the cultural meanings of objects of mobility, analyzes the origins and making of airbrush paintings on charter tour coaches in thailand serving the domestic and international tourism market. cohen thereby explores the complex interplay between global and local in terms of its presence in the buses’ motifs and depicts these objects of mobility as containers of globalized, hybridized post-modern symbols. the study’s data are based on the documentation of 145 buses; of which 18 pictures are published in this contribution to help illustrate the discussed motifs. shifting the discussion from the objects to the subjects of mobilities, dinita setyawati addresses the idea of framing migrant workers as state assets, based on the premise that these workers maximize national economic benefits. while sending countries benefit through remittances of their ‘economic heroes’, receiving countries gain in low-skilled labor supply. setyawati’s contribution offers an examination of the legal regulations concerning migrant workers’ protection in indonesia and the philippines, two of the largest exporters of migrant labor in south-east asia. in the context of low-skilled labor movements, forms of skilled migration seem to be underrepresented, especially in south-east asian contexts. cirilia limpangog conducted a study based on in-depth interviews with professional filipina migrants in melbourne und identified diverse motives which are not only related to economic household strategies but highlight alternative lifestyles, escape from political persecution, migration in order to live united with one’s spouse, and escape from gender and cultural norms as driving forces of mobility. however, potential obstacles to mobility remain, supporting the argument that our times are characterized not only by large flows of various forms of mobilities but also by immobilities. immigration policies and harsh controls by local or national governments can restrict migration. highland ethnic minorities in northern thailand, for example, have sometimes found their mobility restricted by state regulations, as they had not received official thai ids and citizenship rights. therefore, the notion of a seemingly borderless world in constant motion needs to be questioned and supplemented with the perspective of an “age of involuntary immobility” (carling, 2002), which aims at identifying and analyzing barriers and constraints. in a study alexander trupp & claudia dolezal editorial: mobilities in south-east asia aseas 6(2) 239238 on mobility and immobility of asylum seekers passing through indonesia, antje missbach further focuses on international migration flows to indonesia by comparing indochinese asylum seekers between the 1970s and mid-1990s and more recent asylum seekers coming from the middle east. the author explores how claims for protecting asylum seekers are handled in indonesia and in this course introduces the notion of obstructed mobility to this issue. in addition, everyday mobilities, e.g. walking for work purposes of mobile street vendors (trupp, 2014), can be restricted by urban or selling regulations imposed by local governments or private actors. in our section ‘research workshop’, kirsten w. endres offers an anthropologically oriented contribution to this topic, which looks into marketplaces and bazaars in socialist vietnam, exploring the influence of neoliberal politics on the lives of small traders. the author shows that these traders experience difficulties surviving in the marketplace, which is now owned by private investment companies, therefore deteriorating the traders’ livelihoods. at the same time, the development of markets is actively fostered in the west, where urban planners regard markets as a tool to improve community life and relations. endres furthermore introduces the relevance of tourism as one aspect of mobility, by observing two opposing developments: on the one hand, privately owned supermarkets replace vietnamese bazaars, while on the other hand, the traditional aspects of marketplaces are fostered to satisfy tourists in their search of the ‘authentic’. the notion of authenticity has been a point of discussion in tourism studies for many decades and, hence, forms a vital part of the broader mobility paradigm, given its identification as one of the major travel motifs of international tourists. maccannell’s (1976) sketch of the modern subject on the move in search of authenticity still finds usage in current academia. while maccannell’s (1992) initial idea, however, pictured host communities as the ones being exploited, playing ‘ex-primitive’ on the touristic stage, authenticity or self-commodification are increasingly realized as bearing potential of self-empowerment for local communities in the global south (ruiz-ballesteros & hernández-ramírez, 2010). oftentimes, it is through communitybased tourism (cbt) – if organized and managed carefully – that rural communities in south-east asia can gain power and derive greater economic and social benefits from tourism activity and international mobility, also through the conscious usage of notions of authenticity (dolezal, 2011). in the section ‘in dialogue’, claudia dolezal aseas 6(2) 239238 presents an interview with the chairman of the bali community-based tourism association, which refers to the complex play with ideas of authenticity as an aspect of the controversial empowerment debate in a tourism-for-development context. the interview sheds light on the social as well as economic impacts of international tourism on local communities in bali and discusses the meaning of the ambiguous term ‘empowerment’ as well as the possibilities cbt creates locally. tourism therefore can be regarded as an engine for mobility, connecting the tourist and rural communities in a complex interplay between the global and the local (burns & novelli, 2008). in our section ‘south-east asia visually’, bianca gantner and philip weninger offer a visual account of a filipin@s migrant communities’ festival in vienna, underlining the importance of the event in terms of fostering social and economic ties of the biggest south-east asian migrant group in austria. outside the mobilities focus, this issue features a ‘current research’ contribution on the social dimensions of deforestation and forest protection in local communities in northern cambodia, which have implemented community forestry (cf) and reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (redd+) programs. the study conducted by maya pasgaard and lily chea is based on qualitative interviews and reveals that vulnerable households are disproportionately affected by the costs of deforestation and that they only marginally benefit from forest protection due to social exclusion facilitated by prevailing power structures. the issue further includes two book reviews. william j. jones’ review of conversations with thaksin: from exile to deliverance: thailand’s populist tycoon tells his story by tom plate presents a collection of interviews with thailand’s former prime minister thaksin shinawatra, thereby focusing on thaksin’s self-exile and, at the same time, on the influence he still has on thai politics from afar. a second book review by dayana parvanova of faith and the state: a history of islamic philanthropy in indonesia by amelia fauzia addresses islamic philanthropic practices in indonesia and provides insights into their influence on state-civil society relations as well as on socio-political and religious ideologies. the book discusses the practices of zakat (almsgiving), sedekah (donation, giving), and waqf (religious endowment) by covering a number of historic periods in the development of the indonesian nation state. furthermore, aseas continues its introduction of austrian research institutions featuring a focus on south-east asia. in this context, alfred gerstl presents the newly alexander trupp & claudia dolezal editorial: mobilities in south-east asia aseas 6(2) 241240 developed south-east asian orientation at the department of east asian studies at the university of vienna. finally, paulo castro seixas provides some thoughts and reflections on the role of international scientific conferences and presents a short report on the coordination of the 7th euroseas conference, which took place in lisbon in july 2013. the next euroseas conference is scheduled to take place in vienna in august 2015. references burns, p., & novelli, m. (2008). introduction. in p. burns & m. novelli (eds.), tourism and mobilities: localglobal connections (pp. xvii-xxvi). oxfordshire, uk: cabi. büscher, m., urry, j., & witchger, k. (2011). introduction: mobile methods. in m. büscher, j. urry & k. witchger (eds.), mobile methods (pp. 1-19). abingdon, uk: routledge. carling, j. (2002). migration in the age of involuntary immobility: theoretical reflections and cape verdean experiences. journal of ethnic and migration studies, 28(1), 5-42. cresswell, t., & merriman, p. (2011). geographies of mobilities: practices, spaces, subjects. farnham, uk: ashgate. dolezal, c. (2011). community-based tourism in thailand: (dis-)illusions of authenticity and the necessity for dynamic concepts of culture and power. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 4(1), 129-138. elmhirst, r. (2012). methodological dilemmas in migration research in asia: research design, omissions and strategic erasures. area, 44(3), 274-281. hewison, k., & young, k. (2005). transnational migration and work in asia. new york, ny: routledge. hitchcock, m., king, v. t., & parnwell, m. (2009). tourism in southeast asia: challenges and new directions. honolulu, hi: university of hawaii press. horstmann, a. (2011). editorial: grenzregionen und border studies in südostasien/borderlands and border studies in south-east asia. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 4(2), 203-214. husa, k., trupp, a., & wohlschlägl, h. (eds.). (2014). southeast asian mobility transitions: recent trends in tourism and migration. vienna, austria: department of geography and regional research. larsen, j., urry, j., & axhausen, k. w. (2006). mobilities, networks, geographies. aldershot, uk: ashgate. maccannell, d. (1976). the tourist: a new theory of the leisure class. los angeles, ca: university of california press. maccannell, d. (1992). empty meeting grounds: the tourist papers. london, uk: routledge. olwig, k. f., & sorensen, n. n. (2002). mobile livelihoods: making a living in the world. in n. n. sorensen & k. f. olwig (eds.), work and migration: life and livelihoods in a globalizing world (pp. 1-19). new york, ny: routledge. aseas 6(2) 241240 rigg, j. (2003). southeast asia: the human landscape of modernization and development. london, uk: routledge. rolshoven, j. (2007). the temptations of the provisional. multilocality as a way of life. ethnologia europea, 37(1-2), 17-25. ruiz-ballesteros, e., & hernández-ramírez, m. (2010). tourism that empowers? commodification and appropriation in ecuador’s turismo comunitario. critique of anthropology, 30(2), 201-229. sheller, m., & urry, j. (2006). the new mobilities paradigm. environment and planning a, 38(2), 207-226. skeldon, r. (2006). interlinkages between internal and international migration and development in the asian region. population, space and place, 12(1), 15-30. trupp, a. (2014). rural-urban migration and ethnic minority enterprise. in p. liamputtong (ed.), contemporary socio-cultural and political perspectives in thailand. dordrecht, netherlands: springer. yeoh, b. s. a., willis, k. d., & fakhri, s. m. a. k. (2003). introduction: transnationalism and its edges. ethnic & racial studies, 26(2), 207-217. alexander trupp & claudia dolezal editorial: mobilities in south-east asia progress and challenges of combating climate change in indonesia: an interview with prof. rachmat witoelar, the president’s special envoy for climate change aseas 5(2) 345344 d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -5 .2 -1 0 im dialog / in dialogue progress and challenges of combating climate change in indonesia: an interview with prof. rachmat witoelar, the president’s special envoy for climate change till plitschka1 & irendra radjawali2 citation plitschka, t., & radjawali, i. (2012). progress and challenges of combating climate change in indonesia: an interview with prof. rachmat witoelar, the president’s special envoy for climate change. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 5(2), 345-351. professor rachmat witoelar, former minister of the environment in indonesia, heads the national council on climate change in indonesia (dnpi) and indonesia’s delegations to negotiations under the united nations framework convention on climate change (unfccc). this interview was conducted during the most recent unfccc negotiations in bonn in may 2012 and contains references to specifi c agreements in that process. as the kyoto protocol – which includes binding targets for countries in the global north (so-called annex 1 countries) – is drawing to an end, negotiations revolve around a new protocol, but last year’s high level talks in durban only came up with a fairly vague result – the durban platform – without binding emission reduction targets. in this context, indonesia’s announcement to pursue its own unilateral reduction target is signifi cant. the progress and challenges of achieving this target are the focus of the following interview. professor rachmat witoelar, ehemaliger umweltminister indonesiens, leitet sowohl den nationalen rat für klimawandel in indonesien (dnpi) als auch indonesiens delegation zu den verhandlungen im rahmen der united nations framework convention on climate change (unfccc). dieses interview wurde während der letzten unfccc verhandlungen in bonn im mai 2012 durchgeführt und bezieht sich auf spezifi sche vereinbarungen im rahmen dieses verhandlungsprozesses. aufgrund des baldigen auslaufens des kyoto-protokolls, welches verpfl ichtende ziele für die länder des globalen nordens (sogenannte annex 1 länder) beinhaltet, konzentrieren sich die laufenden verhandlungen auf ein neues protokoll. die gespräche auf höchster ebene, die vergangenes jahr in durban geführt wurden brachten mit der schöpfung der durban platform jedoch nur ein vages ergebnis hervor und legten keine bindenden emissionsreduktionsziele fest. in diesem kontext ist indonesiens ankündigung, unilateral eigene reduktionszieles festzulegen, bedeutend. die fortschritte und herausforderungen, dieses ziel zu erreichen, stehen im fokus des folgenden interviews. 1 till plitschka has a background in engineering and studied south-east asian studies at bonn university, germany, with a special focus on contemporary indonesia. in his master thesis (2012) he explored the political, social, and environmental controversies surrounding redd in south-east asia. contact: till.plitschka@hotmail.com (corresponding author) 2 irendra radjawali is trained as a civil engineer, urban and regional planner at the institute of technology bandung, indonesia and as a geographer at the university of bremen, germany. he is a researcher at the institute of oriental and asian studies, university of bonn, germany with focus on the political-ecology analysis of ecosystem change, especially on water resources. aseas 5(2) 347346 till plitschka: i would like to start with the famous speech that president susilo bambang yudhoyono gave in september 2009 in pittsburgh, usa, in which he committed indonesia to unilaterally cut greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions by 26 percent and up to 41 percent with international support. so what has indonesia done to fulfil this commitment? rachmat witoelar: i would like to divide indonesia’s efforts into two key areas: first, institutional and second, operational. at the institutional level, there are laws and rules that have been passed to ensure that emissions can be mitigated, like preventing forest degradation through redd3, and also rules to empower the government to punish those who transgress redd. a key piece of legislation is the presidential decree no. 61/2011 which outlines who does what and when. this decree specifies the forestry sector (i.e. land use and land use change and forestry – lulucf) as responsible for 67 percent of the total emission reduction target of 26 percent. the coordinating meetings with the governors and the district heads (bupati) are another key initiative at the institutional level. the central government can give directions but the regional governments are the executors. unfortunately, the law which allows the bupati to issue permits (e.g. for timber, plantation or mining concessions) has been proven to be damaging to the environment. the central government can ask the heads of regional governments to stop issuing permits, but there has been some ‘resistance’ against this in the name of decentralisation. there have been constant ‘legal wars’ going on related to this issue in indonesia. i’m proud to say that the environmental concerns are winning, and the district heads realise that this is good, so they don’t issue as many permits as they used to. in samarinda4 there are 300 permits for mining, i don’t know where they will mine. of course, the motivation of these bupati is the money from the concessions, but this is very damaging for the environment. the law no. 32 on the environment says that the punishment for abusing the regulation (on concessions) is not in the form of a fine but is actually imprisonment. if it’s only a fine, then the punishment might not be effective enough as they will obtain even more money with the permit than what they will be fined. these are the efforts to move forward and to fulfil the commitment of a 26 percent emission cut. plitschka: what about the operational level? witoelar: at the operational level, first, the government, through the ministry of forestry, is recovering and replanting millions of trees, in fact billions of trees a year. second, the private sector is encouraged to use their csr (corporate social responsibility) for greening and planting trees. a third effort is the initiatives of local organisations and the local population. for example, the association of the ladies of the ministers has been planting half a million trees per year, a lot of trees. so the men should do more! in the past, all these efforts have been surrounded by cynicism, but now we are sure that it has been done as it is checked by 3 the acronym redd refers to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and is a un programme that aims to offer incentives for countries in the global south to reduce emissions from deforestation by creating financial values for the forest carbon stocks. (aseas explanatory note) 4 samarinda is the capital of east kalimantan, one of four provinces of the indonesian part of the island of borneo. (aseas explanatory note) aseas 5(2) 347346 satellite mapping. however, due to the extent of the damage and the size of the country, it takes time to get everything recovered, so i’m pleased that we’re going to meet the target of a 26 percent ghg emission reduction by 2020, and we’re going to surpass it. i was part of the decision at that time, and the number we suggested to the president was decided on after careful deliberation. so the 26 percent are, to my knowledge, feasible and quite easy to achieve because the emissions are due to the carelessness of doing things and because of the waste, so we need to economise more. so if we just cut down on those two aspects, we would already cut down 7 to 8 percent, and the major part of it is the deforestation and illegal loggers which account for up to 40 percent of everything. so if we focus on this sector and if we cut down on that we can already achieve 30 to 40 percent, going beyond our commitment of 26 percent. plitschka: so which sector is indonesia’s main focus to cut emissions? witoelar: better governance in terms of regulating the forestry sector. plitschka: so forestry, not power generation like coal-fired power plants? witoelar: no, i’m aware of the bad consequences of using coal for power generation but according to the statistics, the forestry sector has been polluting up to 67 percent of all emissions. plitschka: that’s why you focus your emission cutting on the forestry sector? witoelar: yes, but also the other sectors such as traffic, land use, and so forth. in all, there are 70 concrete projects that are being run under the presidential decree mentioned above. in this sense, the target of 26 percent is not a guess, we are not guessing. it’s calculated. plitschka: i ask this because indonesia has a big source of geothermal energy and within the unfccc framework there’s the component of technology transfer, so you are not planning to go down that road of promoting renewable energy instead of cutting the emissions from forestry? witoelar: of course we are going that way, but it can’t be done in the initial phase. our studies say that it takes around six years to start such geothermal installation. we want to do it from year 1. year 1 focuses on stopping logging, year 2 focuses on starting planting, year 3 is to cut down on waste and increase efficiency, and the next year to start developing renewable energies. up to 2012, we are keen on converting kerosene to gas, so that people use little gas stoves for cooking instead of kerosene. so this is year 4 and year 5, in year 6 we will start to exploit geothermal energy. so if we start in 2012, we are convinced that we’ll pass the target of 26 percent emission reduction as promised. till plitschka & irendra radjawali an interview with prof. rachmat witoelar aseas 5(2) 349348 plitschka: but the immediate focus is forestry? witoelar: yes, because it’s the most significant sector for ghg emissions and we have to catch the actors and put them in jail. we have our jails full of them. also, we promote replanting. this will be done from year 1 to year 3. we have a very precise plan to reach the commitment. irendra radjawali: what about redd? witoelar: redd is supplementary and a good approach to compensate our efforts to save the trees, and we are not fighting the livelihood of the people living in the forest. we appreciate the indigenous people and support them in strengthening their capacity to live there without destroying the environment. we also have the two years moratorium on logging, and redd is supporting the moratorium. indonesia is in favour of putting redd into practice, but this meeting’s result is lower than the one in durban, i don’t know why. two indonesian delegates are fighting to increase the strength of the dictum, but there are some objections from other countries. plitschka: when we are talking about redd, what should a working redd mechanism look like for indonesia? how could it work? witoelar: first, we have to have a clear map to delineate where it applies. second, we have to have a clear indication of who lives in that area. third, we are talking about redd++, where those pluses mean the sustainability of the people who live there, they can plant and cut wood as long as they use the right plot of the land. we also have the demonstration/pilot projects run by ourselves with support from interested parties like australia and norway in certain areas. we have those parties competing for the best practice of redd++ implementation. we also established the so-called ‘green provinces’ – the provinces that are able to successfully implement redd++. the winner this year is east kalimantan province, where those big mining (coal) companies are located. the governor of east kalimatan, awang faroukh, appreciates this initiative and he totally understands that we have to stop doing things that are detrimental to the environment. of course, the economy slows down a bit, but that’s the price of clean air. radjawali: in the context of redd and mapping, how do you think it should be connected to the spatial planning process? witoelar: actually, spatial planning comes after that map. we have problems with mapping because we have so many different maps. so indonesia has the initiative to establish the one map project. it is supported by the us through the u.s.-indonesia comprehensive partnership and executed by lapan (indonesian space agency) and bappenas (indonesian land agency) among others. this map is going to be the base map of indonesia and is going to be legalised by parliament. a good spatial system is very important. aseas 5(2) 349348 plitschka: so you have the idea of redd on one side and on the other side you have the national development strategy that includes for example oil palm plantations. how can you combine these two? witoelar: if they follow the rules strictly, there won’t be any conflict with the redd scheme. by law, a certain amount of oil palm concessions should be employed for the welfare of the region at the provincial level. some 20 percent of the concessions should be dedicated to the health of the region. the second thing is that those plantations have often been responsible for related disasters such as forest fires. so, if the oil palm plantations want to expand their area, they have to do it appropriately and not by burning as the smoke goes to singapore and malaysia. however, problems exist on the ground, for example that those companies ‘buy’ some local people to burn the forest, as they try to avoid responsibility. also, previously, the corrupt government officials accepted some bribes from these companies to insure them against prosecution for their law breaking activities. however, i hope and am sure that now the high rank government officials won’t easily take such bribes. first of all, we delineate the land that is going to be allocated for oil palm plantation. oil palm has the characteristic of destroying the environment, but it can be offset by doing other things, because there is also a lot of money there. so they have to make sure that they replant trees and also they don’t go to the area where the forest is protected, it’s very sensitive in central kalimantan and riau province. the punishment on breaking the law is imprisonment. so law enforcement is important, the government can’t just forbid doing this or that, we also need to enforce the law. at present, a combination of both is seen as effective. the government can’t do it alone, the government also needs to work with ngos, be it national or international ones. when i served as minister of the environment, i was personally very close with some ngos like greenpeace, conservation international, etc. oil palm plantations need to be sustained but with strict regulation, especially on its compliance with the environmental protection and climate change mitigation. in this context, i suggest the ministries to open the space for discussion with stakeholders and discuss the data to assess the oil palm plantations, it’s data vs. data. some data are developed by those who don’t want those industries to prosper. i’m not pointing fingers but it’s a war for markets. if we can’t sustain our markets somebody else will get the markets. so i’m in favour of sustaining our markets and pointing out that those plantations outside indonesia are way worse than the ones in indonesia. to be fair, if there’s an embargo, then embargo everything, that’s fair! don’t only embargo indonesia. the second thing i want to mention: i take the position that we should forbid foreign nationals to hold permits for plantations. many of our plantations are owned by singaporeans and malaysians. i’m not accusing them but don’t blame indonesia alone, as in malaysia (sabah, sarawak) there are also lots of plantations. when i served as minister of the environment, i had access to meteorological maps showing the wind flows and the wind was turbulent, meaning that smoke in malaysia came from the plantations in sarawak and not from indonesia. this is a technological war. my point is, don’t point fingers at anyone because maybe you are wrong. till plitschka & irendra radjawali an interview with prof. rachmat witoelar aseas 5(2) 351350 radjawali: what is indonesia’s main objective during the current negotiations in bonn? witoelar: ensuring that the bali road map (brm) and the durban platform will be realised. brm has been inspected five times from cop 13 in 2007 to cop 175 in 2011 and was the foundation of all the arguments in the meetings. the words “to execute brm” are always there. however, as it is not a political entity, it is not easy. 1b1 and 1b26 are not accepted by some parties. also the cbdr (common but differentiated responsibilities) is refused by the same parties [i.e. the united states], and the us doesn’t want the kyoto protocol and brm. i respect that, it shows their position. in that respect, we also want to ensure that the durban platform works, but they [the united states] don’t want that either. at this moment, i’m unhappy because there’s no real progress, only small progress. in durban, i was part of the ministers’ informal negotiation. all the countries that were suspected by the us of not complying with the agreement like india or china agreed on cutting back on emissions to a greater degree than the us. i’m proud because indonesia did it three years before. us delegates accused india and china of not wanting to cut their emissions, so i just went to china and india and persuaded them to set a target without obligation. we should appreciate china as its forests are increasing. china plants more trees than anyone else cuts down. ok, there’s a debate on the cbdr concept as it states that the annex i countries should do more and the other countries should just do as much as they can, and this point is not ‘good’ for the us-americans. however, the durban platform recognises that developing countries also contribute to the effort of combating climate change. but still, the us doesn’t want to commit to anything. radjawali: what about adaptation to climate change? witoelar: we have lots of vulnerable communities due to the changing climate. they need help and support to adapt to climate change, so adaptation is very important. indonesia is proud to have historically been part of the initiatives of what is now called the adaptation fund, which hopefully will be realised in the coming months until the doha meeting. mitigation is intended to fight climate change although i think we cannot fight it, we can only delay it. meanwhile, the vulnerable ones need to be taken care of by the system and national policies, so we are aware that adaptation efforts to climate change should not be reactive, they should be pro-active and should be prepared before it happens. radjawali: what do you think about capacity building, science, and doing research in the context of climate change? 5 cop refers to the conference of the parties to the convention, in this case of the unfccc. the conferences are numbered consecutively. (aseas editorial note) 6 1b1 and 1b2 refer to ipcc source categories of greenhouse gasses referred to by the kyoto protocol. 1b1 refers to fugitive emissions from solid fuels, i.e. coal mining, and 1b2 refers to fugitive emissions from oil and gas. (aseas editorial note) aseas 5(2) 351350 witoelar: it’s important because this is what climate is about, we rely on science, we rely on ipcc reports to formulate actions, otherwise it all remains highly subjective. as you know, basic research and research in general need lots of money while in indonesia the allocation is not sufficient at all. so in the national council on climate change we have our working group which focuses on research led by dr. agus supangat. plitschka: you mentioned the moratorium [on logging]. i have read a lot about the moratorium, mostly critiques regarding loopholes in the moratorium and so forth. what’s your opinion on such criticism? witoelar: i accept such criticism with an open mind. some of it is correct. but some of it is wrong, for example the one by norway7. and norway apologised for that. the idea of the moratorium is to pass a moratorium law on the executable areas – not in all areas. so it applies to the areas with logging operations. you have to make sure that you can enforce it. where is it? in the tropical rain forest and in the heart of borneo, it’s possible to do it there. if there’s any criticism on the moratorium area that is being planted, it’s a serious problem, please give us the data and i’ll go to the minister of forestry to take action. plitschka: it sounds like you are not too happy with the moratorium? witoelar: no, we should do more, and do it more intensively. plitschka & radjawali: thank you for this interview! 7 norway’s minister of the environment, bard vegar solhjell, stated in an interview with reuters in may 2012 that indonesia’s progress in reforming its forestry sector would be insufficient to meet its pledge to cut carbon emissions by 26 percent by 2020. (aseas editorial note) till plitschka & irendra radjawali an interview with prof. rachmat witoelar health and environmental risk communication in thailand: an analysis of agency staff ’s perspectives on risk communication with external stakeholders aseas 5(1) 52 53 aktuelle südostasienforschung / current research on south-east asia health and environmental risk communication in thailand: an analysis of agency staff ’s perspectives on risk communication with external stakeholders seth tuler1, uma langkulsen2, caron chess3 & nuntavarn vichit-vadakan4 citation tuler, s., langkulsen, u., chess, c., & vichit-vadakan, n. (2012). health and environmental risk communication in thailand: an analysis of agency staff ’s perspectives on risk communication with external stakeholders. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 5(1), 52-73. health and environmental agencies are routinely called upon to provide risk-related information to the public-at-large and to more narrowly defi ned audiences, such as children, pregnant women, or labourers. while a large body of guidance is available, it is often general and transferability to new contexts is not well understood. in particular, the relevance of this guidance for south-east asia is not clear. this paper reports the results of a study, using q method, that aimed to develop a better understanding of offi cers’ and staff ’s perspectives on health and environmental risk communication within a single regulatory agency in thailand, the pollution control department. the results demonstrate that there are multiple perspectives, and they are unrelated to roles or experience. this study contributes to a deeper understanding of the ways that offi cers and staff within a national agency with important responsibilities for health and environmental risk communication in thailand think about these responsibilities and how to achieve them. keywords: risk management; health communication; organisational studies; q method; thailand gesundheitsund umweltbehörden erfüllen üblicherweise die rolle der allgemeinen öff entlichkeit, aber auch speziellen zielgruppen wie kindern, schwangeren oder arbeiterinnen, risikobasierte informationen zur verfügung zu stellen. trotz vorhandener beratung ist diese oft sehr allgemein gehalten und eine übertragbarkeit auf neue kontexte ist schwierig. besonders die relevanz der beratung in bezug auf südostasien ist oft unklar. dieser artikel berichtet über die ergebnisse einer auf der q-methode basierenden studie, die versucht, ein besseres verständnis über die perspektiven von führungskräften und mitarbeiterinnen in bezug auf gesundheitsund umweltrisikokommunikation innerhalb der thailändischen behörde für umweltschutz zu gewinnen. die ergebnisse zeigen, dass es, unabhängig von den rollen und erfahrungen der befragten, sehr unterschiedliche perspektiven über verantwortlichkeiten gibt. die studie gibt einen einblick in diese perspektiven und die möglichkeiten der umsetzung in einer verantwortungsvollen nationalen behörde im bereich gesundheitsund umweltrisikokommunikation. keywords: risikomanagement; gesundheitskommunikation; organisationstheorie; q-methode; thailand 1 seth tuler is research fellow at the social and environmental research institute, inc., greenfi eld, ma, usa. contact: sptuler@seri-us.org (corresponding author) 2 uma langkulsen is researcher at the faculty of public health, thammasat university, thailand. 3 caron chess is professor at the department of human ecology, rutgers university, new brunswick, nj, usa. 4 nuntavarn vichit-vadakan is associated professor at the faculty of public health, thammasat university, thailand. d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -5 .1 -4 aseas 5(1) 52 53 introduction5 a critical task of health and environmental agencies is to communicate information about health risks. “risk communication” refers to activities that provide information to an audience about the risks (and benefits) of a particular activity or technology, and it is widely understood as an important function of government agencies at all levels (kasperson & stallen, 1991; morgan, fischhoff, & bostrom, 2001; renn, 1992; usfda, 2011; usnrc, 1989). the audience of communication efforts can be the general public, targeted subgroups within a population, such as labourers or particularly vulnerable subgroups, or institutions. the task of risk communication may serve the purpose of informing people of options. for example, a community may be considering how to promote economic development through different industrial and agricultural activities; each will have a different mix of risks and benefits. a second purpose can be to persuade people to adopt particular behaviours, such as using condoms, reducing the use of pesticides in agricultural work, or stopping smoking. risk communication is also used to build consensus around policy proposals, to disseminate information during a crisis, and to promote trust in hazard and health management agencies. national government agencies in thailand are routinely called upon to provide riskrelated information to the public-at-large and to more narrowly defined audiences, such as children, pregnant women, or agricultural labourers. information is provided about, for example, ways to prevent insect-borne viruses (e.g. dengue fever or malaria) (academy for educational development, 2010; heddini, 2009) and sexually transmitted diseases (chamratrithirong & boonchalaksi, 2009; rao, 1998), how to reduce exposure to toxic chemicals (regional forum, 2009), the use of helmets among motorcycle riders (ichikawa, chadbunchachai, & marui, 2003), and the dangers of smoking (svenkerud & singhal, 1998; takeuchi, 2006). labourers are also the subject of informational campaigns about, for example, exposures to chemical releases (langkulsen, vichitvadakan, & taptagaporn, 2011), best practices for reducing exposures to pesticides (bumbudsanpharoke, moran, & hall, 2009; chalermphol & shivakoti, 2009) and the 5 support for the research was provided by a fulbright scholar fellowship to seth tuler with the faculty of public health, thammasat university, bangkok, thailand during december 2008 to april 2009. additional support for this project was provided by the new jersey agricultural experiment station and the thai fogarty itreoh center d43 tw007849 fogarty international center national institutes of health. we are grateful for the assistance and support of dr. supat wangwongwatana, secretary general of the office of natural resources and environmental policy and planning and of officers of the pcd who participated in this study. we thank the anonymous reviewers for their advice. while helpful of course, we remain responsible for the content of this paper. tuler, langkulsen, chess, & vichit-vadakan health and environmental risk communication in thailand aseas 5(1) 54 55 effects of heat stress (langkulsen, 2011; langkulsen, vichit-vadakan, & taptagaporn, 2011; tawatsupa et al., 2010). during the recent floods, the ministry of environment and natural resources, the ministry of public health, and the disaster warning centre provided information about exposure to contaminated foods and water, electrocution hazards, and drownings. constitutionally required health impact assessments require that regulatory agencies consider public health risks associated with new industrial facilities (jindawatthana, sukkumnoed, pengkam, chuenchit, & mathurapote, 2009; phoolcharoen, sukkumnoed, & kessomboom, 2003). the effective communication of information about health and environmental risks is not easy. a vast literature provides guidance, but insights are often difficult to generalise. simplistic principles and checklists, like ‘understand the needs of the community’, may be difficult to achieve in practice and do not provide clear guidance in specific situations. what is understood to be the best practice in a particular situation will depend on what those organising and participating in the process think about the context, the objectives, their roles, the scientific understanding of the issues, and many other factors. yet, this body of work does provide “enough evidence and experience to make good guesses at best general practices for communicating useful informative messages to help the public make informed decisions about their health” (usfda, 2011, p. 107). however, this is a statement applicable to the state of knowledge in the us and europe. the relevance of this evidence and experience for south-east asia is not clear. despite a rapid growth in risk communication research and practice, little work has been grounded in the socio-cultural context of thailand or elsewhere in south-east asia. the implications for cultural preferences of, for example, saving face and avoiding conflict remain largely unexplored in the field of risk (and crisis) communication. making good guesses by applying relevant knowledge and experience in the south-east asian context suggests that health and environment agencies need to take a close look at their capacities and responsibilities, staff’s understandings of roles, responsibilities, and priorities for communication efforts, and some kinds of assumptions that are made about the audiences of health communication efforts. this paper contributes to our understanding of institutions responsible for health and environmental risk communication in thailand. we report the results of a study investigating the perspectives of officers and staff about risk communication within a aseas 5(1) 54 55 single regulatory agency in thailand, the pollution control department. our objectives were to understand (a) perspectives about risk communication needs, goals, organisational capacities, target audiences, and content of communication activities and (b) the degree to which perspectives varied by department, position in the organisational hierarchy, and depth of experience with risk communication. we focus on the views of agency officers and staff because formal rules and procedures for risk communication are not well developed within thai government agencies. thus, we expect to find a range of viewpoints based on how different individuals “understand their location, the norms that affect them and their interests” (bevir & rhodes, 2006, p. 6; krueger & gibbs, 2010): a combination of national and organisational cultures, organisational traditions, and personal beliefs and preferences. the next section of the paper describes our research methods, which employed q method as the primary analytic approach, and a brief overview of the thai pollution control department. after discussing the results, which include the presentation of different perspectives among pcd officers about the purposes and methods of risk communication, we discuss the relevance to the practice of risk communication in the south-east asian context. research method this study used q method, a quantitative way for gathering information from a small group of people in structured interviews (brown, 1996; tuler & webler, 2008). q method has been applied to the study of a variety of issues related to environmental management, political ideologies, people’s perceptions of animals and nature, pedagogy, personal relationships, and medical care as well as risk communication and public participation (bumbudsanpharoke et al., 2009; chess & johnson, 2006; kalof, 1998; niemeyer, petts, & hobson, 2005; tuler, webler, & finson, 2005). the goal of q method is to reveal the range of viewpoints on a topic (such as the importance of external communications with the public and goals of risk communication) by asking different people to rank-order a group of ‘q statements’ in response to a sorting instruction that sets the context. this is known as ‘doing a q sort’. determining the right number of q participants means finding the right balance between two competing rules of thumb. on the one hand, it is good to have a certain tuler, langkulsen, chess, & vichit-vadakan health and environmental risk communication in thailand aseas 5(1) 56 57 amount of redundancy among the q participants. normally a q study will result in two to five shared perspectives as this is generally the number of distinct perspectives about any issue under consideration. for each perspective, it is ideal to have two to five individuals who ‘define’ it. according to this rule, the number of q participants should be between 4 (2 factors x 2 people defining each factor) and 25 (5 factors x 5 people defining each factor). on the other hand, it is important to have fewer q participants than q statements. the context for our study was the pollution control department (pcd) of thailand. the pcd was established in 1992 and is part of the ministry of environment and natural resources. the mission of the pcd is to control, prevent, reduce, and eliminate pollution as well as to conserve and rehabilitate the environment conductive for human life in thailand. its responsibilities require that the department develop and provide information about pollution sources, health risks, and hazard management within thai society. it is organised into three bureaus: air quality and noise management, water quality management, and waste and hazardous substance management. data for this study were gathered during september and october 2009 from 28 officers and staff working in the three bureaus of pcd: air quality and noise management (12 individuals), water quality management (9 individuals), and waste and hazardous substance management (7 individuals). officers from different organisational levels were interviewed, including bureau directors, operational officers, experts, special experts, and managers. these were categorised as senior level officers (8 individuals), middle level officers (13 individuals), and junior level officers (7 individuals, including one administrative officer). with the input of pcd managers we tried to select individuals with a range of a) experience with risk communication activities and b) responsibility for managing or implementing risk communication activities. the reason we selected people from the three bureaus was to investigate if there were different viewpoints about communication activities or if there was agreement about communication goals and objectives across the bureaus. this is also why we gathered data from individuals at different levels (senior officer, staff and so forth). a key to any q study is the sample of statements that respondents are asked to sort. these must represent all key aspects of likely perspectives on the issue of interest. typically, 20 to 60 statements are selected to make up the q sample. in this study, the q statements were based on a review of scholarly literature on risk communicaaseas 5(1) 56 57 tion. feedback about the relevance of possible statements was obtained from our thai collaborators and contacts at the pcd. ultimately, 35 statements were chosen and they are shown in table 1. in this study, the sorting instruction and the statements were developed in english and translated into thai. individuals completing q sorts were asked to rank-order the statements according to a particular pattern. both the sorting instruction and the pattern for rank-ordering statements are shown in figure 1. the numbers in the bottom row refer to the number of statements that can be placed in each column. we asked each participant to read all the statements once. then we asked them to sort the statements into three piles, the left-hand pile being the statements they source: authors’ questionnaire the pollution control department provides information to residents in areas where there may be threats to health from environmental contamination. the statements express ideas about how pcd communication activities should be performed. please sort the statements according to those most like you think to least like you think. there is no “correct” answer – i am interested in learning about your personal opinions. sort the 35 statements into 9 columns. the number of statements in each column is shown in the figure (2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 6, 4, 3, 2). rankings are determined by column – not by location within a column. least like i think most like i think figure 1: q sorting instruction and pattern for rank ordering statements 2 23 34 46 67 tuler, langkulsen, chess, & vichit-vadakan health and environmental risk communication in thailand aseas 5(1) 58 59 would least likely emphasise as important, the right-most pile being those they would most likely emphasise as important, and the middle pile being somewhere in between. they then continued by sorting the cards into a normal distribution as shown in figure 1. two cards could be placed in the left-most columns, three in the second-most left column, and so on. the scale was ordinal with the two endpoints subjectively anchored. in other words, a certain participant may have felt that all the statements were important, but he or she still had to differentiate between those that he or she would be most unlikely and most likely to emphasise. while this technique (like surveys) forces participants to provide information in a manner structured by the researcher, unlike surveys items are ranked relative to each other. the participants are also free to define their own scale, such as at what point statements move from being important to neutral in relative ranking. for example, someone could have defined the rightmost seven columns as statements considered likely or most likely and relegate only the leftmost two columns as objectives unlikely to emphasise. moreover, objectives may be grouped by some underlying concepts rather than strictly rank-ordered. participants can structure their rank-ordering of statements in a manner that makes sense to them. we sought to gather information about such issues by asking the participants to reflect on the pattern of cards they created. after all the data were gathered, correlations among individuals’ q sorts were computed and factor analysed. in this study, three factors were identified. the factors are defined by an ‘idealised’ rank-ordering of the statements that best describes the individual sorts included in the factor. thus, each factor can be described as its own q sort, as shown by the data in table 1. based on these factors, three short narrative descriptions were written. they represent perspectives about how personnel view the risk communication activities with external stakeholders, the role of pcd, and the organisational issues the agency confronts. these descriptions were then shared with 12 people who participated in the study. typically they were the individuals who loaded most highly on each factor. this allowed us to validate the accuracy of the descriptions of the perspectives. we received written feedback from 7 individuals. based on feedback from these individuals we modified the narrative descriptions. q method is both similar and dissimilar to a survey. like a survey, q method is a technique to explore peoples’ subjective beliefs and attitudes. as in a survey, people aseas 5(1) 58 59 react to statements by assigning them to categories according to extent of agreement or disagreement. however, q method is unlike a survey by allowing participants far more flexibility to express their beliefs. it also forces people to express how strongly they believe something – they cannot say everything is important. in addition, they prioritise the statements relative to each other. in surveys each item is ranked independently of the others on a pre-defined scale. it is these features of q that make it an important way to understand differences between people’s viewpoints. once the sorts have been entered into a computer, factor analysis is used to reveal the viewpoints within the population studied and patterns of similarities and differences. in the following section we present the narrative descriptions that represent the three factors. then, we go on to compare them. results three distinct and coherent factors – or what we will call perspectives on risk communication – emerged from the analysis. information about the rankings for each statement in the three factors is provided in table 1. these three factors explain 45 percent of the variance, which is considerable for a q study. 1. the pcd and local communities should work together to solve environmental problems in the local areas. 2. the pcd’s communication with local communities should be based on the assumption that local people do not understand pollution and risk problems. 3. the pcd communication efforts should help reduce conflicts. 4. the pcd should educate people about environmental threats to health. 5. the pcd should listen carefully to what people worry about. 6. communication activities should help the pcd’s officials understand what local people know. 7. the pcd should give people all the information they want. 8. communications should correct misunderstandings based on misinformation or lack of knowledge. 9. the pcd should only communicate about what is required by law and regulation. a 1 -4 2 0 4 1 -2 0 -4 b 1 -2 -2 -4 -1 2 -4 2 1 c 4 -1 -1 3 1 1 -3 4 -4 table 1: q statements and their rankings in each of the three factors* factor tuler, langkulsen, chess, & vichit-vadakan health and environmental risk communication in thailand aseas 5(1) 60 61 10. the pcd should inform the local community residents about what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. 11. the pcd should explain what is being done by government and industry to manage environmental health problems. 12. government agencies and private organisations should coordinate the information given to communities in order not to confuse them. 13. the pcd communications should be tailored to the specific local situation. 14. the pcd should respond in a timely way to all questions, comments, and requests. 15. the pcd should tell people how to protect themselves from pollution problems. 16. the pcd managers should make communication with the community an important priority. 17. communication activities should mobilise communities to demand better pollution controls and reduction. 18. the pcd staff should learn to communicate better with community residents. 19. the pcd should gather information from the public that will help scientists and regulators do a better job. 20. the pcd should explain information about pollution and risk by comparing levels to standards. 21. communication activities should target vulnerable groups. 22. the pcd should be very careful not to give the impression that it is taking sides in disputes. 23. information provided to the public should be based on the best available science. 24. the pcd needs to help local community leaders understand the science behind pollution control and mitigation activities. 25. the pcd should help people understand the limits and uncertainties of what is known about health risks. 26. the information given to people should focus on the most important risks they face. 27. the pcd’s communication efforts should build trust with local communities. 28. the pcd’s communication efforts should inform the agency’s preventative measures to manage pollution problems in local areas. 29. the pcd should focus on local leaders, rather than the whole community when it gives out information or asks for input. 30. a commitment to programmes should be made that help pcd officers communicate better with each other. 31. pcd should invest the time, money, and staff needed for successful communication with the public. 32. the pcd should have more scientific expertise 33. other government agencies should cooperate more with the pcd to achieve its communication goals. 34. pcd should create an office with expertise on communication to support the activities of the bureaus. 35. if people make a good argument, pcd should be willing to change a project, programme, or activity. -2 -3 2 1 0 0 3 -3 4 -1 0 -1 3 2 -1 -2 -2 1 -1 -3 2 3 0 -1 1 0 1 -2 4 2 -1 -1 0 -3 -1 0 2 0 1 4 3 0 0 1 0 -3 0 -1 -2 3 -3 3 3 0 1 2 2 3 2 -1 0 -2 0 0 2 -1 0 0 1 -2 0 -4 -2 -3 -3 -2 -1 1 *thai translations are available at www.seri-us.org/sites/default/files/35qs%20for%20pcd_0.pdf source: authors’ questionnaire aseas 5(1) 60 61 the factor analysis revealed that some individuals contributed significantly to shaping one factor and had minor influence over other factors. table 2 shows how closely each individual’s rank ordering of statements matches those of the three factors – and, thus, how much each individual agrees or disagrees with the perspective represented by a factor. the degree to which an individual’s beliefs share features with a factor is represented by ‘factor loading scores’. a +1.00 indicates that a participant’s rank-ordering of statements exactly matched the factor, a 0 means that there were no similarities at all, and a –1.00 indicates that a participant’s rank-ordering was the exact opposite of the factor. in this study, four individuals did not load significantly on any factor. three individuals loaded significantly on two factors each, and an additional person loaded on all three factors. an additional individual had only a significant negative loading on one factor (which means significant disagreement with the factor). this suggests that these individuals expressed points of view that are unique and not captured by any of the three ‘ideal types’ emerging from this solution. source: authors’ questionnaire factor a 0.7482 0.7369 0.6842 0.6451 0.6278 0.5407 0.503 0.5003 0.4177 -0.3305 0.2958 0.1168 0.3538 -0.0562 0.1818 -0.0653 0.1499 -0.0243 0.3981 -0.0112 -0.0785 0.1705 0.302 0.0982 -0.1827 0.0552 -0.1138 0.265 factor b 0.0747 -0.054 -0.067 0.1235 0.0878 0.1191 0.1721 0.4547 0.6697 0.644 0.6263 0.5625 0.5076 0.4934 0.019 -0.4293 0.2 0.3852 -0.1319 -0.04 0.3475 0.4293 0.0178 -0.6097 -0.0743 0.3257 -0.1329 -0.069 factor c -0.1638 0.0877 0.1314 0.2249 0.4618 0.4865 0.4236 0.5085 0.2008 0.2821 0.06 0.1983 -0.1235 0.4847 0.7573 0.6865 0.6546 0.6262 0.5466 0.5041 0.503 0.4836 0.4712 0.3749 0.3198 0.1595 0.155 0.128 bureau air waste air air water air air waste air water water air air air air air water water waste air water water water waste water waste waste waste table 2: factor loading scores for individuals completing q sorts (n = 28)* * variance explained by factor solution is 15 percent for factor a, 13 percent for factor b, and 17 percent for factor c. bolded factor scores are significant at 95 percent confidence. 0.4360 loading score is 5 percent significance for flagging factor. tuler, langkulsen, chess, & vichit-vadakan health and environmental risk communication in thailand aseas 5(1) 62 63 perspective 1: pcd risk communication requires resources to reduce conflict this factor represents a perspective on the role of pcd risk communication to reduce conflict (3).6 as the focus is on reducing conflict, the pcd should not take sides – or be perceived as taking sides in disputes (22). instead it should coordinate with private organisations about the information given to communities in order not to confuse them (12) and use the best available science (23). in some cases, this may mean going beyond what is required by law and regulation in communication activities (9). furthermore, the pcd should not attempt to mobilise communities to demand better pollution controls and reduction (17) or just focus on community leaders (while ignoring the residents, 29) because both of these could be perceived as taking sides. the pcd does not need to explain what the agency or industry is doing and why they are doing it (10, 11). to achieve risk communication goals, there is a recognised need for high-level commitment from pcd senior management (16, 30), financial and staff resources (31), and efforts to improve the capacities of pcd staff (18). those who subscribe to this perspective are ambivalent about the creation of a new office with expertise on risk communication to support the activities of the bureaus (34). to design its communication activities, the pcd should listen carefully to what people worry about (5) and then use the best science available (23) to help improve understandings and address their worries. there is a sense that local community residents are capable of understanding pollution and risk problems (2). however, it would be wrong to provide any information local residents want (7) because this could lead to confusion (12) if pcd communications goes beyond the facts. perspective 2: pcd risk communication should focus on science the focus of this perspective is on risk communication that improves people’s understandings of the science about risks, pollution control, and pollution mitigation (8, 24). in keeping with the focus on science, it is critically important that the information provided to the public should be based on the best available science (23). an effective way of improving understandings is to explain information about pollution and risk by comparing levels to standards (20) and to tailor communications to 6 in the following, narrative description numbers in parentheses refer to q statement numbers in table 1. aseas 5(1) 62 63 the specific local situation (13). this means that the pcd should strive to understand what local people know (6) and if people make a good argument, pcd should be willing to change a project, programme, or activity (35). however, the pcd’s mission should also be limited. the communications of the pcd should focus narrowly on pollution levels and risk. communication activities should not emphasise education of community residents about environmental threats to health (4), should not give them all the information they want (7), and should not mobilise communities to demand better pollution control and reduction (17). to achieve the goal of improving understandings about pollution risks and mitigation strategies, pcd risk communication programmes should be closely coordinated with other agencies and the private sector (12, 33). the pcd should be careful not to confuse community residents (and leaders) with communication activities (12, 29). while the pcd can always benefit from more scientific expertise, it already has enough ‘in house’ to ensure effective communications (32) and there is no need at this time to create an office with expertise on communication to support the activities of the bureaus (34). perspective 3: pcd risk communication strives to solve environmental health problems those who subscribe to this perspective believe that the pcd and local communities should work together to solve environmental problems in the local areas (1). in keeping with the problem-solving mission, pcd should inform communities about what it is doing (10) and tell people how to protect themselves (15). to improve collaboration, the pcd risk communication programmes should be designed to educate people about environmental threats to health (4) in ways that correct misunderstandings (8). the focus on environmental health means that risk communication activities should go beyond a focus on pollution levels and risk. this means that pcd must often communicate more than what is required by law and regulation (9). in order to determine what information to communicate, pcd communication activities should include activities designed to help the pcd’s officials understand what local people know (6), and communication activities should be tailored to the specific local situation (13). however, while attempting to be responsive to questions, comments, and requests from the public (14, 29), the pcd should not just simply give people any information they want (7). tuler, langkulsen, chess, & vichit-vadakan health and environmental risk communication in thailand aseas 5(1) 64 65 those who subscribe to this perspective believe that the pcd has the capacity to achieve these goals. thus, there is no need for pcd to invest more time, money, and staff for successful communication with the public (31), or develop more scientific expertise (32). there is some feeling that the pcd might benefit from a modest investment in gathering information from the public to help scientists and regulators do a better job (19) and in programmes that help pcd officers communicate better with each other (30). this leads to some ambivalence among those subscribing to this perspective about whether the pcd should create an office with expertise on communication to support the activities of the bureaus (34). discussion before a more detailed discussion of our results is given, it is prudent to point out the limitations of our study. the chief caveat has to do with the generalisability of our findings. because of the design of our study, it is not possible to generalise from our research participants to the pcd as a whole. in q methodology, researchers do not select a random sample of the population but instead they use a purposive sampling approach. in this case, our intent was to select people from different bureaus and different organisational levels who have had experience with risk communication activities. we do not know if this is a representative sample of pcd officers. consequently, we cannot use these findings to draw conclusions about how other people think within pcd. we can, however, make inferences or develop new hypotheses. in addition, our q method results are premised on the assumption that we sufficiently identified the bulk of diverse perspectives about risk communication. if we missed one or more important perspectives among the research subjects, then our q results could be incomplete. another limitation is that the study does not allow conclusions to be drawn about why particular individuals subscribe to these different ideal types. people may subscribe to different perspectives because of their past experiences, the kinds of problems they work on, or other factors (tuler & webler, 2010). while q studies have, like all research methods, limitations, it is a technique that makes it an appealing approach for investigating subjective attitudes and beliefs on an issue or topic. first, it allows participants to define their own viewpoints. second, aseas 5(1) 64 65 it is a technique that forces people to prioritise their preferences in a way that is challenging with interviews or focus groups. third, q method can clarify areas of agreement and disagreement by putting people’s views in the larger context of their overall viewpoint. fourth, it summarises the many viewpoints held by individuals into a few shared perspectives. finally, it is appropriate for situations where the number of people involved is small; surveys are not appropriate for small samples. with these strengths and limitations of the study design in mind, we now turn to four key observations that emerge from our empirical results. first, the three perspectives were distinguished by many beliefs in common. important areas of agreement are that: • pcd should gather information about potential audiences for external communication activities. this can be to learn about their concerns and understandings to both improve pcd activities and to identify areas of misunderstanding. • it is important to tailor external communication activities to the context of the situation. • the pcd should use the best available science to provide information in its communication activities. • the pcd should not provide any information that is requested by local communities, but rather should only provide information for which there is scientific support (statement 7). • it would be a mistake for the pcd to focus on local leaders, rather than the whole community when it gives out information or asks for input (statement 29). second, perspectives emphasise different goals for risk communication. perspective 1 represents the view that pcd risk communication should be used to reduce conflict (statement 3). perspective 2 represents a view that pcd should focus risk communication activities on improving people’s understandings of the science about risks, pollution control, and pollution mitigation. finally, perspective 3 emphasises collaboration to solve pollution problems. what is not clear is why different goals are emphasised. two possible explanations are that 1) different respondents are thinking of different kinds of situations or that tuler, langkulsen, chess, & vichit-vadakan health and environmental risk communication in thailand aseas 5(1) 66 67 2) there is a lack of consensus within pcd about goals of risk communication. as research and practice in europe and the united states strongly emphasise that risk communication activities should be tailored to specific situations, if respondents’ differences result from varying perceptions of the context, then such differences would be appropriate. however, this study does not provide sufficient data to understand the real reason for these differences. in spite of our caveats above about limitations, the data do suggest – as shown in table 3 – that preferences for a perspective are not associated with working duration in a particular bureau or organisational level of the officer (senior, medium, or junior). practitioners and experienced pcd officers may not be surprised to find that people develop very different ideas about goals and mechanisms for communication with external stakeholders. one interesting observation is the relative absence of senior officers associated with perspective 3, which represents a more problem solving approach (only 1 out of 8). in addition, we gathered data about years of employment in pcd and the number of cases in which an officer was involved with risk communication. the individuals associated with perspective 3 have worked somewhat fewer years at pcd, however, the significance of this association is not known. third, because they emphasise different goals, the three perspectives suggest different content and ways of communicating messages. perspective 1 emphasises reduction of conflict, and thus it also highlights the need on occasion to go beyond what is required by law and regulation in communication activities. by focusing on improving understandings, perspective 2 highlights the need for risk communication messages to focus on pollution levels and risk and to use standards as a basis for comparing what is safe versus what is not safe. in contrast to perspective 2, perspective 3 wants to provide information that can inform and empower local communities (statement 15), by, for example, educating people about environmental threats to health (statement 4). fourth, the perspectives reflect different beliefs about the pcd’s capacity for risk communication, the need to invest more commitment and resources to develop capacity, and whether a new office focusing on external communications should be created. table 4 summarises the viewpoints expressed by each of the perspectives about these matters. perspective 1 has the highest rankings for all statements about the need for more commitment and aseas 5(1) 66 67 resources to develop more capacity. both perspectives 2 and 3 represent views that the pcd already has the capacity to design and implement successful risk communications with external stakeholders. it is not surprising then that they also represent a view that there is no need for substantial new resources devoted to helping pcd develop more scientific expertise (about risk communication). perspectives 1 and 3 suggest some ambivalence about whether the pcd should create a new office with expertise on risk communication to support the activities of the bureaus (statement 34). those who subscribe to perspective 3 have the fewest years working for the pcd and have participated in the fewest number of projects involving risk communication. the problem solving perspective also consists of mainly middle managers and staff. while these associations should be treated with caution, they may suggest that those with less experience believe in a need for more training and support. perspective 2 is more strongly opposed to the idea of creating a new office, even though it also has the most negative view about the effectiveness of pcd communications with other groups. perspective 2 also represents the weakest support for having pcd managers who make communication with communities an important priority (statement 16). number of individuals loading significantly on factor* number from air bureau number from water bureau number from waste bureau average (and median) years worked at pcd average (and median) number of projects involving risk communication 1 8 5 1 2 14.75 (16) 16.75** (4.5) 2 7 4 2 1 14.5 (15) 6 (4) 3 13 5 6 2 9.53 (10) 4.46 (3) table 3: summary of results * four individuals loaded on more than one factor. four individuals did not load significantly on any factor. one individual had only a significant negative loading on one factor (which means significant disagreement with the factor). ** the average for perspective 1 is skewed because one individual responded with ‘100+’ projects. eliminating this outlier, the average # of projects involving risk communication is comparable across all three perspectives. source: authors’ questionnaire perspective tuler, langkulsen, chess, & vichit-vadakan health and environmental risk communication in thailand aseas 5(1) 68 69 insights and recommendations about risk communication practice in thailand the purpose of this study was to investigate the range of views among pcd officers about 1) the important goals that should be achieved in communication activities with external stakeholders, 2) who the external stakeholders are, and 3) what kinds of information should be provided. this study contributes to a small literature investigating the organisations responsible for risk communication (e.g. chess & clarke, 2007; chess & johnson, 2006; o’neill, calia, chess, & clarke, 2007; shaw & johnson, 1990; shen, 2010) and provides insight into the views of agency officers and staff in thailand about health and environmental risk communication. we focused on the people responsible for managing and carrying out activities involving risk communication. in the pcd and more widely among thai government agencies with responsibilities for public and occupational health, there is little explicit focus on risk communication as a core responsibility. yet, officers and staff need to develop capacity 18. the pcd staff should learn to communicate better with community residents. 19. the pcd should gather information from the public that will help scientists and regulators do a better job. 32. the pcd should have more scientific expertise invest more commitment and resources 16. the pcd managers should make communication with the community an important priority. 30. a commitment to programmes should be made that help pcd officers communicate better with each other. 31. pcd should invest the time, money, and staff needed for successful communication with the public. create new office? 34. pcd should create an office with expertise on communication to support the activities of the bureaus. a 4 -1 0 3 2 3 1 b -1 0 -2 0 0 -1 -3 c 0 -2 -3 2 -2 -3 -1 table 4: suggestions about pcd capacity for risk communication factor source: authors’ questionnaire aseas 5(1) 68 69 are frequently called upon to be risk communicators and design risk communication activities. they bear the responsibility of determining what is needed in particular contexts to achieve communication goals. even without explicit rules and procedures, staff and officers are likely to act in ways that are significantly influenced by their job descriptions, organisational incentives, and cultural values and social norms (chess & johnson, 2006; o’neill et al., 2007). in this case we mean cultural values and social norms in both organisational and national contexts. such values and norms may promote certain behaviours, such as overly reassuring messages that observers identify in thai crisis communications, which are contrary to guidance about risk communication practice (lanard & sandman, 2011). they may also foretell why advice based on european and us experience may go unheeded. for example, advice to apologise and explain past mistakes (as recommended by lanard & sandman, 2011) may be difficult for government officers to follow in a culture where saving face and avoiding conflict are important values. while there are many points of agreement among the respondents, it is also clear that there are some important areas of difference. in particular, officers at all level lack a consensus on the goals of communication activities with external stakeholders. we are not saying, however, that lack of agreement reflects a problem. rather, it is important to acknowledge that such differences may be a result of different needs in different communication contexts. in fact, many officers believe that risk communication activities should be tailored to specific situations and audiences. on the other hand, many pcd officers participating in the study have received no training for risk communication, had relatively little experience with risk communication activities, expressed a strong sentiment that more effort should be placed on developing skills and knowledge among officers and staff, agreed that pcd managers should make risk communication an important activity, and believed that pcd communications with the public and ngos are not as effective as desired. to improve practice and congruence between agency missions and communication activities, organisations frequently provide managers and staff with training and resources. the results of this study indicate that many pcd officers and staff believe that training for risk communication would be beneficial. however, there has been little effort to investigate the impact of training efforts on the improvement of organisational risk communication capacities. tuler, langkulsen, chess, & vichit-vadakan health and environmental risk communication in thailand aseas 5(1) 70 71 although many federal and state agencies have conducted risk communication training, there are no peer-reviewed assessments. anecdotal reports focus on participant satisfaction, rather than changes in knowledge, let alone changes in agency practice. thus, despite consultants’ promotion of the importance of training, there is no evidence about its value. 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(1989). improving risk communication. washington, dc: national academy press. tuler, langkulsen, chess, & vichit-vadakan health and environmental risk communication in thailand research on south-east asia in austria: the department of east asian studies at the university of vienna aseas 6(2) 391390 d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -6 .2 -1 1 netzwerk südostasien / network south-east asia research on south-east asia in austria: the department of east asian studies at the university of vienna alfred gerstl1 citation gerstl, a. (2013). research on south-east asia in austria: the department of east asian studies at the university of vienna. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 6(2), 391-394. the department of east asian studies at the university of vienna was established on january 1, 2000 by merging the institutes of sinology and japanese studies. initially comprising the pillars sinology, japanese, and korean studies, the fourth pillar, the chair of east asian economy and society (ecos), was established in 2007. the first head of department was erich pilz (2000–2001), followed by sepp linhart (2001–2012), both leading researchers on japanese history, society, and culture. the current head is rüdiger frank (since 2012), specialized in east asian politics and economics, in general and north korea, in particular. in addition to six professors, the department of east asian studies currently has a staff of about 50 permanent and temporary researchers and lecturers (institut für ostasienwissenschaften der universität wien, 2001–2013). in addition to language courses, the disciplines sinology, japanology, and koreanology offer strong social and cultural science studies. ecos focuses on current political, security, and economic relations in east asia and the respective national political and economic systems. the department of east asian studies applies a broad area definition of east asia by incorporating north-east and south-east asia. in this context, south-east asia, in particular the role of the association of southeast asian nations (asean) in promoting east asian regionalism, has always figured prominently in the respective ecos courses. yet, in order to demonstrate the growing international relevance of this region, it has been a strategic aim of rüdiger frank to institutionalize south-east asian studies at the ecos department to complement its range. in october 2013, the position of a university assistant at the postdoc level was created. two 1 alfred gerstl is a political scientist and currently postdoc researcher at the department of east asian studies, university of vienna. he was aseas editor-in-chief from 2008 to 2010 and focuses on international relations and the political and economic systems in south-east asia. contact: alfred.gerstl@univie.ac.at aseas 6(2) 393392 university assistants (praedoc) and one study assistant, concentrating on north-east asia, complete the ecos team. overall, the teaching and research program at ecos reflect the interconnectedness of north-east and south-east asia. for instance, two key areas of research are state socialist systems (notably china, north korea, and vietnam) and climate change, the environment, and energy. since october 2008, ecos offers a four-semester master of arts (ma) as well as a phd course on east asian economy and society. since an adaption of the curriculum in 2011, the ma is offered exclusively in english, and south-east asia features explicitly as an area of research in addition to the north-east asian countries china, japan, and the two koreas. the master course promotes the interand transdisciplinary comparative analysis of international relations and of domestic politics and economics in the region in the twentieth and twenty-first century. in their master thesis, students have to compare specific topics in at least two countries, either in northor south-east asia. the program provides students with a broad range of possibilities to specialize in topics of their choice. in addition, students have to acquire basic language skills in an east asian language, particularly in chinese, japanese, or korean. an admission requirement is a bachelor or an equivalent college or university degree; eligible majors are, for instance, japanese, korean, and chinese studies, (international) business studies, or political science. the five core modules are contemporary east asian language, east asian economy, east asian politics, east asian society and research, and master’s colloquium. due to the popularity of the program in other european but also east asian countries, student numbers have far exceeded the initial planning for 25 students per study year (217 master students in the summer term 2013). due to the shortage in staff, room, and teaching resources, the rectorate decided to introduce admission requirements, starting with winter term 2013/2014. since then, students have to apply for admission to ecos; inter alia, they have to submit a demanding letter of motivation, detailing their research interests and goals after graduation. each study year, 25 students from all over the world are admitted to the masters program, guaranteeing an optimum staff-student ratio. aseas 6(2) 393392 the department’s south-east asia focus research on south-east asia at the chair of east asian economy and society concentrates on three main areas. the aim is to implement these research fields on multiple levels, notably promoting master and phd theses and research projects. the first field is asean’s centrality in shaping east asian regionalism through trans-regional institutions such as asean plus three, the asean regional forum, and the east asia summit, applying neorealist, neoliberal as well as constructivist approaches. both the association’s internal integration process, notably the asean community (to be established in 2015), and asean’s relations with the neighboring north-east asian countries are analyzed. thereby, the role of institutions as well as of formal and informal norms and values are examined with regard to their potential to promote collaboration in the region. a second area of research are the territorial disputes in the south china sea which is, due to its vast oil and gas resources and global importance as a shipping lane, a regional flashpoint. directly involved in this highly complex judicial, political, and economic conflict are china, taiwan, vietnam, the philippines, malaysia, and brunei, indirectly the united states, japan, russia, and india. in addition to the arguments and concrete policies of the claimant states, a special interest rests on the reasons for asean’s low profile in this conflict. the third focus is the gradually changing notion of security in south-east asia from a traditional state-centric towards a human security perspective. previous research was conducted by ecos staff on the asean intergovernmental commission on human rights (aichr) and climate change and counter-terrorism policies. it has shown that despite a human security rhetoric with reference to the endangered security of individual citizens – and a more prominent role of national and transnational human rights ngos – the south-east asian governments still prioritize state and regime security (gerstl, 2010; gerstl, 2012; gerstl & helmke, 2012). out of the 20 master theses submitted in 2011/2012, five explicitly dealt with south-east asian topics in a comparative or transnational perspective: democracy in south-east asia; social and welfare states in hong kong, singapore, south korea, and taiwan; foreign corporate entrepreneurship in china and vietnam; tourism management strategies in china and thailand; vietnam, the philippines, and china in the alfred gerstl the department of east asian studies at the university of vienna aseas 6(2) 395394 south china sea conflict. as northand south-east asia’s economic importance for europe is steadily growing, graduates who have obtained strong analytical and methodological skills during the program find jobs in private business or banks, others pursue an academic career. references gerstl, a. (2010). the depoliticisation and ‘aseanisation’ of counter-terrorism policies in south-east asia: a weak trigger for a fragmented version of human security. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 3(1), 48–75. gerstl, a. (2012). human security and china ś rise as triggers for regional and intra-regional cooperation in and between southeast and northeast asia. thammasat review, 15, [special issue on human rights], 131-156. gerstl, a., & helmke, b. (2012). the association of southeast asian nations (asean) and climate change: a threat to national, regime and human security (pp. 135–156). in ben teh cheng guan (ed.), human security: securing east asia ś future. dordrecht, netherlands: springer. institut für ostasienwissenschaften der universität wien. (2001-2013). institutsberichte 2001–2013. universität wien. turning red rural landscapes yellow sufficiency economy and royal projects in the hills of nan province, northern thailand aseas 5(2) 275274 aktuelle südostasienforschung / current research on south-east asia turning red rural landscapes yellow? suffi ciency economy and royal projects in the hills of nan province, northern thailand amalia rossi1 citation rossi, a. (2012). turning red rural landscapes yellow? sufficiency economy and royal projects in the hills of nan province, northern thailand. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 5(2), 275-291. this paper discusses the eff orts of the royal family to moralise the environmental behaviour of their subjects in the name of the suffi ciency economy philosophy solicited by king bhumibol since the 1990s in thailand. drawing on ethnographic fi eldwork conducted in nan province, northern thailand, in 2008 and 2009, i focus particularly on royal projects recently promoted to correct the rural practices of the ethnic minority groups living in the hills of nan. in the past, many of these ethnic groups took part in the maoist insurgency while at present, they represent a key basin of supporters for the reformist red shirts movement which is currently threatening the role of the monarchy in thai politics. the research suggests that the recently increased trend of staging new projects for sustainable agro-forestry management in a ‘red’ area as nan does not only aim at improving the conditions of mountain peoples and of the environment, but simultaneously increases the political infl uence of the conservative forces over this ‘ungovernable’ territory in times of political crisis. keywords: lua people; northern thailand; royal projects; suffi ciency economy; thai politics dieser artikel diskutiert die bemühungen der königlichen familie in thailand seit den 1990-er jahren, das umweltverhalten ihrer subjekte im namen der suffi ciency economy philosophie von könig bhumibol zu moralisieren. mit bezug auf ethnografi sche forschung in der provinz nan in nordthailand in den jahren 2008 und 2009 fokussiere ich insbesondere auf royal projects, die in letzter zeit gefördert werden, um ländliche praktiken ethnischer minderheiten in den bergen von nan zu korrigieren. in der vergangenheit waren viele dieser ethnischen gruppen am maoistischen aufstand beteiligt, während sie heute ein zentrales auff angbecken für unterstützerinnen der reformistischen rothemden, die derzeit die rolle der monarchie in der thailändischen politik in frage stellen, darstellen. die forschung deutet an, dass der trend zur einführung von neuen projekten für nachhaltigen feldwaldbau in einem „roten“ gebiet wie nan nicht nur die bedingungen von bergvölkern und ihrer umwelt verbessern will, sondern gleichzeitig den politischen einfl uss von konservativen kräften über „unregierbare“ gebiete in zeiten politischer krisen erhöht. schlagworte: lua; nordthailand; royal projects; suffi ciency economy; thailändische politik 1 amalia rossi got her phd in anthropology in 2012 at the department of human science of the university of milan -bicocca, italy. she has conducted fieldwork in northern thailand, mainly on public representations of nature and on socio-environmental movements. the author would like to thank two anonymous reviewers and oliver pye for their contribution to the improvement of the paper and their support for editing the text. contact: amalia.rossi79@gmail.com d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -5 .2 -6 aseas 5(2) 277276 introduction since the 1950s, king bhumibol adulyadej (rama ix) and other members of the royal family have funded a large number of rural development projects called royal projects. in northern thailand, the first projects targeted ethnic minorities living in the upland areas (the so-called ‘mountain people’ chao khao) and promoted programmes for opium eradication and substitution and health, educational, and infrastructural facilities. these projects can be seen in the context of counter-insurgency activities in the mountainous regions of northern thailand. rural development was designed to isolate the communist party of thailand (cpt) and to integrate the ethnic minorities into the nation state. in some ways, this strategy was successful, and the cpt gave up its armed struggle in 1982. ex-fighters were granted amnesty and tentatively assimilated back into mainstream thai society. however, over the last decade, thailand has seen a new political polarisation between the conservative yellow shirts movement and the reformist red shirts movement. the so-called yellow shirts movement (yellow being both the colour of the monarchy and of buddhism in the national imaginary) is a nationalist movement that seeks to restore and consolidate the power of the conservative forces (the monarchy, state bureaucracy – often headed by aristocrats – and the army). it rose in opposition to the figure of the reformist businessman and politician thaksin shinawatra and to his party, the thai rak thai (trt), the winner of national political elections in 2001 and 2005 (phongpaichit & baker, 2008). the yellow shirts accused thaksin of undermining the king, which was one justification for the coup d’état by the army that ousted thaksin in 2006 (connors, 2008; ungpakorn, 2007). in the years leading up to and after the coup d’état, a new spate of royal projects has been initiated in the region. ostensibly, the main focus has changed from irrigation and rural development to the promotion of sustainable agriculture, the management of natural resources, and the protection of local biodiversity (supaporn, 2008), referring to king bhumibol’s philosophy of sufficiency economy as their ideological framework and inspiration. this article is based on ethnographic research of these new royal projects in the northern province of nan.2 it argues that the new spate of royal projects represents 2 i conducted fieldwork in this area from december 2007 to november 2009. the research was conducted within aseas 5(2) 277276 amalia rossi turning red rural landscapes yellow? an attempt by the conservative elite to counter the influence of the ousted prime minister thaksin shinawatra and the red shirts movement in nan. the projects and the class differences between the project developers and those to be developed highlight the social and cultural gulf between the royalist yellow shirts and thaksinsupporting red shirts in contemporary thailand. the past and present political background of the province invites to map connections between two current parallel trends: the strongly publicised royal interest in sustainable natural resource management of the nan river basin and the ‘yellow’ imperative to consolidate the presence of conservative forces in politically sensitive (‘red’) areas. i will evoke some elements of the cultural and political impact of royal projects in nan, keeping in mind that in this area development projects have often had political and military vested interests. therefore, i first analyse the localisation of royal projects in nan in the name of the king’s sufficiency economy philosophy that has been reshaping the expressive horizon of those non-farmers (ngo workers, bureaucrats, civil servants) since 2000. then, i briefly describe the social environment shared by upland and lowland farmers and the tendential response of these socio-economic groups to sufficiency economy and to alternative development devices triggered by ngos, royal projects, and the state. finally, i discuss the social and political impact of two royal projects recently implemented in nan. from red to red. the politicisation of rural development in nan province nan province, in the most eastern part of northern thailand and at the border with laos, is a sparsely populated part of the country. only about 500,000 people live in the valley along the nan river and in the mountain ranges on both sides of the river. this geography is reflected in the ethnic make-up. those living in the valley call themselves khon muang (literally ‘people of the city’) and tend to consider themselves as descending from the ethnic t’ai colonisers. the lowlanders call the mountaindwellers a generic chao khao (‘mountain people’ – but also ‘the others’, see forsyth the phd programme in anthropology of the university of milan-bicocca, italy. the article draws partly on my phd dissertation (rossi, 2012). the data presented here result from a multi-sided ethnographic approach, entailing the intermittent frequenting and the participant observation of about a dozen different key locations in the northeastern districts of nan province. the reported interviews have been selected among more than a hundred open and semi-structured interviews to subjects directly involved in agro-forestry development activities (mainly farmers, ngo leaders, conservationist monks, public officers, and managers of royal development projects). aseas 5(2) 279278 & walker, 2008, p. 59), although they are made up of various different ethnic or language groups such as the mon-khmer speaking minorities lua, htin, khamu, mlabri, and the hmong and mien groups (davis, 1984; delcore, 2008; rossi, 2012). the mountainous terrain, the social and political marginality, and the ethnic diversity of upland nan province was conducive to armed guerrilla warfare, and nan became a stronghold of the cpt during the 1970s. “most of the province [was] cpt controlled” (de beer, 1978, p. 147) in the mid-1970s, and the maoist peoples liberation army of thailand (plat) established ‘liberated red villages’ in the mountains. many ethnic groups like hmong, mien, and lua took part in the maoist army to gain autonomy from the central powers. the recruitment strategies of the plat were based on ethnic criteria: the hmong were the first to join the guerrilla, while lua – the largest minority in nan province – and groups of t’ai khon muang (both yuan and t’ai lue, the dominant ethnic groups in the region living by the valley plains), followed (sathyawadhna, 1991). members of the student movement from chiang mai, bangkok, and other cities found political and material support from chao khao groups when hundreds of them decided to join the guerrilla in the jungle after the military repression of the democratic triennium (1973-1976) (morell & samudavanija, 1981; wyatt, 1982/2003). the counter-insurgency strategy of the army included bombing ‘red’ villages or forcibly evacuating and resettling their inhabitants (de beer, 1978, p. 147). this was flanked by rural development programmes that were basically driven by security issues and not by social and environmental ones. at that time, the promotion of agricultural and infrastructural modernisation in thailand was one of the main tools by which the government, intermittently represented by army generals loyal to the crown, tried to contain the spread of communism. accelerated rural development (ard), combining agricultural extension and infrastructural projects, was promoted to relieve the economic condition of the rural working classes and to prevent t’ai and chao khao farmers from joining the guerrilla forces (charoensin-o-larn, 1988, pp. 203-232). this especially happened in ‘red’ liberated areas such as nan, where ard programmes, conceived under the guidance of the us intelligence, were implemented by the army in areas where communist ‘terrorists’ were believed to operate (marks, 2007). in this context, royal projects can be seen as part of a consolidated state strategy to contain the economic discontent among farmers (both chao khao and khon aseas 5(2) 279278 amalia rossi turning red rural landscapes yellow? muang), who have been chronically disappointed by incomplete, awkward, and lowly publicised land reforms that systematically left the majority without property rights on the land (kemp, 1971; leonard & na ayutthaya, 2005). in the 1970s, royal projects mainly consisted of irrigation, weir and dam-building projects, and of crop conversion projects that were supposed to eradicate poppy cultivation. perhaps most spectacular was the queen sirikit dam on the nan river – a symbol of national development that was completed in 1972. other small royal projects were promoted during the guerrilla in the western part of the province (being the eastern part of the nan basin in turmoil). these projects that included the construction of schools, roads, and water management facilities had been implemented since the 1960s, and their number increased especially in the late 1970s, when the terrorist guerrilla seemed to become a revolution (the office of his majesty’s principle private secretary, 1982). according to a recent book, the official definition of a royal project is a group of organizations joined by the common purpose of realizing the king’s vision for the thai highlands. in this scene the royal project is an informal network of numerous organizations both national and international. the first and most important group involved in the royal project is the hill-tribe farmers themselves. not only are they the beneficiaries of the work done by the project, but they are also the ones who actually do the most of the work. (wichai, phunthisung, & luang, 2007, p. 55) in nan, the ‘hill-tribes’, mainly represented by mon-khmer speaking minorities such as the lua, were a particular target of the royal projects. following the “strategy of peace” enacted to stop the insurgence (law 66/23 of 1980), captured and surrendered maoist comrades were formally defined as ‘co-operators for the development of the nation’ (pu ruam patthana chat thai, known as phorotho). the memory of the recent past, thus, still operates through this network of guerrilla veterans: the phorotho initiatives (conferences, workshops, seasonal camps) provide an important identity marker for many lua (but also hmong, mien, and khon muang) individuals and families that live on the hills of nan province today. the network, indeed, led to the establishment of solidarity relations among former comrades and among their descendents all over thailand. the amnesty for communist insurgents and the defeat of the cpt can be seen as a victory of the thai military and monarchy over the first ‘red’ areas. however, in the 1980s and 1990s, old problems continued, and new conflicts over land and forest resources emerged. after logging in nan had been encouraged by the army to prevent the spread of the guerrillas in the forest (an experience relayed to me in many interaseas 5(2) 281280 views with conservationist monks and lay activists in the province), the logging ban issued in 1989 (lakanavichian, 2001) and new national parks created a conservation legislation that was primarily targeted against farmers and ‘hill-tribes’ (pye, 2005). in santisuk district, for example, near the doi phu kha national park, many farmers were encouraged to cultivate genetically modified maize on the forested hills under the contract farming regime promoted by the converging interests of state ministries and large agro-business corporations such as charoen pokhpand (cp). these farmers often fell in a spiral of debt, and their families were impoverished by this system. they were not the legal owners of the land they farmed, and they had to pay their debts with local entrepreneurs and with the bank of agriculture, which seasonally provided the chemical stocks of fertilisers and pesticides and genetically modified seeds for maize farming. to repay their debts, farmers encroached into forest areas to establish new cultivations and came into conflict with the park authorities. this situation is common all over northern thailand, particularly for the chao khao of this and other provinces (rossi, 2012). poverty, landlessness, and negative experiences with government agencies such as the royal forest department were all reasons for the popularity of thaksin shinawatra, who offered different kinds of development possibilities with programmes such as debt moratoriums, micro-credit for rural investment (the one-million-bahtprogramme), and the 30-baht universal health care scheme (phongpaichit & baker, 2009). during my fieldwork i could experience the widespread appreciation for the red shirts and for the ousted ex-prime minister thaksin shinawatra. in the eastern area of the upper nan river basin (santisuk, pua, bo kluea, and chaolerm phrakiert districts), many farmers declared to me to feel largely satisfied with the social and economic policies promoted under the government of thaksin. due to the widespread discontent of the rural population and the hope (sustained by thaksin) to take part in a wider society of consumption, during the decade 20002010, in nan, a general sympathy for the red shirts movement among a wide range of socio-economic profiles (farmers, urban and rural workers, both chao khao and khon muang, small and large entrepreneurs, students) was tangible and has in many ways replaced the widespread support for the cpt. a crucial factor (reported to me by key activists of the hug muang nan foundation and by local leaders) is that the cpt veteran network phorotho, which is particularly popular in northern and northaseas 5(2) 281280 amalia rossi turning red rural landscapes yellow? eastern thailand, counts many supporters of the radical wing of the red shirts movement today. among the dozens of rural workers i interviewed (both khon muang and lua, men and women) somebody even argued continuity between thaksin’s welfare policies and the communist aspiration of egalitarian distribution of wealth among different classes. the royal projects and counter-insurgency rural development could not prevent this turn, full circle, “from red to red” (kitiarsa, 2012). sufficiency economy and the new royal projects in nan in 1997, the year the financial crisis hit the thai economy and the urban and rural working classes, king bhumibol announced his concern for the development model embraced by thailand and spoke out for a radical change. in a now famous speech, he emphasised the necessity for what he called a sufficiency economy (settakit po piang in thai). in his opinion, thai individuals, families, and communities should focus on the satisfaction of their basic needs through their own production and consumption of local natural resources. moderation and reasonability should drive the thai people’s economic choices before possibly, and not necessarily, engaging in risky investments in the globalised market economy (grossman & faulder, 2012, pp. 265-279). the sufficiency economy model was immediately taken up by government agencies but lost real influence under the successful economic policies of the thaksin government that stressed mildly keynesian investment strategies as a way out of the crisis. however, after the coup d’état, sufficiency economy resurfaced as the main ideological flagship of the conservative forces. in 2007, it was included in the new constitution as a fundamental guideline in economic, social, and environmental policies and in open opposition to thaksin reformism. substantially, the doctrine was shaped along the lines of a buddhist moral economy as propagated by foreign and indigenous eco-buddhist movements, schools of thought, and lay and ordained intellectuals (rossi, 2012, forthcoming). the sufficiency economy model was even declared to be a key tool for the social development of thai society by the united nations development programme (undp, 2007). in 2007, the ministerial office of environmental quality promotion even adopted the slogan: yut lok roon, chai settakit po piang (stop global warming, use sufficiency economy), stressing the positive environmental impact of the king’s economic philosophy on a global scale. aseas 5(2) 283282 during the decade 2000-2010, the king’s economic philosophy became the national brand of sustainable development and his majesty’s teachings are recalled all over the country through slogans on posters, stickers, tv, and radio advertisements and are explained in websites, video clips, and short films that publicise the king’s message. this regime of representation is nurtured with a visual imaginary centred on the presentation of didactic pictures and movies reproducing thai villages in a romanticised and static perfection. this imagery represents the ideal rural order as it is imaged by the royal elite and by institutions like the office of royal development projects and other foundations set up by members of the royal family. from the end of the 1990s onward, sufficiency economy has become the main mythomoteur of royal projects and other royal developmental initiatives. it has also become a key ideological framework for the activities of many ngos and public institutions engaged in land and forest issues. two new royal projects show how sufficiency economy is used as a development paradigm in nan: the phu payak-project initiated by the queen in 2005 and a new huge royal project initiated in 2009, called phid thong lang phra (ptlp). the idea underpinning these two (and many other similar) projects is to create pilot areas in which farmers can learn new models of natural resource management and take inspiration from the king’s sufficiency economy idea. the activities promoted in the queen’s project and ptlp are: 1) conversion of shifting monocrop cultivations (rice and maize) into sedentary multicrops (including fruits, vegetables, tea, and flowers); 2) substitution of agro-chemical stocks of fertilisers, pesticides, and seeds with biological stocks; 3) reforestation programmes; 4) terracing and planting vetiver stripes (to reduce the space for agriculture, to prevent soil erosion, and to pursue forest re-growth); 5) introduction of water management techniques to avoid floods and droughts; 6) collection, transformation, packaging, and commercialisation of agricultural products; and 7) tourist promotion of the pilot area. phu payak royal project in nan province, one of the best known and publicised royal projects is the one promoted at the border with laos in ban nam ri (khun nan sub-district, chaloerm phrakiet district) by queen sirikit, the king’s wife. the project has been baptised ‘staaseas 5(2) 283282 amalia rossi turning red rural landscapes yellow? tion for agricultural development according to the royal vision’ (sathanti patthana kasettakon phrarachadamri). phu payak used to be one of the hottest battlefields in nan province during the communist insurgency and the project is targeted towards chao khao communities who were resettled by the army during that time. the project seeks to provide technical advice and material support to local families through the mediation of technicians employed in research foundations and think tanks sponsored by the monarchy. local people from four villages around the core village of ban nam ri are hired to work within the project pilot area for a salary of about thb 100 (a little more than eur 2) per day. in nan town there is an elegant shop set up to publicise the queen’s project to thai tourists and to sell the project’s agricultural products which are neatly packaged and branded with the royal project logo. in the shop one can find the official brochure that explains the idea behind the project: on the 12th of july 2005, her majesty the queen travelled and posed her sight on the forested area around phu payak where serious problems with illegal cultivation [buk ruk] in the forest reserve still exist. . . . bun tap samuh, general of the thai army3, has been entrusted with the mission to develop – respecting the local people – a programme to solve the problems of water management following the royal inspiration. this aims to help the local people and to improve their livelihoods. . . . the [target] population is composed of thai people of the mountains [chao thai phukhao]. their prevalent occupation consists in shifting agriculture [luean loi], which is causing the progressive illegal occupation of the reserve [buk ruk] and forest destruction on the slopes. for these reasons soil erosion problems have occurred, with a globally bad impact on the local eco-systems. in this way the agricultural production has diminished. people have become poor and the quality of life is very low. (thai in the original, translation by author) the brochure exemplifies a recurrent rhetoric underpinning royal projects in the nan area. ethnic prejudice and political oblivion drive the mainstream discourse of the ‘developers’. information about lua is reduced to the fact that these ‘unlucky’ thai citizens are the authors of their own miserable condition and that fortunately, the royal family and the army will help them to adjust their ecological habitus. its depiction of the lua follows the ethnic scapegoating as environmental ‘villains’ encroaching on the forest otherwise applied to the hmong (forsyth & walker, 2008, p. 77). according to the experts involved in the management of these projects that i interviewed in september 2008 and in november 2009, the landscape forged by shifting agriculture is lambak (difficult), mai suaei (ugly), and mai tuk (wrong). lua are commonly defined by the developers as very slow in accepting the importance of trees 3 this general of the thai army is the most influential advisor of the queen and for several years led the army operations against the muslim separatist insurgence in southern thailand. aseas 5(2) 285284 and forests and adopting the thai concepts of development in their life. in nan, the hegemonic understanding of development is influenced by eco-buddhist narratives and practices. in this context, many lua (mon-khmer speaking groups) on the hills of nan do not practice buddhism, but the royal projects staff involves them in ecobuddhist ceremonies like the buad paa (tree consecration, see darlington, 1998). in royal projects it is common for them to receive training from buddhist monks on natural resource management. phid thong lang phra (ptlp) royal project the second and much larger project, the ptlp royal project (set up by managers of the doi tung royal projects of chiang rai and by the chai patthana fundation based in chiang mai) has targeted the whole upper basin of the nan river since 2009. its name refers to a popular saying about the practice of modesty (symbolised by the act of sticking golden sheets on the back of buddha statues) and consists of a highly structured environmental intervention that aims to build rice terraces, settle nomadic farmers, and replant the forest over a hilly area mainly populated by lua ex-communist resettled communities. the project will last at least ten years and will cover a sloped area of thousand hectares, the basin of the nan river. according to royal project managers and local urban environmental activists, this broad organisational enterprise will repair the hydrological balance of the nan river which is believed to be the main tributary of the chao phraya river. in the opinion of the project managers, this massive intervention will not only support the chao khao but is primarily aimed at protecting lowland agriculture and preventing floods and water scarcity in the central plain. the ptlp explicitly aims to involve the communist veteran network phorotho, with the help of army officials. this operation, once again framed by the sufficiency economy discourse and imagery, encourages the cooperation of the phorotho in mapping and managing the territory, thus helping other institutional actors in the management of the rich water and forest resources of the basin, damaged by shifting agriculture and maize plantations (rasakun, 2009). according to interviews conducted with activists from different organisations, farmers, village leaders, and students at the early stage of the project between sepaseas 5(2) 285284 amalia rossi turning red rural landscapes yellow? tember and october 2009, ptlp is intended to strengthen the political influence of the conservative forces on the ‘red’ territory of nan. the establishment of formal relations between the ptlp managers and operators and the phorotho was not considered a politically neutral strategy by the majority of my long-term and short-term informants. firstly, the increased number of new environmental projects in the name of sufficient economy implies a consistent flow of funding directed at local villages and sub-district leaders that will join the project. secondly, it will imply the physical presence of urban upper-class bureaucrats and technicians belonging to royal development institutions on the hills and will be monitored by the army. thirdly, the project aims to incorporate the local ngo and environmental activist networks into socio-environmental activities promoted by the royal project staff. this incorporation of environmental activists within the royal project and sufficiency economy framework is well underway. the most important example is the hug muang nan foundation, an eco-buddhist socio-environmentalist ngo founded in 1993 by the conservationist monk (phra nak anuraksa) phra khru pithak natakuhun, abbot of the wat aranyawat in nan town (darlington, 2000; delcore, 2000; rossi, 2008, 2012, forthcoming). until 2005, the hug muang nan foundation network tended to be independent from the royal initiatives but at the time of my fieldwork it was systematically embraced within the new royal projects programmes. royal project staff consistently asked and paid for advice and collaboration by religious and lay activists of the hug muang nan foundation network that in some cases have been hired and earn a salary as technicians, managers, and advisors within the royal projects. sufficiency economy is not sufficient – the limits of royal ideology despite the base of the royal project in royalist ideology and the repeated use of sufficiency economy philosophy imagery, the royal projects in nan show discrepancies between the royal project’s self-representation and local responses to it. i argue that the hiding or flattening of ethnic specificity, historical identity, and public dissent under ecological classifications reflect a bias that leads to a muted response. this can be seen by weak participation in the projects, a lack of self-confidence of participants, and an almost total absence of compliance towards the project by the target aseas 5(2) 287286 subjects. hegemonic socio-environmental projects can often be misunderstood and resisted by the beneficiaries. in part, this is due to the hierarchical nature of projects that are infused with an imagery of members of the royal family helping poor farmers and therefore prevent real participation. as reported by mr. a., an ex-employee of phu fa royal project (a project promoted by the princess sirindhorn in bo kluea district), this lack of interest is connected to the weakness of participation devices enacted within the phu payak and other royal projects: [the target population] doesn’t feel they are the owners of the project, but they feel that the owners of the project are people that they don’t know at all and who don’t give them a chance. this is a problem also in phu payak: when some budget is provided, farmers come to the project and join the activities, otherwise they don’t care for the project . . . actually, we should listen to them and ask what they exactly need. but experts from bangkok come to the project and tell them: “you must do this and that.” the project provides natural seeds and fertilisers for free to local farmers, but periodically these stocks deplete and the project goes short of funding from ministries and donors. (mr. a., santisuk district, personal communication, april 2009) even if participation and improvement of local costumes are explicit and highly publicised objectives, the removal of the target communities’ accurate ethnic profile and historical background characterises the ongoing construction of the public image of many royal projects environmental initiatives. beneficiaries are generally defined as thai citizens (chao thai), community (chumchon), tribe (pau), or population (ratatron). this lack of acknowledgement of local histories and identities matches with the lack of a reciprocal acknowledgement among the project’s experts and the target population. this situation produces niches of resistance. in phu payak, lua farmers hired by the project used to steal the empty packaging reporting the project logo to sell non-biological products grown in their own gardens (project manager in phu phayak, personal communication, september 2008). the beneficiaries of the project complained to me about the salary, which to them seemed too low, while other lua villagers complained about the fact that the project could not cope with the water scarcity around their settlement. hills in front of the beautifully shaped pilot areas are still seasonally burned to make space for monocrops, while farmers who accept to be part of the project do this just to get monetary and material support. only few people spontaneously adopt the royal model and go back to their previous habits as soon as the budget finishes. a more fundamental discrepancy is what walker (2008) calls the “elites’ misinterpretation” of the thai village economy, which is deeply embedded in the global market system. sufficiency economy emerges in awkward opposition to the rhetoric and practice aseas 5(2) 287286 amalia rossi turning red rural landscapes yellow? of material development pursued by the thai pro-monarchic governments during the cold war. thus, the philosophy has been embraced by bureaucratic elites in response to the business oriented policies sustained by an emergent class of politicians with important careers in the business sector (i.e. thaksin) but its projection onto rural lives is not reciprocated by the rural subjects themselves. this contradiction between urban fantasies of sufficiency economy and the real aspirations of the rural population is played out within the royal projects. in nan, different categories of ‘non-farmers’ are today working in training activities on sustainable techniques of natural resource management to improve the farmers’ situation. most of the ngo workers and state administrators i interviewed considered sufficiency economy as the key solution to farmers’ poverty and environmental degradation produced by slash and burn agriculture. these non-farmers involved in community development and sustainable agriculture implement dozens of educational projects around the province to teach rural workers about sufficiency economy principles. they are often urban educated people from the middle and upper classes, including technicians and directors of the local royal projects, managers of the office of agriculture of santisuk and nan. the royal project managers i met around the province were mainly male urban professionals from notable and aristocratic families, often specialised in the agro-forestry sector. when asked for an opinion on sufficiency economy, my informants among the farmers acknowledged the good intentions of the royal philosophy and were curious about the alternative practices promoted within royal projects, but most of them had the impression that “sufficiency economy is not sufficient” to relieve their economic condition. furthermore, some farmers looked at the intervention of urban administrators and ngo workers for educational and developmental purposes as an alien presence in their villages. i noticed a class fracture between developers and those ‘to be developed’ that in some ways reflected the ‘yellow’ versus ‘red’ conflict. farmers identified ngo workers and local bureaucrats as aligned with the conservative forces and some looked at them as people that get money from the state to tell us what to do, while the state gives us nothing. . . . at least, thaksin gave the budget directly to each village, and we knew perfectly what to do for our communities. (farmer, santisuk district, personal communication, october 2009). on a more explicitly political note, the presence of the army (royal thai army, 2011) monitoring socio-environmental ‘good practices’ entailed in the project activities, is aseas 5(2) 289288 a political fact that alone raises serious doubts about the political neutrality of royal socio-environmental projects in this area. today, nan province is recognised as a key bastion of the red shirts and was among the 15 provinces that experienced the enforcement of the emergency decree during the repression of the red shirts movement in may 2010 (nightwatch, 2010). the return of red shirt activists who experienced repression by the army may serve to reinforce the scepticism towards the ‘yellow’ royal projects. the election results from 2011, in which the thaksin party phuea thai won a resounding victory in all districts of nan, suggest that the royal projects have not been successful in turning the ‘red’ rural landscapes ‘yellow’. conclusion the recent bout of new royal projects in northern thailand needs to be understood within the changing and polarised political situation and represents an attempt to regain hegemony over the developmental discourse in rural thailand. key elements include the combination of traditionally prejudiced depictions of ethnic minorities in the uplands (forsyth & walker, 2008) within the sufficiency economy doctrine of the king, with an active developing role ascribed to state bureaucrats and the army. the biggest royal project to be introduced in nan province was the ptlp programme. if phu payak exemplifies the ‘old trend’ of controlling minorities by flattening ethnic and political identities under an ecological stigma (represented by slash and burn agriculture), ptlp combines this with the systematic attempt at incorporating civil society networks. in particular, the managers of the project try to do this by mobilising local networks of former communist comrades (and thus many lua) and by including the eco-buddhist socio-environmentalist network hug muang nan foundation. ptlp thus opens new trends in implementation strategies of royal projects. the ptlp project represents a large-scale strategy to win over rural populations in ‘red’ areas, proved by the fact of the intended implementation of ptlp programmes in yala and udon provinces respectively. yala is perceived as the core of the muslim contemporary insurgency in the south, and udon is considered the strongest ‘from red to red’ province in the northeast of thailand (isan). like these provinces, nan occupies a delicate position in the national political landscape and the co-optation aseas 5(2) 289288 amalia rossi turning red rural landscapes yellow? strategy triggered by ptlp – which today involves the whole civil society, both in urban and in rural milieus – is aimed at countering a stronghold of former communist resistance with many members of the red shirt phorotho. the new socio-environmental royal projects in nan are far from being politically neutral. behind a frame that emphasises ecologically sound approaches and the sustainable improvement of rural livelihoods, the proliferation of royal projects around the upper nan river basin in the decade 2000-2010 is an attempt to enforce the presence of conservative networks in a region that strongly supports the red shirts and the radical wing of the reformist movement. the strategy implies both de-politicisation and co-optation of local communities and networks. in this scenario, the environmental spectacle carried on within royal projects in nan not only offers new solutions to natural resources management in areas afflicted by shifting agriculture but works as an inclusive and soft strategy of conservative rule. however, after the violent repression of the red shirts in bangkok and their re-emergence as a powerful force after the 2011 election victory, it seems unlikely that the royal projects will be sufficient to reshape the ‘wrong’ and ‘red’ landscapes handcrafted by the chao khao lua and to re-colour them ‘yellow’. references charoensin-o-larn, c. (1988). understanding post war reformism in thailand. bangkok, thailand: editions dung kamol. connors, m. k. (2008). article of faith: the failure of royal liberalism in thailand. journal of contemporary asia, 38(1), 143-165. darlington, s. m. (1998). the ordination of a tree: the buddhist ecology movement in thailand. ethnology, 37(1), 1-15. darlington, s. m. (2000). rethinking buddhism and development. the emergence of the environmentalist monks in thailand. journal of buddhist ethics, 7, 1-14. davis, r. (1984). muang metaphysics. a study on northern thai myth and ritual. bangkok, thailand: pandora. de beer, p. (1978). history and policy of the communist party of thailand. journal of contemporary asia, 8(1), 143-157. delcore, h. d. (2000). localizing development. environment, agriculture and memory in northern thailand. phd dissertation, wisconsin-madison university, madison, wi. delcore, h. d. (2008). the racial distribution of privilege in a thai national park. journal of south east asian studies, 38, 183-205. aseas 5(2) 291290 forsyth, t., & walker, a. (2008). forest guardians, forest destroyers. the politics of environmental knowledge in northern thailand. chiang mai, thailand: silkworm books. grossman, n., & faulder, d. (eds.). (2012). king bhumibol adulyadej. a life’s work. thailand’s monarchy in perspective. bangkok, thailand: edition didier millet. kemp, j. h. (1971). legal and informal land tenures in thailand. modern asian studies, 15(1), 1-23. kitiarsa, p. (2012). from red to red. an auto-ethnography of economic and political transitions in a northeastern thai village. in m. j. montesano, pavin chachavalpongpun, & aekapol chongvilaivan (eds.), bangkok 2010. perspectives on a divided thailand (pp.230-247). chiang mai, thailand: silkworm books. lakanavichian, s. (2001). forest policy and history in thailand. bangkok, thailand: research centre on forest and people in thailand. leonard r., & na ayutthaya, k. n. (2005). thailand’s land titling program: securing land for the poor. in p. cuasay & c. vaddhanaphuti (eds.), commonplaces and comparisons: remaking eco-political spaces in southeast asia (pp.79-102). chiang mai, thailand: regional center for social science & sustainable development. marks, t. a. (2007). maoist people’s war in post-vietnam asia. bangkok, thailand: white lotus. morell, d., & samudavanija, c. (1981). political conflict in thailand. reform, reaction, revolution. cambridge, ma: oelgeschlager, gunn & hain. nightwatch. (2010, may 13). nightwatch 20100513. retrieved 29 november, 2012 from http://www.kforcegov.com/nightwatch/nightwatch_10000152.aspx phongpaichit, p., & baker, c. (2009). thaksin. chiang mai, thailand: silkworm books. pye, o. (2005). khor jor kor. forest politics in thailand. bangkok, thailand: white lotus editors. rasakun, s. (2009, april 5). reviving the fortunes of nan. the bangkok post. rossi, a. (2008) phra nak anurak. politica, religione e ambiente nella thailandia contemporanea. quaderni asiatici, 83, 135-156. rossi, a. (2012). l’ambiente come spettacolo. etnicità, sviluppo rurale e visioni politiche del paesaggio nel nord della tailandia (provincia di nan). phd dissertation, university of milan-bicocca, italy. rossi, a. (forthcoming). environmental subjects and displays of the political order: the case of the ecology monks in northern thailand. la ricerca folklorica. royal thai army. (2011). royal thai army in supporting of royal initiated projects. retrieved 29 november, 2012 from http://www.weloverta.org/eng/royal-thai-army-in-supporting-of-royal-initiated-projects sathyawadhna, c. (1991). the dispossessed. an anthropological reconstruction of lawa ethno-history in the light of their relationship with the tai. phd dissertation, australian national university, canberra, australia. supaporn, w. (2008). his majesty bhumibol adulyadej’s developement through built environment in thailand. paper presented at the 10th conference on thai studies, bangkok, thailand, january 8-11, 2008. the office of his majesty’s principle private secretary. (1982). illustrated handbook of projects undertaken through royal initiative. thailand: samnak ratchalekhathikan. ungpakorn, g. j. (2007). a coup for the rich. thailand political crisis. bangkok, thailand: workers democracy publisher. united nations development programme. (2007). thailand report on human development. sufficiency economy and human development. bangkok, thailand: undp. aseas 5(2) 291290 amalia rossi turning red rural landscapes yellow? walker, a. (2008). royal sufficiency and misinterpretation of rural livelihoods. paper presented at the 10th conference on thai studies, bangkok, thailand, january 8-11, 2008. wichai, s., phunthisung, p., & luang, k. (2007). the peach and the poppy. the story of thailand’s royal project. chiang mai, thailand: highland research and development institute. wyatt, d. k. (2003). thailand. a short history. chiang mai, thailand: silkworm books. (original work published 1982) filipin@ communities in austria: barrio fiesta sa vienna 2013 aseas 6(2) 375374 d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -6 .2 -9 südostasien sehen / south-east asia visually filipin@ communities in austria: barrio fiesta sa vienna 2013 bianca gantner1 & philip weninger2,3 citation gantner, b. & weninger, p. (2013). filipin@ communities in austria: barrio fiesta sa vienna 2013. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 6(2), 374-385. on july 22, 2013, the austrian-based filipin@4 communities got together on atv liesing sportplatz in order to celebrate the annual barrio fiesta in vienna. in the philippines, the term barrio describes all rural sub-units of municipalities that lie outside the poblacion (municipal center) as well as any sub-units of some smaller cities (romani, 1956). as ramon reyes, a philippine native, described during the event, barrio fiesta could be translated as ‘neighborhood party’: in the philippines, people love to gather together to enjoy these festivals that celebrate anything from weddings to holidays. no matter who you are or where you come from, everyone is welcome as a guest and active participant. (ramon reyes quoted in “barrio fiesta in vienna”, 2011) as mentioned in this quote, there are various occasions for such get-togethers. in the case of the viennese barrio fiesta, it is to commemorate the philippine independence from spain in 1898. according to the council of filipino associations in austria, which organizes the event in cooperation with the philippine embassy, the fiesta in the austrian capital is supposed to be the biggest one outside the philippines. with approximately 100 participating organizations and almost 6,000 participants from all over austria, slovenia, the slovak republic, germany, and italy, this seems likely. the filipin@’s account for 12,025 registered persons in austria, representing the biggest group of south-east asian migrants. official data of statistik austria (2011a) shows that in 2011, 7,522 persons who held an austrian citizenship but were born 1 bianca gantner finished her phd at the department of geography and regional research, university of vienna in 2012, focusing on south-east asia and tourism. her dissertation dealt with the role of the informal sector in the thai tourism industry. contact: bianca.gantner@gmx.at 2 philip weninger earned his master at the department of geography and regional research, university of vienna in 2010. his thesis focused on philippine migration and remittances. contact: philip.weninger@gmail.com. both authors are members of the „zentrum für österreichische und philippinische kultur und sprache“ (sentro ng kultura at wika ng austria at pilipinas). 3 picture 1, 2, 3, 4, 9 and 10 in the series of fotos at the end of the article were taken by christian namiss, who is a core team member and the webmaster of the „zentrum für österreichische und philippinische kultur und sprache“ (http://www. zentrum-oep.at/). all other picures were taken by the authors. 4 the term filipin@ refers to male and female persons of philippine origin. aseas 6(2) 375374 in the philippines (2,160 male and 5,326 female) and 4,506 (1,895 male and 2,611 female) philippine citizens were registered in austria (second-generation not included). the strong presence of female migrants is related to the international migration of (mainly female) philippine nursing staff to austria since the 1960s. later on, family reunification as well as marriage-related migration had an impact. with 8,517 persons, the majority of the 12,025 so-called pinoys5 are living in vienna (statistik austria, 2011b). for most of the philippine migrants, social ties and networks play a vital role in their occupational and private life, which is also reflected in the high number of philippine associations and organizations. the strong organization in associations is a quite specific criterion of filipin@ migrants compared with other south-east asian communities in austria. while some of the organizations stand for regions of origin of their members (e.g. igorot-cordillera austria) or target areas (e.g. philippine association in niederösterreich [lower austria]), others represent interest groups (e.g. filipino basketball in wien [vienna]; philippine nurses association-austria) or religious organizations (e.g. vienna christian center – filipino fellowship). according to an information website for filipino overseas workers (ofw), there are more than fifty (50) organizations, clubs and associations of filipinos or filipino-austrians — organized along either regional, ethnic, professional or religious lines, many of which maintain excellent cooperative and consultative ties with the embassy and are actively supporting the embassy in projecting a positive image of the philippines through regular activities and projects. (pinoy ofw, 2011) hector pascua (2012) summarizes the essential function of these various groups and the barrio fiesta in particular as follows: these wonderful occasions bring us together. we need to set aside our differences and think as one people, one nation! this sense of unity, of having common heritage should continue to keep filipinos in austria together. it is this sense of community that will allow us to face the tremendous challenges confronting our lives as filipinos living in a foreign land. considering the importance of the catholic church in the philippines, it is hardly surprising that the event started with a field mess celebrated by a philippine priest and accompanied by a church choir. subsequently, a big parade took place where every participating organization presented itself as eye-catching as possible, since the best parade performance was awarded. moreover, there were competitions honoring the best booths, the best regional ethnic costume, and the best dance performance. one 5 pinoy is a commonly used word in philippine language for filipin@s outside and inside the philippines. it is a term with a normally positive connotation. bianca gantner & philip weninger filipin@ communities in austria aseas 6(2) 377376 of the fiesta’s attractions was the food bazar where philippine specialties such as pork barbecue, halo-halo (desert consisting of shaped-ice, evaporated milk, and sweet fruit and beans), or balut (duck embryo boiled in an eggshell) were served. the large number of stalls with commercial interest, who expected to reach their target at the event, was especially astonishing. there were companies represented that directly support migrants’ networks to their places of origin and families leftbehind as money remittance services, tour and travel agencies as well as cargo-forwarding businesses. filipin@ migrants play a vital role for the philippine economy. their money transfers from abroad – remittances – accounted for approximately 10 percent of the country’s gdp in 2011 (world bank, 2013). in 2009, the austrian branch of the philippine metrobank had 7,000 registered clients, of which at least 90 percent were ethnic filipin@s. through this bank branch alone6, eur 14.5 million were sent to the philippines in 2008 in the course of 32,000 transactions.7 furthermore, real investment firms and organizations that support development projects in the philippines approached the migrants in their role as investors at the barrio fiesta. the barrio fiesta featuring such various attractions as traditional, contemporary, and – in austria – rarely known filipino cultural performances, information stands about ‘transnational’ commercial opportunities, and diverse palettes of food has become a highlight in the event calendar of the filipin@ communities in vienna and beyond. in addition to its original goals, which focused on showcasing philippine culture and lifestyle, nowadays economic aspects play an important role as well. stalls operated by mobile communication providers, travel and airline companies, money transaction services, or real estate companies are prominent features of barrio fiesta. due to the joint efforts of the council of filipino associations in austria, the embassy, and the involvement of many filipin@ organizations, the festival has become a regular event, growing bigger year by year. 6 there are two more philippine banks operating in vienna: pbc international money transfer (a subsidiary company of philippine national bank) and iremit. 7 data was obtained in an interview with the head of the metrobank branch in the course of a field study (dealing with remittances of filipin@ migrants in vienna) by bianca gantner and philip weninger in may 2009. the opening catholic mass of barrio fiesta celebrated by fr. mars sahulga and a filipino church choir is well attended although it starts at 11 a.m association of novo ecijanos (anea; inhabitants of nueva ecija province on the island of luzon) and many other associations are joining the parade. aseas 6(2) 377376 the opening catholic mass of barrio fiesta celebrated by fr. mars sahulga and a filipino church choir is well attended although it starts at 11 a.m association of novo ecijanos (anea; inhabitants of nueva ecija province on the island of luzon) and many other associations are joining the parade. aseas 6(2) 379378 photo 1: igorot cordillera austria is the winner of the best booth 2013. the igorot are an indigenous group in the philippines who have their origin in the mountainous regions on the islands of luzon. the igorot cordillera austria’s aim is to practice and promote their cultural heritage, to serve as a forum for the igorot community in austria, to establish bonds to other filipin@ organizations as well as to support igorots in their home region (www.igorot.at). thanks to the fine weather a huge crowd is enjoying barrio fiesta 2013. association of novo ecijanos (anea; inhabitants of nueva ecija province on the island of luzon) and many other associations are joining the parade. filipinos are organized in associations representing their new home region (e.g. philippine austrian association in linz) or in associations consisting of people from their region of origin (igorot austria). aseas 6(2) 379378 photo 1: igorot cordillera austria is the winner of the best booth 2013. the igorot are an indigenous group in the philippines who have their origin in the mountainous regions on the islands of luzon. the igorot cordillera austria’s aim is to practice and promote their cultural heritage, to serve as a forum for the igorot community in austria, to establish bonds to other filipin@ organizations as well as to support igorots in their home region (www.igorot.at). thanks to the fine weather a huge crowd is enjoying barrio fiesta 2013. igorot cordillera austria: winner of the best booth 2013. the igorot are an indigenous community who have their origin in the mountainous regions on the islands of luzon. the igorot cordillera austria’s aim is to practice and promote their cultural heritage, to serve as a forum for the igorot community in austria, to establish bonds to other filipin@ organizations as well as to support igorots in their home region (www.igorot.at). association of novo ecijanos (anea; inhabitants of nueva ecija province on the island of luzon) and many other associations are joining the parade. filipinos are organized in associations representing their new home region (e.g. philippine austrian association in linz) or in associations consisting of people from their region of origin (igorot austria). aseas 6(2) 381380 photo 1: igorot cordillera austria is the winner of the best booth 2013. the igorot are an indigenous group in the philippines who have their origin in the mountainous regions on the islands of luzon. the igorot cordillera austria’s aim is to practice and promote their cultural heritage, to serve as a forum for the igorot community in austria, to establish bonds to other filipin@ organizations as well as to support igorots in their home region (www.igorot.at). the food stalls offered filipino specialities like pork barbecue as well as austrian-filipino ‘fusion food’ like apfelstrudel-malagkit (sticky rice apple pie). filipinos are organized in associations representing their new home region (e.g. philippine austrian association in linz) or in associations consisting of people from their region of origin (igorot austria). aseas 6(2) 381380 paulo castro seixas science on the move: the 7th euroseas conference in lisbon in 2013 photo 1: igorot cordillera austria is the winner of the best booth 2013. the igorot are an indigenous group in the philippines who have their origin in the mountainous regions on the islands of luzon. the igorot cordillera austria’s aim is to practice and promote their cultural heritage, to serve as a forum for the igorot community in austria, to establish bonds to other filipin@ organizations as well as to support igorots in their home region (www.igorot.at). the food stalls offered filipino specialities like pork barbecue as well as austrian-filipino ‘fusion food’ like apfelstrudel-malagkit (sticky rice apple pie). aseas 6(2) 383382 the pupils of the “paaralan sa pasuguan schule in der botschaft 2013” organized by the philippine embassy and the “sentro ng kultura at wika ng austria at pilipinas zentrum für österreichische und philippinische kultur und sprache” are presenting a traditional folk dance. aseas 6(2) 383382 less traditional more commercial are the aims of stalls as shown above. migrants should invest for their future return to the philippines. aseas 6(2) 385384 there are cheap flights to the philippines or travel agency vouchers offered. some organizations are fund raising for the less privileged on the philippines. they are organizing projects in their home provinces. babaylan austria has donated a classroom in batad elementary school for example. aseas 6(2) 385384 references barrio fiesta in vienna. (2011, september 21). austro-asian press. retrieved from http://www.aapress. at/?p=1229 pascua, h. (2012, may 29). 114th philippine independence day celebration. austro-asian press. retrieved from http://www.aapress.at/?p=1384 pinoy ofw. (2011). country guide to austria for filipinos. filipino communities in austria. retrieved from http://www.pinoy-ofw.com/country-guides/austria/ romani, j. (1956). the philippine barrio. the far eastern quarterly, 15(2), 229-237. statistik austria. (2011a). bevölkerung 2011 nach detailliertem geburtsland, geschlecht und staatsangehörigkeit. retrieved from https://www.statistik.at/web_de/static/bevoelkerung_2011_nach_detailliertem_geburtsland_geschlecht_und_staatsange_071371.pdf statistik austria. (2011b). bevölkerung 2011 nach detailliertem geburtsland, geschlecht und bundesland. retrieved from https://www.statistik.at/web_de/static/bevoelkerung_2011_nach_detailliertem_geburtsland_geschlecht_und_bundesland_071370.pdf world bank. (2013). remittancedata_inflows_april2013. retrieved from http://siteresources.worldbank. org/intprospects/resources/334934-1288990760745/remittancedata_inflows_april2013.xls bianca gantner & philip weninger filipin@ communities in austria aseas 1-2 final (außergottowik).indd “we are living in a diff erent time zone” transnational working places and the concept of a “glocalized intermediary class” niklas reese university of bonn, germany aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften / austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 1 (2), 2008 seas gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften www.seas.at the article would like to make a proposition on how to amend the underdifferentiated way social stratifi cation within the “global society” is usually theoretized. in the dominant discourse there seems to be only one global class, the “winners of globalization”. critics of this narrative, which i call the cosmopolitan delusion, make the “losers” of neoliberal globalization visible. but the “vulnerable” (robert castel) and precarious are usually not included in such a dualistic two-classapproach. if the middle class(es) within societies of the global south again are mentioned, this is usually done in simplifi ed way. i would like to introduce the concept of a “glocalized intermediary class” (gic) to better capture the social location of transnational class positions in between societies of the global north and the global south. the gics can be considered to be part of the (service or white collar) proletariat of the north but at the same time to be part of the middle class in the society of their origin (in this case: the philippines). if the middle class(es) can be understood as a “contradictory class location” (goldthorpe), this is even intensifi ed for gics working and living in between the worlds and the class positions. the exploratory theory of a “glocalized intermediary class” is exemplifi ed by the agents working at international call centers in the philippines. they are working at transnational working places and can be considered sociocultural migrants. keywords: transnationalism, social stratifi cation, middle class, habitus, postcolonialism 34 niklas reese “we are living in a diff erent time zone” aseas 1 (2) der artikel möchte einen vorschlag machen, wie eine unterdifferenzierte theoretisierung der sozialstruktur innerhalb der weltgesellschaft erweitert werden könnte. im dominanten diskurs scheint es in ihr nur eine klasse zu geben: die “globalisierungsgewinnerinnen”. kritiker dieses ansatzes machen auch die verliererinnen sichtbar. die “verwundbaren” (robert castel) zwischenpositionen werden in der regel jedoch nicht berücksichtigt. und wo mittelklassen im globalen süden berücksichtigung fi nden, wird dies meist in einer vereinfachten weise getan. ich möchte das konzept einer “globalen zwischenklasse” (glocalized intermediary class/gic) vorstellen, um die soziale lage dieser zwischenpositionen besser fassen zu können. die gics werden als teil des (dienstleistungs-)proletariats im globalen norden wahrgenommen, gleichzeitig aber auch als teil der mittelklasse in ihrer heimatgesellschaft (hier die philippinen). wenn mitteklasse(n) als „widersprüchliche klassenlage“ (goldthorpe) verstanden werden, so wird dies für gics, die zwischen den welten leben und arbeiten, noch verstärkt. die heuristische theorie der “globalen zwischenklasse” wird anhand der telefonistinnen, die in den internationalen call-centers in den philippinen arbeiten, ausgeführt. sie arbeiten auf transnationalen arbeitsplätzen und können als soziokulturelle migrantinnen verstanden werden. schlagworte: transnationalismus, sozialstruktur, mittelklasse, habitus, postkolonialismus preliminary remarks studying societies of the global south – esp. the philippines – for more than a decade now, i got more and more dissatisfied with how social stratification within globalized societies is theoretized. i think that an important group of people from the south is only scantly covered by it. the article takes its starting point in two perceived deficiencies of the theory of social stratification within the “global society”. not only in mainstream media, but also in much of the literature social differences let alone inequalities are not problematized. here the impression is created that only one global class exists, the “winners of globalization”. if again the “losers” of neoliberal globalization are noticed this usually leads to a dualistic twoclass-approach. the middle class within societies of the global south is hardly taken into consideration and if it is, this is usually done in an underdifferentiated way. secondly, the “container approach” of clearly cut country societies (or nation states) still prevails in social analysis. this article aims to introduce the concept of a “glocalized intermediary class” (short: gic) 35 as an attempt to better catch the “social location” respectively the social condition (soziale lage) of a “class in between”: being a transnational class in between the societies of the global north and the global south and being vertically an intermediary class in between contradicting class locations. the gics can be considered as part of the (service or white collar) proletariat of the north but at the same time as part of the middle class in the society of their origin (in this case: the philippines). if the middle class(es) can be understood as a “contradictory class location” (j. goldthorpe), this is even intensified for gics working and living in between the worlds and the class positions. gic is a heuristic term and a work in progress. developing this concept is part of a longer research project, which wants to identify the sense of citizenship within the globally exposed and connected marginal middle class in the philippines. the notion of citizenship i want to draw on expresses itself in (a) political agency and (b) a sense of entitlement to social and public services. it is not necessarily linked to a sense of nationalism and a clear identification with one nation state. the first step in this research is to identify this globally exposed and connected marginal middle class in the philippines. this article serves as a first step to do so. for now i am focusing on four groups which possibly are gics: overseas contract workers with a professional educational background (teachers, doctors and nurses, technical training etc.), call center agents in international call centers, local staff of foreign and transnational companies active in the philippines and possibly even people working at foreign-funded ngos in case one considers the “aid industry” to cater to the philanthropic and political needs of the middle classes of the north (as well), which would turn these ngo workers to service providers of the first world. in november 2007 i did a research project on international call centers in manila and davao, conducting semi-structured interviews with 12 call center agents and several expert interviews (reese 2007). many of my theoretical assumptions took off from the case of this “transnational working places”. therefore they will serve as major example to empirically ground my theoretical concept, even though they probably will not be the central focus of the further research (for reasons see below). in july and august 2008 i discussed the first draft of this article with several people in the philippines (reese 2008) and i will try to include the outcomes in this presentation.1 1 i like to thank all the persons who found the time to review this article and share their thoughts with me. maraming salamat! i have been working for an information office on the philippines in germany (www. philippinenbuero.de) for several years and as lecturer for philippines studies at the universities of passau and bonn. the insights i gained during more than ten “field trips” to the philippines ranging from 4 weeks to 6 months between 1998 and 2008 shape much of my assumptions as well. last but not least i like to mention the more than insightful master thesis of the filipina sociologist aya fabros on which i draw more than once during the article. 36 niklas reese “we are living in a diff erent time zone” aseas 1 (2) i. international call centers in the philippines before deliberating on my assumption that international call centers typify ‘transnational working places’ let me give a short overview on international call centers in the philippines. international call centers are one of the fastest growing industries in the country. the boom is due to the fact that there is a redirection of business process outsorcing from india to the philippines by us-clients (see in detail fabros 2007). especially in an industry close to the customer like the call centers there have been regular complaints from american customers that they can hardly understand the (british coloured) english of the indian agents. a market gap for the former american colony philippines, which like india, possesses a well-trained and computer-literate population and in addition has one of the largest english-speaking populations in the world. due to the colonial past and the neo-colonial present filipinos and filipinas are more familiar with us-culture, particularly with american expressions and places, than other english-speaking low-wage economies. labour costs are even slightly below those in india. in the philippines companies must pay only about a fifth of what they are paying their employees in the us. at the same time the payment is what is mentioned first when asked for the motivation to work in an international call center. one earns much more in an international call center in manila than in local jobs which college graduates can take up. a teacher e.g. earns about 10,000 to 13,000 pesos (150 to 190 euro) a month, while even a newbee call center agent earns at least 15,000 to 18,000 (215 to 245 euro). this is if graduates find a job at all! the unemployment rate is especially high for young people and for college graduates. according to the labour force survey, 37.6 percent of the unemployed in 2006 had at least a college level education. getting a job in the public sector is a tedious affair. applying for a government job usually takes several months to get approved, requires in many cases job experience and often one only gets one of the scant jobs with a padrino using his or her connections and who even in awhile asks to be bribed for this “service”. getting a job in a call center in contrast formally does not even require a college degree and allows immediate hiring. it promises “fast money” if one is in need of cash as psyche fontanilla explained, who worked several months in a call center (reese 2008). in a country where social mobility is significantly restricted, going abroad or working for foreign clients is a not to be underestimated avenue for upward mobility. the lack of job prospects for filipinos with ample education fuels the migration of highly skilled workers like nurses (or doctors applying to be a nurse overseas) teachers or even law graduates and engineers. (it seems however, that call centers do not serve as an alternative to migration but more as a deferment of and preparation for migration.) call center companies unlike many other companies furthermore offer social security contributions which are really remitted to the social security system 37 (sss). some even offer an extra health insurance supplementing the only basic payments of the mandatory health insurance philhealth. all of this makes the jobs attractive even for graduates of the countrý s elite universities. when asking my interviewees whether they minded getting paid only a fifth of what their american counterparts received for the same work i received the following reply: “they’re losing their jobs; we don’t” (reese 2007). the working conditions on the other hand do not belong to what makes the call center jobs attractive. many of the problems call center agents encounter during their work resemble those of a factory job: high work speed and frequently changing shifts are just two of several bad conditions. this work routine has resulted in various health problems for agents. furthermore they encounter job-specific impertinences like frequently disrespectful and racist insults on the part of the person they are talking to. as a good portion of the accounts in the philippines are outsourced from the usa and canada, most shifts are in line with north american day time. the 8-12 hour difference translates to peak working hours from 6pm to 6am manila time. adding to the changing shifts night work implicates that agents can hardly plan their week and are pulled out of the social rhythms of the remaining society due to the differing working hours. “the day-to-day lives of agents begin to revolve around call center production, strictly limiting outside, private activity and interaction with significant others. family life and friendships suffers much from it”, says fabros (2007: 262), who spent six months as a call center agent during the research for her master thesis. they then develop new friend networks which are composed usually of colleagues. the commonalities with the transnational family lives of overseas contract workers (ocws) seem compelling (see fabros 2007: 150 for an example). but call centers do not seem to be considered life-time jobs. many agents drop out after a while. “if one would be offered a day time job with comparable remuneration, probably everyone would accept it”, says rosen, a 34-year old call center agent (reese 2007). “someday we want to have a normal life as well.” in the long term most are frustrated too that they do not advance in career terms. “i did not study to be a better telephone lady forever”, says an agent from bicol. only for those, whose tasks are within range of what they have studied (it-consultants e.g.) call centers are a job location where they find personal fulfillment. ii. pinoy by day, kano by night transnational working places the assumption i want to develop in the second part of my article is the following: international call centers typify transnational working places, which are globalizing and localizing at the same time. “transnationalism” is a term which tries to express the increase 38 niklas reese “we are living in a diff erent time zone” aseas 1 (2) of economic, cultural and social interaction world-wide, coming along with the loosening of the significance of national borders. social interconnections are created which transverse and lay across geographical borders (pries 2001). “transnational”, however, is not equivalent to “cosmopolitan” – a normative and sometimes even ideological term propagating the idea that all of humanity belongs to a single moral community, which implies that borders (geographical, but social and cultural as well) are of only little significance. at the same time “transnational” is not equivalent to the term “multicultural” which rather assumes the idea of a peaceful coexistence of different cultures (which people can easily and unequivocally be associated to), which only marginally influence each other. instead (at least) dual loyalty is a central characteristic for transnational existences: people have religious, cultural or political ties to societies other than the country of their origin or residence. saskia sassen has described the urbanities which are in this sense transnational as global cities (e.g. sassen 2001). i believe that international call centers can be considered such “transnational working places” as they are situated in a “space” which transverses national borders in respect to time and culture even if they are clearly situated within a specific country. fabros identifies a “spatiotemporal reconstitution”: “in order to reach the customer, agents have to submit to temporal cycles of others. call center production requires agents to reorder their day-to-day routines according to the cycles of the time zone they service” (2007: 61). the clocks on the floor of call centers usually show the time zone they service. “we are living in a different time zone”, therefore says rosen, an agent from manila (reese 2007). fabros (2007: 61) says that agents are forced to reorder their life according to imperatives that are not situated in the physical space they occupy nor the common social space they share with significant others. barbara adam even calls the synchronization of agentś shifts with western customer servicing hours a “colonization with time” (fabros 2007: 134). agents are compelled to live in at least two “places” at once and at the same time they are held responsible for managing and reconciling these contradictory lives on their own. they are pinoy (a colloquial term for filipino) by day and kano (a colloquial term for american) by night. it seems agents have to live a “second life”: what is real around them is irrelevant for the virtual space they inhabit. they have to “defy time and space” (fabros 2007: 60): should there be a natural calamity in the philippines like a typhoon which is a frequent occurrence, operations go on as scheduled and agents have to act as if it was an ordinary day. agents have to deliver their performances, business as usual. american callers have no idea that they are calling a place being ravaged by a storm or threatened by a coup. national holidays in the philippines are ordinary working days for the agents, not allowing them to spend these very social days with their relatives and their beloved ones. at the same time they take on american holidays like thanksgiving, which have no real meaning in their everyday lives. therefore fabros does 39 not consider transnational existences like the mentioned call center agents to be merely “deterritorialized” (as appudarai would do) but more than that, to be “disembedded” from the society surrounding them (fabros 2007: 61). call center districts like eastwood in metro manila could be described as outlets or franchises of the usa, inhabited by onlookers2 consuming western products in the branches of western coffee house chains thanks to higher purchasing power in comparison to the rest of the society around them. they have at least got hold of a place in the standing room. these districts could be understood as western theme parks, which are not merely simulations of the west as they develop their own distinct reality. some agents not only work but also live in these disembedded global cities which take the form of artificial islands amidst of the squatter areas of metro manila, places again other agents live in and so cross the “border” every day. fabros considers this to create a “social-jetlag that requires no physical displacement” (2007: 61). making extraterritoriality homelike conventional service delivery usually requires physical proximity. to make up for this “default” and to close the gap to the temporal approximation to the customerś world alone is not enough. to “manufacture proximity” (aya fabros based on reese 2007) not only the spatiotemporal gap has to be bridged but the social and cultural gap also has to be closed as far as possible3 and in market logic this is at the expense of the service provider. the logic of “service wage labour” with its motto “the customer is the king” leads to a neo-colonial appropriation of the “periphery” by the metropolis. “closing the gap” requires the performance of considerable social and cultural labour and the neo-colonial subjects are the ones to move and to adapt.4 they have to bear the burden of producing respectively constructing proximity and they are the ones who have to cope with with the resulting disembeddedness and their alienation.5 2 the german term “zaungast” even grasps the phenomenon more clearly: literally it means guest on the fence, making him a second-class guest who can only watch and hardly participate unlike a fence sitter who is free to go to either side. 3 to manufacture proximity may even be of higher significance in a non-view-business as it can create the necessary trust for a continued patronage. 4 i will omit at this point for reasons of space that the social production by the agents goes beyond closing these gaps. in a capitalist service economy in general it includes a lot of emotional work on the side of the (alienated) service provider demonstrating that “the customer is valued”, “is always right” and has to be understood no matter how weird s/he behaves. “whatever the case may be, the agent is expected to establish rapport, empathize, deliver customer care, and ensure customer satisfaction.” (fabros 2007: 58) “the companies force us to be a kind of sponge which absorbs the anger of the customers” says the 26-year old agent leslie from davao (reese 2007). 5 interestingly enough fabros believes that filipinos and filipinas have learnt coping with disembeddedness over the centuries: “particular social trajectories of filipinos can be traced back to a long, historical process of disjunction and contradiction. […] the ‘training’ of filipino call center agents have (sic!) taken place long before the first call center arrived, embedded in the particular socialization of the filipino. i do not just refer to the “westernized” or “americanized” sensibility of the filipino, but a particular ethos that allows the filipino to thrive and straddle contradictions, whether economic, political, social or symbolic […]. for filipino agents raised by 40 niklas reese “we are living in a diff erent time zone” aseas 1 (2) agents are required to slip into a more “westernized” identity and perform the attitudes and persona that the interaction under neo-colonial circumstances demands. ideally they have to pass themselves off as “locals” and act as if they are talking to the customer just from some place in the usa (although the ateneo based industrial sociologist regina hechanova indicates that agents are less forced to deny that they are based in the philippines than in earlier times reese 2008). customers are to be presented with the reality that the call center encounters are still taking place ‘at home’. (“let them feel at home” as a trainer from a call center training course expresses the aim of the trainings.) in a very literal sense these are white lies. various ways of manufacturing proximity are pursued to establish a homelike reality: agents are “instructed” to speak english with an american intonation. training 1. facilities advertise their courses by summoning the prospective agents to “learn the right accent”. up to now only five to ten applicants out of hundred are accepted although the need is substantially larger due to a lack of “excellent” english speakers. on the floor, agents are required to follow an “english only policy.” agents have to acquire “local knowledge”: during trainings they are taught us history, 2. culture and geography, have to be proficient in their knowledge about superbowl and thanksgiving and they have to be able to pretend they go skiing in aspen (even if most filipinos have never in their life experienced snow). agents are required to be up to date with events in the us: they are factually forced to 3. live virtually in the us as they are told to watch cnn or cbs news as well as american sitcoms and sports shows (which many of them do anyway). they have to know what the weather is like at their alleged current location as it “helps to establish rapport if you can do small talk about the weather or the game the night before”, as one trainer says (fabros 2007: 176). in several cases agents are even required to change their names which are more 4. familiar to their american callers. finally “manufacturing proximity” even requires a “mentality training”: agents have 5. to adjust to attitudes different from their own. for instance american (or european) the ethos of sesame street and mtv […] inhabiting the call center lifeworld the new capacity to accumulate the symbols and lifestyle this engenders, is essentially a validation of the self. this explains the ease at which filipinos predisposed to consume images and assume roles that resonate an inner inscribed logic of contradiction, assume this new vocation despite the seemingly dramatic transition it requires” (fabros 2006). in a personal interview she explained to me: “we have always lived in contradictions, we are even socialized in contradictions; that is what makes it easy for us to inhabit that place” (reese 2008). 41 callers tend to be more demanding and assertive, clarifying that it cannot be them who made a mistake. filipinos on the other side believe in “smooth interpersonal relationships”. filipino consumers are believed to be more ‘understanding’ and less confrontative. all this brings fabros to the conclusion, that “the worker in effect bridges the global distance that offshored accounts have straddled” (2007: 178). the anger they encounter when a customer realizes the deception also has to be absorbed by the agent.6 taking this setup into consideration one may regard call centers not to only be a (temporary) alternative to physical migration but in fact another form of migration – “a different form of migration, one that is social and temporal, rather than spatial” as fabros says (2007: 150). while the workplaces are offshored to the philippines physically, the call center agents are mentally offshored as much as possible to the usa. their body in contrast must remain in the philippines, because of the iron fences around the fortresses in the north and as their reproduction requirements can be remunerated much cheaper in a third world country. iii. the concept of the “glocalized intermediary class” the second part of my article described the working places of the call center agents as “in between the worlds”. the third and final part shall try to describe their social position “between the worlds” as well. i believe that what is said about call centers is true in one way or another for the other gic-groups as well (e.g. migrants). in my research project on citizenship i will even concentrate more on people with migration experience as this is still the big business in the philippines. one million are said to leave the country a year and there are only around 160.000 call center agents in the country.7 before that a brief overview is needed of how the social structure of global society is usually depicted. the most common description of “global society” one encounters in mass media and mass culture is one which i call a “cosmopolitan deception”. it does not visualize social differences let alone inequalities and solely focuses on the winners of globalization. the 6 but it should be noted that “manufacturing proximity” can also have a protective meaning to the agents. several of the ones i interviewed told me that acting this way makes customers ask less questions and therefore makes it easier to finish the calls within the prescribed handling times. they can also evade the emotional work explaining to their customers why they are not “only filipinos” (reese 2007). 7 additionally i believe that developing a sense of citizenship (a positive one or a negative one as i could witness in many interviews i conducted in 2008) needs a longer experience with the state and the public sphere and reflection on these experiences resulting in a more sustainable sense of citizenship. call center agents are usually only 20-26 years old. i will therefore focus in my qualitative research more on respondents of 30 years and above, whose “sense of citizenship” seems to be more ‘reliable’ to me. furthermore the call center culture may be as much a product of youth culture as of glocalization. avoiding this pitfall leads me to lesser rely on them as respondents. 42 niklas reese “we are living in a diff erent time zone” aseas 1 (2) marginalized if at all only appear as objects of charity of these winners, privatizing welfare to be a part of the lifestyle of a “socially conscious citizen”. i call this narrative “communication society” and consider its motto to be the microsoft slogan “where do you want to go today?”8 there seems to be only one global class (as there has been only one really human being before enlightenment and during colonialism which was the [socially established, western] male – all the others being insufficient deviations of him and most of the time simply kept invisible) and this is the “executive class” of neoliberal globalization. it includes (a) the (often expatriate) transnational capitalist class and the corporate expatriates which are at least upper middle or even upper class and (b) the (mainly indigenous) “global middle class without location” (globale ortlose mittelklasse). this class is economically networked and culturally connected (by internet and cyber society), socially established and secured. following goldthorpe, these people therefore could be categorized as “global service class”. they have at least one thing in common: they fulfil, intentionally or unintentionally, the (flexibilized) functional requirements of global capitalism. leslie sklair says: “the transnational capitalist class […] is transnational in at least three senses. its members tend to have global rather than local perspectives […]; they tend to be people from many countries, more and more of whom begin to consider themselves ‘citizens of the world’ as well as of their places of birth; and they tend to share similar lifestyles, particularly patterns of luxury consumption of goods and services” (sklair 1995: 71). this/these class/es appear most often only as actors of the “communication society” narrative, which tells the story of a cultural synchronization of world society in form of a global culture, which is patterned after the western or even american way of life and suggests or better mocks an unlimited (grenzenlos) freedom for each and every citizen of this society “to go where s/he wants today”. the narrative of the global communication society spread by media and the advertising industry consists of communities, which seem to develop independently of national and language borders, a kind of global off-shore society, in which the e-mail address in tokyo and the chat partner in sydney are much closer to one than the unemployed mother next door. this model is probably most purely embodied by those who anne meike fechter (fechter 2007) calls “young global professionals” in her research on expatriates in indonesia: they are young, flexible and unattached, maintain an international lifestyle and are globally mobile. they differ from the earlier generation of expatriates by the fact that they do not consider their stay in a foreign country as a burden but as vocational challenge and as a desired part of their career. their social networks are more international than those of the corporate expatriates. they have de-nationalized themselves culturally and due to their global attitude, 8 insofar it is what ernst bloch calls an “ideology” as it deletes the contradictions and presents the drama of a fulfilled humanity, but not by transcending the realities (which would make it an utopia) but by denying them. 43 their mobility and their international network they call themselves “the new global tribe”.9 one of fechters interviewees explains “home is where my email is” (fechter 2007: 139). the narrative of the global communication society is accompanied by rhetoric free of class and gender contradictions; the peasant of the remote bondoc peninsula has the same right to follow the developments at the stock exchange as the ceo in the main financial district of makati or the broker at the frankfurt stock exchange does. however, “gated communities” are just the most manifest sign of the formation of communities based on similar values, interests and economic as well as cultural capital, which come along with the walling-off of the winners in exclusive areas (in clubs, private schools up to whole city districts) usually resulting from the gentle form of a higher purchasing power. going back to fechteŕ s “new global tribe”, she says they are living in a parallel society (the german parallelgesellschaft could mean ghetto society as well) which she marks as western international bubble. belonging to the group of the young global professionals is not explicitly based on ethnic criteria as fechter observed in the case of corporate expatriates. nevertheless, the majority of the locals (here: indonesians) is excluded from this group as they lack the necessary economical and cultural capital. in effect locals can only belong to this group if they are rich, have studied abroad and work themselves in multinational companies, meaning to say they have the necessary economic and cultural capital at the same time (fechter 2007: 128 et sqq.).10 the critics of the medially hegemonic communication society narrative try to overcome its blindness by making the other class(es) produced by neoliberal globalization visible: the “global proletariat” like the workers in the free trade zones and “the displaced, superfluous and excluded” like the slum dwellers, the peasants or indigenous people. taking off from this dichotomization zygmunt bauman (1997) considers “globalization” to be an ambivalent process and considers it rather to be a “glocalization”: globalization for the ones coincides with localization for the others. this kind of “glocalization” expresses itself especially in the polarization of mobility. “while the ‘global class’ lives in the time as spatial distances for them are bridgeable and therefore insignificant, the others are stuck in the restriction of space. they lack the resources for moving” (bauman 1997: 323 translation by the author). the counterpart of the “global citizen” (weltbürger) is the “global villager”, who is required to create profit “while his mental horizon does not exceed the immediacy of his existence” (ibid.). 9 i like to acknowledge my student nina benischke, who discovered fechters book and explained the concept and the adjoining groups very clearly in her presentation on “expatriates as migrants” in my seminar on migration in south east asia and latin america at the university of passau in the winter term 2007/08. in explaining the concept i follow the written version of her presentation (unpublished). 10 part of my further research will be to distinguish if this is true for its philippine counterpart the “makati crowd” too. can they be understood as onlookers and bystanders and not less important: do they experience themselves this way? is the financial district of the philippines, seemingly the most global place in the country inhabited by firstand second-class citizens in this as well? 44 niklas reese “we are living in a diff erent time zone” aseas 1 (2) transcending dichotomy: the three-layer-approach in my eyes this purely dichotomical and dualizing model of global class society (of winners and losers, of competitive and superfluous) in the tradition of marxism is too simple and should at least be amended by an intermediary stratum the way robert castel (castel 2000: 336 et sqq.) does this for western work societies: he observes a division of the european labour societies (arbeitsgesellschaft) into three main zones.11 (a) a “zone of integration” with protected standard employer-employee relationships (the winners of modernization; castel calls them “the integrated”). (b) opposite to them castel places “the zone of decoupling”, inhabited by groups, which are more or less permanently excluded from regular wage labour. they are the superfluous or as castel calls them “the excluded”. (c) in between we can find intermediate zone(s), which castel calls the “zone of precarity”, a bundle of heterogeneous zones which are determined by employment conditions, which not permanently secure ones livelihood and are therefore “vulnerable”. castel consequently calls the group(s) found there “the vulnerable”. the two most important categories, which decide on membership and belonging to either zone, are the usefulness as worker as well as state citizenship as helga cramer-schäfer believes. while the superfluous must be kept in check in order not to simply knock down the pawns, the precarious are governed in a different way: who is still needed, must not only be kept at it, but shall follow the intensified mobilization imperative at best voluntarily. as “from the perspective of liberalism the direct rule over the subject turns out to be unproductive” (opitz 2004) and neoliberal policy can reach its political aims more ‘economically’ and ‘efficiently’ through individual self-realization respectively self-exploitation, it is pivotal for neoliberal governing to delegate the responsibility and liability from formal state government to the individual subjects. ulrich bröckling calls this “responsibilization”. to govern under a neoliberal regime means to activate the commitment (“mobilization”) and the will of the individual to make decisions under the sign of individual responsibility, independence and individual initiative (“empowerment”). the figure of the “enterprising self”, making “a project out of himself” represents the role model of neoliberal subjectifying (reese 2007a; bröckling 2007). in addition to that: where not primarily rights, but purchasing power is determining the satisfaction of ones needs, the interests and demands of the “purchasing powerful” the 11 in the sociological description of southern societies the tripartition is usually a different one. while a significant middle class seems missing, there is a two-fold bourgeoisie (or upper class) making up for three classes in addition to “the poor”. the upper (middle) class is depicted as being split into a traditional (often national) bourgeoisie, (which are mainly the groups evers and schiel call strategic groups) which forms the old elite and a new (globally connected and even comprador) new bourgeoisie, which mainly form the “new rich” as described in pinches (1999) and the other articles of the compilation “culture and privilege in capitalist asia” and its sibling books. 45 “modernization winners” are to what society and goods production are oriented to and whom the precarious have to serv(ic)e. castel developed his model for europe i believe however, it can be translated to “global society” (where this exists). scholz (2001) sees a concurrence of integrating and fragmenting processes on the global scale leading to a tripartition into (integrated) “global places”, (precarious) “globalized places” and (redundant) “segregated rest world”. the “glocalized intermediary class” one of the groups inhabiting the global zone of precarity (or in scholz’ words a globalized place) is the cinderella sibling of the “global service class”, which i call for now “glocalized intermediary class” (gic) – following it up in the mentioned three year research project. as already mentioned taking the case of the philippines i am focusing on four groups which possibly are gics: overseas contract workers with a professional educational background, call center agents in international call centers, local staff of foreign and transnational companies active in the philippines and potentially people working at foreign-funded ngos. i think it to be adequate to call these professional groups not only a stratum but a “class in the making” (see thompson 1963: 9) as they have (a) central characteristics in common [e.g. similarities in education, capabilities or income] and (b) like for goldthorpè s “service class” the different “locations” or “occupations” could be accessible and interchangeable for all different gics undergroups. all occupational locations i consider to be part of this gic require at least a college degree and serve as (restricted as well as qualified) job options for them. individuals could pass between one location and the other (although it seems that at least the call center jobs are not an alternative but a “stepping stone” or a preparation for migration [two respondents; reese 2008]). in how far this is a “klasse an sich” and also leads to a “klasse für sich” or at least lifestyle communities (milieus) meaning similar values and tastes, friendship networks and intermarriages and even shared associational memberships is still to be seen. initial research showed that the gics share lifestyle: the places they patronize, the books they read, the movies they watch. what unites all of them is that they do not only dream of “joining the global” but are already part of it. considering that “if you have a foreign friend or you work with foreigners, that gives you a certain distinction, a level up from the other people” (yasmin quitan-teves following reese 2008), to me this “asset” or “status symbol” seems a pivotal issue for understanding social stratification in the philippines. let me give some evidence that the gics belong socioeconomically and culturally to what is commonly called “middle class”. the “middle class” is less a class than a stratum of 46 niklas reese “we are living in a diff erent time zone” aseas 1 (2) different social or class locations which is why i find the term “intermediary” more helpful. “middle class” with wright (1985: 42—57) can be defined as an ambiguous, contradictory social location as the classes within this stratum usually swing between bourgeois and proletarian actions and attitudes. it is especially an income beyond survival (disposable income) and a sense of aspiration which makes someone belong to this intermediary stratum. and i consider the gics to be one (not the!) class within a differentiated even fragmented middle stratum, located at its lower end. so it is similar to what bautista calls “marginal middle class”, a class which is no longer working class but does not belong to the established middle class (bautista 2001). a) socioeconomic (materialistic dimension) looking at the features usually attributed to the middle class, the gics have acquired a higher education (degree). in addition, they have an income beyond the threshold of necessity (a discretionary respective of a disposable income) but only in their society of origin. knowledge and skill (or at least the credentials imputing skill and knowledge) are the most significant “capital” the gics command over. therefore, according to barbara ehrenreich (1989) they can be considered part of the professional middle class. ehrenreich regards all those people to be “professional middle class” “whose economic and social status is based on education, rather than on the ownership of capital or property”, which distinguishes them from petty bourgeoisie or executives and managers. then again most gics occupy only proletarian job locations in the global economy (which is less true for the local staff of transnational companies and even more for the ones working at the foreign funded ngos). in the global society property rights and bureaucratic assets which allow the controlling of the labour of subordinates are not with them and even for the foreign funded ngos the issue of “ownership” is at least ambivalent. nevertheless no matter which work they are doing the gics have a sense of being professionals. b) habitus (cognitive dimension) the mindset of the gics shows another pivotal trait of middle class belonging. they show aspiration and advancement orientation and are willing to follow the mobilisation command.12 12 “the true member of the middle class denies this fixity to which both upper and lower are committed. life depends, not upon birth and status, not upon breeding or beauty, but upon effort” (margaret mead according to ehrenreich 1989: 75). 47 in addition, it seems that they also show significant distinction. following bourdieù s “social critique of the judgement of taste” it is characteristic for intermediate classes to show behaviour of distinction towards the ones below them in the social ladder – and simultaneously to display a sense of “pretension” (or imitation) towards the classes above them (bourdieu 1987). how true is this for the gics? not only trade union organizers told me that call center agents have a very derogatory way of treating the simple service personnel in the global coffee shop branches. especially the younger ones consider themselves to be something better as they speak english more fluently and have a lot more money than “the normal population”, the common tao (reese 2007). similarly, christ (2008: 30) reports from dubai that “filipinas working in the low-pay-sector see people from south asia on a much lower level than themselves”.13 this behaviour well proven in research for the petty bourgeoisie and for social climbers may be a result of their vulnerable social position which leads to applying a strategy of dissimilarity.14 and finally the fact that their income transcends the “necessary”, motivates gics to invest it into conspicuous goods which can be seen as demonstrative consumption. gehrke considers this to be a “part of the class formation process [as] the production of lifestyle is not just a personal matter; it is also directed towards the establishment of social boundaries and structures of exclusion, in order to establish a ‘collective’ identity” (gehrke 2000: 149). he furthermore argues that “consumption becomes a symbolic act signalling ‘modernity’ and membership in the ascriptive category ‘middle class’ ”(gehrke 2000: 145).15 earning in local comparison relatively high salaries they “find themselves with the purchasing power to consume goods and services that affirm and validate the identities they construct for themselves: for instance by drinking coffee at starbucks” (fabros 2007: 250).16 13 but then again the derogatory behaviour is not specific to any middle class person in the philippines. all my respondents (reese 2008) have found it (to different degrees) an overgeneralization if niels mulder describes the attitude of the filipino middle class towards the underclass this way: “[their culture] centers overseas, far away from anything that reeks of common natives, mere tao. […] they are not offended by the poverty of the majority of the common people. it is clear why the latter are poor: they are indolent and lazy, wasting their scant resources at fiestas, in cockpits, and during irresponsible drinking sprees. […] it is not poverty that is the problem. the problem is that there are so many poor people. these latter are basically a nuisance (mulder 1997: 51). 14 looking at the middle class employed in europe and america this strategy shall lessen the “fear of contamination” and at the same time legitimate the own better position. by stressing the dissimilarity between them and the unemployed they try to suppress the fear of failing (ehrenreich 1989) and to keep up the illusion of controlling the own risk of losing the job by well-behaving (see newman 1996). 15 this consumption demonstrating middle-class membership is not even linked to a disposable income. as gehrke (2000) says, ‘membership’ is not necessarily dependent on income but can be defined through social behaviour and lifestyle, which can give ones life a middle-class ‘touch’. she class this kind of behaviour “lifestyling“, which makes a middle class even there where it is not socio-economically present – and helps this symbolic middle class to distinguish itself from the ones it consider socially below itself even if they have a similar socio-economic location. for indonesia gehrke observes that “lower-ranked bureaucrats with a monthly income similar to that of the lower class would not identify with those of similar class positions such as small-scale businessmen, lowerranked members of the military and other wage workers. instead, they would identify with higher-ranked members of the bureaucracy and attempt to imitate whenever possible the latter’s lifestyle (2000: 151; see as well thompson 1999). in marxist terms one could call this a “false class consciousness” going along with a high occupational group consciousness. 16 similar to what is stated about call centers in delhi one can observe that a call center culture came into existence by the purchasing power, the night-shifts and the contact with the ‘western world’. the experiences 48 niklas reese “we are living in a diff erent time zone” aseas 1 (2) iv. a glocalized social location if it is characteristic for the middle class(es) to be in a “contradictory class location“, this location is even intensified for gics as in the global economy they are merely considered to be “service workers” (or white collar proletariat), but “at home” they are considered and consider themselves to belong to the middle class. “be a part of it” the global middle class as orientation model coming back to bourdieú s critique of taste, middle class(es) are ‘pretentious’ meaning they orient themselves to a “legitimate culture” defined and exemplified by the upper class. is there any “legitimate culture” the gics follow and if yes which culture is it? 350 years of colonialism and more than 60 years of a neo-colonial relationship to the west make many believe that “the colonial mindset” accompanied by an inferiority complex towards the west is deeply rooted in the country. the omnipresent whitening applications, english as the language of education and status, the awe a “joe” (as all white foreigners are called here) and the admiration of their not that flat noses creates or the great relevance attributed to todaý s us-culture here are just some hints for that. white people are considered by many people to be more independent, tolerant and of course generally rich.17 ‘qualifications’ like “expat” or “caucasian” are highly appreciated and looked for at friendship portals like filipino friend finder. this could lead to the assumption that the cultural orientation (not only) of the gics is embodied by the “global (professional) class” or the “universal middle class” (ehrenreich 1989: 19). it can be assumed that what brian owensby says regarding the brazilian middle class can be said similarly for the filipino middle class: “the experience of being modern was mediated by the image of an idealized modernity located outside brazil. through newspapers, books, magazines, advertisements, radio shows, photographs, and movies, a growing number of brazilians from the nineteenth to the twentieth century came into contact with the idea of what it was to be modern. it was an idea that took life from the visions of modernity issuing from new york, paris, london, and los angeles, where it was supposed the modern had already been achieved. and since by the 1920s the celebratory middle-class storyline had become normative for modern societies, middle-class brazilians could not help but conduct their lives in tangled relation to the middle-class ideal. amidst the commotion and swirl of rapid change, they, perhaps more keenly than other brazilians, experienced modernity of the new proletarianized middle class generation are characterised by a call centre job straight after school or university, the night shifts, the technological control and general pressure, the shared flats, the purchasing power, the expensive food in the neighbouring shopping malls, the long hours in cabs, the frequent job changes, the more open gender relations at work, the burn out, the difficulty to keep the perspective of an academic career or to find jobs as academics” (anonymous 2006). 17 probably like in indonesia white people are considered by the new middle class as “uniformly modern and are seen as carriers of the modernising spirit into (..) social life: as the carriers of superior civilisation, high technology and modernity they are looked up to culturally” (heryanto 1999: 161). 49 through the incongruity and dissonance of trying to live by an ideal they could never quite live up to” (owensby 1999: 8).18 none of my respondents questioned the existence of this orientation. most even believe that “colonial mindset” and “inferiority complex” remain strong in the philippines. this seems to me to be a pivotal issue for understanding a weak sense of citizenship in this country. it comes along with a (purely) “negative narrative” which downgrades what is going on in the philippines and romantizes the west and its political system and its workings. this narrative seems to be a stumbling point for developing a sense of citizenship (which i do not equate with nationalism or patriotism per se). five caveats, however, can be formulated: the colonial mindset may not be that strong and universal as some people assume 1. following the negative narrative mentioned, which seems to me very common especially among intellectuals these days. this might be a result of their quest for systemic change which leads them to “describe the present without salvation” as jude esguerra from the institute for popular democracy (ipd) thinks (reese 2008). the longing for the west has not only cultural, but also economic reasons. a life in 2. overseas (or as in the case of the other gic-locations in service of overseas) is equated with escaping scarcity, social and political insecurity and living a decent life. usually economic reasons are considered as nearly the only reason for migration. this seems to me to be as much a simplification as only blaming the colonial mindset as sole reason why it is “mabuti pasa sa amerika” (good to go to america) and why people believe everything is better abroad. even if the western culture functions as the cultural orientation (3. leitkultur), that does not imply that middle classes of the south simply copy western lifestyles. there is a considerable “indigenisation” (which is what robertson calls glocalization) of western lifestyle like the fast food chain jollibee or pigeon languages like taglish (the lingua franca of the lower middle class) creating words like “mag-enjoy” (to enjoy) today. during the independence struggle against the spanish the western educated illustrados are an example for this, bringing ideas from europe but rooting them in the philippine society and culture. there is a considerable desire for being cosmopolitan and having a global mindset 4. amongst the educated middle class worldwide, not only in former colonies. this does not equate with just longing for the west but is expression of their sense of aspiration 18 see lakha 1999 for the indian example of orientation towards the western middle class. 50 niklas reese “we are living in a diff erent time zone” aseas 1 (2) wanting to transcend the well known, exploring the new and exotic, tasting the options. plus ultra!19 finally, being accommodating and hospitable (5. mapagbigay) is part of the selfunderstanding of the filipinos. it remains to be seen if this is indeed a special cultural trait of the filipinos which must not be confused with simple subservience or if instead mapagbigay is mainly a form of indigenization of the colonial mindset. how entrenched the colonial mindset is still in the philippines and in how far it effects the decision of the gics to “join the global” (by applying for call centers or even more relevant by going abroad) is one of the pivotal points i want to follow up in the further research project. by now it seems to me that unlike the metropolitan counterpart described by bourdieu the (new) middle classes of the globally exposed periphery is at least less subject to the hegemonic control of the indigenous dominant class. michael pinches e.g. states for the philippines that an “increasing normative weight is being placed on the ideas of industry achievement and merit” (pinches 1999: 288) and that “many new rich reject or only conditionally accept the high cultural authority of the old elite. indeed, like the younger generation of that elite, they are also subject to global fashion trends whose main arbiters are located outside the philippines” (ibid: 295). “the fundamental weakness in the high-culture claims of the old elite is their association with economic backwardness and national humiliation” (ibid: 295). this questioning of the cultural authority of the old elites could be a result of the western middleclass merit myth (leistungsmythos) transmitted by a professional education that stresses the benefits of achievement and entrepreneurial merit as well as the ubiquitous middle class role model in the western movies et al. to restrict the relationship between middle class and upper class in the periphery to a merely pretentious behaviour of the middle class and a merely distinctive one of the upper class (as bourdieu does for the french society) would be far too simple. rather the globalized middle class shows distinctive behaviour towards the lower and the upper classes. an assumption that could be made from these observations is as follows: the new middle class (in this case the gics) is trying to participate in the “global culture” conceived to be more progressive and hip than the culture the old middle class is offering and distinguishes itself from the other classes by that. 19 the pivotal question to distinguish cosmopolitan orientation from an inferiority complex seems to me: is spatial and “mental” migration done to leave the philippine realities behind as they are considered to be stagnant and below average – or is it done to enrich the own culture to give it a “new blend”. 51 participating in the global my research came to the conclusion that call center agents understand themselves as part of the “global crowd”, fechters “new global tribe”, and are proud if customers do not recognize that they are filipinos (fabros 2007: 178). fabros further observed a “certain pride […] that agents derive from working in the frontlines of a transnational corporation or a fortune 500 company and dealing with foreign customers” (2007: 250). agents told me they appreciate working in such an “efficient” environment (reese 2007). speaking english very well is a central means of production for status and distinction and can be converted into other forms of capital. “to speak english is equated with being intelligent. and for a lawyer this is very important”, says one respondent who will be a lawyer one day (reese 2008). many young people are tempted to work in a call center for these reasons.20 then again i do not want to belittle the relevance income and job security have as reasons for people to work in call centers or to migrate. in stressing the cultural reasons i want to make a point as i think the economical motivation is often overemphasized as sole reason. especially for the middle class the cultural reasons (the global outlook as josua mata from the alliance of progressive labor (apl) calls it – reese 2008) may be of explanatory relevance other than for migrants from the lower classes who may just escape poverty and are not (that) strongly motivated by the desire for the overseas as mata believes. distinguishing oneself from the local my (still too much prima facie) assumption is that gics not only orient themselves to the lifestyles of the global middle class, but also understand themselves to be superior to not only the underclass but also to the traditional upper class. this would be a major difference to what bourdieu stated for the french society.21 living up to a “professional” working style (see below and owensby 1999: 68), promoting a model of democracy following western examples (in case of the ngo-workers) or planning to leave the philippines behind in looking for greener pastures not only for financial reasons may be done in the self-conception to be “missionaries of ‘modernity’ as well as trend-setters of a new way of life […] [and] providers of symbolic goods of ‘modernity’”, as gehrke (2000: 146) stated this for the indonesian middle 20 like the 27-year old psyche, who worked seven months as an agent after finishing her law studies and in the meantime working in a political ngo. “for a time this work is fun, you get into touch with people from other cultures. it is something different and you can learn something. [...] next to the improvement of my english i also learned to be more patient and disciplined. […] and it was improving my self confidence” (reese 2007). 21 but in the same line there are authors who question the validity of the purely hierarchical model of taste for western societies which bourdieu proposes. lofgren and frykman for instance state that “the middle class claims superiority for its lifestyle and attempts to impose it on other classes” (following ockey 1999: 231). 52 niklas reese “we are living in a diff erent time zone” aseas 1 (2) class. i assume that drinking coffee at starbucks or going out at greenbelt or serenada (the most popular places in metro manila nowadays) at night is for young, educated, middle class, professional, urban filipinos at the same time a matter of pretension (towards the western middle class) and of distinction towards the common filipinos. the same could be considered true for the growing patronage of organic products, an idea which mainly comes along as a cultural import of the west and expresses a global, although alternative lifestyle. “just a filipino” – the localization of the gics media and employers promise the gics to be part of the “global” drawing on the narrative of communication society. the call center industry for example instrumentalizes these desires quite explicitly. the promise to belong to the ‘communication people’ plays a central role in the job ads: self fulfilment, creativity, “aiming high” or “rising above the rest” are highlighted there. “while jobs are designed like a production line, the image projected by the call center, with its global accounts, high-tech work places, posh work environments and cosmopolitan clienteles, coincides with signs and symbols that relate with agents‘ middle class [and western oriented n.r.] identities (fabros 2007: 249). sooner or later, however, gics are reaching limits and make experiences that remind them that they are more service personnel and second rowers than full citizens of “communication society”. overseas contract workers can hardly escape these experiences as they suffer derogatory and racist treatment by their employers and the citizens of their host countries in a regular and structural manner. call center agents may find it easier to deny their being second-rate (zweitklassigkeit) although they have a similar experience in their interaction with us-colleagues and customers, who from time to time openly consider them to be “only a filipino”. agents are told “i cannot understand you” and customers demand “to speak with an american”. most probably ngo-workers are the ones who least experience being pushed back into the inferior, on the one hand as it does not fit into the “partnership culture”. northern funders claim to cultivate with their recipients, on the other hand exactly this culture has a blinding effect as one tends to believe that “it cannot be what may not be” (c. morgenstern). there is, however, enough evidence of unequal treatment of southern ngos which does not come up to the claim of partnership.22 gics seem to be neither really integrated here nor there and live in an intermediate world in between the global north and the global south. agents as well as ocws seem to be 22 one of the examples i heard from some ngo workers i interviewed during my second field trip for this research project (reese 2008) is the fact that skype conferences which involve participants from the south and the north are usually scheduled in a way convenient to the participants from europe and america even if most participants are from asia. 53 considered something special in their home country, but at the lower edge of society in the societies they serve. gics cannot be completely part of the global middle class. overseas travel, which is regarded as the ‘ultimate symbol of distinction’ amongst the middle class (lakha 1999: 258), is beyond their means. ngo-workers and the local staff of the transnational companies do fly abroad once in a while, but only if their employer or their funders ask them to do so. even if they had the necessary means to travel abroad they would encounter major difficulties due to the “wrong” colour of their passport. they are limited to remaining referred to the local place, while the global class easily crosses the borders of nation, race and class, as their american, german and other “expat” bosses or partners in the case of ngos do. lakha believes that the southern middle class is confined to emulating middle-class consumption through the consumption of inferior copies (1999: 258). coming back to the call center districts like eastwood, the agents there remain restricted to a simulacrum of the west – the “town center” being a kind of disneyland version of the (imagined) west placed amidst a typical third-world urban environment. managing contradiction: symbolic consumption and the discourse of professionalization there seems to be a gap between the class position given to the gics in the global society and the position they give themselves. there is an attempt to bridge this gap in a two-fold way. one of the ways is compensating their working class-like occupational position with a middle class-like symbolic consumption (see above). the second strategy of managing the intensified contradictory class location gics are in seems to be a discourse of professionalization. in short, it contains a reconstruction of the work situation which apparently is factory-like to be well done only in a professional manner and by professionally educated people. gics (re-)construct their work as demanding, prestigious and relevant much more so as from the global perspective their work is commonly perceived as proletarian. this is especially the case for call center agents and professionals turning to be service workers as a consequence of overseas migration. “being ‘professional’ strikes deeply into the heart of agents as it allows them to reconcile the conditions of repetitive, routinary, ‘no brainer’ work with their skills and educational background” (fabros 2007: 192). “it comes with the construction of a work ethic, standards, commitment, competence, efficiency and ‘getting the job done’” (fabros 2007: 239).23 there is the attempt to reconstruct a work 23 this again is used to govern the agents: “control and discipline is exacted in a way by tapping into the agent́ s ‘sense of duty’ and ‘professional ethos’ developed through their particular educational and discipline training” (fabros 2007: 192). this meets with the neoliberal governementality of self-guidance (foucault) and at the same time resembles the production of docile bodies which was typical for the “making of workers” at the beginning of the industrial age. 54 niklas reese “we are living in a diff erent time zone” aseas 1 (2) which is considered especially by other professionals as a “no brainer job” as intellectually demanding.24 an agent quoted by fabros lets her know: “call center work is not easy, in a sense that, though the work may look easy, there are so many hidden challenges to overcome” (fabros 2007: 111). professional is who knows to get along with the given circumstances in a seemingly intelligent and witty way (see fabros 2007: 169, 192). one reason for that is to meet up with their own self-image of a middle class using their main asset, their credentials, for achievement. the possession of credentials serves as the key distinction marking the “boundary” between themselves and “deskilled workers”. this is how i explain myself merely receiving smiles when asking what the agents think about the characterization of call centers as “air-conditioned hubs for exploiting workers” by the leftist labour center kmu. even if repetitive, even robotic mode of working lets call centers appear like factories, at least the agents make something out of it. “agents would always affirm their sources of distinction such as their fine background and good education. the constant reference to good schools, background, and education can also be viewed as an assertion that filipino agents are trying to make, as they distance themselves from the image of call center work as dead end, nobrainer ‘mcjobs’” (fabros 2007: 233). nevertheless this strategy of beautifying the seemingly unavoidable does only seldom lead to the glorification of call center work as dream jobs! distinguishing oneself from the working class may also be an important reason why one can observe “everyday resistance” (e.g. scott 1990) against unfavourable working conditions amongst call center agents but collective organization in trade unions and alike is nearly completely absent. the latter is considered to be underclass behaviour and joining a trade union is seen by middle class members (real or imagined) as inconsistent with their status and a threat to their hope of rising or at least of remaining a part of the respectable middle class (owensby 1999: 175 et seq.). “immersed in this rich, symbolic space, agents do not necessarily consider themselves oppressed. rather, they are ‘stressed out’” (fabros 2007: 250).25 distinction within the transnational zone distinctive behaviour is also applied when the educated middle class of the south ends up serving the everyday man of the north – be it as migrant worker or as call center agent, performing work which may contradict with the worker’s sense of self, for instance in the 24 within the philippines the reputation of call center work is ambivalent. while most admire the agents for their good english and the amount of money they apparently earn, which they apparently earn, agent turned college graduates of the elite universities are asked by their fellow students now active as attorneys or other established middle class professions: “why does someone like you work in a call center?“, as two graduates from the university of the philippines told me (reese 2007). 25 see fabros (2007: 189-247) and reese (2007b) for a lengthy description of resistance in international call centers. 55 case of teachers becoming domestic workers, engineers becoming construction workers or professionals working as clerks. “these ‘contradictions’ in relations force workers to continuously construct their location within the exchange. previous social axes of class and status are in a way subverted and challenged by the global distance. this situation demands for new symbolic systems to be created or for strategies to re-assert old meaning systems”, says fabros (2007: 231). they distance themselves to be considered merely drop-outs by their american customers (which the agents believe call center agents in the usa are, underestimating the precarious situation many middle-class members in the global north are exposed to in the meantime as well). “caught between two competing symbolic systems [race and class – nr] agents play up symbolic hierarchies of status and prestige to reconstitute their position in the exchange” (fabros 2007: 226). customers are cursed as stupid people, dullwitted or even white trash, while the agents consider themselves as knowledgeable, bright and university educated. while this downgrading of customers can also be understood as keeping oné s dignity (and therefore a form of everyday resistance), similar distinction strategies are also played towards their main competitors, the indians: indian agents are mocked for their thick accents and their “formal” (british) english, characteristics that are then played up as signs of ‘incompetence’ or ‘ineptitude’ in doing the job. “speaking with the proper accent becomes a measure of skills and status, which filipino agents claim they possess more than their counterparts” (fabros 2007: 233). are the gics taking pride in being able to adapt successfully to the “global culture” and are using their flexibility as a weapon in global competition? this would indeed be a very efficient way of self-leadership and responsibility, which the governmentality studies referring to foucault consider to be the aim of neoliberal government. i 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(1985). classes. london: verso. 58 niklas reese “we are living in a diff erent time zone” traders, markets, and the state in vietnam: anthropological perspectives aseas 6(2) 357356 d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -6 .2 -7 forschungswerkstatt / research workshop traders, markets, and the state in vietnam: anthropological perspectives kirsten w. endres1 citation endres, k. w. (2013). traders, markets, and the state in vietnam: anthropological perspectives. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 6(2), 356-365. in the past two decades, marketplaces as sites of multifarious economic, social, and cultural exchanges have attracted renewed interest of economic anthropologists. the collapse of communism, for example, unleashed a tidal wave of small-scale crossborder shuttle traders and contributed to the mushrooming of so-called post-socialist bazaars that have since been subjected to various forms of state regulation. in some parts of the world, traditional marketplaces are being promoted (and even recreated) to satisfy western tourists’ desire for an authentic oriental bazaar experience. elsewhere, or in different contexts, they are seen as indicators of a backward economy that need to be replaced by modern supermarkets and shopping malls. on the contrary, planners in the west now foster the development of community markets in order to enhance public life and improve community relations. in short, marketplaces, bazaars, and other sites of small-scale trading – sites of the so-called informal economy – hold plenty in store for anthropologists to explore and investigate. established in 2011, the max planck institute (mpi) research group traders, markets, and the state in vietnam investigates local markets and other sites of small retail trade in the seemingly paradoxical context of vietnam’s continuing socialist orientation, on the one hand, and contemporary neoliberal economic and social transformations, on the other. the group currently consists of kirsten w. endres as head of the group, two phd students (lisa barthelmes and esther horat), and, since april 2013, caroline grillot as postdoctoral researcher (replacing christine bonnin who took up 1 kirsten w. endres is head of research group at the max planck institute for social anthropology, halle/saale, germany, department ‘resilience and transformation in eurasia’. she has been conducting research in northern vietnam since 1996, focusing on socio-cultural transformation processes that arise from the dynamic interplay between state, society, and market. her monograph performing the divine: mediums, markets and modernity in urban vietnam (2011, nias press) examines urban spirit mediumship as part of the reform-era revival of popular religion in vietnam. in her current research, she focuses on vietnamese marketplaces as contested, politicized social spaces and investigates the entangled webs of social ties, informal networks, and institutional/political structures in which the economic practices of smallscale traders are historically and locally situated. contact: endres@eth.mpg.de aseas 6(2) 357356 new assignments in january 2013). besides holding regular informal meetings, the group organizes and participates in workshops and conference panels in order to place its findings in broader comparative contexts and to contribute to theoretical conceptualizations of the relationship between neoliberal reforms, economic restructuring, and changing state-society dynamics. market development policies in vietnam today ferdinand braudel’s (1982/2002) monumental study on european civilization and capitalism in the fifteenth to eighteenth century is a poignant reminder that public markets have, in different historic times and places, commonly been sites of intense policing and regulation. along with the growth of markets, complex contestations emerged over important issues such as the institutionalization and control of marketplaces, the levying of taxes, the use of public space, as well as, more generally, over changes in production and exchange relations. vietnam is no exception in this regard. the ‘appropriate’ development of traditional marketplaces has been on the vietnamese government’s agenda since the early 2000s. new policies were issued in the areas of distribution network planning, general public market regulations and management issues, and the privatization of market construction, renovation, and upgrading. in the capital of hanoi, in particular, a number of long-standing public retail markets have been demolished and rebuilt as multi-story trade centers by private sector contractors (barthelmes, 2013). as a result, many small-scale market vendors, after years of struggling for economic survival in temporary markets awaiting relocation, now suffer the consequences of higher monthly fees, inadequate spatial conditions, and the loss of customers. in addition, since the mid-1990s, other ‘disorderly’ forms of commercial activity, such as street vending and hawking, have repeatedly been banned in government efforts to bring order to city streets and discipline citizens into becoming ‘modern’ urban subjects. yet the state’s modernizing mission represents only one side of the coin. equally important in explaining the elimination of traditional public markets is the current climate of wealth accumulation in vietnam that takes place at the higher levels of an ‘unholy’ confluence between clientelistic mechanisms of political power kirsten w. endres traders, markets, and the state in vietnam: anthropological perspectives aseas 6(2) 359358 kirsten w. endres traders, markets, and the state in vietnam: anthropological perspectives and capitalist opportunities to profit – opportunities that serve the interests of a powerful politico-economic elite by absorbing its over-accumulated capital (harvey, 2003). consequently, the government’s attempts at civilizing the marketplace has brought about significant changes in the distribution of social and economic entitlements that call for closer examination from an anthropological perspective. rule by uncertainty and avenues of negotiation many of the rules and standards imposed by recent political economy changes run counter to the moral norms that govern the social, spatial, and temporal organization of ‘traditional’ economic activity and therefore meet with various forms of resentment and resistance by those affected. in addition, rather than providing a consistent legal basis for their economic activity, the maze of rules and regulations relevant to vietnamese small-scale traders does little in the way of reducing uncertainty. on the contrary, regulatory uncertainty (as well as coercion) has evolved as an efficient means by which the vietnamese state exercises power over its citizens (gainsborough, 2010). in her ongoing phd research on street vendors in hanoi, lisa barthelmes found that the possibility of a police raid, which usually results in the confiscation of goods and imposition of a fine, is the most agonizing part of their daily routine. the lack of predictability as to when and where a mobile law-enforcement team will chase after them and what kind of treatment and penalty they are to expect if caught further enhances the precarious economic situation of mobile vendors, whose semilegal status as rural-to-urban migrant workers already sets significant limits to their livelihood options. unlike in india or the philippines, restrictions on the formation of associations persist and effectively block possible avenues for vietnamese citizens to pursue and safeguard their interests. vietnamese small-scale traders therefore engage in subtle everyday strategies of avoidance and compliance in order to subvert, contest, and negotiate the enforcement of top-down planning policies and legal provisions directed against their ubiquitous presence in the streets. one way of negotiating the imposition of legal restrictions is through petty bribery. whereas, generally speaking, vietnamese citizens feel exasperated by the degree to which corruption in its manifold forms and manifestations has come to permeaseas 6(2) 359358 ate their daily lives, small-scale traders commonly justify their own resort to such practices by declaring them an essential means of economic survival. the tropes, analogies, and metaphors of corruption employed by vietnamese small-scale traders not only frame and shape their (self-)perception and experience, but also transmit social commentary and political criticism. as endres’ research reveals, small-scale (ethnic majority) traders at the northwestern border between vietnam and china rhetorically cast their petty bribe arrangements with officials as benevolent acts of providing access to economic opportunity for which they offer a token of appreciation – the bribe – in return (endres, 2012a). the metaphorical justification of the bribe as a means of economic survival on the one hand and as an act of the state official’s compassionate complicity on the other reflects small-scale traders’ moral claims upon the state to their right of making a substantial living and transforms this type of corruption into a legitimate, and even moral, practice. informality, moral economy, and household-based trade according to a recent ilo study (cling, razafindrakoto, & roubaud 2011), more than forty percent of non-agricultural household businesses in vietnam engage in traderelated economic activities. with formal business registration as the main criterion of distinction between the formal and informal sectors of the economy, threefourths of these households are categorized as belonging to the informal sector. whereas this classification certainly applies to mobile street traders and to vendors in temporary, unlicensed markets, the boundary between the formal and the informal already starts to blur when it comes to formally registered vendors in public markets managed by local authorities. many licensed traders engage in ‘informal’ vending activities, for example by merchandising goods obtained through informal/illegal channels (i.e. smuggled or imported ‘duty-free’ across the border, or purchased from unregistered traders or producers), by employing ‘informal’ stall helpers, or by ‘informally’ subletting their vending space to other users. in vietnam’s largely local, relationship-based economy, informality in fact constitutes a particular mode of social interaction and economic exchange and should, therefore, be treated analytically as an aspect of the moral economy rather than as a separate sector from the formal. kirsten w. endres traders, markets, and the state in vietnam: anthropological perspectives aseas 6(2) 361360 advanced by e.p. thompson (1971) in the context of the english working class and later applied to asian peasant societies by james scott (1976), the concept of moral economy stresses social institutions and moral beliefs as important components of economic behavior– or what karl polyani (1944/2001) described as the embeddedness of the economy in society. in vietnam, economic organization remains deeply entrenched in prevailing social norms and values regarding filial obligations and family cohesion. the importance of the household as an economic unit becomes particularly apparent in esther horat’s ongoing research on the village of ninh hiep in the red river delta. since the early 2000s ninh hiep has emerged as a dynamic regional trading community that channels chinese textiles from the vietnam-china border to various locations throughout vietnam. almost four thousand households are engaged in these trade-related activities. family enterprises are the most common type of economic organization in this village, with each household specializing in a specific phase in the production and supply chain, i.e. importing fabric or ready-to-wear clothing from china, cutting and sewing garments, and selling textile products at the local market. while traditional gender roles continue to perpetuate male dominance and female subordination, it is the women who are perceived as both the main breadwinners and managers of the family economy (horat, 2013). the prevailing preference for village endogamy and a low level of out-migration account for a steady growth in the number of householdbased trading enterprises, as young couples usually set up their own business after marriage. unlike in hanoi, where the replacement of old-style markets by shopping malls has diminished spaces for traditional forms of vending, the recent construction of two new market buildings by private investors provides ninh hiep cloth traders with additional vending space that suits their economic needs and enhances the economic strength and reputation of the village as a major textile hub in vietnam. in contrast to ninh hiep, most villages in the densely populated red river delta still depend, for better or worse, on agricultural production for the bulk of their income. migration (temporary/seasonal) to urban areas has therefore become a common household strategy for economic advancement. whereas, for example, female street vendors are often looked down upon as second-class citizens in the capital of hanoi, their remittances back to their home villages contribute significantly to enhancing their household’s economic situation at the village level. although they aseas 6(2) 361360 retain strong links with their rural-based families, many street vendors who spend the bulk of their time in the city also find it difficult to adapt to the tight social environment and set role expectations associated with vietnamese village life upon their (temporary) return. the interrelation between the street vendors’ experience of migration and their sense of belonging and personal identity is one of the issues that shall be explored in greater depth during the subsequent phases of the project. cross-border trade, mutual perceptions, and notions of entrepreneurial success vietnam’s love/hate relationship with china has been a persistent theme throughout vietnamese history and forms a significant part of the background against which kirsten endres (2012b) and caroline grillot (2012a, 2012b) explore current small-scale trade relationships across the vietnam-china border. after the brief but violent border war in 1979, official border crossings were shut down and trade came to a halt until the normalization of bilateral relations in the late 1980s. since then, the border gradually transformed from a line of demarcation between two hostile neighbors into a vital economic resource and thriving nexus of social and cultural interaction. on either side of the frontier, internal migrants hailed (back) to the border area in order to seize the economic opportunities at hand. along with the forging of new crossborder trading relationships, mutual images and perceptions evolved from the interstices of wider societal/political discourses and the localized, everyday experience of, and interaction with, the neighborly other. despite the fact that bilateral trade relations between china and vietnam are clearly dominated by chinese imports, cross-border economic ties are characterized by a high degree of mutual dependency, and small-scale traders on both sides are acutely aware of the fact that it is the very existence of the border that enables them to make a relatively decent living in this region. yet whether chinese or vietnamese, the rules of the game are to a great extent determined by on what side of the border the economic exchange takes place, and the degree to which traders conform to business practices that differ from their own plays an incisive role in determining vietnamese and chinese traders’ attitudes towards each other. their mutual perceptions are thus informed as much by cultural kirsten w. endres traders, markets, and the state in vietnam: anthropological perspectives aseas 6(2) 363362 prejudice and political tensions that shape public sentiment as they are conditioned by economic opportunity, individual self-interest, and face-to-face commercial transactions with suppliers, intermediaries, and customers from across the border. vietnamese small-traders would certainly not deny the need to work hard in order to be successful in the market. the ways in which they conceptually frame their economic success, however, reveal that discipline, rational calculation, and personal skills are very much downplayed in personal accounts. instead, a person’s propensity for trade and the wealth generated by it are narratively constructed as part of a person’s fate decreed by heaven. accordingly, a trader’s success in business is referred to as loc – a key concept that relates to good luck, fate-fortune, prosperity, and divine benevolence. loc may be secured by moral virtue, enhanced by ritual practice, reciprocated in ritual exchange, distributed among kin, and transferred to future generations. it is thus in constant circulation: from ‘heaven’ to humans, from humans to deities and ancestors, and from deities and ancestors back to humans (endres 2013). further research into the complex web of interlinkages between the economic sphere and the metaphysical assumptions that govern and guide vietnamese perceptions of the self and the world is expected to contribute valuable insights to our understanding of local economic practices, the moral implications of wealth, and ideas about human agency. ethnic minority traders in the northern uplands the mountainous northern borderlands of vietnam are home to a significant number of officially designated ethnic minority groups for whom local periodic markets have featured for centuries as integral to their social and material lives. moreover, border residents have long sustained their livelihoods through cross-border goods exchanges and nurtured strong ties with kin in china. while market trade has gained central importance in the livelihood strategies of uplanders, minorities such as ethnic hmong continue to be labeled as autarkic societies lacking in entrepreneurial know-how. thus, the vietnam state’s agenda to develop the ‘economically inefficient’ northern upland region involves the ‘modernization’, upgrading, and regulation of local marketplaces (turner & bonnin 2012). christine bonnin’s research has aseas 6(2) 363362 enriched the group’s agenda by looking at the effects of state-imposed standardized models of how markets should look and how traders should behave that prescribe fixed, licensed trading from a permanent market structure. on the other hand, ‘ethnically colorful’ upland markets are being assessed for their economic potential, as the state and private stakeholders alike seek to promote cultural tourism and ‘cultural commodities’ for external consumption (bonnin, 2012). conclusions and outlook in his seminal book the great transformation, first published in 1944, karl polanyi has cautioned against the idea of the free market (i.e. free enterprise and private ownership) as the essence of human freedom, as this may ultimately come to mean “the fullness of freedom for those whose income, leisure, and security need no enhancing, and a mere pittance of liberty for the people, who may in vain attempt to make use of their democratic rights to gain shelter from the power of owners of property” (polanyi, 1944/2001, p. 265). such have been the effects of neo-liberal restructuring in many parts of the world, including europe, and we can see evidence of its first seeds taking root in vietnam today. the transformation of urban public markets into trade centers and shopping malls is one salient case in point: large plots of state-owned real estate in the inner city are handed over to private investment companies for development, in the process of which thousands of small traders are ‘dispossessed’ of their means of economic survival in the marketplace. ironically, this also happened during the period of socialist transformation, when small traders were ‘encouraged’ to engage in more productive work (abrami, 2002). in spite of these larger processes that have so far become most evident in urban settings, large sections of vietnam’s population continue to rely on small-scale trade and market vending activities in order to sustain their livelihoods. the expected results generated by this research group will contribute to a fuller understanding of complex market-society-state dynamics that inform, and are formed by, the social contexts in which the everyday economic practices of vietnamese small-scale traders and market vendors are embedded. we anticipate that our findings will set the stage for further investigations that take up a broader historical and conceptual apkirsten w. endres traders, markets, and the state in vietnam: anthropological perspectives aseas 6(2) 365364 proach in order to situate the particularities of the vietnamese experience within the wider trajectories of resilience and (post-socialist) transformation in eurasia. references abrami, r. m. (2002). just a peasant: economy and legacy in northern vietnam. in p. leonard & d. kaneff (eds.), post-socialist peasant? rural and urban constructions of identity in eastern europe, east asia and the former soviet union (pp. 94-116). basingstoke, uk: palgrave. barthelmes, l. (2013). “dort gibt es nichts zu sehen” – shoppingmalls, supermärkte und stadtplanung in hanoi. südostasien, 1, 8-10. bonnin, c. (2012). new markets in upland culture: state development agendas and ethnic minority traders of ‘cultural commodities’ in northern vietnam. paper presented at 12th easa biennial conference, nanterre, france, july 10-13, 2012. braudel, f. (2002). the wheels of commerce: civilization & capitalism 15th-18th century, volume 2. london, uk: phoenix press. (original work published 1982) cling, j. p., razafindrakoto, m., & roubaud, f. (2011). the informal economy in vietnam. international labour organization (ilo). retrieved from http://www.ilo.org/hanoi/whatwedo/publications/wcms_171370/ lang--en/index.htm endres, k. w. (2012a). making law for a bowl of rice: small-scale trade, state regulation, and metaphors of subversion at the vietnam-china border. paper presented at international conference on post-socialist bazaars: markets and diversities in ex-comecon countries, max planck institute for the study of religious and ethnic diversity, göttingen, germany, february 23-24, 2013. endres, k. w. (2012b). neighborly bargains: small-scale trade and mutual perceptions at the vietnam-china border. unpublished manuscript, based on paper presented at workshop on vietnam and its minorities, vietnam and its neighbours – are there historical lessons for the 21st century?, university of hamburg, germany, june 9-10, 2012. endres, k. w. (2013). “luck bestowed by heaven” – strategies and perceptions of entrepreneurial success in the vietnamese marketplace. paper presented at the 7th. euroseas conference, lisbon, portugal, july 2-5, 2013. gainsborough, m. (2010). vietnam: rethinking the state. london, uk: zed books. grillot, c. (2012a). between bitterness and sweetness, when bodies say it all. chinese perspectives on vietnamese women in a border space. journal of vietnamese studies, 7(1), 106-148. grillot, c. (2012b). cross-border marriages between vietnamese women and chinese men: the integration of otherness and the impact of popular representation. in d. w. haines, k. yamanaka, & s. yamashita (eds.), wind over water: migration in an east asian context (pp. 125-137). oxford, uk: berghahn books. harvey, d. (2003). the new imperialism. oxford, uk: oxford university press. horat, e. (2013). towards privatization and gendered marketization: dynamics in a traditional trade commune in north vietnam. paper presented at the workshop on the transformation of public markets in contemporary vietnam: anthropological perspectives, vietnamese academy of social sciences, hanoi, vietnam, april 12, 2013. polanyi, k. (2001). the great transformation. the political and economic origins of our time. boston, ma: beacon press. (original work published 1944) aseas 6(2) 365364 scott, j. c. (1976). the moral economy of the peasant: rebellion and subsistence in southeast asia. new haven, ct: yale university press. thompson, e. p. (1971). the moral economy of the english crowd in the eighteenth century. past & present 50, 76-136. turner, s., & bonnin, c. (2012). at what price rice? food security, livelihood vulnerability and state intervention in upland northern vietnam. geoforum 43(1), 95-105. kirsten w. endres traders, markets, and the state in vietnam: anthropological perspectives in and out of the forest: decentralisation and recentralisation of forest governance in east kalimantan, indonesia aseas 5(2) 243242 aktuelle südostasienforschung / current research on south-east asia in and out of the forest: decentralisation and recentralisation of forest governance in east kalimantan, indonesia cathrin bullinger1 & michaela haug2 citation bullinger, c., & haug, m. (2012). in and out of the forest: decentralisation and recentralisation of forest governance in east kalimantan, indonesia. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 5(2), 243-262. the ‘big bang’ decentralisation reforms indonesia embarked upon in 2001 went along with a decentralisation of the forestry sector. hopes were high that this would improve local development and contribute to more sustainable forest management. however, undesired outcomes of decentralisation have been counteracted by an immediate eff ort to recentralise forest governance. in this paper, we address the question what actual impact both deand recentralisation of forest governance had on the livelihoods of local communities in east kalimantan. our fi ndings are based on fi eld studies conducted in two villages using ethnographic methods. we show that under decentralised forest governance, unclear functional competences and overlapping authorities of the central and local governments triggered a logging boom that increased interand intra-village confl icts, exacerbating inequality, and leading to further deforestation. on the other hand, the recentralisation of the forestry sector and the increased central state control of illegal logging deprived villagers of lucrative income sources without off ering adequate alternatives, while ending therewith associated confl icts. our case studies thus show that deand recentralisation had both positive and negative eff ects on a local level. however, we argue that continual decentralisation eff orts would be more promising for the improvement of local communities in east kalimantan. keywords: decentralisation; east kalimantan; forest governance; indonesia; local livelihoods die weitreichenden dezentralisierungsprozesse, die indonesien 2001 in die wege geleitet hat, schlossen eine dezentralisierung des forstsektors ein. die hoff nungen waren groß, dass damit die lokale entwicklung vorangetrieben und nachhaltiges waldmanagement gefördert würden. den unerwünschten folgen der dezentralisierung wurde jedoch mit umgehenden bemühungen entgegengewirkt, den forstsektor zu rezentralisieren. in diesem artikel befassen wir uns mit der frage, welche tatsächlichen folgen sowohl die deals auch rezentralisierung des forstsektors auf die lebensumstände lokaler gemeinschaften in ost-kalimantan hatten. unsere ergebnisse beruhen auf feldforschungen in zwei dorfgemeinschaften unter anwendung ethnographischer methoden. wir zeigen, dass die unklare aufgabenverteilung und überlappenden autoritäten von zentralund lokalregierung während der dezentralisierung einen logging boom hervorgerufen haben, der zu steigenden konfl ikten innerhalb von und zwischen dörfern sowie wachsender ungleichheit und ansteigender 1 cathrin bullinger studied social and cultural anthropology, political science, and environmental conservation at the universities of freiburg and basel. she is currently research associate and project coordinator of the bmbf-southeast asian studies programme at freiburg university, germany. contact: cathrin.bullinger@politik.uni-freiburg.de (corresponding author) 2 michaela haug studied social and cultural anthropology, history of art, philosophy, and indonesian studies in karlsruhe, cologne, and yogyakarta. she gained her phd from freiburg university in 2009 and is currently working as scientific assistant at the institute for social and cultural anthropology at the university of cologne, germany. d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -5 .2 -4 aseas 5(2) 245244 entwaldung geführt hat. auf der anderen seite haben die rezentralisierung des forstsektors und die zunehmende zentralstaatliche kontrolle des illegalen holzeinschlags den dorfbewohnerinnen lukrative einnahmequellen entzogen, ohne adäquate alternativen zu schaffen. unsere fallstudien zeigen somit, dass deund rezentralisierung sowohl positive als auch negative auswirkungen hatten. dennoch argumentieren wir für die fortsetzung der dezentralisierungsbestrebungen, da dies für die verbesserung der lebensumstände von lokalen gemeinschaften vielversprechender ist. schlagworte: dezentralisierung; forst-governance; indonesien; local livelihoods; ost-kalimantan introduction decentralisation is assumed to hold a great potential for local development and sustainable natural resource management (larson & ribot, 2004; moser, norton, conway, ferguson, & vizard, 2001; steinich, 1997). however, recent studies on the impact of decentralisation reforms show mixed results (baumann & farrington, 2003; ribot, 2002; shackleton, campbell, wollenberg, & edmunds, 2002). a more critical and differentiated view has thus replaced the initial celebration of decentralisation. these mixed results emerged in indonesia, where ‘big bang’ decentralisation reforms also decentralised forest governance. governmental and popular hopes for improved living conditions of the local population and a more sustainable forest management did not materialise. the excessive encroachment of new authorities on forests and legal uncertainty led to increased deforestation and a lack of long-term improvements of local livelihoods (barr, wollenberg, limberg, anau, iwan, & made sudana, 2001; casson, 2001a, 2001b; mccarthy, 2001a, 2001b; obidzinski & barr, 2003; potter & badcock, 2001; soetarto, sitorus, & napiri, 2001). consequently, as was the case in other countries where central government called for recentralisation when decentralisation did not go smoothly, the indonesian government recentralised forest governance (barr, resosudarmo, dermawan, & mccarthy, 2006, p. 128). while several studies have documented the impact of decentralised forest management in indonesia, the effect of recentralisation on village level has been hardly documented so far. in this paper, we address the question of what impact these two subsequent policy shifts had on the intended beneficiaries of new decentralised policies. our case studies illustrate that decentralisation and recentralisation have aseas 5(2) 245244 both positive and negative impact on local communities. however, we argue that the negative consequences of decentralisation are the result of the sudden and disorderly nature and weak implementation of the decentralisation process in indonesia, which was conducted in a phase of economic and political crisis and was seen as an instrument for protecting the nation state from breaking up due to separatist movements. we thus support the argument that recentralising authority is not the best answer to the shortcomings of decentralisation (larson, 2005). instead, we are optimistic that improved decentralised forest policies will be able to reduce the negative impact of decentralisation while strengthening its advantages and thereby offer a more promising future for local communities. our findings rest on field research conducted between 2004 and 2007 in the district of kutai barat as an integrated part of the project making local government more responsive to the poor: developing indicators and tools to support sustainable livelihood under decentralization which was carried out by the centre for international forestry research (cifor) in co-operation with freiburg university. we used descriptive and exploratory fieldwork methods, including participant observation, informal interviews and semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, and village level household surveys. informants included a broad range of stakeholders, such as policy-makers and administrators on the district and sub-district level, village authorities, private business operators, ngos, and village inhabitants. we discussed our findings with local communities and submitted recommendations to district government officials. after providing a short overview of the legal framework that shaped the deand recentralisation of forest governance in indonesia in the next section, we introduce the local setting of kutai barat. in the main part of this paper, we describe the impact of decentralisation and the subsequent recentralisation policies within two sample villages. in the final section, we provide an analysis of these impacts and present our arguments for continued decentralisation efforts. deand recentralisation of the indonesian forestry sector during the early phase, decentralisation included a temporary relaxation of the highly centralised indonesian forestry sector. first steps towards decentralised forest cathrin bullinger & michaela haug in and out of the forest aseas 5(2) 247246 governance undertaken in 19983 were strengthened in 1999 through the newly enacted regional autonomy laws. law no. 22/19994 regulated the devolution of political authority to local governments. the central government retained the authority over foreign policy, defence and security, monetary policy, legal systems, and religious matters while ceding authority over all other policy fields to local governments. these subsequently gained the full responsibility for natural resource management, including forests. law no. 25/19995 devised a new system of financial arrangements between the centre and the regions, whereby districts received a much larger share of forest revenues generated within their boundaries and were empowered to generate their own additional revenues. government regulation no. 6/19996 and its implementing regulations issued by the ministry of forestry7 further strengthened the decentralisation of forest management, empowering district heads to allot small-scale timber concession licences for areas of up to 100 hectares and a period of up to one year. however, the exact extent of district governments’ new authority over forests remained vague, as law no. 22/1999 contained ambiguities which invited multiple interpretations (resosudarmo, 2004, p. 114). further inconsistencies arose between the decentralisation legislation and the new basic forestry law passed in 19998, as the latter retained the notion of central control (mccarthy, 2004, p. 10). in this situation of ambiguous functional competences and overlapping authorities, district heads throughout indonesia’s forest rich regions interpreting the legislation in their own favour issued small-scale logging permits with renewed zeal (nugroho, russell, & sardjono, 2009, p. 1). in response to these emergent excesses, the ministry of forestry withdrew the authority for issuing small-scale concessions from district heads in february 20029. four months later, the central government reinforced this policy when it finally issued the implementing regulations for the new 3 government regulation 62/1998 (peraturan pemerintah no. 62/1998 tentang penyerahan sebagian urusan pemerintahan di bidang kehutanan kepada daerah) granted authority over a number of forestry affairs to district heads and was partly read as a signal that the central government was prepared to support decentralised forest governance (dermawan, komarudin, & mcgrath, 2006, p. 3). 4 undang undang no. 22/1999 tentang pemerintahan daerah. 5 undang undang no. 25/1999 tentang perimbangan keuangan antara pemerintah pusat dan daerah. 6 peraturan pemerintah no. 6/1999 tentang pengusahaan hutan dan pemungutan hasil hutan pada hutan produksi. 7 keputusan menteri kehutanan dan perkebunan no. 310/1999 tentang pedoman pemberian hak pemungutan hasil hutan. 8 undang undang pokok kehutanan no.41/1999. 9 keputusan mentri kehutanan no. 541/2002 tentang pencabutan keputusan menteri kehutanan no. 05.1/kpts-ii/2000 tentang kriteria dan standarperizinan usaha pemanfaatan hasil hutan dan perizinan pemungutan hasil hutan pada hutan produksi. aseas 5(2) 247246 basic forestry law10, which returned the authority over forests to the centre and provided the ministry of forestry with the sole authority to issue logging licences (resosudarmo, 2004, p. 125). finally, the decentralisation laws of 1999 were replaced by laws no. 32/2004 and no. 33/200411, which affirmed regional autonomy but recentralised many fields of authority to higher levels of government. the short period of ‘big bang’ decentralisation in the forestry sector thus came to an end by legal means in 2002 (dermawan, komarudin, & mcgrath, 2006, p. 5). regional setting the district of kutai barat is located in the province of east kalimantan and came into existence in october 1999, when the former district of kutai was split into three parts, kutai barat, kutai timur, and kutai kartanegara. it stretches along the mahakam river, covering a territory of 31,628 square kilometres with a population of nearly 150,000 people (badan pusat statistik, 2003). most of the district’s poor infrastructure is concentrated around the new district capital, sendawar, which occupies the highland region of the middle mahakam. the district population is comprised of a vast amalgam of ethnicities including several dayak groups, which form the majority of the population, malay groups like the banjar and kutai, and migrant groups from other indonesian islands. the district possesses rich forest resources with a state forest area of 2.3 million hectares (kk-pkd kutai barat, 2001, p. 6). the district’s most important economic sectors are timber and mining, with diminishing gold mining and an increasing significance of coal mining. the development of oil palm estates in the sub-district of jempang is marked by a long history of conflict and controversy (casson, 2001a, p. 20; gönner, 2002, pp. 84-85; gönner, cahyat, haug, & limberg, 2007), but currently only plays a minor economic role in kutai barat. the smallholder economy of the district is characterised by swidden agriculture, animal husbandry, market gardening, and small-scale estate crop production. to demonstrate the impact of the subsequent deand recentralisation policies on local communities, we will employ examples from two villages. the first, jambuq, is 10 peraturan pemerintah no. 34/2002 tentang tata hutan dan penyusunan rencana pengelolaan hutan, pemanfaatan hutan dan penggunaan kawasan hutan. 11 undang undang no. 32/2004 tentang pemerintahan daerah and undang undang no. 33/2004 tentang perimbangan keuangan antara pemerintah pusat dan daerah. cathrin bullinger & michaela haug in and out of the forest aseas 5(2) 249248 a self-proclaimed kutai village12 that lies on the eastern border of kutai barat and is located directly on the trans-kalimantan road connecting sendawar with the provincial capital of samarinda. according to official village records of 2004, jambuq has 549 inhabitants living together in 116 households. the village covers an area of 30.1 square kilometres, with a great share of secondary forests of different stages and only minor primary forest spots left. the amount of valuable timber in the village’s forest has declined over the last few decades due to commercial logging under hph-legislation13 which started in 1979, and disastrous forest fires which occurred in 1997/9814. jambuq villagers subsist mainly on swidden agriculture, forest gardens, and additional income from various monetary sources. jontai, a dayak benuaq15 village, is located in the westernmost part of kutai barat on the shore of the nyuataatn river. the village area is densely forested and is bordered in the north by the province of central kalimantan. numbering 361 inhabitants16 living in 60 households, its settlement size is slightly smaller than that of jambuq, while the village area, covering 64.32 square kilometres, is more than twice as large. the inhabitants of jontai practice an extended subsistence economy with a high importance of subsistence and a situational orientation towards monetary income. the largest proportion of the village area (65 percent)17 consists of old secondary and primary forest, while the remaining 35 percent is used for agriculture, including rice cultivation, fallow fields, as well as rattan, rubber, and forest gardens. commercial logging undertaken by different companies has played a major role in jontai since the log flood enterprises18 of the late 1960s. the logging company currently active started its operations in the village area in 2001. 12 the inhabitants originated from benuaq ancestors and converted to islam in the early twentieth century, therewith adapting kutai customs and kutai language. 13 commercial forestry concession (hak pengusahaan hutan – hph) for state forests, issued by the ministry of forestry, introduced during the suharto regime (1967-1998). 14 forest fires in indonesia’s tropical swamp forests have occurred in the past few decades mainly due to a combination of ecological and economic reasons. in 1997/98, a prolonged drought caused by a strong el niño – southern oscillation (enso) event, created an extraordinary fire prone situation in east kalimantan (hoffmann, hinrichs, & siegert, 1999). villagers in jambuq suspect fire setting on behalf of plantation owners as the major reason for the outbreak in the forest surrounding jambuq. 15 the different ethnicities of our sample villages are not of primary importance for the argument laid out in this article. a discussion of how different impacts and perceptions of decentralisation are influenced by different ethnic backgrounds is currently in preparation by the authors. 16 the data on jontai and the sub-district nyuatan was obtained during an interview with the staff of the subdistrict office (dempar, personal communication, april 27, 2005). 17 as the village area has not been measured yet, this percentile division is based on the estimation of key informants. 18 the log flood enterprises used traditional, non-mechanised logging techniques. the logs were placed at river banks so that they could be transported downriver with the seasonal floods. aseas 5(2) 249248 impact of decentralised forest governance on local livelihoods impact on district level new forestry regulations issued by the provincial and district governments provided local communities with a larger share of benefits from the forestry sector and improved their access to forests and forest resources. for example, the provincial government of east kalimantan issued governor decree no. 20/200019, which requires holders of large-scale logging concessions (hph) to pay up to idr 3,000 (usd 0.36 [2000]20) per cubic metre of harvested logs to local communities who hold customary rights to the respective forest areas. the decree further demands that hph-holders make retrospective payments for timber cut during the previous five years (center for social forestry, 2005, pp. 2-3). in kutai barat, this policy was transferred into district head decree no. 283/200021 and implemented in the same year. the introduction of the new small-scale concessions was regulated in kutai barat through district head decree no. 4/2000 on procedures for granting forest product harvest concessions (hak pemungutan hasil hutan – hphh). by the end of 2000, the district government had already granted hundreds of such licences; the actual amount varied between 622, according to kk-pkd kutai barat (2001, p. 43), and 223, according to dermawan et al. (2006, p. 7). the licences were granted to individual inhabitants of kutai barat, groups or cooperatives who then mainly worked together with logging companies as contractors to exploit the forest. negotiations between logging companies and villagers determined the fee contractors would have to pay to the traditional owners of the forest. these fees varied between idr 50,000 (usd 5.50 [2004]) and idr 150,000 (usd 16.50 [2004]) per cubic metre of timber (andrianto, 2006, p. 45). several studies demonstrate that in the majority of the cases, local communities only gained short-term economic benefits from decentralised forest governance, 19 surat keputusan gubernur kalimantan timur no. 20/2000 tentang standar pemberian biaya kompensasi kepada masyarakat adat atas kayu yang dipungut pada areal hak ulayat di propinsi kalimantan timur. 20 we use average conversion rates for each year (indicated in brackets) as follows: (1999): 0.00013 – usd 1 = idr 7,879; (2001): 0.00010 – usd 1 = idr 10,250; (2003): 0.00012 – usd 1 = idr 8,593; (2004): 0.00011 – usd 1 = idr 8,945; (2005): 0.00010 – usd 1 = idr 9,721; (2007): 0.00011 – usd 1 = idr 9,110. 21 surat keputusan bupati kutai barat no. 283/2000 tentang desa-desa di dalam dan di sekitar areal hph yang berhak menerima dana kompensasi dari perusahaan-perusahaan kehutanan yang ada di wilayah kabupaten kutai barat. cathrin bullinger & michaela haug in and out of the forest aseas 5(2) 251250 while local elites and companies were the main beneficiaries (see for example barr et al., 2001, 2006; barr & resosudarmo, 2002; casson, 2001a; haug, 2010; resosudarmo, 2004; rhee, 2000). however, the new regulations not only provided new income opportunities for local communities but strengthened their customary rights politically. another example can be found in the licences for collecting forest resources (called ippk – izin pemungutan dan pemanfaatan kayu), which were supposed to provide legal means to clear small forest plots for community plantations (casson & obidzinski, 2002, pp. 40-41). the district government of kutai barat further developed community-based forestry management models, such as the iukhm scheme22. these initiatives can be seen as an important attempt to provide local communities with legitimate access to their forests. this is of special importance as customary rights to state forest lands are not yet recognised in a meaningful way under national law. the basic forestry law of 199923 acknowledges adat24 rights as long as adat still exists and is not contrary to national interests or to superior national legislation. however, this acknowledgement of customary rights in state forests only provides people with forest management rights and rights to collect forest products but does not recognise ownership rights. therefore, local communities have limited prospects of claiming rights to land or forest resources (bakker & moniaga, 2010, p. 189). the legal insecurity which arose through unclear functional assignments and overlapping authorities within the forestry sector triggered a logging boom during the early phase of decentralisation. the villagers in kutai barat enjoyed practically free access to their forest and thus set up their own logging operations. many hphh-holders also made use of this opportunity by extending their logging operations well beyond the actual boundaries of their concession area as the district government lacked the capacity to monitor the implementation of these small-scale licences. in addition, the distinction between legal and illegal logging blurred as logging activities could be legal according to district government regulations while they were considered illegal by the central government (casson & obizinsky, 2002, p. 2134). 22 keputusan kepala dinas kehutanan kabupaten kutai barat nomor 521.21/130/dk-i/2004 tentang petunjuk teknis permohonan dan pelaksanaan pengukuhan serta ijin usaha kehutanan masyarakat (iukhm). 23 forestry law no. 41/1999 article 4, paragraph 3 (penguasaan hutan oleh negara tetap memperhatikan hak masyarakat hukum adat, sepanjang kenyataanya masih ada dan diakui berandaanya, serta tidak bertentangan dengan kepentigan nasional). 24 adat can be best understood as a dynamic system which controls all aspects of human life and which varies among the different regions of indonesia. as adat also includes traditional law, it is sometimes used synonymously with customary law. aseas 5(2) 251250 impact on jambuq in jambuq, decentralised forest governance led to two substantial changes. first, the logging company holding an hph over parts of jambuq’s forest began paying annual compensation for its logging activities. these payments were allocated to village development (30 percent) and direct cash payments to the villagers (70 percent). the first compensation in 2000 included retrospective payments for the previous five years, with a total amount of idr 450 million (usd 53,900 [2000]). the distribution of this payment was accompanied and supervised by the hph-owner, so villagers received payments in three classes of idr 750,000 (usd 89 [2000]), 3 million (usd 359 [2000]), and 4 million (usd 479 [2000]) for each family. this monetary distribution depended on the age of the family head, status within the village, and, for immigrants, the time the family had spent in the village. in the following years, compensation decreased as the amount paid depended on harvested logs (about idr 30 million (usd 3,000) to idr 70 million (usd 6,850) a year [2001]). while statements by informants concerning the first compensation payment were consistent, they were contradictory concerning the amounts paid out in the following years. however, villagers benefited from compensation payments in 2001 and 2002 with idr 20,000 (usd 2 [2001]) to idr 70,000 (usd 7 [2001]) per household. nevertheless, the distribution of kompensasi within the village was unclear as villagers had limited information and some families did not receive payments at all. second, access to the forest was possible due to negotiations between the hphholder and village leaders. this led to an agreement that village leaders could grant permits for cutting particular tree species25 to villagers or external operators in the hph-area, which is considered communally owned forest according to adat. these self-organised logging groups then had to pay fees to the village leaders amounting to idr 10,000 (usd 1.30 [1999]) per cubic metre in 1999, which were subsequently raised to idr 25,000 (usd 2.70 [2002]) in 2002. for forest areas that are claimed by individuals or groups due to inheritance rights according to adat, fees for chainsaw operators were increased to idr 50,000 (usd 5.40 [2002]) and subsequently paid to the respective owners. the fees for the village’s forest resulted from village negotiations and were allotted equally to village development and additional village leader 25 in particular, two tree species were included: ulin (eusideroxylon zwageri) and ipil (intsia palembanica). cathrin bullinger & michaela haug in and out of the forest aseas 5(2) 253252 salaries. however, village leaders showed an unwillingness to regularly inform people of the fee amounts. increased financial revenues on the village and district level which corresponded with logging activities opened up opportunities for development activities at the expense of forests. government programmes for private business credits, education, and health were introduced in the village as in other parts of kutai barat. for jambuq, infrastructure projects (e.g. the construction of pathways, mosques, water tanks, and market stalls) as well as some development programmes (e.g. wet rice field planting, reforestation, and mixed agroforestry) were closely linked to decentralisation as programmes and projects were co-financed by the district government of kutai barat, the hph-holder, and village funds (bullinger, 2008, pp. 70-77). although welcomed by most of the villagers, both development activities and cash payments led to new problems in terms of transparency and the distribution of shares. our research shows that village leaders and people with close ties to the village’s elites profited the most. village leaders were in the powerful position of gatekeepers who could decide who participated in development programmes and who did not. moreover, village leaders controlled compensation payments and fees, and profited disproportionately from these payments, as democratic institutions on the village level remained weak. additionally, no efficient control mechanism was institutionalised by the district or sub-district government at this stage of decentralisation. thus, village leaders accumulated new power and villagers became increasingly dependent on local elites.26 economic benefits from compensation payments and returns from logging activities led to increased visible material wealth, in particular electricity (generators), housing, motorbikes, and electronic equipment (such as tvs and mobile phones). in addition, some families invested the money in education or future income options (such as kiosks and chainsaws). however, these temporary effects contrast with other outcomes, such as increased inequality and conflicts among villagers, neighbour associations, and neighbouring villages mainly over boundaries of logging permits and the distribution of compensation and fees as well as growing distrust as a consequence of the limited availability of information. 26 this phenomenon is known as elite capture, explaining that local elites profit disproportionally from public resources due to their dominance in local planning and governance processes as well as proximity to state institutions and decision-makers. various aspects of elite capture in indonesia can be found, e.g. in dasgupta & beard (2007), hadiz (2003), mccarthy (2011), and sidel (2004). aseas 5(2) 253252 impact on jontai the villagers in jontai interpreted the changes in the forestry sector after decentralisation as a re-establishment of their customary rights. formerly, the forest has been in the grip of the state. now timber is coming under adat rights again. formerly, the people were quiet and did not dare to talk. formerly, the state was still in power, but now the forest has been returned from the state to the people (t. usni, personal communication, september 10, 2004). in cooperation with a local logging company, the villagers gained one of the new small-scale logging licences. due to their strengthened position, fees rose from idr 3,000 (usd 0.36 [1999]) per cubic metre under the hph system up to idr 65,000 (usd 7.15 [2004]) per cubic metre under the new hphh regulation. after initial plans to share the fee payments equally among all families failed, the villagers formed descent-based groups who shared customary use rights in certain parts of the forest and divided up the village forest according to their different ‘locations’. each of these groups was represented by a partly self-appointed leader who was responsible for the arrangements with the logging company and the distribution of the fee payments among all group members. although 73 percent of all households received fee payments, the amount a person received varied greatly according to the honesty of the group leader, the size of the respective location as well as the number of people belonging to his or her inheritance group. fee payments were disbursed in irregular intervals and the amount a person received per payment varied between idr 200,000 (usd 22 [2004]) and idr 15 million (usd 1,650 [2004]). single children had a definite advantage as they did not have to share the fee payments with siblings. however, people in powerful positions gained the largest advantages because village elites with noble origins received the highest profits. as a consequence of the de facto open access to the forest, people also started to set up their own small logging operations along new and abandoned logging roads which meander through the village area. timber traders came regularly into the forest to collect square blocks and shelves sawn by the villagers. prices varied according to timber species. for meranti27 cut into square blocks they paid idr 300,000 (usd 33 [2004]) per cubic metre, and idr 600,000 (usd 66 [2004]) if already sawn into shelves. 27 the name meranti refers to several kinds of trees from the family of dipterocarpaceae, e.g. shorea spp., shorea sp., and anisoptera sp. cathrin bullinger & michaela haug in and out of the forest aseas 5(2) 255254 in one week, an experienced chainsaw operator working on his own location could thus earn an income of up to idr 3 million (usd 330 [2004]). this contributed to active involvement in logging although the villagers were aware of the negative longterm effects. most, however, viewed logging as a window of opportunity which they did not want to miss, like, for example, kakah diren: “if the forest gets closed up again, if it is given back to the state, we can’t manage the forest anymore” (k. diren, personal communication, august 31, 2004). furthermore, some villagers perceived it as their longstanding right to cut timber and finally gain financial profit as various companies had earned fortunes from their forests over the last decades while they remained poor. with new income from logging and fee payments, material wealth increased. many families invested their growing income into house building and the purchase of motorbikes, working tools, and electronic equipment. because most logging money was received by young men, a large amount of it was also spent on alcohol, gambling, and prostitution. a few households used their increased income for long-term investments and education. for example, the first adolescent from jontai that took up university studies was financed by fee money. due to the fact that people received different benefits from fee payments and logging, inequality within the village increased sharply and many conflicts arose among the villagers concerning the size of their different ‘locations’, and the distribution and utilisation of fee payments and logging income. impact of recentralisation on the local level impact on district level two years after the decentralisation of the forestry sector had been ended legally, the logging boom came to an abrupt end in november 2004 when central government control of illegal logging increased significantly as part of newly-elected president susilo bambang yudhoyono’s ambitious plans to tackle indonesia’s most serious problems within the first 100 days of his presidency.28 thus, the recentralisation 28 during the election campaigns susilo bambang yudhoyono promised that he would combat indonesia’s most serious problems within the first 100 days of his presidency. poverty, corruption, terrorism, slow economic growth, unemployment but also illegal logging were commonly viewed as the most serious problems. aseas 5(2) 255254 of the forestry sector became effective in kutai barat two years after it had been initiated legally. with recentralisation, the district government lost its authority over state forests. subsequently, community-based forest management models created by the local government under decentralised forest governance in kutai barat were restricted to the existing 800,000 hectares of non-forest areas (nugroho et al, 2009, p. 4). while decentralisation can be seen as a move into the forest from the perspective of local communities, recentralisation can be seen as a movement out of the forest. impact on jambuq while the logging operations of the local hph-company continued largely unaffected, all self-organised logging operations came to an immediate halt due to the increased control of logging activities that were considered illegal by the central government. the resulting loss of fee payments reduced village funds significantly although compensation payments continued. the loss of income from self-organised logging was felt severely by most villagers as obligations, such as for motorbikes or tvs, continued and cash needs for electricity, education and so forth increased successively. in the search for new income options, most had to turn to less lucrative alternatives. immediately after controls started, only a few villagers continued their logging activities in spite of legal restrictions. for the majority of villagers, the cutting and cleaning of rattan became the temporary major income source. a year later, however, when the stocks of valuable rattan species were harvested and no capital was available to buy rattan for processing in neighbouring villages the situation changed. the majority of villagers gave up rattan processing and resumed subsistence activities such as farming and to a lesser degree fishing as well as additional small-scale cash crop production, such as rubber. few people temporarily left the village searching external wage labour. both logging and rattan activities disappeared from the village. as a result, villagers have suffered from distinct losses of income while the remaining alternatives have been seen as a step backwards. as hopes for self-determination and a changing political climate were heavily disappointed, the majority of village inhabitants showed a lack of understanding of the cathrin bullinger & michaela haug in and out of the forest aseas 5(2) 257256 recentralisation of the forestry sector: “after decades of logging [by the hph-owner] and restricted access to the community forest, we should decide ourselves how to use our forest” (m. tommy, personal communication, december 1, 2004). finally, the cessation of self-organised logging operations contributed to the easing of social conflicts as the main contentious issue, the distribution of benefits from logging, largely disappeared. some villagers welcomed the new restrictions as they raised concerns that “trees were stolen from the forest”. in the same manner, inequality partly decreased although village elites remain powerful. impact on jontai increased controls of illegal logging by the central government led to the cessation of self-organised logging operations in late 2004. in view of the strong police presence, regular confiscations of chainsaws, and high penalties, nobody dared to work in the forest or transport timber anymore. the local logging company also stopped its operations temporarily, but several months later continued under a new concession licence (iuphhk29), issued directly by the ministry of forestry. the company is thus no longer the contractor of the villagers as it was under the hphh regulation. this immediately adversely affected the bargaining power of the villagers. fees in jontai declined and subsequently (2005–2007) varied between idr 25,000 (usd 2.75 [2007]) and idr 45,000 (usd 4.95 [2007]) per cubic metre, depending on personal bargaining skills and the location of the respective forest plot. as a more positive effect of the recentralisation policies, the number of conflicts within the village declined, as exemplified in jambuq. it also became increasingly obvious that most of the people who had received large fee payments had not reinvested their money. we often heard remarks such as that of ibu kira who said: “now at least we are all the same again” (i. kira, personal communication, november 25, 2005). despite this positive impact, most villagers felt disappointed in the recent policy changes. most households experienced a severe loss of income and a lack of alternative income opportunities while facing rising living costs due to rising prices and in29 these new iuphhk licences (izin usaha pemanfaatan hasil hutan kayu) were introduced with the new basic forestry law of 1999 and effectively replaced the hph as principle licence for large-scale timber concessions (barr et al., 2006, p. 92). aseas 5(2) 257256 creasing regular expenses like electricity bills, school fees, and maintenance costs of motorbikes and other machines. several families reported that they had to hand back items bought on credit or had to sell gold jewellery in order to make ends meet. in 2005, most households in jontai shifted back to subsistence strategies, earning cash through the selling of agricultural products (33 percent) and rattan (33 percent) while the remaining households were seeking daily wage labour. some households also sold a certain kind of grass (kapilongan) to the coal mining area downriver where the grass is planted to mount the waysides of mining roads. rattan prices remained low at idr 800 (usd 0.08 [2005]) per kilogramme for rattan sokaq (calamus caesius) while the grass could be sold at idr 5,000 (usd 0.5 [2005]) for a bunch of 100 blades. in comparison to logging, rattan or grass cutting and selling was perceived as hard and unsatisfying work and villagers expressed hopes for new coal mining operations in their area, anticipating high compensation payments. discussion our findings demonstrate that both decentralisation and recentralisation of forest governance have been a mixed blessing for local communities. while decentralisation opened up new economic opportunities, strengthened customary rights, and provided a feeling of increased self-determination, it encouraged unsustainable logging practices, led to rising numbers of conflicts, and increasing inequality. recentralisation, on the other hand, has led to a decline of conflicts and reduced inequalities which were caused by the unequal distribution of benefits from logging, fee, and hph-compensation payments. however, it also robbed local communities of important income sources without offering adequate alternatives. it has weakened customary rights and people have lost their recently-attained access to the forest again. recentralisation brought an end to the logging boom and its excessive outgrowth, but logging operations are now exclusively in the hands of companies again. despite the indisputable shortcomings of decentralisation, we argue for a resumption of decentralisation efforts because we are convinced that: a) many negative effects of regional autonomy were rather caused by its sudden and disorderly nature and weak implementation than by the mere devolution of political authority, cathrin bullinger & michaela haug in and out of the forest aseas 5(2) 259258 as argued for example by casson & obidzinski (2002) and nugroho et al. (2009) and b) prudent, multi-level decentralisation policies could counteract elite capture and therewith associated conflicts as well as limit unsustainable practices while promoting the recognition of customary rights and enhancing local well-being. indonesia’s far reaching decentralisation reforms were carried out rashly in the face of economic and political crisis, when especially resource-rich regions threatened to break away. regional autonomy was intended to loosen these tensions by providing the regions with more power and a larger economic share. after 32 years of marginalisation, both local elites and local communities were eager to take the chance to finally benefit from their forests. the great legal uncertainty which characterised the early phase of decentralisation supported this reaction as it created a situation in which “who dares most gains most”. in the vacuum of power that followed the fall of suharto’s authoritarian regime, the central government was extremely weak and de facto absent in many parts of the outer islands. the central government was thus unable to enforce national laws and policies or monitor district activities, which made it easy for local governments and local elites to take advantage of the situation. a strong central government, which is needed for a successful decentralisation according to decentralisation experts (barr et al., 2006, p. 132; crook & manor, 2000, p. 23), was thus absent during the initial phase of decentralisation in indonesia. although customary rights were politically strengthened during decentralisation, they still lacked proper legal acknowledgement and consequently remained extremely insecure. local communities thus tended to view the new situation not as a serious long-term improvement of access to the forest but rather as a window of opportunity which they did not want to miss. however, the examples of other countries show precisely how important these two aspects – secure rights for local communities and trust in the long-term commitment of reforms – are for sustainable resource management. experiences in the philippines (balooni, pulhin, & inoue, 2008; pulhin & inoue, 2008) and vietnam (nguyen, 2008) suggest that one of the most critical factors for decentralised forest management is sustained access to forest resources. in yunnan, china, deforestation increased dramatically after local authorities were given new power over forest resources – but this trend reversed (dachang & edmunds, 2003). according to research findings, the temporary increase of deforestation was caused by tenure aseas 5(2) 259258 insecurity and concerns that newly established forest management rights would again be taken away – fears that were also widespread in indonesia (larson, 2005, p. 53). lessons learned on java and the philippines further show that central elements of successful decentralisation in the forestry sector are effective control mechanisms and community participation. the latter includes the active involvement of local communities in the planning and management processes of forest resources, which require a high degree of community organisation and self-management capacities in order to develop institutions, mechanisms, and protocols for enhancing village development (balooni et al., 2008, p. 2128-2129; dasgupta & beard, 2007, p. 244-245). at the same time, control mechanisms need to be established at all levels of government which comprise transparent and reliable procedures as well as internal and external accountability measures (balooni et al., 2008; dermawan et al., 2006). there are several possibilities for exercising control at village level. this can be done, for example, by ngos or other civil society organisations as is the case in the philippines or by a strengthened sub-district level, as antlöv & eko (2012, p. 13) suggest. in indonesia, the hastily carried out decentralisation reforms were not accompanied by such mechanisms, leading to a poor implementation quality. this shows that many of the shortcomings of decentralised forest governance can be attributed to the particular way and specific circumstances under which the reforms have been implemented in indonesia. the central government, however, has raised two main arguments for recentralisation. the first is that local governments do not yet have the capacity to exercise ‘good’ forest governance. this might be correct for the transitional period when districts were not prepared for their new range of duties. but instead of recentralising authority, an alternative response could be capacity-building for sub-national government units and refining hierarchical arrangements of multi-level polities. the second argument says that local governments have encouraged unsustainable practices. however, sustainable forest management was also not achieved during three decades of centralised forest governance and there is little evidence that recent forest management is any more sustainable than decentralised management. further, it should be considered that district governments have issued timber extraction and forest conversion permits covering a few hundred thousand hectares under decentralised forest governance, while the ministry of forestry issued timber concathrin bullinger & michaela haug in and out of the forest aseas 5(2) 261260 cessions covering some 69 million hectares of forested lands during the new order period (barr et al., 2006, p. 128). to lay out the detailed terms and conditions for a successful decentralisation of forest governance is beyond the scope of this article. however, central points would be: 1) to decentralise in a more structured and clear way supported by a coherent legislation, 2) to have a strong central government that is capable of controlling the decentralisation process, 3) to provide clear and secure tenure rights for local communities, and 4) to develop effective control mechanisms as well as participation models for local people. we argue that in such a way, improved decentralisation efforts could avoid the previous shortcomings while holding potential for strengthening the positive impacts by providing increased rights for local communities, improving local livelihoods, and securing long-term sustainability. references andrianto, a. 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(2008): the household economy and decentralization of forest management in vietnam. in c. colfer, g. dahal, & d. capistrano (eds.), lessons from forest decentralization: money, justice and the quest for good governance in asia-pacific (pp. 185-207). padstow, uk: tj international. nugroho, y., russell, i., & sardjono, m. a. (2009). decentralisation and recentralisation of forest management: impact and implications in kutai barat and gunungkidul. policy brief 7 of the australia indonesia governance research partnership, crawford school of economics and government, anu college of asia and pacific. obidzinski, k., & barr, c. (2003). the effects of decentralisation on forests and forest industries in berau district, east kalimantan. case studies on decentralisation and forests in indonesia, case study 9. bogor, indonesia: cifor. potter, l., & badcock, s. (2001). the effects of indonesia’s decentralisation on forests and estate crops: case study of riau province, the original districts of kampar and indragiri hulu. case studies on decentralisation and forests in indonesia, case study 6 and 7. bogor, indonesia: cifor. pulhin, j., & inoue, m. (2008). dynamics of devolution process in the management of the philippine forests. international journal of social forestry, 1(1), 1-26. resosudarmo, i. a. (2004). closer to peoples and trees: will decentralisation work for the people and the forests of indonesia? european journal of development research, 16(1), 110-132. rhee, s. (2000). de facto decentralisation during a period of transition in east kalimantan. asia-pacific community forestry newsletter, 13(2), 34-40. ribot, jesse. (2002). democratic decentralisation of natural resources: institutionalising popular participation. washington, dc: world resources institute. shackleton, s., campbell, b., wollenberg, e., & edmunds, d. (2002). devolution and community-based natural resource management: creating space for local people to participate and benefit? natural resource perspectives 76. london, uk: odi. sidel, j. (2004). bossism and democracy in the philippines, thailand, and indonesia: towards an alternative framework for the study of ‘local strongmen’. in j. harriss, k. stokke, & o. tornquist (eds.), politicising democracy: the new local politics of democratisation (pp. 51-74). basingstoke, uk: palgrave macmillan. soetarto, e., sitorus, m., & napiri, m. (2001). decentralisation of administration, policy making and forest management in ketapang district, west kalimantan. case studies on decentralisation and forests in indonesia, case study 8. bogor, indonesia: cifor. steinich, m. (1997). dezentralisierung und entwicklung: licht in die entwicklungs-politische dunkelheit. nord-süd aktuell, xi(1) , 69-80. aseas 2-2 continuity in a changing world: malaysia’s coercive security apparatus in the age of terror and beyond aseas 2 (2) aktuelle südostasienforschung / current research on south-east asia continuity in a changing world: malaysia’s coercive security apparatus in the age of terror and beyond andrew humphreys1 university of wollongong, australia aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften / austrian journal of south-east asian studies seas gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften / society for south-east asian studies www.seas.at the malaysian government’s use of its repressive security legislation has had a signifi cant impact on malaysia’s modern political history. the focus of the present article is on the government’s use of its coercive security apparatus since the terrorist attacks of 9/11. my argument is that the apparatus is largely unchanged by the current global climate of the ‘war on terror.’ notably, malaysia’s use of coercion has become increasingly less criticized by other governments, notably those in the west. perhaps as a consequence, the government has become increasingly bold in its crackdowns against opposition elements. following the political upheaval of the 2008 election, however, the future of the security apparatus is in question. keywords: malaysia, security, terrorism, war on terror, political opposition der einsatz repressiver sicherheitsgesetze durch die malaysische regierung beeinfl usste die moderne politische geschichte malaysias in nicht unerheblicher weise. dieser beitrag analysiert den einsatz des sicherheitsapparates durch die malaysische regierung seit den terroranschlägen des 11. september 2001. ich argumentiere, dass dieser apparat im gegenwärtigen weltweiten klima des “kriegs gegen den terrorismus” größtenteils unverändert blieb, dass jedoch gleichzeitig malaysias einsatz von gewalt von anderen (vor allem westlichen) regierungen weniger kritisiert wird als früher. eine mögliche konsequenz dessen ist die zunehmend rücksichtslosere vorgehensweise der regierung gegen oppositionelle strömungen. als folge des politischen umschwungs nach der wahl 2008 steht die zukunft des sicherheitsapparates jedoch in den sternen. schlagworte: malaysia, sicherheit, terrorismus, krieg gegen den terror, politische opposition 1 dr. andrew humphreys is a postdoctoral scholar affiliated with the university of wollongong, australia. he has recently completed his phd thesis entitled “a total approach: the malaysian security model and political development”. contact: ah00@uow.edu.au 102 aseas 2 (2) it is a cliché to state that the terrorist attacks on new york and washington on 11 september 2001 (9/11) changed the world. this statement is certainly true when the adoption of repressive security laws in countries the world over and the wars in afghanistan and iraq are taken into account. in malaysia, however, the difference is less noticeable. the malaysian government’s response to the events of 9/11 has been a swift, though often controversial, application of its well-established coercive security apparatus, namely the internal security act (isa). the security apparatus refers to the implementation of legislative policy by the institutions of the state, namely the police, and the coercive force utilized in support of the regime and its ideology and interests. with regard to the ‘war on terror’, arrests of suspected terrorists began in the months prior to 9/11 and have continued in the months and years since. the apparatus has continued to perform its primary function: the survival of the barisan nasional (bn) coalition, dominated by the united malays national organisation (umno), a muslim-malay party, in power since malaysia’s independence. the consistency in security policy is remarkable given that in the post-9/11 period malaysia underwent a leadership transition from the prime ministership of mahathir mohamad to abdullah badawi. there is little distinction to be made between the application of the coercive apparatus by either prime minister. in general, i argue that internal security policy in malaysia is calibrated to ensure regime – rather than national – security. security policy is a political tool used to support the status quo favoured by the bn and umno and weaken any opposition forces, be they a legitimate physical threat or not. security policy is designed to support the political interests of the elites and the political system as a whole, which itself is calibrated to ensure the bn remains the dominant political player. when malaysia’s politics is viewed through the framework of its security policy the power and paranoia of the regime can be witnessed. in malaysia the regime and the state emerged at approximately the same time and the same regime has remained in power since independence. this has meant that the institutions and instruments of the state have become synonymous with the regime which uses them – one reinforces the other. all state power is vested in the executive, itself composed of members of the ruling bn regime, thus guaranteeing complete control of the apparatus of the state. many aspects of state power have been established and developed by the regime for andrew humphreys continuity in a changing world 103 aseas 2 (2) the specific purpose of reinforcing its power (for example, the new economic policy [nep], an essentially pro-malay affirmative action programme). the line between regime and state is blurred. this has resulted in a security policy which regards a threat to either the state or the regime as a threat to both. malaysia’s security policy is thus state and regime-centric, with little consideration given to the issues of human/individual security. the malaysian security apparatus has been in place since the emergency period (1948-1960), during which malayan forces, supported by the british, fought against communist insurgents. during this period, the british centralized significant power in the hands of the government, notably through the creation of a number of emergency regulations, out of which evolved the isa, the sedition act and the printing presses and publications act, among others. the isa provides for preventive detention of those seen by the government as threats to national security. the act allows the government to extend the period of detention by a period of two years, though this can continue indefinitely, with minimal judicial review. under section 73 of the isa, any police officer may arrest and detain without warrant any person who has ‘acted or is about to act or is likely to act in any manner prejudicial to the security of malaysia or any part thereof.’ this provision is so vague that many legitimate activities, including criticisms of government policy, could fall within its scope. complementing the isa, the sedition act prohibits virtually all activities seen as causing disaffection towards the government or communal ill will. given the preventive nature of such legislation, francis loh kok wah has likened the use of the coercive apparatus to internal “pre-emptive strikes” (f. loh kok wah, personal communication, august 13, 2007). although the emergency was concluded in 1960, the government did not repeal the emergency regulations. instead, the national government retained and used its authoritarian powers whenever it felt the interests of national security and racial harmony were threatened. indeed, in 1960, the government amended the constitution, namely articles 149, 150 and 151 to allow for preventive detention. broad terms were used here to pre-empt the revival of a communist insurrection, though no evidence was provided to justify such a move. in the decades that followed, numerous justifications were provided to legitimise the use of the isa and other repressive acts. for example, the threat of communism 104 aseas 2 (2) was used to justify crackdowns in the aftermath of the 1969 race riots. the riots themselves occurred in the tense aftermath of the 1969 general election and led to the deaths of hundreds of people. the government did not see its failure to cater to its constituencies as a motivation behind the rioting. instead, the prime minister, the tunku, placed most of the blame on the communists. it was however later admitted by government officials that the communists had nothing to do with it. nonetheless, in response to the riots, the coercive apparatus was amended and expanded, the powers of the isa increased, the emergency ordinance and official secrets act (osa) established. the threat of ethnic violence, derived from the events of 1969, was utilized to legitimise the detention of political opponents in 1987’s operation lalang and in the era of reformasi in the 1990s. following the islamic revival of the 1970s, interpretations of islam that differed from the state’s islamisation project were either co-opted by the government – for example, anwar ibrahim in the early 1980s – or forcefully disbanded by the government via the isa – as in the case of al arqam and al-maunah. the regime’s claim of upholding the ‘true’ interpretation of islam was used to justify a series of crackdowns against rogue islamic groups, generally labelled as ‘deviants.’ this article examines malaysia’s security policy in the contemporary context of the ‘war on terror.’ i argue that, on the whole, the apparatus remains largely unchanged, with few amendments to the government’s security legislation. however, malaysia’s security approach has become increasingly endorsed at the international level. perhaps as a consequence of this, the government has moved more boldly to curb threats to its political power. many of those arrested in these crackdowns could hardly be characterized as a threat to national security, traditionally defined. instead, those arrested are often threats to the status quo favoured by the bn. with the 2008 election bringing about substantial political upheaval, though, this article also contends that a drastic change to malaysia’s longstanding security policy is becoming increasingly likely. the continuity and consistency in malaysia’s security policy may soon be at an end. 9/11 and the malaysian response in the months prior to the attacks on washington and new york, the malaysian andrew humphreys continuity in a changing world 105 aseas 2 (2) government had begun cracking down on groups allegedly affiliated with international terrorism, notably the so-called ‘jihad gang’ or kumpulan militan malaysia (kmm), a group linked to the murder of a state assemblyman and a botched bank robbery.2 despite this, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks malaysia was described by us officials as a springboard state for al-qaeda operations, including its operation on 9/11 (abuza, 2003, p. 123). malaysia responded strongly against terrorism in both the short and long-term, at least in part to dispel this view, and establish itself in the new world climate as an anti-terror government.3 by early 2002, the government claimed to have arrested 62 terrorists and militias with ‘global and regional links’ under the isa. a number of those of those arrested were malaysian citizens, although several were foreigners with alleged associations with external terrorist groups.4 that said, compared to previous periods, the number of isa crackdowns is comparatively small. in the entire year 2001, the number of isa arrests was 70, while in 2002 the number of arrests decreased to 53. in every year since, the number of arrests and detention orders under the isa has fallen drastically. the average number of arrests in the fiveyear period between 2002 and 2006 is 37 persons. by comparison, the average number of arrests in the previous five-year period, 1997 to 2001, totalled 126. in fact, the entire first five years of the war on terror has featured, on average, less isa arrests than any previous five-year period (suara rakyat malaysia [suaram], 2007, p. 13). thus, statistically, this current era has not brought about an increase in governmentsponsored repression through its use of the isa – if anything it has been marked by a statistical decrease. the only major legislative change to malaysia’s security policy since 9/11 is the 2 there is some suggestion that the kmm itself was a fabrication of the government, a cover for the arrest of opposition members such as nik adli (liow, 2004, p. 251). alleged members of kmm, while under detention, continuously denied the existence of the group, claiming the whole organisation was a creation of the police and that the government had distorted their legitimate participation in a loose network of malaysian alumni of islamist schools in india and pakistan (“in the name of security,” 2004, p. 15). the belief in such a notion among certain segments of malaysian society is primarily – if not solely – the fault of the government. the government weakened its own case in two main ways. first, the government detained the kmm members and nik adli without trial under the isa. thus, the public – and the political opposition – did not see the charges against the group proven in a court of law. second, the government, without explanation, changed the name of the kmm from kumpulan mujahideen malaysia to kumpulan militan malaysia, both of which had the same initials, lending support to the thesis that the organisation’s existence was fabricated (cotton, 2003, p. 156). 3 it should be noted that islam itself formed part of malaysia’s counter-terrorism strategy. the pro-development, pro-bn version of islam promoted by the government was increasingly promoted as the ‘true’ interpretation of the faith. any interpretation which differed could thus conceivably be labelled as ‘deviant.’ official islam was ultimately used, then, to demonstrate what was and was not acceptable, and thus limited the ability of more radical strands to take root. abdullah’s islam hadhari approach was a repackaging of this strategy. 4 an example of the latter is ahmed ibrahim bilal, an american who had been detained and deported in october 2002 after it was alleged that he was a leader of a terrorist cell in portland, oregon. he had been studying at malaysia’s international islamic university (abuza, 2003, p. 213). 106 aseas 2 (2) 2003 amendment to the penal code. the amendment provides a sentence of up to life imprisonment for ‘anyone who harbours or interferes with the arrest of terrorists, recruits members into a terrorist group or provide them with explosives or facilities such as meeting places.’ this could potentially affect lawyers and journalists as the confidentiality of clients/sources is a major part of their occupations. although minister in the prime minister’s department rais yatim conceded that present laws were sufficient to tackle terrorism, he contended that the amendment was “appropriate” (beh lih yi, 2003). the amendment has yet to be enforced. a major difference between the contemporary era and previous periods is that, presently, malaysia’s security policy – namely the isa – is now implicitly or explicitly endorsed by other countries, most notably those in the west who themselves have adopted vaguely similar legislation in response to the terrorist threat, such as the australian anti-terrorism act (2005), the canadian anti-terrorism act (2001), and, most infamously, the 2001 uniting and strengthening america by providing appropriate tools required to intercept and obstruct terrorism act (usa patriot act). a key element of many new counter-terrorist laws has been the emphasis on preventive detention. although these countries still operate according to a more stringent interpretation of the rule of the law than malaysia does, and terrorism suspects would thus be more likely to receive a fair trial, an essential component of much of malaysia’s security legislation has nonetheless now become more accepted in the west. although this has not led to an increase in arrests, it nonetheless has strengthened the malaysian government’s own justifications for continuing to use the isa and other repressive acts, as i will later demonstrate. days after september 11, deputy prime minister abdullah stated that the isa had served its purpose in combating terrorism and that the government had made the right move in acting against the kmm. later that month, prime minister mahathir declared that countries which once accused malaysia of being undemocratic because of its use of the isa were now adopting similar legislation. after the marriott bombing in jakarta in 2003, mahathir further enunciated that, prior to 9/11, “malaysia was criticized and people said that we were cruel for detaining suspects. they don’t know which is better, to have bombs explode first before making arrests, or to arrest first before bombs explode” (“no adverse impact on economy,” 2003). firm support for the isa was continued in the prime ministership of abdullah. andrew humphreys continuity in a changing world 107 aseas 2 (2) the united states, in particular, has praised isa detentions in recent years as contributing to the global counter-terrorism effort. public statements by us officials against malaysia’s human rights record dwindled in number, with president bush, for example, making no comment on this issue at the october 2001 apec summit in shanghai. instead, praise was heaped upon the mahathir administration. us trade representative robert zoellick stated, “malaysia is a model”, “a force in regional stability in both political and economic terms” and “an islamic country that provides leadership” (“malaysian objections,” 2001). assistant secretary of state james a. kelly, though noting that the continued imprisonment of former deputy prime minister anwar ibrahim was a matter of concern, called malaysia a “beacon of stability.” the us attorney-general allegedly even expressed support for the isa, endorsing its significance in the context of the patriot act. in may 2002, a us official stated that malaysia had not used the isa for political purposes since 9/11, further sanctioning its usage (cotton, 2003, p. 162). in may 2002, malaysia’s defence minister najib bin tun abdul razak revealed the depth of the defence relationship during a visit to washington d.c. describing the relationship as a “well-kept secret,” najib noted that the level of defence cooperation between the two countries, though strong in the decades prior, had “elevated” after 9/11 (najib, 2002). there are two main reasons for the us backflip. first, the us wishes to legitimise the ruling bn regime, seeing it as a source of stability in south-east asia specifically and the muslim world generally. second, america’s own conduct in the ‘war on terror’ in terms of human rights has harmed its credibility when it comes to human rights advocacy. in particular, the us practice of indefinite detention without trial of terrorist suspects at guantanamo bay under president bush draws parallels to malaysia’s isa practices and thus puts america in no position to criticize (“in the name of security,” 2004, pp. 43-44). indeed, minister in the prime minister’s department datuk mohamed nazri claimed the us no longer criticises the isa because of the guantanamo issue. despite the above-mentioned cooperation with the us, it must be emphasized that malaysia forcefully maintained an independent and critical stance against us hegemony and power. malaysia’s vocal criticism of the us-led invasions of afghanistan and, most prominently, iraq are the most public examples of malaysian opposition to american power. mahathir went so far as to describe the us-led invasion of iraq 108 aseas 2 (2) as “cowardly and imperialist” (“malaysian pm condemns iraq war,” 2003). malaysia’s criticisms of us actions may seem a contradiction when cooperation between the two appears so entrenched. the reason for malaysia’s stance lies not only in its leading role in the islamic world, but also in domestic factors. for example, editorin-chief of malaysian online newspaper malaysiakini steven gan states, “i think as a rule the malaysian government would not [admit] that the us government influences [it]… that would be political suicide. most muslim voters would not accept that” (s. gan, personal communication, july 20, 2007). academics diane k. mauzy and brian l. job argue, “malaysian leaders have offset the quiet cooperation of their military intelligence agencies with american counterparts with vocal public opposition to us actions” (mauzy & job, 2007, p. 639). confirming this argument, us assistant secretary of state james a. kelly pointed out that cooperation with the us, on a variety of efforts, remained close despite malaysia’s strong opposition to the iraq conflict (nesadurai, 2004, p. 21). opposition to american policy is essentially a political tool used by the government to appease domestic – namely muslim – audiences. malaysia’s relationship with the association of southeast asian nations (asean) also notably expanded in the aftermath of 9/11. this marked a departure from a security policy which historically has been limited to domestic concerns and mostly has not tolerated outside opinions let alone joint-policy making. illustrating this shift, the asean states have formulated a common rhetorical position, signing a number of joint declarations, including the declaration on joint action to counter terrorism (2001) and, with the us, the joint declaration for cooperation to combat terrorism (2002). regional meetings on terrorism have become a regular occurrence. the military intelligence directors of malaysia, singapore, indonesia, thailand and brunei held an informal meeting in kuala lumpur in january 2002 to discuss intelligence sharing and the threat posed by regional terrorist networks. this marked the beginning of a series of such meetings. asean’s foreign ministers likewise met in february 2002 to discuss regional collaboration on the issue. in may 2002, the 22nd meeting of the asean chief’s of national police in phnom penh focused on addressing terrorism and other transnational crimes – a focus which was then repeated at consecutive meetings in 2004, 2005 and 2007. moreover, malaysia encouraged the developement of isa-style laws in indonesia and thailand, thereby demonstrating a growing common regional consensus on the appropriateness of malaysia’s security approach. andrew humphreys continuity in a changing world 109 aseas 2 (2) the foreign endorsement of the isa has created trouble for actors in malaysia’s civil society. josef roy benedict of the malaysian branch of amnesty international, for example, has stated: it’s been harder for civil society to challenge [the government] now when countries like us/uk are putting in laws like this … in the past malaysia was in a way a part of a minority compared to other countries who had these kinds of laws … western countries don’t have the moral high ground [they] used to have. that’s the hard part now. whereas in the past we’d say ‘look at this country’, use as a model, now these countries have undermined human rights, renditions in the eu, guantanamo bay in the us (j. r. benedict, personal communication, july 19, 2007). a core feature of many civil society groups in malaysia has been their opposition to the isa. by legitimizing the isa and other similar pieces of legislation, the bn regime has been further legitimized and malaysia’s growing civil society consequently weakened. overstretch: abuse of the security apparatus after 9/11 while, security-related arrests have declined in recent years, unjust repression has certainly continued, a fact not helped by the abovementioned international support for malaysia’s policies. however, this repression is now defined in different terminology. whereas before the label ‘communist’ was applied liberally by the government, the term ‘terrorist’ has firmly replaced it. the terrorist label had been applied to so-called threats before 9/11 – often in reference to ‘communist terrorists’ – but in modern times the term has a whole new meaning and brings up certain feelings. thus, when the government defines an issue in terms of ‘terrorism’ now, it is provoking a different reaction than in years past. one of the most notable examples of this new vocabulary and discourse being utilized is in the government’s crackdown on the malaysian internet blogging community. in february 2005, blogger jeff ooi was questioned by police for a comment somebody else had posted on his weblog screenshots. the comment had stated it was contradictory for abdullah to promote islam hadhari when umno itself was ripe with corruption. in early 2007, the government announced it was setting up a group of 500 writers to counter bloggers’ claims as well as track and monitor content that could be deemed ‘anti-government.’ subsequently, bloggers nathaniel tan and raja 110 aseas 2 (2) petra kamarudin were, like ooi, investigated for comments that had been posted on their blogs. bloggers were thus being questioned by police on the basis of statements that were not even made by them. in the lead up to the 2008 election, with the political blogging community becoming increasingly influential amongst malaysia’s 11 million internet users, the government began expanding its campaign against them. information minister zainuddin maidin accused bloggers of being “dangerous”, “pro-west” and supporting “foreign elements bent on destroying our beloved country” (“fresh round of gov’t attacks on bloggers,” 2007). the government warned that it would use its anti-terror laws and apparatus – including the isa – against bloggers and was looking at the possibility of formulating new laws to allow better monitoring. this is a clear example of the government utilizing the fear and images associated with the concept of ‘terrorism’ to justify the proposed implementation of its security policy. according to nazri aziz, minister in the prime minister’s department, such action was designed not to stifle internet freedom but “to put a stop to the freedom to lie in the blogosphere” (“nazri warns bloggers face harsh laws,” 2007). a proposal to introduce a ‘code of ethics’ for internet users was also floated. it is perhaps then not surprising that in 2007 malaysia fell to its worst ever ranking in the reporters sans frontieres’ press freedom index, dropping 32 spots to 124th position, behind cambodia (85th), timor leste (94th) and indonesia (100th). ultimately, the government’s threats are designed to make people think twice not only about using blogs to criticise the government but about creating a blog in the first place. in a further example, the issue of ethnic stability has also been placed within the context of terrorism. in the contemporary context, the ‘bogeyman’ of ethnic violence has been blended with the new ‘bogeyman’ of international terrorism. in an era where the ‘terrorist’ and ‘religious extremist’ label now has certain connotations, it is perhaps no surprise that, when the threatened, the bn has chosen to utilise such terms to undermine its detractors. this became apparent in its 2007/2008 skirmish with the hindu rights action force (hindraf). hindraf was established in december 2005 by waytha moorthy and was originally designed as a coalition. moorthy had attempted to forge an inter-religious alliance with malaysian christians. the christians however feared government retribution and declined his invitation. hindraf was initially concerned with the issues of andrew humphreys continuity in a changing world 111 aseas 2 (2) religious freedom and the freedom to challenge religious rights in civil society but eventually the scope of the movement broadened to include other hindu rights issues such as education and culture. moorthy, the chairman of hindraf, stresses that the movement is concerned not just with hindu rights but human rights alone, though it is often portrayed as simply a hindu organisation in the media (w. moorthy, personal communication, july 15, 2008). on 25 november 2007, hindraf held a rally in kuala lumpur in protest of what they saw as discriminatory government economic policies. hindraf’s attempts to obtain a police permit for the march were denied but, citing the constitution’s guarantee of freedom of assembly and expression, the movement proceeded with the protest. police eventually dispersed the rally with force. on 13 december 2007, the government arrested five hindraf leaders. notably, days before the arrests, hindraf was accused by inspector-general of police musa hassan of “trying to seek support and help from terrorist groups” (“igp: hindraf linked to terrorist groups,” 2007). though musa did not name the terrorist groups, it is assumed from accusations by the attorney-general in court that the igp was referring to the liberation tigers of tamil eelam (ltte). after their arrests, one of the hindraf detainees claimed he was being pressured by police into admitting involvement with terrorist activities, stating: the government and the police have no evidence to substantiate their accusations on our alleged terrorism links. as such they are now using the back way to obtain a confession from me by forcing me to admit of having terrorism link (kabilan, 2008). the inspector-general of police also raised the commonly used spectre of racial conflict, stating, “[hindraf’s] actions are potentially explosive in sparking racial clashes” (“igp: hindraf linked to terrorist groups,” 2007). in the weeks following the hindraf detentions, prime minister abdullah utilized the term ‘extremist’ in an attempt to continue sidelining the hindraf movement. on 25 december 2007, in a clear reference to hindraf, abdullah warned malaysians against religious extremists pulling the country apart. abdullah urged malaysia to continue with its “middle position” (“pm warns about religious extremism,” 2007). following the february 2008 hindraf rose protest – in which some 200 people were arrested – abdullah explicitly labelled the group as ‘extremists’ who were attempting to disrupt the 8 march 2008 election (“rose violence: global demo against m’sia,” 112 aseas 2 (2) 2008). in an attempt to counter claims of racism, abdullah pointed out that the isa had also been recently used against muslim groups, such as al-maunah and jemaah islamiyah. abdullah said, “they are my people, who believe in the same religion. but i had a duty to carry out. what is wrong is wrong. the law is colour blind” (hong, 2007). by using these two organizations as examples, abdullah had again linked hindraf to religious extremism and international terrorism. however, his assertion of the law being ‘colour-blind’ has not gone unchallenged. dean johns, writing for malaysiakini, pointed out that, while several arrests had resulted from the hindraf rallies, the government had not brought to justice the police responsible for the high rate of deaths in custody, particularly amongst indian detainees. nor did the government reprimand umno members who at the 2006 general assembly “threatened to bathe the keris in the blood of fellow malaysians” and ex-malacca chief minister rahim thamby chik for his statement that “the malays have never taken to the streets so do not force us to do so as we will draw our parang to defend the ketuanan melayu in this country” (johns, 2007). the ongoing battle for islam: umno versus pas at the political level, the rhetoric of international terrorism has also increased the stakes in the conflict between the two major islamic parties, umno and the panmalaysian islamic party (pas). the competition between the two has been defined anew in the contemporary era, with umno effectively capitalizing on pas’s political missteps. one such instance occurred with the us-led invasion of afghanistan. commenting on the invasion, pas leader fadzil noor declared the us a ‘terrorist state’ and openly called for a ‘jihad’ against it. the jihad was justified on the grounds that afghanistan was attacked without strong proof of its involvement in the 9/11 attacks and terrorism, with noor viewing the conflict as one against all muslims. noor claimed the call for jihad was not in defence of afghanistan’s taliban regime, but in defence of “an islamic nation being attacked by an enemy of islam” (bakar, 2005, p. 115). to many in malaysia, the distinction was unclear. such a view was reinforced in early october when pas youth leader mahfuz omar launched a jihad fund, called on the government to break off diplomatic ties with the us, and declared his willingness to andrew humphreys continuity in a changing world 113 aseas 2 (2) raise an army to fight in afghanistan. the bn in general and umno in particular capitalized effectively on pas’s political faux pas, utilizing the image pas had unwittingly constructed to score political points for the ruling coalition. the government claimed pas’s call for jihad was ‘a gimmick’ aimed at scoring political points within malaysia’s muslim community (“pas backing for jihad against the us ‘a gimmick’,” 2001). pas was now portrayed as ‘malaysia’s taliban’, the government embarking on a television campaign which inter-spliced images of pas leaders with the murder of a woman by the taliban. deputy prime minister abdullah stated that ‘practically’ all the militants arrested in the period between september 11 and the end of january 2002 were members of pas, noting: we don’t want to be very quick in drawing conclusions, but we are saying that the presence of these people among the pas people can create a kind of pas politics which may not be in the long-term interests of malaysia (“terror investigations strain malaysian politics,” 2002). however, this remained a political level attack – those arrested were simply members within the admittedly broad pas organization, effectively political nonentities, and none were in the leadership circle. as fadzil noor said, “as far as we know there is no connection at all. if there is, it is based on the actions of individuals” (ibid.). the 2004 general election testified to pas’s lost ground, the opposition’s failure to capitalize on reformasi, and the bn’s success in linking pas to radical islam and itself to ‘moderate’, progressive islam. umno performed well in malay-majority constituencies, with an average 10 percent increase in its support in these seats, though admittedly less than what it had received in 1995 pre-reformasi. by contrast, pas dropped from 27 seats to just seven. pas had clearly misunderstood the type of islam desired by its malay-muslim constituency, with the elections instead reflecting an embrace of the islam hadhari agenda of the incumbent prime minister abdullah badawi. overall, the ‘terrorist’ discourse has certainly been utilized by the government for its own decidedly political purposes. the implicit and explicit support of other countries for malaysia’s security approach has certainly emboldened the government with the use of coercive legislation fast becoming the ‘norm’ in international politics. however, this has not corresponded with a rise in arrests – rather the opposite is true. 114 aseas 2 (2) nonetheless, it can be deduced that the motive of the government in characterizing and dealing with threats in these ways is a function of its continued emphasis on regime – particularly bn and umno – stability. the hypocrisy of the government noted by johns above illustrates this clearly, as the law is not being applied consistently – it is only being applied in situations where there is a direct challenge to the malaydominant regime not to society as a whole. when members of this regime make racially provocative remarks they are not reprimanded – when outsiders to the regime make similar comments or protest, they are arrested or branded as ‘extremists’ or ‘terrorists.’ this policy helps protect the regime by not only eliminating political threats but, through the emphasis on racial elements, allowing the government to divide the people and score political points in various constituencies. 5 beyond 9/11: a chance for change? since the march 2008 election, however, the malaysian political system, and the security policy which protects it, is facing the most significant challenge in its history. the election did away with many of the preconceptions which have plagued malaysian politics since independence. for the first time, the bn regime could potentially be defeated at the next election. the election saw the opposition parties gain considerable ground at the bn’s expense. in the lead-up to the elections, while it was believed the opposition had its best chance in over a decade to gain electoral ground, the probability of it breaking the bn’s two-thirds majority in parliament was considered slim. the opposition parties, pas, the democratic action party (dap), and the parti keadilan rakyat, campaigned primarily on non-racial issues, such as human rights and combating corruption. the opposition also campaigned on the issue of reforming the police, which it viewed as dominated by political interests. the islamic party pas notably dropped from its agenda its push for an islamic state, an issue which had both plagued and defined the party for decades. with the mainstream media beholden to the government, the opposition effectively utilized the medium of the internet to campaign, a move which was particularly successful 5 the government contends that, as part of nation-building, some racial division is necessary, for example the affirmative action policies favouring the malays (beginning officially with the new economic policy). while this may be less true today as it was following the 1969 race riots, i argue that the government’s use of racial discourse and division has been primarily utilized to justify the political status quo in which the malay-dominant umno is the centre of political power and the other ethnically-based political parties within the bn act as peripheral partners. andrew humphreys continuity in a changing world 115 aseas 2 (2) in reaching urban audiences (“winning hearts and minds in cyberspace,” 2008). by contrast, the bn regime under prime minister abdullah badawi was weighed down by rampant corruption, broken electoral promises, and the growing re-emergence of ethnic tensions, particularly from minority ethnic groupings. much of this was admittedly inherited from abdullah’s predecessor as prime minister and leader of umno, mahathir mohamad, who ironically has become a vocal critic of the abdullah administration in his retirement. the arrests of several indian leaders in the months prior to the elections also delegitimized the bn’s main ethnic indian party, the malaysian indian congress (mic) (welsh, 2008). voter turnout for the 8 march election was the highest for any election, with approximately 80 percent of eligible voters casting their votes. (malik imtiaz sarwar, 2008, p. 50). the elections saw the bn win just 51.2 percent of the vote, giving it enough seats to remain in power but losing its two-thirds majority in parliament for the first time since 1969. the state governments of selangor, penang, kedah and perak fell to the opposition parties while kelantan remained in opposition hands. all of the main leaders of the mic were “wiped out” (“2008 polls – interesting facts,” 2008). the opposition’s gains were highly significant given the fact that the political and electoral system is biased in favour of the ruling regime (johns, 2008). there was some concern that the results may lead to ethnic rioting, like that witnessed in the aftermath of the 1969 elections, an election in which the ruling coalition likewise suffered a considerable loss. however, unlike in 1969, all the major ethnic groups had abandoned the government and malaysia’s streets remained calm (“malaysian politics turned upside down,” 2008). monumental changes swept through malaysian politics in the aftermath of the election. the opposition parties formed a formal coalition, pakatan rakyat (people’s alliance), on 1 april 2008. although comprised of diverse parties with divergent interests, opposition leader anwar ibrahim claimed the parties had united on the basis of the common principles of ‘freedom, justice and democracy.’ for arguably the first time, a genuine two-party (coalition) system had begun emerging in malaysia (kuppasamy, 2008). anwar announced plans to dismantle the nep, an affirmative action programme and ideological tool biased in favour of the malays that had been the foundation of the bn’s nation-building project. the state governments of penang and selangor, now in the hands of the opposition, also announced plans to prohibit 116 aseas 2 (2) the spread of abdullah’s islam hadhari concept, a broad ideology which had been central to his administration’s nation-building strategies and security policies. for the most part, the government reacted to these developments in typical fashion, utilizing the instruments of the state to thwart the political gains of the opposition. the government banned tamil daily makkal osai, a move believed to be related to the publication’s coverage of the opposition (“tamil daily makkal osai banned,” 2008). anwar was charged with sexual assault, widely considered to be politically motivated. the charge inspired a sense of déjà vu within the country, a consequence of the government having arrested anwar on similar grounds in 1998 (“here we go again,” 2008, p. 40). implicitly defending his earlier actions against anwar, mahathir disputed that anwar’s recent arrest was politically motivated. the former prime minister stated: yet can it be that the present government is so stupid and unimaginative as to use the same ‘ploy’, especially after it was so happy over the release of anwar? surely it could come up with another story which would be more credible if it is deliberately plotting or conspiring against anwar. the probability is that the story is the same because it is genuine (mahathir mohamad, 2008). mahathir’s statement could be regarded as a rare defence of the abdullah administration though it was more likely a defence of his own legacy. with such dramatic changes sweeping malaysia’s political landscape following the election, it appears the current format of the security approach could be approaching its end. the leadership transition from abdullah to najib abdul razak on 3 april 2009 is unlikely to bring about such a change. however, an electoral defeat of the bn at the next election, for the first time a reasonable prospect, would almost certainly bring about some, if not major, alterations to security policy. the current opposition parties, organized in the pakatan rakyat coalition, are all inherently antagonistic toward malaysia’s internal security policies. many of the key figures and leaders in the opposition have been subject to detention under the isa, dap leader lim kit siang and keadilan leader anwar ibrahim being the two most famous examples. should the bn regime lose the next election, it would logically follow that the security policy that has formed an intrinsic part of the bn state project would also be discarded. however, this may not necessarily be the case. at least three different scenarios are possible. if faced with an electoral defeat, the bn regime may use the security andrew humphreys continuity in a changing world 117 aseas 2 (2) apparatus to cling to power. this i contend is unlikely. although the bn has certainly manipulated the electoral process to its advantage, particularly via the electoral commission, with the exception of the 1969 elections it has generally respected the results of the polls, conceding defeat in a number of state elections for example. another scenario is that pakatan rakyat secures a federal victory but does not significantly alter the security approach. a number of the main instruments may be discarded or amended, such as the isa or the printing presses and publications act. given that the security approach has become an ingrained element of the malaysian state, some parties in pakatan rakyat may believe or claim it to be too destabilizing to abolish it completely.6 indeed, it should be noted anwar himself was a leader in the bn during a time when the isa was continually deployed against political opponents. a further scenario is that a pakatan rakyat government retains the basic structure of the security approach but completely overhauls it, utilizing less overt or repressive coercion and less manipulative or limiting ideological tools. in other words, the essential elements of the policy may be brought more into line with international human rights standards, human rights being a key element of pakatan rakyat’s election agenda. conclusions malaysia’s security policy has remained largely consistent in the years following 9/11, with minimal legislative amendments. while the number of isa arrests has declined, the government has become increasingly willing to launch crackdowns against its opponents. backed by growing international endorsement of its security approach, the rhetoric of ‘terrorism’ has been used to legitimate government policies against bloggers, as well as more traditional ‘threats’ such as ethnic instability and political opposition. the term ‘terrorist’ has been used by the government in prior periods – most significantly, the 1948-1960 emergency era – but its usage in the post-9/11 climate brings up a whole new set of feelings to both domestic and international audiences and thus provokes a different reaction. the war on terror has therefore 6 a suggested possible alternative is that a new government may attempt to change the isa but that the security apparatus itself might be strong enough to de facto boycott any reforms. however, i regard this as unlikely. while the security apparatus is deeply embedded in the malaysian political system, it remains primarily a political tool of the ruling government. to date, there has been no evidence that it acts on its own accord – it always acts according to directions from the government. this is unlikely to change, even if the pakatan rakyat forms a national government. 118 aseas 2 (2) provided a new set of justifications for the continued existence of malaysia’s security approach. the 2008 elections herald the possibility for a change in this context, though this is far from guaranteed. after all, this security policy has helped sustain the regime and the state for over 50 years and is therefore something which will not be easily discarded. references 2008 polls – interesting facts. 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(2008, april 16). malaysiakini. retrieved april 17, 2008, from http:// www.malaysiakini.com/news/81464 terror investigations strain malaysian politics. (2002, january 22). bbcnews. retrieved april 17, 2008, from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/1775718.stm welsh, b. (2008, march 12). election post-mortem: top 10 factors. malaysiakini. retrieved march 13, 2008, from http://www.malaysiakini.com/news/79677 120 aseas 2 (2) winning hearts and minds in cyberspace. (2008, february 20). malaysiakini. retrieved february 21, 2008, from http://www.malaysiakini.com/news/78314 interviews • josef roy benedict. (july 19, 2007). executive director amnesty international malaysia. • steven gan. (july 20, 2007). editor-in-chief of malaysiakini. • francis loh kok wah. (august 13, 2007). professor at the school of social sciences, universiti sains malaysia. • waytha moorthy. (july 15, 2008). chairman and founder of hindraf. andrew humphreys continuity in a changing world 121 aseas 2-1 außer rand und band: regionalentwicklung in metro-jakarta aseas 2 (1) aktuelle südostasienforschung / current research on south-east asia außer rand und band: regionalentwicklung in metro-jakarta gone wild: regional development in metro-jakarta günter spreitzhofer1 universität wien, österreich / university of vienna, austria aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften / austrian journal of south-east asian studies seas gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften / society for south-east asian studies www.seas.at der vorliegende beitrag behandelt aktuelle phänomene der regionalentwicklung in metrojakarta (jabodetabek), der größten städtischen agglomeration südostasiens. nach einer kurzen einführung zu demographischen, ökonomischen und soziokulturellen hintergründen indonesischer urbanisierungsprozesse gilt das hauptaugenmerk aspekten von regionalplanung, marginalisierung, suburbanisierung, kampung-bereinigung und der entwicklung von satellitenstadtblöcken an der suburbanen peripherie. die gegenwärtige urbane transformation ist gekennzeichnet durch fehlende lokale und überregionale kooperation, unzureichende entscheidungsstrategien und das aufkommen konsumorientierter mittelschichten, was die latenten disparitäten zwischen reich und arm verstärken und weitere soziale spannungsfelder eröff nen könnte. schlagworte: metro-jakarta, jabotedabek, verstädterung, marginalisierung, regionalentwicklung the goal of this article is a discussion of current aspects of regional development within metrojakarta (jabodetabek), which is considered the biggest urban agglomeration within southeast asia. after a short introduction of demographic, economic and sociocultural features, the focus of the paper is shifted to aspects of regional planning, marginalization, suburbanization, kampung clearing and new town development. the present urban transformation is characterized by lack of local cooperation, insuffi cient governance and the rise of a booming middle class, which seems to be bound to widen the gap between (sub-)urban rich and urban poor and lead to further social unrest in today’s global recession. keywords: metro-jakarta, jabodetabek, urbanization, marginalization, regional development 1 mag.dr. günter spreitzhofer ist universitätslektor am institut für geographie und regionalforschung der uni versität wien. arbeitsschwerpunkte: südostasien, tourismus, urbanisierung, soziokultureller wandel. kontakt: guenter.spreitzhofer@univie.ac.at 70 aseas 2 (1) günter spreitzhofer außer rand und band: regionalentwicklung in metro-jakarta 1. konfliktpotenziale in südostasiatischen metropolen – eine einführung the megacities of southeast asia are a dream and a nightmare cohabiting. emperors could only dream of capitals that so prodigally display might and money; urban planners must wake screaming from visions of massed poverty in the same places. authors of fairy tales might have dreamed up the architecture while participle scientists sank into reveries of how much energy a mere city could generate. claustrophobes are condemned to the nightmare of midget apartments that ring with the heavy metal noise; drivers fret the hours away in pinched streets shrouded in gasoline fumes. (goldberg, 2004) das rasante stadtwachstum der letzten jahrzehnte hat nicht nur in südostasien historisch definierte gebietseinheiten gesprengt (siehe u.a. bronger, 2004; crane & daniere, 1997; kraas, 2007; mcgee, 1995). fragen der migration, neubesiedlung und ökonomischen erschließung sind längst nicht mehr auf die eigentlichen kernstadtbereiche reduzierbar (nas, 2002) und betreffen seit der sukzessiven etablierung von exportorientierten industrien in den 1970er jahren zunehmend das großstädtische umland (hakim & parolin, 2009, s.110-111). der urbanisierungsgrad südostasiens ist mit 37,2 prozent (stand: 2000) sehr gering ausgeprägt (jones, 2002), kulminiert jedoch in einzelnen ballungsräumen, die meist hafennahe hauptstadtregionen darstellen: „mega-urban regions“, die definitionsgemäß 50 kilometer vom kernstadtbereich in das peri-urbane hinterland dringen (mcgee & robinson, 1995), bestimmen vor allem auf java, das auf nur 7 prozent der gesamtfläche indonesiens über die hälfte der indonesischen gesamtbevölkerung beheimatet, die bevölkerungsdynamik (silas, 2002, s. 1-3), die vor allem an der nordküste augenfällig ist. während das jährliche wachstum der städtischen weltbevölkerung (united nations department of economic and social affairs [undesa], 2008, s. 9-14) insgesamt schwächer wird (1950-2007: 2,6 prozent; 2007-2025: 1,8 prozent), weisen in südostasien vor allem indonesien und die philippinen eine urbane wachstumsdynamik auf, die auf zeitverzögerte verstädterung von nach wie vor weitgehend agrarischen gesellschaften schließen lässt, die in den schwellenländern malaysia, singapur und thailand bereits überwunden scheint. indonesiens urbanisierungsgrad etwa wird für 2010 mit 53,7 prozent prognostiziert (2020: 62,6 prozent); die städtische bevölkerung betrug im jahr 2000 87 millionen (jährliches wachstum 3,99 prozent) und wird bis 2010 auf 126 millionen (jährliches wachstum 2,64 prozent) bzw. bis 2020 auf 160 millionen (jährliches wachstum 1,64 prozent) ansteigen (ernst, 2008). metro-jakarta, auch als „jakarta metropolitan area“ (bzw. jma; hakim & parolin, 71 aseas 2 (1) 2009), „jakarta extended metropolitan region“ (jones, 2002) oder kurz – dem nationalen planungskonstrukt entsprechend – jabotabek (bzw. jabodetabek) bezeichnet, gilt als die größte stadtagglomeration südostasiens, deren attraktivität als zielraum für migrationsströme – nach kurzzeitiger rückläufiger entwicklung ende der 1990er jahre – wieder ungebrochen scheint. jabotabek2, mit einer fläche von 6.160 km2 etwa sieben mal größer als berlin, steht als akronym für die stadtagglomeration aus jakarta, bogor, tangerang und bekasi, den im süden, westen und osten dem kernstadtbereich angrenzenden städten. jüngere publikationen erweitern den begriff auf jabodetabek, um dem bevölkerungsboom in der neuen millionenstadt depok, im südteil des ballungsraumes zwischen jakarta und bogor gelegen, gerecht zu werden und diese auch terminologisch einzubinden (soegijoko & kusbiantoro, 2001; yulinawati, 2005; u.a.). der großraum, nach brongers ansatz (2006, s. 20) als „subkontinentales zentrum“ darstellbar, beherbergt 11 prozent der indonesischen gesamtbevölkerung (1961: 6,1 prozent), wobei der großteil der zunahme in botabek erfolgt (rustiadi, 2002). doch auch der bebaute kernraum von dki jakarta3 ist seit den 1960er jahren (180 km2) bis 2001 (590 km2) und 2007 (661km2) deutlich gewachsen. er beherbergte 2005 annähernd 8,67 millionen einwohner, könnte diesen wert bis 2015 auf 21,2 millionen mehr als verdoppeln und wäre damit die fünftgrößte stadt der welt – fünfzehn mal größer als 1955, unmittelbar nach der unabhängigkeit des südostasiatischen archipelstaates (peresthu, 2004). nur dhaka und lagos weisen weltweit höhere wachstumsraten auf. der übergang zum kernstadtbereich 2 jabotabek ist administrativ dreigeteilt, koordinative maßnahmen sind deshalb traditionell schwierig zu setzen: die kernstadt jakarta (dkij) ist direkt der regierung unterstellt; bogor, depok und bekasi sind teil der provinz west-java, während tangerang teil der provinz banten ist. 3 dkij ist eine abkürzung für daerah khusus ibukota jakarta, die das hauptstadtterritorium bezeichnet. der begriff botabek bezeichnet den großstädtischen raum außerhalb des kernstadtbereiches dki jakarta. 72 siehe ernst, 2008 tabelle 1: die bevölkerungsentwicklung in jakarta jahr 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2005 2010 bevölkerung (in mio.) 1,45 2,67 3,91 5,98 7,65 11,06 13,21 15,20 jährliches mittleres bevölkerungswachstum (in %) 6,12 4,15 4,13 2,52 3,60 3,55 2,81 2,02 aseas 2 (1) günter spreitzhofer außer rand und band: regionalentwicklung in metro-jakarta dkij kann – zumindest tangerang und bekasi betreffend – als fließend betrachtet werden. industrielle ansiedlungen (hafen tanjung priok, u.a.) oder prestigeträchtige neubauprojekte kommerzieller und siedlungsbezogener art (z.b. villa 2000, concord 2000, waterfront4, kemayoran) und bedeutende verkehrsachsen (z.b. dkij – international airport sukarno hatta) sind für diese entwicklung mitverantwortlich. „[u]ncontrolled urban expansion and chaotic land use“, laut rustiadi (2002) symptomatisch für südostasiatische urbanisierung, machen auch vor jabotabek nicht halt, das durch einen mix aus landwirtschaftlichen und nicht-landwirtschaftlichten nutzungsformen bis in die kernstadt gekennzeichnet ist, der als desa-kota-ansatz definierbar ist. nach mcgee (1995) handelt es sich dabei um semiperiphere stadtrandgebiete, deren nutzung durch besiedlung, industrialisierung und subsistenzielle landwirtschaft geprägt ist. die marginalisierung enormer urbaner bevölkerungsgruppen greift weltweit um sich (bronger, 2005). in metro-jakarta handelt es sich um eine direkte folge der regionalen wirtschaftskrise der späten 1990er jahre, die latente disparitäten verschärfte und die kluft zwischen armen und reichen weiter vorantrieb, deren nebeneinander wie miteinander nicht auf bestimmte stadtbereiche reduzierbar und auf suburbane wie zentrale stadtteile gleichermaßen zutreffend ist. die folgen der gegenwärtigen globalen finanzkrise sind derzeit weder abschätzbar noch empirisch zu belegen. die rigiden maßnahmen der aktuellen stadtregierung gegen sämtliche bereiche des informellen sektors (jellinek, 2003) dokumentieren die gratwanderung zwischen versuchter (westorientierter) modernisierung und (autokratischer wie postautokratischer) konzeptlosigkeit im umgang mit stetig steigenden bevölkerungsgruppen, die sich ihrerseits zunehmend emanzipieren und in zahlreichen printmedien und internet-plattfomen5 artikulationsmöglichkeiten nutzen, die – nicht zuletzt aufgrund der autokratischen regime der letzten jahrzehnte – früheren generationen von marginalisierten gruppen nicht offen standen. fünf millionen der stadtbevölkerung sind in der altersgruppe zwischen 14 und 34 und machen die indonesische hauptstadt zu 4 die visionäre “waterfront city” (wfc oder pantura) galt in den 1990er jahren als prototyp futuristischer landnutzungsprojekte. dieses öffentlich-private großprojekt erstreckte sich über die gesamte jakarta bay (ca. 32 km, im nordteil von dki jakarta), basiert auf 2.700 ha (künstlich gewonnenem, 1,5 km ins meer reichendem) küstenland sowie 2.500 ha revitalisierungsland und war, bei bereitstellung von 500.000 arbeitsplätzen, für eine bis anderthalb millionen einwohner konzipiert. aus kostengründen wurde das projekt jedoch storniert (caljouw, nas, & pratiwo, 2004, s. 5). 5 siehe abschnitt 3.1.1.3. 73 aseas 2 (1) einer der jüngsten metropolen der welt (guharoy, 2007), mit deutlich intensiverer dynamik als „ältere“ ballungsräume (undesa, 2008). der folgende beitrag spart aspekte von urbaner umweltbelastung, postkolonialen planungskonstrukten und investitionshype sowie fragen zu parteipolitischem umfeld und globalisierter transformation gezielt aus, denen in früheren arbeiten das hauptaugenmerk galt (siehe spreitzhofer & heintel, 1997; 1998; 1999a; 1999b; 2000; 2001). versucht wird vielmehr ein überblick über genese und konfliktfelder der metropolitanen planung innerhalb der agglomeration metro-jakarta, deren gegenwärtige entwicklung eine kontinuierliche verstärkung latenter disparitäten erkennen lässt, die bestehende marginalisierungstendenzen geradezu fördert. im komplexen spannungsfeld von rural-urbanem nutzungswandel, gezielter industrialisierung, rapider bevölkerungszunahme und visionärer planungskonzepte6 stehend, ist die wohnungsund siedlungsdiskussion längst nicht mehr ausschließlich auf die kernstadt begrenzt zu führen; diese „lebensfrage“ jabotabeks ist zunehmend an die bereitstellung und anbindung von infrastrukturleistungen (suburbane stadtneugründungen, öffentlicher und privater verkehr, u.a.) an der städtischen peripherie gekoppelt, wo unkoordinierte neustadtgründungen und willkürliche flächenwidmung die (jahrzehntelange) ausgrenzung breiter urbaner bevölkerungsmehrheiten in zentraljakarta begleiten, die seit 1998 – dem ende der suharto-ära – eine neue (systematische) qualität erfährt. marginalisierung versus moderne scheint das entscheidende urbane konfliktpotenzial der indonesischen gegenwart. 2. polarisierung, marginalisierung und segregation: (sub-)urbane trends und perspektiven der folgende analyse ist zweigeteilt: nach einer analyse von rahmenbedingungen, entwicklungstendenzen und -hemmnissen auf dem metropolitanen wohnungsmarkt folgt eine betrachtung zu genese, entstehung und gegenwärtigem stellenwert von (traditionellen) kampungs und (modernen) new towns, die planungsszenarien zu jabotabek reflektieren und die gesellschaftliche polarisierung einer inhomogenen stadt6 siehe http://www.portmanusa.com/master_plan/bsd.html, zuletzt zugegriffen am 20. mai 2006. 74 aseas 2 (1) günter spreitzhofer außer rand und band: regionalentwicklung in metro-jakarta bevölkerung dokumentieren. die reduzierung der armut ist das offizielle hauptanliegen der indonesischen regierung, die dieses ziel mittels massivem wirtschaftswachstum und rapider erhöhung der produktivität erreichen will. verfügbarkeit von land, hohe baukosten und komplizierte kreditvergabe sind die hauptverursacher für die steigende zahl von substandard-wohnungen. indonesienweit lebt ein viertel der bevölkerung unter der armutsgrenze7 und 23 prozent der städtischen bevölkerung – 2001 waren das rund 20 millionen menschen – in slums (ernst, 2008). 2.1. der duale lebensraum: zwischen kampung und kondominium der anstieg der wohnungskosten im legal-autorisierten bereich betrug zwischen 1980 und 1990 153 prozent und lag damit selbst in der ökonomischen boomphase der frühen 1990er jahre deutlich über der inflationsrate von 133 prozent (state ministry for people’s housing, 1995). die divergenz zwischen der stadtplanung der regierenden elite und den bedürfnissen der masse der urbanen bevölkerung, die durch staatspolitisch motivierte maßnahmen wie „street clearance“, „kampung clearance“ und „land clearance“ die internationalisierung hautnah erfährt, dokumentiert sich nicht zuletzt in einem mehrheitlich unerschwinglichen wohnungsmarkt: „the ever increasing land prices in urban areas are a result of the increased need for commercial space and increased land speculation, and have led to the growth of more slum housing, particular on public land and marginal areas …“ (tjiptoherijanto, 1996, s. 9). „those in possessory rights cannot sell their land (since they have no title) and can only exercise their rights and realise some value to their land by continuing to reside on it, thus inhibiting changes in land use patterns“, bringen henderson, kuncoro, & nasution (1996, s. 80) die interessenskollision auf den punkt. douglass (1996a, s. 1517) betont die illusion einer entwicklungskonzentration auf die infrastrukturell völlig überlastete kernstadt. ziel der planungsstrategien sollte eine integrierte schaffung von „site and services“-einrichtungen sein: ohne die bereitstellung von verkehrswegen, trinkwasser, müllentsorgung oder elektrizität würde die konzeptlosigkeit 7 siehe http://www.habitatindonesia.org, zuletzt zugegriffen am 30. november 2008. 75 aseas 2 (1) der ära der frühen „neuen ordnung” prolongiert und eine weitere verschärfung der prekären umweltund transportbedingungen vorweggenommen (ieda, mizokami, kidokoro, & iwakura, 2003). die erschließung von „serviced land“, teils in form von neustadtgründungen, genießt mittlerweile längst den vorrang vor der nachträglichen verbesserung der lebensqualität in „old kampongs“ (peresthu, 2004), was – durch die tertiärisierung der kernstadt – ohnedies eine relozierung etablierter zentraler siedlungsräume mit sich bringt. langfristig scheint die kernstadt jakarta als wohnraum nur mehr gehobenen einkommensgruppen zugänglich, die – der vision der weltstadt entsprechend – ihren lebensbereich in zentral gelegene apartments und kondominien von privat errichteten vielstöckigen towers verlegen (soegijoko, 1995, s. 22). 2.1.1. superblocks und new towns: schöne neue welt? when all the development was going on, they couldn’t build golf courses and housing developments fast enough; they were just stripping down the hillsides. it made me think the whole thing was turning into a monumental urban nightmare. (ken pattern in kennedy, 2005) die „superblock“-konzeption der stadterweiterung liegt sämtlichen szenarien für jabotabek zugrunde und beruht auf der verordnung 678/1994 des gouverneurs von jakarta.8 als superblocks gelten multifunktionale und integriert entwickelte gebiete mit einer mindestgröße von 20.000 m 2 , die von mindestens zwei hochkapazitätsstraßen erschlossen werden und in urbanen stadterneuerungsgebieten oder niedrigdichteregionen liegen sollen (jakarta metropolitan city government, 1995, s. 83). für das suburbane umland erscheinen die potenziellen konfliktfelder noch ausgeprägter. die raumplanungskonzepte westjavas für botabek lassen eine interessenkollision zwischen agrarischem versorgungsraum und der dezidierten ansiedlung von industriellen großund mittelbetrieben erkennen. im rahmen eines konzentrischen wachstums der wohnzonen soll dem pendlerproblem begegnet werden, das seinerseits die prekäre innerstädtische transportsituation9 ursächlich bedingt. in einem 8 die verwaltungstechnische operationalisierung der erforderlichen planungsstrategien obliegt seit 1976 einem koordinativen gremium aus zentralregierung, stadtregierung und provinzregierung (west java). 9 die geplante metro-verbindung durch zentraljakarta ist aus technischen und finanziellen gründen auf unbestimmte zeit ausgesetzt. 76 aseas 2 (1) günter spreitzhofer außer rand und band: regionalentwicklung in metro-jakarta inneren kreis, der maximal 15 bis 20 km von der distriktgrenze dki jakartas entfernt ist, sollen 75 prozent der potenziellen arbeitspendler lokalisiert sein, in einem äußeren kreis (entfernung zur kernstadtgrenze: 30 bis 40 km) 25 prozent. die praxis zeigt jedoch die de-facto-unkontrollierbarkeit jedweder entwicklung im unmittelbaren umfeld der kernstadt. als folge der deregulierungsmaßnahmen der 1990er jahre sind oftmals ungeplante wachstumspole entstanden, die wiederum ihrerseits jedwedes verkehrskonzept überaltet erscheinen lassen: „it was around these outlying manufacturing sites, and later probably the outlying housing estates, where there has emerged a co-existence of urban-rural activities“, argumentieren hakim & parolin (2009, s. 111) das aufkommen von flächenintensiven wohn-, shopping und freizeiteinrichtungen wie golfplätzen und themenparks. die spillover-effekte zunehmender landnutzung im umland der kernstadt manifestieren sich in massiver verbauung, die – von der stadtgrenze ausgehend – zunächst die angrenzenden teile botabeks erfassten. eine betrachtung der verbauten fläche innerhalb von dki jakarta verdeutlicht den enormen siedlungsdruck in richtung botabek: 1971 waren 31,4 prozent, 1980 58 prozent, 1994 bereits 82 prozent des stadtgebietes verbaut, was einer jährlichen steigerung der bebauten fläche von derzeit 4,3 prozent entspricht; 95 prozent sämtlicher 1993 in jabotabek neu errichteten häuser – insgesamt 246.000 – entstanden in botabek, lediglich 5 prozent in jakarta selbst, wo noch 1981 48 prozent der neubauten lokalisiert waren (soegijoko, 1995, s. 20-21). 2.1.2. investoren contra raumplanung: der influx der „developer“ die strategie der forcierung von gegenpolen zu dki jakarta, sogenannten „countermagnets“, innerhalb botabeks ist ein produkt des letzten jahrzehnts; die schaffung von semi-autarken „new towns“ wurde zum prägenden merkmal der gegenwärtigen planungsintention, um migration und pendlerwesen zielgerecht zu begegnen. mitte der 1990er jahre agierten über 30 private landerschließungsgesellschaften, die auf flächen von 500 bis 10.000 ha neustadtgründungen planten, die allerdings nur teilweise realisiert wurden. sämtliche dieser designierten wachstumspole lagen innerhalb eines umkreises von 60 km zu jakarta und umfassten eine gesamtfläche von über 43.000 ha (kusbiantoro, 1996, s. 61). 77 aseas 2 (1) die neustadtgründungen mögen zwar architektonische bewährungsproben sein und auch kurzfristige erfolge in der entlastung des angespannten wohnungsmarktes (für mittelschichtpublikum) bringen, hochrechnungen für das ende der erschließungsphase ließen jedoch eine bloße verlagerung der transportproblematik befürchten. die rolle der neugründungen als gegenmagnet wird – bei fortschreibung der gegenwärtigen entwicklungstendenzen – weitere transregionale verkehrsströme bedingen. die szenarien für bumi serpong damai10, einer „new town“ in tangerang, deren fertigstellung für 2015 mit einer einwohnerzahl von rund 800.000 projektiert ist, prophezeien eine verkehrslawine ersten ranges. ausgehend von der bis dahin bloß 12-prozentigen erschließung (1989–1995) sprechen die prognosen von einer 30-fachen steigerung des verkehrs auf regionalstraßen und einer 20-fachen erhöhung auf den mautpflichtigen hauptachsen. studien für lippo cikarang (bekasi) sind annähernd deckungsgleich. die hochrechnungen geben keinen anlass zu optimismus, das siedlungsproblem mit neustadtgründungen zu kontrollieren: „given that all new towns and industrial estates developed along the toll road corridor are expected as the one that bsd and lc have, the impact of this rapid development will be devastating“ (kusbiantoro, 1996, s. 63). henderson et al. (1996, s. 78-81) unterstreichen die inhärente konzeptlosigkeit, die zahlreichen derartigen erschließungsprojekten eigen ist. die entwicklung findet vielfach in „pockets“, als transportkosten schonendes anhängsel, entlang der mautstraßenkorridore statt. auf den bau eigener verkehrswege wird aus kostengründen vielfach verzichtet. die fehlende koordination der einzelnen betreiber untereinander bewirkt mangelhafte infrastruktur und eine scheinbar konzeptlose aneinanderreihung von bauprojekten. die (durchaus vorhandenen) örtlichen raumplanungsmaßnahmen wären sehr wohl exekutierbar – doch plan und realität erwiesen sich als keineswegs konsistent, was das populäre (wie ebenso populistische) motto des „dynamic planning“ (leaf, 1994, s. 65) erleichterte. parallel dazu erzeugten – politisch forciert – die wesentlich verbesserten transportbedingungen auf java neue räumliche mobilität. der (aus-)bau von straßen und das aufkommen von minibussen rückten auch bislang schwer erreichbare siedlungen zunehmend in die nähe der hauptstadt – der zeitfaktor der anreise war kein hinder10 siehe abschnitt 3.2.1.2. 78 aseas 2 (1) günter spreitzhofer außer rand und band: regionalentwicklung in metro-jakarta nisgrund mehr für saisonale oder temporäre beschäftigung(-ssuche) im umfeld von metro-jakarta, was die räumliche entwicklung westjavas entscheidend mit beeinflussen sollte: „channelled by trunk transport corridors connecting the urban core of jakarta to the east, west and southern parts (and beyond) of jma, the investments, which had focused primarily on manufacturing, services, finance and the property sector, had brought about substantial impacts on the spatial arrangement of employment“ (hakim & parolin, 2009, s. 110). umgekehrt eröffnete der ausbau des verkehrswesens auch die möglichkeit der penetration ruraler märkte mit gütern, die in (sub-)urbanen mittelund großproduktionsbetrieben erzeugt wurden. ob lebensmittel oder kleidung, der preisund qualitätsdruck der waren bewirkte vielfach eine berufliche umorientierung der erwerbstätigkeit (schneider werden kleiderhändler etc.) wie auch rurale arbeitslosigkeit und einen weiteren push in richtung informeller tätigkeiten im städtischen raum – gemeinsam mit definitiv besseren bildungsmöglichkeiten in jabotabek, die als impetus nicht zu vernachlässigen sind (marshall, 2005, s. 312-313). der private konsum ist zwar weiterhin der motor des 4,1-prozentigen nationalen wachstums (stand: 2003), doch zumindest das doppelte wäre notwendig gewesen, um die aufgrund des bevölkerungswachstums steigende arbeitslosenquote stabil zu halten (hofmann, 2004), die die sinkende nachfrage nach indonesischen textilien bereits vor der aktuellen globalen rezession reflektierte. 2.1.3. projekte und projektoren: ciputra, bsd & jababeka im werbevideo erscheinen die bilder einer besseren welt: prachtvolle wohnhäuser, villen, schulen, gepflegtes grün. dazu schmettert ein kinderchor den refrain ‚bumi serpong damai’, der nach glücksversprechen und heiler welt klingt, ohne dass man zunächst versteht, was das heißt: ruhiges land serpong, … der alte name des stadtteils am rand des molochs jakarta, der keine ränder mehr hat. (novy, 2005, s. 1) visionen brauchen visionäre, um realität zu werden. einer der ersten privatiers, die noch vor der krise 1998 die planerischen akzente für das jakarta der jahrtausendwende setzten, hieß ciputra, ein chinesisch-indonesischer unternehmer, dessen drähte bis zu höchsten politischen kreisen legendär waren. „ciputra has had a greater influence on the formation of jakarta’s landscape than any other single individual, inclu79 aseas 2 (1) ding sukarno“, stellt leaf (1994, s. 65) die effizienz administrativer planungsebenen (öffentliche infrastrukturinvestitionen, landnutzungregulative) in frage. weitere (meist privat finanzierte) stadtgründungen entlang der west-ost-achse – eine stadtgründung bei tangerang (3.000 ha), vier bei bekasi (gesamt 7.000 ha) – waren für die finanzkräftige mittelschicht geplant. die meisten landentwickler agieren als wohnbaugesellschaften, ohne ein gesamtkonzept für die umliegende infrastruktur vorzulegen. im gegensatz dazu zeichnen sich private satellitenstädte wie bintaro, bumi serpong damai (bsd; http://www. bsdcity.com) und lippo karawaci (http://www.lippokarawaci.co.id), die allesamt in tangerang (jabotabek west) liegen, durch ihre konzeption als selbständige städte (kota mandiri) aus (leisch, 2000, s. 25). die daseinsgrundfunktionen sind zumeist auf höchstem (westlichen) niveau gewährleistet. modernste klimatisierte großraumkinos, fitness studios, golf clubs und franchise-unternehmen internationaler fastfoodketten (dunkin donuts, mcdonald’s, pizza hut, u.a.) sowie gesundheitsund bildungseinrichtungen (deutsche internationale schule [dis]; swissgerman-university [sgu]; u.a.) machen derartige synthetische stadtgebilde attraktiv und ermöglichen kapitalkräftigen investoren eine urbane gegenwelt mit direktem autobahnanschluss (seit 2005) zum internationalen flughafen sukarnohatta – ein wachstumsimpuls mehr für die bevölkerungsentwicklung im suburbanen raum, die den stadtkern marginalisierten gruppen überlässt und sich in eigene welten, zumeist „gated communities“ zurückzieht. während 1999 in bsd erst 40.000 (ausbauziel 2015: 800.000) einwohner und in lippo karawaci etwa 10.000 (ausbauziel 2015: 84.000) menschen lebten (leisch, 2000, s. 25), stieg die bevölkerung in bsd 2003 80 siehe ernst, 2008 tabelle 2: stadtneugründungsprojekte in botabek name bumi serpong damai tigaraksa cariu bekasi 2000 bekasi terpadu cikarang baru lippo city depok lippo village fläche (ha) / lage 6.000 / tangerang 3.000 / tangerang --/ bogor 2.000 / bekasi 1.500 / bekasi 2.000 / bekasi 450 / bekasi -- / bogor 500 / tangerang finanzierung privat privat privat privat privat/öffentlich privat privat öffentlich privat aseas 2 (1) günter spreitzhofer außer rand und band: regionalentwicklung in metro-jakarta bereits auf 60.000 (http://www.germancentre.co.id/bsd) an. was kann die disparitäten zwischen den sozialen gruppen jabotabeks besser belegen als das kaufverhalten? traditionelle straßenmärkte in dkij stehen in starkem kontrast zu überdachten, vielfach transnational strukturierte einkaufszentren (z.b. plaza indonesia oder plaza senayan) in den satellitenstädten rundum (vgl. mutebi, 2007, s. 361-364). „fußwege [...] wurden durch die plaza ersetzt: den kommerzialisierten, security überwachten raum unter dem kühlenden dach des konsumtempels. wer da nicht hineingehört – und das sind die allermeisten – lebt draußen: in hitze, smog und lärm, tief unten zwischen den hochhäusern, die der asiatische boom in riesigen clustern über die stadt gestreut hat“ (novy, 2005, s. 3). mit 67 shopping centers hat sich die zahl der malls zwischen 1990 und 1995 mehr als verdreifacht (soegijoko & kusbiantoro, 2001), ihre gesamtfläche liegt bei über drei millionen m2 bei einer auslastung von mittlerweile wieder 75 bis 90% (colliers international indonesia news, 2003). die lippo supermall etwa, die im zuge der unruhen 1998 weitgehend zerstört wurde, ist renoviert und längst mehr als ein (durch wachleute gesichertes) versorgungszentrum (leisch, 2000, s. 25). an wochenenden flanieren (eher als nutzen) wieder an die 100.000 menschen durch die schicken freizeiteinrichtungen vor ort, die nur durch private investitionen möglich gemacht wurden – lebensbedingungen, die viele indonesierinnen und indonesier aus dem fernsehen kennen, die aber für das gros unerschwinglich scheinen. „since many outdoor spaces have been made unpleasant due to parked cars and traffic jams, a walk in a mall has become the new indonesian recreational activity“, betont pratiwo (2003), direktor des research institute for constructive habitat in jakarta. mit der eröffnung der grand indonesia shopping town entstand schließlich 2008 die größte shopping mall südostasiens, die 650.000 m2 fläche aufweist (harinowo, 2008) – eine neue konkurrenz für die etablierten shoppingzentren blok m plaza (1.002.000 besucher/monat) und matahari (1.400.000 besucher/ monat) (guharoy, 2007). die wohnraumschaffung für die industriearbeiterschaft, quasi in einem paket mit der gründung von industrieparks, hat dagegen eine etwas längere tradition: cikarang baru (im gelände des cikarang industrial estate) oder lippo city (im umfeld des bekasi terpadu industrial estate) gelten als erste beispiele für reißbrett-stadtgründungen für finanzschwache sozialgruppen, was die latente (regionen überschreitende) 81 aseas 2 (1) strukturlosigkeit an der urbanen peripherie weiter verstärkt. 13 der 15 urbanen neustadt-projekte indonesiens lagen in jabotabek, wo sich ende der 1990er jahre auch 50 prozent aller industrieparks des landes befanden (yulinawati, 2005, s. 9). noch einen entwicklungsschritt weiter gehen kombinierte arbeits-wohn-städte. jababeka etwa gilt als musterbeispiel für industriestadtgründungen, die auch nach der wirtschaftskrise 1998 florieren. im jahr 1989 etwa 40 km östlich der stadtgrenze jakartas bei bekasi gegründet (jabotabek ost), beherbergt jababeka heute 150.000 menschen und 1.100 unternehmen aus 24 ländern, darunter multinationale konzerne wie unilever, samsung oder mattel. die stadt ist mittlerweile autark, mit eigenen kraftwerken, wasseraufbereitungsanlagen, universitäten (etwa einem geplanten nationalen center of excellence) und freizeiteinrichtungen für die multiethnische bevölkerung, die sich aus migrantinnen und migranten aus dem ruralen umland zusammensetzt. setyono djuandi darmono, präsident von jababeka, beziffert den umsatz der konzerne seiner urbanzone mit 10 prozent des nationalen exportaufkommens und strebt mittlerweile auch einen administrativen autonomiestatus in form eines legal eingesetzten stadtrates aus industriellen und bürgerinnen an (khalik, 2005). die ausbleibenden investitionen gelten als hauptproblem für die schleppende fertigstellung oder aufgabe vieler neustadtgründungen. das für südostasien in der ersten dekade des 21. jahrhunderts prognostizierte wirtschaftswachstum von 5 bis 6 prozent droht aufgrund politischer instabilität, mangelnder rechtssicherheit, korruption und bürokratismus zu stagnieren (hofmann, 2004). die aktuelle globale rezession wird hierbei in der betrachtung überhaupt noch nicht berücksichtigt. 2.2. leben im kampung: traditioneller lebensraum am ende? 2.2.1. slum, squatter oder kampung: eine terminologische annäherung die oftmals synonyme verwendung der termini „slum“ und „kampung“ mag usus sein, ist jedoch inhaltlich nicht korrekt. letzterer begriff ist mit dörflichen strukturen assoziierbar, wobei die korporative einheit sowohl durch räumliche wie auch soziale merkmale gekennzeichnet ist. außer zweifel steht jedoch die mangelnde versorgung mit öffentlichen infrastrukturleistungen wie strom, wasser oder adäquaten 82 aseas 2 (1) günter spreitzhofer außer rand und band: regionalentwicklung in metro-jakarta allwettertauglichen zufahrtswegen (han & basuki, 2001, s. 1842). sullivan (1992) erachtet den hohen grad an zusammengehörigkeitsgefühl und „nachbarschaft“ als grundlegende charakteristik: „[t]here are strong pressures on kampung people to be good neighbours. good neighbourship or ‘neighbourliness’ is quite precisely defined in the kampung and powerful sanctions function to make community members behave in conformity with the conventions“ (1992, s. 71). kampungs seien weiters gekennzeichnet durch „communal harmony, a situation in which people live together peacefully and compatibly“ (1992, s. 106). murrays (1991, s. 61) definition klammert dagegen das konzept der gemeinsamkeit weitgehend aus und betont das system der zweckgemeinschaft: „[k]ampung is not an entity capable of devising a ‘strategy’ but a community of individuals adapting to their urban situation and the arrival of more and more people with a balance of co-operation and competition.“ insgesamt scheint die zusammengehörigkeit auf die unmittelbaren nachbarn beschränkt, da der gesamte bereich des kampungs aufgrund seiner ausdehnung und bevölkerungszahl intensivere kontakte nahezu unmöglich macht: „[i]nhabitants identified less with the kampung than with clusters of houses along several paths“, erkennt jellinek (1991, s. 26) in ihren erhebungen über das leben in javanischen kampungs. die kommerziellen aktivitäten des informellen sektors, dessen wurzeln in den dörflichen strukturen der urbanen kampungs liegen, sind mit informationsaustausch verknüpft und kausal gekoppelt (jellinek, 2003, s. 172-175). die soziale realität des zusammenlebens auf engstem raum und der erforderlichen solidarität innerhalb der bevölkerung bedeutet jedoch nicht zwangsläufig homogenität; die soziale und räumliche stratifizierung ist ausgeprägt, etwa zwischen haushalten im zentrum und solchen an den äußeren übergangszonen, im grenzbereich zu semipermanenten slum-distrikten. doch auch innerhalb der kampungstruktur sind disparitäten unverkennbar: „[t]he better-off regarded themselves and were regarded by the rest of the neighbourhood as outsiders“, wie murray (1991, s. 41-42) feststellte. je höher bildungsgrad, einkommen und mobilität, desto eher sind schichtspezifische identifikationsmuster bemerkbar. sullivan (1992, s. 75) ortet darin ein wesentliches charakteristikum im kampung-leben der 1990er jahre: „[t]he reality of inequality – the existence of a rather broad social mix – is just as essential to kampung order as the kampung’s subtle ideologically shaped conception of equality.“ die intensität sozialer kontakte ist somit einer hierarchisch-institutionellen basis 83 aseas 2 (1) unterworfen, die intern fungiert, aber auch über den eigentlichen kampung hinausgeht. die administrative koppelung bewirkt soziale und ökonomische streuung unter divergierender führerschaft. korff (1996, s. 303) vergleicht dieses organisationsmuster mit einer pyramide, deren horizontale verknüpfungen auf die unmittelbare umgebung (familie, nachbarschaft) beschränkt bleiben, während die vertikalen konnexe über den individuellen einflussbereich hinausgehen – dieses konzept verringert die möglichkeiten organisierter kommunaler aktivitäten außerhalb formalisierter kanäle beträchtlich. somantri (1995, s. 221) betont die gelassenheit, mit der umsiedlungen in der regel hingenommen werden, und ortet vielfach lethargie und das bewusstsein der chancenlosigkeit jedweder protestaktion: „for kampung dwellers, to get a fair amount of compensation money and move elsewhere is more attractive than to continue to suffer severe repression by security officers in the urban areas, and to preserve their communities.“ das recht auf kompensation scheint mittlerweile außer zweifel, doch die grundproblematik bleibt ungelöst: „as long as there is uncertainty about the legal position of kampung dwellers, the once useful flexibility in the system of land law will harm any form of urban development“ (reerink, 2006). noch 1970 hatte nur 35 prozent der stadtfläche einen offiziellen besitzer, 1986 war 43 prozent der wohnfläche jakartas illegal besetzt (donner, 1987, s. 288). die akribisch geplanten, meist militärisch unterstützten räumaktionen machten keinerlei unterschied zwischen öffentlichem interesse an urbaner infrastrukturverbesserung und privatem interesse teils ausländischer investoren, was die haltung zu internationalisierung bereits in der anfangsphase zunehmend verschlechterte – als paradebeispiel gilt der kampung pondok indah, der einem privaten shopping-komplex mit luxuswohnungen und golfanlagen weichen musste. direkte staatliche investitionen in den wohnungsbau sind indonesienweit gering. in urbanen bereichen ist die dominanz privater und kommunaler bauträger noch stärker ausgeprägt und beträgt geschätzte 85 prozent für den städtischen wohnungsmarkt, der jedoch systematisch deprivatisiert werden soll (dbi, 2004). die gewinnorientierung der bauträger, deren bautätigkeit auf die finanzielle kapazität der schmalen mittelschicht ausgelegt ist, führt zur verstärkten ausprägung illegaler squatter settlements, welche die absorptionsfunktion für die stetig wachsende bevölkerung zu tragen haben. 84 aseas 2 (1) günter spreitzhofer außer rand und band: regionalentwicklung in metro-jakarta nimmt man das verwendete (provisorisch-semipermanente) baumaterial dieser sogenannten „shanty towns“ als definitionskriterium (davis, 2004), so lebte anfang der 1990er jahre – je nach berechnungsgrundlage – ein drittel der bevölkerung jakartas (1970: 60 prozent) in slums (jellinek, 2003). die schätzungen der stadtregierung sind optimistischer, denen zufolge 4,8 prozent (2.855 ha) der stadtfläche jakartas von slums belegt sind, in denen knapp 10 prozent der gesamtbevölkerung der metropole leben – bei der überwiegenden mehrheit handelt es sich um saisonale migrantinnen und migranten. die ursprüngliche vision eines slum-freien jakarta bis 2005 (ccj, 1994; vgl. auch darrundono, 2005) erweist sich angesichts der restriktiven vorgangsweise des (ehemaligen) suharto-regimes und seiner nachfolger in zahlreichen gesellschaftsund wirtschaftspolitischen belangen nicht unbedingt als völlig unrealistische illusion. die schleifung traditioneller kampungs und darauf folgende ersetzung durch wohnblocksiedlungen mag technisch durchaus bewerkstelligbar sein, stellt jedoch lediglich eine problemverlagerung in das umland jakartas und – langfristig – nach west-java dar. die beschleunigung des regionalen wirtschaftswachstums und gezielte (physische) modernisierung hat soziale und ökologische kosten, die sich im verschwinden von grünflächen deutlich äußert, die in wohn-, verkehrsund industrieflächen transferiert wurden: von 1972 bis 1997 sank der anteil nicht kommerziell genutzter flächen um 23 prozent (zain, 2001), während die bevölkerungsdichte in der kernstadt dkij auf 13.787 einwohner/km2 stieg (jones, 2002). das „urban housing renewal programme“, eine weiterentwicklung des „kampung improvement programme“ (kip), führt weiterhin zu „kampung clearance“ und damit verbundener relozierung der bevölkerung sowie zu einer ersetzung gewachsener bausubstanz durch vielstöckige bauwerke mit internationalisierter architektur. hugo (1994, s. 35) fordert explizit die aufgabe der versteifung auf „minimum housing standards“ und „aesthetic niceties“, die als rechtfertigung für schleifungsaktionen im zentrum der kernstadt angeführt werden, ohne jedoch adäquaten und finanziell erschwinglichen ersatz-wohnraum in den „new towns“ jabotabeks anzubieten, die durch zunehmende internationale investitionstätigkeit und dadurch neu geschaffene erwerbsmöglichkeiten stetig attraktiver werden. die hebung des allgemeinen bildungsniveaus mag mittelfristig die zahl potenziell interessierter angehöriger der mittelschicht erhöhen, deren finanzieller hintergrund jedoch wohl erst in geraumer 85 aseas 2 (1) zeit gegeben sein wird; die zahl der „neo-decadent dwellings“ einer zunehmenden oberschicht war bereits vor zwei jahrzehnten thema einschlägiger publikationen (vgl. clarke, 1985, s. 39). 2.2.2. post-suharto-jabotabek: die marginalisierung schreitet voran slums [...] werden als illegal angesehen und häufig werden hier öffentliche leistungen und grundlegende dienste verweigert [...] aber vertreibung und abriss sind keine lösung für die probleme der raschen verstädterung. wir müssen eine entwicklung fördern, die sich um die armen kümmert [...] und in der entwicklung mit respekt vor den menschenrechten und dem völkerrecht erreicht wird.11 der alljährlich im oktober stattfindende „world habitat day“ wurde 2005, im gedenken an die tsunami-opfer 2004, an jakarta vergeben. über 1.000 geladenen gästen wurde von höchsten politischen stellen ein muster-apartment-komplex in cenkareng (westjakarta) präsentiert, und bürgermeister sutiyoso erhielt eine auszeichnung der un für seine leistungen in „slums improving and building new infrastructure to create an exclusive cosmopolitan city“. jakarta sei eine sicherere, besser versorgte, grünere und lebenswertere stadt geworden, verlautet aus offiziellen kommentaren. blanker zynismus, wie wardah hafidz, koordinator der indonesischen ngo „urban poor linkage indonesia“ (uplink) betont, der die schattenseite der anti-marginalisierungskampagnen der stadtregierung aufzeigt: zwischen 2000 und 2005 wurden 63.676 personen vertrieben, weiteren 1,6 millionen menschen droht nach der realisierung bereits vereinbarter privater bzw. öffentlicher nutzungstransformation der stadtfläche ein ähnliches los; 23.205 fahrradrikschas (becaks), die durch zweischichtbetrieb etwa 46.000 arbeitsplätze stellen, und 62.263 mobile stände von straßenhändlerinnen und straßenhändler wurden konfisziert und vernichtet, allein 2003 550 straßenmusikerinnen und straßenmusiker verhaftet (international alliance of inhabitants, 2005).12 der informelle sektor leiste keinen beitrag zur urbanen wirtschaftsentwicklung und störe daher das nationale wachstum, wird bürgermeister sutiyoso zitiert, und kommentare orten ein „increased risk of eviction for kampung dwellers“ (reerink, 11 erklärung des ehemaligen uno-generalsekretär kofi annan zum welt-habitat-tag, 3.10.2005. zuletzt zugegriffen am 2. juni 2006 unter http://www.runic-europe.org/german/presse/2005/runic86.htm 12 vgl. auch das einschlägige online diskussionsforum zu zwangsvertreibungen in jakarta unter http://www.achr. net/evictions%20asia/indonesia/august2007.html, zuletzt zugegriffen am 15. mai 2009 86 aseas 2 (1) günter spreitzhofer außer rand und band: regionalentwicklung in metro-jakarta 2006). die slumbewohner haben zumeist keinen anspruch auf infrastrukturleistungen (gesundheit, nahrung, bildung), da die wenigsten einen meldeausweis für jakarta haben, obwohl sie teils schon seit jahrzehnten hier leben. kompensation – etwa im ausmaß des mietpreises eines kleinen zimmers für zwei monate – steht nur denjenigen zu, die ihre häuser freiwillig in eigenregie abbauen, um zumindest einige materialien sicherzustellen, wie etwa in pedongkelan (ostjakarta) geschehen.13 fragen des landbesitzes14 sind weiterhin ungelöst, trotz physischer, sozialer und wirtschaftlicher besserstellung der kampungs. im zuge zunehmender industrialisierung und siedlung an der urbanen peripherie behielt es sich die regierung vor, freie hand über spekulationsland zu behalten, um potenziellen investoren attraktive flächen wie immobilien zu bieten. „the lack of land registration contributed to the emergence of legal pluralism in indonesia’s land sector“, konstatiert reerink (2006), der die bedeutung „semi-formaler“ besitzverhältnisse hervorstreicht – „not on any legal basis, but on the basis of daily practice, including the daily practice of corruption.“ aus traditionellen „old kampungs“ werden zunehmend “squatter kampungs”, die sich nach der zerschlagung vormaliger sozialund baustrukturen ergeben (peresthu, 2004). die öffentliche perzeption15 der de-marginalisierungswelle ist keineswegs so rosig, wie die aussagen von djoko kirmanto (minister of public works) und m. aysari (minister of housing) vermuten lassen, die bis zum jahr 2010 bereits 200 indonesische städte völlig slumfrei sehen und 12.000 wohnungseinheiten allein für jakartas mittel und unterschicht vorsehen (united nations habitat, 2005). „the award will encourage the city to be more intensive in evicting the poor and confiscating the livelihoods now that it has received international support for its development policies“, betont hafidz (2005, s. 2) auch die gefahr der negativen vorreiterfunktion dieser preisverleihung in anderen indonesischen städten. enteignung, konfiszierung und vertreibung werden durch eine neue präsidentenverordnung erleichtert, welche die planung von „für die öffentlichkeit wichtigen bauvorhaben“ beschleunigen soll. schätzungen des 13 siehe http://www.achr.net/jakarta_achr.htm, zuletzt zugegriffen am 28. april 2006. 14 in indonesien bestehen zwei sichtweisen zu landbesitzverhältnissen: das traditionelle adat, unregistriertes land, konkurriert die statutorischen landrechte, die seit 1960 im basic agrarian law (bal) formuliert sind (reerink, 2006). 15 einer umfrage der tageszeitung kompas zufolge betrachten 52,8% der befragten die transportsituation allgemein als zunehmend schlechter, für 47,4% sinkt die qualität der straßen und 49,3% betonen die abnehmende sicherheit auf öffentlichen plätzen (siehe http://www.habitants.org/article/articleview/1502/1/395, zuletzt zugegriffen am 12. april 2007). 87 aseas 2 (1) „urban poor consortium“ zufolge könnten davon mittelfristig allein in der hauptstadt 1,5 millionen menschen betroffen sein. 3. zwischen sozialer repression und architektonischem renommee: ein ausblick since the primary drive of the deterioration is the exponential growth of ist economy [...] a planned and rational policy has to be formulated to build a negative feedback loop to slow down economic growth. (soemarwoto, 2006) die marginalisierung der mehrheit der urbanen bevölkerung schreitet stetig voran und stellt mittelfristig einen potenziellen sprengkopf für die metropolitane entwicklung der indonesischen hauptstadtregion dar. sowohl soziale ausgrenzung als auch erzwungene räumliche dislokation kennzeichnen die gesellschaftliche entwicklung des ballungsraumes, dessen marginalsiedlungen – brongers (2005, s. 10-11) definitionsansatz folgend – sowohl squattersiedlungen als auch infrastrukturell degradierte kampung-viertel darstellen. synthetische reißbrettstädte, die von investorenkonsortien für sozial besser gestellte zielgruppen errichtet werden, sind als ersatz für diese traditionellen kampung-strukturen genauso wenig geeignet wie öffentliche wohnanlagen im suburbanen raum, die weder etablierte sozialnetze aufrechterhalten noch informelle beschäftigungsmöglichkeiten gewährleisten können. eine weitere polarisierung der gesellschaft scheint unvermeidlich, solange die metropolitane modernisierung unsensibel und autoritär die marginalisierung vorantreibt. die transformation der landnutzung geschieht im kernstadtbereich zumeist auf öffentlichen oder privaten druck hin, grundstücke bzw. parzellen kommerziell attraktiver zu gestalten – zumeist ohne konsistente infrastrukturplanung bzw. -einbindung, was die prekäre umweltsituation zahlreicher bereiche von dkij verschärft und die lebensbedingungen marginalisierter gruppen erschwert (yulinawati, 2005, s. 9). nutzungswandel ist mit entwaldung, bodenerosion, sedimentation und erhöhter überschwemmungsgefahr gekoppelt, die vor allem in nordjakarta verstärkt zu verzeichnen ist (caljouw et al., 2004, s. 1-3). der öffentliche raum wird zunehmend politisiert, eine folge der emanzipation der städtischen armen16, deren leben und arbeiten öffentlich geworden ist. die wach16 vgl. jaringan rakyat miskin kota (netzwerk der armen stadtbevölkerung); jellinek (2003); urban poor consortium 88 aseas 2 (1) günter spreitzhofer außer rand und band: regionalentwicklung in metro-jakarta sende demokratisierung, die seit suhartos rücktritt 1998 unverkennbar ist, bewirkt auch vermehrte opposition zu infrastrukturellen entscheidungen, die durch das fehlen entsprechender interessensgruppierungen über jahrzehnte hingenommen werden musste. marco kusumawijaya, architekt und sprachrohr betroffener bevölkerungsgruppen, betont die konfliktpotenziale und transformationsoptionen zentraler öffentlicher flächen, die als zunehmend unsicher empfunden werden (murwisah, 2003, s. 2-5). segregation ist unübersehbar: die (wohlhabende) mittelund oberschicht drängt – dem latenten trend zur räumlichen verlagerung des lebensbereiches in den suburbanen raum folgend – weiter in die satellitensiedlungen am urbanen außenrand, in klimatisierte malls und gated communities, da die „straßen“ in dkij als reich der armen gesehen werden. jakartas mittelschichten scheinen ein ziel konsequent zu verfolgen: „[t]o create a ‘safe’ suburban environment, removed from the marginallyemployed lower classes crowded into both inner city and other urban kampung areas“ (jones, 2002), die sowohl durch ihr kriminelles gewaltpotenzial als auch durch ihre prekäre umweltsituation nicht als attraktiver lebensraum erachtet werden. luftund wasserverschmutzung jabotabeks – vor allem im zentralen dkij, vermehrt auch im suburbanen botabek (wirahadikusumah, 2002) – sind trotz steigendem problembewusstsein seitens der planungsinstanzen stetig im ansteigen. aufgrund der interdependenz soziokultureller faktorenbündel (konsumorientierter wertewandel) und ökonomischer (industrialisierung und internationale arbeitsteilung) scheint eine rasante verbesserung unwahrscheinlich. „the western model of so-called democracy and consumerism is thrown at them in a very unfair way. everybody wants to buy into the mtv thought pattern”, kritisiert ken pattern (kennedy, 2005), bekannt für seine kampung-stillleben, den modernisierungsschub der 1990er, der nach der wirtschaftskrise 1997/98 skurrile formen annahm. zurück in die vergangenheit? rund um verrostende kräne auf ehemaligem kampung-gelände, das für nie mehr realisierbare kondominien vorgesehen war, bilden sich längst wieder marginalsiedlungen, die baustellen der reichen wurden vom lebensraum der armen überrollt – „almost as if we give the developing world mcdonald’s and golf courses as if that’s going to help people“ (kennedy, 2005). (2005). 89 aseas 2 (1) die großteils unkoordinierte errichtung und planung von punktuellen industriezonen oder satellitenstädten (kraas & mertins, 2008, s. 11-13) ist weiters nicht dazu angetan, die zeitbombe umwelt kurzfristig zu entschärfen. das potenzial für landnutzungskonflikte scheint insbesondere in süd-jabotabek (raum bogor) massiv, wo aus wasserschutzgründen weitere bebauung unterbleiben sollte, nichtsdestoweniger aber von privater seite auf vormals landwirtschaftlich genutzten flächen massive landaufschließung betrieben wird (douglass, 1996a). soziale disparitäten, umweltverschmutzung und unzureichende lösungen in wohnungsund arbeitsfragen fördern massive marginalisierung. ohne verstärkte einbeziehung lokaler raumplanung und der schaffung von praktikablen landnutzungskonzepten, auch gegen die intentionen lokaler und internationaler investoren und landaufschließungsgesellschaften, scheint auch eine mittelfristige lösung nicht in sicht und die attraktivität jabotabeks als internationaler produktionsstandort gravierend gefährdet. der aktuelle weltweite konjunktureinbruch hindert die stadtpolitik nicht daran, für 2009 ein wirtschaftswachstum von 5,6 prozent zu prognostizieren, wenngleich ein anstieg der arbeitslosigkeit von 5 prozent zum vergleichzeitraum des vorjahres konzediert wird (winarti, 2009) – der beginn einer dramatischen auflösung industrieller arbeitsplätze zugunsten (sub-)urbaner landwirtschaft zu puren überlebenszwecken, wie macan-markar (2008) postuliert? die zunehmend aggressive verhinderung neuer zuwanderung ist nicht dazu angetan, die vielzahl an sozialen und ökonomischen spannungen zu entschärfen: „[m]erely applying a repressive approach to prevent people from rural areas migrating to the cities will be ineffective. it denies people’s basic human rights to move and migrate freely in search of more decent jobs and lives, basic rights protected by our constitution” (sudirman, 2008). dass islamistische heilslehren im größten moslemstaat der welt angesichts dieses umfeldes aus politisch-methodischer marginalisierung künftig auf starken zustrom stoßen könnten, scheint unbestritten – trotz stimmrückgang bei den jüngsten wahlen auf nationaler ebene. wachsendes unbehagen und opposition gegen den westlichen lebensstil von internationalen investoren und – viel mehr noch – der wachsenden mittelschicht des 225-millionen-staates, der sich in den gated-communities und shopping-malls der (vorwiegend) suburbanen neustadtgründungen manifestiert, bewirkte neben attacken auf internationale luxushotels auch demonstrationen gegen die stadtregierung, die zur zeit außer gewaltsamen auflösungen keine lösungsmo90 aseas 2 (1) günter spreitzhofer außer rand und band: regionalentwicklung in metro-jakarta delle für die disparitäre gesellschaftsund siedlungsentwicklung anzubieten in der lage ist. eine reihe von leserinnenund leserzuschriften fordert mittlerweile allen ernstes eine verlegung der hauptstadt, da deren lenkbarkeit schon in zeiten globaler hochkonjunktur außer kontrolle war (salim, 2006). die entwicklungsperspektiven von metro-jakarta scheinen außer rand und band. bibliographie bronger, d. 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(2000). metro-jakarta: zwischen nasi und nike. suhartos ‘neue ordnung’ als motor der regionalentwicklung in westjava? frankfurt: peter lang. spreitzhofer, g., & heintel, m. (2001). die infrastruktur der megastadt: zeitbombe jabotabek? metrojakarta im spannungsfeld von internationaler investition, ökologischem desaster und politischer labilisierung. asien, 78(1), 50-69. salim, w. (2006, october 7). capital city bill to spare jakarta from old problems. the jakarta post. zuletzt zugegriffen am 2. mai 2009 unter http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2006/10/07/capital-citybill-to-spare-jakarta-from-old-problems.html soemarwoto, o. (2006, april 25). recognizing the plight of jakarta on earth day. the jakarta post. zuletzt zugegriffen am 2. mai 2009 unter http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2006/04/25/recognizingplight-jakarta-earth-day.html state ministry for people’s housing (1995). setengah abad rakyat. jakarta: smph. sudirman nasir (2008, october 16). managing urbanization and creating an inclusive city. the jakarta post. zuletzt zugegriffen am 13. mai 2009 unter http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2008/10/16/ managing-urbanization-and-creating-inclusive-city.html tjiptojiptoherijanto, p. (1996). urbanisation and urban development in indonesia. the indonesian quarterly xxiv(1), 8-14. united nations habitat (2005). international seminar on the millenium development goals and the city. bandung, 30 september 2005. zuletzt zugegriffen am 23. april 2009 unter http://www.unhabitat.org/ whd/2005/whd_jakarta.asp united nations centre for human settlements (1996). an urbanizing world: global report on human settlements 1996. oxford: oxford university press. united nations department of economic and social affairs (undesa) (2008). world urbanization prospects. the 2007 revision. new york: un. winarti, a. (2009, january 8). city expects 5.6% economic growth. the jakarta post. zuletzt zugegriffen am 13. mai 2009 unter http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/01/08/city-expects-56-economicgrowth.html wirahadikusumah, k. (2002). jakarta air quality management: trends and policies. paper presented at aseas 2 (1) “the regional workshop on better air quality in asian and pacific rim cities”, december 16, 2002, hongkong. yulinawati, h. (2005). jakarta mega urban region. how livable is its environment? paper presented at the 8th international conference of the asian planning schools association, september 11-14, 2005. zuletzt zugegriffen am 15. mai 2009 unter http://tbelfield.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/yulinawati_jakarta_2005.pdf zain, a. m. (2001). distribution, structure and function of urban green space in southeast asian megacities with special reference to jakarta metropolitan region. master thesis, university of tokyo. 96 the depoliticisation and ‘aseanisation’ of counter-terrorism policies in south-east asia aseas 3(1) 48 aktuelle südostasienforschung / current research on south-east asia the depoliticisation and ‘aseanisation’ of counter-terrorism policies in south-east asia: a weak trigger for a fragmented version of human security alfred gerstl1 society for south-east asian studies (seas), vienna, austria aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften / austrian journal of south-east asian studies seas gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften / society for south-east asian studies www.seas.at this article applies a modified version of the theoretical approach of the copenhagen school to demonstrate that the association of southeast asian nations (asean) has since 2001 reacted in a twofold way to the complex political obstacles to closer counter-terrorism co-operation: first, it has responded with securitising terrorism as a transnational crime and, second, with a depoliticisation and ‘aseanisation’ of its counter-terrorism policies. depoliticisation and ‘aseanisation’, i.e. the framing of a security threat under the asean way values, are both deliberate political actions. they enable politicians to base co-operation among the asean members and with outside powers on a non-political, technical basis. contradicting an assumption of the copenhagen school, this study argues that in south-east asia where sovereignty and noninterference are still core principles this approach can offer better political opportunities to resolve a security threat than a ‘classic’ securitisation. furthermore, this article demonstrates that asean’s anti-terrorism policies reflect its fragmented version of human security, which is based on national and regime rather than individual security. as counter-terrorism does not enjoy political priority in the region, these policies can only be a weak trigger for the implementation of asean’s notion of human security keywords: asean, human security, copenhagen school, terrorism, counter-terrorism policy dieser artikel wendet eine leicht modifizierte version der copenhagen school an, um aufzuzeigen, wie die vereinigung südostasiatischer nationen (asean) seit 2001 auf die vielfältigen politischen hindernisse für eine engere regionale anti-terrorismus-zusammenarbeit reagiert hat. asean hat, erstens, eine sekuritisierung des terrorismus als transnationales verbrechen und, zweitens, eine depolitisierung und „aseanisierung“ (die kontextualisierung einer sicherheitspolitischen bedrohung unter den werten des asean way) ihrer anti-terrorismus-politik vorgenommen. sowohl depolitisierung und „aseanisierung“ sind bewusste politische handlungen, die es den politikerinnen ermöglichen, die interne wie externe zusammenarbeit auf eine unpolitische, technische basis zu gründen. im widerspruch zu einer these der copenhagen school wird hier 1 dr alfred gerstl, mir, is scientific director of seas and editor-in-chief of aseas. his research interests include regional co-operation in east asia and international relations theories. contact: alfred.gerstl@seas.at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ aseas 3(1) 49 argumentiert, dass ein solcher ansatz in südostasien, wo souveränität und nicht-einmischung immer noch zentrale prinzipien sind, realpolitisch bessere chancen eröffnen kann, um ein sicherheitspolitisches problem zu bewältigen als eine „klassische“ sekuritisierung. zusätzlich zeigt der artikel, dass aseans anti-terrorismus-ansatz das fragmentierte verständnis der organisation in bezug auf menschliche sicherheit widerspiegelt. dieses basiert stärker auf nationaler und regimeals auch auf individueller sicherheit. da anti-terrorismus-politik in der region jedoch keine priorität genießt, ist diese politik bloß eine schwache triebfeder für die implementierung von aseans verständnis von menschlicher sicherheit. schagworte: asean, menschliche sicherheit, copenhagen school, terrorismus, anti-terrorismuspolitik 1. introduction since the end of the cold war, the south-east asian societies have experienced a broad variety of new, non-traditional threats, be they underdevelopment, poverty, legal and illegal migration, drug and weapon smuggling, the spread of mass diseases, or terrorism (cf. buzan, 1997; caballero-anthony, 2008; dosch, 2008). accordingly, already in the late 1980s the south-east asian governments were gradually adopting the notion of comprehensive security (caballero-anthony, emmers & acharya, 2006; rüland, 2005). in south-east asia, though, comprehensive security is a state-centric, top down rather than an individual security, bottom up approach. the asian financial crisis (afc) of 1997-98, the devastating boxing day tsunami of 2004, and cyclone nargis in 2008, however, have demonstrated that individuals can be more affected by security menaces than states. even though the notion of security is gradually changing toward a more people-oriented understanding with human security tendencies (caballero-anthony, 2004; dosch, 2008; emmerson, 2008a, 2008b; sukma, 2008), this article aims to show that the south-east asian governments still view security primarily through a neorealist stateand regime-centric security lens rather than a human security prism (cf. acharya, 2006; caballero-anthony, 2004; emmerson, 2008a). as i will further show, even though the evolving notion of more people-oriented security in south-east asia is broad and comprehensive, it is nevertheless fragmented: the regimes and the association of southeast asian nations (asean) emphasise alfred gerstl the depoliticisation and ‘aseanisation’ of counter-terrorism policies in south-east asia aseas 3(1) 50 the non-political dimensions of human security, e.g. socioeconomic and human development. overall, they seem to frame security under the principles of the asean way, i.e. in the context of national and regime security rather than individual security (cf. asean, 2007a). this specific framing of security can be defined as ‘aseanisation’. this ‘aseanisation’ logic applies to counter-terrorism policies in south-east asia too. asean’s anti-terror approach, as i will further argue, must therefore be regarded as one means, albeit a weak means, of promoting a piecemeal version of human security that is more concerned with state than individual security. terrorism has in parts of the region posed since the early 1990s an increasing danger to national, regime, economic, and human security alike. asean, though, regards it neither as a core threat nor as a security threat alone (ong, 2007a, p. 19; ong k. y., personal communication, 2 december 2008). as early as the mid-1990s asean made the fight against terrorism, together with drug abuse and smuggling, a priority (asean, 1997, 1999). at this time, terrorist groups in the philippines and indonesia were becoming increasingly transnationally active. yet asean’s counter-terrorism collaboration only gained pace after the bali bombings on 12 october 2002. the killing of 202 people, among them 88 australians, demonstrated to the broad public the deadly transnational danger of jemaah islamiyah (ji), pressuring the politicians to strengthen their national and regional counter-terrorism efforts. yet, as i will demonstrate in this article, closer anti-terror co-operation among the asean members and with outside partners still faces major obstacles, in particular differences in regard to the perception of the terrorist threat, the political will and the concrete methods to combat terrorism, and the different capabilities of the national military, policing, and law enforcement agencies (almontre, 2003, p. 229; dillon, 2003; emmers, 2003, pp. 423-427; pushpanathan, 1999; singh, 2003, p. 217).2 applying the theory and methodology of the constructivist copenhagen school (buzan, wæver, & de wilde, 1998), i will argue that asean, aware of the complex hindrances for closer counter-terrorism co-operation, has since the mid-1990s securitised terrorism, framing it, together with people smuggling, piracy, or money 2 besides published works, my analysis will heavily draw on personal communications, i.e. interviews, with experts in singapore (j harrison., assoc. prof, s rajanatnam school of international studies, nanyang technological university, 1 december 2008; i reed, director, economic and political department, us embassy, 4 december 2008; i storey, visiting fellow, institute of southeast asian studies (iseas), 5 december 2008, ong ky, ambassador and director, institute of policy studies (ips), 2 december 2008) and kuala lumpur (madya ruhanas harun, school of politics & strategic studies, universiti kebangsaan malaysia (ukm), 8 december 2008; s leong, former assistant directorgeneral of the institute of strategic and international studies (isis), 9 december 2008). aseas 3(1) 51 laundering, as a transnational crime. the association has thereby diminished the political motives for terrorism (cf. lutz & lutz, 2007). highlighting the differences between the copenhagen school’s concept of nonpoliticisation and my notion of depoliticisation, i will demonstrate that asean’s depoliticisation of its counter-terrorism approach offers, in combination with the ‘aseanisation’ method, in fact better political opportunities to resolve a security threat than a ‘classic’ securitisation or a pure criminalisation (cf. emmers, 2003). depoliticisation and ‘aseanisation’ are both deliberate political actions chosen by the asean leaders. they enable them to base co-operation among the asean members and with outside powers on a non-political, technical foundation. accordingly, in the realm of counter-terrorism asean’s main objective is to harmonise the national and regional legal basis for bilateral and sub-regional collaboration. this political aim is not very ambitious but it is realistic as asean is not a strong, independent organisation but a means for the member states to deepen their transnational cooperation. empirically, this study is based on an analysis of the securitisation of terrorism on regional level since the early 1990s. the securitisation process consists not only of asean’s ‘speech acts’, e.g. the association’s counter-terrorism declarations and the asean charter (asean, 2007a), but of its concrete counter-terrorism policies as well. this article starts with an analysis of the theoretical and political tensions between state, regime, and human security in south-east asia. subsequently, it proposes the categories of depoliticisation and ‘aseanisation’ as amendments to the copenhagen school to reconcile the theoretical conflicts. in the following chapter, asean’s specific anti-terror approach will be examined, focusing on its shortcomings and concrete achievements. in the conclusion, it will be demonstrated that asean’s counter-terrorism approach can be regarded as a driving force, albeit a weak one, for the promotion of a fragmented, ‘aseanised’ notion of human security in south-east asia. alfred gerstl the depoliticisation and ‘aseanisation’ of counter-terrorism policies in south-east asia aseas 3(1) 52 2. theoretical framework: the copenhagen school as hinge between neorealism and human security 2.1. securitisation, depoliticisation and ‘aseanisation’ since the end of the cold war, the copenhagen school has broadened and deepened our traditional understanding of security, identifying new security threats that endanger new referent objects, be it the economy, society, the environment or individuals. this theory has an inherent tendency to privilege state actors in the securitisation process but also allows the securitisation of individuals and groups of individuals, making it appropriate for an analysis of human security threats. unlike neorealism, which is mainly concerned with the security of states (and explaining the relations among them), human security is a policy-making agenda and top-down approach focussed on the security of individuals (floyd, 2007). the neorealist perspective on state security is also poorly suited to addressing the new non-traditional hazards and explaining let alone promoting the transnationally co-operative responses they require (cf. bellamy, 2004; mearsheimer, 2007; rüland, 2005). due to its broadness and inclusive character, the transdisciplinary concept of human security is still contested and both analytically and methodically difficult to apply (acharya, 2008; floyd, 2007; kerr, 2007; peou, 2009). this holds true in particular for the broad ‘freedom from want’ school, which takes an all-encompassing view of human security, including human development aspects. the narrower ‘freedom from fear’ perspective emphasises direct violent threats to survival, be it from an authoritarian government, the police, rebels, or criminals. ideally, national and human security are complementary, yet there remain theoretical, analytical, and normative differences between state-centric neorealist approaches and those concerned with individual security (kerr, 2007; undp, 1994). this article’s notion of depoliticisation and its new category of ‘aseanisation’, however, are able to bridge theoretically the copenhagen school and neorealism to make them applicable for an analysis of human security threats. among the concepts developed by the copenhagen school, the notion of securitisation is especially helpful in compensating for neorealism’s somewhat narrow focus on traditional threats and inter-state relations. many security threats aseas 3(1) 53 are constructs (or at least open to interpretation) and as such are affected by political, economic, social, cultural, and historical conditions (buzan, wæver, & de wilde, 1998; wendt, 1997). not least among these are the perceptions and rationalisations of the governments, which remain the key actors in the securitisation process, as they possess the main “capabilities to make securitisation happen” (floyd, 2007, p. 41). although civil society groups play an increasingly prominent role in shaping the security discourse, due to their lack of the crucial political capabilities, their efforts are only a securitisation move. the copenhagen school’s realistic assessment of the dominance of state actors in the securitisation process is therefore in fact an analytical strength. criticism of its analytical closeness to neorealism is thus only partly justified (cf. booth, 2005; williams, 2003). a crucial amendment this article proposes to the copenhagen school is the notion of depoliticisation – which must not be confused with the school’s view of nonpoliticisation (buzan, wæver, & de wilde, 1998, p. 23). it argues that the south-east asian securitising actors regard human security challenges as genuine security and political threats. therefore they do not desecuritise but depoliticise it. depoliticising a threat can objectify it in the sense that it ceases to be a subject of political discourse and is portrayed instead as a matter for expert resolution by executive order, often through means that are perceived as purely technical in nature (cf. aras & karakaya polat, 2008). rather than stressing the human rights and democratic aspects of human security, asean puts emphasis on the provision of socioeconomic development, the eradication of poverty, the implementation of long-term reforms in the economic, social and education sectors and on the requirement of an inclusive but non-political dialogue with all stakeholders (asean, 2007a, 2007b; gerstl, 2009).3 it is easier to achieve consensus for regional collaboration in matters construed as non-political, i.e. depoliticised, as they seem less imposing on sovereignty. in its depoliticised form, a policy or threat can still be part of the political and media discourse in a country. securitisation and depoliticisation are core categories for examining the security discourse in south-east asia. this article agrees with acharya (2006, p. 250) that securitisation and politicisation (or depoliticisation) cannot be regarded as “two 3 already in the human rights debate in the early 1990s, many south-east asian governments emphasised economic and social rights. at the world conference on human rights in vienna in 2003, indonesia, singapore, and china argued that political rights are a luxury that can only be afforded at a certain stage of development. beijing also stressed the right to development – in state-dominated east asia a right of governments, not of individuals (tatsuo, 1999). alfred gerstl the depoliticisation and ‘aseanisation’ of counter-terrorism policies in south-east asia aseas 3(1) 54 neatly separate or distinct outcomes” or concepts, both are “essentially political”. the same holds true for the category ‘aseanisation’, introduced to take into account the political and normative regional context. like depoliticisation, ‘aseanisation’ is both a method and a deliberate political action. ‘aseanisation’ is defined as the use of asean values – national sovereignty, non-interference and the legitimacy of incumbent regimes – to limit the scope and sensitivity of human insecurity as a matter of discourse and policy. as the asean way has become contested in the last few years among the asean members, a politically even more appropriate term is ‘asean-way-framing’, coined by donald k emmerson (personal communication, 21 december 2009). in this study, however, ‘aseanisation’ remains the preferred term, referring solely to the method of framing a topic. 2.2. the south-east asian security discourse: stateand regime-centric interpretations of comprehensive and human security the copenhagen school’s broad notion of security and referent objects that can be secured converges with the south-east asian view – security is defined in comprehensive terms, including traditional and non-traditional threats. yet, for an analysis of the shifting perception of security in south-east asia, it is essential to take into account not only that security threats can be politically constructed (or at least exaggerated or downplayed) by the securitisers but also the region’s state-centric security culture (dosch, 2008, p. 74; rüland, 2005, pp. 559-560; smith & jones, 2008, p. 186). this article claims that the governmental securitisers still regard comprehensive and human security primarily through “an established frame of reference” (acharya, 2006, p. 249; caballero-anthony, 2004, pp. 160-163): neorealist state-centrism and regime legitimacy, enshrined in the asean way with its emphasis on sovereignty, non-interference and consensual decision-making. despite the magnitude of nontraditional threats and the trend towards increased multilateralism in south-east and even north-east asia since the early 1990s, neorealist approaches still describe the power relations and perception of security in the region very well (bellamy, 2004; dosch, 2008, p. 74; rüland, 2005, pp. 559-560; smith & jones, 2008, p. 186). the governments pursue power politics, based on a neorealist interpretation of politics. aseas 3(1) 55 the asean principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity, and non-interference in domestic affairs have enabled the regimes to pursue their nation building and socioeconomic development programs. being the key to their legitimacy (gerstl, 2008, p. 120), the latter are closely interlinked with security (acharya, 2008, p. 501; cf. dosch, 2008, p. 76). the security challenges the regimes face have therefore become increasingly complex, in particular in times of economic crises. underdevelopment, poverty, legal and illegal migration, urbanisation, the spread of epidemics, organised crime, terrorism and environmental degradation, though, do not only threaten states but individuals. as a policy response, the south-east asian governments already before the end of the cold war gradually adopted the concept of comprehensive security (caballeroanthony, emmers, & acharya, 2006; rüland, 2005). though, in south-east asia, the preponderance of sovereignty, non-interference and regime legitimacy strengthens the state-centric dimension of comprehensive and even human security (cf. caballeroanthony, 2004, pp. 160-163). amitav acharya highlights the political dimension, arguing comprehensive security was developed and propagated by governments and the policy community in asia (except in japan, where the concept originated) primarily as an instrument of regime legitimization and survival, by making the governments of day appear to be seriously concerned with challenges other than military threats, primarily poverty and underdevelopment (acharya, 2006, p. 249). consequently, there exist conceptual and political tensions between human and state security in south-east asia. insofar as a priority on human security implies an agenda that features human rights and democracy, it can clash with the preoccupation of south-east asian regimes with their own stability, often rationalised and discursively presented as national security (caballero-anthony, 2004; but cf. chandler, 2008). national and regime security, which are distinct in the developing world, are however often portrayed as inseparable by the elites in the third world. in retrospect, the afc – like the sars epidemic in 2003, the tsunami in 2004 and cyclone nargis in 2008 – acted as a crucial catalyst for the promotion of a more people-oriented notion of security (emmerson, 2008b, pp. 62-64; dosch, 2008). these incidents illustrated that communities and individual citizens can be more affected by economic, social, environmental, or political crises than the state and regime. they have also uncovered the deficiencies of asean’s “reactionary regionalism” (beeson, alfred gerstl the depoliticisation and ‘aseanisation’ of counter-terrorism policies in south-east asia aseas 3(1) 56 2003, p. 251). in 1997, no political or economic structures existed to effectively cope with the afc that affected major parts of east asia. on a positive note, the crisis eventually triggered the democratisation of indonesia, which country evolved into a leading advocate of human security. aware of the necessity of resolving human security threats in order to guarantee their legitimacy and of the shortcomings of the asean way for their effective resolution (asean eminent persons group, 2000), the asean regimes announced in october 2003 their far-reaching plans for an east asian community by the year 2015 (initially by 2020), based on an economic, (political) security, and socio-cultural pillar (bali concord ii). the political-security community subscribes to comprehensive security, yet highlights sovereignty and non-interference. accordingly, the bali concord ii (a, 2) rejects the idea of creating “a defence pact, military alliance or a joint foreign policy”. the official objective, confirmed in the vientiane action program (2004) and the asean charter (2007), is to transform asean into a more people-oriented, inclusive, caring and sharing community. yet, the asean charter, signed in november 2007 and in force since december 2008, illustrates that human security still largely remains to be “found along the margins of subaltern security discourses” (caballero-anthony, 2004, p. 158). it falls short of promoting or even clearly defining human security (dosch, 2008; emmerson, 2008a). due to the lack of consensus among the member states, it also does not unambiguously endorse democracy and human rights. the charter reiterates the creation of the long discussed human rights body, but remains unclear about its functions (asean, 2007a, art. 14). the fifteenth asean summit in thailand in october 2009 institutionalised the asean intergovernmental commission on human rights (aichr). in the near future, though, it will resemble a tame tiger, domesticated by politicians and bureaucrats (one from each member state) rather than unleashed by civil society representatives (ashayagachat, 2009). consequently, south-east asian civil right groups such as the asean people’s assembly (apa) and the solidarity for asian people’s advocacy (sapa) have been highly critical of these shortcomings (collins, 2008; dosch, 2008; sapa, 2006). the reason why asean is so cautious in promoting human security is that this concept has a strong political and democratic connotation (acharya, 2008; kerr, 2007). although its human security concept is still a work in progress (emmerson, 2008a), it aseas 3(1) 57 is likely that the organisation will in the foreseeable future further stress the statecentric and the non-political dimension, e.g. economic, social, educational, and health aspects. an illustration of the depoliticisation and ‘aseanisation’ approach is article 1, paragraph 7 of the asean charter. it lists the strengthening of democracy and human rights among its purposes, yet under the caveat of paying “due regard to the rights and responsibilities of the member states of asean”. applying the theoretical framework of securitisation, depoliticisation and ‘aseanisation’, outlined in chapter 2.1, the next part will examine whether the association’s anti-terror policies are able to promote human security – and what kind of version. 3. asean’s counter-terrorism policies 3.1. the terrorist threat in south-east asia: the ‘second front’ in the ‘war on terror’ only after the terrorist attacks on the world trade center and the pentagon on 11 september 2001 (9/11), did terrorist threats from and within south-east asia come into the global spotlight. the bush administration started to view the region as the ‘second front’ in its ‘war on terror’. it feared south-east asia with its weak states, history of political violence, high levels of poverty, and porous borders could become a safe haven or at least a region “of convenience” for al qaeda and other terrorist groups from the middle east, afghanistan, and pakistan (abuza, 2003a, p. 135; tay, 2003, pp. 97-98). indeed, already in the early 1990s al qaeda had strengthened its networks with national and local south-east asian terrorist groups such as jemaah islamiyah (ji) or the moro islamic liberation front (milf) (abuza, 2005, pp. 38-39; acharya & acharya, 2007, pp. 76-78; desker, 2003, pp. 420-423; gunaratna, 2007, pp. 423-427; jones, smith, & weeding, 2003, pp. 444-450). all in all, over the last several years political islam in south-east asia has increasingly become radicalised and transnationalised (abuza, 2003b, p. 4). even though terrorism has figured on asean’s political agenda since the mid-1990s, prior to 9/11 this threat had not promoted a deep common response. the main reason is that asean was – and still is – confronted with other, more strategic challenges. foremost among them was to prevent a possible power struggle in east asia after the end of the cold war. thus the association was keen to engage japan and china in new multilateral structures, e.g. the asean regional forum (arf) and the asiaalfred gerstl the depoliticisation and ‘aseanisation’ of counter-terrorism policies in south-east asia aseas 3(1) 58 europe meeting (asem) (gerstl, 2008, pp. 121-122; khong, 1997; leifer, 1996). today, a core strategic necessity for asean is to engage india and the us more effectively in the regional structures and to ensure the organisation’s predominance in regard to institution-building, especially as australia and japan have promoted their own plans for a new institutional architecture. only at first glance has the bush administration’s labelling of south-east asia as the “second front” in the “war on terror” ever seemed appropriate (gershman, 2002; hamilton-hart, 2005). indeed, al qaeda had strengthened its regional networks in the 1990s and due to its transnational and anti-western ideology, the indonesian ji posed – and still poses – a threat to the wider region. the group aims to establish an islamic caliphate, encompassing parts of indonesia, malaysia, singapore, brunei and the philippines. similar to al qaeda, it is organised in loose, transnational networks. at the end of the 1990s, these so-called mantiqis were active even in australia (abuza, 2005, pp. 43-54). after ‘bali’, the intensified collaboration of the indonesian police and law enforcement agencies with their regional and western counterparts and a new transnational focus of national counter-terrorism policies in south-east asia in general have yielded concrete results (chow, 2005, pp. 302-303; jones & smith, 2006, p. 196; jones, smith & warding, 2003, pp. 443-444). prominent examples are the arrest, trial, and execution of the bali bombers in 2008 and the killing of noordin mohamad top, a key ji organiser, in september 2009. the constant murder of innocent people has also eroded ji ś support base (emmerson, 2009). internal ji disputes about the legitimacy of violence have further weakened the movement (australian department of defence, 2007, pp. 35-37; chalk & ungerer, 2008, p. 11;). despite all these efforts and achievements, ji has managed to commit further terrorist attacks in indonesia, e.g. on the marriot hotel in jakarta in 2003 or in bali in 2004. the terrorist attacks on the marriot and ritz carlton hotels in jakarta in july 2009 illustrated once again that terrorism still imperils parts of south-east asia. yet, there remain distinct differences from the ‘first front’. unlike in the middle east or western asia, islam has in south-east asia been traditionally regarded as far more moderate. in the past, radical middle eastern groups struggled to popularise their rigid form of islamism. amitav and arabinda acharya (2007, p. 79) thus claim: “southeast asian groups would renounce violence and focus on political means as long as the end result is the establishment of an islamic state or the implementation aseas 3(1) 59 of islamic jurisprudence.” another important difference to the middle east is that, despite the anti-us sentiments of many south-east asian citizens, in particular during george bush’s presidency, washington’s strategic preponderance is not contested among the political leaders. there are also no rogue states in the region that would sponsor terrorism. terrorism and political violence are neither a new phenomenon in south-east asia nor have they been merely transplanted to the region by foreign groups (chalk, rabasa, rosenau, & piggeot, 2009, p. 1). indonesia and vietnam fought bloody wars for their independence. after their independence, indonesia, malaysia, myanmar, the philippines and vietnam were threatened by communist insurgencies, and in other parts of the region militant ethno-nationalist movements and domestic religious groups were active. while during the cold war external powers such as the soviet union and china actively supported communist rebels, political violence and terrorism today have home-grown causes. foremost among them are poverty and underdevelopment, the economic and social marginalisation of ethnic or religious minorities, weak or nonexistent public institutions, and the lack of public participation and democracy in general (gershman, 2002, pp. 61 & 68; international crisis group, 2005).4 radical islamism thus offers an apparent alternative for disenfranchised parts of society. however, the malaysian government, for instance, did not respond with political reforms to minimise legitimate criticism but portrayed even moderate islamic movements as local partners in al qaeda’s terrorist network (cf. abuza, 2005; gunaratna, 2005). the strict application of the internal security act against terrorists and harmless regime opponents alike has been criticised by ngos (human rights watch, 2005; humphreys, 2009; jordan, 2009). 3.2. criminalisation, depoliticisation and ‘aseanisation’ while after 9/11 washington’s political pressure to strengthen national and regional counter-terrorism policies was a crucial external driving force for deepening asean’s anti-terror efforts,5 the transnational impacts of the bali bombings in october 2002 4 according to the freedom house index, only indonesia qualifies as a “free” democracy, while the philippines, malaysia, singapore and thailand are regarded as partly free, brunei, cambodia, laos, myanmar, vietnam as not free (freedom house, 2008; cf. köllner, 2008). 5 in the declaration on joint action to counter terrorism of the heads of state or government in november 2001, asean did “unequivocally condemn in the strongest terms the horrifying terrorist attacks” of 9/11 (asean, 2001a; italics in original). alfred gerstl the depoliticisation and ‘aseanisation’ of counter-terrorism policies in south-east asia aseas 3(1) 60 must be regarded as the main trigger (jones & smith, 2006, p. 196). prior to the terror attacks on the popular island, jakarta denied the existence of any terrorist threats in the country (dillon, 2003, p. 4). in general, the domestic focus of the south-east asian police and law enforcement authorities prevailed (jones, smith, & werding, 2003, pp. 443-444). the bombings, however, illustrated to the international community the deadly danger of terrorism in south-east asia or, to be precise, in parts of south-east asia. terrorism is a real threat, although, due to political interests of the regimes or other security actors, its dangers can be either exaggerated or minimised. crucial for the securitisation of a threat is, according to the copenhagen school, whether the key decision-makers, e.g. politicians or the media, succeed in convincing a specific target group through a discursive ‘speech act’, i.e. speeches, declarations, articles, and concrete political measures (acharya, 2006, p. 247), that a certain danger poses an existential threat to a specific referent object (buzan, wæver, & de wilde, 1998; emmers, 2007). the latter can be the state, the regime, the economy, society, the environment, or individuals. this article, however, asserts that the securitisation conception of the copenhagen school would not be rendered excessively vague or meaningless if it were to include non-existential threats. one reason for this is that existential threats are subjective and even relative too. a terrorist attack in the vulnerable city-state singapore, for instance, could cause existential damage, yet this would not necessarily be the case in a megalopolis such as jakarta. moreover, the majority of the south-east asian governments are authoritarian regimes, thus they do already possess extraordinary powers. therefore, unlike in the us, the united kingdom or australia, there was no political need for the south-east asian governments to discursively portray terrorism as an existential threat in order to justify new legislative measures to limit certain individual rights in the ‘war against terror’ (cf. wolfendale, 2007). in the analysis of how asean has securitised terrorism, this article regards the asean leaders and the ministers of the interior and security affairs as the main security actors (cf. emmers, 2003, p. 423). the ‘speech act’ consists of the asean counter-terrorism declarations, the asean counter terrorism convention (actc), the asean charter, and speeches given by the former secretary-general ong keng yong. the referent objects that need to be secured are the state, the regime, the economy, society, and individuals (asean, 2001a, 2007b). however, in the stateaseas 3(1) 61 centric south-east asian region – as in the developing world in general – the often inseparable national and regime security have political priority for the elites (acharya, 2006; caballero-anthony, 2004). the target groups the asean leaders needed to convince about the requirement to collectively address the severe threat of terrorism were, first, their more sceptical counterparts. mainly the indochinese politicians were reluctant to deepen their national and the regional anti-terror efforts, due to a different threat assessment. secondly, in indonesia and other countries with a large muslim population, the politicians had to demonstrate to this audience that neither the national nor the asean counter-terrorism policies in general resemble washington’s narrow and unpopular anti-terror approach. thirdly, the asean security actors had to assure the international community, notably the united states, of their commitment to the global struggle against terrorism. the discourse analysis of asean’s ‘speech act’ since the mid-1990s shows that the asean leaders have made a realistic assessment of the different threat perceptions and counter-terrorism capabilities of the member states. the declarations prove that the organisation is aware of the complex and concrete challenges terrorism presents to many south-east asian societies. nevertheless, asean regards terrorism not as an existential but as a “profound” and “serious” threat to state, regime, economic, societal as well as international, regional and individual security (asean, 2001a; 2007b). in particular indonesia, malaysia, singapore, thailand and the philippines are endangered by terrorism and related criminal offences such as money laundering and weapons smuggling. terrorism, however, is not a major concern for the indochinese nations (united states department of state publication, 2009, ch. 2; foot, 2008). consequently, as asean’s ‘speech act’ illustrates, terrorism is certainly neither a ubiquitous threat nor the core challenge asean faces. in addition, the former secretary-general ong keng yong poses: “i believe that terrorism is not simply a security problem, as such it cannot be dealt with through coercive and punitive measures per se” (chalk & ungerer, 2008, ch. 5; ong, 2007a, p. 19; cf. ong, 2007b). yet, although terrorism might have transnational effects, it is still mostly a threat that originates within the individual member states and affects primarily the individual societies. in light of the different threat perceptions and the key asean principles of sovereignty and non-interference, the asean states had “great incentive to be cautious and view the problem of terrorism in term of domestic, not region wide, alfred gerstl the depoliticisation and ‘aseanisation’ of counter-terrorism policies in south-east asia aseas 3(1) 62 implications” (chow, 2005, p. 320). thus the regional counter-terrorism approach is necessarily built on the lowest common denominator and inspired by national rather than regional interests. the political consensus asean could achieve in order to deepen regional cooperation was, firstly, to securitise terrorism as a transnational crime (asean, 1997, 1999, 2001a, 2004a, 2004b, 2005, 2007b, art. ii).6 yet there was no consensus for a regional definition of terrorism. in the actc, asean only makes references to the respective united nations conventions, highlighting the criminal dimension of terrorism (asean, 2007b, art. ii; cf. acharya & acharya, 2007, p. 75; emmers, 2003, p. 429). as a direct consequence of its ‘aseanisation’ method – the contextualisation of a security threat or political issue under the principles of sovereignty, non-interference and regime legitimacy, asean has subsequently depoliticised its anti-terrorism policies. both depoliticisation and ‘aseanisation’ (or asean-way-framing) aim to depoliticise a securitised topic, thus they must be regarded as highly political acts – a politicisation as defined by the copenhagen school (buzan, wæver, & de wilde, 1998, ch. 2; emmers, 2007, pp. 111-115). in the realm of counter-terrorism, a depoliticisation seems to be necessary in south-east asia to establish an efficient framework for biand minilateral co-operation, both among the asean members and with outside partners such as the united states and australia (cf. wright-neville, 2003). depoliticisation means that a formerly politicised issue is now primarily regarded as a security threat that is best dealt through non-political, technical measures. contradicting the claim of the copenhagen school, securitisation can lead under certain circumstances to a depoliticisation – and a more promising way to resolve a concrete threat. under this non-political framework it can still be discussed in the parliament, the media, or the public in general, yet the focus lies on the concrete, technocratic methods for conflict resolution. yet, from a normative point of view, depoliticisation and ‘aseanisation’ raise serious concerns, as there is no genuine public political debate about the counter-terrorism approach. this depoliticisation strategy is also evident in regard to asean’s treatment of (political) islam. as islam plays a regime-legitimatising role in malaysia and brunei, 6 in the section “transnational issues”, the asean website lists, among “environment” and “drugs”, “transnational crime and terrorism” (http://www.aseansec.org/4964.htm). aseas 3(1) 63 and muslims constitute either the majority of the population (indonesia, malaysia, brunei) or at least a strong minority (philippines, thailand, singapore) in certain countries, most governments also had to respond to the religious and political sensibilities of their muslim citizens. a clear pattern in asean’s ‘speech act’ is that it stresses, in accordance with its multilateralism credo, the key role of the united nations in the global struggle against terrorism. another implicit criticism on the us ‘war on terror’ is the argument that terrorism cannot be associated with a particular culture or religion. consequently, asean recommends a broad and inclusive intrareligious and intra-cultural dialogue on a regional and global level (asean, 2001a, 2002b, 2007b). especially after 9/11, the bush administration has been criticised for equalling terrorism with islam. thus counter-terrorism collaboration with western nations in general was regarded with distrust, possibly alienating large parts of the southeast asian citizenry from their regimes (cheng, 2006, p. 97; tay, 2004, p. 119). this despite the fact that, initially, washington aimed to keep a low profile, supporting its partners in capacity building and with information and intelligence sharing rather than deploying troops (cruz de castro, 2004, pp. 198-199; richardson, 2001). asean’s counter-terrorism pact with the us from august 2002 mirrors these aims (asean, 2002a). instrumental for the closer collaboration between the us and key countries such as indonesia and malaysia was that america downplayed its criticism of human rights violations in south-east asia (grabowski, herold, & jordan, 2009, pp. 197-203; ottendörfer, 2009, p. 149). in september 2002, however, the united states proclaimed the bush doctrine that stressed the “right” of the us to conduct pre-emptive strikes against alleged terrorist bases in foreign countries (the white house, 2002, pp. 15-16). this doctrine amounts to a clear violation of the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity – and thus international law. as large parts of the south-east asian population became increasingly critical of the us due to the war in iraq and the perceived anti-muslim bias of washington’s policies in general, jakarta and kuala lumpur, unlike singapore and manila, had to publicly downplay their increased co-operation with the us (tay, 2004, pp. 119-123). at the end of 2003 washington started to subscribe to asean’s comprehensive and less militaristic counter-terrorism approach. in general, “(t)he bush administration’s approach to asia did not deviate significantly from the historic alfred gerstl the depoliticisation and ‘aseanisation’ of counter-terrorism policies in south-east asia aseas 3(1) 64 principles of u.s. asian strategy” (cossa et al., 2009, p. 14). however, due to the global ‘war on terror’, in particular the invasions of afghanistan and iraq, and washington’s continuing support for israel, till the election of barack obama as us president in 2008 a critical perception of the us policies towards south-east asia among the broader public prevailed (s leong, personal communication, 9 december 2008). under obama, who has spent his childhood in indonesia, the us has signed the treaty of amity and cooperation (tac) which signalled a new commitment towards multilateralism. as yet, washington has still to fulfil its policies with concrete actions. 3.3. realism and pragmatism: the creation of a legal regional framework for biand subregional counter-terrorism co-operation since the bali bombings in 2002, asean’s process of strengthening regional counter-terrorism collaboration has become more structured and formalised. the organisation held a series of ministerial, senior diplomat, and other expert meetings to foster transnational co-operation. in this regard, the asean ministerial meeting on transnational crime (ammtc), consisting of the ministers of the interior, the chiefs of police and drug experts, played a crucial steering role. politically, asean has since 2002 concentrated on establishing a regional, legallybased framework to harmonise the national counter-terrorism laws as base for biand minilateral co-operation (millar, rosand, & ipe, 2007, p. 8; nathan, 2003, p. 256; ong, 2007a, p. 19; rose & nestorovska, 2005, p. 167;). the philippines, malaysia and indonesia, for instance, have in 2002 agreed to upgrade their anti-terrorism collaboration and increase intelligence sharing; in 2003, thailand, cambodia and brunei joined this mechanism (acharya & acharya, 2007, pp. 83-84; dillon, 2003). yet singapore, which possesses the most sophisticated counter-terrorism capabilities in the region, is still hesitant to share sensitive data with regional partners regarded as less reliable. this behaviour illustrates the need for increased confidence-building and a further depoliticisation of national counter-terrorism policies (cf. wright-neville, 2003, p. 6). an example for the latter is how singapore and indonesia deal with the spread of so-called “wrong ideologies” or a “distorted view of islam” (allard, 2009). role models for the re-education of terrorists that asean proposes are singapore and indonesia, which have implemented correction and re-education programs. in aseas 3(1) 65 both countries, civil society organisations play a strong role in engaging convicted terrorists and their families and communities in a broad dialogue that also includes communal and spiritual leaders (cf. azra, 2003, pp. 53-55; jones, 2009). the major achievement of asean’s struggle against terrorism and in the promotion of respective regional co-operation is the asean counter terrorism convention of 2007. the actc is a binding convention, although it is not yet in force. even after a successful ratification process (so far only singapore and thailand have ratified it) the instruments identified in the actc to deepen regional co-operation, e.g. mutual legal assistance in criminal matters and even the possible extradition of terrorist suspects (art. xiii), are not strong enough to prevent and suppress terrorist acts. overall, malaysia’s criticism is justified: most of the actc’s aims and instruments only mirror provisions made in the respective un counter-terrorism conventions. the majority of the asean members, however, have not signed or ratified these conventions (chalk & ungerer, 2008, p. 41). realistically, the actc’s focus lies once again on improving national counter-terrorism capabilities. as zachary abuza (2003c, p. 192) points out, “the real problem with multilateral efforts is that successful multilateralism must be built upon the foundation of a strong and effective domestic legislation and enforcement capacity”.7 the areas that need to be addressed with more rigour are according to asean (2007b) itself an agreement on a common list of terrorist groups and individual terrorist suspects, stricter border control mechanisms, increased regional policing, the exchange of passenger data and the prevention of counterfeiting identity papers and travel documents. efforts to prevent the financing of terrorist groups and money laundering have also been highlighted. notably the traditional informal islamic money transfer system (hawala), also widespread in south-east asia, is difficult to control (abuza, 2003c, pp. 172-183; ramakrishna, 2005, pp. 149-150). border insecurity in south-east asia with its negative impacts on terrorism and illegal migration, in particular via indonesia, is also a major concern for australia. canberra has thus further deepened its collaboration with jakarta, providing financial support and technical advice for the indonesian military and police as well as training for legal and financial specialists (chalk & ungerer, 2008, pp. 35-42). due to 7 to strengthen national capacities through regional training and capacity building programs is the mission of the southeast asian regional centre for counter terrorism (searcct), established in kuala lumpur in 2003. yet the searcct it is still under-resourced. alfred gerstl the depoliticisation and ‘aseanisation’ of counter-terrorism policies in south-east asia aseas 3(1) 66 the increase in illegal immigrants from sri lanka and afghanistan to australia since 2009, the rudd government, facing an election at the end of 2010, has strengthened its respective policing and military co-operation with indonesia. in general, canberra has returned under rudd to emphasising policing in its counter-terrorism policies. the conservative howard government preferred a hard power approach, mirroring the policies of its key ally washington (cf. pickering, mcculloch, & wright-neville, 2008). the widespread perception of australia as the us’s deputy sheriff, however, limited canberra’s influence in south-east asia (cruz de castro, 2004, p. 210). border security and money laundering are also challenges which the asean regional forum aims to address. another multilateral forum that has dealt with terrorism is the asia-pacific economic co-operation (apec). yet the sydney summit in 2007 demonstrated the difficulty in getting such a politically diverse forum to implement strong common counter-terrorism measures (gerstl, 2007, p. 87).8 a less political and more informal approach, such as that which the bush administration has pursued, is more likely to deliver results, in particular as “some asean members are worried that the west-centric counter-terrorism agenda is forcing institutional change within apec in favour of a more legalistic, formal framework”, dominated by western norms and procedures (ogilvie-white, 2006, p. 12). in regard to the deepening of regional counter-terrorism efforts, asean’s depoliticisation strategy has been instrumental and positive. the ‘aseanisation’ method has on the one hand contributed to reaching a political consensus among asean members and developing specific counter-terrorism measures, while on the other hand however it has proved an impediment to a credible and strong common counter-terrorism approach. an illustration is the actc’s strict sovereignty clause (art. iii, iv and v) that enables a regime to declare national conflicts, even with potential transnational repercussions, to be purely domestic issues, thus preventing asean from intervening (cf. helmke, 2009, p. 5). however, read in a more positive light, the actc is at least a political signal of a more rule-based common counterterrorism policy, although asean has the power neither to enforce the actc norms nor to settle disputes among its members if different interpretations of the actc obligations arise (cf. art. xix). to sum up, the actc, emphasising state and 8 on a technical level, apec created in 2003 a counter terrorism task force which has proved successful. it monitors the implementation of national anti-terror efforts in the realm of trade policies and provides information to member states (rosand et al., 2008, p. 17). aseas 3(1) 67 regime rather than individual security, is completely in line with asean’s overall understanding of comprehensive and human security. 4. conclusion: asean’s counter-terrorism policies as a trigger for an ‘aseanised’ and fragmented version of human security despite the increase in non-traditional threats in the last three decades, the south-east asian governments still primarily regard the world form a neorealist point of view. both comprehensive security and the evolving notion of a more peopleoriented understanding of security have thus been ‘aseanised’. asean’s counterterrorism policies reflect this stateand regime-centric view of security as well as the organisation’s pragmatic, realist and voluntarist approach towards regional collaboration. in its policies, the association does not go beyond the mandate of the member states. even before 9/11, asean was aware of the need to combat terrorism. the terror attacks on the world trade center and the pentagon and in particular on the bali nightclubs, though, were the main catalyst for a stronger anti-terror approach in south-east asia. due to the different threat perceptions and counterterrorism capabilities of its members as well as political sensibilities in regard to the perceived anti-muslim bias of washington’s ‘war on terror’, asean’s anti-terrorism efforts have not been translated into a robust regional approach: the organisation could only agree to securitise terrorism as a transnational crime. consequently, it has depoliticised and ‘aseanised’ its anti-terrorism policies, thus enabling its members to co-operate on a legal-technical rather than political basis. this achievement, however, can be only a first step in a more credible approach. at this very moment, however, asean’s anti-terrorism objectives may not lack vision – but ambition. in all its declarations, asean basically recommends only the signing and ratification of the 16 un counter-terrorism conventions, the multilateral exchange of intelligence, the sharing of best practice models, and the strengthening of national police and law enforcement capabilities in general. due to the differing levels of political will and the different capabilities to effectively combat terrorism in south-east asia, it is highly unlikely that asean will ever “qualify as an anti-terrorist coalition” (dillon, 2003, p. 1) therefore to allow an inner circle, notably bangkok, alfred gerstl the depoliticisation and ‘aseanisation’ of counter-terrorism policies in south-east asia aseas 3(1) 68 jakarta, kuala lumpur and singapore, to co-operate in more depth with each other and outside powers (consensus minus x) seems a promising concept. in accordance with its comprehensive security view, asean demonstrates in its ‘speech act’ that terrorism is in south-east asia not only a security threat but in many countries reflects discontent due to underdevelopment, poverty, and a lack of education. thus the association acknowledges that a criminalisation of terrorism without considering the context of the problem is not sufficient to combat it. thus, despite and precisely due to its depoliticised character, asean’s anti-terror policies can further trigger the notion of human security in the region, although this will also be an asean-way-framed and thus fragmented version, focused on the non-political aspects of human security. for instance, asean might play down discontent with the lack of democracy and human rights as a potential cause for political violence and terrorism. all in all, in its anti-terror declarations and the asean charter, the organisation emphasises the provision of socioeconomic development, the eradication of poverty, and the implementation of long-term reforms in the economic, social, and education sectors. asean also stresses the requirement for an inclusive but non-political dialogue with all stakeholders (asean, 2007a, 2007b; ong, 2007b). yet all these socalled people-oriented programs have a long-term focus on human development; human rights are not a major concern. furthermore, as the charter demonstrates, these initiatives are still primarily framed under state and regime security. asean’s counter-terrorism approach does therefore promote a piecemeal version of human security. however, as anti-terror politics are not the main strategic priority for asean, counter-terrorism is only a weak catalyst for implementing an ‘aseanised’ form of human security. the reason for the restrictive interpretation of human security is that southeast governments are aware that the implementation of this concept could pose a risk to their regime stability. to depoliticise and ‘aseanise’ human security might offer a short-term solution for the non-democratic regimes. yet, due to their output logic, there is rising domestic political pressure to cope with these threats more effectively. as their civil societies have become increasingly active in promoting a more democratic and human rights agenda, it remains to be seen how long the regimes will be able to contain the unwanted democratic aspects of the human aseas 3(1) 69 security concept. to conclude, while depoliticisation seems an adequate method for the deepening of counter-terrorism co-operation in south-east asia, it is an inappropriate means for the strengthening of human security in this region, as is ‘aseanisation’. even though many authoritarian regimes in south-east asia and elsewhere may not want to acknowledge it, a true state of security can only be achieved by addressing both stateand people-centred security concerns with the adoption and implemention the holistic individual and democratic spirit of the human security concept. references abuza, z. 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(2007a). the asean charter. jakarta, indonesia: asean secretariat. retrieved 24 october 2009, from http://www.aseansec.org/asean-charter.pdf asean. (2007b). asean counter terrorism convention (acct). retrieved 12 october 2009, from http:// www.aseansec.org/19251.htm asean. (2007c). joint communique of the third asean plus three ministerial meeting on transnational crime (ammtc+3), bandar seri begawan, 7 november. retrieved 12 october 2009, from http://www. aseansec.org/21042.htm asean. (2008). joint communique of the 28th asean chief of police conference. brunei darussalam, 25-29 may. retrieved 21 october 2009, from http://www.aseansec.org/21620.htm alfred gerstl the depoliticisation and ‘aseanisation’ of counter-terrorism policies in south-east asia book review: mietzner, m. (ed.) (2013). the political resurgence of the military in southeast asia: conflict and leadership. abingdon, uk: routledge. reprint edition. isbn: 978-041-5460354. i–xiv + 177 pages. ► chen, k. (2014). book review: mietzner, m. (ed.) (2013). the political resurgence of the military in southeast asia: conflict and leadership. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 7(1), 137-140. since the early twenty-first century, some southeast asian countries (e.g., thailand and timor-leste) have witnessed the political resurgence of militaries, especially military involvement in political institutions, economy, security, and society. the most significant case might be the thai military coup in 2006. more research in the field of military resurgence is called for to extend the debate on the civil-military relations. the political resurgence of the military in southeast asia is a timely exploration of the impact of militaries on politics in different geographical contexts and exposes the tensions and interconnections in civilmilitary relations in southeast asian countries. the contributors to this wide-ranging volume stem from an array of disciplines, including history, political science, security studies, and southeast asian studies. in their opinion, the multifaceted aspects of the militaries’ political resurgence are ignored by structuralist approaches to a large extent, such as specific ideology (i.e., communism or democracy), regime types (i.e., monarchy, military junta, or one-party state), historical background (i.e., independence through armed struggle, negotiated transition into nationhood, or absence of colonial rule), and economic development. the volume features eight chapters. chapter 1 illustrates the literature of military resurgence in southeast asia and outlines the book's content. based on case studies of seven southeast asian countries (i.e., thailand, myanmar, vietnam, the philippines, timor-leste, indonesia, and singapore), chapters 2 to 8 reveal the causes of military resurgence – failed civilian governance and the problematic leadership of paramount leaders determine the civil-military relations. in the case of thailand, the struggle for democracy finally caused a vicious circle, “which in turn is used by the military to justify its coercive and political role in restoring order” (p. 59). at the same time, the militaries show less respect for the citizenry and turn to strengthen “corporate identity and coherence” (p. 54), that is, fractionalization. in the case of the philippines, since the current institutions are unable to handle the security issues and political conflicts, the military withdraws “its loyalty from a popularly elected chief executive” (p. 101) and enjoys more autonomy and political status to a large extent. in contrast, the singaporean military “lacks the socio-political significance” (p. 164) and there is no obvious change in singapore’s civil-military relations, given that the civilian government in singapore has remained stable since the 1960s. rezensionen  book reviews w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 14 .1 -1 1 138 kai chen  aseas 7(1) the contributors also point out that the military dominance has its own limits. for example, there is increasing tension between high-ranking ex-officers and the new generation of officers, the newly established units, as well as the military. in the case of timor-leste, the rise of specialized paramilitary police units has threatened the advantages of the military. the most significant chapter of this volume might be chapter 2 entitled “the armed force of burma”. as marcus mietzner suggests, “with the exception of burma, southeast asian civil-military relations after 2001 have been shaped by the successes and failures of civilian governments” (p. 18). in the case of myanmar, in addition to the variables of “failed civilian governance” and “problematic leadership of paramount leaders” (p. 19), another essential variable should be taken into account, that is, the long-term existence of ethnic-based militias, which makes the civil-military relation in myanmar the most complicated in southeast asia. historically, most ethnic-based militias in myanmar have established their own autonomous regions, some of which enjoy full autonomy in internal administration, while others have a semi-autonomous status. this weakens the myanmar central government’s authority to a large extent. at the same time, the conversational tactics of the paramount leaders have caused a vicious circle: the tatmadaw (myanmar military) uses force to occupy the areas under the ethnic-based militias’ control, but none of the major ethnic-based militias has ever been entirely defeated. it is not surprising that the armed conflicts have lasted so many years in myanmar, and the successes and failures of civilian governments had little impact on the tatmadaw. by contrast, the rise and fall of ethnic-based militias have had more direct impact on the resurgence of the tatmadaw. indeed, insecurity caused by the tensions between militaries and ethnic-based militias is also one of the main reasons for military resurgence in southeast asia. in chapter 2, the tatmadaw is considered to control the natural resources and the national economy. in fact, the dominance of the tatmadaw has been exaggerated to some extent. for instance, the tatmadaw is unable to implement and enforce rules in parts of myanmar, especially in the border areas controlled by the ethnicbased militias. as a result, the tatmadaw has lost control of a large portion of natural resources, such as precious gems, timber, and minerals in kachin and shan states, where ethnic-based militias are very active. as a consequence, there are frequent lowintensity armed conflicts between the tatmadaw and ethnic-based militias. moreover, the tatmadaw cannot mobilize manpower from the entire nation, because the ethnic-based militias compete against the military over manpower resources. as a result, both the tatmadaw and ethnic-based militias are suspected of recruiting child soldiers. it would be valuable for the editor and contributors to this volume to continue research on military resurgence and civil-military relations in southeast asia. if possible, it might be better to consider ethnic-based militias as a variable in military resurgence, which might make their arguments more inclusive. from a context-sensitive perspective, the political resurgence of the military in southeast asia addresses the militaries’ political influences in southeast asian countries and explores the tensions between civil-military relations and military resurgence. in short, this edited volume of essays provides a solid foundation for further 139review: the political resurgence of the military in southeast asia: conflict and leadership research on civil-military relations in southeast asia. it may be particularly valuable for academics, policy makers, and students seeking alternative perspectives on military resurgence and civil-military relations in southeast asia. at the same time, this volume will surely raise awareness of the importance of studying military resurgence in southeast asia and stimulate future discussion in academia and policy-making circles. kai chen zhejiang university, china jones, lee (2012). asean, sovereignty and intervention in southeast asia. aseas 6(1) 233232 d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -6 .1 -1 7 rezensionen / book reviews jones, lee (2012). asean, sovereignty and intervention in southeast asia. houndmills, uk: palgrave macmillan. isbn: 9780230319264. i-xvi + 262 pages. citation amer, r. (2013). book review: jones, l. (2012). asean, sovereignty and intervention in southeast asia. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 6(1), 232-234. the book by lee jones dealing with the association of southeast asian nations (asean) is a welcomed contribution to the growing literature on asean and on various dimensions of regional collaboration in the southeast asian region. the focus of the book on issues such as sovereignty and intervention is very relevant in the context of asean and the region of southeast asia. given the emphasis asean puts on non-interference and on respect for sovereignty within the framework for regional collaboration that the association promotes in southeast and also increasingly in the broader pacific asia, the book addresses a highly relevant area of research from both scholarly and policy perspectives. the structure of the book is as follows: the introduction outlines the purpose and structure of the book (pp. 1-9); chapter 1 is primarily devoted to theorizing the concepts of sovereignty and intervention (pp. 10-35). part i is devoted to the cold war era and is divided into three chapters: chapter 2 deals with the social foundations of asean and non-interference (pp. 39-57); chapter 3 is devoted to asean and east timor (pp. 58-74); chapter 4 is focused on asean and the cambodian conflict (pp. 7591). part ii of the book is devoted to the post-cold war period and is divided into four chapters: chapter 5 deals with asean after the cold war with a focus on the crisis of the late 1990s (pp. 95-127); chapter 6 looks at asean and cambodia in the post-cold war setting (pp. 128-149); chapter 7 is devoted to asean’s response to the east timor situation of the late 1990s (pp. 150-179); chapter 8 deals with asean policies towards burma (pp. 180-210). in the conclusion the main findings are summarized followed by a final analysis (pp. 211-228). this is followed by the notes (pp. 229-233) and references (pp. 234-252). jones outlines asean’s position on sovereignty and intervention including the primacy of the principle of non-interference and the importance of this principle aseas 6(1) 233232 within the asean framework for regional collaboration in southeast asia. through empirical case studies taken from the region he then examines how these principles are applied in practice. jones’ empirical case studies display that the principle of non-interference is applied in a more flexible way than one would anticipate given the strong emphasis placed on the respect for sovereignty and non-interference in the internal affairs of the member states within the asean framework. since the situation during the cold war period and the two cases of east timor and cambodia are addressed first, it can be observed that the first case was viewed as an internal indonesian issue by asean, while in the second case, besides the fact that cambodia was not a member of asean, the association would argue that its policies were in response to vietnam’s military intervention in cambodia. thus, these two cold war cases do not offer any strong evidence to inquire into the practical implementation of asean’s principles. the cases of east timor and cambodia, respectively, from the post-cold war era are more convincing, and in particular the case of cambodia. asean even delayed admitting cambodia as a member in 1997 on the grounds of the domestic developments in that country. this was a clear display of interference in the internal affairs of cambodia. the case of burma also offers a convincing example of the flexible implementation of asean’s principle of non-interference given that the internal developments in burma have been scrutinized by asean and by some of its member states. jones’ findings highlight that asean seems to experience a discrepancy between the stated principles of the association as agreed upon by its member states and the policies conducted by its member states in practice both through their foreign policies and through asean. this is not a unique situation as this phenomenon can be observed even more evidently in the context of the united nations and its charter and the policies conducted by its member states. if a weakness can be found in the book, it relates to the fact that jones disregards the legal foundations of the principle of non-interference. the focus of the book is on the international relations dimension. the linkage between the asean principles and the charter of the united nations should also have been made more explicit in the book. this would have revealed to the reader how the fundamental principles of the asean framework adhere to international law and to the provisions of the charter of the united nations. ramses amer book review: asean, sovereignty and intervention in southeast asia aseas 6(1) 235234 to summarize, the book is an interesting contribution to the study of asean and of regional collaboration in southeast asia, in particular on core issues such as sovereignty, intervention, and non-interference. through its approach and originality, it complements existing literature in the field by offering new insights. the book can be recommended to both the scholarly community and policy makers. it is of considerable relevance to those interested in the southeast asian region as well as to those interested in regionalism and regional collaboration more broadly, given that issues such as sovereignty and intervention are of relevance in other regions as well. in fact, they are of global relevance. ramses amer institute for security & development policy, sweden ford, michele (hrsg.). (2013). social activism in southeast asia. aseas 6(1) 223222 d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -6 .1 -1 5 rezensionen / book reviews ford, michele (hrsg.). (2013). social activism in southeast asia. oxon, ny: routledge. isbn: 978-0-415-52355-4 (hbk). 214 seiten. citation schuh, l. (2013). rezension: ford, m. (hrsg.). (2013). social activism in southeast asia. aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften, 6(1), 223-227. mit 8,5 prozent der weltbevölkerung hat südostasien eine der weltweit höchsten bevölkerungsdichten und ist gleichzeitig eine der ethnographisch heterogensten regionen der erde. zehn der elf nationalstaaten ist eine koloniale vergangenheit gemeinsam, heutige südostasiatische regierungssysteme reichen von absoluter monarchie über verschiedene ausprägungen autoritärer, repressiver und sozialistischer regime bis hin zu diversen abstufungen liberal-demokratischer systeme. für die dynamischen gesellschaftlichen und politischen veränderungsprozesse des erdteils spielt sozialer aktivismus eine entscheidende rolle. social activism in southeast asia ist zu beginn des jahres 2013 der jüngste band in der zeitgenössischen südostasien reihe des routledge verlags und bietet aktuelle studien zu den mannigfaltigen ausprägungen und kontexten zivilgesellschaftlichen aktivismus in südostasien. die zwölf kapitel des buches enthalten beiträge hochrangiger wissenschaftlerinnen aus sieben nationen – drei davon aus südostasien –, die theoretische modelle zur entstehung sozialer bewegungen mit detailliertem wissen über die region vereinen. die herausgeberin michele ford ist direktorin des südostasienzentrums der universität sydney und eröffnet den sammelband mit einer einführung in wissenschaftliche hintergründe zur entstehung neuer theoriezweige, als die protestbewegungen der 1960er jahre nicht mehr durch gemeinsam erfahrene missstände einer bevölkerungsgruppe erklärt werden konnten. in diesem zusammenhang analysiert der westeuropäisch geprägte ansatz der neuen sozialen bewegungen die bedeutung identitätsstiftender und universeller themen für kollektiven aktivismus, während die aus den usa stammende ressource mobilization theory von rationalem handeln der akteurinnen ausgeht und die political process theory den grad der liberalität politischer regime untersucht. der social constructivist approach thematisiert die reproduktion aseas 6(1) 225224 von sinn und positionierung einer bewegung durch framing – ein ansatz, der sich ebenso wie das konzept transnationaler aktionsnetzwerke, mit denen globale allianzen untersucht werden, als geeignet für die untersuchung von südostasiatischem aktivismus erweist. ford bemängelt universelle geltungsansprüche wissenschaftlicher modelle, deren ursprünge im globalen norden liegen, und empfiehlt die analyse sozialer bewegungen aus multiplen theoretischen perspektiven. garry rodan präsentiert im zweiten kapitel ein modell zur differenzierung zwischen individuellem und kollektivem aktivismus und der jeweiligen beziehung zum staat. die legitimation eines regimes sieht rodan gestärkt durch die eingliederung autonomer kräfte in das politische system, und macht nicht zuletzt kapitalistische entwicklungen und internationale unterstützung autoritärer regime während des kalten krieges für eingeschränkte handlungsspielräume südostasiatischer zivilgesellschaften verantwortlich. edward aspinall widmet seinen beitrag der unabhängigkeitsbewegung in aceh, für deren mobilisierung kulturelles erbe ebenso bedeutsam war wie der machtverfall suhartos. als die rebellen ihre waffen für das recht auf politische partizipation eintauschten, gerieten ehemalige anführer in bedrängnis, ihr handeln schlüssig zu argumentieren, da der ideologische kern der widerstandsbewegung auf „incompatibility of acehnese and indonesian identities“ (s. 48) beruhte. im vierten kapitel bietet vincent boudreau einen abriss der philippinischen demokratisierung, die mit der absetzung marcos offiziell eingeläutet wurde und sich in form jahrzehnte langer politischer machtkämpfe und wechselhafter allianzen entfaltete. boudreau spricht von einer institutionalisierung des aktivismus, die sich in „periods of popular mobilisation, regime transition and political disappointment“ (s. 68) niederschlug. im fünften kapitel widerspricht nicola edwards mit einer analyse dreier fallbeispiele zu indonesiens bewegung für ökologische landwirtschaft der unter anderem von robert michels vertretenen these des unvermeidlichen radikalitätsverlustes durch den prozess der institutionellen eingliederung aktivistischer kräfte. die prekäre situation burmesischer arbeitsmigrantinnen in thailand beschreibt dennis arnold anhand des grenzortes mae sot, in dem flüchtlinge aus myanmar ausbeutung und missbrauch durch arbeitgeberinnen und staatsgewalten beider länder für einen unsicheren arbeitsplatz eintauschen. transnationale solidarität und ngos aseas 6(1) 225224 beider länder stärkten den rechtlichen rückhalt der migrantinnen, die sich durch streiks und andere aktivistische aktionen zunehmend gehör verschafften. auch die von andrew brown und sakdina chatrkul na ayudhya im siebten kapitel beleuchtete nationale arbeiterinnenbewegung in thailand hat eine schwierige mission. obwohl in den 1970er jahren erstmals gewisse rechte verankert wurden, führten kapitalistische entwicklungen, die asienkrise und politische instabilität zu einer schwächung der gewerkschaften und zunehmender beteiligung von arbeiterinnen an alternativen formen zivilgesellschaftlichen aktivismus, was eine tendenzielle zersplitterung der arbeiterinnenklasse zur folge hatte. dominique caouette und teresa s. encarnacion tadem schildern anhand von drei national orientierten organisationen und zwei transnationalen netzwerkinstitutionen die anti-globalisierungsbewegung auf den philippinen. obwohl es ihnen gelingt durch internationale kooperation von verschiedenen seiten druck auf die regierung auszuüben, stehen sich die organisationen auf nationaler ebene teilweise in oppositionellen lagern gegenüber und sind somit „inherently local regardless of the scale at which they engage“ (s. 120). im neunten kapitel erörtert thushara dibley das spannungsfeld zwischen aktivismus und internationaler entwicklungshilfe, in dem sich die friedensbewegung in osttimor seit 1999 befindet. mit dem einzug internationaler hilfsorganisationen änderte sich die prioritätensetzung timorischer aktivistinnen zugunsten von geberkriterien, wodurch sich der raum zur entwicklung einer autonomen nationalen friedensbewegung verringerte und es zu einer entpolitisierung des themas kam. kontroverse transnationale einwirkungen auf die bewegung für die rechte von sexarbeiterinnen in kambodscha analysiert larissa sandy in ihrem beitrag. spaltungen in der globalen frauenbewegung, aber auch die thematisierung von hiv/aids und menschenhandel, hatten direkte auswirkungen auf den kambodschanischen aktivismus, der trotz gewisser erfolge einen herben rückschlag erhielt, als die usa mit dem angedrohten entzug von entwicklungshilfegeldern druck auf die ohnehin konservative regierung ausübten, woraufhin diese ein gesetz zur kriminalisierung von prostitution erließ. julian c. h. lee setzt sich im elften kapitel mit seksualiti merdeka auseinander, einer bewegung für die anerkennung nicht heteronormativer sexueller orientierungen und identitäten in malaysia. obwohl das land historisch eine relativ liberale position leila schuh rezension: social activism in southeast asia aseas 6(1) 227226 einnahm, entwickelte sich durch koloniale und islamische einflüsse ein höchst konservatives gesellschaftliches und politisches umfeld. mithilfe internationaler allianzen und unter dem deckmantel der kunst gelang es der inoffiziellen organisation dennoch, drei jahre lang weitgehend unbehelligt zu bleiben. im letzten kapitel nimmt lenore lyons einen vorfall innerhalb der namhaftesten liberal-feministischen organisation in singapur unter die lupe, der 2009 zu den höchsten „levels of mass participation outside of the political sphere for over fifty years“ (s. 199) führte, als eine gruppe konservativer christinnen in das präsidium der association of women for action and research (aware) gewählt wurde. social activism in southeast asia bietet einen qualitativen überblick zu sozialem aktivismus in der region und arbeitet die kontroverse rolle historischer und aktueller internationaler einflüsse heraus. transnationale netzwerke können den artikulationsraum national basierter aktionsgruppen erweitern und hinsichtlich argumentativer professionalität, effektiven framings und finanzieller engpässe unterstützung bieten. letzteres birgt jedoch das risiko des authentizitätsverlustes, da empfängerorganisationen, um als solche in frage zu kommen, meist den kriterien der geberinstitutionen entsprechen müssen, womit die autorinnen an kritiken innerhalb des entwicklungsdiskurses anknüpfen. bereits maria eriksson baaz (2005) argumentierte in diesem zusammenhang, dass offizielle partnerschaft auf augenhöhe in der praxis nicht umgesetzt wird, und uma kothari (2005) entlarvte die professionalisierung der internationalen entwicklungszusammenarbeit (eza) als triebkraft der neoliberalen agenda. für zukünftige forschung mag die unterscheidung zwischen unabhängigen und eza-basierten organisationen von nutzen sein. die kombination wissenschaftlicher theorien unter berücksichtigung regionalgeografischer spezifika erlaubt es, komplexe wirkungsmechanismen innerhalb südostasiatischer aktivismen zu erfassen. auch staatstheoretische ansätze werden eingearbeitet und so erscheint der nationalstaat zum teil als kontaktfläche rivalisierender akteurinnen, als vermeintlicher verbündeter oder als gegenspieler. im globalen norden verortete produktion von wissen über den globalen süden wird zwar durch die dominanz westlicher autorinnen nicht eindeutig durchbrochen, das buch kann aber dennoch als alternative zu eurozentristischen darstellungen gewertet werden, da die autorinnen teilweise aus südostasien stammen und einflüsse aus dem globalen norden insgesamt kritisch hinterfragen. stereotype weltund menaseas 6(1) 227226 schenbilder werden durch die profunde analyse dynamischer mobilisierungsstrategien und individueller positionierung südostasiatischer aktivistinnen dekonstruiert. social activism in southeast asia bietet nicht nur einen einzigartigen beitrag für sozialwissenschaftliche forschung und theoriebildung, sondern auch eine spannende lektüre für südostasien interessierte. leila schuh universität wien, österreich literaturverzeichnis baaz, m. e. (2005). the paternalism of partnership. a postcolonial reading of identity in develeopment aid. london, uk: zed books. kothari, u. (2005). authority and expertise. the professionalisation of international development and the ordering of dissent. antipode, 37(3), 425-446. leila schuh rezension: social activism in southeast asia contesting state forests in post-suharto indonesia: authority formation, state forest land dispute, and power in upland central java, indonesia aseas 5(2) 209208 aktuelle südostasienforschung / current research on south-east asia contesting state forests in post-suharto indonesia: authority formation, state forest land dispute, and power in upland central java, indonesia anu lounela1 citation lounela, a. (2012). contesting state forests in post-suharto indonesia: authority formation, state forest land dispute, and power in upland central java, indonesia. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 5(2), 208-228. this article explores the ongoing confl ict over state forest land between the local population and the state forestry corporation (sfc) in a village in upland central java with regard to authority formation. it looks at how diff erent agents draw on diff erent sources of authority in the course of the confl ict and its negotiations. the principal questions are to what kind of sources of authority villagers refer to and how the formation of authority informs the relations between the state and society in the land dispute. the article is based on 11 months of ethnographic fi eldwork and focuses on the central fi gure of pak wahid who took a leading position in the forest land dispute and in mobilising peasants in the village. the article argues that in post-suharto java, leadership in the struggle for state forest land at the village level is embedded in the interaction of javanese ideas of power and authority as well as administrative authority. due to political and institutional reforms, new sources of authority could be invoked while there are no real changes in the power relations within the village or between the sfc and the villagers. keywords: authority formation; land dispute; power relations; state forest land; upland java dieser artikel untersucht den anhaltenden konfl ikt um staatliche waldfl ächen zwischen der lokalen bevölkerung und der state forestry corporation (sfc) in einem dorf im hochland von zentraljava in bezug auf die entwicklung von autorität. es wird untersucht, wie sich unterschiedliche akteurinnen im rahmen des konfl ikts und dessen verhandlung auf unterschiedliche bezugsquellen von autorität beziehen. die zentralen forschungsfragen in diesem zusammenhang sind, auf welche bezugsquellen von autorität sich dorfbewohnerinnen beziehen und wie die entwicklung von autorität die beziehungen zwischen staat und gesellschaft im rahmen des landkonfl ikts beeinfl usst. der artikel basiert auf einer 11-monatigen ethnografi schen feldforschung und fokussiert auf die person von pak wahid, der eine schlüsselrolle im konfl ikt um die staatlichen waldfl ächen und in der mobilisierung von bauern und bäuerinnen einnahm. der artikel argumentiert, dass führung im kampf um staatliche waldfl ächen in post-suharto java in einem zusammenspiel zwischen einer javanischen vorstellung von macht und autorität und administrativer autorität eingebettet ist. aufgrund von politischen und institutionellen reformen konnten neue bezugsquellen von autorität aktiviert werden, während keine wirklichen veränderungen in den machtverhältnissen innerhalb des dorfes sowie zwischen sfc und den dorfbewohnerinnen zustande kommen. 1 anu lounela is currently a researcher at the department of social and cultural anthropology at the university of helsinki, finland. she thanks cliff ord sather and two anonymous reviewers for the valuable comments on this article. contact: anu.lounela@helsinki.fi d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -5 .2 -2 aseas 5(2) 209208 schlagworte: entwicklung von autorität; java’s hochland; landkonflikt; machtverhältnisse; staatliche waldflächen introduction this article discusses emerging authorities in dispute negotiations between local populations and the state forestry corporation (sfc) and other parties in wonosobo district in central java. conflicts over state forest land became visible after the fall of president suharto in 1998, when the indonesian authoritarian state (known as new order) seemed to lose its hegemonic position and many local communities occupied land areas designated as state forest land. when discussing authority, many anthropologists draw on weber’s division of authority systems into three different types: rational-legal, traditional, and charismatic, all of which contribute to processes of change in the world. in weberian philosophy, the rational-legal form of authority was only possible in the west, while charismatic authority challenged rational and traditional forms (weber, 1968, pp. 217-219). many anthropologists (anderson, 1990; antlöv, 1995; geertz, 1980) have used this theoretical line of thought to discuss different forms of authority in indonesia. geertz (1980, pp. 124-126), for example, proposed a theory of the ceremonial theatre state and exemplary centre in south-east asia. accordingly, power is attractive rather than coercive since the leader manifests his power through ceremonies, thereby becoming an exemplary centre, something which only a powerful leader with certain qualities can achieve. anderson (1990) has made similar suggestions using the example of a king who embodies and exemplifies spiritual power through his behaviour (see also siegel, 1986). both these models have been applied when studying javanese village leadership. in exploring leadership in javanese new order villages, keeler (1985), for instance, has suggested that javanese villagers “want very much to see in their headmen powerful leaders” (p. 114) in the sense of being ‘spiritually potent’ and thus a paternal figure to the villagers. in keeler’s view, the villagers’ need for a powerful leader stems from a lack of strong formal (political) organisation (1985, p. 139), though he notes that villagers often resist a concentration of power by dividing their loyalties, which causes local tensions. the question then arises as to the required qualities of a “powerful anu lounela contesting state forests in post-suharto indonesia aseas 5(2) 211210 figure” in the javanese context. antlöv (1995), examining similar themes, suggests two bases of authority in new order java: community and administration. he argues that the javanese rural elite comprises “privileged clients” of the state (anak mas – favourite children) whose opportunities to accumulate power and rule depend on their crucial links with higher authorities (pp. 6-7). because of the need for these upper links the village headmen are stretched between the villagers and higher administrative forces. antlöv concludes that the new order state reached all corners of a sundanese village (west java) and any other source of authority could not be utilised at that level. furthermore, he suggested that there was no possibility for upward mobility without total submission to the new order regime. in the context of state formation in south-east asia, day (2001, p. 166), however, suggested that a clear demarcation between western “rational” and indigenous “ceremonial states” is difficult to detect. rather, “rational” bureaucratic organisation and the ritual state have become intertwined, forming a hybrid form of authority. following this line of thought, i suggest that ideally we can distinguish two forms of power when we look at the formation of authority in javanese villages: the javanese idea of power (anderson, 1990) and western rational-legal knowledge or discipline (foucault, 1977). though the administration became an increasingly important source of authority during the new order, community-based authority (the javanese idea of power) informs state formation (administration) and vice versa at the village level, and in the post-new order javanese village new sources could be invoked showing the hybrid nature of the authority formation process. following day (2001, p. 34), i propose in this paper that the state as well as its subjects should be seen as agents with multiple resources and techniques within the context of given situations. in the authority building process, for example, agents draw from different sources (religion, myths, bureaucracy and legislation, extrastate sources), thereby demonstrating the contested and hybrid nature of authority. my article will contribute to the discussion of power and authority with regard to land disputes in java. i argue that in post-suharto indonesia rural leaders draw from different sources of culturally informed authority in processes that demonstrate that they are active agents in these disputes. thus, my principal research question is: from what sources of authority do villagers draw and how does authority building inform this forest land dispute and the relations between the state and society? aseas 5(2) 211210 i conducted 11 months of ethnographic fieldwork between 2003 and 2004 in the forest village that i call wanasana2 in wonosobo district, with a specific focus on power relations between the actors in a dispute about rights of access to and control over actual state forest land and forests around the villages which were located close to state forest land. after 1999, the villagers of wanasana, together with some ngos, had taken the lead in demonstrating against the sfc – locally known as perum perhutani – in the district capital, taking over state forest land and planting crops and trees there. they claimed that they had rights as indonesian citizens to benefit from state forest land and that they could manage it better than the sfc and thus protect the environment in wonosobo. the discussion focuses on the case of pak wahid who took a leading position in the forest land dispute negotiations examined in this article. his case exemplifies the hybrid nature of authority formation and how some authority sources are more suitable than others in the javanese village arena. as a former village head he contested the village head elections during my stay and was exposed in the media as the leader of the local peasants in their effort to take over the state forest land in wonosobo. i argue that his active role in the dispute was partly due to his struggle with ‘javanese’ values in his quest for power, values embedded in the village bureaucracy to which he had belonged but from which he had had to withdraw for various reasons. land dispute in wonosobo district, central java by the beginning of the twenty-first century, the kaliwiro sub-district – where wanasana village is located – had become known as the worst area of forest destruction in wonosobo. many wanasana villagers (and most probably some villagers from nearby) were cooperating in an organised manner with outsiders, sfc staff, and the police in the devastating felling of trees from the slopes around the village resulting in the loss of at least 10 percent of the forest cover in wonosobo district (adi et al., 2004, pp.12-13; lounela, 2009).3 2 the village names and names of the villagers mentioned in this article are pseudonyms. 3 the island of java is divided into five provinces: west java, east java, central java, banten, and capital territory of jakarta with approximately 120 million inhabitants. central java, where wonosobo district is located, is inhabited by 32.64 million people (2011) and covers 3.25 million hectares. there are 236 villages (desa), 154 of which are categorised as forest villages, and 29 village level administrative units that are part of the city or regency government (kelurahan) in wonosobo. wonosobo district is inhabited by about 758,078 people (badan pusat statistik kabupaten wonosobo, 2012) while the village of this study is inhabited by 5,010 people. anu lounela contesting state forests in post-suharto indonesia aseas 5(2) 213212 wonosobo district is located north west of yogyakarta, in the heart of central java, covering 98,468 hectares, 19,965 hectares of which are state forest land4 and 19,472 hectares peoples’ forest (hutan rakyat) (adi et al., 2004, p. 15; nomura, 2008, p. 172). the state forest (about 19 percent of the total land area) is managed by the sfc with two different units operating in wonosobo: the southern kedu unit (9,728 hectares) is mainly planted with pine trees, damar (agathis alba), and teak, while the northern kedu unit (9,967 hectares) is mostly planted with pine trees and mahogany (switienia macrophylla) (adi et al., 2004, p. 22). in 2000, forest cover in wonosobo comprised about 38,368 hectares, including both state forest and peoples’ forest. until the beginning of the nineteenth century, large jungles had covered the sindoro and sumbing mountains when the area began to suffer from erosion because of uncontrolled tree felling (boomgaard, 1996, pp. 20-21; lounela, 2009, p. 66; smiet, 1990, p. 289). in response, the dutch colonial government started reforestation programmes on the slopes which accelerated in the 1880s. by the mid-nineteenth century, the government had made new regulations requiring villagers to get a license to cut teak for which they had to pay a fee to the officials, and in 1875, a penal and police regulation on forestry matters was enacted (boomgaard, 1996, p. 21; lounela, 2009, p. 68). the roots of the dispute can therefore be traced back to the dutch colonial period, when foresters entered wanasana village to mark out areas designated as state forest land with wooden stakes, thereby limiting the access of local populations to those areas (lounela, 2009). in 1945, jawatan kehutanan (the indonesian forest service) was founded, replacing the colonial sfc. in 1961, it was transformed into the general head body sfc (bpu perhutani – badan pimpinan umum perhutani) and in 1972, into the general state forestry corporation (perum perhutani) which, by 1978, had three main units: unit i east java (1961), unit ii central java (1961), and unit iii west java (1978) (departamen kehutanan, 1986, p. 76; peluso, 1992, p. 126). in the 1960s, wanasana villagers related to me, they were told to cut the trees in their area and in the 1970s, pine trees (pinus merkurii) were planted ‘everywhere’. the villagers disliked pine trees, as they claimed that they caused water scarcity – which means that villagers’ rice fields had to be transformed into forest gardens –, and that pine needles made soil ‘hard’ (keras), killing other vegetation. however, the sfc maintained that 4 these figures draw on data from the sfc, while the district government claims the state forest land to be 17,746 hectares. aseas 5(2) 213212 pine trees were its main source of income and thus necessary for the corporation. sfc cooperated with the village functionaries to maintain ‘order’ and restrict access of the villagers to state forest land. thus hidden tensions resulting in small-scale conflicts over forest access, have continually occurred over a long period of time, demonstrating the ongoing nature of the dispute (lounela, 2009). the parties to the wonosobo land dispute were principally the forest village peasants and the sfc. the sfc is administratively divided into district, provincial, and central levels, but it does not follow state administrative boundaries and has its own administrative system. the organisation includes the management unit (central office and director), the forest management district unit (kph – 20 units in central java), led by an administrateur or adm, the forest management sub-district unit (bkph, 7 units in the kedu selatan forest district unit), led by a supervisor (asper), which includes the ngadisono forest sub-district unit, and, finally, the forest police unit led by a forester head or mantri. in wonosobo district, state forest management is divided between the kph kedu selatan and kph kedu utara units. during my fieldwork, the leading role in the negotiations at the district level was filled by the adm at the kph kedu selatan unit (purworejo), while at the village level the asper and mantri played a big part in negotiating with the villagers. however, the central unit and director, located close to the ministry of forestry in jakarta, had superior authority over other units. the other parties to the dispute were ngos, state officials at the central (ministry of home affairs and ministry of forestry), district, and sub-district levels, police, and some academics. different levels of government assumed different roles, demonstrating that the state in indonesia is not monolithic. for instance, at one stage the district government, led by the district head (bupati), was heavily promoting state forest management by the local communities through regional regulations on community-based forest management, but the central government (ministry of home affairs and ministry of forestry) eventually put a stop to these efforts after extensive lobbying from the sfc, which rejected the district government and bupati policies (adi et al., 2004, p. 29). the dispute was quite extraordinary in the javanese context: for decades, the sfc control over state forest land had been almost total, exercised through the smallest resort polisi hutan (rph – forest police unit) that patrolled the forestry sub-district, comprising a mantri and a team of four mandors. the units could summarily arrest anu lounela contesting state forests in post-suharto indonesia aseas 5(2) 215214 people and take them to the state police for further processing and, indeed, many wanasana villagers recounted experiences of mandors chasing them if they took branches or wood from the state forest area during the new order period (lounela, 2009; see also peluso, 1992). when president suharto and the new order regime fell in 1998, many forest peasants participated in taking over these state forest lands claiming they could better manage and protect the forest than the sfc. according to them, the local gardens were fertile and green with multiple tree species, fruits, and crops which provided both cash and subsistence harvests, and this should serve as an exemplar for state forest management. between 1999 and 2001, in a multi-stakeholder forum, some ngos and the district government drafted a regional regulation on community-based forest management (perda psdhbm 22/2001). however, the district head at that time, trimawan nugrohadi, faced difficulties in furthering the implementation of the regulation because the central government started to oppose it. at the same time, the head of the district assembly commission, b. c. krustanto, and the vice-district head, h. abdul kholiq arif (from here on pak kholiq), were vocal in their support of the regulation. disappointed with it, the sfc withdrew from the negotiation forum (rejoining it at a later point) and claimed that the perda psdhbm was countermanding a superior national law (uu 41/1999), which established the sfc as power holder over state forest lands in java. in 2002, the ministry of home affairs asked for cancellation of the regulation, which caused new tensions that continued during my stay between 2003 and 2004 and afterwards. the fieldwork for this article was inevitably multi-sited because of the many arenas wherein the control over state forest land was disputed. here, however, i focus on the village arena as represented by wanasana, a village of about 5,010 inhabitants in 2002. wanasana spreads along the main asphalted road that runs from prembun to the city of wonosobo. above the village, the hills marked out as state forest land had been planted with pine trees, which were all cut down between 1998 and 2003 by ‘illegal loggers’ with the naked sandy slopes then being planted with maize, chili, cassava, banana trees, and later sengon (albizzia, paraserianthes falcataria) by the villagers. beyond the boundaries of the state forest area spreads land owned by the villagers, a landscape of green and abundant forest gardens, where the villagers plant bananas, coconuts, and various other trees and crops. the peoples’ forest, planted with various tree species, has been considered an example of sustainable and ecoaseas 5(2) 215214 logically sound forest management. the land area disputed (72.5 hectares during my stay) is located in the mountains, which were territorially demarked as the southern kedu unit by the sfc. it is administratively part of the ngadisono sub-district forestry unit that covers 6,491 hectares and spreads across seven villages which are categorised as forest villages as they are located in close proximity to state forest land. in this article, i wish to explore how authority building informs this forest land dispute and its settlement efforts, particularly in wanasana, one of the seven forest villages that had a visible role in the protests and negotiations through the actions of the active peasant leader pak wahid. building authority in the village through the forest land dispute authority building in the village by pak wahid, a man in his 40s, became related to the land dispute after 1999. pak wahid took a lead in mobilising peasants in the seven villages bordering on the ngadisono forestry sub-district (the sfc forest management unit) to take over state forest land and negotiate access to it. he told me that, in 2000, he had become extremely depressed when he saw the destruction of a pine tree plantation that had surrounded and shielded the local ‘power place’, considered to be the ‘centre of the world’ by its local guardian and many of the villagers. pak wahid decided that something should be done both to reforest the land and provide work for those who had lost their income when they were no longer needed to manage the plantations. due to the land scarcity and unequal land distribution in wanasana (as in java and wonosobo in general), there were 80 villagers who did not own land at all (numpang) and land ownership averaged out at only 0.37 hectare. in 2002, about 40 families owned more than one hectare of land each. following the inheritance system, each child in the family got a plot of the same size for a garden, housing, or a rice field and as a consequence, land ownership has become extremely scattered. thus, many families were in need of agricultural land and were eager to have access rights to state land for this purpose (badan pusat statistik kabupaten wonosobo, 2002; lounela, 2009, p. 112). frustrated and distressed by forest destruction, pak wahid described how he called on the heads of the seven villages in the ngadisono forestry sub-district to take part in an anu lounela contesting state forests in post-suharto indonesia aseas 5(2) 217216 agreement he intended to make with the staff of the kedu selatan unit of the sfc. in 2000, the seven village heads, under pak wahid’s leadership, demanded that the sfc grow only teak trees in the blocks (petak in the language of the sfc) of the ngadisono forestry sub-district unit, with the provisos that peasants should be able to get a share of harvests, and they should be able to plant some crops under the teak trees. in spring 2001, some forest village peasants (led by pak wahid) agreed with the sfc to replace pine trees with teak trees in the ngadisono forestry sub-district unit. the parties had agreed that block 11c (72.5 hectares) would be planted with teak and that other blocks would be 40 percent teak and 60 percent pine (in sfc language called vourbou blocks, altogether 115.2 hectares). while sfc decided to withdraw from the wonosobo multi-stakeholder forum negotiations, it allowed villagers to plant crops and some tree species on the state forest land, and negotiated directly with them. in march 2003, soon after my arrival in the village, i witnessed the last land distribution concerning block 11c above the village in the hills, an event organised by pak wahid. other land distribution events had been organised before my arrival. the villagers now had temporary access to state forest land and they were able to have some say in what to plant and harvest there. on a sunny day, pak wahid had called for a “mutual liberation” (musyawarah) to be held at the state forest block that bordered on wanasana. this musyawarah was called to gain consensus (mufakat) on land size and compensations, and to create a new peasant group under a peasant organisation called mandiri. about 46 peasants arrived on foot or by motorcycles, mostly middle-aged or older men. about 35 people had registered beforehand with pak wahid in order to take part in the land sharing. the amount of land to be shared was 2.5 hectares, which was part of block 11c. “we will share this land fairly and equally with those who do not have land yet,” pak wahid proclaimed at the beginning of the meeting and then asked people to give their names. by the end of the day, there were 46 claims to the piece of land – everybody was to get a 480 m2 plot with temporary land rights. this allocation of land rights differed from the sfc arrangements, according to which peasant day-labourers (pesanggem) were given the right to grow cassava for the first three years of the pine tree plantation management, as now the villagers independently decided who got rights to the land and what to plant there. at that time villagers thought they could gain long-term access to the area. aseas 5(2) 217216 to implement the land distribution, pak wahid put together a team that would be responsible for measuring and marking out plots in the field, and whom he invited to meet in pak winaryo’s house. although poor and owning only a small piece of land, winaryo was often involved in village head elections as a supporter of one of the candidates (and i was told that the candidate he supported won most of the elections). he was entitled to cultivate a piece of the village head’s land (tanah bengkok) through the sharing system and, owing to his alliance with the village elite (especially the village head), he was an important gatekeeper of peasant organisations in the village. besides, he was said to have spiritual power which he could use for good or bad purposes. pak wahid seemed to make sure that pak winaryo was involved in peasant mobilisation. as with those villagers who had been involved in forest stripping and violent clashes with the sfc, these forms of power offered important sources of authority. community bases of authority, therefore, included interpersonal relationships and the capacity to communicate with spirits and ancestors who were tied to the land and guarded it. the day after the meeting and the measuring of land plots, a forest ritual (selamatan) was held on the land in order to pacify the forest spirits, get their support and protection, and prevent conflicts among the peasants and between peasants and the sfc. everybody was asked to submit to the decisions on compensations which were already made and to the sizes of the plots as they had been marked out. during the ritual pak wahid distributed small portions of food to everybody and islamic prayers were offered. the peasants’ effort to take control of the land was now blessed by the spirits, which would prevent conflicts between all the parties involved. in the course of time i realised that for every tree planting or land sharing, a kind of ritual feast was led by pak wahid. here, ritual was not only a local act but expressed a hybrid setting (spyer, 1996, p. 43). rituals made the forest work of the peasants public and integrated them into the larger political field in which district government officials, party members, union leaders and members, and even local religious figures were invited to take part. thus, these ritual feasts translated peasant union, ngo activism, and universal principles, such as peasants’ rights to land, into local language and belief. at the same time, the authority of villagers as legitimate rights holders was confirmed, as the spirits were on their side and would support anu lounela contesting state forests in post-suharto indonesia aseas 5(2) 219218 their struggle. this community-based authority was important to pak wahid. he had the power to ask permission and blessings from the spirits, making him a proper leader in a javanese sense. there were, for example, many narratives told of angered forest spirits who caused trees to fall on people due to their misbehaviour in the area, and only powerful people were considered able to communicate with them and calm them down. pak wahid could also effectively negotiate in the conflict with the sfc and thus make it possible to reproduce the villagers’ relations to the land and surrounding “nature” (alam). in addition, pak wahid added to his authority by constantly organising ritual feasts (selamatan) in the forests or in relation to state forest land events, thereby further legitimising his position as a peasant leader. peasant organisations and authority building pak wahid, who had been recruited by the central javanese peasant union sepkuba5, started to mobilise peasants in his and neighbouring villages in support of the regional regulation perda psdhbm and peasants’ rights to state forest land in the hope that peasants could continue to manage state forest lands through independent peasant organisations and share the harvest with sfc, with which they were in continual negotiation. this support took the form of demonstrations in which villagers (though not the village elite) and ngos took part. sometimes hundreds or even thousands of peasants from different villages demonstrated in front of the district assembly building demanding new tree species for the state forest or refusing pine trees, and demanding the implementation of the new district regulation and the cancellation of the new forest management institutions created by the sfc respectively. the latter refer to the phbm [forest management together with the community] and the lmdh [the forest village community institution] (dte no. 55 nov. 2002). in most cases the local ngo jkpm ( jaringan kerja pemuda muslim) and sepkuba together with a smaller ngo called koling, mobilised the rallies. pak wahid’s own narrative, which he related to me in 2003, depicted him as the ‘hero’ in leading the negotiations and reaching agreement with the sfc; he felt he 5 sepkuba (serikat petani kedu, banyumas – kedu and banyumas peasant’s union) is a local peasant union that was formed in 1999. it played an important role in visiting villages and building networks among the villagers, ‘strengthening’ them at the villages, and representing forest peasants in the district level meetings. aseas 5(2) 219218 had started the negotiations which led to this outcome. in his narrative, the peasants were a strong force that had pressured the sfc until they were obliged to negotiate. pak wahid had further invited villagers to gather and share the state forest land plots in order to cultivate cash crops during unspecified periods and demand rights of access to land and the opportunity to plant new tree species. pak wahid’s authority in this organisation and in village negotiations was recognised by everybody, although i was told that he dominated discussions and produced long monologues at the meetings. yet, the villagers also had vivid memories of the 1960s and the military coup of president suharto, when it became extremely dangerous to participate in anything other than state approved organisations. everybody knew about the killings of hundred thousands of people who were considered communists and the imprisonment of many others. these violent events completely changed the political landscape, and no political mobilisation outside of extreme state control was possible due to the fear of punishment (hadiz, 2011, p. 52). during the new order government, peasant mobilisation took place through the official village peasant organisations which became channels for new order development efforts, especially those connected with green revolution projects. land reform or land claims were delicate issues that nobody would raise because of the fear of risking their lives. pak wahid told me that he was sometimes suspected of being a communist and his civil society connections were not at all approved by most of the village elite. after the land distribution mentioned above, a new group, supitan (an independent forest peasant organisation or kelompok tani hutan [kth]), was formed by the people who had been given land plots in block 11c. this organisation became part of the umbrella organisation mandiri that was led by pak wahid. for several decades, the sfc had been creating village peasant organisations to manage the pine tree concessions around wonosobo. villagers who got a piece of land automatically became members in the sfc kth, and ideally they were invited to meetings and had the responsibility of taking care of the plants or trees in their blocks and of following the rules of the organisation. when illegal loggings started, the sfc kth in the village ceased to function. in 2001, pak wahid called on villagers managing state forest land and asked them to join the mandiri kth (mandiri translates as “independent”, referencing the fact that it was not an official sfc organisation), the umbrella for the kths that operated in certain forest blocks. under the mandiri organisation, there anu lounela contesting state forests in post-suharto indonesia aseas 5(2) 221220 were six kths and, under them, 32 smaller local peasant organisations (organisasi tani lokal [otl]) whose individual members managed the state forest blocks (with an approximate number of 20–35 members per otl). by the time i resided in the village, pak wahid claimed that there were 850 peasant members in six organisations in wanasana and neighbouring villages. pak wahid included some heads of various neighbourhoods (rukun tetangga [rt]) in the organisation who were important allies for him as they could mobilise villagers in their immediate locales. he did not, however, invite the hamlet head (mentioned as advisor of the organisation), village head, or those officially part of the village power structure (perangkat desa) to most of the meetings. i argue that this was because they would have undermined wahid’s authority as they were above him in the village power structure, but also because they were his relatives. nonetheless, the entire village elite was invited to the official inauguration meeting of the mandiri organisation. during my stay, pak wahid became a candidate in the village head elections. he had been village head in the mid-1990s, but due to various reasons (his struggle against corruption in the village elite, a scandalous extra-marital relationship) he had to withdraw after only one year. the village elite claimed that for this reason he was not a ‘proper’ leader or village head candidate as he could not control his emotions. however, his supporters considered him to be the man who had fought against corruption and authoritarian rule in the village and the only person who has the power to mobilise peasants to occupy state forest lands and negotiate with the sfc. here, a different idea of authority building emerged legitimising pak wahid’s work and position. in his youth, pak wahid had been active first in the ppp (islamic union party) and then (unofficially) in the pkb (national awakening party), which is a muslim organisation. he had turned to the religion of islam as a potential source of authority at that time, since the head of an islamic boarding school (pesantren) located in the village had an almost familial relationship with his family. pak wahid had received his education from the pesantren, and his mother’s uncle had given one hectare of land to the local islamic leader (the kiyai) to build a mosque and a pesantren, thereby adopting the leader into the family. now, pak wahid stressed his ‘modernist’ islamic or santri (more egalitarian than the javanese hierarchical order, he claimed) orientation in the face of the village bureaucracy. however, it soon became clear that pak wahid did aseas 5(2) 221220 not fulfil the new criteria for village head elections because he had only a primary school certificate and, according to new district legislation, he should have at least a secondary school certificate. with wahid disqualified, there was finally only one remaining candidate who, not surprisingly, won the election. before the village head elections in 2003, pak wahid had mobilised hundreds of people in the distribution of land and many of them became his supporters in the village head elections. he also involved ngos and peasant organisations at the village level, which was considered problematic by the village elite as civil society actors were often regarded as opposing the state or connected to communists. some village elite members told me that pak wahid was self-interested (pamrih), too outspoken, and had a past which was inappropriate for a village head. however, his outspokenness and active role were qualities necessary for a land dispute negotiator or peasant movement leader. again, the qualities suitable for the village head and peasant organiser seemed to differ a great deal, an issue i will explore in the following sections. when the village head elections were over in july 2003, pak wahid’s state forest activities increased dramatically, partly due to his disqualification. in august 2003, the peasant organisation he led was formalised in the village through an event (upacara), whereby mandiri was named the village peasant organisation and became linked to the state. the practical aim of this move was to enable problem-free funding from the state as the district government was now demanding that organisations be officially recognised and fulfil certain criteria. the more obvious aim was to ritually publicise the authority of the organisation and pak wahid’s authority to take over the forest land issue in the village. however, at the same time, the organisation ceased to be an independent peasant movement (as it was described in some places) and formally became a bureaucratic-rational organisation in the weberian sense. in the following weeks i could see pak wahid coming and going from the sfc office and organising peasant group meetings, which the ngos and sepkuba sometimes attended. furthermore, the sepkuba leader spent a lot of time in the village (or in the neighbouring selokerto village), and often slept in wahid’s house. his visits in the village were supposed to strengthen and legitimise pak wahid’s position and struggle for access to state forest land. in september 2003, about 60 villagers built a road to the state forest land as part of the programme. similarly, another road was constructed in the following month. by the end of october 2003, the villagers, in coanu lounela contesting state forests in post-suharto indonesia aseas 5(2) 223222 operation with sfc staff, planted mahogany seedlings on a plot which pak wahid had rented from a neighbour. the plan was to start planting mahogany in the state forest when the seedlings were high enough. in a meeting held in the sfc office in the village in october 2003, seven staff members were present from the sfc with a higher officer from the southern kedu unit office. wahid arrived with a relative of his who was also a member of a peasant organisation from the neighbouring selokerto village, and another man who belonged to the inner circle of the organisation, but whom i never saw taking part in forest management. senior sfc staff took over the forum, outlining what was expected from the forest peasant groups: organisational structure, identity cards for all members, a forest management plan with all the details and calculations of capital input from the peasants. this meeting could be described as a turning point in the negotiation of the rights to state forest land at the village level as the position of the sfc staff was far stronger in the face of the few villagers present. pak wahid, meanwhile, seemed to be willing to accept the conditions set by the sfc. the growing power of the sfc in village negotiations derived partly from the insecure and confusing situation at the district level where the district government was forced to cancel the regional regulation on community-based forest management which would have allowed peasants to have power over state forest land management surmounting that of the sfc. from 2000 on, pak wahid supported the local vice-district head, pak kholiq, from the islamic-oriented pkb party. in 2004, pak kholiq campaigned for the position of district head, supporting the implementation of the regional regulation perda psdhbm and the local villagers in their efforts to continue their own state forest land management system; he achieved his goal in 2005 (“bupati wonosobo,” 2005). simultaneously, however, the sfc was lobbying the central and provincial governments which had superior power over the district government. during my stay in wanasana, there were two forest management models (the district regulation-based psdhbm and the sfc-based phbm) circulating in the forest villages. wanasana, as with many other villages, was now negotiating directly with the sfc, and ngos facilitated this process to ‘strengthen’ them, but psdhbm or community-based forest management did not have a clear legal basis. furthermore, losing in the village head elections significantly reduced pak wahid’s authority in the eyes of the sfc, the villagers, and the bureaucratic village elite alike. villagers became aseas 5(2) 223222 increasingly marginalised in district level settlement efforts and even at the village level they had limited say. when i visited the village in 2009, the sfc had founded an ‘official’ forest peasant organisation (kth) in the village, and pak wahid’s role as a peasant leader was unclear. why did pak wahid have difficulties in connecting with the village elite while he was recognised as the right person to lead peasant mobilisation and land distribution and negotiations with the sfc, at least initially? one reason was his linkage with extra-state actors who, on the one hand, became the source of his authority, but, on the other hand, challenged it because the village elite associated ngos with the ‘left’: they were considered dangerous because they criticised the state, which during president suharto’s period was considered a subversive act likely to result in a prison sentence. the other reason relates to factors of status and tradition as a source of authority that have become embedded in the javanese administration. leadership in this land dispute was mostly based on different qualities of leadership than village leadership, as i will describe below. tradition as a source of authority ward keeler has noted that in javanese society all interaction is about status (keeler, 1987, pp. 26–27; siegel, 1986). behaviour and speech in an interaction signify people’s status and one’s position in the village structure and in the community. in the anthropological literature, javanese custom or tradition – customary law (adat) – has been defined as the cosmos and the norms and principles that direct javanese in their interactions (anderson, 1990; antlöv, 1995; keeler, 1987; pemberton, 1994). such norms as being refined (halus) or being coarse (kasar), maintaining harmony (rukun), and working voluntarily for the community (gotong royong) have been mentioned as major principles in javanese village custom. siegel (1986, pp. 15–17) has effectively described how in a javanese encounter speaking correctly is also behaving correctly, having social and linguistic implications. javanese speech has different levels that mark the status of the speaker. by using the right level of language and tone (ngoko or kromo) one avoids upsetting the other partner to the exchange; sentences are for the listener, not for the speaker. anu lounela contesting state forests in post-suharto indonesia aseas 5(2) 225224 the notion of respect informs authority building in the village. younger people, whatever their position, should offer respect to their elders. the village functionaries and other high status persons should be respected by those in lower positions. at the same time, if one fails to be respected, it is difficult to have authority in the eyes of the villagers. it is obvious that one should respect the elite members of the community and any kind of resistance (disrespect) is often interpreted by the village elite as harsh behaviour or stupidity. pak wahid was obviously considered ‘harsh’ because he was outspoken, contested village functionaries openly, and mobilised people in the village through peasant meetings and forest-related activities. pak wahid was a former village head and he had experience (perjuangan) in working for the village. he had, however, been expelled from his position because of his extra-marital affair and because, according to the new legislation, he did not fulfil the criteria for formal leadership (lacking a certificate of secondary education) and was therefore ineligible as a candidate. in other words, his power (in the javanese sense) diminished quite suddenly, which in javanese thinking may imply that his power had moved to someone else (siegel, 1986, p. 36). certainly, he could no longer gain support from the village elders and the village elite. ruling effortlessly is an important sign of one’s power in java (siegel, 1986, p. 37) while using force is a sign of weakness. a seloman hamlet head stated that he does not have to order (menyuruh) peasants to do anything, preferring that local neighbourhood heads see that community members do what is asked. thus, he meets the smallest neighbourhood unit heads (rt) or sends them letters, and they pass information and directives onto those living in their locales. the village functionaries often noted that it is difficult to order or ask villagers to do something (especially those in a higher position or elders) because it does not feel comfortable. tidak enak refers to the feeling (rasa) of being afraid of hurting somebody or lowering oneself by being harsh (kasar). the inability or unwillingness to order or ask people to do something may relate to two core values of javanese adat: rasa and pamrih. when theorising about javanese culture in relation to javanese administration, anderson (1990, p. 54) suggested that the implications of javanese cultural values encourage people not to act, lest they appear as if they wanted to gain something for themselves. antlöv (1995, p. 164) claims that sundanese leadership has been very much based on traditional authority even aseas 5(2) 225224 in the state domain. keeler (1987), deriving from anderson (1990), relies on the idea of the potent king as a culturally directing image of a suitable leader, village head or lurah. in this sense, pak wahid’s visible efforts to become a village head, and his activities concerning state forest land, raised suspicions and were sometimes interpreted as pamrih. the village elite seemed not to support his activities for this reason. the new order elite rested on the idea of a power-full leader, from the village up to the highest level of governance. it was visible in the way village officials governed and directed a village: effortlessly. during the new order, if there were a problem in a village, as one elder village functionary told me, brimob (mobile brigade – the indonesian national police special operations force unit) would be called in, and they also used to arrive regularly and without invitation for larger village meetings (lapanan). in these cases the passive governance of the village elite became linked with the feared and violent state (police) in a curious way, given that the new order regime used fear and violence to create order and stability (siegel, 1986, p. 37). drawing on foucault, pemberton (1994) has criticised ethnographers for strengthening the new order discourse on javanese core values that marginalised struggles and conflicts. he claims that new order discourse on javanese culture and politics produced an ideology that stressed harmony, stability, and family-ness (kekeluargaan) to suppress conflicts (the negative side of selamatan) (pp. 14-15). new order village elites stressed order and stability, marginalising harsh and disrespectful behaviour as dangerous. in this light, pak wahid’s active role contradicted the dominant discourse of javanese cultural identity as stressed by the new order regime. pak wahid had to struggle with the village elite and sfc, while the support from the ngos and peasant union were not enough to strengthen his position, or sometimes even undermined it, and for this reason wanasana villagers failed to secure rights to the state forest land. in post-suharto java, however, it was possible for pak wahid to struggle for power and be supported by those parts of the village which had taken part in the land dispute, because of his extra-state sources of authority and the fall of a regime which had been shown to be corrupt in many ways. anu lounela contesting state forests in post-suharto indonesia aseas 5(2) 227226 conclusion i have explored how people draw from different sources of authority in a post-suharto, upland javanese forest village in their struggle for state forest land. taking a hybrid view on the formation of authority, my principal questions were: from what sources of authority do villagers draw and how does authority formation inform this forest land dispute and the relations between the state and society? the case study examined here clearly indicates that the ideal of an exemplary centre and a powerful leader and authoritative figure informs authority building at the village level. however, as noted by keeler (1987), villagers tend to resist the concentration of power in one person by distributing their loyalty and building alliances with many authority figures in order to reduce their dependency and protect their personal sovereignty. thus, authority building is a two-way process: people build their authority by using different sources, on the one hand, and distribute their loyalty and create patron-client relations with numerous people, on the other. in the case of pak wahid, he gained followers by mobilising people in the land dispute, but the same people also built alliances with the village functionaries and his opponents in the village head elections who had upward connections. during the new order period, the bureaucracy became a dominant power source in ordering the lives of people. bureaucracy was, however, informed by javanese ideas of authority and power. those owning land or belonging to powerful or wealthy families could gain a position in the official structure where they should behave according to their status position – passively, in a word. the new order regime rhetoric stressed stability (stabilitas) as the basis of the indonesian nation state, and the positions of the village elite and staff were related to a reinforcement of this order. order was further buttressed by an imposed hierarchy and constant references to such concepts as kasar, halus, and pamrih in the village. however, new kinds of rationales for authority emerged too: those having material wealth or education could gain authority as long as they were loyal to the ruling party (golkar) and the state (pancasila6). 6 pancasila refers to the state philosophy of the republic of indonesia, i.e. 1) the belief in one god, 2) humanity that is just and civilised, 3) the unity of indonesia, 4) democracy guided by the wisdom representative deliberation, and 5) social justice for all indonesians. aseas 5(2) 227226 due to the changes in national politics (decentralisation), the withdrawal of president suharto, public criticism of corrupt bureaucracy and politicians, and open contestation over state forest land new sources could be invoked. villagers who wanted to gain access to land created patron-client relations with pak wahid (the landless or poor, illegal loggers, and jobless) and became his followers in the land struggle. for many, however, pak wahid was considered too active, harsh, and outspoken to become a village head, but these qualities became the basis of his authority in the land dispute making it possible for him to lead negotiations in the village and with the sfc. in post-suharto java, leadership in the struggle for state forest land at the village level is embedded in the interaction of ‘traditional’ authority and administrative authority. modern authority and village leadership are informed by certain javanese qualities considered suitable for a leader. however, the villagers have new sources of authority due to national and local political changes. these new sources seemed to open space for innovative kinds of negotiations and to challenge the power of the sfc or traditional authority figures, while not bringing any real transformation of the power structure in the village or of that between the sfc and the villagers. references adi, n. j., arganata, f., chehafudin, m., fuad, f. h., nugraheni, s. c., sanyoto, r. . . . walpole, p. (2004). communities transforming forestlands. java, indonesia. tagbilaran city, philippines: asia forest network. anderson, b. r. (1990). language and power: exploring political cultures in indonesia. ithaca, ny: cornell university press. antlöv, h. (1995). exemplary centre, administrative periphery: rural leadership and the new order in java. richmond, uk: curzon press. badan pusat statistik kabupaten wonosobo. (2002). wonosobo dalam angka 2002. retrieved october 29, 2012 from http://wonosobokab.bps.go.id/subyek_statistik/publikasi/dda/dda2002.pdf badan pusat statistik kabupaten wonosobo. (2012). wonosobo dalam angka 2011. retrieved june 28, 2012 from http://wonosobokab.bps.go.id/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=79&itemid=49 boomgaard, p. (1996). changing economy in indonesia, a selection of statistical material from the early 19th century up to 1940. forests and forestry 16. amsterdam, netherlands: royal tropical institute. bupati wonosobo drs h abdul kholiq arif konsolidasi dan reorientasi kinerja pemerintah. (2005, november 1). suarakarya online. retrieved october 15, 2012 from http://www.suarakarya-online.com/news. html?id=125944 anu lounela contesting state forests in post-suharto indonesia aseas 5(2) 229228 day, t. (2002). fluid iron: state formation in southeast asia. honolulu, hawaii: university of hawaii press. departamen kehutanan. (1986). sejarah kehutanan indonesia 2 vols. ii–iii, periode tahun 194 1983. jakarta, indonesia: menteri kehutanan. foucault, m. (1977). discipline and punish: the birth of the prison. london, uk: penguin books. geertz, c. (1980). negara. the theatre state in nineteenth-century bali. princeton, nj: princeton university press. hadiz, v. (2010). localising power in post-authoritarian indonesia: a southeast asia perspective. stanford, ca: stanford university press. keeler, w. (1987). javanese shadow plays, javanese selves. princeton, nj: princeton university press. keeler, w. (1985). villagers and the exemplary centre in java. indonesia, 39, 111-140. lounela, a. (2009). contesting forests and power; dispute, violence and negotiation in central java. phd. research series in anthropology 17. helsinki, finland: university of helsinki. nomura, k. (2008). the politics of participation in forest management: a case from democratizing indonesia. the journal of environment & development, 17(2), 166-191. peluso, n. (1992). rich forests, poor people: resource control and resistance in java. berkeley, ca: university of california press. pemberton, j. (1994). on the subject of “java”. ithaca, ny: cornell university press. siegel, j. (1986). solo in the new order: language and hierarchy in an indonesian city. princeton, nj: princeton university press. smiet, a. (1990). forest ecology on java: conversion and usage in a historical perspective. journal of tropical forest science, 2(4), 286-302. spyer, p. (1996). diversity with a difference: adat and the new order in aru (eastern indonesia). cultural anthropology, 11(1), 25-50. weber, m. (1968). on charisma and institution building. selected paper, edited and with an introduction by s. n. eisenstadt. chicago, il: university of chicago press. assets or commodities? comparing regulations of placement and protection of migrant workers in indonesia and the philippines aseas 6(2) 265264 d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -6 .2 -3 aktuelle südostasienforschung / current research on south-east asia assets or commodities? comparing regulations of placement and protection of migrant workers in indonesia and the philippines dinita setyawati1 citation setyawati, d. (2013). assets or commodities? comparing regulations of placement and protection of migrant workers in indonesia and the philippines. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 6(2), 264-280. in labor-abundant countries, migrant workers are considered state assets and the government often calls them the ‘economic heroes’ of the nation. yet by maximizing economic benefi ts, the protection of labor migrants is often neglected by both origin and host countries. the state’s assumed presence in protecting its nationals is tied to its capacity to ‘control’ migration fl ows and protect its nationals abroad. within this framework, the regulations concerning migrant workers’ protection in indonesia and the philippines, which comprise the two largest exporters of migrant labor in south-east asia, are assessed. this paper compares the two key laws in both countries: indonesian law no. 39/2004 and the philippine republic act (ra) no. 10022. in this context, it also aims to answer the following question: are filipinos better protected than indonesians? looking specifi cally into the state and the economy, the history of workers’ protection, and key aspects of the law, this paper recognizes several weaknesses of the indonesian government’s migrant workers protection scheme, especially in the aspects of educating workers and defi ning the responsibilities of government agencies. thus, strong commitment from the government, along with close monitoring by civil society, is needed to ensure better protection for citizens. keywords: indonesia; labor law; labor migration; migrant workers; philippines in ländern mit vielen arbeitskräften werden arbeitsmigrantinnen als staatliches vermögen angesehen und die regierung bezeichnet sie oft als „wirtschaftliche helden“ der nation. um den ökonomischen nutzen zu maximieren, wird der schutz von arbeitsmigrantinnen allerdings oft vernachlässigt, sowohl von herkunftsals auch von zielländern. die vorausgesetzte präsenz des staates im schutz seiner bürgerinnen steht in verbindung mit der kapazität, migrationsströme zu „kontrollieren“ und seine bürgerinnen im ausland zu schützen. in diesem rahmen werden die gesetzlichen bestimmungen bezüglich des schutzes von arbeitsmigrantinnen in indonesien und den philippinen, die die zwei größten exporteure von arbeitsmigrantinnen in südostasien darstellen, analysiert. dieser artikel vergleicht die beiden wichtigsten gesetze in beiden ländern, das indonesian law no. 39/2004 und den philippine republic act (ra) no. 10022. in diesem kontext soll folgende frage beantwortet werden: sind philippinerinnen besser geschützt als indonesierinnen? durch einen genauen blick auf den staat und die ökonomie, auf die geschichte des arbeiterinnenschutzes sowie auf schlüsselaspekte des rechts, weist dieser artikel auf zahlreiche schwächen des staatlichen regelwerks zum schutz von arbeitsmigrantinnen in indonesien, insbesondere in der ausbildung von arbeiterinnen und in der defi nition von verantwortlichkeiten der staatlichen behörden, hin. verbindlichkeiten von seiten der regierung, zusammen mit engem monito1 dinita setyawati is a researcher and analyst, with research interests in south-east asian politics, government, migration, and economic development. graduated from the school of oriental and african studies, university of london, she now resides in indonesia and works as government relations officer in an international organization. contact: s.dinita@gmail.com aseas 6(2) 265264 ring von seiten der zivilgesellschaft, sind deshalb notwendig, um einen besseren schutz der bürgerinnen zu gewährleisten. schlagworte: arbeitsmigrantinnen; arbeitsmigration; arbeitsrecht; indonesien; philippinen our goal is to create jobs at home so that there will be no need to look for employment abroad. however, as we work towards that end, i am ordering the dfa, poea, owwa, and other relevant agencies to be even more responsive to the needs and welfare of our overseas filipino workers. (aquino iii, 2010) my government is intensifying cooperation with both domestic and foreign recruitment agencies, to ensure their safety of migration and also their protection in the host countries. (yudhoyono, 2011)2 introduction working abroad has become a means of escaping poverty in asia. a large number of migrants have seen better opportunities in other countries compared to those at home which were limited, stagnant, or declining. this perception is popular in indonesia and the philippines, the two largest exporters of migrant workers in south-east asia. in indonesia, the international organization for migration (iom) documented that the registered remittances of indonesian overseas workers accounted for more than usd 6 billion annually, contributing 1.4 percent to gdp in 2007 and 1.2 percent in 2009 (iom, 2012). equally, the philippine workers recorded a rise in remittances of usd 10.7 billion in 2005 to usd 17.4 billion in 2009, contributing 10.8 percent to gdp in 2005 (antique & ahniar, 2010). these figures do not include money sent directly by workers via non-bank institutions or non-formal channels. according to the world bank, however, only about 20 percent of the total remittances that arrive in indonesia are registered (world bank, 2008). meanwhile, labor receiving countries such as singapore, hong kong, and malaysia continue to rely on labor supply from indonesia and the philippines to work as low-skilled and semi-skilled workers in the sectors of service, construction, and domestic work. the international labor organization (ilo) recorded some 700,000 to 1,000,000 workers leaving indonesia and the philippines 2 dfa – department of foreign affairs, through its post abroad has the capacity to manage the protection of migrant workers; poea – philippine overseas employment administration, has the capacity to monitor recruitment agencies and issue permits for the deployment of workers; owwa – overseas workers welfare administration, has the capacity to ensure workers’ welfare, including the organization of pre-departure briefings and trainings. dinita setyawati assets or commodities? aseas 6(2) 267266 each year, while approximately twice as many remain undocumented (ilo, 2011). however, as ilo (2009) stated, “the contribution of labor migration to employment, economic growth, development and the alleviation of poverty should be recognized and maximized for the benefit of both origin and destination countries” (p. 5). with regard to these facts, this paper attempts to compare and contrast the regulations for labor migration from indonesia and the philippines. to achieve its purposes, this paper uses qualitative research with the following primary methods: discourse analysis of key labor laws from both countries and literature review of books, journals, independent publications, and online news articles. the discourse analysis approach is imperative to understand how the government protects and places their migrant workers. in addition, discourse analysis can identify the social context in which the text was written, while a literature review is useful to grasp the background knowledge of the topic discussed. in order to situate the discussion, a brief overview of the economic indicators in indonesia and the philippines is given, followed by the history of policy development in the two countries. subsequently, the key laws in both countries – indonesian law no. 39/20043 and the philippine republic act (ra) no. 100224 or amendment of 1995 magna carta – are compared. following ford’s (2012) argument that the indonesian government has poor consular assistance for its citizens working overseas compared to the government of the philippines, which has established a number of structures to support overseas workers, this paper argues that the philippines’ magna carta has provided more state assistance and protection for migrant workers than the respective indonesian law, which continues to be criticized by migrant activists for its weakness in protecting and promoting the workers’ welfare. the corridors of migration: political and socio-economic factors theories in migration studies rest upon the assumption that labor migration can in fact be influenced and controlled effectively and coherently through the use of legal 3 republic of indonesia (2004). indonesian law no. 39/2004 on the placement and protection of indonesian workers overseas. 133 statute book of the republic of indonesia. 4 republic of the philippines (2010). philippines republic act (ra) no. 10022, an act amending republic act no. 8042, otherwise known as the migrant workers and overseas filipinos act of 1995. (2010). retrieved from the lawphil project website: http://www.lawphil.net/statutes/repacts/ra2010/ra_10022_2010.html aseas 6(2) 267266 instruments directed by the state (guild & mantu, 2011). the state’s assumed presence is linked to its capacity to ‘control’ migration flows and protect its nationals abroad. as day (2002) defines it, “the state regulates power and morality and organizes space, time, and identity in the face of resistance to its authority to do so” (p. 34). bohning (1988) further emphasizes the argument that: the state of which the migrant is a national owes him protection because of the membership which that person has acquired by virtue of birth or naturalisation. the constitutions of contemporary states proclaim, inter alia, the rights and freedom that nationals should enjoy; and some states’ constitutions – such as spain’s – make it a special duty of the executive power to safeguard the rights and welfare of citizens abroad. (p. 133) the state’s responsibilities have been recognized by philippine and indonesian leaders who are committed to protecting their nationals abroad, as reflected in their statements in the first section of this paper. however, in practice, the placement and protection of migrant workers remain complex. for example, four days after delivering his fundamental speech at the ilo conference, president yudhoyono received the news that an indonesian worker, ruyati binti sapubi, was being beheaded by the saudi government for allegedly murdering her (allegedly abusive) employer (“migrant workers,” 2011). in addition, in 2012, the indonesian ngo migrant care found that out of the 417 migrant workers abroad who were facing charges, 32 were on death row (“workers send,” 2012). criticism was directed towards the government’s inaction. meanwhile, the philippines’ ngo migrante international (2012) reported that in a span of less than two years in office, four filipinos were executed in china because the aquino administration did not provide enough legal assistance and support. a closer look at some economic indicators of indonesia and the philippines leads to assumptions regarding the conditions that created corridors of migration. as shown in table 1, in the period of ten years, mainly due to the asian crisis in 1997/1998, both countries have failed to increase their gdp per capita significantly. in fact, indonesia and the philippines have experienced a steady rise in unemployment rates from the mid-1990s to 2006. the crisis resulted in the decline of the domestic market and the closing of factories, forcing workers to seek employment elsewhere. moreover, political and economic constraints and lack of employment opportunities at home are maintained in order to uphold a steady flow of migrant workers to receiving countries. ruhs and martin (2010) support this argument by claiming the existence of a trade-off (i.e. an inverse relationship) between the number of migrants and some of dinita setyawati assets or commodities? aseas 6(2) 269268 the socio-economic rights of low-skilled migrant workers admitted to high-income countries. garces-mascarenas (2011) points out that “the more rights low skilled migrants have, the less advantageous (or desirable they are)” (p. 65). based on the argument above, overseas deployment is mainly in favor of the government rather than the workers. gonzales (1998) provides the argument that overseas workers have not been sufficiently equipped to adapt to the conditions they are facing in pre-departure, during the placement period, or upon their return. as a result, most of these workers are at risk of illegal recruitment, criminal offenses, and family/marriage breakdown. yet, working abroad remains popular as these workers are often framed as the ‘economic heroes’ of their nation by the government due to the high remittances and foreign currency reserves they send home. for example, indonesian president yudhoyono (2011) stated: “we in indonesia call these migrant workers ‘economic heroes’ (pahlawan devisa), due to their hard work and selfless devotion to the welfare of their family back home.” indonesian overseas workers: ‘economic heroes’ of the nation the indonesian labor export policy began in the suharto era from the late 1960s to the mid-1990s, with the intention of generating economic growth from workers’ remittances. the implementation of this policy was given to the department of manpower, transmigration and cooperative units (departemen tenaga kerja, transmigrasi dan koperasi), which was established in 1970. this department issued ministerial table 1: economic indicators source: esds international, world bank data, 2011 indonesia philippines 1996 2006 1997 2006 4.4 10.3 7.9 8.0 11.4 6.5 5.2 5.4 848.2 953.9 1,045.4 1,225.0 gdp per capita (constant 2000 us$) poverty gap at $1.25 a day (ppp) (%) unemployment, total (% of total labor force) aseas 6(2) 269268 regulation no. 4/1970 which prohibits recruitment without a permit and imposes conditions upon recruitment (national agency for the placement and protection of indonesian migrant workers [bnp2tki], 2011). the regulation explains general ways in managing domestic and international migration through the intra-region cooperation program (akad) and the intra-nation cooperation program (akan). it also paved the way for the involvement of the private sector in workers’ recruitment and placement. as a ruling dictator, suharto gave no room for civil society to criticize his handling of migrant workers. consequently, the regulation of migrant workers was not monitored and mishandling of workers often occurred. in the post-suharto period starting from 1998, the government increased its efforts to protect indonesian migrant workers through the introduction of several regulations and policies. the ministry of manpower and transmigration passed the ministerial decree no. 104a/2002 which set the platform for the early recognition of ‘vulnerable workers’, which refers to those who work in the domestic sector without contracts (iom, 2012, p. 13). in addition, the government established a national agency for workers, the bnp2tki and enacted law no. 39/2004 that regulates the placement and protection of migrant workers. yudhoyono’s administration further elevated the regulation framework by issuing a presidential instruction no. 6/2006 on reforming the system and placement and protection of indonesian migrant workers. this instruction sets up guidelines, i.e. for the advocacy of workers, service at embarkations under the ‘one roof’ system (a system where immigration at airports provides special counters for overseas workers, which includes many dangers for them, i.e. exposure to corrupt officials), the improvement of the quality and quantity of workers, and eradication of illegal recruiters, which are mainly responsible for recruitment that leads to physical and psychological damages. in response, the ministry of foreign affairs issued regulation no. 4/2008 which was designed to assist indonesian nationals abroad through close cooperation between consulate offices in host countries and the bnp2tki. although these policy decisions illustrate the increasing intention of the government to effectively manage and protect overseas labor, its implementations are weak and they fail to address the issues surrounding domestic workers (iom, 2012, p. xi). anies hidayah, migrant care’s director, criticized the government for not taking a step towards reforming the placement and protection of migrant workers in accordinita setyawati assets or commodities? aseas 6(2) 271270 dance with human rights standards. for instance, insurance problems are still left unsolved, and the forgery of identity documents is common (“benahi serius nasib,” 2011). national migrant ngos such as care for workers (lsm peduli buruh migran) and association for indonesian migrant workers (serikat buruh migran indonesia) also expressed their frustration with the government’s response in handling migrant workers’ cases. they claim that most of the violent cases surrounding migrant workers are left unresolved (ruslan, 2012). domestic workers currently do not benefit from many of the legal protections granted to other workers under indonesian law. in this sense, sam zarifi, amnesty international’s asia-pacific director, points out the 2003 manpower act (uu no. 13/2003, hukum ketenagakerjaan), which discriminates against domestic workers by not providing the same protection it gives to other workers, such as a reasonable limitation on working hours and provisions for rest and holidays (amnesty international, 2011). the draft and passage of the domestic workers protection bill was included in the national legislation program 2012, however, progress has been slowed. it seems that the government’s commitment is mainly rhetoric and bound to ‘lip service’. philippine labor policies: stepping up workers’ protection sending workers abroad became popular in the philippines during the first five decades after independence in 1946 as a political response to worsening economic problems: setbacks in the growth of industry and low labor absorption. during the marcos era from 1966 to 1986, the philippine overseas labor migration program was regulated in the labor code (presidential decree no. 442 of 1974). the labor code stipulated the establishment of the overseas employment development board and the national seamen board as well as operational guidelines for placement, dispute resolution, and documentation (gonzales, 1998, p. 121). after the fall of marcos, president aquino vowed in 1987 to continue labor migration protection as part of her priorities. indeed, under her presidency from 1986 until 1992, three executive orders (eos) dealing directly with labor migration were issued. these were eo 126 which renamed the welfare fund as overseas workers welfare administration (owwa); eo 247, which subsumed the deployment of overseas filipino workers (ofws) under aseas 6(2) 271270 one agency, the philippine overseas employment administration (poea); and eo 450, which lifted the ban on the issuance of licenses to new recruiting agencies (gonzales, 1998). there seems to be a shift from labor export to migration management and the privatization of migration during this period. at this phase, ‘labor friendly’ provisions were incorporated in the 1987 constitution. for instance, section 3, article xiii of the constitution5 stated that “the state shall afford full protection to labor, local and overseas, organized and unorganized, and promote full employment and equality of employment opportunities for all”. an important phase in the development of the philippine labor policy started after the execution of flor contemplacion, a philippine worker, in 1995. after her execution, protesters took to the streets of the city, demanding from the government to reorganize its state migratory apparatus (tyner, 2000). in response, ramos endorsed the completion of the magna carta of overseas filipino workers (ra no. 8042) by the congress in the same year. this law marked a significant policy shift from the previous laws since it de-emphasized the economic aspects of the diaspora and created a higher standard for the protection and welfare of overseas workers (gonzales, 1998). in 2010, president noynoy aquino addressed some of the issues pending from his predecessor, including a commitment to not pursue overseas employment as a developmental strategy and a priority in the protection of workers (“ofws score,” 2012). in line with these action plans, the president successfully pushed the parliament to pass the republic act no. 10022 in 2010, an amended version of the migrant worker and overseas filipino act of 1995, which was signed during the term of former president gloria macapagal-arroyo. furthermore, congress also approved hb 5804 or the magna carta for domestic workers or batas kasambahay, which put in place a better legal protection for domestic workers or those who work within the employer’s household. in the course of these changes, ngos in the philippines played an important role in ensuring workers’ protection. they not only provide support and services for workers but, most importantly, advocate for the protection of their families back in the philippines. although the government helps to protect migrants abroad through various agencies, migrants’ families are often forgotten. the lack in protecting mi5 the 1987 constitution of the repulic of the philippines. (1987, february 11). retrieved from the government website: http://www.gov.ph/the-philippine-constitutions/the-1987-constitution-of-the-republic-of-the-philippines/the-1987constitution-of-the-republic-of-the-philippines-article-xiii/ dinita setyawati assets or commodities? aseas 6(2) 273272 grant workers’ families often becomes the source for criticism of existing government regulations. ngos thus focus on strengthening supportive systems for family members and caregivers left behind through programs rooted in the private sector.6 comparison of indonesia and the philippines this section compares the placement and protection of migrant workers within the regulatory framework of indonesia’s law no. 39/2004 and the philippine ra. indonesian law no. 39/2004 was passed by the megawati administration in 2004 with little consultation with civil society members or organizations (iom, 2012, p. 13). since its adaptation, the law has attracted much criticism from migrant worker activists. wahyu susilo, a policy analyst from migrant care, expressed his concern that the law has a limited scope of protection and a tendency to accommodate the placement process of migrant labor rather than creating a protection mechanism for migrants (susilo, 2010). in contrast, ra no. 10022 sought to improve the standard of state assistance and promotion of overseas workers’ welfare. by amending the articles, the law improved the rescue and assistance mechanism, expanded the scope of illegal recruitment definitions, set heavier penalties for violators, and included penalties for overseas employment administration members who did not follow the law. in its analysis, this section will briefly cast a look into the ilo conventions ratified by both governments. by comparison, the philippines have ratified a total of 35 ilo conventions, while indonesia has ratified 18 ilo conventions.7 both countries have ratified the un convention on the protection of the rights of all migrant workers and members of their families. despite both governments’ commitment to protect their nationals abroad, there are several differences in the provisions of the law that result in filipinos being better protected than indonesians. 6 for example, the philippine ngo women’s feature services (wfs) has programs with the private sectors, including “justice and healing for survivors of gender-based violence” and “the impact of female migration on the filipino families and strengthening support systems in the community”, retrieved from wfs website: http://wfstest.weebly. com/justice-and-healing-for-survivors-of-gender-based-violence.html/ and http://wfstest.weebly.com/the-impactof-female-migration-on-the-family.html. apart from wfs, other ngos in the philippines that are active in migrant workers’ protection are centre for overseas workers, blas f. ople policy centre, and asia pacific missions for migrants (apmm). 7 these ratifications include technical conventions such as c017 – workmen's compensation (accidents) convention and c157 – maintenance of social security rights convention. for a full list, see ilo website: http://www.ilo.org/dyn/ normlex/en/f?p=1000:11001:0::no::: aseas 6(2) 273272 defining overseas migrant workers general provisions of both laws provide different definitions of migrant workers. section 2 of the philippine law states that an “overseas filipino worker refers to a person who is to be engaged, is engaged or has been engaged in a remunerated activity in a state of which he or she is not a citizen”. on the other hand, the indonesian law article 1 stipulates migrant workers as indonesian citizens who meet the requirement to work overseas for remuneration for a certain period of time. while the philippine law incorporates a broader definition of overseas workers, the indonesian law covertly stipulates that irregular workers who used unofficial channels or migrated illegally will not receive protection under this law. this is a violation of the ilo convention c111 on discrimination, which indonesia has ratified, in which article 1 (a) states that: discrimination includes any distinction, exclusion or preference made on the basis of race, color, sex, religion, political opinion, national extraction or social origin, which has the effect of nullifying or impairing equality of opportunity or treatment in employment or occupation. the differing views on protection of undocumented migrant workers make indonesian workers more vulnerable towards physical torture and other poor treatment by their employers. based on a report prepared by the indonesian migrant worker trade union, most of the undocumented migrant workers are women who have obtained their employment without official documents, do not have standard salaries, and are not permitted to join a trade union (“indonesia to encourage,” 2011). this negligence of rights stands in contrast with the commitment of ilo convention c-087 on the freedom of association and protection of the right to organize, especially article 5: workers’ and employers’ organizations shall have the right to establish and join federations and confederations and any such organization, federation or confederation shall have the right to affiliate with international organizations of workers and employers. the indonesian embassy in malaysia recorded that there were more than 800,000 illegal workers in malaysia in 2009 (“tki bermasalah,” 2009). since they were perceived to be illegal, the indonesian government would not be able to take any affirmative action in response to the treatment of the host country towards these workers. ) dinita setyawati assets or commodities? aseas 6(2) 275274 key government stakeholders and responsibility the philippine magna carta provides more comprehensive details than the indonesian law in terms of key government stakeholders involved in migrant workers’ deployment and their responsibility. ra 10022 identifies the agencies involved, provides definitions of these agencies, and elaborates the responsibilities of these government units.8 in addition, the law incorporates the establishment of a national reintegration center for overseas filipino workers (nrco) and oversight committee (section 24) which comprises five senators and five representatives to be appointed by the senate president and the speaker of the house of representatives, respectively. comparable strategies are absent in the indonesian law. apart from the government agencies mentioned above, the department of foreign affairs (dfa) is also involved in the protection of the interests and welfare of filipinos abroad. under the dfa, the commission on filipinos overseas (cfo) is tasked to monitor and organize pre-departure registration and orientation seminars for filipinos leaving the country (gonzales, 1998). in comparison, indonesian law no. 39/2004 addresses the role of the regional government and the bnp2tki in the process of labor migration. as stipulated in article 5, the government is obliged to regulate, guide, implement, and monitor the placement of indonesian labor migrants, with the optional involvement of the local government, following delegated authority by the central government. the law then specifies the two roles of the national government, which comprise both execution and supervision. however, this situation creates a bias in reporting, since supervision should be carried out by non-governmental agencies (iom, 2012). bnp2tki is directly responsible to the president and in charge for the placement process of overseas workers, including servicing, coordinating, and monitoring in the pre-departure phase, during workers’ placement, and during their return. however, unlike the philippine law, the indonesian law does not stipulate which other agencies or government departments are to be involved in this process. as a result, the management of overseas workers has created a dispute between the agencies and high-ranking officials involved in this matter. it is important to note that a national agency responsible for the reintegration of workers, like the philippine nrco, is absent in indonesia. in the latter, the ministry 8 see republic act (ra) no. 10022 section 14, section 16 and section 20, which regulate the role and responsibilities of the philippine overseas employment administration (poa), department of health, and the establishment of a shared government information system for migration, http://www.lawphil.net/statutes/repacts/ra2010/ra_10022_2010.html aseas 6(2) 275274 of manpower and the bnp2tki implement the process simultaneously. furthermore, bnp2tki is often dependent on international or national ngos to handle reintegration cases, like in the project migrant village in central java, which is conducted in cooperation with iom (prihadiyoko, 2012). publications by the indonesian government tend to promote the workers’ success story, rather than encourage the formulation of new programs for productive living options in the home countries. educating workers a perennial challenge to the government’s public policy is the creation of educational programs for overseas workers to ensure their rights are protected. education and training of prospective labor migrants is vital to improve their knowledge of basic rights and reduce cases of mistreatment by their prospective employers. both the indonesian and the philippine governments have introduced workers’ education programs in their laws. however, the indonesian government has ‘assigned’ the rights to educate workers to private agencies, while the philippine government takes direct responsibility. some of the private agencies in indonesia have no valid permit, cram many workers into a dormitory designed for fewer people, and keep the workers waiting for months before being sent abroad (haryanto, 2011). the philippine law, however, states that the responsibility for the education of workers lies in the hands of the overseas employment administration (ra 10022, section 14, para. 2). in comparison, indonesian law no 39/2004, article 86, subarticle 2, states that in undertaking education and training for workers, the government can include recruitment agencies, other organizations, and/or the community. however, the government has failed to monitor whether the workers have received adequate education or training (syaiful, 2009). according to the transmigration and labor ministerial regulation no. 17/men/viii/2009, the listed pre-departure briefings should be delivered within a timeframe of at least 20 hours. however, a survey carried out by the institute for ecosoc rights found that the pre-departure briefing is delivered in eight hours (or less) to an often over-crowded room (iom, 2012). in other cases, a significant number of individuals did not receive any pre-departure training at all (iom, 2012). uneducated workers, upon their return, are more vulnerable towards the indonesian ‘one roof’ system at the arrival gate at the airport. indonesian labor migrants have to go through the repatriadinita setyawati assets or commodities? aseas 6(2) 277276 tion system at terminal iv at the soekarno-hatta international airport and are often harassed by corrupt officials and unofficial brokers (who often act as transport providers charging more for transport services to the workers’ hometowns) (safitri, 2012). rights of migrant workers and family members in response to numerous cases involving workers abroad, the indonesian and philippine governments have regulated legal assistance systems in their laws. for indonesia, the scheme is stated in indonesian law no. 39/2004 chapter vii, article 80 (1) and (2): (1) in consideration with the situation and period where migrant workers are situated in destination countries abroad: a) legal assistance is given in accordance with the rule of law in effect in destination country and international custom b) protection of the fulfillment of rights is in accordance with the contract and/or the rule of law where the migrant worker is located (2) further guidelines regarding the protection of migrant workers during their placement abroad according to article (1) are stipulated with government regulation. [author’s translation] however, this provision has proven to hold little weight since many labor migrants have experienced poor handling of their cases, indicating weakness in the legal aid services (liu, 2012). the embassies in host countries serve as government representatives and point of contact for troubled workers. however, the legal response to overseas workers’ cases seems to be practiced on an ad hoc basis. the task force (known as satgas tki) mandated with assisting and providing legal advocacy to indonesian migrant workers facing legal problems, especially death sentences, was formed only recently under presidential decision no.8/2012 as a response to mounting criticism against the government, especially after the case of ruyati (liu, 2012). in contrast, the legal assistance system for international and domestic cases is regulated in several provisions of the philippine ra 10022, with an emphasis on ‘free’ access and the inclusion of undocumented workers (section 1 (e), section 8, and section 18). another important issue raised by migrant worker activists from migrant care is the ratification of the un convention on the protection of the rights of all migrant workers and members of their families, which was issued in 1990. while the philippines ratified this convention in 1995, indonesia signed it in 2004 and was slow in implementing it. in february 2012, president yudhoyono issued a letter r-17/pres/02/2012 that mandated the ministry of manpower to discuss the process, followed by the paraseas 6(2) 277276 liament’s ratification in april 2012 (house of representatives, 2012). the ratification obliges countries to ensure workers’ basic human rights, including the right to return to their home countries, the right to be informed of working conditions before taking up employment, and the right to form trade unions. in contrast, the philippine law is more advanced in terms of ensuring the rights of migrants and their families. for instance, ra 10022 section 23 mandates that migrant workers are entitled to a compassionate visit by family members when hospitalized. bilateral, regional, and international cooperation the colombo process obliged the state to operationalize the mandate of protecting their migrant workers in domestic as well as international context (wickramasekara, 2006). according to the process, both bilateral cooperation and the memoranda of understanding are important for managing migration as they (1) ensure continued access to the labor markets of receiving countries, (2) reduce domestic unemployment pressures, (3) ensure protection of migrant workers’ rights and welfare, and (4) earn foreign exchange through workers’ remittances (wickramasekara, 2006). the philippine law elaborates several conditions that host countries must observe, including laws protecting labor and social rights of migrant workers, a signatory of multilateral conventions relating to the protection of migrant workers, and concluded bilateral arrangement with the philippine government (ra 10022, section 3). the latter article is found in the indonesian law, while other provisions were absent. article 11 and 27 of law no 39/2004 state that placement for overseas workers could only be applied in countries that have signed a written agreement with the government of indonesia. conclusion the analysis of indonesia’s and the philippines’ regulatory framework to provide protection for overseas workers highlights the fact that, the philippine regulatory framework is more advanced than the indonesian. the indonesian government clearly puts economic importance over the protection of workers. although both governments recognize migrant workers as ‘economic heroes’ of the nation, the philippines regulates migrant workers’ protection in a more comprehensive way. for instance, in dinita setyawati assets or commodities? aseas 6(2) 279278 opposition to the philippine law, by defining ‘migrant workers’, the indonesian law does not recognize irregular or illegal workers in their protection scheme. in addition, the indonesian law does not define specific roles of the government agencies, which often creates confusion when handling migrant workers’ cases. the role of private agencies in educating indonesian migrant workers also becomes a source of problems since the monitoring of those agencies is still weak. thus, it is important for indonesia to revise its law to maximize the protection of its migrant workers. for indonesia, the government needs to consider several aspects of the law, especially the definition of the roles of various government agencies and the education of migrant workers. the clear division of tasks between the philippine government agencies means that the government could work more effectively. in contrast, vague articles in the indonesian law about the role of regional government resulted in misinterpretations and conflicts among the government agencies involved in the management of migrant workers. as for migrant workers’ education, the article in the indonesian law no. 39/2004 that allows for unreliable private agencies to educate workers has made workers less prepared and aware of their rights and responsibilities (haryanto, 2011). this situation has made indonesian workers more desirable by employers as they tend to prefer workers who are less educated and know less about their rights. in response, the workers have more opportunities to find employment. the government enjoys more remittances, even though negligence of workers’ education has created legal problems that affect the government’s credibility. it also means that indonesian workers are more vulnerable towards abuse and legal problems. to fix this situation, indonesia needs to address its regulatory failure and impose fair protection for its workers – even if it is opposed by the host government. references amnesty international. 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(2010). agrofuels in indonesia: structures, conflicts, consequences, and the role of the eu. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 3(2), 175-193. this paper deals with agrofuel policies within the european union (eu) and the consequences of these policies in indonesia. that south-east-asian country is the world leader in the production and exportation of palm oil, which is one of the cheapest feedstocks for the production of biodiesel. recently, production has expanded signifi cantly due to the incentives of the international energy market. this paper analyses the interests and strategies of the key players in the palm oil and agrofuels business in indonesia, looks at the model of development they (re-)produce, and analyses their reactions to the problem of sustainability in relation to deforestation, land confl icts, and biodiversity loss through the expansion of monocultures and industrial agriculture. keywords: agrofuels, palm oil, land confl icts, eu, indonesia dieser artikel beschäftigt sich mit der agrartreibstoff politik der europäischen union (eu) und den auswirkungen dieser politik auf indonesien. das südostasiatische land ist weltweit führender produzent und exporteur von palmöl, dem derzeit billigsten rohstoff für die produktion von biodiesel, und dieser sektor expandiert aufgrund der politischen und ökonomischen anreize ungehindert weiter. der artikel analysiert die interessen und strategien der zentralen stakeholder in der indonesischen palmölund agrartreibstoffi ndustrie, beleuchtet das dahinterstehende entwicklungsmodell und analysiert die reaktionen zur nachhaltigkeitsproblematik in bezug auf die abholzung von regenwald, landkonfl ikte und verlust von biodiversität durch die expansion von monokulturen und industrieller landwirtschaft. schlagworte: agrartreibstoff e, palmöl, landkonfl ikte, eu, indonesien 1 melanie pichler studied political science and international development at the university of vienna. this article is based on her diploma thesis “neue allianzen in der umweltund energiepolitik: die politik der eu in bezug auf agrartreibstoff e und ihre auswirkungen in indonesien“ at the department of political sciences. in the winter of 2008/09 she went on a research trip to indonesia, where she conducted interviews with key stakeholders in the palm oil production process. currently she is doing her phd on agrofuels production in south-east asia at the department of political sciences at the university of vienna. contact: mel_pichler@hotmail.com aseas 3(2) 176 177 agrofuels: a solution or part of the problem? as part of an “energy revolution” (international energy agency, 2008, p. 3) and the “global green new deal” (united nations environment programme, 2009), agrofuels have been promoted as a solution to the multiple global crises of rising energy prices, climate change, and economic downturn. internationally, economic powers such as the european union (eu), the usa, brazil, china, and india are determined to expand and develop the use of agrofuels. mandatory blending of fossil fuels with biodiesel or ethanol fuel has created strong demand for agrofuels, resulting in the emergence of a global market. the eu mandatory 10 percent target for agrofuels by 2020 plays a key role in the global promotion of agrofuel production. as this volume of agrofuel is so large that the full amount cannot be produced inside the european union, the export of feedstock as well as of processed agrofuels was seen as a perfect chance for further economic development of countries in the ‘global south’ (european commission, 2005, p. 41). whereas brazil is the leading exporter of ethanol fuel (mainly produced from sugarcane), indonesia and malaysia are important biodiesel producers (oecd, 2008, p. 16) and leading exporting countries of palm oil,2 which is currently the cheapest feedstock for biodiesel production. palm oil production has expanded significantly over the last few years due to incentives and high demand from the international market. whereas governments of south-east asian countries see great opportunities for economic income from palm oil exports, the global boom has dramatic social and ecological consequences. huge areas of tropical rainforests are cut or burned down and people are forced to leave their traditional lands. the intention of this paper is to outline the expansion of palm oil production in indonesia and the connection of these developments to the european regulations on agrofuels. the analysis examines the different actors and their interests and strategies in indonesian palm oil production and deals with the discussion of sustainability and certification within the framework of the roundtable on sustainable palm oil (rspo). 2 together, malaysia and indonesia account for 85 percent of global palm oil production (wuppertal institut, 2007, p. 5). aseas 3(2) 176 177 european regulations on agrofuels the eu has promoted the idea of non-fossil energy sources systematically since 2003, when it signed the first biofuels directive. the directive included a target of 5.75 percent agrofuels on member states’ markets by 2010 (european union, 2003, art. 3). although human rights and environmental organisations raised concerns over the directive, a follow-up directive with a mandatory target for the transport sector was issued in 2008. this compulsory document requires 10 percent of the energy used in transport sector to come from renewable energy sources (eu, 2009, art. 3). so-called second-generation biofuels, produced from waste, non-food cellulosic material, and ligno-cellulosic material count double towards the target (eu, 2009, art. 21). nevertheless, these technologies are less competitive for now and the target will be mainly based on first generation agrofuels made from palm oil, rapeseed, soybean, sugarcane etc. (eickhout et al., 2008). furthermore, the eu included sustainability criteria in the directive. greenhouse gas emission savings from the use of agrofuels shall be at least 35 percent (eu, 2009, art. 17([2]) and agrofuels shall not be planted on land with high biodiversity value, namely primary forests, nature conservation areas, highly biodiverse grasslands, wetlands etc. (eu, 2009, art. 17[3,4]). however, the directive lacks clear provisions on how to calculate these savings. most importantly, so-called indirect land-use changes (iluc) will not be included in the calculation of sustainability (european federation for transport and environment [t&e], 2009, p. 13). indirect land-use changes occur when agrofuel plantations displace agricultural production for food, feed, fibre etc. to other areas and thereby cause deforestation. these replacements can cause a major increase in greenhouse gas emissions and “outweigh any savings from using biofuels as an alternative transport fuel” (t&e, 2009, p. 13). sustainability implies both environmental (greenhouse gas emission savings, direct and indirect land-use changes etc.) and social criteria (human rights, food security, land rights, indigenous rights etc.). however, besides the abovementioned weak environmental criteria, no social standards for agrofuels are mentioned within the mandatory sustainability criteria. instead, the commission is asked to report every two years to the european parliament and the council on the impact of agrofuels on social sustainability in the eu and third countries, including the status of ratification melanie pichler agrofuels in indonesia: structures, conflicts, consequences, and the role of the eu aseas 3(2) 178 179 and implementation of selected ilo conventions without further binding social standards (eu, 2009, art. 17[7]). for countries like indonesia it is likely that weak and insufficient sustainability criteria in eu agrofuel policies cannot lead to a major change in indonesian palm oil production, which is socially inequitable and often environmentally destructive. palm oil and agrofuel production in indonesia: an export-oriented model indonesia is the world’s largest producer and exporter of palm oil. in 2008, the southeast asian country produced 18 million tonnes of crude palm oil (cpo), of which 14 million tonnes were exported. the demand in the international market has boosted the expansion plans of the indonesian government. by 2020 indonesia intends to produce 30 million tonnes of cpo (secretary-general of aprobi [indonesian biofuels producer association], personal communication, 5 january 2009). production doubled between 2001 and 2007 from 8.4 million tonnes to 16.9 million tonnes (indonesian palm oil board [ipob], 2008, p. 1), which may be an indicator of the connection between agrofuels promotion and palm oil expansion. the currently largest plantation areas are located on the islands of sumatra and kalimantan (ipob, 2008, p. 8), while the expansion is concentrated on kalimantan, sulawesi, and papua. some of these new plantations are exclusively for the processing of agrofuels. in 2005, the government supported a plan to develop 1.8 million source: own compilation (from ipob, 2008, p.3; indonesian state official, ministry of energy and mineral resources, personal communication, 7 january 2009) figure 1: indonesian palm oil production 2001-2009 million tonnes 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 25 20 15 10 5 0 aseas 3(2) 178 179 hectares of oil palm plantations for agrofuels in kalimantan on the border with malaysia. 3 in the autonomous province of papua, where most of indonesia’s ethnic minority groups live, the indonesian state wants to convert 1.5 million hectares of tropical rain forest into a huge palm oil plantation (non-governmental organisation [ngo] representative, personal communication, 31 december 2008). the biggest concentration of palm oil plantations can be seen in the province of riau on the island of sumatra, where officially 1.4 million hectares of agricultural land and former rain forest is planted with oil palms (ipob, 2008). according to spks, a union of independent oil-palm-growing peasant farmers, the area used for palm oil production is actually 2 million hectares (secretary-general of spks, personal communication, 27 january 2009). palm oil production in indonesia is based on an export-oriented model (kok & hilderink, 2007): approximately 78 percent of the palm oil produced is exported (secretarygeneral of aprobi, personal communication, 5 january 2009). the most important export partner is india, which buys nearly half of indonesia’s exported cpo. the european union is the second biggest importer: the netherlands, germany, and italy are 3 the ambitious plan to develop 1.8 million hectares of oil palm plantations (1 million for the local agrofuel industry and the rest for export) along the border with malaysia competed against a conservation project, covering big parts of east and west kalimantan (indonesia), sabah and sarawak (malaysia), and brunei. the ‘heart of borneo’ project, initiated by the wwf and other environmental ngos, built a strong opposition against the palm oil project. accordingly, in 2006 the minister of agriculture admitted that only 180,000 hectares of land were suitable for oil palm plantations in the border region (potter, 2009). however, “the minister added that the government would look for other available land outside the heart of borneo conservation area” (potter, 2009, p. 101). source: ipob, 2008, p.33 figure 2: importing countries of indonesian palm oil in 2007 india china sri lanka others pakistan singapore malaysia italy germany netherlands melanie pichler agrofuels in indonesia: structures, conflicts, consequences, and the role of the eu aseas 3(2) 180 181 the major buyers. important regional partners are malaysia and singapore (ipob, 2008). in line with the global trend, indonesia has recently pushed through national laws on the mandatory blending of fossil fuels with agrofuels. since january 2009 all petrol and diesel for transport purposes has had to contain at least one percent agrofuel. by 2025 this will be raised to 25 percent. although indonesia wants to diversify its potential sources for agrofuels, palm oil is currently the only feedstock for costefficient agrofuel production (indonesian state official, ministry of energy and mineral resources, personal communication, 7 january 2009). the political economy of the indonesian palm oil industry: different actors, different interests this paper focuses on an actor-oriented approach towards analysing the structure of the indonesian palm oil industry and to emphasise “the role and interaction of actors in environmental conflict” (bryant & bailey, 1997, p. 25). therefore, i will refer to the state, business, international financial institutions, ngos, and grassroots actors as major stakeholders. in the following, i highlight some results of the empirical research in indonesia in outlining the interests and strategies of the actors involved as well as conflicts, coalitions, and consequences in the field. the state the indonesian state vigorously promotes the production of palm oil and agrofuels. officially, poverty alleviation, the creation of jobs, sustainable economic activities, and the reduction of domestic fuel consumption are the main objectives (indonesian delegation, 2008). experts and representatives from ngos, however, doubt that the current development of an export-oriented model can help attain these goals. a member of walhi, a network of the ngo friends of the earth indonesia, confirmed that the increasing production of cpo in indonesia is for export purposes and to fulfil biofuel production goals in other countries. indonesia uses less than 30 percent of the produced cpo, the additional amount is aseas 3(2) 180 181 exported (ngo representative, personal communication, 30 december 2008). furthermore, the need for a reduction of fossil fuels in its transport system is a new phenomenon for indonesia. the only south-east asian member of the organisation of the petroleum exporting countries (opec) quit the organisation in 2008, as it had become a net oil importer in recent years due to a considerable increase in population and low investment in the exploration for and extraction of oil (“indonesia pulling out,” 2008). nevertheless, not everybody in indonesia supports the palm oil boom. most notably, indigenous peoples and rural communities often oppose the development of monoculture plantations for the export business. the criminalisation of such communities and groups is a widespread strategy in dealing with resistance. a spokesman of the farmers union spks confirms that many communities are criminalised by the government and are accused of being anti-development (secretary-general of spks, personal communication, 27 january 2009). business various companies are involved in the field of palm oil and agrofuel production. producers, plantation owners and refinery companies aside, trading companies, banks and other financial institutions play an important role (employee of ta future sdn bhd [malaysian company dealing in palm oil and biofuel futures], personal communication, 22 january 2009). the indonesian palm oil business is highly centralised and only a few corporations control the whole industry. the most important companies are sinar mas, salim/indofood, bakrie plantations, raja garuda mas, wilmar group, astra agro lestari, ioi corporation as well as the state-owned palm oil company ptpn (ekonid, 2007, p. 41; ngo representative, personal communication, 27 january 2009). european or us investment plays a marginal role in the production of palm oil, which is mainly financed with indonesian, malaysian, singaporean, and chinese investment (ekonid, 2007, pp. 62-63; pye, 2008, p. 433). the biggest investors in indonesia are malaysian companies, which own more than 40 percent of the plantations (norman jiwan, personal communication, 25 february 2009). different strategies strengthen the current structure of an oligopolistic market: melanie pichler agrofuels in indonesia: structures, conflicts, consequences, and the role of the eu aseas 3(2) 182 183 as the maximal plantation area for one company is limited by law to 100,000 hectares (directorate general of plantation, 2007, p. 12) many companies create subcompanies to bypass this regulation. indonesia’s largest palm oil company sinar mas is an example: as indonesian law does not allow any one company to hold in excess of 200,000 hectares in papua4, sinar mas has split large forest blocks into several concession areas. for example, it has created 14 separate companies in a bid to gain control over 1.8 million hectares in the forested southeast corner of papua (greenpeace, 2007, p. 40). this expansion through division is accompanied by horizontal integration. many palm oil companies branch out to gain further access to related industries or beneficial services. again, sinar mas is an example: as observable from its website (http://www.sinarmasgroup.com/app.html), the corporation is engaged in pulp and paper production, has set up banks and insurance companies, and invests in real estate. another important issue is the various strategies with which companies try to take over land from communities and village leaders. representatives from the palm oil companies normally try to convince the key person in the village, mainly through donations and the prospect of great economic benefits for that individual and the people of the village (indonesian social scientist lian gogali, personal communication, 23 december 2008). plantation companies together with influential villagers often play an important role in the parcelling up and selling off of common lands. mccarthy describes this process in a village in jambi, sumatra: influential villagers had gone out into the common village lands (hutan lepas) and staked out parcels of land which were then sold at large fees to the oil palm companies … the plantation solicited the process, indicating to villager brokers the areas where … it wished to expand into and plant. the village head facilitated the process by issuing a letter, for a fee, recognising individual title over sections of communal land. this letter then became a basis for legitimate sale to an outside buyer – the plantation company (mccarthy, 2010, pp. 842-843). if donations fail, intimidation or even forced eviction is a common way of displacing people from their traditional land in order to plant oil palms. in many cases the military is directly involved in the displacements (lian gogali, personal communication, 23 december 2008; marti, 2008, p. 108). 4 in the autonomous province of papua the maximal plantation area is extended to 200,000 hectares compared to 100,000 hectares on the other islands (directorate general of plantation, 2007, p. 12 & 34). aseas 3(2) 182 183 moreover, a common strategy to convince the communities of the benefits of the monoculture production of oil palms within a plantation system is the prospect of good infrastructure for the production and sale of fresh fruit bunches (ffb, fruit of the oil palms). many independent palm oil farmers have problems selling ffb in time due to poor transportation systems and refineries being far away. 5 in addition, they cannot afford their own vehicles for the transport of the ffb to the mills (colchester & jiwan, 2006, p. 2 & 9). good infrastructure, especially in remote areas, is often a good argument for communities to sell their land and work for a plantation company. another problem in which companies as well as local authorities are highly involved is deforestation in respect of palm oil production. according to a study by greenpeace, cited in marti (2008), indonesia has the highest annual rate of deforestation worldwide. between 2000 and 2005, 1.8 million hectares of rainforest were destroyed each year, with palm oil expansion being a major contributor to this figure (marti, 2008, pp. 19-21). a large amount of indonesian rainforest is peat swamp forest that holds enormous amounts of carbon. however, in recent years the slash-and-burn practices to clear the land for plantations has released “hundreds of millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide, making indonesia the third highest contributor of co2 emissions in the world” (marti, 2008, p. 7). meanwhile, many surveys have confirmed the involvement of palm oil companies in illegal deforestation, logging, and clearance of peatlands. for example, a recent audit of indonesian palm oil giant pt smart tbk, part of the singapore-listed company golden agri-resources (gar) and certified member of the rspo, affirms oil palm plantations on carbon-rich deep peatlands (creagh & wulandari, 2010, p. 2). similarly, sinar mas is accused of destroying peatlands and rain forests for the plantation of oil palms (greenpeace international, 2010). another survey reveals the proven involvement of three oil palm plantation companies in illegal logging in west kalimantan. the relevant companies are related to the singapore-listed corporation wilmar which is one of the biggest agribusiness players in asia (khaimur, theile, & zakaria, 2007). the research findings indicate that “illegal logging and removal of forest produce (timber, rattan) is taking place without the legally required forest product removal permits” (khaimur et al., 2007, p. 54). furthermore, the oil palm 5 good transportation systems and marketing channels are essential to an integration of smallholders in the palm oil production as ffb have to be processed within 24 to 48 hours after harvesting (mccarthy, 2010, p. 826). melanie pichler agrofuels in indonesia: structures, conflicts, consequences, and the role of the eu aseas 3(2) 184 185 plantation companies clear forests without having conducted high conservation value forest (hcvf) assessments. international financial institutions like big palm oil companies, international financial institutions play an important role in the palm oil business. the international monetary fund (imf) and the world bank group are important actors in this context. the main interest of these financial institutions is the promotion of free trade and private investment: in short, marketbased instruments for the economic development of indonesia. the imf’s influence increased during the asian financial crisis in 1997. an important condition for the credits of the imf was trade liberalisation (imf, 1997). this policy can be seen today in the palm oil and agrofuels production, as the industry is focused mainly on the export and trade of products on the international markets. the current promotion of a free trade zone in the autonomous province of papua exclusively for the production of agrofuels is another indicator of these developments (ngo representative, personal communication, 31 december 2008). while the international finance corporation (ifc), as a member of the world bank group, is very active in the promotion of private investment in the palm oil and agrofuels sector, the world bank as such acts mainly as a “global environmental manager” (bryant & bailey, 1997, p. 97). the director of aprobi, paulus tjakrawan (personal communication, 5 january 2009), confirmed that the world bank is mainly involved in the clean development mechanism (cdm) and acts as a consultant for companies on carbon trading. non-governmental organisations ngos are important actors in palm oil and agrofuel production as they inform the population about the risks of a monoculture and export-oriented agricultural model, try to influence the legislative process, and monitor executive power (norman jiwan, personal communication, 25 february 2009). the ngos involved differ widely in size, structure, ideology, and legal status, and consist of big international ngos such as greenpeace, friends of the earth, or wwf aseas 3(2) 184 185 as well as small local and regional networks. the main interest of ngos in indonesia is to put the socio-ecological problems and conflicts regarding palm oil production on the agenda of everyday politics through campaigning, lobbying, and raising awareness. the focus of engagement ranges from supporting minority cultures and demanding nature conservation to broader calls for climate justice “which links the double environmental crisis of climate change and biodiversity loss to the dominant development model of the north, and its repetition in the south” (pye, 2009, p. 97). the foundation of spks, a union for palm oil producing independent farmers, is one step towards addressing the problems of peasants in the centralised palm oil industry. an indonesian ngo network with a focus on palm oil, sawit watch, established the smallholder union in 2006, after several years of informal efforts to inform and organise independent palm oil farmers in sumatra and kalimantan. through seminars with the communities, spks wants to strengthen the position of smallholders during negotiations with companies over land or commodity prices. furthermore, conflict management and resolution as well as providing information on the production of oil palms are major objectives. members of spks consist mainly of independent palm oil farmers (swadaya) who are exclusively responsible for the whole production process. however, the union explicitly addresses contract farmers (plasma)6 because they face the same problems as independent smallholders, especially in negotiations with companies and the enforcement of their rights (secretary-general of spks, personal communication, 27 january 2009). grassroots actors grassroots actors, a category which variously includes shifting cultivators, small-scale farmers, nomadic pastoralists, hunter-gatherers, poor urban dwellers or fishers ... have more often than not been at the losing end of environmental struggles with their lot in a politicised environment one largely characterised by marginality and vulnerability (bryant & bailey, 1997, p. 158). in indonesia, many of these grassroots actors are still very forest-dependent, which means that they gain a “substantial proportion of monetary and non-monetary 6 many of the palm oil plantations in indonesia are organised in a nucleus/plasma structure, whereby state or private plantation companies convert local land into palm oil plantations (nucleus), with the provision of smallholder plots (plasma) (mccarty, 2010, p. 828-829). the company acts as the plantation “core”, providing infrastructure and setting up the plantation. the smallholders are contractually bound to pay back the investments in the planting process with interest and within a given time period (peters, 2000, p. 38). melanie pichler agrofuels in indonesia: structures, conflicts, consequences, and the role of the eu aseas 3(2) 186 187 income” (marti, 2008, p. 55) from forest goods such as timber, firewood, traditional medicine etc. in many cases these resources are organised as “common pool resources” (marti, 2008, pp. 56-58). no single person has individual rights to these common resources and access is regulated collectively. likewise, land in general is often cultivated under customary rights, lacking state registered land certification (mccarthy, 2010, p. 829). the expansion of palm oil plantations highly endangers these collective strategies of agricultural cultivation. many indigenous people and small-scale farmers lack formal land rights and are therefore easily displaced from their traditional lands. this problem with land rights and marginalisation is highlighted in a survey on palm oil expansion on the island of sumatra: “the lack of secure and enforceable rights over both private and village common land weakened the landowners’ bargaining position and left them vulnerable to elite manipulation during the process where ‘informal’ and ‘fuzzy’ rights were translated into formal legal entitlements” (mccarthy, 2010, p. 838). especially, vulnerable landowners and marginalised grassroots actors are exposed to the risk of poverty and exclusion in the palm oil business. as du toit (2007, p. 2) states, “poverty and disadvantage themselves can often flow not from exclusion, but from inclusion on disadvantageous terms, into a system that in itself is exploitative”. furthermore, diversification of income is a common feature in rural areas of indonesia and helps to spread risk in times of commodity price fluctuation and climate change. the current palm oil expansion is based on a monoculture and a large-scale mode of production, which endangers the possibility of traditional income diversification and sustainable livelihood creation (marti, 2008, pp. 60-61). although these problems are documented, many communities are in favour of developing palm oil plantations on their territories. they expect higher income and new job opportunities as well as investments in public infrastructure (ngo representative, personal communication, 30 december 2008; pye, 2009, p. 92). in fact the advantages and disadvantages respectively of palm oil expansion for grassroots actors and especially smallholders are variable, depending on a number of economic, social, and political relations as well as power constellations that vary over time and space (mccarthy, 2010, p. 824). accordingly, state intervention and withdrawal on different scales have been crucial, further contributing to the marginalisation of vulnerable landowners in recent years. in the neoliberal transformation after the aseas 3(2) 186 187 fall of suharto, the state has withdrawn from direct interventions and inputs into palm oil plantations, further excluding independent small-scale farmers (indonesian liaison officer of rspo, personal communication, 12 january 2009). in this context, the commodity-specific characteristics of palm oil are important as the plantation crop requires large investments in quality seedlings, fertiliser, and transportation infrastructure (colchester & jiwan, 2006; mccarthy, 2010). the large capital investment required, combined with the physical nature of oil palm, such as its requirement for significant labour inputs only at intermittent stages in the planting, weeding and harvesting cycle, make it ideal for an absentee landlord-wage labour mode of production (mccarthy, 2010, p. 845). conflicts and coalitions having outlined interests and strategies of different actors in palm oil and agrofuel production, i briefly highlight conflicts and coalitions arising from this structure. at the centre of coalitions in the indonesian palm oil and agrofuel industry is “a collaboration between indonesian government, military and investors” (lian gogali, personal communication, 23 december 2008). this coalition is most important in areas rich in natural resources. local governments benefit financially from this coalition, which can be seen as a reason to invest in short-term economic profit rather than in long-term benefits for the population. the indonesian state facilitates the centralisation and expansion of the palm oil business through pro-palm oil industry legislation (local ngo representative in riau [sumatra], personal communication, 27 january 2009). in short the state acts as kind of a marketing centre for the indonesian palm oil industry (pye, 2008, p. 438). an ambivalent image can be seen in respect of the relations between companies and communities. communities that have not previously been involved in monoculture cultivation or wage dependence are likely to agree with the terms and conditions of the companies for selling their land and starting work as employees. in contrast, communities that have already experienced the process of palm oil production often oppose further expansion plans. one reason for these developments is the inadequate information for farmers about the real impacts of the agreements. melanie pichler agrofuels in indonesia: structures, conflicts, consequences, and the role of the eu aseas 3(2) 188 189 companies … frequently fail to explain to communities that the land they relinquish will not return to them at the end of the hgu [land use permit], but will instead return to the state … the community leaders are being duped into signing agreements which they think entail temporary transfers of use rights, when the government or company representatives know that they are actually agreeing to the extinguishment of their rights in land (marti, 2008, pp. 33-34). furthermore, payments are often minimal in relation to the value of the land as communities lack information on adequate prices and do not have any experience in negotiation processes. “as a result, communities are often under the impression that the land is only being borrowed and that they are being compensated for not being able to carry out productive activities on this land during the plantation cycle” (marti, 2008, p. 68). only years later they realise that they have lost their lands forever and are dependent on crude palm oil and its highly volatile price on the world market. accordingly, in 2009 the indonesian ngo network sawit watch (palm oil watch) recorded 576 ongoing land conflicts all over indonesia (sawit watch representative, personal communication, 25 february 2009). in many cases, land conflicts and the clearance of land for palm oil plantations go hand in hand with violence and the displacement of people from their traditional lands. a representative from walhi (friends of the earth indonesia) confirms that violence on the plantations and during negotiations as well as land conflicts are major issues they have to deal with (ngo representative, personal communication, 30 december 2008). another ambivalent relationship can be outlined between the ngos on one side, and the companies as well as the state on the other. ngos have to find a balance between their role as a spokesperson for civil society and the necessity of collaborating with companies and the state to reach compromises. the potential danger of an appropriation of ngos for business interests is widespread, as can be seen for example with the role of the world wildlife fund (wwf) within the rspo. many other ngos accuse the wwf of legitimising the role of the rspo as a plausible instrument to ensure sustainability whereas the real problems of the affected people in the ‘global south’ continue (international declaration, 2008). for a better understanding of this criticism, a brief outline of the structure and role of the rspo follows. aseas 3(2) 188 189 the roundtable on sustainable palm oil: sustainability for profit the rspo was created in 2002 following increased pressure on european food companies and supermarkets using palm oil in their products. especially, big international conservation and environmental ngos were successful with transnational consumer awareness campaigns. the main initiators of the rspo were the european company unilever and the environmental ngo wwf in co-operation with the malaysian palm oil industry (pye, 2008, pp. 447-450; rspo, 2004). the most important objective of the organisation is the promotion of palm oil as a clean and sustainable solution for agrofuels, food, and cosmetics. working groups have formulated principles and criteria for the production of palm oil, however, they function mainly as guidelines for companies as the rspo is a voluntarily association and membership does not really force a company to act in a sustainable way (indonesian liaison officer of rspo, personal communication, 12 january 2009). the principles and criteria try to create a win-win situation for all the various stakeholders (producers, trading companies, banks, ngos, supermarkets, the food industry, energy companies etc.), in line with its motto “people, planet, and profit” (indonesian liaison officer of rspo, personal communication, 12 january 2009). although rspo is a big marketing centre for south-east asian palm oil and may be essential for the future export of palm oil to europe, the roundtable cannot solve the ecological and social problems of the monoculture palm oil industry. addressing this issue, torry kusqardono from friends of the earth indonesia states that “certifying palm oil as responsible or sustainable makes consumers feel good and encourages increased consumption, which is precisely the root cause of the problem” (walhi, 2009). accordingly, the irrational and excessive use of vegetable oil for food and agrofuels is the main problem causing plantation expansion and deforestation at its current high level. voluntary market-based mechanisms without permanent monitoring and sanctions for violations of principles and criteria can never replace strict legislation and political will for a new system of palm oil production based on local demand and the needs of the local population (walhi, 2009). the voluntary nature and lack of implementation of rspo principles and criteria as well as the uncritical position of the industry-led initiative towards the large-scale monoculture production of palm oil has recently undermined the legitimacy of the melanie pichler agrofuels in indonesia: structures, conflicts, consequences, and the role of the eu aseas 3(2) 190 191 rspo (greenpeace netherlands, 2008; pye, 2009, p. 94; walhi, 2009). many important ngos and networks in indonesia such as greenpeace, walhi (friends of the earth indonesia), la via campesina, and other local and regional civil society organisations doubt the credibility of the rspo or reject its basic objectives and are engaging in new transnational campaigns that focus on the integrated framing of environmental, social, and human rights concerns related to palm oil expansion (pye, 2009, pp. 9496). conclusion in conclusion, the analysis of palm oil and agrofuel production in indonesia shows that existing inequalities between different groups have been strengthened while marginalised and vulnerable groups such as indigenous people or rural communities have been further weakened. the companies as well as the indonesian state strongly promote the expansion of monoculture and large-scale palm oil production, whereas traditional forms of cultivation, subsistence agriculture, and independent small-scale farming are not supported. these developments have led to social tensions and are manifested in hundreds of land conflicts between communities on one hand and companies and the state on the other. palm oil corporations are quite creative in their strategies to expand plantation holdings and gain access to local lands. conflicts arise mainly over land, including conflicts over land tenure, as well as uneven bargaining power between palm oil companies, state authorities, and villagers. the regulations on agrofuels within the eu may have a connection to the expansion of palm oil production in indonesia as production has been boosted to an enormous extent since the beginning of this century. the indonesian industry is highly geared towards the export of cpo as a feedstock for foods, cosmetics, and agrofuels but is not able to develop an integrated feedstock production and processing industry model. due to this situation, the country is highly dependent on volatile vegetable oil prices on the international market and is likely to fall short of its goals on poverty alleviation and sustainable development. although sustainability criteria may be an opportunity to absorb some of the environmental and social problems in feedstockaseas 3(2) 190 191 producing countries in the ‘global south’, the current sustainability criteria within the eu directive are insufficient and cannot solve the pressing problems in indonesia, especially those concerning land conflicts, human rights violations, deforestation, and land-use change. likewise, the rspo as a multi-stakeholder organisation, initiated mainly by european ngos and companies, has lost legitimacy, giving rise to other transnational campaigns against monoculture palm oil production and agrofuel 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(2009). global green new deal. a policy brief [monograph]. retrieved 24 october 2009, from http://www.unep.ch/etb/publications/green%20economy/unep%20 policy%20brief%20eng.pdf walhi. (2009, november 4). certified’ palm oil not a solution to social and environmental woes [press release]. retrieved 4 november 2009, from http://www.walhi.or.id/index.php/en/component/content/ article/357-certified-palm-oil-not-a-solution-to-social-and-environmental-woes wuppertal institut. (2007). sozial-ökologische bewertung der stationären energetischen nutzung von importierten biokraftstoffen am beispiel von palmöl. retrieved 15 november 2010, from http://www. bundesumweltministerium.eu/files/pdfs/allgemein/application/pdf/palmoel_studie_wi.pdf melanie pichler agrofuels in indonesia: structures, conflicts, consequences, and the role of the eu activism and social movements in south-east asia aseas 6(1) 18 editorial activism and social movements in south-east asia dayana parvanova & melanie pichler citation parvanova, d. & pichler, m. (2013). editorial: activism and social movements in south-east asia. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 6(1), 1-6. south-east asia has been characterized by rapid economic growth and enduring socio-political disruptions. after the second world war, many independent movements in the region ended up in or were replaced by authoritarian regimes. only in the past few decades, mass protests have led to the fall of some of these authoritarian regimes, including the philippines and indonesia. social movements and collective activism have played a crucial role in these upheavals. the region has seen an emergence of various forms of collective action and social activism ranging from smallscale mobilization to mass movements concerned with social justice, political and democratic freedom, gender, minorities, and the environment as well as civic, ethnic, indigenous, and human rights. the history of social movements is deeply connected with the struggle for social change. forming a heterogeneous compound of collective actors with a variety of demands and strategies, social movements essentially represent the “conscious, concerted, and sustained efforts by ordinary people to change some aspect of their society by using extra-institutional means” (goodwin & jasper, 2009, p. 3). as a complex system of relations and networks, social movements transcend local, regional, and national borders and connect very different actors on various levels (van dyke & mccammon, 2010). the heterogeneous groups and networks demonstrate manifold processes of emergence, formation, organization, and transformation, which render any analysis of internal and external dynamics a significant challenge to the researcher. in the past, research on collective action and social activism was mainly focused on issues of labor, class, and the nation, referring mainly to marxist and structuralfunctionalist traditions (della porta & diani, 2006). in south-east asia, this overlap of the working class movement and emerging nationalism became obvious, for example, with the strong independent movements in burma/myanmar, french indochina, d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -6 .1 -1 aseas 6(1) 32 indonesia (with the third largest communist party outside of the soviet union and china), or the philippines (anderson, 1998, pp. 7-8). the emergence of the so called “new social movements”, which mobilized actors across class boundaries, including women, students, ethnic minorities, migrants, or peasants, prompted a quick and innovative response with regard to empirical and theoretical analysis and has led to the proliferation of a range of social movement theories (della porta & diani, 2006). in this context, collective action and identity theory, for example, points to the social psychology of collective behavior (mccarthy & zald, 2009, p. 193; cf. calhoun, 1994; cohen, 1985; melucci, 1995), while resource mobilization theory addresses the more deliberate and strategic behavior and rational choices of conscious actors, notably in the early work of mayer zald and charles tilly (freeman, 1979; jenkins, 1983; mccarthy & zald, 1977). the political process theory focuses on the political and institutional environment in which social actors operate (mcadam 1982; tilly, 1978) and the new social movement theory highlights the structural origins of social conflict (melucci, 1989, 1996; touraine, 1981). each of these approaches gives some proliferate answers to questions with regard to the structural conditions and pre-requisites for the emergence of collective action, the cultural and symbolic production of meaning and identity, the role of political and economic regimes, and the availability or nonavailability of organizational and individual resources. these theoretical advances open a broad space for innovative analytical frameworks for the study of social activism and protest originating in the global south – a site rarely regarded as the place of production of social movements theory (boudreau, 2004). indeed, existing discrepancies between the geographical and historical roots of social movements theory and social movement activity today have been increasingly addressed by scholars from both social studies and area studies (ford, 2013; foweraker, 1995). historically, social movements have emerged as counterpart to the state and have challenged more institutionalized forms of political representation. consequently, media and research alike have fostered a perceived dichotomy between politicized social movements – often equated with civil society – and an institutionalized state. however, in the face of an increasing interpenetration between civil society and the institutional system (cohen & arato, 1992; keck & sikkink, 1998; mcadam & scott, 2005), questions with regard to both the concrete relation between social activists and other institutional actors, including the state, and the actual role of social movedayana parvanova & melanie pichler editorial: activism and social movements in south-east asia aseas 6(1) 32 ments in social and political change become ever more pressing. the contributions in this issue offer an insight into the heterogeneous struggles of social movements in south-east asia and present case studies from burma/myanmar, indonesia, laos, the philippines, thailand, timor-leste, and vietnam. ranging from labor, ethnic, and women’s rights to cultural expression and struggles for democracy, the examinations, however, exceed national boundaries and show the transnational character of present-day social activism. in the first article of the present issue on social movements in south-east asia, william noseworthy analyzes the emergence of the unified front for the struggle of the oppressed races (fulro) in today’s vietnam and cambodia from a historical perspective. with emphasis on the biography of the fulro leader les kosem and the examination of original fulro documents, which have not been referred to in any english language analysis to date, the author challenges a dominant narrative in the region that – based on james scott’s famous book – echoes a highland-lowland-dichotomy in the emergence of social movements. in his study of a more recent movement among highland minorities, micah morton focuses on the construction of identity and sense of belonging among akha minorities residing in the borderlands of burma/ myanmar, china, laos, thailand, and vietnam. drawing on ethnographic research in the region, the author shows how certain akha elites promote their specific concept of culture and cultural citizenship across national borders by creating space for what can be perceived as a transnational movement. in a third article related to mainland south-east asia, james buchanan presents an insight of the red shirts movement in thailand, based on participatory observation, field notes, and the translation of thai language sources, such as banners, signs, songs, and speeches, during the demonstrations in bangkok in 2010. like the case of fulro, the red shirts movement is intrinsically connected to the political structures and cultural context in which it emerged, and yet, both studies show that the analysis of these structures may not be enough to explain the actual rise, formation, and eventual transformation of collective action into a social movement (see also goodwin, jasper & polletta, 2001). in a similar manner, kristina großmann presents a more recent study on muslim women activists in aceh, indonesia. based on biographical interviews, the article highlights the subjective positioning within but also the reflective interpretation of the events after the tsunami in 2004. muslim women activists in aceh point at existdayana parvanova & melanie pichler editorial: activism and social movements in south-east asia aseas 6(1) 54 ing discrepancies between the aims of foreign donors in the region and those of local organizations, emphasizing a return to women’s needs at the grassroots level. offering a similar argument, julia scharinger examines some of the problematic aspects of participatory theater in timor-leste, which, placed in the hands of international donors and ngos, was eventually transformed into a tool for development, losing its stimulating and emancipatory potential. the author clearly shows the existing tensions between the roots of participatory theater in a bottom-up social movement and the more institutionalized and top-down approach applied by ngos and international donors. in the study of social movements nowadays, global phenomena and local politics present two entities that cannot be separated from each other (caouette, 2006; caouette & tadem, 2013; smith, 2002). steve beers outlines some of the ways in which transnational labor activism affects labor organizing in indonesia. by drawing upon the literature on discursive framing, the author shows “how local activists draw upon internationally circulation discourses of labor rights and adapt these discourses into the local political context”. also focusing on labor movements and unionism, niklas reese and joefel soco-carreon challenge the idea of the eventual transformation of precarious working conditions into conscious behavior and collective action. grounded in a comparative research project on the making of new social movements in south-east asia, the authors attempt to explain the connection between precarity and (the lack of) collective action in philippine call centers from a foucauldian perspective. in the final article of this issue, oliver pye and longgena ginting analyze the emerging resistance against a food and energy estate in west papua, indonesia, as an example for a new social movement that draws on different traditions of struggle. by analyzing the interests and strategies of local, national, and international actors engaged in the protests, the authors highlight three narratives of opposition that refer to indigenous rights to the forests, the indonesian ‘colonization’ of papua, and land reform. each of the articles in this issue deals with one or several specific aspects of social activism in south-east asia. although far from any attempt to cover the whole range or reflect the complexity of social movements and collective action in the region, they add knowledge to existing assumptions on the formation, oraseas 6(1) 54 ganization (or institutionalization), characteristics, strategies, and eventual impact of social movements. in subsequent sections of this issue, wolfram schaffar and ralph guth address critical questions with regard to research and analysis of democratization processes along liberal constitutional ideas by focusing on the participation in and negotiation of political processes in thailand based on three different movements. in dialogues with kinari webb and phra maha narong chaiyatha, bethany kois and carina pichler respectively present inspiring insights in new forms of social activism deeply rooted in the social and cultural context of the region. references anderson, b. (1998). the spectre of comparisons: nationalism, southeast asia, and the world. london, uk: verso. boudreau, v. (2004). resisting dictatorship: repression and protest in southeast asia. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. calhoun, c. (ed.). (1994). social theory and the politics of identity. oxford, uk: blackwell. caouette, d. (2006). thinking and nurturing transnational activism: global citizen advocacy in southeast asia. kasarinlan: philippine journal of third world studies, 21(2), 3-33. caouette, d., & tadem, t. s. e. (2013). the anti-globalization movement in the philippines. in m. ford (ed.), social activism in southeast asia (pp.119-137). london, uk: routledge. cohen, j. l. (1985). strategy and identity. new theoretical paradigms and contemporary social movements. social research, 52, 663-716. cohen, j. l., & arato, a. (1992). civil soceity and political theory. cambridge, uk: mit press. della porta, d., & diani, m. (2006). social movements. an introduction. malden, ma: blackwell. ford, m. (ed.). (2013). social activism in southeast asia. london, uk: routledge. foweraker, j. (1995). theorizing social movements. london, uk: pluto press. freeman, j. (1979). resource mobilization and strategy. a model for analyzing social movement organizations. in m. n. zald & j. d. mccarthy (eds.), the dynamics of social movements. resource mobilization, social control, and tactics (pp. 167-189). cambridge, uk: winthrop publishing. goodwin, j., & jasper, j. m. (2009). the social movements reader. cases and concepts. malden, ma: blackwell. goodwin, j., jasper, j. m., & polletta f. (eds.). (2001) passionate politics. emotions and social movements. chicago, il: the university of chicago press. jenkins, j. c. (1983). resource mobilization theory and the study of social movements. annual review of sociology, 9, 527-553. keck, m. e., & sikkink, k. (1998). activists beyond borders. advocacy networks in international politics. ithaca, ny: cornell university press. dayana parvanova & melanie pichler editorial: activism and social movements in south-east asia aseas 6(1) 76 mcadam, d. (1982). political process and the development of black insurgency: 1930-1970. chicago, il: university of chicago press. mcadam, d., & scott, w. r. (2005). organizations and movements. in g. f. davis, d. mcadam, w. r. scott, & m. n. zald (eds.), social movements and organization theory (pp. 4-41). new york, ny: cambridge university press. mccarthy, j. d., & zald, m. n. (1977). resource mobilization and social movements. a partial theory. american journal of sociology, 82, 1212-1241. mccarthy, j. d., & zald, m. n. (2009). social movement organizations. in j. goodwin & m. jasper (eds.), the social movements reader. cases and concepts (pp. 193-210). malden, ma: blackwell. melucci, a. (1989). nomads of the present. london, uk: hutchinson radius. melucci, a. (1995). the process of collective identity. in h. johnston & b. klandermans (eds.), social movements and culture (pp. 41-63). minneapolis, mn: university of minnesota press. melucci, a. (1996). challenging codes. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. smith, j. (2002). bridging global divides? strategic framing and solidarity in transnational social movements. international sociology, 17(4), 505-528. tilly, c. (1978). from mobilization to revolution. reading, uk: addison-wesley. touraine, a. (1981). the voice and the eye. an analysis of social movements. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. van dyke, n., & mccammon, h. (eds.). (2010) strategic alliances. new studies of social movement coalitions. minneapolis, mn: university of minnesota press. kontinuitäten im wandel: handlungskoordinationen von frauenrechtsaktivistinnen in aceh aseas 6(1) 8180 d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -6 .1 -5 aktuelle südostasienforschung / current research on south-east asia kontinuitäten im wandel: handlungskoordinationen von frauenrechtsaktivistinnen in aceh kristina großmann1 citation großmann, k. (2013). kontinuitäten im wandel: handlungskoordinationen von frauenrechtsaktivistinnen in aceh. aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaft, 6(1), 81-101. muslimische aktivistinnen nehmen in aceh eine wichtige rolle ein, indem sie soziale und politische missstände zu beseitigen versuchen und frauenrechte fördern. im aushandlungsprozess ihrer visionen eines neuen acehs positionieren sie sich zwischen ihrer persönlichen islamischen religiosität und acehischen identität sowie zwischen dem nationalstaat und internationalen konventionen. die frage nach den erfahrungen und einfl ussfaktoren, die motive, ziele, strategien und umsetzung frauenrechtlicher arbeit von aktivistinnen in aceh bedingen, steht im mittelpunkt dieses artikels. basierend auf einer 11-monatigen ethnologischen feldforschung und biographischen interviews in aceh, argumentiert die autorin, dass muslimische aktivistinnen ihre frauenfördernde arbeit nicht mit eigenen erfahrungen der benachteiligung durch patriarchale strukturen begründen, sondern die anfängliche triebfeder in der betroff enheit, empathie und solidarität mit physisch und psychisch versehrten weiblichen kriegsopfern sehen. nach steigender institutionalisierung und kommerzialisierung von wiederaufbauund entwicklungshilfe nach dem tsunami 2004 empfi nden aktivistinnen hohe diskrepanzen zwischen den zielen der geldgeberinnen und lokalen organisationen und plädieren für eine rückbesinnung auf die bedürfnisse von frauen an der basis. schlagworte: aceh; biografi e; frauenrechte; gender; islam muslim women activists in aceh play a central role in eliminating social and political ills and promoting women’s rights. in their visions of a new aceh, they situate themselves between their islamic belief and acehnese identity as well as between the nation state and international conventions. the central question presented in this article relates to experiences and factors which infl uence the aspirations, goals, strategies, and implementation of women’s rights work among women activists in aceh. based on an 11-month ethnographic fi eld research and biographic interviews, the author argues that muslim women activists do not perceive their work for the advancement of women as a result of their own experiences of discrimination by existing patriarchal structures. rather, the source of their engagement lies within their empathy and solidarity with physically and psychologically suff ering female confl ict victims. due to the increasing institutionalization and commodifi cation of reconstruction and development aid after the tsunami of 2004, women activists recognize large discrepancies between the aims of foreign donors and those of local orga1 kristina großmann arbeitet als akademische rätin am lehrstuhl für vergleichende kulturund entwicklungsforschung – südostasien der universität passau, insbesondere zu den themen gender, islam, prozesse von modernisierung und glokalisierung, zivilgesellschaftliche organisationen und friedensund konfliktforschung in südostasien, vor allem in aceh, indonesien. aktuelle publikationen beinhalten die monografie gender, syariat islam, aktivismus: handlungsräume muslimischer aktivistinnen nach dem tsunami in aceh, indonesien (2013) und den sammelband gewalt gegen frauen in südostasien und china. rechtslage, umgang, lösungsansätze (2013) – beide herausgegeben bei regiospectra (berlin). kontakt: grossmannkristina@yahoo.de aseas 6(1) 8382 nizations and emphasize a return to women’s needs at the grassroot level. keywords: aceh; biography; gender; islam; women’s rights einleitung aceh nanggroe darussalam, die nordwestlichste provinz indonesiens – die den namen veranda mekkas (serambi mekka) trägt – ist dafür bekannt, dass sich große teile der bevölkerung auf ihre islamische identität berufen.2 als einzige provinz indonesiens werden seit dem jahr 1999 sukzessive strafrechtliche aspekte der syariat islam eingeführt. die implementierung der syariat islam in aceh ist zum einen in den trend der politisierung von islam und der steigenden islamisierung in indonesien eingebettet. zum anderen trugen dynamiken innerhalb des versuchs der befriedung des fast 30 jahre andauernden sezessionistischen kampfes der bewegung freies aceh (gerakan aceh merdeka, gam) und der tsunami im jahr 2004 zu einer religiösen revitalisierung bei.3 die naturkatastrophe katalysierte und perpetuierte den friedensprozess in aceh. das im august 2006 ausgefertigte nationale gesetz über die regierung und verwaltung acehs 11/2006 bildet die rechtliche grundlage für eine politische und wirtschaftliche neukonfiguration acehs nach dem tsunami.4 der friedensprozess wurde von dem verband südostasiatischer nationen (association of southeast asian nations, asean) und der europäischen union (eu) vermittelt und überwacht, und den wiederaufbau finanzierten und koordinierten zu einem großen teil internationale organisationen. die erhöhung von frauenrechten und die partizipation von frauen ist auch in aceh ein fester bestandteil der entwicklungspolitischen agenda. zudem ist die bezugnahme auf den islam und die durchsetzung islamischer werte und normen, wie die sukzessive einführung der syariat islam zeigt, augenscheinlich ein wichtiger 2 siehe edward aspinall (2009) für die darstellung der ausbildung einer speziellen acehischen identität, die den islam als hauptbezugspunkt nimmt. 3 obwohl das nationale dezentralisierungsgesetz 44/1999 im jahr 1999 die provinz aceh bereits legitimierte, die syariat islam zu implementieren (miller & feener, 2010), was als vorstoß einer politischen lösung des aceh-konflikts gesehen werden kann, wurde der bewaffnete konflikt erst im jahr 2005 beendet (vgl. miller, 2009, für weitere informationen über die auswirkungen der dezentralisierung auf konfliktlösungen). weitere analysen bezüglich des zusammenspiels von religiöser revitalisierung und der verstärkten einführung der syariat islam nach dem tsunami siehe feener (2013) und großmann (2013). mehr informationen zur formellen ebene der einführung der syariat islam siehe lindsey, hooker, clarke, und kingsley (2007). eine gute analyse der islamisierung von nationalem recht gibt salim (2008). 4 einen guten überblick der politischen, gesellschaftlichen und wirtschaftlichen neukonfiguration acehs nach dem konflikt und dem tsunami bietet stange, großmann, und patock (2012). aseas 6(1) 8382 referenzrahmen. acehische muslimische frauenrechtsaktivistinnen entwickeln und rechtfertigen visionen für ein neues aceh, stellen forderungen, entwickeln strategien und setzen ihre agenden um. sie positionieren sich im aushandlungsprozess zwischen ihrer persönlichen islamischen religiosität und acehischen identität, dem nationalstaat sowie internationalen konventionen. frauen, die sich kontinuierlich über einen langen zeitraum öffentlich für menschenund frauenrechte und dabei für die interessen von mitgliedern marginalisierter gruppen einsetzen, bilden einen sehr kleinen anteil der bevölkerung. welche erfahrungen und einflussfaktoren bedingen die motive, ziele, strategien und umsetzung frauenrechtlicher arbeit von muslimischen aktivistinnen in aceh? welche triebfedern beschreiben sie für ihr anfängliches engagement? warum engagieren sie sich langjährig im zivilgesellschaftlichen bereich und setzen sich dabei für die interessen anderer frauen ein? welche externen faktoren bedingen ihre agenda und die umsetzung ihrer ziele? die beantwortung dieser fragen wird im folgenden artikel verfolgt, wobei die emische perspektive von aktivistinnen im vordergrund steht. im ersten einleitenden abschnitt werde ich die selbstwahrnehmung, ziele und strategien von muslimischen aktivistinnen darstellen. anhand von retrospektiven beschreibungen biografischer aspekte widme ich mich in dem zweiten abschnitt des artikels der darlegung des arguments, dass die weitergabe eines bestimmten wertekanons innerhalb der familiären sozialisation von aktivistinnen für die ausprägung ihres sozialen und politischen engagements von bedeutung ist. die darauf folgenden darstellungen der initiierenden momente, weiteren entwicklung und aktuellen ausrichtung von frauenfördernder arbeit muslimischer aktivistinnen vor dem hintergrund des konflikts und des tsunami beantworten die frage nach der triebfeder für ihr anfängliches engagement und der herausarbeitung von externen faktoren, die ihre agenda und die umsetzung ihrer ziele im weiteren bedingen. die in diesem artikel präsentierten forschungsergebnisse basieren in erster linie auf biografischen interviews mit aktivistinnen, die ich innerhalb meiner insgesamt 11-monatigen ethnologischen feldforschung zwischen 2008 und 2011 in der hauptstadt banda aceh und in lhokseumawe durchführte. ein biografisches interview – als spezifische unterform des narrativen interviews – eignet sich in besonderem maß zur erfassung der subjektiven repräsentation und retrospektiven darstellung von ereignissen (atkinson, 1998). biografische selbstrepräsentation gibt nicht nur einen kristina großmann kontinuitäten im wandel: handlungskoordinationen von frauenrechtsaktivistinnen in aceh aseas 6(1) 8584 einblick in die vergangene lebensgeschichte, sondern auch in die neuordnung der biografischen erlebnisse aus der heutigen sicht und position innerhalb der gesellschaft (rosenthal, 1995, s. 13). in diesem sinn stellen biografische erzählungen mehr als die geschichten von individuellen anstrengungen dar. sie sind vielmehr in die interaktionen mit anderen personen eingebettet, nehmen bezug zu spezifischen ereignissen und basieren auf erlangtem wissen und erfahrung. die analyse biografischer interviews ist in besonderem maß dafür geeignet, die persönlichen aspekte des sozialen engagements von aktivistinnen – also ihr selbstverständnis und ihre motivation – herauszuarbeiten. komplementär zu diesen internen faktoren stelle ich externe faktoren – wie strukturelle dimensionen und historische ereignisse – dar. die verflechtung beider ebenen präsentiert ein plastisches bild der handlungskoordination frauenrechtlicher arbeit von muslimischen aktivistinnen in aceh und leistet einen beitrag zu erklärungsmodellen für aktuellen politischen und sozialen aktivismus. die bezeichnung ‚muslimische aktivistinnen’ in diesem artikel bezieht sich auf neun frauen, mit denen ich während meiner forschung besonders intensiven kontakt hatte und die schlüsselpersonen in dem bereich der frauenrechtsarbeit in aceh sind. sie haben in den 1980er und 1990er jahren eine organisation mit dem schwerpunkt frauenförderung und frauenrechtsarbeit in den städten lhokseumawe oder banda aceh gegründet oder waren aktiv am gründungsprozess beteiligt. ich nenne sie anonymisiert asmah sari, cut nurdin, dewi, eka diani, ella diani, ilmu, rika syam, salma mahdi und tia. sie sind seitdem hauptamtlich in diesen oder anderen lokalen organisationen in diesem bereich tätig und bestimmen maßgeblich die inhaltliche und strukturelle ausformung von organisierter zivilgesellschaftlicher frauenförderung in aceh. das adjektiv muslimisch verwende ich, um deutlich zu machen, dass für diese schlüsselpersonen im bereich des frauenrechtsaktivismus in aceh der islamische glaube immanenter bestandteil des denkens, handelns und fühlens ist. religiosität ist intrinsisch mit der eigenen identität, weltanschauung und dem system der sinngebung verbunden. dies wird an der spezifischen kritik muslimischer aktivistinnen gegenüber der einführung von islamischem strafrecht deutlich, wie im ersten abschnitt des artikels über ziele, strategien, selbstund fremdwahrnehmung explizit dargestellt wird. aseas 6(1) 8584 selbstwahrnehmung, ziele und strategien die bezeichnung für aktivistin oder aktivist in der landessprache indonesiens, bahasa indonesia, lautet aktivis oder aktifis. perempuan ist die bezeichnung für frau. aktivis perempuan beschreibt eine aktivistin, die sich für frauenbelange einsetzt. muslimische aktivistinnen in aceh gehen mit der selbstbezeichnung aktivis perempuan äußerst strategisch und reflexiv um. sie verwenden den ausdruck situativ und kontextabhängig, das heißt nur in der abwesenheit beziehungsweise anwesenheit spezifischer personen, denn sie sehen die verwendung der bezeichnung in bestimmten situationen als hinderlich beziehungsweise förderlich für das erreichen ihrer ziele an. die angeführten gründe für die negative oder positive bewertung sind dabei weitestgehend identisch, unterschiedlich ist die konnotation der kriterien. die bezeichnung aktivis weckt oftmals zwei assoziationen: zum einen den vehementen und öffentlichen einsatz für spezifische inhalte, zum anderen die verbindung mit dem englischen wort activist. die mit diesen bildern verbundenen bewertungen der jeweiligen personen stehen sich oftmals diametral gegenüber. in gesprächen mit lokalen politischen oder religiösen autoritäten vermeiden aktivistinnen die bezeichnung aktivis, da diese als lehnwort aus der amerikanischen oder englischen sprache angesehen und mit westlicher hegemonie in verbindung gebracht wird. ebenso weckt in lokalen kontexten die assoziierte nähe von aktivis zu missionarischem eifer misstrauen. aktivis werden in religiösen zusammenhängen als missionarisch oder fanatisch angesehen, religiöse missionare werden beispielsweise aktivis islam oder aktivis kristen genannt. in internationalen kontexten hingegen, beispielsweise in gesprächen mit vertretern und vertreterinnen von internationalen organisationen oder in vorträgen und diskussionen auf konferenzen, verwenden aktivistinnen durchaus die (selbst-) bezeichnung aktivis perempuan. die aktivistin tia, die bereits für zahlreiche internationale organisationen gearbeitet hat, erklärt dies damit, dass die oben genannten assoziationen des vehementen und öffentlichen einsatzes für spezifische inhalte und die verbindung mit dem englischen wort activist in internationalen kontexten als qualifikationen angesehen werden. große einsatzbereitschaft werde sehr positiv bewertet, so tia, und die entsprechung des indonesischen ausdruckes aktivis mit dem englischen activist erzeuge die annahme, dass über ähnliche kategorien, inhalte und ziele gesprochen werde. kristina großmann kontinuitäten im wandel: handlungskoordinationen von frauenrechtsaktivistinnen in aceh aseas 6(1) 8786 die aktivistinnen tia, asmah sari und eka diani definieren aktivis perempuan als eine person, die sich für frauenund menschenrechte und einen humanistischen und gerechten islam einsetze. es sei des weiteren eine frau, die gegen ungerechtigkeit und unterdrückung (kezaliman) kämpfe, die männer als verbündete mit einbeziehe und den kampf für frauenund menschenrechte als einen integralen teil ihres selbst ansehe.5 um diese ziele umzusetzen, führen aktivistinnen projekte und programme auf der persönlichen, gesellschaftlichen und politischen ebene durch. die aktivitäten betreffen den ökonomischen, politischen, rechtlichen, soziokulturellen und religiösen bereich. frauenförderung soll auf jeder ebene erfolgen und integraler bestandteil jeder entwicklung sein. programme, die aktivistinnen daraus entwickeln, betreffen die aspekte armut, gesundheit – dabei vor allem mütterund kindersterblichkeit – bildung, rechtsgleichheit, gesunde umwelt, partizipation in gesellschaftlichen und politischen bereichen und gewalt. dabei gibt es programme, die in erster linie die persönliche ebene von frauen betreffen und vor allem darauf abzielen, frauen zu stärken, damit diese gegen patriarchale strukturen vorgehen können. dabei ist empowerment von frauen, pemberdayaan perempuan oder penguasaan perempuan, eine grundlegende methode und bestandteil vieler programme. pemberdayaan wird von aktivistinnen als ein prozess beschrieben, in dem die möglichkeiten (menciptakan suasana) und kapazitäten (memperkuat potensi) über entscheidungsprozesse in sämtlichen privaten und öffentlichen, zivilen und politischen bereichen von frauen vergrößert werden. ein weiterer bereich auf der persönlichen ebene ist fürsprache (advokasi). dies beinhaltet die fürsprache und die verteidigung von frauen, die unter staatlicher und privater gewalt in sozialen, ökonomischen, kulturellen und rechtlichen bereichen leiden. neben beratung und unterstützung von frauen in streitigkeiten, beinhaltet dies auch die bildung von schutzräumen. eine weitere strategie auf der persönlichen ebene ist, die kapazitäten von frauen zu stärken (capacity building). hierbei wird der englischsprachige ausdruck übernommen. meist beinhaltet dies die schulung von multiplikatorinnen und den aufbau von lokalen kadern, welche die numerische sowie die substantielle partizipation von frauen vor allem in führungspositionen erhöhen soll. im bereich des community empowerment und livelihood and economic recovery – auch hier werden 5 fokusgruppendiskussion mit tia, asmah sari und eka diani, 2. februar 2010, banda aceh. kristina großmann kontinuitäten im wandel: handlungskoordinationen von frauenrechtsaktivistinnen in aceh aseas 6(1) 8786 in der regel die englischsprachigen begriffe übernommen – sollen lokale gemeinschaften auf der grassroot-ebene in erster linie ökonomisch gestärkt werden.6 in anlehnung an das konzept von community development werden mikrofinanzierungsprogramme aufgebaut, die darauf abzielen, das einkommen von frauen zu erhöhen. obwohl die seit jahrzehnten durchgeführten evaluationen kritik an der umsetzung dieser programme formulieren und deren neukonzeptionalisierung fordern (berninghausen & kerstan, 1991), sind kaum veränderungen festzustellen. so beschreibt linda pennels (2008), dass frauenspezifische mikrokreditvergaben in aceh häufig zu der dreifachbelastung von reproduktion, gemeinschaftsarbeit sowie lohnarbeit führen und in vielen fällen den druck und die arbeitsbelastung für frauen erhöhen (s. 5). eine nach dem tsunami sehr verbreitete methode, information und bewusstseinsbildung bezüglich frauenrechten zu fördern, ist die sogenannte kampagnenarbeit. dies beinhaltet die durchführung von schulungen, diskussionen, seminaren, workshops, übungen, beratungen und ebenso das verteilen von broschüren und postern. themenkomplexe, die nach der einführung der syariat islam und dem tsunami verstärkt beachtung erfuhren, liegen im bereich der verstärkten zusammenarbeit nichtstaatlicher und staatlicher frauenförderung, der verankerung von frauenrechten auf der normativen ebene, wie die verabschiedung der charta der rechte der frau in aceh und die beteiligung bei der schaffung von islamischem strafrecht (qanun jinayat).7 die bezeichnung aktivis beinhaltet für aktivistinnen die persönliche identifikation mit den vertretenen zielen und die notwendige ideologische überzeugung von inhalten der arbeit und schließt personen aus, die sich beispielsweise nur aus ökonomischen gründen für frauenförderung einsetzen. die aktivistin asmah sari lehnt aus selbstkritischen gründen ab, sich aktivis zu nennen. ihrer vorstellung zufolge ist die bezeichnung mit einem bestimmen maß an erfolg verknüpft, welchen sie noch nicht erkennen kann. 6 in entwicklungspolitischen strategien der 1950er jahre wurde entwicklung in der regel mit modernisierung gleichgesetzt. in indonesien wurden in diesem sinne modernisierungsstrategien, die förderung von industrialisierung und die steigerung der produktivität der landwirtschaft weitestgehend zentralistisch gefördert. der gewinn dieser entwicklungen sollte sich dann, so die theorie, auf alle teile der bevölkerung ausbreiten (trickle-down-effekt) (vgl. braunmühl, 1998, s. 78-80). in den 1970er jahren zeigte sich, dass diese technozentrische sichtweise von entwicklung nicht die gewünschten ziele erbrachte. mit konzepten der community development und der einbeziehung von lokalen ngos in den entwicklungsprozess sollte abhilfe geschaffen werden. das konzept des community development, welches bereits in den 1940er jahren von der britischen kolonialregierung in indien implementiert wurde, beinhaltet die förderung von selbsthilfe und etablierung eines lokalen netzes von entwicklungshelferinnen, die programme aufbauen und koordinieren. in den 1980er jahren wurde die idee der selbsthilfe zu einem eigenen konzept entwickelt und fand als strategie der development from below oder target group oriented development, eingang in die entwicklungshilfe. 7 mehr analysen bezüglich der handlungsräume muslimischer aktivistinnen in aceh nach der einführung der syariat islam und dem tsunami, siehe großmann (2011, 2013). kristina großmann kontinuitäten im wandel: handlungskoordinationen von frauenrechtsaktivistinnen in aceh aseas 6(1) 8988 wenn ich kritisch bin, dann würde ich mich nicht als aktivis bezeichnen. denn als aktivis müsste ich etwas bewegen. ich aber habe das gefühl, dass ich noch nicht viel bewegen konnte, deshalb fühle ich mich peinlich berührt, wenn ich als aktivis bezeichnet werde. (asmah sari, persönliches interview, 2. februar 2010, banda aceh) muslimische aktivstinnen sehen ihre rolle darin, soziale und politische missstände zu verändern und bestenfalls zu beseitigen. sie sehen sich, trotz selbstkritischer betrachtung, als befähigt, politischen und soziokulturellen wandel zu induzieren. eka diani ist mitbegründerin der organisationen freiwillige frauen für menschlichkeit (relawan perempuan untuk kemanusiaan, rpuk) und leitete mehrere jahre das büro in lhokseumawe. sie nahm anfang der 2000er jahre eine anstellung bei der staatlichen institution nationale kommission gegen gewalt gegen frauen (komisi nasional anti kekerasan terhadap perempuan, komnas perempuan) an, entschied sich jedoch nach mehrjähriger arbeitszeit in jakarta im jahr 2006 wieder nach aceh zurückzukehren, um am dortigen wiederaufbau mitzuwirken. seit 2009 ist sie generalsekretärin von rpuk. ich hätte noch eine [wahl-] periode länger bei komnas perempuan arbeiten können, jedoch entschied ich mich bewusst für eine rückkehr nach aceh. ich habe gesehen, dass nach dem tsunami viel geld nach aceh floss und meiner meinung nach verloren danach viele organisationen in aceh ihre ideologische ausrichtung. die arbeit orientierte sich nur noch an vorgegebenen projekten, der berichterstattung und der kassenprüfung, um sich gegenüber dem geldgeber zu rechtfertigen. . . . der gefühlte nutzen oder gewinn für den zusammenhalt der gesellschaft ist sehr klein und deshalb ist es schwer, dass aceh seinen weg selbständig fortsetzen kann. das bewog mich dazu, zurückzukehren und diesem prozess durch meine arbeit bei rpuk entgegen zu wirken. (eka diani, persönliches interview, 15. januar 2010, banda aceh) des weiteren möchte eka diani durch ihre arbeit in aceh der politisierung des islam entgegen wirken. muslimische aktivistinnen befürworten generell die implementierung der syariat islam. die art und weise, in der die einführung vollzogen wird, beinhalte jedoch problematische aspekte: warum ich nach aceh zurückgekommen bin, ist die steigende politisierung der religion. stimmen, die das pro und contra der syariat abwägen sind menschen, die erstens sehr mutig und zweitens gebildet sind. aber die gesellschaft an der graswurzel weiß überhaupt nicht, wie sie mit der ganzen sache umgehen soll, wie sie an informationen kommt und sich eventuell gegen übergriffe wehren kann. ich denke, es ist sehr wichtig, die menschen an der basis zu informieren und platz zu bieten für einen kritischen und gewaltlosen meinungsaustausch. für die meisten politiker ist die syariat nur wichtig, wenn es um stimmen bei der wahl geht. (eka diani, persönliches interview, 15. januar 2010, banda aceh) neben der in dem zitat erwähnten politisierung von religion und der fehlenden information und kritischen diskussion über die einführung der syariat islam, stößt vor allem deren rigide umsetzung auf ablehnung. kritisiert werden die strafart der auskristina großmann kontinuitäten im wandel: handlungskoordinationen von frauenrechtsaktivistinnen in aceh aseas 6(1) 8988 peitschung sowie gewalttätige übergriffe, demütigungen und willkür gegen frauen, die nach dem tsunami an schärfe gewannen. die kritik von muslimischen aktivistinnen bleibt jedoch syariat islam-immanent und betrifft in erster linie die in ihren augen konservative, inhumane und patriarchale theologische grundlage, die deren umsetzung dominiere. nach wie vor sehen sie die syariat islam als zukunftsmodell für acehs politische, gemeinschaftliche und individuelle ordnung an. sie bewegen sich dabei argumentativ ausschließlich innerhalb des referenzrahmens des islam. kontinuitäten zwischen familiärer herkunft und politischem engagement der bekannten-, freundesund familienkreis begegnet dem ehrgeiz und der überzeugung, mit der aktivistinnen ihre ziele verfolgen, oftmals mit wohlwollen und unterstützung. der vater von eka diani bemerkte beispielsweise: meine tochter hätte sich auch für eine anstellung als beamtin entscheiden können. dann hätte sie ein sicheres gehalt und lange mittagspausen [lacht]. jetzt kämpft sie für mehr gerechtigkeit. zum glück gibt es noch einige, die das tun, sonst gäbe es in aceh überhaupt keine entwicklung. (eka dianis vater, persönliches interview, 15. januar 2010, banda aceh) zwischen aktivistinnen und ihren eltern oder dem sozialen umfeld entwickeln sich oftmals angeregte diskussionen über tagespolitische ereignisse, in denen alle seiten vehement kritik an nationaler und lokaler politik äußern und mögliche aktionen von seiten der aktivistinnen erörtern. viele der aktivistinnen betonen, dass die kritische haltung ihrer eltern gegenüber politikrelevanten themen und ihr austausch darüber sowie generell die erlangung von bildung und wissen wichtige aspekte in ihrer kindheit und jugend gewesen seien. die weitergabe eines bestimmten wertekanons innerhalb der sozialisation wird von fast allen aktivistinnen als besonders wichtig für die ausprägung ihres sozialen und politischen engagements beschrieben. sie stellen die bedeutung des einflusses ihrer eltern, meistens noch stärker ihrer mütter, in der ausbildung ihrer werteorientierung, lebensweise und einstellung heraus. ihre innere haltung, die sie ihren eltern zu verdanken haben, bilde die basis ihrer tätigkeit im zivilgesellschaftlichen bereich. die meisten aktivistinnen betonen, dass sie selbstvertrauen, selbständigkeit und kritisches denken vor allem durch ihre sozialisation erlernt haben. diese prägte den wertekanon der späteren aktivistinnen und trug dazu bei, dass sie fähig und motiviert waren, sich gegen soziale ungerechtigkeit auskristina großmann kontinuitäten im wandel: handlungskoordinationen von frauenrechtsaktivistinnen in aceh aseas 6(1) 9190 zusprechen. der aspekt der kontinuität zwischen den generationen ist von großer bedeutung. ihr soziales und politisches engagement bedeutet für aktivistinnen nicht, in abgrenzung zu ihren eltern zu stehen. vielmehr finden in den meisten familien lebhafte diskussionen über die themen und strategien von aktivistinnen statt, und viele der aktivistinnen sind mit ihren eltern in regelmäßigem austausch über ihre aktivitäten. die beschriebenen kontinuitäten zwischen familiärer herkunft und politischem engagement finden sich ebenso in sozialisationstheoretischen forschungen über die pionierinnen der politischen und sozialen bewegungen der 1960er jahren in den usa (feuer, 1969; flacks, 1967; whalen & flacks, 1989). ich betone die parallelen der ergebnisse meiner analyse biografischer aspekte von aktivistinnen in aceh und denen der erwähnten – zugegebenermaßen länger zurückliegenden – forschungen, da in rezenten arbeiten über soziale bewegungen und deren akteurinnen die betrachtung des einflusses von biografien und subjektivitäten auf handlungskoordinationen von aktivistinnen selten einfließt. forschungen zu aktivistinnen und frauenbewegungen in indonesien beispielsweise stellen überwiegend historische, politische und religiöse aspekte in den mittelpunkt. analysen behandeln themen wie nationenbildung (unter anderem blackburn, 2004; robinson, 2009), staatliche gender-ideologien (unter anderem suryakusuma, 1987; wieringa, 2002) oder die entwicklung von frauenorganisationen und aktivismus (unter anderem martyn, 2005; robinson & bessell, 2002). aktuelle forschungen stellen fragen der repräsentation und einflussmacht im islamischen kontext in den vordergrund. ein schwerpunkt ist dabei die neuinterpretation des koran und der sunnah von weiblichen religionsgelehrten (zum beispiel schröter, 2010). pieternella van doorn-harder (2006), siti syamsiyatun (2007), monika arnez (2009), rachel rinaldo (2007) und dayana parvanova (2012) beschreiben und analysieren den einfluss von muslimischen aktivistinnen und islamischen feministinnen auf die gender-spezifische agenda der zwei indonesischen islamischen massenorganisationen muhammadiyah und nadlatul ulama (nu). gemäß den sozialisationstheoretischen forschungen über die pionierinnen der politischen und sozialen bewegungen der 1960er jahre in den usa kamen diese politisch linken und meistens pazifistischen aktivistinnen aus studentinnenkreisen, vorzugsweise aus einem humanistisch geprägten, politisch liberalen, bildungsorientierten und wenig strengem elternhaus, das in der oberen mittelklasse verortet war (flacks, aseas 6(1) 9190 1967). diese familiäre sozialisation – so zeigen die forschungen – prägte den wertekanon der späteren aktivistinnen und befähigte und motivierte sie, sich gegen soziale ungerechtigkeit und autoritäre strukturen auszusprechen. die these, die vor allem durch psychoanalytische ansätze gestärkt wurde, dass generationenkonflikte und die politische divergenz zwischen eltern und ihren kindern wesentliche faktoren in der ausprägung von politischem engagement der jungen generation sein könnte (feuer, 1969; middleton & putney, 1963), wurde damit zumindest teilweise entkräftet (flacks, 1970/1971; westby & braungart, 1966). die forschungen von flacks (1967) zeigen, dass die wurzeln für die anfänglichen studentischen politischen und sozialen bewegungen in den usa nicht auf gemeinsamer erfahrung von ausbeutung, materieller benachteiligung oder politischer machtlosigkeit gründeten, denn diese jugendbewegungen formierten sich aus studierenden, die aus ökonomisch und soziokulturell privilegierten familien kamen. vielmehr sind die aspekte der bildung und familiären herkunft für das engagement gegen soziale ungerechtigkeit relevant. dabei sei, so flacks, weniger ausschlaggebend, was genau in der erziehung passiere, als vielmehr, dass die erfahrungen der kinderund jugendzeit in einer spezifischen subkultur der amerikanischen mittelklasse stattfanden. spezifische werte, normen, perspektiven und innere haltungen innerhalb dieser subkultur wurden durch soziale praktiken der beteiligten mitglieder, seien es familien, nachbarn oder freundinnen, produziert, reproduziert und transformiert. flacks (1971) nennt diese subkultur „intelligentsia“, eine soziale schicht oder gruppe, die in gouldners begriff die kontrolleure des kulturellen kapitals sind (gouldner, 1979). zwei aspekte der moralischen implikationen sind der subkultur der intelligentsia inhärent: zum einen das engagement für soziale entwicklung und zweitens das selbstbewusstsein der mitglieder dieser gruppe, dass sie in einer herausragenden art und weise das potential zu der erfüllung des projektes des sozialen wandels, innehaben. auch wenn der fokus und der umfang dieses artikels die beschreibung der elterngeneration von aktivistinnen und deren zuordnung in einer spezifischen subkulturellen gruppe nicht zulassen, gibt es, wie beschrieben, sowohl in der familiären sozialisation als auch in der persönlichen überzeugung der aktivistinnen die dimension der moralischen implikationen bezüglich des engagements für soziale entwicklung. der persönliche einsatz ihrer töchter wird von den eltern positiv und als erfolgversprechend bewertet. aktivistinnen sehen sich selbst als potentiell befähigt, sozialen wandel zu evozieren. kristina großmann kontinuitäten im wandel: handlungskoordinationen von frauenrechtsaktivistinnen in aceh aseas 6(1) 9392 konflikt als initiator – die anfänge frauenfördernder arbeit der folgende teil des artikels behandelt den bewaffneten konflikt in aceh als triebfeder des anfänglichen engagements von muslimischen aktivistinnen und wieso sie sich speziell für die förderung von frauenbelangen einsetzen. gründerinnen von zivilgesellschaftlichen organisationen in aceh sind unter anderem frauen, die selbst in gebieten wohnten, die als panas (heiß) galten. das sind regionen, in denen zeitweise schwere kämpfe zwischen dem indonesischen militär – tni (tentara nasional indonesia) – und den bewaffneten streitkräften der gam – tna (teuntara neugara aceh) – stattfanden, wie im distrikt nord-aceh und in randbezirken der stadt lhokseumawe.8 diese frauen waren auf grund dessen in besonderem maß mit den auswirkungen des krieges konfrontiert. cut nurdin, die in lhokseumawe aufwuchs, erzählt von der häufung von berichteten oder erlebten menschenrechtsverletzungen, die dazu führten, dass sie sich für die verbesserung der situation von kriegsopfern engagierte. ilmu erachtet als schlüsselerlebnis, dass sie bewaffnete kämpfe überlebte. auch die meisten anderen aktivistinnen beschreiben betroffenheit, empathie und solidarität mit physisch und psychisch versehrten frauen als anfängliche triebfeder ihres engagements. solidarität beinhaltete für die mehrzahl der aktivistinnen in erster linie die verbundenheit mit anderen frauen, der eigenen familie und freundinnen, und nur in zweiter linie die unterstützung des politischen ziels der unabhängigkeit mit dem einsatz von waffen. da jedoch die regierung indonesiens als kolonialmacht angesehen wurde und die mehrzahl der frauenrechtsverletzungen, wie vergewaltigung, folter und mord, von mitgliedern des indonesischen militärs begangen wurden, sympathisierten aktivistinnen mit der gam. „eindringlinge aus java“, die „von außen“ (cut nurdin, persönliches interview, 19. februar 2010, banda aceh) kamen, wurden hauptsächlich für menschenrechtsverletzungen während des konflikts verantwortlich gemacht. benachteiligungen durch patriarchale strukturen innerhalb acehischer gesellschafts-, gemeinschafts-, und familienordnungen wurden von aktivistinnen weniger in verbindung mit initiierenden momenten für ihre zivilgesellschaftliche orga8 die militärischen auseinandersetzungen während des bewaffneten sezessionistischen konflikts in aceh steigerten sich während dreier phasen: von 1989 bis 1998 innerhalb der phase der militärischen operationszone (daerah operasi militer, dom), direkt nach dem sturz suhartos im jahr 1998 und ab dem jahr 2003, nachdem die damalige präsidentin megawati sukarnoputri das kriegsrecht über aceh verhängte. aseas 6(1) 9392 nisierung genannt. diesbezügliche themen tauchen auch nicht in den damaligen programmen der organisationen auf, in denen es hauptsächlich um oben genannte frauenrechtsverletzungen und missstände in lagern von binnenflüchtlingen, sogenannten idp (internally displaced persons), ging. die unterstützung der konfliktopfer durch aktivistinnen während der phase der militärischen operationszone dom (daerah operasi militer) basierte in der regel auf freiwilliger und unentgeltlicher arbeit. aktivistinnen sammelten zum teil geld, nahrungsmittel, kleider, planen, kochutensilien und andere gebrauchsgegenstände von ihren freundinnen und verwandten, um konfliktopfer in entlegenen gebieten zu versorgen. den transport der hilfsgüter bewerkstelligten sie oftmals mit öffentlichen bussen, die fahrtkosten finanzierten sie durch spenden von freundinnen. aktivistinnen berichten, dass es viele freiwillige gab, die sich an solchen aktionen beteiligten oder finanzielle unterstützung leisteten. die zunahme bewaffneter übergriffe, die wachsende mediale verbreitung von begangenen kriegsgräueln seit ende der 1990er jahre und vor allem die steigende pressefreiheit nach dem sturz des autoritären präsidenten suhartos im jahr 1998 führten dazu, dass erstmals berichte über mord, folter, vergewaltigung, das niederbrennen von häusern und andere maßnahmen kollektiver bestrafungen durch das indonesische militär von acehischen, indonesischen und internationalen medien öffentlich verbreitet wurden. die gesteigerte internationale beachtung des konflikts in aceh trug dazu bei, dass aktivistinnen, die sich mit gender-spezifischen problemen in der konfliktregion auseinandersetzten, verstärkte aufmerksamkeit erhielten. ihr zivilgesellschaftliches engagement wurde kanalisiert und der aufbau eines institutionellen rahmens gefördert. mit der steigenden institutionalisierung von nothilfe durch die gründung von organisationen war die voraussetzung der finanzierung durch nationale und internationale geldgeber geschaffen. die informationen über und kontakte zu internationalen organisationen wurden anfänglich innerhalb der vorhandenen netzwerke weitergegeben. die langjährigen erfahrungen im konfliktgebiet aceh und der permanente zugang zu zielgruppen in ländlichen gebieten stellten für aktivistinnen eine einzigartige kompetenz und ressource für die arbeit in nationalen und internationalen organisationen dar. diese qualifizierung auf dem gebiet der nothilfe stellten aktivistinnen selbst jedoch nicht als besondere fähigkeit dar, sondern beschrieben eher ein gefühl kristina großmann kontinuitäten im wandel: handlungskoordinationen von frauenrechtsaktivistinnen in aceh aseas 6(1) 9594 der unterlegenheit gegenüber kolleginnen in nationalen und internationalen organisationen. als begründung führte asmah sari an, dass sie durch den konflikt in aceh ihre arbeit nur auf konfliktrelevante themen konzentrierten und von national und international geführten diskursen über gender-spezifische themen abgeschottet waren: durch meine arbeit bei der . . . [lokalen organisation] in aceh bin ich mit . . . [einer nationalen organisation] in jakarta in kontakt gekommen. sie haben mich überredet, dass ich sonderbeauftragte für aceh werde. ich war sehr unsicher, ob ich die anforderungen der arbeit auf der nationalen ebene erfüllen kann. sie aber meinten, dass ich eine spezielle kompetenz habe, die keine andere besitze: ich habe den konflikt miterlebt. . . . ich merkte inhaltlich bald, dass sich die schwerpunkte der arbeit in aceh, in einer konfliktgegend, sehr von denen auf nationaler ebene unterschieden. die mitarbeiterinnen . . . [der nationalen organisation] beispielsweise diskutierten, ob und wie sich ein neuer feminismus nach dem sturz suhartos formte. ich hatte mir dazu noch keine gedanken gemacht. wir waren in aceh überhaupt nicht an diesem punkt. (salma mahdi, persönliches interview, 17. märz 2010, banda aceh) zäsur tsunami die abschottung acehs fand nach dem tsunami ein jähes ende. die indonesische provinz rückte in den mittelpunkt finanzkräftiger nothilfeund wiederaufbauprogramme internationaler, kirchlicher und humanitärer organisationen, der weltbank und staatlicher entwicklungsdienste. die ersten kostenpläne der anträge für nothilfe von organisationen fielen meist bescheiden aus. sie enthielten in der regel die kosten der zu verteilenden mittel, ein geringes honorar und fahrtkostenerstattung für die fahrt mit dem öffentlichen nahverkehr.9 mit steigender institutionalisierung, professionalisierung und kommerzialisierung von notfallund entwicklungshilfe stieg nicht nur der umfang der programme, sondern auch die höhe der honorare.10 nach dem tsunami erreichten die höhe der honorare für beraterinnentätigkeiten internationaler organisationen, aber auch das einkommen für mitarbeiterinnen in zivilgesellschaftlichen organisationen und angestellte wie fahrer oder haushaltshilfen den absoluten zenit.11 nachdem die erste phase der notfallhilfe beendet war, sanken zwar die höhe 9 beispielsweise enthielt der im jahr 1997 aufgestellte kostenplan einer organisation für die versorgung von zirka 30 frauen und kindern mit nahrungsmitteln und medizinischer grundversorgung in einer notunterkunft unter anderem ein honorar von umgerechnet eur 25 pro monat für eine mitarbeiterin. 10 die erzielten einkünfte einer aktivistin durch die tätigkeit in einer organisation pendelten sich von anfang der 2000er jahre bis ende des jahres 2004, vor dem tsunami, auf einem niveau ein, welches mit dem einkommen einer lehrerin vergleichbar war. 11 das einkommen eines fahrers in einer der vereinten nationen affiliierten organisation war beispielsweise vergleichbar mit dem eines direktors einer universität in banda aceh. diese unverhältnismäßigkeiten waren unter anderem auf pauschalierte honorare innerhalb der notfallhilfe zurückzuführen, die nicht im verhältnis zum aseas 6(1) 9594 und menge der möglichen einkünfte innerhalb der notfallund wiederaufbauhilfe, das einkommensniveau in dieser sparte blieb jedoch generell hoch. für die implementierung der programme wurde eine vielzahl von lokalen angestellten, beraterinnen und expertinnen benötigt und neue, befristete arbeitsplätze geschaffen. neue positionen, wie beispielsweise die der sogenannten gender-expertin, wurden kreiert, um die vorgegebenen standards innerhalb der implementierung westlicher entwicklungszusammenarbeit einzuhalten. die meisten programme müssen geschlechtsspezifische gleichstellung in sämtlichen bereichen, sogenanntes gendermainstreaming, garantieren und werden nach einer sogenannten g-kennung eingestuft. diese gliedert sich in drei kategorien, die helfen sollen, programme nach ihrem beitrag zur umsetzung der gleichberechtigung der geschlechter und stärkung der rechte von frauen zu beurteilen.12 die position einer sogenannten gender-expertin ist, als teil der strategie des gender mainstreaming, unter anderem für die gewährleistung der geschlechtsspezifischen gleichstellung zuständig. die genaue bezeichnung dieser position ist ebenso vielseitig wie deren aufgabenbeschreibung. so gibt sich oft die person, welche die position besetzt, selbständig eine bezeichnung. meist wird ein englischsprachiger ausdruck, wie beispielsweise advisor for gender oder eine mischform aus dem englischen und indonesischen, wie beispielsweise gender spesialist13, gewählt. die aufgaben werden bei der einstellung grob skizziert oder entwickeln sich während der ersten monate der anstellung. sie enthalten meist die erstellung der pläne zur umsetzung von gender-sensibler haushaltsplanung, sogenanntes gender budgeting, die konzeptualisierung und durchführung von seminaren zu geschlechtsspezifischen themen oder die programmübergreifende kontrolle und evaluierung von gender mainstreaming. die position als gender-expertin, beraterin oder programmdirektorin in internationalen organisationen, der weltbank oder bilateralen entwicklungsdiensten verhalfen aktivistinnen zum einen zu überdurchschnittlich hohen einkünften und zum anderen führte die stark gestiegene nachfrage an ihrer expertise dazu, dass viele acehische aktivistinnen ihr empfinden der unterlegenheit ablegten. einkommensniveau in aceh standen. 12 für die mitgliedsstaaten der oecd gelten seit dem jahr 1997 die gender policy markers, die sogenannten g-kennungen. sie bestehen aus drei kennungen, die sich auf die zielsetzung des vorhabens beziehen. in programmen der kategorie g-2 ist die gleichberechtigung der geschlechter ein hauptziel, in der kategorie g-1 hat es ableitend positive wirkung und g-0 programme haben kein potential, zur gleichberechtigung der geschlechter beizutragen. im jahr 2001 hat das bundesministerium für wirtschaftliche zusammenarbeit und entwicklung die einstufung aller programme der deutschen entwicklungszusammenarbeit nach den g-kennungen verbindlich eingeführt (gtz, 2006). 13 das wort in bahasa indonesia für spezialist lautet spesialis. kristina großmann kontinuitäten im wandel: handlungskoordinationen von frauenrechtsaktivistinnen in aceh aseas 6(1) 9796 durch die schaffung einer großen anzahl von neuen arbeitsplätzen im menschen und frauenrechtsbereich entwickelte sich eine gruppe von mitarbeiterinnen, die sich in sehr verschiedener weise mit den inhalten ihrer arbeit identifizieren, als das bei den langjährigen aktivistinnen der fall ist. für die mehrzahl der neu eingestellten mitarbeiterinnen stellt die arbeit in einer zivilgesellschaftlichen organisation in erster linie eine möglichkeit dar, geld zu verdienen und wurde oft als ein sprungbrett in die berufstätigkeit genutzt. das engagement von aktivistinnen, die während des konfliktes zum teil unter einsatz ihres lebens und meistens unentgeltlich humanitäre hilfe leisteten, wurde durch mitarbeiterinnen kontrastiert, die ihre tätigkeit in einer zivilgesellschaftlichen organisation in aceh in erster linie als verdienstquelle und qualifikationsmöglichkeit auf ihrer karriereleiter sahen.14 dewi kommentiert die ernennung einer frau, die vorher weder in zivilgesellschaftlichen organisationen noch im bereich frauen oder gender gearbeitet hat, zur gender-expertin einer internationalen organisation folgendermaßen: „es ist schon ein komisches gefühl, wenn ich dieser sogenannten gender-expertin in gemeinsamen treffen gegenüber sitze und ihr erst einmal erklären muss, was genderbudgeting bedeutet“ (dewi, persönliches interview, 2. oktober 2009, banda aceh). trotz ihrer kritik bezüglich der fehlenden qualifikation, erfahrung und ideologie sahen die meisten aktivistinnen dem zuwachs an mitarbeiterinnen kurz nach dem tsunami gelassen entgegen. zum einen profitierten aktivistinnen selbst von den erhöhten finanziellen und nicht-materiellen ressourcen. zum anderen wussten sie, dass mit dem ende der wiederaufbauhilfe im jahr 2009 viele neu entstandene positionen abgebaut werden würden und im anschluss daran wieder die qualifikation, erfahrung und der kontakt zu den bestehenden netzwerken ausschlaggebend für die besetzung einer position in einer zivilgesellschaftlichen organisation wurde. die zahlreichen anfragen für beraterinnentätigkeiten nach dem tsunami, die damit verbundene steigende arbeitsdichte und die oft empfundene fehlende sinnhaftigkeit der tätigkeiten wurden von vielen aktivistinnen als störend empfunden. die aktivistin salma mahdi resümiert, dass es „oft nicht darum ginge, die gelder sinnvoll zu verwenden, sondern darum, sie überhaupt einfach auszugeben. das entspricht nicht meiner intention“ (salma mahdi, persönliches interview, 17. märz 2010, banda 14 viele berufseinsteigerinnen in der entwicklungszusammenarbeit konnten aufgrund ihrer position in aceh nach dem tsunami eine weiterführende anstellung in internationalen, bioder multilateralen organisationen erhalten. aseas 6(1) 9796 aceh). deshalb lehnten einige aktivistinnen die angebote für positionen und beraterinnenverträge bei internationalen organisationen kategorisch ab. aufgrund von diskrepanzen zwischen den zielen der geldgeber und lokalen organisationen reagierten auch einige aktivistinnen in der wiederaufbauhilfe ablehnend auf förderungen. dadurch haben sie größere unabhängigkeit in der umsetzung ihrer ziele, so eka diani (persönliches interview, 23. februar 2011, banda aceh). tia hingegen sieht – je nach der zielsetzung der jeweiligen lokalen organisation – ein gewisses maß an entscheidungsfreiheit, obwohl sie prinzipiell von einem abhängigkeitsverhältnis von ausländischen geldgebern zu ungunsten der lokalen organisationen ausgeht. die autonomie von organisationen ist ein sehr kompliziertes thema. natürlich gibt es eine abhängigkeit der lokalen organisationen von ausländischen geldgebern. aber nichts desto trotz ist es die entscheidung der organisation. wenn die organisation projekte im gesundheitsbereich anbieten will und gelder fließen gerade für den bereich der gewaltprävention, dann hat die organisation im grunde zwei möglichkeiten. entweder sie bietet programme zur gewaltprävention an und bekommt schnell geld. oder sie plant ein anderes projekt und sucht nach anderen geldgebern. der eine weg verspricht schnell viel geld, der andere weg verspricht langfristige veränderung. (tia, persönliches interview, 12. märz 2009, banda aceh) dewi betont, dass die lokale organisation, in der sie arbeitet, mit den geldgebern verhandelt, wenn letztere nicht ihre prioritäten unterstützen. vor allem wenn die beziehung zwischen der lokalen organisation und dem westlichen geldgeber etabliert ist, gebe es fast immer eine lösung. ihre erfahrung sei, dass die förderer im prinzip die agenda der lokalen organisation unterstützen wollen, es aber manchmal kleine anpassungen in der zielsetzung gebe, die die implementierung der programme jedoch kaum beeinflussen. in der frage der autonomie von lokalen organisationen komme es sehr auf die kapazitäten, kompetenzen und zielvorstellungen dieser an, so tia. manchmal gerate das ziel etwas aus den augen. es sollten jedoch die bedürfnisse der zielgruppe im mittelpunkt stehen und im grunde darauf hingearbeitet werden. aber es sei oft zu beobachten, dass es in erster linie darum geht, die mitarbeiterinnen zu bezahlen. es sei natürlich auch sehr wichtig, den arbeitsplatz der mitarbeiterinnen so sicher wie möglich zu gestalten, aber das ziel sollte doch immer noch die zielgruppe sein (tia, persönliches interview, 12. märz 2009, banda aceh). in diesem sinn beschreibt eka diani die ziele für ihre arbeit in der organisation nach dem ende der wiederaufbauprogramme ende des jahres 2009 hauptsächlich in der rückbesinnung auf die bedürfnisse von frauen an der basis. kristina großmann kontinuitäten im wandel: handlungskoordinationen von frauenrechtsaktivistinnen in aceh aseas 6(1) 9998 die jahre nach dem tsunami waren eher davon bestimmt, die bedürfnisse der geldgeber zu bedienen. jetzt geht es wieder darum, an die bedürfnisse der frauen an der grassroot [sic] zu kommen. ich möchte so viel zeit wie möglich mit ihnen verbringen, um durch diskussionen und gemeinsames überlegen zusammen mit frauen lösungen zu finden. ich fahre gerade in die dörfer, auch wenn ich keine projekte mache, einfach nur um mit frauen zu reden und wieder ein gespür für die bedürfnisse der frauen dort zu bekommen. (eka diani, persönliches interview, 23. februar 2011, banda aceh) fazit aktivistinnen, die langjährig im zivilgesellschaftlichen bereich tätig sind und in den 1980er und 1990er jahren eine organisation mit dem schwerpunkt der frauenförderung und frauenrechtsarbeit gründeten oder aktiv am gründungsprozess beteiligt waren, sehen ihre rolle darin, soziale und politische missstände zu verändern und bestenfalls zu beseitigen. sie sehen sich – trotz selbstkritischer betrachtung – als befähigt, politischen und soziokulturellen wandel zu induzieren. die kontinuität zwischen den generationen und die weitergabe eines bestimmten wertekanons innerhalb der familiären sozialisation von aktivistinnen sind für die ausprägung ihres sozialen und politischen engagements von bedeutung. auseinandersetzung, diskussion, kritisches denken bezüglich politischen und soziokulturellen themen, aber auch selbstbewusstsein, ehrgeiz und eigenverantwortlichkeit im handeln sowie finanzielle unabhängigkeit und ein gewisses maß an autonomie haben ihre wurzeln oftmals in dem wertekodex, der in der kindheit und jugend vermittelt und innerhalb eines spezifischen umfelds gefördert wurde. aktivistinnen sehen ihr soziales und politisches engagement nicht in abgrenzung zu ihren eltern, als kritik oder bruch zwischen den generationen, sondern als weiterentwicklung von deren werten und normen. aktivistinnen wohnten oftmals in besonders betroffenen gebieten des bewaffneten konflikts und waren aufgrund dessen direkt mit den auswirkungen des krieges konfrontiert. sie beschreiben die empathie und solidarität mit weiblichen konfliktopfern als grundlegende motivation für ihr zivilgesellschaftliches engagement, welches durch die zunahme bewaffneter übergriffe, die steigende internationalisierung des konfliktes und die damit einhergehende, wachsende mediale verbreitung von menschenrechtsverletzungen seit ende der 1990er jahre verstärkt wurde. persönliche erfahrungen von frauenrechtsverletzungen oder die benachteiligungen durch patriarchale strukturen innerhalb acehischer gesellschafts-, gemeinschafts-, und aseas 6(1) 9998 familienordnungen wurden von aktivistinnen nicht in verbindung mit initiierenden momenten für ihre zivilgesellschaftliche organisierung genannt. diese ergebnisse decken sich mit erklärungsmodellen für politischen und sozialen aktivismus, die im zuge der politischen und sozialen jugendbewegungen in den usa und europa seit den 1960er jahren eingang in die bewegungsforschung fanden. die möglichkeit der finanziellen absicherung durch die arbeit in zivilgesellschaftlichen organisationen stellt eine voraussetzung dafür dar, dass aktivistinnen auch über die altersphase der adoleszenz und des jungen erwachsenenalters hinaus politisch aktiv sein können. das einkommen ist für die meisten aktivistinnen, die langjährig im menschenund frauenrechtsbereich arbeiten, jedoch von untergeordneter bedeutung. muslimische aktivistinnen in aceh erfuhren durch die steigende institutionalisierung, professionalisierung und kommerzialisierung von notfallund entwicklungshilfe nach dem tsunami nicht nur eine steigerung des umfangs der programme, sondern auch der höhe der honorare. die überdurchschnittlich hohen einkünften und die zahlreichen anfragen für beraterinnentätigkeiten wurden jedoch bald von vielen aktivistinnen als störend empfunden. der steile anstieg an neuen karriereorientierten mitarbeiterinnen im frauenrechtsbereich ebbte mit dem ende der wiederaufbauhilfe im jahr 2009 ab. aktivistinnen etablierten sich wieder, konnten mit qualifikation und erfahrung überzeugen und die kontakte zu den bestehenden netzwerken waren ausschlaggebender für die besetzung einer position in einer zivilgesellschaftlichen organisation. die ziele für ihre arbeit in der organisation nach dem ende der wiederaufbauprogramme ende des jahres 2009 sehen aktivistinnen in aceh hauptsächlich in der rückbesinnung auf die bedürfnisse von frauen an der basis und knüpfen damit an ihre grundlegende motivation für ihr zivilgesellschaftliches engagement an. literaturverzeichnis arnez, m. 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(2018). is makassar a ‘sanctuary city’? migration governance in indonesia after the ‘local turn’. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 11(2), 199-216. taking into consideration three levels of government (regional, national, and sub-national) that potentially offer protection to refugees, this paper is concerned with changes initiated by the 2016 presidential regulation on handling foreign refugees. this regulation has delegated more responsibility for managing refugees to the sub-national levels of administration in indonesia, which, like other nations in the southeast asia, has been reluctant to provide protection for refugees or any options for their integration into society. the reason for this is that, despite many vociferous demands in favor of a ‘regional solution’ in the aftermath of the 2015 andaman sea crisis, most attempts ended up in abeyance. following suit with the so-called ‘local turn’ in migration studies, which increased attention to the local dimensions of refugee protection due to the receding capacities in the major actors involved both in global refugee protection and international migration management, we direct attention to the sub-national level of refugee management in indonesia using as a case study the city of makassar, which has hitherto enjoyed a fairly positive reputation for welcoming refugees. by examining the current living conditions of asylum seekers and refugees in makassar and comparing them to other places in indonesia, we ask whether the concept of ‘sanctuary city’ is applicable to a non-western context and, in doing so, hope to enhance current discussions of creating alternative models for refugee protection beyond the national and regional level. keywords: indonesia; migration governance; presidential regulations; refugees and asylum seekers; sanctuary cities  introduction an unprecedented 65.6 million people around the world at the end of 2017 have been forced from their homes by war and conflict, which means that the number of displaced people currently exceeds the number uprooted during world war ii. at the end of 2016, there were close to 3.5 million refugees, 2.7 million internally displaced people, and more than 1.5 million stateless people in the asia-pacific region (unhcr, 2017a). in 2016, southeast asia hosted a total of 2.8 million persons of concern, including over 483,000 refugees, 68,000 asylum seekers, 462,000 internally displaced people (idps), and over 1.4 million stateless people (unhcr, 2018).1 indonesia, the focus of this article, hosted less than 1 these unhcr statistics include figures for bangladesh, which is not usually considered part of southeast asia. aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 03 200 | aseas 11(2) is makassar a ‘sanctuary city’? 14,000 asylum seekers and refugees in mid-2018, which is substantially less compared to its neighbours, such as thailand and malaysia. the majority of asylum seekers and refugees in indonesia come from afghanistan (56%), somalia (10%), and myanmar (8%). southeast asia has the weakest normative frameworks for refugee protection of any region, apart from the middle east (klug, 2013). most southeast asian states simply never felt obliged to sign the 1951 convention relating to the status of refugees (refugee convention) (davies, 2008). the countries producing the largest numbers of refugees currently are afghanistan, south sudan, syria, and myanmar. against widespread politicized perceptions of a ‘refugee crisis’ in europe, the united states, and australia, the majority of displaced people lack the will and the means to travel long distances, tending to stay relatively close to their home countries. on these grounds, when critical migration scholars speak of the ‘global refugee crisis’, they usually mean a political crisis of compassion and thus tend to emphasize the lack of collective responsibility and binding commitments for hosting displaced people. in light of the absence of trans-regional and global schemes to deal with the many challenges that displaced people face, the topic of so-called south-to-south hospitality has recently re-entered academic studies and regained attention (pacitto & fiddian-qasmiyeh, 2013). spontaneous acts of coping with large inflows have raised expectations and increased the pressure for temporary or permanent integration of refugees and asylum seekers in countries that are usually not among the typically western resettlement countries. particularly during so-called times of extraordinary irregular movements, such as the 2015 andaman sea crisis when thousands of rohingya arrived in insular southeast asia by boat, politicians and humanitarian advocates issued calls for ‘regional solutions’ to address the hardship of forcibly displaced people (fontaine, 1995). given the extremely low accession rate to the 1951 united nations convention relating to the status of refugees and its associated 1967 protocol2, the search for ‘regional solutions’ in southeast asia is tied to high hopes for alternative forms of protection that are not as strict as those set out in the refugee convention. in the aftermath of the andaman sea crisis, the combined efforts of the multilateral fora and mechanisms that were deployed to resolve the situation, including the association of southeast asian nations (asean) ministerial meeting on transnational crime as well as the bali declaration on people smuggling, trafficking in persons, and related transnational crime and its regional cooperation framework, ended up in abeyance, leaving it rather uncertain “whether they have improved the region’s preparedness to respond to such events in the future” (gleeson, 2017, p. 6). this article seeks to contribute to the debate on regional solutions by taking into consideration also national, and more importantly, sub-national approaches. since there is no functioning regional mechanism to deal with displaced people in southeast asia, and considerable doubt that one might ever materialize, it is necessary to scrutinize the temporary admittance of displaced people into each southeast asian host country and the prevalent complementary and alternative forms of 2 only three out of 11 southeast asian states have ratified the 1951 refugee convention: cambodia, the philippines, and timor-leste. it is unlikely that indonesia will sign and ratify the convention in the near future. aseas 11(2) | 201 antje missbach, yunizar adiputera & atin prabandari protection available for them at both national and sub-national levels.3 for this article, indonesia was chosen because of its geopolitical significance within the asiapacific region. like all but three southeast asian states, indonesia is not a signatory to the refugee convention and thus not legally obliged to offer protection to refugees (tan, 2016). out of the three durable solutions envisioned by the united nations high commissioner for refugees (unhcr), only two are available for refugees in indonesia: voluntary repatriation to their countries of origin and, if this is not possible, resettlement to a third country. local integration is not a legal option so far. however, because of the ongoing influx of new asylum seekers, global resettlement fatigue, and deterrence policies in the region, de facto integration is about to happen in indonesia and elsewhere in the region. makassar has been chosen as a case study for this article because of its functional role in accommodating asylum seekers and refugees. as indonesia’s fifth largest city, makassar is often referred to as kota angin mamiri (city of breeze) because of its seaside location.4 also, due to its long-standing tradition as an important trade hub and host for a large sea-faring and migratory population, makassar enjoys a reputation as being cosmopolitan and tolerant (sutherland, 2011). although makassar had frequently seen the temporary stay of internally displaced people from different conflict areas within indonesia, only from 2010 onwards did the city become a hub for foreign asylum seekers and refugees. not only does makassar have an immigration detention center (idc), but it also has a range of community shelters. in 2011, the international organization for migration (iom) started using two hotels for housing asylum seekers and refugees who could not be placed in the idc (missbach, 2017a). the number of shelters has grown in recent years, with 18 available in august 2017 for 1,158 asylum seekers and refugees (iom, 2017). at the end of 2017, 13,840 asylum seekers and refugees were registered with the unhcr all over indonesia. of these, 1,838 were living in makassar, 564 of whom languished in the idc and other forms of temporary detention, despite the growing consensus among indonesian government agencies that immigration detention facilities should no longer be used for housing refugees and asylum seekers for the long term (unhcr, 2017b). when measured against makassar’s reputation as a city known for welcoming refugees, current developments – after the issuance of the presidential regulation no. 125/2016 that we define here as a watershed moment as it sought to formalise the ‘local turn’ in indonesia – represent a dramatic deterioration in hospitality. in this paper we scrutinize the handling of refugees in makassar under the premise of ‘sanctuary cities’ – a broad term applied to cities that have policies in place designed to limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement actions and deportation and instead offer some community-driven forms of hospitality and protection – and ask whether any of the approaches that were developed in the united states and europe are in indonesia. critical readers might think that this application of a concept that was developed in more affluent societies onto a non-western context is 3 unlike many other studies dealing with the decentralized politics of indonesia, we define ‘local’ here as primarily the urban setting, rather than the province or regency, which is usually considered the main sub-national entity. 4 makassar is the provincial capital of south sulawesi, located on the southern part of sulawesi island. it is a major port city with a majority muslim population of around 1,7 million. 202 | aseas 11(2) is makassar a ‘sanctuary city’? epistemologically naive, but to us it is of utmost (political) importance to shed light on how non-western refugee hosting societies operate, as they are often ignored within the current global scenario. whereas several authors have scrutinized the handling of refugees on a national level (kneebone, 2017; tan, 2016), we pay attention to sub-national approaches, in part because of the local turn expedited by the presidential regulation no. 125/2016. in this article, we argue that whereas the sanctuary city and the way it is practiced elsewhere (outside of indonesia) depicts an emancipative bottom-up approach, the local turn in indonesia stands primarily for a top-down approach that seeks to shift responsibility for refugee protection and migration management from the national to the sub-national level without equipping the local stakeholders or offering budgetary concessions. overall, as our case study will show, the handling of asylum-seekers and refugees remains shaped by rightlessness, restrictions, and reprimand, despite a few nascent initiatives driven by the makassar municipality and to a lesser extent local communities. this article is the outcome of collaborative effort between researchers based in indonesia and australia, who have conducted interviews over more than a year, individually and as a team, with national and local stakeholders involved in the management of refugees. in 2017, the authors observed three sosialisasi (information-sharing) events related to the implementation of presidential regulation no. 125/2016 in jakarta (one national and one provincial) and in makassar. during several research trips to makassar, usually for a week at a time, the authors established contact with a number of asylum seekers and refugees in their community shelters and kept in contact with some of them through social media. this article is based on a variety of sources, including formal interviews with authorities and informal conversations with refugees, online communication via social media with selected informants, and indonesian-language press reports and grey literature. the article is divided into three main parts: first we explain the sanctuary city concept; then, we introduce the indonesian context with regard to its hosting of asylum seekers and refugees over protracted periods of time and particularly the changes aspired by the issuance of presidential regulation no. 125/2016; and finally, we offer a detailed portrayal of makassar and its local policies vis-à-vis refugees and asylum seekers. the theoretical lessons learnt from the research are fleshed out in a brief conclusion. the ‘sanctuary city’ the concept of the sanctuary city has gained significance and popularity worldwide as local communities have welcomed and protected refugees and asylum seekers in defiance of restrictive state policies (bauder, 2017; darling, 2010; hintjens & pouri, 2014; nyers, 2010; squire & darling, 2013; villazor, 2010). its popularity and spread across several geopolitical contexts means that the concept now refers to variety of practices and policies, which differ substantially across different national and local contexts. bauder (2017) has categorized two contesting forms of the sanctuary city that are worth summarizing here. the first concept derives from the united states context, which advocates non-cooperation with federal immigration authorities and challenges the mainstream discourse of citizenship and belonging, whereas the aseas 11(2) | 203 antje missbach, yunizar adiputera & atin prabandari second derives from the united kingdom and is much more focused on the culture of hospitality, engagement, and social inclusion. non-cooperation and ‘local citizenship’ the sanctuary city concept originated in berkeley, california, in 1971 to protect us navy sailors who resisted the vietnam war. city law prohibited city officials from assisting the implementation of federal law at that time. the concept evolved and inspired subsequent generations to protect undocumented immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers across the us (bauder, 2017). for example, in san francisco advocates have interpreted the concept as providing a place where ‘local citizenship’ (as opposed to national citizenship) is granted to undocumented refugees and asylum seekers. this approach, fostered by local authorities, was characterized by non-cooperation and non-compliance with us federal immigration law, which placed restrictions considered harmful to refugees (villazor, 2010). from 1987, san francisco became a ‘city of refuge’ in response to the us federal government’s denial of protection to asylum seekers from el salvador and guatemala (villazor, 2010). two years later the city passed an ordinance confirming its non-cooperation and non-involvement with federal immigration law, declaring that “no department, agency, commission, officer or employee of the city and county of san francisco shall use any city funds or resources to assist in the enforcement of federal immigration law” (villazor, 2010, p. 583). one way of translating this decision into everyday policies was the ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ approach, applied by the local authorities and service providers, which discouraged local stakeholders from inquiring about anyone’s legal migration status and revealing it to federal officials (villazor, 2010). as well as upholding the principle of non-cooperation with federal immigration law and law-enforcement officials with regard to asylum seekers, the sanctuary city concept, as enacted by san francisco local authorities, contained ideas for challenging the formalistic and normative discourse of citizenship and belonging. in its legalistic sense, citizenship is a concept that came into being with the rise of the nation-state and refers to the “formal or nominal membership in an organized political community” (bosniak, 2000, p. 456). from this perspective, to be a citizen means to possess the legal status, acknowledged by the state, of being part of a nation. holding citizenship is connected with the possession of certain rights and duties, but undocumented immigrants not only lack citizenship in their place of residence and, consequently, access to certain basic rights, but also often have very few options to ever legalize their status without enduring punitive consequences for their presence in that place of residence. through san francisco’s sanctuary law, undocumented immigrants are eligible for local citizenship. as citizens of the city, they have equal status with local residents in terms of rights, privileges, and obligations (villazor, 2010). in practice, when dealing with public sectors such as schools and healthcare services, they will not be asked about their immigration status and, if their status is known, it will not be revealed to the federal immigration officers. the only exceptions to the law concern adult immigrants who have committed crimes and felony. the local citizenship law was supported by the issuing of “identification cards to residents regardless of legal 204 | aseas 11(2) is makassar a ‘sanctuary city’? status, the promotion of low-cost banking, and the city’s long-standing opposition to immigration raids” (gavin newsom, mayor of san francisco, quoted in villazor, 2010, p. 591). in 2018, the federation for american immigration reform estimated that more than 500 us jurisdictions – both states and municipalities – had adopted sanctuary policies. however, many sanctuary cities now face severe repercussions from the federal government under president trump and its highly restrictive immigration acts, and they have frequently been threatened with cuts in federal funding. despite the threats, a number of sanctuary cities, including berkeley, have reaffirmed their status and commitment as sanctuary cities and promised to protect all residents, regardless of their immigration status, by not supporting, communicating with or submitting to the demands of federal immigration and customs enforcement officers. hospitality, engagement, and reframing the discourse the sanctuary city model crossed the atlantic in the early 2000s to the united kingdom, where the city of sheffield from 2005 onwards embarked on a popular reconceptualization of the concept in a way that continues its “long tradition of offering a welcome to refugees” (wainwright, 2003). as the first city to the gateway protection program – a collaborative program between uk national government, unchr, local authorities, and national ngos – sheffield has been actively involved in enabling the most vulnerable refugees to gain access to services and participation in the wider host community (darling, 2010). the sanctuary city movement in the uk, generally speaking, has been centered on offering hospitality and protection to asylum seekers and refugees, and making the city a welcoming place for them. in 2009, the city council of sheffield drew up a manifesto outlining key areas of concern, and 100 supporting organizations signed on. according to darling (2010), the local stakeholders in sheffield based their approach on three main principles, which were translated into various activities. first, they aimed to rally political support by establishing a network of civil society agencies (academia, local communities, organizations, business, refugee and asylum seekers groups), partly to demonstrate the legitimacy of the movement. second, they sought to apply visual strategies to mark the city as a welcoming city for refugees and asylum seekers, for example, by providing signs to organizations and local communities that declared their support for the sanctuary city movement, by distributing postcards to individuals on how they could support refugees and asylum seekers, and developing infographics that debunked myths about asylum seekers to make people think again. third, they encouraged active engagement between refugees, asylum seekers, and local residents through various interactions and events, including cultural events such as dancing and concerts, shared meals, and giving honorary awards to citizens in recognition of their endeavors to provide to refugees and asylum seekers. the main philosophy behind sheffield’s sanctuary city approach was the strategic application of ideas of hospitality and engagement to offer an alternative discourse to the public in sheffield, which was intended to make local residents proud of their culture of welcoming refugees and asylum seekers but also set out explicit expectations for future benefits from the welcomed refugees in order to create a more vibrant host aseas 11(2) | 205 antje missbach, yunizar adiputera & atin prabandari community inclusive of all its residents. sheffield became the uk’s benchmark which led to the establishment of the network of about 15 sanctuary cities in the uk, but the outcome of the 2016 referendum in which britons voted to leave the european union and the anti-immigration sentiment that fueled it now pose difficult challenges for advocates of the sanctuary city movement. before moving on to our indonesian case study, it is necessary to contrast the two contending perspectives and practices of sanctuary cities to establish a basis for comparison with our case study from makassar. generally, the sanctuary city model in the uk appears to be more encompassing than the us model, as it seeks to engage not only local officials, but also civil society organizations, religious groups, and grassroots communities. while the sanctuary city concept in the uk is centered around ideas of generosity and engagement and a struggle for abstract justice grounded in hospitality, the us model is marked by non-cooperation with federal government officials and by the notion of local citizenship, thus envisioning a more “concrete political struggle” (squire & darling, 2013). having replaced the notion of asylum with sanctuary, uk sanctuary city advocates perceive refugees and asylum seekers as guests who deserve a warm welcome, good treatment, and protection, at least for a period of time. critics of this approach have remarked that rather than providing tangible and legal solutions for marginalized refugees and illegalized asylum seekers, such urban sanctuary initiatives tend to offer only symbolic gestures that actually contribute to the normalization of the precarious situation of refugees and asylum seekers. in contrast, the spirit of sanctuary cities in the us is rooted in much broader debates on the possession of human rights and protection on a permanent basis and is, therefore, more than just a friendly welcome and a diffuse expectation towards refugees and their contributions to the host communities. non-cooperation with federal government immigration acts and law-enforcement officials and the enactment of the idea of local citizenship signifies equal status and rights for residents and immigrants in a city from the very start rather than in the undetermined future and without the explicit expectations for benefit in return for the friendly welcome. the ‘local turn’ of refugee management in indonesia international migration concerns the movement of people across national state boundaries, and, as such, its management, regulation, and supervision are primarily the tasks of national governments. at the global level, the paradigm of migration management “strives for a coordination of states’ regulatory (inter)-actions to render international migrations predictable and beneficial for all stakeholders” (ahouga, 2018, p. 1524). however, this national-centric migration management has been questioned in recent years by analysts of both the macroand micro-politics of migration, in large part because international migration affects, first and foremost, sub-national governments, which become the actual locus of migration. this view is also reflected in the findings of the un joint migration and development initiative (jmdi), which say that “the drivers and impact of migration are often most strongly felt at the local level”, but at the same time “local governments have not received the same level of attention as other stakeholders, while their involvement and potential impact on the connections between migration and development is crucial” (jmdi, 2008). the 206 | aseas 11(2) is makassar a ‘sanctuary city’? localness of migration effects is felt more strongly, considering that migrants are rarely, if ever, equally distributed within national borders. in fact, “immigrants may often feel closer and more connected to the city they live in than to the country they have arrived in” (jørgensen, 2012, p. 244). the importance of local actors in migration management and integration policy has been indicated by a number of scholars (caponio & borkert, 2010; jørgensen, 2012; penninx, 2009; schmidtke, 2014). although urban anthropologists, geographers, and sociologists have studied urban refugees for at least two decades, inter-governmental and supra-national migration organizations, such as jmdi and iom, have only recently shifted their attention to local stakeholders and settings. for example, in 2015 iom convened a conference on migrants and cities, which sought to “bring together ministers, high-level government officials, mayors and other local authorities, the private sector and civil society organizations to discuss the complex dynamics of human mobility at city and local level” (iom, 2015). this strategic shift, often dubbed the local turn in migration management, is a trend that “seeks to engage new [local] actors in its endeavour to create coordinated strategies and practices regulating international migration” (ahouga, 2018, p. 1524). the unifying theme of this local turn is the need to recognize the strong effects of migration on local actors and, thus, the important role they can or should play in migration governance. iom’s conference on migrants and cities in 2015 also marked the institution’s key role in pushing for greater inclusion of actors at the sub-national level. iom claims to provide services “to address the migratory phenomenon from an integral and holistic perspective . . . in order to maximize its benefits and minimize its negative effects” (iom, 2007, p. 3). as the most prominent proponent of the migration management paradigm, it claims to serve its member states by promoting and implementing “a regulated openness to international migration flow” (ahouga, 2018, p. 1526). however, in the context of the local turn within global migration management, iom plays a key role in engaging “local actors in order to further ‘diffuse’ and legitimise migration management’s regulated openness to the local scale through an articulation of different space-times” (ahouga, 2018, p. 1526). in indonesia, which in the three decades before 2000 experienced only the infrequent arrival and passage of asylum seekers and refugees through its territory, the state had only minimal involvement in regulating and providing services to those people. in the absence of any basic legal provision for the treatment of refugees, subsequent indonesian governments preferred to delegate these tasks to the unhcr and the iom. much of the funding for these organizations and their programs for refugee status determination, resettlement, or repatriation came from the australian government and other international donors (hirsch & doig, 2018). indonesia perceived its role first and foremost as ‘transit country’ and was mostly concerned with speedy regular and irregular departures from its shores. given that indonesia has become a bottleneck for asylum seekers and refugees in the last five years, as fewer are resettled and very few embark on irregular departures, indonesia now faces the prolonged presence of these people. rather than approaching this challenge centrally, at the national level supported by national funds, the current indonesian government under president joko widodo aims to shift the challenge down to the next level of government. in the context of indonesia, the local turn has been marked by the issuance of aseas 11(2) | 207 antje missbach, yunizar adiputera & atin prabandari presidential regulation (pr) 125/2016 on the treatment of refugees and asylum seekers in indonesia, which is now the main legal instrument governing the treatment of refugees in indonesia. the pr covers five aspects: search and rescue of refugees; housing them; securing them; supervising them; and funding of related activities (missbach et al., 2018). except for search and rescue, which is coordinated by national organizations, the four other aspects contain provisions that clearly reflect a local turn in indonesian refugee policy. in this context, local governments (pemerintah daerah) are given, to a certain extent, both authority and responsibility caring for refugees in their jurisdictions. this is not to say that local governments had no role in managing refugees and asylum seekers living in their areas before the pr was issued. in fact, the pr can be considered as formalizing practices that were already in place in a more informal way. local governments did make policies that affected the lives of refugees in their areas and they also worked with central government bodies and international migration and refugee organizations before the pr came into force. for example, in makassar, the local government efforts to support handling asylum seekers and refugees and their accommodation in alternatives to immigration detention has been acknowledged by the central government as a success (panga, 2016). makassar was the first city in indonesia to sign an mou with iom. signed in september 2015, this mou served as a platform for coordination between the municipal government and iom to address issues related to refugees and asylum seekers. through the mou, the relevant services and work units (satuan kerja perangkat daerah/skpd) under the makassar government, such as the local departments of education, healthcare, and social affairs are required to provide basic services to refugees and asylum seekers, supported by iom funding (malia, 2016; syukri, 2015). the makassar government has even claimed it has produced a blueprint for the management of refugees in makassar to be used elsewhere in indonesia (iom, 2016). so far, the pr is the most important marker of the local turn in indonesia’s refugee management because it signals a deliberate attempt by policy-makers to turn to local actors and position them at the center of indonesian refugee governance, supported (but not directed) by national agencies. it assigns formal responsibility to local governments and empowers them to use their resources to carry that responsibility. on the one hand, this shift of responsibility could be seen as empowering local stakeholders and giving them a say in the management of refugees rather than just serving as “a passive setting for the interventions of international organisations and states” (ahouga, 2018, p. 1524) that often tend to ignore local authorities and local civil society organizations. on the other hand, there is the risk that local stakeholders might get easily overwhelmed by their new tasks and responsibilities. for example, under the pr, local governments, such as the makassar municipal government, are required to identify suitable accommodation for refugees and provide temporary accommodation while they do so. the pr states that the local government should use its own assets (land, buildings, etc.) to house refugees. the operational and maintenance costs of these assets as they are being used for housing refugees are charged to the central government in a loan scheme. the pr lays out strict criteria for the housing, which must, for example, be close to healthcare services and religious facilities, be within the same municipality as the nearest immigration detention center, and be 208 | aseas 11(2) is makassar a ‘sanctuary city’? reliably secure. as for the provision of basic necessities, such as clean water, food, and clothing, health and sanitary services, and religious amenities, the pr provides for this to be facilitated by international organizations, because funding such requests would be far beyond the means of most local governments. this provision in the pr means, however, that the housing must also meet quality and safety standards set by the international organizations, such as iom, which tend to be higher than what is considered appropriate for local (indonesian) tenants. another consequence of the pr, however, is that when international organizations are no longer offering financial support for refugee-related tasks, local governments are in big trouble. under the pr, the local governments now have the authority to use their budget (anggaran pendapatan dan belanja daerah/apbd) for refugee-related program expenses. in a series of pr information-sharing events it was made clear that local governments can use their apbd to cover the costs of transfer and placement of refugees in community housing, of renting temporary accommodation until more permanent shelter is available, and even of funerals. these expenses are to be allocated under unforeseen expenses (belanja tak terduga/btt), and program expenses allocated through services and work units (skpd) under the governor and mayor/ regent. however, spending money on politically unpopular activities, such as providing for refugees, is something many local leaders are unwilling to do, as it runs counter to their political interests and reputation (missbach et al., 2018). in sum, the practices, and from 2016 also the legal provisions, of refugee management in indonesia have certainly taken a local turn. arguably, the central government and its agencies still have significant authority over the fate of refugees and asylum seekers, but as we have shown, the powers and role given to the local governments are equally critical, if not more so, to their welfare as those of the central government. against this backdrop, can a local government use this power and serve as a sanctuary for refugees and asylum seekers coming to indonesia for prolonged periods of time? in order to see what the local turn has meant for asylum seekers and refugees in indonesia we turn to our case study in makassar in order to consider whether or not the treatment of refugees and asylum seekers in makassar resembles either of the sanctuary city approaches outlined above in any way. we have structured our deliberations and reflections on the potential and challenges of such a possible framing loosely around, first, local government involvement in protecting refugees, second, local civil society organizations, and third, local host communities. outsourcing refugee protection to local actors: the experience of makassar generally speaking, until early 2018 makassar had a reputation for being a rather hospitable city for refugees and asylum seekers (“iom puji toleransi di makassar”, 2016). the main reason for this was the openness and welcoming approach by the municipal government. not only had the local city government allowed for the establishment of iom-sponsored community shelters to be used by refugees and asylum seekers who were released from immigration detention centres (idc), but the city government was also more supportive of allowing some refugee children to attend local schools aseas 11(2) | 209 antje missbach, yunizar adiputera & atin prabandari (hafanti, 2018).5 makassar is still considered a good model for creating community shelters and alternatives to detention (atd) (missbach, 2017a). it has been successful in placing a good number of refugees outside the local, prison-like immigration detention centre, in shelters that meet international quality and safety standards. the pr has formalized this role for local government – a role that is strategic and crucial for the welfare of refugees. it is probably the role that has the greatest impact in current refugee management, as accommodation is tightly connected to the provision of food, water, health care, education, and spiritual/religious services. in this regard, the inclusion of local government in refugee governance under the pr is not incidental, but rather a recognition of the vital role that local government can play. what makes makassar most attractive to refugees is, however, the relatively quick transfer from immigration detention centers to community shelters, which were like “paradise” compared to the idc (irin, 2014). because of its reputation, not only did hundreds of asylum seekers move from other indonesian cities to makassar where they surrendered to immigration authorities to be placed briefly in detention or directly in a community shelter (missbach, 2017a), but detainees in idcs in other indonesian cities also staged protests and demanded to be transferred to the makassar idcs in anticipation of prompt transfer to community accommodation (jonker, 2017). the initial hospitality, however, might not suffice to make makassar resemble a sanctuary city. makassar’s attractiveness for refugees and asylum seekers, who relocated themselves from jakarta, made the city a victim of its own success. because of these spontaneous arrivals, local migration authorities eventually demanded that newcomers be stopped (cipto, 2016). because fewer asylum seekers have been coming to indonesia since 2015, the number of newcomers to makassar started to decrease. similar to other indonesian refugee hubs, makassar only saw some rudimentary involvement of indonesian ngos, such as the faith-based organisation dompet dhuafa and palang merah indonesia (indonesian red cross) which became involved in facilitating some medical services and some recreational activities (suryono, n.d.). some local ngos collaborated with the municipal authorities in providing special services to underage and unaccompanied minors. however, most of this involvement remains rather basic and temporary. there is little long-term engagement or sustainability to be expected any time soon. the specific reasons for this remain unclear. generally speaking, indonesian civil society organisations have little interest in refugee matters and only very few have dedicated their attention and resources to helping refugees stranded in indonesia (suaka, 2016). the main exception was the arrival of ca. 1,800 rohingya in aceh in may 2015, which saw an enormous amount of spontaneous donations (missbach, 2017b).6 whereas sanctuary cities elsewhere, particularly in the uk, can count on the strong support from local civil society organisations and also volunteers, a lot of the positive developments for refugees in makassar can be attributed first and foremost 5 in most other refugee hubs, refugees organized their own schools as access to state-funded education proved very difficult. learning in indonesian schools helps the refugee children to learn bahasa indonesia much faster, which is positive for their local integration. 6 the exemption appeared not least because the rohingya are a persecuted muslim minority from myanmar and their destiny struck a chord with indonesian muslims who donated generously to readily available networks and charities. 210 | aseas 11(2) is makassar a ‘sanctuary city’? to the city’s mayor, mohammad ramdhan ‘danny’ pomanto, renowned for his friendly outreach to asylum seekers and refugees. for example, on his initiative, the local government organized community outreach seminars to inform local inhabitants of makassar about asylum seekers and refugees (marzuki, 2016). asylum seekers and refugees were invited to local carnivals and fairs (alfian, 2017). the relationship between the mayor and some refugees was particularly close, as he offered, for example, his private residence for an exhibition of paintings by refugees (saldy, 2016). in return, mayor pomanto knew how to play to the gallery by appearing in public with young asylum seekers and refugee children who pronounced their gratitude to him for their positive treatment in makassar (warga imigran persembahkan kado, 2017). last but not least, in january 2016, pomanto received an award for “the support and collaboration in handling asylum seekers and refugees” from the indonesian ministry of law and human rights (kusuma, 2016). although there have been some outstanding individuals in the recent local government who, like mayor pomanto, have supported the well-being of refugees in makassar, it is uncertain whether this level of support will be maintained under different mayors in the future. caring for refugees serves no voter base, so this budget allocation is a politically unpopular decision for any mayor. moreover, the apbd requires approval from the local legislative body (dewan perwakilan rakyat daerah/dprd), where the politics relating to the city’s budget decisions are very contentious. consequently, it is difficult to expect that any meaningful sum of funding will be set aside to care for refugees. in the past, it was relatively easy for makassar to emerge as a success story in refugee management, as it did not require the expenditure of any taxpayers’ money. with the announcement by the iom in march 2018 to decrease its funding for refugees and the limited range of other international funding sources, the pr puts makassar and the indonesian government in a difficult position regarding budget allocation. the response from the makassar government and the indonesian government will determine whether taking the local turn is, in fact, a viable option. the latest developments in makassar, however, signal an end to the friendly welcome of refugees and a more restrictive treatment of them. despite these aspirations to do away with immigration detention for refugees and asylum seekers, the treatment of refugees and asylum seekers in makassar remains imbued with security and surveillance motives, even in non-custodial accommodation facilities (missbach, 2017a). while the pr generally indicates the local turn by empowering actors at sub-national level, in ways consistent with existing practice in makassar, its implementation still suffers from an absence of operational guidelines, which makes it difficult for the makassar government to determine the practical steps it must take to fulfil the responsibility mandated by the pr. on the one hand, the makassar city government had already gained considerable experience in housing refugees prior to the implementation of the pr, which meant that makassar had no real difficulty in carrying out its responsibility as mandated by pr. on the other hand, as technical and implementation guidance that was to follow the pr’s issuance had not been circulated and explained to the city government, local officials were not in a hurry to implement the provisions of pr. in mid-february 2018, about two dozen of immigration officers raided several community shelters in the city of makassar and arrested aseas 11(2) | 211 antje missbach, yunizar adiputera & atin prabandari several refugees in an unusual show of force.7 the reasons for the raids and arrests put forward by local immigration authorities were mostly linked to non-compliance. inhabitants of the shelters must comply with certain rules and regulations to avoid being put back into the overcrowded prison-like idc on makassar’s outskirts.8 these rules range from curfews, the prohibition to drive motorbikes, drink alcohol, or make noise at night. as shaky videos captured during the raid on cell phones show, the young men were taken from their rooms while other inhabitants watched in fright.9 unwilling to accept such conduct, shelter inhabitants across the city staged a peaceful protest in front of the local unhcr office and complained about their arbitrary treatment by local immigration authorities (freischlad, 2018; nur, 2018; padmasari, 2018). peaceful protests continued until september 2018, but with less press coverage.10 at first the local media appeared to be sympathetic to the refugees’ cause and pointed to a new head of immigration detention who was testing the boundaries of his authority with that of other authorities involved in refugee matters. in order to push back against their negative portrayal in the media, local immigration authorities held a press conference, in which they blamed refugees for all kinds of moral vices, such as drinking alcohol, having affairs with the spouses of police officers living nearby, and engaging in same-sex activities and paedophilia (cipto, 2018; prayudha, 2018).11 although it might sound utterly absurd to many readers, in indonesia such rumors easily fall on fertile ground and create tensions, as a number of anthropologists have demonstrated (bubandt, 2008; herriman, 2010, 2015). the local government, which had done much in support of refugees, remained rather silent throughout this tense period, not least because of upcoming local elections that might bring a change in local government. until these arrests, demonstrations, and anti-refugee smear campaigns, makassar was a rather friendly place, but those times might be coming to an end sooner than later, not least due to the absent support from the indonesian central government and the decreasing funding from iom. whatever potential makassar held to become a sanctuary city, might therefore vanish before it ever enfolds properly. conclusion in this article, we have shown that over the last years migration management and refugee care in indonesia has indeed seen a local turn, which means that cities and regencies now play a greater role in accommodating and managing asylum seekers and refugees than in the past, when the central authorities perceived the handling of 7 the authors were first alerted to these raids in phone calls and facebook postings by several refugees living in some of the shelters. 8 unfortunately, the rules are often spelled out rather vaguely, leaving plenty of room for immigration authorities to exercise discretion (missbach, 2017a). 9 one such video went viral on social media, see https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v= yakmtzfqeay. 10 indonesian filmmaker andrianus ‘oetjoe’ merdhi captured some of the protests in his recent documentary respite, see http://amerdhi.mengoceh.de/respite-trailer2018/ 11 for the full press conference, see https://video.okezon e.com/play/2018/02/22/1/109444/waduh-imi gran-di-sulsel-kerap -mengganggu-istri-aparat 212 | aseas 11(2) is makassar a ‘sanctuary city’? asylum seekers and refugees their exclusive task. we have argued that this local turn was an essential reaction to the failure of creating a regional protection mechanism that would provide a more concerted way of dealing with incoming asylum seekers within the region based on the existing regional legal frameworks, such as the asean human rights declaration (gleeson, 2017). furthermore, we have reasoned that this local turn in indonesia – although set in motion informally prior to the issuance of the pr – was eventually formalised through the decree. unwilling to create a comprehensive protection framework for asylum seekers and refugees on the national level and provide the necessary funds to run it, the indonesian central government has sought to shift the responsibility to sub-national levels, first and foremost regencies and municipalities. indonesian cities became a locus of sanctuary, but – judged on the criteria for what constitutes the best practice cases for sanctuary cities elsewhere – they fall short of meeting any of those. there is a fine distinction between the local turn of refugee care and the concept of sanctuary city. while the former has only been emerging in the last decade or so, the latter has been around since at least the 1970s. local turn is a set of efforts undertaken by international and national actors to include local actors in the management of international migration. the goal of this inclusion is to create better policies and practices in regulating migration, considering that local actors are the ones affected the most by it. as such, it is clear that the local turn lacks normative orientation as to what kinds of ‘regulation’ it wants to pursue. the concept of sanctuary city, on the other hand, clearly has normative goals, i.e. protection from deportation, hospitality, engagement, and social inclusion. it advocates a certain ‘kind’ of regulations that aim for a better treatment of migrants. while both have different goals in mind, it does not necessarily mean that both are mutually exclusive. empowering local actors in migration governance should prima facie support the establishment of sanctuary cities, if not its pre-requisite. there are, however, aspects of the local turn that may hinder the goals of sanctuary city. the local turn as a phenomenon in migration management and refugee care is usually characterized by a top-down approach, where actors at the international and national level ‘ask’ sub-national governments to be more proactive in migration governance. this puts sub-national governments as passive recipients of responsibility that spill over from the top. as such, the hierarchical nature of this relationship may remain, hindering meaningful policy initiatives from below. another aspect of local turn that may contradict sanctuary city is the prominence of local state actors over local nonstate actors, particularly the civil society. as the case of uk has shown, civil society activism is the key driver for sanctuary city. whether the local turn can meaningfully empower civil society as an important local actor for refugee care remains to be seen. nowadays, the majority of asylum seekers and refugees is living in indonesian cities and their surroundings. initially it was only jakarta, where the unhcr has its main office, but later on also other big indonesian cities – such as makassar, medan, and surabaya – started to attract asylum seekers and refugees. so, it is fair to say that indonesia’s refugee population has predominantly been an urban one. yet, cities in indonesia have not displayed the same welcoming reception or the autonomous sanctuary in the same way as what sanctuary cities have been well-known for in the us or in the uk, which remain somewhat consistent despite the growing aseas 11(2) | 213 antje missbach, yunizar adiputera & atin prabandari anti-immigration sentiment in recent years and the rise of president donald trump who is openly hostile towards sanctuary 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(2017a). global trends. forced displacement in 2016. retrieved from http://www.unhcr.org/5943e8a34.pdf united nations high commissioner for refugees. (2017b). people of concern in indonesia, december 2017. unpublished. villazor, r. c. (2010). sanctuary cities and local citizenship. fordham urban law journal, 37(2), 575-597. wainwright, m. (2003, january 8). service with a smile. the guardian. retrieved from https://www. theguardian.com/society/2003/jan/08/asylum.guardiansocietysupplement1 warga imigran persembahkan kado manis buat danny. (2017, august 21). makassar metro. retrieved from http://makassarmetro.com/2017/08/21/warga-imigran-persembahkan-kado-manis-buat-danny/ about the authors antje missbach is a senior research lecturer in anthropology at the school of social sciences at monash university in melbourne and an associate at the centre for indonesian law, islam and society (cilis) at the melbourne law school. her research interests include forced migration in the asia-pacific region, people smuggling, and the trafficking of persons as well as diaspora politics. ► contact: antje.missbach@monash.edu 216 | aseas 11(2) is makassar a ‘sanctuary city’? yunizar adiputera is a lecturer in international relations at universitas gadjah mada in yogyakarta. his research interests include humanitarianism, diplomacy, refugee studies, arms control, and disarmament. ► contact: yunizar@ugm.ac.id atin prabandari is a lecturer at the department of international relations at universitas gadjah mada, in yogyakarta, and a research fellow at the center for digital society, the asean studies center, and the southeast asia social studies center, all at universitas gadjah mada. her research interests include humanitarianism in world politics, refugee and forced migration studies, and border politics. ► contact: atinprabandari@ugm.ac.id acknowledgements the authors would like to acknowledge the financial support of our research project by the 2017/2018 anu indonesia project research grant delivered by the anu indonesia project in collaboration with the smeru research institute. flooded: an auto-ethnography of the 2011 bangkok flood aseas 5(2) 317316 d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -5 .2 -8 erik cohen flooded: an auto-ethnography of the 2011 bangkok flood aktuelle südostasienforschung / current research on south-east asia flooded: an auto-ethnography of the 2011 bangkok flood erik cohen1 citation cohen, e. (2012). flooded: an auto-ethnography of the 2011 bangkok flood. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 5(2), 316-334. in this personal account i report my perceptions, experiences, and conduct during the 2011 bangkok fl ood, in which my home and neighbourhood have been badly inundated and damaged. therefore, i draw on auto-ethnography as an increasingly popular, though controversial qualitative methodology in social sciences. though personal, the account has some broader implications, deriving primarily from the examination of the relationship between my perceptions and conduct in the disaster and my life experiences and present social position, as set against the perceptions and conduct of my thai wife, our neighbours, and the broader community. the contrast throws some light on an aspect of thai culture rarely discussed in the literature: the thai response to disaster. keywords: auto-ethnography; bangkok 2011 flood; disaster; floods; home in dieser persönlichen darstellung berichte ich über meine wahrnehmungen, erfahrungen und mein verhalten während der überschwemmungen 2011 in bangkok, in denen mein heim und die nachbarschaft überschwemmt und schwer beschädigt wurden. in diesem zusammenhang stütze ich mich auf die autoethnografi e als zunehmend populäre, wenn auch umstrittene qualitative methode in der sozialwissenschaftlichen forschung. trotz des persönlichen zugangs einer autoethnografi e lässt diese breitere schlussfolgerungen zu, die sich hauptsächlich aus der betrachtung der beziehung zwischen meinen wahrnehmungen und verhalten während der katastrophe sowie meinen persönlichen erfahrungen und meiner sozialen stellung im gegensatz zu den wahrnehmungen und verhalten meiner thailändischen ehefrau, unserer nachbarn und der community ableiten lassen. dieser kontrast wirft licht auf einen bisher in der literatur wenig diskutierten aspekt der thailändischen kultur: der thailändischen antwort auf katastrophen. schlagworte: autoethnografi e; bangkok 2011 überschwemmung; heim; katastrophe; überschwemmungen 1 erik cohen is the george s. wise professor of sociology (emeritus) at the hebrew university of jerusalem, where he taught between 1959 and 2000. he has conducted research in israel, peru, the pacific islands, and, since 1977, in thailand. his recent books include contemporary tourism: diversity and change (elsevier, 2004), and explorations in thai tourism (emerald, 2008). thanks are due to eyal ben ari, scott a. cohen, mark neal, and chaim noy for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper. contact: mserik@mscc.huji.ac.il aseas 5(2) 317316 preamble “we are not interesting enough to be the subject matter of sociology,” says sarah delamont (2007) in her critique of auto-ethnography; i agree – but some of our experiences, if properly presented and interpreted, might be. all my professional life i was what post-modernists call a ‘realist’: i separated my studies from my life, and kept myself out of my publications. in retrospect, this may have been a shortcoming or a mistake – for a reflective analysis of my own position in the field, or of some crucial events in a rather complex life, could have improved the quality of my work and helped towards a better understanding of myself. when the recent floods in the bangkok neighbourhood – where i now live – caught up with me, i made a belated attempt to write this account of the event and of my experiences as an auto-ethnographic essay. introduction auto-ethnography is an increasingly popular (ellis & boechner, 2000; macilveen, 2008; wall, 2006), though controversial (delamont, 2007), qualitative methodology. it was born as a way out of the crisis of representation in late modern anthropology (ellis, adams, & bochner, 2011; holt, 2003), and as a post-modern attempt to break the dichotomy between the researcher and his/her objects of representation (butz & besio, 2009). auto-ethnography was meant to serve as a reflexive and indeed, therapeutic medium for the author, while at the same time illuminating the culture which he/she studies (ellis et al., 2011; holt, 2003; wall, 2006). though expressly subjective, claims have been made for particular criteria by which its reliability, validity, and generalisability could be judged (ellis et al., 2011). the focus of the proponents of auto-ethnography is on the researcher and his/ her position and involvement in the field – an emphasis which has been criticised for prompting (young) researchers to be more concerned in their reports with themselves than with the subjects of their study (anderson, 2006, pp. 385-386). but there are situations outside the research context which may call for auto-ethnography, particularly those in which a researcher is caught serendipitously in a dramatic event, which he/ she is able to enlighten in an auto-ethnographic essay, though he/she had not studied it systematically. i found myself in such a situation when i was flooded out of my home in the course of the 2011 catastrophic floods in thailand. erik cohen flooded: an auto-ethnography of the 2011 bangkok flood aseas 5(2) 319318 i had no intention to write about the event at the time of the flood’s inception, and started to reflect about my experience only at a late stage of the event. rather than offering a systematic analysis of the complexities of a major flood disaster, i will straightforwardly tell the story of my trajectory through the floods in a small corner of that huge catastrophe: in a housing estate in an outer district of the city of bangkok. personal my personal background is significant for the elucidation of the following account. i was born in yugoslavia in 1932 and immigrated to israel in 1949. i spent several years in the army and became a reconnaissance officer. i studied, and later taught at the hebrew university of jerusalem for more than 40 years, as a professor of sociology and anthropology. but i had also a long acquaintance with thailand, where i have been conducting research since the late 1970s; in the early 2000s, after retirement, i moved to live there permanently. my wife is thai, but i am nevertheless a foreigner in thailand, of a permanently-temporal status, whose formal expression is the need to annually renew my retirement visa. the housing estate in which we live, senaniwet khon khan 2 (senaniwet second project), is inhabited by lower-to-upper middle-class thai families; there are only two to three westerners around, married to thai women. though i have conducted research on a wide variety of topics in different parts of thailand (e.g. cohen, 1991; 1996; 2000; 2008), and have a broad acquaintance with its culture and history, i have never considered doing research on our neighbourhood, and neither developed a wide local social network, nor became much involved with community affairs. i had, however, previous personal experience with floods, caused by heavy monsoon storms, in both the slum in which i did research in the early 1980s (cohen, 1988) and in the housing estate in which i now live, where a heavy rainfall may turn the soi (lane) in front of our house, in the words of the son of a visiting friend, into a ‘river’. but the ‘river’ always dried up in a day or two. that experience influenced my opinion that the 2011 flood, if it ever reached our neighbourhood, would be similarly transient. i was involved in the study of tourism in the 2004 tsunami disaster in southern thailand (cohen, 2007, 2008, pp. 23-51, 2009), but had no personal experience of the aseas 5(2) 319318 tsunami disaster; my work was based on secondary materials. i did not feel comfortable to do fieldwork in the stricken region after the event: to study people in a disaster of those proportions seemed improper to me. however, when floods struck the town of pai, which i had previously studied for several years (cohen, 2006), i rushed there and did a comparative study on the tsunami and flash floods (cohen, 2007). hence, when the 2011 floods in central thailand turned out to be a major disaster, i again found a systematic comparison with the tsunami attractive, though that event was much too complex to be studied by a single researcher without institutional support. however, as the floods reached bangkok and eventually our neighbourhood, they provided an opportunity to experience a disaster first-hand, though it was incomparably milder than the tsunami. as the event progressed, i realised that an account of my personal experiences and of my trajectory through the floods could contribute to contemporary disaster studies from a different perspective than that deployed by ‘realist’ researchers. the 2011 floods the study of disasters has in recent years moved from the periphery to the centre of sociological interest (tierney, 2007). natural disasters have in the past been largely taken for granted, and studies focused narrowly on the management of their consequences. recent work on disasters, however, has stressed the extent to which ‘natural’ disasters, even rare and unexpected ones, are to a significant extent socially produced (oliver-smith, 2002; oliver-smith & hoffman, 1999). indeed, even the effects of a unique and unforeseeable natural disaster such as the tsunami in thailand have been considerably aggravated by human transformation of the coastal zone of the andaman sea from mangrove forests to tourist resorts (cohen, 2008, p. 49). anthropologists have also shown that repetitive ‘disasters’ frequently constitute part of a society’s habitat, and are expected and adapted to by the affected populations (oliver-smith & hoffman, 2002, p. 8). the central plains of thailand have in the past regularly experienced heavy flooding during the monsoon period; their population was well adapted to them, by conerik cohen flooded: an auto-ethnography of the 2011 bangkok flood aseas 5(2) 321320 structing houses on stilts and using boats for transportation. the well-known thai architect sumet jumsai (1988) has in fact characterised thailand as an “aquatic society” and argued that its settlements in the past functioned as “amphibious communities” (jumsai, 2011). however, the construction of dams with huge reservoirs, the creation of a network of irrigation canals, and the more recent landfills for the establishment of massive industrial estates and housing developments in the huge bangkok metropolitan area, transformed the ecological and hydraulic conditions of the central plains (na ayuthaya, 2011), turning even regular floods into potential disasters. hydraulic management thus plays a central role in the prevention and management of floods, but is ridden by rivalries between authorities with conflicting priorities and interests (e.g. “bma gives,” 2011). in 2011, the annual monsoon rainfall was exceptionally heavy, with several major storms arriving in the later part of the monsoon season. between september and november, catastrophic floods hit the central plains of the country, causing a considerable loss of life and enormous damage to the country’s infrastructure and economy. according to various reports, about 600 people lost their lives in floodrelated accidents, 28 of thailand’s 78 provinces were flooded (chongkittavorn, 2011), about 10 million rai (2.5 million acres) of cultivated land destroyed (suvanaporn, 2011), and seven major industrial estates inundated (kertbundit, 2011), causing the closure of 1,700 factories (chongkittavorn, 2011). the business sector lost an estimated thb 1.3 trillion (about usd 43.3 billion) in damages and revenues (“businesses lost,” 2011). the huge disaster elicited a fierce controversy regarding the question whether the floods were due to natural causes or to hydraulic mismanagement (e.g. kertbundit, 2011; praiwan, 2011); and if the latter was the case, who bore the responsibility for the tragedy. this controversy was carried on along the lines of the political split, which has divided the country for the last five years and even engendered a politicallyinspired conspiracy theory by representatives of the recently elected government against its previous incumbents (“abhisit fires,” 2011). that government, headed by yingluck shinawatra (the sister of prime minister thaksin shinawatra, deposed in the 2006 military coup) was as yet little experienced to deal with a crisis of such proportions. as the crisis worsened, the government put up a flood relief operations command (froc), intended to coordinate the flood management efforts; but this body was soon submitted to severe criticism and declared incompetent aseas 5(2) 321320 to take hold of the situation (achakulwisut, 2011a; “froc worsens,” 2011; yoon, 2011). individual froc members were accused of pushing flood relief priorities in different directions, according to their political interests, preventing the formation of a coherent policy (yoon, 2011). froc became the butt of jokes in the foreign language press, especially after its own headquarters, on don meuang airport north of bangkok, was itself flooded and its members had to flee to new headquarters in the city (sheldon, 2011). while a study of the thai ‘flood politics’ is beyond the aims of this account, it is important to point out that the various interested authorities made contrasting predictions with regard to the progress of the floods, and especially on their expected impact on bangkok and its various districts. these varied between promises that there would be no flooding in the city, to warnings that all of it might be eventually flooded (“flood barriers,” 2011). such contradictory predictions created considerable uncertainty and confusion in the urban population, including in our neighbourhood, which, in turn, affected my own disposition towards the threat. waiting for the flood i followed the news of the slow advance of the flood through the central plain towards bangkok without much personal concern. as the waters reached the provinces of nonthaburi and phatumthani in the north of the capital, inundated several major industrial estates, and caused an increasing loss of life, i still did not assume that our housing estate would be threatened, even if the waters penetrated the city. that assumption was based on the topographical location of the estate: there were no waterways, such as brooks or major khlongs (canals), in our immediate vicinity, while the estate was surrounded by open, unused land that i believed to be capable of absorbing any amount of water reaching our area. having a naive image of floods as a ‘natural’ flow of water, according to the lay of the land, i was unaware of the possibilities of manipulation of that flow by the authorities, or of other routes – like drainpipes – by which the water could slowly progress southward. hence, i remained optimistic that we should be spared. at the outset of the crisis i was also, somewhat naively, influenced by the authorities’ reassurances that bangkok would be safe. but these proved increasingly unrelierik cohen flooded: an auto-ethnography of the 2011 bangkok flood aseas 5(2) 323322 able. a plan to save the capital by deflecting the approaching waters to the rivers bang pakong to the east, and ta chin to the west of the metropolitan area badly failed, apparently because the gradient of the flat land was so low that the waters would not flow into the designated direction. panicky voices from individual froc officials consequently announced that all districts of bangkok were in danger of being swept by the floods (“flood barriers,” 2011). the governor of bangkok, who had at first hoped to protect the city as a whole, now concentrated his efforts on the salvation of its central business district and prestigious residential quarters (“bma tries,” 2011). however, i remained disinclined to take the danger of the flooding of our housing estate seriously; this attitude was to some extent a reaction to what appeared to me as an exaggerated preoccupation with the threat by the women in the neighbourhood. i perceived their concern as hysteria and as a welcome distraction from the monotony of their everyday lives, saying to my wife that some of them might regret if the floods did not materialise. in a contrarian disposition, i denied that there was any significant threat to our area. in fact, the information on the threat to our neighbourhood was, as elsewhere, unreliable and erratic. during the later part of october there were daily rumours that the flood was about to arrive on the next day or night, however, these proved to be false, reinforcing my conviction that nothing would happen. the uncertainty resulted in a range of responses to the possible threat on part of our neighbours: a few built a protecting wall in front of the gate to their house and left (photo 1), some blocked their gates by sandbags (photo 2), several acquired movable pumps to drain their yards, while the rest did not take any precautions. i was reluctant and unwilling to start any preparations towards the flood, believing that they were an unnecessary effort. my wife, however, proved more prudent. even before we departed for a conference to india on october 11, she had insisted on purchasing some sandbags, which i reluctantly placed behind the gate of our house on the eve of departure; but we found the house dry upon return a week later. this reinforced my optimism that nothing would happen anymore, expressed in an e-mail to my daughter on october 17, upon returning from india: “our house has not yet been flooded, and there seems to be a declining chance that it will in the next few days.” even as the waters were about to aseas 5(2) 323322 enter bangkok, on october 22 (“deluge reaches,” 2011), i still firmly believed that they would not pose a serious threat; as i wrote to my son: “the water from the north will enter bkk today, but there will probably be little flooding.” ironically, afraid that we would not have a chance to see the flood, we in fact went to look at the first gushing of the flood water into the neighbouring urban district of bang khen. but at the end of october the unexpected happened: dirty water started to gush from the gutters, slowly spreading and rising to flood our soi. this was new to me; i knew that floods can be caused by rains and overflowing rivers or canals, but not that they could come from underground – from the drains. i still did not believe that those waters could get very high, considering the open spaces surrounding the estate, and thought that a few sandbags at the door of the house would protect its interior; but i consented to my wife’s insistence to move some possessions from the lower to the upper floor of our house, though i refused to carry upstairs a heavy cupboard, telling her flippantly that i would buy her a new one if this one would get destroyed by the flood (which it indeed did). leaving as the flood threatened the city, many middle-class bangkokians started to leave, either to stay with family up-country or in the hotels and resorts in the unaffected areas around bangkok (ngamkhan & bangprapa, 2011); while foreign tourism withered, pattaya, hua hin, and other near-by sea-side locations enjoyed a boom in domestic and expatriate refugee-tourism (katharangsiporn, 2011; “locals fleeing,” 2011). many of our neighbours had left prior to the arrival of the flood, while those who installed movable water pumps in their yards drained their property day and night. on october 31, as the water in our soi rose inexorably, we also decided to leave. the timing was determined by my wife: she wanted to get out as long as it was still possible to pass through the rising waters by our car. i packed just a few personal belongings and some materials for my work, believing, on the basis of previous experience, that the waters would recede in a few days. budget hotels in the city itself were already almost fully occupied by people like ourselves. we found a room in a cheap hotel nearby, and, turning the hotel room into a erik cohen flooded: an auto-ethnography of the 2011 bangkok flood aseas 5(2) 325324 temporary home, soon settled down into some kind of routine: work during the day, exercise in the evening, dining in still open restaurants. since much of north-eastern bangkok was flooded, we desisted from going to other parts of the city, staying and exploring the area around the hotel. we made, among others, a visit to a nearby khlong, with a slum of long-time muslim in-migrants along its banks, which we had never even noticed before when passing through the area. we also discovered, just behind our hotel, in an unlikely, run-down area of workshops and mostly lower class habitations, the luxurious, high-walled, and well-protected compound of thailand’s present prime minister, yingluck shinawatra. the move to the hotel thus opened to us sights in the vicinity of our home, which we had previously been completely unaware of. our housing estate was declared an evacuation zone by the urban authorities soon after we had left. lying on low land, it was reported to be one of the more seriously affected areas of the city. a day or two after leaving, we visited the estate. the transformation in the appearance of the familiar site was striking. the street into the estate looked like a khlong, with waters at places 70 to 80 centimetres high, and still rising. i began to realise that our ‘exile’ was going to last much longer than we had initially expected. an emergency post, staffed by local volunteers, police, and later on, soldiers, was established at the entrance to the flooded area, which soon became a meeting place for socialising and exchanging information. people waddled from there through the murky waters, and were occasionally helped by volunteers, with vehicles fit to pass through the flood waters. the following day we also put on shorts and started to waddle towards our house (photo 3), until a volunteer picked us up. the water in our soi was knee-high; against my previous conviction that the house would remain dry, the water had in fact flooded the lower level of the house, at a height of about 30-40 cm, damaging most of the furniture we had not moved to the higher level. i took a few photos (photo 4), but there was nothing else we could do. the neighbourhood had died down; most households were abandoned, shops closed up. our soi was virtually deserted. but despite the call for evacuation, not all residents of the housing estate had left; a few hundred remained, mostly in the lower-middle class areas of the estate. the inhabitants adapted to the situation remarkably soon. in a few days, the flooded area bustled with floats, boats of all kinds aseas 5(2) 325324 (photo 5), and even a few motor boats, some volunteering to carry passengers to their homes, and at least one person ferrying people for a fee along the flooded streets. volunteers, and increasingly the army, supplied those who stayed behind with food, water, and transportation. along the main road in front of the housing estate, a lively market for emergency goods appeared: hawkers established stalls, selling sandbags, plastic boots and overalls, and plastic and rubber boats; elsewhere even outboard motors were offered for sale on the roadside. with no prospect to return home soon, we decided to take a previously planned trip to the north-east of the country on november 10. preoccupied with other matters, i gave little thought to the floods, but during the trip i decided, following a conversation with a colleague, to write up this account. i was hoping that we would be able to re-enter the house soon after our return. this, however, again proved over-optimistic. we went to the house to check on the damage; since our previous visit, the waters had started to decline, leaving behind much dirt and broken furniture. in a disturbing contrast with the chaos beneath, we found the upper floor still orderly, just as we had left it. appalled, we departed, waddling in the dirty water until the ferrying boatman took us back to the post. there was nothing to do but wait. we settled down again in the nearby hotel, thinking of another trip, but the enthusiasm with which we had gone away the first time had faded; rather, we followed the annoyingly slow recession of the water in the estate. at the entrance post a kind of routine had settled in, after about three weeks of flooding. the emergency services continued to operate, but the hustle of the boats along the flooded lanes gradually stopped. the army brought in heavy trucks, which regularly plied the affected area to assist people to travel to and from their homes (laohong, 2011). we took a truck a few times to check the water at the house. the spirits among our co-travellers appeared high: in sharp contrast to the helpful but serious young soldiers who accompanied us on the trip, the locals were usually chatting, giggling, and joking, excited by the unusual circumstances, but possibly also seeking to cover up their worries and personal embarrassment, provoked by their helplessness and need for assistance. we found the water in the house gradually receding but also becoming increasingly darker and dirtier, making it ever more unpleasant to walk through. we threw some disinfecting compounds into the flooded interior and returned to the hotel. erik cohen flooded: an auto-ethnography of the 2011 bangkok flood aseas 5(2) 327326 return on november 21, the first draining pump arrived at the housing estate; another followed a few days later. but the flood level, whose decline now everybody eagerly followed, went down only slowly, though the pumps drained the water 24 hours a day. by november 23, we found most of the interior of the house free of water, but full of rubbish from broken furniture and damaged belongings, and the floors slippery and covered by congested muck. i had never imagined that a relatively modest flood could leave behind so much dirt. but it should be remembered, that this was ‘second-hand’ floodwater, which had already flooded areas in the north of bangkok before it reached our estate. in a rather cheerful mood, we devoted ourselves to the demanding work of draining the remaining flood water from the backyard, cleaning the floors, and drying the furniture, most of which turned out to be beyond repair. despite our efforts, we eventually had to hire a professional cleaning team that brought the place into shape in a few hours. but the streets were still flooded and not passable by car, so we delayed our return until november 30, when we were finally able to drive through the receding waters and return home – a whole month after we had left. we went on a brief shopping spree, replacing the old, damaged, or broken furniture and equipment with new things, thus using the occasion of the disaster to partly renovate our house. as our neighbours also started to come back and clean their properties, discarding damaged furniture and household goods, huge heaps of trash accumulated in front of the dwellings and in empty lots on the estate. the saleng, mobile collectors of recyclable rubbish, had a heyday raking through the trash. buyers of second-hand goods crisscrossed the estate, seeking to purchase discarded furniture and equipment. the city brought in huge trucks to collect the junk. community leaders called upon the households to send representatives to clean the sois of the accumulated dirt; but the communal spirit was gone: except for my wife, virtually nobody responded to the call. life in the estate had returned to normal. reflection the 2011 floods have been likened to an ‘interior tsunami’, but it was a slow-motion tsunami, at least in its final stages, which left considerable scope for individual aseas 5(2) 327326 agency. but its slowness also played an important role in my misapprehension of the situation and persistent denial of the threat to our neighbourhood. i was under the spell of a wrong image of a flood. being familiar with flash floods, which come suddenly in the wake of a storm and recede quickly, i was completely unaware of the role of the complex man-made system of khlongs and drainage pipes through which the flood had advanced, in some instances spontaneously, in others manipulated by the authorities or even by the actions of angry inhabitants, who tried to open sluice gates or to destroy dykes, in order to release the water accumulated in their neighbourhoods (“flood barriers,” 2011; rojanaphruk, 2011). as a male and a foreigner i had certainly less access than my wife to the neighbourhood’s informal information network, based mainly on the female members of households, and was less well informed about the threat of flooding than most locals. but it is important to note that, like the 2004 tsunami, the 2011 floods were unique in their enormity, and none of my neighbours had ever experienced anything similar. hence, there was little reliable ‘native knowledge’ (of the kind the moken sea-nomads allegedly possessed in the tsunami (arunotai, 2008)) which could be of help to deal with the threat; but the havoc which the flood caused in the two provinces to the north of bangkok, nontaburi and pathumthani, prior to reaching bangkok, might have served as a warning to the locals, which i had disregarded. therefore, i failed to ‘read’ the developing situation correctly and was slow to react to it. rather, i reluctantly went through a gradual process of transition from resident to ‘exile’ in a series of steps, each of which i initially resisted but then was eventually forced to accept: 1. from denial to acceptance of the possibility that our neighbourhood might be flooded. 2. from reluctance to acceptance of the need to put up sandbags. 3. from unwillingness to remove possessions to the higher floor to their reluctant removal. 4. from a conviction that we should remain at home, despite the flood, to the acceptance of its abandonment. 5. from a belief that we should stay away for just a brief time to the realisation that our ‘exile’ would be relatively long. erik cohen flooded: an auto-ethnography of the 2011 bangkok flood aseas 5(2) 329328 having to leave one’s home is generally a traumatic experience (fried, 1963). among thai people, attachment to their home is strong; especially older people were reluctant to abandon their homes during the floods (achakulwisut, 2011b). but in my case, the reluctance to do so was not so much motivated by a dread of homelessness as by an under-estimation of the actual threat as well as by a personal disposition to not exaggerate dangers and to remain cool in emergencies. this, in turn, is probably rooted in my early socialisation to the israeli (military) ethos which stresses coolness as well as in some significant personal experiences. for – in contrast to most other people in our neighbourhood – abandoning or losing a home was not a new experience to me. during my childhood, in 1941, as jews in fascist croatia during the second world war, we were thrown out of our flat on short notice; in 1949, i left my home in zagreb, sadly but voluntarily, to emigrate to israel; in 1964, when my first marriage broke up, i left my home precipitately. each of these cases is different but together they constitute an experiential background which dwarfs the experience of the temporary abandonment of our house owing to the floods. moreover, in the early 2000s i left my flat in jerusalem to live in thailand, though i still maintain it and stay in it during annual visits. the fact that, like many people in the contemporary mobile society (haldrup, 2004), i had two homes, one in jerusalem and another in bangkok, might have attenuated my attachment to either. but i wonder what my reaction would have been if a disaster, such as an earthquake, hit my jerusalem home, in which i have lived for almost 40 years. under the circumstances, the use of the epithet ‘exile’ for our leaving the house in the estate should be taken more as a playful, and – considering our comfortable conditions – ironic rather than serious description of our situation. in fact, the situation we found ourselves in after we left the house was ambiguous; we were neither ‘at home’ nor really ‘away’, staying in a hotel just a few minutes away from the estate and visiting it regularly. there is no appropriate term to designate our move from the house to the hotel: ‘flight’, or even ‘escape’ seem inappropriate since we were not forced to leave by a physical threat; ‘refuge’ or ‘exile’ are terms too strong for a move of such a short distance from one’s home; we were certainly not ‘tourists’ or ‘vacationers’ (like those bangkokians who went to sea-side resorts could be described as), though we lived in a hotel and did engage in some touristic activities. in fact, we strove to continue our everyday life as much as the circumstances permitted, and we sought to stay as close to our home as possible. this indicates that, at least in our case, despite the aseas 5(2) 329328 radical interruption of the basis of our ordinary existence by the disaster, there was no clear break between ‘home’ and ‘away’, or between ‘everyday’ and ‘extraordinary’ circumstances. this kind of intermediary situation seems to escape crisp conceptualisation since it comprises a modicum of continuity under conditions of change, provoked by a radical interruption of regular life by disaster. i was also inclined to take our ‘exile’ easy, owing to a sense of inverted ‘relative deprivation’: people in other places, mainly outside bangkok, were much more severely affected by the floods; in comparison, we got away lightly. i did not feel the anger and disappointment with the manner in which the authorities managed the flood like many thai people. unlike many western expatriates, who criticised the authorities in angry letters to the editor of english-language newspapers, i felt that, as a foreigner living in thailand, i had no standing to complain publicly, though i might study the event professionally. conclusion in this account, written partly in ‘real time’, i related my experience of a localised event: the flooding of our neighbourhood. but that event was critically enmeshed in at least two principal contexts: the natural, topographical, and administrative context that fashioned the arrival, rise, perseverance, and termination of the flood in the neighbourhood; and my personal biography and previous experiences with floods (which, under the circumstances, were counterproductive), that channelled my perceptions and actions in a particular direction. my account thus draws attention to the complexities involved in the formation of a personal trajectory through a disaster. thus, it contributes to the growing field of disaster studies by charting out the personal trajectory of the author through a prolonged flooding of his neighbourhood. it indicates that, although people might be exposed to similar threats and circumstances in a disaster, as they were in the flood in our estate, their trajectories through the event, in terms of perceptions, experiences, and actions, will be to a significant extent influenced and diversified by their particular biographies and previous key life experiences. notwithstanding the similar spatiotemporal context of the event, peoples’ varied reactions will thus result in a plethora of diverse personal trajectories. the foregrounding of the biographical dimension in human conduct in disasters is thus the specific contribution of this account to disaster studies. erik cohen flooded: an auto-ethnography of the 2011 bangkok flood aseas 5(2) 331330 1 protective wall on neighbour’s gate sandbags at neighbour’s gate2 marina wetzlmaier prooder anti-life? aseas 5(2) 331330 marina wetzlmaier prooder anti-life? my wife waddling through the stagnant flood water the front yard of our house under water 3 4 aseas 5(2) 333332 references abhisit fires back at pracha’s conspiracy theory. 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(2011, november 9). as roads become rivers, soldiers turn ferrymen. bangkok post, 4. locals fleeing to hua hin, pattaya. (2011, october 28). the nation, 3. macilveen, p. (2008). autoethnography as a method for reflexive research and practice in vocational psychology. qualitative research, 17(2), 13-20. na ayuthaya, i. (2011, november 3). anatomy of a crisis. bangkok post, 8. erik cohen flooded: an auto-ethnography of the 2011 bangkok flood aseas 5(2) 335334 ngamkhan, w., & bangprapa, m. (2011, october 29). city folk flee to nearby resort towns to escape crisis. bangkok post, 3. oliver-smith, a. (2002). theorizing disaster: nature, power, and culture. in s. m. hoffman & a. oliversmith (eds.), catastrophe and culture (pp. 23-47). santa fe, nm: school of american research press. oliver-smith, a., & hoffman, s. (eds.) (1999). the angry earth; disasters in anthropological perspective. new york, ny: routledge. oliver-smith, a., & hoffman, s. m. (2002). introduction: why anthropologists should study disasters. in s. m. hoffman & a. oliver-smith (eds.), catastrophe and culture (pp. 3-22). santa fe, nm: school of american research press. praiwan (2011, november 3). egat chief says dams “not to blame”. bangkok post, 3. rojanaphruk, p. (2011, november 1). tempers flare at sluice gate. the nation, 1. sheldon, j. (2011, october 30). bangkok floods: froc evacuated from don mueang. thaitravelnews. retrieved april 15, 2012, from http:/www. thaitravelnews.net/bangkok-2/bangkok-floods-froc-evacuated –donmueang/ suwanaporn, c. (2011, november 3). thai economy under water: a serious supply chain shock. the nation, 8a. tierney, k. j. (2007). from the margins to the mainstream? disaster research at the crossroads. annual review of sociology, 33, 503-525. wall, s. (2006). an autoethnography on learning about autoethnography. ijom; international journal of qualitative methods, 5(2), 146-160. yoon, s. (2011, november 3). froc: how not to run an emergency operations center. the nation, 8a. book review: ear, s. (2013). aid dependence in cambodia: how foreign assistance undermines democracy. new york, ny: columbia university press. isbn: 978-0-231-16112-1. 208 pages. ► nasrat, s. (2014). book review: ear, s. (2013). aid dependence in cambodia: how foreign assistance undermines democracy. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 7(2), 261-264. based on the premise of the importance of national ownership for development, this book examines the relationship between cambodia’s aid dependence and its poor governance. sophal ear, assistant professor of national security affairs at the us naval postgraduate school, chooses cambodia as a case study as it is one of the most aid-drenched countries in southeast asia. to achieve the aforementioned objective, the book is divided into four chapters, using field interviews, case studies, and document analyses as a source of information. chapter 1 concisely highlights the connection between aid dependence and quality of governance. this chapter claims that the quality of governance depends upon the governance system followed in the country. it argues that foreign aid has had negative incentives for good governance, weakened tax collections, and undermined accountability since donors failed to improve the rule of law. chapter 2 describes the recent economic growth in cambodia and shows the ineffectiveness of foreign aid and government policies in three main economic sectors (garment, rice, and livestock). ear points out that effective and sustainable economic growth depends upon good governance in as much as the government ensures the rule of law, democracy, and anti-corruption. chapter 3 assesses the effectiveness of official development assistance (oda) and the effects of aid dependence based on the example of highly pathogenic avian influenza (hpai). the chapter shows that the efforts and policy responses to prevent the disease were weak mainly because of the lack of good governance, fund management, and the weak coordination at the state level. last but not least, chapter 4 looks into indigenous human rights activism between 2005 and 2006 that drew on international media and international diplomatic ties to curtail the excesses of the state and the ruling cambodian people’s party. funding by the international community was particularly oriented towards local, national, and international ngos working to liberalize cambodian democracy. as a result of international pressure, some political prisoners were released; yet, the pressure was too weak to spur government reforms in the country. the central argument of aid dependence in cambodia is that neither democracy introduced by the united nation transitional authority in cambodia (untac) nor foreign aid flows led to economic development and a stabilization of the country. therefore, the author suggests that cambodia should cut foreign aid as soon as possible and instead strengthen domestic tax collection and enrezensionen  book reviews w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 14 .2 -9 262 sayed nasrat  aseas 7(2) hance ownership for national development. ear argues that cambodia’s main problems (e.g. poverty, corruption, and inequality) are global problems that can – particularly in postconflict societies – only be dealt with through international aid. however, cambodia has received oda for more than two decades with little impact on the socio-economic conditions of its people. the main reason for this ineffectiveness is high corruption and mismanagement of funding. the long-term aid dependence has made cambodia a “laboratory for donors’ trial and error experiments” (p. 10). having this in mind, the author demands political will to change the culture of corruption. with regard to specific economic sectors, ear finds that donors in cambodia failed to invest in the energy sector and fight against informal payments in order to develop the rice, garment, and livestock sectors in the country. the garment industry as an important employment and income generation sector was successful mainly due to favorable external market conditions, the imposition of good labor practices by trading partners, and unified trade association. lack of collaboration between rice-milling associations, poor access to credit, and high cost of energy and transportation limited the rice production in the country. similarly, lack of trade association, poor quality of certification, and high informal payments for exports were the main hindrances for the livestock sector development in cambodia. ear claims that aid dependence is the main obstacle for cambodia’s ownership of development and links foreign aid flows with the government’s political reluctance to tax; and without taxation, the link between the government and electorate is broken. thus, in a recent interview with the broadcaster voice of america (voa khemer), the author stated that when people do not pay taxes, they do not own their part of the democratic process (sothearith, 2013). an important argument further claims that directing aid to economic development means removing many of the gatekeepers who stand between a country’s national economy and the international system. therefore, aid can only trigger economic development if it fosters: (1) information to the general public of both donors and recipients; (2) transparency; and (3) consultation and participation in order to increase the demand for good governance. in addition to these arguments, there are some points that have not been clearly discussed and potentially limit the strength of the book. first, clear and detailed information for most of the arguments is missing. for instance, there is no elaboration on the system and approaches for the collection and administration of domestic taxation, neither is the access to credits and certification for the rice and livestock sector comprehensively explained. moreover, the author offers no successful example of tax collection as a substitute for foreign aid from other postconflict and aid-dependent countries. due to this lack of information, the contribution of taxation to economic development in cambodia is questionable. son chhay, a sam rainsy party parliamentarian, has criticized the tax collection system in cambodia for its high level of tax leakage and losses. according to him, collected tax goes into the private pockets of the tax collectors. although rising year by year, tax income therefore does not reflect real payments or collection (kunmakara, 2012). second, as the book is a compilation of previously published articles, particularly chapter 1 (aid dependence and quality of governance), it is difficult to follow the sequence of the author’s rationale. 263book review third, the author’s policy recommendations, such as imposing stronger penalties to tackle corruption problems, collecting more revenues from taxation, and beefing up civil society (pp. 140–141) stand little chance to be implemented effectively in cambodia due to high levels of corruption. it is also not clear whether an increase in revenue would have a positive impact on governance as an example for such a case is missing. in sum, it should be noted that the above-mentioned shortcomings of the book do and shall not undermine the weight of the author’s arguments. the book is a good source of information for donors, politicians, and civil servants in cambodia as well as for other highly aid-dependent countries in africa and asia to understand that aid dependence impedes good governance and how aid dependence can be avoided. in addition, policymakers, development practitioners, theorists, and political economy students can benefit from this thin and yet instructive book for a better understanding of the inter-connection between foreign aid and governance in cambodia. sayed nasrat ritsumeikan asia pacific university, japan  references kunmakara, m. (2012). criticism for cambodia’s tax revenue. the phenom penh post. retrieved from http://www.phnompenhpost.com/business/criticism-cambodia%e2%80%99s-tax-revenue sothearith, i. (2013). dependence on foreign aid undermining cambodia. voice of america khemer services. retrieved from http://www.voacambodia.com/content/dependence-on-foreign-aid-underminingcambodia/1609151.html call for papers | euroseas conference | vienna | 11—14 august 2015 the european association for southeast asian studies (euroseas) invites scholars to present papers at the euroseas conference in vienna, 11 to 14 august 2015. for the accepted panels please see: http://www.euroseas.org/content/conference if you want to participate in a panel, please send your paper abstract directly to the panel conveners. euroseas will not accept paper proposals that are not part of a panel. please be reminded of the following deadlines:  28 february 2015: early bird registration deadline  15 may 2015: overall registration deadline if your paper is accepted by a panel convener, your registration and payment have to be effected by 15 may 2015 to be part of the program. thank you very much for your attention! kind regards, the euroseas panel committee  call for papers euroseas conference ∏ vienna ∏ 11–14 august 2015 the european association for southeast asian studies (euroseas) invites scholars to present papers at the euroseas conference in vienna, 11 to 14 august 2015. for the accepted panels see: http://www.euroseas.org/content/conference if your want to participate in a panel, please send your paper abstract directly to the panel conveners. euroseas will not accept paper proposals that are not part of a panel. please be reminded of the following deadlines: 28 february 2015: early bird registration deadline 5 may 2015: overall registration deadline if your paper is accepted by a panel convener, your registration and payment have to be effected by 15 may 2015 to be part of the program. thank you very much for your attention! kind regards, the euroseas panel committee mainstreaming human security in the philippines: options and prospects for non-state actors in light of the ‘asean way’ aseas 3(2) 210 211 aktuelle südostasienforschung / current research on south-east asia mainstreaming human security in the philippines: options and prospects for non-state actors in light of the ‘asean way’ eduardo t. gonzalez1 & magdalena l. mendoza2 university of the philippines development academy of the philippines citation gonzalez, e. t., & mendoza, l. m. (2010). mainstreaming human security in the philippines: options and prospects for non-state actors in light of the ‘asean way’. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 3(2), 211-240. progress in human security in the philippines is infl uenced by the ‘asean way’, which underscores consensual approach to decision-making, informal structures and processes, and the principle of non-interference in member-countries’ internal aff airs. along these lines, asean broadened the agenda of security to encompass problems like poverty, epidemics, food security, human rights, and climate change, but failed to deepen security from a focus on the state to a focus on human individuals and communities. yet the ‘asean way’ off ers enough tolerance for ‘operationalising’ possibilities for normative non-state securitisation. philippine ngos have intervened in the decision-making process, shaped and disseminated politically relevant values and norms, and have taken the initiative to set rules themselves. for the philippine government labouring under ‘soft state’ conditions, the most appropriate role based on a human security agenda would be to strengthen existing institutional structures, expand the democratic space for non-state actors, and join inter-state regimes and quasi-diplomatic arrangements, thereby reducing transaction costs and facilitating reciprocity within asean. keywords: human security, non-state actors, asean, securitisation, diplomatic tracks der „asean way“, der konsensuelle entscheidungsprozesse, informelle strukturen und prozesse sowie das prinzip der nichteinmischung in die inneren angelegenheiten der mitgliedstaaten betont, hat direkte auswirkungen auf die weiterentwicklung menschlicher sicherheit auf den philippinen. innerhalb dieses rahmens erweiterte asean die sicherheitspolitische agenda um probleme wie armut, epidemien, nahrungsmittelsicherheit, menschenrechte und klimawandel. es erfolgte jedoch keine vertiefung des sicherheitsbegriff s durch einen fokuswechsel vom staat hin zu individuen und gruppen – und das obwohl der „asean way“ ausreichend operationalisierungsspielraum für normative nicht-staatliche sekuritisierung böte. philippinische ngos beteiligen sich an politischen entscheidungsprozessen, beeinfl ussen und vermitteln eigene politisch relevante werte und normen, und stellen sogar eigene regeln auf. für die im kontext eines „weichen“ staatlichen rahmens agierende 1 eduardo t. gonzalez is professor at the asian center of the university of the philippines. contact: edtgonzalez@gmail.com 2 magdalena l. mendoza is a fellow at the development academy of the philippines. contact: dedengmendoza@yahoo.com aseas 3(2) 212 213 philippinische regierung wären daher die am meisten angemessenen aufgaben bei der verwirklichung der agenda menschlicher sicherheit die stärkung der vorhandenen internationalen strukturen, die erweiterung des demokratischen spielraums für nicht-staatliche akteure sowie der beitritt zu zwischenstaatlichen regime und quasi-diplomatischen arrangements. damit könnten transaktionskosten gesenkt und die reziprozität innerhalb aseans gefördert werden. schlagworte: menschliche sicherheit, nichtstaatliche akteure, asean, sekuritisierung, diplomatische ebenen introduction the central purpose of this paper is to show how non-state actors (nsa) in the philippines translate the concept of human security from discourse to action, and consequently, how the state can correspondingly calibrate its own human security outlook. human security is approached using the ‘asean way’ as context because the philippines is bound and influenced by the policy-making and diplomatic style favoured by the association of southeast asian nations (asean). this paper argues that as a state with a relatively open democratic space but with weak political institutions, the philippines – when seen through the lens of the broader asean practice of human security – implies constrained human security outcomes but shows well-articulated policies by non-state actors. along the lines of arts (2003), the role of non-state organisations and players as ‘securitisers’ is analysed in the context of their newlyfound decisional, discursive, regulatory powers in order to demonstrate the shift in focus of human security from a state-centric to a people-centred perspective. the south-east asian policy environment asean’s consensual approach the ‘asean way’ underscores a consensual approach to decision-making, informal structures and processes, and the principle of non-interference in membercountries’ internal affairs (that is, respect for absolute sovereignty) (camilleri, 2000; von feigenblatt, 2009). this line of approach emphasises quiet diplomacy as aseas 3(2) 212 213 opposed to institutionalised rules3 and direct censure of individual member states. as such, discussions within official asean forums are often low-key, muted by the “comfort level” of the individual regimes (campbell, 2006). issues arising from any serious breach of the objectives and principles adopted in the asean charter such as “respect for and protection and promotion of human rights and fundamental freedoms”, “rejection of acts of genocide, ethnic cleansing, torture, the use of rape as an instrument of war, and the discrimination based on gender, race, religion or ethnicity”, and “enhancing the well-being and livelihood of the peoples of asean by providing them with equitable access to opportunities for human development, social welfare and justice” are to be handled nationally (severino, 2008, pp. 106-109). asean’s loose structure and non-binding nature has proven to be an appealing formula for a region wary of super-power interference with a vivid memory of colonialism (von feigenblatt, 2009).4 nonetheless, asean’s diplomatic style may still mean progress in human security at many levels precisely because it is less threatening than might otherwise be the case (camilleri, 2000). voluntary co-operation and mutual non-interference suggests a longer-term horizon in arriving at comprehensive security. it may hinder shortand mid-term decisive answers, but it also avoids precipitate and impulsive action. and the fact that asean has been willing to somewhat relax its cherished non-interference principle in specific cases (such as the recent cambodia-thailand border rift) may be an indication of a shifting attitude in order to make headway on the issue of human security in the region. the key, according to acharya (2007), in making the idea of human security the basis for regional co-operation is to ‘localise’ the idea within the current security concepts and approaches of asean. 3 the ‘asean way’, compared to us and european union human security perspectives, seems to be least unambiguous. according to jensen (2006), the us policy is premised on the “non-negotiable demand of human dignity” and the centrality of democratisation and liberalisation of markets in the fulfilment of human security goals. us policy can threaten to meet democratic deficits with direct sanction and the latent threat of regime change. the eu policy mirrors a narrower interpretation of human security, emphasising multilateral forums and comprehensive agreements with a wide range of regional powers. compared to us ‘instantaneity,’ eu policy allows more autonomy, time and resources to its regional partners. thus the eu avoids imposing a solution and indicates a more relativist approach. to the extent that it succeeds in imposing its solution, the us is imposing a particular normative interpretation of the region according to a specific universalist code. the ‘asean way’ is closer to the eu perspective, but agreements are non-binding. 4 a more interventionist ‘flexible engagement’ policy, proposed by thailand towards burma’s human rights crisis, gained support only from the philippines. a compromise solution within asean was to adopt ‘enhanced interaction’ whereby individual member states could disapprove of other members’ domestic affairs but asean as a whole should not (campbell, 2006). eduardo t. gonzalez & magdalena l. mendoza mainstreaming human security in the philippines aseas 3(2) 214 215 broadening the agenda of security along these lines, asean was one of the first regional alliances to think of comprehensive security, an important step toward fulfilling the first important trait of human security – the broadening of the agenda of security from the focus on direct violence to problems like poverty, epidemics, food security, human rights, and the looming effects of climate change. scheftel (2009) calls this the horizontal integration of human security. in asia, the recent rise of many non-military issues, such as the asian financial crisis (afc), indonesian forest fires, the bali terrorist bombings, floods in china, and the outbreak of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (sars), has highlighted the shortfalls of the entrenched paradigm of traditional security in the region (othman, 2004). asean has moved toward the idea of security as symbolising safety from ‘threats without enemies’: disease, hunger, unemployment, crime, social conflict, political repression, environmental hazards, piracy, drug trafficking, undocumented immigration, separatism, and other border-crossing pathologies. such diverse phenomena, all falling under the rubric of human security, cannot necessarily be dealt with successfully by individual member-states. asean has succeeded in significantly extending the security debate, without automatically deserting the conventional approach of state sovereignty and statecentricity. human security hazards have a power to harm communities and constituencies which outstrips the state’s power to protect. these hazards have exposed the vulnerability of asean member states and clearly restricted their defensive capabilities. because of this asean has recently become more receptive to a post-cold war reassessment of what lam (2006) calls ‘regime security’ and the utility of military power in inter-state conflict. the need to protect people from major disruptions in their daily lives has become a legitimate alliance concern. a more balanced view of human tragedies seems to be emerging, as opposed to the tendency to regard security only in the context of military challenges and terrorism. after all, more people died from the aids epidemic (which can be prevented, cured, or effectively managed) than from 9/11 (sen, undated). likewise, the tsunami in december 2004 claimed more than 126,000 lives in indonesia alone. the bali bombings in october 2002 killed 200 innocent people. the sense of fear and aseas 3(2) 214 215 uncertainty sparked by the sars epidemic in 2003 was of a far greater magnitude than any other transnational challenge, including terrorism (acharya, 2005). the imperative to confront and defeat terrorism remains, as sen (undated) argues, but the enormous toll of human neglect is also being recognised. yet another trigger for the shifting attitude, according to sen (2000), is the region’s economic vulnerability. while its economic progress had been very swift for many decades, and while poverty levels in the region have decreased considerably, the danger of a downturn affecting the lives of hundreds of millions also remains ever present – even if the area weathered the asian economic crisis of 1997 (which wreaked havoc on the daily lives of people who had previously felt secure and protected). at the bargaining table, asean has matched intentions with accords. principally through the bali concord ii, asean seeks to establish the asean security community, along with the asean economic community and the asean socio-cultural community, by 2020 (later accelerated to 2015). while economic co-operation is the main driving force, asean leaders have recognised that economic integration, the main engine of alliance building, will be incomplete without the ‘security’ features (political development, human rights, rule of law, and democracy). along more specific lines, the asean plan of action to combat transnational crime (1999) has identified the threats to human security like illicit drug trafficking, trafficking in persons, arms smuggling, terrorism, and various forms of economic crime. the blueprint is being implemented at the ministerial level. in the wake of the devastation caused by the tsunami in december 2004, asean concluded an agreement on disaster management and emergency response in july 2005. in the field of public health, the regional framework for control and eradication of highly pathogenic avian influenza has been put in place. asean has likewise launched the asean plus three emerging infectious diseases programme (along with china, japan, and south korea) in a run-up to the work of the asean disease surveillance network. to mitigate the effects of haze pollution resulting from forest fires (which disrupt social and economic life, and also adversely affect the health and well-being of millions of people in the region), the regional alliance came up with the asean agreement on transboundary haze pollution of 2002 (yong and sané, 2007). the asean declaration on the protection and promotion of the rights of migrant workers was issued in 2007. early on, asean signed the declaration eduardo t. gonzalez & magdalena l. mendoza mainstreaming human security in the philippines aseas 3(2) 216 217 on the elimination of violence against women in the asean region in 1994. lately, asean has established the asean intergovernmental commission on human rights (aihcr). but as severino (2008) cautions, such commitments are far from binding, and there is no evidence that progress in carrying out set interventions is being monitored or followed through. the process, tempo, and execution of these accords are still in doubt. nevertheless, the agreements can be invoked in case of egregious violations, which suggests a slow, step-by-step progress in advancing human security. they likewise open the door for non-state actors to initiate human security activities in limited contexts. where asean is firmly united is in its opposition to the use of labour rights in international trade agreements for disguised protectionist purposes. asean insists that the subject of labour rights be dealt with in the international labour organization (ilo) rather than in the world trade organization (wto). against deepening of security the ‘asean way’ identifies the referent, or enforcer, of security as the sovereign nation-state – a residue of the cold war’s centripetal tendency of political regimes towards the consolidation of state power. current thinking transcends security for states and their sovereignty and focuses on the security of human individuals and communities. scheftel (2009) labels this process the deepening of security through the vertical integration of human security. such deepening is part of the radical conceptual shift from national security, with its narrow focus on military defence, to human security, with its emphasis on individual welfare (thakur, 2000). it is people who must be protected against dangers that threaten life and well-being – regardless of whether these threats can be traced back to societal activities or natural events, whether they exist inside or outside the framework of the state, whether they are direct or structural (burgess & owen, 2004). generally, what confronts the survival of the state also threatens the survival of its people. yet the converse is not always true: menaces which affect people might not necessarily threaten the continued existence of states. human security may thus be quite distinct from the security of the state. as acharya (2005) illustrates, events like the afc and sars threatened neither the physical boundaries nor the territorial aseas 3(2) 216 217 integrity of states in the region, which is the core of the national security paradigm. even if the afc triggered a chain of events that led to the collapse of one of asia’s most entrenched authoritarian regimes – indonesia’s suharto –and the separation of east timor as an independent nation state, what was really at stake was the safety of the indonesian people, their livelihoods, their health, and their sense of well-being. acharya also observed that the massacre of the indonesian chinese that followed the fall of suharto again did not endanger the state itself. as dahl-eriksen (2007) contends, there are situations for which governments cannot be held responsible. on the other hand, state power itself, exercised repressively, could be a threat towards individuals (dahl-eriksen, 2007), as when a state’s policies and laws discriminate against certain minority groups (othman, 2004). or, the threat could take the form of the incapacity of the state – whether through incompetence or lack of needed resources and infrastructure – to make available safety, health, justice, basic human rights, and education to develop the skills that lead to economic and social well-being (othman, 2004). an adequate concept of human security, sen (undated) points out, includes at least the following distinct elements: (1) a distinct focus on human lives; (2) an appreciation of the role of society and of social arrangements in making human lives more secure in a constructive way (avoiding a socially detached view of individual human predicaments); and (3) a fuller understanding of the coverage of human rights, which have to include not just political freedom and personal liberties (important as they are), but also societal concern with food, medical attention, basic education, and other elementary needs of human lives. asean’s historical preoccupation with regime security and the institutionalised retention of the political elite (campbell, 2006) does not augur well for a normative shift toward a people-centric security perspective. if asean has acted on matters that directly affect people’s lives (such as sars, the tsunami, or haze pollution), it has done so because it was forced to by circumstances (severino, 2008). asean has been challenged to reassess its priorities and its ability to manage human disasters in the wake of regional and domestic menaces that impair human lives. eduardo t. gonzalez & magdalena l. mendoza mainstreaming human security in the philippines aseas 3(2) 218 219 protective versus developmental security a closer look suggests that asean may be averse only to protective human security, which stresses ‘freedom from fear’ and individual rights against political repression. the international ‘responsibility to protect’ and its implicit challenge to sovereignty, arguably falls within the parameters of ‘protective human security.’ asean elites may be more comfortable with developmental human security, which stresses ‘freedom from want’ and the importance of economic issues in advancing human security, and avoids (for the time being) dealing with civil and political rights (von feigenblatt, 2009). ‘freedom from fear’ is understood as freedom from pervasive threats to people’s rights, safety or lives only (floyd, 2007; caballero-anthony, 2004) and emphasises civil-political human rights in particular (richardson, 2007). it is the foundation of protective human security. the canadian government favours this approach, which emphasises the protection of the dignity of the individual and the prevention of cruelty to people caught in zones of conflict (acharya, 2005). it stresses the international community’s ‘responsibility to protect’, which suggests that it does not rule out the collective use of force and/or sanctions and regime change if and when necessary (caballero-anthony, 2004) in order to protect individuals in other countries from genocide, ethnic cleansing or other physical threats beyond the capability of their home governments, with or without the government’s approval.5 it thus favours shortand mid-term decisive action. protective human security has an unpalatable implication for asean: it aims to break the barrier of absolute sovereignty in order to enforce the protection of human rights (von feigenblatt, 2009). ‘freedom from want’ is understood as safety from threats such as poverty, disease, and environmental disasters (floyd, 2007). it draws on economic, social and cultural rights, includes development issues, and emphasises the creation and maintenance of a stable social and economic environment (richardson, 2007; acharya, 2005). it is the basis for developmental human security. it has been mainly promoted by 5 according to acharya (2005), in the post-9/11 political environment, freedom from fear has acquired a new meaning: fear of freedoms. the framing of terrorism as a national security concern has undermined the key bases of human security, such as multilateral peacekeeping in the region as well as confidence and trust-building. this is reflected in the narrowing of military-political perspective and approach between western and some asean governments (expressed in legislation that allows ever more intrusive surveillance). the region’s elites could perhaps even take pride that their own security laws (say, malaysia’s internal security act, or the philippines’ human security act) closely resemble the us’ patriot act, which essentially adopts a freedom from fear perspective. aseas 3(2) 218 219 the japanese government through supporting a number of developmental projects overseas (caballero-anthony, 2004). it favours a long-term vision of development and goals for transformation. it does not deny the monopoly on the use of coercive power by the nation-state and thus serves as a cover for the strengthening of governing elites. clearly it is the most compatible and favoured version of human security by regional elites and matches perfectly with the ‘asean way’ (von feigenblatt, 2009). specifying the ‘vital core’ in 2001, the commission on human security, established through a japanese initiative, argued for protecting the ‘vital core’ of human lives in ways that enhance human freedom and human fulfilment (dahl-eriksen, 2007). this vital core is specified in terms of capabilities and resources needed to escape from absolute poverty. its articulation is the capability approach which re-orients the objective of economic activity from an instrumental end (economic growth) to a people-centred end (expanding people’s freedom). in plain terms, capabilities consist of the capability to enjoy a set of valuable ‘beings and doings’, such as being nourished, being confident, being able to walk about without terror, being able to wear what you like, and having a say in group decisions. the approach also focuses on the opportunity to attain positive economic, social, or cultural freedoms, and likewise includes both civil and political liberties. it also may include agency, which is the freedom to bring about achievements according to one’s values. it is consistent with the united nations development programme’s (undp) human development approach, which describes the capability approach as “expanding people’s choices” (alkire, 2003). the repercussions of specifying capabilities, as what alkire (2003) calls a coherent space in which to identify the elements and threshold of the ‘vital core’, are central to asean’s need to ‘resolve’ its own predilections. first, as noted by alkire, the capability approach solidifies human security’s central focus on human beings. more importantly, as economist amartya sen suggests, the capability approach links human beings to economic opportunities, social facilities, the enabling conditions of good health, basic education, the encouragement and cultivation of entrepreneurship, and political liberties (sen, undated). to the extent that the capability approach mirrors eduardo t. gonzalez & magdalena l. mendoza mainstreaming human security in the philippines aseas 3(2) 220 221 the developmental human security perspective, in a context where economic, social, and cultural rights are prominent, asean governments would have no trouble accepting it. asean will continue being challenged on its insistence to regard political rights as a relativist (more akin to ‘asian values’) rather than a universalist (global) prescription, but it will adopt developmental security for as long as an emphasis sits on building socio-economic capabilities and on a sequence of implementation from capabilities to rights. despite shortcomings in its interpretation of human security, the ‘asean way’ possesses certain positive attributes. these include: the increasing possibility for contextualised policies by both state and non-state actors due to an aversion to solutions imposed from without, a consensual approach that may help build a ‘sheltering’ social capital among peoples and communities within and across nations, and a vital core that provides the platform to allow individuals and communities to pursue human security projects. these factors ‘operationalise’ possibilities for normative non-state securitisation. they enable individuals and groups to (at least to some small degree) initiate securitisations (deal with existential threats), on behalf of those who are otherwise not in a position to speak for themselves or exercise decisionmaking power in terms of security policy-making (including disadvantaged groups and academics). securitising actors can influence select securitisation processes in a deliberate and thought-out fashion, to a desired effect. examples of such ‘enabling’ securitisations on the world stage are the high profile ban on land mines and the establishment of the international criminal court (floyd, 2007), where a network of diverse actors effectively worked together, even if they had disparate perspectives on human security (amouyel, 2006). more modestly, in the asean region, non-state actors have successfully pushed for labour rights as a non-trade-negotiable issue. the literature indeed credits non-governmental sectors with ‘reframing’ and advancing a more human-centric agenda within asean. a shift from purely state-focused security policies to more people-focused ones will increase the effectiveness of such policies by creating ones that better meet people’s needs and empowering people through their participation in development (stanley foundation, 2003). this paper adopts the ‘vital core’ perspective and argues for mainstreaming human security in the philippines. it acknowledges arguments that the “multidimensional approach to security sacrifices precision for inclusiveness” (thakur, 2000) and that aseas 3(2) 220 221 making individuals the ultimate referent object can be costly in terms of the loss of analytical purchase on collective actors both as the main agents of security provision and as possessors of a claim to survival in their own right (buzan, 2004). nonetheless it contends that the human security approach, though inadequate with regard to analytical utility, has much to offer in terms of normative utility, which is in part operationalised through individual and community securitisations (amouyel, 2006). asean contextualisation in the philippines how the asean states fare in human security how would some of the asean states fare regarding human security concerns, given their adherence to the ‘asean way’? the possible combinations of these conditions and outcomes are summarised in the matrix below (the concepts, in modified form, are borrowed from jensen, 2006). even if the region is defined by the ‘asean way’, when it comes to defining specific policy approaches, there is a need to revert to treating states separately. the state’s authenticity can refer to the legitimacy a state draws from its willingness to protect its population under asean rules of nonframework adopted from jensen (2006, p. 44); country classifications by authors; no sufficient data exist to classify brunei and timor-leste. table 1: matrix of human security outcomes in south-east asia strong normative initiative best human security results; most contextualised policies thailand human security contextualised but on terms enforced by the regime singapore, malaysia, vietnam refusal to compromise; human security considered interventionist tool state with relatively open securitisation practices state with autocratic practices state with doubtful mandate weak normative initiative limited human security results; possibility for contextualised policies by non-state actors philippines, indonesia imposed results if any; least contextualised outcomes cambodia, laos poor prospects for human security; dangerous outcomes possible myanmar eduardo t. gonzalez & magdalena l. mendoza mainstreaming human security in the philippines aseas 3(2) 222 223 interference and gradualism. resistance, on the other hand, draws from the tendency to regard the policy instruments on human security as a trojan horse for western intervention in the internal affairs of states. as acharya (2007) points out, any link between human security and the ‘asean way’ is contingent on the nature of each member-state’s government. when the broader asean practice of human security is filtered by contextualisation of domestic actors and their initiatives within member-states, it would seem that if the political will is strong, nations with relatively open securitisation practices (e.g. thailand) would yield the best human security results and most contextualised policies, while states with autocratic practices would see human security contextualised but on terms enforced by the regime (e.g., singapore, malaysia). ensuring regime consolidation, where democratic legitimacy is inadequate and violent repression is logistically infeasible, also requires some measure of domestic consent to authoritarian rule. at the same time, where issues of national security, development and cultural continuity are stressed, and simultaneously, “regime” and “state” are conflated, asean autocrats resort to claims that “strong leadership” is needed to protect the common good (campbell, 2006). if political will is weak, states with relatively open practices would show constrained human security results but well-articulated, contextualised policies by securitising non-state actors (e.g., the philippines). following jensen’s (2006) argument, when the state is subject to the kind of “autonomy capture” which removes human security from its list of priorities (myanmar is the example), it remains a riddle as to how the grey area of the state’s legitimacy should be considered when the asean threshold of non-interference has not yet been crossed but the state is also not fulfilling its obligations towards its population. here, regime maintenance is regarded as more important than the condition of the citizens of the regime. the overall picture is best summarised by campbell (2006) and acharya (2007): democratic transitions (if not consolidation) in several regional polities, including indonesia, the philippines, and thailand, have created greater democratic space for human security concepts and approaches. such openness has been the outcome of the state-sponsored economic growth of these asean countries. with the rise of a more self-confident population (particularly the middle-class), political elites within some asean states have had to attend to popular demands for reform associated aseas 3(2) 222 223 with human security issues. these pressures have also served to encourage the independence of civil society that creates greater awareness of the need for people’s initiatives and the dangers of excessive concentration on national security. some of the governments of these states have also championed the human security concept more openly as a way of distancing themselves from their authoritarian predecessors, enhancing their legitimacy and attracting development assistance. while democratisation within asean member states remains locked up in the tensions between domestic citizens and established political elites, the above trends suggest the possibility of further openness in south-east asia and, in turn, improved regional promotion of human security. the emancipatory project of creating open structures is alive within some states in south-east asia. the strongest inference is that the political will to achieve human security goals is probably necessary on both sides (state and non-state) to achieve substantive results (jensen, 2006). but with varying political will and normative initiative by the state, non-state actors become crucial. in the philippines, that leaves open the field of action to non-state participants, who in some ways ‘substitute’ for the weak authority of the state. the power of non-state actors 6 despite their asymmetrical relationship with the state, non-state actors have turned the tide in human security – through social networking, informal diplomacy, and by putting pressure on nation-states. as wehrenfennig (2008) argues, while the state itself, using traditional diplomacy, is struggling to respond to new global and domestic initiatives, nsas are making better use of various forms (tracks) of non-state diplomacy and their own skills and resources to form alliances, internally as well as across state borders in order to extract reasonable outcomes. nsas are challenging asean’s regime-centred policies and rhetoric more directly and substantially than extra-regional appeals for human security. 6 for purposes of this paper, non-state actors are defined as those operating within a state. these include international ngos with substantial presence in the state, civil society organisations, people’s organisations (po), and epistemic communities which have substantial constituencies and which have access (no matter how limited) to political arenas. inter-governmental organisations are excluded. eduardo t. gonzalez & magdalena l. mendoza mainstreaming human security in the philippines aseas 3(2) 224 225 the instrumental role played by ngos, or track iii7 in asean parlance, importantly explains the change in asean’s attitudes towards human-centric norms. again, the threats and crises helped these transnational activists and their domestic counterparts to ‘reframe’ the human security agenda. this job could not have possibly been undertaken by track i and track ii working in an asean multilateral diplomacy framework, given their historical preoccupation with state-centric norms. the key for track iii was to engage track ii in numerous conferences in order to convince the latter to adopt unconventional security issues in the workshop. track ii participants do not have to bear the responsibility of representing their respective countries, hence it is easier for them to embrace new norms. but if state action is required, track iii’s hopes lie in track ii being able to influence track i when track ii officials interact with track i workers (cheeppensook, 2007). some track iii groups that cheeppensook counts as quite active are the people’s forum, which has been organising conferences in order to convey the message that the growth-oriented development model is not the only path towards well-being, the asian exchange for new alternatives (arena), which is a contact point for intellectuals to search for a more humane asean order, and the asian task force on ngos (atf), which organises training workshops and dialogues. high-profile non-state actors raise the bar for effective multi-level inter-ngo networking strategies, and turn a multidimensional topic into a high priority issue in national human security discourse. they build coalitions within states among likeminded groups and convert others to embrace the cause. following kötter (2007), cooperation with local/homegrown ngos provides the type of proximity that human security requires. the principle of subsidiarity – that maximal responsibility should not be assigned to a higher level (e.g. national or regional) if the most local or specialised organisations are capable of undertaking it – ensures that the freedom and self-direction of local ngos are preserved, while large international ngos siphon off needs which cannot be addressed by smaller or weaker groups, or where there are significant economies of scale (alkire, 2003). such an approach responds to the actual needs of citizens, preserving their right to decide on resource allocation and distribution (tadjbakhsh 7 the three asean diplomatic channels are: track i – state (formal intergovernmental processes), track ii – state (informal, non-binding intergovernmental discussions, with civil society participation), and track iii – non-state (civil society networks). aseas 3(2) 224 225 & tomescu-hatto, 2007). it has the very constructive result of encouraging local ‘ownership’ of projects vis-à-vis the high-level formal dialogues initiated under asean auspices. to be effective securitisers, non-state organisations, and players must be equipped with the following three facets of power, as articulated by arts (2003): 1. decisional power, which is related to policy-making and political influence. in order to be consequential, nsas need to intervene, directly or indirectly, in the decision-making process they want to influence. they can do so in several ways: lobbying, advocacy, monitoring, protest, and participation. 2. discursive power, which is related to the framing of discourse. conceivably, nsas – by shaping and disseminating politically relevant values, norms, theories and stories – co-determine the behaviour of states and other participants. 3. regulatory power, which is related to rule-making and institution-building. rather than wait for governments and intergovernmental organisations to establish public rules, ngas can set rules themselves. rule-making in this context is to be considered standard-setting, whereby a standard is defined as an expertise-based voluntary rule on organisational regulations, structures and/or procedures. in concert, they constitute the power of non-state agents, i.e. the capacity “to achieve outcomes” in social interactions, embedded in institutional and local contexts. mainstreaming under weak state constraints following the non-violent uprisings that unseated the marcos dictatorship in 1986 (people power revolution i) and the short-lived estrada administration that was tainted by corruption (people power revolution ii), the philippines is a re-established, if frail, democracy. its gdp per capita of usd 1,639 means that it sits squarely in the middle of asean in terms of national wealth, below brunei, singapore, malaysia, thailand, and only slightly lower than indonesia, but above viet nam, laos, cambodia, and myanmar. as an archipelago, the philippines has suffered from similar problems as indonesia in terms of violent secessionism or problems compounded by the eduardo t. gonzalez & magdalena l. mendoza mainstreaming human security in the philippines aseas 3(2) 226 227 emergence of islamist terrorist organisations such as abu sayyaf (apcr2p, 2009). it likewise continues to face one of the most enduring communist insurgencies in the region. geographically, the country is within both the typhoon belt and the ‘ring of fire’ in the pacific, making it vulnerable to natural disasters. for years the philippines has struggled to respond to human security fundamentals. the philippine state’s somewhat weaker normative initiative derives from its ‘soft state’ characteristics – lacking a disciplined and capable bureaucratic culture, a cogent societal fabric, and a strong political will to overcome such weakness (myrdal, 1970) – and its (formal, non-substantive) democratic procedures, which often lead to gridlock. post-martial law structural power of philippine ngos the aquino administration is credited with the burgeoning of nsas in the philippines, principally the ngos. when president aquino appointed the delegates to a convention charged with drafting a new constitution in 1987, over 20 percent of them were popularly associated with the ngo/po community (clarke, 1998). the new constitution, which is currently still in place, provided for ngo participation in national life to an extent that was unique in the developing world. article ii, section 23 states: “the state shall encourage non-governmental, community-based, or sectoral organisations that promote the welfare of the nation.” article xiii, section 15 states: “the state shall respect the role of independent people’s organisations to enable the people to pursue and protect, within the democratic framework, their legitimate and collective interests and aspirations through peaceful and lawful means.” article xiii, section 16 states: “the right of the people and their organisations to effective and reasonable participation at all levels of social, political, and economic decision-making shall not be abridged. the state shall by law, facilitate the establishment of adequate consultation mechanisms.” article x, section 14 provides for ngo participation in local government structures. a devolution law, the local government code, legislated in 1991, is perhaps the most sweeping measure to recognise the governance role of civil society groups in the philippines. estimates of the number of civil society groups in the philippines range up to 500,000, although only a fraction of this figure are registered as non-stock, nonaseas 3(2) 226 227 government institutions (ngos, pos). the number of ‘development-oriented’ ngos is put at somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000. in any case, there is consensus that the civil society sector is large and vibrant by developing country standards, even though most of the large number of organisations are small, struggle financially, and have weak capacity (adb, 2007). these nsas act as lobbyists, watchdogs, advocates, alternative delivery systems, and discussion forums for a plethora of social, economic, political, environment and other issues (gonzalez, 2001) in locationspecific, complex, and constantly changing contexts. although these mechanisms have been held back every now and then by government meddling, they offer on paper the most effective means of promoting human security at the community and national levels. by operating beneath state obstruction, they have proved their worth through networking and coalition building, campaigning for policy reform, adopting good practice standards, and advancing “sustainable development” as a uniting vision for all organisations (adb, 2007). following jensen (2006), such local initiatives have operationalised universalist human security fundamentals in a relativised context. decisional, discursive, and regulatory powers as ‘securitisers’, non-state organisations and players have exercised, following arts (2003), decisional, discursive, and regulatory powers in order to advance human security concerns. a few examples are illustrated below. decisional power. the philippine environmental ngos’ successful lobbying, advocacy, and monitoring that led to the passage of the indigenous peoples’ rights act (ipra) is the most-talked about example of ngo decisional influence in the country. various non-state policy actors were involved in the passage of the ipra, basically an ancestral domain law, beginning from the agenda-setting phase to policy formulation and policy adoption. the coalition for indigenous peoples’ rights and ancestral domains (ciprad), a network of 15 indigenous peoples’ organisations and five ngos, collaborated with filipino legislators and the legislative staff members to smooth the process of the bill’s approval by the philippine congress. after arriving at a consensus and bargaining with one another, the civil society groups’ effort bore fruit when the bill was passed during the ramos administration in 1997 (luserio rico, 2005), a full decade ahead of the un declaration on the rights of indigenous eduardo t. gonzalez & magdalena l. mendoza mainstreaming human security in the philippines aseas 3(2) 228 229 peoples. tacit track ii support came in the form of the ilo-inter-regional programme to support self-reliance of indigenous and tribal communities through cooperatives and self-help organizations (indisco) (adb, 2002). this pioneering effort did not catch fire in asean, however, except in cambodia which had passed a similar law (seaca, 2007). in part the reason is that asean nations signed the un declaration only after 2007. in part, indigenous rights are ensconced within the term ‘ancestral domain’ (which suggests retention of ‘aboriginal title’ to lands claimed by indigenous groups, significant management rights, and respect for their traditions and identity) which is not a common international reference and needed to be parsed into territory, economic resources, and governance (tuminez, 2005). as tuminez further indicates, there are two hurdles to negotiating ancestral domain: public support through consensus, and accommodation of cultural and social differences. there are likewise divergences among asean states in framing the issue of control over resources. in aceh, indonesia, for instance, the right of the acehnese to secure political control over their territory did not take a communitarian form, but the form of a secure access to an economic base along the lines of conventional property rights. moreover, whereas the philippine state’s support came at the end in the case of ipra, the indonesian government was very much involved in exercising its political power at the beginning of the aceh negotiations, as sevilla observes (2008). today, track i initiatives (review of legal frameworks) in asean are being encouraged by the united nations permanent forum on indigenous peoples’ rights, while track iii measures are sporadically underway, such as those being initiated in asean countries by the international alliance of indigenous and tribal peoples of the tropical forests (iaitptf) (seaca, 2007). interestingly, tracks i, ii, and iii function as a team in certain cases, as in the effort to contain severe acute respiratory syndrome. asean governments (track i) readily shared information and best practices in preventing the transmission of sars within the member states, in contact tracing, and in aspects involving epidemiology, clinical features, public health measures, and infection control (asean secretariat, 2003). track ii engagements in the philippines included the formation of a local network of health agency professionals and health-based ngos to formulate clinical guidelines for philippine sars preparedness (lopez, 2003). for track iii, the philippine sars response network was organised by civil society groups (e.g., friendly care aseas 3(2) 228 229 clinics, medical action group), academia (e.g. the university of the philippines college of medicine and college of public health), and other multi-sectoral groups (e.g. philippine foundation for sustainable society) (datol, 2003). the high level of co-operation could only be made possible, according to caballero-anthony (2002), in cases when (1) epidemics can reach crisis proportions beyond the capabilities of states to manage, and (2) grave threats leave little room for ideological contestation or policy preferences. the immediacy of the threats, in the context of a human security framework, easily generates regional and national consensus. indeed, a huge ideological or cultural divide can thwart collaboration. in the case of support for counter-terrorism, the philippines readily consented to the us ‘war on terror’, while malaysia and indonesia moved rather cautiously because of the complexity and sensitivity of having a large muslim population (tan & ramakrishna, 2004). conversely, in the case of the promotion of reproductive health, most asean states and health ngos have readily adopted who standards, while the health stakeholders of predominantly catholic philippines are locked in a battle with the country’s church hierarchy, which is opposed to contraceptive methods (fabros, 2010). discursive power. human rights ngos in the philippines reframed the discourse on human rights after the marcos dictatorship was toppled and contributed to elaborating the present human rights regime. notable among the rights-based ngos are the task force detainees (for political prisoners), the free legal assistance group (lawyers assisting human rights victims, karapatan (alliance of human rights associations), national union of journalists, and families of victims of involuntary disappearance. many of their leaders advise the government-run commission on human rights. they have held the state accountable for human rights infractions, an activity that has reduced the incidence of violations, thereby ameliorating related human security issues. the favourable rights environment that developed also made possible the adoption by the philippine judiciary in 2007 of the writ of amparo, a legal remedy available to any person whose right to life, liberty, and security has been violated or is threatened with violation. it was conceived to address the issue of extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances after 1999 (puno, 2007). deep linkages with track iii international human rights organisations (e.g. amnesty international, human rights watch, and lately, the asian federation against involuntary disappearances) have made possible the marshalling of global action against the eduardo t. gonzalez & magdalena l. mendoza mainstreaming human security in the philippines aseas 3(2) 230 231 perceived human rights abuses of the arroyo administration. however, as the war on terror expands in south-east asia, the cost to civil liberties may likewise be rising. track iii leaders remain concerned that anti-terrorism initiatives can be used to serve other political agendas. human rights organisations, in particular, from imparsial in indonesia to suaram in malaysia, are apprehensive that counter-terrorism measures would restrict hard-won rights (jones, 2002). in the philippines, the human security act of 2007 has been heavily criticised for inadequately guaranteeing possible human rights violations committed by state agents in pursuing groups suspected of terrorist activities (fidh, 2008). these developments necessitate vigilance on the part of track iii participants in order to foil track i excesses. in another noteworthy display of discursive power, peace-seeking groups have created, and have reached out to, local constituencies about specific issues that are based on perceived common values. one prominent example of this is the peace process that led to the peace pact between the government and the main muslim rebel group, the moro national liberation front (mnlf), in 1998. many non-state actors created a multi-level dialogue process and formed a peace network. this connected local, regional, national, and global actors (including the organisation of the islamic conference) into a powerful peace constituency that put pressure on the official peace process. a key track i participant, indonesia, hosted the peace talks that led to the peace agreement. a national consensus was reached through the joint effort of government and peace and development ngos. between track i and track iii lines, the government has also started an interfaith and intercultural dialogue on preventing conflicts and healing social wounds in conflict-stricken communities in the southern philippines. interfaith dialogue has been found to be essential in translating shared values of peace and respect into practical action at the grassroots level (apcr2p, 2009). such exchange of ideas has become more urgent as periods of violence seem to have no clear beginnings or endings. the situation in the southern philippines, for instance, was supposed to be ‘post-conflict’ after the jakarta accords between the philippine government and mnlf in 1998, but has clearly reverted to being in the midst of conflict. regulatory power. local health and education boards, with substantial ngo participation, have set rules on health care and basic education at the local government level. procurement committees in government agencies have ngo members setting aseas 3(2) 230 231 regulations on government purchases. local environmental groups, such as haribon and kalikasan, have designed and institutionalised environmental management systems, covering rules on stewardship, accountability, continuous improvement, a community-right-to-know policy, and codes of practice (community awareness and emergency response). microfinance ngos (such as the microfinance council of the philippines), have devised alternative options for non-collateralised loans (like group accountability) and savings instruments for the poor, following the grameen principles. these are cases of non-state actors filling the institutional gap occasioned by state structures that are weak or lack authority. such substitutive mechanisms thrive precisely in environments where formal rules are not routinely enforced or fail to achieve their goals (helmke & levtisky, 2004). track ii groups, such as greenpeace south-east asia and climate action network south-east asia, are providing logistical and technical assistance to local environmental ngos, co-ordinate information exchange, and lobby asean governments on sustainable development issues as well. new roles for the state human security does not bypass the philippine state, weak though it is. the state remains an indispensable aspect of human security, even if it is not the ultimate answer for protecting its citizens. a weak state with few resources and with a policy apparatus that works in fits and turns may still be better than none at all. domestic organisations cannot operate independently of the state. inasmuch as security is built from below, a “downside-up” perspective (dahl-eriksen, 2007) demands the ability to deal with two parallel institutions: active non-state actors on the one hand, and an ineffective state, on the other. to be sure, in this setup, ngos and other civil society groups have the initial advantage in negotiating normative frameworks, extracting concessions from government, and lobbying for a people-centric human security program. the most appropriate role for the philippine government based on a human security agenda would be to facilitate productive change by its own agencies. corruption, inefficiencies, and a generalised system of patronage and clientelism have hobbled the philippine government for decades. rebuilding existing structures to improve their capacity and effectiveness as opposed to imposing a new order of eduardo t. gonzalez & magdalena l. mendoza mainstreaming human security in the philippines aseas 3(2) 232 233 affairs will be a wise step in the direction of instituting good governance practices in the bureaucracy. certainly, an effective human security approach will require the following good governance requirements, as summarised in escap (2010): • fair legal frameworks that are enforced impartially; impartial enforcement of laws requires an independent judiciary as well as an impartial and incorruptible police force • information that is freely available and directly accessible to those who will be affected by government decisions and their enforcement • processes that serve the public within a reasonable timeframe • socially-inclusive policies and regulations • participatory mechanisms at various levels of governance • results-oriented monitoring and evaluation instruments • decision-making that is accountable to the public and to all stakeholders the government has likewise to develop an institutional framework where human security concerns direct developmental resources. on this score, sen (2000) proposes getting government commitment not just for “growth with equity” but for “downturn with security”, inasmuch as economic slumps are common in emerging economies. but human security policies that yield numerous positive externalities, for instance, health and education (amouyel, 2006), or that only require a minimum level of development (community-based health insurance) (fordelone & schütte, 2007), or that are free of ideological baggage (caballero-anthony, 2002) may be administratively easier to deal with. this would actually be a way to prioritise certain elements of human security over others. analyzing one threat, grievance, or problem can resolve several issues at once, so it may not be sensible to categorically separate threats, rights, and underdevelopment issues (amouyel, 2006). if one issue is addressed successfully, it should have positive consequences for other human security issues. for example, successfully reducing illegal logging resolves a number of other key problems: loss of forest cover (affects watersheds), drugs (truck drivers resort to stimulants to keep themselves awake on long-haul trips), malaria and other communicable diseases (spread during logging and deforestation), industrial pollution, organised crime (associated with logging syndicates), and corruption (bribes for forest guards and highway police). to offset its own weaknesses, the state can, to appropriate the words of tadjbakhsh aseas 3(2) 232 233 and chenoy (2006), organise public space in such a way that it opens possibilities for ngos, civil society, international and local organisations, individuals, and communities to create networks and mobilise social resources. this may jump-start a diffusion of human security from the bottom to the top. the local government code of 1991 already enables the government to assist ngos through: • a process of accreditation of ngos and pos at the local level; • a local governance infrastructure composed of five special bodies, e.g. the local development council must be formed at the local level; • a stipulation that at least one quarter of the local development council’s membership must come from civil society or the private sector, which civil society representatives must come from locally-accredited organisations; • the right of the people to amend, revoke, and enact ordinances through referenda; • provisions for the establishment of other local committees, such as cooperatives. what is essential is that these provisions are carried out fully and uniformly across local government units. inter-state co-operation human security is amplified through inter-state regimes which reduce transaction costs, make commitments more credible, and facilitate reciprocity among nations (kim and hyun, 2000). for the philippines, these are the benefits to inter-state coordination. it can lean on three pillars, on which collective security is to be based, following felício (2007): 1. collective vulnerability. since today’s threats recognise no national boundaries, the philippines can share its own threat suppression experience involving both state and non-state actors, limited though it may be. 2. national limitations. no state can unilaterally dispel that vulnerability. the philippines will have to rely on its stronger neighbours’ threat containment instruments and strategies. the question arises, however, of how a neighbouring actor can promote a human security agenda without imposing an exterior and foreign solution that does not mesh with the local context. eduardo t. gonzalez & magdalena l. mendoza mainstreaming human security in the philippines aseas 3(2) 234 235 3. national fallibility. each state will not always be able, or willing, to meet its responsibility to protect its own people, and to not harm its neighbours. being a weaker state in the alliance, the philippines may have to invoke mutual protection clauses of regional agreements. if it is the one being harmed, it will have to seek help from extra-regional authorities to pre-empt the threat. curiously, however, in an important instance, the philippines has shown disinterest when it was not the source or ‘hot spot’ of a particular threat. when the regional agreement on transboundary haze pollution entered into force in november 2003, the philippines did not ratify it and to date has not done so. haze pollution often originates from indonesia (another non-ratifier), which is obliged under the agreement to contain the haze to its national jurisdiction (severino, 2008). it is true that no forest fire haze had reached the country in the past to threaten the health of filipinos, but non-ratification might haunt the philippines later, when it is its turn to request reciprocal treatment from its neighbours. treaty-based agreements depend on joint implementation by asean member states. yet because most regional pacts are essentially non-binding, they may occasion difficulties for the philippines. the philippines may have to initiate what acharya (2007) proposes as a collective rethinking of non-interference, in favour of more mutual help, sharing of information, and resources. acharya notes that the 2004 tsunami dramatically, if tragically, showed why mutual assistance is necessary, while the floods that devastated myanmar recently showed the limitations of the principle of non-interference. this is not to say that there have not been collective breakthroughs even under current constraints. in relation to the sars epidemic, the establishment of an asean+3 ‘hotline’ network among designated contact points, the quick sharing of information, pre-departure screening, the management of suspected cases in flight, disinfection of aircraft, co-ordinated procedures at international departure and arrival points, and other measures recommended by the world health organization for travel from and to countries affected by sars, stopped the epidemic in its tracks. the asean agreement on disaster management and emergency response has not yet formally entered into force, but a number of its provisions are in place: disasterrelated specialised training, information sharing through a dedicated website and aseas 3(2) 234 235 communications system, a stand-by relief fund, and early warning systems for haze pollution, typhoons, etc. (severino, 2008). joint delivery by the member-states does help the philippines cope up with transnational threats and dangers. it is in track ii where academics or the so-called epistemic communities deal with newly emerging human security issues. with the organisational development skills of its nsas, the philippines can be instrumental in forming a regional working group consisting of professionals from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds that can debate on options available to manage climate change, involuntary migration, and pandemics. epistemic communities can build up a reservoir of cutting-edge knowhow on the nature of interlinkages between issues and the chain of events that might happen when a particular action or policy is carried out (kim, 2000). through these working groups, various human security propositions are interrogated with particular regard for the diverse historical and cultural contexts of the region. they are a crucial link to creating a constituent base in track i (morada, 2006). summary progress in human security in the philippines is influenced by the policy-making style favoured by the association of southeast asian nations. the ‘asean way’ underscores a consensual approach to decision-making, informal structures and processes, and the principle of non-interference in member-countries’ internal affairs. along these lines, asean was one of the first alliances to think of comprehensive security, an important step toward fulfilling the first important trait of human security – the broadening of the agenda of security from the focus on direct violence to problems like poverty, epidemics, food security, human rights, and climate change. however, the ‘asean way’ identifies the referent of security as the sovereign nation-state, which goes against the second important characteristic of human security – deepening of security from a focus on the state to a focus on human individuals and communities. a closer look suggested that asean may be averse only to protective human security, which stresses ‘freedom from fear’ but challenges the state’s absolute sovereignty in order to intervene (with direct sanctions if necessary). asean elites may be more comfortable with developmental human security, which stresses ‘freedom from want’ eduardo t. gonzalez & magdalena l. mendoza mainstreaming human security in the philippines aseas 3(2) 236 237 and the importance of economic issues in advancing human security and sustains the use of coercive power by the nation-state. when the broader asean practice of human security is filtered by contextualisation of member-states’ political systems, it would seem that if political will is weak, states with relatively open democratic practices would show constrained human security results but well-articulated, contextualised policies by non-state actors. that is the case of the philippines. human security issues are location-specific, multifaceted, constantly changing – they are best dealt with by civil society organisations that operate at levels beneath state obstruction (or weakness). as ‘securitisers’, non-state organisations and players have adopted three facets of power – decisional, discursive, regulatory – in order to develop a robust yet flexible coping capability. along these lines, philippine ngos have intervened, directly or indirectly, in the decision-making process, have shaped and disseminated politically relevant values and norms, and have taken the initiative to set rules themselves. human security does not bypass the philippine state, weak though it is. the most appropriate role for the philippine government based on a human security agenda would be to facilitate productive change by its own agencies and to rebuild existing structures to improve their capacity and 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(2010). bantay lansangan, tan causes. retrieved 18 april 2010, from http://www.tan.org.ph tuminez, a. s. (2005, september). ancestral domain in comparative perspective (special report no. 151). washington, dc: united states institute of peace. von feigenblatt, o. (2009). asean and human security: challenges and opportunities (rcaps working paper no. 09-5). beppu city, japan: ritsumeikan center for asia pacific studies. wehrenfennig, d. (2008). multi-track diplomacy and human security. revue de la sécurité humaine/ human security journal, 7, 80-89. yong, o. k., & sané, p. (2007, 25-27 october). foreword. in: asean-unesco (eds.), proceedings of the asean-unesco concept workshop on human security in south-east asia (pp. 7-10). jakarta, indonesia: asean-unesco. book review: plate, t. (2011). conversations with thaksin – from exile to deliverance: thailand’s populist tycoon tells his story. aseas 6(2) 395394 d o i 1 0. 42 32 /1 0. a se a s -6 .2 -1 2 rezensionen / book reviews tom plate (2011). conversations with thaksin – from exile to deliverance: thailand’s populist tycoon tells his story. singapore: marshall cavendish. isbn 978-981-4328685. 249 pages. citation jones, w.j. (2013). book review: plate, t. (2011). conversations with thaksin – from exile to deliverance: thailand’s populist tycoon tells his story. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 6(2), 395-397. nearly seven years after the coup that ousted thailand’s prime minister thaksin shinawatra, a reincarnation of the thai rak thai party, the phuea thai party, came to power once again. the astounding landslide victory in the 2011 general election saw the country’s first female prime minister, thaksin’s younger sister yingluck shinawatra. with campaign posters saturating the landscape and displaying slogans such as “thaksin thinks, phuea thai acts”, as well as periodic reports of skype cabinet meetings with thaksin orchestrating party politics as mediation in policy, there is no doubt that the ex-prime minister is very much involved in thai politics, albeit from afar. exile, it seems, has not curbed the passions and political relevance that are critical to the former prime minister’s survival, return, and possible political rehabilitation. as thaksin is currently in self-exile in protest against a politically influenced and biased judicial system and has multiple criminal cases pending, the exigencies surrounding his sister and vanguard political party have become central to dealing with the allegedly compromised judiciary. tom plate’s book is based on interviews garnered over a week’s time, which allowed the academic and ex-journalist unprecedented access to the man (thaksin) in dubai. a recurring dichotomy becomes evident in this book: is thaksin the unrepentant democrat or chastened autocrat? the ex-prime minister often reveals himself to be an unfairly judged and accosted supporter of the poor or “the people” in general. simultaneously, he acknowledges serious mishandling of critical domestic issues such as the southern muslim insurgency and, most importantly, his gross misjudgment of antagonisms with the palace, which may have led to his current exile. nonetheless, this book is interesting in terms of how the author approaches the rise of thaksin in functional order, his exile, and alleged indirect comeback via aseas 6(2) 397396 his younger sister. the author attempts to draw thaksin into the critical realm of his deposition and investigates who was really behind his ouster by referring to the royal institution and his confrontations with privy councilor prem tinsulanonda, who is considered one of the most influential and instrumental figures in the palace political complex (p. 145). confrontation with the royal institution is perhaps the most crucial aspect that the author addresses, albeit in a conservative manner. the reasons for the ambiguity in addressing the royal institution are of course thailand’s current polarized political climate and legal redress to article 112 of the criminal code, better known as the lèse-majesté law. this highlights the still simmering undertones of thai political economy where the extremely popular ex-prime minister stands, due to his electoral success, in direct confrontation with thailand’s most revered figure and its institutional machinery. the author also provides the lay reader with a basic understanding of thaksin, the man and politician, using a historical/journalistic approach to lend substance to the content. the author’s elaboration on personal notes of what it is like to be in exile, traveling as a luxurious vagabond, and the very personal politics of the region are of interest regarding the conception of thai politics since thaksin’s exile. personal politics are demonstrated in thaksin’s close relationship with hun sen, the prime minister of cambodia, and the very real friction and conflict this caused, not to mention the domestic criminal proceedings, which determine his continued absence. plate’s book depicts thaksin as a political chameleon, but nonetheless focuses on his democratic credentials and support for thailand’s forgotten millions whom he gave a voice through policy. however, the volume lacks depth in terms of critical issues such as the role of the monarchy, which is self-evident in light of wikileaks revelations concerning the palace’s role in the 2006 coup as well as thaksin’s alleged abuse of power and nepotism. furthermore, it is unclear whether the author simply could not get further information out of thaksin or if he just took his words at face value throughout the text. this point continues throughout the book, as thaksin’s story is told one-sidedly, with a mere depiction, not a discussion, of alternative views. the volume does, however, provide readers with a glimpse into the political mind of what newsweek magazine considered the potential future leader of asia in 2004. the vindictive nature of contemporary thai politics and the lack of legitimacy of court decisions and aseas 6(2) 397396 diplomatic initiatives against thaksin are brought forth very assertively. in hindsight, it becomes apparent that ultimate vindication may very well await thaksin in the future if events continue to unfold. using a clear journalistic style, this book is easily accessible to readers, and thereby avails itself to people with an interest in south-east asian politics and former strongmen of the region such as lee kwan yuu and mahathir mohammad. what remains to be seen in the final chapter is whether thaksin’s sister yingluck can capitalize on her brother’s legacy and continue it, eventually bringing him home and extending the nascent democracy in thailand without antagonizing conservative forces. william j. jones mahidol university international college, thailand william j. jones book review: conversations with thaksin – from exile to deliverance conflict dynamics and transformations in southeast asia gunnar stange & iris o’rourke ► stange, g., & o’rourke, i. (2014). editorial: conflict dynamics and transformations in southeast asia. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 7(1), 1-4. the present aseas issue features a focus on ‘conflict dynamics and transformations in southeast asia’. it brings together topical works of researchers from various academic fields that offer a comprehensive perspective on current developments in some of the region’s political, social, and environmental conflicts as well as on approaches to their management and resolution. the contributions include case studies from indonesia, myanmar, the philippines, and thailand, as well as analyses of the status and prospects of regional security cooperation within the framework of the association of southeast asian nations (asean). the complex and interdependent nature of conflicts makes it inevitable to study their causes and potential solutions through approaches that transcend the borders of classical academic disciplines. in his comprehensive monograph peace by peaceful means, johan galtung (1996), the ‘father’ of peace research, reminds us just how challenging and intellectually demanding peace research is. he argues that this is owed to the many spaces in which peace and conflict researchers have to search for causes, conditions, and contexts in order to understand their subject of study (galtung, 1996, p. 1). thus, the multiand interdisciplinary character of area studies – here, southeast asian studies – provides a suitable framework for deciphering the multilayered trajectories of conflicts, which, after all, might contribute to their peaceful transformation. despite its political, religious, and ethnic diversity, southeast asia is by no means more prone to interor intrastate conflicts than other regions of the world. on the contrary, especially with regard to interstate conflicts, the member states of asean rightfully claim that the norm of non-interference in domestic issues and consensus diplomacy has largely spared the region the terrors of interstate armed conflict. yet, the postcolonial states of southeast asia are still the arena of a significant number of domestic armed conflicts in which resistance and liberation movements (dudouet, 2009) are challenging the respective nation states by striving for greater self-determination or even secession, with all the tragic consequences. on the other hand, during the last decade, southeast asian governments have gradually moved away from military conflict resolution approaches. it appears that the mode of procedural conflict resolution (elwert, 2004) through legitimate institutions is becoming the dominant norm in managing domestic violent conflict. timo kivimäki (2012, pp. 419–420), for example, shows that battle deaths related to violent conflicts in southeast asia have significantly declined since the mid-2000s. indeed, since the formation of southeast asia’s posteditorial w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 14 .1 -1 2 gunnar stange & iris o’rourke  aseas 7(1) colonial states following the end of the second world war, the region has never been as peaceful as it is today (vatikiotis, 2009, p. 28). recent successful conflict mediation processes underline this trend, for example, that between the free aceh movement and the government of indonesia in 2005 and the comprehensive peace accord between the moro islamic liberation front (milf) and the government of the philippines in the southern philippines in march 2014. this issue begins with a regional macro-perspective, proceeds to a comparative national perspective, and finally offers thickly described empirical case studies at the micro-level. in the first two articles, the authors address one of the most hotly debated issues with regard to the increasingly integrating asean: regional security cooperation. henning borchers ponders the possibility of the development of an asean peacekeeping force despite member states’ reluctance towards a regional conflict resolution mechanism, as this could challenge asean’s constitutive norm of non-interference in domestic politics of its member states. borchers argues that the progress in institutionalizing regional cooperation regarding ‘soft’ security issues – such as environmental challenges – stands to facilitate a slow deepening of ‘hard’ security cooperation at the asean level, which can deepen political trust among member states. similarly, kathrin rupprecht argues that the asean operational norm of noninterference is insufficient to adequately address state-internal conflicts and impedes efficient security cooperation. she examines two cases of long-lasting and violent separatist conflict embedded in ethnic and religious sentiments: the cases of the resistance of the patani-malays in thailand’s deep south and of the bangsamoro in the southern philippines. rupprecht concludes that non-traditional security issues linked to state-internal conflicts demand a more proactive asean role. yet, the role malaysia did play bilaterally in brokering the recently signed path-breaking peace accord between the milf and the government of the philippines gives reason to believe that asean as an organization will play a more proactive and institutionalized role in regional conflict management in the years to come. based on interviews with representatives of armed opposition groups in myanmar, sina kowalewski analyzes their leaderships’ perspectives on myanmar’s current multidimensional transition. according to the findings of her study, the government’s top-down strategy in implementing political and economic reforms and the mistrust between the conflicting parties constitute severe challenges to the ongoing ceasefire negotiations and peace processes. the armed groups mainly interpret the government’s efforts as a strategy to maintain the current status quo of power relations between the myanmar central government and the country’s ethnic minorities. the main issues at stake in this complex and rapidly proceeding peace process are political legitimacy, economic as well as political participation, and the improvement of the socio-political situation of the country’s diverse ethnic groups. in their contribution, jeroen adam and boris verbrugge challenge the rigid distinction between formal and informal actors in conflict mediation approaches. based on an analysis of existing conflict management practices in mindanao, the philippines, they find this distinction may actually be counterproductive and lead to unintended consequences such as reinforcing existing power imbalances by favoring already well-connected elite actors. also, they caution against overlooking that the 3editorial: conflict dynamics and transformations in southeast asia typically ‘formal’ may have significant informal traits or that presumed ‘informal’ actors may derive authority and legitimacy from the ‘formal’ political sphere. in the context of a land conflict between the indigenous batin sembilan and an oil palm company in jambi province, central sumatra, indonesia, barbara beckert, christoph dittrich, and soeryo adiwibowo show how the batin sembilan used the concept of indigeneity to enhance their agency and empowerment. in their resistance against a multinational company, they have become empowered actors instead of marginalized victims. the authors show, however, that access to land is still contested and shaped by power asymmetries. within the frame of indigenous political strategies, timo duile analyzes socioecological conflicts arising around palm oil expansion in kalimantan, indonesia, and the conceptions of nature that are employed in the course of these conflicts. duile demonstrates how the indigenous dayak’s concepts of nature differ fundamentally from hegemonic concepts that frame nature as opposed to culture or the human mind. even though the dayak in kalimantan, the indonesian part of borneo, have to refer to some hegemonic epistemic premises in order to enter global discourses, indigenous knowledge is neglected by western discourses on local knowledge in kalimantan. in reference to descola, duile shows how dayak concepts are negotiated and revitalized for political strategies. in the ‘in dialogue’ section, ying hooi khoo offers an insider’s perspective on extra-parliamentary opposition politics in malaysia, in particular, the bersih movement. bersih comprises 89 non-governmental organizations whose aspiration is to push for a thorough reform of the electoral process in malaysia through rallies and demonstrations. in her interview with hishamuddin rais, a prominent bersih activist, she illustrates the linkages between grassroots political activism and the broader democratization process in malaysia. last but not least, in the ‘southeast asia visually’ section, vera altmeyer provides well-informed insights into the 2012 gubernatorial elections in jakarta, indonesia, with a thick visual description of the highly contrastive campaign strategies of the two main pairs of candidates: incumbent governor fauzi bowo and his running mate nachrowi ramli on the one hand, and challenger joko widodo and his running mate basuki tjahaja purnama on the other. with indonesian presidential elections set for july 2014 and acting jakarta governor joko widodo as the most promising candidate, this visual report could not be timelier. may peace prevail!  references dudouet, v. (2009). from war to politics. resistance and liberation movements in transition. berlin, germany: berghof center. elwert, g. (2004). anthropologische perspektiven auf konflikt. in j. eckert (ed.), anthropologie der konflikte. georg elwerts konflikttheoretische thesen in der diskussion (pp. 26–38). bielefeld, germany: transcript. 4 gunnar stange & iris o’rourke  aseas 7(1) galtung, j. (1996). peace by peaceful means: peace and conflict, development and civilization. oslo, norway: international peace research institute. kivimäki, t. (2012). southeast asia and conflict prevention. is asean running out of steam? the pacific review, 25(4), 403–427. vatikiotis, m. (2009). managing armed conflict in southeast asia: the role of mediation. in institute of southeast asian studies (ed.), southeast asian affairs 2009 (pp. 28–35). singapore: institute of southeast asian studies publications. about the authors gunnar stange is guest editor of this aseas issue. he is a research associate at the department of social and cultural anthropology and the cluster of excellence “the formation of normative orders” at goethe-university frankfurt/main, germany, and a lecturer at the department of geography and regional research at the university of vienna, austria. ► contact: stange@em.uni-frankfurt.de iris o’rourke is managing editor of this issue and a member of the aseas editorial board. she studied law and social and cultural anthropology in vienna, oslo, and canberra, and is currently working on her phd in law at the university of vienna, austria. ► contact: iris.orourke@seas.at thinking globally, framing locally: international discourses and labor organizing in indonesia aseas 6(1) 121120 aktuelle südostasienforschung / current research on south-east asia thinking globally, framing locally: international discourses and labor organizing in indonesia steve beers1 citation beers, s. (2013). thinking globally, framing locally: international discourses and labor organizing in indonesia. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 6(1), 120-139. in the fi nal decade of the new order regime, indonesian labor activists turned to international organizations as a key ally in the dangerous work of challenging the state-controlled labor regime. as the political context has become more open, international organizations have continued to play an important role in the labor movement. this paper examines the changing role of transnational labor activism in democratic indonesia. first, the paper describes the emergence of the discourse of global labor rights in response to the challenges of globalization. it then sketches the historical relationship between the indonesian state, the labor movement, and international activists. finally, the paper examines an internationally supported union organizing campaign. drawing upon the literature on discursive framing, the case suggests that while internationally circulating, rights-based discourses remain an important resource for domestic activists, such discourses must be translated and modifi ed for the local political context. keywords: indonesia; labor rights; labor unions; transnational labor activism; transnational social movements im letzten jahrzehnt der neuen ordnung wandten sich indonesische arbeitsaktivistinnen an internationale organisationen als wichtige bündnispartnerinnen für ihre gefährliche arbeit, das staatlich kontrollierte arbeitsregime infrage zu stellen. im zunehmend off eneren politischen klima spielen internationale organisationen weiterhin eine wichtige rolle für die arbeiterinnenbewegung. dieser artikel behandelt die sich verändernde rolle von transnationalem arbeiterinnenaktivismus im demokratischen indonesien. dazu wird zuerst die entstehung eines globalen arbeitsrechtsdiskurses als antwort auf die herausforderungen der globalisierung beschrieben. der artikel skizziert anschließend die historische beziehung zwischen dem indonesischen staat, der arbeiterinnenbewegung und internationalen aktivistinnen. schließlich wird eine international unterstützte kampagne zur gewerkschaftlichen organisierung analysiert. mit bezug auf die literatur zu discursive framing zeigt der fall, dass international zirkulierende, rechtebasierte diskurse eine wichtige ressource für innerstaatliche aktivistinnen sind, solche diskurse allerdings übersetzt und für den lokalen politischen kontext modifi ziert werden müssen. schlagworte: arbeitsrechte; gewerkschaften; indonesien; transnationaler arbeiterinnenaktivismus; transnationale soziale bewegungen 1 steve beers is a phd student in sociology at the university of wisconsin-madison and author of the blog working indonesia. this article is based on a master’s thesis in south-east asian studies written at the university of michigan. contact: sbeers@ssc.wisc.edu d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -6 .1 -7 steve beers thinking globally, framing locally: international discourses and labor organizing in indonesia aseas 6(1) 121120 introduction after the democratic transition following the fall of suharto’s new order regime in 1998, indonesian labor activists went from being suppressed by the state and considered a ‘communist’ threat to be dealt with by force (hadiz, 1997, p. 131) to gaining legal protection, including the right to organize unions and bargain collectively (caraway, 2009, pp. 157-158). both under the authoritarian new order regime and in the postsuharto democratic era, international activists and organizations have served an important role in supporting the indonesian labor movement. in the final decade of the new order regime, international organizations aided the difficult and often dangerous efforts by local labor activists to challenge the authoritarian regime (ford, 2009, pp. 88-89). likewise during the initial transition to democracy, when the indonesian labor movement was still rebuilding and politically disorganized, international actors played an important role in advocating labor law reforms (caraway, 2009, p. 177). a decade into democratic rule, is there still a role for international actors in the rejuvenated indonesian labor movement? and, if so, has this role changed as the political context has become more open? this paper examines the changing role of transnational labor activism in democratizing indonesia. first, the paper provides an overview of the challenges globalization presents for labor activism, and the emergence of a globally circulating discourse of labor rights as a response to these challenges. the paper then provides a brief sketch of the historical relationship between changes in the indonesian political system, the ability of indonesian workers to organize unions, and the role that international activists have played in supporting domestic campaigns. it then uses an internationally supported organizing campaign by hotel workers in bandung, west java, to analyze the dynamics of international labor activism in a labor dispute in indonesia. finally, drawing upon the social movements literature on discursive framing, the paper examines how local activists draw upon internationally circulating discourses of labor rights and adapt these discourses into the local political context. the case study highlights the opportunities and limits for social movements in indonesia to draw upon global rights-based discourses. the openness of the democratic context has not created a blank slate. instead, activists drawing upon global discourses continue to adjust these discourses to the local political, institutional, and discursive opportunity structures, translate abstract rights steve beers thinking globally, framing locally: international discourses and labor organizing in indonesia aseas 6(1) 123122 claims into citizenship claims embedded in indonesia’s democratic reforms, and enact social justice discourses when institutional channels fail. globalization and labor rights the intensified globalization of recent decades, coming in the form of increased global market integration and the increased role of global governance bodies, has created pressures linked to the decline in labor union membership and bargaining power. capital mobility and neoliberal policy reforms have led to weakened regulation of work conditions and safety, increased “flexible production” and contract work, decreased job security and density of union representation, and reduced wages due to the weakened bargaining position of labor unions (deyo, 1997; lerner, 2007; mazur, 2000; tilly, 1995). labor unions face a complex and transnational corporate environment in which corporations can shift capital and jobs across borders (bronfrenbrenner, 2007, pp. 1-2), while mobile capital pressured states to adopt policies that discourage workers’ organization and weaken measures to protect workers’ welfare (deyo, 1997, pp. 103-104). internationally, unions find the political landscape increasingly influenced by supra-governmental institutions such as the world trade organization (wto), the international monetary fund (imf) or the world bank, which have failed to make labor rights a serious part of their agenda (stevis & boswell, 2007, p. 177). in recent decades, nations in east and south-east asia have seen trends that in other eras and regions have been associated with the development of strong labor movements, such as increased literacy, expanded wage labor, urbanization, and democratic reform. despite these trends, labor unions in asia remain relatively weak (deyo, 1997, pp. 97-98; hutchison & brown, 2001, p. 12). many states in south-east asia have pursued economic strategies of light export-oriented industrialization, based upon labor-intensive industries and a compliant and low-cost labor force to attract manufacturing investment. international pressures to open domestic markets to foreign imports have intensified competition and further pressured employers to minimize labor costs. these pressures have led firms to adopt flexible production systems that rely heavily upon contract labor and outsourcing, which undermines the aseas 6(1) 123122 bargaining power of workers and creates a precarious labor force difficult to organize (deyo, 1997, pp. 103-104). this region-wide transformation of industrial relations has given capital more power over workers and has led to declines in union density and collective bargaining coverage (caraway, 2009, p. 167; kuruvilla, das, kwon, & kwon, 2002, pp. 432-440). though democratic reforms in the region have offered unions opportunities to influence state policy and labor legislation, labor movements have played marginal roles in the development of respective policies (deyo, 1997, p. 100), while unionization and collective bargaining remain poorly institutionalized (caraway, 2009, p. 170). with these global changes, there has been increased awareness of the need for transnational organizing and a consistent rise in the number of transnational social movement organizations (smith, 2010, p. 172). many of the key factors in the process of globalization have also provided transnational networking opportunities for social movements (keck & sikkink, 1998, pp. 14-15), while the creation of international governing bodies has, unintentionally, brought together social movement organizations and created new forums for political claims (kay, 2010, p. 87; smith, 2010, p. 184). such trends have led to an interest in “globalization from below” and the possibility for international civil society to contest the effects of globalization (appadurai, 2000). the labor movement has long fought for its place in the global economy and the need for transnational action. much of this has come from the ideological left, epitomized by karl marx’ declaration “working men of all countries, unite!” (1848/1978, p. 500). however, the pressure of international competition, capital mobility, and neoliberal reforms have demanded a renewed interest in transnational organizing across a wider spectrum of labor activists and has come to be considered a sine qua non for the future of the labor movement (herod, 1995; lerner, 2007). if the sites of struggle are to be at the level of transnational capital and supra-governmental institutions, then labor must take on projects that operate at this global scale (bronfrenbrenner, 2007, p. 1). the internationally circulating discourses of labor rights have been one of the most important resources in the labor movement’s response to globalization. part of a wider trend of a rights-based approach, such as human rights, women’s rights, and indigenous rights, the discourse of labor rights offers activists a set of universal claims flexible enough to be used to make claims and frame issues in the local context steve beers thinking globally, framing locally: international discourses and labor organizing in indonesia aseas 6(1) 125124 (keck & sikkink, 1998; shafir & brysk, 2006). historically, labor claims have taken the form of citizenship claims embedded in and enforced by the state. however, as the welfare state and labor regulations have eroded and human rights claims have gained legitimacy, a universal rights discourse has increasingly been applied to the claims of labor (fudge, 2007, p. 31; kolben, 2010, p. 451; tilly, 1995). this discourse is most clearly embodied in the ilo conventions, which attempt to establish global labor standards through the voluntary ratification of key labor relations principles by member states. these conventions cover a wide range of issues such as freedom of association, collective bargaining, forced labor, child labor, and discrimination in the workplace. for labor unions, the most important of these conventions are convention no. 87 and convention no. 98. the former protects the right of workers to organize, the right of these organizations to control their own administration, and the right to form labor federations. the latter protects workers from anti-union discrimination and obligates states to establish procedures to respect these rights (novitz, 1998, pp. 170171). however, due to the ilo supervision of state compliance, the voluntary nature of convention ratification, the vagueness of their wording, and the impossibility of ilo enforcement, the conventions act as policy guidelines rather than legal standards (novitz, 1998, pp. 171-173; standing, 2008, p. 356). with the continued erosion of the welfare state and labor regulation, the ilo has emphasized negative rights against the worst abuses over strong state regulation and standard setting. in doing so, critics contend the ilo has ceded too much ground to the neoliberal agenda (alston, 2004; standing, 2008), while for proponents the current rights-based discourse is flexible enough to survive economic transformations and be deployed in multiple contexts. as the case study of indonesia will illustrate, the rights-based approach offers local activists discursive resources to make labor rights claims. however, the operation of these discourses in local labor disputes requires further consideration. a brief history of the indonesian labor movement and international involvement before examining the role of labor rights discourses in contemporary indonesia, this section provides a brief overview of the historical relationship between the indonesian state, the indonesian labor movement, and its international allies. in the years aseas 6(1) 125124 following independence, indonesia was a parliamentary democracy in which most labor unions were linked to political parties, the largest of which was the communistaffiliated all-indonesia central workers’ organization (sobsi – sentral organisasi buruh seluruh indonesia). while representing a relatively small industrial working class, labor unions of that time took advantage of a weak state and fierce party competition to organize a vibrant movement. however, when indonesia made the transition from parliamentary democracy to sukarno’s guided democracy in 1957, the consolidation of state power and increased role of the military led to greater restrictions on labor unions and workers’ rights to organize (hadiz, 1997, pp. 52-56). in 1965, the new order regime under suharto came to power through a coup and ensuing massacre of an estimated 500,000 people, based on the pretext of eliminating a communist threat to the nation. for the labor movement, this meant the banning of leftist labor organizations (caraway, 2004, p. 33), especially the communist-affiliated sobsi, and the killing or arrest of leftist labor activists (hadiz, 1997, p. 59). following the violent defeat of the left, any form of independent labor activism came to be labeled as ‘communist’ and, thus, a security threat (hadiz, 2002, p. 131). the regime revoked many of the labor rights from the sukarno era and consolidated all remaining labor unions into a politically docile, state-sponsored union run by officials with government, military, or ruling party ties that rarely confronted employers or the state (caraway, 2004, p. 33; quinn, 2003, p. 13). the banning of independent labor unions and the domination of state and military interests came to characterize the state’s industrial relations policy, known as pancasila industrial relations (hip – hubungan industrial pancasila).2 hip emphasized harmony and partnership between workers and employers and specifically rejected “foreign models” of industrial relations that acknowledged antagonism between workers and employers (ford, 2009, p. 34). in practice, this meant the stifling of workers’ grievances and guarding against the development of an independent labor movement (hadiz, 2002, p. 132; quinn, 2003, p. 13). the regime characterized labor activists as dangerous outsiders attempting to use workers for their own political agendas (ford, 2009, pp. 78-79). this included restrictions on the activities of international labor organizations, unless they were willing to accept the constraints of the pancasila 2 pancasila represents the five fundamental principles of the indonesian state: belief in one god, humanitarianism, national unity, consultative democracy, and social justice. first articulated by sukarno in 1945, the principles have remained the philosophical basis of the indonesian state to this day. steve beers thinking globally, framing locally: international discourses and labor organizing in indonesia aseas 6(1) 127126 framework and work with the state-sponsored labor union (ford, 2009, pp. 49-50). in the 1990s, the final years of the new order rule saw an increase in labor disputes (quinn, 2003, p. 51), along with the emergence of labor-related ngos and a few independent labor unions that attempted to challenge the state-controlled labor relations (quinn, 2003, pp. 7-8). this led to a growing concern within the regime about the possibility of labor unrest, a concern amplified by international labor rights campaigns that put indonesia’s labor conditions on the international agenda. the regime’s concern for its international reputation opened up important political space for domestic activists, including modest reforms in labor relations and the protection of labor ngos with international connections from the regime’s most repressive tactics (ford, 2009, pp. 88-89). much of the international support for domestic labor activism in indonesia resembled what keck and sikkink (1998) term the “boomerang pattern”, in which domestic actors attempt to bypass blocked political channels domestically by drawing upon transnational activist networks through which they bring pressure upon the state from the outside (pp. 12-13). adopting the “naming and shaming” strategies commonly used by human rights campaigns (hafner-burton, 2008, p. 1), international campaigns used the most dramatic cases of labor rights suppression, such as the murder of female labor activist marsinah, the jailing of union leaders muchtar pakpahan and dita indah sari, or the sweatshop conditions tied to prominent multinational clothing brands to moderate the regime’s most repressive tactics and create some political space for domestic labor activists (hadiz, 1997, pp. 179-180; quinn, 2003, p. 14). international connections also served as a key source of funding for labor activism outside the regime-backed labor union, with funds coming from such organizations as the ford foundation, the united states agency for international development (usaid), the ilo, and the afl-cio’s american center for international labor solidarity (ford, 2009, pp. 88-89). this support led to the growth of labor-specific ngos and was part of a larger civil society resistance against the new order regime (aspinall, 2005, pp. 86-115). following the fall of suharto in 1998 and the subsequent democratic transition, labor activists worked in a far more open political context that gave indonesia arguably aseas 6(1) 127126 the most worker-friendly labor laws in the region (caraway, 2009, pp. 157-158).3 while these labor reforms have been undermined by a lack of quality enforcement (caraway, 2009, p. 177) and criticized for their emphasis on business-friendly flexible labor relations (suryomengglo, 2008; tjandra, 2008), they provide a basis for workers’ claims to workplace justice. along with gaining formal rights and institutional access, previously risky public demonstrations have been decriminalized and labor street protests have become a routine element of the political landscape (juliawan, 2011). international organizations have continued and even increased their involvement in the indonesian labor movement (ford, 2009, p. 170). international actors played an essential role in the initial labor law reforms following democratization (caraway, 2004, p. 44; tjandra, 2008, p. 5) and, while international labor organizations were unable to unify the indonesian labor movement under one umbrella federation (ford, 2009, p. 170), they provided important funding and organizational support to a labor movement decimated by decades of authoritarian rule. furthermore, while the “boomerang pattern” remains important, international organizations increasingly play the role of offering organizational and discursive support to domestic actors who have more political space to adopt and transform them in the local political context. in order to examine these dynamics in contemporary labor campaigns, the paper now turns to a union organizing campaign by workers at the grand aquila hotel in bandung, west java, that reflects the intersection between a dynamic local union organizing drive and universal labor rights claims. the grand aquila campaign drawing upon the social movements literature on discursive framing, this case study points to the ways in which transnational connections help domestic actors to tap into internationally circulating discourses on labor rights. however, it also emphasizes the need to translate and enact these discourses in the local political context. the following analysis of the grand aquila campaign draws on local press reports of 3 this included the ratification of ilo convention no. 87 on freedom of association and protection of the right to organise; the passage of the trade union act of 2000, guaranteeing freedom of association, the right to organize, and the right to bargain collectively; the manpower act of 2003, which strengthened the right to strike, limited outsourcing, and contract labor, and raised severance pay (caraway, 2004, pp. 37–38); and the creation of the industrial relations courts independent of the ministry of manpower (mizuno, 2008). steve beers thinking globally, framing locally: international discourses and labor organizing in indonesia aseas 6(1) 129128 protest events, findings from the ilo freedom of association committee, local and international union press releases, and correspondence with local union leadership. while the use of press reports is limited by potential biases and selective reporting, such an approach is common among studies of protest movements as a way to both confirm activist narratives and capture what elements of a protest are being communicated to the public at large. the union organizing campaign at the hotel grand aquila, a luxury hotel located in the commercial district of bandung, began in september 2008, when workers organized a union affiliated with the federation of independent labor unions (fspm – federasi serikat pekerja mandiri) (international union of foodworkers asia/pacific [iuf asia/pacific], 2008). the campaign received support from the international union of foodworkers (iuf), a global union federation with local union affiliates in 120 countries (iuf, 2009). in early october, grand aquila workers informed the management that they had formed a union and would like to begin negotiating. the next day, the general manager dismissed the union chairperson and two other union officers without cause and let security forces escort them from the building (ilo, 2010, p. 151; iuf asia/pacific, 2009a). in a series of one-on-one meetings, the hotel management threatened the union members with dismissal or pay cuts if they did not resign from the union (ilo, 2010, p. 151). soon after the initial firings, management and the union engaged in talks mediated by the bandung ministry of manpower. in those talks, according to the union, the management expressed their willingness to rehire the fired workers but refused to put anything in writing (merdeka, 2008). these promises did not lead to the reinstatement of the fired union leaders. on 1 december, the management confronted the union members with an ultimatum: union members would accept pay cuts or face dismissal. following the ultimatum, the union continued to seek mediation through the bandung ministry of manpower. however, as the management continued to refuse collaboration, the union informed management that they would go on strike if the union leaders were not reinstated and all anti-union discrimination ended. this culminated in a one day work stoppage. the next day, management distributed a list of 128 union members who were to be barred from the hotel premises, effectively terminating their employment (ilo, 2010, p. 154; sopandi, personal communication, june 4, 2011). furthermore, the hotel management attempted to undermine the aseas 6(1) 129128 union by helping to create a competing union, the family association of grand aquila (sp ikga – ikatan keluarga grand aquila) (iuf asia/pacific, 2009b). the case represents many of the most common forms of union discrimination by employers, both in indonesia and worldwide: firing union activists, holding one-on-one meetings with workers, threatening dismissal, and creating an employer-friendly alternative union. after the initial conflict over the right to form a union, workers started a more public campaign against the hotel. the union established a presence in front of the hotel, held weekly demonstrations, and demanded reinstatement, back wages, and the freedom to form a union (iuf asia/pacific, 2009b). workers also created a “solidarity café” next door to the hotel to help raise funds for the campaign (iuf, 2008). in one of its early workplace actions, the union blocked two of the hotel’s entrance gates with 50 meter banners reading “prohibiting workers from organizing is 5 years in jail or a 500 million rupiah fine” (rakasiwi, 2009), referring to a rarely enforced law against the violation of workers’ freedom of association. along with publicizing the dispute, workers sought redress through institutional channels. these included lobbying the west java ministry of manpower to mediate the dispute (ilo, 2010, p. 159), demonstrating outside the bandung city legislature calling for the hotel to have its business license revoked (sayuti, 2010; “spm desak kasus grand aquila”, 2010), and urging the west java prosecutor’s office and local police to bring criminal charges against the hotel (martadinata, 2010). these attempts to seek redress through state channels gained the workers recognition but few results. after the failed mediation attempts, the bandung ministry of manpower sent a series of reprimanding letters to hotel management, asking them to reinstate the dismissed workers, repay back wages, and respect the workers’ freedom of association. workers also held mediation meetings with management through the bandung regional house of representatives, but according to the union, management did not take these talks seriously. the local police opened an investigation against the management, though the charges were ultimately dropped. even the national commission on human rights recognized the case, repeatedly offering to provide mediation and urging president susilo bambang yudhoyono to intervene to end the dispute (ilo, 2010, pp. 151-152; sopandi, personal communication, june 4, 2011). despite this recognition, the ilo identified a lack of willingness by the state to “impose sufficiently dissuasive sanctions” against the violating employers (ilo, 2010, p. 155). while the steve beers thinking globally, framing locally: international discourses and labor organizing in indonesia aseas 6(1) 131130 ilo did not recommend specific sanctions for the grand aquila campaign, the ilo’s freedom of association committee recommends severe fines, the reinstatement of workers, and closing down enterprises in cases of anti-union discrimination where a settlement cannot be negotiated (ilo, 2006, § 825). the lack of sanctions in the grand aquila case illustrates the ways in which union organizing remains highly dependent both upon the freedom of association protections that came with indonesia’s democratic reform and the state’s often lax enforcement of laws prohibiting anti-union discrimination (caraway, 2009, p.165). universal and local framing strategies the grand aquila campaign shows how the campaign’s discursive strategies have been informed by the union’s international connections and internationally circulating discourses on labor rights. in the social movements literature, these discursive strategies are discussed in terms of framing. david a. snow et al. (1986) describe framing strategies as the “rendering of events or occurrences meaningful”, in which frames “function to organize experience and guide action, whether individual or collective” (p. 464). this approach to social movements emphasizes that activists not only act upon the world, but also give it meaning through interpretation and articulation (p. 466). in this way, social movements use framing strategies to make their message “comprehensible to target audiences, to attract attention and encourage action, and to ‘fit’ with favorable institutional venues” (keck & sikkink, 1998, pp. 2-3). while the literature on discursive strategies has focused on “new social movements”, that are based on identity and cultural politics (edelman, 2001, pp. 288-289), the grand aquila case suggests the utility of framing analysis for labor union organizing as well. internationally circulating, labor rights-based discourses provided the language with which workers framed their initial grievances against the hotel management. during early demonstrations, workers held signs referring to ilo convention 87 on freedom of association or signs saying “stop union busting”, with “union busting” written in english (gandapurnama, 2008; iuf asia/pacific, 2009a). by referring to the right to form a union under ilo convention 87, ratified by indonesia in 2000, the campaign drew upon internationally accepted labor rights as a way to introduce new political norms and pressure their employer and the state to resolve the dispute. while the ilo does not have the enforcement aseas 6(1) 131130 mechanisms to effectively combat such labor violations (rütters & zimmermann, 2003, p. 30), indonesia’s ratification of ilo convention 87 provided the “texts and pretexts” upon which activists were able to build a campaign (waterman & timms, 2005, p. 185). these international discourses, along with domestic legal protections, were part of a language of abstract rights with which the campaign framed its grievances. however, as the campaign moved on, protest strategies shifted from universal claims of labor rights to normative claims of local justice. in one such protest, outside the bandung legislature, activists staged a theatrical performance in which they carried plates of sand, representing the economic hardship the workers faced after 15 months off the job, while demonstration speakers emphasized the back pay workers were owed and the difficulty they had paying rent (“spm desak kasus grand aquila”, 2010). similarly, the campaign received some of its widest press coverage when it conducted a seven day “long march” from bandung to jakarta, concluding it with a demonstration in the capital and demanding a meeting with the president (iuf, 2010; sunarya, 2010). in describing the march, one activist called it an “action [that] comes purely from the hearts of our comrades” (ginulur, 2010, author’s translation), a language far more emotive and normative than the legalistic claims of ilo conventions. furthermore, when two union members died from heart attacks during the course of the campaign, the union posted harrowing bedside photos on its official facebook page and demonstrated with two caskets outside the bandung mayor’s office (demo serikat mandiri, 2011). in each of these examples, one finds a shift away from the abstract claims of international labor rights to a normative framing, adopting an emerging repertoire of street protest in indonesia that focuses on performance, symbolism, and hardships (juliawan, 2011). the shift points to the importance of framing strategies that resonate with the way that grievances are experienced (snow & benford, 1988, p. 208) and the relationship between framing strategies and institutional opportunities, in this case the move away from failed institutional strategies. the shift in campaign narrative from one about universal labor rights to one about the material impact of union busting and dismissal from their jobs also represented a key change in the claims of workers, from globally circulating abstract labor rights to social rights claims. social rights, as described by t. h. marshall (1949/1964), are claims to prevailing standards of economic welfare and based on a relationship between citizens and the state. steve beers thinking globally, framing locally: international discourses and labor organizing in indonesia aseas 6(1) 133132 whereas abstract labor rights provided the initial frame for the grand aquila workers, activists operationalized this rights discourse through claims embedded in material experience and targeting the state as citizens. friction and transgressing proper political channels the shift in narrative represents a strategic choice of workers to frame grievances in ways that resonate with local target audiences, but it also speaks to the necessary translation of social justice discourses across borders and what anna tsing (2005) refers to as “friction”. according to tsing, friction is the process through which cultures and discourses are continually co-produced across borders, with special emphasis on the negotiation between universal categories and particular local contexts (pp. 4-5). this process has particular implications for globally circulating social justice discourses. while they allow local actors to make claims, they also “must be negotiated not only across class, race, gender, nationality, culture, and religion, but also between the global south and global north, and between the great mega-cities of the world and their provincial hinterlands” (tsing, 2005, p. 13; cf. thayer, 2010). this is equally true of the universal labor rights claims deployed by the grand aquila workers, which must be adapted in ways that have relevance in the local political context (seidman, 2007, p. 20). perhaps no event in the grand aquila campaign better illustrates this process of transforming universal rights into locally relevant political action than the union’s reaction to an ilo decision in its favor. in november 2010, the ilo published a decision stating that there was evidence that workers’ freedom of association had been violated and recommended that the indonesian government “take without delay all necessary measures, including sanctions where appropriate” to have the fired workers reinstated and the union recognized (ilo, 2010, p. 156). the decision was a victory for the union as it gave legitimacy to the workers’ grievances, but it was not binding. the campaign had to translate the international recognition of its claims in a way that had local political meaning. the workers did so days later in chaining themselves to the gate of the west java governor’s office, demanding the government act upon the ilo recommendations (budiana, 2010). whereas the ilo decision gave symbolic capital and legitimacy to the campaign, it had to be articulated and made real, in this case in a physical sense. the choice to demand the implementation of the ilo aseas 6(1) 133132 decision by chaining themselves to the gates of the governor’s office represented a strategy, in which they not only reframed the language of their claims but deployed protest strategies that transgressed ‘proper’ political channels and the ineffective institutional methods of resolving the dispute. the new tactics represented a shift to what doug mcadam (1996) calls “strategic dramaturgy”, in which the message of the movement is framed by the meanings encoded in actions, rather than language alone. in the grand aquila campaign, these transgressive, action-oriented strategies often involved physical demonstrations and made the hotel itself a politically contested space. a series of demonstrations, which coincided with large events at the hotel, involved union protesters throwing trash, rotten eggs, and chicken feces onto hotel property and burning tires in front of the hotel gates. the actions left guests holding their noses in disgust, while activists urged customers to leave the hotel (“demo spm”, 2010; “karyawan hotel lemparkan”, 2010; kurniawan, 2010). while receiving local press coverage, the actions were absent from the press releases of the campaign’s international supporters, the iuf. the union adopted other transgressive strategies which were left unmentioned by the otherwise regular updates of the union’s international affiliates. for months, the cover photo of the local union’s official facebook page featured a picture of graffiti painted on a wall outside the hotel. the graffiti read “this hotel has been confiscated”, co-opting the bureaucratic language of an official posting and declaring hotel property a site of political contestation. the graffiti included the word “dog” (anjing), a highly derogative term in muslim-majority indonesia. while the graffiti may not translate well for international audiences, it represents a shift in framing from abstract rights and the failed bureaucratic channels to a localized and emotional framing. these strategies are highly political, and the personalization of grievance can be seen as both a powerful way of generating anger and possible action and a way of imagining and articulating alternative social relations (scott, 1985, p. 347). the campaign did not only use graffiti to construct a political imaginary in which workers actually had the power to confiscate the workplace, but also attempted to enact this imaginary in a small way. for three months in 2009, workers occupied a section of the sidewalk outside the hotel with an installation of tents and banners. after three months, workers and the management met with government officials to negotiate the legality of the workers’ sidewalk occupation. soon after the meeting, steve beers thinking globally, framing locally: international discourses and labor organizing in indonesia aseas 6(1) 135134 the local satpol pp, indonesia’s unarmed public order police, arrived at the site to dismantle and confiscate the tent installation. workers, left to clean up the remains, only did so after throwing some of their remaining things onto hotel property and turning two large speakers playing rock music in the direction of the hotel (yulianti, 2009). these skirmishes between workers and management over the control of hotel property became an opportunity for the campaign to take the dispute outside the bureaucratic channels of the state that continued to fail the workers. conclusion like other social movements in indonesia, the indonesian labor movement has seen its ability to organize and mobilize rise and fall with indonesia’s shifting political contexts. the democratic context of post-suharto indonesia has provided social movements with many new political opportunities unavailable under the new order regime, including more opportunities to supplement domestic campaigns with internationally circulating rights-based discourses. despite the lack of a resolution to the dispute, the grand aquila campaign represents a multi-faceted labor organizing campaign – involving international support, government lobbying, and direct action – that would have been difficult to imagine in indonesia prior to democratization. the new political opportunities include the freedom to mobilize around internationally circulating discourses on labor rights. yet, as the grand aquila campaign suggests, democratization has not created a blank slate upon which international discourses can be simply inscribed verbatim. activists can more freely adopt international discourses, but must grapple with the limited impact of universal rights claims in the local institutional and discursive context. each of the campaign strategies described above – the rhetorical shift from legal rights to social rights claims based on economic hardship, the use of symbolic demonstrations, the transgression of proper political channels, and the enactment of labor rights claims through physical demonstrations – illustrates how international support provides discursive resources to domestic activists and the need for those discourses to be translated and enacted locally by domestic actors. as snow and benford (1988) put it, framing and mobilization are “highly dialectical, such that there is no such thing as a tabula rasa or empty aseas 6(1) 135134 glass into which new and perhaps alien ideas can be poured” (p. 204). in contemporary indonesia, the more open democratic context has not eliminated the friction between international and local discourses for social movements. the grand aquila campaign’s shift from rights-based appeals to normative appeals demonstrates the ways that activists adjust framing strategies to the discursive and political opportunity structures in which they operate (ferree, 2003; meyer & minkoff 2004; snow, 2007). in this case, the shift away from rights-based appeals that garnered little response from the state bureaucracies assigned to enforce them points to the limits that institutional opportunity structures place on social justice discourses and the importance of work by local activists to deploy, adapt, and transform these discourses in ways that have meaning in the local political context. thus, for the indonesian labor movement, international allies and internationally circulating social justice discourses remain a powerful resource to draw upon. just as important, however, is creative adaptation of these discourses in the local political context, whether it is translation of universal discourses in ways that resonate locally, transformation of universal rights claims into citizenship claims upon local state actors, or enactment of these claims through transgressive direct action. yet, the lack of resolution for the grand aquila workers illustrates how the utility of universal rights discourses remains dependent upon the strengths and weaknesses of civil and citizenship rights embedded in the domestic state. references alston, p. 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(2009, august 20). tenda dibongkar paksa, hotel grand aquila dilempari nasi bungkus. detik. retrieved december 17, 2012 from http://bandung.detik.com/read/2009/08/20/102922/1186194/486/tendadibongkar-paksa-hotel-grand-aquila-dilempari-nasi-bungkus steve beers thinking globally, framing locally: international discourses and labor organizing in indonesia mobilization potential and democratization processes of the coalition for clean and fair elections (bersih) in malaysia: an interview with hishamuddin rais ying hooi khoo ► khoo, y. h. (2014). mobilization potential and democratization processes of the coalition for clean and fair elections (bersih) in malaysia: an interview with hishamuddin rais. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 7(1), 111-120. in recent years, protests and popular mobilization have become pronounced elements in malaysian politics. bersih (clean) demonstrations are notably the most outstanding protest events in malaysian history. bersih is a group of 89 non-governmental organizations (ngos) pushing for a thorough reform of the electoral process in malaysia through rallies and demonstrations. five opposition parties initiated the idea of bersih in 2005 and included several ngos in the ‘project’ later on. after the first bersih street protests in november 2007 (bersih 1.0), the political parties and the ngos reached the ‘compromise pact’ that led to the formation of bersih 2.0 in 2010 as a non-partisan movement free from any political interference. this interview explores the linkages to the broader democratization process in malaysia from the perspective of hishamuddin rais (isham), a prominent grassroots activist. isham spent 20 years in political exile after the baling student protest of 1974. he became active again in 1998 after the ouster of then deputy prime minister anwar ibrahim, the current leader of the opposition coalition. isham was a member of the bersih steering committee for two years until he stepped down in 2012.  in den letzten jahren sind proteste und öffentliche mobilisierung zu ausgeprägten elementen malaysischer politik geworden. bersih (saubere) demonstrationen gehören zu den herausragenden protestereignissen in der malaysischen geschichte. bersih ist eine gruppe von 89 nichtregierungsorganisationen (nros), die durch kundgebungen und demonstrationen für eine umfassende reform des wahlprozesses in malaysia kämpfen. fünf oppositionsparteien initiierten 2005 die idee von bersih und integrierten später einige nros in das „projekt“. nach den ersten bersih-demonstrationen im november 2007 (bersih 1.0) einigten sich die politischen parteien und die nros auf ein „kompromissabkommen“, das 2010 zur gründung von bersih 2.0 als eine unabhängige bewegung führte, die frei von politischer beeinflussung ist. dieses interview untersucht die verbindungen zum breiteren demokratisierungsprozess in malaysia aus der perspektive des bekannten aktivisten hishamuddin rais. isham verbrachte nach dem großen baling-studentenprotest im jahr 1974 20 jahre im politischen exil und ist erst seit dem sturz im jahr 1998 des damaligen vize-premierministers anwar ibrahim, der die aktuelle oppositionskoalition anführt, wieder politisch aktiv. bis 2012 war isham zwei jahre lang mitglied des bersih-vorstandes. im dialog  in dialogue w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 14 .1 -8 112 ying hooi khoo  aseas 7(1) ying hooi khoo: thank you for agreeing to my interview,1 isham. could you tell me how you got involved in the bersih movement? hishamuddin rais: at first, the bersih steering committee asked me to help them with some posters, concepts, and the re-launching of the movement. i was not in the jawatankuasa pemandu (steering committee) at that time, merely a ‘contractor’. that was exactly what i did. that was at the very beginning during the re-launching from bersih 1.0 to bersih 2.0, where dr. dzul2 and other opposition politicians officially passed the responsibility of bersih 1.0 to ambiga.3 i was there that night at the civic hall and i did stand-up comedy. every now and then they called me when there was something that i could lend my support to. finally, the jawatankuasa pemandu decided to rope me in. so from a ‘contractor’ i became the ‘owner’ of the bersih 2.0. khoo: why did you step down in 2012? isham: i left bersih’s jawatankuasa pemandu three weeks before himpunan kebangkitan rakyat kl112.4 i left because i did not want it to be seen as a ‘clash’ as i was organizing the bersih protest at the same time as i was also organizing kl112 at stadium merdeka. khoo: what is your take on bersih having been initially started as a politically motivated movement by oppositional political parties but later being changed into a non-partisan movement? how would you compare them? isham: bersih has gone beyond the limitations of an ngo and become a mass movement. if bersih were just an organization that sat in a room issuing press statements, bersih would not be the bersih of today. i think that bersih became popular because bersih opposition challenged (melawan) the state and bersih moved to the streets. the street protests made bersih a mass movement. khoo: what triggered the emergence of the bersih movement? isham: the elections of 1999.5 there has always been talk about the elections being unfair. personally, i have been writing about the ridiculousness of the election sys1 this interview was conducted as part of a dissertation on social movements and democratization in malaysia at bangsar, kuala lumpur, on 30 july 2013. . 2 dr. dzulkefly ahmad was the former pan-malaysian islamic party (pas) member of parliament for the kuala selangor constituency. he is now the director of the pas research centre. 3 datuk ambiga sreenevasan was the former co-chairperson of bersih 2.0. maria chin abdullah replaced her in november 2013. 4 this rally was the final show of force from the oppositional pakatan rakyat (people’s alliance) before the 13th general elections in 2013. it was dubbed kl112 as the rally was held on 12 january in the city center of kuala lumpur. 5 malaysia’s 10th general election was held on 29 november 1999. the ruling barisan nasional (national front) won 148 out of 193 parliamentary seats. 113mobilization potential and democratization processes – interview with hishamuddin rais tem since 1999. so that is why after 2004,6 politicians felt that there was more to be done. at the very beginning of the formation of bersih, the demand was mainly to clean up the repeated criticisms over the tainted electoral rolls. but when bersih 2.0 was launched, eight demands were finally drafted. so instead of just cleaning up the electoral rolls, it now has bigger demands. so i think, as i look at it, a political party is a stakeholder in free and fair elections. bersih is also a stakeholder but, as a popular movement, cannot be elected. that is the difference: politicians are stakeholders and want to be elected to parliament. but bersih is the rank and file, its supporters are stakeholders in general but they do not stand for parliament. so people in general trust bersih more because it does not wear the politician’s hat (tidak memakai topi politician). khoo: so do you think that the political system was more open in 2004 during former prime minister tun abdullah badawi’s7 period? did you see his premiership as an opportunity? isham: yes, there are many factors that come into play. the abdullah leadership is one of the important factors and also, at the time, the changing of two different types of leadership in the post-mahathir period. so the post-mahathir atmosphere was slightly more relaxed. abdullah badawi, either by design or by his personality, was not aggressive. this transition period gave breathing space not only to bersih, but to a lot of ngos. so from 2004 to 2008, before the 12th general election, there was a kind of ‘perestroika’. i have been describing abdullah badawi as the ‘gorbachev’ of malaysia. for example, abdullah badawi set up the police commission.8 this created hope and an atmosphere of democratization. people had high hopes for abdullah badawi, but he failed to deliver. that performance was reflected in 2008.9 khoo: how would you describe bersih’s relationship and engagement with the election commission (ec) at the time? isham: i think there was no relationship. the ec was disrespectful towards the movement and the ec never treated bersih seriously. as it is, you can see that none of the eight demands were taken seriously. as a matter of fact, not only the ec, but also the government does not accept the eight demands except for indelible ink (dakwat kekal).10 there have been so many excuses by the ec like their lack of staff (tak cukup 6 the 11th malaysian general election was held on 21 march 2004. barisan nasional won 198 parliamentary seats versus the combined opposition parties’ 20 seats, with one independent. 7 abdullah badawi’s premiership lasted from 2003 to 2009. 8 tun abdullah badawi established the royal commission to enhance the operation and management of the royal malaysia police in 2005. this royal commission made 125 recommendations in its 2005 report, which included setting up the independent police complaints and misconduct commission (ipcmc) that was rejected by the police numerous times. 9 the 12th general election was held on 8 march 2008 and is popularly known as the ‘political tsunami’, in which the barisan nasional only won 140 out of 222 parliamentary seats. 10 many citizens complained that the indelible ink used during the elections could be washed off easily, and indeed, the ec later admitted that the ink used in the 13th general elections on 5 may 2013 was actually food coloring. 114 ying hooi khoo  aseas 7(1) kakitangan) or that they have not been able to clean up the electoral rolls and many other excuses. basically, they are not sincere and not willing to commit themselves, so i personally feel that the ec acts as part of the mechanism to defend the barisan nasional, the ruling party. khoo: touching on the question of mobilization, what are, in your opinion, effective tactics to mobilize people in malaysia? isham: first, the use of technology. that means using facebook, blogs, and social media. that is clear. second, we hold speeches (ceramah). i went all over the country from small meetings to large meetings to campaign this way. for two whole months before the bersih 2.0 rally on 9 july 2011, almost every night there were programs. we went to big towns such as johor bahru, batu pahat, and seremban. then we went to smaller ones, like felda.11 third is what we call ‘publicity by accident’. it means that whenever our movement is attacked in the media, it gives us free publicity, for example, the ‘assault’ by utusan malaysia through inaccurate reporting.12 in fact, this encourages people to come forward. so there are three tactics, social media, ceramah, and ‘publicity by accident’. khoo: when you refer to ceramah, is it just bersih itself or do you ride on the influence of politicians? isham: it depends. sometimes the functions are just for bersih, like bersih johor bahru and bersih malacca. but sometimes we share (tumpang) the political party platform, although i personally always represented bersih. we also campaign together with ngos, usually with the solidariti anak muda malaysia (samm).13 that is specifically for mobilization. but at the same time, we also work closely with political parties, as this is very important. for example, the state of selangor14 supports us with banners and buses. our support mostly comes from the pakatan rakyat states. but at the same time, we also reached the understanding that the leadership of the political parties will make statements in support of the bersih program. so nik aziz15 will make a statement, anwar16 will make a statement, lim kit siang17 will make a 11 felda stands for federal land development authority; it is a land settlement agency to carry out projects for the development and settlement of land. 12 utusan malaysia is a malay language newspaper in malaysia. its credibility has constantly been under criticism due to its bias towards barisan nasional in its reporting. 13 samm is an ngo, although some of the leaders are from political parties. it is intended to train and develop young malaysians to build a better country. samm is the main organizer of the occupy padang merbok movement. this movement demanded the resignation of the ec chairman and his committee over the 13th general election results. the occupiers camped at padang merbok, near the parliament. 14 the opposition coalition pakatan rakyat won the state of selangor from the ruling coalition barisan nasional during the 12th general elections in 2008. 15 nik abdul aziz nik mat is the spiritual leader of the pas. 16 datuk seri anwar ibrahim is the current leader of opposition and de factor leader of parti keadilan rakyat (pkr). 17 lim kit siang is a prominent leader of the democratic action party (dap). 115mobilization potential and democratization processes – interview with hishamuddin rais statement. these are all concerted efforts. we also work with big ngos on mobilization, for example, with himpunan hijau18 and the national felda settlers’ children association (anak). these are big organizations that have mass support. if we go for the ceramah, we also invite them to come and to show support. khoo: often, ngos are very careful regarding relationships with politicians or even shy away. what is your take on this? isham: the thing is that, eventually, bersih will decide. but let’s be honest, in terms of organization and structure, only the political parties have the structure. in the small villages, they are the ones with structures. we have to work with them. so yes, there are some who have reservations, but we are only talking about the program of bersih. khoo: you mentioned earlier, in the context of protest tactics, that the bersih movement is most often associated with rallies. do you think protests can actually cause political change? isham: yes. when i planned bersih 3.0 on 28 april 2012, it was with the understanding that elections would be held soon. finally, the elections were not held. that is why we planned another demonstration, the himpunan kebangkitan rakyat kl112 in january 2013. again, the elections were not held. but why do we plan this? i believe a mass protest will translate anger into votes; this is the tactic. now they want to do a bersih 4.0! i personally would not do it now because the next elections are four or five years away. so there will be loss of energy. you have to have the protests closer to the elections, so that the protests will translate into votes. khoo: do you see the result of the 13th general elections on 5 may 2013 as a result of the protests? isham: you must understand that my analysis goes back to 2008. in 2007 and 2008, there were many protests, which culminated in the 2008 general election results. prior to the election in 2013, we had bersih 2.0, bersih 3.0, the kl112, and also himpunan hijau. three protests from himpunan hijau, one in kuantan, one in pengerang, and one in raub. so from 2011 to 2013, there have constantly been protests. the election took place in may 2013; looking at the results, the protests have obviously been translated into votes. khoo: bersih has used social media to reach the people. do you think the tactic of going on the ground was effective? for example in the rural areas, were people aware of this movement? isham: yes. you see, in rural areas, we distributed flyers, and in urban areas, we had flash mobs – so there are different ways and means. but in rural areas actually, in the 18 himpunan hijau is a malaysian environmentalist movement protesting a proposed rare-earth processing plant in kuantan, pahang. the project is to be set up by the australian company lynas. 116 ying hooi khoo  aseas 7(1) kampung (village), the political parties are very important because they are the only ones that have the links with these entities. so we have to work with them based on a common understanding of free and fair elections. khoo: do you think that flash mobs are effective? isham: flash mobs are effective if the protestors get arrested. khoo: what is the relationship of bersih with the ruling coalition, barisan nasional? isham: since bersih stands for clean and fair elections in general, we always invite both sides, pakatan rakyat and barisan nasional. but so far, barisan nasional has not responded. they usually do not turn up – there was only one occasion, a debate on electoral reforms19 between khairy20 and ambiga, organized by the sinar harian.21 khoo: considering that the bersih movement has played an important role in the political discourse of the country as well as for democratic developments, how has the bersih movement influenced the political process in malaysia? isham: there are two things. bersih 2.0 is very important because it was assaulted. there was a crisis in kuala lumpur. certain places were barred. i personally was not allowed to enter kuala lumpur.22 and then, there was this silat (self-defense) group,23 the counter-demonstrators. but people still turned up on the street. so the significance of bersih 2.0 is that people crossed the boundaries of fear. in malaysia, bersih 2.0 is the demarcation line. people no longer fear street protests. street protests are now part of the political discourse. after bersih 2.0, they became part and parcel of the political process in malaysia. the same thing also happened with bersih 3.0. kl112 is an example of how half a million can demonstrate peacefully. so with bersih 2.0 we crossed fear, and with bersih 3.0 we proved that we are not scared. with kl112 we proved that we could come to the street peacefully. so that is the gain of the battle. khoo: in your view, what are the strengths of the bersih movement? isham: i think the strength of the bersih movement is that people understood that they were cheated. suddenly, an organization comes out and tells them, okay, let’s come together, we don’t want to get cheated anymore. so that is why bersih was 19 the debate entitled “electoral reform: is enough being done?” was held in the club at bukit utama on 25 april 2012. the debates are available on youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieakjen5wf8. 20 since 2008, khairy jamaluddin has been a member of parliament for the rembau constituency. he is also the chairman of barisan nasional youth. 21 launched in 2006, sinar harian is a malay-language daily newspaper and famously known for its relatively balanced reporting. 22 the police obtained a restriction order from the magistrate’s court under section 98 of the criminal procedure code to bar 91 individuals from entering kuala lumpur on 9 july 2011. 23 this refers to the malaysian silat lincah organization (psslm) which reportedly threatened to ‘wage war’ against bersih activists. 117mobilization potential and democratization processes – interview with hishamuddin rais popular. since the 1960s elections, people have known that they were cheated. so now, suddenly an organization said okay, this has turned into a common thing, so now people can come together and show solidarity. khoo: do you think that the leadership is a key factor? isham: yes, leadership is a factor. because bersih is multi-ethnic, it looks very competent. ambiga is a lawyer and pak samad24 is an icon. together with other activists, bersih is kind of a respectable organization, not the ‘half past six type’. khoo: how about weaknesses? isham: the weakness is that it is big. it is bulky because it is a coalition. so it is difficult to have a unified opinion, to reach consensus. let me tell you, for the decision to have the bersih 2.0 protest, it took four meetings – four enlarged meetings. and there were a lot of arguments. that is the weakness; because everybody has an opinion. being bulky, however, is also a strength when we look at the macro-level. but when it comes to the details, we have a lot of problems. i mean the strategies, whether we just want to wear yellow or whether we want to paint our house yellow, and all these ideas. it is because not all ngos are for street protests. some prefer press conferences and some argue for sending memorandums. khoo: so what do you think about this bersih tribunal?25 isham: i think it is a very good idea, but it is what i called the last shot. it is just part of what needed to be done. it is the concluding part because the demands during the protests were ignored. i just translated their documents and i personally think that the government will probably ignore it. whatever the outcomes of the tribunal, you must understand, with the exception of online media, the media would probably not bother to touch such issues. but anywhere else around the world, if they have a tribunal like that, there would probably be debates on television. but no, it does not happen here. it will probably be only selected media that will produce such news. khoo: what are the prospects of the bersih movement in malaysia? isham: well, there are seven more demands that have not been met. probably we should also add the issues about the gerrymandering and the demarcation because these are the main flaws of our electoral system. the struggle (perjuangan) of bersih should continue and i hope the new leadership will continue what the old leadership started. 24 datuk a. samad said is former co-chairperson of bersih 2.0 and he is a national laureate. 25 the bersih people’s tribunal is a tribunal mooted as a response to the public outcry of electoral fraud and irregularities in malaysia’s 13th general election. it took place from 18–22 september 2013. six renowned individuals – three from overseas and three from malaysia – are members of the tribunal. the main aim of the tribunal was to investigate irregularities during the 2013 polls. 118 ying hooi khoo  aseas 7(1) khoo: the eight demands introduced by bersih 2.0 also included democratic elements, e.g., to stop dirty politics. so how is bersih 2.0 going to implement it, since some of these demands are very subjective? isham: exactly. yes, you are right. there are general concepts such as stopping dirty politics. they are not specific like indelible ink or extending the campaign period (panjangkan waktu berkempen). that is the generic; so i think the most important thing is to clean the electoral rolls, extend the campaign period, use indelible ink, and have media freedom. these are four original demands, implementable with the exception of hentikan rasuah (stop the corruption). so i think it is best to have a combination of the old demands and the new demands. khoo: how do you evaluate the relationship between the social movements, in this case the bersih movement, with the democratization in malaysia? do you think the bersih movement has managed to open up democratic space? isham: yes, i think bersih plays an important role in creating awareness, particularly among the younger generation. that was proven on 8 may 2013 at kelana jaya stadium where young people showed their anger because they felt cheated in the election of 5 may. they came out and protested and you could see the culmination of protest in many places from ipoh over kuala lumpur to penang. thousands of people came to the grand finale at padang merbok. that shows that the demands for free and fair elections are particularly important among the younger generation. and if you had been there at the night of the kelana jaya, you would have noticed that some of them are not even of voting age. so i think if bersih 4.0 is to come, it would probably be bigger than bersih 2.0 and bersih 3.0. khoo: my final question: are you optimistic about the future of the bersih movement? isham: yes, i am. but the bersih leadership must be clear about tactics and strategies. if the leadership is not clear, then it will fail. if the new leadership of bersih is clear of what it aims for and how it is going to do it, then it will do all right. khoo: thank you for your time, isham. about the author ying hooi khoo is a fellow at the department of international and strategic studies, faculty of arts and social sciences, university of malaya, malaysia. she is also a phd candidate at the university putra malaysia writing on “social movements and democratization in malaysia”. ► contact: yinghooi@gmail.com 119mobilization potential and democratization processes – interview with hishamuddin rais acknowledgements the author would like to thank hishamuddin rais who willingly shared information and insights for this interview and the university of malaya for a dissertation scholarship. asean’s environmental challenges and non-traditional security cooperation: towards a regional peacekeeping force? henning borchers1 ► borchers, h. (2014). asean’s environmental challenges and non-traditional security cooperation: towards a regional peacekeeping force? aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 7(1), 5-20. this article reflects on the prospect for an asean peacekeeping force and regional security cooperation. i argue that progress on ‘soft’ security issues stands to facilitate a slow deepening of ‘hard’ security cooperation at the asean level. governments of asean member states are still reluctant to develop a regional mechanism for conflict resolution, which they perceive to be a challenge to the norms of non-interference and state sovereignty. yet, these norms are subject to dynamic shifts in the security environment that regional governments now have to manage. the establishment of mechanisms to address politically less controversial non-traditional security issues such as environmental challenges stands to further develop and consolidate military-to-military ties and deepen political trust among member states. an asean standby force for emergency response and disaster relief has become a politically acceptable initiative and could set the stage for the development of an asean peacekeeping force. keywords: asean; hadr; peacekeeping; security community; security cooperation  in diesem beitrag wird die möglichkeit einer asean-friedenstruppe und einer regionalen sicherheitskooperation betrachtet. ich argumentiere, dass fortschritte bei „weichen” sicherheitsfragen eine stetige vertiefung der „harten“ sicherheitszusammenarbeit auf asean-ebene ermöglichen. noch zögern die regierungen der asean-staaten, einen regionalen konfliktlösungsmechanismus zu entwickeln, da sie diesen als infragestellung der normen der nichteinmischung und der staatlichen souveränität sehen. diese normen hängen jedoch von dynamischen veränderungen in der sicherheitsumgebung ab, mit welchen die regierungen konfrontiert sind. die einrichtung von mechanismen um politisch weniger umstrittene, nicht-traditionelle sicherheitsthemen anzugehen, wie z.b. umweltherausforderungen, ist ein erster schritt dahin, militärische kooperationen weiter zu entwickeln, zu festigen sowie das politische vertrauen zwischen den mitgliedstaaten zu vertiefen. eine asean-abruftruppe für notfallund katastrophenhilfe ist bereits eine politisch akzeptable initiative geworden. dies könnte den weg für die entwicklung einer asean-friedenstruppe festlegen. schlagworte: asean; hadr; friedenssicherung; sicherheitsgemeinschaft; sicherheitskooperation 1 disclaimer: the views and opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily represent the views of the new zealand human rights commission. aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 14 .1 -2 6 henning borchers  aseas 7(1) introduction in 2003, indonesia proposed an association of southeast asian nations (asean)2 peacekeeping force towards the development of a regional mechanism for conflict resolution. the proposition was part of a comprehensive proposal for the asean political-security community (apsc), one of the three pillars3 of the asean community. at the time, several other asean members rejected the idea of a regional force as ‘unnecessary’ or ‘too early’, with resistance largely credited to concerns over the norm of non-interference in member countries’ internal affairs (bandoro, 2004; chongkittavorn, 2004; kuah, 2004). over the past decade, asean advanced the apsc and military-to-military ties through preventive diplomacy and confidence building measures. several member countries also developed their peacekeeping capabilities for united nations peacekeeping operations (unpko) and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (hadr). the association further adopted plans to establish a regional mechanism to address non-traditional security (nts) challenges, including the development of a regional standby force that could be deployed in response to environmental disasters. plans to establish a regional mechanism for conflict resolution remain vague. focusing on the prospect of an asean peacekeeping force, this article reflects on asean’s approach to regional defense and security cooperation. i argue that progress on ‘soft’ security issues stands to facilitate a slow deepening of ‘hard’ security cooperation at the asean level. asean governments are still reluctant to develop a regional mechanism for conflict resolution, which they perceive to be a challenge to the norms of non-interference and state sovereignty. yet, these norms are subject to dynamic shifts in the security environment that regional governments now have to manage. the establishment of mechanisms to address politically less sensitive nts challenges such as environmental disasters stands to further consolidate military-tomilitary ties among asean member states through joint military exercises and thus deepen political trust. an asean standby force for disaster preparedness and emergency response in the region has become a politically acceptable initiative. this could set the stage for the development of an asean peacekeeping force that could address more intricate political challenges such as domestic or regional conflicts. firstly, i will provide a historical outline of asean’s approach to regional security, followed by a brief review of asean security community building by means of an analysis of relevant literature and asean policy papers. i will then analyze selected examples of regional peacekeeping initiatives and security cooperation. lastly, i will discuss asean’s approach to disaster preparedness and emergency response, and the implications related mechanisms could have for the development of an asean peacekeeping force. 2 the asean includes brunei, cambodia, indonesia, laos, malaysia, myanmar, the philippines, singapore, thailand, and vietnam. 3 the other two pillars of the asean community are the asean economic community and the asean socio-cultural community (asean secretariat, 2009a). 7asean’s environmental challenges and non-traditional security cooperation asean’s approach to regional security security has always been a core concern of asean. following indonesia’s armed opposition to the creation of malaysia (konfrontasi) between 1963 and 1966, interstate war has been notably absent in southeast asia since asean was established in 1967. the promotion of regional peace and stability is among the main objectives outlined in the bangkok declaration, the association’s founding document. the declaration refers to security only in the context of external interference (asean declaration, 1967). yet, alongside interstate tensions, most of asean’s founding members were also facing internal threats with potentially regional implications from the turbulent processes of nation building and cold war dynamics. strengthening the state was asean’s principal approach to manage internal security challenges, advance economic development, and maintain regional stability (bellamy, 2004, p. 93; rolls, 2012, p. 128). the association has successfully maintained a stable interstate peace among its members based on the norms of respect for national sovereignty, non-interference in internal affairs, the non-use of force, and a consensus-based approach to decisionmaking, collectively referred to as the ‘asean way’. the expansion of multilateral security and defense cooperation to a level “short of a formal military alliance” was also one of the options considered early on (rolls, 2012, p. 129), but concerns over cold war power rivalries prevented the formation of a military pact, which could have been perceived as a threat by communist regimes in the region (acharya, 2000, p. 26). moreover, most of the founding members already had de facto or formal alliances with western powers that helped maintain regional stability. security and defense cooperation at the asean level was confined to bilateral relationships (acharya, 1991; tomotaka, 2008, p. 19). the norms entailed in the ‘asean way’ account for asean’s strengths and weaknesses. norms have a transformative impact as a determining factor in interstate interactions and facilitate security community development (adler & barnett, 1998). asean has been comprehensively and critically studied within the framework of security communities (acharya, 1991, 2000; bellamy, 2004; caballero-anthony, 2005; haacke, 2005; kuah, 2004; tomotaka, 2008). the rules laid out in the ‘asean way’ have without doubt promoted shared values and a collective asean identity among the region’s state-makers and bureaucratic elite, consolidating a level of mutual trust as well as deepening interstate practices through regular interaction. these processes have created “a transnational region comprised of sovereign states whose people maintain dependable expectations of peaceful change” (adler & barnett, 1998, p. 30). yet, internal conflicts with at times regional implications are prevalent in the region and have regularly raised questions as to the association’s legitimacy, as it refrains from addressing regional conflicts and the poor human rights records of some regional governments. the “cliché problem” (sukma, 2010, p. 3) of non-interference is at the core of asean’s ongoing struggle to effectively address regional security concerns as it obstructs collective efforts at conflict resolution in order to avoid confrontation. asean’s perspective on regional conflict resolution changed with the association’s engagement in the cambodian conflict. the 1978 vietnamese invasion of cam8 henning borchers  aseas 7(1) bodia provided asean, at the time including indonesia, malaysia, the philippines, singapore, and thailand, the grounds for acting collectively towards the peaceful settlement of a regional dispute. to avert the perceived vietnamese threat to thailand’s sovereignty and regional stability, asean advanced political, economic, and diplomatic initiatives, and urged and supported un measures in order to effect vietnam’s withdrawal from cambodia, specifically through the jakarta informal meetings in 1988 and 1989 that helped facilitate the establishment of the united nations transitional authority in cambodia (untac) and the deployment of untac peacekeeping forces from 1992 to 1993 (sundararaman, 1997). this shared expression of the ‘asean way’, based on the commitment to diplomacy and consultation, was a formative experience for asean that shaped the association’s future approach to community building and regional peace and security (bellamy, 2004, pp. 99–100; caballero-anthony, 2005, p. 259). furthermore, brunei, indonesia, the philippines, and thailand contributed military and civilian police personnel, marking untac as asean member states’ first contribution to a multilateral peacekeeping operation in the region. in subsequent years, asean had to redefine its role in managing regional security in a changing post-cold war strategic and security environment. security issues were increasingly raised in a range of extra-regional dialogues, highlighting the need for a multilateral approach. this led to the establishment of the asean regional forum (arf) in 1994, a platform that expanded asean’s style of confidence building and preventive diplomacy to the wider asia-pacific region (rolls, 2012, p. 131; tomotaka, 2008, p. 22). yet, the forum’s predominantly foreign ministry-affiliated participants, its emphasis of process over action, and slow pace towards developing a platform for preventive diplomacy were criticized by non-asean members (brandon, 2002; tomotaka, 2008, p. 23). this gap was addressed through the establishment of the shangri-la dialogue (sld) in 2002, “asia’s most prominent exercise in defence diplomacy” (capie & taylor, 2010, p. 359), which provides a forum for defense, security, and intelligence officials from the arf countries to meet and discuss security issues pertaining to the asia-pacific. a similar platform exclusive to asean was yet to emerge. regional repercussions of 9/11 and maritime security as well as pandemics and environmental disasters further highlighted the need for a multilateral approach towards defense diplomacy and security cooperation at the asean level. the asean political-security community the notion of establishing a southeast asian security community to facilitate political and security cooperation has been at the heart of asean’s concept of regional order since its early years (acharya, 1991, p. 161). in 2003, indonesia advanced a set of propositions suggesting a range of measures towards the establishment of an asean security community as one of the three pillars of the asean community. indonesia, having emerged from the crippling impacts of the asian financial crisis and the sociopolitical tensions this had created domestically, was eager to again project its claim for regional leadership both to the association’s other members and to an international community that welcomed the norms and values jakarta espoused with its proposal (“indonesia proposes”, 2004; kuah, 2004). following east timor’s referendum and 9asean’s environmental challenges and non-traditional security cooperation independence, which had been facilitated by an australian-led international force, it likely was also in jakarta’s interest to develop a regional mechanism to avert further international interference in domestic and regional affairs. australia’s leadership in east timor had soured the relationship between jakarta and canberra for several years following the intervention. ongoing conflicts in aceh, where the megawati administration had declared martial law in 2003, and papua also highlighted the need to establish a mechanism to manage domestic problems regionally. the tenets of the ‘asean way’, which continue to determine relations among member states and that prioritize dialogue over confrontation, would be preferable to the embarrassment caused by the intervention of extra-regional forces. other asean governments were, however, apprehensive of indonesia’s projection of what was perceived as a “democracy agenda” that challenged the principles enshrined in the ‘asean way’ (sukma, 2008, p. 138). in order to address these concerns while maintaining core elements of the original proposal, indonesia proposed the establishment of peacekeeping centers in the region to build regional capabilities for un-led peacekeeping missions and disaster relief. these objectives were better aligned with the less contentious dimension of regional non-traditional security cooperation, acknowledging that peacekeeping missions increasingly have to meet a wider range of objectives, including hadr (uesugi, 2004). while noting the region’s need to develop its capacity for conflict prevention and resolution, the revised proposal refrained from highlighting the potential of regional peacekeepers for the purposes of ‘hard’ security cooperation within asean. sugeng raharjo, a former indonesian foreign ministry official, suggested that “the wording was changed but the spirit is the same” (“indonesia modifies”, 2004). the revised proposal was approved in the same year at the ninth asean summit. by signing the bali concord ii, member states committed to its principal components of norm setting, conflict prevention, conflict resolution, post-conflict peace building, and the establishment of an asean political-security community (apsc) by 2020 (asean concord ii, 2003).4 through the bali concord ii, asean outlined its commitment to ‘comprehensive security’ and enhanced defense cooperation, though within the framework of the ‘asean way’ to inform interstate relations. the norm of non-interference substantially shaped member states’ initial resistance to the original proposal and jakarta’s response as the bali concord ii reaffirmed asean member countries’ “rights to lead their national existence free from outside interference in their internal affairs” (asean concord ii, 2003, p. 3). this perpetuation of asean’s core norms raised the question of whether the initiative really was “more of the same” (rolls, 2012, p. 132). any development and implementation of new mechanisms was further set to move “at a pace comfortable to all”, which confirmed the tradition of the lowest common denominator in asean’s consensus-based decision-making culture (asean concord ii, 2003, p. 3). the vientiane action programme, which was adopted the following year (2004), aimed to address a wide range of security issues by initiating the gradual institutionalization of confidence building measures, multilateral security dialogues, and mechanisms (asean secretariat, 2004b). multilateral dialogues such as the asean 4 the timeline for establishing the apsc was later changed to 2015 (asean secretariat, 2009b, p. 1). 10 henning borchers  aseas 7(1) defence minister’s meeting (admm, since 2006) and the admm-plus (since 2010) have since become important regional platforms for asean member states and dialogue partners to advance security cooperation and defense diplomacy.5 as the highest defense mechanism within asean, the admm is a significant step in asean security regionalism towards the apsc as it promotes “regional peace and stability through dialogue and cooperation in defence and security” by means of military-tomilitary interaction (asean secretariat, 2006). despite restated commitments to establishing an asean mechanism for regional conflict resolution, progress towards this goal remains slow. the objective of establishing “regional arrangements for the maintenance of peace and stability” was first expressed in the 2004 vientiane action programme (p. 8). it was reiterated in the 2009 apsc roadmap (p. 14). in 2011, defense ministers agreed to establish an asean peacekeeping training centre network to facilitate planning, training, and exchange of experience in order “to contribute to peacekeeping efforts in the world” (indonesian defense minister purnomo yusgiantoro, cited in “defense ministers discuss”, 2011; asean defence ministers’ meeting [admm], 2011b). concrete steps to establish a mechanism for the management of regional security are yet to materialize. recent territorial spats between thailand and cambodia as well as the conflict between rohingya muslims and rakhine buddhists in myanmar highlight the need for such a mechanism and have raised renewed calls for an asean peacekeeping force (“asean peacekeepers”, 2012; pitsuwan, 2011). towards an asean peacekeeping force? asean member states are yet to agree on a uniform view of defense cooperation that could make a regional force possible. the idea of some form of military arrangement, even a “joint command”, had been raised several times throughout the 1970s and 1980s, yet it failed to receive the support of asean leaders (acharya, 1991, p. 161). indonesia’s proposal for an asean peacekeeping force that could be deployed to help resolve regional and internal conflicts met with resistance from the representatives of several regional governments, who at the time considered jakarta’s proposal for an asean security community a “blatant and unacceptable bid to reassert itself over the rest of the region” (wain, 2004). vietnam’s foreign minister considered the idea of a regional force “too early” and argued that the region’s political and military policies were not sufficiently compatible for the level of cooperation required for such an initiative (acharya, 2005, p. 149). possibly in view of the association’s economic prerogatives, singapore’s foreign minister argued that asean was neither a security nor a defense organization and that the grouping was the “wrong entity to play a peacekeeping role” (acharya, 2005, p. 149; kuah, 2004, p. 4). thailand’s foreign affairs minister rejected the idea as unnecessary and argued that there were no conflicts in the region that would justify the mobilization of an asean force (kuah, 2004, p. 2). the resistance of regional governments to this level of ‘hard’ security cooperation was indicative of the latent antagonism that exists among members of the association. 5 the admm-plus includes asean dialogue partners australia, china, india, japan, the republic of korea, new zealand, russia, and the united states. 11asean’s environmental challenges and non-traditional security cooperation notwithstanding efforts towards community building, mutual distrust and competition within asean endure. the several territorial disputes in the south china sea involving malaysia, vietnam, and the philippines as well as border disputes between thailand and cambodia, among others, underline this complexity (acharya, 1991, pp. 173–174, 2000, p. 128; “asean, preventive diplomacy”, 2011; bandoro, 2004; sukma, 2011). faith in the association’s conflict resolution procedures has been modest at best, evident in the yet to be utilized high council mandated in the 1976 treaty of amity and cooperation (tac) that was again put forward in the apsc (tomotaka, 2008, p. 21). the absence of a regional mechanism for conflict resolution is particularly noteworthy in view of the disproportional ratio of armed conflict in southeast asia to the number of peacekeeping operations in the region (helmke, 2009, p. 4). the response to indonesia’s propositions also indicated regional governments’ ongoing commitment to the norm of non-interference (bandoro, 2004; chongkittavorn, 2004; kuah, 2004). asean member states’ initial lack of response to the post-referendum violence in east timor highlighted the significance of this norm in interstate relations in the region, though once indonesia conceded to un intervention, malaysia, the philippines, singapore, and thailand did eventually deploy personnel to the australian-led international force for east timor (interfet) and to the united nations transitional administration in east timor (untaet). the norm of non-interference continues to impact on regional affairs, but some change is underway. rizal sukma from the centre for strategic and international studies (csis) in jakarta, who was involved in drafting the 2003 proposal, noted that indonesia had failed to address the question of non-interference in view of its proposed mechanisms for conflict resolution and peace building (khalik, 2003). sukma asserted that indonesia did not want to question the principle, though he claimed a more flexible interpretation was necessary in order to address internal security problems within the region. this episode once again demonstrated the intricate balance norm entrepreneurs in asean have to maintain between the ‘asean way’ and efforts to realign these norms to address emerging issues in a changing security environment. prior to indonesia’s proposal, malaysia’s anwar ibrahim and thailand’s surin pitsuwan endeavored to adjust asean’s founding principles. their concepts of ‘constructive intervention’ and ‘flexible engagement’, respectively, met with considerable resistance at the time (acharya, 2005, p. 150; bellamy, 2004, p. 97; bellamy & drummond, 2011, p. 187; haacke, 2005). acharya thus asserts, “the most significant barrier to peace operations in asia … is normative” (acharya, 2005, p. 149). these reactions also explain the lingering skepticism towards the global ‘responsibility to protect’ (r2p) debate. alongside its premise to address human security in the context of government atrocities, r2p has also been invoked to legitimize the forcible delivery of humanitarian assistance without a government’s consent in response to the initial resistance of myanmar’s government to accept foreign assistance following cyclone nargis, and it has been argued that the principle is making some normative headway in the region (bellamy & drummond, 2011, p. 263). following indonesia’s proposal, one can discern growing support for the notion of a regional peacekeeping capability as several asean members developed their peacekeeping capacities. primarily, regional governments value the participation in multilateral peace operations under un auspices, as this helps advance their interna12 henning borchers  aseas 7(1) tional standing, multilateral diplomacy, and defense capabilities. since 2003, indonesia, malaysia, and the philippines have substantially increased their contributions of police, military experts, and troops to unpko. jakarta has invested considerably in the country’s peacekeeping capacities as indonesia intends to be among the top ten contributing countries to unpko by 2020 (luftia, 2012). also the philippines have more than tripled contributions to unpko since 2003 and numbers of troop deployment, in particular, have sharply increased (un peacekeeping statistics, 2013). while these developments are less pronounced in other asean countries, there is a discernable regional trend to advance peacekeeping capacities. singapore’s contribution has been modest since the country deployed several hundred peacekeepers to unpko in east timor. brunei started deploying modest numbers of peacekeepers in 2006 (un peacekeeping statistics, 2013). cambodia has been a steady contributor to unpko since 2004. thailand’s contributions dropped following the 2006 military coup, increased again from 2010, but dropped again sharply in mid-2012. in 2010, cambodia, indonesia, malaysia, the philippines, and thailand also established the asean peacekeeping centre association, a first step towards the establishment of the asean peacekeeping centres network that was endorsed by the admm in its 2011 joint declaration. the network’s purpose is “aimed to promote and enhance cooperation among defence and armed forces within asean” to leverage member states’ peacekeeping competencies and capabilities, which would benefit both unled operations and regional initiatives (admm, 2011a). signaling a significant shift in attitude towards the un, vietnam first expressed support for unpko in 2006. hanoi has yet to contribute peacekeepers to unpko, which might be due to political opposition as much as capacity (“vietnam mulls participation”, 2006). in developing its peacekeeping capacity, vietnam is also deepening bilateral relationships with extra-regional partners (“australia expands”, 2012; “vietnam, bangladesh”, 2012). myanmar and laos are yet to participate in this development. but the shift is obvious. carlyle thayer of the australian defence force academy thus proposed that “there is normative pressure building up regionally in support of peacekeeping under u.n. auspices” (“vietnam mulls participation”, 2006). furthermore, these developments are paralleled by a gradual reinterpretation of the norm of non-interference. the language of the 2009 apsc roadmap entails a subtle shift from the 2007 asean charter, which had already indicated a more flexible interpretation of non-interference vis-à-vis the achievement of collective goals in economic affairs, but also increasingly in view of regional security (bellamy & drummond, 2011, p. 189). the roadmap makes no mention of the norm of non-interference, a notable omission in view of its security context. instead, it emphasizes the objective to “strengthen efforts in maintaining respect for territorial integrity, sovereignty and unity of asean member states [by] addressing threats and challenges that may affect the territorial integrity of asean member states including those posed by separatism” (asean secretariat, 2009a, p. 13). this objective reflects indonesia’s original proposal to develop ‘standby arrangements’ for a peacekeeping force as a “maximum security response … that could one day help settle disputes such as those in aceh and the southern philippines” (asean secretariat, 2004a). two regional missions highlight the potential of this arrangement. in aceh, brunei, malaysia, the philippines, singapore, and thailand supplied approximately 40 percent of the military observers 13asean’s environmental challenges and non-traditional security cooperation and civilian monitors to the 2005–2006 aceh monitoring mission (amm) that was established by the european union, and which facilitated the implementation of the 2005 helsinki memorandum of understanding.6 yet, the security component of the international monitoring team (imt) in central mindanao comes closest to the idea of a regional force.7 the imt was established in 2004 under the government of the philippines-moro islamic liberation front coordinating committee on the cessation of hostilities (ccch) and has since been credited with successfully reducing the number of ceasefire violations (bendahara & au, 2012). in october 2012, in view of a peace agreement that was signed in early 2014, a philippine government representative raised the idea of an international peacekeeping force through the existing imt structure to facilitate demobilization, disarmament, and reintegration (ddr) of the armed forces of the milf (arguillas, 2012). the mission’s success is also due to the favorable conditions of the constellation. both malaysia and indonesia, who contribute a substantial share of the peacekeepers, have played significant roles in mediating the conflicts in central mindanao since the 1990s. the development of regional peacekeeping capacities will further benefit from initiatives at the level of asean-centered multilateral mechanisms such as the arf and the admm-plus. at the 2010 admm-plus meeting in hanoi, defense ministers agreed to establish a peacekeeping working group to identify capability gaps as well as opportunities for collaboration to enhance member states’ contributions to peacekeeping operations (department of national defense, republic of the philippines, 2012). member countries of the arf have conducted annual peacekeeping expert meetings since 2007, focusing on capacity building, civil-military cooperation, and regional cooperation in peacekeeping, post-conflict peace building, and hadr (asean regional forum [arf], 2010). the convergence of peacekeeping and aspects of nts and hadr creates opportunities to expand military cooperation. the apsc roadmap instructs member states to create a “cohesive, peaceful, stable and resilient region with shared responsibility for comprehensive security … which goes beyond the requirements of traditional security but also takes into account non-traditional aspects vital to regional and national resilience” (p. 11). regional cooperation on some of the less contentious issues of nts such as environmental disasters can thus facilitate military-to-military ties through joint training, operations, and exercises as well as the development of a regional standby arrangement for disaster relief. as such, the non-traditional security agenda could become the platform on which to advance traditional security cooperation. non-traditional security: environmental challenges the nts agenda advances the intractable debate on normative realignments as it questions the modus operandi of the ‘asean way’, which hitherto had been framed within traditional security concerns. since the late 1990s, asean had to manage a 6 thailand, malaysia, brunei, the philippines, and singapore provided monitors to the mission alongside the european union, norway, and switzerland. 7 at the time of writing, the imt’s security component included 11 peacekeepers from malaysia, 15 peacekeepers from brunei, 15 peacekeepers from indonesia, and two peacekeepers from norway. 14 henning borchers  aseas 7(1) range of security issues, such as transnational crime and terrorism as well as natural and man-made environmental disasters, which initiated a gradual shift towards a more qualified form of sovereignty that allowed some degree of interference at the regional level. sukma (2008, p. 147) argues that while the doctrine of non-interference continues to remain relevant, it needs to be interpreted in the context of member states’ interdependence and their vulnerability to transboundary issues and spillover effects of domestic events in member countries. bellamy and drummond (2011, p. 196) assert that “many southeast asian states are moving away from the traditional notion of sovereignty … towards accepting a localised variant of sovereignty as responsibility” that allows for criticism of domestic policies and limited diplomatic pressure in the event of humanitarian crises. also caballero-anthony and haywood (2010, p. 7) note a gradual shift in attitudes towards the principles of state sovereignty and non-interference, with ‘regional’ security concerns at times outweighing concerns over ‘interference’. they conclude that “the ‘asean way’ itself is not an entirely static concept and what is considered interference in the domestic affairs of a country is an ever-widening notion” (caballero-anthony & haywood, 2010, p. 5). these dynamics became evident in asean’s – albeit belated – response to cyclone nargis that devastated parts of myanmar in 2008. asean, long criticized for its hands-off approach to the burmese regime, raised concerns over human security and eventually responded despite initial concerns over the prerogative of non-interference. nargis triggered the largest humanitarian operation ever coordinated by asean, who successfully mediated between the burmese regime and international aid donors, diminishing fears of political intervention in order to manage the humanitarian crisis (emmerson, 2008a, p. 45). although critics pointed out the nonpolitical nature of asean’s involvement, some observers argued that the cyclone “transformed myanmar from asean’s embarrassment into its opportunity” (emmerson, 2008a, p. 45) as the association’s relationship with the regime became an asset in the aftermath of the disaster (see also bellamy & drummond, 2011, p. 191). the experience highlighted the need for more formal mechanisms to facilitate a coordinated regional response to such disasters. it further demonstrated the role asean militaries could play in assisting relief efforts (gunawan, 2008) and illustrated the significance of cooperation with non-state actors as well as civil-military coordination. this multi-faceted approach widens the security discourse in the region towards a pluralistic response to security challenges, further eroding the westphalian logic of state-centered security (emmerson, 2008b, p. 147; sukma, 2008). then asean secretary-general surin pitsuwan, who was credited with putting pressure on myanmar to cooperate, later proclaimed, “this is the new asean – a community that puts people at the centre of concern” (pitsuwan, 2008, p. xx). the response to nargis highlighted asean’s efforts at “working around the sensitivities to external interference and avoiding charges of intrusion by emphasising the cooperative character of the nts agenda in which sovereignty is not trumped or superseded, but rather, pooled” (caballero-anthony, 2008, p. 207). since nargis, this approach has been further institutionalized. the establishment of a legally binding asean disaster mitigation mechanism draws from the lessons learned, but progress remains slow. the asean agreement on disaster management and emergency response (aadmer) was designed as a 15asean’s environmental challenges and non-traditional security cooperation “proactive regional framework for cooperation, coordination, technical assistance, and resource mobilisation in all aspects of disaster management” (asean agreement on disaster management and emergency response [aadmer], 2005). the process was initiated several weeks before the 2004 indian ocean tsunami and asean foreign ministers ratified aadmer in july 2005. it took more than four years for the agreement to come into effect, however, and overall progress has been criticized as too slow in view of the frequent disasters in the region (amul, 2012). the asean coordinating centre for humanitarian assistance on disaster management (aha centre), established in november 2011 and based in jakarta, serves as the hub for coordinated disaster response under the mandate of the aadmer. the centre faced its first major challenge with typhoon haiyan, which devastated parts of the central philippines in november 2013. while the centre had been monitoring the movement of the typhoon and deployed a field team to the region prior to the typhoon’s landfall to coordinate relief efforts, some observers were critical of asean’s response, noting that regional relief efforts were coordinated bilaterally, rather than through asean (graham, 2013). a week after landfall, there was still no clear chain of command to coordinate relief efforts, a gap that the centre would have been mandated to fill. further, the naval relief effort, a significant dimension of hadr in a predominantly maritime region, was being led by extra-regional states, with asean navies mostly absent (graham, 2013). thailand’s foreign minister surapong commented that “a quick response team is needed for asean, the 10 countries have human resources and enough equipment, so it is time to share and cooperate” (graham, 2013). the aadmer is also the most significant step yet towards a more functional level of security cooperation. article 9 of the aadmer mandates the establishment of an asean standby arrangement for hadr deployed on a voluntary basis and based on the state’s capabilities. under the asean standby arrangements and standard operating procedures (sasop), the aha centre now co-organizes the multi-level asean regional disaster emergency response simulation exercise (ardex) that began in 2005, where asean member states practice, assess, and review the readiness of disaster emergency response mechanisms (pacific disaster center, 2013). ardex-13, which was hosted by vietnam shortly before typhoon haiyan, was the first opportunity to test the operational capability of the aha centre. in the 2011 admm declaration, defense ministers adopted plans to use military assets and capacities for hadr operations (admm, 2011b, p. 4). the establishment of the standby arrangement is perceived as a matter of urgency that requires the acceleration of “the effective operations of the asean military in hadr operations regionally and internationally … to minimise loss to live and property due to natural and man-made disasters, while respecting the sovereignty of the affected state” (admm, 2011b, p. 4 and annex d, p. 2). indonesia and singapore co-hosted the first asean hadr table-top exercise (asean hadr ttx) in july 2011 as a step towards practical cooperation of asean militaries. the second hadr ttx was co-hosted by brunei and singapore in 2013 in an effort to strengthen asean centrality especially in the context of military-to-military cooperation as well as the coordination with civil hadr mechanisms such as the aha centre (wood, 2013). progress towards the standby arrangement has been limited to the ongoing identification of member states’ assets and capacities. the implementation of the 16 henning borchers  aseas 7(1) aadmer work programme is the primary responsibility of the member states, which have to develop the policy and legal framework at the national level to facilitate the establishment of necessary structures and mechanisms for implementation, coordination, and enforcement (asean committee on disaster management, 2010, p. 74). without a definite timeframe, these processes will take time. voluntary contributions by asean member states, “preferably on a regular basis”, along with contributions from dialogue partners are meant to finance the implementation of the aadmer work programme (aadmer, 2012). without secure funding, the viability of the mechanism cannot be ascertained. also the voluntary nature of the standby arrangement should not surprise critics of asean’s modus operandi. the ‘asean way’ still sets the pace for the development of a regional mechanism that provides the clearest outline yet for a regional force. notwithstanding the shortcomings of this mechanism, progress made towards regional responses to environmental, or ‘soft’, security challenges may stand to facilitate the emergence of a collective response to ‘hard’ security challenges, though a regional mechanism for conflict resolution is unlikely to be realized in the near future. asean’s preference for a ‘soft’, or lower, degree of institutionalization means that the normative realignment currently underway will take time to manifest itself in institutions and practices. the prevalence of nts threats to national and regional security will continue to highlight the need to accelerate this development. to adequately address current security challenges will require regional governments to sacrifice a degree of their sovereignty. as the norm of sovereignty as responsibility as a concession to the primacy of individual human rights and security gains traction (bellamy & drummond, 2011, p. 186), one can be hopeful that the conflicts that have festered under the protective fold of the ‘asean way’ for decades and that have led to many ‘man-made disasters’ across the region will be subject to closer regional scrutiny in the near future. the establishment of a regional force as a conflict resolution mechanism is still eyed with caution, as it is perceived to be a challenge to the norms that help uphold regional peace and stability. yet, a regional force could also be a powerful statement consolidating the level of trust and the sense of community within asean. this may allow for an open dialogue also on those conflicts that could, if further ignored by regional governments, adversely affect community building towards a “peaceful and stable southeast asia where each nation is at peace with itself ”, the very purpose that is at the core of asean’s existence (asean secretariat, 1997). conclusion i have argued that asean’s cooperation on some non-traditional security challenges stands to facilitate the deepening of traditional security cooperation. the association has made considerable progress towards adapting to the changing security environment, most notably in the area of defense diplomacy and the management of non-traditional, specifically environmental, security challenges. military cooperation within asean remains limited, as indicated by the lack of progress towards a regional mechanism for conflict resolution, but plays an increasing role in hadr. thus far, commitments to a regional mechanism for conflict resolution are not designed to 17asean’s environmental challenges and non-traditional security cooperation move beyond the level of political rhetoric. the main obstacle has been the question of whether and under what conditions asean’s approach to security should include a right to intervene in a member country’s internal affairs. the norms framing southeast asian security cooperation are only slowly succumbing to the changing security environment regional governments have to face as they have to consider whether and when to prioritize human security over state security and external versus internal security threats (emmerson, 2008a, p. 6). asean’s response to a range of nts issues in recent years, such as the cyclone nargis, suggests that these new challenges have contributed to a realignment of the ‘asean way’. asean governments have come to realize that multilateral defense cooperation is necessary in order to effectively address nts challenges. asean could benefit from a deepening of regional defense cooperation, as it consolidates confidence among its members. the objective of establishing an hadr standby force is encouraging. the nascent initiative seen in the network of national peacekeeping training centers provides a framework for advancing joint initiatives that could well include all asean members in the future. the security component of the peacekeeping operation in central mindanao is a positive example of an initiative that is already predominantly regional. these initiatives indicate that the notion of a regional force, which was outright rejected ten years ago, is slowly gaining traction in the regional normative framework. the ‘soft’ institutionalization of security and defense cooperation is at a pace observers might criticize as too slow in view of the urgent needs faced by many disasterand crisis-struck communities in the region. however, acknowledging the achievements of asean to date, an asean peacekeeping force might yet be a nottoo-distant possibility. whether it would work towards resolving some of asean’s long-standing internal conflicts or whether it would serve to ward off international scrutiny of asean’s at times questionable approach to protecting its citizens’ human rights remains to be seen.  references acharya, a. 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(2008). asean security community: an initiative for peace and stability. nids security reports, 3(4), 17–34. tokyo, japan: the national institute for defense studies. uesugi, y. (2004). the nexus between un peacekeeping and human security: reviewing the functions of un peacekeeping from a perspective of human security. in institute for peace science hiroshima university (ed.), conflict and human security: a search for new approaches of peace-building (19th ed., vol. 19, pp. 96–123). hiroshima, japan: institute for peace science hiroshima university. un peacekeeping statistics. (2013). troop and police contributors archive (1990–2013). retrieved from http:// www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/resources/statistics/contributors_archive.shtml vietnam mulls participation in u.n. peacekeeping force. (2006, 7 january). the china post. vietnam, bangladesh strengthen defence cooperation. (2012, 22 september). the voice of vietnam. 20 henning borchers  aseas 7(1) wain, b. (2004, 10 june). jakarta jilted. far eastern economic review. wood, d. (2013, 17 june). forces improve mutual understanding. brunei times. about the author henning borchers is a research, monitoring, and evaluation officer with the new zealand human rights commission. he has worked on social, political, and environmental issues in the asia pacific with local and international non-government organizations, focusing on human rights, peace, conflict, and human security in southeast asia. ► contact: h.borchers@gmx.net building interregional networks among young researchers: ifair’s 2nd eu-asean perspectives dialogue kilian spandler ► spandler, k. (2015). building interregional networks among young researchers: ifair’s 2nd eu-asean perspectives dialogue. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 8(1), 103-106. comparative regionalism is a budding research field which generates a demand for interregional forms of knowledge production as a way to overcome regional intellectual parochialism. however, this demand is yet to be matched by appropriate academic networks. valuable regional research networks exist in the form of punctual interaction at international conferences, but dialogue between regions that goes beyond these is still rare. there may be a number of reasons for this. apart from potentially differing research cultures, the simple fact that institutionalizing intellectual exchange across geographical distances is usually cost-intensive is certainly one of the most important barriers. this is especially true for countries and regions where the financial equipment of research institutions is poor and funding for travel is sparse. those who suffer the most under such conditions are students and young researchers with generally fewer personal resources and limited access to funding for academic purposes. against this background, the 2nd interregional eu-asean perspectives dialogue (euap ii), which was held from march to june 2015, shows how a mix of onand offline formats can help in building bridges for young academia despite unfavorable conditions. the euap ii was organized by the young initiative on foreign affairs and international relations e.v. (ifair), a student-led, germany-based initiative that promotes youth exchange and projects related to international affairs.1 following the inaugural project in late 2013 and early 2014, the second edition of the dialogue ran under the heading ‘building global partnerships – which role for the eu and asean?’. in keeping with this question, 20 graduate and post-graduate students, as well as young professionals from europe and southeast asia, discussed the potential for the two regional organizations to cooperate on current challenges in global governance. concluded in late march 2015, the first phase of euap ii was an online conference which included a two-week working phase of break-out groups focusing on specific issue areas. using video conference technology, the participants jointly developed research questions and prepared presentations that were then discussed in a plenary session. with high selection standards, the project connected a low financial threshold and a 50:50 quota for participants from each region, thus ensuring excellence in academic performance without sacrificing equal representation of voices from both regions. 1 more information on the organization can be found on http://www.ifair.eu. netzwerk südostasien  network south-east asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 15 .1 -8 104 kilian spandler  aseas 8(1) expert advisors from academia, think tanks, and civil society organizations assisted the break-out groups in their research during the working phase. the findings of the online conference form the basis for a policy paper, which identifies the potential for an eu-asean partnership. in addition, the paper makes recommendations to decision-makers on how to improve interregional cooperation in the issue areas of development, trade, finance, and climate change. it was drafted by a group of dialogue participants under the guidance of ifair’s editorial team. in the recently concluded second phase, a project delegation discussed the policy recommendations with political stakeholders in brussels. the visit was concluded by a ‘citizens café’ informing the public about the findings of euap ii. there was also a panel discussion with experts and project representatives at the european institute for asian studies on 18 june 2015.2 the support by established research institutions, such as the eu center in singapore or the brussels-based european institute for asian studies, indicates that the potential of hybrid onand offline research formats for exchange among young academia is gaining increasing acknowledgement by the regionalism community. the discussions of the online conference attest the undeniable viability of web tools as a means to create sustainable interregional formats of knowledge production as well as the productivity of such formats in producing policy-relevant analyses (see also the paper resulting from the first eu-asean perspectives workshop, meissner et al., 2014). the euap ii discussions showed that, while the potential for joint action by the eu and asean on global issues differs across policy fields, there are generally clear limits for a partnership. in addition to differences between the two regions, divergences within the regions in terms of political and economic structures obstruct the development of common policies. any strategy for developing the global dimension of eu-asean interregionalism will therefore have to work towards relations on more equal terms between but also within the two regions. a recurrent point raised at the conference was that greater involvement of civil society and private sector actors can help to level the playing field. this being said, the obstacles towards a more fully developed interregionalism somewhat reflected back on the eu-asean perspectives dialogue itself: even though the participants came from geographically diverse backgrounds, including nationals from five european and six southeast asian countries, the inclusion of representatives from each region’s peripheries has proven hard to achieve. increasing inclusiveness will therefore form one of the key challenges of future editions of the project. in this respect, the main hurdles are weakly developed academic networks which make it hard to advertise calls for applications, limited internet bandwidth capacity which impedes participation in the online meetings, and a lack of language skills. an improvement of the academic and digital infrastructure together with an enhancement of english language training in higher education systems would go a long way in maximizing the potential of interregional knowledge production. 2 the paper and a report on the discussion can be accessed on http://ifair.eu/en/eu-asean-perspectivesdialogues/. 105building interregional networks among young researchers  references meissner, k., pente, i., stratieva, n., & sumano, b. (2014). unlocking the potential of interregionalism: mutual perceptions and interests in eu-asean relations. ifair impact group “eu-asean perspectives” policy paper. retrieved from http://ifair.eu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/ifair-unlocking-thepotential-of-interregionalism.pdf about the author kilian spandler is ifair’s regional director for south and east asia and member of the impact group eu-asean perspectives which convenes the dialogues on a regular basis. he is a phd student at the institute of political science, university of tübingen, germany. ► contact: kilian.spandler@ifair.eu a buddhist way of drug rehabilitation in thailand approaching drug addiction with loving kindness: an interview with phra maha narong chaiyatha aseas 6(1) 195194 d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -6 .1 -1 2 im dialog / in dialogue a buddhist way of drug rehabilitation in thailand approaching drug addiction with loving kindness: an interview with phra maha narong chaiyatha carina pichler1 citation pichler, c. (2013). a buddhist way of drug rehabilitation in thailand approaching drug addiction with loving kindness: an interview with phra maha narong chaiyatha. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 6(1), 195-201. narong chaiyatha has worked at the quality development of life center for 12 years and is engaged in diverse social projects as a buddhist monk. the quality development of life center is an alternative program of dealing with drug addiction in thailand and was established in 1993. on the premises of a buddhist temple, the participants live together with monks, practice meditation, join chanting and dhamma talks, and help cultivate the temple. the program is part of the implementation of restorative justice in the criminal justice system. depending on the severity of the drug addiction and the social background of the person, the department of probation of the ministry of justice sends clients to the center to take part in the buddhist rehabilitation program for two months. this interview is based on the experiences of narong chaiyatha at the quality development of life center in thep mongkol temple, amnat charoen, thailand, and gives an overview of some of the central elements of the program, positive impacts for the community as well as challenges in its implementation. the interview was conducted at the same location on 28 january 2013. narong chaiyatha arbeitete 12 jahre im zentrum quality development of life und engagiert sich als buddhistischer mönch in diversen sozialen projekten. das zentrum quality development of life stellt ein alternatives programm zur behandlung von drogensucht in thailand dar und wurde im jahr 1993 gegründet. auf dem gelände eines buddhistischen tempels leben die teilnehmerinnen zusammen mit mönchen, praktizieren meditation, nehmen an gesängen und dhamma-gesprächen teil und helfen, den tempel instand zu halten. das programm ist teil der implementierung von restorative justice im kriminalund justizsystem. je nach schweregrad der drogenabhängigkeit und sozialer herkunft der personen, schickt die abteilung für bewährung des justizministeriums klientinnen zum zentrum, um an dem buddhistischen rehabilitationsprogramm für die dauer von zwei monaten teilzunehmen. das folgende interview basiert auf den erfahrungen von narong chaiyatha am zentrum im thep mongkol tempel, amnat charoen, thailand, und bietet einen überblick über zentrale elemente des programms, positive auswirkungen für die gemeinschaft sowie herausforderungen im rahmen der implementierung. das interview wurde am gleichen ort am 28. jänner 2013 durchgeführt. 1 carina pichler is studying international development studies at the university of vienna. currently she is working on her diploma thesis about restorative justice and potential inspirations from buddhist ideas. during her stay in thailand in 2012/2013 she conducted several interviews with buddhist monks and restorative justice advocates. contact: pichler.carina@gmail.com aseas 6(1) 197196 carina pichler: in the beginning, i would like to know how you understand buddhism and what it means to you in your life. narong chaiyatha: i see buddhism as a way of life, a buddhist lifestyle. i was born in a poor family with seven siblings and there was not enough money to pay for school and education. my father died when i was four years old. that made the situation in the family very difficult; my mother had to take care of all children without him. i went to the buddhist temple to stay there and ordained as novice when i was 13 years old. i was surrounded by a good loving environment and many opportunities evolved for me through living as monk; aside from studying the buddha teachings i could learn a lot about other traditions such as christianity, islam, and hinduism as well. i had the opportunity to visit higher education institutions; obtained a bachelor and a master degree and am now working on my phd thesis. if i had not ordained, it would have hardly been possible for me to study considering my family background. i want to study and practice more and support other people to live a happy life. i felt a lot of support from society and want to give something back. through studying the buddha teachings i have gained benefits for myself; happiness, confidence, and more abilities to support society in various ways. it is difficult for me to explain the meaning of buddhism for my life in only a few words. many opportunities had opened up to me: associating with good teachers, living in the forest temple close to nature, covering my basic needs, studying and practicing the buddha teachings, studying abroad, taking part in diverse trainings, meeting many interesting people, etc. pichler: you are currently working on your phd thesis about the role of meditation in drug rehabilitation treatment in thailand. at the quality development of life center you worked together with the participants of the buddhist drug rehabilitation program for 12 years. how can meditation help to deal with drug addiction? chaiyatha: i think that meditation is only one aspect. the buddhist way of rehabilitation is not only about practicing meditation alone, but also about applying morality (sila), concentration (samadhi), and wisdom (panna). those factors cannot be separated from meditation practice and they are applied into the rehabilitation method of the center. the value of meditation is to strengthen the ability to focus on one thing such as the mind or breathing. this concentration helps to gain happiness. the fruits or result of meditation practice is happiness. happiness can’t be gained by taking drugs; it is rather the opposite of drug abuse. the kind of happiness that is produced through drug abuse is not pure. drugs can have different effects such as keeping you awake. happiness that can be gained through meditation practice is much greater, because it comes from inside and not from outside. i would like to share a metaphor in relation to that: if you look into calm water you can see yourself like in a mirror. if the foundation is not stable you can’t see yourself. through samadhi (concentration or meditation) you are able to see the real problem. this ability leads to wisdom. wisdom is the power to realise the truth of things. a stable mind is the condition for it. aseas 6(1) 197196 pichler: can you tell me a bit about your experience of working with the participants? chaiyatha: it was a great experience and i feel very grateful. only a few monks were working at this project. i did many activities with the participants; morning and evening chanting, dhamma teachings, socialising with community members, exchanging and discussing the project with the community leaders, etc. many different people from many different fields of society come together at the center and work as a team. i spent a lot of time and energy and gained a lot for myself as well. seeing the participants returning to society as good people gives me happiness, even now. many of the former participants are now studying at higher education institutions, whereas others are working as officials at the police or with the government; in positions where they can serve society. some of these ex-addicts have ordained as monks and are now living and working at the temple helping others, or have re-entered society, some even rising to become abbots. the aim of the program is to find out more about what can be contributed from the buddhist field for helping people in rehabilitating themselves from drug addiction. there were many positive experiences and many participants are abstaining from drugs since being trained at the temple. many of them transformed their behavior and are now serving society. but i also experienced negative things: some people were behaving badly and wanted to do harm. usually we could solve the problems through working together as a team, but sometimes i tried to help, but it wasn’t possible. it made me very sad and i even cried. i saw that the problem was mental and it was beyond my ability to help. sometimes even the abbot or senior monk couldn’t help to deal with the problem and if there was no other way, we had to contact a doctor who came and admitted the participant into a hospital for mental illness. sometimes we had to do this, but not often. in these instances, the responsibility for these people will revert to the probation service and their own families. i want to mention another positive example of a transformative impact that buddhist activities can have on people who came into conflict with the law: i used to visit a prison to do meditation with the prisoners. one of the former prisoners now regularly joins in temple activities, works as taxi driver, and has a good relationship with us. indeed, this person has become a role model and has worked as a volunteer with newcomers for the past three years, encouraging them to take a full part in the program. that is the result of meditation and buddhist practices. at the quality development of life center i was working together closely with the participants, learned to understand emotions, and gained a lot for my personal training through the years. helping others and thereby gaining happiness – i think this is the value of life. we are born into the society to do something good for ourselves and others as well. that is my understanding of the purpose of being born in this world. through the drug rehabilitation program i got in contact with different people, worked together with good teachers in a good environment. i gained a lot of experiences through that and am now confident enough to work internationally. i already had the opportunity to give a speech at a world conference to introduce the buddhist drug rehabilitation center and discuss the issue of drug addiction.2 2 the 21st world conference of the world federation of therapeutic communities was held in melbourne in 2002. carina pichler an interview with phra maha narong chaiyatha aseas 6(1) 199198 pichler: what do you think are the most valuable benefits that the participants can gain at the center? chaiyatha: one of the most valuable aspects is social reintegration. when the participants come to the temple they usually are supported by their families. the community – even the public – supports and respects them, because getting trained in the temple is appreciated throughout thai society. the participants can associate with good persons, live in a good environment, and are offered good teachings. they can learn and grow in a supportive environment through activities such as chanting and meditation. meditation is like ‘power giving’; it makes them mentally strong. they have the opportunity to cultivate loving kindness for themselves and for others as well. the individual’s gains can be to realize the truth of life, understand what is good and bad, and right and wrong; samadhi supports this understanding. after having spent 60 days at the center they can be a good example for the society. it benefits both the individual and the public. pichler: how would you describe the involvement and benefits for the community? chaiyatha: the participants enter the rehabilitation program as humans; without being labeled as drug addicts or criminals. through their training in our program they can gain both physical and mental strength. they help to develop the temple through work such as cultivating the garden, maintaining the facilities, help building residences. these activities benefit the temple – which means it also serves the community. the participants can be proud and happy because they created something for the community. society appreciates and respects them for their activities. the benefits relate to society as a whole. we are using an alternative way where participation is an essential part: we include the society; inform them about and invite them to take part in shared activities such as practicing yoga, walking in the forest, excursions, or providing opportunities for counseling sessions. all of these activities can be applied to the rehabilitation methodology, as can contact with all levels of society. after completing their stay, the former participants can serve as good example for society. they can support their families and other people. some set up different activities such as group sports. it’s not always like that, some get addicted to drugs again. meditation and buddhist activities are not the only curing factors for rehabilitation; it also strongly depends on the environment and the person. the role of the monks is to help and support them; to give loving kindness. that is a main aim of the program: to provide a space and framework for cultivating loving kindness for oneself and society. i want to mention that there is no money or profit making through the program. i like to express my appreciation for the financial support for the maintenance of the temple from the government and people in the society. aseas 6(1) 199198 pichler: what are your experiences with conflict dealing during the rehabilitation program? chaiyatha: every day there is a circle meeting with the participants and the monks where everyone can speak about their feelings and emotions. there we can observe and analyze problems. we use the power of the group. people can share their understandings and perspectives of the problem in the group and we try to find a solution together. if we can’t find a solution in the group, we do individual counseling together with the abbot and senior monk or someone who has the ability to help in the matter. sometimes we invite family members and relatives to participate and discuss the conflict together. if the participants continue to break the rules we have to send them home. in the beginning my mind and emotions were unstable and sometimes i felt very happy, but sometimes i suffered a lot. through working there for many years and training myself, my mind got more stable. the abbot of the temple, who is a great teacher to me, reminded me that there is no reason to suffer, because we are here to support them. i want to mention the concept of dependent origination. it says that everything depends on another and everything is conditioned: a leads to b and b leads to c. it helps to understand that the situation is like that because of karma. all is linked with each other. i learned to apply buddhist teachings to understand this interrelatedness in the practical situations. the staff needs to be well trained in order to successfully and professionally work with the participants. working as a team is very important. the team working in the program – monks, community members, and the chiefs of the community – was trained at the hospital before working at the center. the form of training has been determined by the government and it takes place at the thanyarak hospital in bangkok. there is also the new life center (christian) where we learn about diversity. generally, it is important to use methods that can be flexibly applied according to the needs of the people in the specific situations and contexts. pichler: what is your personal impression of the success of the program? chaiyatha: in my opinion the program has mainly been a success. there are many successful cases, but there are also some less successful cases: some of the participants started using drugs again after going back to their homes. sometimes they get in conflict with the law again and the department of probation sends them to another program, for example to a military camp to train in discipline. compared to the buddhist rehabilitation program at the temple, the military camp is very different in its approach. however, we all work together; sometimes monks go to the military camp and give dhamma talks. the abbot of thep mongkol temple set up an organization under which different social projects were established; such as a school, a kindergarten, a museum, and the quality development of life center3. community participation is an important aspect of all the projects. there is a range of social 3 the center was relocated from thep mongkol temple to bankaobo temple in amnat charoen, where the program is currently conducted. carina pichler an interview with phra maha narong chaiyatha aseas 6(1) 201200 activities with the aim of providing supportive social structures that prevent problems like drug addiction to a certain extent beforehand. there are many examples of former drug addicts that contribute to society in good ways after leaving the buddhist drug rehabilitation center. the aim is to enable the participants to return to society as good persons and good members of society. social reintegration serves the former drug addicts, the community members, harmony in society, and prevents future problems. drugs are a big issue in thailand and the society uses a lot of money to address the problem. especially north-east thailand is affected, because drugs are smuggled in from the neighboring countries of laos and cambodia. alcohol is a big problem as well. in the center we live like a family and share everything. that loving environment supports the participants to open their minds. in the temple they can find loving kindness and there are no guns, etc. it is very different compared to the military camp. it is difficult to help these people. they need loving kindness, tolerance, and sincerity. in order to work successfully, it needs people from all fields of society to work together, because drug addiction does not only concern individuals, but is a social issue. when people from different fields of society are involved, it also creates a sense of shared responsibility. from a personal perspective i believe that the experiences at the center also helped me to grow. through observation and participation i have strengthened my personal beliefs and gained great merit. i also gained great happiness and satisfaction from seeing the rehabilitated ‘ex-addicts’ return to become fully functioning members of society. pichler: what do you see as the main reasons for getting addicted to drugs? chaiyatha: there are many conditions: for example friends or environment. there is the aspect of fashion and popularity and a lot of entertainment such as bars, etc. sometimes people push others to take drugs. bad social conditions such as living in slums, broken families, and lack of education are also problematic. family problems could be divorce and separation or fights within the families. some parents are not a good example to their children and don’t know how to advise them. another reason is that many people want to make money through selling drugs – even people from the government or police – and they try to get young people addicted. even if they are rich already they want to make more money. it is important to see that there are many conditions that lead to taking drugs; it is not only one condition. pichler: what do you think about the future potential of applying buddhist ideas in responding to drug addiction? how would you envision dealing with drug issues in society? chaiyatha: in my opinion, it is not only buddhist ideas, beliefs, and traditions that can be applied to these rehabilitation programs. anywhere where the ideals of loving kindness and compassion can be found, these principles can be applied. but spirituality, love, kindness, and compassion are just the start. it will take all levels of society, from spiritual leaders, through the medical profession, to the legal and probation services, to work together as a cohesive whole in order to meet the difficulties inherent in drug addiction. aseas 6(1) 201200 at the center we put strong emphasis on establishing contact between the participants of the program and the community members. instead of isolating the participants from the rest of society we should rather provide structures that enable encounter, where people can support each other and increase mutual understanding. loving kindness and compassion can provide the basis for working with people to overcome drug addiction. also other problems, conflicts, and crimes in society can be approached with loving kindness and compassion. we are all linked with each other and depend on one another, so we need to take good care of and support each other, even if we sometimes make mistakes. that is all part of our experience. pichler: is there something more that you would like to mention? do you have another comment? chaiyatha: when we were working with the government officials from the department of probation in ubon ratchathani in 1999, it was a different team dynamic than it is now in amnat charoen. many of the government officials that were supposed to work with us as a team just didn’t come. it seems like their intention of doing the program was more to have a high position in the job and to earn more money, rather than truly wanting to support the program. it makes me sad. now, in amnat charoen, the teamwork is better. the team in ubon ratchathani is still there, but a few years ago a new center in amnat charoen was opened that is responsible for this area. i would like to finish by reiterating the value of good team work in this field. pichler: thank you for this interview and sharing your knowledge and experiences! carina pichler an interview with phra maha narong chaiyatha science on the move: the 7th euroseas conference in lisbon in 2013 aseas 6(2) 387386 d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -6 .2 -1 0 netzwerk südostasien / network south-east asia science on the move: the 7th euroseas conference in lisbon in 2013 paulo castro seixas1 citation seixas, p. c. (2013). science on the move: the 7th euroseas conference in lisbon in 2013. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 6(2), 386-390. what is the role of international scientific conferences (iscs) in the scientific system? this is the question i address based on a brief report on the coordination of the 7th euroseas conference in lisbon in 2013. in some circles of the scientific community, iscs have been underestimated as ‘merely’ places where research is tested or science consumed rather than produced. i will argue that on the contrary, just like in the economic system in general, the place of consumption is also where new designs and ideas are produced, not only where production is assessed and decided. besides, considering that the services on the one hand and science, technology, and entertainment on the other are the engines of the economy, iscs represent an obvious asset in a global economy. although research on international conferences has increased lately (e.g. cutting, 1995; green, 2008; drife, 2008; ngamsom & beck, 2000; olsen, 2004), analyses focused on motivations and constraints of attending an isc and the economics of the event itself rather than a thick analysis of the role of iscs in the global cultural dimensions and the scientific system in this context. drife (2008) states that “in the 1980s the internet was expected to replace meetings; in the 1990s electronic conferences were promoted; and last year [2007] a ‘facebook for science’ appeared. none of these can replace genuine communication” (p. 1466). i would argue that more than just for communication, an isc is the place for cosmopolitan production of the self and, as a consequence, the proper realm for scientific production. as cutting (1995) puts it concisely: “in essence, you should travel, see places, meet people, make friends, and identify one or two ideas that you can apply in your own work or research” (p. 249). 1 paulo castro seixas is an associate professor of sociology at the school of social and political sciences (iscsp) of the university of lisbon, portugal, and a researcher at the centre for administration and public policies (capp). he researches and works on development (on consultancy) in east timor as well as on urban studies in a transnational context. contact: pseixas@iscsp.ulisboa.pt aseas 6(2) 387386 in 2007, i presented a paper at the euroseas (european association for south east asian studies) conference in naples and subsequently became the representative of the iberian peninsula on the board until 2010. the intention was to boost south-east asian studies in portugal and spain. in september 2010, i coordinated a panel on east timor at the euroseas conference in gothenburg and – as secretary of the board – accepted to organize the 2013 euroseas conference in lisbon, portugal. at the time, the political and economic situation in europe and portugal in particular was already difficult due to the 2008 financial crisis in the us, the greek default and bailout program (may 2010), and the irish and portuguese default crisis and bailout programs (in november 2010 and may 2011). this context created considerable constraints and affected organizational decisions in the following years. euroseas conferences are events of international relevance and euroseas itself is an institution with members and representatives from all continents. though this is very interesting, it also creates several problems. in 2010, as the new secretary, i became aware that euroseas was a formal organization from the netherlands with a president from germany, a secretary from portugal, and a board to be managed from several countries. besides, the webpage was hosted and managed by italy and the logistics of the latter isc were with the swedish team in gothenburg. last but not least (moreover in a crisis context), the management of a euroseas conference was expected to be a task of the university/faculty which hosts the secretariat. with this in mind, three years was the right amount of time to prepare an isc: the first year may be spent trying to acknowledge the situation, the second preparing, and the third being alarmed . . . the new board of euroseas had four meetings being held in germany and in portugal. the members of the organizing committee of the conference (myself with the new representatives for the iberian peninsula, rui feijó from ces-university of coimbra and lúcio sousa from aberta university) divided among themselves the organization and management of the meetings within a tight schedule of lecturing and research. although inevitable problems arose to set up those meetings, the good moments created in a complex mix of intense shared international decision-making and tourism overcame the time spending and concerns with logistics and costs. in an international period of economic contraction, the board had difficulties supporting their own travels and conference sponsors were hard to find. paulo castro seixas science on the move: the 7th euroseas conference in lisbon in 2013 aseas 6(2) 389388 the turning point was the porto meeting in june 2012 during the summer solstice that is commemorated with the saint john’s street party in porto. the harsh conditions presented by the portuguese public administration made it difficult to manage an isc through a public institution. thus, besides this option, i presented to the board two others: a) choosing a company to manage the conference or b) to create an association for that purpose, assuming the managing of the isc ourselves. bearing in mind three briefings with companies that organize iscs, the experience as participant in an isc organized by companies and my own experience as an ngo manager, my option was quite obvious from the beginning: a company was a good choice if i preferred to save myself some work, but an association would fit the responsibilities of boosting south-east asian studies as it was originally intended to. so, in late 2012, aia-seas was formalized resulting from a network of portuguese and brazilian colleagues, since it was hard to find spanish colleagues. the idea of a conference organized for colleagues by colleagues also influenced our decision. this is a choice that confronts both the expropriation of the production of iscs when outsourced and the impersonal conference setting that is often created by external entities. in the beginning of 2013, we were already in the alarm level period. the call for panels ran between september 2012 and january 2013 and the call for papers and registration had to begin. decisions had to be made: an accountant was needed, the webpage should be improved to have a proper registration office, an institutional account was a pressing need, and payment by credit card was a goal. all those bits and pieces were done but not without problems. despite all the constraints, the call for panels and the call for papers were a success with around 100 and 650 proposals, respectively. nevertheless, some problems emerged with the registration office and with the credit card payment; confirming that economic globalization implies always cultural differences, the conference reached its momentum. the momentum includes the two months prior to the conference: the frantic period in which everything must be ready (complete online program, the abstract booklet to be published, the keynote speakers and their logistics arranged, the accommodation of the grantees, the conference lunches and coffee breaks, the conference dinner, the social program, the publishers and their needs, the local secretariat of students and their role, the attention to the proper contacts with institutions: faculty, embassies, research centers, and so forth). aseas 6(2) 389388 finally, after more than 3,000 emails, the 7th euroseas conference took place at the school of social and political sciences of the university of lisbon from 2 to 5 july 2013. we had 77 panels with around 450 participants from europe, the us, asia, and australia. regarding publishers, nias, giga, cambridge university press, routledge, iseas, and brill were present. the conference was a success as many mentioned, and several colleagues fell in love with lisbon. for me, it was a fantastic challenge and the conference momentum was a non-stop week of work from 1 july (when the local secretariat prepared the conference bags) to 6 july (the social program to sintra and cascais). besides logistics, it is relevant to highlight some ideas and trends of the conference. the role of the conference organizer does not lend itself to an in-depth analysis, but i may leave some hints. on one side, area studies have been at stake already for some time, but the old empires are trying to keep their symbolic territories in hand; on the other, the traditional strong theoretical positions seem to confront both a lighter/diplomatic way of doing science or/and the challenge of a wider comparison in a perspective of global interdisciplinary studies. thus, the critical perspective will always be a must. the late nineteenth century anthropological idea of cultural circles constituted a scientific asset both to support comparison and to establish its limitation within a certain area. this idea supported the colonial gaze, was reified in museum representation cultures and is still part of today’s geopolitics. meanwhile, a mix of cultures (hybridism) basically through the imbalanced transnational commoditization of culture is also a way to describe contemporary situation. as a consequence, area studies conferences are still the confrontation of two generations. besides, science plays an undeniable part in the process of cultural commoditization. thus, to say the least, sometimes it seems that we are facing blurred boundaries between critical ironies in a scientific analytical context and selling cultural gadgets for scientific entertainment. i have no doubt that an isc is a place to present research, many times even hosting the first public presentation of preliminary work, which is being prepared for publication. but an isc is much more than that. an isc is a place to play and display the role of a researcher among peers, even before the senior ones whom we had only had been in contact with through reading their books. besides, these contacts are expected as possibilities to pave the way for new publications either in journals or paulo castro seixas science on the move: the 7th euroseas conference in lisbon in 2013 aseas 6(2) 391390 books. these gatherings in informal international settings are also the proper places to reinforce old teams/reputations and to create new ones as well as to initiate new international projects. finally, publishers want to be present and even sponsor big conferences because they want to be ‘just in time’ spotters and co-producers of all these dynamics. to conclude these notes on a conference, i would say that an isc is in fact science on the move and in the making involving (1) universities/cities/countries, (2) research teams and theoretical perspectives, and (3) scientific and personal reputations. the conscience of the economic relevance of international conferences creates two paradoxical trends: a) the continuous scattering creation of new iscs as a way to promote science production poles and b) continuous attempts to captivate, even to institutionalize in a certain locale, the isc which already represents a brand. thus, iscs are indeed producing realms of science and new indicators for the continuous negotiation between geopolitical and economic center and periphery in science production. references cutting, w. a. m. (1995). how to do it: participate in an international conference. bmj-british medical journal, 310, 249-251. drife, j. o. (2008). are international medical conferences an outdated luxury the planet can’t afford? bmjbritish medical journal, 336, 1467. green, m. (2008). are international medical conferences an outdated luxury the planet can’t afford? yes. bm -british medical journal 336, 1466. lodge, d. (1984). small world. new york, ny: penguin books. ngamsom, b., & beck, j. (2000). a pilot study of motivations, inhibitors, and facilitators of association members in attending international conferences. journal of convention & exhibition management, 2(2-3), 97-111. olsen, k. a. (2004). the economics of international conferences. computer, 37(6), 90-92. resisting agribusiness development: the merauke integrated food and energy estate in west papua, indonesia aseas 6(1) 161160 d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -6 .1 -9 aktuelle südostasienforschung / current research on south-east asia resisting agribusiness development: the merauke integrated food and energy estate in west papua, indonesia longgena ginting1 & oliver pye2 citation ginting, l. & pye, o. (2013). resisting agribusiness development: the merauke integrated food and energy estate in west papua, indonesia. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 6(1), 160-182. the merauke integrated food and energy estate (mifee), launched in 2010 by the indonesian government, aims to transform 1.2 million hectares of indigenous and forest land in west papua into largescale agribusiness estates for food and bioenergy production. this article looks both at the power structures and geopolitics behind the project and at the emerging resistance to the mifee land grab. what is the extent of local opposition to the project? what coalitions between local groups and organized movements and ngos are developing and what national and international alliances are they involved in? how do they counter the state narrative of mifee as a development path for the region? analyzing key documents of the diff erent organizations and initiatives involved, we examine three distinct but connected narratives of opposition around the discourses of customary forest rights, indonesian ‘imperialist’ subjugation of papua, and land reform and food sovereignty. we argue that their relation to each other needs to be rethought in order to overcome internal divisions and to broaden and deepen the social movement opposing the project. keywords: indonesia; land grab; mifee; social movements; west papua das merauke integrated food and energy estate (mifee) wurde im jahr 2010 von der indonesischen regierung ins leben gerufen und zielt auf die umwandlung von 1,2 millionen hektar indigenem land und wäldern in west papua in großfl ächige agrarindustriefl ächen für die nahrungsmittelund bioenergieproduktion. der folgende artikel betrachtet die machtstrukturen und geopolitiken im hintergrund des projekts sowie die dabei entstehende widerstandsbewegung. in welchem ausmaß gibt es lokalen widerstand gegen das projekt? welche koalitionen entwickeln sich zwischen lokalen gruppen und organisierten bewegungen und ngos und in welche nationalen und internationalen allianzen sind diese eingebunden? wie entgegnen diese dem staatlichen narrativ von mifee als entwicklungspfad für die region? auf basis der analyse von schlüsseldokumenten der unterschiedlichen involvierten organisation und initiativen untersuchen wir drei unterschiedliche, aber miteinander verbundene narrative des widerstands rund um die diskurse um gewohnheitsrechte an wald, die indonesische „imperialistische“ unterwerfung papuas sowie landreform und ernährungssouveränität. wir argumentieren, dass die beziehung zwischen diesen diskursen neu gedacht werden muss, um die internen spaltungen zu überwinden und die soziale bewegung zur ablehnung des projekts zu verbreitern und zu vertiefen. schlagworte: indonesien; landraub; mifee; soziale bewegungen; west papua 1 longgena ginting is director of greenpeace indonesia. contact: longgenaginting@gmail.com 2 oliver pye is lecturer at the department of south-east asian studies, bonn university, germany. contact: oliver. pye@uni-bonn.de longgena ginting & oliver pye resisting agribusiness development aseas 6(1) 161160 introduction this paper looks at the emerging resistance to a new major land grab in indonesia, the merauke integrated food and energy estate in west papua, indonesia, known more commonly by its acronym mifee.3 land grabs have been identified as a crucial new arena of political and social conflict, provoking local struggles for land and globally coordinated campaigns. however, there is as yet little written on these new social movements. we try to find some answers to the question of “to what extent have agrarian political struggles been provoked by the new land investment dynamics?” (borras, hall, scoones, white, & wolford, 2011, p. 212) and argue that a new alliance opposing the project is emerging that draws on different traditions of struggle. we also look at some of the “issues that unite or divide the rural poor, organized movements, and rural communities” and how mifee is “discursively challenged and opposed” (borras et al., 2011, p. 212). we argue that there are three distinct but connected narratives of opposition around the discourses of customary forest rights, indonesian ‘imperialist’ subjugation of papua, and land reform and food sovereignty. at the same time, there is also a division between the indigenous papuans resisting the project and migrant small farmers living in merauke who tend to welcome the project. this creates a key dilemma for the resistance. although alternatives such as indigenous customary rights to land and forests, land reform and “food sovereignty” are all “relevant and useful” (borras et al., 2011, p. 212), we argue that their relation to each other needs to be rethought in order to overcome these divisions and to broaden and deepen the social movement opposing the project. mifee: a textbook land grab? mifee is in some ways a textbook land grab: “powerful transnational and national economic actors from corporations to national governments” have identified merauke as an “‘empty’ land” and a site for “fuel and food production” (borras et al., 2011, p. 209). indeed, the very name of this land grab points to the convergence of 3 a draft version of this paper was first presented at the international conference on global land grabbing in april 2011, organized by the land deals politics initiative (ldpi) in collaboration with the journal of peasant studies and hosted by the future agricultures consortium at the institute of development studies, university of sussex. longgena ginting & oliver pye resisting agribusiness development aseas 6(1) 163162 agribusiness and agrofuel interests. key players behind the project are large domestic conglomerates, joint venture capital from south korea and japan, local authorities, and the national government. state entities play an active and decisive role in the mifee land grab. the national government developed a “grand design” for the project as part of plans to “turn the food and energy crisis into an opportunity” and “to feed the world” (president yudhoyono) (takeshi, rachman, & savitri, 2013). the presidential instruction 5/2007 on the acceleration of development in papua and west papua (the names of the two provinces now comprising west papua) and the government regulation no. 39/2009 on special economic zones (kawasan ekonomi khusus, kek) established papua as a strategic location of national development fantasies. in 2010, government decree no. 18/2010 on agricultural crops created the format of food and energy estates and merauke became the flagship estate project. at the launching of the project in august 2010, agriculture minister suswono proclaimed mifee as a future “bread basket” of indonesia and that it would eventually produce “almost two million tons of rice, two million tons of corn and 167,000 tons of soybeans” as well as “2.5 million tons of sugar and 937,000 tons of palm oil” (ekawati, 2010). takeshi, rachman, and savitri (2013) identify this “creation of the corporate agricultural estate to solve food and energy crises” as the key discourse through which “the process of accumulation by dispossession was legalized” (p. 26). locally, the mifee project was preceded by a program developed by merauke’s then regent head, johannes gluba gebze, called the merauke integrated rice estate (mire). investors were wooed in order to transform the regency into a rice basket of indonesia. when the plans failed to materialize, gebze was quick to take up the opportunities offered by indonesian’s president yudhoyono’s declaration to seize the international food crisis as an opportunity. the district government promised to “provide the necessary infrastructure (construction of a sea port and airport expansion, procurement of three boeing 737 aircraft, and irrigation)” and proposed themselves that the estate should cover 1.2 million hectares, or over one quarter of merauke’s total area (takeshi et al., 2013). gebze was to play a crucial political role in overcoming legal problems to the project posed by customary land rights. a closer look behind the companies who have been awarded permits within the mifee scheme reveals that transnational capital from east and south-east asia plays aseas 6(1) 163162 a major role. korean capital, which has long been active in indonesia, has secured permits for industrial tree plantations and oil palm. in 2009, lg international (2009) announced that it had secured a “massive forestry concession in papua” through a joint venture with the indonesian medco group in a company called metra duta lestari. meanwhile, mitsubishi is a major shareholder in medco energy (awasmifee, 2012). wilmar, an agribusiness giant based in singapore, has also been reported to have been offered 200,000 hectares, this time for sugar cane (“wilmar begins”, 2010). the medco group, an oil company whose owner arifin panigoro was an influential politician with the partai demokrasi indonesia perjuangan (pdi-p), has an influential role. typically, medco is a conglomerate that is involved in energy, agribusiness, finance, manufacturing, and real estate and hotels. through its subsidiary, pt. selaras inti semesta (sis), it is already developing a 300,000 hectares timber plantation in kurik, kaptel, animha, and muting districts. its chipwood mill, pt. medco papua industri lestari (mil), needs 10 million tons per annum for chipwood production and another 2 million tons annually for pulp production. while waiting for the timber plantation, which will need eight years to mature, the mills utilize tropical timber from community forests and their concessions. medco is an active proponent of the whole mifee concept and has established its own merauke integrated food and energy estate research centre that is “promoting bio fuel experiment [sic] that will support energy resilience for the country” (medcofoundation, n.d.). the second major group of mifee investors are agribusiness and logging conglomerates that reaped super profits under general suharto’s export-oriented new order. apart from state corporations that are involved, key players from the private sector are politically well-connected. kertas nusantara, for example, with a permit for 155,000 of industrial tree plantations, is owned by the notorious ex-kopassus general and suharto son-in-law prabowo subianto. another company, pt. bangun cipta sarana, is connected to former suharto minister of interior and minister of transmigration siswono yudo husodo. a third important group, artha graha, is owned by tommy winata, who is well-connected to the military in west papua and has been involved in various infrastructure projects (klute, 2010; papua forest eye, 2010a). the involvement of suharto cronies is a sign of the special circumstances surrounding the project in west papua. longgena ginting & oliver pye resisting agribusiness development aseas 6(1) 165164 or a papuan exception? at the same time, west papua is in many ways an exception to most land grab contexts. it has been under indonesian military occupation since 1962 and was coerced into joining indonesia in 1969 (drooglever, 2009). since then, the politics in west papua have been characterized by military repression of the widespread underlying separatist sentiment of the papuan population and a west papuan political elite that is co-opted by the indonesian state. freedom of speech is massively curtailed and activists often jailed or harassed. occasional raids by armed separatist forces (organisasi papua merdeka, opm) are used to legitimize continued occupation and the criminalization of any discussion about independence, including raising the flag of west papua, the morning star (widjojo, 2006). the special papuan context of the mifee land grab and how resistance to it develops is defined by this historical experience and how the relationship with indonesia has changed since the reformasi movement and the fall of suharto in 1998. mega projects have a long and painful history in west papua, reflecting development fantasies of jakarta. as carolyn marr (2011) argues, natural resource exploitation has been a consistent feature of indonesian intervention, characterized by “a steady marginalisation of indigenous papuans, with top-down projects imposed from outside, and often accompanied by the threat of, or the use of violence to enforce plans”. previous mega projects include the 8 million hectare mamberamo project that was promoted by then prime minister habibie and aimed to combine a series of dams with agro-industrial estates (carr, 1998) and the infamous scott paper plantation and pulp factory project. above all, indonesian timber companies have used military occupation to log west papuan forests, a trend that has increased in recent years (for a comprehensive list of activities cf. marr, 2011). of major economic, political, and symbolic significance is a huge gold and copper mine in the central highlands of west papua owned by the mining corporation freeport (leith, 2003). based on the violent expropriation of indigenous lands, the exploitation of migrant labor, and the environmental degradation of rivers, freeport generated billions in revenue for the suharto regime. military occupation and human rights abuses were intimately connected to the freeport mine. recently, the amungme people sued freeport for 32.5 billion dollars for the legal appropriation of their aseas 6(1) 165164 land. other foreign investment and the exploitation of papuan natural resources are therefore always seen within the context of this violent history. another characteristic of indonesian occupation was its integration within the state-organized transmigration program that sought to relocate millions of landless farmers from densely populated java to the “idle lands” of the “outer islands” (adhiati & bobsien, 2001). in west papua, the transmigration program was closely connected to political and security considerations. the national government in jakarta wanted to change the demographic character of key lowland areas and build up a political base of muslim javanese to counter the christian papuans. military occupation regularly used the symbolism of muslim festivities in order to shore up the identification of the migrants with the indonesian state and the occupation project. from the papuan perspective, therefore, transmigration is seen as part of an indonesian strategy of domination. the national reformasi movement that toppled suharto and his new order in 1998 represented a historical shift in this history of occupation. crucially, the national movement in jakarta adopted the demand for the autonomy of aceh and west papua as part of their list of ten demands (lane, 2008). the resultant special autonomy status passed by the indonesian parliament in 2001 was a partial fulfillment of this demand. it included a much larger share of taxes from west papua being returned by the national government, with transfers rising from under idr 5,000 billion (usd 500 million dollar) in 2001 to over idr 20,000 billion in 2008 (world bank, 2009). however, ten years down the track, these extra billions have not reached most of the papuan inhabitants. instead, the political elite use the funds for their own (private) version of development whilst basing their power on compliance with jakarta, the military, and votes from the increasing number of javanese migrants. papua has become a kind of new order ‘time warp’: military business involvement is as ubiquitous as it used to be for indonesia as a whole. west papua has become their favored ‘retreat’ from the less friendly atmosphere in many other parts of indonesia. it remains an attractive destination of the more informal public-private forms of transmigration (li, 2011, p. 288). the mifee project is set firmly within this framework of military-business-politicians networks and of political intimidation and oppression. according to an ngo report by the environmental investigation agency (eia) and telepak (2009), the combilonggena ginting & oliver pye resisting agribusiness development aseas 6(1) 167166 nation of gebze’s political aspirations, central government interests and the potentially huge investment in plantations expansion, has created a climate of intimidation towards anyone who opposes the plantations or new province. local sources report that irregular groups allied to gebze work in unison with the state security forces to monitor and intimidate any dissenters in the region (p. 20). military personnel is very visible in the proposed project area and the recent suspicious death of the journalist ardiansyah matra’is, who had been writing critically about the mifee project, is seen by ngos as a sign of the authorities’ determination to squash any dissent to the plan (tapol & down to earth, 2010). emerging resistance although portrayed as a “food and energy estate”, the largest part of the mifee project is slated for industrial plantations (over 970,000 hectare), with oil palm (over 300,000 hectare) and food crops (69,000 hectare) in second and third place (tri & haksoro, 2010). most of the major companies involved and most of the activities on the ground have prioritized wood plantations, palm oil, and sugarcane and very little food production has taken place at all. the large-scale nature of the plantations, their location within forested areas and the fact that the permits were handed out for customary owned land led to concern by environmental and indigenous organizations that a major land and forest grab was underway. government plans and media hype on projected huge investments in merauke soon alerted ngos in west papua and jakarta, who were already operating within established networks. successful campaigns that had thwarted previous mega projects such as the scott paper project and the mamberamo mega development had led to established networks, both within west papua and indonesia and with campaigners in australia and europe. during 2010, a loose coalition came together as the civil society coalition against mifee (masyarakat sipil tolak mifee) that coordinates exchange among around 30 local and national organizations. a key member is the papua ngos cooperation forum (forum kerjasama lembaga swadaya masyarakat papua, foker lsm papua), the ngo umbrella for 118 member organizations all over papua that was founded in 1991. foker lsm papua has a strong focus on human rights, natural resourcaseas 6(1) 167166 es exploitation, and development issues. church organizations are also central to the alliance, for example, the sekretariat kemanusiaan dan perdamaian keuskupan agung merauke (skp-kam), a catholic church’s organization dealing with peace and humanitarian issues. important national organizations include the indigenous peoples’ alliance aliansi masyarakat adat nusantara (aman), friends of the earth indonesia (wahana lingkungan hidup indonesia, walhi), the mining advocacy network jaringan advokasi tambang (jatam), greenpeace indonesia, and the think tanks pusaka and sawit watch. the foker lsm papua member yayasan santo antonius (yasanto), a local development ngo that provides education and health services to communities in merauke, is one of the most active groups dealing with mifee. yasanto has become a focal point for the ngos/groups from outside who are concerned with the mifee issue. it plays a key facilitating role, connecting local communities and indigenous people from the area with ngos from jayapura, jakarta, and beyond. foker lsm papua also helped set up the papua peoples solidarity against mifee (solidaritas rakyat papua tolak mifee, sorpatom) that is a mainly student activist group. this offered students and other interested citizens in merauke and jayapura the chance to become active against the project without being a member of one of the established ngos. indigenous representatives on the official papuan adat council (dewan adat papua) were among the first to reject mifee. the secretary general of the papuan adat council of region v (ha-anim), johanes wob, denounced the agribusiness interests behind the project as a threat to the indigenous people of merauke. he criticized that indigenous people were structurally disadvantaged versus companies in legal procedures and announced that indigenous peoples land was “not for sale” (hardianto, 2010). on 18 july 2010, the papuan adat council of region v sent a letter to president yudhoyono stating that they reject the mifee project. they warned that continuing with the project would cause serious dissatisfaction with the government. the council proceeded to map their territory and to provide legal assistance and training to the indigenous people in the area. the adat council enjoys the support of local malind people and also works together with ngos such as yasanto and with the catholic church organization spk-kam. as members of the alliance of the indigenous peoples of the archipelago (aman), they are also well-connected nationally (j. wob, personal communication, august 13, 2010). longgena ginting & oliver pye resisting agribusiness development aseas 6(1) 169168 the first primary objective of the ngo coalition was to exchange information and research about mifee. in addition to research such as the pusaka report beyond malind imagination, groups cooperated to develop a spatial analysis on who will be affected and the environmental impact of the project. another area of cooperation was awareness raising and trainings for local people in the area. various members of the alliance organized a series of consultations, public meetings, and trainings for local people in the area (12 of which are listed by zakaria et al., 2010, p. 5-6). spk-kam ran a series of research and training for communities while other foker lsm papua members gave trainings on rights of communities, the principle of free and prior informed consent (fpic) or local reporting via sms. meanwhile, jayapura-based members lobbied the provincial governor and parliament, who were side-tracked out of the decision-making process by the direct agreement between president yudhoyono and regency head glebze. very quickly, the established ngo networks transnationalized their protest. in 2010, aman, with the support of 26 indigenous and related organizations issued a statement before the 9th session of the united nations permanent forum on indigenous issues in new york (aman, 2010). they urged the un special rapporteur on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous peoples and the un special rapporteur on the rights to food to visit merauke and conduct an independent report into mifee. in 2011, the ngo coalition appealed directly to un special rapporteur on the rights to food (tarigan & mackay, 2011). both rapporteurs and the un committee on the elimination of racial discrimination (cerd) responded by expressing their concern to the indonesian government and to halt further activities until un bodies could investigate the project. however, indonesia rejected the recommendation that the rapporteurs be allowed to visit the area (down to earth, 2013). if international pressure did not have the desired effect of at least stalling the project, resistance at the local level, although slower off the mark, was to have a bigger impact. most of the land earmarked for mifee is part of the malind anim-ha, that is the customary boan land of the malind people consisting of various clans (balagaise, basik-basik, gebze, kaize, mahuze, samkakai) (zakaria et al., 2010). the “right to use boan land is held by the clan, not by the individual headman of the clan, and only a member of the clan can access and use boan land” (takeshi et al., 2013). even though this indigenous control over land is overwritten by state ownership (and permit alaseas 6(1) 169168 location), it remains the biggest obstacle to developing the mifee project. of major symbolic and political significance was therefore the ‘adoption’ of medco head arifin panigoro into the gebze clan, which was facilitated by the then regent johannes gluba gebze (takeshi et al., 2013). by becoming a clan member, panigoro could then receive permission to use hundreds of thousands of hectares of clan land for his industrial tree plantation. most companies with permits to develop plantations within mifee have tried to secure clan permission to do so. at first, promises of development, including roads, schools, and jobs persuaded many clan leaders to sign agreements with the companies. however, indigenous feelings changed as negative impacts of some of the first projects came to be felt and some of the promises of development were not forthcoming (yasanto, 2010). medco, the most active company so far, has become embroiled in various conflicts (zakaria et al., 2010, pp. 37-44), culminating in direct action by sanggase villagers, who blocked a wood chip factory located on their land, occupied the medco office and finally received idr 3 billion compensation in october 2011 (awasmifee, 2012, p. 17). by 2011 dissatisfaction and conflicts on the ground had spread across merauke. an overview in the tempo weekly journal shows that most of the companies with permits who had started logging or plantation activities were involved in some kind of dispute (aliansi gerakan reforma agraria [agra] & pesticide action network asia and the pacific [panap], 2012, pp. 10-11). these were often related to the terms of agreements made with the company which were disputed by other communities or by people within the same community. in ulilin, muting, jagebob, okaba, and malind districts internal conflicts within and between communities developed over the delineation of concessions and size and distribution of compensation. in ngguti and animha districts villagers protested about the size of the compensation offered whilst locals in kaptel district managed to double the amount of compensation paid by the company. in kurik district, communities refused to hand over any of their land. in ilwayap district, protests led by village head leo mouyuend managed to stop a mifee road being bulldozed through the sacred grounds of bibikem village (boy, 2012). these local disputes were in part facilitated by information provided by the ngo networks involved in opposing mifee. they also led to networking between local activists themselves. on 18 december 2012, 23 indigenous community members from longgena ginting & oliver pye resisting agribusiness development aseas 6(1) 171170 baidub, boha, bupul, erambu, kindiki, kweel, muting, pachas, poo, and tanas villages signed the demands and aspiration of indigenous peoples of river (kali) ban – river (kali) maro, papua, merauke, in which they questioned the leasing of their land by the regency government (down to earth, 2012). also in december 2012, the malind bian customary people’s assocation (malind bian lembaga masyarakat adat, malind bian lma) called on the government to revoke all the plantation permits in merauke. the association that is made up of representatives from all the indigenous groups in the area was worried about the effects of logging that was underway to establish the plantations and that were jeopardizing people’s access to forest products. they criticized the lack of consultation and warned that by agreeing to the permits, the locals were effectively signing away their customary rights, as the land would be returned to the state after the lease period expired (aliansi demokrasi untuk papua [aldp], 2012a). the overall result of widespread opposition to investment plans and/or negotiations over the terms of such investment has cooled the excitement of potential investors and has changed the political atmosphere in merauke itself. in 2011, the new regency head, romanus mbaraka was elected on a platform that claimed “to uphold the people’s rights against aggressive companies” (awasmifee, 2012, p. 22). after being elected, mbaraka “even repealed medco’s license to cut further into the forest, and asked villagers to report any investor who came secretly to their village trying to trick them into a deal” (awasmifee, 2012, p. 23). by 2012, only 10 of 46 companies with permits were actively developing their plantations (aldp, 2012c). counter-framing mifee the emerging resistance against mifee is located within a national (and international) alliance against land grabs and within the movement against indonesian occupation and exploitation. both operate with preconceived assumptions, ways of working, frameworks, and networks and both, on their own, can lead to different strategies of resistance. as widjojo (2006) argues, in the history of west papuan activism, two connected but distinct strategies and discourses – one focusing on independence, the other on human rights – developed. under suharto, mega development projects aseas 6(1) 171170 in west papua resonated with activists in other parts of indonesia. the freeport mine “became a focal point for ngo protests on issues ranging from environmental pollution to the violation of human rights” (p. 413) and led to a broad coalition between jakarta-based organizations such as walhi and lembaga studi & advokasi masyarakat (elsam), and indigenous and church organizations based in west papua that “replaced the symbols and discourse of papuan independence with those of human rights, justice, and environment” (p. 415). the reformasi movement that toppled suharto in 1998 with its demand for more autonomy for regions affected by military occupation opened up new space for calls for independence. unfortunately, renewed separatist violence (and some military provocations) was used by the military to justify their continued and increased presence (p. 418). the ‘threat’ of separatism is used to shore up a nationalist discourse for continued occupation and repression, which then reinforces separatist, anti-imperialist discourses among west papuan activists. in the face of the mifee project, the west papuan activists engage in critical dialogue with the international campaigners around land grabs, leading to new and innovative ways of criticizing and stopping the project. the groups opposing mifee operate with three different basic frameworks that are used in varying intensity and combinations. because of their different background, they discursively challenge and oppose the mifee deal in different ways and this is relevant for how resistance is organized and developed (borras et al., 2011). these are firstly, a narrative of indigenous peoples living within the forest and threatened by commercial interests, secondly, a story of resistance against the occupation and exploitation of west papua by foreign interests, and thirdly, a framework of land reform and food sovereignty against agribusiness food estates. the potentially huge conversion of forests by mifee has been criticized by environmentalist organizations, and the ngo greenomics indonesia estimates that up to 90 percent of the area is still covered by natural forest (ekawati & satriastanti, 2010). locally, forest protection is usually associated with the defense of indigenous customary land rights. the discourse around indigenous peoples and their harmonious relation with forests has been a powerful one in indonesia and in related international campaigns. it has been systematically developed in indonesia by the environmental justice movement, particularly by aman and walhi, in order to defend customary longgena ginting & oliver pye resisting agribusiness development aseas 6(1) 173172 land rights against the territorialization of state control (peluso, afif, & rachman, 2008). reminiscent of the situation in indonesia under the suharto regime, the forest issue is also seen by foker lsm papua as something that activists can work on without seeming “too political”. the basic strategy of this framework is to strengthen the traditions that celebrate indigenous knowledge and reinforce the position not to sell land but only to rent it and even then not for huge plantations (s. manufandu, secretary general of foker lsm papua, personal communication, march 28, 2011). the second framework is one of papuan independence. here, mifee is seen as a continuation of occupation and exploitation of the freeport kind: foreign companies moving in to extract maximum profit from the natural resources of west papua. in this view, mifee, and politicians like gebze who pursue it, are merely serving imperialist interests, particularly the us, who want to use west papua to solve their food and energy crisis (sorpatom, 2010). the presence of a large number of army units in the mifee area testifies to the role of the military in protecting the interests of foreign investors against the local population (s. manufandu, secretary general of foker lsm papua, personal communication, march 28, 2011). in this context, the potential recruitment of migrant workers to work the food and biofuel estates is interpreted as a calculated means of control and ethnic subjugation by indonesia. huge numbers of migrant workers are predicted to arrive with the mifee project. several accounts predict 4 million workers coming in from outside. sorpatom (2010) extrapolates this (with wives, children, and relatives) to a total of 24 million, concluding that “genocide or extermination of the indigenous community will occur spontaneously”. aman (2010) also speaks of the “structural and systematic genocide” that will occur if the papuans (already in a minority in merauke) are marginalized by an influx of migrants. the third framing argues for land reform and food sovereignty against agribusiness food estates. here, the main contradiction is seen as between big business interests and small farmers, although, again, foreign capital is seen as paramount (idham, 2010; serikat petani indonesia [spi], 2009). as part of the neoliberal restructuring of agriculture, the food estates will exacerbate the food crisis by feudalizing independent peasants into cheap laborers and dependent smallholders, thereby undermining food sovereignty (spi, 2009). walhi connects the large-scale destruction of forests with the loss of food sovereignty and draws a parallel with the central kalimantan mega rice project that had converted forests and swamps into rice fields aseas 6(1) 173172 with the help of transmigrant labor. the project collapsed mainly because of inappropriate land use and environmental problems, and was cancelled after the fall of suharto. sustainable and family based farming is put forward as the alternative to the predicted failure of the food estate project. strategic questions in resisting mifee in view of the relatively young status of mifee and the modest amount of actual investment and ‘land grabbing’ on the ground, the speed of indigenous and ngo reactions to the project has been impressive. also, the breadth of involvement of and cooperation between ngos at the local and national level and good links with the indigenous population in the area promise a potentially sophisticated, enduring, and even successful campaign against the project. there is a real possibility that a lot of the land grab can still be stopped before it materializes. however, resistance is still in a very early stage and to date basically involves information gathering, networking, and awareness raising. it is still a long way away from ‘grabbing land back’ (borras et al., 2011, p. 212). this will depend on how the emerging coalition can extend the base of the opposition beyond existing ngos, how political pressure can be built up (so that the national or district/provincial governments back out), how economic pressure can be developed (targeting existing and potential investors), and what people living in the area can do to prevent agribusiness development if the project does go ahead. the early stage of both deal and resistance opens up the opportunity to think through some of the strategic questions in developing a successful campaign. in this sense, the campaign coalition against mifee can benefit from international linkages and experiences, and also critical reflection by and dialogue with activist scholars. this is particularly important in merauke because of the way the resistance builds on existing networks and ‘modes of resistance’. this is at once a strength and a weakness because these modes of resistance operate within certain assumptions and ways of working that may not be helpful for tackling some of the key challenges posed by the land grab. this also applies to international networking and campaign strategizing that can fall into a ‘default mode’ – paths of connection and ways of operating that have been in place and are therefore repeated. longgena ginting & oliver pye resisting agribusiness development aseas 6(1) 175174 the forest option using ‘indigenous peoples and forests framing’ could be a way of generalizing resistance amongst the indigenous malind anim. it also seems to be promising in terms of creating a split within government agencies, particularly between the ministry of forestry and the ministry of agriculture. the forestry minister has already declared that much of the land earmarked for mifee is forest land and cannot be converted into farm land (simamora, 2010). zoning issues have already slowed up project implementation and could lead to mifee being scaled down to only 500,000 hectares. these turf wars between ministries can be understood within the context of redd, which could redefine forest conservation as a major source of funding via the carbon market. the ministry of forestry is therefore reluctant to relinquish control over potentially lucrative areas. redd money could also be a powerful economic alternative to agribusiness investment. however, the celebration of indigenous forest communities on its own will not be enough to stop agribusiness development. in the indigenous communities themselves, people are not content with just continuing the traditional ‘hunting and sago’ way of life, but want some kind of cash income as well. this is shown clearly by the nature of many of the local protests that demand a just development including jobs, hospitals, and education. the indigenous way of life strategy is further complicated by that fact that the “clans” in papua represent “pseudo-tribal entities” and “neotraditional political communities” (filer, 2012, p. 602) in which people like gebze compete for political power. the practice of renting out land for logging and receiving a commission per cubic meter is one way of generating income, even if it undermines the traditional subsistence economy. in this context, redd money could also be attractive for indigenous communities as an alternative way of generating cash income. but using redd as an alternative to mifee has its own dangers. the forestry sector is firmly in the hands of the indonesian government and powerful timber companies and in west papua, it is entwined with the military and is notoriously corrupt (eia & telepak, 2005, 2009). it could become a trojan horse, facilitating a ‘forest grab’ by military-linked companies and further marginalizing indigenous communities by plugging their forests into a global carbon market controlled by carbon brokers and hedge funds (as in papua new aseas 6(1) 175174 guinea, cf. filer, 2012). there is also the risk that, with the help of large conservationist ngos like world wide fund for nature (wwf) and conservation international, it ‘greenwashes’ mifee by taking out some of the most ‘high conservation value’ areas in ‘partnership’ with the large agribusiness corporations involved. for example, the medco group is one of conservation international’s corporate partners. foker lsm papua is therefore skeptical towards redd and has adopted the position of “no rights, no redd” (s. manufandu, secretary general of foker lsm papua, personal communication, march 28, 2011). nevertheless, this glosses over different positions within the coalition against mifee. while walhi rejects redd, aman, for example, has adopted a position of critical engagement in order to use redd to strengthen indigenous rights to forests. a redd-based strategy to stop mifee would therefore generate intensive debates between the different opposition groups and could potentially split the coalition. the autonomy/independence default mode based on the framing of mifee as an example of (indonesian) imperialism marginalizing the papuans with a kind of military/corporate/transmigrant block, this uses papuan identity as a resource to mobilize local communities to reject the project. the strength of this option is that it is integrated within the broader movement for papuan independence, which is gaining strength with the rejection of the special autonomy status. disgust with the connivance of local political representatives with military and indonesian business interests finally burst in january 2011, when thousands of people, including thousands of church members and hundreds of students from the indonesian christian students movement (gerakan mahasiswa kristen indonesia, gmki) (a member of the world student christian federation) occupied the papua people’s council (prc). in an extraordinary statement, church leaders criticized the “present tyrant state authorities, who is on a rampage of internal colonialism, ethnic cleansing (genocide), and disguised slavery against your own nation” and called for the rejection of the special autonomy status and a referendum on the future of west papua mediated by a third party (doirebo, giay, & yoman, 2011). it also plugs into an existing network of international west papua solidarity groups (and churches) that can help to fund activities (particularly christian aid), organize longgena ginting & oliver pye resisting agribusiness development aseas 6(1) 177176 watch dog and solidarity actions, and generate international pressure on indonesia. this path is already being followed by foker lsm papua in order to generate political pressure (pressuring the new district head of merauke who is less gung-ho about mifee, lobbying the provincial parliament and governor who were sidelined by mifee) and also to ward of (potential) investors. here, the threat of indigenous rejection and potential unrest is used as a resource to undermine trust in the viability of mifee as a safe investment (s. manufandu, secretary general of foker lsm papua, personal communication, march 28, 2011). internationally, mifee has already become quite well known via the solidarity groups and church networks in operation. however, there are two major problems with this strategy. the first and fairly obvious one is that a movement for papuan real autonomy or independence that is based on indigenous identity opposition and international solidarity and pressure has not been successful for perhaps 50 years. the whole modus operandi of indonesian control over papua is to ignore and criminalize any sentiment for independence. military occupation and repression is backed up by building a political base amongst an increasing number of muslim migrants and among some papuans and creating enough profit via the exploitation of papuan natural resources to do so. while west papuan solidarity is important in providing a space for activists to operate and to prevent some of the most atrocious human rights violations, it will not upset this indonesian occupation regime. in fact, significant progress in the direction of autonomy was only made in the context of the reformasi movement – that is a national movement for more democracy that challenged key political cornerstones in jakarta (lane, 2008). ‘nationalizing’ the papua question, perhaps by creating papua solidarity groups in indonesia could be one way of encouraging policy change on this issue. the second and perhaps most challenging question is that of the transmigrants. migrant small-scale farmers from java, sulawesi, and from other parts of papua now make up more than half of merauke’s population. although understandable given the political and economic marginalization of the indigenous papua and the role migrant farmers play in this process, polarizing against these migrants can only be counterproductive because it encourages unity within the military-corporate-transmigrant block. on this basis, politicians like gebze can continue to control the district government by mobilizing the migrant votes. some of the anti-mifee arguments also tend to sensationalize the problems of immigration by exaggerated numbers and by the claim aseas 6(1) 177176 of “structural genocide”. as li (2011, p. 282) points out, the labor required for plantation agriculture and forestry are grossly exaggerated by government and corporate land grabbers and range from 10 to 400 per 1000 hectares depending on the crop. a rough estimate using an average of 150 workers per 1000 hectares would give us a total number of migrant workers of 180,000 for 1.2 million hectares of fully developed mifee. this is still large in relation to the current population, but nothing like the often quoted number of 4 million and the extrapolated 24 million migrants (!) feared by sorpatom. in the merauke context, therefore, rejecting the land grab by defending indigenous customary rights based on “ethno-territorial identity” that excludes migrants who have been living there for some time creates a particularly “troubling dilemma” (hall, hirsch, & li, 2011, p. 11). in this dilemma, “counterclaims” based on “indigeneity and ethno-territory” collide with those based on land reform and the “need for land as the basis of an agrarian livelihood” (hall et al., 2011, p. 183). creating a “migrant scare”, albeit from an indigenous rather than a supremacist perspective, also risks the more sinister danger of “ethnic violence” witnessed under similar circumstances between indigenous dayaks and malays and madurese transmigrants in kalimantan and acehnese and javanese migrants in aceh at the end of the 1990s (hall et al., 2011, pp. 176-177; peluso, 2008). this can lead to local elites using “ethnic identity as a resource” (van klinken, 2008, p. 44) in order to create “racialised territories” (peluso, 2008, p. 62) and in the papuan context, could well be answered with a military or para-military crackdown against the papuans. land reform and food sovereignty the critique of mifee as part of agribusiness expansion at the cost of small farmers can be seen as the default resistance strategy of national organizations spi and walhi. the advantage of this strategy is that it offers a way of struggling for an alternative kind of development rather than harking back to a solely traditionalist (indigenous people living in harmony with the forest) or a nationalist/ethnic perspective. the fight against mifee in merauke could thereby become part of a generalized movement against food and energy estates in indonesia and be connected to a global reaction against land grabs. however, there are various complications in the merauke context that mean that the strategy would have to depart from its default mode and become something else longgena ginting & oliver pye resisting agribusiness development aseas 6(1) 179178 and new. the first is fairly blatant: neither spi nor walhi have local organizations in papua, let alone merauke, which means there is as yet no organized social force that could struggle for land reform or food sovereignty as an alternative to mifee. the polarization between papuans and migrants also complicates things. if land reform is seen as distributing land “in areas where population is sparse” to smallholders rather than to agribusiness, and in providing supporting government services (li, 2011, p. 285), would a call for food sovereignty include handing out indigenous land to landless migrants instead of to palm oil companies? what would this mean in a situation where the “potential for conflict between locals and transmigrants over both land and jobs is clearly very high” (li, 2011, p. 288)? how would an alternative development path based on food sovereignty look like for merauke? how would it polarize successfully against the government framing that appeals to a nationalist ‘food security’? and how could a different future look like that could balance a wish to maintain traditions and a successful co-existence with the forest with the desire for some kind of development, perhaps along the lines of successful smallholders? conclusion the mifee land grab is a show case piece in many ways. the proactive role of the national and local government, the key involvement of domestic agribusiness conglomerates, and also the state condoned violence are some aspects that are typical for other land grab projects. indeed, this particular constellation of forces could be part of one type of land grab that is different from those characterized more by the role of foreign investment and financial equity funds. another typical feature of the mifee land grab is the gap between planned territorialization and investment and real investment and action. this opens up the opportunity for resistance to the land grab. as we have argued, this resistance is already quite well organized and therefore, has a real chance of stopping or seriously downsizing the planning fantasies of the government officials and corporations involved. at the same time, the emerging resistance also shows some of the potential strategies and also some of their limitations. there are serious contradictions between the forest-livelihoods strategy, the ethno-territorial strategy, and the land reform strategy which are probably relevant for many other resistance setaseas 6(1) 179178 tings in other parts of the world. in particular, the forest-livelihood strategy underplays the development aspirations of local communities, while the ethno-territorial strategy prevents a class-based alliance between indigenous and migrant small-scale farmers. however, all three strategies are also very much interconnected, and finding those connections that can complement and enhance each other might be the key to developing new and successful models of resistance.4 opposition to mifee is not solely fueled by an outright rejection of the project in order to preserve traditional sago and hunting lifestyles. rather, much of the dissatisfaction arises from the failure of the development promise to deliver: low wages in the plantations (aldp, 2012b), and a lack of jobs and of social and infrastructure projects. sebastianus ndiken, the head of malind bian lma, for example, argues that he would like to see progress “that doesn’t deceive the people” (pembangunan yang tidak menipu masyarakat) and that delivers the promised jobs, schools, and hospitals (aldp, 2012c). following de schutter (2011, p. 258), the challenge for the emerging resistance to mifee would be to develop an alternative and better way of agricultural investment around a locally adapted program of land reform. as li (2011, pp. 289-292) shows, the success of such an alternative would depend very much on how it is developed, and particularly, on whether smallholders are in the driving seat and supported by the government or become indebted contract workers within a corporate-dominated landscape of liberalized agrarian relations. “hard-fought struggles” (li, 2011, p. 292) will be necessary for this and, given the current schism between indigenous people and transmigrants, imaginative and creative strategies will be needed in order to create an alternative that could appeal to both groups of small-scale farmers. one step in this direction has been taken by foker lsm papua and allies. after the two separate consultations with papuans and migrants had led to seemingly irreconcilable positions, foker lsm papua then brought the two groups together. migrants and papuans listened to each other’s problems and agreed that neither of them were to blame, but the government was (s. manufandu, secretary general of foker lsm papua, personal communication, march 28, 2011). without representing a common program of any kind, these discussions could be the start of one. 4 for example, a broad coalition of papuan and indonesian organizations (walhi, pusaka, sajogyo institute, sorpatom, papuan ngos working group, sawit watch, aman, huma, jaringan kerja pemetaan partisipatif, consortium for agrarian reform, kontras, greenpeace indonesia, down to earth) have combined elements of all three frames without polarizing against migrants, cf. walhi et al., 2011). longgena ginting & oliver pye resisting agribusiness development aseas 6(1) 181180 references adhiati, m., sri, a., & bobsien, a. 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(2010). beyond malind imagination. jakarta, indonesia: pusaka. konferenzbericht: die schattenseiten des wirtschaftswachstums in südostasien. 19.–20. juni 2015, goethe-universität frankfurt a. m. konferenzbericht: die schattenseiten des wirtschaftswachstums in südostasien. 19.–20. juni 2015, goethe-universität frankfurt a. m. heinz gödde ► gödde, h. (2015). konferenzbericht: die schattenseiten des wirtschaftswachstums in südostasien. 19.–20. juni 2015, goethe-universität frankfurt a. m.. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 8(2), 223-224. die südostasienwissenschaften der goethe-universität frankfurt a. m. luden in zusammenarbeit mit der südostasien informationsstelle im asienhaus köln und dem arbeitskreis südostasien der deutschen gesellschaft für asienkunde den 19. und 20. juni 2015 zu der konferenz „die schattenseiten des wirtschaftswachstums in südostasien“ nach frankfurt ein. an den beiden tagen wurde in fünf verschiedenen panels das thema der tagung diskutiert. der erste workshop beschäftigte sich mit dem gegenstand „wirtschaftsmodelle in südostasien und deren bewertung“. andreas nölke (universität frankfurt) stellte „varianten des kapitalismus“ vor, wobei zunächst die dimensionen des wirtschaftlichen aufstiegs der großen schwellenländer brasilien, china und indien und deren wirtschaftsmodelle diskutiert wurden. südostasien wurde dann in diesem kontext verortet und die unterschiede der einzelnen südostasiatischen staaten herausgearbeitet. nach der betrachtung der makroebene konzentrierte sich der nachfolgende beitrag auf die mikroebene von stadt, stadtvierteln und haushalten in indonesien. christoph antweiler (universität bonn) zeigte „boom und exklusion in der peripherie – makassar, süd-sulawesi als beispiel einer wachsenden regionalmetropole“. im dritten teil dieses workshops setzte sich vincent houben (humboldt-universität berlin) mit der „beständigkeit sozialer ungleichheit in südostasien“ und deren grundmuster auseinander, die sich mindestens bis in die kolonialzeit hinein zurückverfolgen lassen können. im zweiten workshop diskutierten die teilnehmer_innen die „sozioökonomischen folgen des wirtschaftsbooms“. rüdiger korff (universität passau) präsentierte die „sozioökonomische entwicklung und legitimationskrise der eliten“ in einzelnen südostasiatischen ländern. spätestens im verlauf der asienkrise wurden auch die schattenseiten der wirtschaftlichen entwicklung in der region erkennbar. diese zeigten aber auch ganz deutlich probleme für die legitimation der jeweiligen politischen eliten, mit unterschiedlichen, länderspezifischen reaktionen auf diesen legitimationsverlust. parallel zu diesem workshop fand ein studentisches forum statt, das von den fachschaften der südasienwissenschaften der universitäten bonn und frankfurt organisiert wurde. dieses forum eröffnete die möglichkeit, seminararbeiten zum konferenzthema zu diskutieren und bot chancen zum informationsaustausch. zwei weitere workshops rundeten die tagung am nächsten tag ab. dabei netzwerk südostasien  network south-east asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 15 .2 -1 0 224 heinz gödde  aseas 8(2) handelte der dritte workshop von „wirtschaftswachstum und demokratisierung in südostasien“. entwicklungen in den beiden muslimischen staaten malaysia und indonesien waren das thema der präsentation von claudia derichs (universität marburg) über „die islamisierung der wirtschaftspolitik und ihre folgen in malaysia/indonesien“. fallbeispiele aus einer islamischen, schariakonformen unternehmenswelt (banken, versicherungen, …) legen demnach eine eigene art von management und arbeitsorganisation (rolle des gebetsrufes, geschlechtertrennung, das handoder auch nicht handgeben, …) wie auch eine verbundenheit zur arabischen welt an den tag. patrick ziegenhain (universität frankfurt) untersuchte das „wirtschaftswachstum als folge von oder trotz demokratie in indonesien und den philippinen“. dabei wurde aufgezeigt, dass der prozess der demokratisierung in den einzelnen ländern jeweils eine unterschiedliche entwicklung durchläuft, die bis hin zur stagnation des demokratisierungsprozesses oder gar zu einem rückschritt reicht. wirtschaftswachstum zeigt sich auch in autoritären systemen der region. die konsequenzen der wirtschaftlichen entwicklung für die umwelt wurden im rahmen des vierten workshops mit dem titel „natur als rohstoff? die ökologischen auswirkungen des wirtschaftsbooms“ diskutiert. michaela haug (universität köln) untersuchte in ihrem vortrag „sozio-ökonomische folgen der palmölexpansion in indonesien“ anhand einer kleinräumigen studie an der pionierfront des palmölbooms eine vielzahl von konsequenzen dieser entwicklung. in der weiteren präsentation „boom, transformation, flut? die politische ökologie des flusses in südostasien“ diskutierte oliver pye (universität bonn) vielfältige aspekte von wasser an beispielen der staudammpolitik, der entwicklung in den deltas wie auch den zusammenhang von wasser und stadt. die tagung, organisiert von patrick ziegenhain (universität frankfurt), brachte einen gelungenen einblick in die schattenseiten des wirtschaftswachstums in südostasien. wirtschaftliche entwicklung, gesellschaftliche und ökologische folgen wurden an regionalund lokalbeispielen vorgestellt und alle teilnehmer_innen, darunter auch viele studierende verschiedener universitäten, erhielten eine vielzahl von anregungen für die weitere beschäftigung mit südostasien. zur gleichen zeit war die zweite ausgabe 2015 der zeitschrift südostasien erschienen, die ihren schwerpunkt auf die gleiche thematik setzte: „in den schatten gestellt – soziologische, ökonomische und ökologische auswirkungen des wirtschaftswachstums“. die unterschiedlichen beiträge in diesem heft schließen an die inhalte der tagung an, indem die vielfalt des raumes südostasien, der wirtschaftlichen entwicklung und deren folgen deutlich gemacht werden.  über den autor heinz gödde arbeitet nach dem studium der geographie, geschichte, politikwissenschaft und soziologie an der rwth aachen in aachen. ► kontakt: heinzgoedde@aol.com on the edge of crisis: contending perspectives on development, tourism, and community participation on rote island, indonesia aseas 5(1) 102 103 d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -5 .1 -6 aktuelle südostasienforschung / current research on south-east asia on the edge of crisis: contending perspectives on development, tourism, and community participation on rote island, indonesia cassandra wright1 & belinda lewis2 citation wright, c., lewis, b. (2012). on the edge of crisis: contending perspectives on development, tourism, and community participation on rote island, indonesia. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 5(1), 102-127. the eastern indonesian province of nusa tenggara timur (ntt) is struggling to overcome the burden of widespread poverty, illness, and illiteracy. within the context of globalisation and indonesia’s ongoing transitions in governance, people on rote island, ntt, are experiencing rapid socio-cultural change. the increasing arrival of tourists and foreign business interests add further complexity to these processes of transition. the direction forward for rote is a topic of considerable debate amongst community members, development workers, businesses, and other stakeholders. this qualitative pilot study explores key community stakeholders’ perspectives on development, tourism, and community sustainability in delha, rote. it has revealed confl icting perspectives about future development and tourism on rote, with particular concern regarding social, cultural, and environmental impacts, and loss of autonomy and community control. important ‘dynamics of exclusion’ between stakeholders are identifi ed. more equitable participation in planning and decision-making is needed to ensure that the benefi ts of tourism and development are not concentrated with a privileged few. keywords: nusa tenggara timur; social change; culture; globalisation; tourism die indonesische provinz nusa tenggara timur (ntt) ist mit weitverbreiteter armut, krankheiten und analphabetismus konfrontiert. im kontext der globalisierung und indonesiens politischer transformation vollzieht sich ein rascher soziokultureller wandel auf der insel rote, ntt. eine steigende zahl an touristinnen sowie ausländische unternehmensinteressen verschärfen die komplexe übergangssituation. der weitere entwicklungsweg für rote ist gegenstand zahlreicher debatten zwischen community-mitgliedern, entwicklungshelferinnen, unternehmen und anderen akteurinnen. die vorliegende qualitative vorstudie untersucht zentrale perspektiven unterschiedlicher akteurinnen in bezug auf die zukünftige entwicklung rotes und legt besonderes augenmerk auf soziale, kulturelle und ökologische auswirkungen sowie den verlust von autonomie und gemeinschaftlicher kontrolle. “ausschlussdynamiken” zwischen den akteurinnen werden identifi ziert. gleichberechtigte partizipation in der planung und entscheidungsfi ndung ist entscheidend um sicherzustellen, dass die vorteile von tourismus und entwicklung nicht nur auf wenige privilegierte beschränkt bleiben. schlagworte: nusa tenggara timur; sozialer wandel; kultur; globalisierung; tourismus 1 cassandra wright holds an honours degree of the bachelor of health science (health promotion) from monash university, australia. her main research interest area is health promotion in both local and international contexts, and her current research is focused on the evaluation of a major australian government health promotion initiative. contact: cassandra.wright@monash.edu aseas 5(1) 102 103 introduction this paper reports on research exploring key community stakeholders’ perspectives on the relationships between development and community sustainability in the delha community of rote island, nusa tenggara timur (ntt) province, indonesia. as in most of eastern indonesia, ntt is geographically isolated from the rapid industrialisation of the western side of the nation, where the majority of the country’s economic activity takes place (barlow & gondowarsito, 2007; carnegie, 2008). the province has been of little interest to commercial investors, and there has been inadequate government investment in basic infrastructure essential for health (water, sanitation, power), healthcare, and education services. therefore, many communities continue to experience inflated transport costs, widespread illiteracy, and illness (barlow & gondowarsito, 2007). rote is the southern-most inhabited island of indonesia (see figure 1), and lies only 500 kilometres from mainland australia. despite its geographic proximity to australia, rote is extremely isolated in terms of access. there are no direct commercial flights from any international airport into rote, including from australia. access to 2 belinda lewis has a phd in health promotion, and has worked as a practitioner, researcher, and health promotion consultant. her most recent book is bali’s silent crisis: desire, tragedy and transition. her forthcoming book is health communication: a media and cultural studies approach. figure 1: map of nusa tenggara timur province, indonesia, with rote and major surrounding islands as well as neighbouring countries highlighted source: adapted from carnegie, 2008 cassandra wright & belinda lewis on the edge of crisis aseas 5(1) 104 105 the closest international airports in kupang, west timor, or dili, timor-leste, require an overland bus trip followed by a two-hour ferry transport to the island. the population of rote is 119,711 (badan pusat statistik republik indonesia, 2010). despite its geographic isolation, rote has a complex history, blending the development of local custom and distinctive community practices with ongoing interactions through trade and cultural exchange (carnegie, 2010; fox, 1977). rote’s maritime context has ensured continued contact with other peoples, particularly through religious missions, commerce, and colonisation. traditionally, social hierarchies have been organised around the harvest of the lontar palm (borassus flabellifer) (barlow & gondowarsito, 2007; fox, 1977). the functional significance of the lontar palm is related to the difficult climatic conditions endured by islanders (fox, 1977); the area suffers a long dry season, with sporadic rainfall inadequate for sustainable agricultural yield (barlow & gondowarsito, 2007). the lontar palm juice, tree, and oil have provided sustenance during famine, material for building housing, and means of income for the rotinese through history (carnegie, 2010; fox, 1977). in addition, the rotinese currently rely on subsistent agriculture, fishing and more recently, a seaweed farming industry initiated by the australian agency for international development (ausaid) in 2001 as their means of survival and income (barlow & gondowarsito, 2007; carnegie, 2008). living conditions are basic as there is no reticulated water supply or waste management, and most of the population do not have access to electricity and other infrastructure. recent statistics highlight the extent of poverty, showing that residents of ntt live on one-third of the average income of indonesians (resosudarmo & jotzo, 2009, p. 4). recent literature states that poverty is concentrated in rural areas where the majority of people live and highlights that most people are in fact living on less than usd 1 per day (carnegie, 2008; resosudarmo & jotzo, 2009). indonesia is still considered to be undergoing transition to democratic decentralisation, with several reforms taking place since the dismantling of suharto’s military dictatorship, the new order regime, in 1998. the reformasi represented the end of a highly autocratic and nepotistic leadership with hopes of bringing power closer to the people. extensive indonesian studies literature has been written to analyse the associated economic, political, and socio-cultural transitions at a broader level (erb, 2011; furqan & som, 2010; kristiansen & santoso, 2006; phelps, 2004), but relatively aseas 5(1) 104 105 little attention has been paid to the practical implications for specific provinces such as ntt (cole, 2008; sahin, lewis, & lewis, 2012). for remote and impoverished regions including ntt, investments in infrastructure, health, and education can have visible and life-changing outcomes for communities. there are currently concerns that the benefits of decentralisation have been offset by corruption (erb, 2011; furqan & som, 2010; sahin et al., 2012), and the limited publications capturing local perspectives indicate that regional needs are still felt to be largely ignored and not well-served by the new government structures (fointuna, 2008; kristiansen & santoso, 2006; resosudarmo & jotzo, 2009; sahin et al., 2012). rote has not been impervious to the ripple of wider political and economic changes in indonesia and globally. although structural development has thus-far been slow, people in particular areas such as the delha region of west rote are experiencing rapid socio-cultural changes associated with global communication technologies (tv, radio, internet, mobile phones) and the increasing arrival of foreigners purchasing land and engaging in the local economy (carnegie, 2008; indigo foundation, 2011). however, the current (lack of) infrastructure continues to profoundly affect people’s health. major issues include inadequacies of the health care system, difficulties with transportation and roads, and the aforementioned lack of basic necessities such as clean water provision and sanitation management. furthermore, little work has been done to ensure the protection and sustainability of the environment for further development in ntt (resosudarmo & jotzo, 2009). while improvements to the socio-economic conditions and infrastructure (which might accompany development and increased tourism) are welcomed by members of the delha community, the specific direction forward for rote is a topic of contentious debate (indigo foundation, 2011; van sebille, 2001) and one worthy of documentation due to the potential implications for the local community. of particular concern to the rotinese in delha is the potential for loss of autonomy and decisionmaking regarding the development of their community, loss of cultural traditions, and economic and environmental sustainability (indigo foundation, 2011). there is a wealth of literature describing the effects of rapid development and change on developing regions of indonesia (barlow & gondowarsito, 2007; cole, 2008; lewis & lewis, 2009; sahin et al., 2012). a key learning from this literature is that not all development is positive, and the model of development undertaken will determine cassandra wright & belinda lewis on the edge of crisis aseas 5(1) 106 107 many outcomes for communities. most studies of tourism-related development in indonesia have focused on bali, capturing the environmental, social, and cultural destruction which have accompanied growth in wealth and development (hitchcock & darma putra, 2007; howe, 2005; lewis & lewis, 2009). conversely, there have been several studies which highlight the wide benefits of community-driven development, and participation in tourism (cole, 2006; timur & getz, 2009). while there is only scant literature about rote specifically (carnegie, 2010; fox, 1977), a number of studies have examined the dynamics of development and rapid socio-cultural change in other areas of eastern indonesia (cole, 2006; 2008; sahin et al., 2012). several of these studies highlight the complex impacts on health, well-being, and sustainability of communities (cole, 2008; kristiansen & santoso, 2006). for the people of delha, prospects of development present great potential to improve living conditions but also loom with threats to the community. given the critical importance of considering community perspectives about development, and the lack of published literature focused on rote, there is a need for research to explore the perspectives of multiple community stakeholders around the issue of development, tourism, community sustainability, and their roles within this process. preliminary consultations (conducted by the secondary researcher and indigo foundation) have exposed the need for further research and have identified key issues of community concern regarding the process of development and its relationship with health in delha. in-depth research into people’s lived experience of development, and perspectives on the links between tourism and development on rote would yield valuable findings to inform future development practice. this study therefore aims to explore community perspectives on the relationships between development, tourism, and community sustainability in delha. in the light of existing gaps in the literature, the research will provide insights into people’s perspectives and experiences of the development and rapid social change currently taking place on rote. of priority is the identification of key issues of concern to different stakeholders, outlining the differences and commonalities in stakeholder groups. given the small scope of this study, these will be preliminary findings that will provide the basis for more in-depth exploration in a larger qualitative research project. aseas 5(1) 106 107 theoretical underpinnings the research was guided by two theoretical paradigms: development theory and cultural studies. firstly, theories of participatory, community-driven development (bebbington, dharmawan, fahmi, & guggenheim, 2004; haslam et al., 2009), and sustainable tourism development (cole, 2006; graci & dodds, 2010) provide an alternative to traditional top-down development models (haslam et al., 2009) and were utilised to inform the development of research questions and data analysis. this literature also provided a framework for identifying the key players in development. secondly, a cultural studies paradigm allowed for reflection on the social and cultural context of rapid social and cultural transition in rote. key theoretical perspectives include “transculturalism” (lewis, 2008, pp. 10-18 & p. 107) and cultural transition in the context of globalisation (lewis, 2008, pp. 288-322). cultural studies is particularly interested in the cultural politics of ‘meaning-making’. it is concerned with the ways that discourse and everyday practice are related to knowledge, power, culture, and processes of change (lewis, 2008; lewis & ridge, 2005). this theoretical framing provided a useful lens through which to understand the heterogeneity of local views and the interactions and disputes over meaning associated with social, economic, and cultural transition. methodology study design the research consisted of a small, qualitative pilot study, analysing in-depth interviews with 11 key stakeholders in development in delha. for pragmatic reasons relating to the short time frame, lack of funding, and limited scope of this study, all research was conducted from australia. stakeholders were identified by the research team in a preliminary study on rote, which enabled the current research to be conducted from a distance. all identified stakeholders were contactable on rote via phone or were in australia at the time of the study. cassandra wright & belinda lewis on the edge of crisis aseas 5(1) 108 109 the project feeds into an action research cycle, which involves the work of two aid organisations: indigo foundation, an australian development organisation, and their local partner lua lemba community development and education organisation, a rotinese community initiative. ethics approval was granted by the monash university human research ethics committee, and the study was approved and supported by indigo foundation and lua lemba. all participants’ names have been replaced with pseudonyms in order to protect confidentiality.3 qualitative methods can be used to gain a deeper understanding of phenomena, rather than simply identifying patterns and trends (liamputtong, 2009). they have an emphasis on meaning and interpretation from the perspective of the participants (denzin & lincoln, 2008 in liamputtong, 2009, p.xi). individual interviews were chosen as an appropriate method for data collection, in part because the study was conducted at a distance from the research setting but also largely because formative research indicated that development is a strongly contested issue and there are substantial differentials in power and social status between stakeholders in delha. liamputtong (2009) suggests that participants are more likely to provide richer and full data in individual interviews when researching areas which are sensitive or contentious. a second strength of qualitative research is its capacity to uncover and understand phenomena, particularly where there is little existing knowledge (corbin & strauss, 2008). this is particularly relevant for rote, where development processes and people’s perspectives about these processes have not been formally studied and documented. sampling strategies the study utilised purposive sampling, a non-probability sampling technique common to qualitative research (patton, 2002). purposive sampling involves the deliberate selection of specific individuals because of the crucial information that they can provide that cannot be obtained adequately through other channels (carpenter & suto, 2008 in liamputtong, 2009, p. 11). patton (2002) discusses the power of this 3 because delha is a very small community, it was important to further protect respondents’ confidentiality in reporting the findings. any descriptive information about participants would make it extremely easy for readers to identify the source of specific quotes. thus, in order to minimise potential stress and further community division, the researchers have provided only minimal descriptive information. aseas 5(1) 108 109 method to lie in accessing information-rich cases, which offer in-depth understanding and insights into the findings. the sample size consisted of 11 participants. sample size was determined according to two priorities. the first was to fill all sections of the sampling frame (see table 1). the second was to achieve data saturation in relation to the themes arising from the preliminary analysis. sampling was also guided by principles of equitable gender representation. stratified, maximum variation sampling technique was conducted, which involves the purposeful selection of participants with variation in a characteristic of interest (patton, 2002). according to minichello, sullivan, greenwood, and axford (2004), this is a particularly useful technique for research where little is known as it can provide a wide scope for understanding the issues. contemporary development theory acknowledges that there are four key groups of actors in development. given the importance of this theory in understanding development processes, stratification was based on the framework of ‘actors in development’ provided by haslam et al. (2009) to explore stakeholder groups. participants were then recruited from each of these groups in order to ensure that multiple perspectives were represented – while bearing in mind the limited size and scope possible within this preliminary pilot study. sampling aimed to include key community stakeholders, both local and non-local, with a broad range of ‘interests’ in development of rote (see table 1). this pilot study seeks to complement the existing more general, local-centred need analyses conducted by indigo foundation with specific and detailed data about table 1: sampling frame local doctor (f) university academic (f) lua lemba rep and teacher (f) lua lemba rep and teacher (m) (overlap of all other local categories here) land agent/business owner (m) tourism operator (m) government civil society / ngos community members private sector non-local dentist (f) indigo foundation rep (f) indigo foundation rep (m) foreign resident (m) business owner (m) authors’ compilation, based on haslam et al. (2009) cassandra wright & belinda lewis on the edge of crisis aseas 5(1) 110 111 the perspectives of additional stakeholders. the study includes key informants of local and non-local origin for two main reasons: 1) these perspectives are potentially competing and it is important to draw out the main areas of contention and contradiction, and 2) it is important to ensure that all stakeholder groups in development are represented so that pathways and structures for collaborative development practice can be negotiated. as the primary researcher does not speak indonesian, and most rotinese have poor english speaking skills and literacy, it was therefore appropriate to only access stakeholders who could competently speak english and were available either to meet in australia or be interviewed by phone from rote. no other exclusion criteria applied. data analysis this study used modified grounded theory to identify themes which emerged from the data during the analysis process (corbin & strauss, 2008). the thematic analysis then proceeded as an iterative process (corbin & strauss, 2008; minichello et al., 2004). as discussed earlier, this study was further informed by the theoretical perspectives of development theory and cultural studies. these theoretical frameworks were used to extend the grounded theory approach. the emergent themes were examined in relation to these theories in a cyclical and reflexive manner. this enabled the researchers to adopt a more theoretically informed, critical, and holistic perspective when reporting the findings (minichello et al., 2004). preliminary data analysis began after the first three interviews were conducted and continued concurrently with ongoing data collection. findings and discussion this section presents a synthesis of key findings and their discussion in relation to existing literature and relevant theories of development and community sustainability. of the many themes which emerged from the data, four themes were selected aseas 5(1) 110 111 for detailed analysis and discussion based on their relevance to the research question. these themes also provide insights into several key areas of contention between stakeholders. the first theme focuses on overarching notions of inclusion and exclusion that permeated throughout each of the other themes. three other significant themes are then discussed, which explore issues of tourism, development, and sociocultural changes. these include: unfettered development, contending perspectives on tourism, and negotiating cultural transitions. exclusion and power asymmetries: ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ as the research unfolded, it became apparent that there were forces of exclusion and power differentials operating between different groups within the community of delha. the interviews were threaded with notions of who fits ‘inside’ or ‘outside’ the community and many comparisons were made between particular groups (or individuals) who did or did not ‘belong’. short-term tourists were, for many local informants, explicitly seen as outsiders. foreign residents and business owners were similarly seen as outsiders by informants from all other groups, though some felt they had built networks with particular groups that granted them ‘insider’ status. development workers were labelled as outsiders by several local residents but commented that from their own perspective, they felt they had a ‘special’ (inside) role in the community. indonesian migrants were granted ‘local’ status by other outsider groups (such as foreign land-owners, tourists, and development workers) but were often themselves seen as outsiders to rotinese locals, who were seen as the ultimate insiders by everyone. each of these comparisons involves a sense that the ‘other’ is an outsider to the community and/or culture and therefore does not have as legitimate a claim to being a ‘stakeholder’. while this insider/outsider discourse is potentially a way of creating cohesion and cultural stability within a community, it can also give rise to practices of exclusion which marginalises ‘others’ (reid, 1999). it reflects a struggle for power; while ‘outsiders’ have more economic power and access to decision-makers, locals use operations of exclusion to establish their own mechanisms for community control (reid, 1999). this process of ‘othering’ (riggins, 1997) can also obstruct progress towards collaborative approaches to development and problem-solving (reid, 1999). this dycassandra wright & belinda lewis on the edge of crisis aseas 5(1) 112 113 namic is common within communities experiencing rapid social change associated with development while at the same time becoming more culturally hybridised (connor & vickers, 2003; lewis & lewis, 2009). exclusion of individuals or groups from participation in society undermines social cohesion; it can also give rise to stigma, discrimination, and conflict within communities (keleher & macdougall, 2011). the practical implications of this finding for community development and sustainability will be discussed further in the following themes. unfettered development: crisis and opportunity the development is unfettered . . . they’re making the same mistakes that everybody in the world ever made. we can’t condemn them for that but it’s happening. (cathy, foreign, personal communication, 23 april 2011) informants, both local and foreign, shared concerns about the pace and control of development on rote, especially as none knew of any current formal planning. locals and development workers in this study were particularly concerned about the implications of this for local ownership of land and access to beaches, which hold significance for the livelihoods of local fishermen and seaweed farmers. many saw existing resources and infrastructure (such as water, electricity, and land space) as ‘natural’ limiting factors for development and tourism on the island. several local informants felt this would prevent tourism from becoming ‘bali style’, referring to both the magnitude of tourism in bali and the negative consequences seen there. foreign informants tended to disagree, viewing development and tourism as a ‘juggernaut’ requiring careful management. there was a consistent view that the responsibility of managing development lay primarily in the hands of the government and it was common to hear that this role was being neglected or improperly managed. several foreign informants spoke with a wariness of the government’s pro-development stance. they came to me and said they’re prepared to waive any tax, give me any permits if i wanted to encourage tourism . . . but you just can’t go along the coast willy-nilly without thinking of the consequences – the sewerage, the water and everything else. they’re not thinking about that, they just want more bums on seats. (john, foreign, personal communication, 8 may 2011) the local governments . . . typically want to take it [development] as fast and furious as they can . . . they have all the tools in place to control it, they just don’t [control it]. (jim, foreign, personal communication, 13 july 2011) aseas 5(1) 112 113 all stakeholders agreed that improvement to infrastructure and services were necessary and important for the living conditions of people on rote, however, foreign stakeholders felt that there were also benefits of rote’s ‘under-developed state’. the basic conditions were viewed as the main barrier to increased tourism. foreign informants saw this as a protective factor as they felt the island was underprepared for the ‘wrath’ of development. all local informants believed that infrastructure should be a top priority, to improve community health, for community amenity, and to facilitate increased tourism. health promotion literature emphasises the importance of environmental conditions in determining health outcomes (commission on the social determinants of health, 2008). improvements to infrastructure in delha would likely lead to improved community health. however, if as predicted, the improved infrastructure also leads to increased tourism this becomes a paradoxical solution for the rotinese. tourism development literature warns of the environmental destruction associated with rapid and uncontrolled increases in tourism numbers in the absence of planning for longer-term sustainability (graci & dodds, 2010; muhanna, 2006). as demonstrated in other provinces, such as bali and lombok, this can also have profound impacts on the livelihoods, health, and security of local people (lewis & lewis, 2009). in the current study, development workers commented that foreign visitors and residents could potentially play an important role in creating demand and lobbying for increased infrastructure, especially considering their privileged relationships with government. locals further pointed out that while happy to donate funds to education and health services, tourists and foreign residents did not donate to infrastructure despite requests. this was commonly attributed to vested interests in keeping the destination ‘quiet’ for themselves to enjoy: “the tourists here don’t want to give money for infrastructure here. . . . they don’t want too many other foreign people” (aaliyah, local, personal communication, 10 august 2011). however several locals did also identify an alternative reason, citing that foreign people felt that infrastructure was a “responsibility from the government” and that “they don’t want to involve because the government here is so very korupsi [corrupt]” (aaliyah, local, personal communication, 10 august 2011). this disjuncture between foreign stakeholders’ ‘good intentions’ and how they are perceived by the local stakeholders was a common theme. as mentioned, many cassandra wright & belinda lewis on the edge of crisis aseas 5(1) 114 115 local informants were concerned about decreasing beach access due to foreign land control along the coast. one foreign land-owner provided a contrasting explanation for the foreign land uptake, saying that investors were making a concerted attempt to protect the local community by developing their own methods of regulating development where government was lacking. there was a conscious decision by the westerners to buy and lease as much land along the coast to prevent it [rapid development]. it’s not a selfish outlook. it’s to give them time and space because these people are being fed information by the government of rote . . . that they need development quick, to make it look like bali. we just know from . . . the very, very many experiences from across the globe that it’s not going to work there. because of the scarcity of water, scarcity of food, and the infrastructure . . . i’m a firm believer in what we’re doing is a good thing. (john, foreign, personal communication, 8 may 2011) a frequently mentioned example of this ‘misunderstood’ protective behaviour was of the sand-mining on local beaches. a foreign investor explained: we were told by the local government that sand-mining was illegal . . . we didn’t want to invest in a place where people could come and just start taking all the sand . . . as foreign investment money was coming in, all of a sudden the locals had a little bit more money . . . so instead of living in a grass roof thatch wall home, they started building houses with cinder blocks and pinned roots. but to build those houses they needed to have cement. to make the cement they need sand. so they started going down to the beaches and taking sand. it starts off as a few truckloads, the next thing you know it’s hundreds and hundreds of truckloads of sand being taken off the beach. and they have no education as to how sand and erosion works, they just see a lot of sand – what’s the big problem? it took me five years of complaining to the government – ‘hey this sand-mining’s going on, you have to stop this!’ he told us he would . . . nothing happened until enough land had been leased across the front of west rote here. access for the trucks to get to the beach got blocked by the foreign investors who didn’t want trucks being driven across the land or sand-mining going on. . . . well, the villagers got all angry because they thought the westerners were trying to take over their village. when all we were really trying to do is preserve the beach. (jim, foreign, personal communication, 13 july 2011) in this case, it took many years of disagreement before changes were made to preserve the natural environment. one foreign informant felt that residents and investors toe “a fine line between vested interest and convincing them [the local community] of what they really need for their future” (jim, foreign, personal communication, 13 july 2011). some locals talked about a change in their attitudes, whereby they now agree that foreign stakeholders were acting with good intent with regards to beach conservation. we had the bad habits of collecting the sand from the beach to make buildings. that has been stopped because the land from the beach-front was taken over by the foreigners and now they protect it. (ari, local, personal communication, 12 august 2011) aseas 5(1) 114 115 despite this apparent approval, there was a common local perception that there needs to be greater communication between foreign and local stakeholders and more equitable distribution of assistance. we’re needing more communication between the local people and the foreigners there. there’s no communication . . . the foreigners, they have the mind to protect the local people but they have to have the same ideas for everybody, of what they can do to help the local people. (ari, local, personal communication, 12 august 2011) a successful example of local and foreign stakeholders openly negotiating to achieve community protection is illustrated in the recent move toward local people leasing rather than selling their land. this initiative was driven by a local land agent, who explained that it was received well by the foreign investors, but initially more difficult to gain support of the locals. in nemberala from the beginning when people start to lose the land, i told the people in town, don’t sell because if you sell your land, you’ll be gone. you’ll be moved from nemberala so you don’t have any place to stay for your kids . . . so just lease for 20 years . . . even if they lease for 40 years but the land is still yours . . . the people didn’t really understand that. (paulus, local, personal communication, 29 july 2011) many stakeholders noted that leasing land rather than selling was now the accepted standard practice in delha. while some local informants were concerned about the sale and lease of land, most acknowledged this negotiation as being important for maintaining community control. the land is not going to be taken over forever but only like a lease contract . . . i don’t think the chinese or anyone from other parts of indonesia would come and only lease the land. but the foreigners here, australians and americans, they’re there to lease the land, that is good. it will go back to us later, after 40 years. (ari, local, personal communication, 12 august 2011) many informants, both local and foreign, additionally agreed that there also needed to be greater communication between the local community and ngos for assistance to be useful in the medium to long term. examples were cited of aid organisations sporadically donating infrastructure, which quickly fell into disrepair due to inadequate engagement with the community to teach them how to properly use or maintain the equipment. ngos with a long-term commitment and focus on empowerment approaches to development assistance such as indigo foundation were cassandra wright & belinda lewis on the edge of crisis aseas 5(1) 116 117 more widely accepted because “the programs come from the community” (martha, local, personal communication, 2 august 2011). however, one foreign informant was critical of the slow pace of this approach, noting that “they’re going to need to do it for about 10 to 20 years at the rate they’re doing it now” (jim, foreign, personal communication, 13 july 2011). both local informants and development workers agree that a plan needs to be developed which actively engages ‘the community’. however, this implies that the community is a homogeneous entity and denies the varied range of perspectives, interests, and power differentials of stakeholders on rote, all of whom have an important role in development (haslam et al., 2009). current approaches of development organisations have thus far had a primary focus on building local capacity. contemporary development literature endorses this approach but additionally emphasises the value of building partnerships between stakeholders to enhance the effectiveness and sustainability of practices. in the setting of delha, the ‘outsider’ status of foreigners currently presents a barrier to potentially valuable collaborations and hinders planning required for sustainable development and equitable health outcomes (muhanna, 2006; timur & getz, 2009). according to graci and dodds (2010), plans need to be agreed on by all stakeholders involved, and communication and aligned vision between stakeholders is essential for this process. whilst these suggestions are theoretically appealing, the current findings suggest that stakeholders in the delha community see considerable barriers to collaboration and planning in practice. there are strongly conflicting perspectives about both the direction forward for delha and how best to proceed. without effective mediation of these conflicts, the possibilities for equitable and genuinely participatory development appear unlikely. contending perspectives on tourism there are lots of tourists. that helps increase the community’s income – although it’s not everybody who benefits . . . there are also not just good things that affect people . . . but some don’t see this. (martha, local, personal communication, 2 august 2011) in general, there are very positive views of tourism across the community, however, there are also growing concerns that this confidence might be misplaced. some aseas 5(1) 116 117 stakeholders talked about a ‘dark side’ of tourism-related development, which locals are not anticipating. rote has recently seen a steady increase in foreign visitors, including both short and long-term tourists, foreign investors, and aid/development workers, largely concentrated in coastal areas around delha. stakeholders consistently viewed tourism as being an important source of income generation for local people, offering previously unavailable opportunities to young people for education and skill building: “when the tourists come here, they help people here to make some jobs and they give the people money . . . to help us to have a new chance to life” (yuli, local, personal communication, 30 july 2011). it was commonly reported that visitors to delha have thus far showed generosity to the community by making substantial donations to the health centre and schools. this is encouraged by a donation system set up at the main resort in nemberala. both local and non-locals also viewed tourism as an exciting opportunity for cultural exchange and learning. most tourists have come to visit our school . . . and then give some help for us for the toys and books. and they help us to giving better information to the student about education. (yuli, local, personal communication, 30 july 2011) tourists give donations to the community, which is a very good thing. the community can improve their english by interacting with the tourists too. (peni, local, personal communication, 21 july 2011) most locals in this study said that they would like to see tourism increase in order to improve local livelihoods and there was an expressed expectation from many that the generosity and goodwill from visitors would continue. interestingly, several local informants described indigo foundation representatives as ‘good-natured tourists’, and this would likely contribute to the positive impressions of tourism. however, in sharp contrast to this perspective, other locals articulated serious concerns that the community more broadly is unaware of the potential implications of larger scale tourism and was encouraging tourism based on naivety. this makes delha extremely vulnerable to the potential harm caused by unregulated development and tourism. it’s trying to educate the stakeholders on the island that bali’s not the holy grail . . . you’ve got to remember that you’re dealing with people who’ve got limited travel experience, limited knowledge, limited education. (john, foreign, personal communication, 8 may 2011) cassandra wright & belinda lewis on the edge of crisis aseas 5(1) 118 119 some foreign investors attributed local naivety to the fact that currently, most tourists to rote are ‘low-impact’ visitors. one foreign informant explained that the demographics and mentality of tourists are currently quite different to other tourism destinations such as bali: “we have not had that young westerner population that’s coming here and wanting to party or do drugs . . . for now anyway” (jim, foreign, personal communication, 13 july 2011). this is seen to be a protective factor for the community. however, many informants showed great concern for what might happen ‘if the flood-gates open’ for tourism, expecting it to attract the ‘wrong crowd’. although this was primarily reported by foreign informants, all locals who had travelled to bali showed equal concern. if the place is changed, you never know, it might be that criminals come out too. and the prostitutes. i’m really expecting nemberala is be the same as bali . . . bali right now is really bad . . . criminals and prostitutes are everywhere. for me personally, i don’t want nemberala to be like bali. (paulus, local, personal communication, 29 july 2011) it was widely acknowledged by local community members that there were both positive and negative implications of tourism, but the negatives were seen as a reasonable trade-off for the increased income and opportunities: “they don’t necessarily like everything tourism brings, but they feel that on balance, there’s a benefit” (james, foreign, personal communication, 20 april 2011). several local stakeholders felt that this view was short-sighted and described a broad range of ‘fears’ they had for the medium/long-term future of rote. table 2 lists the current and potential impacts of tourism as perceived by local community stakeholders. another concern of local informants was whether community members had opportunities to actively engage in future tourism and development rather than act as passive bystanders. tourism has been widely viewed as presenting great new opportunities to rotinese young people, and the main tourism operators have explicitly taken an ethical approach to train and employ local people first. however, there are still concerns that foreign investors will continue to disproportionately benefit as there have been few observable opportunities for local control: “i’d like to see that local people also take part in the development and not just people from outside” (martha, local, personal communication, 2 august 2011). another stakeholder added: aseas 5(1) 118 119 “i want the younger generations to be able to work and to have the job but i want them to be able to create their own work” (ari, local, personal communication, 12 august 2011). development workers showed similar concerns for the power asymmetries between foreign landowners and local community members. they [foreign landowners] kind of sit on top of the community, but there’s no vertical unity to it. they might have local people cook for them or clean their house . . . they feel that they’re benefitting the community by paying their housekeepers a very generous wage. it’s not working in a lot of ways. it’s leading to inflation in the markets and a distorted view of westerners. (cathy, local, personal communication, 23 april 2011) the findings suggest that the flow of benefits from development and tourism into the community has been largely inequitable, with the majority of the benefits reaped by people not originally from rote. the tourism operators’ decision to train local young people has the potential to empower those involved by enhancing their skills and self-efficacy, however, leaves others remaining impoverished and without livelihoods or economic security. the difference between this approach and a true communitydriven approach is the opportunity to participate in decision-making and therefore take some control, which is not currently well established. sustainable tourism literature indicates that for tourism and development to benefit the local community in a long-term and sustainable manner, there is also a need for support of local table 2: current and potential impacts of tourism in delha, rote island current negative impacts of tourism loss of control over land/beach access some beach pollution pressure on natural resources display of taboo behaviour current positive impacts of tourism opportunity for jobs and wealth generation donations from visitors environmental protection initiatives potential to improve infrastructure learning opportunities potential further negative impacts of tourism foreigners reaping all benefits of development environmental degradation loss of cultural traditions cultural ‘corruption’ of young people sexual exploitation of youth crime drug use authors’ own compilation based on interview findings cassandra wright & belinda lewis on the edge of crisis aseas 5(1) 120 121 enterprises (cole, 2006; muhanna, 2006). this would assist in extending the reach of tourism-related benefits across the local community in a more equitable manner. literature documenting other tourism developments in indonesia indicates that continuation of the current ‘open slather’ development may potentially have disastrous implications for the natural environment and the livelihoods of the local community (hitchcock & darma putra, 2007; nutbeam, 1996). considering the widespread concerns about local comprehension of these negative consequences, the foreign stakeholders feel that they are playing an important role in protecting the community from tourism mismanagement. however, their current approach perpetuates the exclusion of locals from playing a fuller role in participating in tourism development. this further supports the need for integrated planning and communication between various stakeholders. negotiating cultural and socio-economic transitions lots of tourists from different cultures are coming . . . the kids, they’re shocked with the different culture. they’re comparing the culture with which one is good or which one is better. (martha, local, personal communication, 2 august 2011) while rote has its own distinctive cultural modes and practices (fox, 1977), the island has a long history of interaction with other social groups, religions, and cultural frames. according to carnegie (2010), the rotinese have over many decades successfully mediated the interaction of ethnicities and religions through adat (customary law) to produce low-conflict communities. more recently, in delha the community has seen rapid cultural shifts arising from increased global and local interconnectivity and new opportunities for education, work, and travel. our findings suggest that these transitions are viewed to have both positive and negative implications. both local informants and development workers showed concern for the social and cultural implications of changes to local livelihoods and lifestyles. parents here now always give attention to working the seaweed . . . for the money. so they ignore their children . . . they’re busy, they work in the sea and come home late and go to bed and don’t see their children. (aaliyah, local, personal communication, 10 august 2011) the [villages] that are experiencing it [development] first and benefiting the most from it, they’re losing some of their traditions . . . really quickly. the weaving’s disappearing because it’s a really time-intensive way to earn money. people can go out and farm seaweed and earn money much more quickly and a much more regular return than from weaving. the dancing and things, i’m not quite sure why they seemed to aseas 5(1) 120 121 be disappearing . . . but clearly it is those communities most impacted by development that are losing those traditions the fastest. (james, foreign, personal communication, 20 april 2011) the community used to work together to do things occasionally, like they would work together to build the church. but now people don’t have so much time to do that . . . those old support systems have fallen into disrepair once people started working doing farming for the seaweed . . . there are definite changes in the structure in the community. (cathy, foreign, personal communication, 23 april 2011) interactions between the local and foreign people are widely regarded amongst informants as opportunities for the exchange of knowledge systems. outsiders are seen to have valuable knowledge to share on concepts such as environmental conservation, management of development, health, and education: “the tourists teach the community how to be on time in doing their job, how to put garbages on the right place in order to keep clean environments” (peni, local, personal communication, 21 july 2011). however, not all ideas have been so easily accepted. conflicting cultural ideas are also emerging through exposure to (predominantly western) outside values and ideas, especially regarding modesty and sexuality. we have a tradition about our clothes . . . but some tourists come here with clothes not the same as our tradition. some of us think that is not good for our tradition, for our development, for the young people here. (yuli, local, personal communication, 30 july 2011) the tourists also teach bad things to the community such as just wearing underwear at the public area, kissing, sensual kissing at public areas. these two things are taboo to the local people. drugs also is not good things for the youth local people. (peni, local, personal communication, 21 july 2011) cultural conflict surrounding sexuality and modesty have been common across tourism destinations in indonesia (hitchcock & darma putra, 2007; lewis & lewis, 2009). interestingly, development workers observed that locals are developing some mechanisms for negotiating these cultural exchanges. we were talking with kids in the schools [and] they said ‘well, we see these people acting really badly . . . we’ve seen that they have free sex. they don’t cover themselves. they don’t work. they don’t get married… but we spoke about this and our parents say . . . they’re having their holidays . . . they do that because they’re from that country but we have our own values and that’s not how we behave and we don’t copy their behaviour’. so they’ve got a very strong kind of sense of identity and of their own community and their own values. (cathy, foreign, personal communication, 23 april 2011) there are also contending views amongst locals with regard to the arrival of new cassandra wright & belinda lewis on the edge of crisis aseas 5(1) 122 123 technologies. locals conveyed a sense of excitement about emerging technologies within the community, although there were differing opinions on whether this was positive or negative: “the phone is pretty good because you can communicate to your friends anywhere in the world. it’s very good for us” (paulus, local, personal communication, 29 july 2011). it’s like, you never have tv and then suddenly . . . you have access to all those things. there are lots of kids that watch tv all night. it’s a big problem. (martha, local, personal communication, 2 august 2011) many locals have consequently expressed a desire for the community to have wide access to ‘social education’, so that they can better understand the cultural differences and make informed choices about the consequences of their behaviour. people can get access from the internet, from the television but it’s just a matter of social education for young kids. sex education. this is not a normal thing for us in nemberala . . . we have now a lot of problems with teenagers, they are pregnant at school. don’t you think that’s the saddest one? i’m concerned about it . . . a family with money, they buy television and they get their kids to watch all the programs . . . it brings all the problems. (ari, local, personal communication, 12 august 2011) some changes have sparked a broad local desire to preserve expressions of traditional culture such as weaving, art, dancing, and dress. this has been assisted by a lua lemba and indigo foundation initiative for a ‘cultural festival’. people start to realise that they should keep their culture – things like traditional dances – they get the kids to learn. i think it’s a good thing that people want to preserve their culture. (martha, local, personal communication, 2 august 2011) cole (2008) describes tourism as a driver for the process of ‘localisation’, suggesting that tourism encourages the construction of cultural or ethnic identities which can then be used as a resource and commodity for communities to participate in tourism. despite many questioning the authenticity of cultural identities created through tourism (allerton, 2003; cole, 2008; howe, 2005; picard, 1996), cole observed villagers in ngadha, ntt, gaining pride in their cultural heritage and political empowerment in this process (cole, 2006; 2008). aitchison (2001) similarly states that using culture in tourism can empower host communities and help to equalise the power differentials between them and outsiders. however, the discourse of ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ ideas can facilitate exclusion and hinder broader community cohesion (riggins, 1997). aseas 5(1) 122 123 studies of the ajeg bali cultural movement in bali demonstrate the double-edged nature of strategies for cultural revivification, including their potential for exclusion of ethnic minorities (lewis & lewis, 2009). in the current study, both local and foreign informants expressed the view that the cultural festival in delha is an exciting mechanism for the local community to build solidarity, share new cultural forms, and strengthen their sense of cultural identity as an ‘anchor’ for more productive cultural interactions with others. it’s the first time i’ve seen so many people doing so many different traditional things. that was a wonderful thing to see. the way they participate – you can see there’s a strong community. (john, foreign, personal communication, 8 may 2011) several local informants claimed that conservative traditional practices could also have negative consequences and suggested that some transitions associated with greater cultural interaction may benefit the economic and social well-being of the community. for a man to marry a woman they have to save [money] all their lives to be able to pay for the marriage price . . . also for family occasions – weddings, funerals – people like partying. they spend so much on the occasions. it is really not good for the economics. they don’t spend that money on education. (ari, local, personal communication, 12 august 2011) informants not originally from rote also discussed culture as a barrier to the health of locals, especially related to understandings of health. western medical models of health are still seen as ‘alternative treatments’, second to spiritual and superstitious beliefs about health and well-being. health workers voiced great frustration as they feel there are missed opportunities when medical treatment is seen as a last resort. it’s like competition with doctor and medicine and prayer . . . they more believe the prayer than me . . . as long as l work here, i have already lost for competition with the prayer . . . maybe if they don’t believe that the prayer is the most important then they believe me as well. maybe it will not happen. but you know my person’s already dead! . . . because they need maybe four hours just for praying. (aaliyah, local, personal communication, 10 august 2011) they have a very strong aversion to medical science . . . black magic kind of rules the day around here so unfortunately we see a fair amount of deaths. (jim, foreign, personal communication, 13 july 2011) however, some locals had mediated these contradictory beliefs, saying that there were merits of both health belief systems. cassandra wright & belinda lewis on the edge of crisis aseas 5(1) 124 125 it is the christianity way, it’s good . . . a lot of them get cured from [prayer]. . . . but people have a low understanding of medication and check-ups and this is not really a good thing. maybe both is good. (jim, foreign, personal communication, 13 july 2011) consistent with the globalisation literature (huynen, martens, & hilderink, 2005), these findings suggest that within delha, rapid cultural shifts are taking place through the exchange and hybridisation of beliefs and practices. according to lewis (2008), ‘culture’ is a convergence of meaning systems that operates through social groupings and practices and “culture is always transitional, open and unstable” (p. 13). a cultural studies approach helps to explain the phenomena on rote as the negotiation of knowledge systems as people come to and from the island, each sharing their beliefs and meanings. this is intensified by the gradually increasing presence of the mass media in the everyday lives of locals, which brings into closer proximity the products, practices, and values of other cultures (lewis, 2008). some locals in delha see this as extremely problematic, while others see merits of outside ideas, new technologies, and transitions. studies of development and tourism in other areas of indonesia have likewise highlighted cultural tensions regarding the influence of western cultural practices, particularly around gender roles, sexuality, and the body (howe, 2005; lewis & lewis, 2009). within the context of globalisation and increasing levels of social, economic, and cultural interaction between people across the globe, contemporary societies are constantly exposed to alternative ways of living, acting, and making meaning. thus, they are becoming more complex, mixed, and heterogeneous, rendering them vulnerable to an infinite array of external and internal disputes of meaning (lewis, 2008). while cultural transition is an inevitable consequence of globalisation, there is clearly a negotiation process by which the rotinese are both challenging and selectively integrating new ideas and practices into their everyday lives. according to the informants in this study, these disputes of meaning, along with struggles around traditional structures of power and influence, have the potential for positive outcomes but they are also creating threats to social cohesion and new forms of exclusion. this dynamic poses a threat to the health, well-being, and sustainability of local communities. it is also undermining opportunities for building the collaborations that are required for development to be managed in an equitable and genuinely participatory manner (cole, 2006; reid, 2000). aseas 5(1) 124 125 conclusion the findings of this study demonstrate that in the delha community, development is a passionately disputed issue. the political and economic context for development in rote is complex, with processes of globalisation and governance transition simultaneously shaping local outcomes from afar. further complications arise at the community level, where a lack of planning and regulation has left delha on the brink of crisis, particularly with regard to increasing tourism and local control of development. furthermore, while many stakeholders share common views about the need for planning and collaboration, there are contrasting perspectives about who should be involved in this process and the best way for development to proceed. the findings from this small, preliminary study suggest these disputes and power differentials are excluding important perspectives and undermining people’s sense of control over the health, well-being, and future sustainability of their communities. in the midst of these debates are complex cultural interactions between locals and outsiders. these exchanges of ideas, practices, and economies are seen to have both positive and negative ramifications for community well-being in delha. undermining people’s sense of social cohesion, community sustainability, and control over their health are struggles arising from power differentials, inequities, and deeply entrenched notions of exclusion. the current study has begun to draw out and analyse selected key issues to demonstrate the diverse and contested perspectives surrounding development, tourism, and community sustainability in delha, rote. references aitchison, c. 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(2012). editorial: changing socio-natures in south-east asia. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 5(2), 198-207. south-east asia’s environment is of special relevance to the world today. this is not simply because of its particular geological and geographical history (periods of interaction and separation with asia and australasia, endemic speciation on the thousands of islands), its tropical forests, and its reef-lined coasts which have made it into one of the globally most bio-diverse regions (sohdi & brooke, 2006). in more recent human history, the geographical location of south-east asia between china and india, arabia, and europe led to the early integration of its environmental resources into global trading flows, also significant to its eventual colonial subjugation by european powers (reid, 1993). the experience as a major political fault line during the so called cold war and subsequently, export-led agriculture and industrialisation in the region, transformed the way south-east asian societies interacted with and exploited the environment. the environmental crisis that accompanied this economic success story is an extreme example of the challenge we face to create a sustainable future today. this urgency of environmental change and crisis in south-east asia has given rise to an increasing number of publications on environmental issues in the region. rather than seeing the environment as ‘nature’ outside of human society, most of these writings have focussed on the changing relations between society and nature. most authors can be located within an increasingly influential tradition of political ecology (robbins, 2012) that looks at the “social relations of nature” (“gesellschaftliche naturverhältnisse”, görg, 1999), the “social production of nature” (smith, 1984) and “socionatures” (swyngedouw, 1999). at issue are how societies appropriate nature, how they thereby produce land, forest, water, and urban socio-natures, and how this reciprocally influences social relations of production, exploitation, power, and conflict. 1 oliver pye is a lecturer of south-east asian studies at bonn university, germany and the guest editor of this issue. his research foci are globalisation, social movements, and the social relations of nature in south-east asia. contact: opye@uni-bonn.de d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -5 .2 -1 aseas 5(2) 199198 at one level, the changing socio-natures of south-east asia can be seen as a result of successive waves of commoditisation processes and the “dynamic relationships between commoditization, nature, people and places” that this entailed (nevins & peluso, 2008, p. 2). the way in which these commoditisation processes were organised, influenced how societies and states developed. long before colonial times, nontimber-forest-products (ntfps) were exchanged down rivers, linking forest-based peoples in the interiors via intermediate trading centres (often at the mouth of the river) to china (tagliacozzo, 2005). this gave rise to “dendritic systems” (bronson, 1977; dunn, 1975) of politically independent but mutually trade-dependent societies. later, wars were waged over the control over ntfp extraction and trade, leading to the emergence of regionally powerful trading empires such as srivijaya, angkor, ayutthaya, or makassar. trade with forest and agro-forestry commodities played a defining role in the colonial interest in south-east asia. for several hundreds of years, portuguese, dutch, and english trading companies waged war against malay, javanese, bugis, and moluccan peoples and each other for the monopoly over the spice trade (reid, 1993). nutmeg and cloves, cultivated as orchards on the moluccas, were in such high demand that they were worth their weight in gold in london and rotterdam. subsequent colonial domination of the region at first took over and expanded existing ntfp trading networks, exhausting the stocks of products such as gutta percha, camphor, or bird’s nests (columbijn, 2006; potter, 1997). but the new colonial powers soon had a more far-reaching and long-term impact on the social relations of nature in the region. in particular, the colonial powers developed a timber industry that was dependent on large amounts of capital and waged labour for timber extraction and milling (bryant, 1997; peluso, 1992; pye, 2005) and new systems of plantation agriculture. sugar, tobacco, and rubber estate owners on java and sumatra, in the malay states, and in the mekong delta imported labourers from as far as china and india to clear large areas of forests and initiated small-scale agriculture for new monocultures (breman, 1990; brocheux, 1995; stoler, 1995). this represented a qualitative shift from expanding market exchange to introducing capitalist relations of production, creating new landscapes of produced socio-nature. the productions of these socio-natures were political projects that changed power relations at different scales and created new political ecologies of south-east asia. while expanded exchange networks could be accessed by the control over trade cenoliver pye editorial: changing socio-natures in south-east asia aseas 5(2) 201200 tres, the timber industry and plantation agriculture required “territorial control” (vandergeest & peluso, 1995), i.e. the principle of state ownership over land and forest in a defined and mapped area. the colonial state in general and forest administrations in particular strived to exclude customary use of forest resources by the peasant population (bryant, 1997; cleary, 2005; kathirithamby-wells, 2005; peluso, 1992; vandergeest, 1996). subjugating nature was a means “to improve” (li, 2007) – a modernising and civilising project to develop the colonies. meanwhile, dispossession of peasants for commercial plantations, new taxation systems, and labour laws created gendered systems of indentured labour for commoditised agriculture (breman, 1990; stoler, 1995). if the colonial experience was a defining one in the region (thailand – although not colonised – copying similar structural processes), a second common experience of long, protracted war recalibrated the complex interaction between political regime and environment. anti-colonial liberation struggles merged with world war ii, continuing and intensifying as proxy wars between the united states, the soviet union, and china, and transforming into long civil wars, creating their own brutal socio-natures. cambodia, for example, became caught up in the american war in vietnam, in which forests became guerrilla cover to be destroyed by intense bombing (half a million tonnes of bombs 1969-73; kiernan, 1989) and agent orange. similarly, rice fields were systematically destroyed by using the herbicide agent blue (westing, 1976). under the khmer rouge, agricultural production became collectivised under a war economy that prioritised rice exports to china in exchange for weapons – killing millions through overwork and starvation (kiernan, 1996). in the subsequent civil war lasting into the 1990s, the khmer rouge and the vietnam-backed forces financed their troops through extensive logging, creating a peculiar political ecology of forest destruction based on conflict and cooperation between warring parties (le billon, 2000, 2002). although the social relations of nature – particularly access to land and forests – were a major factor in the social upheavals against the colonial powers (peluso [1992] writes of “forest-based agrarian war” in the case of indonesia), the post-colonial nationalist governments of south-east asia prolonged many of the principles set down by the colonial territorialisation efforts. in the name of development, colonial forestry departments were revamped and geared towards national timber industries (broad, 1995; bryant, 1997; cooke, 1999; peluso, 1992; pye, 2005) and export networks aseas 5(2) 201200 (dauvergne, 1997), increasing deforestation rates across the region (aiken & leigh, 1992; hirsch, 1993). the plantation economies, too, were nationalised and expanded (stoler, 1995). in forestry and agriculture, coalitions between corporations and political elites pursued more profitable and permanent conversions such as eucalyptus and acacia pulp and paper plantations (lang, 2002) and oil palm (colchester et al., 2006; marti, 2008). water socio-natures also became the target of national development plans. thailand, malaysia, indonesia, and the philippines systematically developed their industrial fisheries and trawler fleets, leading to overfishing and increasing conflicts with small-scale fishers (butcher, 2004). special development fantasies evolved around rivers. coalitions of government planners, energy corporations, and engineers strived to subdue and control their raw and seasonally wild power with dams that promised the double benefits of energy and irrigation (molle, foran, & käkönen, 2009). meanwhile, industrialisation and urbanisation created new problems of heavily polluted urban riverscapes (lucas & djati, 2007). developmentalist strategies based on the exploitation of natural resources were implemented by authoritarian regimes of various shades. large-scale infrastructure projects were wedded to centralised state control over resources and to the politics of repression. suharto’s new order regime in indonesia was a stark representation of this regional trend. the mass killings of labour and peasant activists in 1965 radically changed the social landscapes of land reform on java (cribb, 1990) and plantations in northern sumatra (stoler, 1995), laying the ground for an unchallenged export-led industrialisation. large-scale projects such as the grasberg mine in west papua were backed up by military might, while a system of large-scale timber concessions handed out to conglomerates close to the regime (barr, 1998; gellert, 2005) was supplied with disciplined labour by the transmigrasi programme (hancock, 1997). however, these authoritarian regimes were challenged by a wave of democracy movements that swept across the region in the 1980s and 1990s. the peoples power movement that toppled marcos in the philippines in 1986, the may 1992 democracy movement in thailand, and the reformasi movement that brought down suharto in indonesia in 1998 all opened up democratic space for the articulation of environmentalist critiques of the then dominant development model (broad & cavanagh, 1993). politicisations over the social relations of nature often preceded these mass movements. in indonesia, for example, wahana lingkungan hidup indonesia, (walhi), a netoliver pye editorial: changing socio-natures in south-east asia aseas 5(2) 203202 work of ngos and grassroots groups, was able to lead successful campaigns against a pulp and viscose factory on sumatra and a planned pulp plantation in west papua (gordon, 1998). walhi joined struggles by peasant and indigenous groups to form an “environmental and agrarian justice movement” (peluso, afif, & rachman, 2008) that blossomed after the fall of suharto. in thailand, successful resistance to eucalyptus plantations and forced relocations of forest-based peoples (lohmann, 1991; pye, 2005) gave rise to the assembly of the poor, a network of grassroots movements that put forward an alternative development paradigm based on local sovereignty over natural resources (missingham, 2003). in countries where democracy movements did not emerge (laos, vietnam), were weak (cambodia, malaysia), or were violently put down (myanmar), environmental justice movements have not developed to the same extent. anti-logging protests by indigenous peoples in malaysia (brosius, 1999) and cambodia (bottomley, 2002) remained marginalised at the national scale. these challenges to authoritarian natural resource regimes coincided with wider transitions of neoliberal globalisation. for south-east asian environments, this meant a new wave of commoditisation embedded within political regimes that emphasised a mix of privatisation, ‘good governance’, and ‘self-management’ (li, 2007; nevins & peluso, 2008). new appropriations of nature, be it “aquarian capitalism” (fougères, 2008) of aquaculture and live reef fisheries, national parks and conservation services (hall, hirsch, & lee, 2011), bio-diversity and genetic information (colchester, 1996), or ‘carbon stocks’ link different actors along the “friction of the commodity chain” (tsing, 2005, p. 51). the new decentralised but globalised political ecologies that this creates “complicate conservation” (dove, sajise, & doolittle, 2011), leading to processes that cannot be captured by a dichotomy between local and indigenous conservation versus central, capitalist exploitation. rather, shifting alliances create new politicised paradoxes of development and environment at different scales (forsyth & walker, 2008; mccarthy 2006, 2010). the papers in this special edition of the austrian journal of south-east asian studies are located firmly within this recent phase of ambiguous transition. in a first set of articles on forest politics in indonesia, anu lounela looks at how the pent-up social anger at the injustices under suharto led to peasant mobilisations and land occupations. she explains the sources of authority which a local javanese leader draws on to challenge state policies on land and forests. also on java, ahmad maryudi shows how this kind of community resistance against state control over forests became aseas 5(2) 203202 co-opted and bureaucratised within a community forestry scheme. the forest user groups that were officially sanctioned by the state forest company perhutani are a good example of the now dominant ‘self-management’ environmental governance regime. cathrin bullinger and michaela haug discuss the unintended consequences of the decentralisation policy in the reformasi era. the combination of centralised timber industry and localised concession-granting political power led to an upsurge in logging activities and to reassertion of centralised power by the ministry of forestry. the ministries of forestry of several south-east asian countries are key players in a new commodity which is currently being produced within the global climate regime: carbon. the un mechanism reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (redd) aims to sell carbon stocks ‘saved’ by preventing deforestation on an emerging carbon market. in their interview with prof. rachmat witoelar, the indonesian president’s special envoy for climate change and executive chair of the national council on climate change, till plitschka and irendra radjawali explore why redd is the key component of indonesia’s climate change mitigation programme. in a second interview, chris lang from the website redd monitor explains some of the dangers of redd. the production of a new and lucrative commodity could lead to powerful groups (state agencies, timber companies, carbon brokers, international ngos) appropriating carbon stocks to the detriment of indigenous peoples and their use of forests. the kind of stakeholder alliance that has come to typify the new redd socio-natural landscapes across the region – conservation ngos, carbon trading companies, and government agencies – also run the redd project in cambodia discussed by donal yeang. however, donal yeang argues that given the right conditions, redd projects can be designed in such a way that supports local communities’ rights to land and forest resources. this kind of ‘sustainable rural development’, but in a very different context, is also the focus of amalia rossi’s article on the royal projects in northern thailand. she shows how projects that used to aim to integrate communist-leaning ethnic groups into the thai cultural mainstream are now being recalibrated along king bhumibol’s “sufficiency economy philosophy” to win over thaksin-supporters to the royalist camp. marina wetzlmaier’s article on the impact of mining in the philippines reminds us that neoliberal development does not only rely on fuzzy stakeholder self-management but also on old-fashioned violence. mining was liberalised in the philippines in the 1990s, but state support of foreign investment has led to conflicts oliver pye editorial: changing socio-natures in south-east asia aseas 5(2) 205204 between indigenous peoples and small-scale gold miners and to armed resistance against large-scale mining. the last group of articles looks at changing waterscapes from different perspectives. erik cohen’s auto-ethnography of the 2011 flood in bangkok offers a very personal insight into how the middle-class segment of the city reacted to the flood. the extent of the flooding was itself a highly politicised event and connected to previous modernist waterscape development in thailand. this theme is taken up by carl middleton who explores how thailand’s energy sector has shifted its dam-building activities to the mekong region after social and environmentalist movements in thailand successfully prevented the further expansion of dams nationally. he shows how a “transnational nexus” of thai banks and engineering companies have financed and built dams in laos and myanmar, raising issues of trans-border environmental justice. finally, the photo essay by martin lukas, julia, irendra radjawali, michael flitner and oliver pye on the kapuas river in west kalimantan visualises its “conflict-laden multi-functionality”. it points to the spatial dynamics inherent in the transformation of the social relations of nature across south-east asia that connect the urban and the rural in new and diverse ways. references aiken, s. r., & leigh, c. h. 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(2008). claiming the grounds for reform: agrarian and environmental movements in indonsia. in s. m. borras, m. edelman, & c. kay (eds.), transnational agrarian movements confronting globalization (pp. 91-121). chichester, uk: wiley-blackwell. potter, l. m. (1997). a forest product out of control. gutta percha in indonesia and the wider malay world, 1845-1915. in p. boomgaard, f. colombijn, & d. henley (eds.), paper landscapes. explorations in the environmental history of indonesia (pp. 281-308). leiden, netherlands: kitlv press. pye, o. (2005). khor jor kor. forest politics in thailand. bangkok, thailand: white lotus. reid, a. (1993). southeast asia in the age of commerce 1450-1680. bangkok, thailand: silkworm books. aseas 5(2) 207206 robbins, p. (2012). political ecology: a critical introduction. chichester, uk: wiley-blackwell. smith, n. (1984). uneven development: capitalism, nature and the production of space. oxford, uk: blackwell. sodhi, n. s., & brooke, b. w. (2006). southeast asian biodiversity in crisis. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. stoler, a. l. (1995). capitalism and confrontation in sumatra’s plantation belt, 1870-1979. michigan, mi: university of michigan press. swyngedouw, e. (1999). modernity and hybridity: nature, regeneracionismo, and the production of the spanish waterscape, 1890–1930. annals of the association of american geographers, 89(3), 443–465. tagliacozzo, e. (2005). onto the coasts and into the forests: ramifications of the china trade on the ecological history of northwest borneo, 900-1900 ce. in r. l. wadley (ed.), histories of the borneo environment (pp. 25-60). leiden, netherlands: kitlv press. tsing, a. l. (2005). friction. an ethnography of global connection. princeton, nj: princeton university press. vandergeest, p. (1996). mapping nature: territorialization of forest rights in thailand. society and natural resources, 9(2), 159-175. vandergeest, p., & peluso, n. l. (1995). territorialization and state power in thailand. theory and society, 24(3), 385-426. westing, a. (1976). ecological consequences of the second indochina war. stockholm, sweden: stockholm international peace research institute. oliver pye editorial: changing socio-natures in south-east asia „in our hearts, we do not have trust“: frieden und bewaffnete gruppen in myanmar sina kowalewski ► kowalewski, s. (2014). „in our hearts, we do not have trust“: frieden und bewaffnete gruppen in myanmar. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 7(1), 41-60. der vorliegende artikel betrachtet die perspektiven der führungskreise bewaffneter oppositionsgruppen auf den politischen übergangsprozess in myanmar. die allianz aus 16 bewaffneten gruppen, der united nationalities federal council (unfc), zweifelt am friedenswillen der regierung und interpretiert deren reformen als strategie zur absicherung bestehender machtverhältnisse. dementsprechend bringen bewaffnete gruppen wie die karen national union (knu) und die kachin independence organization (kio) dem friedensprozess nur wenig vertrauen entgegen. das vorherrschende misstrauen und die top-down-strategie der regierung in der umsetzung von reformen fordern daher den friedensprozess heraus. der artikel basiert auf interviews mit bewaffneten gruppen und ihnen nahestehenden organisationen in thailand und myanmar in den jahren 2012 und 2013. schlagworte: bewaffnete gruppen; burma/myanmar; kachin independence organization; karen national union; united nationalities federal council  this article analyzes the perspectives of armed opposition groups’ leaderships on the political transition process in myanmar. the alliance of 16 armed groups, the united nationalities federal council (unfc), questions the government’s desire to peace and interprets its political reforms as a strategy to maintain the existing balance of power. therefore, armed groups such as the karen national union (knu) and the kachin independence organization (kio) have little trust in the peace process. the mistrust between the conflicting parties and the government’s top-down strategy in implementing reforms hence constitute the main challenges to the peace process. this article is based on interviews with members of armed groups and related organizations in thailand and myanmar in 2012 and 2013. keywords: armed groups; burma/myanmar; kachin independence organization; karen national union; united nationalities federal council aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 14 .1 -4 42 sina kowalewski  aseas 7(1) introduction die politischen reformen in myanmar und die zahlreichen runden der friedensverhandlungen zwischen unterschiedlichen bewaffneten oppositionsgruppen und der regierung werden innerund außerhalb des landes als große chance für die realisierung von frieden und demokratie wahrgenommen. die in der allianz der 16 bewaffneten gruppen, dem united nationalities federal council (unfc), vertretenen führungskreise der opposition bleiben jedoch skeptisch, inwiefern die aktuellen entwicklungen auf einen politikwandel der regierung hindeuten. sie interpretieren den von der regierung eingeleiteten reformund friedensprozess als strategie, um die „ethnischen nationalitäten“1 zu schwächen und die bestehende machtverteilung aufrechtzuerhalten. in der literatur zu transformationsund friedensprozessen wird ökonomischen bedingungen häufig eine große bedeutung zugemessen (vgl. collier & hoeffler, 2000; przeworski, alvarez, cheibub, & limongi, 2000). so gelten die ökonomischen motive bewaffneter gruppen als hindernisse für friedensprozesse. in dem vorliegenden artikel möchte ich die perspektive bewaffneter gruppen in myanmar auf den transitionsprozess herausarbeiten und zeigen, dass die friedensfähigkeit von bewaffneten gruppen durch ihre interpretation der aktuellen situation beeinflusst wird. ich beziehe mich auf den unfc und zwei seiner mitgliederorganisationen, die karen national union (knu) und die kachin independence organization/army (kio/a). ihre perspektive auf den transitionsprozess entwickeln die führungskreise dieser bewaffneten gruppen nicht aufgrund feststellbarer veränderungen, sondern basierend auf aktuellen und vergangenen erfahrungen. vergangene erfahrungen wie die zerstörung des hauptquartiers der knu in manerplaw 1995 und aktuelle erfahrungen wie der bruch des waffenstillstandsabkommen mit der kio/a durch das myanmarische militär 2011 führen bei bewaffneten gruppen zu mangelndem vertrauen in den friedensprozess. die führungskreise bewaffneter gruppen begegnen dem friedensprozess daher mit zurückhaltung. ziel des artikels ist es, einen blick auf die vorherrschende sicht der führungskreise von knu und kio auf den friedensprozess zu geben. dadurch wird eine im wissenschaftlichen diskurs bisher vernachlässigte perspektive erschlossen. der vorliegende artikel basiert auf mehr als 40 interviews, welche ich während zwei vierwöchiger feldforschungsaufenthalte im mai/juni 2012 und im oktober/ november 2013 in thailand (bangkok, nordthailand und grenzregion zu myanmar) und myanmar (yangon, karen-staat und kachin-staat) führte. die interviews waren dabei nur wenig formalisiert und die interviewfragen wurden in abhängigkeit zu den jeweiligen interviewpartnerinnen entwickelt. die meisten interviews wurden in englischer sprache geführt. wenn dies nicht möglich war, standen den interviewten nahestehende personen als übersetzerinnen zur verfügung. so stellte ich sicher, dass in diesem sensiblen politischen kontext die anwesenheit der übersetzerinnen die aussagen nicht verfälschte. die größte herausforderung der feldforschung bestand im zugang zu relevanten personen. auch wenn sich die politische situation 1 besonders die führungskreise der ethnischen gruppen bezeichnen sich selbst nicht als minderheiten, sondern als ethnische nationalitäten, auch da die ethnische verteilung nur durch einen neuen, verlässlichen zensus zu klären sei. dies zeigt sich beispielsweise auch in der namensgebung des unfc. der unfc rekurriert auf nationalitäten (nationalities) anstelle von minderheiten. 43„in our hearts, we do not have trust“: frieden und bewaffnete gruppen in myanmar in den letzten jahren entspannte, bedurfte es umfangreicher vorarbeiten, um das vertrauen von gegnerinnen der ehemaligen militärregierung zu gewinnen. bei der vorbereitung der feldforschung legte ich daher besonderen wert auf die identifizierung von und den zugang zu relevanten interviewpartnerinnen.2 zu den interviewpartnerinnen zählten politisch-militärische vertreter der knu, der kio und repräsentantinnen des united nationalities federal council (unfc), vertreterinnen lokaler hilfsund menschenrechtsorganisationen, friedensaktivistinnen sowie ein verhandlungsführer der regierungsseite, heute vertreter des myanmar peace center (mpc). zum schutz der interviewpartnerinnen wird auf die angabe von namen und detailinformationen wie beispielsweise zum ort der interviews, die zu deren identifizierung führen können, verzichtet. bei zivilen interviewpartnerinnen habe ich die organisation oder ethnische zugehörigkeit angegeben. bei militärischen interviewpartnerinnen habe ich darauf jedoch verzichtet, da dies wiederum rückschlüsse auf die person erlaubt hätte. transitionsund friedensprozess in myanmar seit über 60 jahren kämpfen in wechselnder intensität bewaffnete gruppen der ethnischen nationalitäten gegen die zentralregierung von burma/myanmar.3 zwar konnten in den vergangenen jahren, beispielsweise mitte der 1990er jahre, immer wieder waffenstillstandsvereinbarungen geschlossen werden, eine politische regelung und damit die dauerhafte beendigung der konflikte blieben aber aus. nicht selten basierten die waffenstillstandsabkommen dabei auf ökonomischen regelungen. waren bewaffnete gruppen bereit, ihren widerstand gegenüber der damaligen militärregierung aufzugeben, erhielten sie informell die erlaubnis wirtschaftlichen vorhaben in den gewünschten bereichen nachzugehen und beispielsweise jademinen zu betreiben. besonders einflussreiche mitglieder von (ehemaligen) widerstandsgruppen wurden durch wirtschaftliche beteiligungen in das regierungssystem eingebunden (meehan, 2011, s. 386–391). die strategie der regierung zur beendigung der bewaffneten konflikte basierte somit stets darauf, (wenigen) einflussreichen führungspersönlichkeiten wirtschaftliche beteiligungen einzuräumen und dadurch negative anreize für die wiederaufnahme von kämpfen zu schaffen (farrelly, 2012, s. 53). nach dem amtsantritt der regierung unter präsident thein sein startete der damalige eisenbahnminister aung min 2011 eine neue friedensinitiative. innerhalb von zwei jahren gelang es dem verhandlungsteam der regierung,4 mit mehr als ei2 besonders wolfgang trost und maung zarni unterstützten mich dabei sehr und stellten kontakte zu relevanten interviewpartnerinnen her. darüber hinaus intensivierte ich kontakte, die aus einem sechswöchigen feldforschungsaufenthalt im oktober und november 2010 in thailand entstanden waren. 3 1989 beschloss die damalige militärregierung burma (deutsch birma) in myanmar umzubenennen. häufig wird argumentiert, dass burma und myanmar prinzipiell die gleiche bedeutung haben, da beide namen bezeichnungen für die offiziell größte ethnische gruppe der birmanen sind. andere autorinnen argumentieren, dass der begriff myanmar mit buddhismus gleichzusetzen ist, so dass andere religionen ausgeschlossen werden (keenan, 2012, s. 34). in diesem artikel verwende ich burma für den zeitraum bis 1989 und myanmar für den zeitraum danach. 4 zu beginn der friedensverhandlungen war das mandat des verhandlungsteams unklar. mit der gründung des myanmar peace center (mpc) 2012 sind die personen des ersten verhandlungsteams nun auch 44 sina kowalewski  aseas 7(1) nem dutzend bewaffneter gruppen waffenstillstandsvereinbarungen zu unterzeichnen, darunter auch mit der einflussreichen gruppe der knu. nach einem 17-jährigen waffenstillstand zwischen der kia und dem myanmarischen militär flammten im juni 2011 bewaffnete auseinandersetzungen auf, die trotz zweier abkommen zwischen der kio und der regierung im mai und oktober 2013 nicht beendet werden konnten. die führungskreise der bewaffneten gruppen zeigen sich der neuen friedensinitiative gegenüber skeptisch. sie vermuten, dass ähnlich wie bei vorherigen waffenstillstandsvereinbarungen durch wirtschaftliche beteiligungen einzelner führungspersönlichkeiten anreize für die beendigung des bewaffneten widerstands geschaffen werden sollen. in den geführten interviews betrachten die interviewpartnerinnen häufig die absicherung bestehender machtverhältnisse als ziel der regierung. die motivation der regierung wird in einem interview beispielsweise so beschrieben: „power is like drugs: if you are addicted to it, it is hard to stop“ (damaliger hochrangiger knu-funktionär, persönliches interview, mai 2012). durch symbolische neuerungen sollte zudem die unterstützung des globalen nordens gesichert werden. die reformen werden daher auch als „only cosmetic changes“ (general bewaffneter gruppe, persönliches interview, mai 2012) beschrieben. der reformprozess fort von einer militärherrschaft begann bereits 2003, als der damalige state peace and development council (spdc)5 mit der roadmap to a discipline-flourishing democracy seine strategie verkündete, das land in die demokratie zu führen (zin & joseph, 2012, s. 106). wie in diesem fahrplan angekündigt, setzte die regierung 2008 eine neue verfassung in kraft und konzipierte sich damit formell als parlamentarische demokratie mit militäreinfluss. die bewaffneten konflikte sollten durch die transformation der ethnischen widerstandsarmeen in eine dem myanmarischen militär unterstellte grenzschutztruppe, die border guard force (bgf), beendet werden. als gegenleistung für die transformationsbereitschaft erhielten die ethnischen gruppen die möglichkeit, sich politisch zu beteiligen und beispielsweise eigene parteien für die wahlen aufzustellen. dies interpretierten mehrere bewaffnete gruppen jedoch als eine kapitulation und so waren es mit der new democratic army-kachin (ndak), der kayan new land party (knlp), der pa-o national organization (pno) und teilen der democratic karen buddhist army (dkba) nur 4 der etwa 206 bewaffneten gruppen, die sich dem kommando des myanmarischen militärs (tatmadaw) unterstellten. ein weiterer schritt des fahrplans waren die wahlen im november 2010. zwar entsprachen diese nicht den demokratischen standards des globalen nordens und wurden beispielsweise von der europäischen union als „weder frei noch fair“ (council of the european union, 2010) beurteilt, dennoch kennzeichneten diese in vielen offiziell mit der aushandlung von frieden und waffenstillstand beauftragt. 5 spdc war der offizielle name der damaligen militärregierung. bis 1997 trug diese den namen state law and order restoration council (slorc). mit der umbenennung 1997 ging jedoch keine politikänderung einher. 6 burma news international listet 19 aktive bewaffnete gruppen auf (burma news international [bni], 2013), darunter einige kleinere gruppen mit weniger als 500 kämpferinnen. etwa 12 aktive bewaffnete gruppen haben 500 oder (deutlich) mehr kämpferinnen, wie die united wa state army (uwsa) mit mehr als 25.000 mitgliedern. paul keenan (2012) identifiziert 37 bewaffnete gruppen, darunter befinden sich auch gruppen mit einer stärke von 20 kämpferinnen. er kommt zu dem ergebnis, dass die bewaffneten gruppen insgesamt über eine stärke von 61.770 kämpferinnen verfügen (keenan, 2012, s. 255). 45„in our hearts, we do not have trust“: frieden und bewaffnete gruppen in myanmar augen den auftakt des reformprozesses (effner, 2010). als mit den nachwahlen 2012 die oppositionsführerin aung san suu kyi mit der national league for democracy (nld) ins parlament einzog und hunderte politische gefangene entlassen wurden, waren zentrale forderungen von eu, usa und anderen ländern des globalen nordens erfüllt, die daraufhin ihre jahrzehntelange sanktionspolitik beendeten. für negative aufmerksamkeit sorgte ab mitte 2011 die gewalt gegen muslime, besonders gegen die staatenlosen rohyinga im rakhine-staat, die von menschenrechtsorganisationen wie human rights watch als ethnische säuberungen klassifiziert wurde (human rights watch [hrw], 2013). transformationsprozesse und bewaffnete gruppen in der theorie bei der betrachtung zentraler ergebnisse der transformationsforschung7 und der forschung zu bewaffneten gruppen wird deutlich, dass besonders der transformationsforschung, aber auch weiten teilen der forschung zu bewaffneten gruppen, ein rationales akteursverständnis zu grunde liegt, das dem eigenen verständnis bewaffneter gruppen kaum gerecht wird. mit diesem artikel stelle ich daher die perspektive bewaffneter gruppen in myanmar in den fokus, um ihre interpretationen und die sich aus dieser perspektive ergebenden voraussetzungen für einen stabilen frieden aufzuzeigen. politische transformationsprozesse avancierten besonders mit dem zerfall der sowjetunion zu einem bedeutenden forschungsthema (merkel & thiery, 2010, s. 186). dabei stand zunächst die frage nach den ursachen und verlaufsformen der transformationsprozesse im vordergrund, wohingegen mittlerweile ein verstärktes augenmerk auf die konsolidierung bestehender demokratien gerichtet wird. aus unterschiedlichen theoretischen zugängen wird dabei argumentiert, dass für die konsolidierung der demokratie die politischen und gesellschaftlichen verhältnisse in den transformationsländern entscheidend sind. so werden transformationsprozesse über das sozioökonomische entwicklungsniveau abgesichert und damit konsolidiert; ein rückfall in autokratische regimeformen ist dort unwahrscheinlich, wo zugleich keine extreme ökonomische ungleichheit und ein gestiegenes bildungsniveau herrschen (przeworski et al., 2000). myanmar kann im gegensatz zu einer vielzahl von transformationsprozessen als ein besonderer fall betrachtet werden, da es sich hierbei um einen „top-down, regime-driven“ (nilsen & tonnesson, 2013) prozess handelt. dies äußert sich auch im fahrplan der regierung. diese strategie führt dazu, dass aus einer kritischen perspektive die reformen stets dem verdacht ausgesetzt sind, die absicherung bestehender machtverhältnisse hätten einen größeren stellenwert als die einbeziehung unterschiedlicher bevölkerungsgruppen. zum anderen kann es akteurinnen nach jahrzehnten von militärherrschaft und repression probleme bereiten, bei der veränderung ihrer perspektive mit dem ambitionierten 7 transformation und die forschung zu transformationsprozessen geht über transitionsansätze hinaus. während sich der begriff der transition besonders auf den übergang von einem nicht-demokratischen zu einem demokratischen regime bezieht und damit politische wandlungsprozesse thematisiert, betrachtet die transformationsforschung auch wandlungsprozesse der gesellschaftlichen und wirtschaftlichen ordnung (egger, 2007, s. 154). da sich die diskussion des falls myanmars besonders auf die politischen veränderungen konzentriert, verwende ich hier den begriff der transition. 46 sina kowalewski  aseas 7(1) plan und tempo der regierung schritt zu halten. die regierung strebt für 2014 einen neuen zensus an und 2015 werden parlamentswahlen stattfinden. friedensverhandlungen zwischen den bewaffneten gruppen und der regierung hätten bereits ende 2013 abgeschlossen sein sollen und neue investorinnen drängen in das land. all dies sind relevante themen und ereignisse für die ehemaligen gegnerinnen der militärregierung, ohne dass ihnen jedoch gestaltungsmöglichkeiten eingeräumt werden. diese gleichzeitigkeit von ereignissen kann somit durchaus dazu führen, dass akteurinnen den anschluss verlieren. des weiteren sind ökonomische ungleichheit und ein schlechtes bildungsniveau drängende probleme in myanmar. in bezug auf die ergebnisse von przeworski et al. (2000) ist der transitionsprozess momentan daher nur schlecht abgesichert. in diesem top-down-demokratisierungsprozess wird somit ein demokratisches paradox (chestermann, 2005) sichtbar, nämlich die einführung demokratischer strukturen mit autokratischen mitteln. denn trotz (sichtbarer) veränderungen lässt die regierungsstrategie auch den raum, die reformen als autokratisches herrschaftsinstrument zu interpretieren. eine vorbedingung für transformationsprozesse in kriegsgesellschaften stellen in der regel friedensabkommen zwischen den konfliktparteien dar. die forschung zur internationalen konfliktregelung hat einige voraussetzungen für den erfolg von friedensprozessen und politischen transformationen herausgearbeitet. zu den wichtigsten zählt dabei, dass eine situation besteht, die friedensverhandlungen für beide seiten notwendig macht („entry point“). beispielsweise weil eine sich gegenseitig bedingende pattsituation („mutually hurting stalemate“) besteht, „where the hopes of victory of each side are blocked by the other and that blockage hurts“ (zartman, 2004, s. 147). ramsbotham, woodhouse und miall (2011, s. 179) unterscheiden zwischen der reife eines konfliktes, friedensverhandlungen zu beginnen und diese erfolgreich zu beenden, da konfliktparteien nicht nur willens sein müssen, friedensverhandlungen zu beginnen, sondern auch, die verhandelten bedingungen umzusetzen, auch wenn die schmerzenden umstände noch bestehen. für die beendigung von gewaltkonflikten ist es daher notwendig, dass die konfliktparteien verhandlungen als chance zur verbesserung der situation wahrnehmen. im unfc organisierte bewaffnete gruppen in myanmar wie die kia und die bewaffneten gruppen der knu, die karen national liberation army (knla) und die karen national defense organization (kndo), interpretieren die verhandlungen jedoch kaum als chance zur verbesserung der situation, sondern als strategie zur legitimierung und absicherung der bestehenden machtverhältnisse. sie betrachten die verhandlungen als teil einer strategie, die darauf abzielt, die ethnischen nationalitäten zu schwächen und sie (weiter) zu marginalisieren. bewaffnete gruppen werden häufig im kontext fragiler staatlichkeit diskutiert und sind damit unter anderem auch für die arbeit internationaler organisationen relevant. dies führt dazu, dass die vorliegenden arbeiten oft policy-orientiert sind. dabei kann jedoch die komplexität von motiven unterschätzt werden, besonders wenn bewaffnete gruppen überwiegend als rationale interessensmaximierer betrachtet werden, die aus profitgier handeln. collier und hoeffler (2000) kommen in ihrer studie zu dem ergebnis, dass habgier (greed) und nicht politischer missstand (grievance) das überwiegende handlungsleitende motiv bewaffneter gruppen in bürgerkriegen ist. aus dieser perspektive ist eine kriegsgesellschaft auch durch das spezifische öko47„in our hearts, we do not have trust“: frieden und bewaffnete gruppen in myanmar nomische gefüge der bürgerkriegsökonomie gekennzeichnet, in dem bewaffnete gruppen als wirtschaftsakteurinnen mit ökonomischen interessen auftreten. durch den (illegalen) handel, unter anderem mit rohstoffen und drogen wie opium und coca, bereichern sich bewaffnete gruppen selbst und sichern ihre ökonomische vormachtstellung ab, indem der gewaltkonflikt in gang gehalten wird (ballentine & sherman, 2003, s. 2). auch am fall von myanmar wird deutlich, dass wirtschaft und bewaffnete gruppen in einer beziehung zueinander stehen. woods (2011) führt den begriff des waffenstillstandskapitalismus (ceasefire capitalism) ein, der die wirtschaftlichen und politischen beziehungen zwischen geschäftsleuten, dem militär und der ethnischen elite in gebieten unter waffenstillstand regelt. er zeigt so, dass es beispielsweise myanmarische geschäftsleute und transnationale investorinnen waren, die im kachin-staat eine erste transition von war-making hin zum statemaking finanzierten und den waffenstillstandsabkommen der 1990er jahre den weg bereiteten. aber auch geschäftsleute der kachin und die kio/a profitierten von dem waffenstillstandskapitalismus: geschäftsleute agierten als vermittlerinnen zwischen chinesischen investorinnen und den jeweiligen widerstandsgruppen und die kio/a garantierte schutz bei der durchführung von wirtschaftsprojekten (woods, 2011, s. 752–761). ein ökonomischer blick auf bewaffnete gruppen trägt zum verständnis der beziehungen zwischen diesen gruppen und externen akteurinnen sowie deren motive bei, dennoch wird eine solche perspektive nur begrenzt den internen prozessen von bewaffneten gruppen und ihren politischen motiven gerecht. mit den internen prozessen bewaffneter gruppen beschäftigen sich beispielsweise die arbeiten von schlichte (2009) und engels (2012). schlichte argumentiert, dass die politische vorherrschaft von bewaffneten gruppen auf ihrer fähigkeit basiert, legitimität herzustellen. ihren bewaffneten kampf können sie dabei über politische projekte legitimieren. abstrakte vorstellungen wie befreiung und revolution haben dabei große mobilisierungseffekte, auch weil der nachweis über die realisierbarkeit faktisch nicht oder erst bei realer, politischer macht zu erbringen ist (schlichte, 2009, s. 104). engels analysiert ausgehend von soziologischen handlungstheorien die motive bewaffneter gruppen. biographische erfahrungen von gewalt, exklusion und missachtung stellen motive für den eintritt in den bewaffneten kampf dar, da der einsatz von waffen aufgrund von gruppenbezogenen missachtungserfahrungen als legitim und einzige möglichkeit zur erreichung von politischen und individuellen zielen erscheint (engels, 2012, s. 171–177). die arbeiten von schlichte und engels zeigen somit, dass eine vornehmliche betrachtung bewaffneter gruppen als ökonomische akteure zumindest unterkomplex ist und internen prozessen, die zu deren transformation und entstehung führen, nur unzureichend gerecht wird. der argumentation der autorinnen folgend führt dies dazu, dass eine dauerhafte niederlegung der waffen nicht durch versprechen von ökonomischem gewinnen erreicht werden kann. die ergebnisse der unterschiedlichen forschungsstränge zusammenführend bedeutet dies, dass für einen dauerhaften frieden eine situation geschaffen werden muss, die bewaffnete gruppen zu einer freiwilligen transformation veranlasst. dafür müssen führungspersönlichkeiten auch während der übergangsphase ihre legitimität gegenüber ihren anhängerinnen aufrechterhalten können, erfahrungen von missachtung und exklusion müssen als 48 sina kowalewski  aseas 7(1) durch die transformation überwindbar und politische programme als durch eine verhandlungslösung realisierbar rezipiert werden. generell neu sind arbeiten zur transition bewaffneter gruppen. dudouet (2013) identifiziert vier analyseebenen möglicher faktoren für die transition von bewaffnetem zu unbewaffnetem widerstand: die intragruppen-ebene, die beziehung zwischen der bewaffneten gruppe und der gesellschaft, die beziehung zwischen gruppe und staaten sowie die mit der internationalen gemeinschaft. auf der intragruppen-ebene sind veränderungen von eigenschaften und der identität der führungspersönlichkeiten, veränderungen im wertesystem und in der ideologie der führungselite, kriegsmüdigkeit und die verschiebung der machtverhältnisse innerhalb der entscheidungsstrukturen motive für die transformation von bewaffneten gruppen (dudouet, 2013, s. 406). auch diese ergebnisse deuten darauf hin, dass mit der entscheidung zur niederlegung der waffen eine veränderung der perspektive bewaffneter gruppen einhergeht. ich möchte nun zeigen, wie die führungskreise bewaffneter gruppen und ihnen nahestehende organisationen die friedensinitiative interpretieren. zentral für diese perspektive ist, dass sie das handeln der regierung als strategie zur marginalisierung der ethnischen nationalitäten und sicherung der ökonomischen vormachtstellung, also als strategie zur aufrechterhaltung der macht von regierung und militär, deuten. die ethnischen nationalitäten und der bewaffnete kampf nach dem zensus8 von 1983 wird in myanmar zwischen acht ethnischen gruppen unterschieden, wonach die birmanen mit 69 prozent die bevölkerungsmehrheit stellen, gefolgt von den shan mit 8,5 prozent, den karen mit 6,2 prozent, den rakhines (arakanesen) mit 4,5 prozent, den mon mit 2,4 prozent, den chin mit 2,2 prozent, den kachin mit 1,4 prozent und den karenni mit 0,4 prozent (steinberg, 2010, s. xxiv). weitere bedeutende ethnische gruppen, wie unter anderem die wa, naga, kokang oder palaung, wurden in diesem letzten zensus nicht gesondert erhoben. zwischen den ethnischen gruppen sorgen die zahlen für einen disput; so sind militärische führungskreise der karen beispielsweise der ansicht, dass der bevölkerungsanteil der karen gezielt nach unten korrigiert wurde, indem buddhistische karen9 den birmanen und nicht den karen zugerechnet wurden. für jede der oben genannten ethnischen nationalitäten formierten sich bewaffnete gruppen, die sich meist als selbstverteidigungsarmeen gegenüber dem myanmarischen militär betrachten, wie beispielsweise die knla oder die kia. nur wenige dieser gruppen agieren als zusammenschlüsse, allerdings gibt es durchaus militärische und politische allianzen. militärisch haben sich zurzeit beispielsweise die ta’ang national liberation army (tnla) und die arakan army (aa) mit der kia alliiert. aktuell vereinigt der unfc als dachorganisation 16 bewaffnete gruppen. die all burma students democratic front (absdf) ist eine der wenigen bewaffneten gruppen, die sich nicht als selbstverteidi8 von 30. märz bis 10. april 2014 fand die erhebung des ersten zensus nach mehr als 30 jahren statt. es wird jedoch eine politisierung der ergebnisse befürchtet (transnational institute, 2014). 9 die karen gehören verschiedenen religionen an. exakte zahlen liegen hierzu nicht vor, es kann jedoch geschätzt werden, dass jeweils rund ein drittel der karen christlich, buddhistisch und animistisch orientiert sind (steinberg, 2010, s. 107). 49„in our hearts, we do not have trust“: frieden und bewaffnete gruppen in myanmar gungsarmee einer ethnischen gruppe versteht. die absdf wurde nach der gewaltsamen niederschlagung der proteste von 198810 von studentinnen gegründet und kämpft seitdem in wechselnden allianzen für die beendigung der militärherrschaft. innerhalb der bewaffneten gruppen hat die united wa state army (uwsa) eine art sonderstatus. sie ist mit etwa 25.000 angehörigen die militärisch stärkste gruppe in myanmar, geht keine allianzen mit anderen gruppen ein und kontrolliert de facto, wenn auch nicht offiziell anerkannt, einen autonomen staat. die uwsa gilt als wichtiger akteur im drogenhandel, besonders mit opium, heroin und amphetaminen (bni, 2013, s. 180; keenan, 2012, s. 88). während viele andere politisch-militärische gruppen wie die knu und die kio aktivitäten zur begrenzung des drogenhandels unternommen haben, zählt der drogenhandel für die uwsa zu den wichtigsten einnahmequellen. andere bewaffnete gruppen finanzieren sich (auch) durch den handel mit holz und jade, einnahmen aus kasinos sowie durch die erhebung von steuern (keenan, 2012). bereits ab 1920 unter britischer herrschaft engagierten sich ethnische nationalitäten wie die karen bei den damaligen machthabern für die gründung eines sich selbst verwaltenden karen-staates. mit dem abkommen von panglong 1947 handelten general aung san und vertreterinnen von kachin, chin und shan die grundlagen für das politische system eines unabhängigen burmas aus. im abkommen heißt es eher unspezifisch, „full autonomy in internal administration for the frontier areas is accepted in principle“ (panglong agreement, 1947), jedoch stellt dieses abkommen auch heute einen wichtigen bezugspunkt und damit die legitimation für den bewaffneten kampf dar. durch das attentat an aung san und sechs seiner kabinettsmitglieder im juli 1947 scheiterten auch die vereinbarungen des panglong-abkommens. kurz nach der unabhängigkeit des damaligen burmas begann der bewaffnete konflikt zwischen der regierung und ethnischen widerstandsarmeen. in der perspektive der knu dient dieser der selbstverteidigung. so heißt es in einem statement der knu zur geschichte der karen: when karen security posts and villages were attacked by government troops and large numbers of karen killed and women brutalized in the area around the capital rangoon in late 1948 and early 1949, the knu believed it had no choice but to take up arms against the government in defense of itself. (knu, o.j., s. 3) auch der bewaffnete konflikt zwischen regierung und kia geht auf eine verteidigungsstrategie zur bewahrung der identität der kachin zurück. der bewaffnete kampf der kia begann 1961, hauptsächlich als widerstand gegen die entscheidung des premierministers u nu den buddhismus zur staatsreligion zu erheben. die kachin sind überwiegend christinnen, nach schätzungen etwa 90 bis 95 prozent (steinberg, 2010, s. 107). innerhalb der kachin erhielt und erhält die kia/o großen zuspruch und unterstützung: „the kachin people look to the kio to act. in their eyes, the kio was founded to defend the kachins’ heritage, their culture, religion, language and every other aspect of life“ (euro burma office, 2010, s. 2). der unfc ist die neu10 friedliche proteste von studierenden für demokratie wurden am 8. august 1988 vom militär gewaltsam niedergeschlagen. dabei starben etwa 3.000 menschen. 50 sina kowalewski  aseas 7(1) este allianz bewaffneter ethnischer widerstandsbewegungen und wurde im februar 2011 auf einer fünftägigen konferenz von 15 ethnischen gruppen gegründet. die gründung des unfc verfolgt das ziel „to strengthen the teamwork cooperation in their struggle for a true democratic federal union of burma against the ruling military junta“ (linn, 2011). der unfc ging aus dem committee for the emergence of federal union (cefu) hervor und möchte alle bewaffneten widerstandsbewegungen in den friedensverhandlungen mit der regierung vertreten (bni, 2013, s. 174). zunächst weigerte sich das verhandlungsteam der regierung allerdings friedensgespräche mit dem unfc zu führen, traf sich in der folgezeit dann jedoch doch einige wenige male mit dem unfc. ein verhandlungsführer der regierungsseite begründete die weigerung damit, dass die unfc-vertreterinnen „only promote their own personal interests“ (persönliches interview, mai 2012). ein erstes informelles treffen zwischen aung min und einem unfc-vertreter fand allerdings schon im dezember 2011 statt. ein hochrangiger unfc-vertreter erklärt die fehlende gesprächsbereitschaft der regierung mit dem unfc wiederum so: „the government peace team did not want to talk with the unfc, because they do not want to make the unfc strong. they only came to us because of the kia membership“ (persönliches interview, oktober 2013). auch wenn die regierung den unfc als vertretung der bewaffneten gruppe nicht anerkennt, hat der unfc für die bewaffneten gruppen im widerstand eine wichtige koordinierungsfunktion. seit 2011 wurden zahlreiche waffenstillstandsvereinbarungen erneuert und neu geschlossen, dennoch bleiben gruppen wie die knu, kio und der unfc skeptisch. diese skepsis erklärt sich auch aus den bewaffneten auseinandersetzungen im kachin-staat, die im juni 2011 begannen. tatmadaw (das myanmarische militär) brach im juni 2011 den waffenstillstand mit kio/a, um – wie es in der perspektive des kio-führungskreises und von regierungskritikerinnen heißt – chinesischen unternehmen schutz beim staudammbau zu gewähren (hochrangiger kio-funktionär, persönliches interview, mai 2012). so habe tatmadaw militärstützpunkte auf kiakontrolliertem gebiet errichtet und die kia angegriffen. diese erklärung für den ausbruch des bewaffneten konfliktes ist innerhalb der kachin-gemeinschaft weit verbreitet und wird auch von gemeindebasierten organisationen geteilt. so heißt es beispielsweise in einem von verschiedenen lokalen organisationen im zuge von luftangriffen des myanmarischen militärs gegen die kia veröffentlichten statement: „since june 2011, burmese troops started war against kachin independence army“ (kachin community based organizations, 2012). in der wahrnehmung der bewaffneten gruppen und der ihnen nahestehenden organisationen wird nicht abgestritten, dass der präsident zu einer beendigung der kampfhandlungen aufrief, allerdings habe er nicht die notwendige autorität aufbieten können oder wollen, das militär zum rückzug zu veranlassen: „the president, he was whispering and not shouting“ (kachin-entwicklungshelferin, persönliches interview, mai 2012). auch mehr als zwei jahre nach dem beginn der bewaffneten auseinandersetzungen konnten diese nicht beendet werden. die kio/a fordert anstelle eines erneuten waffenstillstandsabkommens eine politische regelung, die dauerhaft sicherheit vor übergriffen gewährleistet. besonders die zivilbevölkerung leidet unter den kämpfen. mehr als 100.000 menschen sind vor der gewalt geflohen und leben als intern vertriebene (internally displaced persons, idps) in myanmar. besonders schlecht sind die bedingungen der 51„in our hearts, we do not have trust“: frieden und bewaffnete gruppen in myanmar 66.000 idps in den camps im kia-kontrollierten gebiet, denn die regierung ließ zwischen mitte 2011 und mitte 2013 nur zweimal internationale hilfstransporte zu (kachin women’s association thailand, 2013, s. 2). die meisten bewaffneten gruppen legitimieren ihr vorgehen als kampf gegen diskriminierung und für menschenrechte. sie sehen sich besonders durch hohe raten von armut und analphabetismus, fehlende infrastruktur wie strom und verkehrswege, menschenrechtsverletzungen aufgrund von zwangsarbeit, willkürliche steuern, das verbot in ethnischen sprachen zu unterrichten und zwangsumsiedlung durch die regierung diskriminiert. auch das vorgehen des tatmadaw, wie sich dies beispielsweise in der „four-cut“-strategie äußert, stellt in ihren augen eine verletzung der menschenrechte dar (sakhong, 2012, s. 28). da bewaffnete gruppen in enger verbindung zu dorfbewohnerinnen und dörfern stehen, von hier aus operieren und rekrutieren, zielt diese strategie auf eine unterbrechung der verbindung zwischen dörfern und bewaffneten gruppen ab. dörfer werden so von 1) nahrungsmitteln, 2) informationen, 3) verkehrsmitteln und 4) kommunikation abgeschnitten. um den austausch von informationen zwischen dörfern und bewaffneten gruppen zu erschweren, dürfen in den ethnischen gebieten beispielsweise keine zeitungen in den ethnischen sprachen publiziert werden, was dazu führt, dass diese sprachen zunehmend eliminiert werden (sakhong, 2012, s. 28). in einem interview werden die folgen der militärstrategie für die dorfgemeinschaften so beschrieben: to cut the recruitment of new soldiers [for the ethnic resistance forces] for example, they [the tatmadaw] relocate villages. the villagers are therefore suffering terribly during the civil war; women, elders and children, especially, are suffering. because of this cutting system, the ethnic states are so poor. (chinfriedensaktivist, persönliches interview, november 2013) der friedensprozess in myanmar: entwicklungen und perspektiven seit beginn der friedensoffensive 2011 konnte das verhandlungsteam der regierung mit 14 bewaffneten gruppen bilaterale waffenstillstandsvereinbarungen schließen bzw. bestehende erneuern. bereits seit ende 2013 bemühte sich die regierung um die überführung der bilateralen vereinbarungen in ein landesweites waffenstillstandsabkommen (nationwide ceasefire). besonders die kio hatte jedoch angekündigt, dieses nicht zu unterzeichnen, da ihren forderungen nach einem politischen dialog und der beendigung der übergriffe durch das myanmarische militär nicht nachgekommen worden war. auch andere gruppen stehen dem landesweiten abkommen kritisch gegenüber und interpretieren dieses als nach außen gerichtete strategie. der unfc begründet seine ablehnende haltung beispielsweise so: the nationwide ceasefire is a hot item. the government is saying that the ceasefire should come first and then we will work on the political solution. but signing a paper is very easy, so we [the unfc members] have our doubts that with the ceasefire a political solution … will come. (unfc, persönliches interview, oktober 2013) 52 sina kowalewski  aseas 7(1) auch andere akteurinnen sind skeptisch, ob einer waffenstillstandsvereinbarung auch ein politischer dialog folgt: „the burmese government is not sincere. they always say something and then do something else“ (general bewaffneter gruppe, persönliches interview, oktober 2013). für die bewertung der handlungen der myanmarischen regierung verfolgen die bewaffneten gruppen aufmerksam die aktuellen ereignisse im kachin-staat; so führten 2013 geschlossene abkommen zwischen regierung und kio/a nicht zu einer beendigung der kämpfe. dies stärkt das misstrauen gegenüber der regierung. nur wenige wochen nach dem letzten abkommen im oktober 2013, welches den weg für weitere verhandlungen bereiten sollte, kam es zu erneuten bewaffneten auseinandersetzungen. kio/a und ihnen nahestehende organisationen sehen den auslöser für die bewaffneten übergriffe in dem machtstreben von militär und regierung, die ihre position durch die kontrolle von ressourcen und land zu stärken beabsichtigen. bewaffnete gruppen der unfc-mitglieder beschreiben ihr handeln ausschließlich als reaktion auf das regierungshandeln: „we just respond to their [the government’s] actions. they want to talk, we talk with them. they fight us, we fight back“ (oberst bewaffneter gruppe, persönliches interview, oktober 2013). eine große sorge der führungskreise bewaffneter gruppen, wie der im unfc vertretenen, besteht in ihrer eigenen schwächung durch die taktik der regierung. sie befürchten durch die bilateralen verhandlungen mit regierungsvertreterinnen, die einzelnen personen oder gruppen vor allem wirtschaftliche zugeständnisse machen um sie zu überzeugen, geschwächt zu werden. das erhöht die gefahr, dass es den widerstandsbewegungen nicht gelingt, mit einer stimme zu sprechen und gemeinsam ihre politischen ziele zu verfolgen. um eine gemeinsame position zu entwickeln und vorbedingungen für die unterzeichnung des landesweiten waffenstillstandsabkommens zu formulieren, verständigten sich im oktober 2013 16 bewaffnete gruppen auf einer konferenz in laiza, dem hauptquartier der kia, auf einen gemeinsamen standpunkt und gründeten das nationwide ceasefire coordination team (ncct). im januar 2014 erarbeiteten diese bewaffneten gruppen und ihre politischen vertretungen auf einer konferenz im knla-kontrollierten gebiet den entwurf eines landesweiten waffenstillstandsabkommens, das wenige tage später dem verhandlungsteam der regierung vorgelegt wurde. als zentrale bedingungen für die unterzeichnung eines landesweiten abkommens fordern die bewaffneten gruppen, dass dieses abkommen bereits den rahmen und das verfahren für einen politischen dialog sowie die themen streitkräfte und schutz der zivilbevölkerung zu beinhalten habe (ethnic armed organizations conference, 2013, s. 2). nur durch konkrete vereinbarungen scheint es für die bewaffneten gruppen möglich, ihre politischen programme als durch verhandlungen durchsetzbar wahrzunehmen. obwohl in den vergangenen monaten zahlreiche waffenstillstandsvereinbarungen neu unterzeichnet oder bestätigt wurden, führte dies bei den skeptikerinnen des friedensprozesses nicht zu einer veränderung ihrer perspektive auf regierung und militär. denn es fehlt an konkreten schritten und der einhaltung von vereinbarungen. in den interviews (2012 und 2013) wurde die friedensinitiative überwiegend als nach außen gerichtete strategie interpretiert, um den globalen norden zu besänftigen und investorinnen wie touristinnen für myanmar zu interessieren. im nun folgenden teil werde ich zeigen, dass die aktuellen friedensverhandlungen in den 53„in our hearts, we do not have trust“: frieden und bewaffnete gruppen in myanmar führungskreisen bewaffneter gruppen kaum als chance zur verbesserung ihrer politischen situation wahrgenommen werden. in einer negativen einschätzung wird die derzeitige friedensinitiative in knu-,11 kiound unfc-führungskreisen basierend auf vorangegangen erfahrungen als regierungsstrategie zur marginalisierung der ethnischen nationalitäten und zur absicherung der ökonomischen vormachtstellung von regierung und militär interpretiert. misstrauen als herausforderungen für den frieden im verlauf des artikels habe ich bereits darauf hingewiesen, dass sich die bewaffneten gruppen, wie diese im unfc vertreten sind, zwar an dem friedensprozess beteiligen, diesem jedoch skeptisch gegenüberstehen. ich argumentiere, dass die zurückhaltung dieser gruppen im friedensprozess weniger darauf basiert, eine kriegsökonomie aufrechterhalten zu wollen, als vielmehr darauf, dass aufgrund der jahrzehntelangen konfliktgeschichte ein misstrauen gegenüber der regierung besteht. solange die verhandlungen zwischen regierung und bewaffneten gruppen zu keinen greifbaren ergebnissen führen und die regierung an ihrer top-down-strategie festhält, ist eine niederlegung der waffen somit auch den anhängerinnen und kämpferinnen nicht vermittelbar. die waffen trotzdem niederzulegen, würde die autorität der führungskreise bei ihrer anhängerschaft gefährden. eine der größten herausforderungen für den friedensprozess stellt somit das anhaltende misstrauen dar, dass politische veränderungen im sinne der bewaffneten gruppen nicht durch verhandlungen zu erreichen sind. ihr misstrauen gegenüber der regierung beschreibt die führungsebene der kio beispielsweise so: „in our hearts, we do not have trust. in the past they [the government] always agreed on paper, but their actions on the ground were different. therefore, we do not believe them“ (hochrangiger kio-funktionär, persönliches interview, oktober 2013). wichtiger als worte sind für sie die handlungen von regierung und armee. besonders die aktuellen bewaffneten auseinandersetzungen, aber auch (lang) zurückliegende ereignisse bestimmen die interpretation der gegenwärtigen situation. diese interpretation macht es den bewaffneten gruppen kaum möglich, der reformund friedensstrategie der regierung vertrauen zu schenken. sie beteiligen sich zwar an den friedensgesprächen und beschäftigen sich intensiv mit einem zukünftigen föderalen staatssystem. so arbeitet beispielsweise der unfc an einer neuen verfassung. diese ist jedoch nur eine von zwei strategien: „we are hoping for the best, but we are prepared for the worst“ (general bewaffneter gruppe, persönliches interview, oktober 2013). die bewaffneten gruppen der knu und kio interpretierten aktuelle und vergangene ereignisse in den geführten interviews häufig als eine geschichte der marginalisierung mit dem versuch der beseitigung regierungsfeindlicher gruppen. ein bedeutendes ereignis für die knu stellt der sturz ihres hauptquartiers manerplaw 1995 durch die myanmarische armee dar. mehr als zwei jahre, von 1992 bis 1994, hatte das militär erfolglos versucht, manerplaw zu erobern. da die eroberung in einer direk11 innerhalb der knu-führung existieren unterschiedliche ansichten über den erfolgversprechendsten weg zur erreichung der politischen forderungen. so sind softliner durchaus bereit, sich stärker auf die friedensinitiative der regierung einzulassen. 54 sina kowalewski  aseas 7(1) ten auseinandersetzung misslang, wählte die damalige militärregierung einen hinterhalt und konnte mit unterstützung der democratic karen buddhist army (dkba) schließlich manerplaw einnehmen. 1994 gründete der buddhistische karen mönch u thuzana die democratic karen buddhist organisation (dkbo), nachdem er bereits ab anfang der 1990er jahre zulauf von knuund knla-angehörigen erhalten hatte. die gründung der dkba/o kann dabei als reaktion auf die christliche dominanz innerhalb der knu und deren autoritäre führung gedeutet werden. jedoch förderte die militärregierung von beginn an u thuzana und die gründung der dkba als verbündete der regierung im kampf gegen die knu (south, 2009, s. 57) und schlug der dkba einen deal vor: wenn es ihnen gelänge, manerplaw zu erobern, erhielte die dkba autonomierechte im karen-staat. angeführt von dkba-kämpfern, die als ehemalige knla-angehörige die versteckten wege und schwachpunkte kannten, und getarnt in knla-uniformen marschierten vertreterinnen der militärregierung im januar 1995 in das knu-hauptquartier ein (karen human rights group, 1995). die eroberung von manerplaw war in der erzählung der knu nicht der erste versuch ihrer zerschlagung. bereits 1961 unter general ne win war dieser versuch unternommen worden: „for religious reasons they [the myanmar government] want to wipe the karens out. but they could not wipe us out in the past because there are more of us than they believe and they overestimated their strength“ (ehemaliger hochrangiger knu-funktionär, persönliches interview, oktober 2013). die geschichte der gewaltsamen beendigung von widerstand hat jedoch nicht nur für die knu eine bedeutung, sondern auch für die kachin. die kio und ihnen nahestehende organisationen interpretieren die angriffe auf kia-stützpunkte und das wiederaufflammen der kämpfe seit mitte 2011 als eine systematische strategie zur schwächung der kachin: „the enemy’s offensive against the kachin since 2011 is a strategy of the tatmadaw to wipe out the kachin“ (unfc, persönliches interview, oktober 2013). in den geführten interviews geben die kio und ihnen nahestehende organisationen an, dass die kachin trotz der übergriffe des tatmadaw an dem waffenstillstand hätten festhalten wollen und die kia erst maßnahmen zur selbstverteidigung ergriffen habe, nachdem zahlreiche kia-kämpferinnen getötet worden waren und deutlich wurde, dass sich das militär die zurückdrängung der kia zum ziel gesetzt hatte. in folge der kampfhandlungen fühlten sich die kachin in ihrer existenz bedroht und der konflikt weitete sich aus, indem sich das narrativ der kia/o zunehmend gesellschaftlich verankerte. nach dem ausbruch der kampfhandlungen war es beispielsweise nicht länger das ziel der kachin baptist convention (kbc),12 einen waffenstillstand zu fördern, sondern die freiheit der kachin, sie beteten daher „for freedom, not ceasefire“ („burma’s largest“, 2012). seit dem wiederaufflammen der kämpfe erhielt die kia verstärkt zulauf und politische forderungen radikalisierten sich; so existiert in kio-führungskreisen heute auch die einschätzung, dass nur ein unabhängiger kachin-staat (und nicht mehr als teil eines föderalen staates) dauerhaft freiheit und sicherheit garantieren kann. in den interviews werden häufig parallelen zwischen der kia und der myanmar national democratic alliance army (mndaa) gezogen. so habe das militär versucht 12 die kbc ist eine christliche organisation mit über 400.000 mitgliedern. sie unterstützt die zivilbevölkerung in den konfliktregionen und äußert sich öffentlich zu dem bewaffneten konflikt im kachinstaat. 55„in our hearts, we do not have trust“: frieden und bewaffnete gruppen in myanmar die kia wie schon die mndaa, eine bewaffnete gruppe der kokang, zur kapitulation zu zwingen. im gegensatz zu der mndaa sei bei der kia dieser versuch jedoch gescheitert. das myanmarische militär griff 2009 die mndaa an, die trotz der unterstützung anderer gruppen nur wenige tage später gezwungen war, sich zu ergeben. die myanmarische regierung sei daher davon ausgegangen, dass eine zerschlagung der kia ebenso möglich sei: „they [the myanmar government] crushed the kokang within three days, so [they believed] they can crush the kachin within ten days“ (unfc-vertreter, persönliches interview, oktober 2013). aktuell zeigt sich die angst vor der zerschlagung von bewaffneten gruppen darin, dass in führungskreisen eine militärische großoffensive wie gegen die liberation tigers of tamil eelam (ltte) im norden sri lankas für durchaus möglich gehalten wird. es kursieren informationen, wonach die regierung von myanmar den weitestgehenden waffenstillstand nutzte, um besonders durch den austausch mit israel und sri lanka ihre kenntnisse im kampf gegen widerstandsgruppen zu erweitern. bei ihrem vorgehen werden regierung und militär überwiegend ökonomische motive unterstellt. so zielten regierung und militär darauf ab, wichtige investitionsstandorte unter ihre kontrolle zu bringen, entweder durch landnahme oder durch waffengewalt. eine kachin-friedensaktivistin fasst das konfliktgeschehen so zusammen: an investment site means a clash. where there is an investment site in kachin state, they [the tatmadaw] will just find an excuse to fight. all fighting is about clearing the area for investment projects. but investment only means extracting the natural resources. without international help the whole country will be sold out soon, and after 2015 nothing will be left. (kachin-friedensaktivistin, persönliches interview, november 2013) ein großteil der aktuellen bewaffneten auseinandersetzungen im kachin-staat findet entlang der 771 kilometer langen shwe gaspipeline statt, die öl und gas aus dem golf von bengalen quer durch myanmar nach china befördert. zum schutz der pipeline wurden innerhalb von wenigen monaten 6.000 zusätzliche soldaten des myanmarischen militärs in die region gebracht (shwe gas movement, 2012). die beschlagnahmung von land in den gebieten der ethnischen nationalitäten wird derzeit als großes problem thematisiert. zwischen regierung und wirtschaftselite besteht häufig (noch) eine enge verbindung, sodass der regierung nahestehende unternehmen mit deren duldung land konfiszieren, wie beispielsweise die yuzana company limited. deren gründer, der geschäftsmann u htay myint, verfügt über enge beziehungen zum militär bis hin zum ehemaligen staatschef von myanmar, than shwe. im kachin-staat konfiszierte das unternehmen in der vergangenheit etwa 120.000 hektar land. das handeln von regierung und militär wird dabei als versuch interpretiert, durch die kontrolle von wirtschaftlich relevanten gebieten ihre machtposition dauerhaft zu sichern. für die menschen in den waffenstillstandsregionen brachte der friedensprozess allerdings positive entwicklungen. so ist es in weiten teilen des karen-staats beispielsweise für die menschen dort möglich, sich frei und ohne angst zu bewegen (south, 2014). aber auch hier entsteht durch landbeschlagnahmung für wirtschaftsprojekte ein neues großes problem für die dörflichen gemeinschaften (karen human rights group, 2013). in einer pessimistischen perspektive, 56 sina kowalewski  aseas 7(1) die besonders innerhalb der führungskreise von kio, knu und unfc sowie unter aktivistinnen kursiert, werden die aktuellen friedensbemühungen in erster linie als nach außen gerichtete strategie interpretiert: „the myanmar peace center and the government want to have an agreement to show the world that myanmar is a safe environment for business and tourists“ (chin-friedensaktivist, persönliches interview, november 2013). zentral bei ihrer interpretation der aktuellen ereignisse sind ihre vorangegangen erfahrungen mit regierung und militär. fazit der mögliche erfolg des friedensprozesses in myanmar wird wesentlich durch das fehlende vertrauen, das die führungskreise bewaffneter gruppen diesem entgegenbringen, in frage gestellt. den proklamierten reformprozess der regierung betrachten sie als fortsetzung einer althergebrachten strategie, die besonders auf die marginalisierung der ethnischen nationalitäten und die sicherung der ökonomischen vormachtstellung für regierungsund militärangehörige abzielt. die friedensabkommen sollen in dieser perspektive dazu dienen, die widerstandsbewegungen in ein enges korsett zu pressen: „the nationwide ceasefire is a strategy of the burmese government to put us in a cage. so that we cannot move anywhere, we are locked in a small chicken cage“ (general bewaffneter gruppe, persönliches interview, oktober 2013). die waffenstillstandsabkommen sollen die widerstandsbewegungen zur niederlegung der waffen drängen, indem sie ihnen (minimale) politische und wirtschaftliche teilhabe versprechen, jedoch ohne die chance tiefgreifende politische veränderungen umzusetzen. ich zeigte in dem vorliegenden artikel, dass sich die bewaffneten gruppen zwar an dem friedensprozess beteiligen, letztendlich damit aber nur auf das handeln der regierung reagieren und ihre gesprächsbereitschaft signalisieren. ich argumentierte, dass die führungskreise bewaffneter gruppen nicht deshalb eine kritische perspektive einnehmen, weil sie ökonomische verluste befürchten, sondern weil es ihnen an vertrauen fehlt. nach jahrzehnten der militärherrschaft ist es eine besondere herausforderung, dem gesinnungswandel der regierung zu vertrauen und bei dem ambitionierten tempo des reformprozesses den anschluss nicht zu verlieren. lassen sich die führungen der bewaffneten gruppen auf das von der regierung vorgegebene tempo ein, laufen sie gefahr ihre legitimität gegenüber ihren anhängerinnen nicht länger aufrechterhalten zu können. führungspersönlichkeiten, die sich zu schnell auf den reformprozess einlassen, geraten bei ihrer anhängerschaft in verdacht, durch ökonomische vorteile korrumpiert worden zu sein. dementsprechend erfährt der friedensprozess bei skeptikerinnen nicht durch die ökonomische beteiligung mehr glaubwürdigkeit, sondern nur durch eine politische. erst durch eine politische beteiligung können die bewaffneten gruppen die friedensverhandlungen als chance zur verbesserung ihrer situation wahrnehmen. weitere wirtschaftliche zugeständnisse für einzelne individuen und gruppen würden nur die kritische perspektive, in der die regierung auf die spaltung der ethnischen nationalitäten abzielt, bestärken. bereits bei vorherigen waffenstillstandsvereinbarungen, wie beispielsweise zwischen kio/a und regierung, wurden wirtschaftliche zugeständnisse über eine politische regelung gestellt. das wiederaufflammen der kämpfe im 57„in our hearts, we do not have trust“: frieden und bewaffnete gruppen in myanmar kachin-staat zeigt jedoch, dass ohne eine politische regelung die gefahr bewaffneter auseinandersetzungen bestehen bleibt. um einen nachhaltigen frieden in myanmar zu erreichen, ist es hilfreich, der perspektive der skeptikerinnen gehör zu schenken und den top-down-friedensprozess in einen solchen zu verwandeln, der einer vielzahl von gesellschaftlichen und ethnischen gruppen gestaltungsmöglichkeiten einräumt. nur so kann innerhalb der bewaffneten gruppen die perspektive eine chance bekommen, dass durch eine verhandlungslösung ihre marginalisierung überwindbar und ihre politischen forderungen realisierbar sind. dazu muss die regierung bereit sein, von ihrem plan für die zukunft myanmars, der strategie einer florierenden, disziplinierten demokratie, abzuweichen und demokratische verfahren bereits im reformprozess 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(2012). kachin organization’s statement on thein sein government and burmese army airstrike attacks against kachin civilians and kio/kia. zugegriffen unter http:// www.burmapartnership.org/2012/12/kachin-org-statement-on-thein-sein-n-burmese-army-airstrikeattacks/ kachin women's association thailand. (2013). state terror in the kachin hills. burma army attacks against civilians in northern burma. zugegriffen unter http://www.kachinwomen.com/images/stories/publication/state_terror.pdf karen human rights group. (1995). the fall of manerplaw. zugegriffen unter http://www.burmalink.org/ the-fall-of-manerplaw-khrg-commentary-february-1995/ karen human rights group. (2013). losing ground. land conflicts and collective actions in eastern myanmar. zugegriffen unter http://www.khrg.org/reports karen national union (o.j.). the karens, a nation, their nature and history. zugegriffen unter http://www. knuhq.org/statements/the%20karens%20history.pdf keenan, p. 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(2000). democracy and development. political institutions and well-being in the world, 1950–1990. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. ramsbotham, o., woodhouse, t., & miall, h. (2011). contemporary conflict resolution. cambridge, uk: polity press. sakhong, l. h. (2012). the dynamics of sixty years of ethnic armed conflict in burma. in p. keenan (hrsg.), by force of arms. armed ethnic groups in burma (s. 9–40). chiang mai, thailand: burma centre for ethnic studies. schlichte, k. (2009). in the shadow of violence. the politics of armed groups. frankfurt, deutschland: campus. shwe gas movement. (2012). myanmar pipeline fuels fighting, rights abuses in ethnic areas. zugegriffen unter http://www.shwe.org/myanmar-pipeline-fuels-fighting-rights-abuses-in-ethnic-areas-report/ south, a. (2009). ethnic politics in burma. states of conflict. new york, ny: routledge. south, a. (2014). inside the peace process. myanmar times. zugegriffen unter http://www.mmtimes.com/ index.php/national-news/9190-what-is-the-peace-process-in-myanmar-local-and-global-realities. html steinberg, d. (2010). burma/myanmar. what everyone needs to know. oxford, uk: oxford university press. transnational institute. (2014). ethnicity without meaning, data without context. the 2014 census, identity and citizenship in burma/myanmar. burma policy briefing nr. 13. amsterdam, niederlande: tni. 59„in our hearts, we do not have trust“: frieden und bewaffnete gruppen in myanmar woods, k. (2011). ceasefire capitalism. military-private partnerships, resource concessions and militarystate building in burma-china borderlands. journal of peasant studies, 38(4), 747–770. zartman, w. (2004). sources and settlements of ethnic conflicts. in a. wimmer, r. goldstone, d. horowitz, u. joras, & c. schetter (hrsg.), facing ethnic conflicts. towards a new realism (s. 141–159). lanham, md: rowman & littlefield publishers. zin, m., & joseph, b. (2012). the opening in burma. the democrats’ opportunity. journal of democracy, 23(4), 104–119. über die autorin sina kowalewski ist wissenschaftliche mitarbeiterin am zentrum für konfliktforschung der philipps-universität marburg. ihr aktuelles forschungsinteresse gilt dem transitionsprozess in myanmar und hier besonders den bewaffneten gruppen. sie hat mehrmals feldforschungen in thailand und myanmar durchgeführt. ► kontakt: sina.kowalewski@staff.uni-marburg.de danksagung mein dank gilt besonders christoph kowalewski, wolfgang trost, thorsten bonacker und brigitte schüssler für ihre unterstützung bei meiner feldforschung. des weiteren bedanke ich mich für wertvolle hinweise bei zwei anonymen gutachterinnen. book review: gravers, m., & flemming, y. (eds.). (2014). burma/myanmar—where now? copenhagen, denmark: nordic institute of asian studies. isbn: 978-87-7694-112-3 -xiv. 447 pages. ► benedikter, s., & köster, u. (2015). book review: gravers, mikael, & flemming, ytzen (eds.). (2014). burma/myanmar—where now? aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 8(1), 111-118. myanmar has been ruled by an authoritarian military regime for more than half a century. the southeast asian country gained sad notoriety through political repression, massive human rights abuses, armed conflicts, socioeconomic decline, and extreme poverty. this began to change only in 2011 when the junta replaced itself with a quasi-civilian government in order to seek ways out of its political and economic isolation. thereafter, the country embarked on a new political course of opening up and political liberalization. while the international community has euphorically celebrated myanmar’s self-initiated “roadmap to democratization,” new and old problems endanger the transitional process. in response to this, mikael gravers, an anthropologist and myanmar scholar, and flemming ytzen, a journalist with a long-lasting burma engagement, put together this ambitious volume taking stock of the current political situation with a thematic focus on conflict resolution, peace building, and democratization. bringing together the perspectives of 21 academics, journalists, and practitioners, the purpose of this book is to address the attainments and prospects of the transitional process so far, as well as the future challenges and threats lying ahead of the conflict-torn country. the book features three parts and a brief conclusive chapter. part i, entitled “order and change” (pp. 23–139), guides the reader through the most salient events, developments, and changes of the country’s ongoing transition from a military dictatorship to a civil government with all its institutional consequences. ytzen and gravers draw a lively picture of the controversial elections of 2012 as well as the upcoming polls of 2015. this is followed by an overview of the altering role of the media and newly emerging space for political engagement. this section also looks at the main actors and key political figures, their interests and strategies, most notably aung san suu kyi and her national league for democracy (nld), president thein sein, the military-affiliated union solidarity and development party (usdp), and the various ethnic minority parties, but also societal forces such as the tatmadaw (military of the union government), the bureaucracy, the buddhist sangha, business interests, and (armed) ethnic groups. michael lidauer provides detailed insights into the new constitution and the political administrative system enshrined in it. he highlights the need for more decentralization, constitutional amendments, and corresponding changes in the election system on the way towards a new and more democratic state in myanmar. charles petrie and ashley south briefly sketch the country’s civil society rezensionen  book reviews w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 15 .1 -1 0 112 simon benedikter & ute köster  aseas 8(1) landscape and elucidate the potential role ngos may play for peace building and democratization. more critically, referring to myanmar’s geostrategic position in the region, bertil lintner argues that reforms are embedded in and driven by geopolitical power games and interests that do not necessarily serve the democratic transition in the first place. subsequently, josine legêne and flemming ytzen describe how global and regional players aligned their foreign policy towards myanmar throughout its turbulent history. beyond politics, major social issues are addressed by marie ditlevsen, who sheds light on current developments in health and education, while jessica harriden elaborates on the situation of women who suffered greatly because of decades of armed conflict and violence. anna roberts shows that despite recent legal improvements, the human rights situation remains precarious and has even aggravated in the face of flaring anti-muslim violence. with almost two hundred pages, part ii, entitled “challenges to unity” (pp. 142– 338), represents the analytical heart of this volume. while the preceding part describes changes due to political reforms, this section analyzes the challenges inherent in the current transformation and legacies of the past. mikael gravers depicts how many of these obstacles stem from the british colonial era. the british divide-and-rule colonial policy, which systematically segregated ethnic and religious groups within burma’s “plural society” (furnivall, 1948) fuelled distrust and fear, which escalated into multiple, ever-complicating conflicts after the country gained independence in 1948: “politicization of ethnicity, internal conflicts and general mistrust has created a complex scenario that is difficult to handle in the ongoing reform and peace process” (p. 154). in this context, gravers traces the karen’s struggle for autonomy as a process of ethno-nationalism, factionalism, and multifaceted conflicts. far from describing homogeneity, gravers insightfully illustrates how the karen have become increasingly fragmented since 1948 due to inner conflicts between the christian and buddhist camps and their changing relationship with the (military) government. gravers vividly demonstrates how different layers of conflict emerged over time and space. remaining with southeast myanmar, tim schroeder and alan saw u, both engaged in the peace process in karen state, look into more contemporary developments under the ceasefire agreement signed by the government and the karen national union (knu) in 2012. in the face of massive land grabbing, the illegal extraction of resources, and large-scale top-down development projects, the authors hint at the far-reaching social and ecological impacts that will potentially bring an abrupt end to the flimsy peace process. both authors underline the urgent need for more coordination between international actors engaged in humanitarian aid and more participation of local populations and civil society in all affairs related to peace building and regional development in order to avoid further conflicts. fair access to and even distribution of natural resources must be duly ensured in the peace process. how different groups/local elites cooperated with military government and private investors in the field of natural resources extraction under so-called “ceasefire capitalisms” (wood, 2011) and how abruptly such ceasefire agreements can end is shown by wei moe’s chronology of the kachin conflict in myanmar’s northeast. in 2011, after a 17-year bilateral ceasefire agreement between the tatmadaw and the kachin independent army (kia) was broken, fighting started over the development of hydropower and other large-scale projects (e.g. myitsone dam), as well as plans to in113book review corporate the kia into the government-controlled border guard forces. moe draws a portrait of a highly complex and almost unresolvable conflict that has long extended its scope across kachin state into northern shan state and even china. from a more emotional perspective, lian h. sakhong describes what it means to return to myanmar and to visit his homeland, the chin sate, after having lived more than twenty years in political exile. throughout this chapter, it is repeatedly emphasized that peace building and reconciliation are the key factors for the country’s democratic transition and socioeconomic development, but this is difficult to achieve as long as limited trust among conflict parties and divergent expectations about peace exist. charles petrie and ashley south recap the history of peace building endeavors between the government and non-state-armed groups (nsags) over the past decades. concerning state building in post-conflict zones, one of the key questions is how “non-state local governance structures will relate to formal state structures. this is a particularly pressing question in areas of recent armed conflict, where communities are subject to multiple authorities” (p. 227). as ethnic minorities have little trust in the tatmadaw and fear growing central government influence (bamarization), for them peace, essentially, is about more regional autonomy and ownership over policies and the development process. for the military and the union government, however, peace is traditionally tantamount to controlling the margins to ensure political stability and national unity. given such contradictory perceptions, the authors conclude that more needs to be done in order to enhance the dialogue between government, nsags, and urban populations to generate mutual understanding and create a common basis for peace. as the reform process continues to gather momentum, donors are increasingly engaged in peace building initiatives but often lack sufficient background knowledge of the complexity of the situation. at present, as illustrated by south, donors predominately support and operate through governmentally controlled structures while neglecting direct cooperation with conflict parties and their organizations – indeed, a one-sided and therefore risky approach. the second section of part ii deals with religion and ethnicity, which are tightly entangled in myanmar. buddhists comprise the majority (eighty-nine percent of the population), but there is a diversity of other beliefs such as christianity, islam, hinduism, and animism. gravers and ditlevsen provide insights into religion and its politicization. following this, mandy sadan describes how among the kachin (which is basically an umbrella term for several ethnic subgroups settling in northeast myanmar) christianity has become the common identity and major ideology supporting their long-term struggle for regional autonomy. with respect to democratization, gravers depicts buddhist worldviews on democracy, human rights, and political culture and what we can learn from this for the current democratization process. following up on this, gravers traces the politically inherent role of buddhism throughout different epochs of the country’s modern history, focusing on the political engagement of the sangha as a historical continuum, in both positive and negative terms. on the one hand, buddhism constantly has acted as a vehicle of social, political, and moral criticism and resistance to repression and authoritarianism. the struggle for freedom from british colonial rule and the saffron revolution of 2007 are explicitly discussed in this context. on the other hand, buddhism constitutes an unpredictable source of xenophobic nationalism and political polarization. the recent anti-muslim 114 simon benedikter & ute köster  aseas 8(1) riots, in which politically radicalized monks played a major role, are the most recent manifestation of a whole array of similar incidences carrying on from past to present. ardeth maung thawnghmung discusses the outbreak of communal ethnic-religious violence between buddhists and muslims in northern rakhine state in 2012. she examines the historical roots of this conflict and the controversial term rohingya for the ethnic muslim group in rakhine state. officially considered bengali (illegal immigrants from bangladesh without formal citizenship status), this group of people has become the target of severe discrimination, displacement, and other human rights abuses in the wake of rising xenophobic nationalism coupled with fear about the spread of radical islam. part iii considers “economy, development and environment.” sean turnell examines economic reforms and their effects, among other issues, including the new foreign direct investment law, trade liberalization, the new exchange rate regime, and land reforms. rather skeptically, turnell argues that macroeconomic and fiscal reforms are lagging far behind the political developments. the reforms, yet unfinished and fuzzy, have created a regulatory environment in which the country’s elite and foreign investors are taking advantage in a socially and ecologically unsustainable way. while growth has increased, it remains non-inclusive and largely dependent on natural resources extraction for export, mainly oil, gas, gemstones, and teak. also, other sectors remain embedded in a political economy featuring crony capitalism: “one of the most remarked-upon developments in the latter years of the burma’s then-ruling spdc regime was the increasing dominance of the economy by the military, and by a handful of elite business figures attached to them—universally known throughout burma as the ‘cronies’ … there can be little doubt that they will remain a force in burma’s political economy” (p. 382). in contrast, rural areas, where the bulk of myanmar’s population lives, face constrained livelihood opportunities and poverty due to little public investment in infrastructure, unsecure land tenure, and no clear rural development policy to change things for the better. after reading part i and ii, part iii, fraught with repetition, falls a bit short of expectations. it has little new to offer that has not already been said elsewhere in the book. less description and more analyses of the changing political economy would be of great value for the reader to complement the picture provided in part i and ii. all in all, covering a wide range of issues essential to grasp the present situation, this is a useful book in many respects. approaching a wide readership ranging from scholars to practitioners, it has much to offer in terms of overview knowledge as well as in-depth analysis and thought-provoking considerations about the nexus of peace building, democratization, and development. endowed with an index and multiple glossaries on issues such as ethnicity, main political organizations, and armed groups, as well as a range of useful chronological tables and cartographic materials, the book also serves as a valuable reference book. in this regard, however, one wishes that the editors had paid more regard to structural issues. for instance, it remains unclear why the book distinguishes between normal and so-called 'in focus' articles and how these two types of articles align with each other. thematically, the book largely focuses on the southeast and northeast as well as explicitly violent and armed conflicts. other aspects would have been worth paying more attention to. when it comes to ethnic minorities, the kachin and karen are 115book review in the spotlight, whereas other regions and more ‘silent’ conflicts (e.g. shan state and chin state) receive far less attention. as so often occurs in the highly politicized context of myanmar, some views and political analyses are debatable, but the editors managed to balance divergent views and draw a differentiated picture of the current situation. although no article solely deals with the history of the country itself, in most articles history is taken into consideration and used to explain current processes and dynamics. hence, the book undoubtedly provides a solid foundation for all those meaning to engage with contemporary myanmar and its transitional process to an uncertain future. simon benedikter researcher and advisor, based in hanoi, vietnam ute köster consultant to civil society organizations, based in yangon, myanmar  references furnivall, j. s. 1948 (1956). colonial policy and practice. a comparative study of burma and netherlands india. cambridge: cambridge university press. wood, k. (2011). ceasefire capitalism: military-private partnerships, resources concession and militarystate building in burma-china borderlands. journal of peasant studies 38(4), 747–770. book review: gainsborough, m. (2010). vietnam: rethinking the state aseas 5(1) 190 191 rezensionen / book reviews gainsborough, martin (2010). vietnam: rethinking the state. london, uk: zed books. isbn: 978-1-84813-310-5. 224 pages. citation schippers, l.-k. (2012). book review: gainsborough, m. (2010). vietnam: rethinking the state. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 5(1), 190-193. martin gainsborough’s latest book vietnam: rethinking the state is a long-awaited contribution to the discussion of the role of the state in vietnam. gainsborough is a reader in development politics at the university of bristol, uk, and has spent more than 20 years working and living in vietnam as an international consultant and scholar. his analysis is consequently strongly informed by his experiences. the book itself is based on field research conducted between 1996 and 2007. as can be inferred from the title, the book aims at grasping the nature of the vietnamese state. yet, gainsborough’s analysis differs from those of other scholars who analyse the state by directly focusing on the “entity we call state” (p. 3) as such. accordingly, he claims that his analytical approach differs from weberian approaches insofar as he does not focus on the state itself, but rather applies a wider analysis of societal power relations in order to shed light on ‘the state’. gainsborough aims to advance an understanding of the state “by studying issues to do with politics and more pertinently power” (p. 2-3). he argues that focusing on the role of various societal actors and paying attention to their historical practices allows for an embedded understanding of the state. by applying his approach to the case of vietnam, gainsborough aims to address two key questions: “what is the nature of the state? and what is the relationship of the state to the political?” (p. 4). gainsborough argues that most scholars who currently work on vietnam tend to overemphasise the aspect of ‘change’ since the launch of doi moi (renovation) in 1986. they thereby unquestioningly accept that the changes attributed to the ‘reform years’, such as economic openness, private sector development, and alignment with neoliberal policies, have undermined the power of the state. as a result of his empirid o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -5 .1 -1 4 aseas 5(1) 190 191 cal analyses over the years, gainsborough challenges such notions and makes clear that “the book is not very sympathetic towards ideas of state retreat” (p. 2). instead, he provides a rich analysis of different empirical cases in support of his argument that the vietnamese state has been able to maintain its central role in organising society and the economy as a whole. rather than focusing on the overused label of ‘reform’ which is often understood as a move towards liberalisation, export-oriented trade, and privatisation (or ‘equitisation’ as called in the case of vietnam), and thereby evoking a loss of influence of the vietnamese state, he questions the “unmediated advance of neoliberalism” (p. 2) on a global scale. gainsborough’s analysis evolves around the empirical observation that despite formal changes, large “areas of continuity, in form of existing power structures, elite control over the economy and particular forms of rule” remain. he argues that a major reason for this is that “power continuously seeks to re-create itself” (p. 4) and in order to understand the vietnamese state, it is crucial to detect where power structures have been re-created in order to secure existing power relations. each chapter presents an analysis of a distinct feature of contemporary vietnamese politics. the major issues around which the analysis evolves are the unchallenged role of the communist party, the phenomena of corruption and patronage, the process of privatisation, the impact of globalisation on vietnam as well as the minor influence of neoliberal ideas on the vietnamese state. taken together, each chapter fulfils the role of a puzzle piece necessary to see the whole picture. gainsborough argues that the economic and social change of the past decades did not harm the rule of the vietnamese communist party because it was able to secure its central role in organising the social order. he regards this as a central reason why the communist party continues to rule in vietnam today. the originality of gainsborough’s analysis especially becomes clear when he discusses the process of ‘equitisation’ in vietnam. he argues that the sale of state companies does not automatically indicate a retreat of the state from the realm of economics. instead, the decision to allow for the privatisation of state assets was accompanied in such a way that the vietnamese communist party could continue to control the new owners. they used ‘uncertainty’ as a means to exert power, as they did not sufficiently inform the new owners about their rights and duties. hence, the lan-katharina schippers book review: vietnam: rethinking the state. aseas 5(1) 192 193 new owners became dependent on the state authorities. similar to ‘equitisation’, the author shows that globalisation did not lead to the retreat of the state either. by assessing the impact of globalisation on the local state in provincial vietnam, he comes to the conclusion that the increase in cross-border flows and the rise of transnational and private actors did not lead to a weaker state. globalisation, and neoliberalism as its underlying rationale, is regarded as less influential by the author than most scholars working on vietnam would assume. instead, gainsborough shows that the local state elite has been able to maintain its rule by resisting international agreements and using the new developments to enhance its power. by analysing the party congress, gainsborough directs the attention towards another crucial aspect of political power in vietnam: patronage and network politics, as well as uncertainty as the modus operandi of power in vietnam. the communist party has been able to preserve its power by remaining tacit about the actual application of rules and procedures. in this sense, uncertainty fulfils a disciplinary function in order to enhance control over the vietnamese population. gainsborough’s critical stance towards the argument that we have witnessed a retreat of the state in the last decades is similar to the position of leftist scholars such as j. hirsch (materialistische staatstheorie, 2005) and l. panitch (globalisation and the state, 1994) who argue that the state has remained vital in organising institutional and economic restructuring. nevertheless, it would have been fruitful for his analysis to widen his definition of neoliberalism. instead of understanding neoliberalism as a homogenising force, j. peck and a. tickle (neoliberalizing space, 2002, p. 36), for example, speak of “neoliberalisms”, using the plural form of the term in order to stress that different forms of neoliberalisms exist and become manifested in “hybrid or composite structures”. hence, national specificities in light of neoliberal pressures for state restructuring do not necessarily constitute a contradiction but can instead be regarded as an essential feature of how past and present struggles interact and result in heterogeneous forms of statehood. the author’s analysis is driven by his critique of mainstream accounts of the state. therefore, he explicitly calls for a new research agenda which turns away from analyses that stress the virtue of the state in the global north only to impose a governance agenda over the global south. he draws two major implications from this position. aseas 5(1) 192 193 first, “what is presented today as offering a robust analysis of the state is nothing of the sort, and in fact is a selective, politically motivated characterization of the state” (p.185). second, in order to arrive at a better understanding of how power is organised, it is crucial to uncover “in whose interest the state is acting” (p.186). only by pursuing such an approach it is possible to arrive at a contextual analysis of the state. in a nutshell, vietnam: rethinking the state is a unique account of politics and the state in vietnam. it challenges conventional analyses by offering rich empirical investigations of state ‘change’ and ‘continuity’ in an era of globalisation. lan-katharina schippers university of vienna, austria lan-katharina schippers book review: vietnam: rethinking the state. carbon markets and redd in south-east asia: an interview with chris lang from reddmonitor aseas 5(2) 353352 d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -5 .2 -1 1 im dialog / in dialogue carbon markets and redd in south-east asia: an interview with chris lang from redd-monitor oliver pye1 citation pye, o. (2012). carbon markets and redd in south-east asia: an interview with chris lang from reddmonitor. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 5(2), 352-358. chris lang is a climate justice activist and currently runs redd-monitor, a website that follows projects and developments around redd (www.redd-monitor.org). the acronym redd refers to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and is a un programme that aims to off er incentives for countries in the global south to reduce emissions from deforestation by creating fi nancial values for the forest carbon stocks. in this interview, lang talks about structural shortcomings of redd and the danger of carbon cowboys, provides an insight in the 1 billion dollar agreement between norway and indonesia, and discusses the relation between redd and indigenous peoples’ rights. chris lang ist klimaaktivist und betreibt derzeit die webseite redd-monitor, die projekte und entwicklungen rund um redd verfolgt (www.redd-monitor.org). die abkürzung redd bezieht sich auf das un-programm reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, das darauf abzielt, anreize für länder des globalen südens zu schaff en, ihre emissionen aus abholzung durch fi nanzielle werte für den kohlenstoff gehalt der wälder zu reduzieren. in diesem interview spricht lang über strukturelle schwächen von redd und der gefahr durch carbon cowboys. er gibt einen einblick in das 1-milliarde-dollar abkommen zwischen norwegen und indonesien und diskutiert die beziehung zwischen redd und den rechten indigener völker. oliver pye: can you tell us what you do at redd-monitor? chris lang: redd-monitor is a website whose purpose is to create a debate around some of the issues surrounding redd. at the start of each week there is a post which is a roundup of as much as possible of the week’s news on redd. then, during the week, i write posts on issues that i find interesting and relevant. one of the things i did recently was a series of ten interviews with key actors in indonesia working on redd, such as the world bank, the climate and land use alliance, friends of the earth indonesia, fauna & flora international, so a whole range of different views about redd. 1 oliver pye is a lecturer of south-east asian studies at bonn university, germany. his research foci are globalisation, social movements, and the social relations of nature in south-east asia. contact: opye@uni-bonn.de oliver pye an interview with chris lang from redd-monitor aseas 5(2) 353352 pye: so why do you have to monitor redd? lang: one of the reasons why i got involved in setting up the website redd-monitor is because theoretically this programme will apply to all tropical forests. so here is a scheme which is supposed to be addressing climate change which can affect all tropical forests, and this is a major issue in itself. secondly, right from the beginning of the discussions on redd, it has been a carbon trading scheme. this is fundamentally problematic because carbon trading does not actually reduce emissions. it may reduce them in one place but then allows emissions to increase by the same amount somewhere else. clearly, what we need to do to address climate change is to reduce emissions from fossil fuels and that is a fundamental problem with redd: it is not addressing how we can reduce emissions from fossil fuels. redd was first introduced in montreal at cop 112, and during the unfccc negotiations it then developed into redd+. redd refers to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and the plus part is “conservation of forest carbon stocks”, “sustainable management of forests”, and “enhancement of forest carbon stocks”. the first thing to note here is that carbon is the fundamental focus of two of these additions. “conservation of forest carbon stocks” brings in the whole discussion about national parks and conflicts between people and parks, which has been an ongoing theme for indigenous peoples for decades. redd has the possibility of exacerbating this kind of conflict. “sustainable management of forests” is the logging industry’s shorthand for industrial logging. so there is a danger that the logging industry can use redd to argue that the logging they are doing is slightly less destructive than the logging that they could be doing and therefore they can claim carbon credits for it. “enhancement of forest carbon stocks” can involve – under the un definition of forests – replacing forests with industrial tree plantations, or doing some kind of offset where you protect one area of forest and establish a large industrial tree plantation somewhere else – with all the implications that it has for biodiversity and local people’s livelihoods. i think these are some of the risks of redd in a broad sense. another issue that emerged very early on was the danger of ‘carbon cowboys’ – as they have come to be known – carbon traders who go into a country, talk to local people living there, and then set up what are in effect fraudulent contracts with indigenous people or local communities who live there. one notorious example is david nilsson, an australian who turned up in peru a couple of years ago. he promised indigenous communities billions of dollars in return for signing over the rights to their forests. he even plans to log the forests once he’s cashed in on the carbon.3 right from the beginning of redd, these carbon cowboys cropped up in papua new guinea. they have also appeared in indonesia, in malaysia, in the democratic republic of congo, in brazil, in peru, and there is no sign that this problem is diminishing. if anything, there are more now than there were two or three years ago. 2 cop refers to the conference of the parties to the convention, in this case of the united nations framework convention on climate change (unfccc). the conferences are numbered consecutively. the eleventh conference of the parties to the unfccc was held in montreal in 2005 (cop 11). (aseas explanatory note) 3 more details on redd-monitor: http://www.redd-monitor.org/?s=david+nilsson. oliver pye an interview with chris lang from redd-monitor aseas 5(2) 355354 pye: ok, so redd has these problematic sides to it, but if the right safeguards were in place and if communities were benefiting from these projects, wouldn’t this be a great opportunity to do something about climate change and to save the forests at the same time? lang: i think the first response to this question has to be that if redd is a carbon trading scheme, then it is not reducing emissions from fossil fuels, and therefore it is not addressing climate change. there has been a lot of attention on safeguards, which is important because obviously, without safeguards the dangers i mentioned above are more likely to happen. however, if we look at safeguards, for example, in the context of world bank development projects, the world bank probably has better safeguards than any other development institution on the planet. but it still gets involved in all kinds of destructive projects – despite the safeguards. so you have to ask yourself whether having a fundamentally bad idea and then attaching safeguards to avoid the worst outcomes makes any sense whatsoever. a few years ago, navin rai of the world bank gave a presentation in front of an audience of indigenous peoples4, and one of the examples he gave for how well the bank has applied its safeguards was the nam theun 2 dam in laos – which is an example that ngos use to show how badly the world bank applies its safeguards. there was involuntary resettlement going on in that project, there was logging outside of the reservoir, and accusations of corruption. so this is a project that had safeguards in place and which suited the world bank’s model of development, but whether it benefited indigenous people in laos is extremely doubtful. the world bank has set up a forest carbon partnership facility under which countries produce an r-pp – a readiness preparation proposal. according to its own safeguards, the world bank is supposed to undertake a free and prior informed consultation (which is different from a free and prior informed consent (fpic) as outlined in the un declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples) but the world bank hasn’t even applied the free and prior informed consultation in its own projects and according to its own safeguards. it’s actually bending its own safeguards to imply that the fpic doesn’t have to be conducted beforehand, which is in blatant disregard of the safeguards in place. pye: let’s look at some of the issues in more detail. can you give us some examples for redd projects in the region where you can see some potential positive impacts and projects that show some of the problems that you have been outlining? lang: i think indonesia is actually quite an interesting example where some positive things are happening. the whole issue of forests, of deforestation, and indigenous peoples’ rights has come right to the forefront – and that’s a good thing. the indonesian president has declared that he will spend the next three years addressing deforestation. whether or not we believe that he is actually doing anything is another matter. but in itself, to have a president that says he is committed to tackling deforestation indicates the high level that this issue has reached. another good thing in indonesia is that the authorities have managed to produce one single 4 more details: http://www.redd-monitor.org/2009/05/18/how-the-world-bank-explains-redd-to-indigenous-peoples/. oliver pye an interview with chris lang from redd-monitor aseas 5(2) 355354 map of the forests of indonesia, and what can be converted and what cannot be converted. previously, there was a ministry of forestry map, a ministry of agriculture map, a ministry of planning map, and various other maps. the maps were not consistent, and the ministries never agreed on which one was correct. so every time a concession was given, there was a conflict over who had jurisdiction over it and there was no agreement on where the forest areas actually were. so i think this is a good thing that is happening partly because of redd. on the other hand, in indonesia you still have the expansion of oil palm concessions. in aceh, the tripa peat swamp is still being drained and burned even though it’s a peat swamp and should be protected, and even though there is an international outcry. you still have illegal logging, there is still abuse of indigenous peoples’ rights, there is still expansion of coal mining projects, and there is still exploration for oil. redd is taking place in parallel to all these other industrial land use activities. the classic example of the potential of redd for greenwashing can be seen in the ulu masen project in aceh. the project developer, an australian company called carbon conservation, has been 50 percent taken over by a canadian mining company that wants to use the project in order to get permission to mine in an area of protected forest. they actually said in their press release that they hoped that their involvement in redd would speed up the permission process for them to mine. which hasn’t happened, i’m delighted to say. four or five years ago, the ulu masen project was a very high profile redd project, there was even a film made about setting up the project. merril lynch/bank of america promised 9 million dollars to the project and this was how redd projects were going to be set up and run in the future. there was a very energetic project manager called dorjee sun who runs carbon conservation. five years later, the project hasn’t sold a single carbon credit. villagers are asking what on earth redd is all about. one of them said redd is ‘like farting’, like selling air. another said that redd is a lie. the villagers haven’t seen any benefits from redd and certainly no payments for conserving forests. the company running the project is more than half owned by a mining company. and the ngo involved in the project at the beginning, fauna and flora international, has completely distanced itself from carbon conservation and from the whole carbon trading project in ulu masen.5 pye: so what went wrong? lang: basically, i think the project developers were far too optimistic about how easy it would be to sell carbon credits from the project. i think that is a general problem for redd. there isn’t a very high demand for carbon credits. the only possible way to create a high demand for carbon credits is if you have an international cap on carbon emissions. and over the last 20 years, the unfccc has totally failed to agree on meaningful emission reduction targets. as a result, there is little demand for carbon credits. and the carbon credit prices have crashed. so even those projects that managed to sell carbon credits have received far less income than they anticipated. 5 more details on redd-monitor about ulu masen: http://www.redd-monitor.org/tag/ulu-masen/. oliver pye an interview with chris lang from redd-monitor aseas 5(2) 357356 the other thing that has undermined the market is various companies fraudulently selling carbon credits. in some cases, they were selling carbon that didn’t exist, in other cases they were selling credits at hugely inflated prices and promising enormous returns, and it turned out that the people who bought the credits were never going to get any return and that they had been ripped off. for example, in the uk the financial services authority has put out two warnings against buying carbon credits basically because of these companies who are ringing people up and offering them ‘great deals’ on carbon credits on the phone. pye: let’s stay in indonesia for a bit and turn to the 1 billion dollars that norway has pledged to help set up redd. has this made a difference to the dynamics of land use change you were talking about? lang: i think it’s probably too early to say how much difference it has made. for me, one of the big disappointments about this agreement between norway and indonesia is the loopholes that were put into the letter of intent. so for example, there is a moratorium on new forest concessions, but the moratorium does not cover existing concessions. and there is no systematic review of existing concessions, many of which were issued illegally or had forests that were cleared without the necessary documents and so forth. there was an opportunity under the moratorium to look into these concessions, and that opportunity was missed. another problem with the moratorium is that it’s only a two year moratorium and we are already more than half way through it. so the big danger is that all the palm oil companies will just wait for two years to see what happens and then just carry on business as usual. it’s difficult to see what the norway agreement can do to prevent that from happening. of course most of the money under that agreement is a performance-based payment. so indonesia has to show that it has reduced the deforestation rate in order to access most of that money. the problem is that indonesia can make a hell of a lot more money by clearing the forest, selling the timber, and growing palm oil than it can by waiting for a billion dollars from norway. if you compare the profits of the palm oil industry with a billion dollars, the palm oil industry wins. there are examples in aceh, where an area of the tripa peat swamp that is covered by the moratorium is being cleared. this became public in august last year, so it’s been almost a year and they are still clearing that forest. it’s a very high level case and yet – as far as i’m aware – there has been no public statement from the norwegians about the ongoing deforestation in the peat swamp. and tripa is just one example. the environmental investigation agency (eia) recently put out a report about a palm oil company in central kalimantan that has illegally cleared 23,000 hectares of land to set up an oil palm plantation. central kalimantan is the redd pilot province under the norway agreement. norway has put up 1 billion dollars to stop deforestation, but then there is norway’s government pension fund global, which is the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world and that invests in forest-destroying companies such as palm oil companies. on the very day the moratorium was signed last year, eia researchers were in the forest in central kalimantan aseas 5(2) 357356 investigating a company that the norwegian pension fund has invested in. the company was illegally clearing forest in central kalimantan. this is not an isolated example – there is a fundamental and systematic problem that norway has so far completely failed to address with its sovereign wealth fund. pye: if you look at the key players involved in redd in the region, how has redd shifted power between local communities, forestry departments, the logging industry, carbon brokers, and international ngos? lang: generally speaking, one of the things that has happened is that redd has taken over the whole debate on forests and biodiversity, forests and indigenous peoples, community forestry, and so on. all these issues are being subsumed into a debate about redd. a lot of bilateral and multilateral and also philanthropic funding has gone into redd, but most of it has gone to organisations and institutions that are in favour of redd. so if you are prepared to go along with carbon trading and if you are prepared to go along with the mainstream view on redd, then that’s great, there’s lots of money that will be coming your way. if you take a critical stand on redd you will tend to see your funding dry up, and it’s certainly much more difficult to secure funding for such a critical stance. and i think there is a real danger of co-optation of ngos and critical debate around these issues. there are so many working groups where ngos are taking part alongside governments and the redd proponents, the redd financiers, and the question is: how independent are they really during the redd implementation process? there is the danger of ngos getting so close to the government and to the redd proponents that they are no longer able to criticise what is happening. pye: related to that is the question of how to intervene in the redd debate. i read an interview posted on your website with aman, the alliance of indigenous peoples of indonesia, who decided to get involved in redd projects in order to use redd to strengthen indigenous peoples’ rights to the forest. why did aman decide to do that? is this a potentially successful strategy – to use redd to strengthen indigenous rights to the forest? lang: i think you would have to ask aman why they are doing what they are doing in terms of redd, and why they are getting more and more involved in redd. my understanding from the interview that i did with aman is that they are getting involved in redd because they saw it as an opportunity to strengthen indigenous peoples’ land rights – something they have been working on for a long time. pye: how would you, as an independent activist, see this strategy? lang: well, i think this is a classic situation where aman is in danger of being co-opted in the sense that they will no longer be overtly critical of redd because they are part of the process of implementing it. when we did that interview about two years ago, i asked them about their position on carbon trading, and the answer was more or less that they didn’t oliver pye an interview with chris lang from redd-monitor aseas 5(2) 359358 have a position, and that they didn’t really understand what carbon trading was. i don’t know whether they have a position in the meantime, but at the moment they are in the process of helping to facilitate the implementation of carbon trading projects in indonesia’s forests.6 pye: would you say that the indigenous groups who participate in redd are – in the long term – signing off their forests to a speculative financial market dominated by carbon traders over which they have no control? lang: yes, that is exactly the danger of these redd projects. so for example, i recently looked at a carbon trading project in mozambique, where a company called envirotrade was going in and signing seven-year contracts with the villagers. the villagers get paid for seven years for planting and looking after trees but the carbon contract – the period of time the company is selling carbon credits for – is 99 years. so having been paid for seven years, they are under an obligation to look after these trees for another 92 years. to me this is blatantly unjust. some of the villagers are now saying that they will cut down the trees after the seven years are over, which is perfectly understandable because they are not making any money from these trees. but the company has already forward sold the carbon credits based on a 99 year period, so what happens to those carbon credits? is the company going to go to the people who bought them and say, look, we’re really sorry but the villagers have cut down the trees, so we will buy the carbon credits back and by the way you will have to reduce your emissions instead? pye: i can’t see that happening. lang: neither can i. pye: thank you for this interview! 6 the interview with aman is available here: http://www.redd-monitor.org/2010/07/04/“we-want-to-change-thisthreat-to-an-opportunity”-interview/. aseas 2-2 regional conflict management: challenges of the border disputes of cambodia, laos, and vietnam aseas 2 (2) ramses amer & nguyen hong thao regional confl ict management aktuelle südostasienforschung / current research on south-east asia regional confl ict management: challenges of the border disputes of cambodia, laos, and vietnam ramses amer1 & nguyen hong thao2 stockholm university, sweden vietnam national university aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften / austrian journal of south-east asian studies seas gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften / society for south-east asian studies www.seas.at this study analyzes the border disputes of cambodia, laos, and vietnam, respectively. both settled and unsettled disputes are encompassed. the study outlines the settlements reached and the remaining unsettled disputes. furthermore, the broader trends in managing the border disputes are analyzed and remaining challenges, both in implementing agreements and in managing the unsettled disputes, are addressed. so are the implications for regional confl ict management. the study displays that both laos and vietnam have made considerable progress in both managing and settling their existing border disputes, whereas cambodia has thus far been less successful. keywords: border disputes, regional confl ict management, cambodia, laos, vietnam dieser beitrag analysiert grenzstreitigkeiten kambodschas, laos und vietnams. gelöste und ungelöste konfl ikte, als auch weitere trends im management von grenzstreitigkeiten werden dabei betrachtet. herausforderungen in der umsetzung von vereinbarungen sowie in der schlichtung noch ungelöster dispute und deren implikationen auf das regionale konfl iktmanagement werden adressiert. die studie zeigt auf, dass laos und vietnam beträchtliche fortschritte im management und in der lösung ihrer grenzstreitigkeiten gemacht machen, während kambodscha bis dato weniger erfolgreich war. schlagworte: grenzstreitigkeiten, regionales konfl iktmanagement, kambodscha, laos, vietnam 1 dr. ramses amer is associate professor in peace and confl ict research and senior research fellow at the center for pacifi c asia studies (cpas), department of oriental languages, stockholm university, sweden and coordinator of the swedish network of peace, confl ict and development research. contact: ramses.amer@orient.su.se or ramsesamer@gmail.com 2 nguyen hong thao, lld is professor at the faculty of law, vietnam national university, hanoi, vietnam. contact: nguyenhongthao57@gmail.com 53 aseas 2 (2) purpose and structure3 the purpose of this study is to outline and assess the border disputes of cambodia, laos, and vietnam, respectively. the study encompasses both disputes between the three countries and between each of the three countries and other countries. both settled and unsettled disputes are encompassed in the study. the study is divided into three main parts. the first part encompasses two sections: the first devoted to the settlements reached and the second to the remaining unsettled disputes. the second part is a broader analysis of the trends in managing the border disputes of the three indochinese countries and of the remaining challenges both in implementing agreements and in managing the unsettled disputes. the final part is a conclusion summarizing the main findings of the study and also addresses the regional conflict management dimension. settled and unsettled border disputes the border disputes of the indochinese countries can be studied from various perspectives; in this study the focus is on the current status of the disputes, i.e. whether the disputes are settled or not. since some of the border disputes have been settled the overview of the disputes is divided into two categories; the first devoted to the settled disputes and the second to unresolved disputes. settled territorial disputes on july 18, 1977, laos and vietnam signed a treaty delimiting the land boundary between the countries. following the completion of the demarcation process a complementing treaty was signed on january 24, 1986. on march 1, 1990, an additional protocol was signed and on the same day an agreement on border regulation was signed.4 more recently, the two countries signed a supplementary treaty to the 3 this study partly draws on amer (2009). this study also draws both on amer’s and thao’s individual and joint research on vietnam’s border dispute and on the south china sea situation. it also draws on amer’s research on regional collaboration and conflict management in south-east asia with a focus on the border dispute dimension. the views expressed in this study only represent the private views of the two authors. 4 for details on the settlement and demarcation of the land border between laos and vietnam see gay (1995). see also a report carried by vna news agency reproduced in bbc/fe 2975, b/6-7. 54 aseas 2 (2) border treaty on november 27, 2007 (mfa vietnam, 2007a). on july 7, 1982, vietnam and the then people’s republic of kampuchea (prk) signed an agreement on “historic waters” located between the coast of kien giang province, phu quoc island and the tho chu islands on the vietnamese side and the coast of kampot province and the poulo wai islands on the cambodian side. the agreement stipulated that the two countries would hold, “at a suitable time”, negotiations to determine the maritime frontier in the “historic waters”. pending such a settlement the two sides would continue to regard the brévié line drawn in 1939 as the dividing line for the islands within the “historic waters”. the exploitation of the zone would be decided by “common agreement”.5 on july 20, 1983, the two countries signed a treaty on the settlement of border problems and an agreement on border regulations (bbc/fe 7393, a3/1; quang, 1986, pp. 8-9). on december 27, 1985, the two countries signed the treaty on the delimitation of the vietnam-kampuchea frontier (bbc/ fe/8143, a3/1-3; quang, 1986, pp. 8-9). on october 10, 2005, the two countries signed a supplementary treaty to the 1985 treaty (mfa vietnam, 2005b). in october 1991 laos and china signed the treaty on the sino-laotian boundary system. subsequently the two countries agreed on a supplementary protocol to the treaty on the sino-laotian boundary system in 1993.6 on june 5, 1992, an agreement was reached between malaysia and vietnam to engage in joint development in areas of overlapping claims to continental shelf areas to the south-west of vietnam and to the east-north-east off the east coast of peninsular malaysia (amer, 1995, p. 306; nguyen, 1999, pp. 79-88; nguyen, 2002a, pp. 53-56). on april 8, 1994, laos, myanmar and china signed a ‘convention’ relating to the delimitation of a tri-junction point where the borders between the three countries meet (gay & phommachack, 1999, pp. 14-15). on june 11, 1994, laos and myanmar reached an agreement relating to their land boundary, i.e. along the mekong river. the ‘convention’ relates to the ‘fixation’ of the 5 for the full text of the agreement of july 7, 1982, see bbc/fe 7074, a3/7-8. the text of the agreement has also been reproduced in an english language version as ‘appendix 2’ in kittichaisaree (1987, pp. 180-181). interestingly enough the ‘full text’ of the agreement transmitted by the official cambodian news agency (spk) on july 8 omitted the sentence “patrolling and surveillance in these historical waters will be jointly conducted by the two sides”, which was included in article 3 of the version published by the vietnamese news agency and reproduced in kittichaisaree’s study (bbc/ fe 7074, a3/8; bbc/fe 7076, a3/7; kittichaisaree, 1987, pp. 180-181). 6 mfa china (2003a; 2003b). the second document refers to the ‘treaty on china-laos boundary’. neither of the two documents provides more specific details about the dates of agreements. 55 ramses amer & nguyen hong thao regional conflict management aseas 2 (2) international boundary between the two countries.7 on august 9, 1997, thailand and vietnam reached an agreement delimiting their continental shelf and exclusive economic zones (eez) boundaries in a disputed area in the gulf of thailand to the south-west of vietnam and to the north-east of thailand (bbc/fe 2996, b/4-5; nguyen, 1997, pp. 74-79; nguyen, 1998, pp. 7-10; nguyen, 2002a, pp. 51-53). on december 30, 1999, china and vietnam signed a ‘land border treaty’ settling the land border dispute between the two countries (nhan dan, 1999). on december 25, 2000, china and vietnam signed the ‘agreement on the delimitation of the territorial seas, exclusive economic zones and continental shelves in the gulf of tonkin’ settling their maritime boundary disputes in the gulf (mfa vietnam, 2000b). on the same day the two countries signed an agreement on fishery co-operation in the gulf of tonkin (nguyen, 2005, pp. 35-41; zou, 2002, pp. 127-148). on june 11, 2003, vietnam and indonesia signed an agreement on the delimitation of their continental shelf boundary in and area to the north of the natuna islands (nhan dan, 2003). on october 10, 2006, china, laos and vietnam signed a treaty defining the trijunction point of their land boundaries (mfa vietnam, 2006). on august 26, 2008, cambodia, laos and vietnam signed an agreement defining the tri-junction of their land boundaries (mfa vietnam, 2008d). unsettled territorial disputes between laos and thailand there are disputed areas along the land border. the border is partly made up of the mekong river.8 between cambodia and thailand there are disputes relating to both the land border and to the maritime borders in the gulf of thailand where the claims of the two countries to maritime zones overlap.9 7 for details on the settlement and demarcation of the boundary between laos and myanmar see gay & phommachack (1999, pp. 7-18). 8 ramses amer’s discussions with officials in bangkok in december 1998, april 1999 and november 2000. 9 amer’s discussions with officials in bangkok in december 1998, april 1999 and november 2000. see also prescott (1998). 56 aseas 2 (2) between cambodia and laos there are disputes relating to the land border.10 the agreements reached between vietnam and cambodia in the 1980s, were not recognized by all parties within cambodia for most of the 1990s. new bilateral talks on the status of their borders between the countries have been initiated to reach a solution to remaining disputed issues. this eventually led to signing in 2005 supplementary treaty to the treaty of 1985 thus settling the land border dispute between the two countries. however, the maritime disputes are still not settled, therefore in the context of this study the maritime disputes between vietnam and cambodia cannot be considered as resolved and they are listed among the unsettled disputes. the disputes relate to overlapping claims to maritime areas in the gulf of thailand.11 between china and vietnam the overlapping sovereignty claims to the paracel and spratly archipelagos are still unresolved. the same applies to china’s claims within the so-called ‘nine dotted lines’ to the east of the vietnamese coast in the south china sea. between malaysia, thailand and vietnam there is a multilateral dispute relating to an area of overlapping claims in the gulf of thailand.12 between malaysia and vietnam the major dispute relates to vietnam’s sovereignty claim to the whole spratly archipelago which overlaps the malaysian claim to the southern part of the archipelago (amer, 1995, pp. 305-306; prescott, 1985, pp. 218222; valencia, 1991, pp. 54-66). these parts of the archipelago are also claimed by china and taiwan as well as partly claimed by the philippines. furthermore, brunei darussalam also claims louisa reef. between the philippines and vietnam there is a dispute in the south china sea where vietnam’s sovereignty claim to the whole spratly archipelago overlaps the filipino claim to the major part of it (amer, 1995, pp. 306-308; prescott, 1985, pp. 218222). these parts of the archipelago are also claimed by china and taiwan as well as partly claimed by malaysia. 10 this was acknowledged by the then cambodian first prime minister ung huot in early june 1998 (bbc/fe 3250, b/1). 11 for details on the disputes between cambodia and vietnam relating to the land and sea borders see amer (1997, pp. 80-91; 1995, pp. 299-301). 12 for an overview of the maritime conflicts and co-operative agreements in the gulf of thailand see prescott (1998). the area is currently included in the jda between malaysia and thailand but is recognized by the two countries as claimed by vietnam (amer’s discussions with officials in bangkok december 1998, in april 1999 and in november 2000). 57 ramses amer & nguyen hong thao regional conflict management aseas 2 (2) between vietnam and indonesia the issue of the delimitation of the eez between the two countries remains to be settled. brunei’s claim to louisa reef also overlaps with a vietnamese claim through its sovereignty claim to the whole of the spratly archipelago.13 vietnam’s claims to the paracel and spratly archipelagos also overlap with taiwan’s claims to the two archipelagos. between conflict management and tension cambodia during the 1980s came agreements between the then prk and vietnam in 1982, 1983 and 1985. but no progress was made in negotiating the border disputes with thailand. the cambodian conflict prevented any such initiatives from 1979 to 1991. although the prk had good relations with laos, border issues do not appear to have been addressed in the 1980s. in the 1990s after the settlement of the cambodian conflict in late 1991 and in particular following the formation of a coalition government in cambodia in mid1993 after the united nations-organized election, the border disputes with its three neighbouring countries – laos, thailand and vietnam – re-emerged as contentious issues. in fact during the 1990s cambodia openly accused laos, thailand and in particular vietnam of violating its borders (amer, 2000, pp. 40-43). with vietnam in particular, the land border issue and events along it have caused periods of tension in bilateral relations. vietnam has repeatedly rejected accusations that it has violated cambodian territory. the initiation of renewed talks on the border issues in the late 1990s did not lead to any agreement by the end of the decade. the status of the agreements of 1982, 1983 and 1985 were first put in doubt by the cambodian side, but since the late 1990s they seem to have become acceptable to both sides as basis for further talks (amer, 1995, pp. 299-301; amer, 1997, pp. 80-91; amer, 2000, pp. 40-42). the bilateral talks did progress into the year 2000 and vietnam officially stated that an agreement would be reached by the end of that year (nhan 13 a conflict over overlapping claims to 200-mile eez could emerge if brunei and vietnam would begin to assert such claims from islands and reefs which they claim in the area (valencia, 1991, pp. 48-50 and pp. 66-67). 58 aseas 2 (2) dan, 2000; mfa vietnam, 2000a). however, this did not materialize and for a few years talks were more sporadic. eventually the two countries managed to make progress in their talks on the land border dispute resulting in the agreement on a supplementary treaty on october 10, 2005. following the completion of the ratification process in both countries, the exchange of ratification documents for the supplementary treaty took place on december 6, 2005 and thus it entered into force (nhan dan, 2005). this settled the land border issue between the two countries. currently, cambodia and vietnam are carrying-out the demarcation and marker planting of the land border in order to complete the process by 2012 in accordance with the agreement between the two prime ministers (mfa vietnam, 2009e). however, the maritime disputes in the gulf of thailand are still not settled. talks on the maritime disputes were initiated following cambodian complaints that the thai-vietnamese maritime boundary agreement of august 1997 encroached on cambodian waters.14 thus far, little progress has been made in the maritime talks with one major point of differences being the interpretation of the brévié line left by the french.15 in relation to the land border disputes with laos the two countries established the cambodia-laos joint boundary commission (cljbc) and the laos-cambodiajoint boundary commission (lcbjc), respectively, and they met for the first time in vientiane from november 20-22, 1995. talks have continued with some progress being reported in terms of survey and also demarcation including the 2008 tri-junction agreement with vietnam, but the land border issue has not been fully settled yet.16 for the major part of the 1990s areas of cambodia bordering thailand were under the control of the party of democratic kampuchea (pdk) (khmer rouge). this situation caused tension and also prevented the cambodian government from getting involved in talks with thailand on the common border.17 cambodia and thailand initiated 14 for cambodia’s complaints about the thai-vietnamese agreement see bbc/fe (3223, b/2-3; 3228, b/14). for the vietnamese response see bbc/fe (3228, b/14). the information relating to the agreement was carried by the voice of vietnam. 15 in an earlier study it has been observed that “the brévié-line left by the french, which primarily addressed the question of the islands in the area, is to be regarded as an administrative delimitation and not as a border delimitation” (amer, 1997, p. 89). in fact the governor general brévié made this distinction in his decision of january 31, 1939 (see chhak, 1966, p. 158; tran, 1979, p. 39). for the text of brévié’s decision see sarin (1966, pp. 207-208) and tran (1979, pp. 62-63). 16 for details on developments up to 2000 see amer (2000, pp. 42-43) and st john (2001, pp. 101-102). in january 2005 cambodia officially reported that “86% of the border issues” had been settled (cambodia mfa, 2005). in late 2008 cambodia officially issued information that border demarcation would be terminated in 2009 (“cambodia, laos to end”, 2008). 17 for information about the situation along the border in the 1990s see st john (2001, pp. 103-104). 59 ramses amer & nguyen hong thao regional conflict management aseas 2 (2) talks on their land border dispute with the first meeting of the joint commission on demarcation of the land boundary held in thailand in early july 1999. reportedly, the two sides could not agree on which system to opt for when using earlier conventions and treaties.18 later the same year, talks on the maritime disputes between the two countries were initiated. due to periods of tension in bilateral relations in the 2000s – most notably in 2003 with attacks on thai assets in cambodia including the thai embassy in phnom penh – and to periods of tension along the land border – most notably in 2008 and 2009 when tension in and relating to areas in the vicinity of the preah vihear temple led to both deep political tension and to sporadic clashes between thai and cambodian troops resulting in casualties19 – the talks on the border issues between the two countries have been hampered and both land and maritime disputes remain to be settled. laos during the second half of the 1970s laos and vietnam reached agreements relating to their land border with the demarcation being finalized in 1990. officially the two countries did not refer to any border dispute between them but the outcome of the demarcation process displayed that areas of overlapping claims existed and that such differences were resolved in the negotiation and demarcation processes. since september 2008, laos and vietnam are implementing a project to add and upgrade border landmarks between the two countries. this project will be carried-out during the period 2008-2014 and about 800 border pillars will be planted along the 2,300 km boundary line (mfa vietnam, 2008b; mfa vietnam, 2008c). with other neighbouring countries it was not until after the end of the cold war and the changing regional developments with the end of the third indochina conflict that border issues were being addressed. the most notable progress is the agreements and demarcations of the borders 18 land boundary (1999, p. 46) and boundary talks (1999, p. 37). 19 official cambodian sources provide details on cambodia’s position on key periods of the 2008-2009 dispute with thailand. first, through letters to the united nations complaining about thailand’s violation of cambodia’s territorial integrity (un cambodia letter, 2008a, un cambodia letter, 2008b; un cambodia letter, 2008c). second, by clarifying that there is no territorial dispute in the preah vihear temple area (“no overlapping”, 2008). third, on thai de-mining activities encroaching on cambodian territory (“cambodia: thailand”, 2008; “statement of the spokesman”, 2008). fourth, through accounts about military clashes in both october 2008 and april 2009 (“cambodia informs”, 2008; “cambodia clarifies”, 2009; “cambodia demands”, 2009). fifth, an official rebuttal that the inscription of preah vihear temple provoked thailand’s military action (“inscription of the temple”, 2009). 60 aseas 2 (2) between laos and china and laos and myanmar, respectively, as well as the trijunction agreement between the three countries during the first half of the 1990s. with thailand, laos agreed in august 1996 to set up a joint border committee, to be chaired by the foreign ministers of the two countries, to deal with the demarcation of the common border.20 the demarcation process has been initiated and some sections of the land border have been demarcated but a number of disputed areas remain to be settled.21 furthermore, the two countries need to agree on the principles for establishing the borderline along the mekong river which makes up a large section of the common border between laos and thailand. the attempts at progressing with the demarcation process have at times been hampered by tension between the two countries.22 vietnam with the exception of laos and the prk, vietnam only held border talks with indonesia prior to the early 1990s. the 1990s were characterized by considerable progress in negotiations. in 1992 a joint development agreement (jda) was reached with malaysia relating to an area of bilateral dispute in the gulf of thailand. in 1997 an agreement was reached with thailand relating to maritime boundaries in areas of bilateral dispute in the gulf of thailand. the agreement entered into force on february 27, 1998, following the completion of the ratification process (thaivietnam ratification, n.d.). in 1995 vietnam and the philippines agreed on a ‘code of conduct’ to be observed by the two countries in the south china sea. in the late 1990s vietnam, malaysia and thailand initiated trilateral talks relating to an area in the gulf of thailand where the claims of the three countries overlap. these talks were made possibly by the maritime boundary agreement between vietnam and thailand in 1997 (amer & nguyen, 2005, p. 432 & p. 434). the claims of taiwan and vietnam, respectively, to the spratly and paracel archipelagos overlap and vietnam have made official statements criticizing taiwanese 20 amers’s discussions with officials in bangkok in december 1996. see also bbc/fe (2713, b/4; 2770, b/4.) 21 thai sources indicate that more than 90 percent of its border with laos has been demarcated. this does not include the sections of the border along the mekong river (amer’s discussions with officials in bangkok in november 2007 and in february 2009). 22 for background information including clashes in both 1984 and in 1987 as well as developments up to 2000 see st john (2001, pp. 102-103). 61 ramses amer & nguyen hong thao regional conflict management aseas 2 (2) activities in the spratlys in recent years. however, vietnam does not recognize taiwan as a sovereign country. vietnam not only adheres to the ‘one china policy’ – implying that vietnam is committed to only recognize china and not taiwan – but also has repeatedly stated its commitment to this policy. thus, vietnam cannot enter into official talks with taiwan over the overlapping claims by the two parties. the nonrecognition of taiwan does not imply that vietnam refrains from official protest against taiwanese activities in the spratlys.23 given the extent of the border disputes between china and vietnam along the land border, in the gulf of tonkin and in the south china sea, these disputes deserve more extensive analysis. during the process leading up to the full normalisation of relations between the two countries in november 1991 the border disputes were not resolved.24 following the full normalization of relations the major part of the 1990s was characterized by a fluctuating level of tension relating to the border disputes. sharp differences relating to all the border disputes, i.e. overlapping claims to the paracel and spratly archipelagos; to water and continental shelf areas in the south china sea and in the gulf of tonkin; and to areas along the land border, were prevalent from may to november 1992. differences relating to oil exploration in the south china sea and the signing of contracts with foreign companies for exploration were prevalent during the periods april to june 1994, april to may 1996, and march to april 1997. in 1998 there was no extended period of tension relating to the border disputes but shorter periods can be noted such as in january along the land border and in the south china sea in april, may, july, and september (amer, 2002, pp. 8-26). in order to cope with the fluctuating level of tension relating to the border disputes, the two countries developed a system of talks at the expert-, governmentand highlevels to deal with the border issues (amer, 2002, pp. 9-41 & pp. 50-58; amer, 2004, pp. 329-331, amer, 2008; amer & nguyen, 2005, pp. 433-434; amer & nguyen, 2007a, pp. 74-76; amer & nguyen, 2007b, pp. 118-122). the talks at the government-level began in august 1993, the thirteenth round of talks was held in january 2007, and in 23 the most recent vietnamese protest was made on may 5, 2008 (mfa vietnam, 2008a). 24 for more detailed analyses of the normalization process as such and the way in which the border disputes were addressed during this process see amer (2002, pp. 7-8). for broader analysis of the normalization process see amer (1994, pp. 365-366 & p. 376; 1999, pp. 73-74 & pp. 105-108; 2004, pp. 320-328). 62 aseas 2 (2) august 2009 the most recent ‘round’ of government-level talks was held.25 the first achievement was the signing of an agreement on october 19, 1993, on the principles for handling the land border and gulf of tonkin disputes. it was further agreed to set up joint working groups at the expert-level to deal with the two issues. the joint working group on the land border held sixteen rounds of talks from february 1994 to the signing of the ‘land border treaty’ in december 1999. the joint working group on the gulf of tonkin met 17 times from march 1994 to the signing of the ‘agreement on the delimitation of the territorial seas, exclusive economic zones and continental shelves in the gulf of tonkin’ in december 2000. talks at the expert-level on the disputes in the south china sea proper, the so-called ‘sea issues’, were initiated in november 1995 and the eleventh round of talks was held in july 2006.26 the progress is evident relating to both the land border and the gulf of tonkin with the agreements of 1999 and 2000 respectively. both countries ratified the ‘land border treaty’ in 2000 and it officially took effect on july 6 (amer, 2002, pp. 27-35; amer, 2004, pp. 334-335). the demarcation process was officially concluded at the end of 2008 (mfa vietnam, 2009a; mfa china, 2008; nhan dan, 2009). the maritime boundary agreement relating to the gulf of tonkin entered into force on june 30, 2004, when the two countries exchanged documents relating to the ratification of the agreement in hanoi (nhan dan, 2004; people’s daily, 2004). the ratifications process and the entry into force of the agreement were made possible by the completion of the talks on an additional protocol to the agreement of fishery co-operation. this agreement also entered into force on june 30 (people’s daily, 2004; “vn – china gulf,” 2004, pp. 8-10, nguyen, 2004, pp. 9-15 & p. 19; nguyen, 2005, pp. 25-44; zou, 2005, pp.13-24). following the entry into force of the gulf of tonkin maritime boundary agreement and the fisheries cooperation agreement, the two countries initiated expert-level talks on the delimitation of the area outside the entrance of the gulf of tonkin – the 25 the thirteenth round of government-level talks we held in beijing january 19-20, 2007 (nhan dan, 2007; mfa vietnam, 2007b). at a meeting in hanoi november 27-29, 2007, between the vietnam and chinese delegations to the ‘sino-vietnamese government border and territory negotiation’ it was agreed that the fourteenth round of talks at the government-level will be held in 2008 (mfa vietnam, 2007d). from august 12-14, 2009, government-level talks were held in hanoi. reports do not indicate which round this corresponds to (mfa vietnam, 2009d; mfa china, 2009b). 26 the eleventh round of talks on ‘sea issues’ was held july 10-12, 2006 (nhan dan, 2006). at a meeting in hanoi from november 27-29, 2007, between the vietnam and chinese delegations to the ‘sino-vietnamese government border and territory negotiation’ it was agreed that the twelfth round of talks on the ‘sea issues’ would be held in 2008 (mfa vietnam, 2007d). 63 ramses amer & nguyen hong thao regional conflict management aseas 2 (2) so-called mouth of the gulf of tonkin. the first meeting of the expert-level working group was held in january 2006 in hanoi and the fifth meeting was held in hanoi in january 2009 (nguyen & amer, 2007, p. 313; mfa vietnam, 2009b). the expert-level talks on the so-called ‘sea issues’ (south china sea – referred to as east sea by vietnam) have not made much progress partly due to disagreements on what issues should be on the agenda with vietnam pushing for the inclusion of the issue of the paracels and china insisting that that issue should not be on the agenda. nevertheless, the level of tension relating to the disputes in the south china sea had been considerably reduced by 1999, a trend that has continued to largely prevail in the 2000s (amer, 2002, pp. 27-35; amer, 2004, pp. 334-335; amer & nguyen, 2005, pp. 434-435; amer & nguyen, 2007a, p. 76; nguyen & amer, 2007, p. 313). despite this lack of progress in the expert-level talks, the high-level talks have resulted in agreements on increasingly sophisticated principles for the behaviour of the two countries in the south china sea in order to avoid actions that can provoke tension and to minimize tension if a dispute arises. notable provisions relating to the behaviour in the south china sea can be found in joint declarations, joint statements and joint communiqués from high-level meetings between china and vietnam over the last decade.27 this clearly displays the stated commitment to handle the disputes in the south china sea through peaceful means and to strive for both a solution and collaboration in the area. in the context of the multilateral dispute relating to the spratly archipelago and the broader issue of the situation in the south china sea, vietnam is actively involved in the asean-china dialogue. the most tangible outcome of that dialogue was the signing of the ‘asean-china declaration on the conduct of parties in the south china sea’ (doc) on november 4, 2002, during the eighth asean summit. the doc is seen as an important step in the process aiming at establishing and agreeing on a ‘code of conduct’ in the south china sea. the parties concerned undertake to resolve their border and jurisdictional disputes by peaceful means, without resorting to the threat or use of force, through friendly consultations and negotiations by sovereign states directly concerned, in accordance with universally recognized principles of international law, including the 1982 united nations convention on the 27 for an overview of such high-level meetings and the focus of the joint declarations, joint statements and joint communiqués see amer (2008). 64 aseas 2 (2) law of the sea (unclos) (nguyen, 2001, pp. 105-130; nguyen, 2002b, pp. 19-21). in the context of the situation in the south china sea it can be noted that an agreement on seismic survey in the south china sea between the chinese national offshore oil company (cnooc) and the philippines national oil company (pnoc) was signed on september 1, 2004 (dfa 2004). the area of seismic survey covers some parts of the spratly archipelago. vietnam officially stated that the agreement had been concluded without consulting other parties. it ‘requested’ china and the philippines to inform vietnam about the content of the agreement. vietnam also reiterated its sovereignty claims to both the spratly and paracel archipelagos. finally, it called on all other signatories to join vietnam in “strictly implementing the doc” (mfa vietnam, 2004). in march 2005 there were further developments relating to the south china sea. first, on march 7, it was announced by the department of foreign affairs of the philippines that the maritime and ocean affairs center, department of foreign affairs of the philippines would host the third philippines-vietnam joint oceanographic marine scientific expedition in the south china sea (jomsre-scs iii) from april 6-9, 2005 (dfa, 2005a). on march 11 the spokesman of china’s ministry of foreign affairs expressed china’s “concern” about the joint marine research and that china and the “relevant parties” would follow the “principles enshrined in the declaration on conduct of parties in the south china sea” in their marine research (mfa china, 2005a). second, on march 14, a ‘tripartite agreement for joint marine seismic undertaking in the agreement area in the south china sea’ (jmsu) was signed between china national offshore oil corporation (cnooc), vietnam oil and gas corporation (petrovietnam) and the philippine national oil company (pnoc). it was stipulated that the signing of the agreement ‘would not undermine the basic position held by the government of each party on the south china sea issue’. however, the parties expressed their “resolve to transform the south china sea into an area of peace, stability, cooperation and development”.28 the three-year term of jmsu ended on july 1, 2008, and the three parties have not officialized any information about the possible continuation and future direction of the tripartite collaboration. 28 information derived from mfa vietnam (2005a). for the report from china see mfa china (2005b). for the report of the philippines see dfa (2005b). 65 ramses amer & nguyen hong thao regional conflict management aseas 2 (2) on february 2, 2009, the house of representatives of the philippines passed house bill 3216. the bill aimed at defining the archipelagic baselines of the philippine archipelago and it reportedly includes both the kalayaan island group (kig)29, i.e. the major part of the spratly archipelago, and scarborough shoal. the passing of the bill prompted reactions from both vietnam and china.30 in early may 2009 vietnam submitted a ‘partial submission’ relating to vietnam’s extended continental shelf in the “north area” (un vietnam submission, 2009) as well as a “joint submission” together with malaysia to the commission on the limits of the continental shelf (un malaysia-vietnam submission, 2009). both submissions prompted china to protest and to reiterate its claims in the south china sea.31 in the context of the border disputes with indonesia the 1990s did not bring about a breakthrough in the negotiations. the two countries failed to capitalize on the traditionally good bilateral relations. furthermore, the impact of the asian financial crisis on indonesia brought other more pressing needs on the agenda for the indonesian leaders. thus, no progress was made in negotiating the border disputes, but stability was maintained. this state of affairs continued to prevail into the early 2000s (nguyen, 2002a, pp. 56-58) until a breakthrough was made in 2003 leading to the agreement of june 2003 settling the continental shelf dispute between the two countries. after the completion of a lengthy ratification process the agreement entered into force on may 29, 2007 (mfa vietnam, 2007c). the issue of the delimitation of the eez between the two countries remains to be settled. patterns of conflict management from the observations above it can be noted that the resolution of the cambodian conflict in october 1991 was a watershed in the management of both laos’ and vietnam’s border disputes. prior to this development laos and vietnam had settled 29 the kig encompasses all features of the spratly archipelago with the exception of the spratly island itself, royal charlotte reef, swallow reef, and louisa reef (nguyen & amer, 2007, p. 308). 30 on the passing of the bill see dalangin-fernandez (2009). on vietnam’s initial response see mfa vietnam (2009c). on china’s initial response see mfa china (2009a). 31 china’s reaction to the joint submission was through a letter from the permanent mission of the people’s republic of china to the secretary general of the united nations (un china letter, 2009a). china’s reaction vietnam’s partial submission was through a letter from the permanent mission of the people’s republic of china to the secretary general of the united nations (un china letter, 2009b). attached to both letters was a map of the south china sea outlining china’s claims in the area and the so-called ‘nine-dotted lines’ are clearly displayed on the map. 66 aseas 2 (2) only their common land border. during the first half of the 1990s laos settled its land borders with china and myanmar, respectively. during the 1990s talks were also initiated with thailand and cambodia, respectively. these talks have continued in the 2000s and progress has reportedly been made also in terms of border demarcation. as noted above the agreements reached between cambodia and vietnam in the 1980s did not resolve the border disputes as displayed by continued differences and renewed attempts at negotiations in the late 1990s and the early 2000s. however, the land border dispute was settled in late 2005. since the settlement of the cambodian conflict, vietnam has agreed on a jda with malaysia in areas of overlapping claims in the gulf of thailand in 1992. in 1997 vietnam and thailand agreed on maritime boundaries between the two countries in the gulf of thailand. the agreement with thailand has also paved the way for talks between vietnam, thailand and malaysia relating to the area of the gulf of thailand where the claims of the three countries overlap. in 2003 vietnam and indonesia agreed on their continental shelf boundary. furthermore, the 1995 agreement with the philippines on a ‘code of conduct’ to be observed in the south china sea is another notable progress after the resolution of the cambodian conflict. more recently in may 2009 the ‘joint submission’ by vietnam together with malaysia to the commission on the limits of the continental shelf can be seen as the result of a bilateral conflict management process (un malaysia-vietnam submission, 2009). in relation to the border disputes between vietnam and china the full normalization of bilateral relations in late 1991 certainly facilitate the management of the disputes. however, the most interesting feature is the fact that the full normalization took place without resolving the border issues. this can best be understood in light of the major efforts that both countries have invested in managing and resolving the border issues since full normalization. in other words, as noted above, full normalization of relations between china and vietnam would not have been possible in 1991 if resolving the border issues would have been a pre-condition for it. overall vietnam has made considerable progress in managing and resolving its border disputes. some bilateral disputes have not been formally settled but they are managed through various measures such as jda, code of conduct, and talks. the multilateral dispute over the spratlys is more complicated due to the nature of the 67 ramses amer & nguyen hong thao regional conflict management aseas 2 (2) disputes. thus far vietnam has made most progress in its bilateral talks with the philippines and china, respectively, when it comes to managing disputes in the area. vietnam also contributes to the policy of asean on the south china sea situation and the association’s attempts at promoting peace and stability in the area. differences are likely to persists such as those between vietnam and china relating to the paracels and also with regard to areas to the east of the vietnamese coast and the west of the spratlys. however, as noted above both sides have made considerable progress in containing tension in recent years and have agreed on a number of measures to avoid and contain possible sources of tension. cambodia has been less successful in formally settling its border disputes with the notable exception being the land border with vietnam, which is currently being demarcated. however, cambodia is involved in border talks and in border demarcation with laos on the land border issues, with vietnam on the maritime issues, and with thailand on both land and maritime border issues. achievements since the early 1990s, vietnam has emerged as an active actor in settling border disputes by peaceful means in the region. during a period spanning less than fifteen years (1992-2005) vietnam reached agreements relating to its land border disputes with china and cambodia and on maritime disputes with malaysia, thailand, china, and indonesia. in addition vietnam has reached an agreement on a code of conduct with the philippines relating to the south china sea. more recently vietnam and malaysia made a ‘joint submission’ to the commission on the limits of the continental shelf. this is an impressive success rate in terms of settlement of border disputes in the south-east asian context. through these agreements, vietnam has contributed to the development of international law such as the application of uti possidetis principle, the equitable principle, the application of the single line for maritime delimitation, and in terms of the effect of islands in maritime delimitation. also laos has been actively addressing its border disputes with the notable progress achieved with vietnam as well as with china and myanmar, respectively. progress has also been made in terms of border demarcation with both thailand and cambodia, although these processes have not yet been completed. 68 aseas 2 (2) cambodia has not been as successful as its two neighbours but the 2005 agreement relating to the land border with vietnam is a notable progress for cambodia in terms of settling its border disputes. talks are also underway with laos relating to the land border and with vietnam relating to the maritime disputes. although tension dominated the interaction between cambodia and thailand in 2008 and 2009 the mechanisms for talks on border issues are in existence. challenges in the case of cambodia the land border disputes with thailand have been the most acute and tension filled over the past year. the lack of progress in addressing the maritime disputes with both thailand and vietnam, respectively, display the continued challenges facing cambodia in terms of dispute settlement on border issues. the fact that the land border issue with laos still persists further adds to the challenges that cambodia faces in dealing with its border issues. there is also a need to complete the land border demarcation with vietnam within the deadline agreed upon by the two countries, i.e. by 2012.32 in the case of laos the main challenges are the settlements of its land border disputes with thailand and cambodia, respectively. for vietnam the demarcation processes of the land border with cambodia has to be completed. vietnam and china have to complete their negotiations relating to maritime delimitation in then the so-called mouth of the gulf of tonkin. the talks between vietnam, malaysia and thailand relating to the area of tri-lateral overlap in the gulf of thailand have to be concluded. in the south china sea the disputes with china have to be continuously managed and the same applies to vietnam disputes with other claimants in the area, i.e. malaysia, taiwan, the philippines, and potentially brunei. conclusion and regional conflict management dimension the analysis carried out in this study has displayed the positive developments relating 32 the on-going demarcation process between cambodia and vietnam is expected to be completed by 2012 (nhan dan, 2008; mfa vietnam, 2008b; mfa vietnam, 2009e). 69 ramses amer & nguyen hong thao regional conflict management aseas 2 (2) to both laos and vietnam’s border disputes. the developments relating to cambodia’s border disputes display less progress than that of its two neighbours. the case of cambodia displays few formal settlements of border disputes, with the land border with vietnam being the exception, while talks are underway with laos, thailand, and vietnam, respectively, on unsettled border disputes. this relates to the land border dispute with laos, the land and maritime disputes with thailand, and the maritime dispute with vietnam. the cases of both laos and vietnam display track records in settling border disputes, which has been impressive as seen from the perspective of the south-east asian region. the reduction in tension relating to the remaining border disputes of vietnam is also a positive development. also laos is on the process of managing its borders with both thailand and cambodia. these overall positive developments do not imply that all disputes have been settled nor that all agreements have been fully implemented, therefore continued efforts are needed to resolve the remaining bilateral disputes, e.g. in the case of vietnam the maritime disputes with cambodia, and to prevent tension from remerging, e.g. the south china sea. for laos the settlement of its land border disputes with thailand and cambodia, respectively, has to be achieved. the full implementation of the agreements reached thus far is essential. in the case of vietnam this relates to the land border with cambodia, along which the demarcation processes has to be completed. the negotiations relating to maritime delimitation in the so-called mouth of the gulf of tonkin needs to be completed by vietnam and china. vietnam’s integration into asean can be further enhanced and strengthened if the trilateral dispute involving thailand and malaysia in the gulf of thailand could be formally managed through some sort of joint scheme. it could serve as a model for handling other multilateral dispute in the region. the settlement of the maritime disputes with cambodia would also be a positive contribution. furthermore, continued and renewed efforts between vietnam and china to manage their disputes in the south china sea are also of importance to vietnam and to the rest of the region. the importance placed on minimizing tension by the two sides can be seen in the agreements on mechanisms to reduce tension and the actual 70 aseas 2 (2) reduction in tension that has been prevailing since the late 1990s.33 despite such efforts differences are likely to persist and administrative decisions in the respective country relating to the paracels and/or spratlys will spark official protest from the other side as will oil exploration and related contracts with foreign oil companies. however, both sides will continue to strive to minimize the tension caused and refrain from escalating it, as has been the prevailing policy since the late 1990s. as for the broader south china sea situation the adoption by asean and china of the doc for the south china sea is a positive step in terms of conflict management. vietnam and other parties concerned can play active and constructive roles in implementing and abiding by the doc. the tripartite agreement – jsmu – between the national oil companies of china, the philippines and vietnam could possibly have an important impact on the south china sea situation. the findings generated from this tripartite initiative will also provide valuable information about how resource rich the area is. the latter will certainly be an important factor in influencing the involved parties in discussions about the possible future direction of the tripartite collaboration. in terms of regional integration into asean, the settlement of the land and maritime disputes between cambodia and thailand, of the maritime disputes between cambodia and vietnam, and the settling of cambodia’s land border issues with laos, would not only enhance bilateral relations between cambodia and its three neighbours, but also enhance cambodia’s integration into asean. laos’ integration would also be strengthened by the formal settlement of its land border issues with thailand. vietnam’s integration into asean can be further enhanced and strengthened if the trilateral dispute involving thailand and malaysia in the gulf of thailand could be formally settled which could serve as a model for handling other multilateral disputes in the region. in the above the question of regional integration has been discussed relating to cambodia, laos and vietnam, respectively. if this is expanded to the field of regional 33 despite the sharp reduction in tension some incidents have occurred since 1999 (amer, 2002, pp. 27-35; amer, 2004, pp. 334-335). for example in 2007 two events led to vietnamese official responses. first, on november 27 – in response to a military exercise by china in the paracels – vietnam reiterated in sovereignty claims to both the paracel and spartly archipelagos (mfa vietnam, 2007e). second, the establishment by china – of what the vietnamese called ‘san shan city’ – on hainan island to administer the paracel and spratly archipelagos in 2007 led to an vietnamese official protest on december 3, 2007 (mfa vietnam, 2007f). in an unprecedented development protests where held outside the chinese embassy in hanoi and the chinese consulate in ho chi minh city on december 9, 2007, prompting an official response by the chinese foreign ministry stating that china was “deeply concerned over the recent developments in vietnam” and warning that they could undermine bilateral relations (mfa china, 2007). 71 ramses amer & nguyen hong thao regional conflict management aseas 2 (2) conflict management and in particular the asean approach to conflict management, it can be said that all three indochinese countries display a preference to bilateral approaches to negotiating their border disputes. this is not in contradiction with the asean approach as long as the three countries do adhere to the treaty of amity and cooperation and other asean documents of relevance to inter-state relations among its members. the fundamental principle is of course the peaceful settlement of disputes as enshrined in the tac. as has been argued in earlier studies on the management of vietnam’s border disputes the progress made in formally settling a number of vietnam’s border disputes strengthens the credibility of asean in the field of conflict management (amer & nguyen, 2005, p. 443; amer & nguyen, 2007a, pp. 81-82). this study has shown that also laos has contributed to enhance the credibility of the asean approach. this line of argumentation draws on the logic that bilateral approaches are not in contradiction with the regional approach as long as the bilateral ones adhere to the same basic principles guiding the regional approach. this relates to the asean role as one of norm creator and not necessarily as a third-party mediator in disputes between its members. more problematic are cases where the bilateral approaches are not successful and where regional mechanisms such as the high council of the tac are not utilized. by way of concluding it can be argued that since formal talks and negotiation are the approaches utilized by both vietnam and laos with success and also by cambodia with less formal settlement outcome thus far, the informality that is said to be the dominant within asean as part of the so-called ‘asean way’ does not seem to apply when addressing the border disputes of the indochinese countries. on the contrary in particular vietnam has intentionally and consistently sought to address through management and when possible formal settlement its border disputes. this displays a preference for both diplomatic and legalistic approaches to managing and settling border disputes. it indicates that the study of conflict management and disputes settlement in south-east asia and among the asean members must take into account the experiences of the newer members, e.g. vietnam, to a greater extent. 72 aseas 2 (2) references amer, r. 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(2009). submission to the commission on the limits of the continental shelf pursuant to article 76, paragraph 8 of the united nations convention on the law of the sea 1982. partial submission in respect to vietnam’s extended continental shelf: north area (vnm-n). part i – executive summary. vnm-n-es-doc april 2009. retrieved 14 july, 2009, from http://www.un.org/ depts/los/clcs_new/submissions_files/vnm37_09/vnm2009n_executivesummary.pdf valencia, m. j. (1991). malaysia and the law of the sea. the foreign policy issues, the options and their implications. kuala lumpur: institute of strategic and international studies (isis malaysia). 79 ramses amer & nguyen hong thao regional conflict management aseas 2 (2) vn – china gulf pact to enhance relations. (2004, june). vietnam law & legal forum, 10(118), 8-10. zou k. (2002). sino-vietnamese fishery agreement for the gulf of tonkin. the international journal of marine and coastal law, 17(1), 127-148. zou k. (2005). the sino-vietnamese agreement on maritime boundary delimitation in the gulf of tonkin. ocean development and international law, 34(1), 13-24. 80 die ist das periodisch erscheinende publikationsorgan der arbeitsgemeinschaft für pazifische studien e.v. (apsa), welches an der abt. wirtschaftsgeographie am geographischen institut der universität hamburg herausgegeben wird. die erscheint halbjährlich in hamburg. interessierte autoren möchten sich an die redaktion kontakt über www.pacific-news.de pacific news pacific news wenden. pacific news www.pacific-news.de issn 1435-8360 nachrichten mitteilungen hintergründe aus dem pazifischen raum wir laden sie herzlich ein, dem netzwerk der apsa e.v. beizutreten. die apsa bietet allen am asiatischpazifischen raum interessierten personen, insbesondere auch studierenden, ein forum der kontaktund netzwerkpflege sowie des austausches. als apsa-mitglieder erhalten sie die zeitschrift pacific news kostenlos und die publikationen der apsabuchreihe pazifik-forum verbilligt. kontakt: apsa e.v. c/o geographisches institut, abt. wirtschaftsgeographie, universität hamburg, bundesstr. 55, 20146 hamburg; internet: www.apsa-ev.de der jahresbeitrag für vollzahler beträgt 25 euro/ermäßigt 18 euro (etwa für studierende/schüler). lowland participation in the irredentist ‘highlands liberation movement’ in vietnam, 1955-1975 aseas 6(1) 76 d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -6 .1 -2 aktuelle südostasienforschung / current research on south-east asia lowland participation in the irredentist ‘highlands liberation movement’ in vietnam, 1955-1975 william b. noseworthy1 citation noseworthy, w. b. (2013). lowland participation in the irredentist ‘highlands liberation movement’ in vietnam, 1955-1975. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 6(1), 7-28. in the fi eld of mainland south-east asian history, particular attention has been granted to highlandlowland relations following the central argument james scott presented in the art of not being governed: an anarchist history of upland south-east asia. scott’s analytical perspective echoes a long-term trend of scholarly examinations in the region. in a similar fashion, historical examinations of the vietnam war period view the so-called ‘highlands liberation movement’ or the unifi ed front for the struggle of the oppressed races (fulro) through the lens of a highland-lowland dichotomy. however, based on an examination of the biography of the cham muslim leader les kosem and various fulro documents, this article challenges dominant assumptions based on scott’s argument and argues that a focus on minority-majority relations is essential for understanding the origins of irredentist claims of indigenous peoples in the region. keywords: fulro; highland-lowland relations; irredentism; mainland south-east asia; vietnam war der beziehung zwischen hochland und tiefl and kommt in der geschichte festland-südostasiens in anlehnung an das zentrale argument von james scott in the art of not being governed: an anarchist history of upland south-east asia besondere aufmerksamkeit zu. scotts analytische perspektive spiegelt einen langfristigen trend der wissenschaftlichen auseinandersetzung mit der region wider. in ähnlicher weise zeigen historische abhandlungen der zeit des vietnamkrieges das sogenannte „highlands liberation movement“ oder die „vereinigte front für den kampf der unterdrückten völker“ (fulro) durch die brille einer hochland-tiefl and-dichotomie. basierend auf einer analyse der biografi e des cham muslim führers les kosem und anderer fulro-dokumente stellt dieser artikel dominante und auf scotts argumenten basierende annahmen in frage und argumentiert, dass ein fokus auf die beziehung zwischen minderheiten und mehrheiten zentral für das verständnis der ursprünge irredentistischer ansprüche von indigenen in der region ist. schlagworte: fulro; hochland-tiefl and-beziehungen; irredentismus; festland-südostasien; vietnamkrieg 1 william b. noseworthy is a phd candidate in history of south-east asia at the university of wisconsin-madison and currently a senior research fellow at the center for khmer studies. his work has been published in the middle ground journal, the iias newsletter, studies on asia, explorations, cha: an asian literary journal, newasiabooks.org, and inrasara.com. his dissertation project focuses on the work of cham scholars from 1651 to 1969. this article has been produced with the funding support from the center for southeast asian studies and the department of history at the university of wisconsin-madison. thanks for this work go to the many professors, colleagues, and students who contributed to discussions on the various concepts contained within this article from 2012 to 2013 in both vietnam and the united states. finally, the author would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers and the editorial board of the austrian journal of south-east asian studies for all their comments, constructive critique, and editorial support. contact: noseworthy@wisc.edu aseas 6(1) 98 introduction in the wake of the second world war (wwii) major political changes occurred on the global arena as a direct result of the process of decolonization. minahan (2002) has referred to this process as the “second wave” of modern nationalism (pp. xx-xxi).2 during this second wave of nationalism, the french fought a punctuated conflict against ho chi minh’s viet minh to regain control of their former colony in the light of the japanese retreat from the region. in an ill-advised turn against american ideals of democratic rights and self-determination, the united states sided with the french colonialists, as they fought to maintain control over indochina until the decisive battle of dien bien phu in may 1954, which led to the geneva conference later that year and the promise of elections for the reunification of north and south vietnam. in the south, after ngo dinh diem removed bao dai from power in a gradual process from 1955 to 1956, culminating in fraudulent elections, minority communities became the target of diem’s assimilationist policies, as the republic of vietnam (rvn) (vn: viet nam cong hoa also “south vietnam”)3 explicitly supported the migration of predominantly viet-kinh4 catholics into regions populated by highland and austronesian cham minorities in 1957, as well as during the strategic hamlet program in 1959. in this period, all peoples in the south who were not viet-kinh were reclassified as dong bao thuong or “ethnic minorities” that, in the words of diem, “needed to assimilate” (scupin, 1995, p. 315). the study of the cham language was banned and cham language books were burned while in the north, ho chi minh promised to create “autonomous zones” for ethnic minorities, following both the chinese and soviet state models (scupin, 1995, p. 315). for the khmer krom in the mekong delta, the cham along the coast in cambodia and along the vietnamese-khmer5 frontier, 2 minahan (2002) divides the history of nationalism into three waves: the first wave relates to the period between the two world wars; the second wave follows the post-wwii period, which is also described as the period of decolonization; and the third wave occurs more recently after the end of the cold war in 1989. 3 the language of the original documents has been considered where felt as appropriate and indicated as follows: (f) for french, (c) for cham, and (vn) for vietnamese language. due to formatting requirements the diacritics have been removed from this publication. 4 the definition “vietnamese” indicating vietnamese nationality, in opposition to “vietnamese” as an ethnic identity, is rather inappropriate, due to the reluctance of many minority groups to be referred to as vietnamese nationals during the period in question. technically, the formal term for vietnamese ethnicity is kinh, while the informal term in many sources is viet. thus, to avoid additional confusion for individuals who may not be familiar with either the usage of viet or kinh, the hyphenated viet-kinh is used for ethnic vietnamese throughout this article. 5 this refers to the contemporary border of vietnam and cambodia which was formalized as the border between the protectorate of cambodia and the colony of cochinchina during the high period of french colonialism in the early twentieth century. aseas 6(1) 98 and the highland minorities living in the western highlands region (vn: tay nguyen)6, tension mounted slowly throughout the 1950s and the early 1960s. thus, the unified front for the struggle of the oppressed races (f: le front unifie de lutte des races opprimees or fulro)7 emerged in 1964 as a merger of the disparate guerrilla movements to unite indigenous minority peoples along the borderlands of what is now vietnam and cambodia (fulro, 1965, pp. 13-18). the history of fulro has remained problematic for contemporary vietnam, as the nation continues to struggle with the healing process of conflicts invoked by the process of decolonization. although fulro was initially an extra-governmental organization, they did strive to form a legitimate government recognized by the international community. they claimed sovereignty over the western highlands region with the formation of the provisional government of champa in 1965, with the rhade leader y bham enuol serving as prime minister (fulro, 1965, p. 1; garfour, 1991, pp. 8-9; labrie, 1971, pp. 80-82). y bham enuol’s position at the head of the provisional government of champa reflected internal shifts in fulro leadership, with highlanders eventually taking a greater part in the front’s organization. this shift led to the contemporary conflation of the degar foundation and fulro, particularly in the vietnamese press in 2004, in the wake of widely publicized comments by then vietnamese ambassador to the united nations in new york, le luong minh.8 however, the contemporary degar foundation is not a military organization, nor do they advocate any form of separatism, as fulro did. rather, they are an advocacy organization promoting the rights of highland minority peoples in vietnam by non-violent means (ksor kok, 2012). the perceived continuity between fulro and the degar foundation is one of two major misconceptions of the movement. even in the most well-rounded examinations of fulro, the organization is most commonly referred to through a permutation of the terms montagnard autonomy movement, using the french colonial term for 6 tay nguyen is frequently mistranslated as “central highlands”. meanwhile “central highlands” would be more properly defined as trung nguyen in vietnamese language. however, the meaning of trung nguyen is flexible in that it can also refer to the classification “midlands” by terms of elevation, rather than region. finally, for the same region as the western highlands, the term cao nguyen meaning “plateau” is also used. also cf. “ban bien soan chuyen tu dien new era”, 2011. 7 fulro is sometimes erroneously translated as the unified font for the liberation of oppressed races. 8 for more details, cf. “day manh thong”, 2004; “nguyen, t. d. trp”, 2004; “nung hanh dong”, 2004; “quoc te phan”, 2004; viet cuong, 2004. william b. noseworthy lowland participation in the irredentist ‘highlands liberation movement’ in vietnam aseas 6(1) 1110 highlanders: montagnards.9 this analysis of fulro correlates with certain fundamental elements of james scott’s (2009) thesis on highland-lowland relations, particularly with his depiction of the highlands as a “region of refuge” (p. 130) and extra-governmental authority. however, this framework obscures the significant participation of lowland minorities in fulro and prevents scholars from seeing the initial origins and aspirations of fulro as an organization. when fulro was founded it was in fact not a montagnard organization, but rather an attempt to form a trinity of minority peoples that had been repressed by the vietnamese, particularly during the rise of ngo dinh diem. while austronesian chams and austroasiatic khmers had their conflicts historically, both of them had been conquered in the process of the expansion of the viet-kinh nguyen dynasty from the mid-seventeenth to the nineteenth century. when, in the event of decolonization, certain members of the cham and khmer community came to view not the french but the viet-kinh as their true colonizers, irredentist sentiments arose. highland-lowland relations in theory the widely discussed work of james scott (2009) argues that there is a distinct, unified, highland culture that exists in mainland south-east asia. by maintaining this perspective, many scholars have been able to gain significant understanding with regard to this region. based on scott’s argument, highland-lowland relations pose a critical element in understanding the resistance of highland populations to be incorporated into what is today vietnam. scholars have also noted the relatively friendly relations between the cham and highland peoples. the epigraphic record suggests that cham used military force to incorporate highlanders into their polities as early as the twelfth century, while later trade-tribute relations and a change in the composition of the cham monarchy led po rome (1627-1651), a highland churu, to become the sovereign of the cham territories. subsequently, 14 cham sovereigns (c: po) were 9 while labrie (1971) refers to fulro as the “montagnard movement for autonomy” (p. 3), salemink (2003) and hickey (1982-2003) present more balanced analyses; although their focus is almost entirely placed on the highlands. eventually, the role of the lowlanders in fulro becomes, in hickey’s (1982/2003) words, “blunted” (p. 146) or overwritten in favor of the portrayal of the noble highlander resisting the inevitable machines of lowland civilization. only po and phoeum (2006) highlight the nature of fulro as a united highland-lowland minority movement. aseas 6(1) 1110 churu people, and from the seventeenth century onwards, austronesian peoples in the highlands held cham royal titles. thus, irredentist claims of the cham, khmer, and highlanders in their opposition to the vietnamese during the twentieth century were not only contiguous, they were overlapping. if considered at their greatest extent, the cham could claim all of the territory from hoanh son to mui ke ga (half of the contemporary coastline), while the highland peoples could claim the majority of the annamite chain, and the khmer krom the entirety of the mekong delta, limiting the viet-kinh population to the territory north of ha tinh.10 these claims highlight the fact that fulro cannot be analyzed by a mere application of scott’s theory, considering that the organization claimed a relatively small portion of territory in the western highlands. contemporary highland elements of the degar movement, which include some former members of fulro, have received much attention since 2001, when human rights watch (hrw) examined the repression of highlanders, viet-kinh land grabs, and the increase in the policing of the vietnamese border (hrw, 2002, 2011). while several sources place an emphasis on fulro as a montagnard movement, a point that is not entirely incorrect, other sources have gone beyond the accuracy of historical representations: one historical dictionary source oddly refers to fulro as an “indigenous vietnamese resistance organization” (berman, 2011, p. 403; italics added), while another major vietnamese publication printed in english and aimed at the international audience notes: “in 1975 some wicked muslims [sic] set up the so-called front for champa liberation, which diffused the idea of restoring the chiem thanh kingdom, and participated in fulro” (nguyen minh quang, 2001, p. 69). by building on a damaging conflation between vietnamese nationality and viet-kinh ethnic identity, the labelling of furlo as an indigenous vietnamese organization obscures the initial intentions of the movement; likewise, the front for the liberation of champa (flc) was not founded in 1975 by “some wicked muslims”, but by the single figure of les kosem – one representative of the three member groups of fulro more than ten years earlier. 10 baird (2010) – in focusing on the khmer minority in laos and the lao minority in cambodia – defined irredentism as “the doctrine that a people or territory should be controlled by a country that is ethnically or historically related to it” (p. 187). in the case of highlanders, this would have been an ethnically related claim, whereas in the case of chams and khmer krom it would be a historically related one. william b. noseworthy lowland participation in the irredentist ‘highlands liberation movement’ in vietnam aseas 6(1) 1312 the examination of the narrative of les kosem together with two other predominant fulro leaders, y bham enuol (rhade) and um savuth (khmer), combined with an analysis of the fulro documents, shall provide a solid basis for the re-evaluation of secondary literature as well as for the reassessment of the analytical implementation of scott’s concept of lowland-highland relations. the central argument of the following analysis builds on both primary sources and secondary literature in english and vietnamese accessed through the university of wisconsin-madison as well as on rare sources provided by cornell university, and selected others, accessed during my research at the faculty of vietnamese studies at university of humanities and social sciences division of vietnam national university in ho chi minh city. primacy in this analysis is given to the fulro documents, as they have not been well discussed in any english language analysis to date. eventually, this article inquires whether and how minority-majority relations or relations between non-state and state peoples may provide a basis for a useful, nuanced discourse on fulro. the analysis begins by delving more deeply into the historical background of khmer, cham, and highland irredentist claims, continues with a reassessment of the fulro documents, and concludes with a consideration of how to reframe this history for the sake of accuracy. historical background there is an immensely rich literature in the field of south-east asian studies that discusses the historical background of the khmer, cham, and the highland peoples who later became members of the fulro movement. many of these early studies were completed by french scholars at the turn of the nineteenth century. while they applied similar models of social organization in their theorization of early southeast asian polities, they did not agree on early historical evidence. while finot (1927) credited the earliest sanskrit language inscription in the region of vo canh to khmer authorship, one year later, maspero (1928) credited the same inscription to cham origin11. 11 the cham are an austronesian peoples who controlled much of the vietnamese coastline from the hoanh son pass to mui ke ga (200 miles). they formed a complex poly-ethnic society with multiple kingdoms that, some have argued, relied heavily upon plunder or piracy. however, more recent examinations of the cham economy have suggested that the cham not only engaged in long distance trade with merchants from china and arabia, but also were particularly linked to the chinese courts through trade tribute. to make gains in this network, the cham, who also relied upon salt water fishing, lowland rice agriculture, and swidden plots (c: apuh), formed trade relations with aseas 6(1) 1312 regarding cham societal structures, the prolific historian of vietnam, keith taylor (1999), recently suggested that early cham polities would be better thought of as an “archipelagically-defined cultural-political space” (p. 153), considering the geographical features of the vietnamese coastline reminiscent of insular south-east asia, and therefore argued that early cham polities had probably followed a malay pattern of political organization, trade relations, and settlement. although taylor’s concept has been recently praised by leading scholars in the field (e.g. lochart & phuong, 2011), the terms vuong quoc champa, literally “champa kingdom”, or chiem thanh, literally “cham citadel”, still frequently appear as annotations for this “archipelagic space” in vietnamese literature. both terms are theoretically outdated. vuong quoc champa hearkens back to maspero (1928), while the term chiem thanh owes its historical origins to a different source: the fifteenth century dai viet su ky toan thu. in this text, chiem thanh does not refer to highland portions of cham polities, nor does it include the northern polities of amaravati and indrapura. thus, the term chiem thanh does not include substantial portions of cham territory in the province of quang binh or the territory deep into the hinterlands of the annamite chain, despite evidence that chams did control this territory (gafour-meth, 1991, p. 443; li, 1998, pp. 80-86, 99-116, 139-158; ngo si lien, 2010, pp. 310, 316-317; po, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1991, 2006). the khmer and highland peoples present a complex group whose consideration in the following analysis is rather reduced, considering that up to date my research has focused mainly on the cham population. meanwhile, highlanders generally originated in the western highlands region and represent a mixture of austronesian and austroasiatic peoples. they have predominantly relied upon hinterland products, which linked them to lowland trade. importantly, historians have also suggested that there was a substantial trade of slave and debt-bonded labor that linked various groups together. the position of highland peoples changed substantially after the seventeenth century, when vietnamese, fleeing the nguyen-trinh wars, were first allowed into prey nokor (now ho chi minh city). as the trading port became increasingly popular both among vietnamese and highland peoples who had migrated to the lowlands, lowland khmer, known also as the khmer krom, eventually became a minority in the region of the southern delta (vn: nam bo). highland peoples and even fought to bring highland peoples under their control. william b. noseworthy lowland participation in the irredentist ‘highlands liberation movement’ in vietnam aseas 6(1) 1514 cham nationalism had its roots in the responses to early nineteenth century campaigns against cham peoples, when the vietnamese emperor minh menh (1820-1841) suppressed cham culture and annexed the last cham kingdom (c: negar) of panduranga, now ninh thuan and binh thuan provinces, in 1832. however, a revolt led by katip ja thak wa (1834-1835) which aimed to establish a cham state in panduranga (po, 1981, 1988, p. 60, 1987, pp. 153-155) defined cham nationalist sentiments throughout the following century. while certain historians place an emphasis on the cooperative relations between cham and vietnamese during the process of decolonization (cao xuan pho, 1988, p. 180), a close examination of the narratives of les kosem, y bham enuol, and um savuth demonstrates that a contestation of participation in vietnamese society was just as probable. les kosem (alias y prin enuol or po nagar) was a cham muslim, born in phan rang (now ninh thuan province, vietnam) and raised on khmer territory, where he eventually served together with khmer krom leader, um savuth (or om savuk alias chau dara) and formed an alliance with the advocate of highland nationalism and the highest-ranking representative of the rhade people, y bham enuol. by the 1950s, while les was a leading operative in detachments to the central highlands,12 um savuth was responsible for khmer krom operations in the mekong delta (cornfield & summers, 2002, p. 241; labrie, 1971, p. 113; po & phoeum, 2006, pp. 1-13). there are surprisingly few sources available on les’ early career. one of the few accounts is ngon vinh’s (1995) revision of an early work on fulro, fulro: hay la tap doan toi pham (fulro or a criminal organization) (1983), which was published with the cong an nhan dan or the socialist republic of vietnam’s security police press. according to ngon vinh (1995), shortly after his work as an interpreter during the 1944 japanese occupation of south-east asia, les kosem founded a youth anti-french colonial resistance corps that hoped for the “restoration of the former kingdom of champa” (vn: phuc hoi co quoc champa) (pp. 6-8). however, although both cham and khmer shared the experience of vietnamese conquest, it is unlikely that this restoration of the former kingdom of champa would have entered the political rhetoric, since les was focused on anti-french colonialist, rather than on nationalist aims. 12 at that time, the highlands were increasingly under the control of the vietnamese government and administration. aseas 6(1) 1514 les’ initial anti-french stance more likely put him in contest with the early ethnonationalist movements of highland minorities. minorities of the western highlands had previously fought for recognition with french colonial authorities. with the creation of the commiserate of the federal government for the montagnard populations of south indochina (f: commissariat du gouvernement federal pour les populations montagnardes du sud indochinois) in may 1946, and an ordinance signed by the french high commissioner admiral thierry d’argenlieu, which founded the country of the montagnards of southern indochina (f: pays du montagnard du sud indochinois – pmsi) that same month, highland minorities shifted towards a relatively pro-french stance, even though d’argenlieu’s support of the pmsi was predominantly part of a larger plan to re-conquest indochina after the surrender of the japanese. however, highland sovereignty was quickly rescinded one year later (1947), when france granted the vietnamese emperor bao dai the pmsi as part of his crown domain (salemink, 1991, pp. 264-266, 2003, pp. 129-179). highland movements at this stage became antivietnamese rather than anti-french, moving parallel to shifts that occurred among the cham and khmer. les kosem shifted to an anti-vietnamese position after late 1954, when the saigon regime enacted a migration policy, which led to a large-scale viet-kinh incursion into cham, khmer, and highland territory (hickey, 1982/2003b, pp. 2-32). after his resistance movement was repressed by the southern vietnamese regime, les relocated to france to train at st. cyr academy, where he worked together with lon nol’s younger brother, lon non, studied law, and developed an interest in works with relation to the “history of the champa kingdom” (vn: lich su vuong quoc champa) (vinh, 1995, pp. 6-8). although by the mid-1950s, les kosem was very likely concerned with the development of cham nationalism, this did not preclude participation in the activities of khmer elites or highland minorities. after ngo dinh diem’s 1955 fraudulent referendum victory, the rvn policy supported a predominantly viet-kinh catholic migration into the highlands and cham lands. local authorities working for the diem regime banned the use of cham language and burned cham books. as they enacted diem’s policies, they tended to refer to the highland populations as “savages” using the highly charged vietnamese term moi or the french term sauvages (salemink, 1991, pp. william b. noseworthy lowland participation in the irredentist ‘highlands liberation movement’ in vietnam aseas 6(1) 1716 264-266, 2003, pp. 129-179).13 thus, by 1957 pressure on highland populations led to the formation of the bajaraka movement among the bahnar, jarai, roglai, and koho peoples, with y bham enuol as one of the movements leaders, while les, together with fellow cham muslims chek ibrahim (che ibrahim), el ibrahim (chak prak hum or en rak hum), and prime, formed an advocacy group for cham political and military participation in kampong chhnang province on khmer territory (lafont, 2006, p. 12; vinh, 1995, pp. 6-8). while bajaraka’s explicit resistance to the diem regime resulted in the imprisonment of most of their leadership, including y bham enuol, les kosem continued to partner with the khmer elite (lafont, 2006, pp. 11-12; po & phoeum, 2006, pp. 23-46). after the foundation of his advocacy group, les moved on to gain support from cambodian prime minister prince norodom sihanouk, which granted les access to arms and funds. in his support for khmer irredentism, les became a founding member of the liberation front of northern kampuchia (flnc) in the late 1950s, while diem’s repression in the highlands continued with the reorganization of hamlets until 1959 (kahin, 1986, pp. 99, 108-109; po & phoeum, 2006, p. 39). it was around this time that the relationship between les kosem and the khmer krom leader um savuth became of critical importance. both worked for the khmer secret service and simultaneously fed information to the remnants of the french secret service agency, the external documentation and counter espionage service (f: service de documentation exterieure et de contre espionage – sdece) (white, 1992, p. 143). thus, by 1960/1961, les was in a good position to found the flc (vn: mat tran giai phong champa) which sought to liberate the poly-ethnic “territory of ancient champa” (hickey, 1982/2003b, p. 46; po & phoeum, 2006, p. 39; po, 2007, p. 49).14 while the ngo dinh diem regime had stalled hopes for peaceful negotiations, the winds shifted after the coup of 1963 and the assassination of ngo dinh diem. demonstrating his connections to saigon, les managed to petition the new generals in power – general le van kim, general ton that dinh, and colonel nguyen chanh thi15 – and 13 according to scupin (1995), the ngo dinh diem enacted ethnocidal policies against the cham, as cham language materials were burned, the study of cham was banned, and they were reclassified as ethnic minorities (dong bao thuong) that “needed to assimilate”, whereas in the northern vietnamese territory ho chi minh promised to create autonomous zones for ethnic minorities (scupin, 1995, p. 315). 14 ngon vinh misrepresents the flc as the: phong trao phuc quoc champa or the front for the restoration of champa. (vinh, 1995, p. 10) 15 le van kim was the brother in law of tran van don and the two had formed a triangular relationship with duong van minh (alias “big minh”), which resulted in the coup of 1963. general ton that dinh became a member of the aseas 6(1) 1716 secured the release of y bham enuol in 1964. later that same year, y bham enuol was proclaimed president of the high plateau of champa, that is, the non-coastal provinces of the ii corps region. the ceremony was held in front of a group of three thousand fulro members with les kosem on their front (kahin, 1986, pp. 93-181; po & phoeum 2006, pp. 42-46; tarling, 1999, p. 218). fulro then released a series of proclamations declaring their objectives. almost no secondary accounts of fulro examine the actual contents of these statements, even though they were collected and published by the organization itself as a reflection on the events that led up to the foundation of the government of the high plateau of champa and their participation in the conference of the indochinese peoples in 1965. the fulro documents the fulro documents are a collection of archival materials, photographs, newspaper clippings from agence france presse (afp) and the phnom penh post, the fulro proclamation, and the fulro declaration. while some of the documents were originally written in french, others were translated into english. the collection, which was published by furlo leadership and members of the government of the high plateau of champa at the conference of indochinese peoples in early 1965 under the title the fulro history, represents the most concise collection of primary source documents that give a clear self-portrayal of the fulro movement.16 what follows is a detailed analysis of these materials, not present elsewhere in secondary literature, beginning with the fulro proclamation that marked the organization’s official founding on 1 august 1964 with the following words: the cham, rhade, jarai, churu, raglai, chauma, bih, hrue, bahnar, sedang, hre, kabuan, hadrung, mnong, stieng, and khmer krom peoples of the center and south of vietnam have today joined the coup of the viet cong [sic].17 this is because nguyen khanh and his valets are incapable of guaranteeing our life and our liberty and also undertook pretexts for our suppression and maltreatment. military revolutionary council (mrc) after the coup and commander of the iii corps tactical zone. while colonel nguyen chanh thi had previously fled to khmer territory, after the coup he was put in control of the i corps tactical zone under the command of general nguyen khanh. 16 this compilation is available at cornell university. 17 it should be noted that viet cong is a rather pejorative appellation for viet nam cong san or “vietnamese communist”. william b. noseworthy lowland participation in the irredentist ‘highlands liberation movement’ in vietnam aseas 6(1) 1918 [these actions] prove that the vietnamese have brought an unnecessary campaign of destruction against our grand races. since we are not able to support the repressive policies of the [south] vietnamese: we establish fulro to release us from their yoke. by this proclamation we make a solemn appeal to the countries of the world to help us arrive at our goal, which aims to make the attempt at the extermination of our great races by the vietnamese colonialists a failure. signed, president chau dara (om savuk) vice-president po nagar (les kosem) and vice-president y bham enuol (fulro, 1965, pp. 13-17) the declaration begins with a list of the lowland and highland peoples who have joined “the coup of the viet cong”. the use of the pejorative viet cong, as opposed to the national liberation front (nlf), suggests a relatively anti-communist stance of fulro leadership. the second section also notes the peoples’ explicit dissatisfaction with general nguyen khanh who had become the president of the rvn in january 1964. the dislike of both the communist and the republic’s stances, combined with a strong sentiment of fear that the “repressive policies” of the south vietnamese were aimed at the “extermination” of fulro, present a leading motivating factor in the “appeal to the countries of the world”. the proclamation was published in several languages – not only in french and khmer but also in cham akhar thrah script, the malay-jawi script used by cham muslim populations in cambodia and south vietnam, and two highland languages, most likely rhade and jarai, given the large participation from these two factions. the spread of the proclamation across linguistic barriers and regional boundaries was thus a primary concern for the organization’s leadership, a step not taken in the fulro declaration, which was published at the same time with the following wording: aseas 6(1) 1918 declaration of the high committee of the unified front for the fight of the oppressed races our peoples: the cham, rhade, jarai, churu, raglai, bih, hrue, bahnar, sedang, hre, kabuan, mnong, stieng, and khmer-krom, have been brought together into a community by the expansionist south vietnamese. a systematic policy of genocide is keen on destroying our civilizations, our cultures, our religions, our nationality, and our languages. our chief religions have been attacked, our historical monuments and our temples bombarded, our schools closed, our youth enrolled in the army of the south vietnamese imperialists in order to be used as flesh in the gun of their civil war against the viet cong. these are immense sufferings. we have undergone them for 10 years and we are not going to endure the amplification of them. the total elimination of our grand races from the center and south of vietnam was at one time considered inevitable. if we do not react against the crimes of the south vietnamese perpetrated against us this will be the case. this is the same for all minorities, representative of our being of common identity, original inhabitants of the countries of our father of the center and south, that were integral in the kingdoms of champa and the cambodians, who decide to form the unified front for the fight of the oppressed races called fulro. our goal is the defence of our survival, for our cultural, spiritual and racial patrimony and the independence of our country. it would not be superfluous to emphasise to all countries who enthusiastically support peace, the hardships that we have endured vis a vis the south vietnamese imperialists, supported by the american imperialists who seek to involve by any means [available] the countries of southeast asia in seato, their block of war, and do not back down in front of any crime, even if offensive to them and their goal. the list of their [south vietnamese and american] crimes is already long and well-known in the world, and it is not our intention to say more. we announce solemnly: today, to all of the members of the united nations, the member states of the committee of decolonization, the existence of our united front for the fight, and also our determination to fight until the end, to safeguard our races from extermination by imperialist vietnamese and their american patrons. we have the conviction that all the people of the world who enthusiastically support peace will not miss the opportunity to contribute their effective assistance to release us from the yoke of the southvietnamese colonialists. (fulro, 1965, p. 18) the declaration of fulro seems to have been published only in french, which was still the de facto lingua franca of fulro leadership and most likely a result of the predominance of french education amongst fulro leaders. fulro leaders drew upon the language used in the furlo proclamation, extending the accusation of a coming extermination of fulro peoples to a coming genocide. the grievance against the repression of minority languages, culture, and religion, along with the abuse of minorities in the army of the republic of vietnam (arvn) was a unifying call. it is important to note that the appeal of fulro was not directed to the national authorities but rather to the united nations as the committee for decolonization presented a means to make legal petitions to the international community. william b. noseworthy lowland participation in the irredentist ‘highlands liberation movement’ in vietnam aseas 6(1) 2120 although the wording of the fulro proclamation is, as common with nationalist material at that time, sprinkled with the hyperbolic language of radical nationalism, the petition to the international community provides evidence that the organization intended to act in accordance with international law. with this concern in mind, fulro leadership began to plan the next phase of their revolt, the coup of 20 september 1964, which resulted in the capture of a large portion of western highland territory. from the radio station at ban me thuot, fulro leadership began to broadcast their proclamation, which was quickly dismissed as “propaganda” in several press sources. nevertheless, nguyen khanh responded to their appeal, and although the declaration of fulro had referred to him as the “leader of the puppet regime of saigon”, he did promise fulro’s “austronesian brothers that they would be granted legitimate rights” (fulro, 1965, p. 1). however, nguyen khanh did not mention any austroasiatic participants and, according to dispatch no. 2.086 on 24 september 1964, the saigon regime maintained its prejudices as it “feared the instalment of a local autonomous government” and was “under the influence of viet cong propaganda that tended to emphasize divergences existing between the tribes of central vietnam and the populations of the delta”. additionally, an afp/saigon press relation during this time confirms nguyen khanh’s “fears” that the fulro revolt would “divide the country in two” (fulro, 1965, p. 32). khanh’s words reflect the assumption that the “delta” populations were already synonymous with the majority viet-kinh population, while fulro’s self-proclaimed aim was to unify lowland and highland minorities. in response to fulro’s continued petitions, general khanh visited one of fulro’s police constabularies in the western highlands on 17 october 1964 to assure “64 compatriots representing the austronesians” that the promises of 28 september 1964 remained in place (fulro, 1965, p. 1). these promises included development programs, the restoration of land rights to minority populations, and the restoration of ‘the right’ to join the arvn. not only did khanh address solely “austronesians”, and thus disregard the participation of austroasiatic minorities, he also disregarded one of fulro’s major concerns: how minorities were forced to serve and die disproportionately for the arvn’s cause. on the same day of general nguyen khanh’s visit, fulro leadership thus founded the provisional government of champa, appointing prime minister y bham enuol, minister of foreign affairs khua y ruah anha, and minister of war khua ip’ha l’and, while fulro remained the military wing of the provisional government (fulro, 1965, p. 1; garfour, 1991, pp. 8-9; labrie, 1971, pp. 80-82). aseas 6(1) 2120 the foundation of the provisional government of champa marked an important shift in the formation of the fulro movement, as the military group was now to take a backseat in relation to the provisional government, which exhibited significantly more highland leaders in its administration. additionally, as displayed by the words of y bham enuol upon the foundation of the provisional government, fulro leadership began to take a slightly softer stance towards saigon: dear compatriots! our coup of 20/9/64 is for us a bright national victory. hasn’t our victory meant the occupation of most of the zone [ii] of the western highlands, where our forces killed many enemies and we have more than 70 prisoners? our forces have been able to occupy without difficulty the radio station of ban me thuot and broadcasted in several languages a proclamation of our territorial claims. on 24/9/64, general khanh promised in front of 300 representatives of the western highlands that he would restore our land rights and on 28/9/64 those representatives returned with the general to sarpa, where he insisted in front of our brothers in arms upon these same agreements. colonels freund and wendt and general depuy, having played a key role in this process, are the principal persons in charge of continued negotiations. it is with the insurance of these american senior officers and the government of saigon that our brothers in sarpa have accepted the truce. dear compatriots, we ask you to take guard of these verbal promises. in case the vietnamese government does not give us satisfaction in the immediate future, we will take up arms again in our struggle until the final victory. long live fulro! long live the countries enthusiastic of peace! down with the vietnamese colonialists! made with champa, october 17, 1964 y-bham enuol (fulro, 1965, p. 19) although the composition of the provisional government of champa reflected a shift towards increased representation of highland peoples, les kosem remained an instrumental link to the khmer royalty, guaranteeing the presence of fulro in the provisional government of champa and resulting in their participation in the conference of indochinese peoples in 1965. this process began with fulro letter no. 111, dated 17 december 1964 and addressed to “his royal highness samdech preah norodom sihanouk varman” and ended on 19 february 1965, when fulro members received their official invitation, just three days before they arrived in phnom penh (fulro, 1965, p. 2). william b. noseworthy lowland participation in the irredentist ‘highlands liberation movement’ in vietnam aseas 6(1) 2322 although fulro leadership participated in the conference, they only acted as the military wing of the provisional government. fulro sources document the participation of the provisional government of champa with y bham enuol as its president in meetings with the vietnamese nlf and the delegation of the democratic republic of vietnam. it was during this meeting that y bham enuol refers to the “historically friendly relations” between all “austrien” peoples for the first time (fulro, 1965, p. 2; gafour, 1991, pp. 8-9; hickey, 1982/2003b, pp. 164-165). although the so-called “austrien” peoples were in fact not always characterized by “historically friendly relations”, as major conflicts between cham and khmer appeared during both the eleventh and fourteenth centuries, y bham enuol’s use of the term austrien reflects a greater project at hand. les kosem had created the term as a merger between austronesian (covering cham, raglai, jarai, rhade, and churu factions) and austroasiatic (covering khmer, koho, and bahnar factions). the creation of this term, combined with general trends in fulro decision making at that time, suggests that the immediate goals of the provisional government of champa and fulro were not to reclaim the historical territory of “chiem thanh” or “co vuong quoc champa”, as ngon vinh’s account would suggest, but rather to create a unified identity of highland and lowland, austroasiatic and austronesian minority peoples under the banner of austrien. under this same banner, fulro members sought to establish a series of relations with vietnamese, khmer, and international forces that would guarantee fulro members rights to territory in the western highlands (fulro, 1965, p. 2; gafour, 1991, pp. 8-9; hickey, 1982/2003b, pp. 164-165). initial press releases and sources from saigon were inaccurate as they greatly overstated fulro’s territorial claims and did not consider their symbolic role, dismissed the fulro proclamation and declaration by using the term “propaganda”, and suggested that the rebellion included “only small groups of highlanders” who were “illiterate” (fulro, 1965, pp. 25-32). subsequently, in june 1965, when general khanh’s regime collapsed and vice-air marshal nguyen cao ky became prime minister of the rvn, the vietnamese leadership terminated the afore proposed development programs. as the tension continued to mount, american special forces maintained a close relationship with fulro for at least another several months as they recognized fulro, rather than the arvn ii corps command as the primary authority of the western highlands (hickey, 1982/2003b, pp. 164-165; hrw, 2002, pp. 13-25; socheruk, 1965, pp. 39-54; 5th sfga, 1965, p. 15). aseas 6(1) 2322 the second revolt through the 1970s with the successes of the coup of 20 september 1964, the conference of indochinese peoples, and the official recognition by the american forces, it was clear that the provisional government of champa and fulro had made substantial gains in relation to saigon. the newly created front for the liberation of the high plateau of champa (flhpc) was technically under les kosem’s command, along with the flc, the flnc, and the flkk.18 flhpc was responsible for creating, in the words of scupin (1995), a “political renaissance” (p. 316) amongst the cham, as language materials and teaching manuals were published in the cham script (c: akhar thrah) and radio broadcasts released. however, internal divisions within the fulro command structure were pressing. the subordinate command of former bajaraka members loyal to y bih aleo remained loyal to the nlf, while the majority of the fulro command owed loyalty to phnom penh, and a small minority to the americans. however, due to a lack of recognition on the part of saigon, a second revolt broke out in december 1965, which eventually led to negotiations. in its aftermath, paul nur (bahnar) was appointed to the position of directorate general for the development of ethnic minorities and negotiations prompted the plains of pleiku conference in ban me thuot from 25 to 27 june 1967, when 250 fulro fighters were allowed to return to the western highlands from their posts in cambodia (hickey, 1982/2003b, p. 164; hrw, 2002, pp. 13-35; socheruk, 1965, pp. 39-54; 5th sfga, 1966, p. 15). the plains of pleiku conference was a continued attempt by the rvn to court highland elements of fulro that were not yet loyal to phnom penh and the nlf, which aimed to drive a wedge between highland and lowland elements of fulro. nguyen cao ky’s saigon regime proposed the creation of the commiserate of montagnard affairs with paul nur at its head, if fulro elements would rally against the nlf. yet, the provisional government of champa rejected ky’s offer on 7 july 1967, and in august 1968, prime minister y bham enuol made an additional plea for the sovereignty of the cham people (hickey, 1992/2002, p. 275; scupin, 1995, p. 317). the wedge between the highlands and saigon continued to grow in 1969, as accusations that fulro leadership was selling out to rvn began to spread. these and other concerns brought les kosem back to center stage and by june 1970, les’ new cham battalion came in line 18 front for the liberation of kampuchia krom william b. noseworthy lowland participation in the irredentist ‘highlands liberation movement’ in vietnam aseas 6(1) 2524 along with a subordinate command responsible for a territory ranging from modulkiri, ratanakiri, kratie, and kampong cham to the kampong speu transfer depot, monitoring the arms for rice trade along the borderlands of the khmer krom (ahern, 2009, pp. 36-39, 49; hickey, 1992/2002, p. 275). it was the arms for rice trade that first brought les kosem into working directly with the cia in 1970.19 at this time, working with the agency proved deadly, as collaboration with the cia became one of the first grossly exaggerated accusations of the khmer rouge regime against the cham population of cambodia. furthermore, in the blowback of the coup, dubious sources reported that les’ militias were massacring khmer rouge villages (vickery, 2000, pp. 1-27). the combination of these accusations, along with claims of chams collaborating with saigon, quickly contributed to a political situation that rapidly spiraled out of control. even though many cham members of the flc, the flhpc, and fulro had supported the khmer rouge, policy quickly turned towards the systematic execution of tuan and hakem islamic intellectuals who were the pillars of the community, forcing the ingestion of pork, forbidding the teaching of kitap qur’anic commentaries, desecrating the qur’an itself, and forcing cham to wear blue and white checkered scarves, marking them for execution. the result was a genocide committed against the cham population of cambodia, wherein cham accounted for 25 percent of deaths (400,000 to 500,000 deaths) between 1975 and 1979, while they represented only 10 percent of the total population. in the fervor of this socio-political disaster, y bham enuol was executed, the provisional government of champa was disbanded, and les kosem exiled to malaysia (hassan, 1992, pp. 21-22; osman, 2005, pp. 100-118; osman, 2006, pp. 2-17; vickery, 2000, pp. 1-27). only from this period onward did fulro become an almost purely highland organization. conclusion the biography of les kosem, combined with the history of fulro and the provisional government of champa, urge historians to reflect on the nature of interpersonal politics and political speech in the history of vietnam and cambodia from 1955 to 1975, as the analysis of the macro-spatial actors of american, vietnamese, and khmer 19 for example, les kosem was actively recruited by the agency to produce a collection of documents known as the kosem files. aseas 6(1) 2524 elites is not enough. furthermore, it has been demonstrated that to look at the history of fulro as the history of a highlands movement is potentially misleading. the participation of significant lowland members in the fulro movement demonstrates that, rather than thinking in highland-lowland dichotomies, it may be useful to focus on the dualities created by majority-minority relations in the region, in order to better understand the irredentist claims of fulro. the events described in this article provide evidence which suggests that lowland cham and khmer territorial claims are equally important historical considerations, along with les kosem’s creation of the austrien unified highland-lowland identity and appeals to the international community. barring re-examinations of this history bodes poorly on the improvement of minority-majority relations throughout south-east asia, and in vietnam and cambodia in particular. the future of these relations could certainly not improve without direct policy initiatives by south-east asian governments themselves, as even this brief examination of fulro highlights the reconciliation work that remains to be done and the tensions between minority populations and government authorities that continue to provoke incidents with negative consequences for all parties involved. nevertheless, scholars of the region can continue their work by striving to present a more detailed understanding of this borderlands region, from the periods of the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries, giving greater primacy to cham, khmer, and highland language sources. thus, only through the continued study of non-english language material will historians gain a better understanding of the interstices between national frames in the region and, perhaps for scholars working in vietnam, a better understanding of minority populations as a whole. references 5th special forces group (airborne). 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(2007). tu flm den fulro: cuoc dau tranh cua dan toc tieu so mien nam dong duong (1955-1975). champaka, 7, 1-196. quoc te phan doi tinh chat khung bo cua ksor kok (international against the terrorist activities of ksor kok). (2004, may 22). vietnamnet. retrieved from http://news.socbay.com/quoc_te_phan_doi_tinh_chat_ khung_bo_cua_ksor_kok-600247984-33619968.html salemink, o. (1991). mois and marquis. the invention and appropriation of vietnam’s montagnards from william b. noseworthy lowland participation in the irredentist ‘highlands liberation movement’ in vietnam aseas 6(1) 2928 sabatier to the cia. in g. w. stocking, jr. (ed.), colonial situations: essays on the contextualization of ethnographic knowledge (pp. 243-284 ). madison, wi: university of wisconsin press. salemink, o. (2003). the ethnography of vietnam’s central highlanders. a historical contextualization, 18501900. london, uk: university of hawai’i press. scupin, r. (1995). historical, ethnographic, and contemporary political analyses of the muslims of kampuchea and vietnam. sojourn, 10(2), 301-328. socheruk, h. (1965). american special forces in action in vietnam. national geographic, 127(1), 38-65. tarling, n. (1999). the establishment of the colonial regimes. in the cambridge history of southeast asia (vol. 2, pt. 1, pp. 5-78). cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. taylor, k. (1999). early kingdoms: champa. in n. tarling (ed.), the cambridge history of southeast asia (vol. 1, pt. 1, pp. 153-155). cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. whitmore, j. k. (2011). the last great king of classical southeast asia: che bong nga and fourteenthcentury champa. in k. p. tran & b. m. lockhart (eds.), the cham of vietnam. history, society, and art (pp. 168-203). singapore: nus singapore press. vickery, m. (2000). a gentle land. in cambodia 1975-1982 (chap. 1, pp. 1-27). seattle, wa: university of washington press. viet cuong. (2004, may 25). ksor kok, mot phan tu khung bo dien cuong (ksor kok, one crazy terrorist). suc khoe va dinh duong. retrieved from http://suckhoedinhduong.nld.com.vn/63512p0c1006/ksor-kokmot-phan-tu-khung-bo-dien-cuong.htm migration as a strategy for maintaining a middle-class identity: the case of professional filipino women in melbourne aseas 6(2) 307306 d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -6 .2 -5 aktuelle südostasienforschung / current research on south-east asia migration as a strategy for maintaining a middle-class identity: the case of professional filipino women in melbourne cirila limpangog1 citation limpangog, c. (2013). migration as a strategy for maintaining a middle-class identity: the case of professional filipino women in melbourne. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies 6(2), 307-329. this paper surveys the diverse motives of professional filipino immigrant women in melbourne, australia. in-depth interviews of 20 women reveal that their mosaic of motives challenges the traditional notion of economic advancement framed within the household theory, or ideas of purely individualistic pursuits. their movements were facilitated through the intersection of established families and social networks in australia, and the possession of skills required by the immigration department, defying the mail order bride stereotype that was projected on almost all filipino women in the 1980s. it is argued that migration provided a bridge to more liberating quality of life, enabling them either to recover their declining middle-class status in the philippines or to explore an alternative lifestyle in the new context. keywords: australia; gender; lifestyle; philippines; skilled migration dieser beitrag untersucht die unterschiedlichen motive gut ausgebildeter philippinischer migrantinnen in melbourne, australien. die ergebnisse, basierend auf 20 tiefeninterviews, zeigen eine vielfalt an migrationsmotiven, die klassisch wirtschaftlichen konzepten wie jenen der mikroökonomischen haushaltsstrategie widersprechen. die migrationsbewegungen philippinischer migrantinnen wurden durch das zusammenspiel sozialer und familiärer netzwerke in australien sowie durch die fachkompetenzen, die von der einwanderungsbehörde vorausgesetzt werden, gelenkt. dieses migrantinnenprofi l widerspricht dem vorurteil der „katalogbraut“, das während der 1980er jahre auf viele philippinische migrantinnen projiziert wurde. es wird argumentiert, dass migration einen im herkunftsland zu erwartenden sinkenden status verhindert und persönliche freiheiten, das ausprobieren alternativer lebensstile sowie individuelle lebensqualität im migrationszielland ermöglicht bzw. erhöht. schlagworte: australien; gender; lebensstil; philippinen; qualifi zierte migrantinnen 1 cirila p. limpangog holds a phd from the university of melbourne, australia and is currently a lecturer at the royal melbourne institute of technology. she is also program manager at the international women’s development agency. contact: cirila.limpangog@rmit.edu.au aseas 6(2) 309308 cirila limpangog migration as a strategy for maintaining a middle-class identity introduction immigration takes place within the complex interaction of macro (structural, legislative), meso (familial, social network), and micro (individual) contexts. in this context, human agency is significant in determining people’s migration trajectories. this is the force through which social and human capital are summed up, accessed, and utilized for the individual to succeed. this paper explores the informants’ (micro) reasons and motives for migrating to australia. i analyze how human agency is facilitated, fortified, or curtailed through its interaction with macro and meso forces. migration involves various and complex motives. the range of women’s aims can include advancing themselves and their family economically, fleeing gender-based persecution, reuniting with their families, seeking asylum, seeking greater personal autonomy, and (re)marriage, to name a few (delaet, 1999; kofman, 2004). i thus reject the onedimensionality of household or family-centered economic theory (without negating the importance of family and kinship in people’s movements), which asserts that the individual’s decision to migrate is induced by household needs. migration primarily appears as a strategy for household maintenance, with the migrant worker returning to the same household in between contracts or during work holidays (semyonov & gorodzeisky, 2005). so far, studies on filipino migration have emphasized economic motives that are directed towards the ‘left-behind’ family remaining in the philippines. hereafter, migrant workers are studied as remitters of income (basa et al., 2012; mcdonald & valenzuela, 2012; mckay, 2011; quisumbing & mcniven, 2010; semyonov & gorodzeisky, 2008). i extend such analysis by exploring the ways that migrating women remain family-oriented in their economic interests, but in a situation where the family has also migrated. as kofman (2004) remarks “women may seek to combine work, career and marriage but these rationalities are difficult to grasp using a classification of migratory moves based on a single reason, such as labour, family or asylum” (p. 647). my informants’ migratory aspirations were variously framed. alternative lifestyles and, to some extent, marriage and escape from political persecution and from oppressive gender and cultural norms were their motives. they left the philippines as middle-class2 professionals, and migration was principally a strategy for maintaining or extending their class position. 2 in the philippines, education is an important marker of class. thus, middle-class is used here to refer to people possessing educational qualifications from reputable universities, and occupying well-paid jobs. they usually come from well-educated families. aseas 6(2) 309308 despite the extraordinary global reach of filipino migration, there has been a lack of scholarship on filipino skilled or professional migrant women, and this could be attributed to two reasons: first, the majority of filipino women working overseas are low-waged laborers, mainly domestic workers (constable, 1997; liebelt, 2011; parrenas, 2001); and second, they often leave the country as ‘marriage migrants’, or, as they are commonly known and thought of in australia, ‘mail order brides’ (mobs) (angeles & sunanta, 2007; jackson, 1989; robinson, 1996; saroca, 2007; woelz-stirling, kelaher, & manderson, 1998). studies reveal that despite their high education, low-waged workers experience meagre occupational mobility after migration. even nurses – the only prominent, female-dominated filipino migration stream of skilled workers – have experienced deskilling, downward occupational mobility, and structural as well as everyday discrimination in their transnational movement (ball, 2004; choi & lyons, 2012; hawthorne, 2001; pratt, 1999; salami & nelson, 2013). roces (2003) notes that women who move as either a spouse or fiancé quickly become mothers, workers, and citizens in a new context, and yet, these new identity dimensions are rarely surveyed. instead, migrant women are pigeonholed as brides, even after years of settlement in australia and despite their high level of education and skills prior to migration. these narratives also obscure the movements of the other skilled filipino migrant women. the category ‘skilled migrant’ is used here to refer to holders of university degrees who occupied white-collar jobs during the interviews, although some of them had experienced under-employment at one point or another. their entry was facilitated by either a skilled visa, through family reunification, studies, marriage, or a combination of any of these. the under-representation of skilled filipino women in the migration discourse seems anomalous for two reasons: first, since 2004, philippine entrants to australia largely come through skilled migration visas; in the period between 2011 and 2012, 70 percent of these visas were issued through the skilled migration stream (australian government department of immigration and citizenship, 2011). second, filipinos represent the seventh largest immigrant group in australia, with a men-to-women ratio of 1 to 1.5 for the year 2010 (australian bureau of statistics, 2012). this paper therefore challenges the invisibility of skilled filipino migrant women in the migration discourse in australia and beyond. cirila limpangog migration as a strategy for maintaining a middle-class identity aseas 6(2) 311310 this paper is based on my research for my phd thesis on skilled migrant filipino women in melbourne. from 2006 to 2007, i conducted in-depth interviews with 20 filipino women who came to australia over the past 25 years.3 as i used a ‘snowball’ approach in the selection of informants, some of them were each other’s friends, colleagues, neighbors, or relatives. yet, they were diverse in their professional fields, and in the circumstances of entering australia. as a minority scholar researching the lives of co-nationals, i occupied a unique position. my own embodied experience as a skilled filipino woman researching the lives of skilled filipino immigrants in australia has enabled the deployment of indigenous knowledge valuable to this research project. i did not conduct the interviews as an ‘outsider’ but more as an ‘outsider within’ (collins, 1986). while minority scholars have the privilege of accessing trust and comprehension of the cultural ways of the subjects, they are constantly faced with self-criticism to ensure authenticity of their own voice and those of the subjects (andersen, 1993). i was aware that my own historical and cultural situatedness would always influence me as researcher (cerwonka & malkki, 2007). the researcher’s subjectivity is integral to the knowledge production process. interpretation involves a ‘fusion of horizons’ – that of the historical specificity of the researcher and that of the object of inquiry: “the fusion at the center of understanding means that we must see knowledge production as a flexible, creative, historically influenced process” (cerwonka & malkki, 2007, p. 23). i used the intersectionality framework in analyzing the informants’ accounts. intersectionality, according to davis (2008), is “the interaction between gender, race, and other categories of difference in individual lives, social practices, institutional arrangements, and cultural ideologies and the outcomes of these interactions in terms of power” (p. 68). i argue that middle-class maintenance, expressed in terms of alternative lifestyle, retrieval of a declining class position, and a host of other interlocking motives, many of which have familial undertones, frame the migrants’ move to australia. the following sections contextualize the migration of filipino women and explore the diversity, nuances, and conflicts associated with their migrations. 3 pseudonyms were used to protect the informants’ privacy. aseas 6(2) 311310 an overview of the australian immigration restriction and the passage of filipino women australian migration history is significantly different from that of other major destination countries of filipino immigrants mainly because of its racial policy that prohibited the settlement of non-white people. in the 1850s, labor disputes both in the gold mining industry and in factories, due to chinese diggers’ productivity and cheap wages for the hardworking indentured laborers from the south pacific, would all precipitate the white australian policy (1901-1973). also known as the immigration restriction act of 1901, the policy deployed language tests to prevent ‘undesirables’ (prostitutes, criminals, paupers, contract laborers, non-whites) from entering the newly federated australia mainly for economic reasons. it was also during this last half of the nineteenth century when the history of filipino immigration to australia was first recorded. the first wave of philippines-born migrants consisted of sailors, artisans, laborers, and divers. they were recorded in the official registry as manila men and sulu men.4 many of them fled the pre-republican philippines in search of peace, away from the tyrannies of the spanish colonizers. they petitioned for their families to emigrate; some married local residents. thus, the first wave of filipino settlers clearly made use of their familial and social networks as an immigration strategy, consistent with the clannish orientation of filipino culture. this trend would continue irrespective of the constraints in subsequent immigration regimes (hennessy, 2004). the white australian policy was officially terminated in the 1970s, as the whitlam government affirmed anti-discrimination treaties. yet, a strong anti-immigration sentiment would reverberate on a structural level (for instance, refugees without valid visas were subjected to mandatory detention5; or through ideological critiques on multiculturalism as ‘asianization of australia’6). 4 the philippines was declared a republic in 1898, although its independence was immediately disrupted by the invading americans. it was only in 1946 that it became an independent nation state. before 1898, inhabitants of the archipelago were recognized in terms of their regional orientation. those who came from manila and the larger luzon region were simply called ‘manila men’, while those who came from the mindanao region were called ‘sulu men’ (see ileto, 1993). 5 colloquially known as ‘boat people’, asylum seekers who arrived by boat – such as those aboard the historic tampa in 2001 – were subjected to mandatory detention. such political posture is a blunt contravention of the universal declaration of human rights, of which australia is a signatory. 6 in 1996, politician pauline hanson and her one nation party endorsed a populist and protectionist stand calling for the abolition of multiculturalism and the prevention of further asian immigration to australia. cirila limpangog migration as a strategy for maintaining a middle-class identity aseas 6(2) 313312 another reason that historically prevented filipino women from entering australia was gendered labor restrictions. looking at the larger contours of asian migration, hugo (2003) emphasizes that male-led movements from asian countries to australia in the nineteenth century were facilitated by labor migration strategies that restricted the entry of women. this was however neutralized in the third part of the twentieth century with the onset of family and humanitarian visa schemes, which also propelled female-led migrations, and then later with the government’s preference for skilled migrants. despite these policy developments, feminist thinkers demonstrate that australia’s skilled migration strategy is gender-biased. fincher (1995) sees these skill categories as oriented towards the male migrant, as men are more often trained in the professions required for overseas employment. thereafter, male managers, administrators, professionals, paraprofessionals, and tradespersons embody the skills favored by australian immigration policy(fincher 1995, p. 212). through the nineteenth and twentieth century, policy guidelines have placed women as ‘immigrant wives’, ‘breeders for australia’, and ‘unskilled dependents’ (see hugo, 2003). iredale (2005) observes that it was not until quite recently (namely 1989) that australia’s immigration policies have taken into consideration the professional qualifications of the spouse of the main applicant. despite the restrictive measures that led to the decline in their number in earlier eras, filipinos have not stopped entering australia. they came again in trickles, mainly as female nursing students through the colombo plan7 in the 1950s. most of them were enrolled in universities in sydney and melbourne, and opted to permanently settle after graduation. simultaneously, changes in australian immigration policies were introduced to fill shortages of skilled tradesmen in response to post-war needs. the repeal of the white australia policy in the 1970s coincided with the proclamation of the martial law in the philippines. in the following decades, many filipinos were demoralized because of the widespread corruption, growing insurgency, and suppression of democracy during the marcos dictatorship.8 the political instability and persistent economic predicaments on the one hand, and the state’s aggressive move 7 the colombo plan was a bilateral aid set up in the 1950s to enable economic, technical, and educational assistance by western countries to developing countries in south and south-east asia. australia played a critical role in the colombo plan by sponsoring asian students to its tertiary academic institutions. 8 president ferdinand marcos declared martial law on september 21, 1972. he ruled the philippines until 1986, when his dictatorship was toppled by the famous people’s power movement. subsequent leaderships attempted to restore democracy, install transparency in governance, and improve the country’s economic life – but with little success. aseas 6(2) 313312 to globalize its labor force on the other, resulted in an unprecedented out-migration and overseas work deployments, especially in the 1970s and 1980s. the migration of many middle-class filipinos was also a means to maintain their standard of living that was endangered in their homeland (tacoli, 1999, p. 668). mosaic of motivations for coming to australia in this section, i outline the informants’ diverse motivations and strategies as well as the facilitating factors that enabled their migration to australia. family reunification has been a favored strategy of filipino immigration not only in the u.s. (keely, 1973; liu, ong, & rosenstein, 1991; tyner, 1999) but also in australia (cariño, 1994). although geographical studies focus more on receiving countries’ changing immigration policies, it can be assumed that filipinos take advantage of these opportunities to advance their family-centered agenda. the family is described in many writings as the site of filipinos’ most cherished values (asis, 1994; medina, 1991; miralao, 1997). filipinos abroad are characterized to have maintained a strong ‘shared identity’ with family and friends in the homeland, inducing them to recreate such affiliation through family reunification (pe-pua, 2003). the family is the chief inspiration and benefactor of its members’ goals, aspirations, and trajectories in life, including their migration to urbanized cities in the philippines as well as abroad (asis, 2002; asis, huang, & yeoh, 2004; lauby & stark, 1988; parrenas, 2006; ronquillo, boschma, wong, & quiney, 2011). such attitudes extend beyond economic factors, for the ideological force of the family is stronger than the restrictive immigration policies and discriminatory cultures in the host country. however, as will be shown later, this compelling desire to move, although couched as family-induced, is actually tied to other individualistic agendas. the family was a motivator and facilitator in the informants’ migration. yet, regardless of kin support, the informants’ diverse motives to migrate were not necessarily consistent with the visas they obtained. to elucidate the complexity of both migrant women’s motivations and experiences, in the following i will sum up informants’ responses into three themes, according to dominant, recurrent motives: (1) alternative lifestyles, (2) escape from political persecution, and (3) consequential cirila limpangog migration as a strategy for maintaining a middle-class identity aseas 6(2) 315314 migration. yet, in reality, these are no neat categorizations, and motives and experiences tend to overlap in one or the other way. alternative lifestyles due to the prevailing focus on family culture rather than on the individual, migration studies in the philippines tend to focus on the role of the family as the primary lens in analyzing migrant movements. similarly, filipino migrants tend to couch their stories in line with familial responsibility. i do not dispute the importance of this aspect; yet, i suggest that the family is just one factor in their cross-border movements. other desires, individualistic as these may sound, equally frame their migration and thus deserve attention. one dominant and overlying reason for the informants’ migration was to search for an alternative lifestyle. lifestyle migration puts one’s own self-centered desires as the focus, and uses one’s agency and social capital to fulfill them. giddens (1991) calls this ‘reflexive biography’ as the self takes on the responsibility traditionally expected from society or the state. lifestyle migration also resonates to some extent with individualization, an approach that beck and beck-gernsheim (2002) appropriate for those who relocate to explore their self-centered motives. focused on the power of the individual rather than of organized institutions, migration is an escape option in which people construct their ‘do-it-yourself-biography’. the informants’ alternative lifestyle movements may be further understood as acquiring an improved quality of life, resisting financial insecurity, and accomplishing greater autonomy. improved quality of life coming to australia held a promise of improved quality of life especially in terms of better political governance, employment opportunities, and protection from social unrest and economic vulnerabilities. informants commonly appraised the philippine economy as ‘unstable’, ‘worsening’, and ‘plunging’ due to the exponential foreign debt being serviced, and a corrupt bureaucracy. the series of coups d’état that deposed or destabilized national leaders, the long-standing communist rebellion, the muslim separatist movements, and the atrocities committed by the militant muslim fundamentalist abu sayyaf had all weakened the informants’ trust in the governaseas 6(2) 315314 ment. in contrast, australia was seen as having an established, transparent, and efficient government. the informants perceived australian society as egalitarian and affluent “where there is dignity in labor”, as they often told me. they heard anecdotes of migrant filipino tradesmen in the 1970s and 1980s who became financially successful in australia, but who would have stayed poor had they remained in the philippines. susan, a medical doctor, and her husband were motivated by this fantasy of an ‘alternative lifestyle’. she explained that their migration was prompted by their shared dream for “quality of life. in the philippines, although you’re earning well, it’s always stressful.” by this she meant that the cost of living was higher than a worker’s average wages. susan’s husband supported her desire for a more comfortable life, as he was experiencing stagnation in his it executive job. although they were thriving in their respective professions and had no children to support, they could not afford to buy their dream house. coming to australia was a step to a secure comfortable lifestyle for carol, even if, at first, she vaguely knew this country. her father suggested australia, having read about its potentials for a good life: “my dad said, it would be good if you could go to this country. it’s a young country. you can be part of the growth of this country.” her fatherin-law, who as a cargo ship captain had visited all corners of the world, agreed. carol argued, “if he would live his life all over again, or if he were in his 30s, he would live in australia. so my husband and i thought there must be something wise about our fathers’ words.” carol was born to a middle-class family, married to a man with a lucrative it job, a graduate from a reputable university, and enjoyed a thriving career as a statistician. yet, these were not enough for her to attain her desired quality of life. i guess we were young. . . . we thought life in the philippines is hard, although from our parents’ side we didn’t face hardships. we knew we wanted more for our own children. . . . we had our eldest [child] in manila. we trained him here . . . we wanted more, more . . . greener pasture. more chances of getting a good job, be able to afford a house, be able to afford a holiday. leah, then a pr executive, came with her family in 2002. working abroad had been a desire she nurtured over the years. “like most migrants, [we were] looking for a better life . . . despite the fact that we’re both professionals, we were not very happy economically. we felt that there were more opportunities for the kids and the family here in australia,” leah said. choosing australia over canada where her husband’s side of the family had migrated proved to be strategic. cirila limpangog migration as a strategy for maintaining a middle-class identity aseas 6(2) 317316 first, comparing canada and australia in terms of financial requirements such as ‘show money’ as bond, the latter required less. . . . and second, my mom who had already settled in australia helped us in having our skills assessed. she lent us money, and hired an agent to start the processing of our papers. familial networks can thus have diverse purposes. supplying information and financial resources influenced my informants’ decision about the destination. in bashi’s (2007) ‘hub-and-spoke’ network model, the old immigrants’ accrued resources in terms of housing, social connections within and outside the ethnic network, entrenchment in the labor market, and monetary power all collude to provide the new recruits an opportunity to risk, survive, and eventually succeed. these resources largely catalyze my informants’ decision to move to australia. lorna, a civil engineer, also came with her husband for career furtherance. like carol, leah, and susan, she was looking for a more secure life especially in the light of economic and political crises in the philippines. in 1985, my husband randy won a scholarship from an organization [anonymized by author] in america. he proceeded in taking his masters and phd there. i went along with him. there, our two boys were born. we were on an exchange visitor visa, under which as a spouse i was permitted to work. after the scholarship, randy was expected to serve in our home country at least for two years. but the political condition in the philippines was worsening, so we thought of migrating abroad instead. randy tried applying for jobs in new zealand and australia. we eventually chose australia because of the better employment benefits offered. we didn’t know much about australia back then. all we knew then was it is a huge mass of land in the south pacific! amy, who came with her family in 2004, echoed similar sentiments. her two young children were enrolled in an exclusive school where amy taught, enabling them a 50 percent discount in tuition fees. yet, her salary combined with her husband’s, who was in the it marketing field, was just enough to cover their needs, leaving them little to improve their lifestyle. she yearned to own a house and live a slower-paced life. after an eight-hour job back in manila, amy would sell insurance before negotiating the polluted and often choked-up thoroughfares to get home. as soon as she arrived home, her household duties would always conflict with her teaching work, as she had to mark papers and make lesson plans. this routine always left her exhausted. migrating to australia offered a chance to reconstitute paid work into one that was more harmonious with family life. before they left manila amy had begged her husband to take on the breadwinner role alone at least for a year or two upon arriving in melbourne. she longed for a break after 15 years of continuous teaching. she had also envisaged that migrating to australia would reduce the strains in her paid work aseas 6(2) 317316 and family life. she wanted to re-channel her energies into looking after her children. coming to australia was somewhat of an escape strategy, as the informants’ reasoning would dwell on the romanticized image of the new country. although it had some legitimate basis, its depiction was partly flawed. egalitarianism and multiculturalism in australia is increasingly advocated. however, in practice, its exclusionary white culture, although indirect and less blatant than before, remains well entrenched (dunn & nelson, 2011; mapedzahama, rudge, west, & perron, 2012; poynting & noble, 2004). the informants did not have false pretenses about the many forms of discrimination and challenges they would encounter. but as far as they were concerned, australia symbolized ‘hope’ where they could stake a new life through the use of hard work, qualifications, and ambitions. resisting financial insecurity the need for financial security was more pronounced for those who had older children. bing and her family were perennially vulnerable to the economic crisis despite their combined earning capacity. she and her husband, at some point in their lives, served as full-time ministers in a christian church. understandably, they depended on members’ tithing. echoing her husband’s apprehension, bing recalled, “the children are getting older. there is no future here.” they believed that migrating to australia was their only hope. it was a strategy to reverse their declining class status. all of their five children went to private schools and reputable universities in the philippines. before coming to australia, the couple had worked in the u.s. on a tourist visa, at least to alleviate their immediate financial woes. they did not stay long in the u.s. because their children in the philippines were having problems. the youngest of their five children was only four years old, and their eldest daughter, who was barely 18, looked after them with the maids’ assistance. upon returning to the philippines, her husband fell from favor in his church because he had sought other employment while in the u.s., and his ministry was terminated. moving to australia was considered an escape from their chronic economic hardship. in consultation with her four melbourne-based siblings, bing and her husband worked strategically to obtain enough points for the skilled visa assessment. bing returned to teaching and enrolled for an education graduate certificate. drawing on his engineering qualifications, her cirila limpangog migration as a strategy for maintaining a middle-class identity aseas 6(2) 319318 husband opened a home appliance repair shop. being a teacher in a well-established private college did not guarantee an adequate living, as bing struggled to make ends meet with jewelry retailing and after-hours tutorials. in 1999, the couple’s combined monthly income was 25,000 pesos.9 however, they needed at least 1,000 pesos a day for food, petrol, and the children’s matriculation and allowances. family migration sponsorship and a reasonably settled clan to lean upon presented a way out of their financial distress for bing’s family. coming to australia enabled a reassertion of their middle-class status, which was greatly imperiled in the philippines. the husbands of susan, carol, leah, amy, and bing shared their desires to migrate. gender equality was not an issue for these women in terms of strategizing their family migration. both wife and husband equitably helped each other to garner enough points for the immigration assessment, and both also took advantage of their kinship networks in australia. typically, the husband was the principal applicant, but both parties were actively involved in the tedious visa application process. the case of amy is different because her movement to australia marked a conscious desire for downward job mobility and a radical career shift for the sake of ‘reduced stress’. we might also infer that her desire to be ‘available’ for her children was an implicit strategy that authenticated her ideas of maternal responsibility, placing obligations derived from ideologies of the gendered nature of social reproduction. she proudly told me of her involvement in her daughters’ school assignments and attendance in their co-curricular activities. seeking greater autonomy and ‘a taste of good life’ those who came as single migrants were motivated more by the chance to experience the adventures and leisure brought about by traveling and living in a foreign country. such were the cases of kris, gemma, and ligaya. kris reunited with seven of her eight siblings, their respective families, and her widowed mother in melbourne. in manila, kris lectured at a prestigious university when she was offered a scholarship to australia, but she declined. she preferred to come instead via family visa in 1991. migration, to her, promised an “opportunity to travel for pleasure and a taste of good life”. she recalled: 9 php 25,000 was equivalent to usd 584 or aud 609 on june 13, 2013. aseas 6(2) 319318 when i came, i thought . . . this would be nice. i can have a gallivanting life. in manila, i had to work really hard. when i arrived here, life was really gratifying. the means of transportation, food and environment . . . it’s clean everywhere. then you have all the time. so there was time for gallivanting even amidst my studies and part-time work . . . practically my first two years was largely gallivanting. apart from having siblings already settled in australia, gemma (the sister of kris) decided to come for better economic prospects. she said that her father who went to the u.s. for a postgraduate degree had always advised his children to study hard and obtain a college diploma. it seemed that he was always discouraging us from taking a blue-collar job. but here in australia, it is very useful. . . . back home, when you’re a driver or mechanic how much do you get? but here, they get a much better pay, right? gemma readily gave up her teaching job in manila. like her sister kris, gemma benefited from an elder brother’s family visa petition and offer of free accommodation while she was job hunting. “all my friends are here. [i want] challenges, adventures,” was the reason for ligaya’s lifestyle change-induced migration in 1990. she was single without any boyfriend or relatives in australia. but after a one-year residence in bangkok as a governmentsponsored scholar her perspective about life abroad broadened. she learned about australia’s skilled migration opportunity, but reluctantly resumed work at the government’s agrarian reform bureau in manila to compensate for her one year of fulltime study abroad. the desire to be with her friends who had all obtained their visas to australia prompted her to follow suit. besides, the wide-scale corruption in ligaya’s bureau demoralized her. quitting her job and migrating to australia was a much better option. ligaya did not convince any of her siblings to come to australia. “that’s why i left [the philippines]. if they were here, i’d rather go home [laugh]. that’s because i’m independent. it seems to me that your family has a lot of expectations sometimes.” it was clear to her that migration would allow for a do-it-yourself biography; after all, she was young, unattached, and without any dependent. her stance was in striking contrast to the family-oriented patterns and practices of filipino migrations. nonetheless, she supported the visa application of a skilled nephew and his wife, who were based in adelaide during the interview. apart from them, ligaya had no other relatives in australia, although she had friends whom she considered a ‘second family’. they and cirila limpangog migration as a strategy for maintaining a middle-class identity aseas 6(2) 321320 their respective families constitute her local support system. they would teasingly match her with prospective husbands, but she was not interested. later she established a de facto partnership, which she feared would not be acceptable to her family back in the philippines. it appears that ligaya’s ‘escape strategy’ was stimulated by dissatisfaction in her previous job, but it was also her way to explore a less culturally restrictive lifestyle, especially in terms of intimate relationships. this was a lifestyle choice that she did not feel comfortable taking while in the philippines. benson and o’reilly (2009) explain that this form of “[m]igration is presented as a way of overcoming the trauma of these events, of taking control of their lives, or as releasing them from ties and enabling them to live lives more ‘true’ to themselves” (p. 610). ligaya’s friends provided the security of a social network, with which she shared home and gallivanting activities especially during her first year of settlement. these women’s envisaged ‘alternative lifestyle’ intersects with a desire to improve the standard of living they had while in their homeland. in the philippines, young and single adults normally live with their parents and abide by their household rules. the only exception is when the children would study or work elsewhere. thus, migration allows the informants to experience freedom, autonomy, and adventure. even the siblings kris and gemma, who came through the behest of their elder brother and therefore were tacitly obliged to turn to him for household authority, saw their move as an opportunity ‘to gallivant’. gemma’s desire to improve her economic status would even intensify when she saw that trade skills in australia were valued more than in the philippines. migration is perceived as “a rite of passage from dissipated youth to responsible adulthood” (tacoli, 1999, p. 670). without any dependents to send money to and with family or friends to rely upon, the ‘alternative lifestyle’ lets them indulge in what their new life has to offer at their own pace. in the case of ligaya, leaving the bounds of her nuclear family and the cultural constraints it imposed was an additional attraction. she was the only informant who lived with a partner without marriage or children, and therefore circumvented the mother-wife identity that most informants assumed. the alternative lifestyle she chose was one that transgressed the traditional gender roles in the household. my observations resonate with the findings of tacoli (1996) on filipino women in italy. for those coming from relatively affluent backgrounds, economic advancement aseas 6(2) 321320 is subsidiary to their “desire for change, seeing the world and living a different experience” (p. 17). the informants’ desire for change and election of an alternative lifestyle was based on career dissatisfaction and financial insecurity, although they were not typically out of jobs nor endangered in the labor market. i interpret this as wanting to retain their notions of middle-class privileges, which had been threatened by the worsening socio-political climate in the philippines. their seemingly advantaged position, such as having relatives in australia, possession of above-average educational credentials, and, in one case, prior residence in australia had enabled them to initiate that change. escape from political persecution political grievances against the marcos dictatorship, and the failed reforms promised by the people power administration that toppled marcos, influenced informants’ migration decisions. two were blacklisted during the martial law era. vilma recounted: the declaration of martial law in 1972 prompted me to migrate. scholars then were in hotspot. from 1973 to 1975, there were scores of disappearances amongst scholars. i finished pre-nursing in baguio [northern part of the philippines]. i was the very first in my family to migrate to australia as a student, and then later stayed on as a skilled worker. i’d never set foot in manila until it was time for me to collect my visa and go to the airport. vilma did not look back. after graduation, she met and married another medical practitioner of anglo-australian background. they have two children. maggie, a broadcasting journalist, also left the philippines to escape political persecution. she was a co-founder of an underground radical feminist movement of student activists organized during the first quarter storm (fqs). filipino feminist academic and former student activist judy taguiwalo (2005) described the first quarter storm that occurred in january to march, 1970, as mark[ing] the series of widespread protests in metro manila against the then administration of ferdinand marcos and signif[ying] the resurgence of nationalist struggle in the country which has been dormant since the 50s. the ferment of the fqs would lead to a frenzy of organizing among the students, community youth, workers, and farmers. to quell the fqs outrage and the unrest that followed, marcos declared martial law in 1972. a fellow youth activist, maggie’s husband, disappeared without any trace. he was assumed murdered along with other comrades during the militarized regime. in the course of community organizing work, maggie met rudy, an anglo-australian cirila limpangog migration as a strategy for maintaining a middle-class identity aseas 6(2) 323322 who was stopping-over in manila en route to india. they fell in love and married shortly after. maggie was at first hesitant to move to melbourne: “no, it wasn’t our plan, but that era was turbulent. that’s because i am an activist, and i was advocating for human rights.” maggie came on a tourist visa, believing that she would still return to the philippines. but she eventually stayed, found a job, and re-established her family. she became pregnant and gave birth to another child, and later, petitioned for the migration of her first child from the previous marriage. marriage to an australian national was an unplanned life-changing event that facilitated these women’s flights to safety. the cases of both vilma and maggie demonstrated that australia offered the peace, stability, and security they longed for. yet, they continue to spearhead social reforms and political activism in australia on issues that affect filipinos there and in their homeland. vilma was a mentor to an association of filipinas in rural victoria, and was actively involved in assisting those who sustained psychological trauma due to domestic violence. maggie, on the other hand, was engaged in human rights advocacy. immigration therefore allowed them to freely retain their political identities that would have otherwise risked their lives, had they returned to the philippines. consequential migration studies show that the nexus of family and work-related migration often leads to one spouse sacrificing career and social networks, to follow the other’s (usually the male’s) work-induced movement (ho, 2006; jervis, 2011; meares, 2010; van der klis & mulder, 2008; yeoh & willis, 2005). such were the cases of rosanna, luningning, and sharon, who all came as fiancées to their philippines-born partners. rosanna and her husband eric got engaged in manila in 1990. two years later, eric obtained a skilled visa with family sponsorship and joined his parents and sister in melbourne. on spousal grounds, rosanna followed in 1994. they married in melbourne and raised two children. rosanna said that she would not have relocated to australia without the stimulus of marriage. she was satisfied with her life in manila as a dentist and part-time lecturer, jobs that were not easily recaptured in australia. there were numerous challenges for her qualifications to be accredited. she had to aseas 6(2) 323322 undergo professional review seminars and pass qualifying tests, as well as work as a dental nurse during the process of obtaining her professional license. pregnancy and maternal responsibilities slowed her career reconstitution even more. luningning moved to australia in 1989 on a fiancée visa. unlike rosanna, she was discontented with her life in the philippines, and was looking for a way out. i had no intention of coming to australia. when i returned from the states after completing my masters i tried to work in manila. i wasn’t contented or happy working in that kind of environment. i couldn’t apply what i have learned in the states. pr work in the philippines was still publicity-oriented. luningning had an active yet stressful career in the philippines. although her partner’s prior movement paved her migration, luningning implied that a job prospect overseas would improve her career. like most informants, she was not acquainted with australia, and would have probably gone elsewhere if it were not for her fiancé. yet, she chose not to enter the pr industry in australia. therefore, even as luningning initially believed her relocation to australia would advance her career, marriage and new status as a wifemother circumscribed her options. her changed circumstances meant she had to take a different career path and when she had children, her choices were further limited. for many, their migration motives were straightforward. to be with one’s family and loved ones might seem a clear-cut reason to migrate, and this is intertwined with their economic motives, but not to some who had other equally attractive options. sharon is a case in point. she came in 2003 to marry richard despite her ambivalent feelings about moving to australia. the couple met online the previous year. she was then employed as an administrative officer in a japanese construction company in manila. richard, a filipino-australian, was holidaying and exploring a computer-related business in manila. their whirlwind romance produced a son, who was born after richard had returned to melbourne. richard then petitioned for their migration. but sharon, who enjoyed a prestigious job, the trust and recognition from her expatriate bosses, and a comfortable life in manila with full-time maids, was initially reluctant to come. in a different scenario, sharon might have opted for a green card in the u.s. she would have gone there for two months with her grandfather and aunt, both naturalized u.s. citizens who came to manila for christmas in 2002. sharon would have tried living in the u.s. on a tourist visa before finalizing her migration plans. “but i was two-months pregnant, so that plan was shelved aside.” giving up her life in manila, and waiving her chance to reunite with her relatives in the u.s. was not without furcirila limpangog migration as a strategy for maintaining a middle-class identity aseas 6(2) 325324 cirila limpangog migration as a strategy for maintaining a middle-class identity ther complications. it also meant declining her former fiancé who courted her back despite carrying a baby by another man. according to sharon, he was an affluent and mature 42 years old american. being financially unstable, richard paled in comparison to him. thus, sharon’s family favored her american boyfriend over richard. but she turned her back on the american life option, and chose to marry the latter. her move to melbourne was mired by financial insecurity. richard was then just establishing himself as a freelance programmer. sharon and their son migrated amidst the fears of her mother that sharon was marrying someone who was financially unstable. migrating to australia in this instance signified a loss of prestige for the family as well as a subversion of gender expectations. during the interview, sharon was working as a training coordinator in a professional association, which she found stimulating, although less prominent than her posts in manila. a job in line with her original career path was not her priority at that time. the cases of rosanna, luningning, and sharon suggest that consequential migration is accompanied by varying degrees of reluctance. severe reluctance in the case of sharon was linked to her vulnerability to class demotion. in rosanna’s case, the ‘slight’ reluctance may be viewed as fear of temporary career instability, which is presumably common to well qualified migrants. all three women faced difficulties in recapturing their careers, prompting luningning and sharon to shift course. discussion and conclusion this paper showed the informants’ complex, contradictory, and overlapping reasons for migrating. it concurs with feminist writings that women’s and men’s migrations cannot be explained alone by monolithic householdor individual-based theories. the migration of these professional filipinos had varied and complicated starting points, which were not solely economically motivated. in sum, their movements were facilitated through the intersection of established kinship networks in australia, and the possession of education and skills required by the immigration department. yet, what appeared to have overlaid their decision to move were the maintenance of middle-class status as well as the exploration of an alternative lifestyle. in this paper, i have shown the connectivity of these two main migration motives. aseas 6(2) 325324 for those whose aim was mainly economic, migrating to australia was a way of retrieving their declining class position, or at best protecting it against the economic and political turbulence that beset the philippines at that time. most of the informants’ move is argued to be used as a strategy to middle-class maintenance. my argument coincides with tacoli (1999), whose study of filipino women in rome shows migration as a means to protecting their middle-class standard of living against the perennial domestic economic crisis. subsequently, i would add to this argument by emphasizing that their motives are essentially fluid and do change during the course of migration. unfolding opportunities and desires, such as meeting a partner or establishing a family, affect their trajectories. migration as a solution to economic problems seems over-determined in the philippines. given their qualifications, these women could have succeeded in their career aspirations in the homeland, yet they did not rely on it. hope and ambition were projected into migration – and were reinforced by the encouragement of relatives who had already migrated. most informants had either a spouse or direct family members as companions during the process of migration. those who came as students met their partners and subsequently settled down. more than half of the informants had established clans in australia, either sponsoring their nuclear family, or petitioned by a kin who arrived before them. i see the ways and capacities through which they negotiate their new identities as migrants as markedly privileged given their social capital in both the homeland and australia. another dominant stimulus of the informants’ migration is the opportunity to explore other facets of their lives. focused on the power of the individual rather than that of organized institutions, many exercised their self-centered motives to enjoy, gallivant, be with friends rather than family, and meet new challenges. the quest for lifestyle change appears to be a subplot for most, which, though not exclusively, relates to middle-class status maintenance. the informants’ ability to elect and eventually pursue their desire for a lifestyle change by coming to australia was also facilitated by their middle-class status in their homeland. it enabled them to reconfigure gendered expectations inscribed in filipino culture, especially when living with one’s own family while single, and obeying its implicit decorum. the informants’ entries were mediated by stringent immigration measures and steep visa costs which are not accessible or affordable to the average filipino. despite cirila limpangog migration as a strategy for maintaining a middle-class identity aseas 6(2) 327326 cirila limpangog migration as a strategy for maintaining a middle-class identity their middle-class status in the philippines, some had to sell off their properties, get loans, and solicit financial help from relatives in australia to subsidize their immigration. once in australia, it became necessary for them to aim for well-paid work corresponding to their qualifications in order to recover the costs of their migration. yet, in some cases, prior class privileges, high skills, and education would not translate into economic success. sharon’s story suggests that marriage with someone in a western country did not guarantee an improved quality of life. coming to australia meant downward social and occupational mobility, and a letdown to an implicit gendered expectation to marry up. the mosaic of motives outlined in this paper challenges the traditional notion of economic advancement framed within the household theory, or of purely individualistic pursuits to self-development and gratification, although some informants, like kris and ligaya, had prominently cited these at the outset of their migration. surprisingly, advancing one’s career as a main motive to migrate was not mentioned except by three informants, luningning, lorna and ligaya, whose move were triggered by the lack of satisfaction in their previous jobs. quite the opposite, amy envisaged her 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(1999). the global context of gendered labor migration from the philippines to the united states. american behavioral scientist, 42(4), 671-689. van der klis, m., & mulder, c. h. (2008). beyond the trailing spouse: the commuter partnership as an alternative to family migration. journal of housing and the built environment, 23(1), 1-19. woelz-stirling, n. a., kelaher, m. m., & manderson, p. l. (1998). power and the politics of abuse: rethinking violence in filipina-australian marriages. health care for women international, 19(4), 289-301. yeoh, b. s., & willis, k. (2005). singaporeans in china: transnational women elites and the negotiation of gendered identities. geoforum, 36(2), 211-222. cirila limpangog migration as a strategy for maintaining a middle-class identity an alternative policy proposal for the provinces populated by the malay ethnonationality in the south of thailand aseas 4(1) 106 107 aktuelle südostasienforschung / current research on south-east asia an alternative policy proposal for the provinces populated by the malay ethnonationality in the south of thailand otto f. von feigenblatt1 millenia atlantic university, usa citation von feigenblatt, o. f. (2011). an alternative policy proposal for the provinces populated by the malay ethnonationality in the south of thailand. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 4(1), 107-128. this article provides a public policy analysis of governance in the provinces populated by the malay ethnonationality in the south of thailand. important stakeholders are identifi ed as well as important sociopolitical environmental factors. the fi nal sections of the paper present a proposal for a new governance structure for the muslim south of thailand taking into consideration the social, cultural, and economic context as well as the wellbeing and right to self-determination of the local population. this study concludes that considerable economic, political, and social opportunities for development are being lost in the south of thailand due to misguided governance policies. keywords: malays, south of thailand, autonomy, governance, devolution of power dieser artikel stellt eine politische analyse von governance in den von der nationalen minderheit der malaien bewohnten provinzen in südthailand vor. zunächst werden zentrale interessensvertreterinnen und soziopolitische faktoren identifi ziert. anschließend diskutiert der autor einen vorschlag für eine neue governancestruktur, die soziale, kulturelle und wirtschaftliche kontexte ebenso beachtet wie die bedürfnisse und das recht zur selbstbestimmung der lokalen bevölkerung. der beitrag konkludiert, dass beträchtliche möglichkeiten zur wirtschaftlichen, politischen und sozialen entwicklung aufgrund von fehlgeleiteten politiken ausgelassen wurden. schlagworte: malaien, südthailand, autonomie, governance, machtdezentralisierung 1 otto f. von feigenblatt is an elected fellow of the royal asiatic society of great britain and ireland, an academician of the constantinian academy of arts, letters, and sciences (palermo, italy), and a member of the united states committee of the council for security and cooperation in the asia pacifi c (cscap). he is an adjunct professor of political science at millenia atlantic university (doral, florida). contact: vonfeigenblatt@hotmail.com otto f. von feigenblatt an alternative policy proposal for the provinces populated by the malay ethnonationality d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -4 .1 -6 aseas 4(1) 108 109 introduction the deep south of thailand has been plagued by violence and underdevelopment for decades. bordering the federation of malaysia, the three southernmost provinces are mostly populated by ethnic muslim malays who speak a dialect of malay called melayu patani (liow, 2006a, p. 27, 2006b; mccargo, 2008, p. 4). historically the region was part of the independent sultanate of patani2 and was later annexed by thailand in the early twentieth century (kershaw, 2001; mccargo, 2008, p. 61; perkasa, 2008, p. 41). separatist movements have existed in the region since siam started to exercise greater influence over the region in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but the highest point of the insurgency came during the 1970s and 1980s when several separatist groups joined forces with the communist party of thailand to fight the central government (perkasa, 2008; ungpakorn, 2007). nevertheless, the insurgency was thought to have been exhausted by the 1990s due to effective counterinsurgency tactics by the military and strong american support for the armed forces (jitpiromrisi & mccargo, 2008). in 2004 an important army armoury was raided and several bombs detonated in the southern provinces (“child recruitment and use in southern thailand“, 2008, p. 6; perkasa, 2008). since that year more than 3,000 people have died due to the violence in the south. owing to instability of the central government, the army was given almost absolute control over the southern provinces and martial law was imposed (perkasa, 2008; ungpakorn, 2007). the result has been a policy of dealing with the insurgency through military methods which closely resemble the ones used to fight the once powerful communist party of thailand through raid and sweep operations in villages and internment of suspects in concentration camps for prolonged periods of time (liow, 2006b, p. 43; perkasa, 2008; ungpakorn, 2007). the result of the current policy has been an exponential increase in the defence budget, increased unemployment in the south, and a rise in local support for the insurgency (gunaratna & acharya, 2006, p. 149; perkasa, 2008; yegar, 2002). finally, paramilitary militias have been formed in buddhist villages in the south with the support of the palace and the security establishment (ungpakorn, 2007; von feigenblatt, 2 to avoid confusion concerning the use of the terms ‘pattani’ and ‘patani’: after the malay-speaking regions in southern thailand were integrated into siam in the early twentieth century, malay-sounding names have been converted to names that are phonetically in tune with thai rhythm. hence, ‘pattani’ is the official romanisation of the thai spelling. ‘patani’, on the other hand, is the malay version, often used in historical contexts or when referring to historical claims over the territory. aseas 4(1) 108 109 2009a; 2009b, p. 5). these paramilitary militias have attacked muslim villages with impunity. importance of the southern unrest for thailand and the region the insurgency and unrest in the southern provinces of thailand have caused more than 3,000 deaths since 2004. in addition to that, the problem has weakened successive civilian governments with the result of strengthening the hand of the security forces and the palace (alrc, 2009, p. 1; chang, chu, & park, 2007, p. 76; hamlin, 2009; neher, 2002; ungpakorn, 2007). furthermore, the unrest has been used as an excuse to increase the military budget by more than 300 percent in five years and thus diverting needed funds away from development projects (askew, 2010, p. 130; von feigenblatt, 2010). the violence in the region has negatively affected the important tourism industry not only in the southern provinces but also in the entire country with the net effect of damaging the already precarious state of the economy, which was facing a 2.2 percent contraction in 2009 due to the global financial crisis (cia, 2009). moreover, the breakdown of the rule of law in the southern provinces, and to a certain extent in the entire country, has led to a sharp increase in illegal business activities such as smuggling drugs and weapons through the porous malaysian border, thus giving rise to violent crime (askew, 2010, p. 57; von feigenblatt, 2010). finally, the muslim identity of the insurgency has fueled speculation about possible infiltration by regional islamic terrorist networks such as jeemah islamiyah and al qaeda (gunaratna & acharya, 2006; liow, 2006a, p. 93). in addition, the region is considered to serve as a litmus test of separatist tendencies in other regions with historical experience of independence and semiautonomy (means, 2009). in summary, dealing with the southern unrest is important for economic, security, and humanitarian reasons. possible beneficiaries of the greater pattani autonomous economic and administrative region to establish a greater pattani autonomous economic and administrative region would be beneficial for the entire country — with the exception of the armed forces and the palace. possibly modelled after the special administrative regions of china, otto f. von feigenblatt an alternative policy proposal for the provinces populated by the malay ethnonationality aseas 4(1) 110 111 hong kong and macau, and the basque region in spain, the policy would combine greater self-government with a strong economic development component. thus economic integration into the national and global economy, which while not easily achieved is possible, as demonstrated by the experience of bali and beppu as tourist destinations, would substitute for government centralisation in the administrative realm (barber, 1996). therefore the challenge would be to privatise governance and thus raise it to the international level while at the same time making it sensitive to local needs. by dealing with the core grievances of the melayu patani population and also with the problem of underdevelopment in the region, the new greater pattani autonomous economic and administrative region would lower the incidence of violent crime, assuage fears of religious and local leaders about the loss of distinct socio-cultural heritage of the area, and avoid a complete rupture of the region with thailand. furthermore, the economic benefits reaped from the development of the area and the increase in productivity of the rubber industry of the south would also benefit the rest of the country through greater tax revenues and a subsequent increase in tourism. greater stability will also be of great benefit to the entire country and would free needed resources away from the defence budget and into infrastructure development in other underdeveloped regions such as the northeast. from a political perspective, the civilian central government would be strengthened vis-à-vis the military and thus increase stability in the country. only the palace and the armed forces would be weakened by the proposed policy due to their relative loss of influence. while the military and the palace could attempt to claim some credit from the pacification of the south, the perceived loss in sovereignty would ultimately weaken the traditional security views of the military and palace establishment. competing policy options for the southern unrest several policy options have been proposed for dealing with the southern unrest. the policy that is currently in place can be labelled the “military counterinsurgency strategy” and combines overwhelming force with intelligence gathering (alrc, 2009; askew, 2010; ungpakorn, 2007). a second option proposed by some academics and the insurgents in the south is the peaceful separation of the three southernmost aseas 4(1) 110 111 provinces to become either the republic of patani or the sultanate of patani (perkasa, 2008; ungpakorn, 2007; von feigenblatt, 2009c, p. 606). this option is based on the norm of self-determination for ethnonational groups and on the historical claim over the territory (perkasa, 2008; syukri, 1985). another variant of this policy is the option of the three provinces, yala, pattani, and narathiwat, joining the federation of malaysia, however this option was only seriously considered during the 1940s (askew, 2010; von feigenblatt, 2009b, p. 4). finally, a third category of policies involves some form of self-government combined with economic development. several proposals in this category favour some devolution of authority to local governments in the south and greater development through increased trade with malaysia and singapore or an improvement in local industry (jitpiromrisi & mccargo, 2008). geographical proximity to malaysia is an advantage that can be utilised by promoting the integration of the local economy into malaysia’s production chain. in other words, economic integration at the sub-regional level can take the place of political integration and thus allow the south to benefit from the positive externalities of joining a relatively advanced production chain in sectors as diverse as automobile manufacturing and electronics. while the military strategy has proven to be futile in dealing with the unrest, the second option which involved complete independence or annexation with the federation of malaysia is unrealistic due to lack of political capital and the relative weakness of the insurgency (von feigenblatt, 2009d). however, the third category of policy options is more promising than the first in terms of effectiveness in dealing with the core grievances of the local population and at the same time it does not impinge on national sensitivities regarding the territorial integrity of the thai nationstate. in terms of political capital and the relative power of interest groups, the first option clearly has the upper hand at this point, however, some positive signs can be identified showing that the third category would be feasible in the near future (perkasa, 2008; ungpakorn, 2007). analytical framework this study follows an elite theory model of public policy making (anderson, 2006). while this model has many weaknesses, it is a good fit for the thai political system and socio-cultural environment. the thai political system is elitist and revolves otto f. von feigenblatt an alternative policy proposal for the provinces populated by the malay ethnonationality aseas 4(1) 112 113 around the palace. governance depends on a network monarchy which includes the armed forces and a powerful bureaucratic elite. thailand’s government is strongly unitary in nature and the provinces are directly controlled by the capital. an elite model concentrates on the role of a small group of power brokers in the policy making process. the population is assumed to be a passive player under the control of the elite. thailand has been characterised by anthropologists and area specialists as a highly hierarchical society with a very large power distance (chang et al., 2007; mulder, 1996; von feigenblatt, suttichujit, shuib, keling, & ajis, 2010; wyatt, 2003). moreover, the undemocratic history of the country serves as evidence of the role of a small group of power holders in making the important decisions (albritton & bureekul, 2007; ungpakorn, 2007). nevertheless, some aspects of constructivist social theory will be used to describe the role of the militants in the south and of the malay community in general. the reason for this is that the southern unrest is partly a grassroots movement and thus its behaviour cannot be duly explained by elite theory and needs to be understood from the point of view of those involved in the struggle (perkasa, 2008; ungpakorn, 2007). it should be noted that while elite theory provides the best theoretical fit to explain the actions of the thai side of the issue, it lacks the explanatory traction to explain the yearnings and grievances of the less centralised muslim malays. identity needs are important and constructivist theory, with its emphasis on norms and ideas and how they shape social action, provides a useful lens to complement elite theory (jackson & nexon, 2009). stakeholders the southern unrest involves a vast array of stakeholders and thus any proposed policy to deal with it must include them in both, the decision making process and most importantly during its implementation. stakeholders can be roughly classified as thai and malay. external stakeholders will also be discussed in terms of their relationship to the two sides. armed forces (state and non-state) arguably, the most important group of stakeholders in the southern unrest involves aseas 4(1) 112 113 armed groups (gunaratna & acharya, 2006; storey, 2008). included in this category are both state and non-state armed groups. the most powerful stakeholder in the military realm is the royal thai army (gunaratna & acharya, 2006; mccargo, 2008; ungpakorn, 2007). more than just a subservient branch of the government, it is a semi-independent institution with its own power resources and interests (mccargo, 2008; ungpakorn, 2007; von feigenblatt, 2009c). historically, the thai army has been used mostly for internal counterinsurgency operations (yegar, 2002). the united states supported it during the 1970s and 1980s so that it could defeat the communist party of thailand and serve as a bastion of capitalism in south-east asia (kershaw, 2001; neher, 2002; rolfe, 2008). in addition to that, it is not a professional army in the modern sense of the word. officers consider their troops to be their source of power and are more than willing to use them for their own interests. more than ten military coups have taken place in thailand in recent history (ungpakorn, 2007, 2010; von feigenblatt, 2009e, p. 4; wyatt, 2003). in terms of ideology, the thai army is highly conservative and royalist. nationalism is strong in the army and it considers itself to be constrained only by the needs of the nation and the monarchy, not the civilian government (handley, 2006; ungpakorn, 2007, 2010). the army has virtually complete control over the southern provinces and has imposed martial law (liow, 2006a, 2006b, p. 37). abuses of human rights are widespread and the army favours a traditional counterinsurgency strategy to deal with the southern unrest (dingwerth, 2008; jitpiromrisi & mccargo, 2008; mccargo, 2008, 2009; perkasa, 2008). in terms of economic interest, the army is corrupt and is involved in the smuggling of weapons across the malay border, among other illicit activities (askew, 2010; perkasa, 2008). the violence in the south has also been used to justify exponential increases in the budget for the military (ungpakorn, 2007, 2010). the police are comparatively weaker than the army but are similarly characterised by virulent thai nationalism and corruption (askew, 2010). it has been involved in a turf war with the army over influence in the south (ungpakorn, 2007, 2010). furthermore it has also been known to commit abuses in the southern provinces but not of the same scale as the army. politically, the police are identified with the former prime minister thaksin shinawatra, who was deposed by the military coup in 2006 (askew, 2010; ungpakorn, 2007; von feigenblatt, 2009e, pp. 3-5). thus, it is viewed with suspicion by the armed forces. the civilian government has more influence over the police otto f. von feigenblatt an alternative policy proposal for the provinces populated by the malay ethnonationality aseas 4(1) 114 115 than over the army. paramilitary groups are involved in the southern unrest. buddhist militias organised by the police and the army with the support of the palace have increased in number since 2004 (mccargo, 2008, 2009). buddhist militias are usually very nationalistic and carry out vigilante attacks on muslim villagers. the lack of direct control over them by the central government means that there is very little accountability regarding their actions. in general, buddhist militias have a vested interest in the continued presence of the armed forces in the south so as to defend their interests. on the muslim side there are about ten different militias with a total of fewer than 2,000 fighters (jitpiromrisi & mccargo, 2008; perkasa, 2008). the fragmented nature of the militant groups makes it difficult to provide a clear picture of the relative strength of each group and their overall goals. however, one of the oldest and best known groups is the patani united liberation organisation (pulo) which was founded by a descendant of the last rajah of patani in the mid-twentieth century (perkasa, 2008; syukri, 1985). this organisation has both a political and a military branch and its main goal is to coordinate the attacks of the separate militant groups. its military force is thought to range from 300 to 500 armed fighters. its leadership is composed of intellectuals trained in the middle east and exiled malay aristocrats in malaysia (liow, 2006a, 2006b; perkasa, 2008). its goal is the re-establishment of the sultanate of patani or at least the achievement of autonomy within the thai state. the main interest of this group is the protection of the distinct malay muslim culture in the south of thailand and guaranteeing enough leadership jobs for members of the muslim malay intelligentsia (perkasa, 2008). while pulo is not a very large organisation, it has the tacit support of the majority of the malay population, and also has links with muslim countries and organisations all over the world (askew, 2010; gunaratna & acharya, 2006). it should be noted that there are other insurgent groups operating in the south of thailand which are considered by some scholars to be equally as important as or even more important than pulo such as brn but there is very little information regarding its structure and membership in comparison to pulo (liow, 2006b). the other groups tend to be more secretive and lack an overt political arm which makes it difficult to assess their true support and resources (askew, 2010; funston, 2010; joll, 2010). finally, there is a third kind of militia operating in the deep south of thailand without a clear political agenda. transnational organised crime aseas 4(1) 114 115 (toc) is omnipresent along the porous border with malaysia and it has at its service armed bands of militants (jones & smith, 2007; millard, 2004; storey, 2008). drugs, human trafficking, and smuggling rings all operate in the region and have links with powerful local politicians and officers. the democrat party is widely believed to be involved in criminal activities in the south along with certain elements in the armed forces and the police (askew, 2010; ungpakorn, 2007, 2010). toc groups have a vested interest in the southern unrest in that they want the conflict to continue so as to guarantee an uncertain environment for their illicit activities. civilian government and bureaucrats the civilian government and the bureaucracy consider the unrest in the south a major problem. it weakens their authority relative to the armed forces and is detrimental to the overall economy of the country (askew, 2010; glassman, 2005; ungpakorn, 2010). however, it should be noted that with the exception of former prime minister thaksin shinawatra, most civilian governments do not have very strong national support and their power base is greatly limited by the palace and the armed forces (chang et al., 2007; ungpakorn, 2007, 2010). this is evidenced by the recurrent coups d’état, constitutional changes, and interference by the palace (dressel, 2009; ungpakorn, 2007, 2010; von feigenblatt, 2009e; wyatt, 2003). most civilian governments function as mediators representing a vast array of interests including business, the military, and the palace. moreover, a majority of civilian governments have been forced to hand over the control of the south to the military and have had their arms tied in terms of negotiating with the insurgents (lintner, 2009, pp. 112-115; ungpakorn, 2007). due to the influence of narrow interests on the weak civilian administrations, the government has to appear strong in terms of defending national sovereignty and thai nationalism. one of the only differences between administrations is the preference of the shinawatra faction for the involvement of the police in the south rather than the military and the support of the democrat party for greater involvement of the military (alrc, 2009; ungpakorn, 2007). bureaucrats in thailand are generally very conservative and nationalist and tend to come from bangkok and central thailand. civil service examinations are usually passed by members of the elite due to structural advantages such as better access to otto f. von feigenblatt an alternative policy proposal for the provinces populated by the malay ethnonationality aseas 4(1) 116 117 education at the secondary and tertiary levels and are the preferred career of ethnic thais (askew, 2007). due to thailand’s political instability, the bureaucracy is one of the only constants in the country. most bureaucrats serve under many administrations and even constitutions. in general, the main interest of the bureaucracy is the continued influence of its members over the administration of the south of thailand and the defence of national sovereignty. as explained in a previous section of this paper, the democrat party is the strongest party in the south and there are allegations that several prominent members are involved in criminal activities along the malaysian border. nevertheless, the exact nature of their involvement is not known but several independent scholars have found evidence of their involvement in several illicit enterprises (liow, 2006a; ungpakorn, 2010). while the role of the democrat party in illicit activities remains in dispute, the political party is actively involved in the traditional patronage politics of the region and thus exerts considerable power at the local level (mccargo, 2008). traditional leaders this category includes muslim religious leaders, malay aristocrats, and the thai palace. muslim religious leaders derive their authority from their role in the pondok network of islamic schools, their control over mosques, and the high regard muslims traditionally have for teachers (askew, 2007; means, 2009; millard, 2004; mulder, 1996; ungpakorn, 2007). in addition, they are considered to be the protectors of malay muslim culture in the deep south of thailand. their main interest is to protect the muslim religion and the malay language, and to have some influence over local governance. most religious leaders have expressed a fear of government encroachment on malay religious and cultural affairs (liow, 2006a; perkasa, 2008; von feigenblatt, 2009c). they have also alleged that the government has tried to reduce their power by bringing pondok schools under the control of the ministry of education (jitpiromsri & mccargo, 2008; ungpakorn, 2007). most religious leaders ask for religious freedom and some form of autonomy for the region. identity needs are usually at the forefront of their demands (von feigenblatt, 2009d, 2010). most do not request complete independence. closely related to this group are the traditional malay nobility. the descendants of the former ruling houses of the region are related to the royal houses aseas 4(1) 116 117 of several sultanates in malaysia (kershaw, 2001; ungpakorn, 2007; yegar, 2002). this group was traditionally headed by the direct descendant of the last rajah of patani, who later on went into exile in the sultanate of kelantan (wyatt, 2003; yegar, 2002). they derive their legitimacy from hundreds of years of history in the region and their connection to the culture and traditions of patani (perkasa, 2008). most of the tunkus, malay princes, of patani have been involved in the separatist movement in one way or another and most favour some form of autonomy for the region and the restoration of their houses. the princes enjoy the support of the majority of the religious leaders as well as of the population and they also have international legitimacy due to their historic relationship with the sultanates of malaysia and great britain (millard, 2004). the palace, as it is known, encompasses the royal family and the privy council (handley, 2006; ishii, 1994, p. 458; kershaw, 2001; yegar, 2002). in thailand, the privy council is composed of powerful retired generals who rule from behind the scenes (kershaw, 2001; ungpakorn, 2007, 2010; wyatt, 2003). the present members of the royal family are not direct descendents of the previous few kings and the present king was actually born in the united states (handley, 2006; kershaw, 2001). conservative generals revived the institution of the monarchy in the post-war years and the present king was elected by the head of the previous ruling family. in order to give the king some semblance of legitimacy, the new royal family was included in the previous chakri dynasty even though this is in fact a new dynasty (handley, 2006; ungpakorn, 2007). massive propaganda campaigns raised the profile of the monarch and his family. after years of a concerted propaganda campaign and indoctrination through the media and schools, the monarchy gained a lot of influence over government affairs (kershaw, 2001; ungpakorn, 2007; von feigenblatt et al., 2010; wyatt, 2003). the king has given his blessing to several military coups and the queen has encouraged the organisation of buddhist militias in the south (mccargo, 2008; pitiyanuwat & sujiva, 2005). through the use of the draconian lèse majesté laws, which make any insult or criticism of the king a criminal offence punishable by up to 15 years in prison, conservative politicians have tried to silence alternative centres of power, including the traditional malay nobility and the communist party (le-coz, 2009; neher, 2002; ungpakorn, 2007, 2010; von feigenblatt, 2009c). the palace tends to be the most nationalist and conservative institution in the country and is usually otto f. von feigenblatt an alternative policy proposal for the provinces populated by the malay ethnonationality aseas 4(1) 118 119 linked to the armed forces. among the most important interests of the palace is the protection of sovereignty over the south, the assimilation of the malay muslims in the south, and most importantly the silencing of alternative histories of the region showing the legitimacy of malay royal houses (perkasa, 2008; ungpakorn, 2007). in terms of power, it is probably one of the most powerful institutions in the country due to its considerable wealth, informal influence, and connections with the armed forces (kershaw, 2001). business interests tin mining and rubber plantations, among others, are some of the important businesses in the region (perkasa, 2008; yegar, 2002). most tin mines and rubber plantations are owned by chinese and ethnic thais. business owners in the region tend to be non-ideological in that they support whoever gives them protection and allows them to do business (askew, 2007). this means that some pay protection money to corrupt members of the armed forces and to the muslim insurgents. some even pay both sides (liow, 2006a, 2006b). there is also an important link between business interests and democrat politicians who have a stake in some enterprises (perkasa, 2008; ungpakorn, 2010). in general, business owners want peace in order to do business and they want the region to remain part of thailand (askew, 2007). they also have an interest in improving the infrastructure of the area and facilitating trade. in terms of power, business owners are relatively weak in that they control resources but they depend on others for their security. moreover, since most of them are chinese, they are usually not involved in the bureaucracy and suffer from some of the same discrimination as most other minority groups in thailand (askew, 2010; ungpakorn, 2007, 2010; von feigenblatt, 2009c, p. 598). external interest groups due to the religious factors in the unrest in the deep south of thailand there are external groups with an interest in the conflict (kiong & bun, 2001; means, 2009; millard, 2004; perkasa, 2008). malaysia and other muslim countries have been involved in the conflict in one way or another. due to the ethnic ties between malays across aseas 4(1) 118 119 the border, many insurgent leaders have moved to malaysia in order to seek funds and support from fellow muslim malays (liow, 2006a; perkasa, 2008; syukri, 1985). conservative malay political parties have indirectly supported the muslim separatists in the south of thailand by providing asylum as well as funds (askew, 2007; means, 2009; millard, 2004). in addition to that, jemaah islamiyah has also cooperated with the insurgents in terms of logistical support and in the arms trade (gunaratna & acharya, 2006; yegar, 2002). funding from middle eastern sources has also been channelled through charities in order to support the muslim community. libya has been one of the strongest supporters of the muslim community in thailand and has provided funds and political support (yegar, 2002). on the other side of the conflict, the united states and its allies involved in the ‘war on terror’ have supported the thai government in its characterisation of the muslim insurgents as part of international islamic terrorism. this means that the united states has supported the traditional counterinsurgency approach of the thai government as an important front in the war on terror (neher, 2002; yegar, 2002). alternative approaches to the unrest in the deep south of thailand there are other approaches to solving the unrest in the deep south of thailand besides the autonomous economic and administrative region approach that is proposed in this paper, however, none of them are very promising in terms of achieving sustainable peace and development. one such option is the one proposed by duncan mccargo and colleagues (askew, 2007; jitpiromrisi & mccargo, 2008). this proposal involves the establishment of a ministry for the south. it basically recommends the concentration of the administration of the south under a single ministry rather than having it divided among separate ministries and government agencies. this proposal also stresses the importance of strengthening civil control over the administration of the region but stops short of recommending local governance (jitpiromrisi & mccargo, 2008). a ministry for the south would make the administration of the region more efficient and would weaken the role of the military in the region but it would not deal with the most important grievances of the muslim population in the south. thus, this proposal can be considered to be administrative streamlining rather than a long term solution to the southern unrest. this approach to the southern unrest otto f. von feigenblatt an alternative policy proposal for the provinces populated by the malay ethnonationality aseas 4(1) 120 121 does not include any greater autonomy for the region but simply a more efficient means of exerting direct control over a distant region of the country by the central government. another possible solution to the southern unrest would be to re-establish the nineteenth century system based on feudal tenure by the malay aristocracy (syukri, 1985). feudal tenure in the south of thailand was based on the co-option of the malay nobility into the administration of the region. this would provide some measure of autonomy under thai sovereignty but would not be acceptable to the thai government nor to the armed forces (jitpiromrisi & mccargo, 2008; syukri, 1985). this possibility was very popular in the decades after world world ii, but has since then lost popular support. thus, this possibility suffers from a lack of political capital in order for it to be accepted by important stakeholders. consequences of the creation of the greater pattani autonomous economic and administrative region possible consequences of the creation of the greater pattani autonomous economic and administrative region can be divided into three broad categories, namely economic, political/security, and socio-cultural. on the economic front, the establishment of the greater pattani autonomous economic and administrative region would increase trade with other provinces as well as with other members of the association of southeast asian nations (asean) and attract foreign direct investment due to a more business friendly environment, greater political stability, and therefore a lower level of investment risk. this would create more jobs in the region as well as increase revenue for the central government in terms of taxes and tariffs. the transition from a military approach to one based on constructive engagement through the greater pattani autonomous economic and administrative region would translate into savings in armaments and a reduction in the military budget. the savings could then be reallocated to social services and development projects throughout the entire country. a failure to establish the greater pattani autonomous economic and administrative region would result in continued capital flight due to the violence, a decline in the living standard of the inhabitants of the region, and a decline in the tourism aseas 4(1) 120 121 industry of the country as a whole. moreover, further increases in the budget of the armed forces could be expected (askew, 2007; ungpakorn, 2010). some important consequences of the proposed policy on the political and security fronts would be a drastic reduction in terms of the budget and size of the army. its influence would also be diminished since its involvement in the south and in other security issues will be greatly reduced. civilian governments will be strengthened through an improvement in the economy and in the security of the southern provinces. this could also have a positive impact on the general political stability of the country and reduce the likelihood of more military coups due to the improvement in the overall security of the country (von feigenblatt, 2009c; von feigenblatt et al., 2010). moreover, the police would be strengthened in comparison to the army, since it would be given greater responsibility for the internal security of the country and law enforcement. it can also be expected that the democrat party would be greatly weakened due to its links to the military and corruption in the deep south (ungpakorn, 2010). transnational organised crime in the border provinces would also come under greater national and international scrutiny due to the possible increase in trade and foreign direct investment. most importantly, malay muslims should participate in greater numbers in the governance of the region. it is also expected that malay muslim politicians at the national level will also be strengthened due to the greater leverage they would gain through the establishment of the autonomous administrative and economic region and the greater resources they would be able to muster. thus, there would be a gradual shift of some political power away from the centre in bangkok and towards the south (askew, 2007). the possible consequences of failing to implement the recommended policy would mean a continuation of the status quo with all the unsatisfactory externalities that entails. moreover, greater violence and local dislocation can be expected, as well as the further economic decline of the region and the country as a whole. furthermore, the armed forces would continue to use the southern unrest as an excuse to exercise influence in local and national politics (kershaw, 2001; mccargo, 2004). finally, on the socio-cultural front, the country as a whole would become more pluralistic (von feigenblatt, 2009c; von feigenblatt et al., 2010). this means that diversity would be cherished rather than suppressed. education could gradually be decentralised based on the example set by the greater pattani autonomous administrative otto f. von feigenblatt an alternative policy proposal for the provinces populated by the malay ethnonationality aseas 4(1) 122 123 and economic region so as to include the particular histories and religious practices of different ethnic groups (von feigenblatt et al., 2010). there is also the possibility that this would lead to a negative backlash by the ethnic thai population of central thailand, at least in the short term. it could be vigorously resisted by the palace and conservative elites in the capital. for the malay muslim community the adoption of this policy would satisfy many of its most important grievances and gradually lead to a decrease in fundamentalist islam (perkasa, 2008; ungpakorn, 2007; yegar, 2002). the reason for this is that the malay muslim community would not feel threatened by the dominant culture any more, thanks to their autonomy, and this would reduce the need for fundamentalist teachings. needless to say this assumes that part of the appeal of fundamentalism is due to existential uncertainty and the related fear of a possible loss of identity. furthermore, the general population in the south will not be as open to extremist teachings if they feel that their culture and religion are alive and thriving (mccargo, 2009). the failure to implement the proposed policy would further alienate the malay muslim population and provide the perfect breeding ground for fundamentalist islamic extremism. rather than leading to national unity, as conservatives claim, it would force ethnic and religious minorities to become more fundamentalist and to distance themselves from the majority in an attempt to protect their culture. this would in fact be a continuation of the present situation which has shown an increase in the teaching of a middle eastern variant of islam which stresses stricter compliance to religious teachings than the moderate version of islam historically prevalent in the region (mulder, 1996; ramakrishna, 2005). in summary, the proposed policy offers advantages on economic, political/security, and socio-cultural fronts. while there is the possibility of a negative backlash by conservative forces, this would only be a temporary setback. failure to implement the establishment of the greater pattani autonomous economic and administrative region would be tantamount to a continuation of the present trend with all of the well known negative externalities. aseas 4(1) 122 123 making the greater pattani autonomous administrative and economic region a reality funding and economic considerations due to the nature of the proposed policy, finding the necessary funding to undertake the establishment of the greater pattani autonomous administrative and economic region will not be very difficult. first of all, very little funding is required, since most changes are administrative, and the savings made in other areas can be invested in the development of the region. savings in the realms of security and pacification could be used for investment in infrastructure and human capital. this would improve the chances of the economic side of the policy being successful. more specifically, gradual reductions in the defence budget will free up plenty of resources that can then be partly used for the implementation of this policy. it is also likely that malaysia and other muslim countries would be willing to provide some funding for the development of the region under the proposed autonomy. this would pump needed foreign direct investment into the region and create jobs, in addition to lowering the cost of implementing the policy for the central government. political considerations political capital is the most important resource that will be necessary to move this policy forward. civilian political parties should be convinced of the viability and benefits of this policy so that they provide the political support necessary in order to overcome the opposition of the armed forces and some elements in the palace. it would clearly benefit civilian political parties to demilitarise the south and to divert resources away from defence and into social projects. further research should be conducted by national and international scholars so as to demonstrate the potential benefits of this policy and persuade civilian parties to adopt it. in this respect, the role of national ngos and grassroots organisations will be pivotal in convincing politicians. since ngos and civil society in general are usually fragmented in thailand and lack a clear leadership, an overarching steering committee should be formed to orchestrate and coordinate the political movement (ungpakorn, 2010; yegar, 2002). otto f. von feigenblatt an alternative policy proposal for the provinces populated by the malay ethnonationality aseas 4(1) 124 125 the role of the media in thailand, the media are very conservative and operate under strict censorship (ungpakorn, 2007; von feigenblatt, 2009c). it can be assumed that most mainstream media will be opposed to this policy due to their conservative nature and fears of reprisals by the military and the palace. however, alternative media can be used, such as the internet, radio, and newsletters, to get the message across. due to the tense political atmosphere related to the coming elections, the time is ripe for public pressure on politicians. politicians will be more responsive to popular demands as the elections approach. the policy should be framed as an opportunity for national reconciliation and as a way to strengthen democracy over the military. since the economy is slumping, it could also be marketed as a way to boost the lagging economy with a very small investment. the excesses of the military budget could also be brought to light. it is very important to avoid certain topics such as the role of the palace and to stress the fact that sovereignty will stay in the hands of thailand. conservative media will surely attempt to distort the news in order to show the policy in a bad light. nationalism should be kept in check by presenting the policy as a way to strengthen national unity through economic integration. summary and conclusions the violent unrest in the deep south of thailand is a top priority issue not only for the thai government but also for the region. due to the economic and socio-political externalities of the conflict, inaction is not an appropriate policy option. furthermore, as explained in this paper, the present approach has not led to a reduction in the violence nor to an economic recovery. moreover, the post cold war rise in aspirations for self-determination combined with a renewed unity of the ummah, makes it harder to ignore the calls for greater cultural and religious autonomy for the melayu patani ethnonationality. this paper compared and contrasted three broad categories of policy options that have been put forward at one point or another as possible solutions to the unrest in the deep south of thailand. socio-cultural as well as political and economic factors were taken into consideration in the analysis so as to determine which category aseas 4(1) 124 125 would yield the best results. it was determined that only an approach that grants some level of autonomy to the south in addition to promote development would prove to be sustainable. the greater pattani autonomous administrative and economic region was proposed as a policy framework that applies ‘best practices’ from the chinese experiences in hong kong and macau as well as socio-cultural considerations appropriate for the local context. rather than simply putting forward a proposal for a new administrative structure, the paper delineated some of the possible political obstacles that could be encountered during its implementation as well as several ways in which they could be overcome. in conclusion, the most appropriate and feasible way to achieve sustainable peace in the deep south of thailand is to establish the greater pattani autonomous administrative and economic region and thus grant the area greater self-determination on some issues and at the same time integrate it with the country and the region through greater economic interdependence. references alrc. 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(2003). thailand: a short history (thailand ed.). chiang mai, thailand: silkworm books. yegar, m. (2002). between integration and secession: the muslim communities of the southern philippines, southern thailand, and western burma/myanmar. new york, ny: lexington books. community-based tourism in bali: on the road towards empowerment? an interview with djinaldi gosana aseas 6(2) 367366 d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -6 .2 -8 im dialog / in dialogue community-based tourism in bali: on the road towards empowerment? an interview with djinaldi gosana claudia dolezal1,2 citation dolezal, c. (2013). community-based tourism in bali: on the road towards empowerment? an interview with djinaldi gosana. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 6(2), 366-373. djinaldi gosana, the chairman of the bali community-based tourism association (cobta) and the executive director of bali hotels association, seeks to empower communities in bali’s rural areas through community-based tourism (cbt). bali cobta is an ngo that engages with cbt in bali’s least developed regions and strives to build stronger communities by assisting them in using, above all, their cultural assets to engage in a type of tourism that is fi nancially benefi cial for the community and at the same time helps preserve local culture. this interview was conducted on 2 june 2013 during the author’s phd fi eldwork on the topic of cbt and empowerment in bali. community empowerment is a highly contested concept that seems to be easily achieved in theory but diffi cult to implement in practice. empowerment, along with the challenges that bali cobta is facing, forms the focus of this interview. djinaldi gosana, präsident der bali community-based tourism association (cobta) und geschäftsführender direktor der bali hotels association, bemüht sich darum, gemeinschaften in balis ländlichen gebieten durch gemeinschaftsbasierten tourismus (community-based tourism) zu stärken (to empower). bali cobta ist eine ngo, die sich im bereich des gemeinschaftsbasierten tourismus in balis sozio-ökonomisch am stärksten benachteiligten regionen engagiert. dies basiert auf der verwendung ihrer kulturellen ressourcen und dem ziel, einen tourismus zu fördern, der der gemeinschaft fi nanziell zu gute kommt, aber auch deren kulturelles erbe bewahrt. dieses interview wurde am 2. juni 2013 im rahmen der doktorats-feldforschung der autorin zum thema gemeinschaftsbasierter tourismus und ermächtigung (empowerment) in bali durchgeführt. ‚community empowerment’ ist ein sehr umstrittenes konzept, welches in der theorie einfach zu erreichen scheint, in der praxis jedoch schwer zu verwirklichen ist. fokus dieses interviews sind das konzept ‚empowerment’ sowie die herausforderungen, welchen bali cobta gegenübersteht. claudia dolezal: what was the reason or what motivated you to create bali cobta? djinaldi gosana: the reason why i am now building this community-based tourism is because, firstly, here in bali, there is nobody else who can do the same thing that i am doing and, secondly, it is my promise that when i come back to indonesia, after my hospitality 1 claudia dolezal is a doctoral researcher at the university of brighton, uk. her phd thesis looks into community empowerment in cbt in bali. claudia has a background in tourism and international development with a focus on south-east asia and contributes to the work of the society for south-east asian studies, i.a. as a member of the aseas editorial board. contact: c.dolezal@brighton.ac.uk. 2 the interview was conducted in english and the phrasing was retained as authentically as possible during the transcription with only minor changes in order to improve readability. aseas 6(2) 367366 studies in germany, i should do something, for poverty alleviation, to make the people more wealthy. you know, i am working for bali hotel association and i have a lot of experience in opening hotels. and, i said – why not, you just move the management system in a hotel and bring it into the village, into the rural area. a hotel has a lobby, an information center; there is a restaurant, and also accommodation. dolezal: so how do you go about initiating cbt and communicating with the villages? gosana: perhaps i am the first who tries to apply the system of the hotel in the village. for example, imagine the hotel; if you bring it to the village, the system is the same, but the situation is different. now, as i said, because of my experience, i know the expectations of the guests; they are looking for something authentic, not mass tourism. and what is good for indonesia, or for bali, is creative tourism. creative tourism means that guests engage, involve, and work together – something they can remember. how can we make this happen, though? i go to the village and i would like to get a confirmation from the head of the community, “is it true that your community wishes or expects to become visited by tourists?” and then he asks me, “teach me the strategy, how can we do it?” i would answer, “firstly, you and the community have to be able to develop the ‘seven charms’ – they are security, order, cleanliness, beauty, green surrounding, friendliness, and building a nice memory; number two, once we have the basics you have to have a committee. so think and choose within the village who can become the leader to develop tourism.” i need a minimum of three persons; ideally, it would be five in the committee: one for accommodation, one for food and beverages, one for marketing, one for accounting, and one for the activities or attractions. people will come to the village because of the attractions. dolezal: so how would you define cbt compared to other types of tourism? gosana: what’s happening here in bali is that people have some money and they say, “ok, i will build something artificial in rural areas, like in ubud3.” they make a stage, they build a hotel, because this person has some money, and then they call the community, “come here, i have a guest!” you see? i feel that this one is not community-based tourism. rather, community-based tourism means that the community has the share; that means that everyone, the 10 or 20 people are involved – that is the difference. if, say, djinaldi has the money, i go to the village, i rent out 5 or 10 rooms there and if i am gone … it is finished. that is the difference when you speak about community-based tourism: if i am gone, hopefully the people or the children can continue it. and then, let’s say, when there is an investment, not only one person is responsible, but the community. the investor, the bank that gives the money, is not giving the money to one person, but gives the support to the community. this is the difference! 3 ubud is a town in gianyar regency, which is famous for tourism. claudia dolezal an interview with djinaldi gosana aseas 6(2) 369368 dolezal: i understand. concerning empowerment, bali cobta states on its website that its mission is to build strong communities and empower them. so, in your eyes, what does empowerment mean and how do you define empowerment? gosana: there are three or five people in the committee. i give them the idea, i train them, i have the money, i trust them to use the money for the activities. but if i am not empowering them, as i said, when i am gone, it is finished. it will not continue. that is why we have to empower them, until they say, “ok, i give up trying to engage in tourism, because i am a farmer, i am a worker, because i am a government official, i have no hospitality experience like you.” and until that time, i will keep empowering them. it is not easy, as i said to you, it is a process. then your empowerment will be successful. dolezal: so how would an empowered community look like or how does empowerment show itself in practice? when, would you say, is a community empowered? gosana: when they … when they can implement what i teach them, without me being there. dolezal: so you mean being independent? gosana: yes, when they are independent. but the people and their background … it makes every village different from the other. one village can be fast, while in the other they might be fighting each other. it depends on who would like to become the ‘king’. but as i said, i should not be too much involved there. ideally, they make use of the same recipe, the ‘seven charms’, and if they need money, they can contact me, i will introduce them to the bank, etc. but they have to decide on the roles in the village and on who runs the show. if it fails, don’t blame me. so far, i haven’t seen anything that endangers the community. however, it does not always go according to our expectations. sometimes they promise something and then we come back and it wasn’t put into practice. i do the empowerment, however, i have to monitor where the limit is. i realize that with those people in the community it is a process, you cannot expect anything within one or two years. i cannot expect that the community can serve as good as i can, because they are not hoteliers. they are not learning that. they learn to be a farmer, they learn to be a worker, maybe a woodcarver. however, i am sure, perhaps in another five, six years, when they are able to train themselves, this will be different. dolezal: but do you try to monitor what’s going on and if it is in line with cbt, or if it is going in the wrong direction? gosana: of course! wrong direction, i don’t think so, as long as the activities belong to the community. i have an example where i empowered the people and it went in the wrong direction. if i say that it is a wrong direction, it is no longer managed by the community; they get money and let the community from another village work. and that is what i think is aseas 6(2) 369368 wrong. that is not bringing benefits to that community, but to another community. therefore, i’ve always said, you have to exploit what you have, what is authentic and original. once you already take something from the outside, like, let’s say, catering service from denpasar, and then you outsource the dancers, you outsource the gamelan4 orchestra, you outsource everything – your place becomes a venue. then it goes in the wrong direction. dolezal: you said earlier that you want to fight poverty with cbt. who do you think benefits from cbt or, to put it differently, do you think that the poor people in the village can also benefit? gosana: yes, i can give you an example when i was criticizing the community because they do not understand the concept. one day, i saw the community show a gamelan orchestra. imagine this, suddenly you see a master there playing the instrument. you think, “wow, that looks professional!” and then i asked the community leader, “who is that person?” – “oh, that is our master, our best man! he already went all over the world, he is very famous!” – “so why do you let this person play in front of the community?” – “because if it is not this person, we are ashamed, not proud.” – “so that’s a rich man, he went around the world!” – “so we made a mistake?” – “yes, you should give the opportunity to the farmer who works in the morning as a farmer and has spare time and has a skill, who has a talent and can show it to the tourist, that is something original! not the person who has already studied and learned and is professional for that.” and then they realize. therefore, cbt ideally would be to create the opportunity to let these people work who are not professionals. dolezal: but don’t the people need training first? gosana: no, because they are in the village, because of the authenticity, they can already do it, because they are talented! but sometimes they are not given the opportunity, because of the leader, the political leader. they are afraid, “if i let this farmer play, you know, the outcome will be bad.” and that is what i criticize. and this has to be understood by the community. dolezal: and you tell them? gosana: yes, a second example: what’s difficult for me and dangerous is when the community leader cannot explain or socialize the program properly. i give you an example: imagine that a group of guests goes for a walk in the village. i think the committee in the village should be smart enough to know when the group will pass through the rice field, for example. so, on the way, the balinese farmer women should already stand there and know – when from far away she sees the tourists coming – that she has to go there. beforehand, she already prepares a big bag of rice or whatever. so when the tourists come, the woman 4 gamelan is the javanese word that is used amongst others in bali to refer to a traditional musical orchestra, which usually consists of a group of people playing a number of different instruments similar to xylophones. claudia dolezal an interview with djinaldi gosana aseas 6(2) 371370 will take the bag and put it up on her head and then the tourists will say: “oh, balinese women are very strong!” and then they take a picture. this is something you will not see in your country. after they’ve left, you put it back and go back to work. not that suddenly the tourists come and they say: “oh, in the program it says that we will see the farmers work, but where are they?” this is why you have to be creative in using the program without disturbing the regular job of the farmer. the farmer can work over there, but if the guests come from the road without passing by the farmer, it is not efficient, right? the timing has to be right. therefore you have to make a show. that is reality. dolezal: so you think it is still authentic if it is a show? gosana: yes, because daily life means you do it like that. they are just doing it at the same time when the tourists come – to show them. that’s the reason why i said at the end of the month, the woman must get money, because this woman is also dancing, only on a different stage. tourists can sit and see the dancer in a nice costume in the evening. if they give money to the dancer, why couldn’t we pay money to the farmer? it is the same stage, only a different kind, you understand? therefore, a good management of cbt is a package. as if you visited walt disney land. you pay once, and then you don’t need to pay again when you are entering the different attractions. that’s it! the money has to be distributed. some money goes to the farmer, some to the kids who were showing things to the guests on their way – who didn’t realize that they were professional … everybody gets something. dolezal: but how can you make sure that the blacksmith gets money, that the farmer gets money? how can you make sure it doesn’t go to the leader? gosana: i empower the community, that’s the difference. lucky me, that i am a little bit close with the community, they tell me, “djinaldi, what’s happening in the community, we experience this and that.” dolezal: i am sure there is a lot happening … can you see any disparities in the villages because of tourism? gosana: as i said to you from the beginning, it is dangerous when the community leader is not socializing properly with the community. that is one big mistake. there is an opportunity. if you only tell four or five people, who have the money and invest – that is wrong! you must sit together and hold a meeting, and you tell for example: “there is a guest looking for a bicycle. everybody who would like to lend a bicycle, please report to me and i will organize it.” if a person didn’t know about that in the end and the conglomerate of the village gets the business, of course, this person will be angry. so then there is no more security and safety, and they will fight each other. and in the end no tourists will come to visit. aseas 6(2) 371370 dolezal: what do you think about the caste system in bali, do you think that the caste system could be an obstacle to this, as it may be difficult to delegate power to the lower caste? gosana: yes, i know. but you know, it depends on the higher caste and how they behave. what i am trying to do now, since i have experience in bedulu village – i am doing wisata puri, tourism related to the royal family. we have to use the opportunity; we have to utilize this caste system to implement what i explained before. i don’t have the intention to awaken feudalism, but: forty or fifty years ago, the royal family had a lot of land and the community worked on that land. the money they earned they gave to the king. so what happened after the land reform: the money comes, and who should maintain the temple, the puri, or the house where the cultural and economic activities happen? only the royal family who has a sense of entrepreneurship can survive, just like the ubud royal family, because they use the puri as an icon, and tourists come. the king invites the tourist to the village, to the royal family house, to the palace, for dinner, dancing, and so on. it is more attractive for the tourists, right? and if people in the community want to do tourist activities, yes, we can schedule for the guests who will stay in the royal family house to visit the community. so with these activities, the community will respect the king again. dolezal: so how do the others benefit then, besides the royal family? gosana: it is the same, the desa wisata5, only that the desa6 doesn’t have the royal family and its attraction. the royal family brings the attraction, it is more beneficial. for the royal family it is not the money – it is the prestige. they could not maintain the relationship with the community, they could not make the palace look always nice and fresh, they could not maintain the para, the market, and so on. so, by having wisata puri, it is the same like 40 years ago. but the difference is that the community is now utilizing the tourists to make money. dolezal: so if the tourists stay in the puri, will there be other homestays, too? gosana: yes, as not all puri will welcome tourists. some think it is a sacral place and that only the royal family may stay there. other puri don’t mind. so therefore, there are two options. we utilize the royal family house for cultural activities, like dinner together with the prince, where people can learn dancing, cooking, painting, the history of the area, but they stay in the homestays in the village. if the royal family has a piece of land, i can build a replica of the royal family houses there. if you would like to stay and feel like a part of the royal family, then, behind the wall of the royal family house, there are some villas with nice swimming pool and so on. dolezal: for you, what are some indicators that a cbt project has been successful – if the tourist is happy or if the community is happy? 5 i.e. tourism village or what bali cobta names ‘community-based tourism’. 6 i.e. ‘village’ in indonesian. claudia dolezal an interview with djinaldi gosana aseas 6(2) 373372 gosana: yeah, if i see that the community is happy, because before they are poor and now they have a better life because of the activities. for example, in blimbingsari: i started that place in 2004; and now people already have a different career. dolezal: so for you, a successful project means that the community improves their standard of living? gosana: yes, it means that the people who are involved in the activities get a better life. that is what it means for me. dolezal: what do you think are the challenges for bali cobta? what is difficult when you work in cbt? gosana: there are a lot of challenges. the biggest challenge for me is when a community is not professional – particularly the tourism committees that organize tourism in the villages. bali cobta empowers and delegates, yes. but the problem is the human resources: the professionalism to handle the things on the ground is not there. it is still a challenge. but i believe that in another three years it will be different. dolezal: so you think it takes some time? gosana: yes, sometimes the challenge is the community itself; if they are not sure they want to do it or not. and that is where the community leader has to convince. if the community leader is not professional, that’s difficult. second, they don’t understand that tourism is only a trigger. the trading through tourism and investment generates more revenue for the community. i give you an example: cbt should consist of three activities: tourism, trading and investment. guests come to a village, they see a piece of land, and think, “hey, that’s good for tourists, i would like to invest and build some villas here.” and then the community says, “yes, we help you!” they build, they invest. it means more money comes in and it can be managed by the community or by the tourist himself. and then people come and say, “oh, the coffee tastes delicious! where does it come from?” – “oh yes, i can arrange something for you, how many kilos do you need in a year?” you see, you just say, “i can supply.” if this opportunity is not used, not taken by the community, then you will wait ages until you are rich. and these things need some time. so if they use only tourism, it takes ages – but if you can create trading or investment and there is still a piece of land that you can build on ... that is my challenge! dolezal: so this is what you tell the villages? gosana: this is what i teach them. dolezal: do you think that if land is sold and more tourists come to the village, that agriculture could be replaced? aseas 6(2) 373372 gosana: i never tell them to sell. collaborate, yes! it is good for the investor; it is also good for the community. that is why i said to you, if we can synergize tourism and trading and whatever can be invested, we can make the poor get rich faster. and yes, there is still a lot to be done, that’s why we have to go back again, empower them, make a cbt center in the village, or a cbt college. if we have some people who would like to stay there and teach them how to speak english – fantastic! what i am doing is just idealism, and i am happy if i can make other people more productive and free them from poverty. that is what it is all about. for me, you feel rich when you can give to someone else. and again, the challenge is that sometimes we try to be good and teach people, but the result is not as fast as we expect. but again, communities do not belong to us. we just have the heart to help and it is up to the community to make use of the help or not. dolezal: thank you very much for your time to do this interview! claudia dolezal an interview with djinaldi gosana food sovereignty: a framework for assessing agrarian responses to climate change in the philippines amber heckelman & hannah wittman ► heckelman, a., & wittman, h. (2015). food sovereignty: a framework for assessing agrarian responses to climate change in the philippines. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 8(1), 87-94. introduction the philippines is one of the foremost countries affected by climate change, with increasing incidence of super typhoons, droughts, floods, and changing rain patterns — all of which exacerbate existing food insecurity, poverty, and ecological degradation (united nations university & alliance development works, 2014; yumal et al., 2011). in response to these challenges, the development and diffusion of adaptation and mitigation strategies are necessary to enhance agrarian resiliency. our ongoing research involves the assessment of food sovereignty pathways in ecuador, brazil, canada, and the philippines. here, we report on our progress in using food sovereignty principles to develop an assessment framework for climate resiliency and food security among a network of smallholder agrarian systems in the philippines. the objective of this research project is to analyze how and to what extent these smallholder farmers are enhancing their livelihoods; responding to loss and damage incurred due to climate change; and serving as catalysts for climate change adaptation, mitigation, and overall resiliency through farmer-led agricultural development initiatives. the magsasaka at siyentipiko para sa pag-unlad ng agrikultura (farmer-scientist partnership for agricultural development, masipag) is a national filipino farmer-led network engaging in agroecological strategies to promote the sustainable use and management of biodiversity through farmers’ control of genetic and biological resources, agricultural production, and associated knowledge (medina, 2009). since masipag’s establishment in the 1980s, the network has grown from 50 farmers to an estimated 35,000 farmers today. our team is working with masipag to assess the degree and scope of their effectiveness in facilitating livelihood resilience, especially in the context of climate change. the challenge with this research lies in capturing the range of complex and interrelated dimensions encompassed in agrarian systems. another challenge is developing new methodological approaches to empirically measure the outcomes of dynamic agroecological strategies and their overall impact on climate resiliency and food security. in response, we propose a systems-based approach built on the principles of ‘food sovereignty’ as a framework for investigating these dynamics and assessing their impact on both food security and climate resiliency. forschungswerkstatt  research workshop w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 15 .1 -6 88 amber heckelman & hannah wittman  aseas 8(1) in the philippines, an estimated 17 percent (16.4 million) of filipinos do not meet their nutritional requirements and basic needs (food and agriculture organization, 2012). a quarter of the population (24.2 million) lives in poverty (world bank group, 2012) and poverty is most severe and widespread among indigenous peoples and small-scale farmers (international fund for agricultural development, 2009). contributors to poverty and food insecurity include land reform policies dating back to 1988 that have been ineffective at breaking up and redistributing privately owned lands acquired during spanish colonialism (bello, 2001); multinational agricultural companies that are expanding industrial palm oil, banana, and pineapple plantations (franco & borras, 2007); and large-scale gold and copper mining operations that are destroying landscapes and watersheds (cec-philippines, 2012). these factors perpetuate a cycle of landlessness and poverty among farmers and contribute to the ongoing concentration of wealth and power in the philippines (ballesteros & de la cruz, 2006; borras, 2007). major reports (de schutter, 2010; mcintyre et al., 2009; united nations conference on trade and development, 2013), high profile case studies (altieri & koohafkan, 2008; bachmann, cruzada, & wright, 2009; holt-giménez, 2002), and reviews (altieri, funes-monzote, & petersen, 2012; lin et al., 2011) suggest that in order to address worsening inequalities, limited resources, and degrading ecological conditions while improving climate resiliency, agrarian systems should facilitate effective social processes for community empowerment as well as exhibit high levels of diversity, synergy, recycling, and integration. these studies credit the smallholder farmer sector for enhancing resiliency by effectively adapting to and mitigating climate change through increased use of local varieties, water harvesting, diversified and intercropping agroforestry, soil conservation practices, farmer-breeding practices, and a series of other traditional techniques. however, little empirical assessment has been made of the potential of diversified and small-scale agrarian systems to achieve food security and sustainable livelihoods through climate change adaptation and mitigation (ccam) strategies, and there is a lack of consensus on how to assess and measure the effectiveness of such strategies. systems-based assessment built on food sovereignty assessments that only measure crop yield fail to account for important social, political, economic, environmental, and health outputs of an agrarian system. the development of comprehensive assessments that also consider inequality, poverty, hunger/malnutrition, market instability, and ecological degradation that characterize much of the agrarian experience are urgently needed. all of these dimensions and realities necessitate a move toward a more ‘systems-based approach’ derived from systems dynamics, a methodology for studying and managing complex systems that change over time (ford, 2010; meadows, 1972). the principles of food sovereignty provide a framework for developing a systemsbased approach that can assess food security and climate resiliency among agrarian communities. since its articulation by la via campesina in 1996 as the right of local people to control their own regional and national food systems, food sovereignty has emerged as a significant topic in the discourse surrounding climate change. advo89food sovereignty in the philippines cates suggest that food sovereignty initiatives have the potential to create alternative agricultural and food policy models that are better equipped with addressing food insecurity in the face of climate change (altieri, 2009; altieri, nicholls, & funes, 2012; chappell et al., 2013; wittman, 2011). this is because the principles of food sovereignty promote practices that are consistent with resilient agrarian systems like the preservation of genetic and biological diversity to enhance ecosystem service functions, reduced reliance on costly energy intensive inputs, and the linkage of farmer knowledge with political mobilization (vandermeer & perfecto, 2012). the basic principles of food sovereignty provide a starting point in the effort to transcribe this concept into a methodological tool for assessing agrarian systems. the principles in brief are (nyéléni forum for food sovereignty, 2007): 1. the perception of food as a human right versus a commodity; 2. the value placed on equity and empowerment for all food providers; 3. the emphasis on the social and ecological benefits of localizing food systems; 4. the call for local control over resources and knowledge; 5. the support for local knowledge and protection of community intellectual property rights; and 6. the significance placed on agroecological practices. a review of these principles reveals the different scales (household to global), factors (policies to local organizations), and dimensions (equity to sustainability) that food sovereignty engages with. another feature of the framework is that it facilitates an investigation of phenomena affecting management decisions within agrarian communities, such as citizenship, social justice, and nutritional health (alkon & mares, 2012; chappell et al., 2013; vandermeer & perfecto, 2012; weiler et al., 2014; wittman, 2009). as such, a systems-based assessment built around these principles has the capacity to capture the various dimensions and phenomena that affect the ability of agrarian communities to effectively respond to climate change. as such, our systems-based approach (see figure 1) aims to address the growing critiques and concerns with assessments that focus primarily on crop production and the biophysical aspects of an agrarian system (gregory, ingram, & brklacich, 2005; schmidhuber & tubiello, 2007). assessing conventional and agroecological approaches to climate resilient food security in the philippines ccam strategies are developed and deployed from a range of agricultural models (holt-giménez & altieri, 2013; kaur, kohli, & jaswal, 2013; loos et al., 2014). for example, the ‘conventional’ model led by the international rice research institute (irri) and its national version, the philippine rice research institute (philrice), challenges scientists to develop technologies including high yielding and/or genetically engineered varieties (hyv) capable of withstanding climate induced ecological disturbances such as floods, droughts, and salinization (fedoroff et al., 2010; ismail et al., 2013). the process of developing and locally testing hyv varieties, and making them available to farmers via commercialization, can take several years. this process is 90 amber heckelman & hannah wittman  aseas 8(1) figure 1: a ‘food sovereignty' approach to assessing agrarian systems (own compilation). costly, both in terms of the investment required for developing and producing new crop varieties and in terms of their subsequent affordability and accessibility to resource-poor farmers (perfecto, vandermeer, & wright, 2009). there are also significant environmental and health costs associated with applying the chemical inputs required to grow these hyv (frossard, 2002; kaur, kohli, & jaswal, 2013; perfecto et al., 2009). masipag advocates an alternative ‘agroecological’ model for agricultural development (bachmann, cruzada, & wright, 2009). to enhance climate resiliency, this network of farmers, scientists, and ngos works in concert to collect indigenous (or heirloom) seed varieties and engages in farmer-breeding initiatives to develop crops that are locally adapted to climate-induced conditions such as floods, droughts, and salinization (see figure 1). these seed varieties are then shared among other farmers in the network via seed exchanges or planned distribution efforts. the network also provides mechanisms for farmers to share agricultural practices and community initiatives, such as intercropping strategies and livestock exchanges to promote genetic diversity (see figure 2). diversified livestock and intercropping systems improve soil quality and carbon sequestration as well as provide farmers, along with their families and community, with access to diverse and nutrient-rich diets. however, the productive capacity of agroecological and smallholder systems has been questioned in terms of their ability to feed growing urban populations, in particular because of reduced access to agricultural inputs, limited labor availability for low-input systems, and other resource constraints. other challenges include the limited access of smallholder environment economic health political sociocultural agrarian systemfoodsecurity climate resiliency availability access sustainability utility vulnerability resistance adaptation mitigation nutritional/caloric intake illness/ailments healthcare access tradition/religion community development knowledge/tech biodiversity soil quality pollution policy farmer empowerment autonomy market/exchange debt/profit labor/capital intensity figure 1: an illustration of (a) the dimensions of an agrarian system and the capacity for (b) food sovereignty to define this systems-based framework to facilitate an investigation of two particular outcomes of an agrarian system: (c) food security and (d) climate resiliency. (a) (b) (c) (d) 91food sovereignty in the philippines figure 2: over 375 rice varieties bred by a single masipag farmer (photo by amber heckelman). figure 3: masipag farmer preparing an organic pesticide and fertilizer (photo by amber heckelman). 92 amber heckelman & hannah wittman  aseas 8(1) systems to agricultural infrastructure and consolidated distribution networks (connor, 2008; international fund for agricultural development, 2013; seufert, ramankutty, & foley, 2012). both irri and masipag initiatives demonstrate the different ways in which the philippine agrarian sector aims to improve its capacity to adapt to and mitigate climate change while simultaneously ensuring food security. this illustrates, again, the need to move beyond yield-centered assessments so as to comprehensively account for the range of activities and adequately assess their effect on food security and climate resiliency. moving forward at present, we are in the first of two phases in the effort to develop our systemsbased food sovereignty assessment tool. the first phase involves designing and drafting the assessment tool (survey questionnaire), which involves soliciting feedback from participating agrarian communities and pilot testing the assessment tool in collaboration with masipag. the second phase will utilize the questionnaire to collect data in three agrarian communities comprised of both conventional and masipag farmers, and located in regions susceptible to climate change induced disturbances. as part of an ongoing multiand transdisciplinary and multi-country collaborative research project, this paper highlights the challenges of adequately assessing climate resiliency and food security in the philippines, and proposes a systems-based approach built on food sovereignty principles as a framework for carrying out such assessments. ultimately, our intention is to increase our understanding of the connection between food security and climate change in the philippines and to lay the groundwork for identifying pathways to resilient agrarian systems.  references alkon, a. h., & mares, t. m. 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(2002). measuring farmers’ agroecological resistance after hurricane mitch in nicaragua: a case study in participatory, sustainable land management impact monitoring. agriculture, ecosystems & environment, 93, 87–105. holt-giménez, e., & altieri, m. (2013). agroecology, food sovereignty, and the new green revolution. agroecology and sustainable food systems, 37(1), 90–102. international fund for agricultural development. (2009). region & country: philippines overview and statistics. rural poverty portal. retrieved from http://www.ruralpovertyportal.org/country/home/tags/ philippines ismail, a. m., singh, u. s., singh, s., dar, m. h., & mackill, d. j. (2013). the contribution of submergencetolerant (sub1) rice varieties to food security in flood-prone rainfed lowland areas in asia. field crops research, 152, 83–93. kaur, a., kohli, r. k., & jaswal, p. s. (2013). genetically modified crops and climate change linkages: an indian perspective. agricultural sciences, 4(10), 541–548. lin, b., chappell, j., vandermeer, j., smith, g., quintero, e., bezner-kerr, r., & perfecto, i. (2011). effects of industrial agriculture on climate change and the mitigation potential of small-scale agro-ecological farms. cab reviews: perspectives in agriculture, veterinary science, nutrition and natural resources, 6(20), 1–18. loos, j., abson, d. j., chappell, m. a., hanspach, j., mikulcak, f., tichit, m., & fischer, j. (2014). putting meaning back into “sustainable intensification”. frontiers in ecology and the environment, 12(6), 356–361. mcintyre, b. d., herren, h. r., wakhungu, j., & watson, r. t. (2009). agriculture at a crossroads. international assessment of agricultural knowledge, science and technology for development (iaastd). global report. washington, dc: island press. meadows, d. h. (1972). the limits to growth. new york, ny: universe books. medina, c. (2009). empowering small rice farmers: the masipag approach. panap rice sheets. retrieved from http://www.zef.de/uploads/tx_zefnews/medina_2009_masipag_empowering_samall farmers.pdf 94 amber heckelman & hannah wittman  aseas 8(1) nyéléni forum for food sovereignty. (2007). declaration of nyéléni. retrieved from http://nyeleni.org/ img/pdf/declnyeleni-en.pdf. perfecto, i., vandermeer, j., & wright, a. (2009). nature’s matrix: linking agriculture conservation and food sovereignty. london, uk: earthscan. schmidhuber, j., & tubiello, f. (2007). global food security under climate change. proceedings of the national academy of sciences, 104(50), 19703–19708. seufert, v., ramankutty, n., & foley, j. a. (2012). comparing the yields of organic and conventional agriculture. nature, 485(7397), 229–232. united nations conference on trade and development. (2013). trade and environment review 2013. wake up before it is too late: make agriculture truly sustainable now for food security in a changing climate. retrieved from http://unctad.org/en/publicationslibrary/ditcted2012d3_en.pdf united nations university, & alliance development works. (2014). world risk report 2014. retrieved from http://www.ehs.unu.edu/file/get/11895.pdf vandermeer, j., & perfecto, i. (2012). complex traditions: intersecting theoretical frameworks in agroecological research. journal of sustainable agriculture, 37(1), 76–89. weiler, a. m., hergesheimer, c., brisbois, b., wittman, h., yassi, a., & spiegel, j. m. (2014). food sovereignty, food security and health equity: a meta-narrative mapping exercise. health policy and planning, 1–15. wittman, h. (2009). reworking the metabolic rift: la vía campesina, agrarian citizenship, and food sovereignty. journal of peasant studies, 36(4), 805–826. wittman, h. (2011). food sovereignty: a new rights framework for food and nature? environment and society: advances in research, 2(1), 87–105. world bank group (2012). world development indicators: philippines. world databank. retrieved from http://databank.worldbank.org/data/views/reports/tableview.aspx yumal, g., cruz, n., servando, n., & dimalanta, c. (2011). extreme weather events and related disasters in the philippines, 2004-08: a sign of what climate change will mean? disasters, 35(2), 362–382. about the authors amber heckelman is a phd student in integrated studies in land & food systems at the university of british columbia, a liu scholar at the institute for global issues, and a bullitt environmental fellow. her research is centered on food security, food sovereignty, and climate change resilience in the philippines. ► contact: amber.heckelman@gmail.com hannah wittman is associate professor at the faculty of land and food systems and the institute for resources, environment and sustainability at the university of british columbia, canada. she works on food sovereignty, agrarian resilience, and health equity in the americas. ► contact: hannah.wittman@ubc.ca imagining indonesia from afar: exploratory thoughts on utopian, nostalgic, and embodied longing for the homeland antje missbach & henri myrttinen ► missbach, a., & myrttinen, h. (2014). imagining indonesia from afar: exploratory thoughts on utopian, nostalgic, and embodied longing for the homeland. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 7(2), 141-146. unlike india and china, which have the largest diaspora worldwide and have been nurturing their connections with their multi-generational overseas population for a long time, indonesia has only recently started to pay more attention to fellow indonesians outside of the homeland. in august 2013, wahid supriyadi, the head of the diaspora desk at the indonesian foreign ministry, welcomed more than three thousand diasporans at a three-day conference in jakarta. this event served to discuss issues, such as immigration and citizenship, business and investment, education, culture and youth affairs, and other matters of interest to the indonesian diaspora (soemartopo, 2012). wahid supriyadi, the main organizer of the event, expressed his hope stating that “the fundamental objective of engaging with the diaspora was to find ways for indonesia to benefit”. in other words, indonesians overseas “could potentially be courted to invest in the country and contribute to its development” (“3,000 to attend sunday’s”, 2013). economic aspirations aside, how do ‘ordinary’ indonesian diasporans, outside of such business-minded organizations, perceive their ‘homeland’? what non-economic imaginations of and “homeland anchorages” (meel, 2011) for indonesia do they have in their minds and hearts? in order to explore in more depth what indonesians located overseas aspire to for their homeland beyond economic progress and how they imagine a ‘better’ indonesia for the future, which includes their own participation and contributions while living outside the tanah air (homeland), this special issue has compiled the work of five authors who have critically examined this question within the realms of their specific disciplines. currently, between 1.8 and 6 million indonesians are living and working overseas (muhidin & utomo, 2013), first and foremost in malaysia and the middle east. with most indonesians just having recently established overseas communities, there are, however, also some rather established indonesian diaspora communities (martinez & vickers, 2012; meel, 2011). while away from ‘home’, the ‘homeland’ shapes the post-migratory life significantly and therefore remains a special point of reference for people’s biographies. many overseas indonesians choose to uphold their connections with people and institutions in indonesia due to modern communication technologies and more affordable transportation, both of which allow for more regular real-time contact (trupp & dolezal, 2013). despite these opportunities for ‘staying in touch’ with current developments in indonesia, homeland imaginaries are shaped to a large extent by editorial w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 . 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 14 .2 -1 142 antje missbach & henri myrttinen  aseas 7(2) other, often rather emotive, factors. as peter meel (2011) reminds us, the “homeland anchorage” includes in particular language, religion, cuisine, etiquette, art, dance, literature, and music. whether homeland is primarily understood as the country of origin or simply the country that ancestors hailed from, remains open for debate. like other diasporic or exilic populations, indonesians overseas can choose from all the homeland information available to them and selectively decide on what to consume and what to ignore. in fact, they can easily opt for cherishing past memories (or traumas) over taking into account developments and changes and thereby generate distorted homeland views and ‘time warps’ (missbach, 2011). depending on whether the emigration or the departure from home was voluntary or not and whether the stay overseas was meant to be short-term, mid-term, long-term, or even permanent, people create and recreate their collective and individual homeland relations over time in multiple ways, for example, through overseas student organizations, diasporic business collectives, or cultural and folkloristic associations. while away from indonesia, people might delve in memories of their past, or they might dream of their return and brighter futures for indonesia more generally. in fact, current research shows that indonesia serves overseas indonesians as a multi-faceted canvas for projections of longings for a better tomorrow and of a golden yesteryear (chauvel, 2009; dragojlovic, 2010, 2012; hearman, 2010; hill, 2010; missbach, 2011; steijlen, 2010; van amersfoort, 2004). while such visions for indonesia’s future and the diasporic interpretations of its past might not necessarily be shared by those living in the everyday reality in indonesia, for the indonesians overseas who project them onto their tanah air, they turn out to be powerful means for their political agitation, long-distance politics, transnational solidarity/activism, fund-raising, and even for shaping indonesia’s reputation in the host country. homeland imaginaries are by no means homogeneous or static; instead they develop over time and often, when coming under closer scrutiny, they may turn out to be rather fragmented, ambivalent, or even outright ‘unrealistic’ as specific actors see the indonesian homeland in a different light. to an extent, the same can be said about the social and political and even religious imaginaries employed by those indonesian actors who remain in the country but have ‘exiled’ themselves either voluntarily or involuntarily from mainstream society. they project their imaginings of a better society onto a societal canvas they see as being currently imperfect, be it due to religious considerations in the case of salafis (chaplin in this issue), political objections in the case of papuan independence activists (myrttinen, 2011, forthcoming), or, in a past era, socio-political concerns in the case of the indonesian communist party (interview with hearman, missbach in this issue). utopias generally conceptualize social orders and political systems for times yet to come; in some cases, they also look back at glorified pasts. thus, in both cases, they depict responses of current dissatisfaction with political regimes, state orders, and social frameworks. utopias serve their inventors to excogitate alternatives deemed to improve the destinies of many. however, attempts to implement social or political utopias are often characterized by a tragedy of ‘unrealizability’ or unfeasibility (machbarkeit as defined by norbert elias in voßkamp, 2009), or in the worst case, they achieve the opposite of what was intended. despite the fact that many utopias 143editorial: imagining indonesia from afar might never enter the phase of implementation at all, it is still worthwhile to examine the political contents of these utopias as they also represent a critique of contemporary societal conditions. when examining the state of the art on the politically active indonesian diaspora – from acehnese, papuans, and moluccans to overseas student associations – it appears that antagonism against the indonesian state and its government is a decisive element of diaspora politics (ali, 2013; van amersfoort, 2004, p. 161). scholarship on political diasporas often ignores more subtle forms of socio-cultural politics and activism. by not limiting our gaze to more or less established diasporic groups with internet presence and regular media outlets, this special issue seeks to also include less formalized and temporary group activities of indonesians overseas that complement the already existing assemblies of indonesian homeland narratives and imaginaries. the special issue aims to explore the multiple readings of longings for a better life that are projected both on indonesia’s past and/or future. the papers deal with the romanticization and transfiguration of the indonesian homeland without ignoring the darker sides of internal and external exile, migration, and long-distance politics. in particular, the papers critically reflect on the construction and perceptions of ‘homeland’ and ‘homing’, the creating of transnational political links and activism, as well as the significance of diasporic groups and their influence in indonesia. the contributions examine in detail political utopias and homeland imaginaries held by indonesians and, in one case, east timorese at home and abroad. these include labor migrants (hertzman), expatriates, marriage migrants (utomo), overseas students (hasyim), political exiles, and refugees (askland). since being in exile does not always require an actual departure from the homeland, as people can retreat into an ‘inner exile’, this special issue also takes into account the imaginaries of those who are physically within the boundaries of indonesia, yet in one way or another voluntarily or involuntarily ‘exiled’ from the rest of society, such as salafi activists (chaplin) or political prisoners (hearman). in her contribution, emily hertzman examines the multiple ways in which ethnic hakka chinese indonesian migrants to southeast and east asia navigate their lives abroad while maintaining deep emotional ties to and (re-)imagining their area of origin, singkawang, in west kalimantan. ariane utomo similarly looks at indonesians living abroad for extended periods of time and explores how indonesian mothers in the australian capital of canberra use language schooling for their children as a way to maintain their own ties to indonesia, but also build transnational relations for their children. on a more political note, syafiq hasyim investigates the history of indonesian student activism in berlin over the years and the struggle both for a more democratic and a more pious indonesia. in terms of examining diaspora communities, hedda askland’s contribution might seem to be an outlier at first sight since it examines changing perceptions of exile east timorese in australia of their native country. the link to indonesia here, however, is a historical one, as most of the exiles had fled indonesian occupation. the remaining contributions – a paper by chris chaplin and an interview with vannessa hearman – examine re-imaginings of indonesia from within the country by indonesians who are either voluntarily (in the case of chaplin, salafis) or involuntarily (in the case of hearman’s study of letters of the political prisoner gatot lestario) distanced from mainstream society. 144 antje missbach & henri myrttinen  aseas 7(2) the papers in this special issue thus pay attention to individual homeland conceptions among indonesians and east timorese overseas but more so, they are interested in collective narratives, imaginaries, and interpretations as well as the more practical expressions resulting therefrom. the contributions follow interdisciplinary approaches and are situated at the intersections of anthropology, political science, history, as well as migration and diaspora studies. they give fascinating insights into the dynamic meanings attached by different indonesians and east timorese to their homelands and how these imaginings, although they might in part be at odds with the imaginings of the majority of the population, act as parts and fragments which add up to the mosaic that is indonesian society.  references 3,000 to attend sunday’s diaspora congress. (2013, august 15). jakarta globe. retrieved from http://thejakartaglobe.beritasatu.com/news/3000-to-attend-sundays-diaspora-congress/ ali, a. (2013, august 15). putra aceh ikuti pelatihan ham internasional di belanda. the globe journal. retrieved from http://www.acehinfo.com/nanggroe/putra-aceh-ikuti-pelatihan-ham-internasionaldi-belanda chauvel, r. (2009). from the ramparts of fort victoria: knowing indonesia through a distant mirror. review of indonesian and malaysian affairs, 43(1), 165–187. dragojlovic, a. (2010). ‘sukarno’s students’: reconfiguring notions of exile, community and remembering. review of indonesian and malaysian affairs, 44(1), 53–81. dragojlovic, a. (2012). materiality, loss and redemptive hope in the indonesian leftist diaspora. indonesia and the malay world, 40(117), 160–174. hearman, v. (2010). the last men in havana: indonesian exiles in cuba. review of indonesian and malaysian affairs, 44(1), 83–109. hill, d. (2010). indonesia’s exiled left as the cold war thaws. review of indonesian and malaysian affairs, 44(1), 21–51. martinez, j. t., & vickers, a. (2012). indonesians overseas – deep histories and the view from below. indonesia and the malay world, 40(117), 111–121. meel, p. (2011). continuity through diversity: the surinamese javanese diaspora and the homeland anchorage. wadabagei: a journal of the caribbean and its diaspora, 13(3), 95–132. missbach, a. (2011). politics and conflict in indonesia: the role of the acehnese diaspora. new york, ny: routledge. myrttinen, h. (2011, november 10). “freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose?” – west papua declares its independence, again. retrieved from http://infocus.asiaportal.info/2011/11/10/%e2%80% 9cfreedom%e2%80%99s-just-another-word-for-nothing-left-to-lose%e2%80%9d-west-papua-declares-its-independence-again/ myrttinen, h. (forthcoming). under two flags: encounters with israel, merdeka and the promised land in tanah papua. in j. munro & m. slama (eds.), from ‘stone-age’ to ‘real-time’: exploring papuan temporalities, mobilities, and religiosities. canberra, australia: australian national university press. muhidin, s., & utomo, a. (2013). how many overseas indonesians are there? discussion paper series no.1, indonesia diaspora network – research and development (idn – r&d), december 2013. steijlen, f. (2010). moluccans in the netherlands: from exile to migrant. review of indonesian and malaysian affairs, 44(1), 143–162. soemartopo, b. (2012, august 12) diaspora indonesia pulang kampoeng! the jakarta globe. retrieved from http://thejakartaglobe.beritasatu.com/archive/diaspora-indonesia-pulang-kampoeng/ 145editorial: imagining indonesia from afar trupp, a., & dolezal, c. (eds.). 2013. mobilities [special issue]. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 6(2). van amersfoort, h. (2004). the waxing and waning of a diaspora: moluccans in the netherlands, 1950– 2002. journal of ethnic and migration studies, 30(1), 151–174. voßkamp, w. (2009). wunschtraum und albtraum: zur utopieforschung von norbert elias. leviathan, 37, 477–489. about the authors antje missbach is research fellow at monash university in melbourne. she has written widely about the long-distance politics of the acehnese diaspora. currently, she is finalizing a book on troubled transit: asylum seekers stuck in indonesia. ► contact: antje.missbach@monash.edu henri myrttinen is currently working as a researcher at mauerpark institute in berlin. in the past decade, he has worked extensively in and on indonesia and timor-leste as both re searcher and activist. he holds a phd in conflict resolution and peace studies from the university of kwazulu-natal, south africa, with a focus on masculinities and violence in timorleste. ► contact: henrimyrttinen@gmail.com book review: creak, s. (2015). embodied nation. sport, masculinity, and the making of modern laos. book review: creak, s. (2015). embodied nation. sport, masculinity, and the making of modern laos. honolulu: university of hawai’i press. isbn: 978-0-8248-3889-8. xiv + 327 seiten. ► lubenovic, v. (2015). book review: creak, s. (2015). embodied nation. sport, masculinity, and the making of modern laos. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 8(2), 229-232. simon creak, dozent für südostasiatische geschichte an der universität melbourne, behandelt in seinem 2015 erschienenen buch die staatswerdung und -bildung der heutigen demokratischen volksrepublik laos aus einer bisher einzigartigen perspektive. embodied nation untersucht die bedeutung des sportes, des körperkultes und der maskulinität für den historischen prozess der staatsbildung im 20. jahrhundert, die auf politisch-ideologischer ebene von zahlreichen umbrüchen gekennzeichnet ist. die französische kolonialperiode, die im ersten kapitel analysiert wird und die moderne territoriale entität laos markiert, bildet den ausgangspunkt seiner untersuchung. dafür wird der fokus auf tikhi – ein dem englischen feldhockey ähnliches spiel – gelegt. es wird nachgezeichnet, wie französische reisende sowie anthropologen des école française d’extrême-orient durch ihre berichte und interpretationen das spiel mit nationalen, kulturellen und geschlechterspezifischen bedeutungen versahen und so an der entstehung einer kohärenten idee der laotischen kultur mitwirkten, die den geographischen grenzen der kolonie entsprach und ihren vorstellungen folgend traditionell geprägt war. insofern war, neben ihrer auswirkung auf die geschlechterverhältnisse, die rechtfertigung des modernisierenden kolonialen projekts ein grundlegendes element der einseitigen französischen wissensproduktion. kapitel zwei widmet sich der periode zwischen 1940 und 1944 und zeigt, wie sport und körperkult zu einer bedeutenden nationalen politischen agenda wurden. ausgehend vom faschistischen vichy-frankreich schildert der autor, wie ideen von maskulinität als zentraler ausdruck eines kulturellen nationalismus ihren weg vom mutterland über andere teile indochinas bis nach laos fanden und sich in militärischer praxis – samt visuellen und ideologischen begleiterscheinungen – niederschlugen. von frankreich nicht intendiert, äußerte sich dies jedoch in einem erstarken des laotischen patriotismus, der den glauben in das französische kolonialprojekt in frage stellte. in kapitel drei analysiert der autor die royalistische übergangsperiode von laos zu einem unabhängigen staat. mittels in dieser zeit angefertigter fotografien und zeichnungen legt creak die fortwährenden französischen bemühungen um einflusssicherung angesichts der aufkeimenden blockkonfrontation im binnenstaat und deren auswirkungen auf die voranschreitende militarisierung dar. besonderes augenmerk legt er dabei auf die bedeutung der laotischen soldaten als symbol für die neugewonnene formelle unabhängigkeit des landes. mit kapitel vier beginnt die genaue erörterung der bedeutung von sportrezensionen  book reviews w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 15 .2 -1 2 230 vedad lubenovic  aseas 8(2) ereignissen in zeiten innerstaatlicher ideologischer machtkämpfe für die nationale staatsbildung. die 1961 und 1964 abgehaltenen national games dienen dem autor als beispiel für die instrumentalisierung von sportveranstaltungen für politische zwecke. die machthaber nutzten sie nicht nur als legitimationsquelle, sondern auch als zeichen nationaler einheit und nationalen fortschritts. kapitel fünf behandelt in weiterer folge die art und weise, wie regionale kräfte in laos globale prozesse im kontakt mit nachbarstaaten – und hier insbesondere thailand und vietnam – vor dem hintergrund politischer entwicklungen vor ort vermittelten und sich diese in sportpolitischer natur niederschlugen. es werden hintergründe der teilnahme des landes an den seap (south east asia peninsular) games und ganefo (games of the new emerging forces) beleuchtet. kapitel sechs und sieben widmen sich der periode nach der machtergreifung der kommunistischen lprp (lao people’s revolutionary party) ab 1975. ersteres konzentriert sich auf die intentionen staatlicher rhetorik durch die stärkung des breitensports physisch starke und gesunde staatsbürger_innen hervorzubringen, die als voraussetzung für den weiteren erfolgreichen sozialistischen weg gedeutet wurden. dabei untersucht der autor vorrangig den zusammenhang zwischen sozialistischer ideologie und dem daraus abgeleiteten körperkult. er legt nicht nur die kulturellen und historischen auswirkungen, sondern auch die probleme, grenzen und paradoxien bei der umsetzung dar. kapitel sieben beleuchtet die bedeutung professioneller sportler_innen für die verfolgung innerstaatlicher sozialistischer anliegen. der autor stellt vier hypothesen vor, die unter anderem darauf hinweisen, wie die lrpr publikumssport dafür nutzte, eine revolutionäre atmosphäre im land zu schaffen, um die massen für den weiteren weg der revolution zu mobilisieren. die analyse der teilnahme an bzw. des fernbleibens von internationalen sportveranstaltungen, mit dem ziel sich international zu positionieren und zu präsentieren, bildet einen wichtigen teil dieses buchabschnitts. die hypothesen werden entlang zweier bedeutender großveranstaltungen, nämlich der olympischen spiele 1980 in moskau und der national games 1985 in vientiane, untersucht. mit kapitel acht schließt das werk ab. der sprung in die jüngere geschichte behandelt die bedeutung der 2009 in vientiane ausgetragenen south east asian (sea) games für das heutige regime. creak zeigt, wie der laotische staatsapparat immer mehr abstand von sozialistischen motiven genommen und sie durch eine aktuelle „moderne“ und für die region spezifische ideologie kapitalistischer entwicklung ersetzt hat. es wird gezeigt, wie die spiele den machthabern unter anderem dazu dienten, der internationalen öffentlichkeit die stetig voranschreitende sozio-ökonomische entwicklung des landes vor augen zu führen. dabei geht der autor auch auf die negativen begleiterscheinungen des eingeschlagenen weges ein. simon creaks arbeit stellt ein unverwechselbares novum dar, da sie die erste wissenschaftliche auseinandersetzung in buchform ist, die sich primär der bedeutung des sportes und männlichen körperkultes für die entstehung und den werdegang von laos annimmt. zugleich werden die verbindungen der sportlichen sphäre mit anderen bedeutenden bereichen – wie beispielsweise religion oder medien – gezeigt und bearbeitet. das fundierte wissen, das der autor nicht nur über die geschichte des landes, sondern auch über die sprache lao vorweisen kann, ermöglicht es ihm, 231book review auf die bedeutung des verhältnisses von sprache/rhetorik und sport hinzuweisen und eine große vielfalt historischer dokumente in seine analyse einzubinden. dies steigert nicht nur das lesevergnügen, sondern trägt auch entscheidend zur plausibilität der argumente bei. creak liefert eine schlüssige begründung dafür, wie sport in spezifischen ausformungen von den akteuren für die jeweiligen ideologien und die damit verbundenen vorstellungen politischen und sozialen wandels genutzt wurde. in weiten teilen des buches wird dabei besonderer wert auf vorstellungen und aushandlungsprozesse von maskulinität gelegt. der autor eröffnet neue sichtweisen auf historische fragestellungen, die bisherige hypothesen infrage stellen. dies muss als ein besonderes merkmal der arbeit hervorgehoben werden, da sie dadurch nicht völlig losgelöst von bisherigen forschungsprojekten zum staatswerdungsprozess laos steht, sondern eine differenzierte auseinandersetzung mit ihnen darstellt. gleichzeitig muss kritisch angemerkt werden, dass sich im werk ebenso annahmen finden, die einer noch detaillierteren auseinandersetzung bedürfen. als beispiel sei die abhandlung über die gründe der teilnahme an den ganefo angeführt. obwohl das unterkapitel die politik der ganefo und die damit verbundenen ideologischen machtspiele der regionalen und internationalen mächte auf über acht seiten beleuchtet, folgert creak, dass die möglichkeit der sportler_innen, laos auf einer internationalen bühne zu repräsentieren „was probably more important than the ideological politics of ganefo“ (s. 160). zudem ist es bedauerlich, dass das abschließende kapitel, welches die sea games 2009 in vientiane behandelt, als das kürzeste der arbeit ausfällt. als äußerst bedeutender punkt in der jüngeren zeitgeschichte des landes, wäre eine detailliertere ausarbeitung wünschenswert gewesen. ungeachtet der vorgebrachten kritikpunkte liefert simon creak mit embodied nation eine leicht verständliche historiographie von laos, die sich nicht in fachtermini verliert und somit auch für dem forschungsgebiet fremde leser_innen eine spannende lektüre aus einer bis dato einmaligen perspektive bietet. vedad lubenovic universität wien, österreich conference report: land grabbing, conflict, and agrarian-environmental transformations: perspectives from east and southeast asia, 5-6 june 2015, chiang mai university conference report: land grabbing, conflict, and agrarianenvironmental transformations: perspectives from east and southeast asia, 5-6 june 2015, chiang mai university rainer einzenberger ► einzenberger, r. (2015). conference report: land grabbing, conflict, and agrarian-environmental transformations: perspectives from east and southeast asia, 5-6 june 2015, chiang mai university. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 8(2), 215-218. it was an extraordinarily emotional moment for an academic conference when the cambodian human rights activist hong chinda1 informed the audience that her family had just been evicted from their land once again by the cambodian authorities. this time, the incident happened during her absence, while she was attending the conference on “land grabbing, conflict and agrarian-environmental transformations: perspectives from east and southeast asia”2 and only shortly before she addressed the 240 international participants of the conference in her speech. hong chinda’s case is just one of the countless examples of conflict over land in the southeast asian region. her testimony is a reminder of the importance of this conference, which was a follow-up to the related international academic conferences organized by the land deal politics initiative (ldpi) at university of sussex (uk) in 2011 and at cornell university (usa) in 2012. established in 2010, the ldpi is a network of academic research institutions and individuals that “aims to provide in-depth and systematic enquiry into the global land grab in order to have deeper, meaningful and productive debates around causes and implications” (ldpi, n.d.). academic interest in what is now globally known as land grab followed the sudden increase in large-scale, cross border land acquisitions in the global south that began around 2007 (hall, 2013, p. 95). a briefing of the international nongovernmental organization grain, titled “seized! the 2008 land grab for 1 hong chinda is a human rights activist from sihanoukville in cambodia. she is a member of the community peace building network (cpn) and a founding member of the action research team (art) which is an informal community based network of land, forest, and fishery rights activists from seven provinces in cambodia. (“land grabbing”, 2015). 2 the conference was organized by a broad range of organizations and institutions: brics initiatives for critical agrarian studies (bicas), land deal politics initiative (ldpi), mosaic research project, transnational institute (tni), interchurch organization for development cooperation (icco), focus on the global south, the regional center for social science and sustainable development (rcsd) chiang mai university in cooperation with demeter (droits et egalite pour une meilleure economie de la terre), geneva graduate institute, university of amsterdam wotro/aissr project on land investments (indonesia/philippines), université de montréal – reinventerra (asia) project mekong research group, university of sydney (amrc), and the university of wisconsin-madison. more information on the conference’s procedures can be found at: http://www.iss. nl/research/research_programmes/political_economy_of_resources_environment_and_population_per/networks/land_deal_politics_ldpi/conferences/land_grabbing_perspectives_from_east_ and_southeast_asia/ netzwerk südostasien  network south-east asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 15 .2 -8 216 rainer einzenberger  aseas 8(2) food and financial security”, was reportedly one of the first publications highlighting the issue (grain, 2008). while acknowledging that land grab is nothing new and has been ongoing for centuries (most noticeably since the colonial period), grain claimed that the world food crisis and the bigger financial crisis triggered a new boom in investment in land for both outsourced food production and as a new source for profit (grain, 2008). if the conference in chiang mai was to draw one single conclusion, it was that the problems over land are rapidly increasing rather than decreasing, offering a rather gloomy outlook. the report from grain already identified china as one major global player involved in land grabbing. china had been outsourcing part of its food production well before the global financial crisis in 2008 as part of its general “go abroad strategy” (grain, 2008). unsurprisingly, china’s influence also featured prominently at the conference in chiang mai where numerous case studies related to china’s investment in mainland southeast asia were presented3. prominent examples included country cases such as the lao pdr and cambodia where chinese companies control a major share of agricultural land. fewer studies were presented on vietnam and myanmar, with the latter representing one of the latest investment frontiers for foreign capital (again with china as top investor) – a topic that remains narrowly researched. remarkable was the lack of contributions on thailand, reflecting the criticism expressed by thai activist prue odochao during his speech at the conference. he criticized that few thai academics are committed to helping the thousands of rural communities in thailand still under threat of eviction from land declared as forest area. this situation, according to odochao, has not improved since the current military government took over power in a coup in may 2014. to remind the audience of the very dangerous life still faced by activists in thailand, prue odochao reported the case of his friend, pholachi rakchongcharoen (also known as “billy”) – a karen human rights activist who went missing in april 2014 after trying to defend his community against thai national park authorities (amnesty international, 2014). with over 80 papers presented at the 24 parallel panels, the conference covered a broad range of issues. even so, the panels managed to stay focused and concise, providing much room for discussion due to strict time management. the topics discussed included, for example, the main actors involved in land grabbing (transnational corporations, states, and local elites), gendered experiences of southeast asia’s corporate land rush and the broader context of agrarian transformation in the region. other panels explored the intersection of land grabs and climate change mitigation. a constant reminder was not to lose sight of other “powers of exclusion” (hall, hirsch, & li 2011), which often work in more subtle ways than large scale land grabbing. in this context the economic land concessions in cambodia was a frequently quoted case. while there was broad agreement on the increasing number of land grabbing cases and the global forces at play, several academics, such as henry bernstein, urged not to forget the processes of class formation as well as the internal differentiations and gender dynamics related to land issues. a case in point was a paper by kevin woods who studied the involvement of thai based agribusiness giant cp group in maize contract farming in myanmar’s shan state. the paper argued that “corporatization and regional-/globalisation of the chicken feed market has radically 3 moreover, conference participants also addressed china’s role in africa and southern america. 217conference report: land grabbing, conflict, and agrarian-environmental transformations transformed agrarian relations and structures of debt and dispossession in rural, upland shan state” (woods, 2015, abstract), without the need for direct land grabbing. a major discussion at the conference revolved around the best way to secure land tenure for those who need it the most, and the seeming dichotomy between private land tenure on the one hand versus customary (communal) land tenure on the other. the latter is seen by some advocates as a way to enclose land for the purpose of keeping it out of the control of market forces and to protect its oftentimes indigenous inhabitants. a critic, such as professor ben white, however, argued in his closing statement that “both [forms of tenure] result in vast differentiation of rural societies quite different from the egalitarian small-holder communities envisioned by agrarian movements; they do not provide and they often work against democratic control of land”. while he made some proposals for alternative land tenure regimes following the general principal of “land to the tiller”4 , it is unlikely that this debate will come to a conclusion anytime soon, but will stimulate further discussion in the future. still, the unconventional mix of academics and activists in this conference provided an exciting, unusual, and profound contribution to the debate. for those academics and practitioners interested in issues on land grabbing and agrarian transformations, it is strongly recommended to visit the conference’s website which provides free access to the complete papers presented.5  references amnesty international (2014). thailand: six months on, fate of human rights activist remains unknown, index: asa 39/016/2014, 17 october 2014. retrieved from https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/ asa39/016/2014/en/ grain. (2008). seized! the 2008 landgrab for food and financial security (grain briefing). retrieved from http://www.grain.org/article/entries/93-seized-the-2008-landgrab-for-food-and-financial-security hall, d. (2013). land. cambridge, uk: polity. hall, d., hirsch, p., & li, t. m. (2011). powers of exclusion: land dilemmas in southeast asia. honolulu, hi: university of hawaii press. land deal politics initiative (ldpi). (n.d.). international institute of social studies in the hague. retrieved from http://www.iss.nl/research/research_programmes/political_economy_of_resources_environment_and_population_per/networks/land_deal_politics_ldpi/ land grabbing (2015). land grabbing, conflict and agrarian-environmental transformations: perspectives from east and southeast asia. conference program. retrieved from: http://www.iss.nl/fileadmin/assets/iss/research_and_projects/research_networks/ldpi/2015_chiang_mai_conference_final_ programme_1_june.pdf woods, k. (2015). cp maize contract farming in shan state, myanmar: a regional case of a place-based corporate agro-feed system. proceedings of the conference on land grabbing, conflict and agrarianenvironmental transformations: perspectives from east and southeast asia june 5-6 2015, chiang mai university, chiang mai, thailand. 4 the principle of “land to the tiller” is based on communal but not customary ownership and democratically allocated individual use rights. 5 see the conference website at: http://www.iss.nl/research/research_programmes/political_economy_ of_resources_environment_and_population_per/networks/land_deal_politics_ldpi/conferences/ 218 rainer einzenberger  aseas 8(2) about the author rainer einzenberger worked as myanmar project coordinator at the heinrich böll foundation’s southeast asia regional office in bangkok from 2010 to 2014. he is currently university assistant and phd candidate at the department of development studies, university of vienna. ► contact: rainer.einzenberger@univie.ac.at acknowledgements the author wishes to thank asea-uninet for its financial support which enabled him to attend the conference. contested land: an analysis of multi-layered conflicts in jambi province, sumatra, indonesia barbara beckert, christoph dittrich, & soeryo adiwibowo ► beckert, b., dittrich, c., & adiwibowo, s. (2014). contested land: an analysis of multi-layered conflicts in jambi province, sumatra, indonesia. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 7(1), 75-92. in the lowland areas of sumatra, conflicts over land and natural resources are increasing as fundamental land use transformation processes take place and the region is gradually integrated into globalized markets. set against the background of the conflict arena of bungku village, jambi province, this paper describes and analyzes the struggle for land between a group of indigenous people, the batin sembilan, and an oil palm company, pt asiatic persada. by highlighting the path dependency of land conflicts, the article shows that access to land results from concurring but ambivalent institutional regimes and power asymmetries, leading to an ostensible state of equilibrium in a post-frontier area. keywords: access to land; indonesia; jambi province; land conflicts; post-frontier  grundlegende veränderungen in der landnutzung sowie die fortschreitende einbindung in globalisierte märkte führen in den tieflandregionen sumatras zu zunehmend gewalttätig ausgetragenen konflikten um land und natürliche ressourcen. vor dem hintergrund der konfliktarena von bungku, einem dorf in der provinz jambi, beschreibt und analysiert der beitrag den kampf um land zwischen den indigenen batin sembilan und einem palmölunternehmen, pt asiatic persada. der artikel zeigt anhand der pfadabhängigkeit von landkonflikten, dass zugang zu land aus der gleichzeitigkeit und ambivalenz institutioneller systeme und machtasymmetrien resultiert, was zu einem scheinbaren gleichgewichtszustand in post-frontier-regionen führt. schlagworte: indonesien; landkonflikte; post-frontier; provinz jambi; zugang zu land aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 14 .1 -6 76 barbara beckert, christoph dittrich, & soeryo adiwibowo  aseas 7(1) sumatra – globally integrated and locally contested the indonesian island of sumatra has been known for decades for its vast plantation industries, based on key cash crops like rubber, oil palm, and industrial timber (mainly gamelina, sengon, and acacia). since the 1970s, the lowland rainforests of central sumatra have been largely converted into timber, rubber, and oil palm plantations, after the indonesian government had assigned almost the entire area for logging. between 1985 and 2008, sumatra’s forest resources had been cleared with an average speed of 542,000 hectares per year, resulting in a natural forest cover of only 29 percent in 2008, compared to 58 percent in 1985, and hence a strong increase in co 2 emissions (wwf indonesia, 2010, p. 15). beside the conversion of forests into large-scale agro-industrial development projects, resource extraction (such as coal and gas exploration and exploitation) has been and still is a key development strategy (jiwan, 2013, p. 73). as the coordinating ministry for economic affairs of the republic of indonesia (2011) states, the sumatra economic corridor is expected to become ‘the center for production and processing of natural resources as the nation’s energy reserves’. sumatra’s strategic location can propel it to become ‘the front line of the national economy into the european, african, south asian, east asian, and australian markets’. (p. 51) with this economic policy and the integration of the region into globalized markets, fundamental land use related transition processes still take place and land prices substantially increase (potter, 2001, p. 313). combined with socio-economic change and high population growth rates (also due to in-migration from other parts of the indonesian archipelago), these processes have contributed to socially and spatially fragmented land use patterns, consisting of patches of primary forest, jungle rubber, as well as rubber and oil palm plantations. due to new actors entering the politico-economic stage, transformation takes place leading to new forms of re-territorialization (tomlinson, 1999, pp. 148–149). access to land becomes more and more contested as various actors with different economic intentions and socio-cultural backgrounds are getting involved in land claims. in this regard, jambi province, central sumatra, stands as an example for a highly dynamic conflict arena1 where borders between the local and the global become indistinct. conflicts over land and other natural resources are becoming worse. in 2010, zazali (2012, p. 12) counted approximately 100 land use and forestry conflicts of varying intensity in the province. conflicts are escalating in intensity because of the growing range of parties involved, like communities, ngos, corporations, and governmental institutions (zazali, 2012, p. 12). the present article has two objectives: set against the background of the wider conflict arena of bungku village, the paper will first describe and analyze land conflicts between a group of indigenous people, the batin sembilan,2 and the interna1 drawing on the understanding of peluso and watts (2001) “the environment is an arena of contested entitlements, a theater in which conflicts or claims over property, assets, labour, and the politics of recognition play themselves out” (p. 25). this approach thus highlights “the panoply of differentiated actors … and the ways in which they operate in historically and culturally constituted fields of power” (p. 25). 2 the batin sembilan originate from nine founding brothers who settled along nine rivers in the 77contested land: an analysis of multi-layered conflicts in jambi province, sumatra, indonesia tional oil palm company pt asiatic persada. particular attention is given to the path dependency of present land conflicts and thus the changes in land tenure regulations over time will be described in detail. following the argument of peluso and lund (2011), the paper will secondly show that within this highly dynamic conflict arena of bungku village “new frontiers of land control are being actively created” (p. 668). the advancement of the conventional frontier to a post-frontier concept will be intertwined with the “theory of access” (ribot & peluso, 2003). the theoretical concept will thus be applied to the empirical insights by showing that access to land is constantly contested, leading to an ostensible state of equilibrium in post-frontier areas. the concept of access in a post-frontier conflict arena the research interest in frontiers can be traced back to 1893 when frederick jackson turner described the violent land seizure in north america in his book the significance of the frontier in american history (turner, 1893). geiger (2008) applied the term frontier to today’s state-territorialization projects and defines frontier as “an area remote from political centers, which holds strategic significance or economic potentials for human exploitation, and is contested by social formations of unequal power” (p. 94). according to fold and hirsch (2009), “the frontier is thus in part a metaphor for national development in its material and ideological senses, as well as in terms of spatial expansion and delimitation” (p. 95). however, frontiers are specifically localized spaces in which access to resources and control over territories, people, and cultural dominance are under contestation (korf & schetter, 2012, p. 166). according to sato (2000, pp. 161–165), a frontier can therefore be conceptualized as a kind of in-between space, a space of spatial and temporal transitions, with “lands in between” and “people in between”. the dissolution of the conventional frontier as a zone of transition between forests and agricultural land into a “space of multifaceted development trajectories” (fold & hirsch, 2009, p. 95) is at the heart of today’s postfrontier debate (peluso & lund, 2011; rindfuss et al., 2007). fold and hirsch (2009, p. 95) analyze post-frontiers as connected spaces as they are embedded in supra-local influences and processes of globalization and reflect the reshaping of frontier society, environment, and economy as well as the continuing significance of these areas in national development schemes. the transformation of an area, from a leading edge associated with people moving into a geographical area, to a more diverse post-frontier is in most cases not just a change in land-cover but also in the way of life (rindfuss et al., 2007, p. 740). once the “external frontier” is closed, “internal frontiers” emerge (rindfuss et al., 2007, p. 740) which can be both symbolic and real. according to peluso and lund (2011), these “new frontiers of land control are being actively created, through struggles involving varied actors, contexts, and dynamics” (p. 668). as “‘new’ frontiers challenge, transform, or extinguish previous ones” (peluso & lund, 2011, p. 669), the landscape is turned into a dynamic post-frontier area which can be described as an “amalgam of spaces of newly emerging social and batanghari region, jambi province (colchester, anderson, firdaus, hasibuan, & chao, 2011, p. 9). first introduced by the dutch, the term suku anak dalam (‘ethnic group of the children of the interior’) is nowadays used by the local government to classify ethnic groups according to certain cultural characteristics (hauser-schäublin & steinebach, 2014, p. 23). for further information, see steinebach (2013, pp. 65–73). 78 barbara beckert, christoph dittrich, & soeryo adiwibowo  aseas 7(1) environmental relations” (fold & hirsch, 2009, p. 96). this means that the development of the classical frontier is challenged by different actors gaining, maintaining, or losing access to land. this paper therefore draws on the “theory of access” by ribot and peluso (2003), who define access as the “ability to benefit from things” (p. 153). by focusing on ability rather than rights, the authors distinguish access from property and thereby draw attention to a wider range of social relationships that can enable or constrain people to benefit from resources (ribot & peluso, 2003, p. 154). over time and scale, people and institutions are positioned differently in relation to access to land: “different political-economic circumstances change the terms of access and may therefore change the specific individuals or groups most able to benefit from a set of resources” (ribot & peluso, 2003, p. 158). in short, access to land is affected by the “bundle of powers” different people hold and can draw on (ribot & peluso, 2003, p. 154). as they point out, it is important to concurrently examine the larger contexts of such political economic relations. policies, markets, technologies, knowledge, and even identities, constitute and are constituted by these broader social forces. access analysis can be focused on the policy environments that enable and disable different actors to gain, maintain, or control resource access or the micro-dynamics of who benefits from resources and how. (peluso & ribot, 2003, p. 173) multi-layered conflicts in the contested arena of bungku village introducing the ‘time bombs’ of bungku village jambi province with a present population of about 3.2 million people (badan pusat statistik [bps] provinsi jambi, 2012, p. 129) is located on the east coast of central sumatra. there are three distinct regions: a marshy coastal peat area in the east, a more undulated area with mainly poor soil in the center, and the barisan mountain range in the west. empirical research was carried out in the central part of the province, in batanghari, and in sarolangun regency. these two regencies are amongst the least populated in jambi province.3 the authors collected data in 2012 and 2013 in consecutive field visits with a total duration of ten months. following a qualitative research approach, multifaceted research methods were applied, including participant observation, semi-structured household interviews, focus group discussions with key informants, participatory rural appraisal (pra) tools as well as expert interviews. field research was conducted in seven villages in the two respective regencies as well as in jambi city. even though this paper mainly presents data obtained through secondary material analysis, the complexity of the local conflict arena could not have been revealed without intensive fieldwork. this paper thus presents a cutout of the dataset by analyzing the conflict arena of bungku village, batanghari regency. bungku is of particular interest because the village illustrates the variety of land use conflicts and actor groups involved (see figure 1). as one local farmer stated, 3 population densities in sarolangun as well as in batanghari regency comprise 42 persons per square kilometer and 44 persons per square kilometer, respectively (bps provinsi jambi, 2012, p. 129). 79contested land: an analysis of multi-layered conflicts in jambi province, sumatra, indonesia [i]n bungku village four ‘time bombs’ already exploded, one after the other. outsiders regard bungku as a place of diamonds and pearls … but these people do not know that bungku actually is a place of 1001 problems. one bomb after the other explodes here and there … this is not the land of 1001 nights, it is the land of 1001 problems. (local farmer, personal communication, 21 march 2013, bungku village, own translation) this quote illustrates the severity of land conflicts on the village level as each ‘time bomb’ represents one major land conflict. located 85 kilometers southwest from the provincial capital of jambi city (see figure 1), bungku village was founded in the 1970s as a resettlement project for the indigenous semi-permanent batin sembilan group. in 2011, the village population comprised 2,864 households and a total population of 10,215 people (bps kabupaten batanghari, 2012, p. 18). bungku consists of five hamlets (dusun) and 32 neighborhoods (rukun tetangga, rt) (see picture 1). the inhabitants are mainly peasant farmers cultivating rubber and oil palms as cash crops in addition to vegetables for their own consumption. households hold about five hectares of land on average; major non-agrarian sources of income are from small businesses such as grocery shops, food stalls, and repair shops. picture 1: main road of bungku village. taken by barbara beckert, 20 march 2013, bungku village. until the 1980s, shifting cultivation, horticulture, the collection of non-timber forest products, and the cultivation of fruit trees were important livelihood sources, mainly for the indigenous batin sembilan population. with the establishment of 80 barbara beckert, christoph dittrich, & soeryo adiwibowo  aseas 7(1) road connections and governmental resettlement schemes, the batin sembilan increasingly became sedentary and involved in growing and tapping rubber (colchester et al., 2011, p. 9). presently, the batin sembilan are outnumbered by migrants from java and other parts of sumatra.4 the total administrative village territory covers 77,000 hectares and most of this area is comprised of large concession areas: the ecosystem restoration concession of pt reki (restorasi ekosistem indonesia), the timber plantation of pt wanakasita nusantara/pt agronusa alam sejahtera, and the pt asiatic persada oil palm plantation. aside from the concession areas, 15,830 hectares of bungku village are classified as forest reserve5 called taman hutan raya (thr) sultan thaha syaifuddin (see figure 1). pt reki is located in the southern part of bungku and is known as harapan6 rainforest. it covers an area of more than 100,000 hectares and stretches from jambi province to the neighboring province of south sumatra. until 2007, the area was legally logged by pt asialog and pt inhutani. in 2008 and 2010, an ecosystem restoration license (izin usaha pemanfaatan hasil hutan kaya, iuphhk) was given to the company pt reki for the southern and northern concession part. being implemented as the first ecosystem restoration license in indonesia, the harapan rainforest concession was acquired through a joint initiative of national and international ngos (such as burung indonesia, royal society for the protection of birds, and birdlife international) and is funded by various donors, including the danish international development agency (danida), the german federal ministry for the environment, nature conservation, and nuclear safety (bmu), singapore airlines, and others. the project serves as a pilot project for sustainable climate and forest conservation policy and aims to conserve and restore one of the few remaining tracts of lowland rainforest in indonesia while at the same time promoting redd7 (hein, 2013, p. 15; hein & faust, 2014, p. 21). the batin sembilan do not have land tenure security as they do not hold title deeds issued by the national land agency (badan pertanahan nasional, bpn), but instead draw on customary land rights (hak ulayat or tanah adat).8 pt reki negotiated conservation agreements with the batin sembilan population, allowing them to use a parcel of land within the harapan rainforest concession and to collect non-timber forest products (hein & faust, 2014, p. 23). however, an informal land trade started between customary leaders and migrants, leading to overlapping 4 under the transmigration program, around 45,000 people were moved to the area, mainly from java (steinebach, 2013, p. 65), and today around 90 percent of the inhabitants are migrants (hauser-schäublin & steinebach, 2014, p. 3). for further information on the indonesian transmigration program, see hardjono (1977, pp. 16–35) and fearnside (1997, pp. 553–555). 5 a forest reserve, or taman hutan raya, is defined as a nature conservation area in which the collection of plants and animals is only allowed under certain circumstances and has to contribute to research, science, educational purposes or has to support culture or tourism (undang undang no. 5/1990). 6 harapan means ‘hope’ in bahasa indonesia. 7 reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, redd, is a united nations backed scheme aiming to reduce land use-based green house gas emissions. 8 for a more detailed perspective on adat law, refer to benda-beckmann & benda-beckmann (2011). 81contested land: an analysis of multi-layered conflicts in jambi province, sumatra, indonesia figure 1: map of bungku village indicating major concession and conservation areas land claims between pt reki, the batin sembilan, and migrant communities. this resulted in massive land conflicts and illustrates the first ‘time bomb’ described in the quotation above. the second ‘time bomb’ refers to the concession area of the companies pt wanakasita nusantara and pt agronusa alam sejahtera, which spread across 28,000 hectares, where industrial timber (acacia and eucalyptus) for the pulp and paper industry is produced in large plantations. due to management problems, sections of the concession remained undeveloped; villagers claimed that land, built houses, and cultivated rubber and oil palms. today, these ‘irregular settlers’ ask to change the legal status of the concession from an industrial timber plantation (hutan tanaman industri, hti) to a ‘peoples’ plantation’ (hutan tanaman rakyat, htr). under this community timber plantation program, launched in 2006, state forestland can be " "" "" " " "" "" " " "" " " " "" " """ " "" " " " " "" "" " " "" " " " "" " """ " "" " "" " "" "" " " "" "" " " " " " "" "" " " " " " "" "" " """ " "" " "" "" " "" " " "" "" " " "" " "" " " " " "" " " " "" " """ " "" "" " " "" " " " " " " " "" " "" " "" " " " "" " """ "" " pt. asiatic persada pt. wanakasita thr. sulthan thaha syaifuddin harapan rainforest concession (pt. reki) bungku ! jambi city jambi province concession / conservation harapan rainforest concession (pt. reki) pt. asiatic persada pt. wanakasita thr. sulthan thaha syaifuddin provincial boundary district boundary bungku boundary road minor road " "" village centre " "" centre of bungku " "" hamlet of bungku source: gadm, peta rupa bumi indonesia (bakosurtanal), setara, own survey cartography: niklas rehkopp institute of geography, university of goettingen, germany ¯ 0 10 205 km south sumatra south sumatra south sumatra bengkulu west sumatra riau 82 barbara beckert, christoph dittrich, & soeryo adiwibowo  aseas 7(1) allocated to local communities for a period of up to 100 years (obidzinski & dermawan, 2010, p. 339; van noordwijk et al., 2007, p. 5). the third ‘time bomb’ is referred to as the forest conservation area thr sulthan thaha syaifuddin located in the northern part of bungku (see figure 1). it covers 15,830 hectares and was established in the 1990s (steinebach, 2014, p. 18).9 this area, administered under the authority of the ministry of forestry, is heavily contested, as the official law enforcement is weak and undermined by illegal logging of smallholders, land sales, settlement activities, and land conversion into oil palm and rubber plantations. the fourth ‘time bomb’ is represented by the longest on-going land conflict in bungku: the conflict between the batin sembilan and the palm oil company pt asiatic persada. in the 1970s, the company held an extensive logging concession in the area. in 1986, the company pt bdu received the right to cultivation (hak guna usaha, hgu) by the bpn to develop 20,000 hectares of plantation within this logging concession (colchester et al., 2011, p. 5). having started as a cocoa plantation, oil palms were not planted until the 1990s. in 1992, the company was named pt asiatic persada and in the following years, ownership changed several times until the company was sold to wilmar international in 2006 (colchester et al., 2011, p. 5). in 2013, the company was again sold to two companies: to the indonesian-based company pt agro mandiri semesta and the british virgin islands-based company prima fortune international ltd. (parker, 2013). as the plantation expanded into customary land of the semi-permanent batin sembilan, disputes and already existing conflicts intensified. since 2008, small groups of batin sembilan have occupied land inside the pt asiatic persada plantation, claiming it as their customary and ancestral land. the parties could neither agree on financial compensation payments nor on any compensating land area, hence these batin sembilan groups have to earn their living by collecting loose palm fruits on pt asiatic persada’s plantation. in 2011, the land conflict escalated into violence when the police destroyed huts and houses erected by the batin sembilan within the plantation area of pt asiatic persada (colchester et al., 2011, p. 46). in the meantime, the company started to dig a trench, five meters deep and wide, in order to protect the plantation from the intrusion of local people and to prevent the theft of palm fruits (see picture 2). the unresolved conflict escalated again in late 2013 when the police destroyed 150 huts and houses of the batin sembilan on behalf of pt asiatic persada (parker, 2013). in march 2014, a further level of escalation was reached when one villager was killed and five others injured during a clash with security forces of pt asiatic persada (butler, 2014). land conflicts and path dependency the analysis shows a strong path dependency of land conflicts in bungku village. forest-dependent communities, such as the malay-speaking batin sembilan (colchester et al., 2011, p. 9), have played an important role in regional trade and barter activities throughout the past centuries. hence, forest products have always been 9 however, during the dutch colonial power, it was already designated as protected forest (boshwezen) because of its rich diversity of ironwood species, locally known as kayu bulian (eusideroxylon zwageri) (steinebach, 2014, p. 11). 83contested land: an analysis of multi-layered conflicts in jambi province, sumatra, indonesia picture 2: a new frontier is set; trench designating the border of the oil palm plantation pt asiatic persada. taken by barbara beckert, 26 september 2013, bungku village. important in sustaining livelihoods, traded for sandal wood, rattan, resins, natural dyes, and also gold. in the nineteenth century, these forest products were traded as far as india, the arab world, and china (locher-scholten, 2003, p. 276). until the present day, the batin sembilan follow the concept of collective customary land (wilayah adat).10 historically, this land use system was combined with frequent movements on this land for economic and cultural reasons (colchester et al., 2011, p. 9). in the early twentieth century, jambi province was characterized by dynamic land use transformation – a result of the expansion of the dutch colonial power on the indonesian archipelago accompanied by the introduction of plantation agriculture. traditional social and land use systems rapidly changed with the adoption of para rubber, which was planted extensively by local smallholders. international demand for rubber increased due to the fast-growing automobile industry and high rubber prices. rubber cultivation boomed from 1910 onwards with a heyday in the 1920s (feintrenie & levang, 2009, p. 326; locher-scholten, 2003, pp. 276–277). oil palms were first introduced by the dutch colonialists in 1848 and large-scale plantations 10 since the dutch colonization, several legal orders coexisted, leading to ambiguities and competition between codified state laws and customary laws (hukum adat) (steinebach, 2013, p. 68). there is no consistent understanding or well-defined legal process for how customary land claims should be justified (barr et al., 2006, p. 110). in general, the borders of customary territories run along rivers, and the collectively owned land is regularly redistributed among community members under the supervision of adat leaders. land rights are inherited bilaterally and access to customary land is granted by customary authorities such as adat leaders (hauser-schäublin & steinebach, 2014, p. 13). 84 barbara beckert, christoph dittrich, & soeryo adiwibowo  aseas 7(1) were developed in sumatra from 1911 onwards (feintrenie & levang, 2009, p. 331; jiwan, 2013, p. 51). these plantations were mainly operated by private dutch companies, who could afford the large financial and workforce inputs required to establish these operations (jiwan, 2013, p. 51). following indonesian independence in 1945, foreign companies were nationalized (van gelder, 2004, p. 18). land use schemes in jambi province changed massively in the following decades, especially under suharto’s new order regime, with the promotion of logging and the completion of the trans-sumatra highway (martini et al., 2010, p. 3). during the 1970s, virtually the entire forested area of jambi was allocated as forestry concessions for the extraction of timber (colchester et al., 2011, p. 12). at the peak of the logging boom in the 1980s, regional policy shifted towards the expansion of plantations with the implementation of large transmigration schemes. bordering bungku village, the state-owned company pt perkebunan nusantra vi developed a nucleus estate together with smallholdings for javanese transmigrants with a total size of 30,000 hectares (colchester et al., 2011, p. 12; jiwan, 2013, p. 52). suharto gave palm oil concessions to family members, political elites, and domestic conglomerates that had often been involved in the logging industry (jiwan, 2013, p. 52; yasmi, guernier, & colfer, 2009, p. 99). since the establishment of the road connections in the 1980s, the batin sembilan have increasingly settled and intensified growing and tapping rubber, but this has not changed their strong bonds to collective customary lands. they regard burial sites as evidence for their traditional land claims. by the 1980s, access to land had been restricted for local communities and indigenous groups. with the basic forestry law, the ministry of forestry classified 143 million hectares of the indonesian territory as forest estate (kawasan hutan) (anderson, 2013, p. 246; barr et al., 2006, p. 23), completely ignoring indigenous peoples’ rights in these territories. in the “suharto palm oil oligarchy” (aditjondro, 2001), political actors were at the same time the main business players. the alignment of strong economic and political interests between the indonesian palm oil business, the government, and sino-indonesian business people enabled the deprivation of indigenous rights by the oligarchy. during the asian financial crisis in the late 1990s, the letter of intent with the international monetary fund liberalized the plantation sector and extensive investments of foreign companies followed. this market liberalization very much changed the indonesian palm oil sector. currently, private companies from malaysia, singapore, and the usa control about 60 percent of the plantation sector. however, today the same conglomerates and consolidated companies comprise the indonesian palm oil sector, so that it is referred to as the “post-suharto palm oil oligarchy” (pichler & pye, 2012, p. 146). the gradual process of a top-down development approach, which mainly benefitted jakarta’s elites, was superseded by a phase of political upheaval, leading to an atmosphere of institutional change. after the collapse of the suharto regime, the period between 1999 and 2002 was characterized by rapid and far-reaching decentralization with a transfer of administrative and regulatory authority from the national government to the provincial, district, and municipal governments (barr et al., 2006, p. 1). first and foremost, the effects of decentralization could be felt in the forestry sector. in 1999, with the introduction of indonesia’s regional autonomy law, the central government transferred considerable authority to district governments. with the imple85contested land: an analysis of multi-layered conflicts in jambi province, sumatra, indonesia mentation of a series of forestry sector reforms in which district governments and local communities were adjudged with a greater role in forest management, “district officials suddenly found that it was politically feasible to assert far-reaching administrative authority over forest resources located within their jurisdictions, and many moved aggressively to do so” (barr et al., 2006, p. 2). many large-scale concessions were granted at that time, new fees were imposed by district officials, and new district development strategies were formulated, most of them based on the exploitation of forest resources and often overlapping with concessions issued by the national government or with national parks and conservation areas. the rights of local communities and indigenous people were limited or extinguished (jiwan, 2013, p. 55).11 however, the political climate changed to the effect that forest-dependent communities were able to (re)assert claims over land and forest resources that they were displaced from during the new order period: collectively, these actions reflected a widespread feeling that after 32 years of centralized control in the forestry sector, the time had now come for district and local actors to get their rightful share of the benefits associated with forest resources. (barr et al., 2006, p. 2) even though the indonesian constitution recognizes the rights of indigenous peoples to their lands, economies, and systems of law, the indonesian government has ignored these sections of the constitution and interprets indonesia’s founding law as granting the right to manage all natural resources to the benefit of the nation (anderson, 2013, p. 246). since 2002, the ministry of forestry rescinded much of the authority over forest administration that was granted earlier to district authorities and a process of recentralization took place (barr et al., 2006, p. 2; djogo & syaf, 2004, p. 14). the struggle over indonesia’s rapidly diminishing primary forest resources is rooted in a long history of contradictory laws and regulations and an accompanying struggle of power between different actor groups. as the land claims of local communities are weaker in forest areas, because the government claims all forest as state lands, it is often easier for companies to obtain large areas for conversion to oil palm plantations with minimal compensation, compared to establishing plantations in agricultural landscapes. (anderson, 2013, p. 247) in may 2013, the rights of customary communities were recognized and restored with a court ruling by the constitutional court of the republic of indonesia, declaring that customary forests (hutan adat) are no longer part of state-owned forests (hutan negara), which “fundamentally validates customary communities’ position in their scattered struggle over land, resources and territory” (rachman, 2013, p. 1). first statements revealed the court decision’s potential to empower communities and their land claims. whether or not they will be heard by the ministry of forestry remains unanswered. 11 this is embodied in the forestry law 41/1999 and the plantation act 18/2004 (jiwan, 2013, p. 55). 86 barbara beckert, christoph dittrich, & soeryo adiwibowo  aseas 7(1) a violent conflict between the batin sembilan and pt asiatic persada all these continuing political and societal dynamics have concrete impacts on bungku’s conflict arena and the pt asiatic persada conflict. the strong bonds of the batin sembilan population to their customary lands were never acknowledged by either of the concession companies (colchester et al., 2011, pp. 5, 7). pt asiatic persada was developed as a nucleus estate palm oil concession in the 1990s without providing smallholdings for local communities.12 this stands in stark contrast with the pt perkebunan nusantara vi transmigration project, which provided smallholdings, however, mainly for javanese transmigrants. the batin sembilan population lost much of their customary land to the transmigration project in the eastern part of the pt asiatic persada concession and later to the harapan rainforest conservation concession (pt reki) in the southern part of bungku (see figure 1). access to land is thus restricted and traditional livelihood sources are diminished. the social structure of bungku village massively changed during the last two decades due to in-migration from different parts of the indonesian archipelago (mainly from java and northern sumatra). marriages between batin sembilan and people of javanese or sundanese origin increasingly take place, leading to changes in the batin sembilan’s concept of indigeneity. their marriage patterns easily allow for the integration of ‘foreigners’ and promote anything but boundedness and exclusivity (steinebach, 2013, p. 78). therefore, all groups are claiming the same land as their ancestral land. the pt asiatic persada conflict has never been solved and is rooted in a long history of inconsistencies, misunderstandings, and frictions related to the legal size of the right to cultivation (hgu) that was issued differently by different government institutions. these overlapping land claims are rooted in asymmetric webs of power creating new frontiers of land control. this situation was further aggravated by the fact that in 1999, the batanghari regency was divided into two administrative units (colchester et al., 2011, p. 12), which made it even harder to address problems related to access to land. ongoing in-migration and population growth further increased pressure on land resources and contributed to exacerbating land conflicts. the two hectares of land, once given by the government to transmigrants as smallholding, are no longer sufficient to sustain their livelihoods due to population growth and family reunions. the concept of scale13 (brenner, 2008; gibson, ostrom, & ahn, 2000) can be used to analyze the spatial and temporal dimensions of conflicts related to land resources in jambi province. due to the opening up of the indonesian economy towards international markets, multinationals – backed by state authorities – increasingly enforce their interests and land claims against local communities. the interests of these multinational companies are challenged by the growing debate over human rights, 12 a forest inventory in 1987 showed that around 2,000 families farming 4,000 hectares with shifting cultivation lived inside the pt asiatic persada concession (colchester et al., 2011, p. 11). 13 the concept of scale refers to the political significance of territorial reorganization. scales are interpreted as socially produced facilitating power asymmetries, social polarization, and spatial disparities. according to gibson et al. (2000), scale is defined as “the spatial, temporal, quantitative, or analytical dimensions used to measure and study any phenomenon” (p. 218). 87contested land: an analysis of multi-layered conflicts in jambi province, sumatra, indonesia conservation, and sustainability. the pt asiatic persada case demonstrates the major influence of international and national actors over land resources, and how local actors are able to link their interests with global discourses and arenas.14 from 2006 until 2013, pt asiatic persada belonged to asia’s leading agribusiness group, wilmar international, with headquarters in singapore. wilmar international is a prominent member of the roundtable on sustainable palm oil (rspo). as it is financed by the international finance corporation (ifc), several complaints by a consortium of ngos were submitted to the ifc’s compliance advisory ombudsman (cao) for not following rspo standards. since then, the conflict has been mediated by a joint team including local and international ngos and the provincial government of jambi (chao, 2013, p. 198). in early 2013, however, wilmar international sold pt asiatic persada to a non-ifc and non-rspo member, pt agro mandiri semesta and prima fortune international ltd. by enforcing their company interests they circumvent compliance with rspo rules.15 the recent eviction of 150 batin sembilan households in december 2013 does not align with a rapid conflict resolution by the new shareholders. up to now, futile attempts of conflict resolution can be seen in the pt asiatic persada case. the conflict even escalated again in march 2014 when there was a clash between villagers of bungku and pt asiatic persadas’ security forces. the pt asiatic persada case shows how the action of differently positioned local, national, and international actors are connected to various global discourses. on the one side, the batin sembilan are fighting for access to land by following an indigenous rights discourse, and relating it to the international debate on the effectiveness of the rspo. by taking up this indigeneity discourse, the batin sembilan are using scalar strategies in order to change existing power relations. connecting it to the landless peasant movement, the batin sembilan are using the concept of indigeneity in order to reassert access to land. interview partners reported on various ngos varying in outreach capacity in the area of bungku village, actively supporting the batin sembilan to claim land. this mix of actors in everyday negotiation processes further changes access to land and thus contributes to the creation of new frontiers. on the other side, wilmar international is not willing to solve a decade of conflict and is trying to evade responsibility by selling the investment (colchester, cited in parker, 2013). within the conflict arena of bungku, other actors and discourses supervene, such as the conservation and redd schemes, which stand vis-à-vis a strong peasant movement for landless farmers in the pt reki area (hein & faust, 2014, p. 23). conclusion the conflict arena of bungku village has illustrated that access to land is subject to contestations and struggles resulting from concurring but ambivalent institutional regimes and power asymmetries. the case study shows how the batin sembilan en14 this also applies to other indonesian provinces; see, for example, adiwibowo’s (2005) study on central sulawesi. 15 this is contradicted by a recently published “no deforestation, no peat, no exploitation policy” of wilmar international, in which the company states to respect the universal declaration of human rights as well as to give or withhold ‘free, prior, and informed consent’ (fpic) (wilmar international limited, 2013, p. 1). 88 barbara beckert, christoph dittrich, & soeryo adiwibowo  aseas 7(1) gage with discourses at different scales such as indigeneity, rspo, conservation, and peasant movements (hein & faust, 2014, p. 21; steinebach, 2013, pp. 64, 79). the batin sembilan use indigeneity to enhance agency and empowerment,16 allowing for a transformation from marginalized victims to empowered actors in their struggle for land (steinebach, 2013, p. 63). this is well-exemplified by the pt asiatic persada conflict, where indigenous resistance against a multinational player takes place. the four ‘time bombs’ analyzed against their historical trajectories, thus, translate into two main frontiers of land control. the conflict between local actors and pt wanakasita nusantara/pt agronusa alam sejahtera and pt asiatic persada exemplifies how law enforcement is applied to private actors and shows the varying levels of success by local indigenous groups in gaining informal access to land. in the concession area of pt wanakasita nusantara/pt agronusa alam sejahtera, law enforcement is significantly weaker compared to the pt asiatic persada concession and, consequently, access to land is slightly easier there for local actors. in the pt asiatic persada concession, law enforcement is guaranteed with the help of mobile police brigades, diminishing the access to land. the pt reki and thr sultan thaha syaifuddin case stand for conflicts related to conservational efforts of governmental and non-governmental organizations and the attempt of indigenous groups and local farmers to regain selfdetermination in regard to accessing local natural resources. to sum up, in all four land conflicts, “the moment’s ‘common sense’” (peluso & lund, 2011) is challenged by different actors, trying to enclose, exclude or territorialize it (peluso & lund, 2011, p. 669). this means that different actors perceive their understanding of the situation as the only truth, leading to the fact that multiple contested truths exist in parallel. these newly emerging social and environmental relations foster and accelerate a transformation process in which access to land is at the heart of today’s land contestations. these contestations can only be uncovered by dismantling the underlying power trajectories, leading to an ostensible state of equilibrium in this post-frontier area.  references aditjondro, g. j. 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(2013). “today we occupy the plantation tomorrow jakarta”: indigeneity, land and oil palm plantations in jambi. in b. hauser-schäublin (ed.), adat and indigeneity in indonesia. culture and entitlements between heteronomy and self-ascription (göttingen studies in cultural property, vol. 7, pp. 63–80). göttingen, germany: universitätsverlag göttingen. tomlinson, j. (1999). globalization and culture. chicago, il: university of chicago press. turner, f. j. (1893). the significance of the frontier in american history. essay first read at the ninth annual meeting of the american historical association, chicago, 11–13 july 1893. van gelder, j. w. (2004). greasy palms. european buyers of indonesian palm oil. castrico, netherlands: friends of the earth & profundo. retrieved from www.foe.co.uk/sites/.../greasy_palms_buyers.pdf van noordwijk, m., suyanto, s., budidarsono, s., sakuntaladewi, n., roshetko, j. m., tata h. m., galudra, g., & fay, c. (2007). is hutan tanaman rakyat a new paradigm in community based tree planting in indonesia? international centre for research in agroforestry southeast asia, working paper no. 45. wilmar international limited. (2013). news release. wilmar international announces policy to protect forests and communities. no deforestation, no peat, no exploitation policy to meet rising market demand for traceable, responsibly produced vegetable oil. retrieved from http://www.wilmar-international.com wwf indonesia. (2010). sumatra’s forest, their wildlife and the climate. windows in time: 1985, 1990, 2000 and 2009. a quantitative assessment of some of sumatra’s natural resources submitted as technical report by invitation to the national forestry council (dkn) and to the national development planning agency (bappenas) of indonesia. jakarta, indonesia. yasmi, y., guernier, j., & colfer, c. j. p. (2009). positive and negative aspects of forestry conflict: lessons from a decentralized forest management in indonesia. international forestry review, 11(1), 98–110. 91contested land: an analysis of multi-layered conflicts in jambi province, sumatra, indonesia zazali, a. (2012). the importance of mainstreaming alternative dispute resolution (adr) in tenurial conflict resolution in indonesia. a summary of adr studies in riau, west sumatra, jambi and south sumatra, indonesia. forest peoples programme e-newsletter february 2012. retrieved from http://www.forestpeoples.org/sites/fpp/files/publication/2012/02/fpp-e-newsletter-february-2012-colour-english.pdf about the authors barbara beckert is a research associate at the department of human geography at the university of göttingen, germany. her research within the framework of the collaborative research center (crc) 990 “ecological and socioeconomic functions of tropical lowland rainforest transformation systems”, funded by the german research foundation (dfg), focuses on land use conflicts in jambi province. further research interests are livelihoods and conservation in a rural context. ► contact: barbara.beckert@geo.uni-goettingen.de christoph dittrich is head of the department of human geography at the university of göttingen, germany, and co-leader of a research project on land use transformation within the framework of crc 990. his main areas of research are human-environmental conflicts in a globalized context, sustainable resource management in megacities as well as geographical food systems. ► contact: christoph.dittrich@geo.uni-goettingen.de soeryo adiwibowo is chair of the department of communication & community development sciences, faculty of human ecology, bogor agricultural university, indonesia. his research focus is on national parks, conservation areas, and natural research management from a political ecology perspective. he is a collaborator within the framework of the crc 990. ► contact: adibowo3006@gmail.com book review: wintle, c. (2013). colonial collecting and display. encounters with material culture from the andaman and nicobar islands. new york, ny: berghahn books. isbn: 978-0-85745-941-1 (hbk.) isbn 978-0-85745942-8 (ebk.). i–xix + 244 pages. ► kóczán-vörös, v. (2014). book review: wintle, c. (2013). colonial collecting and display. encounters with material culture from the andaman and nicobar islands. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 7(1), 133-136. claire wintle’s first book colonial collecting and display approaches (post-) colonial theory from a new perspective, based on a focus on material culture: it seeks to ‘decolonize’ the written colonial discourse and adds new contexts to postcolonial critique by examining museum objects instead of textual sources. these commodities and personal belongings once used by indigenous peoples are studied as material marks on the world left by people who are excluded from the written modes of representations such as colonial archives or published documents (p. 3). the volume investigates the biography of a set of objects such as dishes, clothes, jewelry as well as zoomorphic and anthropomorphic figures made by the indigenous peoples of the andaman and nicobar islands in the era of british colonization between 1858 and 1949. it follows their way through personal collections to their final place in the brighton museum, now called the royal pavilion and museums, brighton & hove (rpmbh). as a senior lecturer in the history of art and design at the university of brighton, the author’s research focuses on museums, imperialism, and decolonization, with special attention to the material culture of india and its neighboring islands, the andaman and nicobar islands. after several field studies in the area and having taken on the curator role of the exhibition temple, man and tuson: collecting the andaman and nicobar islands in the brighton museum, the author gained sufficient first-hand experience and sources for her research. yet, claire wintle emphasizes that her book is not an ethnographic study of the culture and peoples of the andaman and nicobar islands, but is an object-centered – that is, not text-focused – research of the colonial project (p. 11). along with an emerging group of scholars – amongst others museologists and anthropologists such as nicholas thomas, chris gosden, and chantal knowles – the author emphasizes the importance of material culture in exploring the cultural, social, and economic processes of empire formation. the author raises one major question: what do a certain set of objects and its changing meaning reveal about imperial histories? throughout her analysis, wintle seeks to answer this question by investigating the factors that played a role in the biography of the collection displayed in rpmbh. using the example of a zoomorphic figure called hentakoi, the circumstances of production, use, and collection of the objects in the andaman and nicobar rezensionen  book reviews w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 14 .1 -1 0 134 viola kóczán-vörös  aseas 7(1) islands are examined. the author emphasizes the two-way nature of trade, arguing that although the attacks of british colonizers and indigenous hostility made encounters and product exchange difficult, the conflict softened with time. hence, cooperation between the two parties slowly developed, whereby the sale of andamanese objects to the colonizers can be considered as a creative and positive response to the new historical situation. a strong point the book makes is that even though it does not deny the negative elements of colonialism, it succeeds in highlighting the balance of colonial encounters. by questioning the existence of an “average collector” (p. 60), wintle makes a key argument in chapter 2, where three different sets of objects are examined, which later formed the whole collection of the brighton museum. by introducing the three collectors’ different personalities, their degrees of professional responsibility, the levels of access to indigenous life, their personal status and individual tastes, wintle points out how all these aspects influence the circumstances of collecting as well as the later career of the objects. wintle discusses the scientific collection of edward horace man, richard carnac temple’s collection for professional status, and the gendered approach in katharine sara tuson’s indigenous artifacts to show how the objects acquired different layers of meaning from the very beginning of their biographies. moving farther along this line, the next station of the collected objects is victorian and edwardian britain, as the personal possessions of the returned (ex)colonial elite or as their donations to the brighton museum. a thorough social and cultural analysis offers insights into the preformed conceptions with which the museum visitors might have approached the collection (chapter 3). this reception was formed by three major factors: by the pictorial depictions of this asian colony on the pages of the illustrated london news (iln), by the colonial and indian exhibition in 1886 where the nicobar and andaman islands were brought to the fore as a curiosity, and finally by arthur conan doyle’s popular sherlock holmes novella the sign of four (1890). in the latter, the villain is a savage and vicious native from the andaman islands, who commits the central murder of the plot. wintle analyzes in detail how the character of the native tonga encapsulates the image of exoticism as well as the colonial fear prevailing in victorian society. nevertheless, the native character of the doyle-novella may also be interpreted as the negative manifestation of a general colonial feeling, but not – as wintle suggests – as a concrete antipathy towards the andaman islands. it seems that she does not consider the possibility that doyle simply searched for ‘something exotic’ for his plot. owing to the illustrations of iln and the colonial exhibition, his attention turned to the andaman islands – but only to find a geographical place for his plot. wintle’s lack of information in this regard may be the consequence of her overprotection of this territory’s cultural heritage, signs of which can be occasionally perceived throughout the whole book. yet, irrespective of doyle’s intentions and writing methods, claire wintle is undoubtedly correct in her judgment that due to the sign of four, victorian society was faced with a negative image of the andaman islands, which influenced the reception of the brighton museum’s collection, too. in chapter 4, it is made clear that the author of colonial collecting and display certainly cannot – and does not want to – deny her museological vein: she examines 135review: colonial collecting and display various paradigms according to which the brighton museum approached, organized, and presented the collection to the audience. from the professional viewpoint of an insider, she gives a gripping overview of how evolutionary, geographical, later on aesthetic, and finally thematic approaches led to continuous reconsiderations and reorganizations of the exhibition. the scope of the book is limited to the year 1949; however, the final chapter studies potential contemporary postcolonial approaches to the display and interpretation of the objects. in sum, colonial collecting and display offers a fascinating overview of how material culture can serve as a mediator between peoples, cultures, and historical periods, and how attributed functions and meanings change and form people’s knowledge and ideas about imperial histories. claire wintle presents her analysis of the colonial discourse in a three-layered way: through the life of concrete objects (e.g., the hentakoi mentioned above), she offers insights into the colonial relations between great britain and the andaman and nicobar islands and into the whole colonial project. colonial collecting and display is a must read for anyone interested in the peoples and material culture of india as well as the nicobar and andaman islands. due to the detailed object descriptions and the museological approach, the book is particularly interesting for ethnographers and museum experts. owing to the illustrations and a clear and lucid writing style, it also constitutes a fascinating read for those who simply have an interest in learning about colonial encounters from a unique and original point of view. viola kóczán-vörös pázmány péter catholic university, hungary bus paintings in thailand: a post-modern urban art form in comparative perspective aseas 6(2) 243242 d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -6 .2 -2 aktuelle südostasienforschung / current research on south-east asia bus paintings in thailand: a post-modern urban art form in comparative perspective erik cohen1 citation cohen, e. (2013). bus paintings in thailand: a post-modern urban art form in comparative perspective. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 6(2), 242-263. studies of paintings on motorized vehicles are rare. existing studies indicate that such paintings play a role in national identity politics or serve as means of representation of an alternative national history. this article deals with the origins and execution of airbrush paintings on charter tour coaches in thailand, and with the sources and styles of the motifs represented on them. the paintings are produced in a hybridized process, involving artwork and computerization; they are thus a post-modern art form, which is not strictly classifi able into modernist categories of art, craft, or decoration. the sources, styles, and motifs of the paintings refl ect global infl uences: they are highly heterogeneous, deriving primarily from contemporary western or japanese popular cultures or from thai or chinese ‘traditional’ painting. the bus-owners’ motivations for the choice of motifs are primarily aesthetic and social rather than religious or political. thai bus paintings can thus be seen as a globalized, postmodern art form, with most of the motifs just being pleasing symbols, without external reference. keywords: airbrush painting; bus paintings; globalization; post-modern art; thai popular culture studien über malereien auf motorisierten fahrzeugen sind selten. vorhandene studien zeigen, dass solche malereien eine rolle in nationaler identitätspolitik spielen oder als mittel zur darstellung einer alternativen nationalen geschichte dienen. dieser artikel beschäftigt sich mit den ursprüngen und der realisierung von airbrush-malereien auf charter-bussen in thailand und mit den quellen und stilen der motive, die auf diesen dargestellt sind. die malereien werden in einem hybriden prozess entwickelt, der kunstwerk und computerisierung vereint, und können deshalb als postmoderne kunstform bezeichnet werden, die nicht klar modernen kategorien wie kunst, handwerk oder dekoration zuordenbar ist. die quellen, stile und motive der malereien spiegeln globale einfl üsse wider: sie sind äußerst heterogen und beziehen sich vor allem auf zeitgenössische westliche oder japanische populärkultur oder auf thailändische oder chinesische „traditionelle“ malerei. die beweggründe der buseigentümer für die wahl der motive sind eher ästhetische und soziale als religiöse oder politische. thailändische bus-malereien können deshalb als globalisierte, postmoderne kunstform gesehen werden, in der die meisten motive ansprechende symbole ohne externe bezüge darstellen. schlagworte: airbrush-malerei; bus-malereien; globalisierung; postmoderne kunst; thailändische populärkultur 1 erik cohen is the george s. wise professor of sociology (emeritus) at the hebrew university of jerusalem, where he taught between 1959 and 2000. he has conducted research in israel, peru, the pacific islands, and, since 1977, in thailand. contact: mserik@mscc.huji.ac.il aseas 6(2) 243242 introduction paintings on vehicles have been described as “moving art” (“truck art”, 2013) as well as a “vital form of contemporary urban folklore” (meñez, 1988, p. 38). the best-known examples of that art form are the colorful paintings covering pakistani trucks (“decorative truck”, 2011; sökefeld, 2008) and philippine jeepneys (meñez, 1988). but such paintings can also be found on buses in suriname (laughlin, 2009), in panama (szok, 2008), in some cities in india (chattopadhyay, 2009), and in thailand. in the past, paintings have also been common on argentina’s colectivos and on maltese buses, but the custom disappeared with the modernization of the bus fleets. in western europe and the united states, buses and trucks are also occasionally painted (“40 creative painted”, 2009; harris & harris, 1988), but such paintings serve predominantly as advertisements for particular products2, whereas in asia, latin america, and the caribbean they are not primarily meant as promotional devices. though an attraction for visitors, and amply illustrated on the internet, paintings on vehicles have aroused little interest among social scientists and art historians, except for a few studies of philippine jeepneys (güss & tuason, 2008; meñez, 1988) and pakistani trucks (elias, 2003; rich & khan, 1980; schmid, 2000; sökefeld, 2008). the paintings on thai buses, which have in recent years proliferated in a plethora of colorful shapes, have attracted the attention of journalists (biggs, 2013; le febre, 2010), but have not yet been systematically examined. in this article, i will deal with their emergence, execution, and the variety of their sources, styles, and motifs as a unique globalized, postmodern phenomenon, significantly different from the stylistically more homogeneous decorations on pakistani trucks and philippine jeepneys, as well as from the contemporary commercialized folk crafts of thailand (cohen, 2000). lizardo and skiles (2008) state that “a key feature of industrial and post-industrial societies consists of the formally organized production and market based dissemination of cultural goods that were previously produced and procured in more informal folk and community contexts” (p. 485). this led to a “rise of mass-produced ‘media cultures’ – at concurrently national and global scales – disseminated by new technologies of mass communication” (lizardo & skiles, 2008, p. 485). i show in this article that, ironically, these same mass media cultural products provided the styles and motifs on 2 see e.g. the paintings on german trucks on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxghko7fwwi erik cohen bus paintings in thailand: a post-modern urban art form in comparative perspective aseas 6(2) 245244 most of the paintings that are deployed on thai buses, in order to individualize those impersonal vehicles. the decorations serve to publicly display their individuality among the mass of unmarked vehicles on the road, and hence endow distinction on their owners. by having their buses decorated with figurative representations, the owners provided the incentive for the rise of a new, hybridized art form in thailand. literature review painted vehicles can be found in a number of countries. however, there are differences among them in the extent of variety of their painting styles, and in the nature and diversity of depicted motifs. one can hardly talk of a ‘style’ in the case of the vehicle paintings in western countries because these are a relatively rare and sporadic phenomenon, serving predominantly as advertisements. the paintings on philippine jeepneys, pakistani trucks, and the wilde bussen (lit. wild buses) in suriname’s capital paramaribo are produced in fairly uniform, locally developed styles, though within each style, motifs may vary widely. thus, pakistani trucks feature diverse figurative motifs, such as “screaming tigers, flower arrangements, mosques, roaring trains, barnyard roosters, jet aircraft, peacocks, buraq (the mythical human-headed horse that carried the prophet mohammad on his journey to jerusalem) figures, and panoramic views of kashmir” (rich & khan, 1980, p. 257). a more recent study adds to this list “movie heroes, portraits of women and landscapes”, and comments with regard to the latter that “with all these lakes, forests, mountains and small huts [they] resemble more an imaginary switzerland than any pakistani landscape” (sökefeld, 2008, p. 176). elias (2003) offers a classification of motifs on pakistani trucks, ranging from romanticized village landscapes, beautiful women, and elements from modern life (such as political figures) to talismanic and religious objects. pakistani trucks also exhibit koranic inscriptions on their fronts or sides (sökefeld, 2008, pp. 182, 185, 186). according to the website twistedsifter, there is a difference in signification between the front and back of the truck: “unlike the front of the truck, which largely features powerful religious material, the back is whimsical (often humorous) and predominantly has motifs from modern life” (“decorative truck”, 2011). aseas 6(2) 245244 sökefeld (2008, p. 177) distinguished three styles of pakistani truck paintings by focusing on the differences in the prominence and choice of figurative motifs. referring to famous cities, they are named pindi (short for rawalpindi), havelian, and peshawari style. the sides of trucks in the long-established pindi style “carry one row of figurative paintings” (sökefeld, 2008, p. 177). in contrast, “the havelian style never makes use of human portraits [while] peshawari style is almost minimalist. here, figurative paintings on the truck sides are reduced to small miniatures, framed by ornaments”; that style also “never makes use of images of humans” (sökefeld, 2008, p. 190). according to sökefeld, the “havelian and especially peshawari styles can be interpreted as a kind of islamization of truck art” (p. 190). he concludes that truck art with the ornamental minimalism of the peshawari style, on the one hand, and the increased lavishness of pindi style, including the popularity of portraits of unveiled women . . . on the other, can be considered as a site of the struggle between a new islamic orthodoxy and popular culture (sökefeld, 2008, p. 190). this argument puts the process of change in pakistani truck art squarely into the field of pakistani identity politics. in the past, philippine jeepneys also featured mainly “paintings of rural scenes – waterfalls, trees, flowers and birds” (meñez, 1988, p. 38). more recently, a comparative study of decorated jeepneys in manila and davao found that “manila jeepneys featured more decorations . . . concerned with religion, identity and western commercialism, while davao jeepneys featured more political and civic themes” (güss & tuason, 2008, p. 211). de sousa bastos (2008), commenting on that study, perceives the jeepney paintings as “a semiotic device which carries social suggestions and promotes personal actions and goals” (p. 237). paramaribo’s wilde bussen feature “a mobile pantheon of very different culture-heroes” (laughlin, 2010), ranging from pop culture icons, such as bollywood stars and hollywood starlets, to political figures, such as presidents george w. bush and barack obama, and even saddam hussein. laughlin (2010) sees “an alternative nation-story [to the hegemonic one], [rendering] alternative insights into how contemporary surinamese understand and imagine themselves” in the paramaribo wilde bussen paintings. as limited as they are, these studies raise some important comparative issues regarding the recent proliferation of bus paintings in thailand: has a distinct painting style (or distinguishable sub-styles) emerged in thailand? do the paintings have religious or erik cohen bus paintings in thailand: a post-modern urban art form in comparative perspective aseas 6(2) 247246 magical significance? do they relate to thai identity politics or express resistance to the hegemonic thai nation-story? or do the paintings only express the aesthetic preferences and individual aspirations of the owners of the buses? i relate to these questions in the conclusion. before turning to an analysis of the body of paintings on the buses, it is, however, necessary to find out about the painters and the procedures of the painting process. the painting process in the non-western world, the vehicles that get painted mostly belong to the older, relatively low stratum of the transport vehicle stock or to the informal sector of the transportation system. the manila jeepneys were initially us army jeeps, left over from world war ii, which were adapted for public transportation. in pakistan, in the past “the highways were almost exclusively plied by old bedford trucks produced under license in pakistan” (sökefeld, 2008, p. 177; see also rich & khan, 1980). though newer brands of trucks were added more recently, “the bedfords will continue to dominate the roads for years to come” (sökefeld, 2008, p. 177). the paramaribo wilde bussen are privately owned minibuses (laughlin, 2010). these vehicles are not considered ‘modern’ means of transport, which is also indicated by the fact that in argentina and malta, the painting of buses was discontinued with the modernization of their fleets. in thailand, three types of buses can be distinguished: buses of the national bus company plying formally regulated interurban lines, which are uniformly painted white and blue, without much additional decoration; buses plying the urban lines in bangkok, many of which carry conspicuous, colorful advertisements (but no paintings); and charter tour coaches, run by often small, privately owned companies. there are an estimated 5,000 such coaches in thailand (chinmaneevong, 2013), serving primarily the domestic tourism market. bigger charter tour companies have their coaches painted in uniform, mostly non-figurative designs. by the middle of the first decade of the new millennium, figurative paintings began to appear on buses owned by smaller charter tour operators. the novelty soon became a fashion: presently there are hundreds of often richly decorated tour buses plying the country’s roads. despite their ‘modern’ appearance, the majority of these buses are reassembled, renovated, and refitted old vehicles. similar to pakistan, where a “considerable craft aseas 6(2) 247246 economy has evolved around the trucks . . . which to a great extend involves recycling” (sökefeld, 2008, p. 176), in thailand, the refitting of old buses takes place in tens of mostly small workshops, but two big bus manufacturers also engage in the refitting business. most of the workshops are located in two geographical centers: in nakhon phathom province, about 60 kilometers west of bangkok, and in nakhon ratchasima province, about 260 kilometers northeast of the capital. many of the refitted buses are decorated by paintings, executed by specialist ‘airbrush painters’. i have visited several refitting enterprises in both areas and interviewed three managers as well as three airbrush artists regarding the emergence and development of bus paintings in thailand, the sources and choice of motifs, and the manner of execution of the paintings. there was considerable agreement among the respondents on the basic traits of these processes. the following account is based on those interviews. unlike in pakistan, where the team of workers assembling the trucks includes a “specialist who paints the images and other non-specialists who paint ornaments and other non-figurative parts of the decoration” (sökefeld, 2008, p. 177), the airbrush painters in thailand are predominantly freelancers, working for several workshops on demand; but some also possess their own, small refitting workshops. there are about 20 airbrush artists in thailand. some have an academic background in fine arts and all work with a team of three to five assistants. the execution of a bus painting is a relatively expensive affair. at present, prices for the decoration of a bus range from thb 35,000 to thb 100,000 (approximately usd 1,200 to usd 3,450), according to the size and complexity of the design. the process starts with a meeting between the airbrush artist and the owner of the vehicle. in some instances, the owner supplies the artist with a picture or sketch of the desired bus painting. in others, the artist shows the owner his ‘portfolio’ of drawings and photos to choose the designs for his or her bus. the owners’ motives to invest considerable sums in decorating their buses are difficult to determine. they seem to be driven by a mix of aesthetic, social, and business motives, but the choice is sometimes quite arbitrary: in one instance, for example, the choice was made by the young son of the owner who insisted that two animated cars from the film cars, released by disney in 2006, be depicted on his father’s refitted bus. informants report that the owners’ principal motives in choosing paintings for their buses are aesthetic. they want their buses to look nice or beautiful (suay) and compete erik cohen bus paintings in thailand: a post-modern urban art form in comparative perspective aseas 6(2) 249248 with one another regarding their attractiveness. but the informants also pointed out that charter tours’ clients prefer to rent a beautifully adorned bus; business considerations thus might accompany the purely aesthetic ones. the painters distinguish two basic painting techniques: ‘freehand’ and ‘stickers’. in the former, older technique, the painter would paint the design directly upon the bus (‘freehand’). in the latter, more recent one, the chosen painting is put on a computer, enlarged to the desired size, and cut by a plotter onto an adhesive stencil (‘sticker’). the painters either do this by themselves or employ a computer plotter operator to cut the stencils for them. the stencils are then applied to the surface of the bus and the painting is airbrushed onto the outline. the whole process takes about eight days. the use of stencils simplified and expedited the painting process but made for some repetition of motifs on several buses. however, the identically stenciled motifs may be colored differently, according to the taste of the airbrush artist. some charter tour companies have their coaches decorated with the same or similar paintings, which endow them with a shared identity. between late 2010 and early 2013, i have photographed figurative representations on almost 150 buses, which i encountered primarily in seaside resorts popular with thai tourists, at buddhist temples, at tourist attractions, and at gas stations. i made more than 300 photographs of whole bus sides or of individual figurative paintings. i have excluded non-figuratively decorated buses and those painted only with orchids or other flowers from the study. the following discussion is based on those materials. just as jeepneys or trucks have been used as the unit of analysis by other researchers, so buses (rather than individual paintings) were chosen as the unit of analysis in the present context. sources, styles, and motifs in contrast to the painted vehicles in pakistan or the philippines, there is no stylistic uniformity in the thai bus paintings. as a first step to deal with this heterogeneity, i made a distinction between comprehensively and discretely painted buses. like the pakistani trucks or philippine jeepneys, some older non-air conditioned buses were completely covered by paintings, often applied ‘freehand’ upon the suraseas 6(2) 249248 face of the bus. the comprehensive coverage is achieved by a complex combination of figurative representations and non-figurative ornaments, seamlessly mixing styles and cultural motifs. one such bus features a stylized, pipe-smoking american indian on the upper right corner, and a ghost-like ogre on the lower left corner of its side (photo 1); on another, an american bald eagle is combined with a chinese dragon (photo 2). comprehensive painting became an expensive affair over the years; at present, few buses are painted like this. consequently, their number is relatively small with only six of the buses in my collection belonging to this category. newer, air-conditioned buses are generally discretely painted; mostly featuring identical, airbrushed paintings on both sides, while the rest of the vehicle is left blank. in the past, an additional painting was in some instances added on the back of the vehicle, but the authorities have prohibited this, since it might distract other drivers. unlike the pakistani trucks, the front of the buses is generally left unadorned. the motifs on such buses usually share a uniform style; however, on a few of them, the various figures are executed in divergent styles. the name and phone number of the tour company is usually printed in large letters on the sides of the buses but does not constitute part of the decorative design. the painter sometimes inserts his ‘tag’ and phone number in small letters at the bottom of the painting. while the painters enjoy great freedom in the choice of motifs, there are some limitations. the authorities have prohibited the depiction of female nudity, even on mythological figures, and the placing of a buddha image on a bus side is considered inappropriate. the bus paintings are based on a variety of sources in different styles, but adapted, rearranged, or ornamented according to the taste of the painter or his customers. to start the analysis of the paintings, it is therefore necessary to identify the sources from which the styles and specific motifs were drawn. i have identified four major sources of the paintings on discretely painted buses: american popular culture, japanese/korean popular culture, thai ‘traditional’ culture, and chinese ‘traditional’ culture. paintings based on these four sources are found on 107 (74 percent) of the 145 buses in my collection.3 3 the remaining 26 percent of the buses include the six comprehensively painted buses and buses painted in different, predominantly naturalistic styles, from various, mostly hard to identify sources; i will discuss them below. erik cohen bus paintings in thailand: a post-modern urban art form in comparative perspective aseas 6(2) 251250 photo 1: smoking indian and ghost-like monster on a comprehensively painted bus (2012) photo 2: american bald eagle and chinese dragon on a comprehensively painted bus (2010) aseas 6(2) 251250 photo 3: snow white and the seven dwarfs (2012) photo 4: rock musicians (2012) aseas 6(2) 253252 photo 5: the scott nipper sacramento rock meeting group (2012) photo 6: skateboarding boys (2012) aseas 6(2) 253252 photo 7: “red indian” riding mustang (2012) photo 8: female anime guitarists (2012) aseas 6(2) 255254 photo 9: female anime character (2011) photo 10: god rama on chariot (2011) aseas 6(2) 255254 photo 11: a pair of nagas shooting fire balls from mekong river (2011) photo 12: the legendary battle between the thai king and the burmese crown prince at don chedi (2013) aseas 6(2) 257256 photo 13: chinese dragon (2011) photo 14: chinese cranes (2010) aseas 6(2) 257256 photo 15: chinese opera characters (2012) photo 16: pandas (2011) aseas 6(2) 259258 american popular culture was the most frequent source of motifs, found on about 40 buses. several distinct styles can be distinguished within this source. the most easily recognizable and most numerous is the distinct animated cartoons style, pioneered by walt disney. it is found on 15 buses in my collection. anthropomorphic animal characters, such as mickey mouse, predominate, but more comprehensive representations, such as snow white and the seven dwarfs from disney’s 1937 film (photo 3), can also be found. spider-man, a popular american comic book (and film) character, was depicted on two buses. on several buses, various american rock bands were depicted in cartoon style. one painting blends three such bands, deadsy (a californian synth rock band), the distillers (a punk rock band), and blink 182 (a rock band) (photo 4). another carries on its sides a cartoon-like depiction of the scott nipper sacramento rock meeting group (photo 5) and on its back a realistic portrait of scott nipper himself. a group of break dancers is featured on one bus, on another a pack of skateboarding boys (photo 6). the caricatured figures on these buses make exaggerated animated movements and wear pugnacious facial expressions. a painting on one bus depicts the airbrushing process itself in a similar style. a single bus features an american western motif – native americans riding wildly on unsaddled mustangs (photo 7) – a reflection of the considerable popularity that native americans and cowboys enjoy in contemporary thailand (cohen, 2008, pp. 181–223). japanese/korean popular culture was the second most frequent source of motifs, found on 35 buses in my collection. the style of all these paintings is based on japanese or korean manga comics or anime (the japanese abbreviation for “animation”) television series and video games. while virtually all depicted figures manifest the distinctive bodily proportions and facial features of the anime characters, such as big, expressive eyes and small mouths (photos 8 and 9), i could not identify individual members of the cast or particular episodes on which the various figures were based. one important difference between japanese-style paintings and those derived from american popular culture stood out: both are gendered, but in opposite directions. there is a marked predominance of female characters on the former, with 19 buses painted in the japanese/korean anime style presenting only females against three with males only (the rest included both, male and female characters). on the latter, aseas 6(2) 259258 there is a marked predominance of males. on 19 of the buses painted in american popular styles only males appear, as opposed to a single bus with females only (the rest had either both or no human figures at all). thus, american popular culture often seems to appeal to painters or bus owners for its celebration of male super heroes while japanese/korean popular culture seems to appeal for its expressions of feminine charm. thai ‘traditional’ painting was the third most frequent source of the motifs, found on 21 buses in my collection. approximately three quarters of these were decorated with thai mythical motifs, such as the god rama driven on a chariot, a scene from the epic ramakien (the thai version of the indian ramayana) (photo 10), two nak (naga) serpents shooting fireballs from the mekong river at the end of the pansa retreat (buddhist lent) (cohen, 2007) (photo 11), thewada (heavenly beings), yak ( yaksha) gate guardians, and similar mythic characters. one bus was adorned by characters from the works of the thai poet sunthorn phu (1786-1855), another with the famous scene of the legendary battle on elephants’ backs between the siamese king naresuan and the burmese crown prince, reenacted every year during the memorial fair at don chedi in suphanburi province (photo 12). there were a few paintings of thai female dancers and of thai children, but remarkably, purely buddhist themes were absent, save for a depiction of the pair of stupas (pagodas) of the phra doi tung temple on top of doi (mountain) tung in northern thailand and wat arun (see below). however, the owner of a small tour company showed me a small picture of the buddhist temple in which she worships that she had depicted above the other paintings on one of her buses. chinese ‘traditional’ painting was the least frequent source of the paintings, appearing on only 11 buses. the most common motifs were the chinese dragon (photo 13) and the chinese crane, a symbol of longevity (photo 14). a few buses were decorated with stylized paintings of predominantly male chinese children, while one featured several chinese opera characters (photo 15). the sources of the motifs on the remaining discretely painted buses are hard to determine. about 20 of them feature more or less naturalistically painted animals, birds, and sea life, which might have been copied from photos, advertisements, and other printed sources. several of the depicted animal species are of some significance in the context of thai tourism. polar bears and penguins, found on two buses, seem to signify the cold polar world, which many thai people desire to experience erik cohen bus paintings in thailand: a post-modern urban art form in comparative perspective aseas 6(2) 261260 photo 17: powerboat racing (2013) photo 18: astronaut (2013) aseas 6(2) 261260 (see e.g. cohen, 2010. p. 157). however, they could also be a metaphor of the pleasant air-conditioned cool within the bus, in contrast to the oppressive heat prevailing outside. the elephants, dolphins, and pandas (photo 16) found on several buses, are leading animal tourist attractions in thailand.4 and lastly, the fairly numerous scenes of sea life, some of them imitating the batik paintings found on popular souvenirs, and of powerboats upon waves (photo 17) obviously foreshadow the diverse delights of seaside vacationing. a few paintings on the buses feature some well-known tourist landmarks of thailand, such as the khmer-style wat arun temple on the western bank of the chao phraya river in bangkok or the so-called “bridge on the river kwai”, in kanchanaburi province in western thailand, made famous by a film by the same name; while one bus features the twin petronas towers in kuala lumpur, malaysia. finally, paintings on a few buses conjure up the space age, depicting the sun and the planets, and, in one case, an astronaut (photo 18). conclusion the preceding detailed presentation was not intended to create a gallery of thai airbrush art, but rather to enable us to draw some theoretical and comparative conclusions regarding the distinctive traits of the body of thai bus paintings. in contrast to paintings on vehicles in the other countries discussed above, the bus paintings in thailand do not display a characteristic local style. rather, as the preceding discussion amply demonstrates, they are marked by a considerable heterogeneity of styles and motifs, taken from many parts of the world, and primarily from the two globally leading popular cultures, the american and the japanese. this indicates that, taken as a whole, thai bus paintings are a globalized art form, expressing openness to the immensely diverse choice of styles and motifs, which became easily accessible on the internet. in that respect, the thai body of bus paintings differs radically from the paintings on philippine, pakistani, and latin american vehicles, which are more uniform in style, even though some novel motifs were gradually added to the more traditional ones in suriname and to some extent also in pakistan. 4 the panda is native to china but one pair is kept on loan in the chiang mai zoo (cohen, 2010). erik cohen bus paintings in thailand: a post-modern urban art form in comparative perspective aseas 6(2) 263262 again in contrast to those other countries, the paintings on thai buses do not carry a message, whether religious or political. unlike, for example, the religious invocations on pakistani trucks (sökefeld, 2008, p. 176), there are no protective symbols included in the thai paintings. even mythical themes do not seem to play a magical protective role, as do buddha images on the coach cabin’s panel board or amulets and magic tattoos (cummings, 2012) often worn by drivers or passengers. buddha images as decorations on bus sides would probably be seen as sacrilegious rather than protective. furthermore, unlike the paintings on the wilde bussen of paramaribo, the paintings on thai buses do not relate to thai identity politics. while some thai bus paintings refer to tourist attractions, such as sea life, iconic animals, and some popular landmarks, the great majority are endowed with a post-modern character, as enjoyable, surface decorations, devoid of symbolic meaning – signs without reference. in that respect, they reflect a wider trend in thai popular culture, where alien symbols, such as the christian cross or muslim half moon, are often adopted as ornaments (especially on earrings), decoupled of their religious significations. the production of the thai bus paintings is a process consisting of clients’ preferences, the skills of the airbrush artists, styles and motifs taken from the internet, and computer technology used to cut the images on stencils. the process is thus a post-modern hybrid of different types of activities, which cannot be unequivocally classified into such modernist categories as ‘art’, ‘craft’ or ‘decoration’. in contrast, the painting of vehicles is a relatively simple folk art in the other non-western countries discussed above. most of the motifs on the thai bus paintings are chosen from the impersonal, contemporary mass popular culture and applied to impersonal vehicles; however, by fiat of such choice, the combination of distinct motifs on particular buses bestows upon those vehicles, and by extension, on their owners, a mark of individual distinction, while up-lifting those popular cultural products to the level of ‘artwork’. i suggest that it is the achievement of such distinction, in a context of invidious comparison between the paintings by both owners and clients that constitutes the driving force motivating the owners of tour companies to incur considerable expenses in painting their buses. however, in order to substantiate this suggestion, a systematic study of thai tour companies, which is beyond the means at my disposal, needs to be conducted. aseas 6(2) 263262 references biggs, a. (2013, march 24). art in the fast lane: don’t gaze too long. bangkok post, brunch 6(12), p. 4. chattophadyay, s. (2009). the art of auto-mobility. journal of material culture, 14(1), 107-139. chinmaneevong, c. (2013, april 12). boom brings bus shortage. bangkok post, p. b4. cohen, e. (2000). the commercialized crafts of thailand: hill tribes and lowland villages. richmond, va: curzon press. cohen, e. (2007). the “post-modernization” of a mythical event: naga fireballs on the mekong river. tourism, culture and communication, 7(3), 169-181. cohen, e. (2008). explorations in thai tourism. bingley, uk: emerald. cohen, e. (2010). panda and elephant – contesting animal icons in thai tourism. journal of tourism and cultural change, 8(3), 154-171. cummings, j. (2012). sacred tattoos of thailand. singapore: marshall cavendish. decorative truck art from pakistan. (2011). twistedsifter. retrieved from http://twistedsifter.com/2011/09/ decorative-truck-art-pakistan/ de sousa bastos, a. c. (2008). commentary: jeepneys: tattoos on the collective soul. culture & psychology, 14(2), 237-243. elias, j. (2003). on wings of diesel. res: anthropology and aesthetics, 43(spring), 187-202. güss, c. d., & tuason, t. (2008). jeepneys: values in the streets. culture & psychology, 14(2), 211-236. harris, m. f., & harris, l. j. (1988). art on the road: painted vehicles of the americas. st. paul, mn: pogo press. laughlin, n. (2010, july). moving pictures. the caribbean review of books. retrieved from http://caribbeanreviewofbooks.com/crb-archive/22-july-2010/moving-pictures le febre, j. (2010, august). gallery: thailand’s blinged out tourist buses. retrieved from http://www.cnngo. com/bangkok/life/thailands-bus-artists-629230?hpt=c2 lizardo, o., & skiles, s. (2008). cultural consumption in the fine and popular arts. sociology compass, 2(2), 485-502. meñez, h. q. (1988). jeeprox: the art and language of manila’s jeepney drivers. western folklore, 47(1), 38-47. rich, g. w., & khan, s. (1980). bedford painting in pakistan: the aesthetics and organization of an artistic trade. the journal of american folklore, 93(369), 257-275. schmid, a. (2000). truck art as arena of contest. journal of social science, 4(4), 235-241. sökefeld, m. (2008). moving images: truck art in pakistan. tsantsa – revue de la societé suisse d’éthnologie, 13, 175-190. szok, p. (2008). “red devils to hell”: an interview with artist óscar melgar on the decline of panama’s painted buses. anthurium: a caribbean studies journal, 6(2), article 1. truck art in pakistan. (2013). wikipedia: truck art in pakistan. retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ truck-art-in-pakistan 40 creative painted bus pictures. (2009, march 13). stock images. retrieved from http://gallery.xemanhdep. com/2009/03/40-painted-bus-pictures/ erik cohen bus paintings in thailand: a post-modern urban art form in comparative perspective schattenwirtschaft unter palmen: der touristisch informelle sektor im urlaubsparadies patong, thailand aseas 4(1) 50 51 aktuelle südostasienforschung / current research on south-east asia schattenwirtschaft unter palmen: der touristisch informelle sektor im urlaubsparadies patong, thailand bianca gantner1 universität wien, österreich citation gantner, b. (2011). schattenwirtschaft unter palmen: der touristisch informelle sektor im urlaubsparadies patong, thailand. aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften, 4(1), 51-80. seit den 1960er-jahren spielt der tourismussektor innerhalb der thailändischen wirtschaft eine wichtige rolle und ist durch ein stetiges wachstum gekennzeichnet. für über 50 prozent der personen, die in thailand ihren lebensunterhalt durch informelle beschäftigung (schattenwirtschaft) sichern, stellt dieser boomende sektor eine bedeutende verdienstquelle dar. unter verwendung qualitativer methoden (interviews und teilnehmende beobachtung) untersucht dieser artikel den touristisch informellen sektor des ortes patong auf der insel phuket und stellt sowohl die entstehung und den verlauf als auch die akteursund angebotsstruktur dieses sektors dar. die aktuelle entwicklung wird dabei verglichen mit dem modell vorlaufers, das die entwicklung einer staatlich geförderten tourismusdestination beschreibt. entgegen der annahme dieses modells, mit einem wachstum des tourismussektors würde der anteil an formeller gegenüber der informellen beschäftigung steigen, zeigt sich, dass kein rückgang des touristisch informellen sektors zu erkennen ist, dieser weiterhin ein integraler bestandteil der tourismuswirtschaft patongs geblieben ist und eine wichtige verdienstquelle für migrantinnen und die lokale bevölkerung darstellt. schlagworte: phuket, tourismus, informeller sektor, netzwerke, thailand since the 1960s, tourism has become a vital part of the thai economy and has been characterised by a steady growth. for more than 50 percent of all thais working in the informal sector (shadow economy), the booming tourism industry represents an important source of income. in this article patong on phuket serves as a case study for examining the network of actors, the touristic supply structure as well as its evolution and developments over the years by using qualitative methods (interviews and participant observation). the empirical data will then be compared to vorlaufer’s scheme on the development of a state-sponsored tourist destination. in contrast to the scheme’s assumption of a decline of the informal and a rise of the formal sector, the empirical results show that the level of informal activity remains on a high level and can be described as an integral part of patong’s tourism industry. in addition, revenues from the informal sector serve as an important source of income for migrants and locals. keywords: phuket, tourism, informal sector, networks, thailand 1 bianca gantner ist doktorandin am institut für geographie und regionalforschung der universität wien. die hier vorliegende arbeit baut auf ihrer laufenden dissertation mit dem arbeitstitel: „der informelle sektor in der tourismuswirtschaft thailands – eine analyse am beispiel patong beach (phuket)“ auf. kontakt: bianca.gantner@ gmx.at bianca gantner schattenwirtschaft unter palmen d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -4 .1 -4 aseas 4(1) 52 53 einleitung der internationale tourismus nach thailand hatte seinen durchbruch in den 1960erjahren, als mit den „rest and recreation“-programmen kostengünstige erholungsangebote für die us-amerikanischen soldaten des indochinakriegs geschaffen wurden. seitdem wuchs dieser sektor rapide und stellt einen wichtigen teil der thailändischen wirtschaft dar. zu beginn des neuen jahrtausends entfielen auf den tourismus etwa elf prozent aller arbeitsplätze, und er machte einen anteil von rund elf prozent am bruttoinlandsprodukt aus. mit dem bedeutungszuwachs des sektors stieg die zahl jener, die an seinem wirtschaftlichen potenzial partizipieren wollten und darin eine beschäftigung suchten. heute findet sich ein großer teil der im tourismussektor bestehenden beschäftigung im informellen bereich. das deckt sich mit befunden zur gesamtstruktur der thailändischen wirtschaft. über 50 prozent der beschäftigten sind dem informellen sektor, der schattenwirtschaft, zuzurechnen. am beispiel einer der meist besuchten touristischen destinationen thailands – dem ort patong auf der insel phuket – soll gezeigt werden, welche personengruppen in diesem informellen, also staatlich ungeregelten und meist unterbezahlten sektor, beschäftigt oder tätig2 sind und welche tätigkeiten durch sie vollbracht werden. zudem sollen netzwerke der in diesem sektor agierenden und mit diesem sektor verbundenen personen dargestellt werden sowie eine untersuchung in hinblick auf das vorhandensein spezifischer zyklen in der entwicklung des touristisch informellen sektors im untersuchungsgebiet durchgeführt werden. informeller sektor und informalität in den sozialwissenschaften entwickelte sich die unterscheidung zwischen formellen und informellen wirtschaftssektoren in den 1950er-jahren in zusammenhang mit der diskussion über die „unvollständigkeit“ von modernisierungsprozessen in der sogenannten „dritten welt“. steigende akademische aufmerksamkeit fand das thema der informellen beschäftigung zum ersten mal in der zeit nach den weltwirtschaftskrisen der jahre 1929 beziehungsweise 1933 sowie in den jahren nach dem zweiten welt2 in der regel gilt „beschäftigt“ als sammelbegriff für angestellte und arbeiterinnen, während selbstständige oftmals als selbstständig tätige bezeichnet werden. um eine leichtere lesbarkeit des artikels zu ermöglichen, werden in weiterer folge die begriffe „beschäftigte“ und „tätige“ synonym verwendet. aseas 4(1) 52 53 krieg. der begriff „informeller sektor“ wurde erstmals zu beginn der 1970er-jahre in studien der international labour organisation (ilo) zu wirtschaftlichen aktivitäten in den städtischen zentren kenias und ghanas erwähnt (vgl. komlosy, parnreiter, stacher, & zimmermann, 1997). sowohl in bezug auf seine wirtschaftlichen als auch sozialen auswirkungen gewann das thema seit den 1980er-jahren an bedeutung. der fokus lag insbesondere auf den urbanen zonen. gleichzeitig wurde klar, dass sich vor allem in bezug auf messung und abgrenzung des phänomens des informellen sektors schwierigkeiten auftaten. viele begriffe, wie etwa „wirtschaft der armen“, „überlebensökonomie“, „secteur non-structuré“, „second economy“, „graue ökonomie“ oder „schattenwirtschaft“ (vgl. stacher, 1997), wurden und werden nach wie vor in der literatur synonym mit dem begriff „informeller sektor“ verwendet. diese breite und offenheit der definition spiegelt sich auch in der definition der ilo aus dem jahr 1998 wieder: the informal sector consists of small-scale, self-employed activities (with or without hired workers), typically at a low level of organization and technology, with the primary objective of generating employment and incomes. the activities are usually conducted without proper recognition from the authorities, and escape the attention of the administrative machinery responsible for enforcing laws and regulations. (ilo, 1998, s. 658) ähnlich wie die ilo definieren auch castells und portes (1989) den aspekt der informalität vor allem in bezug auf dessen (oft mangelnde oder ungenügende) legalität. demnach handelt es sich bei informellen wirtschaftlichen tätigkeiten um prozesse der einkommensgenerierung, die sich von formeller wirtschaftlicher aktivität vor allem durch die nicht-regulierte aufnahme und durchführung der wirtschaftlichen aktivität – und damit ihrer legalität – unterscheiden. die leistung oder produkte, die sowohl informeller als auch formeller wirtschaftlicher tätigkeit entspringen, können in beiden fällen dieselben sein und als legal bezeichnet werden. die informelle tätigkeit (produktion und verbreitung der leistung) an sich gilt jedoch als illegal, da sie sich staatlicher regulierung entzieht. der weitere unterschied zu krimineller wirtschaftlicher aktivität findet sich im aspekt, dass bei letzterer auch das endprodukt als illegal zu bezeichnen ist (vgl. castells & portes, 1989). festgehalten werden muss jedoch, dass die grenzen zwischen formell, informell und illegal/kriminell oft fließend sind. das so entstehende abgrenzungsproblem erschwert wie schon oben beschrieben die empirische messung des informellen sektors. bianca gantner schattenwirtschaft unter palmen aseas 4(1) 54 55 theorien der informalität in weiterer folge werden theorien zur informalität kurz vorgestellt. hingewiesen werden soll damit auf die unterschiedlichen erklärungsansätze für entstehung und fortbestand dieses sektors (vgl. komlosy et al., 1997, s. 14-20; wiego, o.d.). • theorie des dualismus: sogenannte dualistinnen gehen davon aus, dass der informelle sektor ein zeichen von „rückständigkeit“ sei. abgegrenzt wird dieser „rückständige“ sektor gegenüber „modernen“, rationalen und formalisierten wirtschaftsformen. dieser „traditionelle“ oder „rückständige sektor“ bietet denjenigen arbeit, die im „modernen“, formellen sektor keine beschäftigung finden. beschäftigungsfelder des informellen sektors entstammen meist der dienstleistungsbranche, da diese durch eine geringe notwendigkeit an betriebsund geldmitteln gekennzeichnet ist. durch diese geringen voraussetzungen ermöglicht der informelle sektor ein rasches entstehen und stabiles fortbestehen von arbeitsplätzen bzw. informeller beschäftigung. oft vorhandene rahmenbedingungen wie langsames wirtschaftswachstum und/oder hohes bevölkerungswachstum führen meist dazu, dass „moderne“ oder „formelle“ arbeitsplätze nur unzureichend vorhanden sind und begünstigen wiederum entstehung und fortbestand von beschäftigung im informellen sektor. • theorie des strukturalismus: im gegensatz zu den dualistinnen, die vor allem geringes wirtschaftswachstum als den informellen sektor begünstigend darstellen, argumentieren strukturalistinnen, dass auch starkes wirtschaftswachstum das wachstum des informellen sektors vorantreiben würde. großunternehmen des formellen sektors würden nämlich durch die auslagerung von arbeiten an informelle betriebe aufwand und arbeitskosten sparen und damit ihre wettbewerbsfähigkeit steigern. beide sektoren bedingen sich also wachstumsbedingt positiv. • theorie des legalismus/il-legalismus: legalistinnen erweitern die wirtschaftliche um eine rechtliche perspektive. sie sehen die entstehung des informellen sektors als zwangsläufige, quasi-ökonomische reaktion auf ein bestehendes rechtssystem, in welchem sich die formalisierung für kleinbetriebe oder einzelunternehmen als zu zeitaufwendig und teuer darstellt. während vertreterinnen des legalismus damit der aufnahme informeller tätigkeit mehr veraseas 4(1) 54 55 ständnis beibringen, sind vertreterinnen des il-legalismus, wie de soto (1989), der ansicht, dass die entscheidung, informell und damit illegal zu agieren, opportunistisch getroffen wird, um regulierungen, steuern und betriebskosten zu vermeiden und höhere gewinne zu erzielen. demnach wäre im falle niedrigerer steuern und schnellerer administrativer prozeduren die variante eines rein formellen wirtschaftssystems denkbar. • anthropologische ansätze: über wirtschaftliche und rechtliche aspekte hinausgehend rückt dieser analyseansatz die sozialen netzwerke des informellen sektors, also vor allem verwandtschaftsoder freundschaftsverhältnisse, ins zentrum der analyse. untersucht wird, wie in diesen sozialen netzwerken informationen weitergegeben werden, die außenstehenden verwehrt bleiben (z.b. auskunft über billige unterkunft, günstige verpflegungsmöglichkeit oder gute verkaufsstände). diese beziehungsgeflechte ermöglichen beispielsweise den zugang zum informellen arbeitsund wohnungsmarkt und stellen eine wichtige ressource für jene personen dar, die ihren lebensunterhalt weder durch formelle beschäftigung noch durch staatliche sozialleistungen (z.b. arbeitslosengeld) sichern können. • integrierter ansatz: die beschränktheit einzelner theorien hinter sich lassend, setzte in den vergangenen jahren in bezug auf die theorieschulen zur informalität ein gewisses umdenken ein, und forderungen zugunsten eines integrierten ansatzes wurden laut. dessen vertreterinnen plädieren demnach dafür, die verwendung einzelner theorien für umfassende erklärungen von entstehung und auswirkungen (wirtschaftlicher und gesellschaftlicher art) des informellen sektors in einem bestimmten wirtschaftssegment oder einer region fallen zu lassen und stattdessen mehrere theorien und perspektiven in einer jeweiligen analyse zuzulassen. die dimension des informellen sektors in thailand von der theorie zur empirie: die offizielle erfassung und unterscheidung der formellen und informellen tätigkeit erfolgt im fall von thailand durch das das national statistical office (nso). das nso zählt im zuge einer relativ unpräzisen definition alle betriebe mit mindestens zehn beschäftigten zum formellen sektor. eine zusätzliche bianca gantner schattenwirtschaft unter palmen aseas 4(1) 56 57 voraussetzung, um gemäß dieser definition formell als unternehmen anerkannt zu werden, ist das vorhandensein sowohl einer geschäftsführenden person als auch „administrativer systeme“. in abgrenzung zu formellen unternehmen werden betriebe des informellen sektors laut definition als solche beschrieben, die einen „niedrigen organisationsgrad“ aufweisen, als kleinunternehmen operieren, kein oder nur ungesicherte einkommen für ihre mitarbeiterinnen erzielen und diese nicht durch ein staatliches sicherungssystem erfassen lassen (vgl. nso zit. nach allal, 1999, s. 37). der wirkliche umfang des informellen sektors in thailand, also die zahl der informellen unternehmen und damit auch deren mitarbeiterinnen, kann auf grund dieser relativ unpräzisen definition des nso sowie der fehlenden behördlichen registrierung der informellen betriebe nur ungefähr beziffert werden. die meisten unabhängigen schätzungen, darunter eine von der ilo publizierte, gehen davon aus, dass mehr als 50 prozent aller erwerbstätigen in thailand ihren lebensunterhalt im informellen sektor verdienen (vgl. amin, 2002, s. 13-17; ilo, 2002, s. 19). spezifika des touristisch informellen sektors der touristisch informelle sektor (tis) als eine untergruppe des informellen sektors im allgemeinen findet weder in der bestehenden wirtschaftswissenschaftlichen literatur noch in der bestehenden literatur zur tourismusforschung große oder spezifische beachtung. im falle der tourismusliteratur mag das auch daran liegen, dass kleinen und mittleren touristischen unternehmen generell wenig aufmerksamkeit in bezug auf deren wirtschaftliches potenzial geschenkt wird. so meint dahles dazu: within the body of literature on tourism’s economic potential, little attention has been paid to the role of entrepreneurial activity . . . apart from general discussions of the impact of transnational organizations, the literature is remarkably uninformative about the role and position of small and medium-sized businesses in the tourism industry. (dahles, 1999, s. 2) auf grund der größe und bedeutung des allgemeinen informellen sektors für die thailändische wirtschaft gibt es eine vielzahl an forschungsarbeiten und publikationen, die sich mit der erfassung des phänomens informeller sektor (vgl. boonperm, 2000; nesdb & nso, 2004) oder mit den möglichkeiten zur einbindung der im informellen sektor beschäftigten in formelle wirtschaftsstrukturen beschäftigen (vgl. allal, 1999; aseas 4(1) 56 57 tajgman, 2006). die wissenschaftliche untersuchungen beziehen sich jedoch zum großen teil auf den urbanen informellen sektor, (meist auf jenen der hauptstadt bangkok) (vgl. ilo, 1996; kusakabe, 2006; nirathron, 2006) und lassen den touristisch informellen sektor als eigenständiges phänomen oft außen vor. nur wenige autorinnen stellen hier ausnahmen dar. vorlaufer (1999) stellt den touristisch informellen sektor dem touristisch formellen sektor gegenüber und beleuchtet konflikte, interdependenzen und standortdynamik der beiden sektoren. die erste untersuchung, die den informellen sektor in einem touristischen gebiet zum inhalt hatte, wurde von wahnschafft (1981) zu beginn der 1980er-jahre durchgeführt, um die eigenschaften und manifestationen sowohl des informellen als auch des formellen sektors in pattaya, thailand zu analysieren. zur jahrtausendwende beschäftigte sich die world tourism organization mit nachhaltiger tourismusentwicklung in thailand und dem beitrag, den kleine und mittlere unternehmen dazu leisten können (vgl. unwto, 2001). smith und henderson (2008) untersuchten den touristisch informellen sektor auf phuket in bezug auf die auswirkungen des tsunami 2004 auf das laguna beach resort, einer exklusiven touristischen enklave an der westküste der insel. über den touristisch informellen sektor schreiben sie: with specific reference to tourism, informal commerce covers occupations such as motorised and nonmotorised driving, guiding . . . street food hawking, beach massage, low-budget lodging proprietorship and prostitution . . . . some of these may be practised formally with a licence, but traders without proper permits or who ignore or abuse restrictions are part of the informal sector. (smith & henderson, 2008, s. 272) während smith und henderson damit auch prostitution dem touristisch informellen sektor zurechnen, wird im vorliegenden artikel prostitution nicht als teil des tis behandelt, da es sich im fall von thailand um eine rechtswidrige aktivität handelt, die gemäß vorab aufgeführten taxonomie der kriminellen wirtschaftlichen aktivität zuzuordnen ist. zum touristisch informellen sektor sind alle jene wirtschaftlich tätigen und kmus des informellen sektors zu zählen, welche ihre produkte und/oder dienstleistungen touristinnen anbieten. wie schon vorlaufer (1999, s. 686-688) in seiner untersuchung zu beginn der 1990er-jahre zeigte, weist der touristisch informelle sektor erwartungsgemäß zahlreiche ähnlichkeiten zum informellen sektor auf. darunter findet sich, dass kleinbetriebe die vorherrschenden wirtschaftlichen einheiten darstellen und innerhalb dieser bianca gantner schattenwirtschaft unter palmen aseas 4(1) 58 59 klasse wiederum einpersonenbetriebe (own account workers) den höchsten anteil ausmachen. da für die ausübung informeller tätigkeiten weder eine spezifische formale ausbildung, noch eine formelle arbeitserlaubnis benötigt wird, bietet der tis gesellschaftlichen gruppen, die am formellen arbeitsmarkt benachteiligt werden (z.b. frauen, menschen mit behinderung, flüchtlinge3), die möglichkeit, ihren lebensunterhalt zu verdienen. die zusammensetzung des tis betreffend, stellte vorlaufer fest, dass der anteil von arbeitskräften mit geringer oder fehlender schulbildung im tis (in den untersuchten ländern thailand und den philippinen) niedriger ist als im nicht-touristischen, also restlichen informellen sektor (nicht-touristisch informeller sektor, nis).4 als weiteres ergebnis seiner untersuchung zeigte sich die unterschiedliche altersstruktur der beschäftigten, wobei sich der tis durch die im schnitt jüngeren beschäftigten auszeichnete. zudem erwies sich, dass innerhalb des tis häufiger jobwechsel stattfinden als innerhalb des nis.5 im gegensatz zu mancher vermutung weist der tis in thailand nur geringe einkommensdisparitäten im vergleich zum touristisch formellen sektor (tfs) auf. jedoch sind betriebe des tis zumeist mit nur geringem kapital (ersparnisse, kredite bei verwandten/bekannten) ausgestattet, und die investitionstätigkeit ist dementsprechend gering. händler kaufen ihre ware oftmals nur auf kommission. darüber hinaus bietet der tis den vollberuflich tätigen (z.b. lehrerinnen, bauern, studierende) die chance auf ein nebeneinkommen6 und schwächt die saisonale arbeitslosigkeit in landwirtschaftlich geprägten regionen ab (vgl. vorlaufer, 1999, s. 686-688). 3 für die benachteiligung der erwähnten gruppen gibt es verschiedene gründe. die doppelbelastung resultierend aus familienund erwerbsleben erschwert in thailand beispielsweise vielen frauen die aufnahme eines formellen arbeitsverhältnisses. menschen mit behinderung erfahren benachteiligung am arbeitsmarkt aufgrund geringerer ausbildungschancen und folglich der niedrigeren formalen qualifikation. arbeitsplätze sind zudem meist nicht auf die mitunter bestehenden speziellen bedürfnisse von menschen mit behinderung ausgerichtet. flüchtlingen ist es in thailand üblicherweise gesetzlich untersagt, im zuge ihres asylverfahrens einer arbeit nachzugehen. 4 in thailand besuchten 1992 etwa 28 prozent der im tis beschäftigten nur die grundschule (dauer ein bis fünf jahre), während es im nis 51 prozent waren. im vergleich dazu waren es im tfs 16 prozent gegenüber 29 prozent im nichttouristisch formellen sektor (nfs) (vgl. vorlaufer 1999, s. 686). 5 so gingen in thailand zu beginn der 1990er-jahre nur zwei drittel der im tis beschäftigten länger als zwei jahre einer jeweiligen tätigkeit nach (vgl. vorlaufer, 1999, s. 686). 6 das nebeneinkommen wird meist über tätigkeiten als reiseführerinnen oder taxifahrerinnen lukriert. eine weitere möglichkeit ist die vermietung von privatzimmern oder fahrzeugen an touristinnen aseas 4(1) 58 59 modell der entwicklung und des zyklischen verlaufes des touristisch informellen sektors nachdem auf die spezifika des touristisch informellen sektors eingegangen wurde, soll nun der frage nachgegangen werden, inwieweit sich entwicklung und verlauf des touristisch informellen sektors in einer beliebigen destination zyklisch erklären lässt. vorlaufer hat hierfür ein modell entworfen, das sich an butlers (1980) modell des lebenszyklus von tourismuszentren7 anlehnt. die entstehung des tis in einer touristischen destination ist mit dem eintreffen der ersten touristinnen zu erwarten. der tis ist in dieser initialphase der hauptsächliche träger des touristischen angebots. einige wenige touristinnen passen sich jedoch an das zu dem zeitpunkt bestehende touristische angebot an, indem sie in einfachen unterkünften wie bungalows schlafen sowie günstige lokale restaurants besuchen. das preisniveau des touristischen angebots ist aufgrund des in dieser zeit vorherrschenden niedrigen lohnniveaus der örtlichen bevölkerung niedrig. einheimische werden für kurze exkursionen (z.b. fischerinnen, die im nebenerwerb ihr boot für ausflüge vermieten) bezahlt und einfach erzeugte, traditionelle produkte als souvenirs erstanden (vgl. vorlaufer, 1999, s. 681-682). in einer frühen wachstumsphase, in der die tourismusankünfte steigen, erhöht sich die zahl der beschäftigten und betriebe sowohl im tis als auch im tfs, wobei der tis zu beginn der rasanten entwicklung mehr angestellte und unternehmen vorzuweisen hat. dennoch ändert sich die struktur des touristischen wirtschaftsbzw. beschäftigungssystems: haben viele einheimische in der initialphase den tourismus lediglich als nebenerwerbsquelle genutzt, wird dieser bei weiterem anstieg der anzahl der touristinnen zur wichtigsten einnahmequelle. bevölkerungsschichten, die über mehr kapital, einfluss oder bildung verfügen (z.b. händlerinnen, lokale politikerinnen, lehrerinnen etc.), investieren in das touristische wirtschaftsystem und eröffnen beispielsweise kleine beherbergungsbetriebe. auch fischerinnen nutzen ihre boote nun hauptsächlich für sightseeing-touren, und die zahl der souvenirhändlerinnen nimmt zu. der tourismus wird zudem von den nationalen entscheidungsträgerinnen 7 das tourism-area-life-cycle-modell von butler (1980) beschreibt die zyklische entwicklung von tourismuszentren in anlehnung an den produktlebenszyklus von konsumgütern (von ihrer markteinführung bis hin zur bedeutungsabnahme). auf touristische destinationen übertragen nennt butler diese phasen nach entwicklung der touristinnenankünfte gegliedert exploration, involvement, development, consolidation, stagnation und post-stagnation (vgl. schulz et al., 2010, s. 616-617). vorlaufer integrierte in butlers modell der touristischen phasen die quantitative entwicklung der informellen und formellen tourismuswirtschaft. sein modell beruht auf ergebnissen empirischer untersuchungen in kenia, thailand und indonesien. bianca gantner schattenwirtschaft unter palmen aseas 4(1) 60 61 tourismus zentrum typ ii tourismus zentrum typ i staatliche regulierung verdrängt tis größtenteils (typ i) keine staatliche regulierung (typ ii) lokale bevölkerung investiert in tourismus (bars, bungalows, etc.) nationale investitionen bspw. in hotelanlagen internationale reisekonzerne u.a. investieren (bspw. luxusbzw. großhotellerie) nur geringe informelle aktivität wird geduldet / entgeht der regulierung bzw. deren durchsetzung nachfrage durch angebot gedeckt / touristischer markt gesättigt initialphase frühe wachstumsphase späte wachstumsphase konsolidierungsphase stagnation niedergang? quelle: autorin nach vorlaufer (1999) beschäftigte im touristisch formellen sektor (modellannahme nach vorlaufer) beschäftigte im touristisch informellen sektor (modellannahme nach vorlaufer) abbildung 1: vereinfachstes phasenmodell des tis und tfs nach vorlaufer als verdienstquelle erkannt, und es wird, beispielsweise durch straßenbaumaßnahmen, in die infrastruktur der destination investiert, oder es werden anreize für nationale investorinnen in hotelprojekte gesetzt (z.b. fördergelder, steuererleichterungen). mit der guten entwicklung der tourismuszahlen und den damit geschaffenen arbeitsplätzen wird der tourismusort auch für inund ausländische migrantinnen aus wirtschaftsschwachen regionen attraktiv. diese finden aufgrund ihrer geringen formalen bildung oder – im fall von illegal eingereisten migrantinnen – fehlenden visa und arbeitsbewilligungen jedoch meist im touristisch formellen sektor keinen arbeitsplatz und verdienen ihren lebensunterhalt in weiterer folge im tis. gemäß vorlaufers modell wird das weitere wachstum der tourismusdestination in der späten wachstumsphase beziehungsweise konsolidierungsphase dann jedoch vom touristisch formellen sektor getragen. dies ist dadurch bedingt, dass das gebiet aufgrund aseas 4(1) 60 61 eines steigenden aufkommens kaufkräftiger touristinnen zunehmend für (inter)nationale investorinnen interessant wird. die nun vertretene gruppe von touristinnen8 stellt dem modell nach höhere ansprüche in bezug auf die qualität der touristischen produkte, welche aufgrund des hohen kapitaleinsatzes (zum beispiel hochwertige restaurants oder hotels) durch den tis nicht gänzlich befriedigt werden können. es entstehen im zuge der nun massentouristischen entwicklung transnationale luxus und großhotels, befestigte straßen oder einkaufszentren. der touristisch informelle sektor wird gleichzeitig durch maßnahmen wie lizenzierungen und der strengeren überprüfung von gesetzen und daraus resultierenden strafen eingedämmt. in vielen destinationen kommt es daher zu einer abnahme der anzahl der beschäftigten und betriebe im tis. diese entwicklung stellt vorlaufer in seinem tourismuszentrum typ i9 dar, während in einem tourismuszentrum typ ii10 der tis keinen behinderungen (wie etwa die angesprochenen strengen überprüfungen) unterliegt (vgl. vorlaufer, 1999, s. 681-682). welchem tourismuszentrumstyp patong entspricht, wird in weiterer folge herausgearbeitet werden. das untersuchungsgebiet: patong nachdem eingangs die theorien, dimensionen, spezifika sowie die zeitliche entwicklung des touristisch informellen sektors dargestellt wurden, folgt nun eine analyse des tis in einem spezifischen untersuchungsgebiet. für diese studie wurde der ort patong auf der thailändischen insel phuket gewählt. die region um die insel phuket war mittelpunkt einer erstaunlichen touristischen entwicklung. von etwa 200.000 zu beginn der 1980er-jahre stieg (vgl. tat, 1983) die zahl der touristinnen bis zum jahr 2004 rasant auf einen rekordwert von 4,2 millionen an (vgl. tat, 2005). die empirischen erhebungen dieser studie fanden von anfang jänner bis anfang 8 smiths (1977) touristinnentypologie unterteilt reisende nach dem grad deren anpassung an lokale gegebenheiten. darunter finden sich typen wie explorer-, elite-, massoder charter-touristinnen (vgl. freyer, 2008, s. 93). 9 der tourismuszentrum typ i zeichnet sich durch eine verdrängung des informellen durch den formellen sektor aus, oft bedingt durch u.a. behördliche raumordnungsmaßnahmen bzw. striktere polizeiliche durchsetzung der geltenden regulierungen (vgl. vorlaufer, 1999, s. 681) 10 der tourismuszentrum typ ii steht für eine gewachsene dualistische struktur im tourismusgewerbe (vgl. vorlaufer, 1999, s. 681). aus dem begriff „dual“ sollte hier jedoch nicht geschlossen werden, vorlaufer wäre den vertreterinnen der dualistischen theorie zuzuordnen. vorlaufer bezeichnet den typ ii als „dualistisch“, um zu unterstreichen, dass beide sektoren, sowohl tis als auch tfs, im verlauf der entwicklung des ortes weiterbestehen und kein verfall des tis einsetzt. im gegensatz zu den „dualistinnen“ geht er jedoch nicht davon aus, dass tis und tfs strikt voneinander zu trennen seien, sondern untersucht im zuge seiner studien netzwerke zwischen beiden sektoren (strukturalistisches argument). bianca gantner schattenwirtschaft unter palmen aseas 4(1) 62 63 märz 2009 statt. die ersten beiden wochen in bangkok dienten dem aufsuchen von archiven und bibliotheken und der expertinnenbefragung, die restlichen sechs wochen verbrachte ich direkt in patong. diese zeit wurde für gespräche mit regionalen tourismusexpertinnen über phuket sowie für interviews mit den verschiedenen akteurinnen des tis genutzt. so wurden 40 interviews mit angestellten informeller touristischer geschäfte, elf interviews mit massagedamen, jet-ski und liegestuhlvermieterinnen sowie 15 interviews mit strandverkäuferinnen durchgeführt. es wurden fragen zum sozioökonomischen status der gesprächspartnerinnen (z.b. bildungsstand, familienstand, kinderzahl, einkommen) und dem verlauf ihres arbeitslebens auf phuket (migrationserfahrungen, arbeitsorte auf phuket bzw. in patong, problemfelder beim ausüben der arbeit, umsatz, verlauf der aktuellen saison, kundenschichten) gestellt.11 um zusätzliche, tiefer gehende informationen zu erhalten, wurden informelle gespräche geführt. weiters wurde die methode der teilnehmenden, verdeckten beobachtung angewandt, um die handlungsmuster des tis erkennen zu können (vgl. reuber & pfaffenbach, 2006, s. 123-127). um einen überblick über die dimensionen und räumliche verortung des tis in patong zu erhalten, wurde eine quantitative erfassung sowie eine kartierung der touristischen kernzone12 vorgenommen. im zuge des vorliegenden artikels soll ergründet werden, wann der tis in patong entstand und inwieweit dessen zeitliche entwicklung dem zyklusmodell von vorlaufer entspricht. weiters wird gezeigt, welche personengruppen in patong im tis arbeiten und ob deren eigenschaften mit den von vorlaufer genannten übereinstimmen. darüber hinaus erfolgt eine analyse, welche tätigkeiten durch den tis abgedeckt werden und ob es für gewisse untergruppen des tis bevorzugte verkaufsareale gibt. außerdem wird ein beispiel vorgestellt, anhand dessen netzwerke zwischen den im tis beschäftigten personen und unternehmen, jenen des tfs und den behörden, illustriert werden. 11 die auswahl der interviewpartnerinnen erfolgte per schneeballmethode, wobei darauf geachtet wurde, dass eine möglichst gleichmäßige verteilung der befragten über die touristische kernzone patongs erreicht wurde, um in weiterer folge die räumliche analyse auf eine möglichst repräsentative grundlage zu stellen. 12 die empirische untersuchung wurde auf eine kernzone patongs eingegrenzt. in diesem gebiet zwischen beach road und der parallel dazu verlaufenden „second road“, das nördlich durch die had patong road und südlich durch die „holiday inn“ road begrenzt wird, findet die touristische hauptgeschäftstätigkeit statt und sind kaum wohneinheiten vorhanden. aseas 4(1) 62 63 die entwicklung des tourismus in patong bis in die 1970er-jahre war zinnabbau der bedeutendste wirtschaftsfaktor phukets, gefolgt von kautschukund kokosnussplantagen sowie fischerei. tourismus rangierte zu diesem zeitpunkt in bezug auf das bip nur an fünfter stelle (vgl. cohen, 1982, s. 196). angesichts der baldigen erschöpfung des zinnvorkommens und der begrenztheit der landwirtschaftlichen ressourcen erstellte die tourism organization of thailand (tot)13 im jahr 1979 ein gesamtkonzept für die touristische entwicklung phukets. das potenzial der insel für eine touristische entwicklung wurde mit deren großer fläche und guter erreichbarkeit, der exzellenten qualität und lage seiner strände und dem vorhandensein vieler natürlicher (zum beispiel bucht von phang nga, similian islands), kultureller und historischer attraktionen (zum beispiel sino-portugiesisches erbe von phuket town, ethnische minderheit der „sea gypsies“, tempel wat chalong) begründet. dadurch war eine bandbreite für die verschiedensten tourismusformen (zum beispiel badetourismus, familientourismus, kulturtourismus) gegeben (vgl. tot, 1979, s. 3-18). mit der eröffnung des internationalen flughafens auf der insel sowie einer aktiven bewerbung stieg die zahl an touristinnen rasant an, und phuket wurde in nur wenigen jahren vom geheimtipp für rucksackreisende zu einem hotspot des massentourismus. im zuge des fifth national social development plan (1982-1986)14 wurde in phuket die finale phase des ausbaus als touristische destination verfolgt (vgl. richter, 1989, s. 88). vor allem patong stand im zentrum dieser rasanten entwicklung. als die tot ende der 1970er-jahre die strategie für die touristische erschließung der insel phuket erstellte, war in patong die entwicklung des touristischen wirtschaftssystem und der touristischen infrastruktur am weitesten fortgeschritten. zudem war im hinterland ausreichend räumliche kapazität für eine weitere entwicklung gegeben, und die qualität des meerwassers und des strandes wurde als sehr gut bewertet. entsprechend wurde beschlossen, diese destination zum touristischen zentrum der region auszubauen (vgl. tot, 1979, s. 3-27). noch anfang der 1980er-jahre galt patong als ein sehr beschaulicher ort. in hinblick auf die touristische infrastruktur zählte cohen im jahr 1982 15 hotels und bungalows, 13 die tot war die vorgängerorganisation der tourism authority of thailand (tat), die 1979 gegründet wurde (vgl. richter, 1989, s. 91). 14 verantwortlich für die erstellung dieser jeweils fünfjährigen entwicklungspläne in thailand zeichnet sich das national economic development board (nedb). bianca gantner schattenwirtschaft unter palmen aseas 4(1) 64 65 etwa 30 restaurants, einige bars, tourismusshops sowie eine disco (vgl. cohen 1982, s. 198). in einer späteren beschreibung im jahr 1995 stellt er fest, dass patong inzwischen ein zentrum des internationalen tourismus geworden sei mit einer vielzahl an bars, hotels, restaurants, shoppingzentren, nachtclubs, die unsystematisch angeordnet waren, und der ort nun eher einer stadt statt einem friedlichen paradies glich (vgl. cohen, 1995, s. 229). die touristinnenzahlen patongs stiegen stetig an, bis im jahr 2003 zum ersten mal über eine million gästenankünfte verzeichnet wurden. der höchststand wurde im darauffolgenden jahr mit 1,18 millionen erreicht (tat, 2005). die tsunami-katastrophe, die sich am 26. dezember 2004 ereignete, wirkte sich sehr stark auf die tourismuswirtschaft phukets des jahres 2005 aus, und die gästeankünfte sanken um etwa 55 prozent auf 557.305 (tat, 2006). das ausbleiben der gäste bezeichnete das gros der auf der insel erwerbstätigen als einen „second tsunami“, schließlich war der tourismus inzwischen eindeutig zur haupteinnahmequelle geworden, wie das gross provincial product (gpp) der provinz phuket zeigt. so machten im jahr 2006 die einnahmen im hotelund restaurantwesen 38,5 prozent des gpp aus, gefolgt von jenen aus transport, lagerhaltung und kommunikation mit 13,8 prozent (vgl. alpha research, 2009, s. 911). letztere ist zudem ein wirtschaftzweig, der auch eng mit der touristischen wirtschaft verbunden ist. in diese offiziellen statistiken nicht mit einbezogen sind jegliche formen des informellen sektors. zudem erfasst die statistik nicht die große zahl der nicht registrierten bewohnerinnen. im fall von patong lag die zahl der registrierten einwohnerinnen 2009 bei 17.800 (patong municipality, 2009) . addiert man dazu die unregistrierten sowie urlauberinnen, kommt man in der hochsaison auf einen inoffiziellen wert von über 100.000 einwohnerinnen, so patongs vize-bürgermeister chairat sukban (persönliches gespräch, 24. februar 2009). die bestehende reale abhängigkeit der wirtschaft patongs vom tourismus dürfte sich damit als um ein vielfaches höher erweisen. die entwicklung des tis in patong nach der beschreibung der entwicklung des tourismus im untersuchungsgebiet soll nun jene des tis skizziert und erörtert werden, inwieweit diese dem zyklischen phasen-modell von vorlaufer folgt. wie von vorlaufer (1999) beschrieben, wurde auch in patong das touristische angebot in der initialphase des tourismus durch einheiaseas 4(1) 64 65 mische gestellt, wobei die meisten davon dem tis zuzurechnen waren (abb. 2). in bezug auf unterbringung zeigte sich, dass kleine bungalow-anlagen ohne hotellizenz durch die besitzerinnen selbst beziehungsweise durch deren enge familienmitglieder geführt wurden. fallweise wurden personen aus familie oder aus dem freundeskreis beschäftigt und mit geringem lohn oder nur mit kost und logis entschädigt. cohen zählte 1979 in patong etwa 50 im tourismus beschäftigte, wovon 36 aus der lokalen bevölkerung stammten und der rest aus anderen orten der insel phuket (vgl. cohen, 1982, s. 217). die tourismusbetriebe waren kleine bungalows oder einfache strandrestaurants. die straßen, auf denen bereits fahrerinnen von motorradrikschas (tuk-tuks) informell den touristinnen ihre transportleistungen anboten, waren unasphaltiert. mit fortschreitendem wachstum ( frühe wachstumsphase) der touristischen aktivität erkannten auch akteurinnen von außerhalb patongs das mit dem tourismus verknüpfte wirtschaftliche potenzial. in weiterer folge war es nun schließlich nicht die lokale bevölkerung, die den größten profit aus der touristischen entwicklung schlug, sondern personen von außerhalb patongs, unter anderem chinesischstämmige unternehmerinnen aus der hauptstadt phukets, phuket town, in deren besitz die größeren touristischen beherbergungsbetriebe waren. diese wiederum setzten meist in der leitung ihrer betriebe die eigenen vertrauensleute aus der stadt und nicht ortsansässige ein. diese geschäftsleute ebneten in weiterer folge den weg für lukrative investitionen, da sie durch ihre unternehmerischen tätigkeiten kontakte nach bangkok und ins ausland unterhielten. einheimische, die noch grund in strandnähe besaßen, verkauften diesen nun zu hohen preisen. und auch in weiterer folge, als sich immer mehr internationale investorinnen für phuket zu interessieren begannen, stiegen die grundpreise noch erheblich an (vgl. cohen, 1982, s. 215). anita pleumarom, die koordinatorin der ngo t.i.m.-team (tourism investigation & monitoring team), welche touristische entwicklungen und konzepte in thailand und der mekongregion hinsichtlich ihrer nachhaltigkeit sowie umweltund sozialer verträglichkeit prüft, meint zu dieser entwicklung: also die lokale bevölkerung wurde immer weiter hinaus gedrängt. die meisten haben ihr land verkauft, weil die preise wurden einfach zu teuer [anm. preise für die ausgaben des täglichen bedarfs]. für die meisten wurde es attraktiver, ihr land für gutes geld zu verkaufen und in die stadt zu gehen . . . patong, kata, karon und rawai – das ist die internationale zone, wo auch keine lokalen leute in der tourismusbranche arbeiten wollen. hier sind es hauptsächlich migranten [sic] aus nordost-thailand oder burma (anita pleumarom, persönliches gespräch, 15. jänner, 2007). bianca gantner schattenwirtschaft unter palmen aseas 4(1) 66 67 an der versorgung der touristinnen konnte die dorfgemeinschaft bereits beginnend mit der frühen wachstumsphase des tourismus kaum mehr verdienen, denn restaurants oder hotels tätigten ihre einkäufe in den urbanen märkten phuket towns (vgl. cohen, 1982, s. 218). nachdem – wie von pleumarom erwähnt – große teile der ursprünglich lokalen bevölkerung patong verlassen haben, waren in der späten wachstumsphase sogenannte „locals“ meistens nur noch unter den strandverkäuferinnen und liegestuhlvermieterinnen zu finden. folgt man vorlaufers modell des tourismuszentrum typ i, so wäre nun auch im falle patongs durch das auswandern der lokalen bevölkerung und dem durch den touristischen boom animierten raschen anstieg von betriebsgründungen im formellen sektor sowie steigender ausländischen investitionen ab den 1990er-jahren eine schrumpfung des tis zu erwarten gewesen. dementgegen ging die zahl der betriebe des tis im untersuchungsgebiet jedoch nicht zurück. stattdessen wies die entwicklung patongs eher charakteristika des von ihm beschriebenen tourismuszentrum typ ii auf, welches eine stabilisierung der dualistischen struktur des tourismusgewerbes erwarten ließ. im jahr 1996 beobachtete vorlaufer 680 läden und verkaufsstände, die großteils ohne behördliche lizenz agierten (vgl. vorlaufer, 2006, s. 38). einen beitrag zum fortbestehen des tis leisteten (und leisten auch heute noch) die von pleumarom angesprochenen migrantinnen15, die meist durch fehlende formale bildung oder arbeitserlaubnis nur informell ihren lebensunterhalt verdienen können. entsprechen würde diese beobachtung der theorie der legalisten: die informalität scheint eine erzwungene reaktion auf das bestehende restriktive rechtssystem darzustellen. als zäsur sowohl für den tis als auch für den tfs in patong genauso wie im rest des südlichen thailands, gilt die tsunami-katastrophe des 26. dezember 2004, durch welche beide sektoren mit rapide sinkenden gästezahlen und weiteren problemen konfrontiert waren (niedergang). im jahr nach der katastrophe, in der weiterhin massive einnahmeverluste entstanden, mussten die kleinbetriebe des tis sowie die unternehmen des tfs geldmittel für den wiederaufbau oder die wiederinbetriebnahmen auf15 vereinfachte migrationsmodelle wie push-pull-modelle gehen von der existenz sogenannter push-faktoren, die personen dazu veranlassen, ihre herkunftsregion zu verlassen, als auch pull-faktoren, welche einen anreiz bieten, in ein jeweiliges zielgebiet zu migrieren, aus (vgl. iom, 2004, s. 49). als push-faktoren gelten zum beispiel: krieg, verfolgung, hunger, armut oder umweltkatastrophen, während als pull-faktoren politische freiheit, sicherheit, höhere einkommen im zielland oder gründe wie familienzusammenführungen genannt werden können (vgl. migration satellite, o.d.). aseas 4(1) 66 67 bringen und wurden durch auflagen von behörden teilweise stark behindert.16 zwei jahre nach dem tsunami erholte sich die tourismuswirtschaft allerdings wieder und patong war von jenem vor der katastrophe kaum zu unterscheiden. sowohl touristisch informeller als auch formeller sektor nahmen ihr wachstum wieder auf (neue wachstumsphase). nach dem tsunami eröffnete in patong eine reihe neuer hotels wie etwa 2006 das la flora oder 2009 das courtyard by marriott phuket. gleichzeitig wurde neue infrastruktur17 für informelle shops geschaffen, wie beispielsweise das otop shopping paradise 2005 oder dj plaza ende des jahres 2009. neben den migrantinnen, welche den hauptteil der informellen beschäftigten stellen, muss das fortbestehen des tis jedoch auch durch entsprechende käuferschichten bzw. eine nachfragestruktur gesichert werden. für den tis ist es vorteilhaft, dass nicht ausschließlich luxusressorts in patong vorhanden sind18, da diese touristische enklaven bilden, aus denen sich touristinnen nur selten hinaus bewegen und somit kaum auf die leistungen der außerhalb dieser anlagen präsenten informell tätigen zurückgreifen können. sind nur low-budget-touristinnen zugegen, sind die voraussetzungen für einen wirtschaftlichen erfolg der informell beschäftigten ebenso begrenzt, denn diese schränken ihren persönlichen konsum von dienstleistungen wie massagen oder den kauf von mitbringseln wie souvenirs oder markenkopien, welche vom tis intensiv vertrieben werden, üblicherweise stark ein. zusammenfassend lässt sich über den zyklischen verlauf des tis und tfs in patong feststellen, dass die entwicklung vor allem in der initialphase und ersten wachstumsphase vorlaufers modell des tourismuszentrum typ i folgt: die betriebsund beschäftigtenzahl des tis pendelt sich aber mit fortschreitendem wachstum auf einem hohen niveau ein, und die variante eines nachhaltigen niederganges, die als eine möglichkeit in vorlaufers schema dargestellt wird (abb. 1), kann im fall von patong nicht bestätigt werden. die beobachtete entwicklung einer dualistischen struktur entspricht daher eher dem tourismuszentrum typ ii. doch auch diese variante lässt sich nicht eins zu 16 so waren für einige zeit nach dem tsunami keine liegestühle auf dem strand gestattet, oder es musste für bauwerke ein abstand von 30 metern zum strand gewahrt werden (vgl. gantner, 2007, s. 104-107). 17 es handelt sich um einen raumordnenden, regulativen eingriff der stadtverwaltung patongs mit dem ziel, ein strukturierteres erscheinungsbild der destination zu schaffen. durch die bereitstellung von entsprechender infrastruktur soll die zahl von mobilen straßenverkäuferinnen und semi-mobilen verkaufsständen am straßenrand abnehmen. 18 ein viertel der gästeankünfte entfallen auf betriebe mit einzelzimmer-rate von unter 500 baht (entspricht im mai 2011 ca. 23 euro). weitere 35 prozent der gäste wählen unterkünfte, die pro nacht im einzelzimmer weniger als 2.500 baht (entspricht im mai 2011 ca. 58 euro) kosten. weniger als ein drittel der gäste wählt teure hotels, deren übernachtungskosten diesen wert übersteigen (vgl. tat, 2006). bianca gantner schattenwirtschaft unter palmen aseas 4(1) 68 69 eins auf patong übertragen, denn hier findet zum teil eine behinderung des tis durch behörden statt, die wiederum ein charakteristikum wäre, das eher vorlaufers typ i entsprechen würde. quantitativ hat der tis in patong eine relativ hohe bedeutung. die im zuge der empirischen erhebung in der touristischen kernzone gezählten 580 shops des immobilen tis prägen das ortsbild, ebenso werden die dienstleistungen des semimobilen beziehungsweise mobilen tis von den touristinnen nach wie vor nachgefragt. das ergebnis einer selbst durchgeführten erhebung unterstreicht diesen sachverhalt. im untersuchungsgebiet fanden sich dabei rund 125 massagedamen, 100 angestellten im bereich der jet-ski-vermietung und 200 im liegestuhl-business beschäftigten sowie 150 strandverkäufern. abbildung 2: entwicklung des tis und tfs in patong im vergleich zu vorlaufers phasenmodell quelle: autorin / vorlaufer (1999) beschäftigte im touristisch formellen sektor (modellannahme nach vorlaufer) beschäftigte im touristisch formellen sektor (empirische ergebnisse / patong) beschäftigte im touristisch informellen sektor (modellannahme nach vorlaufer) beschäftigte im touristisch informellen sektor (empirische ergebnisse / patong) fortschreitende bautätigkeit (v.a. hotels) tsunami 26.12.2004 erste touristische „problemjahre“: asien-krise 1997, 9/11 , sars (2003) aufbauarbeiten ausbleiben der touristen + strenge behördliche auflagen für wiederaufbau neue infrastruktur für tis: bspw. otop markt steigende investitionen: straßen& hotelbau: starkes wachstum des tfs behinderungen des tis durch lokale behörden (schließung / umsiedlung von strandhütten) + abwanderung lokaler bevölkerung starke arbeitsmigration: wachstum des tis v.a. durch migrantinnen getragen initialphase 1979 bis beginn der 1980er-jahre frühe wachstumsphase ab mitte der 1980er-jahre späte wachstumsphase ab den 1990er-jahren niedergang ab 2005 neue wachstumsphase ab 2006 zukunftsszenarien ab 2009 tourismus zentrum typ ii tourismus zentrum typ i aseas 4(1) 68 69 angebot und klassifizierung des touristisch informellen sektors neben einem vergleich der entwicklung des tis in patong mit dem zyklischen phasen-modell vorlaufers wurde im zuge der empirischen untersuchung eine räumliche analyse des sektors vorgenommen. um einen besseren überblick über die verschiedenen akteurinnen des tis und deren angebot an produkten und dienstleistungen zu erlangen, wurde eine klassifizierung vorgenommen, welche die akteurinnen in bezug auf ihre mobilität hin unterscheidet (vgl. smith & henderson, 2006, s. 275-276): • mobiler tis: unter mobilem tis werden akteurinnen des touristisch informellen sektors beschrieben, die ständig in bewegung sind, ihre waren mit sich tragen und keinen fixen verkaufsstandort haben. in diese kategorie fallen die strandverkäuferinnen, die von kleidung, über essen, getränke, obst, sonnenbrillen, uhren und souvenirs sowie saisonale produkte uvm. verkaufen und im gesamten strandbereich aktiv sind. weiters sind fremdenführerinnen, tänzerinnen oder musikantinnen (jeweils ohne lizenz) hinzuzuzählen. • semi-mobiler tis: jene akteurinnen, die zum semi-mobilen tis gezählt werden, gehen ihrer arbeit an ausgewählten/festen standorten jedoch mit mobilen verkaufseinheiten (z.b. verkaufsständer, karren) nach. hierunter fallen strandliegenvermieterinnen, jet-ski-vermieterinnen, garküchenbetreiberinnen, fischerinnen, die ihr boot für ausflüge vermieten, taxibetreiberinnen, massagedamen oder verkäuferinnen im touristischen einzelhandel. diese verkaufsstände werden täglich aufund abgebaut. • immobiler tis: die gruppe des immobilen tis inkludiert alle gewerbetreibenden des tis, die ihre waren an standorten anbieten, bei denen es sich um fest installierte verkaufsstände oder shops mit unterschiedlicher bauweise und –substanz handelt. außerdem werden informelle beherbergungsbetriebe und restaurants als teil dieser gruppe gezählt. ein ergebnis dieser untersuchungen war, dass sich den verschiedenen gruppen des tis spezifische verkaufsgebiete zuordnen ließen. die folgende schematische darstellung (siehe abb. 3) zeigt, die räumliche aufteilung der zonen, in denen mobiler, semimobiler und immobiler tis bevorzugt aufzufinden sind. 19 19 die darstellung in abb. 3 ist eine schematische. das veranschaulichte muster erstreckt sich von nord nach süd in ähnlicher form über das touristische kerngebiet patongs bianca gantner schattenwirtschaft unter palmen aseas 4(1) 70 71 die räumliche analyse stellt ein aktivitätsfeld des touristischen sektors dar, das sich in strandbereich, erholungszone20 und verbautes gebiet untergliedern lässt. der mobile tis lässt sich vor allem im strandbereich und der erholungszone verorten. die vom semi-mobilen tis bevorzugte zone liegt ebenfalls im strandbereich beziehungsweise in der parkähnlichen erholungszone hinter dem strandbereich, wo palmen und pinien schatten spenden, in dem sich die massagedamen mit ihren liegen niederlassen. auch die liegestuhlvermieterinnen finden sich an der grenze zwischen strandbereich und erholungszone. der großteil der liegestuhlvermieterinnen betreibt, um die touristinnen, die in ihrem bereich liegen mieten, entsprechend versorgen zu können, einen getränkeoder snackstand, der erwartungsgemäß im schatten positioniert wird. die jet-ski-vermieterinnen agieren nicht ausschließlich im strandbereich, sondern begeben sich auch in die erholungszone, um kundinnen zu werben. der immobile tis befindet sich im verbauten gebiet. das beruht darauf, dass nach dem tsunami 20 als erholungszone wird das parkgebiet zwischen strandbereich und verbautem gebiet bezeichnet, das mit palmen und laubbäumen bepflanzt ist und spazierwege, fitnessgeräte sowie spielmöglichkeiten für kinder beherbergt. strandbereich erholungszone verbautes gebiet s tr aß e m e e r touristischer markt (> 20 shops) touristischer shop kleinsthandel / garküche massage mobiler strandverkauf getränke / snacks liegestuhlvermietung jet ski, ausflugsboot, parasailing mobiler tis semi-mobiler tis immobiler tis abbildung 3: räumliche verteilung des tis im untersuchungsgebiet quelle: autorin aseas 4(1) 70 71 laut vize-bürgermeister chairat der gesetzlich festgelegte abstand von 30 metern, den gebäude – und somit die shops des touristischen einzelhandels – zum strand einhalten müssen, stärker forciert wird als vor der katastrophe (persönliches gespräch, 24. februar 2009). die shops des immobilen tis sind teilweise sehr klein mit einer etwa 15 meter langen und zwei meter hohen verkaufswand in einem 30m2 großen verkaufsraum, den sich oftmals mehrere besitzerinnen teilen. die bevorzugten standorte des immobilen tis, also diejenigen mit der höchsten kundinnenfrequenz, sind im verbauten gebiet in der nähe zur erholungszone zu finden. dass es sich in diesen zonen um begehrte verkaufslagen handelt, findet seinen niederschlag u.a. in der höhe der mietpreise. in speziell für kleinunternehmerinnen geschaffenen märkten (bsp. otop shopping paradise, sainumyen plaza) sind die mieten zudem jeweils in eingangsnähe am höchsten. akteursstruktur des tis um aussagen über die akteurinnenstruktur des tis von patong zu erhalten, wurden während der feldarbeit interviews mit akteurinnen aller sparten des tis durchgeführt, in denen u.a. der sozioökonomische status der befragten erhoben wurde. die daraus abgeleiteten ergebnisse werden in weiterer folge präsentiert und ein vergleich mit der eingangs beschriebenen früheren untersuchung vorlaufers gezogen (siehe kap. spezifika des touristisch informellen sektors). im zuge der empirischen untersuchung stellte sich heraus, dass in den geschäften des immobilen tis nicht die shopbesitzerinnen selbst, sondern meist angestellte (zum großen teil migrantinnen ohne arbeitsgenehmigung) arbeiten. von den 40 interviewten, die im immobilen tis tätig sind, gaben nahezu zwei drittel an, angestellte zu sein, während die restlichen interviewten personen ladenbesitzerinnen oder deren verwandte waren. mehr als die hälfte der befragten aus der gruppe des immobilen tis stammte aus myanmar, wobei innerhalb dieser gruppe charakteristisch erschien, dass das gros ursprünglich nepalesische wurzeln aufweist. etwa zehn prozent der befragten migrierten aus vietnam nach phuket. migrantinnen aus myanmar werden bevorzugt angestellt, da diese bereit sind, für einen geringen lohn zu arbeiten, oftmals über bessere englischkenntnisse verfügen, von ladenbesitzerinnen generell als arbeitsamer betrachtet werden und sie zudem als gute verkäuferinnen gelten. bianca gantner schattenwirtschaft unter palmen aseas 4(1) 72 73 vorlaufer erwähnte, dass die von ihm untersuchte gruppe der im tis arbeitenden zudem durchwegs jung war. auch in der von mir durchgeführte erhebung lässt sich das bestätigen: die 40 befragten wiesen ein durchschnittsalter von 27 jahren auf. ein häufiger wechsel der arbeitsstelle ist ein weiteres charakteristikum der akteurinnen des tis in patong und entspricht ebenfalls den ergebnissen vorlaufers. der großteil der interviewten gab zwar patong als einzigen arbeitsort auf phuket an, innerhalb dieses touristischen zentrums fanden jedoch zahlreiche jobwechsel statt. es scheint gängige praxis, dass thailändische shopbesitzerinnen angestellte, welche sie als gute verkäuferinnen einschätzen, von anderen läden abwerben. die jeweiligen verkäuferinnen wiederum versuchen eine anstellung an verkaufsstandorten zu finden, die stark von touristinnen frequentiert werden, da sie zumeist zwei prozent kommission am verkaufswert der artikel erhalten und so ihr gehalt aufbessern können. der durchschnittliche monatslohn der angestellten im immobilen tis in der hochsaison beträgt exklusive umsatzbeteiligung zwischen 5.000 baht und 12.000 baht21. das im zuge der interviews höchste genannte monatsgehalt von 12.000 baht liegt deutlich über dem mindestlohn der provinz phuket, der im september 2010 bei 6.400 baht22 pro monat lag (vgl. sidasathian, 2010). auch diese ergebnisse korrespondieren mit jenen von vorlaufer. grundlegend bleibt festzustellen, dass nur eine geringe einkommensdisparität zu beschäftigten im formellen sektor besteht. dies bestätigt beispielsweise eine umfrage der prince of songkla university (phuket campus), die zu dem ergebnis kam, dass im jahr 2002 das gehalt von absolventinnen des „hotel management programs“, also beschäftigten im tfs, zwischen zirka 5.000 und 14.000 baht23 lag (vgl. chaisawat, 2006, s. 113) und damit nur geringfügig höher als die lohnspanne wie sie von sidasathian angeben wird. die anderen beiden gruppen des tis, der semi-mobile und mobile tis, unterscheiden sich in einigen wesentlichen punkten vom immobilen tis. im mobilen tis sind durchwegs thais beschäftigt, wobei hier zwischen den verkäuferinnen mit lizenz24 der 21 entspricht im mai 2011 ca. 112 bzw. 268 euro. 22 entspricht im mai 2011 ca. 143 euro. 23 entspricht im mai 2011 ca. 116 bzw. 325 euro. 24 die verkäuferinnen sind trotz lizenz nicht als formelle unternehmerinnen zu bezeichnen, da sie weder steuern entrichten noch, da sie ein-personen-betriebe darstellen, die erforderliche anzahl an angestellten aufweisen, um vom nso thailand als formell wahrgenommen zu werden. die administrative verwaltung der tourismusdestination hat durch den prozess der lizenzvergabe ein ordnungsinstrument geschaffen, um die zahl der gewerbetreibenden im strandbereich zu limitieren. hier zeigen sich die fließenden übergänge zwischen als informell und formell geltenden beschäftigten. aseas 4(1) 72 73 stadt patong (nur rund 70 personen) und jenen ohne lizenz zu unterscheiden ist. jene mit genehmigung sind laut angaben des vize-bürgermeisters chairat durchwegs personen der lokalen bevölkerung (persönliches gespräch, 24. februar 2009). die gruppe der ohne lizenz agierenden, die sich also aus illegal tätigen strandverkäuferinnen zusammensetzt, ist allerdings deutlich größer als die derer mit lizenz und besteht nicht aus ortsansässigen thais, sondern personen, die zum großteil aus dem nordosten thailands oder bangkok stammen. wie sich im zuge der untersuchung zeigte, sind diese einer hohen wahrscheinlichkeit ausgesetzt, durch die polizei kontrolliert und sanktioniert zu werden, da sie ohne genehmigung im strandbereich verkaufen. auch die zur semi-mobile gruppe zählenden massagedamen sind thailändische binnenmigrantinnen, vornehmlich aus dem süden und nordosten thailands sowie aus dem großraum bangkok. angestellte der großen liegestuhlvermieterinnen sind überwiegend migrantinnen aus myanmar. diese akteurinnenanalyse zeigt, dass die lokale bevölkerung nur in einigen segmenten des tis selbst aktiv ist. ihr bleibt vor allem der lizenzierte strandverkauf und die liegestuhlvermietung vorbehalten. die meisten angestellten des immobilen tis sind ausländische arbeitsmigrantinnen. auch viele angestellte des semi-mobilen tis sind dieser gruppe zuzuordnen. migrantinnen aus anderen provinzen thailands verdienen ihren lebensunterhalt meist durch massage-dienstleistungen im strandbereich oder als strandverkäuferinnen ohne lizenz. netzwerke zwischen tis und tfs und behörden: beispiel schneidereien entgegen vorlaufers modell des tourismuszentrum typ i ist kein niedergang des tis in patong eingetreten. ein grund für dieses weiterbestehen des tis scheint die wechselseitige abhängigkeit von tis und tfs zu sein, die sich in netzwerken unterschiedlicher art aus unterschiedlichen beteiligten manifestiert. im sinne der strukturalistischen theorie wies schon wahnschafft zu beginn der 1980er-jahre auf solche verlinkungen der touristisch informellen und formellen sektoren in form hin, die er als downward und upward vertical exchanges bezeichnete. unter erstem ist der verkauf von gütern und dienstleistungen des tfs an den tis zu verstehen, unter zweitem der verkauf von gütern und diensten des tis an den tfs (vgl. wahnschafft, 1981, s. 17-22). als beispiel für ein solches netzwerk zwischen tis und tfs sollen hier die maßschneidereien bianca gantner schattenwirtschaft unter palmen aseas 4(1) 74 75 (tailor shops) von patong kurz beleuchtet werden. diese lizenzierten und steuer entrichtenden unternehmen des tfs stellen ein gutes exempel für die vernetzung der beiden sektoren dar, da sie als unternehmen des tfs eng mit dem tis kooperieren, sich bezüglich dieses informellen vorgehens aber selbst mit den behörden arrangieren, wie in weiterer folge gezeigt wird. die maßschneiderei genießt unter den internationalen touristinnen, die thailand bereisen, nicht zuletzt aufgrund des guten preis-leistungs-verhältnisses einen guten ruf. in der touristischen kernzone patongs zeigt sich die bedeutung der branche an der zahl der betriebe: 2009 existierten eigenen erhebungen zufolge rund 100 sogenannte tailor shops. im folgenden werden die verbindungen zwischen tis und tfs kurz beschrieben: im geschäftslokal einer maßschneiderei werden von den verkäuferinnen die maße der kundinnen genommen und der schnitt angefertigt. das nähen erfolgt in kleinen fabriken mit 20 bis 80 thailändischen näherinnen. eine fabrik erledigt die arbeit für bis zu zehn maßschneidereien. bereits bei den angestellten der tailor shops, die an sich lizenzierte betriebe darstellen, ist keine klare abgrenzung mehr zum tis gegeben, denn diese sind meist illegal eingereiste aus myanmar ohne arbeitserlaubnis. der tfs bedient sich somit dienstleisterinnen des tis (upward vertical exchange). dieser prozess läuft allerdings selten ohne wissen der behörden ab. die regionale polizei ist meist in dieses lokale netzwerk involviert, indem sie schmiergeldzahlungen für die illegal beschäftigten einhebt. im zuge der interviews mit shopbesitzerinnen wurde ein hierfür gängiger betrag von 3.000 baht pro monat und angestellter person genannt. ein weiteres netzwerk besteht zwischen tailor shops und dvd-verkaufsläden des tis. hinter den stoffen der maßschneiderei werden des öfteren kleine versteckte räume als lager oder büroflächen an dvd-verkäuferinnen vermietet – ein downward vertical exchange. auch in diesem fall ist die polizei involviert, indem sie für den verkauf von raubkopierten dvds eine monatliche schmiergeldzahlung von etwa 20.000 baht einhebt. in weiterer folge geht die regionale/lokale polizei diesem gesetzesverstoß nicht weiter nach.25 gelegentlich muss jedoch trotzdem mit razzien von auf produktpiraterie spezialisierte sondereinheiten aus bangkok gerechnet werden. diese sind als externe akteurinnen nicht in die bestehenden lokalen netzwerke involviert. 25 die zuvor diskutierten mobilen strandverkäuferinnen ohne lizenz müssen daher mit polizeilichen übergriffen rechnen, weil sie meist über zu wenig kapital verfügen, um schmiergelder an die polizei zu entrichten. aseas 4(1) 74 75 modellerweiterung und ausblick der touristisch informelle sektor kann zum zeitpunkt der empirischen untersuchung als integraler bestandteil der tourismuswirtschaft patongs gesehen werden. in weiterer folge sollen in der untersuchung festgestellte faktoren beschrieben werden, welche diese entwicklung gefährden könnten und weitere ergebnisse festgehalten werden, um welche die vorgestellten modelle erweitert werden könnten. risiken für ein weiteres wachstum des tis und tfs – erweiterung des modells um externe faktoren ein niedergang des tis und des tfs könnte in der zukunft durch naturkatastrophen oder wirtschaftliche und politische krisen verursacht werden. diese beiden einwirkungen sind gesondert von vorlaufers entwicklungsmodell als mögliche weiterentwicklung des modells zu betrachten. die verwundbarkeit der tourismusbranche wurde im fall phukets sowohl nach dem tsunami 2004 als auch in den saisonen 2008/09 und 2009/10 augenscheinlich, als das reiseund konsumverhalten von touristinnen durch wirtschaftliche und politische ereignisse nachhaltig beeinflusst wurde. diese aussage zog sich als roter faden durch die interviews mit den akteurinnen des tis. mit beginn der weltweiten wirtschaftskrise mitte des jahres 2008 und politischen unruhen innerhalb des landes, die in besetzungen des internationalen flughafens von phuket (august 2008) und des suvarnabhumi-flughafens in bangkok (november 2008) durch die sogenannten „gelbhemden“ mündeten, wurden anschließend an wachstumsjahre nach dem tsunami wieder schwierigere zeiten eingeläutet. eine weitere verschärfung der krise zeigte sich im april 2009, als der east asian summit der asean in pattaya von den „rothemden“ gestürmt wurde. 2009 wurden thailandweit mit 14,15 millionen gästenankünften zwar nur leicht weniger als 2008 (14,58 millionen) verzeichnet (vgl. mots department of tourism, o.d.), doch jene touristinnen, die kamen, wurden durch billige pauschalangebote gelockt, damit die hotels und tourismusbetriebe eine erträgliche auslastung aufweisen konnten. negativ kam hinzu, dass die gäste auf grund der wirtschaftskrise weniger geld ausgaben. dies bekamen auch die betriebe des informellen sektors stark zu spüren. im zuge der interviews mit den im tis tätigen anfang des jahres 2009 wurde von allen beteiligten bianca gantner schattenwirtschaft unter palmen aseas 4(1) 76 77 erwähnt, dass die größte sorge die geringe kauffreudigkeit der touristinnen sei. auch die redaktion der zeitung phuketwan stellte diesen trend fest, als sie zum zeitpunkt der krise die gewerbetreibenden am strand patongs befragte: the conclusion from our survey: business is down on last high season. regular guests return because they love the place. but they are spending much, much less. newcomers are harder to find. people who once were prepared to stretch out on the beach and buy drinking water from the nearest vendor now go without a lounger or an umbrella, and bring their own drinking water, purchased more cheaply at a convenience store. (phuketwan reporting team, 2009) für eine zusätzliche erweiterung des modells von vorlaufer kann die rolle der käuferinnenschichten des tis und tfs herangezogen werden. bleiben die touristinnen (käuferinnen) aus bzw. haben sie ein geringeres reisebudget, so werden in der destination weniger touristische dienstleistungen und waren konsumiert. die einnahmeverluste führen wiederum zu einer abnahme der anzahl der in der tourismuswirtschaft beschäftigten und/oder betriebe. behördliche deckung zur sicherung des tis – erweiterung des netzwerkmodells um weitere akteurinnen auch das modell wahnschaffts der downward/upward vertical exchanges kann aufbauend auf die ergebnisse der empirischen studie eine erweiterung erfahren. es zeigte sich, dass neben den netzwerken zwischen tfs und tis beziehungsgeflechte zwischen tfs/tis und den behörden unterhalten werden, um informelle tätigkeiten weiterführen zu können und die gesetze ungestraft umgehen zu können. das ausgangsmodell, das der strukturalistischen theorie folgt, wird somit um eine illegale komponente erweitert (bewusstes umgehen von steuern, gesetzen etc.). zwei zukunftsszenarien für den tis in patong die weiter oben als risiken beschriebe faktoren zeigen, dass es im fall einer nachhaltigen krise der tourismuswirtschaft (sinkende touristinnenzahlen und einnahmen) schnell dazu kommen kann, dass ein niedergang der informellen beschäftigung einsetzt und sich die im tis tätigen neue wege zur sicherung des lebensunterhalts suchen müssen. die einseitige ausrichtung der wirtschaft auf den tourismus (touristiaseas 4(1) 76 77 sche „monokultur“) patongs verstärkt die auswirkungen einer solchen entwicklung. auf grund der vielen arbeitsmigrantinnen im tis würde dies zu einer abwanderungswelle aus patong führen. ein großer teil der interviewten migrantinnen des tis spielte zum zeitpunkt der befragung mit dem gedanken einer mittelfristigen rückkehr in das heimatland, falls die touristinnenzahlen und einnahmen weiterhin auf einem niedrigen niveau bleiben würden. die daraus resultierenden niedrigeren einkommen verbunden mit den hohen lebenserhaltungskosten in der tourismusdestination würden dazu führen, dass nicht mehr genügen geldsendungen in die heimat getätigt werden könnten. falls die tourismuswirtschaft jedoch einen neuerlichen boom erleben sollte, wie sich aus den buchungszahlen für die aktuelle saison erwarten lässt,26 stellt sich auch die frage, inwieweit der tis in patong durch die behörden vor ort unreguliert bleiben wird. erste zeichen für bemühungen einer stärkeren regulierung sind die vergabe von lizenzen für den mobilen und semi-mobilen tis im strandbereich, die schaffung von infrastruktur für den immobilen tis (zum beispiel. der bau des otop-marktareals nach dem tsunami) sowie das verstärkte einschreiten der auf markenraubkopien spezialisierten sondereinheit aus bangkok. eine vollständige regulierung des tis ist jedoch nicht zu erwarten, da er für viele personen die lebensgrundlage darstellt, denen andernfalls andere arbeitsstellen oder soziale absicherung geboten werden müssten, um den sozialen frieden aufrechtzuerhalten. zudem stellen die historisch gewachsene strukturen und netzwerke ein starkes bollwerk gegen eine solche änderung dar. so ist es für den tfs auf grund bestehender upward und downward vertical exchanges, wie am fallbeispiel der tailor shops gezeigt wurde, nicht von interesse, den tis zu formalisieren, da er durch die mit ihm unterhaltenen netzwerke profitiert (strukturalistisches argument). er kann durch auslagerung von arbeit an den tis oder die anstellung von billigen informellen arbeitskräften seine betriebskosten und somit auch die verkaufspreise niedrig halten der tis kann durch das vermeiden von steuern und lohnnebenkosten seine waren und dienstleistungen weitaus günstiger als formelle betriebe anbieten. letztlich trägt nicht zuletzt das günstige angebot des tis zu dem image thailands als destination mit ausgezeichnetem preis-leistungs-verhältnis bei – wie es auch von der tat intensiv beworben wird. und: diese strategie zeigte erfolg. 26 der general manager des phuket international airport erwartet einen 25-prozentigen anstieg des passagieraufkommens gegenüber dem letztjährigen zeitraum in der hochsaison zwischen november und april (vgl. morison & sidasathian, 2010). bianca gantner schattenwirtschaft unter palmen aseas 4(1) 78 79 so belegte thailand im country brand index 2008 in der sparte „value for money“ vor indien und mexiko den ersten platz und wurde als eine der erschwinglichsten destinationen der welt gewürdigt. die marketing-kampagne der tat für 2009 stand daraufhin unter dem motto ‚amazing thailand – amazing value‘ (vgl. tat, 2009). references allal, m. 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(1981). formal and informal tourism sectors: a case study in pattaya, thailand. annals of tourism research, 9(3), 429-451. wiego (women in informal employment: globalizing and organizing). (o.d.). about the informal economy. definitions and theories. zuletzt zugegriffen am 3. jänner 2011 auf die wiego homepage unter http://www.wiego.org/about_ie/definitionsandtheories.php. shaping southeast asia: tracing tourism imaginaries in shaping southeast asia: tracing tourism imaginaries in guidebooks and travel blogs felix magnus bergmeister ► bergmeister, f. m. (2015). shaping southeast asia: tracing tourism imaginaries in guidebooks and travel blogs. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 8(2), 203-208. tourism constitutes both an economic activity and a cultural force that involves a dynamic interplay between travelers and their ideas about the societies they visit. this paper traces the construction and negotiation of “tourism imaginaries” (salazar, 2012) in popular guidebooks and independent travel-blogs, critically examining questions of representation and power relations in a southeast asian context. employing critical discourse analysis, this paper investigates how particular southeast asian destinations are represented from a western perspective. whereas long-established commercial media such as guidebooks function mainly to communicate destination images to the reader, recent participatory media formats (e.g. travel-blogs) are more experienced-based and enable tourists to form ideas about foreign places in idiosyncratic ways. the preliminary insights of this study show that hegemonic narratives from guidebooks are rather reproduced than critically challenged and subverted in the examples under review. keywords: guidebooks; power; tourism and destination images; tourism imaginaries; travel-blogs  following crang (2014), tourism can be seen as “a very literal sort of geography” (p. 68). it writes the earth by inscribing meaning onto places via the communication of narratives, myths, and dreams that effectively construct the destinations tourists consume (crang, 2014, p. 68). at the heart of this semiotic process lie “tourism imaginaries”, which operate “as socially transmitted representational assemblages that interact with people’s personal imaginings and are used as meaning making and world shaping devices” (salazar, 2012, p. 864). from this perspective, tourism constitutes a powerful cultural force that involves practices of mediating and interpreting the world. likewise, it can provide a window into the cultural organization of societies and intercultural power differentials on a global scale (wilkes, 2013, p. 33-34). the present paper is part of an ongoing dissertation project, investigating the construction of destination images in popular guidebooks and independent travel-blogs and tracing matters of power and identity in a regional southeast asian context. the growing importance of tourist agency scarles and lester (2013) point out that tourism research has predominately investigated destination images as they are constructed through important media texts such as guidebooks and brochures (pp. 1-2). however, with the recent proforschungswerkstatt  research workshop w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 15 .2 -6 204 felix magnus bergmeister  aseas 8(2) liferation of new media, tourists are no longer confined to their role as passive media consumers but increasingly emerge as active agents with the potential to shape representations of places themselves (larsen, 2006, p. 79). travel blogs have gained importance in this regard as travelers frequently use them to share their holiday experiences with friends and the general public (chandralal, rindfleish, & valenzuela, 2015, p. 681). furthermore, blog entries reveal insights into travelers’ feelings and emotions and provide feedback on how tourists actually interpret a destination (banyai & glover, 2012, p. 268). accordingly, a more comprehensive understanding of destination images can be gained by comparatively investigating the joint knowledge mediation between professionally projected images and tourists’ reflexive accounts (bell, 2013, pp. 116-118). consequently, i adopt a research strategy that combines the analysis of top-down circulation of place narratives (e.g. in guidebooks) as well as tourist-bloggers’ capacities to negotiate sites via new media along the axis of interpretation and reproduction (e.g. in travel blogs). to investigate the potentially tension-ridden interplay between discourse, geography, and power, i apply critical discourse analysis (fairclough, 2003; khoshravinik, 2010; van djik, 1993) vis-à-vis said’s (1978) notion of orientalism as a conceptual framework for the discursive construction of regional inequalities. in that sense, power and lack of power are conceptualized as a function of access to discourse, so that particular social conditions can be legitimized through the communication of beliefs, ideologies, and ideas via systems of representation (van djik, 1993, p. 256). central to this process is the encoding of social macro-structures (e.g. ideologies of colonialism and western hegemony) into textual micro-structures by means of strategic linguistic choices. these strategies include the inor exclusion of actors in the text, the ways these actors and their actions are put into perspective, and the arguments that are used for or against them (khoshravinik, 2010, pp. 64-66). in brief, the goal of this study is to explore how particular destinations are represented in terms of difference and otherness, and to what extent the voice of the commercial guidebook coincides with or differs from the experience-based format of the independent travel blog. guidebooks and representational strategies lonely planet’s recent guidebook on southeast asia (the shoestring edition) includes a general qualification of the region as “friendly and intense, historic and devout” (williams et al., 2014, p. 6). besides, the guidebook features a full chapter on “people and culture”, which offers additional insights into the construction of the region for the tourists’ imagination. southeast asia is described as: a culturally rich region that encompasses most of the world’s religions with a tropical flair. colorful artistic traditions date back to the period of regional empires, when kings and sultans were cultural patrons. akin to the region’s personality, each country’s culture chest is generously shared with curious outsiders. (williams et al., 2014, p. 922) in this first quote, the reader is transmitted a message of “colorful artistic tradi205shaping southeast asia: tracing tourism imaginaries in guidebooks and travel blogs tions” that date back to a bygone period of regional empires, ruled by presumably generous kings. this heritage is said to continue to function as the main source of today’s cultural richness. furthermore, the passage supposes that it is these attractions that are happily shared with curious travelers – thanks to the region’s taken-forgranted friendly personality and attitude towards foreign visitors. besides this seductive framing of southeast asia, a somewhat different labeling can be observed in a second quote: “increasingly, though, the region is moving towards a more urban and industrial way of life. southeast asian cities, except for singapore, are studies in disorder and dysfunction, and are fascinating places for their faults” (williams et al., 2014, p. 933). as both extracts suggest, the guidebook structures parts of its representational strategy along the binary pairs ‘traditional vs. modern’ and ‘non-problematic vs. potentially problematic’. on the one hand, supposedly century-old manifestations of southeast asian culture are labeled as the region’s true authentic heritage and on the other hand, recent socio-economic developments such as urbanization and industrialization are dismissed as chaotic and dysfunctional. previous research has revealed that such a perspective is problematic as it implicitly precludes local agency and assumes a false dichotomy of an authentic past and a degenerate present (tegelberg, 2010, p. 500). as bhattacharya (1997) has shown in her influential analysis of lonely planet india, this narrative strategy of pitting ‘then vs. now’ gives a particular region the positive valence of escape from modernity. consequently, indigenous development is portrayed in the limelight of a negative attitude towards modernization (p. 383). any change in the relationship between the modern tourist and the other destination is thus implicitly assumed as inconvenient. since the western tourist is encouraged to escape progress towards pre-industrial authenticity, the destination must be discursively precluded from western-like development in order to continue to appear as the pre-modern tourist attraction that is portrayed in the guidebook. travel blogs, experience, and interpretation the following section demonstrates the potential of travel blogs for this study by means of a further example. as discussed above, travel blogs are gaining increasing importance as vehicles for sharing personal travel stories and they offer researchers the opportunity to better understand how individuals negotiate destinations. nevertheless, analyzing travel blogs poses a number of challenges. given that the goal of this study is not and cannot be an exhaustive reading of all available blog posts on southeast asia (travelblog.org lists 40,600 entries for thailand alone), i rather screen the material for topic-related blog entries by means of useful key words. in a first step, i will scrutinize lonely planet to identify topics and discourses that appear worth investigating (e.g. the above indicated ‘positive past vs. negative present’ dichotomy). in a second step, i search for travel blog entries that relate to these topics. these posts are then analyzed in-depth to better understand how individual tourists interpret their actual experience against the discursive background that my analysis of the guidebook suggests. the following blog entries have been selected from the website travelblog.org for an exemplary analysis. 206 felix magnus bergmeister  aseas 8(2) post 1: singapore is a good place to start a trip to asia. it’s asian without any chaos. there are many things i like and appreciate about singapore: the streets are clean. it is illegal to litter. english is the common language. (the castelloes, 2009) post 2: hanoi is one of the craziest cities i’ve ever been to. it's chaos and has a kind of grimy feel to it, but at the same time is totally endearing and pulls you in. (joey, 2013) post 3: ‘breathtaking’ is not an over statement when attempting to describe angkor wat. in fact there are not enough words to describe the gob-smacking magnificence of angkor wat & all its surrounding temples. when the french naturalist, henri mouhot, first discovered it in the mid 1800’s, after centuries of being hidden in the jungle, he described it as, “a temple that would rival solomon, erected by some ancient michelangelo. it is grander than anything left to us by greece or rome.” (shakespeare, 2014) arguably, much of lonely planet’s above discussed strategy of representing southeast asia as friendly, historic, culturally rich, and increasingly industrializing with some negative results can be traced in these three individual accounts. in the first entry, lonely planet is almost quoted verbatim when singapore is qualified as the ideal entry to southeast asia for the reason that it is asian without any chaos. this utterance is, however, problematic as it not only implies that chaos reigns in all other cities in the region, but also assumes that the city is the only economic center in southeast asia where industrialization and progress have brought about ‘a civilized’ way of life with a working legal system, clean streets, and english as a common language. this effectively equals civilization with a particular model of western lifestyle. notions of superiority towards other cultures can therefore be traced in this quote. the second post implicitly confirms the ideological stance of the first one. a different central city in southeast asia (hanoi) is visited by a traveler and qualified as crazy and chaotic with a grimy feel to it. interestingly, though, the author uses the conjunction “but” which functions to contrast the propositional content of the sentence-initial clause. as can be observed, the contrastive second clause operates as mitigation and balances out the harsh first statement with a possible reference to personal experience and interpretation. even though hanoi is described as the craziest city the author has ever seen, actual experience may have induced the person to alter the message and describe the city in positive and even affectionate terms. as such, the short extract is more open to alternative interpretation than the first one and might therefore point towards a more inclusive strategy of negotiating the self vis-à-vis the other. thirdly, angkor wat is described by using the terms “breathtaking” and “gobsmacking magnificence”. this rhetoric of admiration is intra-textually confirmed by a reference to an extra-textual voice: the french naturalist, henri mouhot. notably, the account of a colonial explorer is used in a post-colonial context and country to serve as a reference point for the description of a superb edifice that was erected in pre-colonial times. the double loop of logical implication that underlies the text re207shaping southeast asia: tracing tourism imaginaries in guidebooks and travel blogs quires critical examination: firstly, mouhot’s account of “a temple that would rival solomon, erected by some ancient michelangelo [and which] is grander than anything left to us by greece or rome” establishes an implicit link between mythology, the great empires of the ancient world, and european art of the first rank. the temples erected by the khmer are thus symbolically incorporated into the ‘great’ tradition of european achievement. secondly, mouhot is credited for discovering angkor “after centuries of being hidden in the jungle”. this rhetoric of discovery implies both enduring local decline and the power of colonial conquest to bring to light an architectural greatness that might have been lost forever, so that the temples symbolize the dangers of decadence and thus justify france’s moral responsibility in indochina (edwards, 2007, p. 20). taking this into account, the blog reader receives the implicit message that angkor’s now preserved grandiosity still draws heavily from european discovery and western power of representation. in addition, the absence of local voices in favor of a colonial persona suggests that a supposedly more authentic and reliable past is given greater valence than the present. arguably, the comparative reading of the examples introduced above point at representational strategies informed by a western discourse, claiming superiority over representation and cultural judgment. the blog entries under investigation perpetuate rather than subvert the power differential between self and other by assigning positive valence to a bygone colonial past and/or western way of life. as these brief examples shall demonstrate, critical discourse analysis makes it possible to draw a connection between tourist texts as social practices and the underlying ideologies by which they might be informed. as a consequence, subsequent research will have to identify further representational strategies and discursive topics in the guidebooks and investigate whether they are sustained or challenged in the blogs. my forthcoming dissertation project will thus identify further representational strategies and discursive topics in the guidebooks and investigate whether they are sustained or challenged in the blogs.  references banyai, m., & glover, t. d. (2012). evaluating research methods on travel blogs. journal of travel research, 51(3), 267-277. bhattacharya, d. (1997). mediating india: an analysis of a guidebook. annals of tourism research, 24(2), 373-374. bell, k. (2013). a comparative analysis of the projected and perceived images of gloucester. in c. scarles, & j. a. lester (eds.), mediating the tourist experience: from brochures to virtual encounters (pp. 105-122). surrey, uk: ashgate. chandralal l., rindfleish, j., & valenzuela, f. (2015). an application of travel blog narratives to explore memorable tourism experiences. asia pacific journal of tourism research, 20(6), 680-693. crang, m. (2014). cultural geographies of tourism. in a. lew & a. william (eds.), the wiley blackwell companion to tourism (pp. 66-77). chichester, uk: wiley blackwell. edwards, p. (2007). cambodge: the cultivation of a nation, 1860–1945. honolulu, hi: university of hawai’i press. fairclough, n. (2003). analysing discourse: textual analysis for social research. london, uk: routledge. 208 felix magnus bergmeister  aseas 8(2) joey (2013). hanoi is one. published 25 february 2013. retrieved from https://www.travelblog.org/asia/ vietnam/blog-772871.html khoshravinik, m. (2010). actor description, action attributions, and argumentation: towards a systematization of cda analytical categories in the representation of social groups. critical discourse studies, 7(1), 55-72. larsen, j. (2006). picturing bornholm: producing and consuming a tourist place through picturing practices. scandinavian journal of hospitality, 6(2), 75-94. said, e. (1978). orientalism. london, uk: routledge. salazar, n. (2012). tourism imaginaries: a conceptual approach. annals of tourism research, 39(2), 863-882. scarles, c. & lester, j. a. (2013). mediating the tourist experience: from brochures to virtual encounters. in c. scarles & j. a. lester (eds.), mediating the tourist experience: from brochures to virtual encounters (pp.  1-12). burlington, uk: ashgate. shakespeare, k. (2014). ‘breathtaking’ is not. published 18 july 2014. retrieved from https://www.travelblog. org/asia/cambodia/north/siem-reap/blog-850099.html tegelberg, m. (2010). hidden sights: tourism, representation and lonely planet cambodia. international journal of cultural studies, 13, 491-509. the castelloes (2009). in singapore, day 3. published 23 august 2009. retrieved from https://www.travelblog.org/asia/singapore/blog-430379.html van dijk, t. a. (1993). principles of critical discourse analysis. discourse & society, 4(2), 249-283. wilkes, k. (2013). from the landscape to the white female body: representations of postcolonial luxury in contemporary tourism visual texts. in c. scarles & j. a. lester (eds.), mediating the tourist experience: from brochures to virtual encounters (pp. 33-56). burlington, uk: ashgate. williams, c., bloom, g., brash, c., butler, s., low, s., richmond, s. & waters, r. (2014). lonely planet: southeast asia on a shoestring. oakland, ca: lonely planet. about the author felix magnus bergmeister studied geography and economic education combined with english at the university of vienna. he is currently phd candidate at the department of geography and regional research and a lecturer at the english department, university of vienna. his research interests include southeast asia, cultural studies, media studies, and critical development studies. ► contact: felix.magnus.bergmeister@univie.ac.at returning to the kampung halaman: limitations of cosmopolitan transnational aspirations among hakka chinese indonesians overseas emily hertzman ► hertzman, e. (2014). returning to the kampung halaman: limitations of cosmopolitan transnational aspirations among hakka chinese indonesians overseas. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 7(2), 147-164. migrants originating from singkawang, west kalimantan, indonesia, experience limitations in their ability to engage in host societies overseas despite their hopes and fantasies of becoming cosmopolitan transnational citizens. marginality, stemming from the lower status associated with being a migrant, as well as forms of parochialism which hinder the ability to adopt a flexible attitude to cultural difference combine and lead to a significant reimagining of those original cosmopolitan fantasies. essentializing characterizations of “us” versus “them” reveal some of the difficulties of being received in other societies and come to constitute a recuperative discourse in which migrants can preserve a sense of self – as hakka chinese indonesians – when the value of that identity is called into question. in this context, migrants experience practical limitations in translating cosmopolitan fantasies into lived realities. as a response, a romantic nostalgia for the home is constructed, which in turn provides the imaginative resources used for planning a return to the kampung halaman (indonesian: home/home town). keywords: chinese indonesians; cosmopolitanism; home; marginality; migration  trotz ihrer hoffnungen und wunschvorstellungen, transnationale weltbürgerinnen zu werden, stoßen migrantinnen aus singkawang, west kalimantan, indonesien, an die grenzen ihrer fähigkeiten, beim versuch an aufnahmegesellschaften im ausland teilzunehmen. marginalität, die auf dem niedrigen status beruht, der oft mit migrantinnen assoziiert wird, wird mit formen von provinzialismus kombiniert, die das einnehmen einer flexiblen einstellung zu kulturellen unterschieden verhindern und führt zu einer bedeutenden neuorientierung der ursprünglichen wunschvorstellungen. essentialistische darstellungen von „uns“ gegenüber „den anderen“ offenbaren manche der schwierigkeiten, in anderen gesellschaften aufgenommen zu werden, und bezeichnen einen diskurs, in dem migrantinnen das eigene „ich“ bewahren können – als indonesierinnen hakka-chinesischer abstammung –, wenn der wert dieser identität in frage gestellt wird. in diesem kontext erfahren migrantinnen praktische grenzen der möglichkeiten, ihre kosmopolitischen wunschvorstellungen in eine gelebte realität umzusetzen. daraufhin konstruieren sie eine romantische sehnsucht nach der heimat, die wiederum das vorstellungsvermögen für die planung der heimkehr zum kampung halaman (indonesisch: heimat/heimatort) unterstützt. schlagworte: heimat; indonesierinnen chinesischer herkunft; kosmopolitismus; marginalität; migration aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 14 .2 -2 148 emily hertzman  aseas 7(2) introduction hakka chinese indonesians from singkawang, west kalimantan, indonesia, move abroad on a large scale for working, studying, and marrying. many migrants travel with the ambition of eventually attaining a kind of cosmopolitan transnational citizenship exemplified by members of a different class of elite chinese business people, who act as imaginative role models for young people. these ambitions, despite being vague and seldom supported by financial, educational, social, or logistical backing, nevertheless constitute a powerful motivation for migration. evidence from long-term, multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork reveals that when these migrants go overseas (to taiwan, singapore, hong kong, malaysia, or south korea, to name a few destinations), they are treated as various kinds of others: as hakka, as indonesians, as southeast asians, as poor, as rural, or simply as migrants.1 these labels carry lower status vis-à-vis other groups in the host societies and this negative evaluation occurs despite the fact that these migrants ostensibly share some aspects of the same ethnicity (chinese) as sizeable parts of these overseas populations. ambivalent reception abroad impacts migrants’ senses of self and compounds other existing limitations they face engaging within the new societies. initially surprised at feeling alienated, migrants’ hopes of actualizing their aspirations of becoming adaptable transnational citizens become significantly undermined. as a response to the less than favorable reception overseas, migrants begin to construct essentialized characterizations of host populations, which rely heavily on stereotypes (i.e. singaporeans are arrogant, mainland chinese are rude, japanese are authoritarian). such characterizations are inherently comparative, revealing how the migrants have come to imagine themselves in relation to others. aspects of both migrants’ ambivalent status overseas and their own essentialized portrayals of locals index, among other things, socio-economic differences and dialect group antagonism. in the end, migrants’ social marginalization leads to a particular kind of self-portrayal emphasizing the uniqueness, goodness, and integrity of hakka chinese indonesian culture from singkawang. this paper considers the impact of these “us”-versus“them” constructs on the self-perception of singkawang chinese, and how this selfperception contributes to the schism between hopes and fantasies for transnational engagement, on the one hand, and the vagaries and realities of living overseas, on the other. 1 this study is based on long-term, multi-sited, ethnographic fieldwork conducted primarily in singkawang, indonesia, with shorter research trips to hong kong, malaysia, and taiwan, between 2010 and 2013. the findings are based on in-depth interviews with 60 migrants, combined with a broader range of ethnographic data gathered through informal conversations with friends and family members of migrants as well as participant observation in the field. 149returning to the kampung halaman singkawang singkawang is a small city in west kalimantan, which is unique in indonesia as the only city with a majority chinese indonesian2 population.3 hakka, a chinese dialect, is the main language of the market place and the former mayor, hassan karman, was the first ethnically chinese mayor elected in indonesia. the chinese community traces its origins back to multiple groups of overseas chinese migrants (coolie laborers and pioneers), who came to borneo from the southeastern coastal provinces of china to mine for gold beginning in the 1740s (heidhues, 2003; yuan, 2000). the first generation of these laborers married local indigenous women who adopted their husbands’ language, patrilineal and patrilocal family structure, and religious practices, which created subsequent generations that came to constitute the local chinese community (heidhues, 2003). traders, merchants, and entrepreneurs arrived in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries further diversifying the community socially, economically, and linguistically (heidhues, 2003). until today, the chinese population consists primarily of working class and lower middle class petty merchants, famers, and primary producers, a profile that contributes to both migration practices and cosmopolitan imaginings. located three hours by road from the busier provincial capital, singkawang remains peripheral; lacking a functioning port, airport, or a university it has limited economic prospects. many houses are not connected to water and electricity out2 my usage of the term ‘chinese indonesians’ requires clarification, as there are considerable variations not only in scholarly approaches to ethnicity, but also in the criteria by which people identify themselves and are identified as chinese indonesians by others in different areas of indonesia. in singkawang, those people whom i shall refer to as chinese typically and regularly identify their ethnicity or ‘tribal-national affiliation’ (indonesian: etnis, suku-bangsa) as chinese (tionghoa, cina); they trace their lineage and genealogical descent (keturunan), whether by blood or by marriage, to immigrants originally from china; they observe customs and kinship patterns (adat) that they trace to these immigrants; and they predominantly speak hakka (bahasa khek) as their first language. the fact that chinese indonesians in singkawang identify their ethnicity, customs, kinship patterns, and language as not simply “indonesian” does not in itself differentiate them from other indonesians as a majority of indonesians speak a first language other than the national language and observe ethnic customs that are more specifically identified with a sub-ethnic group (e.g. malay, dayak, madura, sunda, batak). in indonesia and particularly in the academic literature about chinese indonesians, there has been a tendency to think and talk in terms of two groups, peranakan versus tokok, the former being more assimilated and hybridized with indonesian regional languages and cultures and the latter maintaining chinese language and cultural traditions to a greater extent. i have decided not to use these terms because they are inaccurate in the case of singkawang where individuals display characteristics of both processes of long-term, multi-generational assimilation and acculturation into indonesian society, as well as persistence and preservation of chinese language and traditions. degrees of assimilation, acculturation, hybridization, as well as cultural perpetuation and persistence are not accurately captured by these two identifiers; to use such terms reifies groups and suggests internal homogeneity, where in fact great individual variety exists. it is now increasingly possible, since reformasi, for individuals as well as communities, to reorient themselves towards china, or chinese cultural identifications, via processes that greatly complicate the idea and reality of peranakan and tokok communities. an important example is the recent trend for youth from peranakan families in java to study mandarin after decades of prohibition and despite the fact that perhaps multiple generations in their family had long since stopped using mandarin and other chinese dialects. 3 while the official census does not aggregate the population by ethnicity, estimates based on religious affiliation suggest that the chinese population is approximately 42 percent of roughly 200,000. the former mayor, hassan karmen, in an interview with the author, claims the percentage is over 62 percent and media reports sometimes claim it is as high as 72 percent. 150 emily hertzman  aseas 7(2) ages; water shortages are a common, almost daily occurrence. singkawang is a city of shophouses where people from the surrounding rural areas can buy clothing, furniture, household goods, food, and building materials. however, with little productionbased economy, and profits from agricultural and forest products benefiting only a small portion of the population (particularly those who have moved to jakarta), many people are compelled to go overseas for employment and higher education. there is also a perception on the part of the chinese community in singkawang (which is often not shared by members of other ethnic groups) that the local economy is not “busy enough” (indonesian: tidak cukup ramai/kurang ramai) to be able to quickly save money to start one’s own business. migrants from singkawang several different kinds of migrations collectively comprise the chinese mobility complex of singkawang. there are international students studying primarily in malaysia, taiwan, singapore, china, australia, england, and the united states. there are low-wage laborers in taiwan, japan, korea, and hong kong, and there are cross-border brides in hong kong and taiwan (and to a much lesser extent malaysia). there is also considerable temporary and permanent migration to jakarta and other parts of java. these three groups of international migrants – students, workers, and brides – (which are not discrete, but frequently overlapping), form the basis of this research. however, there are other individuals involved in international trade, multinational temple networks, and tourism, whose perceptions of “us” and “them” both at home and away also influence the imaginaries of aspiring migrants.4 in singkawang, there is widespread desire to be wealthy and successful through one’s own business pursuits. to be able to chart a path through the multiple challenges that constitute indonesia’s struggling economic reality is a commendable achievement, and a frequently recurring subject of city dwellers’ ‘talk’. the dream of prosperity is by no means limited to hakka chinese from singkawang. in a study of migrant workers in batam, johan lindquist (2009) observes that achieving middle-class status, defined by material wealth and consumerism, has become a broad, nation-wide goal, transcending ethnic groups. however, for singkawang chinese, one of the ideal routes of attaining this middle-class goal is to become one’s own boss, as opposed to applying for a government sector job, developing a professional career, or working as a wage earner for someone else.5 4 this paper is a subset of a larger dissertation research project, which studied multiple dimensions of mobility within the hakka chinese indonesian community of singkawang, west kalimantan, indonesia. this paper will focus primarily on the experiences of temporary labor migrants and overseas students. while marriage migrants constitute a large subset of the research project, aspects of their experiences differ significantly from those of these other types of migrants and are best analyzed separately. 5 in singkawang (as elsewhere in indonesia), there are relatively few ethnically chinese people working in the civil service. this fact reflects a long-standing discriminatory policy as well as sociological patterns that have been handed down over generations. increasingly, chinese are involved in local politics, but mainly as publically elected officials, rather than as civil servants. throughout indonesia, there are countless numbers of chinese indonesians working as professionals and as wage earners for others. however, in singkawang, the goal of becoming one’s own boss is particularly common as comparison with the working goals of members of other ethnic groups. 151returning to the kampung halaman periodically throughout indonesia’s history, the chinese have been restricted and excluded from professional and government sector jobs, favored and limited to business, managerial and middlemen type roles, particularly under the dutch colonial regime and then during the post-independence, nationalist governments, including suharto’s new order (fasseur, 1994; reid & alilunas-rodgers, 2001; suryadinata, 2004). colonial, nationalist, and suharto era politics and policies have left a powerful legacy (fasseur, 1994), which continues to play out in the present through a longstanding tendency among ethnic chinese to mistrust government institutions. this mistrust combines with ideas, passed down over generations, about the inherent values of business ownership, and being able to become one’s own boss. business ownership, as an ideal, is evident in people’s aspirations, in the ways they talk about famous indonesian businessmen, particularly liem sioe liong, and phang jun phen.6 these tycoons are people who have been able to translate their financial success into cosmopolitan lifestyles that have all the material and social forms of prestige entailed and required by such status, including multiple passports,7 a transnational business network, and children studying overseas. at the local and national level, people who have become financially independent based on their own business pursuits are looked up to; they are considered heroes and morally upright community leaders (indonesian: tokoh). they are appreciated for their success, materialized in the form of houses, cars, and businesses, and praised for their burgeoning symbols of cosmopolitanism, such as trips abroad, knowledge of foreign languages, and philanthropic activities. people like to know these individuals, cultivate connections with them, and emulate their behavior, in the hopes of also becoming successful. the desire to become one’s own boss is further reinforced in stories, songs, films, and reflected in widely known idiomatic expressions including “se se sen li cang co kong” (hakka: “even the smallest business is better than working for somebody else”). this aspiration is perpetuated by the plans, hopes, behaviors, and choices of relatives, friends, and neighbors in singkawang, to the extent that nearly all people pursue the same goal of business ownership. this is a socio-cultural pattern that is well documented (carney & dieleman, 2008; mcvey, 1992; weidenbaum, 1996) and it is also the result of businesses being owned and operated by families and passed down to children and grandchildren. small trade shophouse-type businesses are a common inheritance, including the physical space, business partners, and networks, and the skills and experience needed to run a business. 6 liem sioe liong (indonesian name: sudono salim) was a businessman and capitalist. before his death this year, he was one of the richest chinese indonesians and one of the richest southeast asians in the world. he started life in a small town in fujian province in china, the son of a farmer and later he immigrated to indonesia and became involved in the clove trade. he eventually formed the salim group, one of the largest holding companies in indonesia. similarly, phang jun phen (indonesian name: prajogo pangestu) is a successful chinese indonesian businessman. he was a timber tycoon, who owned the barito pacific group, which sold timber from kalimantan during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. he is a hakka chinese indonesian from a poor family in bengkayang, west kalimantan. 7 indonesia does not permit citizens to hold more than one passport, which limits people’s possibilities of becoming transnational actors. however, attaining permanent residency overseas, while maintaining an indonesian passport, is highly sought-after. 152 emily hertzman  aseas 7(2) however, singkawang’s shophouse, trade-based economy is saturated and people find it increasingly difficult to actualize their aspirations to be successful local business people. the town faces economic involution, not involution indicative of economic growth, but rather suggesting stagnation of the economy. more and more similar types of businesses start, but without the same rate of consumer growth, fueling competition, which forces the bottom line down and diminishes profits. new shops often close shortly after opening due to economic unviability. population growth in the 1970s and 1980s also put pressure on families, as family businesses could no longer support all members of the subsequent generations. the town’s economic saturation and stagnation is widely and frequently discussed, to the extent that young people readily articulate their confusion (indonesian: pusing/bingung; hakka: an fun/ an hin) about what sorts of businesses might be viable, even if they had start-up capital to invest. it is in this context that going overseas has emerged as a major alternative to staying in singkawang and foreign countries are idealized as places of plenty, bountiful in terms of wages, opportunities, and connections. going overseas has several different motivations, mostly related to the ultimate goal of becoming one’s own boss either locally, nationally, or transnationally, and each of these goals comes with its own set of imaginations of cosmopolitan transnational citizenship and involves taking a different route. first, people work overseas in order to save money so they can return and start a business (despite the prevailing confusion about what businesses might be viable.) second, people study abroad (while also working part-time) hoping to enter into a different labor market, or be able to enter into a more professional work force overseas. such individuals usually choose to study accounting, economics, finance, commerce, and business management, as well as english and mandarin, which are courses of study that they imagine can be translated into careers in international centers of business and finance like hong kong, singapore, and new york. third, people go overseas to make connections, which they hope will lead to opportunities later. thus, young people actively try to be taken under the guidance of an uncle, a wealthier or more successful friend, relative or established boss knowing that, in the short term, this will provide an income and work experience, and, more importantly, in the long term, could provide the capital and connections needed to become one’s own boss in the same or an adjacent industry, or in a transnational part of an existing business. it is primarily individuals from families of the property-owning class (who can afford to attend foreign universities) who explicitly entertain the idea of translating their (often newly acquired) prosperity into forms of cosmopolitan transnational citizenship. however, it would be wrong to assume that it is only members of that class who do so. labor migrants also fantasize about how their work experiences overseas may lead to richer, more glamorous, worldly, and prosperous lives. this resembles what appadurai theorizes as ‘cosmopolitanism from below’, or “the urge to expand one’s current horizons of self and cultural identity and a wish to connect with a wider world … a variety of cosmopolitanism that begins close to home and builds on the practices of the local, the everyday and the familiar” (appadurai, 2011). 153returning to the kampung halaman cosmopolitan dreams susanto lives with his sister in a two-story shophouse. by day, they work in the family bakery downstairs, and by night, they sleep together in a single bedroom upstairs. the bakery is small, but busy and well located in the center of the city and although susanto’s parents only received an elementary school education, they have managed to send both him and his sister to university in malaysia. the first time i met susanto, he was 17 years old and about to graduate from high school. i asked him what he wanted to do after graduation and whether he would take over the family business. he replied quickly and confidently, “i plan to be an international businessman. i will not continue to run the bakery. i want my own business, with branches in many countries around the world. i want to live in a mansion and drive a mercedes”, he announced. “what will this business be”, i asked him. “do you have any ideas yet?” “no, not yet”, he replied. “i have to go to business school first.” it is now two years later and susanto is studying business management overseas. he speaks fluent english, mandarin, indonesian, and hakka and aspires to learn even more languages. he is of a small minority of young people from families slightly wealthier than the average. however, his tuition and expenses abroad place a significant financial strain on the family, and susanto’s living arrangement in malaysia is substantially less luxurious than he originally imagined. whereas he thought that he would be able to rent a single detached two-story house in the city and live with a group of friends who would each drive their own car to school, the reality is significantly different. when i met him in kuala lumpur, he was sharing a small single room with only one bed with another male student from indonesia in a shared apartment near the campus. he could not afford to eat in the modern food courts boasting western foods, but instead was limited to ‘economy rice’ to keep to his daily budget. the subject of susanto’s fantasy is an international businessman made in the image of an elite overseas chinese transnational akin to the kind of subjects that aihwa ong and others have studied (ley, 2010; ong, 1999; ong & nonini, 1997). this is a wealthy, well-connected cosmopolitan, who is adorned with symbols that both constitute and communicate that identity: a transnational business network, multiple houses in multiple countries, multiple passports, luxury cars, rolex watches, expensive brand-name clothing and jewelry, hobbies, and philanthropic pursuits. while it is not difficult to understand the allure of the socio-economic status of this kind of individual, particularly for poorer, or lower middle-class individuals, the fantasy does not consist merely of the material conditions of wealth alone; there are also several immaterial qualities involved in this fantasy, which have a role in people’s imaginings and aspirations, things which guide, more than other factors, the trajectories of their lives and motivate new forms of mobility. material symbols of wealth and status are alluring and powerful because of the kinds of social and cultural capital that go along with them, and make them possible (strassler, 2008); being able to travel, being accepted and taken seriously in contexts that are not one’s home, being able to negotiate multiple levels and kinds of difference with ease, and being able to transcend that which is local. these are qualities that scholars such as hannerz (1990) identify in theorizations of cosmopolitanism. 154 emily hertzman  aseas 7(2) hannerz (1990) portrays the cosmopolitan as a figure who is flexible, and adaptable, open to a plurality of cultures and demonstrates a willingness to engage in new and multiple cultural forms. likewise, appadurai explains that cosmopolitanism contains “a certain cultivated knowledge of the world beyond one’s immediate horizons … the product of deliberate activities associated with literacy, the freedom to travel, and the luxury of expanding the boundaries of one’s own self by expanding its experiences” (appadurai, 2011). salzar (2010) shows how people can use knowledge of the world beyond indonesia to cultivate cosmopolitan selves without even traveling abroad, an observation which illustrates the role of the imagination (appadurai, 1996) in accumulating symbolic capital. hakka from singkawang, despite forms of marginality in indonesia, are nonetheless powerfully influenced by images and ideas of cosmopolitanism circulating in the media. overseas chinese transnationalism, of the sort exemplified by studies of hong kong business elites (ley, 2010; ong, 1997) as well as the image of ‘rising china’ have implications for chinese communities overseas, including singkawang, where by “imagining oneself as part of a globally significant, transnational chinese diasporic community” (dawis, 2009, p. 35) one can find, or at least imagine, a kind of symbolic inclusion (ang, 2001) and/or a form of cosmopolitanism that may be lacking at home. in these images and imaginings, people also find a model for the kinds of economic and professional success, as well as lifestyles that constitute the middle-class dream life (lindquist, 2009). individuals actively pay attention to and position themselves in relation to these images and ideas about rising china and overseas chinese transnationalism as part of their identification practices (dawis, 2009). however, when people from singkawang try to transform these imaginings into realities, when they attempt to self-make themselves into the kind of successful transnational subjects of their fantasies, a disconnect appears between what is imaginatively possible and what is practically possible given their idiosyncratic social, cultural, economic, and geographical location. what emerges from this disconnect is a complicated set of behaviors, experiences, and adaptations that account for the realities of people’s lives and not simply their imaginings. fantasies of becoming elite cosmopolitan transnational subjects are practically limited by an inability to develop the flexibility and willingness to engage with a plurality of cultures. partially, this inflexibility is a response to conditions of marginality overseas and partially, it stems from inherent limitations and lack of experience. as i will show below, the lack of willingness to develop the flexibility needed to engage in new societies is best viewed as a coping strategy that helps to deal with cultural difference and allows individuals to preserve a sense of self and self-worth under conditions in which that worth is called into question by majority/minority politics. the practice of making judgments, both negative and positive, is also a way of performing one’s discernibility. food once overseas, and upon returning, imaginings about the allure of foreign places have started to transform into complaints, dislikes, and ambivalences. one of the main ways this is expressed is through appraisals of food. singkawang people com155returning to the kampung halaman miserate together by talking about food and the difficulty of finding food to suit their tastes overseas. they miss food from home and talk incessantly about the unique flavors and ingredients from singkawang. a desire for food from home is an axiomatic experience among migrants internationally and has resulted in networks of restaurants, shops, and super markets catering to the tastes of specific ethnic communities (quayson & daswani 2013). what is striking, in this case, is the fact that people describe the food overseas not only as not delicious, but that, in fact, it cannot be eaten (hakka: sit ng gan). talk about food reveals both implicit and explicit comparisons between “us” and “them”. whereas our food is delicious (and, therefore, superior), their food is difficult to eat (and, therefore, suspect). the difficulty to find suitable food both contributes to and can be seen as a manifestation of other kinds of barriers to engaging with and integrating in new societies. alang is a middle-aged mother of four children. she is energetic, independent, and loves to travel and she has been on tours to europe, asia, and america. she and her husband have prospered economically in singkawang via several entrepreneurial pursuits, including a garage, land speculation, bird’s nest cultivation, and stock investments. they live in the center of the city, own a large house and a car and have enough money to send their children overseas to australia and singapore to study. alang prides herself on having exotic foreign things such as red wine bought in france and cheese bought in the netherlands. however, despite owning these, she has not developed a taste for them nor does she want to. they are simply symbols of her burgeoning cosmopolitanism. i had the opportunity to meet up with alang in taipei, while she was visiting a relative. we walked around for hours visiting tourist sites, shopping, and gossiping about singkawang. when it was time to find dinner, i took her to a popular night market, where she and her relative began a lengthy process of inspecting all of the food options, sizing up each restaurant and food stall, peering into the dining rooms, scrutinizing what others were eating, and glancing at the mandarin menu (which was mostly incomprehensible to them). in an attempt to broker the exchange, i suggested a busy medium-priced restaurant with indoor seating and a wide selection of standard chinese fare. they agreed and judiciously ordered steamed dumplings, rice, soup, and vegetables. when the dumplings arrived, alang’s face lit up with a smile, but after she took her first bite, it looked as if she might spit it out. she chewed and swallowed but said nothing, then gobbled up her rice and picked at a few vegetables, mostly moving them around on the plate until others finished eating. claiming not to be hungry, they got up and started to leave, with at least half the food still on the table. alang cut her trip in taipei short because of the difficulty of finding food that she could eat. she struggled to communicate what she wanted to order in restaurants because of her broken mandarin and she was visibly disturbed at how different the reality of the cuisine was compared to her expectations. seeking recognition and verification from me, we talked constantly about how much better the food is in singkawang than in taiwan. now, two years later, she is planning a trip to canada and has asked me repeatedly whether or not she will be able to find rice once she arrives. lily is 42 years old, a high school graduate who worked in an insurance company before entering local politics. now she makes fairly frequent overseas work trips to places like 156 emily hertzman  aseas 7(2) taiwan, hong kong, and australia. she is a well-known, well-connected individual with significant political aspirations and she considers herself an adaptable person who can move between various circles of people. i asked lily to tell me about her overseas travel experiences. in response, she asked me whether i liked to eat bread dipped in olive oil. i said i did and she shook her head and grimaced in response. she told me about her recent trip to italy and said that she absolutely cannot eat that bread dipped in olive oil and vinegar. she said it was very difficult to find food (read: rice). that was the only thing she told me about italy as well as her other overseas travels. food may seem trivial, or obvious, but food preferences and attitudes communicate a lot about people’s experiences overseas and are directly implicated in the processes of developing cosmopolitan sensibilities.8 food is intimately connected to the affective dimensions of belonging, memory, and nostalgia (mannur, 2007; mintz & du bois, 2002; raman, 2011), despite the fact that anthropologists are still working to pin down the precise mechanisms through which food and belonging become so intricately bound. jon holtzman (2006) wants to know how “real or perceived resilience in foodways speak to understandings of the present and imaginings of the future”, particularly in relation to concepts of the past (p. 363). for studies of migration, this important question must be extended across transnational space in order to shed light on how food mediates migrants’ senses of belonging in multiple locations. mannur (2007), for example, explores this theme by explaining how identity politics of indian american immigrants gets expressed through nostalgia for imagined culinary pasts that are linked to national and ethnic identities. according to her, culinary concerns, which were initially of little importance, take on greater significance in new host societies as food and food memories allow individuals to imaginatively recreate connections to their former homes and pasts. according to saunders (2007), “eating and talking about eating are both communicative acts … creating new understandings of the ways in which food shapes those who eat it” (p. 204). narratives about food can be used to create a sense of community, both real and imagined, even across transnational space (saunders, 2007). communication and practices related to food and eating are also ways to mark distinctions between groups of people along lines of class, ethnicity, and other forms of identity. talking about food (in the form of complaints about foods overseas and praises for foods from home) with other people from singkawang is a form of communication that strengthens their group identity. for hakka from singkawang overseas, the logistic of getting food that one likes is difficult for some migrants, because of language, cost, and taste barriers. people have a limited budget for food and face challenges when trying to order food in foreign languages (english, mandarin, cantonese, korean, etc.). this generates, often repeated, disappointment, which leads to cooking at home, or only eating in the cafeterias of the factories where they work or the schools where they study, that is, generally not venturing far from these familiar locations. in this context, a discourse about the superiority of the food from home is developed and acts as something of a cipher for the 8 for an interesting analysis of the ways that jewish american immigrants use eating chinese food as both an ethnic identity marker and as a sign of cosmopolitanism, see liu (2010). 157returning to the kampung halaman experiences of the migrants abroad. this discourse is also common in singkawang as people regularly perform their ability to make extremely subtle distinctions between foods, thereby demonstrating their discerning tastes. ubiquitous complaints about foods overseas also reveal people’s inadaptable palate, and their inability to develop the flexibility needed to consume new things, a major part of becoming cosmopolitan and transnational. images of elite businessmen talking on cellular phones, dining on gourmet food in executive airport lounges enroute from one country to another underline the following personal traits: mobile, flexible, confident, they are at home anywhere in the world. not liking new foods, and not being able or willing to cultivate a taste for new foods, constitutes one of the front lines where people must come to terms with the practical limits of their ability (and, subsequently, their desire) to actualize their transnational fantasies. surprisingly, these issues surrounding food play a major role in influencing the decision to return to singkawang, the kampung halaman, and the ability to find food that one likes, or to develop a taste for the food away from home becomes a marker of bourgeoning cosmopolitanism. for those who can cultivate flexible tastes, this ability becomes a hallmark of their success in living and integrating into the host society in multi-dimensional ways; these more adaptable migrants become important culture brokers for others who have just arrived. for those who stay overseas for long periods of time but remain limited in their ability to develop a palate for local food, there are now small companies, as well as networks of friends and relatively on-hand ready-tomail food from singkawang to other places in indonesia and overseas.9 marginality overseas temporary overseas labor migration is currently the largest form of migration from singkawang and has some unique characteristics. most hakka migrants do not join official government-administered tki/tkw (tenaga kerja indonesia/tenaga kerja wanita – indonesian workforce/female indonesian workforce) programs, which send workers overseas via legally sanctioned schemes involving agents, fees, visas, training programs, wage deduction, and remittance plans. instead, they travel independently of government involvement, using packaged tours sold by hakka agents in singkawang and jakarta, which are specifically designed as routes for labor migrants to enter foreign countries with the intention of forfeiting the return ticket and staying on to work illegally (indonesian: gelap (dark) or tidak resmi (not official); hakka: si theu si het (expired visa)). these migrants work in low-level labor market jobs in the service sector, construction, and factory production. unlike indonesia’s largely female official overseas workforce, chinese from singkawang almost never work as domestic cleaners and nannies. instead they use networks of friends, rela9 in hong kong and taiwan, there are special indonesian food stores, some of which have buffet-style dining areas. some of these stores are run by people from singkawang, or west kalimantan, and carry or make the singkawang foods, which migrants overseas most crave, including wheat noodles with pork (hakka: jam mian), fried rice noodles (indonesian: kwe tiau goreng; hakka: chau pan), as well as snacks such as durian candy (indonesian: durian dodol). fermented fish paste, fish sauce, different kinds of curries and sambals as well as pork meat and pork fat are more likely to be sent directly to individuals by relatives, or friends using special remittance parcel services that link singkawang with popular destinations overseas. 158 emily hertzman  aseas 7(2) tives, and fellow city folk already in those host countries to help them find jobs, lowcost living arrangements, food, recreation, and remittance agents. many people leave singkawang empty-handed10 (indonesian: tangan kosong; hakka: khung siu) and are only ‘brave enough’ (indonesian: berani) to return once they have become successful (indonesian: sudah sukses), meaning once enough capital has been saved to invest in a small business in singkawang or jakarta. living overseas as illegal migrant workers means having a pariah status, which limits people’s daily engagements and mobility. people are afraid of being discovered by the police, or being asked to show identity cards, or being at the mercy of employers who sometimes withhold their wages or passports, or being required to communicate in a foreign language. the experience of living under these conditions and migrants’ economic marginality powerfully shape the daily activities that are considered possible and not possible. their economic and social limitations (a subject which has been well investigated in the literature on migrants and migration),11 however, are not the only source of disappointment. there is also the problem of not having one’s ethnic and national identity recognized or recognized accurately12 in the new society. this was a recurring theme among the migrants that participated in this study. ajung is the father of four children and has a computer servicing business in singkawang. he lives in a small house on the outskirts of the city, with his wife, children, and his father-in-law. he is an avid gardener and likes to go fishing regularly. at the age of 18, he went to work illegally in korea. this was directly after the anti-chinese riots in indonesia, in may 1998. he travelled to korea with a tour group from china and worked in different factories for two years, before moving to taiwan and working illegally for another three years. he said it was easy to get a job and easy to make money there but korea was very cold, language was always a barrier, and he never went out, even when he was invited. he only thought about saving money and he did not want to be caught by the police. ajung’s journey was directly linked to the economic and political situation in indonesia at the time of reformasi13 and his desire to save money to return to indonesia to start his own business. during our interview, he succinctly articulated a common frustration that hakka migrants experience: “in indonesia, there are problems from islam and from malays. they 10 migrants often borrow money from family members in order to pay for their initial travel costs to go overseas. once overseas, they must work full-time, sometimes more than one job, in order to save money, not only to remit home and bring home at the end of their sojourn, but also in order to pay for their travel home and the penalties they may incur if they are caught crossing the border as illegal workers. for those who find it difficult to find employment quickly, they often undergo long periods of poverty overseas, in which they rely on the charity of friends, relatives, city folk, or church groups to meet their basic daily needs. 11 see, for example, the recent compilation edited by philip kretsedemas, jorge capetillo-ponce, and glenn jacobs, migrant marginality: a transnational perspective (2014). for a report on the effects of socioeconomic factors on health among samoans overseas, see mcgarvey and seidin (2010). for a discussion of the role of the state in producing migrants’ social and economic insecurity, see tseng and wang’s (2013) case study of guest workers in taiwan. 12 for hakka chinese indonesians from singkawang, this inaccurate identification by others took the form of not always having their sub-ethnic identity recognized, and/or valued by individuals in the host societies. 13 reformasi is the indonesian term for the political transition and democratization process that began during the fall of president suharto in 1998. 159returning to the kampung halaman don’t consider us (i.e. chinese indonesians) to be real indonesians. but when we go overseas to taiwan, and to hong kong, the chinese there don’t consider us to be ‘real chinese’, they think we are indonesians.” andy has had a similar experience. he is 19 years old. he is currently studying accounting at a small university in the uk. on a trip home for the summer, he told me that there is a lot of discrimination in england. according to him, people there do not like the chinese, so when he meets white people he tells them that he is from indonesia and speaks indonesian. he strategically downplays the ethnically chinese part of his identity. however, when he meets chinese people, including his cantonese boss, he tells them he is chinese indonesian, and speaks mandarin and hakka, downplaying the indonesian aspects of his identity, and emphasizing the ethnically chinese aspects in order to find acceptance and a common ground. this relational shifting is a daily experience in his life. by day, he is one of only a handful of asian students at the small local university and by night he works at a chinese restaurant. with customers and fellow students he speaks english, but with his boss and the other staff he speaks mandarin. andy is in an advantageous position because he can speak mandarin, which is not the case for many older people who grew up during the suharto era when schools that taught mandarin were banned. this older generation is often called ‘the lost generation’ because they were denied the ability to study mandarin, which is perceived as an important part of becoming a chinese person, especially in overseas chinese communities where chinese dialects are often the dominant languages within the chinese community. the politics of speaking or not speaking mandarin have generated problems for people who want to work overseas in places that have a majority population of ethnic chinese, and this limits people’s cosmopolitan dreams. this gets expressed as anger at the indonesian government, embarrassment, and a sense of personal failure, as well as frustration with not having one’s chineseness recognized and affirmed by other groups of ethnic chinese. people frequently contrast their situation with that of malaysian chinese, many of whom are fluent in english, mandarin, and malay, as well as a chinese dialect. afui is 40 years old. he lived in the united states for six years and then in hong kong for three years. he told me that when he goes overseas and he cannot speak mandarin, he feels ashamed. he feels embarrassed and he feels like he is not a real chinese person. he said, “i am so fucking angry. the indonesian government is so stupid. they don’t think far. they don’t want us to develop. it is because of indonesia that i cannot speak chinese.” amin only received an elementary school education, but taught himself chinese by speaking with elderly people and watching satellite tv. while working in a factory in malaysia, he joined a local mutual aid society. he said that he felt that malaysian chinese consider chinese indonesians to be stupid, uneducated, and unable to speak mandarin. but he was able to impress a group of people by giving an impromptu public speech in mandarin. this instantly increased his status and allowed him to make friendships, which, years later, he still maintains. 160 emily hertzman  aseas 7(2) negative judgments of others in descriptions of their experiences overseas, migrants often make essentializing characterizations of host populations, which rely heavily on stereotypes (e.g. “singaporeans are arrogant”, “taiwanese are aggressive”, “chinese are rude”). these are common shorthand expressions that distinguish “us” from “them” and these negative judgments are made in the context of the migrants’ own marginality and their perception of also being negatively evaluated by the local populations. the experience of living as low-status non-citizen foreign ‘others’ who are limited in their engagements within the host society fuels these characterizations, which are inherently comparative, reflecting how migrants come to imagine themselves in relation to others. while judgments relate to ethnic or national group characteristics, they also index the difficulties of fitting in that stem from socio-economic, dialect, and sub-ethnic group differences and frustration at not having one’s identity recognized and valued. not having aspects of the chineseness of migrants’ chinese indonesian identity recognized is a problem, but another problem arises when a sub-ethnic identity, while recognized, is negatively evaluated. hakka identity (which is both a dialect and a sub-ethnic group designation) carries certain stereotypes, which vary depending on historical, geographical, and intergroup relations, but can be generalized as associated with working class socio-economic status, labor-intensive jobs, lack of education, sojourning, and rural lifestyles. these characterizations only make sense in relation to those of other groups, such as cantonese, or hokkien, who are often afforded a more favorable characterization, as refined, cultured, hard-working, educated, and enterprising. when people from singkawang travel to countries with other groups of chinese people, the politics of these sub-ethnic group stereotypes play out in terms of how they are perceived by locals and therefore whom they feel comfortable associating and communicating with.14 as a way of refuting these negative stereotypes of hakka sub-ethnic identity, people frequently cite the fact that some famous people including sun yat-sen, deng xiaoping, and lee kuan yew were/are hakka. in addition to being chinese indonesian and being hakka, migrants overseas must also contend with the politics of being southeast asian, which carries the stigma of coming from a developing country and implies poverty, corruption, and lack of discipline. i do not want to suggest any truth in these claims. the reason for focusing on the negative characterizations of migrants, and the negative judgments that they, in turn, make about host populations, is merely to understand the context in which these characterizations are imagined and reproduced in talk, eventually becoming common shorthand understandings for groups of people. young people go overseas with hopes, dreams, and fantasies of being able to adapt and be included in the new societies where they live, work, study, and marry. they imagine they will make friends and connections, start businesses and seek better lives (indonesian: cari kehidupan lebih bagus). at one end of this spectrum of dreams is the image of cosmopolitan transnational citizenship. at the other end is the hope of living temporarily in a more affluent society, working, and saving money. however, hakka from sing14 these politics play out in the indonesian context as well, as reflected in negative judgments and animosity between the hokkien chinese communities in north sumatra, jakarta chinese, and the hakka communities in west kalimantan. 161returning to the kampung halaman kawang face significant limitations in becoming transnational and they often lack the financial, educational, social, logistical as well as cultural credentials needed to create the kinds of cosmopolitan sensibilities of their fantasies. among such limitations is the tendency of hakka from singkawang, much like other indonesians, not to spend a lot of time alone, both inside and outside the home. in singkawang, people live with their extended families, sleep together in a room of many, and do not expect or imagine much in the way of personal or private space. when going out, people travel with a friend or a group of friends. continuously, they seek social engagements that are busy or crowded (indonesian: ramai; hakka: an nao), generally considering them happy affairs. while overseas, hakka from singkawang also reproduce this sociality. they sleep in rooms with other people from singkawang, they go out in groups of people from indonesia, they chat and sms and take funny photos in funny places as often as possible, as they would do at home. the majority, however, do not have any local friends,15 nor have they ever been to the houses of locals, nor have they accessed social or medical services that would allow them to develop a more nuanced, insider view of the mechanics and nature of the host society. they feel unable to mix with local people (indonesian: susah bergaul; hakka: an nan kak phan), because of the fear that they would be negatively judged and therefore not received graciously as potential friends, acquaintances, or business partners. while cross-border brides from singkawang make greater inroads in these new societies in terms of making local friends, they also tend to rely most heavily for social support on their networks of friends and family who are also, originally, from singkawang. recuperative discourse migrants’ social marginalization and their wish to subvert hegemonic structures and discourse leads to a particular self-portrayal that emphasizes the uniqueness, goodness, and integrity of their own culture. they self-identify with ‘traditional’ chinese culture, strong kinship and family structures, unique religious practices, and they describe themselves as loyal and fraternal, engaging in group solidarity and mutual aid among friends. such descriptions do reflect, to some extent, the realities of singkawang’s “traditional”, small-scale chinese society as defined by concrete social, cultural, and economic arrangements. however, this characterization also reflects ideals that have emerged from experiences overseas, and the assertion that some of these qualities have been lost in other societies. in korea, japan, hong kong, and the usa, for example, migrants witness states of development and modernity that are very different from home. they see, firsthand, the advanced industrial and post-industrial economies, the prevalence of famous international export brands, the international centers of business and finance, middle-class and upper middle-class professionals who appear well-dressed, disciplined, hard-working, and sophisticated. migrants who fantasized about being able to enter into this world before going overseas instead find work in service sector jobs, 15 while this is not designed to be a quantitative study, it is significant to note that 98% of the 60 migrants interviewed said they did not have any local friends. 162 emily hertzman  aseas 7(2) selling noodles or bubble tea to these wealthier office workers, who occupy social and economic space as the ideal citizen-subjects: productive, consuming, and selfdisciplined. within these daily interactions, people feel the practical limitations of converting their more humble origins into lives resembling their original cosmopolitan transnational fantasies as represented by these established elites. as a function of these encounters, migrants sense the uniqueness of their own culture and sociality and begin to emphasize “us” versus “them” through a discourse about the preservation of culture at home and the loss of ‘culture’ overseas. whereas they describe japanese as technologically and economically advanced, they depict singkawang as preserving filial piety, respect, honor, and care for the elderly. whereas they call singapore alienating and competitive, they see singkawang as relaxed and friendly. whereas they herald mainland china for its rapid economic growth, authoritarian leadership, and strict laws (which some migrants valorize as being better than indonesia’s weak political system), they praise singkawang as a center of chinese folk religion (something believed to be lost in china and preserved in singkawang). this recuperative discourse highlights positive characteristics of ‘home’. culture, sociality, and behavior become valuable resources they can identify with, but which are lost or diluted in modern industrial places overseas. home becomes something to be proud of in situations where the society challenges their parochial, small-town status – a status that limits their ability to fit in. reorientations towards home are ironic given the ambiguous position of the chinese ethnic minorities in indonesia, and the historic and persistent challenge for hakka from west kalimantan to be considered anything other than “strangers at home” (hui, 2011). nonetheless, overseas migrants indulge in nostalgic daydreams of home, which include all these cultural characteristics as well as memories of delicious food, socializing with friends, and the familiarity of the town and the environment. just as the fantasy of becoming a cosmopolitan transnational subject powerfully motivated migration, so too does the allure of returning to the newly reimagined kampung halaman motivate their return journeys. conclusion going abroad initiates a process by which migrants come to learn about their own idiosyncratic patterns of behavior, sociality, and cultural adaptations as hakka chinese indonesians from an out-of-the-way small town. this happens through the dynamics of their encounters overseas where they experience, first-hand, a new society, new people, new living and working conditions. during these experiences, migrants must confront the practical limits of their ability (and, consequently, their desire) to build lives overseas. so what happens to the fantasy of being a cosmopolitan transnational subject when the very transnational encounters they imagined wanting to attain challenge their ability to be open, flexible, adventurous, accepting, and enjoying forms of difference? rather than recognizing the role of class, education, and experience, they resort to essentializing stereotypes of “us” and “them”, and a discourse of cultural difference emerges. they also readjust their plans to accommodate what might be described as parochialism. no longer imagining the life of wealth and success in taipei, hong kong, or seoul, people instead bring back small influences to singkawang by opening bridal salons, photography studios, bubble tea cafes, by in163returning to the kampung halaman troducing korean fashion trends, or starting english language schools. people reorient themselves to local industries such as bird’s nest cultivation, rubber and oil palm plantation, and decide to put more energy into cultivating wealth and social status at home where their specific culture logic is readily recognized and respected, not challenged or undermined. based on this case study, we can reflect back on appadurai’s observation that imagination has become an axiomatic social practice in modern life (appadurai, 1996), and one which is not limited to elites, but increasingly used by non-elites to formulate their own “cosmopolitanisms from below” (appadurai, 2011). in this paper i have illuminated a schism that exists between the imaginings and the realities of people’s cosmopolitan transnational fantasies. while hakka from singkawang endeavor to build their own cosmopolitanism from below, in practice, what occurs is a reimagining of home, a reorientation towards the social and cultural settings that are familiar, and actual, physical returns from overseas. through this circuit of imagining, experiencing a disconnect, and then reimagining, people’s transnational imaginaries ultimately fuel the continued construction and reconstruction of home, as an idea, as a physical place, and a social space.  references ang, i. 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(1996). the chinese family business enterprise. california management review, 38(4), 141–156. yuan, b. (2000). chinese democracies: study of the kongsi of west borneo (1776–1884). leiden, netherlands: university of leiden. about the author emily hertzman is a phd candidate at the department of anthropology, university of toronto, canada. her dissertation research focuses on mobility patterns and practices amongst hakka chinese indonesians from singkawang, west kalimantan, indonesian. by viewing mobility within a local, regional, and international frame, she seeks to understand how concepts of space and place, home, belonging and identity are created and recreated, particularly as people travel and communicate across borders, oceans, satellites, cyberspace, and back roads. ► contact: emily.hertzman@gmail.com community tenure rights and redd+: a review of the oddar meanchey community forestry redd+ project in cambodia aseas 5(2) 263262 aktuelle südostasienforschung / current research on south-east asia community tenure rights and redd+: a review of the oddar meanchey community forestry redd+ project in cambodia donal yeang1 citation yeang, d. (2012). community tenure rights and redd+: a review of the oddar meanchey community forestry redd+ project in cambodia. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 5(2), 263-274. tenure rights over land, forest, and carbon have become a contentious issue within redd+ implementation across the tropics because local communities could be excluded from redd+ benefi ts if land tenure or use and access rights are not clear. this study aims to understand and assess tenure arrangements under the fi rst redd+ demonstration project in cambodia, the oddar meanchey community forestry redd+ project. in particular, the study explores the following questions: (1) how are tenure rights arranged in the oddar meanchey redd+ project? (2) does the tenure regime recognise the rights of local communities to their land and its associated resources? (3) what kind of institutions are put in place to support tenure rights of local communities in the project? the author conducted in-depth semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders and complemented the analysis by participant observation and a review of policy documents and secondary literature. the major fi nding of this study is that the local communities in the project are still given rights to use and access forest resources, although carbon rights belong to the government. while the government retains ownership over carbon credits, it agreed that at least 50 percent of the net revenue from the sale of carbon credits will fl ow to participating communities. keywords: cambodia; carbon rights; community forestry; redd+; tenure rights besitzrechte an land, wald und co2 sind zu einer umkämpften angelegenheit in der redd+ implementierung in den tropen geworden. diese studie versucht die besitzregelungen im ersten redd+ demonstrationsprojekt in kambodscha, dem oddar meanchey community forestry redd+ project, zu verstehen und zu bewerten. die untersuchung analysiert dabei insbesondere folgende fragen: (1) wie sind besitzrechte im oddar meanchey redd+ projekt geregelt? (2) erkennt das besitzsystem die rechte von lokalen gemeinschaften an ihrem land und den dazugehörigen ressourcen an? (3) welche institutionen werden geschaff en, um die besitzrechte von lokalen gemeinschaften im projekt zu stärken? dazu führte der autor semi-strukturierte interviews mit zentralen interessensvertreterinnen, wandte teilnehmende beobachtung an und nahm eine analyse von politischen rahmenbedingungen und sekundärliteratur vor. das hauptergebnis der studie ist, dass lokale gemeinschaften im projekt nach wie vor nutzungsund zugangsrechte zu waldressourcen haben, während die regierung über die co2-rechte verfügt. auch wenn die regierung eigentümerin der co2-zertifi kate bleibt, wurde vereinbart, dass 50 prozent der nettoeinnahmen aus dem verkauf der zertifi kate an die teilnehmenden gemeinschaften fl ießen. 1 donal yeang holds a master in agriculture and forestry from the university of eastern finland and a master in forest and nature conservation policy from wageningen university, the netherlands. he is currently a national policy advisor for redd+ community carbon pools programme at fauna & flora international (ffi) in cambodia. his main research interests include forest and nature conservation policy and tenure rights and benefit sharing under redd+. the author would like to thank two anonymous reviewers and the editors for their contribution to the improvement of the manuscript and their support for editing the text. contact: yeangdonal@gmail.com d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -5 .2 -5 aseas 5(2) 265264 schlagworte: besitzrechte; co2-rechte; community forestry; kambodscha; redd+ introduction deforestation and forest degradation account for nearly 20 percent of the total annual anthropogenic greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions, which is more than the entire global transportation sector (intergovernmental panel on climate change, 2007). as a result, reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (redd) plays a crucial role in mitigating climate change. at the 13th conference of the parties (cop13) to the united nations framework convention on climate change (unfccc) in 2007, the bali action plan highlighted the importance of policy approaches and positive incentives for reducing emissions and introduced redd as the financial mechanism to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries (huettner, leemans, kok, & ebeling, 2009; miles & kapos, 2008). at the cop14 of the unfccc in poznan, poland (2008), the concept of redd+ was introduced. adding to redd, redd+ includes the role of conservation, sustainable management of forest, and enhancement of forest carbon stock. this discussion was continued at the cop15 in copenhagen in 2009 (unfccc, 2009). even though the copenhagen accord is not an internationally binding agreement, the parties agreed on the urgent need to mobilise financial resources from developed countries for redd+. at the cop16 in cancun in 2010, specific policies and mechanisms to implement redd+ were further defined as a result of long collaborative actions, and developing countries were encouraged to contribute to mitigate climate change through redd+ based on their capabilities and national circumstances (unfccc, 2010). the cop16 agreement on redd+ stressed the importance of tenure rights of local and indigenous communities in the process of developing and implementing redd+ mechanisms. even though the discussion on the precise design of the future redd+ mechanism is ongoing, redd+ projects are being planned and implemented across the tropics, particularly in countries with high forest cover and high deforestation rates (phelps, webb, & agrawal, 2010). however, redd+ implementation generally faces major methodological, institutional, and governance challenges (boucher, 2008; scherr & sthapit, 2009). furthermore, redd+ initiatives might affect the rights, livelihoods, and land tenure of forest dependent and indigenous communities negatively (brockaseas 5(2) 265264 donal yeang community tenure rights and redd+ haus, 2009; cotula & mayers, 2009; griffiths, 2008; phelps et al., 2010). local and indigenous community engagement was fiercely debated in copenhagen at the cop15 and recently at the cop16 in cancun. numerous articles (e.g. brown, seymour, & peskett, 2008; cotula & mayers, 2009; griffiths, 2008; larson, 2011; sikor et al., 2010) have been published that express concern of redd+ impacts on indigenous and local communities in tropical countries where hundreds of millions of people depend on forest resources for their livelihood. if redd+ is not well designed, forest dependent communities may be deprived of their rights over land and resources and may be physically displaced from forests. in addition, some authors (e.g. cotula & mayers, 2009; engel & palmer, 2008; sunderlin, hatcher, & liddle, 2008) argue that redd+ overlooks the tenure rights and engagement of forest dependent and indigenous peoples. in particular, concern over local or indigenous community participation has been raised (cotula & mayers, 2009; sunderlin, hatcher, & liddle., 2008) presuming the lack of early participation in redd+ project design may undermine redd+ implementation. thus, it is largely recognised that the success of redd+ will depend on the support of forest communities and indigenous peoples (e.g. cotula & mayers, 2009; hatcher & bailey, 2009; yeang, 2010). redd+ in cambodia in the last decade, cambodia, indonesia, myanmar, and papua new guinea have reported large forest losses. cambodia’s annual deforestation rate was estimated at up to 1.3 percent over the period between 2000 and 2010 (food and agriculture organisation [fao], 2010). deforestation has posed challenges for cambodia for decades. yet, the redd+ mechanism can help cambodia achieve sustainable forest management and halt deforestation while delivering climate change mitigation benefits (poffenberger, 2009). currently, several redd+ demonstration projects are being designed and implemented in cambodia. the oddar meanchey community forestry redd+ project is implemented in oddar meanchey province, which is located in the northwest of the country, covering over 64,318 hectares of forest. some further demonstration projects include the siema protection forest redd+ project which covers 187,000 hectares and is located in the north-eastern part of cambodia (evans, 2010; pearson, aseas 5(2) 267266 petrova, harris, & brown, 2008; yeang, 2010); the redd+ carbon project in prey long covering 520,000 hectares of forest in kampong thom province and located in the centre of cambodia (theilade & schmidt, 2011); the northern plains redd+ project in preah vihear province covering more than 500,000 hectares of forest and located in the northern plains of the country (rainey, heng, & evans, 2010); the southern cardamom redd+ pilot project located in koh kong province in south-western cambodia (beukering, leeuw, grogan, & hansfort, 2009); and the siem reap community forestry redd+ project covering over 15,649 hectares of forest and located in the north-west of the country (redd+ community carbon pools program, 2012). the oddar meanchey redd+ project is the first and most advanced of all redd+ demonstration projects in cambodia as it is currently under the dual validation for both the verified carbon standard and the climate community and biodiversity alliance. the royal government of cambodia’s forestry administration developed the oddar meanchey redd+ project along with pact and terra global capital (tgc). the project was approved by the forestry administration in november 2007 and was officially endorsed by the prime minister of cambodia under the government decision no. 699 on may 26, 2008. the project involves 13 community forestry groups, comprised of 58 villages and 10,036 households, which protect 64,318 hectares of forest land in the north-western province of oddar meanchey. the project is expected to seize 8.3 million tonnes of co 2 over 30 years and provide sustainable financing to local forest protection efforts, while serving as a learning laboratory to support national redd+ development. however, the concept of redd+ is still relatively new to cambodia as well as to other tropical countries, and the issue of tenure rights over forest and carbon have not yet been carefully investigated. in cambodia, the national redd+ roadmap is still at a stage of development and in order to achieve effective implementation, local and indigenous communities have to be taken into consideration. additionally, the united nations declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples (undrip), un-redd guidelines on social and environmental safeguarding, and other relevant international conventions signed by cambodia need to be respected. yet, the inclusion of indigenous tenure rights into redd+ projects is still in progress. aseas 5(2) 267266 donal yeang community tenure rights and redd+ methodology this study aims to generate information and knowledge on how tenure rights over forest and carbon have been addressed in the oddar meanchey redd+ project. although a number of studies about the project have been conducted (e.g. pasgaard, 2012; poffenberger, 2009; ty, sasaki, ahmad, & zainal, 2011), they have provided little insight into how tenure rights issues have been secured. the study also aims to contribute to on-going debates on the influence of redd+ on tenure rights of local communities and inform policy makers involved in developing social safeguards in the national redd+ strategy. in particular, the study explores the following questions: (1) how are tenure rights arranged in the oddar meanchey redd+ project? (2) does the tenure regime recognise the rights of local communities to their land and its associated resources? (3) what kind of institutions and systems are put in place to support tenure rights of local communities in the project? the questions above are based on criteria developed by cotula and mayers (2009) and davis et al. (2009). accordingly, redd+ projects should be based on (1) a land tenure system that is non-discriminatory and provides clear rights over land and its associated values, (2) legal recognition of indigenous peoples’ rights to land, (3) clearly defined and addressed carbon rights, and (4) institutions and systems that uphold the rights of forest dependent people. the study combines quantitative empirical analysis and qualitative investigation. scientific publications and grey literature on climate change, redd+, and tenure rights have been reviewed. additionally, the redd plan idea note (r-pin) of cambodia, submitted to the forest carbon partnership facility (fcpf) was taken into account. the r-pin offers a basic understanding of tenure rights issues of cambodia. furthermore, in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with key respondents from the government, civil society, private sector, local communities, and donor agencies involved in the oddar meanchey redd+ project.2 2 five respondents were from the forestry administration of the ministry of agriculture, fishery and forestry that is designated as the national redd focal point, and the climate change department of the ministry of environment that acts as the unfccc national focal point for cambodia. two respondents from civil society (pact cambodia and the children’s development association (cda)), one respondent from the private sector (terra global capital), 10 community representatives, and two donor agencies (danish international development agency (danida) and the table 1: number of key respondents government civil society private sector local communities donor agencies total 5 2 1 10 2 20 source: author’s compilation aseas 5(2) 269268 from community forestry to redd+ in oddar meanchey oddar meanchey province shares 224 kilometres of border with thailand and within cambodia, it borders on siem reap, banteay meanchey, and preah vihear provinces. the province was one of the remaining strongholds of the post-1979 khmer rouge guerrilla force and was only formally established in 1999. the province’s 6,158 square kilometres are divided into five districts: samraong, banteay ampil, chong kale, anlong veng, and trapeang prasat. the total forest cover of the province is officially 68.8 percent of the provincial area or 457,131 hectares, and there are four forest types, namely, evergreen forest, semi-evergreen forest, deciduous forest, and open forest (ty, sasaki, ahmad, & zainal, 2011). the main causes of deforestation and forest degradation in the project area can be identified as the global commodity and investment market on the international level, economic land concessions on the national level, and forest land encroachment by military and migrants, agricultural expansion, illegal logging, forest fire, and fuel-wood extraction on the sub-national level (poffenberger, 2009). the oddar meanchey redd+ project involves 13 community forestry sites located in the north-western part of oddar meanchey province. originally, the project started out as a community forestry redd project that was initiated by the us-based ngo community forestry international (cfi). in its current redd+ form, the project aims to protect 67,853 hectares of forest and thereby enhance storage and sequestration of carbon (bradley, 2009). the project’s target is to sequester some 8.3 million tonnes of carbon over the next 30 years. the primary goals are to successfully enhance storage and sequestration of carbon in the natural forests of north-west cambodia under the emerging redd+ initiative and to assess a climate-related payment mechanism for forest conservation. the secondary goals include supporting the implementation of the national community forestry programme, securing longterm tenure rights for forest dependent communities, responding to rural livelihood needs, conserving biodiversity, and supporting hydrological regimes (poffenberger, de gryze, & durschinger, 2009). the danish international development agency (danida), the uk department for international development (dfid), the new zealand agency for international development clinton climate initiative (cci)) were interviewed. source: authors’ compilation aseas 5(2) 269268 donal yeang community tenure rights and redd+ (nzaid), and the clinton climate initiative (cci) are the main funders for this project. the project partners include terra global capital (tgc), a san francisco-based carbon development company which offers technical advice for project development, and local ngos, namely the children’s development association (cda) and the monks community forestry association (mcf)3 as well as local authorities in oddar meanchey province. community tenure rights in the oddar meanchey redd+ project in cambodia, forest lands belong to the forestry administration (fa) of the royal government of cambodia, but local communities are legally granted use and management rights in the project areas. according to the 2002 forestry law of cambodia, local communities are guaranteed customary user rights of forest products and byproducts and do not require permits for these uses. the traditional user rights include collection of dead wood, picking wild fruits, collecting honey, tapping resin trees, and collecting other forest by-products. the local communities can also harvest timber for household use, to build houses, stables for animals or fences, and to make agricultural instruments. to legitimise their management rights, local communities entered into concrete community forestry agreements with the fa (see table 2). community access and user rights to forest resources in the project areas are guaranteed under a 15-year renewable agreement between the fa and the local community forestry management committee (cfmc). the cfmc is considered as the key local institution for upholding the rights of forest dependent people in the project. community forestry members elect the cfmc for a five-year period, and the formation of the cfmc is facilitated by local authorities or commune councils as well as local fa officials. the candidate who has gained the most votes is nominated as the cfmc leader. generally, the structure of the cfmc (figure 1) is comprised of a chief, secretary, deputy, and members who are responsible for bookkeeping, information dissemination, tree planting, and patrolling. the cfmc is responsible for the overall management of the community forests including adopting community forestry regulations, preparing the community forestry management plan, coordinating with fa 3 the cda is a local ngo based in oddar meanchey province that has been implementing community forestry projects since 2002. the mcf has been formed by a charismatic buddhist monk in oddar meanchey province who supports forest protection activities by coordinating closely with local authorities and communities in the project. aseas 5(2) 271270 and local authorities, resolving conflicts in the community forestry areas, reporting to local fa officials on illegal forest activities, and protecting the community forest. the forest resources in the project areas are granted for household use only, while commercial use is strictly forbidden. for example, local communities can collect firewood, wild fruits, and other non-timber forest products from these areas. the timber harvesting for household use in the project area is not forbidden, however, it must be approved by the cfmc beforehand. like most countries in the world, cambodia did not have any policy or law to recognise ownership over forest carbon credits before the approval of redd+ projects. in order to meet international standards, it is important to ensure the clarification of rights to carbon credits that are generated in the project. in this first redd+ demonstration project, carbon rights are not specifically defined, but the government decision no. 699 illustrates that the fa retains ownership of forest carbon credits and plays the role of the carbon credit seller for the project. the table 2: the 13 community forestry groups in the oddar meanchey redd+ project group name angdoung bor chhouk meas dung beng ou yeay kaov phaav prey srorng prey srors ratanak ruka rolus thom romdoul veasna samaky sangkrous preychheu sorng rokavorn district banteay ampil samraong banteay ampil samraong trapeang prasat anlong veng banteay ampil samraong samraong samraong anlong veng anlong veng samraong size (ha) 6,114 383 1,843 960 2,025 6,344 1,605 12,733 6,443 6,009 1,079 4,151 18,164 established 2004 2004 2004 2004 2008 2004 2004 2004 2008 2004 2004 2001 2001 approved 2008 2008 2008 2008 2011 2008 2008 2008 2011 2008 2008 2008 2008 no 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 source: author’s compilation from various project reports figure 1: general structure of the community forestry management committee source: author’s compilation chief deputy secretary cashier planting patrollingdissemination aseas 5(2) 271270 donal yeang community tenure rights and redd+ government decision no. 699 states that revenues from carbon credit selling from the project will be used to (1) improve the forest quality, (2) provide maximum benefits to local communities who are participating in the project, and (3) study the new potential area for new redd+ projects in cambodia. the fa agreed that at least 50 percent of the net income (after project expense) will flow to participating communities in the project and the technical working group on forestry and environment was nominated to channel payments during the first five years (bradley, 2011). this working group represents the government-donor coordination initiative for supporting and strengthening development activities within forestry and environment, especially between the fa, the ministry of environment, and the donors. revenue flows from the project have been defined, yet, a more concrete plan for the revenue distribution will require the broad consensus and approval by the project working group and possibly higher level of government. the oddar meanchey redd+ project will directly benefit local communities in a number of ways as it secures management rights over forest resources through a 15-year stewardship agreement with the government and guarantees revenues from carbon credit selling for forest protection and restoration activities such as forest fire control, forest patrolling, and project monitoring (yeang, 2010). these activities shall also generate employment for the local communities, and the net revenues shall be used for community development including infrastructure development such as road, health care centre, and school construction as well as alternative livelihood projects (e.g. bee keeping project, microfinance, and agricultural intensification). discussion and conclusion the oddar meanchey redd+ project developers gave priority to securing land and resource tenure of local communities in the project. to secure these rights, the fa granted the 13 communities a 15-year renewable community forestry agreement to officially manage their forest areas. however, the government still retains ownership over forest lands while the local communities have been formally granted use and management rights of forest resources. the study illustrates that the oddar meanchey redd+ project has not ignored land and forest tenure rights of local and aseas 5(2) 273272 indigenous communities and contributes to the legalisation of management and use rights of the communities over forest resources. in general, the existing laws and policies governing the forestry sector in cambodia recognise customary rights of local communities. however, to ensure the certification of the climate community and biodiversity alliance standard for the project, it required further clarifying customary and legal tenure rights of indigenous and local communities in the project and particularly the ways in which the project contributes to addressing tenure right issues (yeang, 2010). most of the community forestry members and representatives acknowledged that after tenure rights had been secured, the tensions between communities and economic land concession companies have diminished, and illegal logging inside the community forestry sites has decreased, compared to the period when the community forestry sites were not legalised. in addition to securing tenure rights over land and forest resources of the local communities in the project, it is essential to continue to enforce these tenure laws and regulations in order to avoid overlapping claims to forest land in the project area. under government decision no. 699, which was specifically adopted for the oddar meanchey redd+ project, carbon credits belong to the government. the benefits from carbon credits are not included in the customary rights that are guaranteed by the community forestry agreements with the fa. this means that the redd+ component of the project could transfer benefits and tenure rights to carbon stocks away from the community and toward the central government. in the oddar meanchey redd+ project, this problem has been addressed by the government agreeing that at least 50 percent of the net revenues from the sale of carbon credits in the project will flow to participating communities. but this kind of promise by the government is less secure than the 15-year-contracts providing user rights to the community forestry projects, with the latter mandated by the forestry law and community forestry subdecree. if the cambodian government intends to implement further redd+ projects in the country, carbon rights have to be institutionalised in a stronger way, since there is a strong link between carbon rights and benefit sharing. in particular, government decision no. 699 should be reviewed in order to award communities rights to revenues from carbon credit sales. aseas 5(2) 273272 donal yeang community tenure rights and redd+ references beukering, p. j. h. van, leeuw, k. van der, 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(2009). reduced emission from deforestation and degradation in the southern cardamom ecosystem, cambodia. retrieved 18 october, 2012 from vu university http://www.ivm.vu.nl/en/images/r09-13%20decisionmakers%20summary_tcm53-95564.pdf boucher, d. (2008). out of the woods: a realistic role for tropical forests in curbing global warming. cambridge, ma: union of concerned scientists. bradley, a. (2009). communities and carbon: establishing a community forestry redd project in cambodia. phnom penh, cambodia: pact cambodia. bradley, a. (2011). review of cambodia’s redd readiness: progress and challenges. kanagawa, japan: institute for global environmental strategies (iges). brockhaus, m. (2009). realising redd+: national strategy and policy options. bogor, indonesia: cifor. brown, d., seymour, f., & peskett, l. (2008). how do we achieve redd co-benefits and avoid doing harm. in a. angelsen (ed.), moving ahead with redd: issues, options and implications (pp. 107-118). bogor, indonesia: cifor. cotula, l., & mayers, j. (2009). tenure in redd: start-point or afterthought? london, uk: international institute for environment and development. davis, c., daviet, f., nakhooda, s., & thuault, a. (2009). a review of 25 readiness plan idea notes from the world bank forest carbon partnership facility. working paper. washington, dc: world resources institute. engel, s., & palmer, c. (2008). “painting the forest redd?” prospects for mitigating climate change through reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation. ied working paper 3. retrieved 18 october, 2012 from institute for environmental decisions (ied) http://www.ied.ethz.ch/pub/pdf/ied_wp03_engel.pdf evans, t. (2010). carbon credits from avoided deforestation a pilot project in the seima protection forest, cambodia. paper presented at the iges-recoftc-ina capacity building workshops on redd from february 24-26, 2010, phnom penh, cambodia. retrieved 30 november, 2012 from http://www.iges.or.jp/en/fc/pdf/ activity_201003/cambodia/1_(e)2-mondulkiri_carbon_project_recoftc_meeting_feb_2010.pdf food and agriculture organisation. (2010). global forest resource assessment 2010. retrieved 18 october, 2012 from food and agriculture organisation http://www.fao.org/forestry/fra/fra2010/en/ griffiths, t. (2008). seeing ‘redd’ forests, climate change mitigation and the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities. moretonin-marsh, uk: forest peoples programme. hatcher, j., & bailey, l. (2009). tropical forest tenure assessment: trends, challenges and opportunities. yokohama, japan: rri & itto. huettner, m., leemans, r., kok, k., & ebeling, j. 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(2012). the challenge of assessing social dimensions of avoided deforestation: examples from cambodia. environmental impact assessment review, 38, 64-72. pearson, t., petrova, s., harris, n., & brown, s. (2008). assessing the potential for generating carbon offsets in the seima biodiversity conservation area, cambodia. arlington, va: winrock international. phelps, j., webb, e. l., & agrawal, a. (2010). does redd+ threaten to recentralize forest governance? science, 328, 312-313. poffenberger, m. (2009). cambodia’s forests and climate change: mitigating drivers of deforestation. natural resources forum, 33(4), 285-296. doi: 10.1111/j.1477-8947.2009.01249.x poffenberger, m., de gryze, s., & durschinger, l. (2009). designing collaborative redd projects: a case study from oddar meanchey province, cambodia. retrieved 18 october, 2012 from http://www.terraglobalcapital. com/press/reddprojects.pdf rainey, h. j., heng, b., & evans, t. e. 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(2008). report of the subsidiary body for scientific and technological advice on its twenty-ninth session, held in poznan from 1 to 10 december 2008. retrieved 18 october, 2012 from unfccc http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2008/sbsta/eng/13.pdf united nations framework convention on climate change. (2009). copenhagen accord. fccc/cp/2009/l.7. retrieved 18 october, 2012 from unfccc http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2009/cop15/eng/11a01.pdf united nations framework cconvention on climate change. (2010). draft decision -/cp.16. outcome of the work of the ad hoc working group on long-term cooperative action under the convention. retrieved 18 october, 2012 from unfccc http://unfccc.int/files/meetings/cop_16/application/pdf/cop16_lca.pdf yeang, d. (2010). tenure rights and benefit sharing arrangements for redd. a case study of two redd pilot projects in cambodia. master thesis, wageningen university, netherlands. consumption and nutritive values of traditional mon food aseas 5(1) 152 153 d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -5 .1 -9 forum südostasien / forum south-east asia consumption and nutritive values of traditional mon food kanvee viwatpanich1 citation viwatpanich, k. (2012). consumption and nutritive values of traditional mon food. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 5(1), 152-160. introduction2 traditional foods, consumed by people over a long period of time, play an important role in establishing local identity, culture, and custom, and they transfer cultural heritage from generation to generation (albayrak & gunes, 2010; inamdar, chimmad, & naik, 2005). during the past two decades, several researchers have claimed that traditional foods are healthier products and good sources of micronutrients. however, such statements have been poorly described in scientific literature (albayrak & gunes, 2010; inamdar et al., 2005; kuhnlein, 2003; salehi, kuhnlein, shahbazi, & kimiagar, 2005). this paper is based on an exploration in an ethnic minority village of mon people in thailand. it aims to identify traditional mon food, describe its nutritive values, and illuminate selected aspects of food consumption behaviour. indigenous peoples who live in remote areas mostly rely on traditional foods that are collected from the local surrounding environment (azar & aminpour, 1996). the mon are considered to be one of the earliest peoples in mainland south-east asia. they were already exposed to theravada buddhism more than thousand years before the arrival of the thai and burmese in the area, and their language was influential on other languages in the region. more recent migration movements to thailand appeared 1 kanvee viwatpanich is assistant professor at the department of community medicine, faculty of medicine, thammasat university, thailand. contact: kanvee@tu.ac.th 2 an earlier version of this paper was first published in the conference proceedings of the international interdisciplinary conference, which took place on 15-18 april 2012, in palermo, italy. for further information, refer to the international institute for social and economic sciences (iises) website at http://www.iises.net/conferences/ palermo/conference-proceedings aseas 5(1) 152 153 in the years following 1948, after the civil war and the subsequent installation of military dictatorship in myanmar. even though the mon in thailand have been integrated into an economic market system and have adopted many aspects of thai mainstream society, preparation and consumption of traditional food is a practice that can help to perpetuate mon identity. in the following, this paper presents the study context, introduces 10 traditional mon dishes, and discusses the nutritive values of the food. research methodology the following research was carried out in ban dong sak, sangkhlaburi district, kanchanaburi province, thailand. the research protocol was approved by the ethical committee of the faculty of medicine, thammasat university. the research procedure was divided into three main phases. during the first phase, a food survey was conducted and checklists disseminated among 50 households in ban dong sak to identify common foods in everyday consumption. the results of the survey pointed out 79 kinds of food, which were then categorised into eight groups: curry soups (38 recipes), soups (18 recipes), stir-fried food (8 recipes), deep-fried food (7 recipes), chilli pastes (5 recipes), salads (2 recipes), and grilled food (1 recipe). the 10 most frequently consumed foods were purposively selected as representative samples in the study of nutritive values of traditional mon food. the second phase of the research dealt with a discussion of traditional mon food and its ingredients, cooking methods, and consumption. in this phase, 10 housewives, who normally did the cooking for the households, were invited to participate in a focus group discussion. during the process of discussion, the 10 recipes selected in the survey were presented and the cooks agreed to use these as representative for traditional mon food as all of these dishes (1) were cooked and consumed in myanmar before they migrated to thailand, (2) had been consumed for many generations, and (3) were still regularly prepared. the food ingredients and the process of cooking were then recorded to present the standard recipes for this research. the third phase consisted of cooking demonstrations as one housewife from the focus group consented to do a cooking demonstration of all 10 representative recipes. following the standardised recipes from the focus group discussion, most ingrekanvee viwatpanich consumption and nutrivtive value of traditional mon food aseas 5(1) 154 155 dients were collected from the forest near the village while only a few were bought from the local market. all ingredients were weighted in raw condition by digital scales before starting to cook. in the case of nutritive value, all data in grams were computed by using the inmucal programme which was developed by the institute of nutrition, mahidol university, and measures calories, protein, fat, carbohydrate, fibre, calcium, phosphorus, iron, vitamin a, vitamin b1, vitamin b2, niacin, and vitamin c. food consumption behaviour the objective of this part is to explain the food patterns of mon ethnicity in ban dong sak. generally, the mon in this village consume two meals a day. in case of agriculturalists or workforces breakfast is taken between 6 and 7 am before work. the elderly or persons who work at home consume breakfast around 10 or 11 am. the other meal is dinner which is normally eaten around 5 or 6 pm. in between these two meals the consumption of small snacks or salad often occurs. at the time of this research, it was only papaya salad (including raw papaya, shrimp paste, salt, dry shrimp, peanuts, fresh chilli, and fermented marian plum), which was consumed this way. this meal is always consumed in a group and more people meet to prepare and eat together. rice is the staple food which is served to each person on a separate plate. apart of this, two or three side dishes are served on plates in the middle of the group where everyone can take whatever they want. traditionally, the mon ate their food by using their hands. due to social interaction with members of modernised thai society, this behaviour in food consumption changed and some of the younger generation now prefer to eat with spoons and forks.3 the consumption of fruits or desserts after the main dish is very rare. as a general characteristic it was found that a sour taste, combined with a spicy and a salty flavour is much preferred in mon cuisine. the use of oil and sugar as ingredients for food plays only a marginal role. the sour taste comes from tamarind, fermented marian plum, lemon, rosella leaves, or acacia concinna leaves. the salty flavour is from salt and shrimp paste. fish sauce, which is a popular ingredient in thai dishes, is not 3 traditionally, though, thais also ate their food using hands. aseas 5(1) 154 155 used in mon cuisine. just as in thai cuisine, a few ingredients are used to increase the taste of their dishes. for example, mono sodium glutamate (msg) is added to almost every kind of dish. culinary interaction also enters in mon society, and nowadays mobile food vendors from outside the mon community offer their goods too, for example, ice-cream, fish balls, and sausages. additionally, mon can easily buy thai or western (junk) food in the nearby convenience stores. for economic reasons, in order to gain supplementary income, some mon opened small shops in their houses and sell industrially produced small snacks and candies for children. some women also sell home-made snacks or foods in front of their houses. mostly, dishes are given in the style of ‘takeaway’, but some of them also offer places to sit and eat. at this point it is obvious that food patterns of the mon are changing and that in addition to home-made and selfproduced ingredients industrially produced foods are consumed too. consequently, change in the living environment also leads to change in consumption behaviour and patterns. traditional mon foods 10 representative cooking recipes and the methods used to prepare traditional mon food are explained below. the details of recipes and ingredients are presented in table 1. 1. roselle soup (kang krajeab): boil the water in a small pot. add clean roselle leaves and stir until the soup becomes glutinous. add shrimp paste and salt as needed. 2. fish curry (kang pla): for this curry, pound galangal, garlic, shallots, fermented marian plum, fresh chilli, salt, and shrimp paste in the mortar until it is smooth. marinate the fresh fish with the curry paste in the pot by hand. heat it up and add water to cover the fish. sprinkle a pinch of curcuma powder over the dish to decrease the smell of the fish. before serving, sprinkle with fresh sliced parsley leaves to increase the taste and aroma. 3. dried shrimp paste (naam prik kung haeng): grill fresh chilli, garlic, and shallots and mix them with salt in the mortar. add dried shrimp and pound it until it attains a smooth consistence. add lemon juice to increase the taste and aroma. serve with egg plant, okra, and cucumber as side dishes. 4. acacia concinna curry (kang som poi): boil water and add shrimp paste as well as salt. add pieces of grilled barb fish. add clean acacia concinna leaves. wait until it is cooked. kanvee viwatpanich consumption and nutrivtive value of traditional mon food aseas 5(1) 156 157 5. hunglei curry (kang hunglei): for this curry, ground galangal, garlic, shallots, dried chilli, salt, shrimp paste, and curcuma powder in a mortar until smooth. heat a pan, put some oil in it, and fry the curry paste with some dark soy sauce. add the meat which can be pork, chicken, or beef, and fry it with the soy sauce and the curry paste. add some water, cover the pan, and steam the dish until the meat is tender. finally, ground and sprinkle dried coriander seeds over the dish to increase the aroma. 6. dillenia indica curry (kang look san): boil water in a small pot and add sliced garlic. slice the dillenia indica into small pieces and put them into the boiling water. add shrimp paste, salt, and monosodium glutamate to increase the taste. 7. wax gourd curry (kang fag kheao): grind chilli, garlic, shallots, salt, shrimp paste, and curcuma powder in the mortar until smooth. heat the pan, add some oil, and fry with table 1: list of ingredients in the selected recipes food item roselle soup fish curry dried shrimp paste acacia concinna curry hunglei curry dillenia indica curry wax gourd curry lasia spinosa curry monkey apple curry tomato curry major ingredients (in percent) fresh chilli (3.6) roselle leave (81.1) shrimp paste (8.1) salt (5.4) msg (1.8) fresh fish (65.8) galangal (1.6) shallot (4.5) garlic (4.5) fresh chilli (4.5) salt (1.2) shrimp paste (4.1) fermented marian plum (9.1) curcuma powder (0.4) parsley leave (3.3) msg (0.8) fresh chilli (9.7) shallot (38.7) garlic (12.9) shrimp paste (5.6) salt (2.4) lemon juice (19.4) dried shrimp (9.7) msg (1.6) acacia concinna leave (35.8) shrimp paste (14.9) grilled fish (40.3) salt (6.0) msg (3.0) pork meat (74.1) oil (5.5) galangal (2.4) shallot (7.4) garlic (4.0) dried chilli (1.7) shrimp paste (0.9) salt (1.7) curcuma powder (0.2) dark soy sauce (1.2) coriander seed (0.5) msg (0.3) dillenia indica (73.7) shallot (9.3) garlic (7.6) shrimp paste (3.4) salt (4.2) msg (1.7) wax gourd (48.3) chicken (36.2) fresh chilli (1.2) shallot (5.6) garlic (2.0) salt (1.0) shrimp paste (1.6) curcuma powder (0.2) oil (2.8) parsley leave (0.5) msg (0.7) lasia spinosa leave (29.9) fresh fish (43.9) shallot (9.0) garlic (4.5) shrimp paste (2.3) fermented marian plum (7.3) salt (1.1) fresh chilli (0.6) curcuma powder (0.3g) msg (1.1) monkey apple (52.3) fresh shrimp (32.1) shallot (7.8) garlic (3.2) shrimp paste (1.8) salt (2.3) msg (0.5) tomato (57.9) dried mackerel (20.2) oil (6.2) shallot (6.5) garlic (3.4) salt (1.3) shrimp paste (2.6) dried chilli (1.3) curcuma powder (0.3) msg (0.5) source: author’s compilation aseas 5(1) 156 157 curry paste. add chicken and continue to stir until it is cooked. pour in some water and wait until it is boiling again. put small cubes of wax gourds into the curry soup, add a bit more water until the food is covered, and wait until the chicken and wax gourds are tender. before serving, sprinkle with fresh sliced parsley leaves to increase taste and aroma. 8. lasia spinosa curry (kang pak nham): mix lasia spinosa leaves, garlic, shallots, fermented marian plum, salt, shrimp paste, galangal, and fresh fish together by hand. squeeze it until the water from the lasia spinosa comes out. boil water in a pot, add all ingredients, pour in some more water, and wait until it reheats. before serving, add sliced fresh chilli as decoration and to increase the aroma and taste. 9. monkey apple curry (kang pud sar): put slices of garlic and shallots into boiling water. add shrimp paste and salt. after this, add mashed monkey apples and wait until the water is boiling again. finally, add clean fresh shrimps and boil until it is done. 10. tomato curry (kang ma khuea ted): the curry paste of this dish consists of dried chilli, garlic, shallots, salt, shrimp paste, and curcuma powder. to prepare this dish, heat a pan, add some oil, and fry the curry paste. next, add tomatoes and dried mackerel. pour in a little bit of water and cook until done. nutritive values of mon foods the nutrient composition in 100g edible portions of the 10 recipes is shown in table 2. kang hunglei contains the highest number of calories (1050.45 kcal/100g), followed by wax gourd curry (666.14 kcal/100g), tomato curry (470.04 kcal/100g), and fish curry (265.15 kcal/100g), while roselle soup, which was the most frequently consumed, had least calories compared to other foods (32.59 kcal/100g). total dietary fibre ranged from 0.20 to 7.09 g/100g and 7 out of 10 recipes possessed more than 2.0g/100g (acacia concinna curry was the only dish in which such amount of fibre was not found as the main ingredient is only small leaves from acacia concinna). the highest level was found in wax gourd curry, which contained a relatively high amount of dietary fibre, 7.1g/100g. the highest protein and fat contents were found in kang hunglei (95.45g/100g and 62.74g/100g, respectively) as the main ingredients are pork and oil. this was followed by wax gourd curry (41.91g/100g of protein and 43.12g/100g of fat) due to the chicken and oil which are added. for the other foods, especially the vegetable soup and curry, kanvee viwatpanich consumption and nutrivtive value of traditional mon food aseas 5(1) 158 159 the nutritive value of the food was low in fat and energy levels, for example, dillenia indica curry (0.06g/100g of fat and 33.57 kcal/100 g) and roselle soup (0.12g/100g of fat and 32.59 kcal/100g). carbohydrate showed a variation between 3.66g/100g and 26.88g/100g. the highest carbohydrate value was found in wax gourd curry while the lowest was in acacia concinna curry. generally, traditional mon foods are good sources of calcium and phosphorus, especially tomato curry (234.63 mg/100g of calcium and 356.51 mg/100 g of phosphorus) and kang hunglei (133.66 mg/100g of calcium and 1128.91 mg/100g of phosphorus). the reason for this is the shrimp paste, which plays a major role in mon cuisine and thus presents an important ingredient for all recipes. finally, the dishes contributed 9.7980.47%, 15.99-52.96%, and 1.72-58.52% of the total food energy from carbohydrate, protein, and fat, respectively. table 2: proximate composition of 10 recipes per 100g edible portion kang hunglei 1050.45 95.45 62.74 25.67 3.31 133.66 1128.91 8.28 69.43 7.09 0.38 23.76 11.16 9.79 36.39 53.82 energy (kcal) protein (g.) fat (g.) cho (g.) fiber (g) minerals ca (mg.) p. (mg.) fe (mg.) vitamins a (iu) b1 (mg.) b2 (mg.) niacin (mg.) c (mg.) energy distribution cho protein fat wax gourd curry 666.14 41.91 43.12 26.88 7.09 216.96 450.61 4.77 24.59 0.26 0.40 12.24 100.71 16.21 25.28 58.52 tomato curry 470.04 32.80 25.81 23.38 4.42 234.63 356.51 5.23 117.36 0.33 0.15 10.00 71.25 20.46 28.71 50.82 fish curry 265.15 28.90 7.34 14.08 2.50 79.24 330.34 2.03 46.94 0.21 0.17 5.81 35.57 23.67 48.57 27.76 monkey apple curry 184.42 14.42 1.89 26.19 5.07 188.53 258.58 3.05 2.28 0.09 0.83 3.23 53.18 58.39 32.15 9.46 lasia spinosa curry 140.98 15.42 3.64 7.87 2.31 96.66 188.64 2.12 15.21 0.10 0.16 3.35 28.72 24.99 48.98 26.03 dried shrimp paste 120.60 10.65 0.73 17.08 3.19 146.57 225.64 2.66 8.57 0.18 0.11 2.21 19.88 58.14 36.24 5.62 dillenia indica curry 33.57 1.40 0.06 6.31 0.69 62.88 49.72 1.22 11.75 0.07 0.09 0.96 4.32 80.47 17.80 1.72 roselle soup 32.59 1.22 0.12 6.14 0.20 67.24 30.04 0.97 31.30 0.05 0.12 2.24 20.78 80.47 15.99 3.54 acacia concinna curry 82.93 9.37 2.07 3.66 0.00 170.13 130.19 2.62 0.00 0.01 0.04 1.64 0.00 20.67 52.96 26.37 source: author’s analysis via inmucal aseas 5(1) 158 159 conclusion the majority of traditional mon food in everyday life is based on curry and prepared by boiling. generally, fried foods are very rare. the nutrition value of the dishes reveals a high variation in nutrient composition. dishes with high content of calcium and phosphorus are also identified. there is some traditional food, which is identified as low in carbohydrate and fat, especially dishes which are based on vegetables. in order to increase the nutrient value of the dishes, fish or meat is recommended due to their valuable nutrient composition. the consumption of mono sodium glutamate (msg) is high as it is used in almost all dishes in mon cuisine. although msg presents a flavour enhancer which is widely considered safe for human consumption, a reduction of daily intake may be of benefit. studies convey that high consumption of msg may lead to an increasing food desire, to overconsumption and, eventually, to gain in weight (he et al., 2008; hermanussen et al., 2005; hirata, andrade, vaskevicius, & dolnikoff, 1997). according to informal observations and an interview with the vicevillage headman of ban dong sak, obesity in the mon village is increasing and the high intakes of msg were considered one of the reasons for that. besides, hypertension and diabetes are also explained by increasing obesity. the recommendations from the study are twofold. first, all relevant information concerning the nutritional composition of local foods, and especially information on the acceptable daily intake of msg, should be provided and communicated to the villagers by local health institutions. second, additional material concerning the negative impact of food consumption related to a ‘western’ or a ‘modern’ lifestyle, especially in relation to junk food and fast food, should be provided to local schools in order to target the young generation. as the knowledge of the nutritional value of local food increases, both food preparation and consumption patterns might be preserved and improved. kanvee viwatpanich consumption and nutrivtive value of traditional mon food aseas 5(1) 160 161 references albayrak, m., & gunes, e. (2010). traditional foods: interaction between local and global foods in turkey. african journal of business management, 4, 555-561. azar, m., & aminpour, a. (1996). composition and nutritional value of traditional rural iranian foods. eastern mediterrenean health journal, 2, 261-267. he, k., zhao, l., daviglus, m. l., dyer, a. r., horn, l. v., garside, d., zhu, l., guo, d., wu, y., zhou, b., & stamler, j. (2008) association of monosodium glutamate intake with overweight in chinese adults: the intermap study. obesity (silver spring), 16, 1875-1880. hermanussen, m., garcia, a. p., sunder, m., voigt, m., salazar, v., & tresguerres, j. a. (2005). obesity, voracity, and short stature: the impact of glutamate on the regulation of appetite. european journal of clinical nutrition, 60, 25-31. hirata, a. e., andrade, i. s., vaskevicius, p., & dolnikoff, m. s. (1997). monosodium glutamate (msg)obese rats develop glucose intolerance and insulin resistance to peripheral glucose uptake. brazilian journal of medical and biological research, 30, 671-674. inamdar, v., chimmad, b. v., & naik, r. (2005). nutrient composition of traditional festival foods of north karnataka. journal of human ecology, 18, 43-48. kuhnlein, h. v. (2003). micronutrient, nutrition, and traditional food systems of indigenous peoples. food, nutrition and agriculture (fna/ana) 32, 33-39. retrieved 22 april 2011 from ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/ fao/005/y8346m/ y8346m04.pdf salehi, m., kuhnlein, h. v., shahbazi, m., & kimiagar, s. (2005). effect of traditional food on nutrition improvement of iranian tribeswomen. ecology of food and nutrition, 44, 81-95. sovereignties of food: political struggle and life-world encounters in southeast asia christiane voßemer, judith ehlert, michelle proyer, & ralph guth ► voßemer, c., ehlert, j., proyer, m., & guth, r. (2015). editorial: sovereignties of food: political struggle and life-world encounters in southeast asia. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 8(1), 1-6. in southeast asian societies, food has always been at the center of diverse forms of contestation over access to land and other productive means, food selfsufficiency, and quality as well as food-based identities. political struggles and socio-economic differentiation in terms of food production, distribution, and consumption have dramatically intensified in the region. this has mainly been caused by enduring periods of agrarian reform, rapid global market integration, as well as processes of industrialization and urbanization in countries traditionally characterized as peasant societies. scott (1976) elaborates on the struggles and resistance of the peasantry in southeast asia in the context of emerging world capitalism and colonial hegemony – fighting against food shortages and the exploitation of their subsistence means. following the region’s independence from colonial exploitation, protests and other forms of contentious and ‘everyday politics’ of peasants and farmer organizations (kerkvliet, 2009) have, of course, not withered but have redirected their claims against and adaptations to another ‘food hegemon’. in this regard, friedmann and mcmichael (1989) critically analyze the establishment of stateled large-scale plantations for cash crop production in the global south and the new socio-economic dependencies produced by the green revolution. furthermore, the authors address the emergence of the current corporate food regime during the neoliberal phase of capitalism. in this regime, the hegemonic power emanates from transnational corporations and international finance institutions, controlling whole food commodity chains on a global scale and subordinating food and agriculture to the paradigm of profit-maximization. the region’s pathway of green revolution technology and concurrent regional and international trade liberalization have gradually and comprehensively led to growing social inequalities and agrarian differentiation. the interests and life-worlds of small-scale producers, landless people, fisher folk, and consumers seem to be threatened by the corporate food regime which favors large-scale and capital-and knowledge-intensive industrial food production (manahan, 2011). critically addressing this structural violence emanating from the dominant food regime, a transnational social movement – la via campesina – emerged on the global stage in the 1990s. in sharp contrast to the food security discourse, originally promoted by the united nations food and agriculture organization (fao) and related international aid agencies stressing the need of agricultural modernization to combat world hunger, the social movement calls for food sovereignty. food sovereignty stands for the attempt to radically transform global editorial w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 . 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 15 .1 -1 2 christiane voßemer, judith ehlert, michelle proyer, & ralph guth  aseas 8(1) food-based inequalities by advocating an alternative path of small-scale agro-ecological and socially just modernity (mcmichael, 2009). aiming towards “the right of the peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems” (nyéléni, 2007), it goes beyond global policy agendas aiming to ‘feed the world’ through technocratic fixes that have shaped the promotion of the green revolution in southeast asia since the 1960s/1970s (ehlert & voßemer, in this issue). the alternative agenda of food sovereignty, which continues to be critically addressed as romantic rural nostalgia (collier, 2008), is making its way into national and international policy arenas, gaining recognition in view of old and new inequalities: the latest global food crisis and high prices of rice constituting southeast asia’s main staple food (arandez-tanchuling, 2011) continue to hit poor households in the region as competition over basic productive means like land, water, and seeds intensifies (lvc, 2008). although strongly rooted in the latin american context (martinez-torres & rosset, 2010), the discourse of food sovereignty and its political struggle increasingly gains ground in southeast asia (reyes, 2011). in indonesia, transnational food activists ally with the indonesian environmental and agrarian justice movement, campaigning against biofuels and palm oil monoculture in the context of both the decline in biodiversity and climate change (pichler, 2014; pye, 2010). at the same time, access to safe and healthy foods has become a matter of complex global food governance that is largely beyond the regulatory capacities of states and untransparent to people making daily food choices. vietnam, which is usually hailed for its agricultural and economic success since market liberalization in the mid-1980s, has recently been facing a number of food scares in relation to the abuse of pesticides and unsafe chemicals, hormones, and drugs in livestock production and aquaculture (thi thu trang tran, 2013), worrying local consumers. this obviously raises complex questions about food and health and has led several states in the region to adopt a discourse of food sovereignty, re-evoking the need for a strong developmental state as a guardian over food safety and accessibility as argued by lassa and shrestha (2014) for indonesia. furthermore, asean’s appropriation of the language of civil society and the discourse of food sovereignty is critically assessed as rhetoric cosmetics rather than stemming from a sincere commitment to fight hunger and social inequality in the region (reyes, 2011, p. 224). instead, in the aftermath of the food crisis governments would go back to normal by increasing productivity, green revolution mechanisms, and food aid (manahan, 2011, p. 469). the historical modes of peasants’ resistance against colonial powers addressed by scott (1976) are modified by the food sovereignty movement which, as a political actor, puts the contemporary concerns of a transnational peasantry to the fore. scott has been taken up by current scholars on the contentious politics of peasant and farmer organizations (mcmichael, 2009; patel, 2009) and continues to inform actual political contestations over food production, distribution, and consumption in southeast asia. however, these new political discourses as well as the agenda of the food sovereignty movement itself leave many aspects unaddressed. this special issue relates to the political dimension of the food movement, but complements this perspective by drawing attention to how sovereignty over food is actually practiced as a matter of everyday food choice and identity and contextualized in local agricul3editorial: sovereignties of food tural life-worlds. under the heading of “food sovereignty”, this issue hosts studies on southeast asia that engage with questions of ‘sovereignty’ related to food as well as the nexus of food and health in a broad sense. the contributions enquire into very different struggles and sites of food sovereignty exploring the meanings of ‘the right to define own food and agricultural systems’, as well as the plural ‘sovereignties’ of food related to the multiple actors, topics, understandings and practices of food sovereignty three articles in this issue discuss different struggles for what we may broadly call food sovereignty based on empirical studies into settings as diverse as a remote peasant community in indonesia, soup-pot restaurants in phnom pen, and a network of activists in the north of thailand promoting alternative forms of agriculture. these empirical studies are framed by a methodological reflection on ‘actors’ in the discursive contexts of food security and food sovereignty, contributed by the guest editors of this issue. in their article, judith ehlert and christiane voßemer apply the methodological approach of ‘actor-oriented’ development research by norman long to trace and criticize the limitations of the concepts of actors as passive aid-receivers in the food security regime, or as unified peasantry in the food sovereignty movement, and call for research to engage with the more complex glocal struggles for food sovereignty as rooted in the context of people’s life-worlds in southeast asia and beyond. the second article and first empirical contribution to this issue by sophia maria mable cuevas, juan emmanuel capiral fernandeza, and imelda de guzman olvida delves into the role of swidden agriculture and its main produce – local rice varieties – for the food sovereignty of a community of peasants who identify as ethnic tagbanua. as the ethnographic study reveals, local concepts of social identity, health, and deprivation are deeply intertwined with the year-round community practices of cultivating rice in the swidden. in the context of national policies that aim to extend the cultivation of rice as a commodity into this sphere of tagbanua agriculture, the article offers an insightful and relevant contribution to understand peasants’ everyday struggle for food sovereignty in the philippines. the third article by hart nadav feuer centers on phnom penh’s soup-pot restaurants as “urban brokers of rural cuisine” (feuer 2015, p. 45), and as spaces where the travelling food concepts of customers and cooks are assembled into the idea and practice of a national cuisine. analyzing the daily practices of choosing, cooking, eating, and discussing foods by restaurateurs and customers of soup-pot restaurants in cambodia’s capital, feuer brings in a rare and inspiring perspective on what he views as every-day democratic forms of exercising food sovereignty among food distributors and consumers. the alternative agricultural network isan in northern thailand is a member organization of la vía campesina and is at the focus of alexandra heis’ article winding up this issue’s section on current research. the article employs a political-economic perspective to delineate the global corporate food regime and its manifestations in the thai context. against this background, heis analyzes the network’s activities and discourses in the realms of organic farming, social relations of food production, and health as strategies of local resistance and empowerment. the article shows that these strategies of resistance are founded in vernacular concepts of identity and 4 christiane voßemer, judith ehlert, michelle proyer, & ralph guth  aseas 8(1) build spaces where alternative meanings of and a more egalitarian access to good and healthy foods are enacted. in our research workshop section, amber heckelman and hannah wittman present their ongoing work on agrarian responses of farmers in the philippines to the challenges of climate change. this is part of a bigger and highly relevant project assessing “food sovereignty pathways in ecuador, brazil, canada, and the philippines” (heckelman & wittman, 2015, p. 87). the part discussed here draws attention to one of the countries which is already being hit hard by climate change and reports on how principles of food sovereignty are used to develop an assessment framework for climate resiliency and food security among smallholder farmers. the interview section comprises a conversation with kin-chi lau from lingnan university, hong kong. as a member of the department of cultural studies, she initiated and currently coordinates an organic urban gardening project on campus. among other interesting details on this, by now, well-established facility, she sheds light on the importance of local agricultural projects in the region. rainer einzenberger conducted this interview while michaela hochmuth edited the contribution. kilian spandler offers insights into the 2nd interregional eu-asean perspectives dialogue (euap ii) in our network southeast asia section. spandler highlights the importance of building interregional networks among young scholars and describes how such a process was facilitated by the euap ii in different phases, including online communication to overcome financial barriers of travelling costs for young academics. two book reviews conclude this issue. a new publication by melanie pichler, umkämpfte natur. politische ökologie der palmölund agrartreibstoffproduktion in südostasien (2014), was reviewed by timo duile. stressing the importance of a critical-materialistic perspective in analyses of ecology and the state, duile agrees with the author that such an approach is central in understanding why certain strategies of sustainability or transparency still fail in the contemporary political economy. the review is published in german. simon benedikter and ute köster contribute a review of burma/myanmar – where now? (2014) edited by mikael gravers and ytzen flemming. the authors consider the extensive volume a solid source of information on myanmar’s current state, specifically with regard to conflicts in the southeast and northeast of the country.  references arandez-tanchuling, h. (2011). two years after the 2008 rice crisis. kasarinlan: philippine journal of third world studies, 26(1), 295–311. collier, p. (2008). the politics of hunger. how illusion and greed fan the food crises. foreign affairs, 87(6), 67-79. feuer, h. (2015). urban brokers of rural cuisine: assembling national cuisine at cambodian soup-pot restaurants. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 8(1), 45–66. friedmann, h., & mcmichael, p. (1989). agriculture and the state system: the rise and decline of national agricultures, 1870 to the present. sociologia ruralis, 29(2), 93–117. 5editorial: sovereignties of food heckelman, a., & wittman, h. (2015). food sovereignty: a framework for assessing agrarian responses to climate change in the philippines. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 8(1), 45–66. kerkvliet, b. j. t. (2009). everyday politics in peasant societies (and ours). journal of peasant studies, 36(1), 227–243. lassa, j. a., & shrestha, m. (2014). food sovereignty discourse in southeast asia: helpful or disruptive? working paper no. 231, s. rajaratnam school of international studies, nanyang, singapore. la via campesina. (2008). food crisis in south east asia and east asia. seoul, south korea. manahan, m. a. (2011). is asia for sale? trends, issues, and strategies against land grabbing. kasarinlan: philippine journal of third world studies, 26(1–2), 466–481. martínez-torres, m. e., & rosset, p. m. (2010). la via campesina: the birth and evolution of a transnational social movement. the journal of peasant studies, 37(1), 149–175. mcmichael, p. (2009). a food regime genealogy. journal of peasant studies, 36(1), 139–169. nyéléni. (2007). declaration of the forum for food sovereignty. selingué, mali. patel, r. (2009). food sovereignty. the journal of peasant studies, 36(3), 663–706. pichler, m. (2014). umkämpfte natur. politische ökologie der palmölund agrartreibstoffproduktion in südostasien. münster, germany: westfälisches dampfboot. pye, o. (2010). the biofuel connection – transnational activism and the palm oil boom. journal of peasant studies, 37(4), 851–874. reyes, m. p. p. (2011). southeast asian perspectives on food sovereignty: outcomes and observations. workshop synthesis. kasarinlan: philippine journal of third world studies, 26(1–2), 223–251. scott, j. c. (1976). the moral economy of the peasant: rebellion and subsistence in southeast asia. new haven, ct: yale university press. thi thu trang tran (2013). food safety and the political economy of food governance: the case of shrimp farming in nam dinh province, vietnam. the journal of peasant studies, 40(4), 703–719. about the authors christiane voßemer works as a university assistant and lecturer at the department of development studies, university of vienna. she is a graduate of development studies and currently working on her phd thesis, applying an actor-oriented research approach to the transformation of health care in a myanmar borderland. ► contact: christiane.vossemer@univie.ac.at judith ehlert is a sociologist by training and holds a postdoctoral position at the department of development studies, university of vienna. in her phd thesis, she worked on environmental knowledge and agrarian change in the mekong delta in vietnam. her current research project deals with the body politics of food and eating in vietnam. ► contact: judith.ehlert@univie.ac.at michelle proyer received her phd in education from the university of vienna, austria. her main research interest covers transcultural comparative research at the intersection of inclusion and culture. she was involved in two international research projects in thailand and ethiopia. currently, she works as a research associate at kingston university london. ► contact: m.proyer@kingston.ac.uk 6 christiane voßemer, judith ehlert, michelle proyer, & ralph guth  aseas 8(1) ralph guth is currently working as a lecturer at the department of development studies, university of vienna, where he is also writing his phd thesis. he is a political scientist mainly working on state theory, constitutionalism, and critical legal theory. ► contact: ralph.guth@univie.ac.at food sovereignty and conceptualization of agency: a methodological discussion judith ehlert & christiane voßemer ► ehlert, j., & voßemer, c. (2015). food sovereignty and conceptualization of agency: a methodological discussion. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 8(1), 7-26. the latest food crisis hit food producers and consumers – mainly in the global south – hard and refocused attention to the question of global food security. the food sovereignty movement contributes to the growing re-politicization of the debate on ‘how to feed the world’. from an actor-oriented perspective, the article presents a methodological reflection of the concept of food sovereignty in opposition to the concept of food security, both agendas highly relevant in terms of food policies in southeast asia. after framing the two concepts against the development politics and emergence of global agriculture following world war ii, this paper elaborates on how actors and agency are conceptualized under the food security regime as well as by the food sovereignty movement itself. with reference to these two concepts, we discuss in which ways an actor-oriented methodological approach is useful to overcome the observed essentialization of the peasantry as well as the neglect of individual peasants and consumers as food-sovereign actors. keywords: actor-oriented research; agency; development paradigms; food security; food sovereignty  die letzte ernährungskrise traf landwirtschaftliche produzent_innen und konsument_innen im globalen süden besonders hart und zog eine erhöhte aufmerksamkeit für fragen globaler ernährungssicherheit nach sich. zur wachsenden re-politisierung der debatte darüber, wie die welt zu ernähren ist, trägt die globale soziale bewegung für ernährungssouveränität bei. der artikel stellt aus akteursorientierter perspektive eine methodologische reflexion ihres ernährungssouveränitätskonzepts, in gegenüberstellung zum konzept der ernährungssicherheit, an, da beide agenden von großer relevanz im kontext südostasiens sind. nachdem die beiden konzepte im entwicklungspolitischen und historischen kontext der globalen landwirtschaft nach dem zweiten weltkrieg verortet wurden, führen wir aus, wie akteur_innen und ihre handlungsmacht unter dem ernährungssicherheitsregime und durch die ernährungssouveränitätsbewegung selbst konzeptualisiert werden. mit bezug zu beiden diskutieren wir in welcher weise ein akteursorientierter methodologischer zugang hilfreich sein kann, um die konstatierte essentialisierung der kleinbauernschaft sowie das ausblenden von kleinbauern/bäuerinnen und konsument_innen als ernährungssouveräne akteur_innen zu überwinden. schlagworte: akteursorientierung; agency; entwicklungsparadigmata; ernährungssicherheit; ernährungssouveränität aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 15 .1 -2 8 judith ehlert & christiane voßemer  aseas 8(1) introduction the question of global food security has gained renewed attention with the latest food crises, which have severely affected food producers and consumers – mainly in the global south. the ongoing debate on ‘how to feed the world’ is re-politicized in particular by the food sovereignty movement. this article methodologically reflects on the conceptualization of agency as implied in the framework of food security and food sovereignty. from our actor-oriented research perspective as development sociologists, we contribute to a deeper engagement with the role of different actors and their negotiations on food sovereignty and security, highlighting the importance of an actor-oriented understanding of food sovereignty to strengthen the relevance of the concept for development studies and politics. both concepts – food security and food sovereignty – are of high relevance to the context of southeast asia. the region has been presented as a ‘success story’ in terms of food security. this applies, for example, to the case of vietnam which, following the country’s market reforms and agricultural investments in the mid-1980s, moved from a severe and enduring state of food insecurity to one of the major global rice exporters nowadays (tran thi thu trang, 2011). in general, most governments adopted food security policies and the region became an experimental ground for the green revolution. despite the region’s achievements in food security, food crises still occur (e.g. the rice crisis in 2008). struggles over the ownership and use of basic productive means such as water and land are ongoing, and pressing new challenges regarding the quality and social distribution of foods arise (manahan, 2011; thi thu trang tran, 2013 for the case of vietnam). the broad transformations of agriculture and food in southeast asia cannot be understood without taking into account the modernist development paradigm and programs that have framed them for decades. development agendas and food policies, as well as the debates in the social sciences, can be characterized by contradictory and often conflicting positions regarding the role of structure versus agency in shaping and changing societies. the food sovereignty movement draws on and shares friedmann and mcmichael’s (1989) political-economic understanding of global food regimes. at the same time, it is a child of its time as it mirrors the actor-turn in the realm of development policies, embracing civil society participation and global social movements as actors of change since the 1990s. the movement has its origins in latin america, but soon developed to become a global social movement from the global south. as such, the agenda of food sovereignty also gained attention among peasant and civil society organizations in asia, where a 2004 conference in dhaka resulted in the people's coalition on food sovereignty publishing ‘the people’s convention on food sovereignty’ that focuses on the right of people and communities to food sovereignty (pcfs, 2004). in addition, the united nations food and agriculture organization (fao), the association of southeast asian nations (asean), and several governments in southeast asia and beyond have started to adopt, at least rhetorically, the term food sovereignty (for indonesia, see lassa & shrestha, 2014, for venezuela see schiavoni, 2014). in this context, the conceptual vagueness of the concept of ‘sovereignty’ becomes increasingly problematic. the questions of whose sovereignty is institutionalized in which spaces, and who is sovereign by what means 9food sovereignty and conceptualization of agency: a methodological discussion are essential to the quest of food sovereignty and gain momentum as a growing diversity of actors relates to it. the term sovereignty, coined by legal and international relations scholarship, conventionally refers to the sovereignty of the state over its national territory and the legitimacy and right to impart policies without external interference. regarding food policies, the nation state would be sovereign over food production and distribution without interference by, for example, the world trade organization (wto), the world bank (wb), and multinational corporations (schiavoni, 2014, p. 3), which makes this reading attractive to national governments advocating for a stronger state regulation of food chains. the food sovereignty movement, though, focuses on food sovereignty as a ‘right of the peoples’ (nyéléni, 2007), thereby adopting a pluralistic concept that attributes sovereignty to both state and non-state political actors (such as cultural and ethnic communities) who may co-exist but also challenge each other (hospes, 2013, p. 122). patel (2009) proposes the movement to reach beyond a plurality of juridical sovereignties and clearly raises a core issue of food sovereignty when asking how people can engage with food policies in a ‘sovereign’ way, given the existence of disempowering social structures. yet, the history of development in southeast asia and beyond cautions against his proposal of a moral universalism and egalitarianism, as we will further discuss. new conceptualizations of sovereignty seem to be needed that not only cut across different juridical understandings, but also engage more productively with food sovereignty as an embedded agency of people. for southeast asia, kerkvliet (2009) and scott (1985) have established the necessity to broaden the understanding of the political, recognizing the less pronounced daily forms of struggle and the ‘weapons of the weak’ in this regard. to account for the meanings of food sovereignty in terms of agency also requires challenging the dualism of structure and agency in critical food research and politics, analyzing how a multitude of more and less ‘powerful’ actors negotiate and shape the meanings of food sovereignty in policies and daily practices. such processes of negotiating social change among different actors are the focus of norman long’s (2001) methodological approach to development research which he introduced to development sociology based on his own grounded theory studies of rural transformation and agricultural development. while the methodology was coined in view of the broader context of critical food research, the reason for this article is that actororiented approaches are largely absent from the current debates on food sovereignty (one exception is long & roberts, 2005). the aim of this article is to discuss the problems associated with narrow conceptualizations of agency in the discourses on food security and sovereignty, and to highlight the opportunities of an actor-oriented perspective to deepen the understanding of people’s struggles for food sovereignty as well as the meanings attached to it, thereby strengthening also the relevance of the food sovereignty debate for development studies. in this regard, we propose research that engages with agency beyond predefined arenas of political negotiations on food sovereignty and traces food-related agency in people’s life-worlds. this opens the view to spaces of negotiation over different systems of knowledge on food, agriculture, and development, in which local food producers and consumers interact with state and international ac10 judith ehlert & christiane voßemer  aseas 8(1) tors, transgressing the local microand global-structural level. after developing the context of development politics and the emergence of global agriculture which frame the emergence of the food security regime and the food sovereignty movement, we elaborate how actors and agency are conceptualized under the two frameworks and how this is commonly criticized. following up on the observed ignorance of people’s life-world agency as well as the problematic essentialization of collective agency, we discuss the added value of an actor-oriented methodology to address these shortcomings and strengthen an analytic approach to (embodied) and life-worldly food sovereign agency. global agriculture and development paradigms: contextualizing food security and food sovereignty the modernization of global agriculture and the development paradigms and politics following world war ii frame the emergence and agenda of the concepts of food security and food sovereignty. modernization theories in the 1950s/1960s, epitomizing the universality of the western model of progress, were directly translated into development politics and interventions in newly independent nation states of the global south. large-scale agriculture – including land concentration, mechanization, irrigation, and intensification of production through green revolution technologies – promised higher productivity and was regarded as the main driver for further economic developments in the industrial sector. in this model, smallholder and labor-intensive subsistence agriculture in so-called developing countries were seen as inefficient traditional remnants that needed to be abandoned through transfers of technological innovations, agricultural know-how, and capital from north to south (rostow, 1960). modernist ideology proclaiming man’s destiny to tame nature, made it a ‘natural’ imperative to re-organize the agricultural landscape to overcome environmental boundaries to productivity in the global south. furthermore, industrial development and urbanization required the re-organization of the social organization of work (scott, 1999). agricultural labor had to be ‘freed’ and absorbed as factory labor by the emerging industrial sector (rostow, 1960). the era of ‘catching up development’ was driven by the developmental state in countries of the global south and by development agencies in europe and north-america as well as the brettonwoods institutions transferring capital, technology, and agricultural innovations to the developing world. this context is referred to by friedmann (1987) and friedmann and mcmichael (1989) as the second food regime (1950–1970s).1 deriving from world systems theory and regulation theory, their food regime analysis problematizes dominant development models perceiving national agricultural modernization as a linear process towards economic progress. by contrast, they focus on the unequal structural economic and ecological interdependencies in which nation states have ever since been inter-woven on a global scale. in their analysis, they reconstruct how intensive and extensive forms of capitalist accumulation reproduce structural inequalities between 1 the first food regime (1870–1930s) is characterized by extensive capitalist accumulation of industrializing europe, importing foods from tropical colonies and settler-colonies that ‘nurtured’ european industrialization. 11food sovereignty and conceptualization of agency: a methodological discussion the global north and south (see below). from the mid-1960s onwards, scholars of dependency theory critically assessed the devastating effects of the modernization paradigm and its respective development politics (rist, 2008). according to the critics, the hoped for trickle-down effects of industrial growth had failed to translate into overall economic betterment of the rural masses. instead, top-down re-organization of subsistence to state-led plantation monocultures for cash crop production increasingly left peasants in the global south without access to land and traditional subsistence livelihood means (akram-lodhi, borras, & kay 2007; holt giménez & shattuck, 2011, p. 110). as a consequence, agricultural communities became more and more dependent on external food aid and foreign food imports of european and us-american agricultural surplus production. dependency theorists see the reason for the failure of industrial growth in the structural economic dependencies between industrialized and under-developed nations but share the conviction with modernization theory that industrial and agricultural modernization are the most crucial to unleash national progress (rist, 2008).2 the food security regime deriving from this specific political economic context, the term ‘food security’ was first mentioned at the first united nation’s world food conference held in 1974 in rome. nation states pledged to combat hunger and food insecurity in the global south by increasing global food production while guaranteeing price stability of staple foods. the technocratic faith in the productivity of industrial agriculture by followers of modernization and dependency theory alike led the debates around sufficient world food supplies (patel, 2009, p. 664). the global economic shocks of the 1970/1980s brought about the neoliberal turn of overall economic policies in the 1980s, which drastically downsized the developmental state. structural adjustment programs (saps) sharply cut down public investments, and dismantled price guarantees and tariffs. former state subsidies of the agricultural sector were eliminated. the 1980s marked the beginning of the third ‘corporate’ food regime (friedmann & mcmichael, 1989). free trade agreements (fta) as well as the foundation of the world trade organization in 1995 and its ‘agreement on agriculture’ further institutionalized the process of agricultural liberalization. state-centered agricultural development was gradually replaced by international financial and development institutions, and multinational corporations monopolized global agriculture by corporate-led technological innovations and proprietary regimes controlling entire food chains (holt giménez & shattuck, 2011, p. 111). neoliberal policies have turned food into a tradable good from which many poor communities in the south remain excluded while domestic agriculture has been structurally downsized. acknowledging that enough food to ‘feed the world’ was available on the global market, the united nations world food and agriculture organization (fao) refigured world hunger as a problem of access to food and reformu2 for a description of the respective economic development policy of ‘import substitution industrialization (isi)’, see rist (2008). 12 judith ehlert & christiane voßemer  aseas 8(1) lated the concept of food security accordingly.3 holt giménez and shattuck (2011, p. 120–121) understand food security as an integral part of the current corporate food regime and as embedded in modernization theories of state-led development. the renewed role of the state within the corporate food regime is to provide food and agriculture-based safety nets cushioning the global food enterprise and its exclusive character. at the same time and in order to absorb the socio-economic externalities of the current neoliberal regime, fao and international development agencies provide local food and agricultural aid. as the food security concept is deeply inherent to the food regime itself, functioning as an immanent development-political measure to deal with hunger in the global south, we would like to call it the ‘food security regime’. the food sovereignty movement whereas this food security regime was initiated by international agencies of the un system, the transnational food sovereignty movement emerged “out of struggle and resistance” on the streets (schiavoni, 2014, p. 2) where peasants in different regions of the world aired their complaints with the minimalist state and the global neoliberal food order. what started out as rather fragmented global peasant protests, culminated in the formation of the global social movement la via campesina (1993). during the nyéléni forum for food sovereignty in 2007, leaders of the movement defined the guiding principle of ‘food sovereignty’ as “the right of the peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems” (nyéléni, 2007). the movement’s potent presence in the anti-globalization movement objecting neoliberal policies, free trade agreements, and agri-business monopolies generated a lot of media attention to its demand of an alternative agricultural model and visions of global socio-economic transformation.4 the global food crisis, which peaked in 2007/08 and which was accompanied by popular protests and food riots mainly in the global south (bello, 2010), has certainly lent further legitimacy to the claims of the food sovereignty movement. the extraordinary boost of rice prices triggered national crises, for example, in the philippines (manahan, 2011). during this time cambodia, indonesia, and vietnam even banned rice exports to secure national food security (bello, 2010; tran thi thu trang, 2011). whereas asean’s responses to the global food crisis persist in increased food aid and green revolution (manahan, 2011), peasant organizations, activists, and scholars have started discussions about alternatives to this productivist model. control over natural and productive means by the “small and landless farmers, fisherfolk, rural women, indigenous peoples and other rural poor” (manahan, 2011, p. 469) is increasingly being framed as a matter of food sovereignty in the region (atienza, 2011; caouette, 2011). in this way, food sovereignty goes beyond the food security concept as it re-politicizes global agriculture and the fundamental role and entitlement to food of the marginalized in this system. 3 in contrast to the conceptualization of food security as a matter of increasing production and a supply problem discussed at the first un world food conference (see above). 4 for a detailed account on the genealogy of la via campesina and its strong roots in peasant resistance in latin america, see martinez-torres & rosset (2010). 13food sovereignty and conceptualization of agency: a methodological discussion instead of searching for inbuilt solutions, it opts for a radical break with the corporate food regime. conceptualizations of actors and agency in the food security and the food sovereignty framework having established the general context, we will now elaborate on how actors and agency are conceptualized in the food security and food sovereignty framework. under the food security regime in the global south, authority to design and implement food policies is primarily granted to agricultural engineers and advisors because of their knowledge of green revolution technologies, as well as nutritionists and pharmacists because of their bio-medical expertise on micronutrients. delivering the rational combination for the development of industrial agriculture and controlled nutrition supplies, these development experts are conceptualized as key actors of food security, and opposed to the hungry poor and ignorant masses in the global south. in the course of the establishment of the food security paradigm, its agenda of modernization and its aid mechanisms, foreign food experts have fundamentally challenged the social organization of production and consumption in agricultural communities. local agricultural and food knowledge have been constructed as a backward, residual obstacle to the universal leap from underdevelopment to industrial modernity. modernization theories’ positive belief in the regulating, determinant effects of structures and institutions of western societies on ‘the underdeveloped’ is also mirrored in respective food security programs: supposedly homogenous target communities of passive aid-receivers whose bodies wait to be fuelled are to be transferred from a state of underand malnutrition to full-fledged productivity. in the food sector where neither food producers nor consumers are visible as actors with the knowledgeability and capacity to cope with everyday food-related challenges, this top-down paradigm of economic growth trickling down to the ones in need has been particularly obvious. the dualistic conceptualization of actors, opposing global experts to passive aidreceivers, as well as its underlying paradigms of development and knowledge, have attracted numerous critiques. the logic of development as modernization, guiding the food security regime, has been problematized for its hegemonic claims of man over nature, specialist knowledge and universal science over situated forms of everyday life experiences, and modernity over tradition. for example, hobart (1993) argues that the dichotomy constructed between the hegemonic ‘progressive’ global knowledge and traditional local ignorance carries a subtext of development as global topdown intervention rather than global-local interaction. the above binary constructions and their implications for the recognition of local agency in the global south are also at the heart of the development critique voiced by prominent scholars like escobar (1995). mcmichael analyses them as mayor epistemological factors for the disregard of the global importance of smallholder farming culminating in the “narrative of peasant extinction in the modern world” (mcmichael, 2009, pp. 152–153). he bemoans that, “in the name of free trade, development and food security, the current corporate food regime has imposed an ‘agriculture without farmers’ in a world equating industrial efficiency with human progress” (mcmichael, 2013, p. 1). neglecting 14 judith ehlert & christiane voßemer  aseas 8(1) local forms of knowledge, subsistence and social reproduction, the conceptualization of actors in food security programs is also criticized for its gender-blindness. agricultural development under the modernist food security agenda strongly favored cash crop production which is commonly dominated by male labor, whereas female peasants in many parts in the global south tend to be responsible for reproductive subsistence agriculture (boserup, 1970; mies & shiva, 1993; von werlhof, 1991). as ecofeminist perspectives stress, a universalist and depoliticized agenda of agricultural development and food security completely overlooks the different and gendered positions in the global economy from where men and women struggle for their food needs. furthermore, pottier (1999, p. 16) criticizes the food security regime’s technocratic focus on food preferences following the simplistic idea of ‘people x enjoy food y’. this reductionist approach decouples the individual from the complex cosmology of local food cultures. these critics, coming from different perspectives, demand a stronger recognition of the knowledge and position of the gendered social group of peasants acting from a marginalized position of power. they meet and strengthen the claims for food sovereignty, which, as a political project, global social movement, and analytic framework, is concerned with bringing ‘peasants’ back in. it places food producers at the center in an otherwise technocratic project of ‘feeding the world’ in which peasants in the global south in particular are seen as making up the most vulnerable group to the structural violence emanating from the global food regime (schiavoni, 2014, p. 2). whereas the food security framework fully ignores local agency, the food sovereignty framework introduces the global peasantry as a collective actor, a counter movement challenging capitalist food relations in manifold ways and “to use exchange not for purposes of accumulation, but for reproduction of particular socioecological relations anchored in principles of self-determination/organization” (mcmichael, 2013, p. 1). this said, the food sovereignty framework has inspired and mobilized a diversity of publics, including, next to peasant movements, also workers, academic and public intellectuals, ngos, and human rights activists in the global south as well as the global north. bernstein (2014) problematizes the power differentials within the movement that portrays itself as the heart of a globally solidary peasantry but incorporates food sovereignty intellectuals’ claims to develop discourse in concert with peasants, ‘only’ voicing their thought and experience in a more scientific language.5 he is even more concerned with what is defended by sympathizers of the movement as a ‘strategic essentialism’ of the peasantry and the ‘peasant way’ of forming counter-agency in a capitalist global food regime. he opposes the movement’s uniform construction of the peasantry, which he sees as a diverse group in terms of the social categories different peasants fall into – especially class and its intersections with gender, generation, and ethnicity. yet his assumption of a total commoditization of socio-economic relations in a capitalist system leads him to disapprove of the potential of counter-agency exercised by this diverse group of peasants, and of the 5 this claim would also be dunned by postcolonial feminist scholars of development with regard to its ignorance of the complex problematic of representing as well as speaking from a subaltern position (harcourt, 2009; spivak, 1988). 15food sovereignty and conceptualization of agency: a methodological discussion existence and potential of non-commodified forms of agriculture and meaningful peasant resistance against capitalism. though holding on to the collective agency of the peasantry criticized as ‘capital’s other’ (bernstein 2014), the movement and scholarship on food sovereignty situate political collective agency in an analytic framework that strongly emphasizes structural constraints of agency. approaching a food regime as a “rule-governed structure of production and consumption of food on a world scale” (friedmann, 1993, pp. 30–31), “the strategic role of agriculture and food in the construction of the world capitalist economy […] across time and space” (mcmichael, 2009, pp. 139–140) are at the heart of food regime analysis and its reception by food sovereignty advocates. the structural epistemic interest in understanding food as part of global capitalism translates into an academic approach to agency within predefined social categories and oppositions inherent to this capitalist system, as friedmann reveals in her description of the interplay of actors within a food regime as “changing balances of power among states, organized national lobbies, classes – farmers, workers, peasants – and capital” (friedmann, 1993, p. 31). capitalism is understood by mcmichael (2009) as developing cyclically, with periods of stabilization and transition, and his attention towards the potential of change inherent to the food sovereignty movement is associated with the latter. this politically emancipative, yet structurally determined, conceptualization of peasant agency is reflected by the food sovereignty movement’s radical claims to overthrow the capitalist system and the power relations attached to it, aiming towards a moral universalism and egalitarianism, which, as patel argues, would be the only structural context in which food sovereignty could be enacted meaningfully by everyone: to make the right to shape food policy meaningful is to require that everyone be able substantively to engage with those policies. but the prerequisites for this are a society in which the equality-distorting effects of sexism, patriarchy, racism, and class power have been eradicated. (patel, 2009, p. 670) yet, such claims are obviously problematic in view of the discussions above, both methodologically and politically. they implicitly fall back into modernization theory’s paradigm that universal institutions and structural change are to free oppressed people’s bodies and minds, denying that agency in a sense of food sovereignty could also be substantive in the context of a food regime which fosters global social inequalities. the previous discussions have shown that the food security and food sovereignty framework clearly represent different approaches with a view to the distribution of ‘agency’ and ‘knowledgeability’ as well as the (in)visibility of food producers and consumers as sovereign ‘actors’. in the food security debate, international organizations and their corporate allies are situated as the main actors in the driving seat. the food sovereignty movement breaks with the ‘agriculture without farmers’ and the peasant as passive and ignorant aid receiver and, by contrast, constructs the collective resistant actor of the global ‘peasantry’ as a politicized collective agent endowed with the entitlement to build an alternative food order. yet, a common feature of the con16 judith ehlert & christiane voßemer  aseas 8(1) ceptualization of actors in both approaches is a tendency to essentialize: the food security regime does so in its conceptualization of the ignorant local aid recipient, the food sovereignty movement in its strategic construction of a collective agency of the peasantry. we propose an actor-oriented approach to engage explicitly with the empirical heterogeneity of actors shaping, reproducing, and challenging food regimes. as we will argue in the following section, an actor-oriented perspective is useful to deal substantively with relations of power and questions of sovereignty in the current food regime of the ‘everyone’ in patel’s citation – the peasant, the cook, the consumer, and so forth as actors, meaningfully struggling with and against food policies while exercising forms of food sovereignty in the context of their life-worlds. contributions of an actor-oriented research approach to food sovereignty the actor-oriented research approach that we draw upon in the following has been developed by norman long (2001) in his book development sociology: actor perspectives. in this work, long takes up theories of social action, in particular schütz and luckmann’s approach to life-worlds (1973 & 1984; see next section) as well as giddens’ (1984) concept of structuration.6 based on his study of rural transformations, long promotes a paradigm shift from structural to actor-centered approaches in researching development processes. his critique of structural approaches to rural transformation and social change more generally – be they rooted in modernization theory, political economy or even postmodernism – is that they are driven by determinist, externalist, and often even linear accounts of social change. in the critical analysis of the global food order, perspectives of political economy and political ecology dominate. in particular the already introduced food regime analysis (see above) has become a prominent framework for understanding the way global food regimes develop, and for analyzing how the dynamics of global capitalism consolidate or destabilize food-related power balances between powerful and marginalized actors, and vice versa. long’s main concern is that such approaches are weak in understanding the dynamics of development surging from social heterogeneity and ambiguous local-global interactions. they risk overlooking the “empirical complexities and variabilities of contemporary life” (long, 2001, p. 11), and present structural processes of social change as disembodied from the agency and the struggles of the multiple more and less ‘powerful’ actors that produced them (long, 2001, pp. 11–12). addressing such critique carries a special weight for research dealing with dynamics of rural development in the global south in view of the modernist and colonial heritage of development, which has inscribed homogenizing views and interventionist paradigms to food security programs and development politics more generally (see above). in order to avoid replicating these problematic assumptions on the level of research methodology and build theoretical approaches that capture social complex6 giddens approaches situations of social (re)production as processes of structuration, based on the observation that “society only has form, and that form only has effects on people, in so far as structure is produced and reproduced in what people do” (giddens & pierson, 1998, p. 77). 17food sovereignty and conceptualization of agency: a methodological discussion ity and human agency of more and less ‘powerful’ actors within it, long encourages research to explore arenas of negotiation and structuration, spaces where different socially impeded individuals come to negotiate social change in a particular context of action (corbin & strauss, 1990). in this understanding, complex actors’ networks generate gendered social spaces of negotiation7 where different actors, their distinct forms of knowledge, resources, discourses, and symbols come to interact (long, 2001, pp. 57, 113): female and male peasants – collectively and individually – for example, negotiate issues of food production, distribution, and consumption with representatives of international agribusinesses and development agencies, state departments of agriculture, local authorities and family members, bringing forward ideas about rural development, or experiences of food production and perceptions of healthy foods that are shaped by technological, material, and symbolic food resources in their life-world. life-world arenas of negotiating food sovereignty whereas patel bemoans the lack of opportunities for ‘everybody’ to engage with food policies (see above), long detects and traces such engagements on the level of people’s ‘life-world’: the social cosmos of individual actors, which they take for granted, experience, act upon, and thus constitute in situated daily practices (schütz & luckmann, 1973). long’s approach to life-world interaction clearly distinguishes actor-oriented research from food regime analysis, extending the question of political agency into the social realm of everyday life constituted by quotidian interactions between, for instance, members of a household or between farmers and extension workers. friedmann’s (2005, p. 234) food regime approach analytically focuses on policy arenas, for example, when stating that “each of the past two food regimes was the combined outcome of social movements intersecting with state strategies and strategies of profit-seeking corporations”. yet, peasants do not necessarily organize in social movements to confront and exercise meaningful agency towards development policies that intrude their daily practices of food production and consumption. the tagbanua community studied by cuevas, fernandez, and olvida (in this issue) offers a classical example of a life-world arena of food sovereignty: peasant households in the community are approached by state agencies promoting programs to commoditize former subsistence agricultural produce. and they deal with these offers by directly interrogating the meanings and potentials of such development interventions in the context of their interwoven daily life concerns over food and health, standard of living, cultural identity, and social reproduction. food programs and agricultural development interventions are not simply adopted or rejected but negotiated by ‘powerful’ actors – in policy arenas and in immediate or indirect encounters with local rationalities in life-world arenas, such as the gendered social fields of the household and community. in focusing on these arenas of development, actor-oriented research engages with the more complex, ambiguous, and diverse processes by which particular 7 dannecker and lachenmann (2014) show that gender, next to translocality, is an axis that fundamentally structures such spaces of negotiation. 18 judith ehlert & christiane voßemer  aseas 8(1) social “arrangements emerge and are consolidated or reworked in the everyday lives of people” (long, 2001, p. 49). actors are thus methodologically grounded as ‘powerful’ agents based on their ability to process and embed such diverse discontinuities intersecting in their life-worlds, making them capable of acting. de-essentializing entities of agency what is constitutive of actors in long’s understanding is that they are in a position to formulate, reach, and carry out decisions (long, 2001, p. 16), that is, to develop agency either individually or collectively. generally, however, the actor-oriented approach is very sensitive towards the negotiated character of social positions and the fluctuant nature of systems of knowledge and identity. in consequence, social categories such as class or ethnic group are not conceived of as actors, as this would imply a reification of these categories in the sense of a methodological nationalism/ essentialism (lachenmann 2010, p. 9; with reference to wimmer & glick-schiller, 2003). an actor-oriented critique of the essentialization of the peasantry thus reaches deeper than the critique of bernstein (see above) and problematizes the empirical grounds of the latter. it is from this stance that actor-oriented perspectives problematize the (re-)presentation of collective actors – such as the peasantry in the food sovereignty framework – as entities. instead, it stresses, for example, that the reification of the ‘household’ a commonly used ‘entity of decision-making’ in development research neglects the complex interactions of unequally positioned actors (lachenmann, 2009) and the different layers of belonging to a household. especially, gender dimensions (dannecker & lachenmann, 2014), but also education and age shape decisions within households in intersecting ways, making the household a space of negotiation rather than a fixed entity of decision-making.8 similarly, under an actor-oriented perspective, it is crucial to scrutinize the movement’s claim of collective agency. on the one hand, its essentialization of the peasantry as ‘capital’s other’ needs to be acknowledged as an important strategy to exercise ‘coherent’ agency in highly politicized arenas where civil society, states, and international organizations negotiate agricultural and food paradigms. on the other hand, however, the movement’s quality as a collective actor and decision-maker needs to be challenged, by approaching it in itself as a space of negotiation where ‘authoritative knowledge’ about food sovereignty is generated, and where differently positioned gendered actors struggle to represent ‘the global peasantry’ or to be represented as part of it. one could critically remark that the movement’s perceived mandate to represent the ones who are the most marginalized in the dominant regime (see above) draws on the same paternalistic and dichotomizing development discourse of empowering the ‘weak’ – a discourse which is framed by the very powerful actors of the food regime itself which the movement tries to resist. this lens seems highly important to methodologically account for the empirical complexity of food struggles in people’s life-worlds, for activists’ diverse engagements 8 herein we also see a major methodological pitfall of the household concept applied by the food security regime and food aid programs in which e.g. gendered food rules on distribution and consumption within the household are neglected. 19food sovereignty and conceptualization of agency: a methodological discussion with food-sovereignty, and last but not least the structures and dynamics of power within the space of actors promoting food sovereignty as members or sympathizers of the movement. this must not lead to a destruction of the political subjectivity of the movement, but may strengthen its capacity to openly negotiate and thereby act upon internal structures marginalizing certain groups, knowledges, rationalities, and meanings of food sovereignty. research of shiavoni (2014) as well as lassa and shrestha (2014) point to new issues of representation within the group of actors embracing food sovereignty as international bodies and nation states start to adopt a language of food sovereignty. an actor-oriented analysis of the movement, as a dynamic arena of negotiation itself, is helpful in this context to trace shifts in the movement’s internal gendered processes of empowering or dominating certain actors and their perceptions and daily practices of food sovereignty. such shifts may be generated (and analyzed) in the negotiations between individual peasants and activists of the movement and new actors (in particular national representatives and development agents) who join and shape the space of food sovereignty from a position of material and discursive power. who empowers whom then becomes a contested terrain. global-local interfaces of knowledge knowledge and its transformation, as well as ‘knowledgeability’ as a basis for social action, play a central role in actor-oriented research. long (2001, p. 16) follows giddens’ notion of human agency, attributing individuals a ‘knowledgeability’ and knowledge-based capacity of coping with their life, given the manifold constraints of a social world, even under situations of extreme deprivation. social action is shaped by internalized routines and explorative practices, as well as by social conventions and power relations (long, 2001, p. 49–50). as depicted earlier, development thinking and food policies have for decades granted epistemological authority to the expert knowledge of (western) agrarian scientist and technical engineers. at the same time, agency-less peasants and their farming knowledge have diametrically been constructed as traditional, naïve, and lay. nevertheless, this does not mean that farmers receiving food or seed aids have unambiguously taken on this assigned role. hence, in this process of generating “authoritative knowledge” (jordan, 1997), different systems of knowledge as well as systems of ignorance (lachenmann, 1994, pp. 287) towards alternative knowledge still are contested, reproduced or restructured between different actors and their social actions. whereas the food security regime accounts for the superiority of scientific knowledge over local knowledge, for the food sovereignty movement global knowledge manifests in disruptive agro-productivist technology imperializing and destroying ecologically-sound, ‘ethical’ local knowledge. both knowledge concepts entail a dichotomy, which the actor-oriented approach deliberately deconstructs. the actorperspective methodologically centers on the interlocking of different bodies of knowledge, at so-called ‘interfaces’, moments in which actors’ different cultural interpretations and social interests come to permeate each other, bringing to the front hidden rationalities of action (long, 2001, p. 50). at such critical points of linkage and confrontation, peasants and development organizations substantiate claims or strategies and exercise power based on the integration of different forms of scientific, ex20 judith ehlert & christiane voßemer  aseas 8(1) pert or everyday knowledge, global technical standards or longstanding experience. following this, agency largely derives from the actors’ ‘knowledgeability’ and ‘capacity’ to process diverse forms of knowledge as basis for social action and according to their life-world rationalities (ehlert, 2012): rather than seeing the ‘local’ as shaped by the ‘global’ or the ‘global’ as an aggregation of the ‘local’, an actor perspective aims to elucidate the precise sets of interlocking relationships, actor ‘projects’ and social practices that interpenetrate various social, symbolic and geographical spaces. (long, 2001, p. 13) it is exactly this empirical ambiguity of people’s relation to both dominant and resistant conceptions of food and health that they interlink in their life-world struggle for and everyday coping practices of food sovereignty. alexandra heis’ study of a local network for alternative agriculture in northern thailand (in this issue) is a good example to illustrate the ambiguity of the food sovereignty activists’ approach to healthy food. on the one hand, representatives of the movement adopt globally dominant discourses of food security that measure healthy food in narrow terms of micronutrients. at the same time, on the other hand, they considerably stretch and challenge the narrowness of these discourses by empirically reconstructing them in their life-world context: through the creation of green markets they establish direct food encounters between peasants and consumers that are not mediated by supermarkets or traders. in these encounters, nutrition tables, expiry dates, and sterile packaging – the symbolic markers of a global knowledge system that promotes hygienic, nutritious, and fresh food – become replaced by an assessment of ‘freshness’ in the direct conversations between producers, cooks, and consumers, concerning when the vegetable was picked, combined with sensual impressions like smell, consistence, size, and taste as indicators of overall quality. in a similar vein, figuié and bricas (2010) discuss the development of supermarkets in vietnam. they empirically assess how the modalities of food supply in supermarkets enact new practices of assessing food quality. sensory methods as described above and the trust between seller and customer are more and more replaced by product information supplied and consumer knowledge imparted. nevertheless, instead of creating dichotomies between ‘traditional’ versus ‘modern’ forms of food qualification methods, the actor-oriented approach would focus its attention on the process of customers maneuvering in different markets and settings of food distribution by drawing on and combining diverse forms of knowledge. this process of maneuvering is directed by rational food ‘information’, but also by emic perceptions of food quality and concepts of freshness, taste, and delicacy. analyzing such interfaces, researchers may gain in-depth understanding about “how discrepancies of social interest, cultural interpretation, knowledge and power are mediated and perpetuated or transformed at critical points of linkage and confrontation” (long, 2001, p. 50) – be they green markets or supermarkets. in order to theoretically grasp how the members of this movement, and the movement as a collective actor, construct and live their idea of food-health sovereignty, this ambiguity needs to be understood as part of the dynamic processes of negotiation in this translocal space of food-health and with a view to emerging rationalities of both food health and food sovereignty. 21food sovereignty and conceptualization of agency: a methodological discussion embodiment of agency? an actor-oriented analysis of the sensual food-encounters in the examples above may also contribute to further developing the methodological approach of long. though the latter acknowledges bryant turner’s (1992) work on the ‘embodiment’ of actors and action, the role of the perceiving, feeling, and experiencing body remains largely absent from his discussion. also in the critical claims for food sovereignty, the body is largely constrained to an ‘object’ to be fed and treated well, as well as a victim waiting to be politically freed from the structural violence of neoliberalism and its food-related body politics. the calorific and scientific nurturing of bodies via food programs as in the food security framework on the other side strips the bodily agency off the actor. turner (2001, p. 245), however, stresses the lived experience of eating – the smell, taste, touch, pain, and emotions associated with food – as expressions of agency over one’s sensual and subjective body. different settings than the studies cited above bear interesting hints towards the need to further explore the meaning of turner’s observation for the quest of food sovereignty. furthermore, feuer (in this issue) shows the entanglement of taste, embodied knowledge and sensual experience of food and eating in soup-pot restaurants as essential elements of the negotiations on good and healthy food on a daily basis. cuevas et al. (in this issue) even find local meanings of food sovereignty in their research community to be grounded in the physical experience of swidden farming and the indulgence of the tongue in the tastes of swidden-grown rice specialties. as these examples illustrate, empirical accounts of the importance of bodily aspects of food sovereignty in production, distribution, and eating are readily available. it will be an important challenge for actor-oriented research to reconceptualize the food sovereign actor with a view to the embodiment of his or her action. conclusion in this article, we have pointed out the possible contributions of an actor-oriented research approach of development sociology to the study of food sovereignty and the quest of sovereign agency within it. to this end, we have discussed the conception of actors and their interactions in the food sovereignty framework as well as the food security regime it opposes. a historical synopsis of the contexts of the food security and sovereignty frameworks served as a point of departure as it clarifies how the food security regime in the global south is embedded into a wider context of a top-down modernist and interventionist development paradigm, shaping a technocratic and universalistic agenda of ‘feeding the word’. the food sovereignty framework presents itself as a fundamental opposition to the food security agenda and the wider corporatist, capitalist global food regime it is integral to. emerging from a global social movement, it revalorizes the role of the resistant peasant in a global food regime that postulates an industrial ‘agriculture without farmers’. while peasants and consumers in the global south disappear under the aegis of the food security regime as knowledgeable actors, the food sovereignty movement reclaims them on the global agenda of food politics, introducing the global peasant22 judith ehlert & christiane voßemer  aseas 8(1) ry as an unambiguous, anti-capitalist collective actor struggling for food rights. we argue that both conceptualizations of actors, though politically opposed, draw on similarly problematic essentializations of actors and their agency. they largely ignore the empirically visible manifold, complex, and heterogeneous struggles of peasants encountering, negotiating, and enacting development politics and programs in their everyday lives of farming routines and consumption practices, and thereby leave concrete and fundamental questions of power relations and sovereign agency ‘on the ground’ untouched. based on this critique, we see the contribution of an actor-oriented research approach in its methodological focus on how food policies are dynamically transformed and made sense of at interfaces of different actors and their food knowledges. it reveals how otherwise invisible food-related agency is unfolding in life-world arenas where actors at different levels, including the individual peasant and consumer, struggle over food policies and the authority of their respective (embodied) knowledges and experiences in defining them. this is where we see a crucial dimension of sovereignty that goes beyond its single-edged political notion, but assigns it to the actor as being capable of coping with everyday life and stimulating change not only through overtly political but, indeed, very mundane actions. shifting the focus to the engagement with food politics in the daily lives of people and scrutinizing how specific forms of food sovereignty are developed in global-local interactions, the methodological focus on actors is thus a strong lens for addressing the increasingly pressing questions of sovereignty and representation within the food sovereignty framework.  references akram-lodhi, h. a., borras, s. m., & kay, c. 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(1993). ecofeminism. halifax, ns, london, uk: zed books. nyéléni (2007). declaration of nyéléni: declaration of the forum for food sovereignty. sélingué, mali. patel, r. (2009). food sovereignty. journal of peasant studies, 36(3), 663–706. pcfs – people's coalition on food sovereignty. (2004). the people's convention on food sovereignty: draft developed at the asia pacific people's convention on food sovereignty. dhaka. retrieved from: http://www.archive.foodsov.org/resources/conventiondhaka.doc pottier, j. (1999). anthropology of food: the social dynamics of food security. malden, uk: blackwell publishers. rist, g. (2008). the history of development: from western origins to global faith (3rd ed.). london uk: zed books. rostow, w. w. (1960). the stages of economic growth: a non-communist manifesto. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. schiavoni, c. m. 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(1988). can the subaltern speak? in c. nelson & l. grossberg (eds.). marxism and the interpretation of culture (pp. 271–313). urbana, il: university of illinois press. tran thi thu trang (2011). food security versus food sovereignty: choice of concept, policies, and classes in vietnam’s post-reform economy. kasarinlan: philippine journal of third world studies, 26(1-2), 68–88. thi thu trang tran (2013). food safety and the political economy of food governance: the case of shrimp farming in nam dinh province, vietnam. journal of peasant studies, 40(4), 703–719. turner, b. s. (1992). regulating bodies: essays in medical sociology. london, uk: routledge. turner, b. s. (2001). disability and the sociology of the body. in g. l. albrecht, k. seelman, & m. bury (eds.), handbook of disability studies (pp. 252–267). thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. von werlhof, c. (1991). was haben die hühner mit dem dollar zu tun? frauen und ökonomie. münchen, ger: frauenoffensive. wimmer, a., & glick schiller, n. (2003). methodological nationalism, the social sciences, and the study of migration: an essay in historical epistemology. international migration review 37(3), 576–610. about the authors judith ehlert is a sociologist by training and holds a postdoctoral position at the department of development studies, university of vienna. in her phd thesis, she worked on environmental knowledge and agrarian change in the mekong delta in vietnam. her current research project deals with the body politics of food and eating in vietnam. ► contact: judith.ehlert@univie.ac.at 25food sovereignty and conceptualization of agency: a methodological discussion christiane voßemer works as a university assistant and lecturer at the department of development studies, university of vienna. she is a graduate of development studies and currently working on her phd thesis, applying an actor-oriented research approach to the transformation of health care in a myanmar borderland. ► contact: christiane.vossemer@univie.ac.at challenging a home country: a preliminary account of indonesian student activism in berlin, germany syafiq hasyim ► hasyim, s. (2014). challenging a home country: a preliminary account of indonesian student activism in berlin, germany. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 7(2), 183-198. this article gives an overview on indonesian student activism in berlin, germany. based on documents (published and unpublished), interviews, and conversations with former and current student activists, the paper scrutinizes the trajectory of activism of indonesian students in the capital of germany since the 1960s and asks about the evolution of specific student organizations, the issues and topics they tackled, and their media and networking strategies. the article illustrates the activities of the ppi berlin as a dominant example of indonesian students’ political activism abroad and the activities of indonesian muslim students as a prominent example of religious-based activism which has gained significance since the fall of suharto. these examples indicate the diversity of indonesian student activists in berlin that are nevertheless united in their aspirations to challenge politics back home. keywords: anti-suharto protests; berlin; indonesian student activism; indonesian student associations; religious-based activism  dieser artikel gibt einen überblick über den aktivismus indonesischer studentinnen in berlin, deutschland. anhand von veröffentlichten und unveröffentlichten dokumenten, interviews und gesprächen mit früheren und derzeitigen studentischen aktivistinnen wird die entwicklung dieses aktivismus seit den 1960er jahren untersucht und nach der entstehung von einzelnen studentinnenorganisationen, den behandelten themen sowie den medienund netzwerkstrategien gefragt. der artikel zeigt die aktivitäten der ppi berlin als beispiel für politischen aktivismus von indonesischen studentinnen im ausland und die aktivitäten von indonesischen muslimischen studentinnen als beispiel für religionsbasierten aktivismus, der seit dem fall von suharto an bedeutung gewonnen hat. diese beispiele zeigen die vielfalt von indonesischen studentischen aktivistinnen, die dennoch in ihren bestrebungen, auf politische prozesse im heimatland einzuwirken, vereint sind. schlagworte: anti-suharto proteste; berlin; indonesische studentinnenvereinigungen; indonesischer studentischer aktivismus; religionsbasierter aktivismus aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 14 .2 -4 184 syafiq hasyim  aseas 7(2) introduction the political position of students (mahasiswa/i) in indonesia has been a determining factor at key junctures since the colonial era. this was most evident in the course of the downfall of suharto in 1998 (aspinall, 2005; botz, 2001, p. 39; eklof, 2004, p. 297), as indonesian students not only played a critical role in their home country, but some of them living abroad also contributed remarkably to this change in leadership. already during dutch colonial rule, indonesian student associations in the netherlands were engaged in struggling for the independence of indonesia. for instance, mohammad hatta through perhimpunan indonesia (pi, indonesian student’s league), syahrir, and many others who studied in the netherlands were active in persuading the international community to lend their support to the independence of indonesia (mrázek, 1994; rose, 2010). this paper seeks to highlight the activism of indonesian students in berlin from the 1960s until today. in order to do so it poses the following question: how have indonesian students abroad organized their political activism, built networks, and sustained consistency in order to express their critical stance towards events at home? in particular, the article focuses on indonesian student activists in berlin-based campaigns between the 1970s and today: what issues have been preferred, what media used, and what networks established? finally, this paper also illustrates nuances between the activism of secular student movements and religion-based student activism. the current capital of germany is the center of this article’s analysis since most indonesian students in germany, estimated to number perhaps a thousand, currently reside in berlin.1 this study is based on written documents (published and unpublished), interviews and conversations with former and current student activists, and on personal participatory observation with former and current students who lived and studied in berlin from 2010 to 2013. this set of written material and oral histories allow for a closer insight in the activism of indonesian students abroad.2 indonesian student activism in germany until the fall of suharto student activism refers to a series of collective actions outside learning and educational undertakings, which are oriented towards contributing to the change of unjust political, social, and cultural circumstances surrounding them. in many countries, the targets of their opposition are the entrenched, ruling regimes (weiss, aspinall, & thompson, 2012, p. 1). the political and historical position of student activism in the process of social and political change of any country is of utmost importance. in the republic of china, for example, students in the 1990s spearheaded protest move1 this number is estimated by an informant at the indonesian embassy in berlin. besides this estimation, the indonesian embassy cannot provide accurate figures. 2 for the literature review, i have benefited from the closer study of bulletins, booklets, and magazines of student organizations which remain preserved by pipit rochijat kartawidjaja in a private collection. he is a former prominent activist of the indonesian student association (ppi) and one of the founders of watch indonesia!. 185challenging a home country ments against the authoritarian ruling regime, while in indonesia, student demonstrations successfully forced suharto to step down from presidency in 1998 (aspinall, 2005; eklof, 2004; vatikiotis, 1994; wright, 2001). similar to the student movements in their home country, indonesian student activists in berlin remained focused on and critical of the politics in their home country. this section highlights the activism of indonesian students in berlin, germany, between the 1970s and the fall of suharto in 1998. prior to this, especially in the post-colonial era of indonesia, many student organizations were established abroad, but their activism did not have any discernible impact on the domestic politics of their home country. the information regarding the first indonesian students who arrived in berlin is both scarce and not particularly clear; several names have been mentioned as the early generation of indonesian students who came to the german democratic republic (gdr) in the 1960s. regardless, there certainly was an indonesian student presence in the gdr, most of whom were sympathetic to the partai komunis indonesia (pki, indonesian communist party), such as soebronto k. atmodjo (1929–1982) (ardjo, 2012, p. 437; baets, 2002, p. 280). in the sukarno era, atmodjo was sent to east berlin by the government of indonesia to study music. in 1965, he completed his studies at hanns eisler advanced music school, department of choral music and art ensembles (ardjo, 2012, p. 438). xing hu kuo was reported as one of the first chinese-indonesian students who came to the gdr; yet he was anti-communist (slobodian, 2013). mas prasetyo soeharto, who was buried in the front yard of the sehitlik mosque in berlin in 1957, can also be regarded as one of the first indonesian students in germany. by the mid-1960s, there were some 70 indonesian students in the gdr. during the sukarno era (1945–1965), indonesia had a closer alliance with the gdr than with the frg (federal republic of germany, or west germany) (slobodian, 2013, p. 38). sending indonesian students to the soviet union, china, east germany, cuba, and many other countries was part of his strategy to collaborate with socialist and communist countries and promote nasakom (nasionalisme [nationalism], agama [religion], komunisme [communism] at home (hill, 2012; lamoureux, 2003, p. 100; westad, 2005). to underscore this, in 1965 subandrio (the leftist foreign minister of sukarno’s cabinet) refused to issue permits for 13 indonesian students to travel to the us (murphy & welsh, 2008, p. 15). the perhimpunan pelajar indonesia (ppi, indonesian student association) was established in 1954 in west germany. at that time, ppi was an association of indonesian students in both east and west germany tied with the sentiment of indonesian nationalism. as an umbrella group for indonesian student organizations in germany, the central ppi (ppi pusat) functioned as a coordinator of the ppi branches established by indonesian students throughout gdr and frg. in addition to the ppi, organisasi pelajar indonesia (opi, indonesian student organization) was established in east germany in the 1970s. this organization was not established to replace or counter the ppi and it eventually existed only in east germany, functioning as an umbrella organization for student activism parallel to the ppi. in its early days, ppi was not concerned with social and political criticism. rather, it worked closely with the representatives of the indonesian government in both frg and gdr. yet, in the 1970s it changed its legal status from being based upon indonesian law to becoming an eingetragener verein (e.v.) (registered association) under german law (informant, 186 syafiq hasyim  aseas 7(2) personal communication, 1 july 2014). although ppi was considered to be an entirely independent student organization, from that time on it began to take a more critical stance towards indonesian politics. this happened at the same time as the first critical comments against suharto began to be put forward by student activists at home. a turning point was the malari incident of 15 january 1974 (malapetaka lima belas januari, fifteenth of january tragedy) – a big demonstration against suharto’s policy of providing more benefits to the economic interest of japan than to indonesia (hidayat, 2008, p. 47; widjojo & noorsalim, 2004, p. 60). three years later, in 1977, the ppi cabang berlin barat (cabe, west berlin chapter; in indonesian language cabe means hot chili peppers), one of the local branches of central ppi, started its critical activism. although there is no direct link between the malari incident and the beginning of indonesian student activism in berlin, both shared a critique of the ruling suharto regime. one of the first signs of indonesian student opposition in berlin was their refusal to attend the indonesian consulate of west berlin’s commemoration of kesaktian pancasila (day of pancasila’s victory).3 kesaktian pancasila is a public holiday set by suharto to commemorate the defeat of the pki in 1965. suharto introduced the day as a symbol of devotion to the generals who became victims of the aborted coup on 1 october 1965, allegedly driven by the pki (cribb, 2005, p. 34). this rejection led the consulate office to speculate that the branch of ppi supported the ideological stance of indonesian communist and sukarnoist groups in berlin (pipit rochijat kartawidjaja, personal communication, july 2014). although the board members of ppi pusat seemed to disagree with the position of its west berlin branch, they did not have the right to interfere, since ppi berlin profited from institutional autonomy. the indonesian general consulate was concerned with this matter since any indication of communism was considered a threat to the stability of indonesian politics abroad. meanwhile, indonesian communist and sukarnoist groups (alumni of partai nasional indonesia, pni, or indonesian national party) did not confirm any shared activities with the ppi berlin. the former were mostly cadres of pki and sukarnoists who came from communist-socialist countries in the soviet union and from china after obtaining political asylum from frg. they assumed that the members of the ppi berlin were not revolutionary enough for them to fight against the suharto regime. the situation put the indonesian student association of west berlin in a difficult position. in short, its refusal to attend the kesaktian pancasila commemoration was a means of showing its opposition to the repressive politics of the suharto regime, but not to indonesia itself. it was a sign of an active concern of members of ppi with the daily politics of indonesia, although they lived in germany (pipit rochijat kartawidjaja, personal communication, 20 may 2014). from this incident onwards, the relationship between the consulate office of indonesia and the indonesian student association began to deteriorate. the consulate had two opponents at the time: indonesian communist and sukarnoist groups, on the one side, and the ppi berlin, on the other. although indonesian communist groups in berlin never clearly declared their ideological stance in front of the indonesian public, their tendency towards communism and socialism could be recognized 3 pancasila represents the ideological foundation of independent indonesia set out in the constitution and consists of five pillars: (1) union of god, (2) humanity, (3) unity of indonesia, (4) social justice, and (5) democracy (darmaputera, 1988; intan, 2006; ramage, 2005). 187challenging a home country from their favorable discussions of marxism, stalinism, leninism, and maoism and from the back-up of communist and socialist parties such as the deutsche kommunistische partei (dkp) and sozialistische einheitspartei deutschlands (sed) (pipit rochijat kartawidjaja, personal communication, 19 july 2014). in reaction to the critical stance of the ppi berlin, the consulate attempted to intimidate some core indonesian student activists by pressuring them over their indonesian citizenship. the consulate did not revoke their citizenship since this would be a move against human rights laws, yet it delayed and even refused to issue passport extension (or renewal). without a valid passport, indonesian student activists were not eligible for extension of their student visas from west german authorities. pipit rochijat kartawidjaja was one former indonesian student activist targeted by this intimidation. this strategy, however, did not reduce the criticism of indonesian students of the official representative of indonesia in germany. years later, a similar intimidation strategy was directed at ivan al-hadar, a core activist of persatuan pemuda muslim di eropah (ppme, association of muslim students in europe) and a phd student at technische universität (tu) berlin. in 1992, the suharto regime prevented him from going back to west germany after a long fieldwork period from 1989 to 1992 in indonesia. during his fieldwork, al-hadar was summoned by the badan koordinasi intelijen negara (bakin, state intelligence coordination agency) for interrogation regarding his and his student friends’ activities in berlin. it seemed that bakin was afraid that ivan al-hadar had used his phd fieldwork to consolidate support for the indonesian student movement in west berlin, assuming that the issue of ppi berlin’s resistance against suharto had been heard by pro-democracy activists in indonesia.4 however, bakin’s efforts to intimidate kartawidjaja and ivan al-hadar were not successful. instead of acquiescing, ppi berlin increased its resistance against the suharto regime. in fact, they not only opposed the regime but also adopted a strategy of counter-intimidation by creating activities that irritated the personnel of the indonesian consulate office in west berlin. in the 1980s, for instance, ppi berlin published and circulated its own internal magazine called gotong royong (mutual aid). this magazine was funded with their own money to indicate its independence from any intervention. in addition, kartawidjaja regularly wrote a personal note that contained gossip and rumors happening among home and local staff of the consulate. these notes were partly published in berita tanpa sensor (news without censorship) in 1984.5 some of the staff were not happy to see how they were mentioned in kartawidjaja’s diary and staged a sort of a public tribunal against him. they forced him to burn the manuscript of the diary. although the confrontation with the indonesian consulate and the embassy of indonesia were evocative of the story of “david 4 for example, abdurrahman wahid (general chairman of nahdlatul ulama and indonesian president from 1999 to 2001), emha ainun nadjid (artist and poet), and adnan buyung nasution (human rights defender and lawyer) often met and shared experiences either when they visited berlin or when ppi berlin activists were going home to indonesia. emha ainun nadjib lived in berlin and amsterdam for eight months in the 1980s. according to him, the activity of ppi berlin grew popular among the pro-democracy activists of indonesia. 5 this diary was not published in the form of a bound book, but printed on photocopiers. some members of ppi berlin participated in circulating the diary among the indonesian public in berlin. i got this information from asep ruhiyat and rolf susilo during my stay in berlin from 2009 to 2014. 188 syafiq hasyim  aseas 7(2) against goliath”, as kartawidjaja puts it, the activists of the student association never despaired. scholarly politics in anticipation of the criticism from indonesian students throughout europe, ‘scholarly politics’ (politik ilmiah) was introduced as a guiding principle in the cadres of ppi. as a student organization, ppi was supposed to be independent from the intervention of the ruling regime in indonesia. however, many of the leadership’s members were close to the state. consequently, the imposition of state intrusion happened mostly through its leadership. scholarly politics was introduced by daud joesoef who had studied in paris, france, in the 1970s. the jargon was intended to motivate indonesian students abroad to focus on their studies and to keep distance from political activism. engagement in political activism, in joesoef ’s words, led students into non-academic activities, which were against the original intention of their presence abroad. besides, politics was deemed a “bad” engagement in disharmony, conflict, and immorality. interestingly, during his period as minister of national education and culture in indonesia, from 1978 to 1983, joesoef introduced scholarly politics at campuses at home through his policy called nkk/bkk (normalisasi kehidupan kampus/badan koordinasi kemahasiswaan, normalization of campus life/bodies for student coordination). similar to the idea of scholarly politics for indonesian students abroad, the spirit of the nkk/bkk aimed to depoliticize the role of indonesian students at home (aspinall, 2005, p. 120; machmudi, 2008, p. 109). in the context of the ppi in germany, this idea of scholarly politics received various responses from indonesian students. the ppi pusat in west germany generally agreed with the idea. they brought forward the argument that many indonesian students failed their studies because they were too involved in political activism. this assumption, however, is not totally accurate since many of them dropped out of their studies due to job opportunities in a western country and to earn money, sufficient not only for their own expenses, but also for their families at home. ppi berlin, on the contrary, challenged the idea of scholarly politics, as it would lead to ignorance and antipathy towards politics at home or in general. the concept tended to be ‘prostatus quo’ and facilitated control by the regime. like ppi berlin, the catholic students who formed keluarga mahasiswa katholik indonesia (kmki, indonesian community of catholic students) as well as indonesian muslim students in germany opposed scholarly politics. media and networking the success of ppi berlin in its activism in the 1970s was mainly due to its awareness of the importance of media and networking. since their inception, the media was regarded as an important tool and strategy to promote their ideas and their struggles. it published gotong royong, a regular bulletin that reported news, articles, and also featured translated articles from either german or english into indonesian. the bulletin had quite a significant readership (a circulation of 200 to 300 exemplars of each edition) compared to an estimated 700 indonesian students living in berlin 189challenging a home country back then (sembering, former indonesian student activist, personal communication, 9 july 2014). from the 1970s to the 1990s, reading indonesian newspapers was a privilege, limited to the staff of the indonesian consulate that regularly received supplies from garuda indonesian airways. besides a bulletin, the establishment of a network of local activists in berlin and west germany is worth mentioning here. as a result, in 1991, the former activists of ppi and local activists agreed to establish the ngo watch indonesia!. the tragedy of santa cruz, east timor, that resulted in the death of 290 civilian east timorese on 12 november 1991 (gunn, 1997, pp. 126–127; lawson, 1996, pp. 782–783) was a major reason for the establishment of the ngo.6 furthermore, the fall of the berlin wall in 1989 inspired the spirit of liberation for the indonesian community in berlin. watch indonesia! became a bridge between ppi berlin and german activists. the establishment of watch indonesia! can therefore be regarded as evidence of the failure of the “politics of isolation” (politik isolasi) conducted by the indonesian consulate. the politics of isolation intended to create a public discourse or image that political activism was ‘bad’ for indonesian students abroad. the involvement of senior activists of ppi berlin in the formation of watch indonesia! presented a response to the politics of isolation as it indicated the ability to extend their activism to german citizens. according to kartawidjaja, the politics of isolation led the ppi berlin to interact even more intensively with local ngos. protesting against suharto in germany in 1995, indonesia was a hannover industrial fair partner country and suharto used this opportunity to visit dresden. this was not suharto’s first visit to germany. already in 1991, the president was greeted by demonstrations organized by those who would found watch indonesia! and other indonesian student activists in berlin who protested against his government’s policies, particularly towards east timor. although the demonstration against the 1995 visit of president suharto was not big in scale (attended only by 150 to 200 protestors, mostly germans and a few indonesians), it had an impact on the political position of the authoritarian leader at home and the eventual degradation of his image as a strong and charismatic leader in both domestic and foreign politics. this was evident in the way the domestic politics of indonesia responded to this event, and in how east timor’s independence movement, and also labor activists, used this degradation to strengthen their activism (elson, 2001, p. 277). many speculated that ppi berlin was an important actor behind the protest. yet, there is no direct evidence for its involvement but the spirit of opposition against the suharto regime. one assumed link between the dresden incident and ppi berlin was the arrival of sri-bintang pamungkas to berlin, which coincided with suharto’s visit to hannover. sri-bintang pamungkas was a public intellectual and an opposition figure to the suharto regime. he was elected member of parliament (dpr) for 6 prior to the establishment of watch indonesia!, indonesian and german students together with other interested citizens formed the deutsch-indonesische gesellschaft (dig); yet, this institution was focused on culture and art rather than on political issues. 190 syafiq hasyim  aseas 7(2) the muslim-based partai persatuan pembangunan (ppp, united development party).7 sri-bintang pamungkas spoke out critically with regard to the authoritarian regime. in particular, he criticized the concept of “development economy” (ekonomi pembangunan). until then, this concept was seen as a trademark of the new order regime and praised by national and international institutions (like the world bank) alike. the idea was to counter ekonomi pembangunan – celebrated by suharto’s crony companies and then minister for research and technology, b. j. habibie – with a critical point of view. sri-bintang pamungkas came to germany on invitation by a coalition of international human rights institutions based in west germany, including watch indonesia!. human rights and democracy activists, such as yeni rosa damayanti,8 were also invited. after finishing his program in bonn, sri-bintang pamungkas returned to berlin to give a lecture on the progress of indonesian politics at the tu berlin on 9 april 1995. the lecture was a regular activity organized by ppi berlin that had hosted other indonesian speakers such as adnan buyung nasution (lawyer and human rights advocate), w. s. rendra (poet), and many other indonesian ‘national figures’ before. in the context of sri-bintang’s visit and the demonstration mentioned above, ppi berlin had no intention to connect the two events, since the protests took place before the lecture of sri-bintang. the dresden protest was set up by timor und kein trupp, an ngo of former east german activists that fought against any kind of authoritarian regimes in the world and had also been participating in toppling the dictatorial regime in east germany. the incident curbed the pro-democracy protest movements of indonesian activists, which had largely stagnated during the new order. suharto tried to criminalize all those who were directly or indirectly involved in the protests. on his way home from germany, he spoke to journalists claiming that all those involved in the demonstration against him were a group of insane people (orang sinting). sri-bintang pamungkas was a possible target of prosecution, although there was no evidence at all connecting his lecture at ppi berlin’s forum to the incident (elson, 2001, p. 277; prasetyo & hasibuan, 1996, p. 33). nevertheless, the jakarta central court found him guilty of inciting hate speech in his lecture. the court charged sri-bintang pamungkas under a regulation that forbids insulting the president of indonesia. the government accused him and indonesian student activists of masterminding the dresden demonstration against suharto. furthermore, suharto called for a dismissal of pamungkas’ mandate in parliament. while it was believed that ppp had no right to recall an elected mp, the leadership felt that it had no other choice. as a result, the ppi berlin received wide coverage in indonesian media. in short, although there was no direct connection between ppi berlin and the dresden incident, this event formed 7 ppp was the result of a forced unification of several smaller political parties oriented towards islam and one of three legal political parties under suharto’s dictatorship (ziegenhain, 2008, p. 52). the role of ppp and partai demokrasi indonesia (pdi, indonesian democratic party) was comparable to “rubber stamp parties” (blockflöten-parteien) in the gdr: their function was to legitimize the policy of suharto and the ruling party golkar (partai golongan karya, party of the functional groups). 8 damayanti was an activist of pijar (the center for information and reform action network), one of the prominent indonesian ngos critical of the suharto leadership. she went to study at the institute of social sciences in the netherlands and continued her criticism against the undemocratic regime in indonesia from abroad. 191challenging a home country an apparent link in the minds of many, and in turn influenced protest movements at home (pamungkas, 2008). the emergence of muslim student activism as mentioned above, not all indonesian students in berlin were affiliated with ppi berlin. in 1973, indonesian muslim students established the ppme (muslim youth association in europe) in germany.9 the organization was a reincarnation of kii (indonesian islamic family association), which was established as a response to the establishment of kmki. in addition, the founding of this muslim youth association was stimulated by emerging identity politics of the indonesian community in berlin at the time. internationally speaking, it also merged with the spirit of global islamic revivalism, for instance in egypt and iran. from egypt, it took the doctrine of the muslim brotherhood and from iran, it took the spirit of the iranian revolution (ivan al-hadar, personal communication, 23 september 2014, jakarta). although it referred to islam as an ideological foundation, the youth organization also involved some members of other student associations. ivan al-hadar, for instance, was both an active member of ppme and a core activist of ppi berlin (1973– 1989). not surprisingly then, the relationship between the two organizations was relatively harmonious at the time, with different roles at the beginning. whereas the ppi was active in mobilizing political and critical activism, the ppme berlin focused on providing services to indonesian muslim students such as finding a place for friday prayers, celebrating islamic festivities, and many other religious activities. differences between them arose when ppme showed its radical islamic outlook in public, for instance, regarding the position of women. in 1985, this disagreement became evident when ppi berlin commemorated the indonesian women’s day with a focus on the indonesian female ‘hero’ kartini. the ppme opposed the celebration with reference to islam, as the female students at the event were dressed without covering their ‘awra/aurat’ (arabic term for the part of the female body that must be covered in islam, excluding the face and hands). this opposition showed ppme’s stance, which was primarily based on the conventional opinion of muslim jurists among the four schools of islamic law (hanaf ī, mālik, shāfi'ī, and ibn hanbal). its conservative religious tendencies, however, did not stop there, but continued in the daily activities of their members such as in islamic study groups (pengajian) in which women were segregated from men. abdurrahman wahid (general chairman of nahdlatul ulama, 1984–1999), for instance, had a disturbing experience with ppme that invited him to give an islamic sermon at a conference on islam in berlin in 1987. wahid came to the forum and witnessed that the audience was separated in a male and female group through a partition. wahid opposed this segregation and suggested them to 9 ppme was first established in the netherlands in 1971. the use of the word europe was envisioned to dissociate the organization from indonesia and therefore avoid trouble with the indonesian consulate. the founders of ppme were abdurrahman wahid (gus dur), tengku razali, muhammad chaeron, a. hanbali maksum, abdul muis kaderi, rais mustafa, and moh. sayuti suaib. conservative tendencies of the ppme appeared when it started to collaborate with the world assembly muslim youth (wamy), the muslim world league (rabita al-'ālām al-isāmī), and the council of indonesian islamic propagation (dewan dakwah islamiyah indonesia, established by mohammad natsir, leader of masyumi party) (chabibi, 2011). 192 syafiq hasyim  aseas 7(2) dismantle it. when they refused his demand, wahid left the forum (pipit rochijat kartawijaja, personal communication, 19 july 2014). the conflict intensified when the ppme accused student activists of ppi berlin of being secularists and communist sympathizers. at this point, ppme was closer to the anti-communist viewpoint of the indonesian consulate. with regard to religious orientation, the ppme was dominated by muslim student activists inclined towards salafism (the idea of going back to the practice of the first muslim generations, see also chaplin, this issue). ppme often hosted indonesian salafi or muslim brotherhood preachers (arabic: muballigh) commissioned from saudi arabia or egypt for proselytization (da’wa) in berlin. although the ppme claimed it was an islamic student association, its commitment to islamic solidarity at home was questioned by other indonesian students in berlin at the time. this skepticism was related to ppme’s reaction to the tanjung priok tragedy, which took place in jakarta. in 1984, the struggle of muslim groups for the use of islam as the sole ideology of indonesia (asas tunggal) led the indonesian military to commit mass murder in the area of tanjung priok, in the north of jakarta (muluk, 2009, p. 106). it was not clear why the association did not issue a solidarity statement as the ppi berlin did. post-suharto student politics in berlin after the resignation of suharto, the activism of both ppi berlin and the central ppi dramatically declined. they assumed that the resignation of suharto in 1998 would improve politics in indonesia, especially in terms of democracy and social justice. they also believed that elected leaders – executive and parliament – in the post-suharto era would assist in this. in fact, the election of abdurrahman wahid as president of indonesia for the period from 2000 to 2001 gave rise to a slight sense of optimism among the students. wahid announced to amend the majelis permusyawaratan rakyat sementara (mprs, transitional indonesian people assembly) xxv/1966 decree, which had been a main source of political injustice and discrimination of indonesian citizens, especially for those who adhered to non-mainstream ideologies such as communism. the amendment of the law became an important starting point to promote reconciliation across the political spectrum in indonesia. for indonesians abroad, the amendment was especially important as those who were sent to study abroad by sukarno regained their citizenship. although wahid’s plan received criticism from political parties such as golkar and some islamic parties in indonesia, the international community and indonesian diaspora responded very positively to it. of course, from the perspective of ppi berlin, this plan was in line with one of their key struggles. after a controversy, wahid had to resign from his presidency in 2001, and the agenda of amending the decree was not an urgent issue for his successor, megawati sukarnoputri (susanto, 2007, p. 70). at the same time, the activism of indonesian muslim student groups abroad began to evolve and increase. in berlin, their activism was mostly concentrated at the al-falah mosque. the mosque was founded by the indonesian muslim community in berlin and brandenburg as a cultural center (iwkz, indonesisches weisheitsund kulturzentrum); however, the ppme played a pioneering role. before the establishment 193challenging a home country of the al-falah mosque, islamic activities were concentrated around the indonesian embassy. the iwkz itself was a center for cultural activity that was not officially intended to be used as a mosque. because of difficulties in acquiring a building space for an independent mosque in germany in terms of regulation, location, and financial resources, the indonesian muslim community in berlin agreed with the embassy to repurpose the iwkz to a mosque. the existence of al-falah in berlin created a flexible space for indonesian muslim students to organize and plan their activities such as weekly qur’an lessons or majelis taklim for adult muslims. the community of al-falah can be roughly divided into two groups. the first comprises activist members who take part in the routine activities of the mosque whereas the second encompasses ordinary visitors of the mosque. the majority of the first group has a religious mindset close to the ideas of the muslim brotherhood and/or salafism. politically, most of them are affiliated with or at least sympathetic to partai keadilan sejahtera (pks, prosperous justice party).10 pks regularly sends an islamic preacher from indonesia to deliver sermons to the indonesian muslim community in germany. these visits are hosted by the al-falah mosque in berlin. the second group comprises those who attend the mosque mainly for friday prayers. they do not have strong ties with the agenda of the mosque but go there because it is the only mosque administered by the indonesian community in berlin. while the first group is smaller than the second one, it is able to dominate the activities because of the intense role in the management of the mosque. informants assured me that the board of al-falah is significantly dominated by activists from pks. the first group’s tendency to support the ideas of the muslim brotherhood is demonstrated by its adoption of an islamic learning system for their activists and members. they employ a cell system (arabic: usra, or family), within which the members are divided into several smaller groups ranging from senior to junior strata. each group is maintained by a senior mentor (arabic: murabbî). the different groups are separated from each other, i.e. juniors sit with juniors and seniors with other seniors. there is a strong sense of solidarity among members, what mandaville (2007, p. 271) would call a micro-mobilization movement. although this system is covertly organized, many people know about its activities. in addition, some of those who drop out from the circle have publicly criticized the system, especially through social media like facebook and twitter. indonesian students in berlin occasionally hear about these activities ,but understand them as standard islamic learning activities, not related to the cultivation of the muslim brotherhood’s ideology. in addition, indonesian muslim students have also organized an islamic learning forum called forum komunikasi masyarakat muslim indonesia se-jerman (forkom, communication forum of the indonesian muslim community in germany). although this organization is not intended exclusively as a forum for muslim students, the majority of its members are students. ideologically speaking, the members of forkom also tend to be close to the religious model of the muslim brotherhood and/or salafism and most of its members are indeed members of the pks. the forum 10 the pks is an indonesian islamist political party that has a similar vision with the muslim brotherhood in egypt. based on its activities and programs, the party seeks to establish sharia law in indonesia and has a very prominent presence among indonesian muslim students in berlin. in the 2014 general election, the pks won 35 percent of the vote in berlin (aziz, 2014). 194 syafiq hasyim  aseas 7(2) has a very strong presence in berlin, hannover, frankfurt, and other big cities in germany. it sponsors not only religious learning activities but also sports festivals, similar to ppi. importantly, forkom organizes almsgiving for indonesian muslims living in germany. the sports festival is held every year and all the participants are required to wear clothing in accordance with sharia norms. further evidence that suggests forkom and al-falah’s support for pks can be seen in their promotion of the party’s program through social media such as facebook and twitter. during the jakarta gubernatorial election in 2012, they campaigned actively for the pks-backed candidate pairing of hidayat nur wahid and didik j. rahbini. hidayat nur wahid is a senior politician of pks and former spokesperson of the indonesian people assembly (mpr) and rahbini is a senior politician of partai amanat nasional (pan, national mandate party). when both candidates failed to advance to the second round of the election, they shifted their support to fauzi bowo and nachrowi and launched a negative campaign via social media against the eventual winners, joko widodo (the current, newly elected president of indonesia) and basuki cahya purnama. religious activism among indonesian muslim students became more vibrant in berlin when in april 2010, a number of nahdlatul ulama students coming from indonesia to germany established pengurus cabang istimewa nahdlatul ulama (pcinu, special branch of nahdlatul ulama, germany). pcinu focuses on organizing religious meetings and providing online and offline religious learning and public discussions for indonesian muslim students. interestingly, both muslim and non-muslim students participate in pcinu activities. the presence of the special chapter of indonesia’s largest islamic organization in germany provides an alternative space for those indonesian muslim students who have a different point of view from the conservative islamic groups. in addition, after a lengthy slumber, the activism of the ppi was re-energized by a collaborative demonstration involving ppi berlin, pcinu, and watch indonesia! during the visit of indonesian parliamentarians to germany on 26 april 2012. the demonstration received serious attention from prominent political figures in both the indonesian consulate in berlin and back home. the protest was triggered by a rumor that a group from the dewan perwakilan rakyat (dpr, legislators of indonesia) would visit germany and hold a special session organized with the embassy of indonesia and the indonesian community in berlin. this meeting was ‘dressed up’ by the embassy as part of the commemoration of kartini day. in response, some indonesian student activists decided to attend the commemoration and conduct a protest, citing the legislators’ visit as a misuse of public funds. as the embassy of indonesia was not aware of the plan, members of the abovementioned organizations found it easy to attend the commemoration. once there, they brought up three important issues: first, to remind the legislators of their function as one of the democratic pillars of the country; second, to remind them of the need for a sense of urgency in their work; and third, calling on them to reduce overseas visits as they consume large amounts of funding but have little benefit at home. the activity gained wide media coverage in indonesia because it was the first of its kind performed inside an indonesian embassy. every major national media outlet – print and electronic – covered the incident as a means to stimulate public debate on the function of the dpr and the importance 195challenging a home country of monitoring the use of public funds. as a result of this pressure, the dpr finally decided to reduce the frequency of members conducting trips abroad (“dpr pelesir”, 2012). conclusion this paper pointed out that indonesian student activism in germany comprises a diverse, dynamic, but also controversial interplay of voices. while ppi remains active, it is no longer the sole and central actor among indonesian students in the country. ppi berlin and central ppi continue to focus their activism on issues of human rights and politics, but newer groups such as forkom have introduced more puritanical religious activism. muslim students who associate with the pks have a different way of performing their activism than students with the ppi berlin. relations between current student activists and alumni of both ppi and muslim students are maintained and sustained, ensuring a basic thread of continuity across time. this is provided by a number of former student activists deciding to stay in berlin beyond their studies. furthermore, although there are differences among activist elements, there is a shared desire to critically discuss the situation back home and express and share different views. the ppi hopes its home country will evolve as an open and pluralist country whereas indonesian islamic students grouped under forkom and the pks want indonesia to become a more islamized country. since the resignation of suharto, both groups appear freely in the german public sphere. indonesian student activists understand dynamic engagement with (political) activism as part of their way in paving the way to the future. therefore, although they know that their activism may produce unpleasant consequences for themselves, they continue their informed and active engagement and concern.  references ardjo, i. d. 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(2005). legal pluralism, decentralisation and the root of violence in indonesia. in d. f. anwar, h. bouvier, s. glenn, & r. tol (eds.), violent internal conflicts in asia pacific: histories, political economies, and policies (pp. 41–57). jakarta, indonesia: yayasan obor indonesia. darmaputera, e. (1988). pancasila and the search for identity and modernity in indonesian society: a cultural and ethical analysis. leiden, netherlands: brill. de baets, a. (2002). censorship of historical thought: a world guide, 1945–2000. westport, ct: greenwood publishing group. 196 syafiq hasyim  aseas 7(2) dpr pelesir ke jerman, boros anggaran. (2012, april 27). tempo.co. retrieved from http://www.tempo.co/ read/news/2012/04/27/063400101/dpr-pelesir-ke-jerman-boros-anggaran eklof, s. (2004). power and political culture in suharto’s indonesia: the indonesian democratic party (pdi) and decline of the new order (1986–98). copenhagen, denmark: nias press. elson, r. e. (2001). suharto: a political biography (vol. 13). cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. gunn, g. c. (1997). east timor and the united nations: the case for intervention. new jersey, nj: the red sea press. hidayat, h. (2008). politik lingkungan: pengelolaan hutan masa orde baru dan reformasi. jakarta, indonesia: yayasan obor indonesia. hill, d. (2012). writing lives in exile: autobiographies of indonesians left abroad. in m. perkins (ed.), locating life story beyond east west binaries in autobiographical studies (pp. 215–237). honolulu, hi: university of hawai'i press. intan, b. f. (2006). public religion and the pancasila-based state of indonesia: an ethical and sociological analysis. new york, ny: peter lang. lawson, e. (1996). encyclopedia of human rights. london, uk: taylor & francis. machmudi, y. (2008). the rise of jemaah tarbiyah and the prosperous justice party (pks). canberra, australia: anu press. mandaville, p. (2007). global political islam. new york, ny: routledge. marshall, c. (2006). pipit rochijat’s subversive mythologies: the suharto era and beyond. asian folklore studies, 65, 21–44. mietzner, m. (2009). military politics, islam and the state in indonesia: from turbulent transition to democratic consolidation. singapore: iseas. mrázek, r. (1994). sjahrir: politics and exile in indonesia. leiden, netherlands: seap publications. muluk, h. (2009). memory for sale: how groups distort their collective memory for reconciliation purposes and building peace. in c. j. montiel & n. m. noor (eds.), peace psychology in asia (pp. 105–122). new york, ny: springer science & business media. murphy, a. m., & welsh, b. (eds.). (2008). legacy of engagement in southeast asia. singapore: iseas. pamungkas, s. b. (2008). menantang seorang diktator: perjalanan di jerman. jakarta, indonesia: rm books. prasetyo, s. a., & hasibuan, i. (1996). saya musuh politik soeharto: sri bintang pamungkas. jakarta, indonesia: pijar indonesia. ramage, d. (2005). politics in indonesia, democracy, islam and the ideology of tolerance. london, uk: routledge. rose, m. (2010). indonesia free: a political biography of mohammad hatta. singapore: equinox publishing. slobodian, q. (2013). citizenship-shifting: race and xing hu kuo’s claim on east german memory. in v. fuechtner & m. rhiel (eds.), imagining germany imagining asia: esays in asian-german studies (pp. 34–49). new york, ny: boydell & brewer. susanto, a. b. (2007). sisi senyap politik bising. yogyakarta, indonesia: kanisius. vatikiotis, m. (1994). indonesian politics under suharto: order, development and pressure for change. london, uk: routledge. weiss, m. l., aspinall, e., & thompson, m. r. (2012). understanding student movement in asia. in m. l. weiss & e. aspinall (eds.), student activism in asia: between protest and powerlessness (pp. 1–32). minnesota, mn: the university press of minnesota. widjojo, m. s., & noorsalim, m. (eds.). (2004). bahasa negara versus bahasa gerakan mahasiswa: kajian semiotik atas teks-teks pidato presiden soeharto dan selebaran gerakan mahasiswa. jakarta, indonesia: yayasan obor indonesia. widodo, a. (1988). “wayang” revisited: the politics of language of new order student. paper presented at the annual conference of association of asian studies, march 25–27, department of anthropology, cornell university, san francisco, ca. woodhead, l., dessing, n. m., nielsen, j. s., & jeldtoft, n. (eds.). (2014). everyday lived islam in europe. burlington, vt: ashgate publishing, ltd. 197challenging a home country wright, t. (2001). the perils of protest: state repression and student activism in china and taiwan. honolulu, hi: university of hawaii press. ziegenhain, p. (2008). the indonesian parliament and democratization. singapore: iseas. about the author syafiq hasyim is the director of the international center for islam and pluralism and a senior research fellow at pusad (pusat studi agama dan demokrasi, center for the studies of religion and demoracy), jakarta. he obtained his doctorate from berlin graduate school muslim cultures and societies (bgsmcs), freie universität berlin, germany, with a dissertation on the council of indonesian ulama (majelis ulama indonesia, mui) and its role in the ‘shariatization’ of indonesia. forthcoming publications are “the council of indonesian ulama (mui) and ‘aqīda-based intolerance: a critical analysis of its fatwa on ahmadiyah and ‘sepilis’”, in an edited volume by tom lindsey and helen pausaker, and “gender, the problem of patriarchy and maslaha in indonesian islam: from fiqh al-abawī to fiqh al-nisā’”, in an edited volume by fritz schulze. ► contact: syafiq.hasyim@googlemail.com acknowledgements i thank pipit rochijat kartawidjaja, alex flor, and ivan al-hadar for their generosity, information, and literature on student activism in berlin. book review: köster, u., trong, p. l., & grein, c. (eds.). (2014). handbuch myanmar. gesellschaft, politik, wirtschaft, kultur, entwicklung. angermünde: horlemann verlag. isbn: 978-3-89502-361-3. 496 seiten. ► stange, g. (2015). book review: köster, u., trong, p. l., & grein, c. (hrsg.). (2014). handbuch myanmar. gesellschaft, politik, wirtschaft, kultur, entwicklung. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 8(2), 225-228. ute köster, phuong le trong und christina grein haben mit der herausgabe des handbuch myanmar für die burma-initiative in köln erstaunliches geleistet. sie und die fast 50 autor_innen des handbuchs tragen dazu bei, die große lücke in bezug auf kompakte, wissenschaftlich fundierte und vor allem umfassende informationen zu einem land zu schließen, das hinsichtlich seines rasanten politischen, wirtschaftlichen und sozialen wandels in den vergangenen fünf jahren weltweit seinesgleichen sucht. myanmar befindet sich nach einer fast 50-jährigen militärdiktatur seit dem jahre 2010 in einem von „oben“ gesteuerten demokratischen transformationsprozess, der gleichzeitig die wirtschaftliche und politische öffnung des größten landes festlandsüdostasiens bedeutete. neben dieser, wie es scheint, fundamentalen transformation des politischen systems und seiner akteur_innen steht das sprachlich, ethnisch und religiöse äußerst vielfältige land vor der großen herausforderung eines nationalen versöhnungsprozesses zwischen der regierung in der hauptstadt naypyidaw und den unterschiedlichen bewaffneten gruppierungen der ethnischen minderheiten des landes, die seit jahrzehnten für mehr selbstbestimmung und/ oder die unabhängigkeit von myanmar kämpfen. das knapp 500 seiten umfassende handbuch gliedert sich in insgesamt sechs hinsichtlich ihres umfangs unterschiedlich gewichtete kapitel und einen umfassenden anhang. sympathisch erscheint zunächst, dass die einleitung in form eines „fahrplans“ durch das buch eine kompetente und gut lesbare „einführung“ (s. 13) zu den kernthemen gesellschaft, politik, wirtschaft, kultur und entwicklung bietet. zudem geben die herausgeber_innen eine leseanleitung an die hand, ohne die man in einer derart komplexen publikation leicht den überblick verlieren würde. so ziehen sich durch das gesamte buch themenzentrierte verweise auf internetquellen und querverweise auf weitere beiträge im handbuch, die sich mit dem jeweiligen thema beziehungsweise einem bestimmten aspekt in einem anderen zusammenhang beschäftigen. das erste kapitel „das land und seine menschen“ thematisiert fragen der demographie, migration und urbanisierung sowie der linguistischen und ethnischen vielfalt des landes. vor dem hintergrund dramatischer naturkatastrophen wie etwa die des zyklons nargis im jahr 2008 nimmt das kapitel gleichermaßen die auswirkungen von und den umgang mit naturrisiken in den blick. rezensionen  book reviews w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 15 .2 -1 1 226 gunnar stange  aseas 8(2) darüber hinaus wird der außerordentliche reichtum des landes an natürlichen ressourcen unter gerechtigkeitsund umweltgesichtspunkten diskutiert. das zweite kapitel „facetten der kultur“ nimmt sich zunächst in den ersten drei beiträgen der wichtigsten kongregationen und glaubensvorstellungen (buddhismus, christentum, islam und animismus) sowie der beziehungen ihrer anhänger_innen zueinander an. von einer „eintracht in vielfalt“ (s. 88) unter den religionen kann derzeit in myanmar allerdings kaum gesprochen werden, wie unter anderem die gewaltsamen ausschreitungen buddhistischer mönche gegen die staatsbürgerlich nicht anerkannte muslimische minderheit der rohingya im rakhine-staat verdeutlichen, die im fünften kapitel „soziale brennpunkte“ eingehend diskutiert werden. die sich anschließenden kapitel widmen sich dem zeitgenössischen theater, dem wandel der musikalischen traditionen der bamar, der größten ethnischen gruppe myanmars, sowie der modernen und zeitgenössischen literatur des landes als reflexion gesellschaftlicher und politischer wandlungsprozesse. eine wunderbare auflockerung bieten dabei die das buch durchziehenden zahlreichen bebilderten textboxen, die sich in miniessays unterschiedlichsten alltagsphänomenen myanmars widmen und den leser_innen das land auf diese weise nahe bringen. so wird im zweiten kapitel etwa von der „kleinen, aber lebendigen punkszene“ (s. 116) yangons oder aber von der allgegenwärtigen lebenspraktischen bedeutung der astrologie in form von „zahnlosen mittwochselefanten und planetendiagrammen“ (s. 104) berichtet. etwas traurig muss stimmen, dass ein einblick in die moderne und zeitgenössische malerei myanmars leider fehlt. wie in anderen südostasiatischen ländern auch ist es sicher eine der großen herausforderungen der nahen zukunft, eine kunstgeschichte myanmars zu schreiben. wer es einmal in das letzte stockwerk des nationalmuseums geschafft oder einen tee in der pansodan-galerie in yangon getrunken hat, weiß, dass die moderne und zeitgenössische kunst des landes ein solches unterfangen durchaus lohnenswert erscheinen lassen. das mit abstand umfangreichste dritte kapitel des handbuchs „geschichte, staat und politik“ konzentriert sich vorrangig auf fragestellungen, die hinsichtlich der aktuellen politischen entwicklungen in myanmar dringend sind und diskutiert diese vor dem hintergrund der historischen entwicklungen des landes. so erfahren die leser_innen, dass eine zukünftige stärkung der rechte der ethnischen minderheiten myanmars auch maßgeblich davon abhängen wird, ob es gelingt, die offizielle lesart der geschichte des landes als geschichte der politisch und wirtschaftlich dominanten größten ethnischen gruppe der bamar umzudeuten und allen volksgruppen einen platz in einem gemeinsamen nationenbildungsnarrativ einzuräumen. es geht also in myanmar derzeit nicht nur um die frage, ob der einmal eingeschlagene weg der demokratisierung weiter beschritten wird, sondern auch darum, den nationenbildungsprozess myanmars als noch längst nicht abgeschlossen zu begreifen, und ihn im sinne einer nationalen integration weiter zu gestalten. die beiträge beschäftigen sich mit dringenden themen wie der reform des wahlsystems und der verfassung – unter anderem in bezug auf die frage einer angemessenen politischen repräsentation der ethnischen minderheiten des landes – sowie der rolle der (lange zeit staatlich gelenkten) medien für den demokratisierungsprozess. darüber hinaus beleuchtet das kapitel in mehreren beiträgen die geopolitische rolle und die außenpolitik myanmars sowohl in asien an der „seite der riesen“ indien und china als auch die 227book review neuen politischen beziehungen zu den usa und der eu vor dem hintergrund der jahrzehntelangen sanktionen gegen das land, die im jahre 2012 seitens der eu aufgehoben wurden. in diesem zusammenhang widmet sich ein beitrag dezidiert den deutsch-myanmarischen beziehungen der vergangenen sechzig jahre. besondere beachtung wird darüber hinaus den zwei derzeit wohl bedeutendsten politischen protagonisten geschenkt: dem vom „bürosoldaten zum staatsmann“ (s. 217) gewandelten präsidenten thein sein, der die demokratisierung von oben verkörpert, sowie der tochter des staatsgründers aung san, friedensnobelpreisträgerin und gesicht der opposition myanmars, aung san suu kyi. das vierte kapitel bietet „einblicke in die wirtschaft“ des landes. schwerpunkte bilden dabei einerseits die trotz des enormen ressourcenreichtums des landes bislang ausgebliebene entwicklung verarbeitender industrien und die damit verbundene knappheit formeller, qualifizierter beschäftigungsmöglichkeiten. andererseits warnen die autor_innen des kapitels vor den möglichen negativen sozialpolitischen und ökonomischen auswirkungen des aktuellen einströmens internationaler investitionen nach myanmar und mahnt eine „verantwortungsbewusste wirtschaftspolitik“ (s. 266) an. verdeutlicht wird dies anhand des zunehmenden landraubs in den durch die regierung eingerichteten sonderwirtschaftszonen (sez) durch nationale und internationale privatwirtschaftliche akteur_innen sowie durch das myanmarische militär. einen weiteren fokus bildet die enorme wirtschaftliche bedeutung des illegalen anbaus von opium im goldenen dreieck zwischen myanmar, thailand und laos und dessen vehementer, jedoch bislang wenig erfolgreicher bekämpfung durch die regierung myanmars. abschließend stellt das kapitel die frage nach den herausforderungen und chancen für den tourismussektor in einem land, das touristisch auch aufgrund der jahrzehntelangen sanktionspolitik im vergleich zu seinen regionalen nachbarn kaum erschlossen ist, allerdings ein erhebliches touristisches potential besitzt. auch hier wird vor der gefahr gewarnt, dass die chance des aufbaus einer sozial gerechten und nachhaltigen touristischen infrastruktur zugunsten kurzfristiger gewinninteressen verspielt werden könnte. das fünfte kapitel „soziale brennpunkte“ thematisiert die komplexen sozialen problemlagen eines landes, dessen öffentliche ausgaben für bildung die niedrigsten und für das militär die höchsten im globalen vergleich sind (s. 313). dringender sozialpolitischer handlungsbedarf ergibt sich in myanmar, so die beiträge des kapitels, aufgrund chronischer unterernährung, einkommensarmut, hoher kindersterblichkeit sowie massiver sozialen ungleichheit und der damit einhergehenden ausgrenzung großer bevölkerungsteile, allen voran der ethnischen minderheiten des landes. die beiträge des kapitels fokussieren daher schwerpunktmäßig den zustand des bildungssystems, die situation von kindern, die menschenrechtslage sowie die themen flucht, vertreibung und arbeitsmigration das sechste kapitel „möglichkeiten und entwicklung“ zeigt auf grundlage des vorangegangenen kapitels einleitend die vielfältigen herausforderungen und bürokratischen hürden auf, vor denen akteur_innen der internationalen entwicklungszusammenarbeit stehen, die es zum ziel haben den transformationsprozess myanmars aktiv mitzugestalten. die beiträge beschäftigen sich mit fragen der armutsbekämpfung und den chancen, die sich für diese mit der internationalen öffnung myanmars ergeben. darüber hinaus findet die zivilgesellschaft myanmars und ihre rolle 228 gunnar stange  aseas 8(2) im kampf gegen armut und soziale ungleichheit vorstellung. die letzten drei beiträge dürften vor allem für „entwicklungspraktiker_innen“ interessant sein. sie beschäftigen sich dezidiert mit der entwicklungszusammenarbeit zwischen myanmar und der bundesrepublik deutschland und zeigen anhand zweier praxisbeispiele von deutschen entwicklungsorganisationen in myanmar auf, wie sich partnerschaftliche zusammenarbeit konkret gestaltet. der abschließende beitrag reflektiert zusammenfassend die wesentlichen entwicklungen und aktuellen herausforderungen in myanmars transformationsprozess. der mit viel detailliebe und bedacht erarbeitete anhang bietet den leser_innen eine zeittafel der wichtigsten historischen ereignisse seit der gründung des ersten birmanischen großreichs mitte des 11. jahrhunderts. eine große orientierungshilfe für die leser_innen stellen zudem die kurzbiographien zentraler historischer und zeitgenössischer vertreter_innen der eliten myanmars dar, da es sich im vergleich zu anderen südostasiatischen ländern bei myanmar um ein land handelt, über dessen akteur_innen vergleichsweise wenig bekannt ist. darüber hinaus bietet der anhang empfehlungen zu internetseiten und weiterführender literatur. abgerundet wird der anhang durch einen kurzen, jedoch für erste alltagskommunikation durchaus hilfreichen myanma-sprachführer. auch wenn die herausgeber_innen angesichts des komplexen unterfangens, ein überblickswerk zu myanmar vorzulegen, explizit keinen anspruch auf vollständigkeit erheben, den zu stellen ohnehin vermessen wäre, ist es ihnen gemeinsam mit den autor_innen gelungen, ein bislang einzigartiges informationsund analyseangebot zu myanmar in deutscher sprache zu schaffen. aus diesem grund soll diese rezension ungewöhnlicherweise mit zwei forderungen schließen. zum einen sollte das handbuch myanmar schnellstmöglich ins englische übersetzt werden, um es einem weiteren internationalen leser_innenkreis zugänglich zu machen. zum anderen wird es aus den genannten gründen mit großer wahrscheinlichkeit zum favorisierten vademekum für all die aktivist_innen, politiker_innen, mitarbeiter_innen der entwicklungszusammenarbeit, geschäftsleute und nicht zuletzt reisenden werden. leider ist es mit seinen 500 seiten kein leichtgewicht und wird so manchen koffer oder rucksack um einiges schwerer wiegen lassen. eine ebook-ausgabe könnte hier sicherlich abhilfe schaffen. gunnar stange goethe-universität frankfurt am main, deutschland book review: pichler, m. (2014). politische ökologie der palmölund agrartreibstoffproduktion in südostasien. münster: westfälisches dampfboot. isbn 978-3-89691-978-6. 248 seiten. ► duile, t. (2015). book review: pichler, m. (2014). umkämpfte natur. politische ökologie der palmöl und agrartreibstoffproduktion in südostasien. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 8(1), 107-110. palmöl wurde in europa in den letzten jahren zum politikum und damit auch zum gegenstand wissenschaftlicher untersuchungen und auseinandersetzungen. war palmöl davor oft als ein lösungsansatz im kampf gegen den klimawandel und als möglichkeit zur einkommensgenerierung in den ländern des globalen südens (in erste linie indonesien und malaysia, woher etwa 90 prozent des weltweit produzierten palmöls stammen) gesehen, mehren sich nun auch im akademischen diskurs kritische stimmen, die ökologische und soziale folgen des palmölbooms in den erzeugerländern untersuchen. melanie pichler, universitätsassistentin am institut für politikwissenschaft an der universität wien, hat in diesem kontext eine weitere studie vorgelegt, die sich mit der palmölproduktion in südostasien beschäftigt. in ihrem werk widmet sie sich einem bisher wenig beachteten untersuchungsgegenstand, nämlich der rolle des staates bei der schaffung eines für die palmölindustrie vorteilhaften produktionsumfeldes. den staat charakterisiert pichler hierbei im anschluss an kritisch-materialistische staatstheorien als umkämpftes terrain, in dem verschiedene gruppen versuchen, ihre interessen durchzusetzen und als allgemeininteressen zu universalisieren. „natur“ wird in diesem konflikthaften prozess sowohl materiell-stofflich als auch diskursiv-symbolisch (re-)produziert, von bestimmten akteurinnen angeeignet und innerhalb postfordistischer naturverhältnisse als nachhaltig zu managendes ressourcenreservoir entworfen, ohne dass besitzund machtverhältnisse in frage gestellt werden. im ersten teil der studie erläutert pichler diesen kritisch-materialistischen zugang und diskutiert überzeugend dessen vorzüge gegenüber konventionellen theorien von staat und staatlichkeit. dabei beschreibt sie den staat als ein gefüge sozialer verhältnisse, in welchem hegemonie durch konsens und zwang, also sowohl diskursiv als auch durch staatliche gewalt, durchgesetzt wird. innerhalb kapitalistischer widersprüchlichkeiten gelingt es so, die sozialen verhältnisse trotz latenter konflikthaftigkeit immer wieder zu stabilisieren. anschließend wird das methodische vorgehen der untersuchung dargelegt, wobei die autorin ihre arbeit als qualitative forschung ausweist, in der interviews, gesetzestexte und publikationen der untersuchten akteurinnen ausgewertet werden. daran anschließend wird die entwicklung und förderung des agrartreibstoffsektors in indonesien und malaysia diskutiert. hier wird deutlich, wie bestimmte akteurinnen ihre partikularen interessen in staatliche praktiken einschreiben. besonders wird dann aber die materielle basis des rezensionen  book reviews w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 15 .1 -9 108 timo duile  aseas 8(1) „palmölprojekts“ analysiert: diese macht melanie pichler in anlehnung an regulationstheoretische überlegungen in einem regionalen akkumulationsregime aus, das vor allem aus nationalen und regionalen konglomeraten besteht. diese sind, wie pichler in der analyse der historischen entwicklung der akteurinnen, strukturen und kräfteverhältnisse ausführt, in transnationale wirtschaftszusammenhänge eingebunden, ermöglichen aber einer regionalen elite ebenfalls eine effektive akkumulation von kapital. darauffolgend wird die bedeutung indonesiens, malaysias und singapurs für dieses akkumulationsregime analysiert. während indonesien – zumindest theoretisch – auf eine diversifizierung von rohstoffen für die biotreibstoffproduktion abzielt und mehrere institutionen und interessensgruppen in die ausarbeitung der strategien involviert sind, konzentrierte sich malaysia seit den 1960er jahren auf die produktion von palmöl und lediglich dem plantagenministerium fallen hier politische entscheidungskompetenzen zu. in beiden ländern profitieren besonders konglomerate, die sowohl über eigene plantagen als auch über eine weiterverarbeitende industrie verfügen. singapur nimmt innerhalb des regionalen akkumulationsregimes die position des handels-, technologieund finanzzentrum ein. ein zentraler aspekt des buches ist dann die untersuchung zu den konflikten um die kontrolle und aneignung von land. dabei wird zunächst die historische genese der eigentumsverhältnisse nachgezeichnet. hier wird deutlich, dass die heutigen eigentumsverhältnisse, die eine akkumulation von land als produktionsmittel in den händen des staates und privatwirtschaftlicher unternehmen ermöglichen, eine vorgeschichte haben, die in indonesien auf die niederländische kolonialzeit zurückgeht. deutlich wird hier allerdings auch, dass „natur“ im rahmen dieser analyse einer politischen ökologie als ressource, z.b. als land in erscheinung tritt, was letztlich vielleicht auf einen anthropozentrischen naturbegriff des späten marx verweist. auch wenn so ökonomisch nicht fassbare dimensionen von natur nur schwer in eine analyse eingebunden werden können, beispielsweise bedeutungszuschreibungen durch indigene an natürliche entitäten, so ist eine solche herangehensweise doch adäquat und wichtig, um vermeintlich unideologischen analysen des managements und der inwertsetzung natürlicher ressourcen, die lediglich marktbasierte lösungsmechanismen propagieren, argumente entgegenzusetzen. des weiteren führt melanie pichler aus, dass indonesiens dezentralisierungsprozesse seit 1999 dazu geführt haben, dass unternehmen ihre interessen nun auf unterschiedlichen politischen ebenen – beispielsweise in jakarta und auf provinzoder landkreisebene – und damit effektiver durchsetzen können. sie zeigt außerdem, dass die „neue ordnung“ unter suharto maßgeblich auf der inwertsetzung von natur basierte, da so einerseits die anbindung an das kapitalistische wirtschaftssystem vorangetrieben, andererseits auch die ökonomischen interessen nationaler und lokaler eliten bedient werden konnten. im demokratischen indonesien haben nun jedoch auch ngos sowie soziale und indigene bewegungen die möglichkeit, den staat als arena zu nutzen. so hat es beispielsweise die indonesienweit agierende indigenenngo aman zum teil geschafft, die anerkennung von solchen besitzverhältnissen durchzusetzen, die sich aus dem traditionellen gewohnheitsrecht indigener gruppen ableiten. auch innerhalb des staatsapparates selbst werden dabei konflikte ausgemacht. schließlich kann so gezeigt werden, dass der staat selbst ein umkämpftes 109book review terrain ist, auf dem jedoch akteurinnen, die mit kapital ausgestattet sind, strukturell im vorteil sind. neben den konflikten um land macht die autorin als weitere zentrale konfliktlinie die auseinandersetzungen um die beimischung und zertifizierung von agrartreibstoffen aus. beimischungsquoten von agrartreibstoffen waren dabei zunächst als strategie im kampf gegen den klimawandel und als maßnahme gedacht, um die abhängigkeit von fossilen energieträgern zu reduzieren. pichler zeigt jedoch, dass hier der staat in erster linie als regime in erscheinung tritt, das ein exportorientiertes landwirtschaftsmodell fördert, welches letztlich hauptsächlich agrarkonzernen und biodieselunternehmen zugutekommt. auch der roundtable on sustainable palm oil (rspo), der eine zertifizierung von palmöl auf freiwilliger basis anstrebt, wird analysiert. dabei wird herausgearbeitet, wie im rspo bestimmte gruppen systematisch marginalisiert werden – allen voran unabhängige kleinbäuerinnen und plantagenarbeiterinnen. auch zeigt die autorin, dass indigene landrechte im rahmen des rspo kaum beachtet werden. sie argumentiert überzeugend, dass der rspo ein beispiel für ein steuerungsinstrument ist, das government durch governance ersetzt und letztlich auf freiwilligkeit und markt baut anstatt auf demokratisch-politische kontrolle. dennoch ist der staat weiterhin präsent, da er diese formen der regulierung anerkennt und auf eigene instrumente verzichtet. resümierend hält pichler fest, dass innerhalb des aus den palmölkonglomeraten bestehenden, staatlich abgesicherten regionalen akkumulationsregimes auch gesellschaftliche naturverhältnisse transformiert werden, natur also noch stärker den interessen der konglomerate untergeordnet wird. schließlich regt sie im ausblick auch an, die renewable energy directive der eu insgesamt in frage zu stellen, denn die untersuchung legt nahe, dass die beimischung von zertifizierten treibstoffen, die innerhalb der ökonomischen und sozialen rahmenbedingungen des akkumulationsregimes produziert werden, bestehende systemimmanente probleme wohl eher reproduzieren als lösen. melanie pichler hat eine studie vorgelegt, die nicht nur für wissenschaftlerinnen interessant ist, sondern auch wichtige anregungen für die politische arbeit von umwelt-, entwicklungsund menschenrechtsorganisationen geben kann, indem der systemische charakter der probleme, die das akkumulationsregime verursacht, aufgedeckt wird. gerade die idee, den staat als umkämpftes terrain zu fassen, indem sich machtasymmetrien reproduzieren, ist hier sehr überzeugend: mit diesem theoretischen rahmen kann erklärt werden, warum viele konflikte und missstände in der palmölindustrie einen derart persistenten charakter aufweisen und mit dem ruf nach mehr nachhaltigkeit oder transparenz im rahmen der bestehenden verhältnisse bisher nicht gelöst werden konnten – und wohl auch nicht zu lösen sind. es bleibt zu hoffen, dass diese informative, argumentativ starke und theoretisch gut fundierte studie auch über akademische kreise hinaus eine entsprechende wirkung entfalten kann. timo duile universität bonn, deutschland urban brokers of rural cuisine: assembling national cuisine at cambodian soup-pot restaurants hart n. feuer ► feuer, h. n. (2015). urban brokers of rural cuisine: assembling national cuisine at cambodian soup-pot restaurants. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 8(1), 45-66. pre-prepared food venues (or soup-pot restaurants) in cambodia and other asian countries make their decisions about what to cook in a complex food–society nexus, factoring in their culinary skill, seasonality of ingredients, and diners’ expectations for variety. as such, soup-pot restaurants exist as tenuous brokers between rural food customs and the prevailing expectations of city dwellers. in urban areas, they are a transparent window into seasonality and market cycles, as well as an opportunity to encounter culinary diversity and participate in the consolidation of an everyday ‘national cuisine’. soup-pot restaurants, in contrast to other restaurant formats, craft an experience that balances the agricultural and social dynamics of rural eating customs with city comforts. typically, soup-pot restaurants can accomplish this while also serving as a space of dietary learning, providing meals that are culturally understood to be balanced and nutritious, and garnering support for local cuisine from across the socio-economic spectrum. as a site of research, these restaurants can be seen as potential innovators for managing the consequences of industrialization on food and agriculture, facilitating democratic daily practices of food sovereignty. keywords: cambodia; food; national cuisine; nutrition; urbanization  restaurants in kambodscha und anderen asiatischen ländern, wo vorgefertigtes essen angeboten wird (sogenannte soup-pot-restaurants), gestalten ihren täglichen speiseplan aus komplexen gesichtspunkten der ernährung, der jeweils eigenen kochkenntnisse, der saisonalen verfügbarkeit der zutaten und den ansprüchen der gäste an einen abwechslungsreichen speiseplan. soup-pot-restaurants spielen eine vermittlungsrolle zwischen ländlichen kochsitten und den ansprüchen der städtischen bevölkerung. in urbanen gebieten spiegeln sie die saisonale verfügbarkeit und marktzyklen wieder und bieten gleichzeitig den kunden die möglichkeit, die kulinarische vielfalt zu erschließen und sich so auch an dem fortbestand der „nationalen küche“ zu beteiligen. im gegensatz zu anderen restaurant-formen, schaffen die soup-pot-restaurants eine art von ausgleich zwischen der landwirtschaftlich-sozialen dynamik der ländlichen essgewohnheiten und den städtischen annehmlichkeiten. zusätzlich dazu fungieren soup-pot-restaurants als quelle für nahrungswissen und regionale küche für eine breite sozioökonomische kundenschicht. außerdem entsprechen die angebotenen mahlzeiten den kulturellen erwartungen für ausgewogene ernährung. als forschungsfeld dienen diese restaurants als musterbeispiel für die bewältigung der folgen der industrialisierung in der ernährung und landwirtschaft und für die tägliche praxis der ernährungssouveränität. schlagworte: ernährung; essen; kambodscha; nationale küche; urbanisierung aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 15 .1 -4 46 hart n. feuer  aseas 8(1) introduction: the rural-urban food nexus it is a truism that cuisines worldwide originate in the diffuse rural sphere, typically in tandem with local agriculture. rural areas provide a constant agriculturallybased influx of culinary habits to the cities through a combination of the dynamics of migration and the types of food delivered. in turn, these habits are gradually integrated into the prevailing – more cosmopolitan – contexts. while modern trade and logistics have made it possible for some of the produce of more distant rural areas (i.e. from other continents) to become accessible in urban markets, agricultural and also social inputs that are geographically closer (typically deriving from domestic agriculture) remain a powerful reference point for most culinary systems. indeed, despite increasing disjuncture in the cultural economy of food and agriculture through globalization (appadurai, 1990, p. 301), the material basis of many cuisines remains anchored, if sometimes only symbolically, to the food products and habits of the nearby rural sphere (nützenadel & trentmann, 2008, pp. 5–6). this is largely still the case in cambodia, the focus of this paper. it should be noted that in highlighting this, i do not argue away the significance of the ongoing ‘de-localization’ of nutrition through trade, nor the increasing importance of ideological dimensions of cuisine, such as national identity (see ferguson, 2010; montanari, 2006) and commoditization (i.e. tourism and trade promotion) (see chuang, 2009; firat, 1995; henderson, 2004). indeed, these aspects are very much on parade in heavily urbanized and food-import dependent countries in southeast asia, such as singapore and brunei. in these countries, the competitive sensibilities of ‘culinary nationalism’ (i.e. ferguson, 2010)1 figure prominently (see henderson, 2014; ikhwan, 2014) and are even championed by the government (see henderson, 2004; “local cuisine”, 2012; saunders, 2004). with its grounding in cambodia, a less globally dominant food player, this paper circumscribes many of the dominant trends in the research described above. it is oriented instead on understanding why the factual existence and/or imaginary of nearby agriculture and rural culinary habits exert such a considerable sway in spite of the increasing availability of imported food and culinary cultural models. in other contexts, this ‘stubbornness’ has been ascribed to the rise of food movements, the resistance to globalization (friedland, 2010), or the efforts to protect biodiversity (burlingame, 2012). in seeking explanations that more accurately characterize ruraldominated developing countries such as cambodia, this paper takes a closer look into how the cumulative impact of the routinized transformation and consolidation of rural food habits in the rural-urban nexus contributes to a generalized popular knowledge and the awareness of ‘national cuisine’. this paper stops short, however, of projecting the future of khmer national cuisine. in the sense that it is used in this paper, national cuisine is not represented by flagship dishes accessible to tourists (such as phat thai, vietnamese phở, cambodian amok curry, or laotian larb), what is inscribed in cookbooks (see appadurai, 1988), nor by the foods named after a modern state such as singaporean fish-head curry 1 addressing the competitive cross-border identity building directly, ferguson (2010, p. 105) writes: “the movement of goods and the blurring of borders notwithstanding, more and more countries propose culinary distinction as a marker of identity. from austria to singapore, from norway to brazil, aspiring culinary countries vaunt their edible traditions and indigenous foods to promote both tourism and exports.” 47urban brokers of rural cuisine (these anyway being regularly contested). for the purposes of this paper, i define national cuisine as the range of foods that are widely known, qualitatively understood, and regularly consumed by urban people of a collective ethnic background. cambodia, and more specifically its capital phnom penh, is a model case in this respect as it is fairly homogeneous in terms of ethnicity (98 percent khmer)2 and is still in the early stages of urbanization following a period of forced ruralization in the 1970’s (described more thoroughly in fallavier, 2003; simone, 2008). the country is still 73 percent rural/agriculturally-based, yet it is experiencing rapid rural-to-urban migration,3 with the consequence that the nexus between agrarian change and urbanization presents a particularly active arena in which national cuisine is being negotiated and forged. the goal of this research is to examine the emergence of national cuisine at the rural-urban interface, preferably in a setting in which identity politics and globalization take a backseat to the daily routines of sourcing ingredients and making food. in this everyday setting, what can we observe about the negotiation over national cuisine and the role played by food makers, consumers, and food markets? the search for a locale expressing this dynamic led me to what i refer to as a souppot restaurant, which is essentially a working class purveyor of various rural khmer culinary traditions. for cambodians, soup-pot restaurants fall under the linguistic rubric of haan bai (the generic term for ‘rice stall’), which includes both stalls serving made-to-order food as well as those serving pre-prepared food4 (usually from large aluminum pots; see figure 1 for a typical soup-pot shop front). as described in greater detail in the sections below, soup-pot restaurants are typically inexpensive and family-run, making them suitable not only for recent immigrants with low wages and conservatives tastes, but also for anyone seeking a culinary experience comparable to home cooking. as a consequence, the owner-operators of soup-pot restaurants play the role of brokers between their individual (usually rural) culinary heritage and urban expectations of food, hygiene, and service. with this dynamic in mind, this research set out to study how the day-to-day operations of these ubiquitous restaurants work to consolidate the diversity of khmer cuisine, both in their independent cooking decisions and in their response to customer demand. because soup-pot restaurants capture such a wide range of customers in terms of demographics (a point i will address below), culinary trends that emerge in the routine of operating these restaurants are, in the evolutionary sense, continually selecting and distilling the diversity of regional khmer cuisine into a national cuisine. in doing so, they are creating a basis for food sovereignty and setting the stage for managing globalization on more advantageous terms. 2 based on the cambodian social economic survey, 2013. for more details, see national institute of statistics (nis): http://www.nis.gov.kh/index.php/en/find-statistic/social-statistics/cses/cses-tables.html 3 nationwide, urban population growth from 2000 to 2010 has averaged around 4.3 percent (cambodia development resource institute, 2012). this statistic does not, however, account for dynamics introduced by temporary rural-urban mobility, commuting, and the predominance of only two major cities in absorbing urban migrants. 4 curiously, there is no specific word or phrase or even a generally agreed-upon set of terms in khmer for ‘soup-pot restaurant’. in discussions about this subject, informants and i would generally agree to talk about ‘places serving pre-prepared food’ or ‘food in pots’. 48 hart n. feuer  aseas 8(1) figure 1: a soup-pot shop front in phnom penh (photo by hart n. feuer). for this research, i studied a cross-section of the restaurant scene between january and november 2014, representing diners, restaurateurs, and local markets in phnom penh. specifically, i surveyed 120 phnom penh residents cluster-sampled across the categories of age, socio-economic class, and gender.5 i also conducted embedded participant observation in 15 soup-pot restaurants and 9 to-order restaurants in different economic zones of the city. in addition, i accompanied the chefs of 10 restaurants (both soup-pot and to-order) to fresh food markets over a period of 6 months to ascertain the logic behind food purchases and the dynamics of seasonality of vegetables, fish, and fruit. all interviews were conducted by the author in khmer language and all quotes appearing in this text were also translated by the author. soup-pot restaurants and the urban interface in many southeast asian countries like cambodia that are experiencing a transition from small-holder agriculture to corporate farming and urban life, the basis of nutrition (and hence, of culinary practices) is necessarily shifting. the nature of this change, by definition, is associated with the dynamics of urbanization – who, how many, and for what reason are people moving? although phnom penh’s migration is dominated by a young demographic – primarily young women seeking jobs in the textile industry and young men with insufficient land to farm – the phenomena of 5 interviews were conducted randomly over a period of three months in june-august 2014 at the parking area of the phnom penh water supply authority – a place where nearly every family will come to pay the water bill on a 3-month cycle. 49urban brokers of rural cuisine land sale, dispossession, and micro-entrepreneurship have continued to bring entire families into the city (derks, 2008, p. 7; scheidel et al., 2013). however, even as the nominal levels of urbanization have increased, observers of phnom penh have, in fact, characterized the enduring rural character of the city (see saphan, 2011; simone, 2008), describing it as having the atmosphere of a large village. in previous work (feuer, 2011), i have also outlined how the farming background of most current city dwellers in cambodia is associated with greater appreciation of food variety, the quality of produce, and the sanctity of balanced meals. this is necessarily associated with the way in which cuisine in the city is understood, negotiated, and evaluated. a first-generation city dweller in phnom penh highlighted these changes clearly in a conversation in a soup-pot restaurant: when i was growing up, we only ate foods that were in season. every season was an exciting time to get something new and fresh. sometimes the fruit trees were ready, sometimes the long beans were ripe. my parents did not even have to harvest themselves because we, children were so happy to go collect things from the fields. at that time, i thought we just got lucky and nature gave us things to eat when we needed them but now i know that my parents planted everything carefully so we would have tasty and good things all year long. [hf: how about now, in phnom penh?] in the city? it feels a bit like this but different. we can have anything, anytime we want but now we have to decide every day what we should eat; before, the fields helped decide this for us. and now, we only enjoy real fresh products if we get visitors from the countryside or if we visit home. (female accountant, lower-middle class, age 28, phnom penh, personal communication, 3. february 2014) as this woman describes, not only has the basis of nutrition planning moved from long-term (i.e. using an agricultural time-frame) to short-term (i.e. daily decisions at the urban market) but the relationship between seasonal agriculture and food preparation has also deteriorated as a result of living in the city. in other words, culinary and nutritional habits that were rooted in a nexus of agricultural planning and agroecological constraints (see halwart, 2006) are now more a matter of arbitrary, immediate food cravings and availability in the city markets (drewnowski & popkin, 1997). this narrative of becoming alienated from the rhythms of seasonality and nature re-appeared in various forms in most conversations i led with first and even second generation immigrants to phnom penh whom i met in soup-pot restaurants. a related, and similarly popular topic, however, was that eating at soup-pot restaurants was a step back into this rural food atmosphere, with respondents describing the restaurants variously as 'pure khmer', 'real khmer', 'like home', 'traditional', 'the usual [positive connotation]', and 'healthy'. while the accuracy of these various descriptions will be taken up over the next few sections, it is important to stand back and ask if the borderline-romantic notions surrounding soup-pot restaurants are actually relevant: do they translate into popularity? the short answer is: they are unquestionably the most popular dining format6 in phnom penh among all socio-economic levels. according to my survey of 6 see table 2 for a listing of competing restaurant formats. 50 hart n. feuer  aseas 8(1) 120 residents (excluding foreigners) in 2014, all varieties of haan bai, which includes both to-order restaurants and soup-pot restaurants, host approximately 78 percent of all meals out in the city (see table 1). of all the meals in haan bai, 72 percent are taken in soup-pot restaurants (28 percent in to-order restaurants). another way of seeing this is that 56 percent of all meals out (including to-order restaurants, branded restaurants, mall food courts, and foreign-food restaurants) are taken in soup-pot restaurants. table 1: relative popularity of the different types of haan bai (n=120) (own data).7 while the relative popularity of this restaurant format is generally high, there are a few dynamics which arise when one looks at the weekly dining habits of various groups (see table 2). first, the popularity of haan bai is inversely correlated with socio-economic status, with richer people proportionately favoring branded restaurants, food courts, and tourist restaurants relative to lower socio-economic strata. in spite of this relative difference, soup-pot restaurants remain the most popular form of dining even among the richest strata (1.8 times per week or 32 percent of all meals out). among the poorest strata, families dine out almost exclusively in soup-pot restaurants (3.0 times per week or 94 percent of all meals out). second, entertainment dining (such as going out for snacks, to a café, or a night-life locale) becomes increasingly prevalent at higher socio-economic levels, although it cannot be determined if this has an independent impact on where people take their full meals each day. third, while the trend visible in table 2 suggests that economic mobility allows people to diversify their dining choices, the absolute popularity of soup-pot restaurants among lower-middle and middle-class people remains robust. this suggests, on face value, that the broader set of restaurant options available at higher incomes, rather than class identity, determine routine dining choices (more on this below). finally, unusual dining options that are not listed here (such as office canteens, buffet restaurants, and restaurant-cafés) are not included in this sample but were, at the time of surveying, a relatively small factor (mentioned only 5 times in 120 surveys). given the robust popularity of haan bai, and more specifically of soup-pot restaurants, i made a point of interviewing haan bai diners across the socio-economic 7 socio-economic background was triangulated through a number of factors. if salary information was available, it was used as one basis, yet many other factors were also considered, such as the family income and non-salary income sources as well as the informant’s mode of transportation, mobile phone model, and other outward characteristics used in a contextual manner (such as appearance and accent) for substantiation. roughly speaking, the poorest earn adjusted monthly salaries of usd 150 or less; lowermiddle income class up to usd 400; middle-class up to usd 1,000; and upper-classes above usd 1,000. approximate socio-economic background poorest lowermiddle middle upper average % of all meals out in all haan bai 94,1 87,9 75,8 58,9 77,6 % of all meals out in soup-pot restaurants 88,2 65,5 51,6 32,1 56,2 % of haan bai meals at soup-pot restaurants 93,8 74,5 68,1 54,5 72,4 51urban brokers of rural cuisine table 2: weekly dining-out locations of phnom penh residents (n=120) (own data). spectrum in order to clarify the motivations or justifications explaining the egalitarian popularity of these venues. in the quotes below, the inertia behind the abstract of khmer cuisine becomes apparent: i like to try many kinds of new food, but to fill my belly every day i still prefer khmer food. haan bai are the best place to get regular khmer food. and they are cheap too. (male electronics salesperson, lower-middle class, age 24, personal communication, 5. may 2014) my family likes khmer food every day. even if i bring bread, i still have to bring soup and fried food or else they will complain. the haan bai around here always have something tasty. (female house-wife, upper class, age 31, personal communication 15. may 2014) furthermore, the utility and efficiency of the soup-pot restaurant model for both patron and restaurateur helps to explain why it remains such a popular institution in phnom penh, as demonstrated by the following statements from both owners and patrons: i used to have a to-order restaurant, but it was not so easy to run. i had to buy so many kinds of ingredients and cook them in a hurry when people came. i wasted a lot and i think the food was not so good. now i just choose a few dishes for the day and take my time serving instead of being in the hot kitchen. (female restaurateur, age 40, personal communication, 8. october 2014) i like to look at and smell all the foods when i go to a [soup-pot] restaurant. it makes my decision easier. and if i’m with a group, we can decide together. (male patron, age 17, with a group of four fellow students, personal communication, 6. june 2014) approximate socio-economic background dining-out location poorest lowermiddle middle upper average soup-pot 3,0 3,8 3,2 1,8 3,0 to-order 0,2 1,3 1,5 1,5 1,1 branded restaurant 0,1 0,3 0,6 1,1 0,5 mall or food court 0,1 0,4 0,7 0,9 0,5 tourist restaurant 0,0 0,0 0,2 0,3 0,1 snack 1,1 1,7 2,3 2,8 1,9 night-life locale 1,0 1,3 2,3 2,6 1,8 café 0,7 2,1 3,0 3,2 2,3 total entertainment out/week 2,8 5,1 7,6 8,6 6,0 total dining out/week 3,4 5,8 6,2 5,6 5,3 52 hart n. feuer  aseas 8(1) if i’m in a hurry, i always go to the [soup-pot] restaurant because i can choose fast and they can wrap it up to go easily. (female hairdresser, age 21, personal communication, 6. june 2014) while price is also a determining factor, particularly for lower socio-economic groups, patrons regularly praised the convenience, familiarity, and transparency of the soup-pot model. because soup-pot restaurateurs typically display the options in the entryway (or roadside), patrons have the opportunity to smell, pose questions, discuss with their group, and even interact with the food (stir, flip, or touch) before settling on their choice. at the same time, they can evaluate the hygiene of the food and atmosphere of the location before entering the interior. if they are not immediately satisfied, it is not unusual (or impolite) for a patron to politely walk away. in contrast, to-order restaurants require patrons to commit to a seat in the restaurant and trust that the food emerging from the kitchen will be tasty and hygienic. nevertheless, to-order stalls also play an important set of roles for various diners; for example, while a soup-pot restaurant may run out of food or close early, to-order restaurants will be available for those who cannot eat during normal meal hours. soup-pot restaurants are also typically less active during dinner, a meal many families (including restaurateurs themselves) prefer to eat at home. as a consequence, in the evening when soup-pot restaurants are either closed or are merely serving leftovers, to-order restaurants can prepare freshly-cooked food. needless to say, for those in the mood for something specific, a to-order restaurant is a better choice. in this section, i showed that soup-pot restaurants are a highly popular feature of phnom penh’s urban landscape. unlike restaurants that prepare food on-demand from a relatively fixed set of ingredients, chefs of soup-pot restaurants make their decisions about what to cook in a more complex food-society nexus, factoring in their culinary skill, seasonality of ingredients, whims in demand, and the compulsion to touch on the wide spectrum of regional khmer cuisine. consequently, as a site of research, these restaurants can be a window on food seasonality, food diversity, and the vagaries of urban dining demands. connecting rural seasonality to urban spaces the rural sphere, in all of its regional diversity, has historically acted as a cradle for food culture by both engendering dietary customs and sustaining the flow of agricultural inputs to cities. food studies have long been concerned with what appadurai (1986) calls “the social life of things”, or the complex, sometimes transnational, forces that accompany a product and re-define its role along the path from producer to consumer. food (i.e. fresh produce or meat) is an interesting example of this, as its eventual use is understood well by the producers, namely farmers who are cooks and eaters themselves. as agricultural produce moves away from the farm and into the city, its end-use in someone’s recipe may either diverge widely from the conceptions of the farmer or fall in line with them. for example, while the fate of a high-quality pumpkin that is bought by the chef of a five-star hotel is hardly imaginable to the farmer, if that pumpkin is bought by a family cook or soup-pot chef, the end-use of cooking it is likely to be very similar to that which would have taken place on the 53urban brokers of rural cuisine farm. beyond a shared view of how to prepare food, the cook in a soup-pot restaurant shares an additional connection with producers, namely seasonality. while growing seasons are not as differentiated in the sub-tropics as in the temperate latitudes, the availability of water and the presence of competing cultivation (typically rice in the humid sub-tropics) engender a combined form of seasonality based on cultural, market, and natural factors. for the purpose of this paper, seasonality describes the cyclical (i.e. foreseeable) changes in both price and availability of certain agriculture and fish during the course of the year. typically, soup-pot restaurants face conditions similar to a designated cook in a family home, balancing what is available and cost-competitive (from the fields, rivers, and markets) with nutritional considerations, the family budget, and food preferences. in a predominantly agricultural society like cambodia, there are many synergies inherent to this process. seasonal vegetables, fruits, and fish are typically cheaper, fresher, and more in-demand by customers than imported or cold-stored products (amo and wfp,8 2014, p. 2014; buoy, chhuon, & thilsted, 2009; chou, 2011, pp. 12–13, 28–29, 58–59; hap et al., 2012, pp. 32–34). this is illustrated by a restaurant chef ’s description of her shopping strategy: i do all the shopping by myself so that i can be sure about quality. i don’t trust my children yet, but they come with me so that they can learn. we usually go to the market for vegetables in the evenings, a few times per week. the other days we stay home and prepare pickles and sauces. [hf: and for fish, meat?] every morning at dawn i wake my husband up, we go for fish and meat and sometimes vegetables if the farmers bring in something very fresh. sometimes i see a vegetable that reminds me to cook a dish i haven’t made in a while. sometimes i see a fish that is perfect for one soup. i am always thinking about what i made before. i try not to repeat the same foods in a week, but sometimes i have difficulty in the dry season when there is not so much [produce]. i try to cook this way if the price is not too high. (female soup-pot restaurateur, age 42, personal communication, 12. september 2014) the description above by a veteran (12-year) chef from a popular soup-pot restaurant is indicative of the logic of a typical home food planner. as opposed to the countryside, home cooks and restaurateurs in the city, are not necessarily constrained by the seasonality of produce to the same extent as rural dwellers. nevertheless, as the vignette above illustrates, and embedded research with other restaurateurs confirms, most soup-pot chefs strive for seasonality, but must balance this against the risk of boring their customers with the same (seasonal) dishes. interestingly, in a family-run restaurant, they also have to consider the demands within their actual family. a telling quote from the child of a soup-pot restaurant owner echoed this sentiment: if customers came in early enough, they would see our family eating the same food that we will serve for lunch. if the food is bad, we will complain to dad along with all of the customers! (male school child, age 15, personal communication, 14. june 2014) 8 agricultural marketing office of the ministry of agriculture, forestry, and fishery of cambodia & the world food programme of the united nations 54 hart n. feuer  aseas 8(1) in order to fulfill the expectations of ‘city people’, soup-pot restaurants face a difficult challenge when attempting to source ingredients in unison with fresh markets, while also balancing food diversity, long-term customer preferences, and price fluctuations. a successful soup-pot restaurateur regularly manages these competing demands and, as a consequence, when urban dwellers dine out at soup-pot restaurants, the food they eat becomes a transparent window into the agricultural and market cycles that they would not otherwise encounter in the city. this comes to light when comparing the food diversity, cost, and use of non-standard vegetables9 between soup-pot and to-order restaurants (see table 3). table 3: comparing the diversity, cost, and vegetable sourcing of restaurant formats (own data). although restaurants serving pre-prepared food and those serving made-to-order food cannot be compared on a one-to-one basis, i have found that this creative set of metrics adequately describes the different dynamics in these restaurants. a 2-pot restaurant (i.e. one preparing 2 large soup pots for each meal) will serve, on average, 28 unique soups and stews per month while a 3-pot restaurant will serve 40 per month. these values do not include the pre-prepared fried foods and braised dishes (kaw) that are also commonly served as the quantity of these dishes varies greatly across soup-pot restaurants of similar sizes. at the extreme, i have documented a 15pot restaurant at the central market that serves up to 140 identifiably unique dishes per month. in contrast, to-order restaurants tend to receive most of their orders for a limited range of dishes and in only 37 percent of cases do people stray from the top10 dishes ordered at that restaurant.10 furthermore, to-order restaurateurs reported that they are not routinely equipped to serve a large range of food types as this often leads to food waste. this becomes apparent when comparing the use of non-standard vegetables; on average, soup-pot restaurants, serve food containing these more unusual vegetables almost twice as often as to-order restaurants. the tendency of soup-pot restaurants to use more seasonal ingredients can be 9 non-standard vegetables excludes the most generic of ingredients found in cambodia, such as tomatoes, onions, chinese cabbage, morning glory, lettuce, potatoes, spring onions, string beans, sour mango, bok choi, shallots, and lime. it includes more recipe-specific ingredients such as lotus shoots, banana flower, young bamboo shoots, bitter gourd, makak fruit, palm fruit, ma'om, moringa, kantrup, bas leaf, ptih, malabar spinach, ngob leaf, water mimosa, asiatic pennywort, and crab claw herb. 10 although the top-5 or top-10 dishes are, strictly speaking, not consistent across restaurants, they are still generally comparable because the dishes overlap 70 to 80 percent. soup-pot restaurant to-order restaurant 2-pot restaurant top 5 dishes 11/28 dishes per week/month ordered 49 percent of the time 3-pot restaurant top 10 dishes 15/40 dishes per week/month ordered 63 percent of the time average price: usd 1.55 average price: usd 1.85 with rice, sometimes dessert with rice, no dessert non-standard vegetables non-standard vegetables 39 percent of dishes 23 percent of dishes 55urban brokers of rural cuisine substantiated further by comparing the amount of cambodia-sourced and/or seasonal ingredients purchased by the two different restaurant formats (see table 4). while with some products (such as fruit, eggs, beef, and pork) place of origin and seasonality is fairly consistent across the market, with other products (such as vegetables and fish), soup-pot restaurants tend to buy more domestic and seasonal produce than to-order restaurants.11 to-order restaurant owners suggested that, in order to be ready to prepare a range of the highest-demanded dishes, they are compelled to buy a fairly fixed set of ingredients, regardless of whether these are in season or can be sourced locally that day. with the flexibility to select and adjust their offering of dishes on an ad-hoc basis, soup-pot restaurateurs are not faced with this dilemma. table 4: percentage of ingredients (by weight) that are cambodia-sourced and/or seasonal (own data). the overarching trend apparent from the data in tables 3 and 4 is that in addition to serving a more diverse range of food types, soup-pot restaurants demand a more diverse range of ingredients than to-order restaurants. from the perspective of the soup-pot restaurant owner, this is a result of following seasonal trends and fluctuations in fresh food markets and avoiding repetition of the same food. from the perspective of to-order restaurants, the reason most commonly given for the low diversity of food selected is that customers tend to be less creative about what to order when they are given the choice (not to mention that most to-order restaurants lack a menu), requiring to-order restaurateurs to stock certain ingredients regardless of their seasonality or place of origin. rural familiarity in urban dining for city dwellers and the cohort of migrants who move through the cities seasonally, soup-pot restaurants provide low-cost access to familiar types of khmer food and the comfortable atmosphere of ‘home-cooking’. particularly for low-income people, these familiar locales are an invaluable resource in overcoming the economic and social challenges of living in (or, in the case of migrants, transitioning to) the city. 11 place of origin and seasonality was confirmed orally with each handler during market transactions. and while it is unrealistic to expect that food traders always honestly report the origin of the food, their long-term relationships with restaurateurs presents a disincentive to regular lying, so these numbers are reasonably accurate. ingredient soup-pot to-order vegetables 73 56 fruit 85 80 beef 100 100 pork 34 31 wild fish (dry season) 43 27 wild fish (wet season) 78 58 eggs 85 82 56 hart n. feuer  aseas 8(1) according to embedded research in 15 soup-pot restaurants and 9 to-order restaurants, this utility derives from three main attributes of soup-pot restaurants: 1. the atmosphere is familial and less anonymous; 2. despite the low price point and modest settings, they are a less class-sensitive environment than on-demand restaurants; 3. the way the food is served mimics social eating customs in the countryside. while the overall experience of eating in a soup-pot restaurant was routinely praised as comfortable and informal by a wide spectrum of patrons, this aspect is more pronouncedly appreciated by rural migrants, who are in the process of adjusting to the relative anonymity and service-orientation in the city. one patron, who had moved to phnom penh three months prior, related the following: after i sold my land and moved to stung meanchey [district], i went to a nearby k'mong [to-order] restaurant for lunch because we did not have a kitchen ready yet. we just ordered one soup and one fried food, but the waiter brought us a whole receipt! (male soup-pot restaurant patron, age 50, personal communication, 16. july 2014) the business-like formality of this experience was clearly off-putting and in contrast to the more informal culture of soup-pot restaurants. in fact, this quote derives from an interview in a soup-pot restaurant that took place after the meal was paid for, a process in which the owner’s 15-year-old daughter merely asked the patron what he had eaten, calculated in her head, and produced change from her own pocket. the fact that the restaurant owner’s children, who were home from school for lunch, were the only ‘servers’ in the restaurant facilitates the atmosphere of familiarity (a typical family scene can be viewed in figure 3). for this customer, the ‘working class’ character of the setting is considered a positive trait, even though he was a middle-class patron who could afford a fancier setting. in fact, sitting near this patron, who was a civil servant, were a range of people from varying socio-economic backgrounds. this included a group of four criminal defense lawyers, a local surgeon and his family, two achan (buddhist laypeople) from the local pagoda, two groups of teenage students, and a group of construction workers in soiled clothing. in my sample of 15 soup-pot restaurants across phnom penh, this type of heterogeneity of clientele is consistent across the city (see figure 2) and, in areas with more mixed middle and upper-class populations, the atmosphere in soup-pot restaurants is distinctively egalitarian. one reason consistently cited for the inclusive popularity of soup-pot restaurants is the customary way in which the food is selected, presented, and served. the owner typically offers an arrangement of foods that allows even a lone diner to enjoy a complete menu that includes a watery soup, a fried entree, pickles, and cold tea (see a typical spread in figure 4). in a to-order restaurant setting, arranging a meal balanced in this way would require planning by the customer rather than the chef and a higher cost to the customer. allowing a food planner to curate the dishes available is a dietary custom that is typical of the countryside (halwart, 2006; ip & betts, 1986; ooraikul, sirichote, & siripongvutikorn, 2008) and has expanded into cambodian urban cuisine in the soup-pot setting. in fact, customers that i interviewed in soup 57urban brokers of rural cuisine figure 2: diners in soup-pot restaurants: employment and age distribution (own data). figure 3: a scene from a family-run soup-pot restaurant in phnom penh (photo by hart n. feuer). pot restaurants consistently reported that they expect the chef to arrange the dishes to complement each other in a balanced way that follows dietary customs (and avoids food taboos, such as serving steamed rice without soup to wash it down). age employment 58 hart n. feuer  aseas 8(1) figure 4: a typical arrangement of cambodian fare in a soup-pot restaurant (photo by hart n. feuer). rural dietary learning in the city by providing a rotating menu of dishes containing diverse ingredients in a customary modality of dining, soup-pot restaurants can be a mutually-accepted coercive space of dietary learning, providing meals that are culturally understood to be balanced and nutritious, and that constantly (re)expose patrons to the diversity of national cuisine. indeed, when prepared properly and arranged following various unwritten rules (i.e. old wives tales) for combining food types, khmer cuisine can readily provide all of the necessary nutrients (olney et al., 2009) as well as integrate various medicinal foods that support illness prevention (medecine de la natur, 2010). this aligns with the characteristics of the soup-pot restaurant outlined in the sections above – as a popular, affordable, and convenient place to eat, an access point to diverse home-cooking, and an egalitarian space for urban residents. aligned this way, this positive dietary and socialization experience also creates an opportunity for informal learning about the range of khmer cuisine, eating habits, and food flavors/ textures. to illustrate with one vignette: of course my child here [age 10] wants to eat burgers, but when we come here [to the soup-pot restaurant] to eat, he is very happy trying new kinds of soup and other foods that i don’t make at home. look at his plate today, he removed all the bones from this fish that he has never tried before. ... here there is not only cola, but also coconut water and sugar cane juice. (housewife, age 36, personal communication, 11. august 2014) in this example, the soup-pot restaurant provides a setting for informal food education by providing examples of khmer cuisine not routinely prepared at home, and 59urban brokers of rural cuisine by introducing local agricultural products (e.g. a new fish, alternative sweet drinks, unfamiliar vegetables and flavors) that are found in khmer cuisine. the practice of providing a space with coercive social rules for dining that features a varied range of dishes is not dissimilar to programs that have been used for teaching nutrition education to cambodian refugees in the usa (ip & betts, 1986), which suggests that the soup-pot restaurant is unwittingly serving as a passive educational resource. the child mentioned in the quote above is learning skills such as how to fillet an unfamiliar fish, how to taste and appreciate new flavors, and how to conduct himself in a customary eating environment. these skills will be useful when visiting relatives in the countryside or being invited to a meal at someone else’s house. the mother, in turn, is refreshing her familiarity with certain foods, learning how to match the various soups and fried foods, and possibly learning about new dishes. indeed, in many of the soup-pot restaurants i observed, it was common for the owner to discuss ingredients, cooking techniques, and food taboos with patrons. in fact, a striking feature of many discussions that i have overheard or participated in at soup-pot restaurants is the high degree of food-related expertise exhibited by most patrons. in conversation at the table, it is not unusual for a patron to correctly diagnose a cooking error, off-flavor, poor quality ingredient, or the questionable arrangement of dishes. it is also not unusual for patrons to praise the freshness of ingredients, skillful preparation, and suitable arrangement. in general, this capacity to critique food and agriculture is widespread in cambodia, owing largely to the rural background of most city dwellers. as depicted in saphan (2011) and feuer (2011), the re-population of cambodian cities after the forced ruralization of people during the democratic kampuchea period (ending primarily in 1979) has meant that most urban dwellers, and almost all recent urban migrants, have an agricultural background. this tends to equip diners to assess raw ingredients and the food they receive with considerable nuance (see feuer, 2013, pp. 24–26). however, eating in soup-pot restaurants also presents new challenges and opportunities for patrons to maintain and revise their knowledge and awareness of food quality, nutrition, and food safety. dining in a soup-pot restaurant is usually as predictable as eating at home: the food is familiar and the arrangement of the dishes is customary. however, given the diversity of food encountered over time in soup-pot restaurants (see table 4 for reference) and the variability among venues, one often discovers new foods, or is confronted with modern food ingredients and additives (such as monosodium glutamate, bouillon, synthetic vinegar, artificial colorings, etc.). because the food at soup-pot restaurants is similar to food that might be served at home, patrons have a baseline from which to comment on the divergences in quality of raw ingredients, skill in preparation, and presence of new ingredients – in both positive and negative ways. actually, this is my first time here even though i live just nearby. i used to eat there [pointing across the street] every day, but the daughter took over cooking and the food is no longer tasty. she uses a lot of flavoring [monosodium glutamate] and prepares the kreung [pounded ingredient paste] the night before so it is not good smelling by the next day. (female garment factory worker, age 19, personal communication, 17. august 2014) 60 hart n. feuer  aseas 8(1) taste this rice. i guess this is ir [a high-yielding variety]. this is for pigs to eat. we should be proud of our rice in cambodia. … i’m not coming here again. (male security guard and former rice farmer, age 25, personal communication, 21. march 2014) [to me:] if you look behind this house, you'll see banana trees, herbs, and b’ah trees. you’re not supposed to put b’ah leaves in this soup, but that's why it’s so tasty even if it’s not really somlaw korko [vegetable herbal stew]. [to the hostess:] hey sister, show this foreigner how fresh your ingredients are – bring him some fresh sluk m’reah from the back! (male construction worker, age 34, personal communication, 14. september 2014) in aggregate, these routine types of critique are performative of food knowledge: they represent both the continual confirmation and maintenance of existing knowledge and the potential for new learning about food, agriculture, and contemporary issues such as food additives. at the bare minimum, soup-pot restaurants provide a continual reminder of the variation of regional food and, particularly for children, provide opportunity to discover flavors, textures, and social eating patterns not found at home. in other words, soup-pot restaurants help set the popular and accessible benchmark for national cuisine and contribute to maintaining existing knowledge. in addition, new learning and participation in the evolution of the national cuisine takes places spontaneously when one encounters and learns from new dishes, novel variations on familiar foods, and modern ingredients. entrepreneurs adapting culinary tradition to the city from one perspective, the cohort of small business owners who open and maintain soup-pot restaurants can be viewed as conservative, un-original, and practicing only rudimentary hygiene. indeed, their food is not usually innovative in the sense of creativity and experimentation, their premises are typically unkempt and poorly furnished, and they often follow poorly-substantiated folk models of hygiene (see pelto & pelto, 1997) rather than scientific rationale. in this paper, however, i have argued that soup-pot restaurateurs operate in a rural-urban nexus, in which their role as brokers for rural dietary customs and curators of national cuisine is valued more than their capacity for innovation and fancy interiors. in fact, many business owners have related that they fear that certain types of advancement will only alienate customers or increase costs without justification. two years ago, i updated my restaurant with a new display case and silverware. my wife and i thought it was a good change, but customers complained. they said they could not look inside the soups or touch the fish easily to help them choose. and they said the new spoons were too thick so they could not cut meat with them. so i put the soups back where the flies were and gave them the small aluminum spoons back. you see, that is what i have now.12 (male soup-pot restaurateur, age 39, personal communication, 27. march 2014) 12 it is common in cambodian haan bai not to provide knives, so diners have adapted to using the edge of a spoon to cut through large pieces of meat. cheaper spoons are often thinner, which makes them more effective. 61urban brokers of rural cuisine i always buy my rice from neighbors in my home village in kompong cham. this is usually one or two traditional rice varieties. last year, a salesman convinced me to try a high-quality jasmine rice so i bought two sacks to try. some people complained that the rice was too soft for everyday food, or they said they feel like they are eating wedding food. after using that rice for one month, i switched back to the old one. (female soup-pot restaurateur, age 45, personal communication, 15. march 2014) the only reason that i can accept for the lunch price to go up is if the owner gives more food or makes better quality food. i don’t want to pay more for fancy tables, chairs, and bowls. (male soup-pot patron, age 55, personal communication, 14. february 2014) the examples above suggest that the constraints faced by soup-pot restaurateurs in deciding how to manage expectations about their establishment compel a more functional form of creativity, one which does not tamper overtly with the perceived authenticity of the customary dining experience. this follows with analyses of the role of chef-as-entrepreneur, which suggest that the responsibilities of a chef are not necessarily to innovate and upgrade but to match the food to the intended dining experience (duruz, 2009; leschziner, 2009). indeed, the restaurateurs of many of the more popular soup-pot restaurants that i met had learned the art of creating what moreiras’s (1999) called a “double consciousness”. this phenomenon explains how restaurants keep the interactional framework of dining familiar and desirable to patrons even as they are otherwise compelled to adjust the underlying structure to respond to urban constraints (e.g. hygiene, entertainment, availability of seasonal or local ingredients, presence of non-khmer food). “double consciousness” describes how, for example, hygiene measures are surreptitiously included in the restaurant protocol without tampering with the shabby, working-class atmosphere. this also explains how, given the growing prevalence of aquaculture fish and the vegetable imports to cambodia (chan, 2014; chhean, diep, & moustier, 2004; hortle, 2007, p. 59), a restaurateur can create a dining experience that expresses ‘authentic’ flavors while camouflaging the presence of cultured catfish and out-of-season vegetables. for example, most establishments i researched now provide fans for comfort, condiment kits and rubbish bins for each table, and an area with a television or newspapers. all of them will package the food to take-away with no extra fee. more than half of the venues (18 of 24) use food warmers to maintain optimal temperature (see the pots in figure 1). additionally, most restaurants have switched to hygienic ice and have improved techniques for sterilizing dishes and utensils. even then, some establishments still crush the hygienic cubes to make the ice appear like ‘traditional’ shaved block ice, and present the already-sterilized utensils in a jar of hot water (an accepted folk method of hygiene). a few venues (3 out of 24) use cleaning agents to wipe down tables instead of the more predominant practice of wiping with a used rag (a folk model more effective in maintaining orderliness rather than sterility). while hygiene and comfort can be easily adjusted without changing the overall rural dining experience, the mark of a good broker is the capacity of the owner to transform the seasonal products in the market into food that captures a broad swath of the national cuisine. one soup-pot restaurant near the central market in phnom penh has remained a beloved institution due to this characteristic, often be62 hart n. feuer  aseas 8(1) ing referred to in the newspapers as “a museum of lowland cambodian food” (“the unique lunch”, 2012). ultimately, the proprietor who can derive a large number of dishes from the highest quality ingredients will not only be a successful entrepreneur, but also provide a gateway for city people to routinely encounter diverse rural food, thereby (re-)producing the national cuisine and maintaining demand for domestic agriculture. conclusions in this paper, i argue that the rural-urban interface is the crucible in which the diversity of rural agriculture and culinary culture is transformed into a more abstract and less geographically-embedded concept of ‘national cuisine’. while many observers of culinary change are quick to jump to globalization as both the major cause for and the conclusion of national cuisine, the case of cambodia in this paper suggests that such an approach would be premature. in cambodia, and potentially other rural-dominated countries, the more fundamental processes of agrarian change and urbanization are the primary battlegrounds in the formative stages of ‘developing’ national cuisine. during this period, national cuisine is still predominantly about defining the range of foods that will become generally known, qualitatively understood, and regularly consumed by urban people of a discrete culinary-ethnic group. undoubtedly, for the purposes of encouraging culinary tourism, the urgency builds to establish cuisine as a representation of an imagined community of the nation (ferguson, 2010; phillips, 2006). however, this does not necessarily crowd out the concurrent, and more everyday, processes of consolidating culinary diversity at the rural-urban nexus. this ‘glare of the global’, i suggest, is what brought appadurai (1988) to hastily suggest that national cuisine would tend to be formed out of disparate regional and local elements that scarcely would have been found together. in fact, cuisines from nearby rural areas or even those gradually integrated through immigration and agricultural exchange ‘from outside’ (as would be the case for certain thai, vietnamese, and chinese touches in cambodia), are often found together with little contradiction as long as basic ingredients and cooking practices do not depart too radically from one another. this is illustrated in this paper through the decentralized manner by which soup-pot restaurants, as brokers of cuisine and agricultural produce, routinely curate the diversity of regional culinary habits and fresh produce – regardless of whether or not they come from cambodia. while there are cuisines that, in a simplified and reified form, aspire to go abroad as ambassadors of culture (see the cases of singaporean “takeout” and “malaysian kitchen” found in, respectively, epicure, 2011 and yoshino, 2009), this paper is about the early formative steps, in which culinary diversity, agricultural heritage, and everyday eating habits are more fundamental than “culinary soft power” (farrer, 2009) in the world. as translators of rural dietary traditions for urban citizens and urban migrants, cambodian soup-pot restaurants contribute to maintaining awareness and appreciation for khmer cuisine and supporting seasonal domestic agriculture. as the most popular destination for meals out across the socio-economic spectrum, souppot restaurants can contribute to food sovereignty by providing affordable, accessible, and nutritionally balanced food for a broad range of urban diners. in the long 63urban brokers of rural cuisine term, this domestic consolidation of national cuisine reinforces the stature of khmer food and puts it in an advantageous position for exposure to global cuisines. this has become more apparent in 2014 with the naming of cambodia’s luu meng as “asia’s top chef ” by top 10 of asia magazine (murray, 2014) and in cambodia’s third consecutive win of the title for the world’s “best rice” at the 2014 world rice conference. everyday institutions, such as soup-pot restaurants, facilitate food sovereignty locally by brokering diversity and consolidating national cuisine in an inclusive, decentralized way. this then contributes to laying the groundwork for international legitimation of khmer cuisine. these forms of food sovereignty are rooted in daily practices and are essentially democratic as opposed to the sometimes authoritarian policies implemented under a food sovereignty heading. this inclusivity and democratic nature of assembling national cuisine is achieved, in part, due to three emergent characteristics of soup-pot restaurants that were outlined above. first, by leveraging synergies between fresh and low-cost ingredients from domestic agriculture, soup-pot restaurants render seasonality transparent to patrons who otherwise do not experience the agricultural cycles in the city, thereby empowering everyday citizens to participate in demand creation. second, the social atmosphere of soup-pot restaurants is a more familial and egalitarian environment than other types of venues, thereby drawing customers from the entire socio-economic continuum who are seeking familiar culinary customs. third, soup-pot restaurants can be a space of dietary learning, providing meals that are not only balanced and nutritious, but allow city dwellers, especially children, to experience and learn about the diversity of national cuisine while participating in its continual redefinition. for food researchers looking for countervailing forces to the rapid changes in agriculture, cuisine, and diets in developing countries, the soup-pot restaurant can be understood as an institution that transforms culinary diversity into a relevant and popular experience. as a phenomenon on the rural-urban interface, soup-pot restaurants are neither entirely rural nor entirely urban. rather they erect a “double consciousness” that allows urbanites to experience a window onto rural cuisine and agricultural cycles while adjusting for comfort and the vagaries of food availability in urban markets. successfully navigating the expectations of urban cambodian customers requires the soup-pot restaurateurs to carefully gauge the competing demands for modern convenience, a customary experience, as well as tasty and varied food. in this way, the relative survival of soup-pot establishments can be an indicator of the scope and nature of industrialization and their role in brokering will provide insights and guidance for managing future disjuncture of globalization and agrarian change on food.  references amo & wfp. 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(2008). introduction: mapping food and globalization. in a. nützenadel & f. trentmann (eds.), food and globalisation. consumption, markets and politics in the modern world (pp. 1–18). oxford, uk: berg. olney, d. k., talukder, a., iannotti, l. l., ruel, m. t., & quinn, v. (2009). assessing impact and impact pathways of a homestead food production program on household and child nutrition in cambodia. food and nutrition bulletin, 30(4), 355–369. ooraikul, b., sirichote, a., & siripongvutikorn, s. (2008). southeast asian diets and health promotion. in f. d. meester & r. r. watson (eds.), wild-type food in health promotion and disease prevention (pp. 515–533). totowa, new jersey, usa: humana press. pelto, p. j., & pelto, g. h. (1997). studying knowledge, culture, and behavior in applied medical anthropology. medical anthropology quarterly, 11(2), 147–163. phillips, l. (2006). food and globalization. annual review of sociology, 35, 37–57. the unique lunch in phnom penh (trans. piseth som). (2012, april 16). rasmei kampuchea daily. saphan, l. (2011, july). phnom penh urbanites: becoming city dwellers. transforming cambodia studies: social change and cultural transitions since 1979, center for khmer studies, siem reap, cambodia. saunders, k. j. (2004). creating and recreating heritage in singapore. current issues in tourism, 7(4-5), 440–448. scheidel, a., giampietro, m., & ramos-martin, j. (2013). self-sufficiency or surplus: conflicting local and national rural development goals in cambodia. land use policy, 34, 342–352. simone, a. (2008). the politics of the possible: making urban life in phnom penh. singapore journal of tropical geography, 29(2), 186–204. yoshino, k. (2009). malaysian cuisine: a case of neglected culinary globalization. in j. farrer (ed.), globalization, food and social identities in the asia pacific region. sophia university institute of comparative culture (online-only). retrieved from http://icc.fla.sophia.ac.jp/global%20food%20papers/ about the author hart n. feuer is assistant professor at the division of natural resource economics, graduate school of agriculture, kyoto university, and former senior research fellow at the center for khmer studies (cks) in cambodia. ► contact: hfeuer@gmail.com constitutionalism in thailand: key questions of an on-going research aseas 6(1) 183182 d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -6 .1 -1 0 forschungswerkstatt / research workshop constitutionalism in thailand: key questions of an on-going research wolfram schaff ar1 & ralph guth2 citation schaffar, w. & guth, r. (2013). constitutionalism in thailand: key questions of an on-going research. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 6(1), 183-187. our research project3 analyzes the thai political crisis with reference to, firstly, the global trend towards rights-based development and specific liberal democratization trajectories. secondly, the project is based on a micro-level analysis of the strategic positioning of and debates within social movements concerning a quest for fundamental rights and a rejection of a ‘judicialization’ of politics. this focus leads to critical questions about democratization processes along liberal constitutional ideas in general. as the situation in thailand points beyond the particular case, its analysis has implications on a regional and global level, both for democratic and political theory and also for the practice of development cooperation. we would like to outline some of these critical core questions in the following. since the political crisis in thailand fully unfolded with the military coup in 2006, it continuously intensified and preliminarily culminated in the protests, clashes, and eventually the violent crackdown of red-shirt demonstrations in may 2010. when pheu thai, the party close to the red-shirts and ousted prime minister thaksin shinawatra, won a majority in parliament in july 2011, it immediately sparked rumors of a new coup; two years later, the party faces severe criticism by supporters for seeking reconciliation with the military, including amnesty for the shootings of 2010, and resistance from opponents for trying to amend or even re-draft the constitution of 2007. 1 wolfram schaffar is professor at the department of development studies at the university of vienna and is currently a visiting fellow at the royal netherlands institute of southeast asian and caribbean studies (kitlv) in leiden, netherlands. his research focus is on state theory, constitutionalism, social movements, and democratization in the global south, with a regional focus on thailand and myanmar/burma. contact: wolfram.schaffar@univie.ac.at 2 ralph guth is research associate at the department of development studies at the university of vienna and writing his dissertation about transnationalization of law and new constitutionalism at the same university. contact: ralph.guth@univie.ac.at 3 this research project is funded by the jubilee fund of the oesterreichische nationalbank (austrian national bank), project-nr.: 14710, and is situated at the department of development studies, university of vienna. aseas 6(1) 185184 when we talk about the deep crisis of thai political institutions, we have to keep in mind that for a whole decade, the democratization process of thailand was hailed as one of the most promising in all south-east asia: it started with the strong prodemocracy movement in 1992, which pushed the military out of politics, and many analysts saw the adoption of the people’s constitution in 1997, with its institutional arrangements and its orientation towards good governance and human rights, as the culmination and the institutional enshrinement of the democratization process. yet, the optimism soon gave way to tensions within society when, in 2001, thaksin shinawatra became prime minister and large parts of society became alienated by his political and economical agenda (pye & schaffar, 2008). ultimately, he was mentioned along with silvio berlusconi and hugo chavez as a prototype of new populism (mizuno & pasuk, 2009). since the military coup of 2006, the introduction of farreaching media censorship, and the curtailment of political rights and civil liberties, thailand is widely regarded as an example of the return of authoritarianism (case, 2009). the case of thailand requires questioning the basic assumptions about the framing of state institutions (or polity). as their implementation is often schematically promoted, certain state institutions remain the unquestioned target of democratization and development processes worldwide – and not the unanticipated outcome of such processes. this problem lies at the center of our research project. the aim is to capture the struggle for democracy as something processual. in europe and north america, this process has produced different systems of government, like the british westminster system, the swiss consensus democracy, or the us-american checks and balances model of liberal constitutional democracy. neither of these systems is uncontested or ideally democratic, and all of them are under attack by de-democratization tendencies in the wake of globalization as well as by the most recent political developments in reactions to the worldwide financial and economic crisis (guth, 2013). the critical analysis of institutional diversity forms one of the theoretical bases of the project and focuses on a particular observable global development of the past years and decades: the increasing judicialization of politics (cf. hirschl, 2004a, 2004b). generally, judicialization means the development of legal strategies to address social problems, or that “the exercise of political power is increasingly being transferred from the legislature to instances of case-by-case decision-making by individual aseas 6(1) 185184 judges” (fischer-lescano & christensen, 2012, p. 94). increasing judicialization can be observed at different levels: various social and political problems are negotiated in a rights discourse, while progressive judicialization is also the focus of most strategies of development cooperation. the problem of inequality between men and women, of discrimination against the disabled and against ethnic, religious, and other minorities is usually met through means of a definition of enforceable rights or anti-discrimination legislation. an example is the convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women (cedaw) (un, 1979/2008), which is referred to by the united nations as a ‘bill of rights for women’. also the united nations development programme (undp) pursues a rights-based poverty reduction program under the concept of legal empowerment of the poor and the eradication of poverty (lep) (un, 2009). at the micro level, which is in the everyday relationships between people, the globalization of law and legal norms is reflected in the development of a specific legal consciousness (merry, 2006). only the development of a particular self-perception and interpretation of one’s own position in legal categories makes global initiatives such as cedaw or the lep applicable. this point is receiving increasing attention in legal sociological and anthropological research. legal sociologists and anthropologists have interpreted the democratization process in thailand, especially the people’s constitution, as an originally thai articulation of a developed legal consciousness (munger, 2006/2007). the people’s constitution is distinguished precisely by a variety of institutional innovations that reflect a judicialization: a detailed charter of fundamental rights and a variety of newly created constitutional institutions that monitor compliance with these rights, e.g. a human rights commission, an anti-corruption commission, and, above all, an active constitutional court. as such, this constitutional model corresponds to the global trend of constitutional innovations of the 1990s and to the concept of good governance, which was at the center of many programs of international development cooperation. the failure of thailand’s constitution therefore raises questions beyond the individual case and regarding liberal constitutional models in general; it also points to critical implications and risks inherent to strategies of increased judicialization as a means of emancipatory politics. one aspect of the political crisis in thailand is the politicization of the judiciary, engaging ever more openly in the political process of wolfram schaffar & ralph guth constitutionalism in thailand: key questions of an on-going research aseas 6(1) 187186 the country, and the failure of the numerous constitutional bodies that had been established for the protection of fundamental rights. contrary to the above mentioned interpretations, engel’s (2005) in-depth empirical investigation of litigation cases shows an increasing reluctance to get involved with the judicial system. our investigation of the strategic orientation of social movements point in the same direction as engel, yet our interpretation is different. in contrast to what engel perceives as decay of legal consciousness and as a move to irrational patterns of behavior and beliefs, we interpret the strategies of the social movements as a very rational and creative search for an alternative to the rightsbased approaches to democratization. our empirical work on social movements is based on the assumption that social movements have two different broad strategies to pursue their goals: a judicial and a political strategy. while the judicial strategy is based on a legal discourse and involves the courts as a central arena of conflict, the latter relies on various forms of protests, demonstrations, and so forth, to achieve a shift in the balance of power and influence the processes of norm-setting. the focus of the investigation is thus on the discourse and practice of social movements on these strategic orientations. the extent up to which various movements pursue a rights-based strategy or focus on the participation in and influence on political processes of negotiation in their everyday practical political work is investigated by using the example of three movements: the health movement – in particular, people living with hiv and aids and their struggle for access to drugs; the labor movement; and groups working for internet freedom. based on preliminary studies (e.g. schaffar, 2007; schaffar & ziai, 2011), the research showed that the failure of the institutions introduced by the liberal constitutional model of 1997 is one reason why social movements in thailand do not rely on actors such as the human rights commission, the administrative courts, and the constitutional court, but rather look for alternative negotiating methods and opportunities for political participation as a quest for alternative forms of democratic government beyond liberal constitutionalism. considering examples of social movements in latin america (unterberger, 2012) and critical judicialization trends in europe (guth, 2013), the results of this research project will be interpreted in a comparative perspective and made available through publishing, lectures, and conference presentations. aseas 6(1) 187186 references case, w. (2009). low-quality democracy and varied authoritarianism: politics in southeast asia today. in w. case (ed.), contemporary authoritarianism in southeast asia. structures, institutions and agency (pp. 1-15). london, uk: routledge. engel, d. m. (2005). globalization and the decline of legal consciousness: torts, ghosts, and karma in thailand. law and social inquiry, 30(3), 469-514. fischer-lescano, a., & christensen, r. (2012). auctoritatis interpositio: how systems theory deconstructs decisionism. social & legal studies, 21(1), 93-119. guth, r. (2013). eu-krisenpolitik als verrechtlichung der demokratie. autoritärer europäischer etatismus und die negation der volkssouveränität. momentum quarterly, 2(1), 33-46. hirschl, r. (2004a). the political origins of the new constitutionalism. indiana journal of global legal studies, 11(1), 71-108. hirschl, r. (2004b). towards juristocracy: the origins and consequences of the new constitutionalism. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. merry, s. e. (2006). human rights and gender violence. translating international law into local practice. chicago, il: university of chicago press. mizuno, k., & pasuk, p. (eds.). (2009). populism in asia. singapore: singapore university press. munger, f. (2006/2007). culture, power, and law: thinking about the anthropology of rights in thailand in an era of globalization. new york law school law review, 51, 817-838. munger, f. (2007). constitutional reform, legal consciousness, and citizen participation in thailand. cornell international law journal, 40(2), 455-475. pye, o., & schaffar, w. (2008). the 2006 anti-thaksin movement in thailand: an analysis. journal of contemporary asia, 38(1), 38-61. schaffar, w. (2007). verfassung in der krise. die thailändische ‚verfassung des volkes‘ von 1997. in s. conermann & w. schaffar (eds.), die schwere geburt von staaten. verfassungen und rechtskulturen in modernen asiatischen gesellschaften (pp. 233-274). hamburg, germany: eb-verlag. schaffar, w., & ziai, a. (2010). demokratie, demokratisierung und konstitutionalismus in peripheriestaaten. in i. ataç, a. kraler, & a. ziai (eds.), politik und peripherie (pp. 93-112). wien, austria: mandelbaum. un. (2008). convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women (cedaw). (original published 1979). retrieved from http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/text/econvention.htm un. (2009). legal empowerment of the poor and eradication of poverty. report of the secretary-general, a/64/133. unterberger, f. (2012). „juristocracy“ als herausforderung an soziale bewegungen im 21. jahrhundert: vom erbe pinochets zur asamblea constituyente? momentum quarterly, 1(4), 248-261. wolfram schaffar & ralph guth constitutionalism in thailand: key questions of an on-going research reflections on the 8th euroseas conference reflections on the 8th euroseas conference, 11–14 august, vienna duncan mccargo ► mccargo, d. (2015). reflections on the 8th euroseas conference, 11-14 august, vienna. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 8(2), 219-222. as a veteran of five previous euroseas (the european association for southeast asian studies) conferences in hamburg, london, naples, gothenburg, and lisbon, i was greatly looking forward to taking part in the vienna conference. euroseas was established in 1995 to promote the academic study of southeast asia, on the basis that bringing together researchers from across the continent of europe would be far more fruitful than limiting our main contacts to colleagues from our own countries. euroseas thus set out to counter the structural marginalization that southeast asian studies has often suffered in individual institutions and national contexts. along with the other members of the board, i had already visited vienna in november 2014 for a site inspection; i had been a member of the program committee; and i had been copied into an awful lot of emails about arrangements. i was well aware of the meticulous preparations made by the organizers gabriele weichart and martin slama, along with their committee of local colleagues. but none of this had really prepared me for what we all experienced: simply the best organized conference i have ever attended. it helped that vienna is a beautiful city and that we had such spectacular venues at each stage of the proceedings: the historic austrian academy of sciences auditorium, with its remarkable ceiling paintings, one of the grandest secular rooms in all of europe; the main building of the university of vienna; and, for our conference dinner, the vienna city hall. it also helped that we were blessed with glorious weather, basking in radiant summer sun (though i was rather relieved to go back each night to an air-conditioned hotel room). but the quality of the eighth euroseas conference was ultimately determined neither by the buildings nor by the weather. euroseas is already known as an extremely friendly gathering: there is much less of the hierarchism and exclusivity that characterizes a large professional conference like aas (annual conference of the association for asian studies), no invitation-only receptions, no huddled gatherings of insiders. in short, we are a thoroughly open organization. this climate of openness and friendliness is a mix of the twenty-year history of an organization that was specifically created to break down national boundaries, not to mention disciplinary ones; and an active determination by each successive host to sustain and enhance what we might for want of a better term call the spirit of euroseas. our hosts in vienna succeeded admirably in doing exactly that, right down to the festive closing ceremony they scheduled for the final hour of the conference – an innovation that confounded the sceptics amongst us. netzwerk südostasien  network south-east asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 15 .2 -9 220 duncan mccargo  aseas 8(2) it is impossible here to do justice to all that transpired during the week of 11– 14 august, 2015 but let me mention a few highlights: the conference for me began a day before the formal opening, when we held the second euroseas phd workshop with a group of eight doctoral students from universities across the continent. using a formula developed by euroseas secretary henk schulte nordholt for the first such workshop in amsterdam in 2014, the vienna team ably led by judith ehlert hosted an event that provided the participants with some remarkable intellectual exchanges on a wide range of topics including indonesian politics, the history of the siamese timber trade, and an ethnography of philippine families. the phd workshop was a precursor of things to come. ben anderson’s keynote alarms of an old alarmist on the opening night of the conference was a session to remember: not only the auditorium but even the overspill hall was full to capacity, and we found ourselves in the unfortunate position of being unable to accommodate all who wished to hear one of the world’s greatest southeast asianists give his inimitable thoughts on recent developments in the field. sadly, his vienna keynote turned out to be a swan song for professor anderson, who passed away unexpectedly in indonesia on 13 december, aged 79: an enormous loss to southeast asian studies. ayu utami’s keynote the following morning on the spirit of indonesia: rasa, race and religion, again delivered to a packed house in the stunning setting of the university of vienna’s großer festsaal, was beautifully crafted and delivered on the thoughtprovoking topic of “critical spirituality” as a tool to confront fundamentalist tendencies. opening euroseas with these two keynote speakers set the tone for the many parallel sessions that followed: a balance of the critical, the deeply researched and the passionately engaged. the highly eclectic program covered a range of topics from archaeology to contemporary politics; from ancient malay manuscripts to the latest tweets and facebook pages. among the many highlights in the days that followed were three afternoon roundtables on contemporary issues and developments in the region generously hosted by our main sponsor for the conference, nikkei asian review (nar). on 12 august, we had a session on emerging regionalism in southeast asia chaired by nar editor-at-large ken koyanagi, while on the final day we had a lively discussion about comparative political developments in the region chaired by nar chief editor gwen robinson. in the wake of the jokowi’s election and the latest thai coup, was southeast asia turning away from democracy, or embracing it? but the most popular of the three sessions was undoubtedly the 12 august discussion of the latest trends in myanmar, which coincided with the dramatic ousting of house speaker shwe mann from his post as chair of the ruling usdp (union solidarity and development party). the room was full as gwen robinson moderated a remarkable discussion featuring ardeth thawnghmung kyaw yin hlaing, marcus brand and wolfram schaffar – a session that later featured on austrian television. another important facet of the conference was the lively cultural program, and especially the excellent series of film screenings put together by ascan breuer and rainer einzenberger. these included the presentation of two of ascan’s own films, riding my tiger and jakarta disorder; as well as the austrian premiere of the thai documentary paradoxocracy, which has rarely been shown outside the country; and 221reflections on the 8th euroseas conference, 11–14 august, vienna the remarkable burmese film nargis. the cultural programme was rounded off by a literary café event with ayu utami on the final night of the conference. at the nikkeisponsored reception on 12 august, the first ever euroseas book prizes were presented to two well-deserved winners: philip taylor (social science) for the khmer lands of vietnam: environment, cosmology, and sovereignty (nus press/nias press 2014) and mandy sadan for being and becoming kachin. histories beyond the state in the borderworld of burma (oup 2013). the creation of these new prizes reflects the wider mission of euroseas to promote the academic study of southeast asia. the vienna euroseas conference was a highlight both for the very dedicated team of local academics and students who put the event together, and for our organization as a whole. vienna has set a high bar for those who will come next. i look forward to seeing many of you once again in oxford (2017) and berlin (2019).  about the author duncan mccargo is professor of political science at the university of leeds and the president of euroseas (2013-17). his academic work is mainly focused on the comparative politics of southeast asia, and he is best known for his fieldwork-based research on the politics of thailand. ► contact: d.j.mccargo@leeds.ac.uk transborder environmental justice in regional energy trade in mainland south-east asia aseas 5(2) 293292 aktuelle südostasienforschung / current research on south-east asia transborder environmental justice in regional energy trade in mainland south-east asia carl middleton1 citation middleton, c. (2012). transborder environmental justice in regional energy trade in mainland south-east asia. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 5(2), 292-315. thailand is mainland south-east asia’s largest energy consumer. since the early 1990s, community and civil society opposition to new domestic large-scale power projects has strengthened within thailand. partly in response and facilitated by deepening regional economic integration, thailand’s electricity utility, private sector energy, and construction companies have increasingly looked towards neighbouring laos and myanmar to supply thailand’s energy markets. this paper assesses the political economy of thailand’s power sector development through the lens of distributive and procedural environmental justice, including the role of social movements and civil society in thailand in reforming the country’s power planning process. the environmental and social costs of domestic power projects and power import projects are discussed. the author concludes that thailand’s existing energy imports from hydropower projects in laos and a gas project in myanmar have exported environmental injustice associated with energy production across borders, exploiting the comparatively weak rule of law, judicial systems, and civil and political freedoms in these neighbouring countries. keywords: energy trade; laos; myanmar; thailand; transborder environmental justice thailand ist der größte energieverbraucher in festland-südostasien. seit den frühen 1990-er jahren hat sich der zivilgesellschaftliche widerstand gegen neue großfl ächige energieprojekte in thailand verstärkt. teilweise als antwort darauf und erleichtert durch sich vertiefende regionale integration haben thailändische stromversorgungsunternehmen sowie private energieund bauunternehmen zunehmend in die nachbarländer laos und myanmar geblickt, die den energiebedarf thailands decken sollen. dieser artikel beurteilt die politische ökonomie der entwicklung des thailändischen energiesektors durch die brille distributiver und prozeduraler umweltgerechtigkeit sowie die rolle von sozialen bewegungen und zivilgesellschaft in den reformprozessen der energieplanung. des weiteren werden umweltund soziale kosten von binnenund importenergieprojekten diskutiert. der autor argumentiert, dass thailands energieimporte von wasserkraftprojekten in laos und einem gasprojekt in myanmar ökologische ungerechtigkeit in bezug auf energieproduktion exportieren und die vergleichsweise schwachen systeme von rechtsstaatlichkeit, justiz sowie zivilgesellschaft und politischer freiheit in den beiden nachbarländern ausnutzen. 1 carl middleton is a lecturer at the international development studies programme at the faculty of political science, chulalongkorn university, thailand. his research interests include environmental politics and policies in south-east asia, with a particular focus on the political ecology of water and energy resources. the author would like to thank two anonymous reviewers, oliver pye, and melanie pichler for their constructive comments on the paper. the paper was prepared with partial support from the international cooperation and human security project (hs1069a) of chula unisearch. contact: carl.chulalongkorn@gmail.com d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -5 .2 -7 aseas 5(2) 293292 schlagworte: energiehandel; grenzüberschreitende umweltgerechtigkeit; laos; myanmar; thailand introduction since the 1960s, thailand has undergone a profound transformation from a predominantly agrarian towards an export-orientated industrial society. this transformation has been paralleled by a massive increase in electricity demand. thailand’s total electricity system capacity has grown eleven-fold from 2,838 megawatts in 1982 to 32,395 megawatts as of 2011 (energy policy and planning office [eppo], 2012; greacen & greacen, 2004). within thailand, whilst measures of human development have improved for most, economic inequality has widened and there is a growing political polarisation (united nations development programme [undp], 2009, p. 52-61, 78). the construction of large power stations developed with limited public participation and a failure to fully address or compensate for environmental and social harms are part of the legacy of contested injustices carried forward to the present day. since the late 1980s, thai community movements and civil society groups have increasingly resisted new large power plants in thailand, with high-profile protests against projects such as the pak mun hydropower dam and the mae moh coal-fired power station. over the same period, thailand’s power sector has shifted from a state-led to a partially-liberalised model (wattana, sharma, & vaiyavuth, 2008), whilst a process of regional economic integration has deepened thailand’s economic ties with neighbouring countries. this has enabled thailand’s power planners to look towards laos and myanmar for power imports from independent power producers (ipps), where there are relatively abundant water resources that could be harnessed for hydro-electricity, major gas reserves in the case of myanmar, and where community and civil society opposition is constrained (simpson, 2007). through the lens of environmental justice, this paper examines the evolution of thailand’s power sector and the consequences for affected communities’ natural resources, health, and livelihoods in thailand and neighbouring countries. it argues that whilst many power projects continue to be built and contested in thailand itself, the projects in neighbouring countries have weaker standards in terms of public participation, environmental protection, and mitigation or compensation for social carl middleton transborder environmental justice in regional energy trade in mainland south-east asia aseas 5(2) 295294 impacts than those in present-day thailand and therefore constitute an exportation of environmental injustice across borders. the paper first defines environmental injustice. it then reviews the political economy of thailand’s power sector since the 1950s and assesses two contested large power projects in thailand from the perspective of environmental justice. the paper then turns to power sector planning and reform in thailand, the implications of regional economic integration and regional power trade, and the role played by thai private sector energy and construction companies and commercial banks. three regional energy trade projects, namely the theun hinboun and xayaburi hydropower projects in laos and the yadana gas project in myanmar are then discussed from a transborder environmental justice perspective. what is environmental (in)justice? the concept of environmental injustice first emerged in the united states (us) in the late 1970s to name and explain institutionalised discrimination along lines of race and class in the siting of toxic waste facilities and other polluting projects (bullard, 1990). now infamous cases, for example the love canal in new york state, and broader research revealed that industrial facilities damaging the environment and people’s health were systematically being located in low-income predominantly african-american or hispanic neighbourhoods. these projects, furthermore, were often promoted as affirmative actions to bring employment to previously marginalised communities, and thereby to redress past social injustice. in fact, the project developers were seeking a ‘path of least resistance’ after opposition by wealthier and more politically represented neighbourhoods against “locally unwanted land uses” (lulus), now well-known as the “not in my back yard” (nimby) phenomena (bullard, 1990, p. 4). in parallel, as the process of globalisation has accelerated since the 1970s and northern countries have de-industrialised, many polluting and hazardous industrial facilities have been relocated to southern countries, and the north has exported its toxic wastes for disposal to the south (mcmichael, 2004). many of these polluting industries are nowadays prohibited in northern countries and thereby take advantage of weaker environmental governance in southern countries. analogous to the us, aseas 5(2) 295294 carl middleton transborder environmental justice in regional energy trade in mainland south-east asia projects relocated to the south have often been claimed to bring ‘development’. as a result, many cases of transborder environmental injustice have emerged (schroeder, st. martin, wilson, & sen, 2008). the concept of environmental justice incorporates principles of distributive and procedural justice, including adherence to the rule of law, equal treatment for minority groups, and respect for human rights including the right to protection from environmental degradation. distributive justice calls for the fair distribution of environmental harms, benefits, and risks (pedersen, 2010). procedural justice seeks to instil justice into institutional decision-making processes that may otherwise apportion environmental harms, benefits, and risks inequitably and addresses procedural issues such as public participation, access to information, transparency, and accountability. procedural justice may be granted through the courts, through formal planning processes, within parallel social forums, or through direct political action (schroeder et al., 2008). political economy of thailand’s electricity sector before the 1960s, thailand’s electrification rate was very low. however, from the 1950s, as the cold war escalated and the us sought thailand as an ally, usaid and the world bank supported the development of several large power generation projects, the early stages of thailand’s electricity transmission network, and the establishment of the state-owned electricity utilities, including the electricity generating authority of thailand (egat) in 1968 (wattana et al., 2008). this support has shaped the centralised power generation and high-voltage transmission system that exists in thailand today (chaivongvilan, sharma, & suwin, 2008). egat emerged as an influential political actor, given the relationship between thailand’s industrialisation and the demand for electricity to fuel this economic growth (greacen & greacen, 2004). up until 1992, egat was thailand’s monopoly generator of electricity and was incentivised to maintain its monopoly and to expand its capacity due to a ‘cost-plus’ pricing policy, which is a ‘rate-of-return’ model that allocated returns to egat according to the total investment made. whilst this arrangement achieved rapid electricity industry expansion during the 1980s and 1990s, it also resulted in the downplaying of aseas 5(2) 297296 environmental and social costs, and as over-investment began to occur since the 1997 asian financial crisis, it also passed these costs on to electricity consumers (greacen & greacen, 2004). egat’s growing debts and a series of pro-business governments in thailand from the early 1980s increased pressure for a privatisation of the thai energy sector. in 1992, prime minister anand panyarachun amended the egat act allowing the state enterprise to issue long-term concessions to private sector ipps under take-orpay contract arrangements. egat established a subsidiary, the electricity generating company (egco), to operate two of its most profitable plants as ipps, whilst maintaining a 45 percent share in the company, and began negotiating contracts with other ipps (greacen & greacen, 2004). during the 1997 asian financial crisis, declining electricity demand together with egat’s commitments to long-term take-or-pay contracts left it severely indebted. the international monetary fund and world bank, promoting neoliberal economic policies as conditionality to their recovery packages, sought to further liberalise thailand’s power sector and to create a power-pool electricity market. whilst the plan for a power pool model was eventually shelved due to egat’s own resistance (wattana et al., 2008), the state enterprise was forced to sell assets, including its ratchaburi power plant as an ipp, which it maintained a 45 percent share in. furthermore, egat was required to allow private companies more access to the energy sector (greacen & greacen, 2004). these initial waves of partial liberalisation were conducted in the absence of an effective electricity regulator (chaivongvilan et al., 2008). having first established a ministry of energy in 2002, prime minister thaksin shinawatra’s thai rak thai (trt) government sought to reform thailand’s power sector. thaksin planned to corporatise egat as a public company at the stock exchange of thailand (set) that reflected trt’s policy to expand set and project thailand’s economic influence into neighbouring countries. however, the supreme administrative court of thailand blocked the set listing in 2006, following opposition by a civil society coalition that included consumer associations, energy policy think tanks, and egat’s union that were concerned about the absence of an energy regulator. subsequently, the energy industry act, b.e. 2550 (2007) established the energy regulatory commission (erc) (wattana et al., 2008). aseas 5(2) 297296 carl middleton transborder environmental justice in regional energy trade in mainland south-east asia as of 2012, thailand’s peak power demand was 26,121 megawatts, whilst thailand’s total generating capacity was 32,395 megawatts (eppo, 2012). thailand’s most recent power development plan (pdp) estimates that electricity demand will almost triple to 70,686 megawatts by 2030 (eppo, 2012). egat and private sector producers each generate approximately half of thailand’s electricity. narratives of environmental injustice towards domestic power projects from the late 1980s, the dominance of egat and perceived lack of accountability in the planning and operation of large-scale power plants caused growing grievance amongst rural communities who experienced the social and environmental consequences. the pak mun hydropower dam and the mae moh lignite-fired power station are two projects that have seen long periods of contestation and hold symbolic significance in the restructuring of society-state relations and reform of electricity and environmental governance. these cases, summarised below, are representative of a number of other protests against power projects in thailand. the pak mun dam the pak mun dam, located on the mun river in ubon ratchathani province, northeast thailand, is a long contested dam project between the project’s proponents including egat, the thai state, and the world bank, and locally affected communities and supportive civil society groups (foran & manorom, 2009; missingham, 2003). the project is a 136 megawatts run-of-the-river project that was completed in 1994. a case study completed by the world commission on dams found that 1,700 households were relocated, at least 6,200 households suffered a loss of livelihoods, there was a loss of 116 fish species in the river (44 percent of the pre-dam fish biodiversity), and fishery yields upstream of the dam project dropped by up to 80 percent (amornsakchai et al., 2000). through a succession of thai governments, protestors against the project first sought for compensation and subsequently for the dam to be decommissioned. opposition to the project was expressed through the occupation of the dam site, a protest camp from 1999 to 2002 next to the dam site, prolonged rallies in bangkok aseas 5(2) 299298 and encampments outside government houses, and villager-led thai baan research.2 the social movement’s challenges to egat and the state agencies resulted in notable concessions, including the opening of the dam’s gates between 2001 and 2002 and the thai government’s order to keep the gates open for four months of the year. at the same time, the state acted repressively, and there were numerous violent confrontations (foran & manorom, 2009). in opposing the project, local community movements and ngos created an injustice narrative in a distributive sense regarding the basic rights of thai citizens as well as in the procedural sense, for example, the entitlement to information and public participation in project planning (foran & manorom, 2009). complex arrays of actors interacted through formal and informal processes such as the thai baan research and extraordinary politics such as street protests, seeking justice. the politically negotiated opening of the dam gates was an important first in thailand. whilst the situation is yet to be finally settled, pak mun was the last major hydropower dam built in thailand and has required the dam building industry to look towards neighbouring countries. mae moh power plant the 2,625 megawatts mae moh lignite-fired power plant is operated by egat and located in lampang province, northern thailand. the lignite fuel is sourced from a 135 square kilometres open pit mine nearby which produces 40,000 tons per day. the coal dust from the mine and the emission of sulphur dioxide and toxic chemicals, such as mercury and arsenic, from burning the lignite at the mae moh power plant have polluted local water sources, contaminated rice fields, and resulted in serious health problems for local communities. greenpeace (2005) reports that 30,000 people have been displaced from their homes, more than 200 people died due to exposure to pollutants from the mine and power plant, and over 600 villagers have suffered acute respiratory problems. to address the problems of the lignite mine and power plant, local communities formed the network of occupational health sufferers of thailand. a lawsuit was 2 thai baan is a community-based research methodology in which villagers are the principal researchers. it was developed in response to the scientific research methods used by development experts that can misunderstand or ignore the relationship between local livelihoods, culture, and river-based ecosystems (see www.livingriversiam.org/ work/tb_research_en.htm). aseas 5(2) 299298 carl middleton transborder environmental justice in regional energy trade in mainland south-east asia launched in 1998 by villagers in mae moh district seeking redress for their respiratory problems. three subsequent lawsuits were filed claiming damage for health deterioration, physical and mental grievances, compensation for medical expenses, and for damage to crops and land (greenpeace, 2005). in may 2004, the thai provincial court awarded thb 5.7 million to villagers for crop damage caused by the power plant. subsequently, in march 2009, in response to 35 lawsuits filed by residents in 2004, the court required egat to compensate 130 villagers who had suffered severe health problems (boonlong, farbotko, parfondry, graham, & macer, 2011). the mae moh communities’ use of the rule of law and court system to seek redress has contributed towards strengthening the procedural accountability of power plant planning and operation. numerous other coal-fired power stations have been contested by local communities. some have been cancelled, for example bo nok and the hin grud power stations in prachuab kirikhan province in the late 1990s (greenpeace, 2002). however, other projects such as the gas-fired kang koi 2 power plant in saraburi province were built in their place. power sector planning and reform in thailand whilst initially affected communities and civil society groups protested individual power projects that epitomised distributive environmental injustices, they were also seeking to influence egat’s power planning process itself and the respective procedural injustices. narrative frames of dam-proponents, for example, stating “the dam has already been built so why not use it” had challenged project opponents, revealing the need to participate earlier in the power planning process (foran & manorom, 2009). through official processes and committees, the media, and extrapolicy processes and actions, civil society groups such as palang thai, greenpeace, towards ecological recovery and regional alliance (terra), alternative energy project for sustainability (aeps), the healthy public policy foundation (hppf), and numerous project-affected community movements have critically questioned thailand’s pdp and its decision-making process and criteria. thailand’s pdp is drafted by egat, before being reviewed by the energy policy planning office (eppo) in the ministry of energy. the pdp is then submitted to the national energy planning council (nepc) chaired by the prime minister for approval, before aseas 5(2) 301300 being submitted for final approval by thailand’s cabinet. civil society groups have argued that egat in the pdp heavily promotes the development of large-scale electricity generation plants that generate profit for the state-owned electricity utilities, energy companies, and the construction industry, whilst downplaying the potential for energy efficiency and renewable energy (greacen & footner, 2006). civil society studies have also revealed systematic overestimates of electricity demand forecasts resulting in overinvestment in generation capacity (greacen & footner, 2006; greacen & greacen, 2012), whilst egat has argued that overinvestment is less costly to thailand’s economy than underinvestment (thabchumpon and middleton, in press). in 2004, civil society groups in thailand prepared an alternative pdp (permpongsacharoen, 2004). since then, two expanded studies have been developed by greenpeace and palang thai (greacen & greacen, 2012; greacen & footner, 2006). using officially available data of the thai government, these studies have sought to demonstrate how thailand could meet its energy needs through repowering existing power stations, and promoting energy efficiency and demand side management as well as renewable energy technologies. in doing so, they sought to incorporate additional environmental and societal objectives into decision-making, make the power planning process more transparent and participatory, and pushed for more ambitious targets and regulatory reform for decentralised and renewable power generation. thailand’s power sector has seen important reform over the past decade, including new renewable energy regulations, promotion of combined heat and power plants, and the creation of an energy regulatory commission in 2007 (greacen & footner, 2006; wisuttisak, 2012). in 2002, thailand was the first developing country to adopt net metering regulations for very small power producers generating beneath one megawatt (greacen & footner, 2006). furthermore, since 2007 a slight but imperfect increase in transparency and public participation has emerged with public hearings now held during the pdp preparation process, together with a commitment to increase the use of renewable energy (foran, wong, & kelley, 2010). despite these incremental steps, weak transparency and accountability in decision-making that privilege large industry interests remain entrenched in thailand’s power planning (thongplon, 2008). more widely, there have also been legislative developments that support environmental justice in thailand (nicro, friend, & pradubsuk, 2011). thailand’s 1997 people’s aseas 5(2) 301300 carl middleton transborder environmental justice in regional energy trade in mainland south-east asia constitution created a greater commitment to civil liberties and political space, including the creation of the national human rights commission of thailand (phongpaichit & baker, 2002). the most recent 2007 constitution contains several important provisions, including article 56 on the right to access public information, article 57 on the state’s responsibility to hold public hearings on projects that could affect the quality of the environment, and article 67 on the need for environmental impact assessment and health impact assessments. unger and siroros (2011) argue, however, that important institutional weaknesses remain in thailand’s political system that limit implementation of environment-related policies and conflict resolution amongst diverse interest groups, including weak linkages between political parties and groups in society and few alternative representation institutions. regional economic integration and power trade given that egat predicts a large growth in power demand in thailand and faces strong community and civil society resistance to new large power projects domestically, power imports are an important strategy to ensure thailand’s energy security. furthermore, thailand is heavily dependent on natural gas and egat is keen to diversify its fuel sources with hydropower and coal-fired power stations in myanmar and laos. in response, the governments of myanmar and laos are keen to develop their relatively unexploited power generation potential for export and domestic demand (kaisti & käkönen, 2012). regional power trade has been promoted and facilitated by the asian development bank’s (adb) greater mekong subregion (gms) programme since the early 1990s (greacen & palettu, 2007; hirsch, 2010). the adb’s first regional electricity study envisaged a network of high-voltage transmission lines opening up mountainous regions mostly in laos, yunnan province of china, and myanmar to hydropower development to export electricity to thailand and vietnam (norconsult, 1994). in 2002, a second study filled out the details of this plan, and in 2009, the plan’s logic was extended to the wider energy sector, including coal and gas (adb, 2009). these studies claim that by facilitating access to new and cheaper generation sources and creating a competitive regional power trade market investment requirements and electricity costs can be reduced. aseas 5(2) 303302 adb’s early proposals for regional power trade were criticised by civil society for not taking account of cumulative social and environmental impacts, and for having been prepared without the participation of diverse stakeholders (international rivers network, 2004). other studies questioned the economic viability and benefits of the plan, finding the predicted costs of hydropower unrealistically cheap, and highlighting significant risks in regulating and coordinating the transmission of electricity regionally, given the political circumstances and level of technical capacity and investment in the region (garrett, 2004; ryder, 2004; yu, 2003). to expand regional energy trade, thailand has signed memoranda of understanding of 7,000 megawatts and 1,500 megawatts with the governments of laos and myanmar respectively. at present, thailand imports approximately 2,000 megawatts from nine hydropower dams in laos, with major projects including the nam theun 2 (1075 megawatts), thuen hinboun (220 megawatts), and nam ngum 2 (615 megawatts) dams (egat, 2010; government of laos, 2012). table 1 summarises plans for future power imports. table 1: power imports from laos and myanmar to thailand according to pdp 2010 (revision 3) * not including projects decommissioned ** located in laos *** including some possibly located in myanmar project theun hinboun expansion ** hongsa ** hongsa ** nam ngiep 1 ** xe pian ** xayaburi ** unspecified projects *** project size 220 mw 982 mw 491 mw 269 mw 390 mw 1220 mw 300 mw per year from unspecified projects annual capacity increase total * 1871 mw 6329 mw 4791 mw 3121 mw 2205 mw 1770 mw 3241 mw from power imports 12% 0% 20% 16% 0% 37% 37% year 2012 2013-2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2021-2030 source: author‘s own compilation based on eppo, 2012 aseas 5(2) 303302 carl middleton transborder environmental justice in regional energy trade in mainland south-east asia regional expansion of thai energy and construction companies and banks alongside companies from vietnam and china, thailand’s energy and construction companies and commercial banks have figured prominently in building hydropower dams in laos to date (table 2) (government of laos, 2012; middleton, garcia, & foran, 2009). as glassman (2010) highlights, these companies are seeking profitable investment opportunities in neighbouring countries under the liberalising investment regime of the gms. to date, each major power export project in laos to thailand has at least one thai developer involved, suggesting that these projects build on existing business networks and knowledge of thailand’s power sector. in the past, when major power projects were commissioned by the state, thai construction companies would compete to secure construction contracts. at present, within the increasingly liberalised power sector, the role of construction companies has changed and they have become active proponents of the projects themselves as constructors and operators. the ital-thai development corporation (itd), for example, was originally a 15 percent shareholder in nam theun 2 that started commercial operation in march 2010. however, having secured and fulfilled its role as principle civil works contractor (lawrence, 2009), itd fully divested its shares in october 2010 (prlog, 2010). some thai project developers, including itd, are publically listed companies on set and therefore are incentivised by shareholder expectations. for example, following the government of lao’s announcement in november 2012 that there would be a ground-breaking ceremony for the proposed usd 3.5 billion xayaburi dam on the mekong river’s mainstream, the share price of ch.karnchang – the lead project developer and thailand’s second largest construction company – rose 5.7 percent to its highest level since january 2011 (chemaphun, 2012). whilst egat’s contribution to total generation capacity in thailand under the partially liberalised industry structure is capped at approximately 50 percent, egat is able to increase its share of total generation capacity via ipps, deepening its mono poly role (wisuttisak, 2012). as table 2 indicates, egat is a shareholder in two thirds of the power-import projects through its share ownership in egco (25 percent), ratchaburi (45 percent), and egat international (100 percent). aseas 5(2) 305304 table 2: thai developers and financiers of major power projects in laos * partners in consortiums ** cod = commission operation date *** international financing review asia, 2 february 2008 project houay ho (152 mw; commissioned 1999) theun hinboun (220 mw; commissioned 1998) nam theun 2 (1075 mw; commissioned 2010) nam ngum 2 (615 mw; cod** 2012) theun hinboun expansion project (220+60 mw; cod** 2012) hongsa lignite (1878 mw; cod** 2015) nam ngiep 1 (262 mw; cod** 2018) xepian-xenamnoy (390 mw; cod** 2018) xayaburi dam (1285 mw; cod** 2019) thai developers* hhtc (20%) gms power (20%) electricity generating company of thailand (egco) (35%) ch. karnchang (28.5%), ratchaburi (25%), bangkok expressway (12.5%), team consulting engineering (1%) mdx (20%) ratchaburi (40%), banpu (40%) egat international (30%) ratchaburi (25%) ch. karnchang (50%), ptt plc (25%), egco (12.5%), bkk expressway (7.5%), pt construction and irrigation (5%) thai financiers* unknown refinancing in 2002 by unidentified thai banks*** bangkok bank, bank of ayudhya, kasikorn bank, krung thai bank, siam city bank, siam commercial bank, thai military bank krung thai bank, siam city bank, thai military bank bank of ayudhya, kasikorn bank, siam city bank, thanachart bank siam commercial bank, bangkok bank, krung thai bank, government saving bank, kasikorn bank, bank of ayudhya, siam city bank, thai military bank kasikorn bank, and unknown others (and adb) unknown kasikorn bank, bangkok bank, siam commercial bank, krung thai bank source: based on middleton (2009) and www.poweringprogress.org aseas 5(2) 305304 carl middleton transborder environmental justice in regional energy trade in mainland south-east asia transborder environmental (in)justice within south-east asia, environmental governance is uneven (middleton, 2012). in principle, power projects in laos and myanmar could stimulate economic growth through investment and its secondary effects, encourage job creation, and generate revenues for the governments to reinvest into development. however, in both countries media freedom is limited, independent civil society organisations are restricted, open community protests are repressed, incomplete or inconsistent laws are often unimplemented, there is weak rule of law, and corruption is a serious challenge (the burma environmental working group [bewg], 2011; stuart-fox, 2006). numerous projects that supply electricity or gas from neighbouring countries to thailand have been documented as impacting local people and the environment including nam theun 2 (lawrence, 2009; singh, 2009; trandem, 2012), nam ngum 2 (international rivers, 2008), houay ho (delang & toro, 2011; international rivers, 2008), and theun hinboun (see below) in laos, and gas exports (see below) and the proposed salween dams (bewg, 2011; magee & kelley, 2009) in myanmar. the following sections outline the political context in laos and myanmar as relevant to energy project development and two examples of regional energy trade projects as notable examples of transborder distributional environmental injustice. the paper then turns to a discussion on procedural justice for transborder power projects within thailand’s power planning process. laos and the theun-hinboun hydropower dam laos is predominantly an agrarian society. with the introduction of the new economic mechanism policy in 1986 that led the country’s single-party communist government towards a market economy, export-orientated agribusiness, hydropower, and mining investment has accelerated. the economic growth was accompanied by a range of environmental and social costs (lintner, 2008; middleton et al., 2009; rutherford, lazarus, & kelley, 2008). a reasonably comprehensive – although fragmented – legal and policy framework for power project development exists, prepared with support from the adb and world bank amongst others, including measures for community participation, project information disclosure, environmental impact assessment (eia) preparation, and compensation and resettlement with livelihood restoraaseas 5(2) 307306 tion for affected communities (suhardiman, silva, & carew-reid, 2012). furthermore, the “national policy for environmental and social sustainability of the hydropower sector in lao pdr” (2005) emphasises economic, social, and ecological dimensions of sustainability. in practice, however, despite some improvement, enforcement is weak. for example, eia and resettlement action plans have generally not been disclosed to the public and are often of questionable quality (baird & shoemaker, 2007; international rivers, 2008). furthermore, project site selection and operation is predominantly driven by the priorities of private sector investors rather than integrated water-, land-, and energy planning by the government (suhardiman et al., 2012). the 210 megawatts theun-hinboun hydropower project, commissioned in 1998, was laos’ first build–operate–transfer (bot) hydropower project jointly-owned through the theun hinboun power company (thpc) by electricité du laos (60 percent), norway’s statkraft (20 percent) and thailand’s gms power (20 percent). the project exports 95 percent of its power to thailand and was partially funded by the adb and the nordic development fund. the environmental and social performance of the project has been heavily contested between thpc and environmental ngos (whitington, 2012). at first, the project was announced to be a success by the adb (gill, 1997), but subsequent independent research revealed serious impact on between 25,000 and 30,000 people living along three rivers, including markedly reduced fishery catches, loss of vegetable gardens, fishing nets and other assets, riverbank erosion, and downstream flooding resulting in loss of wet season rice crops (association for international water studies, 2007; shoemaker, 1998). in response, the thpc established an environment management division with a usd 10 million, 10 year budget and initiated a mitigation and compensation program in september 2000 (whitington, 2012). whilst the programme was able to address some of the material needs of the villagers (e.g. building wells), it has struggled to ensure the long-term recovery of livelihoods, for example, through the production of dry season rice, cash crops, and livestock (association for international water studies, 2007; barney, 2007). in october 2008, the thpc commenced construction of an expansion dam project, despite having not fully resolved and compensated for existing social and environmental problems caused by the original project. for this reason, and because the expansion project requires the resettlement of 4,186 people and there are concerns that the project will exacerbate existing impacts, the project’s construction has been controversial (see e.g. international rivers, 2012; thpc, 2012). aseas 5(2) 307306 carl middleton transborder environmental justice in regional energy trade in mainland south-east asia myanmar and the yadana gas project whilst possessing abundant natural resources, myanmar ranks poorly by almost every development indicator (ware, 2011). myanmar’s laws and policies on environment are weakly developed and require the preparation of environmental impact assessment or resettlement plans only since the recently passed environment conservation law (pyidaungsu hluttaw law no. 9/20120) in march 2012. this law, however, is not yet effectively implemented, including and because of the absence of necessary by-laws. more broadly, policy on public participation and the release of information to the public still remains unclear (bewg, 2011). large foreign investments in myanmar in the recent past, including hydropower dams and gas pipelines, supported the military junta financially and politically and were linked to extensive corruption, widespread environmental and social impacts, and numerous human rights violations (bewg, 2011; magee & kelley, 2009; simpson, 2007). whilst political reform appears to be deepening since late 2010, it remains incomplete and myanmar’s administrative and legal structures are fundamentally weak, the judiciary is not independent from the military, and the practices of existing energy projects leave a legacy in need of redress. approximately 70 percent of thailand’s electricity generation is fuelled by natural gas (laksamakoses, 2006, cited in greacen & footner, 2006), and 30 percent of thailand’s total natural gas consumption is sourced from myanmar (kate, 2011). natural gas exports currently account for 12.5 percent of myanmar’s gdp, although large volumes of these revenues do not enter official government revenue streams (earthrights international, n.d.; turnell, 2010). thailand presently is the main purchaser of natural gas from myanmar, which it imports from the andaman sea crossing mon state and tenasserim division in eastern myanmar to ratchaburi, thailand via the yadana and yetagun pipelines, completed in 1999 and 2000 respectively. both pipelines pass through ethnic karen and mon areas and have been linked to increased militarisation in project areas and intensified conflicts with ethnic groups, land confiscations, and human rights abuses (earthrights international, 2010a, 2010b; simpson, 2007). the yadana project is operated by the myanmar oil and gas enterprise in partnership with total (france), unocal (us), and ptt exploration and production (pttep thailand). in 2005, in a landmark case in the us courts, a major out-of-court settlement was aseas 5(2) 309308 agreed with unocal, which was subsequently absorbed by chevron and faced lawsuits for complicity in human rights abuses. despite this, human rights abuses by pipeline security forces are reported to be on-going as of late 2009 (bewg, 2011). transborder environmental justice and power planning deficits in contrast to the procedure for the selection of domestic ipps in thailand, the procedures for the selection of power import ipps are less defined and more opaque (greacen & greacen, 2012). whereas for domestic projects ipps must bid competitively for contracts, there is no competitive bidding process between alternative ipps for power import projects. for many of these projects, therefore, selection is left to the discretion of egat. the key criterion for a power import project is that the electricity price is cheaper than power otherwise generated within thailand. no environmental or social selection criteria are applied. indeed, respecting the principle of sover eignty, a key principle of the ‘asean way’, egat does not monitor ipps’ compliance with neighbouring countries’ laws, which it considers the responsibility of the ipp and the host government. furthermore, the erc does not monitor the environmental and social performance of power import projects as it does not have the authority to issue a license in a neighbouring country (thabchumpon & middleton, in press). in laos, on the other hand, the process of selecting and proposing projects disproportionately reflects the priorities of the private sector investors (suhardiman et al., 2012). the thai state, as the purchaser of electricity via egat, arguably holds some degree of responsibility for environmental and social impacts of ipp projects in laos because without a power-buyer these projects could not operate. furthermore, as egat is a shareholder in egco, ratchaburi, and egat international, the thai state itself is currently a minority shareholder in six ipp projects in laos (table 2). in other words, the thai state’s commitment to political non-interference appears contradictory due to its role in approving power purchases and its shareholdings within many of the private sector consortiums, although these projects proceed with little transparency and accountability both to thai civil society and thailand’s erc. overall, the mechanisms in thailand for ensuring procedural environmental justice are notably weaker for power import projects, as exemplified by the current aseas 5(2) 309308 carl middleton transborder environmental justice in regional energy trade in mainland south-east asia controversy surrounding the 1,260 megawatts xayaburi dam proposed for the mekong river’s mainstream in northern laos (grumbine, dore, & xu, 2012; matthews, 2012). the lead developer of the predominantly thai consortium is ch. karnchang, thailand’s second largest construction company, the proposed financiers of the usd 3.5 billion project are four thai commercial banks, and 95 percent of the electricity generated would be exported to thailand (see tables 1 and 2). the project could have significant local and transborder impacts (international centre for environmental management [icem], 2010). it has drawn criticism for proceeding with preliminary construction work and resettlement activities, including a ground breaking ceremony in october 2012, when not having completed a regional notification and consultation process with neighbouring riparian countries as committed to under the 1995 intergovernmental mekong agreement (herbertson, 2012; latsaphao, 2012; stone, 2011). in thailand, the project was incorporated into the pdp with remarkable speed; whilst the xayaburi dam was not even named in revision 2 of the pdp issued in april 2011, in revision 3 issued in june 2012, the project had been included and had already signed its power purchase agreement (ppa) on 29 october 2011, legally committing egat to purchase power from the project. the xayaburi dam has become an important test case for addressing transborder environmental justice through legal procedures within thailand. in august 2012, riparian communities from the north and northeast of thailand submitted a case to thailand’s administrative court suing egat, the thai cabinet, and three other state entities over their failure to follow the thai constitution before approving the ppa for the project. the raised concerns, deriving from the potential project impacts on thailand, comprise the lack of a transborder eia and an incomplete public consultation in thailand (thai people’s network in eight mekong provinces, 2012). furthermore, the national human rights commission of thailand (nhrct) has initiated an investigation into the xayaburi dam on the grounds that the project lacked information disclosure and public participation and could impact marginalised communities in thailand who are dependent on mekong river resources (nhrct, 2012a). this is a significant move given that the nhrct has initiated investigations into only four transborder cases of thai investment to date, which also include the hongsa lignite power plant in laos and the hat gyi hydropower dam in myanmar (nhrct, 2012b). aseas 5(2) 311310 conclusion thailand’s power demand, economic growth, and strengthening environment policies compared to neighbouring countries, together with the on-going process of regional economic integration, have been key drivers for the construction of energy projects in laos and myanmar. this regional energy trade has exported environmental and social impacts associated with energy production, in the past experienced by affected communities in thailand, to communities in neighbouring countries. many of these projects have a track record of undermining the natural resource base upon which rural populations in laos and myanmar depend for their livelihoods (simpson, 2007). the expert-led pdp preparation process in thailand by egat does not specifically account for and internalise the social and environmental impacts of individual power projects beyond specifying the electricity generation power mix. instead, for domestic projects, the enforcement of the relevant articles of thailand’s constitution, the body of environment and social laws, and the role of the erc in licensing projects, alongside a reasonably independent judiciary, have all contributed towards improvements in environmental governance over the past 15 years, although much remains to be done. the environmental and social impacts of power import projects from countries with weaker environmental governance are not safeguarded by thailand’s power planning process. within laos and myanmar, the rule of law is weak, the judicial system is relatively underdeveloped and lacks independence, and space for public discussion and protest is constrained. therefore, communities affected by energy projects have little access to justice through formal judicial procedures. in laos, shallow public participation processes mask deeper political inequalities in decision making, whilst in myanmar the notion of public participation is largely absent to date. furthermore, with many important decisions taken in thailand, which is the electricity buyer and also the home country of a number of the energy and construction companies and financiers, the possibility of participation in decision-making of locally affected people in laos and myanmar becomes even more distanced. historically, electricity consumption has created environmental injustice between those who benefit most from electricity generation – including the construction and energy companies who build and operate the projects and energy intensive indusaseas 5(2) 311310 carl middleton transborder environmental justice in regional energy trade in mainland south-east asia tries in thailand – and those who pay the costs through the deterioration of their livelihoods and health. often, project proponents legitimise large regional energy trade projects through discourses that frame them as bringing economic cooperation, cheap energy, and energy security. yet the social, environmental, and economic costs of these projects are comparatively localised. discourses that legitimise and mask environmental injustice, therefore, reframe and reimagine the use of resources through a politics of scale away from local community use and towards exploitation by energy project developers in line with the development plans of national governments (lebel, garden, & imamura, 2005; sneddon, 2003). in dumping in dixie, bullard (1990, p. 32) reveals how environmentally harmful projects in the us were sold to poorer communities as bringing jobs and redressing past social injustices. analogously, it is the communities at the comparative margins of mainland south-east asia’s increasingly liberalised market economy who experience firsthand the negative social and environmental costs of the large energy projects that are now spreading from thailand into myanmar and laos, and to whom these projects are framed to bring development, modernisation, and poverty alleviation. for such projects, however, to be equitable and sustainable, it requires a significantly deeper commitment on the part of governments and project developers to strong and enforced environmental legislation, legally binding commitments to affected communities, and the ability for communities to access information, participation, and justice – including across borders. otherwise, just as economic, social, and political injustices have created deep cleavages within thai society, it is conceivable that similar tensions could emerge in neighbouring laos and myanmar, and across borders. references asian development bank. 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(2009). human security today and tomorrow: thailand human development report 2009. bangkok, thailand: undp. ware, a. (2011). the mdgs in myanmar: relevant or redundant? journal of the asia pacific economy, 16(4), 579-596. wattana, s., sharma, d., & vaiyavuth, r. (2008). electricity industry reforms in thailand: a historical overview. gmsarn international journal, 2(2), 41-52. whitington, j. (2012). the institutional condition of contested hydropower: the theun hinboun–international rivers collaboration. forum for development studies, 39(2), 231-256. wisuttisak, p. (2012). regulation and competition issues in thai electricity sector. energy policy, 44, 185198. yu, x. (2003). regional cooperation and energy development in the greater mekong sub-region. energy policy, 31(12), 1221-1234. it takes a rooted village: networked resistance, connected communities, and adaptive responses to forest tenure reform in northern thailand kimberly roberts ► roberts, k. (2016). it takes a rooted village: networked resistance, connected communities, and adaptive responses to forest tenure reform in northern thailand. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 9(1), 53-68. conflicts persist between forest dwelling communities and advocates of forest conservation. in thailand, a community forestry bill and national park expansion initiatives leave little space for communities. the article analyzes the case of the predominantly ethnic black lahu village of huai lu luang in chiang rai province that has resisted the threats posed by a community forestry bill and a proposed national park. the villagers reside on a national forest reserve and have no de jure rights to the land. this article argues, however, that through its network rooted in place and connected to an assemblage of civil society, local government, and ngos, huai lu luang has been able to stall efforts by the thai government that would detrimentally impact their use of and access to forest resources. their resistance is best understood not in isolation – as one victimized community resisting threats to their livelihoods – but in connection to place, through dynamic assemblages. a ‘rooted’ networks approach follows the connections and nodes of huai lu luang’s network that influence and aid the village’s attempts to resist forest tenure reform. keywords: community forestry; ethnic minorities; resistance; rooted networks; thailand  introduction in the face of global concerns over deforestation and conservation, throughout the highlands of southeast asia, the narrative of upland communities as forest destroyers persists. this concept that people and forests are mutually exclusive has direct implications when policies aimed at stalling or reversing deforestation rates run in contradiction to the livelihoods of communities living within these forests. political ecologists have long investigated these relationships between nature and society (blaikie & brookfield, 1987; robbins, 2004) and have explored state territorial expansion through forests (bryant, 1997; vandergeest & peluso, 1995), the mechanisms behind resource use and access (peluso & lund, 2011; ribot & peluso, 2009), the appropriation of land for conservation (adams & hutton, 2007; roth, 2008), and how these forest governance mechanisms impact local communities (hares, 2009; vandergeest, 2003; walker, 2003; wittayapak, 2008). in thailand, community forestry policies, the expansion of the national park system, and a community land deed pilot project represent attempts to reduce aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 16 .1 -4 54 kimberly roberts  aseas 9(1) deforestation rates and provide opportunities to either exclude communities from forests or incorporate them within the management of these ecosystems. between 1961 and 2005, forest coverage in thailand decreased from 53.3% to 31.5% (world bank, 2016), giving thailand one of the highest deforestation rates in southeast asia. more recent calculations suggest a slight increase in forest cover to roughly 33% (leblond & pham, 2014). however, pressure still remains from the thai royal forestry department (rfd) to conserve the remaining forests (wittayapak, 2008). the 1985 national forest policy strives to maintain the country’s forest cover and in 1989, the thai government implemented a nationwide logging ban (johnson & forsyth, 2002, pp. 10-11; vandergeest & peluso, 2006, pp. 377-379). this shift in forest policy from timber to conservation management relies on the stringent separation of people from forests (walker, 2003, p. 2) and eventually devalues traditional swidden agriculture and non-timber forest product (ntfp) harvesting practices of the roughly 6 million highland ethnic minorities of southeast asia who live within the boundaries of protected areas (badenoch, 2006). the notion that forests and people cannot coexist implies that forest dwellers must be evicted in order to protect forested areas. holders of this position argue that deforestation is caused by population increases and by illegal forest encroachment for activities like shifting cultivation (walker & farrelly, 2008, p. 377). due to the illegality of residing within forest reserves, most upland villages live under the threat of eviction – a threat which is occasionally realized (peluso & vandergeest, 2011, p. 595). in 1991, an estimated 20% of the 56,000 villages in thailand were located within forest reserves (bugna & rambaldi, 2001). a detailed survey of 1,400 communities undertaken by the department of land development in chiang mai province around this time found that 90% were located within forest reserves meaning that a large number of upland communities are actually illegal (walker & farrelly, 2008, p. 377). by 2000, the department of national parks (dnp) had established 13 national parks, resulting in the relocation of over 200 communities (srimongkontip, 2000). according to leblond (2010), the majority of these conservation-induced relocations took place in the late 1980s and early 1990s, with a higher risk of relocation for non-karen ethnic minority groups.1 the most famous of these relocation attempts was the khor jor kor scheme of the early 1990s. after the 1991 coup, the military government attempted to evict five million people from reserve forests (hall, 2011). during the initial implementation of the program, at least 16 villages were relocated. the number of households affected ranges from two thousand to as many as forty thousand (walker & farrelly, 2008). however, the scheme was shelved after vigorous protests from farmer organizations and civil society groups (hall, 2011; walker & farrelly, 2008). however, recent changes in thai politics have again raised this threat of eviction. on june 2014, the current junta’s national council for peace and order issued two orders, the first stating that encroachers in protected areas and poachers of forest goods will face strict legal measures and the second stipulating that the poor and communities settled in protected areas prior to this policy will not be affected (editor2, 2015). this article converges on the interactions of huai lu luang, an ethnic minor1 out of the 12 officially recognized ethnic minority groups in thailand, karen are the largest (353,000), with hmong (112,000), and lahu (82,000) following in size. karen are also the only group that can claim to be ‘indigenous’ in thailand (forsyth & walker, 2008). 55it takes a rooted village ity village in northern thailand, as it responds to challenges to their forest access through relationships that assemble, disassemble, and shift over space and time. focusing on three distinct mechanisms that could alter huai lu luang’s de facto use of forest resources in thailand, the article looks at the community forestry bill, a proposed national park, and a proposed community land deed pilot project. these mechanisms are initiated in separate agencies, the royal forestry department, the department of national parks, and thai parliament, respectively. huai lu luang’s responses to each of these mechanisms are best understood not as an isolated community, but instead through an assemblage of relations. in the literature, the actions of marginalized minorities get cast as either events of strength, as in the chiapas rebellion of 1994 in mexico (mcmichael, 2008), or as everyday actions of resistance that remain a powerless community’s only recourse (jones, 2012; scott, 1985). however, as rocheleau (2015) showed in chiapas, many of these resistances do not take shape in isolation, but through networks, rooted in place and strengthened through a web of civil society and communities. huai lu luang’s rootedness connects to michaud’s (2006) southeast asia massif. approximately 80 million people reside within the southeast asian massif (usually above 500m) of mainland southeast asia, stretching across myanmar, thailand, laos, china, cambodia, and vietnam (michaud, 2006, pp. 2-5). these ‘minority’ populations are larger than the population of myanmar, thailand, laos, or cambodia. however, representing numerous transnational ethnicities, these highland peoples typically reside in the periphery of their nation states and are often categorized as backward, barbarian, uncivilized, and wild (mccaskill & kampe, 1997; scott, 2009; vandergeest, 2003; vienne, 1989). moreover, with their subsistence livelihoods, mobile communities, and diversity – all of which are hard to govern and difficult to tax – they pose a threat to settled agrarian states (bryant, 1997; scott, 2009). literature on resistance incorporates any form of resistance to impositions from a dominant power (baviskar, 2001; peluso 1992; scott, 1985), suggesting that any activity can be political (jones, 2009). in the uplands of southeast asia, scott (2009) conceptualizes the resistance of communities as anarchist. yet, contemporary huai lu luang, rooted in place, engage with civil society, neighboring communities, ngos, and local government. huai lu luang has ‘resisted’ threats to their forest resource use and access through both avoidance and defiance as well as cooperation. as in chiapas, this resistance is best understood in connection to place, through dynamic assemblages. rocheleau and roth’s (2007) analytical framework of ‘rooted’ networks allows for a way to follow the connections and nodes of huai lu luang’s network that influence and aid the village’s attempts to influence various branches of the thai government’s forest tenure reform efforts. these are not the sterile networks of some types of complexity theory, but are rather rooted, disrupted, and shaped by territory, infused with power, containing social and natural nodes and exhibiting both static and dynamic characteristics. such network thinking allows for an exploration of these actions and actors that resist dominant powers. hence, in understanding the situation of rural, landless communities, we must carefully trace their connections to both human and non-human entities and seek to understand how power shapes the nature of those connections (rocheleau & roth, 2007). 56 kimberly roberts  aseas 9(1) huai lu luang village huai lu luang is a village of roughly 400 people and is located in mae yao sub-district, muang district, in chiang rai province alongside the mae kok river at roughly 475m elevation. the lahu people of huai lu luang have responded to, prepared for, and adjusted to external forces affecting their lives and livelihoods since the beginning of the 20th century. originating in southern china, lahu are part of the tibetoburman language family group. over the last two centuries, they have dispersed and migrated across the uplands of southeast asia. the largest population of lahu still resides in southern yunnan (china) (approximately 453,700 people in 2000), while an estimated 78,000 live in the shan state of myanmar, 103,000 in northern thailand, and less than 16,000 are dispersed between laos and vietnam (michaud, 2006, pp. 130-131). huai lu luang’s history and networks start in the early 20th century in the remote mountains of yunnan. three generations ago, in the 1940s,2 many of huai lu luang’s ancestors lived in southern china, converted to christianity, practiced shifting cultivation on the slopes of mountains, and grew rice in lowland paddy fields. according to lahu baptist convention staff, in 1896, the american baptist missionary william marcus young moved to the shan state of myanmar. from keng tung, young’s missionary work expanded north to yunnan province where many of the black and yellow3 lahu people converted to christianity (lahu baptist committee, personal communication, march 31, 2009). mao’s communist china brought with it religious persecution, demand up to 80% of the villager’s crops, and forced labor. thus, many yellow and black lahu moved from southern china to keng tung. in the 1960s, the military junta took power in myanmar, once again restricting villager’s religious freedom and forcing some into labor camps. yet again, many black and yellow lahu were forced to leave and migrated from myanmar to thailand to create the village of obsuawan in the northern sub-district of mae yao. in 1962, mostly yellow lahu families from obsuawan created the village of panasawan. around 1973, 12 black lahu families separated from panasawan and established huai lu luang. a large influx of migrants from myanmar between 1974 and 2006 increased the population of the village household number from 30 in 1977 to 90 in 2010, with a total population of around 400 (village pastor, 18 october 2010). religion and connections to ‘parent’ villages feature strongly in huai lu luang. just as spider plants drop new offshoots of roots when overcrowding, encouraging a relocation for access to greater nutrients and water (rocheleau & roth, 2007, p. 435), huai lu luang became an offshoot of panasawan, which itself was an offshoot of obsuawan, which was an offshoot from a village in keng tung, myanmar, which was an offshoot from a village in the yunnan province of china. today, a national forest reserve – first designated by the rfd – surrounds huai lu luang. in 2002, the rfd gave permission to the dnp to work toward establish2 all dates referring to the migratory history and establishment of huai lu luang result from oral history and are therefore to be regarded as generalizations. 3 among the lahu six subcategories are recognized (michaud, 2006). of these subcategories, black, yellow, and red (english translations) live in the sub-district where huai lu luang is located. from conversations with community members, there are linguistic and cultural distinctions between these groups. 57it takes a rooted village ing lam nam kok national park (department of national parks, 2015). the dnp is currently in the process of turning the forest reserve into the lam nam kok national park. four districts and 13 sub-districts are located in the area proposed for the national park. in mae yao sub-district alone, this includes 13,000 people and 18 villages covering an area of 733 km2 (uhdp staff, 26 july 2015). villagers of huai lu luang have de facto but no formal (de jure) rights to the land that they use, which includes the forest and the fields that surround the village. the majority of households in huai lu luang farm paddy fields, and few that do not, either share or rent fields from their neighbors. moreover, all households farm upland fields and have access to a shared community forest (village pastor, 18 october 2010). the villagers plant rice in paddy fields as well as rice and corn in upland fields and have an average annual per capita income of thb 9000 (usd 250) (kaiser et al., 2012). the lack of available land precludes the use of swidden agriculture, which lahu historically practiced in china and myanmar where they cultivated fields for three years and then fallowed fields for one to two years (lahu baptist committee, 31 march 2009). huai lu luang has roughly 90 households, 95% of whom are black lahu and the remaining 5% are ethnic yellow lahu or akha. the village has a history of organizing around committees, with a youth committee, church committee, and community forest committee. however, as a traditionally patriarchal society, only men serve on these committees (community forest committee, 28 october 2010). the classification of huai lu luang as a marginalized community harkens to its status as a ‘hill tribe’ (chao khao). in thailand, chao khao make up only about 1.45% of the officially registered population and scant attention is paid to them (michaud, 2006, p. 240). there is, however, a popular narrative of chao khao as ‘forest destroyers’. the karen are the only ethnic group that have escaped the narrative of ‘forest destroyers’ and instead have donned one of ‘forest guardians’ (forsyth & walker, 2008; michaud, 2006). thai government officials and the media characterize all other officially recognized ethnic groups as uncivilized and blame them for national problems such as deforestation. the term ‘hill tribes’ came into use in the 1950s to describe the non-ethnic thai groups living in the uplands of northern and western thailand that quickly became identified with the negative stereotypes of forest destroying, opium cultivating, and non-thai troublemakers (buergin, 2000). however, this narrative does not always reflect the reality on the ground (sato, 2000, pp. 164-165) but further marginalizes ethnic, upland ‘hill tribe’ communities. approach and method this article uses rocheleau and roth’s (2007) framework of rooted networks to analyze how huai lu luang – through its network – has responded to threats to forest access as well as opportunities to secure formalized access. rooted networks utilize actor network theory’s ability to combine non-human and human entities and political ecology’s placement of these entities within territories, literally ‘rooting’ networks to place. building on these aspects, these networks then expand to understand constructs and interactions of nature and culture through a web of relations that carry power and polycentricity, situated knowledge(s), and rootedness and territory in its understanding of relations and processes (rocheleau, 2008, p. 215). while the frame58 kimberly roberts  aseas 9(1) work broadly seeks to address four challenges – placing power in networks, connecting those networks to territories, incorporating natural and social elements, and integrating static networks and dynamic system behaviors – this article focuses primarily on the first two. treating roots and networks as active analogies to plants helps to understand how a network can be dynamic and still ‘rooted’ to a territory. plant species vary in fixity and mobility, individual and collective associations, and in relation to habitat. extensive tap roots anchor some plants, spider plants send out new roots when resources become scarce, and fungal mycorrhizae networks aid plants’ ability to absorb nutrients in porous soils (rocheleau & roth, 2007). like rocheleau’s examples of resistance in chiapas (2008) and the dominican republic (2009), huai lu luang’s resistance is rooted in place and in a network of unequal coalition of ngos, local government, and local community groups (rocheleau, 2008; 2015). my own work with thai ngo upland holistic development project (uhdp) and my later role as an academic researcher place me as a small piece of huai lu luang’s network. in 2007, i began my ongoing relationship with uhdp when i moved to their small agroforestry resource center. the center, established in 1997 in northern thailand, took up space on a west facing hillside, barren at that time, but since then covered in agroforest, upland fields, orchards, fish ponds, agricultural plots, animal pens, and an assortment of homes that housed the mixed community of lahu, karen, palaung, kachin, and akha staff and their families. prior to interviews i conducted for my master degree, my work at uhdp had already acquainted me with the predicament of huai lu luang’s community forest and its many layers. as a volunteer for uhdp from january to june 2007, i worked on counter mapping efforts for the community forests of villages in mae yao sub-district, including huai lu luang. this included an overnight visit in april 2007 with uhdp co-director bunsak thongdi, hiking the boundaries of their community forest with the community forest committee and recording gps waypoints. later, in may 2007, i conducted gps use trainings for members of huai lu luang’s community forest committee as well as for neighboring communities and in 2008, i became a liaison between the us ngo plant with purpose and uhdp. i returned to huai lu luang between september and november of 2010, conducting key informant interviews, group interviews, and semi-structured survey interviews. for the semi-structured surveys, i interviewed 32 individuals (roughly 13% of the village’s population) and conducted follow-up interviews with the community forestry committee, village headman, and uhdp staff. every interview was tape recorded and warunee harichaikul – a lahu villager working at a chiang rai lahu boarding school – translated the interviews from kham mueang (northern thai language) or black lahu to english. the survey interviewees were selected through a purposive sampling method, a type of non-probability sampling where i ascertained which units should be observed based on my judgment about which ones will be the most useful or representative (babbie, 2007, p. 193). based on participant observations, i noted that individuals of differing ages and genders used different forest resources in their daily lives; therefore, i selected the sub-groups of gender and age because i wanted to capture as much diversity as possible (see table 1). communities are not homogenous entities and the participation of only one ethnic group, social class, or gender in community forest governance may negatively impact that gov59it takes a rooted village ernance (ratner & moser, 2009). the age groups were chosen based on discussions with uhdp around labor divisions. the rooted networks of huai lu luang huai lu luang’s rooted network extends throughout the southeast asia massif, connecting it with communities and religious organizations in china, myanmar, and thailand, while being grounded through the ecological constraints and requirements of managing a community forest. within thailand, huai lu luang connects with ngos, civil society, and the sub-district government through dynamic arrangements that shift and alter depending on changing circumstances. the following section describes huai lu luang’s efforts to either secure formalized land rights or to ensure a retention of current informal land use. to this end, they have joined national debates on community forestry, formed a network with neighboring villages and partner ngos, and collaborated with the sub-district both to resist the creation of a national park and to apply for a community land deed. national community forest debates community forestry represents a form of common-pool resource management. contrary to hardin’s (1968) tragedy of the commons, commons do not always lead to ungoverned territories and the deterioration of ecosystems, but instead often involve complex and sophisticated governing mechanisms (agrawal, 2007; thompson, 1975). chhatre and agrawal (2008) define the common pool resource of forest commons as “forests used in common by a large number of heterogeneous users” (p. 13286). in thailand, variations of community forestry have a long history. these community forests show the characteristics of defined resource boundaries, user group identity, and property rights for resource benefits (ostrom, 2002). in the last 30 years, competition for forest products between villages and business interest in combination with a nation-wide logging ban have caused a resurgence of community forestry efforts (ganjanapan, 1998, p. 78; li, 2002; walker, 2003). in 1977, over concerns around forest degradation and water quality, huai lu luang established a community forest, with de facto permission from the rfd (which later in 2001 transferred authority to the dnp). representatives of the 30 families (one representative for each family) present in huai lu luang at that time voted unanimously to accept the community forest, its committee, and its rules. according to the committee the community forest was established because: male female age group a (ages 19-34) 5 5 age group b (ages 35-49) 7 5 age group c (ages 50+ ) 5 5 table 1. number of interviews by age and gender. notes: age group b contained male yellow lahu and age group c contained one male akha respondent. (own compilation). 60 kimberly roberts  aseas 9(1) before the community forest, everybody did what was right in their own eyes concerning the forest. it’s a must to have a committee. before, outsiders like thai people cut the trees, and we had no authority to stop them, because we didn’t have the committee and the community forest. (huai lu luang, 18 october 2010) the committee itself is made up of 13 black lahu volunteer men broken up into the roles of president, vice president, secretary, and treasurer. women are not allowed on the committee or in any leadership role in huai lu luang. the committee agreed on the community forest rules before they were submitted to the rest of the village for approval. however, huai lu luang’s de facto community forest lacked formal de jure status. at the end of the 1980s, groups of activities, academics, and ngos began to argue for de jure local control of resources through community forests as an alternative to the forest conservation strategy of the rfd (buergin, 2000, p. 11). in 1990, the rfd wrote the first official draft of the community forestry bill to address the issue of forest tenure reform. according to johnson and forsyth (2002), development-based ngos, academics, and grassroots organizations criticized this version for maintaining a state-led system of forest management. from this point, a back and forth process began with the community forest bill. in response to the rfd version, a coalition of activists and development ngos drafted the first ‘people’s’ version asserting the rights of local villages to enter and use forests (johnson & forsyth, 2002, p. 14). through huai lu luang’s community forest, the village became actively involved in the community forestry debates in thailand, with the survival of their de facto community forest hinging on the outcome of these debates. in 1999, some huai lu luang villagers joined some roughly 3000 representatives of the different minority groups to demonstrate in chiang mai, demanding their right to citizenship, a simpler naturalization process, and recognition of their settlement and land use rights in protected areas (buergin, 2000, p. 14). unfortunately, neither the rfd version nor the ‘people’s’ version of the community forestry bill actually accounts for local use of forest resources (walker, 2003). for swidden agriculturists, land is that of a shifting mosaic of forest, agroforest, and agriculture supporting their livelihoods and often increasing biodiversity of the area (xu, lebel, & sturgeon, 2009). however, for villages like huai lu luang, a lack of land security caused a spatial reorganization where they moved away from overlapping and flexible boundaries to more static and clearly delineated forests, upland fields, and paddy fields. as roth (2008) references, this negotiation between state and community is a spatially produced process and reflects social and environmental relationships. for huai lu luang, agriculture exists within the forest, and villagers both plant desirable species within their community forest and harvest products beyond timber from the forest. villagers listed forest vegetables, wood for building houses, mushrooms, bamboo, food, firewood, herbs, banana flower, raising cattle, nuts, construction wood and bamboo, water, string bamboo, medicine, land, and furniture as services they get from the community forest that they could not afford to pay for otherwise. the ‘forest’, for huai lu luang is a component of an integrated landscape that provides long term and short term benefits and products. larger debates surrounding conservation have shifted huai lu luang’s use of space from swidden agri61it takes a rooted village culture to agroforestry plots and backyard gardens. this allows community members to maintain their use of traditional forest products, while respecting the boundaries established by the dnp. forest for the king and the arrival of ngos in the midst of the community forestry debates, and in another attempt to secure access to forest land, huai lu luang set aside part of the forest for the king. although huai lu luang is a predominately baptist lahu village, buddhist students from chiang mai visited huai lu luang and recommended that they dedicate a portion of the forest (not already designated as community forest) to the king in order to prevent the government from taking the land. in 1995, due to encouragement from these university students, the villagers conducted a buddhist ceremony to set aside an additional portion of 5,000 rai (800 ha) for the king. concurrently, in the late 1990s, other ngos began to work with huai lu luang. one of their first established relationships was with the thai-lahu baptist convention (initiating projects on health, aids, drugs, environment, and community forestry), but later they established working relationships with the mekong minority foundation (mmf), mirror foundation, compassion international, community organizations development institute (codi), a rice bank, and uhdp. these organizations have worked independently and cooperatively with huai lu luang, depending on the intersections of the various projects, each contributing to huai lu luang’s rooted network. uhdp began working with huai lu luang in 2006, with the original goal to improve the networking and farming capacity of villagers and to increase their understanding of community forestry. uhdp was founded in 1996 by baptist missionaries from the us, with an aim of assisting marginalized or resource poor ethnic minority communities along the thai-burma border (uhdp, 2 february 2007). the first year of huai lu luang’s connection to uhdp involved the establishment of watershed networks. these networks provided a space for seven neighboring communities to meet and discuss their interactions with the sub-district government, rfd officials, and dnp. through the network, uhpd also gave trainings in community forestry and related laws that provided a chance for neighboring villages to network and update each other on the situations in their respective villages and to take a proactive, rather than reactive, stance to changes in forest policies. during these meetings, villagers talked about the potential problem of the proposed national park and encounters they had experienced with the dnp. in one case, the dnp offered thb 50,000 (usd 1,670) to huai lu luang villagers under the pretense of preserving the forest and giving the land to the dnp. one community forestry committee member described his experience as this: i sensed that something was wrong. the next morning the officer come again and asked for us to give them the land, but then on another day the officer said he wanted to negotiate with the villagers. that day i was not around, but then all the villagers signed their signature. why they signed is because the government said ‘we will give you 50,000 baht, this money is not to buy the land but 62 kimberly roberts  aseas 9(1) to help you save the forest’. when i found out the villagers had signed i went down to the headquarters and told the officer ‘it’s wrong for you to do that, to just ask some of the villagers to sign the signature in order to approve that. you have to get the signature from the headman all the way down through to the sub-district’. the officer that gave the money said he wouldn’t give money anymore. but it didn’t stop there, he came one more time and tried to entice the headman. but i said ‘you cannot do this, if you want to ask us to accept the money, you must tell all of the villagers and ask them first whether they think it’s good and if they agree to sell the land or not. (huai lu luang, 18 october 2010) although the villager encouraged huai lu luang not to accept the money, that was not the case for neighboring villages. panasawan (see figure 1) received thb 50,000 and lost the land they had used as a community forest. eventually, huai lu luang ended up giving panasawan a portion of their community forest. in 2007, villagers proactively decided that they needed to map their own boundaries of the community forest so that they would not have to rely on dnp documents. this led to gps trainings and gis, which i designed for uhdp staff and members of this watershed network (see figure 1). figure 1. huai lu luang community forest. (roberts, 2011). 63it takes a rooted village national park plans and collaborations with local government by 2008, the sub-district (tamboon)4 stepped in and showed support for the villages by helping them create more detailed maps. these maps used 1:4000 scale aerial photos and each household could trace the outline of their paddy and upland fields. the hope was that by designating the land and creating official maps, villages would have better negotiating tools with the dnp. in december 2008 and january 2009, the conflict over forest access came to a crisis when the dnp began a serious drive to establish the lam nam kok national park. according to uhdp, the dnp needed to get approval from communities within the different sub-districts before officially establishing the national park. the villages had to vote on 15 january 2009 about whether or not to allow the national park in their area. on 23 december 2008, the villages held a meeting, appointed two to three people from each village for a meeting with the tamboon on 28 december. on 15 january 2009, the representative from mae yao sub-district rejected the national park. this vote forced the dnp to hold more formal communications with the tamboon and the villages themselves. according to uhdp staff members, the park was approved in all sub-districts except mae yao. so while the park was partially approved, boundaries have not been set and it has not been officially established: many things have started about the national park, they have a center, they have put up signs, but they still cannot get the approval from the central government because of mae yao. the national park has tried to work with the sub-district administrative governments. it happened in one area [not mae yao] that there was an official agreement between the national park and the local leadership that ‘okay we’re going to set the boundary between the national park and the community, but there’s no document. so they’re working on that. it’s not easy, because there’s no document. . . . in the case of mae yao, the department can’t get the approval from the local communities because people understand and through the work of uhdp and the watershed network, they are aware about these problems. even the local leaders of mae yao, they understand and they indirectly support the local communities instead of working with the national parks on this process, they insist on getting approval from the local communities first. (uhdp staff, 28 july 2015). thai parliament’s community land deed pilot project simultaneously, while the dnp was pushing its national park plans, the central government was moving ahead with its pilot project of community land deeds (chanod 4 the tamboon administration act, established in 1992, sought to delegate more jurisdiction to subdistrict and district level administrations. as a result of this act, governance is divided between central, provincial, district, sub-district, and village level administrations. the ministries and departments fall under the jurisdiction of the central government, with its elected officials and appointed ministry positions. the central government also appoints provincial and district level officials. a district is composed of at least two sub-districts (tamboon) whose officials are locally elected for five years and operate under the supervision of the district chief officers. at the village level (mooban), a village headman is elected for five years. both the tamboon and village headman positions are considered government officers and get a monthly remuneration from the central government (government of thailand, 2006, pp. 1-15). 64 kimberly roberts  aseas 9(1) chumchon). a chanod chumchon is another alternative to the community forestry bill. prime minister abhisit vejjajiva’s cabinet approved community land title deeds in june 2010. the objectives are to improve soil quality and provide land to poor farmers through the issuance of land rights certificates for communities living on state land (chudasri, 2010). chudasri (2010) suggested that the community land deed screening committee would give priority to communities that demonstrated a good land use plan with strong internal community control and a commitment to caring for natural resources. against the background of the project, huai lu luang shifted its focus from community forestry to obtaining a chanod chumchon. no longer concerned with just mapping and documenting the boundaries of the community forest, huai lu luang began efforts to demonstrate that they had “a good land use plan with strong internal community controls”. aided by the tamboon, they obtained 1:40000 air photo maps on which they meticulously traced all community land use from the forest, to the fields, to the village center. additionally, my own research evaluated huai lu luang’s capacity to effectively self-govern their community forest. these findings then strengthened huai lu luang’s chanod chumchon application to demonstrate strong internal community control and a commitment to caring for the forest. however, as with the national park, the situation for huai lu luang has not substantially changed since 2010. due to the political turnover from vejjajiva’s government to yingluck shinawatra’s government to the 2014 military coup (bbc, 2015) the future of the chanod chumchon project remains uncertain. conclusion haui lu luang’s tale is not one of resounding success. pressures on natural resource use and labor in china caused many villagers to migrate to myanmar in the 1940s and similar pressures from the burmese military junta in the 1960s caused a later undocumented migration to thailand. in thailand, huai lu luang’s de facto use and access to forest resources has made their circumstances precarious in the midst of national concerns over deforestation rates and a racialized narrative that criminalizes ethnic minority communities inside forested areas. as a result of perceived and actual threats of relocation or forest access restriction, they involved themselves in national debates over community forestry, defiantly attending protests, while also trying to cooperate with restrictions placed on them by the rfd. as a christian community, they respected the buddhist national religion and dedicated part of the forest area they use in a buddhist ceremony to the thai king. in response to national park creation plans, they have counter-mapped the area of the forest that is unofficially designated as their community forest, not trusting the dnp maps. they joined a watershed network of neighboring villages and ngos, which helped them to stay informed on the interactions of their neighbors with the rfd and dnp and the rapidly changing policies from the thai state that may affect them. they have collaborated with their sub-district government to hold the dnp accountable to its claims of an informed consent process over the creation of a new national park, and they have seized the opportunity to become part of a pilot project for community land deeds proposed by the prime minister’s cabinet in 2010. in this process, my research project itself became a piece of the community land deed application. interviews conducted 65it takes a rooted village with huai lu luang villagers unearthed dozens of individual, community level, and, importantly for this article, network level actions that have been taken to either prevent the direct loss of access to forest resources or to secure formalized rights to forest resources. huai lu luang’s responses to the community forestry bill, a proposed national park, and a proposed community land deed pilot project are best understood not as acts of an isolated community, but instead through their ‘rooted’ network. it is through their affiliation with the baptist church that the community first moved from china to myanmar. in thailand, this affiliation later connected them with uhdp, a new node with international connections. huai lu luang’s relationship with their tamboon allowed a means of both cooperating with the dnp, as well as resisting any establishment of the national park that did not respect their land use. some nodes, like their affiliation with national protests over an rfd influenced version of the community forest bill died off, while others, like their relationship to their tamboon, continue to change as politics and elected officials change locally, provincially, and nationally. none of these relationships or actions have guaranteed huai lu luang de jure rights. the community forest bill has not guaranteed access to the forest, the dnp still plans to establish lam nam kok national park, and chanod chumchon has an uncertain future. however, neither has the community forest bill nor the dnp cut off huai lu luang’s access to the forest. instead, huai lu luang has demonstrated agency and choice. through their ‘rooted’ network, connected to place and through an assemblage of individuals and organizations, they have stalled a loss of forest access and use. they are neither passive victims of the political dynamics within thailand nor actively resisting the government at every step, instead they are working within their networks to negotiate access. through these networks, they have gained support from the tamboon, have collaborated with national movements, and have formed their own network of villages. these relations to other villagers, local government, religious groups, 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(2009). functional links between biodiversity, livelihoods, and culture in a hani swidden landscape in southwest china. ecology and society, 14(2). 68 kimberly roberts  aseas 9(1) about the author kimberly roberts is currently a phd student in critical human geography at the department of geography at york university, canada. her research interests include the political ecology of forestry and conservation and natural resource conflicts, specifically in southeast asia. ► contact: kimr22@yorku.ca entwicklungsund gesundheitsarbeit des österreichischen roten kreuzes in südostasien: im gespräch mit max santner und gerlinde astleithner aseas 5(1) 174 175 d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -5 .1 -1 2 im dialog / in dialogue entwicklungsund gesundheitsarbeit des österreichischen roten kreuzes in südostasien: im gespräch mit max santner und gerlinde astleithner anna-sophie tomancok1 citation tomancok, a.-s. (2012). entwicklungsund gesundheitsarbeit des österreichischen roten kreuzes in südostasien: im gespräch mit max santner und gerlinde astleithner. aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften, 5(1), 174-185. max santner leitet den bereich internationale hilfe (humanitäre hilfe und entwicklungszusammenarbeit) im generalsekretariat des österreichischen roten kreuzes (örk) in wien. gerlinde astleithner ist als asien-länderreferentin des örk unter anderem für die zusammenarbeit in südostasien (vor allem laos und myanmar sowie an rande auch für osttimor) verantwortlich. im vorliegenden gespräch bieten sie einen überblick zur gegenwärtigen lage der entwicklungsund gesundheitsarbeit der internationalen rotkreuzbewegung in südostasien. das interview wurde am 19. märz 2012 in wien durchgeführt. max santner is head of international aid (humanitarian aid and development co-operation) at the austrian red cross (arc) headquarters in vienna. gerlinde astleithner, the arc’s country coordinator for asia, is in charge of development co-operation in south-east asia (particularly lao pdr and myanmar, but also timor-leste). in this interview, they give an overview on the international red cross movement’s activities as well as the current state of development and health work in southeast asia. the interview was conducted on 19 march 2012 in vienna. anna-sophie tomancok: lassen sie mich mit einer allgemeinen frage für jene leserinnen beginnen, die nicht mit der auslandsarbeit der rotkreuzbewegung vertraut sind: wie ist eigentlich die arbeit des internationalen roten kreuzes organisiert? max santner: es gibt auf der einen seite das internationale komitee des roten kreuzes (international committee of the red cross/icrc), das ein völkerrechtssubjekt ist und als hüter der genfer konvention vor allem in konfliktfällen agiert. darunter fällt zum beispiel der schutz von zivilistinnen, wie es im moment in syrien geschieht. dann gibt es auf der anderen seite nationale gesellschaften des roten kreuzes, wie zum beispiel das kambodschanische rote kreuz oder das österreichische rote kreuz. diese gesellschaften haben nationale mandate, 1 anna-sophie tomancok ist studentin am institut für kulturund sozialanthropologie, universität wien, österreich und war von oktober 2011 bis juni 2012 praktikantin bei seas gesellschaft für südostasienwissenschaften. aseas 5(1) 174 175 meist in einem gesetzgebenden rahmen gegenüber dem staat und sind zur hilfestellung verpflichtet. die nationalen organisationen wiederum sind zusammengeschlossen unter einem dachverband, der internationalen föderation der rotkreuzund der roter-halbmond-gesellschaften (international federation of red cross and red crescent societies/ifrc). dieser dachverband hat die funktion, die nationalen gesellschaften in ihrem aufbau zu unterstützen und ist eine schnittstelle für kommunikation und koordination, beispielsweise auch dann, wenn es zu naturkatastrophen kommt. vereinfacht dargestellt: der vater ist das icrc, die mutter ist die ifrc und die kinder sind die einzelnen nationalgesellschaften. welche länder in südostasien unterstützt das österreichische rote kreuz im moment? gerlinde astleithner: in südostasien sind wir derzeit in osttimor, laos und myanmar tätig. in südasien arbeiten wir in nepal und pakistan. bleiben wir bei ihren aktivitäten in südostasien. welche aktivitäten finden in diesen ländern statt? astleithner: hauptsächlich machen wir gemeindebasierte wasserund sanitärprojekte. in laos und osttimor haben wir noch eine community-based health-komponente dabei. alle unsere projekte sind community-based, weil sie immer gemeinsam mit den communities gemacht werden. was ist so eine community-based health-komponente? astleithner: es wird zunächst mit den dörfern selbst erarbeitet, welche krankheiten vorkommen – durchfälle, hauterkrankungen sowie unterund mangelernährung sind dabei die drei häufigsten erkrankungen bzw. symptome. was wir dann leisten können, richtet sich nach diesen erhebungen. es wird im nächsten schritt mit der community diskutiert, wo hilfe und unterstützung benötigt werden, und intern wird dann beim roten kreuz auch evaluiert, ob es die möglichkeit gibt die lokale bevölkerung dabei zu unterstützen. dann werden programme implementiert. wasserund sanitärprojekte werden immer zusammen eingebracht, zum beispiel ist der zusammenhang zwischen praktiziertem händewaschen und durchfällen wesentlich. der wichtigste punkt ist dann eben sauberkeit und hygiene. oder es werden moskitonetze verteilt und erklärt, warum die leute unter diesen schlafen sollen. der wasserund sanitärbereich bzw. öffentliche gesundheit sind ein bestandteil vieler internationaler entwicklungsaktivitäten. inwiefern unterscheidet sich das rote kreuz in diesem bereich von anderen hilfsorganisationen? anna-sophie tomancok im gespräch mit max santner und gerlinde astleithner aseas 5(1) 176 177 astleithner: primär durch die vernetzung und darin, dass wir durch unser großes netzwerk die most vulnerable groups erreichen. santner: und durch das spezielle regelwerk oder die gesetzeslage, die die nationalen rkgesellschaften gegenüber dem staat haben. es gibt auf der einen seite ngos, die meistens ein regelwerk über die sozialministerien haben und dann gibt es auch eigene „rotkreuz-gesetze“. das heißt, dass die gesetzeslage, in der wir uns mit dem roten kreuz bewegen, speziell ist. ein anderer wichtiger punkt ist, dass wir einerseits stark in den communities verankert sind und andererseits durch unsere vernetzung eine internationale dimension hineinbringen können. und diese größe haben andere organisationen nicht. was bedeutet nun die besondere stellung der rk-gesellschaften in ihrer täglichen arbeit im feld? astleithner: das rk hat immer einen gewissen sonderstatus – es ist auxiliary to the government, also es ergänzt die arbeit der regierungen. diese besondere stellung erleichtert den zugang zu allen gruppen der bevölkerung. durch die nationalen gesellschaften haben wir einen leichteren zugang im allgemeinen und speziell bei katastrophen. da das örk eng mit nationalen behörden und den lokalen rk-gesellschaften, die mit der betroffenen bevölkerung interagieren, zusammenarbeitet, gibt es auch eine beeinflussung ihrer arbeit durch die nationalen regierungen? astleithner: einerseits ist es unsere aufgabe, den regierungen das mandat der zivilbevölkerung nahe zu bringen. andererseits versuchen wir politisch unabhängig zu sein. das offizielle mandat macht es uns einfach, direkten zugang zu allen gruppen einer gesellschaft zu bekommen, also zu behörden und zur bevölkerung kontakte herzustellen und gespräche mit den lokalen gemeinden zu führen. in manchen ländern ist es dann aber auch schwierig zu unterscheiden, wo politik anfängt und wo sie wieder aufhört. das kommt dann immer auf den lokalen kontext an. und umgekehrt gefragt: beeinflusst ihre arbeit auch nationale regierungen? astleithner: das ist der sinn, die idee unserer arbeit. durch uns wird die stimme der zivilbevölkerung in die politik eingebracht. das geht manchmal besser und manchmal nicht so gut, aber es ist ein permanenter dialog und eine permanente einbringung. die präsenz in netzwerken und die wiederholte einbringung der stimme der zivilbevölkerung, das passiert laufend. das rote kreuz gibt meistens eine meinung zu bestimmten themen in den medien ab und das passiert auch in südostasiatischen ländern. aseas 5(1) 176 177 gibt es auch, überspitzt gefragt, irgendwelche erfolgsmeldungen, wie zum beispiel gesetzesnovellierungen aufgrund ihrer internationalen zusammenarbeit? astleithner: das ist möglich, aber ich kann es im detail nicht sagen. ich weiß aber von unseren partnerinnen in myanmar, dass dort ein austausch mit den jeweiligen ministerien stattfindet und sich diese stellen gegenseitig ergänzen. was zeichnet südostasien im gegensatz zu anderen regionen aus? astleithner: vor allem der buddhismus ist in südostasien prägend. sonst sind die projekte ähnlich, immer lokal und regional adaptiert. südostasien zeichnet sich auch dadurch aus, dass es im vergleich zu anderen regionen tendenziell friedlich ist. aber osttimor ist doch zum beispiel katholisch geprägt und eine postkonfliktregion, in myanmar wurde das icrc, das in bürgerkriegsregionen tätig war, des landes verwiesen? astleithner: ja das stimmt, es sind postkonfliktregionen, aber im vergleich zu anderen weltregionen läuft es in südostasien friedlicher ab. man kann dort leichter arbeiten, weil man keine bombenanschläge erwarten muss. gerade in myanmar sind die leute, aus meiner sicht, auch aufgrund des buddhismus friedlicher. der buddhismus macht schon etwas aus, wenn ich das jetzt mit anderen weltregionen vergleiche. wie gestaltet sich die zusammenarbeit mit regionalen und lokalen partnerorganisationen? astleithner: wir haben immer partnerschaften mit den lokalen rk-gesellschaften, zum beispiel dem laotischen oder myanmarischen roten kreuz oder dem malaysischen roten halbmond. diese sind immer unser ansprechpartner und unsere lokale instanz, die auch die projekte implementieren. die zusammenarbeit zeichnet sich durch die partnerschaftlich gestalteten projekte aus. die stärke der programme liegt in der stetigen kommunikation mit den partnerinnen vor ort, da diese genau wissen, was in form von kapazitäten oder entwicklung in den communities gebraucht wird. die mitarbeiterinnen unserer lokalen partnerorganisationen sprechen auch die jeweiligen landessprachen und können damit die bedürfnisse genau herausfinden. gibt es auch barrieren, die von den nationalen regierungen gegenüber dem roten kreuz aufgestellt werden? santner: vor allem in bezug auf geldmittel und ressourcen gibt es grenzen, und eine weitere barriere für das rote kreuz ist auch, dass es begrenzte kapazitäten gibt und der staat imanna-sophie tomancok im gespräch mit max santner und gerlinde astleithner aseas 5(1) 178 179 mer noch der souverän im land ist. es ist also ein ambivalentes verhältnis zwischen hilfe von außen und selbstbestimmung des staates. da wir in den nationalen gesellschaften aufgrund der gesetzeslage sehr oft einen gesetzlichen auftrag haben, eben die sogenannte auxiliary role, ist aber damit eigentlich weitgehend abgesteckt, was gemacht werden kann. und da gibt es dann einen spielraum, je nachdem wie, auf nationaler oder regionaler ebene, die bereichsleiterinnen oder die regionalen direktorinnen mit den regierungsbeamtinnen zusammenarbeiten. in laos gibt es zum beispiel oft eine personalunion, das heißt die leiterinnen des gesundheitswesens des bezirks sind oft auch leiterinnen der lokalen rotkreuzbewegung. in der praxis hat das positive auswirkungen, der-/diejenige hat dann zugang zu mitteln, die eine andere organisation nicht hätte. die verankerung in der bevölkerung ist auch stärker. ist es in der regel oft so, dass programme angenommen werden, oder gibt es da auch ressentiments? santner: es besteht grundsätzlich die frage, ob man einen top-downoder bottom-up-ansatz hat. das ist in der praxis oft eine mischung. wenn aufgrund der bedarfslage reagiert wird und dann das richtige gemacht wird, dann ist es der am meisten erfolg bringende ansatz. aufgrund der verankerung in den communities ist eine hohe akzeptanz gegeben, aber allgemein gültig ist die frage nicht zu beantworten. in osttimor, zum beispiel, wurden die programme in einem bezirk angenommen und in einem benachbarten bezirks ist es schief gegangen, wegen verschiedenster lokaler umstände. es hängt auch einfach von den handelnden personen ab. aber aufgrund der verankerung in der bevölkerung wird unsere hilfe oft angenommen, das kann man fast generalisieren. aber es gibt dann auch beispiele, wo es nicht funktioniert. astleithner: in laos, zum beispiel, in der provinz, in der wir arbeiten, gibt es 34 verschiedene ethnien. da diese unterschiedlich sind, ist es oft schwer einen gemeinsamen nenner zu finden. in den meisten dörfern funktioniert es wunderbar. und dann erwischt man ein dorf, in dem eine ethnie lebt, die mit unseren maßnahmen wenig anfangen kann. santner: oder ganz banal, die ethnie oder das dorf kommt einfach nicht mit dem/der projektleiterin aus, weil er/sie von einer anderen ethnie ist. diese/n lassen sie dann nicht an sich heran und akzeptieren somit das gesamte programm nicht. das sind einfach menschliche mechanismen, die dahinterliegen, die behindernd wirken und die man schwer im vorfeld einschätzen kann. da beginnt auch ownership zu wirken. wenn die betroffenen die ownership nicht übernehmen und sich dafür nicht verantwortlich fühlen, dann funktioniert es nicht. wenn die betroffenen, egal ob die lokale rk-gesellschaft oder die regierung, die agenden akzeptieren und auf sich nehmen, dann hat ein projekt erfolg. wenn es auf diese weise nicht so angenommen wird, sondern das gefühl besteht, dass es nur von außen implementiert wurde, dann wird es nicht funktionieren. aseas 5(1) 178 179 also das design aller projekte wird in zusammenarbeit mit den lokalen rk-gesellschaften entwickelt? astleithner: ja, projekte werden vor ort mit der rk-gesellschaft und der community entwickelt. ist dann das örk, die nationale rk-gesellschaft und die community vor ort? also sind dann immer auch leute aus der community dabei? astleithner: es sind immer die wichtigsten dabei. so sitzen in den besprechungen immer die vertreterinnen lokaler verbände, beispielsweise der youth oder der women’s union, oder aber auch lehrer, hebammen und andere einflussreiche leute. dann stellen sie aber fest, dass die leute die projekte aufgrund fehlenden ownerships nicht annehmen. wie ist das unter einen hut zu bringen? astleithner: es ist sehr unterschiedlich. damit die leute die programme annehmen, ist es wichtig, dass sie von anfang an bei der entwicklung beteiligt sind. das birgt aber auch eine gewisse gefahr, weil die beteiligten sich dann viel erwarten. wenn man das projekt zu offensiv entwickelt, dann gibt es gewisse erwartungen der betroffenen und damit muss man auch vorsichtig sein. denn oft bekommt man dann das geld für ein solches projekt nicht bewilligt und man kann es dann nicht in gang bringen. man muss die balance finden – bedürfnisse gemeinsam herausfinden ohne erwartungen zu schüren. es mangelt also nicht an partnerschaftlichkeit? die ist dann immer gegeben? astleithner: an und für sich schon. in laos, zum beispiel, nehmen von 100 dörfern zwei oder drei das programm aus ethnischen gründen nicht an. aber dann kann man es mit diesen halt nicht machen. heißt das dann, dass sich das örk oder die nationale rk-gesellschaft aus diesen dörfern zurückzieht? nach dem motto „lebt euer leben wie ihr wollt“? astleithner: implementiert wird immer von der nationalen rk-gesellschaft, weil diese mitarbeiterinnen die sprachen sprechen, akzeptiert und respektiert werden. wenn jetzt aber die bereitschaft in der bevölkerung nicht vorhanden ist? astleithner: dann versucht man es später wieder einmal. anna-sophie tomancok im gespräch mit max santner und gerlinde astleithner aseas 5(1) 180 181 es wird dann also nicht gesagt „wir machen es jetzt trotzdem“? astleithner: nein, das würde nichts bringen. sie kommen also nicht mit vorgefertigten plänen dort hin und fragen dann die lokalen behörden und die von der entwicklung betroffenen, ob sie das mit ihnen in dieser form machen wollen? können sie vielleicht ein beispiel für so einen designprozess geben? astleithner: also in unseren wasserprogrammen, da gibt es technikerinnen des nationalen rk und jene von der lokalen wasserbehörde. in laos ist es zum beispiel so, dass immer die behörde mit hilfe des rk implementiert. und alleine dadurch, dass dort die regierung hinkommt, mit unterstützung des roten kreuzes, ist die akzeptanz gegeben. es muss im vorfeld immer der bedarf eruiert werden. so wie sie es jetzt ausgedrückt haben, klingt es aber eher nach einer top-down-herangehensweise. das rk kommt in ein gebiet, und sagt „wir wollen das jetzt für euch machen – ist das in ordnung für euch?“ ist das letztlich dann noch ein gemeinschaftlich entwickeltes projekt? astleithner: schon, weil die bevölkerung meistens nach wasser schreit und sie bedarf danach haben. also die bedürfnisse der bevölkerung werden zuerst eingeschätzt und dann überlegt das rk, wohin es jetzt mit seinem technischen know-how geht? astleithner: das kann man nicht so generalisieren, weil es hand in hand geht. manchmal ist es zuerst die bevölkerung, manchmal das rk, das den handlungsbedarf äußert. auch die regierungen wissen, wo es noch bedarf gibt und wo wasserbzw. sanitärzugänge bereits gedeckt sind. dann muss bewertet werden, ob das passt oder nicht. ist das verständlich? ja, ich habe nur ein wenig schwierigkeiten festzustellen, wie jetzt die partizipation der bevölkerung konkret passiert. astleithner: die bevölkerung ist bei der einschätzung der situation dabei, zum beispiel beim wasser: sie baut zum beispiel das wassersystem, trägt materialen bei, baut die latrinen selbst etc. aseas 5(1) 180 181 der kern des projekts ist aber aus europa transferiert, richtig? ist es europäisches gedankengut, das von der gemeinde selbst implementiert wird? astleithner: ich weiß nicht, ob unsere unterstützung als europäisches gedankengut bezeichnet werden kann – wassertechnik gibt es ja nicht nur in europa. die gemeinden arbeiten jedenfalls mit unterstützung der technikerinnen. denn könnten sie ihr wassersystem allein bauen? genauso wenig können es die laoten. das muss schon hand in hand gehen. ich muss sagen – es ist eine komplexe arbeit und es ist schwer zu erfassen. man muss da hineinwachsen. nun zu einem anderen thema – gibt es in südostasien spezielle initiativen, die versuchen, die armut zu reduzieren? astleithner: poverty reduction stellt immer das große oberziel unserer projekte dar. da es allerdings ein so großes feld ist, können unsere programme immer nur dazu beitragen. spezielle interventionen gibt es generell viele. wie interagieren programme zur reduktion der armut mit programmen zur verbesserung von gesundheitsstandards? astleithner: wir arbeiten immer, wenn man das plakativ beschreibt, in form eines logframes2. an oberster stelle steht immer das überziel, overall objective, die armutsreduzierung, eingetragen. zu der leistet man einen beitrag. im einzelnen versuchen wir dann resultate zu definieren, die auch erreichbar sind, wie zum beispiel die reduktion von durchfallerkrankungen in einer gemeinde. dies geschieht durch hygienemaßnahmen, bereitstellung von sauberem wasser, aktiver gesundheitsund bewusstseinsbildung etc. sauberes wasser, hände waschen, sauberes essen und so weiter, tragen wieder zu mehr gesundheit bei. das größte problem ist jedoch die mutter-kind-gesundheit sowie die hohe kindersterblichkeit. wenn mutter-kind-erkrankungen ein großes thema beim rk und in der eza generell sind, welche maßnahmen werden von ihnen in diesem bereich getroffen? astleithner: wir haben zum beispiel ein gerade auslaufendes projekt in laos, wo wir mit der gesundheitsbehörde auf bezirksebene zusammengearbeitet haben und mit der behörde in die dörfer gegangen sind, um die leute in den bereichen preand postnatal care, zum beispiel stillen, ernährung etc., aber auch in fällen von komplizierten geburten, zu schulen. im vorfeld muss es dabei eine logistische abklärung geben, da die krankenhäuser weit von den dörfern entfernt sind. 2 anmerkung der aseas-redaktion: der logical framework approach (lfa) ist ein werkzeug des projektzyklusmanagements in der entwicklungszusammenarbeit. anna-sophie tomancok im gespräch mit max santner und gerlinde astleithner aseas 5(1) 182 183 santner: ergänzend dazu: eigentlich ist es nicht oder nur ganz wenig aufgabe des roten kreuzes, in das bestehende spitalswesen einzugreifen. aber es gibt im rahmen solcher projekte sehr selten auch unterstützungen für einen gesundheitsposten, weil es integrative projekte sind. für ein projekt ist es nicht ziel, einen solchen gesundheitsposten zu errichten oder das spitalswesen zu verändern, sondern die lebensbedingungen in den bestehenden rahmen zu verbessern. astleithner: unser fokus liegt auf primary health in den communities und nicht so sehr darauf, das bestehende gesundheitssystem zu ersetzen, sondern dieses zu ergänzen. aber ich könnte mir vorstellen, wenn jetzt ein solcher gesundheitsposten aufgestellt wird, dass der ja mehr frequentiert wird als das krankenhaus vor ort. ist das nicht schlecht für das öffentliche gesundheitssystem? santner: natürlich, darum ist ja auch der versuch, in den bestehenden strukturen zu arbeiten und nicht außerhalb der, zugegebenermaßen, rudimentären struktur etwas in form einer parallelstruktur aufzubauen. man hat natürlich das defizit, dass man dann keine schöne gesundheitsstation herzeigen kann. aber man weiß genau, dass diese nicht nachhaltig ist. das ist ein dilemma, in dem wir immer wieder stecken, da wir oft von privaten spenderinnen gebeten werden, eine gesundheitsstation aufzubauen. das spitalswesen ist weniger unser ding, wir sind eher auf die community-based aktivitäten spezialisiert. public health, schulungen und prävention an den grassroots sind unsere hauptaugenmerke. astleithner: in zeiten von schlimmen katastrophen oder notfällen werden aber bei bedarf gesundheitsposten aufgestellt, die mobil sind und nur während der speziellen krisensituation existieren. das örk hat den ansatz, die vorhandenen kräfte zu stärken, damit sie sich selbst organisieren können. wie sieht es mit hiv-infektionen bzw. aids in südostasien aus? astleithner: also generell muss man sagen, dass im vergleich zu anderen weltregionen, im speziellen zu afrika, hiv in südostasien ein relativ geringes problem ist. in den grenzregionen thailands, myanmars und laos, also im goldenen dreieck, ist es allerdings schon ein problem – unserer ansicht nach vor allem wegen der armut und dem versuch, irgendwie geld aufzutreiben, oftmals eben durch prostitution. hier muss man aufpassen, dass die rate nicht steigt und dass man die infizierten entsprechend unterstützt. das örk arbeitet nicht zu hiv und aids, allerdings gibt es programme, die von anderen rk-gesellschaften unterstützt werden. die idee dabei ist eben, die infektionsrate möglichst gering zu halten. aseas 5(1) 182 183 und wie sehen solche programme aus? astleithner: hauptsächlich machen die anderen rk-gesellschaften auf die themen aufmerksam und wollen so zu einem verstärkten bewusstsein über die damit verbundenen probleme beitragen. es werden also vor allem aufklärungsprogramme implementiert. wenn ein programm über das rk-netzwerk läuft, dann läuft es über freiwillige, die in den dörfern stationiert sind. diese leben vor ort und sie werden geschult, gewisse themen anzusprechen und aufklärung zu betreiben. diese leute gehen dann von haushalt zu haushalt und sprechen in den familien bestimmte themen an. einerseits ist es aufklärung und andererseits werden sie animiert kondome zu benutzen, was allerdings schwierig mit der kultur ist. inwiefern erschwert „die kultur“ eine derartige arbeit? astleithner: das mit der verteilung von kondomen ist so eine sache: was tut man und wie schützt man sich? durch kondome. insofern muss man diese verbreiten und anpreisen. wenn die bevölkerung das weiß, sie aber nicht verwendet, dann ist das immer schwierig. man kann sie aber nicht zwingen, sondern es ihnen nur schmackhaft machen. ich habe gehört, dass auch herzkreislaufund stoffwechselerkrankungen sowie krebs häufige todesursachen in südostasien sind tendenz steigend. welche maßnahmen werden in diesen bereichen getroffen? astleithner: richtig, diese krankheitsgruppen sind auch in südostasien im vormarsch. aber es gibt in den dörfern so viele dringendere themen, die schneller zum tod führen als diese genannten erkrankungen. wir sind vor allem in den bereichen der hygiene tätig, die wieder auf die reduktion von durchfallerkrankungen abzielen. mutter-kind-gesundheit ist auch eines der größeren themen im bereich der reduktion der hohen mütterund kindersterblichkeit, im besonderen von kindern bis fünf jahren. ernährung ist ein großes thema, weil sie oft sehr einseitig ist und oft nicht genügend nahrungsmittel zur verfügung stehen. wir sind operativ in diese richtung tätig, weil die bevölkerungsgruppen, mit denen wir arbeiten, unmittelbar von diesen erkrankungen betroffen sind. da katastrophenhilfe einer der kernbereiche des roten kreuzes ist, können sie bitte ein konkretes beispiel für katastrophenhilfe in südostasien nennen und dieses kurz beschreiben? santner: das thema der katastrophenhilfe hat mehrere ebenen. es gibt einerseits katastrophen, die nur das land, in dem sich die katastrophe ereignet, betreffen. das heißt, wenn es sich um eine regionale oder lokale katastrophe handelt, dann ist das eine sache für die anna-sophie tomancok im gespräch mit max santner und gerlinde astleithner aseas 5(1) 184 185 lokalen behörden. beispielsweise, ereignet sich eine katastrophe in indonesien, dann ist das die sache des indonesischen roten kreuzes oder eben der lokalen rotkreuzoder roter-halbmond-gesellschaft. andererseits gibt es aber auch landesgrenzen überschreitende überregionale katastrophen. dann wird das ifrc-zonenbüro angesprochen, welches sich in kuala lumpur, malaysia, befindet und für 38 staaten im raum asien und pazifik zuständig ist. von dort aus wird überregional kommuniziert und koordiniert. wenn es notwendig ist, wird dort hilfe von außen, sprich von potenten nationalen gesellschaften, angefordert. es wird zunächst geprüft, ob die eigenen kapazitäten des staates ausreichen, um mit der katastrophe allein umgehen zu können oder ob die hilfe der internationalen gemeinschaft benötigt wird. das gilt sowohl auf staatenebene als auch bei den lokalen rk-gesellschaften. nehmen wir als beispiel den tsunami 2004 in banda aceh, indonesien. das war eine sehr große katastrophe und die ganze humanitäre welt ist dort hingekommen. das zonenbüro in kuala lumpur koordinierte den einsatz im gebiet in verbindung mit den nationalen behörden und mit den hilfsorganisationen. daraus ist dann ein längerfristiges projekt entstanden, das zwei bis vier jahre dauerte und sich in mehrere phasen aufgliederte. die erste phase betrifft die unmittelbare nothilfe, in der die betroffenen geborgen werden – das kann mehrere stunden, aber auch tage dauern. die zweite phase ist eine art konsolidierungsphase, in der man die überlebenden mit nahrungsmitteln und trinkwasser versorgt. darunter fällt auch der aufbau von lagern. die dritte phase, die phase des wiederaufbaus, beginnt sechs bis sieben wochen nach der eigentlichen katastrophe. diese phase kann jahre dauern. bleiben wir bei indonesien: dort gibt es auch immer wieder vulkanausbrüche. dann tritt die lokale stelle des roten kreuzes ein. die katastrophenpläne enthalten spezielle aufgaben wie zum beispiel trinkwasseraufbereitung, errichtung von notunterkünften oder lieferung von nahrungsmittelpaketen – sowohl für die rk-gesellschaft als auch für die nationale behörde. dies wird in abstimmung mit den lokalen behörden rund um den vulkan gemacht. es hängt immer mit der dimension der katastrophe und der kompetenz der einzelnen länder zusammen. gut aufgestellt sind länder wie thailand, die philippinen und indonesien. laos hingegen ist eher schlecht aufgestellt und verfügt nicht über die nötigen kapazitäten und notfallpläne. laos würde demnach hilfe von außen brauchen, da es das problem nicht alleine bewältigen kann. dazu kommt die regionale hilfe, die im zonenbüro in kuala lumpur koordiniert wird. gibt es auch situationen, in denen das örk eingreift? santner: natürlich, erstens greifen wir durch spendensammlungen ein, die den jeweiligen nationalen rk-gesellschaften zur verfügung gestellt werden, ohne dass wir selbst in der krisenregion tätig werden. zweitens, durch eine direkthilfe des örk in schwachen staaten, in denen es wenige strukturen gibt und keine lokalen hilfskräfte. bei großen katastrophen, wie zum beispiel in banda aceh, werden weltweit rk-mitglieder angefordert, logistiker aus dänemark, deutschland, kanada, usa etc. und das örk steuerte eine trinkwasseraufbereitungsanlage bei. die sicherstellung und aufbereitung von trinkwasser zieht sich wie ein roaseas 5(1) 184 185 ter faden durch die entwicklungszusammenarbeit des örk. es werden über einen raster verschiedenste dinge aus den verschiedensten regionen der welt angefordert, zum beispiel eine spezifische wassermenge, die das örk herstellen muss. intern beginnt dann die einberufung geschulter leute, die ein visum und ein briefing bekommen, drei tage später mit einer ausrüstung von zwanzig bis dreißig tonnen im flugzeug sitzen und in das krisengebiet fliegen. sie kommen dann zur logistikstelle und werden mit der order ausgeschickt, eine gewisse menge wasser am tag zu produzieren. dann sind konkret mitarbeiterinnen des örk im netzwerk unterwegs. mit welchen hindernissen sieht sich das rk im moment in südostasien konfrontiert? santner: ich würde in diesem bezug nicht von hindernissen sprechen, sondern von einer situation, mit der wir als europäische organisation konfrontiert sind. nachdem ich mich jetzt ein jahr mit der region asien im allgemeinen beschäftigt und mir auch ein bild auf den reisen gemacht habe, kann ich sagen, dass es eine enorme wirtschaftsdynamik in diesen ländern gibt. das ist jetzt kein hindernis, sondern eine erkenntnis, dass es sich in dieser region um dynamische volkswirtschaften handelt. sie entwickeln solche eigenkapazitäten, dass die klassischen bilder der entwicklungszusammenarbeit, des wissensund geldtransfers vom westen bzw. vom norden in den süden, nicht mehr funktionieren. es ist so ein hohes selbstbewusstsein in der region entstanden, dass die klassischen mechanismen der entwicklungszusammenarbeit nicht mehr tragend sind. es ist im wesentlichen ein auslaufmodell, auch jene art der entwicklungszusammenarbeit, die wir in der region betreiben. die länder sind selbst im stande, mit ihren katastrophen fertig zu werden und ihre entwicklung voranzutreiben. sie brauchen uns mehr oder weniger nicht mehr. astleithner: ich würde es eher als neue chance sehen. die zusammenarbeit wird sich dementsprechend ändern und an die neuen gegebenheiten adaptiert. ist dann die entwicklungszusammenarbeit, die das rote kreuz anbietet, überhaupt noch notwendig? astleithner: wir sind in den ärmsten ländern dieser region tätig und da ist die entwicklungszusammenarbeit in dieser form derzeit noch notwendig. wie lange dies noch möglich ist, bleibt fraglich. vielen dank für das interview. anna-sophie tomancok im gespräch mit max santner und gerlinde astleithner exploring the poverty reduction potential of social marketing in tourism development exploring the poverty reduction potential of social marketing in tourism development v. dao truong & c. michael hall ► truong, v. d., & hall, c. m. (2015). exploring the poverty reduction potential of social marketing in tourism development. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 8(2), 125-142. although social marketing has been demonstrated to be an effective tool of behavior change in a variety of contexts, its poverty reduction potential in tourism development has captured limited research attention. this paper explores the potential contribution of social marketing to tourism-related poverty alleviation in sapa, vietnam. it does so by creating an understanding of how local residents perceive poverty, then exploring whether social marketing could be a potential solution in the case of sapa. through participant observations and semi-structured interviews, this study reveals that local people perceive poverty as a lack of rice and/or income and ascribe it to both internal and external factors. local women often follow tourists to sell handicrafts, causing discomfort for tourists and driving them away from certain destinations. insufficient capital and farming land are also identified as a critical barrier to poverty reduction. this study argues that by understanding the poor people’s perspectives on poverty, we can identify meaningful approaches to poverty alleviation. thereby, social marketing can be one of the tools to bring the marginalized voice of poor people to the attention of decision-makers. keywords: behavior change; poverty alleviation; social marketing; sustainable tourism; vietnam  introduction social marketing is the use of marketing methods to bring about voluntary behavioral change in a target audience in order to achieve a public good. although perhaps most widely recognized in public health, since the term was first used by kotler and zaltman (1971), its applicability has been explored in areas such as hiv/aids, malaria, nutrition, physical activity, substance abuse, tobacco, recycling, consumption reduction, and environmental conservation (andreasen, 2002, 2006; hastings, 2007; lee & miller, 2012; mckenzie-mohr, schultz, lee, & kotler, 2012; truong, 2014; truong, garry, & hall, 2014). recent debates have highlighted the need for the field to embrace a wider range of areas (truong, dang, hall, & dong, 2015), including a growing interest in social marketing in tourism (hall, 2014, 2016; musgrave & henderson, 2015; truong & hall, 2013, 2015). nevertheless, despite the small but significant engagement of marketing researchers with development studies and poverty alleviation issues (kilbourne, 2004; mittelstaedt, kilbourne, & mittelstaedt, 2006), little research has investigated the potential contribution of social marketing to poverty alleviation in tourism development (hall, 2014; truong, 2015; truong & hall, 2013; truong, aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 15 .2 -2 126 v. dao truong & c. michael hall  aseas 8(2) hall, & garry, 2014). this paper examines the poverty reduction potential of social marketing in tourism development, taking the town of sapa, vietnam, a destination with a substantial level of poverty (sapa district people’s committee [spc], 2009), as a case study. by examining how residents understand the causes of poverty, this paper suggests that the views of poor people need to be better considered in using tourism as a means of poverty alleviation. they are the ones, who, from a social marketing perspective, are the target audience for agency interventions, which ultimately enable more appropriate approaches to poverty alleviation. the article first reviews the relevant literature on social marketing to create an understanding of the concept. next, it offers a brief description of the case study area and methods before presenting the main findings. the paper then suggests potential social marketing interventions and their implications before concluding. social marketing and poverty alleviation marketing is usually perceived as vital for firm or place based promotion in tourism, rather than as a means to alleviate poverty. however, its domain has long-since broadened from its economic focus. kotler and levy (1969) influentially suggested that the marketing concept conveys two different meanings. first, as the received view of marketing, it is associated with selling, distributing, influencing, and persuading. secondly, and more pertinently for the present paper, marketing is connected to serving and satisfying people’s needs and enriching people’s lives through better promotion of arts, cultural, educational and health services, and effective natural resource utilization. marketing is therefore inherently concerned with non-business interests and assisting organizations and communities in satisfying societal needs. although it has seen only limited recognition in the wider development literature (e.g. desai & potter, 2008), the relationship between marketing and development has been examined in a number of studies (duhaime, mctavish, & ross, 1985; hosley & wee, 1988; kilbourne, 2004). there are two main perspectives on the role of marketing in development. the first one focuses on economic development (klein, 1985), especially distribution channels. the second one, which forms the focus of the present paper, is the long recognized role of marketing in linking social and economic goals, especially with respect to poverty reduction (lavidge, 1970; lazer, 1996). over 50 years ago, lavidge (1970) argued that marketing had more roles than only facilitating consumer desire, including facilitating the drive for social justice by, for instance, discouraging harmful activities; and helping counter or mitigate the negative consequences of unsustainable social and environmental practices (hall, 2016). marketing is concerned with the struggle of poor people for subsistence – because it is impossible to satisfy people’s other needs if they suffer from hunger and starvation – and can be used to promote social and cultural services to enable people to develop their potential. finally, it encourages the adoption of new behaviors and approaches to protect and improve well-being at micro (individual), meso (community) and macro (society) levels (hall, 2013; truong & hall, 2013). the exchanges on which marketing is focused are an essential social activity that go beyond monetary exchange (bagozzi, 1975). therefore, it is inappropriate to solely define marketing in terms of the economic ends of buying, selling, and distributing 127exploring the poverty reduction potential of social marketing in tourism development goods and services (lazer & kelley, 1973). although commercial and social marketing have developed parallel to each other (andreasen, 2012), examples of public good initiatives that marketing contributes to include: institutional change (savitt, 1988), conservation (hall, 2014; truong, willemsen, dang, nguyen, & hall, 2016), poverty reduction (lavidge, 1970; lazer, 1996), improved health behaviors (hastings, 2007), anti-corruption (hosley & wee, 1988), sustainable behaviors (mckenzie-mohr, 1994, 2011; musgrave & henderson, 2015), and quality-of-life and well-being (andreasen, 2006; ger, 1992). research suggests that since the late 1960s elements of social marketing have been used in public health initiatives and interventions in developing countries (hastings, 2007; macfadyen, stead, & hastings, 1999; truong, 2014), and have helped promote a range of programs, including distributing contraceptives and treated mosquito nets to at-risk people, as well as targeting a range of hiv/aids and sanitation programs. such programs often positively changed the behavior of the target audience, which was important for improving living conditions and community development, and although not specifically aimed at poverty alleviation they positively affected the poverty situation of the target market (kotler & lee, 2009). for example, social marketing programs aimed at family planning were implemented in india, sri lanka, and vietnam, where contraceptives were offered at a low price and education and mass communication components were developed to encourage local people to reduce birth rates as a means to alleviate poverty (macfadyen, 1999). other programs also utilized social marketing techniques although they did not label themselves in social marketing terms. one of the best known examples is the grameen bank’s adoption of a marketing approach to poverty alleviation in bangladesh where microloans were provided to the bottom 25% lowest income earners of the population, consisting mainly of women (alwitt, 1995; yunus, 2007). a marketing mix was used including target segmentation, product development, positioning, relationship marketing, and word-of-mouth communication (dholakia & dholakia, 2001). although loans did not guarantee success, it did contribute to povertyescaping behavior given that local households gained income from developing their own micro businesses (yunus, 2007). at the upstream level (institutional change), the bank urged policy-makers to enlarge the narrow profit maximization approach to achieve social benefits (and still contribute to profits). although not always successful in lifting people out of poverty (karnani, 2007), the grameen bank experience has influenced development agencies and financial institutions to adopt an approach that is influenced by social marketing and target audience oriented (koku, 2009; lee & miller, 2012). a key element that social marketing brings to poverty alleviation strategies is the need to understand the target audience in order to increase the likelihood of successful behavioral change by appropriately shaping the intervention. a social marketing approach is different from pro-poor tourism (ppt) or other development initiatives because of its much stronger focus on the targeting and design of interventions to specific audiences and helping to articulate the voice of the poor (annis, 1991; rangan & mccaffrey, 2004). poor people are often excluded from the planning stages of social and economic projects that are meant to benefit them, while donor’s needs tend to take precedence (annis, 1991; rangan & mccaffrey, 2004; truong et al., 2014). 128 v. dao truong & c. michael hall  aseas 8(2) therefore, the adoption of social marketing practices can (1) help empower the poor by incorporating their voice in the early stage of a project and (2) improve the likelihood of the success of any policy intervention by ensuring that the intervention appropriately fits the needs and attributes of the targeted group (the audience or segment in social marketing terms). six criteria also act as benchmarks for social marketing interventions (andreasen, 2002; truong & hall, 2013): • behavior change goal(s): programs consider behavioral change as an objective and a primary outcome indicator; • audience research and segmentation: programs are designed based on understanding of audience needs and wants. formative research is conducted to achieve this target. program interventions are pre-tested. the audience is divided into homogenous segments; • social marketing mix: programs use the set of four ps in the traditional marketing mix (product, price, place, promotion). other ps may include people and policy; • exchange: something of value is offered to the audience to motivate behavioral change. it may be tangible (e.g. financial incentives) or intangible (e.g. emotional satisfaction); • upstream targeting: programs seek to influence other people relating to the target audience (e.g. local authorities, professional organizations, policymakers); and • competing behaviors: competing behaviors are considered by program interventions. they may be internal (e.g. the target audience’s current behavior) and/or external (e.g. ineffective policies). strategies are developed to eliminate or minimize these factors. arguably one of the most distinguishing features of a social marketing approach is the attention given to market segmentation and target audience research so that the social marketing mix is clearly designed to provide a clear and workable exchange proposition that will potentially succeed with the audience (hall, 2014). however, even though many tourism projects, including with respect to ppt, utilize marketing principles in either whole or part to achieve social and behavioral change (truong & hall, 2013), surprisingly the explicit connection between tourism and social marketing has been little addressed (hall, 2014; truong & hall, 2013, 2015; truong et al., 2014). while there is increased interest in the role and responsibility of national governments as well as international development agencies in poverty alleviation (hill & adrangi, 1999), kotler, roberto, and leisner (2006) argue that poverty remains in part because some people tend to maintain “poverty-staying behavior” (p. 235). for example, a survey of poor people in pakistan revealed that in attempting to engage in income-generating activities the local poor tend to choose a low-risk and lowincome option rather than a higher-risk but higher-income one. the low-risk and low-income activity is considered a form of poverty-staying behavior (kotler et al., 2006, p. 235). expanding on this, kotler and lee (2009) place poverty at the center of social marketing efforts and adopt a conventional marketing approach to poverty al129exploring the poverty reduction potential of social marketing in tourism development leviation, from situation analysis, target segmentation, goals and objectives setting to implementation, evaluation and monitoring. thereby, various dimensions of poverty (e.g. socio-economic, environmental) are examined, also including health, education, and family planning issues. most importantly, kotler and lee (2009) regard poor people as needing to be active participants in identifying and solving their own problems. while this paper does not share the notion that individuals are fully responsible for their own condition, instead emphasizing the importance of structural and institutional reasons for poverty, it does support the notion that poor people should be active participants in the development and implementation of poverty reduction interventions, including in tourism (hall, 2014). in order to do so, it is important to first of all understand how residents perceive the causes of poverty and see whether social marketing could be a potential contributor to poverty alleviation. the next section describes the case study area for this research. case study area covering an area of 68,329 ha, sapa is located in the mountainous province of lao cai and is about 400 km from vietnam’s capital of hanoi. administratively, sapa consists of sapa town and 17 communes with a total population of 53,549 inhabitants (general statistics office of vietnam [gsov], 2010). each commune has a people’s committee and a people’s council that control several villages. besides the national majority of kinh (vietnamese) people that account for 17.9% of population, sapa is home to several ethnic minority groups: h’mong (51.7%), red dzao (23%), tay (4.7%), dzay (1.4%), xa pho (1.1%), and other ethnic groups (0.2%) (spc, 2009). the regional economy has undergone substantial change, with the contribution of agro-forestry and fishing to sapa’s economy decreasing from 44.68% in 2000 to 29.83% in 2010, while that of tourism and services increased from 48.86% to 58.68% in the same period. although sapa’s household poverty rate decreased from 48.7% (2005) to 26.91% (2009), the national poverty rate is 9.6%, where poor people are defined as those who earn less than vnd (vietnamese dong) 500,000 (usd 23.8) and 400,000 (usd 19) per month in urban and rural areas, respectively (gsov, 2012). tourism started in sapa in the 1900s when the french developed the area as a hill station (michaud & turner, 2006). a sanatorium was completed in 1913 to house military officers and foreigners and a tourist office was opened in 1917. privately owned villas and hotels were built in sapa between 1920 and 1940. during the french war (1945-1954), the area was severely damaged (vu & sato, 2010) and in 1990, a railway network was built to connect sapa with hanoi and other provinces. in 2012, sapa attracted 610,000 tourist arrivals, a tenfold increase as compared to 60,000 tourist arrivals in 2002 (truong et al., 2014). since 1993, when sapa was reopened to tourists, tourism has been an important sector in the local economy and a means of poverty alleviation (spc, 2009). it has attracted substantial funding from international ngos and development agencies (truong & hall, 2013). different approaches have been adopted in development projects such as awareness raising, capacity building, stakeholder partnership, and skills training. none of these ngos and development agencies labeled their projects in social marketing terms, although some elements of social marketing were used in 130 v. dao truong & c. michael hall  aseas 8(2) project design and implementation (truong & hall, 2013). however, only limited attention was given to the aspirations and expectations of the locals, particularly the poor (truong et al., 2014). method the research upon which this paper is based examines residents’ understanding of the causes of poverty to consequently investigate the potential that social marketing bears for poverty reduction in the context of tourism. an important element was identifying what the target audience for poverty reduction interventions perceived as the cause of their poverty and how they understood the role of tourism as a reduction measure. a phenomenological approach was adopted that focuses on the lived experiences of members of the study communities in order to allow local people to voice their opinions of poverty and alleviation barriers (holden, sonne, & novelli, 2011; szarycz, 2009). research data was collected from august to november 2012. most fieldwork was conducted in sapa town and three communes (lao chai, ta van, ta phin) where tourism is more developed than in other communes in the region (truong et al., 2014). they are also among the poorest communes in sapa (spc, 2009). the researchers conducted 47 semi-structured interviews with 47 local people in vietnamese lasting 25-45 minutes and five interviews with development consultants in english language lasting 40-60 minutes). notes were also taken from conversations with foreign tourists. initially, interviews were carried out with members of the local women’s union because they clearly understood local living conditions and were gatekeepers to local networks. a local guide was also hired throughout the fieldwork. field notes were taken and used to enrich interview and observation data. some interviewees were chosen because their incomes were below the official national poverty lines (gsov, 2012), while others were selected with the help of a member of the local women’s union and these were not necessarily poor in economic terms. there were two main reasons for this purposive selection. first, local people might hold different views of poverty as compared to researchers and policy-makers (holden et al., 2011). second, other factors such as health, education, and social service access should also be considered in identifying people that official definitions of poverty may not capture (truong et al., 2014). the key themes identified include local people’s interpretation of poverty and poverty causes, experiences in tourism, and perception of the barriers to poverty alleviation. these themes are discussed below. findings interviewees’ profiles of the 47 interviewees, 36 were female ranging from 15 to 71 years old and 11 were male from 13 to 71 years old. local women were a majority in the interview sample because they are often family heads and are thus sensitive to financial matters and the living conditions of their families. the average age of interviewees was 36 years (female interviewees: 37; males: 31). in terms of ethnicity, 20 respondents were h’mong, 18 red dzao, six kinh who constitute the vietnamese mainstream society, and three 131exploring the poverty reduction potential of social marketing in tourism development are dzay. eleven people were based in ta van, ten in ta phin, six in lao chai, five in sapa town, and 15 in other communes. all quotes are anonymized. locals’ perception of poverty is presented first before the causes of poverty are analyzed and the findings are put into relation with social marketing. local perception of the nature of poverty a large majority of interviewees indicated that growing rice is their main occupation and generates most income. some also grow corn and medicinal fruit (which is grown under forest trees and exported to china). the perception of poverty is closely related to the amount of rice produced per year. when asked what poverty means to residents, most of the interviewees said it meant not producing enough rice to feed their families: i think poverty means having a lack of rice. i do not know the poverty criteria that are applied by the local authority. (linh, ta van commune) some respondents indicated that poverty is associated with a lack of income. to them, although they may have enough rice to feed their families, they are poor if they have no money to meet their daily needs. in addition, residents also distinguish hunger from poverty. if they do not have enough rice to feed their families, they suffer hunger. they consider themselves poor if they produce enough rice but have no money to buy vegetables and meat: people here think of poverty as not having enough rice… my family has enough rice for the whole year but we still consider ourselves poor. if we do not have enough rice to eat, we call ourselves hunger sufferers. (pham, ta van commune) the perception of poverty also varies by education level. younger and more educated respondents (i.e. who receive formal schooling) have more holistic perceptions of poverty: poverty is identified by the farming land area, the number of people in a family and total incomes. in general, many factors can be used to define poor families. (do, sapa town, university graduate) however, such holistic views are atypical. most local people frame poverty as something integral to their lives, i.e. rice to feed families. none of those interviewed understands the poverty criteria that are applied by sapa’s authority, nor does s/he have any idea about the poverty levels established by the vietnamese government. while this may be attributed to education levels, it also suggests that government views of poverty are significantly different from those of poor people. criticism of official definitions neither denies the hardships from which local people suffer nor undermines efforts to estimate the number of poor people. rather, it emphasizes that poor people have their own meanings of poverty. this suggests that in order to develop meaningful interventions for the target audience (e.g. social marketing 132 v. dao truong & c. michael hall  aseas 8(2) initiatives) and therefore increase likelihood of success, poverty measures must start from a local understanding of poverty and its causes. local perception of poverty causes in explaining the causes of poverty, some interviewees attributed poverty to environmental factors, with limited arable land and bad weather frequently cited. some blamed social causes for poverty, including overpopulation, lack of education, and hesitance to change. others ascribed poverty to both external and internal causes. farming conditions are cited as the most important cause of poverty. the mountainous rice fields can accommodate only one annual crop (april-october). in addition, a shortage of water for the uphill terraced fields is a regular occurrence in the dry season. traditionally, local people used to marry very young and have large families. this practice is still common among some h’mong people  (kim, ta van commune). the issue in terms of rice production is that land is distributed equally as it is passed down the generations, and the resulting ever-smaller land parcels produce less rice. some respondents also attributed poverty to location, increased commodity prices, and ineffective government assistance that did not necessarily reach the poorest households (hoa, ta van commune; kim, ta van commune). local people’s hesitance to adopt new practices may be because they tend to trust people whom they “admire”, instead of government officials (my, ta van commune). however, shu (sapa town) suggested that “the problem lies in government officials (the majority kinh) explaining nothing to local people, who are culturally different”. if this suggestion holds, it means that the vietnamese government’s approach to poverty alleviation, and even potentially those of some ngos, may not have fully considered the different cultural contexts of people in sapa and the relationships between them. this situation is likely also exacerbated by the many local people engaged in subsistence lifestyles. for example, although the vietnamese government offers free education for ethnic minority children, local parents often keep their children working in rice fields or selling handicrafts instead of sending them to school. to other respondents, local people are poor because they are “lazy” (hang, sapa town), lack business knowledge (shan, lao chai commune), are not educated (lam, san xa ho commune), do not save money (chien, sapa town), or simply lack access to information (peter, development agency, sapa town). some of these causes are also perceived to be barriers to local people participating in tourism. local people’s experiences with tourism although tourism is promoted as an economic development and poverty alleviation tool in sapa, the main beneficiaries of tourism are perceived to be private sector hotels and tour operators, often run by the majority kinh people: business owners are only concerned about their own interests. most of them are kinh people. ethnic minorities can only sell handicrafts. (do, sapa town) 133exploring the poverty reduction potential of social marketing in tourism development eight out of ten tourism businesses here are run by people coming from other areas. the other two are run by locals. however, they are all kinh people. private businesses only care about their own interests. (tam, hotel staff, sapa town) local ethnic minorities often lack the knowledge, skills, and capital needed to participate in tourism. language is also a barrier because most of the respondents can only speak their own language and basic vietnamese. some can speak basic english, but writing skills are limited. in contrast, the majority of kinh people are generally better educated with the knowledge, skills, funds, and networks to run tourism businesses. since local ethnic minorities have little alternative livelihoods outside of the main rice crop, most of them are informally involved in tourism by following foreign tourists to sell handicrafts. upon arriving at sapa square, sapa market, or at village entrances, tourists are approached by local women who introduce themselves and follow them on their treks, asking them to buy handicrafts. when local women are asked why they follow tourists, a common response is that it is because they are poor with much free time after the rice crop harvest and need money to buy food and fertilizer (thanh, lao chai commune). selling handicrafts in the streets does not generate a stable income and there are long periods when sellers make no business at all. in addition, the work is tiring because the seller women often follow tourists on 20-24 km treks. some local women know that tourists are not happy being followed (tan and may, thanh kim commune) and others believe that some tourists may feel curious at first, but then are not comfortable once they realize local women are following them (lam, san xa ho commune). as a consequence, sapa’s authorities have attempted to stop local women from following tourists by allocating specific spaces in sapa market and sapa square for handicraft sellers. to get a space in the market, interested people need to register at a local office, while in the square, all sellers can sell their products. a code of conduct team was formed to oversee handicraft sellers and fine sellers if caught selling handicrafts in the streets. however, the number of street vendors did not decrease, with some women complaining that they could not get a space to sell their products (tan and may, thanh kim commune). after all, most spaces in the market are occupied by kinh people and only some spaces on the second floor are allocated to ethnic minorities. at the same time, the square is an unroofed outdoor space, where handicraft sellers cannot do business on sunny or rainy days. this suggests that the options offered by sapa’s authority are less beneficial than following tourists to sell handicrafts (do, sapa town). however, the economic benefits for handicraft sellers are also doubtful, with some interviewees stating that many seller women do not want to stay in the market and square because they can sell more handicrafts by following tourists (do, sapa town). some development agencies (e.g. snv netherlands development agency) have worked with sapa’s authority to reduce the number of handicraft sellers. a community market was built in ta phin, where local women could sell handicrafts. however, the market was small, did not have enough spaces for all sellers and was inappropriately located. those who did not get a space kept following tourists and sold more handicrafts. other markets built in lao chai and ta van were also abandoned 134 v. dao truong & c. michael hall  aseas 8(2) because they were not well located. attempts to develop communal entrance tickets to villages have also not benefited the poor. the ticketing offices are small posts established at the entrance of such villages as cat cat and ta phin and the fees are supposed to be used for community development. however, a widespread perception among local people is that the fees have primarily benefited village chiefs and/or commune leaders: “they [local authorities] keep saying that the ticket fees belong to the villagers but i have seen nothing” (lien, san xa ho commune; su, ta van commune). as such, the failure of the local authority and development agencies to stop local women from following tourists can be attributed both to the economically less attractive alternatives offered and the longstanding business practices of local women. perceived barriers to poverty alleviation through tourism when respondents were asked about the main barriers they face in moving out of poverty, insufficient capital was most frequently cited, followed by limited farming land. these barriers were also mentioned by the consultants of development agencies in sapa (peter, development agency, sapa town). a large majority of residents in sapa wish to participate in tourism, often as homestay owners, tour guides, and handicraft sellers as a means to move out of poverty. after all, local people view tourism as one of the few, if not the only, remaining income generator, although they are aware that in many cases tourism does not necessarily alleviate poverty. nevertheless, a large majority of ethnic minority women in sapa are only able to participate in tourism informally, by following tourists to sell handicrafts. reasons for this are firstly that they are unable to get formal tourism jobs such as working in hotels and travel agencies. secondly, the alternatives offered by sapa’s authority (e.g. market spaces) are not adequate for all sellers and are economically less beneficial than following tourists. many local women are used to this selling practice, some of whom have over ten years of experience. however, this way of selling has resulted in tourists’ discomfort as discussed above. although it is a focal point for government and many ngos, tourism is not necessarily the only way to lift poor people out of poverty in sapa. indeed, one tourism consultant stated, “we need to agree that tourism is one alternative livelihood option only” (quang, tourism consultant, hanoi). instead, making more forest land available for farming could be an appropriate measure and a way of reducing the number of handicraft sellers. as the above consultant described, “if farmers are deprived of land, then they lose their most powerful weapon”. if given more land, local people could grow more rice and medicinal fruit and thereby earn an income by providing some locally produced food to tourism businesses. however, increased land in the forest and/or income earned from agriculture or tourism does not necessarily translate into poverty alleviation if the population keeps growing or if income is not invested in longer-term developments. use of social marketing for poverty alleviation through tourism although not aware of social marketing, project managers and consultants may have already utilized several or all elements of this concept (truong & hall, 2013), also in 135exploring the poverty reduction potential of social marketing in tourism development the case of sapa. indeed, one of the local tourism consultants stated, as practitioners, we do not pay substantial attention to the theoretical aspects of social marketing. i think it is a new concept. however, i want to emphasize that it is very likely tourism practitioners have already used the tools of social marketing, although they are not aware of the concept. (quang, tourism consultant, hanoi) quang went on to elaborate the tools used in projects in which he has been involved: our project tools have been used to influence a variety of audiences, including host communities, schools, communal authority, and even the national administration of tourism. differing interventions are made on different audience segments. for example, policy changes are advocated at management bodies, while responsible travel clubs are established to target businesses and tourists. environmental awareness programmes, extra-curricular activities, and contests are organized at school level. performing competitions are also held as we realize that local ethnic minorities have a keen passion for performances. additionally, training sessions and study tours are also provided. (quang, tourism consultant, hanoi). the tools described above appear to match the elements of the social marketing benchmarks previously discussed. this reinforces the argument that social marketing as an approach seems to have been applied in some tourism projects but is not labeled specifically as social marketing. however, it needs to be noted that the majority of the tourism consultants interviewed have never heard about the concept of social marketing: i have no idea about social marketing. i think social marketing consists of all marketing activities undertaken to benefit all segments in society. (thang, tourism consultant, hanoi) i am not aware of the social marketing concept. i heard about it but i do not really know about it. i think it involves the use of social media technologies and so on. (michael, tourism consultant, hanoi) the above comments clearly raise questions about the potential contribution of social marketing to development. as noted above, a key element of social marketing is to provide something of interest to the target audience (“exchange”, tangible and/ or intangible). target audience research helps identify what the exchange might be that leads to the adoption of new practices. importantly, exchange does not just refer to an exchange in monetary terms. although tangible benefits (e.g. money) may have direct behavior impacts, intangible benefits (e.g. community pride, sense of ownership) may generate long-term outcomes (hall, 2014; truong & hall, 2013). ultimately, the perceived benefits of any new behavior must outweigh the perceived costs in order for people to try it. 136 v. dao truong & c. michael hall  aseas 8(2) therefore, focus may be put on (hall, 2014, p. 75): • increasing and highlighting the benefits to the target audience • decreasing or de-emphasizing the barriers to the adoption of new behaviors • changing the product, place, price or promotion to meet the exchange a social marketing approach assists in framing development issues differently. for example, several previous interventions trying to provide women in sapa with alternative venues for the selling of handicrafts have failed, as discussed earlier. therefore, a social marketing approach, which attaches particular importance to understanding the target audience, may provide new insights on how best to help alleviate poverty. discussion and recommendations this research showed that local people in sapa, of whom a majority are rice farmers, perceive poverty mainly as a lack of rice. some consider themselves as poor although they may produce enough rice but do not have sufficient money to meet their daily needs. multiple views of poverty were found, particularly among the educated that combine several factors in defining poverty (e.g. land area, family size). the most critical barrier to poverty alleviation in sapa is the lack of capital and farming land. offering the local poor preferential loans and access to secure land tenure therefore appears to be the most appropriate exchange to reduce the number of handicraft sellers. although sapa’s authority and ngos have embraced tourism as a poverty alleviation tool, poor people have no access to reap benefits from tourism. the aspirations and expectations of the local poor in relation to tourism have been considered only to a limited extent by either the local authority or project organizations. social marketing can address this issue given its focus on the target audience in designing and implementing any behavioral change intervention (hall, 2014; truong & hall, 2013). furthermore, without such research, the barriers to improve well-being are often not recognized. again, it is social marketing’s strong focus on the target audience that differentiates it from other participatory approaches as discussed earlier in this paper (hall, 2014). this study revealed that most local women are involved in tourism informally, following tourists to sell handicrafts, which causes discomfort on the tourists’ side. although efforts have been made by sapa’s authority and development agencies to manage the situation, the issue remains. when development agencies have sought to bring about behavioral change, appropriate research has not been undertaken to understand local people’s needs (e.g. for more farming land), including cultural differences. as a consequence, the interventions have not been designed effectively. local people have not been asked previously about reasons for their behavior (e.g. why they keep following tourists) and what they could do to improve their well-being. this is arguably one of the main contributions that a social marketing approach can bring to poverty alleviation strategies. it is significant not just for ‘downstream’ social marketing that focuses on the target audience but also ‘upstream’ social marketing that influences institutional perspectives (hall, 2014). this approach also goes beyond many ppt and sustainable marketing practices (hall, 2013; raymond & hall, 2008). 137exploring the poverty reduction potential of social marketing in tourism development nevertheless, even with a focus on a target audience, the capacity of social marketing to encourage social and economic change in tourism development is limited. the most critical structural barrier to poverty alleviation in sapa is a lack of farming land and capital. however, even here a social marketing approach can help reveal the behavioral changes that can occur once structural conditions, often related to wellintended regulatory and policy measures, are changed (hall, 2013). there is a need for authorities to view farming land and practices as part of long-term poverty reduction measures. an integrated approach to poverty reduction that incorporates local as well as agency perspectives is therefore required. such an approach would combine an appropriate downstream focus on behavioral change with an upstream emphasis on changing institutional practices and structures. this research suggests that the experience of the bangladeshi grameen bank (yunus, 2007) may offer some important learning points for the implementation of a social marketing program in sapa (table 1). it is recommended that, at the downstream level, a community microloan scheme would be an appropriate development. a community fund may also be established where the communal entrance fees are retained. groups of four to five local poor households each (headed by women) are formed (target audience) and provided with preferential loans (exchange). group members may be empowered to manage the loans without having to pay an interest rate. given preferential (non-interest) loans, it is likely that the burden of interest and hence the barrier to borrowing loans is waived. the provided loans should be adequate to establish a micro business (e.g. a handicraft shop) or purchase building material (e.g. for a homestay). given their participation in community activities, members of the local women’s union may assist in disseminating information, motivating poor families, promoting local cultural values, and monitoring the effective use of the given loans. the desired outcome is a reduction in the number of handicraft sellers in the streets (behavior change as the objective of the program). however, such measures should not occur in isolation and the development of a new land policy is essential. similarly, loans may impoverish poor people if they are not effectively invested or if they are invested in homestay or handicraft business but do not generate profits due to limited tourists. this argument suggests that social marketing interventions should be made for encouraging the private sector in sapa to support poor people by recommending guests to stay overnight in local homestays and by training homestay owners in skills connected to hosting tourists, thereby bridging the divide between profit making and poverty alleviation. at the upstream level, the government of vietnam may facilitate favorable conditions for the recruitment of poor people by tourism businesses. for example, incentives (e.g. partial tax exemption) can support businesses that employ and provide vocational training to poor people. in addition, some provisions may be added to national tourism legislation that encourage tourism businesses to provide equal employment, income, and promotion opportunities to poor ethnic minorities. these measures would be particularly significant given that vietnam’s tourism law already advocates tourism development that helps improve the living conditions of poor people in areas with socio-economic difficulties (truong, 2013). 138 v. dao truong & c. michael hall  aseas 8(2) conclusion this research has explored the poverty reduction potential of social marketing in the tourist town of sapa, vietnam. through participant observations and semi-structured interviews with local poor people, this study has shown that poverty tends to be interpreted relatively differently and is attributed to both internal and external causes. although tourism may be a potential contributor to poverty alleviation in sapa, the potential to distribute benefits has been substantially reduced by barriers to business development and employment. the wealthier members of society and tour program element description behavior change goal encouraging local women to stop following tourists to sell handicrafts. target audience poor people in lao chai, ta van, ta phin, and sapa town who lack capital and land. exchange (a) microloans for buying wood and building material (homestays), opening handicraft shops or other small businesses. (b) farming land for growing rice and medicinal fruit. marketing mix (a) product: microloans, farming land. (b) price: loans are interest-free (or otherwise a token interest rate may apply) (see (e)). (c) promotion: information is disseminated by members of the local women’s union, local elders, and village chiefs. these people may be trained to work effectively with poor people. other mediums may also be used such as brochures and flyers. (d) place: lao chai, ta van, ta phin, and sapa town, where a microloan scheme and/or community fund is established. (e) collateral requirements: groups of poor households are formed, which are headed by women. these women supervise the effective use of the loans. loan recipients may be required to be committed to reducing birth rates and sending children to school. they may also need to be committed to protecting the land allocated to them. (f) process: a simple loan application process with minimal paperwork is used. upstream targeting (a) communal authorities, village chiefs, and women’s union participate in assisting poor people. (b) local tourism businesses are encouraged to provide employment and/or income opportunities to poor people. (c) national government: advocacies may be undertaken to promote changes in relevant land and/or forest policies. changes in the tourism law may also be required to provide incentives to businesses that offer employment and income to poor people. (d) other stakeholders such as foreign ngos may participate in working with the gov and making program activities recognized and supported by the gov. competition local people are used to following tourists; tension between tourism growth, poverty alleviation, and sustainable development. table 1. summary of a proposed social marketing program for sapa (own compilation). 139exploring the poverty reduction potential of social marketing in tourism development operators are perceived as the main beneficiaries of tourism. local women often follow tourists to sell handicrafts, resulting in discomfort on tourists’ side and conflict amongst community members. the most critical barriers preventing participation include insufficient knowledge, skills, work experience, and funds, and poor foreign language proficiency. overall, limited capital and farming land is the most important obstacle to poverty alleviation. a well-developed social marketing approach that focuses on the needs of the target audience would allow this audience to have a voice in change processes, much more than in the context of ppt. indeed, an appropriately structured social marketing approach will not only seek to ask what kind of tourism places want to pursue, but ultimately, whether they wish to introduce tourism at all (hall, 2007). there is possibly no better way to establish meaningful approaches to poverty alleviation than to understand the locally poor, and to do so by raising important questions as well as allowing them to voice their opinions. it is at this point that social marketing holds great potential given its focus on gaining insights into the target audience and their behaviors. strong social marketing helps identify the poor amongst all community members, assists in understanding their needs and wants, and ultimately helps bring their marginalized voices to the attention of those making policies and decisions that affect their lives. while this paper has shown that social marketing can be a useful tool in addressing poverty reduction through tourism, more research is required that specifically focuses on social marketing initiatives and their results in practice.  references alwitt, l. 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(2015). promoting voluntary behaviour change for sustainable tourism: the potential role of social marketing. in c. m. hall, s. gössling, & d. scott (eds.), the routledge handbook of tourism and sustainability (pp. 246-260). abingdon, uk: routledge. truong, v. d., hall, c. m., & garry, t. (2014). tourism and poverty alleviation: perceptions and experiences of poor people in sapa, vietnam. journal of sustainable tourism, 22(7), 1071-1089. truong, v. d., willemsen, m., dang, v. h. n., nguyen, t., & hall, c. m. (2016). the marketplace management of illegal elixirs: illicit consumption of rhino horn. consumption markets & culture. doi: 10.1080/10253866.2015.1108915. vu, n., & sato, m. (2010). tourism and amenity migration in hill stations: the case study of sapa in vietnam. advanced tourism studies, 7, 1-16. yunus, m. (2007). creating a world without poverty – social business and the future of capitalism. new york, ny: public affairs. about the authors v. dao truong is based at the tourism research in economic environs & society (trees), north-west university, south africa and the department of tourism and hospitality, national economics university, hanoi, vietnam. ► contact: vandao83@yahoo.co.uk c. michael hall works at the university of canterbury, christchurch, new zealand and is also a visitor to the university of oulu, finland and the linnaeus university school of business and economics, sweden. ► contact: michael.hall@canterbury.ac.nz imagining the land of the two holy mosques: the social and doctrinal importance of saudi arabia in indonesian salafi discourse chris chaplin ► chaplin, c. (2014). imagining the land of the two holy mosques: the social and doctrinal importance of saudi arabia in indonesian salafi discourse. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 7(2), 217-236. the emergence of salafi islam within indonesia has shifted the imaginary boundaries of islamic identity. although relatively small in numbers, salafis propagate a religious discourse linked to scholars in saudi arabia. while it cannot be regarded as merely a type of ‘saudization’, the kingdom is frequently exemplified as a model for a pious society as well as pragmatic solutions on how to deal with contemporary issues ranging from justice to terrorism. indeed, saudi arabia plays a pivotal part in the salafi imaginary, balancing a historical islamic past with a modernist religious present and future. based on fieldwork conducted from 2011 to 2012 in yogyakarta, this paper builds upon this premise, offering both a description and an analysis of the importance of the kingdom as a source of educational sponsorship but also, more interestingly, as a source of religious authority and social ideals, articulated within contemporary religious literature and the movement’s study sessions (kajian). more pointedly, i argue that actors use saudi arabia to construct an imaginary ideal through which social and religious issues are contemplated and compared to apparent indonesian ‘social corruption’. keywords: indonesia; religious renewal; salafism; saudi arabia; social imaginaries  mit dem auftreten des salafismus in indonesien wurden die imaginären grenzen islamischer identität verschoben. obwohl sie nicht zahlreich sind, propagieren salafistinnen einen diskurs, der sich auf gelehrte in saudi-arabien bezieht. während der salafismus nicht bloß als eine art von „saudisierung“ angesehen werden kann, wird das königreich oft als modell für eine fromme gesellschaft sowie für pragmatische lösungen betreffend fragen von gerechtigkeit bis terrorismus dargestellt. in der tat spielt saudi-arabien eine zentrale rolle in der salafistischen vorstellung, indem es eine historische islamische vergangenheit mit einer modernen gegenwart und zukunft ausgleicht. basierend auf feldforschung in yogyakarta von 2011 bis 2012 baut dieser artikel auf den oben genannten annahmen auf und analysiert die bedeutung des königreichs als quelle für bildungsförderung und, noch interessanter, als quelle religiöser autorität und sozialer ideale, dargeboten in zeitgenössischer religiöser literatur und in studentischen versammlungen der bewegung (kajian). es wird gezeigt, dass saudi-arabien für die konstruktion eines imaginären ideals verwendet wird, durch das soziale und religiöse themen betrachtet werden und "soziale korruption" in indonesien verdeutlicht wird. schlagworte: indonesien; religiöse erneuerung; salafismus; saudi-arabien; soziale vorstellungen aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 14 .2 -6 218 chris chaplin  aseas 7(2) introduction the emergence of salafi islam within indonesia has, for its adherents, shifted the imaginary and ethical boundaries of islamic identity. although relatively small in numbers, salafis propagate a religious discourse linked to scholars and educational institutions in saudi arabia that they believe emulate the salaf al-salih (which they interpret as the first three generations of muslims). while it cannot be regarded as merely a type of ‘saudization’, the land of the two holy mosques plays a pivotal part in the salafi imaginary, balancing a historical islamic past with an ideal religious future. frequently exemplified, saudi arabia is not only the caretaker of islam’s most holy sites, but provides a model for an imagined pious society (compared to the perceived immorality of indonesia) as well as pragmatic solutions on how to deal with contemporary issues from justice to terrorism. based on fieldwork conducted from 2011 to 2012 in yogyakarta, this paper explores the importance of the saudi kingdom among salafis as a source of educational and financial sponsorship, but also, more interestingly, as a place of religious authority and ideals. i approach the subject through a focus on religious literature and study sessions (kajian) prevalent in yogyakarta. my line of enquiry does not relate to a singular foundation or group, but rather looks more widely at a variety of agents active under the label ‘salafi’ within the religious landscape. in doing so, i maintain that salafism is a broad, translocal, multi-layered, and multi-stranded social movement that encapsulates a variety of different actors, institutions, and foundations. it is sustained not through any singular organizational structure, but through the lived experiences, divergences, and multiple ways in which it is ‘enacted’ within a given locale. in yogyakarta, its proponents include (but are not exclusive to) wahdah islamiyah, the yayasan majelis at-turots al-islamy (at-turots al-islamy foundation, at-turots), and yayasan pendidikan islam al-atsary (ypia, al-atsary islamic education foundation). these actors often differ and disagree in the modes and methods through which they promote salafi teachings, not shying away from contention in relation to religious practice. yet, they nevertheless share similar global linkages and utilize saudi arabia in remarkably similar ways. indeed, the use of saudi sources and imaginaries in order to promote specific religious practices is perhaps a crucial overarching characteristic that conjoins a variety of ‘salafi’ strands throughout indonesia. through a description of the ways salafi doctrine ‘travels’ (said, 1983) and is ‘framed’ (benford & snow, 1986), i argue that the image of saudi arabia is used by actors to construct an imaginary ideal through which social and religious issues are reflected. for salafis, any religious decision must find its legitimacy in saudi sources. further, saudi society itself is utilized as a model of piety that adherents should strive towards. yet, while this imaginary is built on real links and experiences, it fails to move beyond a normative set of values and look at the complexities and nuances of saudi society itself. moreover, as salafism is not based on any unifying organizational and hierarchical ‘center’, its spread depends as much on global linkages as it does on the ability of local agents to adapt religious resources to a given context. consequently, the need to recompose global sources at the local level inevitably requires a level of adaptation that creates a degree of distance from any idealized image of saudi 219imagining the land of the two holy mosques arabia. this does not render the image ineffectual, but rather, for salafis, it becomes part of an ‘emancipatory desire’ constantly insisted upon, even if impossible to enact. framing salafism and religious legitimacy prior to analyzing the modes through which particular socio-historical images of an islamic society and saudi arabia penetrate indonesian salafi discourse, a descriptive account as to what i mean by the term salafism (and salafism in indonesia, more specifically) is needed. the phrase derives from the phrase as-salaf, referring to ‘those who came before us’. it is commonly utilized in islamic thought to denote the companions of the prophet muhammad and, generally, those who believe they follow the examples of these early generations (hassim, 2010). indeed, despite its recent popularity as a ‘catch-all’ phrase to label a variety of conservative islamic groups with significant theological differences (for example, see fradkin, 2008), the importance of the term salafi can be traced to earlier periods of islamic history. hassim, for example, states that it was commonly used in the abbasid era to distinguish ‘guided’ muslims from those that deviated from the orthodox creed, although he also stresses that it was used before this period (hassim, 2010). steeped in islamic historical significance, ‘salafi’ thus resonates among islamic advocates and has, perhaps unsurprisingly, been applied to a variety of factions claiming to uphold islamic traditions. in indonesia, for instance, the organizations muhammadiyah and persatuan islam (persis, islamic unity) have often been referred to as having ‘salafi’ elements due to their use of the turn-of-the-nineteenth-century reformist ideas of the egyptian muhammad abduh and his colleagues – also popularly denoted as the salafiyya (hassim, 2010).1 as important as this is, i do not wish to delve too deeply into the nuances concerning the variety of theologians and movements who lay claim to the phrase. rather, returning to the topic at hand, this brief description underlines not only the significance of the term, but also the importance in qualifying to whom one refers when applying it (and indeed what they themselves mean when engaging with the term). my description thus utilizes ‘salafi’ fairly narrowly in reference to a broad social movement that entered indonesia during the 1980s and has links to several scholars who studied at islamic universities in the saudi kingdom. referring to itself as a particular manhaj (methodology), the movement aims to ‘literally’ apply islamic principles in order to emulate the salaf al-salih (by which they specifically refer to the first three generations of muslims – the sahabah, tabi’un, and tabi’ al-tabi’in) in every aspect of one’s life. following a rigid adherence to tawhid (monotheism) as well as to the athari aqida (creed) (while most indonesian muslims traditionally followed the ash’ari aqida), salafis condemn any ‘contextualization’ of islamic practice as well as any custom that may taint one’s absolute commitment to god – such as celebrating the prophet muhammad’s birthday or visiting the graves of islamic saints. in its place, they believe in a need for rigid adherence to the qur’an and sunnah, although it is notable that the way they study hadith is unique given the importance of muhammad nasir aldin al-albani (1914–1999), who questioned the authenticity of approximately 990 ha1 the use of the term salafiyya represented abduh’s ideal of re-engaging with islamic texts by going back to the main ‘sources’ of the qur’an and sunnah in order to find an islamic synthesis with concepts of modernity. 220 chris chaplin  aseas 7(2) dith considered authentic by most scholars (kamaruddin, 2004). it is, moreover, what mahmood (2005, p. 81)describes as a “post-madhaab” form of islamic religiosity that believes one cannot solely follow a particular ‘tradition’ or school of jurisprudence but, rather, must engage personally with islamic principles and practice. socio-historically, salafism emerged from the university of madinah during the 1960s, particularly among the followers of muhammad nasir al-din al-albani, who taught at the university’s faculty of hadith studies. although sharing similarities and quickly building bridges with several other global movements – such as the ahl-e hadith in south asia – the saudi roots of contemporary salafism have led several observers to link it to the ‘wahhabism’ of the kingdom’s religious elite (al-rasheed, 2007; roy, 2004). while correct in pointing out a similar set of historical references and socio-conservative values between the two, we must remember that conflating salafism and wahhabism ignores the level of contention within the saudi religious ‘field’, often between the institutionalized ‘wahhabism’ of the aimat al-da’wa al-najdiyya (religious notables of najd) and those who propagate a variety of other religious positions – including salafism (lacroix, 2011). indeed, the rise of salafism occurred much to the ire of the wahhabi elite at the time; they even successfully conspired to deny al-albani an extension of his visa in 1963 after he criticized muhammad bin abd’ al-wahhab’s (the āl-shaykh) reading of hadith. al-albani’s followers, referred to as the ahl al-hadith movement, who later grew into the jama’ah salafiyyah muhtasiba (loosely translated as the salafi jama’ah (group) that practice hisba, or the commanding of right and forbidding of wrong) thus began to promote a set of beliefs that challenged several tenants of wahhabi thought, including, but not limited to, their approach to hadith as well as adherence to the hanbali madhaab. in this light, salafism is perhaps best thought of as a reconstituted wahhabism (hasan, 2010), sharing several socio-conservative and theological similarities in relation to aqida, but also decoupled from the historical-scholastic lineage of the aimat al-da’wa al-najdiyya and traditional fiqih (jurisprudence). they have fallen in and out of favor with the religious and political elite of the kingdom, most notably during the 1970s when the jama’ah salafiyyah muhtasiba was subject to state repression, especially after some of its former members laid siege to the grand mosque in mecca in 1979. yet, salafism was also fortunate enough to benefit from influential support, especially due to the intimacy between its followers and the influential bin baz, who was a senior member of the majlis hay’a kibar al-ulama (council of the committee of senior ulama) and became grand mufti from 1993 to 1999. bin baz, the first grand mufti not to originate from the family of muhammad al-wahhab, was well respected among wahhabi scholars, never fully aligning with any religious ‘camp’ but rather mediating between religious factions within the kingdom. it was often at his behest and intervention that activists formerly involved in the ahl al-hadith and jama’ah salafiyyah muhtasiba received light treatment from saudi authorities during several periods of political repression (lacroix, 2011). by the 1980s, bin baz’s influence led many salafi ulama to engage with – and sit on – a variety of saudi-sanctioned islamic institutions including the council of the committee of senior ulama. not only did this provide space for salafi religious scholars, but it also endowed them with funding through which to facilitate religious programs, sermons, and social initiatives, often with little state oversight (lacroix, 221imagining the land of the two holy mosques 2011). it also coincided with a marked increase in funding for international religious programs. shaken by the challenge of the 1979 iranian revolution, the seizure of the grand mosque in mecca in the same year, and the soviet invasion of afghanistan, saudi authorities augmented their drive to dress themselves in religious colors abroad (al-rasheed, 2008). although salafi scholars initially suffered from repression given the involvement of some of their former followers in the seizure of the grand mosque, their collusion with and loyalty to saudi arabia in relation to the war in afghanistan brought them back into the fold (lacroix, 2011). this inevitably allowed activists to build bridges, provide scholarships, and construct mosques throughout the world – a process well documented in the work of meijer (2009), but also within analyses pertaining to salafism in germany (wurger, 2013), ethiopia (ostebo, 2011), and yemen (bonnefoy, 2011). underlining the aesthetical and referential similarities amongst salafis – all of whom reference similar religious scholars and sport either jalabiyaa (robes), beards, or the niqab (full veil) if they are women while avoiding isbal (trousers beyond the ankle) – such studies emphasized the commonalities and shared imaginative power of a ‘global umma’ utilized by a variety of actors throughout the world. yet, they also highlight how the spread of salafism is not the result of an organized state-based campaign, but has often circumvented direct state institutions and embedded itself in a variety of landscapes by transforming and recomposing itself in relation to the necessities of a given locale. indeed, its increased global appeal had as much to do with saudi arabia’s greater financial power as it did with wider global social transformations – mass urban migration, increased education, the ‘failure’ of cold war ideologies, and the advent of mass communication tools, all of which led to a qualitative shift in religiosity both globally (mandaville, 2007; roy, 2004) and in indonesia (effendy, 2003; feely & white, 2008; hasan, 2006; sidel, 2006). the resurgence of islamic identity from the 1980s onwards was, as studies have shown, not linked to any established form of islamic authority, but came to rely on an individual’s ability to reflexively think of oneself as primarily muslim and to consider what this meant vis-à-vis the state, one’s peers, the wider community, and market forces. consequently, this presents a challenge to delineating a coherent salafism. for example, from a social movement perspective, ‘resource or political mobilization’ (for example, see mcadam & mccarthy, 1996) is, given salafism’s frequent lack of explicit political mobilization, inadequate. the movement, rather than having a specific framework for engaging state and society, is based on what hassim (2010) labels a particular ‘paradigm of thought’ that leads to a set of discursive practices drawing on a similar theological and socio-historical disposition. it remains a social movement, however, one that does not have clear-cut boundaries or objectives, preferring to be enriched through multi-layered and multi-directional characteristics, representing an enmeshment of people and lived experiences. in adopting such a definition, i borrow from the work of lehmann and siebzehner (2006) who, through their study of the shas (sephardic ‘orthodox’ religious political party in israel), highlight how a multi-directional religious movement can reshape the intricacies and the very boundaries of a religio-ethnic community. social movements often do not have specific objectives or even a defined set of ideas, but rather exist as the object of allegiance by individuals, whose own actions, built upon what bayat (2005, pp. 891–908) 222 chris chaplin  aseas 7(2) terms “imagined solidarities”, endow the movement with new debates, programs, and strands. this approach allows us to encapsulate a variety of salafi ‘strands’ in our analysis that, while varying in their scope and nuances, can be tied together through similar linkages, both real and referential. moreover, if we were to ‘epidemiologically’ trace their history in indonesia, we could see several similar roots such as the founding of the lembaga ilmu pengetahuan islam dan arab (lipia, institute for arabic and islamic knowledge, a branch of the riyadh-based imam muhammad ibn saud university) in jakarta in 1980, an increase in scholarships to study in saudi arabia through the dewan dakwah islamiyah indonesia (ddii, indonesian islamic propagation council), an influx of saudi-trained scholars, and a crisis in islamic authority linked to political repression by suharto’s new order. indeed, for many young muslims who, through rapid urbanization and access to educational facilities, neither identified with the belief system (islamic or otherwise) of their parents’ generation nor the official pancasila ideology of the state, islam provided an ideational reference point through which one could embody a modern identity. this process not only led to a form of religiosity that fealy (2008, p. 15) believed penetrated further into social, cultural, and political life than ever before, but also an influx of scholastic works linked to ‘global’ movements including – but not exclusive to – salafism. prior to continuing, it is important to point out that the emphasis on the hejaz and middle east more broadly – a key part of salafi discourse – is not new to indonesian islam.2 indeed, the requirement of every able muslim to undergo the hajj points to the importance of the region for the religion as a whole. for muslims in southeast asia, moreover, the hejaz has constituted a marked source of scholarly work and religious legitimacy, with people, resources, and ideas continuously flowing from one to the other (see, for example, the collection edited by tagiliacozzo, 2009). ahmad dahlan and kh hasyim asy’ari, the founders of muhammadiyah and nahdlatul ulama, respectively, both studied in mecca. it was also in mecca that the sumatran scholar ahmad khatib became the great imam of the shafi’i madhaab at the haram mosque in 1876 and taught many would-be reformist southeast asian muslims – who would later become pivotal actors within the anti-colonial religious movement in the dutch east indies (djamal, 1998). in this light, the hejaz was not only a source of spiritual and intellectual inspiration, but was also entwined with a variety of religious reform movements within the southeast asian archipelago. yet, for many indonesian religious organizations, the twentieth century also witnessed a shift in importance away from the region and towards the archipelago itself. the creation of new religious organizations – most notably muhammadiyah and nahdlatul ulama – alongside the emergence of an indonesian nationalist project, shifted the political and religious focus to one concerned primarily with defining the position of ‘islam’ within the new nation state (for example, see effendy, 2003). notably, this also occurred at a time when the saudi kingdom was consolidating its rule and promoting the religious principles of the aimat al-da’wa al-najdiyya, whose social conservative and puritanical pretenses were at odds with the theology and/ 2 the hejaz contains the holy cities of mecca and medina, the former of which is where all able-bodied muslims are obliged to undergo pilgrimage. the cities have not only been sacred to muslim history, but also provided a crucial location for scholarship and study. 223imagining the land of the two holy mosques or social concerns of indonesia’s religious organizations. indeed, although abdulaziz ibn saud held a pan-islamic conference in mecca in 1926 in order to confer some ‘global’ legitimacy to his rule of the hejaz, this was of little significance to islamic mobilization during 1920s indonesia – despite the fact that nahdlatul ulama had to an extent been created to provide representation to ‘traditional’ islamic scholars at this very conference. the emergence of salafi thought in 1980s indonesia, which re-engaged with the imaginary potential of the hejaz and a ‘global umma’, correlated with a crisis of legitimacy within established religious organizations whose need to align with new order policy and indonesia-centric focus appealed little to a generation looking for a ‘pure and universal’ islam. wahdah islamiyah – whose yogyakarta branch forms part of this case study – provides a case in point as it emerged from university students in makassar who were traditionally aligned to muhammadiyah. breaking away from muhammadiyah in 1984 after the organization was forced to adopt pancasila as its founding principle, these students established their own foundation (jurdi, 2007, 2012; nisa, 2012). benefiting from lipia scholarships and funding links to saudi institutions and donors (facilitated through old muhammadiyah and ddii contacts), these students were able to study abroad as well as set up a propagation program that disseminated salafi texts amongst university and high school students before finally establishing the wahdah islamiyah community organization (organisasi masyarakat/ ormas) in 2002. it is more politically nuanced than most salafi foundations (as it has an agreement with the indonesian department of social affairs to provide social welfare to remote areas in parts of indonesia) and also, unlike the majority of salafi bo dies, has a national structure with an extensive caderization system and approximately 70 branches across indonesia. in yogyakarta – the primary geographical focus of my fieldwork – it was the activities of abu nida (full name chamsaha sofwan) that provided a foundational foothold for salafi thought. born in east java and educated at the imam muhammad ibn saud university in riyadh, he arrived in the city in 1985 and, through the assistance of the ddii, began to lecture to students at gadjah madah university (ugm). becoming popular among students, these lectures quickly expanded to the campuses of the school of middle technology and yogyakarta state university. yet, during the 1990s, when suharto’s administration enacted a policy of rapprochement to non-political forms of islamic organization that salafis embedded themselves permanently within the locality. in 1992, abu nida invited several scholars including jafar umar thalib, muhammad as-sewed, and yazid bin abdul qadir jawas to join him and together they established a mosque in degolan, sleman (northern yogyakarta, central java). this was to become a euclidean point for religious learning, although no sooner had salafism imbibed itself within yogyakarta than a rift among its adherents emerged. jafar umar thalib, a charismatic preacher who had spent time in yemen, became highly critical of several of his cohorts including abu nida, believing their cooperation with non-salafi student groups and donors (such as ddii) was contrary to the ‘purity’ of the movement. in the course of the 1990s, these strains became increasingly intractable, dividing the movement to this day (hasan, 2006; international crisis group [icg], 2004). jafar’s brand of salafism, and its rise to national prominence after the fall of suharto, has received much attention by regional and international 224 chris chaplin  aseas 7(2) social scientists (hasan, 2006; icg, 2004; wahid, 2006). indeed, hasan (2006) has expertly documented the way jafar umar thalib mobilized his followers into the forum komunikasi ahlus sunnah wal-jama’ah and laskar jihad, who then partook in sectarian violence in maluku. yet, a topic that has been less frequently visited is the expansion of the opposing strand of salafism represented by abu nida and his majelis at-turots al-islamy as well as that of wahdah islamiyah (notable exceptions are icg, 2004; jurdi, 2004, 2007; nisa, 2012a, 2012b). indeed, similar to jafar, abu nida’s at-turots underwent efflorescence during the 1990s, opening several educational institutes, such as the ma’had jamilurrahman as-salafi and building a ‘salafi’ village in wirokerten, yogyakarta (of which the ma’had jamilurrahman as-salafi is the centerpiece). unlike jafar, however, the at-turots maintained strong financial links to the arabian peninsula and, after the fall of suharto, was able to utilize these not to mobilize politically but to focus on propagation. the group has grown dramatically, establishing the pesantren islamic centre bin baz (icbb), a hospital, medical training facility, several housing complexes, a radio station as well as an expansive propagation program that its adherents claim stretches all the way to sorong, west papua (anonymous informant, personal communication, jakarta, 6 july 2011 & yogyakarta, 13 november 2011).3 the icbb – which consists of a kindergarten, primary and high school and includes students from malaysia, timor-leste, and australia – has become a nodal point not only for at-turots, but also for a wider network of salafi actors within the city. activists linked to the icbb have played a pivotal part in establishing and assisting in the creation of other salafi foundations, including the yayasan pendidikan islam al-atsary (ypia). although it became an official foundation in 2007, ypia’s roots lie in kajian organized by and for students at ugm in 2000. notably, this was an era of increased islamic mobilization and anxiety (sidel, 2006), marked by the rise not only of new islamic political parties, but also increasing ‘sectarian’ conflicts in maluku, kalimantan, and sulawesi (especially poso). for many of the initial participants of these sessions, a ‘pure’ or ‘non-political’ islam not privy to the mass islamic political mobilization, formation of religious political parties, and sectarian conflicts was an important part of the appeal of this strand of salafism. consequently, ypia grew into a more organized body that offers structured islamic classes, provides boarding and accommodation, runs a radio station and several websites, and produces several weekly bulletins it disperses throughout the city. by 2006, wahdah islamiyah also made inroads into yogyakarta after participating in a salafi conference concerning the evils of shi’ism. quickly gaining a following among the city’s students, it was not long before an official branch office was opened and wahdah islamiyah initiated an arabic language course, an after hours educational program for adults, a student hall, and a coordinated lecture program. it also aligned itself with several salafi preachers linked to the pesantren al-madinah nusantara (established in 2001). the school, founded by ridwan hamidi, trains da’i (preachers) who then preach throughout rural java and has become a pivotal part in the wahdah islamiyah rubric. 3 given the political sensitivities revolving around the concept of salafism, i have kept all interviewees anonymous to reduce any intended risk towards them as well as, from a methodological standpoint, to remain true to a ‘do no harm’ research framework. 225imagining the land of the two holy mosques educational and financial networks the salafi groups briefly described above are independent from each other despite scholars frequently moving between different foundations and occasionally working together. they exemplify the loose and multiple ways through which salafism has entered the religious landscape and the multivariate ways through which it can be ‘enacted’ in indonesian society. yet, these activists share a commonality in the way they utilize saudi arabia within their discourse and propagation. it is also important to note that despite the ‘imaginary’ power the kingdom has in salafi discourse, such networks share real funding and scholastic linkages. indeed, while salafis linked to jafar umar thalib (who believe themselves to be ‘purists’) refuse ‘organized’ funding streams, the donor bodies of jam’iyah ihya’ at-turats al-islami (kuwait) and jam’iyah darul birr have provided support for abu nida’s at-turots as well as wahdah islamiyah in makassar (mujahid, 2012). several of these indonesian foundations have become adept at soliciting donations from saudi arabia and kuwait to build religious facilities. for example, wahdah islamiyah recently opened a new office and mosque complex in yogyakarta through the financial assistance of a private donor in kuwait while at-turots received a donation towards its icbb from the saudi embassy in early 2013 after the ambassador visited the foundation. these linkages extend to a variety of educational institutions including the lipia in jakarta as well as facilities in yemen or saudi arabia. the most predominant of these is the islamic university of madinah, wahdah islamiyah claims almost 60 of its members have studied there (anonymous informant, wahdah islamiyah, personal communication, 17 december 2011) while several ustadz (preacher) working with atturots and ypia have also attended the university. the islamic university of madinah also plays a more intimate role; it offers accreditation for religious schools that meet a certain standard of religious learning. in yogyakarta and central java these include icbb, but also the pesantren iman bukhari in solo and pesantren islam alirsyad in salatiga. accreditation is not merely a ‘rubber stamp’ legitimizing the salafi credentials of a school, but consists of a thorough examination of the curriculum and facilities in order to ensure a certain degree of competency (many salafi schools have not reached this level). receiving accreditation is an issue of pride that holds resonance not only amongst salafis, but also very often within wider educational circles. quantitatively, however, the number of persons able to study in saudi arabia remains small and so for those wishing to continue their religious studies but unable to go abroad, the online al-madinah international university (mediu) provides a ‘virtual’ alternative. originally founded in madinah in 2004, the university has been relocated to shah alam, selangor, malaysia and received official accreditation from the malaysian government in 2007. at present, mediu provides a variety of degrees up to doctoral level in both arabic and english through online classes and test centers located across the globe. accreditation by the malaysian government may create the impression that mediu is part of some wider ‘global’ phenomenon, but this is far from the case. saudi shareholders and academics remain both in financial and managerial control as all seven shareholders and five of the seven board members originate from the kingdom. nevertheless, for salafis throughout yogyakarta, the institution provides an important ‘virtual’ place of study. 226 chris chaplin  aseas 7(2) the facilitation of links with saudi arabia is further assisted through indonesians physically located in saudi arabia. it is not uncommon for indonesian religious students to organize islamic talks for their fellow co-patriots in the kingdom. one informant provides an interesting example here. fluent in english, he used to work in the tourism industry, living in singapore, thailand, and malaysia as well as working at the hyatt hotel in jeddah. while in jeddah, he was invited to islamic lectures held by indonesians (as he spoke little arabic). it was here that he slowly began to reassess his life and ‘chose’ salafism. moreover, through the indonesian salafi magazine as-sunnah – which is available in saudi arabia – he was able to find an advertisement for a religious training program in solo (anonymous informant, personal communication, solo, 4 april 2012). he provides an interesting example of reversion outside of – but linked to – indonesia, something catalyzed by indonesian religious students based in saudi arabia who can provide such classes for their compatriots.4 saudi arabia and the religious ideal the abovementioned linkages between saudi arabian religious institutions and religious actors in indonesia, maintained through personal, professional, and even virtual ties, are thus integral in augmenting the importance of the arabian peninsula among indonesian muslims interested in the movement. not only do they increase the resonance of salafi claims to represent an islam in line with the practices of islam’s most holy places but also, logistically, they increase access to funding and private donations from abroad. yet, such connections are reified through the dissemination of salafi scholastic works. publishing houses frequently translate and distribute the works of muhammad bin abd’ al-wahhab, muhammad nasir al-din al-albani, abd al’ aziz bin baz, muhammad al-uthayim, ‘abd allah bin jibrin, and salih al-fawzan. initially, these translations were circulated by the lipia, although it has now spread to an insurmountable number of publishers scattered across the archipelago. the international crisis group has listed 24 prominent publishers, although the number is a lot higher when one takes smaller operations into account (icg, 2004). for example, at-turots, ypia, and wahdah islamiyah all publish major works by saudi scholars despite the sometimes small scope of their operations. these works, distributed through a network of religious bookstores and fairs as well as outside of mosque complexes, are an important part of any course or syllabus. ypia, for example, runs several structured courses for students that include the work of muhammad nasir al-din al-albani, abd al’ aziz bin baz, and muhammad al-uthayim (lembaga bimbingan islam al-atsary, 2006). the distribution of the works of arabian-based ulama also provides insight into the modes through which salafi islamic authority is constructed in indonesia. with few notable exceptions (like wahdah islamiyah), indonesian salafi scholars do not 4 i refer to one becoming salafi as ‘reversion’ rather than ‘conversion’ on two accounts. firstly, it refers to the fact that, while perhaps lax in the observance of religious principles, this informant acknowledged he was born a muslim. secondly, salafi propagation differentiates between bringing lax muslims back to the fold and getting non-muslims to convert (mualaf). they emphasize different points in their da’wa depending on one’s religious affiliation. more so, those who are already considered muslims do not undergo any official ‘conversion’ ceremony or the need to officially declare islam their religion, unlike those who mualaf. 227imagining the land of the two holy mosques issue fatwa (religious judgments) of their own, but rather refer to the works, rulings, and fatwa of their arabian-based cohorts. consequently, indonesian scholars often spend much time learning not only the qur’an and hadith, but also cross-referencing fatwa by the abovementioned ulama in order to find adequate answers to the concerns of their constituents. for example, in the magazine as-sunnah no. 7 xv november 2011, a woman writes to the editor to ask whether it was permissible to get dental braces in order to correct her teeth. the unnamed ustadz, who replied on behalf of the magazine stated that, according to a similar question asked to al-fawzan (and recorded in a collection of his fatwa al-muntaqa min fatawa syaikh shalih alfauzan), this is permissible as long as one’s teeth are abnormal and such dental surgery is not done to ‘beautify’ oneself (‘hukum merapikan’, 2011). a reader who asked whether one is allowed to eat crocodile meat provides a further example. in this case, the ustadz replied that, according to a fatwa given by the saudi permanent committee for research and fatwa (fatwa no. 5394) and signed by bin baz, eating crocodile meat is permitted (‘hukum makan’, 2012). indeed, out of the 10 issues of as-sunnah published between october 2011 and september 2012, there were 44 questions printed, 29 of which were answered by direct reference to saudi arabian shaykhs, most predominantly bin baz, al-abani, al-uthayim, and al-fawzan. the use of middle eastern scholars is not extraordinary for indonesian muslims in itself. yet, contemporary salafism differs from the majority of indonesian scholars as it also refers to specific twentieth century shaykhs who lived within the era of the modern saudi state. moreover, the heavy reliance on the rulings of arabian ulama has led to a division of roles between these salafi scholars and their indonesian contemporaries, whose primary task seems to be transplanting and framing such teachings within the archipelago. by relinquishing a responsibility to directly issue fatwa or deal directly with the issues of constituents without foreign references, indonesian scholars are not ‘shirking their duties’ but rather reifying a discursive position at the heart of the movement. indeed, one of the notable appeals of salafism is a unique clarity as to where one can find and access religious works dealing with all sorts of issues (as the question concerning the consumption of crocodile meat above attests to). indonesian scholars play a primary part in transplanting religious concepts into indonesian contexts and social environments, both by socializing the rulings of ulama (often in very intricate ways) and underlining their relevance (and meaning) to indonesians as muslims. importantly, this moves beyond the purely religious and taps into wider issues of what a modern and progressive society should look like. saudi arabia, not limited to a center of religious learning, also becomes part of a ‘deeper’ religious imaginary, providing pertinent examples of correct social practice indonesia could learn from. contrasting indonesia with saudi arabia, salafi preachers frequently lament the ‘backwardness’ and ‘social corruption’ of the former in comparison to the piety, social advancement, and modernism (all linked together) of the latter. while not explicitly referencing any civilizational dialectic (for example, the ‘west’ vs. ‘islam’), the use of saudi arabia builds an alternative idea of islamic modernity that contains the advances of ‘western’ sciences without any of their apparent social or moral decay. indeed, saudi arabia, with its alleged religious observance and apparent economic wealth, represents a social model they believe indonesian society can emulate in or228 chris chaplin  aseas 7(2) der to enact a ‘progressive’ future still in line with the principles of an islamic past. one pivotal example in this regard is offered when examining the issue of islamic terrorism, something salafis show a particular sensitivity to given accusations that they are synonymous with terrorism (for example, see idahram, 2011). tackling the issue head-on, one article written by ustadz anas burhanuddin describes the severity of rebelling against the state and the chaos it has caused in indonesia. while the state has done much to curb it, terrorism is a political issue that, he argues, can only be addressed in a serious yet ‘islamic’ manner. he thus elaborates that saudi arabia provides a useful insight that could be implemented within indonesia to combat jama’ah islamiyah and religious violence more generally. going into minute detail, he outlines how the kingdom combated threats of terrorism in 2003–2004 through a media campaign, which included friday sermons and religious lectures as well as providing religious knowledge to those involved in anti-terror actions so they did not circumvent islamic ideals. when extremists were captured, islamic scholars were dispatched to run de-radicalization classes and bring them back to the ‘true’ way of islam, a technique burhanuddin writes was successful given the rapid fall in terrorism. he thus concludes that this example is not only useful for muslim states like indonesia, but those of kafir (non-muslim) nations too. as he states, “what has already brought results in practice for saudi arabia will, insya allah, also produce results for indonesia” (burhanuddin, 2011, p. 41). a further example is evident in an article written by ustadz erwandi tarmizi concerning corruption in indonesia and how to deal with such cases according to islamic law. corruption is an extremely pertinent issue within the indonesian public sphere. tarmizi approaches the topic from a religious disposition analyzing where corruption would stand in relation to saudi arabia’s fatwa committee. he refers to rulings by the fatwa committee in order to assess whether corruption could be classified as theft and so subject to the hudud that allows ones hand to be cut off. after careful consideration, however, he concludes that corruption and theft differ and so, under islamic law, there would be no grounds to implement hudud against corrupt persons. his reasoning follows the line that, as indonesia has a functioning and legitimate government, one must respect the laws in place. tarmizi’s article provides an interesting example of how an indonesian contemporary issue is viewed by referencing saudi arabian shaykhs. while he concludes that cutting of one’s hand or caning is not allowed in this case, he does not rule them out as legitimate punishments (tarmizi, 2012). furthermore, his final argument that one must respect the decision of the indonesian government is somewhat representative of the political quietist approach taken by salafis not aligned with jafar umar thalib immediately after the fall of suharto. this position is remarkably similar to the political line espoused by contemporary salafis in relation to saudi authority. the two examples underline how saudi arabia is more than a base for learned scholars and networks; the country itself provides an evident example as how to best implement islamic law in relation to topical concerns. the imaginary potential goes much deeper, however, as it also provides an example of modern society that salafis refer to in order to build a bridge between the ‘evils’ of contemporary indonesian society and the idealized islamic society of the salaf al-salih. perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in the public kajian given by ustadz within yogyakarta. these 229imagining the land of the two holy mosques scholars, many of whom have studied in the arabian peninsula, frequently refer to the region in order to emphasize what indonesians should aspire to. in a process that perhaps ‘thickens’ how an islamic ideal would be actualized, such preachers have become adept at utilizing saudi arabia as a resource to emphasize their message. ridwan hamidi, a wahdah islamiyah preacher, offers a case in point. holding weekly kajian at ugm’s campus mosque, ridwan lectures on qur’anic and hadith studies over the course of 1 and a half hours. attended by roughly 100 participants, these sessions offer intense lectures of islamic knowledge and its application/use in everyday life. ridwan, who completed his bachelor’s degree at the islamic university of madinah’s dakwah and ushul ad din faculty (1998) before receiving his masters in fiqih and ushul fiqih at the muhammadiyah university surakarta, is currently completing a further master's in fiqih sunnah at the medina international university (mediu) while teaching at the technical-electrical department at ugm. his experience in saudi arabia has given him a unique resource that he utilizes within kajian at the campus mosque in order to emphasize the seriousness of qur’anic studies and what they could mean in socio-political terms. for example, he once lamented that many indonesian ulama did not have sufficient islamic knowledge nor set a good example, comparing them to people who had a good motorbike but could not ride it properly. he contrasted this to bin baz who, despite his prestige, was always humble and replied to every individual who wrote to him. in fact, he continued, his experience in saudi arabia was exemplary in highlighting ideal religious morals. mosque attendance was ‘luar biasa’ (out of the ordinary) as they were always full. he compared this to indonesia, where many people avoided attending the mosque and there was a lack of morality among indonesian women. his style, while talking of this experience and concern, was one of lament and reflection, urging his audience to learn from saudi arabia and, if possible, to visit it for study. ridwan was not unique in this instance but utilized a common tool through which preachers actualized an idealized world by referencing saudi arabia. abu muslim, who gives a weekly kajian at ugm’s medical studies faculty, provides a further example. having studied in yemen and visited saudi arabia several times over the course of four years, abu muslim currently teaches at the icbb while also conducting campus kajian in conjunction with ypia. his lectures at the medical faculty are, compared to ridwan’s classes, aimed at a smaller audience (approximately 12 males and an unknown number of females) and cover more basic and foundational issues of islamic learning. the main string of argumentation throughout these lectures consisted of the need for islamic learning and introspection in order to save oneself from eternal damnation and the immorality prevalent in (indonesian) society. indeed, when the wider student community was involved in demonstrations against a planned government fuel hike, he argued that such worldly concerns only help cause friction among the umma. he further elaborated (on several occasions) that the indonesian campus, while an integral place of learning, was also one of corruption that through the mixing of the sexes caused zinah (illegitimate relationships) and desires that distract men (and women, presumably) from not only their studies but from religious duty. this in turn allegedly contributed to a wider breakdown of society. in saudi arabia, however, people took time to respect religion and, as such, society lived by a higher standard 230 chris chaplin  aseas 7(2) of morals. on one account, he recollected a personal experience where after friday prayers he was invited back to the homes of strangers to eat together. this, he lamented, could never happen in indonesia, not only because society was riddled with selfishness but also because friday, a day that should be reserved for muslim prayer, was a workday. he continued that, with the exception of several schools in indonesia such as icbb, people abided by a work calendar linked to christian worship, an issue made all the worse as people were ignorant of this fact. what was needed, in abu muslim’s opinion, was greater emphasis on religious learning and social codes, and saudi arabia and yemen provided not only a feasible model to follow but also emphasized the positive social results this would create. transplanting the land of the two holy mosques the use of saudi arabia in such instances offers an insightful example into the methods of recomposing, transplanting, and, more specifically, ‘frame bridging’ exemplified in social movement theories. the concept of framing offers a cognitive tool for interpreting experience and how a certain ideological position can receive meaning. actors produce, arrange, and disseminate a particular ideological bearing in order to achieve a certain amount of resonance among constituents (benford, rochford, snow, & worden, 1986). at its most basic level, it represents the art of communicating in specific ways, selecting issues and symbols that are of concern to those one wishes to reach. for example, wiktorowicz (2004), in his study of intra-movement framing contests between salafi jihadist and non-jihadist groups, highlights how different factions within a movement can compete for legitimacy through specific techniques, as well as how popular intellectuals contextualize such framing for followers. by emphasizing the perceived knowledge, character, and logic of its message, a movement attempts to assert its authority and resonate its message among potential constituents. in our case, the frame shifts between the global and the local ‘scale’, in a way where globally available resources take on local meaning. framing in such an instance is complex as the movement both consumes existing cultural materials but also produces new ones influenced by global resources and networks. to offer a global frame, these movements need to internalize global symbols for domestic use and diffuse modes of contention from the global to the local and back (tarrow, 2005). yet, this is far from straight forward, but must contain a degree of adaptation, institutionalization, and representation dependent on the given locale. ideas and concepts must travel and undergo a process of transplantation, adapting to new contexts and facing challenges different from an idea’s point of origin (bonnefoy, 2011; said, 1983). in relation to our enquiry, ridwan and abu muslim act as mediums bridging indonesian social issues and a religious ideal through the credibility of their own experiences in saudi arabia. this moves beyond religious references, but also includes many ‘contemporary’ allusions of a modern and pious (saudi) society. in doing so, they aim to move beyond religion as a scholastic and scriptural pursuit to one that becomes a living dialogical discourse concerned with all matters of life and society. in this regard, a focus on contemporary concerns or on the suggestions to follow saudi models against terrorism or corruption can play an important part in form231imagining the land of the two holy mosques ing the religious ideal salafis strive for. i would go even further to say that through such references we can see the modes by which salafis attempt to recreate an ideal society based on the first generations of muslims. it is pivotal to the salafi imaginary in terms of balancing an idealized and selective account of an islamic past with a modern present and future. for several constituents, it provides solutions to social concerns, highlighting how following islamic scripture can enact an apparently just and fair society. thus, it is not uncommon for salafis – even those who have not been to saudi arabia – to praise the kingdom as an ideal society. for example, one interviewee who had never been to saudi arabia stated that the kingdom was an example all muslims should follow as well as a bastion of stability within a region that had become unstable due to events in syria and wider ‘shi’a’ subversion. when asked how this compared to indonesia, the interviewee replied that indonesia certainly was not a pious society but nevertheless it had potential, as muslims were free to practice as they wished (anonymous informant, personal communication, yogyakarta, 28 february 2012). in such instances, the land of two holy mosques is used as an implicit socio-political example of how governmental decisions should be made and relate to religion. salafis highlight their political quietist position, stating the need to respect and follow a legitimately based government and so criticize hizbut tahrir and the muslim brotherhood over their concerns with political power (arif fathul ulum bin ahmad saifullah, 2011). yet, despite remaining explicitly apolitical, the utilization of saudi arabia or saudi-based scholars in order to assess indonesian policy does imply a political stance, where all decisions must be filtered through the works of religious scholars in order to judge their legitimacy. however, concepts and imaginaries remain just that. they may offer examples and suggestions, but do little in the way of stating exactly how such programs could be implemented or enacted within indonesia (besides through an increase in piety). the use of saudi arabia, consequently, fails to move beyond complementing the normative set of values they set out to enact in the first instance. moreover, their imaginary element not only lies in their suggestive nature of how indonesian society should act, but also in the fact that they rarely move beyond an idealization of saudi society and entwine with the socio-political realities and religious complexities of the kingdom. for example, little mention is made of the plight of indonesian and foreign workers in the kingdom, nor of a series of diplomatic spats throughout 2011 and 2012 concerning the beheading of an indonesian woman that led to protests outside the saudi embassy in july 2011 and a government embargo on sending maids to saudi arabia. underlining their detachment from these issues, salafis remained quiet, even actively ignoring such issues when brought up. the same interviewee mentioned above, when asked about his opinion concerning this controversy (as it was in the news), became dismissive, stressing how hotheaded indonesians could be and then quickly ended the conversation (anonymous informant, personal communication, yogyakarta, 28 february 2012). the ability of such imaginaries to move beyond the normative is further inhibited by the fact that actors do not exist in a religious vacuum, but have to contend with a variety of religious agents, both old and new. salafism, far from being either a decontextualized movement or form of ‘saudization’ is, borrowing hepp’s (2009) use of the term, translocal. as hepp argues – and i have attempted to emphasize through the 232 chris chaplin  aseas 7(2) idea of framing and transplantation – the local remains important, as it is the place where the availability of global resources is reflected in the form of locally appropriated cultural codes and meaning. localities do not dissolve but provide a reference point for ongoing globalization processes, highlighting the increasing connectivity between different spaces all over the world (hepp, 2004 in hecker, 2010, pp. 325– 339). what salafism thus represents is the recomposition of religious resources that disembed themselves from any singular territory before recombining within the localities of indonesia through the work of grounded actors. the imaginary element of saudi arabia is thus part of the global resource utilized by activists in order to frame a contemporary problem and social issues and a ‘perfect’ islamic society of the past. while i believe this implies that actors gear many of their activities towards the local, this does not render the ‘imaginary of saudi society’ as irrelevant or merely contradictory. i believe the use of such examples attests to a method of embedding a set of values based on transcendental salvation within the temporal and geographic landscape in which agents work. references to islam’s geographical heartland, and the institutions of study and religion within them, provide salafism with a degree of legitimacy in their claim to represent ‘correct tradition’. it is part of a meshing of salafi networks, actors, texts, and other non-salafi forces that sustain the ideals of ‘piety’ in a variety of different contextual settings. in indonesia, its agents thus put forward the idea of a modern religious society at odds with the ‘moral decay’ and ‘backwardness’ of indonesia. yet, this ideal itself is (and has to be) continually disrupted given that it is refracted through the local – responding to concerns of potential followers, opponents, with wider forces of public opinion and governance – to a point where the imaginary ideal can never be fully actualized. saudi arabia, or the idealized image of it, rather plays the part of a utopic goal, an aspiration (if only everyone followed religion properly) that is never realistically attainable. this perhaps mirrors derrida’s (2006) affirmation of a group’s need for an “unpredictable future to come” where, despite knowing what an idealized future may hold or what the blue print for it should be, exactly when and where it can be established in the “here and now” remains an uncertain aspiration. indeed, as derrida states, “not only must one not renounce the emancipatory desire” but “it is necessary to insist on it more than ever” (p. 94). the examples of a ‘perfect society’ built upon personal piety and social values – imagined through reference to saudi arabia in opposition to indonesian social ills – forms part of this “emancipatory desire”, an image constantly insisted upon but never fully reachable. however, obtaining the goal is not the point. rather, the utilization of saudi arabia as a worldly utopia provides an earthly face that pious individuals can strive towards. one should therefore not view the fact that there is no ‘decontextualized’ or perfect salafism (based on an idealized saudi example) as testament to its failure. the examples highlighted in this paper point to the useful reference and role saudi arabia plays in providing an imagined but ‘real’ solution to how piety should be enacted. consequently, this gives salafis a unique point upon which to build claims of legitimacy and underscore the temporal rewards for religious exactitude. 233imagining the land of the two holy mosques concluding remarks the relationship between salafi religious discourse and the imagined ideal of the arabian peninsula provides an interesting case study of both socio-political imaginaries and contemporary religious movement. representing a broad multi-layered social movement enriched through the lived experiences and debates of its agents, it is difficult to talk of one singular unifying salafism. it has spread throughout the world, defined by its adherents as a search for religious ‘purity’. yet, despite the multivariate ways it has been enacted and embodied, there is a high level of coherency in terms of drawing from similar scholars and institutions within the arabian peninsula. moreover, as is the case in yogyakarta, the kingdom is more than an institutional heartland; it becomes an imagined ideal through which socio-political solutions and a picture of a perfect religious community are described. juxtaposed against the ‘social ills’ of indonesian society, such as corruption and terrorism, it forms a pivotal resource through which preachers stress the importance and benefits of correct religious behavior. however, while saudi arabia may give such salafi imaginary values a nuance of physical resonance, these same imaginaries often ignore the complexities of the saudi religious field or political developments within the kingdom. yet, providing an accurate account of saudi arabia is not the point. rather, it remains an image utilized as a resource not only to ‘thicken’ descriptions as to what an embodied piety would mean socially, but also to provide salafi discourse with a greater degree of proximity to islam’s holy sites. it thus becomes a desire, constantly insisted upon if impossible to enact.  references al-rasheed, m. 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(2004). globalised islam: the search for a new ummah. new york, ny: columbia university press. said, e. (1983). the world, the text and the critic. cambridge, uk: harvard university press. sidel, j. (2006). riots, pogroms and jihad. ithaca, ny: cornell university press. tagiliacozzo, e. (ed.). (2009). southeast asia and the middle east: islam, movement and the longue duree. singapore: nus press. tarrow, s. (2005). the new transnational activism. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. wahid, a. b. (2006). salafi da’wa movement after the dissolution of laskar jihad. uin sunan kalijaga (unpublished). wiktorowicz, q. (2004). framing jihad: intramovement framing contests and al-qaeda’s struggle for sacred authority. international review of social history, 49, 159–177. wurger, t. (2013, 15 march). the path to radicalisation: following a german salafist to egypt. spiegel online. retrieved from http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/a-profile-of-german-salafists-inegypt-a-888605.html about the author chris chaplin is currently writing his phd thesis concerning the social dynamics of the salafist movement in post-suharto indonesia at the department of sociology, university of cambridge, uk. his research interests include a broad curiosity concerning global religious movements and their impact on social/national identity as well as a regional interest in indonesian political/social reform, human rights, local identity, and west papua. ► contact: cjc202@cam.ac.uk restoring state control over forest resources through administrative procedures: evidence from a community forestry programme in central java, indonesia aseas 5(2) 229228 aktuelle südostasienforschung / current research on south-east asia restoring state control over forest resources through administrative procedures: evidence from a community forestry programme in central java, indonesia ahmad maryudi1 citation maryudi, a. (2012). restoring state control over forest resources through administrative procedures: evidence from a community forestry programme in central java, indonesia. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 5(2), 229-242. in recent years, community forestry has emerged as a means to reform power constellations with regard to forest governance. through community forestry, the central state promised to devolve several forest rights to local communities and encouraged them to get involved in decision making processes and the implementation of forest activities. however, experience in some countries indicates that the implementation of community forestry programmes is rarely followed by genuine power devolution to local forest users. instead, these programmes may even serve as a means to retain or restore the central state’s control over forests. using a case study of a community forestry programme implemented in java, indonesia, by a state forest company, this paper argues that the implementation of community forestry is also driven by the state’s interests to regain control over the forests. research in eight villages in central java province reveals that the community forestry programmes are carefully structured according to numerous administrative procedures and establish a mode of control through a bureaucratic design. keywords: administrative procedures; community forestry; indonesia; state control; state forestland in den letzten jahren hat sich community forestry als mittel zur reform von machtkonstellationen in bezug auf die verwaltung von wäldern herausgebildet. der zentralstaat versprach durch community forestry bestimmte waldrechte an lokale communities abzugeben und ermutigte sie, sich an entscheidungsprozessen und der implementierung von forstaktivitäten zu beteiligen. erfahrungen in einigen ländern zeigen jedoch, dass die implementierung von community forestry-programmen selten mit einem tatsächlichen machttransfer an lokale forstnutzerinnen einhergeht, sondern diese programme sogar als mittel zur rückgewinnung von zentralstaatlicher kontrolle über wälder dienen können. anhand eines fallbeispiels eines community forestry-programms, das in java, indonesien, von einem staatlichen forstunternehmen implementiert wird, argumentiere ich in diesem artikel, dass die implementierung von community forestry auch von den interessen des staates, kontrolle über die wälder zurückzugewinnen, vorangetrieben wird. meine forschung in acht dörfern in der provinz zentral-java zeigt, dass die community forestry-programme sorgfältig nach zahlreichen administrativen verfahren strukturiert sind und eine art der kontrolle durch bürokratisches design etablieren. 1 ahmad maryudi holds a phd in forest development policy from georg-august universität göttingen, germany, and is currently an associate professor at the faculty of forestry, universitas gadjah mada, indonesia. this research was partly funded by german research foundation (deutsche forschungsgemeinschaft/dfg) and the directorate general of higher education (dikti) of the ministry of national education of the republic indonesia. contact: maryudi76@yahoo.com d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -5 .2 -3 aseas 5(2) 231230 schlagworte: community forestry; indonesien; staatliche kontrolle; staatlicher wald; verwaltungsverfahren introduction over the past decade, there have been calls for the devolution of forest control from the central state to local communities. the calls were principally driven by concerns about the absolute control by the central state – particularly in the developing world – over forest resources and their uses (agrawal & gibson, 1999; assembe mvondo, 2009; gilmour & fisher, 1991; shackleton, campbell, wollenberg, & edmunds, 2002; webb 2008). the implementation of community forestry in recent years has been a starting point in reforming the power constellations in forest governance (acharya, 2002; lachapelle, smith, & mccool, 2004; nygren, 2005; ostrom, 1999). community forestry promised to devolve several forest rights to local communities and encourage them to get involved in decision making processes and the implementation of forest activities from reforestation to harvesting. for example, mcdermott and schrekenberg (2009, p. 158) elaborate that community forestry comprises local people’s exercise of power to influence decisions regarding the management of forests, including the rules of access and the disposition of products. many countries across the globe have experimented with different programmes that included the participation of local people and that formally mentioned power devolution as one of the core policy goals (bull & white, 2002; gilmour, malla, & nurse, 2004). however, there is an increasing pool of studies (for instance agrawal & ostrom, 2008; blaikie 2006; dahal & capastrino, 2006; larson, 2005; ribot, 2004, 2009) that indicate that the implementation of such models is rarely followed by genuine power devolution to local forest users. experiences in many countries, for instance, indonesia, nepal, the philippines, senegal, uganda, bolivia, and nicaragua indicate that community forestry programmes may even serve as a means to retain or restore the central state’s control over the forests (see devkota, 2010; gauld, 2000; ribot, agrawal, & larson, 2006). this paper will further support the aforementioned findings on the informal (hidden) agenda of states in implementing community forestry. using a case study of a programme implemented in java, indonesia, pengeloaseas 5(2) 231230 laan hutan bersama masyarakat (phbm), by the state-owned company of perhutani, this paper argues that the implementation of the phbm is also driven by the state’s interest in regaining control over the forests. it reveals that phbm is carefully structured according to numerous administrative procedures – based on a bureaucratic design – that serve as a mode of control by the forest administration over the forestland and its resources. theoretical framework this paper uses theories from political science, which principally focus on the concept of control and the mechanisms used for its enforcement. in political science, the term control usually describes the relationship between a political authority (principal) and the subordinate/agent (moe, 2002). it frequently centres on how the former devises a structure of rules so that the latter’s policy actions are pursued accordingly (bendor, 1988, cited in moe, 2002, p. 2), depicting power relations in which the position of the former dominates the latter’s “in terms of great mastery of rules” (offe, 1976, p. 25). rangan (1997) defines control as the ability of the principal to check and direct the behaviour of the agent. this definition mirrors weber’s notion of domination (ribot & peluso, 2003, p. 159). on the other hand, the degree of control that the agent experiences correlates with “the variability of autonomy, and freedom from direction” (clegg, 1981, p. 545). for this analysis it is important to understand how control is imposed. extensive discussions in behavioural research often centre on whether the principal pursues ex post or ex ante control in order to achieve the action’s desired outcomes (see e.g. kamin & rachlinski, 1995; kolstad, ulen, & johnson, 1990). the ex post mechanism, which focuses on direct supervision such as police patrols, remains a popular strategy for enforcing legal norms (kraakman, 1986). it involves monitoring, observing the subordinate’s actual behaviour, rewarding, and punishing in cases of misconduct (mccubbins, noll, & weingast, 1987, p. 244). several political scientists (e.g. kraakman, 1986; leatherwood & spector, 1991; mccubbins et al., 1987) raise the limitations of direct monitoring, particularly its associated costs and limited coverage. in the absence of effective enforcing capacity, direct oversight appears to offer limited advantages for the principal to check and direct an agent’s behaviour. ahmad maryudi restoring state control over forest resources through administrative procedures aseas 5(2) 233232 therfore, mccubbins et al. (1987) argue that administrative procedures (ex ante) offer a cheaper and more effective approach for the principal to exert control over the agent. the mechanism depends on “stacking the decks” to guide “an agency to make decisions that are consistent with the preferences” of the principal (mccubbins, noll, & weingast, 1989, p. 432). here, political control is exercised through the design of bureaucracy and pursued by establishing rules and requirements, imposing decision procedures and criteria, and constraining the agent from moving in the direction it desires (moe, 2002). the structure and process mechanism is expected to limit the independence of an agent to make policy actions (bawn, 1995, p. 62; mccubbins et al., 1987, p. 244), and if the structures and processes are properly designed, an agent’s behaviour “will be largely under control from the outset” (moe, 2002, p. 3). the decline of state control and phbm community forestry the state forests of java comprise about 3 million hectares, more than four-fifths of which are administered and managed by the state forest company perhutani. unlike most forest companies in indonesia, perhutani is autonomous. it directly controls and uses the forest resources, while it also determines forest management, exploitation, marketing as well as protection (maryudi, 2011). prior to the economic and political crises that struck the country between 1997 and 1998, the forest administration and state-company’s management were based on the forestry model established by the colonial administration, which adopted a state-control approach comprised of an exclusionary policy vis-à-vis the local population. peluso (1992) describes this centralistic forest tradition at great length. the centralistic model was based on control over the state’s forestland and resources as well as local people’s activities in the forests (peluso, 1992). in this regard, the state’s ownership of forestland was a fundamental element as this represents “a broader set of practices and ideas related to ‘best management’ of forest production or protection” (peluso, 2011, p. 814). ensuring ownership means that the state captures the greatest amount of benefits from forest products. to ensure control, the forest office relied on direct surveillance, and the forest police became the core component of the forest company, complementing the managerial and technical lines (peluso, 1992; peluso & poffenberger, 1989). a ) aseas 5(2) 233232 formal forest policy highlighted the importance of the forest police that was put in charge of securing and guarding the state’s rights over forest resources (peluso, 1993a). the strong centralistic forest traditions effectively prohibited local communities’ access to forest resources. the only legal access granted to local communities was the short-term (usually two years) taungya-styled agroforestry, locally referred to as tumpangsari, in which local people were allowed to cultivate agricultural crops in between the main forest species during reforestation (bratamihardja, sunito, & kartasubrata, 2005). however, as peluso (1993b) notes, this centralistic state control has significantly declined. over the past few decades, the state forest company has experienced numerous forest problems, for example, forest land encroachment, forest thefts, and agricultural cultivation (djajanti, 2006; djamhuri, 2008; nawir & rumboko, 2007; peluso, 1993b; purwanto, ito, & oohata, 2003). some groups of local people have also attempted to claim ownership rights over some parts of the forests (see maryudi & krott, 2012a). these problems have led to massive forest degradation, mirrored by the high proportion of young forest stands and barren forestlands (nawir, murniati, rumboko, hiyama, & gumartini, 2007). at the time of the aforementioned political crisis, conflicts and unrest related to forestry occurred in many forest regions (see wulan, yasmi, purba, & wollenberg, 2004). furthermore, political struggles over the control of forests emerged as some district governments attempted to dethrone the superiority of perhutani in administering the state forests in their regions (adi et al., 2004; nomura, 2008).2 the accumulated forest problems urged the state company to adopt a new approach through the implementation of community forestry. while there have been experiments with community forestry in java for more than three decades (see peluso, 1993b), a formal policy on community forestry was finally launched in 2001. phbm community forestry serves as a generic model implemented for all forests under the administration of perhutani. it rests on joint forest management between perhutani and local community institutions – usually at the village level – that formally encourages both parties and other interested stakeholders to share roles in decision making 2 the downfall of the new order regime in 1998 has provided pathways for legal and institutional reform. since then, there has been a period of intense struggle over the administrative authority of forests between national and local (provincial and district) governments. this resulted in the enactment of two fundamental laws – law 22/1999 on regional governance and law 25/1999 on fiscal balancing between the central government and regional governments, which both delegate substantial authority, including forestry, to district governments. however, decentralisation in the forestry sector occcured mainly in regions outside java. this means that perhutani remains the authority over most forests in java. ahmad maryudi restoring state control over forest resources through administrative procedures aseas 5(2) 235234 processes, the implementation of forest activities, and eventually the benefits from forest resources. in addition, phbm formally aims to integrate socio-economic community development in forest management systems from which local communities can access economic benefits in order to improve the community’s welfare (maryudi & krott, 2012b). under the programme, forest users are required to organise themselves as a forest user group3 at the village level, widely referred to as lembaga masyarakat desa hutan (lmdh), to implement the phbm. research sites and methodology the research for this paper was conducted in eight villages that have formally implemented phbm in three of perhutani’s forest districts in central java: randublatung, south kedu, and pemalang. prior to phbm implementation, perhutani’s forests in the villages suffered from different problems like tree thefts/illegal logging, conflicts between perhutani and local people, agricultural encroachment in the forests, and tenure claims to the forestland (table 1). the primary field data was drawn from interviews, discussions, and other information from various stakeholders such as the respective district forest managers and forest officers, the leaders of the lmdhs, and other relevant stakeholders. the interviews were complemented by reviews of scientific literature and phbm regulations. 3 this forest user group has to be formally registered by the legal office, usually at the district level. table 1: forest management related problems at the research sites source: author’s compilation village gempol gembyungan temulus glandang burat mayungsari sedayu benowo forest district randublatung randublatung randublatung pemalang south kedu south kedu south kedu south kedu × × × × × × × × × × × × × × × × × × tree thefts conflict with local people agricultural encroachment tenure claim forest problems aseas 5(2) 235234 empirical findings to restore control over forest resources in the phbm programmes, perhutani establishes regulatory frameworks and conditions for the community forestry practices through which the company is able to force local people to act according to its desires. this section discusses the administrative procedures used by perhutani to exert control over forest resources. regulated in the decision of perhutani’s board of directors no. 136/kpts/dir/2001, phbm is preceded by the signing of a legal agreement between the forest office – usually at the district level – and a formally-registered lmdh. article 5 (1-b) of the decision reads: “to implement phbm, perhutani prioritises lmdhs that have been formally registered at a legal office and are recommended by their respective village leaders” (own translation). while all villages studied in this research have already created such a group, a clear example of the power of this administrative procedure is provided by the case of temulus. in this village, interest in community forestry has been evident since the end of the 1990s, however, the phbm was only approved after the establishment of a formally-registered lmdh group in 2010 (maryudi, 2011). the forest officials of the three forest districts suggested that this requirement ensures the legal enforceability of the phbm agreement (see also djajanti, 2006). the administrative screening is further enhanced by the fact that perhutani can determine whether particular groups are qualified for the participation in the phbm agreement. officials in the three forest districts are expected to have a ‘good partner’ in managing the forests. they anticipated that the lmdhs actively and cooperatively participate in the phbm, suggesting that they will not undermine perhutani’s interests. in most cases, the forest offices facilitated the creation of the lmdhs to make them more reliant and inclined to perhutani. in contrast, the people from benowo and temulus villages were heavily influenced by a local ngo, much to the chagrin of the respective forest offices (see maryudi & krott, 2012a). in temulus, the forest district office ignored the local group working with the ngo and created an lmdh composed of more supportive villagers to implement phbm. through a legal contract, the forest office can exert some degree of control over the participating user group as contracts usually articulate the “principal’s preferahmad maryudi restoring state control over forest resources through administrative procedures aseas 5(2) 237236 ences and priorities” (shapiro, 1987, p. 632). in the phbm agreements with the lmdhs investigated for this research, perhutani clearly aspires to limit local communities’ (forest users and their groups) access to the state forestland and associated resources. the agreement itself was prepared by the respective forest district offices as indicated by the identical content and wording for different lmdhs. it is carefully narrated with administrative procedures to limit the access of local people to the forestland and its resources. state ownership of forestland is one of the main elements of the forest administration to restore control over forest resources that is agreed upon in the phbm agreement. in fact, the participating lmdhs are forced to acknowledge the state’s ownership of forestland, which ignores the (customary) tenure claims of local communities to the forestland (maryudi, 2011). article 6 of decision no. 136/kpts/dir/2001 reads: “phbm is implemented without changing the status of the state forestland” (own translation). this fact was duly accepted by all lmdhs in the phbm agreements that state that “the tenure ownership of the forestland is assigned to the state, which has mandated the management of the forestland to perhutani” (own translation). the preferences and priorities of perhutani are further emphasised in the permit systems (allowable and non-allowable regimes) that regulate forest users’ use and access rights to forests. the phbm agreement clearly reinforces the dominant narrative of the state’s control and possession of forest products as it outlaws tree cutting and grazing on young forest stands. local people are only permitted to collect non-timber products such as edible fruits, mushrooms, and fodders (djajanti, 2006; maryudi, 2009). the administrative procedures for ensuring control are further enhanced through management plans and reporting activities. in community forestry programmes, lmdhs are invited to develop so-called management plans, which unfortunately only relate to permitted forest uses, such as the use of the forest floor for agricultural cropping. usually, the groups are provided with a planning sheet, which outlines the agricultural crops that are allowed to be planted and indicates where and when these crops are permitted to be planted. this procedure can serve as a screening mechanism for the forest office to instantly prevent misconduct in the forests. a forest officer in randublatung forest district suggested that some crops such as rice and bananas are prohibited as they would mimic private paddy fields and gardens aseas 5(2) 237236 respectively, which are perceived to encourage tenure claims in the future. some local groups also failed in their attempt to propose activities such as planting trees, coffee, and other perennial crops that were considered to impede the growth of the main forest species. administrative procedures may increase the likelihood that the agent’s policy actions mirror the principal’s interests (mccubbins et al., 1987, p. 262). in phbm community forestry, perhutani enriches the bureaucracy by urging lmdhs to craft their own forest regulations to guarantee that forest practices serve perhutani’s desired outcomes. in most cases, the creation of local regulations has been heavily influenced by the forest office and appears to enhance its administrative procedures since they are simply copied from the phbm agreement (maryudi, 2011). in fact, combined with the phbm agreement, the local forest regulations create a so-called “two-tier permit system” (maryudi, 2011) that links local forest users with the forest administration through permits (see figure 1). the formal agreement between the forest office and the lmdhs further specifies both the responsibilities for forest activities and the sanctions that are to be imposed in cases of forest misconduct of the participating lmdhs. as mentioned above, phbm encourages the active participation of local communities in forest management and conservation activities. through the programme, perhutani expects that communities contribute to reforestation, and the agreement obliges the group comfigure 1: the two-tier permit system in the java community forestry system source: adapted from maryudi, 2011, p. 59 forest administration community forestry agreement access on tenurial rights, forest uses, decision making etc. group constitution (statutes, by-laws and other internal rules) permits permits group committees forest users ahmad maryudi restoring state control over forest resources through administrative procedures aseas 5(2) 239238 mittees/leaders to ensure high survival rates of the planted seedlings at a minimum of 90 percent. newly reforested areas are parceled out to interested forest users for agricultural cropping for about two to three years. in return, they are obliged to plant prescribed tree seedlings and nurture them. when the people fail to reach the survival target, they are obliged to replant the forestland. this is particularly important for addressing the problems of reforestation failure that often occured prior to the implementation of the phbm. perhutani is also concerned about valuable timber. through the phbm programme, the company aspires to secure the tree stands. it therefore imposes heavy sanctions in cases where the forest’s potential to produce timber is reduced. in all cases observed in this research, people are expected to actively participate in forest patrols to prevent illegal logging. to ensure this, the forest offices threaten to terminate the agreement upon the discovery of illegal cutting. given these restrictions, questions may remain about the degree to which the extensive administrative procedures and regulations work on the ground. within the phbm programmes, perhutani has created mechanisms of extended control, most notably through the use of lmdh committees, to deliver its interests. in other cases, scholars (e.g. dasgupta & beard, 2007; thoms, 2008; varughese & ostrom, 2001,) have noted the influence of local elites, such as village leaders or people from high castes, on the groups and their ability to control the group members. in this study, the influence of local elites such as village leaders, civil servants, teachers, and religious leaders, is also visible across the research cases. these people usually dominate the structure of the group committee and the decision making in the group, and also capture most of the benefits obtained from phbm (maryudi, 2011). for perhutani, controlling the committees can mean control over the group members and their activities in the forests. in this regard, the administrative procedures are manifested by the attachment of a forest officer, albeit indirectly, as an adviser on the committee structure of all lmdhs. while greater control over the forests can be achieved, perhutani benefits from reduced costs, which are transferred to the group committees as a consequence. perhutani greatly benefits from the participation of group committees, which play the role of ‘forest-keepers’. in cases of forest users’ misconduct, the group committees adopt different strategies depending on the severity of the forest violation. persuasion is employed as a common strategy – particularly for minor misconduct – but heavy and persistent misconduct can lead to severe punishments. in benowo and aseas 5(2) 239238 sedayu villages, for instance, the committees adopt so-called ‘peer-controls’ whereby a forest user is promised 30 percent of the fines obtained from his/her fellow users who are caught infringing upon the regulations. in sedayu, some group members have been ejected from the group due to persistent infringement. conclusion this paper reveals that the phbm programme is systematically set up to ensure that forestland and resources are kept under tight control of the state through numerous administrative procedures. these administrative procedures are manifested in the obligation of legal registration of lmdhs, the use of formal agreements and contracts that are biased toward perhutani’s priorities, and the use of local forest regulations. the informal agenda associated with the implementation of community forestry is veiled in a scheme that supposedly (formally) serves the interests of local people. through the use of group committees, perhutani has additionally produced an effective mechanism of surveillance in the forests, whereby the forest office no longer has to directly control forest activities, and thus lifts the burden of supervision in this area from its own responsibilities. consequently, signs of forest order emerge. while more empiricallybased case studies are indeed required to provide more solid justification, local people in the studied villages are clearly experiencing increased control. this conclusion by no means advocates ‘no control’ in the forests that might have contraproductive consequences with regard to the condition of forest resources. instead, the challenge that lies ahead is to create better instruments that can integrate the interests of perhutani to improve the forest conditions and the needs of local communities for meaningful benefits from the forests. the participation of local people in forest conservation and management should be met with genuine attempts to improve their livelihood and quality of life. in phbm, the legal access to the forests is astonishingly limited and across the studied villages, the programme has yet to lift local people from their chronic poverty (maryudi & krott, 2012b). here, a much improved legal access to the forest by local people is the key of the future implementation of phbm. ahmad maryudi restoring state control over forest resources through administrative procedures aseas 5(2) 241240 references 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(2004). analisa konflik sektor kehutanan di indonesia 1997-2003. bogor, indonesia: cifor. workshop report: social media and islamic practice in southeast asia, 14-15 april 2016, institute for social anthropology, austrian academy of sciences workshop report: social media and islamic practice in southeast asia, 14-15 april 2016, institute for social anthropology, austrian academy of sciences dayana lengauer ► lengauer, d. (2016). workshop report: social media and islamic practice in southeast asia, 14-15 april 2016, institute for social anthropology, austrian academy of sciences. aseas – austrian journal of southeast asian studies, 9(2), 311-314. above the rooftops of vienna’s old city center and on the top floor of the building of one of the world’s leading technology companies, a selected number of international scholars working on new media and religion in indonesia gathered early this year to discuss their current research.1 they were invited by the austrian science fund (fonds zur förderung der wissenschaftlichen forschung, or fwf) project “islamic (inter)faces of the internet: emerging socialities and forms of piety in indonesia” led by martin slama, a researcher at the institute for social anthropology at the austrian academy of sciences. the workshop, which was comprised of 12 presentations in the span of two days, focused on social media and digital technologies uses and islamic practices of muslims in different parts of southeast asia. the central question that informed this workshop was how the rising use of new communication technologies affects islamic practices and forms of piety in the muslim majority countries of southeast asia. the presentations touched upon a number of related issues including islamic finances, fashion, music, and youth culture. they discussed changes in the perception and representation of religious authority or the revival of islamic concepts in the light of social media uses. apart from popular islamic expressions of piety, some presenters addressed issues of religious sectarianism and sentiments of hate spread through the online presence of particular religious groups. what remained uncontested throughout those two days was the fact that social media have become an indispensable part of the daily practices and socialities of muslims throughout southeast asia (barendregt, 2012; slama, 2016). for example, followers connect to their islamic leader, be it the local preacher or the country’s most influential sufi scholar, by simply opening facebook. islamic leaders, on their part, use social media as means of self-representation in yet unprecedented ways. these online presences trigger new perceptions and articulations of authority and preacher-followers relationships which do not remain uncontested. this is the case when, for example, self-representations on 1 next to the workshop organizers, martin slama and dayana lengauer, invited guests who presented their work were bart barendregt (leiden university), carla jones (university of colorado boulder), daromir rudnyckyj (university of victoria), eva nisa (victoria university of wellington), fatimah husein (state islamic university yogyakarta), ismail fajrie alatas (university of michigan), john postill (rmit university), merlyna lim (carleton university), saskia schäfer (columbia university), and wahyuddin halim (state islamic university makassar). netzwerk südostasien  network south-east asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 16 .2 -1 0 312 dayana lengauer  aseas 9(2) the internet intersect with the islamic concept of riya, roughly translated as “showing off ”. yet, social media and other online platforms, such as forums or blogs, offer ample space for users to discuss and eventually find agreement upon such activities. this is only one example of how ‘new’ media prompt the renegotiation of traditional practices, forms of communication, and self-representation (gershon, 2010). the infusion of digital media in everyday expressions of islamic piety affect not only the construction of islamic authority but also popular understandings of islamic gender roles. selfies, popular among social media users across southeast asia, expose those behind the camera to exhibitionist narratives and other forms of criticism framed in the discourse of muslim femininity and virtue. notably, both the authors of contested visual expressions and their most vigorous critics are predominantly young social media users. as a number of presenters argued, social media use affects the ways in which southeast asian muslims understand their religion and conversely, muslims’ understandings of their religion affect the ways they use social media to spread their message, as in the case of online da’wa, or islamic proselytization. another aspect of social and digital media, which is rarely touched upon, is the effect of sound or music both upon consumers and music production industries. for example, nasyid – a popular music genre among southeast asian muslims today – reconciles piety with modern consumerist lifestyles by offering new avenues for the expression and experience of islam. islamic sounds, constitutive of short videos posted on social media and other online platforms, trigger affective registers among users and generate sentiments and dispositions which further inform online and offline socialities. social media offer sites where one can literally pour out one’s heart. this stands in stark opposition to widespread anxieties that the digital could take the intimacy out of social relationships (baym, 2010). on the contrary, social media are often used to sustain close (group) relationships beyond the limitations of physical co-presence. apart from sentiments that nurture group cohesion, social media can become the site where anxieties with regard to social, political, and economic disparities become projected. such anxieties become tangible in the online (as well as offline) debates over debt and in the malaysian state’s efforts to reformulate islamic finance around ideas of equity and equal sharing. similarly, in indonesia, social thresholds become imprinted in online sectarian narratives, often reinforced by violent rhetorics. as it became clear during the workshop, social and political activism in southeast asia today runs across the boundaries of online and offline presence and along emerging socialities. social media can function not only to support cross-sectarian social bonds but also to demonstrate and nurture suspicion between different religious fractions. in the face of the plurality of lifestyles and voices visible in social media today, presenters also discussed various endeavors of state and non-state actors to control the online activities of internet users as well as the implications of such attempts for processes of democratization. the rather close and familiar setting of the workshop provided ample room for the discussion of ongoing research and the theorizing of preliminary findings. many participants, including myself, profited from the presentations of research tackling related questions and addressing similar challenges in the study of islamic practices and socialities in the context of social media and new technologies. the workshop 313workshop report: social media and islamic practice in southeast asia simultaneously provided opportunities for rigorous exchange for both presenters and external participants. the topic of the workshop received a wide coverage by austrian media, which signals rising public interest in islamic practices in the digital age. additional information on the workshop is provided on the austrian academy of sciences website reporting on local events.2 with its particular constellation and well-chosen venue, the workshop was certainly perceived as an exceptional scholarly event.  references barendregt, b. (2012). diverse digital worlds. in h. a. horst & d. miller (eds.), digital anthropology (pp. 203-224). london: bloomsbury. baym, n. k. (2010). personal connections in the digital age. cambridge: polity press. gershon, i. (2010). the breakup 2.0: disconnecting over new media. ithaca: cornell university press. slama, m. (2016). file sharing and (im)mortality: from genealogical records to facebook. in r. sanjek & s. tratner (eds.), efieldnotes: the makings of anthropology in the digital world (pp. 94-109). philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. about the author dayana lengauer is a researcher at the institute for social anthropology, austrian academy of sciences, and editor of the austrian journal of south-east asian studies. ► contact: dayana.lengauer@oeaw.ac.at 2 austrian academy of sciences’ events, retrieved from http://www.oeaw.ac.at/en/events-communication/events/eventdetail/article/social-media-religioese-praxis-in-indonesien/ tourism and development in southeast asia tourism and development in southeast asia claudia dolezal & alexander trupp ► dolezal, c., & trupp, a. (2015). tourism and development in southeast asia. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 8(2), 117-124. over the last decades, southeast asia has experienced a rapid growth in international tourist arrivals from 21.2 million in 1990 to 96.7 million in 2014 (unwto, 2015a, p. 4). tourism is no longer only regarded as a mere income generator, creator of jobs, or socio-cultural phenomenon, but also serves as a tool to foster beneficial and locally driven development in all its dimensions (scheyvens, 2002). recent years have shown a steady increase in tourism being used as a tool for development and poverty alleviation in the world’s less developed countries (darma putra & hitchcock, 2012; holden, 2013; novelli, 2015). organizations such as the world bank, un agencies, ngos, and governments put tourism high up on the agenda to achieve objectives of livelihood diversification, community empowerment, poverty alleviation, and development (christie et al., 2013; spenceley & meyer, 2012; unwto, 2013). understandings of development have significantly changed over the years, moving beyond ideas of economic growth towards the inclusion of social and environmental aspects. as part of the post-2015 agenda, development focuses on the eradication of poverty and hunger as well as on health, education, gender equality, sanitation, clean energy, and economic growth (un, 2015). it further includes action against climate change, responsible consumption and production, the reduction of inequalities, and the conservation of the environment (un, 2015). the un includes tourism as a key activity to contribute to the achievement of its former millennium development goals (mdgs) and the newly implemented sustainable development goals (sdgs), thus contributing to tourism being “firmly positioned in the post-2015 development agenda” (unwto, 2015b, p. 2). with broader shifts in development paradigms from top-down and externally-driven development to alternative, participatory, and ‘homegrown’ development (potter et al., 2008), tourism in the developing world has equally experienced significant changes (telfer & sharpley, 2008). the alternative development paradigm prevalent in the 1980s, putting emphasis on local participation, people, and bottom-up development (chambers, 1983), created the grounds for the emergence of alternative forms of tourism including ecotourism, sustainable tourism, pro-poor tourism, and community-based tourism (cbt) – all of which ultimately aim at generating more beneficial development for local populations (reid, 2003). the rise of small-scale participatory tourism initiatives – with the larger aim of increasing developmental benefits from tourism – was also fostered through negative socioeconomic and ecological impacts of mass tourism in southeast asia. these include the unequal distribution of economic benefits from tourism editorial w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 . 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 15 .2 -1 118 claudia dolezal & alexander trupp  aseas 8(2) or the overexploitation of natural resources for uncontrolled tourism resorts such as in pattaya, thailand, or kuta in bali, indonesia. while harrison (2015) recently stated that “alternative tourism will never replace mass tourism” (p. 53), one can at the same time observe a growing interest in sustainable forms of tourism in southeast asia. in countries such as thailand, malaysia, and indonesia, for instance, cbt is used as an alternative tourism strategy to mass tourism, making room for local ownership and fostering sustainability and cross-cultural understanding (boonratana, 2010; dolezal, 2014; rest, 2013). in the lao pdr, ecotourism and cbt have officially played an important role in national tourism planning as the local government announced its plan to become a “world renowned destination specializing in forms of sustainable tourism” (lao national tourism administration, 2004, p. 6). there appears to be an increasing awareness in southeast asian tourism that the once ‘toured’ need to experience greater levels of decision-making and power in order for tourism to work as an effective catalyst for development. as a consequence, tourism in southeast asia has experienced a stronger focus on development aspects, both within academia and in practice. researching tourism in the developing world is no longer limited to understanding its impacts as well as local responses and mitigation strategies, but actually focuses on finding practical ways for how tourism can serve as an engine for development. nevertheless, tourism for development experiences regular criticism. one of these criticisms is that alternative or sustainable forms of tourism are often vaguely defined, referring “to anything which is not mass tourism” (harrison, 2015, p. 64). in fact, alternative forms of tourism are often condemned for being too small-scale, for leading to tokenistic rather than real participation, and for increasing local inequalities (goodwin, 2009; tosun, 2005). in addition, tourism often increases pressure on natural resources in localities characterized by scarcity. for example, cole (2012) illustrated this issue in regards to water equity and tourism in bali, indonesia. for ecotourism in indonesia more generally, erb (2001) has demonstrated that the environment is perceived as a resource to be exploited, even though the kind of tourism under study was aimed at sustainable development. in addition to environmental impacts that compromise sustainability in southeast asia (parnwell, 2009), tourism leads to changing socio-cultural dynamics, including transformations in gender relations (chan, 2009), cultural commodification (cole, 2008; trupp, 2011), and the use of heritage for economic and political ends (hitchcock, king, & parnwell, 2010). despite these negative consequences, residents’ agency in tourism and development is increasingly acknowledged, leading to a shift from simplistic binary divisions of power relations between tourists and residents, towards more nuanced analyses of tourism. picard’s (1990, 1996) work on tourism in bali, for instance, has demonstrated that instead of destroying balinese culture, tourism became a part of it and created a “touristic culture” (picard, 1990, p. 42), which, in turn, reinforced balinese cultural identity. dolezal’s research on cbt in bali further reveals that residents empower themselves by playing with notions of authenticity to attract tourists and eventually be part of the global tourism market. trupp (2015) shows how ethnic minority street vendors in thailand’s urban tourist areas mobilize their social and cultural capital and become successful micro entrepreneurs. these examples lead us to think of tourism not as an external force impacting upon societies but as an internal dynamic, with residents constituting agents rather than taking passive roles in the tourism en119tourism and development in southeast asia counter. it is therefore key to acknowledge and understand residents’ agency as well as local factors that constitute structural constraints in those places where tourism serves as an engine for development. an increasing number of studies put local political contexts into the center of their analysis, investigating how tourism can and must be in line with wider national policies in order to ensure developmental success (muangasame & mckercher, 2015). policy makers and tourism developers in southeast asia (and elsewhere) view tourism as a way of increasing foreign investment and economic growth (harrison, 2015). at the same time, richter (2009) suggests that “governments can and must do more to make opportunities for their own people to travel and have recreation” (p. 145). fostering domestic and cross-border tourism in southeast asia is one of the strategies to increase the local benefits from tourism, particularly when taking into consideration the increasing spending power of some southeast asian economies (king, 2015; winter, 2009). domestic tourism not only stimulates local economies through increased tax revenue but also avoids the use of long-haul flights, ultimately enabling tourism to follow principles of sustainability. between 2003 and 2011, the asian development bank (adb) provided usd 58.7 million in the form of loans and grant assistance for the development of the tourism industry in the greater mekong sub region (adb, 2012, p. 11). however, the positive impacts of such investments for local people also need to be questioned, as the adb’s program in the region features “a strong favour of neoliberalism”, a focus on a mere increase of tourist numbers through cross-border travel, integration of national markets, and development of the private sector (harrison, 2015, p. 62). despite the positive impacts of tourism on residents and their livelihoods, it remains questionable to what extent tourism can really contribute to development in all its dimensions. a study by novelli and hellwig (2011) on the perceived contribution of tourism to the mdgs shows that tourism largely neglects health issues, such as prevalent diseases (e.g. hiv and malaria), child mortality, and women’s health. more effort therefore needs to come from those agents who specifically aim to tackle these aspects of development, as well as from the tourism industry itself, in order for tourism to cast wider health benefits. partnerships with development agencies and ngos not directly related to tourism are a way forward for tourism to yield wider developmental benefits (saarinen, rogerson, & manwa, 2013). this proves crucial not only in practice but also in academia, where multiand interdisciplinary studies are increasingly supported (hitchcock et al., 2009). by bringing together experts from a variety of backgrounds, this special issue contributes to the understanding of tourism’s dynamics in southeast asia. it addresses a range of concerns connected to tourism as a tool for development by drawing on case studies from thailand, vietnam, and indonesia. v. dao truong and michael hall start the discussion on tourism and development by focusing on social marketing and its potential for poverty alleviation. by drawing on a case study of sapa town in the northern highlands of vietnam, their article discusses residents’ perception of poverty and its causes to subsequently explore whether social marketing could be a potential solution. the authors argue for an increased use of social marketing as a tool that could potentially empower residents and bring their oftentimes marginalized voices to the attention of decision-makers. maribeth erb contributes with an ethnographic study of tourism in nusa teng120 claudia dolezal & alexander trupp  aseas 8(2) gara timur province by investigating ‘sail komodo’ – a marine tourism event aimed at boosting tourist numbers and raising local standards of living in eastern indonesia. the author reveals the contradictory nature of tourism as a tool for development, illustrated by examples such as the displacement of tourists at the event through government officials’ attendance and the lacking positive local impact that was initially promised. by analyzing tourism through the lens of a local event, erb ultimately illustrates how tourism is conceptualized as “the reason to offer development programs, instead of seeing tourism itself as a pathway to development” (erb, 2015, p. 159) claudia dolezal shifts the discussion in another direction by offering an analysis of cbt in northern thailand, moving away from the oftentimes problematic nature of cbt and towards investigating the tourism encounter as a potential space for change. by drawing on maccannell’s work on the tourism encounter and said’s orientalism in relation to tourism, her contribution questions the theoretical grounding that has long influenced investigations of social interactions in tourism. she argues that new forms of tourism such as cbt can make room for more beneficial residenttourist relationships. as a consequence, some of the theories that have influenced our thinking of the tourism encounter need to be adapted or reconsidered in light of newer, more beneficial forms of tourism. cbt therefore is not only a tool for residents to empower themselves in inventing and managing their own tourism product in order to reap the economic benefits of tourism, but at the same time can lead to deeper and more meaningful relationships between residents and tourists. huong t. bui and timothy j. lee’s case study of the imperial citadel of thang long in hanoi, vietnam, investigates the processes of turning heritage resources into tourism products. the authors pay particular attention to the relationship between heritage, identity, and tourism by investigating the process of commodification and politicization of unesco world heritage in vietnam. rather than being demanddriven in its nature, bui and lee argue that the interpretation and presentation of heritage at the citadel is governed by an ideological doctrine. based on the generated insights, the authors ultimately offer recommendations for the management of heritage in vietnam’s tourism industry. in the section ‘research workshop’, felix m. bergmeister offers insights into his ongoing phd project, investigating the construction and negotiation of “tourism imaginaries” (salazar, 2012) in popular guidebooks and independent travel-blogs. in doing so, he analyses power relations as part of cultural representation in southeast asian tourism, thereby unraveling dominant western discourses. at the same time, his research reveals insights into the possibilities that new media offers for representation, being more experience-based and forming ideas about southeast asian countries in new and very particular ways. ‘in dialogue’ features an interview by christina vogler with nancy lindley, head of the chiang mai expats club and coordinator of lanna care net, a network providing assistance for elderly foreigners settling down in thailand. the interview offers insights into the expats community, the challenges that retirees from abroad are facing in chiang mai, and the system of care for elderly foreigners. the contribution thus blurs the boundaries between tourism and migration and discusses what happens when tourists become residents in the places they visit. this special issue of the austrian journal for south-east asian studies therefore 121tourism and development in southeast asia constitutes a contribution to the wider debate on tourism and development by revealing new insights into the dynamics of tourism in southeast asia. based on case studies conducted in thailand, indonesia and vietnam, this collection of papers highlights the importance of a local voice in development intervention to ensure developmental success. it elaborates some of the positive impacts that tourism can create in rural areas, while also uncovering a number of local paradoxes. at the same time, this issue revealed the need for further research that specifically focuses on best practice examples and draws on local expertise in order to maximize the benefits of tourism in the post-2015 era.  references asian development bank (adb). 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(2012). a political ecology of water equity and tourism: a case study from bali. annals of tourism research, 39(2), 1221-1241. cole, s. (2008). tourism, culture and development: hopes, dreams and realities in east indonesia. clevedon, uk: channel view publications. darma putra, i. n., & hitchcock, m. (2009). terrorism and tourism in bali and south-east asia. in m. hitchcock, v. t. king, & m. parnwell (eds.), tourism in southeast asia: challenges and new directions (pp. 83-98). copenhagen, denmark: nias press. dolezal, c. (2014.) understanding the meaning and possibilities of empowerment in community-based tourism in bali. conference proceedings from iscontour 2014 – international student conference in tourism research, 05 may 2014, imc fh krems, austria. dolezal, c. (2015). questioning empowerment in community-based tourism in rural bali. unpublished doctoral dissertation, university of brighton, uk. erb, m. (2001). ecotourism and environmental conservation in western flores: who benefits? antropologi indonesia, 66, 72-88. goodwin, h. (2009). reflections on 10 years of pro-poor tourism. journal of policy research in tourism, leisure and events, 1(1), 90-94. harrison, d. (2015). development theory and tourism in developing countries: what has theory ever done for us? international journal of asia pacific studies, 11(supp. 1), 53-82. hitchcock, m., king, v. t., & parnwell, m. (2010). heritage tourism in southeast asia. honolulu, hi: university of hawaii press. hitchcock, m., king, v. t., & parnwell, m. (2009). introduction: ‘tourism in southeast asia’ revisited. in m. hitchcock, v. t. king & m. parnwell (eds.), tourism in southeast asia: challenges and new directions (pp. 1-42). copenhagen, denmark: nias press. holden, a. (2013). tourism, poverty and development. abingdon, uk: routledge. 122 claudia dolezal & alexander trupp  aseas 8(2) king, v. t. 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(2008). tourism and development in the developing world. london, uk: routledge. tosun, c. (2005). stages in the emergence of a participatory tourism development approach in the developing world. geoforum, 36(3), 333-352. trupp, a. (2011). exhibiting the “other” then and now: “human zoos” in southern china and thailand. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 4(1), 139-149. trupp, a. (2015). agency, social capital, and mixed embeddedness among akha ethnic minority street vendors in thailand’s tourist areas. sojourn: journal of social issues in southeast asia, 30(3), 779-817. un (2015). sustainable development goals. sustainable development knowledge platform. retrieved from: https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/topics unwto (2013). sustainable tourism for development guidebook. madrid, spain: unwto. unwto (2015a). unwto tourism highlights 2015. madrid, spain: unwto. retrieved from http://www.e-unwto.org/doi/pdf/10.18111/9789284416899 unwto (2015b). tourism and the sustainable development goals. madrid, spain: unwto. winter, t. (2009). asian tourism and the retreat of anglo-western centrism in tourism theory. current issues in tourism, 12(1), 21-31. 123tourism and development in southeast asia about the authors claudia dolezal is lecturer in tourism at the university of westminster, london, uk. she specializes in tourism for development and the anthropology of tourism, in community-based tourism, empowerment, and the tourism encounter in rural thailand and bali. claudia is also editorial board member of aseas and contributes to the work of the society for south-east asian studies (seas). ► contact: c.dolezal@westminster.ac.uk alexander trupp is lecturer at the institute for population and social research (ipsr) at mahidol university, thailand, and editor in chief of aseas. he worked at the department of geography and regional research, university of vienna, and the research institute for languages and cultures of asia, mahidol university. his research interests include tourism and migration, tourism and development, ethnic minority tourism, asian outbound tourism, street vending, and social capital. ► contact: alexander.tru@mahidol.ac.th cultural impacts of mining in indigenous peoples’ ancestral domains in the philippines aseas 5(2) 335334 d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -5 .2 -9 forum südostasien / forum south-east asia cultural impacts of mining in indigenous peoples’ ancestral domains in the philippines marina wetzlmaier1 citation wetzlmaier, m. (2012). cultural impacts of mining in indigenous peoples’ ancestral domains in the philippines. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 5(2), 335-344. introduction according to the philippines’ largest mining company, philex mining corporation, “there is life in mining”. in its advertising campaign, the company tells the public that it “values the environment and community” through “responsible mining” (hilomenvelasco, 2011). for indigenous peoples, however, who belong to the most marginalised and vulnerable sectors of society, large-scale mining often leads to the loss of their lands and thus poses a serious threat to their livelihoods. about 60 percent of mining operations in the philippines take place in ancestral domains2 and often without the consent of the affected communities, which fall victim to displacement and numerous human rights violations, such as arbitrary detention, persecution, killings of community representatives, demolition of houses, destruction of property, rape, and forced recruitment (brawner baguilat, 2011). these abuses occur in an environment of impunity, as perpetrators – state as well as private armed forces – are usually not held responsible. mining affects the strong cultural ties of indigenous communities and leads to the loss of their culture and identity (brawner baguilat, 2011). the following paper will look at impacts of mining on indigenous communities in two selected areas: abra province in northern luzon and the tampakan mining project in mindanao in the 1 marina wetzlmaier studied international development at the university of vienna, austria and is currently working as research and information officer at foodfirst information and action network (fian) philippines, quezon city. contact: marina.wetzlmaier@gmx.at 2 the term “ancestral domain” is defined in the indigenous peoples rights act of 1997 and refers to all areas claimed by indigenous peoples in the philippines based on tradition and heritage. it includes ancestral land, forests, pasture, residential, agricultural land, watersheds, natural resources, as well as traditional hunting grounds, burial grounds, and worship areas (congress of the philippines, 1997, sec. 3a ancestral domains). aseas 5(2) 337336 south of the philippines. it will not limit its focus to large-scale mining, but also include small-scale mining. primary data on the two cases was collected during a study tour3 on mining and human rights in the philippines, the purpose of which was to gain insight into different challenges connected with mining in the philippines. visits to the affected areas were the main component of the tour where open group discussions with community leaders and members took place. round table discussions with local ngos and individual interviews with government officials provided additional information. for the following article, the collected primary data was complemented and updated by secondary sources, such as newspaper articles. the selected cases are only two examples of numerous similar experiences in other areas of ancestral domains in the philippines. they show the divisive effects of mining on communities where positions vary between those who strongly oppose mining and those who hope to benefit from it. the situation raises questions about the future of ancestral domains, including indigenous peoples’ cultural heritage and natural resources. mining in the philippines the philippines is said to host one of the world’s biggest deposits of undiscovered minerals, especially of gold and copper (herrera, 2012). mineral reserves are estimated at about 7.1 billion tonnes of 13 known metallic and 51 billion tonnes of 29 nonmetallic minerals, many of which are located in areas of rich biodiversity and within ancestral domains of indigenous peoples (alyansa tigil mina [atm], 2011a, p. 5). with the enactment of the mining act of 1995 (republic act 7942), the philippines liberalised its mining policy and opened both public and private lands, including protected areas, to foreign investments (atm, 2011a, p. 7). for 2012, the mines and geosciences bureau of the department of environment and natural resources (denr) expects usd 2.27 billion of foreign investment in mining (herrera, 2012). in addition to the mining act, executive order 270-a of 2004 promoted mining as a priority industry in the country (brawner baguilat, 2011), which, according to ngos, marked a policy shift from “tolerance” to “aggressive promotion” of large-scale min3 the study tour was organised with support of the german-based philippinenbuero and took place from 24 february to 17 march 2012. participation was open to individuals from different sectors such as research, journalism, and ngos. aseas 5(2) 337336 ing. between 2004 and 2011, 32 mining projects were pipelined and more than 2,000 applications for mining contracts and exploration permits were filed (atm, 2011b, p. 3). despite this “aggressive promotion” of the mining industry, investments stayed below the government’s initial target and the mining industry only accounted for about one percent of the annual gdp (atm 2011a, p. 18). in june 2012, president benigno aquino iii signed a long-awaited executive order (e.o. 79) which defines the future direction of the philippine mining policy. the e.o. 79 aims at increasing revenues from mining to at least 5 percent while it also defined “no-go zones” for mining such as prime agricultural lands, eco-tourism sites, and other protected areas (cheng, 2012). thus, it sought to find a balance for different stakeholders, although not all expectations were met. the chamber of mines of the philippines welcomed the order saying that it would provide a “consistent and stable business environment” attractive for investors (olchondra, 2012). environmental groups, however, complained that they were not consulted and the catholic bishops of the philippines, who have always spoken out against destructive mining, criticised that the e.o. 79 would serve business interests and launched a signature campaign in support of an alternative mining bill (cheng, 2012). mining in ancestral domains for years, ngos and supportive politicians have been calling for the revocation of the mining act of 1995, which promoted a “private sector-led and foreign market/ investment-driven exploitation of mineral resources”. instead, they have been pushing for an alternative mining bill in congress that should regulate companies’ activities and give more attention to environmental conservation and local communities (arquillas, 2012). for example, congressman teddy baguilat who is one of the main advocates for a new mining bill demands better protection of ancestral domains in accordance with the indigenous peoples’ rights act (ipra) of 1997 or republic act 8371 (herrera, 2012). among others, ipra obliges the state to recognise, protect, and promote indigenous peoples’ rights to their territories “to preserve and develop their cultures, traditions, and institutions” (congress of the philippines, 1997, chapter i, sec.2). it further guarantees indigenous peoples rights to self-determination and to marina wetzlmaier cultural impacts of mining in indigenous peoples’ ancestral domains in the philippines aseas 5(2) 339338 their ancestral territories, which empowers them to manage and to decide over the use of the natural resources within their lands (brawner baguilat, 2011). for the indigenous peoples, land is life which means more than a mere source of livelihood. the term land is strongly associated with home that refers to a traditional territorial claim and an identity as a community with socio-cultural values closely linked to the environment (“binodngan ancestral domains,” 2011). environmental protection is therefore crucial to the indigenous peoples’ livelihood and their cultural identity. the binongan communities in abra province, for example, describe their responsibilities in interaction with others and with nature through a web of values with three main angles: (1) self-dignity and respect for others, (2) relation to the environment, and (3) spirits and the supernatural world. mining interferes with this set of values as it is considered a symbol of the western culture of consumption that enters into conflict with the indigenous culture of sufficiency and commonness (community volunteer missioners [cvm] member, personal communication, march 4, 2012). village leaders or the council of elders act as guardians of values and practices and are in charge of ensuring the “protection of watersheds, water sources, and acceptable uses of forests and resources” (cvm, n.d., p. 2). however, mining has disrupted traditional socio-political systems and thereby weakened the communities’ sense of unity. village leaders report that conflicts have been provoked by local government officials who, following their own business interests, assigned an ‘alternative’ council of elders that – in opposition to the traditional leaders – acts in favour of mining (village of magao, personal communication, february 29, 2012). having village leaders on their side is crucial for mining operators, as the ipra requires a free prior and informed consent (fpic)4 of affected communities prior to any extractive activities in ancestral domains (brawner baguilat, 2011). nevertheless, experiences on the local level show that the fpic is easily bypassed, manipulated, or not well implemented by companies and the government agencies in charge (bitog, 2011). when it comes to conflicting laws, as in the case of the mining act and ipra, decisions are often made in favour of business interests instead of the affected communities, which then re4 the principles of consultation and participation of indigenous peoples are provided in the ilo convention no. 169 or indigenous and tribal peoples convention of 1989. article 6 states that peoples concerned shall be consulted through appropriate procedures and in “particular through their representative institutions” whenever measures which may affect them are being considered (international labour organization [ilo], 1989, article 6). furthermore, according to article 16 “peoples concerned shall not be removed from the lands which they occupy”, unless they gave their “free and informed consent”. the philippines has not ratified ilo 169, but has integrated some of its standards, such as the fpic, into national law. marina wetzlmaier cultural impacts of mining in indigenous peoples’ ancestral domains in the philippines aseas 5(2) 339338 sort to their own ways of resistance. in mindanao, for example, the b’laan’s struggle for the defence of their rights and of their ancestral domains erupted into a violent conflict (sarmiento, 2012; see also peliño & maderazo, 2012b). case 1: struggle against large-scale mining in tampakan5, mindanao “if the company does not leave, we will fight it with arms,” a tribal leader of a b’laan community announced in march 2012 during an area visit (village of columbio, personal communication, march 10, 2012). two months later, members of the b’laan finally took up armed resistance against the two companies sagittarius mines inc. (smi) and xstrata to defend their ancestral domains (sarmiento, 2012). swiss-based xstrata is the world’s fourth largest copper mining company and main stakeholder of smi, which operates the usd 5.9 billions tampakan mining project – the biggest foreign investment in the philippines (atm, 2011a, p. 25). 28,000 hectares of land are targeted for the extraction of gold and copper, affecting the four provinces of south cotabato, sarangani, sultan kudarat, and davao del sur. smi has already conducted explorations of the tenement and plans to start extractive activities by 2016. if this plan pushes through, about 2,600 families or 4,000 individuals, most of them b’laans, would have to relocate (peliño & maderazo, 2012b). on 9 january 2012, however, the denr ordered smi to stop all operations in the area because the company did not meet the requirements for an environmental compliance certificate (ecc), which is one of the prerequisites for large-scale mining. one reason for the denial of the ecc is an open-pit mining6 ban in south cotabato imposed by the provincial government in 2010. despite that, the company has retained its presence in the area arguing that the ecc denial would only prevent construction-related but not “consultation-related” activities (sarmiento, 2012). community leaders and ngos have questioned the legality of smi’s activities since the application process. as the affected area has been declared an ancestral domain by the local community, an fpic is required prior to any mining operation. some b’laan communities, however, have not been consulted at all, while in other cases the 5 the mining operation is known as tampakan project, because the main site is located in the town of tampakan, south cotabato. 6 experiences from other case studies show that large-scale mining causes irreparable environmental damage. especially open-pit mining comes with long-term negative impacts as it produces more quantities of waste than any other form of extractive activity. during the process, heavy equipment is required to excavate the pit and to remove large quantities of rock. in a next step, cyanide and other toxic chemicals are used to extract the gold from the stone. remaining waste materials, or tailings, are then often discarded into the environment (miranda, blanco-uribe, hernández, ochoa, & yerena, 1998, pp. 21-22). marina wetzlmaier cultural impacts of mining in indigenous peoples’ ancestral domains in the philippines aseas 5(2) 341340 consultations were only conducted with selected village leaders who were offered incentives by the mining company (marbel, personal communication during group discussion, march 8, 2012). in general, promises of material benefits such as seedlings and capital, of job opportunities, and development projects in these poverty-stricken remote areas convinced b’laan members to sacrifice their land to the mining company (sarmiento, 2012; village of columbio, personal communication, march 10, 2012). thus, the mining issue has clearly caused divisions among the b’laan communities. some b’laan members expressed their willingness to resolve their differences with other communities based on their customary practices of conflict management (peliño & maderazo, 2012a). however, the high degree of militarisation in the area not only hampers conflict resolution but has also worsened tensions on the ground. battalions have been officially deployed in a counter-insurgency mission against the new people’s army (npa), the armed wing of the communist party of the philippines, which is operating in the mountain area. indigenous communities, however, claim that military operations have intensified since smi started its activities and report a series of harassments, violations against their rights as indigenous peoples, and threats to their livelihoods. soldiers have raided villages in search for suspected npa members or for leaders who are involved in armed resistance against smi. they have further prevented villagers from practicing their spiritual rituals and from hunting in the forest (sarmiento, 2012; marbel, personal communication, march 9, 2012). the tampakan case demonstrates several problems and negative impacts directly or indirectly related to mining. apart from the abovementioned conflicts within communities and with the military, people suffer from the environmental destruction that occurs even before the start of the actual mining operation. the company’s exploration and preparation activities threaten livelihoods as well as the indigenous peoples’ cultural heritage. according to the b’laan communities, bulldozers of smi destroyed their fields and traditional burial grounds to give way to road construction and drilling operations (peliño & maderazo, 2012a). case 2: small and large-scale mining in the binongan ancestral domain/abra province in abra province, northern luzon, communities have successfully pushed for a stop of the large-scale mining operations of jabel corporation/abra mining industrial coraseas 5(2) 341340 poration (amic). the whole province, however, is still subject to seven pending applications for gold mining covering more than 50 percent of the land area. although jabel/amic were forced to cease their activities in 2008, they might resume their operations any time, as they still hold operation permits valid for 25 years, which they obtained in 1999 (cvm, n.d., p. 2). all this happened without prior consultations of the affected indigenous communities, although ipra was already in effect at that time. the denr and the national commission on indigenous peoples (ncip) had certified that no indigenous peoples lived in the targeted areas, regardless of the fact that communities of the binongan7 tribe claim the land as their ancestral domain “since time immemorial” (cvm, 2012). the binongan ancestral domain covers an area of 31,610 hectares and is composed of 150 villages (cvm, n.d.). the domain is known for its rich biodiversity, forests, and watersheds. the majority of the 3,000 to 4,000 inhabitants lives on subsistence farming and is settled along the rivers (cvm, n.d.). it was only in september 2008, after a series of protests by affected communities at the ncip, when a fpic was conducted, during which 9 out of 11 villages rejected the large-scale mining project (cvm, 2012). after large-scale operations in licuan-baay had ceased, small-scale miners entered the tenement. these operations come in different forms. on the one hand, there are commercialised and mechanised small-scale mining projects controlled by operators from the outside. on the other hand, artisanal gold mining is being practiced and regulated in indigenous villages.8 common to most forms of small-scale mining in the philippines is that they mainly happen beyond state control. while binongan communities showed strong opposition to large-scale mining, positions vary when it comes to small-scale mining. the concept of land as home and carrier of cultural identity erodes in the face of the socio-economic difficulties in rural areas. according to some communities, farming does not produce enough output anymore to feed their families, rivers carry less water for irrigation, and more forest areas have to be cleared to plant vegetables. under these circumstances, some community members are forced to look for alternative sources of income and get involved in small-scale mining. other members however suspect that the decrease in agricultural output is a consequence of small-scale mining, as chemicals such as 7 other spellings are ibinongan or binodngan. 8 for the different types of mining, see also miranda et al. (1998, p. 17). marina wetzlmaier cultural impacts of mining in indigenous peoples’ ancestral domains in the philippines aseas 5(2) 343342 mercury and cyanide are being used to extract gold and are eventually released into the rivers. they admit that compared to large-scale mining, in the beginning the environmental effects would be less devastating, but in the long-term, they would still negatively affect people’s livelihoods (village of cawayan, personal communication, february 28, 2012).9 differences also occur on the issue of whether communities would benefit from mining or not. this factor might be determined by the degree of involvement of the local community. while mining controlled by the communities themselves can provide an important source of income for the locals, some communities complain that most of the small-scale miners originate from other provinces. as a village elder put it, “i don’t want outsiders to come here and to destroy our land” (tribal leader, personal communication, march 1, 2012). those who are employed in commercialised small-mining operations would not receive much profit anyway, as shares first go to the financer, the ball mill operator, the land owner, and to the maintenance of the equipment (village of cawayan, personal communication, february 28, 2012). moreover, people have to deal with unsafe working conditions, which in the past caused deadly accidents due to gas poisoning in the tunnels (cvm member, personal communication, march 4, 2012). these divisions have weakened the communities and consequently their capacity to protect their ancestral domains. protecting ancestral domains both cases present mining as a source of conflict that affects indigenous ancestral domains, the protection of cultural heritage, and of natural resources. traditional concepts and values of indigenous communities tend to erode when socio-economic realities force people to look for alternative sources of livelihood and when power-relations within communities change. communities are divided between their responsibility to protect their ancestral heritage and prospects of economic development. ngos suggest indigenous peoples themselves to uphold traditional values and practices, such as peace pacts between tribes and other mechanisms of conflict reso9 according to miranda et al. (1998), small-scale mining can even lead to the same negative impacts as industrial mining. small-scale mining causes (1) soil and water damage: collapse of underground shafts, increase of sedimentation in rivers, damages to vegetation through blasting, deforestation; (2) damages from mercury use to the environment and health as tailings get into the rivers; (3) social damage to social structures of indigenous communities (pp. 19-20). aseas 5(2) 343342 lution, in order to strengthen the communities’ ties within and among each other. while small-scale mining in the philippines still provides a field for further study and analysis, large-scale mining clearly bears the potential of disastrous effects not only on the environment, but also on indigenous peoples’ ancestral domains. the case of tampakan shows how the disrespect for local communities and their rights can lead to the escalation and radicalisation of resistance. the same case also exposes the state’s failure to meet its obligations to respect, protect, and fulfil the rights of indigenous peoples. solutions might be a change of mining policy itself, as proposed by advocates of an alternative mining bill, which should prioritise environmental protection and uphold indigenous peoples’ rights. one suggestion is to explicitly include ancestral domains in the “no-go zones” for mining companies (brawner baguilat, 2011). the president’s executive order failed to do so. it iterates that no mining agreements “shall be approved without the fpic (free, prior, and informed consent) of the concerned ips [indigenous peoples] and compliance with the social acceptability requirement of the communities affected” (cabreza, 2012). however, it does not provide concrete measures to protect indigenous peoples’ rights. in the end, calls for a new mining law remain the only measure to “rectify the flaws of the 1995 [mining] law” (cabreza, 2012). references alyansa tigil mina. (2011, january). a legacy of disasters. the mining situation in the philippines – 2011. quezon city. alyansa tigil mina. (2011, september). position paper on the continued adoption of the aquino government of the revitalization of the philippine mineral industry policy. quezon city. arquillas, c. o. (2012, january 29). multisectoral council, not denr, should decide to allow or not allow mining. mindanews. retrieved 30 june, 2012 from http://www.mindanews.com/top-stories/2012/01/29/ multisectoral-council-not-denr-should-decide-to-allow-or-not-allow-mining-2/ binodngan ancestral domains: where land is home. (2011, january). cvm bulletin, 2(3). bitog, r. (2011, december 27). lawmakers call for mine moratorium anew. sunstar. retrieved 29 june, 2012 from http://www.sunstar.com.ph/baguio/local-news/2011/12/27/lawmakers-call-mine-moratoriumanew-197685 brawner baguilat, t. (2011). philippines. mining and its impacts to indigenous communities. retrieved 29 june, 2012 from http://indigenouspeoplesissues.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1 1988:philippines-mining-and-its-impacts-to-indigenous-communities&catid=32&itemid=65 cabreza, v. (2012, july 9). aquino ally welcomes mining eo, but indigenous people unhappy. philippine marina wetzlmaier cultural impacts of mining in indigenous peoples’ ancestral domains in the philippines aseas 5(2) 345344 daily inquirer. retrieved 10 july, 2012 from http://business.inquirer.net/70032/aquino-ally-welcomes-mining-eo-but-indigenous-people-unhappy cheng, w. (2012, july 7). pnoy’s mining eo welcomed, criticized. abs-cbn news. retrieved 10 july, 2012 from http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/business/07/09/12/pnoys-mining-eo-welcomed-criticized community volunteer missioners. (n.d.) a licuan-baay, abra primer. [brochure]. baguio, philippines. community volunteer missioners. (n.d.). brief profile of the licuan-baay ancestral domain. [brochure], baguio, philippines. community volunteer missioners. (2012, february 24). factsheet on licuan-baay mining issue. [brochure], baguio, philippines. congress of the philippines (1997). republic act no. 8371. an act to recognize, protect and promote the rights of indigenous cultural communities/indigenous peoples, creating a national commission on indigenous peoples, establishing implementing mechanisms, appropriating funds therefore, and for other purposes. quezon city, philippines. herrera, c. f. (2012, june 29). no-mining zone in rice terraces urged under eo. manila standard today. retrieved 29 june, 2012 from http://news.manilastandardtoday.com/2012/06/29/no-mining-zone-rice-terraces-urged-eo/ hilomen-velasco, s. (2011, september 10). ads set on responsible mining. manila bulletin. retrieved 30 june, 2012 from http://www.mb.com.ph/articles/333817/ads-set-responsible-mining international labour organization. (1989). c169-indigenous and tribal peoples convention. retrieved 23 august, 2012 from ilo website: www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=1000:12100:0::no::p12100_instrument_id:312314 lopez, v. (2012, january 7). lack of livelihood projects drive small-scale mining. sunstar manila. retrieved 28 june, 2012 from http://www.sunstar.com.ph/manila/local-news/2012/01/07/lack-livelihood-projectsdrive-small-scale-mining-199251 miranda, m., blanco-uribe, a. q., hernández, l., ochoa, j. g., & yerena, e. (1998). all that glitters is not gold. balancing conservation and development in venezuela’s frontier forests. washington, dc: world resources institute. olchondra, r. t. (2012, july 10). chamber of mines applauds aquino policy: signal to all investors. philippine daily inquirer. retrieved 10 july, 2012 from http://business.inquirer.net/70132/chamber-of-mines-applauds-aquino-policy-signal-to-all-investors peliño, g. j., & maderazo, m. e. (2012, april 29). tampakan: stop the divide, let the b’laans decide. retrieved 29 june, 2012 from http://www.piplinks.org/tampakan%3a-stop-divide,-let-b%2526%2523039%3blaansdecide peliño, g. j., & maderazo, m. e. (2012, 30 april). mining, conflict and death of ips in tampakan. tampakan forum press statement. retrieved 29 june, 2012 from http://www.piplinks.org/tampakan%3a-stop-divide,let-b%2526%2523039%3blaans-decide sarmiento, b. s. (2012, july 1). mining firm, not tribesmen, to blame for atrocities in tampakan. mindanews. retrieved 1 july, 2012 from http://www.mindanews.com/top-stories/2012/07/01/mining-firm-nottribesmen-to-blame-for-atrocities-in-tampakan/ sarmiento, r. s. (2012, june 18). mining firm security guard killed in tampakan attack. businessworld online. retrieved 29 june, 2012 from http://www.bworldonline.com/content.php?id=53672&section=nation &title=mining-firm-security-guard-killed-in-tampakan-attack rezension: keller, a. (hg.). (2015). indonesien 1965ff. die gegenwart eines massenmordes. ein politisches lesebuch. rezension: keller, a. (hg.). (2015). indonesien 1965ff. die gegenwart eines massenmordes. ein politisches lesebuch. berlin: regiospectra. isbn: 978-3-940132-68-0. 214 seiten. ► blum, f. (2017). rezension: keller, a. (hg.). (2015). indonesien 1965ff. die gegenwart eines massenmordes. ein politisches lesebuch. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 10(1), 117-120. das politische lesebuch indonesien 1965ff. die gegenwart eines massenmordes, herausgegeben von anett keller im auftrag der südostasien-informationsstelle, versammelt stimmen, die sich mit den massenmorden in indonesien ab 1965 und deren aufarbeitung auseinandersetzen: beiträge von indonesischen wissenschaftlerinnen unterschiedlicher disziplinen, protokolle von überlebenden, darstellungen von akteuren, die sich der vergangenheitsaufarbeitung widmen, sowie werke zeitgenössischer indonesischer künstlerinnen. der übergreifende ansatz des buches ist es, die kontinuität der massenmorde herauszuarbeiten und damit nicht nur einen einblick in indonesiens vergangenheit zu geben, sondern die ereignisse ab 1965 als prägendes moment der indonesischen gegenwart zu beschreiben. im oktober 1965 wurden in jakarta sechs generäle und ein leutnant der indonesischen armee entführt und ermordet. die täter, die sich „bewegung 30. september“ (g30s) nannten, handelten eigenen angaben zufolge, um einen putsch rechter generäle gegen den präsidenten sukarno zu verhindern. noch bevor die hintergründe der tat geklärt waren – sie sind es bis heute nicht –, wurde die kommunistische partei indonesiens (pki) als drahtzieher der angriffe beschuldigt. in den folgenden wochen und monaten wurden mitglieder oder (vermeintliche) sympathisantinnen der pki verhaftet, gefoltert und ermordet. schätzungen zufolge wurden 500.000 bis 3 millionen menschen getötet, was die gewalttaten ab 1965 zu einem der größten massenmorde des 20. jahrhunderts macht. hunderttausende menschen wurden zum teil jahrelang inhaftiert und auch nach ihrer entlassung diskriminiert, ausgegrenzt und entmenschlicht. als grundlage dafür diente die jahrzehntelang dominierende geschichtsschreibung der „neuen ordnung“ (orde baru) unter general suharto, der sich nach den ereignissen um den oktober 1965 an die spitze des staates geputscht hatte: die opfer der massenmorde wurden als täter dargestellt. dieser einen version der geschichte eine vielzahl von geschichten und alternative thesen entgegenzustellen ist das anliegen des sammelbandes: indonesien 1965 als „schauplatz des kalten krieges“ (baskara t. wardaya sj), als „folge staatlichen handelns“ (stanley adi prasetyo), als „wendepunkt der indonesischen geschichte“ (hilmar farid), als „wendepunkt der geschichte von indonesiens frauenbewegung“ (i gusti agung ayu ratih); um nur einige zu nennen. der fokus auf einzelne aspekte der gewalt, deren fortwirken und die strukturen, in die die gewalttaten eingebettet sind, trägt in der gesamtheit der beiträge zu einem differenzierten bild bei, das widersprüchlichkeiten zwischen rezensionen  book reviews w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 17 .1 -9 118 franziska blum  aseas 10(1) den texten ebenso zulässt wie wiederholungen. hilmar farid beschreibt das jahr 1965 weniger als menschliche tragödie, sondern vielmehr als wendepunkt der indonesischen geschichte und als „siegeszug des kapitalismus“ (s. 71-82). die protokolle von überlebenden (s. 29-40, s. 59-64, s. 83-88, s. 137-152, s. 183-192) beschreiben die menschliche tragödie in all ihren facetten – was als leserin oft schwer zu ertragen ist. die individuelle dimension der gewalt für die opfer und deren familien (auch der generationen nach 1965) zeigen sowohl die unvergleichbarkeit der schicksale als auch eine mögliche konzeptualisierung der gewalt und strukturelle bezüge (z.b. zu sexualisierter gewalt). die protokolle der opfer sind übersetzungen von beiträgen aus indonesischen sammelbänden, die die geschichte nicht aus der perspektive der sieger, sondern der opfer erzählen. damit stehen sie stellvertretend für viele akteure der vergangenheitsaufarbeitung, deren arbeit auf interviews mit opfern seit 1965. basiert (z.b. yayasan penelitian korban pembunuhan 1965/66 (ypkp), institut sejarah sosial indonesia (issi) oder lembaga kreatifitas untuk kemanusiaan). in den darstellungen von akteuren der vergangenheitsaufarbeitung (s. 41-46, s. 65-70, s. 89-94, s. 117-122, s. 153-164, s. 193-198) werden auch die schwierigkeiten sichtbar: „die öffentliche meinung tendiert aus den verschiedensten gründen eher zu einer ablehnung der aufarbeitung von 1965. hier zeigt sich, wie suhartos geschichtsschreibung bis heute nachwirkt. ein teil der gesellschaft hat angst, dass die wahrheitssuche alte wunden aufreißt und wieder zu konflikten führt. ein anderer teil sieht im ruf nach aufarbeitung das bemühen von kommunisten mit dem ziel, die macht zu ergreifen“ (s. 81). auf welchen ebenen und mit welchen mitteln die geschichtsschreibung durchgesetzt wurde, zeigt der beitrag „film als mittel der propaganda“ von wijaya herlambang (s. 123-136). filme spielten als massenkommunikationsmedien eine schlüsselrolle für den aufbau von denkstrukturen der neuen ordnung. wissenschaftliche studien wie jene des militärhistorikers nugroho notosusanto, bildeten das ideologische fundament der dokumentationen und zeugen von der verflechtung von wissenschaft und politischer macht in der ära suharto. auch auf internationaler ebene gab es – auch aufgrund des geopolitischen kontexts – über einen langen zeitraum nur wenige beispiele für wissenschaftliche analysen der ereignisse von 1965, die sich von der neuen ordnung und den machtpolitischen verstrickungen emanzipierten (z.b. die cornell papers). der historiker baskara t. wardaya sj beschreibt in seinem beitrag „schauplatz des kalten krieges“ (s. 17-28) die ereignisse von 1965 als „logische konsequenz“ (s. 20) der innenund außenpolitischen konstellationen. er arbeitet insbesondere die rolle der usa heraus, die anti-kommunistische politik im blockfreien indonesien der 1960er jahre unterstützte und „aktiv in die pläne der beseitigung der pki und zur entmachtung von präsident sukarno beteiligt“ (s. 24) war. seiner analyse zufolge ist die internationale machtkonstellation nicht nur mitverantwortlich für die gewalt, sondern auch für ihre fehlende aufarbeitung. einen möglichen weg für eine solche glaubhafte aufarbeitung auf internationaler ebene beschreitet die organisation ypkp, die zu den initiatoren des volkstribunals in den haag im herbst 2015 zählt und auf den internationalen druck zur juristischen und politischen aufarbeitung setzt. 119book review „dem puzzle fehlen . . . noch viele teile“ (s. 14), argumentiert die herausgeberin anett keller und es bleibt fragwürdig, warum es gerade außerhalb indonesiens kaum wissen über das unvorstellbare ausmaß an gewalt gibt. der sammelband schließt hier eine lücke, indem er sich erstmals in deutscher sprache mit den ereignissen von 1965/1966 und deren fortwirken bis heute auseinandersetzt. weitere auseinandersetzungen sollten folgen, so zum beispiel zum verhältnis von indonesien und der bundesrepublik deutschland, die besondere beziehungen zu indonesien unter suharto (bis hin zu persönlicher freundschaft zwischen helmut kohl und suharto) pflegte. ob auf nationaler oder internationaler ebene, die wissensproduktion über die massenmorde im oktober 1965 und ihre hintergründe spielte eine zentrale rolle, die massenhafte gewalt zu legitimieren und bis in die gegenwart hinein fortzuführen. die kritische aufarbeitung bedarf gerade deshalb einer kritischen wissensproduktion im sinne vielfältiger perspektiven. franziska blum freie autorin environmental policy coordination in asean: the case of waste from electrical and electronic equipment aseas 5(1) 30 31 aktuelle südostasienforschung / current research on south-east asia environmental policy coordination in asean: the case of waste from electrical and electronic equipment armin ibitz1 citation ibitz, a. (2012). environmental policy coordination in asean: the case of waste from electrical and electronic equipment. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 5(1), 30-51. among numerous environmental challenges in the asean region, the rapid growth of volumes of waste from electrical and electronic equipment (e-waste) has increasingly drawn international attention. economies face huge demands for electrical and electronic products, while governments are confronted with diffi culties dealing with mounting volumes of e-waste. furthermore, lucrative transnational shipment of discarded electric and electronic devices calls for a regional response to the issue. while asean has failed to come up with a common policy response, certain member states have pushed ahead with their own legislation in an attempt to address this urgent issue. this study sets out to identify the determining factors which have disabled asean in terms of agreeing on a common policy response in the case of dealing with e-waste. based on the assumption that states act according to expected gains, the study applies a game theoretical approach to analyse the developments. keywords: policy coordination; e-waste; electric and electronic equipment; trade; asean die bewältigung der rasant anwachsenden menge an elektroschrott zählt zu den großen umweltpolitischen herausforderungen der asean-staaten. während sich die volkswirtschaften einer immer größer werdenden nachfrage nach elektrischen und elektronischen geräten gegenübergestellt sehen, vermögen es die meisten länder nicht adäquate entsorgungswege für altgeräte aufzubauen. zusätzlich zur inländischen produktion gilt es auch mit oftmals als gebrauchtprodukt getarntem, importiertem elektroschrott umzugehen. eine dringend notwendige regionale koordinierung wurde von asean noch nicht in angriff genommen. diese studie geht der frage nach, warum auf ebene von asean keine lösungsansätze zu dieser problematik zu erwarten sind. zur analyse der entwicklungen bedient sich die arbeit eines spieltheoretischen ansatzes. schlagworte: politikkoordinierung; elektroschrott; elektrische und elektronische geräte; handel; asean introduction over the past decades, solid waste has become one of the most visible environmental 1 armin ibitz is assistant professor at the wenzao ursuline college of languages, kaohsiung, taiwan. he received his ph.d. from the national sun yat-sen university, taiwan. his research interests are in trade and the environment, and environmental governance. contact: armin_ibitz@mail.wtuc.edu.tw d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -5 .1 -3 aseas 5(1) 30 31 issues of countries in the asean region, and the rapid rise in the volume of discarded electrical and electronic equipment (waste electrical and electronic equipment/ weee) represents another emerging challenge for south-east asia. due to economic growth and increased living standards, demand for electrical and electronic equipment (eee) is growing, but so are streams of waste from these same devices. volumes of e-waste are growing three times faster than volumes of average solid waste (goosey, 2004). the volume of obsolete pcs in developing countries is estimated to surpass those of the developed countries by 2016 to 2018. and by 2030, some 400 to 700 million personal computers will become obsolete in the developing countries (yu, williams, ju, & yang, 2010). many asian countries are experiencing a rapid rise in the volume of e-waste. thailand has reported a rise in the volume of e-waste by an annual 12 percent. inappropriate handling of e-waste causes severe harm to the environment and to human health since many electronic components contain hazardous substances, such as lead or cadmium. since recycling, dismantling, and disposal of weee requires appropriate facilities, advanced methods, and trained personnel, mounting streams of waste represent a massive ecological threat and pose risks to human health, particularly in the developing countries. inappropriate methods of treatment first result in a localised contamination of the soil, the aquatic systems, and the air. eventually, pollutants spread over a larger region, flow down the water system, and enter the food chain. besides the issue of domestically generated weee, there is rising concern about transboundary shipments of weee (greenpeace, 2008). large amounts of discarded eee and second-hand eee are shipped across the globe for the purpose of recycling, reuse, or disposal. some estimated 50 to 80 percent of the collected domestic e-waste of the united states is not recycled domestically but exported to developing nations (puckett & smith, 2002). increasing amounts of e-waste and second hand eee are shipped from developed nations to developing countries (mainly to africa and asia) but also within the developing nations. many countries in asia are actively trading second hand appliances (puckett, westervelt, gutierrez, & takamiya, 2005). hong kong, china, singapore, and malaysia are the main recipients of shipments of discarded eee from the eu. electronic scrap and second hand eee contain valuable components, and imports have been a source of secondary raw materials. trade of discarded eee provides a lucrative business opportunity for international traders and armin ibitz environmental policy coordination in asean aseas 5(1) 32 33 generates income for thousands of operators in the informal sector, at the cost, however, of human health and the environment. with the number of personal computers and electronic devices correlating to the gross domestic product of an economy, we can expect continuous growth rates of weee in the near future (robinson, 2009). as a result, the region will be increasingly affected by the mounting volumes of weee and the consequences of inadequate treatment, recycling, and disposal of e-waste. when addressing the issue, environmental efforts often come in conflict with economic interests. the main purpose of this article is to identify the factors that disable asean from agreeing on a common policy response on e-waste. while many claim that lack of political will and awareness is the main reason for the failure of policy coordination, this study attempts to go beyond that point and seeks to reveal the underlying incentives for decision makers which prevent them from proceeding with environmental cooperation. based on the assumption that states act according to expected gains, the study applies a game theoretical approach to analyse the developments. regional integration and policy coordination across the globe, we can witness the formation of regional cooperation. however, joint efforts and cooperation between countries rarely occur out of altruistic reasons but are rather driven by potential benefits in respect of each country’s national interests. a major benefit from cooperation lies in the reduction of transaction costs, such as easier access to information. however, cooperation often entails a loss of sovereignty which leaves decision makers reluctant to cooperate. given that political will is shaped by the involved actors’ perceptions of the situation and the expected gains from cooperation, we can assume that cooperation is more likely in cases where the problem identification of the negotiating parties is identical and win-winsituations occur. therefore, the overall pace and intensity of regional integration and policy coordination is determined by the capabilities of resolving disputes, overcoming obstacles of cooperation, and balancing distributive gains among the members. from a game-theoretical point of view, inter-state cooperation is described by the collective action problem, including two kinds of situations: collaboration and cooraseas 5(1) 32 33 dination games. collaboration games describe a situation where actors are attracted to defect from an existing agreement due to short-term benefits. as a consequence, policy makers may opt for decisions that lead to situations which are not-pareto efficient (ostrom, 1990). unless the dominant strategies can be broken down, actors will defect from cooperation and the agreement is doomed to fail. coordination games describe a situation where actors face difficulties to reach an agreement in the beginning. here, the main concern lies in the coordination of the varying interests of all involved parties. while actors share an identical set of goals, specific differences prevent them from reaching an agreement. setting the board for repeated games, the distribution of gains needs to be taken into consideration as changes in the gains may influence the actors’ interests. the perception of achievable benefits plays a significant role in the formation of agreements. the greater the gains an actor expects from cooperation, the more likely the member state will opt for joint action. with the rise of environmental challenges, the potential gains from cooperation also rise. regional environmental cooperation is most likely to emerge when all parties perceive the issue as an immanent threat that causes economic losses or hinders further development, but is less likely when an agreement runs counter to national interests or contradicts existing sets of policies. in general, collective action problems can be overcome by two responses. first, by the emergence of an international institution that serves as a mediator between the interests of countries and takes over major coordination functions. while negotiations through an existing institution reduce transaction costs, a central body provides a platform for resolving disputes and stimulating negotiations. the institution is set in charge of information gathering and engages in informal consultation about preferences and state policies. it thus functions as a mediator between the bargaining parties (snidal, 1985). second, the existence of a leader may ease substantial obstacles for policy coordination and cooperation. for fear of the consequences, a strong leader may prevent free-riding. the leader may be from within the group (focal point) or an extra-regional actor with strong acceptance and influence. as the european integration process has shown, the road to interstate cooperation and regional integration is often bumpy, requires time and a substantial amount of political will, and is also influenced by external developments. armin ibitz environmental policy coordination in asean aseas 5(1) 34 35 asean and environmental governance environmental issues first appeared in the association’s political agenda during the late 1970s. environmental awareness and environmental regionalism have evolved slowly and in three major phases (elliott, 2011). in the first phase, asean introduced the first subregional environment program (asep i) which mainly emphasised securing the availability of natural resources for economic development. over time, environmental ambitions evolved and a growing commitment to accepting common environmental norms and principles could be witnessed. during the second phase (from the late 1980s until the late 1990s), the focus shifted to transnational threats. environmental awareness in many countries has grown. in 1993, the asean senior officials on the environment (asoen) agreed to develop the asean strategic plan of action on the environment. the new action plan should shift focus towards sustainable development strategies, and greater emphasis was placed on the creation of networks that should contribute to the policy making process. the third phase is characterised by the formation of formal relations within the community. asean established a system of environmental goals and objectives. under the bali concord ii (2003) the organisation of asean reiterated its intention to strengthen the institutional mechanisms and to form an asean community based on three pillars: the asean political-security community (apsc), the asean socio-cultural community (ascc), and the asean economic community (aec). regarding regional environmental governance, the three pillars created new possibilities to integrate environmental topics to a broader forum. first, the formation of the apsc mainly aims to strengthen cooperation on political and security issues (asean, 2009). second, with the creation of the aec the region aims to form a single market and transform into a single production base. as the case of the eu showed, market integration requires advances in the harmonisation of the regulatory frameworks in order to rule out obstacles in the flow of goods due to varying environmental standards and regulations. third, the establishment of the ascc provides even more opportunities to strengthen environmental cooperation across numerous fields, such as sustainable development, unemployment, environmental degradation, transboundary pollution, and disaster management. the asean charter of 2007 marked an important step in the evolution of asean, since it not only provides a basic framework that governs relations among the mem-) aseas 5(1) 34 35 ber states but also transforms asean into a more rule-based organisation with a legal character (lin, 2010). the missing legal identity has been blamed as one of the reasons why asean not only reacted slowly in reaching agreements but also failed to implement them at the national levels. the charter marks an improvement for policy coordination by providing a constitution that governs the relations between the member states and by allowing leaders to meet more frequently. but deeper integration requires a substantial strengthening of institutional structures, decision-making processes, and a solid enforcement system. on the one hand, regional leaders are attempting to emulate an eu-like community but on the other hand they are reluctant to cede power to a central body and the organisation is still left without a binding community law. competition among asean member countries, a narrow focus on national interests, and the fear of losing sovereignty hinder deeper cooperation and policy coordination in asean. as a direct consequence of the conflicts of interest among the member states, asean leaders have come up with a more flexible concept of consensus finding by introducing two formulas: “asean minus x” and “2 plus x”. while the “asean minus x” formula allows specific member states to join asean agreements at a later point in time, the “2 plus x” formula explicitly allows asean states to form new sub-regional agreements within the asean framework (asean, 2006). however, since there is neither an institutional body in charge of controlling the sub-regional groups nor a limit to the number of agreements, such agreements contradict efforts to cooperate and may eventually lead to a weakening of the overall regime (chiou, 2010). from the establishment of asean on, the decision making process can be described as informal elite-based diplomacy based on consultation and consensus. as decision makers did not want to see their newly independent nations put under the control of an external power again, member states only agreed to cooperate as long as decision making respected each member state’s sovereignty. the association has strictly followed the principle of non-interference in other member states’ domestic affairs, and any form of coercion among member states is ruled out. while these principles may have been useful to avoid internal conflict, they also slowed down progress in regional integration. scholars have repeatedly pointed to the principle of non-interference as a major obstacle for deeper integration and collective action (haacke, 2003; tay, estanislao, & soesastro, 2001). like other issue areas, environmenarmin ibitz environmental policy coordination in asean aseas 5(1) 36 37 tal governance follows the common principles of the asean community. in general, decision making in asean takes place at two main levels, the inter-state and the domestic level. major agenda setting and decision making regarding asean takes place by informal diplomacy through government channels, where the summit of the asean heads of state and government is the highest decision making body. in the meetings about specific issues, participants represent the positions of the individual states. environmental issue such as e-waste only have a chance to be dealt with by asean when they are put on the agenda of this highest level of decision making. the second level consists of political decision making processes within each member country. actors at the national level include the political parties, interest groups, and ngos. on several occasions, business associations have been invited by the governments to consultations and hearings. asean encourages the participation of civil society organisations in its regional programmes, but there has been slow progress in the overall integration of non-state actors in the policy formation process of the environment protection area. although several countries across the region possess an active ngo sector, access to policy makers seems to be more difficult for ngos since they typically have limited access to decision making processes. as a consequence, asean governance is mainly determined by government officials and has a top-down hierarchical structure. transboundary issues, such as haze from forest fires, climate change or trade of e-waste, connect the inter-state and the domestic decision making since implementation and enforcement remains a domestic issue. since member countries have the final decision making power in environmental policy making, the organisation’s structure favours environmental cooperation by implementing soft laws which leave compliance at the national levels. while asean environmental programmes and agreements are highly ambitious in their wording, they often lack effective implementation and enforcement mechanisms. as a member state faces no serious consequences in the case of non-compliance, incentives for implementation and enforcement are low (aggarwal & chow, 2010). the principle of non-interference and safeguarding member states’ sovereignty is continued at the cost of the environment (koh & robinson, 2002, p. 679). so far, there has been no agreement, declaration or common policy output from asean that explicitly targets improving the emerging situation of e-waste in the region. aseas 5(1) 36 37 the basel convention during the 1970s and 1980s many industrialised countries exported their hazardous waste to developing nations for final disposal. after two decades of negligence, the basel convention on the control of transboundary movements of hazardous wastes and their disposal (basel convention) – which came into force in 1992 – should have brought an end to the malpractices by providing mechanisms to control international movements of hazardous substances. the basel convention includes lists of hazardous and non-hazardous wastes, including several types of e-waste, such as batteries, cables which contain lead, crt glass etc. in order to ban illegal shipments, the basel convention requires notification of the importing country about the export of hazardous waste prior to shipment. as a result of the basel convention, the shipment of hazardous waste for disposal substantially declined. however, now there is great concern about the shipment of eee for the purpose of reuse and recycling, since goods that are exported for the purpose of reuse do not require pre-shipment notification of any form or pre-shipment approval. due to that loophole, the basel convention is limited in its ability to restrict the trade of discarded eee, shipped as second hand appliances. the ban amendment restricts the export of hazardous waste from developed countries to developing countries and is applicable to exports of hazardous waste for any kind of purpose – including recycling. however, many countries have not signed the amendment yet (see table 1). armin ibitz environmental policy coordination in asean brunei darussalam burma/myanmar cambodia indonesia lao pdr malaysia philippines singapore thailand vietnam basel convention ratified 16 dec 2002 basel convention ratified 02 mar 2001 basel convention ratified 20 sep 1993 basel convention ratified 21 sep 2010 basel convention ratified 08 oct 1993 basel convention ratified 21 oct 1993 basel convention ratified 02 jan 1996 basel convention ratified 24 nov 1997 basel convention ratified 03 mar 1998 ban amendment accepted 16 dec 2002 ban amendment accepted 24 oct 2005 ban amendment accepted 26 oct 2001 table 1: asean parties to the basel convention and ban amendment source: author’s compilation aseas 5(1) 38 39 existing legislation on e-waste in asean unlike other forms of waste, treatment of weee follows a different logic, since it contains both hazardous as well as valuable materials. a tonne of discarded mobile phones contains about 240 g gold, 2.5 kg silver, 92 g palladium, 92 kg copper, and 38 kg cobalt, worth about eur 10,000. in 2008, about 1.3 billion mobile phones were sold worldwide and the worth of gold alone accounts to usd 1.1 billion. an estimated usd 1.35 worth of retrievable materials per mobile phone makes trade a lucrative business (hagelüken, 2010). countries in the region have witnessed the formation of large informal sectors that engage in collecting, reselling, refurbishing, dismantling, and recycling obsolete and second hand eee. trade flow of discarded and second hand eee has intensified across the globe. although the largest sources of discarded eee are still the oecd countries, non-oecd countries are increasingly active in the trade of used eee. particularly, asia has become a hotspot for shipments of weee and second hand eee. large amounts of second hand appliances are shipped to hong kong and singapore, mainly for the purpose of re-export (ministry of the environment japan, 2011). however, also other asean countries are actively importing various kinds of wastes, including used eee and weee (yoshida & terazono, 2010). as the region lacks a common policy on the issue, we can find a patchwork of regulations across the asean member states. the following section provides an overview of existing legislation regarding the treatment of weee and trade of weee in asean member states. with the exception of burma, all asean member states have ratified the basel convention, by which they agree to follow the procedures of notification laid out by the convention. vietnam has no restrictions on the export of hazardous wastes and other wastes for recovery or final disposal. the country has not yet formally ratified the amendment to the basel convention but has indicated that it is in a preparatory process to do so. in 2004, vietnam prohibited the import of e-waste for the purpose of re-export and in 2005 it tightened the ban on imports of e-waste, regardless of its purpose. with the lack of stringent import controls, the illegal influx of eee continued. a major route for regional trade of second hand eee is between china and vietnam. beijing promotes the trade in the region with the reduction of value-added tax on exports of second hand eee. by importing used eee from industrialised countries, repairing aseas 5(1) 38 39 or refurbishing, and then re-exporting them to developing countries, chinese actors are utilising the high demand for second hand appliances in the region (shinkuma & huong, 2009). a growing domestic industry and lower tax for imports of brand new eee will reduce the demand for used eee in the long run. in general, vietnam still lacks high awareness of the ecological risks connected to the treatment of weee. indonesia restricts the import and the export of hazardous wastes and other wastes for recovery and final disposal.2 the country follows the provisions of the basel convention regarding exports of hazardous waste, e-waste, and used eee. in 1994, indonesia has enacted national regulations on hazardous waste management but the general awareness of threats from e-waste remains low. since the issue of ewaste receives no big public attention, policy makers see no immediate need to deal with the problem and trade continues to flourish due to weak enforcement. there is only one facility that is able to treat hazardous waste properly for the whole country. e-waste is still shipped to indonesian markets, and illegal imports of second hand electronics and e-waste continue (gross, 2010; kojima, yoshida, & sasaki, 2009). indonesia is largely dependent on imports of eee since the domestic electronic industry is not yet fully developed. there are only about 80 large and 150 small-medium electronic manufacturers. as a result, more than half of the required components need to be imported. due to the lack of a strong domestic electronic industry, demand for cheap eee is met by imports or second hand products. in indonesia, about half of the overall electrical and electronic goods market is estimated to be smuggled. currently, the government aims to stimulate the domestic industry by restricting the import of used electronics for direct reuse. in thailand, e-waste is defined by domestic regulations and declared as hazardous material. all trade of e-waste officially requires governmental approval. additionally, also the import of used eee for reuse requires governmental permission. thai regulations request registration for producers, importers, exporters, and sellers of weee and used eee. however, besides this comprehensive regulatory framework, thailand faces massive problems enforcing the regulations. as of now, weee is largely dismantled by the informal sector, despite the existence of a subsidised national collection system. from an economic perspective, the electrical and electronic sector plays a 2 according to the regulations, waste exports are allowed provided that the shipment has received a written permission from the competent authority of the destination as well as the exporting country. armin ibitz environmental policy coordination in asean aseas 5(1) 40 41 crucial role as the country has a strong domestic eee industry. thailand has over 800 electrical and over 900 electronic factories. while most electric suppliers are domestic smes, electronic suppliers are mainly international joint-ventures (electrical and electronics institute thailand, 2007). as a large producer of eee with a strong export focus, thailand is concerned about legislation implemented by its trading partners. the eu represents thailand’s second largest export destination. as a response to the eu environmental directives on electrical and electronic equipment (eu-weee and eu-rohs), thailand has introduced a domestic standard on rohs-conformity including a labelling scheme that was launched in early 2009. malaysia has national definitions of waste used for the purpose of transboundary movement. export of e-waste for the purpose of final disposal is prohibited. malaysia restricts the import of hazardous wastes and other wastes for final disposal and for recovery.3 import of hazardous wastes for recovery requires written approval by government authorities. the country restricts the export of hazardous wastes and other wastes for final disposal. malaysia lacks a domestic recycling scheme that can handle the mounting streams of weee adequately. the amount of weee being discarded is estimated to equal 1.165 billion units (or over 21,000 million tonnes) by 2020 (basel convention, 2009). the country suffers from a huge divide between the largest sources of weee and the number of licensed e-waste collectors. in 2008, the whole country only had 107 licensed contractors for collecting and processing e-waste (agamuthu & victor, 2011). as a consequence, only a small fraction of the e-waste is treated properly. the government of malaysia is currently working on a draft for regulating the control and management of e-waste. meanwhile, public awareness of the issue of weee remains generally very low. similar to other countries, the philippines also struggles with rising volumes of e-waste and trade of electrical and electronic equipment. electrical and electronic equipment accounts for about 40 percent of the country’s total imports. the number of clearances regarding the importation of second hand eee and e-scrap issued by the government is rising over time. in 2005, nearly 100,000 tonnes were imported from korea and japan (peralta & fontanos, 2006). the country lacks a comprehensive policy framework for e-waste, and authorities have failed to issue an official definition 3 for details, see: the environmental quality act 1974, (amendment 1996) section 34b; and the customs (prohibition of import) order 1998 amendment 2006. aseas 5(1) 40 41 of e-waste (alegre & borcena, 2010). while the country has a vibrant market for used eee, recycling of electronics is a rather new development. thus, only a small fraction of the obsolete electronic items are brought to recycling facilities or to final disposal at the landfills. obsolete equipment is either stored or reused (terazono et. al., 2006). singapore has definitions of waste used for the purpose of transboundary movement and restricts the import and export of hazardous wastes and other wastes for final recovery and final disposal under the hazardous waste act which went into force in 1998. the act requires permission from the pollution control department prior to any export, import or transit of hazardous wastes (national environmental agency, 2009). while in general singapore does not allow export of waste for disposal, the export of hazardous wastes can be allowed for recovery purposes if there are no waste treatment facilities available domestically. the import of hazardous wastes for recovery is granted on a case-by-case basis. in singapore, the electronics industry takes a vital position for the country’s overall economic strategy. singapore enjoys a high level of environmental awareness. despite all the regulations and requirements, cases of illegal shipment of hazardous waste are still reported. cambodia – due to its rapid economic development – has developed an enormous demand for eee. since it lacks its own domestic eee industry it is heavily dependent on the import of brand new and second hand eee. while cambodia does not produce any kind of eee at all, the country possesses a large second hand market, and cheap second hand products play a dominant role in satisfying the domestic demand. second hand appliances are imported from china, finland, france, hong kong, japan, malaysia, the republic of korea, singapore, thailand, and the usa (unep, 2007). in order to meet growing domestic demand, national regulations allow the import of used eee for reuse and do not require government approval prior to shipments of used electronics for reuse. between 2000 and 2006, cambodia imported almost a million units of tv sets, about 200,000 air-conditioners, about 91,000 refrigerators and about 30,000 washing machines. for fear of an influx of malware, the government bans the import of second hand computers, while other kinds of weee are unregulated. cambodia does not consider used eee with the purpose of reuse as a hazardous waste and in 2007 there was no record of a single e-waste recycling facility in the country. as a consequence, weee and used eee are collected, renewed, recycled, dismantled, and disposed of by the informal sector (unep, 2007). sorting materials at the scrap yards armin ibitz environmental policy coordination in asean aseas 5(1) 42 43 is often done by children. the country lacks a legal framework on e-waste and thus has no specific regulations on e-waste. no specific governmental agency has been put in charge of managing the increasing streams of used eee, and environmental considerations are not taken into account when dealing with weee. awareness of the negative consequences from improper treatment of e-waste is generally at a very low level in cambodia (basel convention, 2007). valuable materials such as metals are sold abroad for recycling purposes (unep, 2008). brunei darussalam is in the preparatory process of restricting the import and export of hazardous wastes and other wastes for final disposal and for recovery. the country is currently drafting legislation aimed at controlling trade in hazardous wastes in accordance with the basel convention. regulations will be implemented in the draft environmental order of negara brunei darussalam. in brunei, e-waste accounts for about one percent of the total generated waste (department of environment, parks and recreation, ministry of development, 2006). while the country has disposal facilities, it lacks facilities for recycling, recovery or re-use. extended producer responsibility in asean in recent years, there have been increasing efforts across the globe to address the emerging issue of e-waste by reorientation of the management approaches. in tackling environmental challenges, the concept of extended producer responsibility (epr) has received increased interest. originally defined by t. lindhqvist (2000), it represents an environmental protection concept which makes manufacturers of products responsible for the whole life cycle of their manufactures, including the post-consumption phase. the eu adopted two directives with the aim of tackling the issue of e-waste: the waste electrical electronic equipment directive (weee-directive 2002/96/ec) and the restriction of hazardous substances (rohs-directive 2002/96/ec). while the eu weee directive mainly aims to reduce concerns about waste-management, the eu rohs directive restricts the use of hazardous substances contained in eee. the ban of six hazardous substances aims to prevent contamination from hazardous substances in the case of improper treatment or disposal. only products that fulfil the requireaseas 5(1) 42 43 ments are allowed to be sold on the eu market. the implementation of the directives has also triggered reconsideration of policies regarding weee among non-eu countries, particularly in those with close trade links with the eu (ibitz, 2009). in general, the concept of epr has drawn the attention of policy makers in asia. thailand, for instance, has responded with national legislation with similar aims (“thailand rohs”) (tingsabadh & jantarasarsophon, 2007). however, due to varying trade dependencies, not all asean member states feel similar pressure to respond. in 2005, thailand published draft legislation aimed at tackling the stream of e-waste.4 this regulation can be seen as a direct response to the eu weee-directive. thailand has adopted regulations that shift the financial responsibilities for recycling of e-waste to the producers. the overall policy includes measures that require electrical and electronic producers to use a certain minimum level of recycled input (manomaivibool & vassanadumrongdee, 2011). also, vietnam has revised its environmental protection law (2005) to include the financial responsibilities of producers for the collection for eol products. the concept of epr can also be found in the indonesian law on rubbish management (2008), where manufacturers are given more responsibility for dealing with eol products (saputra, 2011). in malaysia, the 2007 solid waste and public cleansing management act allows the government to put responsibility for the collection of products on the manufacturers, assemblers, and importers. there is hope that in the long run, such environmental considerations may well spread to some other asean countries. however, the successful application of epr is difficult in developing countries, since – as is the case for e-waste – the informal sector takes centre stage in recycling. since formal recyclers have to comply with certain kinds of environmental standards and follow the labour protection measures, the informal sector – which ignores such regulations – receives a competitive edge that leads to a weakening of the regulated sector. furthermore, epr implementation is facing difficulties as it is often not easy to identify the producers or the importers. for products that are assembled by small-scale businesses, it seems infeasible to put responsibility on the producers. in the case of smuggled items or product imitations, it seems infeasible to apply this approach.5 with a background of such high rates of smuggled and imitated equipment in the region, the application of epr based legislation seems not viable. 4 the act on the promotion of hazardous waste management from used products 5 for more please refer to hotta, elder, mori, & tanaka (2008). armin ibitz environmental policy coordination in asean aseas 5(1) 44 45 analysis although problem awareness about e-waste has sharpened among the leaders of asean, the issue has clearly not gained enough political weight to find its way to the top levels of asean decision-making. while regional integration could be strengthened by the harmonisation of regulations and standards on the treatment of weee as well as common definitions of e-waste, major challenges arise from the region’s diversity in terms of economic development and market structure which makes policy coordination harder to achieve. the integration of the new members between 1995 and 1999 was mainly driven by security concerns and less by economic considerations, but it is also interfering with environmental policy coordination. preferences and interests of member states diverge greatly in the region, and member states see no immediate need for action as a stricter framework would limit the inflow of secondary raw materials and/or hinder the development of a strong domestic eee industry. the experiences of dealing with e-waste vary largely among the member countries and so do the perceptions of the benefits and gains from the issue. thus, neglecting the e-waste issue at the highest political talks avoids the emergence of potential conflicts. the logic of markets and economic considerations are definitely crucial factors in this complex matter. the asean region is characterised by economies that engage as exporters as well as importers of used eee. from an economic perspective, e-waste represents a valuable resource that may lower the production costs for the domestic industry. while the founding members all engage in the production of eee, the least developed countries do not even possess their own domestic industry. richer nations, such as singapore, thailand, and malaysia are both importers and exporters of second hand equipment. countries tightening the regulations on imports of obsolete eee would cut off local industries from cheap supplies which would run counter to national economic development strategies. thailand’s move to enact national regulations similar to those of the eu derives more from national economic interests than environmental concerns. bangkok aims to promote domestic industry actors to adjust their products to comply with european requirements to keep up market access to the eu market. domestic demand in less developed countries is met by imports of brand new and second hand equipment or by the refurbishment of discarded prodaseas 5(1) 44 45 ucts. their dependence on foreign producers results in a more cautious approach regarding any regulation of used eee and second hand equipment. countries such as indonesia and vietnam are now in the initial phase of building up a domestic eee manufacturing industry. for other countries, such as thailand, the philippines, malaysia, and singapore, the electronic industry already enjoys a vital position within the overall economy. with rising prices of raw materials in international markets, competition for secondary resources generated from e-waste will stiffen. while countries with higher economic development and higher income levels, such as singapore, malaysia, and to a lesser degree also thailand and the philippines, have already had experience of setting up advanced recycling stations for hazardous wastes, countries with relatively low economic development (clmv) have not developed adequate recycling and treatment facilities. since landfills of the least developed nations do not report that large streams of e-waste as expected, it can be assumed that large parts of the equipment is repaired, refurbished, stored, and disposed of by the informal sector. less advanced economies in the region do not possess formal waste management schemes where e-waste streams could be integrated (damanhuri, 2009). across the region, the collection and recycling of weee is largely accomplished by the informal sector, which provides income for thousands of people. in most member states, the informal sector is the largest player in the collection and recycling of weee and is in competition with the formal sector. since the former operates under a lower cost structure, it is able to pay higher prices for discarded eee and thus undermines the formal national collection and recycling schemes (liu, tanaka, & matsui, 2006). so far, only the more advanced economies were able to establish facilities that can deal with the large amounts of hazardous waste in a more appropriate manner. regional trade of weee and second hand eee is driven by economic incentives such as cheap and abundant labour, low environmental standards, and a high demand for second hand eee or secondary raw materials. national governments have no immediate incentives to favour a ban on international trade of weee and used eee since this would cause economic losses and an increased need for raw material imports for production processes. due to fears of potential economic losses, it seems unlikely that regional governments will agree unanimously on a regional framework to tighten regulations on the import of weee and trade of e-waste. the import ban on second hand eee – as implemented by vietnam – is rather an effort to promote the armin ibitz environmental policy coordination in asean aseas 5(1) 46 47 build-up of a domestic industry than an environmental protection effort. while at first glance a ban on the transboundary shipment of weee (basel convention) seems to be an appropriate method for limiting the flow of e-waste, in practical terms the attempt fails due to implementation and enforcement issues at the national level. although most countries have laws and regulations in place to restrict the trade of hazardous waste, enforcement of the regulations represents a major issue. effective regional cooperation can only emerge on the basis of mutual trust. however, as the case of e-waste demonstrates, asean is not able to mediate interests to shape a consensus to implement a common position on dealing with e-waste. besides, the region lacks a clear frontrunner that pledges to address the issue. in all countries economic interests prevail over environmental considerations and the competition among the economies prevents closer cooperation and policy coordination. furthermore, from major debates about the classification of e-waste as hazardous waste and the ban on hazardous-waste exports, we know that also several external actors do not want to see the emergence of a strong environmental regime in the region. as long as member states continue to focus on short-term economic gains while neglecting benefits from cooperation such as health improvements, productivity increases, reduction of transaction costs or information sharing, progress in integration and regional policy coordination will be slow. conclusion since transboundary challenges can be addressed more efficiently by joint regional efforts, asean is discussed as the potential promoter of environmental protection in the region. although the challenge of e-waste has received increased attention from various actors in the region over the last years, asean has failed to come up with a common policy response in order to tackle the issue. the association faces strong need to step up its efforts and reconsider its position towards regional environmental governance. effective regional environmental governance must be based on cooperative policy formulation in combination with concrete mechanisms to facilitate the implementation of policies. as of now, asean environmental governance allows member states to set their national efforts according to their individual national aseas 5(1) 46 47 interests. due to its weak institutional structures and its fragile legal framework, asean is not equipped with enough authority to enforce existing agreements, and so it is unable to adopt eu-like-directives. there is a strong need to establish asean community law to govern the association with principles that can be applied at the national level. without the adoption of a binding community law, asean will not be able to develop into an effective and successful community. major obstacles derive from its organisational structure as well as the massive gap in the member state’s economic development and their national interests. although the leadership seems to be increasingly aware of the rapidly worsening environmental base in the region, concerted efforts in environmental cooperation seem to be harder to achieve than economic cooperation – simply because the mutual gains are not perceived immediately, and it does not provide exploitable gains for the domestic politics. in the case of e-waste, asean is facing difficulties agreeing on a common policy response due to the complex situation of varying perceptions and diverging interests. in cases where interests and perceptions among member countries diverge, the decision-making principles lead to a standstill. thus, asean fails to act as a mediator for policy coordination. regional integration can only be intensified when member states are aware of the potential gains from cooperation and cede a certain degree of sovereignty to a central authority. for enhanced regional environmental governance, asean would need to form a central bureaucracy with enforcement authority. however, the organisation suffers from a general resistance to legalism and formalism as its member states are reluctant to show political commitment to hand over power to a central body due to a lack of regional identity but also due to misunderstandings of potential gains from cooperation. individual countries would rather follow their selfinterest than seek collective benefits. given the large variations in levels of economic development, market structure, institutional structures, technological capabilities, environmental awareness, and the progress of basic environmental protection legislation, it seems unlikely for the asean region to implement a common policy for the issue of e-waste. as a consequence, the first steps to address the issue need to take place at the national levels by promoting national recycling industries under stricter regulations, and establishing organisational linkages between the formal and the informal sector. a further fruitful step could be the introduction of a certificaarmin ibitz environmental policy coordination in asean aseas 5(1) 48 49 tion scheme for facilities with proper methods of recycling. in addition, specific tax policies and subsidies could direct waste streams towards government approved and certified facilities (asean secretariat, 2009). a redefinition of environmental degradation (such as from improper treatment of e-waste) as a security threat could raise awareness of the issue at the regional level and bring new impetus for action (dokken, 2001). since the current emphasis on consultation and consensus building hinders the overall progress of regional integration and policy coordination, a redefinition of the range of application of the principles could launch new dynamics (wiebe, 2000). the environmental realm could provide a first testing ground for fundamental reforms of the application of the principles, such as setting environmental measures with a binding character. furthermore, since a region-wide policy response on e-waste is unlikely to be achieved, a multiphased approach under the formula of asean minus x could provide a viable option (akenji, hotta, bengtsson & hayashi, 2011). in such a case, several more developed asean countries could move ahead with an agreement based on common interests. after gaining benefits from the agreement, other countries may follow the example. however, such as multi-phased approach must be implemented with care, since it also includes a risk of further weakening the overall community. the existence of a frontrunner could ease the path to set out a more rigid policy framework, such as in the eu, where integration processes in certain issues areas are driven by individual member states. however, asean lacks an accepted frontrunner in the case of dealing with e-waste. although thailand, malaysia, and singapore are actively promoting the production of green electronics, their main motivation derives from economic benefits by gaining access to developed nations’ markets. their path could provide a model for other countries to follow. as an organisation asean must focus more on the potential gains from cooperation. the region could benefit greatly by strengthening its regional environmental governance and creating regional mechanisms to manage cross-border environmental issues better. a concerted effort could provide competitive gains, boost productivity, and provide public goods that are unlikely to be produced by markets or individual economies, such as connected infrastructure and platforms of information sharing. aseas 5(1) 48 49 references agamuthu, p., & dennis, v. 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(2010). forecasting global generation of obsolete personal computers. environmental science and technology, 44(9), 3232-3237. armin ibitz environmental policy coordination in asean contested frontiers: indigenous mobilization and control over land and natural resources in myanmar’s upland areas rainer einzenberger ► einzenberger, r. (2016). contested frontiers: indigenous mobilization and control over land and natural resources in myanmar’s upland areas. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 9(1), 163-172. over the past two decades, myanmar’s upland areas have gradually turned into formally administered, legible, and governable state-territory. following decades of armed conflict, a series of ceasefire agreements since the 1990s opened the door for the central state’s expansion of territorial control in the upland areas through the exploitation of natural resources and land concessions. new civil society coalitions are being formed inside myanmar to resist the states strategy of accumulation by dispossession in conjunction with enclosures and the formation of state territory. this paper provides a brief outline of an ongoing research project which takes a socio-spatial perspective on state building processes and links the concept of the resource frontier with emerging discourses on indigenous rights in myanmar. keywords: frontier; indigenous movements; land; myanmar; state building  introduction this contribution provides an outline of an ongoing research project in its early stage. against the backdrop of current political and economic transformation processes in myanmar, the research takes a socio-spatial perspective on state building in the periphery or frontier areas, that is, the vast upland areas along its borders. the project aims to investigate the practices (technologies), strategies, and discourses of different actors to produce frontiers in ceasefire areas of myanmar’s uplands through the integration into state territory and the national (capitalist) economy. furthermore, i seek to understand how actors on different scales respond to the extension and production of state space in the frontier areas and the corresponding processes of enclosures of land and natural resources. the first part of this article provides some (historical) background on the formation of myanmar’s resource frontiers. after a brief outline of the theoretical framework, some preliminary insights are discussed. state building and the resource frontier in myanmar myanmar’s upland areas – inhabited by over 40% of the country’s population and covering about 50 to 60% of its territory – are among the most ethnically diverse and resource-rich regions in southeast asia (buchanan, kramer, & woods, 2013; forschungswerkstatt  research workshop w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 16 .1 -1 0 164 rainer einzenberger  aseas 9(1) food security working group, 2011). with many armed ethnic groups still fighting the central government, these frontier areas became notorious for the world’s longest running civil wars (south, 2008, 2011). in october 2015, a national ceasefire agreement was signed just before the general elections. yet, it was neither a national agreement (since only a few armed groups signed it), nor did it end all hostilities (ye mon & lung min mang, 2015). according to scott (2009), the upland areas – now officially part of myanmar state territory – were part of a vast non-state space which he termed zomia.1 encompassing the uplands of mainland southeast asia and southwest china, zomia provided a sanctuary for diverse groups of people who wanted to evade state building projects in the valleys. however, since the second half of the 20th century zomia has experienced major transformations, described as the “last enclosure” (scott, 2009, p. 10): “the sovereign nation-state is now busy projecting its power to its outermost territorial borders and mopping up zones of weak or no sovereignty” (scott, 2009, p. xii). under british colonial rule, burma’s uplands (then also called “frontier areas” or “excluded areas”) were politically divided from the lowlands (“burma proper”) and put under different systems of administration (seekins, 2006; taylor, 2009; thant myint-u, 2001). after independence from the british empire in 1948, large parts of these upland areas remained under the control of traditional rulers and headmen (smith, 1991). a failed attempt to integrate the frontier areas into the union of burma during a brief democratic period resulted in the outbreak of several revolts by ethnic armed groups and communist insurgents. in 1962, general ne win staged a military coup and declared the country a socialist state run by a military government and later the burma socialist program party (bspp) (seekins, 2006). what followed was a violent period of war-induced state building (callahan, 2003). the situation in the frontier areas changed profoundly following the nationwide pro-democracy uprising in 1988 and the collapse of the communist party of burma and its armed resistance in 1989 (seekins, 2006). after the violent oppression of the uprising, the new regime changed its name (state law and order restoration council, slorc) and its strategies from the early 1990s onwards. deals with major armed ethnic groups were brokered, offering legal concessions for the extraction of natural resources and other lucrative business in the frontier zones in return for ceasefire agreements (jones, 2014; schaffar, 2008; woods, 2011). the ceasefires “weakened and co-opted much of the opposition” (jones, 2014, p. 780) and allowed the military regime to re-focus on its major political reform in the center and layout a roadmap for a ‘disciplined democracy’ to safeguard its interests (jones, 2014). this finally led to the adoption of the 2008 constitution (introducing a nascent federal system) and the implementation of the 2010 general elections (and subsequent 2015 elections) which set the stage for a semi-democratic government under strong military control (kyaw yin hlaing, 2012). alongside its ceasefire strategy, the junta abandoned its ‘burmese way to socialism’ in favor of a ‘burmese way to capitalism’ and adopted a market-oriented opendoor policy to enlarge its economic base and maintain its power (mya maung, 1995). 1 the term zomia was originally coined by willem van schendel (2002) and refers to zomi which is translated as highlander. the term is also used as an endonym by some groups in the western uplands of myanmar, however, the exact translation is contested (vumson, 1986). 165contested frontiers the valuable resources in myanmar’s frontier regions (e.g., timber, jade, rubies, minerals, water resources) as well as its ‘maritime frontier’ – rich in natural gas fields – played an important role in securing foreign exchange. according to official data, recent foreign direct investment (fdi) in myanmar has been concentrated in the oil/gas and hydropower sectors followed by the mining sector (allan & einzenberger, 2013). the military government began to export natural gas to thailand in the late 1990s with the construction of the yadana and yetagun pipelines. another pipeline from myanmar to china was completed in 2013, increasing the export revenues from oil and gas sales (shwe gas movement, 2013). recent reports suggest that the oil and gas sector payments contributed around 40% of the estimated government fiscal revenues in 2013/2014 (bauer, shortell, & delesgues, 2016). however, unofficial reports place the value of mineral exports even higher than those of oil and gas. officially reported at usd 1.5 billion (moore stephens llp, 2015), an independent global witness report values the jade production in myanmar up to usd 31 billion in 2014 alone (global witness, 2015, p. 5). this would amount to almost half of myanmar’s gdp in 2014 (world bank, 2016). jade is almost exclusively exported to china, most of it informally (global witness, 2015). other major minerals produced and exported are copper, lead, silver, zinc tin, tin-wolfram, and coal (moore stephens llp, 2015). furthermore, the export of timber from the frontier areas still provides an important source of revenue which amounted up to an estimated usd 1.5 billion in 2013 (woods, 2015, p. iii). according to mya maung (1995), the willingness of the neighboring countries to invest in myanmar and exploit its rich resources was “the single most important factor that has helped the junta to rule against the will of the burmese people” (pp. 678-679). the frontier regions provided theses rich resources. the political transition after the 2010 general elections and the inclusion of the main opposition party – the national league for democracy (nld) – in the political process paved the way for the further opening of myanmar’s economy following the lifting of international economic sanctions (jones, 2013). termed the “last frontier” by international business pundits (kent, 2012), myanmar has become a new investment opportunity for transnational capital. the “highly rapacious and coercive” (jones, 2013, p. 167) mode of capitalist development continues to focus largely on resource extraction in the ethnic frontier areas with significant environmental and social impacts (buchanan et al., 2013). investor-friendly legislation adopted by the semi-civilian government since 2012 such as the fdi law and new land laws (buchanan et al., 2013; ferguson, 2014; transnational institute, 2014) facilitate a new regime of accumulation which is mainly based on enclosures and dispossession (de angelis, 2001; glassman, 2006; sevilla-buitrago, 2015). according to some critical voices, “indigenous people’s practices of customary laws and use of local common natural assets are mostly disregarded. indigenous peoples are increasingly driven off their common land and further marginalized” (myo ko ko, 2014). customary ways of land use and agriculture such as shifting cultivation and the use of natural commons (e.g., community forests, water resources, communal land) are mostly ignored in government policies. current state policies prioritize formal land titles and private property in accordance with the policies of modern capitalist economies (buchanan et al., 2013; cairns, 2015; transnational institute, 2014). 166 rainer einzenberger  aseas 9(1) frontier, state building, and indigeneity the research project employs the concept of frontier as an analytical framework to capture the process of (capitalist) state expansion through territorial control and resultant contestations in the periphery. originating from historical studies (turner, 1921), the concept has been adjusted and applied in social sciences in recent years to explain conditions at the “fuzzy edges” (geiger, 2009, p. 195) of states (barbier, 2010; fold & hirsch, 2009; kelly & peluso, 2015). peluso and lund (2012) understand frontiers as spaces “where authorities, sovereignties, and hegemonies of the recent past have been or are currently being challenged by new enclosures, territorializations and property regimes” (p. 669). geiger (2009) calls this process the “politics of nationalizing space” (p. 195). yet, the frontier concept cannot sufficiently explain the underlying mechanisms of state building or the ‘nationalization of space’. a pioneering work interrogating the relationship between states, (socially produced) space, and territory was laid out by lefebvre (1991). according to him, space is socially produced, that is, space has a material as well as a social and discursive dimension that is linked to specific societies and modes of production. the capitalist nation state produces a very particular space that is different from non-capitalist spaces or non-state spaces. it is an abstract space that is homogenous and devoid of any difference. abstract space enables the process of capital accumulation and privileges the exchange value over the use value. it is instituted by the state and is a political instrument towards territorial control (lefebvre, 2009, p. 187). for lefebvre, the production of social space is an inherently political and contested act. whereas the state and capital attempt to ‘pulverize’ space into a manageable, calculable and abstract grid, diverse social forces simultaneously attempt to create, defend or extend spaces of social reproduction, everyday life and grassroots control (autogestion). (brenner & elden, 2009, p. 367) following the work of lefebvre, poulantzas (1978/2000) has examined in his state theory the interrelation of global and national capitalist expansion and the production of state frontiers. he considers the frontier as the very space where the state inscribes its “spatio-temporal matrix” in order to extend the reproduction of capital and the separation of labor and capital (p. 116). the nation state monopolizes the organization of state space and seeks to homogenize it and its inhabitants in order to unify the national market and economy (poulantzas, 1978/2000, p. 107). however, the state is not a homogenous actor or institution but a social relation or a strategic terrain where social classes compete for power and control over resources (poulantzas, 1978/2000, p. 73). these power relations between certain classes, class fractions, and power blocks are materialized amongst others within the state, its infrastructure, and its apparatus. thus, by analyzing the conflicting spatial strategies and sociospatial relations between different actors, it is also possible to unravel ongoing state building processes. the concept of indigeneity provides a useful analytical category in order to grasp these conflicting dynamics around state building processes at the 167contested frontiers margins of states.2 while looking onto a long political tradition in the americas, the concept of indigeneity as a political and legal tool has slowly gained traction in southeast asia in recent years (erni, 2008; hall, hirsch, & li, 2011; li, 2010). since important elements of indigeneity are the attachment to ancestral territories as well as the idea of self-determination, the concept serves as a suitable collective resistance identity in the context of contested territories in the frontier areas (baird, 2011; castree, 2004; erni, 2008). despite its strong linkage to the local scale, the idea of indigeneity has also a strong transnational dimension. it is directly linked to un institutions such as the united nations permanent forum on indigenous issues (unpfii) as well as international legal standards such as the un declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples (undrip) (mipenn, 2015). preliminary results the upland areas of myanmar can be conceptualized as resource frontiers at the forefront of an ongoing process of state building. this process goes hand in hand with the formation of capitalist state spaces through the production of abstract space. the internationalization and economic transformation of the myanmar state in recent years and its accumulation strategy based mainly on the enclosure of land and the extraction of resources are the main drivers for the creation of these frontiers. initial explorative research has shown the growing importance of indigeneity as a new political discourse and platform for certain civil society actors in the current political and economic context of myanmar.3 this can be seen as a direct response to the enclosures of land in the frontier areas on the one hand and to the gradual opening of political space on various scales on the other hand. it also constitutes a change from the past, when “ethnic identity was generally not expressed in terms of broader international standards on indigenous peoples’ rights” (mcrb, ihrb, & dihr, 2014, p. 132). even though little direct reference to indigenous peoples is made in domestic legislation and the term is not yet widely used, ethnic civil society advocates increasingly identify themselves as ‘indigenous’. they do not identify as (national or ethnic) minorities but as indigenous peoples in order to reinforce their legitimate claim to the lands and their right for self-determination. this political struggle has been a key and continuous demand since the beginning of the state building project. several indigenous organizations and coalitions have been formed in recent years such as the 2 there is no universal agreement on the definition of indigenous peoples. jose r. martinez cobo, the former special rapporteur of the sub-commission on prevention of discrimination and protection of minorities, outlined some elements relevant for identifying indigenous peoples: occupation of ancestral lands; common ancestry with the original occupants of these lands; culture; language; residence on certain parts of the country, or in certain regions of the world. on an individual basis, an indigenous person is one that belongs to these indigenous populations through self-identification as indigenous (group consciousness) and is recognized and accepted by these populations as one of its members (acceptance by the group) (myanmar indigenous peoples/ethnic nationalities network [mipenn], 2015, p. 1) 3 while the term indigenous peoples (tha-nay tain-yin-tha in burmese language) “is not widely understood or generally used in myanmar . . . indigenous rights activists use the burmese term hta-nay tain-yintha for indigenous peoples, and base themselves on the international concept of indigenous, using the criteria of non-dominance in the national context, historical continuity, ancestral territories, and selfidentification” (myanmar centre for responsible business [mcrb], institute for human rights and business [ihrb], & the danish institute for human rights [dihr], 2016, p. 13) 168 rainer einzenberger  aseas 9(1) myanmar indigenous peoples/ethnic nationalities network (mipenn, 2015), the coalition of indigenous peoples in myanmar/burma, and others. they comprise of a number of ethnic civil society organizations as well as cultural and environmental non-governmental organizations who see an advantage in organizing under the umbrella of indigeneity. the latter submitted a report to the 23rd session of the universal periodic review working group at the un in geneva in november 2015, highlighting the major concerns for indigenous peoples in myanmar. the most pressing concerns were related to access to land, territory, and resources as well as cultural rights (coalition of indigenous peoples in myanmar/burma, 2015; yen snaing, 2015). while highlighting specific cases of land confiscation and extractive industry projects in frontier areas, the report asks for “domestic legislation to ensure that it incorporates the collective rights of indigenous peoples to their land, territories, and natural resources, including customary land use practices” (coalition of indigenous peoples in myanmar/burma, 2015, p. 14). ongoing advocacy and lobbying with the government has already achieved some initial results. the 2015 protection of the rights of national races law4 states that “prior to implementing development projects and . . . extracting of natural resources, local indigenous inhabitants are to be informed and be explained in detail about these plans and projects to achieve mutual cooperation” (article 5, cited in mipenn, 2015, p. 35). this relates to the concept of free prior and informed consent (fpic) which is an important element of the undrip. in several rounds of negotiations concerning the hotly debated national land use policy, indigenous rights advocates also managed to integrate the recognition of “customary lands” and “customary land use tenure systems” into the latest draft (mipenn, 2015, p. 41). several civil society organizations are active in raising awareness on undrip, fpic, and the national land use policy draft, and conduct participatory community mapping in order to maintain grassroots control over community territory, land, and resources. this clearly illustrates the agency of indigenous movements in myanmar. it also resembles similar developments in other countries in the region, such as cambodia and indonesia (baird, 2011; 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(2013). good governance and the extractive industry in burma: complications of burma’s regulatory framework. retrieved from http://www.burmalibrary.org/docs15/sgm-governance2013-06-en-red.pdf smith, m. (1991). burma: insurgency and the politics of ethnicity. london: zed books. south, a. (2008). ethnic politics in burma: states of conflict. london: routledge. south, a. (2011). burma’s longest war: anatomy of the karen conflict. amsterdam: transnational institute. taylor, r. h. (2009). the state in myanmar. honolulu: university of hawaii press. thant myint-u. (2001). the making of modern burma. new york: cambridge university press. transnational institute. (2014). pro-business or pro-poor? making sense of recently unveiled draft national land use policy. retrieved from http://www.tni.org/briefing/pro-business-or-pro-poor?context=69566 turner, f. j. (1921). the frontier in american history. new york: holt. van schendel, w. (2002). geographies of knowing, geographies of ignorance: jumping scale in southeast asia. environment and planning d: society and space, 20(6), 647-668. vumson. (1986). zo history: with an introduction to zo culture, economy, religion and their status as an ethnic minority in india, burma, and bangladesh. aizawl: vumson. woods, k. (2011). ceasefire capitalism: military-private partnerships, resource concessions and militarystate building in the burma-china borderlands. journal of peasant studies, 38(4), 747-770. woods, k. (2015). commercial agriculture expansion in myanmar: links to deforestation, conversion timber, and land conflicts. retrieved from http://forest-trends.org/releases/uploads/conversion_timber_in_ myanmar.pdf world bank. (2016). country data myanmar. retrieved from http://data.worldbank.org/country/myanmar ye mon, & lung min mang. (2015, october 16). ceasefire pact is “historic gift”: president. myanmar times. retrieved from http://www.mmtimes.com/index.php/national-news/17051-ceasefire-pact-is-historicgift-president.html 171contested frontiers yen snaing. (2015, july 21). indigenous rights coalition in burma plans upr submission. the irrawaddy. retrieved from http://www.irrawaddy.org/burma/indigenous-rights-coalition-in-burma-plans-uprsubmission.html about the author rainer einzenberger is a phd candidate at the department of development studies, university of vienna. his research interests include political science (with a regional focus on southeast asia), land and resource politics, critical geography, and indigenous movements. ► contact: rainer.einzenberger@univie.ac.at acknowledgements the author would like to thank asea-uninet for partial financial support for the initial field research. no call for action? why there is no union (yet) in philippine call centers aseas 6(1) 141140 d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -6 .1 -8 aktuelle südostasienforschung / current research on south-east asia no call for action? why there is no union (yet) in philippine call centers niklas reese1 & joefel soco-carreon2 citation reese, n. & soco-carreon, j. (2013). no call for action? why there is no union (yet) in philippine call centers. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 6(1), 140-159. this contribution presents fi ndings from a qualitative study which focused on young urban professionals in the philippines who work(ed) in international call centers – workplaces usually characterized by job insecurity and other forms of precarity, factory-like working conditions, and disembeddedness. nevertheless, trade unions in these centers have not come into existence. why collective action is not chosen by call center agents as an option to tackle the above mentioned problems – this is what the research project this article is based on tried to understand. after outlining some work related problems identifi ed by filipino call center agents, the article will focus on the strategies the agents employ to counter these problems (mainly accommodation and everyday resistance). by highlighting fi ve objective and fi ve subjective reasons (or reasons by circumstances and reasons by framing), we conclude that it is not repressive regulation policies, but rather the formative power and the internalization of discourses of rule within individual life strategies that are preventing the establishment of unions and other collective action structures. keywords: call centers; coping strategies; everyday resistance; philippines; precarity der folgende beitrag präsentiert die ergebnisse einer qualitativen studie unter jungen berufstätigen, die in internationalen callcentern im städtischen raum in den philippinen arbeite(te)n – an arbeitsplätzen, die gewöhnlich durch hohe jobunsicherheit und andere formen der prekarität, wie fabrikähnliche arbeitsbedingungen und entbettung charakterisiert sind. trotzdem wurden bis dato keine gewerkschaften in den call centers gegründet. warum kollektives handeln unter arbeiterinnen in callcentern nicht als option für die lösung der oben genannten probleme identifi ziert wird, stellt die leitende frage der untersuchung dar, auf der der folgende artikel aufbaut. nach der skizzierung einiger arbeitsgebundener probleme, die von philippinischen arbeiterinnen in callcentern identifi ziert werden, fokussiert der artikel auf ihre strategien, diesen problemen zu begegnen (hauptsächlich mittels anpassung und formen alltäglichen widerstands). indem wir fünf objektive (umstandsgebundene) und fünf subjektive (framing-gebundene) ursachen hervorheben, kommen wir zu dem schluss, dass nicht repressive regulierungen, sondern die formative macht und internalisierung von regeln 1 niklas reese is a social scientist, freelance journalist, and researcher, with regional focus on the philippines, germany, and latin america and working mainly on issues of democratization, gender, migration, social movements, and social security. since 1997, he has been involved in political solidarity work through his involvement with the philippinenbüro, a socio-political information center on the philippines in germany. currently, he is working on his phd thesis on the sense of citizenship amongst the lower middle class in the philippines. contact: reese.niklas@gmail. com 2 joefel soco-carreon studied anthropology at the ateneo de davao university in davao city, philippines, and was research assistant at the three-year research project on the making of social movements under the condition of precarization and transnational migration in south east asia, directed by the university of bonn: 2010-2012. aseas 6(1) 141140 innerhalb einzelner lebensstrategien die entstehung von gewerkschaften und anderen strukturen kollektiven handelns verhindern. schlagworte: bewältigungsstrategien; callcenter; philippinen; prekarität; alltäglicher widerstand introduction are the unorganized organizable? this question haunts sociologists as well as activists in europe nowadays. especially social uncertainty (precarity) of life paths and working conditions seem to aggravate this dilemma. bourdieu (1998) and dörre (2006) are just two out of many who believe that precarity discourages collective political protest and that the lack of biographical perspectives caused by precarity (allegedly) leads to despair and depression. also in the philippines, activists are concerned that young urban professionals do not organize themselves and often accuse them of being politically disengaged. agents in international call centers, which nowadays offer employment to hundreds of thousands of well-educated young people, are specifically highlighted in this concern. in this case, however, reactions of despair to a precarious life are not evident, or at least not among the young urban professionals interviewed in this study. three out of four respondents (of altogether a total of 40 participants) claimed that they have “clear life plans”; four out of five strongly disagreed with the statement that “when a person is born, how things are going to work out for him/her is already decided”; and the same number likewise strongly disagreed with the statement that “seeing the way things are, i find it hard to be hopeful for the world” . likewise, in the last years, one could witness from the mediterranean up to chile that young professionals are not per se in despair due to their precarious lives. recent protest movements in portugal and spain, or egypt have even proven that strategies to counter precarity are not necessarily confined to ‘muddling through’ and can actually catalyze political reactions and collective mobilization. these examples indicate that it is inaccurate to consider precarious living and working conditions as causes for the lack of political mobilization and collective political protest as, for instance, bourdieu would assert. niklas reese & joefel soco-carreon no call for action? why there is no union (yet) in philippine call centers aseas 6(1) 143142 this paper though does not aim at providing an answer to the question of whether young urban professionals in the philippines may soon emulate their mediterranean counterpart and carry their disgruntlement into the public sphere. after having ruled out the more general assumption that precarity triggers despair and thus inaction, we will rather concentrate on identifying alternative reasons of why collective action is not arising among call center agents. after outlining some work-related problems that filipino call center agents identify as significant, the article will focus on common but not collective strategies that agents employ to counter these problems (mainly accommodation and everyday resistance). in the second part of the article, five objective and five subjective reasons (or reasons by circumstances and reasons by framing) are identified as of why collective action and trade unions are scarce in the philippine call center setting. this paper presents an overview of the findings and preliminary conclusions of a qualitative research with 40 currently employed and former call center agents in metro manila, davao city, and dumaguete city in the philippines; 28 of them took part in all three interview stages. this study – which is part of a three-year comparative research (2010-2012) by the university of bonn on the making of new social movements under the conditions of precarity and transnational location in southeast asia, supported by the deutsche forschungsgemeinschaft – included biographical interviews; problem-focused interviews on how to cope with work-related problems; and finally, interviews on the political orientations of call center agents. additionally, we used secondary literature on filipino call center agents and complementary indian call center agents (noronha & d’cruz, 2009; taylor, scholarios, noronha, & d’cruz, 2007). the latter was included as the situation in indian call centers proves highly comparable with that in the philippines, and analytical literature on indian call centers offers a more detailed picture especially with regard to collective action and unionization. not an unproblematic industry nearly all employees in international call centers in the philippines have finished at least a few years of college, several even graduated from college. they have studied aseas 6(1) 143142 to become nurses, engineers, anthropologists, or political scientists. given the scarcity of better paid opportunities in their chosen courses and professions and the limited employment opportunities for those with a liberal arts or science degree, high pay and easy entry in call centers have enticed mostly young individuals to join the workforce. hence, the business process outsourcing (bpo) sector has become the fastest growing provider of employment for filipino college graduates, employing more than 600,000 people by end of 2011. job dissatisfaction and high work stress are widespread among call center agents. the findings of this research reaffirm former findings on the nature of call center work (fabros, 2007; noronha & d’cruz, 2009) and already outlined earlier in this journal (reese, 2008a). despite the glowing promise projected by job offers at call centers as a place of self-realization, it could be observed among the respondents that the less the work in the call center resembles their chosen course (and the less autonomous and challenging the position is), the more they feel that they are wasting their talents, and the less they see call center work as a career. this is reflected in the common assertion of: “do i really want to touch the lives of north american people? na-ah.” the central aim of the research though was not to capture ‘objective’ situations of ‘exploitation’, but rather to find out how people deal with their dissatisfaction and if this may lead to protest – maybe even in a collective manner. this research direction was identified because social movements and political socialization theories agree that readiness to political action (politische aktivierungsbereitschaft) and political action itself do not (mainly) spring from ‘objective criteria’ – be it precarity, poverty, or social inequality. people also have to (subjectively) suffer under such a crisis (the reasons for which should be attributed externally); they have to “dare to protest”, for which next to “a minimum of education and self-confidence . . . various resources and personal qualities are required”; and, it finally needs “categories creating collective identities” (schmitt, 2006, p.19). hence, schmitt draws the conclusion that “the emergence of social protest is a process with lots of requirements” (p. 19). in order to claim rights, it is usually not enough to have an awareness of such rights (framing), or a sense of injustice, (relative) deprivation, and denied dignity (piven & cloward, 1986; scott, 1990; thompson, 1963). it is also important to believe that these rights can be enforced and that violations can be remedied. these, niklas reese & joefel soco-carreon no call for action? why there is no union (yet) in philippine call centers aseas 6(1) 145144 likewise, rely on the perception/detection of existing political spaces and favorable opportunity structures that would increase the likelihood of successful action: “for a protest movement to develop out of the traumata of everyday life”, as piven and cloward (1986) assert, “the disadvantages and disorders experienced by people must be considered as unjust as well as alterable” (p. 36). here, collective protest is usually only the culmination of a series of protests, starting off as everyday resistance and in the form of a hidden transcript (scott, 1990). but indeed, there are several issues which respondents to this study consider problematic. next to performance pressures, which a majority of them consider a major or significant (pinakagrabe/grabe) problem, issues like the denial of vacation and sick leaves, forced leave (without payment), the lack of security of tenure and easy termination, or excessive and tedious workloads were perceived as “(pinaka) grabe”. a considerable number of them also consider the lack of due process in cases of termination or that they have no say in working conditions as a major problem. (although, a significant number finds this latter problem manageable [or ok lang, as expressed in everyday language] or did not mention it at all.) despite the relatively high pay, almost half of the research participants (12 out of 28) also categorized both issues of low wage and high deductions as pressing and significant (while 12 said it does not arise as a problem for them). however, for quite some agents (including the respondents), there is not much to heavily complain about (pinakagrabe) when it comes to their working conditions. despite the fact that the pressures of mass servicing are unrelenting, call center work provides real benefits and increased autonomy outside of production, which agents prize quite highly. many agents do not necessarily consider themselves oppressed, calling themselves instead as “stressed out”. coping strategies because the reason to work in the call center industry is foremost economic, frontline call center workers struggle to positively construct the workplace and learn ways to cope in order to deal with various levels of precarity (fabros, 2007; noronha & d’cruz, 2009; taylor et al., 2007). aseas 6(1) 145144 one of these ways is identification, done by embracing the imperatives of the call center regime. one respondent claims: “i do believe in the products which i am troubleshooting or handling. so it’s not that difficult to sell, not difficult to love the products, so it’s not difficult to love the job.” other agents associate themselves with the company and its policies. regarding overtime, one respondent had this to say: “if they do ask you for overtime . . . you would understand because you would know: if we are going to lose half of those 200 calls, that would be a loss for the company . . . if it’s a loss to the company, it’s our loss as well cause it’s the company who is paying us.” others resort to adjustment and submission – not agreeing to, but simply accepting the conditions of the workplace as inevitable. complaining is considered as whining or as ‘unprofessional’. on the number of calls taken by the agents, a respondent said: “sometimes, it hurts, like you’re so tired, your throat is so dry … but you could not really complain about it, about changing the way things are.” another agent explains that: “eventually you’ll get used to it. it’s already normal, although inside you rebel against it.” another says: “you don’t really have a choice . . . your option is either you can resign and get more time for yourself or you accept that you don’t have time for yourself, then you only have to work, you only have to take up calls.” it is in this spirit that half of the respondents said the monotonous and routinely work is ok lang, one out of four does not even have an issue with it at all. a strong belief in god’s providence has also been mentioned by several respondents, which could be interpreted to rationalize submission. such is expressed by one of them in this way: “i believe that there’s always a hand that guides us, that no matter how much you want to, it will always guide you to something else . . . i believe that there is always a purpose” (male agent, 35). another way of coping can be to resort to split off from the ‘real life’, a term often heard to label the life outside of the call center. this kind of coping can especially be located among former activists who struggle with the fact that “before, we were fighting the imperialists and now we are serving them”, as well as artists (singers and writers) who especially suffer under the lowbrow work in the call centers. they live two different lives and leave the real persons that they are behind once they go to their workplace – making activism in the workplace more unlikely. this is shown in the response by an agent who was once an activist (and is now an ngo worker): “i would not take [problems in the workplace] personally … i know that even if i’m not doing good in that niklas reese & joefel soco-carreon no call for action? why there is no union (yet) in philippine call centers aseas 6(1) 147146 [i.e. work performance], i know i’m still an intelligent person; i know i’m capable of other things . . . i can write, i can speak to other people . . . it’s not the basis of my personhood; it’s just my job.” such split off though can also be an expression of self-management (selbstführung) – just like identification and adjustment – by which agents condition themselves for work to be able to handle the demands of the job. this is considered by governmentality studies as “governing from a distance” and as the main means of neo-liberal governmentality (opitz, 2004; reese, 2004). this is illustrated in the statement of a respondent saying: “the moment you step inside the company, you have to totally log yourself out from (your) problems … it’s just a matter of how you manage your emotions, yourself. . . .” being able to manage oneself might even be a source of pride for being a professional. like for this 26-year old female respondent who shared: “i realized, all you need to is . . . you should adopt it, you should adopt to the changes, you should adopt the pressure and eventually you will love the job, then you’d feel proud of yourself. hey, i can stay awake the whole night.” professionalism also goes along with finding the mistake in oneself: “maybe you wouldn’t be issued a termination order if you didn’t do something wrong in your job,” as one respondent said. professionalism also includes keeping up a notion of agency even in difficult situations and criticizing colleagues of being a reklamador (habitual complainant). as one agent said: “there are others who always blame the company, company, company . . . you have the will to change your life so why rely on the hands of other people . . . they really overstretch themselves.” not every coping though should be understood as making ends meet and even fooling oneself. indeed there are at least traits in the call center work that agents consider fulfilling. aiming to be helpful, they believe that they are able to be of help by assisting callers (e.g. old people or disaster victims calling a hotline) and so they aim to give satisfaction to customers – a notion fed by the management side: “agents are advisers who help people fix their problems” (executive director jojo uligan of the call center association in the philippines, personal communication, in ermitanio, 2012). feelings of fulfillment are also oftentimes present when agents are able to hit performance metrics or resolve issues especially with irate callers. at the same time, this ambition for self-fulfillment and the sense of professionalism which is “capturing the essence of agents’ lived experience . . . [and] mak(ing) agents accept stringent work systems and job design elements, techno-bureaucratic aseas 6(1) 147146 controls and the primacy of the customer” (noronha & d’cruz, 2009, p.72) serves as an entry point for dissent. the delivery of so-called ‘good work’ is systematically obstructed by the relations of production, which hurts the employees’ pride of doing their work well. like in the case of a female agent who was troubleshooting for the company’s cell phone products – models which she never actually saw except in an online manual which the company provided her with. the frustration that management does not listen to the views and ideas of agents is likewise an entry point for dissatisfaction, as an agent says: “(w)e have suggestions . . . they don’t know the real issue at work . . . there are things we are aware of that supervisors are not aware of . . . so we are suggesting but they are still the ones that will be followed.” self-management though does not make external management (fremdführung) dispensable as people do not always ‘want what they should’ (wollen, was sie sollen). therefore, instilling a self-construction as professional, e.g. as done in job advertisements, is complemented by surveillance and monitoring techniques which at times are reminiscent of bentham’s panopticon, where inmates always feel observed without seeing the one observing them. an example for this is recording calls or documenting the transactions done within the it-based interaction between agent and callers. hidden and open individual protest the narratives of several research participants are not only marked by stories of coping. significant everyday resistance could be identified in the narratives of nearly every second respondent, “small, seemingly trivial daily acts through which subordinate individuals or groups undermine – rather than overthrow – oppressive relations of power” (groves & chang, 2002, p. 316), as well as open protest on an individual basis – be it in the form of ‘voice’ with the human relations department or by ‘exit’ exemplified by call center hopping or even leaving the industry. individual struggles against the ‘system’ are evident with call center agents who have familiarized the ‘insides’ and who have evolved ways of challenging the status within the bounds of strict rules of operations, for as long as it does not threaten employment. an agent phrases it the following way: “there are lots of things you niklas reese & joefel soco-carreon no call for action? why there is no union (yet) in philippine call centers aseas 6(1) 149148 cannot do, especially on a call . . . (but) there are lots of crimes you can do, until you get caught.” agents found ways of subverting the control of the panopticon over the process, which is also a source of pride for them. in seemingly trivial matters, some tend to bend certain floor policies. respondents share a variety of ways in asserting themselves to irate callers. since there is a strong policy over call-releasing (hanging up), agents typically put up with such callers by cursing at them while putting the phone on mute or on hold and making the customer wait on the line for a long time until they hang up, or getting back in other ways possible. but while the everyday resistance of subalterns shows that they have not consented to dominance and resist to being totally converted into a docile body, many of these actions might as well be classified as adaptation strategies, which make work easier to bear than as disturbing the process of accumulation. agents calling these actions ‘stress out’ rather than ‘resistance’, offers a hint of this perspective. fabros (2007) explains that “these forms of resistance have been practiced within spaces available, without considerably altering relations and conditions in this global enterprise” (p. 170). “interventions do not result in any considerable improvements in work conditions or bargaining capacities of call center workers”. (fabros, p. 273) “everyday resistance” is not even necessarily detrimental to the interest of their employers and may even be a form of governance to leave marginal arenas for alternative practices to the subalterns (here, to ‘stress out’), serving the reproduction of the agents’ performance and allowing them to believe that they can exert some agency and resistance. in this sense, mckay (2006, p.179) states that “workers necessarily help constitute the labor regimes they consent to or resist. in spite of the benefits of high-tech work to workers’ personal lives, without collective organization, such individualized or ‘asymmetric agency’ does not challenge management authority in production, thus demonstrating how workers’ actions and discourses can simultaneously challenge and reproduce their own subordination and capital’s flexible accumulation strategies”. however, everyday resistance and irony may not only serve as valve that helps to make the pressure bearable but might also be “building blocks for more manifest resistance against structures and apparatuses to control” (scott, 1990, p. 57). aseas 6(1) 149148 why is collective protest so sparse? and the unions even fewer? as mentioned above, there are instances when individuals resist not only ‘everyday’, and cautiously so as not to be caught, but also protest openly. this is done on a case to case basis, depending on the kind of situations the agents consider to have breached their personal limits of what they view as just and reasonable (tama na, sobra na), the resources they have command over, and on how promising they consider the tearing down “the political cordon sanitaire between the hidden and the public transcript” (scott, 1990, p.19). while some agents put up with supervisors or account managers when they are humiliated on the floor or shouted at during calls, others publically defy the company, like by refusing to work overtime, especially if unpaid. these are individual acts of protests though. “forms of resistance have yet to take on a more organized and collective character to substantially transform bargaining power of workers in order to establish a level of control over the pace, content, direction, context and over-all conditions of their day-to-day work” as fabros (2007, p. 270) concludes her study on call center regimes and experiences in the philippines. there have been protests staged collectively in call center settings in the philippines. more than half of the respondents report that they have experienced taking action together with others, although it is only in one out of the four cases when the issues were raised beyond the team level, i.e. with the management. oftentimes, court cases are raised against erring companies, mainly for reasons of undue termination and non-payment of salaries. such is the case involving 664 cebu-based agents who filed a legal suit not individually but collectively (mosqueda, 2012). furthermore, the taking of legal actions is singular and usually only initiated after the employees have left the call center they are protesting against. efforts of union building, however, show more or less nil results, despite several attempts by radical political groups and moderate labor federations (especially the trade union congress of the philippines, and party-lists and labor centers from the orthodox left spectrum). an organizing project initiated in 2007 by the international labor organization (ilo), which involved major trade union federations, did not successfully lead to the setting-up of a sustainable union. expert interviews in this research with personnel of organizations whose efforts to organize agents were in niklas reese & joefel soco-carreon no call for action? why there is no union (yet) in philippine call centers aseas 6(1) 151150 vain revealed that, up to now, they only attained the role of serving as support in filing cases and as givers and sources of advice. this failure in organizing unions persists, despite the fact that the (scant) research done on the organizing potential in call centers (sale & bool, 2005) shows that there are more agents who are open to joining a union than those who are against it. likewise, in this research, nearly every second respondent considered the ‘no-union’ policy within call centers as a problem and said that they would be willing to join a union; while another 25 percent at least said “it depends”. only one out of four are hostile to the idea of unions. the reasons for the lack of collective actions on interest representation, therefore, have to be located elsewhere. this study proposes ten probable reasons; five of them are due to external circumstances (lack of resources and political opportunities) while five can be described as internal (framing). 1. the “no-union” policy discourages some agents as they fear termination or discrimination during their trainings, call center employees are usually discouraged by management from joining or forming unions. in some companies, a ‘no-union’ provision is even clearly stipulated in pre-employment contracts. instigating such formations therefore spells a threat to their employment. as one agent reveals: “once they [the management] hear you provoking or doing things like that [fighting for your right], you are immediately out of the company . . . of course, if you’re against the company, it leads you nowhere. you lose.” an agent in manila conveys her apprehension by saying that: “there’s this cloud hanging over our heads that if you’re too hard on the company there’d come a time that they’d replace you, then you have to pay for your bills . . . here comes me, i have to pay for my apartment, i have to pay for my brother’s enrollment.” these fears are aggravated by the fact that, in filipino culture, the ones speaking out are easily considered as disturbo or “troublemakers” and hirit (talking back or disagreeing) is frowned upon. an agent shares that during an apprenticeship in a fast-food chain: “my co-trainee told me that management said that i was an activist. what?! just because you speak your mind, just because you raised a question, they tag you as an activist.” aseas 6(1) 151150 2. forming unions in call centers is perceived as futile given the transient character of the workforce [and the accounts] many young agents do not consider the industry as their lifetime career and they do not intend to stay in such a workplace for a long time. additionally, frequent changes of employment are believed to hinder the deeper understanding of shared affectedness, the development of solidarity and of common interest patterns – all prerequisites for association organization. the interaction spaces that exist – e.g. the teams the agents have been organized into by the management or any place outside of the call center which is no longer under surveillance of the management – (only) serve as a vehicle for discussion of work-related issues aside from account updates. their mere existence does not suffice to trigger organizing. experiences of successful organizing amongst the precariously employed show that the few who lead (and push the ‘rank and file’) have been permanent in one location or have even been with one company over several years (cf. girndt, 1997). moreover, campaigns like the justice for janitors in the us, which is famous for its successes, have been planned and carried out over several years. 3. it is not clear whom the agents should turn to “there are really huge violations against labor laws in the call center industry,” says a respondent, “but . . . you don’t know who to blame. you don’t really know whom to talk and bargain with.” rapid changes in clients make it difficult for them to have a clear counterpart to turn to or mobilize against. furthermore, these clients who should be held accountable are abroad and not visible in the tripartite container society, and hence, cannot be approached. others even say that nobody is to be held responsible in particular: “you could not help it; it’s the system . . . you could not really complain about it, about changing the way things are. the supervisors don’t have control over it.” 4. grievance procedures are a form of token participation in almost all call centers, workers are encouraged to approach and settle issues with the human resource department (hrd) individually or raise them during town hall sessions. this creates the imagination that it is easy to approach the hrd whenever niklas reese & joefel soco-carreon no call for action? why there is no union (yet) in philippine call centers aseas 6(1) 153152 one has a grievance (open door policy). the image constructed by the management is this: there is no need for unions as the hrd takes up individual complaints, employers take care of employees’ needs, and the interests of employers and employees go in the same direction. this is furthermore fostered by an atmosphere of congeniality and camaraderie created by fun initiatives or the first-name principle and the perception that employers value their professional employees. yet, most respondents doubt that their opinions are of great value to the company. an agent observes that: “you can tell your supervisors but they can’t do anything much,” as complaints may go unaddressed if supervisors are busy with an account. he elaborates that: “all you can do is tell your concerns, but it’s up to the management to act on it . . . you can say your concern but i don’t know if the management will act on it.” a manila respondent echoes this sentiment by saying that: “we had a grievance mechanism where you can rant but nothing happened.” an agent from a different company affirms this, stating that: “how many times did they do surveys and still nothing happened; there’s no improvement.” town hall meetings are controversial as well. management’s responses to some issues, e.g. office facilities, are written in tarpaulins and publicly displayed in office premises. but, for several agents, major issues that they view as pressing are often unclearly answered, if responded to at all, or neglected. noronha and d’cruz (2009) consider the participation mechanisms therefore as a “false claim, concerned only with impressing and misleading agents” (p. 165). this notion is shared by a respondent of this study who says that: “i considered it [the participation mechanisms] as . . . a game by the management; it’s a spectacle just to show that they have a grievance process . . . the management can tell [i.e. promise] them [the agents] everything . . . they’re not in the company anymore when that’s supposed to happen.” another agent says that: “in the call centers, they want to prevent unions . . . they don’t do union busting, they do union-avoidance . . . you have to give the democratic space so that (agents) would not think that they are being oppressed.” agents who have experienced utilizing the grievance and participation mechanisms consider them mostly as token. seven out of ten respondents in the study, therefore, consider no genuine grievance mechanisms to exist, with more than half of them considering this a (very) significant problem. similarly, while several agents are impressed by the seemingly symmetrical relationship practiced between a boss aseas 6(1) 153152 and a worker in call centers – contrary to the hierarchical filipino society – most of them recognize that this kind of relational symmetry limits itself to the interpersonal surface, which does not necessarily manifest in work standards and dynamics that are essential to a worker’s well-being. in the overall structure of authority, this emphasizes the agents’ disadvantaged position – one wherein they cannot negotiate with management over matters of utmost concern for them, i.e. job security, account selection, work schedules, and rational work tasks, contract terms, or even in the implementation of trainings. all in all, agents are fully aware that participation and grievance mechanisms are subordinate to production imperatives which at any time may override whatever feedback procedures have been put into place. “as long as they can squeeze out more from you, they will,” an agent believes (fabros, 2007, p. 211). as an agent in this research concludes: “you might be performing (well) in other fields, but you’d be summed up in only one system: ‘we don’t care how you manage your personal life; we just want this; and this alone.’” but even if agents come to the conclusion that human resource management practices do not sufficiently address the grievances they have presented, in the philippine call centers this does not (yet) spark organizing alternatives – be it in the form of unions or through company-independent redress systems. 5. call center hopping finally, it is often heard that the ease of moving from one call center to another (termed call center hopping) when problems arise might be a reason why hardly any collective action can be observed. exit, ergo seems to be another coping mechanism for agents. with the mushrooming of the industry and the lack of qualified personnel, changing a call center company for another one presents an easy option. when asked what the respondents would do if they lose the job, “find another job” is easily articulated. circumstances hostile to unionizing alone though cannot comprehensively explain non-unionization in the philippine call center sector. many of the structural and external reasons for non-unionization mentioned so far also apply to call centers in the us or in europe, wherein, however, a few unions have been set up. (this may also be niklas reese & joefel soco-carreon no call for action? why there is no union (yet) in philippine call centers aseas 6(1) 155154 due to the fact that some of these societies are relatively densely unionized.) other reasons, which can be classified as issues of framing (i.e. the way people perceive and construct the circumstances), seem to be equally important. 6. individualism people with considerable resources tend to believe that they can manage and thrive on their own. they believe they can rely on their individual capabilities for success. schultheis and schulz (2005) have documented among the precarized in germany that the “ethic of achievement is very pronounced among those who believe to be able to make it” (p. 539). this is why they are less inclined to organize themselves collectively at least in socio-economic matters. agents are further induced by a corporate culture that encourages competitiveness and individualism. the display of performance statistics, for instance, is such a tool used by management to promote competition (in terms of productivity) among the workers, which affects ‘individualization’. agents’ calls are considered their own and how these turn out depends on their individual communication skills. the only help they can get from other agents is encouragement. “it’s like you’re programmed . . . you don’t really work for the team; you’re working for yourself. you are just contributing something to the team” (male agent, 25). as a result, an agent’s scores are his/her own, and how one fares in the competition and mechanical dynamics of the workplace is one’s struggle for wage. fixing of wages and settling disputes are done individually. employees are encouraged to not discuss salaries with each other and to think of salary figures as a purely personal issue. this not only prevents people from developing notions of relative deprivation (which could have a mobilizing effect), but also feeds to the idea of personal performance, which is also evident in most of the agents’ personal perspectives. 7. violations of rights and the lack of humane working conditions are considered “normal” contractualization, e.g. workers getting terminated after a five-month probationary period, is typical for many parts of the philippine service sector and has increased by about 20 percent in the past few years (reese, in print), creating the impression that such is ‘normal’. when things are considered ‘normal’ or ‘without alternative’, they aseas 6(1) 155154 evoke less protest. the same applies to the explicit ban on unionizing – a policy which many other companies have imposed as well, even if this goes against the philippine labor code. the necessity of finding a living (hanapbuhay) forces workers to accept nearly any working condition because “beggars cannot be choosers”, as a common saying in the philippines goes. when one is a proletarian (i.e. one who has no control over the means of production), there is something worse than being exploited: not to have work at all. the demand to have whatever kind of work takes paramount precedence, while the demand for humane work takes a backseat. a female agent (30), puts it clearly this way: “if you’re helping your family, . . . you won’t think of the hardships or the exhausting work inside; just think of the money that you can get [as an agent].” it was also observed that the agents do not find it unjust to earn around five times less than their american counterparts who are doing exactly the same kind of work. the variations in the cost/standard of living are quickly regarded as a convenient justification for the disparity, even if the comparison of purchasing power only explains a difference of 200 to 300 percent (cf. united bank of switzerland, 2013). it can therefore be assumed that the acceptance of these wage differentials can be traced to the habitualization of one’s position in the current world order, i.e. of coming to terms with the fact that one belongs to a country which is supplying the rich countries with cheap or sought-after manpower as “servants of globalization”, as rhacel parreñas (2001) calls them in her book on the massive outward migration in the philippines; or a naturalization of social inequality (souza, 2008). some respondents frame it as: “you have to accept the fate of the world . . . it’s life. it’s not fair”; and this is immediately followed by the claim that: “it’s kind of a blessing in disguise actually, here in the philippines. because it’s generating a lot of jobs.” the phenomenon of “normalization” is closely connected to the strategies of downward comparison. agents consider themselves to still be in a better situation than other workers (relative privilege instead of relative deprivation). the jobs in the bpo industry in developing countries are of reasonably good quality by local standards in terms of working and employment conditions (wages, hours of work, non-wage benefits, etc.). seen relatively, these jobs are less precarious and easy to get. as an agent puts it well: “because of the benefits and salaries, one cannot even think anymore of unionizing. what more could you ask for? you already have health benefits and the like.” niklas reese & joefel soco-carreon no call for action? why there is no union (yet) in philippine call centers aseas 6(1) 157156 8. trade unions are considered by them as something for workers furthermore, several researchers have observed that despite the fact that many of the issues faced by agents in mass service call centers are no different from those faced by their blue-collar counterparts, trade unions are considered by them as something for workers (fabros, 2007; noronha & d’cruz, 2009). experiences of mass servicing are sidelined by highlighting academic backgrounds, the well-equipped working places (gyms included), and the above-average salaries they receive. they are “communication people” and their direct contact in service work should not be confused with the physical and menial work of blue-collar workers. however, despite the difficulty to completely ignore the fact that the repetitive, even robotic mode of work, makes call centers appear like factories, agents take pride in being able to “make something out of it”. furthermore, being involved in sloganeering, picketing, and striking – activities commonly associated with trade unions – is considered as an unworthy demeanor of a professional. management supports the strategy of dissimilarity by giving call center employees catchy designations and prestigious-sounding positions such as customer care agent, customer support agent, or customer support executive. 9. the stigma attached to unions that unions do not have much appeal to agents is aggravated by the “stigma” (aganon, 2008, p.124) attached to unions in the philippines in general. not only has the ‘no-union’ policy gotten more and more normal, it is also that membership in trade unions has in general reached new lows. barely 5 percent of the workforce is organized into trade unions and a mere 13 percent of them are covered by collective bargaining agreements – which are not even deemed universally binding. together with the rapid and steady decline in the number of trade organized workers, strikes have also dramatically dropped. 10. underestimation of market power finally, this study has come to the observation that agents underestimate their market power as expressed in this response by a male agent (30): “it’s useless . . . they can always hire more agents if you strike.” what may hold true for factory workers is, however, questionable in the case of call center agents. as outlined above, the call center industry has difficulties in meeting its demand for personnel who have aseas 6(1) 157156 the specific qualifications needed to sustain its operations (e.g. flawless english or communication skills). furthermore, it can be considered highly unlikely that the call center industry would reach the point of moving out from the philippines once the workforce would demand and organize for more in terms of better working conditions and benefits. call centers demand very specific skills that are neither easy to find nor can be quickly developed, namely, the ability to speak the customer’s language in an acceptable manner and to be familiar with the culture the callers come from. the call center industry has made the philippines the world champion as far as voice-based operations are concerned. a significant number relocated their operations from india for the very reason that american customers complained about the british accent of indian agents. it is very unlikely then that call centers would move on to vietnam or china, as some factories did. prospects for unionizing: dim, but not impossible this study concludes that the prospects for unions in the philippine call center industry are for now rather dim. as a result of the combination of external and internal reasons, there are even indications that it is also more difficult to establish these unions in this high-end service sector than in the production sector. in the case of export processing zones in the philippines, repressive regulation policies are resorted to at times to prevent unionizing (mckay, 2006). in the philippine call centers, open repression is of no need as it is rather the formative power and the internalization of discourses of rule within individual life strategies that is preventing the establishment of unions and other collective action structures. having said that, the prospects collective action offers to agents are considerable: call center agents not only have market power, they also have productive power (terms following silver, 2005), as the industry is very vulnerable to production slowdown and in need of a quick turnaround. what they lack is organizational power which would give them even more leeway to push their interests. but as mentioned above, call center agents are not closed to the idea of joining a union and most even consider it a better grievance mechanism in lieu of token spaces such as town hall meetings and individual complaints. but considering it trade organiklas reese & joefel soco-carreon no call for action? why there is no union (yet) in philippine call centers aseas 6(1) 159158 nization in reality boils down to strategy. as one agent cum activist explains: “if you think about a union, the image that we have is that of a poorly dressed worker . . . and then you’re this someone with high heels, super attire.” the agent continues that it could be an “english-speaking union . . . but it should have a different approach, not the militant one that could possibly antagonize the agents. it should be done gradually, depending on the capacity of your mass base”. this resonates very much with the successful experiences on organizing in india, europe, and north america (for the experience of the union unites, cf. noronha & d’cruz, 2009; taylor et al., 2007). references aganon, m. e. (ed.). (2008). revitalizing philippine unions – potentials and constraints to social movement unionism. quezon city, philippines: friedrich ebert stiftung and u.p. school of labor and industrial relations. agarwalda, r. (2008). from work to welfare – a new class movement in india. in r. agarwala & r. hering, whatever happened to class? reflections from south asia (pp. 91-108). london, uk: routledge. bourdieu, p. (1998). prekarität ist überall. in gegenfeuer. wortmeldungen im dienste des widerstands gegen die neoliberale invasion (pp. 96-102). konstanz, germany: uvk. dörre, k. (2006). prekarität – die soziale frage am beginn des 21. jahrhunderts und möglichkeiten zu ihrer politisierung. kulturrisse, 4, 8-11. ermitanio, n. (2012, june 30). college students find work in call centers. philippine daily inquirer. fabros, a. (2007). social production of outsourced selves: a view of call center regimes and experiences in the philippines. master thesis (unpublished), university of the philippines, diliman. girndt, c. (1997). the citybetriebsrat never sleeps. in anwälte, problemlöser, modernisierer – betriebsratsreportagen (pp.91-100). gütersloh, germany: verlag bertelsmann stiftung. groves, j. m., & kimberly, a. c. (2002). romancing resistance and resisting romance: ethnography and the construction of power in the filipina domestic worker community in hong kong. in f. aguilar (ed.), filipinos in global migrations (pp. 316-343). quezon city, philippines: pssc. mckay, s. (2006). satanic mills or silicon islands –the politics of high-tech production in the philippines. manila, philippines: ateneo de manila university press. mosqueda, m. (2012, august 3). displaced bpo workers file plaint. manila bulletin. retrieved from http:// www.contactcenterworld.com/view/contact-center-news/displaced-bpo-workers-file-plaint.aspx noronha, e., & d’cruz, p. (2009). employee identity in indian call centers. the notion of professionalism. new delhi, india: sage books. opitz, s. (2004). gouvernementalität im postfordismus. hamburg, germany: argument verlag. parrenas, r. s. (2001). servants of globalization: women, migration and domestic work. stanford, ca: stanford university press. piven, f. f., & cloward, r. a. (1986). aufstand der armen. frankfurt a. m., germany: suhrkamp. aseas 6(1) 159158 reese, n. (2004). subjektivitäten ins zentrum stellen – die subjektivierung unter neoliberaler gouvernementalität (unpublished draft). retrieved from http://www.scribd.com/doc/55520570/subjektivitaten-inszentrum-stellen reese, n. (2008a). “we are living in a different time zone.” transnational working spaces and the glocalized intermediary class. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 1(2), 34-58. reese, n. (2008b). stehaufmenschen – umgang mit sozialer unsicherheit in den philippinen. in k. husa, r. jordan, & h. wohlschlägl (eds.), ost und südostasien zwischen wohlfahrtsstaat und eigeninitiative. aktuelle entwicklungstendenzen von armut und sozialer unsicherheit (pp. 217-232). wien, austria. (english version, jack in the box: social precarity in the philippines and how it is coped with. retrieved from http://www. scribd.com/niklas_reese/d/91160999-precarity-in-the-philippines) reese, n. (in print). hard work, hard times. employment, trade unions, and the informal sector. in n. reese & r. werning (eds.), handbook philippines. essen, germany: philippinenbuero im asienhaus. sale, j., & bool, l. (2005). context and possibilities of trade union organizing in the philippine call center and business outsourcing industry: a survey report. retrieved from http://www.scribd.com/doc/36503664/3uni-apro-survey-on-cbpop-professionals-philippines-2005 schmitt, l. (2006). wie ausgeschlossen muss man sein, um zu protestieren? sozialer protest und seine voraussetzungen. in die proteste in frankreich. ccs working papers no. 1 (pp. 17-21), center for conflict studies, philipps university, marburg. schultheis, f., & schulz, k. (eds.). (2005). gesellschaft mit beschränkter haftung. zumutungen und leiden im deutschen alltag. konstanz, germany: uvk. scott, j. (1990). domination and the arts of resistance: hidden transcripts. new haven, ct: yale university press. souza, j. (2008). die naturalisierung der ungleichheit. ein neues verständnis peripherer gesellschaften. wiesbaden, germany: verlag für sozialwissenschaften. taylor, p., scholarios, d., noronha, e., & d’cruz, p. (2007). union formation in indian call centers/bpo the attitudes and experiences of unites members. strathclyde business school, glasgow, uk, & indian institute of management, ahmedabad, india. retrieved from http://www.unitespro.org/files/docs/2008/report/ unites%20report%20final.pdf thompson, e. (1963). the making of the english working class. harmondsworth, uk: penguin. united bank of switzerland. (2013). a comparison of purchasing power around the globe 2012. retrieved from www.ubs.com/research niklas reese & joefel soco-carreon no call for action? why there is no union (yet) in philippine call centers “some of the best movement people are political ecologists at heart”: an interview about political ecology with nancy peluso melanie pichler ► pichler, m. (2016). “some of the best movement people are political ecologists at heart”: an interview about political ecology with nancy peluso. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 9(1), 181-186. nancy peluso pioneered political ecology research in southeast asia with her book on rich forest, poor people (1992) that untangles peasant resistance and state control in indonesian forest politics. since then, the professor of political ecology at uc berkeley, california, has done extensive ethnographic research on the effects of social difference (ethnic identity, class, gender) on resource access and control, dealing with forests, land, mining, and water conflicts in indonesia and malaysia. her recent work investigates the relationships between migration and environmental change. melanie pichler spoke with her during the international conference of the european network of political ecology (entitle) from 20 to 24 march in stockholm where she delivered a keynote lecture on the unexpected impacts of women’s migration on the environment in a forest village in east java. during the interview, nancy reflected on current trends in political ecology research, the potential pitfalls of indigenous peoples’ rights, the contradictory role of ngos in socio-ecological conflicts, and the potential of political ecology research beyond academia. keywords: indigenous peoples; interview; migration and environment; political ecology; political forests  melanie pichler: from your research experience in southeast asia, what are current challenges for political ecology in the region and what are you focusing on at the moment? nancy peluso: if challenges means new research topics that are becoming important, i see big questions connected to migration, mobilities, and their role for the making of places. migrations have multiple effects on resource holdings, forests, or pollution. personally, i’m interested in the mobilities of people, capital, and resources into and out of forests and other environments. i think political ecology has brought foundational insights to understanding the struggles over making places, property, territory, or landscapes. but when you think about how much movement – mobilities – affects places and livelihoods everywhere in the world today, i think we have to admit that political ecologists have not done enough to integrate migration and mobility into their world views. i also think that understanding the political ecological relations of mining and the spatial power of mining companies has become extremely important. im dialog  in dialogue w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 16 .1 -1 2 182 melanie pichler  aseas 9(1) mining corporations are taking up huge spaces on the planet, claiming the underground as gavin bridge puts it. so how have these corporations been able to get access to so much land? if you think about the mining law in indonesia that was passed in 2009, it requires mining companies that wish to extract metals and rocks to develop smelters for first stage processing inside the country. but many companies refused to do that: they left – ran away from concessions and sought mineral sources in other countries. there are so many questions around mining, including whether multinational corporations should stay or go, the conflicts around land, and the struggles over access to jobs. and of course there are huge questions around how small-scale mining has also exploded all over the planet – in conjunction with and opposition to large-scale mining projects. melanie: do you see any similarities between indonesia and the current developments in myanmar in the course of the liberalization process with regard to resource conflicts? nancy: one thing that is actually a similarity between myanmar and indonesia, for example, is the role of the military, the power of the military, and what parts of the old regime are still in place as myanmar undergoes massive changes. that is something that was and has been an issue in indonesia since suharto came to power; the connection between military concessions and logging, oil palm, or mining interests and the ways the government allocated concessions. military connections seem to be critical in myanmar’s transition; i think military involvement in resource use is a pattern across southeast asia, though it takes different forms, of course. when looking at the particular historical moments in which liberalization becomes important – it’s fascinating to think about comparisons and how specific histories make a difference. at some time or another all southeast asian countries have had authoritarian or military postcolonial governments, whether they were socialist, communist, capitalist, or state capitalist. as liberalization of these different political economies takes hold, it highlights these similarities as well as differences. we could learn much from the similarities and differences in the initial conditions – political, economic, and cultural – that ‘host’ neoliberal capitalisms. melanie: you pioneered research on “political forests” in indonesia in the 1990s. how have forest politics and associated socio-ecological conflicts changed since then? nancy: i did that work with peter vandergeest, now a professor at york university in toronto. we tried to historicize and locate forest politics. what did the formation of political forests mean? we saw them as strategies for assuming state power, though different forest areas were made “political forests” at different historical moments. the idea came out of a period in which state-led development and state action was really strong and the indonesian state, the thai state, and the malaysian state all had strong authoritarian characters; different from one another but still very strong. what kinds of colonial and postcolonial relationships did political forests come out of? of course the answers were very different for the three countries that we took as our examples, and even for specific regions inside those countries circumstances varied; but we looked at the formation and impositions of the law, the politics of rule 183“some of the best movement people are political ecologists at heart” within these historical spaces, and the effects of the political violence of the 1950s to the 1970s on forest formations. i think one of the things that is striking today is that it’s taken as a given that many forests are state or national forests in southeast asia; the idea that the forest belongs to the government has been naturalized – except, still, among many indigenous and forest dependent groups. governments, conservationists, and others often assume that if the forest doesn’t belong to the state, it should. that was one of the things that we wanted to understand; how did that idea gain so much power in so many different sites? and, once the idea takes hold, what other factors affect the politics of maintaining that forest or extracting resources from that forest? one big question today is what replaces the forest. harold brookfield, lesley potter, and yvonne byron wrote a book in 1995 called in place of the forest; they looked mainly at eastern malaysia and western indonesia. michael ross wrote about booms and busts in the forests of malaysia, indonesia, and the philippines and peter dauvergne wrote on shadows in the forest, comparing three countries and the role that trade and other agreements with japan played in the three different contexts. tim forsyth and andrew walker (forest guardians, forest destroyers) focused on productions of environmental knowledge. more recently, michael eilenberg (at the edges of states) has written about the fate of borneo forests in international borderlands. what nearly everybody is talking about is the replacement of the forest by industry, plantation development, or mining and resulting new politics of forests in the region. as i already mentioned, when i started to think about labor migration’s effects on forest and agrarian landscapes – this new topic i’m working on – i was thinking about what was happening in the amazon – in peru and in brazil – because of the work that other scientists such as susanna hecht and christine padoch have done. in indonesia, rebecca elmhirst has done important work on gendered labor migration and its effects on forests and forest livelihoods. and new work is starting to come out as migration appears in many forms to be such an important component of our times, yet the variation in effects is also important. in java, where labor migration has been common for a long time, international migration is having new and huge effects on some forests through remittances – uses of the understories, agroforestry configurations outside the political forest, many different effects. at the same time, remittances have less direct impacts on forests in kalimantan because they are being so rapidly and extensively replaced by industrial oil palm plantations. government and corporate desires to transform forests to some industrial use is an important – and expanding – dynamic. the huge quantities of biological, ecological, cultural, and social diversity that existed in those forests can’t be maintained in the same way when they are replaced with plantation environments. in any case, my work on migration is focused largely on east java, where plantations came in a century and a half ago to the uplands, mostly preceding the reservation and enclosure of forests. it's almost ironic that migrations are having some bigger effects on the forests which have been enclosed for the longest in indonesia. theoretically, enclosure is often seen as an end to the agency of smallholders and the creation of laboring classes. but this java case demonstrates the importance of context; showing how those who were seemingly locked out (of the forest) can come back in and change it in new and unexpected ways. 184 melanie pichler  aseas 9(1) melanie: have conservation policies like redd had any impact on that? nancy: everybody was criticizing redd or redd+ when it first came out, but it sure looked pretty good next to using the land for oil palm plantations. redd+ has greater potential – although not always realized – for community management and benefit. the good thing about redd was – at least at a certain level – that the people that were involved in developing it were often committed to listening to some of the issues movement people brought up. some tried to respond to indigenous rights issues and the whole ‘who owns the forest’ thing. to a certain extent there was some listening going on, at least the kind of listening that doesn’t usually go on with all these other kinds of activities. contrast this with many mining companies, oil palm companies, and other large land using industries that just don’t care. this is not necessarily to endorse redd+ but to understand it in a context of competing, less palatable options for transforming production relations and access to forests. melanie: you mentioned indigenous people’s rights which have gained importance in socio-ecological conflicts in recent years. what are the potentials and pitfalls of these instruments? nancy: i think it’s important but i wonder if it’s not too late. i know, that’s a depressing thing to say. one of the really interesting things that just happened in indonesia is that the human rights commission did an inquiry into the rights of indigenous peoples in forest areas. they went to these different parts of the country, held hearings, and brought witnesses from different parties to conflicts over land, forest, and water. i was able to observe just a single day of the kalimantan hearings in pontianak in october 2014. it was heart-wrenching because so many of the people that took part in those hearings had already lost everything. one of the witnesses from a forest area said, in response to a question from a commissioner about what she would like done, that she would like the companies to “put their customary forest back”. but a company can’t recreate an ancestral forest, it’s physically impossible. it’s just too bad that this investigation wasn’t possible 10 or 15 years ago. now people have to work with what they’ve got – which is a largely destroyed and stripped environment. but of course, indigenous rights are still important given the growing importance of land and land access. indigenous and other local groups need to make their claims even though the complexities for both making and realizing those claims are growing. the other thing is that the indonesian government has a very narrow definition determining which indigenous communities can be recognized as such: they have to still have ties to the forest or other ancestral lands, and also be able to prove that their indigenous community ties are still in place and have meaning. in other words they are not supposed to have changed – the concept assumes a static state. not only is this ridiculous – everything changes – but the indigenous communities are constrained in making claims to land that they have occupied and used long before the indonesian state came into being. the static definition of indigeneity is a major part of this problem. think about movements in brazil, for example: the mst [movement of landless peasants] didn’t have a problem with saying, look, our ancestors were expropriated a long time ago and their children moved to the city, but that 185“some of the best movement people are political ecologists at heart” history matters; we were dispossessed and now we want to reclaim the countryside. it’s about being courageous enough to build a new definition of what it means to be indigenous, a peasant, a small farmer. the point is to understand varied notions of belonging. i read this great article by philip kelly a few years ago about agrarian change and migration. his point was basically that migration is normal, settlement is what’s odd. in indonesia, many mobile people(s) were stopped in their tracks, in their mobile trajectories, by the colonial guys: they were sedentarized; they had to stay in place. maybe they would have stayed anyway in some places, who knows? the point is that we are so engaged in understanding claims in place that we don’t really understand the trajectories, the mobile processes and people through which places have been made – past and present. melanie: how do you see the role of ngos in all these socio-ecological conflicts? nancy: generally speaking, i think that local or domestic ngos in indonesia can sometimes help to translate and facilitate conversations between disparate groups. but we all know that ngos are often in conflict or competition with each other in terms of approaches, philosophies, and objectives. that can be part of a ‘problem’ in trying to understand ngos as a whole; many refuse to publically acknowledge that there are differences. i think this attitude is largely a legacy of the suharto era when ngos had a clear common point of opposition; the ‘common enemy’ is less clear under contemporary political economic conditions. the academic conversation is often about ngos in general and – again, something left over from the suharto era – you would try not to say negative things about ngos just because of their ‘alternative’ status. today, many small ngos are dependent on national and international ngos, on the government itself, or sometimes on companies for their funds, so it’s very messy. they play a role, sure, but their roles are not always critical and oppositional; they may not necessarily support the kinds of positions that other activists or local people or other organized groups are hoping for. melanie: many political ecology researchers still come from western countries. what do you think about political ecology research from southeast asia? nancy: you find political ecologists in southeast asia in many different places. some of the best movement people are political ecologists at heart. there are a lot of people who are getting into political ecology from the region but they are not all academics. the pathway to becoming an academic – at least in indonesia – is a winding one, with many potential distractions along the way. yet, many people in their ngo work find that they need research or need to know how to do research. a lot of times, they have no idea how to gather the kind of evidence that is convincing about the origins of socio-environmental problems – an objective which is still at the heart of political ecology in my opinion. activists are usually so committed to their campaigns and to their issues but don’t have time to write. a promising thing is that a lot of them have managed to get overseas – to get away to writing or study programs. we all often need to get out of our immediate environments in order to find time to write – in this they are not so different. i guess, i don’t think that there are just a few political 186 melanie pichler  aseas 9(1) ecologists, there are certainly a lot more than when i first started working. they just don’t appear in academia as frequently. melanie: you mentioned the interlinkage between research and activism that is very important for political ecology. can you mention any current examples of this interlinkage? nancy: i’m thinking of the assembly of the poor in thailand. they were concerned when dams were being built on the mekong and they raised questions that had to do with whether fish would be available to all the people who depend on fish for food and livelihood. that movement was dealing with one of the biggest challenges affecting the political ecologies of southeast asia: dams are making a huge comeback in asia, and all over the world. the assembly of the poor is an example of academics and activists getting together in a really positive way to oppose them. in east malaysia, one of the dams that they were planning to build on the baram river was stopped and this was the work of a small ngo and a few academics based in the us working with many contacts and connections in sarawak that probably should not be mentioned by name. yet academics and activists managed to get the chief minister to listen and to think about the dam and its potential damage in the submersion area and also to support micro-hydro development for local water use. that effort was a combination of academics, other professionals, activists, and local people. [so i am putting in a plug for the borneo project which is based in berkeley, california, and has some super committed people involved with it!] in indonesia, there is also a great, very committed ngo working out of pontianak in west kalimantan called the swandiri institute and their sister group gemawan. they have been doing research and working on the ground with communities suffering from corporate impingements on their land. they do excellent research on the illegal takings of customary and forest land by oil palm interests in particular. swandiri folks are using drones for a good purpose: to photograph and map sites where community members claim the companies are illegally exceeding their bounds. that’s an amazing example of activist research.  about the author melanie pichler is editor-in-chief of the austrian journal of south-east asian studies and a post-doc researcher at the institute of social ecology in vienna, austria. ► contact: melanie.pichler@seas.at informal conflict management in exclusivist political orders: some observations on central mindanao jeroen adam & boris verbrugge ► adam, j., & verbrugge, b. (2014). informal conflict management in exclusivist political orders: some observations on central mindanao. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 7(1), 61-74. in the past decade, a range of international and national ngos have pointed to the need to complement national-level negotiations with a support for alternative, informal institutions of conflict management in order to reach a sustainable peace in the conflictaffected regions of central and western mindanao. this argument is based on emerging insights into the multi-layered conflict ecology in the region and the fact that classic statist diplomacy can only deal with this complexity to a limited extent. based on an analysis of existing conflict management practices in the region, we would like to challenge some of the basic premises underlying this ‘alternative’ and informal approach. our core argument is that in the case of mindanao, assuming a rigid distinction between formal and informal actors and practices of conflict mediation is flawed and may actually be counterproductive, as it obscures how informal practices dominate purportedly formal mediation procedures. moreover, it tends to underestimate how the local executive embodying state power plays a key role in allegedly ‘informal’ conflict management mechanisms. keywords: conflict management; informality; mindanao; peace studies; the philippines  in den letzten jahren hat eine reihe von internationalen und nationalen nros darauf hingewiesen, dass verhandlungen auf nationalstaatlicher ebene durch alternative, informelle institutionen des konfliktmanagements unterstützt werden müssen, um nachhaltigen frieden in den konfliktregionen von zentralund west-mindanao zu erreichen. dieses argument basiert auf jüngsten einsichten über die vielschichtigkeit der konfliktdimensionen in der region und dem faktum, dass klassische nationalstaatliche diplomatie im umgang mit dieser komplexität begrenzt ist. basierend auf einer analyse von bestehenden praktiken des konfliktmanagements in der region möchten wir einige der grundlegenden prämissen, die diesem „alternativen“ und informellen ansatz zu grunde liegen, in frage stellen. unser zentrales argument ist, dass die annahme einer rigiden trennung zwischen formellen und informellen akteurinnen und praktiken der konfliktmediation im fall von mindanao mangelhaft und möglicherweise sogar kontraproduktiv ist, weil sie verschleiert, wie informelle praktiken vorgeblich formelle mediations prozesse dominieren. zudem unterschätzt eine solche trennung, wie die lokale exekutive als verkörperung von staatsmacht eine schlüsselrolle darin spielt, welche scheinbar „informellen“ mechanismen des konfliktmanagements geltend gemacht werden. schlagworte: friedensforschung; informalität; konfliktmanagement; mindanao; philippinen aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 14 .1 -5 62 jeroen adam & boris verbrugge  aseas 7(1) introduction the southern philippine island of mindanao faces one of the longest-running violent conflicts in the world. starting in the late 1960s with clashes between christian and muslim armed militias, already by the early 1970s the conflict had escalated into a full-scale war between the moro national liberation front (mnlf, the main representative of the minority muslim population at the time) and the philippine army (dañguiland & gloria, 2000; mckenna, 1998, pp. 138–156). in later stages of the conflict, new rebel movements emerged, with the moro islamic liberation front (milf) in particular proving to be a serious contender to the traditional mnlf hegemony. although the mnlf and the milf are no longer officially at war with the philippine state at the time of writing, sporadic outbursts of violence between the armed forces of the philippines (afp) and these rebel groups still occur on a regular basis. furthermore, a counterinsurgency campaign is ongoing against the abu sayyaf group (asg), a small but highly mediatized terrorist group that rose to prominence after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. in addition, as recently as 2008, the bangsamoro islamic freedom fighters (biff) were established as a radicalized breakaway faction from the milf, disenchanted with the ongoing negotiations between the milf and the government of the republic of the philippines (grp). this decades-long history of violence and confrontation coincided with protracted rounds of peace negotiations. already in 1976, the philippine state and the mnlf reached a ceasefire agreement, the so-called tripoli agreement (özerdem, 2012). however, it was only following a plebiscite in 1989 that the autonomous region for muslim mindanao (armm) was created, albeit as a much smaller geographic entity than originally envisioned in the 1976 agreement. in 1996, a final peace agreement was signed between the mnlf and the grp (bertrand, 2000). this peace agreement provided for the disarmament and reintegration of mnlf fighters, although it did not manage to prevent further confrontations between mnlf factions and the afp.1 meanwhile, soon after the 1996 agreement with the mnlf, preliminary talks started with the milf (international crisis group, 2008). despite some major setbacks (williams, 2010), often followed by a period of open warfare, talks between the grp and the milf have now reached an advanced stage with the signing of the framework agreement on the bangsamoro (fab) and four annexes, as recently as january 2014. while important challenges remain with regards to the further fine-tuning and implementation of this agreement, it has nonetheless enabled a rapprochement and a stabilization of relations between the milf and the philippine state.2 1 one recent example is the audacious attack by 200 mnlf fighters on the city of zamboanga on 8 september 2013. these events should be understood against the background of the current talks between the grp and the milf, whereby some mnlf leaders feel anxious about their potential political sidelining in the future bangsamoro autonomous region. this was in particular the case for a group of mnlf members around former armm governor nur misuari who mainly originate from the island of sulu. it needs to be stressed that other important mnlf leaders have condemned the attack and that there was no direct support among mnlf communities in mainland mindanao (“sema’s mnlf faction”, 2013). 2 the last big hurdle that remains is to write up a bangsamoro basic law (bbl) wherein the promulgations made within the fab and the four annexes will be integrated and the institutional structure of the future bangsamoro will be further refined. considering the positive atmosphere that has surrounded the recent consultations between the milf and the grp, it is generally expected that this bbl will be finished 63informal conflict management in exclusivist political orders notwithstanding the notable progress made in these negotiations, important questions remain with regards to their impact on the everyday security situation in mindanao, where a broad variety of local conflicts continue to proliferate. this observation is related to critical insights that have emerged in recent years about the highly complex, multi-layered conflict ecology in the region (adam, 2013; lara & champain, 2009). by tackling only one aspect of this conflict ecology, namely the ‘master narrative’ of muslim struggles for autonomy, national-level statist diplomacy is inevitably limited in scope. for these reasons, a range of ngos and international organizations are now pointing towards the need to complement these national-level negotiations with alternative conflict management practices that rely disproportionately on nonstate, informal institutions of conflict management (centre for humanitarian dialogue, 2011; human development network, 2005; the asia foundation [taf], 2011). these informal institutions are said to be not only socially legitimized, but also better equipped to deal with localized violent disputes. based on an analysis of existing conflict management practices in mindanao,3 however, we would like to challenge some of the basic premises underlying this ‘alternative’ approach. our core argument is that in the case of mindanao, assuming a rigid distinction between formal and informal actors and practices of conflict mediation is not only unhelpful, but may even be counterproductive, as it obscures how informal practices dominate purportedly formal mediation procedures and, perhaps more fundamentally, how the local executive embodying state power plays a key role in allegedly ‘informal’ conflict management mechanisms. in the following section, we will provide some critical observations regarding the complex conflict ecology in western and central mindanao, and how a growing acceptance of this complexity is feeding into support for alternative, informal conflict management mechanisms. the third section will investigate the alleged shortcomings of ‘formal’ conflict mediation mechanisms. it will be argued that these ‘formal’ mechanisms in effect exhibit a high degree of informality, in the form of amicable settlement practices and a high degree of personal influence on the part of local executives. the fourth section will turn to a brief evaluation of three dispute settlement mechanisms that explicitly aim to transcend formal state structures by including non-state actors. it will be suggested that the local executive plays a key role in these allegedly ‘informal’ or hybrid mechanisms, both as a vital source of coercive power and legitimacy. by early 2015 at the latest. the biggest difficulty will lie in the ratification by the philippine congress without invoking too many fundamental amendments that would weaken the bbl. in case of successful ratification, it is expected that before the ending of the aquino administration in 2016, a new bangsamoro will be installed which will incorporate the current armm. 3 for this article, we draw on an analysis of a diverse range of conflict management interventions in western and central mindanao, with a specific focus on the province of north cotabato. these different interventions, ranging from big international programs such as one supported by the asia foundation to localized initiatives operating on a limited geographical scale, have been researched over the past year throughout different fieldwork periods in the region. the methodology consists of a combination of indepth interviews with different stakeholders, participant observation, and analysis of written documents (e.g., policy reports, evaluations, pamphlets). 64 jeroen adam & boris verbrugge  aseas 7(1) complex conflict ecologies and the rise of the informal in recent years, there has been growing awareness that armed confrontations between the afp and muslim armed groups over the specific interpretations and modalities of autonomy constitute only a minor portion of the actual violence (lara & champain, 2009, pp. 8–9; torres, 2007). instead, the majority of violent conflict in the region should be understood as part and parcel of struggles for control over the local political economy. significant in this regard is the high incidence of what has been described as ‘warlord politics’, an ultimately coercive and oftentimes-violent form of electoral competition, often built around kinship networks. while this observation is by no means unique in the philippine setting (sidel, 1999), it is exceptional that this coercive form of political-electoral contestation interacts in highly complex ways “with a second form of political violence not encountered in other regions of the philippines – that of the armed struggle for independence” (kreuzer, 2005, p. 4). this results in a highly complex conflict ecology, as violent struggles play out between different kin-based groups, can obtain both an interand intra-religious framing, and result in an intricate web of small-scale, yet often protracted, violent disputes that do not necessarily follow the national framing of the conflict (adam, 2013). furthermore, rather than a neat dichotomy between the ‘local’ and ‘the national’, different scales of violence and oftentimes-coercive authority interact in highly complex ways wherein mnlf or milf commanders deploy their capacity for violence in localized struggles over resources and political office. ultimately, the causes of violence in the region are more diverse and complex than merely conflicting opinions on the legal status of an autonomous muslim entity. as such, and without wanting to question its relevance, national-level diplomacy has clear limitations, as it targets only one particular aspect of this complex conflict ecology. based on this observation, a range of researchers, ngos, and international organizations have pointed to the need to complement these national-level negotiations with a support for alternative, in particular non-state or informal, institutions of conflict management in order to reach true, sustainable peace in the region.4 this argument is underpinned by two broad rationales. first, unlike ‘statist’, formal, and distant national-level negotiations, informal institutions are considered to have strong social embeddedness and legitimacy. for instance, in a paper on civil society in mindanao based on a case study in pikit, north cotabato, neumann (2010) argues that local, civil-society based organizations and institutions are more effective and flexible in handling conflict and violence when compared to the many (failed) national, top-down efforts to implement peace in the region. the institute for autonomy and governance at notre dame university in cotabato city makes a similar point when it considers community-based conflict resolution and inter-faith dialogue as a fundamental part in building a ‘cultural basis’ for socially-embedded peace (bacani & mercado, 2009; mendoza, 2010). in the 2005 philippine human development re4 conflict management is understood as a range of different approaches and programs focused on containing violence during the actual conflict. this distinguishes conflict management from other activities such as conflict prevention or post-conflict reconciliation (world bank, 2006). the strategies and institutions of conflict management we elaborate on in this article are in particular focused on a quick settlement of small-scale violent disputes. 65informal conflict management in exclusivist political orders port (human development network, 2005), it is stated that “peace talks by themselves are unlikely to prosper” (p. 45) as these are only conducted by a selective group of “designated specialists” (p. 35). therefore, it is important that these are supported by a broad popular constituency, consisting of a diversity of pro-peace civil society organizations that can monitor the peace process. a second rationale, which is stated in the same report, claims that these civil society organizations are better placed to deal with everyday violence and tensions at the micro-level of society. for this reason, national-level talks on the ‘secessionist question’ should be complemented with support for informal strategies and actors of conflict management, focused on everyday violence rooted in struggles over the local political economy. for instance, the swiss-based centre for humanitarian dialogue (2011) makes a plea to actively support so-called “indigenous conflict resolution mechanisms” (p. 54) as these are better suited than formal local government units to settle disputes at the micro-level of society. this rationale also became apparent when studying the so-called hybrid coalition approach of conflict management deployed by the asia foundation in different conflict-affected places in mindanao. the asia foundation is an american ngo and one of the most important players in the ngo landscape in central and western mindanao where they have a widespread conflict management program through 13 partner organizations. when studying the basic rationale behind this program, some interesting issues can be noted. first of all, this approach is conceived of as a hybrid approach because it seeks to combine formal and informal actors and institutions of conflict management (taf, 2011, p. 2). in everyday programs, however, the informal sphere is particularly emphasized as a resource from which very efficient mechanisms for conflict management can be derived. in general, it is argued that informal institutions and actors of conflict management have a stronger social embeddedness and legitimacy and are therefore more effective in settling and resolving local violent conflicts. this argument is also related with the assumption that formal institutions are ineffective in dealing with local disputes. formal state institutions, apart from being subject to mismanagement and large-scale corruption, may be too slow and weak and therefore ineffective in conflict-affected regions in mindanao (taf, 2011, p. 25). this is then contrasted with the very flexible character of the informal institutions and actors, which do not require endless hearings, review processes, or the submission of different documents to formal courts. importantly, these arguments resonate with a broader, global tendency to downscale strategies of conflict management and peace building and to include non-state actors and informal institutions within these strategies (anderson, olson, & doughty, 2003; lederach, 1997). this view is also shared by prominent international organizations including the un secretary general (2001), the world bank (2006), and usaid (2001). the underlying arguments for this trend can be categorized into three broad streams. a first line stresses the restricted reach of conflict management initiatives within the formal state as they engage only elites through power-sharing initiatives. the best-known proponent of this argument is jean paul lederach (1997) who criticizes “traditional statist diplomacy” (p. xvi) and proposes a more holistic approach that puts human relations at the center of analysis (see in particular chapter 5 and 6). a second line of explanations stresses the limited capacity of the formal state to deliver sustainable resolutions to disputes in conflict-affected regions. therefore, as 66 jeroen adam & boris verbrugge  aseas 7(1) an alternative to – or in collaboration with– this weak state, alternative and non-state conflict management institutions should be supported. for instance, a study by ken menkaus (2008) describes how in a northern kenyan context characterized by weak state performance and chronic, low-intensity violence, an informal alliance sprang up, led by a women’s market group which was instrumental in settling disputes. in the longer term, this informal alliance merged with the formal state resulting in a “civic-government partnership” (p. 26). according to menkhaus, despite some shortcomings, the emergence of these sorts of partnerships has resulted in “impressive gains in public security and conflict management” (p. 33). a third line of arguments states that informal institutions of conflict management are more socially embedded and therefore more flexible and easier to apply compared to formal, state-led mechanisms which are considered to be more static and artificial. for this reason, it is more cost-efficient for international organizations to support informal dispute settlement mechanisms instead of investing in costly and time-consuming formal institutions. for instance, in the case of somalia, menkhaus (2006/2007) highlights organic sources of local governance in conflict management and dispute settlement and contrasts this with inorganic and top-down formal state building processes that are highly artificial, top-down, time-consuming, and ultimately bound to fail. ‘formal’ conflict management and the ubiquity of amicable settlement before problematizing the formal-informal dichotomy, it is important to note that the formal justice system in mindanao is indeed curtailed by a range of factors, which limit access to formal adjudication for ordinary citizens. first of all, engaging the formal judiciary is expensive. secondly, judicial procedures are notoriously slow, and judges often fall prey to intimidation or political pressure. thirdly, accessibility for ordinary citizens, particularly those in the countryside, is hampered by mobility constraints. due to these problems of inaccessibility, exclusivity, and illegitimacy of the formal justice system, in particular for the rural marginalized population (franco, 2008, p. 1860), citizens in rural areas have long reverted to local, traditional methods to process disputes. while there is a great degree of variation in ‘traditional’ settlement practices, they are broadly known as ‘amicable settlements’. despite this significant degree of variation, some general observations can be made with regard to the process of amicable settlement (latip, 2012; libre, 2012). it typically involves mediation by a third party that commands an authoritative position in the community. regarding settlement and punishment, some case studies mentioned dramatic solutions such as lashing or even the death penalty (montillo-burton, matuan, poingan, & alovera, 2007), but the more common practice is a compensation payment by the offender. where people have been killed in a dispute, this will typically be in the form of blood money, the actual amount of which depends on a variety of factors and is subject to negotiation. in some instances, however, the mediator unilaterally dictates the amount that needs to be paid. traditional authorities, particularly the council of elders, are often imbued with a central role in amicable dispute settlement. they are referred to as a highly authoritative body rooted in the traditional clan system. given their authoritative position, the scope of their interventions can 67informal conflict management in exclusivist political orders and often does transcend small conflicts, as elders also deal with major issues like rape or murder. however, defining traditional authority and traditional conflict settlement is difficult, all the more because traditional conflict management has become increasingly entangled with formal state institutions. the historical tradition of amicable settlement inspired former president marcos to create the katarungan pambarangay or barangay justice through presidential decree 1508 (pd1508) in 1978 (republic of the philippines, 1978).5 after the end of martial law, barangay justice was enshrined in the local government code. formally, mediation in barangay justice takes place under the administrative supervision of the lupon, a body composed of 10 to 20 residents appointed by and presided over by the village chairman. any conflict within its jurisdiction should pass through the katarungan pambarangay; the village chairman will refer a dispute to the formal judiciary only where it is incapable or not mandated to intervene. any settlement reached is also binding upon the conflicting parties. pd1508 was meant to recognize and as such reinforce the process of amicable settlement, which could represent a flexible, culturally sensitive, and discrete alternative for the slow and congested formal judiciary. simultaneously, pd1508 was clearly geared at integrating amicable settlement within formal state institutions, and the village chairman came to occupy a pivotal position at the expense of other (traditional) political elites (golub, 2003; siliman, 1985). this did not mean that traditional-religious authority was completely sidelined. instead, there is a kind of symbiosis – often defined in terms of ‘mutual respect’ – between traditional authorities and formal state authorities. the common practice is for the village chairman to ask the influential clans – or at least those supporting his/her administration – to endorse one or more representatives to the lupon. before moving on to discuss more ‘informal’ mechanisms of conflict management, it is worthwhile to briefly consider another body first created by the marcos regime (through executive order 727) and later reorganized by democratically elected governments: the peace and order councils (republic of the philippines, 1981). these councils are organized at different levels of government, including the municipal and village level (in villages, it is called the peace and order committee). they are composed of the counterparts of government agencies operating at the respective government level, and they are chaired by the chief executive (mayor or village chairman). significantly, there is also a mandatory representation of civil society. in theory, the municipal peace and order committee addresses issues of security that concern the entire village or more. the legal mandate of the peace and order councils/committee (in its latest form, i.e., executive order 773) is heavily informed by counterinsurgency concerns, in particular against the communist new people’s army (npa). for instance, it literally states that it can impose sanctions against local chief executives supporting npa rebels and even attempts to monitor the provision of livelihood and infrastructure development programs and projects in the remote rural and indigenous population areas adopted to isolate them from the communist rebels’ “agitate/arouse, organize and mobilize” and ideological, political and organization works. (republic of the philippines, 2009) 5 barangay is the lowest administrative unit in the philippines. 68 jeroen adam & boris verbrugge  aseas 7(1) this preoccupation with counter-insurgency might hamper its work in terms of dispute settlement, since many of the conflicts involve people with (in)direct ties to a rebel movement. furthermore, several respondents indicated that the effectiveness of the peace and order councils/committees depended on the willingness of the local executive to dispense vital resources. for example, in several instances respondents suggested that the local executive was using state resources to compensate victims of a local feud (so-called ‘blood money’) in an effort to appease the situation. perhaps more importantly, the local executive commands what several respondents referred to as ‘policing power’. this is in line with a more general, albeit crucial observation, namely that local executives in the philippines command – partly as a result of american colonialism – a high degree of control over the local means of violence (hedman & sidel, 2000; hutchcroft, 2000; sidel, 1999). while these typically include private political armies, this control extends into the realms of the state-sanctioned means of violence, with local executives exerting a high degree of control over (barangay) police and even (para)military units operating within their jurisdiction. furthermore, it has already been indicated earlier that several local executives cultivate ties with one of the rebel groups. to summarize, supposedly informal amicable settlement procedures have long been ‘colonized’ by the formal sphere (read: the state). meanwhile, existing formal procedures exhibit a high degree of ‘informality’: not only are they geared towards the amicable settlement of disputes through third-party intervention, there is also a high degree of personal influence on the part of a local executive that commands vital financial and coercive resources. this observation is particularly problematic in those localities marked by a high degree of political factionalism and even political feuding. the formal in the informal: the role of the state in alternative conflict management efforts crucially, this tendency toward executive dominance is not limited to the formal sphere, but is also apparent in purportedly ‘informal’ mechanisms of conflict management. some local government units have created structures to provide more room for informal (traditional) dispute settlement, e.g., the mayor’s council in upi, a municipality in the province of maguindanao. this council is composed of two muslim representatives, two indigenous representatives, and two christian representatives (husin, 2010). it was created per municipal ordinance by the mayor of upi and was meant to strengthen formal mediation through the recognition and incorporation of traditional, more culturally sensitive mechanisms of conflict mediation. as the name suggests, the local executive in the person of the mayor retains a high degree of discretion over the mayor’s council, and will be firmly in charge of the settlement process and the selection of council members. another example is that of natularan mu,6 a local dispute settlement alliance composed of six conflict-affected barangays that was established in 2006 with support from integral development services philippines and the german techni6 natularan mu is an acronym which stands for the villages in midsayap: nabalawag, tugal, lower glad, rangeban, nes, and mudseng. all these villages are represented in this dispute settlement body. 69informal conflict management in exclusivist political orders cal cooperation (hipec, 2011, pp. 94–95). this mechanism convenes the barangay captains in the volatile municipality of midsayap, north cotabato, and was meant to collaborate with various other stakeholders, including ngos. like the mayor’s council in upi, the municipal mayor also supported natularan mu by recognizing it through municipal resolutions and the creation of a monitoring team. it should also be noted that this alliance was set up by tubog pulalan, a village chairman that had emerged as the local ‘strongman’ following years of violent competition between different political and electoral alliances, all of which cultivated ties with the muslim rebel movements active in the area. ‘kumander’ tubog himself was also a known rebel commander who had first served in the mnlf before joining the milf. therefore, he already wielded significant coercive power before extending his grip over village politics. when he, his wife, and some of his close allies started to dominate barangay politics in the area, this coercive capacity was gradually absorbed and legitimated by the state, as tubog started appointing several of his men as barangay police (also known as ‘civilian volunteers’). instead of perceiving this coercive capacity as a problem, some of the people engaged in natularan mu emphasized that tubog’s consolidation of power was precisely the reason why he became president of the alliance. soon after its establishment in early 2006, however, tubog was killed on 19 april 2006, allegedly by one of his many rivals in midsayap (unson, 2006). nonetheless, the case of natularan mu and its leader, tubog, is a potent illustration of the role of the local executive in conflict management, and how this is intimately related to their coercive capacity. a final illustration of this mutual involvement of conflict management institutions and state politics comes from the barangay of nabalawag, north cotabato. here, a youth organization – united youth for peace and development (unypad) with close ties to the milf – played an important role in the settlement of a longrunning violent feud among different families that revolved around land disputes that had escalated as part of a broader power struggle between two village chairmen. these chairmen acted simultaneously as commanders in the area. killings and land grabbing by both sides had led to an overall climate of insecurity and distrust. unypad members, with the assistance of the asia foundation, set up a quick response team (qrt), which cleared the ground for negotiations between the two parties by approaching the family elders and commanders to hear their demands. subsequently, the qrt met with the village chairman in order to establish a strategy for further negotiations between the parties and different stakeholders. by involving village officials, the municipal mayor, the milf, and the philippine military in the mediation process, the warring parties were eventually pushed towards an agreement (unypad, 2007). when analyzing this intervention, two factors emerged as particularly important in explaining its success. first, several members of the unypad qrt were members of or had connections to the village council, which tremendously reinforced their credibility and authority as mediators. this is closely related to a second observation, namely that the recognition and approval of the qrt’s work by the municipal local government unit, the state security sector, and the milf imbued the mediators not only with policing power, but also with vital credibility and legitimacy. on the downside, however, qrt members admitted that this support came at 70 jeroen adam & boris verbrugge  aseas 7(1) a price, with its mediation work depending on the approval and support of existing elite networks and, to a lesser extent, also ngos. conclusion the entrance point of this article was the observation that in response to an increased understanding about the complex and multidimensional nature of violent conflict in mindanao, a growing number of scholars and development practitioners have pinned their hopes on informal conflict management mechanisms that explicitly seek to include non-state actors and institutions in the mediation and settlement of conflicts. through an analysis of existing formal and informal conflict management practices, we have attempted to illustrate how such a rigid distinction between formal and informal institutions is misleading. on the one hand, what is usually described as formal has significant informal traits. on the other hand, purportedly informal actors and institutions have intricate ties with the formal sphere and derive much of their authority, legitimacy, and policing power from the state as embodied by the local executive. these observations about the dominant role of the local executive in conflict mediation are in line with the broader literature on state-society relations in the philippines. there, it has been argued that control over (local) state institutions represents a vital source of coercive power, with the local executive retaining a high degree of control over state-sanctioned means of violence (kreuzer, 2009; sidel, 1999). furthermore, access to the realms of the state also represents an important source of legitimacy, strengthening or even replacing more traditional sources of public authority (abinales, 2000; wong, 2006). mindanao is no exception in this regard, as can be gauged from the fact that electoral competition has been claimed as one of the main causes of violent conflict in the region (torres, 2007). while often thought of as a region marked by a weak state presence, it is more useful to understand this region as a highly exclusivist political order wherein dominant coalitions of elite players purposefully limit access to political authority and coercive resources (kreuzer, 2009). while these coalitions are typically a hybrid of formal and informal authority, elected officials in control of state institutions have gradually emerged as kingmakers in this highly exclusivist political order, although they still have to negotiate with other authoritative actors. one of the key arenas of governance where these local elites manifest themselves and assert their authority is precisely in daily 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(2006). civil society and peacebuilding. potential, limitations and critical factors. washington, dc: wb/social development department. 73informal conflict management in exclusivist political orders about the authors jeroen adam is a researcher at the conflict research group at ghent university, belgium, where he is working on issues of conflict and resource governance in indonesia and the philippines. ► contact: jeroen.adam@ugent.be boris verbrugge is a researcher at the conflict research group at ghent university, belgium, where he studies conflict, resource governance, and trajectories of state formation in mindanao, with a particular focus on small-scale mining in eastern mindanao. ► contact: boris.verbrugge@ugent.be acknowledgements the research was supported by the justice and security research programme (jsrp), based at the london school of economics and political science (http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/jsrp/). change and challenges for foreign retirees in thailand. an interview with nancy lindley change and challenges for foreign retirees in thailand: an interview with nancy lindley christina vogler ► vogler, c. (2015). change and challenges for foreign retirees in thailand: an interview with nancy lindley. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 8(2), 209-214. the northern city of chiang mai in thailand has become a popular destination for national and international tourists as well as for a growing number of expatriates and retirement migrants. compared to thailand’s southern destinations such as phuket or pattaya, chiang mai features a cooler climate and interesting cultural and environmental surroundings. therefore, since 2006/07, the city continues to attract many retired expats from several countries all over the world. nancy lindley is the head of the chiang mai expats club and the coordinator of lanna care net, a network, which provides advice and assistance for elderly foreigners. as a retirement migrant from the usa, she gives insight into the expats’ community, reports on the challenges for foreign retirees in chiang mai and talks about the elder care system for foreigners. the interview took place in november 2014 in chiang mai, thailand. keywords: elderly care; expatriates; retirement migration; thailand  christina vogler: why is chiang mai so famous with retired people from “western” countries? nancy lindley: due to the obvious reasons like weather and culture, chiang mai is being positioned as a retirement destination by the thai government for its good medical facilities. there are a lot of universities and cultural attractions in town. quite a few consulates are located in chiang mai – so you do have some support from your local government. it is a compact enough city where retirees can get around relatively easily. you have got western amenities here in terms of restaurants and shopping and the things you need for daily life if you want to live a mix between thai and western lifestyle. it is quite affordable. the airport has good international connections; you can fly to several international destinations without having to go through bangkok. my husband and i came in 2006 to investigate – that is really common. after that, people would go back home, do what they need to do to get ready, and come back here to retire. it is a place where people deliberately decide to retire. in 2006/07 the city started advertising in magazines too. vogler: how many retired expats live in chiang mai? lindley: from what thai immigration told us, the number of retirement visas im dialog  in dialogue w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 15 .2 -7 210 christina vogler  aseas 8(2) has just really shot up. they say that numbers have doubled in the last two years. you can certainly believe that when you go to the immigration office and see the crowd there. you are looking at a number between 10,000 and 20,000 retirees. it’s hard to get those numbers because there is not only the western population, but also a lot of japanese and korean retirees too. they have their own long-stay communities, clubs and organizations. vogler: so the expats club is only for “western” people? lindley: yes, our chiang mai expats club does its business in english. there is the swiss lanna society that is very active too. and there are some germans that are in that group too. the swiss seem over-represented here. we cooperate with them. there is a lot of cross-communication between the organizations. vogler: how did the chiang mai expats club develop? lindley: it was founded in 2005/06. originally it was an organization for younger business people but soon it became evident that it was the retirees who were interested in an organization and its activities. it was the retirees who really drove it forward. vogler: do you see change within the foreign population here over the time? lindley: what we are seeing here in the expats club is that back in 2008 there were more single men coming here as retirees for the low cost of living and the availability of sex. now there are more and more couples coming and single women who retire here; so we are seeing a shift. i get at least 5 to 6 emails a week from people who message me about retiring in chiang mai. also, people who are coming here now are not as much on the edge financially. officially, you have to have an income of either 65,000 baht a month or 800,000 baht1 thai bank account. in the past, there used to be ways to bypass this regulation. there was a lot of gamesmanship that went on where older people were doing visa runs2 but as you get older it gets physically and mentally hard to keep doing that. anyways, after the military coup the rules got stricter and this is also why a lot of people now choose other countries like cambodia for retiring. my husband and i went to siem reap for vacation, where you can buy a one-year business visa for around 300 dollars and give your passport to somebody, a fixer at a drugstore or something [note by interviewer: who will then provide you with a legal visa informally]. no questions asked. cambodia is the new retirement destination! elderly western men sit in the pub streets talking about how much more easygoing cambodian women are than the thai women. that’s where they are going now. not here, not anymore. another change is that there are men in chiang mai who lived a straight life before they retired. now in their retirement they have come out of the closet and have a thai boyfriend. they got the freedom now to say, “now that i have retired i can do whatever i want.” 1 thb 65,000 = eur 1,727; thb 800,000 = eur 21,261; rate: 21 july 2015 2 ‘visa run’ = leaving the country to a neighboring state for a short time, then re-entering again to the original destination of choice to avoid visa complications. 211change and challenges for foreign retirees in thailand: an interview with nancy lindley vogler: what are the challenges expats are facing in chiang mai? lindley: part of what thailand and specifically chiang mai are promoted for is the low cost of living. some websites and articles unrealistically promote the low cost of living. what happened, especially after the 2008 global crisis, is that a lot of people found themselves with all their savings wiped out. all they had left was their pensions, perhaps around 1,000 dollars a month, which is a difficult number to live on in europe or north america. so people worried what they should do. they were in their 50s or 60s and maybe unemployable. thailand was promoted as a nice place to live. so they came over here and did find that it was a good place to live. however, the problem is they can live on that budget but there are no reserves. when they get into problems, like health problems, they have no safety net. some don’t do anything to keep their visa status up-to-date so when it gets really bad, (and often there is alcohol involved) they end up in the immigration detention center (idc), then are eventually deported back to their home countries. we don’t have a lot of these cases chiang mai, but bangkok certainly does. thailand is now discouraging budget retirees. by discouraging, i mean they are stricter in enforcing regulations. vogler: is this where lanna care net comes in? lindley: yes, i have been the coordinator of lanna care net since the honorary british consul started it about 3 years ago. it is a support network. we volunteer and help resident expats in need. it was founded because we see retirees getting into trouble and needing systems they can relate to, and then we see that there are expats here who have skills that can maybe help those in need, and we do a match-up. so what we saw is that 95 percent of the people who make use of lanna care net get themselves into medical problems [note: as they grow older, they have to seek medical care more often]. these guys are not thinking ahead –they do not have any financial reserves because they were living on their low pensions. unlike in their home countries, there is no governmental safety net for them in thailand. some of our clients come to us on visa-overstay then we have to work out the overstay situation. the last few months have been very busy with that. luckily, the thai government hasn’t enforced a blacklist yet so this means that after an overstay, you might have to pay a penalty when you get out of the country , but you can still return to thailand without giving reasons. vogler: what are the other tasks of lanna care net? lindley: there might be people we visit once a week; we set up their medications for them, go with them to their doctor’s appointments, listen to what the doctor says and help them to understand it. for those who have cancer, we accompany them. when you have got something like that you often need a friend to help, listen, and ask the doctor some questions. people who accompany them are sometimes former doctors or nurses themselves, so they have a better idea of the issue. when it gets to the point where they need more care we talk to thai people who may have worked for them before and who have experience. they would come to their home and assist them, like home care. of course, this is dependent on the elder person having the funds to pay for it. 212 christina vogler  aseas 8(2) vogler: what experience have you made with retirement homes for foreigners – baan kamlangchay or care resort chiang mai, as examples? lindley: baan kamlangchay is for swiss retirees and successfully attracts people directly from their home country. the people i work with are people who come here to live, so they don’t go and live at a nursing home directly. care resort chiang mai is new, isolated, and far out of the city. i think if the owner had a critical mass of active retirees, they could build their own social life. the problem is that some founders have the idea that if they make a place really pretty, people would come eventually. they don’t realize that this is not what people want. as president of the expats club, i see that people prefer living in a condo. in my condo, there are at least a dozen of people who are in their 80s and they live an independent lifestyle, playing bridge, going to the computer club, going to music performances and eating out at restaurants. they want to be in a place like this where they can get a tuktuk, a songthaew3. they want to enjoy an active life. whenever i get a chance to talk to someone who has money for an investment, i tell them: i’d like to see a facility like this in town! they should buy a bunch of empty units and offer assisted living with proper barrierfree facilities and a nurse to supervise medication. there is another nursing home here called mc kean which is the place where many people go. their price is in line with what our resident expats can pay, somewhere between 32,000 and 45,000 baht depending on the level of care but exclusive of the drugs you might need. mc kean has different wings: there is a hospital, which delivers nursing home care and then there is one for assisted living and one for alzheimer’s care. it also houses lanna care net clients that can no longer live on their own in town. if it cannot be arranged for somebody to be with them in their home, they too go to mc kean. vogler: what are future plans for your community? how do people handle the fact of getting older and transience? lindley: i wouldn’t necessarily say plans, but options. no case is ever helpless, but an option that we work with is getting people back to their home country. about one third of the cases we work with on lanna care net are repatriations. we would organize for someone to go back to their home country. they don’t have hospices here in thailand per se. they can set up a sort of hospice situation like mc kean, but it is not the same as in the west. for example, here you cannot have injectable morphine in your home, even if you have a registered nurse coming in. in fact, we are working on a case like that right now and she will be going back. to get someone back to their home country with a fatal diagnosis can be tricky because they can get to the point where they can’t travel. anyhow, you do have to have a good network. lanna care net and the expats club are a good way to meet people but it’s important to have someone who is closer than that: family. vogler: what is the situation with insurance? do retired expats have insurance here? 3 tuktuk is the thai expression for a three-wheeled motorbike taxi; songthaew is the expression for a shared taxi bus, popular in chiang mai. 213change and challenges for foreign retirees in thailand: an interview with nancy lindley lindley: the thai government has an insurance program, the ‘30 baht program’: thai people pay no more than 30 baht4 every time they seek medical care if they don’t receive insurance through employment. the thai government opened this insurance to neighboring countries, mostly because of migrant laborers (burmese, laotians, cambodians, etc.). the retirees could enroll, but the program could be understood as “for all foreigners”. every province interpreted it differently and chiang mai allowed it for all foreigners. there was a real rush on it. nakhon phing hospital had over 100 people over 80 years old enrolling within the first month. they didn’t have the resources. it was a disaster. now they have changed it. it is hard to start a new insurance policy once you are over 65, globally. a lot of the retirees come here after 65. even if you start younger and keep paying, the rates go up as they grow older. it is expensive to keep the policy up, so very few have insurance and if something happens they pay on the spot. vogler: what do you think about the term ‘gerontological colonialism’ promoted by some european newspapers? lindley: certainly, in some aspects it is accurate. some of it might be about the high population we have because of the baby boomers. i can see that it makes a difference in how many older people go to a place and how they might change that place with their financial and health situation for better and worse. vogler: thank you for the interview.  about the author christina maria vogler obtained her master at the department of geography and regional studies, university of vienna, focusing on demography, population studies and southeast asia. the interview is part of the master thesis “receiving and providing care abroad. interactions between international retirement migration and the elderly care sector in chiang mai, thailand“ and developed out of a cooperation with the research institute of languages and cultures in asia (rilca), mahidol university, thailand. ► contact: christina_vogler@gmx.at 4 thb 30 = eur 0,80; rate:21 july 2015 “plant some plants, plant some hope, plant some future”. urban gardening at lingnan university of hong kong: an interview with prof. kin-chi lau rainer einzenberger & michaela hochmuth ► einzenberger, r., & hochmuth, m. (2015). “plant some plants, plant some hope, plant some future”. urban gardening at lingnan university of hong kong: an interview with prof. kin-chi lau. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 8(1), 95-102. prof. kin-chi lau is currently associate professor at the department of cultural studies, lingnan university, hong kong.1 her areas of interest cover cultural studies, contemporary china studies, and comparative literature as well as critical pedagogy and gender studies. she promotes the idea of a transition campus at lingnan university and is one of the initiators of the organic urban gardening project2 there. she is also a founding member of the global university for sustainability.3 rainer einzenberger conducted this interview with prof. kin-chi-lau on the topic of urban gardening in hong kong via skype in march 2015. michaela hochmuth was in charge of the editing. the interview portrays the urban gardening project, its history, structures, and organizational characteristics. it engages with the participants of the project and their challenges and difficulties in realizing it. the broader and complex concepts of food sovereignty, food security, and ‘commons’ build the contextual background of this dialogue.  prof. kin-chi lau ist derzeit außerordentliche professorin am institut für kulturwissenschaften an der universität von lingnan, hong kong. ihre interessensgebiete umfassen kulturwissenschaften, zeitgenössische china-studien, vergleichende literaturwissenschaften sowie kritische erziehungswissenschaften und gender studies. sie treibt die ideen des transition campus an der universität von lingnan voran und ist diesbezüglich eine der projektinitiatorinnen des stadtgartens für biologischen anbau. darüber hinaus ist sie gründungsmitglied der global university for sustainability. rainer einzenberger führte dieses interview mit prof. kin-chi lau zur thematik des städtischen gartenbaus in hong kong via skype im märz 2015. michaela hochmuth war für die editierung verantwortlich. urbane landwirtschaft erfreut sich in südostasien angesichts wachsender besorgnis über klimawandel und fortschreitende urbanisierung sowie im kontext einer wiederaufwertung bio-ökologischer anbauformen als „gutes“ essen einer wachsenden popularität. das interview zeichnet das stadtgarten-projekt, dessen geschichte, strukturen und organisatorische merkmale nach. es beschäftigt sich mit den akteuren und akteurinnen sowie deren herausforderungen und schwierigkeiten im zuge der umsetzung des projekts. die umfassenden und vielschichtigen konzepte von ernährungssouveränität, ernährungssicherheit und commons stellen den kontextuellen rahmen des dialogs dar. 1 for prof. kin-chi lau university profile, see: www.ln.edu.hk/cultural/staff/lau-kin-chi. 2 the title of this interview “plant some plants, plant some hope, plant some future” (lingnan gardeners, 2014, p.1) originates from the first newsletter of the urban gardening project at lingnan university. 3 for more information, see the global university for sustainability’s website: our-global-u.org. im dialog  in dialogue w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 15 .1 -7 96 rainer einzenberger & michaela hochmuth  aseas 8(1) rainer einzenberger: you initiated an organic urban gardening project at lingnan university in hong kong in 2014. what was the intention of the project and how did the idea for this project come into being? kin-chi lau: we started this project in september 2014 but prior, we had been very much concerned with questions of food security, food safety, and food sovereignty. these issues have been our main concern ever since we convened two forums on questions of sustainability. in december 2011, we held one main conference called the south-south forum on sustainability4 at lingnan university in hong kong and in december 2012, we had the second forum in chongqing at the southwest university. to these two forums we invited over 200 scholars and activists from over 30 countries across different continents, including cuba, brazil, mexico, peru, bolivia from south america; south africa, mozambique, mali, senegal, egypt from africa; thailand, india, nepal, indonesia, malaysia, the philippines, korea, and japan from asia; as well as countries from europe and north america. so the concern about food sovereignty and sustainability has already been there for many years. as for the project at the university, the main idea is that it would be a pedagogic project by which students could gain more understanding not only about plants and gardening, but also about issues of global warming and climate change. lingnan is a small liberal arts university. we have about 2,700 undergraduates, 3,000 associate degree students, and maybe 2,000 postgraduate students. previously, i sent students to do their internships at different farms in hong kong or even in beijing. but this only benefited a few students. so, we thought, putting the garden in the campus itself would arouse more curiosity and interest, and with that we can promote certain issues. in september 2014, we made an application to the president of lingnan university to give us some sites on campus and he was quite interested in the idea. he himself liked planting and came from a rural background in mainland china. he endorsed our plan. the main locations for the garden plots are between several main academic buildings, which means most people pass through the sites every day. at these central sites, we started to make planting boxes, find soil, get seeds, and then find people who wished to get involved. today, the people involved come from two different groups: one group are students who are taking some of my courses, which have to do with questions of sustainability, farming, or understanding global issues. so as part of their assignment, the students are doing some farming at the garden during the semester. another group is called ‘the lingnan gardeners’ which includes staff, students, alumni, friends, or family members. this group is open for anyone who is interested – even people from the neighborhood can come and be part of the project – and we encourage everybody to participate according to their time and energy available. sometimes, we also have specific groups to whom we give the produce, for example the cleaning staff, or the security guards. the idea is that although we organize this project and take care of the seedlings and plants, the produce belongs to anyone who cares to come to the campus on the harvest days to have their shares. 4 for the south-south forum on sustainability, see: www.southsouthforum.org. 97urban gardening apart from the farming and harvesting in the garden, we also organize seminars to talk about food safety and other issues. one question we try to tackle is the question of ‘commons’. for instance, we tailor-made some 20 planting boxes with wooden frames for the gardens in the campus. when people joined the lingnan gardeners group, some people came and asked, “which box is mine?” they had the idea that if they took care of a box, it would be theirs and so they would be entitled to the produce. we encountered this question many times when we were asked what we would do with the harvest. we have been trying a lot to emphasize that we would want the people to see the campus as a common space, for which we are only caretakers. concerning the garden, we only need to manage the water and the soil, since the plants grow by themselves. we announce the harvest day at the beginning of the month in our newsletter. on harvest day, whoever comes by will be able to enjoy a part of the harvest. but the idea of commons is already very alien to many people who are so used to private property, privatization, and the monetized economy. we also tell students that the campus is a common space – not only for students and staff, but also for the cats living at lingnan university campus. when we started the planting, one main discussion we had was how we could coexist with these cats, since they would mess up the gardens a little bit. we eventually designed some ‘playground’ for the cats with soil in certain boxes, and the cats got the message and did not mess with our plants in the garden plots. another issue we had was that the campus management team used to spray pesticides to kill mosquitos and other insects. when we started this project, we wanted to bring back butterflies and bees because we saw so few of them on the campus, yet they are so important to nature. but we were told by the management team that if there were any report of bees they would have to kill them since people were used to some ‘urban’ idea of what was an appropriate environment for humans, and they would see bees with their stings as dangerous. so bees needed to be eliminated. after we started the organic farming, we negotiated with the management team to refrain from spraying pesticides in the garden areas and now we have bees and butterflies in our areas, but not in others. this may appear to be trivial issues, but we bring up these issues to our students, some of whom may never have thought about them before. we explain for example why certain chemical pesticides are killing all microorganisms in the soil and that normally there are millions of microorganisms in a handful of healthy soil. in particular, we raise the issue of organic farming and the problems of modern farming. einzenberger: how come the cultural studies program initiated such a project, and not e.g. agricultural sciences or life sciences? lau: cultural studies at lingnan university is quite a unique program because we are an interdisciplinary program and we have faculty members who are quite actively involved in social movements and local and global initiatives. that is also why it seemed quite natural that it would be the cultural studies program running this gardening project. in our undergraduate studies, for example, we cover the question of ecological justice in the curriculum. we discuss the linkages between ecological and socio-economic 98 rainer einzenberger & michaela hochmuth  aseas 8(1) justice. as students normally learn only with their heads but not their hands and their hearts, we ask our students to sweat and labor in the garden. through growing local organic products, we also encourage students to see how over 90 percent of the food we consume in hong kong is imported – some of it travelling very long distances from the usa or europe to come to our dining table. in our master’s program we have been running new courses which are concerned with the food crisis, the future of farming, food sovereignty, and food movements. further, we have courses on global issues and global cultures where we also take up questions of sustainability. we draw on experiences from the people’s science movement in india or the aymaran indigenous movement in peru, where we see the different initiatives on water, soil, and food. such issues have been taken up in our courses. that is why, i think, this subject is not only a matter of life sciences. at the cultural studies program, we try to understand the kind of crisis we are facing in today’s world and we also try to look for alternatives. but if we discuss alternatives that are too grand or too remote from daily life, then the impact on the students is going to be limited. that is why we also have this kind of farming project on the campus itself – so that it offers some kind of experiential learning, watching the plants grow and linking that to different issues. for example, we saw how the heat island effect5 on our campus caused the plants to grow very well in the winter because of all the glass and concrete walls surrounding the gardening plots. we asked our students to do some research and they found that the heat island effect in hong kong was serious and that the temperature rose by 3 degrees celsius for every kilometer from the edge of the city moving towards the city center, and that the average rise of temperature in hong kong in the last century was three times the rise of the average world temperature. these are some examples of how we try to link local experience with broader perspectives and global concerns. einzenberger: you refer to your campus also as transition campus, how is this linked to the transition movement6 which tries to find small-scale local responses to the global challenges of climate change and ecological limitations? lau: in the summer of 2014, we went to the uk to see some of the transition towns, for example totnes7 and bristol8. introducing the idea of the transition town and transition campus is a first step to have people critically reflect upon the whole question of urbanization. the idea of the mainstream is that being modernized means you are urbanized. whether it is hong kong, or mainland china, or other countries, people take pride when the proportion of peasants is altogether very small, and if the urban population is high, it is taken as something positive. in 2011, china already had over 50 percent of the population being urban. but we know that cities are basically parasitical, since they do not produce food and there are a whole series of problems 5 the (urban) heat island effect is the phenomenon of the average urban air temperature being higher than that of the nearby rural environment. this effect varies in time and place as a result of geographical, meteorological, and urban characteristics. see also kleerekoper, van esch, & baldiri salcedo, 2011. 6 for the transition movement, see: www.transitionnetwork.org. 7 for transition town totnes, see: www.transitiontowntotnes.org. 8 for transition town bristol, see: transitionbristol.org. 99urban gardening related to urbanization. therefore, on the one hand, the idea of the transition campus is to look for alternatives to global warming and the unsustainable ways of life in the urban environment. on the other hand, it is to try to reverse and change some of the values that favor and also privilege urbanization. one agenda for us is to try to see how people can value farming and the peasants because they produce food and because they have been the most exploited sector of the population for a whole century. it is in this context that we try to promote the idea of the transition campus. the transition campus is one way in which we also try to pose the questions addressed by the rural reconstruction movement in china. for about 15 years i have been working with some professors, students, and social movements in mainland china to encourage young people to go back to the countryside, stay there for six months or one year, so that they can learn about the problems of the countryside and through their experience there, reflect on their ideas about urbanization and modernization. einzenberger: where did the knowledge for the gardening project come from, did you have some advisors or experts? lau: yes, we have one graduate from our master’s program who is the director of the little donkey farm9 in beijing. he is an agricultural expert and has done organic farming in china for 12 years now. as our key expert he teaches students, helps to plan the farming, and takes care of some of the problems. we are all learning together with him. i myself started to learn organic farming back in 1994, when i started some poverty alleviation projects in the rural mountain areas of mainland china. at that time i thought that i needed to know more about farming and agriculture before i could start interacting with the local villagers. i have been trying to learn from this and it has been a great pleasure for me to do farming. einzenberger: how are the participants actively involved in the gardening experience working physically with the plants and soil? lau: students had to do some hard labor during the clearing and the construction of the garden and some students told us that they had never sweated so much within two hours. others made their first experiences in constructing a path. one main impact is that they realized the amount of labor, care, and time involved in growing a plant. certain perceptions, usually taken for granted, for example that rice is just easily available at the supermarket or that there is abundant supply at the wet market, might change. we will also be growing some paddy rice on the campus so that students not only know how rice grows, but that they also learn that food is precious. many students told me that one reflection they have since their involvement in the project, is the kind of importance they now attach to food, and how they now feel that the prices for food which takes so long to grow are inappropriately low. 9 the little donkey farm is the first community supported agriculture (csa) farm in beijing. for more information see: www.littledonkeyfarm.com. 100 rainer einzenberger & michaela hochmuth  aseas 8(1) einzenberger: you also have special harvest days for women in your urban garden projects. what gender aspects do you see in this context? lau: that particular harvest day was the international women’s day on march 8th but in fact among the lingnan gardeners, three quarters are women. we have some men but they are a minority. of course there are certain gender aspects to the questions of farming and food but this is not a main focus of our work, maybe because most of the initiators and participants are women, and most of us are feminists. so we put in a lot of value to reciprocity and to contributions which cannot be calculated by monetized exchange. these are some of the feminist values and approaches which we have taken up. einzenberger: how important is healthy (organic) food for hong kong people, and is it affordable? lau: this question is related to a much more complex context about value change, cultural change, and social change. organic food from abroad is available in certain supermarkets in hong kong for the upper and middle classes, and organic vegetables are even imported from mainland china to hong kong. now in hong kong you have big corporations in the organic food market. but since the price for organic food is 50 to 100 percent higher than for conventional food, for the general population – the lower and lower middle classes – it is hard to afford. but if you would stop going to restaurants and cook at home, you probably can afford all the organic food for your meal. but then there is also the question of time and energy that you have to spend on going to the market and on cooking. that is also some constraint in hong kong because so many people work overtime. i think the ‘cook your own meal’ movement that has been going on in different parts of the world needs to be promoted in hong kong. but that will also require changes in work time patterns and in the intensity of work. einzenberger: china experienced several food scandals in the last years (with baby formula, rotten meat, etc.). how was this taken up in the hong kong media and has this influenced the idea for the project? lau: the hong kong media of course has been reporting a lot about food scandals because this is a question that people are concerned with. the food scandals come not only from mainland china but also from taiwan, which previously was supposed to be very safe, and then it was found that contaminated and recycled oil was used or that they were using color and flavoring ingredients. so there have been food scandals from mainland china, from taiwan, and occasionally from hong kong itself. i think the awareness for safe food is quite high in hong kong. there are quite a lot of mechanisms introduced by the government for quality control. for instance, if there is bird flu somewhere in mainland china, no live poultry, chicken, or duck would be imported to hong kong. sometimes i feel that the phobia about food safety is excessive. there is need for more education about food that seems to be hygienically produced and safe, such as junk food from big food chains, but of course some of us 101urban gardening know that it is not healthy. there is still a lot that we need to do in terms of people’s understanding about what kind of food is healthy. another aspect on which we would like to focus is the idea of local production for local consumption. it is both a question of food sovereignty, and the need to reduce the distance that food travels from around the world to the dinner tables in hong kong. that of course has direct consequences for the co 2 emissions, climate change, and global warming. hong kong is very vulnerable in terms of its dependence on food imports from the usa, brazil, and mainland china.10 this question is relevant not only in terms of food safety and food sovereignty, but also in terms of the ecological footprint. einzenberger: what resonance does your project have in hong kong and maybe beyond? lau: many people have been interested in our project and we got reported on in some mass media. after we started this project, some universities in shanghai and chongqing also got interested in promoting the idea of the transition campus. they contacted us and wanted to see how they could grow organic food on the campus as an educational project for all students. many universities in southeast asia, south asia, or china have sites where they do organic agriculture, but mostly by the agricultural departments. for us, we want to stress not only growing organic food but also a whole series of issues. so we have been discussing this with other colleagues from shanghai and beijing, and there is some interest in building certain networks so we can interact with and learn from each other. einzenberger: do you also have networks with southeast asia? lau: yes, for example in thailand, we visited chiang mai university two months ago and also know many colleagues at chulalongkorn university. they have been sending students for internships to the countryside and to villages. apart from academia, we also have contacts with several rural reconstruction movements in southeast asia and south asia – in the philippines, thailand, india, and nepal. with them, we have been working on networks to see how we can share our resources to run short term courses or particular programs for young people. einzenberger: in vienna, since recently, there are many urban agriculture and gardening initiatives. would you say that urban gardening in hong kong and southeast asia is becoming popular or is it rather a marginal issue within a small group of academics or activists? lau: of course, in a way it is still marginal but i also find that urban gardening has gone beyond a small group of activists or academics. in some neighborhoods, for instance in some primary and secondary schools, we can also see the promotion of urban gardening. these initiatives also come up as a kind of response to the problems 10 according to the statistics of the office of the united states trade representative, in 2013, hong kong was the 6th largest export market for agricultural goods. mainland china was the largest (united states trade representative, 2014, p. 1). 102 rainer einzenberger & michaela hochmuth  aseas 8(1) of food insecurity, global warming, etc. somehow we can try to promote this more as an alternative to the crises and problems that we face today. einzenberger: do you see any evolving research topics in this context? lau: i think one question is about food movements. how there can be autonomous food movements of people who grow their own food, in their local neighborhoods, and take up urban farming or subsidize and support rural regeneration movements, and also how these would be related to lifestyle changes. i think michael pollan11 said in his promotion of the food movement, that as long as people cook their own meals they won’t have all the problems of obesity and heart disease which come along with the consumption of junk food. but these issues need to be taken up by the general public and not only by activist groups, advocacy groups, or academics who discuss them in the classrooms. people need to make efforts to make some changes, however trivial they may appear to be.  references kleerekoper, l., van esch, m., & baldiri salcedo, t. (2011). how to make a city climate-proof, addressing the urban heat island effect. resources, conservation, and recycling. international journal of sustainable resource management and environmental efficiency, 64, 30–38. lingnan gardeners (2014). lingnan gardeners’ newsletter no. 1. 1–21. retrieved from http://www.ln.edu.hk/ ihss/crd/ln_gardeners/pdf01.pdf united states trade representative. (2014). u.s.-hong kong trade facts. retrieved from https://ustr.gov/ countries-regions/china-mongolia-taiwan/hong-kong about the authors rainer einzenberger is a geographer by training. he worked as myanmar project coordinator at the heinrich böll foundation’s southeast asia regional office and is currently a university assistant (phd candidate) at the department of development studies at the university of vienna. his phd thesis focuses on natural resource conflicts as well as on questions of land and territory in the frontier areas of myanmar. ► contact: rainer.einzenberger@univie.ac.at michaela hochmuth is studying international development at the department of development studies at the university of vienna and is currently a research assistant in a project on food in vietnam, financed by the austrian development fund at the same department. ► contact: michaela.hochmuth@univie.ac.at 11 michal pollan is a us-american author, journalist, and activist with a focus on the entanglements of nature and culture. for more information see: www.michaelpollan.com. assets or commodities? comparing regulations of placement and protection of migrant workers in indonesia and the philippines aseas 6(2) 281280 d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -6 .2 -4 aktuelle südostasienforschung / current research on south-east asia waiting on the islands of ‘stuckedness’. managing asylum seekers in island detention camps in indonesia: from the late 1970s to the early 2000s antje missbach1 citation missbach, a. (2013). waiting on the islands of ‘stuckedness’. managing asylum seekers in island detention camps in indonesia from the late 1970s to the early 2000s. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 6(2), 281-306. this article sheds light on the obstructed mobility of asylum seekers who were passing through indonesia during their search for permanent and eff ective protection, and the politics of their detention. the fl ows of indochinese asylum seekers who were ‘stored’ in galang island between the late 1970s and the mid-1990s, awaiting either their resettlement or repatriation, are compared with more recent arrivals of asylum seekers from the middle east, many of whom were hosted in open detention facilities on lombok island during the mid-2000s. this comparison provides comprehensive background information on how the asylum seekers and their claims for international protection have been handled in indonesia. given that indonesia is not a party to the 1951 refugee convention and the 1967 protocol, indonesia off ers no formal rights to asylum seekers and refugees within its territory. instead, indonesia ‘tolerates’ their presence as long as they are under the auspices of the united nations high commissioner for refugees (unhcr) or the international organization for migration (iom). highlighting the diff erences regarding the management of these two distinctive groups of asylum seekers helps to grasp the full scope of ‘stuckedness’ (hage, 2009) and also helps to understand the varied impacts of obstructed mobility on asylum seekers looking for permanent and eff ective protection. keywords: asylum seekers; detention camps; indochinese ‘boatpeople’; indonesia; middle eastern refugees dieser artikel beleuchtet die eingeschränkte mobilität von asylsuchenden auf ihrem weg durch indonesien auf der suche nach dauerhaftem und eff ektivem schutz sowie die politik ihrer inhaftierung. in diesem kontext werden asylsuchende aus den indochina-staaten, die von den späten 1970er bis mitte der 1990er jahre auf der insel galang festgehalten waren und dort auf ihre umsiedlung beziehungsweise repatriierung warteten, mit den neueren flüchtlingsankünften aus nahost verglichen, von denen viele mitte der 2000er jahre auf der insel lombok in off enen asylstätten festgehalten wurden. dieser vergleich dient in erster linie dazu, den umgang indonesiens mit asylsuchenden in den letzten drei jahrzehnten aufzuzeigen. angesichts der tatsache, dass indonesien bisher die flüchtlingskonvention der vereinten nationen (1951) sowie das dazugehörige protokoll (1967) nicht unterschrieben hat, bietet indonesien asylsuchenden und flüchtlingen keine formellen rechte. solange diese sich jedoch beim flüchtlingshochkommissariat der vereinten nationen (unhcr) oder auch bei der internationalen organisation für migration (iom) registrieren, toleriert indonesien ihre anwesenheit 1 antje missbach is a postdoctoral fellow at the university of melbourne, australia. contact: antje.missbach@unimelb.edu.au aseas 6(2) 283282 innerhalb seines territoriums. unterschiede im umgang mit diesen beiden flüchtlingsgruppen verdeutlichen nicht nur das volle ausmaß des „festsitzens“ (stuckedness) (hage, 2009), sondern zeigen auch verschiedene auswirkungen von eingeschränkter mobilität auf, wenn es um den zugang zu dauerhaftem und effektivem schutz geht. schlagworte: asylgefängnisse; asylsuchende; flüchtlinge aus dem nahen osten; indochinesische bootsflüchtlinge; indonesien introduction it’s good to hope, it’s the waiting that spoils it. (yiddish proverb) this article compares the treatment of indochinese and middle eastern asylum seekers in indonesia between the late 1970s and the early 2000s by examining galang and lombok – two islands used for detaining asylum seekers in the past. in particular, this article seeks to illustrate the general conditions of obstructed mobility – or even stasis – experienced during protracted stays on these ‘detention’ islands. in order to better understand the general and specific features of human migratory flows in current south-east asia, it is insufficient to focus solely on the causes, courses, and conditions of movement. the other side of the coin, obstructions to migrants’ mobility as well as the total inability to move (on), requires at least the same degree of attention if a complete picture of human migratory flows is to be provided. there has been a significant spread in the use of global detention regimes for asylum seekers and undocumented migrants to remote corners of the world, particularly to those situated at the ‘margins’ of the ‘west’. potential receiving states use these detention regimes as punitive and disciplinary deterrents to reduce further irregular movement and migration (babacan & briskman, 2008; briskman & dimasi, 2010; mainwaring, 2012; moran, gill, & conlon, 2013). unlike immigration detention centers on the mainland, detention islands and detention facilities on islands are a special case (mountz, 2011a; 2011b). in a fashion similar to legendary prison islands such as alcatraz and pianosa, island detention centers are surrounded by the sea and escaping from them often appears less feasible than from jails elsewhere.2 it is the 2 lombok differs significantly in terms of its size and population from other, often rather small, detention islands. this, however, shall not distract from its function as a temporary detention island where asylum seekers could not leave. aseas 6(2) 283282 very nature of isolated islands that makes them more attractive as ‘natural’ prisons given the lower security precautions required. these days, island detention facilities have gained notoriety, as they are symbols of the suffering of asylum seekers deprived of many of their basic rights. especially notorious are the facilities on lampedusa (italy), guam (usa), and two australianfinanced facilities, manus island (papua new-guinea) and nauru. the idea of ‘storing away’ asylum seekers and preventing their integration into a host community, whether temporary or permanent, is by no means novel, as this article sets out to illustrate. what is novel are the debates about island-based detention camps and the recently increased practice of states to host asylum seekers on (remote) islands as means of migration management or as a punitive deterrent for their ‘irregular’ movements. in particular, current debates focus on the jurisdiction and the management of detention islands as well as the impact on asylum seekers and their right to apply for protection (broeders, 2010; thomson, 2006). in her pioneering study of maritime detention centers, alison mountz (2011a; 2011b) has demonstrated that island detention centers have become special sites of exclusion in a geographical landscape where migrants try to access asylum processes. nation states and the international community have established special intragovernmental institutions and invested considerable resources to enforce the management, interruption, and redirection of global irregular migratory flows. while the cruelties of war and the hopelessness of persistent poverty are among the reasons why these people were displaced from their homelands, it is the strict asylum/migration regimes of the receiving countries of the ‘west’ that prevent them from reaching their desired destinations. ‘irregular’ migrants, many of whom are registered asylum seekers or even recognized refugees under the united nations high commissioner for refugees (unhcr), are held in open or closed detention in island facilities for extended periods, during which they are unable to return or move on. this leaves them “suspended in time and space” (mountz, 2011a, p. 383). as an archipelago with more than 17,000 islands, of which only a third are permanently inhabited, indonesia appears to have an unlimited potential to ‘lock away’ asylum seekers for extended periods. neighboring australia, the most popular (potential) destination country for asylum seekers in the asia-pacific region, is well-aware of indonesia’s potential and increasingly seeks to exploit it. in the last few decades, antje missbach waiting on the islands of ‘stuckedness’to the early 2000s aseas 6(2) 285284 indonesia has gained extensive experience with receiving and managing asylum seekers and refugees. indonesia is not a party to the 1951 refugee convention, has no domestic mechanism for processing asylum claims, and does not offer permanent protection and integration to asylum seekers. instead, indonesia relinquishes the determination of refugee status to the unhcr. after the fall of saigon in 1975, hundreds of thousands of vietnamese, and later, cambodian, asylum seekers fled by boat to indonesia and its neighbors. given the reluctance of thailand, malaysia, singapore, and indonesia to become permanent settlement destinations, the international community, under the auspices of the unhcr, agreed to resettle large numbers of refugees. despite initial plans to host them only temporarily on a secluded island in the riau archipelago, it was not until 1996 that the last vietnamese left the camp on galang island. around the time when the last vietnamese asylum seekers left indonesia, the first wave of asylum seekers from the middle east, mainly iraqi, afghan, and later, iranian started to arrive in indonesia. as their numbers were significantly smaller compared to the indochinese refugees, no regional plan was set in place. however, neighboring countries such as malaysia and thailand received an increasing number of middle eastern asylum seekers, especially as a result of renewed violence in the countries of origin. coinciding with the arrival of middle eastern asylum seekers in the second half of the 1990s, indonesia was experiencing great political and economic turmoil and saw massive displacement of many of its own people due to ethnic-religious and separatist conflicts in a number of outer provinces (hedman, 2008). despite the large numbers of displaced people and refugees within indonesia that could have triggered a more proactive stance on the part of the indonesian government, the handling of the foreign asylum seekers remained the responsibility of the unhcr and the international organization for migration (iom). although the numbers of middle eastern asylum seekers remained far below the indochinese, they were by no means negligible. in fact, indonesia’s laissez-faire attitude towards their presence and onward migration to australia evoked substantial tensions between indonesia and australia (fortuna, 2002). the middle eastern asylum seekers had no intention of staying in indonesia for the long term. rather, they tried to use a rapidly developing people smuggling industry to reach australia as soon as possible (barker, 2013; missbach & sinanu, 2011; munro, 2011). when australia’s ‘pacific solution’ was launched in 2001, a number of boats with asyaseas 6(2) 285284 lum seekers onboard were forcibly returned to indonesia. unable to leave indonesia, these returned asylum seekers were held as discretely as possible for several years on lombok. meanwhile, more asylum seekers kept arriving in indonesia and were stranded there (see annual unhcr statistical yearbooks). asylum seekers’ lives were shaped by indefinite periods of waiting for onward migration. they often experienced waiting as something unbearable due to many uncertainties they faced and the prohibition on working legally. ‘waiting it out’ while being torn between hope for resettlement (in the best case) and fear of forced repatriation (in the worst) left lasting imprints on people, especially when endured over many years. the remoteness of their location, their collective isolation from the temporary host society, restricted mobility, and deprived liberty were a form of punishment that was intended to dissuade other potential asylum seekers from following their paths. while the presence of indochinese and middle eastern asylum seekers in galang and lombok was concealed from the general indonesian public, news about the fate of those detained in the island detention camps reached a more interested audience outside indonesia, such as activist groups and ngos in australia. asylum seekers’ access to cheaper and more easily accessible communication technologies such as the internet and mobile phones made indonesia’s ‘out-of-sight-out-of-mind-approach’ work only in the short term. plans for future island detention camps keep lingering within political debates in indonesia when it comes to finding solutions of how to handle asylum seekers, even though many decision-makers admit that the problems of both galang and lombok outweighed the gains. indonesian proponents of island detention camps listed better cost efficiency of centralized management and better surveillance mechanisms for detention islands among their arguments (alford & nathalia, 2013). based on this perspective, the option of stricter control movements is deemed more important than upholding asylum seekers’ right to freedom of movement. if hosted far away from local communities, asylum seekers cannot exercise any negative influence on the indonesian population, such as assumed threats to indonesian health and security. also, the possibilities of implementing orderly onward migration schemes for the asylum seekers (resettlement or repatriation) are greater, making self-organized crossings by boat to australia less likely. opponents of detention islands in indonesia do not show much resentment of the plans of setting up a main immigration detention island because they are concerned antje missbach waiting on the islands of ‘stuckedness’to the early 2000s aseas 6(2) 287286 with the well-being of the transiting asylum seekers. they are not necessarily in favor of accommodating asylum seekers in smaller detention camps spread out all over the archipelago or allowing them to live among local communities, as is currently widely practiced due to the shortage of space in the existing centers. rather, they would prefer indonesia not to interfere and obstruct transiting asylum seekers from reaching australia. not only do they consider the detention regime as waste of money, but more importantly, they also dislike the idea of indonesia acting as a lackey (kaki tangan) for australia’s externalized asylum and migration policies. based on fieldwork, interviews, official reports, witness accounts, and other secondary sources, this article provides detailed background information on indonesia’s handling of indochinese and middle eastern asylum seekers in indonesia from the mid-1970s to the 2000s.3 besides retracing trends and numbers of these two specific asylum seeker cohorts, the article sets out to explain major differences in reception and processing of their claims in indonesia. next to depicting the everyday complexities and hardships of being held on a small island, the article seeks to elaborate on the intimacies of transit, ‘stuckedness’, or as ghassan hage (2009) described it, the “sense of existential immobility” (p. 7). by retracing previous experiences of transiting asylum seekers in indonesia and examining the politics of detention as played out between the indonesian state, the international community, the unhcr, and the iom, the article highlights in particular indonesia’s lack of proactiveness in finding viable solutions for asylum seekers. the article argues that, in the case of indonesia, despite the dire circumstances on these ‘islands of stuckedness’, those detention islands only had very little impact as a tool of deterrence. the ebbs and flows of asylum seekers across the region were generally triggered by the wider geopolitical context rather than the dreadfulness of the detention islands. vietnamese ‘boat people’ in indonesia following the fall of saigon in april 1975, tens of thousands of vietnamese who had previously supported the us forces started to flee their home country in fear of communist retaliation. economic hardship and political discrimination also contributed 3 as part of a larger research project on transit migrants in indonesia conducted between 2010 and 2012, i also had the chance to interview a number of former unhcr staff members who had worked in galang. aseas 6(2) 287286 towards the exodus. besides the vietnamese and ethnic chinese from south vietnam, thousands of cambodians and laotians also fled due to political unrest across the region. they either crossed to thailand or tried to reach hong kong, malaysia, the philippines, or indonesia by boat. thousands perished in the pirate-infested south china sea. the first report about vietnamese refugees arriving in indonesia appeared on 19 may 1975, when 92 people passed through the town of tarempa (riau islands) on their way to singapore (fandik, 2013). a week later, a vietnamese boat landed on pulau laut (riau islands). from then on, vietnamese refugees started arriving almost on a daily basis at different islands in the riau archipelago, such as batam, bintan, natuna, anambas, and kuku. by 30 june 1979, the united nations general assembly (1979) reported that close to 43,000 vietnamese and cambodian ‘boat people’ were present all over indonesia. indonesian officials provided substantially different data: when the indochinese exodus began in 1975, not a single country in south-east asia had acceded to the 1951 refugee convention and the 1967 protocol. additionally, none of the south-east asian countries had instituted a domestic legal framework for the reception of asylum seekers. with no screening mechanisms for asylum seekers in place yet, the unhcr granted all asylum seekers automatically prima facie refugee status and protection en bloc. given the political circumstances of the cold war, the exodus of the vietnamese refugees, for the west, was an indication of the vietnamese communist regime’s arbitrariness. despite the resettlement of about 200,000 indochinese refugees to third countries such as the us, australia, france, and others between 1975 and march 1979, it was the countries in south-east asia – and first and antje missbach waiting on the islands of ‘stuckedness’to the early 2000s table 1: numbers of asylum seekers from indochina source: department of foreign affairs of the republic of indonesia, 1979. hong kong indonesia malaysia philippines thailand 3,413 1,831 4,202 199 7,690 9,888 9,193 83,495 5,819 235,474 5,100 7,187 52,273 2,150 149,387 0 3,101 6,033 254 6,644 15 406 3,166 797 4,604 february 1979 january 1979 arrivals in march 1979 cumulative (197531 march 1979) persons awaiting solution on 31 march 1979 aseas 6(2) 289288 foremost thailand and malaysia – that had to take care of more than 340,000 people in various camps. due to the massive scale of the exodus, the south-east asian countries appealed to the international community for burden sharing and assistance in managing the refugee flows. after a series of meetings among the south-east asian transit states and western resettlement countries during the first half of 1979, the governments of indonesia and the philippines each offered to allocate a sparsely populated island to establish regional processing centers for refugees who had already been accepted for resettlement. while the philippines offered to host 7,000 refugees temporarily on tara island,4 about 250 km south-west of manila, the indonesian government chose galang island in the riau archipelago as a temporary home for up to 10,000 refugees at a time.5 galang is not only strategically located and easily accessible by air and sea, but it was then inhabited by only about 200 people. this also made it easier for the local authorities to separate the refugees from the local population in order to avoid intermingling. galang was never supposed to offer permanent integration for refugees. it was conceived as a temporary location where refugees could prepare for their resettlement by undertaking language and other courses. from the very beginning, the indonesian government emphasized that it would not receive refugees in its territory, but for the sake of humanitarianism it was forced to accept them during transit while they were waiting to move on to a third country, as well as actively providing thoughts and concrete support to find a solution for this problem. (department of information of the republic of indonesia, 1980, p. 1) the meeting of asean foreign ministers in may 1979 issued a statement on refugees, which stipulated that “countries providing the site or island for the processing center shall retain the sovereignty, administrative control and security responsibility over the island” (department of foreign affairs of the republic of indonesia 1979, p. 5). all costs of establishing and running these centers, including the provision of food, education, and health care, were to be covered by the unhcr. delegates of the international community at the time widely welcomed this plan, resulting in substantial financial support (totaling about usd 160 million in cash and kind) being provided to 4 tara island was populated by only about 100 families, mostly fishermen and -women or farmers. the total estimated costs of establishing and running the camp for two years were usd 6,072,853 (department of foreign affairs of the republic of indonesia, 1979). 5 after wwii, galang island served as a transit location for japanese soldiers before they were returned to japan in 1946 (fandik, 2013). aseas 6(2) 289288 the unhcr to run these centers (united nations general assembly, 1979). the decision to establish temporary processing centers was based on the condition that the vietnamese government would stop further ‘illegal’ departures and instead promote orderly departures, to which vietnam agreed (robinson, 2004). on 2 july 1979, the indonesian ministry of defense established the team for the prevention and management of vietnamese refugees (tim penanggulangan dan pengelolaan pengungsi vietnam, p3v). presidential decree no. 38 of 1979, dated 11 september, confirmed this team under the ministry of defense, but also ordered integrated and coordinated measures with the ministry of foreign affairs and the ministry of interior affairs for handling the “indochinese refugee problem”. it was envisioned that the refugees would stay there only for a “reasonable period”, estimated at three to five years. as indonesia was reluctant to spend any domestic resources on establishing and running the center in galang, the unhcr had to cover all costs, estimated at about usd 18,562,000 over a period of two years (department of foreign affairs of the republic of indonesia, 1979). refugee processing in galang the refugee processing center was established near sijantung village on galang, between june and august 1979. inside the camp, people were housed in barracks, one containing up to 100 people (fandik, 2013). galang camp was equipped with water, sanitation, schools, a hospital, and even a small port. compared to local standards, conditions in the camp were adequate but frugal. the unhcr spent about idr 400 (usd 0.64) per person per day in rations, not cash. the camp was supposed to assist refugees to improve health and fitness levels as well as participate in classes including languages (english and french) and cultural instruction, as was required by most receiving countries before resettlement. the indochinese refugees were well organized amongst themselves and promptly established various organizations for religious and cultural activities. given that some refugees had cash and other valuables, they started commercial activities inside the camp. for example, some built small coffee shops while others sold cigarettes and convenience goods. over time, churches, temples, markets, bakeries, gardens and antje missbach waiting on the islands of ‘stuckedness’to the early 2000s aseas 6(2) 291290 even gambling spots, cinemas, video parlors and discotheques sprang up (cohen, 1993). there was also a jail in the camp to lock up drunkards or those involved in fights. sexual violence and intimidation, both by fellow refugees and by guards, was widely reported (yen, 1995). a cemetery was built to accommodate those who died while awaiting their resettlement. in the beginning, the local population on galang welcomed the establishment of the center, as it offered them temporary employment. however, incidents of theft swayed public opinion against the vietnamese refugees and social resentment emerged. sometimes camp inmates would leave the premises overnight to go to town. according to indonesians who used to work in the camp, there were also substantial business activities between some refugees and the chinese community on the neighboring bintan island (imalia komalo, personal communication, pancawati, 10 february 2012).6 although the informal sector benefitted from the presence of refugees, it was, first and foremost, members of the military who profited from the establishment of the camp as it served them as a source of commerce and employment. in the early years of joint action (1979-1980), the unhcr tried to reach an average level of resettlement to third countries of about 25,000 people per month across all south-east asian camps (united nations general assembly, 1979). between july 1979 and july 1982, about 623,800 indochinese refugees were resettled to a total of 20 resettlement countries, mainly the us, france, and canada (unhcr, 2000). logistics for these resettlements were provided by the intergovernmental committee for migration (icem), the predecessor of today’s iom. from 1980 to 1986, resettlements in galang outpaced new arrivals (robinson, 2004), but from 1987 onwards, when more people from north vietnam joined the exodus, the number of refugees arriving in south-east asia increased drastically (balfour, 1993). although the conditions in the processing camps were far from ideal, the possibility of resettlement to a country in the west itself had become a pull factor. in order to deal with the rising numbers, a second camp for newly arrived refugees was established at galang. in the mid-1980s, the indonesian military launched operations and also engaged in joint maritime patrols with malaysia and singapore to prevent the arrival of additional refugees (fandik, 2013). this cooperation was overshadowed by 6 the red cross also helped with money transfers. aseas 6(2) 291290 malaysia’s unilateral redirection policy, adopted in the late 1980s, which was responsible for pushing back boats into the sea (unhcr, 2000; yen, 1995).7 despite international protests, malaysia prevented at least 5,600 refugees from landing at bidong island (azam & vatikiotis, 1990). with some deaths reported and many more that went unreported, the majority of these rejected refugees decided to go to indonesia (betts, 2006). while there were fewer than 2,000 people in galang in 1989, the number of camp inmates increased to 16,500 in the following year, thereby overburdening the facilities (yen, 1995). galang under the comprehensive plan of action (cpa) between 1975 and 1995, almost 2 million people from indochina had fled their home countries, about 800,000 of them on boats, looking for asylum and hoping for resettlement (yen, 1995). during this period, between 122,000 and 145,000 asylum seekers transited through indonesia (cohen, 1993; fields, 1992; mcbeth, 1994; unhcr, 2000). despite ongoing resettlements, mainly in the usa, canada, australia, france, and a number of other european countries, there were still more than 200,000 indochinese people stuck in refugee camps all over south-east asia in 1989. given the combination of rising numbers of arrivals, increasing waiting times for resettlement, and a compassion fatigue among western resettlement countries, the transit countries decided to discourage the indochinese from entering. multilateral consultations had already begun in 1988 for what later came to be known as the comprehensive plan of action (cpa) for indochinese refugees. the international conference on indochinese refugees, which took place in geneva in june 1989, saw the beginning of a new era in managing large refugee flows. for the 7 there were also push-backs by thai officials at khlong yai port, assisted by thai fishermen (helton 1990/1991, p. 114) and by singaporean coastal guards (fitzpatrick, 2009). antje missbach waiting on the islands of ‘stuckedness’to the early 2000s table 2: vietnamese arrivals in indonesia (1975-1995) source: unhcr, 2000, p. 98. 51,156 15,274 121,70819,07036,208 1980-19841975-1979 1985-1989 1990-1995 cumulative (1975-1995) aseas 6(2) 293292 first time, as an outcome of the conference, a refugee status determination scheme was introduced for the indochinese refugees. rather than a prima facie grant of refugee status and en masse resettlement, asylum seekers were now required to provide evidence to support their individual claims for protection in order to qualify as refugees. after a cut-off-date, which was determined in the cpa, every new arrival had to undergo a screening procedure to establish an individual case for protection. in order to prove a well-founded fear of persecution, it was no longer enough to cite former maltreatment or collective discrimination. instead, claimants also had to show that their lives would still be endangered upon return. if unable to provide evidence of individual persecution, they would be considered economic migrants instead. those who were not found to be in need of international protection and resettlement were to be returned to vietnam. the main objective of the cpa was to discourage departures from vietnam, as it was by then widely believed that it was not only political persecution and discrimination that drove people to flee their homeland, but that the option for resettlement in the west had become an even stronger pull factor.8 this objective was not met straight away, and another 400,000 people left indochina over the duration of the cpa (robinson, 2004). however, after the first wave of repatriations to vietnam, the annual vietnamese exodus decreased drastically. in 1989, the number of newly-arrived refugees was still about 64,000 but it fell to about 32,000 in 1990 and about 23,000 in 1991 (bari, 1992, p. 509). in order to ensure fairness within the refugee status determination process, the cpa sought to introduce uniform screening mechanisms all over the region. most transit countries relied on the unhcr as advisor, observer, and sponsor. also, national officials were trained to assess refugee claims. in indonesia, the aforementioned team for the prevention and management of vietnamese refugees, composed of army, navy, immigration, and police personnel, was in charge of conducting interviews and making decisions in the first instance (bari, 1992). everybody who arrived after 17 march 1989 had to undergo a screening. according to arthur helton (1990/1991, p. 121), one of the most vocal critics in the ngo community and the representative of the lawyers committee for human rights, the screening procedures 8 james hathaway (1993) has criticized the inconsistent labeling of asylum seekers from vietnam, stating that the “conceptual shift between the unbridled inclusion of vietnamese asylum seekers under the 1979 accord and the presumption of economic motivation in the 1989 plan is not explained by a substantive shift in the nature of the protection claims advanced” (p. 689) because basic civil and political rights, such as denial of free speech, press, and assembly, were still missing. aseas 6(2) 293292 in indonesia “began disastrously” because authorities relied on resettlement criteria instead of refugee status criteria. before the actual screening interview with p3v, unhcr representatives conducted weekly information sessions with the applicants. during these sessions, leaflets were distributed which explained the status determination process, but not the actual criteria for grant of asylum. during these sessions, the unhcr also conducted eligibility assessments with applicants. these initial assessments, paired with a recommendation on whether the request for asylum should be granted or not, were then forwarded to the indonesian authorities. the unhcr representatives were not present during the actual p3v screening interviews, which in many cases were extremely short, sometimes lasting only twenty minutes. in the majority of cases, p3v accepted the recommendation of the unhcr representatives (helton, 1993). there were, however, widespread complaints from the applicants about the arbitrariness of the refugee status determination process (betts, 2006). the indonesian fast-track version of the refugee status determination process that often consisted only of simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ questions was seen as seriously compromising the fairness of the interviews (helton, 1993). other obstacles to a fair screening included the choice of interpreters, who were often just recruited from the camp. legal consultants for the asylum seekers were not provided with sufficient training and, more generally, the understanding of the situation in vietnam was inadequate (robinson, 2004). there were widespread allegations of corruption, bribery, and demands for sexual favors in order for refugee status to be granted (betts, 2006; robinson, 2004; yen, 1995). by july 1992, three years after the introduction of the cpa, p3v had managed to screen about two-thirds of all the people in galang. antje missbach waiting on the islands of ‘stuckedness’to the early 2000s table 3: refugee status determination in galang source: unhcr, 2000, p. 98. number interviewed positive decisions negative decisions positive review decisions negative review decisions 7,423 cases 2,293 cases 5,263 cases 112 cases 1,409 cases 10,253 persons 3,657 persons 7,382 persons 165 persons 1,815 persons aseas 6(2) 295294 rejected asylum seekers received a written decision, but the reasons for the decision were often only cursory. they were allowed to appeal within 15 to 30 days to a special review committee in jakarta, which, however, also consisted of p3v members as well as officials from the ministry of foreign affairs. the unhcr did not provide the asylum seekers with any help for the preparation of appeals. on the contrary, rejected applicants had to undergo special counseling by the unhcr about voluntary return before they were allowed to hand in their appeal. unlike asylum seekers in hong kong, people in galang were not allowed to use private lawyers or advocacy groups (bari, 1992). given the lack of legal advice, many faced substantial difficulties with the bureaucratic mechanisms of the screenings and the appeals, as they did not know how to present their cases.9 all in all, under the cpa, a total of 18,131 people were screened in indonesia between march 1989 and september 1993, including about 1,000 unaccompanied minors (fields, 1992). most accepted refugees were resettled in the us, canada, or australia. between 1975 and 1995, a total of 1,311,183 indochinese refugees had been resettled to third countries (unhcr, 2000, p. 99).10 according to mcbeth (1994), this included at least 132,000 refugees from galang. usually, the unhcr matched the resettlement criteria of potential resettlement countries with the refugees in the camps, and the iom provided logistical support for resettlement (betts, 2006). nonetheless, problems arose, as in the case with de facto couples. legal marriage was not allowed in the camps and informal marriages did not qualify for resettlement as one unit (unless it involved children born to the couple), making family reunions difficult. in june 1996, the unhcr funding for indochinese refugees under cpa stopped throughout the region (robinson, 2004). although indonesia and thailand extended their involvement with the cpa for another 90 days, both decided that all remaining camp inmates had to be returned eventually. following hong kong’s example, indonesia (as well as thailand and the philippines) signed a tripartite agreement with the unhcr and vietnam in october 1992, establishing an orderly return program for rejected asylum seekers. although vietnam had promised to accept and reintegrate its 9 between 60 to 70% of the claimants across the south-east asian camps failed to be recognized as refugees, which led to serious charges of procedural deficiencies for the screening mechanism. unfortunately, it was only towards the end of the cpa when applicants were given guidelines on how to prepare a submission. 10 according to unhcr statistics (2000), the four resettlement countries with the largest intake were the us with 822,977; australia with 137,543; canada with 137,145; and france with 95,671 indochinese refugees received (p. 99). aseas 6(2) 295294 people without punishment or persecution, voluntary return proceeded hesitantly. despite incentives for return, such as reintegration grants (betts, 2006), only 3,911 rejected asylum seekers in galang had accepted repatriation by september 1993 (yen, 1995).11 altogether, more than 109,000 vietnamese were repatriated under the eightyear period of the cpa (unhcr, 2000). being aware that it would not be possible to convince all rejected asylum seekers to return voluntarily, and that it would therefore be necessary to adopt involuntary return as well, neither the unhcr nor the iom wanted to be involved in organizing the repatriations (as that was considered a violation of their statutes). thus, the primary responsibility for the returns was left to the transit countries (betts, 2006). as the indonesian government was dedicated to clear galang as soon as possible to allow for its plans to redevelop galang into a special industrial zone, the majority of the remaining 8,500 vietnamese were eventually returned despite protests and acts of resistance (cohen, 1993). rejected asylum seekers in galang did not accept their destiny without protest. in 1994, camp inmates organized hunger strikes and riots (lander, 1996). to protest against their rejection and their imminent repatriation, a number of people committed suicide, either by hanging or by self-immolation (fields, 1992; mcbeth, 1994). moreover, a few rejected asylum seekers tried to escape the camp and reach australia on their own initiative (gilley, 1996). if their plans were discovered, the indonesian authorities punished such attempts severely. nevertheless, in july 1994, a group of vietnamese who had been screened out in galang succeeded in arriving in broome (grewcock, 2009).12 asylum seekers from the middle east not long after the last vietnamese departed galang, a new group of asylum seekers started coming to indonesia. the first five afghan and the first seven iranian applications for protection under the unhcr in indonesia were recorded in 1996 (human rights watch [hrw], 2002). the push factors for leaving their homelands were the poor political and economic conditions, for afghans it was in particular the rise of the taliban 11 between 1993 and 1995, the unhcr spent usd 34.4 million on economic and social reintegration projects for returnees in vietnam. it also employed observers in hanoi and ho chi minh city to oversee the wellbeing of the returnees. the european union contributed about usd 135 million for the reintegration of returnees in vietnam (robinson, 2004). in the first year, returnees received between usd 240 and usd 360 as assistance (balfour, 1993; cohen, 1993; unhcr, 2000). 12 between 1976 and 1978, 2,087 vietnamese asylum seekers arrived in australia on 55 boats (kneebone, 2010, p. 347). antje missbach waiting on the islands of ‘stuckedness’to the early 2000s aseas 6(2) 297296 in 1995, accompanied by massive discrimination against religious and ethnic minorities. choosing to come to indonesia instead of remaining in their homelands was mainly due to the policy shifts in countries of first asylum that consequently led to their socalled secondary movements. for example, in the late 1990s, pakistan adopted harsher treatment towards afghan asylum seekers residing in its territory, where many had stayed during the soviet occupation, some for more than 20 years (hrw, 2002). iran also stopped tolerating iraqi and kurdish asylum seekers, many of whom had fled to iran during the iran-iraq war and the first gulf war (hrw, 2002). applying for protection at unhcr offices in iran and pakistan was often difficult, as local security forces prevented physical access to the unhcr offices (hrw, 2002). the lack of legal status combined with severe restrictions on employment and freedom of movement, the lack of health care, education, and housing as well as ongoing risks of arrest, detention, and deportation made life for asylum seekers in these two countries of first asylum highly insecure.13 although neighboring countries in the region, including jordan and syria, are parties to the refugee convention, they offered no effective protection, as both countries lack domestic laws to protect refugees. this absence of protection spurred local smuggling networks to create new routes for those asylum seekers who could afford to leave again and look for protection elsewhere. first europe and then australia became alternatives, because their asylum policies were deemed to be more favorable, offering high approval rates and, at times, enabling family reunion and offering extensive integration services (united states committee for refugees and immigrants, 2001). nonetheless, the push factors in the countries of origin and the countries of first asylum were more relevant for asylum seekers’ decision-making than the pull factors in the destination countries (koser, 2010). unlike the indochinese who arrived in large numbers by boat, many middle eastern asylum seekers arrived in small groups by air and entered on short-term tourist visas. the new arrivals were comparatively few, in both absolute and relative numbers. consequently, their treatment by the indonesian authorities differed substantially from the treatment of the indochinese. nevertheless, the arrival of asylum seekers from the middle east triggered several problems for indonesia in administering, accommodating, and resettling them. as 13 despite the deteriorating situation in the countries of first asylum in the middle east, it should not be ignored that the largest numbers of afghan asylum seekers continue to live in pakistan (about 550,000), and iran (about 1.1 million). aseas 6(2) 297296 there was no legal framework for the processing of asylum seekers, nor any national legal guidelines or standard procedures for immigration officials on how to handle transit migrants, officers on the ground were inexperienced and had no understanding of international refugee procedures or the work of the unhcr.14 given that the management of refugees and asylum seekers had previously been the task of the special committee p3v, local immigration authorities frequently did not differentiate between asylum seekers in need of international protection on the one hand and irregular migrants on the other, especially when claimants did not possess valid travel documents (missbach & sinanu, 2013). also, after the refugee processing center in galang had been closed, indonesia was left with only limited detention facilities (karantina imigrasi), mostly unfit to host undocumented migrants for a longer period of time. overwhelmed by its many serious domestic problems in the wake of the asian financial crisis and the end of the authoritarian suharto regime, indonesia had little capacity left for handling ‘irregular foreigners’, who were, after all, aiming to reach australia. for this reason, it was hardly surprising that the indonesian government did not welcome australia’s idea of opening an asylum seeker processing center in indonesia (united states committee for refugees and immigrants, 2001). during the late 1990s and early 2000s, indonesia chose to ignore to the greatest possible extent the presence of these transiting asylum seekers, assuming that they would not stay for the long term. instead of enacting new laws on the handling of refugees or installing a domestic mechanism for assessing asylum claims, indonesia preferred to rely on the services of the unhcr in jakarta to process the applications of asylum seekers and organize their resettlement. the reason for the government’s inactivity was the lack of political will and also the lack of funding. for example, the immigration department lacked the funds to deport irregular migrants or even try them for breaching the immigration law (lindsey, 2002; united states committee for refugees and immigrants, 2001). people in search for international protection therefore had to contact the unhcr office in jakarta in writing or in person. after an initial interview, they would be provided with a letter of attestation, written both in english and indonesian, which explained their status as asylum seekers. possession of such a letter was intended to minimize the risk of detention and forced deportation; however, there was no 14 the 1992 immigration law (uu 9/1992, section 8 and 24) governed who was permitted to enter the country lawfully, but it did not specify asylum seekers and it contained no provisions relating to the grant of asylum or effective protection. antje missbach waiting on the islands of ‘stuckedness’to the early 2000s aseas 6(2) 299298 legal guarantee that would not occur. after an initial interview, unhcr staff would interview applicants more thoroughly in order to determine whether they qualified as refugees or not. due to the small number of staff and interpreters at the unhcr in jakarta, this could take months, if not years. both the processing of refugee claims and the processing for resettlement proceeded very slowly. for example, between january 1999 and august 2001, the unhcr in jakarta recognized 476 refugees but resettled only 18 of them, due to shortage of offers from resettlement countries (hrw 2002; lindsey 2002).15 if asylum claims were rejected, the applicant had the right to appeal, however only once. meanwhile, waiting asylum seekers had access to minimum health care through the indonesian red cross. caritas indonesia, the local implementing partner of the unhcr, offered its clients counseling and, in exceptional cases, even financial support. generally, asylum seekers were expected to live self-sufficiently among the local community. in hindsight, it was not surprising that many asylum seekers and refugees tried to leave indonesia as soon as possible. the resulting demand for irregular onward migration to australia created a new smuggling industry, especially in indonesia’s impoverished eastern province, nusa tenggara timur (balint, 2005). the peak of people smuggling from indonesia to australia was reached in 2001, with 43 boats and 5,516 asylum seekers on board (phillips & spinks, 2012). in the first three weeks of august 2001 alone, 1,212 people arrived at australian outposts (howard 2003, p. 37). altogether, more than 6,000 asylum seekers reached australia by boat between 2000 and 2002 from indonesia (kneebone, 2010, p. 354), causing the australian government during john howard’s prime ministership to make substantial changes to its asylum and bordering policies. without describing the impact of the so-called ‘pacific solution’ in full detail (as this has already been done by a great number of scholars, including grewcock, 2009; howard, 2003; kneebone, 2010), it is sufficient for the purposes of this article to concentrate on forcible returns of boats to indonesia, as this explains why middle eastern asylum seekers became ‘stuck’ in indonesia for several years. as part of the pacific solution, the howard government initiated ‘operation relex’ to deter ‘unauthorized’ boats. under this operation, the australian defense forces were allowed to intercept any suspected illegal entry vessel’ (siev) once within the vicinity of austra15 resettlement countries were extremely reluctant to accept refugees from indonesia as they saw the caseload in indonesia as an outcome of australia’s refugee policy (hrw, 2002). those who were accepted went mostly to new zealand, sweden, norway, and canada, and to a lesser extent, australia. aseas 6(2) 299298 lia’s contiguous zone. if the crew of an unauthorized boat ignored the warning given to them and continued into australian waters, australian forces would then board the vessel to remove it back to the high seas (howard, 2003). under operation relex, at least five boats containing asylum seekers were towed back to indonesia without prior formal agreement with the indonesian government and without any guarantees of their protection there (crock & ghezelbash, 2010; hrw, 2002). between october and december 2001, four boats with at least 500 people on board were forcibly returned (howard, 2003). by doing so, australia breached several of its obligations under human rights and international maritime law. the returned asylum seekers were to be kept in indonesia for an undetermined period of time. most of these asylum seekers, mainly iraqis, afghans (pashtuns, hazara, balochs, tajiks, and uzbeks), and iranian mandaeans, became stranded in perpetual limbo as their claims for protection were rejected and they therefore could not be resettled in an orderly fashion elsewhere, while at the same time they also could not be deported to their home countries due to ongoing political instability. in limbo in lombok after the australian forces initially ‘dumped’ the asylum seekers in nusa tenggara timur, where overall conditions were harsh and where they could not be accessed by the unhcr, indonesian authorities transferred them to lombok island in january 2002 and housed them in several hotels around the provincial capital mataram (hrw, 2002; hunter, 2004; taylor & rafferty-brown, 2010a). since the australian government, in cooperation with the indonesian government, engaged the iom to provide custodial care, it covered the costs of their accommodation and medical services (mountz, 2011b). in january 2002, the unhcr also started processing some of the asylum seekers in lombok. their status determination process, however, received widespread criticism for its inadequacy. not only was the number of interpreters insufficient, but applicants also complained about their partiality, as they allegedly favored some ethnic groups over others or were not trained in all the various dialects spoken by the asylum seekers (ghulam, 2004). general complaints about the unhcr status deterantje missbach waiting on the islands of ‘stuckedness’to the early 2000s aseas 6(2) 301300 mination process concerned the brevity of the interviews and the lack of legal advice. some claimants did not know how to address certain interview questions or how to provide evidence to back up claims (nassery, 2004). the number of those who were accepted as refugees after the first assessment was relatively small, leading to the belief among rejected asylum seekers that the unchr status determination process was merely a “lottery” that could only be overcome by those who had relatives living overseas prepared to pay for lawyers to assist them with their applications (nassery, 2004). while waiting for the outcome of their assessments, asylum seekers were visited by representatives of the afghan and iraqi embassies, who tried to convince them to return voluntarily. of 220 afghan asylum seekers in mataram about 142 accepted these offers (nassery, 2004). iraqis, however, were less inclined to return after the us invasion of iraq in march 2003. because of the war, the unhcr agreed to reassess the iraqi asylum seekers once more, even though some had already been rejected twice (hunter, 2004). in october 2003, almost two years after their return to indonesia, there were still 146 people (including newborn babies) living in mataram and waiting for the outcome of their asylum claims (hunter, 2004). although asylum seekers on lombok theoretically enjoyed freedom of movement, only those who received remittances from friends and families overseas could make use of that right (with the permission of the iom). one afghan applicant took the initiative to teach children and adults english and computer lessons. for a short interval, there was a mixed soccer team, including iraqi and local sasak players (local ethnic group on lombok). a few men married or dated indonesian women, sometimes causing tension with the local communities. tensions also arose from social jealousy as many locals envied the asylum seekers for their perceived privileges, such as free accommodation and food (hunter, 2004). moreover, interethnic tensions built up between the iraqis and the iranians, most often about religious differences, such as the sunni-shia divide, which led to a redistribution of accommodation according to ethnic background. when the local population (sunni) learned about the presence of shiites, some locals threatened to burn down the hotels that hosted them, and police had to guard the premises for a number of weeks (hunter, 2004). in early january 2004, iraqi asylum seekers in mataram learned about a hunger strike that had taken place in december 2003 in nauru, where the australian government had detained hundreds of asylum seekers. in solidarity they organized one aseas 6(2) 301300 themselves, to protest their situation in open detention and the repeated rejection of their asylum claims (hunter, 2004; kneebone, 2010). they were accompanied by the afghans, of whom seven sewed together their lips (ghulam, 2004). the hunger strike attracted considerable attention in australia. unlike two decades earlier in galang, asylum seekers in lombok were in regular contact through mobile phones and email with activists and advocates in australia and, to a lesser extent, friends and family in their homelands and countries of destination. the protesters ended their strike after they met an unhcr protection officer who promised to review their cases on the basis of the most up-to-date information about the situation in their home countries. by october 2005, there were still 92 iraqis and afghans left in lombok. the rest had returned to their homelands and some had been resettled. in december 2007, after many attempts by the iom to persuade the afghans to accept voluntary return in exchange for free travel and an aud 2,000 assistance payment, which the afghans declined, nine men were separated from their wives and children and transferred to the detention center in makassar (on sulawesi island) (mountz, 2011b). this separation was intended to increase pressure on the asylum seekers to return ‘voluntarily’ to afghanistan, pressure which some people eventually gave in to, despite the unsafe conditions there. due to the tense situation in lombok and manifold protests, all remaining asylum seekers were eventually resettled in cisarua, a village in the mountainous area near bogor about 60 km from jakarta, where they continued to be under iom care. given the deteriorating political conditions in their countries of origin, the unhcr in jakarta decided to re-open a number of cases of the previously rejected asylum seekers. some were accepted in 2009, after their fourth assessment (taylor & rafferty-brown, 2010b). resettlements on humanitarian visas to canada, australia, and new zealand took place until 2011. meanwhile, more asylum seekers arrived in indonesia, not only from the middle east but also from burma, sri lanka, and even from a number of east african states. while thailand and malaysia (involuntarily) host greater numbers of asylum seekers, people of concern to the unhcr in indonesia have been steadily increasing. since 2009, the number of asylum seekers who continued to australia by boat has also increased, with official figures recording 278 boats carrying 17,202 asylum seekers in 2012. due to australian pressure and funding, indonesia has enlarged its detention capacities. but rather than utilizing single remote islands for detaining asylum antje missbach waiting on the islands of ‘stuckedness’to the early 2000s aseas 6(2) 303302 seekers, there are now 13 detention centers operating across the archipelago. nevertheless, ideas for creating one large centralized detention center on a single, secluded island persist (alford & nathalia, 2013). while the issue of asylum seekers has not been a high priority in indonesia until recently (hoffman, 2010) and prompt action on that idea appeared rather unlikely, it has to be taken into account that the political pressure on indonesia from the new australian government under tony abbott will increase. during abbott’s first visit to jakarta in late september 2013, it became very clear that australia’s persistent efforts to coopt indonesia into assisting australia with its asylum seekers policies would continue (maher, 2013). conclusion this article has compared the handling of asylum seeker flows from indochina and the middle east to indonesia over the last thirty plus years. in particular, the article has demonstrated how asylum seekers’ mobility was obstructed once they had arrived in indonesia. not party to the refugee convention, indonesia’s approach was first characterized by open aversion to hosting asylum seekers for the long term. despite officially unsympathetic rhetoric, indonesia has nevertheless allowed asylum seekers and refugees to remain in its territory and established open detention facilities on remote islands. against initial plans to accommodate transmitting asylum seekers only temporarily, most of them have spent several years in indonesia, not least because the unhcr and the iom covered all related costs. table 4: people of concern to the unhcr in indonesia source: unhcr, 2006-2010. refugees asylum seekers (pending cases) returned refugees various total population of concern 315 211 0 0 526 89 58 135 246 528 798 1,769 311 0 2,878 1,006 3,233 0 0 4,239 369 353 1 3 726 301 265 0 0 566 811 2,071 0 0 2,882 20082006 201020072005 2009 2011year aseas 6(2) 303302 nonetheless, when comparing the handling of indochinese asylum seekers with the handling of those from the middle east, the disparity could not have been greater. while the indochinese were collectively granted prima facie refugee status, at least during the decade prior to the enactment of the cpa and its compulsory individual screening procedures, the middle easterners faced great difficulties in accessing basic protection mechanisms provided by the unhcr. being located on galang island and managed by the military, the processing of the indochinese asylum seekers proceeded steadily, although the time of ‘stuckedness’ was also marked by human tragedy and exploitation. all in all, the indochinese refugees enjoyed many sympathies from the west, possibly being perceived as living proof of the claimed depravity of the communist regime in vietnam. unlike their muslim middle eastern counterparts, they were resettled to final destination countries in great numbers. in contrast, resettlement countries accepted the middle eastern asylum seekers, although much smaller in number, only reluctantly. the absence of a comprehensive (regional) approach and the lack of shared responsibility across the region left middle eastern asylum seekers in lombok stranded. although there were a few reported escapes both from galang and lombok, the two detention islands turned out to be highly effective barriers to asylum seeker mobility, much to the detriment of those in need of effective protection. references alford, p., & nathalia, t. 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(2004). the comprehensive plan of action for indochinese refugees, 1989-1997: sharing the burden and passing the buck. journal of refugees studies, 17(3), 319-333. taylor, s., & rafferty-brown, b. (2010a). waiting for life to begin: the plight of asylum seekers caught by australia’s indonesia solution. international journal of refugee law, 22(4), 558-592. antje missbach waiting on the islands of ‘stuckedness’to the early 2000s aseas 6(2) 307306 taylor, s., & rafferty-brown, b. (2010b). difficult journeys: accessing refugee protection in indonesia. monash university law review, 36(3), 1-32. thomson, m. (2006). migrants on the edge of europe – perspectives from malta, cyprus and slovenia. sussex migration working paper 35. sussex, uk: centre for migration research. united nations general assembly. (1979). report of the secretary-general on meeting on refugees and displaced persons in south-east asia, 20-21 july 1979. new york, ny: unhcr. retrieved from http://www.unhcr. org/refworld/docid/3ae68f420.html united nations high commissioner for refugees. unhcr (2000). the state of the world’s refugees: fifty years of humanitarian action. oxford, uk: oxford university press. united nations high commissioner for refugees. (2004-2011). statistical yearbook. geneva, switzerland: unhcr. united states committee for refugees and immigrants. (2001). paying the price: australia, indonesia try to stop asylum seekers. refugee reports, 22(8). retrieved from http://www.refworld.org/docid/3c58099a1. html yen, t. (1995). the closing of the saga of the vietnamese asylum seekers: the implications on international refugees and human rights laws. houston journal of international law 17(3), 463-517. mobile technology in the lives of thai immigrants in germany mobile technology in the lives of thai immigrants in germany sirima thongsawang ► sirima thongsawang. (2016). mobile technology in the lives of thai immigrants in germany. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 9(2), 295-300. this paper examines the role of mobile technology in the lives of thai immigrants in berlin. by using qualitative research methods, this research investigates how new digital and social media applications have affected the organization of thai immigrants on both individual and institutional levels, with a particular focus on the royal thai embassy in berlin. mobile technologies today are widely used in the diaspora, by both individuals and social institutions, to maintain relationships with the homeland and to promote national affairs. both individual thai immigrants and official staff of the embassy rely significantly on internet sites, particularly on social networking sites such as facebook, to gain information on thailand and to expand their networks. this paper explores changes in communication and their implications for thais and their respective institutions in germany. keywords: berlin; mobile technology; royal thai embassy; social networking sites; thai migration  introduction and background across continents, the emergence of new communication channels has changed the central means to acquire information. private individuals and social organizations increasingly use mobile technologies as tools to search information and convey their message. the nature of information is also subject to change. information acquisition has been moved from physical materials to digital media not least due to the fast pace of online connections (harper, 2011, pp. 55-56). among the variety of immigrant groups in germany, thai people make up a large number of foreign citizens. the immigration statistics of germany collected in 2014, reveal that 58,827 thais reside in germany (statistisches bundesamt, 2015). this number includes the first and second generation of thais in germany who still hold thai citizenship. thai immigrants have established networks and created group activities to stay connected with other members of the community throughout germany. before the development of widespread social media use, a large number of thai immigrants in berlin were only passive receivers of letters and flyers and lacked opportunities to respond. today, these ‘audiences’ no longer take a passive role, but a more interactive and productive role (e.g., chen, 2011, p. 757; livingstone, 2004, p. 5). individuals can now instantly give feedback or comment on a given data via social media platforms. new media and mobile technologies have created new ways of communication that serve people in different circumstances, locations, times, and purposes. forschungswerkstatt  research workshop w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 16 .2 -8 296 sirima thongsawang  aseas 9(2) moreover, media ideologies point at people’s capacity to interpret communicative possibilities and define the material limitations of particular channels (gershon, 2010; thompson, 2009). the online platforms most favored by thai people in germany include skype, facebook messenger, line, whatsapp, and different providers’ operating systems such as blackberry message service (bbm) and apple’s imessage. offering instant message services, these mobile social media platforms facilitate communication and information exchange and distribution among users equipped with portable computers and mobile phones. this paper examines the role of mobile technologies in the daily lives of thai immigrants and in the organization and work of related institutions such as the royal thai embassy in berlin. the main objectives of this study are to demonstrate the interplay between popular uses of mobile technologies and thai immigration to germany, and to explore the changes triggered by the application of new media in representative organizations and institutions. the author argues that social media have become the key channel for connecting and networking among thai immigrants in germany. in order to accommodate emerging online practices, the royal thai embassy is now facilitating online inquiries through its website. information dissemination has also shifted from the use of text letters or posters to email or chat messages. as the study shows, previous offline public relations (pr) strategies blocked the flow of communication between thai individuals, respective organizations, and the general public because a number of thai immigrants were unable to fully access traditional media such as newspapers and magazines. this resulted in some thai immigrants disengaging from the circles of the government and their activities. instead, they relied on family and peer networks in order to gather information relating to homeland affairs. many did not participate in national events as information did not reach them in a timely manner. only a few had established their social networks to share information, yet their offline connection remained limited. unlike earlier traditional practices, pr via the internet solved many accessibility problems (thompson, 2009). thus, new media eventually became the solution for the royal thai embassy in berlin to reach thai immigrants living in and outside berlin and engage them in their activities. using interviews and participant observation, this paper scrutinizes current changes in the communication and organization among thai immigrants in berlin. secondary data is drawn mainly from governmental statistics and documents. interviews with the royal thai embassy staff and thai people with migration background living in berlin were carried out in the period from june to september, 2015. research insights the study showed that mobile technologies are widely employed at both individual and organizational levels. both formal and informal communication ranging from official announcements from the royal thai embassy to everyday chatting occur on social media platforms and rapidly replace more traditional media. previously, many thai immigrants were not able to access information provided by the embassy because relevant news resources were limited to those well-connected groups living in the city centers. as the royal thai embassy in berlin reported, while it was 297mobile technology in the lives of thai immigrants in germany its obligation to take care of its people, prior to using digital media, difficulties in information distribution platforms prevailed. the embassy facilitated thai people’s immigration, offered various services, and promoted thai people’s relations to the host country in every dimension. pr was considered the key tool to achieve these obligations; however, traditional media such as official leaflet announcements, posters, or the circulation of letters did not efficiently support the organization’s tasks. the emergence of new digital media allowed a broader dissemination of information. it also affected the relations between the embassy and thai immigrants in germany on the whole, from communication and activities that were more interpersonal and official, to those more community-oriented and participative. the embassy now attempts to reach out to thais overseas and learn more about them in order to promote their social welfare in the host country and keep them informed about developments in thailand. new media worked well to serve these missions, staff reported. as mobile technologies transformed migrants’ daily routes of communication, it also affected their homeland family attachments and the establishment of social networks at home and abroad. the embassy played a central role in upholding these ties. mobile phones today are used for various purposes, particularly for long-distance communication. thai immigrants in germany retain ties with their families in thailand by connecting to the internet via their mobile phones at no extra cost. thus, they can stay in touch with family and homeland affairs much more often compared to previous times. thais nowadays are far more active in using the internet via their mobile devices (fairfield, 2015), implying that there are more opportunities for them to automatically receive news from their social networks. in addition, portable devices such as smartphones or tablets make it possible for migrants to join family activities as if they were together. placing tablets on the table at dinner time surrounded by family members and relatives in the country of origin is part of thai immigrants’ regular practices. indeed, eating or having dinner together with the family is perceived as a very social pleasantry; thais like to eat together, share food, and hold conversations while dining (“understanding thai food”, 2011). thus, it can be argued that new media have changed some of the living patterns of thai immigrants, from being physically separated from their homeland to being virtually connected via multimedia. social media platforms allow users to enjoy talking with each other not only by sending and receiving text and voice messages, but also by exchanging pictures, video clips, and music. these multiple functions of smartphones are reported to enable ways of communication that appear more realistic and natural: i’ve been here for 11 years. in the beginning, i contacted my family using a prepaid phone card. the cost was expensive so i couldn’t call that often. now, we have the internet; it saves a lot, yet the internet quality in the past was not good – slow, unclear, lots of other devices needed to connect in order to make a call. now, it is much better. the internet quality is improved, fast, clear, and inexpensive plus we can use smartphones now. video call is easily made from a mobile phone. it makes conversations from overseas more natural comparing to the abroad communication 10 years ago. (vorapol, 33 years old, thai migrant, 12 july 2015, berlin) 298 sirima thongsawang  aseas 9(2) furthermore, mobile phones serve as information hubs; thai migrants watch news, read articles, and listen to radio or music online. reportedly, thai institutions had to replace their traditional means of communication and information dissemination by digital resources: i would say numerous thai immigrants in berlin i work with do not seem to prefer highly informative sources. they like entertainment or merely summary of texts. we have to adjust information in the form of pictures and few sentences of short summary to communicate with thais here. (suree, 37 years old, embassy staff, 3 september 2015, berlin) a staff member of the royal thai embassy reported that short messages, pictures, and group chat would better fit thai immigrants’ lifestyle and preferences since some of them had a limited ability to read and write in both thai and german. moreover, the increased demand for social media, and the exchange of music, news, and videos online among thai people is likely to continue in the future, along with the arrival of the fourth generation (4g) of wireless broadband services (suchit, 2016). mobile technologies foster transnational social networks and, as such, encourage migration. facebook groups like thai students in berlin and brandenburg (ts ber-brand) and thai asa münchen offer space for potential migrants to post their questions on topics such as visa procedures, documents required for a student visa, courses available in german universities or german language schools, fees, etc. thai immigrants who already reside in germany can also advertise their businesses to potential migrants such as job vacancies or vacant rooms. social networking sites are not only a space for seeking job opportunities, housing, and socializing, but also an online forum for people to set up their transnational network in order to share their feelings and experiences in the host land. for instance, the deutsch-thai/thaideutsch dolmetscher/übersetzer (german-thai/thai-german translator) network on facebook currently hosts 812 members aiming to help migrants and potential newcomers to establish their networks by also learning german. it is an interactive online forum in which many thai immigrants in berlin and prospective immigrants to germany take part. the use of the internet was also found to promote thai integration. a number of websites administrated by the thai government, for instance, www.thaiembassy. de, m.mfa.go.th, www.thaibizgermany.com/de, and dtan.thaiembassy.de, provide information on aspects of everyday life, career, language, education, and laws in germany. apart from these government run websites, a number of private thai institutions take part in facilitating the process of integration, for example thai articulate their rights abroad (thara), puer thai e.v. berlin, ban ying e.v., and thk translation. these privately run websites aim to provide migrants with useful information with regard to life in germany. today, potential migrants can also learn from the experiences of other immigrants through private blogs such as thai freundschaft gruppe erlangen (thai friendship group erlangen) or educatepark. the information made available on these websites prepares migrants to adjust and comply with laws in the host country, unlike in the past when they lacked both understanding and sources of information regarding regulations and decent practices of living in germany: 299mobile technology in the lives of thai immigrants in germany recently, after we uploaded guidelines concerning registration, consular services, and laws in daily life of germany on our facebook page and website, i noticed that many thai immigrants were more confident and brought correct and complete documents when contacting us. . . . it is much faster to proceed documents for them in the embassy now. (maneeya, 36 years old, embassy staff, 4 june 2015, berlin) our clients do not have to physically come at the embassy to inquire. they can drop questions in our emailbox or facebook inbox and we simply reply them in a short time manner – generally within 24 hours. for example, a thai traveler in germany lost his passport, i could advise him what to do on facebook, and things were solved without requiring his presence in the embassy. (prapapen, 35 years old, embassy staff, 4 june 2015, berlin) mobile technologies had a strong impact on the working relationships between the royal thai embassy staff and its clients. it replaced the old working styles of the organization by a phenomenon known as “time shifting”. now staff could even set up their own online network groups in order to convey information via line chat or other instant message applications. additionally, mobile technologies reduced the communication hierarchy. previously, when staff needed to consult their supervisors, they had to follow the formal procedure by making an appointment with the secretary first. staff had to check and wait for their supervisors’ vacant slot and ensure they were in town. in contrast, today staff had set up line group chats where all staff members participate. junior staff can post their questions directly to their supervisors in the group chat. online communication has shown to have influenced offline hierarchies in ways that allow junior staff to communicate and work together closer and faster without going through order scales. conclusion thai immigrants to germany increasingly build their transnational social networks through the use of new social media platforms. these ever expanding communication networks stimulate migration and prepare potential migrants for integration while facilitating life overseas. as in the case of the royal thai embassy in berlin, mobile technology clearly affected organizational culture: the communication hierarchy is reported to have diminished, allowing them to adopt flat organizational structures. pr via internet channels has strengthened the organization’s capacity to promote the country’s diplomatic affairs. the relationship between the embassy and thai immigrants has also changed, allowing for online social networking. due to the short-term nature of this research, this case reveals only a limited number of aspects related to the larger project of studying the interplay between new digital and mobile technologies and thai migration to germany. as such, it does not meet requirement of a deeper historical, political, and social contextualization of the transnational paths of thai migrants. yet, these initial findings may be indicative in exploring broader questions such as modern reinterpretations of enduring social hierarchies or the medial representation of thai politics. in conclusion, i assert that new technolo300 sirima thongsawang  aseas 9(2) gies, most prominently social media, have affected thais’ lifestyles and apparently improved much of their family and institutional relations in germany and at home.  references chen, g. m. (2011). tweet this: a u&g perspective on how active twitter use gratifies a need to connect to others. retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/216724030_tweet_this_a_ug_ perspective_on_how_active_twitter_use_gratifies_a_need_to_connect_to_others fairfield, j. (2015). a complete guide to internet and social media usage in thailand. retrieved from http:// tech.thaivisa.com/complete-insight-internet-social-media-usage-thailand/3147/ gershon, i. (2010). media ideologies: an introduction. journal of linguistic anthropology, 20, 283-293. harper, t. (2011). democracy in the age of new media: the politics of the spectacle. new york: peter lang. livingstone, s. (2004). the challenge of changing audiences or, what is the audience researcher to do in the age of the internet? retrieved from http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/412/1/challenge_of_changing_audiences_-_spoken_version.pdf statistisches bundesamt. (2015). ausländische bevölkerung in deutschland 2014. retrieved from https://www.destatis.de/de/publikationen/statistischesjahrbuch/statistischesjahrbuch2015.pdf?__ blob=publicationfile suchit leesa-nguansuk. (2016). thai users consumed by smartphones. bangkok post. retrieved from http://www.bangkokpost.com/tech/local-news/835456/thai-users-consumed-by-smartphones thompson, e. c. (2009). mobile phones, communities and social networks among foreign workers in singapore. global networks, 9(3), 359-380. understanding thai food culture what we’ve learned. (2011). as we travel.com. retrieved from http:// www.aswetravel.com/understanding-thai-food-culture/ about the author sirima thongsawang is lecturer at the kasem bundit university in thailand. she earned her phd from humboldt university of berlin, germany, in 2015. besides southeast asian studies, her research interests more specifically concern the topics of migration, globalization, and inequality. ► contact: sirima.tho@kbu.ac.th book review: aspinall, e. & sukmajati, m. (eds.). (2016). electoral dynamics in indonesia. money politics, patronage and clientelism at the grassroots. book review: aspinall, e. & sukmajati, m. (eds.). (2016). electoral dynamics in indonesia. money politics, patronage and clientelism at the grassroots. singapore: nus press. isbn 978-981-4722-04-9. 449 pages. ► stange, g. (2017). book review: aspinall, e. & sukmajati, m. (2016). electoral dynamics in indonesia. money politics, patronage and clientelism at the grassroots. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 10(1), 125-128. in 2018, indonesia will celebrate the 20th anniversary of its democratization process that was augmented after the fall of long-term authoritarian president suharto in may 1998. since then, indonesia has witnessed four legislative elections (1999, 2004, 2009, and 2014), which were generally welcomed as largely free and fair. however, the extent to which indonesian politics in general – and elections specifically – are being dominated by money politics, patronage, and clientelism remains one of the main concerns of many scholars and observers (e.g., aspinall, 2013; hadiz & robison, 2013; mietzner, 2013; robertson-snape, 1999; simandjuntak, 2012; van klinken, 2009). in this respect, it appears that the 2014 legislative elections marked a disturbing peak. in the introduction to their edited volume electoral dynamics in indonesia1, edward aspinall and mada sukmajati describe the role money politics played in the 2014 elections as “the most ‘massive’ it had ever been” (p. 2). the research presented in aspinall’s and sukmajati’s volume aims at “identifying the chief mechanisms that indonesian legislative candidates used to appeal to voters [in the 2014 legislative elections]” (p. ix). the volume originates from an impressive collaborative research project comprising 50, mostly indonesian, researchers who observed the lead up to the 2014 national legislative elections in 20 of indonesia’s 34 provinces.2 all in all, 1,500 interviews with candidates and campaigners were conducted and hundreds of campaign events observed. the book comprises 23 chapters – a comprehensive introduction and 22 case studies that present empirical data from across indonesia. in their introduction “patronage and clientelism in indonesian electoral politics”, aspinall and sukmajati give a brief overview of relevant works on patronage and clientelism in indonesian politics, explain the research design and goals, summarize the main findings of the case studies, and last but not least, hint to limitations of the volume while pointing out desiderates for further research. in reviewing the literature on the role of patronage and clientelism in indonesian politics, the authors cite a wide range of publications that stress the key role of patronage and clientelist practices in indonesian electoral as well as 1 an indonesian version of the edited volume was published in 2014. 2 the research was conducted in the frame of a larger research project on money politics in southeast asia, comprising malaysia, indonesia, thailand, and the philippines. rezensionen  book reviews w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 17 .1 -1 1 126 gunnar stange  aseas 10(1) party politics. at the same time, the authors criticize the limited knowledge that exists regarding the actual workings and functioning of such mechanisms as compared to other southeast asia countries (e.g., thailand). accordingly, the case studies presented in chapters 13 to 16, describe in detail how vote buying actually works for the first time. although the research underpinning the volume did not exclusively focus on patronage politics by legislative candidates, the authors conclude that “patronage distribution is the central mode of political campaigning in indonesian legislative elections” (p. 5). this is not only supported by the findings of all 22 case studies presented in the volume but also illustrated by statements of candidates quoted in the introduction who, after the elections, publicly regretted their decision to refrain from handing out monetary incentives. but, what is it that actually made patronage feature so prominently in the 2014 elections? aspinall and sukmajati go into depth to find answers to this question – which also is the main argument of the volume – by looking into the legal changes in the indonesian elections legislation over the past 15 years. in its second3 democratic elections in 1999, indonesia used a fully closed proportional representation system. in this system, the place of a candidate on the party list, and on the ballot paper accordingly, decided whether or not he or she would win a seat in an electoral district. then, starting in 2009, indonesia’s election legislation changed to a fully open-list proportional representation, which meant that the candidate who was able to accumulate the most individual votes in an electoral district would win the seat, provided that the party surpassed the electoral threshold. this led to the paradox that suddenly legislative candidates no longer see candidates from other parties as their main competitors but those coming from their own party ranks. in this logic, it became more rational for candidates to rely on highly individualist, not party-based campaign strategies and to pursue as many individual votes as possible. in their analysis of the case studies assembled in the volume, aspinall and sukmajati offer a typology of different kinds of patronage that featured as reoccurring patterns in the elections. they distinguish between (1) vote buying, (2) individual gifts, (3) services and activities, (4) club goods, and (5) pork barrel projects. vote buying (1), here, is understood as the distribution of money or goods to voters with the expectation that beneficiaries would repay the favor with their vote. the case studies presented in chapter 14 to 17 on rural east and central java not only describe thickly the actual practice of vote buying but also reveal that, in these areas, it seemed to be more common as well as more socially accepted than in other researched areas. individual gifts (2) consisted of different categories such as ‘election merchandise’ like calendars showing the candidate’s picture and name, food items like rice, clothing, or household items. these goods were both distributed on house-to-house visits and campaign events, either by the candidate himor herself or by campaign teams. the authors admit that it is difficult to sharply distinguish between vote buying and individual gifts. what is more important, though, is that many of the interviewed candidates did not consider individual gift distribution as part of money politics. services and activities (3) that were provided by candidates included sports competitions, community parties, prayer meetings, and cooking demonstrations, to name just a 3 the first democratic indonesian legislative elections were held in 1955 (feith, 1957). 127book review few. this also included the ‘distribution’ of free health insurance or the assistance for voters to access government services such as health or scholarship programs. club goods (4) were a kind of patronage that targeted social groups in a certain locality rather than individuals. they included, inter alia, donations for the renovation of public infrastructure or farming equipment. in many cases, candidates used community leaders as vote brokers to ensure the electoral support of their communities. based on these insights, the authors conclude that many candidates considered club goods morally and legally superior to other forms of patronage but less reliable in garnering voters’ actual support. as opposed to all other forms of patronage, pork barrel projects are not funded privately but are “geographically targeted and publicly funded benefits in repayment of, or expectation of, political support” (p. 24). this meant that candidates promised to fund public programs in their electoral district paid by the so-called aspiration funds (dana aspirasi) that indonesian legislators have on their disposal to respond to their constituencies’ ‘aspirations’. the 22 case studies in the volume are mapped out like a ‘legislative journey’ from aceh, the westernmost province of indonesia, to the central highlands of papua in the east of the archipelago state. all in all, they cover seven election campaigns on sumatra, ten on java, one on kalimantan, two on sulawesi, one in east nusa tenggara, and two in papua. the editors decided to group the case studies geographically rather than thematically as similar patterns of election campaigning emerged in all of them. furthermore, the research project focused especially on the effects of different social, political, and economic factors as well as constituency size on campaigning strategies. accordingly, the case study sites vary not only regarding ethnic, religious, and social composition but also in terms of scale and scope: while some of them closely observed campaigning in only one or two electoral districts of a city (kota) or a district (kabupaten), others looked at dynamics in a whole district or even province. in addition, while some focused on the legislative races for a district parliament only, others compared races for all three legislative levels (national, provincial, district/city) in one locality. although the book appears to present an inventory of cases rather than a deep comparative analysis, without doubt its value lies in the thick description and documentation of vote buying, patronage, and clientelist dynamics in indonesian elections at the grassroots in highly heterogeneous localities. the case studies are well structured and profoundly rich in original research material as well as references. also, the book convincingly demonstrates that there seems to exist what could be termed a ‘unity in diversity’ when it comes to the question of how prominently money politics, patronage, and clientelism actually feature in contemporary indonesian politics. all studies assembled in this edited volume clearly conclude that money politics is considered to be a legitimate means to the end of electoral victory. although no promise of winning the race exists for whoever spends most on the campaign, the findings of the case studies clearly indicate that there is a widespread believe all over indonesia that electoral campaigns cannot be won without employing money politics, at least to a certain extent. last but not least, although the richness of original and highly interesting fieldwork data assembled in this book speaks for itself, it becomes obvious to the reader that the volume comprises preliminary results of a larger research project, the outcomes of which are yet to be analyzed more comprehensively. it is 128 gunnar stange  aseas 10(1) particularly these future insights, which everyone interested in indonesia’s highly dynamic democratization process should definitely look forward to. gunnar stange university of vienna  references aspinall, e. (2013). a nation in fragments: patronage and neoliberalism in contemporary indonesia. critical asian studies, 45(1), 27-54. feith, h. (1957). the indonesian elections of 1955. ithaca: modern indonesia project, southeast asia program, cornell university. hadiz, v. r., & robison, r. (2013). the political economy of oligarchy and the reorganization of power in indonesia. indonesia, 96(1), 35-57. mietzner, m. (2013). money, power, and ideology: political parties in post-authoritarian indonesia. singapore: nus press. robertson-snape, f. (1999). corruption, collusion and nepotism in indonesia. third world quarterly, 20(3), 589-602. simandjuntak, d. (2012). gifts and promises: patronage democracy in a decentralised indonesia. european journal of east asian studies, 11(1), 99-126. van klinken, g. (2009). patronage democracy in provincial indonesia. in o. törnquist, n. webster, & k. stokke (eds.), rethinking popular representation (pp. 141-159). new york: palgrave macmillan. participatory theater, is it really? a critical examination of practices in timor-leste aseas 6(1) 103102 aktuelle südostasienforschung / current research on south-east asia participatory theater, is it really? a critical examination of practices in timor-leste julia scharinger1 citation scharinger, j. (2013). participatory theater, is it really? a critical examination of practices in timor-leste. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 6(1), 102-119. dance, music, and oral narratives are an important and vibrant part of cultural practice and heritage in timor-leste. but while timorese people have used such creative methods and processes during rituals, celebrations, and their fi ght for independence, today arts and artistic expression become an increasingly popular strategy in development cooperation. especially diff erent forms of so-called participatory theater with origins in development cooperation, arts, and social movements, present themselves as innovative, participatory, and well applicable in terms of capacity building and stimulating positive social transformation. based on the author’s experience and observations, this article critically examines the alliance between various stakeholders in timor-leste engaging with the fact that the current scene of participatory theater can hardly be seen as an independent grassroots or even social movement, rather than an initiated top-down process by donors with specifi c agendas. keywords: development cooperation; empowerment; participatory theater; social change; timorleste tanz, musik und mündliche erzählungen sind ein wichtiger und dynamischer teil der kulturellen praxis und des kulturellen erbes in osttimor. während timoresinnen solche kreativen methoden und prozesse insbesondere in ritualen, feierlichkeiten und ihrem unabhängigkeitskampf nutz(t)en, sind kunst und künstlerische ausdrucksformen heute eine zunehmend populäre strategie in der entwicklungszusammenarbeit geworden. insbesondere unterschiedliche formen des sogenannten partizipativen theaters mit ursprüngen in der entwicklungszusammenarbeit, der kunst und sozialen bewegungen präsentieren sich als innovativ, inklusiv und gut anwendbar in bezug auf capacity building und stimulierung positiver sozialer transformation. aufbauend auf erfahrungen und beobachtungen der autorin untersucht dieser artikel die allianz zwischen unterschiedlichen stakeholdern in osttimor vor dem hintergrund, dass die derzeitige szene des partizipativen theaters kaum als unabhängige grassrootsoder gar soziale bewegung angesehen werden kann, sondern eher als ein von oben initiierter prozess von geberinstitutionen mit spezifi schen vorstellungen. schlagworte: entwicklungszusammenarbeit; empowerment; partizipatives theater; sozialer wandel; osttimor 1 julia scharinger earned a master degree in political science at the university of vienna and is currently finishing her master degree in international development studies at the same university. scharinger functions as vice-president of theatre of the oppressed – vienna and as international early childhood education advisor for a local ngo in timorleste. contact: scharinger.julia@gmail.com d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -6 .1 -6 aseas 6(1) 103102 introduction development projects and practitioners all around the world claim to use arts as participatory tool to engage people and communities in processes of creation and recreation to transform life and societies as well as strengthen peace and development (sloman, 2011, p. 1). this is also the case in timor-leste – the youngest nation in south-east asia with a long history of violence, conflict, and deprivation of basic rights and needs (commission for reception, truth and reconciliation in timor-leste [cavr], 2005). celebrating the 10th anniversary of independence last year, its second quite peaceful elections, and the withdrawal of the un after a decade of almost ongoing presence, timor-leste is still struggling with coming to terms with its past. people and communities are divided and traumatized and while a small middle class is slowly emerging, the majority of people hardly benefit from the country’s oil wealth and emerging economy – especially in rural areas (scharinger, 2012). as such, timor-leste seems to be a highly attractive field for a variety of development agencies and organizations and while some agencies focus on capacity building of high-level-ministries, others engage with local communities trying to stimulate positive social change in areas like peace, health, or women’s empowerment. in the face of widespread illiteracy, difficult access to remote areas, widespread fragmentation, and ongoing conflicts and violence, more and more organizations adopt theater activities to spread their message and acknowledge arts’ positive contribution to healing, reconciliation, and identity-building (epskamp, 1984, p. 46). moreover, participatory arts projects are widely perceived as being rather inexpensive and having desirable impacts on people’s lives by forming relations to indigenous knowledge and cultural understanding. exploring relations between important stakeholders in timor-leste mostly through participatory observation and critical analysis of performances and performing groups,2 this paper acknowledges the challenging work and positive effects of participatory theater3, while specifically drawing attention to 2 the author gained insights and experiences as a research student and theater practitioner working with a youth group in dili, in 2011. since late 2012, her activities focus less on practical application but rather on observing and analyzing different groups and activities within and outside development cooperation structures. 3 with terms like theater for development (tfd), community theater, applied theater, popular theater, educational theater, or theater for social change, a vast amount of terminology was created and even though these terminologies show differences in appearance and appliance, all of them have the common basis of applying participatory methods of theater in non-conventional spaces with non-conventional actors and audience. therefore, this paper uses the term participatory theater to cover the variety of participatory practices, which usually work outside the area of conventional theater. julia scharinger participatory theater, is it really? a critical examination of practices in timor-leste aseas 6(1) 105104 critical and often contradictory applications and impacts. by adding perspectives of emerging and shifting paradigms and working methods of development cooperation (dc) to the analysis of participatory theater in timor-leste, i hope to gain a clearer understanding of such paradoxical applications. from modernization to participation in development cooperation in the 1950s and 1960s – the widely assumed ‘birth’ of development in theory and practice – the most preeminent development theory was the one of modernization and growth then adopted by most of the countries recently released into independence. based on the us’ experience with investing in infrastructure and technology, development was solely defined as a single-linear and evolutionary process of economic growth with developed countries being just a few steps ahead of the colonial and post-colonial countries (rostow, 1960). starting in the mid-1960s, however, it became more and more apparent that modernization and growth were not the only road to development. in fact, after a decade of focusing solely on modernizing society and stimulating infrastructure and economic growth, countries faced internal problems such as stagnation of economy, corruption, and fragmentation of society. especially social scientists in latin america related the problems of so-called underdeveloped countries to dependencies between countries and regions within the global world system (cardoso & faletto, 1979; esteva, 1993). and even though they too did not manage fully and satisfactorily to explain the world and its dynamics, people started to question the very ideas and approaches of development per se. as can be seen with the emergence of the theory of post-development, this resulted in a deep and existential crisis of development in theory and practice (ziai, 2007). it was during this time, when former british colonial administrator and new postcolonial development practitioner robert chambers grew increasingly skeptical towards common top-down development approaches and undertook his first steps on a new path of participatory development. he argued that not ngos or donor organizations should have the primary power in decision-making over development issues but rather the targeted communities themselves (chambers, 1994). though the aseas 6(1) 105104 very concept of participation was not new at all – one need only to think about the greek acropolis or traditional community meetings – with this, chambers managed to introduce the very concepts of participation, ownership, and empowerment into dc and its related scientific discourse. with dc being criticized as more and more ineffective, exclusive, and ignorant in terms of cultural and social structures and skills, participation seemed to be the best approach to overcome local and global challenges, backlashes, and critics (chambers, 2004). research presented the empowering and overall positive effects of such approaches, which were additionally viewed as fairly inexpensive and simple (chambers, 1994). for example, theater was and is being celebrated as an ideal method of integrating stakeholders as holistic human beings into projects and empowering them to be their own “motors of change”: if development is understood as a process in which people’s conditions – material, social, political or cultural – are changed, then theatre with its immense transformative potential seems to be an ideal form through which to explore a community’s developmental aspirations and possibilities. (prentki, 1998, p. 420) accordingly, even initially criticized donors such as the world bank adopted chambers’ participatory approaches and mainstreamed them into their agendas (cornwall, 2008). as a result, a set of participatory and creative methods of community-based work – including theater – was developed or integrated into dc approaches and donor frameworks. theater and development practitioners started to adopt participatory and often community-based approaches towards their own work and with the rise of the 1970s’ social movements, links between arts and socio-political activism grew stronger and stronger (boal, 2001). with the rise of these social movements – promoting for example gender equality, environmental sustainability, democracy, or human rights – came major changes in socio-political spheres and discourses, which eventually also impacted the status of arts in society and arts itself. james thompson and richard schechner (2004), for example, argue that until the 1960s and 1970s the “aesthetic” or conventional theater was dominant in western countries and their colonial or post-colonial counterparts. then, however “’the theatre’ ceased to exist as a single entity” and many kinds of different theaters for different audiences and with specific social agendas emerged (thompson & schechner, pp. 11-12). even though artists were at all times aware of the great space for reflection, analysis, criticism of mechanisms of power, and stimulation of social change that theater could offer – one need only to think about shakejulia scharinger participatory theater, is it really? a critical examination of practices in timor-leste aseas 6(1) 107106 speare or brecht 4 –, in the 1970s, they started to incorporate education theorist paulo freire’s approach of critical pedagogy in their theater (freire, 1972). this approach attempted to liberate people and stimulate social transformation by engaging the audience into dialogue and valuing local and traditional knowledge. theater practitioners all around the world realized that “only dialogue, which requires critical thinking, is also capable of generating critical thinking. without dialogue, there is no communication, and without communication, there can be no true education” (freire, p. 65). consequently, they started to search for theater methods and approaches, which could overcome the barrier between theater and people to open up spaces for dialogue and interaction between actors and audience in order to encourage people’s participation in arts, just like in their individual and social realities (cf. ganguly, 2011). moreover, especially artists in colonial and post-colonial countries aimed to liberate their theaters from influences of western dramaturgy, approaches, and theatrical methods. by re-opening theater to a wide audience rather than only to those who could afford it and by returning to pre-colonial and participatory styles of theater, they sought to re-establish and remodel indigenous theater approaches and methods, which were meaningful in their country’s socio-political situation (boal, 2001; prentki, 1998). in such approaches, rather than delegating power to an imagined character or a single director, people are asked to identify issues of concerns and to imagine and discuss possible solutions. with forumtheater, for example, famous inventor of theater of the oppressed, augusto boal, stages a play based on a community’s concern and then asks this very community to engage in a creative process of envisioning and acting upon possible solutions themselves, eventually leading to a transformative process inspiring activism for social transformation and personal behavior change. with encouraging people from the audience to come up on stage and rewrite the script according to their envisioned solutions, they are not only engaged in a tremendously empowering and participatory moment, but also provided with a safe space to test and modify their ideas (boal, 2002). most commonly, participatory theater groups are either asked to create a performance based on issues and concerns they explored together with members of communities, which will then be presented to the relevant communities along with 4 shakespearean and brechtian theater are two well researched and discussed examples of how artists in different centuries have been able to utilize drama for the purposes of analyzing and challenging political power structures and social behavior (cf. boal, 2001; prentki, 2003). aseas 6(1) 107106 discussions of possible solutions. alternatively, facilitators of participatory theater work with the relevant communities themselves to identify issues of concern and create performances. participatory theater, however, is not only used to express one’s worries or challenges of life. drawing from my own experience as joker and actress, while usually the focus is put on the outcome of a project – in this case a performance – the process of engagement and creation of such a performance is just as important. for example, in working with victims of violence such a process can provide a safe space to explore and express their experiences and current situation, while also having positive effects on trauma-recovery such as identity-rebuilding, disruption of processes of isolation, reconnection of the physical, intellectual, and emotional self, or encouragement and empowerment to engage in social activism. such plays are then rarely performed in traditional playhouses but rather staged on streets, public places, in traditional meeting spaces, schools, prisons, or other institutions, inviting an alternative and often spontaneous audience to watch. cultural practices in timor-leste throughout the emergence of dc and participatory theater approaches, timor-leste was fighting to come into existence. until the 1970s, the eastern part of timor island was a neglected colony of portugal and when independence seemed to be within reach, indonesian troops invaded their neighboring country in 1975, claiming it as indonesian territory for more than 20 years. the timorese resisted the indonesian ‘culturization’ and tried to preserve their cultural identity and practices while also communicating secret messages amongst each other. as such, social dramas of rituals and community celebrations were an important and vibrant setting to preserve traditional songs, dances, and oral narratives, promoting the cultural identity of timorese warrior clans and kingdoms (dunphy, 2012, p. 187). at the same time, they were used in demonstrations and protests to promote the struggle for independence and self-determination. however, the period of the indonesian occupation had a fundamental impact on the country’s cultural heritage. with the aim of assimilating the timorese traditional social fabric, community and traditional leaders and story tellers were a primary target of oppression and killing, should they refuse to collaborate julia scharinger participatory theater, is it really? a critical examination of practices in timor-leste aseas 6(1) 109108 with the indonesian forces (cavr, 2005). especially during the days of the invasion and the brutal genocide in 1999, much of the country’s traditional infrastructure was destroyed together with thousands of people being killed (cavr, 2005). with timor-leste being an oral society, much of its cultural heritage and practice was therefore lost within a short period of time, since people were not able to transmit their knowledge and powers to their successors. after indonesia withdrew in 1999, the country’s cultural heritage was further endangered by socio-economic pressure and the vast amount of external influence as the un and other international organizations established themselves on the ground. fearing the loss of culture, timorese artists and youth engaged – and were engaged by ngos, governments, and international artists – in the preservation, but also recreation and reshaping of culture, history, and identity, eventually promoting peace and development (dunphy, 2012). as a result, and often internationally supported, new arts initiatives such as the arte moris free art school (living art free art school) in the capital city of dili, afalyca (wild people) in baucau, or the lospalos centre for traditional and contemporary arts and culture came into existence. incorporating various visual and fine arts forms, these initiatives combined traditional practices with elements of contemporary arts, further claiming on a positive impact in terms of trauma recovery, peace-building, and popular education.5 inand outside such structures, in the past 10 years, a lot of more or less well-known theater groups arose and declined again all over the country. well-known examples would be the arte moris performance group bibi bulak (crazy goats, which stopped operating at the end of 2012), the sanggar haburas based in lospalos, or the nafo fila in ainaro. the following examples and critical examination of participatory theater in relation to dc is mostly based upon experience and insights working with or observing theater projects and groups in dili, directly placed within the structures of ngos, while at the same time also being hired by other ngos for advocacy purposes. 5 cf. arte moris’ website: www.artemoris.org; http://www.whitehorse.vic.gov.au/ignitionsuite/uploads/docs/afalyca%20flier%202.pdf; http://manyhands.org.au/our_activities/lospalos_centre_for_traditional_and_contemporary_arts_and_culture aseas 6(1) 109108 the reality of practice in participatory theater while participatory theater in theory is a process led by, with, and for communities, in the timorese reality it is often a process initiated and guided by external, nonartistic actors within local or global dc structures. this makes not only sustainability and effectiveness questionable but also results in donor-driven agendas and practices (etherton & prentki, 2006; sloman, 2011). a detailed exploration of the involved actors reveals the hierarchy between stakeholders and messages sent to each other. therefore, it can provide insights on the gorge between theory and reality of participatory theater as applied in timor-leste. when the donor writes the script when donors such as international organizations (ios) or ngos approach theater groups and provide funding in exchange for a play based on a specific topic, artists often find limitations, regulations, and stereotypes that weaken autonomous creative exploration, expression, and overall political dynamics such groups could have or develop. oftentimes, actors explore issues in and with communities and engage in a series of briefings and discussions with respective donor organizations. however, when it comes to scripting the play, the donors show a lack of trust and value in the group’s knowledge and skills. this problem can be seen with the preparation of a theater play in dili. asked to create a play about gender equality and women’s empowerment, a theater group consisting of young and inspired actors committed to promote change and transformation of their society, examined living situations in nearby communities and engaged with national and international standards and human rights. after this research process, they created a humorous script with the main female character aiming to run for president at the next elections and facing numerous challenges before she can do so. the donors, however, had a very different idea of how this topic should be approached. within a few meetings and review sessions of the developed script, the groups’ ideas were completely overturned, and the emerging play showed a traditional family arguing over who was to do the dishes. the donors firmly controlled the content and performance, highlighting that some political spheres should better remain untouched and unchallenged. additionally, their tremendous interference showed that their message and its promotion were julia scharinger participatory theater, is it really? a critical examination of practices in timor-leste aseas 6(1) 111110 the chief concerns, whereas creative and aesthetic dimensions together with appreciation of the theater groups’ ideas and practices were irrelevant. technical experts sent to review and reshape scripts often lack experience in script-writing, theater, or engaging in the indigenous creative thought process in a participatory and respectful way. as a consequence, the resulting scripts lack aesthetical quality, cultural relevance, political linkages, or simply factors of entertainment. moreover, such scripts reflect donors’ attitudes of superiority and their ideas of theater being a fairly inexpensive way to educate people and communicate messages in the face of lack of infrastructure. prentki (2003) makes these consequences clear: as long as a development process leaves the affective aspects of human beings out of account, it will never succeed in facilitating changes of attitude and behavior. people may pay lip-service to transformational goals but in their hearts they will remain untouched and unreconstructed. (p. 41) furthermore, controlling processes of exploring and expressing individual and social realities within a public space in timor-leste sends a very concerning message to a population, which is part of a transition process from an oppressed nation during indonesian occupation to an independent democratic state. it is vital to mention here that, until today, most timorese are growing up and being educated in a style which does not encourage critical reflection, analytical skills, or freedom of expression, but rather obedience to authority. tightly controlling a presumably creative and critical process creates another authoritarian space where timorese are not able to acquire knowledge and skills regarding democratic citizenship and creative and peaceful self-expression. this problem has also been encountered within theater groups outside of timor-leste. reflecting upon forumtheater and its potential influence on democracy in india, director and founder of famous forumtheater group jana sanskriti, sanjoy ganguly, shows the challenge of developing political citizenship in a context where ngos – just like politicians – aim to use arts for their “publicity machinery” (ganguly, 2011, pp. 62-63). in such cases, theater becomes another mode of “one-way communication”, where the message is worked out beforehand and the sole role of theater is to “persuade people to adopt the new practice or participate in a certain program” (kidd, 1984, p. 270). reports and evaluations following such top-down-approaches consequently show the same lack of incitement and sensitivity to people’s actual needs. as etherton and prentki (2006) point out, the very definition of impact and transformation is not aseas 6(1) 111110 neutral, and especially ngos working on a project-basis do not have the means or mechanisms to evaluate any long-term effects and sustainability (pp. 140-141). while in reports and evaluation, participatory theater is often stated to be efficient, effective, and sustainable, the focus rests more on numbers of performances, participants, and audience rather than on generating comprehensive and meaningful data: the impact of such theatre cannot be quantified in terms of numbers. certainly the numbers define the outreach statistically, but it is often difficult to gauge what effect it has on the minds of audience members whose values may be engrained in their minds owing to hundreds of years of tradition. (mundrawala, 2007, p. 160) in reality, the very methods of acquiring knowledge regarding sustainable and transformative impacts on behavior change need to be critically examined. for example, a theater group based in dili was hired by an ngo to create a performance to promote conflict transformation skills and tour throughout the country. within two weeks, they performed in 11 of the 13 districts of timor-leste. yet, their only evaluation tool was preand post-surveys handed out to a small percentage of the audience before and after the performance with questions such as “how many tools of conflict prevention do you know?” as a pre-survey-question and “have you learned about tools for conflict prevention while watching the performance?” as part of the post-survey. such questions, however, can by no means be any indication of a decreased use of violence or appearance of conflicts, nor can they indicate long-lasting and sustainable transformation of conflicts or personal behavior. in the given example, the group dropped in and out of communities, performing almost every night in another community. they did not have time to actually engage with their audience and learn about their problems, leaving their play to nothing more than a commercial against conflict and violence however, it is not only communities or the audience who experience a drop-in and -out of donors but also participants in theater projects themselves: for example, identifying school-drop-outs in various communities in dili and involving them in theater and social activism in order to prevent them from being engaged in gangs and violent behavior can be a great project with great outcomes. the youth indeed receive an alternative tool for expression to ease their anger and frustration, they feel empowered and important within their community, and are included in a regular, stable, supportive, and yet challenging environment. in following youth who engage in julia scharinger participatory theater, is it really? a critical examination of practices in timor-leste aseas 6(1) 113112 such projects, it is a wonderful experience for me to observe the transformative and empowering processes stimulated by such projects. however, it is a cause for concern that after a certain period of time, the project finishes or enters another stage, incorporating other youth without providing adequate care and alternative means of expression and engagement for the previous participants. worried about the negative effects on their former participants’ well-being and sustainable positive development, facilitators often spend their spare time to meet and mentor them rather than just let them down. however, as admirable their efforts are, facilitators risk an overload by trying to keep a project or project-cycle alive, which was abandoned by its donors in order to search for new numbers of participants and performances for their reports. top-down approaches it seems to be a universal challenge for urban theater groups with members educated in a conservative development and education philosophy not to enter communities “as empty vessels to be filled with the knowledge by the teacher” (odhiambo, 2005, p. 195). for example, odhiambo gives a shocking account on how theater for development practitioners in kenya are influenced by a sense of superiority due to their university education while at the same time stating that they are not aware of any philosophy or ideology which defines and characterizes their practice (p. 195). similar experiences can be heard from theater researcher syed jamil ahmed (2002): “there is no in-depth analysis of the complexities of life, because, as the development workers often explain, ‘the villagers will not understand it’” (p. 212). observing participatory theater in timor-leste, i find that after experiencing a topdown script writing process, with scripts being hardly designed for or with communities but rather to please specific interests of donors, there is a high risk that such top-down experiences are reflected into scripts and performances themselves. such attitudes and approaches can exacerbate the situation to such an extent that the created play will show severe signs of stereotyping and patronizing traditional culture and elements of society. accordingly, as annie sloman (2011) who worked with different theater groups in timor-leste for several years describes, theater groups often enter “a community and dogmatically [tell] the people how they should change their lives” (p. 4). aseas 6(1) 113112 just like “mr. wise and mr. foolish”, traditional characters are displayed as stupid, ignorant, and violent. they can only be saved by modern characters – often richer and more educated relatives – who suddenly appear for a visit and explain mistakes and solutions to the foolish traditional opponent. without any further discussion, the foolish traditional relatives understand and vow to change. however, “the complexity of people’s lives, of definitions of what constitutes empowerment and transformation, of the ethics of an artist’s involvement in social transformation and of what an arts project can offer, suggest no quick fix” (houston, 2005, p. 167). in fact, performances directed in such a short-minded sense cannot have any deeper impact on people’s lives. not only that people refuse to identify with the stupid, ignorant, and violent “mr. foolish”; such performances can only scratch the surface of the perceived problems and therefore present a very limited and short-framed solution. ignoring the fact that behavioral change or social transformation often consists of a challenging long-term struggle, the audience is provided with the idea that it just takes a few minutes of basic explanation to change people’s perceptions, behavior, and life. prentki (1998), however, points out that “especially when working with groups who have long social and cultural histories of oppression and silence, it is unreasonable to expect the tfd process to be implemented rapidly” (p. 421). additionally, micro-issues and macro-issues cannot be linked and questions of power and accountability remain untouched – what seems especially the case when international or national organizations fund the performances (kerr, 1991, p. 66). the audience becomes a simple receiver of the funding agency’s message and power asymmetries remain unchallenged. for example, displaying a violent husband on stage and teaching him to count from one to ten to regulate his anger does not touch underlying problems of domestic violence, perceptions of power, manliness, or failures of the political system to protect victims from any harm. similarly, performing a play, which encourages people to eat at least five colors per day cannot have any impact as long as people lack access to different kinds of food or crops; not even speaking about topics such as global food dependency or cultural perceptions of richness and poverty. theater groups and donors performing in such a way hardly understand that in order to stimulate the very beginning of transformation of thought and behavior – which itself is never to be guaranteed and certainly not completed after watching a julia scharinger participatory theater, is it really? a critical examination of practices in timor-leste aseas 6(1) 115114 single performance – it needs a creative process and interaction between actor and audience (ganguly, 2011, p. 77). in a hierarchical relationship based on assumptions about the ‘other’ and a feeling of superiority, empathy, mutual respect, and understanding are hardly to be found. this idea is exemplified by augusto boal’s approach that opposes educational, didactical, or propaganda theater in which lessons are simply being delivered to the audience. theater to him is a dialogue and a process of learning together. arts in this sense means the integration of thought, words, and action, otherwise such performances present just another package of development propaganda with participation, empowerment, ownership, and sustainability only being found in project proposals (ganguly, 2011, p. 117). the critical role of the facilitator as can be seen in the preceding critique, a great part of responsibility rests with the theater groups and facilitators. as sloman (2011, p. 15) describes, facilitators need to be multi-skilled “agents of change”, who are able to negotiate between different interest groups, facilitate creative and participatory processes, provide inspiring and encouraging leadership, engage in ongoing and critical self-reflection, and ideally have skills in finance, administration, and project management. they should be independent, with in-depth knowledge of their working context and possess cultural sensitivity and language skills. this is hardly the case in timor-leste, where groups are often set up, run, and/or funded by ngos with international facilitators who come into the country for mostly a short period of time and work or perform for different communities with different cultural and linguistic backgrounds. many groups face conditions, time and other limitations due to both the funding proposals and donors’ agendas, which hardly allow creative exploration and meaningful participation of the ‘real’ stakeholders in terms of agenda setting. if donors for example would expect a performance on youth violence in the streets, whereas the youth engaged are much more interested in the limited access and quality to formal education, the facilitator faces a quandary. if he or she engages with the youth, takes their concerns seriously, and opens up channels to express their grievances, the possible consequence is that donors and employers terminate contracts and funding due to unfulfilled requirements. this will not only aseas 6(1) 115114 harm the employing ngo and restrict its future access to funding, but also the youth who will be left in the middle of an important process of exploring and expressing grievances in non-violent, but creative ways. if, on the other hand, the facilitator decides to stick to the initial proposal and topic, he or she risks that the project and its activities will lack relevance in the eyes of the youth. discussions about who makes the best facilitator are still ongoing; some argue that it is the well-established and experienced facilitators who enjoy greater creative freedom and less dependency on funding mechanisms; others argue that it is especially those well-established and experienced facilitators who become extremely selfconfident and authoritarian rather than participatory and empowering. participating in such a theater of the oppressed-workshop myself, i was astonished by how much the incoming facilitator attempted to streamline her own work-experience with her theater group into a totally different context and how ignorant she was towards the participants’ experiences, interests, and aims. nevertheless, younger and less-established facilitators show similar weaknesses. in timor-leste, it is especially these younger and enthusiastic so-called ‘volunteers’ or ‘youth ambassadors’ who are placed within different ngos and settings and take responsibility for theater groups and projects. these volunteers hardly have a background in development studies or participatory theater but, if so, more often in theater management or fine arts. this often means that performances and the methods of creating them seem more or less like streamlined western theater as the new facilitators are used to from their native countries (lee, 1978, p. 79). overstrained and overwhelmed, they hardly have time to do adequate research – neither about methods and ideas of participatory theater nor about communities’ perceptions and problems. as a consequence, they barely reflect upon their own ideas and approaches, in order to adapt them to new contexts and the challenges they face. already being integrated in dc structures, they are not only at risk but moreover “a compliant tool of northern development agencies” (kerr, 1991, p. 71). as a result, they tend to reinforce hierarchies and stereotypes, not only in their work with theater groups but also in performances. instead of enabling actors and communities to explore and express themselves, they tend to control creative processes and outcomes. but, in a country like timor-leste, where stereotypes about the “uneducated and unskilled timorese” are widely shared amongst international development practitioners, transjulia scharinger participatory theater, is it really? a critical examination of practices in timor-leste aseas 6(1) 117116 ferring leadership and capacity to local stakeholders is meant to be a necessity, and yet often remains an untouched sphere. the worst example observed in such a context was a european master’s candidate conducting research for her thesis and volunteering with a local ngo in dili. twice a week she would join timorese facilitators for their theater classes. while the ngo had offered three-month cycles of theater classes for disaffected and marginalized youth, who were often perpetrators or victims of violence, for approximately a year, it was the first cycle in which two timorese facilitators were given the opportunity and responsibility to handle these classes without international facilitators. within a cycle of three months, the actors should acquire knowledge in different theater methods and explore issues important to them and their communities. afterwards, together with the facilitators, they would create a performance based on these issues and do showcases in their communities. the newly incoming international volunteer was asked to join the classes, observe the facilitators’ performance, and provide ideas and mentoring, based on her own theater experience after the classes. however, soon she would not only enter the stage as a facilitator but also as an actor. she would more or less create lesson plans for the facilitators and step in to show the youth how to act ‘her way’. as a result, both, facilitators and actors felt increasingly intimidated and did not come up with ideas for performances themselves. facing time pressure, facilitators would use scenes from past projects, while the international volunteer would create more scenes. as a result, the actors were increasingly alienated by the planned performance. showing a scene about the empowerment of women, for example, the girls refused to participate because they felt shy dancing to pop music in front of an audience. showing another scene about domestic violence, the male actors acting as husbands did not understand the basic message of the scene and acted more and more violent stimulated by a laughing audience who – accordingly to timorese social behavior – expressed discomfort and distress with laughter. james thompson and richard schechner (2004, p. 15) describe the positive processes and impacts theater can have in post-conflict contexts: with making themselves heard instead of being silenced, victims of violence re-gain action and power over their own lives, what proves to be a highly important process in trauma-healing and recovery. furthermore, in enabling communities to come and work together to understand their past and to move forward while also providing time for joy, relief, aseas 6(1) 117116 and entertainment, new bonds between people are created and the social fabric can re-emerge. with timor-leste being a post-conflict country with high levels of violence in homes and on the streets, theater projects engaging young victims and perpetrators of conflict and violence seem to be very popular, but hardly include people with any background in psychology or drama-therapy (dunphy, 2012, p. 191). in terms of the do no harm-approach, this is highly concerning. instead of traumarecovery, empowerment, community-building, or transformation, inexperienced and unskilled facilitators and projects put great risk on actors and audience in terms of re-traumatization, re-victimization, and reinforcement of social stereotypes. conclusion as this critical examination of ongoing theater activities shows, the current scene of participatory theater in timor-leste can hardly be seen as an independent grassroots movement. originating within a mix of dc, arts, and social movements, it has widely abandoned its relations to arts and social movements and solely follows the premises of dc and its inherent power and economic structures. hence, what ahmed (2002) states in the case of bangladesh is also applicable in timor-leste: at the field level, the ngos, not the people, determine the issues. . . . in turn, the issues of the ngos are determined by the donors’ agenda, where the ‘larger’ have some bargaining power but the ‘smaller’ have none. hence, at the end of the day, whatever their vision, mission or goal, they are geared to fulfilling the donors’ agendas. at the ‘globalised’ level, the donors’ agendas are determined by the interest of multinational capital. (p. 215) integrated in structures of dc, theater practitioners seem to become part of a mainstreamed cultural framework defined by major political actors who are apparently still operating under the premises of top-down approaches of western modernization theory, while hiding under the disguise of participatory approaches. as such, participatory theater has become another tool and label which legitimizes projects claiming to achieve empowerment and ownership of marginalized groups. once believed to be the way out of top-down approaches, cultural insensitivity, and mainstreamed economic development, participatory theater today serves hegemonic interests and mass development. ostensively, participatory tools are integrated in donors’ approaches and frameworks without being sensitive to stakeholders’ needs and julia scharinger participatory theater, is it really? a critical examination of practices in timor-leste aseas 6(1) 119118 wants. by only adopting the techniques of participatory theater rather than the full set of ethics, methods, and approaches, donors manage to take an originally critical and challenging approach and include it into a hierarchy that depends on the acquisition of further funding and is therefore less able to critically examine and challenge power mechanisms and structures which compromise donors’ agendas, interests, or even reputation (faschingeder, 2011, p. 21). as such, participatory theater has in many cases lost its original link to the social movements of the 1970s and lacks ethical, political, and aesthetical quality. furthermore, just like cooke and kothari (2001) criticize that participation has degenerated to a “tyrannical power” oppressing the already poor and marginalized, participatory theater shows a similar potential. this seems even more dangerous, since it inherits the western romanticist idea of arts being initially “good” and “transformative” in and of themselves. as a consequence, participatory theater is at risk, not only of becoming just another meaningless buzzword of dc, but rather of being turned around to defeat its own purpose of liberating and empowering marginalized people. references ahmed, s. j. (2002). wishing for a world without ‘theatre for development’. demystifying the case of bangladesh. research in drama education: the journal of applied theatre and performance, 7(2), 207-219. boal, a. (2002). games for actors and non-actors. london, uk: routledge. boal, a. (2001). hamlet and the baker’s son. my life in theatre and politics. london, uk: routledge. boal, a. (1995). the rainbow of desire. london, uk: routledge. chambers, r. (2004). ideas for development. reflecting forwards. ids working paper 238, institute of development studies, brighton, uk. cardoso, f. h., & faletto, e. (1979). dependency and development in latin america. berkeley, ca: university of california press. chambers, r. (1994). the origins and practice of participatory ural appraisal. world development, 22(7), 953-969. commission for reception, truth and reconciliation in timor-leste. (2005). chega! the report of the commission for reception, truth and reconciliation in timor-leste. retrieved from http://www.cavr-timorleste. org/en/chegareport.htm cooke, b., & kothari, u. (2001). participation. the new tyranny? london, uk: zed books. cornwall, a. (2008). unpacking ‘participation’. models, meanings and practices. community development journal, 43(3), 269-283. aseas 6(1) 119118 dunphy, k. (2012). the role of participatory arts in social change in timor leste. discussing outcomes for project stakeholders. in m. leach, n. c. mendes, a. b. da silva, b. boughton, & a. da costa ximenes (eds.), new research on timor-leste (pp. 187-193). hawthorn, australia: swinburne press. epskamp, k. (1984). going ‘popular’ with culture. theatre as a small-scale medium in developing countries. development and change, 15(1), 43-64. esteva, g. (1993). entwicklung. in wie im westen so auf erden. ein polemisches handbuch zur entwicklungspolitik (pp. 89-121). rohwolt, germany: reinbek bei hamburg. etherton, m., & prentki, t. (2006). drama for change? prove it! impact assessment in applied theatre. research in drama education: the journal of applied theatre and performance, 11(2), 139-155. faschingeder, g. (2011). theater als kulturelle aktion. in s. ganguly (ed.), forumtheater und demokratie in indien (pp. 14-27). vienna, austria: mandelbaum. freire, p. (1972). pedagogy of the oppressed. new york, ny: herder and herder. ganguly, s. (2011). forumtheater und demokratie in indien. vienna, austria: mandelbaum. houston, s. (2005). participation in community dance. a road to empowerment and transformation? new theatre quarterly, 21(2), 166-177. kerr, d. (1991). participatory popular theater. the highest stage of cultural underdevelopment? research in african literatures, 22(3), 55-75. kidd, r. (1984). popular theatre and non-formal education in the third world. five stands of experience. international review of education, 30(3), 265-287. lee, m. (1978). theatre for development. africa media review, 1(3), 69-80. mundrawala, a. (2007). fitting the bill. commissioned theatre projects on human rights in pakistan. the work of karachi-based theatre group tehrik e niswan. research in drama education: the journal of applied theatre and performance, 12(2), 149-161. odhiambo, c. j. (2005). theatre for development in kenya. interrogating the ethics of practice. research in drama education: the journal of applied theatre and performance, 10(2), 189-199. prentki, t. (2003). save the children? – change the world. research in drama education: the journal of applied theatre and performance, 8(1), 39-53. prentki, t. (1998). must the show go on? the case for theatre for development. development in practice, 8(4), 419-429. rostow, w. w. (1960). the stages of economic growth. a non-communist manifesto. new york, ny: cambridge university press. scharinger, j. (2012). frieden nach dem krieg? trauma und peacebuilding in timor-leste. diploma thesis, department of political science, university of vienna. sloman, a. (2011). using participatory theatre in international community development. community development journal, 47(1), 42-57. thompson, j., & schechner, r. (2004). why “social theatre”? the drama review, 48(3), 11-16. ziai, a, (2007). development discourse and its critics. an introduction to post-development. in a. ziai (ed.), exploring post-development. theory and practice, problems and paerspectives (pp. 3-17). new york, ny: routledge. julia scharinger participatory theater, is it really? a critical examination of practices in timor-leste the tourism encounter in community-based tourism in northern thailand the tourism encounter in community-based tourism in northern thailand: empty meeting ground or space for change? claudia dolezal ► dolezal, c. (2015). the tourism encounter in community-based tourism in northern thailand: empty meeting ground or space for change? aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 8(2), 165-186. this article offers a contribution to the anthropology of tourism by investigating the tourism encounter in community-based tourism (cbt) in northern thailand. it does so by discussing maccannell’s (1992) idea of the empty meeting grounds and said’s orientalism (1978), two works that contributed to research on power inequalities between tourists and residents in the developing world. by establishing a relationship between the two and embedding these in the wider literature on the tourism encounter, this article suggests moving away from binaries towards understanding the space of the tourism encounter and its potential for change. building on empirical research conducted in ban mae kampong, a cbt village in northern thailand, findings suggest that cbt shows signs of resident-host interactions that are based on understanding and learning rather than exploitation. while also in cbt friendships and meaning take time to emerge and the ‘other’ is used as attraction, villagers’ agency and control over tourism are acknowledged. this paper therefore calls for a revisiting of the theoretical grounding that influences our understanding of the tourism encounter and argues for an investigation of community power relations in connection to the tourism encounter and its potential for residents’ empowerment in cbt. keywords: community-based tourism; empowerment; northern thailand; orientalism; tourism encounter  introduction during the last few decades, social scientists have contributed to a wide understanding of tourism as a socio-cultural phenomenon. much research has been conducted on the host-guest relationship (smith, 1989), especially in the global south, where the difference between the two parties is strongly pronounced (mcnaughton, 2006; mowforth & munt, 2003; van der duim, peters, & wearing, 2005). tourism studies have largely been influenced by (post)colonial thinking, involving a superior and an inferior, i.e. a suppressed other (said, 1978), mostly in the form of the post-modern tourist versus the ex-primitive and exotic host (maccannell, 1992). maccannell’s (1992) book on the empty meeting grounds significantly contributed to how the tourism encounter is still perceived today, particularly in the developing world. this resulted in the tourist being characterized as intruder into peaceful communities, leading to a number of negative socio-cultural impacts (smith, 2003). the tourist gaze (urry, 2002), the consumpaktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 15 .2 -4 166 claudia dolezal  aseas 8(2) tion of exotic culture (yamashita, 2003), the intrusion into private space and cultural commoditization (cole, 2007; holden, 2006) are all well researched issues. over the years, this somewhat intangible exploitation of residents contributed a great part to tourism’s negative connotation. however, recent studies have shown that the tourism encounter does not have to be negative and exploitative. scheyvens (2002), for example, argues that the interactions between tourists and residents may lead to empowerment of the latter, depending on the interest tourists show in local culture and traditions. furthermore, it is increasingly acknowledged that residents are also subjects in the tourism encounter and have agency and control (oakes, 2005; stronza, 2001), for example when returning the gaze, which is by far not one-sided (maoz, 2006). above all, alternative forms of tourism, such as community-based tourism (cbt), should give power to residents in planning, managing, and implementing tourism (boonratana, 2010; murphy, 1983) thereby leading to a more fruitful tourism encounter. nevertheless, concepts of orientalism and the empty meeting grounds still influence tourism research to date. this paper proposes a more balanced view on the host-guest-relationship by conducting a more detailed analysis of both sides constructing the tourism encounter. this proposal serves as a kind of intervention into recent tourism research that has tended to focus mainly on the tourists’ side (erb, 2000; galani-moutafi, 2000; nyaupane, teye, & paris, 2008). i argue, however, that it is useful to consider the possibility of a change in the perceptions of tourism encounters or even counter-arguments to said’s and maccannell’s ideas. a number of questions drive the present paper and challenge the tourism industry’s reputation as an “otherness machine” (aitchison, 2001, p. 144): what is the nature of tourism meeting grounds? is the encounter a “utopian vision of profit without exploitation” (maccannell, 1992, p. 28) or is there a chance for residents’ empowerment and a collapse of the ‘other’ vs. ‘self ’ division? specifically, this paper investigates whether tourism has the potential to create the basis for a more equitable and equally beneficial tourism experience for hosts and guests, and also if maccannell’s and said’s arguments have stood the test of time against the development of new tourism forms. within this background, the overall aim of the paper is to explore the nature of tourism’s meeting grounds of residents and tourists by critically questioning the theoretical grounding that has influenced tourism studies in the last years and still does to date. this is done by discussing empirical findings from research conducted in ban mae kampong, a village in northern thailand that engages in cbt. hence, this paper presents empirical evidence to challenge the orientalist discourse in tourism research and also the idea that tourism in remote or vulnerable communities will result in negative outcomes for the host community. the paper starts by tracing said’s (1978) orientalism – the masterpiece of postcolonial thought and discourse – and relating it to a detailed analysis of maccannell’s (1992) ideas. the two works have much in common and have contributed significantly to the negative connotation of tourism and the host-guest relationship more specifically. it further discusses the possibility of the tourism encounter to turn into a space for change and consequently introduces cbt as the broader context of this study. the paper continues by laying out the study context and methodology used before proceeding to a discussion of the findings. 167the tourism encounter in community-based tourism in northern thailand orientalism, empty meeting grounds, and tourism said’s (1978) orientalism as both a discourse and system of knowledge the west holds about the orient has experienced manifold usage in tourism research, particularly the postcolonial and socially constructed division into orient and occident or self and other (aitchison, 2001; caton & santos, 2009; osagie & buzinde, 2011; van der duim et al., 2005; yan & santos, 2009). this is particularly applicable to the tourism encounter, with residents in the developing world’s tourist destinations presented as exotic, pristine, and authentic, whereas the western tourist enjoys the image of the advanced and superior (caton & santos, 2009). in order to establish a link between orientalism and tourism, table 1 lists main characteristics that demonstrate the connections between the two. what clearly emerges from table 1 is the notion of hegemony as a core characteristic of orientalism and tourism, whereby the self (i.e. the west, the occident, or the superior identity) dominates the other (the exotic orient), which can be studied for reasons of self-identification (said, 1978). it is not surprising that tourism is often seen as a microcosm of orientalism due to its exploitative nature with the tourist gazing at cultural difference and resident communities and consuming them in a subtle way (urry, 2002). thereby, tourists’ main travel motives are often self-identification (crouch, 2004; meethan, 2006) and self-realization (maccannell, 1992). these rather egoistic travel motives, paired with the subtle political, economic, and sociocultural control the industry exercises (giampiccoli, 2007) contribute a great deal to the negative aftertaste of tourism literature and establish a connection between orientalism and tourism. most importantly, western imaginations create mere representations rather than realities of the other – both within the context of orientalism and tourism. tourism relies upon created myths and fantasies for marketing purposes (selwyn, 1996; pritchard, 2000; yan & santos, 2009) to ultimately attract the authenticity-seeking tourist (maccannell, 1976) who arrives at the destination with pre-formed perceptions of natives (osagie & buzinde, 2011). just like the orient, residents are often museumized and seen as fixed in time and space (burns, 2001, 2006; maccannell, 1992): i.e. passive objects waiting to be discovered (said, 1978). maccannell (1992) picks up some of the major aspects of orientalism and applies these to the tourism encounter. according to him, tourism’s meeting ground is one “where people live and tourists visit” (maccannell, 1992, p. 176), a place without any real relationships or bonds between the two and marked by economic transactions, consumption, and suppression. maccannell refers to tourism as a meeting point of post-moderns and ex-primitives, with the former characterized by a constant movement (not only due to tourism) and in search of what s/he has lost due to modernity. this relates to maccannell's (1976) idea of the search for the authentic, as already stated in the tourist (maccannell, 1976). however, the tourist confronts an “ex-primitive”, a performative primitive and a myth in terminology that is due to the influences of globalization and used to keep tourists’ desire for the exotic alive (maccannell, 1992, p. 26). this encounter yields nothing but exploitation, without the possibility of a beneficial situation for both sides (maccannell, 1992). table 2 presents an overview of maccannell’s major arguments, put into comparison with valene 168 claudia dolezal  aseas 8(2) smith’s (1989) hosts and guests, a milestone in tourism research of the host-guest encounter. a comparison is useful insofar as both works are widely used within the anthropology of tourism, with smith tending to regard tourism as less exploitative than maccannell. what becomes obvious from table 2 is that, whereas maccannell seems to condemn tourism (to ‘exotic’ places) and its impossibility of equality, smith sees a chance for mutual understanding through a closer contact between hosts and guests. according to smith, the nature of interactions depends on the type of tourism and tourist – at the same time, though, she acknowledges the tourist in search of meaning and the exotic. the dichotomy and difference between host and guest is not denied, however, it is argued that cultural brokers can contribute a fair part in mediating between them (nash, 1989). hence, tourism as a social phenomenon even offers the possibility orientalism (see said, 1978) tourism orient as socially constructed by the west, ‘orientalized’ industry with economic value and social significance (nyaupane et al., 2008) construction of the orient helps the west to define itself through establishing contrast travelling for the purpose of self-identification or –change (meethan, 2006; noy, 2004) orient as a discourse constructed through: representation of cultures, histories, language by the west, experienced through the ‘lenses’ of literature, travel and stereotypes shaping the encounter with the other reinforces cultural representations through creating reality a priori (through marketing, travel brochures, imagery, etc.), expectations and knowledge influence the host-guest encounter (pritchard, 2000) west as dominating power (hegemony), superior identity: ‘us’ versus ‘the other’, domestication of the exotic condemned for hegemonic power of its (mostly western) actors in economic, political, and sociocultural terms reigning over residents in less developed countries (giampiccoli, 2007) west ‘knows better’ how to represent the orient and decides on what is good for the other; orient regarded as a passive object that can be studied development discourse dominated by western ideas in the past – tourism development done to/ for versus by the community (empowerment) (scheyvens, 2002; telfer & sharpley, 2008) representations instead of truth, orientalism as a system of power and ideology postcolonial theory influencing tourism studies (osagie & buzinde, 2011) variety and distinctiveness of eastern cultures is generalized under the term ‘orient’ cultural homogenization affecting tourism and tourists in search of the authentic (gotham, 2005; maccannell, 1976) orient gains its sense with the western consumer only defining culture for own benefits, not for purposes of truth cultural difference in tourism highlighted to benefit the west – the tourist who is chasing myths (selwyn, 1996) orient is regarded as given, as an a priori knowledge and certainty locked in itself, unchangeable (e.g. in travel books) and fixed in time and space exotic cultures regarded as fixed in time and space due to usage as asset and basis for the tourist product (burns, 2001, 2006) orient is toured and watched but the european stays detached without involvement tourist in search of the authentic trying to get close to natives but constantly gazing upon and consuming the other (maccannell, 1976; urry, 2002) table 1. orientalism and tourism (sources indicated in the table; own compilation). 169the tourism encounter in community-based tourism in northern thailand of a so-called “cultural involution” where representation is used by locals for the purpose of preservation and cultural pride (mckean, 1989, p. 119). despite maccannell’s rather skeptical outlook on tourism and the encounter between people(s), he recognizes the chance of a “positive involution”, i.e. using the community’s qualities for its own development in the future (maccannell, 1992, p. 306). both works share similar views on the exploitative nature of tourism and the encounter between host and guest. still, maccannell’s referral to a division into subject and object, or self and other, and the difficulty of emerging relationships based on the objectification of the other, are key points that distinguish the two works. while maccannell’s (1992) empty meeting grounds is … smith’s edited volume (1989) host and guest discusses … … the result of polyglot communities that are “nothing more than a territorial entity with a unified economy … and perhaps a single race” (p. 2). … a transitional touristic social system based on the relationship between host and guest and their played roles and power relations (nash, 1989). … the theoretical free space between dialoguepartners, where the division into ‘i’ and ‘he’ as well as subject and object is permanent. … the emergence of stereotypes in the host-guest encounter, where hosts become objectified. (this can be changed though through a closer contact in homestays e.g.) (smith, 1989). … the meeting ground where ex-primitives perform and post-moderns consume what is lost due to modernity, i.e. a place of commercialization. … cultural homogenization and the growing importance of ‘model cultures’, i.e. cultural reconstructions of the past to divert tourists away from hosts’ private life (smith, 1989). … “a place where people live and tourists visit” (p. 176), i.e. a staged community without human relationships or bonds due to the division into economic gain (host) and self-realization (tourist). … the social disruption of hosts, which is dependent on the type of tourism and the number of tourists, i.e. it is sought to establish categories of tourism and tourists (smith, 1989). … the reality of an “utopian vision of profit without exploitation” (p. 28). … tourism as a form of imperialism, where the center controls the periphery (nash, 1989). … the reality of the host-guest encounter in tourism, where the tourist seeks “to experience a place where human relationships still seem to exist” (p. 177), but is confronted with a lack in real bonds. … a meeting point of hosts and guests where either the latter wants to “become acquainted with local people”, which may even lead to understanding (smith, 1989, p. 9) or interactions are impersonal (nash, 1989). … socially constructed and performative ethnicity in the form of ethnic tourism – helping to enforce racism by pretending equality. … ethnic tourism as a combination of nature and culture tourism to satisfy the demands of the curious tourist in search of the exotic and meaning (smith, 1989). … hegemonic in nature with a superior self and an oppressed other, where human difference is tried to be suppressed, i.e. poles and divisions collapsed. … the dichotomy between host and guest, i.e. two separate poles/divisions, where difference cannot be denied and where cultural brokers can mediate between them (nash, 1989). … the chance of positive involution, i.e. making the community use its qualities for its own development. … the chance of cultural involution, i.e. using representation through tourism for preservation and status creation (mckean, 1989). table 2. the host-guest encounter in tourism: two theoretical perspectives (sources indicated in the table; own compilation). 170 claudia dolezal  aseas 8(2) smith mentions the impact of pre-formed stereotypes on hosts, she acclaims the chance of personal contact and meaningful interaction. maccannell’s reference to the postmodern world characterized by commercialization and the loss of human bonds is also picked up by bauman (2000) in his idea of the liquid modernity. his metaphor is useful for examining tourism as a social phenomenon in a restless and ‘fluid’ society that is unable to assimilate changes. with people constantly on the move and more individualistic than ever, the community becomes a utopia of harmony and security (bauman, 2000). the search for both individual freedom and security as well as the restless nature of the postmodern subject affects social relations: the meeting of strangers, implied by the accelerated movement of people, seems to be a “mis-meeting”, i.e. quick encounters with neither interaction nor depth (bauman, 2000, p. 95) that resemble maccannell’s empty meeting grounds. rethinking tourism encounters the previous section has highlighted the somewhat negative light cast upon the tourism encounter. this can largely be led back to the usage of binary divisions in tourism research, characterizing inequalities between a self versus an other or the west versus the south, which some regard as simplistic and in need to be deconstructed (van der duim et al., 2005; mcnaughton, 2006; woosnam, 2010). one argument is that the anthropology of tourism should move away from examining the other to studying the space in-between parties in order to understand the meaning they construct together (nash, 1996; van der duim, 2007a, 2007b). it should also move from focusing on the tourists’ viewpoint only towards including the host perspective (trupp, 2014) and consider counter-arguments to the empty meeting grounds. this is useful in order to generate an understanding of the potential that the tourism encounter could bear for change and empowerment (dolezal, 2015). maoz’s (2006) mutual gaze is such an example, acknowledging that the gaze can be returned and that hosts are no longer the object of the gaze as once argued by urry (2002). in addition, third parties, such as guides, can act as mediators between tourists and residents (jensen, 2010), micro-finance in cbt projects can enable women to start their own businesses and foster a sense of pride and achievement (megarry, 2008), and possibilities for self-representation and self-commodification on the global consumer market can increase local control (ruiz-ballesteros & hernández-ramírez, 2010). some argue that, for instance, the presentation of culture and traditional knowledge to tourists can even lead to empowerment when they show an interest in residents’ life (miettinen, 2005). a move away from one-sided analyses that prove disempowering for residents towards postmodern analyses (based on understanding the space of the guest-host-relation and using dynamic conceptualizations of power) can enable an acknowledgement of residents’ agency to ultimately foster greater power equality in the tourism encounter (dolezal, 2011; hollinshead, 1998; uriely, 2005). leveling power relations between host and guest goes hand in hand with the cross-cultural understanding enabled through social interactions in tourism (van der duim et al., 2005). the cultural differences between the two parties, however, need to persist to avoid affecting the 171the tourism encounter in community-based tourism in northern thailand tourism product due to unfulfilled expectations of meeting the exotic (yang, 2011). on the other hand, maccannell (2011) argues that for the tourist the “other must not be so profoundly other as to preclude the tourist from relaxing in its presence and ‘taking it in’. differences are rounded off to make the passage of tourists possible.” (p. 219). still, there is a chance of identification through differentiation, which happens “when tourists’ attempts to positively differentiate themselves from one another collapse in a moment of identification with the other” (gillespie, 2007, p. 580). nevertheless, this collapse of self and other needs familiarity with the other (gillespie, 2007), which might be difficult or unwanted in tourism. this is largely characterized by brief, commercial transactions between consumer and producer (cheong & miller, 2000). based on these assumptions, the subsequent empirical investigation should cast light on the possibility of the tourism encounter as a space for change, with a particular focus on cbt as an alternative form of tourism. community-based tourism cbt emerged as an alternative form of tourism against mass tourism and its negative impacts (yamashita, 2003) to ultimately prevent dependency and inequality and increase residents’ control in managing tourism activities (hipwell, 2009). in the best case, cbt not only involves the community in the implementation and managing of the tourism product but also in planning and developing it (boonratana, 2010; novelli & gebhardt, 2007). furthermore, cbt should contribute to a development strategy that exceeds economic gains and aims at sustainability, agency, and freedom (matarrita-cascante, 2010). in doing so, cbt uses existing natural and cultural resources and contributes to their preservation, while also fostering understanding between residents and tourists (boonratana, 2010). still, cbt is often romanticized and presented as a utopian idealization of reality (matarrita-cascante, 2010). academics and practitioners alike criticize cbt for being too small-scale to effectively help relieve poverty (mitchell & muckosy, 2008). other limitations of cbt include the uncertainty of the extent of real community involvement or empowerment, mainly because power relations within the community and wider tourism network are highly complex (matarrita-cascante, 2010). communities often only participate in the implementation of agendas that are decided upon by external parties (butcher, 2007) and important decisions come from the usual tourism actors, such as governments or private investors (mitchell & muckosy, 2008). putting people at the forefront, cbt supposedly builds on democracy, however, the mere fact of not offering any alternative to locals contradicts this democratic orientation (butcher, 2003). thus, extensive capacity building at local level is needed to enable community members to understand their possibilities and make more informed decisions (novelli & gebhardt, 2007). in a case study of tourism in western flores, for example, erb (2015) demonstrates that tourism needs to be connected to training to lead to village development. difficulties exist particularly in pursuing a type of development that coincides with everyone’s ideas as communities and individuals’ opinions are extremely heterogeneous (blackstock, 2005; gursoy et al., 2009; mcnaughton, 2006; nash, 2004; van der duim et al., 2005). 172 claudia dolezal  aseas 8(2) despite the mentioned criticism of cbt, residents, or the once others, are said to be more involved in tourism planning through cbt projects (van der duim et al., 2005). after all, cbt emerged out of a shift in the development agenda to a more community-based and neopopulist one (butcher, 2007) and is thus representative of a wider shift in tourism development which, slowly but still, becomes a more sustainable and reflective practice. this can be led back to tourism casting a number of positive benefits, such as, for instance, shifting power to local communities through the creation of community ventures (novelli & gebhardt, 2007), environmental and cultural preservation (boonratana, 2010), local participation (lapeyre, 2010), socioeconomic diversification (snyder & sulle, 2011; zapata et al., 2011) and increased resilience for sustainable development (ruiz-ballesteros, 2011). a number of community-based initiatives emerged over the past years, particularly as part of what is usually called ‘indigenous tourism’ (butler & hinch, 2007), i.e. touristic visitation of indigenous people. in many cases these can cast economic gains while also bearing potential to improving indigenous groups’ status politically in gaining power relative to other, usually more powerful, actors (theodossopoulos, 2010). in addition, cbt can create a space for residents to represent themselves rather than be represented by third parties, as much as they reinvent themselves through the tourism encounter (amoamo, 2011; miettinen, 2005). given these complex dynamics between the actors involved, cbt is a twofold phenomenon. seen from a macro perspective, it bears potential to shift power from external actors (e.g. governments or foreign investors) to the local level while at the same time, it can foster local power inequalities and competition at micro level (dolezal, 2015). study setting and methods the empirical research for this study was undertaken in ban mae kampong (bmk), a village in mae on district in northern thailand. villagers identify themselves as khon muang (northern thai people), and are not part of the highland ethnic minority groups often referred to as ‘hilltribes’. it is a best-practice cbt example in thailand (tica, 2008) and is divided into four different parts with the inner one being the most prosperous part of the village. from the center, the village spreads out two kilometers. agricultural land and forests surrounding the village are most important for villagers’ living as they rely on the production of coffee (arabica) and miang tea. the streams running through bmk constitute an additional contribution to the financial income as they are used to produce electricity, which is sold to other villages. bmk has produced electricity from hydropower since 1983, contributing a big part to its independence (undp, 2009). the possibility of homestays in bmk as well as the village’s cbt best-practice status are, amongst others, reasons for choosing the village as location for the empirical research of this study. bmk is also part of the thailand community-based tourism institute (cbt-i, see: www.cbt-i.org), which highlights community development and participation in and through tourism. the cbt-i facilitates research on cbt in thailand as well as cooperation amongst stakeholders in cbt. it also provides training of villagers engaging in tourism. moreover, bmk has received marketing and funding support from the ministry of tourism and the tourism authority thailand 173the tourism encounter in community-based tourism in northern thailand (kontogeorgopoulos et al., 2015). the role of the village chief (at the time of study), phrommin phrommala, further contributed to tourism success. he initiated tourism in bmk in 1996, focusing on a sustainable tourism strategy: tourism is allocated around long-term planning, making the village use their resources for a sustainable future and business without trying to follow other examples of mass tourism destinations (undp, 2009). tourism in the village takes place in the form of day trips, flight of the gibbon adventure tours (i.e. a tourism company based in the village), and homestays. the village is attractive for a wide range of international and local tourists, including school groups, families, couples, and travel groups coming to bmk as a part of their prebooked tours. it is a place of learning for international and local school classes as it serves as a fieldtrip location for ecology classes or outdoor training. while day trippers spend only a limited period of time in the village, enjoying a walk to the waterfall or some arabica coffee, homestay tourists spend a more considerable amount of time and also money. while day trippers’ contact with locals remains rather shallow, homestay tourists are generally more involved with the family they stay with (boonratana, 2010). homestays were introduced to bmk in 2000 and 17 out of 123 households offered rooms to tourists at the time of the research. not all households in the village are able to offer this service as this means undertaking major changes on the house to meet thai homestay standards. villagers are either directly involved in tourism through homestay or guiding or indirectly through manufacturing handicrafts or offering transportation. even those villagers working in tourism focus primarily on the production and harvest of tea or coffee, but welcome the work in tourism especially for the time when they are under-occupied. hence, the village does not depend solely on tourism, as it is not the main source of income (phrommin phrommala, personal communication, june 23, 2011). a part of the income from tourism is shared between the households in the community. for example, around usd 10 of the 18 homestay per night go to the village fund, collecting money for emergency cases (phrommin phrommala, personal communication, june 25, 2011). despite these efforts, various studies proved the gap in income between rich and poor (suriya, 2011; untong et al., 2006), suggesting prosperity inequalities in the village and social inequalities that come to the surface in the form of community conflict (kontogeorgopoulos et al., 2015). the methods used for this study consist of observations, informal semi-structured interviews, and conversations with residents and tourists in bmk. observations focused on interactions between locals and tourists and their behavior as well as village life and helped frame the analysis. in total, twelve semi-structured interviews were conducted in june 2011 with villagers of the inner two clusters of the village, who are main actors in tourism (see table 3). interviews focused on homestay owners and those involved in tourism in other ways, while at the same time also including villagers who have limited contact to tourists. to understand the interactions between locals and tourists, observations proved most important as tourists’ time resources were scarce (especially for day visitors). nevertheless, individual/group discussions were arranged where possible. eleven people participated in the latter, with an additional number of tourists forming part 174 claudia dolezal  aseas 8(2) of observations. participants were chosen to be representative of different age groups, gender, and nationalities. frame analysis was used to identify common themes and categories (gray, 2003). it is a technique that is used mainly for understanding differing perspectives, e.g. power relations and underlying assumptions on specific social phenomena (bullock, 2010). thereby, patterns arise if enough individuals share similar viewpoints or actions (oliver & johnston, 2010) based on the premise that “when two or more people hold the same frame(s) regarding a situation, they are said to be socially constructing reality” (bullock, 2010, p. 25). in this article, frame analysis focuses on interviews, hence it examines perspectives of tourists and hosts through spoken data. observations form a vital part of the research by providing an active field of context. common themes emerging from the analysis are then categorized and underlying frames – for both residents and tourists – deduced. for practical interviewee no. gender, age group occupation, selection criteria person 1 male 60-80 years homestay, miang tea plantation and harvest, guides coordinator (former guide), musician → experience with tourists person 2 female 40-60 years homestay, miang tea plantation and harvest, handicraft producer and seller → role of handicrafts person 3 female 40-60 years miang tea plantation and harvest, food stand/restaurant → no or barely any direct contact with tourists person 4 female 20-40 years homestay, tour guide, massage, massage coordinator → contact with tourists on different levels person 5 female 60-80 years homestay, miang tea plantation and harvest → contact with tourists, older generation person 6 female 60-80 years homestay, sewing → contact with tourists, single woman person 7 female 40-60 years miang tea plantation and harvest, small grocery store → barely any direct contact with tourists person 8 male 40-60 years homestay, miang tea plantation and harvest, coffee → contact with tourists, gender person 9 female 40-60 years homestay, miang tea plantation and harvest, handicrafts → importance of handicrafts person 10 female 40-60 years flight of the gibbon, miang tea plantation and harvest → employed at a company from outside person 11 female 20-40 years homestay, restaurant → regular contact with tourists, age person 12 male 40-60 years village chief table 3. interviewed villagers (own compilation). 175the tourism encounter in community-based tourism in northern thailand reasons, the analysis is deliberately based on the binary division of ‘residents’ versus ‘tourists’. this separation allows for both sides being represented, hence it enables a balanced voice. challenges and limitations during the fieldwork included, amongst others, the small number of tourists visiting the village. this is mainly due to the weather conditions as the rainy season is the low season for tourism (suriya, 2011). moreover, given the theoretical underpinnings only farang (foreign) tourists were subject of the research. in terms of the host community, the challenge was mainly to gain an adequate understanding of the cultural context: in thai culture – largely influenced by buddhism – communication tends to be indirect in order not to ‘lose face’ and smiling in thailand has different meanings besides happiness and approval (berger, 2007; slagter & kerbo, 1999). consequently, it is important to note that frames get their meaning by the community producing them (santos, 2004). in addition, this study largely focuses on resident interviewees who form part of tourism to gain an understanding of their perspective on the tourism encounter. it does not, however, address the power relations within the wider community, a topic that future research will need to tackle. findings residents — the nature of tourism for residents one of the key aspects that emerged from the data analysis is residents’ positive attitude towards tourism and tourists. residents regard tourism as work, however, besides the financial profit, it generates pride and contributes to variety in daily tasks. locals express feelings of excitement, for example, one villager (person 8) said that “having tourists in our house every day would mean more fun for us as it is not that calm when we have a visit and we like talking to people and treating them well”. others say that the fun in tourism lies in communication, including pointing at words and trying to get by with basic vocabulary (person 1). generally, tourism is a preferred job, as it is easy work, compared to the hard miang tea harvest (person 5). it even makes their work more interesting (e.g. producing handicrafts) when tourists constitute an audience and even participate in the work (person 9). tourists’ interest therefore generates pride amongst villagers. still, not everyone in the village participates equally in tourism or is trained for it. while most interviewees who are active in tourism feel confident interacting with tourists, others show an inability to welcome tourists and to communicate, which hinders them from feeling proud (person 7). “i am afraid that tourists are not happy here because they do not understand the language”, is what one villager (person 7) said in response to whether she wants to participate in tourism. — villagers’ view of the tourists’ world empirical evidence revealed that residents regard money as a threat to the sharing 176 claudia dolezal  aseas 8(2) community and as a characteristic of the west, where life is thought to depend on money and consumption (person 4). villagers make a clear distinction between village life and life in the west. the farangs’ world is pictured as sad, a world characterized by individuals that are so busy that they have no time for each other (person 2, 3 and 4). this view expands into picturing farangs as constantly consuming, a lifestyle totally different from the idea of a sharing village or community (person 2, 3 and 4). one of the villagers even feels sorry for the tourists because of their stressful life and would like to understand their language to give them warmth and a feeling of family and belonging (person 4). many interviews revealed the connection between village life, family, and a sense of community that tourists lack in the villagers’ view. — interactions with tourists when it comes to interactions, data revealed difficulties for both residents and tourists due to a lack of language skills. interactions take place in form of sign language rather than direct spoken communication, which leads, amongst others, to an unwillingness to participate in tourism due to the possibility that farangs “might laugh at me because i cannot speak their language” (person 3). others argue that studying languages together with tourists would assist in learning from each other, even though knowledge might be forgotten quickly (person 8). nevertheless, language remains an obstacle that hinders fruitful interactions between residents and tourists. when referring to foreign tourists, residents tend to use the term farang, which is used for foreigners with white skin. while tourists may regard this term as impolite, it was found that the word is used merely descriptively, i.e. to differentiate between thai and foreign visitors (person 1). there is an absence of racist connotations and hosts are aware of the term’s impolite character in tourists’ eyes, hence they avoid using it in the presence of guests (person 8). interactions with tourists are generally positive for residents after having overcome an initial phase of shyness (person 1). in bmk, residents are teachers of a sustainable lifestyle, admired by tourists for their demonstration of skills and healthy way of living, which they educate tourists about (person 3). still, besides some degree of language skill, interactions require effort from both sides. when tourists, for example, do not ask villagers to join them for dinner, they will have food on their own (person 6). hence, sensibility and openness turn out to be key for both residents and tourists who co-construct the tourism encounter. this example also shows that in cbt, encounters are more natural and evolving rather than characterized by onesided offensiveness. interactions, however, are not limited to direct contact and conversations but equally involve gestures such as the usage of cameras. residents acknowledge the fact that for tourists travelling involves capturing the other with the camera. however, rather than feeling disturbed by tourists taking pictures, residents are convinced that tourists’ motive behind it is an interest in their life and work (person 5). disruption takes place when people have wrong intentions and bad morals: “when they smile, i also smile. it depends on their heart, some people look good and have evil hearts, some don’t but [have] a good heart” (person 8). regarding residents’ positive attitude towards tourists, it is not surprising that tour177the tourism encounter in community-based tourism in northern thailand ists staying longer than a few nights somewhat become a temporary family member and are remembered when they leave (person 8). in bmk, relationships that resemble friendships seem to emerge: some of the villagers receive pictures from their guests and proudly present photo albums (person 2 and 5). tourists – be it thais or farangs – return to the same homestays to undertake activities with their hosts, thereby pointing towards emerging friendships. the data also revealed that villagers prefer hosting farangs to thai tourists, who are regarded as demanding, disrespectful, loud and polluting the environment (person 4 and 10). — community collaboration, influence from outside and development bmk is well organized in terms of job and task allocation given that every person living in bmk is part of one of more village associations (e.g. massage, souvenir production etc.). generally speaking, although collaboration could be observed between those participating in tourism, villagers are not all equally involved in tourism as mainly the interior two clusters participate directly. one of the challenges in making cbt a true community enterprise is to involve all villagers – a challenge that seems impossible given that not all want to participate in tourism. some villagers are convinced that collaboration and consent are indispensable for making cbt work (person 8 and 9) and selfish thinking – stemming mainly from those who are originally from outside the village, is destructive for tourism and village life. at the same time, development in the village signifies a certain influence from outside (e.g. established television connections, companies from outside operating in the village, private investors buying land) and poses a threat to the sharing community. the future is connected to feelings of fear and uncertainty as many expressed their concerns about people selling properties to entrepreneurs who do not share the community mindset (person 4). however, the selling of land is a reality, particularly because more young villagers search job opportunities in the city of chiang mai. there is a pronounced fear that the young generation will not return to the village due to limited job opportunities that do not require physical strain (such as miang harvest) (person 8 and 9). brain-drain therefore constitutes one of the biggest threats to the village and cbt, although “the community’s most valuable asset may be the energy of its young people” (hipwell, 2009, p. 302). tourists — tourist experience when it comes to the overall tourism experience, it was found that tourists’ motives to visit bmk vary. for some, experiencing a novel and different way of living and interacting with residents prevails (spanish couple), while for others, the physical environment, i.e. the forest and traditional houses (american couple, french male tourist), constitute the key attraction. tourists’ stays in bmk are generally of short duration (i.e. ranging from a few hours to 3 nights) given that most tourists visit bmk as part of an organized roundtrip (french travel group, spanish couple). for these tourists, thailand’s rural areas present a place to relax and escape daily routine, but 178 claudia dolezal  aseas 8(2) they would not stay longer (spanish couple) as they miss their busy lifestyle (american couple) and the lack of comfort: “no, it is not organized here, one or two days and that’s it, only to see the forest and all that” (french male). this contradicts the view of some homestay owners, as presented above – oftentimes accepting tourists as temporary family members. — authenticity authenticity emerged as a key frame in tourists’ experiences, with tourists trying to get off the beaten track (e.g. on walking tours), arguing that what they like most is “to get away from the places that are most touristic [to see] the life of real people” (spanish female). tourists regard ‘the authentic’ as a positive construct connected to residents’ warm-hearted and natural way of interacting with tourists, which may be harmed by development (french female). tourists avoid staged events and, based on their fear of encountering staged events, even regard those events forming part of daily village life as contrived. cbt therefore seems to constitute an escape from the oftentimes contrived touristic world, while skepticism in regards to how authentic the village really is, remains. a group of french tourists, for instance, believed that when their guide told them to give alms to the monks, those monks would only walk by as a demonstration for tourists. they did not know that this very day was wan phra (buddhist holy day), where it was usual for monks to collect alms. — development and the other interviews revealed that tourists believe a balance should be found between tradition and development (french female). progress is particularly important for tourists when it comes to comfort: “there are no mirrors for men to shave, the toilets are wet, you need a towel for your feet afterwards. no, it is not organized” (french male). while comfort may be missing for tourists, bmk is not regarded as poor or underdeveloped: here people have warm water, which was a surprise, they are really well equipped here, like with the streets, electricity everywhere. the people are poor, above all in the big cities, but here they are better off, they are rich. (french female) hence, poverty is relative to the living conditions in the respective country, a view that is shared by others: to me the village does not seem poor. when you see the houses, it is not poor. when we were in bangkok in some places you have the feeling that the people are poor, here i see a way of life that resembles much a rural village in spain. they can eat, they have everything they need, they do not lack anything. (spanish female) this statement reveals that this particular tourist compares the other to the own socio-cultural context she comes from, potentially leading to an identification with 179the tourism encounter in community-based tourism in northern thailand the other and the once foreign. furthermore, some tourists perceive seeing and experiencing the other as an advancement of their own personality: “we chose thailand to see other cultures, other ways of living, learn about ourselves. it is like learning that there is another world” (spanish male). the aspect of learning is essential in bmk, also because the tourist product fosters tourists’ admiration of villagers’ selfsustaining lifestyle. during a walking tour in the forest, a french couple, for instance, was impressed by the sustainable and efficient way the forest’s resources are used. hence, in cbt, residents teach tourists through means of educational tourism. this also happens in the form of students visiting bmk, who constitute more than half of the tourist numbers in the village (boonratana, 2012), ultimately turning the village into a place of learning and education. — interactions with hosts communication between tourists and residents is complex in bmk. whereas hosts are better able to cope with language barriers, tourists’ behavior was generally shy, perceiving the lack in english language skills of the host family as a problem (american couple). attitudes towards communication with hosts varied between tourists as some showed efforts to communicate, such as a study group from australia where students used vocabulary sheets to ask questions. for others, residents’ lack in language skills was a major argument for non-interaction: “no, the family does not eat with us … you cannot talk to them because they do not speak english, in bangkok they speak english everywhere” (french male). observations made the dialectic nature of communication obvious, demanding effort from both residents and tourists to enable fruitful communication. when this effort is given, meaning can evolve through constructing and playing with words together – or at least attempting to do so (french couple). the knowledge that is transmitted to tourists needs the help of cultural brokers, taking the form of guides from outside the village who enable translation between residents and tourists. in bmk, one villager accompanies the external guide on walking tours, where the local guide gives information to the broker who translates to tourists. although in this case locals are unable to represent themselves in spoken language, a certain level of communication with tourists and their understanding of the local context emerges. nevertheless, tourists’ education and the transmission of knowledge take time and are not always possible during their rather short stays in the village. it was observed that tourists do not have enough knowledge about the village to make correct judgments about thai culture. this was revealed earlier when it came to the conflict concerning monks’ alms collection. discussion the empirical evidence discussed in this paper enabled a more positive outlook compared to the tourism literature, which at times displays residents as suppressed and dominated by outside actors, especially tourists. in bmk, tourism does not only constitute a source of income but also presents an activity that enables the use and display of skills, characterized by enjoyable interactions and emerging friendships. 180 claudia dolezal  aseas 8(2) these may be due to the relatively small number of tourists who stay overnight and the fair distribution of overnight stays amongst households. as a consequence, tourists’ visits are a special occasion for most homestay owners. moreover, it was found that tourists do not necessarily regard residents as ‘underdeveloped’ and ‘backwards’. particularly the younger generation of tourists admires residents’ lifestyle and seeks to benefit from interactions by learning from their hosts. nevertheless, when tourists stay with residents for a short period of time, they tend to regard their hosts as mere servants, meaning that interaction is limited. as argued by nash (1996) “the fact that tourists, being tourists, are en passant, a condition that, itself, tends to lead to superficial social contacts, might justify the broader use of the term “empty meeting grounds” for tourist-host contacts” (p. 87). in these interactions, it was found that hosts feel sorry for tourists who are in search of what they have lost due to modernization. at the same time, the tourists’ search not only for the authentic, but also for values of family and togetherness, is not inherently negative as has so long been propounded in the literature. after all, no sign of residents’ exploitation by tourists or unidirectional power-relations were observed. tourists do ‘gaze’ in bmk, however, residents do not feel disturbed, meaning that the tourist gaze does not necessarily come with unequal power relations. after all, “[l]ooking is complex too. there is an engaging, connecting, caring content and character of looking, rather than merely a detached, observing, exploitative one” (crouch, 2004, p. 92). residents are well aware of what vacations mean for tourists and understand their oftentimes superficial travel motives. rather than exploiting the tourist or regarding them as the new colonizers, residents feel sorry for them, wanting to share their feeling of family, togetherness, and community. as a consequence, it emerged that in bmk tourists and residents (at least those actively involved in tourism) derive benefits from tourism equally. what has contributed to the assumed power inequality in literature is the way the other is often museumized, exoticized and ‘sold’ to the tourist. however, particularly in cbt, locals should be agents who – given that they initiate and plan the tourism product – can control how they present and market themselves (theodossopoulos, 2010). in bmk, cbt uses exoticism and difference to earn money – while at the same time keeping tourist numbers low – therefore benefiting residents rather than presenting a microcosm of orientalism. this means that residents are not victimized but have agency in how to represent themselves, consciously choosing what parts of their identities they wish to display (stronza, 2001). also, in contrast to thailand’s hilltribe villages, villagers in bmk do not belong to an ethnic minority group, which turns nature and education, rather than people themselves, into the main attractions. along with the interest that tourists show, this status enables residents to empower themselves much more than is usually argued for tourism in the developing world. in the context of cbt in bmk, more equal power relationships between residents and tourists are possible, based on an encounter with an other (be it resident or tourist) that is based on respect and learning. residents and tourists alike co-construct the tourism encounter to produce mutual benefits, with residents earning an income and diversifying livelihoods and tourists gaining rich personal experiences. through learning about difference, both parties also learn about themselves. the connections that are drawn between oneself and others, however, take time and familiarity (gil181the tourism encounter in community-based tourism in northern thailand lespie, 2007), which is not always possible in tourism. this study revealed that, if meaning is to be constructed in cbt, effort (not necessarily skills) is needed from both sides, happening through a play with words between residents and tourists. this is in line with cohen’s (2004) argument that communication in thailand’s tourism encounters often “is an enjoyable game in itself and … ease[s] the tension of the encounter between complete strangers” (p. 220). therefore, the possibility of creating meaning and relationships even without linguistically understanding each other emerged from this study. hence, while residents may be regarded as exotic, pristine, and authentic, they share the status of proud teachers who showcase their skills, knowledge, and lifestyle to tourists. while the so-called other may form the basis of the cbt attraction, this study did not reveal any of orientalism’s hegemonic and imperialistic thinking – even though comfort emerged as an issue highlighting pronounced differences between tourists’ and residents’ lifestyle. as a consequence, cbt may be a field where orientalism is not an appropriate metaphor or theory, making room for tourists’ involvement in local realities (subject to certain temporal limitations) and turning the tourism encounters into a space of appreciation. without romanticizing the tourism encounter, the signs of understanding, respect and learning evidenced in this study can challenge maccannell’s (1992) propounded ‘emptiness’ in encounters. at the same time, one needs to acknowledge that maccannell’s ideas were conceptualized at a time when cbt was still a largely unknown type of tourism. in addition to changes in tourism planning and development, both tourists and residents are not as naïve as once pictured. tourists are well aware – at times even paranoid – of the ‘staging’ of events and residents do not always perform. in fact, they try to give tourists a sense of warmth and family. they “create ersatz communities to manufacture and even to sell a sense of community” (maccannell, 1992, p. 89), which should not immediately be regarded as problematic. at the same time, however, this paper has shown the dilemmas that bmk and many other cbt villages face. as kontogeorgopoulos et al. (2015) mention, tourism in bmk runs the danger of threatening ‘rural authenticity’ and the thai principle of the ‘self-sufficiency economy’, which serves as the major attraction for both domestic and international tourists. with tourism and development, influence from outside is usually unavoidable, which is obvious in bmk where community spirit is increasingly disrupted and replaced by individualistic thinking and uneven benefits. this change in values poses a threat to the sharing community, the one aspect that seems to constitute the greatest asset for tourism in bmk. conclusion this article has offered insights into tourism meeting grounds in cbt and has demonstrated the somewhat overcriticized nature of tourism research. while the theoretical concepts used in this study help us to shape our critical lens of the tourism encounter, this article showed that the socio-cultural realm of tourism is characterized by a theoretical grounding that is difficult to apply to alternative forms of tourism. in some cases, these types of tourism, including cbt or indigenous tourism, present more sustainable practices and different dynamics between residents and tourists than is the case for mass tourism. as a consequence, there is a need for more 182 claudia dolezal  aseas 8(2) empirically grounded research, particularly into the tourism encounter in cbt, in order to enable more nuanced analyses of tourism encounters in different tourism environments. the aim of this study was not to prove the inapplicability of maccannell’s thoughts, but to use his ideas and concepts to generate new insights in a cbt context. as maccannell states himself, “nothing is healthier for the advancement of a field [than refutations]. so long as critiques and supportive studies are based on evidence, i look forward to joining the dialogue” (maccannell, 2011, p. xi). maccannell’s intention with the empty meeting grounds was certainly not a generalization of tourism’s effect on societies, leading towards the need of making a distinction between mass tourism and other more alternative forms of tourism. in fact, this paper took maccannell’s ideas a step further, which already offered a hint of the changes that were and are still about to come. his idea of a positive involution connects to new and alternative forms of tourism, where the deadlocked concepts of inequality and binaries need refutation. it was found that the gaze exists but does not disturb, that meeting grounds can be characterized by fun and variety, and that appreciation, respect, and even friendships may emerge. more research needs to be done that connects the wider community power relations to the tourism encounter, understanding how the social ties in the form of either collaboration or individualistic thinking play out in cbt, a business that is largely reliant on the existence of a ‘community’ in order to function effectively and as part of the attraction. development through tourism, can, in turn, disrupt existing social ties that are the basis for cbt. potential frustration, therefore, stems from the way tourism is managed and the fear of change rather than the tourism encounter. the latter, however, can serve as a window into intra-community relations, which often play out in the interactions that constitute the social space of the tourism encounter. this study showed that the tourism encounter is a space that the (perhaps stereotypically restless) tourist and the (perhaps authentic) community co-construct, resulting in mutually fruitful relationships. in this case, it becomes a space of change, where the hosts’ chance to teach the tourist escaping from an eventual daily empty meeting ground into the shelter of the – then rightly – romanticized community should neither be ignored, nor indicted but certainly seized.  references aitchison, c. 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(2011). can community-based tourism contribute to development and poverty alleviation? lessons from nicaragua. current issues in tourism, 14(8), 725-749. about the author dr. claudia dolezal is a lecturer in tourism at the university of westminster, london, uk. she specializes in tourism for development and the anthropology of tourism, in specific community-based tourism, empowerment, and the tourism encounter in rural thailand and bali. claudia also is an editorial board member of aseas and contributes to the work of the society for south-east asian studies (seas). ► contact: c.dolezal@westminster.ac.uk mimicry of the legal: translating de jure land formalization processes into de facto local action in jambi province, sumatra yvonne kunz, jonas hein, rina mardiana, & heiko faust ► kunz, y., hein, j., mardiana, r., & faust, h. (2016). mimicry of the legal: translating de jure land formalization processes into de facto local action in jambi province, sumatra. aseas – austrian journal of southeast asian studies, 9(1), 127-146. in indonesia, as in many other countries of the global south, processes to formalize rights over land have been implemented with the intention to reduce deforestation, decrease poverty and increase tenure security. literature on de jure processes of land formalization is widely available. there is a gap, however, on the discrepancy of de jure land titling procedures and de facto strategies to legitimize land claims. led by the theoretical concepts of “law as process” and “politics of scale”, this study closes this gap by analyzing the impact of national tenure formalization processes on de facto local patterns of land titling. using empirical material from 16 villages in jambi province, we show that the outcomes of the state-led land reforms and land tenure formalization processes are imitated and translated into locally feasible actions. we refer to these translation processes as “mimicry of the legal”. the land formalization endeavors fostering mimicry of the legal allow for resource exploitation and rent-seeking behavior. keywords: indonesia; land reform; land tenure; mimicry of the legal; politics of scale  introduction in indonesia, as in many other countries of the global south, processes to formalize land rights have been implemented with the intention to reduce poverty and increase tenure security (de soto, 2000; sjaastad & cousins, 2008, p. 8). in the context of increasing conflicts over land due to agricultural expansion and other development and infrastructure projects, the tenure formalization endeavors are seen as an opportunity to alleviate such conflicts. with an increasing pressure on communities and difficulties they experience in accessing land, the formalization of land rights seems to be an obvious step. the concept of using land titling as a tool to stimulate investments in order to eradicate poverty and to foster more sustainable land-use practices has been widely discussed, often controversially. many studies focus on the benefits and disadvantages of property formalization with regard to land, as well as on hurdles to implement land registration programs (benjaminsen, holden, lund, & sjaastad, 2008; bromley, 2008; hall, 2013; sjaastad & cousins, 2008; toulmin, 2008). toulmin (2008, p. 10), in particular, points to the fact that securing tenure rights has become ever aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 16 .1 -8 128 yvonne kunz, jonas hein, rina mardiana, & heiko faust  aseas 9(1) more urgent, given the rising demand for land for purposes of large-scale cultivation. an increasing pressure on land is notably prevalent on sumatra, indonesia. rising demands for land occur especially in the context of large-scale monoculture cultivation as well as through the expansion of conservation areas. transmigrants, an increasing number of independent smallholders, as well as investors from other parts of the country further contribute to a rising demand in land. since the beginning of colonization, more than 15 million ha of sumatra’s forest land have been converted (de kok, briggs, pirnanda, & girmansyah, 2015, p. 29), often in the context of landtenure formalization processes. these processes were, for example, realized through transmigration and titling programs initiated by the government and supported by the world bank in combination with the intention to boost cash crops. the participants of these programs were granted formal land titles and often also seedlings with the obligation to cultivate a certain crop, usually rubber or oil palm. these contract farmers are bound to sell to mostly state-run processing facilities (mccarthy, 2009, p. 115). today, about 70% of indonesia’s oil palm plantations are located on sumatra1 (coordinating ministry for economic affairs of the republic of indonesia, 2011, p. 53) and about 84% of indonesia’s smallholder rubber comes from the western island (peramune & budiman, 2007, p. 9). sumatra also has the highest share of transmigrants resettled from densely populated java, madura, and bali (cribb, 2000, p. 57; miyamoto, 2006, p. 8). indonesia’s recent attempts to formalize land tenure have been pushed by the unbacked reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (redd+) mechanism. the national redd+ strategy refers to the “constitutional right to certainty over boundaries and management rights for natural resources” (indonesia redd+ taskforce, 2012, p. 18). the process of formalizing rights, which normally involves an amendment of the rights, can be complex when different phases of formalization occur consecutively or even simultaneously. rather than fostering sustainable and socially inclusive growth, this complexity can create leeway for actors to develop their own interpretations of land tenure formalization processes. this leeway in turn encourages rent-seeking behavior as well as resource exploitation (lund, 2008, p. 135). while there is literature on the de jure procedures of issuing title deeds, on the institutions in charge, on land-use planning, and on the designation of protected areas in indonesia (e.g., sahide & giessen, 2015), there is a gap in the literature on the links between de jure land titling procedures and de facto actions on the local level. this study closes this gap by analyzing the discrepancy between national land formalization processes and de facto local level dynamics of land titling. the article therefore starts by embedding the research in a theoretical conception, establishing the underlying understanding that the law is often not simply followed but imitated and translated on different scales. translation here refers to deand re-construction, that is, an adjustment of meaning. while making use of language and procedures as outlined in the initial law, meaning and application shift in the course of translation (struve, 2013, p. 131). this translation is linked to, but is not congruent with, the national legislation: starting with the pre-colonial period through the first major changes in 1 indonesia is palm oil producer number one in the world. 129mimicry of the legal tenure regimes under the dutch and the major development interventions of titling programs that followed, we explore the history of land-titling programs in indonesia. led by the concepts of “law as process” (moore, 1978) and “politics of scale” (brenner, 1998; meadowcroft, 2002; neumann, 2009; swyngedouw, 2010; towers, 2000; zulu, 2009), we combine theory and empirical data from jambi province, sumatra, to shed light on a confusingly high number of different kinds of land titles in use and their relation to public authorities. we argue that actors – these are state representatives as well as farmers – translate fragments of national land formalization programs and regulations into local action. drawing on concepts devised by international law (bélanger, 2011; drumbl, 2005) and post-colonial scholars (bhabha, 1994), we call these processes “mimicry of the legal”. in our case, mimicry refers to the translation of national law to local land tenure regulations embedded in power asymmetries (bélanger, 2011, p. 25; drumbl, 2005, p. 15; 123). in two case studies, we illustrate this mimicry process of national policies. the first case study analyzes the formation of the informal settlement transwakarsa mandiri (tsm) within a private conservation concession and redd+ pilot initiative, while the second case study examines the general translational dynamics of village-scale land titling. the cases demonstrate that formalization of land tenure systems is not simply applied as predetermined, but is reinterpreted and translated by local public authorities and land users into a local reality. local actors construct new village scales of regulation for facilitating access to land and property. by using fragments of national policies and regulations as well as language and symbols used by the central state, local public authorities seek to legitimize the exceeding of competencies and rent-seeking behavior. the ensuing empirical material leads to the conclusion that access to land is rather obtained by mimicry of the legal than by applying de jure procedures. process-oriented conceptions of land tenure formalization this article analyzes the translation of national formalization endeavors into de facto processes of regulation on the local level. this implies that “rules enshrined in formal law provide only part of the picture” (lund, 2008, p. 134). in law as process, moore (1978) puts forward the idea that regulatory processes, including rules, exist to organize and stabilize uncertainties. at the same time, processes of situational adjustment redefine rules or relationships. although social reality is impacted by national laws, it is also impacted by the socio-cultural context in which local actors live, making the law applicable to their local setting. we analyze regulatory processes of property making as existing orders that are “endlessly vulnerable to being unmade and reproducing themselves. even staying as they are should be seen as a process” (moore, 1978, p. 6). we define property in line with sikor and lund (2010, pp. 3-5) as a social relationship to an object of value (e.g., rights to land legitimized by a public authority). eventually, it is the local actors embedding normative rules of property making into their local reality. a land registration program, for example, can spark the motivation of people striving for a certificate. smallholders might for certain reasons not be able to participate in a national land titling scheme or might lack the (financial) capacities to obtain a formal land title. actors are aware of a national rights framework securing 130 yvonne kunz, jonas hein, rina mardiana, & heiko faust  aseas 9(1) claims over land, hence, turning it into property backed by the central government. the authority in charge of de jure acknowledgments and securing of land rights is a government institution. however, the perspective of local land users on what secures and legitimizes claims may differ. in addition, local authorities, in their multiple identities, can also have a different perception from that foreseen by the national legislators. according to lund (2008, p. 135), actors develop certain readings of the law that may be technically [de jure] incorrect, though considered “the law” by the administrators and, in consequence hereof, by the local population. . . . what is commonly accepted as the reference point, the law, may in fact be a social construction that differs significantly from the normative law. the rule of law is often the rule by those who define it. in line with swyngedouw (2010), we assume that questions of access to natural resources, including land, can be further explained by analyzing the socio-spatial configurations of scales. we consider scale as socially produced, thus “as the outcome of socio-spatial processes that regulate and organize social power relations” (swyngedouw, 2010, p. 8). different public authorities construct different scales to acknowledge and secure rights. in frontier landscapes, public authorities with varying capacities and ranges of legitimacy compete with each other (fold & hirsch, 2009; peluso & lund, 2011; tsing, 2005). they seek to constitute different – and often competing – land rights as property (benda-beckmann, benda-beckmann, & wiber, 2009, p. 18; sikor & lund, 2009, p. 5). the legitimacy of public authorities in issuing land titles is in many cases characterized by “endless chains of reference to bigger authorities” (lund, 2006, p. 693), and thus has a scale component. authorities governing forests and land operate on different government levels and consequently create different – and sometimes overlapping – scales of regulation (towers, 2000, p. 26). more explicitly, scales are shaped by actors while they are at the same time structuring the social practices of actors (hein et al., 2015; marston, 2000, p. 220; towers, 2000, p. 26). relevant scales of regulation that overlap and compete with each other are the village and the national scale. while the village and national scale compete with one another, the latter is at the same time structuring the village scale. when “actors . . . attempt to shift the levels of .  .  . decision-making authority or the level and scale which most suits them .  .  . [and] where they can exercise power more effectively” (lebel, daniel, badenoch, garden, & imamura, 2008, p. 129), the literature speaks of politics of scale (brenner, 2001; towers, 2000). when actors are marginalized at a specific scale (e.g., the national scale), they might seek to “jump scales” to higher or lower scales in order to achieve their interest (smith, 2008, p. 232; zulu, 2009, p. 695). for example, in many parts of indonesia it is almost impossible for peasants to access a land title or forest concession from the ministry of forestry or from the national land agency (nla). peasants consequently often jump to the village scale of regulation to legitimize land claims (hein et al., 2015; zulu, 2009, p. 695). by acknowledging that rules are dynamic and that certain actors “jump scales”, it becomes apparent that the regulatory processes used at the village scale are different from the formulation of these processes at the national scale. they are “almost the same but not quite . . . almost the same but not white” (bhabha, 1994, p. 132). bhabha 131mimicry of the legal describes these processes as mimicry. applying the term in the postcolonial discourse context, he sees mimicry as a strategy. inherent to this strategy is a subversion and power potential. on the discursive level, mimicry works in a double way. on the one hand, specific aspects used by colonizers are turned into own, local aspects in a way that makes them look deceptively genuine. on the other hand, there is always something remaining that cannot be read in the “still not exact” or the “almost the same” (struve, 2013, p. 144). since the regulatory and legal aspects are central to the context of land formalization dynamics, we extend the term to “mimicry of the legal”. regulatory processes played out at, and amended between, scales is what we present in the following paragraphs, the outcome being what we refer to as mimicry of the legal. methodology and field site in order to analyze asymmetries in the national de jure procedures of formalizing land ownership and de facto local land titling, a multi-sited qualitative approach was applied (hein et al., 2015; marcus, 1995). through a literature review of government and academic documents, we gained an understanding of de jure land tenure formalization in indonesia and, in particular, in our research area jambi province, sumatra. in addition, 75 expert interviews were conducted with national government representatives, local authorities, and representatives of ngos between june 2012 and november 2013 to learn about the de jure perspective on land formalization processes at different times. to study the village-scale processes of tenure formalization it was crucial to investigate a variety of villages that differ in their origin and in their locality. the research is part of a larger collaborative research centre (crc 990 on “ecological and socio-economic functions on lowland rainforest transformations systems in jambi province, sumatra, indonesia”). core plot villages, around which all of the 24 research center groups work, were predetermined by the overall research design. in accordance with this design, we identified 16 villages (see figure 1) from across jambi province. amongst them are transmigration villages and local resettlement villages as well as villages of pre-colonial foundations. despite the heterogeneity of the villages and the fact that transmigrants are granted title deeds by the nla, mimicry of the legal dynamics were found in all villages. the researched villages are all located in the proximity of protected areas managed by the state or by private conservation companies. the village territories of some villages (e.g., bungku and singkawang) overlap with state forest, with protected areas, and with the private conservation and redd+ pilot initiative harapan rainforest (badan pengelola redd+, 2014). overlapping claims, (e.g., village-scale land titles competing with titles (concessions) issued by the ministry of forestry or by the nla), are common for many of the villages investigated. information on land tenure systems and land titling processes was mainly gathered through semi-structured interviews in all of the villages (119 interviews across all villages) between may 2012 and october 2013. interview partners were selected following principles of snowball sampling and present a wide variety of affiliations: village representatives, customary leaders, independent smallholders, contract farmers, employees of companies, and the like. the interview focus was on differences in the local actors’ perception of the intention as well as the motivation to obtain title deeds. 132 yvonne kunz, jonas hein, rina mardiana, & heiko faust  aseas 9(1) figure 1. research area, jambi province, sumatra, indonesia.2 information was also gathered through participatory observation and numerous informal interviews conducted while spending several weeks in the villages, usually in the household of the village head. historical development of tenure formalization in jambi, sumatra the emergence of land formalization during the colonialization period does not imply that land tenure had been unregulated before the dutch arrived in indonesia. in precolonial times, it was the sultan who was in charge of land and resource management regulations. the different ethnic groups (batin groups) inhabiting the research area at that time were mostly given autonomy by the sultan in their land decisions. their elected chiefs were in charge of decisions made in regard to access to land as well as in regard to what the land could be used for (locher-scholten, 1994, p. 48). land, during that time, was not an individual possession, but a common good that was guarded and preserved by the community (warman, sardi, andiko, & galudra, 2012, p. 17). the maintenance of the land was regulated through adat rules, the rules in use by indigenous communities. these adat rules permitted different batin lineages to control land and forest along different rivers. the boundaries between different lineages were demarcated by water courses, specific trees, and other landmarks. within the territory of a lineage, only lineage members were allowed to establish fruit gardens and dry rice fields (hein et al., 2015). migrants and other outsiders had to pay tenancy to batin groups for accessing land (tideman, 1938, p. 78). amongst 2 other land use here refers to acacia, eucalyptus, coconut, mangrove, ponds, primary and secondary swamp forest, rubber, settlements, shrubs, swamp, and tea. 133mimicry of the legal these batin groups are the batin sembilan, an ethnic group that has been living in the research area for generations. until today, batin sembilan leaders are approached by land-seeking actors to be granted access to land. by acknowledging their authority as group in charge of land tenure, the access granted is legitimized at the village scale, however, not recognized at the national scale. colonization and land tenure western concepts of private property rights were introduced to the research area at the beginning of dutch colonization when the first dutch resident, helfrich, was deployed to jambi in 1906 (locher-scholten, 1994, p. 268). the dutch colonial government sought to strengthen land control and started to enact regulations aimed at formalizing access to land and property rights. the agrarian act was issued for java and madura in 1870 and for sumatra in 1874 (sumatra domein verklaring). the main intention was to “facilitate the growth of private investment in the agricultural sector” (biezeveld, 2004, p. 140) by establishing a concession system allowing mainly european companies to run plantations. colonization imposed laws, land-use categories, and a western concept of private property by imposing a jurisdictional system with implications for land tenure. in jambi, the colonial jurisdictions undermined the previous water-shed and lineage-based social and territorial structure of the batin groups. the dutch colonial administration established the marga as a new jurisdiction consisting of five to six villages, and the pasirah as a new public authority responsible for land tenure of the native population within a marga. the pasirah remained a relevant public authority until the enactment of the village government law in 1979 (uu 5/79) (galudra, van noordwijk, agung, suyanto, & pradhan, 2014; hein et al., 2015). independence and the basic agrarian law the independence period, commencing in 1945, was characterized by a dual system of land laws: dutch land tenure regulations and customary rules. until the enactment of the basic agrarian law (bal) in 1960, the dualism remained, mostly equipping non-indonesians with land certificates for land that was mapped, measured, and titled. for indonesian citizens, adat rules usually continued to be the legitimizing regulation that organized access to land (macandrews, 1986, p. 19). the bal sought to abolish this dualism mainly by revoking dutch land laws. the basic principles, as outlined in these regulations, were based on the indonesian constitution from 1945, article 33, stating that all land in indonesia has a social function, and that land matters shall be controlled by the state as the authority representing the indonesian people (macandrews, 1986, p. 21). the bal was passed under the first president sukarno and can be considered as an important element of his idea of an indonesian socialism. by introducing a maximum size for land holdings (20 ha) and a redistribution of land to landless or poor households, the law aimed at promoting agrarian justice. the bal further set out the fundamental types of land rights, the most important ones for our context being the right of ownership (hak milik) and the right to cultivate (hak guna usaha). the right of ownership needs to be registered with 134 yvonne kunz, jonas hein, rina mardiana, & heiko faust  aseas 9(1) the nla, and the holder is given a certificate as evidence of the title (oecd, 2012, p. 109). article 19 of the bal made land registration through the nla mandatory, but set no time limit for registration. this means that all landholders should hold a certificate issued by the nla, indicating that the landholder is legally granted the right to own (hak milik). the empirical data to be presented in the case studies show that this mandatory registration is widely interpreted, mimicked, and subject to shifting levels of decision-making. new order and the economic development paradigm sukarno’s ‘guided democracy’, during which most of the provisions from the bal were not operationalized, ended with a military coup and made way for the new order government under general suharto in 1965 (thorburn, 2004, p. 37). the new policy narrative that came with the military-led government was characterized by export-led economic growth and development (barr, 2006, p. 23; rachman, 2011, p. 43). for jambi province, this meant that vast areas of the province were designated as concessions for forest exploitation, thus neglecting the rights of local indigenous communities such as the batin sembilan. in order to achieve these development goals, a number of laws and programs, often closely or directly linked to land formalization processes, were implemented or passed during a 32-year period of a centralized and authoritarian government. the transmigration program the transmigration program in indonesia is the largest government-sponsored voluntary resettlement scheme in the world (world bank, 1988, p. iii). people had already been moved from densely populated islands such as java and bali to less populated areas such as jambi by the dutch colonial administration (batang hari delta kolonisatie project) (sevin & benoît, 1993, p. 105). this program was continued under president sukarno with the intention of equipping landless farmers with land, but it gained momentum during the new order regime and suharto’s strive for development. the program contained “provisions for land development, basic infrastructure, selection and transport of settlers to the sites, housing, subsistence packages, and supporting agricultural services” (sevin & benoît, 1993, p. 555). the directorate general of transmigration, in cooperation with the directorate general of agrarian affairs, was to provide each transmigration household with right-to-use titles (hak pakai) for their house, the land that was ready for cultivation on arrival, and the land to be set aside for other cultivation purposes. after a total of five years on the site, households would be granted full right of ownership titles (hak milik) issued by the nla (world bank, 1979, p. 33). for jambi province, where 70,000 households were moved to under the transmigration program between 1967 and 1995, this would translate to a total area of approximately 438,000 ha equipped with de jure title deeds (miyamoto, 2006, p. 8). participants of a sub-program called swakarsa received, compared to the ‘full transmigrants’, ‘only’ a plot titled by the nla and subsidies for relocation (fearnside, 1997, p. 3). the term swakarsa plays a major role in the mimicry dynamic of the first case study. 135mimicry of the legal forestry laws and the national land agency in addition to the transmigration program, the newly established basic forestry law (bfl) of 1967 initiated major changes in land tenure regimes during the suharto period. under the bfl, the directorate general of forestry within the ministry of agriculture (later upgraded to the ministry of forestry) has the so-called one-sided authority to designate forest areas, regardless of the vegetation cover of a certain area. with this newly acquired authority, more than 140 million ha of forest land or approximately 74% of the land mass of indonesia fell under the jurisdiction of one ministry (indrarto et al., 2012, p. 23). indigenous and local communities were disappropriated and their land became part of state forest land (kawasan hutan), and thus eligible for corporate exploitation via a concession system (contreras-hermosilla & fay, 2005, p. 9). for local communities, it is close to impossible to receive a land certificate for state forest land. nevertheless, as the case studies show, local land users in state forest areas hold de jure title deeds for the land they cultivate. the nla, formerly the directorate general for agrarian affairs, governs land use and land tenure for non-forest areas while the ministry of forestry governs the area assigned as forest land (hein, 2013; indrarto et al., 2012). in terms of land formalization processes and rights of ownership to land, this dual structure has major implications: the bal does not apply to forest land, thus right of ownership land certificates issued by the nla only apply to non-forest land. the nla is responsible for the administration of all non-forest land activities, including land reform, land use, land titling, and land registration (oecd, 2012, p. 109). the local reality, as to be presented in the cases later on, differs. titles are issued on forest land and titles are also issued by institutions different from the nla. according to the nla, the two most common ways to acquire right of ownership land titles outside the transmigration program are sporadic and systematic registration. sporadic registration is the process that identifies, adjudicates, and registers rights of ownership to land on an ad hoc basis, usually when walk-in customers approach the nla and request registration of their parcel regardless of the intentions of their neighbors in this regard. systematic registration identifies, adjudicates, and registers rights to all adjacent land parcels in a selected locality and within a given period of time (world bank, 2002, p. 3). as one of the case studies shows, in a process of mimicry the term sporadic is reinterpreted with a new meaning at the village level. in the process of obtaining a land certificate, the role of the village head (kepala desa) is crucial. based on government regulation 24/1997, it is mandatory to have a proof of ownership signed by the village head in case no other written proof exists. article 7 of government regulation 24/1997 further authorizes the village head to be in charge of land deeds in peripheral areas without a land title registrar (pejabat pembuat akta tanah, ppat). these regulations and the powers given to the village head are widely played out in local reality land titling processes. as to be seen later on, the village head is regarded as a legitimized authority in the context of issuing land titles. again, the competency exercised by the village head is not exactly what the national regulations indicate, but they are “still not exact . . . but almost the same” (bhabha, 2000, p. 122). 136 yvonne kunz, jonas hein, rina mardiana, & heiko faust  aseas 9(1) mimicry of the legal in jambi province despite the efforts to foster land formalization in the previous decades, only a very small number of smallholders hold de jure certificates. “only about 45 percent of the 85 million existing parcels [all over indonesia] are registered, but most of these registered parcels are not yet mapped” (deininger, augustinus, enemark, & munrofaure, 2010, p. 11).3 nevertheless, most of the interviewed smallholders state that they do hold land titles. how does the local reality match the statistics as recorded by the nla and the national statistic office? local actors have established their own titling system, imitating the national juridical system but based on locally relevant scales of regulation, such as village territories. even though this system looks arbitrary, it is not: it follows a complex pattern of translation from national conception to local feasibility. adding to the complex regulatory framework, access to de jure formal tenure is easier to obtain for certain groups (e.g., transmigrants) than for spontaneous migrants or groups inherent to the area.4 this disequilibrium has been translated into a more feasible local set of rules. two cases illustrate the mimicry of the legal as a local translation of national formalization processes. the first case is the formation of a particular informal settlement within state forest land and the way of formalizing its existence; the second one is a type of title deed that was found in all villages, by the name sporadik. mimicry 1: the formation of transwakarsa mandiri the forests of kunangan jaya have been used for shifting cultivation, hunting, and gathering activities by the semi-nomadic batin sembilan since pre-colonial times. in the 1970s and 1980s, the area became part of the logging concession of pt asialog and of the oil palm concession of pt asiatic persada. as a consequence, some batin sembilan families were displaced and shifting cultivation was prohibited. yet, a few families resisted and have remained in the area. the formation of the transwakarsa mandiri (tsm) settlement in the hamlet of kunangan jaya of bungku village can be considered as an active spatial strategy of batin sembilan elites, village elites, and district elites to regain full control over land that had been used and owned by the local population prior to suharto’s appropriation policies. the settlement can be considered as a mimicry of the legal national resettlement policies such as the transmigration program or the program for ‘underdeveloped villages’ (impress desa tertingal, idt). national policies are structuring in-situ access and property relations and providing them with legitimacy. the mimicry of legal policies, legal procedures, and narratives are used to legitimize and justify settlement formation and hence forest conversion. the name of the settlement, transwakarsa 3 unfortunately no data is available for sumatra or jambi province in particular. 4 worth mentioning here is the constitutional court decision mk35 from 2012 (mahkamah konstitutsi nomor 35/puu-x/2012) declaring that customary forest must no longer be subsumed under state forest. instead, customary forest has been changed to a category of “forests that are subject to rights”. once implemented, this would allow indigenous groups to be granted ownership rights for parts of their customary forest land. 137mimicry of the legal mandiri, refers to the state-backed swakarsa transmigration program, even though the tsm settlement has officially no relation to this program and none of the settlers has ever received any support from the transmigration authorities (hein, 2016). the formation of the tsm settlement in 2003 can be traced back to an agreement between a batin sembilan leader living in the district capital of muaro bulian, a javanese teacher and second-generation transmigrant, and the former village head of bungku (pak kumis [pseudonym], 9 september 2012; 10 july 2013). the former village head of bungku married into a batin sembilan family and claims to represent the formal village government and customary authority at the same time (hein et al., 2015; mardiana, 2014). the three leaders started the formalization process by requesting a forest conversion and settlement permit from the logging company pt asialog (pak kumis, 9 september 2012; 10 july 2013) that stopped logging activities in 1997. pt asialog refused to issue a permit, delegating it to the ministry of forestry as the authority in charge. they applied for a permit from the forestry service office in the district of batanghari but never received a formal permit. instead, the javanese teacher pak kumis claims that he received a permit from the district head to establish a farming group for converting forests into smallholder rubber plantations. it is impossible to verify this claim; nevertheless, it seems likely that the tsm project was supported by district officials since the settlement became de facto legalized through support given by the agricultural agency of the district of batang hari (smallholder from bungku, 10 july 2013). the agricultural agency provided agricultural extension services for the settlers, such as fertilizer, soy, and corn seeds. today, the elementary school in the settlement receives operational support from the district’s education agency, further legitimating the settlement. for legalizing individual land claims, the village government of bungku issued village-scale land titles. the formation of the tsm settlement had, according to the three leaders running the project in the first place, three objectives which were all in line with objectives of the transmigration program. the settlement should provide land for landless households, create welfare, and reduce unemployment. additionally, it aimed at supporting poor batin sembilan households. as the program for ‘underdeveloped villages’, the three leaders claimed that encouraging the batin sembilan to be sedentary and teaching them “modern farming techniques” would support them in reaching “development”. following the central transmigration program, migrants participating in the tsm program should act as model farmers for local semi-nomadic groups (pak kumis, 9 august 2012). however, during field research in 2013 only 20 batin sembilan households lived in the settlement and only five to nine houses for batin sembilan had been built by the program. to access land, villagers had to pay a development or administrative fee of approximately idr 700,000 to 1,000,000 per ha (usd 55 to 80) (smallholder from bungku, 24 august 2013). as a local indigenous group, batin sembilan were considered as previous legitimate land owners. thus, they received the plots free of charge. the fee for migrants was meant to finance public infrastructure such as roads, electricity supply, and housing for batin sembilan and for an elementary school (hein et al., 2015). by using the term development fee, the organizers of the tsm settlement concealed the fact that the land was actually sold. as land trade is not in line with the principles of the state-backed transmigration program, the concealment of this fact in particular 138 yvonne kunz, jonas hein, rina mardiana, & heiko faust  aseas 9(1) and the whole formation of the settlement in general can be considered a strategy of mimicking de jure processes of the transmigration program. settlement formation and road construction started in 2004. in 2010, the conservation company pt reki received a conservation concession from the ministry of forestry and started to implement the harapan rainforest project. the concession includes the area of the tsm settlement. during the same year, the conservation company, supported by the forest police and the mobile police brigade brimob, entered the settlement and announced that the settlers had to leave the area within two months (smallholder from bungku, 24 august 2013). most of the settlers left only temporarily and returned after the police operation ended. in 2011, a participatory mapping process started, involving pt reki, the district and provincial forest service, the ministry of forestry, the village government, and representatives from the settler community. at the time of field research in 2012 and 2013, the situation was calm but the conflict was not yet resolved. many key informants in the settlement reported that they felt betrayed by the organizers of the settlement arguing that they were not aware of the fact that the settlement was located within state forest land. a batin sembilan elder living in the settlement complained that the tsm settlement has not created benefits for his family or other batin sembilan. he argued that they have lost most of their customary land to javanese, sundanese, and minangkabau migrants and the remaining land is too small for providing a livelihood for their children (smallholder from bungku, 24 august 2013). the formation of the settlement has been facilitated by two scalar strategies. first of all the actor coalition ‘jumped’ to the district scale for formalizing and legitimizing the settlement and agricultural practices within state forest. they circumvented the ministry of forestry by requesting support from the agricultural agency of the district of batang hari. the settlement as such was constructed as a new scale of regulation which has been reproduced by migrants requesting land. regulations for the settlement and the name of the settlement imitated national polices and laws on transmigration and tenure formalization for further legitimizing the conversion of state forest. mimicry 2: sporadik – a title in the name of a process the second case exemplifying translation of de jure processes of obtaining a title into local reality by mimicry of the legal is the application of the term sporadik. data reveals that amongst all 16 villages visited, peasants secure tenure and gain access to loans by using a title deed referred to as sporadik. even though a high number of different titles in use was found (e.g., segel, surat jual-beli, prona, skt, sktt), sporadik seems to be the most common proof of ownership amongst local actors and was considered the strongest village-scale land title by key informants. according to interview partners, the sporadik (see figure 2) is a tenure proof of land which is measured, while the measurements need to be approved by witnesses (smallholder from gurun mudo, 5 july 2013). 139mimicry of the legal figure 2. sporadik title in the village of bungku. (photo by j. hein). if we want to obtain a sporadik, our land has to be measured, we have to report the location of the land to the village head, the bordering plot owners have to approve the information and the sporadik can be issued. (smallholder from desa baru, 21 august 2013) in some villages it was reported that the sporadik was signed by the village head and in others by the sub-district head (see figure 3). the de jure certificate, in contrast, is only valid if signed by the nla. the mimicked sporadik provides detailed information on the landholder, the size of the plot, and the location of the plot (figure 2). it further contains the names and addresses of two witnesses confirming that the holder of the sporadik is the person owning this land. it also indicates the type of right, in this case the right to own (hak milik). several interview partners also reported that the sporadik can be used as collateral to obtain a loan from a bank. according to the nla, a sporadik is the process by which a single person obtains a land certificate without being part of a program (nla representative in jakarta, 15 august 2013). this is opposed to the process of sistematik, in which a group of people hand in a bundled application to certify a certain number of plots. both processes result in de jure land certification issued by the nla (macandrews, 1986, p. 28) (see figure 3). from the perspective of local actors, sporadik is a proof of ownership and not a process. this proof of ownership is less binding than a certificate. it is, however, binding enough for the holder not to strive for more. most interview partners holding a sporadik do not see their land tenure as insecure and are not planning to buy an official nla certificate soon. 140 yvonne kunz, jonas hein, rina mardiana, & heiko faust  aseas 9(1) figure 3. sporadik in perspective. (own illustration). interestingly, experts (local government officials, representatives of state-owned companies, and local nla offices) during interviews also referred to sporadik as a certificate proof of ownership, which allows the holder to borrow money from the bank. it mimics the legal certification by imitating the procedures for obtaining a land certificate issued by the nla in using vocabulary and tools which the nla uses. the certificates are issued and signed by the village head, most probably due to the crucial role given to the village head by the earlier mentioned article 7, regulation 24/1997. the fact that local banks accept the sporadik as collateral on loans, as is the case for de jure land certificates, displays the de facto power of the translation process. in two villages, it was reported that a sporadik was issued as a title for plots within the boundaries of state forest land. according to national law, this is not possible since right of ownership titles cannot be issued for state forest and since the sporadik is not a title itself but the procedure to obtain a title through the nla. this further displays mimicry of the legal under the precondition that law is a process: a title which is de jure not a title on a piece of land that cannot be owned by an individual is issued by a political authority not legitimized to issue titles. and still, most parties at the village scale consider the right as legitimate. the reason why titles are obtained by mimicry of the legal and not through the de jure procedures does not seem to be a lack of knowledge on the side of local actors. local actors are well aware that it is actually the nla that is in charge of issuing land ownership rights through a land certificate. it is rather an issue of access: the high costs of obtaining a land certificate, the distance to the national offices, and limitations imposed by the ministry of forestry seem to be a motivation for imitating the procedures in a locally feasible manner. “people prefer sproadik as it is cheaper and it is not to be applied for by an office far away” (farmer from gurun mudo, 5 july 2013). land title legitimized by the national scale/ nla a) sporadik land of a single person to be identified adjudication of land parcel identified registration of one land parcel for one title holder sporadik (= village-scale title) legitimized by the village scale measurement to be approved by witnesses, this can be adjacent parcel owner, the head of the sub-village sporadik refers to the process of obtaining a title, not to the title itself sporadik is used as a title deed, acknowledging land ownership. this title called “sporadik’’ is not recognized by the nla b) systematic land of a certain number of adjacent parcels to be identified adjudication of land parcel identified registration of several land parcel for title issued for measured land by village head or sub-district head national scale: village scale: national land agency (nla) village head, sub-district head 2 different processes to acquire land to be measured ownership land title 141mimicry of the legal local public authorities benefit from this mimicry as the sporadik does not come free of charge. the interplay of scale, land tenure regulations, and modes of production are worth mentioning. even though it is usually the nla issuing land certificates, supported by local documents, the highest political scale, that is the national scale, is simply left out by smallholders. this new village-scale of land tenure regulation fits perfectly to one of the dominant modes of production, namely smallholder oil palm and rubber cultivation. pre-existing modes of production such as shifting cultivation have been regulated by lineage and water-shed scales of regulation. tree crop cultivation has contributed to the transformation of lineage-based property to individualized and commodified property. the sporadik title provides a minimum of tenure security and access to loans – both are relevant for farmers entering tree crop production (hein et al., 2015). local public authorities respond to this demand by producing village-scale titles and smallholders re-produce a village-scale of land tenure regulation through ‘scale jumping’. this combines mimicry of the legal and active scalar restructuring, since village authorities have expanded their competencies in legal and in spatial terms through issuing land titles. conclusion processes of land tenure formalization have been initiated by many colonial and post-colonial governments in the global south. multilateral organizations such as the world bank have promoted land tenure formalization and the allocation of land titles as important means to rural development. empirical data from the case study villages in jambi province, sumatra, reveal tenure procedures and title deeds adjusted to the local context through mimicry of the legal. the material shows that laws in regard to access to land which seem unrealistic to obey are an invitation for local actors to mimic. all villages under investigation have established their own local titling system. village authorities have successfully installed village-scale land tenure regulations accepted by local smallholders and by the local nla offices. only in transmigration villages do the majority of inhabitants hold a national juridical title deed. the land provided through the transmigration program does, however, not seem to be sufficient any more, leading inhabitants of transmigration villages to seek to expand the land under cultivation. by doing so, the transmigrants also engage in obtaining land titles, mainly sporadik, further stabilizing the village scale of land tenure regulation. in some villages, sporadik titles are issued for land within state forest and within the private conservation initiative harapan rainforest, indicating that property rights legitimized by village governments and by the national government, and entangled with different scales of regulation, compete with each other. banks accepting sporadik documents as collateral for loans are a strong hint of how the de facto local title deeds are regarded as a legitimized claim by a wide range of actors. the reasons for mimicking national laws seem to be manifold and might not have been exhausted completely in this study. unclear and overlapping competencies might be one reason. the role and the power granted to the village heads indicate that local authorities are exceeding their competencies. at the same time, local land owners legitimize the exceeding of competencies through requesting village-scale titles. 142 yvonne kunz, jonas hein, rina mardiana, & heiko faust  aseas 9(1) for land users, it is cheaper, less time consuming, and sufficiently secure to obtain a title through the village head. the majority of the actors involved on the local level do not seem to see the rationale behind the land titles issued by the nla. only an opportunity to be eligible for a higher loan by the bank seems to legitimize the certificate issued by the national scale. however, since the banks legitimize these competencies, legitimization for the translated procedures is further strengthened. additionally, it seems to be a privilege of companies to get access to forest land through concessions. mimicry then seems to serve as a subversive strategy to gain access to forest land in an asymmetric relation that otherwise restricts this access. mimicking the national law provides land titles and enables land use where it would not be possible according to the central state. the village-scale titles provide actors with less financial resources to access property rights legitimized by state actors providing tenure security and access to bank loans. the consequences of the mimicry on the local level, however, remain the creation of leeway for rent-seeking behavior, since the mimicked sporadik titles are bought from the village heads and sometimes district heads. what also remains is a flexibility in regard to land use that allows for an exploitation of the landscape and accelerates the expansion of smallscale agriculture in the forest frontier areas of rural indonesia. a situation in which rules are used, abandoned, bent, reinterpreted, and sidestepped is inherent to rule systems. that this happens through imitation of de jure legal systems, while at the same time jumping scales and producing village scales, adds to the complexity. in the case of indonesia, massive amounts of money have been invested to accelerate national land formalization processes. but still, until today, for vast areas the local reality remains a mimicry of the legal. in the future, it will be worthwhile to monitor the developments under the redd+ strategy. the strategy refers to the constitutional rights over clear boundaries of natural resource management rights. crucial for smallholders holding a sporadik title will be whether a village-level land title is 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(2009). politics of scale and community-based forest management in southern malawi. geoforum, 40(4), 686-699. 145mimicry of the legal about the authors yvonne kunz is a research associate at the department of human geography at the university of göttingen, germany. her research focuses on land tenure processes in jambi province. ► contact: yvonne.kunz@geo.uni-goettingen.de jonas hein is a researcher at the department of environmental policy and natural resources management at the german development institute. he is a geographer who works on the political ecology of land tenure in indonesia, forest carbon offsets, and international forest and climate policies. ► contact: jonas.hein@die-gdi.de rina mardiana is lecturer at the department of communication & community development sciences at bogor agricultural university, indonesia. her research focus is on population, agrarian, and political ecology. ► contact: rmardiana@gmail.com heiko faust is professor at the division of human geography at the university of göttingen, germany. he is working on sustainable land use science, rural development in forest frontier areas, and on socio-cultural transformation processes. for more than a decade, faust has been principle investigator in international collaborative german-indonesian research centers, focusing on sulawesi and sumatra. ► contact: hfaust@gwdg.de acknowledgements this study was financed in part by the german federal ministry for economic cooperation and development and by the deutsche forschungsgemeinschaft (dfg) in the framework of the collaborative german–indonesian research project crc990. community-based disaster risk management in the philipines: achievements and challenges of the purok system community-based disaster risk management in the philippines: achievements and challenges of the purok system angelina matthies ► matthies, a. (2017). community-based disaster risk management in the philippines: achievements and challenges of the purok system. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 10(1), 101-108. the purok system in the philippines is promoted as a voluntary self-organization at the sub-village level which strengthens community resilience to natural hazards. in 2011, the system received the un sasakawa award and gained prominence among the practitioner community. based on a qualitative study in the municipality of san francisco (cebu province) from december 2014 to march 2015, the article elaborates on the achievements and challenges of the purok system. striking merits encompass efficient and effective information dissemination and evacuation measurements between all levels of political administration that stem from the system’s remarkable enforcement of human and social capital. this is underpinned by a clear determination of roles and responsibility that is subsumed under the concept of accountability. however, the purok system faces internal challenges of maintenance and implies profound conceptual ambiguities regarding the notion of voluntarism and capabilities that favor clientelism. nevertheless, the purok system clearly distinguishes itself from conventional community-based disaster risk management practices and implies potentials that are highly beneficial for strengthening resilience in disaster prone areas. keywords: community-based disaster risk management; purok system; resilience; social capital; voluntarism  introduction due to its geographic location as well as its socio-economic conditions, the philippines is one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world and ranks third out of 171 countries in the world risk report 2016 (welle & birkmann, 2016, p. 49). consequently, efficient strategies at national, regional, and local level that cope with, resist, and enable the recovery from such events are constantly in demand. this article presents an effort to respond to this demand by means of illuminating community-based disaster risk management (cbdrm) in the philippines with special reference to the purok system1. the article is based on a two-pillar problem statement. first, prevalent cbdrm approaches imply certain difficulties that require further explanation and proposals for solution. second, the purok system might imply incentives for the 1 purok is a subdivision of a barangay and thus signifies a sub-village in the philippines. barangay is the smallest administrative unit in the philippines and refers to districts or villages (allen, 2003, p. 7, 39). it serves as the administrative arm of the government and functions as part of the delivery system of goods and services at the community level (guillermo & win, 2005, p. 60). forschungswerkstatt  research workshop w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 17 .1 -7 102 angelina matthies  aseas 10(1) sought-after alternative approach but lacks systematically gathered data. hence, the main purpose of this research was to capture tacit knowledge about the system and make it accessible to scientists as well as practitioners who draw on such incentives in order to overcome shortcomings within cbdrm. the purok system is promoted as an indigenous system of self-organization at the sub-village level. it proved its relevance particularly when typhoon haiyan, locally named yolanda, made landfall on 8 november 2013 as the strongest typhoon ever recorded. at that time, the prompt evacuation of the small island tulang diyot, located in the municipality of san francisco (cebu province), saved the entire island population as the aftermath revealed that all 500 houses were totally destroyed (mc elroy, 2013). such efficient and effective evacuation merits pertain to strong community participation measures and a salient disaster risk reduction (drr) knowledge transfer which is underpinned by a close linkage between purok, barangay, and municipality, thus highly increasing the resilience2 of san francisco. in 2011, the system received the un sasakawa award3 and gained prominence among the practitioner community since local government units (lgus)4 and ngos have been striving to duplicate the system in other regional areas. however, opposed to scientifically ascertained data, data about the purok system pertain to short online articles (mc elroy, 2013; ranada, 2014) and lack an in depth examination. overall, community-based approaches to drr that build on existing knowledge, resources, coping, and adaptive strategies are highly appreciated by communities, people’s organizations, ngos, and government agencies for strengthening coping and adaptive capacities at the local community level (allen, 2006, p. 83; victoria, 2003, p. 1). however, they contain particular shortcomings as they are based in communities but are run and implemented by numerous external actors, leading to difficulties and dependencies with regard to their realization. problems, for instance, show the cbdrm project’s neglect of social heterogeneity within communities which often leads to the neglect of those community members that may already find themselves in marginalized positions. moreover, participation processes can appear challenging to communities due to an attitude stemming from the history of oppression or dole-out policies. especially in rural areas in the philippines, the government has left the people incapable of making decisions. moreover, years of solely being receivers of relief goods bring about a form of lethargy and as a consequence a lack of the personal initiative needed in order to implement cbdrm. referring to that, alfredo arquillano jr. who conceptualized and still maintains the purok system in san francisco noted: 2 although definitions of resilience vary in numerous ways, most definitions describe it as a capacity for successful adaptation in the face of disturbance, stress, or adversity and the ability to resist damage (norris, stevens, pfefferbaum, eyche, & pfefferbaum., 2008, p. 129). 3 the united nations sasakawa award for disaster reduction recognizes excellence in innovation, outreach, and collaboration to improve resilience of nations and communities. it is awarded to an individual or an institution for taking active efforts in reducing disaster risk in their communities. 4 a common definition of local government refers to it as “state administration at a level closest to the population within its area of jurisdiction” (o’brien, bhatt, saunders, gaillard, & wisner, 2012, p. 629). it unveils the diversity and complexity of local governments around the globe. within this article, it refers to the government of the municipality. 103community-based disaster risk management in the philippines when i started the purok system, i started only one community. you know why? because of the negative attitude of people. . . . you know for them it is a waste of time and money and effort (a. arquillano jr., 16 december 2014). consequently, ‘real’ community participation appears as a concept that is easier to promote than to implement (delica-willison & gaillard, 2012, p. 721). besides, a project-based approach within cbdrm accompanied by short-term funding leads to dissolutions of community-based teams after projects have been completed. within the frame of a two-month fieldtrip to the municipality of san francisco from december 2014 to march 2015, the article examines achievements and challenges of the purok system regarding drr. methods include semi-structured individual and group interviews as well as participant observation, explicitly referred to the attendance of monthly and annual purok meetings, weekly purok coordinator meetings, and drr trainings. the article introduces the development and organizational structure of the purok system as well as its achievements and challenges by means of an illumination of the notion of human and social capital – concepts which adequately capture the striking merits of the purok system. it concludes with the discussion of the systems’ relevance as an alternative to conventional cbdrm and as well as an outlook for further research. development and structure of the purok system in 2004, the purok system was conceptualized by alfredo arquillano jr., the former mayor of san francisco who describes the purok system as the smallest unit of governance that is located at the sub-village level, basically making up 50 to 100 households. the administrative division into puroks exists all over the philippines. however, its systemized use for cbdrm started in san francisco and is still unique to this municipality. within two years, arquillano jr. and the municipal purok coordination team established about 120 puroks comprising several puroks in each barangay. the purok system is delineated as “the smaller version of a barangay” (municipal disaster risk reduction management office, 6 january 2015) as it includes an arrangement of committees similar to the organizational structure of the barangay. the following organigram gives an example of the average organizational structure (see figure 1). at the beginning of its establishment, it aimed to solve problems of solid waste management and took on additional tasks over time, such as planting vegetable gardens and starting livelihood projects until it developed its own drr strategies. this development took place in response to the implementation of the new disaster management law in 2010 (national disaster risk reduction & management council philippines, 2016) that officially adopted cbdrm as a model to engage communities in drr (fernandez, uy, & shaw, 2012, p. 209; shaw, 2009, p. 138). it was alfredo arquillano jr. who encouraged the communities to build purok halls (see figure 2) for the purpose of monthly meetings. such meetings gather at least one representative of each household as well as the responsible district coordinators and purok chairmen (appointed counselor of the barangay) who are required to attend and act as a bridge between communities and lgus. if a purok member is prevented from joining the 104 angelina matthies  aseas 10(1) monthly meeting for any reason, s/he can either send a representative or pay a penalty ranging from php 20 to 50 (eur 0.38 to 0.94). during such meetings, the purok members are informed and briefed about municipal projects, evacuation measures, and adaptation mechanisms. pintakasi5 is assumed as the heart and reason for portraying the purok system as a system of self-organization based on voluntarism. within the scope of the purok system, it entails a voluntary activity which takes place on a regular basis and aims to clean surroundings through, for example, garbage collection or the maintenance of a community garden. similar to the meeting policy, non-participating members must pay a penalty. combined with other membership fees, such penalties form the capital build up system (cbu) that serves as a deposit for micro-financing procedures. opposed to its promotion as a post disaster fund (united nations office for disaster risk reduction, 2012), the field research revealed that the cbu takes the role of 5 pintakasi is referred to as bayanihan in tagalog. originally, it is related to the practice of mutual help stemming from the common tradition among neighbours in philippine towns and villages who together move an entire house to a new place (devuyst, 2001, pp. 118-119). figure 1: organizational chart of a purok. (own illustration). figure 2. left: light material purok hall of purok bagakay (san isidro, south district). right: concrete purok hall of purok cantuwak (union, north district). (photos by angelina matthies). 105community-based disaster risk management in the philippines financial help for general emergencies like illness or overdue electric bills. however, the low livelihood situation of purok members often prevents them from repayment. the achievement of social cohesion within the scope of the purok system and its role within drr, the idea of social capital proves to be of high importance and acts as a useful tool for illustrating its achievements and challenges. putnam (1995) defines social capital as “features of social life – network, norms and trust – that enable participants to act together more effectively to pursue shared objectives” (pp. 664-665). moreover, he distinguishes between “bonding” and “bridging” social capital and describes the first as “reinforcing the identity of a homogenous group” whereas the latter encompasses “socializing across diverse social cleavages” (putnam, 2000, pp. 22-23). furthermore, szreter and woolcock (2004) refer to a third kind of social capital namely “linking capital” (p.  655) that they define as relationships aiming to bridge individuals across institutional boundaries. especially linking and bonding capital proved to be of utmost significance for evacuation procedures. due to a well-functioning social network based on particular assigned roles within the purok, barangay, and municipality, everybody within the purok is accountable for a certain task, thereby improving efficiency of evacuation processes. since purok communities are strongly linked to the barangay level via kagawads and to the municipality via purok coordinators, they experience a profound enhancement in their social network which can be seen as reinforcement of linking capital. this especially comes into force in cases of information dissemination ahead of natural hazards. the mdrrmo staff constantly monitors weather forecasts, initiates emergency meetings in case of potential hazards, and informs the barangay captains about evacuation plans. they subsequently inform the puroks. furthermore, the purok coordinators ensure that each purok receives the information by virtue of their additional visits. moreover, it is perceived that the purok system reinforces a sense of unity among the purok members which was noted by several interviewees during the conversation about the advantages of the purok system (chairman of health in sungkayao, 10 december 2014). similar to the barangay structure, purok communities are organized through a drr committee including assigned persons who ensure that every household is informed of an upcoming hazard. more precisely, such a committee requires that there be purok members especially assigned to take care of vulnerable community members. in cases of natural hazards, purok communities gather and wait for the transportation to evacuation centers. if some households, that experience a higher risk due to houses with light building materials, are affected by an upcoming hazard, other households who inhabit more resilient concrete houses accommodate them. such forms of community cohesion can be identified as bonding social capital according to putnam’s definition. overall, the strengthening of human capital mentioned above that happens through imparting drr knowledge and skills, paves the way for effective evacuation procedures, ensures its maintenance due to knowledge refreshments, and aims at long-term resiliency and autonomy due to the encouragement of self-sufficiency. 106 angelina matthies  aseas 10(1) challenges for the system’s maintenance concerning the maintenance of the system, challenges mainly appear internally (i.e., within the community). one of the main obstacles to successful performance of the system is the inactivity of members. their inactivity is due to multiple motives that i classified into three types. the first relates to the upper social stratum comprising individuals with a high level of education who often perform time-consuming jobs that overlap with the monthly meetings. the second reason behind inactivity is based on attitudes of certain citizens who do not believe in or do not want to invest in the purok system. this is moreover underpinned by an attitude of lethargy given that inactive members are often deemed as the first to demand relief goods during calamities (drr advocator head, 16 february 2015). the third type of motive behind inactivity refers to political opponents or political rivals. these community members are opposed to the purok system due to their political position against government representatives and strive to discourage people from the system by initiating ‘black propaganda’. furthermore, the system faces profound conceptual ambiguities with regard to the notion of voluntarism. it became clear in the course of the research that voluntarism is a somehow misdirecting term since active participation of each citizen in the purok system is prescribed by the municipal ordinance no. 2007-045. even more, the legal regulation holds that inactive members who do not pay the penalty are not allowed to receive a purok clearance. a missing purok clearance restricts community members from obtaining a barangay clearance which in turn is required in order to assert the rights of a philippine citizen and thus signifies a symbolic form of leverage. overall, the research showed that voluntarism in the case of the purok system is embedded in power relations and restricted by the instrumental way in which it is realized given that voluntary participation is bound to law. pintakasi is perceived as a voluntary activity since nobody is overtly forced to participate but abstinence clearly brings about severe disadvantages. the system’s power of instrumentality also becomes evident during elections through clientelistic structures. purok groupings highly alleviate vote-buying processes since a whole group of votes can be acquired, for instance, by visiting only one purok. moreover, missing political commitment by particular purok communities may result in the redirection of relief goods. the purok system as an alternative to conventional cbdrm? the gathered data shows ambiguous findings that identify the purok system as a strikingly efficient system with regard to drr, but at the same time, highlight fundamental challenges within processes of maintenance and volunteering. on the one hand, the purok system triggers the enforcement of social and human capital which promotes a process of resilience and empowerment. the improvement of resilience takes place at every administrative level and comes especially into force by means of efficient and effective information dissemination and evacuation procedures which are based on the close linkage between purok, barangay, and municipality. moreover, the pdrrmc plays a crucial role during evacuation situations as it distributes tasks within the puroks and ensures accelerated procedures. it clearly distinguishes itself from conventional cbdrm since it involves a fundamental and sustainable restruc107community-based disaster risk management in the philippines turing of communities that counteracts the project-based approach that often implies a structural dissolution after cbdrm projects are completed. the involvement of vulnerable people is one of the purok system’s priorities. the determination of roles and responsibilities before, during, and after natural hazards ensures that especially vulnerable people (pregnant women, disabled, older persons, or people living in light material houses) are protected. moreover, the self-determined process of election and internal policies increase decision-making power and levels of participation. on the other hand, the gathered data lead to disenchantments based on various challenges. as opposed to the expected autonomous indigenous method of self-organization that is promoted in the available literature, the purok system is initiated and maintained by the local government. considering the statutory anchoring, penalty or clearance policies, the system is embedded in a top-down modus operandi. this somehow employs purok communities as executive authorities and increases the system’s susceptibility to political instrumentalization. despite its remarkable achievements, the present research warns against treating the purok system as a panacea to disaster risk management problems as it is always accompanied by institutional authority and embedded in prevalent power relations that embrace difficulties in its effective realization. the purok system is only capable of realizing its full potential if barangay and municipality incorporate sufficient capacity to train the pdrrmc. in addition, the municipality as well as the barangay require a well-functioning structure including sufficient staff and a clear allocation of tasks in order to distribute relevant information and provide essential help within the evacuation process. since main problems such as 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(2004). health by association? social capital, social theory, and the political economy of public health. international journal of epidemiology, 33, 650-667. united nations office for disaster risk reduction. (2012). making cities resilient. my city is getting ready. retrieved from http://www.unisdr.org/campaign/resilientcities/champions/view/47681566 victoria, l. p. (2003). community based disaster management in the philippines: making a difference in people’s life. center for disaster preparedness. retrieved from http://www.preventionweb.net/files/733_8363. pdf welle, t., & birkmann, j. (2016). the world risk index 2016. retrieved from http://weltrisikobericht.de/wpcontent/uploads/2016/08/ worldriskreport2016.pdf about the author angelina matthies received an ma in southeast asian studies from the university of passau, germany, with a focus on conflicts, disasters, and nation-building processes. this article is an outcome of her ma thesis. it is dedicated to the world-wide victims of natural hazards and the warm-hearted citizens of san francisco (cebu province). ► contact: angelinamatthies@gmx.de gender, ethnicity, and environmental transformations in indonesia and beyond gender, ethnicity, and environmental transformations in indonesia and beyond kristina großmann, martina padmanabhan & suraya afiff ► großmann, k., padmanabhan, m., & afiff, s. (2017). gender, ethnicity, and environmental transformations in indonesia and beyond. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 10(1), 1-10. the contributions in this special issue are based on the general assumption that political and economic decisions always have an ecological impact and that societies have always transformed, (re-)produced, manufactured, and crafted nature. environmental transformations are never socially neutral but are strongly connected to power relations (görg, 2003). the enforcement of power over nature evolves in a dialectical process with the enforcement of power over humans (pye, 2015). furthermore, social, cultural, and political power asymmetries shape the production of knowledge, the definition of problems, and the search for solutions with regard to socio-ecological phenomena. both gender and ethnicity are decisive factors in societal relations to nature. gender constitutes a critical variable in human-nature relationships (resurreccion & elmhirst, 2008; rocheleau, slayter-thomas, & wangar, 1996) as does the category of ethnicity with its strong impact on group formation (afiff & lowe, 2007; bertrand, 2004; li, 2000). in this special issue we address how both categories interact and enforce each other in contested development processes, focusing on access, control, knowledge production, and identity-formation in struggles over land, nature, and natural resources. indonesia’s developmentalist and extractivist paradigm during the new order, suharto’s authoritarian development regime was based on the extraction of the natural resources of the ‘outer islands’ for enhancing progress of the center (java) (haug, rössler, & grumblies, 2017). backed by foreign investments, the outer islands and especially the uplands were constructed as marginal areas and their inhabitants as ‘isolated tribes’ (suku terasing) which should be ‘civilized’ in the name of development and modernization (li, 1999). following this aim, since the 1980s, transmigration programs have been enforced in order to establish the presence of the javanese ‘center’, to strengthen a national identity, and to relieve population pressure in java (elmhirst, 1999). thousands of families have been resettled from java to the outer islands and endowed with land and assets so as to cultivate the land and ‘civilize the people’. in the same context, the 1997 implemented village law (uu no. 5/1979) aimed at the homogenization of village governance based on the javanese model of the desa. the law transformed the socio-political and territorial organization of former communities and banned customary rights to land. in the context of editorial w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 17 .1 -1 2 kristina großmann, martina padmanabhan & suraya afiff  aseas 10(1) the developmentalist and extractivist agenda, huge forest areas were destroyed, put under state control, or commercialized for extracting natural resources or converting them into agricultural land. the commodification and devastation of nature entails transformations in livelihood strategies and economic structures as well as the weakening and abolishment of the socio-political and territorial organization of local communities. consequently, conflicts regarding the access and control of land and resources occur (hall, hirsch, & li 2011; nevins & peluso, 2008; pichler & brad, 2016). today, the national model of development still connects economic growth and social development with the extraction of natural resources (for mining, see großmann, padmanabhan, & braun, this issue). the national masterplan for acceleration and expansion of indonesia economic development (masterplan percepatan dan perluasan pembangunan ekonomi indonesia, mp3ei) for the period of 2011 to 2025, adopted by the former president susilo bambang yudhoyono (sby), stresses this developmentalist paradigm. according to their economic capacities and advantages, the mp3ei divides regions into economic corridors to achieve indonesia’s goals of self-sufficiency, advancement, justice, and prosperity (coordinating ministry for economic affairs, 2011). subsequently, sumatra has been defined as a center for production and processing of natural resources and as the nation’s energy reserves (coordinating ministry for economic affairs, 2011, p. 51), referring to palm oil, rubber, coal, shipping, and steel. java, on the contrary, should serve as a driver for national industry and service provision (coordinating ministry for economic affairs, 2011, p. 74), stressing the production of food and beverages, textiles, and transportation equipment. kalimantan should develop to become the center for production and processing of national mining and energy reserves (coordinating ministry for economic affairs, 2011, p. 96), focusing on oil and gas, coal, palm oil, steel, bauxite, and timber. as can be observed in his government plan, the current president joko widodo follows this developmentalist paradigm (widodo & kalla, 2014). he aims at strengthening the national economy by extracting and refining (hilirisasi) natural resources, whereas the exploitation of coal and gas should secure the national energy supply and enhance export revenues. at the same time, joko widodo takes into account local communities and stresses fair governance. this includes the ‘fair distribution’ of natural resources aiming at the enhancement of benefits and respect of local communities and a planned moratorium on giving permits for the establishment of oil palm plantations and mining sites. he prolonged these aspects in his speech on 4 january 2017, in which he promulgated equality, the redistribution of assets, and the reform of land rights as his main objectives. unsuccessful attempts to enhance fair distribution and environmental protection joko widodo’s aim to enhance the fair distribution of natural resources exemplifies a slight change in the relationship between the state and natural resource extraction in respect to policies and regulatory framework. yet, his attempts to enhance equality, rights, and environmental protection still lack impactful implementation, as he mostly proceeds the ineffective regulations and programs of his predecessors. since the 1990s, the indonesian government has tried to limit the negative effects 3gender, ethnicity, and environmental transformations in indonesia and beyond of commercial use of natural resources for people and the natural environment. for example, national parks in which agricultural activity was prohibited were established to increase environmental protection. however, these policies have caused severe land conflicts between the local population, migrants, and state officials. in this issue, stefanie steinebach and yvonne kunz elaborate on the establishment of the bukit duabelas national part in sumatra in 2000 and show that neither ‘indigenous’ nor ‘non-indigenous’ people could assert land rights. in 1997, and in an extended version in 2009, a comprehensive environmental protection law was adopted (uu no. 23/1997 and uu no. 32/2009), which includes, among other things, the obligation to carry out an environmental impact assessment (analisis mengenai dampak lingkungan, amdal) for all projects affecting the environment. however, the assessment is commissioned and financed by the investor or the company and the results are mostly evaluated by a commission of experts who benefit from the investment as, for example, government representatives. therefore, compensation payments are often very low or promised but not paid. ngos and communities see the amdal process very critically as it is primarily a formality in which the negative impacts and rehabilitation measures for people and the environment are not taken seriously (see großmann, padmanabhan, & braun, this issue). overall, the attempts to enhance fair distribution through the establishment of national parks and impact assessments were double-edged. the overlap of areas with community lands, protected areas and indigenous conservation sites cause policy and regulatory uncertainties over land use and property rights. priorities and interests differ not only vertically between local communities, the national state, and companies but also horizontally between different local groups and local elites (see steinebach & kunz; großmann, padmanabhan, & braun, this issue). the need for transdisciplinarity one response to the challenges of environmental transformations and climate change is a transdisciplinary approach (christinck & padmanabhan, 2013). transdisciplinarity goes beyond the interdisciplinary cooperation between different academic disciplines and recognizes the valuable contribution that practitioners’ expertise can bring to problem-oriented research (jahn, bergmann, & keil, 2012). therefore, an understanding of transformation processes demands an assessment of their relationships with human values and socio-economic development pathways. a transdisciplinary approach is concerned with the reconciliation of the development of human society with the planetary boundaries in which it takes place (clark & dickson, 2003) and reflects on power relationships at the heart of current unsustainable socio-ecological interactions. in their contribution, yunita t. winarto, cornelis j. stigter, and muki t. wicaksono describe such an interand transdisciplinary project, that is, the implementation of science field shops for farmers in java to learn agrometerology in order to better respond to phenomena related to climate change. the authors argue that through an interand transdisciplinary educational commitment in the frame of science field shops, farmers not only develop strategies to cope with environmental change resulting from climate change but also learn to contest conventional national development paradigms. 4 kristina großmann, martina padmanabhan & suraya afiff  aseas 10(1) the gender-ethnicity-environment nexus indonesia is of specific relevance within the field of gender studies, as scholars have stressed the tendency of only minor stratification of social relations along the category of gender (colfer, 2008; dejong, 1998; metje, 1995; sanday, 2002; tsing, 1990). in more recent decades, however, research has pointed towards rising gender inequality in predominantly muslim regions (schröter, 2013) which exists side-by-side with gender equal or gender symmetric groups. one of these groups are the dayak benuaq in kalimantan (see michaela haug, this issue), which are generally characterized by well-balanced gender relations. however, new gender asymmetries are emerging due to environmental change. haug indicates that the increasing exploitation of natural resources has led to far reaching social and political transformations which (re) produce, in various ways, gendered economic, political, and social inequalities. as men and women possess different environmental knowledge, roles, and responsibilities, gender plays a crucial role for determining access to and control over natural resources and often influences how men and women are incorporated into new labor systems. rising inequalities are also illustrated in the contribution by kristina großmann, martina padmanabhan, and katharina von braun, where women’s rights and access to and control over land and cash, as well as status within the mining community decrease (see also byford, 2002; lahiri-dutt & mahy, 2007; macintyre, 2002). similar observations are made regarding the exploitation of palm oil where women are described as increasingly marginalized (julia & white, 2011; li, 2015). most existing literature on environmental change and gender focuses on women rather than on gender relations and tend to depict women as victims, stressing their vanishing access, control, and status. only recently, rebecca elmhirst and ari darmastuti (2015) have developed a more nuanced description in their gender specific analysis of environmental change, governance, and power structures, which also takes the materiality of resources into account. they elaborate on the continuing embeddedness of multi-local livelihoods with reference to the use of diverse natural resources. changing economic systems and social structures, they assert, lead to new (self-)concepts of gender identities, gender roles, work activities, control, and responsibilities. in her contribution to this issue, michaela haug follows this approach by describing women’s and men’s integration in differently gendered socio-economic systems, analyzing inclusions and exclusions of men and women in different contexts. generally speaking, while there is a great number of studies on gender relationships in indonesia, there is still a limited body of academic literature on issues of human-nature relationships with a gender focus – a gap which we aim to bridge in this issue. much of the contested environmental transformations, as the increasing exploitation of natural resources, deforestation, and expansion of palm oil production, take place within the domains of indigenous communities and in areas of rich biodiversity. therefore, environmental transformations often entail power struggles between and amongst members of indigenous communities, state officials, representatives of companies, and members of environmental organizations. during the suharto era, ethnicity was abolished from public and political discourse. since the 1990s, however, ethnicity has seen a revival in indonesian politics (davidson & henley, 2007; 5gender, ethnicity, and environmental transformations in indonesia and beyond van klinken, 2007), which is connected to the strengthening of the concept of indigeneity supported by global indigenous peoples’ movements (hauser-schäublin, 2013). in struggles over natural resources, indigeneity becomes a means to strengthen community and secure land rights against state and corporate claims (großmann, 2017; li, 2000). major concerns in these struggles circle around land rights and the legitimization of territorial claims in the context of land grabbing and green grabbing (afiff & lowe, 2007; fairhead, leach, & scoones, 2012; hall, 2011; mccarthy, vel, & afiff, 2012; peluso, 2009, 2011; pichler, 2015). in this issue, stefanie steinebach and yvonne kunz reflect on the highly political process of creating ethnicity in the case of local indigenous land rights in the province of jambi, sumatra. as they show, the right to land cannot be equally implemented by all indigenous groups, as in the case of the orang rimba – an ethnic group in sumatra that can easily be categorized as ‘indigenous people’ but that cannot yet assert territorial claims against the state. why combining gender and ethnicity? as already expressed, changes in the environment lead to far reaching changes of local livelihoods, often inducing economic, political, and social inequalities and deprivation due to indigenous peoples’ dependency on natural resources. therefore, both indigenous men and women are negatively affected by the limited access and control to land and resources as well as other forms of political and economic exclusion. yet, women may experience ethnicity differently than men. scholars and women’s rights organizations document negative effects on indigenous women’s wellbeing, working conditions, their precarious situation of rights, access, and control pertaining to natural resources, as well as their marginalization and exclusion within processes of environmental change (down to earth, 2014; international women and mining network, 2004). gender-based inequalities are often intersected by inequalities based on class, age, race, and ethnicity. therefore, environmental changes have different effects on the knowledge, access, benefit, control, and power relations of men and women as well as of indigenous and non-indigenous peoples. intersectional approaches analyze the mutual construction and reinforcement of various categories of stratification, that is, class, race, ethnicity, and gender (schubert, 2005). in this issue, michaela haug argues that in the case of the dayak benuaq, next to gender and ethnicity, age and education are constitutional factors when considering the impacts, reactions, involvement, and coping strategies of the group regarding development agendas and environmental changes. intersectional intertwinements, however, are rarely explored in research on environmental transformations and there is a lack of gender-specific analyses of indigenous peoples’ natural resource management and their reaction to environmental transformations. strategic essentialism the instrumentalization and essentialization of ethnicity and gender is understood as strategic essentialism (spivak, 1988). based on particular characteristics, indigenous groups distinguish themselves, or are distinguished from others in order to substan6 kristina großmann, martina padmanabhan & suraya afiff  aseas 10(1) tiate claims for the restitution of traditional rights to land and other natural resources. one example is the construction of a specific dayak identity that is utilized for political mobilization (mccarthy, 2004; schiller, 2007; van klinken, 2006). in this issue, angelina matthies elaborates on an example of strategic essentialism in the philippines: while the purok system is promoted as an indigenous system of selforganization at the sub-village level in the context of community-based disaster risk management (cbdrm), it is embedded in a top-down modus operandi and accompanied by institutional authority and clientelistic structures that disenchant the promoted community-based disaster risk management implemented by self-organized citizens. in another example in this issue, kristina großmann, martina padmanabhan, and katharina von braun show how civil society organizations and development institutions in indonesia deploy ethnicityand gender-coded strategic essentialisms in natural resource management discourses as they often depict indigenous women as the ‘better’ conservers of nature and stress their fundamental role in environmental protection. the contributions the contributions to this special issue elaborate on conflicts and alliances concerning struggles over natural resources along ethnic and gendered lines. the authors describe how indigenous men and women perceive, value, and cope with socio-ecological transformations and indicate emerging and sustained gender a/ symmetries. finally, they analyze interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary programs that address environmental transformations caused by climate change. stefanie steinebach and yvonne kunz analyze processes and impacts of indigenous land titling in a controversial national park case in indonesia. although rights against the state can be enhanced, injustice between local communities emerge and transform local social structures. in her gender-specific analysis of environmental transformation processes among the dayak benuaq in indonesia, michaela haug observes emerging asymmetries between men and women due to different ways of inclusion in new economic systems. however, as she argues, gender is interwoven with other kinds of inequalities such as ethnicity, class, age, or education that take effect in different contexts. this is also argued by kristina großmann, martina padmanabhan, and katharina von braun in their literature review on the intertwinement between gender and ethnicity in indonesia’s mining sector. the authors assert that gender, ethnicity, and other categories of differentiation are important in unfolding governance, rights, access, roles, and identities in the complex environmental transformations in the mining sector in indonesia. in their case study on science field shops in indonesia, yunita t. winarto, cornelis j. stigter, and muki t. wicaksono elaborate on the cooperation between farmers and so-called farmer-learning-focused-scientists. while transand interdisciplinary collaboration is seen to enhance positive responses to environmental transformations induced by climate change, future challenges remain particularly in the transdisciplinary collaboration with local universities and governmental authorities. as the contributions to this issue show, members of local communities are differently affected by indonesia’s national developmentalist and extractivist paradigm. 7gender, ethnicity, and environmental transformations in indonesia and beyond new power constellations and the strengthening of indigenous groups can result in the rise of new elites that may impact the exclusion and discrimination of others. therefore, one challenge in current environmental struggles is the empowerment of former marginalized groups without creating new exclusions. the contributions also stress that multiple categories of differentiation, beyond that of gender and ethnicity, should be included in elaborations on power struggles in the context of environmental change. although, gender and ethnicity are critical variables in human-naturerelationships, age, education, status, descent, and other categories are equally important. contextualized research which takes various categories of differentiation into account is essential in order to understand the complex impacts of environmental transformations as power and new exclusions set up along these lines.  references afiff, s., & lowe, c. 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(1990). gender and performance in meratus dispute settlement. in j. atkinson & s. errington (eds.), power and difference. gender in island southeast asia (pp. 95-126). stanford: stanford university press. van klinken, g. (2006). colonizing borneo: state-building and ethnicity in central kalimantan. indonesia, 81, 23-49. van klinken, g. (2007). communal violence and democratization: small town wars. london: routledge. widono, j., & kalla, y. (2014). jalan perubahan untuk indonesia yang berdaulat, mandiri dan berkepribadian. visi, misi, dan program aksi. jakarta. about the authors kristina großmann is assistant professor at the chair of comparative development and cultural studies with a focus on southeast asia at the university of passau, germany. her main research interests are environmental transformations, dimensions of differentiation in ethnicity and gender, and civil society organizations in southeast asia. ► contact: kristina.grossmann@uni-passau.de martina padmanabhan is professor and holds the chair in comparative development and cultural studies with a focus on southeast asia at the university of passau, germany. she received her phd in rural sociology from the university of göttingen, germany. she focuses on social-ecological research, organic farming, gender studies, institutional analysis, sustainable development, and the theory and practice of transdisciplinary research. suraya afiff is director of the center for anthropological studies at university of indonesia, jakarta. she obtained her phd degree in environmental science, policy and management from the university of california, berkeley. she focuses on issues related to access and control of state forest lands by poor communities, climate change issues, in particular redd issues (reducing emission from deforestation and forest degradation), as well as on agrarian and environmental justice movements in indonesia. acknowledgements the idea for this issue emerged during the international workshop “environmental transformation, ethnicity, and gender in kalimantan, indonesia” which took place from 10. to 12. june 2015 at the university of passau, germany, and which was organized by martina padmanabhan, kristina großmann, and katharina von braun. we duly acknowledge funding for this workshop by the deutsche forschungsgemeinschaft (dfg) (pa 1229/5-1) and the university of passau (förderung für wissenschaftliche veranstaltungen). the workshop was part of the program initiation of international collaboration (aufbau internationaler kooperationen) bearing the title “kalimantan contested: in search for development (indsearch)”, funded by dfg. 10 kristina großmann, martina padmanabhan & suraya afiff  aseas 10(1) other parts of the program comprised the funding of a preliminary explorative research trip to indonesia by kristina großmann in 2015, and the visit of suraya afiff as guest professor at the university of passau in 2016, when the introduction for this issue was drafted. we also duly acknowledge funding by the bavarian research alliance (bayfor) for an exploratory research trip to indonesia by martina padmanabhan, kristina großmann, and andrea höing in 2014. prooder anti-life? die katholische kirche in der debatte um reprodukive gesundheit auf den philippinen aseas 5(1) 128 129 d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -5 .1 -7 forum südostasien / forum south-east asia prooder anti-life? die katholische kirche in der debatte um reprodukive gesundheit auf den philippinen marina wetzlmaier1 citation wetzlmaier, m. (2012). prooder anti-life? die katholische kirche in der debatte um reproduktive gesundheit auf den philippinen. aseas österreichische zeitschrift für südostasienwissenschaften, 5(1), 128-138. einleitung im september 2010 drohte die katholische bischofskonferenz der philippinen (catholic bishops’ conference of the philippines, cbcp) präsident benigno aquino mit der exkommunizierung, also der höchsten strafe, die die kirche aussprechen kann. aquinos „vergehen“ war die ankündigu ng, armen familien künstliche verhütungsmittel zur verfügung zu stellen, wenn diese es wünschten. in den augen der kirche galt dies jedoch als „unmoralisch“ und nicht mit dem katholizismus vereinbar, und der damalige vorsitzende der cbcp, bischof nereo odchimar aus surigao del sur, mindanao, sah in empfängnisverhütung sogar einen verstoß gegen die zehn gebote (tubeza, 2010a). seit über zehn jahren wird auf den philippinen ein gesetz zur reproduktiven gesundheit2, die reproductive health (rh) bill, debattiert, das die förderung von allen formen der „natürlichen“ und „künstlichen“3 familienplanung sowie maßnahmen zur müttergesundheit vorsieht. im februar 2011 flammte die diskussion wieder auf, als dem kongress ein neuer entwurf vorgelegt wurde. dafür, dass es bisher zu 1 marina wetzlmaier schloss ende 2011 das studium der internationalen entwicklung an der universität wien ab. in ihrer diplomarbeit behandelte sie die landrechtsbewegung auf den philippinen. derzeit arbeitet sie bei fian (foodfirst information and action network) philippines, quezon city. kontakt: marina.wetzlmaier@gmx.at 2 die weltgesundheitsorganisation (world health organisation, who) definiert reproduktive gesundheit folgendermaßen: „reproductive health implies that people are able to have a satisfying and safe sex life and that they have the capability to reproduce and the freedom to decide if, when and how often to do so” (who, 2012). das recht auf reproduktive gesundheit beinhaltet informationen über und zugang zu sicheren, effektiven und leistbaren methoden der empfängnisverhütung. frauen haben außerdem das recht auf eine angemessene gesundheitsversorgung, die eine sichere schwangerschaft und geburt garantieren soll. 3 mit „künstlicher“ verhütung sind methoden gemeint, die die befruchtung der eizelle verhindern, oder verhindern, dass samenzellen in die gebärmutter gelangen, wie zum beispiel kondom, pessar, spirale oder hormonelle methoden wie die pille oder injektionen (likhaan, 2010). aseas 5(1) 128 129 keiner verabschiedung kam, machen befürworterinnen der rh bill die katholische kirche verantwortlich, deren vertreter in öffentlichen kampagnen, durch fernsehinterviews, pastoralbriefe, während messen und im internet unmissverständlich ihren widerstand gegen eine „anti-life, anti-natal and contraceptive mentality“ (cbcp, 2011) äußern. im folgenden wird daher genauer auf die kontroverse debatte rund um das thema reproduktive gesundheit eingegangen. der beitrag soll dabei einen überblick über zentrale argumente der unterschiedlichen akteurinnen geben und die bevölkerungspolitik auf den philippinen skizzieren. emotionale debatte medien nahmen die spannungen zwischen präsident aquino und der cbcp zum anlass, um von einem konflikt zwischen staat und katholischer kirche zu sprechen, bei dem regierung und kirche anhand der rh bill um einflusssphären in der gesellschaft konkurrierten (david, 2011; doronila, 2010). die debatte rund um die rh bill stellt sich jedoch nicht primär als auseinandersetzung zwischen kirche und regierung dar, sondern geht über diese beiden akteurinnen hinaus. sinnvoller ist es daher, zwischen zwei gegensätzlichen lagern zu unterscheiden – auf der einen seite anhängerinnen einer pro-life-haltung, die eine rh bill klar ablehnen, und auf der anderen seite die befürworterinnen eines pro-choice-ansatzes (umali, 2010, s. 92). letztere vertreten die position, dass alle eltern das recht haben, frei zu entscheiden, ob und welche art von familienplanung sie durchführen wollen. die katholische kirche, mit der cbcp als ihrem offiziellen sprachrohr, wirkt in der debatte so dominant, weil sie die stärkste akteurin der pro-life-fraktion ist, zu der auch mehrere katholische organisationen zählen (umali, 2010, s. 103). eine dieser organisationen ist pro-life philippines, deren mitglieder in den vergangenen jahren immer wieder in emotionale auseinandersetzungen mit befürworterinnen der rh bill involviert waren. ein beispiel dafür ist der konflikt mit aktivistinnen der ngo filipinofreethinkers, die für die verabschiedung des gesetzesentwurfs eintreten. im november 2010 wollten die filipinofreethinkers eine messe in der manila cathedral besuchen, wo über das kontroverse thema gesprochen werden sollte. prolife philippines hinderte sie jedoch daran und reagierte mit verbalen attacken, wie: marina wetzlmaier prooder anti-life? aseas 5(1) 130 131 „satan, get away from us! you should have asked your mother to abort you” (santos, 2011). ein aufgeheiztes klima wie dieses lässt neutrale diskussionen kaum zu und lenkt von zentralen inhalten der rh bill ab. inhalte der rh bill seit 21. februar 2011 liegt dem philippinischen kongress die house bill 4244 unter dem titel an act providing for a comprehensive policy on responsible parenthood, reproductive health, and population and development, and for other purposes vor. abgesehen vom oft vorgebrachten argument, dass bevölkerungswachstum zugunsten der wirtschaftlichen entwicklung und armutsbekämpfung eingeschränkt werden müsse, betonen die autorinnen auch den menschenrechtlichen aspekt reproduktiver gesundheit: „the state recognizes and guarantees the exercise of the universal basic human right to reproductive health by all persons, particularly of parents, couples and women, consistent with their religious convictions, cultural beliefs and the demand of responsible parenthood“ (republic of the philippines house of representatives, 2011, s. 2). konkreter noch wird reproduktive gesundheit als frauenrecht definiert und als mittel zur förderung von gendergerechtigkeit und empowerment (house of representatives, 2011, s. 4). die „guiding principles“ berücksichtigen außerdem das universelle recht auf gesundheit, das vor allem für marginalisierte bevölkerungsgruppen gesichert werden muss (house of representatives, 2011, s. 2). daher sieht die rh bill neben methoden der familienplanung auch maßnahmen zur allgmeinen förderung der kinderund müttergesundheit vor. so soll es pro 500.000 einwohnerinnen mindestens ein krankenhaus geben, das eine notfallversorgung und grundlegende geburtshilfe anbietet (house of representatives, 2011, s. 10). während über diese aspekte konsens besteht, sorgen andere forderungen für kontroversen, unter anderem der anspruch auf ein flächendeckendes angebot an effektiven methoden zur familienplanung: „the state shall promote, without bias, all effective natural and modern methods of family planning that are medically safe and legal“ (house of representatives, 2011, s. 3). der entwurf sieht vor, verhütungsmittel und informationen zu deren effektiven verwendung staatlich zu fördern und sowohl in staatlichen krankenhäusern als auch in kleineren gesundheitskliniken zur verfügung zu stellen. für ärmere bevölkerungsgruppen soll die staatliche gesundheitsversicherung, philippine aseas 5(1) 130 131 health insurance corporation (philhealth), die kosten abdecken (house of representatives, 2011, s. 10). dagegen wehren sich vertreter der cbcp, in deren augen künstliche empfängnisverhütung unmoralisch sei, da sie das menschliche leben – „the most sacred physical gift“ (cbcp, 2011) – nicht respektiere. die bedeutung der katholischen kirche die äußerungen der bischöfe der cbcp prägen unter anderem deshalb die öffentlichen debatten, da der katholizismus gesellschaftlich, kulturell und politisch eine zentrale rolle auf den philippinen spielt. über 80 prozent der etwa 100 millionen einwohnerinnen sind katholisch, wobei die weite verbreitung des katholizismus auf die missionierung während drei jahrhunderten spanischer kolonialherrschaft zurückgeht (zabel, 2007, s. 325). politische legitimität erlangte die katholische kirche während der people power revolution von 1986, als kirchenrepräsentantinnen wie der damalige erzbischof von manila, jaime kardinal sin, jene massenproteste anführten, die den diktator ferdinand marcos zu fall brachten. seither bewahrte sich die kirche ihren ruf als „hüterin der demokratie“ und bezieht immer wieder stellung zu aktuellen themen, wie wahlen, korruption oder landreform (zabel, 2007, s. 328; siehe auch carcamo, 2009). während sich die kirche als „moralisches gewissen“ der nation versteht, argumentieren ihre kritikerinnen, dass sie sich zu sehr in politische angelegenheiten einmische (santos, 2011) und betonen dabei, dass kirche und staat laut verfassung getrennt sein sollten. laut medienberichten spaltet die kontroverse um die rh bill allerdings auch die katholische gemeinschaft selbst, denn die kirchenführung würde sich durch ihre orthodoxe haltung immer mehr von den menschen entfernen, während ein großteil der katholischen bevölkerung die rh bill unterstützt (balana & burgonio, 2011). die debatte rund um die rh bill zeigt außerdem, dass es auch innerhalb der kirchenführung divergierende positionen gibt. eine der zentralen katholischen persönlichkeiten, die den öffentlichen diskurs zur rh bill beeinflussen, ist der jesuitenpater joaquin bernas. in den vergangenen jahren plädierte er in den medien immer wieder für die verabschiedung des gesetzes, weshalb ihn einzelne bischöfe sogar als „ketzer“ bezeichneten. dabei lehnt bernas künstliche empfängnisverhütung ebenso ab marina wetzlmaier prooder anti-life? aseas 5(1) 132 133 wie die meisten katholischen bischöfe. aus respekt vor religionsfreiheit und pluralismus hält er die rh bill jedoch für richtig und betont, der staat müsse die bedürfnisse aller bürgerinnen berücksichtigen (bernas, 2011). wie eine studie der social weather stations (sws) zeigt, befürworten 71 prozent der bevölkerung die rh bill, wobei der glaube keinen einfluss auf die haltung zu reproduktiver gesundheit hat. ebenso wären sie mit aufklärungsunterricht an den schulen einverstanden, wie er im gesetzesentwurf auf optionaler basis vorgesehen ist. zudem befürworten menschen aller sozialen schichten4 gleichermaßen die rh bill, unabhängig von geschlechterzugehörigkeit und beziehungsstatus der befragten (sws, 2008). unterschiedliche lokale gesetze die rh bill soll vor allem einen national einheitlichen gesetzlichen rahmen schaffen, der bisher fehlte. stattdessen liegt gesundheitspolitik in der verantwortung der lokalregierungen5 (local government units, lgu), die entscheiden können, wieviel budget sie für welche art von familienplanung ausgeben. dies führte zu einem ungleichen zugang der bevölkerung zu effektiven verhütungsmitteln und anderen leistungen reproduktiver gesundheit, wie in den zwei folgenden fällen sichtbar wird. in manila city verhängte im jahr 2000 der damalige bürgermeister jose „lito“ atienza ein komplettes verbot von künstlicher empfängnisverhütung und argumentierte, dass seine stadt eine „kultur des lebens“ fördern wolle: the city promotes responsible parenthood and upholds natural family planning not just as a method but as a way of self-awareness in promoting the culture of life while discouraging the use of artificial methods of contraception like condoms, pills, intrauterine devices, surgical sterilization, and other. (atienza zit. nach demeterio-melgar, pacete, aguiling-pangalangan, lu, & sabundayo, 2007, s. 9) in der praxis bedeutete dies, dass krankenhäuser und gesundheitszentren keine verhütungsmittel ausgeben durften. frauenorganisationen warfen atienza vor, gegen nationale gesetze zu verstoßen, denn im local government code von 1991 heißt es, dass grundlegende gesundheitsdienstleistungen angeboten werden müssen, wozu 4 die sws kategorisiert die sozioöknomischen schichten nach den einkommensklassen a, b, c, d und e, wobei die letzten beiden die ärmsten bevölkerungsgruppen darstellen. 5 lgu bezeichnet allgemein die administrativen einheiten auf provinz-, stadtund gemeindeebene. aseas 5(1) 132 133 auch alle methoden der familienplanung gehören (demeterio-melgar et al., 2007, s. 38). mittlerweile sind andere bürgermeisterinnen dem beispiel manilas gefolgt und verbieten hormonelle verhütung, beispielsweise mit dem argument, dass es sich um abtreibungsmittel handelt (austria, 2011, s. 1). im gegensatz dazu verabschiedete die lgu von quezon city im norden des großraums manila 2008 ein umfassendes programm zur förderung reproduktiver gesundheit und künstlicher empfängnisverhütung. der fall sorgte für aufmerksamkeit, weil einer der hauptinitiatoren, stadtrat joseph emile juico, starken öffentlichen attacken durch die katholische kirche ausgesetzt war, seine familie jedoch enge beziehungen zu katholischen persönlichkeiten pflegte. juico begründete seine position damit, dass er den willen der bürgerinnen vertrete (umali, 2010, s. 192-193). der fall zeigt, dass der einfluss der katholischen kirche nicht überall gleich stark ist, sondern dass es vor allem vom politischen willen abhängt, ob bürgermeisterinnen reproduktive gesundheit, inklusive aller formen von verhütung, fördern oder nicht. nationale bevölkerungspolitik die bevölkerungspolitik auf den philippinen war stets von starken dynamiken geprägt, die von den jeweiligen regierungen, ihrer politischen agenda und ihren perspektiven auf familienplanung und reproduktive gesundheit abhängig waren. die politik corazon aquinos wurde von vertreterinnen der katholischen kirche beeinflusst, was unter anderem an aquinos bringschuld gegenüber den bischöfen lag, die sie während der people power revolution unterstützt hatten (umali, 2010, s. 60). aquinos nachfolger hingegen förderten familienplanung als mittel zur bevölkerungsregulierung, um die wirtschaftliche und soziale entwicklung des landes anzukurbeln. im jahr 2000 stellte estradas regierung php 70 millionen6 zum kauf von verhütungsmitteln zur verfügung. allerdings kam es aufgrund der amtsenthebung estradas im jahr 2001 nie zur ausführung dieses plans (umali, 2010, s. 6). der amtsenthebung war ein mehrtägiger protestmarsch vorausgegangen, bei dem die katholische kirche an vorderster front vertreten war und damit entscheidend zum fall estradas und der 6 etwa eur 1,67 millionen (berechnet nach dem durchschnittlichen wechselkurs von eur 1 = php 41,8 im jahr 2000). marina wetzlmaier prooder anti-life? aseas 5(1) 134 135 anschließenden amtseinführung gloria macapagal-arroyos beitrug. laut kritikerinnen begann unter arroyo eine erneute „katholifizierung“ der bevölkerungspolitik, da ihre haltung zu reproduktiver gesundheit die prinzipien der cbcp widerspiegelte. sie kürzte öffentliche gelder für künstliche verhütung und förderte stattdessen natürliche familienplanung, die der „philippinischen kultur“ mehr entspreche: „the government needs to adopt policies that will take into consideration population and reproductive health approaches that respect our culture and values“ (arroyo zit. nach demeterio-melgar et al., 2007, s. 14). barrieren für reproduktive gesundheit und deren folgen seit den 1970er-jahren war die amerikanische entwicklungsagentur united states agency for international development (usaid) die wichtigste unterstützerin philippinischer bevölkerungsprogramme. im sinne ihrer priorität für natürliche familienplanung stoppte arroyo diese geldflüsse und frauen müssen sich seither am privatsektor versorgen, was für viele unleistbar ist. 42 prozent der alleinstehenden frauen, die 2004 nicht verhüteten, führten finanzielle gründe dafür an. von den verheirateten frauen nannten im jahr 2003 8 prozent diesen grund, fünf jahre später waren es bereits 15 prozent. davon abgesehen meinen 41 prozent der frauen, nicht schwanger werden zu können, weil sie nur unregelmäßig sex hätten. religiöse gründe spielen in bezug auf die familienplanung eine immer geringere rolle: im jahr 2008 gaben 10 prozent der frauen an, aus religiöser überzeugung nicht zu verhüten, während es 2003 noch 18 prozent waren (likhaan, 2010). nicht nur die limitierte verfügbarkeit von verhütungsmitteln stellt vor allem für frauen aus ärmeren bevölkerungsschichten ein problem dar. mit dem wegfall der staatlichen förderung für künstliche empfängnisverhütung wurde auch aufklärungskampagnen weniger priorität eingeräumt. frauen aus ärmeren bevölkerungsschichten, die ohnenhin einen schlechteren zugang zu informationen über reproduktive gesundheit haben, waren von dieser entwicklung am stärksten betroffen. dies führte unter anderem dazu, dass die meisten frauen (44 prozent) nicht verhüteten, weil sie gesundheitsschädigende folgen befürchteten (likhaan, 2010) – eine angst, die einerseits auf einen generellen mangel an informationen und andererseits auf falsche inaseas 5(1) 134 135 formationen von gegnerinnen der rh bill zurückgeführt werden kann. so behauptete die cbcp in einem pastoralbrief7: „scientists have known for a long time that contraceptives may cause cancer. contraceptives are hazardous to a woman’s health” (cbcp, 2011). bezüglich der rh bill kam die cbcp zum schluss, dass sie reproduktive gesundheit nicht fördern würde. im gegenteil, „the very name ‘contraceptive’ already reveals the anti-life nature of the means that the rh bill promotes. these artificial means are fatal to human life” (cbcp, 2011). weiters verbreitete die cbcp die ansicht, dass die rh bill abtreibung unterstütze, während sie entgegen dieser behauptung auch nach der verabschiedung des gesetzes verboten bleiben würde. jährlich treiben auf den philippinen über 500.000 frauen illegal ab, 90.000 frauen müssen als folge davon ins krankenhaus eingeliefert werden und etwa 1.000 sterben dabei (likhaan, 2011b). um das risiko jener frauen, die illegal abtreiben, zu verringern, sieht die rh bill eine medizinische versorgung für sie vor: „the government shall ensure that all women needing care for post-abortion complications shall be treated and counseled in a humane, non-judgmental and compassionate manner“ (house of representatives, 2011, s. 4). dass maßnahmen zur verbesserung reproduktiver gesundheit den bedürfnissen vieler frauen entsprechen würden, zeigen auch aktuelle daten der frauenrechtsund gesundheits-ngo likhaan. frauen bevorzugen demnach allgemein kleinere familien, in denen sie die kinder besser versorgen können. im idealfall wünschen sie sich zwei kinder, während eine durchschnittliche familie auf drei kommt. ärmere familien haben im schnitt zwei kinder mehr als ursprünglich geplant (likhaan, 2010). laut einer studie des guttmacher institute und der university of the philippines waren 54 prozent der schwangerschaften im jahr 2008 ungewollt (likhaan, 2011b). 68 prozent dieser frauen haben nicht verhütet und 24 prozent wandten natürliche verhütungsmethoden an. die studie zeigt auch, dass die mehrheit der frauen, die nicht verhüten, aus ärmeren bevölkerungsschichten kommen, da sie einen schlechteren zugang zu qualifizierter geburtshilfe und zu medizinischer versorgung haben (likhaan, 2011b). täglich sterben in folge dieser fehlenden grundversorgung 11 frauen während der geburt, sagen aktivistinnen. kürzere geburtenabstände und eine bessere versorgung der mütter und kinder würden außerdem die säuglingssterblichkeit senken. ausrei7 pastoralbriefe dienen der öffentlichen verbreitung von positionen der cbcp und werden sowohl in medien publiziert als auch während der messen vorgetragen (zabel, 2007, s. 326). marina wetzlmaier prooder anti-life? aseas 5(1) 136 137 chend zugang zu reproduktiver gesundheit rettet leben, lautet daher ein hauptargument der rh-bill-befürworterinnen (likhaan, 2011a). ausblick: ein ende der debatte? ende 2011 erreichte die debatte rund um die rh bill ihren höhepunkt und die verabschiedung des gesetzes schien in greifbarer nähe zu sein. präsident benigno aquino drängte den kongress, das gesetz noch vor jahresende durchzubringen (balana, 2011) und erklärte es ungeachtet der exkommunizierungsdrohungen sogar zur priorität (montenegro, 2011). bisher scheiterte die gesetzesverabschiedung jedoch am langwierigen entscheidungsprozess im kongress. politikerinnen und fraktionen, die eine pro-life haltung teilen und von den bischöfen politisch unterstützt werden, nutzen ihr vetorecht, um den prozess zu verzögern. solange die debatte in der derzeitigen emotionalität fortgeführt wird, kommt es zu keiner abstimmung. dass sowohl die mehrheit der filipinas und filipinos, von denen sich viele als religiös bezeichnen, als auch einzelne kirchenvertreterinnen die rh bill befürworten, zeigt, dass sie nicht zwingend im widerspruch zur katholischen praxis steht. einige lokalregierungen fördern seit jahren aufklärungskampagnen und programme zur reproduktiven gesundheit. auf nationaler ebene scheint eine einigung allerdings noch fern zu sein. während über moral und philippinische werte debattiert wird, bleiben wichtige maßnahmen zur sexuellen selbstbestimmung, familienplanung sowie mütterund kindergesundheit, die die rh bill vorsieht, auf der strecke. bibliographie austria, c. r. (2011). the philippines: local ordinance vs contraceptives. zuletzt zugegriffen am 22. dezember 2011 auf die homepage der university of toronto unter http://www.law.utoronto.ca/documents/reprohealth/ls061_philippine_ordinancebanscontraceptives.pdf balana, c., & burgonio, t. j. (2011, 28. april). catholic church isolated on rh bill now. philippine daily inquirer. zuletzt zugegriffen am 18. märz 2012 unter http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20110428-333367/catholic-church-isolated-on-rh-bill-row aseas 5(1) 136 137 balana, c. d. (2011, 9. dezember). aquino getting impatient over rh bill passage. philippine daily inquirer. zuletzt zugegriffen am 22. dezember 2011 unter http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/107789/aquino-getting-impatient-over-rh-bill-passage. bernas, j. g. (2011, 23. mai). my stand on the rh bill. philippine daily inquirer. zuletzt zugegriffen am 20. dezember 2011 unter http://opinion.inquirer.net/5340/my-stand-on-the-rh-bill. carcamo, d. (2009, 18. mai). bishops meet gma today for carper passage. the philippine star. zuletzt zugegriffen am 18. märz 2012 unter http://www.philstar.com/article.aspx?articleid=468876 catholic bishops’ conference of the philippines [cbcp]. (2011, 30. januar). choosing life, rejecting the rh bill. a pastoral letter of the catholic bishops’ conference of the philippines. zuletzt zugegriffen am 16. dezember 2011 auf die homepage der loyola school of theology unter http://www.lst.edu/community/ news-a-features/326-cbcp-letter-choosing-life-rejecting-the-rh-bill. david, r. (2011, 15.mai). debating the rh bill. philippine daily inquirer. zuletzt zugegriffen am 19. märz 2012 unter http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view/20110515-336572/debating-therh-bill demeterio-melgar, j. l., pacete, j. c., aguiling-pangalangan, e., lu, a. v. m., & sabundayo, m. l. (2007). imposing misery. the impact of manila’s ban on contraception. quezon city, philippines: likhaan, reprocen, center for reproductive rights. doronila, a. (2010, 4.oktober). rh bill fight may damage church. philippine daily inquirer. zuletzt zugegriffen am 18. märz 2012 unter http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20101004295848/rh-bill-fight-may-damage-church republic of the philippines house of representatives (2011). house bill no. 4244. quezon city, philippines. likhaan (2010, 31. mai). facts on barriers to contraceptive use in the philippines. zuletzt zugegriffen am 23. dezember 2011 unter http://www.likhaan.org/content/facts-barriers-contraceptive-use-philippines likhaan (2011a, 5. februar). ten good reasons to pass the rh bill now. zuletzt zugegriffen am 23. dezember 2011 unter http://www.likhaan.org/content/ten-good-reasons-pass-rh-bill-now likhaan (2011b, 26. august). why investing in family planning makes sense. zuletzt zugegriffen am 23. dezember 2011 unter http://www.likhaan.org/content/why-investing-family-planning-makes-sense montenegro, c. (2011, 31. januar). cbcp: rh bill a form of ‘moral corruption’. gmanews.tv. zuletzt zugegriffen am 16. dezember 2011 unter http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/211922/news/nation/ cbcp-rh-bill-a-form-of-moral-corruption santos, k. (2011, 6. januar). catholics risk excommunication over reproductive rights. inter press service. zuletzt zugeriffen am 20. dezember 2011 unter http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=54045 social weather stations. (2008, 16. oktober). third quarter 2008 social weather survey: 76 % want family planning education in public schools; 71 % favor passage of the reproductive health bill. zuletzt zugegriffen am 20. dezember 2011 unter http://www.sws.org.ph/pr081016.htm tubeza, p. (2010a, 30. september). cbcp reminds aquino about excommunication. philippine daily inquirer. zuletzt zugegriffen am 23. dezember 2011 unter http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/nation/ view/20100930-295226/bishop-threatens-aquino-with-excommunication-over-birth-control marina wetzlmaier prooder anti-life? aseas 5(1) 138 139 tubeza, p. (2010b, 5. märz). aquino eases up on reproductive health bill. philippine daily inquirer. zuletzt zugegriffen am 23. dezember 2011 unter http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/ view/20100305-256725/aquino-eases-up-on-reproductive-health-bill umali, v. a. (2010). the politics of population policy-making in the philippines: insights from the population and reproductive health legislative proposals. dissertation, institut für politikwissenschaft, universität wien, österreich. world health organization (who). (2012). health topics reproductive health. zuletzt zugegriffen am 15. april 2012 unter http://www.who.int/topics/reproductive_health/en/ zabel, d. (2007). einmischen aus überzeugung. gesellschaftliches engagement und politischer einfluss der katholischen kirche. in n. reese, & r. werning (hrsg.), handbuch philippinen. gesellschaft, politik, wirtschaft, kultur (s. 325-329). bad honnef, deutschland: horlemann verlag. book review: chandler, d., cribb, r., & narangoa, l. (eds.). (2016). end of empire. 100 days in 1945 that changed asia and the world. book review: chandler, d., cribb, r., & narangoa, l. (eds.). (2016). end of empire. 100 days in 1945 that changed asia and the world. copenhagen: nias press. isbn 978-87-7694-183-3. i-vi + 346 pages. ► o’rourke, i. (2017). book review: chandler, d., cribb, r., & narangoa, l. (eds.). (2016). end of empire. 100 days in 1945 that changed asia and the world. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 10(1), 121-124. on 5 august 1945, the b-29 bomber ‘enola gay’ was loaded with ‘little boy’, the us atomic bomb that was to destroy the japanese city of hiroshima the following day. a hundred days later, on 12 november 1945, indonesian regional commanders elected sudirman as indonesian army commander. he immediately ordered an assault on british and dutch forces in ambarawa, java, marking a turning point towards more forceful military resistance, which eventually led to their withdrawal. in between these two dates, the world order was changed in east and southeast asia in a way that is formative up to this day. over this time period, colonialist powers were defeated, but later took back territories, only to be eventually expelled, independence movements rose and fragmented, power struggles ensued between and among members of different ethnic groups as well as of different political ideologies, and empires ended. division was easier reached than unity. as 2015 marked the 70-year anniversary of the end of world war ii, scandinavian publisher nias press developed the idea of balancing the focus on asia in light of the commemorations, which usually focused more on europe and the us. in end of empire, general editors david p. chandler, robert cribb, and li narangoa combine textual and visual contributions by nearly a hundred historians, lawyers, political scientists, cultural and social anthropologists, and scholars on korean, japanese, chinese, russian, southeast asian, and east asian studies. the volume fittingly illustrates that, generally, the end of war does not mean the end of conflict, and specifically, that the end of world war ii brought peace to “almost nowhere in eastern asia” (back cover). this point, which is too often overlooked from a eurocentric perspective on world war ii, is vigorously brought home. through combining voices from all across asia as well as the us and europe, the study shows that not only was the war transnational and global, but also the efforts to end it as well as the consequences of those efforts. the developments of those 100 days fundamentally changed east and southeast asia and laid the groundwork for the way the affected countries are governed today as well as for ongoing conflicts, which in turn have a global impact. in the eponymous 100 days that changed asia and the world, the indonesian and vietnamese independence movements took shape, the wartime truce between chinese communists and nationalists frayed, and japan made first steps towards a new democratic order. the focus on asian events and politics is also fitting as world war ii began and ended in asia, with the japanese invasion of china in rezensionen  book reviews w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 17 .1 -1 0 122 iris o’rourke  aseas 10(1) july 1937 and with japan’s surrender on 15 august 1945, respectively. the end of the war also “marked the end of the japanese empire”, but the events in the following days “foreshadowed the demise of other empires and set into motion developments that transformed the post-war world” (p. 1). following the introduction, a prelude sets the stage and background for the events unfolding in the next 100 days. short case studies of countries or regions enable the reader to contextualize the following information snippets. regionally, end of empire broadly focuses on burma, cambodia, china, indonesia, japan, laos, korea, malaya, mongolia-manchuria, the philippines, thailand, and vietnam, though over the course of the 100 days as well as the preceding and subsequent periods described in the introductory and concluding chapters, borders and names are prone to change. not unusually, the volume is chronological. quite unusually, however, it has entries for every single day, reminiscent of a diary or a daily. these entries span anything between half a page and 17 pages and are peppered with photographs, maps, propaganda posters, political cartoons, and other visual material. in addition to the short newspaper-style paragraphs outlining current events – usually several a day, covering several countries and perspectives – about 80 approximately two-page vignettes explore specific aspects and topics, like forced laborers (pp. 90-92), the great vietnam famine (pp. 103-105), or prisoners of war (pp. 106-107). personal statements like diary entries, opinion pieces, and reflections by contemporary witnesses complete the picture. regrettably, the volume offers quite an androcentric perspective and consequently, the focus on women’s role during and after the conflicts is mostly lacking. in this collection on military history, other than as ‘comfort women’ and civilian victims – though tessa morris-suzuki’s exploration of the japanese military and the ‘comfort women’ (pp. 92-94) is as sensitive as it is concise and contextualizes an ongoing debate – women’s agency is highlighted only in a few cases. considering the breadth of topics, regions, and events, in too few, though notable, cases: vera hildenbrand explores the 1943 recruitment of women into the indian national army’s all-female rani of jhansi regiment. they spanned all religions, castes, and social classes and were raised in the indian diaspora in malaya, burma, and thailand (p. 119). the regiment’s namesake rani lakshmibai of jhansi was a rebellion leader and symbol of resistance to british rule who died in battle in 1858, thus drawing several parallels to their situation, as the jhansi regiment was also battling the british. another example of women playing a part in the war is kumander liwaway, though little more is offered than a photo. the caption does recognize that “women played a central role in the hukbalahap rebellion”, one of the most significant peasant-based revolutions in modern philippine history, and names their roles as “spies, organizers, nurses, couriers, soldiers and even military commanders” (emphasis added; p. 307). hiromi sasamoto-collins draws attention to the way the post-war japanese constitution was drafted as well as to beate sirota’s influence and contribution to the implementation of gender equality (p. 244). the publisher, nias press, wanted to produce a volume on the end of world war ii in the pacific that transcends mere eurocentric attention to the war in europe as well as the us american inclination to think the war ended with and because of atomic bombs (stuligross, 2016). not only did the editors collect and connect the 123book review knowledge of academics and experts of different fields from a variety of academic institutions from around the world, they managed to expose a diverse variety of interand transnational connections and impacts that continue to shift. end of an empire portrays a variety of sides and perspectives of the complexities of world war ii and the post-war period in truly inspiring and enriching ways, without falling into nationalistic or patronizing traps. though the timeline at times may seem frantic or chaotic, this is not inappropriate for such a turbulent period, innovatively demonstrates the complexities of the postworld war ii period, and is a refreshing take. more conventionally, the same breadth of topics could have been covered in several volumes in a more distant or clinical voice. this, however, would probably not serve to reach and engage as large an audience as end of empire can and should. after finishing learning about the eponymous 100 days, the reader may wish for an even more in-depth analysis of preceding and subsequent events. she or he may be relieved, then, to learn from the editors’ note that more publications are planned as well as a “broader, less frenetic project” to “commemorate the 75th anniversary of the war’s end in 2020” (p. 310). in addition, an accompanying facebook page1 and website2 provide relief. the impacts of the events that happened in the 100 days portrayed continue to shape current international relations and policy. in addition to reading like a thriller one just cannot put down until finished in one go, surely every reader will learn something new from engaging with this unusual collection. iris o’rourke university of vienna  references stuligross, d. (2016, june 9). op-ed: my story about the making of “end of empire”. americanmilitarynews.com. retrieved from http://americanmilitarynews.com/2016/06/op-ed-mynew-book-and-the-making-of-end-of-empire/ 1 see https://www.facebook.com/endofempire1945/ 2 see http://www.endofempire.asia/ separatist conflicts in the asean region: comparing southern thailand and mindanao kathrin rupprecht ► rupprecht, k. (2014). separatist conflicts in the asean region: comparing southern thailand and mindanao. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 7(1), 21-40. this paper examines two cases of separatist conflict, namely the conflict in southern thailand and the conflict in the southern philippines. both conflicts have been longlasting, extremely violent, and embedded in ethnic and religious sentiments. the comparison shows that there are structural analogies in both conflict cases that indicate similar root causes. state-internal conflicts of this scale are not purely a matter of national politics. states and non-state actors have influenced – and are still influencing – both separatist conflicts in various ways and towards different outcomes. it becomes apparent that non-traditional security issues that are linked to state-internal conflicts demand a more proactive role of asean in the field of conflict management. keywords: asean; conflict management; mindanao; separatism; southern thailand  in diesem beitrag werden separatistische konflikte am beispiel südthailands und der südlichen philippinen untersucht. beide konflikte dauern bereits lange an, sind äußerst gewalttätig und von ethnischen und religiösen spannungen geprägt. durch einen vergleich der beiden krisenregionen werden strukturelle gemeinsamkeiten sichtbar, die auf ähnliche konfliktursachen hinweisen. binnenstaatliche konflikte solchen ausmaßes sind nicht nur eine frage nationaler politik. staatliche und nichtstaatliche akteurinnen nahmen und nehmen auf unterschiedliche art und weise und mit unterschiedlichen zielen einfluss auf separatistische konflikte. es wird deutlich, dass nicht-traditionelle sicherheitsfragen in verbindung mit binnenstaatlichen konflikten eine proaktivere rolle aseans im rahmen des konfliktmanagements notwendig machen. schlagworte: asean; konfliktmanagement; mindanao; separatismus; südthailand aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 14 .1 -3 22 kathrin rupprecht  aseas 7(1) introduction “the days when domestic political controversies could not be discussed in regional settings are over” (pitsuwan, 2008, p. xx). this statement by former asean secretary-general surin pitsuwan represents a progressive stance on the operational mode of asean. since southeast asia as a region is seeking to become an integrated community, this no longer allows for keeping state-internal issues out of regional discussions. “new kinds of dangers have arisen that cannot be solved by governments alone. these threats have taken root in the cracks between sovereignties, the spaces between states” (pitsuwan, 2008, p. xix). stability and security are major driving forces in regional integration. founded in 1967 against the backdrop of the cold war, asean has always seen its core purpose in regional security concerns. however, asean’s more recent aspiration to establish a security community by 2015 is strikingly contrasted by the large number of prevailing conflicts in the region. asean’s working principle of non-interference normatively excludes the organization from playing a proactive role in conflict management, particularly when it comes to state-internal conflicts. however, this type of conflict can indeed become a concern for the region when it evolves to a stage where negative impacts such as criminal activities, refugee flows, and terrorism spill across national borders. it can be argued that asean’s current operational norms are insufficient to curb complex security issues in the region and hence pose a serious roadblock to efficient security cooperation. to substantiate this hypothesis and exemplify the dilemma described above, the first part of this paper takes a look at two specific cases of separatist conflict, namely the patani-malays of southern thailand and the bangsamoro of mindanao in the southern philippines. the choice of subject matter is far from random as both conflict cases have special relevance to asean and the region of southeast asia. on the symbolic side, southern thailand represents the fault line of southeast asian diversity – precisely the geographical meeting point of maritime (predominant muslim) and continental (predominant buddhist) southeast asia. prevailing conflict here surely has implications for the region’s sense of being a united community. the case of mindanao in the southern philippines, on the other side, highlights the urgent need to address non-traditional security issues imposed by state-internal conflict. illegal arms trade, kidnappings, and terrorist activities in the border region around the sulu sea have frequently challenged the security of the whole southeast asian region in the past. the second part examines how various actors have managed these two conflicts, moving from the national to the bilateral, regional, and global sphere. state-internal conflicts of this scale are not purely a matter of domestic politics, even if asean and its members would like to perceive it that way. states and non-state actors have influenced (and continue to influence) the separatist conflicts at hand in various ways and towards different outcomes. 23separatist conflicts in the asean region: comparing southern thailand and mindanao patani and mindanao – historical roots the patani-malays in southern thailand the separatist movement of the patani-malays concerns the three southernmost border provinces of thailand: pattani,1 yala, and narathiwat. in contrast to the predominantly buddhist thai nation state in which muslims make up a minority of approximately four percent, the population in these provinces consists of 80 percent ethnic malay-muslims (abuza, 2009, p. 26; mccargo, 2009, p. 2). historically, the region was part of the ancient malay kingdom langkasuka. under the influence of indian and arab merchants, the court of patani converted to islam in 1457 (yuniarto, 2004, pp. 36–40). the subsequent centuries saw alternating periods of independence and siamese suzerainty. the patani sultanate became a semi-independent vassal kingdom and tributary to the siamese empire of ayutthaya (abuza, 2009, p. 11; haberkorn, 2013, p. 190; mahmud, 2008, p. 4). the influence of western colonization finally brought about the complete incorporation into the siamese state with the anglo-siamese treaty of 1909 (abuza, 2009, p. 11; tan, 2007, p. 267). as patani perceives itself as an entity under foreign control, rebellions and uprisings against siamese rule2 have always been part of its history. with bangkok’s intensified efforts to disseminate thai national identity in the first decades of the twentieth century, the patani separatist movement started to manifest itself politically. especially the two authoritarian governments of phibunsongkram (1938–1944 and 1948–1957) enforced strict assimilation policies “that adversely affected all facets of muslim identity and ethnicity, including matters of attire, bureaucratic administration, education, judicial settlements and revenue collection” (tan, 2007, p. 267). the 1950s also saw the systematic resettlement of buddhists from the northeast of thailand into the patani region (abuza, 2009, p. 15). consequently, three principal muslim separatist groups emerged in patani, which demonstrates the continuing heterogeneity of the insurgents’ political agenda. the first group, the barisan nasional pembebasan patani (patani national liberation front or bnpp) founded by malay aristocrats, was mainly “a conservative group committed to orthodox islam. as stated in its constitution, the basic political ideology of the bnpp [was] based on the al-quran, al hadith and other sources of islamic law” (che man, 1990, p. 105). however, the bnpp was divided into several fractions that favored either independence, autonomy within thailand, or integration into malaysia (abuza, 2009, p. 17). in contrast, the bertubuhan pembebasan pattani bersatu (patani united liberation organization or pulo) was more pragmatic and less religious in its outlook. with a broader base than the bnpp, its declared goal was to achieve an independent sovereign muslim state through armed struggle, which also led to the establishment of its armed wing, the pattani united liberation army (pula) (abuza, 1 annotation regarding terminology: ‘pattani’ is the thai name of the modern-day province; by contrast, ‘patani’ is a malay term that includes much deeper historical connotations. this paper will consistently use the malay term – not to take a position, but in order to indicate the related aspects of constructed identity which are so essential for the nature of separatism (cf. mccargo, 2009, p. 1f). 2 siam was renamed thailand in 1939. 24 kathrin rupprecht  aseas 7(1) 2009, p. 18). the third group, the barisan revolusi nasional (national revolutionary front or brn) “was opposed to the nationalist agenda of pulo and mistrusted the bnpp’s goal of restoring the feudal pattani sultanate” (abuza, 2009, p. 18). with close ties to the communist party of malaya, it had a much more leftist, anti-capitalist orientation (abuza, 2009, p. 20). besides these three main separatist groups, there was a wide range of smaller groups that emerged especially in the 1970s, but all of them were highly prone to fractionalization and internally divided on issues of ideologies, strategies, and aims. during the 1980s and 1990s, the insurgency movement in the south waned partly because of increased divisions among all its sub-groups (haberkorn, 2013, p. 191). elements of armed struggle have existed in the patani separatist movement since its beginning. however, in 2004 under the government of thaksin shinawatra, the conflict was revived with a new dimension of violence. right after several coordinated actions in january 2004 that included raids of army camps, weapons and ammunition theft, the burning of schools, and several bomb attacks, the thai prime minister declared martial law across the three southern provinces (haberkorn, 2013, p. 192). the situation has greatly deteriorated since then. the international crisis group (icg) estimated in a report from december 2012 that “[between] 4 january 2004 and 30 november 2012, violent incidents in the southernmost provinces killed 5,473 people and injured 9,693” (icg, 2012a, p. 4). by these numbers, the separatist conflict in patani is one of the most violent, contemporary state-internal conflicts in southeast asia. in early 2013, the thai government agreed to start peace negotiations with one insurgent group, the brn (rustici, 2013). whether or not this step leads to a nascent ‘peace process’ in patani is yet to be seen. the talks had to be postponed repeatedly due to the recent political turmoil in thailand’s capital (hunt, 2014). as long as political stability in bangkok is not restored, the insurgency in the south will most likely remain at the periphery of the thai government’s agenda. the bangsamoro in the southern philippines the history of the bangsamoro can be described as a continuous struggle against foreign domination in three parts: first against the spanish, later the american colonizers, and finally against the philippine nation state (hussin, 2003, p. 11; wadi, 2008, p. 21). similar to the patani-malays, the bangsamoro can look back on a pre-modern history of autonomous statehood. before the arrival of colonialism, islamized groups inhabited the southern regions of the philippine archipelago, including the main island of mindanao and the adjoining islands in the sulu sea (che man, 1990, p. 19). unlike the patani-malays, the bangsamoro are not a homogeneous ethnic group. the tausug, maguindanao, and maranao are the three main tribes of in total 13 ethnolinguistic groups that make up the bangsamoro people. in pre-colonial times, there were several sultanates in the region of mindanao, each of them a separate political entity (abreu, 2008, pp. 9–10). the arrival of the spaniards in 1565 stopped the spread of islam in the philippines. with their historical baggage of the iberian reconquista, the spanish instantly perceived the encountered muslims as natural enemies. the moro-spanish wars lasted 25separatist conflicts in the asean region: comparing southern thailand and mindanao for about three hundred years, but although the political power of the local muslim sultanates declined towards the end of the nineteenth century, spanish colonialism never managed to fully subjugate the moro people (abreu, 2008, p. 12; che man, 1990, p. 22; may, 2013, p. 222). spain had to cede its colony to the united states in 1898. this handover also included the moro region even though the iberian colonizers had never held full sovereignty over these territories (che man, 1990, p. 23). as new colonial masters, the americans introduced policies aimed at incorporating the bangsamoro into the philippine state. but what was portrayed as greater tolerance towards the muslim ethnic groups, the moros experienced as encroachment of their islamic identity (abreu, 2008, p. 13; che man, 1990, p. 23). the most pervasive change in this regard consisted of the new landownership laws, which were fundamental for the land-grab of untitled ancestral land by american companies and transnational corporations (abreu, 2008, p. 14; rodell, 2007, p. 228). sporadic moro uprisings did not prevent resettlement schemes that brought christian filipinos to the region and substantially changed the demographic make-up of mindanao (tan, 2003, p. 5). the philippines achieved independence in 1946, but for the muslims of mindanao this meant just another transfer of colonial mastery. continued internal migration aggravated the situation and gave rise to increasing tensions between traditional landowners and new settlers, between local muslims and migrant christians. by 1970, the moros only made up a mere 21 percent of the population of mindanao (rodell, 2007, p. 228). finally, the jabidah massacre3 in 1968 sparked the political establishment of the moro independence movement which preceded the foundation of the moro national liberation front (mnlf) in 1972. the aim of the mnlf was to fight for bangsamoro independence and for the return of ancestral lands. the group received support from the international islamic community and was granted observer status in the organization of islamic cooperation4 (oic) (may, 2013, pp. 222–223). while it seemed impossible to effectively counter the militant movement, president marcos declared martial law in september 1972. the fighting continued in the early 1970s, killing several thousands and triggering massive refugee flows (may, 2013, p. 223). after the situation reached a stalemate in 1975, peace negotiations facilitated by libya and the oic led to the signing of the tripoli agreement in 1976 that stipulated an area of muslim autonomy for 13 provinces. however, tensions within the mnlf caused an internal split and led to the establishment of the moro islamic liberation front (milf). unlike the secularist mnlf, the milf propagated a religious turn in the separatist struggle and, unsatisfied with the reached compromise, pushed for the continuation of militant struggle. the mnlf itself later disagreed with the philippine government on the implementation of the tripoli agreement and continued fighting as well. after the end of the marcos dictatorship in 1986, the new aquino government reopened negotiations with the mnlf, which culminated in provisions for an au3 during the jabidah massacre on 18 march 1968, at least 28 muslim soldiers of the philippine army that had received training for an invasion of sabah were killed. the resulting scandal drew international attention and caused frictions in the relationship with malaysia (guiterrez, 2000, p. 309; rodell, 2007, p. 229). 4 the oic was formerly known as organization of the islamic conference. 26 kathrin rupprecht  aseas 7(1) tonomous region of muslim mindanao (armm). successive philippine governments have since repeatedly tried to negotiate and implement the armm but, faced with a fractioned separatist movement, all these efforts have not brought lasting peace to mindanao (may, 2013, pp. 224–226; rodell, 2007, p. 241). it was estimated in 2011 that since the 1970s, around 120,000 people have been killed in violent clashes and about 2 million people have been displaced by the separatist conflict (may, 2013, p. 230). the 1990s saw the emergence of another, even more radical group. the abu sayyaf group (asg) has close ties to the network of al-qaeda and stresses the notion of a jihad against the christian world rather than mere bangsamoro separatism. after 9/11, the milf eventually distanced itself from the asg and was willing in 2002 to continue the peace talks with the government that had started in 1997. these difficult and often interrupted negotiations were concluded in late 2012 with a framework agreement between the milf and the philippine government. both parties agreed to establish a transition commission with the task to draft the bangsamoro basic law that would provide for a transition authority. a final peace agreement was signed in march 2014, providing a roadmap for the ongoing transition process that aims to have the milf participate in the 2016 elections. even though this latest agreement can be seen as a historical breakthrough, its validity can only be proven by successful implementation and strong political commitment from both sides (esquerra & burgonio, 2014). structural similarities political environment at first glance, the conflict areas of patani and mindanao share striking similarities in terms of their geographical distance relative to their national centers of political power. both regions are situated in the southern periphery of their respective states; this constrains direct control and influence by the central governments. both regions are regarded as poor and underdeveloped compared to the rest of their countries (che man, 1990, pp. 24–36; funston, 2008, pp. 6–8; rivera, 2008, pp. 33–35). it has often been argued that socio-economic grievances strongly influence and perpetuate separatist movements. unequal development and economic marginalization introduce the perception of internal colonialism, which further fuels resentment against the central political system (che man, 1990, p. 113; diaz, 2003, pp. 44–45; gutierrez, 2000, p. 331). it is remarkable that both separatist movements emerged in the political context of the 1960s and 1970s and underwent profound fractionalization processes. on the one hand, the various splinter groups in each movement created a messy and complicated setting, which makes it difficult to voice clear demands and poses obstacles to official peace negotiations. on the other hand, the central governments may not be considered solid institutions either. both thailand and the philippines experienced various political shifts over the past few decades, which repeatedly changed the governmental actors and the overall political environment in both conflicts (chalk, rabasa, rosenau, & piggott, 2009, pp. 37–40; hussin, 2003, pp. 14–15; mccargo, 2009, pp. 55–56). 27separatist conflicts in the asean region: comparing southern thailand and mindanao the aims of both separatist movements are not internally coherent either. their demands range from outright independence to mere greater autonomy (funston, 2008, pp. 42–43). in contrast, the position of the central governments is clearly aiming at protecting national sovereignty. neither bangkok nor manila has ever signaled approval for letting their violence-prone southern regions create independent states. the protection of sovereignty, national territory, and its borders is of paramount importance to them (gutierrez, 2000, pp. 307–309; mccargo, 2009, p. 60; santos, 2005, pp. 55–57). finally, it should be highlighted that in both nation states the structures for political participation have severe shortcomings, especially with regards to the inclusion of ethnic muslim minorities into the broader political system. in patani, for example, the centralized apparatus of thai bureaucracy has brought about major political grievances for the local muslims as they feel misunderstood and discriminated against by non-local thai government officials who do not speak their language and originate from a different religious and cultural background. efforts to install a more representative bureaucracy have failed because patani-malays that entered government service adapted to the bureaucratic culture and were often seen as “traitors” by their own communities (mccargo, 2009, pp. 57–59; pitsuwan, 1982a, p. 210). in mindanao, the bangsamoro had to make an equally disenchanting experience with the administrative body of the armm which, established in 1990, “quickly became a massive and inept bureaucracy, a hindrance to, rather than an effective tool for, the delivery of services” and “an additional layer of government between manila and the existing provincial structure” (collier, 2005, p. 168). in short, the mismanagement of political participation sets a vicious cycle into motion: as the muslim minorities feel disregarded and oppressed, they resort to violence and are consequently mistrusted even more by the political system (diaz, 2003, pp. 23–30; funston, 2008, p. 10; pitsuwan, 1982a, pp. 269–271). ideological frames the construction of a specific identity is vital for any secessionist movement because it provides the lines of argumentation that are used to contextualize, justify, and legitimize the separatist struggle and its leaders’ moral authority (hafez, 2003, p. 20). imagining an ‘alternative community’ opposed to the existing nation of the dominating state thus lies at the core of every form of separatism (collier, 2005, pp. 155–160; mccargo, 2012, pp. 112–116). when comparing the patani and the bangsamoro cases, there are two powerful social constructs that significantly shape the separatists’ identity and meaning. ethnicity and islam are undeniably the most important cornerstones here, constituting identity markers with both internal and external aspects (che man, 1990, p. 2, p. 12–14). ethnicity is a social construct based on, among others, shared history, geography, culture, language, traditions, and beliefs. it serves as an underlying justification to demand an independent nation state because ethnic groups themselves can be regarded as “candidates for nationhood” (suhrke & noble, 1977, p. 4). gutierrez (2000) for example concludes after examining the emergence of the bangsamoro identity in mindanao, “they are thus a nation within a nation, aspiring one day for their own 28 kathrin rupprecht  aseas 7(1) state but content for the moment to accept the limitations of the historical conditions they cannot change” (p. 335). a similar statement could easily be made for the patani-malays of southern thailand. for both minorities, ethnicity is a political tool to establish their ethno-cultural divergence as opposed political identity vis-à-vis the thai/filipino nation state (gutierrez, 2000, pp. 312–314; pitsuwan, 1982a, pp. 8–11). a shared history of violent struggle and enduring resistance against forced assimilation plays a significant role in this context because the perception of the patani/ bangsamoro ethnic identity being threatened by outsiders fuels the separatist movements (che man, 1990, p. 74). the aspect of ethnicity links both separatist movements to the wider malay world of southeast asia. both conflict areas border on nation states dominated by ethnic malays (malaysia and indonesia). besides the idea of a pan-malayness, historical ties of ethnic kinship cross national borders and thus forge connections that are essential to influence and sustain the separatist movements in southern thailand and mindanao (pitsuwan, 1982a, pp. 259–262). however, a distinction between both cases has to be made with regards to ethnic identity. unlike the patani-malays, the bangsamoro are not a homogeneous ethnic group and have only been constructed as an ethnic identity with the political rise of the separatist movement since the 1970s. the subgroups of the bangsamoro may share a history of struggle against foreign rule but they are still distinct from each other and do not speak a common language, for example. this is one of the main reasons for a deeper fractionalization among the bangsamoro separatists (gutierrez, 2000, pp. 321–323). islam is in fact closely intertwined with both ethnic concepts of patani and bangsamoro because it has pre-colonial, historical roots in the areas and constitutes a dominant aspect of practiced culture. nevertheless, it can be seen as its own dimension in the ideological framework because the aspect of religion distinguishes the separatist minorities in both cases from the dominant national identity. as religion is politicized and “provides an ideal ‘blueprint’ for the development of an informal political organization” (cohen, 1969, p. 210), its ideological influence on both separatist movements is preeminent. transmigration that brought in settlers of different ethnic and religious background has aggravated communal tensions in both cases, which are often interpreted in religious terms and fuel fear and anxiety on both sides of each conflict (kamlian, 2005, p. 101; mccargo, 2012, p. 47; yusuf, 2009, p. 212). islam then does not only provide the overarching moral justification to fight against non-muslim ‘oppressors’ but also connects the separatists to the global muslim community, or ummah, which has muslim countries offering recognition and support for the muslims of patani and mindanao. besides that, pan-islamic and islamic reformist influences from abroad have also substantively shaped the ideologies of both separatist movements (lingga, 2005, pp. 84–86; pitsuwan, 1982a, pp. 262–265). cross-border effects and regional significance the conflicts in southern thailand and mindanao have both transcended national borders and are affecting the region of southeast asia at large. as religious and ethnic ties connect the malay-muslims of malaysia with the minorities in patani and mindanao, malaysia as the closest neighboring country has been involved in and affected by the development of both separatist conflicts. violence in the conflict ar29separatist conflicts in the asean region: comparing southern thailand and mindanao eas has caused displaced people to cross the borders into malaysian territory (che man, 1990, pp. 139–140; pitsuwan, 1982b, pp. 34–38). also, border security remains an issue until today. transboundary crimes such as human trafficking, smuggling, sea piracy, and gunrunning are symptoms of ‘porous borders’ that pose a threat to national security (funston, 2008, pp. 20–23; miani, 2011, pp. 142–145; vatikiotis, 2006, p. 28). issues like these have strained bilateral relationships between kuala lumpur and bangkok/manila on several occasions throughout the past few decades. malaysia has been repeatedly accused of harboring or supporting separatists by both sides (bajunid, 2006, p. 216; pitsuwan, 1982b; tan, 2003, p. 109; wadi, 2007, p. 22). over time, the two separatist conflicts have affected the wider region as well. transnational crime, as manifested for example in the illegal sulu arms market, profits from ongoing armed conflicts in the region and threatens regional security (miani, 2011, pp. 5–8). besides, there is the looming fear in the region that international terrorist networks are exploiting the scenes of protracted separatist conflicts. in fact, this threat cannot be disregarded: links between al-qaeda’s network and the regionally operating jemaah islamiyah are undisputed. the asg as a splinter group of the bangsamoro separatist movement has been associated with both terrorist networks; the closeness between the milf and global terrorism is questionable but cannot be dispelled completely (chalk et al., 2009, pp. 26–29; funston, 2008, pp. 34–36; williams, 2003, pp. 93–94). as a complex security issue, “[t]errorism is not merely a danger to some innocent lives and to property. it is a threat to the economic well being of asean countries because terrorist incidents affect the tourist industry and undermine investor confidence” (singh, 2003, p. 202). comparing conflict management approaches the domestic sphere – political responses to separatism thailand’s policies towards the southernmost provinces have been focused predominantly on integrating the patani-malays into the thai nation state. since the beginning of the twentieth century, the patani people have repeatedly been affected by thai national policies of forced assimilation, especially in terms of culture, language, religion, and identity. these policies gave special attention to education and the role of the local islamic schools (aphornsuvan, 2007, pp. 56–57; che man, 1990, pp. 163–164; pitsuwan, 1982a, pp. 188–191; pramungkas, 2004, p. 81). besides, islam as religion has been integrated into the body of thai administrative structures. a system of provincial islamic councils is headed nationally by the chularajmontri, “the advisor of the king on islamic affairs” (dubus & polkla, 2011, p. 30). this effort to nationalize islam through institutionalization was aimed at diffusing malay nationalist tendencies, but proved to be futile. the patani-malays do not see themselves represented through this body (che man, 1990, p. 165; funston, 2008, p. 12). another feature has been the notion of facilitating economic development, based on the assumption that socio-economic grievances constitute the root cause of the separatist insurgency. however, economic development schemes alone have not been successful in curbing the grievances of the patani-malays. 30 kathrin rupprecht  aseas 7(1) the government of general prem tinsulanonda in the 1980s created the southern border provinces administrative centre (sbpac), which was tasked with coordinating the provincial administration in the deep south while cooperating with local leaders and religious bodies. also, an inter-agency security body was created, the civilian-police-military task force 43 (cpm43) (dubus & polkla, 2011, pp. 31–34; funston, 2008, pp. 15–18). these two new administrative structures combined with a nation-wide democratization process, amnesty policies, and overall economic development in thailand gradually improved the situation. by the end of the 1990s, the insurgency was reduced to such a minimum that many observers regarded the issue as solved to a great extent. however, when prime minister thaksin shinawatra took office in 2001, government policies in the south changed profoundly. thaksin dissolved the spbac and the cmp43 in 2002 and declared the unrest as “criminal” in essence, rather than politically motivated. the re-emergence of violence in 2004 is thus not a coincidence and can be interpreted as a result of political mismanagement (dubus & polkla, 2011, pp. 56–59; mccargo, 2009, p. 9; melvin, 2007, pp. 28–31). thailand’s regimes have frequently changed in the recent past. nevertheless, the general attitude of the government remained unchanged: first, bangkok is vehemently opposed to political autonomy or allowing any decrease of state sovereignty in this regard; secondly, the thai government insists that the conflict in the south is a domestic issue and tries to minimize any internationalization of the conflict. only very recently has thailand accepted malaysia’s help as facilitator in peace negotiations with one of the insurgent groups (lamey, 2013, p. 8; rustici, 2013). in contrast, the philippine government has reacted to the separatist insurgency in mindanao quite differently. since the 1970s, there have always been peace negotiations including third parties. political autonomy for mindanao has been the main item of negotiation right from the beginning, but its successful implementation has been overshadowed by the fractionalization of the separatist movement and a prevalent lack of genuine commitment from the central government. a recurrent point of contestation has been the government’s insistence on the use of plebiscites to determine the territorial extent of the armm. due to demographic changes, the bangsamoro now constitute a minority in most parts of mindanao. therefore, a plebiscite would substantially weaken the structure of the armm. another critical feature about the agreed autonomy is the issue of ancestral domains and land ownership rights. unaddressed landlessness among muslims in mindanao remains a root cause for prevailing poverty and socio-economic grievances (gutierrez & borras, 2004, p. 41). thus, even though the installation of the armm should theoretically accommodate the separatist demands, its viability is greatly challenged by executive restrictions, lack of funding, political discordance, and institutional inefficiency (bauzon, 2008, p. 105; mastura, 2007, pp. 130–132; rivera, 2008, pp. 39–40). nevertheless, with regard to the overall conflict management approach adapted by the philippine governments, it can be concluded that the prevailing willingness to negotiate with the help of third parties has greatly benefitted the process of conflict resolution (may, 2013, p. 231). unlike the thai government, manila has been open towards the political compromise of autonomy. however, the case of mindanao has also shown in the past that the signing of formal peace agreements alone does not automatically solve the conflict situation on the ground. as long as underlying prob31separatist conflicts in the asean region: comparing southern thailand and mindanao lems pertaining to identity remain unresolved, separatism continues to exist and can reemerge in violence (glang, 2003, p. 73). involving the neighbor? malaysia’s role malaysia’s influence on the conflict in southern thailand malaysia was dependent on thailand’s support in combating the communist insurgency after world war ii (pitsuwan, 1982b, pp. 6–8). during the 1960s and 1970s, both countries had close military cooperation along the shared border. nevertheless, the bilateral relation between malaysia and thailand in this regard was always marked by mutual distrust as thailand simultaneously suspected malaysia of harboring and supporting patani-malay insurgents (che man, 1990, p. 160; pitsuwan, 1982b, pp. 9–12). suhrke (1975) describes this apparent solidarity as a “trade-off pattern whereby support for, or acquiescence in the existence of, one rebel group was incompatible with a similar attitude toward the other rebel group” (p. 197). with the end of the cold war era and the surrender of the cpm, this balanced “trade-off pattern” in managing security between the two countries no longer exists. indeed, thailand’s mistrust with regards to malaysia’s attitude towards the muslim insurgents grew in the 1990s. mostly, the issue of dual citizenship continuously sparks the anger of the thai government. the number of muslim malays that hold thai-malaysian dual citizenship is estimated at between 50,000 and 100,000 and with its connections on both sides of the border, this particular group has indeed gained noticeable political leverage (bajunid, 2006, p. 218; funston, 2008, p. 22). thailand’s recent step to accept malaysia as facilitator for peace negotiations clearly represents a shift of position with regards to malaysia’s role in managing the patani conflict. a possible explanation could be malaysia’s obvious success in helping to mediate the conflict with the milf in mindanao (rustici, 2013). malaysia as mediator in the mindanao conflict in contrast to the case of southern thailand, malaysia has had a much more active role in the process of managing the separatist conflict in the southern philippines. this has two apparent reasons: first, the philippine government has always been very open towards peace negotiations involving third parties facilitators; secondly, malaysia’s stake in terms of security has much more weight and persistence in the bilateral relationship with the philippine neighbors. the influx of refugees from mindanao into malaysian territory has been much more considerable and furthermore the philippine territorial claim of sabah substantially predisposes malaysianfilipino relations. whereas the threat of communist insurgency in malaysia has dissolved completely, the sabah claim has never entirely vanished over the decades. as such, malaysia is not a neutral third party to the bangsamoro conflict. during the 1970s, malaysia was actively providing training and support to the separatist movement in mindanao. at the same time, malaysia was also lobbying for the bangsamoro cause in the oic. being recognized on this international platform increased the political bargaining power of the insurgents against the philippine gov32 kathrin rupprecht  aseas 7(1) ernment. simultaneously, by supporting the bangsamoro separatism, malaysia could portray itself internationally as a concerned muslim nation and gained political leverage against the philippines’ sabah claim (che man, 1990, pp. 138–140). with malaysia’s commitment to asean, these foreign policy tactics have gradually subsided, but security concerns still remain on the forefront of malaysia’s motivation for engagement, especially the rising threat of terrorism in the region. the sipadan hostage crisis5 in 2000 and several bombing attacks in the following years demonstrated a drastic need for closer security cooperation (lingga, 2007, pp. 44–45; mastura, 2011, pp. 10–11; wadi, 2007, p. 22). malaysia stepped in as mediating party after 2001, brokering the negotiations between manila and the milf. the goal was primarily to reach a win-win situation based on the principle of non-independence under the emphasis on unity, moderation, and the urgent need for economic development (santos, 2003, pp. 8–9). still, the malaysian-led negotiations reached a deadlock and finally faltered in mid-2003, mainly due to disagreements on governance structures and ancestral land rights (camilleri, 2008, p. 77). after several setbacks, negotiations resumed with malaysian help in 2010, leading to a framework agreement between the government and the milf in 2012 (muzaffar, 2012), and culminating more recently in the signing of the peace agreement in 2014 (esquerra & burgonio, 2014). other external actors asean’s ‘non-role’ asean’s non-interference principle as embodied in the diplomatic culture of the ‘asean way’ prevents the regional body or its member countries to intervene in state-internal issues such as separatism. however, it has been demonstrated that both conflicts at hand have repercussions on the wider region and therefore cannot be seen as purely domestic issues. malaysia’s role as stakeholder reemphasizes this aspect. it can be argued from a constructivist viewpoint that the mere existence of asean in southeast asia has deterred the escalation of separatist conflicts so far. after all, the non-interference principle effectively protects and strengthens state-sovereignty for all member states and good bilateral relations have so far proven paramount to the ethnic or religious ties in the mosaic of southeast asian diversity. asean as an international organization is more than the mere sum of the bilateral relations among its members. even though it has not played a proactive role in managing the separatist insurgencies in southern thailand or mindanao so far, it still provides an intergovernmental platform that has at least in theory the capacity to influence the two conflicts. the asean charter for example includes a chapter on dispute settlement and does not distinguish between inter-state or intra-state con5 in 2000, the asg raided a malaysian tourist resort on sipadan island in sabah. twenty-one foreign nationals were taken hostage and three persons were killed. libya finally paid 15 to 20 million usd as ransom. a similar incident occurred in 2001 when a beach resort on palawan island in the philippines was raided: twenty tourists were taken hostage, four were killed, three of whom were beheaded by the asg (means, 2009, p. 206; wadi, 2007, p. 17). 33separatist conflicts in the asean region: comparing southern thailand and mindanao flict scenarios. here, it instructs all asean members “to resolve peacefully all disputes in a timely manner through dialogue, consultation and negotiation” (asean charter, art. 22(1)). besides, the charter also stipulates that any “[parties] to the dispute may request the chairman of asean or the secretary-general of asean, acting in an ex-officio capacity, to provide good offices, conciliation or mediation” (asean charter, art. 23(2)). asean’s role as a mediator in conflict management is thus possible in theory (vatikiotis, 2009, p. 32). however, there have been no official statements by asean on the conflicts at hand or their progression. also, neither thailand nor the philippines has called upon asean’s capacity as mediator or provider of good offices. this clearly reflects the weakness of asean in the field of conflict management. the organization neither has nor is expected to have the capacities for managing conflicts. against the backdrop of the aspired security community and closer regional cooperation, it is however necessary to develop such expertise. a potential role model in this context could be the oic. the oic just like asean, the organization of islamic cooperation (oic) is an international organization that works on an intergovernmental basis. the oic, established in 1969, today comprises 57 muslim countries and consequently considers itself “the collective voice of the muslim world” (oic, 2013). one of its objectives is “to safeguard the rights, dignity and religious and cultural identity of muslim communities and minorities in non-member states” (oic charter, art. 1 (16)). as such, the oic is an important stakeholder in the conflicts of southern thailand and mindanao. indeed, the oic has played an important role in both conflicts providing an international political platform for muslim interests. its influence is particularly remarkable with regards to the case of the bangsamoro. the oic accepted the mnlf as observer in 1977 and thus gave the separatist movement international recognition and political leverage. the initial peace negotiations between the mnlf and the philippine government in the 1970s were facilitated under the auspices of the oic, mediated by its member state libya (lingga, 2007, pp. 47–49). with regards to the capacities of the organization as an actor of conflict management, santos (2005) observes: the oic can only exert moral suasion, such as through its resolutions. but it has no real power as oic. … still, the oic has the “trust factor” for muslims like the mnlf and milf, and the “fear factor” for governments like the grp in terms of leverage over oic member-countries as petroleum exporters and as employers of filipino and other overseas labor. (p. 98) a similar point could be made for the case in southern thailand, although the role of the oic is much less pronounced there. the patani-malay separatist movement is not represented in the oic; however political pressure by the muslim world is still felt by the thai government. thailand has tried to improve its relations with muslim countries, especially in the middle east, and was recognized as an observer country to the oic in 1998 (yusuf, 2009, pp. 209–210). in 2005, an oic delegation 34 kathrin rupprecht  aseas 7(1) was invited for an observation and assessment mission to the patani region and “concluded that unrest in the south was neither the result of religious discrimination against muslims nor was it rooted in religion itself; instead, it could be traced to culture and historic neglect of the south” (sharqieh, 2013, p. 166). the secretary-general of the oic has also repeatedly urged the thai government to launch a peace dialogue with the patani insurgents (icg, 2010, p. 7; sharqieh, 2013, p. 167). separatists or terrorists? the us and the global war on terror the terrorist attacks of september 11, 2001, and the subsequent global war on terror has drastically changed the landscape of geopolitical security. globally, it has certainly heightened the awareness for the urgency to combat terrorism. in the academic discourse on the insurgencies of southern thailand and mindanao, there have been several re-examinations with regards to international terrorism links (cf. connors, 2007; storey, 2009; wheeler, 2009). this renewed attention coupled with the asian pivot in us geostrategic concerns has influenced the dynamics of both conflicts to various degrees since the early 2000s. however, the us officially recognizes that these separatist insurgencies in thailand and the philippines are domestic issues and was never directly involved in any mediation efforts (santos, 2005, pp. 98–101; wheeler, 2009, p. 179). in the context of its war on terror, the us is nevertheless very concerned about both conflict situations as domestic grievances could be exploited and co-opted by international terrorism (storey, 2009, p. 139). both thailand and the philippines have pledged alliance to the us in its global war on terror and have both become “major non-nato allies” to the american superpower (tuazon, 2008, p. 77; wheeler, 2009, p. 184). the philippine government under arroyo asked for us assistance in combating terrorists in 2001 and the philippine army has since officially received special training by the us (kane & rodriguez, 2006, pp. 191–200; lingga, 2007, pp. 51–52; santos, 2005, p. 100). also, the global war on terror caused the milf to re-enter peace negotiations with stronger commitment – mostly for the fear of being listed as an international terror organization. the milf even started to cooperate with the government on combating the asg in mindanao (rodell, 2007, pp. 240–241; tuazon, 2008, p. 82). thailand, on the other hand, was initially quite hesitant to pledge alliance to the crusade against global terrorism, but did so in 2003 under prime minister thaksin, primarily to mend bilateral relations with the americans. the us has been very cautious not to get too overtly engaged in the conflict of southern thailand, but has provided support and training to the thai army (pongsudhirak, 2007, p. 272; wheeler, 2009, pp. 182–184, 192–195). leaving aside the question of whether links between international terrorism and domestic separatism are real, constructed, or merely whipped up to justify us influence in the wider region, it still needs to be asked whether this form of internationalization is really helping to address both conflicts effectively. regarding southern thailand, connors (2007) argues that the focus on terrorism may simply deter attention from settling the actual grievances of the patani-malays (pp. 163–164). surely, it can be argued that separatism and terrorism breed in the same environment of socioeconomic grievances and take up similar ideological frameworks for justification; but security measures and military presence alone can never attend to their root causes in a holistic way (almonte, 2003, pp. 236–40; tan, 2007, pp. 110–112). 35separatist conflicts in the asean region: comparing southern thailand and mindanao conclusion the analysis in this paper on the state-internal conflicts of southern thailand and mindanao has underlined the complexity of both conflict cases. first, the structural similarities of both separatist movements were elaborated on, which not only makes them comparable but also offers valuable insights into the emergence of separatist conflicts in general. socio-economic grievances as well as inequity of modernization and development can be seen as material root causes for insurgencies. however, the factor of identity is of pre-eminent importance for the emergence of separatism. based on history, language, culture, and religion, an identity is constructed and consequently leads to an alternative ‘imagined community’ in the sense of benedict anderson (1991), which is distinct from the dominant nation of the state (pp. 6–8). thus, if this issue of the distinct identity is ignored or sidelined in conflict management, it can never be possible to address separatist conflicts effectively. the comparison of conflict management approaches by different actors has further exemplified the complex scene of conflict resolution efforts. it may be argued that separatism is primarily a domestic political issue that concerns the nation state. however, the analysis in this paper has found that state-internal conflicts in this form cannot be regarded in an isolated way. they have indeed implications on the bilateral, regional, and global sphere and thus concern and involve more stakeholders than just the respective national government. in this regard, there are several aspects that can either support or disrupt successful conflict resolution. it is noteworthy that internationalization through involvement of third parties in mediating peace negotiations has shown positive effects on the resolution process of state-internal conflicts. this in turn should be a strong incentive for asean to explore its potential as regional actor in conflict management. the oic as another intergovernmental organization could serve as a role model here as it already has considerable experience in managing state-internal conflicts in southeast asia. also, it would be in asean’s interest to play a more significant role in managing conflicts within its own region in order to prevent the unilateral intervention by external powers such as the us. with reference to pitsuwan’s statement quoted in the beginning, it can be confirmed that the days when domestic issues could be seen as strictly separated from the regional sphere are certainly over. in an interdependent and closely connected region that seeks to be an integrated community, state-internal conflicts do indeed concern all members and therefore need to be discussed in a regional setting. it clearly remains a challenge to asean to adapt to these changes. only by embracing new and more progressive forms of regional cooperation can asean evolve into a community that is able to play a proactive role in conflict management.  references abreu, l. m. 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(2008). multiple colonialism in moroland. in b. m. tuazon (ed.), the moro reader. history and contemporary struggles of the bangsamoro people (pp. 19–27). quezon city, philippines: policy study publication and advocacy, center for people empowerment in governance in partnership with light a candle movement for social change. wheeler, m. (2009). the usa, the war on terror, and the violence in southernmost thailand. in c. sathaanand (ed.), imagined land? the state and southern violence in thailand (pp. 179–198). tokyo, japan: research institute for languages and cultures of asia and africa. williams, m. g. c. (2003). the question of “links” between al qaeda and southeast asia. in k. ramakrishna, & s. see (eds.), after bali. the threat of terrorism in southeast asia (pp. 83–95). singapore: world scientific. yuniarto, p. r. (2004). integration of pattani malays. a geopolitical change perspective. in research centre for regional resources-indonesia institute of sciences (ed.), multiculturalism, separatism, and nation state building in thailand (pp. 35–59). jakarta, indonesia: research center for regional resources-indonesia institute of sciences. yusuf, i. (2009). the southern thailand conflict and the muslim ummah. in c. satha-anand (ed.), imagined land? the state and southern violence in thailand (pp. 207–225). tokyo, japan: research institute for languages and cultures of asia and africa. about the author kathrin rupprecht is a post-graduate researcher at the asia-europe institute, university of malaya, kuala lumpur. her research interests include southeast asian societies and politics, asean studies, and international relations. ► contact: kathrin.rupprecht@hotmail.com changing media ecologies in thailand: women's online participation in the 2013/2014 bangkok protests changing media ecologies in thailand: women’s online participation in the 2013/2014 bangkok protests olivia guntarik & verity trott ► guntarik, o., & trott, v. (2016). changing media ecologies in thailand: women’s online participation in the 2013/2014 bangkok protests. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 9(2), 235-252. traditionally marginalized groups now have more access to new and unconventional means to participate in politics, transforming the media ecologies of existing political environments. contemporary feminist scholarship has centered on how women use new media technologies to serve political agendas. however, this literature focuses predominately on women in the west, while women in developing countries, or asia more generally, have been largely excluded from analysis. this article aims to fill this gap by examining thai women’s online activities during the 2013/2014 bangkok political protests. specifically, we ask how the rise of social and digital media has altered what it means to participate politically in the context of thai women’s present-day political experience. to answer this question we looked at how women resorted to various digital and social media to discuss women’s rights and political issues, including yingluck shinawatra’s political leadership as thailand’s first female prime minister (2011-2014). moving beyond traditional notions of participation, we argue that there is a need to recognize the emerging dynamics of women’s online engagement in the political landscape of thailand. in the context of a totalitarian state, speaking out against the ruling authority online embodies an additional layer of citizen resistance, a feature of digital life that is often taken for granted in western democracies. keywords: bangkok protests; digital activism; media ecologies; participatory politics; yingluck shinawatra  introduction emerging social and digital media practices have increased the interest concerning the use of digital technologies for political and civic engagement. for some researchers, this has meant a re-evaluation of what it means to engage politically in the digital era. scholars have asked whether earlier ideas about political participation from the pre-digital age can still be applied to new forms of participation today. they also question whether a rethinking is required around how political participation has developed over time and altered in the light of the changes instigated by online technologies. these questions sit at the heart of much recent literature on social movements, which has often privileged major mass mobilizations, such as those that began in 2011 in the arab world (alterman, 2011; bruns, highfield, & burgess, 2013; daoudi & murphy, 2011; harlow & guo, 2014; khondker, 2011; lim, 2012). aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 16 .2 -4 236 olivia guntarik & verity trott  aseas 9(2) those who have engaged with the arab movements highlighted predominantly the experiences of young men, or men more generally, and disregarded the political experiences of women. researchers who have concentrated on women, specifically focused on women in the west (boyd, 2011; harris, 2008; keller, 2012), while the experiences of women in non-western countries have been largely overlooked. hence, this article seeks to fill this gap in research by discussing women’s online political participation in asia, with a particular focus on thailand. it is designed to contribute to emerging ideas of digital participation through its analysis of thai women’s online political engagement. we are interested in understanding the extent to which feminist-inspired approaches (harris, 2008; keller, 2012) toward the nature of participation are applicable in the thai case. despite the diverse and highly complex political conditions in asia today, we want to explore the relevance of existing research on women’s online political participation for women in non-western contexts. we ask: how has the rise of social and digital media altered what it means to participate politically, particularly in the context of thai women’s political experiences and online practices? up to date, there have been only a few studies that examine women’s online participation in thailand (see balassiano & pandi, 2013; enteen 2005). however, there has been a strong interest on the broader issue of political engagement in thai protests, which provides useful methodological approaches to analyzing online content (nyblade, o’mahony, & sinpeng, 2015). other studies have looked at the role of physical and virtual spaces in fostering civic society (balassiano & pandi, 2013). with regard to the online practices of women, enteen (2005) examined how thai women responded to oppressive images through online discussion forums. this latter study found that thai women were able to use online forums to subvert stereotypes of themselves as highly sexual and subservient to western men. it revealed that online forums facilitated these women’s discussions, enabling thai women to speak out in ways they would not have been able to without the internet. as the author notes, “their participation create(s) new communities with constituents which extend the borders of the nation while reducing the power of national images” (enteen, 2005, p. 477). enteen’s research offers an early snapshot of the digital ways in which thai women resisted gendered categories like sex worker and housewife. more recent studies similarly discussed the ways in which thai women have negotiated their online sexual and gender identities (pimpawun et al., 2013). yet, neither thai scholars nor others in the west have paid attention to thai women’s emerging forms of political participation in thailand’s digital space. by contrast, the more general issue of women’s online political participation has gathered widespread interest among western scholars. their findings indicate that digital technologies have provided marginalized women in the west with alternative and unconventional avenues for political expression (boyd, 2011; harris, 2008; keller, 2012; mazzarella & pecora, 2007). in other words, the internet offers a different means for women to engage with political issues beyond the traditional structures of political engagement. we further assert that the digital environment is unconventional insofar as the political aspects of online participation resist being captured in traditional definitions of politics (e.g., voting, political party membership). furthermore, we found that the political dimensions of 237changing media ecologies in thailand this participatory culture continue to be underestimated in existing theorizations of social and digital media. it is in this spirit of analysis that we consider how new notions of participation might have relevance for thai women’s online engagement in political issues. our study on women’s participatory politics in thailand seeks to determine what forms of online political participation exist among thai women in thailand. we draw on insights from feminist activism in other parts of the world in order to explore how new definitions of participation bear on the forms of online political participation emerging among thai women today. as we will show, online forms of participation of thai women qualify as feminist as they advance feminist goals, which include a recognition of the ways in which women become politically conscious and active. by applying these definitions of participation to thai women’s online activities, we have been able to take a closer look at a range of thai women’s political experiences and expressions. this has allowed us to consider the different ways in which women engage in protests in a country where access to politics and freedom of speech is still largely restricted. postill and pink (2012) assert that social media platforms have created new sites for collaborative and participatory politics. they illustrate how internet users engage in multiple platforms, devices, and mediums. this plurality of engagement requires a concept of sociality that recognizes the multiplicity and hybridity of the digital landscape and enables researchers to understand social media practices and their “relatedness in online and offline relationships” (postill & pink, 2012, p. 132). by lending on postill and pink’s notion of the multiplicity of the digital landscape, we account for alternative and unconventional sites of engagement. hence, we deviate from former definitions of participation developed prior to the ‘internet revolution’. verba and nie (1972, pp. 2-3), for example, define political participation as the behavior that affects policy and political processes. they exclude what they consider as “passive acts”, such as activities that lie outside the sphere of government (e.g., civil disobedience or violence). hence, they do not include actions such as protest activities, the shaping of people’s political attitudes by their peers, or any expressions of support for or disapproval of political issues. critics have been quick to fault such definitions of participation as too narrow. harris (2004, 2008), for instance, asserts that notions of political participation which define participation exclusively within the confines of formal politics are too restrictive. we suggest that such notions limit the ability to understand women’s participatory behavior in environments where media ecologies are recognized as increasingly interrelated, overlapping, and woven into the political and social fabric of society. opening up the definition of participation to incorporate unconventional sites and means of participating in political discussions has allowed us to assess the range of ways in which women share, engage in dialogue, and influence one another through their online practices and activities. these alternative forms of participation constitute a new dynamic of engagement in women’s contribution to the political landscape in thailand, and contain theoretical implications for engaging with complex and changing media ecologies, including the broader spheres of women’s political participation and digital political communication in asian contexts. 238 olivia guntarik & verity trott  aseas 9(2) theorizing political participation the rise of social and digital media has forced scholars to re-conceptualize what it means to participate politically. recent perspectives on participation emphasize the role of social and digital media in contemporary global mass events (daoudi & murphy, 2011; harlow & guo, 2014). for instance, research on the use of digital technologies reveals the need to understand participation from the perspective of technology-enabled events and altered political and social landscapes (bruns et al., 2013; chambers, 2013; harris, 2008; vromen, 2011). for some scholars, regardless of the digital space, the participation of individuals is inextricably tied to the political environment. in these contexts, the research emphasis lies on the relationship between people and the state, rather than people and technologies (morozov, 2011). for others, the focus lies on ‘practice’ or the different kinds of activities that occur around new technologies (pink, 2001). some researchers of the digital highlight the need to see the interactions these technologies enable, not only as having mass appeal, but also as a distinctive social phenomenon (goggin & crawford, 2011; hinton & hjorth, 2013). morozov (2011) offers similar views on political participation in the context of digital media, although he cautions against those whom he accuses of holding steadfast to a cyber-utopian worldview and equating technology with democracy. for others, technology has been embraced as an emancipatory force that ushers in revolutions that can topple tyrannical dictatorships (e.g., castells, 2012; khondker, 2011). in such instances, participation in the political sphere is overlooked in favor of the enabling functions of technology, which are often regarded as a panacea. researchers like lim (2012) and alterman (2011), depart from such perspectives, choosing to see technology as neutral and arguing that it is the people using the technology who determine its power and potential. in their argument, they therefore underscore the power of internet users in the political process. technology is seen to advance social change only through its impact on social institutions and cultural domains. analyzed from this perspective, people’s online activities and multiple socialities are seen to influence the scope of their political engagement (carlisle & patton, 2013) or expressions of citizenship or civic values (bennett, wells, & freelon, 2009; ratto, boler, & deibert, 2014; vromen, 2011). these forms of participation can also be understood to fuel racial, religious, and hate-based violence (foxman & wolf, 2013) or be structured by gender, class, and ethnic differences (boyd, 2011; manjima, birchall, caro, kelleher, & vinita, 2013). the underlying message is that participation should be conceptualized in the context of how people interact with technology in everyday life. rather than viewing technology as a democracy-enabling tool, people’s online practices and interactions through the use of social and digital media are considered central to the process of political participation. what is crucial to all these debates is the role of the digital technology itself, and in essence its mobile and social dimensions, without which people are unable to participate to the extent that they have been able to in contemporary politics. through this conceptual lens, communication technologies are understood as valuable sources of power and counter-power for social change. castells (2007) claims that interactive and digital networks of communication have caused the rise of a new form of ‘mass self-communication’, offering social movements the power to com239changing media ecologies in thailand municate and organize themselves on a large scale. yet, castells is perhaps overly confident in his view of technology and its capacity for democratic and revolutionary purposes. he does not acknowledge the complex relationship between online and offline spheres of engagement and sociality, the boundaries of which are often blurred, overlapping, and indeterminate. it is thus not surprising that castells tends to focus more on democratic action rather than participatory activity. we suggest that a study of participatory action sheds light upon politics from the participants’ point of view. this approach complicates the ways in which participants’ political views may be shaped, influenced, and shared along online and offline sites of encounter. power relationships are not simply shaped and defined in digital spaces alone, but rather in the complex interaction between physical and digital environments (e.g., lim, 2006). castells’ view, hence, tends to overlook the types of social relations that are forged across both physical and virtual environments. for castells (2007), the medium itself does not create actual content but enables “unlimited diversity” and the “autonomous origin of most of the communication flows that construct . . . meaning in the public mind” (p. 248). yet, by essentially dismissing offline and face-to-face communication mediums, and positioning the public as wholly passive, castells credits digital technologies with disproportionate power. in this article, we adopt a different stance, shifting agency back to the participants and focusing on their online practices in order to understand the nature of their participation. this approach allows us to engage with the experiences of the women who are in the focus of our study. we construe their online expressions as political, even if their behavior and activities may not constitute ‘full’ or formal participation in political life because of the obvious lack of traditional forms of political participation, such as party membership. we suggest that broadening the notion of participation to incorporate any form of political discussion in the digital space effectively diversifies the concept of participation. such a perspective additionally complicates the potential of technology as a democratic resource. the people, who access digital technology to join political discussions, are understood as political actors through which forms of participation can be measured and scrutinized. the participants provide a way through which we can read, describe, and interrogate the political action, calling the premise of earlier conceptualizations of participation into sharp refute. sites of paradox and promise as noted above, in the digital era, there has been a shift away from construing political participation strictly within the official vernacular of politics. women’s political engagements in digital environments can be seen as constituting a form of political participation in its own right. hence, such emergent practices invite us to modify earlier definitions of participation developed prior to the pervading of the internet. in this article, we show how these online forms of participation were evidenced across a range of personal blogs, facebook groups, and youtube clips in both thai and english language during the 2013/2014 bangkok protests. we selected sites that included a social media platform, which allowed users to share, like, and comment on different topics, primarily women’s issues. we looked at a cross-section of 100 of the most visited and popular websites, social media news coverage sites, and you240 olivia guntarik & verity trott  aseas 9(2) tube clips over a 12-month period as the 2013/2014 protests took place in bangkok during the regency of thailand’s first female prime minister, yingluck shinawatra (2011-2014). we used google analytics to determine the most popular sites visited, particularly selecting sites where participants were critical of yingluck’s leadership. viewpoints were selected based on their capacity to trigger multiple and immediate responses on her leadership and policies, as well as on their ability to facilitate dialogue across different social networks. we chose not to discuss viewpoints that were supportive of yingluck as they tended only to reinforce each other and more rarely elicited a dialogue. we found that sites critical of yingluck, besides reinforcing one another, also generated extended discussions on her leadership and policies.1 data was analysed using an open source social network analysis tool called nodexl, as a form of basic knowledge management. where the identity of the person was known on these sites, we have included their name and gender. while we focused primarily on female commenters, in the few cases where a person’s name was not published it was difficult to ascertain gender. acknowledging that yingluck did not campaign on women’s issues directly, we selected sites where women discussed yingluck’s policies and her leadership qualities, as this is where we found that much of the discussion was centered during the protests. we did not include yingluck’s facebook page, which had garnered more than 2.5 million likes at that time, as we found that her facebook page attracted only her supporters and showed less critical comment on her government. examining how women discussed women’s issues in relation to yingluck’s leadership led us to websites that carried significantly more dissenting views. with more than 40% internet penetration in its northern and central regions, thailand is experiencing one of the fastest adoption of digital technologies in southeast asia (sureerat, 2012).2 the rise of the internet has transformed how people search for and share information, and thus altered thailand’s media ecologies, communicative processes, and modes of social and political organization. our use of the term media ecologies resonates with guattari’s (2000) insistence to understand media and technology as intrinsically embedded in social relations, subjectivity, and the environment. we argue that thai women are subverting the public/private sphere dichotomy through their multiple uses of technology. this suggests that the contemporary shifts between offline and online politics make it harder to contain notions 1 we looked at both viewpoints critical of yingluck and viewpoints that supported her; for our analysis of thai women’s online political participation we chose the former since the flow of conversation they created online appeared more interrogative, reflective, and analytical in tone. the latter did not produce the same kind of flow of conversation as respondents tended to only concur with or endorse one another. 2 nectec statistics indicate that internet penetration in thailand has grown exponentially with up to 38,015,725 users online (national electronics and computer technology center, n.d.). nectec’s statistics indicate that bangkok metropolitan areas have the highest rate of use with 56.3% of users residing in bangkok. however, there were no major differences in the use of the internet with regard to gender, with the exception of transgendered people who spent the most time online. while nectec’s findings emphasize that communication via social networking sites is the most common activity by thai users, it does not reveal how social networks are being used. etda’s ict report states that online use increased significantly between 2014 and 2015 (electronic transactions development agency & ministry of information and communication technology, 2016). the report notes that mobile devices are the most common way of accessing the internet and the top three online activities of internet users via mobile devices were communicating on social networks, web searching, and reading e-news. 241changing media ecologies in thailand of participation adequately within the strictures of the dominant political vernacular. zizi papacharissi (2015) highlights the value and importance of recognizing how personal expressions and experience in the digital figure as political. discursive and affective expressions can “activate and sustain” a public or network by enabling and sharing feelings of belonging and solidarity (papacharissi, 2015, p. 9). such expressions can also influence the ways in which protests and political issues are framed by providing alternative accounts and experiences of events, thus questioning and contradicting the dominant narrative promoted by mainstream media. for papacharissi (2015), “affective attunement” describes “liking a post on facebook, . . . uploading and sharing a youtube video, or using a meme generator to create and share a simple message” as “indicative of civic intensity and thus a form of engagement” (p. 25). she recognizes that in repressive regimes, citizens require courage to express views and opinions that disagree, undermine, and defy the ruling force; hence, their views become political simply by being voiced. this political dimension is significant because the actions of a group can then be situated across new conceptual frameworks for determining the rules of engagement. thai women’s political voices yingluck shinawatra came to power after a landslide victory in the 2011 thai general elections. her key campaign message at that time (in the aftermath of an extended series of political protests during the period from 2008 to 2010) was one of poverty eradication, corporate income tax reduction, and national reconciliation. prior to her election, the government led by the democrat party incited anger amongst protesters who believed the group had masterminded a controversial legal and military move to establish governance. protests escalated when attempts to negotiate a ceasefire failed and forced a military crackdown, seeing more than 100 people killed and thousands of others injured in the ensuing violent confrontations. the protesters included the national united front of democracy against dictatorship (udd), also known as the ‘red shirts’, which called for an early election and demanded that the government stand down. on a website that documents the top 10 worst prime ministers in the world, yingluck rates a close second to her brother thaksin who is rated first. most of the comments on this english-language site highlight her simple-mindedness, heartlessness, or inability to lead the country: she is the most stupid prime minister. the worst is that she has not done anything to help the country since she became pm. well.. how can i put this.. she can’t even speak her native language properly. do not mention about her english skill. i still wonder what does ‘thank you three time’ mean and how can she graduate from the univ. from usa.. she rarely play her role. skipping meeting is her hobby and cry in front of public is her only one specialty.. she does make the woman’s pride down. just show her face and read the script is her job, i guess? 242 olivia guntarik & verity trott  aseas 9(2) people think yingluck is stupid, but in fact, she is a brutal and cruel person from her command to kill people every night during the bangkok shutdown when they sleep on the road. these people do not have any weapon, but only whistle. yingluck is satan on earth. thailand will be bankrupted soon if she continues to stay in thailand . . . . on this particular site, the public is encouraged to leave messages expressing their opinion of yingluck and whether they agree or disagree with other commenters’ viewpoints. visitors to the site can vote either by ticking the thumbs-up image in support of the comment or thumbs-down to state their rejection of the claims. some of the comments received an enormous number of supporters (anywhere from 3,000 to more than a million thumbs-up votes). followers of the page are also able to share the website using twitter or facebook. the sharing and endorsement of people’s opinions about yingluck highlights the sense of freedom people felt to express their views candidly. the above comments clearly illustrate that the participants were not afraid to criticize and speak out against yingluck. this type of peer endorsement of information and opinions can be understood as a means through which people develop their political identities and consciousness. this site offered an unconventional space for people to speak out against their leader without censorship. we suggest that it is reflective of an emerging political sphere of public agitation and discontent, providing an alternative space for citizens to share a collective and public display of dissatisfaction and protest. while it is obvious from these comments that yingluck was not a favored prime minister, there is also no doubt that her rise to power was set against a complex political backdrop. controversy surrounded her government from the outset, with some protesters claiming she was simply a puppet for her brother and former prime minister, thaksin shinawatra, who (at the time of writing this article) faced corruption charges and was living in self-imposed exile in dubai. in much of the commentary analyzed across the 100 sites, people accused her of acting as a political proxy for her brother: [yingluck] just follows her brother order, thaksin shinawatra, to achieve authority, asset and etc. by corruption. she do everything what her brother said (thaksin shinawatra). she doesn’t know what’s right and wrong and totally can’t think by herself. bad like her brother go to hell. these comments encapsulated the rising discontent toward yingluck’s leadership during the time she was in office. they indicate that people were undaunted by her power and felt defiant enough to express their views in a relatively public forum. the language is expressive, colorful, and often vitriolic and malicious. the comments reflect a public who were unconcerned about speaking their minds freely, and who would not hold back their anger, disappointment, frustration, and cynicism. we propose that such comments constitute a new form of political participation because 243changing media ecologies in thailand such views convey a political standpoint that has the potential to influence a wider audience through politically persuasive commentary. the comments colored the tone of the debate around yingluck’s leadership in ways in which debates between political leaders have not been able to accomplish among the general populace. additionally, the further sharing and endorsing of these views, within the above mentioned sites and on other platforms, helped to raise political consciousness about the extent of public agitation. what was obvious on these sites was the number of participants endorsing such messages. the content of the messages might not have been assigned the same kind of attention or coverage in mainstream media outlets, and yet it was expressive of a public clearly prepared to engage in political dialogue. while the level of engagement through sharing and liking posts may not seem particularly surprising, in the context of a totalitarian state, speaking out against the ruling authority by endorsing and spreading opposing views online embodies an additional layer of citizen resistance that is a feature of digital life in western democracies that is taken for granted. most of the sites in this study were extremely active during the 12-month period of analysis and tended to peak in activity during major protests that occurred in the physical setting of bangkok’s streets, which were also instances of greater media coverage (local, regional, and global). in fact, most of the sites studied were not only critical of yingluck’s leadership but also accused her of abusing her family connections. similarly, during his term in office, thaksin’s opponents accused him of corruption and nepotism, while his government was charged with dictatorship, human rights abuses, and hostility toward free press. yingluck’s own rule was shrouded in political unrest and protests. as one social media user puts it: her government implemented many destructive policies to the country, e.g. the rice policy, the highest corruptions in all gov projects, parliamentary dictatorship, denial of the constitution. other citizens, who discussed yingluck’s policies, have either expressed their opinions about how she might make thailand a better country for women or raised doubts about her capacity to do so. she might bring in more women’s rights. a lot of women suffer domestic abuse and rape; i hope she can improve the situation. (sukhpatra chockmo, female)3 she cannot be a representative of women’s groups, because she has never expressed her vision and stance regarding the protection of women’s interests. (virada somswadi, female, founder of the women’s studies program, chiang mai university)4 these comments articulated perspectives that were quite critical of the government, but they also expressed a level of discontent about women’s rights and position 3 see branigan, 2011. 4 see branigan, 2011. 244 olivia guntarik & verity trott  aseas 9(2) in thailand’s social system. it is interesting that in this case one of the comments was by a thai academic. this demonstrated how women were able to use social and digital media as an extension of their offline identities. the sites provided another space and avenue for women to share information, project their voices, and connect with a wider community they may not have had access to in the offline realm. in some cases, female members of protest groups were using blogs and the commenting features of popular sites to promote and generate public support for their causes, providing another example of how women were using social and digital media to extend their reach (sph razor, 2013). these comments followed a larger pattern found on other social media sites, suggesting a general and mixed sense of both hopefulness and despair that yingluck’s leadership induced in thai women. those who supported her pledged their devotion, loyalty, and obligation toward her. several women in leadership positions, like thida tawornseth, chairwoman of the red shirts, complimented yingluck on her response to the flood crisis, which hit thailand during her government: the government was not a one-man show, a team of principled people should help the leader make the right decisions. (thida tawornseth, female, red shirts chairwoman)5 however, further statements observing yingluck’s management of thailand politics at the time suggested that she was being drowned out by other political voices. for instance, chalidaporn songsamphan, a professor of gender studies at thammasat university, stated that yingluck was midway between passing and failing her test in politics: several issues pending since before the election remain undecided. she should be more independent and more forthcoming about her intentions, particularly in regard to solving the divisions in the country. it is impossible to identify any of her visions about the issues and other people tend to dominate political directions. (chalidaporn songsamphan, female, professor of gender studies, thammasat university)6 the comments by academics, women’s rights groups, and similar organizations with a social justice agenda played an important role in conveying alternative perspectives that may not necessarily have been picked up by the mainstream media. this point supports our contention that the spheres of online and offline politics are complementary to one another. according to piela (2015), digital media can act as a facilitator of grassroots causes but can also provide an interpretative context for political acts themselves. in other words, people who represent various interest groups carry a key role in reading and interpreting the political landscape. they use social and digital media to show audiences the different angles through which the political 5 see sph razor, 2013. 6 see sph razor, 2013; see also chalidaporn songsamphan’ personal blog at http://chalidaporn.blogspot. com.au/. 245changing media ecologies in thailand situation can be analyzed, and particularly how the existing political and social landscape contains implications for women. a fresh outbreak of political violence continued in thailand during november 2013, focused on removing the influence of thaksin from thai politics. among other demands, the protests were triggered by a proposed amnesty bill, which would have pardoned political offences dating back to the 2006 coup, potentially quashing the corruption conviction of people who had been involved in political violence, including thaksin shinawatra. yingluck’s 3-year term in office could be described as nothing short of contentious. in may 2014 and as the military coup ensued, yingluck’s government was swiftly turned over under claims that she abused her power to benefit her party and family. however, she continued to generate widespread support from both her direct fan base and other segments of thai society, many of whom were captured on video pledging their commitment to and admiration for her (ap archive, 2015). other people directly endorsed yingluck’s facebook page, which remained very active at that time with thousands of her followers pledging their support, while her profile in the political realm remained controversial. she faced further charges under thailand’s national anti-corruption commission for allegedly mishandling a loss-making subsidy scheme for rice farmers. this multi-billion dollar scheme was popular in thailand’s rural rice-farming provinces in the north and northeast, and helped yingluck win the votes of millions of farmers when she came to power in 2011. reports of corruption, negligence, and mismanagement plunged the policy into strife and forced the government to find measures to stem ballooning losses estimated at usd 6 billion. despite her exile from government, these issues continued to garner widespread attention across a range of social and digital media platforms. this active online environment laid bare the participation of dispersed and divided female publics whose political perspectives were both shared and contested. redefining participation through women’s experiences how are we to view this participatory behavior in a contemporary context, given that women in thailand are generally excluded from participating in political dialogue, and are cut off from voicing their concerns in traditional media spaces, such as television news reports, radio, and print publications? social media and other online channels provide an alternative medium for women to voice such concerns directly, whilst remaining anonymous if they choose to and without the need to justify themselves. we have shown how this digital environment nurtured an expressive space that welcomed and included different viewpoints about the social and political issues of the day. while it is harder to ascertain whether these same women, presenting their viewpoints online, were the ones who took to the streets to protest, what is pertinent here is that the digital space provided a connection to an alternative form of engagement with political life. no matter how arbitrary or tentative this connection and engagement is, what we are presented with here is a sphere of influence, with members of the public clearly expressing their shared or oppositional views, reinforcing their own and endorsing those of others. the women who posted a comment and those who responded were not always necessarily articulate, clear about their 246 olivia guntarik & verity trott  aseas 9(2) political intentions, or politically correct in their use of language – yet what could be observed was a sense of freedom and directness in their views. this was evidence of a cogent and compelling political debate circulating in the everyday lives of women in thailand. this is a noteworthy context given that women’s participation in politics is often viewed as a reduced space of political activity. some writers have discussed this space as hostile or one that affords few entitlements. the suggestion is that women are largely excluded from participating in formal political arenas. as harris (2008) contends, “young women are underrepresented in many conventional forms of political practice . . . and are less entitled to participate in formal political activities” (p. 487). yet, harris (2004, 2006) along with others has shown how female participants have utilized digital technologies in new and experimental ways (haraway, 1985; keller, 2012; mazzarella & pecora, 2007; offen, 1988; tarrow, 1989).7 such uses suggest a new kind of politics is being performed online, but the relationships and disparities between these kinds of informal and formal politics are still being realized. this observation about women’s political agency has continued to lend understanding to emerging conceptualizations of participation. piela (2015) writes of the gendered uses of technology for muslim women and those who identify as activists. she argues that the internet provides a platform for the development of gendered interpretations of islamic scriptures and that these alternative readings challenge patriarchal conventions. piela views the internet as a ‘facilitator’ of women’s collaborative and interpretative practices, both online and in connection with their face-toface grassroots activities. online spaces, she believes, are valuable for muslim women because grassroots women are largely excluded from any decision-making in islamic religious structures (piela, 2015, p. 274). this idea strikes a chord with other researchers who concur that the digital enacts inclusivity. newsom and lengel’s (2012) analysis of arab feminist activism during the protests in tunisia and egypt in 2011 illustrates how women used social and digital media to construct and broadcast their own voices and experiences. however, while digital acts formed an inclusive and shared space for women to express their views, there were certain limits to their voices. although the online “third space” offered arab women a space for activism, it was essentially a “space of contained empowerment’” (newsom & lengel, 2012, p. 32). in other words, women were able to participate in the political dialogue, but their messages had only a limited power since they could be reframed and watered down once the mainstream media remediates them as news stories for wider public consumption. despite these limitations, a number of scholars assert that the social networking capacity of social and digital media cannot be underestimated. women are willing 7 feminist activists typically engage with social and digital media to create “unregulated, public spaces for peer communities and to construct public selves” (harris, 2004, p. 492). both the red shirt and yellow shirt facebook pages represent public spaces for activists and supporters to engage with each other and establish online communities. the red shirt facebook page has a reach of over 20,000 facebook users and the yellow shirt facebook page has over 4,000 likes. many of the posts are shared, which indicates messages reach further than explicitly stated. the page also incorporates posts by participants and individual members, showing their support by posting their own messages about the cause. the sharing of posts and the contribution of posts helps increase the scale and reach of the groups’ social media presence, effectively increasing awareness about their cause. 247changing media ecologies in thailand to risk political retribution because their ability to discuss political issues with other citizens creates a sense of belonging. touria khannous (2011, p. 359) argues that while facebook and blogs allow women a space to speak freely and initiate social change, the international response to their social media use has taken on an arguably higher importance than the blogs themselves. social networking tools have allowed muslim women to develop their own direct and uncensored messages and help position the women and their political agendas directly on the global stage. arab feminism, khannous (2011) contends, has had a socially transformative impact on women’s lives because of the unprecedented number of muslim networks that have developed and flourished in the light of social and digital media. khannous emphasizes how virtual spaces provide a liberating medium for muslim women to express themselves as they endure restraints imposed on them by their respective government. online forums enable moroccan and saudi feminists to discuss issues of femininity, raise religious questions, and learn about cultural differences, despite the risks they face offline. the development of research, which is located outside the western feminist context or that focuses on gendered forms of technology use, reveals the growing interest in how women of color, minorities, or women who are socially, politically, or religiously marginalized are increasingly finding alternative avenues to form social networks and influence formal politics. looking at this research, we have sought to highlight the largely deficient body of research on women’s political participation in thailand, and to explore the implications of participation scholarship for thai women’s political experiences. women’s voices and viewpoints in thailand have remained silenced in most traditional media, yet thai women have used a range of social and digital media to discuss their political standpoints, publicly sharing and exchanging their political perspectives during the protests. these digital environments were unregulated, largely open networks, and involved no or little moderation by system administrators. users could therefore create content dynamically and establish a flow of direct and pervasive communication with a broad, diverse, and unknown public. by incorporating these thai women’s perspectives, we argue for new modes of conceiving women’s engagement in politics in ways that move beyond conventional descriptions of political participation. the women’s online discussions constituted a form of ‘action’ and engagement that might not traditionally be understood as a conventional political stance in prevailing definitions of participatory politics. these sites offered an unconventional space of political discourse that not only reflected thai women’s political perspectives, but also their capacity to debate political issues and share these perspectives with other like-minded women experiencing similar conditions. these online forms were unconventional in terms of how they were defined as distinct sites that enable alternative expressions of political identities and perspectives. they are also unconventional insofar as they deviate from traditional offline or face-to-face political environments where women are unwelcome or excluded from participating in political processes. our use of thailand as a case study suggests that these unconventional forms of participation have a further bearing on how citizens spread their political messages, and connect with others concerning their everyday anxieties. these participatory forms are indicative of a public in which women’s voices, images, and collective experiences can be examined outside the established parameters of conventional politics. 248 olivia guntarik & verity trott  aseas 9(2) conclusion the politics of participation is a lively terrain. although much attention has been placed on the role of social and digital media in mass events across the arab world, parts of europe, and the usa, their role and impact in southeast asian contexts have been largely neglected. this article sought to highlight how the rise of social and digital media has altered what it means to participate politically. by calling attention to thai women’s engagement in a specific political context, our aim was to illustrate how a range of different online platforms were being utilized for participatory politics. we focused on participants’ online interaction and commentary to legitimize thai women’s political engagement. this approach not only conveyed the extent to which digital media platforms were being used for political engagement, but also assisted us to critically investigate the nature of online participation in thailand. we found that social and digital media users were not afraid to speak out about their discontent with the government during bangkok’s 2013/2014 protests. these participants appeared to have no fear of reprisal or retribution. furthermore, there existed an active practice of sharing and endorsing people’s opinions; the sheer volume of this sharing, liking, endorsing, and commenting was clearly visible in terms of numbers. furthermore, many sites also included the participant’s name, profile, and affiliation. these practices encourage us to revise current definitions of political participation by accounting for the new constituents of participatory activities beyond conventional politics. the range of women’s comments across the internet and social media sites was indicative of the complex political discussions taking place within online groups and communities. the commentary expressed a range of attitudes, which were supported, shared, and contested. the participation and comments by academics and women’s organizations illustrate how digital media were used as an extension to offline activities, protests, and political agendas. these commenters fueled, supported, and reinforced the opinions of other participants across a range of social media sites. commentary merged with other perspectives and became part of a larger whole, making it difficult to ascertain the original source of debates and breaking the rules that define engagement along traditional thresholds. the speed, scale, and nature of internet-based discussion sites create an efficient manner for women’s organizations to communicate, push their agenda, and influence public opinions and activities. while there are challenges in tracing the relationship between online and offline activities, what we have shown is that traditional face-to-face political modes of engagement have been complicated by digital environments, particularly as they interact with the changing media ecologies of the 21st century. social and digital media draw attention to alternative spaces for discussing the issues of social concern and reflect the multiple ways in which women engage in politics in non-traditional ways. this understanding is important because women in thailand may not necessarily engage or have opportunities to directly participate in conventional politics. some may have no interest in following conventional politics, yet may be quite outspoken when it comes to conversing with others about their political stance, be it with work colleagues, friends, or family, or as in this case with an unknown public. a closer examination of these sites has allowed us to trace the range of perspectives commenters from 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(2011). constructing australian youth online: empowered but dutiful citizens? information, communication and society, 14(7), 959-980. about the authors olivia guntarik is a senior lecturer in popular culture at rmit university in melbourne, australia. her research examines the relationship between society, technology, and social change. ► contact: olivia.guntarik@rmit.edu.au verity trott is a melbourne-based video and online media practitioner. she is completing her phd at the university of melbourne on digital activism and feminist theory. she tutors in technology and society, big data, and digital research methods. ► contact: veritytrott@gmail.com acknowledgements we wish to thank the editor and anonymous reviewers for their constructive and helpful suggestions, which ultimately helped to sharpen the final paper. exploring leisure time activities and sociodemographic indicators of subjective happiness and self-perceived health among filipinos exploring leisure time activities and sociodemographic indicators of subjective happiness and self-perceived health among filipinos joseph anthony l. reyes ► reyes, j. a. l. (2016). exploring leisure time activities and sociodemographic indicators of subjective happiness and self-perceived health among filipinos. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 9(2), 269-288. this study explores the relationships of subjective happiness and self-perceived health with leisure time activities and sociodemographic variables among filipinos. it uses data from the international social survey programme 2007: leisure time and sports (issp 2007), and is the first paper that specifically investigates the case of the philippines. ordinary least square and multinomial logistic regression analyses were conducted in this study. age was found to have significant negative relationships with leisure time activity engagement, subjective happiness, and self-perceived health. body mass index was found to significantly predict a better self-perceived health. cultural, tv/music, and social leisure activities were found to be significant predictors only in some of the outcome categories of happiness and health, whereas physical leisure activities were not found to be significant. notably, subjective happiness and self-perceived health were significantly predicted by subjective socio-economic status, but not by actual family income. implications of the results are discussed in terms of the philippines’ context as a ‘developing country’ together with possibilities for an improved perception of quality of life among filipinos. keywords: leisure activities; philippines; social indicators; subjective happiness; subjective health  introduction the progress and development of countries often focus primarily on the results of economic activities measured by market growth, gross domestic product (gdp), per capita income, purchasing power parity, employment, price stability, poverty incidence, and similar indicators. there has been, however, an observed disparity between the economic indicators and personal perceptions of well-being, giving rise to an increasing global trend toward the measurement of happiness or subjective well-being. thus, rather than emphasizing purely economic growth, attention is now also directed toward the happiness of citizens, prompting various governmental agencies, international organizations, and private institutions to develop myriad ways of measuring indicators of well-being and societal progress (boarini, kolev, & mcgregor, 2014; domingo, 2014). international longitudinal social surveys such as the world values survey (wvs) have shown that, for the past two decades, happiness had increased in außerhalb des schwerpunktes  out of focus w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 16 .2 -6 270 joseph anthony l. reyes  aseas 9(2) 45 of the 52 countries where long-term data have been collected. the wvs observes that “since 1981 economic development, democratization, and rising social tolerance had risen to the extent to which people perceive that they have free choice, which in turn has led to higher levels of happiness around the world” (world values survey association, 2016). similar to some other developing countries, the philippines can be considered as a case wherein the economic situation of the country and a relatively high perception of happiness by its people may be incongruent, as the country demonstrates a relatively low economic performance. being among the bottom half of countries in the world in terms of gdp for the past two decades, the philippines was ranked 119 out of 187 countries in the international monetary fund report 2014 and 118 out of 185 countries by the world bank in 2013 (the world bank, 2016). despite this rather cheerless economic situation, happiness and life satisfaction in the philippines have been found to be relatively high in several international studies. in fact, filipinos are considered to be among the world’s happiest citizens according to the recent gallup poll’s positive experience index that was conducted in 143 countries, with the philippines ranking fifth (clifton, 2015). the happy planet index (abdallah, michaelson, shah, stoll, & marks, 2012), which measures human well-being and environmental impact, designed to challenge established indices of national development, such as gdp and the human development index (hdi), ranks the philippines among the upper quartile for all three of its reports over the recent decade. using aggregate data from the wvs in 2005 on the question of overall happiness, the website nationmaster.com ranks the philippines 12 out of 50. even a decade ago, in a study of 90 countries (veenhoven, 2004), the philippines ranked 32 in terms of life satisfaction. as a result, the philippines’ national statistical coordination board (nscb) has considered developing its own happiness index. it aims to take into account happiness in combination with conventional economic indicators to come up with a more appropriate measure of the progress of filipino society. though its guiding principle is the fact that economic progress and happiness are not synonymous, these concepts are not entirely mutually exclusive concepts (virola, encarnacion, & pascasio, 2011, p. 4986). thus, with these recent institutional developments and an emphasis on measuring the well-being of people, the study of the determinants of happiness or subjective well-being becomes ever more relevant for those working toward not only understanding, but possibly also improving the quality of life in a more integrated approach. leisure and health are two aspects that have been considered in various studies on subjective well-being conducted in different countries (brajša-žganec, merkaš, & šverko, 2011; hribernik & mussap, 2010; rossi, ateca, gerstenbluth, & mussio, 2014). in australia, for instance, it was found that leisure is a life domain that contributes significantly to subjective well-being (hribernik & mussap, 2010, p. 703). results of another study conducted in croatia show that engagement in various leisure activities significantly contributed to subjective well-being and allowed people to build social relationships, feel positive emotions, acquire additional skills and knowledge, and therefore improve their quality of life (brajša-žganec et al., 2011, p. 87). numerous studies have been conducted to additionally determine what specific leisure activities are associated to subjective happiness and well-being. yet, as brajša-žganec et al. (2011) note, “though varying numbers of leisure activities groupings have been identified in the literature, there is no general agreement about the classification of 271exploring leisure time activities and sociodemographic indicators leisure activities as well as which specific groups predict subjective well-being” (p. 82). similar studies have explored determinants and structural relationships of perceived health, happiness, and body mass index (bmi) together with sociodemographic variables in countries such as the netherlands (cornelisse-vermaat, antonides, van ophem, & van den brink, 2006, p. 152), where they found that bmi was an important determinant of perceived health, which in turn increased happiness in dutch society. in england, on the other hand, findings indicated that happiness showed a positive correlation with self-efficacy and negative relationship with bmi (cook & chater, 2010, pp. 61-62). multinational studies have been conducted to define the impact of religiosity on happiness, well-being, and life satisfaction (elliott & hayward, 2009; gebauer, nehrlich, sedikides, & neberich, 2013; joshanloo & weijers, 2015), with results indicating that religiosity mitigates the negative effects of various factors toward people’s subjective happiness, especially in poorer or oppressed countries. despite the vast literature that explores the various aspects of subjective well-being utilizing social indicators from international surveys, very few studies conduct a focused analysis on the philippines. studies that include the philippines have found various significant relationships to subjective happiness such as self-esteem, satisfaction with life, measures of delight and terror, positive affect and negative affect (swami et al., 2009). moreover, in a study conducted in the philippines by the nscb among four different subpopulations, low income family members or individuals with employees of two governmental and one private agencies were compared. it was found that happiness deriving from controllable domains (internal factors) was higher than from those that are not controllable (external factors), regardless of gender or subgroup (virola, encarnacion, pascasio, & clavido, 2010). specifically, happiness derived from domains such as community and volunteer work, cultural activities, education, family, health, income and financial security, friends, love life, sex life, leisure and sports, religion and spiritual activities, technological know-how, work, and food, is higher compared to external factors like the economy, environment, government, politics, and peace and security (virola et al., 2010, p. 11). for the international social survey programme 2007 module on leisure time and sports (issp 2007) multinational studies were conducted to explore the relationship between leisure time and happiness (haller, hadler, & kaup, 2013; pampel, 2012; wang & wong, 2014). the survey addresses leisure time related issues such as different forms of leisure time activities; the relation of leisure to work and other spheres of life; and the social determinants and consequences of leisure. for instance, survey data from 33 countries showed that family income and individual demographic variables, such as age and health condition, are associated significantly with happiness (wang & wong, 2014, p. 111). up to date, no research has been conducted that utilizes the issp 2007 survey data to focus on the leisure activities of filipinos and their relationships to subjective happiness and perceived general health. as the issp data set is relatively large and robust compared to most localized surveys conducted in the country, it is an opportunity to gain better insights into general public opinion based on a wide range of respondents in the philippines.1 1 each yearly wave of issp surveys collects sociodemographic as well as substantive (based on citizens' opinion) data on various topics. 272 joseph anthony l. reyes  aseas 9(2) this paper investigates survey data related to the subjective well-being of filipinos in terms of self-reported happiness and health. it will explore and determine statistically significant relationships among substantive variables (e.g., attendance of religious services, self-placement on a top-bottom socio-economic scale, conception of an ideal shape of a man and a woman) that relate to leisure activities and included sociodemographic indicators (e.g., age, education, family income, or marital status). for this paper, leisure activities refer to behaviors that a person voluntarily engages in when free from work or familial responsibilities. happiness is how respondents currently consider how happy or unhappy their life is in general. concerning health, they are asked how healthy they felt in general. the analysis specifically addresses the following research questions: 1. what are the social structuring dimensions of leisure time activities that filipinos engage in and what are the significant predictors of these activities? 2. what are the significant predictors of overall happiness among filipinos? 3. what are the significant predictors of subjective general health? finally, the study also aims toward a better understanding of the implications of the findings, comparing them with results from relevant literature and relating them to the filipino context and to possibilities of improving general perceptions of the quality of life. data and methods analyses are based on data from issp 2007. issp data sets are provided by the zentralarchiv für empirische sozialforschung (the central archive for empirical social research), university of cologne, and can be found at the gesis data archive.2 the issp is a collaboration of social scientists developing annual cross-cultural comparable surveys in currently 53 participating nations. it is a continuing program that covers various recurring topics important for social science research and conducts surveys focused on a single topic each year. the issp 2007 leisure time and sports module was developed between 2003 and 2006, fielded in 36 countries, and was conducted in the philippines from march 2008 to may 2008 by the social weather stations (sws).3 the module covers activities, attitudes, and values related to leisure and satisfaction. it measures myriad aspects of leisure that include for instance the meaning of time and leisure, its relation to work and other spheres of life, and the social determinants and consequences of leisure, together with sociodemographic variables. the sampling procedure is a stratified, multistage random sample considering region, household, and persons within the household. for the philippine subsample the target populations were adults with age ranging from 18 to 91 years old. the sam2 the archive can be accessed at http://www.gesis.org/en/institute/gesis-scientific-departments/dataarchive-for-the-social-sciences/. 3 the sws is a private non-stock, non-profit research institution in the philippines that conducts regular public opinion surveys on various issues including politics, economics, and social issues. most prominent, the social weather indicators include quality of life, change in economy, and satisfaction with public authority figures. 273exploring leisure time activities and sociodemographic indicators ple for the survey was 1,200 with an equal number of female and male respondents. the surveys were conducted using english, filipino, iluko, bicol, hiligaynon, waray, cebuano, maranao, and chavacano languages. independent variables for this study are individual sociodemographic characteristics together with substantive variables, and a derived bmi score based on respondents’ height and weight using the standard formula, defined as the weight in kilograms divided by the square of the height in meters (kg/m2)4. similar to previous empirical research on happiness, health, and weight aspiration (kelaher, williams, & manderson, 2001; natvig, albrektsen, & qvarnstrøm, 2003; pampel, 2012; schieman, pudrovska, & eccles, 2007), this study adopts a combination of methods established and utilized in these studies. it employs factor analysis of the different variables on the frequencies of engaging in various leisure activities in order to find the underlying dimensional items (pampel, 2012). aside from finding latent dimensions, this also allows a reduction in the number of variables used in the regression models and addresses issues of multi-collinearity. explorative factor analysis via the principal component method available in spss (field, 2009) was conducted on the philippine subsample focusing on 12 issp variables categorized under “leisure time: activities and satisfaction”. questionnaire items ask respondents how often they do particular activities during their free time – time that they are not occupied with work or household duties or other activities that they are obliged to do. these were rated by respondents on a five point scale ranging from 1 (daily), 2 (several times a week), 3 (several times a month), 4 (several times a year or less often), or 5 (never). these were recoded as to represent the scores in an increasing manner – 1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest. additional details on these variables can be found in the appendix section and the questionnaire documentation in the issp archive. factor analysis of the philippine subsample shows three dimensions (cultural, social, and tv/music activities) with eigenvalues greater than one. together, these three account for over 42% of the variance observed in the data. this study follows the criteria used in the exploratory factor analysis for determining the number of principal components to retain based on the kaiser criterion or k1 rule of eigenvalues greater than one and the scree test, where eigenvalues are plotted against the number of components. as the plot moves toward latter components there is a relatively sharp decrease in eigenvalues which then levels off (field, 2009, pp. 639-641; tabachnick & fidell, 2006, pp. 607-675). after determining the underlying dimensions of activities, standardized scales are constructed for the three factors (cultural, social, and tv/music), adding the item of physical activities, in a similar fashion to the procedures of pampel (2012). these variables or dimensions are treated as continuous in the subsequent analyses. thus, to address the first research objective, the four variables are used to examine the social structuring of leisure time activities, where each of the dimensions is used as the outcome in multiple regressions with sociodemographic variables (pampel, 2012). adopting similar methods employed in social sciences and medicine for studying happiness (natvig et al., 2003) and health (kelaher et al., 2001), multinomial regression analyses are used to address research objectives 2 and 3 (see introduction). 4 for more information on the derivation and usage of the bmi, refer to the world health organization (www.who.int/bmi). 274 joseph anthony l. reyes  aseas 9(2) the analyses focus on the relationships of leisure activities, other substantive and sociodemographic variables with respondents’ categories for overall happiness, and general health. categorization was obtained by recoding responses in the following manner: for the statement on subjective happiness asking respondents: “if you were to consider your life in general these days, how happy or unhappy would you say you are, on the whole…?”, those who responded as “not at all happy” and “not very happy” were recoded as 1, those who responded as “fairly happy” as 2, and those who responded as “very happy” were recoded as 3. the statement on self-assessed health asking respondents: “in general, would you say your health is...?”, those who responded as having “poor” and “fair” were recoded as 1, those who responded as “good” as 2, and those who responded as “very good” and “excellent” were recoded as 3. with responses for the respective items recoded into three categories, it is treated as a polychotomous variable with membership to either category 1, 2, or 3: it is thus possible to use multinomial logistic regression – a form of logistic regression to predict membership (field, 2009; tabachnick & fidell, 2006, pp. 464-503). the analysis presents a series of comparisons between one category against a specified reference category (field, 2009, p. 300). estimates for the parameter can be identified compared to a base line category that was specified for this study based on relevant literature and allowing for distinctive contrast, as those who are not at all happy, or not very happy, and feel they have poor, or fair health. multinomial regression analysis estimates the effect of predictor variables on the natural log of the odds of the outcome, and allows exploration of qualitative differences between the three outcomes (field, 2009, pp. 308-309). tables 3 and 4 present corresponding parameter estimates and model information for the respective analyses. analysis and results descriptives in terms of overall happiness, as presented in table 1, only 19.3% of filipino respondents indicated that they were unhappy whereas almost half (49.5%) were fairly happy and 31.2% responded as being very happy. for self-perceived general health, 40.8% felt that they had poor or fair health, 29.4% felt that they had good health, and 29.9% said they had very good or excellent health. thus overall, the sample descriptive statistics indicate that the majority of the filipino respondents stated to feel happy and generally at good health. a spearman’s correlation was performed to determine the bivariate relationships between responses of being happy (fairly and very happy), feeling good health (good and excellent), and their respective bmi. two significant relationships were found: an extremely significant correlation between being happy and feeling at good health (= .241, n = 1198, p < .001), while a very weak but significant correlation was found between feeling good health and bmi (= .241, n = 1198, p < .05). according to the means of the component variables of leisure time activities for filipinos, the most popular activities were watching television, listening to music, and getting together with friends, whereas the least popular activities were spending time on the internet/pc, attending cultural events, and playing cards or board games. 275exploring leisure time activities and sociodemographic indicators factor analysis and ordinary least square regression for leisure time activities results from the exploratory factor analysis using the principal component method on the 12 leisure time variables revealed that, for the philippine subsample, variation is explained by three factors: the first factor was cultural, thus composed of going to movies, shopping, spending time on the internet, reading books, and attending variable n mean std. deviation min max sociodemographic female 1200 0.50 0.50 0 1 age (decades) 1200 3.99 1.54 1.8 9.1 education 1200 5.21 2.28 1 10 married 1200 0.68 0.47 0 1 urban 1195 0.54 0.50 0 1 employed-school 1194 0.58 0.49 0 1 subjective status (self-placement) 1197 4.86 1.87 1 10 attendance of religious services 1196 5.17 1.52 0 7 family income (thousands) 1130 8.99 9.40 0.00 100.00 body weight related bmi 985 22.19 3.95 13.85 41.62 image of ideal man (slender) 1198 0.45 0.50 0 1 image of ideal woman (slender) 1198 0.54 0.50 0 1 leisure time activities (factor analyzed) cultural 1200 0 1 -1.59 3.85 social 1200 0 1 -2.30 3.29 tv/music 1200 0 1 -3.95 0.90 physical 1200 0 1 -1.65 2.14 multinominal categories not at all & not very happy fairly happy very happy overall happiness 1198 231 593 374 poor & fair health good health very good & excellent health general health 1199 489 352 358 table 1. descriptive statistics and distribution of multinomial categories. (author’s compilation of data available from the issp archive). 276 joseph anthony l. reyes  aseas 9(2) cultural events; the second factor was composed of social activities such as playing cards, getting together with friends, attending sporting events as spectators, doing handicraft or woodwork, and getting together with relatives; and the third factor was composed of listening to music and watching television. the interpretations of these factors are somewhat similar to the findings in the study made by pampel (2012) for sedentary activities. herein, the cultural dimension is linked to high socio-economic status (ses) activities which entail high personal expense and investment for access in comparison to other leisure activities (pampel, 2012, p. 401). the second factor includes socializing activities such as playing cards or board games, getting together with friends, attending sporting events as spectators, doing handicrafts or woodwork, and getting together with relatives that are not living in the same household. four of the five items clearly have a social component, for instance cards and board games which are usually played with other people during get-togethers and as pastimes during idle moments, colloquially termed in the filipino language as istambay or tambay (from the english word “standby”), usually in public areas. as for the handicraft or woodwork activity, it may be social in terms of how it is conducted with other people or for the intended purpose of their crafted items, which may serve social functions such as sporting events, processions, or fiestas (town festivals), by making team uniforms, themed costumes, party favors, toys, props, streamers, or banners. the do-it-yourself aspect combined with doing it with other people may not only allow savings compared to buying finished commercial products from stores or malls, but also allows a sense of bonding, team building, and pakikisama (camaraderie). the last factor is composed of listening to music and watching television. after the initial outlay for audiovisual equipment, these are essentially two activities that comparably require the least amount of money and effort in order for the respondents to enjoy. understandably, these two are the most frequent leisure time activities that filipinos partake in. the social structuring of leisure time activities is examined using ordinary least square regression, where each of the three dimensions plus taking part in physical activities was used as the outcome in multiple regressions with sociodemographic and substantive variables. as reported in table 2, all models were found to be significant. among predictors, age was found in three models as significantly reducing the more engaging cultural, social, and physical activities, but was not found to be significant for listening to music and watching television. similarly, being married was also found to be negatively associated with the three aforementioned activity types, most strongly with cultural activities. education was significant across the three models of cultural, physical, and tv/music, but not for participation time in social activities. urban residence is associated significantly with more tv/music and physical activities, which may possibly be attributed to easier access to actual (basketball, volleyball, badminton courts) or ad hoc (street basketball, hopscotch) sporting facilities and the availability of commercial audiovisual entertainment products, or broadcasting infrastructures and public utilities such as electricity grids, compared to rural areas. being female was only found to be negatively associated with social and physical activities, though it must be noted that these are the strongest associations (unstandardized b = -0.653, -0.491 respectively) found on all four models. 277exploring leisure time activities and sociodemographic indicators le is ur e t im e a ct iv it ie s so ci od em og ra ph ic p re di ct or s c ul tu ra l so ci al t v / m us ic ph ys ic al fe m al e 0 .0 71 (0 .0 54 ) -0 .6 53 (0 .0 60 ) ** * -0 .0 50 (0 .0 61 ) -0 .4 91 (0 .0 60 ) ** * a ge (d ec ad es ) -0 .1 28 (0 .0 18 ) ** * -0 .0 84 (0 .0 20 ) ** * -0 .0 27 (0 .0 20 ) -0 .0 86 (0 .0 20 ) ** * e d u ca ti on 0 .1 54 (0 .0 13 ) ** * 0 .0 0 9 (0 .0 14 ) 0 .0 81 (0 .0 14 ) ** * 0 .0 51 (0 .0 14 ) ** * m ar ri ed -0 .2 0 6 (0 .0 58 ) ** * -0 .1 50 (0 .0 63 ) * -0 .0 35 (0 .0 64 ) -0 .1 72 (0 .0 63 ) ** u rb an 0 .0 20 (0 .0 54 ) 0 .1 0 6 (0 .0 58 ) 0 .2 19 (0 .0 60 ) ** * 0 .1 77 (0 .0 59 ) ** e m pl oy ed -s ch oo l 0 .0 39 (0 .0 56 ) -0 .0 77 (0 .0 61 ) -0 .0 94 (0 .0 62 ) 0 .0 0 6 (0 .0 61 ) su bj ec ti ve s ta tu s 0 .0 0 7 (0 .0 14 ) 0 .0 0 9 (0 .0 16 ) 0 .0 43 (0 .0 16 ) ** -0 .0 12 (0 .0 16 ) fa m il y in co m e (t h ou sa n d s) 0 .0 0 9 (0 .0 0 3) ** 0 .0 0 6 (0 .0 0 3) 0 .0 0 4 (0 .0 0 3) 0 .0 0 4 (0 .0 0 3) (c on st an t) -0 .3 27 (0 .1 34 ) ** 0 .6 11 (0 .1 46 ) ** * -0 .5 68 (0 .1 49 ) ** * 0 .3 58 (0 .1 46 ) * n 11 21 11 21 11 21 11 21 r s qu ar e (a d j.)   0 .2 47 ** * 0 .1 34 0 15 ** * 0 .0 81 50 4 ** * 0 .1 26 40 8 ** * *p < 0 .0 5, * *p < 0 .0 1, * ** p < 0 .0 0 1 fi gu re s in e ac h c ol u m n a re u n st an d ar d iz ed c oe ffi ci en ts a n d fi gu re s in p ar en th es is a re s ta n d ar d e rr or s. ta b le 2 . m u lt ip le r eg re ss io n c o effi ci en ts f o r p re d ic to rs o f le is u re t im e ac ti vi ti es i n t h e p h il ip p in es . (a u th o r’ s co m p il at io n , w it h m et h o d s ad ap te d f ro m p am p el , 20 12 ). 278 joseph anthony l. reyes  aseas 9(2) if you were to consider your life in general these days, how happy or unhappy would you say you are, on the whole?     95% confidence interval for exp(b) b se lower bound odds ratio upper bound fairly happy age (decades) -0.244 (0.067) *** 0.687 0.784 0.894 cultural 0.184 (0.126) 0.938 1.202 1.540 social -0.054 (0.116) 0.755 0.948 1.190 tv/music 0.140 (0.100) 0.947 1.150 1.398 physical -0.188 (0.107) 0.672 0.829 1.022 subjective status 0.134 (0.055) ** 1.028 1.144 1.273 education 0.025 (0.050) 0.930 1.026 1.132 bmi 0.052 (0.026) * 1.001 1.053 1.108 family income (thousands) -0.008 (0.011) 0.970 0.992 1.015 attendance of religious services 0.158 (0.060) ** 1.041 1.171 1.316 female (0) -0.068 (0.219) 0.608 0.935 1.435 married (0) 0.099 (0.214) 0.726 1.104 1.678 employedschool (0) -0.205 (0.206) 0.544 0.815 1.220 urban (0) -0.183 (0.196) 0.567 0.833 1.224 image of ideal man (corpulent) -0.155 (0.211) 0.567 0.857 1.295 image of ideal woman (corpulent) 0.474 (0.216) * 1.053 1.607 2.452 intercept -0.572 (0.786) very happy age (decades) -0.344 (0.075) *** 0.612 0.709 0.821 cultural 0.213 (0.134) 0.951 1.238 1.610 social 0.005 (0.124) 0.788 1.005 1.282 tv/music 0.296 (0.111) ** 1.081 1.344 1.672 physical -0.179 (0.115) 0.667 0.836 1.049 subjective status 0.143 (0.059) * 1.028 1.153 1.294 education -0.035 (0.054) 0.869 0.966 1.074 bmi 0.051 (0.028) 0.996 1.052 1.110 279exploring leisure time activities and sociodemographic indicators multinomial regression for happiness and health both multinomial logistic regression models were found as having a statistically significant overall relationship between the combination of their independent variables and dependent variable, as indicated by model chi-square tests, and having overall accuracy rates that are greater by 25% than the proportional-by-chance accuracy rate. two measures of r2 (cox and snell’s measure and nagelkerke’s adjusted value) for each model are reported in their respective tables (table 3 and table 4), indicating fairly decent effect. table 3 presents results from the multinomial logistic regression model for subjective overall happiness of filipinos. with those who reported being unhappy (not at all happy and not very happy) as the reference category, findings reveal that age had moderate negative associations on the odds of being happy – thus the older the respondents are, the less happy they felt. on the other hand, subjective status and attendance to religious activities were found to have almost similar positive associations on the odds of being happy. family income (thousands) 0.011 (0.011) 0.989 1.011 1.034 attendance of religious services 0.190 (0.067) ** 1.061 1.209 1.378 female (0) -0.271 (0.236) 0.481 0.763 1.211 married (0) -0.212 (0.233) 0.512 0.809 1.278 employedschool (0) -0.028 (0.221) 0.630 0.972 1.501 urban (0) 0.025 (0.211) 0.678 1.025 1.549 image of ideal man (corpulent) 0.128 (0.226) 0.730 1.137 1.771 image of ideal woman (corpulent) 0.185 (0.231) 0.765 1.203 1.891 intercept -0.651 (0.847) model χ² = 96.610; p < .0001, -2 log likelihood = 1803.562, pearson χ² = 1848.688, p > .2; deviance χ² = 1803.562, p = 1. pseudo r² (cox and snell = 0.099, nagelkerke = 0.114, mcfadden = 0.051). chance accuracy: 37.87%, model classification accuracy: 49.95% notes: *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001; reference category is: not at all happy, not very happy. table 3. results of the multinomial logistic regression analysis for subjective happiness (author’s compilation, with various methods adapted from natvig et al., 2003; kelaher et al., 2001; and schieman et al., 2007). 280 joseph anthony l. reyes  aseas 9(2) in general, would you say your health is …?     95% confidence interval for exp(b) b se lower bound odds ratio upper bound good age (decades) -0.143 (0.061) * 0.769 0.867 0.977 cultural 0.021 (0.107) 0.829 1.022 1.260 social 0.111 (0.102) 0.915 1.117 1.363 tv/music 0.045 (0.089) 0.878 1.046 1.245 physical -0.037 (0.096) 0.798 0.963 1.163 subjective status 0.057 (0.048) 0.963 1.059 1.164 education 0.074 (0.044) 0.989 1.077 1.173 bmi 0.041 (0.023) 0.997 1.042 1.089 family income (thousands) -0.003 (0.009) 0.979 0.997 1.015 attendance of religious services -0.027 (0.056) 0.873 0.974 1.086 female (0) 0.131 (0.190) 0.786 1.140 1.655 married (0) -0.027 (0.186) 0.676 0.973 1.402 employedschool (0) 0.355 (0.181) * 1.000 1.426 2.034 urban (0) 0.082 (0.172) 0.774 1.085 1.520 image of ideal man (corpulent) 0.010 (0.187) 0.700 1.010 1.456 image of ideal woman (corpulent) 0.144 (0.187) 0.800 1.155 1.667 intercept -1.437 (0.704) * very good, excellent age (decades) -0.312 (0.067) *** 0.642 0.732 0.835 cultural 0.177 (0.107) 0.968 1.194 1.471 social 0.216 (0.102) * 1.017 1.241 1.515 tv/music 0.183 (0.097) 0.993 1.201 1.452 physical -0.011 (0.097) 0.819 0.989 1.195 subjective status 0.112 (0.049) * 1.015 1.118 1.232 education 0.046 (0.044) 0.960 1.047 1.143 bmi 0.080 (0.022) *** 1.037 1.083 1.131 281exploring leisure time activities and sociodemographic indicators interestingly, bmi had positive associations with being fairly happy, and respondents who had conceptions of the ideal shape of a woman being corpulent were more likely to report feeling fairly happy (b = 0.474, p < 0.05). hence, the odds of being fairly happy compared to being unhappy are less for people who have a slender conception for the ideal shape of a woman. cultural, social, and physical leisure time activities did not significantly predict whether respondents reported being fairly happy or being unhappy, and also did not significantly predict whether respondents reported being very happy or being unhappy. only leisure time activities of listening to music and watching television significantly predicted whether filipino respondents reported being very happy or being unhappy (b = 0.296, p < .01). thus, compared with those who felt unhappy, the more that respondents listened to music and watched television, the more likely they would feel very happy. table 4 shows the results from the multinomial logistic regression model for self-assessed general health of filipino respondents. with those who say that their health is poor and say that their health is fair being the reference category, findings suggest that age had moderate negative associations on the odds of feeling at good and at very good/excellent health. thus, the older the respondents were, the less healthy they felt. family income (thousands) -0.009 (0.010) 0.972 0.991 1.011 attendance of religious services -0.044 (0.058) 0.854 0.956 1.071 female (0) -0.207 (0.195) 0.555 0.813 1.190 married (0) -0.440 (0.196) * 0.439 0.644 0.946 employedschool (0) 0.126 (0.187) 0.787 1.134 1.635 urban (0) 0.044 (0.175) 0.741 1.045 1.473 image of ideal man (corpulent) 0.119 (0.189) 0.778 1.126 1.631 image of ideal woman (corpulent) -0.139 (0.191) 0.599 0.870 1.265 intercept -1.169 (0.709) model χ² = 95.931; p < .0001, -2 log likelihood = 1917.303, pearson χ² = 1861.275, p > .2; deviance χ² = 1917.303, p = 1. pseudo r² (cox and snell = 0.099, nagelkerke = 0.111, mcfadden = 0.048). chance accuracy: 33.96%, model classification accuracy: 45.78% notes: *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001; reference category is: poor, fair. table 4. results of the multinomial logistic regression analysis for subjective health (author’s compilation, with various methods adapted from natvig et al., 2003; kelaher et al., 2001; and schieman et al., 2007). 282 joseph anthony l. reyes  aseas 9(2) whether the respondents were unemployed or did not study at that time significantly predicted whether they reported as feeling at good health or feeling at poor/ fair health (b = 0.355, p < .05). in other words, those who were employed or studied were less likely to feel at good health. subjective status and bmi had moderate positive associations on the odds of respondents having feelings of a very good/excellent health. whether the respondent was unmarried significantly predicted whether they reported as feeling at very good/excellent health or feeling at poor/fair health (b = -0.440, p < .05). those who were married were more likely to feel at very good/excellent health. for self-assessed general health, cultural, physical, and tv/music leisure time activities did not significantly predict whether respondents reported feeling at good health or feeling at poor/fair health. these also did not significantly predict whether respondents reported feeling at very good/excellent health or feeling at poor/fair health. interestingly, only social activities significantly predicted whether filipino respondents reported feeling at good health or feeling at poor/fair health (b  = 0.216, p < .05). thus, compared with those who felt at poor and fair general health, the more that respondents engaged in social leisure activities, the more likely they would feel at very good/excellent health. discussion social structuring dimensions and predictors of filipino leisure time activities as exploratory factor analysis on the 12 leisure time variables revealed, variation is explained by three factors: the first factor being cultural, the second factor being social activities, and the third and final factor being passive activities such as listening to music and watching television. the structuring is comparable to the findings of pampel (2012), with the exception of handicraft or woodwork activities being included in the social activities factor rather than representing a separate factor. physical activities figured as a separate variable. among predictors, being female was only found to be significantly negatively associated with social and physical activities. however, it must be noted that these are the strongest associations found on all four models. for physical activities, a possible explanation may be that, in the more conservative areas of the country, women may be expected to be less engaging in physically intensive outdoor leisure activities as opposed to men. therefore, filipino women tend not to engage in rough, boisterous, or sweat-inducing play in the humid tropical climate. the social aspect may be more complex to infer upon, though it can be assumed that safety concerns lie at the root of such results, considering that leisure time usually becomes available in the late hours after school or work. unfortunately, nighttime in the philippines is associated with high incidence of robbery, assault, and rape (cabida & zenit, 1995). age was found to be negatively associated with engaging in cultural, social, and physical activities, but was not found to be significant for listening to music and watching television. similarly, being married was also found to be negatively associated with social, physical, and cultural activity types. as for other independent, sociodemographic variables, education was significant for participating in cultural, physical, and tv/music but not for social activities. urban residence is associated significantly with participation in more tv/music and physical activities. 283exploring leisure time activities and sociodemographic indicators significant predictors of overall happiness among filipinos the relationship of age with happiness, along with leisure activity engagement, was found to be negative, thus similar to the findings of a study conducted in croatia by brajša-žganec et al. (2011, pp. 85-88). moreover, comparing the results of this study to observations in 33 countries, including the philippines, deriving from the issp data set (wang & wong, 2014) and a study conducted in the philippines by the nscb (virola et al., 2011, pp. 4988-4990), increased subjective happiness of being fairly happy and very happy, as opposed to not being happy, was found to be significantly predicted by subjective economic status. this shows that indeed happiness and economic progress are not entirely mutually exclusive concepts. distinctive for this study’s results is that progress related to happiness was found to be based on the subjective socio-economic positioning of a person rather than dependency on the income of the family. this goes well with observations that indicate that relative income may actually matter more than absolute income. as the findings of luttmer (2004, p. 29) show, individuals’ self-reported happiness is negatively affected by the earnings of others in their area. increased earnings of neighbors reduce one’s satisfaction with material aspects of life and have the strongest negative effect on happiness for those who socialize more in their neighborhood (luttmer, 2004, p. 29). moreover, subjective status and attendance to religious activities were found to have almost similar positive associations on the odds of being happy, which was more consistently significant in comparison to leisure activities where only radio and tv activities were found to be significant. significant predictors of subjective general health subjective general health of feeling good/excellent was also found to be significantly predicted by subjective economic status. among leisure activities, engagement in social activities made respondents feel healthier. this result is different from the findings obtained in a study conducted on elderly singaporean respondents where poor self-assessed health was predicted by participation in chit-chat, visiting friends, and socializing (chan & jatrana, 2007, p. 480). finally, it was found that married people were more likely to feel very good/excellent health. this is comparable to the results found in the netherlands wherein being married or cohabiting had a strong positive effect on perceived health, and living together might even smooth one’s social life and regulate meal times (cornelisse-vermaat et al., 2006, pp. 151-153). an inference that can be made on these results may be related to the lessening of stress due to the benefits that socialization and cohabiting provides, particularly in terms of child-care and child-rearing support, as well as to the alleviation of loneliness on the part of the elderly, especially in a developing country like the philippines where extended family structures still prevail. implications of findings overall, older people were significantly found to engage less in leisure activities, feel less happy, and less healthy. moreover, happiness seems to be more significantly re284 joseph anthony l. reyes  aseas 9(2) lated to passive categories of leisure activity which participants derive entertainment from. this might be related to the relatively high commitment and active engagement in livelihood activities: it is not uncommon for filipinos with full-time employment and even children to use what remaining free time they have for extra income activities, engaging in a second job, or entrepreneurship, colloquially termed as ‘sideline’ or ‘racket’, in order to make ends meet and help their families (brizuela, 2014; hutchinson, 2012). this can be seen in contrast to richer countries, where people may engage less in manually intensive labor, having more free time (sometimes mandatory), and getting bigger savings that would allow them to work less hours and have better access to expensive and diverse forms of leisure and recreational activities (boarini et al., 2014; gandelman, piani, & ferre, 2012; haller et al., 2013; rossi et al., 2014). future studies can thus explore – given particular religious, cultural, and socio-economic characteristics such as those found in the philippines subsample – whether certain leisure patterns and happiness indicators hold true among certain groups in both wealthy and developing countries. for instance, as noted in the multinational study by haller et al. (2013), which also uses the issp leisure module data from 36 countries, time stress is understood as a subjective experience or anxiety which arises in situations of burden, often connected with the feeling that it will be difficult to cope with a certain task in a given time. supposedly, for developing countries wherein individuals have low incomes and may also have different or fewer expectations, people live in time affluence (haller et al., 2013, p. 404). yet surprisingly, they observed that the philippines stood out by having very high levels of time stress (haller et al., 2013, p. 416). other studies also found different significant relationships in comparison to this study, for instance, the relationship between bmi and happiness, which was found negative (cook & chater, 2010) – even with filipino subsamples included in multiethnic populations (pinhey, rubinstein, & colfax, 1997) – while this study finds it positive. in such cases, socio-cultural factors may yield clues when investigating different ethnic groups or members of different ethnic communities in a country. among the most interesting facets that this research uncovered is how happiness and even self-perceived health were significantly predicted by subjective socioeconomic status, but not by actual family income. this suggests that for those who aspire to make citizens happier in developing countries it might be more rewarding to address the subjective perceptions of socio-economic position rather than the real socio-economic conditions. conversely, for those who have low perceptions of subjective socio-economic status, as indicated by the significant relationships found in religious attendance and the tv/music leisure activity toward happiness, a similar approach toward contentment may be pursued. as religious attendance has a similar positive relationship compared to that of subjective socio-economic status, similar effect toward increasing happiness could be accomplished by religious leaders extolling virtues of contentment and serenity despite poverty and injustice during service. the results of this study also seem to reinforce some intuitive cultural conceptions in developing countries that warrant further exploration for anthropologists and geographers, such as the sociological aspects of happiness and forgiveness relevant to development and human rights issues. in their research in 11 countries, gebauer et al. (2013) found that religiosity buffers the adverse consequences of poverty, wherein re285exploring leisure time activities and sociodemographic indicators ligious people in religious cultures reported higher well-being when their income was low compared to when it was high. this is similar to the analyses made by joshanloo and weijers (2015, p. 610): belief in religion helps to deal with the negative emotional impacts of injustice at the national level, likely due to religious believers perceiving at least some injustice as a necessary part of some complicated higher plan for the greater good, rather than as a reason to be angry at, or lose faith in, god. limitations of the study the study focused on finding significant predictors and associations for leisure time activities, overall happiness, and subjective happiness, placing the results within the philippine context. it aimed toward exploration rather than validating the causality of the relationships, particularly due to the cross-sectional nature of the study. the nature of the issp data also limits investigation to socio-cultural aspects rather than the physiological traits or medical conditions of respondents. on the offset, due to the limits of the survey data, the aim was not the creation of absolute predictive models nor was it arguing for cultural relativism. though a function of the regression models is prediction, the main objectives of the study were to see if there are reliable relationships and to interpret the results within the context in which the research is being conducted. as such, it does not attempt to offer extensive cultural explanations or inference that are beyond the scope of the research questions yet may still be pursued in future studies based on the results found in this explorative study. as with most survey data, there is always the possible limitation of self-reports wherein certain attributes and behaviors may be under or over reported. due to the subjective nature of the variables analyzed, it may also be open to criticism in terms of the methodological approach, as well as the validity and reliability of subjective data (gandelman et al., 2012). because the survey was conducted by the social weather stations and is in line with the standards and procedures of the issp, the author does not have the capacity to test the reliabilities of scales, validation checks, and explore other possible aspects that may limit self-reports such as social desirability, positive illusions, or the effects of present mood (swami et al., 2009). in terms of overall design, a limitation acknowledged is that the study follows established relationships described in literature and prescribed models in relation to the available data. thus for future research, there may still be possibilities to explore omitted variables. though such variables have yet to be tackled in current literature, the next round of issp leisure time and sports module that will be available in a few years may open opportunities for broader models to discern significant results from the additional sample data it provides. 286 joseph anthony l. reyes  aseas 9(2)  references abdallah, s., michaelson, j., shah, s., stoll, l., & marks, n. 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(2011). improving the way we measure progress of society: the philippine happiness index among the poor and the unhappy. paper presented at the 58th world statistics congress, international statistical institute, dublin, ireland. retrieved from http:// www.2011.isiproceedings.org/papers/950161.pdf virola, r. a., encarnacion, j. o., pascasio, m. c., & clavido, r. a. (2010). measuring progress of philippine society: what makes the poor happy? paper presented at the 11th national convention on statistics, philippines national statistical coordination board. retrieved from http://nscb.gov.ph/ncs/11thncs/ papers/invited%20papers/ips-23/01_measuring%20progress%20of%20philippine%20society%20 what%20makes%20the%20poor%20happy.pdf wang, m., & wong, m. c. s. (2014). happiness and leisure across countries: evidence from international survey data. journal of happiness studies, 15(1), 85-118. world bank (2013). world development indicators cd-rom 2013. washington, dc: wb. world values survey association. (2016). findings and insights. retrieved from http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/ wvscontents.jsp?cmsid=findings about the author joseph anthony l. reyes is associate professor at de la salle university, manila, philippines. his research interests and recent publications focus on sustainable development, environmental governance, and equity; environmental attitudes, significant behavior, discourses, and knowledge orientations; gendered analysis of publication productivity; perceptions in social media and terrorism; maritime security and media analysis; sociodemographic indicators of well-being. ► contact: jalreyes@yahoo.com book review: lwin, s. m. (2010). narrative structures in burmese folk tales. book review: lwin, s. m. (2010). narrative structures in burmese folk tales. amherst: cambria press. isbn 978-1-60497-716-5. 178 pages. ► bódis, z. (2016). book review: lwin, s. m. (2010). narrative structures in burmese folk tales. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 9(2), 315-318. in order to properly evaluate soe marlar lwin’s book that is excellently structured, rich in references, and provides a well-chosen text selection, we need to give a short overview of the historical ‘currents’ in folktale research. european culture has been a ‘cradle’ for folktale research and by the 20th century a new interpretive approach, breaking away from this historicity, has been formed providing a universal interpretive framework independent of the european roots.1 taking a closer look at the historical changes considering the history of european tale research, we should distinguish between three different periods, all of which approach tales with a specific point of view. therefore, each of them is associated with different aspects of folktales and the phenomena in tales. in the premodern period concepts, thought schemes originating from european romanticism defined the essence of tales. for researches of the period, the most important task of folk culture when following the herderian organic historical approach was considered to be the formation of identities of linguistic-cultural communities through the concept of nation based on folk culture, folk poetry, and especially folktales. therefore, in accordance with their most significant aim, collecting and canonizing folktales resulted in the establishment of a set of texts (according to the latest research we should rather speak about the creation of these texts) – previously folktales were not regarded as part of high culture – by which a special value was bestowed upon folktales: on the one hand, preserving the traces of the mythical past of nations, folktale functioned as an inexhaustible archive (for the disciplines of the history of language and of folklore); on the other hand, it functioned as a model for contemporary literary production and national awakening that everywhere brought with itself the process of the literary tale becoming a special, priority genre. those interpreting the modern period – partly due to the oral tradition seemingly being pushed to the background – were not interested in finding new tale texts; they rather turned to the interpretation of already existing (collected) texts from various aspects. the folktale text is separated from the concept of the national; attention is turned toward the universality of tales. this is how the interpretation of tales becomes the research of structures – the series of narrative elements as proppean or archetypal reminiscences, as in the case of jungian tale interpretations. in both cases folktale becomes interesting as a text that may carry a message for the community, remaining valid over a long period of time 1 this book review has been translated from hungarian into english by gabriella agnes nagy. rezensionen  book reviews w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 16 .2 -1 1 316 zoltán bódis  aseas 9(2) because it either activates the basic narrative desires of man (“narrare necesse est!”), or the cathartic force hidden in recognizing and making conscious of world view structures identified with the images of the collective consciousness. a pledge for all this is the well-graspable structure of the text which partly carries pseudo-initiative characteristics (mircea eliade) – a text that may be well-revealed and may be transformed into structural formulas and motivic catalogues. folktale research in central-europe took the first steps toward the interpretation of folktales in the postmodern period when tales were no longer interpreted as being a historical archive or a network of narrative structure but a kind of socio-cultural phenomenon in which text production and reception governed by interpretative tendencies gave a new color to folktale research. between the 1940s and 1970s central-european folktale research has stepped out of the closed world of texts collected in the 19th century; researchers again began to venture out to field work and recorded the last traces of the living traditional european folktale telling tradition. according to the theory of the individuality (or budapest) school coined by gyula ortutay – which became famous and respected internationally due to linda dégh’s work – folktale is not simply a structure but it carries with itself traces of the storyteller’s world view and experiences. this approach is elaborated in jack zipes meme-theory. according to his theory, folktales carry a specific consciousness content (they are called memes by evolutionary biology): these are cultural, intelligent “means” by which individuals and communities form the order of human existence and convey “instructions” for existing in the world. this interpretative path was lately expanded by the hungarian phenomenological-hermeneutic school coined by péter bálint – a school researching the folktale tradition of the carpathian basin – according to which tale is a performative phenomenon created together by both the storyteller and his community/ audience. when, after this short overview, we open soe marlar lwin’s book we may definitely see that the author took an unavoidable step in researching the burmese folktale tradition. after the work of previous researchers, such as maung htin aung (the first publisher of burmese tales in english), and the first in-depth overview by abbott and khin, lwin undertook the task of continuing her predecessors’ work navigating from the premodern folktale research period, based on the most extensive overview of reference materials, to the directions offered by postmodern folktale research. the seven chapters of the book constitute a logically structured, well-arranged text that follows a clear cut argument: beginning from the structuralist theories she establishes her thesis by analyzing specific folktale texts. the central idea is to examine the previously ignored narratological questions of “how the fundamental events interlock with one another to create a plot and how formal patterns are related to the story’s content” (p. 125). having briefly defined the genre of folktale in the first chapter, in the next two chapters the author continues by clarifying narratological concepts, providing the basis of her analysis and the elaboration of the methodology she wishes to use. the introductory chapter on narratological concepts proves a thorough knowledge of reference literature on the subject. she avoids the mistake that central-european folktale research schools – partly due to the ideological constraint of the previous 317book review communist period – began to overcome only recently. they no longer consider the proppean type of narrative analysis as the master key of tale interpretation but as a possible starting point for interpretation. in lwin’s overview, the reformed structure analysis based on later narratological concerns reflecting on the proppean narrative analysis – for instance dundes, toolan, bal, ochs/capps – seems to be much more applicable for describing different text types. in her analysis she “classified the functional events into various models” (p. 37). lwin consciously chooses the seemingly most significant segment for the narratological dictionary of concepts: “among all the different aspects, the present study chooses the aspect of story structure. it aims to identify the functional events forming the storylines in some burmese folk tales and their relation in various models of the basic story structure” (p. 20). in further parts of her book, after identifying the functional events, it becomes visible where the researcher’s path would lead to after clarifying the key concepts: while examining how the events are linked into familiar trajectories, the study will also take note of any deviation from them and will explore what effect such deviation has on the storyline of a tale. with this, the . . . study will argue that, instead of looking for a single pattern in plots that may be different across different types of tales, an analysis of narrative structures should investigate various possible temporal and/or causal linkage with which events are bound together into well-organized storylines. (p. 22) perhaps this is the greatest achievement of lwin’s work since she opens up possibilities of structural-narratological analysis by expanding the category of the ‘wellorganized’ storyline – those texts may also be considered ‘well-organized’ that previously, according to the lesser defined proppean system, were listed in the periphery of texts as having no value, being incorrect, and uncategorizable.2 since in the case of those tales, where the order of functions regarded as constant is modified, propp seems to reveal only ‘oscillations’, incidental digressions or deviations from the perfect narrative structure. contrary to propp, in lwin’s system there is a possibility to identify functional events and to reveal the linkage in the storyline. therefore, “according to the similarities in their structural patterns and functional events, making up the main storyline” (p. 37), lwin lists the given folktale texts under five models under which specific folktales may be described by the help of binary oppositional pairs (reward/punishment, interdiction/violation, problem/solution). after achieving the scientific goal set out by lwin, the closing chapter of the book does not really end but opens up paths for further research in folktale interpretation: “the functional events, the different models, and the linkage among those events in each model discovered in this study are expected to serve as a stable ‘what’ for the discussion on the ‘how’ of storytelling in future research” (p. 128). obviously, in this chapter lwin’s flexible approach prepares a new series of studies to be written by the author where she may interpret tales as a complex phenomenon: “[a]n oral storytel2 due to similar experiences during the analysis of the gypsy storytelling tradition of the carpathian basin, the previously mentioned hungarian folktale research school has also turned away from the proppean model and opened up possibilities for folktale reception toward the hermeneutical-phenomenological textual interpretation. 318 zoltán bódis  aseas 9(2) ling performance can be regarded as a synaesthetic activity with the verbal, vocal, and visual aspects occurring at the same time” (p. 130). on the one hand, the book entitled narrative structures in burmese folk tales directs the attention of international folktale research to the specificities of burmese folktales, and on the other hand, the textual force, the clear cut and excellent use of concepts, the articulate and well-organized argument contribute to a kind of approach that ultimately enriches the reference literature of folktale research. by using the most important theoretical outcomes of modern text centered folktale research it provides the possibility for the burmese tales, and tales in general as a complex genre, to become worthy of attention even for the postmodern approach – an approach focusing on orality, multidimensionality, and performativity. zoltán bódis faculty of child and adult education at the university of debrecen, hungary translating thailand’s protests: an analysis of red shirt rhetoric aseas 6(1) 6160 d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -6 .1 -4 aktuelle südostasienforschung / current research on south-east asia translating thailand’s protests: an analysis of red shirt rhetoric james buchanan1 citation buchanan, j. (2013). translating thailand’s protests: an analysis of red shirt rhetoric. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 6(1), 60-80. from 14 march 2010 onwards, a mass of suea daeng, literally ‘red shirts’, began a prolonged, mass protest in bangkok, which eventually degenerated into the worst political violence thailand has seen in its modern history, leaving 91 people dead, around 2,000 injured, and a city smoldering from rioting and arson. this article provides a narrative of the protests and the red shirt movement which is informed by my own eye-witness account of the events and built around the translation of thai language sources i encountered. by translating and analyzing original thai language sources from the protests, e.g. banners, signs, t-shirts, speeches, and graffi ti, i argue that the red shirts have a more sophisticated, far-reaching political philosophy than many give them credit for. also, as events unfolded, the movement developed and grew beyond its original scope by demanding justice for victims of the military crackdowns and challenging the political role of the monarchy. both as a political movement and as a sizeable section of the electorate, the red shirts have the potential to drastically reconfi gure thailand’s social and political landscape. keywords: protest; red shirts; social movement; thailand; thai political crisis ab 14. märz 2010 begann eine masse an suea daeng, wörtlich „rothemden“, einen anhaltenden massenprotest in bangkok, der letztendlich in einem der schlimmsten politischen gewaltakte in thailands moderner geschichte mit 91 toten, etwa 2.000 verletzten und einer in unruhe und brandstiftung schwelenden stadt ausartete. dieser artikel bietet eine erzählung der proteste und der bewegung der rothemden, informiert durch meinen augenzeugenbericht der ereignisse und einer übersetzung von thai quellen, auf die ich gestoßen bin. aufbauend auf der übersetzung und analyse von originalen thai quellen der proteste, z.b. transparente, schilder, t-shirts, reden und graffi ti, argumentiere ich, dass die rothemden eine durchdachtere und weitreichendere politische philosophie haben, als ihnen von vielen zugestanden wird. zudem entwickelte sich die bewegung im laufe der ereignisse über ihr ursprüngliches handlungsfeld hinaus, indem sie gerechtigkeit für die opfer des militärischen durchgreifens forderte und die politische rolle der monarchie in frage stellte. sowohl als politische bewegung als auch als ein erheblicher teil der wählerschaft, haben die rothemden das potenzial, die soziale und politische landschaft in thailand erheblich umzugestalten. schlagworte: protest; rothemden; soziale bewegung; thailand; thai politische krise 1 james buchanan lived and worked in thailand from 2005 to 2010, witnessing much of the turbulence of that time at first hand. he received a master degree with distinction in southeast asian studies from soas, university of london, and is due to begin phd research on thailand’s red shirts in september this year. the author would like to thank two anonymous peer reviewers for their valuable input as well as dr. federico ferrara, assistant professor at the department of asian and international studies, city university of hong kong. contact: jimmy_buchanan@soas.ac.uk aseas 6(1) 6160 bangkok 2010: a year of living dangerously from 14 march 2010 onwards, a mass of suea daeng, literally ‘red shirts’, began a prolonged mass protest in bangkok. the red shirts is the unofficial name given to the protest movement known in thai as naew ruam pra-cha-thi-pa-tai to tan pa-det kan haeng chat, translated as the united front for democracy against dictatorship (udd). they demanded the dissolution of parliament and fresh elections, which seemed certain to empower a party aligned with ex-prime minister thaksin shinawatra, who had been ousted by a military coup four years earlier. a former police lieutenantcolonel turned telecommunications tycoon, thaksin revolutionized thailand’s political landscape when his thai rak thai party won a landslide victory in the 2001 general elections. his american-style campaign trail took him out to areas of the country usually given scant attention by bangkok politicians and his populist policies – universal health care, debt moratorium for farmers, and development funds to stimulate local economies – won him massive support in these rural areas. he completed a full term in office – the first elected thai prime minister ever to do so – and was reelected with another landslide in 2005. however, despite his economic success and popularity, thaksin’s first term in office was also dogged by controversy. civil society groups were appalled by his human rights record, particularly his ‘war on drugs’, and his attempts to control the media through defamation suits. he was also accused of corruption and, most seriously from his point of view, he had made powerful enemies within some sections of thailand’s elites. in particular, he was accused of being disloyal to the king – an extremely serious charge in thailand. a protest movement, the people’s alliance for democracy (pad), began holding increasingly large rallies in the capital in an attempt to bring him down. the pad, dubbed the ‘yellow shirts’ due to the color they wore to show their allegiance to the king, made thaksin’s second term in office extremely difficult and effectively paved the way for a military coup in 2006. the junta cited many reasons for the coup, including disrespect for the monarchy, corruption, and an “unprecedented rift in society” (“statement from the administrative”, 2006). if thaksin had indeed caused a rift in thai society, then the coup only deepened and widened it, as a new movement, the red shirts, emerged to oppose it. thailand had entered into what montesano (2012) has called a “slow-burn civil war” (p. 3). james buchanan translating thailand’s protests: an analysis of red shirt rhetoric aseas 6(1) 6362 i was living in thailand and found myself caught in the middle of events at the time, which became my own ‘year of living dangerously’. as a fa-rang2 visiting the protests, it was often a bewildering experience. i had been studying thai language for some time but was by no means fluent and it was sometimes difficult to follow the many dramatic events of those months. at the rallies, i found myself surrounded by thai, both written and spoken. slogans adorned banners, placards, flags, and the actual red shirts from which the protesters took their name. my ears were assaulted by a cacophony of language from all directions; speeches from the main stage blared out of loud speakers, songs blasted from sound systems set up in the back of pickup trucks, protestors chanted slogans; and i was often approached by friendly and curious protestors who would ask me, in thai, what i thought of the political situation. all of this was a challenge to my limited thai language skills but one which i accepted with vigor, such was my desire to understand what was going on. this article utilizes the linguistic landscape of the protests by translating and commenting on some of the original thai language sources i came across. in doing so, i provide some insight into the political meanings of the protests and the motivations, desires, and frustrations of the protestors. i argue that the red shirts demonstrate a much more sophisticated political outlook than their detractors give them credit for and that the movement went far beyond mere support for thaksin. the red shirts, often in very creative ways, subverted hegemonic cultural norms and challenged the existing order as they reasserted their stake in thailand’s political system. also, as events unfolded, the movement adapted accordingly, expanding its scope to include issues such as justice for the victims of the military crackdown, lèse-majesté, and the role of the monarchy. by using translation of thai language sources as the focus for my analysis i hope, in a sense, to let the protestors speak for themselves. examination of the red shirts’ own words may sound like an obvious method but it is one that has so far been underused as commentators rush to express their own thoughts of the protests. also, the red shirts were very ineffective in their english language public relations and failed to communicate who they were, what they were doing, and why to an international audience. by contrast, their thai language rhetoric and framing was extremely sophisticated, with nattawut saikua and jatuporn prompan 2 an often used term meaning ‘westerner’. aseas 6(1) 6362 in particular emerging from the protests as two of the greatest thai orators of recent times. original thai language sources are therefore fertile ground for those wishing to analyze the movement. to avoid a top-down approach, i have used a variety of sources, ranging from graffiti scribbled on walls by the rank and file protestors to extracts of speeches made by core leaders. all translations are my own and are from thai language i saw or heard at the protests, from photographs i took or from online sources.3 heard and read in the land: decoding red shirt rhetoric many, including myself, were struck by the carnival atmosphere when the red shirts first descended on bangkok. they paraded around the city in cars, pick-up trucks, motorbikes, and on foot. stalls were set up selling food, merchandise, and even services like massage. there was much singing and dancing and several songs became popular anthems. one was “red in the land” (“daeng tang phaen din”, 2009), a rousing marching song, which urged protestors to leave their homes and mobilize to join the red shirts (ok chak ban ruam pa-lang suea daeng). the numbers of protestors the red shirts were able to mobilize became a daily topic of conversation during the march-may period, with various estimates coming from police, media, and other sources. the size of the crowd was an obvious way to judge the size of the movement and its chances of success. with so much at stake, the estimates given were often extremely conservative or exaggerated, depending on the sympathies of those reporting. the protracted nature of the protests meant that the movement found it a challenge to sustain numbers, which waned in the morning and afternoon and then swelled again each evening as people finished work. initial claims that the protests would be a “million man march” (“day of reckoning”, 2010) were obvious hyperbole but, at its peak, there were definitely well over a hundred thousand red shirts on the streets. whilst a few stalwarts sustained the protests by camping out in the city for the duration, many more shuttled back and forth between the capital and the provinces; as some left, others replaced them, ensuring that numbers were maintained. between this and the many based in bangkok who joined to make up the 3 with regards to transliteration style, no system of romanization of thai is perfect, but for the sake of consistency i have followed the commonly used royal thai general system of transcription. james buchanan translating thailand’s protests: an analysis of red shirt rhetoric aseas 6(1) 6564 evening crowds, it is clear that red shirts are a movement of significant numbers. another song was the irresistibly catchy “love red shirt people” (“rak khon suea daeng”, 2009), which proclaimed a love for democracy and for thailand (rao rak pracha-thi-pa-tai rao ko rak pra-thet thai). although nowhere near the ultra-nationalism exhibited by their political enemies, the pad, the red shirts were also nationalistic. it is worth bearing in mind that thaksin managed to successfully turn nationalist sentiment into political currency in the wake of the asian financial crisis of 1997, when thai pride was injured after being forced to accept international monetary fund (imf) assistance (pasuk & baker, 2009, p.76). his thai rak thai party (thais loving thais party) had, as the name suggests, used a nationalist platform to help it win a landslide election victory in 2001. the latest incarnation of that party, which was dissolved by the military junta after the coup, is the phuea thai party (for thais party) who, again, chose a name which would harness nationalist sentiment. whichever side of thailand’s divided politics you are on; it seems it pays to be nationalistic. by comparison with the ultra-nationalist pad, however, whose rhetoric and protests at the cambodian border has enflamed a long running dispute over an ancient temple, leading to a series of clashes, the red shirts are decidedly mild. in their protests, the red shirts have also been much more outwards looking than their nemeses. unlike the pad, the red shirts have a wide network of chapters in various countries in europe, australia, and america who have campaigned on their behalf and held protests at their respective embassies. one reason for this could be that, rather than the backwards ‘country bumpkins’ their urban compatriots consider them to be, many rural thais are now “cosmopolitan villagers” (keyes, 2012), who have first hand experience of the international world through decades of migration for employment and marriage to foreigners. by contrast, the more right-wing pad rhetoric is inward-looking and xenophobic, dismissing outside analysis of issues such as the monarchy as something that ‘only thais can understand’. at one point, founder and core leader of the pad sondhi limthongkul went as far as to make the bizarre claim that american capitalists were behind a plot to overthrow the monarchy (“sondhi: american capitalists”, 2010). another song often heard at the protests, not from the main stage but from protestors’ cars and tents, was “khon ban diao kan” (phai pongsatorn, 2009). aseas 6(1) 6564 the song, which translates as something like “people from the same home”4, is an extremely popular phleng luk thung5, which talks about the empathy and closeness between poor people who go to bangkok from the provinces in search of work. although not overtly political in content, the song’s popularity and meaning ensured its place as a favorite amongst the protestors. the luk thung style, which originates from the north-east, is a denigrated form amongst the middle class in bangkok, who see it as provincial and unsophisticated. the lyrics of the song echo the socio-economic factors which mobilized the red shirts and forged their sense of communal identity – a feeling that, in the words of the song, they only need to “look into each other’s eyes to understand one another” (khae mong tha kan ko khao chai yu). this also demonstrates the strong regional dimension of the political crisis and formation of the red shirts, many of whom come from the north and north-east, or lanna and isaan, which, since the formation of the modern thai state, have not been successfully integrated and maintain distinct regional identities. however, the power balance between the center and the periphery has now begun to change with the consolidation of electoral democracy. more populous rural areas are now able to assert themselves, leading to a backlash from bangkok, which attempts to “derail the political challenges emanating from outside the capital” (glassman, 2010, p. 1319). this ‘all singing, all dancing’ red shirt movement was in sharp contrast to the rioting red shirts who had caused havoc in the city in 2009, pointing to a better organized, more savvy movement. this change in tactics was well-advised because the riots of 2009 had failed to garner public sympathy and provided cause for their opponents to label them as violent and thuggish. in 2010, as mobile red shirt rallies snaked their way through bangkok streets to cheering crowds, there was a tangible sense that the new, ‘fun-loving’ red shirts were winning the hearts and minds of many in the undecided camp. this change was, of course, calculated but may also have been a natural process; an example of what collins (2001) describes as the “initiating emotion”, which gradually subsides within the collective gatherings of social movements. this initiating emotion, which for the red shirts was anger and a sense of injustice, is necessary for a movement to achieve ‘take-off’ but then “gives rise to 4 in this case “home” means village or province. 5 the term refers to a genre of music in thailand that is often translated as “country music” but a more literal translation is “songs of children of the fields” (lockard, 1998, p. 184). james buchanan translating thailand’s protests: an analysis of red shirt rhetoric aseas 6(1) 6766 distinctly collective emotions, the feelings of solidarity, enthusiasm, and morality” (collins, 2001, p. 29). of course, there was more to the protests than just singing and dancing, and the language displayed on shirts, jackets, hats, bandanas, banners, placards, and stickers gave some insight into what had brought tens of thousands of people onto the street in the first place. the main aim of the protests was to pressure the government of abhisit vejjajiva to dissolve parliament ( yup sa-pha); one of the most repeated slogans in the protests. as analysts look for the bigger social and economic trends which are certainly at the root of thailand’s political crisis and the emergence of the red shirts, it is easy to overlook the one simple demand in 2010: fresh elections. the movement’s faith in elections as a tool of political decision-making gives a fair degree of validation to their self-proclaimed commitment to democracy. it is worth bearing in mind that both the red and yellow shirts have the word democracy (pra-cha-thi-pa-tai) in their official titles. however, by contrast, the pad had petitioned for a palace-appointed government (“king the only hope”, 2006) and poured scorn on the electoral process. it is true that many of the protestors did show their loyalty to ousted prime minister thaksin, with images of his face on t-shirts and banners and slogans such as “i love thaksin” (ku rak thaksin). the more colloquial pronoun ku was used during the protests instead of the more formal and hierarchal phom/chan. more personal and with rural, folk undertones, the form is rarely used in public discourse. moreover, due to thai culture’s strict demarcation of the private and public spheres, the intimacy of the pronoun can sometimes cause offense as it is seen as ‘too familiar’. by using this word, the red shirts were deliberately subverting bourgeois social norms and flaunting their alleged rural ‘coarseness’ in the faces of their detractors in the capital. during the earlier pad rallies, protestors used plastic, yellow ‘clappers’ shaped like hands, which when shaken produced a clapping sound to applaud speeches made from the protest stage. with cheeky reference to this, the red shirts produced their own ‘feet-clappers’, this time red-colored and shaped like feet. this juxtaposed nicely with the yellow hand-clappers used by the pad and also had an element of shockvalue, given that feet are considered dirty and offensive in thai culture. once again, the red shirts were defiantly playing up to their unrefined image and showing their aseas 6(1) 6766 middle finger or, in the thai context, showing their foot, to bourgeois hegemony.6 glassman (2011, p. 36) suggests that the red shirts’ discontent was created by the very hegemonic projects designed to subvert them. it is fitting then, that resistance is communicated to elites by creatively recasting their own hegemonic cultural norms and moving away from bourgeois language and social practices to more local, rural ones. possibly the most potent weapon in the red shirts’ rhetoric arsenal was the re-appropriation of an archaic thai word prai – a derogatory word meaning an uncouth and uneducated peasant or serf. bunthawat weemoktanondha, an anthropologist from the northeastern city of khon kaen, comments that the red shirts were “breaking a cultural taboo by using this word so openly to describe themselves without feeling ashamed of being prai” (macan-markar, 2010). the word was juxtaposed to another archaic word, am-mat, which is often translated as ‘elite’ and in this case refers to high-level government officials. the am-mat criticized by the red shirts were influential bureaucrats such as the judiciary, who were blamed for the ‘judicial coup’ which ousted prime minister somchai (weaver, 2008), and the privy council, particularly prem tinsulanonda, who was accused of being the mastermind behind the military coup of 2006. the use of this word demonstrated the new understanding the red shirts had regarding the locus of power in thailand. the word has its roots in the sanskrit word amatya, which was the second highest level of officialdom in the bhramanical theory of political organization, or rajya (tambiah, 1976, p. 31). the amatya were second only to the king, or svami, himself. given the proximity of the amatya to kings historically, and of the modern day am-mat (i.e. the privy council) to the current king, this choice of word seemed to have very subversive undertones. the prai/am-mat dichotomy also played on the feudal system, or ra-bop sak-ka-di na, of thailand’s past and thus highlighted inequality in modern thailand. this phrase has strong connections to thai marxist ideology, specifically to the iconic leftist figure, chit phumisak, and the theme of his most famous work, the face of thai feudalism (chom na sak-ka-di na thai), published in 1957. in the same vein, the choice of the color red poses an obvious reference to radical thai marxist discourse. according to tongchai (2010), the choice of the words prai and 6 in the aftermath of the crackdown on the red shirts at ratchaprasong intersection, ngo worker and activist sombat boon-ngam-anong emerged from the grassroots of the movement with his own red sunday events to maintain the red shirts profile and remonstrate the killing of protestors. aside from creative protests such as ‘red aerobics’ and ‘red bicycle rides’, his group became known for photo opportunities ‘giving the finger’ to the camera. this kind of public defiance may be passé in western culture, but seemed quite shocking in more conservative thailand. james buchanan translating thailand’s protests: an analysis of red shirt rhetoric aseas 6(1) 6968 am-mat “targets the oppression and injustice due to social class and hierarchy” and turns the red shirt struggle into a “revolt of the downtrodden rural folks against the privileged social and political class”. the red shirts realized that dissolving parliament alone, despite it being their central aim, would achieve little if the am-mat they claimed were pulling strings behind the scenes remained in place; therefore a complete overhaul of the thai political system was necessary. thus, t-shirts and banners called for the am-mat to be overthrown (khon am-mat rat-ta-ban) and “power returned to the people” (khuen amnat pra-cha chon). through such sloganeering, the red shirts were effective in tapping into a heritage of popular protest and struggle for democracy in thailand. on 24 june 2012, the red shirts held a rally to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the 1932 revolution, which again historicized the movement – this time all the way back to the revolution which overthrew the absolute monarchy and started the country on its rocky road to democratization. nattawut (2010b) describes this dramatic period in thai history, saying that on 24 june 1932, a group of military and civilians were able to transform the government (24 mi-thu-na-yon 2475 tha-han le phon-la-ruean . . . dai a-phi plian plaeng kan pok khrong). however, he points out that, despite this, the foundation of the political structure in thailand has actually changed very little since that time (khrong sang lak thang kan mueang khong prathet mai dai plian pai loei) and the core of the old system remains, dragging its feet (nai sa-ra sam-kan pen yu yang nan yang khong yam kap yu che-na-nan). he then presents the red shirts as playing a pivotal role in completing this historical process, telling the crowd that in 2012 a big struggle is on the verge of happening (kam-lang cha kuet kan to su khrang). by contrast, the pad failed to create a meaningful narrative, and instead misspent much of their rhetoric on vitriol directed at thaksin. as the red shirt movement first emerged in defense of the ousted prime minster, the pad and its sympathizers also directed its acrimony towards them, calling them uneducated ‘red buffaloes’ (khwai daeng). the term khwai is an extremely offensive term which implies someone is stupid and lazy and is often used towards people from the provinces who work in agriculture. this attempt to degrade the red shirts has been common since their inception and has taken many forms. in this case, the effect is to dehumanize them; not only are the red shirts not human, they are the lowliest form of beast. in other cases the red shirts have been perceived as being ‘red germs’ (tongchai, 2010), inaseas 6(1) 6968 vading and thus infecting the cleanest and most sterile of places – a hospital. after sightings of snipers on the roof of the chulalongkorn hopital, which overlooked the red shirt barricade at silom junction, a group of red shirts entered the hospital to demand that the soldiers vacate. panic ensued as doctors and nurses wheeled out patients to escape the red shirts. tongchai (2010) builds on his ‘infection’ metaphor by explaining that the red shirts and thaksin have come to be viewed as a “disease to the thai moral body”. others, such as pavin (2010) and, in this journal, poowin (2010) have demonstrated how nationalist discourses of ‘thainess’ (khwam pen thai) have been used to portray the red shirts as somehow ‘un-thai’ and therefore as alien or ‘other’, and not deserving the same rights as other thais. not only were thaksin supporters deemed ‘too stupid to vote’, it was also assumed that they lacked the agency to protest about something of their own volition and they were accused of being paid to attend the protests. to rebuke this claim, the slogan mai tong chang ku ma eng (there is no need to hire me, i came of my own accord) was adopted by the red shirts and printed on t-shirts and other merchandise – humorously but decisively reclaiming the agency which their opponents were attempting to take away. commentators often suggest that the red shirt protests began as a pro-thaksin reaction to the coup and then developed into something more. this narrative fails on two counts. firstly, it fails to recognize that from the beginning, the red shirt movement was composed of various different groups, not all of whom were supportive of thaksin. take, for example, the academic and activist giles ungpakorn who was an affiliate of the red shirts and had been one of the first to oppose the coup but also distance himself from the controversial thaksin by using the slogan “no to thaksin. no to the coup” (song mai ao) (ungpakorn in walker, 2006). secondly, this chapter has suggested that even those red shirts who did support the ex-prime minister also demonstrated sophisticated critiques of the thai political system, defended electoral politics, cleverly subverted hegemonic cultural norms, and acted to reclaim their dignity and agency. however, it certainly holds true that the movement developed over the course of the protests and adapted accordingly, as new situations presented themselves. the following chapters will chart these changes. james buchanan translating thailand’s protests: an analysis of red shirt rhetoric aseas 6(1) 7170 cruel april, savage may: the army crackdown inflames the red shirts despite the peaceful start of the protests, events soon took a turn for the worse. the two months of april and may became known as cruel april (me-sa-yon hot) and savage may (phruet-sa-pha-khom ma-hit) as thailand witnessed the worst political violence in its modern history. both of these terms resonate the expression “black may” (phreut-sa-pha tha-min), the name given to the violent crackdown of demonstrations and massacre of protestors by the suchinda government in may, 1992.7 again, these expressions created a historical link between the red shirts and popular resistance in modern thailand. the first violence occurred on 10 april at kok wua intersection, when an attempt by the military to clear one of the protest sites left 25 dead: 19 protestors, 5 soldiers, and a japanese tv cameraman. much of what happened that evening is still blurry but what does seem clear, despite official obfuscations, is that the majority of the protestors died after being fired upon by the army (“military admits firing at reds”, 2010). many of those killed suffered horrendous head injuries, seemingly shot by snipers positioned on nearby rooftops. in the aftermath, those killed on 10 april were eulogized in red shirt rhetoric. t-shirts with the date of the massacre and slogans such as “praise the commoners, heroes of democracy” became popular (sa-du-di prai wi-ra-chon pra-cha-thi-pa-tai). displays were hung up around the rally site, showing graphic photographs of red shirts who had been killed, accompanied by written commentary criticizing the military and decrying prime minister abhisit as a tyrant (thor-ra-rat) and a murderer (khat-kon). as the red shirts mourned their dead, a rumor circulated that shortly before the attempted dispersal, queen sirikit’s lady-inwaiting, jarungjit thikara, had visited the eleventh regiment army base, where the military and abhisit government were conducting meetings. it was alleged that she had met with the government and top brass of the military to order, on behalf of the queen, the crackdown on the red shirts. a leaked photograph of the alleged meeting was copied and pasted around the protest site. jarungjit denied the rumours, leading red shirt leader nattawut saikua (2010a) to tell the crowd at ratchaprasong that “lady jj (jarungjit) has come out and said that she is not involved (than phu ying jj ok ma pa-di-set wa mai kiao khong), that she didn’t interfere in politics, (mai dai yung kiao 7 for an excellent account of this period in thai history, cf. murray (2000). james buchanan translating thailand’s protests: an analysis of red shirt rhetoric aseas 6(1) 7170 kap kan mueang), that she doesn’t have the power to give orders to the commander in chief” (mai mi am-nat nai kan sang phu ban-cha kan tha-han bok dai). he refuted her claim, saying “if i wasn’t sure, i wouldn’t come and announce it on this stage” (tha mai man chai khong cha mai ao ma thalaeng bon we-thi ni). to a cheering crowd, he asserted that she had “interfered in politics” (saek saeng sa-than kan mueang). jarungjit is said to be the queen’s closest aide so, for the red shirts, giving the order for the crackdown was the same as the queen giving the order. prior to this, there had been vaguely detectable discontent with the role of the monarchy, particularly when the queen attended the funeral of a pad protestor who was killed in a clash with the police, saying that she was a “good girl” and a “protector of the monarchy and the country” (“fuelling the pyre”, 2008). however, with passions running high after the clash on 10 april, a more open dissatisfaction was beginning to emerge; something that had previously been almost unimaginable in thailand. the killings hardened the resolve of the protestors, who barricaded themselves in the commercial heart of the city, protected by fearsome-looking fortifications of car tires and sharpened bamboo sticks. along with their calls for the dissolution of parliament, they now also demanded justice for the victims of the crackdown as a prerequisite for ending the protests. having learned a lesson from their blundered attempt to disperse the protestors in april, the army this time created a parameter around the main protest site and attempted to stop food and supplies from entering. the outlying areas were then brought under complete military control using a tactic called containment by fire. in reality this meant shooting anything that moved, often with sniper fire from tall buildings and overhead bridges. the death toll started to mount and the crowd inside the ‘red zone’ slowly dwindled as protestors chose to avoid the main rally site and instead form pockets of resistance in other parts of the city. the protestors had by this time abandoned their trademark red shirts to avoid becoming targets for snipers. the dangerous conditions on the street precluded carrying signs and banners; instead, fireworks and childish looking catapults were used to stage a futile resistance to the soldiers who were armed with high-powered assault rifles. on 19 may, after a week of pressurizing the red shirts, the military decided the time was right to make a decisive push to clear the main protest site. the red shirt barricades proved no obstacle for the tanks and the protest leaders surrendered, fearing for their own safety and that of the crowd. the majority of james buchanan translating thailand’s protests: an analysis of red shirt rhetoric aseas 6(1) 7372 the protestors fled before the troops arrived, scattering out through backstreets to safer areas and trusted friends and family. hundreds fled to a nearby temple which had previously been declared a “safe zone” by the government. however, the temple came under heavy fire, with several protestors shot either inside or just outside the temple; at least nine died (“9 bodies found”, 2010). in the face of defeat, the protestors let out their final cry, rioting and setting fire to buildings around the city, the most famous being the huge central world mall, a section of which was completely destroyed.8 the rage spread to other provinces, with protestors setting fire to government buildings in chiang mai, udon thani, khon kaen, and mukdahan – all red shirt strongholds. when the rioting subsided, thailand stood back and assessed the damage. the charred shells of buildings could be seen dotted around the city, at least 91 people had died and a further 2,000 had been injured. worse still, the crackdown and the killings had only intensified the anger which had brought the red shirts out to the streets in the first place, the country’s social and political fissures had only been deepened, and the possibility of future confrontation seemed very likely indeed. over the course of these two months the atmosphere of the protests had changed from one of fun and optimism to outrage and determined stoicism. alongside the rhetoric discussed in the previous chapter emerged criticism of the military, a desire for justice for the victims of the crackdowns, and rumblings of discontent with the role of the monarchy. the writing on the wall: graffiti and sedition at ratchaprasong after the clearance of the main rally site at ratchaprasong, the red shirts were muted for a while, with most of its leadership in jail, but smaller groups, particularly the red sunday group led by ngo worker and activist sombat boon-ngam-anong soon began rallying again. the emergence of these new groups and leaders such as sombat is evidence of the fluid and organic nature of the movement and seems to refute claims that it is a top-down, elite-mobilized “manipulated mass” (crispin, 2010, 8 that the red shirts committed acts of arson is undeniably true. however, much remains unclear about the most devastating fire, which completely destroyed a large section of the central world mall, with evidence suggesting that the area was already under military control before the fire broke out. regardless, the destruction was seized upon by the state, which used it as justification for the crackdown and a reason to label the red shirts “terrorists”. as taylor (2011) points out, this is an “intentionally de-legitimizing epithet which carries considerable emotional force in the post 9/11 world” (p. 3). aseas 6(1) 7372 p.109). the focus of these protests was expressing outrage over the killing of the red shirts. slogans such as “people died here” (thi ni mi kon tai) appeared on placards as protestors took part in ‘die-ins’ on the street whilst young thais awkwardly shopped in siam square, trying to ignore the chalk bodies that had been drawn on the ground. public space around ratchaprasong was used for state propaganda purposes, with billboards reassuring people that “everything will be ok” and “together we can” (ruam kan rao dai), the latter slogan being creatively subverted with stickers proclaiming “together we can kill” (ruam kan rao kha dai) pasted up around ratchaprasong and nearby siam square. bangkok’s middle classes, so traumatized by the protests, gladly swallowed the prozac propaganda offered by the government. a ‘memorial’ wall was erected at the site of the destroyed central world mall, to which people added messages of their own, declaring their love for the king and mourning the loss of the place they shopped, ate, and socialized. one message lamented that the beer garden outside the mall wouldn’t be open for watching the up-coming football world cup ( yak du bon lok thi ni lae ao lan bia khong rao khuen ma), whilst a girl complained that she wouldn’t be able to attend her dance classes (klap ma sak thi yak som ten). many in the city were understandably upset that the normal rhythms of their lives had been disrupted by the protests, but it was surprising that the destruction of the mall had provoked such strong emotions, illustrating the deep attachment people felt to the site of consumption which had served as a backdrop to their lives. some even used the memorial wall as a chance to air their hatred of the red shirts, with some rather choice language used. however, others found the wall insensitive and were appalled by those quick to ‘mourn’ the loss of a mall whilst apparently lacking any emotional response to the deaths of 91 people (taylor, 2011, p. 4). some were moved to write their own messages, condemning the military and the government. thus, the wall became a site of contention between those who backed the crackdown and ‘mourned’ the mall and those sympathetic to the protestors. messages were written, responded to and angrily scrubbed out – a microcosm of the debate raging throughout the country. on 19 september 2010, the red shirts held the first mass rally at ratchaprasong since the crackdown and decisively claimed back the space, if only for the day, by completely covering the area with their own graffiti. i was working near the area that day and finished work around the time the protest ended. as i walked past cenjames buchanan translating thailand’s protests: an analysis of red shirt rhetoric aseas 6(1) 7574 tral world on my way home i saw two policemen guarding the wall with the graffiti on it. the red shirts had long gone home and the only people on the street were a few passers-by, who were standing reading the graffiti, mouths agape. the majority of the messages targeted the monarchy and blamed them for the killing of the red shirts. in thailand, the king is protected by the lèse-majesté law, article 112 of the thai criminal code, which states that “whoever defames, insults or threatens the king, queen, the heir-apparent or the regent, shall be punished with imprisonment of three to fifteen years” (streckfuss, 2010, p. 108). much of the graffiti targeted the law itself, with anti-lèse-majesté slogans such as “mai ao 112” (we don’t want 112) featuring prominently. derogatory remarks were written about the wan si nam ngoen (blue whale) and pak daeng (red mouth); both thinly disguised references to queen sirikit.9 there were also several comments implicating sirikit in the theft of a blue diamond belonging to the royal family of saudi arabia (us embassy bangkok, 2008). king bhumipol also came under fire, with many comments teasing his blind eye and calling him a murderer.10 with safety in numbers, some red shirts had challenged the monarchy in a public bangkok space – an act of huge political significance in thailand. realizing the importance of the graffiti, i rushed home to grab a camera and return to take some photos. when i returned, just thirty minutes later, the entire wall had been removed by the police, demonstrating the seriousness with which authorities in thailand treat any dissent against the monarchy. the red shirts that day chanted ai hia sang kha, loosely translated as “that bastard ordered the killings” (“ai hia sang ka”, 2010). the term ai is a male title, with a meaning similar to “guy”. it is an extremely familiar term, which can be considered rude if used to address a person one is not close to. the word hia refers to a tua hia, or monitor lizard, which is thought to be a loathsome reptile in thailand. that the red shirts were referring to the king can only be speculated, given that the phrase is so vague, but it is exactly this vagueness which is so intriguing. other possibilities, such as then prime minister abhisit, deputy prime minister suthep, privy councilor prem, and army chief anuphong had all come under fire from the red shirts before, and had 9 the ‘blue whale’ refers to her birth color, blue, and her rather corpulent figure. the ‘red lips’ nickname refers to the bright red lipstick she often wears. often, the blue whale or a pair of red lips were drawn instead of actually writing the words, symbolic of the silence the lèse-majesté law imposes and, at the same time, testament to the protestors’ ingenuity and determination to get around it. 10 details are unclear but king bhumipol either lost an eye or was partially or wholly blinded in a car accident as a youth. aseas 6(1) 7574 been explicitly named; but not the king, protected as he is by lèse-majesté laws and by sections of society still fiercely loyal to the monarchy. giles ungpakorn (2010) speculated that they were referring to the king and that it suggests “a growing republican movement among millions of red shirts”. a survey i conducted among thais living in the uk who identify themselves as red shirts showed that most believed the phrase refers to the king. taylor (forthcoming) points out that, in the wake of the killing of protestors at ratchaprasong, the red shirts renamed the area using a subversive play on words. the name ratchaprasong, composed of the words ra-cha (king) and pra-song (desire), literally means “the king’s desire”. during a protest shortly after the crackdown, this was changed to “people’s desire”, by replacing ra-cha with rat, from the word pra-cha rat, meaning “people” or “citizen”. this symbolic re-naming challenges the power of the monarchy and the entire thai social order. royal bullets: “killing the children for the father” after the crackdown, with many grassroots red shirts seething at the monarchy, the topic could no longer be ignored by the red shirt leadership. on 10 april 2011, at a rally to mark the anniversary of the killing of protestors at kok wua intersection, red shirt core leader and phuea thai member of parliament jatuporn prompan (2011) delivered a controversial speech which subtly criticized the palace. directing his speech rhetorically to then prime minister abhisit, jatuporn criticizes him for using the royal thai army (ta-han rak-sa pra-ong) to crack down on the protestors.11 whatever units are used to kill them, he said, the red shirts will not be hurt (upset) (nuai nai ma kha pom phuak pom yang mai chep puak) unless it is the royal units or the queen’s guard ( yaga-wen nuai tha-han rak-sa phra ong tha-han suea ra-chi-ni).12 this is referring to the use of the regiments most closely associated with the palace, especially the queen’s guard, who were most active in the crackdown on the protestors. he suggests that abhisit wanted the red shirts to think that the bullets (which killed them) were royal bullets (khun cha hai rao khao chai wa pen krasun phra rat than chai mai). jatuporn chose his words carefully; chastising abhisit for using those specific regiments to dis11 here, the emphasis seems to be on the royal. 12 the queen’s guard refers to the 21st infantry regiment, whose nickname is the tha-han suea ra-chi-ni, or ‘queen’s tigers’. james buchanan translating thailand’s protests: an analysis of red shirt rhetoric aseas 6(1) 7776 perse the red shirts and, in doing so, tarnishing the reputation of the palace. rather than attacking the palace, which would be extremely risky, he attacks abhisit. however, few believed that abhisit was holding any real power during the crisis, and so jatuporn’s words about “royal bullets” seem to have deeper significance. if jatuporn knew that abhisit held no real power, then the question is: who was he directing his tirade against? jatuporn then goes off on what seems like a tangent by mentioning that he would like to be interviewed by khun woody, a famous thai talk show host. however, this reference was loaded with meaning that the crowd would immediately pick up on. not long before jatuporn’s speech, woody had conducted a controversial interview with princess chulabhorn. whilst woody sat prostrated on the floor, sharing food with her dog, the princess lamented that “what happened last year, when the country was burnt, brought great sorrow to their majesties the king and queen” (“princess: country burning”, 2011). the red shirts had been extremely upset by her comments and would enjoy jatuporn’s pun that he could never be interviewed by woody because he was not born to talk; he was one of those who were born to die (pro rao mai dai goet ma khuy tae goet ma tai).13 princess chulabhorn’s remarks had already been criticized by some as insensitive because she mentioned the ‘tragedy’ of the burning buildings but not the protestors who had been killed. like any criticism of the monarchy, this was mostly in hushed tones, but the academic somsak jiamteerasakul (2011) aired his views more publicly in an open letter to the princess, slamming the lèse-majesté law and calling for more open public debate about the role of the royal family. later, jatuporn criticized the words of princess chulabhorn – and many other, anti-red segments in the country – by saying that “people in this country only see the smoke, but don’t see the 91 dead and two thousand injured” (khon nai prathet ni hen tae khwan fai tae mai hen 91 sop bat chep loei). jatuporn then returns to abhisit, asking him why he had to kill us (the red shirts), even though they had done nothing wrong and are “good peasants” (pen prai thi di).14 jatuporn then denies that the red shirts wanted to topple the monarchy, insisting that their only goal was to dissolve parliament ( yup sa-pha dai yin mai, mai chai lom chao). he then asks the crowd “mi prathet nai bang nai lok ni kha luk phuea pho kha luk phuea mae, mi prathet ni 13 woody’s talk show is called “born to talk”, or gèrt maa kui. the pun of being “born to die” is reference to the massacre of red shirt protesters. 14 as well as protesting the red shirt’s innocence, this is also a dig at thailand’s ruling elites, given the meaning of the word prai. aseas 6(1) 7776 prathet diao” or “which countries in this world kill the children for the father, kill the children for the mother; only this country!”15. in thailand, where public discussion on the monarchy is effectively impossible thanks to fierce social sanctioning and the country’s lèse-majesté law, jatuporn’s speech was incendiary and openly articulated sentiments which had been percolating through the red shirt rank and file. conclusion the red shirt movement and the protests of 2010 are of major significance in thailand. the social forces unleashed when thaksin courted the rural constituencies for votes have proven to be a genie that just will not be pushed back into the bottle, no matter how hard the country’s elites may try. the political crisis has brought to the surface underlying tensions that have existed in thailand for decades or longer. an examination of red shirts’ rhetoric suggests they have a sophisticated understanding of politics in thailand and have massive revolutionary potential, both as a social movement and as a large section of the electorate. this article has pointed to ways in which the movement has challenged the existing thai social order by incorporating less hierarchal language and behavior into its protests. the existing cultural hegemony set by bangkok elites has been shunned in favor of more rural traditions, particularly as the entire relationship between the center and periphery is shifting. events from the coup until 2010 have led to a political awakening (ta sa-wang), in which the red shirts say they now see the true nature of the thai state and the location of power more clearly. as i have detailed here, this has led to a re-evaluation of the role of the monarchy – an extremely inflammatory issue in thailand which could prove to be a source of further conflict in the near future. without the pressure from the red shirts, it is doubtful whether the elections which brought the phuea thai party, fronted by thaksin’s younger sister, yingluck shinawatra, to power would ever have happened. it is also possible that the threat of mass red shirt mobilization could have deterred the military from staging another coup against her. with their goal of 2010 now achieved, the red shirts remain active in fighting for the rights of those imprisoned either for their part in the red 15 here, “father” and “mother” refer to the king and queen who, according to official discourse, are imagined as the father and mother of the nation. james buchanan translating thailand’s protests: an analysis of red shirt rhetoric aseas 6(1) 7978 shirt protests or for lèse-majesté crimes (the boundaries between which are often blurred). they have also been active in pushing for justice for the victims of the 2010 crackdown and ending the tradition of impunity for the state violence which has too often marred thailand’s history. with slow progress in both, and rumors of a possible rapprochement between thaksin and the royalist elite (crispin, 2011), many of the rank and file of the movement are expressing concern that its leaders, some of whom are now members of parliament, may be selling out in favor of reconciliation with the elites. as mentioned earlier, new groups of red shirts and new leaders continue to emerge. chulalongkorn academic suda rangkupan has led several rallies, whilst another recent rally, organized by a group calling themselves the radio broadcasters for democracy, seemed to ruffle the feathers of phuea thai party and the more mainstream of the red shirt leadership, with reports that they might have intervened to convince the protestors to call off the rally (“thaksin key to rally’s end”, 2013). so it seems, the movement might not exactly be one which “encourages the masses to seek their own action in relation to the situation at hand” (taylor, 2010, p. 298), but rather one which the mainstream leadership would like to control but may ultimately find themselves unable to. by using the original language of the protests as a framework for analysis, i have hopefully created a better understanding of the goals, desires, and frustrations of the protestors. language sources such as slogans and speeches can offer much insight into the nature of protest movements and are too often overlooked in analysis. this is especially true of languages such as thai, which may not be accessible to all observers and therefore require some commentary. language is a tool for communication and is thus a vital and natural part of social movements who, by very definition, have something to communicate. language is first used to negotiate shared values and goals within movements and then to express these values and goals to the broader community. anyone who feels passionately enough about something to take an active role in a movement wants to have their voice heard. i hope that by translating some of the voices from the red shirt movement i have helped, in a small way, to make this happen. many of them died trying to make their voices heard, and so deserve that much. aseas 6(1) 7978 references 9 bodies found inside temple. 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(2008, december 2). thailand prime minister to step down after court strips him of office. the guardian. retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/02/thailand-protests-somchaiwongsawat gaining recognition through participatory mapping? the role of adat land in the implementation of the merauke integrated food and energy estate in papua, indonesia rosita dewi ► dewi, r. (2016). gaining recognition through participatory mapping? the role of adat land in the implementation of the merauke integrated food and energy estate in papua, indonesia. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 9(1), 87-106. participatory mapping has recently become an instrument used by ngos to advocate for adat (customary) land in indonesia. maps produced from participatory mapping are expected to support legal recognition through land formalization or titling. in order to stop land grabbing through the merauke integrated food and energy estate (mifee) project, this strategy has also been applied in merauke district, papua. however, the pitfalls of communal participatory mapping have brought negative impacts to adat communities. this paper analyzes the land grabbing and mapping processes in three villages in the mifee area to show the unexpected consequences of participatory mapping. these mapping processes have caused fragmentation and conflict among adat communities. furthermore, the legal recognition of communal adat land ownership is facilitating the buy-out of adat land by companies and/or the state. keywords: adat; land grabbing; mifee; papua; participatory mapping  introduction1 gaining legal recognition for customary (adat) land is still a major challenge for indigenous people in indonesia. adat can be described as a way of life that links history, land, and law (davidson & henley, 2007). with regard to the recognition of adat communities, land constitutes a central issue because many adat lands are currently threatened by land grabbing. compared to other provinces in indonesia, papua is leading in gaining legal recognition for adat land rights. papuan adat communities gained legal recognition through the special autonomy law for papua no. 21/2001. it seems, however, that legal recognition through this law has failed to protect the customary rights of adat communities, particularly with regard to their adat land. although legal recognition is believed to be the best method to guarantee these rights, it has clearly proved insufficient in the case of papua. this is most clearly shown in merauke district, where the merauke integrated food and energy estate (mifee) project is developed. the mifee project comprises over a million ha of land and is the first na1 a draft version of this paper was presented at the graduate school of global studies workshop series 2014 “environmental governance and development policy in southeast asia”, 10 january 2015, sophia university, tokyo. aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 16 .1 -6 88 rosita dewi  aseas 9(1) tional project in papua developed by the indonesian government after papua was granted autonomy. the central government considers mifee an ideal space for agricultural expansion since its vast arable areas contain much potential. in 2010, mifee replaced the merauke integrated rice estate (mire) which was established by the local government in 2008 to boost investment. after failing to attract investors, mire was relaunched as mifee for broader investment targets in august 2010 (ito, rachman, & savitri, 2014). the central government allocated 1.283 million ha for this new project (government of indonesia, 2010). however, the project has faced a number of implementation problems, especially land conflicts with local communities. through mifee, investors have taken over local adat lands of the marind anim tribe, one of the major tribes that lives in the merauke district. the papuan local government granted location permits for concessions to companies without any prior consent from the marind anim as the adat landowners and thus, land grabbing has been a major issue in the area (aliansi gerakan reformasi agraria, 2012; ito et al., 2014; lamonge, 2012; zakaria, kleden, & franky, 2011). land grabbing refers to the purchase or lease of vast tracts of land to create agricultural operations producing food, feed, or fuel, the aim being to secure the long term supplies by foreign investors, private investors, or government (arellano-lópez, 2012; daniel, 2011; daniel & mittal, 2009). according to the fao, there are three indicators to define land grabbing: first, the size of land with a minimum of 1,000 ha for a single deal; second, the direct involvement of foreign investors or governments; and third, negative impacts on food security in the recipient countries (borras, kay, gomez, & wilkinson, 2012). however, several researchers have criticized this definition as being too narrow. they argue that many land grabs are currently not carried out by foreign investors but also by domestic and transnational companies, often with encouragement and support from the central governments. furthermore, land grabbing is not only limited to large-scale land deals (borras & franco, 2011, p. 5; borras et al., 2012, p. 404). in land grabbing, the state engages in re-ordering or restructuring the country’s land tenure system through policies that justify the use of idle, underutilized, or sparsely populated territories thus facilitating the entrance of large-scale land-based investment (arellano-lópez, 2012; daniel, 2011; daniel & mittal, 2009). for the purpose to analyzing mifee, land grabbing is defined as controlling or taking possession of large-scale lands in order to transform them into agricultural estates by domestic and/or transnational companies with the engagement of local and central governments. in order to protect adat land in merauke, ngos have adopted participatory mapping as a way to advocate for adat rights. the purpose of participatory mapping is to gain land titling and formalization for adat land. land titling is the specific type of formalization in which the state demarcates the boundaries of the land, records ownership, and recognizes the landholders’ ownership and the right to sell, mortgage, or transfer it (hall, hirsch, & li, 2011). many researchers have examined the positive impacts of participatory mapping in helping traditional communities to protect their ancestral lands (deddy, 2006; gessa, 2008; herlihy & knapp, 2003). some argue that local people can use maps created from participatory mapping to legitimize their claims over customary lands. or in some cases, traditional communities were revi89gaining recognition through participatory mapping? talized by the process of participatory mapping (peluso, 1995; pramono, natalia, & janting, 2006). furthermore, participatory mapping may promote indigenous natural resource management and reduce conflict (deddy, 2006). such research provides positive encouragement for ngos to promote participatory mapping. the pitfalls of communal participatory mapping may, however, also create several negative impacts. research has shown that participatory mapping can cause fragmentation or conflict among communities due to the fixation of land control and the map’s rigidity. it can weaken indigenous ideas and conceptions of space and promote land privatization. moreover, participatory mapping expected to counter government mapping can be regulated and co-opted by the state (fox, 2011; fox, krisnawati, & hershock, 2005; hodgson & schroeder, 2002). the concerns about participatory mapping mentioned above were also found in the participatory mapping process in merauke. to date, there has been no research on how participatory mapping was introduced in the mifee area, what the impacts are, and how the process differs from that in other parts of indonesia. for that reason, this article aims to fill this knowledge gap and show the unexpected consequences of participatory mapping in papua. legal recognition of adat land rights during the suharto government, the state did not pay due attention to adat communities and treated their land as state land (hall et al., 2011). the 1999 human rights act states that communal land, being part of the cultural identity, deserves recognition and protection (fitzpatrick, 2007, p. 77). after the regime change, this recognition corresponded with the main agenda of the aliansi masyarakat adat nusantara (aman), the national indigenous peoples’ organization that struggles for the recognition of adat communities (arizona & cahyadi, 2013). in 2011, aman and other ngos advocating for the rights of adat communities proposed the draft bill of recognition and protection of adat communities and called on the constitutional court to review the forestry law no. 41/1999 regarding the existence of adat forest. however, until today, these efforts have still not materialized in substantial changes to the land regime. the decision of the constitutional court to recognize the existence of adat forest land has not changed the government policy regarding adat land in general. adat land is still treated as idle land that is put under the jurisdiction of the state (state land). hence, land conflicts between adat communities and the state continue. in fact, however, adat communities do not have to wait for the enactment of a national law to gain recognition, but local governments at the district or province level have the authority to recognize adat communities under local regulations. after the fall of suharto’s authoritarian regime, the new government under president habibie started implementing decentralization policies in 1999.2 these policies transferred power from central to local government and gave wider authority to local governments to enact their own local regulations as long as they do not contradict national law. this also includes regional authority for the recognition of adat (bakker & 2 see regional autonomy laws no. 22/1999 and no. 32/2004, and laws on the fiscal balance between central and regional governments no. 25/1999 and no. 33/2004. 90 rosita dewi  aseas 9(1) moniaga, 2010). however, local governments are usually reluctant to recognize adat communities in their regions as they are competing to attract investment for regional development. land designated for concession areas or other investment has often been cultivated by adat communities, especially outside of java. therefore, local governments perceive the legal recognition of adat communities as a burden. as a result, local governments often facilitate land grabbing by working closely with corporate actors (alhamid, ballard, & kanowski, 2009). the case study site the district of merauke comprises a vast area of 4.6 million ha in the autonomous province of papua. the total population of merauke district is 263,664 people (population and civil registration board of merauke district, 2015). the indigenous population of papua comprises 56.3%; the rest are transmigrants (43.7%) who mainly came from java and makassar (statistics indonesia, 2011). the biggest tribe in merauke is the marind tribe, often called marind anim. this tribe is divided into seven big clans: gebze, mahuze, ndiken, kaize, samkakai, balagaize, and basik-basik. each clan has its own clan leader. each local village, where marind anim live, usually consists of these seven clans and is headed by an adat leader. whereas this leader represents customary law, each local village also has a village leader that is legally recognized by the state. in addition, there is also a customary community council (lembaga masyarakat adat, lma) leader – a position created by the central government after the establishment of the papua special autonomy law. this function sometimes overlaps with the function of the adat leader. these three levels of leadership make up the political complexity of local villages. in the marind anim tribe, adat land ownership is based on clan membership with borders that have been agreed upon among the clans that own the adat land. usually, land ownership is based on ancestral heritage and passed down through oral stories from generation to generation. trees, stones, rivers, or sago palm huts are used to signify the land borders of adat land. adat communities also have their own mechanisms for leasing adat land. to lease a piece of adat land from one clan, the transfer has to be agreed upon by the clan members and the seven clans leaders who live in the village through an adat meeting that is led by the village adat leader. in this article, i examine three cases in three villages – selu, duku, and alu village3 – which serve as examples of the land grab process. selu (435 people, 108 households) represents a village that accepted company cultivation of their adat land in the early stages of the mifee implementation, when john gluba gebze still served as the head of merauke district (2001-2010). duku (691 people, 153 households) represents a village that accepted company cultivation of their adat land after romanus mbaraka became the new head of merauke district in 2011. and alu (430 people, 73 households) is a village that rejected company cultivation of their adat land. all three villages initiated and conducted participatory mapping (statistic indonesia, 2011; yasanto, 2013). the research scope is limited to the period between the implementation of the mifee project (2010) and the end of susilo bambang yudhono’s (sby) presidential 3 due to the sensitivity of the issue, the names of the villages have been changed. 91gaining recognition through participatory mapping? term (2015). data collection was carried out in the merauke district in january, august, and september of 2014. data were collected through interviews with leaders in each of the three villages, adat community members in each village, the former governor who initiated the mifee project, local government representatives, the company that holds concessions in that area, and ngos which act as advocates on behalf of the adat communities in these villages. mifee as a land grabbing project in the name of development mifee was launched by the central government in august 2010. the project is meant to strengthen the national food and energy stock and at the same time accelerate economic development in merauke (government of indonesia, 2010). mifee is a continuation of the merauke district program. the local government launched this investment program on the 105th anniversary of the merauke district in 2007. the program was marked for the symbolic handover of adat land from adat communities to the government to be hereafter given to the investors. later, in 2008, the local government and investors agreed to create a specific project called mire (awas mifee, 2012). the establishment of mire was in line with president sby’s speech on the great rice harvest in 2006: “first, let’s develop merauke as a rice granary; second, develop plantations in merauke such as sugarcane and palm oil to deal with food security problems” (yudhoyono, 2006). in order to realize mire, a consortium of 15 saudi arabian investors and indonesian corporations was ready to take part in the project (rulistia, 2008). the bin laden group, an investor from saudi arabia, prepared usd 4 billion to develop 500,000 ha of land in merauke. however, this investment was cancelled due to the global financial crises (awas mifee, 2012). to make the project suited for the new conditions, the government re-packaged the mire project into mifee. mifee was expected to attract investment in merauke that was not only limited to rice cultivation but also in the plantation and forestry sector. it was in line with president sby’s ambition to “feed indonesia, feed the world” after the global food and energy crises in 2008 (awas mifee, 2012). under government regulation no. 18/2010, mifee was officially launched in 2010. however, these investments threaten adat land. from 2007 to 2010, the district head granted location permits for over 2.4 million ha of land (more than 50% of the total area of merauke) to 36 companies.4 when granting location permits, the district head based his decision solely on the spatial planning of the district, without notifying or receiving the consent of the adat communities, which were in effect the adat landowners. the location permits neglected the rights of the marind anim people. this became the major factor that prevented permit holders from establishing plantations. in order to make the process of land transfer smoother, several companies used illegal ways to get permission from adat communities.5 local government and village leaders were frequently involved in this process. 4 this area was greater than allocated in the initial plans for the mifee (1.283 million ha) (investment board of merauke district, 2011). 5 companies used many methods to ensure the transfer of land rights from adat communities, including intimidation, co-opting village leaders, and cheating during the negotiation process (zakaria et al., 2011). 92 rosita dewi  aseas 9(1) no company commodity area (ha) location (subdistrict)location permission operation permission korindo group 1 pt. dongin prabhawa palm oil 39,800 34,000 ngguti 2 pt. berkat cipta abadi palm oil 40,000 14,525 ulilin 3 pt. inocin abadi industrial timber plantation (iuphhk-hti) 100,000 99,665 ulilin 4 pt. papua agro lestari palm oil 39,800 32,347 ulilin medco group 5 pt. selaras inti semesta iuphhk-hti 301,600 169,400 kaptel 6 pt. medco papua industri lestari wood and chip 2,800 na kaptel 7 pt. medco papua alam lestari iuphhk-hti 74,219 na kaptel modern land group 8 pt. wanamulia sukses sejati iuphhk-hti 61,000 na animha 9 pt. agri surya agung sugarcane 40,000 36,774 ilwayab, tubang, ngguti 10 pt. nusantara agri resources sugarcane 40,000 39,005 ilwayab, ngguti 11 pt. mega surya agung soybean, corn 24,697 (changed from coordinate into 9,882) na kaptel, ngguti 12 pt. wanamulia sukses sejati iuphhk-hti 96,553 na kaptel, muting 13 pt. wanamulia sukses sejati iuphhk-hti 116,000 na kaptel, okaba, ngguti, muting hardaya group 14 pt. hardaya sugar papua plantation sugarcane 44,812 37,898 jagebob 15 pt. hardaya sawit papua plantation palm oil 62,150 44,740 jagebob table 1. companies and concession area in mifee, 2014. (investment board of merauke district, 19 august 2014). 93gaining recognition through participatory mapping? no company commodity area (ha) location (subdistrict)location permission operation permission rajawali group 16 pt. cenderawasih jaya mandiri sugarcane 40,000 22,117 malind, kurik 17 pt. karya bumi papua sugarcane 30,000 15,628 malind, kurik 18 pt. rizki kemilau berjaya sugarcane 10,000 na kurik astra group 19 pt. dharma agro lestari sugarcane 50,000 na tubang, okaba 20 pt. bhakti agro lestary sugarcane 26,098 na animha mayora group 21 pt. swarna hijau indah sugarcane 36,363 33,668 tubang, kimaam 22 pt. randu kuning utama sugarcane 40,000 na ilwayab, tubang, kimaam 23 pt. kurnia alam nusantara sugarcane 50,00 na tubang, ilwayab bia group 24 pt. bio inti agrindo palm oil 39,900 36,400 ulilin 25 pt. ulilin agro lestari palm oil 12,538 na ulilin wilmar group 26 pt. wahana samudra sentosa iuphhk-hti 79,033 na kaptel, ngguti 27 pt. anugrah rejeki nusantara sugarcane 27,457 na tanah miring, animha 28 pt. lestari subur indonesia sugarcane 25,102 na jagebob, sota ams group 29 pt. agrinusa persada mulia palm oil 40,000 39,692 muting 30 pt. agriprima cipta pesada palm oil 33,540 na muting, ulilin table 1 (continued). 94 rosita dewi  aseas 9(1) the local government usually gave support to the companies rather than the adat communities. when first approaching these communities, local government representatives did not always explain the company’s project in detail. they used money and vague development promises to persuade adat communities to support the projects. on the whole, adat landowner communities agreed, especially if the head of the merauke district was the one to approach the communities directly. because the negotiation process excluded any detailed explanation of the proposed projects and because much information was deliberately withheld by the company, the land transfer process became a land grab. no company commodity area (ha) location (subdistrict)location permission operation permission without group 31 pt. china ghate agriculture development rice, cassava, ground nut, corn 20,000 na okaba 32 pt. internusa jaya sejahtera palm oil 18,567 na muting, ulilin, elikobel 33 pt. purna karsa wibawa sugarcane 20,223 na ngguti, tubang, okaba 34 pt. plasma nutfah marind papua iuphhk-hti 67,736 64,050 ngguti, okaba, kaptel 35 pt. merauke rayon jaya hti 206,800 na na 36 pt. sino indonesia shunlida fishing fish processing industry 33 na merauke 37 pt. dwikarya reksa abadi fishery na na ilwayab 38 pt. cipta papua agri lestari hti na na 39 pt. indonesia jaya makmur investasi sugarcane 20,223 na ngguti, tubang 40 pt. global papua abadi sugarcane 31,026 na tanah miring, jagebob 41 pt. karisma agri pratama rice, corn, ground nut 40,000 37,786 tubang table 1 (continued). 95gaining recognition through participatory mapping? the village of selu in selu, for example, the selaras inti semesta (sis) company wanted to gain the right to cultivate adat land. sis is a subsidiary of the medco group, which was founded by arifin panigoro, an active member of the indonesian democratic party of struggle (pdi-p). he was particularly active in encouraging merauke’s local government to open up the district to investment for large-scale plantations and agriculture (awas mifee, 2012). sis held a concession from the local government for over 169,000 ha of land (investment board of merauke district, 2014) that they and the local government made use of without the consent of the communities (zakaria et al., 2011). in response, the communities blocked the company from entering their lands. in order to open the blockade and get the permission of the communities, sis asked john gluba gebze to help sis to approach the communities in his role as the district head of merauke. due to his close relationship with arifin panigoro,6 john gluba gebze agreed to help the medco group approach the communities about leasing their adat land to sis. after the involvement of the district head, who was also a member of the marind anim tribe, the adat communities in selu agreed to negotiate with the company representatives. we made a rejection letter that was sent to the district head. [it] forced john [gluba gebze] to visit selu together with the company. . . . he promised to develop selu if they gave permission for the company to operate in selu. (head of selu, 22 august 2014) the district head promised, if the adat communities in selu permitted medco to cultivate their lands, selu would become a small city. . . . they [the company] came to the adat communities and brought a document that was signed by the district head, so that the adat leader had to accept it. (adat leader of selu, 22 august 2014) in the end, the adat community agreed to give permission to sis in exchange for idr 300 million (usd 22,750) – tali asih (ex gratia) – to compensate for the use of adat land. although the agreement was in writing, the company did not fully explain the details of the project during negotiations with the adat communities. moreover, it did not mention the exact area of the adat land to be used by the project. as a result, once the project started, the communities felt that the company had cheated them. for example, one interviewed adat member, explained that he did not know that his land would be used for 60 years after 2009. this type of problem emerged because the process of obtaining free, prior, and informed consent was not carried out appropriately. community members did not know the exact content of the agreement between the leaders in selu and sis. once the company started to clear forests and establish forest plantations, the ability to gather food from the forest was limited, affecting the livelihoods of communities in selu. under a corporate social responsi6 the close relationship between arifin panigoro and john gluba gebze (jgg) was manifested by his granting panigoro the title arifin dipanigoro warku gebze as a member of the gebze clan. this nomination enabled panigoro to become the owner of the adat land (tabloid jubi, 2009). 96 rosita dewi  aseas 9(1) bility (csr) project, the company created a vegetable garden (kebun sayur) and a rice field for the communities to cultivate. this project did not work, however, because the adat communities were not familiar with rice cultivation as they traditionally gathered food from the forests. few people joined the csr project. in addition, few people in selu were employed to work for the company. the communities became dissatisfied with these conditions and were disappointed as the promises from the district head had not materialized. as a result, they now want to reclaim land from the company. the village of duku land transfer in duku offers another example for land grabbing. the pt. karya bumi papua and pt cenderawasih jaya mandiri companies (subsidiaries of the rajawali group) were granted location permits by the district head in 2010 for over 70,000 ha7 of sugarcane plantations (investment board of merauke district, 2014). the negotiation process involved the head of the merauke district parliament approaching the adat communities in duku and asking permission for the rajawali group to open sugarcane plantations on their lands. the company, through the head of the district parliament, promised to improve the economic conditions of the adat community in duku through csr projects. the interesting thing in this case is the position of the head of the district parliament. not only did he serve as head of parliament, he was also the consular head of a local ngo (yasanto) in merauke. this ngo signed a memorandum of understanding (mou) with the rajawali group to implement an empowerment program as a csr project. this explains why the presence of an ngo advocating for the adat community has not been effective in this case. the rajawali group also co-opted the lma leader in duku to help persuade the adat community to give their lands to the company. the lma leader in this village is more active in dealing with matters outside the village, whereas the adat leader only deals with matters inside the village, particularly rituals on behalf of the community. with regard to the communication with the company, the lma, supported by the village secretary (village administration), is more active compared to the adat leader. during the negotiation process, the company promised the leaders in duku money for their efforts to convince the communities. the lma leader in duku began to actively persuade community members to lease their land for plantations by promising them that they would earn money from the lease. in return, the adat leader, the lma, and the village leader in duku as well as the village administrators received a monthly payment of between idr 500,000 (usd 38) and 1,000,000 (usd 76) from the rajawali group. by involving the head of the district parliament and the lma leader at the village level, the companies were successful in getting the adat community to agree to lease their land for sugarcane cultivation. on 21 november 2010, seven clans signed an agreement document, which stipulated that 158 households would receive idr 6 billion (usd 455,060) in compensation for their adat land. the money was to be given out by the head of each clan, according to the area that the clan occupied. 7 pt. cenderawasih jaya mandiri holds a location permit for 40,000 ha in the malind and kurik subdistricts; pt. karya bumi papua holds a location permit for 30,000 ha in the kurik sub-district. 97gaining recognition through participatory mapping? the village of alu in contrast to the cases described above, the community in alu, although also threatened by the mifee land grab (by the rajawali group), still retains their land. there are two major reasons for this: first, since their land was used for transmigration programs during the suharto period, the contested area of community land was small (around 15,000 ha), and second, ngos actively advocated for the protection of adat land in alu. due to the involvement of ngo advocates, the community maintained a strong position vis-à-vis the company and local government representatives. pusaka, an ngo from jakarta, was very active in mobilizing the adat communities. the village sent an official letter to the rajawali group and local government to reject the request to cultivate their adat land. later, in 2011, as advised by pusaka, the village also created an adat land map, using participatory mapping exercises in order to counter the government map that was used for mifee investment guidance. as seen above, agricultural expansion of mifee has threatened the existence of adat land of the marind anim community through land grabbing. the government issued the concession over the adat land without the consent of the adat communities as the legitimate owners of the land. the local government was involved in a land leasing process that was perceived as unfair and harmful by the adat communities. supported by the local ngos, therefore, adat communities started to conduct participatory mapping to protect their adat land. conducting participatory mapping to gain recognition of adat land in indonesia, participatory mapping began in 1992, following the international trend in the 1990s to actively advocate for customary rights through participatory mapping. the first participatory mapping project was conducted by the world wildlife fund (wwf) in kayan mentarang, east kalimantan (peluso, 1995). participatory mapping of dayak communities was also conducted in west kalimantan by the pancur kasih organization in 1995 in order to receive due recognition for the adat communities and their lands (pramono et al., 2006). participatory mapping became more prevalent after the establishment of the government’s regulation no. 69/1996 concerning public participation in spatial planning. indonesian activists responded to the regulation by forming the network for participatory mapping (jaringan kerja pemetaan partisipasi, jkpp) in 1996 (pramono, samperante, & achmaliadi, 2009). between 1996 and 1997, participatory mapping was conducted in several adat villages in kalimantan (deddy, 2006). it was difficult, however, for these maps to be adopted into government policies on spatial planning, especially during the suharto government (pramono et al., 2006). after suharto’s fall in 1998, advocacy for the rights of adat communities intensified. the establishment of aman in 1999 encouraged the struggle for the rights of adat communities in indonesia. in line with the aman agenda, participatory mapping initiated by jkpp became an important strategy to strengthen adat claims to lands and forests in order to guarantee the continuity of their livelihood (pramono et al., 2009). 98 rosita dewi  aseas 9(1) in the province of papua, participatory mapping has gained importance since the enactment of the special autonomy law no. 21/2001. this law has opened up wider opportunities for participation, which has been used by ngos to carry out participatory mapping in several villages in papua in order to ensure land formalization and titling. the implementation of mifee has become an obvious example for the way in which the indonesian government neglects the existence and rights of adat communities in papua in exchange for support for development projects. it shows the contradiction of implementing a special autonomy law that stipulates recognition for customary rights, while at the same time implementing a spatial planning process that prioritizes economic development at the expense of adat land in merauke. this contradiction encourages ngos to advocate for adat communities to fight against land grabbing in the course of mifee’s implementation. after the launch of the project, many ngos united to form the papuan people’s solidarity to reject mifee (sorpatom). the ngo group was extremely effective in highlighting the negative impacts of mifee for adat communities in merauke. the group wrote letters to the united nations committee on the elimination of racial discrimination (uncerd), requesting the committee to urge the indonesian government to abandon the implementation of mifee (ginting & pye, 2013). many of the ngos that were incorporated in sorpatom promoted the termination of the mifee project because it led to land grabs of adat land. these ngos did not succeed in stopping the mifee project but they believed that participatory mapping could be used as an instrument to stop land grabbing. they therefore persuaded communities to create adat land maps to protect their land and to gain legal recognition and titles for their lands. several of the villages that are affected by the mifee project have created or plan to create adat land maps at the behest of ngos. the involved ngos believe that an adat land map created by a participatory mapping process can be a powerful instrument to counter government maps that are used to make claims over land or forest areas. participatory mapping, therefore, has become a way to resist the implementation of mifee. every village has its own specific reason to create an adat land map through participatory mapping. for example, in selu, yayasan pusaka, an indonesian ngo supported by international ngos, raised awareness among adat communities about the importance of participatory mapping. after sis was deemed in violation of its promises to selu communities, the village leader asked yasanto to help create an adat land map of selu. participatory mapping in selu was conducted in 2013. the process took three months (from october to december). local government funded the project8 in an effort to counter the negative backlash to the land grabs that had spread during the implementation of the mifee. the adat map also made it easier for the government to map the owners of adat land in the respective villages (yasanto, 2013). in addition, the close relationship maintained by mbaraka, the new head of merauke district, with yasanto may have influenced his decision to trust the fund for participatory mapping of the village. yayasan pusaka was also very active in introducing participatory mapping in alu. the communities in alu trusted yayasan pusaka because the ngo had supported 8 participatory mapping for this village was funded from a grant made in 2013, provided from the merauke district budget. the local government granted idr 560,300,000 (usd 42,410) to conduct participatory mapping in five villages in animha sub-district (yasanto, 2013). 99gaining recognition through participatory mapping? them in protecting their lands from the rajawali group. adat communities, through the head of village, asked the ngo to help with the participatory mapping of their adat land. in 2011, participatory mapping of the village was conducted with the financial support of two international ngos – the forest peoples program (fpp) and the climate land use alliance (clua). in the process, a participatory adat map was established for the border area between alu and neighboring villages. the map was anticipated to provide a last defense for alu communities against the rajawali group as the major instrument to claim their lands. in duku, the secretary of the village requested students from musamus university (universitas musamus merauke) to facilitate participatory mapping. the adat communities in duku felt that creating the adat land map was important and planned to self-fund the project. duku was initially driven to make an adat land map after communities from alu claimed parts of duku adat land as their own. adat communities in duku aim to use the map to reclaim the adat land that is now claimed by alu communities. however, the participatory mapping has yet to begin and remains under negotiation between musamus university and village administrators in duku. from these three examples, it is clear that participatory mapping has become an important instrument to create a sense of legal ownership for the adat communities. in selu, the adat map created through participatory mapping will be used to reclaim adat land that has been taken by the company by means of unfair negotiation. in alu, adat members feel that the adat map is an important tool to protect their lands from a company that tried to grab them. it is also important for claiming adat land ownership for alu members who feel that the community was left with too little land after the transmigration project. unlike the other two villages, the duku community feels that participatory mapping is important to claim lands that are threatened by adat communities in their neighboring village. in all three villages, adat maps created by participatory mapping are seen by adat people as powerful instruments to claim ownership of adat land. the limits of participatory mapping experiences from several countries over the last decades have shown that participatory mapping has helped communities to receive recognition of customary rights (chapin, lamb, & threlkeld, 2005; deddy, 2006; gessa, 2008; herlihy & knapp, 2003; roth, 2009). participatory mapping has led to successful land claims, compensation for customary lands taken by states or companies, and the recognition of customary lands and territories (fox et al., 2005; peluso, 1995). the maps enhanced community capacity to negotiate access to local resources, and increased their involvement in policy processes. however, the practice of participatory mapping may also bring unexpected consequences for the communities. first, mapping can cause fragmentation and conflict among communities. second, because the map fails to provide customary land use information, it can erode the status of indigeneity of customary lands. third, the map can increase state co-optation over customary lands by giving the government authority to control customary lands under legal regulations (fox, 2011, p. 66). the participatory mapping that has been carried out in order to counter mifee has also faced the problems described by fox (2011), including fragmentation 100 rosita dewi  aseas 9(1) and conflict among members of the marind anim tribe. after participatory mapping was conducted, a dispute about the border between neighboring villages emerged. previously the two villages did not have a rigid concept of their border but used a natural barrier such as a stand of trees, a river, or stones to signify the border between adat land held by a certain clan and to recognize existing adat land ownership. the border was acknowledged based on a mutual understanding among the community members. for example, when they hunted kangaroo (saham) and the animal died on another clan’s land, the hunters would divide and share the meat with the owners of the land. however, after the participatory mapping was conducted, the rigidity of the map caused problems. the communities felt that claims to certain areas were very important. a clear example concerns the neighboring villages of alu and duku. alu wanted to protect their land from the company and the local government, but when they conducted participatory mapping, they failed to consult with the neighboring village of duku. this led to their claiming an area near the border of the two villages. the alu community used the map to claim adat land that overlapped with the adat land of duku. this led to fragmentation between the communities in alu and duku. the two communities are both from the marind anim tribe and members often intermarry. therefore, the adat land of these two villages does not require a rigid border. in addition, because of intermarriage, adat landowners cannot be divided firmly on the side of one village or the other, because the next generation could inherit the rights over adat land from either village. this is why alu’s claim over duku’s adat land ignited the anger of duku members. on the other hand, duku’s rejection of alu’s map also sparked the anger of alu members. they [duku] violated the adat land border that has been existing. rajawali group created the border beyond the original border. this caused the conflict. .  .  . there was a meeting between alu and duku to discuss this border. they persisted [on the newly created borders] and i evicted the duku village head. (village head consultative body in alu, 20 august 2014) that is duku land, but after the company operated, they [alu] did not accept that border. they defended that [border] . . . even the conducted adat meeting cannot solve this [adat land border] dispute. besides that, they even threatened us. (village head of duku, 21 august 2014) these issues not only fragmented adat communities, but also led to social conflict. in the case of alu and duku, tensions have erupted between adat members from both villages. worse still, the traditional adat meeting that is customarily used to solve problems among adat communities has not been able to settle the problem of overlapping land claims. in order to settle the conflict, administrators from both villages agreed to bring the problem to the district head of merauke for resolution. however, as of september 2014, the conflict had yet to be resolved. this conflict shows the irony of participatory mapping of adat land. while adat communities struggle to gain recognition, the community itself no longer recognizes their own adat rules. despite the aim to revitalize indigenous values through the 101gaining recognition through participatory mapping? implementation of participatory mapping, the recognition of adat land instead keeps them away from their indigenous values. the conflict between alu and duku villagers has contributed to the loss of indigenous values for the marind anim tribe. the map made things worse through a lack of information and a failure to address adat values during the participatory mapping process, which created misunderstandings about land ownership. in fact, it is considered taboo among adat communities to discuss the history of adat land with anyone from outside the village clan. the case of selu is different from the two cases above. the map created with participatory mapping in selu will be used to reclaim the adat land that is cultivated by sis. the adat communities in selu do not know how many hectares of land have already been cultivated by the company. nonetheless, the map is also expected to be useful for reclaiming adat land after the contract with medco is finished. unlike the map in alu that only delineated the border with its neighbors, the participatory adat map in selu also maps adat land among the clans inside selu. the map does not only show the border with the neighboring village, but also states the name of the clan that owns adat land within the village (yasanto, 2013). indeed, the goal of this map is not the delineation between villages but the mapping of adat landowners among the clans in selu. the rigid and detailed map produced by the communities of selu may loosen kinship ties within single clans of marind anim, causing members to become individualistic. this, in turn, could make clan members become more pragmatic in seeking economic profit as individual landowners. because the map does not recognize the concept of adat land, it may transform communal land into private land. as a result, a race to claim adat land may take place in this village. in the long term, the map may ignite fragmentation or even conflict as the participatory mapping process has failed to gather complete information about the history of adat land. another problem is that the head of merauke district has not yet signed the document that would make adat maps a legal proof of adat land ownership. accordingly, the map still lacks the force of law. based on my observations, local government support for participatory mapping is only voiced to counter the negative backlash from implementing mifee. although local government is trying to promote the protection of adat land in merauke, its unwillingness to legalize the participatory adat map indicates its half-hearted support. furthermore, the local government even intends to use the maps to conduct negotiations with landowners. according to them, the main obstacle to implement mifee is the complexity to lease adat land. the adat map makes it easier for the government and companies to target whom to negotiate with. a concrete example for this argument is a land deal in baley village, where the company sis leased land to set up a saw mill. as there was no adat map that showed the owners of the land, the company mistakenly gave financial compensation to the adat community in baley. however, the adat community in the neighboring village (sesa), was the actual owner of the land used to set up the factory. the situation led to a conflict that was disadvantageous for the company and could have been avoided through a detailed map. therefore, the government and the company both benefit from adat maps that guide their investments. in turn, the same maps often leave adat communities without the legal protection they hoped to gain from the participatory mapping process. 102 rosita dewi  aseas 9(1) the cases show that the communities perceive the maps as the final accomplishment of all forms of struggle for their adat land: “we have our original map [participatory map] that shows the border of our land” (village head consultative body in alu, 20 august 2014). hence, holding an adat map means having authority over the area that is claimed. the communities do not realize, however, that participatory mapping produces flexible maps that can change at any time with social change in the community. even in the ngo participatory mapping report, “it stated that the map is not the final map. this map is an early stage of adat land owner map which has to improve and update with the existed information to obtain the definitive map” (yasanto, 2013, p. 41). inter-marriage among villages also can change the piece of adat land status in the village. besides that, the adat land that is owned by an adat community in one village is not always only inside the village, but also situated in other villages (yasanto, 2013, p. 102). however, how this affects the map was not communicated well to the adat community in the process of mapping. this lack of understanding the map, its legality, and how it can be used causes conflict among the members of clans and villages. over-simplification of the importance of participatory mapping by the ngos has contributed to the problem. participatory mapping has become a generic prescription for all adat communities struggling for their lands, whether or not the resulting maps are recognized by the government. the promotion of participatory mapping by indonesian ngos follows an international ngo movement, which also actively supports and funds the local ngos working with adat communities in the mifee project. although the ngos believe that the maps produced from participatory mapping can be used to gain land formalization, and even land titling from the government, they have not considered the possible problems that these maps may cause. conclusion participatory mapping has been considered as an important mechanism for adat communities in their struggle to claim rights to customary land. this perception is boosted by ngos in indonesia who also advocate on behalf of the marind anim indigenous people in merauke. they believe that participatory mapping can stop the land grabbing taking place under the mifee project in merauke district, papua, and protect the adat land of the marind anim. through an analysis of the land grabbing as well as the subsequent participatory mapping processes in three villages in the mifee area, this article has shown that, contrary to the intended purpose, participatory mapping has initiated problems. first, it has caused fragmentation and conflict among adat communities. second, the legal recognition of adat land through land formalization has led to the co-optation of adat land by companies and/or the state. usually, the key problem for a company is the vagueness that surrounds adat land ownership. participatory mapping renders visible the clear ownership of adat land, making it easier for a company to identify the target of negotiation for land. in addition, once a parcel of adat land is fixed as land owned by one person, adat land can be easily transferred into private land and can then be more easily leased by legal means. it is often forgotten that not only the adat communities themselves and ngos, but also investors want legal recognition for adat communities. traditional communities 103gaining recognition through participatory mapping? are always seen as obstacles to development and are difficult to target for investors. legal recognition makes it easier for them to find the target person with whom the company representative has to speak and negotiate. thus, it can be said that participatory mapping is creating a new space for legal land grabbing. for adat land ownership, land formalization and titling could become a trap for adat communities and endanger their livelihoods. after land titling, adat land can be transferred, mortgaged, and sold in a legally-binding fashion, a process already observed in cambodia (milne, 2013) and in the philippines (crisologo-mendoza & prillbrett, 2009). it is therefore not impossible that adat land will cease to exist and that private land ownership will become the dominant land ownership regime in papua. in this sense, participatory mapping may become a new instrument to accelerate legal land grabbing and create new conflicts between members of adat communities. the new government under president jokowi intends to continue the agricultural expansion in merauke. the central government is planning to open another 1.2 million ha for rice cultivation. to clarify the status of the land, jokowi released the one map policy. the policy aims to create one map as a basis for spatial planning and for the release of all further investment permits. considering that adat land has always been an obstacle for the implementation of the expansion project, can this policy be an opportunity for indigenous peoples to incorporate their traditional territories based on adat maps resulting from participation or does the mapping facilitate the investment in adat land? this question has to be considered by ngos in their support of participatory mapping.  references alhamid, h., ballard, c., & kanowski, p. 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(2011). mifee tak terjangkau angan malind: catatan atas upaya percepatan pembangunan mifee di kabupaten merauke, papua. jakarta: yayasan pusaka. about the author rosita dewi has been a researcher at the centre for political studies, indonesia institute of sciences (p2p-lipi) since 2004. she joined the research team for papua in 2005 and co-edited the book papua road map: negotiating the past, improving the present and securing the future in 2008. currently, she is a phd candidate at the graduate school of asian and african area studies, kyoto university. ► contact: ro_sita2000@yahoo.com acknowledgements i am grateful to okamoto masaaki and takeshi ito as well as two anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier versions of this paper. the research was supported by the graduate school of asian and african areas studies, kyoto university, japan. sea junction: our venue to connect on southeast asia aseas 10(2) | 271 sea junction: our venue to connect on southeast asia patrick mccormick ► mccormick, p. (2017) sea junction: our venue to connect on southeast asia. austrian journal of southeast asian studies, 10(2), 271-274. the southeast asia junction (sea junction) is a ‘knowledge venue’, an event space, a hub, a gallery, and a library with the goal of fostering understanding and appreciation of southeast asia, from arts and crafts to the economy, politics, and development. as a space, sea junction provides knowledge resources and promotes exchanges among students, specialists, and the general public. sea junction opened its doors on 15 may 2016 in the bangkok arts and culture center (bacc) in the siam area of downtown bangkok. the bacc holds a strategic location close to major universities and is easily accessible to the general public and visitors. the physical space is an open library or ‘reading room’ for books in english and regional languages; work stations also let visitors use online resources. the space is not all books: arts and crafts from around the region decorate the space and show visitors some of its cultural richness, from papier-mâché figures from the philippines and burma to the paintings of emerging regional artists. making resources available is the first priority of sea junction, an ‘intellectual salon’ open to all and free of charge. anyone can come and have a cup of coffee or tea, take a look at the books, browse art objects, and participate in activities such as lectures and workshops. staff and volunteers operate the reading room six days a week (from tuesdays to sunday). so far, the library features more than 1,300 books, most of which have been catalogued, in addition to a sizeable e-library. sea junction maintains an online presence through its website www.seajunction.org, which also provides a space for photographic essays and opinion pieces. through the website, facebook, and twitter, sea junction gathers and shares information on conferences, courses, and fellowships of interest to academics and practitioners. underlying sea junction is the idea of networking: both for users and for people who share their knowledge and experience through lectures, books or other modes of communication. this is a space for all kinds of people to make personal contacts, whether they are artists, intellectuals or representatives of groups and organizations, from the region itself or from elsewhere. a great priority of sea junction is on events; from photographic exhibitions to panel discussions, to show the richness of the region and also the challenges it faces. sea junction is thus neither wholly about arts and culture, nor about development, politics, or economics. being in bangkok provides a central location within southeast asia for exchanges amongst people from the region and beyond. music performances and film screenings have profiled emerging artists, intellectuals, and practitioners from the region, while southeast asia-related events have featured both asean-wide phenomena, such as migration, medical tourism, human rights, and country-specific events which would normally be im dialog  in dialogue w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 17 .2 -1 0 272 | aseas 10(2) sea junction: our venue to connect on southeast asia difficult to find outside their countries of origin. the larger meeting spaces of the bacc also allow sea junction to offer more formal programs, including meetings, seminars, lectures, and large exhibitions. in the last year alone, sea junction has held public lectures, including: ‘in search of social justice along the myanmar and china oil and gas pipeline’, ‘chinese tourism in southeast asia: a blessing for all?’, and ‘lgbt rights under siege in indonesia’. photo exhibitions have included ‘harsh life on shore: migrant workers in the thai fishing industry’, and ‘facing trance in indonesia’. for music, there were angklung classes and a concert of the bang khnai music band. one of the documentary screenings was of ‘pulau buru: tanah air beta’ (‘buru island: my homeland’) and involved talks by director rahung nasution and producer whisnu yonar. other events included potluck parties, mini book fairs, and book launches, while some such as classes for students fell under the rubric of ‘outreach’. recently a group from a nursing school in indonesia came to sea junction and gave a class on the impact of regional integration on health. behind sea junction stands the anthropologist and international development specialist, dr. rosalia sciortino, or ‘lia’, who has lived and worked in the region for the past twenty-five years. before starting sea junction, lia worked extensively in the foundation and development world, including as regional director for asia at the rockefeller foundation in thailand, the international development research centre in singapore, senior advisor to ausaid in indonesia, and as a ford foundation officer in indonesia and the philippines. she has held managerial positions for projects through the canadian and australian governments, working on issues of health and migration. more recently, she has been teaching as an associate professor at the institute for population and social research (ipsr) at mahidol university in bangkok, and is also a visiting professor for the master course in international development studies (maids) at chulalongkorn university. during her work and decades-long experience in southeast asia, lia has seen the need for a center of exchange for the region. she has observed how those centers that do exist are only inside universities and are usually not open to the general public, lia says. through my years working with the ford foundation, idrc and the rockefeller foundation and the many programs to better understand and address emerging challenges in the region, i felt there was a gap between the production of knowledge in academic centers, international and government agencies and civil society groups and the distribution to intended beneficiaries. a lot of southeast asia centers are in universities, but they are not accessible to the public. more importantly, the knowledge is not shared widely to ensure informed public debates. the few open venues in the region do not have a special focus on southeast asia and do not encourage conversations and exchanges on regional concerns between all the people involved. after the asean economic community was launched in 2015, lia saw how crucial it was to share knowledge about regional processes and their impact to ensure greater awareness. the emergence of the economic community represents a gradual shift among the countries and peoples of the region, who have aseas 10(2) | 273 patrick mccormick started thinking about their regional neighbors instead of distant, powerful countries in europe and north america. the long-term disconnect means that people in any one country often do not have a clear understanding of the realities in the countries next door. decades of ideology, popular media, textbooks, and curricula that emphasize historical grievances, often further distort the picture of one’s neighbors. the vision to create the sea junction was not lia’s alone. she shared her passion for the region, its people, and its arts and cultures with her husband o’ong maryono, an instructor and practitioner of the indonesian martial art, pencak silat. they saw the need to preserve the diversity of cultural expression that was threatened by nationalism and extremism. the two of them had also amassed a sizeable collection of local art and furniture, a reflection of their multicultural vision, and they sought a suitable venue to display it. then o’ong died of appendix cancer in 2013. partly to re-engage with the world after her loss, but also to commemorate her late husband and their life together, lia decided to manifest their shared passion for the region with a place where people could experience the richness of southeast asia and its arts and crafts, while also learning about its realities and challenges. “making the sea junction was a crucial part of the grieving process,” lia said recently. support from like-minded individuals has been crucial; sea junction is sustained through a system of ‘founding partners’ who donated usd 2,500 each or pledged usd 900 a year for 3 years. they come from different countries and backgrounds, but share a common interest in southeast asia and a readiness to share their knowledge, expertise and extensive and varied networks. sea junction has also benefitted from the generosity of smaller donations from individuals known as friends of sea junction, and grants from partners asia, the heinrich böll stiftung, and the kennedy foundation of thailand. the book collection has been built through the donation of books from many people, especially alan feinstein, executive director of the american indonesian exchange foundation in jakarta, who is also a former colleague and family friend. today sea junction stands as a symbol of collective efforts and shared values. reflecting lia’s own interests and networks, many of the events have focused on indonesia, providing a rare opportunity for people of thailand and the rest of mainland southeast asia to be exposed to their island neighbors. at the same time, lia is very much interested in expanding coverage of the region in all areas, and is always looking for experts and practitioners both from inside and outside the region for events. lia, her staff, and all the founding partners of sea junction would like to extend a warm welcome to everyone to come and visit, make use of the library and other resources, take part in events, consider holding a lecture or workshop, or contribute to its running and activities. anyone interested is encouraged to contact sea junction directly. address: sea junction room 408, 4th floor bangkok arts and culture center (bacc) 939 rama 1 road, pathum wan bangkok 10130, thailand email: southeastasiajunction@gmail.com website: www.seajunction.org 274 | aseas 10(2) sea junction: our venue to connect on southeast asia about the author patrick mccormick is currently an indpendent researcher in yangon, myanmar. he has worked a three and a half-year project funded by the swiss national science foundation through the department of comparative linguistics, university of zürich, and as representative of the école française d’extrême-orient (efeo) in yangon. ► contact: mccormick.yangon@gmail.com acknowledgements a previous version of this article has been published by the international institute for asian studies: mccormick, p. (2017). sea junction: our venue to connect on southeast asia, the newsletter #78, p. 48. leiden: international institute for asian studies. retrieved from https://iias.asia/the-newsletter/article/sea-junction-our-venue-connect-southeast-asia. analyzing international migrant responses to crisis situations in the context of floods in thailand aseas 10(2) | 257 analyzing international migrant responses to crisis situations in the context of floods in thailand teeranong sakulsri, reena tadee, & alexander trupp ► sakulsri, t., tadee, r., & trupp, a. (2017). analyzing international migrant responses to crisis situations in the context of floods in thailand. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 10(2), 257-264. the 2011 floods in thailand were one of the most devastating disasters in the history of the country and affected migrants in several regions. the purpose of this paper is to analyze migrant responses in crisis situations and to assess the impact of the 2011 floods on migrants from myanmar, lao pdr, cambodia, and vietnam. the authors argue that such migrant groups have a weaker social, economic, and political position when compared with local (non-migrant) groups and are thus facing particular vulnerabilities in crisis situations. this paper is based on desk research and empirical data collection consisting of 55 semi-structured interviews. keywords: crisis; floods; migrants; thailand; vulnerability  introduction the results presented in this paper derive from the larger european union-funded project migrants in countries in crisis (micic): supporting an evidence-based approach for effective and cooperative state action which focuses mainly on postcrisis issues, primarily on the situations after a specific crisis event, including both natural disasters and civil unrest (hendow, pailey, & bravi, 2016). while the overall micic thailand project analyzes the response to the crisis by different stakeholders including government authorities, intergovernmental organizations, and civil society organizations (bravi et al., 2017), this article predominantly discusses experiences of and responses by members of migrant communities in a flood crisis context. in 2011, thailand suffered its worst flooding in more than a half century. the floods, which lasted from july 2011 to january 2012, affected more than six million hectares of land in 66 of the country’s 77 provinces and impacted more than 13 million people (world bank, 2012). the flooding was categorized as a level 4 which is the highest level on the country’s disaster management scale. several factors caused the flood situation in thailand. these factors include the tropical storms coming late in the rainy season, poorly planned infrastructure, land filling for urban/commercial and industrial growth, degraded water canals in urban areas, and construction along river banks. at the time of the flood, approximately 3.5 million migrant workers were living in thailand (benfield, 2011) with the majority of them from cambodia, myanmar, and lao pdr. according to the official statistics reported by undp and the world bank, as of september 2011, over forschungswerkstatt  research workshop w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 17 .2 -8 258 | aseas 10(2) analyzing international migrant responses to crisis situations in the context of floods in thailand 870,000 migrants (excluding unregistered migrant workers) lived and worked in provinces that were affected by the floods. however, despite the lack of statistical information on the undocumented migrants, it was noted that up to around one million migrants (including both documented and undocumented) were working and living in the flooded areas as estimated by the ministry of labour (koser, 2014). migrant workers in thailand are particularly vulnerable groups in crisis situations, primarily because of their political and socioeconomic status in thailand (bravi et al., 2017). a crisis can be defined as “a situation faced by an individual, group or organization which they are unable to cope with by the use of routine procedures and in which stress is created by sudden change” (booth, 2015, p. 86). against this background, this paper analyzes migrant responses in crisis situations and examines the impact of the 2011 floods in thailand on migrants from myanmar, lao pdr, cambodia, and vietnam. the migration context thailand has experienced a transformative process of shifting from a rural-based to an urban-based society and to an export-oriented and labor intensive economy with higher incomes and wage levels than most neighboring countries. this has led to a growing demand for low-skilled labor, especially from lao pdr, cambodia, myanmar, and vietnam (huguet & punpuing, 2005). in spite of this high demand for migrant labor, thailand features restrictive employment regulations for low-skilled migrants (sciortino & punpuing, 2009). this lack of formal regulation created many informal migration channels and “subversive mobilities” (cohen, cohen, & li, 2017) – often supported by brokers or smugglers – to bring unregistered migrants to the country. over the past 25 years, major policy changes affecting the administration of migrant workers have taken place (chamchan & apipornchaisakul, 2016). migration and registration policies shape the legal statuses of thailand’s migrant population according to the following categories (archanvanikul, 2014): 1) unregistered / registered migrant workers without work permits, 2) registered migrant workers with work permits, 3) registered migrants who are approved by the nationality verification (nv) program, and 4) migrant workers who entered the country under the memorandum of understanding (mou). the first two groups are considered to be irregular migrant workers (the first one because they do not have a work permit and the second group because of their incomplete national verification), while the third group includes migrants regularly living in thailand, but may comprise regular or irregular workers depending on whether their employment is authorized or not. the migrants included in the last group are considered to be regular migrant workers (sasiwongsaroj, 2014). the criteria of the migrants’ status ranging from undocumented to the obtainment of a temporary work permit and the formal channels of nv or a mou is important as it impacts the freedom of movement as well as the migrants’ general rights in thailand. undocumented migrants can be detained when crossing provincial or national borders if they are stopped by police or immigration officials and thus constitute the most vulnerable group. aseas 10(2) | 259 teeranong sakulsri, reena tadee, & alexander trupp research methods and data sample the micic project was conducted in collaboration between the institute for population and social research (ipsr), mahidol university, and the international centre for migration policy development (icmpd). ipsr acted as local research partner in thailand and conducted the majority of the interviews. semi-structured in-depth interview guidelines were developed covering interview themes such as socio-demographic background, migration experience, legal status, realization of and information about the floods, migrant responses, role of family and relatives left-behind, employer’s response, response and reactions of others within thailand, unequal treatment, and future plans. the guidelines were translated into the native languages and the interviewers translated into respondents’ language where appropriate during the interview. the fieldwork was carried out from march 27 until june 28, 2016 and took place in those provinces (samut sakhon, pathum thani, nonthaburi, nakhon pathom, ayutthaya) that were highly affected by the floods and that featured a high concentration of migrant populations from the four neighboring countries (beesey, limsakul, & mcdougall, 2016). a total of 55 migrants from myanmar (28 respondents), lao pdr (6), cambodia (11), and vietnam (10) were interviewed in-depth. about one quarter of respondents in this study hold only a passport or a national identification card but no work permit for thailand. responses to and impacts of the crisis this section discusses how migrants perceived, experienced, and responded to the 2011 crisis situation. migrants’ responses can be divided – according to the time frame – into migrants’ responses before, during, and after the flood event. this paper, however, focuses on migrant responses during the flooding and presents selected findings in the following paragraphs. deciding to stay the majority of the interviewed migrants stayed in thailand throughout the crisis time. the reasons for not returning home during the flood are manifold and relate to the following factors: moving across provinces was risky for undocumented migrants as they feared arrest; travelling home during the crisis was difficult due to the partial shutdown of roads in the flooded areas as well as the expensive nature of transportation, and the migrants interviewed reported that hardly any assistance for returning home was available or offered to them; migrants underestimated the severity of the flood and then it became too difficult to leave once the floods struck. finally, fear of losing their jobs and sources of income also deterred migrants from leaving because they either had debt to pay or they did not want to return home; some stayed because they could earn extra money working during the floods. the size of migrants’ households in thailand also played a role in their decision to return, as travelling was more complicated and costly: “i did not think about moving back to myanmar. my family was here. also, transportation is way too expensive for all of us” (female migrant from myanmar aged 34). 260 | aseas 10(2) analyzing international migrant responses to crisis situations in the context of floods in thailand desk research, on the other hand, illustrates that several thousand migrants returned to their home countries because of the floods. according to migrant workers groups, thousands of migrants from myanmar evacuated flooded industrial parks in the provinces of ayutthaya, nakhon sawan, nakhon pathom, and pathum thani in the second half of 2011 (undocumented workers exploited post-floods, 2011). in november 2011, aid workers estimated that about 600,000 migrant workers were stranded due to the floods (koser, 2014). iom reported that the flood crisis of 2011 forced many migrant workers in thailand to flee flood-affected areas and return to their respective countries of origin (huguet & chamratrithirong, 2011). preparedness and awareness the risk perception of migrants before the flood is mainly related to information and awareness about the crisis. in terms of information and awareness about the 2011 floods, migrants can roughly be divided into two groups. first, several interviewed migrants stated that they were surprised by the floods and only realized the severity when they had already happened. actually, i had no idea. i went to work on that day and nobody informed me or warned me about the flood. until i came back from work, the flood had already attacked the market. i was completely shocked (female migrant from cambodia aged 24). the lack of information and preparedness pertained especially to migrants unable to read and speak thai (exclusion due to language barriers) and to those who were not embedded in a thai social environment (segregation by ethnicity or nationality and socioeconomic factors). migrants without registration or work permits tended to stay at their workplace or home to avoid problems. these migrants knew very little of what was going on in their host country because they lacked a social network, were unable to understand thai, were without access to radio or tv, and rarely went out. during the floods, information was broadcasted via radio and tv and also spread by megaphone in the main streets by volunteers or aid workers. thus, many migrants missed important information. they had a lower perception of the danger. the second category refers to migrants who can understand and communicate in thai and are socially better integrated into thai society. they were better informed and demonstrated a stronger awareness of and preparedness for the floods, having received the news from various media, from their employers, and other people they talked to. interviewed migrants stated that they thus tried to protect their homes, blocking them from the floods. they also tried to secure their valuables and bought a stock of food and drinking water beforehand. moving within thailand as the water had begun to submerge their places of residence, the common immediate responses among most respondents included moving (oneself as well as one’s belongings) to an upper floor or a friend or relative’s house. moving was a common aseas 10(2) | 261 teeranong sakulsri, reena tadee, & alexander trupp approach adopted by migrants who were affected by the flood. while some chose to return to their home country at the time of the flood, others moved to other areas in thailand that were not flooded. the different strategies of moving within thailand ranged from moving to a higher floor within the same house or building, moving to friends’ houses or apartments in other areas, to moving to available government shelters. some migrants also mentioned using higher elevated areas such as bridges as temporary shelter during the flood. experiences of unequal treatment and (fear of) discrimination generally, migrant respondents reported having experienced more discrimination in everyday life in thailand than during the flood. even though interviewees stated that they did not experience discrimination during the flood due to their national, ethnic or migrant status, the research team documented cases of denial of assistance by assistance groups and member of the thai mainstream society dependent on these statuses. discrimination outside the flood context occurred in various everyday life situations. interview partners reported daily life situations where thai people did not want to have food with migrant workers, did not want to sit in the bus next to them, and generally disrespected them, including situations where they experienced discrimination and unequal treatment in terms of income. i tell you the truth that i have been staying here for 16 years; i have never felt that i have a citizenship here. … i said the truth that although i and (other) laborers are good people, nobody respects us (male migrant from vietnam aged 50). although the majority of respondents state that the level of discrimination they experienced during the flood crisis was lower than during ‘outside-flood’ contexts, some discrimination and unequal treatment based on legal status, national background, race-physical appearance, and language could be identified: “yes. (i was discriminated against), the thai people who came for distributing donations didn’t give me the life aid bags because i am a migrant” (female migrant from vietnam aged 44). especially when personal ‘crisis situations during the flood crisis’ appeared, the vulnerability of undocumented migrants became obvious. for instance, an undocumented migrant from cambodia had her belongings stolen by her landlord during the crisis. due to the combination of being a migrant and lacking documentation/ legal status in thailand, she did not dare to report her case to the police. moreover, myanmar migrants reported cases of detainment of undocumented migrants who tried to cross provincial or international borders during the crisis. crisis as chance while the flood created many obstacles for affected migrants, this paper also aims to shed light on positive experiences of migrants as well as on migrants’ agency and contributions during the crisis time. first, for a few of the respondents, the crisis situation opened the opportunity for new experiences and even constituted some kind 262 | aseas 10(2) analyzing international migrant responses to crisis situations in the context of floods in thailand of entertainment, fun or diversion from everyday working life, at least in its initial stages. one undocumented migrant from myanmar knew that there would not be any id checks in his area during the flood situation. therefore, when the water was still high he swam out through the floods to a large supermarket, an area he would usually not dare to visit out of fear of arrest by thai authorities (personal communication, male migrant from myanmar aged 26). second, for a minority of interviewees the flood brought about economic benefits. although some migrants were not able to continue working during the flood, some even found additional jobs and turned the crisis situation into an opportunity. before and at the beginning of the flood crisis, many migrants were hired to help by moving belongings to higher/elevated places where they would not be damaged by the flood. and when the flood subsided, they were once again hired to help clean up the houses. third, situations of crisis do not only show the vulnerability of migrants but also their agency and their contributions to crisis management efforts. migrants contributed to tackling the crisis before, after, and during the flood. they supported the building of walls that protected houses and factories before the flood and supported the clean-up and reconstruction processes after the flood. furthermore, respondents also mentioned that they gained a sense of belonging during the crisis as they were able to help thai people and felt more included. do you know, i even helped the soldiers and thai citizens to make anti-flood dams. i lived like a thai citizen and i felt that i have responsibility to support neighbors to prevent the flood (male migrant from vietnam aged 50). however, the same interviewees who mentioned this newfound inclusion or sense of belonging also noted that it could not be sustained after the floods. on the contrary, these migrants actually perceived a return to old patterns of everyday exclusion from thai society after the crisis. conclusion the present research shows that due to language barriers, lack of social embeddedness and underestimation of the impact of the impending floods, migrants were inadequately prepared for the crisis. most of the migrants interviewed stayed in thailand during the emergency as they lacked the means to return to their country of origin, feared arrest due to their undocumented status or they did not consider returning an option because their livelihoods were based in thailand. forms of migrant discrimination were reported before, during, and after the flood crisis. results also show that social relations on local and translocal level help coping with hazards (greiner & sakdapolrak, 2013). at the same time, a minority of interviewed migrants turned the crisis into an opportunity to earn additional income while their jobs and regular incomes were suspended. some also felt more included and better embedded into the thai community as they played crucial roles in helping to tackle the flood. the situation had therefore increased their sense of belonging and portrayed migrants as not only victims but also agents at the time of the flood. aseas 10(2) | 263 teeranong sakulsri, reena tadee, & alexander trupp further developments and outputs of the migrants in countries in crisis project can be accessed through the project website: http://research.icmpd.org/projects/ migration-governance/micic/  references archanvanikul, k. (2014). classification of transnational migrant workers from myanmar, cambodia, and lao pdr [original in thai]. population and development newsletter, 33, 1–2. beesey, a., limsakul, s., & mcdougall, e. (2016). hazard exposure and vulnerability of migrants in thailand. geneva: iom. benfield, a. (2011). thailand floods event recap report. impact forecasting march 2012. impact forecasting. retrieved from http://thoughtleadership.aonbenfield.com/documents/201110_ab_apac_thailand_ floods_update.pdf booth, s. a. (2015). crisis management strategy: competition and change in modern enterprises. new york: routledge. bravi, a., schaur, k., trupp, a., sakulsri, t., tadee, r., apipornchaisakul, k., & punpuing, s. (2017). migrants in countries in crisis. thailand case study. migration and natural disasters – the impact on migrants of the 2011 floods. vienna: international centre for migration policy development. chamchan, c., & apipornchaisakul, k. (2016). health security for cross-border migrants in thailand: where have we been? proceedings of the xii ipsr annual conference (pp. 15-35). salaya: institute for population and social research. cohen, e., cohen, s. a., & li, x. (2017). subversive mobilities. applied mobilities 2(2), 1-19. greiner, c., & sakdapolrak, p. (2013). translocality: concepts, applications and emerging research perspectives. geography compass, 7(5), 373-384. hendow, m., pailey, r. n., & bravi, a. (2016). migrants in countries in crisis. emerging findings. a comparative study of six crisis situations. vienna: international centre for migration policy development (icmpd). huguet, j.w., & punpuing, s. (2005). international migration in thailand. bangkok: iom. huguet, j.w., & chamratrithirong, a. (2011). thailand migration report. migration for development in thailand. overview and tools for policymakers. bangkok: iom. koser, k. (2014). protecting non-citizens in situations of conflict, violence and disaster. in s.f. martin, s. weerasinghe, & a. taylor (eds.), humanitarian crises and migration: causes, consequences and responses (pp. 267-286). london: routledge. sasiwongsaroj, k (2014). irregular migrant workers from cambodia, laos, and myanmar in thailand: trends, policies, and the difficulties they face. in k. husa, a. trupp, & h. wohlschlägl (eds.), southeast asian mobility transitions. issues and trends in tourism and migration (pp. 54–82). vienna: institut für geographie und regionalforschung. sciortino, r., & punpuing, s. (2009). international migration in thailand. bangkok: iom. undocumented workers exploited post-floods. (2011, november 8). irin news. retrieved from http:// www.irinnews.org/report/94162/myanmar-thailand-undocumented-workers-exploited-post-floods world bank (2012). thai flood 2011. rapid assessment for resilient recovery and reconstruction planning. bangkok: the world bank. about the authors teeranong sakulsri is a lecturer at the institute for population and social research (ipsr), mahidol university, thailand, and holds a phd in population education from mahidol university. her research focuses on environment, disaster, spatial demography, and migration. ► contact: teeranong.sak@mahidol.edu 264 | aseas 10(2) analyzing international migrant responses to crisis situations in the context of floods in thailand reena tadee holds a master’s degree in asian studies from lund university, sweden. she is currently a researcher at the institute for population and social research (ipsr), mahidol university, thailand. her areas of research interest include labor and migration and sexuality, gender, and reproductive health. ► contact: reena.tad@mahidol.edu alexander trupp is a senior lecturer at the school of tourism and hospitality management (sthm), the university of the south pacific (usp). he previously worked at the institute for population and social research (ipsr), mahidol university, thailand. alexander holds a phd in theoretical and applied geography from the university of vienna and conducts research in the fields of human geography, migration, and tourism, especially in asia-pacific regional contexts. ► contact: alexander.trupp@usp.ac.fj acknowledgements this project migrants in countries in crisis: supporting an evidence-based approach for effective and cooperative state action was funded from the european union under the grant agreement from the international centre for migration policy development (icmpd). the findings are based on the project report by bravi, a., schaur, k., trupp, a., sakulsri, t., tadee, r., apipornchaisakul, k., & punpuing, s. (2017). migrants in countries in crisis. thailand case study. migration and natural disasters – the impact on migrants of the 2011 floods, vienna: international centre for migration policy development. aseas 11(1) | 157 book review: robinson, b. g. (2018). the killing season. a history of the indonesian massacres, 1965-66. princeton: princeton university press. isbn 9780691161389. 429 pages. ► duile, t. (2018). book review: robinson, b. g. (2018). the killing season. a history of the indonesian massacres, 1965-66. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 11(1), 157-159. more than half a century after the bloody eradication of the indonesian communist party (partai komunis indonesia, pki), irrational fears of alleged communists still haunt the archipelago. in recent years, a coalition of the military and conservative muslim groups has increased its efforts to keep these imagined enemies alive in order to discredit any endeavors to come to terms with the past. while there have been previous efforts by civil society organizations and even by the national commission of human rights to seek the truth, recent years have seen a setback for reconciliation. narratives originating from the suharto era have been revitalized to depict the pki as a latent threat to the nation. in this political context, it is a pleasant fact that the academic debate continues. geoffrey b. robinson, professor at the department of history at the university of california in los angeles and expert in the study of genocide and human rights as well as in modern indonesian history, has recently contributed to this debate with his book the killing season. a history of the massacres, 196566. after providing a brief overview of the history of the mass killings and the preliminary events, the author critically discusses patterns of explanation in academic and non-academic discourse in the first chapter. in doing so, robinson stresses the importance of cultural, psychological, and socio-economic factors for the killings. however, the author also points out the shortcoming of these approaches. cultural approaches such as patters of “running amok”, for instance, are criticized for being reductionist and unable to explain the program of mass arbitrary detention that lasted even after the killings had come to an end. socioeconomic explanations, to draw on another example, are said to be unable to explain why these tensions escalated to mass killings. additionally, the international context is taken into account: while repudiating analyses that state that the mass killings were mainly a result of a conspiracy by foreign forces such as the mi6 (secret intelligence service) and cia (central intelligence agency) – a popular approach among leftist circles in indonesia – robinson nevertheless argues that “in the absence of support from powerful states and in a different international context, the army’s program of mass killings and incarceration would not have happened” (p. 22). the international context plays a considerable role throughout the book and robinson dedicates chapter 4 (cold war) to the international circumstances and chapter 7 (a gleam of light in asia) to the role of foreign forces. he argues that western states, especially the united states and the united kingdom, played a crucial role and it can be shown that even long before the coup, western forces sought to delegitimize indonesia’s first rezensionen  book reviews w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 18 .1 -1 0 158 | aseas 11(1) book review: robinson, b. g. (2018). the killing season. a history of the indonesian massacres, 1965-66. president sukarno and the pki by both supporting and encouraging anti-communist parties. robinson shows that following the alleged coup of 30 september 1965, foreign forces have facilitated the violence against the pki in economic, military, and logistic matters. taking into account cold war politics, he shows that western powers contributed to the rewriting of the events and indonesian history by the army. it is not just cold war conditions that fueled tensions between communists and anti-communists in indonesia. the split between the soviet union and china, and sukarno’s decision to ally with china, are, according to robinson, the main reasons why the soviet union was reluctant to protect fellow communists in indonesia. additionally, the author points out that international institutions and networks within civil society concerned with human rights were still weak at that time. the killings therefore gained almost no attention on the international stage. historical conditions, as robinson stresses, are also crucial to understand the developments in indonesia after the alleged coup. in chapter 2, the author provides an overview of these conditions and points out several of their features, namely the ideological split between communist and right-wing factions within the indonesian revolution, narratives depicting the pki as hostile to the nation, militarism resulting from the process of state formation, the army’s tradition of working together with civilian militia, and the historical precondition of mass mobilization and militancy within indonesian politics prior to 1965. the main part of the book, however, deals with the role of the indonesian army. the author proves that the pattern of violence suggests a pivotal role for the army’s leadership in provoking tensions between pki and pki-affiliated organizations on the one hand and religious and other right-wing forces on the other hand. similar patterns can be found when it comes to the way in which mass killings, arrests, tortures, rapes, and other crimes in collaboration with paramilitaries and militias were facilitated and organized. this is illuminated in detail in chapters 5, 6, and 8. contrary to the hegemonic narrative in indonesia that the violence was a rather spontaneous outbreak of amok of the people against the communists, and, unlike approaches stressing socio-economic conditions, robinson instead focuses on the army’s role which is an important contribution to the indonesian debate. chapter 9 deals with the efforts of the new order regime to stigmatize and control former prisoners and alleged communists. finally, in chapter 10, measures for reconciliation and truth seeking in post-suharto indonesia (with a focus on recent years) are discussed, as well as the successful efforts of the anti-communist coalition of politicians, military officials, religious authorities, and paramilitary groups. the final chapter of the book provides a conclusion and discusses the legacies of the killings. it becomes clear throughout the book that the main lines of argumentation and the focus on the army, international contexts, and historical conditions are highly influenced by the author’s academic background as he is an expert not only on genocides and mass violence in general but also on indonesian history. indeed, robinson shows his profound expertise in his detailed explanations. i found robinson’s book a very interesting read, offering new insights especially when it comes to the military’s role. a profound insight into the army’s norms and patterns of behavior and perception (what robinson terms “institutional culture”), and the repertoire of aseas 11(1) | 159 timo duile violence inherent in that institutional culture can also help to explain more recent developments in indonesian politics. these insights are most of all important for the indonesian discussion, since a large part of the population still perceives the army as the nation’s savior and a critical view of the army is discussed only in limited circles of leftist activists and among very few scholars. therefore, an indonesian translation of robinson’s work would be highly desirable. from a political economic perspective, however, the minor discussion of socioeconomic conditions could be criticized. it would be misleading to stress the role of the army or the international circumstances at the expense of socio-economic conditions, since the latter falls into a different category of claims. the category of socio-economic conditions might rather fit into what robinson terms “historical condition”. here, the author discusses important components of a political perspective. he does so convincingly and in great detail, but rather in a manner of discussing ideologies, worldviews, and the army’s self-conception according to its history. adding more information about economic tensions, for instance, between peasants and plantation workers on the one hand and local aristocrats, islamic institutions, and the military on the other, could enrich the analysis of the historical conditions leading to the mass killings and incarceration. regarding the historical conditions, it could also be added that the split between communist and religious forces was not the only or even the main condition, at least at the beginning. emerging from the struggle for independence, there were plenty of efforts to merge islam and communism of which sukarno’s concept of nasakom (an acronym of nasionalisme, agama (religion) and komunisme) is only the most well-known (e.g., cribb & kahin, 2004, pp. 286-287). in conclusion, robinson’s work is a valuable contribution to the ongoing debate on the 1965 events that draws on a rich body of primary and secondary sources. the book is an easy read when it comes to language and an enlightening read when it comes to the details of army operation and strategies. it is a must-read for indonesianists, and many parts of the book might also draw the attention of people dedicated to genocide and military studies in general. timo duile institute of oriental and asian studies, university of bonn  references cribb, r., & kahin, a. (2004). historical dictionary of indonesia. lanham: the scarecrow press. seeing indonesia from behind bars: an interview with vannessa hearman antje missbach ► missbach, a. (2014). seeing indonesia from behind bars: an interview with vannessa hearman. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 7(2), 237-242. in the aftermath of the 1965 military coup that brought right-wing general suharto to power in indonesia, (para)military death squads killed between half and one million alleged communists (especially union members, landless farmers, and intellectuals). vannessa hearman completed her doctoral thesis at the university of melbourne on the 1965–1968 anti-communist killings and violence in east java, and the new order regime’s struggle to win acceptance following the killings. she is currently a lecturer at the department of indonesian studies, university of sydney. in one of her current research projects, she is researching transnational activist and friendship networks born out of letters written by and to political prisoners incarcerated between 1965 and 1985 as part of the anticommunist persecution in indonesia. in this interview, conducted in perth, australia, in july 2014, vannessa hearman speaks about political prisoners in indonesia under the suharto regime, their exchange of letters with pen friends around the globe, and what can be learned from these letters until today.  nach dem militärputsch 1965, der dem rechtsstehenden general suharto in indonesien an die macht verhalf, töteten (para)militärische todesschwadronen zwischen einer halben und einer million vermeintlicher kommunistinnen (vor allem gewerkschaftsmitglieder, landlose bauern und bäuerinnen und intellektuelle). vannessa hearman schrieb ihre doktorarbeit an der universität melbourne über den antikommunistischen genozid und die gewalt zwischen 1965 und 1968 in ost-java und die bemühung des „new order“regimes, akzeptanz im anschluss an die gewaltakte zu gewinnen. derzeit unterrichtet sie am department of indonesian studies der universität sydney. in einem ihrer derzeitigen forschungsprojekte untersucht sie transnationale aktivistinnenund freundschaftsnetzwerke, die aus briefen von und für politische gefangene entstanden, die zwischen 1965 und 1985 als teil der antikommunistischen verfolgung inhaftiert waren. in diesem interview, das im juli 2014 in perth, australien, geführt wurde, spricht vannessa hearman über politische gefangene in indonesien während des suharto-regimes, ihren austausch mit brieffreundinnen rund um den globus und was wir aus diesen briefen bis heute lernen können. im dialog  in dialogue w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 14 .2 -7 238 antje missbach  aseas 7(2) antje missbach: having just listened to your presentation, one of the political prisoners whom you are currently researching is gatot lestario. can you tell us a bit more about this man and why you are so interested in his destiny? vannessa hearman: gatot lestario was imprisoned under suharto’s new order regime in 1969, accused of attempting to resurrect the banned indonesian communist party (pki, partai komunis indonesia). he was executed by a firing squad in pamekasan, east java, in 1985. prior to his imprisonment, lestario was a teacher and a member of the pki’s regional committee in east java. while imprisoned, lestario engaged in a substantial amount of letter writing to pen friends around the globe. studying these letters reveals the personal thoughts of a former activist and teacher when facing death and provides an insight into his political ideas and how he imagined a better future for his country. although not exiled in the strictest meaning of the word, lestario was cut off from his former networks. removed from his family and his professional career, in these letters, lestario, as a representative of the indonesian left, discussed his ideas with his pen friends and in return received compassion and support. after his execution, his pen friends initiated a political prisoner fund to support former prisoners and their families, and in 1986, published the last years of gatot lestario, a book with his letters. missbach: as a historian, in your previous research projects you have relied extensively on oral history and personal testimonies that you have collected from survivors, both witnesses and victims. how did you come across the letters from lestario? hearman: in 2010, i received a grant from the australian netherlands research collaboration scheme, which brought australian researchers to the netherlands and vice versa. i was looking for any material related to the pki at the international institute of social history (iish) in amsterdam. one of these files i consulted was a set of personal papers. in it, i found letters not only from one of my informants in east java, but also a collection of letters from gatot lestario and his wife pudjiaswati to various correspondents. i have to admit that it is strange to work with the written word, having worked intensely with the spoken word during my doctoral research. the inability to refer back to your source, your interviewee, was also somewhat novel for me. the letters are the legacies he has left behind. lestario may also have written for communist publications in east java, but i haven’t been able to trace these so far. missbach: why was lestario able to write letters while imprisoned? hearman: prisoners could receive letters and cards and there was a christmas card sending scheme that the society of friends – the quakers – organized. lestario received one of these cards from a british couple and his correspondence with them began that way. there were also supporters of amnesty international who wrote to him. his letters were subjected to censorship. not all letters were sent through official prison channels, but there were helpful guards and visitors instead who helped with conveying letters and parcels. 239seeing indonesia from behind bars missbach: assuming that life in prison was anything but bearable – how did everyday life behind bars impact on lestario’s letter writing? hearman: his daily activities were often the same, which is perhaps why his letters often discussed things outside of the prison, such as his life before prison, political events in the world, and responding to the activities of his pen friends. there were, however, festive events such as christmas, the anniversary of indonesian independence, and visits from outside which broke the monotony for prisoners and about which he often wrote. so this is to say, that conditions in the prisons as reflected in political prisoners’ own words are also valuable to document. missbach: how does this context matter when it comes to contextualizing his writings? there might have been a number of things lestario might have wanted to comment on in his letters, but had to refrain from doing so for the sake of his own safety. hearman: the extent to which he was able to express himself would have depended on the particular letter being censored or not, if it had gone through the official channels or not. of course being in prison was a highly restricted setting for letter writing. missbach: what (methodological) limitations did you encounter in analyzing these letters? hearman: to obtain more of his letters and contact more of his pen friends to gauge their responses to their correspondence with gatot lestario would be highly beneficial. amnesty international in france was very kind in helping me track down one letter writer in the northeast of france. i have managed to trace another pen friend in arizona to whom lestario wrote. it was her letters that are stored in the iish. there are also ethical issues. the letters in amsterdam led me to peter and doreen brown – the couple of pen friends in london who had compiled lestario’s letters into a book. when they heard that an australian researcher was coming from amsterdam to ask some questions about gatot lestario, they cut short their summer holiday and returned to london – that is how much they cared for this distant pen friend they once had. during the course of the day i spent with them, they could not decide among themselves whether i should have access to his letters that formed the basis of the book. they were custodians of a large bundle of letters from lestario’s other pen friends as well. in the end, they copied and sent them to me in australia, but as these letters were not addressed directly to them i would now have to seek the permission from the letters’ recipients if i were to use the letters in a publication. i would have to track down the letter writers to do this. so, it’s about dealing with ethical issues in terms of personal letters. missbach: why do you think it is important to shed light on these letters and what can be revealed through them more generally about the indonesian left? hearman: other than the letters of pramoedya ananta toer, some of which were published in the mute’s soliloquy: a memoir, indonesians do not have access to these 240 antje missbach  aseas 7(2) letters. letters prisoners wrote to their families are not publicly available, as many family members probably still feel concerned about disclosing that they had relatives in prison. the indonesian left, which was sizeable prior to 1965, was largely silenced through the imprisonment, killing, and exile of its leading figures from then onwards. this silencing of experiences was particularly true in the 1970s and 1980s, when many other prisoners were released from prison and the new order regime consolidated its rule. the fact that prisoners were active in writing to overseas pen friends, encouraging them to campaign for and support them from abroad, is therefore of interest for the history of the indonesian left. missbach: did you have a chance to meet or interview people from lestario’s political network or from his family? hearman: i met one of his political comrades in indonesia. unfortunately, before i had a chance to interview her exclusively about him, she is now largely unable to speak about him because of her advanced age. his wife pudjiaswati died of cancer in the early 1990s, shortly after her own release from prison. so far, i have not been able to trace their two children in indonesia. missbach: while imprisoned, how closely was lestario able to follow ongoing events outside of the prison walls? did he comment on them in his letters? hearman: his letters always discussed events outside of indonesia, such as the nuclear arms race, pakistan, palestine, and so on. indonesians of his generation, particularly those from the left, tended to be knowledgeable about world politics, much more than indonesians today tend to be. also, he might have had access to newspapers and probably to television while in prison. his pen friends also supplied him with information through magazines, books, and their letters. his defense speech, copies of which were made available and circulated also outside of indonesia, contextualized the suharto regime within world politics and the cold war. missbach: his pen friends overseas – what kind of people were they and how had they gotten in contact with lestario (in a world without mobile phones and internet)? hearman: they came from all walks of life, but they shared a concern for human rights, which they expressed concretely through writing to death row prisoners. they obtained his name through the society of friends (the quakers) and amnesty international networks. if he wrote back to one person, for example, that person might have also asked his or her friends to write to him. sometimes other prisoners received letters but were uninterested in letter writing, and so lestario (and others, too) might have taken over replying and adopting the writers as their pen friends instead. the pen friends were interested in gatot’s background, his family, for example, and what it was like to be in prison. gatot told them a bit about his past, his education, his previous work as a teacher, his case, and his punishment, and also what the communists were trying to do in indonesia, viewed through a 1980s human rights trope. he was very critical of the new order regime. he wrote about the prison administration, 241seeing indonesia from behind bars about growing a garden, reading and writing, and the celebrations that occurred in prison on special festive days such as indonesian independence day on 17 august or christmas. missbach: having come across such a treasure, do you plan to extend this research in the future? hearman: i have another bundle of letters written by an amnesty international member in france and a political prisoner in the same prison as gatot lestario, which i plan to analyze alongside the lestario letters. i also plan to write to more of lestario’s pen friends in order to explore their motivations in writing to him. incidentally, brenda capon, a british woman who wrote to prisoners in the same prison in the 1980s, has written a book (a sweet scent of jasmine, 2006, self-published) about the friendship she developed with these men through letters. i assume there are many such letters that many men and women all over the world are storing or have thrown away. the possibilities are endless! perhaps there are copies of letters held at the amnesty international secretariat or the society of friends house in london, but i have not explored these places as possible repositories yet. one of my major research areas is on transnational activism by indonesians during the sukarno period, which i am working on with dr. katharine mcgregor from the university of melbourne. this letter writing research has some connections to that project although it obviously deals with the post-sukarno period and the indonesian activist in this case is highly immobile and is unable to travel and campaign directly. but the methods of building connections, adapting a global message to a local context, and interpreting one’s world for others in order to motivate their action and so induce change are all common themes that this research has in common with research on transnational activism. missbach: good luck with your upcoming research endeavors and thank you for the interview! about the author antje missbach is research fellow at monash university in melbourne. she has written widely about the long-distance politics of the acehnese diaspora. currently, she is finalizing a book entitled troubled transit: asylum seekers stuck in indonesia. ► contact: antje.missbach@monash.edu political ecology and socio-ecological conflicts in southeast asia melanie pichler & alina brad ► pichler, m., & brad, a. (2016). political ecology and socio-ecological conflicts in southeast asia. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 9(1), 1-10. introduction from july 2015 onwards, forest and peat fires raged once again in indonesia, mainly on the remaining forests in sumatra and kalimantan. by the end of the year, acrid haze extended to the neighboring countries of malaysia, singapore, and thailand, releasing co 2 emissions equivalent to the annual emissions in germany and driving a public health emergency across the region. under the haze wave, everyday life in indonesia was brought to a standstill, thousands of people were evacuated, and offices and schools were closed. land clearance through slash and burn practices for industrial plantations that feed a massive global demand for palm oil and pulpwood were reported as the root cause of the fires (balch, 2015; osborn, torpey, franklin, & howard, 2015). the appropriation and control of land for these patterns of resource-based development – along with selective industrialization processes and rapid urbanization – have significantly contributed to economic growth in southeast asia. at the same time, the region – and especially marginalized groups – face the environmental and social costs of centuries of resource extraction (e.g., deforestation, water pollution, flooding, biodiversity loss, eviction of indigenous people or ethnic minorities, surge in urban poor) that give rise to resistance and conflicts against these forms of economic development. this special issue features a focus on such socio-ecological conflicts from a political ecology perspective. it brings together an interdisciplinary collection of expressions of conflict over land, forests, water, mining, and environmental assets, and discusses the power relations underlying these forms of contestation as well as the strategies of different actors to deal with the unequal outcomes of environmental and resource politics. political ecology, power relations, and socio-ecological conflicts in contrast to debates about natural scarcities, political ecology highlights the societal and political character of resource extraction and environmental impacts (robbins, 2012). the interdisciplinary research agenda analyzes the appropriation of nature and the distribution and consumption of natural resources as an explicitly political process that is linked to social relations of ownership and editorial w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 . 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 16 .1 -1 2 melanie pichler & alina brad  aseas 9(1) control (bryant & bailey, 1997; neumann, 2005; robbins, 2012). society-nature relations hence evolve in historically and geographically embedded constellations that are linked to power, domination, and inequalities. based on a political economy understanding, bryant and bailey (1997) conceptualize power as the “ability of an actor to control” (p. 39) the access to nature and natural resources as well as the access of other actors to these resources. power is, then, the control that one person, social group, or state has over the access to and the distribution of natural resources of another person, social group, or state, both in material (e.g., control of access to land, natural resources, and environmental risks) and symbolic terms (e.g., control of access to knowledge systems and environmental discourses) (pichler, 2016). hence, the appropriation and transformation of nature is shaped by social relations of power and domination and the associated actors who control the access to natural resources (wissen, 2015). as blaikie and brookfield (1987) put it: “one person’s degradation is another’s accumulation” (p. 14). focusing on the political character of environmental problems implies taking related conflicts into account. conflicts serve “as a prime form and expression of politics” (le billon, 2015, p. 602) where underlying relations of power and domination, and (contradictory) interests are revealed. whereas mainstream environmental research often strives for the prevention of conflicts, political ecologists challenge the depoliticization of environmental issues and highlight the emancipatory potential of contestation and conflict. over the last three decades, political ecology research has developed diverse conceptions of socio-ecological conflicts. socio-ecological conflicts can be defined as struggles associated with the unequal access to, distribution of, and control over natural resources (e.g., land, water, forests) as well as ecological benefits and risks (le billon, 2015; martinez-alier, 2009; peet & watts, 2004; pichler, 2016; turner, 2004). hence, “resource enclosure or appropriation” by powerful actors increases scarcities and accelerates conflict (robbins, 2012, p. 200). poststructuralist political ecologists have criticized this (neo-)marxist and structural explanation of power relations and conflicts (i.e., conflicts explained from political and economic hierarchies in vertically stratified societies), arguing for a more relational understanding of conflicts and power that evolves in assembled networks and rhizomes (bennet, 2010; rocheleau, 2015). furthermore, feminist and postcolonial research has emphasized the role of culture and identity (evolving along intersectional lines of class, gender, ethnicity, religion, place, and colonial legacy) to understand the emergence of socio-ecological conflicts and struggles (escobar, 2006; nightinggale, 2011). the contributions in this issue employ a variety of these conceptions for understanding the contested nature of resource appropriation and control in southeast asia. contested resources in southeast asia for centuries, conflicts over the distribution and control of natural resources and ecological benefits have played a major role in southeast asia, from land occupations and resistance against dispossession from forests to opposition against mega-dams or mining sites (hirsch & warren, 1998). land control, alienation, and dispossession have been central in land politics ever since colonial rule. conflicts over land, that 3political ecology and socio-ecological conflicts in southeast asia is, the dispossession from and unequal distribution of land and the respective strive for nationalization of land and agrarian reforms, characterized all major revolutionary independence struggles in southeast asia from indonesia to vietnam and the philippines (borras, 2006; lane, 2008; moise, 1976). the subsequent years of mostly state-led development modernism and capitalist transformations through agricultural expansion (green revolution) and partial industrialization were characterized in many countries of the region by further large-scale land dispossession by central state institutions (e.g., peluso, afiff, & rachmann, 2008, for indonesia). the neoliberal turn in authoritarian states led to a further integration into the world market and intensified environmental impacts such as deforestation, pollution of waterways, degradation and conversion of agricultural land, and declining population of wildlife and biodiversity. in recent years, large-scale land acquisitions (denoted as land grabbing) for the production of export crops (for food, fuel, and fibre) have led to further enclosures and accelerated socio-ecological conflicts (borras, franco, kay, & spoor, 2011; hall, 2011; hall, hirsch, & li, 2011). in indonesia, for example, oil palm plantations have expanded over 4.3 million ha of land since the turn of the millennium (brad, schaffartzik, pichler, & plank, 2015). in vietnam, the boom crop coffee has spread over vast areas of land since the mid-1990s, when the country abruptly became the world’s second-largest producer (hall, 2011). in laos and cambodia, extensive amounts of land have been converted to plantations of fast-growing trees to serve the global demand for wood chips, pulp, and paper (barney, 2009). the contributions to this issue demonstrate that different groups of actors benefit from land politics and how these unequal power relations foster subtle or open forms of resistance. rosanne de vos examines a projected expansion of oil palm plantations in a village in west kalimantan, indonesia, and how a community succeeded to prevent the expansion in their area. along the same vein, yvonne kunz, jonas hein, rina mardiana, and heiko faust address coping strategies of local communities against land dispossession in the course of large-scale agricultural expansion in sumatra, indonesia. anne hennings discusses the specific situation of large-scale land acquisitions in post-war bougainville, papua new guinea, and develops a conceptual framework for the nexus of resistance, land acquisitions, and conflict transformation. in another case in point, rosita dewi analyzes current land grabbing strategies in the merauke integrated food and energy estate (mifee) in the autonomous province of west papua, indonesia, and how corporate and government interests have taken possession of customary land for the expansion of industrial plantations. rainer einzenberger discusses the integration of myanmar’s resource-rich and unruly upland areas into state territory, the corresponding processes of land enclosures, and the growing importance of indigeneity as a new political discourse to oppose these strategies. with similar dynamics to land-related conflicts, the control of forests has played a crucial role for colonial powers as well as in nation building processes and the expansion of capitalist development in southeast asia (bryant, 1998, for myanmar; le billon, 2000, for cambodia; leigh, 1998, for malaysia; peluso, 1992, for indonesia; vandergeest & peluso, 1995, for thailand). as highlighted by le billon’s (2000) research on the interlinkage of forests and war politics, forest commodification and logging supported the capitalist transformation during the post-khmer rouge period in cambodia. the mapping and categorization of state-controlled territories served 4 melanie pichler & alina brad  aseas 9(1) suharto’s authoritarian regime to establish control over land and forests in indonesia (peluso, 1992). the conflicts resulting from these enclosures address the establishment of timber plantations, the conversion of forest land for agricultural or industrial purposes as well as conservation projects that expel people from their lands and livelihoods (corson, 2011; osborne, 2011; peluso, 2011). regarding the latter, many political ecology studies reflect upon the quest for centralized state control of forests and its specific impact on indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities (peluso & vandergeest, 2001; roth, 2004). recent years have seen new commodification dynamics – similar to the land grabbing phenomena – emerging from the appropriation and control of land and forests for allegedly ‘green’ and ecological purposes. “green grabbing” (fairhead, leach, & scoones, 2012) and associated conflicts emerge from the very policies and measures to deal with the environmental costs of industrialization and economic growth and include conflicts over conservation areas, payments for ecosystem services (e.g., redd+), or agrofuels development (mccarthy, vel, & afiff, 2012, on green acquisitions in indonesia; pasgaard & chea, 2013, on the social dimensions of redd+ in cambodia; roth, 2004, on conservation policies and ethnic minorities in highland thailand). in this issue, nancy peluso – in an interview with melanie pichler – reflects on the changing patterns of “political forests” in southeast asia, from state-led development to new instruments like redd+. kimberly roberts analyzes the threatening dispossession of an ethnic minority community in northern thailand and their “rooted networks” to retain access to a forest area proposed for a national park. zachary anderson reflects on the emerging green economy in indonesia that materially and discursively shapes the new green appropriation of nature. in doing so, he focuses on the emerging environmental governance network in east kalimantan, and the subtle ways in which actors align with or resist these strategies. mining has been another major source of socio-ecological conflicts in southeast asia, mainly in extractive regimes such as indonesia and the philippines. indonesia is the leading exporter of coal by weight in the world (world coal association, 2016) and the philippines represents the fifth richest country in mineral resources in the world, extracting nickel, gold, and copper (department of environment and natural resources, 2016). mining conflicts mainly evolve from the negative environmental impacts and human rights abuses of extractive industries, often involving multinational corporations (ballard & banks, 2003). environmental impacts are related to dam failure of tailings ponds and associated toxic contamination e.g., the ecological disaster of the ok tedi mine in papua new guinea (ballard & banks, 2003) or mercury exposure associated with gold mining in philippine mindanao or indonesian west papua (appleton et al., 1999; rifai-hasan, 2009) or mercury exposure associated with gold mining in indonesian west papua (rifai-hasan, 2009) or philippine mindanao (appleton et al., 1999). human rights violations often stem from conflicts with indigenous people when mining sites expand to remote areas and indigenous populations face eviction and lose control over their land (holden, nadeau, & jacobson, 2011, for the philippines, rifai-hasan, 2009, for indonesia). in recent decades, not only local protests but also separatist conflicts associated with autonomy endeavors in southeast asia revolved around mining, including the rebellion associated with rio tinto’s copper and gold mine in the autonomous region of bougainville, papua new 5political ecology and socio-ecological conflicts in southeast asia guinea, or the conflicts around the freeport gold mine in the autonomous province of west papua, indonesia (ballard & banks, 2003). in this issue, anne hennings discusses the socio-ecological conflicts culminating in the uprising against the panguna copper mine in bougainville in the late 1980s and reflects on the implications of these assemblages for contemporary struggles against land grabbing in the autonomous region. anna fünfgeld evaluates the consequences and conflicts arising from urban coal mining in east kalimantan’s capital of samarinda, indonesia, and reflects on the role of the state in these conflicts. from a political economy perspective, alvin camba discusses the neoliberal restructuring of the philippine mining regime since the 1980s that has shifted the terrains of struggle from protest in the streets into the domains of state agencies and scientific networks. water politics constitute another contentious terrain in current resource strategies. in recent years, socio-ecological conflicts have centered in the mekong region that has seen an unprecedented shift from a cold war front line to an integrated economic cooperation playground since the 1990s (asian development bank, 2013; bakker, 1999; middleton, garcia, & foran, 2009). the world bank and the asian development bank have promoted the privatization of the greater mekong subregion with a focus on large-scale hydropower development along the mekong river. political ecologists documented the commercialization of the water resources and the associated local livelihood losses (e.g., fisheries) as well as the further marginalization of local communities through scientific expertise and capitalization, especially in laos and cambodia (goldman, 2004; molle, foran, & kakonen, 2012). furthermore, the increasing regional integration has fostered transborder mobilization and conflicts over the unequal distribution of costs and benefits related to large-scale dams, for example, dam construction in laos to feed the energy demand in thailand (middleton, 2012; sneddon & fox, 2006). already in the 1980s, similar developments raised awareness in indonesia, where an anti-dam movement formed against the kedungombo dam in central java (aditjondro, 1998). somehow connected but on a different front, political ecologists have turned to flooding and the unequally distributed vulnerabilities to floods that have intensified due to climate change, and stream control associated with rapid urbanization and economic growth (pelling, 1999; ranganathan, 2015). in this issue, lukas ley analyzes flood management in urban central java, indonesia, and the specific forms of dealing with the ecological crisis that evolved in poor communities in the coastal city of semarang. political ecology research has documented the diverse forms of resistance and contestation associated with the asymmetric power relations in the control of nature and natural resources, ranging from legal strategies and peaceful protests (e.g., civil disobedience, boycotts, strikes) to violent rebellion or more subtle weapons of the weak. these latter forms of resistance are especially important in authoritarian contexts where open confrontation might be especially dangerous. according to scott (1985), this “everyday form of resistance” is often fought with ‘ordinary’ weapons such as “foot dragging, dissimulation, false compliance, pilfering, feigned ignorance, slander, arson, sabotage, and so forth” (p. 29). in recent years, poststructuralist political ecologists have contributed to and expanded scott’s work and conceptualize the emergence of resistance in “rooted networks” (rocheleau & roth, 2007) that connect territory, power, and ecology and allow for an exploration of subtle and polycen6 melanie pichler & alina brad  aseas 9(1) tric actions that resist dominant powers. for the southeast asian context, malseed (2008) documented informal inter-community action and solidarity amongst karen villagers in authoritarian myanmar that enable control over land and livelihoods where formal organization is difficult. peasants, for example, illegally harvest forest products or plantation crops and village heads often underreport crop harvests or other resources to meet livelihood needs. in this issue, kimberly roberts uses the concept of rooted networks to analyze the organizing efforts of an ethnic minority village in northern thailand through networking between villages, creating counter maps, establishing community forestry, and collaborating with civil society and local government to retain forest access. in recent years, judicial strategies to counter increasingly “licensed exclusions” (hall et al., 2011, p. 27) or “legal dispossession” (pichler, 2015) have gained importance. these include, for example, counter-mapping activities (e.g., participatory mapping) of indigenous peoples against land grabbing processes or the filing of law suits for human rights adherence regarding the appropriation of natural resources. in this issue, rosita dewi analyzes participatory mapping and the potential pitfalls of this strategy in the mifee project in west papua, indonesia. yvonne kunz et al. examine how local communities in jambi, indonesia, mimic formal legal practices of land formalization to prevent dispossession from and conflicts over land. the transformative nature of conflicts? much political ecology research highlights the potential of socio-ecological conflicts for the rupture or defeat of unequal power relations and structures of domination – as if conflicts were intrinsically about social justice and change. the above presented insights on the subtle, complex, and rooted forms of resistance challenge these assumptions and call for a closer look on both transformative and stabilizing strategies. research on socio-ecological conflicts also shows that actions and strategies that question the current forms of appropriation of nature and natural resources do not necessarily transform society-nature relations but may be coopted and therefore alter power relations in complex ways. rosita dewi shows these processes with regard to the use of participatory mapping in west papua. whereas ngos introduced the strategy as an important tool to support a community’s fight against land grabbing, it has simultaneously enabled the establishment of a land market through the formalization of land tenure and encouraged land leases to corporations and the local government. the contribution also points to the ambivalent role of ngos. whereas ngos are frequently celebrated as ‘rescuers’ of societal and environmental problems, the role of ngos in the course of participatory mapping in this particular case shows that their contribution to either progressively transform or legitimize power asymmetries depends on multiple factors (e.g., community capacity, involvement in policy processes). providing another example of coping strategies, lukas ley discusses a local flood management project in semarang, indonesia, and the subtle conflicts arising from it. instead of creating the conditions for radical change, flood-related conflicts simply allow some individuals and collectives to produce the conditions necessary to ‘endure’ situations of social instability and uncertainty. conflicts take the shape of silent critique that never erupts onto the political stage but is moderated by local 7political ecology and socio-ecological conflicts in southeast asia communities (and their representatives) themselves. this is especially true for marginalized urban communities, for whom ecological crisis (materialized through daily flooding of their houses) is chronic rather than temporary. to explain the relative stability and the co-option of socio-ecological conflicts and strategies despite inherent contradictions, power relations, and inequalities in capitalist society-nature relations, political ecologists resort to critical state and hegemony theory to reflect on the role of institutions and more specifically of the state in stabilizing the control of nature and natural resources. following gramsci, the state is a terrain where conflicting and contested interests are stabilized via hegemonic political projects (brand, 2013; brand & wissen, 2013; gramsci, 1971; jessop, 1990). in hegemonic projects, particular groups of actors are able to generalize their particular interests and frame them as the ‘general good’ (e.g., the extraction of natural resources to boost economic growth or the eviction of ‘illegal’ residents for urban infrastructural development). this generalization of particular interests is not necessarily enacted through coercion but through consensus, that is, these particular interests and strategies are accepted by the majority of the people (pichler, 2015). hegemony therefore requires alliances between elites (e.g., plantation or mining companies, local landowners, regional banks) and the broader population (e.g., workers, peasants, indigenous people, urban poor) and (material) concessions to meet the latter’s interests. these may comprise the inclusion of smallholders in the course of oil palm expansion or wage increases for miners in order to prevent strikes (camba, 2016; pichler, 2015). despite examples and tendencies of co-option and the stabilizing effects of current society-nature relations, the role of socio-ecological conflicts as expressions of politics make them a reference point for any transformative strategy and practice. in his research on workers’ struggles in malaysian oil palm plantations, pye (2015) shows that everyday forms of resistance by workers offer possibilities of empowerment and collective action. going beyond consumer-oriented campaigning and connecting an organized labor movement with environmental justice claims may open up new opportunities for transformation. in this issue, rosanne de vos examines a land conflict related to oil palm plantations in west kalimantan that erupted into violence and eventually led to the rejection of the planned plantation. she focuses on the multiple functions of land for local communities (e.g., food security, income stability, flexibility to respond to crises and opportunities) that villagers saw threatened through the oil palm plantation project and the mobilizing effect of these functions to reject the plantation project. kimberly roberts analyzes more subtle achievements by highland communities in thailand that up to now have retained their de facto access to forest resources against several threats of eviction. she argues that these are not the result of open confrontation or isolated mobilizations but that these efforts have been successful due to networked activities and negotiation processes in an assemblage of relations. in sum, the contributions in this issue highlight the complex and diverse forms of socio-ecological conflicts in southeast asia that constantly transform society-nature relations in unpredictable and often contradictory ways. thereby they also show the transformative potential of collectively mobilizing 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(2006). rethinking transboundary waters: a critical hydropolitics of the mekong basin. political geography, 25(2), 181-202. turner, m. d. (2004). political ecology and the moral dimensions of ‘resource conflicts’: the case of farmer–herder conflicts in the sahel. political geography, 23(7), 863-889. vandergeest, p., & peluso, n. l. (1995). territorialization and state power in thailand. theory and society, 24(3), 385-426. wissen, m. (2015). the political ecology of agrofuels: conceptual remarks. in k. dietz, b. engels, o. pye, & a. brunnengräber (eds.), the political ecology of agrofuels (pp.16-33). new york: routledge. world coal association. (2016). coal market and prices. retrieved from http://www.worldcoal.org/coal/ coal-market-pricing about the authors melanie pichler is editor-in-chief of the austrian journal of south-east asian studies (aseas) and a researcher at the institute of social ecology, alpen-adria universität klagenfurt, austria. her research focuses on theoretical and empirical analyses of socio-ecological conflicts and transformation processes with a political ecology and state theoretical perspective. ► contact: melanie.pichler@aau.at alina brad is a phd candidate and lecturer at the department of political science, university of vienna, austria. in her dissertation, she analyzes the political ecology of indonesia’s palm oil sector with a special focus on power relations and scale. ► contact: alina.brad@univie.ac.at assembling the ‘field’: conducting research in indonesia’s emerging green economy zachary r. anderson ► anderson, z. r. (2016). assembling the ‘field’: conducting research in indonesia’s emerging green economy. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 9(1), 173-180. new forms of environmental governance, such as the green economy, premise reconfigurations of social relations and rearticulations of scale, which raise myriad questions for field researchers, not least of all, what actually constitutes ‘the field’, and where it is to be found. these questions – practical, methodological, political, and personal – are integral to research itself and can tell us much about the dynamic forms that social organization and emerging governance structures take in practice. this contribution discusses the methodological challenges associated with ‘doing fieldwork’ in the amorphous networks of an emerging environmental governance assemblage – the green economy. drawing on my fieldwork in east kalimantan, indonesia, i argue that by interrogating the positionality of different actors in relation to this assemblage, while remaining critically reflexive about one’s own role in this production, field researchers can capture something of the rich embodied practices through which knowledge is produced and exchanged. moreover, this relational focus on networks of knowledge, actors, and policy can help us to explore the processes of translation and negotiation that underlie the implementation of new forms of environmental governance. keywords: assemblage; fieldwork; green economy; indonesia; methodology  introduction i came to the district of berau, east kalimantan, indonesia two years ago, intending to conduct ethnographic research on the experiences of local dayak communities facing land enclosure from oil palm plantation expansion, while also negotiating new market-based forms of conservation, particularly redd+1. however, after spending a month traveling around the district conducting interviews and trying to understand the forces shaping peoples’ lives, it became clear to me that the questions i really wanted to ask could not be answered by sitting in a village for a year, or only by sitting in a village. the province of east kalimantan, and the district of berau specifically, have been fore-runners of a discursive and material shift towards a ‘green economy’ 1 redd refers to a mechanism developed in international climate talks which is designed to reduce emission of greenhouse gases through enhanced forest management in developing countries, and is being implemented by the un-redd programme and the forest carbon partnership facility (fcpf). redd+ is a more recent evolution of the redd program and includes considerations beyond emissions reduction, including environmental and socioeconomic benefits and enhancement of forest carbon stocks. aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 16 .1 -1 1 174 zachary r. anderson  aseas 9(1) paradigm in indonesia. ‘green economy’ is meant to decouple continued economic growth from environmental destruction, while reducing emissions and poverty (unep, 2012); the much-lauded ‘triple-win’. i became interested in not only what this thing being called the ‘green economy’ actually is in practice – the heterogeneous policies, projects, concepts, metrics, forms of nature, values and valuations, and actors being brought together at a particular spatio-temporal conjuncture, but also how it is becoming — the processes through which the ‘green economy’ is being translated, negotiated, contested, and territorialized by both state and non-state actors, and the social relations and networks through which these processes are taking place. the field, scale, and assemblage these new questions required me to rethink what my field site would look like. the selection of a field site generally begins with spatial and discursive practices that bound a specific space as the ‘field’ of enquiry (katz, 1994, p. 67). however, in order to take the ‘green economy’ on its own terms as an ostensible ‘thing’, it became necessary to develop a methodology that began with the project of the ‘green economy’, rather than a specific ‘site’, and took account of its emergent and diffuse nature. while i argue elsewhere (anderson, forthcoming) that the ‘green economy’ is the name for a particular set of social relations that requires active production to be rendered as a separate, apolitical, and rational space, in my fieldwork i have tried to take this ‘thing’ on its own terms – tracing the process and “following the policy” (peck & theodore, 2010) as it traveled between cities and villages, through the offices of government agencies, ngos and donors, from policy and project documents to presentations and into the thoughts and actions of forest patrols and spatial planners. while i have maintained a focus on the specific conjunctural emergence of the ‘green economy’ in the district of berau, i have attempted to trace the constitutive elements of this ‘green economy’, drawing from the methodological tradition of “multi-sited ethnography”, which “moves out from the single sites and local situations . . . to examine the circulation of cultural meanings, objects, and identities in diffuse time-space” (marcus, 1995, p. 96). this focus has required a shift not only in how i think about ‘the field’, but also how i understand scale. anthropologists and other social scientists have traditionally used spatially nested levels of analysis to address links between macro and micro phenomena (markowitz, 2001, p. 41), yet in my research i found that a hierarchal understanding of scale obscured the ways that different actors and organizations formed relationships, and presupposed a linearity of influence that did not resonate with my own observations. instead, i chose to conceptualize berau’s ‘green economy’ as an assemblage, tying together different actors, objects, ideas, places, metrics and forms of ‘nature’, across space into material and discursive relationships, at a particular moment in time. as li (2007) notes, the analytic of assemblage emphasizes emergence, and thus is attentive to the appearance of new units of analysis and fresh linkages between them (markowitz, 2001, p. 42). while the roll-out of the ‘green economy’ will have a unique and contingent form wherever this discourse gains traction, in indonesia an assemblage analysis is particularly well-suited to describing the complex social relations and patronage networks documented by other scholars (e.g., aspinall & van klinken, 2011), 175assembling the ‘field’ and the ways that these relations and networks complicate the distinctions between state and non-state actors, legality and illegality, and business versus public interests. my first task was to define the field of my analysis. as mentioned above, i started by following the ‘project’ of the ‘green economy’. however, the ‘green economy’ as it is emerging in berau is not one clear project, like redd+ or community-based forestry, but a collection of disparate policies, projects, and practices bundled together under the names ‘green economy’ or ‘green growth’. the emergence of the ‘green economy’ in berau is supported by government-driven efforts to ‘mainstream’ the ‘green economy’ to the district and city level in east kalimantan undertaken by a diverse coalition of actors including the provincial planning agency (bappeda), the provincial climate change board (ddpi), the deutsche gesellschaft für internationale zusammenarbeit (giz), the international ngos the nature conservancy (tnc) and world wide fund for nature (wwf), and the global green growth institute (gggi), with assistance from a number of local ngos and academics. this ‘mainstreaming’ is happening in tandem with the roll-out of a series of new donor-driven programs aimed at realizing the ‘green economy’ in east kalimantan, through the support of projects that lower emissions while improving ‘development’ and/or supporting economic growth, for example through improved planning practices, technological improvements in resource extraction, or supporting rural electrification through the use of ‘waste’ biomass. these shifts are happening against the backdrop of a range of policies developed over the last decade to address sustainable development, environmental degradation, and climate change concerns, first in forest and peatland areas with the national redd+ program, and more broadly through cross-sectoral emissions reduction programs at the national and provincial levels, in line with the concept of nationally appropriate mitigation actions (namas)2. as i have moved forward with my research it has been important to see these policies as forces that are dynamic, “productive, performative and continually contested” (shore & wright, 2011, p. 1). what i discuss as the ‘green economy’ in my research is not an ephemeral vision of social and environmental harmony to be reached at some point in the future, but the models, demonstrations, policies, and projects that constitute the ‘green economy’ at this moment, as it is discursively and materially being experienced in berau. this includes both new projects and policies that have used the language of the ‘green economy’ from the outset, as well as existing projects and policies that have become enrolled into the ‘green economy’ in the course of their implementation. methods and positionality my observations and understanding of berau’s ‘green economy’ have come from attending to the embodied practices that produce, and are produced by, this phenom2 like redd(+) namas were developed in international climate negotiations, and are designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries and support sustainable development. namas specifically refers to a set of measurable and verifiable mitigation actions developing countries can undertake with financial and technological support from developed countries. these policies and programs are generally more broad than those associated with redd(+), which are limited to the forest sector, however redd(+) is often considered to be a nama. 176 zachary r. anderson  aseas 9(1) enon – situating myself as a researcher “within a nexus of fluid interpersonal and institutional relationships, while simultaneously linking these evolving relationships to variable flows of money and influence” (markowitz, 2001, p. 41). one of the ways that i have accomplished this has been through my engagement with the practitioner world, both as a part-time research consultant with the center for international forestry research (cifor) and as a volunteer and friend of tnc’s berau field office – two organizations imbricated in the scientific and political discourses supporting redd+ and the ‘green economy’. both directly and indirectly, i gained access to the networks of berau’s emerging ‘green economy’, at least partially, as a result of my association with one or both of these ‘known’ actors within berau’s ‘green economy’, and the sorts of interactions i had were often shaped by the perception that i was an ‘insider’ and already part of the networks underlying berau’s ‘green economy’. this has required that i remain critically reflexive about my own positionality, and consequently questions of power have shaped my own access to different spaces and actors and my ability to obtain different types of information, as i entered different spaces carrying multiple layers of privilege and authority. thus, while i have been able to maintain an independent and critical approach in my research i do not claim that it is objective in the sense of “standing above the fray or of suppressing subjectivity” (mosse, 2004, p. 666). i view my fieldwork not as a matter of observing and describing berau’s ‘green economy’ as a static phenomenon, but as a process of documenting the moments and practices of assemblage underlying its emergence, while recognizing my own role in this unfolding, and the ‘situatedness’ of knowledge that i am producing (haraway, 1988). to attend to these ‘embodied practices’, and my own role in them, i have employed a range of methods, mostly those associated with the ethnographic tradition: participant observation, semi-structured and open-ended interviews, and document analysis. the use of the analytic of assemblage suggests a disposition of engagement and methodological experimentation (anderson & macfarlane, 2011; lorimer, 2010; swanton, 2010), and thus i have also employed a broader set of methods associated with my shifting understanding of the ‘field’, such as the analysis of newspaper and media reports, meeting presentations, social media, and images, informal socializing, and skype and email conversations. utilizing these methods has enhanced my ability to understand the perspectives and social networks of key actors in an indirect way, and allowed me to triangulate the information received in more formal interviews and through direction observation and interaction (markowitz, 2001). rather than privileging dominant national level and international actors, i have considered how the concerns and actions of a broad spectrum of actors are shaping the roll out of the ‘green economy’ within the landscape of berau, while also attempting to develop relationships with key informants over time, allowing me to cross-check information and discuss significant issues over multiple occasions. the selection of informants began with the identification of primary actors in the main government and non-governmental organizations operating in berau, and more broadly in east kalimantan. these organizations included various government agencies related to resources and the environment, the governor’s office, the district regent’s office, the provincial climate change board, the provincial and district spatial planning agencies, the provincial and district redd+ working groups, local and international ngos, 177assembling the ‘field’ various donor organizations, and local universities. informants were asked to list their most frequent collaborators, the organizations that they actively support, and other important actors working in support of ‘green growth’ in berau. these data were used to identify specific hubs of knowledge and power within east kalimantan’s environmental governance networks, as well as the geographic flows of knowledge, expertise, and funding within these networks. equally as important to these interviews and the various documents i have collected has been the 18-month period i have spent embedded in and acting as part of the communities, networks, and organizations i discuss in my research. the knowledge and social familiarity i have gained from this intense period of participant observation has been critical to my ability to figure out who to talk to, what meetings to attend, and what places to visit, but also what questions to ask, how to ask them, and how to interpret and situate the answers. as mosse (2004) details, i have been “part of the world described” (p. 666), and thus my analysis is an attempt to add my own interpretations to those of the actors whose experiences i have shared. east kalimantan’s environmental governance network one initial observation that this methodology has allowed me to uncover is the importance of institutional history in preparing the social and political landscape of east kalimantan for the advent of the ‘green economy’, and the continuing impact of social networks that have developed over the last thirty years. while my research has made me skeptical about the environmental and social justice outcomes of the ‘green economy’ as it is developing in berau, and east kalimantan more generally, it is undeniable that both the province of east kalimantan, and the district of berau, are unique in their long-term engagement with ‘green’ initiatives, the openness of the government to environmental conservation, and the capacity and robustness of the local ngos and activist communities. at the provincial level, the forestry faculty at mulawarman university (fakultas kehutanan unmul), the largest university in east kalimantan, has played a critical role in facilitating the rise of a strong civil society and activist community that has been extremely active in social justice and indigenous rights issues in east kalimantan since the mid-1980s, particularly as they relate to natural resource management. while many of the student activist organizations that emerged from mulawarman university faced oppression under the suharto regime, individual activists and organizations remained active. with the fall of the suharto regime in may 1998, a number of these organizations banded together, with indigenous peoples, academics, and international donor staff to form the alliance of natural resources policy observers (apksa) as a place for civil society organizations and individuals concerned with environmental issues to share concerns and advocate for better natural resource management policies in east kalimantan. for various reasons akspa is no longer active, however its legacy, and the influence of fakultas kehutanan unmul, lives on in the network of practitioners and activists active in climate change and environmental governance issues in east kalimantan. at present, the majority of the managers of almost every international ngo and donor agency active in east kalimantan were trained at the fakultas kehutanan unmul, as were a number of the government 178 zachary r. anderson  aseas 9(1) actors working on resource management and environmental issues. the provincial climate change board (ddpi), which houses the provincial redd+ and ‘green economy’ working groups, is led by professors from the center for social forestry at mulawarman university, a research center of the fakultas kehutanan unmul. thus while projects, organizations, and conservation ‘fads’ come and go, these individuals have maintained their networks and are able to mobilize support across organizational divides, linking in their colleagues as new funding becomes available, sharing knowledge, and collaboratively deciding how to best engage with new discourses and projects as they emerge. any discussion of the ‘green economy’ which focuses on the technical and economic aspects of project implementation and policy design without taking into account these networks and the political and social relations of policy transfer will be destined for failure. as my field work has progressed, i have become more attentive to the subtle ways in which actors align with or resist this thing called the ‘green economy’, and transform it to serve their own objectives and the goals of their existing social and political networks. while the ‘green economy’ is presented as a technical and apolitical approach to environmental governance based on ecological and economically rational planning and cost-benefit analysis, my research has shown that the rollout of this assemblage is inherently contingent and political, shaped as much by the unexpected and the personal as by the ‘best laid plans’ of those tasked with policy design. the research methodology and personal reflexivity with which i have approached my research has allowed me to capture something of this richness and complexity, while recognizing my own role in the unfolding of the events i have documented.  references anderson, b., & mcfarlane, c. (2011). assemblage and geography. area, 43(2), 124-127. anderson, z. r. (2015). pragmatism and politics: translating the green economy in an indonesian frontier. forthcoming. aspinall, e., & van klinken, g. (2011). the state and illegality in indonesia. leiden: kitlv press. haraway, d. (1988). situated knowledges: the science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. feminist studies, 14(3), 575-599. katz, c. (1994). playing the field: questions of fieldwork in geography. the professional geographer, 46(1), 67-72. li, t. m. (2007). practices of assemblage and community forest management. economy and society, 36(2), 263-293. lorimer, j. (2010). moving image methodologies for more-than-human geographies. cultural geographies, 17(2), 237-58. marcus, g. (1995). ethnography in/of the world system: the emergence of multi-sited ethnography. annual review of anthropology, 24, 95-117. markowitz, l. (2001). finding the field: notes on the ethnography of ngos. human organization, 60(1), 40-46. mosse, d. (2004). is good policy unimplementable? reflections on the ethnography of aid policy and practice. development and change 35(4), 639-671. peck, j., & theodore, n. (2012). follow the policy: a distended case approach. environment and planning a 44(1), 21. 179assembling the ‘field’ shore, c., & wright, s. (2003). anthropology of policy: perspectives on governance and power. london and new york: routledge. swanton, d. (2010). flesh, metal, road: tracing the machinic geographies of race. environment and planning d: society and space, 28(3), 447-466. unep. (2011). towards a green economy: pathways to sustainable development and poverty eradication. retrieved from http://www.unep.org/greeneconomy about the author zachary r. anderson is a phd candidate at the department of geography and planning, university of toronto, canada. ► contact: z.anderson@utoronto.ca transdisciplinary responses to climate change: institutionalizing agrometeorological learning through science field shops in indonesia transdisciplinary responses to climate change: institutionalizing agrometeorological learning through science field shops in indonesia yunita triwardani winarto, cornelis johan (kees) stigter & muki trenggono wicaksono ► winarto, y. t., stigter, c. j., & wicaksono, m. t. (2017). transdisciplinary responses to climate change: institutionalizing agrometeorological learning through science field shops in indonesia. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 10(1), 65-82. science field shops (sfss) are an example of a transdisciplinary educational commitment where farmers, scientists, and extension staff exchange knowledge on agrometeorology in dialogue form to better respond to climate change. how can scientists, farmers, and extension staff build up this transdisciplinary collaboration? how has the agrometeorological learning environment been institutionalized in several places in indonesia? an interdisciplinary collaboration between agrometeorology and anthropology serves as basis for developing seven climate services that are provided in the sfss. through knowledge transfer and communication technologies, farmers have become active learners, researchers, and decision makers of their own responses to the consequences of climate change. although such an approach proves efficient in improving the farmers’ knowledge and anticipation capability, the transdisciplinary collaboration with state authority needs to be overhauled to improve the process. keywords: agrometeorology; climate change; indonesia; science field shops; transdisciplinary educational commitment  do not enforce farmers to only focus on achieving the target to increase productivity. help us with a policy of water allocation from the irrigation canals, and facilitate us in improving our understanding about climate change.1 introduction mobilizing efforts such as technologies and capital to improve agricultural productivity and achieve self-sufficiency in rice constitute a significant part of the indonesian state’s objective to feed the population and to sustain economic growth. in the course of the green revolution since the early 1970s, high productivity has become the state’s primary objective for agricultural development which was flanked by the introduction of new high-yielding varieties in association with chemical fertilizers and pesticides, large-scale irrigation, and new 1 this request was directed to the government by a group of rainfall observers in east lombok led by mastariadi in order to change the government’s policies on agricultural development (mastariadi, 4 november 2015). aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 17 .1 -5 66 yunita t. winarto, cornelis j. stigter & muki t. wicaksono  aseas 10(1) technologies (hansen, 1978; hardjono, 1983). from the beginning, the green revolution has been contested and numerous problems have been reported (conway & pretty, 1990; fox, 1991; hardjono, 1983; schiller, 1980; winarto, 2004a, 2013). summarizing the criticism, conway (1985) argues that high productivity was achieved at the expense of agro-ecological sustainability, namely ecosystem stability and equity for local farmers. farmers as the main producers of food became both the target and the victims of the green revolution. even though they succeeded in increasing agricultural productivity, they have been culturally and ecologically marginalized on ‘their own fields’. many of them did not foresee the consequences of the top-down technology packages which increased productivity but drastically changed their habitat (chambers, 2009; fox, 1991; scoones & thompson, 2009; winarto, 2004a, 2013). one devastating consequence was the severe outbreak of brown planthopper (bph) in 1985,2 just one year after indonesia’s declaration of rice self-sufficiency. in order to fight the negative consequences of ecosystem instability and empower farmers, a number of international and national multidisciplinary scientists collaborated with the indonesian government to introduce programs of integrated pest management (ipm) (fox, 1991; kenmore, 1992). referring to paulo freire’s liberal education philosophy (1972), andragogy (knowles, 1973; knowles & associates, 1985), and the farmer first paradigm (chambers, pacey, & thrupp, 1989), adult education for farmers as well as people’s empowerment and participation became the hallmark of these programs. one strategy was the introduction of farmer field schools (ffss) (dilts & hate, 1996; fox, 1991; kenmore, 1992; pontius, dilts, & bartlett, 2002; wardhana, 1992; winarto, 2004a, 2004b). despite the proliferation of ipm, indonesia faces severe environmental problems as the green revolution paradigm is still underlining the country’s agricultural policies (winarto, 2009, 2011; winarto et al., 2012a). as a result, a devastating outbreak of bph all over java from 2010 to 2012 reduced rice production significantly and 1.96 million tons of rice were lost (bortrell & schoenly, 2012; departemen proteksi tanaman, 2014; fox, 2014; winarto et al., 2012a; winarto et al., 2012b). despite criticism and failures of the green revolution condensed in 20 years of the farmer first movement (chambers, 2009; scoones & thompson, 2009), the research paradigm and the transfer of top-down technology packages are still highly prevalent in the development agenda of many developing countries (jakku & thorburn, 2010; luyet, schlaepfer, parlange, & buttler, 2010; sumberg, thompson, & woodhouse, 2013). farmers are still kept marginalized without sufficient knowledge to understand and foresee the risk of their agricultural practices. this gains even more importance in the course of recent environmental and climate change (winarto, 2013). farmers have always responded to climatic variability, particularly to changes in rainfall distributions and patterns, by adapting their practices throughout the season. in the midst of ongoing climate change, however, farmers in indonesia do not yet know that climate change is their ‘new enemy’. high day-time temperatures 2 the brown planthopper (bph, nilaparvata lugens) is a miniscule fast breeding insect that lodges in the stalks of rice plants. it feeds directly on the rice plant and in large numbers is capable of sucking the life out of extended fields of rice, causing so-called ‘hopperburn’. the bph is also a carrier of two destructive rice viruses: ragged stunt virus and grassy stunt virus, either of which can be as devastating to a rice crop as the direct feeding by the bph (fox, 2014; see also bortrell & schoenly, 2012). 67transdisciplinary responses to climate change in some tropical and subtropical rice growing regions are already close to the maximum levels. the increase in intensity and frequency of heat waves coinciding with sensitive reproductive stages can result in serious damage of rice production (stigter & winarto, 2013; thornton & cramer, 2012). stigter, winarto, and wicaksono (2016) highlight the increased average annual temperature in indonesia, the changes in the seasonality of precipitation (wet and dry seasons), the increased wet season rainfall in southern regions of indonesia, and the decline of southern indonesia rainfall up to 15% (aldrian & djamil, 2008; case, ardiansyah, & spector, 2007). based on these data, farmers in indonesia do suffer and will continue to suffer from increasing temperatures as well as from decreasing rainfall (for the strong relationship between the el-niño southern oscillation [enso] and rainfall variability in most of indonesia, see boer & suharnoto, 2012; for the changing starts of the rainy season, see marjuki et al., 2014). for many farmers in indonesia, these phenomena related to climate change are relatively new (winarto & stigter, 2011). unfortunately, extension facilitation by intermediaries fails to provide farmers with knowledge and strategies (lubis, 2013) or is not working as effectively as it should (cahyono, 2014). in this article, we propose the concept of science field shops (sfss) to address this missing link. sfss provide dialogic exchange of knowledge amongst farmers, scientists, extension staff, and policy makers, through which farmers learn agrometeorology, in order to better respond to climate change and challenge the agricultural paradigm associated with the green revolution. thereby, we propose a new approach to learning and practicing agriculture in a more sustainable way. one important basis for developing the transdisciplinary project of sfss is interdisciplinary collaboration across two disciplines, namely agrometeorology and anthropology. this article aims to examine how the transdisciplinary project of sfss has been introduced and developed in several places in indonesia and to elaborate on the results on farmers’ capability in responding to the consequences of climate change in agriculture. the structure of the article is organized as follows: we first discuss the transdisciplinary educational commitment which includes policy and social learning. we then describe the establishment of sfss through the provision of climate services and the institutionalization of agrometeorological learning in two locations in java and lombok (indramayu, west java; east lombok, west nusa tenggara), following the first initiative in gunungkidul, yogyakarta. finally, we elaborate on the challenges of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary work not only within the farming communities but also regarding the effort to involve other academic institutions and government agencies. we conclude with success factors and future challenges. a transdisciplinary approach for policy and social learning since the late 1980s, andragogy and experiential discovery learning, which was developed in the integrated pest management farmer field schools (ipm ffss), has slowly spread throughout indonesia and became a model for the initiation of various kinds of ‘schools’, including the climate field schools (cfss). since 2003, government officials have carried out cfss to provide farmers with new knowledge on weather and climate in various regions in indonesia. based on our observation of the implementation of a cfs in gunungkidul, yogyakarta province, however, we criti68 yunita t. winarto, cornelis j. stigter & muki t. wicaksono  aseas 10(1) cized the prevailing paradigm of simply teaching over a limited period of time instead of providing a mutual and enduring learning situation (anantasari, winarto, & stigter, 2011). based on their observation in indramayu, west java province, siregar and crane (2011) also argue that activities in the frame of cfss lack to identify, enhance, and build on farmers’ knowledge, capacities, and institutional processes. a transdisciplinary educational commitment would be a necessary means to meet the needs of local farmers in the current dynamic situation of high complexity and uncertainty resulting from climate change. scholars increasingly ascertain the importance of transdisciplinary research in development cooperation for addressing social-environmental problems (brutschin & wiesmann, 2002; christinck & padmanabhan, 2013; cronin, 2008; lang et al., 2012; pohl & hadorn, 2008). cronin (2008) defines transdisciplinary research (tdr) as a practice that transcends the narrow scope of disciplinary views. it challenges existing boundaries and ‘redraws the map’. . . . it is an approach in which researchers from a wide range of disciplines work together with stakeholders. tdr aims to overcome the gap between knowledge production on the one hand and the demand for knowledge to contribute to the solution of social problems, on the other. (pp. 2-3) as socio-ecological research focuses on the solution of real-world problems, the involvement of actors from outside academia in the research process is of utmost importance (cronin, 2008; lang et al., 2012). thus, “transdisciplinarity combines interdisciplinarity with a participatory approach” (cronin, 2008, p. 4). transdisciplinary educational commitment then moves beyond transdisciplinary research by producing knowledge together to contribute to the solution of problems people face in their immediate environment. the above-mentioned criticism of cfss makes it clear that a transdisciplinary educational commitment was absent in the state’s cfss. the state’s cfss ‘curricula’ were designed by agrometeorologists and delivered by agricultural officials. therefore, no direct relationship between scientists and farmers, which would have enabled a process of intersubjectivity, was established. as there were no social scientists involved in cfss, the examination of socio-cultural factors regarding the above-described contested agricultural development was also not tackled. however, both the challenge of climate change and the need for farmers to respond to the dynamics of this change require the collaboration of scientists from different fields (in this case agrometeorology and anthropology) and the active participation of farmers on the ground. in anthropology, such an approach is called collaborative ethnography. lassiter (2005) defines it as “an approach to ethnography that deliberately and explicitly emphasizes collaboration at every point in the ethnographic process, without veiling it – from project conceptualization, to fieldwork, and especially through the writing process” (p. 16). in a later article, he advises anthropologists to use that approach in developing “community-based collaborative action” (lassiter, 2008, p. 74-75). in collaborative research, ethnographers move away from the investigators’ realm of definition, purpose, and authority. in contrast, collaboration entails joint production by scientists and the community. in sfss, the anthropologist initiates transdisciplinary collaboration and acts as a mediator and cultural 69transdisciplinary responses to climate change translator between two domains of knowledge: the scientific and the local (winarto, stigter, dwisatrio, nurhaga, & bowolaksono, 2013; winarto & stigter, 2013). however, the anthropologists have to move beyond just being cultural translators as one important task is to introduce new habits to the farmers. thereby, interacting directly with farmers inter-subjectively becomes the main role of the anthropologists. the establishment of sfss was the first step to move into ‘public-anthropology’ by directly addressing issues beyond conventional anthropological concerns (lassitter, 2005, 2008). in this unique process, we exercise and experience immersion into the farmers’ lives in order to enable us to build up a close relationship with them. at the same time, we detach ourselves from the intimate relationship to provide room for continuously reflecting on the transdisciplinary collaboration. detailed documentation of both visual and inscription data as well as analyzing and processing farmers’ rainfall data and agroecosystem observation become integral parts of our work. policy learning and social learning two challenges need to be addressed for the institutionalization of sfss among farmers and policy makers, namely policy learning and social learning. according to albright and crow (2015), policy learning is about “changes of beliefs, attitudes, goals, or behaviors – in response to new information” (p. 80). agrometeorological learning is then about such changes due to new meteorological and climatological knowledge acquired by farmers (stigter & winarto, 2016). therefore, the establishment and institutionalization of new mutual participative educational commitments, for example observation and analysis of rainfall, enable policy learning in the field of agrometeorology among farmers. as a result, farmers are able to make decisions that enhance their capability to adapt to climate change. in a further step, a social learning process among the rest of the community members is expected to occur. luks and siebenhüner (2006, p. 419) assert that the process of social learning is highly interrelated with the generation, construction, and representation of scientific knowledge as well as with the openness and flexibility of the governance system. one challenge is to ensure the maintenance of the social learning process. generally, farmers are used to and willing to share what they learn and know to their fellow farmers (winarto, 2004a, 2004b). for farmers who have not personally experienced the observation and analysis of rainfall patterns, it is, however, difficult to follow the outcomes and advice of the rainfall observers in the community. for the rainfall observer, agrometeorological learning is a direct way of observing and analyzing emerging problems and opportunities related to meteorological and ecological phenomena. even so, for a social learning process to take place among the rest of the community members, a larger movement of scaling-up the sfss is necessary, and this also requires support from state authorities. one rainfall observer in indramayu complained that “my neighbors would not listen to me (to change their farming strategies) since nobody from the government backed me up” (condra, 5 august 2015). without the state’s support, the extent to which social learning could take place within and beyond the community is still a prevailing problem. 70 yunita t. winarto, cornelis j. stigter & muki t. wicaksono  aseas 10(1) science field shops in practice: knowledge transfer and communication technologies in general, farmers are aware of changes to their environment due to climate change and they have strategies and knowledge as the basis for their work to enhance resilience. improving farmers’ knowledge and decision making to cope with climate change are the main objectives of our transdisciplinary collaboration. this process takes place via knowledge transfer and communication technologies (ktct) in the frame of sfss (winarto, stigter, ariefiansyah, & prihandiani, 2016; stigter, 2016a). knowledge transfer refers to the practical problem of transferring knowledge from one part of an organization to another. knowledge transfer seeks to organize, create, capture, or distribute knowledge and ensure its availability for future users. farmers have their own ways and habits of transferring knowledge among themselves using their own communication technologies (winarto, 2004a, 2004b). how could this knowledge be used and improved in sfss? we examine this process in the following sub-section. introducing and establishing science field shops sfss are a new extension approach in which knowledge is exchanged or transferred for operational use by farmers. the scientists (agrometeorologists and anthropologists) have been working collaboratively on an interdisciplinary basis to introduce seven climate services (see list below) to farmers who have become active learners and researchers throughout the establishment of the sfss on a transdisciplinary basis. after establishing the first sfs in a hamlet in gunungkidul, yogyakarta, from 2008 to 2009, we introduced agrometeorological learning processes among farmers in other regencies, namely indramayu in west java in 2009 and east lombok in west nusatenggara in late 2014. various donor agencies funded the sfss and academic institutions and (inter)national agencies supported the operational costs of both scientists and farmers. in the early stage of its establishment, the collaborative work focused on policy learning among the rainfall observers who joined the sfss by providing the seven climate services for farmers. gradually, we introduced the sfss to local and national government agencies as an alternative extension approach to assist farmers in the midst of ongoing climate change. at a later stage, the scientists gradually addressed social learning through the informal scaling-up of sfss among farmers and by formally establishing new satellite groups as well as inviting agricultural officials to participate. in this transdisciplinary process of knowledge transfer and communication between farmers, scientists, and at a later stage also extension intermediaries (winarto et al., 2016), the farmers are active learners. they carry out their daily observations of rainfall and agroecosystems, document their findings, and analyze and discuss them together in monthly meetings. they play an active role in analyzing the impacts of particular rainfall patterns to the ecosystem and reporting on the most vulnerable situations. scientists and extension workers have the role of establishing climate services which provide (new) operational knowledge in agrometeorology. the aim is the establishment of ktcts in science field shops in order to improve farmers’ anticipation capability in decision making that enables them to 71transdisciplinary responses to climate change better cope with the consequences of climate change. we have learned that what is missing in almost all extension attempts in developing countries is a mutual dialogue for knowledge transfer. for that reason, sfss are organized as a flexible mutual commitment between farmers, scientists, and any extension intermediary who wants to join to hold dialogues on climate problems. agrometeorological learning should lead to policy learning such as changes of beliefs, attitudes, behaviors, and goals due to the transfer of new knowledge (see albright & crow, 2015). the new knowledge is obtained through ktcts on the basis of seven climate services (stigter, 2016b; winarto et al., 2016): 1. daily measurement of rainfall by all rainfall observers in their plots by using rain gauges the first thing all participating farmers have to learn is measuring the rainfall on their plots on a daily basis. this quantitative data is exchanged and discussed on a monthly basis in the sfss meeting. thereby, farmers understand how the rainfall varies through time and space. rain gauges serve as ktcts as they are used to exchange and discuss the data gathered (see figure 1). figure 1. a farmer is measuring rainfall. (photo by aria s. handoko). 72 yunita t. winarto, cornelis j. stigter & muki t. wicaksono  aseas 10(1) 2. daily or weekly observation of agroecological aspects (soil, plants, water, biomass, pests, climate extremes) on pre-printed data sheets, on a daily or weekly basis, farmers fill in observations on crop stages and how their plants look, including colors due to fertilizer treatments and drought. from the nursery stage onwards, they also record detailed observations on pests and diseases (if any) and any consequences found or suspected. farmers may also list soil treatments prior to sowing and include the sowing and planting methods they have used. they list the varieties they have sown and keep records of fertilizers (organic and/or inorganic) used at specific crop phases. treatments involve irrigations and withholding irrigations at specific crop phases as well as the spraying of pesticides, organic and/or inorganic, at specific conditions of pest/disease infestation. the data sheets serve as ktcts and are the basis for exchange, discussions, and the development of strategies during sfss (see figure 2 and 3). 3. measuring of yields and analysis of the correlation to rainfall and inputs (amount & timing) farmers focus on expected and measured yields. moreover, they explain differences in yields in relation to rainfall and other agroecologial inputs (amounts and timing) available, affordable and used (varieties, water, fertilizers, pesticides, labor, machinfigure 2. a farmer is observing the agroecosystem condition of his field. (photo by muki t. wicaksono). 73transdisciplinary responses to climate change ery, and knowledge). farmers communicate and discuss the procurement of yields among themselves. moreover, they compare yield, rainfall, and other data with those from previous seasons. the analysis, understanding, and comparison of yields are part of ktcts. 4. organization of the sfss themselves the continuation of the sfss among farmers needs to be entirely in the hands of the farmers. in both indramayu and east lombok, we helped farmers to form a core group of rainfall observers consisting of the first batch and a number of satellite groups with new rainfall observers. the leaders of the groups organize farmers’ meetings to exchange and discuss knowledge amongst each other or with extension intermediaries. 5. development and exchange of monthly updated seasonal climate predictions in the form of seasonal rainfall scenarios we send farmers monthly climate scenarios in order to provide them with new knowledge that can be combined and discussed with their gathered data. we explained and discussed the terminology of the climate scenarios in advance so that farmers know how to interpret the data. figure 3. group of rainfall observers discussing their agrometeorological observations. (photo by yunita t. winarto). 74 yunita t. winarto, cornelis j. stigter & muki t. wicaksono  aseas 10(1) 6. delivering new knowledge related to the above listed points scientists deliver new knowledge, including the provision and discussion of answers to all agricultural/climatological questions raised by participants throughout the year. 7. guidance on the establishment of farmer field experiments to get on-farm answers on urgent local questions farmers are encouraged to carry out experiments on their own plots. for example, scientists guided farmers to find out the most effective strategies for mitigating methane emissions – released from the plowing of wet biomass in an aerobic condition – while also sustaining and/or increasing yields and reducing costs. such reports on experiments aiming to prevent climate change and sustain or increase yields while reducing costs are an important part of ktcts and constitute ‘win-win solutions’ for both the environment and the farmers. another aspect of ktcts is the training of farmer facilitators which the farmers choose themselves. the scientists trained these facilitators in train-the-trainer workshops to improve their climate literacy and agrometeorological learning skills and knowledge to enable them to facilitate other farmers and new members. other forms of ktcts used by farmers to exchange knowledge are daily or regular informal discussions, mobile telephones, rural radio, and television. information is also spread through existing state agricultural extension services where farmers keep track on how the ongoing season is progressing. the up-scaling of all these ktcts and the reporting on the up-scaling process are also exchanged and discussed in the sfss and therefore are part of ktcts themselves. in transdisciplinary research, the role of farming communities is significant. based on our experience, we learned that the implementation of sfss in different places and farming cultures/systems has to address the peculiarities of each community. agrometeorological learning in the framework of climate change needs to include and address local socio-cultural aspects and the specific ecological landscapes. we reflect on the gradual learning processes in the transdisciplinary setting of sfss in the following section. institutionalizing agrometeorological learning: a gradual learning process for both farmers and scientists, the most important experiences throughout their collaborative work, are the farmers’ significant changes in attitude and strategies and the scientists’ improvement in the sfss materials and approaches. when looking back at the starting point of the sfss, the farmers describe significant changes they have been experiencing gradually over time. through ongoing intersubjectivity with the farmers in the past years and daily reflection on what was missing in farmers’ learning, the scientists improved the farmers’ new habits of measuring daily rainfall and taking notes of their agroecosystem observation over time (prahara, winarto, & kristiyanto, 2011; winarto & stigter, 2011). based on farmers’ reports and evaluations, the scientists gradually improved the template for documenting these data (winarto & stigter, 2016). for the farmers, quantifying rainfall and writing down the 75transdisciplinary responses to climate change results were new skills. in the beginning, they produced incomplete data. writing down knowledge based on their observations meant simplifying very complex phenomena into a few words or short sentences (prahara et al., 2011; winarto & stigter, 2016). thus, scientists had to repeat explanations, revise the template, and correct farmers’ mistakes from time to time. eventually, once the farmers understood the benefits of their data, they could do the documentation on their own initiative. carrying out the data collection on a daily basis, the farmers realized how significant and valuable it was. they were able to compare rainfall patterns between years and to produce hypothetical assumptions on particular agrometeorological phenomena such as the relation between certain rainfall patterns and the infestation of particular pests/diseases. based on our dialogues, we collaboratively produced monthly and annual rainfall graphs (winarto & stigter, 2016). these graphs (see figure 4) can be considered a new form of ktcts. with the graphs, farmers can visually depict their analyses on rainfall, pest/disease populations/infestations, and the plants’ age in one graph. the graph can be used by the farmers themselves and distributed to others in their community. another significant achievement by the farmers was monthly-organized evaluation meetings. in indramayu, these meetings have been held since 2009 by rotation principle. visiting places far away from their villages and discussing data became a strong communicative event, strengthening the network, and establishing friendships (giller, 2013). such meetings are significant ktcts to support the learning process. farmers share and exchange their data, discoveries, ideas, problems, and solufigure 4. annual rainfall graph. (photo by muki t. wicaksono). 76 yunita t. winarto, cornelis j. stigter & muki t. wicaksono  aseas 10(1) tions. learning from one another and from the scientists is the most valuable thing that they missed in formal extension meetings. farmers are used to observing and interpreting phenomena in their fields, but not as detailed as in sfss. however, their observations also depend on what is considered significant in local settings. in indramayu, pest/disease infestations have always been a threat. thus, in the early years of the learning process, they particularly used to share and discuss ideas of how to treat a particular pest or disease. by using various components of agrometeorology, the farmers were gradually motivated to analyze yields and the differences found between farmers, different planting seasons, and the same planting season in different years. from 2013 onwards, farmers were stimulated to carry out simple standardized ‘win-win solution experiments’. they had to discover the most effective strategies for mitigating methane emission that would not reduce yields but only costs. farmers learned that for farmer-led field experiments, they had to prepare and compare one ‘field as usual’ and one experimental field with only one variable differing from the usual field. this is an example of how farmers gradually learn to incorporate scientific premises in their own trial-and-error activities (winarto & stigter, 2016). throughout the intersubjective relationship, it is crucial that farmers themselves sustain the objective of institutionalizing agrometeorological learning. yet, without a common goal to achieve, it would be difficult to reach a consensus or compromise on the diverse values, norms, and rules between the different parties (brutschin & wiesmann, 2002). therefore, it was a pleasant surprise for us and other parties that up to 2016, the sfss in indramayu could be carried out under the leadership of farmers, thereby highlighting the benefits of sfss. the rainfall observers in that region have become the source of climate scenarios for other farmers and regency authorities. for the farmers in east lombok, the sfss were the first opportunity to come into contact with agrometeorological knowledge and learning that could help them to understand puzzling phenomena. over a relatively short time, the east lombok farmers, just as the indramayu farmers from 2010 onwards, gained confidence in the new learning process and started to ‘trust’ the monthly rainfall scenarios provided by the scientists. in comparison to their own traditional cosmology (warigé), which became out of line with the recent weather and climate conditions, “the seasonal scenarios contained truth”, as the rainfall observers argued (zulkarnaen and mastariadi, 4 november 2015). gradually, other farmers in east lombok perceived the rainfall observers as mangku hujan.3 gaining trust, enriching knowledge, proving the advantages, having freedom to speak, and obtaining a feeling of ownership for the learning activities and outcomes are important elements for a sustainable transdisciplinary collaboration. yet, only through strong dedication, mutual trust, and ongoing intersubjectivity between all parties over time, can the institutionalization of sfss as an educational commitment take place. 3 mangku hujan was a traditional informal leader in the old social structure of the sasak ethnic group in lombok having the capability to define and determine local regulations and provide guidance about farming. 77transdisciplinary responses to climate change moving forward: interand transdisciplinary challenges institutionalizing agrometeorological learning in a transdisciplinary collaboration is not possible without establishing an interdisciplinary foundation among scientists on different scales. without the involvement, organization, and education of scientists from local universities and/or other institutions, the materialization of such an educational commitment to assist farmers is doomed to fail. however, breaking the ‘walls’ between different faculties, disciplines, and scales in establishing the research team is not an easy task. the most important thing to begin with is to seek scientists from different disciplines: natural sciences (e.g., agrometeorology, agronomy) and social sciences (e.g., anthropology, sociology) who agree to cross the boundaries of their own disciplines. in indonesia, as elsewhere, this is not an easy task due to the traditional boundaries of faculties and the virtual absence of scientists who are interested to initiate and pursue an interand transdisciplinary research project. building a ‘common language’ between different disciplines needs the high motivation, stamina, patience, and passion of the scientists to learn from one another. all parties have to set up common goals and institutionalize values, norms, and rules for establishing new habits in a collaborative process. without the willingness for continuous reflection and learning at every stage of the collaboration, the necessary intersubjective relationship is not possible. only on such an interdisciplinary basis, ktcts can be developed in a learning arena such as the sfss. however, one remaining constraint is how to sustain the work, especially with regard to local universities where agrometeorologists and social scientists have not been ready to work collaboratively in providing climate services to farmers. although it is not easy to change farmers’ habits and culture, they are seen to internalize new habits easily through direct experiences of what is happening in the fields and gaining confidence in the advantages of their agrometeorological learning. this stands in contrast to changing bureaucrats’ culture and perspectives. our experience in establishing transdisciplinary work with both farmers and local/regional authorities in the two regencies shows that it is much easier to gain the farmers’ trust and willingness to collaborate than that of government officials. facilitating policy learning among the farmers has been the major accomplishment of our transdisciplinary work. the strategies developed by rainfall observers in collaboration with local village officials to avoid harvest failures due to the strong el-niño in 2015 (which lasted up to april 2016) exemplify this accomplishment. in a village meeting in indramayu, the rainfall observers developed the strategy to adopt the schedule for preparing lands and nurseries by anticipating the expected short rainy season, the lack of rainfalls throughout the rainy season, the availability of irrigation water, and the population and life-cycle of white rice stemborer. they calculated the time of making the nursery bed, the type of nursery, and the maturing age of rice variety to be cultivated. although they experienced severe water scarcity in the middle of the rainy season planting, the farmers could still gain their harvests by relying on the groundwater resources at the time when the paddy did not need much water. another benefit was their successful strategy in avoiding pest infestation. in this case, the policy learning and the social learning took place once the local officials understood the need to appropriately define the preparatory stage of the forthcoming 78 yunita t. winarto, cornelis j. stigter & muki t. wicaksono  aseas 10(1) planting season to avoid harvest failures. in contrast, farmers experienced hardships and harvest failures without any timely guidance and assistance by the agricultural officials even though some rainfall observers were able to anticipate the long drought of the 2015/2016 rainy season. instead of working on a flexible planting scheme, the government expected farmers to keep planting rice to reach the state’s annual target of boosting up rice production (winarto, stigter, & ariefiansyah, 2015). without any governmental support, the rest of the community members that have not experienced any agrometeorological learning would follow their previous strategies. the long drought trapped them in a harsh situation without any water supply during the growth of rice. this is illustrated by the complaint of a rainfall observer in indramayu who experienced harvest failure in 2015 when planting rice in the dry season with normally sufficient irrigation water. we are having a long drought this season [dry season of 2015], but why did the government force us to plant rice without taking into account that there would be a strong el-niňo this season? now we have lost our harvest. if the government had advised us and helped us planting another commodity, we would not have experienced this harvest failure. (condra, 5 august 2015) these cases highlight that the main aim is to implement a sustainable long-term educational commitment and not only a short-period training such as in the state introduced climate field schools. in this process, the biggest challenge is to stimulate a policy learning process among government officials. differences between the two research sites are prevalent here as the east lombok regency authorities supported the up-scaling of the sfss in a relatively shorter period than the indramayu regency authorities. recently, the local and regency governments in indramayu and east lombok agreed to facilitate the establishment of the sfss at the village and/ or district levels. however, the top-down approach which focuses only on achieving the national rice production target has continued without any focus on educating farmers to be responsive to the uncertain consequences of climate change. finding an appropriate approach to invite, motivate, and involve local and regional state authorities in developing sfss in their regions is now becoming a significant part of scientists’ responsibility. conclusion this article has shown that the collaborative work between scientists from different disciplinary backgrounds such as agrometeorology and anthropology proves to be useful in initiating, introducing, and institutionalizing a transdisciplinary collaboration with farmers. only by positioning farmers as main partners and active learnerresearchers and not merely as receivers of technology, science field shops could be established on the basis of knowledge transfer and communication technologies. however, changing farmers’ habits, knowledge, and practices to be rainfall observers, researchers, and responsive decision makers of their own fields takes time. gaining confidence, belief, and trust that the new learning and habits are beneficial for improving their anticipation capability and decision making over time constitutes a sig79transdisciplinary responses to climate change nificant part of the entire process of institutionalizing agrometeorological learning. incrementally, farmers realized that only the combined process of gathering rainfall data, understanding their field agroecosystem conditions, and receiving monthly seasonal scenarios enabled them to better anticipate future requirements. the major challenge, however, is to initiate and establish transdisciplinary collaboration with state authorities. agricultural development programs in indonesia still refer to the green revolution paradigm. therefore, high productivity is still the main objective of the state’s agricultural policy, whereas adaptation to the increasing uncertainty and consequences of climate change on agriculture has not been seriously addressed. we propose that state representatives should be collaborative in developing new agendas and strategies in agricultural production that consider climate change and sustain the livelihood of farmers.  references albright, e. a., & crow, d. a. 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(2016, july). agrometeorological learning as policy learning in a changing climate. would the state change its policies if the farmers change their strategies? paper presented at the 6th international symposium of journal antropologi indonesia, faculty of social and political sciences, universitas indonesia. winarto, y. t., fox, j. j., stigter, k., bowolaksono, a., dwisatrio, b., nurhaga, m., & kinanti, v. (2012a). adaptation options of farmers to a changing climate in a vulnerable ecosystem. final report of international research collaboration submitted to directorate of research and community development, universitas indonesia, depok. winarto, y. t., fox, j. j., nurhaga, m., avessina, j., kinanti, n., & dwisatrio, b. (2012b). brownplanthopper in klaten-boyolali-sukoharjo, central java. ricehoppers.net. retrieved from https://ricehoppers. net/2011/05/17/brown-planthopper-in-klaten-boyolali-sukoharjo-central-java/ winarto, y. t., stigter, k., & ariefiansyah, r. (2015, december). interpreting the present, anticipating the future. continuous learning in ongoing climate change. paper presented in the australian research council workshop on “environmental education in indonesia”, faculty of social and political sciences, universitas indonesia. winarto, y. t., stigter, k., dwisatrio, b., nurhaga, m., & bowolaksono, a. (2013). agrometeorological learning increasing farmers’ knowledge in coping with climate change and unusual risks. southeast asian studies, 2(2), 323-349. about the authors yunita triwardani winarto is professor at the department of anthropology, universitas indonesia, and the coordinator of the research cluster on response farming to climate change of the center for anthropological studies, fisip-ui. ► contact: yunita.winarto@gmail.com cornelis johan (kees) stigter was an agrometeorologist from agromet vision in the netherlands, indonesia, and africa, who collaborated with the anthropologists from universitas indonesia since 2008. he passed away on 20 may 2016 after falling ill while facilitating an sfs session in indramayu, west java. muki trenggono wicaksono is a junior researcher at epistema institute in indonesia, a research-based institution on law, society, and environmental issues. he was a researcher at the department of anthropology, universitas indonesia from 2012 to 2015. ► contact: muki.wicaksono@epistema.or.id where peasants are kings: food sovereignty in the tagbanua traditional subsistence system sophia maria mable cuevas, juan emmanuel capiral fernandez, & imelda de guzman olvida ► cuevas, s. m. m., fernandez, j. e. c., & olvida, i. dg. (2015). where peasants are kings: food sovereignty in the tagbanua traditional subsistence system. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 8(1), 27-44. food sovereignty is predicated upon the rights of communities to determine culturally meaningful methods of agricultural cultivation in order to ensure the security of their diets and their lifeworld. the article provides an ethnographic study of two tagbanua indigenous communities in the province of palawan, philippines, and analyzes the relation between swidden agriculture and food sovereignty. traditional swidden farming is an integrative system that defines social relationships, structures a spiritual belief system, and builds a fundament of the tagbanua identity. as a cultural praxis, it is also central to the manifestation of food sovereignty within the market system, constantly being challenged by internal exigencies – as opportunities for cultural reproduction are limited by changing lifestyles – and external interventions from both private and public sectors. the article discusses how the tagbanua subsistence cultivation system serves as the main mechanism through which indigenous cultural communities assert their independence from the market system, thus establishing local control over food and food production systems. keywords: indigenous peoples; philippines; poverty; seed sovereignty; subsistence farming; swidden agriculture  ernährungssouveränität basiert auf den rechten von gemeinschaften, kulturell bedeutsame landwirtschaftliche methoden zu bestimmen, um ihre ernährungsgewohnheiten und lebenswelten zu sichern. der artikel bietet eine ethnografische studie von zwei indigenen gemeinschaften der tagbanua in der philippinischen provinz palawan und analysiert die beziehung zwischen brandrodungsackerbau und ernährungssouveränität. der traditionelle brandrodungsackerbau ist ein integratives system, das soziale beziehungen definiert, spirituelle glaubenssysteme strukturiert und ein fundament für die identität als tagbanua aufbaut. als kulturelle praxis ist er außerdem zentral für die manifestation von ernährungssouveränität im rahmen des marktsystems, der sowohl durch interne notwendigkeiten – aufgrund der begrenzten möglichkeiten für kulturelle reproduktion durch sich verändernde lebensstile – als auch durch externe interventionen des privaten und öffentlichen sektors herausgefordert wird. der artikel diskutiert, wie das subsistenzsystem der tagbanua als zentraler mechanismus dient, durch den indigene kulturelle gemeinschaften ihre unabhängigkeit vom marktsystem geltend machen und dadurch lokale kontrolle über nahrungsmittel und nahrungsmittelproduktion ermöglicht. schlagworte: armut; brandrodungsackerbau; indigene gruppen; philippinen; saatgutsouveränität; subsistenzlandwirtschaft aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 15 .1 -3 28 sophia m. m. cuevas, juan e. c. fernandez, & imelda dg. olvida  aseas 8(1) introduction in the philippines, rice policy and public investment on agriculture had been mostly dedicated to lowland, irrigated areas, whereas upland rice ecosystems have largely been left untouched. consequently, upland farmers relied solely on traditional cultivation methods and varieties to maintain rice production (dayanghirang, 2011). as rice production pressures increase with population growth, rice exports, the loss of agrarian land to real estate development, and the invariable poverty of farmers, policymakers have been turning their attention to the uplands. this article is an outcome of a research and development project that took place in the frame of the upland rice development program (urdp), which was launched in 2011 and draws on the palayamanan systems approach1 and the integration of traditional agricultural systems. in particular, it aimed at sustaining the seed sources for traditional upland rice varieties through the establishment of community seed banks and the promotion of sustainable farming practices. the program has focused its efforts on the eradication of swidden or slash-and-burn agriculture (philippine rice research institute, 2011) because it is perceived as unsustainable given the rapidly growing population (rambo, 2009; suarez & sajise, 2010). national policy promulgated by programs like the urdp envisions a future for upland farmers driven by growth in production, preferably through modernization and mechanization (corong & cororaton, 2005). the intention of the program is to increase the income of upland farmers in order to improve their conditions and cross the poverty threshold. the intensification of rice production in the uplands was purportedly an effort to achieve rice self-sufficiency, but the consequent implementation of urdp is evidence of the “dissonance between governmental desires for rice self-sufficiency and pursuit of a more export-oriented agricultural economy” (ehrhart, 2013, p. iv). in early 2008, a food crisis hit the philippines and put the issue of food shortage at the forefront of national debate. until now, the philippine government – while certainly not blind to the looming food crisis – finds itself unable to attain its goals of rice self-sufficiency (dela cruz, 2014). even though domestic rice production has failed to satisfy the demands of the domestic market, the department of agriculture recently reported the milestone of exporting 400,000 metric tons of premium rice to hong kong and singapore (“for first time,” 2014). the philippine agricultural policy, including urdp, is based on the paradigm of food security which, however, was unable to serve the interests of the majority of food producers and has resulted in devastating effects on the livelihoods of peasants worldwide (mcmichael, 2014). in contrast, the paradigm of food sovereignty, initiated by la vìa campesina, calls for “local production for local consumption” whereby food is valued based on its “nutritional and cultural benefits” in order to bring back control over food systems to nations and people rather than corporations who dominate the market (wittman, desmarais, & wiebe, 2010, pp. 8, 10). based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted from 2013 to 2014, this article explores how a culturally shaped farming system that capitalizes on local knowledge 1 palayamanan is a contraction of two tagalog words: palay means rice and kayamanan means wealth. the palayamanan systems approach emphasizes crop diversity as a sustainable practice for upland agriculture, encouraging the simultaneous cultivation of various crops and seasonal crop rotation. 29where peasants are kings continues to provide for the needs of families and upholds a meaningful form of subsistence while generating income for household expenditures. the research documents agricultural production and the planting calendar of tagbanua upland rice farmers in two communities in palawan, philippines. open-ended ethnographic interviews and focus group discussions with tagbanua farmers as well as migrant, non-tagbanua residents were conducted in order to explore the role of swidden cultivation in ensuring food sovereignty in the tagbanua villages. the article discusses local swidden agriculture and its relation to tagbanua livelihood and identity. as we will argue, the traditional farming system found in this study provides a preliminary framework for understanding how upland farmers in the philippines assert food sovereignty by embedding labor cooperation, food distribution, and the means of production into social systems founded in tagbanua culture and tradition. in order to reach a more in-depth understanding of the current role of swidden agriculture among tagbanua farmers, the research explores the complex meanings and functions related to the cultivation of the swidden. following an introduction to the research sites, we present our research findings in two subsections. firstly, we explain the system of swidden agriculture, illustrating how it is embedded within, and at the same time structures, the farmers’ lifeworld and livelihood by weaving together elements of the spiritual belief system, environmental consciousness, social organization, kinship system, and subsistence. secondly, while the swidden tradition continues to flourish, the system is being challenged by forces from within and without. on the one hand, the interests and aspirations of the younger generations are being diverted as their formative years are under the tutelage of the public education curriculum rather than learning on the field with their parents. on the other hand, farmers are lured by private companies into contract farming of cash crops like rubber and government agencies support upland rice production for export rather than local consumption. while these pressures hamper the continuation of swidden agriculture, the swidden is integral to tagbanua agriculture, identity, and well-being. thus, lastly, we conclude that the tagbanua are likely to continue developing means to maintain their traditions while providing for the needs of their families, regardless of the intentions of both government and agribusiness efforts to replace the swidden. the research sites: sitio daan and sitio sto. niño in barangay aporawan the ethnographic study took place in the villages of sto. niño and daan in the province of palawan. palawan has been historically dubbed as “one of the least populated islands in the philippine archipelago” (lacuna-richman, 2006, p. 37), it continues to be home to different indigenous cultural groups, including the tagbanua who practice traditional swidden farming for subsistence in the uplands. aborlan was one of the major tagbanua rancherias2 established under the american regime (ocampo, 1996) and aporawan remains part of this geographic subdivision (see fig2 rancheria refers to the reservation areas where ethnic communities were relocated during american colonialism. 30 sophia m. m. cuevas, juan e. c. fernandez, & imelda dg. olvida  aseas 8(1) ure 1). today, the barangay3 aporawan comprises a total population of 3,008 persons in 509 households (philippine statistics authority, 2012). a tagbanua community of approximately 200 individuals continues to reside in aporawan, living off their swidden fields and gathering non-wood forest products (nwfp) from their ancestral domain that they claim4 located in sitio daan. this village of tagbanua families is situated in the uplands of aborlan that lack access to basic utilities like electricity and public transportation. the distance of 87 km to puerto princesa city, the provincial capital and public transport terminal, is best understood in terms of cost (sitio daan via aporawan to puerto princesa: php 220)5 compared to daily wages in aporawan (about php 200). the houses are few and far apart, and residence in the area requires one to be tagbanua or married to a tagbanua. in contrast, sitio sto. niño is located approximately 12 kilometers from sitio daan, has become increasingly accessible through public transportation, and its population is more dense. located beside the sea, it is a lowland agricultural community where wet rice paddy cultivation and commercial fishing are the main sources of livelihood. some households also live from income generated from selling general merchandise in sundry stores. tagbanua and diwan6 live as neighbors in this more heterogenous community. among the different villages in aporawan, sto. niño is the closest to sitio daan and many tagbanua families moved to this area in order to be relatively close to their farms but have access to public transportation, a larger market, and the local high school. in the course of the ethnographic study, 40 interviews were conducted in filipino with farmers from the villages of sto. niño and daan. the majority of the interviewees were in the age group of 40 to 50 years,7 comprising 15 women and 25 men who all acted as heads of their households. the average household in aporawan had five members, but among the tagbanua, the size of the household varied widely from two persons in a household (an elderly couple whose children were fully grown with their own families) to twelve (where grandparents take care of their younger children and their grandchildren whose parents work outside of aporawan). all interviewees are refered to by their nicknames and agreed to have their names published. in aporawan, employment opportunities are few and the tagbanua generally seek daily wages of around php 200 doing various jobs ranging from house cleaning, doing laundry, or providing farm labor for the entire day. at the time of the field research, the highest paid position was working on the road construction projects of the department of public works and highways (dpwh), which paid php 400. 3 in the philippines, the barangay is the smallest political government unit, headed by the barangay captain and its council. a barangay usually comprises different sitios or villages depending on the total land area and the resident population. 4 as of writing, the ancestral domains office under the national commission on indigenous peoples is still validating this claim, therefore the tagbanua in aporawan have not been awarded their certificate of ancestral domain title. such a title formally recognizes the rights of possession and ownership of indigenous peoples over their ancestral domains identified and delineated in accordance with the law ra no. 8371 chapter ii, section 3 (http://www.gov.ph/1997/10/29/republic-act-no-8371/). 5 php 220 php currently equivalent to eur 4.2. 6 diwan is a tagbanua term that refers to non-tagbanua residents. 7 the youngest interviewee was 25 years old. the elder interviewees, many of them without birth certificates, did not know their age. 31where peasants are kings figure 1: location of research area aporawan in aborlan, palawan province, philippines (philgis, 2013a; 2013b). but the number of these positions is limited, and a contract of service is usually only issued for a short period of time – usually depending on whom one knows.8 in a focus group discussion, farmers conceded that long-term employment (pag empleyado) that earns monthly salaries would be a comfortable life to aspire to – a life without risks and with little hardship involved. however, gaining such forms of employment would require having extensive education and few of the farmers interviewed (both tagbanua and non-tagbanua) graduated from elementary school. for the interviewed heads of the household, managing family resources invariably revolves around managing their food resources – particularly rice. for the tagbanua, their harvest is not quantified in cash, but measured by how long their food supplies last. in number of cavans of rice (approximately 50 kilogram), some of the farmers claim that their family can survive on 15 cavans while other families require 50, depending on the size of the household. a special portion of the harvest is set aside for the seeds while the surplus can be sold. generally, the rice yield harvested by the tagbanua is modest, as harvests from the uplands are lower than the harvests in irrigated fields (pandey et al., 2006). one of the farmers boasted that his greatest harvest was in 2007 when he got 20 cavans, approximately 1.2 tons, from one sack of tipak seeds. usually, a family can secure their rice supply for the entire year in one harvest season. 8 one of the tagbanua farmers interviewed said that he had been fortunate enough to have worked with dpwh for four months before he was forced to give up his contract to somebody else. he knew a local official who endorsed him towards the agency and facilitated the renewal of the contract. 32 sophia m. m. cuevas, juan e. c. fernandez, & imelda dg. olvida  aseas 8(1) swidden agriculture as a mainstay of the tagbanua lifeworld the annual agricultural cycle of rice cultivation monopolizes the time of the tagbanua whose main occupation is rice farming. when a new agricultural year begins, the farmers clear an area for the year’s swidden field by cutting the natural vegetation and burning the debris prior to planting crops. these swidden areas are usually claimed usufruct lands that have been left fallow for several years.9 rice is the first crop to be sown on the newly opened lands in order to take advantage of the high levels of soil nutrients. supplementary crops like tubers and corn may be planted between these rows of rice. such alternative crops can augment the household food supply throughout the year, in case the rice is depleted. moreover, as the rice plants are growing, root crops are also planted “under the rice” (sa ilalim ng palay).10 tagkaingin11 begins with the thorough clearing of trees and other vegetation (see figure 2). this is usually accomplished by january so that the dry heat of february and march can prepare the field for burning. folk wisdom maintains that the burning has to be perfectly timed before the first rains of the monsoon; upland research claims that these rains bring in higher levels of nitrogen, an important macronutrient for the rice plant (de datta & ross, 1975). when the soil is enriched by the ashes and softened by the first rains, this is the optimal time to start sowing the seeds before weeds take over the swidden. in recent years, many respondents faced difficulties in anticipating the first rains of the year as the climate has been less predictable by the traditional calendar. it was unable to predict the el niño12 phenomenon and the delay it caused to the harvest. the families felt the strain of el niño as rice stores were depleted and families had to eat sweet potatoes, cassava, or wild tubers as alternative staples. despite these difficulties, the long dry spell was conducive to swidden farming, as it brought forest fires burning the fields so thoroughly that many were able to reap a large harvest from september to november that year. as the year ends, the farmers move onto another field for clearing so that they can sow rice on another highly fertile swidden. this is the current practice and generally typical of tropical forest upland cultivation practices in the philippines (olofson, 1981), as also revealed by studies on other areas including the neighboring barangay napsan (conelly, 1992) and upland farms of the bicol region (castoverde, 2000). 9 farmers avoid clearing primary or “virgin” forests since this is illegal and monitored by the department of environment and natural resources. 10 farmers say that root crops are planted “under the rice”, because the cuttings of sweet potato and cassava are literally planted under the canopy of the rice plant. one of the reasons why farmers prefer rice plants with thick canopies is because the shade reduces the growth of weeds, reducing the work needed for maintaining the fields, while also allowing enough space for the root crops. 11 tagkaingin is a local term formed by the prefix tag and the root word kaingin used to denote the season or time for clearing the lands. 12 in 1998, el niño prolonged the dry spell caused by a warming of the ocean and delayed the planting season by two months. 33where peasants are kings figure 2: first year of the tagbanua swidden calendar (own compilation from fieldwork). seeds, kinship, and social relations all agricultural endeavors begin with the seed (harlan, 1995) and among the tagbanua, rice seeds for the swidden can be obtained in several ways. one way is to receive rice seeds from parents when they hand over responsibility to their children (heirloom rice). according to custom, parents give their children rice seeds either when they start tilling their own lands or when they start their own family. seeds can also be obtained when a farmer helps another through cooperative labor (bayanihan) during harvesting. depending on the amount harvested, an individual can be entitled to one-fifth of the bulk that he or she helped bring in from the field. departing from this tradition, farmers may ask for money nowadays (around php 200 as the going rate for a day’s labor), depending on the situation. on some occasions, a tagbanua farmer may be forced to purchase seeds from the nearby villages, but this does not occur frequently as farmers often find it difficult to exchange hard-earned seeds for 34 sophia m. m. cuevas, juan e. c. fernandez, & imelda dg. olvida  aseas 8(1) money: carefully cultivated seeds that farmers set aside for the next season are given spiritual attributes and cannot be sold for profit. also, considering the amount of labor, skill, and time required to grow the seeds, tagbanua farmers believe that money would not be an adequate compensation. therefore, the majority of the farmers get their seeds from their previous harvest, selecting them carefully from robust rice plants (matinggas).13 it is common among the tagbanua farmers to cultivate several different rice varieties in one cropping season. usually, this depends on how many seed types a farmer has available to sow for the season. however, the process of selecting which varieties to plant is not a random decision (warner, 1981) and the farmer usually selects a favored (malandi) variety. one of the key informants to the research, amay bergin14 from sitio daan, said that depending on the farmer’s skill, his malandi variety can gain popularity. as the farmer’s popularity grows, the number of people willing to provide cooperative labor in return for seeds will not be difficult to amass when the time comes. other farmers shared that their malandi were the seeds they had obtained from their parents. despite using other varieties, the farmers’ experience proved that the old varieties still produced the more robust plants in the field. thus, among the tagbanua, a farmer’s skills build on his or her network of social relations that, in turn, will be helpful in cultivating and harvesting the swidden. in order to prevent exploitation and monopoly, distributing one-fifth of the harvested grains among community members is a form of reciprocity that is inherent to a system of swidden agriculture and dissimilar from the global market of agro-industrial corporations that control the supply of inputs in the corporate food regime (fairbairn, 2010; schanbacher, 2010). rituals and bayanihan prior to land preparation, selecting which field to prepare requires a ritual where the farmer asks the diwata mangindusa15 for intervention to speak with the other spirits and request for permission to work the land. the farmer ends the ritual with the words “i know nothing. you can see.” and is not allowed to revisit the swidden for three days in order to allow the spirits to ‘talk’ to each other. rituals allow communication with the diwata letting the farmer know if the spirits will be benevolent, blessing the harvest, or malevolent. misfortunes and tragedies borne of displeasing 13 matinggas is a local term that can be translated as ‘robust’. according to the farmers, a plant’s robustness is a combination of various characteristics including resistance to pests and diseases, endurance against drought or dry spells, a wide canopy, and an aromatic and delicious taste. though the latter may be considered subjective characteristics, they are the traits that lead to traditional varieties being regarded as ‘specialty rice’ as opposed to modern rice varieties that have neutral aroma and different eating qualities compared to local varieties. other characteristics reflect practical concerns: as farmers do not use pesticides or chemicals in their fields, wide canopies can help reduce the encroachment of weeds in the rice fields. 14 amay is a honorific term referring to a male elder – amay bergin is a member of the council of elders of aporawan who is considered to be the foremost expert in agricultural rituals and folk herbal remedies. 15 diwata is a local term for unseen spirits that live in the natural environment. rituals like these are reminiscent of the animistic religion of the pre-colonial tagbanua. for agricultural rituals, amay bergin invokes the spirit of mangindusa. 35where peasants are kings a malevolent diwata are not always limited to a disastrous cropping season, but may also go beyond the swidden, for example, by bringing illness to the family. another ritual conducted on the cleared swidden opens the rice planting activity (pagpapanggas) right before the sowing activity (sungrod) starts. before dawn, the farmer heads onto his or her swidden in order to build an altar (papag)16 and say some prayers asking for blessings (see figure 3). figure 3: a papag for the diwata, an offering for the intercession of benevolent spirits (photo by sophia m. m. cuevas & imelda dg. olvida). the rituals come from the wider tagbanua belief that a good harvest is not the result of a farmer’s skills or seeds, but rather of the blessing of the diwata and god: “only god can give life to people, right? same goes for plants!”17 explaining plant growth in magico-religious terms, this supernatural belief system provides believers with peace of mind and helps cope with stressful events (barber, 2012). in more practical terms, a subsistence economy can provide what is necessary for the family especially in a place like aporawan where opportunities to earn income are low and the 16 papag is an altar for the diwata. it is a bamboo platform ordinarily set in the middle of the swidden and is composed of several elements. the farmer assembles several local plants, water, and sand from the nearby river in order for the rice plant to emulate the characteristics of the different elements assembled in the papag. for example, a local river reed is included in the altar because the farmer wishes the rice to grow supple and resilient against the buffeting winds just like the river reed. the altar will only be cleared by the farmer after the harvest has been completed. 17 the tagbanua believe that in between these rituals and the planting activities maintaining the field up until harvest, there is a miracle that allows the plants to emerge from the seeds, grow tall and fruitful after a few months. when that miracle takes place, humans can eat the rice that nourishes their bodies and gives them life. 36 sophia m. m. cuevas, juan e. c. fernandez, & imelda dg. olvida  aseas 8(1) prices of [consumer] goods – particularly rice – are high (sobreviñas & barrios, 2010). swidden agriculture is a complex exercise requiring the successful orchestration of the climate, workforce, and timing to accomplish each activity. after the mangindusa ritual has been conducted to obtain blessing for the selected swidden fields, the farmer taps into the cooperative labor exchange system within the community (bayanihan) to help clear the field of vegetation. since the planting is a crucial element that requires community cooperation, the tagbanua have made pragmatic arrangements to schedule planting dates and announcing them to neighbors and relatives so they will know when to join the farmer in planting rice. in order to finish sowing one hectare of land in a day, a minimum planting party of six women and one man, i.e. a total of seven people involved in the dibbling of rice, is required. men handle the dibble stick and poke holes in the ground in a process called pagtutugda; women then follow to drop approximately seven to ten seeds per hole in a process called pagbubudbud. compared to pagtutugda, pagbubudbud is more complicated and time-consuming and requires more workers, usually women. according to the farmers, older women perform these tasks best because they are used to evenly distributing seeds into holes made by the men across the swidden. at the same time, however, pagbubudbud is a backbreaking task, as women have to crouch down to drop seeds accurately into the dibbled holes. therefore, one of the respondents said that she preferred not to let her daughters help in the planting. accordingly, she and her husband planted the rice alone, which took them several days to finish. while the respondent realized that practicing to sow would be the best way for her children to acquire the skill and avoid wasting rice seeds, it was more important for her to relieve the physical burden on her children than to pass on traditional swidden knowledge. tagbanua identity in the swidden “if you are a tagbanua, you do swidden. because that is the tagbanua life. that is our life.” ate bebet18 said in response to why they continue the traditional practice of swidden agriculture. like other interviewees, she was unable to imagine a life away from the uplands, and in these areas, swidden is the way of life. ate bebet was raised by a mother who feared the diwan and their “foreign” ways. living in the uplands, children like her learned the agricultural technology system for the swidden cultivation practices of sitio daan from their parents on the fields and in the forests. rice cultivation shapes and affects every aspect of tagbanua existence to the point that it is impossible for the respondents to imagine being without a swidden and still identify themselves as tagbanua. this belief depicts that the indigenous (agri)culture continues to have strong roots among the interviewed farmers in sitio daan who were mostly 30 years or older. when government policies constrain activities within the ancestral domain in the name of environmental conservation, this can entail displacement, especially when 18 ate is a kinship term referring to an older female sibling within the same generation, but it can also be used to refer to older females without kinship relationship in order to express respect. it is used in this article in the diminutive form. 37where peasants are kings traditional means of extracting or producing resources are declared illegal (dressler, 2005; novellino, 1998). while cutting and burning primary forests is illegal, the tagbanua have made adjustments by limiting their practice of swidden cultivation to usufruct lands. yet, by continuing the traditional livelihood of swidden agriculture, indigenous identity and knowledge remain localized. this livelihood concurrently becomes their anchor to cultural heritage: by maintaining the swidden, they are still tagbanua and have not lost their identity by adapting the ways of the diwan. rice production in the swidden does not simply satisfy the physiological need for food, it also fulfills a more complex role by ensuring the social and cultural well-being of the community. beyond mere survival, the concepts of self and identity are shaped by maintaining a traditional lifeworld that continues to be relevant precisely because they continue to work. the value of the swidden, it seems, cannot be divorced from people’s struggle to survive. in an area like aporawan, the market is mostly inaccessible and the prices for the small pockets of commerce that are made available are prohibitive.19 subsistence farming is therefore a vital tool for the survival of the tagbanua household. swidden farming does not only help meet subsistence needs, but also provides an identity. tagbanua identity and change food sovereignty seeks to provide a viable grassroots alternative to the predominant neoliberal economic stance of free trade (mcmichael, 2010) that turns social relationships into mere functions of economic relationships (polanyi, 1957). the tagbanua have generated their own model of food sovereignty based on their indigenous knowledge systems and practices combined with their social institutions and the natural environment. they continue to practice traditional methods of swidden agriculture and refuse to utilize chemicals to augment their production. they continue to cultivate local rice landraces – some of which are heirloom varieties – following planting calendars according to seasons, and drawing on their social and family relations in order to participate in and benefit from cooperative labor exchanges on field activities. however, they do agree that there are certain trade-offs: the swidden does not generate any cash income, is time and labor intensive, has low yield output (in comparison with intensive wet-rice production), and requires long fallow periods during which the fields are unproductive. however, these trade-offs are only relevant within the context of an income-productive farming operation: traditional and subsistence farming systems are a different story entirely. the dimensions of wealth among the tagbanua are tied to their geographic location – that is, their ancestral domain. displacement strips their indigenous knowledge of relevance, nullifies valuable social capital, and renders them exclusively dependent on money as the sole currency with which to exchange goods necessary for survival (asian development bank, 2002). indigenous identity and knowledge remains localized: as comments on the role of the swidden for tagbanua identity cited earlier indicate, interviewed farmers believed that they cannot be themselves 19 the typical sundry stores sell their merchandise with a higher mark-up price, due to the cost of transporting the goods, but also to take advantage of the captive market in aporawan. 38 sophia m. m. cuevas, juan e. c. fernandez, & imelda dg. olvida  aseas 8(1) after being displaced from their homes – and if they are, it is necessary to return or to maintain a connection to the land. among the tagbanua, poverty and hardship are measured or assessed based on the kinds of food that are served: lean periods are when they are served with root crops or when corn is mixed in with the rice as an extender. while policymakers try to measure poverty and the quality of life through the quantitative computation of income and profits, the tagbanua simply assess the quality and variety of the food they eat. during a group interview with six farmers on the swidden, the farmers talked about the sensation of taste and how the pleasure of eating is based on what tastes are sought by the tongue. the inability to indulge in that pleasure, that is, when people can only eat enough in order to have the energy to do the work necessary to produce food and live another day, defines deprivation and poverty for the tagbanua. another aspect overlooked by policymakers is the bodily conditioning that traditional farmers undergo throughout a lifetime of farming in the traditional manner. physical well-being was reportedly affected by adapting the more sedentary lifestyle and the steady diet of artificial substances of the non-tagbanua – requiring medical attention beyond the herbal remedies of the local healers. thus, culture and identity are not simply embedded in the cognition of swidden farming tradition but in the physical practices that this tradition demands. clearly, the lifestyles of tagbanua farmers are changing. they are expected to change more drastically in the coming generations with young children no longer spending their childhood gaining “performative knowledge” (roncoli et al., 2009) under the tutelage of their parents in the field, but increasingly attending school and learning skills appropriate for employment. evidence of such changes can take on various trajectories: the youth growing up in sitio daan whose homes are closer to the swidden fields are able to mimic their elders by proximity, but the youth who grow up in the heterogenous community in sitio daan lack the opportunity to learn the skills necessary for the swidden, and instead redirect their efforts to learning skills appropriate for employment. bert,20 a young tagbanua, grew up working with his father to gather wild honey and helps in the field during the summer months when classes are not in session. he dreams of attending college and getting a job elsewhere to earn money for his parents. meanwhile, a young girl from sitio daan dreams of finishing at the top of her class, learning about the history of her people, and teaching others to respect people from other cultures. another marked difference in behavior among the tagbanua who live outside of sitio daan and those who grow up in sitio daan concerns the children’s games. in sitio daan, they mimic the planting activities of their parents while children in other villages preferred to run to their neighbors to watch television. changes in lifestyle of subsequent generations would also affect their survival strategies, belief systems, and, according to the interviewed tagbanua, even their physical health, should swidden agriculture be replaced as a form of livelihood. one community elder talked about his daughter, a primary school teacher in the city, who felt uneasy and uncomfortable with urban life. he gave his daughter a few seeds and advised her to plant them, thinking that it would make her feel at ease. surprisingly, 20 the author has used a fictive name to refer to an 11-year-old boy who lives in sitio daan. 39where peasants are kings his daughter established a rooftop garden where she has her rice plants and felt much more content. as a tagbanua elder who is attributed high social authority on agricultural issues, it was his opinion that planting rice is a spiritual activity that provides the soul with a connection to nature and peace within oneself. otherwise, the elder said, a tagbanua who does not plant rice would feel unhealthy and weak, prone to becoming ill, and generally miserable. assuming that identity is predicated in social existence – not in the nature of practices themselves, but in the way that these practices are valuable to a community – suggests that not only swidden agriculture qua itself matters, but swidden agriculture within its larger cultural frame of reference: the tagbanua lifeworld. conclusion one of the tenets of food sovereignty is “local production for local consumption” whereby food is valued based on its “nutritional and cultural benefits” (wittman, desmarais, & wiebe, 2010, pp. 8, 10). locally developed cultivation systems like the tagbanua swidden agriculture require environmental knowledge, cultural practices, and social relations in order to provide subsistence for themselves. although their main preoccupation is the swidden, the tagbanua (like other marginalized groups) utilize various strategies in order to sustain their livelihoods: gathering forest products in order to gain an income, seeking employment as day laborers (e.g. road construction, household help), replanting old swidden fields with fruit-bearing orchards for cash-crop production, and funding the education of their children. the swidden or subsistence food production of the tagbanua is only one aspect of the entire web of economic activities that the farmers engage in, though clearly an important one with regard to the maintenance of the local food culture as part of the tagbanua lifeworld and identity. in terms of ensuring their community’s food security, the tagbanua’s greatest hurdle is their lack of monetary resources, while their greatest asset is the persistence and conscious maintenance of their traditional food production systems. it is between these two poles that the tagbanua assert food sovereignty. despite the prevalence of the corporate food regime and the increasing impacts of the market economy, they are afforded relative freedom, control, and intimacy over their food and food-related lifeworld. this system is, however, also challenged from without and within their communities. clearly, the tagbanua continue to practice traditional swidden cultivation in order to provide their families with rice and root crops (dressler, 2009) that would otherwise be unattainable given the scarcity of employment opportunities within the area and the low level of education or skills that would make them eligible for employment elsewhere. however, interviewed farmers also see a need to improve their quality of living and aim to achieve this through participating in government programs like the urdp, the pantawid pamilyang pilipino program,21 or the participa21 this program is also known as 4ps and comprises a conditional cash transfer program implemented by the department of social welfare and development in 2007. 40 sophia m. m. cuevas, juan e. c. fernandez, & imelda dg. olvida  aseas 8(1) tory coconut planting program.22 despite their participation, however, these farmers felt that they have yet to experience the improvement and development such as mechanization and growth in production as promised by these projects. admittedly, for the majority of the farmers interviewed, continued participation in the programs is predicated on the material or monetary incentives they will receive for it. constructive development can only be realized when policymakers recognize marginalized groups as “active agents, working hard to transform their economic and social standing” (gardner & lewis, 1996, p. 59). would perhaps a paradigm shift from food security to food sovereignty be more attuned to the needs of the populace as it has been documented in the province of bukidnon in mindanao (ehrhart, 2013)? in this case, a rice-growing collective composed of small-holding farmers founded on the principles of agricultural sustainability, collective marketing, reciprocal labor, and self-determination organized themselves against the prevailing trend of export crop strategy (particularly pineapple and banana) which had resulted in input-dependent agroecological systems, tenant farming, and debt bondage. at first glance, there appears an insurmountable antagonism between traditional lifeworlds and the demands of ‘modern’ existence, but the tagbanua themselves are not averse to participating in the market; however, they hold that such a participation endangers their sovereignty over the food production systems, and consequently, over themselves. therefore, in order to ensure their right to food sovereignty, their strategies and choices in this regard must be respected, not only because they are rooted in traditions and experience, but more importantly because their practices continue to work and meet their needs. by remaining primarily, but not solely, swiddeners, the tagbanua ensure their well-being and lead lives that for them are culturally significant and contextualized. by participating in the market, they recognize that isolation from the world is impossible. the power that they exercise by continuing traditional agricultural practices allows them space to negotiate indigenous identity within the encroaching modern world. integrating traditional cultivation systems with a diversified farming system like the palayamanan would seem to hold much promise from the perspective of the tagbanua farmers. given their experience, they are willing to include additional varieties to their swidden and compare them with the varieties that they have been cultivating before. as a result of this study, for example, the farmers of sitio daan received seedlings of cocoa, coffee, and cashew. these were given to the communal nursery managed by the local cooperatives in order to begin the development of agroforestry in the area. amay bergin also petitioned the philippine coconut authority for the release of coconut seedlings. as the leader of the tagbanua community, he believes that they would have to find alternatives to gathering non-wood forest products in order to generate income and agroforestry plantations could provide a viable solution. agroforestry plantations are also a strategy to maintain the swidden as the tagbanua expect to be able to continue planting rice for their subsistence while selling the fruit of the trees for income in the coming years. thus, regardless of external 22 this program is implemented by the philippine coconut authority and manages the plantation of open-pollinated varieties of coconut trees in suitable areas. 41where peasants are kings interventions, the farmers aim to continue swidden cultivation as it provides them a livelihood independent of market forces. more importantly, the value of the swidden is an integral part of their identity as tagbanua. while it may be true that not all tagbanua will stay in sitio daan and work on the swidden, there are those who will remain to continue the tradition.  references asian development bank. 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(2010). the politics of food: the global conflict between food security and food sovereignty. santa barbara, ca: praeger security international. sobreviñas, a. b., & barrios, e. b. (2010). impact of rice trade policy reforms on household welfare in the philippines. philippine journal of development, xxxvii(1), 15–39. suarez, r. k., & sajise, p. e. (2010). deforestation, swidden agriculture and philippine biodiversity. philippine science letters, 3(1), 91–99. warner, k. (1981). swidden strategies for stability in a fluctuating environment: the tagbanwa of palawan. in h, olofson (ed.), adaptive strategies and change in the philippine swidden-based societies (pp. 13–28). quezon, philippines: forest research institute. wittman, h., desmarais, a., & wiebe, n. (2010). the origins and potential of food sovereignty. in h. wittman, a. desmarais, & n. wiebe (eds.), food sovereignty: reconnecting food, nature, and community (pp. 1–14). oakland, ca: fernwood. acknowledgments the authors wish to thank the department of agriculture regional field office iv-b mimaropa for funding this study, the people of barangay aporawan for sharing their stories, the municipal agriculturist clemente cacatian, maria teresa carrido for providing assistance during the research, and james nagy for invaluable research access. the acknowledgments also include those who reviewed and gave comments that greatly improved the article. the authors are responsible for any errors or shortcomings in the final article. 43where peasants are kings about the authors sophia maria mable cuevas is the current acting curator of the rice science museum of the philippine rice research institute in nueva ecija, philippines. she is currently researching food production systems among indigenous or traditional cultural communities. ► contact: smm.cuevas@philrice.gov.ph juan emmanuel capiral fernandez is a masters student at the university of chicago. his current research focuses on anthropological photography in the early american-occupied philippines and the fascination with men's bodies. ► contact: jefernandez@uchicago.edu imelda de guzman olvida is a development communication specialist at the development division of the philippine rice research institute in los baños, laguna, philippines. she has been involved with development projects that focus on the promotion of rice technologies for over ten years. ► contact: id.olvida@philrice.gov.ph aseas 11(1) | 141 the social base of new authoritarianism in southeast asia: class struggle and the imperial mode of living wolfram schaffar ► schaffar, w. (2018). the social base of new authoritarianism in southeast asia: class struggle and the imperial mode of living. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 11(1), 141-148. this research note addresses the question of the social base of new authoritarianism and sketches out new directions for future research. in europe and the united states, this question has led to highly controversial debates between two camps. one side argues for a class analysis and sees a revolt of the disenfranchised and poor behind the electoral success of the right-wing populists. the other side draws on the concept of the imperial model of living and focuses on a cross-class alliance in the north, defending their unsustainable consumption pattern, which rests on the exploitation of resources, sinks, and cheap labor from the south. it will be argued that a view from southeast asia – especially data from thailand and the philippines – has the potential to challenge some assumptions of this debate and add important insights. here, a rising middle-class has been in the focus of the debate on democratization in the 1980s/1990s. starting with the asia crisis in 1997/1998, the rise of the new authoritarianism has also been linked to middle-class mobilization. finally, due to the proximity to china and historical links, the re-orientation of middle-classes towards china provides insights into the micro processes behind the shift in the global economic system. keywords: imperial mode of living; middle-class; multiple crisis; new authoritarianism  the social base of new authoritarianism in southeast asia by mid 2018, the authoritarian regimes in thailand and in the philippines appear fully consolidated. in thailand, general prayuth chan-o-cha took over power in a coup d’état in may 2014. in the philippines, rodrigo duterte was elected president in june 2016. both countries are important examples for the rise new authoritarianism in southeast asia because they put a spotlight on the social basis of new authoritarianism. what is remarkable in both cases is the role of the middle-classes in the process of toppling the democratic systems and consolidating the new authoritarian regimes. as of mid-2018, despite his record of over 10,000 extrajudicial killings, duterte enjoys up to 85% support in the polls, with a strong base among the middle-class inside the philippines as well as the philippine diaspora abroad (bello, 2018; focus on the global south, 2017). in thailand, the general support for prayuth is most probably not as high. however, the middle-class was instrumental in ‘inviting’ the coup d’état in may 2014 by mobilizations on the streets of bangkok between november 2013 and march 2014 (prajak, 2016; veerayooth & hewison, 2016). forschungswerkstatt  research workshop w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 18 .1 -8 142 | aseas 11(1) the social base of new authoritarianism in southeast asia this directs the attention to the social base of the new authoritarian regimes in general. in europe and the usa, a lively and controversial debate has evolved concerning the rise of donald trump or the electoral successes of right-wing authoritarian populist parties in france, germany, and other countries. the two competing interpretations are potentially irreconcilable: one side draws on ideas from hochschild (2016) and eribon (2013), who see the base of new authoritarian regimes among the disenfranchised poor who are the losers of neoliberal globalization and who have been abandoned by the democrat party in the us (mcquarrie, 2017) or the european social democratic parties (sablowski & thien, 2018). as candeias (2017, p. 2) summarizes eribon (2013), “the electoral decision for right wing parties is an ‘act of political self-defence’ – a measure taken in order to appear in the political discourse at all, if only in the form of ‘negative self-affirmation’ ”. these approaches see a distorted class struggle hidden behind the xenophobic and nationalist discourse – distorted, because the elites which are voted into power by the marginalized poor effectively continue to pursue the same neoliberal policies which are the root cause for their misery. the revolt of the working class is described as a passive revolution. it stays conservative and authoritarian since it turns against migrant workers, lgbtiq* and women’s rights, and since – despite of an anti-elite discourse – targets only state representatives and does not challenge the bourgeoisie (demirović, 2018, p. 41; sablowski & thien, 2018). this analysis is challenged by interventions like silver (2016), lessenich (2016), brand & wissen (2017), eversberg (2018). instead of a class conflict and passive revolution, they see a genuine cross-class alliance with a shared interest as the social basis of new authoritarianism. central to this line of reasoning is the concept of the imperial mode of living – a heuristic concept and research program proposed by brand & wissen (2017, 2018a, 2018b, in press) which brings an ecological and global aspect into the debate on the rise of new authoritarianism. it highlights that the dominant western consumption patterns of the capitalist world – food, goods of daily consumption, patterns of mobility, communication technology – rely on unequal access to resources, sinks, and cheap labor in the global south. on the one hand, the incorporation of increasing parts of the global population into these consumption patterns stabilizes the growth-based economic system through the demand of consumption goods. the generalization of the imperial mode of living also has the effect to stabilize society through the hegemonic incorporation of large parts of the population into consumerist material well-being. on the other hand, however, the accelerated use of resources, sinks, and cheap labor – triggered by the generalization of the imperial mode of living – is the driving force behind the ecological crisis and the crisis of social reproduction. eversberg (2018) and brand and wissen (in press, p. 1-3) use this concept to explain the rise of new authoritarianism in the global north. they see the line of confrontation as mainly between industrialized centers of the north who are trying to defend the imperial mode of living in the face of the multiple crises which unfold since 2008. rising external violence at the borders and internally against political dissent are explained with the increasing crisis-prone nature of the unsustainable accumulation regime. some aspects of this debate are not entirely new: sablowski and thien (2018, p. 67) criticize that lessenich (2016) and eversberg (2018) replicate and radicalize lenin’s aseas 11(1) | 143 wolfram schaffar thesis of a workers’ aristocracy or an embourgeoisement of the proletariat. based on these ideas, one should bear in mind that, in the wake of 1968, internationalistoriented activist scholars drew the conclusion that the revolutionary subject would have to be found outside the centers of the industrialized world. consequently, they turned their attention to the revolutionary movements in the ‘third world’ (balsen & rössel, 1986; gäng & reiche, 1967; horlemann, 1968). how does this debate about new authoritarianism in the global north link to the rise of authoritarian regimes in southeast asia? the global view that brand and wissen (2017, pp. 95-123) introduce through their concept has two dimensions: first, a clear (conceptual) split between ‘north’ and ‘south’, in so far as the concept stresses that societies of the global north draw on resources from the global south through structural or direct violence. another dimension is that the imperial mode of living – with its inbuilt tendency of generalization – becomes inscribed into societies of the global south, too, especially in the dynamic capitalist societies of the newly industrialized countries (brand & wissen, 2017, pp. 95-123, in press, pp. 1-2). yet, brand and wissen (2017, pp. 109-110) also express their hope that new middle-classes in india and china will evolve as an emancipatory force, because they are exposed to the ecological consequences and the vicissitudes of this system in a more direct way than their northern counterparts. brand and wissen (in press, p. 7) do stress that the situation is quite complex and concede that more research is needed. i argue that research on new authoritarianism in southeast asia is a promising field in this respect. middle-classes in southeast asia analyzes of the democratization in southeast asia during the late 1980s and beginning of the 1990s heavily focused on middle-classes (brown & jones, 1995; robison & goodman, 1996). after years of economic growth – arguably a result of authoritarian developmental state policies – the people power or edsa movement in the philippines toppled ferdinand marcos in 1986. in thailand, the so-called mobile mob – bangkokbased mass demonstrations of people who were recognized as middle-class by the mobile phones they used during the rallies – forced down the military in thailand in 1992 (anek, 1993; callahan, 1998; englehart, 2003; ockey, 2004). the democratization processes were seen as an empirical proof of modernization theory, according to which economic growth brings about a rising middle-class which – on the basis of their education, but also of their life-style which allows them to take an interest in politics – starts demanding political participation (lipset, 1960; thompson, 1996; for a different analysis see ji, 1997). however, in both countries, shortly after the introduction of a multi-party system and free elections, the same middle-class movements – often with personal continuity of the leaders and, in the case of the philippines, even using the same name – went against the popular elected governments. in 1999, the middle-class based people power ii or edsaii movement forced elected president joseph estrada out of office. in thailand in 2005/2006, activists who were behind the mobile mob in 1992 also were among those who mobilized against thaksin shinawatra (pye & schaffar, 2008). in both cases, the elected governments were attacked for being corrupt and populist, 144 | aseas 11(1) the social base of new authoritarianism in southeast asia since, in the wake of the asia crisis of 1997/1998, they promised the poor population welfare and social benefits (aim & arugay, 2015; thompson, 2008, 2016). the concept of the imperial mode of living gives us a powerful tool to reconceptualize the orientation of middle-classes and its connection to class struggle. in the philippines and in thailand, the emergence of an urban middle-class the 1980s and 1990s can be characterized as spread of the imperial mode of living since their life-style rested on high consumption of resources and on cheap labor from the rural areas within the country – labor with predominantly informal forms of employment. when the asia crisis in 1997/1998 hit the region, this development was halted. capital had to look for strategies to overcome the crisis and embraced different strategies of externalization. in thailand, migrant workers from neighboring countries – myanmar and cambodia – were recruited to the production sites to lower the wages further. by the early 2000s, the number of migrant workers from myanmar alone reached one and a half million (eberle & holliday, 2011; kaur, 2010). the philippines, under state sponsored programs for philippinos/philippinas to go abroad for work, became one the biggest exporters of cheap labor themselves (rodriguez, 2010). it is against this background that processes of de-democratization unfolded. in thailand, thaksin shinawatra offered a growth-based keynesian economic policy, with investment in rural infrastructure, social security schemes, and access to consumer credits. this “new social contract” (hewison, 2006, p. 503) promised the poor access to and a co-option into what can be called an ‘imperial mode of living’. it was the basis for thaksin’s huge and continuing electoral success, but also the reason behind the middle-class mobilization against him which rejected this social contract and sought to defend middle-class privileges against the aspirations of the poor (saxer, 2014). the thai urban middle-class’ chauvinism is most clearly expressed in the discourse on alternative development paradigms. the poor in the north and northeast of thailand, who voted for thaksin and his growth-based keynesian economic policy, are blamed to embrace ‘unsustainable’ and ‘irresponsible’ consumerism and are advised to follow a buddhist-inspired middle-path idea of moderation under the guidance of the royal concept of sufficiency economy (schaffar, 2018; walker, 2008a, 2008b). this ongoing conflict culminated in an alliance between the urban middle-class and elites to abolish the entire democratic system (saxer, 2014; schaffar, 2018). sablowski (2018, p. 1) in his criticism of brand and wissen (2017) argues that the imperial mode of living should be seen as a life-style of the bourgeoisie, rather than as a mode of living in the global north. in thailand, there is no difference between the two views: the class distinction between the middleand the working-class on the one side, and the distinction of life-styles between an imperial mode of living and the life of the poor (subsistence farmers and informal workers) on the other side fall in one.1 moreover, spatial distinctions between consumerist cities (bangkok) and exploited countryside (north and northeast) are articulated along the same lines, too. what brand and wissen analyze as a north-south divide, in thailand appears as a class division and a spatial division within the country. 1 for a more detailed class analysis and a summary of contested views see somchai (2006), ji (2009), naruemon & mccargo (2011), walker (2012) and sopranzetti (2012). aseas 11(1) | 145 wolfram schaffar the concept of imperial mode of living thus allows us to re-visit modernization theory and add the aspect of ecological limits of growth and the global dimension of the crisis. if the experience of thailand can be generalized, the predictions of modernization theory concerning the political orientation of middle-classes have to be reversed: under the impression of multiple crises, and due to the ecological limits of growth and the limits to externalization, a further generalization of the imperial mode of living and an incorporation of wider parts of the working-class into its confines meets its limits within the country. the ubiquitous discourse on sufficiency economy and sustainable development goals in thailand shows that the middleclass has a strong consciousness of ecological problems and of their own vulnerability to climate change and floods (brand & wissen, 2017, pp. 109-110). but contrary to the expectation of brand and wissen (2017, pp. 109-110), middle-classes in newly industrialized countries – rather than becoming an emancipatory social force – seem to turn into a base for authoritarianism and fascism (bello, 2018; schaffar, 2018). however, another dynamic can also be observed and needs further investigation: obviously, the anti-democratic movement in thailand not only consisted of middle-class people, but also comprised unions and workers (pye & schaffar, 2008), part of which were incorporated into the alliance through a nationalist xenophobic (anti-cambodian and anti-myanmar) discourse (pavin, 2015). this points to an interpretation along the lines of demirović (2018) as well as sablowski and thien (2018). the trajectory of the philippines, where president duterte is supported by 85% of the population, demands for an explanation for this broad cross-class alliance, too. bello (this volume) argues along the same lines and speaks of a passive revolution by which the poor are integrated into the authoritarian project of duterte. however, he also points to a further complication: the vast number of philippine migrant workers are known to be the strongest supporters of duterte. bello suggests analyzing their class-affiliation as two-fold: frist, inside the philippines, they count as middle-class in terms of their education, consumption patterns, and self-identification. second, abroad they are part of a cheap reserve army of labor according to the kind of jobs available to them. this transnational electoral base with its ambiguous class affiliation provide a rich field of research where further studies are needed – studies bringing together debates in and on the global north with debates in and on southeast asia. one more aspect of this empirical field is worth mentioning. middle-classes in most countries of southeast asia are closely connected to urban overseas chinese who arrived in subsequent waves and – after periods of political marginalization and even prosecution – today are fully integrated into the societies of the countries (menkhoff & gerke, 2002). the support of authoritarian governments in thailand and the philippines, however, coincides with the re-orientation of chinese descendent middle-classes towards china (somsak, 2016). kasian (2017) provided an in-depth analysis of the thai development, where cultural and habitual orientation comes with a political orientation and support of authoritarianism. kneuer and demmelhuber (2016), however, convincingly show that the tendency goes beyond the thai case. this opens the question to what extent we can conceptualize the imperial mode of living as a ‘western’ phenomenon only. as it seems, with the rise of china as the new center of global economy, a new, equally unsustainable, but ‘non-western’ imperial 146 | aseas 11(1) the social base of new authoritarianism in southeast asia mode of living is gaining ground and is becoming the hegemonic base for the new china-centered accumulation cycle. can we speak therefore of a chinese imperial mode of living? does it constitute a new and different pattern, or does it simply replicate the ‘western’ imperial mode of living, with different shades? in the global south, the re-orientation to china – explicitly performed by the authoritarian governments in the philippines and thailand (focus on the global south, 2017; jory, 2017) – is presented and legitimized by with a post-colonial (or decolonial) flavor, as a shift away from western domination towards an asian alternative. sometimes this shift is even connected with the hope for a different, non-neoliberal, and more sustainable version of development (hoering, 2018; solmecke, 2016, 2018). it seems, however, that the heavily growth-based chinese economic projects, such as the belt-and-road initiative in its present shape, are as much a “false alternative”, as the green new deal2 (brand & wissen, 2017, pp. 147-164). the post-colonial pose of this turn towards china and towards a chinese version of globalization, also serves as legitimization of the rejection of western liberalism and of democracy as such. in the search of a progressive internationalism, this ideological cleavage will be difficult to overcome.  references aim sinpeng, & arugay, a. a. 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(2016). ten years later, reaching an impasse. presentation at the seminar 10 years of politico-social crisis in thailand, sciences politiques, 19 septmber 2016, paris. sopranzetti, c. (2012). red journeys. inside the thai red-shirt movement. washington: washington university press. silver, n. (2016, may 3). the mythology of trump’s ‘working class’ support. 538.com. retrieved from https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-mythology-of-trumps-working-class-support/ thompson, m. r (2016). the moral economy of electoralism and the rise of populism in the philippines and thailand. journal of developing societies, 32(3), 246-269. thompson, m. r. (2008). people power sours: uncivil society in thailand and the philippines. current history, 107(712), 381-387. thompson, m. r. (1996). late industrialisers, late democratisers: developmental states in the asia-pacific. third world quarterly, 17(4), 625-647. veerayooth kanchoochat, & hewison, k. (2016). introduction: understanding thailand’s politics. journal of contemporary asia, 46(3), 371-387. walker, a. (2008a). royal sufficiency and elite misinterpretations of rural livelihoods. in s. ivarsson & l. isager (eds.), saying the unsayable. monarchy and democracy in thailand (pp. 241-265). copenhagen: nias press.  walker, a. (2008b, august 9). andrew walker: sufficiency economy, sufficiency democracy, and rural constitution. prachatai. retrieved from http://www.prachatai.com/english/node/746 walker, a. (2012). thailand's political peasants. power in the modern rural economy. madison: the university of wisconsin press. about the author between 2010 and 2018, wolfram schaffar has worked as professor for development studies and political science at the university of vienna. prior to this, he worked at the university of bonn, at chulalongkorn university in bangkok, and at the royal netherlands institute of southeast asian and caribbean studies (kitlv) in leiden. his fields of interest are state theory of the south, social movements, new constitutionalism and democratization processes, as well as new authoritarianism. ► contact: wolfram.schaffar@gmx.de naturkonzepte und indigene identitätsentwürfe im kontext ökologischer konflikte in kalimantan timo duile ► duile, t. (2014). naturkonzepte und indigene identitätsentwürfe im kontext ökologischer konflikte in kalimantan. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 7(1), 93-110. in hegemonialen diskursen, die sich gerade in ökonomischer hinsicht als wirkmächtig erwiesen haben, erscheinen ökologische konflikte meist als konflikte um das adäquate management von ressourcen. der epistemische subtext dieser herangehensweise an den gegenstand „umwelt“ basiert auf einem spezifischen konzept von natur, welches natur als materie, als das andere der kultur und des menschlichen geistes begreift. mit bezug auf philippe descola soll in diesem artikel gezeigt werden, dass sich die im kontext indigener politischer strategien revitalisierenden und neu ausgehandelten naturkonzepte der dayak auf der insel borneo von diesem hegemonialen naturkonzept unterscheiden – auch wenn sich diese immer wieder auf grundlagen der hegemonialen episteme beziehen müssen, um in die globalen diskurse eintreten zu können. der beitrag veranschaulicht diese epistemische dimension ökologischer konflikte, indem exemplarisch publikationen von john bamba, direktor einer indigenen organisation im indonesischen west-kalimantan, analysiert werden. es soll außerdem gezeigt werden, wie indigenes wissen in seiner epistemischen gesamtheit in hegemonialen diskursen über lokales wissen in kalimantan ausgeblendet wird. schlagworte: dayak; epistemische konflikte; kalimantan; lokales wissen; naturkonzepte  in hegemonic discourses, which have been particularly influential in economic terms, environmental conflicts are mostly framed as conflicts about the adequate use and management of natural resources. however, the epistemic subtext of this approach is based on a specific concept of nature that takes nature as matter, as the opposition to culture or the human mind. with reference to philippe descola, this paper aims to show that dayaknese concepts of nature on the island of borneo, which are revitalized and negotiated within the context of indigenous political strategies, differ fundamentally from these hegemonic concepts – even though they have to refer to some hegemonic epistemic premises in order to enter global discourses. the article illustrates this epistemic dimension by analyzing statements of john bamba, director of an indigenous organization in west kalimantan, indonesia. furthermore, it demonstrates how indigenous knowledge in its epistemic totality is neglected by western discourses on local knowledge in kalimantan. keywords: concepts of nature; dayak; epistemic conflicts; kalimantan; local knowledge aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 14 .1 -7 94 timo duile  aseas 7(1) einleitung was sind, im hegemonialen diskurs des globalen nordens, ökologische konflikte? in publikationen der entwicklungszusammenarbeit (eza) werden ökologische konflikte in der regel als konflikte um das richtige management von ressourcen gedeutet, das die kriterien einer wie auch immer definierten nachhaltigkeit erfüllen sowie eine einbindung in lokale, regionale und globale märkte gewährleisten soll. nachhaltige entwicklung soll „wirtschaftlich leistungsfähig“ (nuscheler, 2006, s. 382) sein, also etwas produzieren, das in internationale märkte eingespeist werden kann (momberg, 1993, s. 3). im indonesischen kalimantan beziehen sich untersuchungen ökologischer konflikte meist auf die verunreinigungen durch bergbau und goldabbau, die nicht selten in konflikt mit naturschutzstrategien stehen (eaton, 2005, s. 75–85), sowie auf die großflächige umwandlung der landschaft von tropischen wäldern und kleinbäuerlicher landwirtschaft in zunächst vor allem kautschukund ab den 1980er jahren in palmölplantagen (colchester et al., 2006). für kalimantan stellt die expansion von palmölplantagen aufgrund des enormen flächenverbrauchs den folgenschwersten ökologischen eingriff dar, der sich dort je ereignet hat. aufgrund der hohen, auch politisch gewollten nachfrage nach palmöl (dera, 2009, s. 18–24, 30), das als fast konkurrenzlos günstiges pflanzenöl sowohl für die lebensmittelund kosmetikproduktion als auch als agrartreibstoff verwendet werden kann und in diskursen um den klimawandel immer wieder als marktfreundliche lösung auftaucht (houtard, 2010, s. 60–74), verfolgt die indonesische regierung sehr ambitionierte pläne, um den anbau von ölpalmen auch in den nächsten jahren massiv auszuweiten (caroko, komarudin, obidzinski, & gunarso, 2011). diese sozial-ökologische transformation verursacht eine ganze reihe von konfliktdimensionen. nach pye (2013, s. 2–3) lassen sich in der kontroverse um den palmölanbau drei kategorien von kritik herausarbeiten. erstens richtet sich die kritik gegen die monokulturen, die die biodiversität bedrohen. zweitens wird bemängelt, dass es sich bei der ausweitung der palmölplantagen um eine scheinlösung im kampf gegen den klimawandel handelt, da bei der umwandlung von torfmoorwäldern hohe mengen an co2 freigesetzt werden. drittens wird die palmölindustrie für soziale missstände kritisiert (jiwan, 2013, s. 65). sie greife zu (menschen)rechtswidrigen mitteln bei der akquise von land, mache kleinbauern und -bäuerinnen alleinig von einem produkt abhängig, führe zu nahrungsmittelknappheit und stelle lediglich prekäre beschäftigungsverhältnisse für die arbeiterinnen auf den plantagen her. im folgenden schlage ich vor, diese konflikte unter einem weiteren problematischen aspekt zu betrachten: der jeweiligen nutzung von „natur“ liegt ein spezifischer naturbegriff zu grunde, dessen epistemologisch-ontologische dimensionen in hegemonialen diskursen reproduziert werden. hegemonial werden im folgenden diejenigen diskurse genannt, die sich – im ökonomischen wie im ökologischen sinne – als besonders wirkmächtig erwiesen haben. hegemonial sind dann vor allem jene begrifflichkeiten und repräsentationen von welt, die auf den wissenssystemen und ontologien der diskursiv und ökonomisch einflussreicheren akteurinnen gründen. daher ist die hegemoniale episteme im wesentlichen auch eine kapitalistische: sie dient als legitimierender unterbau für die konzeption der natur als das „andere“, das vielfältigen ausbeutungsstrategien zum zwecke der kapitalakkumulation unter95naturkonzepte und indigene identitätsentwürfe im kontext ökolog. konflikte in kalimantan worfen werden kann. in diesem hegemonialen diskurs wird „natur“ als das andere des menschlichen geistes betrachtet. dabei handelt es sich um ein hierarchisches oppositionspaar, in dem der menschliche geist und die von ihm hervorgebrachte kultur als höherwertig erscheint und natur, verstanden als geistlose materie, dem geist unterworfen wird (mcevan, 2009, s. 123; plumwood, 2003, s. 52–58). der ethnologe philipp descola (2011) bezeichnet diese trennung als naturalismus. demgegenüber entwerfen indigene aktivistinnen alternative naturkonzepte, welche sie als traditionell markieren und in denen „natur“ nicht mehr als das schlechthin andere des menschlichen geistes oder der menschlichen gesellschaft erscheint. ein solch alternatives naturverständnis mit rückgriff auf „traditionelle“ naturwahrnehmungsmuster wird von indonesischen indigenenvertreterinnen und umweltaktivistinnen in den letzten jahren verstärkt als grundlage einer politischen strategie propagiert. in diesem artikel sollen hinweise entwickelt werden, wie die weltwahrnehmung der dayak in descolas schema analysiert werden kann. anhand der analyse von publikationen john bambas, direktor der indigenen und palmölkritischen nichtregierungsorganisation (nro) institut dayakologi in west-kalimantan, sowie von zwei exemplarischen beiträgen aus der eza wird gezeigt, wie die epistemischen unterschiede, die den indigenen naturkonzeptionen zugrunde liegen (in der terminologie descolas handelt es sich um eine alternative ontologie), sich in diskursiver form ausdrücken und dabei die bestehenden hegemonialen naturkonzepte einerseits herausfordern und andererseits reproduzieren. exemplarisch werden auch interviews und gespräche mit indigenenvertreterinnen und umweltaktivistinnen, die während eines forschungsaufenthalts in west-kalimantan zwischen november 2013 und märz 2014 geführt wurden, in die analyse integriert. mit der analyse der epistemischen differenz zwischen westlich-hegemonialen und indigenen naturkonzepten soll der artikel einen beitrag dazu leisten, die eingangs umrissenen dimensionen der kontroverse um ökologische konflikte in borneo – besonders im kontext des palmölbooms – um eine epistemische „tiefendimension“ zu erweitern: es soll also nicht darum gehen, mit der vorgeschlagenen dimension andere kritikpunkte an der ökologischen transformation kalimantans auszublenden, sondern diese um die betrachtung von differenzen in der naturwahrnehmung und der naturkonzepte zwischen ökonomisch, politisch und diskursiv mit ungleicher macht ausgestatteten akteurinnen zu ergänzen. selbstverständlich können die aussagen john bambas sowie die exemplarischen interviews mit dayak in west-kalimantan nicht als repräsentativ für alle dayak angesehen werden, weil sich die naturvorstellungen und -wahrnehmungen dieser heterogenen gruppe besonders mit dem grad ihrer einbindung in modernisierungskontexte verändern. gerade diese einbindung kann jedoch die rückbesinnung auf „traditionelle“ wahrnehmungsmuster hervorrufen, da insbesondere indigene gruppen oft durch die sozial-ökologischen folgen von modernisierungsprozessen benachteiligt werden (alcon, 2000, s. 3–12). wenn von „westlichen“ konzepten oder verschiedenen epistemen die rede ist, dann kommt diesen ebenso wenig wie den „dayak-konzepten“ ein ontologischer wahrheitswert zu: sie sollen vielmehr als begriffliches instrumentarium benutzt werden, da diese beispielsweise von nro-vertreterinnen, wie in weiterer folge beispielhalft gezeigt wird, gegenübergestellt und dabei essenzialisiert werden (vgl. bamba, 2008, 2010). hier dagegen sollen sie dem zweck dienen, unterschiede in der naturwahr96 timo duile  aseas 7(1) nehmung begrifflich zu fassen und sie mit rückgriff auf die überlegungen descolas idealtypisch gegenüberzustellen, um diskursive konfliktlinien herauszuarbeiten. im folgenden wird zunächst ein kurzer überblick über die transformation der umwelt in kalimantan und den dieser transformation zugrunde liegenden hegemonialen naturbegriff gegeben. dieser soll dann in das schema von descola eingeordnet und die unterschiede zu den indigenen naturkonzepten deutlich gemacht werden. schließlich wird das einschreiben dieser alternativen naturkonzepte in die hegemoniale ordnung dargestellt, indem die rezeption indigener naturkonzepte in kalimantan im zuge der diskurse um lokales wissen analysiert wird. die transformation der umwelt in kalimantan im kontext eines hegemonialen naturbegriffs während der hochphase des europäischen imperialismus im 19. jahrhundert wurde borneo durch die kolonialmächte großbritannien und die niederlande immer stärker in das weltsystem integriert. dabei wurden sowohl produkte, die in plantagen angebaut wurden, als auch walderzeugnisse wie rattan oder guttapercha in regionale und globale märkte eingebunden (cleary & eaton, 1992, s. 95). in der kolonialzeit gelangten somit auch europäische naturkonzeptionen in all ihren facetten in den malaiischen archipel. dabei haben sich besonders kapitalistische konzeptionen als wirkmächtig erwiesen, die natur als das andere des (weißen) menschlichen geistes konzipierten, die als rohstoff für die kapitalistische inwertsetzung mit dem zweck der kapitalakkumulation zur verfügung stand (zu kolonialen herrschaftskonzeptionen über natur, siehe plumwood, 2003, s. 52–58). da diese naturkonzeptionen den dekolonialisierungsprozess überdauerten und weiterhin wirkmächtig sind, kann hier in bezug auf eine kritische analyse von einer postkolonialen perspektive auf den begriff der natur gesprochen werden. die integration borneos als peripheren ort in das weltsystem ging einher mit einer tiefgreifenden transformation der umwelt. der wald wurde in größerem maße als rohstofflieferant genutzt und erste plantagen angelegt. den massivsten einbindungsschub in das weltsystem erfuhr kalimantan, der indonesische teil der insel, während der suharto-diktatur (1966–1998), als das regime ab den 1970er jahren anreize für inländische und internationale investitionen zur ausbeutung der natürlichen ressourcen schuf. staatliche investitionen in infrastruktur und finanzielle anreize trugen dazu ebenso bei wie zwangsmaßnahmen (z.b. umsiedlungen), mit denen lokale widerstände gebrochen wurden. neben waldprodukten und kautschuk spielten palmölplantagen für die landwirtschaft borneos ab den 1980er jahren eine immer größere rolle. profiteure dieser wirtschaftszweige waren und sind neben konglomeraten aus dem globalen norden auch die einheimischen palmöl-oligarchien (pichler & pye, 2012, s. 145–147). seit den 1980er jahren wurden auf der insel borneo nach angaben des world wildlife fund (world wildlife fund deutschland, 2013) pro jahr im schnitt 860.000 hektar wald vernichtet, so dass heute nur noch etwa 50 prozent borneos (in kalimantan weniger) mit wald bedeckt sind und „das ende des tieflandregenwalds der insel borneo unmittelbar in sicht“ (klute, 2010, s. 222) ist. unter der regierung yudhoyono (2004–2014) wurden die anreize für ausländisches kapital, in palmölplantagen zu investieren, noch verstärkt (dera, 2009, s. 30–32), 97naturkonzepte und indigene identitätsentwürfe im kontext ökolog. konflikte in kalimantan und die beimischungsquoten für agrokraftstoffe in der eu machen palmöl noch attraktiver.1 allein in der provinz west-kalimantan wurden bis 2010 genehmigungen für eine fläche von über 1 million hektar für den anbau von palmölplantagen ausgegeben, von denen bereits 66 prozent bepflanzt sind (caroko et al., 2011, s. 2–3). die ehrgeizigen pläne der indonesischen regierung sehen einen weiteren massiven ausbau vor; bis 2020 sollen in west-kalimantan über 5 millionen hektar mit ölpalmen bepflanzt werden (colchester et al., 2007, s. 27–28). die ölpalme verändert wie keine andere pflanze die landschaft borneos. ökologische konflikte in kalimantan beschränken sich jedoch keineswegs auf die palmölindustrie. bereits lange vor dem palmölboom wurde kleinbäuerlich und extensiv genutztes land in kautschukplantagen umgewandelt, und auch der goldabbau und die massive verschmutzung der flüsse – insbesondere mit quecksilber – oder der kohleabbau stellen heute massive ökologische probleme dar. gemessen am flächenverbrauch ist der palmölanbau dennoch ein zentrales ökologisches konfliktfeld in kalimantan. die einbindung in das ökonomische weltsystem erfolgte auch mittels einer einbindung in ein epistemisches weltsystem, also in eine hegemoniale wissensordnung, die auf einem spezifischen naturbegriff beruht. laut wallerstein (2010, s. 69–81) ist eine bestimmte universalisierende form von wissen die grundbedingung für das kapitalistische weltsystem. die universalisierende naturwissenschaft stellt in diesem zusammenhang ökonomisch verwertbares wissen bereit und bildet die epistemische grundlage für das moderne kapitalistische weltsystem. damit verbunden ist ein spezifisch naturwissenschaftlicher naturbegriff, den ich in der folge mit dem begriff des naturalismus, wie ihn descola versteht, in verbindung bringen möchte. dieser naturbegriff impliziert dabei nicht nur die forderung, die natur als ressourcenreservoir möglichst effektiv auszubeuten, sondern drückt sich auch in einflussreichen nachhaltigkeitsdiskursen aus, die, ausgehend von der globalen ebene, die indonesische politik erreicht haben (arnscheidt, 2009, s. 125–156). dementsprechend beruht das konzept der nachhaltigen entwicklung auf einem technozentrismus (eblinghaus & stickler, 1992, s. 101–104), der natur als das zu beherrschende äußere begreift. demgegenüber existieren jedoch auch alternative epistemische ordnungen, die mit jener hegemonialen ordnung diskursiv konkurrieren. entlang von ökologischen konflikten lassen sich dementsprechend epistemische konflikte beobachten. darunter werden konflikte verstanden, die sich aufgrund verschiedener, das wissen und die wahrnehmung organisierender strukturen ergeben. in diesem fall liegt der hegemonialen episteme die prämisse zu grunde, dass natur und menschlicher geist zwei qualitativ verschiedene kategorien sind. philippe descola benutzt in seiner untersuchung den terminus der ontologien, um diese wahrnehmungsund wissenskonzepte abzugrenzen. es geht dabei jedoch nicht um die frage, wie das sein ist, sondern wie das sein durch epistemische grundannahmen in der wahrnehmung erscheint. 1 palmöl wird jedoch auch in sehr vielen kosmetika und nahrungsmitteln verwendet, da es derzeit das billigste pflanzenfett ist. erst ab november 2014 muss nach einer eu-richtlinie palmöl als bestandteil dieser erzeugnisse ausdrücklich angeführt werden (rettet den regenwald, 2011). 98 timo duile  aseas 7(1) andere epistemische ordnungen – descolas „ontologien“ jenseits von natur und kultur ein selbstreflexiver blick auf das eigene denken wirft die frage auf, ob es menschliche gemeinschaften gibt, deren denken und wahrnehmen nicht von der uns vertrauten gegenüberstellung von kultur und natur geprägt ist. philippe descola (2011), ethnologe und schüler von claude levi-strauss, hat dazu eine umfangreiche studie vorgelegt, die sich auf ethnographisches material aus verschiedensten regionen der erde stützt. descola zeigt auf, dass es grundlegende, das denken ordnende strukturen gibt – er nennt sie ontologien – die unsere wahrnehmungen und unser wissen vom seienden prägen und erst ermöglichen. dabei ist der westliche naturbegriff, der natur als materie vom menschlichen geist scheidet, eine besonderheit, auch wenn er uns im wahrsten sinne des wortes „natürlich“ erscheint. descola unterscheidet dabei zwischen vier ontologien.2 alle diese ontologien beruhen auf binären oppositionen zwischen interioritäten und physikalitäten. binäre oppositionen3 sind für ihn demnach entscheidend, müssen jedoch nicht zwangsläufig zu einem westlichen naturbegriff führen. unter interiorität subsumiert descola alle vorstellungen von einem inneren, das sich durch bewusstsein und intentionalität auszeichnet – man könnte auch sagen, interiorität ist das, was entitäten in der wahrnehmung als subjekte erscheinen lässt. unter dem vagen terminus »interiorität« ist eine reihe von eigenschaften zu verstehen, die von allen menschen erkannt werden und die sich zum teil mit dem decken, die wir gewöhnlich geist, seele oder bewusstsein nennen – intentionalität, subjektivität, reflexivität, affekte, die fähigkeit zu bezeichnen oder zu träumen. … kurzum, es handelt sich um jenen universellen glauben, daß es dem sein innewohnende oder ihm entspringende merkmale gibt, die unter normalen umständen allein durch ihre wirkung zu erkennen sind und von denen angenommen wird, daß sie für seine identität, seine dauer und einige seiner typischen verhaltensweisen verantwortlich sind. (descola, 2011, s. 181–182) dagegen bezeichnet der terminus physikalität das direkt greifund wahrnehmbare einer entität. dieses konzept lässt sich auf den begriff der materialität anwenden, ist allerdings nicht darauf beschränkt. es bezieht sich auch auf die substanz und die äußere form einer entität. descola führt aus: die physikalität ist also nicht die bloße materialität der organischen oder abiotischen körper, sondern die gesamtheit der sichtbaren und greifbaren ausdrucksformen, die die einer beliebigen entität eigentümlichen dispositionen 2 ich werde hier nur auf den naturalismus als diejenige hegemoniale ontologie eingehen, auf die sich das kapitalistische weltsystem stützt, sowie auf den animismus als diejenige ontologie, die wir bei den dayak auf borneo finden. für die beiden anderen ontologien, die descola totemismus und analogismus nennt, siehe descola, 2011, s. 219–258 sowie s. 301–344. 3 descola widerspricht derrida, wenn er schreibt, „daß, anders als eine beliebte meinung es will, die binären gesetze keine erfindung des abendlandes oder eine fiktion der strukturalen anthropologie sind, sondern bei vielen gelegenheiten von allen völkern reichlich verwendet werden und daß also weniger ihre form in frage gestellt werden muß als die eventuelle universalität der inhalte, die sie zerlegt“ (descola, 2011, s. 189). 99naturkonzepte und indigene identitätsentwürfe im kontext ökolog. konflikte in kalimantan annehmen, wenn angenommen wird, daß sie aus den dieser entität wesentlichen morphologischen und physiologischen merkmale resultieren. (descola, 2011, s. 182) aus der kombination dieser konzepte ergeben sich vier mögliche ontologien, die die wahrnehmung von unterschieden und gemeinsamkeiten der dinge in der welt strukturieren. für descola ist der modus der identifikation entscheidend (descola, 2011, s. 176–194): identifizieren sich individuen mit anderen entitäten, weil sie ihnen die gleiche interiorität oder die gleiche physikalität zuerkennen? in unserer wahrnehmung, die descola naturalismus nennt, erkennen wir nur andere menschen als uns ähnliche entitäten an, weil wir nur ihnen eine interiorität zuerkennen, von der wir annehmen, dass wir sie auch selbst besitzen. innerhalb westlicher gesellschaften finden sich natürlich auch gegendiskurse, die „nicht mehr so eifrig eine diskontinuität zwischen menschen und nichtmenschen behaupten“ (descola, 2011, s. 269). allerdings haben diese diskurse kaum ausdruck in hegemonialen praktiken gefunden, und für die praxis der kapitalistischen warenproduktion ist die trennung von menschen und nichtmenschen, also von geist und natur als rohstoff, nach wie vor ein wichtiges legitimationsmoment. die interiorität lässt sich in konzepten von seele, bewusstsein oder intentionalität begreifen; das heute aber am meisten verbreitete konzept ist wohl dasjenige des rationalen geistes. dagegen begreifen wir die dinge der natur, also das andere des rationalen geistes, als bloße materie, da wir ihnen nur eine physikalität zugestehen. der mensch erscheint im naturalismus einerseits als naturwesen, da sein körper physikalität besitzt. allen voran ist er aber interiorität, rationaler geist, bewusstsein und selbstreflexive intentionalität. descola nennt die ontologie, die genau anders herum verfährt, animismus. nach dieser unterscheiden sich entitäten der welt nicht aufgrund der interioritäten, sondern aufgrund der physikalität: es ist die form, nach der im animismus unterschieden wird: haut, federn, schuppen, rinde und die gestalt sind es, nach denen unterschieden wird, während der naturalismus all diese dinge als gleich betrachtet, nämlich als materie, die aus atomen zusammengesetzt ist. dingen, pflanzen und besonders tieren sowie geistern werden im animismus interioritäten zugesprochen, wie sie auch menschen besitzen. dieses denken führt dazu, dass den entitäten, die uns als bloße natur erscheinen, ein bewusstsein oder eine seele (daher der begriff animismus) zugesprochen wird, die sich prinzipiell nicht vom bewusstsein oder von der seele der menschen unterscheidet. beispielsweise erlaubt dies den menschen zu den tieren, aber auch den tieren untereinander, kommunikationsbeziehungen aufzubauen (descola, 2011, s. 197). des weiteren haben tiere und gelegentlich auch pflanzen qua ihrer interioritäten einblick in die kulturbegründenden normen wie heiratsregeln oder regeln, die generell das verhalten zwischen den subjekten und ihrer gruppen reglementieren. die unterscheidung zwischen dem ort der kultur und dem ort der natur, also zwischen haushalt/dorf und dem wald oder der wildnis wird damit größtenteils aufgehoben (vgl. descola, 2011, s. 63–98). in diesem sinne sind auch die ausführungen von dayak-aktivistinnen zu verstehen, die darauf hinweisen, dass für sie die natur ein „gemeinsames haus“ für alle lebewesen ist. hier sei als beispiel auf die selbstdarstellung der noyan-dayak verwiesen: „die dayak betrachten die natur als gemeinsames haus für alle geschöpfe, einschließlich 100 timo duile  aseas 7(1) derer, die nicht sichtbar sind“ (the new generation of noyan, 2013, übersetzung des autors). das haus verweist hier auf den ort der kultur, an dem diese lebewesen ebenso wie die menschen teilhaben. vor diesem hintergrund erscheinen ökologische konflikte dann auch als gesellschaftliche konflikte – nicht, weil sie nur menschen beträfen, sondern weil nicht-menschliche entitäten als teile der gesellschaft angesehen werden. in der selbstdarstellung der dayak dient der verweis auf diese andere ontologie letztlich auch der politischen strategie der bestimmung des dayak-seins und dem aufbau eines gegenhegemonialen naturverständnisses. entwurf traditioneller naturkonzepte der dayak in borneo die bezeichnung „dayak“ ist ein relikt aus der niederländischen kolonialzeit und bezeichnet zunächst alle einwohnerinnen borneos, die sich nicht zum islam bekennen, andere muttersprachen als das malaiische sprechen und meist „im inneren“ der insel leben. die dayak sind daher kulturell und linguistisch betrachtet eine überaus heterogene gruppe, allein in west-kalimantan hat das institut dayakologi (2011) 151 verschiedene dayak-sprachen gezählt. trotz dieser vielfalt soll im folgenden gezeigt werden, dass es in verschiedenen dayak-gemeinschaften konzepte gibt, die in das descola’sche schema des animismus eingeordnet werden können. diese konzepte dienen nro-aktivistinnen, beispielsweise aus indigenenaber auch aus umweltnros, in der folge dazu, ein „traditionelles“/gegenhegemoniales naturkonzept der bewohnerinnen borneos zu entwerfen, das einem „westlichen“/hegemonialen entgegengestellt wird und zur konstruktion einer gemeinsamen identität als dayak beiträgt. neben dieser idealtypischen unterscheidung gibt es eine reihe von abstufungen, weil die verschiedenen dayak-gemeinschaften zu einem unterschiedlichen grad in modernisierungsprozesse eingebunden sind. das macht sich zum beispiel auch in der strategie von umwelt-nros, die mit indigenen zusammenarbeiten, bemerkbar. in einem interview mit einem vertreter des wwf in pontianak hob dieser hervor, dass man zwischen den noch ursprünglich (masih origen) lebenden dayak, denen es um naturschutz gehe und jenen, die über politische und wirtschaftliche verflechtungen in moderne produktionspraktiken und naturwahrnehmungskonzepte eingebunden seien, unterscheiden müsse. somit werden die „traditionell“ lebenden dayak teil einer politisch-diskursiven strategie: sie sind die „echten“ naturschützer, da sie über einen besonderen zugang zur natur verfügen. der wwf kann das für seine argumentationen nutzen, da die ziele der indigenen trotz eines „anderen“ naturverständnisses mit den praktischen zielen des wwf konform sind (hermayani putra, wwf west-kalimantan, persönliches interview, 7. jänner 2014, pontianak). inwiefern finden wir auf borneo aber konzeptionen von natur, die einen unterschied zu jenen naturdiskursen aufweisen, die als grundlage der kapitalistischen umwandlung und aneignung der natur stehen? seit der kolonialzeit gibt es aufzeichnungen von forschenden, die einblick in die art und weise geben, wie die indigenen borneos ihre umwelt nutzen und wahrnehmen. diese untersuchungen können aufschluss darüber geben, welche ontologien im sinne descolas das handeln und denken der menschen in borneo in bezug auf ihre umwelt bestimmen und ob hier alternative ordnungen die wahrnehmung von umwelt strukturieren. 101naturkonzepte und indigene identitätsentwürfe im kontext ökolog. konflikte in kalimantan der forschungsreisende alfred willem nieuwenhuis (2009), der borneo ende des 19. jahrhunderts bereiste, thematisierte in seinen umfangreichen berichten immer wieder die beziehung der dayak zu den tieren. das reh taucht dabei oft als omentier auf; so musste beispielsweise eine reise verschoben werden, weil dayak beobachtet hatten, dass ein reh über ein gerade erst angelegtes feld gegangen war. nieuwenhuis (2009, s. 44) deutet die wahrnehmung des rehs durch die dayak zunächst als ein „böses omen“. das tier erscheint als bloßes zeichen, als überbringer einer botschaft, die nicht vom tier selbst stammt und derer sich das tier auch nicht bewusst ist. ganz anders liest sich dagegen eine spätere passage, in der das reh wieder auftaucht: auch der schrei des kidjang (reh) rechts oder links vom beobachter, zeigt an, ob ein stück urwald gefällt werden darf oder nicht. hat das reh die wahl gebilligt, so muss das ganze dorf 8 nächte melo njaho. man darf dann das haus wohl verlassen, aber keinen reis als proviant mitnehmen und keine nacht außerhalb des hauses verbringen (sān). (nieuwenhuis, 2009, s. 188, eigene hervorhebung) hier erscheint das reh als subjekt, das darüber entscheiden darf, ob ein waldstück gerodet werden darf oder nicht, es ist teil der gemeinschaft und steht mit dieser im ritual oder durch beobachtung in einer kommunikationsbeziehung. das reh verfügt also über eine interiorität und kann bewusste entscheidungen treffen, die für die menschen bindend sind. wie man die interpretation der dayak bezüglich des verhaltens des tieres auch deuten mag, offensichtlich gibt es hier eine interiorität, die mit den dayak kommuniziert. es ist entweder das reh selbst, das einen geist bzw. eine interiorität besitzt, oder ein geist, der die physikalität des rehs als kommunikationsmittel nutzt. ähnliche fälle schildert john bamba, direktor der nro institut dayakologi, für die heutige zeit. im interview hob er hervor, dass die geister die form von tieren annehmen, um den menschen zu erscheinen und dadurch mit ihnen zu kommunizieren. die tiere sind somit verkörperungen von bloßen interioritäten (merupakan penjelmaan dari roh). die interiorität des tieres ist der geist, der seine form ändern kann, um kommunikationsbeziehungen aufzubauen (john bamba, persönliches interview, 8. jänner 2014, pontianak). diese kommunikation ist besonders dann wichtig, wenn land, auf das die geister und tiere auch ein anrecht (hak) haben, umgewandelt wird, beispielsweise für ein feld mit trockenreis (ladang). wird land dagegen großflächig – etwa von investorinnen – in palmölplantagen umgewandelt, werden solche rituale nicht angewandt und die nicht sichtbaren bewohnerinnen ihrer wohnstätte beraubt. von ähnlichen ritualen bei der anlage von feldern berichteten in interviews auch die bekati-dayak, die neben vögeln auch auf das erscheinen von schlangen und gürteltieren achten. sie kritisierten außerdem, dass bei der anlage einer palmölplantage südlich von seluas (kabupaten bengkyang, west-kalimantan) keine rücksicht auf die geister und zeichen der natur genommen wurde. ein tödlicher unfall, der sich auf der plantage ereignete, ist nach ansicht einiger bauern die folge dieser missachtung der rechte der dort wohnenden geister (persönliches gespräch, 10. dezember 2013, seluas). neben der tatsache, dass tiere und menschen sowie tiere untereinander kommunikationsbeziehungen aufbauen können, sind – wie der aus zentral-kalimantan stammende forscher yus ngabut (2003) zeigt – auch 102 timo duile  aseas 7(1) metamorphosen der form möglich, das heißt, bestimmte menschen wie schamaninnen können die gestalt von tieren annehmen und umgekehrt. ein weiteres beispiel aus borneo zeigt jedoch, dass mitunter auch normale menschen ihre form in eine tierform verändern können, wenn in diesem fall auch unbeabsichtigt: the dayaks recognize the likeness of both these apes to men, but from this likeness they draw a conclusion contrary to that of darwin. the contrast in view shows how two authorities considering the same fact can deduce from them exactly opposite theories. the evolutionists say that man is an ascendent of ape; the land dayaks say that the ape is a descendent of man. the orangutan, they say, spring from a man who, become ashamed at some misdeed in the village, ran away into the jungle. he stayed there so long that he took the form of an orang-utan, and his children were like him. the wife, on this theory, is the missing link. (geddes, 1961, s. 12, eigene hervorhebung) der ethnologe william robert geddes erhielt diese erklärung von den landdayak, bei denen er in den 1950er jahren forschte. nach deren wahrnehmung sind die orang-utans bloß durch ihre form und durch ihr habituelles verhalten von den menschen verschieden. was den orang-utan ausmacht, ist seine form und nicht, wie in der westlichen wahrnehmung, die tatsache, dass er der natur angehört. einen ähnlichen fall, aus dem man auf eine gemeinsame interiorität der menschen und der affen schließen kann, berichtete ein wwf-mitarbeiter im interview: bei den kantun-dayak und iban-dayak gäbe es die vorstellung, dass die orang-utans ihre vorfahren sind (orang utan itu adalah nenek moyang mereka). sie können diese natürlich nur in ihrer interiorität sein. dieser glauben sei für die strategie des wwf wichtig, da er den dayak plausibel mache, warum die tiere einen besonderen schutz genießen müssen (hermayani putra, wwf west-kalimantan, persönliches interview, 7. jänner 2014). indigene episteme und das einschreiben in hegemoniale symbolische ordnungen das besonders seit der suharto-diktatur marginalisierte indigene wissen erfährt im zuge von revitalisierungsprozessen der lokalen kultur diskursive aufwertungen. dabei wird die lokale kultur immer wieder neu entworfen und zwischen den akteurinnen verhandelt. um aber die unterschiede des lokalen in bezug auf das hegemonial-globale zu markieren, bedienen sich (indigene) akteurinnen auch alternativer naturkonzeptionen. im zuge dieser revitalisierungsprozesse wird nicht bloß die materielle kultur gegenstand der identitätskonstruktionen. die folgenden beispiele aus publikationen von john bamba sollen verdeutlichen, dass sich gerade auch entlang ökologischer konfliktlinien lokale kulturen revitalisieren, indem sie ein eigenes naturverständnis als gegensatz zum westlich-hegemonialen naturbegriff hervorheben, das in diesem fall auf einer animistischen ontologie beruht. dabei beziehen sie sich zwar auf hegemoniale naturvorstellungen, also auch auf den naturalismus, indem sie zum beispiel über den produktiven rückgriff auf nachhaltigkeitsterminologien zugang zum hegemonialen diskurs erhalten, der natur in opposition zur gesellschaft stellt. andererseits kann beobachtet werden, dass die oben angedeutete ontologie 103naturkonzepte und indigene identitätsentwürfe im kontext ökolog. konflikte in kalimantan des animismus ebenfalls für die politische repräsentation der dayak genutzt wird, mit der ein identitätsstiftender gegenentwurf angeboten wird. die möglichkeiten dazu sind im formal demokratisierten indonesien größer, da sich der staat während der suharto-diktatur als entwicklungsagentur verstand, die ein spezifisches naturverständnis als grundlage ihres entwicklungsprogramms entwarf (zum naturbegriff in der pancasila, siehe beispielsweise wandelt, 1989, s. 167–169) und alternative konzepte als rückständig und unwissenschaftlich bekämpfte (arnscheidt, 2009, s. 134). in seinen publikationen zeichnet bamba oft eine dichotomie zwischen der traditionellen dayak-kultur und der moderne, wobei erstere positiv besetzt wird und sich durch einen naturnahen und umweltfreundlichen lebensstil auszeichnet. den modernen lebensstil, vermittelt über medien, macht er als die ursache für zahlreiche moralische missstände in den dayak-gemeinschaften aus und unterscheidet diesen von einem leben “in harmony with nature“ (bamba, 2000, s. 45). diese zunächst simple gegenüberstellung, wie sie für viele indigenenvertreterinnen typisch ist, untermauert bamba später mit dem entwurf einer spezifisch indigenen naturwahrnehmung, die zum ausgangspunkt für politische strategien werden kann. in seinem aufsatz „seven fortunes versus seven calamities: cultural poverty from an indigenous peoples’ perspective“ aus 2008 zeichnet bamba zunächst diese dichotomie nach, indem er sich auf den nachhaltigkeitsdiskurs bezieht: the dayaks put sustainability as one of the most important considerations in their natural resource management system. this sustainability is inseparable from the biodiversity that has become characteristic of their resource management. … the biodiversity sustains the resources they need in the long run and allows them to preserve their culture and traditions. (bamba, 2008, s. 244) hier und an anderen stellen greift bamba auf das management-paradigma zurück. die aussage ist zunächst einmal nur, dass die jalai-dayak, mit denen bamba sich in dem aufsatz beschäftigt, ein besseres, da nachhaltiges, management der natur betreiben. bamba greift hier sowohl auf technoals auch auf ökozentristische argumente zurück. technozentristisch sind seine argumente, weil es zunächst einmal nur um ein nachhaltiges management natürlicher ressourcen geht, das die jalai beherrschen. er argumentiert in seinem aufsatz jedoch auch ökozentristisch, wenn er die natürlichkeit (organic) dem von menschen entworfenen (inorganic) gegenüberstellt und ersteres zum dayak-prinzip erklärt (bamba, 2008, s. 246–247). indem er „natur“ im zentrum verortet, greift er mechanismen der naturalistischen ontologie auf, die natur von kultur scheidet. er verortet die dayak-kultur jedoch auf der seite der natur, die hier zunächst als eine mächtige, regeln für den menschen stiftende entität erscheint. in weiterer folge argumentiert bamba zwar in der symbolischen ordnung der kultur-natur-dichotomie, transzendiert diese allerdings gleichzeitig, da die argumente erkennbar von einer tradition beeinflusst sind, die diese dichotomie nicht kennt: „the dayaks believe in nature’s revenge if humans go against the adat, which provides guidance and a path to life. adat shows how to live in unity with nature” (bamba, 2008, s. 246). mit dieser in einer romantischen tradition verhafteten sicht auf das adat der dayak kann bamba an ebendiese westlichen diskurse anschließen. einige seiten später schreibt er: “adat provides moral and ethical guidance to keep 104 timo duile  aseas 7(1) human beings living in unity with nature“ (bamba, 2008, s. 248). bamba spricht nun nicht mehr davon, „in harmonie“ mit natur zu leben, sondern „in einheit“. dies wird erst verständlich, wenn wir den begriff des adat näher betrachten. adat ist hier zu verstehen als ein (gewohnheits-)rechtssystem, das menschliche individuen und nicht-menschliche natur in dieselbe symbolische ordnung des rechts ordnet, somit die trennung zwischen natur und gesellschaft negiert. die natur bzw. die entitäten, die der natur zugeordnet werden, sind in dieser vorstellung in das gleiche rechtssystem des adat integriert, das somit gültigkeit für menschen, tiere, pflanzen und geister gleichermaßen beansprucht. da sie alle eine identische interiorität besitzen, haben sie einblick in diese rechtsordnung. die verpflichtungen der nach der form unterschiedlichen entitäten sind reziprok. bei nichtbeachtung oder übertretung der adat-regeln kann es zu rache kommen. dabei handelt es sich nicht um eine rache der natur im sinne einer strafenden, mächtigen und überindividuellen entität, sondern um eine strafe von anderen gemeinschaftsmitgliedern: tiere, pflanzen und geister können rache üben, wenn menschen sich nicht an die verpflichtungen des adat ihnen gegenüber halten. in einer überarbeitung des artikels im jahr 2010 argumentiert bamba interessanterweise stärker innerhalb eines hegemonialen naturverständnisses des naturalismus, das im sinne descolas natur den menschen gegenüberstellt. in einem kapitel, in dem er seine gegenüberstellung von „naturality (organic) versus engineered (inorganic)“ (bamba, 2010, s. 421) ausführt, schreibt er: “naturality” here should be understood as a philosophy to interact with nature based on its laws and carrying capacities. the ethic and moral behind it is that human beings should not exploit nature more than its capacity, and no matter how sophisticated, advanced and mighty the technologies and knowledge they have achieved, human beings cannot live without nature. the key words are “to manage and to maintain/preserve” nature at the same time, and these two actions are inseparable as prerequisites to avoid overexploitation and trespassing the limits of nature’s laws and capacities. (bamba, 2010, s. 421) bamba verweist nun nicht mehr auf das adat, das natur und gesellschaft an die gleiche moralisch-ethische ordnung bindet. die hier zum ausdruck kommende moral ist vielmehr die eines angepassten technozentrismus, der erkennt, dass die kapazitäten der umwelt für die kommenden generationen bewahrt und nachhaltig gemanagt werden müssen (vgl. dazu eblinghaus & stickler, 1992, s. 104). dieses einschreiben in hegemoniale diskurse ist eine große herausforderung für indigene akteurinnen. schon mit der terminologie, die sich in begriffen wie „natur“ oder „nachhaltigkeit“ ausdrückt, wird die symbolische ordnung des naturalismus reproduziert, die auf der einmaligkeit des menschlichen geistes fußt und in der die natur als materie dem menschlichen geist als interiorität gegenübergestellt wird. innerhalb dieser epistemischen konflikte stellt sich die frage, ob der aufsatz von bamba von 2008 den epistemisch marginalisierten akteurinnen die gelegenheit gibt, sich in die hegemoniale symbolische ordnung einzuschreiben und sie damit auch zu verändern, oder diese durch die sprache reproduziert, wenn die beiträge, um zugang zum hegemonialen diskurs zu erhalten, zunächst die hegemoniale sprachliche ordnung verwenden. im interview verknüpfte bamba die frage, was natur eigentlich ist 105naturkonzepte und indigene identitätsentwürfe im kontext ökolog. konflikte in kalimantan bzw. sein sollte, eng mit wirtschaftlichen problematiken und verwies auf den kapitalistischen charakter der naturausbeutung (john bamba, persönliches interview, 5. dezember 2013, pontianak). um auch ökonomische freiräume zu schaffen, gründete das institut dayakologi eine organisation, die kleinkredite vergibt. bamba führte aus, dass diese kleinkredite jedoch nicht wie jene zu betrachten seien, die von banken mit dem ziel der profitgenerierung vergeben werden. der kredit sei nur das mittel, um den menschen zu helfen, das land wieder nach ökologischen – und „traditionellen“ – kriterien zu bewirtschaften und so zum beispiel ein weiteres vordringen von palmölmonokulturen zu verhindern. die menschen, die diese kredite in anspruch nehmen, müssten sich verpflichten, das erworbene land nach ökologischen kriterien zu bewirtschaften, wozu auch ein verzicht auf den anbau von ölpalmen gehöre. eine ausnahme gäbe es nur für transmigrantinnen, die bereits durch den staat zum anbau von ölpalmen verpflichtet worden seien. diesen menschen, die er letztlich als opfer der ölpalmen sieht (korban sawit), wolle man keine kredite vorenthalten, jedoch würden sie in schulungen über die fatalen folgen des ölpalmenanbaus für die ökologie unterrichtet, um diesen so weit wie möglich zu beenden. generell verweist die strategie bambas auf eine abkehr von kapitalistischen verwertungsparadigmen: im mittelpunkt der landnutzung sollte nicht die produktion für globale märkte stehen, sondern subsistenzwirtschaft, um die lokale nahrungsmittelproduktion sicher zu stellen und nachhaltige landwirtschaft betreiben zu können. nicht zuletzt können so auch alternative naturwahrnehmungen erhalten bleiben, da im traditionell genutzten land auch raum für alle bewohnerinnen des „gemeinsamen hauses“ der natur vorhanden sei. erst durch den freiraum, der durch die kleinkredite gewährt werden soll, kann ein epistemischer freiraum geschaffen werden. das land ist (wieder) im besitz der indigenen, die es nach maßgabe ihrer naturkonzeption nutzen können. die frage nach landbesitz ist dementsprechend in den letzten jahren einer der schwerpunkte des institut dayakologi geworden (julia, ehemalige id-aktivistin, persönliches interview, 20. märz 2014, pontianak). lokales wissen: übersetzung des lokalen in die globalen nachhaltigkeitsdiskurse des naturalismus die rolle von hegemonialen naturkonzepten drückt sich nicht zuletzt in maßnahmen und im denken der eza aus, obwohl lokales wissens immer stärker in diese diskurse integriert wird. dabei wird besonders den lokalen kleinbauern und -bäuerinnen unterstellt, dass sie besser an die lokalen ökologischen gegebenheiten angepasste techniken entwickelt haben. dem zugrunde liegt zunächst ein technozentrischer naturbegriff: natur muss nachhaltig und effektiv gemanagt werden. natur ist das andere des managenden menschlichen geistes, ist ressourcenreservoir und sammelbegriff für die in der umwelt vorliegenden objekte, die als bloße materie, eben als ressourcen, betrachtet werden. während das hegemoniale entwicklungspolitische paradigma bis in die 1980er davon ausging, dass nur durch massive kapitalinvestitionen und maximale ressourcenausbeutung im rahmen einer deregulierten wirtschaft der wirtschaftliche take-off der länder der globalen peripherie bewerkstelligt werden könne (zapf, 1997, s. 33), hat sich dieser fokus mit dem leitbild der nachhaltigen entwicklung (rauch, 2009, s. 75–76) zwar verschoben, die zugrunde liegende 106 timo duile  aseas 7(1) ontologie ist jedoch dieselbe geblieben. anhand zweier beispiele aus borneo soll im folgenden illustriert werden, wie ansätze, die mit lokalem wissen arbeiten, alternative ontologien konsequent ignorieren und somit als transmissionsriemen für das projekt der ausdehnung hegemonialer wissensformen fungieren. dabei markiert der begriff des lokalen wissens bestimmte wissensformen als lokal (im gegensatz zu global), um sie dann doch durch einen szientistisch-hegemonialen diskurs zu repräsentieren. lokales wissen wird in diesem sinne als techne verstanden, also auf seinen instrumentellen aspekt begrenzt (vgl. linkenbach, 2004, s. 234). um argumente für nachhaltiges management vorzubringen, lassen entwicklungsexpertinnen im globalen norden kleinbauern und -bäuerinnen und indigene im globalen süden sprechen, ohne dass eine tatsächlich eigene artikulation dieser menschen möglich ist, weil das lokale wissen sogleich in die hegemoniale episteme übersetzt wird. in der regel gibt so der globale norden die sprache und die ontologie vor. christian gönner (2000) schreibt dementsprechend in einer studie zum ressourcenmanagement in einem dorf der benuaq-dayak: “there is a chance to translate indigenous knowledge into expert knowledge“ (s. 78, eigene hervorhebung). es ist diese übersetzung, die das moment der indigenen episteme ausblenden kann. im hegemonialen diskurs wird wissen nur aus dem blickwinkel von expertinnen aus dem globalen norden betrachtet, zu denen er sich selbst zählt. er möchte zunächst feststellen, ob die bisher praktizierte bewirtschaftungsweise nachhaltig war. mit blick auf die benuaq bejaht gönner dies und führt als kriterium an, dass dieses system die biodiversität erhalten habe (gönner, 2000, s. 61–65). daher habe das lokale wissen den beweis erbracht, dass mit ihm eine nachhaltige nutzung des ökosystems bewerkstelligt werden kann. die zugrunde liegenden prämissen sind für gönner offensichtlich eine marktanbindung, die nachhaltig zu organisieren ist: das dayak-dorf muss als peripherer ort im weltsystem in dieses eingebunden werden, so dass aus ihm ein mehrwert geschöpft werden kann, ohne dass die bewohnerinnen oder das ökosystem dadurch überbeansprucht werden. das lokale wissen soll für eine weite palette von agrarprodukten sorgen, die nachhaltig bewirtschaftet werden, damit zum beispiel schwankungen am markt, für den die produkte bereitgestellt werden, ausgeglichen werden können (vgl. gönner, 2000, s. iv). es geht ihm darum, dass sich die indigenen selbst versorgen und ihre produkte an märkte abführen können (gönner, 2000, s. 70). dieser ökonomische subtext verlangt letztlich eine betrachtung der natur, in der diese auch als ökonomischer faktor erscheint. daher ist die übersetzung des lokalen wissens in eine ontologie des naturalismus notwendig. diese übersetzung ist vereinnahmung des lokalen und gleichzeitig exkludiert sie wesentliche elemente dieses wissens. sehr ähnliche argumentationsmuster finden sich bei momberg (1993). mombergs untersuchung über lokales wissen und indigenes ressourcenmanagement in westkalimantan entstand zu einer zeit, in der sich die diskurse um nachhaltigkeit zu etablieren begannen und dabei paradigmen, die entwicklung durch wirtschaftliches wachstum anstrebten, keineswegs ablösten (vgl. z.b. wagner, 1993, s. 2–4). ein „multidimensionaler nachhaltigkeitsbegriff“ (rauch, 2009, s. 76) wurde zum leitbild, der u.a. einen umweltschonenden entwicklungsprozess mit wirtschaftswachstum zu verbinden suchte. seitdem muss, beispielsweise auch für die deutsche entwicklungszusammenarbeit, wirtschaftswachstum nachhaltig sein (bundesministerium für wirtschaftliche zusammenarbeit und entwicklung, 2014). jedoch konnte in dieser 107naturkonzepte und indigene identitätsentwürfe im kontext ökolog. konflikte in kalimantan zeit nicht mehr übersehen werden, dass eine aggressiv auf effizienz setzende ressourcenausbeutung zu ökologischen schäden führte. momberg (1993) stellt in diesem zusammenhang fest: in west kalimantan, as everywhere in the humid tropics, the misuse of forest resources is leading to rapid deforestation, affecting many indigenous forest communities, who have developed local forestand agroforest management systems, for subsistence and market production. … these systems … might provide potential for sustainable development and conservation. … the obvious source of new ideas and information lies in the knowledge systems of indigenous people for example the dayaks of west kalimantan. (s. 3) momberg stellt klar, dass es ihm nur um lokales wissen geht, sofern es sich dabei um forstwirtschaftliche managementsysteme handelt, die, wie bei gönner, mit marktintegration kombiniert werden können. eine analyse des lokalen wissens soll helfen, diese managementstrategien herauszuarbeiten, um die lokale bevölkerung besser in wirtschaftskreisläufe zu integrieren. momberg führt aus, dass seine analyse includes the inventarization of land use systems and environment from a cognized and a western “scientific” perspective. the comparison of the cognized and “objective” environment should serve for a better understanding between farmers, and the change agents, and provide information on indigenous knowledge systems as potential for sustainable resource management. (momberg, 1993, s. 3) auch hier ist die „emische analyse“ ein prozess der trennung des praktischen wissens von der lokalen episteme und führt zu einer überführung der lokalen episteme in „objektives“ wissen. dieses wissen erscheint aber nur deshalb objektiv, weil der naturalismus als epistemische grundlage angenommen wird. die lokale episteme wird dagegen von beginn an ausgeblendet. schlussfolgerungen anhand einiger beispiele hat dieser artikel gezeigt, dass ökologische konflikte auch eine diskursive, mitunter epistemische oder, wie descola es nennen würde, ontologische dimension haben. der im westen entstandene naturbegriff, der den umgang mit natur strukturiert, beruht auf einem ontologischen konzept, das grundlegende unterschiede zu jenem von indigenen gemeinschaften am beispiel der dayak in kalimantan, indonesien, aufweist. die uns vertraute dichotomie zwischen natur und menschlichem geist ist dort erst durch den import dieser episteme bekannt; die indigene welterfahrung dagegen lässt sich mit descola als animismus charakterisieren, der den entitäten der umwelt eine ähnliche interiorität wie den menschen zuspricht. seit dem sturz suhartos können in indonesien vielfältige revitalisierungsprozesse indigener identität mit politischen folgen (davidson & henly, 2007; li, 2000; für west-kalimantan, siehe beispielsweise tanasaldy, 2012, s. 257–308), oft in zusammenhang mit einer revitalisierung des adat (benda-beckmann & benda-beckmann, 2011, s. 168) konstatiert werden, die auch indigene epistemische ordnungen auf108 timo duile  aseas 7(1) greifen, um die eigene identität beispielsweise gegen umweltzerstörende praktiken des staates oder internationaler unternehmen abzugrenzen. neben akteurinnen, die auf nationaler ebene agieren (z.b. aliansi masyrakat adat nusantara, aman), haben sich lokale indigenen-nros etablieren können, wie beispielsweise das institut dayakologi, das seine aktivitäten auf west-kalimantan beschränkt. wie am beispiel der äußerungen des direktors dieses instituts, john bamba, gezeigt wurde, nehmen diese stimmen eine ambivalente rolle ein: um sich in die hegemonialen diskurse einzuschreiben, müssen sie sich in sprechakten artikulieren, die der hegemonialen symbolischen ordnung, das heißt vor allem dem naturalismus descolas, zugeordnet werden können. gleichzeitig wurde gezeigt, dass eine sorgfältige lektüre andere, den äußerungen zugrunde liegende ontologien freilegen kann, die die uns vertraute dichotomie zwischen interioritätenloser natur und menschlichem geist (als einzige interiorität) nicht kennen. das indigene identitätsverständnis, das sich für seine konstitution unter anderem auf diese epistemische differenz beruft, kann in der folge für politische strategien genutzt werden, beispielsweise in ökologischen konflikten um die expansion von palmölplantagen. diese alternativen epistemischen ordnungen spielen jedoch für ökonomisch ausgerichtete ansätze der entwicklungszusammenarbeit, die natur als ressourcen konzipieren muss, keine rolle – daher wird mitunter, wie hier anhand zweier beispiele gezeigt wurde, nur der instrumentelle aspekt des lokalen wissens betont. wie an beispielen aus der eza gezeigt wurde, findet hier ein übersetzungsprozess statt, der lokales wissen nur als phänomen betrachtet, dass sogleich von westlichen expertinnen in die ihnen vertrauten dichotomien und epistemischen ordnungen gebracht wird. die uns mittlerweile vertrauten konzepte von nachhaltigkeit, ressourcenmanagement oder lokalem wissen sollten dementsprechend immer wieder auf ihre prämissen hin untersucht werden. letztlich würde ein angemessener umgang mit indigenen bedeuten, die eigenen konzepte zu partikularisieren, sich also bewusst zu machen, dass die art und weise, wie wir über natur sprechen und denken, eine historisch gewordene ist. in der kontroverse um ökologische konflikte wie jene um palmöl müssen diese epistemischen differenzen stärker betrachtet werden, da sie zwar nicht direkt sichtbar sind, aber als basis einer westlichen epistemischen hegemonie eng mit der transformation der landschaft verbunden ist: jedem eingriff liegt eine spezifische weltauffassung zugrunde, und jeder eingriff hat andererseits auswirkungen auf die weltwahrnehmung der akteurinnen. entfremdung, anpassung und revitalisierung alternativer ontologie können dann mögliche, politisch und gesellschaftlich relevante konsequenzen sein. im falle der dayak in kalimantan kann die revitalisierung als reaktion auf entfremdungserfahrungen gedeutet werden, die letztlich vor allem eine politische reaktion auf die ökonomische marginalisierung darstellt.  literaturverzeichnis alcon, j. 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(2003). kenyah bakung oral literature: an introduction. in c. eghenter, b. sellato, & s. g. devung (hrsg.), social science research and conservation management in the interior of borneo. unravelling past and present interaction of people and forests (s. 241–257). bogor, indonesien: center for international forest research. nieuwenhuis, a. w. (2009). quer durch borneo. paderborn, deutschland: salzwasser-verlag. nuscheler, f. (2006). entwicklungspolitik. bonn, deutschland: bundeszentrale für politische bildung. pichler, m., & pye, o. (2012). wenn die lösung zum problem wird: agrotreibstoffe und der palmölboom in indonesien. in h. schneider, r. jordan, & m. waibel (hrsg.), umweltkonflikte in südostasien (s. 139–164). berlin, deutschland: horlemann. plumwood, v. (2003). decolonizing relationships with nature. in w. m. adams, & m. mulligan (hrsg.), decolonizing nature. strategies for conservation in a post-colonial era (s. 51–78). london, uk: earthscan. pye, o. (2013). introduction. in o. pye, & j. bhattacharya (hrsg.), the palm oil controversy in southeast asia. a transnational perspective (s. 1–18). singapur: iseas publishing. rauch, t. (2009). entwicklungspolitik. theorien, strategien, instrumente. braunschweig, deutschland: westermann. rettet den regenwald. (2011). erfolg: eu beschließt kennzeichnungspflicht für palmöl. zugegriffen unter http://www.regenwald.org/erfolge/3630/erfolg-eu-beschliesst-kennzeichnungspflicht-fuer-palmoel tanasaldy, t. (2012). regime change and ethnic politics in indonesia. dayak politics of west kalimantan. leiden, niederlande: kitlv-press. the new generation of noyan. (2013). the new generation of noyan. zugegriffen unter http://noyan.webs. com/budaya.htm wagner, h. (1993). wachstum und entwicklung. theorie der entwicklungspolitik. münchen, deutschland: r. oldenbourg verlag. wallerstein, i. (2010). die barbarei der anderen. europäischer universalismus. berlin, deutschland: verlag klaus wagenbach. wandelt, i. (1989). der weg zum pancasila-menschen. frankfurt/main, deutschland: verlag peter lang. world wildlife fund deutschland. (2013). die entwaldung borneos. zugegriffen unter http://www.wwf. de/themen-projekte/projektregionen/indonesien-malaysia/waldverlust-seit-1985/die-entwaldungborneos/ zapf, w. (1997). entwicklung als modernisierung. in m. schulz (hrsg.), entwicklung. die perspektive der entwicklungssoziologie (s. 31–45). opladen, deutschland: westdeutscher verlag. über den autor timo duile ist doktorand an der universität bonn (abteilung für südostasienwissenschaft) und guest researcher an der universitas tanjungpura in pontianak, indonesien. seine forschungsschwerpunkte sind ökologische konflikte, identitätspolitiken und demokratisierungsprozesse in indonesien sowie postkoloniale theorien. ► kontakt: tduile@uni-bonn.de danksagung dieses forschungsvorhaben wird von der universität bonn und dem deutschen akademischen austauschdienst (daad) gefördert. mother tongue, mothering, and (transnational) identity: indonesian mothers in canberra, australia ariane utomo ► utomo, a. (2014). mother tongue, mothering, and (transnational) identity: indonesian mothers in canberra, australia. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 7(2), 165-182. this article focuses on the cultural-linguistic maintenance rationales, efforts, and experiences of a group of indonesian mothers residing in canberra, australia. the conceptual framework rests on the premise of a bidirectional relationship between migration and mothering, and how this dynamic shapes the identities of both migrant mothers and, potentially, their children. the article’s auto-ethnographic approach centers on my involvement in a small community organization in canberra that runs indonesian language and dancing classes, primarily targeting young children of parents with indonesian background. i argue that, while mothers’ collective efforts in this institutional setting may not be effective enough in achieving a native level of language proficiency among second generation children, the club facilitates the production of shared transnational identities among migrant mothers and the mothers’ collective aspirations for their children’s transnational identities. keywords: indonesian diaspora; migrant mothers; migration; mothering; transnational families  dieser artikel beschäftigt sich mit kulturell-sprachlichen erhaltungsprinzipien, -bemühungen und -erfahrungen einer gruppe von indonesischen müttern in canberra, australien. der konzeptionelle rahmen basiert auf der annahme eines doppelt gerichteten verhältnisses zwischen migration und bemutterung, sowie auf dem einfluss dieser dynamik sowohl auf die identität der migrantischen mütter, als auch deren kinder. der autoethnografische ansatz fußt auf meiner einbindung in eine kleine organisation in canberra, die indonesische sprachund tanzkurse mit einem besonderen fokus auf kleine kinder von eltern mit indonesischem hintergrund anbietet. es wird gezeigt, dass auch wenn die kollektiven bemühungen der mütter in diesem institutionellen setting nicht effektiv genug sein mögen, um ein muttersprachliches niveau unter kindern der zweiten generation zu erreichen, der verein dennoch die produktion von geteilten transnationalen identitäten unter migrantischen müttern und das kollektive bestreben der mütter für transnationale identitäten ihrer kinder erleichtert. schlagworte: bemutterung; indonesische diaspora; migrantische mütter; migration; transnationale familien aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 14 .2 -3 166 ariane utomo  aseas 7(2) introduction within the literature on migration in the west, there is a consensus that “migrant families orient significant aspects of their lives around their country of origin” (haller & landolt, 2005, p. 1183). along this line, segmented assimilation theorists treat the family as a social institution within which children of migrants receive an ethnic and linguistic socialization (haller & landolt, 2005; portes & zhou, 1993; ruben g. rumbaut, 1994; zhou, 1997). furthermore, according to recent scholarship on youth and transnationalism, the family plays a crucial part in the formation of transnational identities across different generations of migrants and their children (goulbourne, reynolds, & zontini, 2009; levitt & schiller, 2004). this interest on intergenerational identities of migrants has expanded across a wide range of disciplines in the social sciences. economists, for example, provide further quantitative modeling of the socialization of cultural traits in migrant groups, holding that parents have a set of “well-defined preferences over the cultural traits acquired and developed by their children” (bisin & verdier, 2000, pp. 956–967). central to the discussion on identity formation in migrant families is the practice of mothering. in her decadal review of scholarly work on mothering, terry arendell (2000) concludes that in the interdisciplinary space, the definitions of mothering share a common theme. mothering is “the social practices of nurturing and caring for dependent children [and] is associated with women because universally, it is women who do the work of mothering” (2000, p. 1192). through their practice of mothering, mothers shape the “transmission of culture”, the “constitution of kinship”, and the family and societal reproduction (barlow & chapin, 2010, p. 342; gedalof, 2009). there is a growing body of research on the effects of transnational migration on the family, kinship, and particularly on gender ideology and practices within the family as well as on the identity formation of migrants’ children (coe, 2011; ho, 2006; lafromboise, coleman, & gerton, 1993; levitt & waters, 2006; nora chiang, 2008; wu, 2009). at the same time, there are also studies that examine the effects of motherhood on cross-cultural adaptations of migrants (guo, 2013; moon, 2003; sigad & eisikovits, 2009; tummala-narra, 2004). while migration adds a layer of complexity to ideas of mothering, the scholarship on the topic of motherhood among overseas indonesians is still limited (cf. doxey, 2007; tsai, chen, & huang, 2011; winarnita, 2008). in this article, i built upon literature in the field of population studies on gender and migration and upon interdisciplinary scholarly work on mothering to examine the mothering experience of indonesian women residing in canberra, australia. with an estimated population of 382,863 people (act government, 2013), canberra provides a unique setting for the indonesian diaspora in australia, not least as it scores highest in the wellbeing index of the country (oecd, 2014). according to a recent study, canberra hosts only 1.6 percent of the indonesian diaspora in australia (muhidin, 2013). by crude social groupings, the indonesian diaspora in canberra is largely composed of indonesian nationals working in the embassy, university students, marriage migrants, and a small but increasing number of professionals who came to canberra via the various skilled/business migration schemes. the indonesian community in canberra is comparatively smaller and more close-knit than in 167mother tongue, mothering, and (transnational) identity other major cities in australia such as sydney, melbourne, or perth. there is a range of community groups established largely for the benefit of the indonesian diaspora, including student organizations, family associations, and prayer groups. the conceptual framework of this article rests on the premise of a relationship between migration and mothering. based on this assumption, the following arguments are based on the question of how dynamics in this relationship shape the practices and identities of migrant mothers and, potentially, their children. the article’s autoethnographic approach (see anderson, 2006) centers on my involvement in a small community organization in canberra that runs indonesian language and dancing classes, primarily targeting young children of parents with indonesian background. the core volunteers in this organization are tertiary-educated mothers1 from indonesia with young children, all of whom are first-generation migrants with either an australian permanent residency visa or an australian citizenship.2 auto-ethnography is not a new analytical approach in migration research (kusow, 2003; marvasti, 2005; turgo, 2012). ellis, adams, and bochner (2010) define auto-ethnography “as an approach to research and writing that seeks to describe and systematically analyze personal experience in order to understand cultural experience” (p. 1). i use my own selective hindsight on migrant mothering and relate it to a broader research context on migrant mothering as well as to the experiences of other mothers engaged in this community organization. in doing so, i draw upon semistructured interviews conducted in bahasa indonesia with four mothers between 35 and 42 years old who are active members of the club and whose children attend language and dancing classes. these mothers are tertiary-educated and have permanent migrant status in australia. two of the mothers were employed at the time of the interviews. two of the mothers are married to indonesians and the other two are married to australians. together, these mothers have five australian-born children. due to the small interview sample and the fact that these mothers – including me – are from roughly the same socio-economic background, i am aware of the limited potential for generalization of my study.3 as an aspect of mothering, the cultural-linguistic maintenance rationales, efforts, and experiences of indonesian mothers residing in canberra are my point of departure. my initial research question thus focused on mothering from the perspective of gender and migration research. building on participant observation and a pre1 all mothers have tertiary education; some completed their university degrees in indonesia, and some completed post-graduate degrees in indonesia/australia. a number of mothers hold australian non-university tertiary level qualifications (e.g. graduate certificates or associate diplomas). 2 in general, current indonesian law does not allow an indonesian citizen to have another citizenship. however, dual citizenship is an exception for children of indonesian nationals overseas or children from mixed marriages who were born on or after 1 august 2006 (law no. 12/2006, retrieved from the website of the consulate general of the republic of indonesia, perth, australia: http://kjri-perth.org.au/index.php/ indonesian-citizen/dwi-kewarganegaraan/). the majority of mothers in the committee have australian permanent residency visas obtained through the dependent spouse visa scheme or through the general skilled migration scheme. 3 in effect, the social proximity that i share with the participants of my research had contributed to my decision to avoid the discussion of class altogether in this article. future work on class and gender dimensions of migrant mothering would benefit not only from the budding scholarship on transnationalism, networks, and connectivity among overseas indonesians, but also the under-theorized role of mothers in international migration studies (gedalof, 2009). 168 ariane utomo  aseas 7(2) liminary round of interviews with four active members of the language and culture club, i explore whether and how bilingualism and biculturalism play a role in the practice of migrant mothering, in shaping migrant mothers’ identities, and in their perception of the development of their children’s identities. i argue that, while the mothers’ collective efforts in running a language club may not be effective enough to achieve a native level of language proficiency among their children, the club serves to produce shared transnational identities among migrant mothers, and to promote migrant mothers’ collective aspirations for their children’s transnational identities. the article is organized as follows: i start by looking at pertinent scholarship and demographic data supporting my choice to approach the issue of transnationalism from a cultural-linguistic and a gender perspective. i then outline my auto-ethnographic account on the complex interplay of migration and mothering practices. here, i present my relatively recent involvement in a community organization that aims at promoting native language (bahasa indonesia) use in early childhood among young second-generation children of indonesian migrant mothers. in attempting to localize my rationale and experiences in involving myself and my children in this organization in a broader context, i outline interviews with other mothers participating in the same organization, which show the diversity and the commonalities in bilingual and/or bicultural mothering. finally, i situate language retaining efforts in the context of the ongoing negotiation of mother-child relations and identities in transnational families. migration, transnationalism, and language retention since the early 1990s, there have been several waves of transnational migration scholarship (see levitt & schiller, 2004 for a seminal review). distinct to classical assimilation theorists (e.g. gordon, 1964) who proposed that immigrants in the west4 would ultimately lose their homeland ties and practices, the transnational perspective highlights the enduring connections that generations of migrants maintain to their place of origin at the same time as they are gradually incorporated into their host countries. in the bourgeoning literature on transnational migration, these enduring connections are discussed in terms of transnational identities and sense of belonging, transnational networks and kinship, and socio-economic, cultural, and religious practices across national borders and boundaries. one issue that has emerged out of the complex layers and multiple dimensions of transnationalism in migration studies is the question of whether “transnational migration is an ephemeral first-generation phenomenon” (levitt & schiller, 2004, p. 1005). this question of whether migrants can pass on their transnational identities and practices onto their children and grandchildren is the subject of an increasing number of migration research. one measurable outcome of such processes is language retention, whereby speaking a native language other than english at home became a common indicator of transnational identities among first and later generation migrants in english speaking countries (lazear, 1995; rumbaut, massey, & bean, 2006). 4 here, the west is comprised of popular oecd destination countries for international migrants, including, but not limited to the united states, western europe, and australia. 169mother tongue, mothering, and (transnational) identity there is a great variation in the extent to which a minority language can be successfully retained in migrant communities. for example, in australia, second-generation dutch migrants have the highest rate of progression of language shift, with about 96 percent speaking only english at home. in contrast, only about 11 percent of second-generation vietnamese speak only english at home (australian bureau of statistics, 1999). a longitudinal study of language retention among migrant communities in the us suggests that ‘language death’, rather than ‘language retention’ is the norm for migrant languages. applying methods commonly used to derive life expectancies in mortality studies, rumbaut et al. (2006) estimated linguistic life expectancies across generations of migrant groups in southern california. on average, mexicans have the highest generational span for linguistic life expectancy among all migrant groups in the study area. when defining linguistic life expectancy as the preference to speak in the mother tongue, a mexican household is expected to retain such preference for less than two generations. however, when defining linguistic life expectancy as the ability of the migrant household members to speak the mother tongue well, it was found that no migrant language could survive further than the third generation (rumbaut et al., 2006, p. 457). using a more qualitative approach and broadening the proxy of transnational identities outside of language retention, tracey reynolds (2006) points to the relatively limited attention given to the relationship between ethnicity and social capital. her case study on the formation of transnational identities among secondand thirdgeneration young people of caribbean descent in the united kingdom underlines the importance of “collective ethnic bonds”, of “shared identities and values”, and of the “networks of trust and reciprocity” that operate within minority ethnic communities. in particular, reynolds (2006, p. 1098) highlights how caribbean young people’s participation in transnational networks and celebrations provided them with a sense of belonging and collective membership. the above-mentioned discussions on the importance of collective ethnic bonds, migrant networks, and transnational childrearing practices in facilitating inter-generational transnational identities among migrant families serve as departing points of my analysis of the interrelation between migrant mothering practices and culturallinguistic identities. unlike reynolds, who based her research on practices and identities among secondand third-generation migrants, my focus rests on the collective ethnic bonds, transnational identities, and language retaining efforts among a selected group of first-generation indonesian migrant mothers in canberra, australia. mothering in mother tongue: the australian context since language retention is a quantifiable indicator of transnational identity among second-generation migrants, background statistics from the australian population census relating to language retention in australia can provide a first insight into the research field. alongside this indicator, i examined the literature for the gender dimension of language retention practices in migrant families. here, my focus rests on migrant mothers as the central figure of cultural-linguistic transmission across various marital settings in the west. 170 ariane utomo  aseas 7(2) data from the 2011 australian population census on indonesian migrants in australia show that language retention varies by age and by degree of ancestry.5 in 2011, fewer than 70 percent of children from 0 to 4 years with indonesian as their first ancestry spoke their native language (bahasa indonesia) at home (figure 1). among young children with indonesian nominated as their second ancestry, the percentage speaking bahasa indonesia at home was at only 30 percent (figure 1). these figures suggest that the prospect of linguistic survival for bahasa indonesia in australia is rather weak. figure 1. population of indonesian ancestry speaking bahasa indonesia at home.6 when using minority language retention as an indicator of the cultural-linguistic transmission of identities within the family context, the immediate question arises of who is primarily preoccupied with this transmission. in reviewing the literature on interconnections of gender, intermarriage, migration, and language retention, the following observations arose: to begin with, the literature acknowledges that there is a particular relationship between patterns of intermarriage and patterns of culturallinguistic retention (bisin & verdier, 2000; jan, 2013; okita, 2002; robinson, 1989; winter & pauwels, 2005). a study in the us found that ethnic language retention decreases with a rising rate of exogamy and increases with a rising rate of endogamy among east asian men in the us (jan, 2013). for women, ethnic language retention decreases with a rising rate of intermarriage for east asian women (jan, 2013). however, the exact direction of causality between intermarriage and language retention is less clear. 5 data from the department of immigration and border protection (2013) suggest that by the end of june 2011, there were 73,940 indonesian-born persons in australia. there were slightly more indonesianborn women than men (56 and 44 percent, respectively). 6 adapted from “australian population census 2011: customized tables in tablebuilder”, australian bureau of statistics, 2013. 0– 4 5– 9 10 –1 4 15 –1 9 20 –2 4 25 –2 9 30 –3 4 35 –3 9 40 –4 4 45 –4 9 50 –5 4 55 –5 9 60 –6 4 65 –6 9 70 –7 4 75 –7 9 80 –8 4 85 –8 9 90 –9 4 0,0 10,0 20,0 30,0 40,0 50,0 60,0 70,0 80,0 90,0 % speaking bahasa indonesia at home age group 1st ancestry – indonesian 2nd ancestry – indonesian 171mother tongue, mothering, and (transnational) identity figure 2. overseas born men and women in couple families by birthplace: percent married to australian born partners, 2006.7 because patterns of intermarriage between men and women differ, one may speculate on whether mothers or fathers of a particular ethnic background are more likely to promote their native languages (presumably a minority language) in exogamous marriages. in a study of intermarriage patterns in the us with a focus on gender, jacobs and labov (2002) found that among asian americans, “females are more likely to marry whites than are their male counterparts” (p. 621), while the reverse pattern could be observed among african americans. similar patterns can be observed among first-generation, overseas-born individuals in australia. using data from the 7 adapted from “table 7: overseas-born men and women in couple families, by birthplace: percent with australian-born partner 2006”, by g. heard, s.-e. khoo, & b. birrell, 2009, intermarriage in australia: patterns by birthplace, ancestry, religion and indigenous status (p.17). monash, australia: monash university press, centre for population and urban research. country of birth percent married to australian-born republic of korea philippines china thailand japan vietnam cambodia hong kong malaysia indonesia singapore burma (myanmar) canada usa uk france germany netherlands india iran serbia pakistan turkey greece 10 % married to australian born: women 20 30 40 50 60 70 % married to australian born: men 172 ariane utomo  aseas 7(2) earlier 2006 australian population census, figure 2 outlines the percentage of overseas-born men and women in couple families in australia who were married to an australian-born partner. such statistics may not offer an accurate measure for the rate of intermarriage; nevertheless, they serve as useful proxies for the intermarriage differentials by ethnic origin and gender. for example, a significantly larger proportion of women born in japan, thailand, and the philippines were married to australian-born partners, relative to their male counterparts of the same origin. in the case of indonesians in couple families in australia, the following two points can be observed: first, significantly more indonesians are married to another indonesian than to an australian-born partner. second, the likelihood of marrying an australian-born partner is higher for indonesian women than it is for indonesian men. therefore, women are disproportionately represented as the bearers of minority mother tongue in australian mixed marriages where one of the partners is indonesian. on the one hand, women’s central role in socializing minority cultural-linguistic traits to their offspring in exogamous marriages is well expected. a study of french native language retention in mixed marriage families in canada suggests that children are more likely to adhere to french when the mother, not the father, speaks french as a native language (robinson, 1989). okita’s (2002) rich life stories of japanese mother/british father families highlight the tensions experienced by migrant mothers in taking up the emotionally demanding and time-consuming tasks of cultural-linguistic socialization of their young children. on the other hand, studies on migrant families and cultural-linguistic retention point to the centrality of migrant mothers not only in exogamous but also in endogamous marriages. winter and pauwels’ (2005) analysis of australian studies shows that the transmission of the native language from migrant parents to later generations is seen as the responsibility of mothers, not of fathers. this gendered aspect of minority language transmission supports the argument that the transmission of native language and cultural identities ultimately rests on the mothering practices of migrant mothers, irrespective of whether they are in an exogamous or endogamous marriage. the study of bilingual and/or bicultural mothering is thus a meaningful contribution to scholarship on transnationalism, kinship, and connectivity among overseas indonesians. taking up this endeavor, i continue with some auto-ethnographic reflections on bilingual and bicultural mothering as i recall my lived experience. i use the term bilingual and bicultural mothering to refer to a) my everyday language practice, using both bahasa indonesia and english in communicating with my children, and b) my conscious and unconscious efforts to socialize my children with what i perceive as moderated versions of my native cultural traits including religion, social values, and practices. the early years: ‘isolated and privatized’ migrant mothering i spent most of my formative years in jakarta, indonesia, and canberra, australia. i lived in jakarta until the age of eight and moved to australia in 1992 with my siblings and parents who had both received scholarships for their postgraduate studies. i had about 3.5 years of secondary education in australia before completing 173mother tongue, mothering, and (transnational) identity my undergraduate degree at an australian university. in 2001, i received my australian permanent residency visa under what was then the newly introduced general skilled migration scheme. upon receiving a phd scholarship in 2003, i embarked on fieldwork in jakarta and makassar in 2004, working on my thesis on the interplay between gender roles, attitudes in marriage, and labor market expectations among university students. i lived in jakarta between december 2004 and mid-2006. these two years represented a demographically dense period in my life, in which i went through what demographers coined as two important markers of adulthood: marriage and childbearing (lloyd, 2005). both my husband and i are native speakers of bahasa indonesia. we grew up in different parts of jakarta and spent the parts of our formative years living abroad. in august 2006, i had to return to australia to complete my phd thesis. reflecting on this period, my return to canberra with my five-month-old son marked the beginning of a long and demanding journey inside the complex realms of migration and motherhood. in the past seven years, since the birth of my eldest son, i have become increasingly aware of and at the same time curious about the intricate nexus between migration and mothering: how has migrating to australia from indonesia at the early age of 14 shaped my mothering practices and how do these practices affect the identity formation of my children today? in turn, how has mothering in australia influenced my maternal and cultural identities? my early experience of mothering in australia was imbued with feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and ambivalence. however, treading the water of motherhood in a social and cultural context that was significantly different to how i had been mothered in jakarta during the 1980s had placed another layer of intricacy on my emotional and mental state. my initial beliefs of what good mothering entails often conflicted with the generational, cultural, classand family-specific differences of what back then i interpreted as the mainstream parenting practices in urban middle-class indonesia and the west. to give a more vivid example, upon my arrival back in canberra with my five-month-old son, a neighbor invited me to join her mothers’ group. the idea that other mothers in the mothers’ group, most of whom were of anglo-australian origin, had a seemingly effective baby’s sleeping arrangement practice in place was unfamiliar to me. i slept together with my son as it is a ‘common practice’ among new mothers in jakarta, and not so much because i am an avid believer of attachment parenting. i was initially baffled to see parents taking their young babies to sleep clinics and coming home with the nurse-play-sleep routine.8 however, as i directly experienced sleep deprivation and the absence of a relief mother in the house (and in the neighborhood), i began to see the importance of sleeping routines and later on, to the early promotion of child independence for my own benefit. to me, migrant mothering in the twenty-first century meant living what sharon hays (hays, 1996) called the “cultural contradictions” of a child-centered, intensivemothering ideology that has taken central stage in the us and much of the western world (lupton, 2000; maher & saugeres, 2007) with much less social capital than i 8 currently, nurse(feed)-play-sleep is one of the recommended sleeping arrangements to help newborns and babies settle into their routine. advocates recommend parents to feed or nurse their baby, play/interact with her or him, and then lay her or him in the cot to sleep. this is distinct to practices in which babies are fed on demand and in which mothers nursed their babies to sleep. 174 ariane utomo  aseas 7(2) had grown accustomed to back in jakarta.9 in my son’s early years, when the traditional support for childcare that i had enjoyed in the first five months of my motherhood were no longer available, i found myself facing a heavier domestic workload and progressing towards more of what moon (2003) refers to as “isolated and privatized mothering” (p. 851) in her research on korean migrant mothers in the us. there was no ‘village’ i could rely on and the responsibility to raise my child rested primarily on me. 10 undoubtedly, ‘isolated and privatized mothering’ moves increasingly towards the center of the social and cultural tensions experienced by first-time migrant mothers in the west. i was aware that ‘back home’, in indonesia, the maternal role models in my immediate family and my contemporaries would tend to have their ‘village’ help them in looking after their children. my experience in living such contradictions has been well documented in recent studies on mothering among women of east asian origin in the west (ho, 2006; moon, 2003; nora chiang, 2008; wu, 2009). in speaking about the isolation and privatization of migrant mothering, it is arguably easy not to speak of fathers’ involvement. while acknowledging the contribution and support from my husband to date, i have had the larger share of parenting as he assumes the role of the primary breadwinner with long working hours. perhaps because i am married to another indonesian with a transnational identity like myself, we assumed that our children would be ‘like us’. coming to live in australia in our mid-teens, we both continue to have a good command of bahasa indonesia. we never experienced language loss and in my son’s early years of childhood, we did not put much consideration into which language we used at home. both my husband and i code-switched between english and bahasa indonesia in our daily conversations. we did not anticipate that our son would be a passive user of bahasa indonesia by the time he had finished preschool. on a number of occasions, when we returned to jakarta and our young son began to speak english in public settings, we felt ‘embarrassed’ at our lack of success in teaching him to appropriately use his native language. in the first three years of parenthood, we essentially had no strategic plan to actively pass on bahasa indonesia to our children. my involvement in a collective effort to retain bahasa indonesia was largely incidental. the language and dance club: migrant mothering in a collective setting after completing my studies and the subsequent birth of my daughter in 2008, i somewhat veered into new and multiple circles of social networks of indonesian mothers with young children in canberra. arguably, facebook – being very popular 9 the literature on the social and cultural contradictions of mothering in the west draws on the premise on the renewed desire to live up to the ideals of ‘the good mother’ that co-reside with increased demands for women to participate in the public sphere and paid labor. in demography, the conflicting expectations arising from women’s higher educational attainment and workforce participation, on the one hand, and persistent gendered practices in family institutions, on the other, are seen as a central driver of low fertility levels in developed economies (mcdonald, 2000). 10 i partly enjoyed the help of my mother. later on, i started using on-campus childcare facilities while working on my thesis. 175mother tongue, mothering, and (transnational) identity among both urban and overseas indonesians – not only facilitated my connection to other indonesian mothers with young children in canberra, but also provided a visual map of indonesian migrant groups in the city and their heterogeneous nature. it was through these virtual social networks of indonesian mothers that i became a member of a bahasa indonesia playgroup that was later incorporated into a community language and culture club with a focus on dancing. in this section, i briefly outline the nature of the language and culture club, its effectiveness in language retention, and its role in promoting collective identities. the language and culture club and the indonesian diaspora in canberra the indonesian language and culture club had 30 registered pupils in 2013 aged between three and nine years and is currently registered as a community language school in canberra. the club heavily relies on parents’ volunteer activities for its organization and operation, including administration, fundraising, and teaching activities. it charges a small annual membership fee to families and receives some financial support from the indonesian embassy and community grants from the local government. parents, mostly mothers, also run fundraising campaigns through selling food at community and cultural events.11 in 2013, language and dance classes were held on saturdays in a public library and once a week at a local school (usually in the afternoon after school activities during school semesters). in 2014, the venue for the saturday class moved to a shared education and cultural facility provided by the indonesian embassy. saturday classes are generally attended by children of parents with indonesian background, whereas the after-school language club is attended by students enrolled in that local school, regardless of their migration background. in contrast to the after-school language club with a steady student attendance, the attendance rate of the saturday classes tends to vary and depends largely on the teachers’ and/or volunteers’ availability, as well as on the teaching content of these classes. since 2011, i volunteer in both teaching and coordinating indonesian dance classes. every year, children are invited to perform at community and/or multicultural events. despite the club’s focus on language retention, dance classes seem to draw much more interest of both parents and students than language classes. language and homeland difficulties in language retention were experienced by mothers in either type of marriage (mixed and endogamous marriage). interviews as well as broader informal discussions with other members of the club suggest that while language retention was the central rationale for running the club, in reality, none of the children had a native speaker’s command of bahasa indonesia, the majority being passive speakers of the language. most member families i observed did not consciously practice bilingual parenting in a strict sense. in some cases, some families had cultivated a 11 in the past, funds were mostly needed to meet rental costs. meanwhile, with classes being held at a school and maintaining a public library, most of the club’s revenues go to teaching expenses and school materials. 176 ariane utomo  aseas 7(2) consistent practice of one parent (mostly mothers) speaking only bahasa indonesia to their children prior to joining the club. in a few cases, joining the club had inspired mothers to establish a ‘consistent language policy’ at home. but in most cases, mothers continue to mix english and bahasa indonesia when communicating with their children. until she was two years old, my daughter spoke bahasa indonesia 100 percent (of the time). but when i started working and she began attending childcare, she could not converse with others (in childcare). so i ended up speaking in english to her. now, she has started showing interest (to speak bahasa indonesia) because bahasa indonesia is a subject at school. and she feels that, “oh, my mum is indonesian, i have to be able to”. so she started trying, (also) because my husband also speaks a little bit of indonesian, so she wants to know (what we talk about).12 (rosa, married to an australian, with a daughter aged eight) in some cases, joining the language club encouraged mothers’ willingness to use bahasa indonesia in their daily interaction with their children. most interviewed mothers did not take the conscious decision to raise their children bilingually from the very beginning. these mothers acknowledged the early onset of language loss among second-generation young children of indonesian background and also that it is difficult to overcome this loss unless at least one parent was very consistent in using bahasa indonesia from the very start, or unless the children had a relatively lengthy period of in-country experience. this last point was made by mothers who observed an increased fluency in bahasa indonesia in their children after a longer holiday in indonesia. i don’t oblige my children to be able to read books in bahasa indonesia. the most important thing is that they can communicate. maybe, that is what drives me (sundanese: keukeh) to speak bahasa indonesia at home. … well, maybe if the father was an australian, it is okay but in this case when both parents are indonesians and their children cannot speak bahasa indonesia, it feels sad. (indira, married to an indonesian, with daughters aged seven and four) in effect, without the consistent use of bahasa indonesia throughout early childhood, the attending of saturday language classes itself is not effective enough in ensuring the children’s mastery of their ‘mother tongue’. however, the mothers interviewed were generally content with the club’s success in promoting, as supposed to retaining, the use of bahasa indonesia. while they reported that having a child who can communicate in bahasa indonesia is important, a closer analysis of the conversations reveals also their desire for transnational identities in their children. beside the saturday classes, groups of mothers, children, and their families frequently gathered at play dates, birthday parties, and group holidays. for the mothers, the social capital maintained directly or indirectly through their engagement in club activities offers a sense of reassurance and belonging, asserting their transnational mothering practices and identities. in the context of these mothers’ new collective identity, the idea of 12 quotes of the interviews are translated from bahasa indonesia. informants and their families are anonymized. 177mother tongue, mothering, and (transnational) identity imparting transnational identities to their children through communal mothering is important. for example, one of the members who is married to an anglo-australian man said that she wanted her daughter to feel australian, but at the same time indonesian, and more specifically manadonese, a sub-ethnic identity. i do not want my identity as an indonesian, not only as an indonesian but also as a manadonese, to disappear. so that is what i wish for my daughter as well. i try so that she [would feel like she] is a manadonese, not only indonesian. she has been to manado a couple of times and i sometimes use manadonese or its accent when speaking to her. i don’t think she will have the same experience like us, ya? i think for our children, it’s not going to be like that: javanese, manadonese. i don’t think they can make the connection because we live here [in australia]. except, maybe when the ethnic community group is strong, like the batak kids maybe. how can we make them say that ‘oh i am a manadonese’ when it is hard for them to say that they are indonesian? … well, my daughter has to know that she is an indonesian. … sure, she is australian but my husband and i told her to say that she is both indonesian and australian. … and through language, of course [in shaping identity]. hopefully though. there were phases when my daughter refused to speak bahasa indonesia: “i don’t want to speak bahasa indonesia, i cannot.” (linda, married to an australian, daughter aged seven) one mother expressed that her husband and she liked the idea of their children carrying some of her home culture.13 the practice of socializing children according to common parenting practices and values in indonesia, to common parenting practices in their current surroundings, or to a moderated mixture of these is expressed by all of the women interviewed. an example would be for the mother to say the words ‘i love you’ to her daughter, which she cited as a common practice in australia, and for her daughter to express filial piety, for example, through salim, which is cited as an indonesian sign of respect by kissing or putting an elder’s hand on one’s forehead or nose. the negotiation of these often-contradictory practices, values, and customs is illustrated by the following examples: in indonesia, no parents would say sorry for pinching (nyubit) or earpinching (jewer) their child. so here, we have to learn, no matter how upset and tired [we are] (kesel), smacking a child’s hand (ceples tangan) means we have to say sorry. but compared to kids here, bunga is like an indonesian child, she will do what we ask her to do (nurut). … but when speaking about javanese culture, it is hard to impart it to her. what i think is important is for her to have her manners (sopan-santunnya masih ada). but i don’t want her to be like completely indonesian, what do you call it, too many don’t do this and that (terlalu banyak nggak boleh ini itu). i don’t want her like that. i want her to explore [the world] herself but she should know her limits too. … here, sometimes i get a bit worried that there is too much freedom. (rosa, married to an australian, with a daughter aged eight) 13 home culture here refers to customs and practices which the respondents were accustomed to in their family in indonesia. the respondents grew up in different parts of indonesia and had different ethnic and religious identities. 178 ariane utomo  aseas 7(2) i do it [practice my family traditions]; in terms of religious perspective for instance, praying before eating. … she also cannot say words like crazy, stupid, ugly. that’s how my father raised me. … i don’t think indonesians often say ‘i love you’, but i always say ‘i love you’. indonesian [parents] don’t often express something that is personal. (linda, married to an australian, with a daughter aged seven) the people here have a lot of freedom (bener-bener bebas) whereas we can’t do many things (nggak boleh ini, nggak boleh itu), [can’t be] impolite. we still try to enforce eastern traditions. i mean, the people here have good manners, but we still give our children, what do you call it, cuddles? for example, we still sleep in the same bed with them. white people really don’t like that. (indira, married to an indonesian husband, with two daughters aged seven and four) yes, i also don’t have the heart to do that [to let her young son sleep in his own room]. even though, now my [youngest] son is alright to sleep in the same room with his big brother, sometimes i just lifted him up and moved him back to my bed. (vonny, married to an indonesian, two sons aged 15 and 4) the experience of the migrant mothers in the collective language and culture club setting highlights the club’s function as a hub to expose their children to other young children with indonesian heritage. in practice, the club’s activities outside the language class allow children to identify with other children like themselves: children who live in houses where shoes are taken off prior to entering and whose mothers cook similar food or speak loudly to each other in bahasa indonesia, while insisting that their children too should try to speak bahasa indonesia. i am looking for a place (wadah) for indonesian children groups here. it is for my own sake. i need a group where my daughter could meet other indonesian children. so she could stay in-tune with our culture. (linda, married to an australian, with a daughter aged 7) performing at this point, i would like to draw upon my hindsight on the relative popularity of the dance class. in informal conversations, parents shared with me that the dance classes provided a fun alternative in relation to the classroom environment of language classes. one mother expressed that her daughter did not wish to sit in the language class but was very keen on participating in the dance classes. its fortnightly frequency and more flexible attendance policy also meant that it was potentially less of a burden for families to meet the schedule of all their children’s extracurricular activities. however, i also have the impression that dance classes offer a much gentler, less coercive way to introduce indonesia and indonesian identities to young children. additionally, mothers often felt nostalgic about their children’s public performances and were excited to see their children dressed-up in regional traditional indonesian costumes. between 2011 and 2013, the club staged three performances at the annual indonesian festival held at the grounds of the indonesian embassy in canberra. 179mother tongue, mothering, and (transnational) identity on these occasions, some mothers reminisced how they too had once performed at school and neighborhood events during their childhood ‘back home’. both mothers and their children were keen on ensuring the success of these performances, attending extra sessions outside the fortnightly slot if necessary. the shared experience of the mothers and their children before and during these public performances demonstrate the club’s essential role in the maintenance and reproduction of shared transnational identities. conclusion drawing upon the interviews and reflecting upon my own experience, i note the following preliminary observations: first, the language and culture club serves as a connecting hub for migrant mothers, their children, and an institutionalized migrant network that offers valuable social capital at the individual level. second, the shared transnational identities generated through migrant mothers’ networking overcome the ‘isolated and privatized’ aspect of (migrant) mothering, especially through the identification of a shared past, shared migrant mothering experiences as well as challenges of intermarriage across national borders. third, the club and associated socializing groups have sustained not only collective identities of migrant mothers, but also what these mothers perceived and aspired to as collective identities of their children through the children’s participation in a variety of social and cultural engagements outside the school context. as with other migrant community organizations, perceptions of a ‘social clique’ of mothers who run the club may have hindered the club’s success to garner widespread support among other social groups of indonesian migrant mothers in canberra. the indonesian mothers i interviewed practiced what gedalof (2009) refers to as the work of “reproducing heritage, culture and structures of belonging” (p. 81). while collective language retention efforts by migrant mothers may not be effective in preventing language loss among secondand later generation children of migrant parents, the social practices surrounding these efforts are crucial in creating and maintaining a shared transnational identity of migrant mothers and their children. through promoting a sense of belonging both among mothers and their children, the language and culture club serves as both a connecting hub to a homeland as well as a piece of the homeland itself. the emic perspective i offered in this article shall serve as a step towards a more detailed understanding of the centrality of mothers in the cultural reproduction of collective identities among overseas indonesians. collective language retention efforts among indonesian mothers in canberra mimic similar efforts run by other migrant groups on a volunteer basis, commonly by women. this particular example supports the idea that mothering is conducted not only on behalf of individual children, but also on behalf of the larger social group in which they are situated (levitt & schiller, 2004). 180 ariane utomo  aseas 7(2)  references act government. 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(1997). segmented assimilation: issues, controversies, and recent research on the new second generation. international migration review, 31(4), 975–1008. 182 ariane utomo  aseas 7(2) about the author ariane utomo is a research fellow at the crawford school of public policy of the australian national university. working in the field of social demography, her research interests include gender, education, labor force, and the family in indonesia. ariane’s current work focuses on marriage patterns (in terms of couples’ relative age, education, and ethnicity) in the broader context of development and social change in indonesia. ► contact: ariane.utomo@anu.edu.au acknowledgements an earlier version of this article was presented at the australian anthropological society annual conference 2013, held at the australian national university in canberra. i would like to thank the participants of the panel on asian-australian youth – transnationalism, kinship, and connectivity in the asian century, especially to the conveners linda bennett and monika winarnita for their encouragement and valuable comments. i am grateful to acknowledge suggestions and comments provided by the anonymous reviewers and the editors on earlier drafts. any remaining errors are my own. combating sars and h1n1: insights and lessons from singapore’s public health control measures aseas 5(1) 74 75 aktuelle südostasienforschung / current research on south-east asia combating sars and h1n1: insights and lessons from singapore’s public health control measures allen yu-hung lai1 & teck boon tan2 citation lai, a. y.-h., & tan, t. b. (2012). combating sars and h1n1: insights and lessons from singapore’s public health control measures. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 5(1), 74-101. combating the outbreak of infectious diseases is a major public health imperative for the small island-state of singapore. in this paper we discuss and assess the public health measures taken by the singaporean government to combat the outbreak of sars in 2003 and h1n1 in 2009. most notably, the state introduced a clear line of command and control to monitor the eff ectiveness and effi cacy of public health control measures as well as to oversee their implementation. meanwhile, it has also employed moral suasion to ensure compliance with draconian health control measures by the population. at the same time, the singapore government also established a close partnership with the population to ensure the acquiescence of the general public to these measures. finally, this paper draws on the insights and lessons learned from the two outbreaks to develop a conceptual model for pandemic management. keywords: sars; h1n1; public health control measures; infectious disease; singapore die bekämpfung des ausbruchs ansteckender krankheiten ist ein zentrales gesundheitsgebot für den inselstaat singapur. im vorliegenden artikel erörtern und bewerten wir die maßnahmen, welche die regierung singapurs im bereich der öff entlichen gesundheitsversorgung traf, um den ausbruch von sars im jahr 2003 und von h1n1 im jahr 2009 zu bekämpfen. besonders bemerkenswert ist in diesem zusammenhang die einführung einer klaren weisungsund kontrollstrategie, um die wirksamkeit und wirkungen der maßnahmen zu überprüfen sowie ihre implementierung beaufsichtigen zu können. zudem wurden moralische appelle angewendet, um die einhaltung von drakonischen maßnahmen zur gesundheitskontrolle durch die bevölkerung zu gewährleisten. gleichzeitig etablierte die singapurische regierung eine enge partnerschaft mit der bevölkerung, die das einverständnis der öff entlichkeit zu diesen maßnahmen sicherstellte. zum schluss wird im vorliegenden aufsatz ein konzeptionelles modell, das auf einsichten und lehren aus den beiden ausbrüchen beruft, ausgearbeitet. schlagworte: sars; h1n1; maßnahmen zur öff entlichen gesundheitskontrolle; infektionen; singapur 1 lai yu-hung allen is a phd candidate at lee kuan yew school of public policy, national university of singapore. he is also a senior medical consultant for the health promotion bureau and for the taiwan association of andrology. his current research interests include collaborative capacity, network governance, and organisational learning in public health crises. contact: allen@nus.edu.sg (corresponding author) 2 tan teck boon is a phd candidate at the lee kuan yew school of public policy, national university of singapore, with expertise in intelligence coordination and information synthesis. d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -5 .1 -5 aseas 5(1) 74 75 introduction situated in south-east asia, singapore is fortunate enough to be spared from major natural disasters such as typhoons, earthquakes, and tsunamis. however, as the small city-state is one of the most densely populated countries in the world, singapore is especially prone to transnational health threats such as pandemics. indeed, during the last decade, singapore has been struck by two major pandemics. in 2003, singapore experienced the outbreak of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (sars) (cutter, 2008; goh et al., 2006; james, shindo, cutter, ma, & chew, 2006; pereira, 2008; tan, 2003). then, in 2009, the state had to take additional measures against the novel influenza a (h1n1), which put major parts of its population at risk (cutter et al., 2010; ministry of health, 2009; tay, cutter, & james, 2010). even though the two major outbreaks were eventually contained through an array of public health control measures instituted by the ministry of health (moh) of singapore, sars and h1n1 brought about severe public health and economic consequences for the country as a whole (leo, 2011). as it turned out, the population’s receptiveness to draconian measures was enhanced to a large extent through moral suasion and close partnership between the government and people. indeed, the efficacy of these public health control measures was profoundly related to these two crucial elements. meanwhile, it is important to note that these public health control measures were swiftly adjusted to meet contingencies that arose – for example when additional epidemiological cases were uncovered and when a better understanding of the viruses was developed. this happened through the introduction of a clear line of command and control. in terms of capacity building in the design and implementation of health control policies, the insights drawn from these two episodes of disease outbreak are invaluable both from a practical as well as a research perspective. indeed, beyond adding to the body of knowledge on this subject, these insights also serve to guide the planning of health control policies on a broader level. in this paper, we discuss the health control measures introduced as well as the insights drawn from the singapore experience with specific references to sars and h1n1. to achieve our research objective, we utilised a combination of widely-accepted qualitative methodologies. firstly, we performed a careful examination of official documents released by key institutions such as the singaporean ministry of allen lai yu-hung & teck boon tan combating sars and h1n1 aseas 5(1) 76 77 health and the world health organisation (who). secondly, we also examined relevant literature on public control measures against communicable diseases to establish our conclusions. thirdly, we evaluated public speeches given by senior leaders in the singapore government and who officials on this particular subject-matter. this broad-based methodological approach ensures that our conclusions are both valid and reliable. the research contribution of this paper is significant because it offers a fresh perspective on the role of the state in pandemic management. our research also adds to the body of knowledge on epidemic policy design specific to the region of south-east asia. indeed, the dominant perspective in this field holds that the state must be able to exercise brute force and impose its will on the population (lai, he, tan, & phua, 2009). however, as shown in our paper, this dominant perspective is at least incomplete because the exercise of authority and power from the government is not a sufficient condition to contain the transmission of virulent diseases. success in fighting epidemics is also contingent on a concerted effort of partnership between health authorities and the population at large. beyond this key finding, this paper also contributes to the health policy field by elucidating a conceptual model for pandemic management that is applicable to a broader context. this paper contains five main sections. following this introduction, we provide an overview of the epidemiology of sars and h1n1 in singapore to familiarise readers with the chain of events surrounding these two outbreaks. this is then followed by a critical discussion of the command and control structures put in place by the singapore government to combat sars and h1n1. in the third section, we evaluate the public health control measures that were implemented in key healthcare sectors during the outbreak of sars and h1n1. then, we present the conceptual model for pandemic management that we have constructed from our findings. in the final section, we discuss the implications for pandemic control and management in south-east asia as well as our conclusions. epidemiology of sars and h1n1 in singapore the first case of sars in singapore was a 22-year-old female singaporean, who was detected by clinicians at tan tock seng hospital (ttsh) in march 2003 (centers for aseas 5(1) 76 77 disease control and prevention, 2003). but what began as a few isolated cases swiftly turned into a major epidemic within a short period of time. the first singaporean to contract sars was hospitalised at ttsh in early march 2003 upon her returning from hong kong. as it happened, she had been infected by a superspreader while staying on the same floor of the metropole hotel with the latter. the super-spreader, a chinese physician named dr. liu, was later identified by the who to be the primary source of infection for multiple cases of sars (yeoh, 2003). back in singapore, this singaporean quickly infected 21 others. although this individual eventually recovered, a number of those infected by her were not as fortunate and finally succumbed to their illness (ministry of health, 2003). in late july 2003, singapore reported 238 probable cases of sars and by the time the country was removed from the who advisory list, 205 (86%) had recovered while 33 (14%) had died. a further breakdown reveals that 8 cases (3%) were infected while staying allen lai yu-hung & teck boon tan combating sars and h1n1 table 1: comparison of characteristics of sars and h1n1 sars epidemics november 2002 to july 2003 1 march 2003 sars coronavirus (identified on 16 april 2003) hong kong, china human respiratory droplets, contagious when with fever 238 33 cases (14%) available (rt-pcr/reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction) limited (only supportive) not available outbreak period first reported case in singapore pathogen outbreak origin transmitting pathway total cases in singapore death toll in singapore (mortality rate) rapid diagnostics medical treatment medical prevention h1n1 pandemics april 2009 to august 2010 (who declared a pandemic on 11 june 2010) 26 may 2009 novel influenza a virus (identified on 24 april 2009) mexico and the us human respiratory droplets, contagious even when without fever 1,348* 18 cases (1.3%) available (rt-pcr/reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction) available (antivirals) available (antivirals, vaccines) source: authors’ compilation from various formal reports * refers to confirmed cases admitted to hospitals, representing about 0.6% of the estimated number of h1n1 infections in polyclinics and general practitioner clinics. aseas 5(1) 78 79 abroad whereas 97 cases (41%) were healthcare workers (who, 2003). h1n1, on the other hand, presented a different set of challenges altogether, as its main epidemiological characteristic was radically different from that of sars (see table 1). crucially, a h1n1 carrier is contagious even when he or she had mild symptoms. sars, meanwhile, can only be transmitted by the carrier after he or she had developed a fever. for h1n1, viral shedding begins shortly after infection and before the onset of symptoms. in other words, the h1n1 carrier would begin infecting others at a preliminary stage without even realising that he or she was stricken. therefore, it is apparent that health control measures to combat sars and h1n1 had to be customised according to their unique epidemiological characteristics (leung & nicoll, 2010). on 26 may 2009, the first case of h1n1 – also a 22-year-old female singaporean – was detected at a local clinic and subsequently sent to a local hospital designated to treat h1n1 cases (ministry of health, 2009). about three weeks after this case was reported, community transmissions (with no links to the first case) broke out at an alarming rate. health authorities in singapore immediately introduced rigorous containment measures which eventually brought down the rate of community transmission. most notably, at the peak of the h1n1 pandemic (from 26 july to 1 august 2009), community outpatient clinics attended to nearly 24,477 cases for acute respiratory illness. in the week between 2 august and 8 august 2009, 65.5% of influenza-like cases were confirmed to be h1n1. by 9 july 2009, there were 1,301 confirmed cases of h1n1 in singapore (ministry of health, 2009). although the who later categorised the h1n1 pandemic as one of moderate severity, the public health control measures introduced to mitigate the severity of this pandemic undoubtedly contributed in no small part to contain this highly contagious pandemic. we will now examine in detail the command and control structure implemented by the health authorities in singapore to mitigate the severity of the h1n1 pandemic. command and control structure one of the most important lessons the singapore government learned from the sars epidemic was the significance of the role of the bureaucracy in crisis management. as it turned out, the bureaucratic structure in place prior to the outbreak in 2003 aseas 5(1) 78 79 was wholly inadequate in terms of dealing with a crisis situation that was both fluid and unprecedented (ansell, boin, & keller, 2010; menon & goh, 2005; pereira, 2008); consequently, fighting sars called for more than a medical approach since resources had to be drawn from a number of government agencies that did not fall under the rubric of the moh. on 15 march 2003, when the epidemiological nature of sars was still unclear, the moh initiated a sars taskforce to look into the mysterious strain. only two days later, after more sars cases were uncovered and a better epidemiological understanding of the strain was developed, the singaporean government swiftly declared sars a notifiable disease under the ida (ministry of health, 2003). in the event of a widespread outbreak, ida made it legally permissible to enforce mandatory health examination and treatment, exchange of medical information and cooperation between healthcare providers and moh, and quarantine and isolation of sars patients (infectious disease act, 2003, chapter 137). on 24 march 2003, the moh was authorised by the ida to implement compulsory home quarantine for those who had been exposed to the sars virus. on 7 april 2003 (approximately five weeks after the first case of sars was reported), a three-tiered national control structure was created in response to sars. these tiers were individually represented by the inter-ministerial committee (imc), the core executive group (ceg), and the inter-ministry sars operations committee (imoc) (tay & mui, 2004). the nine-member imc3 was chaired by the minister of home affairs (mha) and fulfilled three major functions: 1) to develop strategic plans, 2) to approve major decisions, and 3) to implement infection countermeasures. notably, the imc also played the role of interagency coordinator overseeing the activities of other ministries and their subsidiaries. the ceg was chaired by the permanent secretary of home affairs and consisted of elements from three other ministries: the moh, the ministry of defence (mod), and the ministry of foreign affairs (mfa). in particular, the role of the ceg was to manage the sars epidemic by directing valuable resources to key areas. the imoc, meanwhile, was seminal in carrying out health control measures issued by the imc and served as the main operational linkage between the moh and all healthcare providers (see figure 1). 3 besides the ministries of home affairs and health, the inter-ministerial committee comprised eight more ministries: foreign affairs, defence, education, national development, manpower, environment, transport, and information, communications and the arts. allen lai yu-hung & teck boon tan combating sars and h1n1 aseas 5(1) 80 81 following the sars epidemic, the above command and control structure was revised to adequately reflect the need to create a multi-faceted and robust management approach – one that would be more suited to a fast changing health crisis situation that was both volatile and unheralded. the outcome was the establishment of a home-front crisis management system (hcms) (pereira, 2008). heading this new command and control structure was the home-front crisis ministerial committee (hcmc). identical to the imc, the hcmc served to provide strategic and political directions during health crises. meanwhile, the functions of the ceg and imoc were consolidated into the home-front crisis executive group (hceg) in order to shorten the time it might take to respond to a health crisis (pereira, 2008). during the 2009 h1n1 outbreak, the hcmc for influenza (hcmc-flu) was formed and it was supported by the hceg-flu (see figure 2). various ministries and agencies also formed interagency working groups called crisis management groups (cmgs). each cmg was in turn headed by a ministry.4 then in each cmg, a senior moh representative was assigned to bring that ministry’s expertise to the group. unlike during the 2003 sars outbreak, the 2009 h1n1 outbreak saw the moh (and not the mha) taking charge of the fight. among other notable moves, the moh established a special taskforce – a joint effort made up of key policy makers, public health practitioners, senior clinicians, and infectious disease specialists – headed by the permanent secretary of health to implement all public health control measures and oversee the provision of medical services (tay, ng, cutter, & james, 2010). 4 it is important to point out that during the 2009 h1n1 outbreak various ministries were assigned specific responsibilities such as border screening, vaccination, domestic surveillance, and public education. figure 1: singapore’s organisational structure for fighting sars inter-minister committee (imc) inter-ministerial operations committee (imoc) medical education economyhousing transport border control other groups when needed public communication source: adapted from tay & mui (2004, p. 35) core executive group (ceg) aseas 5(1) 80 81 the main benefit of this abridged command and control structure was that it dramatically shortened response time and facilitated the implementation of health control measures across various healthcare sectors during the 2009 h1n1 pandemic. noting this, we now turn our discussion to the ways in which these health control measures were implemented. health control measures case management the manner in which sars cases were managed clearly illustrates the significance of good governance at all levels. in particular, singapore’s command and control structure to combat sars was modelled after an all-in-one approach toward the management of sars patients. specifically, all suspected cases of sars were confined to a single hospital designated by the moh – tan tock seng hospital (ttsh) in this case (james et al., 2006; tan, 2003). this all-in-one approach was unique to singapore and was not found in other sars-affected countries. notably, a crucial element of this all-in-one approach to case management was that it required close partnership between three core groups of constituencies: ttsh, the general public, and healthcare allen lai yu-hung & teck boon tan combating sars and h1n1 figure 2: singapore’s organisational structure for fighting h1n1 homefront crisis ministerial committee (flu) homefront crisis executive group (flu) inter-ministerial operations committee (imoc) source: adapted from tay et al. (2010, p. 316) crisis management groups (cmg) moh h1n1 task force hospital / primary care communications / international education environment transport safety & security public communication diplomatic support border control economic sustainability housing & social support dms clinical group aseas 5(1) 82 83 providers (both in public and private practices). the mechanics of this unique approach can be delineated into three key steps. firstly, once the government secured full cooperation from ttsh designating it a sars specific health institution, it made an unambiguous announcement to medical professionals and the general public as to where sars patients can be treated. in practice, once a suspected sars patient was detected at a local clinic or emergency department, he or she would be transferred to ttsh immediately for further evaluation and monitoring. secondly, the government also had to divert non-flu patients away from ttsh so that the sudden surge in the number of flu cases at ttsh would not paralyze its service delivery. as it happened, through the government’s relentless public communication and education, this ad hoc measure ended up receiving strong cooperation and support from the general public. indeed, by seeking medical treatment from other public hospitals for non-flu illnesses, the general public made it possible for ttsh to concentrate its scarce resources on sars-related cases. lastly, the government sought the cooperation of other healthcare providers (such as public hospitals and local clinics) so that they would absorb additional cases of non-flu illnesses. there is no doubt that by concentrating all sars patients in one facility, singapore’s health authority was able to achieve disease containment more rapidly (centers for disease control and prevention, 2003). as opposed to the all-in-one approach in 2003, the strategy to combat h1n1 in 2009 took the form of a so-called one-in-all approach. as its name suggests, this entailed a single all-encompassing strategy to counter h1n1, which was necessary since the characteristic of h1n1 virus was different (tay et al., 2010). unlike sars carriers, h1n1 carriers could be contagious even when they were in the asymptomatic phase of the illness (in other words, not showing any visible signs of illness). to minimise the risk of transmission, moh imposed one standardised infection control measure on all healthcare settings (such as primary care clinics, long-term care facilities, and community renal dialysis centres). given this imperative, the moh again needed strong compliance from health professionals and the general public. in practice, one triage system was implemented in all frontline settings to streamline the treatment of h1n1 patients. once patients were laboratory-confirmed to be stricken with h1n1, mandatory isolation orders were issued and quarantine became compulsory. this was in accordance with the ida, which, it must be pointed out, was amended in a aseas 5(1) 82 83 timely manner to reflect this imperative (tay et al., 2010). furthermore, the moh also established a specific contact tracing centre to track down all laboratory-confirmed cases. this meant that those who came into close contact with h1n1 patients were swiftly tracked down, ordered to undergo mandatory quarantine orders (qos), and were given oseltamivir as a precaution.5 however, mandatory isolation in a setting that was external to the traditional healthcare provider did end up raising a wide range of legal, political, and ethical issues that could potentially result in a public backlash at that policy. indeed, even though the policy of mandatory isolation was arguably quite effective in terms of limiting transmission, such a draconian measure did challenge the public’s acceptance of it, especially those who were isolated since that presented an abrupt disruption in their lives and work (duncanson, 2003). to mitigate such public displeasures, the singapore government endeavoured to provide the affected a comprehensive livelihood support by enlisting the assistance of nongovernmental organisations. at the same time, the population was encouraged to adopt responsible social behaviours (james et al., 2006). we shall discuss this aspect in greater detail in the sections on physical distancing and isolation/quarantine. surveillance disease surveillance is central to combating pandemics because it can serve three critical functions. firstly, surveillance helps to identify patterns of disease progression; secondly, it provides advance warning and detection of impending outbreaks; and thirdly, surveillance can even indirectly lower the mortality rate through better understanding of the pandemic on hand (aledort, lurie, wasserman, & bozzette, 2007; briand, mounts, & chamberland, 2011). at the moment, the surveillance process is predominantly carried out by health authorities at major border-crossings (ansell, boin, & keller, 2010; briand, mounts, & chamberland, 2011; jebara, 2004; bhatia & narain, 2010; who, 2009; who writing group, 2006). yet, a functional surveillance system must also count on timely and accurate disease identification and reporting. it is also imperative that the surveillance process can be extended beyond bordercrossings to that of the community-level and this invariably requires close partner5 quarantine orders were served for a period of seven days from the date of last contact with the index case. allen lai yu-hung & teck boon tan combating sars and h1n1 aseas 5(1) 84 85 ship between the health authorities and healthcare professionals (such as general practitioners at the community level, infectious disease specialists, and laboratory scientists at hospitals). when sars first emerged, the nature of the virus was largely unknown (tan, 2006). as a consequence, health authorities worldwide were mostly ill-equipped to detect suspected cases, let alone monitor them. similarly, health authorities in singapore encountered this problem. but with the aid of who technical advisors, singapore managed to establish identification and reporting procedures in a timely manner. furthermore, the moh also swiftly expanded on the definitions used by the who to identify suspected cases of sars (to include any healthcare workers with fever and/ or respiratory symptoms) in order to widen the surveillance net (goh et al., 2006; tan, 2006). it is important to note that in order to cast a wide surveillance net, the moh needed the cooperation of various targeted groups, such as healthcare workers with fever, patients with atypical pneumonia, clusters of three or more healthcare workers in the same work area and so forth. as a result, sick leaves of healthcare workers were closely monitored and as the pace of sars transmission quickened, the singaporean parliament even amended the ida on 24 april 2003, requiring all suspected sars cases to be reported to the health authority (moh) within 24 hours from the time of diagnosis (centers for disease control and prevention, 2003). while these control measures were laudable, sars also exposed the weakness of the fragmented epidemiological surveillance and healthcare system singapore had in place at the time (goh et al., 2006). for example, surveillance of healthcare-associated infections was not fully instituted in all healthcare facilities in singapore before sars. as a result, atypical clinical presentation of sars cases, for example, immunocompromised patients, managed to evade detection by the surveillance net in place at the time (tan, 2006). therefore, when the sars epidemic was finally put under control, moh quickly introduced a number of novel surveillance measures to integrate epidemiological data and to identify the emergence of a new virulent strain faster. for example, a rigorous measure of thrice-daily temperature surveillance of all healthcare workers was introduced by moh in every institution as well as active surveillance for clusters of febrile patients (goh et al., 2006). another of moh’s notable innovations was the esaseas 5(1) 84 85 tablishment of an infectious disease alert and clinical database system to integrate critical clinical, laboratory, and contact tracing information with a new information technology infrastructure developed to support the surveillance and management of sars. drawing heavily on its experience with sars’s wide-net surveillance, the moh also introduced an enhanced process that consisted of five major formal operational components – community surveillance, laboratory surveillance, veterinary surveillance, external surveillance and lastly, hospital surveillance (see table 2). however, it is important to point out that relying exclusively on this formal surveillance system might not be judicious from an operational standpoint. indeed, in the fight against h1n1, moh’s external surveillance system did not play a significant role in providing early warning of that outbreak. as it turned out, it was through private partnership with health professionals – an informal global network – that moh was able to obtain valuable information on h1n1 (tay et al., 2010). the formal surveillance process in place at the time of the outbreak of h1n1 only fulfilled an ancillary function. physical distancing physical distancing refers to those measures that sought to limit physical contacts at public locations such as workplaces, places of worship, entertainment spots, and schools. accordingly, moh advocated the practice of physical distancing during the outbreak of sars as well as h1n1. the sole intention of physical distancing was of course to limit physical interactions and close contacts in public areas to slow the allen lai yu-hung & teck boon tan combating sars and h1n1 table 2: singapore’s integrative surveillance system type of surveillance community surveillance laboratory surveillance veterinary surveillance external surveillance hospital surveillance operational component community-based reporting of acute respiratory infections laboratory testing of influenza viruses to detect new strains poultry or the wild bird populations infectious diseases in the region and globally cases of atypical pneumonia, prolonged unexplained fever and sudden death of respiratory infection in all singapore hospitals source: authors’ compilation from various formal reports aseas 5(1) 86 87 rate of disease transmission. during sars, all kindergartens, after-school centres, primary and secondary schools, and junior colleges were closed for two weeks from 26 march to 6 april 2003. in addition, school children who had stricken siblings were advised to stay home for at least 10 days. beyond that, students who showed flu-like symptoms or had travelled to other affected countries were automatically granted a seven-day leave of absence (goh et al., 2006). to mitigate the side-effects caused by these disruptions, the ministry of education (moe) instituted a number of homebased learning programmes for those affected. schools meanwhile were also advised to scale down their extracurricular activities in order to minimise physical contacts. in all, during the outbreak of h1n1, there were 148 class closures (66 at the primary and secondary, 82 in kindergartens) between 28 june and 31 august 2009 (tay et al., 2010). during the mitigation period, the moh also advised businesses within the service sector to adopt physical distancing countermeasures such as split-team arrangements and allowing staff to work from home (tay et al., 2010). those who were at higher risk of developing complications if stricken were also removed from frontline work to other areas where they were less likely to contract the viruses. the practice of physical distancing, however, also drew strong criticisms from businesses that suffered economic losses as a result (duncanson, 2003). it is therefore important to point out that the effectiveness of physical distancing remains controversial and the practice itself relies heavily on the judgement passed by a selected few (see for example, aledort et al., 2007; briand, mounts, & chamberland, 2006; gostin, 2006; who, 2006). indeed, few studies have been conducted since the sars outbreak in 2003 to establish the effectiveness of this control measure. despite the absence of solid empirical data, the who nevertheless established a set of general guidelines for countries that sought to institute physical distancing to follow, and recommended that it should be introduced only in accordance with the severity of the epidemic, risk groups affected, and epidemiology of transmission (who, 2005). in other words, physical distancing should only be introduced when it is supplemented by other measures to compensate those who suffered economic losses as a result. only then will physical distancing, as a public health control measure, receive the broad-based buy-in that is necessary for it to be effective. aseas 5(1) 86 87 isolation and quarantine on 24 march 2003, the moh invoked the ida to isolate all those who had been exposed to sars patients (ministry of health, 2003). these “contacts” were quarantined for 10 days either at home or at specific centres and were told to take their body temperatures twice a day. during the quarantine period, contacts who developed a fever (defined as a body temperature higher than 38oc) would automatically be referred to ttsh for further monitoring and investigation. meanwhile, the moh also uncovered an old law that granted that ministry the authority to mandate quarantines. as a result, it was able to serve quarantine orders in thousands of suspected cases. harsh penalties, such as hefty fines of more than usd 4,000 or imprisonment, were imposed on those who defied quarantine orders (“singapore imposes”, 2003). in a drastic move reminiscent of a police state, closed circuit cameras were installed in the houses of those ordered to stay home to monitor their compliance with the quarantine order (“singapore imposes”, 2003). at the height of sars, 12,194 suspected cases were ordered to stay home, all of whom were monitored either by cameras or in less severe cases, by telephone calls. initially, when little was known of the epidemiology of sars, the average quarantine period for suspected cases was six to eight days. however, as the moh came to understand the disease better, that was significantly reduced to just one to three days (see figure 3). allen lai yu-hung & teck boon tan combating sars and h1n1 figure 3: weekly average time from onset of symptoms to isolation of sars cases source: adapted from tan (2003) week of onset 25 feb 03 mar 9 days 6.5 days 04 mar 10 mar 4.7 days 11 mar 17 mar 3.1 days 18 mar 24 mar 4.4 days 25 mar 31 mar 2.9 days 01 apr 07 apr 2.8 days 08 apr 14 apr 2.1 days 15 apr 21 apr 1.75 days 22 apr 28 apr aseas 5(1) 88 89 during the h1n1 pandemic, quarantine and isolation were also mandated as part of the overall containment strategy (tay et al., 2010). similar to the approach taken during sars, patients who demonstrated mild symptoms were ordered by their doctors to stay at home as part of the qo. on the other hand, close contacts of index cases were issued qos and quickly admitted to public hospitals for isolation. contacts who were singaporeans were generally quarantined in their own homes while foreigners were assigned to government quarantine facilities. at the same time, experienced clinicians were elevated to the status of health officers under the ida and given broad authority to issue mandatory isolation orders. it is important to point out that empirical evidence based on mathematical modelling demonstrated a direct correlation between early quarantine and the number of secondary cases generated in subsequent time periods (lipsitch et al., 2003). in other words, the sooner an index case was isolated, the fewer subsequent infections could be linked to it. yet, quarantine, regardless of its effectiveness, received strong criticisms from the general public during the outbreak of sars and h1n1 due to the invasive nature of that measure (duncanson, 2003; menon, 2011). therefore, it remains an ongoing debate in the public policy realm as to where the balance between the requirement for disease containment and privacy can be struck when quarantine is introduced. in response to the public complaints, authorities in singapore provided economic assistance to those individuals and businesses who had been affected by home quarantine orders through a home quarantine order allowance scheme (tay & mui, 2004; teo, yeoh, & ong, 2005). at the same time, the moh worked together with various ministerial authorities to provide essential social services to those affected by the quarantine order. for example, housing was offered to those who were unable to stay in their own homes (because of the presence of family members) during their quarantine, ambulance services were provided to those undergoing quarantine at home to visit their doctors as well as high-tech communication gadgets (such as webcams) for those undergoing quarantine to stay in touch with relatives and friends. healthcare sector infection control measures the view that infection control measures implemented in the healthcare sector can aseas 5(1) 88 89 limit the transmission of infectious diseases is widely supported in extant literature on this subject (see for example, aledort et al., 2007; jeffries, 1995; pittet, 2001). indeed, it is not a matter of dispute that measures that discourage hospital visits in non-essential cases while encouraging better personal hygiene and respiratory etiquette can help to lower the rate of infection. therefore, to limit the risk of transmission in healthcare institutions, the moh decided to implement a series of stringent infection countermeasures that called for the cooperation of all healthcare workers (hcws) and visitors to hospitals during the outbreak of sars. at the same time, the moh instructed all hcws to wear appropriate personal protective equipment6 when treating patients. visitors to public hospitals were also advised not to enter areas where transmission and contraction were most likely. the movements of hcws in public hospitals were also heavily proscribed during the outbreak. as a result, many physicians and nurses were restricted to working in one specific medical facility at any time (james et al., 2006; teo, yeoh, & ong, 2005). unfortunately, except for ttsh, these critical measures were not enforced in a number of healthcare sectors until 8 april 2003, and this oversight led to a number of intra-hospital infections (goh et al., 2006). this oversight taught the moh an important lesson; consequently, stringent infection control measures were implemented in all healthcare settings during the outbreak of h1n1. it is important to point out that when h1n1 broke out in 2009, the moh utilised a combination of soft and hard tactics to combat that outbreak. as an example, the ministry was soft-handed when it simply reminded all healthcare sectors of their social responsibility to limit the transmission of the h1n1 virus (menon, 2011). it is somewhat unfortunate that this form of moral suasion has been given little emphasis in extant literature even though there is a growing body of evidence which underscores the significance of cooperation between the general populace and the government. meanwhile, the moh also introduced heavy-handed measures such as restricting the movements of hcws and visitors to hospitals. even more drastic than the measure that was taken during the outbreak of sars in 2003, the movements of hcws and patients between hospitals were restricted during the outbreak of h1n1 in 2009. as a matter of fact, only hcws who provided essential services were permitted 6 personal protective equipment includes n95 masks, disposable gloves, gowns, and goggles or visors. allen lai yu-hung & teck boon tan combating sars and h1n1 aseas 5(1) 90 91 to move freely from one hospital to another. at the same time, patient movement between hospitals was strictly restricted to medical transfers. moreover, the number of visitors to hospitals was also tightly controlled and their particulars were recorded during each visit (leo, 2011). ultimately, it was not a single infection control measure that defeated h1n1 but rather a novel combination of soft-handed and heavy-handed measures that ultimately brought the virulent outbreak under control. public education and communication during the sars and h1n1 outbreaks, the moh practised a high degree of transparency and forthrightness when it shared information with the general public (menon, 2011). information was communicated to the public through every conceivable channel and medium to educate the domestic populace while reassuring the international community. for example, a government information channel dedicated to providing timely updates was created on the same day – 13 march 2003 – when the who issued a global alert. a dedicated tv channel called the sars channel7 was also launched to broadcast information on the symptoms and transmission mechanisms of the viruses (james et al., 2006). as to reach out to a wider audience, the moh even advertised epidemic-related information in local newspapers. national tv stations channel 8 and channel u even made the rare move of using a range of local dialects such as hokkien and teochew to host live call-in sars forums.8 as it happened, the outbreak of sars prompted the state media in singapore to permit such broadcasts underscoring the severity of the situation as well as the will of the state. in addition to mass media (for example tv and radio), information pamphlets were distributed to every households in the country via the postal service and the moh website provided constant updates and health advisories to the general public (menon, 2011). throughout the sars crisis, a single moh spokesperson acted as the state’s mouthpiece to the media (james et al., 2006). in stark contrast to how the taiwanese government handled the sars outbreak – by allowing numerous medical experts and 7 as the health crisis deepened in may 2003, television broadcast competitors singapore press holdings (sph), media corporation of singapore (mediacorp), and starhub cable tv joined forces to establish a dedicated sars channel, which transmitted from noon to midnight each day. 8 it is noteworthy that singapore stopped broadcasting tv programs in local dialects since the early 1980s (menon & goh, 2005). the temporary reversal of this government policy was the result of initial media criticism that the campaigns needed to be more effectively targeted by reaching out to those people who only understood dialects. aseas 5(1) 90 91 local health professionals to voice their opinions and provide fodder for the local media on a daily basis – the singaporean government’s strategy of presenting one monolithic voice to the media was indeed sensible and commendable (ho, 2003). at the same time, the media in singapore also acted in a sound manner by assuming a social responsible role, which, among others, saw the media establishing a close working partnership with the state to help manage the national crisis.9 for instance, the local newspaper, the straits times, published articles that were largely supportive of the health control measures introduced by the government (menon & goh, 2005). in addition to news and articles that supported the state’s actions, news headlines also called on members of the public to change their attitudes and behaviours toward personal hygiene. unquestionably, these unambiguous messages from the state contributed in no small part towards lowering the risk of public panic. singapore’s open and responsive risk communication even earned the small nation-state praises from dr. osman david mansoor, a senior health advisor for the unicef. underscoring the efficient and almost mechanical manner in which singapore had handled the sars outbreak, mansoor commented in particular that “if singapore cannot get it under control, it is going to be very hard to get it under control anywhere else” (fung, 2003). it is important to note that during the h1n1 outbreak in 2009, this monolithic strategy of public education was also pursued rigorously. similar to the strategy adopted during the outbreak of sars, the moh worked closely with the media to provide regular and timely updates and health advisories to the general populace (menon, 2011). the public was educated on how to minimise the risk of contraction and transmission as well as on how to identify symptoms of influenza. many public and private organisations also displayed prominent signs in front of their building entrances that reminded their staff as well as visitors to be socially responsible. school children were instructed to wash their hands and take their body temperature regularly. the public was told to wear masks and postpone non-essential travels to other countries. once the h1n1 vaccine became available, the moh also pushed for the general public to be immunised.10 however, the vaccination coverage rate in the general public was less than 20 percent, that is lower than the level of herd immu9 criticisms come in as a self-censored mechanism exists in singapore’s media coverage. however, the authors argue that the government’s concerted communication serves as a necessary, effective policy instrument to mitigate the public panic at the response stage of fighting pandemics. 10 to be fair, concerns over the vaccines’ safety tempered the general public’s receptiveness toward immunisation. allen lai yu-hung & teck boon tan combating sars and h1n1 aseas 5(1) 92 93 nity. a survey conducted in november 2009 among singapore’s healthcare workers (hcws) revealed fewer than 40 percent of hcws expressed willingness to receive the h1n1 vaccination. the top two concerns preventing vaccination were “fear of side effects” and “unsure of effectiveness” (toh et al., 2012). when concerns arose regarding the safety of the vaccines, key politicians and ministers took the lead to assuage such concerns by getting vaccinated themselves (menon, 2011). conceptual model and implications for pandemic management the draconian health control measures imposed by authorities in singapore to defeat sars and h1n1 have received heavy criticism both from the west and from within singapore itself (“singapore imposes”, 2003; menon, 2011). indeed, the use of quarantine orders during the outbreaks is reminiscent of the kind of measures used only by police states. it is conceivable that few countries in the west would have resorted to the use of cctvs to ensure compliance with home quarantine orders. however, the evidence presented in this paper strongly suggests that such a perspective is incomplete at best. for one, the singapore government did employ gentler approaches in the form of moral suasion and public-private partnerships to combat sars and h1n1. guided by this insight, we hereby delineate a comprehensive model that is better able to capture the essence of singapore’s success in combating sars and h1n1 (see figure 4). crucially, this model is composed of three critical components – adaptive governance, networked partnership, and moral suasion – all of which are implicitly or explicitly revealed in the measures that had been discussed so far in this paper. more importantly, this conceptual model offers a valuable framework into the kind of approach needed to combat future pandemics especially in south-east asia. we will now discuss the significance of each element and its implications. figure 4: a conceptual model of pandemic control source: authors’ compilation adaptive governance networked partnership moral suasion success of disease control aseas 5(1) 92 93 adaptive governance adaptive governance, in this context, refers to a clear but flexible command and control structure that can be swiftly adapted to changing circumstances. among other things, the flexibility endemic to this command and control structure facilitates the building of trust between the state and its people (lai, 2009). this in turn ensures that government measures are quickly accepted by the general public. as shown in this paper, the singapore government practised adaptive governance during the outbreak of sars and h1n1 by establishing a command and control structure that was able to adapt to rapidly changing circumstances. indeed, this command and control structure was reorganised swiftly to deal with the uncertainties that stemmed from the outbreaks. when sars broke out in 2003, the moh set up a taskforce within that ministry even when the definition of sars remained unclear. as more sars cases were uncovered and better epidemiological information became available, the government quickly created the inter-ministerial committee (imc) and core executive group (ceg) – both of which were instrumental in the design and implementation of all public health control measures – to coordinate the operation to combat the outbreak. while this overarching governance structure is more or less standard worldwide (laporte, 2007; ‘t hart, rosenthal, & kouzmin, 1993), the case of singapore is unique in that the nation-state was able to overcome bureaucratic inertia and adapt this governance structure to deal with the subsequent outbreak of h1n1 in 2009. indeed, moh officials swung into action once they realised that the imc–ceg structure was inadequate in terms of facilitating close cooperation between various key government agencies to tackle the health crisis on hand (pereira, 2008). accordingly, in the post-sars period, the imc–ceg structure quickly evolved into an influenza-focused home-front crisis ministerial committee (hcmc-flu) and the home-front crisis executive group (hceg-flu). on top of facilitating close interagency coordination, the strength of this revamped structure was its ability to ensure swift response to a pandemic outbreak by implementing health control measures more effectively and efficiently. singapore’s legal framework also played an adaptive role in terms of facilitating a swift response to the outbreak of pandemics. a legacy of singapore’s british colonial past, the singaporean legislature is well known for passing laws in a swift and efallen lai yu-hung & teck boon tan combating sars and h1n1 aseas 5(1) 94 95 ficient manner. using the ida, moh declared sars a notifiable disease on 17 march 2003 – a mere two weeks after the first imported case. h1n1 was declared a notifiable disease on 28 april 2009 – just one day after the who raised the alert from phase 3 to 4 – even when there were no reported cases of h1n1 in singapore then. more importantly, singapore was able to swiftly amend the ida during the health crises to suit volatile conditions such as when more epidemiological cases were uncovered and the viruses were better understood. in particular, the government amended the ida on 24 april 2003 requiring all those who had come into contact with sars patients to remain indoors or report immediately to designate medical institutions for quarantine. though vitally important, an adaptive governance structure was not the only reason behind the successful defeat of sars and h1n1 – individual values and the interests of different stakeholders were crucial as well (teo, yeoh, & ong, 2005). this brings us to the second element of our conceptual model: a networked partnership. networked partnership combating pandemics requires multiple government agencies and private organisations to work together in close partnership – not unlike that of a network (lai, 2012; shalala, 1997; webby & webster, 2003). while the health authorities of a country typically lead such efforts, the inclusion of other departments, agencies, and organisations (including non-governmental ones) is necessary and ultimately, inevitable. indeed, major countermeasures such as public education and surveillance are often made possible with the aid of non-health agencies such as the media and schools. in singapore, healthcare delivery is carried out through a variety of providers in the public, private, and voluntary welfare organisation sectors. for example, the national vaccination program against h1n1 in 2009 involved not only the moh but also a number of other ministries such as the moe, mod, mfa as well as entities such as the media, public hospitals, and private clinics. therefore, it is clear that the ability to synergise the capacity of various organisations is central to the fight against infectious diseases (lai, 2012; leung & nicoll, 2010; voo & capps, 2010). in general, every public health control measure introduced by the moh was wellreceived by the public for two main reasons: firstly, the level of trust singaporeans had for their government was relatively high and support for the party in office was aseas 5(1) 94 95 strong. the general sense was that the government needed carte blanche in order to combat the pandemics effectively and this in turn allowed various government agencies and departments to push through a series of draconian measures to contain the outbreaks. secondly, the government’s eagerness to enter into a partnership with various organisations to combat sars and h1n1 was also a key reason. one dramatic example of this was a joint decision made by both the health and education ministries on 25 march 2003 to close all institutions of learning in singapore. the decision was not made on medical grounds but because principals and general practitioners have reported that parents continued to be concerned about the risk to their children in schools (lanard, 2004). then-education minister teo chee hean assured four groups of stakeholders that they were being heard and taken seriously: principals, general practitioners, parents, and the general public. “the ministers can’t do everything the public wants – but the public knows its wishes will be considered,” teo said (fung, 2003). a shared control with its public not only works for partnership but also for moral suasion. moral suasion moral suasion means the use of a persuasion tactic by an authority to influence and pressure but not to force individuals or groups into complicity with a policy (aimone, 2010; barrett, 2007). public education and risk communication are two indispensable components in health crisis management (reddy et al. 2009; reynolds & seeger, 2005). the evidence suggests that draconian government measures, such as quarantine and travel restrictions, are less effective than voluntary measures (such as good personal hygiene and voluntarily wearing of respiratory masks), especially over the long term (bruine, fischhoff, brilliant, & caruso, 2007). therefore promoting social responsibility is crucial in terms of slowing the pace of infection through good personal hygiene and respiratory etiquette in all settings (aledort et al., 2007). this, in large part, has to rely on public education and risk communication. indeed, getting the right message across to the general public can often be a major challenge, especially when no established and respected organisation can act as the central authority for information collection and dissemination. hence, it is absolutely necessary to disseminate essential information to the targeted population in a transparent manner. allen lai yu-hung & teck boon tan combating sars and h1n1 aseas 5(1) 96 97 moral suasion is best illustrated in the singaporean government’s communication strategy during the outbreak of sars and h1n1. the lack of knowledge on the epidemiology of sars and h1n1 at the beginning of the outbreaks inevitably led to public fear and panic. throughout the pandemic, the singaporean government relentlessly raised the level of public awareness on social responsibility and personal hygiene. singapore’s approach to manage public fear and panic was through ensuring transparency and building trust (menon & goh, 2005). since earning the trust of the public was not a given, political leaders had to be seen as doing and initiating a series of countermeasures to reassure the public. one good example was demonstrated by singapore’s senior minister lee kuan yew who told the media how he never left home without his thermometer while prime minister goh chok tong lunched with local media editors at a hotel restaurant to show singaporeans that it was safe to be in public places (“pm goh says”, 2003). goh deliberately used the story of people’s sacrifices during sars to further indicate the type of character that all singaporeans should embrace: i believe, however, that singaporeans are made of sterner stuff. i believe they have fighting spirit. otherwise, singapore would have collapsed by now…take for instance our doctors, nurses and other personnel working to help sars-infected patients. they have conducted themselves magnificently throughout the crises. they have displayed great resolve, and a noble sense of professional responsibility. they have chosen courage over their fear of sars…this is the kind of steel in our character that will see singapore through hard times. we should honour them. (goh, 2003) all these stories illustrated to the singapore public the ‘moral virtue’ of political leaders setting an example. by showing the people that government leaders practised what they preached, the examples served to ‘naturalise’ and ‘legitimise’ the public discourse of ‘social responsibility’ and ‘sacrifice’ for all singaporean citizens. conclusion the world today is more inter-connected than ever before. international travel, transnational trade, and cross-border migration have drastically increased as a consequence of globalisation. in response to these developments, the approach needed to combat a pandemic must also be standardised. public health control measures such aseas 5(1) 96 97 as case management, surveillance, physical distancing, and school closures require wide-spread support from the general public for them to be effective. meanwhile, singapore’s experiences with sars and h1n1 also strongly suggest that a control measure can be effective only when a range of partners and stakeholders (such as government ministries, non-profit organisations, and grass-roots communities) become adequately involved. unilateral actions are simply insufficient and ineffectual. this article discussed the health control measures introduced as well as the insights drawn from the singaporean experience in response to sars and h1n1. in our study of two public health emergencies, we have shown that there was fairly widespread public support for control measures that other countries were unwilling to adopt (such as social distancing and quarantine order). the two health crises revealed that public compliance is particularly effective and necessary to limit the spread of infectious diseases, especially at the early stage of disease containment. as it turned out, the population’s receptiveness to these draconian measures was enhanced to a large extent through moral suasion and networked partnership between the government and the people; indeed, the efficacy of these public health control measures was profoundly related to these two crucial elements. while singapore may be unique in many aspects, its experience highlighted the critical importance of adaptive governance, networked partnership, and moral suasion in ensuring transparency and public trust when confronting the outbreaks. epidemic control in singapore can therefore lend itself to other countries in the region and beyond: a strong command and control governance structure that imposes clear and transparent orders to shape the crisis mentality of the people. the presence of such a governance structure and the extent to which it is utilised explains and predicts how well an epidemic can be successfully contained. whether all of these aspects are transferrable elsewhere needs to be assessed in future analysis. nonetheless, this unique discipline certainly has helped singapore come out of public health crises on a regular basis. allen lai yu-hung & teck boon tan combating sars and h1n1 aseas 5(1) 98 99 references aimone, f. 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(2003, 9 april). singapore woman linked to 100 sars cases. associated press. retrieved 13 may 2012 from http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/bioter/singaporewomansars.html allen lai yu-hung & teck boon tan combating sars and h1n1 moving beyond charity to philanthropy? the case of charitable giving in thailand aseas 10(2) | 185 moving beyond charity to philanthropy? the case of charitable giving in thailand natalie phaholyothin ► phaholyothin, n. (2017). moving beyond charity to philanthropy? the case of charitable giving in thailand. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 10(2), 185-203. this paper outlines the characteristics of the philanthropic sector in thailand today. it first describes the local concept of giving, which is intricately linked to theravada buddhism. then, the paper provides examples of traditional forms of philanthropic institutions that are more closely associated with charity than philanthropy, followed by examples of innovative forms of philanthropic efforts. given the trajectory of economic development in thailand, opportunities to engage broader public interest in philanthropy exist and in order to do so, there is need for the sector in general to build stronger evidence of how public giving is translated into social impact. the main challenge to the thai philanthropic sector is the limited attention to accountability and transparency, as philanthropic entities generally have not developed robust monitoring and evaluation frameworks that target outcomes. this can be turned into an opportunity to address the general lack of focus on strategy development, weak monitoring systems, and a limited reporting of outcomes. keywords: charity; giving; philanthropic organizations; thai philanthropy; thailand  introduction not much has been written about the evolution of charitable giving in thailand from traditional practices related to religious giving to corporate and social giving today. there are very few scholarly works that have studied philanthropic activities in thailand (wattanasiritham, 2007). two underlying reasons may be behind the sparse literature on the philanthropic sector in thailand: 1) the understanding of philanthropy as a sector or a professional area of expertise is at a nascent stage, and 2) there are few examples of local organizations operating in a manner that qualifies as philanthropy as practiced in north america and western europe. the purpose of this paper is to provide a general overview of the context of charitable giving in thailand, and to analyze the current landscape of charitable giving with examples of emerging forms of socially conscious entities working towards the betterment of thai society.1 i will argue that practices of the current philanthropic sector in thailand are generally closer to charity than 1 this paper was written based on a series of grants funded by the rockefeller foundation in 2014 and 2015 towards strengthening the philanthropic sector in thailand. several of the sources used in this paper are drawn from grantee reports that were supported by the foundation. aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 17 .2 -4 186 | aseas 10(2) moving beyond charity to philanthropy? the case of charitable giving in thailand philanthropy. in the following, i will first describe traditional forms of giving in thailand to establish the context of charity in thailand, which is driven by deep religious beliefs in theravada buddhism where traditional forms of giving still permeate most socially-driven programs in thailand. then, i will present emerging local institutions which distinguish themselves by various characteristics that may qualify them as emergent forms of philanthropic entities. these examples demonstrate the diversity of thailand’s charitable sector today, ranging from large corporate social responsibility (csr) programs to small foundations set up by 'high net-worth individuals'2 to an informal network of like-minded professionals who coalesce through facebook. in the last section, i will describe the challenges that lie ahead for thailand’s emerging philanthropic sector such as the need to strengthen accountability and transparency through stronger monitoring frameworks, and to build a collaborative culture across actors to leverage the impact of programs targeting similar social outcomes. the transition from a model of traditional charity to philanthropy is still in the making and the thai case might demonstrate a home-grown repertoire of socially conscious forms of giving, or a local model of philanthropy that extends beyond financial support. the concept of giving in thailand according to the charities aid foundation’s (caf) (2015) world giving index 2015, myanmar ranks as the world’s most charitable country. the united states and new zealand came in second and third place, respectively. thailand was among the top 20, ranking number 19 globally. this is not a new record for thailand, as the country has been among caf’s top twenty during previous years as well. looking over the previous five years, the caf world ranking index places thailand at number 16. the caf calculates its world ranking based on three components of giving: 1) helping a stranger, 2) donating money, and 3) volunteering time, with the assumption that giving and helping others are natural human instincts. the caf report attributes myanmar’s high giving index to the deep belief in theravada buddhism that translates into the practice of donating to temples, as well as volunteering time towards their upkeep and maintenance. myanmar and thailand rank number one and two respectively in terms of percentage of people and number of people who donate money to charitable causes. the caf world giving index 2015 reports that, “both myanmar and thailand have a high proportion of theravada buddhists practicing sangha dana which drives this high donation rate” (p. 19). sangha dana refers to the practice of charitable giving to the community of ordained monks. while theravada buddhism encourages the practice of donation to religious causes, it may not be the only driving force that contributes to the high levels of donations. charitable giving in thailand is influenced by the buddhist principles of karma3, as well as socio-cultural norms based on a political system rooted in kinship, family affiliation, regional ties, and networks that shape local attitudes on giving (ockey, 1994). 2 in the investment sector, private banking, and philanthropic institutions, ‘high-net worth’ is used to designate persons who hold a big amount of assets for investment. 3 karma is derived from sanskrit karman (action, effect, fate). i will use the sanskrit spelling of the word in this paper. aseas 10(2) | 187 natalie phaholyothin understanding charitable giving in thailand must take into account the local belief system that is heavily influenced by theravada buddhism, which constitutes the socio-cultural dimensions of giving (asia pacific philanthropy consortium, 2001; keyes, 1971). one cannot look at giving in isolation, but in relation to the drivers of charitable actions. the principle of reincarnation is a fundamental belief in theravada buddhism. all life forms are reincarnated in a cycle of birth, life, and death without an end unless one reaches nirvana, or enlightenment. tham bun, or making merit, is a means to accumulate good deeds (fuengfusakul, 1993). the role that karma plays in determining reincarnation is key to understanding why people give to charitable causes. karma, as defined in theravada buddhism, is action that is driven by an intention. good karma is action that is driven by good intentions and making merit or meritorious deeds will contribute to accumulating good karma. one’s accumulated karma will determine the kind of rebirth or reincarnation of future lives. this core belief is a fundamental principle that drives charitable giving in thailand (asia pacific philanthropy consortium, 2001, p. 2 ; nye, 2008). the common belief in the karmic cycle based on one’s accumulated good deeds incentivizes people to donate towards religious causes. ordinary thais make merit through various forms of giving. the most popular and traditional form of giving is to temples in the form of monetary contributions. giving alms to monks in the early morning is also widely practiced. the practice of soliciting money from friends, family members, and colleagues for a merit-making trip to a temple is wide spread. another practice that reinforces one’s “karmic savings” is the practice of donations for oneself or loved ones who are alive, or also deceased (asia pacific philanthropy consortium, 2001, p. 2). breakdown of social giving in thailand: most frequent beneficiaries of giving: temples or religious institutions 93.3% educational institutions 83.4% hospitals and health organizations 74.7% community organizations 65.2% royal-affiliated projects 49.6% most trusted charitable organizations: temples or religious institutions 47.9% royal-affiliated projects 23.3% educational institutions 15.8% hospitals and health organizations 5.6% community organizations 4.3% most effective charitable organizations: temples or religious institutions 31.6% royal-affiliated projects 20.4% educational institutions 20.4% hospitals and health organizations 14.2% community organizations 8.5% table 1: breakdown of social giving in thailand (chhina, petersik, loh, & evans, 2014, p. 92) 188 | aseas 10(2) moving beyond charity to philanthropy? the case of charitable giving in thailand also common in thailand is to make contributions for the costs of funerals. it is customary that friends and co-workers make monetary contributions to the family of the deceased. each contribution is made voluntarily and the amount is entirely based on the donor’s social status and ability to pay. weddings also draw in monetary contributions. such widespread social practices reflect social expectations in which giving serves as social glue in networks and communities. in rural areas, giving towards social events such as funerals, weddings, and the ordination of monks and novices constitutes a normal part of engaging in community life. charitable giving as a social practice is meant to solidify the sense of belonging, the community, or the family. local attitudes toward giving are influenced by the idea that if one is to give, then one should not expect anything in return. this notion may owe its origins to the buddhist ideal of selflessness as a virtuous mindset that has a positive karmic value. later sections of this paper will establish the link between this belief and challenges in transitioning from charity to philanthropy in thailand. economic development and charitable giving thailand is heralded as an economic success story. it earned the classification as a ‘high middle income’ country in 2011 according to the world bank’s ranking. except for the asian financial crisis of 1997, the thai economy has grown steadily in the past three decades at an annual average rate of 7.5% per year from 1986 to 1996, and at a slower rate of 5% from 1999 to 2005. as a consequence, the poverty rate fell from 67% in 1989 to only 11% in 2014 (pasul & baker, 1998; world bank, 2016). as the country continues to advance economically and thus building a larger middle class, it is hypothesized that donations towards charitable causes would increase. calculations done by the thailand development and research institute (tdri) based on household surveys seem to support this assumption. in 2014, donations from thai households towards charitable causes amounted to thb 75 million, or around 0.6% of thailand’s gdp of that year (sumano, 2016). despite thailand’s impressive economic achievements, growing inequalities, especially those along the urban-rural dimension, pose a major challenge for the country to escape the ‘middle income trap’. this is understood as an economic development ceiling which a country is unable to surpass without undergoing major structural changes that require moving from laborand capital-intensive industries towards an innovations-driven economy. given the 2008 financial crisis that has affected the world economy, thailand has seen sluggish economic growth with an average annual growth rate of 3.5%. the rural areas, where the majority of the population resides, still face serious disparities relative to their urban counterparts, such as access to quality education and healthcare. with new challenges to the thai economy these gaps risk becoming wider. according to the world bank, in 2013 80% of the country’s 7.3 million poor were living in rural areas (world bank, 2016). recognizing that gains from participation in the global economy are not distributed equitably to address urban-rural inequalities, there is an emerging awareness among ngos, the development and research community, and concerned public officials in thailand that the country needs to break out of the middle income trap. this might require innovations to promote specific reforms such as in the education sector. in this spirit, aseas 10(2) | 189 natalie phaholyothin a handful of local organizations and some private sector champions of corporate social responsibility (csr) are thinking of innovative ways to run their charitable organizations and turn charity – that is defined as giving without any expectation in return – into philanthropy, understood as investing from private sources for the public interest towards the goal of sustained impact. based on data from the caf report, thailand has ranked consistently high in terms of monetary donations. 78% of thais reported having made monetary contributions while only 15% of those surveyed responded that they had volunteered towards a charitable cause (charities aid foundation, 2015, p. 12). if time dedicated or volunteered to a charitable cause is used as the indicator, thailand ranks 98 out of a total of 145 countries. this suggests that time is the rarer commodity in the lives of thais today, and monetary contributions are the preferred means of charitable giving since it is easy to do ‘with no strings attached’. with the disparities growing between rural and urban areas, this pattern of giving indicates that charitable financial contributions would need to address problems that result from the rural-urban gap. in a study on social investment in selected asean countries, three main characteristics of charitable giving were identified in thailand (chhina et al., 2014, p. 91): 1. giving is very much part of thai culture and linked to religious beliefs in making merit or tham bun; 2. charitable giving is done in an ad-hoc manner dominated by individual giving which is motivated largely through personal connections or affiliations; 3. a large part of charitable giving goes to religious causes, organizations, or projects under royal patronage, and well-known charities or foundations. these findings, along with my argumentation here, suggest that traditional giving in thailand is more akin to charity than to philanthropy. the first and third findings underline the assumption that giving in thailand is largely driven by religious beliefs and is mostly done through traditional forms of charity represented by temples, established foundations, and charities. the second finding corroborates the notion that charitable giving is motivated by social cohesion and belonging to a group, as well as by the wish to enhance one’s social status or connections. the landscape of philanthropy in thailand in thailand, royal charities and projects under royal patronage occupy a significant proportion of charitable giving and have contributed to improving the livelihoods of many of their beneficiaries, especially in remote and rural areas. the three principal royal charities are the sai-jai thai foundation, which began in 1976, the chaipattana foundation, and the mae fah luang foundation, both established in 1988. numerous royal projects funded by these three royal foundations form the basis of thailand’s charitable sector. royal charities are the product of king bhumibol adulyadej’s (rama ix; 1946-2016) vision to assist his people and improve their well-being through sustainable agriculture, conservation of the ecosystem, and maintaining a well-balanced and self-sufficient livelihood. these projects aim to foster solidarity among all thais, wherein “thais should help and support other thais” (sai-jai 190 | aseas 10(2) moving beyond charity to philanthropy? the case of charitable giving in thailand thai foundation, n.d.). king bhumibol started these foundations at the time when thailand was still a low income country, surrounded by political instability and war in neighboring countries. the rural thai population was desperately poor and had limited economic opportunities to make a better living. hence, bridging the inequality gap lies at the heart of the mission of these royal projects. the royal projects under the above mentioned royal foundations are distinct from the rest of the philanthropic and charitable sector in thailand because they are managed systematically, are highly organized, and have been in existence over a relatively long period of time compared to csr programs or activities of local non-governmental organizations (ngos). they belong in a category beyond the diverse and fragmented charitable sector because they have reached the scale and sustainability in which impact to segments of society has been palpable. in addition, royal projects are systematically organized and managed by professionals who are hired for various tasks. the doi tung project, for example, is highly sustainable as it operates as a social enterprise linking local producers and small farmers to urban consumers in bangkok and secondary cities. the chaipattana foundation funds projects not only in thailand, but also in neighboring countries and in locations outside the asean region. hence, royal charities will not be part of my discussion. the thai philanthropic sector is composed of an amalgam of diverse types of organizations, ranging from ngos, corporate giving programs, public funds, hospitals, and faith-based organizations, to well-established foundations and social enterprises (wattanasiritham, 2007). to the public at large, all these organizations work in a sector generally known as the 'charitable sector' where there is little understanding between what distinguishes charity from csr or from philanthropy. for example, in thai there is no direct translation of the term ‘philanthropy’. a broad translation of ‘charitable activities’ or ‘socially driven activities’ are used to signify the english term. still today, the deeply engrained notion of making merit is intertwined with charity, as in the expression tham bun tham than, (literally ‘make merit, make a donation’). thus, projects funded under various ‘philanthropic’ causes, more often than not, do not invest in building sustained impact for the beneficiaries, but rather, contribute towards immediate or short-term results. giving in itself is a charitable act, and thus, the engagement of the giver ends once the giving is done. a typical annual activity that is considered as 'philanthropic' in thailand consists of the campaign run by a corporate or private entity to collect donations for the purchase of blankets for poor families in remote areas of northern thailand (thaibev, 2016). the assumption of the program is that poor rural families in the north lack blankets and so face hardship and health vulnerabilities during the winter months. the underlying assumption is that providing blankets will contribute to improving their well-being. there have been very few attempts to assess systematically whether such an endeavor creates the results that are expected, or whether there are alternate methods to improve the living conditions for disadvantaged villagers during the cold winter months. the understanding of the objectives of strategic investment to obtain a sustained outcome and impact is absent from such programs. other philanthropic activities, supported by the private sector, consist of providing scholarships to disadvantaged children. yet, there is little follow up on the educational achievements of the students, the assumption being that just providing aseas 10(2) | 191 natalie phaholyothin financial support is sufficient to improve the education of the recipient. most scholarship programs fail to comprehend that a robust education is more than attending classroom lectures, but includes supportive structures such as counselling, working closely with the students’ families, and consistent follow-up that is made together with the school and the students, as well as connecting the students with appropriate career prospects. similar to initiatives that provide blankets to poor villagers, these scholarship programs do not focus on sustained and strategic investments to have a positive impact on the students. investing resources towards building enhanced capacity for teachers and more productive teaching methods might yield greater educational benefits for the pupils. nevertheless, the most popular charitable cause remains scholarships to poor and disadvantaged school children (sumano, 2016). examples of traditional philanthropic organizations there are a few examples of well-established charitable organizations that bridge the traditional notion of 'charity' and that of 'philanthropy'. more recently, new forms of philanthropic efforts by new groups of local actors have emerged as a response to the changing social and political content. the following examples are by no means exhaustive, but attempt to demonstrate some key characteristics of traditional philanthropic organizations that have achieved a certain level of impact and scale. the thailand development and research institute (tdri) undertook research on religious giving and found approximately 40,000 temples throughout the country with an average annual income from donations of thb 3.4 million, or usd 96,200, and associated annual expenditures of thb 2.8 million, or usd 79,200. each year, the average total amount of money that goes to temples nation-wide is estimated at thb 100 billion or usd 2.8 billion (tdri, 2017). this remarkable figure seems to support the caf study and attests to the deep spirit of giving among buddhist thais. the problem is that giving is not accompanied by an equally robust accountability system. in the same tdri study it was discovered that the majority of temples do not possess a systematic process of accounting, and accounting books do not meet general standards. in recent years, numerous scandals involving inappropriate uses of donation money by temples in thailand have prompted the public to demand for greater accountability and transparency. according to a recent study, from a sample of 39,513 households, 93% participate in giving towards religious activities (kanchanachitra, 2014). the study defines this category of giving as 'merit-making', thus purely for religious reasons linked to buddhist beliefs in accumulating good karma through making merit. the study also looks at giving as making donations for non-religious reasons, such as to established charities, foundations, and organizations. from the same survey, the percentage of thai households that made donations to non-religious causes was estimated at 18%, considerably lower than for religious giving. the study also reveals that households that donate to charitable organizations for non-religious causes tend to have relatively higher household incomes and have a higher proportion of heads of households with a university degree. based on these findings, it seems that there is much space for the development of the philanthropic sector in thailand. as thai households are becoming more urban and have a smaller family size, these households will have 192 | aseas 10(2) moving beyond charity to philanthropy? the case of charitable giving in thailand fewer dependents and thus more disposable income. thus there is the potential to broaden philanthropic engagement and to make giving more systematic and strategic by tapping into these educated and urban households. unfortunately, the study does not delve further into analyzing which categories of charities or foundations benefit the most from non-religious donations. based on my field observations and discussions with professionals working in the non-profit sector, another category which receives significant contributions from the thai public is foundations that serve the three main hospitals and medical schools in bangkok: the siriraj foundation, the ramathibodhi foundation, and the thai red cross society which manages chulalongkorn hospital. for middleto high-income households, donating to these large hospitals is compelling for several reasons. the first is that the institutions have well-organized structures to manage donations, and second that they have a clear mission easily understood by the public, which is to deliver quality healthcare and to reduce the pain and suffering from illness and disease. third, these hospitals are recognized centers of excellence with a long history of public service to the people. the thai red cross society board is chaired by princess sirindhorn. royal patronage of hospital foundations provides a basis of trust among the public that their donations will be put to best use. each hospital operates various trust funds and donors can specify that their contributions go towards a given cause. for wealthy individuals, giving to such hospitals or an affiliated trust fund is a common way to contribute to charity and to society in general, and one that also brings recognition to the individual and their family. sizeable donations that for example support the construction of a new wing, or a new building at a hospital usually mean a visible outcome as well as broad recognition of the donation. it is common that a commemorative tablet, inscribed with names of generous donors, is placed at the entry of a ward or in the lobby of the donated building, or in a location visible to visitors. this type of giving by a select group of wealthy individuals instills a sense of longevity and permanence to the act of generosity, as infrastructure stands the test of time. one of the best-known foundations is the poh teck tung foundation, which began in 1910 (poh teck tung foundation, 2010). its activities were funded by a wealthy first generation of sino-thai merchants who settled in siam4 or by the second generation who descended from migrants from china. the founders were inspired by the legend of a buddhist monk who dedicated his life to serving poor and sick people to relieve them of pain and suffering. in 1937, the poh teck tung foundation was registered officially as the huakiew poh teck siang tung foundation. it had a revolving fund of thb 2,000, with a board of directors composed of 16 members. according to their website, the poh teck tung foundation is one of the biggest charitable organizations in the country. its mission consists of offering relief during disasters, providing education and healthcare and supporting culture and arts. among its best-known activities is their role of retrieving corpses from accidents and catastrophes and taking charge of them, including cremation if no family or relatives can be identified. one of their contributions was the construction of the huachiew hospital, a large hospital in bangkok that provides a comprehensive list of services. as a well-established and highly organized organization, the poh teck tung foundation delivers visible and 4 thailand was formerly known as siam. the name was changed in 1949. aseas 10(2) | 193 natalie phaholyothin quantifiable results. with the visibility of its charitable activities and a history interwoven with the development of bangkok’s chinatown, the foundation garners trust from the local community and the thai-chinese public, which in turn perpetuates the virtuous cycle of giving from individuals and businesses. the philanthropic organizations cited in the examples above do not make their annual donation or programmatic activities easily accessible to the public. for example, all three hospital foundations have websites that allow easy donations online, but do not present details of their charitable activities or on how donations have been spent. the absence of such information might be due to weak interest from the public to seek such information after a donation has been made, thus reflecting the belief that giving is not to expect anything in return, not even following up on how the donation was spent or the results of the contribution. another plausible explanation is that setting up monitoring and evaluation systems is relatively costly and requires specific skills and knowledge. the amount of effort and resources required for a monitoring and evaluation system may not be considered as a strategic use of funds if there is no real demand to use such data to improve performance or refine current programs for greater impact to society. therein lie the limitations of most traditional philanthropic organizations in thailand that impede their categorization as professionally-run ‘philanthropic organizations’. new forms of philanthropic engagement as thailand has graduated into being an upper-middle income country, its socio-economic development has spawned innovative forms of philanthropic entities and charitable models of giving. these newer actors are as diverse as the more traditional ones. the entities i cover in this section represent some of the innovations and demonstrate the diversity of emergent philanthropic actors. one of the largest grant-making entities is the thai health promotion foundation or thai health, founded in 2001 under the health promotion foundation act. thai health operates through a fund collected from a 2% ‘sin tax’ or excise tax on tobacco and alcohol, which amounts to approximately usd 120 million annually (thai health promotion foundation, n.d.). the foundation interprets ‘health promotion’ broadly through the lens of well-being, which encompasses four dimensions of health – physical, mental, spiritual, and social. the majority of thai health’s grantees are local ngos, universities, and research institutions. with its large annual budget funding over 1,000 projects per year, thai health has been criticized for distorting the ngo sector by creating a monopoly on funding and influencing the priorities and programs of the civil society sector. with an annual endowment guaranteed by law from the thai state, thai health is a key funding organization in the country. thai health can be considered a new form of local philanthropy as its institutional structure best fits the characteristics of a typical foundation: 1) it has a secure endowment source, through sin taxes; 2) it does not receive donations or money from the public or any other source; 3) it possesses a governance and staffing structure comparable to other professionally-run foundations; and 4) it implements strategic programs. thai health is overseen by a board, managed by a ceo and run by staff recruited based on their qualifications. it has an independent evaluation board comprising of seven 194 | aseas 10(2) moving beyond charity to philanthropy? the case of charitable giving in thailand members who are experts from areas in health promotion, evaluation, and finance. the function of the evaluation board is to execute overall performance evaluations of the organization, and according to state legislation, thai health is obliged to report annually to the cabinet as well as to both houses of the thai parliament. in thailand, large foundations such as thai health are the exceptions rather than the norm. philanthropic efforts of wealthy individuals are made primarily through the family corporation with some activities managed by a small family foundation. in the study undertaken by the lien centre for social innovation, families of high net-worth individuals in thailand, as in other asian countries, engage in charitable activities through two principal channels: a family foundation that often focuses on charitable purposes such as in the areas of youth, education, and poverty alleviation; and a corporate program attached to the family business (chhina et al., 2014, p. 93). the study concludes with the emerging trend in thailand in which philanthropic activities are being pursued out of corporate entities rather than private foundations. corporate social responsibility or csr is a subject that is broadly understood by the general public and the urban middle class and thus has attracted more interest than philanthropy (chhina et al., 2014, p. 93). the stock exchange of thailand (set) even set up a csr institute in 2007 and the asian center for corporate social responsibility (accsr) was created in 2009 based at the asia institute of technology in bangkok. while this may be a positive sign for csr in thailand, family foundations remain small in terms of size of endowment and staffing, with family members facing the challenge to dedicate sufficient time and effort in managing the foundation (“the changing face”, 2015). thai corporations, led by siam cement group (scg), central group, and premier group, are re-thinking how they engage in the betterment of thailand by leapfrogging traditional models of community engagement, volunteering, and ad hoc donations by setting up programs that empower local communities through activities that build their capacities and valorize local resources (chhina et al., 2014). scg is the kingdom’s oldest and most highly respected conglomerates, founded in 1913 by king rama vi (1910-1925) to provide domestically produced cement and construction materials for the country’s infrastructure. scg started the scg foundation which focuses on children, youth, and community support during disaster relief efforts, such as the indian ocean tsumani in 2004 and the floods in 2011. for the year 2012, the scg foundation reported on its website that it disbursed thb 563 million towards community development, social infrastructure, and the environment (chhina et al., 2014). given the size of its annual csr disbursement, scg is among the top corporate givers in thailand (onozawa, 2013). chaovalit ekabut, currently president of scg, explains that “csr is not an extra activity, it is our duty” (chhina et al., 2014, p. 21). central group is the country’s largest retail conglomerate, which has expanded into real estate, commercial property development, hotels, and restaurants. central group began as a merchandise store located in chinatown, founded in 1947 by tiang chirathivat, a hainanese chinese who immigrated to thailand. in 1957, his son samrit chirathivat opened the first central department store. like many asian family-businesses, 'central' – as it is commonly referred to – is now run by tiang’s children and grandchildren. one active family member who oversees central group’s csr program is busaba chirathivat whose strategy aims to link local communities to its supply chain, explicitly working with local government agencies through the aseas 10(2) | 195 natalie phaholyothin state-run otop program to source products and materials.5 central brings its purchasers and merchandising managers to train communities in developing products for their market. participating communities which face cash flow problems receive accelerated payment for their goods. this program works in 25 provinces with 45 communities across thailand (chhina et al., 2014, p. 95). another feature of their csr program is to work with persons with disabilities through the mahathai foundation – thailand’s largest association for disabled persons, which helps identify appropriate candidates to work at central group’s repair and call centers for central’s power buy, an electrical appliances retail chain. many extremely wealthy individuals run csr programs through their own corporations, and thus, may not be drawn into creating their own private foundations, which are time consuming and intellectually demanding. according to an article on the website of wealth-x, a business specializing in global wealth information, family foundations are gaining ground in asia among the wealthy as a way to deliver charitable activities, and yet, creating such foundations may prove to be easier than actually managing them: the asian foundation industry is in its infancy compared to europe and the us, although it is on the rise … there is no official estimate for asia but it is likely to be less than 10,000, experts say. many of these have fallen into inactivity as they don’t have a dedicated professional running them ... ‘many family foundations in asia were set up by the patriarch years ago and are now dormant, usually because the family has been too busy running the business’ chow [a philanthropy consultant at law firm withers worldwide] said. (“the changing face”, 2015) an exception to this general trend is premier group’s chairman, vichien pongsathorn, who provides a cohesive strategy to the company’s csr program. premier group is involved in a range of businesses ranging between consumer products, real estate and hotels, it, transportation, environmental services, and what it calls “social sustainable development” (premier, n.d.). vichien believes that one of the missions of the premier group should be to mobilize greater participation from thai society in resolving the country’s pressing problems (chhina et al., 2014, p. 96). a key distinction in premier’s corporate philanthropy is the recognition that partnerships and involvement of other stakeholders are critical for the creation of positive and lasting changes in thai society (premier, n.d.). committed to philanthropic efforts, premier group garners 5% of its annual net profits towards its social sustainable development programs (chhina et al., 2014, p. 96). this amount is unprecedented in thailand as the corporate tax deduction is set at only 2% of net profits. the premier group has taken a different strategy than other corporations. it has created four foundations to fulfill its mission: the yuvabadhana foundation, the enlive foundation, the khon thai foundation, and the pan kan society. the yuvabadhana foundation that started over 20 years ago helps disadvantaged children throughout the country through educational scholarships, support programs, and mentoring. 5 otop stands for “one tambon one product”, and is a program supported by the thai government that aims to encourage each district or tambon to produce and sell a distinct local product made from local resources and by the local community. 196 | aseas 10(2) moving beyond charity to philanthropy? the case of charitable giving in thailand three million children benefit from their programs (yuvabadhana foundation, n.d.). the enlive foundation focuses on building increased awareness of the importance of preserving the environment and aims at promoting sustainable eco-tourism in which natural resources are preserved. the foundation encourages the involvement of local government agencies, local communities, and associations in its projects (enlive foundation, 2016). enlive foundation’s annual reports are easily accessible from its website – a practice that is rare among thai non-profit organizations. founded in 2011, the khon thai foundation has an ambitious goal of “creating a better thai society through the development of scalable and replicable collaborative platforms [that] enable active citizens from all sectors to work together for the greater good for society” (khon thai foundation, n.d.). the fourth foundation – pan kan society – is a social enterprise in which profits go towards the yuvabadhana foundation’s scholarships. ‘pan kan’ comes from the thai term baeng pan meaning ‘to share with each other’. pan kan outlets collect donations of second hand clothing, books and household items which are in good condition, from the general public, and resells these items in pan kan shops at very low prices. it has faced a great increase in profits and is now undergoing expansion by also working with mahathai foundation to help that organization to set up their own versions of social enterprises (chhina et al., 2014, p. 96). in 2016, vichien pongsathorn was listed among forbes asia’s top philanthropists along with harald link of the b.grimm group (koppisch, 2016). the american business magazine forbes has reported about noteworthy asian philanthropists in its annual rankings, and in an article published in their print version on september 2015, entitled “in asia, 40 heroes of philanthropy are making their mark” (koppisch, 2015). it selected people who give their own money rather than re-purposing a percentage of their company’s revenues towards charitable causes because, according to their opinion, “donating shareholder funds isn’t exactly philanthropy” (koppisch, 2016). three philanthropists operating in thailand made it on the list: anchalika kijkanakorn, thanong leeissaranukul, and a german national who runs philanthropic efforts in thailand, philipp graf von hardenberg. anchalika kijkanakorn is managing director of akaryn hospitality management services and created the pure blue foundation in 2010 as a way to link her hotel business to environmental conservation and community service. thanong leeissaranukul is president of sittipol group and spearheaded the spare human parts campaign to change public opinion on organ donation. at sittipol, 30% of the profits or approximately usd 3.3 million are earmarked annually towards the spare human parts campaign and for the assistance of the physically and mentally disabled and teachers in the armed conflict southern provinces of thailand. in addition, the group’s 20,000 employees can apply to fund books, equipment, or other support for schools in their respective hometowns (koppisch, 2016). after the 2004 indian ocean tsunami, philipp graf von hardenberg established the yaowawit school, which serves orphans, and the children’s world academy – a supporting foundation. the school continues to educate underprivileged children in kapong, in southern thailand, and has raised donations of more than usd 5 million for the school. these philanthropists are neither household names nor well-known within the csr or corporate philanthropy sector, but nevertheless demonstrate the emergence of a new breed of thai philanthropists who have the desire and the drive to make a positive change with their wealth and privilege. aseas 10(2) | 197 natalie phaholyothin there are also recent models of local philanthropy-cum-social-enterprise created by thailand’s urban and techno–savvy millennials. one such attempt that is becoming increasingly sustainable as a social enterprise is the platform social giver, which operates as a social enterprise that connects businesses to consumers by allowing businesses to sell excess capacity that otherwise would be unused, to consumers who can purchase services and goods at a bargain. for example, service providers such as restaurants or hotels can offer a discounted menu set for two or a hotel room on a certain date for a reduced price because there is no demand for those services on that particular date. this creates a win-win situation for all since the business operator can fill the excess capacity, the customer can purchase a service at a reduced price, and a clearly indicated charity receives a financial contribution from the sales of excess capacity. a significant percentage of social giver’s profits go towards supporting development projects and charitable causes. the idea is that all businesses at one time or another face excess capacity that goes to waste, and this excess can be turned into a win-win model for business operators, consumers, and society as a whole. the transaction is conducted through social giver’s online website. another similar effort is tae jai, which can be translated into english as “giving from the heart” and is an internet-based platform that connects individual donors to numerous development projects implemented by local ngos, communities, and charities. it is supported and managed jointly by a network of non-profit organizations such as change fusion, the khon thai foundation, ashoka thailand, the thai young philanthropists network (typn), open dreams, and krung thep thurakit newspaper. according to its website, tae jai has raised close to thb 13 million from 3,631 donors for 179 projects throughout thailand. donors can follow the progress of their chosen projects, and once a project is completed, it is reported on the tae jai website. tae jai’s innovation lies in connecting individual donors directly to development projects by providing both transparency and accountability through their vetting system and online monitoring. the third example of innovative non-profit organizations is teach for thailand that addresses a pressing problem that most thais are likely to identify with: inequitable access to quality education.6 reforming the education sector is a critical pathway for thailand to breach the middle income trap and propel itself in the ranks of an advanced economy. teach for thailand is a member of the global network, teach for all, and aims to build young leaders through a model adapted to suit the context of thailand’s education inequities. it aims to develop a new education model for low income school children who live in slum communities in bangkok. the model of teach for thailand is to recruit professionals and university graduates to teach at schools in poor neighborhoods where the majority of students are underprivileged. each teacher-volunteer works to inspire, mentor, and evoke positive change among the students. each volunteer will teach for two years. the goal is for young thai professionals to become more engaged in teaching and giving back to society. teach for thailand recognizes that youth cannot fully develop into productive and socially engaged citizens without role models, mentors, and teachers who inspire them. 6 teach for thailand is a chapter of teach for all. it is local in the sense that it has adapted a global model to suit the local context and to solve issues of inequity in thailand’s education sector. 198 | aseas 10(2) moving beyond charity to philanthropy? the case of charitable giving in thailand another new home-grown form of philanthropic engagement is the thai young philanthropist network (typn), which was established in 2008 as a network of young professionals and business leaders with a shared interest to foster positive change in thailand (“the state of philanthropy in thailand”, 2016). the typn began during the period of political tensions in thailand and mass protests in bangkok. the founder, ada chirapaisarnkul, sensed that she and her peers in their twenties and thirties wanted to contribute to society and make their country a better place without joining any political faction. typn began to coalesce through facebook, which at that time was still in its early days. according to ada, users of facebook in thailand in 2008 were mostly university students and urban middle class professionals, and as a result, typn now consists of well-educated professionals who are also well-connected to national and global networks (interview with ada chirapaisarnkul). today, typn has grown into a network of 2,500 members, 1,200 of whom have engaged in past activities. forty core members commit their own time and resources to run the projects. typn, unlike other philanthropic entities, is not institutionalized in the sense that it has no legal entity and no regular operating offices other than that of its founder. activities and projects are sought online through live chats and offline at weekend gatherings of typn members interested in a particular activity. while typn operates based on the volunteering time invested in an activity, the founder believes that members have already built sufficient trust to begin creating a fund and raising money (chhina et al., 2014, p. 99). typn has been very active in the creation of social enterprises, including tae jai mentioned above. it has also partnered with the ministry of education to set up a youth entrepreneurship training program. thailand’s new forms of socially conscious organizations are varied and range from public organizations like thai health that use innovative tax financing to fund philanthropic activities, to loose networks of like-minded professionals who interact through social media platforms. in between, there are large thai corporations that demonstrate commitment to social development by investing large portions of csr budget to support capacity building initiatives of local communities and linking these communities to the supply chain, as well as working with disabled persons for a more inclusive business approach. next to inspiring figures who serve as leadership examples, at a smaller scale, social enterprises like social giver are leveraging the connectivity of the internet to bring excess supply in the private sector to support local ngos. all of these examples demonstrate the potential of the philanthropic sector in thailand with programs that address specific social issues, target results, and social groups. challenges and opportunities to transform into a true philanthropic sector the conceptualization of philanthropy as practiced in north america and western europe, where there is an expectation that the philanthropic investment would have an impact, is still embryonic in thailand and would require much coordinated effort to develop. furthermore, as more traditional forms of socially-conscious giving are closer to charity, the sector has not made any adequate efforts to develop robust aseas 10(2) | 199 natalie phaholyothin monitoring systems for transparency and accountability. as long as having an impact is not considered an objective of local charities, these programs will not be designed to ensure that their activities translate into social change. this is a critical systemic problem of the sector as a whole and will have to be addressed if the ambitions of local charities are to have impact on the lives of the beneficiaries. despite these obstacles, there is much potential to expand the pool of charitable giving in thailand and engage a broader segment of the growing middle class and local corporations. yet, the main constraint that will have to be addressed and systematically resolved in order to create a platform and a nurturing environment to scale home-grown, innovative philanthropic efforts remains the low level of interest to measure results and track outcomes. if the aim of the entire sector altogether is to strengthen public engagement, thailand’s charitable sector must focus on measuring its impact more systematically and with tools that address the public’s concern. one key point that triggers public anxiety is how donations are actually used by non-profit organizations, especially the smaller or less known ones. this mistrust is a key obstacle to strengthening and expanding the non-profit sector, and improving the lack of trust is regarded as an urgent need, especially among ngos whose ability to deliver results, transparency, and operational efficiency are still limited (chhina et al., 2014, p. 93). this point of action is particularly critical for capturing the potential of greater charitable giving by the growing middle class. securing broader engagement from the public is not limited to the question of supply, where there must be a pool of compelling and attractive projects to fund. it is also a question of demand, in which non-profit organizations themselves must address the issue of building trust with the public to attain more funding for social causes. i surmise that weak accountability might be linked with the pervasive belief that charitable giving implies giving without expectations for anything in return – not even inquiring about the actual results of the giving. the english language tdri blog on charity presents this wide-spread attitude in the following: these statistics suggest that most thais are kind and generous when it comes to giving money to others. but have we wondered whether our donation money makes any impact? ... we have been taught since we were kids that we shall give without demanding anything in return. moreover, giving money is so swift and easy, but tracking requires time, efforts, and often more money. so why bother? (sumano, 2016) building a robust accountability framework requires effort and money, as pointed out in the tdri blog post. while some organizations have put in the effort required towards that goal, others lag behind. understanding the core advantages of having transparent, accessible, and strong financial systems and program metrics, especially in attracting future funding, is a key factor that might motivate non-profit organizations to invest in such frameworks. resource alliance, a non-profit organization based in the united kingdom, helps thai non-governmental organizations to build greater accountability by encouraging them to compete in the annual thai ngo awards. resource alliance has incorporated the thai ngo awards into its regional social entrepreneur awards in 2016, as there was weak demand from local non-profit 200 | aseas 10(2) moving beyond charity to philanthropy? the case of charitable giving in thailand organizations.7 on the supply side, non-profits, private foundations, and csr programs hold responsibility vis-á-vis their donors and also towards themselves as professionals, to build a robust and reliable framework for monitoring the results of their social investments if they are to create growth pathways and remain relevant in an ever more competitive field. in addition, on the demand side, it might be time for the charitable sector in thailand, including the donors themselves, to change the broad perception of donations as money ‘to give away’ into money to be invested into social impacts. one has to demand a socially impactful return for that charitable investment. moving from charity, as in giving money, food, or specific assistance to those in need, to philanthropy, which is the investment of private capital for the public good, remains an arduous task. one pathway to reaching this goal may be to transform the expectations around how charitable contributions to non-religious causes are used, tracked, and accounted for. already, some of the larger csr programs and innovative platforms mentioned in this paper are attempting to construct metrics to measure results. working with well-respected organizations which have the technical expertise in philanthropy and in the management of non-profit entities can be a way to develop stronger accountability frameworks and measurement tools. thai health is known to have supported capacity building through “social return on investment” (sroi) as a tool to measure social impact in thailand. thailand’s national institute of development administration (nida) hosts the center for philanthropy and civil society which can compile best-practices for accountability and results tracking. also present in thailand is the csr asia center at the asian institute of technology (ait), which serves as a knowledge hub and research and training center for sustainability practices. these institutions, acting as independent experts in technical areas of accountability, can be valuable partners in moving philanthropy forward and changing the mindset of donors as well as the public. corporate giving can play a role in instigating the professionalization of philanthropy in thailand by modifying current practices. according to a grant report for the rockefeller foundation, challenges in current corporate giving practices relate to three main issues (school of global studies, 2017), the first being the lack of transparency in reporting. this problem is tied to the points mentioned above. moreover, most companies do not disclose data on social and environmental activities of their csr programs. while the un global compact provides guiding principles for the private sector, most thai companies perceive this as a burden rather than a useful guide that will enable them to become responsible businesses (school of global studies, 2017). in thai companies, csr units normally reside within marketing or public relations departments. generally, thai companies consider csr as a component of public relations and marketing, rather than a vehicle to affect social change. third, the practice of csr and other types of corporate giving are still limited to donations, and not surprisingly, 98.5% of thai csr activities qualify as donations (school of global studies, 2017). on a practical level, the tax code can be revised to encourage philanthropy in thailand. like most countries, thailand allows tax deductions for both individuals and corporations. for companies, the total tax-deductible amount is limited to 2% of 7 in 2014, resource alliance received a grant from the rockefeller foundation to support the thai ngo awards. aseas 10(2) | 201 natalie phaholyothin net profits, while for individuals the deductible amount does not exceed 10% of net taxable income. according to tax lawyers and financial planners, these percentages are still relatively small, suggesting that they do not efficiently incentivize philanthropic giving (school of global studies, 2016, p.4). furthermore, legal requirements render philanthropic giving beyond religious causes more cumbersome. for example, according to a report compiled by the school of global studies at thammasat university (2016, p. 4), claiming a tax deduction for an educational institution may not be as easy because the tax law specifically indicates which types of contributions are tax-deductible. furthermore, what is tax-deductible may not correspond to the needs of the school. giving towards religious causes, however, is relatively easy. reforming fiscal regulations to be more supportive of charitable giving to non-religious causes could promote larger allocations of giving towards philanthropy. conclusion as examples in this paper illustrate, various philanthropic efforts attempt to create innovative social development programs that have positive impacts on the lives of their target groups. yet, a major challenge to realize such an impact is the lack of measuring tools and initiatives. a key concern that has to be addressed with this regard is the deeply rooted attitude of thai society that charity is the act of giving without the need or concern for anything in return. this mindset is a cultural and religious construct, originating in thai traditions, and translating into the practice of giving as an end in itself, without expecting anything in return. transforming this deeply engrained mindset will require changes amongst all actors of the charity-philanthropy sector in thailand. from the corporate world, this will imply thinking of csr and corporate charities differently. csr programs will have to be seen as contributions to address social issues that add value to society, rather than specific events with little sustained impact for the beneficiaries. accompanying this change will necessitate systematic monitoring and evaluation frameworks that are utilized by the management. such changes normally do not happen at mid-management level and thus, senior executives with the authority to implement the change will have to lead this transformation. how to incentivize the growing number of wealthy individuals to engage in philanthropy is a potentially interesting topic for thai think-tanks, research institutes, and business schools to explore. small charities and ngos in thailand will have to adapt in an ever-evolving funding ecosystem where competition is coming from new types of organizations such as social enterprises. setting up concrete and measurable goals with accountability measures is a strategic investment that builds trust with existing and potential funders. think-tanks and the media can play a critical role as public watchdogs for greater accountability and transparency in the religious charitable sector, which will reinforce the need for accountability within the non-religious sector as well. prawase wasi is a senior statesman and well-respected public health leader deeply involved in mobilizing support from the public sector as well as from civil society to influence national social policies such as the campaign for a national universal health coverage scheme. in mobilizing support across sectors towards a national cause, prawase uses the analogy of “the triangle that moves the mountain” (wasi, 2000, p. 3). the mountain signifies 202 | aseas 10(2) moving beyond charity to philanthropy? the case of charitable giving in thailand an unsurmountable problem and the triangle symbolizes the three forces necessary to solve that problem: knowledge and relevant research, social movement, and political involvement (wasi, 2000, p. 3). applying prawase’s metaphor to the philanthropic sector in thailand, the mountain is a combination of the challenges of changing mindsets, bringing together fragmented actors from different sectors, and rectifying weak accountability and the lack of public trust. the triangle will have to consist of 1) applying relevant knowledge, tools, and targeted research to better understand the sector in thailand; 2) mobilizing 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(2015, september 23). wealth-x. retrieved from http://www. wealthx.com/articles/2015/changing-asian-philanthropy/ school of global studies. (2017). the future of philanthropy in thailand: final narrative grant report submitted to the rockefeller foundation. bangkok: thammasat university. school of global studies. (2016,). the state of philanthropy in thailand: a grant report for the rockefeller foundation. bangkok: thammasat university. wasi, p. (2000). triangle that moves the mountain and health system reform in thailand. human resources for health development journal, 4(2), 106-110. retrieved from http://www.who.int/hrh/en/ hrdj_4_2_06.pdf wattanasiritham p. (2007) thailand. in: h. k. anheier, a. simmons, & d. winder (eds.), innovation in strategic philanthropy (pp. 89-106). world bank. (2016). overview. retrieved from http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/thailand/overview yuvabadhana foundation. (n.d.). getting to know the foundation: creating smart kids for the future of thailand [original in thai]. retrieved from http://www.yuvabadhanafoundation.org/?q=en/about about the author natalie phaholyothin is associate director at the rockefeller foundation's asia regional office, located in bangkok, thailand. her main responsibility at the foundation is overseeing the global health programs. in addition to this role, she carries a passion for philanthropy, notably in strengthening strategic philanthropy in thailand. this paper is written from her grant-making experience at the rockefeller foundation that supported the strengthening of thai philanthropy. ► contact: bkknatalie@gmail.com acknowledgements i am grateful to dr. rosalia sciortino for her invaluable advice and support. multi-functional lands facing oil palm monocultures: a case study of a land conflict in west kalimantan, indonesia rosanne e. de vos ► de vos, r. e. (2016). multi-functional lands facing oil palm monocultures: a case study of a land conflict in west kalimantan, indonesia. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 9(1), 11-32. this paper presents an ethnographic case study of a palm oil land conflict in a malay community in west kalimantan, indonesia. the conflict occurred in the preparatory phase of a large-scale plantation, before any oil palms were planted. after protest from local communities, the project was canceled. this case enables an empirical enquiry of land tenure as well as the meaning of land and associated resources for people’s livelihoods in a pre-plantation situation. the article aims to understand how people’s responses to the oil palm plantation project are rooted in the way they give meaning to the land that is targeted for conversion. using a functional analysis of property relations, the article shows that people value multiple functions of land, including food security, income security over generations, flexibility to respond to crises and opportunity, and the ability to retain autonomy and identity as farmers. one of the factors that contributed to the conflict was the expectation that a conversion of diversified agricultural land and forest into a monoculture plantation, run by a company, would change the functionality of land and associated resources in a way that would negatively impact livelihood opportunities, lifestyles, and identity. keywords: land conflict; meaning of land; oil palm; property and access; west kalimantan  introduction when the green paddy fields turn yellow, it is time to harvest the rice. farmers in kebun hijau1 village put rubber tapping on hold and work in a race against time to harvest their staple crop. the first harvest is celebrated with a ceremony for the new rice; a nightly event where villagers gather to make a sweet dish of roasted unripe rice with coconut sugar. after the harvest month, the farmers return to their rubber gardens to generate cash income. people in kebun hijau have produced crops for the world market since colonial times, including rubber, copra, pineapple, and a variety of pulse crops. recently, several farmers have started to plant pepper plants and oil palms to try out new cash crops. however, after a company planned to establish a large-scale oil palm plantation, the oil palm became part of a violent land conflict. this article presents an ethnographic case study of a conflict about an oil palm plantation project in kebun hijau, a malay village in a littoral (pesisir) dis1 due to the sensitivity of the subject and ongoing conflicts, all names and village names are pseudonyms. aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 16 .1 -2 12 rosanne e. de vos  aseas 9(1) trict in west kalimantan, indonesia. since the beginning of this millennium, oil palm plantations have been expanding rapidly throughout kalimantan.2 the expansion of oil palm plantations leads to the conversion of vast areas of agricultural land and forest into monocultures. this has triggered violent land conflicts between plantation companies and rural communities, as well as conflicts within communities.3 in 2014, palm oil watchdog sawit watch reported 717 ongoing conflict cases in indonesia. the conflict presented in this article started in the preparatory phase of a plantation project. i analyze the case from a property rights and access to resources perspective, looking at how people’s responses to the plantation project are related to the way they give meaning to land and associated resources that are targeted for conversion to oil palm. in brief, the conflict started in 2008, after a plantation company received a 10,000 ha land concession from the district government. the concession area included a large part of the village lands of kebun hijau and the lands of 13 other villages. the plantation project was met with resistance from local communities because people feared that they would lose their land to the company. after four years of conflict, the district government ordered the company to cease its activities; the plantation project was canceled before any oil palms were planted. the conflict had led to violent confrontations between the company and its supporters and opponents in the villages. a mass demonstration against the company ended with protestors throwing stones at the office of the district head. during a second protest, they set fire to the base camp of the company. the conflict created an atmosphere of fear and mistrust between opponents and supporters of the plantation within the villages. although the company has now left the area, the situation remains tense. new companies are scouting the area and conflict is likely to reoccur. with this case study, the article contributes to an ongoing debate about palm oil production and land conflicts. the global debate on palm oil production started after several international ngos began mobilizing around palm oil issues in response to the major forest fires of 1997 in indonesia (pye, 2010, p. 858). most academic literature on palm oil concentrates on environmental issues, such as deforestation, peatland destruction, (water and air) pollution, and biodiversity loss (fitzherbert et al., 2008; wilcove & koh, 2010). gradually, more attention has been paid to socio-economic issues such as labor conditions, challenges and opportunities for smallholders, gender differences, and (indigenous) land rights (julia & white, 2012; lee et al., 2014; li, 2015; mccarthy, 2010). companies, development institutions, and governments have asserted that the development of plantations is an opportunity for rural development, job creation, and the development of infrastructure in isolated areas (word bank & ifc, 2011). scholars have recorded cases in which farmers have indeed been able to benefit from cultivating oil palm, either independently or through contracts with a company (castellanos-navarette & jansen, 2015 ; jelsma, giller, & fairhurst, 2009). however, particularly for large-scale plantations, scholars and ac2 oil palm plantations in west kalimantan grew from 522,508 ha in 2010 to 929,360 ha in 2014 (badan pusat statistik [bps], 2015). 3 in using the term ‘community’, i am aware that communities are not unified groups of people, and that there can be major power differences within communities. moreover, i recognize that members of communities can have conflicting interests and opinions. 13multi-functional lands facing oil palm monocultures tivists have reported land acquisitions without free, prior, and informed consent and cases in which local communities have been expelled from their lands without receiving compensation or the promised smallholder plots (milieudefensie, lembaga gemawan, & kontak rakyat borneo, 2007; sirait, 2009; vermeulen & cotula, 2010). white and dasgupta (2010) warn not to fall into the trap of blaming the crop; the problem is not the oil palm. rather, they argue that the outcome of land conversion for plantations depend on “the manner in which crops are grown, under which property arrangements and labor regimes, and in what kind of commodity chains” (p. 605). mccarthy (2010) calls this the “terms upon which people are incorporated and integrated into globalized oil palm markets” (p. 823). in addition, the outcomes of land conversion depend on pre-existing “crops, property arrangements and labor regimes, and commodity chains” (white & dasgupta, 2010, p. 605), that is, on socioeconomic relations before oil palm plantations are established. while this is recognized in most research, some researchers and policy makers subsequently argue that palm oil related land conflicts originate from a lack of ‘clear’ land rights in rural areas (rist, feintrenie, & levang, 2010; world bank & ifc, 2011, p. 20). hall (2011) effectively refutes this presumption by stating that land rights insecurity “does not necessarily imply that land relations were insecure before a (crop) boom; who controlled what may have been well understood. it does mean that once the boom begins and the value of land rises, these relations are thrown into question” (p. 9). when land conflicts are attributed to a situation of unclear land rights, the solution focuses on ‘clarifying’ what belongs to whom. during fieldwork (see next section), i encountered a company that invited villagers to go to court if they did not agree with the plantation, in order to determine what land belonged to whom. in this way, the company rendered the conflict a matter of disagreement about ownership and land borders, which could be ‘fixed’ by looking at law documents, thus disregarding concerns about the consequences of a plantation on livelihoods. the villagers refused to go to court because, lacking formal documents, they feared they would lose the land to the company. such a narrow focus on clarifying what ‘belongs’ to whom fails to see why and how land and associated resources are meaningful to people and will not help to address conflicts. on the contrary, its focus on the formal legal status of land might even exacerbate the problem. earlier research on land conflicts in indonesia has shown that responses to agrarian change are to a great extent conditioned by how people perceive land tenure in relation to livelihood needs, opportunities, and threats. furthermore, these conflicts have environmental, socio-economic, cultural, and political dimensions (banks, 2002; cramb et al., 2009; dove, 1983; mccarthy, 2006). building on this literature, i argue that, in order to understand oil palm related land conflicts, it is important to analyze the different ways in which people give meaning to land and associated resources that are targeted for land conversion. the article proceeds as follows: in a theoretical discussion on the meaning of land and associated resources, i build on the functional analysis of property relations of benda-beckmann and benda-beckmann (1999) as well as a theorization of access of ribot and peluso (2003). this approach allows an empirical inquiry into how people distinguish between different land types, what kind of benefits they derive from them, and why these are significant to different people, beyond a focus on economic 14 rosanne e. de vos  aseas 9(1) benefits only. the article proceeds with a brief discussion of oil palm expansion in west kalimantan. the main section of the article presents a case study of a conflict about an oil palm plantation project in littoral west kalimantan. i analyze the meaning people give to agricultural land, rubber gardens, and forest against their expectations on the consequences of the establishment of a large-scale oil palm plantation. this article shows that land and associated resources targeted for oil palm conversion are meaningful to people in various ways, including for food security, income security over generations, flexibility to respond to crises and opportunities, identity, and the ability to retain autonomy as farmers. the opponents of the plantation expect that an oil palm plantation may change and limit this multi-functionality of land and thereby negatively impact their livelihood opportunities, lifestyles, and identities. methodology this article is based on ethnographic fieldwork in coastal villages in west kalimantan during several research visits between 2013 and 2015. during my first visit to the region, i spent three months as a guest at a local ngo in pontianak. for the following visits, i returned to conduct fieldwork in one of the villages that i had earlier visited with this ngo. i lived with a farmer family for three months and followed the villagers in their daily routines, such as planting and harvesting rice, preparing for festivities, or chatting on verandas. i conducted about 58 semi-structured interviews (some more formal than others) with village authorities and villagers without formal political positions.4 my host family and their network of family and neighbors were an important source of information on the daily life in the village and the organization of land tenure and natural resources. for interviews with people who had been involved in the conflict, either as leaders or as participants in meetings and demonstrations, i was assisted by the chair of a farmers’ group, who had also been a leader of the resistance movement. doing research in a village with a history of violent conflict, where tensions are still high, proved to be a challenge. it took time before people were convinced that i was not working for a company. during my stay, two motorcycles of visitors were nearly set on fire because they were (falsely) suspected of being ‘company people’. in this context, it was difficult to talk about the possible advantages of the plantation project, though people shared why they were initially in favor of the plantation and why they later changed their mind. i was not able to speak to leaders of the supporters of the plantation. moreover, these supporters were less organized than the opponents, and since ‘being in favor’ (berpihak) is now strongly criticized, it was difficult to identify these people. another limitation of my research was that i could not interview company staff as they were no longer present in the area. hence, this article explains the resistance and the different perceptions people had about the plantation plans. i do not dismiss the possibility that some people still support the plantation project. the purpose of this article, however, is not to show that people are either in favor or against oil palm. rather, i intend to demonstrate 4 i counted all conversations in which i discussed topics related to the research questions. with several people i had multiple conversations; i counted these as one. interviews were often conducted with more than one person; i counted these as one interview. 15multi-functional lands facing oil palm monocultures how people’s responses to oil palm plantation projects are crucially rooted in the way they give meaning to the land that is targeted for conversion. the meaning of land in oil palm land conflicts a literature review of land use in kalimantan shows a variety of land use and tenure practices that goes beyond the notion of land as a mere location for agricultural production or infrastructure. land, and the benefits people can derive from land, can concurrently be valuable for socio-economic, cultural, spiritual, ecological, and political reasons. for example, dove (1983) demonstrates that farmers’ choices for certain crops can be a strategy to seek acknowledgement for land claims from authorities. haug (2014) points out that land tenure in kalimantan is subject to spiritual and ritual procedures. peluso (2009) explains that land tenure is an important factor in the construction of ethnic identities and kinship relations. a legal-anthro pological perspective, which allows an empirical inquiry of land tenure, helps to grasp this complexity of the meaning of land to people’s livelihoods. people who are dependent on land need tenure security to be protected against involuntary removal (reerink, 2011, p. 1) or exclusion from the ability to benefit from land (ribot & peluso, 2003). this requires negotiations with other people; therefore relations between people and land (or other valuables) are above all “relations between people about land” (benda-beckmann & benda-beckmann, 1999, p. 21). such relations become manifest in property, that is, “the ways in which the relations between society’s members with respect to valuables are given form and significance” (benda-beckmann, benda-beckmann, & wiber, 2006, p. 14). benda-beckmann and benda-beckmann (1999) propose a functional analysis of property. this approach acknowledges that people attribute meaning to property in multiple ways – many more than sheer economic meanings. functions of property are important to people in different ways and can become more or less important over time. a functional analysis of property requires an empirical inquiry of property holders, objects of property (people’s conceptualizations of their environment), and bundles of rights and responsibilities in different times and places (benda-beckmann & benda-beckmann, 1999; benda-beckmann et al., 2006). the functionality of property can be contested, especially in indonesia, where land relations are embedded in a context of legal plurality and competing authorities. sikor and lund (2009) stress that different authorities strive to obtain legitimacy by recognizing or denying property claims. the composition of bundles of rights and responsibilities, and also the question of who can be a property holder and what legitimate property objects are, is therefore subject to power struggles. this means that the endorsement or limitation of property functionalities depends on the authority that legitimates property claims. the functionality of land is also conditioned by access to land. ribot and peluso (2003) highlight that having property rights to land does not yet guarantee the ability to derive benefits from this land. they argue that the actual ability of people to derive benefits from land or associated resources depends on various mechanisms of access, including technology (tools, but also infrastructure), capital, market, labor, knowledge, authority, and property. however, property is an extraordinary mechanism of access because it can legitimize or dele16 rosanne e. de vos  aseas 9(1) gitimize other mechanisms of access. in this article, i talk about functions, meanings, and values. while these concepts are closely related, there are also differences between them. the functionality of land is composed of property holders, objects, and different bundles of rights and responsibilities in different times and places as well as the different ways in which people give meaning and form to it. examples of functions are environmental, economic, cultural, political, and religious functions. when i discuss the meaning of land or associated resources, i refer to people’s interpretations (expressed in narratives and practices) of land and associated resources; either positive or negative. finally, value or valuation refers to people’s perceptions about the appreciation of land and associated resources in relation to their livelihoods, lifestyles, and identities. oil palm expansion in west kalimantan with an annual production of 33 million tons, indonesia has become world leader in palm oil production (sheil et al., 2009). in sumatra, the cradle of the indonesian palm oil industry, the number of oil palm smallholdings (both contract farmers and independent smallholders) is catching up with private and state plantations (ditjenbun, 2014). however, in west kalimantan, oil palms are mostly grown in large-scale plantations run by private or state companies (bps, 2015; li, 2015). the first oil palm plantations in west kalimantan were established in the interior district of sanggau in the 1980s. at that time, indonesia maintained a plantation system known as nucleus-plasma (nes). in a nes plantation, 20% of the plantation area (nucleus) is managed directly by state or private companies. the land is owned by the government and leased to a company through a land cultivation rights permit (hak guna usaha, hgu) for 35 years. the remaining 80% of the concession (plasma) is managed and cultivated by smallholder farmers (transmigrants or locals), for which they can receive formal land certificates (semedi & bakker, 2014, p. 380). in the 1980s, plasma plots often included 0.5 ha for homes and subsistence gardens. local landowning communities could be included in the smallholder schemes by contributing land to the plantation. the plantation sector was strongly supported by the state, which provided credit, infrastructure, migrant labor, and land. the asian crisis of 1997/1998 which led to the fall of the suharto’s authoritarian new order regime and far-reaching political, administrative, and economic reforms, announced a new episode for palm oil production. mccarthy (2010) defines this episode as the laissez faire phase. the central state withdrew direct support for the plantation sector and smallholder inclusion and left control to the market (mccarthy, gillespie, & zen, 2012). the economic and political reforms contributed to a favorable investment climate, and district governments in so called ‘frontier areas’ like kalimantan and papua regarded oil palm as an opportunity to attract investments (pye, 2010). the issuance of plantation permits became a source of income for district governments, and companies and district governments engaged in reciprocal relations (mccarthy et al., 2012). pichler (2015) observes that “as a result, local governments privilege the expansion of oil palm plantations rather than focusing, for example, on replanting existing plantations or supporting smallholders” (p. 526). various scholars have pointed out that the conditions under which people and 17multi-functional lands facing oil palm monocultures their lands are incorporated into the oil palm sector have deteriorated since the beginning of the reform period in 1999 (gillespie, 2011; li, 2015; mccarthy, 2010; mccarthy et al., 2012). the plantation law nr. 18/2004 allowed companies to use a reversed nucleus-plasma ratio with a minimum of only 20% percent for smallholder plots (gillespie, 2011). companies were also no longer required to designate land for subsistence farming (pichler, 2015, p. 522). companies are now responsible for directly negotiating with local communities about the transfer of land and plasma arrangements. the specific terms of land acquisition are no longer regulated by the central state, but by district regulations. the most recent plantation scheme called ‘partnerships’ (kemitraan) allows companies to control and manage both the nucleus and plasma plantations under a so called ‘one roof ’ (satu atap) or ‘one management’ (satu manajemen) system (potter, 2015). mccarthy et al. (2012) highlight that in west kalimantan companies that use such a plantation scheme do not actually return plasma plots to smallholders, but rather offer them “the share of the production from the 20% plasma area which the company retains under its own management” (mccarthy et al., 2012, p. 560). the profit for plasma holders is reduced by various costs for transportation, management, fertilizer, and credit. many plasma holders complain that these costs are too high and the monthly income is too low.5 at the two plantations that i visited, it was not clear what would happen to the plasma plots after the concession expired. people also did not know how much they owed the company and when their debts would be repaid (also observed by mccarthy et al., 2012). in theory, plasma holders receive land certificates for their plots after they have repaid their debts for the investment in oil palms. remaining land contributed to the plantation then becomes state land, which is leased out to the company (julia & white, 2012). according to mccarthy et al. (2012) this is not always clear to people who surrender land. they observe that “villagers believed they were lending land that would later be returned to them rather than selling it for perpetual alienation under a state plantation concession (hgu)” (p. 560). in the one-roof scheme, local communities often work at the plantation as day laborers. indeed, an argument in favor of plantations is that these could create jobs for rural communities who do not have many other job opportunities. however, li (2011) shows that oil palm plantations are less labor intensive than frequently promoted. according to her, “an established plantation uses only one worker per four to ten hectares of land” (p. 284). oil palm land conflict in kebun hijau village the exact terms under which people are incorporated into the palm oil sector vary from place to place. as companies are now directly negotiating with rural communities, outcomes largely depend on power relations and the ability of communities to organize. the case study that follows illustrates people’s responses to an oil palm plantation project in a rural community in west kalimantan. opponents of the project refused incorporation into the oil palm sector, partly based on their valuation of current land tenure arrangements which they regard as more favorable to their livelihoods and lifestyles. 5 i visited two plantations which used a one-roof scheme and i interviewed plasma holders during village meetings. 18 rosanne e. de vos  aseas 9(1) kebun hijau kebun hijau village is located a two hour drive on a run-down road from the district capital to the coast. the village has a population of approximately 3500 inhabitants. the majority of the population identifies as ethnic malay and is muslim. the malay have lived in this area for at least a century.6 in the early 20th century, the colonial government encouraged farmers in this region to plant rubber trees and coconut palm to respond to the rubber and copra boom. elderly villagers remember that the colonial government encouraged their parents to plant rubber trees in exchange for food and luxury goods. roads as well as rivers and sea routes connected the provincial capital pontianak with malaysia to facilitate the trade in these commodities (seavoy, 1980). rubber and copra production have remained key sources of income in the littoral regions. in kebun hijau, farmers also produce rice, fruits, and vegetables for subsistence and cash crops and products like pulse crops, corn, pepper, sugar, edible bird’s nests, and oil palm. in times of a low rubber price, remittances from labor migration to plantations in malaysia or logging companies in kalimantan, sumatra, and papua become important sources of income. the village is divided into four parts, reflecting the village history. the oldest part of the village is the residential area, which stretches along the main road. until the 1960s, the rest of the village area was covered with peat forest and tree gardens. in 1965, the village head decided that the colonial rubber trees had to be cut down to make rice fields and that new rubber gardens could be opened in the forest. behind the residential area, the rubber trees made way for an open ladang area: rain-fed agricultural fields suitable to use as rice fields (ume) and vegetable gardens (kebun kacang). in the 1980s, the population started to grow and young families were encouraged to move into the forest to make a new settlement. nowadays, this kampung consists of about 80 households. it functions as a gateway between the ladang area and the hinterland (darat), where tree gardens (rubber and coconut), fruit gardens, and forest (hutan) are located. due to several forest fires, large parcels of forest and tree gardens have been burned. now this is open grassland where gradually people are replanting tree crops and vegetable gardens. the ladang fields and the tree gardens are divided into plots separated by ditches. by clearing forest and making gardens and fields (merimbah), families could claim ownership over the plots. over time, these plots were passed on through inheritance (warisan) or sold to neighbors and family (jual-beli). plots can also be used under leasehold (sewa-menyewa) or share-cropping arrangements (bagi-hasil). ownership is monitored by the ‘head of plot boundaries’ (kepala parit),7 who keeps record of who owns or uses what. he assists the village head in case of internal disputes about land. there are four kepala parit in the village. if plots are left uncultivated for some time, other people can make a claim. the kepala parit is in charge of supervising and allocating the uncultivated plots. uncultivated plots are mostly found in the hinterland. 6 see peluso (2009) and davidson and kammen (2002) on the many ethnic conflicts that have occurred in this area. 7 kepala parit literally means ‘head of ditches’, which refers to the narrow ditches which indicate the boundaries of plots. other villages in the area may use other names for this position, such as kepala hutan (head of the forest). 19multi-functional lands facing oil palm monocultures the ladang area is seldom uncultivated because ladang plots can be leased out in case the owner does not cultivate the land. several plots in the ladang area have been registered through land certificates issued by the national land agency. i have not encountered people who hold such certificates for their tree gardens or other plots in the hinterland. the ladang fields, the tree gardens and parts of the hinterland are classified as non-forest area subject to the basic agrarian law. these gardens can be classified as ‘non-registered occupied land’ or as ‘administratively registered occupied land’ in case people hold a letter of land clarification (surat keterangan tanah). this type of land is available for agricultural use, including oil palm cultivation. the rest of the hinterland is state forest land (production forest) subject to the basic forestry law. this type of land cannot be used for oil palm plantations (bedner, 2016). the local land tenure arrangements that have developed over time allow for a diversity of livelihood strategies. the next paragraphs describe the introduction of an oil palm plantation, which requires specific land tenure arrangements. the plantation project led to conflict, not only about whether or not to accept oil palm, but all the more about the functionality of land and the distribution of benefits under different land tenure arrangements. evolution of the conflict in 2007, an agribusiness company met with village authorities from several villages, including kebun hijau, to discuss a plan to establish a large-scale oil palm plantation of approximately 10,000 ha, using a nucleus-plasma partnership scheme. the company obtained permission to organize ‘socialization’ meetings8 in the villages to explain more about the project. in 2008, the district government granted a location permit which allowed the company to start with land transfer negotiations with the communities. a leader of a farmers’ group9 in the kampung in kebun hijau was present at the first meeting with the village authorities. afterwards, he gathered the members of his group to discuss the project. after discussing advantages and disadvantages, this group decided that they were against the plantation. my hosts, who are members of this group, recall a heated discussion between opponents and supporters of the plantation plans at the first socialization meeting in an elementary school. several people that i interviewed about this meeting explained that they had prior information about the reputation of palm oil companies in kalimantan, from family members in other districts and ruai tv, a local television station run by the ngo aman.10 moreover, several villagers were in contact with a regional farmers’ movement which was established after a conflict with an oil palm company in a nearby area. the farmers’ movement helped to organize the opponents of the oil palm project. the sub8 socialization meetings (sosialisasi) is an indonesian concept which refers to an event wherein companies or the government announce (development) projects to communities and inform them about the procedures. 9 farmers’ groups are common in the region. by registering as a group with the sub-district government, farmers can apply for government aid for resources like fertilizer, seeds, or hand-tractors. usually, farmers’ groups cultivate a rice field, vegetable garden, or rubber garden to try out farming techniques, sometimes assisted by government extension officials. 10 aliansi masyarakat adat nusantara (alliance of the indigenous peoples of the archipelago) is an ngo that focuses on indigenous rights issues. aman was founded in pontianak in 1999. 20 rosanne e. de vos  aseas 9(1) district government issued an official letter stating that the sub-district rejected the plantation project plan. the company meanwhile started to place land marks and made preparations to build a seed nursery in one of the villages and roads up to kebun hijau. according to villagers, rubber gardens and rice fields were damaged during these activities. in 2010, the farmers’ movement organized a demonstration in front of the office of the district government. the demonstration ended violently with people throwing stones at the building. a few weeks later, people organized another demonstration at the base camp of the company. company assets were damaged, two police motorcycles were burned, and the house of an (allegedly propalm oil) village head was damaged. two villagers were convicted for the violence and sent to jail for six months. eventually, the company withdrew from the area and moved to another district. the conflict left a deep impact on the communities, as opponents and supporters of the oil palm plan had verbally and physically attacked each other. this is not the end of the story, however; after these events the new district head issued a new location permit for a new company. again, kebun hijau was included in the permit. company staff has been spotted to inspect the location and visit village authorities. at the time of writing, no further actions have taken place. land tenure and livelihoods in the next sections, i follow the livelihood strategies of my hosts in the kampung, sri and yadi, and their family and neighbors. this analysis shows how they give meaning to the different lands in their village, including agricultural fields, rubber gardens, and forest, and how their land use is constrained by mechanisms of access. i argue that these meanings and the land tenure arrangements related to them are of utmost importance to understand the palm oil related conflict. agricultural fields: food security and flexibility the term ladang refers to rain-fed agricultural fields. most households cultivate plots of 0.5-2.0 ha. some households obtained locally recognized ownership over their plot through inheritance, land purchase, or clearing forest. however, like sri and yadi, many households do not have a plot of their own and they lease from neighbors and family members or use share-cropping arrangements. sri and yadi lease 0.5 ha from a cousin who lives in another village. a ladang can have multiple functions, depending on who uses it, in what ways, and in which season. first and foremost, a ladang provides food security. from september to february, ladang plots are used as an ume:11 a field for dry rice cultivation. an ume plot of 1 ha can produce between 1.5 to 5 tons of padi per harvest.12 sri and yadi usually obtain enough rice from their 0.5 ha plot for themselves and their two sons for one year. however, sometimes they need to sell rice to obtain cash. when people have surpluses, these are sold to the local market or given to family members living in urban areas. the ability to derive benefits from an ume depends on several factors. first, cultivating rice is labor intensive because land preparation, planting, and harvesting are 11 ume is the local term, bahasa indonesia uses huma. 12 according to a government extension official, yields are low compared to other regions. 21multi-functional lands facing oil palm monocultures done manually. therefore, the amount of hectares that one is able to cultivate depends on access to labor. there are two ways to harvest rice: with a small hand knife or with a scythe. using a scythe is much faster because one cuts the padi from the root instead of cutting the rice grains from the stalks. however, this takes more energy. yadi’s sister, siti, is unable to use a scythe. as her husband works in malaysia, she has to take care of the harvest by herself, using a hand knife.13 to solve this labor problem, people hire farm workers (upah). however, during the harvest time there is a high demand for farm workers. during my visit, sri and yadi tried to find workers to help with the rice harvest but they failed to find anyone still available. second, technology is an important mechanism of access to an ume. tools to speed up the harvest allow people to cultivate more land (e.g., a thrasher or a hand-tractor), and technology might improve the quality of the soil. contrary to government banners in the village that state: “let’s plant rice twice a year!”, sri does not plant rice twice a year because, according to her, her land is sour from the latex residue in the groundwater. the lack of a functioning irrigation system precludes the proper drainage of water which damages the quality of the soil. furthermore, the paths to the rice fields are unpaved and can turn into knee-high rivers in the rainy season. this is the condition under which the farmers have to transport bales of padi on bicycles, motorcycles, and on foot to the threshing factory in the village. this indicates that although people have different kinds of rights to benefit from an ume, actual benefits are limited due to lack of technology. after the rice season, the ume fields are converted into kebun kacang: gardens where pulse crops, corn, cucumber, and watermelon are grown. hence, the ladang fields become a source of cash income. the limited access to markets is a challenge to generate an income from these crops. the poor condition of the infrastructure makes it difficult to transport crops quickly to the nearby towns. another function of the ladang area is that land use and crop choices can be adapted to needs, and the availability of capital, time, and labor. this implies two things: first, with seasonal crops, people can adapt their crop choice to market demands, labor availability, and ecological circumstances. second, land rights are flexible; people can buy one plot this year and sell, lease out, or lease even more the next year. for example, mrs. ngah told me she did not rent a ladang plot this year because she was pregnant and her husband worked in malaysia. she may rent again next year. even selling land is perceived as flexible; people often sell land when in need of direct cash, for example, to pay for the education of children, medical expenses, or make the islamic pilgrimage (hajj). they do this with the expectation that it will be possible to buy new land or open up new land in the future. however, this flexibility is challenged because due to population growth, land is becoming scarcer and it is not easy to regain land once it has been sold. the low yields that are derived from ladang fields in this region may reduce the status of such land to ‘unproductive’ in the eyes of the district government, which emphasizes the economic function of the land when promoting plantation development. however, despite the low yields and the farmers’ focus on production 13 taking care of the rice fields is mostly a women’s job because many men migrate to malaysia for work. a man who just returned home confirmed to me that he was stressed because he had to take over the harvest from his pregnant wife and, not being used to this work, he was too slow and the padi became overripe. 22 rosanne e. de vos  aseas 9(1) for subsistence, ladang fields are meaningful to farmers for providing food security and additional cash income, in accordance with conditions set by mechanisms of access. further, the analysis of rice fields has demonstrated that current land tenure arrangements provide a variety of options to obtain land rights other than through ownership. this allows people who do not hold ownership rights over land to cultivate rice and other crops. a plantation system would threaten this variety of land tenure and eventually affect people’s access to land. tree gardens: security for future livelihoods after the rice harvest season, and if it is not raining, sri can be found working in her rubber garden. the garden was planted some 45 years ago by her father-in-law. he is too ill to work in his gardens now and allocated them equally among his children. yadi and sri received 0.5 ha. sri admits that life as a rubber farmer has become more difficult. during a price boom around 2008, rubber prices were up to idr 20,000 (usd 1.5) per kg but dropped to idr 4,000 to 8,000 (usd 0.3 to 0.6) at the moment. the global rubber price crisis is ‘the talk of the village’. i often discussed with the villagers why they wanted to maintain their rubber gardens despite the low prices. the diverse answers to this question reveal multiple functions of rubber gardens. first, people indicate that they consider it important that rubber gardens have a long history in the village. people said they maintained the gardens because these were made by their ancestors and passed over from generation to generation (turun-temurun). by clearing forest and planting rubber trees, these ancestors claimed land and created a source of income for the next generations. during a conversation about the history of the family, sri said: “my rubber garden is an inheritance from my parents-in-law. we cannot sell it; we have to maintain the garden for the grandchildren. if my son asks ‘whose land is this?’ i will say: it was granted by your grandfather”. her statement shows that she wants her son to know the history of the garden which he and his brother will inherit one day. moreover, her statement about maintaining the garden for the grandchildren reveals that land is an important asset to ensure an income for the next generation. sri and yadi have no money to provide for a higher education for the children and chances are that they will follow in their parent’s footsteps and become farmers. the framing of rubber gardens as turun-temurun helps to make people reluctant of land transfers to outsiders like oil palm companies. this discourse was strongly promoted by opponents of the oil palm project plans. second, tapping rubber allows a diversified livelihood. sri works in the gardens from dawn to around 10 am. this enables her to spend the afternoon in the rice field or the vegetable garden. third, rubber needs little input, the trees grow without fertilizer and pesticides, and tapping rubber only requires a small knife and coconut shell to collect the latex. rubber does not require good infrastructure; people can transport latex on bicycles over the muddy roads. latex can be preserved a long time, so there is no need to transport it quickly for processing. farmers can postpone selling until prices are higher. furthermore, the harvest cannot fail the way other crops can. fourth, tapping rubber is light and easy work, which can be performed 23multi-functional lands facing oil palm monocultures by anyone, including children, elderly, and people with weaker health conditions.14 this means that rubber provides an income to various parts of the population. fifth, rubber is valued as a source of daily cash. even though the price is low, rubber can be tapped and sold every day, except when it is raining. rubber trees’ only enemies are fire and rain. sri argues that even with low prices and a lot of rain, rubber still provides income security. if it rains, then we have no money but we can anticipate that. we can save money in the dry season. we can take a lot of food from the forest. when it is like that, we are fine. the vegetables are still fresh and natural. if we tap rubber one day, we can still get 50,000 rupiah, even with this low price. if we are laborers, we have to work every day and our salaries are fixed and small. we like to live like this without coercion; it is no burden to work. in an interview with mrs. miza, an elderly lady, i asked why she maintained the rubber trees despite the low price. i consider her response exemplary for the functions of rubber gardens described above: rubber gives us our daily food. the profit is enough for our daily costs and needs. we can send our children to school using the income from rubber. our padi [rice field] is for food, our rubber is for cash. our ancestors already planted rubber and we continue to do so. rubber trees can be productive for 12 to 13 years. when oil palms are that old, i cannot harvest them anymore. i can still tap rubber, thank god. [i asked: why can’t you harvest oil palms?] it hurts. when we are old, we can still tap rubber. with oil palm, if it is far from the road, we have to carry the thorny fruits. and the older and taller the trees, the harder it gets. [i said: but the rubber price is so low.] yes, too low. but we maintain our rubber. if we sell our land, we will have to eat stones. with rubber we can eat. rubber does not need fertilizer; we don’t need money to produce rubber. if there is oil palm, there is no firewood. and we cannot grow vegetables. even padi cannot grow close to oil palm. i can’t be someone’s coolie. it is best we have rice and rubber. her answer demonstrates the variety of factors that motivate the choice for crops, beyond price and yields. while oil palm may provide higher income, in the perception of people like mrs. miza, rubber provides a more secure income, now and in the future. though many people are keen to plant oil palm, they do not want to cut their rubber trees in exchange for it. so far, the analysis of rice fields and rubber gardens demonstrates that these lands are valued because they provide food security and income security for a variety of property holders over several generations. in addition, people value the current flexibility in bundles of rights and responsibilities. this flexibility allows them to uphold 14 the depiction of rubber tapping as light and easy work in comparison to the description of harvesting oil palm fruits as labor intensive contrasts the findings of semedi and prasetya (2014). the difference may be explained by a different perception on what is heavy labor: the people in my case study measure this in physical exercise needed, whereas semedi and prasetya seem to measure in hours required for the labor. 24 rosanne e. de vos  aseas 9(1) a large variety of crop choices and respond to crises and opportunities caused by fluctuating prices and new markets. while these functions of land are related to economic benefits (food and cash), at the same time, these benefits are related to social continuity from past to future generations and identities. land is important because it enables a connection to the ancestors and is an investment for future generations. a change to monoculture production would fix property objects, property holders, and bundles of rights and responsibilities according to nucleus-plasma arrangements and reduce the meaning of land to a mere economic function. forest: safety net and threat at the western end of the village, behind the tree gardens, the forest – or what remains of a peat forest – begins. the first time i went there, i was surprised to find that what people call ‘forest’ includes a large open space damaged by forest fire. many villagers lost part of their tree gardens in the fire. hence, forest refers to land that is uncultivated or not yet in full production, including land that is left (temporarily) uncultivated. many people told me that they own a plot in this area, which they do not cultivate because they lack time, labor, or capital. behind the burned forest lays a peat forest, where once a logging company harvested timber. yadi said that the trees are getting scarcer and it will not take long before the forest has disappeared. yadi is concerned about this development because the forest keeps the mosquitos and insects away from the houses and rice fields. depletion of the forest will also affect his family because he is one of the two villagers of kebun hijau that harvest timber in this forest. the forest is also a source of food. sri and yadi do not produce vegetables for consumption; instead they collect vegetables in the forest areas. last year, yadi had an accident which disabled him to work in construction for three months. this meant they had little cash income. sri told me she had to be clever (pandai pandai) and find food in the forest: ferns, mushrooms, taro roots, honey, and many kinds of (medicinal) leaves. besides vegetables, people also collect firewood and catch fish in the forest area. yadi said that since the forest fire, there is surprisingly a lot more fish in the streams. every day he sets out fish pots to catch snakehead murrel, carp, and catfish, which he sells to his neighbors. during my stay, sri often prepared meals using solely ‘forest food’ and rice from their own stock. in particular, when commodity prices are low or people are unable to work due to illness or old age, the forest is a safety net for food security. however, not only positive functions are attributed to the forest. people often referred to the forest as ‘still forest’ (masih hutan), that is, not cultivated yet. in stories about the past, the forest is associated with ghosts and djinns. nowadays, the forest is considered as a risk of fire, which threatens the tree gardens because forest means uncultivated and therefore uncontrolled land. moreover, land further away from the main road is regarded as less valuable because the road towards the darat area is in a bad condition. one villager who inherited land in this area said: “i don’t care about my land in the darat behind the kampung because it is far away and not productive enough for me, it is all right if this land becomes a plantation”. when discussing the oil palm conflict, people often explained to me that they were initially in favor of 25multi-functional lands facing oil palm monocultures the plantation because they thought it would be established in ‘the forest’. people in kebun hijau expected that the oil palms would be planted in the area behind their tree gardens. a discussion with a village official in the neighboring village batu raya who had been involved in the negotiations with the company sheds light on why people welcomed a plantation in the forest. people are afraid of empty land. so, initially we agreed with the company, because they will manage the empty land. they will surely take care that there is no forest fire. if the plantation would be on sleeping land, we would agree because we have to think of our roads. people hoped that, if a plantation was to be established in the forest, this would protect their gardens from fire. moreover, they hoped that the company would build a road which they could use to transport their crops. however, after the company started placing land marks from the main road to the border of the production forest, it became evident that the plantation would not be located in the forest. on the contrary, the plantation would include the tree gardens and rice fields and exclude the forest area and the uncultivated plots located there. the village official's comments on this were: “the company never disclosed the exact location of the plantation. if they had said it was not in the forest but on our land, we would have rejected the plan before they uttered one word”. the company could not, however, develop the plantation in the forest area because forest land cannot be converted into agricultural land without permission from the ministry of forestry. the tree gardens and ladang area already had the status of non-forest area and were therefore available for agricultural production, including oil palm. in analyzing the functions of forest land, it appears that the meaning of land can be ambiguous. forest land is appreciated as a source of food and ecological balance but, at the same time, forest land is also regarded as a threat to other farming activities. it cannot be stated in a general sense that ‘opponents’ of the plantation give a certain meaning to land that contrasts the meaning ‘supporters’ give to land. both opponents and supporters have ambiguous conceptions of the meaning of land. what is important is, however, how the functions of land are used in narratives regarding the plantation project. for example, the company emphasized the meaning of the forest as a threat (even though the plantation would in fact not be located in the forest), whereas its opponents emphasized that the loss of the forest would jeopardize food security. land provides autonomy to farmers the preceding shows that different types of land have diverse functions which relate to food security, daily and long term cash income and resilience in times of crisis, as well as historical-cultural functions. besides the different benefits people obtain from land by producing crops, land is also valued because it provides a sense of identity and autonomy as a farmer. people fear that if the oil palm plantation is established, there will be no land left for farming. in this case, they believe that they will have to become plantation laborers. a plantation laborer is referred to with the term ‘coolie’ 26 rosanne e. de vos  aseas 9(1) (kuli), which is a negative, colonial term for laborer. i often heard the phrase: “if the plantation is established, we will become coolies on our own land”. a talk between my hostess and her friends illustrates why being a kuli is regarded as inferior to being a farmer: [siti:] if the plantation is established then the land will not be ours: it will be the company’s. we don’t want to be a kuli. we don’t want a salary from the company. [yesa:] that would feel as if we are forced, tied. if we have our own land, we are independent, if we want to work or not. if we work hard, we harvest, if we are lazy then we don’t. if you work for a company you have to go to work, whether you want to or not. being a laborer means that you cannot determine when you work, how hard you work, and what you plant. you lose the opportunity to improve your livelihood by creativity and diligence. yet, many people in kebun hijau are keen to work on oil palm plantations in malaysia, where they spend six months to several years. a conversation i had with jeffrey, a young father who had just returned after six months in malaysia, explains this apparent contradiction. i asked him if he would not rather have a plantation in his village, so he would not have to leave home to work. he replied: i disagree, because then we would be forced to work. our working hours would be fixed. if i feel tired and want to stay home and the foreman came by . . . that would not be possible. our land will no longer be ours. while he was happy to work on a plantation in malaysia, he did not want to have the plantation in his own village. working in malaysia is temporary; when people return home, they wish to return to farming, which is regarded as less heavy work than plantation labor. an identity of the ‘independent farmer’ against the ‘tied laborer’ is promoted by opponents of the plantation plans. this identity is upheld by the regional farmers’ movement. their aim is to raise awareness about the negative impact of oil palm on farmers’ livelihoods and to assist farmers with farming techniques that obtain higher yields. the chair of the movement, who is also leader of a farmers’ group in kebun hijau, believes that the better farmers are organized and the more productive they are, the stronger they can oppose the plantation plans. this makes sense because with higher yields, farmers may be less inclined to transfer their lands to companies. people’s conceptions about plantation labor versus farming demonstrates that the meaning of land is not limited to economic functions but includes less tangible meanings related to self-esteem, pride, and upholding a certain way of life and a sense of belonging. current land tenure arrangements provide a degree of autonomy which cannot be replicated in a plantation system and therefore people’s negative perceptions of plantation labor cannot be simply addressed by improving labor conditions. 27multi-functional lands facing oil palm monocultures the oil palm project in this final section, i relate the meaning of land to people’s expectations of the plantation project. the location permit for the plantation included all agricultural fields and rubber gardens as well as parts of the forest land. only the ‘production forest’, far back in the hinterlands, was not included. people in kebun hijau expected that a conversion to oil palm would mean a complete transition from diversified agriculture to monocrop production. there is not enough land in the area to accommodate both a plantation of 10,000 ha and mixed cropping agriculture. when oil palms have matured they cannot be intercropped because the canopy blocks sunlight (koczberski, curry, & bue, 2012). theoretically, land owners have the right to refuse conversion to oil palm and ‘enclave’ their land. however, in practice it is impossible to productively maintain enclaved plots of 2 to 3 ha in the midst of a plantation because isolated paddy fields suffer from pests. furthermore, the company does not favor such a fragmented plantation because it diminishes production efficiency. subsequently, the location of the plantation is usually not negotiated plot by plot; either all land is included in the plantation or none at all. the switch to monocrop production therefore means that people lose the opportunity to adapt their crop choice to changing circumstances. they also have no alternative sources of income during the maturing period of the oil palms and in times of price drops or harvest failures. this context distinguishes the case from other plantation projects where people submitted parts of their land to the plantation while maintaining enough land to continue alternative livelihood strategies (jelsma et al., 2009; semedi & bakker, 2014). in addition to the loss of diversified livelihood strategies, opponents of the plantation project also expect to lose access to land. there is concern that not all households would obtain a plasma plot. under nucleus-plasma arrangements, farmers are expected to transfer approximately 10 ha of their land to the company, for which they receive back 2 ha planted with oil palms as plasma plots (rist et al., 2010). however, in kebun hijau many households have no more than 2 ha in total. if people transfer 2 ha to the plantation and receive back 0.4 ha (20%), they are left with a plasma plot that is too small to be economically viable. on the other hand, if the company would uphold 2 ha as the minimum size for plasma plots, there would only be enough land for 267 plots for a village of 3500 inhabitants. furthermore, not every household in kebun hijau ‘owns’ agricultural fields or rubber gardens. the previous section demonstrated that current land tenure arrangements allow a variety of options for obtaining land rights other than ownership, including share-cropping, leasehold, and clearing new forest land. the establishment of a plantation would require a change in land tenure arrangements in order to meet the criteria of nucleus-plasma schemes. people who have no land to contribute to the plantation have limited opportunities to become plasma holders. meanwhile, they are not compensated for losing access to the land which they currently share-crop or lease. this would also impact livelihood opportunities for future generations (white, 2012). farmers whose land is incorporated into oil palm plantations often become daylaborers on the plantation. such a change from farming to plantation labor would have profound impacts on daily lives, severely restraining people’s autonomy. particularly in a ‘one-roof ’ plantation scheme, people lose control over decision-making 28 rosanne e. de vos  aseas 9(1) regarding production, marketing strategies, and labor time. in kebun hijau, many people have experience with working on oil palm plantations in malaysia. plantation labor is regarded as heavy labor, not suitable for women, elderly people, and people with weaker health conditions. though in other plantations in the region, women do work as laborers, women are not hired above the age of 35 and have to retire at 55 (as observations from a visit to a nearby plantation showed). meanwhile, those fit to work on plantations may choose to continue to work in malaysia because of higher wages. it is therefore likely that the company would attract labor migrants from outer regions. the local population may then become what li (2010; 2011) describes as “surplus people” whose land is needed but whose labor is not. the explanations from the company about the plantation project did not address these concerns. rather, the company made promises such as that the villagers would be able to make the pilgrimage to makkah and that they would have money to improve their houses. the company also promised to improve the roads. such promises are not related to any serious estimation of the benefits of oil palm as a crop vis-avis rubber, rice, and other crops. in socialization meetings, what was also not elaborated on was who will receive these benefits, how and when, or how people’s lifestyles would change. conclusion in this article i have presented a case study of a conflict in a malay community in west kalimantan that occurred in the preparatory phase of an oil palm plantation project. violent confrontations arose between a plantation company and its opponents and supporters in the community, and the project was canceled before any oil palms were planted. to understand this conflict, i analyzed land tenure arrangements in the pre-plantation situation in relation to people’s responses to the plantation project. the findings demonstrate that resistance – or the absence of resistance – to oil palm plantation projects is not only conditioned by characteristics of the project itself. rather, responses are rooted in the way people give meaning to the land and associated resources targeted for conversion to oil palm. to address land conflicts, it is therefore not sufficient to improve laws and policies on plantations or set up standards for the conduct of companies. the people in the case study village expected that a plantation system as such would negatively impact their livelihoods, lifestyles, and identities in three ways. first, people were concerned about becoming dependent on monoculture cash crop production. current land tenure arrangements allow for a wide range of crop choices. for the villagers, this means that land provides food security, income stability (for present and the future generations), and the flexibility to respond to crises and opportunities, such as new market opportunities. in times of limited cash income, the rice fields, vegetable gardens, and foods from the forest are crucial for food security. rubber, even with the current low prices, provides predictable daily cash income for household expenses. rubber gardens are also an investment for future generations. meanwhile, rubber trees require little labor and attention, so villagers can plant additional crops. in contrast, an oil palm plantation would be incompatible with these diversified livelihood strategies because oil palm does not allow intercrop29multi-functional lands facing oil palm monocultures ping and there is not enough land available for farmers to continue producing other crops alongside oil palm. a conversion to oil palm would endanger food security and make farmers dependent on one market without having a safety net in times of crisis. second, the functional analysis of property relations exposed how a variety of property holders, beyond ‘land owners’, can derive benefits from land through leasehold, share-cropping, and clearing new forest land. past and future generations are recognized because they influence bundles of rights and opportunities of current property holders. this is in line with benda-beckmann and benda-beckmann (2014, p. 21), who argue that property relations are meaningful only if they can be preserved over time, beyond the lifespan of property holders. plasma arrangements only acknowledge current property holders while there is no guarantee for future generations to obtain plasma plots. furthermore, people who have no land to offer to the plantation would lose access to land because they are not able to register as plasma holders and other options to obtain land rights will disappear. therefore, a plantation would limit access to land for a considerable part of the local population. third, this loss of access to land is not compensated by opportunities for labor. although labor migration to plantations in malaysia is an important part of people’s livelihood strategies, plantation labor is regarded as heavy work that is not suitable for women, the elderly, and people with weaker health conditions. those who are not able to go to malaysia for work (where wages are higher than on indonesian plantations), would not be able or willing to work on a plantation in the village. an important reason why people do not regard plantation labor as an option is that they regard a laborer lifestyle as inferior to the more autonomous lifestyle of farmers. people refer to plantation laborers as ‘coolies’ or ‘tied laborers’. moreover, being a farmer is associated with heritage from the ancestors. the establishment of a plantation would mean the loss of people’s identities as autonomous farmers. this shows that people’s responses to oil palm plantations are deeply rooted in their perceptions of land tenure arrangements in the pre-plantation situation. for farmers, incorporation into the oil palm sector does not mean a mere switch to a new tree crop. rather, by analyzing property rights and mechanisms of access, this article has shown that the incorporation of farmers and their land into the oil palm sector would lead to the loss of the multiple functions of land, particularly food security, income security over generations, flexibility to respond to crises, and opportunity and autonomy for farmers. this outcome is in stark contrast to claims that oil palm plantations bring ‘development’ to the marginalized littoral regions of west kalimantan and turn ‘unproductive’ into productive land.  references banks, g. 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(2012). swimming upstream: local indonesian production networks in ‘globalized’ palm oil production. world development, 40(3), 555-569. milieudefensie, lembaga gemawan, & kontak rakyat borneo (2007). policy, practice, pride and prejudice. review of legal, environmental and social practices of oil palm plantation companies of the wilmar group in sambas district, west-kalimantan (indonesia). amsterdam: milieudefensie. 31multi-functional lands facing oil palm monocultures peluso, n. l. (2009). rubber erasures, rubber producing rights: making racialized territories in west kalimantan, indonesia. development and change, 40(1), 47-80. pichler, m. (2015). legal dispossession: state strategies and selectivities in the expansion of indonesian palm oil and agrofuel production. development and change, 46(3), 508-533. potter, l. (2015, june). who is ‘land grabbing’? who is deforesting? will certification help prevent bad practice? paper presented at the international conference on land grabbing: perspectives from east and southeast asia, chiang mai, thailand. pye, o. (2010). the biofuel connection: transnational activism and the palm oil boom. the journal of peasant studies, 37(4), 851-874. reerink, g. (2011). tenure security for indonesia’s urban poor: a socio-legal study on land, decentralisation, and the rule of law in bandung. leiden: leiden university press. ribot, j. c., & peluso, n. l. (2003). a theory of access. rural sociology, 68(2), 153-181. rist, l., feintrenie, l., & levang, p. (2010). the livelihood impacts of oil palm: smallholders in indonesia. biodiversity and conservation, 19(4), 1009-1024. seavoy, r. e. (1980). population pressure and land use change: from tree crops to sawah in northwestern kalimantan, indonesia. singapore journal of tropical geography, 1(2), 61-67. semedi, p., & bakker, l. (2014). between land grabbing and farmers’ benefits: land transfers in west kalimantan, indonesia. the asia pacific journal of anthropology, 15(4), 376-390. semedi, p., & prasetya, a. (2014). oil palm versus rubber: gis empirical check for land grabbing in west kalimantan. journal of asian network for gis-based historical studies, 2, 43-50. sheil, d., casson, a., meijaard, e., van noordwjik, m., gaskell, j., sunderland-groves, j., . . . & kanninen, m. (2009). the impacts and opportunities of oil palm in southeast asia: what do we know and what do we need to know? cifor occasional paper no. 51. bogor: cifor. sikor, t., & lund, c. (2009). access and property: a question of power and authority. development and change, 40(1), 1-22. sirait, m. (2009). indigenous peoples and oil palm plantation expansion in west kalimantan, indonesia. the hague: cordaid memisa. vermeulen, s., & cotula, l. (2010). over the heads of local people: consultation, consent, and recompense in large-scale land deals for biofuels projects in africa. the journal of peasant studies, 37(4), 899916. white, b., & dasgupta, a. (2010). agrofuels capitalism: a view from political economy. the journal of peasant studies, 37(4), 593-607. white, b. (2012). agriculture and the generation problem: rural youth, employment and the future of farming. ids bulletin, 43(6), 9-19. wilcove, d. s., & koh, l. p. (2010). addressing the threats to biodiversity from oil-palm agriculture. biodiversity and conservation, 19(4), 999-1007. world bank, & ifc. (2011). the world bank group framework and ifc strategy for engagement in the palm oil sector. retrieved from ifc.org/palmoilstrategy about the author rosanne e. de vos is a phd candidate at the sociology of development and change group, wageningen university, netherlands. her research interests include legal anthropology and rural development as well as local histories of people and their lands, with a special focus on kalimantan and east nusa tenggara, indonesia. ► contact: rosa.devos@wur.nl 32 rosanne e. de vos  aseas 9(1) acknowledgements i am grateful for the insightful discussions and feedback from michiel köhne, dik roth, and adriaan bedner. moreover, i thank melanie pichler, martina padmanabhan, annet pauwelussen as well as two anonymous reviewers for their feedback. i would like to thank prof. garuda wiko of the tanjung pura university and lembaga gemawan in pontianak for their support during my stay in west kalimantan. special gratitude goes out to the communities that welcomed me into their homes and their lives. this research was funded by the wageningen school of social science. aseas 11(1) | 1 the political economy of new authoritarianism in southeast asia rainer einzenberger & wolfram schaffar ► einzenberger, r., & schaffar, w. (2018). the political economy of new authoritarianism in southeast asia. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 11(1), 1-12. introduction over the past years, the deterioration of democracy and the rise of authoritarian forms of governance have been a growing global phenomenon. in the global north, this became painfully clear not least since the establishment of right-wing governments in hungary and poland, or the election victory of donald trump in november 2016. southeast asia is certainly no exception to this trend (chacko & jayasuriya, 2018; docena, 2018; kurlantzick, 2014). with general prayuth chan-o-cha in thailand (2014) and rodrigo duterte in the philippines (2016), two more ‘strongmen’ joined the ranks of authoritarian leaders in a region that is departing fast from democratic pathways. they follow a law and order attitude reflected in statements such as that of general prayuth who warned of “obsession with rights” which could “lead to anarchy” (“obsession with rights”, 2017). duterte's central message is that the philippines suffer from elites who care too much about western notions of human rights and western democracy (bello, this volume; focus on the global south, 2017; juego, 2017). several recent surveys confirm the authoritarian trend in southeast asia. the democracy index 2017, for example, listed six out of ten nations of the association of southeast asian nations (asean) (cambodia, laos, myanmar, singapore, thailand, and vietnam) as unfree, two (indonesia and malaysia) as largely free and only timorleste as partly free (brunei not included). none of the countries was considered as fully free (the economist intelligence unit, 2018). meanwhile, research on new authoritarianism has emerged as a dynamic field in different disciplinary and regional epistemic communities. due to the global scope of the issue, its political relevance and its highly contested nature, emerging debates are very vibrant, and yet fragmented. this fragmentation is mirrored, firstly, in the variety of concepts which are being used – the most prominent being authoritarianism, populism, and fascism – sometimes in combinations or with specifying adjectives (authoritarian populism, populist authoritarianism, right-wing populism, right-wing authoritarianism, authoritarian neo-liberalism, etc.). for this special issue, we will use new authoritarianism as an umbrella term – in singular, without suggesting that it denotes a single well-defined homogeneous concept or regime type (for a different approach see docena, 2018). secondly, the dynamism and fragmentation of the debate on new authoritarianism is mirrored in the highly controversial debate about the actors and the social editorial w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 18 .1 -1 2 | aseas 11(1) the political economy of new authoritarianism in southeast asia base of the turn towards the new authoritarianism (demirović, sablowski, schneider, & syrovatka, 2018). thirdly, there seem to be fundamentally differing views on how to conceptualize the link between authoritarianism, neoliberal capitalism, and the economic crisis. on the one hand, there seems to be an emerging consensus that the rise of a new authoritarianism is linked to what has been analyzed as a multiple crisis which started in 2008. yet, it is highly controversial in how far the new authoritarianism marks the ascent of a nationalist, protectionist – thus anti-neo-liberal – mode of regulation, or rather is connected to a further intensification and continuation of the neo-liberal economic policies (bruff, 2014; demirović, 2018). this special issue contributes to the emerging debate and addresses different phenomena of new authoritarianism in the southeast asian region from a political economy perspective. we argue for the need to understand new authoritarianism as connected to the crisis of global neoliberal capitalism and as part of a global trend. in all areas of the discussion, the role of china as a new hegemonic power plays a central role. against this backdrop, data from southeast asia – where chinese economic, political, and cultural influence is particularly strong – promises new insights and valuable contribution to the general debate. from democratic ‘poster child’ to authoritarian ‘problem region’ not long ago, in the early 2000s, hope for democratic progress in the region was still high (freedom house, 2005).1 globally, the number of democratic countries had increased since the 1970s in a steady process described as “the third wave of democratization” (huntington, 1991) and spread to asia in the 1990s (croissant, 2016). at the end of the cold war, fukuyama famously declared the “end of history” and the eternal victory of liberal democracy over communism (fukuyama, 1992). the extraordinary economic growth in the new tiger states (thailand, malaysia, indonesia, and the philippines) appeared to create the conditions for democratic reforms as suggested by modernization theory (lipset, 1960). with increasing income levels, an educated urban middle class was growing, championed as the ‘bearer of democracy’. indeed, following the early years of the economic boom, mass movements dominated by middle class replaced the old authoritarian regimes one by one. it started with the overthrow of the marcos regime in the philippines by the people power revolution in 1992 (thompson, 2011). in the same year in thailand, the mobile mob mass protests led to the toppling of general suchinda and the legendary intervention of king bhumipol (mccargo, 1997). subsequently, democracy in thailand appeared to consolidate with the 1997 constitution. in indonesia, the reformasi movement overthrew general suharto in the wake of the economic crisis of 1997; and in malaysia anwar ibrahim challenged his former superior mahathir (funston, 2000). however, when the ‘third wave’ reached its democratic peak in the mid-2000s, progress began to stall or even reverse quickly (croissant, 2016). in thailand, prime minister thaksin shinawatra, during his first term in office, had gradually turned into an authoritarian populist (pasuk & baker, 2011), cracking down on political dissent, waging a bloody “war on drugs” (which duterte would copy ten years later), and 1 in its 2005 report, freedom house categorizes the majority of asean nations as partly free or free. aseas 11(1) | 3 rainer einzenberger & wolfram schaffar stirring up an insurgency in thailand’s south. yet, after he was re-elected in 2005, the military staged a coup in 2006 and yet again in 2014, re-installing a military dictatorship that has lasted for already five years.2 in cambodia, the iron grip of quasi-dictator hun sen destroyed any hopes for a democratic government to rise out of the ashes of civil war, with the support of the un (hutt, 2017). in laos in 2012, the (enforced) disappearance of civil society leader sombath somphone ended any illusions of a political opening (fuller, 2013). in addition, myanmar, the most recent candidate for a democratic transition, has disappointed international observers. even after the takeover of the civilian government, led by the national league for democracy (nld), in many respects authoritarian politics did not recede, raising questions concerning an “authoritarian rollback” (buschmann, 2017). in particular, the crisis around the violent displacement of roughly 700,000 rohingya led to an international outcry and condemnation of the former democratic icon aung san suu kyi for not preventing what has been called an “ethnic cleansing” (beyrer & adeeba, 2017). hence, at aseans 50th anniversary celebrated in 2017 the political outlook for the region was rather bleak. since the 2007 asean charter, a number of reforms have been initiated; in particular, the neoliberal reform agenda of the asean economic community (aec) (juego, 2014). other “principles of the charter, however, have not been adequately implemented. that’s particularly true when it comes to issues concerning human rights, democracy, fundamental freedoms, good governance, and the rule of law” (khoo ying hooi, 2017, for a different perspective see middleton & pritchart, 2013). the widespread assumption that increased economic growth would lead to an increased level of political freedom proved wrong over the long run. in addition, the role of the middle-class is controversial, with the urban middle classes in thailand supporting fascist-like, popular, anti-democracy movements (naruemon & mccargo, 2016; schaffar, 2016, 2018), and middle classes in the philippines approving extrajudicial killings of so called ‘drug users’ by a populist full of disdain for human rights (focus on the global south, 2017). the question remains how this trend of stalled or even reversed democratization can be conceived of, and what makes this region unique compared to global trends? towards an explanation of the rise of authoritarianism the emerging debate on new authoritarianism is dynamic as well as fragmented. this is true for the global discourse as well as for the debate on and in sea. to lay the foundation for our contribution, some remarks on the history and definition of central concepts and terms are due. what we subsume under new authoritarianism can be discussed on different conceptual levels: on the level of regimes, of actors, and of ideology. regimes the term authoritarianism in the sense of a regime type was established by linz (1975). similar to the tripartite regime typology of aristotle or the weberian tripartite 2 thaksin was the first prime minister in the history of thailand ever re-elected to serve a second term. for an analysis of the political polarization, see naruemon (2016). 4 | aseas 11(1) the political economy of new authoritarianism in southeast asia typology based on the criterion of legitimacy, linz uses the criterion of pluralism and contrasts authoritarianism (with limited pluralism) with democracy (unlimited pluralism) and totalitarianism (no pluralism/complete conformity). authoritarianism, according to linz, is a regime type where traditional institutions, like the family, church, or corporatist organizations, are used for the exertion of dictatorial rule. whereas linz conceptualizes authoritarianism as fundamentally different from democracy, critical materialist approaches see authoritarianism as an inherent feature to bourgeois democracy. poulantzas (1978/2000) analyzed rising authoritarian tendencies in the democratically consolidated welfare states of the 1970s and coined the concept of authoritarian statism (kannankulam, 2009, p. 223-224). on a descriptive level, poulantzas’ work shows parallels to the characterization of linz’ typology. nevertheless, he is writing from the perspective of critical state theory and analyzes the authoritarian tendencies as result of the economic crisis, which began with the oil crisis in 1973 and put western democracies under pressure. these ideas have recently been taken up by lukas oberndorfer in his concept of authoritarian constitutionalism (kannankulam, 2016; oberndorfer, 2013) – a specific strategy of the eu to enshrine neoliberal policies of austerity in quasi constitutional treaties on the eu level, and defend them by means of increasing suppressive measures.3 populism populism is one of the most frequently used categories in the current discourse on the rise of new authoritarianism. roughly speaking it denotes a situation where a “rhetorically versed leader” appeals to or “seduces the dull populace” by means of “false promises” (boos, 2018, p. 10). because of its analytical vagueness, and the strong tendency to be used as political slogan, there have been frequent appeals to abandon the concept.4 a second quite different strand of the debate on populism stems from latin america, where leaders in the early and mid-20th century achieved a substantial improvement of the situation of the marginalized parts of the population through social reforms.5 the special feature shared by these presidents, which owed them the characterization as populists, was that they mobilized the electorate by emotionally appealing language. for southeast asia, the term was taken up by mizuno and pasuk (2009) and recently by hadiz and robison (2017), and hewison (2017), largely drawing on the structural functionalist tradition and a pejorative meaning. 3 very similar, but including a focus of the electoral dynamism inside the nation states, alex demirović (2018) speaks of authoritarian populism. docena (2017) speaks of authoritarian populism in connection with duterte. 4 the current exponential use of the concept is, according to boos (2018), more an expression of the lack of concepts on the side of the left, and should be analyzed as a phenomenon of its own. boos identifies two major historic sources of the concept of populism: one source is the russian narodniki – the movement of “going to the people” of young russian intellectuals -and the us-american people's party in the late 19th century. 5 those leaders included lázaro cardenas (mexico), getúlio vargas (brazil), and juan domingo perón (argentina). aseas 11(1) | 5 rainer einzenberger & wolfram schaffar fascism similar to authoritarianism of populism, fascism is not clearly defined and has a strong undertone of a political slogan. the term fascism is derived from a term for italian vigilante groups – (fasci italiani di combattimento or fic) – which were supported by the capitalists in northern italy, with the aim of fighting the increasing influence of organized labor and communist groups in factories and among rural laborers. under mussolini’s leadership, these vigilante groups grew strong enough to abolish the parliamentarian system and establish an authoritarian regime based on violence. theories focusing on the dynamism of class struggle and the role of political violence in the early stages of the rise of fascism (saage, 2007) have recently been used by bello (2018) for a cross-regional and diachronic comparative analysis of regimes in italy, chile, indonesia, thailand, and the philippines. schaffar (2016) and schaffar & naruemon (in print) focus on vigilante actors in the social media as a form of fascist groups and follow a similar interpretation of the situation of present day thailand. ideology all authoritarian regime types discussed here – authoritarianism, populism, fascism – primarily denote a mode of governance. however, in the discourses centering around the respective concepts we find literature that can be characterized as an “ideational approach”, trying to carve out a specific ideological content connected to the respective concepts. mudde and kaltwasser (2017, p. 6) define populism as a “thin-centered ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic camps, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’ and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people”. fascism, on the other hand, is understood as a political ideology whose mythic core is a palingenetic (meaning the idea of ‘national rebirth’) form of populist ultra-nationalism (griffin, 2003). certainly, the recent developments in southeast asia provide an abundance of data which can be analyzed along these lines: xenophobic discourses, anti-liberal ideas, the legitimization of the use of violence, the de-humanization of refugees, the anti-gender discourses, the rising lgbtiq-phobia. in a comparative perspective, however, it seems that the present authoritarian regimes in southeast asia do not share a common ideology: thailand with its hyper-monarchy, the philippines with its preoccupation with drug abuse, or indonesia with its dynamics connected to islamic fundamentalism. what unites the new authoritarian leaders, and what might count as a distinctive feature for the entire southeast asian region, however, is the recurrence of the asian values debate. values debate the idea of ‘asian values’ was popularized in the 1990s by autocrats such as mahathir and singapore’s lee kuan yew (thompson, 2001). they claimed that asian values based on confucianism – with a supposed focus on loyalty towards the family and community – were simply not compatible with the concept of ‘western democracy’ 6 | aseas 11(1) the political economy of new authoritarianism in southeast asia emphasizing individual freedom. this argument has been somewhat revived at times also in the context of thailand, referring to ‘thai style’ democracy (ferrara, 2010; thompson, 2015; walker, 2006). yet, several surveys suggest that preferences for authoritarian politics are certainly not limited to (southeast) asia. also in ‘settled’ western democracies, an increased support for authoritarian populists led to the rise of right-wing parties for instance in austria, switzerland, netherlands, denmark, hungary amongst others. different from the asian values debate, the tendency towards authoritarianism has been explained by some as a “cultural backlash in western societies against long-term, ongoing social change” and increasing liberalization (norris, 2016). actors after looking at regimes and ideologies, a third dimension of new authoritarianism needs to be considered. who are the actors behind the new development? who profits from it? how can we analyze the social base of new authoritarian regimes? concerning these questions, a highly controversial debate has evolved in the united states and in europe, at the example of the rise of trump or what has been called authoritarian populism in europe (demirović, 2018; eversberg, 2018; lessenich, 2016; sablowski & thien, 2018). the two contradictory and seemingly irreconcilable views are: on the one hand – the analysis that the social base is mainly working-class people, who are the losers of neoliberal globalization and have been abandoned by the social democratic parties (demirović, 2018; sablowski & thien 2018).6 on the other hand, lessenich (2016) and eversberg (2018) focus on the role of middle-classes and their chauvinistic motivation to defend their social status. this line of argumentation can also be found in southeast asia. saxer (2014), for instance understands the “rage of the middle class” in thailand as a fight between elites during a transformation crisis. in this case, conservative elites resort to fascist ideologies (schaffar, 2016) to gain legitimacy, and apply extra-constitutional measures to turn back the re-distributive project of thaksin’s populism. bello (2018) too, sees a crucial and ambivalent role of the middle-class in the dialectic of “revolution–counterrevolution” against a perceived revolutionary threat by a “progressive movement that is able to use the law and established institutions to promote social reform” (p. 34).7 the political economy of new authoritarianism the authors in this issue take a political economic perspective in order to understand the rise of authoritarian regimes in southeast asia as well as globally. this distinguishes the present special issue from analyses cited earlier, which rely on a modular approach to democracy (croissant, 2016), treat the political system as largely detached from the surrounding economic situation, and identify authoritarianism as an endogenous dysfunction of the political system. the approach pursued here departs 6 walden bello's (2018) analysis of the rise of duterte mirrors this view, too. 7 due to space limitations, we will throw only a spotlight on open questions in this field in the research workshop section of this issue (schaffar). aseas 11(1) | 7 rainer einzenberger & wolfram schaffar from the parallel nature of the phenomenon at this critical juncture of late capitalism, as there seems to be an intrinsic connection to the crisis of capitalism. already decades before the financial crisis of 2008, poulantzas (1978/2000) developed the concept of authoritarian statism, which seems strikingly contemporary. this concept explains how states try to manage economic growth under crisis tendencies resulting in “intensified state control over every sphere of socio-economic life combined with radical decline of the institutions of political democracy and with draconian and multiform, curtailment of so-called ‘formal’ liberties” (poulantzas, 1978/2000, pp. 203-204). while the concept focused on western capitalist states, it is also applied to dependent states in the periphery (chacko & jayasuriya, 2018; jayasuriya, 2018). even though it displays certain fascist elements, according to poulantzas authoritarian statism does not equal the historic form of fascism. as a result of the ‘crisis of crisis management', producing increasing unemployment, inequality and social tensions, authoritarian states increasingly resort to nationalist ideologies, sometimes combined with religious elements to manufacture hegemony and support for its neoliberal re-structuring (demirović, 2018; docena, 2017). the connection between the economic crisis and the rise of authoritarianism seems well established. what is contested, though, is the question whether there is a specific kind of economic project underlying the new authoritarian regimes. one line of argumentation – following poulantzas – is that new authoritarian regimes mean a further intensification of neoliberalism. another position claims that the new regimes pursue an anti-neoliberal project – most clearly mirrored by the new mercantilist ‘xy first’ economic policies – and in non-western countries a move to abandon western style neo-liberal globalization. this is where the role of china comes into play. china itself has undergone a massive capitalist transformation over the past decades, arguably rescuing global capitalism from the crisis of fordism following the 1970s (harvey, 2005; neuwirth, 2018). yet as china’s own capital accumulation cycle is experiencing a decline, it set out to plan a massive infrastructure investment program abroad as a way of “spatial fix” to its overaccumulation problems (harvey, 2001; zhang, 2017). following its ‘going out’ strategy at the turn of the millennium, china soon became the largest investor in the southeast asia region. in 2013, it announced its massive one belt one road initiative (obor), also known as belt-and-road initiative (bri). with an investment volume of several trillion usd, supported by the brics bank and the asian infrastructure investment bank (aiib) (chen & mardeusz, 2015), the plan involves massive infrastructure development (including harbors, ports, highways, railways, etc.). eventually, it should cover over 60% of the world population, potentially overshadowing the us marshall plan. the strategy is to export capital and labor and integrate as many countries as possible into its economic and political sphere, thus replacing the washington consensus with the beijing consensus and diminishing us strategic influence in the region. while us imperialism has used free trade agreements and (forced) market liberalization as a means to extend its political influence (harvey, 2001), china is building connections through infrastructure development. thereby a heavy debt creates a dependence or debt bondage which some have called “creditor imperialism” (chellaney, 2017). according to kneuer and demmelhuber (2016), china can be regarded as one of the world's new “authoritarian gravity centers” which may serve as a role model “for 8 | aseas 11(1) the political economy of new authoritarianism in southeast asia the countries in their geopolitical proximity, making emulation, learning processes or policy transfers effective means of autocracy promotion” (p. 777). while china may not actively promote authoritarian regimes, it is at least providing indirect support through its economic engagement with authoritarian regimes. this might also result from china’s quest for stability in the countries, which are the destination of large-scale investment. the political consequences can be observed for instance in cambodia where longtime prime minister hun sen, relying on china’s full support, openly repudiated cambodia’s former western sponsors by dissolving the main opposition party and closing down an independent us-american-owned newspaper (hutt, 2017). in his case study, einzenberger (this issue) discusses the politics of dispossession around a planned chinese mining project in myanmar’s frontier at the beginning of the political transition in 2011. the study constitutes a showcase of the influence of china – mediated through chinese companies and investment – on political processes in the neighboring countries, resulting in (de-)democratization processes and counter-movements. myanmar is well known for its dependence on china, which enabled the authoritarian military regime’s survival, also in times of international sanctions. rich in resources and sharing a long border, the country is considered by china as a resource frontier to be integrated into its economic orbit in order to fuel its economic growth. due to the regime of dispossession described in the article as frontier capitalism, in the early years of the political transition there was a considerable increase of anti-dispossession movements. while reconciliation with the us and europe opened up some political space for civil society to contest dispossession, in recent years, myanmar has re-oriented itself again towards china, in particular due to its worsening diplomatic ties with europe and the us in relation to the ‘rohingya crisis’. interestingly, while the rohingya have been scapegoated as an economic and political threat, millions of chinese immigrants in the countries’ north, de-facto dominating the economy, have been left out of the public discourse. looking at the case of thailand, schaffar in his article discusses another example of how de-democratization processes can be linked to the impact of chinese projects. his approach, however, focuses on a macro-level and on different actors at a national level. he argues, that the high-speed railway project proposed in 2013 – connecting thailand via laos to china as part of chinas belt-and-road initiative (bri) – played an important role in intra-elite conflicts leading up to the 2014 coup. taking a longue durée perspective, and drawing on world-systems theory, he interprets the chinese mega-infrastructure projects as the material backbone of what andré gunder frank (1996) called the “reorientation” of the world economy towards china. against this background, the coup d’état in thailand appears as an example of the upheavals in the phase of transition between two accumulation cycles. bonn juego’s article adds to the discussion in how far the new authoritarianism in southeast asia is new and linked to a specific new economic project (such as chinese investment or the chinese bri). his very topical article departs from the recent historic elections in malaysia where the longtime opposition pakatan harapan defeated the barisan nasional, which had ruled the country since its independence in 1957. yet, this likewise marked the return to power of mahathir mohamad, one of modern asia’s notorious strongmen and leading proponent of the concept of asian values. aseas 11(1) | 9 rainer einzenberger & wolfram schaffar the new ruling government under mahathir promises regime change through institutional reforms, the revival of populist economic policies, and the investigation of massive corruption allegations against the nine-year tenure of former premier najib razak – including the review of lucrative megaproject deals with china’s government and corporations under the bri framework. juego concretely discusses the institutions of the prevailing regime where the promised reforms shall start and where change must come. through a critical assessment of the evolving political economy of development from mahathir’s first stint as prime minister in the 1980s/1990s to the administrations of abdullah badawi and najib at the turn of the 21st century, juego reveals the continuity and progression of what he calls the regime of “authoritarian neoliberalism”, or a neoliberal economy embedded in authoritarian politics in contemporary malaysia. middleton, in his contribution, focuses directly on the nexus between economy and authoritarianism and discusses the dynamics of transnational business activities and human rights violations in the region. his analysis sheds light on economic actors from thailand and malaysia and on a transnational aspect of the work of human rights commissions in these countries. drawing on the concept of ‘extraterritorial obligations’ (etos) – duties of states towards protecting human rights beyond borders (eto consortium 2013) – he argues that appropriately mandated national human rights institutions and an active civil society empowered with political and civil freedoms are necessary for the further institutionalization and effective utilization of etos in the region. he shows this dynamism on the example of two dams under construction on the mekong river’s mainstream, namely the xayaburi dam in northern laos and the don sahong dam in southern laos, and the role of the thai and malaysia national human rights commissions. the four articles in this issue focus on different aspects of the authoritarian regimes in southeast asia and their connection to economic regulation and crises. they illustrate facets of persistent neoliberalism, but also the contrary – the dawn of a new accumulation cycle of world history. they reveal transnational mechanisms of primitive accumulation as well as sophisticated transnational institutionalization processes for the defense of human rights. there is no coherent picture or answer to the question whether the new authoritarian regimes are connected with a specific economic project or a regional flavor. however, what becomes clear is that any response to the rather bleak outlook can only be transnational cooperation in the search for more fundamental alternatives.  references bello, w. 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(2018). die afd, die arbeiterklasse und die linke – kein problem? prokla, 190, 48(1), 55-72. 12 | aseas 11(1) the political economy of new authoritarianism in southeast asia saxer, m. (2014, january 23). how thailand’s middle class rage threatens democracy. social europe. retrieved from https://www.socialeurope.eu/thailands-middle-class schaffar, w. (2018). alternative development concepts and their political embedding: the case of sufficiency economy in thailand. forum for development studies. schaffar, w. (2017). „unter dem volk populär“ – in thailand ist populismus jetzt allseits positiv besetzt [popular among the people – in thailand, ‘populism’ means something positive], iz3w, 359, 36-37. schaffar, w. (2016). new social media and politics in thailand: the emergence of fascist vigilante groups on facebook. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 9(2), 215-234. schaffar, w., & naruemon thabchumpol. (in print). social media-based far right movements in thailand. in e. toscano (ed.), researching far right movements. ethics, methodologies and qualitative inquiries. london: routledge. the economist intelligence unit. (2018). democracy index 2017: free speech under attack. retrieved from http://pages.eiu.com/rs/753-riq-438/images/democracy_index_2017.pdf thompson, m. r. (2015). democracy with asian characteristics. the journal of asian studies, 74(4), 875-887. thompson, m. r. (2011). the anti-marcos struggle. personalistic rule and democratic transition in the philippines. new haven: yale university press. thompson, m. r. (2001). whatever happened to “asian values”? journal of democracy, 12(4), 154-165. walker, a. (2006, october 30). thai style democracy – “asian values” reborn? new mandala. retrieved from http://www.newmandala.org/%e2%80%9cthai-style-democracy%e2%80%9d-%e2%80%93%e2%80%9casian-values%e2%80%9d-reborn/ zhang, x. (2017). chinese capitalism and the maritime silk road: a world-systems perspective. geopolitics, 22(2), 310-331. about the authors rainer einzenberger is a phd candidate at the department of development studies, university of vienna. his research interests include political science, land and resource politics, critical geography, and indigenous movements with a regional focus on southeast asia. ► contact: rainer.einzenberger@univie.ac.at between 2010 and 2018, wolfram schaffar has worked as professor for development studies and political science at the university of vienna. prior to this, he worked at the university of bonn, at chulalongkorn university in bangkok, and at the royal netherlands institute of southeast asian and caribbean studies (kitlv) in leiden. his fields of interest are state theory of the south, social movements, new constitutionalism and democratization processes, as well as new authoritarianism. ► contact: wolfram.schaffar@gmx.de new media in southeast asia: concepts and research implications new media in southeast asia: concepts and research implications dayana lengauer ► lengauer, d. (2016). new media in southeast asia: concepts and research implications. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 9(2), 187-194. “new media technologies [have] altered the infrastructures and rhythms of everyday life” (horst, 2012, p. 62) – this is true not only for technology-driven metropolitan areas in eeast asia or the usa, but also, and particularly, for those southeast asian countries that hold some of the largest numbers of social media users in the world. yet, contrary to popular expectations of an interconnected global network society (castells, 1996), a number of ethnographic studies have exposed the rather unorthodox ways in which digital technologies have become part of the daily dynamics of social, cultural, and political life that depend largely on particular regional settings, infrastructures, offline relationships, and other aspects of locality (hine, 2000, p. 27; horst, 2013, pp. 149-151; horst & miller, 2006; madianou & miller, 2012; miller, 2011; miller & slater, 2000; postill, 2011; servaes, 2014; slater, 2013). focusing on new media in southeast asia, this issue contributes to this project of “provincializing” (coleman, 2010, p. 489) digital media, particularly social media, by following the ways in which people go about organizing their social, cultural, and political lives in largely institutionalized and conflict-laden environments. directing their focus toward the political participation of urban middle classes in authoritarian and post-authoritarian regimes, the authors of this special issue explore the ways in which different actors set the parameters for participation in digital space, and seize digital media for their socio-political and cultural agendas. this approach allows them to avoid media-centric generalizations and various forms of technological determinism associated with the early work of media theorist marshall mcluhan and others (baym, 2015, pp. 27-44). without disregarding the importance of external forces, such as political centralization, bureaucratization, and urbanization, as well as their regional particularities, contributions place a strong emphasis on the agency of internet users. hence, digital media feed into, reflect, and shape “symbolic struggles over the perception of the social world” (bourdieu, 1989, p. 20) by allowing for new types of exchange and socialities to emerge “across the gap between the virtual and the actual” (boellstorff, 2012, p. 52). while contributions to this issue deploy the terms digital and social media by addressing concrete, non-analog technologies and applications, such as the internet or facebook, the term new media is rarely discussed in detail. inquiring what makes new media new, ilana gershon (2010, p. 10) goes well beyond the factual innovations introduced by what we know today as web 2.0 (o’reilly, 2007; see also ellison & boyd, 2013). rather than the technologies themselves, editorial w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 16 .2 -1 188 dayana lengauer  aseas 9(2) she argues, it is people’s perceptions of and experiences with social media (e.g., facebook or instagram) that define them as new. internet users, as hine (2000) poses in her book virtual ethnography, are involved in the construction of digital technology both “through the practices by which they understand it and through the content they produce” (p. 38). once embedded in everyday practices, new media and their accompanying infrastructures may appear mundane and transparent to users. yet, emerging forms of social interaction through and with digital media do not go without a fair amount of anxieties related to these media (baym, 2015, p. 22; gershon, 2010, pp. 80-81), as they potentially challenge previously established technologies and patterns of exchange (campbell, 2010, p. 9). madianou and miller (2011) encountered similar suspicion among filipino domestic workers in london who today could be defined as “the real vanguard troops in marching towards the digital future” (miller & horst, 2012, p. 10). formulating their concept of polymedia, the authors explore the ways in which diverse media contribute to the emotional repertoire of filipino mothers in their communication with their children back in the philippines. challenging prevailing ideas that technology determines and transforms social interaction, studies like this indicate that the choice of the medium rarely depends on its technological features alone (broadbent, 2012). on the contrary, media become mediated by relationships just as much as relationships are mediated by media (madianou & miller, 2011, p. 148). this assumption goes not only for interpersonal relationships but also for relations between the state and its citizens (horst, 2013). although digital technologies are still out of reach in some areas in the world today (coleman, 2010), polymedia seems to be the predominant condition of communication in most parts of southeast asia. this condition runs along the availability of several channels of communication, including social networking sites, blogs, email newsletters, voice calls, and so forth. despite startling technological developments, particularly in the technopolitan1 state of singapore or in the capital cities of malaysia, indonesia, and thailand, digital divides related to internet connection and costly infrastructure continue to exist (see einzenberger, this issue) and often point toward the “more fine-grained issues of social and economic status and access” (tacchi, 2012, p. 227). development models that often hinge on the arguably interactive, participatory, and democratic perspectives that web 2.0 technologies open (castells, 2009), overlook the more “informal ways in which consumers and providers of services and platforms come to subvert, resist, and reconfigure mobile media infrastructures” (horst, 2013, p. 151). as a number of scholars have argued, the availability of new media does not prescribe the development of a participatory culture (lim, 2013; tacchi, 2012). moreover, as we can draw from a number of cases in indonesia today,2 social 1 technopolitan comes from the term technopolis, coined by science journalist nigel calder (1969) to describe “a society not only shaped but continuously modified in drastic ways by scientific and technical novelty” (p. 22). later it became a theoretical paradigm for regional technology-based development (see smilor, kozmetsky, & gibson, 1988). 2 media coverage on the recent rally that took place on 4 november in the streets of jakarta and targeted jakarta governor basuki tjahaja purnama, also known as ahok, for alleged blasphemy reflected on the low mobilization capacity of particular segments of society. as muhammad fajar (2016) observed, those who opposed the protest “often intelligibly discuss complicated democracy-related concepts on social media but fail to back these up with a vigorous movement on the ground”. both massive online and offline mo189new media in southeast asia media activism does not always yield the support of the masses or translate into a vast offline movement (see also schäfer, this issue). since digital media cultures evolve within the complex fabrics of society and more encompassing systems of power relations, these scholars invite for a more “careful analysis of political processes and their digital dimensions” (postill, 2012, p. 178). this process-oriented approach goes beyond dualistic conceptualizations of online (virtual) and offline (physical) space as two distinct and sovereign arenas of action (lim, 2015) and direct attention toward those gaps between the virtual and the actual in which emerging socialities and new forms of social interaction take form (boellstorff, 2012, p. 52). the notion of sociality lies at the bottom of much social media scholarship (pink et al., 2016). yet, as baym (2015) and others argue, being ‘social’ is not the main qualifier of social media that makes them different from earlier forms of mediated communications, including internet forums or online chatrooms: “what makes ‘social media’ significant as a category in not the technology, but, rather, the socio-technical dynamics that unfolded as millions of people embrace the technology and used it to collaborate, share information, and socialize” (ellison & boyd, 2013). in indonesia, for example, social networking sites like facebook “allow people to return to certain kinds of intense and interwoven forms of social relationship that they otherwise feared were being lost” (miller, 2012, p. 148). this is also evident in a number of migration and diaspora studies focusing on social media practices among members of migrant communities (madianou & miller, 2011; mckay, 2011; panagakos & horst, 2006). the social impacts of the internet and social media are best understood as the “result of the organic interaction between technology and social, political, and cultural structures and relationships” (lim, 2013, p. 637). this interaction is the focal point of the contributions to this issue. in their papers, pinkaew laungaramsri and wolfram schaffar respectively build on earlier observations that “social media tools can simultaneously support grass-roots political mobilizations as well as government surveillance and human rights violations” (coleman, 2010, p. 493). both follow evgeny morozov’s (2011) critique on the idea that new media inevitably advance democracy and freedom and show how digital technologies have been used by the thai state and military to identify ‘traitors’ of the regime and suppress political dissent. in the light of ‘cyber dystopia’ created in the aftermaths of the 2014 coup d’état, pinkaew analyzes the interplay between state institutions, social media, and popular uses arguing that the ongoing militarization of cyberspace has been accomplished through the combination of mass surveillance and “surveillance by the masses”. she casts a closer look at the state-initiated programs cyber scouts and cyber witch hunts as the forerunners of an emergent right-wing movement carried by individuals and ultra-royalist groups and working as a counter-movement against perceived anti-monarchy networks. much in line with pinkaew’s analysis, wolfram schaffar demonstrates how in the context of thailand’s military regime, facebook has become the ‘battleground’ of competing political camps. in his investigation of the online formation and operabilization against ahok, and its missing offline elements among those who opposed the rally, prove lim’s (2013) observations that social media activism is only prone to translate in offline mobilization when “its narratives are simple, associated with low risk actions and congruent with dominant meta-narratives, such as nationalism and religiosity” (p. 636). 190 dayana lengauer  aseas 9(2) tion of ‘fascist vigilante groups’ on the internet, he shows how features of new media technologies that might be considered supportive with regard to political mobilization can become ‘dangerous’ in the hands of right-wing groups. communication technologies are not automatically political, but the use of digital media can doubtlessly become politically meaningful (coleman, 2010; postill, 2012). analyzing the political expressions and social media rhetoric of thai women during the 2013/2014 bangkok political protests, olivia guntarik and verity trott demonstrate the ways in which the rise of digital media use has altered the trajectories of political experience and the configurations of political participation. the authors argue that in the context of thailand’s conflict-laden political environment, social and digital media enable thai women to ‘speak out’ in ways they would not have been able to without the internet. the plurality of voices, reinforced by web 2.0 participatory architectures, has been central in narratives concerning processes of democratization (couldry, 2010; shirky, 2011). yet, as saskia schäfer shows in her contribution to this issue, the ‘act’ to present oneself and the ‘right’ to express an opinion are informed not only by local structures but also by transnational agendas and their popular rhetoric. in her inquiry into social media practices of indonesian atheist activists, schäfer illustrates how activists’ commitment to a non-religious identity and to the right to freedom of non-religious expression, reinforces exclusive understandings of difference and braces existing cultural and social divides. the increased visibility of non-belief facilitated through the offensive use of social media by non-religious actors and the attention of international media and donor agencies given to their activism – in a state defined by the belief in god as well as local narratives of religious harmony – has increased public suspicion and enhanced processes of ‘sectarianization’. in their discussion of social media, all four contributions point at the significance of online communication platforms when offline forms of activism and other forms of social and political participation are restricted or otherwise remain limited. yet, their analyses do not hold still at the enabling forces and architectures of digital technologies that accompany activists and other groups of people in perilous political environments. rather, they inquire into the wider effects and implications these technologies and their appropriation bring along for different actors and their ‘revolutionary’, and at times sweeping, projects. since digital media have become intrinsic to both the institutions that structure and the practices that organize social and political life, the rise of online activism is indicative for on-going transformations within political landscapes and state-citizen relationships. in his study of digital acts of ‘witnessing’ and ‘flaming’ against the ‘political dynasty’ of banten – a province on the island of java in indonesia – muhammad zamzam fauzanafi points at emergent practices of digital citizenship that are not easily framed in traditional understandings of state-citizen relations. much in line with guntarik and trott, he pleads for a reconsideration of what it means to be politically engaged in a digital age, adhering to changing forms of citizenship that develop along autonomous forms of expression and loose networks of social interaction and are accompanied by a broader mistrust toward politicians. while inquiring into alternative spaces of political participation and civic engagement, contributions to this issue indicate the strident rise of hate speech in social media as they become sites for 191new media in southeast asia the open expression of discontent and what fauzanafi frames as civic disgust. notwithstanding this trend in southeast asian political contexts, sirima thongsawang sketches increasing horizontal processes of communication and multiple possibilities of information exchange in her study among thai immigrants living in berlin and their respective local organizations. in an interview with phyu phyu thi and htaike htaike aung, co-founders of myanmar ict for development organisation (mido), rainer einzenberger discusses popular interpretations of the internet and the local use of social media. as the interviewees explain, in myanmar digital technologies and new media only recently hit the market, and facebook is largely perceived as a legitimate news channel. while the internet is the “central conduit and node” (coleman, 2010, p. 495) for the work of both freelance journalists and news agencies, the difference between quality news and light package information (lim, 2013) may not be clear under particular circumstances. a short contribution reports on a workshop that focused on social media and islamic practice in southeast asia and took place in vienna early this year. the workshop was organized by researchers from the institute for social anthropology at the austrian academy of sciences and invited presenters from four continents to reflect on the particular case of indonesia. outside the focus on new media, this issue features an article by joseph a. l. reyes in the field of demography and population studies that explores relations of leisure time activities with sociodemographic indicators of subjective happiness and health in the philippines. here, the internet is mentioned only marginally as a leisure activity that is deemed rather costly and involving high personal expense. seeking scholarly discussion of how various offline contexts affect the production and reach of new media, contributions to this issue cover a variety of analytic frames and aspects of digital southeast asia, with topics ranging from internet vigilantism to ideologies of cultural difference. focusing predominantly on thailand and indonesia, they reveal the remarkable depth and earnest implications of digital media in everyday and institutional life and give arresting insights into those dimensions of state-citizen relations that often remain veiled.  references baym, n. k. 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(2007). what is web 2.0? design patterns and business models for the next generation of software. communications & strategies, 65(1), 17-37. panagakos, a. n., & horst, h. a. (2006). return to cyberia: technology and the social worlds of transnational migrants. global networks, 6(2), 109-124. pink, s., horst, h., postill, j., hjorth, l., lewis, t., & tacchi, j. (2016). digital ethnography: principles and practice. london: sage. postill, j. (2011). localizing the internet: an anthropological account. oxford: berghahn. postill, j. (2012). digital politics and political engagement. in h. a. horst & d. miller (eds.), digital anthropology (pp. 165-184). london: bloomsbury. servaes, j. (ed.). (2014). technological determinism and communication for sustainable social change. lanham: lexington books. shirky, c. (2011). the political power of social media. foreign affairs, january/february. retrieved from http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/67038/clay-shirky/the-political-power-of-social-media slater, d. (2013). new media, development and globalization: making connections in the global south. cambridge: polity. smilor, r. w., kozmetsky, g., & gibson, d. v. (eds.). (1988). creating the technopolis: linking technology commercialization and economic development. boston: ballinger. tacchi, j. (2012). digital engagement: voice and participation in development. in h. a. horst & d. miller (eds.), digital anthropology (pp. 225-241). london: bloomsbury. 193new media in southeast asia about the author dayana lengauer is a researcher at the institute for social anthropology, austrian academy of sciences, and editor of the austrian journal of south-east asian studies. ► contact: dayana.lengauer@oeaw.ac.at "i don't want to limit myself to binary thinking": an interview with the indonesian artist arahmaiani “i don’t want to limit myself to binary thinking”: an interview with the indonesian artist arahmaiani gunnar stange ► stange, g. (2017). “i don’t want to limit myself to binary thinking.” an interview with the indonesian artist arahmaiani. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 10(1), 109-116. arahmaiani is one of the best known contemporary indonesian women artists. her works, performances, and installations have been exhibited at 7 biennials and in a total of 29 countries. she has taught at universities in australia, china, indonesia, germany, the united states, and the netherlands. arahmaiani is a politically committed artist. in her works, she addresses the reduction of human beings to consumers, which is on the rise all over the globe, as well as the discrimination against people on the grounds of gender, religion, and ethnicity. while the phenomena addressed in her art are always of a global nature, the majority of her works deal with cultural, social, and political realities of indonesia. she views these as being threatened by an increasing politicization and essentialization of islam, whose protagonists supplant the country’s diverse ethnic, linguistic, and religious heritage with a purely islamic interpretation of the indonesian past. in this interview, conducted by gunnar stange in december 2016, arahmaiani elaborates on the main themes she addresses in her art works as well as on current political, social, and environmental challenges in indonesia. keywords: engaged art; environmentalism; indonesia; political activism; religious extremism  gunnar stange: you have been active in the indonesian and international art scene for some thirty years now. what were the drivers for your decision to set off on the precarious journey to become an artist? arahmaiani: indeed, time flies fast. i see myself as an artist and at the same time i want to give meaning to life. this is not an easy path. yet, i consider this a call of my conscience that i simply can’t resist. my feet keep carrying me towards that direction. i follow my intuition. besides that, i have loved to draw, paint, dance, and play music since i was a little child. so, already from that time on, i believed that i should become an artist. even though some people discouraged me in the beginning (including my parents), i was sure that art is what i love and i wanted to become a good artist! gunnar: what are the main themes or questions that you are dealing with in your work? arahmaiani: i think that the main theme of my works is power relations. but not limited to a narrow mind frame along binary oppositions. only a free imagination makes it possible to explore fields that couldn’t be reached within the im dialog  in dialogue w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 17 .1 -8 110 gunnar stange  aseas 10(1) boundaries of a binary thinking. i ask very simple questions, for example: ‘what does our life on this planet actually mean?’ in my quest for answers, i am particularly interested in norms and values that we inherited from our ancestors. in my work, i try to reinterpret these philosophies in the context of contemporary conditions. gunnar: you have been given many ‘names’ by the international art scene. some call you an engaged artist. others say that you are a political artist. how would you describe yourself? arahmaiani: as antiquated as it may sound, i understand my work as duty and responsibility. if i put it in a modern or contemporary context that is characterized by individualism, i might simply say i do what i do because i have the right to do it, and i claim it. my way of thinking departs from ancient asian traditions of thought. at the same time, i study and try to understand modern ways of thought, too. as i said earlier, i don’t want to limit myself to a binary thinking. in my way of thinking, two opposing things are actually related to each other. thus, you can’t choose one over the other. this would be a simplification which ultimately leads to a ‘black and white’ categorization, which may look simple but actually causes many problems. in asian traditions of thought, opposing principles had always been juxtaposed and were considered to be part of reality. yet, this doesn’t mean that such a way of thinking doesn’t know the value of truth. it is about understanding reality as it is and dealing with it in a wise way. no easy endeavor, indeed. in principle, art is open and there are many things it can express. and it is easy to share it in public space. in this way, art can function as a bridge between different disciplines and lifestyles. this perfectly fits my multior transdisciplinary approach as an efficient way to express ideas. gunnar: we had the wonderful opportunity to work together on your retrospective exhibition “violence no more” in frankfurt am main in autumn 2015. the exhibition was a journey through the last 30 years of your work, much of it regarding indonesia. what are the most pressing political, societal, and environmental challenges in indonesia these days? arahmaiani: we are facing many problems in indonesia: problems that are related to the past, the present, and the future. first of all, there is the trauma of colonization that has not been properly addressed. then, there are the blind spots of indonesian history that are still waiting to see a truthful portrayal, such as the genocide of 1965/66.1 dealing with the past in such a way has shaped the mentality, the way of thinking, and a certain attitude of indonesians that is [still] problematic up until today. it is the very reason for the fact that corruption and hypocrisy have become epidemic in a country that is so rich in culture and in natural as well as human resources. this, again, has led to other problems like the ever-widening social asymmetry between the rich and the 1 after an attempted, yet failed, coup to overthrow the sukarno government in september 1965, powerful parts within the indonesian military accused the communist party of indonesia (pki) of being behind the coup. in its aftermath, the indonesian military, aided by thugs and civil society mass organization, killed between 500,000 and 1,500,000 alleged members and sympathizers of indonesia’s communist movement. whether or not these gross human rights violations should be categorized as a genocide is still being debated among scholars. 111“i don’t want to limit myself to binary thinking” poor. we can see that values like plurality and tolerance are less and less respected. groups that claim to represent the muslim majority increasingly treat minorities in a barbaric and inhumane way. this is true for non-muslim religious groups in general, and the chinese minority in particular. women are also highly affected by these developments. traditional and religious conservative values consider women not as equals to men. still, there are movements of critical women who try to change this condition. but, if we look at the recent strengthening of conservative and even radical voices within the muslim community, we can observe a backlash regarding the situation of women in indonesia. it has become a normal thing that a member of parliament, who most likely is also a rich entrepreneur, has more than one wife.2 things like this have become socially acceptable again. also, our consumerist and materialist lifestyle increasingly erodes the consciousness that is needed to protect the environment. it seems that the government and corporations have an easy time getting rid of customary and traditional values that actually respect and protect the environment. this is how customary and traditional communities are marginalized and their lands transformed for industrial use that only benefits private businesses. forced eviction and land grabbing by private businesses or the government are common practice all over the archipelago. the enormous tropical forest fires of 2015 and 2016 were, of course, the most visible example. these fires, purposely set by palm oil entrepreneurs, were the worst in a century.3 they have not only destroyed thousands of hectares of forest. they have also caused severe air pollution with heavy impacts on the health of local communities that often lose their land and livelihoods due to the fires. the forest fauna was also highly affected. many animals died in the flames, got injured, and lost their habitat. another serious environmental issue is the pollution of water and soil as a result of the extensive use of chemical fertilizers. this farming system was introduced during the suharto era in the context of the green revolution. seeds, fertilizers, and even farming equipment had to be imported, rendering the farmers highly dependent on the producers. up until today, the ministry for agriculture negotiates farming goods contracts with corporations like monsanto. another reason for the worsening of environmental pollution is the absence of an efficient waste management system. rivers, arable and non-arable land, and even the sea are full of waste, mostly plastic waste that takes a very long time to decompose. the result is an increasing number of natural disasters such as floods and landslides. all these problems have to be seen in the context of a poor education system. according to a survey, indonesia has the worst education system in southeast asia. it is no surprise that indonesians in general have a unique problem or, if you want to put it another way, difficulty: the ability to think logically. 2 a muslim man may marry up to four women if he is able to treat them equally. on the other hand, islam does not provide for polyandry. whether or not this traditional practice is compatible with the idea of universal human rights is being hotly debated within the islamic scholarly community and beyond. 3 forest fires are a seasonal phenomenon in indonesia. purposely set fires are used as a cheap method to clear land for new planting. most of the affected areas contain highly flammable peat soil, which causes the fires to spread quickly and makes it highly difficult to stop them. 112 gunnar stange  aseas 10(1) gunnar: as you said, indonesia has experienced increasing levels of discrimination and violence against religious minorities in recent years. what are the drivers behind these developments and do you see any signs of change for the better? arahmaiani: there are a couple of interest groups involved in that issue – at the local, the national, and even the international level. this includes politicians, entrepreneurs, and certain religious groups that are ambitious, have a limited knowledge, and want to prove that religion holds a superior truth. this makes the issue quite complex. the root problem of today’s global ‘political game’ is the wish to control all kinds of resources. but this must also be seen in the context of an international ‘political game’ in which international corporations and even governments with all kinds of agendas have an interest in stigmatizing the muslim community. at the same time, international radical islamic groups develop their very own strategies to reach their goals. conservative and radical groups on the local and national levels try to capitalize on this situation by claiming that islam as a religion and a specific group of people is being oppressed and colonialized by the west. these groups use this kind of rhetoric to legitimate their claims and to condemn everyone not in line with their way of life and thinking. usually, they call them infidels. on the other hand, politicians at all levels try to capitalize on this situation and on the leaders of these radical groups for their own benefits. after the end of the so-called new order of suharto, it became evident that his regime ‘created’ radical groups in order to spread chaos and terror in society. politicians used this atmosphere to their own advantage, for example, by portraying themselves as guarantors of the public order. to cut it short, the elites determine the rules of the game and, if need be, create disasters (like war or terrorist attacks) and willingly sacrifice people. these kinds of injustices are still practiced – through the economy, the manipulation of culture, the instrumentalization of religion, or the absence of the rule of law in everyday life. in other words: law can be bought. if you ask me whether i see a change for the better, i must honestly tell you that i don’t see any reason for optimism at the moment. gunnar: back in 2014, joko widodo (jokowi) was elected president of indonesia. his constituency considered him the indonesian barack obama and had high hopes regarding the rule of law and human rights protection. yet, under his presidency, the human rights situation seems to be worsening. would you say that indonesia’s relatively young democratization process is experiencing a crisis of political representation? arahmaiani: in the beginning, jokowi was considered a light of hope by many indonesians, especially by the poorer strata that suffer from injustices. most important for this perception was his background as a small entrepreneur who came from a poor family. additionally, he had no connection with the new order whatsoever. he was the embodiment of the promise and the hope for a new type of leader that would bring welfare to the indonesian people. but after he took office, it turned out that in reality he could not live up to these expectations. so, very disappointing. injustice is still going on, corruption is becoming even more rampant, and human rights seem to be a mere slogan without any meaning. one example for the inhumane treatment of people is the fact that drug couriers receive the death penalty and are being executed 113“i don’t want to limit myself to binary thinking” whereas the real bosses are at large. also, corrupt politicians who are clearly guilty are not punished. the weakness of the indonesian corruption eradication commission (kpk) is very disappointing. other examples are, of course, connected to the dark history of the 1965 genocide. although there are demands for justice and official apologies for the victims from many sides, nothing substantial has happened up until today. it seems that the more time passes by the less hope there is. gunnar: do artists play a significant role in political and environmental activism in indonesia? and, are there any governmental or private institutions that provide support and/or funding for politically engaged artists? arahmaiani: the movement of art activism already started during the indonesian independence revolution.4 so, there is quite a long tradition in this field. and even under the new order, this art activism was strong and played a role in the political and social life of indonesia. actually, up until today there are artists in indonesia that are active in this field. they are quite loyal and strong. although the international art scene has changed a lot, the art market is becoming stronger and stronger. besides the positive effect that more artists can actually make a living, the negative side is that the art world is increasingly focusing on the market which is more and more becoming an arena for business and investment. with a poor infrastructure, for example, the absence of publicly financed museums, and a critics scene that is half dead, market domination with all its games becomes stronger. the effect is that it is more about whether an artwork is a good investment than about the artwork itself. art that has social-political or environmental messages is usually done on the artists’ own initiative, or as endorsed by ngos. of course, there had already been a trend in the painting market that considered engaged art as something fancy. yet, it was simply a trend that was soon replaced by another trend, and so on. the problem with the support of ngos is actually that it is usually temporary and project-based. the rationale is usually that the ngos can communicate their agenda. additionally, sometimes ngos are involved in corruption cases, which also constitutes a risk for artists working with them. in principle, there is no public institution in indonesia that supports the activities of engaged artists. i’m completely on my own as i have to finance my activities myself. gunnar: for more than five years, you have been working with tibetan monks in the yushu region. the core focus of your work is to raise awareness for environmental protection. among other things, you have initiated a tree planting campaign that has resulted in hundreds of thousands of newly planted trees.5 how is your tibetan experience influencing you ethically and on a conceptual level? arahmaiani: actually, it has been already more than six years. yes, my first aim is to develop a consciousness for the environment and to remind people how important 4 after the declaration of indonesian independence on 17 august 1945, the indonesians fought a war of independence against the dutch, the former colonial power, between 1945 and 1949. 5 the trees make an important contribution to the reduction of soil erosion. 114 gunnar stange  aseas 10(1) the tibet plateau is in this context. the tibet plateau is also known as the ‘3rd pole’ as it is the world’s third-largest area of ice. it is also called the ‘water tower’ of asia, with asia’s seven largest rivers originating there: the mekong, the yangtze, the yellow river, the brahmaputra, the ganges, the indus, and the salween. global warming has severe effects on that area, as it causes the melting of the glaciers as well as the thawing of the permafrost. at the same time, there is an increase in flood disasters in asian countries. and, of course, we can’t allow this to continue. until now, we have been working on the problem from different angles. this includes waste management, planting trees, re-starting collective organic farming, revitalizing the tradition of nomadic livestock farming with a revolving fund for yaks (called the ‘yak bank’), and the management of water sources for everyday use, energy generation, and medication. we got very lucky when two years ago the local government finally started to like the projects and started to support and even finance them. that’s why the projects developed really fast. when i visited tibet last summer, they estimated that already more than one million trees had been planted since we started the project. my experiences from working and interacting with as well as learning from tibetan buddhists strengthened my belief in what i’m feeling and thinking. although, i’m not completely free of doubt. since i was a teenager, my thinking and understanding of reality has been grounded in ancient philosophy. most people in indonesia find that funny, especially from the muslim community. yet, in tibet i received support and even confirmation for my way of thinking. i had the chance to deepen my understanding together with my friends and teachers, lamas from tibet, both in the lab monastery in tibet and the sera jey monastery in india. of course, that has deeply influenced my understanding of ethical concepts and ideas. i understood that, for a long time, the principle ideas of my art works and writings have been grounded in buddhism. i simply wasn’t aware of it. it also deepened my knowledge of pre-indonesian history. it’s very important to revive this knowledge because many indonesians don’t understand their own history anymore. they have lost that knowledge. the most important influence on me from all of this is that i understand so much more and am so much more conscious of what i actually want to express in my works. a deeper understanding of ethical principles, for example, the principle of non-violence, allows me to comprehend humanitarian problems with regard to social politics, culture, and the environment in a more holistic way. gunnar: you are one of the busiest travelers i know, going from one artist in residence program to another, having exhibitions, and giving classes all around the world. has being a ‘modern nomad’ been a conscious decision and how has constantly being on the move influenced your worldview? arahmaiani: i have been living a nomadic life for more than thirty years now. it all started when i left indonesia for sydney in 1983 after i was threatened by the suharto regime. before i left, i had been imprisoned for a month. i was finally released but not allowed to perform in public. on top of that, i was thrown out of bandung university where i was studying fine arts back then. living on the move gave me the chance to get to know many kinds of cultural practices and beliefs. it also helped me to understand how the global economy with all its effects actually works. i’m mainly interested 115“i don’t want to limit myself to binary thinking” in its negative effects, such as injustice and the widening gap and asymmetry between the poor majority and the rich minority. it also helped me to understand how deeply intertwined the world actually is or, even, that everything is connected to everything. this has allowed me to learn and see the underlying norms and structures of the problems which we can find in human life. yes, i believe we are all humans regardless of skin color, culture, or belief. humans with all their abilities have certain strengths – as compared to other beings like animals – that can be used to achieve positive but also negative ends. for example, if power ambitions or negative emotions are not controlled, it can cause catastrophes and a lot of suffering for humans as well as the environment. in a global system that is increasingly interconnected, people should really open up to get to know and understand each other as well as cooperate in addressing the global problems that are threatening the continuation of life. only if we appreciate and respect difference, will we be able to understand that all humans are related to each other and be able to co-exist. war and fighting are things that only lead to destruction and need to be critically questioned and prevented. the same applies to the weapons industry, which only profits a few but kills and destroys many people. the best would be to shut them down. seriously, we have to strengthen intercommunity relations in order to achieve peace and prosperity together to make sure that the future of the coming generations will be a bright one. gunnar: arahmaiani, thank you very much! arahmaiani: you are welcome. translation from the indonesian: gunnar stange  about the author gunnar stange is editor of the austrian journal of south-east asian studies. he currently holds a position as assistant professor in human geography at the department of geography and regional research, university of vienna, austria. he received his phd from the department of social and cultural anthropology, goethe university, frankfurt am main, germany. his research interests include peace and conflict studies, development studies, and forced migration. his regional focus is on south-east asia, mainly indonesia. ► contact: gunnar.stange@univie.ac.at men, women, and environmental change in indonesia: the gendered face of development among the dayak benuaq men, women, and environmental change in indonesia: the gendered face of development among the dayak benuaq michaela haug ► haug, m. (2017). men, women, and environmental change in indonesia: the gendered face of development among the dayak benuaq. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 10(1), 29-46. the increasing penetration of global capitalism, ambitious development efforts, and related environmental change have significantly transformed kalimantan and its indigenous population, commonly referred to as dayak, during the last decades. this article analyzes these processes from a gendered perspective and explores how gender relations among the dayak, who generally are characterized by well-balanced gender relations, have been influenced by what is commonly referred to as ‘development’. a review of the existing literature shows that new asymmetries between men and women are emerging mainly due to different ways of inclusion in new economic systems. based on research among the dayak benuaq, the article shows that far-reaching gender equality has been so far upheld within benuaq society while gender gets interwoven with an increasing variety of inequalities. i argue that in order to capture this complexity, research on the gendered impacts of development should a) aim for a better understanding of the intertwinement of gender with other aspects, such as ethnicity, class, age, or education, b) pay more attention to how these aspects play out in different contexts, and c) differentiate more clearly between gender ideals, norms, and actual practice. keywords: development; environmental change; gender; indigenous peoples; kalimantan  introduction since the last decades, the island of borneo and its societies have undergone rapid and profound change. deforestation and the degradation of the natural environment has been accelerated by the increasing integration of even small communities into the global capitalist economy, the expansion of state control, ambitious plans of national and local governments to generate income and to boost economic growth through natural resource extraction, growing mobility, as well as the increasing commodification of land and other natural resources (cleary & eaton, 1992; padoch & peluso, 1996; tsing, 2005). for the indigenous population, commonly referred to as dayak, these changes often imply the loss of land and other natural resources, increasing dependency on wage labor, and a shift towards life in (semi-)urban centers (cramb et al., 2009; de koninck & bissonnette, 2011; sercombe & sellato, 2007). these transformations (re-)produce diverse economic, political, and social inequalities. this occurs, for example, through new processes of exclusion (hall, hirsch, & li, 2011) as well as through the “adverse incorporation” (hickey & du toit, 2007) in new economic systems. so far, the inequalities most extensively aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 17 .1 -3 30 michaela haug  aseas 10(1) addressed in this context in kalimantan have been the marginalization of the local population vis-a-vis the state and (trans-)national corporations, increasing economic disparities between local elites and average villagers, and inequalities related to ethnicity (duncan, 2004; fried, 1995; peluso, 2003). the latter are of increasing importance especially since decentralization, when ethnicity gained new prominence within local politics as well as through the revitalization of dayak culture which has partly been directed against claims and demands of migrants from other parts of indonesia, thus fueling violent conflicts in some areas of kalimantan (davidson, 2003; oesterheld, 2004; peluso, 2003; van klinken, 2002). it has further been described how the integration into global capitalism, mainly in the form of commercial logging, mining, and the expanding oil palm industry, leads to conflicts and various forms of resistance (de koninck & bissonnette, 2011; haug, 2014a; potter, 2009). however, what remains unclear is, what role gender plays within these processes and how gender intersects with other elements of multiple and fragmented identities such as ethnicity, education, or age in the (re-) production of various kinds of inequalities. the aim of this contribution is thus to explore these recent processes of environmental and societal change from a gendered perspective. i explore how the lives of men and women have been impacted and how gender relations have been influenced by development. the indigenous groups of kalimantan, commonly referred to as dayak, are of particular interest as they are characterized by far reaching gender equality.1 the limited number of studies documenting the impact of recent economic and environmental change on dayak gender roles, gender identities, and gender relations reveal heterogeneous outcomes. however, their overall tenor is that new asymmetries between men and women are emerging and that women tend to be more negatively affected by this environmental change than men. taking the dayak benuaq as an example, i show that the benuaq have so far upheld far-reaching gender equality despite manifold external influences. i argue that gender is interwoven with a growing variety of inequalities. in order to understand the gendered impacts of development, a complex perspective has to be considered. for example, i view the still prevailing essentialist focus on women as misleading. research exploring the gendered impacts of development must include male perspectives and aim for a better understanding of the intertwinement of gender with other categories of differentiation, such as ethnicity, age, education, or social status and pay more attention to how these play out in different contexts. data for this article was collected during 22 months of field research in kutai barat between 2004 and 2007 and during two shorter periods of field research in 2009 and 2011. my initial research was an integral part of a cifor-bmz research project2, which analyzed the impacts of regional autonomy on the well-being of forest dependent communities. i conducted fieldwork mainly in the three dayak benu1 despite the great linguistic and cultural diversity of the various dayak groups, the available literature supports the general argument that dayak societies are characterized by rather well-balanced gender relations. this will be further elaborated below. 2 the research project “making local government more responsive to the poor: developing indicators and tools to support sustainable livelihood under decentralization” was financed by the german federal ministry for economic cooperation and development (bmz) and carried out by the centre for international forestry research (cifor) in cooperation with the university of freiburg in germany. 31men, women, and environmental change in indonesia aq villages engkuni pasek, jontai, and muara nayan (haug, 2010).3 i used a variety of qualitative and quantitative methods, for example, participatory observation, formal and informal interviews, two comprehensive household surveys, and a wellbeing survey. the wellbeing survey, which i refer to below, covered a total of 300 people with equal proportions of young people, parent and grandparent generations, as well as equal proportions of men and women, all of which were chosen randomly. during my research on poverty and decentralization, gender emerged as an interesting aspect that i start to explore in this article. in order to locate the discussion on gendered development in kalimantan within a broader framework, i start this article with a brief overview of the gendered impacts of development in southeast asia before summarizing what is known so far about its impacts in kalimantan. i then turn to my own research among the dayak benuaq, and describe their gender relations and how recent economic and environmental developments have impacted them. finally, i point out relevant questions for further research on the gendered impacts of development in kalimantan. gender, development, and environmental change in southeast asia the increasing penetration of global capitalism into rural areas of southeast asia is supported by national governments as part of ambitious development agendas which often accelerate the extraction of natural resources (e.g., mining, oil palm plantations) and lead to far-reaching environmental transformations. globalization, development, and environmental change are hence deeply intertwined in the daily experiences of men and women living in the rural areas of southeast asia and elsewhere. three different bodies of literature address the gendered impacts of these processes. first, there is a broad feminist scholarship on gender and globalization, which explores how changes implied by globalization impact women, men, families, and gender relations, paying special attention to work relations and the (in)compatibility of productive and reproductive activities (summarized in acker, 2004). a second body of literature, addressing gender and development, can be traced back to ester boserup’s seminal work women’s role in economic development (1970). despite the broad variety of studies that can be found within this category, a great number focuses on women in the global south and/or the gendered impacts of specific development measures and development projects (elson, 1995; stevens, 2000; trankell, 1993). the third body of literature has developed around the gender and environment nexus. ecofeminist approaches that related the oppression of women and the exploitation of nature to patriarchal-capitalistic domination (shiva, 1989) have meanwhile been heavily criticized in academia (archambault, 1993; leach, 2008) but they still seem prevalent in the field of practice. recent work on gender and environment is strongly influenced by feminist political ecology which focuses on gender specific environmental knowledge, the role of gender in determining access to and control over natural resources as well as the gendered nature of environmental politics and social movements (elmhirst, 2011; rocheleau, thomas-slayter, & wangari, 1996). inspired 3 as agreed with the villagers i use pseudonyms for the names of informants but regular names for places and locations. 32 michaela haug  aseas 10(1) by an increasing attention to the physical, sensory, and functional possibilities and capacities of materials (miller, 2005), the materiality of the natural environment and human bodies becomes currently included in research on gender and environment (barad, 2003; elmhirst, siscawati, & basnett, 2015). as development, globalization, and environmental change are intimately intertwined, i do integrate literature from all these strands in my further discussion of gender and development in southeast asia in general and kalimantan in particular. research on gender in southeast asian societies reveals a great diversity and has contributed to challenging dominant assumptions within the anthropology of women and gender. one of these dominant assumptions is the dichotomy of domestic and public brought forward by rosaldo (1974). ethnographies from southeast asian societies have shown that the domestic realm of life can be very powerful, as for example, among the minangkabau in sumatra (sanday, 2002). they have also emphasized that control over economic resources is not automatically associated with higher social status (anderson, 1972; keeler, 1990), and that there are various societies which simply do not make the distinction between domestic and public, like the dayak gerai (helliwell, 1993, p. 268). it is thus not surprising that research on the gendered impacts of development in southeast asia, which largely focuses on women, also reveals a heterogeneous picture: industrialization, urbanization, labor migration, and the increasing market integration of rural areas can have both empowering effects on women and (re-)produce and strengthen gender asymmetries (rydstrom, 2010; williams, 2007). several researchers have emphasized that other factors such as class, age, and education highly influence the impact of development on women’s lives (helliwell, 1993; karim, 1995) and we can assume that the same is the case for men. aiwa ong, studying female factory workers in malaysia, argues that development is very unevenly experienced and distributed; even in the same community some women may benefit while others lose. also, “for the same women the consequences may be contradictory, opening up new possibilities for social and physical mobility and introducing new freedoms, but also imposing new pressures and constraints” (ong, 1987, cited in king, 1999, pp. 161162). research on agricultural modernization and increasing wage labor also shows great complexity: it is mainly young women who leave rural areas in search of wage labor while married and older women stay in (or return to) the village and are more engaged in agriculture (king, 1999, p. 162). the increasing mechanization seems to have different effects on male and female labor. while the introduction of mechanical harvesting and transplanting methods has often tended to displace women from agriculture (scott, 1985; wong, 1987), the mechanization of field preparation has reduced the workload of men (rigg, 1997). ester boserup (1970) has argued that colonial rule and the advance of capitalism have pushed rural women out of agriculture and confined them to the domestic realm. such processes have also been documented for southeast asian societies. for example, robinson (1986) shows how men and women were “co-partners in agricultural production” (p. 65) in soroako, sulawesi, before nickel mining provided employment predominantly to men. several researchers argue that also state development programs as well as ngo programs and projects often (re-)produce gender asymmetries (van esterick, 1995). such programs are often ignorant of the respective societ33men, women, and environmental change in indonesia ies’ understanding of gender or work, customary land tenure systems, and the local gendered division of labor. consequently, they often locate women in the domestic sphere, while they automatically assume men as local authorities and landowners (king, 1999; van esterik, 1995). this ignorance tends to undermine the authority and the rights of women among ethnic minorities and indigenous groups (kleinhutheesing, 1995; siscawati, 2014). gendered impacts of development in kalimantan marginalizing dayak culture to understand how development has encompassed kalimantan, it is crucial to consider the position of kalimantan and its people within the indonesian nation state. during pre-colonial times, the indonesian archipelago was characterized by emerging and declining centers and peripheries. with the advent of colonialism, however, the island of java emerged as a single center while the surrounding islands were increasingly more transformed into the state’s periphery. after indonesian independence and short debates about federalism during the 1950s, the central position of java and the capital jakarta have been further strengthened, culminating in the highly centralistic orde baru (haug, rössler, & grumblies, 2017). while java and javanese culture have been constituted as the “showcase of development” (tsing, 1993, p. 23), the outer islands, like kalimantan, have been constructed as the margins of the state, being “in need of ‘development’” (li, 1999, p. 11). the new order regime (orde baru) consequently represented itself as a government of progress, bringing development to the indonesian periphery and its inhabitants. development (pembangunan) became a crucial discourse (arnscheidt, 2009, pp. 117-124) and the indigenous population became one of that doctrine’s objects. the dayak were classified as one of indonesia’s isolated communities (masyarakat terasing) whose way of living was considered not in accordance with the standards of modern indonesia. the goal of the government was to develop these groups and integrate them into the social and cultural mainstream of the country. in practice, this meant that dayak, as well as other indigenous peoples throughout the indonesian archipelago, faced severe discrimination and assimilation policies (duncan, 2004). these included resettlement schemes, which encouraged dayak to settle in one family houses and partly forced them to destroy their longhouses as these were considered dirty, unhealthy, dangerous, and a breeding ground for communism. the promulgation of the law uu no. 5/1979 on village administration was of major significance in this process. by standardizing village structures as per the javanese model, it destroyed local political institutions and traditional forms of leadership and social organization. further development efforts attempted to eliminate autochthonous dayak belief systems as these were excluded from the official definition of religion. thus, the dayak experienced a heavy pressure to convert either to islam or christianity (henley & davidson, 2007, p. 10). finally, a variety of development efforts aimed to persuade dayak people to abandon swidden agriculture which was considered unproductive and unsustainable. programs to get dayak into wet rice cultivation were often combined with transmigration programs, which were aimed at relieving the population 34 michaela haug  aseas 10(1) pressure on java, bali, madura, and lombok while simultaneously expanding central control and a nationalist vision of development (hoey, 2003, p. 110). transmigration programs created ecological damage (e.g., the 1 million ha rice project in central kalimantan; kartodiharjo & jhamtani, 2009, pp. 47-49) and in several cases contributed to tensions between migrants and indigenous groups (duncan, 2004). the new order government increased state control over natural resources through issuing sectoral laws on forestry, mining, oil and natural gas, irrigation, and fisheries, which all facilitated resource exploitation by state and private interests (lucas & warren, 2000; thorburn, 2004). in kalimantan, natural resources, most notably timber, oil and gas, gold, and coal were extracted to generate national economic growth and to benefit the center (charras, 2005), while benefits for the local population remained limited. instead, customary rights to land and forests were increasingly marginalized, and millions of hectares of communal forests, fallow land, and forest gardens were given to logging companies or converted to commercial agriculture, jeopardizing the livelihoods of the local population (dove, 2006). with the turn of the century, democratization and regional autonomy have brought manifold changes to kalimantan. through the ‘blossoming’ of new administrative units,4 many new political and administrative centers were created throughout kalimantan, endowed with new political authority and new economic opportunities. dayak people – seen as a whole – have been empowered, with some dayak groups becoming ruling majorities in newly created regencies (haug, 2017), and dayak identities becoming (re-)constructed in various ways (widen, 2002). the resource-rich regions of kalimantan further profited from fiscal decentralization and some local governments have undertaken great efforts to improve service provision and local infrastructures. however, not all citizens have benefited equally from these changes. new processes of marginalization on regency and village levels lead to increasing inequalities (haug, 2017). furthermore, democratization and decentralization have not automatically reversed ecologically destructive practices of natural resource exploitation that emerged during the new order (warren & mccarthy, 2009, p. 227). development in kalimantan continues to be focused on the extraction of natural resources and the conversion of forests for commercial agriculture. mining will be of special importance for the future development as the masterplan for acceleration and expansion of indonesia’s economic development (mp3ei) for the period 2011-2025 designates kalimantan as the center for the production and processing of national mining and energy reserves (government of indonesia, 2011). gender (in-)equality, development, and environmental change among the dayak research on gender among dayak societies so far remains limited, fragmentary, and often raises more questions than answers (sutlive & appell, 1991, p. xi). however, despite the linguistic and cultural diversity of dayak societies, the available literature documents the broad existence of well-balanced gender relations. ethnographies describe, for example, far-reaching gender equality among the iban (mashman, 1991), 4 although this phenomenon is found all over indonesia, it is most striking in the outer islands. while between 1996 and 2007 the number of regencies increased by 7.8% in java and bali, it rose by 82% in kalimantan (brata, 2008). 35men, women, and environmental change in indonesia rungus (appell, 1991), gerai (helliwell, 2000), meratus (tsing, 1990), and kenyah (colfer, 1981, 1985, 1991, 2008). this does not mean that dayak societies are free of gender inequalities, but rather that the gender inequalities, if present, are small and often eclipsed by other categories of differentiation, for example, class in central borneo (rousseau, 1991, p. 409). gender asymmetries exist to varying degrees among the different dayak groups and are most often found in the political domain. for example, schneider and schneider (1991) describe gender relations among the selako as rather egalitarian in terms of the social relations between the sexes, however, men tend to be awarded more prestige than women and dominate political and religious positions. the balance between men and women is produced through different practices. while some dayak groups tend to minimize differences between men and women, others perceive them as clearly different but complementary. the ngaju, for example, belong to the latter. for them, ‘male’ and ‘female’ are viewed as opposing domains, which together comprise a “unity in duality” (schiller, 1991, p. 416). appell (1991) argues that among the rungus sex roles are not identical, but they are equivalent and both behaviorally and ideologically of equal importance for societal functioning: “for each skill exhibited by a male, there is an equally important one possessed by the female” (p. 10). tsing (1990), who has worked among the meratus dayak in central kalimantan, has pointed out the discrepancy that can exist between gender imagery on the one hand, and the realm of practice on the other. even though gender symmetry is an important aspect of meratus customary law and no rule or gender stereotype exists that excludes women from political activity, few women hold political office. “the performance standards necessary to create political centrality in meratus forums privilege male talents. [as a result] women, and less assertive men, become the audience for male ‘stars’” (tsing, 1990, p. 98). colfer has conducted research among the dayak kenyah in east kalimantan since the late 1970s (most recently, elmhirst, siscawati, & colfer, 2016) and describes their gender relations as “comparatively egalitarian” (colfer, 2008, p. 183). the high status of kenyah women is essentially linked to their “equality or even preeminence in economic matters” (colfer, 2008, p. 189) and the well-balanced relationship between men and women is further strengthened by the kenyah’s respect for individual autonomy. however, colfer (2008) describes how the equality of men and women in swidden agriculture has eroded through the introduction of chainsaws and outboard motors, as these have altered the relative contribution of the sexes to rice production and as such undermined an essential basis for the high status of women. chainsaws are only operated by (some) men and increased the efficiency of male work, while the tasks conducted by women continue to be undertaken with traditional technology. the outboard motors further decreased women’s autonomy vis á vis men, as women hardly travel alone with the heavy engines. furthermore, government officials and extension specialists repeatedly directed agricultural planning and training towards men, ignoring the strong role of kenyah women in agriculture. while colfer (1985) has initially expressed the fear that these processes will inevitably lead to increasing gender asymmetries among the kenyah, she meanwhile expresses some cautious optimism that kenyah women will retain a relatively high status, mainly due to young women’s passion for education (colfer, 2008). 36 michaela haug  aseas 10(1) migration to urban centers has been an important factor influencing dayak gender relations. so far, this phenomenon has mainly been explored in the malaysian part of borneo as many dayak have moved to the coastal towns of sarawak and sabah. the contributions to the edited volume of hew (2007) show that the experience of moving to town is ambivalent and “often uneven across class, ethnicity, age, marital status and location” (hew, 2007, p. 140). having grown up in relatively gender egalitarian rural environments, many dayak women experience difficulties with the unfamiliar gender hierarchies in muslim dominated urban centers. similarly, sutlive (1991) described the migration of iban into the city of sibu in sarwak which made traditional inequalities in iban society more apparent as “traditional prescriptions and opportunities for achievement . . . have given way to economic and political systems with uneven advantages for males” (p. 497). sutlive also mentions that with urbanization, prostitution has become a new income source for women and that domestic violence seems to have become an issue.5 prostitution and domestic violence are also major issues discussed in a study exploring the gendered impacts of coal mining in east kalimantan where one of indonesia’s largest coal mines (in kutai timur regency) has created far-reaching environmental change, caused processes of urbanization, and lead to an influx of migrants from other parts of indonesia (lahiri-dutt & mahy, 2008). this study shows that women have profited from employment opportunities and infrastructure improvements in and around the mine, but also that “decreased opportunities from landbased livelihoods [led] to a lowering of women’s status within the family and society whilst increasing their work burdens” (lahiri-dutt & mahy, 2008, p. 1). furthermore, alcoholism and domestic violence against women increased. several women experienced an increasing dependency on males and complained about a lack of decisionmaking power at the community level. the study included dayak communities affected by the mine, but it is notable that the majority of informants seemed to be migrant women. the expansion of oil palm as a major driver of economic and environmental change in kalimantan has fostered interest in the gendered dimension of this industry. research in west kalimantan (julia & white, 2012; li, 2015) and with several dayak communities in east kalimantan (elmhirst et al., 2015) suggests that large investments in oil palm have produced new gender inequalities, mainly due to the weak presence of women in public decision making processes, the exclusion of women from formalizing land rights, and disadvantageous labor regimes. elmhirst et al. (2015) and li (2015) further emphasize that the gendered impacts of oil palm can differ highly according to other aspects like age, ethnicity, the availability of land and capital, as well as between smallholdings and plantation schemes. in sum, the number of studies that explore the rapid economic and environmental changes in kalimantan from a gendered perspective is still rather small.6 despite some variations, the common tenor is that new gender asymmetries tend to emerge because of environmental and economic change. 5 it has been argued that bornean societies are characterized by an absence of sexual violence (helliwell, 2001; sutlive & appell, 1991). 6 i have limited this literature review to academic publications and have not included reports and so called ‘grey literature’ from ngos. 37men, women, and environmental change in indonesia maintaining gender equality in the face of change among the benuaq the benuaq belong to the barito linguistic family of southeastern borneo. until the early 20th century, they had a stratified social order which distinguished between nobles, commoners, and slaves. since then, the increasing integration into the monetary market economy and the indonesian national administration produced a new dispersion of power and prestige (gönner, 2002, p. 51; massing, 1981). most benuaq practice an extended subsistence economy (gönner, 2001, p. 171) which is characterized by a combination of swidden agriculture, extracted and cultivated forest products, and additional wage labor. the religious life of the benuaq is dominated by their autochthonous religion (venz, 2012) and christianity, which are connected in a complementary way. gender among the dayak benuaq gender equality represents a contested term, and feminist debates about the ‘equality’ of men and women have produced rather contrary positions. while liberal and marxist feminists perceive gender equality as the social insignificance of sexual differences, radical feminists insist that there are essential differences between men and women and attempt to increase women’s status by reversing those values that favor only masculinity (du, 2002, p. 3). spiro (1980) distinguishes between the “identity” and the “equivalence” meaning of equality. according to the latter, men and women are equal as long as their differences are held to be equally valuable. accordingly, du (2002) defines “a gender egalitarian society as one whose dominant ideology, institutions, and social practices value its male and female members equally, regardless of the roles they play” (p. 9). building on this equivalence meaning of equality, i argue that dayak benuaq gender relations are characterized by a far-reaching gender equality.7 this argument is based on the following observations: specific gender roles do exist in benuaq society, but they are not strictly followed and often overlap. while women do in general more housework than men and often take care of small children, it is not unusual for men to wash their own clothes, to cook, or to take care of babies, toddlers, and older children. both men and women make important contributions to economic production. men and women fulfill equally important roles in swidden agriculture and agroforestry and today both young men and women increasingly seek employment outside the village. men and women do have equal rights and access to land and other natural resources according to customary law. furthermore, customary inheritance law neither privileges male nor female children. similar to the kenyah (see above), the benuaq highly value individual autonomy, and personal authority is based more on age and personality than on gender. the autochthonous religion of the dayak benuaq encompasses both male and female creator spirits. healing rituals 7 gender relations which are not characterized by male dominance have also been termed as gender symmetries when areas of male dominance are opposed by powerful female domains (e.g., dejong, 1998; metje, 1995). the term gender complementarity is often used to stress that male and female complement each other to form a unity, while the adjective egalitarian is used to emphasize the absence of institutionalized hierarchies between men and women. 38 michaela haug  aseas 10(1) are carried out by female and male specialists, while death rituals are conducted by men only. the existence of benuaq terms for polygyny (penuyaang) and polyandry (pemaduq) suggests that both forms of marriage have been practiced in the past. standard today is a monogamous marriage. although sexual relations before marriage are restricted for young men and women, virginity is not valued as among several other dayak groups of central borneo (rousseau, 1991). marriages can be divorced with few problems and neither men nor women experience a decline in status by divorce. the benuaq have a bilateral kinship system. previously, an uxorilocal post marital residence pattern prevailed. today, young couples prefer to set up their own household, given that they can afford to do so. there is no preference for children of any sex, many couples express the wish to have at least one child of each sex. girls and boys have equal access to education, given that parents have the financial means at all to school their children. education is highly appreciated and has significantly increased with the improved availability of primary as well as higher education since decentralization (haug, 2010). female mobility is not restricted but has improved as a consequence of the shift from transportation by river to road. while women seldom travel alone on boats with outboard motors, they enjoy riding motorbikes. during my field work i met several women who use motorbikes to commute on a daily or weekly basis between their workplace and the village. the most significant imbalances between men and women among the benuaq can be found in the political realm. although there are no formal restrictions for women and there are some outstanding female leaders, formal political leadership is mainly in the hands of men. however, women are actively engaged in all kinds of political fora that i attended, for example, the newly created village parliaments (badan perwakilan kampung) or village meetings (musyawarah kampung). so far, i have not found any satisfying explanation for this imbalance. for the meratus, tsing put forward the reason that performance standards necessary to create political centrality privilege male talents (see above), however, this reason seems unsuitable for the benuaq. several of my (male and female) informants argued that women rarely want these positions because formal leaders have to spend many hours, especially during the evenings and often late into the nights, away from their families to attend rituals, meetings, and dispute settlements. these (partly not formal but moral) obligations are seen as conflicting with other tasks, primarily their role as (grand)mothers. the complex intertwinement of gender, age, and education i have argued so far that road construction and the increasing availability of motorbikes have increased female mobility. taking a closer look reveals that age matters as well. while most young people can drive a motorbike, many of those belonging to the elder generation cannot. roads and motorbikes have increased primarily the mobility of young (and middle-aged) men and women. it is also the younger generation that most often engages in wage labor. in many households, the parents (or grandparents) concentrate on swidden agriculture and agroforestry activities while their sons and daughters seek jobs to provide for the increasingly important and more regularly needed cash income. in this context, women and men are integrated differently in 39men, women, and environmental change in indonesia the gendered socio-economic systems of logging activities, coal mining, or oil palm plantations. wage labor for both men and women is often linked to ambiguous experiences. while they are empowered by their earnings and their experiences outside the village, they often find themselves placed in exploitative work arrangements and unfavorable positions within unfamiliar (gendered) hierarchies. imagining young women spraying pesticides on oil palm plantations and young men working in the logging industry, all of which have minimal security standards, illustrates that health risks are different but equally tangible for male and female bodies. the importance of age is also reflected in representations of wellbeing. the wellbeing survey which i conducted in the three research sites revealed that wellbeing varied only slightly by gender but widely by age. while the percentage of people enjoying a good life remained relatively stable in all three generations, the proportion of people who felt they suffered a bad life increased from 33% among the young people to 46% in the parent generation to 56% in the grandparent generation (haug, 2010, p. 153). this trend was extreme in the village of muara nayan, where 95% of the grandparent generation stated that they lived a bad life. instead of providing a better future for their children and grandchildren, the elder generation of muara nayan witnesses them faced with more and more problems, for example, the loss of land to oil palm plantations, the loss of gardens through forest fires, and increasing water pollution caused by nearby open-pit coal mining. the elder generation thus feels especially worried that the general condition in the village is spiraling downwards (haug, 2014c). besides age, education and family relations play an important role in the context of newly emerging inequalities. when the regency kutai barat came into existence in 2001, a large number of office jobs needed to be filled. this provided a great opportunity for the well-educated community members. for example, in the village of engkuni pasek, which has an unusually high level of formal education8 and is located close to the new administrative center, at least 30% of the households had members who got new jobs in sendawar, mainly as civil servants or teachers. men and women enjoyed these new job opportunities equally which were further supported by the close personal links between several families in engkuni pasek and the first district leader rama a. asia (haug, 2017). in jontai, gender was yet again interwoven with other aspects in the context of the logging boom which followed decentralization. people in this village benefited (temporarily) from fee payments and the opportunity to engage in self-organized logging. however, these benefits were distributed very unevenly. as i have shown elsewhere (haug, 2014b, 2017), it has been the (mainly male) village leaders and several ‘tough’ young men who gained the largest profits. benefits from the logging boom were thus not only gendered but largely influenced by age, formal authority, physical strength, and individual characteristics. 8 this can be explained through a catholic missionary school which was founded in this village in the 1950s. 40 michaela haug  aseas 10(1) conclusion and further research the situation in the three study sites shows that gender intersects with age, education, and various other aspects. it further reveals that gender relations among the benuaq have been influenced by state development policies, the growing presence of indonesian national culture, and christian proselytization – all of which are characterized by differing gender concepts and different gender hierarchies. the market integration of small and until recently rather remote communities leads to an increasing inclusion of the dayak benuaq in new economic and social systems which are characterized by different norms, values, and gender hierarchies. gender is thus not only intertwined with ethnicity, age, education, and other elements of multiple and fragmented identities but is also negotiated in increasingly varying contexts. being a man or a woman can have different meanings within one’s family, within the village, in a logging camp, or in a local government office. insights into indigenous concepts of gender, work, and the complementarity of masculine and feminine identities in southeast asia have challenged common notions of gender based on predominantly western concepts. indigenous concepts and perspectives should thus be placed center stage of future research on gender in kalimantan. already in the 1990s, van esterick (1995) argued that women’s ngos in southeast asia have embraced western gender and development discourse (often in order to receive funding) at the expense of local language, concepts, and perceptions. she consequently urged that “terms such as development, work, gender, and equity must all be deconstructed and interpreted through indigenous logic” (p. 257). this is still a cogent demand and should motivate and inspire future ethnographies. research at the nexus of gender, development, and environmental change in kalimantan should pay attention to including men as well. currently, research on the gendered impacts of development still largely focuses on women, with some recent exceptions (großmann, 2015). ngo literature tends to depict dayak women as an especially vulnerable group. this reflects social injustices caused by prevailing gender inequalities in indonesia, but it also demonstrates the need for activists to often simplify complex relations in order to raise awareness for pressing matters and expose social injustices to an audience not familiar with the issues at hand. elmhirst et al. (2015), however, show how revealing it is to overcome “overly simple dualisms such as . . . male capacities and female vulnerabilities” (p. 3). by facilitating links among different activist communities, such a perspective may be enriching for campaigns against gendered injustices. the anthropological interest for the “differences within” (moore, 1993) has gained new affirmation through the recent popularity of intersectionality (lykke, 2010) which represents a crucial approach for most recent studies. as almost all studies on gender and development reveal great ambiguities as well as the intertwinement of gender with other categories of differentiation, future research on gender and development in kalimantan should more consequently address intersectionality and explore the (re-)production of gendered inequalities as intertwined with age, ethnicity, education, class, and other aspects. drawing on the insights by tsing (1990), future research should also carefully distinguish between a) the ideational level (what values, qualities, and characteristics are assigned to men and women?), b) the normative 41men, women, and environmental change in indonesia level (which rights, roles, and responsibilities do men and women have according to a specific normative order?), and c) the level of everyday practice (how are the concepts at the ideational level and the rights and duties expressed at the normative level realized in everyday social practice?). this might lead to an analysis of how new labor arrangements within families and households challenge and change existing gender identities, gender roles, and gender relations, and to what extent this leads to changes in gender ideology, institutions, and social practices. calls to pay attention to the differences amongst women and amongst men, to the discrepancy between ideals and practice, as well as to the contextuality of gender relations have been repeatedly voiced. but this does not mean that they have become any less important. quite the contrary, with the ever more rapid pace of economic, societal, and environmental change, it is of utmost importance to understand the role played by gender in the (re-)production of inequality on one of southeast asia’s most important development frontiers.  references acker, j. 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(2009). locating the commonweal. in c. warren & j. mccarthy (eds.), community, environment and local governance in indonesia: locating the commonweal (pp. 227-253). london: routledge. williams, c. (2007). maiden voyages: eastern indonesian women on the move. singapore: institute of southeast asian studies. widen, k. (2002). the resurgence of dayak identities: the symbols of their struggle for regional autonomy are self-evident. in m. sakai (ed.), beyond jakarta: regional autonomy and local society in indonesia (pp. 102-120). adelaide: crawford house publishing. wong, d. (1987). peasants in the making: malaysia’s green revolution. singapore: institute for southeast asian studies. about the author michaela haug received her phd from the university of freiburg and is currently assistant professor of cultural and social anthropology at the university of cologne, germany. her research focuses on human-environment relations, processes of political, economic, and social change, social inequalities, gender, and rights to land and forest resources, with a regional focus on indonesian borneo. ► contact: mhaug@uni-koeln.de double inequity? the social dimensions of deforestation and forest aseas 6(2) 331330 d o i 10 .4 23 2 /1 0. a se a s -6 .2 -6 aktuelle südostasienforschung / current research on south-east asia double inequity? the social dimensions of deforestation and forest protection in local communities in northern cambodia maya pasgaard1 & lily chea2,3 citation pasgaard, m., & chea, l. (2013). double inequity? the social dimensions of deforestation and forest protection in local communities in northern cambodia. aseas austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 6(2), 330-355. in cambodia, numerous powerful drivers of land-use change threaten the remaining natural forest and the livelihoods of local communities living on the forest periphery. in an attempt to protect remaining forests, community forestry (cf) and reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (redd+) were implemented in the north-western province of oddar meanchey. this case study examines the distribution of costs and benefi ts within local communities participating in the cf/redd+ project. qualitative interviews conducted in the communities indicate how the costs of deforestation disproportionately aff ect the poorest households, which are more reliant on forest products due to less land and more insecure tenure. meanwhile, the benefi ts from cf/redd+ hardly reach these vulnerable households since their access to forest resources is constrained by physical barriers and a lack of resources or information. their ability to enjoy benefi ts from forest protection is likewise limited by social exclusion facilitated by prevailing power structures. instead, benefi ts are biased towards the better-off households who engage in forest protection activities and decisionmaking. in the context of weak governance, contested tenure arrangements, high agricultural dependency, and power discrepancies, this paper analyzes and critically discusses this ‘double inequity’ of deforestation and forest protection in cambodia, and recommendations on how to ensure more equitable distribution of costs and benefi ts are put forward. keywords: cambodia; community forestry; deforestation; equity; social assessment zahlreiche triebkräfte von landnutzungsveränderungen gefährden in kambodscha sowohl die verbleibenden regenwälder als auch die lebensgrundlagen von lokalen gemeinschaften, die am rand der waldgebiete leben. um die verbleibenden wälder zu schützen, wurden in der nordwestlichen provinz oddar meanchey community forestry (cf) und reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (redd+) implementiert. die vorliegende studie untersucht die verteilung von kosten und nutzen innerhalb von lokalen gemeinschaften, die am cf/redd+ projekt beteiligt sind. qualitative interviews, die in den dörfern durchgeführt wurden, zeigen, wie die kosten der abholzung die ärmsten haushalte, die aufgrund von weniger land und unsichereren besitzverhältnissen 1 maya pasgaard is a phd scholar at the institute for food and resource economics, university of copenhagen. her research focus involves the local impacts of redd+ from a socio-political perspective. contact: mase@ifro.ku.dk. 2 lily chea is a project manager assistant at the ngo fauna and flora international in cambodia. 3 the authors would like to thank christina ender and phat phanna for their valuable support and company during fieldwork in oddar meanchey. we are also grateful to all community forestry program staff of pact cambodia for providing insights, feedback, and documents for the study. a special thanks to amanda bradley for her collaboration and constructive feedback to the paper. we also wish to thank the residents of the study sites for their help in participating in our interviews. finally, the first author gratefully acknowledges the financial assistance from wwf/ novozymes that made this fieldwork possible. aseas 6(2) 331330 abhängiger von forstprodukten sind, unverhältnismäßig stark treffen. indes bewegt sich der nutzen von cf/redd+ weg von diesen benachteiligten haushalten, weil ihr zugang zu waldressourcen durch physische barrieren und einen mangel an ressourcen oder informationen eingeschränkt ist. ihre möglichkeiten, mehr vorteile aus dem waldschutz zu ziehen, werden zudem durch soziale exklusion, die durch vorherrschende machtstrukturen bedingt wird, begrenzt. stattdessen profitieren bessergestellte haushalte stärker, indem sie sich an maßnahmen zum schutz des waldes und an der entscheidungsfindung beteiligen. im kontext von schwacher governance, umkämpften besitzverhältnissen, hoher abhängigkeit von der landwirtschaft und machtdiskrepanzen analysiert und diskutiert dieser artikel die „doppelte ungerechtigkeit“ von abholzung und waldschutz in kambodscha und bringt vorschläge für eine gerechtere verteilung von kosten und nutzen vor. schlagworte: abholzung; community forestry; fairness; kambodscha; soziale bewertungskriterien introduction in many south-east asian countries, rapid and extensive deforestation and other massive land-use change have not only impacted both nature and ecological services, but also local livelihoods. cambodia is perhaps the most extreme case due to the compression of many sources of change in a short period of time and a relatively small space (hall, hirsch, & li, 2011). these trends have concerned researchers (e.g. le billon, 2002; poffenberger, 2009) as well as development agencies and donors in the past decades (e.g. danish ministry of foreign affairs [danida] & department for international development [dfid], 2006; thul, 2011). at the local, regional, and national scale, various drivers such as agricultural expansion by local communities and economic land concessions (elcs) by private companies led to deforestation in cambodia (poffenberger, 2009) – particularly in the north-western province of oddar meanchey (bradley, 2009). in an attempt to protect remaining forests, the cambodian government and international donors initiated a national community forestry (cf) program, with projects emerging from this program in the early 2000s (the center for people and forests [recoftc], 2011), following the trend of many other south-east asian countries and regions across the world. more recently, projects under the reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (redd and redd+) program have also emerged, with cambodia’s first project established in oddar meanchey (united nations redd programme [un-redd], 2010). despite the growing number of critical studies on redd+ (e.g. hansen, lund, & treue, 2009; thompson, baruah, & carr, 2011), international organizations plan and maya pasgaard & lily chea double inequity? aseas 6(2) 333332 implement these projects together with government agencies at a fast pace and extensive scale across continents (cerbu, swallow, & thompson, 2011). social cobenefits and local livelihoods are high on the agenda; yet, social assessments of the feasibility and implications in the participant communities are lagging behind (jagger, sills, lawlor, & sunderlin, 2010). the proposed social assessment approaches rely heavily on quantitative measures, while aiming at capturing the complexities of redd+, such as intangible issues of participation and diverging interests of various stakeholders (e.g. thompson, baruah, & carr, 2011). thus, there seems to be a gap or mismatch between the realities of redd+ and the proposed social assessments relying on indicators, which preferably are tangible, measurable, and observable (pasgaard, 2013). for instance, while equity is one of the main challenges in redd+ (e.g. springate-baginski & wollenberg, 2010), few indicators describe intra-community political impacts, which could help to assess equitability in the distribution of costs and benefits. indeed, intra-community indicators describing existing or changing power relations among groups or individuals in a community are needed to assess people’s rights to access and use resources, e.g. to reveal if restrictions of use disproportionately affect poorer people (schreckenberg et al., 2010). drawing on empirical data from oddar meanchey, this paper aims to address this specific gap in social assessments by investigating how the costs and benefits from forest protection under cf/ redd+ are distributed within communities. first, the paper provides the background for the study followed by a presentation of the redd+ initiative. second, the theoretical foundation is presented, followed by the methodology of the case study. subsequently, the paper presents and discusses the results of the case study from a distributional equity perspective and concludes by suggesting specific recommendations to ensure increased equity in redd+. background the case study site throughout south-east asia, redd+ initiatives are emerging in a context of high deforestation rates and rapid land-use change. in an attempt to protect the remaining forests in cambodia, the government, working together with donors, began to esaseas 6(2) 333332 tablish a national cf program, which was officially recognized as a national policy in 2003 (recoftc, 2011). in the north-western province of oddar meanchey (see figure 1), which has suffered from a deforestation rate of more than 2 percent decline in forest cover per year (bradley, 2009), 13 cfs have been established and are managed by local communities. these cfs provide the platform for the country’s first redd+ demonstration project initiated in 2008, followed by the approval of the national un-redd program a few years later (un-redd, 2010). the redd+ project in oddar meanchey cfs is expected to provide financing and development to the communities through carbon credits generated from the forest protection and regeneration (terra global, 2012). the 13 cfs in oddar meanchey participating in the redd+ demonstration project consist of 58 villages and cover an area of approximately 68,000 hectares of forestland (see table 1). an international ngo (pact) and two local ngos maya pasgaard & lily chea double inequity? figure 1: the oddar meanchey province bordering thailand which includes redd+ project sites. source: kmusser (2010) aseas 6(2) 335334 (children’s development association and monks’ community forestry) facilitate the preparation and implementation of the cf/redd+ project in partnership with the government (the forestry administration). in the cfs, the management committees have the main responsibilities and decision-making power, including recruitment and fund management, and these committees are elected by cf members on five-year terms (royal government of cambodia [rgc], 2003). in order to reach the targeted emission reductions, the redd+ project aims to mitigate the local drivers of deforestation, including the conversion of forestland to agriculture by the increasing number of residents who rely on cropland (blackburn, 2011). specific project activities that aim to reduce deforestation in the project area include the reinforcement of forest land-tenure and formulation of land-use plans as well as a range of site-based activities, such as community-based forest protection, introduction of fuel-efficient stoves, agricultural intensification, and development of non-timber forest products (ntfps) (terra global, 2012). according to the forest administration, a minimum of 50 percent of net income from the sale of carbon credits, after project costs are covered, is expected to flow directly to local communities (bradley, 2009). both monetary and non-monetary benefits from the protection of the forest (e.g. in terms of ntfps) are to be shared among the community members. one of the main policy docutable 1: the 13 community forestry groups in oddar meanchey, the number of villages and people involved, membership rates and size of the cf. (* sites included in the study) source: pact 2012 angdong bor chhouk meas* dung beng ou yeay kaov phaav prey srorng* prey srors ratanak ruka rolus thom romdoul veasna samaky* sangkrous preychheu* sorng rokavorn* total 99 42 100 74 100 71 97 79 46 100 44 62 100 81 6,114 383 1,843 960 2,025 6,344 1,604 12,872 2,666 6,016 1,079 4,151 18,261 64,318 3,267 641 1,611 577 1,383 3,058 1,371 16,214 4,123 4,252 2,669 2,179 3,551 44,896 4 1 4 1 4 5 2 16 4 4 4 3 6 58 villagescommunity forests population cf members (%) cf size (ha) aseas 6(2) 335334 ments calls for a pro-poor approach to benefit sharing to specifically ensure that the poorest households receive substantial benefits from the project (terra global, 2012). drawing on empirical findings from oddar meanchey, the question of how costs and benefits from cf/redd+ are shared within communities on the ground is addressed in this paper. first, some background on deforestation and migration in the province is provided, as the direct drivers of and the patterns inscribed in pressures on land and forest resources play an important role in the analysis of distributional equity within communities. deforestation and migration pressures in oddar meanchey complex factors at the local, national, and regional level drive deforestation in cambodia – and in the oddar meanchey province in particular (table 2). at the local level, agricultural expansion, forestland encroachment, and illegal logging as well as land speculation and firewood consumption lead to deforestation (bradley, 2009; strange, theilade, thea, sloth, & helles, 2007). at the national and regional level, large-scale economic land conmaya pasgaard & lily chea double inequity? table 2: drivers and agents of deforestation in oddar meanchey. source: adapted from terra global (2012). forest clearing for land sales conversion to cropland conversion to settlements fuel wood gathering forest fires induced to clear forest understory forest fires induced by hunters illegal logging for commercial on-sale timber harvesting for domestic use large economic land concessions timber concessions x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x huntersprivate companies other nonlocal local communities migrants soldiersdeforestation driver aseas 6(2) 337336 cessions (elcs) as well as influential elites and the military drive deforestation through the encroachment on forests and crop land (poffenberger, 2009). these actors are often reported to be involved in illegal logging of valuable timber (e.g. sidon, 2011). behind these direct drivers are underlying causes contributing to deforestation such as poverty and population growth, pushing migrants to clear land and settle in the forestrich remote provinces like oddar meanchey (un-redd, 2010). weak forest sector governance, external commercial interests, elcs granted by the government, and displacement of rural populations aggravate the problem (un-redd, 2010) with high levels of corruption and violence in the forestry sector also playing a role (global witness, 2007). furthermore, the influx of poor, landless people to oddar meanchey and other forestrich resource frontiers plays an important role in the competition for land and resources (united states agency for international development [usaid], 2004). indeed, communities in the area are relatively young. a household survey conducted in the province shows that on average, people migrated to their present villages in 1999 with a steady rise of migration until the mid-2000s, when the migration rate leveled off (blackburn, 2011). in a migration study, mcmahon (2008) notes how community leaders in oddar meanchey around the turn of the century freely allowed newcomers to join and clear necessary land with available labor as the only apparent limitation. recent years of violent upsurge and unrest at the thai-cambodian border has brought military families to the province, adding a further dimension to the migration pressure. for instance, more than 740 migrant families have moved into one of the cf areas over the past two years, claiming land for settlement and cultivation in local communities, while forestry officials have been unable to control their widespread clearance of forest (bradley, 2012). underlying these deforestation and migration pressures are insecure and contested land tenure arrangements in cambodia (so, 2010). land tenure security and rights to carbon are central themes in redd+ and essential to the discussion of benefit distribution (e.g. sikor et al., 2010; springate-baginski & wollenberg, 2010). yeang (2012) analyzes tenure and redd+ in oddar meanchey, arguing that in addition to securing tenure rights over land and forest resources of local communities in the project, tenure arrangements need to be continuously enforced in order to avoid overlapping claims. it is important to distinguish between forest tenure, which is strengthened under cf and redd+ (yeang, 2012), and agricultural tenure arrangements in the participating communities (biddulph, 2011). while the rights to the forest, trees, and caraseas 6(2) 337336 bon are directly related to the implementation and success of redd+, land rights and patterns for settlement and farming affect deforestation and benefit sharing in a less direct way. based on research in oddar meanchey, biddulph (2011) for instance argues that people with insecure access to agricultural land present a greater threat to the forests than people with secure access, as the latter have less incentive to clear patches of forest for land use. from this perspective, agricultural tenure is strongly linked to deforestation and in turn the success of cf/redd+. the role of agricultural tenure for the distribution of costs and benefits within communities participating in cf/redd+ in oddar meanchey are further discussed in this paper. equity in redd+ mcdermott and colleagues (2013) provide a comprehensive conceptual framework that identifies and brings together three dimensions of equity in redd+, namely distributional, procedural, and contextual equity. distributional equity is a major concern and widely discussed in the redd+ literature, e.g. in terms of which actors should have the right to benefit from the program (angelsen, brockhaus, sunderlin, & verchot, 2012; van noordwijk, purnomo, peskett, & setion, 2008). procedural equity relates to representation, participation, inclusion, and recognition in decisionmaking processes, while contextual equity concerns the underlying political processes and the social context; the latter issues are often overlooked and underplayed in the design of interventions such as redd+ (hansen, lund, & treue 2009; mcdermott, mahanty, & schreckenberg, 2013). at the center of investigation, distributional equity provides the main theoretical anchoring in this paper for the assessment of how costs and benefits are shared within communities. in this context, the intra-community level represents the specific target and social scale of the study (mcdermott et al., 2013), namely the individual and household level. the three dimensions of equity are not separate elements but highly interrelated and interdependent, and issues concerning procedural injustice and contextual dimensions are continuously present and affect distributional equity. in particular, social exclusion, constrains to access, and existing power structures are recurrent issues in redd+ that can compromise distributional equity. additional maya pasgaard & lily chea double inequity? aseas 6(2) 339338 insights in these matters are therefore provided in the following. threats to an equitable distribution of benefits the risk of social exclusion from forest benefits has been studied and documented in various forest conservation projects, indicating problems with elite capture and exclusion of certain groups (edmunds & wollenberg, 2003; dahal, larson, & pacheco, 2010). studies on community forestry groups in nepal, which are at a more advanced stage than in cambodia, point to the exclusion of certain disadvantaged user groups as a serious equity concern. studies describe how poorer households benefit significantly less than wealthier households, as the poorer face more restricted access and are often excluded from the forest management decision-making body (adhikari, di falco, & lovett, 2004). decision-making bodies are often dominated by wealthier groups who have greater levels of awareness, while poorer groups have limited information and greater time constraints (malla, neupane, & branney, 2003). for instance, decisions by resource-rich groups also concern the principles applied for the distribution of benefits, e.g. whether benefits should be allocated in proportion to contribution (merit-based), in accordance with needs, or based on other criteria (mcdermott et al., 2013). such principles are central to distributional equity, in particular in contexts of procedural inequity, where disadvantaged groups are excluded from participation or decision-making or are less able to contribute to forest protection activities (agarwal, 2001). paying special attention to the social context and structures within communities is likewise essential in order to understand how costs and benefits are shared. patron-client systems are informal social structures, which can affect distributional equity. these structures are highly relevant in a cambodian socio-political context and can play an important role in community-based forest protection programs such as cf/redd+. scott (1972) defines a patron-client relationship as a largely instrumental friendship in which an individual of higher socioeconomic status (patron) uses his or her influence and resources to provide protection or benefits for a person of lower status (client) who reciprocates by offering general support and assistance to the patron. cambodian socio-political life is replete with such patronage networks involving exchange of resources and benefits between individuals (hinton, 2005). complex, interrelated networks of clients and powerful patrons are clearly prevalent aseas 6(2) 339338 in the forestry sector (global witness, 2007; le billon, 2000, 2002). since strong formal institutions are often absent or incomplete in this context, such informal institutions can emerge with socially shared rules that converge or diverge from formal rules (helmke & levitsky, 2004). historically, patron-client structures have flourished in both colonial and post-colonial times, with brutal consequences in cambodia during the khmer rouge regime in the late 1970s (hinton, 2005). new external resources for patronage such as development programs have also been created, in which jobs, cash, and favors can flow down the network, and votes and support can flow upward (ledgerwood, 1998; scott, 1972). such changes in the external environment may change the distribution of power and resources within a community, strengthening actors who benefit from a particular informal setup while weakening others (helmke & levitsky, 2004). in other words, patronage practices seem to co-evolve with the development of the country (e.g. hughes, 2001; ledgerwood, 1998, 2012). cf and redd+ projects fall into this category of developments introducing decentralized control of physical and virtual forest benefits. with an electoral system, the leaders and committees are appointed by the members (rgc, 2003), providing the potential clients (cf members) with a new resource, namely the power to re-elect and support the appointed patron (cf leader). in return, the leader can use his or her discretionary power to control the access to forest resources, for instance, by distributing benefits suc has employment (appointing selected patrol teams) and permits (to extract resources) (ministry of agriculture, forestry and fisheries [maff], 2006). methodology the findings presented in this paper are mainly based on a case study conducted in oddar meanchey in 2011. data primarily consist of semi-structured interviews with local villagers in five cf sites (eight villages in total, see table 3). the main interview questions revolved around respondents’ crop land and land titles, their use of the forest and engagement in cf and redd+ activities as well as their views on deforestation and their future plans for agricultural expansion. in total, 114 qualitative interviews were conducted (see table 4 summarizing the main results). interviews were conducted in khmer (native language of one of the authors) and maya pasgaard & lily chea double inequity? aseas 6(2) 341340 ranged from 15 minutes to over 60 minutes. the selection of respondents was random and covered about 10 percent of the village residents. being an explorative study and one of the first of its kind to qualitatively assess local impacts from cf/redd+ in the province, a relatively open and flexible interview approach was chosen. this allowed for many follow-up questions based on the respondents’ answers, which often led the interview in unpredictable directions revealing useful information related to the three dimensions of equity. relevant site-specific field observations were also an essential part of the data collection and subsequent analysis. for instance, wealth status was assessed and assigned for each respondent using a combination of infortable 3: description of the cfs and villages included in the study community forest chhouk meas prey srorng samaky sangkrous preychheu sorng rokavorn brief description established in august 2004 as a response to increasing levels of deforestation. the cf covers 166 families. established in 2004 and covers 666 families. the forest is rich in timber resources and abundant wildlife, but was logged by a thai company and influential elites between 1999 and 2003, and locals have cleared the forest land for farming. established in 2004 and covers 686 families. historically, this cf was rich in high quality timber and abundant wildlife, but has been logged by locals and influential elites, and cleared to provide agricultural land. initiated in 2001 and covers 633 families. the forest holds important mammal and bird species and a resin enterprise group was initiated in early 2010. initiated in 2001 by the local monk, venerable bun saluth, who took the lead in setting up a “monk’s forest”, which evolved into community forestry. covers 982 families. one of the largest cfs, with many bird species and mammals, including endangered species. villages included in study chouk meas korki kandal sralau srorng ou sramor ou anrae day thmey tom nub thmey poum thmey source: pact (2011) community forestry profiles * cf area based on cf agreement aseas 6(2) 341340 mation gained from the individual interviews (e.g. amount of land, type of land title, and income sources) and field observations (e.g. type and location of settlement, clothes, and jewellery). besides wealth, respondents were categorized according to their settlement location and entitlement to farm land, and their position and engagement in the cf. in-depth interviews and meetings with other stakeholders (government authorities, ngos, and donors) were also conducted, and various secondary data sources were exploited. deforestation, forest protection, and equity as outlined above, the extensive and rapid land-use changes and deforestation in the oddar meanchey province and throughout cambodia show significant implications at the local community level. similarly, forest protection initiatives such as cf/redd+ lead to changes in the participating communities. empirical findings from the case study in oddar meanchey suggest that both deforestation and forest protection affect equity in its various dimensions. two aspects here are of particular relevance: first, to what extent deforestation and migration patterns coupled with contested tenure arrangements affect the poorest in the local communities; and second, to what extent are forest benefits from cf/redd+ biased away from the poorest households, facilitated by a complicated web of constraints and social structures. maya pasgaard & lily chea double inequity? table 4: the main socioeconomic data from case study conducted in cf/redd+ communities in oddar meanchey province 2011. source: unhcr, 2000, p. 98. *land title recognized by village chief, district authorities and/or the commune council 114 (across 5 cfs and 8 villages) poor 29% medium 45% rich 27% 3.6 ha (29% with land title*) 54% (13% involved in forest patrols) 68% 25%44.350% f 50% m gendernumber of respondents average age wealth assessment farm land (average) cf members desire more land experienced evictions aseas 6(2) 343342 figure 2: local perceptions on deforestation represented as percentage of respondents who mentioned specific drivers (grey) and agents (black) of deforestation in their area of residence. while many mentioned agriculture and timber collection as drivers, specific deforestation agents were pointed out in terms of military, high ranking people and “company” (referring acquisition of land by external business companies for plantations or mining). these local perceptions highlight not only the diverse and powerful pressures on the land and forests, but also indicate clear knowledge in the communities about the agents of deforestation, including their own critical role in forest clearings for agricultural purposes. source: data collected by the authors agricultural expansion timber/wood collection high ranking people military company (land concession) 70% 33% 16% 10% 10% the costs of deforestation and migration among the poorest in oddar meanchey, findings show how the local perceptions on deforestation presented in figure 2 confirm the drivers outlined in table 1. according to many respondents in the case study, village chiefs, local and district authorities as well as ‘people with guns’ are involved in capturing the benefits of natural resources. in one of the villages visited during the case study, several respondents reported how the village chief threatened them to sell their land to him at a low price, after which he would sell it to a company with substantial economic surplus. such aseas 6(2) 343342 examples of land grabbing4 and evictions, some involving threats, violence, and undercompensation, seem to be common in the province (mengleng, 2011). among the respondents, fewer than one in three had a land title5 formally recognized by authorities while one in four of the respondents was somehow affected by land grabbing. typically, their previous agricultural land or settlement had been taken over by outsiders such as plantation companies or the military, forcing them to migrate; or some or all of their present land was demarcated for take-over. in oddar meanchey, the real or perceived threat of land grabbing led villagers in some of the visited sites to clear the forest land for agriculture in order to ‘claim’ it, thereby intensifying deforestation (nathan & boon, 2012). however, even if local or district authorities recognize a land title and communities have crops on the field, concession companies frequently take over the land, maybe with a small compensation or with the promise to hire workers from the villages. from an intra-community equity perspective, the findings from the case study indicate that land grabbing and companies’ demarcation of villagers’ land disproportionately affect the poorest households. poorer households are more vulnerable and less resilient in a variety of ways. first, the empirical data and interviews suggest that better-off groups of respondents have more diverse and stable livelihood options in terms of larger land and more secure tenure as well as other sources of income. in contrast, the poorer respondents have no or less land, often without formal titles, and they rely more on forest resources such as non-timber forest products (ntfps) and wood for charcoal production – resources which are in decline due to the rapid deforestation and land-use changes. even with the extensive and on-going land grabbing in the area, the interviews revealed that the vast majority of respondents planned to expand their current agricultural land; however, these plans or desires were often constrained by lack of resources or available land. the opportunities to fulfill this desire diminish with the expansion of elcs and the increased protection of forestland, which comes at a greater prize to the poor and landless that are short of other means to sustain their livelihoods. secondly, the migration and settlement dynamics in the communities also disadvantage the poor. as noted earlier, villages and communities visited during the case 4 in this paper, land grabbing refers to large-scale land acquisitions on villagers’ crop land, either legally granted by the government or through illegal, forced encroachment (for further discussions on land grabbing, see anseeuw, alden wily, cotula, & taylor, 2012, p. 11, or de schutter, 2011, who refers to land grabbing as the “acquisition or longterm lease of large areas of land by investors” (p.249)). 5 a formal land title is signed by the village chief and with stamps from the district authorities and/or the commune council, the latter considered more ‘secure’ than the signature only. maya pasgaard & lily chea double inequity? aseas 6(2) 345344 study were relatively young. on average, the respondents had moved to their respective villages about 10 years ago. the influx of people has historically been driven by relocations related to the actions, downfall, and aftermath of the khmer rouge regime (1975-1979, followed by unrest and civil war until the 1990s). more recently, the perceived opportunities for getting agricultural land in oddar meanchey have attracted the poor and landless from both adjacent provinces and the lower mekong area. according to some of the older settlers interviewed, the first people who migrated to the villages could clear the forest for agriculture “based on their abilities” (personal communication, july 6, 2011). today, the case study findings suggest that new migrants have to buy land from other villagers because there is no more free land available. interviews and observations in oddar meanchey indicate that early migrants settled by (or formed) the main road, while recent migrants settle off the main road at smaller < nearest forest nearest district town > crop fields crop fields crop fields figure 3. typical village structure. sketch map of a fictive village in a community participating in the cf/redd project in oddar meanchey. larger settlements with houses with a concrete base and red metallic roofs are often situated along the main road with their crop fields extending outward from the back of the house. these houses dominantly belong to the early migrants. the more recent migrants often settle at a distance to the main road in smaller wooden houses along the small dust roads with little or less land for agriculture. source: authors aseas 6(2) 345344 dirt roads (figure 3). what is crucial to this settlement pattern is that land concessions are often planned and realized at a certain distance away from the main road. consequently, the settlements and agricultural land of the poor located at a distance to the main road face a higher risk of land grabbing than the land near the main road belonging to the wealthier group. with the presence of companies and the threat of losing land, poor villagers are then pushed to seek other means of survival. without alternative sources of subsistence there appears to be no local safety net to alleviate the negative social consequences for the poorest groups. several respondents stated in the interviews that they were depressed and left with no options but to work for hire or (illegally) migrate to neighboring countries to work at plantations under harsh conditions (barney, 2009). in sum, the costs of deforestation and migration disproportionately affect the poorest groups. how benefits from the forest protection are allocated within communities is detailed below. benefits from forest protection: constraints and deliberate exclusion in the cf/redd+ villages studied in oddar meanchey, the most vulnerable groups appear to be excluded from the benefits of cf (bradley, 2012). several constraints can hinder villagers from participating and enjoying the benefits of forest protection and thereby lead to distributional inequity. by analyzing recurring themes in the interviews, four types of constraints became apparent: disabilities such as physical health (e.g. amputee or old age), resources such as money to buy petrol for patrolling or time to engage in cf activities, distance to the forest such as when limited resources (e.g. mushrooms) are captured by the villagers residing closer to the resource, and information such as being present during recruitment and having access to knowledge about activities. for instance, a village deputy stated that his cf now covers more than 100 families, but about 10 families were not members because they lived too far from the forest or were sick. four male respondents, all amputees (missing a leg or a foot), did not engage in the cf because of their disabilities. one of them explained this was because of a requirement to join activities like patrolling. others said they got no information about enrolment, including an elderly woman who claimed she was not informed because she was old and incapable of contributing to any cf activities. several respondents said they did maya pasgaard & lily chea double inequity? aseas 6(2) 347346 not participate in activities because they were too busy working or due to a lack of financial support for petrol to travel to the forest. all four constraints can, to different degrees or acting in synergy, limit the ability of a person to join the cf and/or participate actively, in particular in patrolling activities, during which many forest products (e.g. mushroom, fish, fuel wood) can be extracted. in turn, such constraints can exclude a person or household from enjoying the forest benefits because of their lack of contribution to the cf. the background for applying distributive principles based on contribution can be found in the cf regulations. while the sub-decree on cf management states that cambodian citizens living within the participating communities can be members, it also lists the roles and duties of community forestry members, including participation in forest resources management, in monitoring the use of community forest resources, and in conserving, protecting, and planting the forest (rgc, 2003). all these duties require a certain level of good health and available resources not likely to be present in all strata of a community. whether these legal requirements are even feasible and how and to what extent they are followed across the cfs is likely to vary. according to the sub-decree, the specific benefit sharing principles are part of the cf regulations passed by the individual cf management committees (rgc, 2003, article 5.8) who engage in decision-making and contribute to forest protection. empirical findings from five cfs show that in many instances, only the better-off households can afford to engage and participate actively in the management of the cf, consequently dominating decision-making bodies and enjoying the benefits of forest protection. the case study also indicates that the requirements of active participation are explicitly interpreted at the local level when it comes to extracting forest benefits. this is true both for non-members or non-active members, who willingly or less willingly disengage with the cf, and for the cf committee and other active members, who expect to get a larger share of the forest resources, including expected benefits from carbon funding. as told by a former cf patroller (personal communication, samaky cf, july 6, 2011): subcommittee told me i could collect timber during patrols, but [i] never got the benefits from the sale, which were shared among other patrollers and [cf] committee. from the perspective of the cf committee, the biased distribution of benefits is considered fair, as reflected in interviews with two cf leaders: aseas 6(2) 347346 [we/i] don’t want to distribute in cash to all members . . . the [carbon] funds will contribute to village development, and cash will provide to the members who are active in patrol activities, to fire breaker building and so on. for those who are not active, they will not get any cash. (personal communication, samaky cf, july 2, 2011) the committees and members who are active will get benefits from the [carbon] project, such as the patrol team for example. (personal communication, prey srorng cf, july 13, 2011) moreover, the empirical findings indicated a risk of inequitable distribution of benefits when some cf members were deliberately kept out of the information flow and thereby not able to participate. this in turn ensures a larger share of the benefits for the other members. it can happen when the cf leader calls in (or refrains from calling) individual members to participate in patrols or delegates this task to selected patrol team leaders. a few respondents directly accused high level cf members, who control the information flows and delegates tasks, of (de-)selecting certain members when benefits were ready to be extracted. several indications of such deliberate exclusion and unequal benefit sharing were found, for instance as put forward in an interview with a former cf patroller: [i] used to be active [in cf], but stopped being called to patrols and other activities five months ago . . . other cf members share the benefits among them. [i] didn’t get any benefits – other members do – [there is] favoritism of a closed group of related patrollers who keep the information and benefits to themselves. (personal communication, samaky cf, july 5, 2011) following up on statements as the ones presented above, a further investigation of the cf structures was conducted in order to explore the internal relations among some of the active cf members. this study revealed that many members of the management committees and forest patrol teams were often relatives, neighbors, or otherwise closely acquainted, e.g. with a shared history of settlement, as reflected in figure 4. finally, some respondents also directly accused their cf committee of illegal activities depleting the forest for personal gain, as exemplified by a male interviewee: some members collect valuable, endangered timber for sale. [there are] no big trees left. subcommittee and leader [are] involved. now, a few people work with patrolling and do timber business” (personal communication, samaky cf, july 6, 2011). these accusations and their relation to the social structures in the cfs are discussed below from an equity perspective together with the other findings from the case study. maya pasgaard & lily chea double inequity? aseas 6(2) 349348 discussion and conclusion put together, the findings from the case study in oddar meanchey indicate the following: the poorest households are often more recent migrants with less secure tenure and risky settlement locations. as a result, this group is disproportionately affected by land-use changes in terms of deforestation and land grabbing. meanwhile, the sharing of the benefits from protecting the remaining patches of forest seem to be biased away from the poorest households, facilitated by various constrains and social exclusion. in turn, the risk of inequity is two-fold, as both costs and benefits are shared unevenly within communities, creating a ‘double inequity’. the case study specifically indicates that the poor are more reliant on forest products due to less agricultural land and more insecure tenure. in turn, as the poorest respondents are excluded or constrained from enjoying the benefits of the remaining forest protected under cf/redd+, this minimizes the role of the forest in providing livelihood alternatives or supplements. this poses figure 4: diagram of relations in cf. a fraction of relationship mapping of the structure in one of the oddar meanchey cfs. full arrow indicates blood relatives. dashed arrow indicates a historical link or a settlement relation (* the cf leader urged other families from her former province ta keo to settle in oddar meanchey). source: data collected by the authors village chief (m) house on main road came from ta keo cf patrol team leader (m) house on main road cf member (m) house on main road came from ta keo cf leader (f) house on main road came from ta keo* former khmer rouge village deputy (f) cf member house on main road came from ta keo timer trader (m) no cf activities cf cashier (f) cf patrol team leader (m) cf patrol team leader (m) son son sibling cousin son neighbors relative/ neighbor aseas 6(2) 349348 a serious concern for reaching the equity objectives and social co-benefits in redd+ (un-redd, 2009). although framed as constraints to participation and deliberate exclusion, these types of social exclusion can also be viewed from a broader “access” perspective (ribot & peluso, 2003) as “the ability to derive benefit from things” (p. 153). in this perspective, access includes a wider range of social relationships that constrain or enable benefits from resource use. shaping how benefits are gained, controlled, and maintained, the mechanisms of access also include technology, capital, markets, labor, knowledge, authority, and identities. several of the issues covered in this analysis clearly relate to these mechanisms, such as knowledge (e.g. information about cf enrolment and patrols), authority (legal or customary rights to manage resources), labor (e.g. forest patrol), and social relations and identity (e.g. distribution of and exclusion from benefits). in particular, identity and social relations were shown to profoundly affect access and distributional equity, based on cf membership positions and forest patrol groupings facilitated by prevailing power structures. empirical findings specifically raise concerns about the presence of patron-client relations in the cf management with their interdependencies and mutual exchange of benefits. the social structures seem to pose a risk, not only to the equitable distribution of benefits but also in terms of facilitation of illegal forest activities, such as logging of valuable timber, within the core clientele. combined with the exclusion of peripheral members, such activities can potentially flourish and be effectively covered-up to the benefit of the patron and the selected core clients. the forest offenders could thereby be the same people who are supposed to monitor illegal activities, and they could easily blame outsiders or the lack of funding for protection activities to cover their own illegal extraction. however, such potential illegal activities are frequency-dependent, as too much illegal harvesting will harm project outcomes and in turn reduce carbon funds, while some illegal harvesting might go unnoticed. it also depends on whether the long-term perspective of forest protection outcompete the short-term gains in the offenders’ view. arguably, even with some slip, the illegal activities are fewer than with no protection at all. the management committees and in particular the cf leader, who are selected to represent the community, are granted an important domain of power to shape resource access and rights on the ground (larson, marfo, cronkleton, & pulhin, 2010). this is of concern in relation to procedural equity and benefit sharing – at least on the daily basis, where the elected committee acts at the local level without interference from forestry aumaya pasgaard & lily chea double inequity? aseas 6(2) 351350 thorities and cf/redd+ implementing agencies, who visit the sites and meet with the leaders only when time and resources allow. the findings presented in this paper question the common development discourse arguing that democratic institutions play a largely positive role in catalyzing pro-poor policies (see hickey, 2009). instead, the formal democracy in cf structure and procedures tend to reinforce social and economic inequities in the community (young, 2000) as benefits are captured and distributed in already present informal institutions. thus, while such community-based programs seem ideal, there is a strong likelihood that the newly created structures will come to mirror prevailing patron-client structures that dominate the region, and it is unreasonable to assume that forming new committees through elections will automatically create a nonbiased and representative body (ledgerwood, 1998). the practical outcome of the forest tenure arrangements in cf/redd+ in oddar meanchey then falls between a statutory system with legally defined and enforced rules and rights, such as cf regulations, and a customary system with rules that are socially defined, where some community members participate in decision-making while simultaneously taking on exclusion and monitoring responsibilities (doherty & schroeder, 2009). the case study findings suggest that simply formalizing customary tenure will not automatically yield positive outcomes to all members of communities. thus, even when laws are seemingly fair, they can be unevenly implemented or selectively enforced, and are thereby not sufficient to overcome existing inequities (larson & ribot, 2007). from a more practical perspective, policies promoting participation and assisting poor and marginalized groups across rural cambodia and beyond require the engagement of such private power structures at the village level, even at the risk of legitimizing and becoming reliant upon these networks for the implementation of projects (hughes, 2001). this in turn presents a dilemma and a challenge for policy makers and practitioners on how to integrate development goals with culturally embedded power relations in the implementation of policies such as redd+. in the case presented here, the biased distribution of both costs and benefits creates a double inequity for the most vulnerable groups in the participating local communities; quite contrary to the ambitious social objectives of the forest protection programs. from a policy perspective, such adverse impacts on local actors could even compromise the overall effectiveness of redd+ (doherty & schroeder, 2011), which highlights the relevance of assessing the local equity dimensions. aseas 6(2) 351350 tackling the social implications of deforestation and forest protection in order to ensure more equity is not an easy task. however, based on the findings and analyses in this paper, five recommendations (to researchers, donors, and practitioners) on how to address the sharing of benefits from remaining protected forests are presented (see also suggestions by mahanty, burslem, & lee, 2007). besides strengthening formal institutions as a catalyst of informal institution change over time (helmke & levitsky, 2004), one of the greatest challenges here and now lies in how to ensure that forest management committees and leaders are more representative and accountable to the community. specific measures suggested to ensure this could be: 1. granting special consideration to non-members and to members who are not active in cf. project implementers who are responsible for reaching social objectives should strive to ensure that benefit sharing principles are agreed on and implemented accordingly, such as a need-based or pro-poor approach outlined in the project design document (terra global, 2012, see the fourth point below); 2. using a rotational system for patrol teams and committee members (the fiveyear duration could potentially be reduced and re-election prohibited) to increase participation and representation. however, the time limit could potentially enhance illegal activities as offenders would seek to optimize benefits during their time of authority. this could potentially be counteracted by: 3. involving a so-called external insider in each cf management group as a respected figure who can mediate conflicts and improve internal unity (dahal & adhikari, 2008). specifically for cambodia, greater involvement of buddhist monks beyond sorng rokavorn cf which is mainly managed by monks (e.g. brady & rukavorn, 2011) might mitigate risks of exclusion and illegal harvesting. besides these three specific measures, more comprehensive interventions are needed: 4. pro-poor initiatives and policies6 should be considered, such as special incomegenerating projects and land allocation (dahal et al., 2010) and pro-poor benefit sharing mechanisms to balance the equity in the communities and create incentives towards forest protection. finally, to alleviate detrimental social impacts 6 for the oddar meanchey redd+ project, specific social objectives and activities have been outlined based on the findings from this and other studies, including improved inclusion and representation of the poorest in management committees and cf activities, frequent visits to vulnerable households, and continued research and surveys to capture changes in livelihoods (terra global, 2012, p. 164). maya pasgaard & lily chea double inequity? aseas 6(2) 353352 from both land grabbing and inequity in cf/redd+, 5. strengthening the conflict management capacity is needed for building trust and common understandings, for example, with the establishment of legal recourse mechanisms to ensure people’s rights. in order to asses and address these social dimensions at the intra-community level, specific mechanisms and minimum standards for benefit sharing are needed (mahanty et al., 2007), supported by comprehensive social assessments including more qualitative indicators such as indicators reflecting people’s ability to participate in decision making and to access resources (pasgaard, 2013). importantly, in-depth qualitative research is valuable to supplement quantitative household surveys at individual sites. the scenario described in this paper is probably not unique to oddar meanchey. rather, it is likely that other communities in cambodia and throughout south-east asia, where forest protection is high on the agenda, exhibit similar social imbalances and risk of enhanced inequity. the findings indicate an urgent need to better address distributional equity in community-based forest protection like cf/redd+. such programs cannot afford to further increase the already skewed social 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(2012). reduced emissions from degradation and deforestation in community forests – oddar meanchey, cambodia. developed by terra global capital for the forestry administration of the royal government of cambodia. project design document for validation under climate, community & biodiversity standard (version 3-0). july 26, 2012. thompson, m. c., baruah, m., & carr, e. c. (2011). seeing redd+ as a project of environmental governance. environmental science & policy, 14(2), 100-110. thul, p.c. (2011, august 9). world bank stops funds for cambodia over evictions. reuters. retrieved from http://www.reuters.com/assets/print?aid=usl3e7j920d20110809 united states agency for international development. (2004). cambodia: an assessment of forest conflict at the community level. washington, dc: usaid. united nations redd programme. (2009). what are the multiple benefits of redd+? un-redd programme. retrieved from un-redd website http://www.un-redd.org/aboutunreddprogramme/globalactivities/ new_multiple_benefits/tabid/1016/default.aspx united nations redd programme. (2010). national programme document – cambodia. un-redd programme 5th policy board meeting, unredd/pb5/2010/9. washington, dc: united nations. van noordwijk, m., purnomo, h., peskett, l., & setion, b. (2008). reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (redd) in indonesia: options and challenges for fair and efficient payment distribution mechanisms. working paper 81. bogor, indonesia: icraf. yeang, d. (2012). community tenure rights and redd: a review of the oddar meanchey community forestry redd project in cambodia. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 5(2), 263-274. young, i. m. (2000). inclusion and democracy. oxford, uk: oxford university press. maya pasgaard & lily chea double inequity? east timorese in australia: affective relations, identity, and belonging in a time of political crisis hedda haugen askland ► askland, h. h. (2014). east timorese in australia: affective relations, identity, and belonging in a time of political crisis. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 7(2), 199-216. this article considers the relationship between the east timorese diaspora and its homeland. more specifically, it explores how a group of east timorese exiles living in melbourne, australia, who left east timor or were born in exile from the time of the 1975 civil war up to the end of the indonesian occupation of the territory in 1999, was affected by the 2006–2007 political conflict in east timor. the article considers how past diasporic practice established the east timorese community in melbourne as a largely homelandfocused community and how the subsequent centrality of the discourse of home exposed the exiles to the political events of 2006–2007. through an analysis of pierre bourdieu’s (1977) notions of habitus and practice, the article explores how the crisis affected the exiles’ sense of self, community, and nation, and how it led to a process of negotiation whereby the notions of the homeland and exilic longing were muted through a gradual movement away from the translocal sphere. the article represents a contribution to the discussion of diaspora as process, condition, and consciousness; that is, diaspora as a dynamic, culturally and politically reflexive group that mediates between and negotiates competing pressures of multiple homes, cultures, and social domains. it sheds light on issues related to political mobilization, peace, and conflict, and the role of reciprocity, trust, and emotions. keywords: east timorese diaspora; emotions; habitus; political unrest; translocal practice  dieser artikel betrachtet die beziehung zwischen der osttimorischen diaspora und ihrer heimat. er untersucht, wie eine gruppe von osttimorischen exilantinnen in melbourne, australien, die in der zeit zwischen dem bürgerkrieg von 1975 und dem ende der besetzung durch indonesien 1999 osttimor verlassen hatten oder im exil geboren waren, von dem politischen konflikt 2006–2007 betroffen wurden. aufbauend auf pierre bourdieus (1977) vorstellung von habitus und praxis analysiert der artikel, wie die krise die wahrnehmung des selbst, der gemeinschaft und der nation durch die exilantinnen beeinflusste und wie sie zu einem prozess der verhandlung führte, durch welchen die vorstellungen von „heimat“ und sehnsucht sich durch eine graduelle entfernung von der translokalen sphäre veränderten. der artikel stellt einen beitrag zur diskussion über diaspora als prozess, bedingung und bewusstsein dar; das heißt diaspora als eine dynamische, kulturell und politisch reflexive gruppe, die den druck multipler heimatorte, kultureller und sozialer sphären aushandelt. er wirft licht auf themen in zusammenhang mit politischer mobilisierung, frieden und konflikt sowie die rolle von reziprozität, vertrauen und emotionen. schlagworte: emotionen; habitus; osttimorische diaspora; politische unruhen; translokale praktiken aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 14 .2 -5 200 hedda haugen askland  aseas 7(2) introduction [w]hen you look at it [the violence] from the outside – it’s so sad, so sad. it’s far too sad … and all these kids, the burning stuff, what are they doing? what is the government doing? where is the law? where is the respect? why are these kids burning stuff? why, why is this happening? in late april 2006, politically and ethnically motivated violence erupted in the east timorese capital, dili. following the 2002 independence, the lack of significant progress on key socio-economic variables such as health, income, and employment had led to increased frustration and disgruntlement, particularly among the country’s youth. while high youth unemployment, increasing poverty in rural areas, and falling per capita incomes were undoubtedly part of the mounting tensions of 2006, the proximate cause of the violence can be traced to the dismissal of 594 soldiers of the national army, falintil-forças de defensa de timor-leste (f-fdtl). in january 2006, the dismissed soldiers, known as ‘the petitioners’, had complained about unfair treatment of soldiers from the western part of the country, citing grievances such as limited opportunities for promotion, poor service conditions, and abusive discrimination by officers from the eastern part of the country. their complaints were dismissed and, when their problems remained unresolved, they deserted. refusing to accept their subsequent dismissal, the petitioners’ protests became increasingly vocal. as the crisis escalated, they were joined by other east timorese who sought to use the situation to convey discontent with the government and the impoverished situation of the country, as well as youth gangs who expressed rivalries and hostility across the east-west axis. with the security forces in conflict and with battles among several street gangs spreading across the capital, the east timorese government called on the international community to restore order. at the same time, the prime minister, mari alkatiri, was under increasing pressure from all sides of the political spectrum – including members of his own party (fretilin). alkatiri resigned on 16 june 2006 and, after parliament’s appointment of the independent candidate josé ramos horta as the country’s interim prime minister and the establishment of a new un mission, a process of reconciliation and rebuilding began. the crisis resulted in the death of at least 37 people, the internal displacement of approximately 150,000 people, and the destruction of more than 14,000 homes and buildings in the capital (un, 2006; undp, 2011; vieira, 2012). it exposed unresolved ideological and strategic differences of the independence movement, as well as ethnic and regional divisions and limitations of institutional, political, and economic sectors. economically, the crisis set the country back dramatically, leading to more unemployment and restrictions in the delivery of social and welfare services (undp, 2011). physically removed from the unfolding conflict, east timorese living in exile watched the breakdown of national consensus with a sense of bewilderment and shock. as is suggested by the epigraph, the exiles struggled to comprehend the turn of events. how could the peace they had all fought for disintegrate so easily? where was the unity? where were their leaders? what were the motives of those fighting? the questions were manifold and the crisis caused a sense of ambiguity, which triggered yet another set of questions related to association, belonging, and the sense of 201east timorese in australia self. while none of the exiles had anticipated that independence would be without challenges, the 2006–2007 political crisis and the subsequent breakdown of national consensus were beyond their expectations. the thought of east timorese fighting east timorese, of east timorese people themselves causing suffering and pain to the nation’s young and old, had been a distant fear, for many too surreal to consider a possibility. in contrast to the timorese in east timor, many of whom were aware of the tensions that led to the conflict (silva, 2010), the exiles’ engagement with local social dynamics in east timor were in general restricted to the level of the family and they received relatively little information about the complex dynamics that underpinned simmering social conflicts, political tensions, and symbolic battles at the local level. explanations of the crisis, which included native theories such as social envy and corruption, arrogance of political leaders, and lack of recognition of past suffering (silva, 2010, pp. 109–110), as well as consideration of socio-political, sociocultural, and socio-economic factors were thus employed in hindsight. this article does neither analyze the causes of the crisis, nor the exiles’ explanations or rationalizations of the events. rather, it focuses on how the exiles experienced the crisis, the affective response triggered by the conflict, and the subsequent questioning of identity and belonging. the article, which forms part of the project ‘east timorese in melbourne: community and identity in a time of political unrest in timor-leste’ (askland, 2009), is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted within the east timorese community in melbourne during the time of crisis.1 based on an understanding of diasporic communities as dynamic, culturally and politically reflexive groups that mediate between competing pressures of multiple homes, cultures, and social domains, i explore how the exiles’ experiences of the crisis form part of an ongoing process of negotiation, where cultural codes, values, meanings, and expectations shape the dynamics of their post-independence identities in intricate ways. i take as my starting point the observation that concern for family and friends at home is a continuous issue facing refugees and exiles (varvin, 2003, p. 16), and that news about violence and unrest can be associated with intricate and complicated feelings of anxiety, fear, guilt, remorse, disappointment, and loss. there is no uniform or simple answer to how conflict, violence, and unrest in the homeland affect exile and refugee communities; rather, the particularities of the refugees’ flight, the nature of their exile, the specific character of the conflict, and variation in cultural and moral discourses may provoke diverse reactions and manifest in individuals’ lives and exile communities in different ways. placed within the discipline of social anthropology, this article is indebted to phenomenology, particularly the phenomenological tradition that focuses on worldly 1 the paper is based on eight months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted with the east timorese community in melbourne in 2006–2007, as well as two months fieldwork in dili in the period between march and may 2006. the fieldwork incorporated research strategies such as participant observation, including neighborhood studies, engagement with various organizations, and participation in community events; semi-structured interviews; and discussions with non-timorese individuals in key roles associated with the community, such as community workers, youth workers, and members of various solidarity organizations. for the melbourne part of the fieldwork, a total of 56 east timorese were formally interviewed; the number of individuals who informed the study is, however, much higher due to the nature of the fieldwork, which incorporated informal conversations with community members in their homes and at community events. 202 hedda haugen askland  aseas 7(2) existence (over transcendental essence) and embodied practice (over pure form). in line with phenomenological thinking, i try to grasp social processes through the phenomenology of individual experience, and the social world – local and translocal – of the exiles is conceived of as constituted through a dialogue between the self and their environment(s). with pierre bourdieu’s theory of practice (1977) as a theoretical point of departure, i explore the conjuncture of the individual subjective experience and the more objective frames within which this unfolds.2 the article is divided into four main parts. first, i present a brief outline of the east timorese community in melbourne and explore how a notion of reciprocity formed part of the establishment of the community as a homeland-focused diaspora. understanding the exiles’ reactions to the crisis and its implications on diasporic practice requires recognition of their past histories and imagined future; the exiles’ experience of and reactions to the political conflict are closely connected to their hopes and expectations of independence and the community’s history as a highly transnational homeland-focused diaspora. this is followed by an exploration of how the exiles were exposed to and how they experienced the crisis. i thereafter consider the exiles’ affective responses to the conflict before, in the final section, presenting the theoretical analysis of the affective responses and the associated process of negotiation of identity and belonging. east timorese in australia there is some uncertainty about the size of the east timorese community in australia, though estimates suggest that the number of individuals born in east timor – estimated at 9,320 – and their descendants total between 15,500 and 20,000 (abs, 2006; askland, 2009, pp. 25–26). the majority of the east timorese in australia arrived in the period between 1975 and 1999 as political refugees in a diaspora born of catastrophe – a brief civil war between the political parties união democrática timorense (udt) and frente revolutionaria de timor-leste independente (fretilin), followed by the indonesian invasion and occupation of the territory. most of the departures were traumatic and coerced, and the suffering of the occupied homeland exerted a powerful influence on the community. subsequently, the diaspora grew as a “community of co-responsibility” (werbner, 1998, p. 12), which, through political mobilization and material gestures, maintained and remained part of east timorese longdistance nationalism (wise, 2006). the majority of refugees, together with many second-generation youth, participated in a protracted political campaign aimed at national liberation and, throughout the occupation era, the diaspora played a central role in the campaign for selfdetermination. the political struggle drove, directly or indirectly, social and cultural activities and lay at the heart of the exiles’ collective imagination. through efforts to educate the international community about the tragic plight of east timor, for 2 while much could be said about the relationship between bourdieu’s theory and phenomenology, this is beyond the scope of the article. for the purpose of the discussion presented here, it is sufficient to note that bourdieu’s ‘theory of practice’, despite its inherent criticism, is highly dependent on phenomenology. for in-depth analyses of bourdieu’s critique and the alignment between his theory of practice and phenomenology, see, for example, endress (2005), throop & murphy (2002), and lau (2004). 203east timorese in australia example political campaigns, humanitarian fundraising, and aesthetic performances of cultural identity, the east timorese refugees tied themselves to the suffering of their family and friends in east timor and experienced it themselves as participants of the liberation struggle. the actions of the people living in exile maintained a level of diplomatic pressure on international power brokers and ensured that the east timorese people’s cause was not forgotten. at the same time, the political campaign and the sense of imagined community on which it rested provided a means by which the refugees could participate in and maintain important social relationships and alleviate feelings of loss and guilt associated with their flight. because of the political campaign, the east timorese exile community developed as a highly homeland-focused community, and the community emerged largely unified and coherent. the community was, however, never a homogeneous group and, behind the unified front of resistance, ethno-linguistic, generational, political, and socio-economic differences existed. within the overarching community, there are smaller ‘sub-communities’, including the ‘twin communities’ (thatcher, 1992) of the timorese chinese and the mestiço3/indigenous timorese, the political groupings udt and fretilin, and the group of young ‘modern timorese’ who are committed to the preservation and regeneration of east timorese culture and cultural identity. in conjunction, the diaspora is today marked by the divergent experiences of those who were politically active throughout the indonesian occupation of east timor and those who refrained from participating in the campaign. whereas those who were intimately involved in the resistance movement had vested interests, motivations, and hopes for independence, those who did not engage in the independence campaign demonstrated greater openness to change and were not affected by the intense emotional proximity between east timor’s independence and the image of self. in this article, i focus on the narratives of a group of firstand second-generation east timorese who were actively involved in the resistance struggle and who, throughout the occupation years, imagined exile as temporary displacement. these groups, which cross the ethnic and political sub-groupings of the community, are united by the similarity of their exile identities and the political campaign. throughout the occupation years, they intertwined their exile identities with the symbols of home and return (wise, 2004, 2006), and – at a higher level of abstraction – a moral order of reciprocity. before continuing the discussion, a brief note on the logic of reciprocity is required, as it forms part of the east timorese cultural framework. the logic of reciprocity the logic of reciprocity is central to east timorese sociality (askland, 2009, pp. 127–129; fox, 1993; mcwilliam, 2005), and notions of exchange and a dualistic organization of the world are prominent across the east timorese landscape. a fundamental epistemological orientation exists which provides, as andrew mcwilliam (2005) observes, “a focus for the articulation and celebration of connections that bind individuals and households within an historical and symbolic unity” (p. 32) and connect people to a ‘historico-mythic’ past. moreover, as he argues in a separate article 3 the term mestiço refers to people of mixed portuguese and timorese ancestry. 204 hedda haugen askland  aseas 7(2) about the fataluku community of east timor, “[a]ncestry, the mythic origins of settlement and the memorialised spatio-temporary trajectory of the clan provides an enduring basis for contemporary social practice and claims to resources” (mcwilliam, 2007, p. 363). this notion of origins and conceptions of precedence is characteristic of most austronesian societies and is frequently paralleled with an idiom of exchange (fox, 1996a, 1996b). in eastern indonesia, such conceptions often feature with dyadic categorizations or a dual organization of social and cosmological elements (fox, 1989; traube, 1980, 1986; van wouden, 1968). cultural and social icons are ordered according to a system of complementary categories; that is, they are classified into pairs of opposites such as male/female, elder/younger, above/below, outside/inside, heaven/earth (fox, 1996b, p. 132; soares, 2003, p. 34; traube, 1986, p. 4). the symbolic dyadic scheme represents various realms of experience and forms part of social institutions, ritual practice, and myths. east timorese anthropologist dionísio da costa babo soares (2003) argues that “traditional thinking regarding dual categories might have some influence on the way the political forms of expression and explanation of life processes among the east timorese are formulated” (p. 35). according to soares, the dual category of the past and the present/future has become particularly pervasive in post-independence east timor and in the east timorese people’s portrayal of struggle. through this dualism, the east timorese engage the past as a source to explain, classify, or predict contemporary events and possible future events (soares, 2003, pp. 38–39). it implies an idiom of reciprocity and exchange, through which the social order (as well as the balance between the cosmos and the living world) is sustained. the cultural code of reciprocity and the associated notion of morality run through the east timorese society and form part of the east timorese people’s perceptions, explanations, and rationalizations of post-independence realities. elizabeth traube (2007) and kelly c. silva (2010) have shown how the notion of reciprocity and a sense of a failure on the part of the nation to fulfill expectations of reciprocity underpinned the political crisis of 2006–2007. i have argued elsewhere (askland, 2009, 2014) that the logic of reciprocity is also relevant in understanding the east timorese exiles’ post-independence practice and their rationalization of contemporary events. despite their detachment from traditional belief systems, cosmology, and social life, the east timorese living in exile have retained the notions of morality and the dualistic complex of east timorese society. this is demonstrated by their responses to the political crisis and their (subsequent) negotiation of boundaries, belonging, and, ultimately, identity. experiencing the conflict at the time of my fieldwork, the exiles remained bewildered and emotionally confused as to why and how the peace could have been broken so easily. they asked questions like the following: how could their leaders and their people allow things to go this far? how could they let go of the peace that they – the people – had sacrificed their lives for? why was there no interference to ensure that suffering and trauma did not again become the reality of the timorese people? as these questions remained unanswered, the exiles were left with a sense of hopelessness and emptiness. these 205east timorese in australia emotions were expressed in both formal conversations between the study participants and myself and in more informal interactions at family and community events. they illustrated an intense emotional connection between the exiles’ selves and the homeland, and manifested an emotive void in which their past and imagined future were confronted by the new reality introduced by the crisis. the distress experienced by the exiles has to be seen not only in relation to their past ventures and imagined futures, but also to their present situations, which – in most circumstances – were shaped by their position in the translocal sphere.4 whereas only a minority of the exiles repatriated after independence, the majority continued to engage in translocal activities. this typically included receiving and sharing information from and with friends and family in east timor, remittances to family members at home, and a continued engagement with and concern about east timorese politics and culture. some of the exiles also reclaimed property left behind at the time of flight; others bought land in east timor considering the possibility of a future return ‘home’. with property and family in east timor, many of these individuals experienced the crisis in a direct manner: some received threats to their family and property in east timor and others’ houses were attacked and burned to the ground. many have family and friends who were forced to leave their homes and seek refuge in camps around dili or with relatives in other districts. although these camps would protect their loved ones from any immediate threat of violence, the exiles remained concerned about their situation due to the poor living conditions in the camps and the disruption that the violence caused to their families’ lives. limited and often contradictory information fueled people’s concerns for family and friends, and they were often left in a state of panic as they received news about violence but were unable to contact their loved ones; either because they had fled to areas without phone coverage or because dili’s phone network had broken down. the direct exposure that many of the exiles had to the crisis is exemplified in chen’s story.5 chen is a fifty-year-old timorese chinese man who has visited east timor numerous times after he left the country in 1976. following independence, chen started to consider moving back to east timor in order to start a small business. reflecting upon the logic of reciprocity, he explained that “i wanted to contribute to east timor, and i thought that i could do so by creating my own business”. he continued, that “it would create employment and help stimulate the economy. of course, i hoped to get a small profit, but this was only secondary, it was because i am east timorese that i wanted to do this. i wanted to give something back.” chen had planned to return to east timor for six years, sacrificing his prospective earnings in australia and leaving his wife and children in melbourne; but after the crisis he reconsidered his plans. as he explained, “i was willing to sacrifice a lot, but my own safety, my own life – i don’t think so”. 4 i adopt greiner and sakdapolark’s (2013) definition of ‘translocal’ and ‘translocality’ as a description of “socio-spatial dynamics and processes of simultaneity and identity formation that transcend boundaries – including, but also extending beyond, those of nation states” (p. 373). as a term, translocal(ity) refers to phenomena that involve mobility, migration, circulation, and spatial interconnectedness that may exist within and beyond national boundaries; it refers to “simultaneous situatedness across different locales” (brickell & datta, 2011, p. 4). 5 pseudonyms are used throughout this article. 206 hedda haugen askland  aseas 7(2) chen’s perception of the risk involved in moving to east timor was largely influenced by his experience of the crisis, as mediated through his family in dili. speaking about the crisis, chen appeared quite distressed and upset. with an empty look in his eyes, he told me how one of his brothers was forced to flee and seek asylum in australia on humanitarian grounds.6 his brother, half chinese and half ‘easterner’, had been threatened by local gangs, as well as by a senior commander of the police: [w]hen the police chief knows [that my brother had travelled to the east] and he ring him and threaten him, saying ‘you involve with lorosae [easterners], you be careful’. so that’s why my brother was scared and wanted to come to australia. with the local, he say that with the local, not, not, you know, [this] happens all the time, but with the police chief he started to worry and also there were a few people, timorese young people who said, they threatened him and said ‘i’m going to rape your, i’m going to rape your daughter’. so when all this happened, my brother said that, how can we stay here? you know, that’s why he came … they have a small clothes shop in there, so people came and they asked for money and they threaten him and also they throw rocks all the time in the night. chen explained how the crisis brought back terrible memories about the invasion and occupation. the distress, fear, and worry that he felt were further exacerbated by the uncertainties connected to the crisis: what was really happening? who was behind the violence? what would happen next? these concerns echoed in the narratives of other participants who emphasized the hardship of not knowing what was happening at any given moment and the inability to help. they expressed feelings of helplessness and hopelessness, restlessness and numbness, often coupled with a sense of guilt due to what they perceived as their privileged position as members of a second national community, earned by their flight from east timor. during the indonesian occupation, emotions such as these underpinned a sense of migration guilt, which added force to the exiles’ translocal practice during the occupation years. australian anthropologist amanda wise (2004), who did research with the east timorese diaspora in the period between 1998 and 2002, argues that many of the protest events of the resistance struggle “appeared to represent spaces in which east timorese refugees were able to participate in strategies of intensification” (p. 27). drawing on ghassan hage’s (2002) concept of migration guilt – that is, guilt resulting from the inability of exiles to participate in, and share, the faith of the family, community, or communal group that “provided them with [the] gift of commonality” (p. 203) – she explains how the sense of guilt experienced in the face of the suffering of those who remained in east timor “translated into a desire to participate in the political struggle” (wise, 2004, p. 27). the sense of migration guilt underpinning the political mobilization of the diaspora reflects the logic of reciprocity discussed previously. considering the continued relevance of the logic of reciprocity to the exiles’ 6 there is no official information available about the number of east timorese who have sought asylum in australia as a consequence of the political crisis of 2006–2007. i was told by community workers who were intimately involved in the cases of east timorese refugees that ten people sought asylum on humanitarian grounds. according to chen, his brother’s application for protection was approved by the refugee tribunal in 2007. 207east timorese in australia translocal activity, it could be expected that the feelings that emerged in the shadow of the political crisis of 2006–2007 would lead to the reappearance or enhancement of migration guilt and its associated practices. however, while an initial intensification of feelings of guilt materialized, this did not translate into translocal practices. rather, there appeared to be a decrease in translocal activism in the aftermath of the crisis. at the time of my fieldwork, the exiles were, as is suggested in the following quotes, increasingly moving away from the translocal sphere: plans of future return were discarded; people were cautious about participating in fundraising activities, withdrawing both material and symbolic support of community activities; and east timor was left out of many of the exiles’ plans for the future. and then the problem start, everybody just feel numb. they feel numb. and when i see, and sometimes i end up with some people in the street or in the shopping center and they say ‘my hope is gone. i have no more hope. i stay here it doesn’t matter. i hoped to go to east timor, but i stay here’ … for me, [the crisis] affect me a lot because i always think that my kids would go back to east timor … now they all think no more security to go. better we stay here. it affects me a lot … i think more than the invasion. we used to do fundraising, but at the moment people are a bit disappointed. the community, i don’t know what happened with the other groups, but the one that i am representing now are really badly disappointed. because they said, ‘we’re helping’. for what? to be destroyed again? that’s why they, they think now, we’re sort of like in intermission. they are watching … they want to help. but then we said, and people, suddenly everything happen, with all the things that has been happening, maybe we send it there and then the container will stay at the port for two-three years, and then they rampage everything to go in and after that … it’s just better we wait and see until things settle to help in different ways. the crisis instigated a limited response from and within the community. with the exception of a few public forums, none of which were organized by east timorese community organizations, there was no communal response to the crisis. the forums, which reflected a discourse removed from the affective domain of the exiles, were dominated by australian people concerned about the development in east timor and representatives of civil society organizations, and only a small number of east timorese attended. the sense of disengagement propounded by the lack of participation in communal events and the reduction in material and symbolic support suggest a gradual diminution of indebtedness and guilt. understanding the disengagement and limitations of material and physical responses require further exploration of the exiles’ affective reactions to the events and how these relate to the logic of reciprocity. this will be explored next. 208 hedda haugen askland  aseas 7(2) affective responses community members were deeply saddened and disappointed by the turn of events. reflecting on the years of occupation – the suffering of the east timorese people, their own suffering, the sacrifices, and the hard work for freedom and peace – they felt a loss and found it difficult to comprehend the situation. they articulated a range of feelings including anger, frustration, sadness, and concern. they felt angry because of the senselessness of the violence; frustrated because of the lack of responsibility shown by the political elites;7 sad because of the continued suffering that the violence brought on their people; and concerned about how the violence might affect their family, friends, and the future of east timor. the political elite’s perceived lack of willingness to reconcile and the subsequent spiral of violence led to feelings of embarrassment and shame. discussion within the australian media and among australian politicians, academics, and everyday australians on the question of whether or not east timor was presenting as a failed state (askland, 2009, pp. 152–155, 175) fuelled these sentiments, which compounded concern about the reactions of the international community and the worry that the fight for independence would be seen as a fraud. how could they defend their right to independence when people were fighting among themselves? how could they claim a right to democratic self-governance when the political elites engaged in infighting, corruption, and nepotism and when a state of anarchy reigned? how could they defend the nation that they fought for when the unity on which it rested was threatened by regional feuds and divisions? we had a once-in-a-life-time opportunity and if we didn’t take advantage of this thing – you know last year [2006], april and may, that was the most painful to look at. i feel embarrassed. i feel worse. people say, ‘hey, you are timorese, you are killing each other!’. i feel embarrassed. they say that, sort of in joking sense, but i feel it very heartfelt, this is really much, much more than a joke or a comment. i feel a lot deeper than that … before it was easier. when you go against somebody else it was easier. you have someone to yell at. we are fighting a harder battle right now. in a sense it is a battle where you don’t have directions … who are we going to scream at? no enemy. different directions. you can’t blame one leadership, you can’t blame the government. you can’t blame the politicians. it’s harder than before right now. 7 the crisis triggered much criticism of the east timorese political elite, several of whom spent the occupation years in exile. it is worth noting that the exiles focus their critique of the political leadership on the role of prime minister mari alkatiri, president xanana gusmão, and former guerrilla leaders such as francisco guterres (lu’olo) and taur matan ruak, none of which were former members of the melbourne diaspora. their criticism follows party lines, with fretilin supporters questioning the role of gusmão in the lead up to and during the crisis and udt supporters focusing on the role of the fretilin leadership, in particular alkatiri and guterres. in contrast, politicians who had spent the occupation years in australia, such as estanislau da silva and emilia pires, were seen by many of the exiles (particularly udt supporters) to be the key for east timor’s future and it was suggested that they would play a role in changing the political culture of the country. 209east timorese in australia the feelings of shame and humiliation furthered a process of othering (said, 2003, p. 332), which had been initiated after independence. the declining levels of translocal activism and the increased emotional distance resonating in the exiles’ narratives are expressions of the exiles’ movement away from the translocal sphere. paradoxically, these actions and the attempts to restrict or reduce the emotional intensity of their relationship with east timor are in themselves depictions of the strength of their affective relations with the nation; they are responses to intensely felt emotions rising from the symbolic proximity of the former refugees’ image of self and their lives in exile to the discourse of home, nationhood, and ancestry. the feelings of anger, sadness, frustration, and embarrassment indicate the continued relevance of the logic of reciprocity and the exiles’ ongoing engagement in a collectivist discourse that underpins east timorese communal life. the emotions signal the presence of a social bond; the events matter to the exiles because of their enduring social, cultural, and historical association with the community. according to scheff (1990), the “primary social emotions” that convey such social bonds are pride and shame. he argues that “pride is the sign of an intact bond; shame a severed or threatened bond” (p. 95). the feeling of pride arises from conformity to exterior norms and the subsequent reward of others’ respect, admiration, and esteem. shame, on the other hand, is a result of the non-conformity to exterior norms and the subsequent loss of deference (scheff, 1990; velayutham & wise, 2005, p. 37). the political crisis represented a breach of the norms to which the east timorese nation and its people were expected to adhere and, through the australian media’s portrayal of the events and the public discourse about the crisis, the exiles experienced decreasing support and esteem for the young nation. the crisis represented the nation’s failure to comply with its obligations towards the community set by the moral code of reciprocity and the social discourse of communalism (askland, 2009, pp. 75–76, 127–129; silva, 2010; traube, 2007). this moral discourse posed expectations that – due to the suffering and sacrifices of the east timorese people in the name of independence – the nation would compensate those who fought for its existence by ensuring peace and prosperity (traube, 2007). it is in the shadow of the nation’s failure to comply with the idiom of exchange and reciprocity that the social bond between the exiles and the east timorese nation is renegotiated and transformed (askland, 2009). in the following section, i will explore this process of negotiation and the paradox of the exiles’ ongoing engagement with the discourses from which they attempt to distance themselves. affect, identity, and negotiation of boundaries reflecting on the ambiguous and dynamic nature of exile, wise (2006) states that “individuals, communities, homelands, and countries of refuge are always situated within and in relation to a changing grid of circumstances and power relationships” (p. 7). intensely felt experiences of changing circumstances, which engage the individual through its involving and affecting effect, can lead to a renegotiation of boundaries, identity, and belonging. according to this, we can expect the 2006–2007 crisis, due to its affective implications, to inform the continuous process of negotiation and transformation of boundaries of belonging. as illustrated above, the exiles showed, 210 hedda haugen askland  aseas 7(2) at the time of my fieldwork, a physical distancing from the translocal sphere and an effort to emotionally detach themselves from the discourse of the homeland. these are practices underlying the east timorese exiles identity and belonging. how, then, does the crisis affect identity and belonging? an exploration of bourdieu’s (1977) theory of practice and his argument about the reproduction of habitus can help illuminate some of the processes at stake. in contrast to identity, which can be defined as “a reflexive construct or experiential modality through which one knows oneself and claims recognition” (leve, 2011, p. 513), habitus refers to the principles of generating and structuring practices and representations that produce and reproduce identity “through particular dispositions and structures of perceptions which are associated with a sensory environment” (askland, 2007, p. 240). it is acquired through primary socialization in childhood and adolescence, but is continuously reproduced and transformed, building on, or responding to its past conditions (bourdieu, 1977). it embodies the individual’s personal history, including her or his social location (class, ethnicity, gender, etc.), and is constructed through the individual’s practice within specific cultural, social, and historical contexts. as such, it reflects the collective history of the group (or variety of groups) to which the individual belongs as well as the individual’s biography. according to bourdieu (1990), the reification of habitus will protect it from “crises and critical challenges by providing itself with a milieu to which it is as pre-adapted as possible” (p. 61). it makes “systematic ‘choices’ … among the places, events and people that might be frequented” (p. 61), ensuring its reproduction and the creation of meaning and practice through familiar fields and a known milieu. however, to presume that individuals can refrain from potential discordance between the subjective dispositions and the objective structures that form their habitus is problematic. people may be exposed to situations in which they have no such ‘choice’; they may be forced to move from their known milieu – as is the case with refugees and asylum seekers – or political or social circumstances may change to such an extent that the social world loses its familiarity. bourdieu (1977) makes reference to such ‘crises’ when he argues that, [t]he critique which brings the undiscussed into discussion, the unformulated into formulation, has as the condition of its possibility objective crisis, which, in breaking the immediate fit between the subjective structures and the objective structures, destroys self-evidence practically. it is when the social world loses its character as a natural phenomenon that the question of the natural or conventional character (phusei or nomo) of social facts can be raised. (pp. 168–169) such crises bring the embodied assumptions underlying identity and practice into the sphere of consciousness. faced with the reality of the political crisis, the east timorese in melbourne experienced a personal and communal crisis in which they were forced to question the character of their social world. while the crisis had only limited, if any, impact on the exiles’ everyday practice, it manifested itself in the translocal sphere in which the exiles’ social worlds of home and exile meet, and in the affective dimensions that are integral to their conception and experience of self. this was particularly evident in their emotive response to the crisis, which indicated 211east timorese in australia a heightened awareness of the subconscious classifications that guide their practice and a heightened reflexivity about their situation and position within the translocal sphere. although the development of habitus forms a significant part of bourdieu’s theory, his framework remains vague on the question of how this process takes place, let alone the role of emotions in the generation of habitus. in general, bourdieu (1977) argues that habitus is “laid down in each agent by his earliest upbringing” (p. 81), and he emphasizes the notion of field, capital, and practice, particularly as it relates to significant others. it can be argued that this emphasis on the role of primary socialization incorporates a notion of emotions, as emotions and affect are central to the primary world into which a child is born. indeed, as rew and campbell (1999) argue, “the domain of family and kinship … contributes centrally to the emotional salience of identity” and the family “provides the context, the models and the means by which key understandings regarding personhood, selfhood and individuality are learned and internalised by children” (p. 17). through gradual accumulation of experience, children develop a sense of identity, personhood, and selfhood; that is, they develop an internal mental representation of self as well as a cultural or collective representation that reflects their positioning within social realities (rew & campbell, 1999). emotive behavior and affective expressions manifest in the interactive pattern between a child and her or his significant others and mobilize a defined sense of association and belonging. accordingly, the process of primary socialization not only equips the individual with cognitive abilities, skills and competence, capital, knowledge, and meaning; it also bestows an experiential dimension onto the habitus in which emotional expressions engender beliefs, attitudes, and desires that motivate and guide social participation and practice. as part of the habitus, emotions guide practice and subsequently form part of its development. inherent in this argument is the possibility of affective experiences leading to change, negotiation, or transformation of the habitus. the intensely felt (negative) emotions evoked by the political crisis in east timor caused a disruption between the participants’ subjective dispositions, their experience of self, and the social world to which they relate. whereas emotions form an intimate part of individuals’ daily lives, not all affective experiences will cause experiences of disruption or change; the intensity of the emotions resulting from the crisis is what put the conventional character of the exiles’ social worlds at odds with each other. bourdieu (1984) acknowledges that people may be affected in various ways and to different degrees by similar events depending on their position within physical space and variance in social distance. drawing on this point, hage (2002) contends that, [a]n intensely experienced reality is not the same as a ‘hard hitting’ reality. intensity has more to do with the extent to which the reality is involving and affecting … an intense reality is primarily an intense relation where the person’s engagement in reality contribute [sic] to construct its intensity. (pp. 193–194) i have argued that east timorese discourses, particularly those of reciprocity, national unity, and freedom, form a central part of the exiles’ perception of self, commu212 hedda haugen askland  aseas 7(2) nity, and nation. the engagement with east timorese discourses and their influence on the exiles’ habitus (specifically the habitus of those who were active in the political struggle for independence) denotes the intense nature of this relation. rather than resulting from physical closeness, the intensity of the relation results from the affective and symbolic proximity of east timorese discourses and their intimate, often subconscious, presence in the exiles’ being-in-the-world. the involving and affecting character of these discourses is evident in the emotional responses outlined above. the emotions – anxiety, worry, concern, anger, sadness, disappointment, embarrassment, guilt, and shame – are signs of the exiles’ interest and involvement in east timor and the presence of east timorese discourses in their lives. in relation to shame, elsbeth probyn (2004b) proposes that “[s]hame is our bodies’ way of telling us that we are interested … [it] is intimately involved in the passions of interest” (p. 225). reactions to shame, she contends in accordance with nietzsche, will reflect a type of self-transformation, [s]hame compels a rethinking of how we conceptualize the everyday as it is lived. shame … dramatically questions taken-for-granted distinctions between affect, emotion, biography, and the places in which we live our daily lives … shame rips the everyday out of its habitual stasis: its sentencing within the present. (probyn, 2004a, p. 328) however, is the disruptive consequence of shame restricted to this particular emotion? probyn (2004b) herself observes that it is hard to delineate “where one emotion ends and another starts. anger and rage can be closely tied to shame, attempting to displace the more painful feeling of shame. shame can also bleed into sorrow” (p. 225). considering the indefinite boundaries of particular emotions, their interconnections and relatedness, i suggest that the potential for self-transformation is not restricted to the emotion of shame, but translates to other intensely felt emotions such as embarrassment, sorrow, anger, and guilt. in the case of the east timorese exiles, these emotions emanated as a result of the public exposure of what the exiles perceived to be a shortcoming or failure of the east timorese nation. it was not an affective reaction resulting from the exiles’ personal impropriety or their violation of a moral code or personal standards (which, as june price tangney and colleagues (2008) explain, are often seen as incentives of shame and guilt), but rather a response resulting from their association with a community that they saw as failing to meet the expected standards and conventions bestowed upon it by independence. they felt exposed by the events in east timor and were concerned with what others would think of their country and of them as east timorese. it directly affected the core of their self-imagination, and the social threat embedded in the crisis forced them to react. a primary source of the negative emotions exhibited by the participants was a desire for social inclusion, resulting from a central need to belong (tangney, miller, flicker, & barlow, 2008). these emotions will normally produce a “somatic temporality, where the future of being again interested is felt in the present pain of rejection” (probyn, 2004b, p. 239). probyn’s words suggest that, despite the pain experienced in the moment of emotional disruption, there is an underlying interest in a continued 213east timorese in australia relationship through which shame (and other intensely felt emotions) will make interest matter again. but, in the wake of the 2006–2007 crisis, the east timorese exiles’ narratives and translocal practice suggested otherwise. the temporary rejection of east timorese discourses was evident within their practice, and they were moving away from the translocal sphere. this does neither mean that they will not return to a greater level of translocal activity in the future, nor that the east timorese sphere will not regain its affective intensity. the muting of their east timorese connections signifies a continued presence of east timorese discourses; their rejection or muting is in itself an action that results from the presence of these discourses. conclusion i have argued that many of the east timorese living in melbourne were strongly affected by the 2006–2007 crisis – despite their physical distance to east timor. those who had family and friends in east timor, or who owned property in dili, were affected in a very direct way; many experienced their families being subjected to violence or being forced to flee their homes, and some had their properties looted and burned. it was, however, in the affective, translocal realm that the crisis manifested most strongly and, while the crisis had limited (if any) impact on the exiles’ social fields of everyday practice, it forced them to question the character of their social world. this, i have argued, has to be understood in relation to the exiles’ positioning within two parallel social worlds that exist independently of one another and in light of the integral role of the translocal sphere and affective dimension to the exiles’ perception, conception, and experience of self. the crisis precipitated a radical ambiguity in the exiles’ pre-existing refugee identities. it challenged perceptions of the past and the very foundation on which the exiles had imagined themselves and their community of belonging. shocked and embarrassed by the events, many expressed bewilderment and confusion as to how the unity of their people could dissipate so easily. complicated emotions of hopelessness and helplessness, concern, sadness, disappointment, anger, and frustration intermingled, and many articulated a sense of loss of trust in the nation and its leaders. these intensely felt negative emotions caused a disruption in the exiles’ subjective dispositions, their experience of self, and in their social worlds. people felt exposed by the events and – with their identities so intimately woven into the narratives of resistance, heroism, and reciprocity – it affected the core of their self-imagination. consequently, many adopted a conscious strategy of increasing the emotional distance between themselves and the east timorese sphere. through a process of othering, the exiles increasingly defined themselves beyond – even in opposition to – the east timorese nation. these processes were visible in people’s withdrawal from the translocal sphere and an apparent disinterest in east timorese affairs. the boundaries of belonging were shifting, yet, through the act of rejection and withdrawal, the notion of east timoreseness remained part of the exiles’ identity and sense of self; the rejection or muting of their east timorese connections was an action that resulted from the affective and involving character of the east timorese discourses upon their exile identities. 214 hedda haugen askland  aseas 7(2) the process of othering and the exiles’ movement away from the translocal sphere illustrate how migrants and diasporas renegotiate a sense of identity in relation to the cultural precedents and socio-political realities of home and exile. migrant and diasporic identities are fluid and notions of home and away, here and there, before and after, us and them, change over time. thus, while the most recent crisis in east timor resulted in a temporary muting of the exiles’ east timorese connection, this does not mean that they will not return to greater levels of translocal activity in the future. through their habitus, east timorese cultural precedents continue to underpin the exiles’ practice and, with vested interests in east timorese discourses, east timor remains part of the ongoing process by which they conceptualize and negotiate their experience of multiple belongings.  references askland, h. h. 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(2006). exile and return among the east timorese. philadelphia, pa: university of pennsylvania press. about the author hedda haugen askland is a lecturer at the school of humanities and social science, university of newcastle, australia. ► contact: hedda.askland@newcastle.edu.au acknowledgements the project on which this article is based was supported by the commonwealth governmentfunded international postgraduate research scholarship (iprs) and the university of newcastle postgraduate research scholarship (unrs central). the fieldwork was funded by the school of humanities and social science at the university of newcastle. mass surveillance and the militarization of cyberspace in post-coup thailand mass surveillance and the militarization of cyberspace in post-coup thailand1 pinkaew laungaramsri ► pinkaew laungaramsri. (2016). mass surveillance and the militarization of cyberspace in post-coup thailand. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 9(2), 195-214. post-coup thailand has witnessed a troubling shift toward censorship, surveillance, and suppression in cyberspace. with cyber security ranking prominently on the military’s agenda and the expansion of the military’s cyber intervention, the country’s online infrastructure has undergone politicization, securitization, and militarization. this paper argues that the militarization of cyberspace in thailand represents the process in which cyber warfare capabilities have been integrated with other military forces and with support from the masses. this process has been effective through at least three significant mechanisms, including mass surveillance, surveillance by the masses, and normalization of surveillance. social media have been turned into an absolute digital panopticon. cyber dystopia, created by the 2014 coup and supported by the masses, has served to sustain a ‘state of exception’ not only within the territorial borders of the state, but also more importantly, within the virtual space of civil society. cyber surveillance by the military and the masses has continued to jeopardize the already vulnerable thai democracy. keywords: cyber dystopia; cyber witch hunt; mass surveillance; militarization of cyberspace; thailand  introduction on 3 may 2016, a group of activists including myself was summoned to a military barrack in chiang mai city for an ‘attitude adjustment’2. the rationale for the summoning, as the commander of the 33rd military circle, the third general, major general kosol prathumchat explained, was that my colleagues and i violated the national council for peace and order (ncpo) orders, concretely order number 3/2015 which installed “measures to deal with actions intended to 1 the content of this paper was presented at several conferences and workshops including the forum on human rights and everyday governance in thailand: past, present, and future at harvard university on 6 march 2015; new media, cyber activism and social movement in asia at harvard university on 1 april 2015; and thailand update conference at columbia university on 1 may 2015. 2 ‘attitude adjustment’ is a technique employed by thailand’s military government to subdue its critics and opponents. those who are summoned for attitude adjustment might be interrogated for several hours or detained without charge and interrogated in the military facilities. the detention period ranges from one to seven days during which the contact to the outside world is prohibited. at the end of the detention session, the detained will be asked to sign a memorandum of understanding (mou), a formal agreement between the detained person and the military government, stating that the former will no longer be involved in any political activities and will not leave the country without an official permission by the government. aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 16 .2 -2 196 pinkaew laungaramsri  aseas 9(2) undermine or destroy peace and national security”, by staging a protest at the thapae gate of chiang mai city on 27 april 2016. in response to this accusation, i argued that the gathering was peaceful and did not involve any activities that would be considered as a threat to national security. i also maintained that the assembly of our small group took place in a public arena where similar activities frequently occurred. however, another high ranking military official who was also there, objected. as he contended, our presence at thapae gate might not have posed a problem, but when i posted a photo of the group standing there on facebook with the caption “freedom, freedom, freedom now!” – that was definitely a political act that violated the law. the aim of this paper is to examine the interrelation of the state and social media and their contribution to the creation of cyber dystopia3 in post-coup thailand. although social media and computer-mediated communication have been subject to control by the thai state for almost a decade, cyber security has only recently been identified by the army as a significant part of national security. while the militarization of cyberspace has been incorporated into a part of the army’s strategies, various tactics of online and offline surveillance have been deployed to monitor both the data and traffic of thai citizens on the internet. in the post-coup era where offline activism has been severely suppressed, the internet has become a primary platform for communication and digital surveillance by the military which has not only served to monitor online activities and intercept electronic communication, but also provided an effective means to arrest dissidents and anti-military activists. cyber-crime has recently been identified by the thai army as one of the most significant non-traditional security threats that requires strict mechanism of control. in defending the necessity of the national cyber security bill, thai prime minister prayuth chan-ocha firmly asserted: “if there is a threat to national security – a violation, or someone committing a crime – we need to empower state officials to investigate” (sim, 2015). the thai military’s shift toward cyber security is a response to the need to find a new role for the thai armed forces in the 21st century. while, on the one hand, the military continues to increase its surveillance capability across wider social arenas, on the other hand, cyberspace has been discovered to represent a new platform for political empowerment. militarization of cyberspace is thus the new mechanism for the military to consolidate its political power. as pirongrong rananand (2003) argued, the changing political landscape in thailand has had a profound impact on the internet regulatory landscape. the military’s attempt to systematically control the internet began in 2007, following the 2006 coup, when the military-led surayud government passed the com3 dystopia brought by digital technology has been discussed by several scholars such as david nye (2007), nancy baym (2010), and evgeny morozov (2011; 2013) in the attempt to counter the idea of cyber-utopianism – the belief that online communication provides freedom and emancipation. according to these scholars, the use of digital technology can also result in the individual’s inability to control the changes and impacts brought by this new means of communication. nye (2007) and morozov (2011) further posit that the development of the internet has also led to an increased control of society by the elite and demonstrates how such technology represents a false hope of freedom. baym (2010), on the other hand, suggests that new media have produced fear among those people who increasingly considered that cyberspace will take away the intimacy of social relationships. following these scholars, this paper uses the term cyber dystopia to refer to the state in which a fearful and oppressive atmosphere has been generated by digital technology used by the state as its apparatus to control its citizens. 197mass surveillance and the militarization of cyberspace in post-coup thailand puter crime act.4 although internet filtering was first initiated in 2002 by the ministry of information and communication technology (mict), the 2007 computer crime act was the first step to state legalization of information control on the internet.5 this law has created substantial penalties for cyber-crimes and placed criminal liability on any person who allowed unlawful content to be distributed, including lèsemajesté (o’brien, 2014). since it came into force, the law has been widely criticized for its violation of freedom of expression on the internet. in the aftermath of the 2014 coup, cyberspace in thailand was brought under tremendous political pressure. as social media were the only remaining arena used by the thai dissidents to wage protest and engage in online activism against the coup d’état, it also became the most effective sphere that the military government could employ to create their political legitimacy, instigate cyber libels against the opposition, and manipulate civil sentiment. in a country with numerous coups d’état, the recent coup has combined online and offline tactics of suppression, including masssupported surveillance, in an attempt to secure its authoritarian regime (sinpeng, 2014). apart from implementing several forms of internet regulations, the junta also created new administrative bodies aiming at more effective monitoring and control of online communication. crimes related to lèse-majesté, national security, or ‘infringing’ ncpo’s orders would be tried and adjudicated by the military court, which lack appellate and higher courts. activists and political opponents were targeted and arrested based on their social media activities while academics and journalists were summoned for questionings. the military government is also reportedly laying the political groundwork for a dramatic restructuring of the country’s internet landscape through the single gateway or the great firewall of thailand project – a project to consolidate all gateways into one central government-controlled point to allow for easier monitoring and interception of materials deemed inappropriate.6 if implemented, the proposed single gateway will not only dramatically cripple the country’s digital infrastructure, but might also lead to the instability of internet connections that can result in an immense economic damage (“government warns”, 2015). 4 the computer crime act was first drafted in 2002 during the thaksin government. it was, however, revised several times, in 2003, 2005, and 2006, before being enacted in 2006 during the military-appointed surayud government. according to sawatree suksri, in the last revision under the supervision of the military-appointed national assembly, fundamental clauses were removed from the act, especially those related to the protection of human rights. serious penalty was also suspended on those internet providers who distributed illegal contents. at the same time what was considered illegal content was very broadly defined and subsequently resulted in random arrests and charges by government authorities. the computer crime act, especially the 2006 revised version, has been heavily criticized as being a tool to control and suppress people who share different political views from those of the government (sawatree, 2011). 5 since the implementation of the act, court orders to block internet content have increased from two urls in 2007 to over 74,000 in 2012 (freedom house, 2014). 6 section 1.2 of the cabinet resolution of 30 june 2015 indicates that the ministry of information and communication technology must proceed with the “implementation of a single gateway to be used as a device to control inappropriate websites and flow of news and information from overseas through the internet system” (“govt ‘gateway’”, 2015). the proposed project has prompted widespread outcry among netizens who set up a campaign “go against thai govt to use a single internet gateway” on change.org. in december 2015, the campaign, which was launched in october 2015, had already earned 152,886 signatures. 198 pinkaew laungaramsri  aseas 9(2) literature on social media has often emphasized the rise of new media and online social networks as one of the major forces that have contributed to novel practices of popular democracy in the last three decades (anduiza, perea, jensen, & jorba, 2012; castells, 2007; clark, 2012; van de donk, loader, nixon, & rucht, 2004). formerly, traditional political movements gave priority to street protests and direct contestation to power holders. the development of communication technologies, however, has altered the nature and dynamics of social movements by stimulating the diffusion of protest ideas and strategies beyond the limit of physical boundaries and modern nation-states. such changes have also transformed state-citizen relationships and surveillance practices in the political arena. while a growing body of literature recognizes the rise of ‘new’ social movements and its impacts on the transformation of the political landscape, little attention has been paid to the manifestation of complex political actions interfacing with different ideologically-based social and political movements, particularly with the formation of counter-movements in the public sphere, and their relation to new media. the linkage between social media and democracy has been widely acknowledged (trippi, 2004). yet, while it is often believed that the advancement of the internet has contributed to the building of a digital civic infrastructure where new ways to access data and network have increased the distribution of information and the political potential as well as the “electronic fabric of struggle” (cleaver, 1995)7 within civil society, it is less recognized that the digital has also significantly reshaped the “art of government” (foucault, 2010).8 among the very few studies on the politics of social media, the work of morozov (2011) offers a critical scholarly perspective on questions of “cyber-utopianism” or the internet’s “freedom agenda” by directing our attention toward the “dark side” of the internet. according to morozov (2011, 2013), the new media not only empower visions of democracy and freedom, but also enable the consolidation of authoritarian regimes as they become used by the state to engage in mass surveillance, political repression, and the spreading of nationalist and extremist propaganda. morozov argues that there are two delusions propagated by scholars and activists of new media and social movements: the first is “cyber-utopianism” (morozov, 2011, pp. xiii-xiv), or the belief that internet culture is inherently emancipatory; and the second is “internet-centrism” (morozov, 2011, pp. xv-xvii), or the propensity to view all political and social change through the lens of the internet. by using a number of cases worldwide to illustrate how the internet did not eventually deliver the democratizing effects it promised, morozov points to the dramatic repercussions of the internet’s political role: the appropriation of the online sphere by the authoritarian regime to crack down online activism; the employment of social networks to infiltrate protest groups; or the online seeding of state propaganda in order to more 7 the term was coined by cleaver (1995) to refer to the use of electronic media in the zapatista revolution which expanded to computer-mediated communication channels. 8 in the case of thailand, the rise of social media has stimulated a new form of computer-mediated communication and a rapid flow of information and ideas from various sources – nationally, regionally, and globally. yet, as soraj hongladarom (2000) recently pointed out, online communication in thailand has been mediated predominantly by ‘thai’ culture: strict prohibition of popular websites and discussion forums, such as pantip.com, and self-censorship on certain topics, such as those related to the thai monarchy, are a common moral practice among thai cyber citizens. 199mass surveillance and the militarization of cyberspace in post-coup thailand effectively control the movement of the opposition. contrary to the ideal of political emancipation, morozov contends that the internet can in fact contribute to the tightening and suppression of freedom. gunitsky (2015) takes the argument of social media effects even further. in authoritarian regimes, he argues, many states have significantly shifted their strategy of social media suppression toward cooptation as another potential mechanism of regime resilience – this is the latest development of authoritarian state-social media relation. non-democratic regimes are increasingly moving toward pro-actively subverting social media for their own purposes. the objectives are to undermine the opposition, to influence the contour of public discussion, and to gather information regarding “falsified public preferences” (gunitsky, 2015, p. 42). tactics such as counter-mobilization of supporters and discourse-framing of the larger national discourse are used in order to maintain the legitimacy of the regime through social media. furthermore, regimes can utilize digital technologies to mobilize their own domestic allies, including regular citizens motivated by patriotism, ideology, or other interests (gunitsky, 2015, p. 45). the antipode of internet freedom is thus not only internet censorship but also a combination of control, cooptation, and manipulation. while dimensions of control and suppression have long been acknowledged in scholarly work on the internet, the aspect of non-democratic regime surveillance has been largely disregarded (greitens, 2013). following a critical view toward social media and the authoritarianism nexus, this paper investigates the role of the internet in the military regime in post-coup thailand. although new media have prompted the growth of online pro-democracy activism among thai civic groups over the past decades, they have also been increasingly employed to mobilize and establish an absolute royalist ideology. apart from the military regime’s strategies to censor and suppress oppositional political views, social media have also become the arena for a significant counter-movement; this is the right-wing initiative, mobilized to instigate nationalist sentiment and pro-military ideology. since the 2014 coup d’état, when social movements in thailand increasingly moved online, the militarization of cyberspace has become an “apparatus of security” where the liberal civic sphere of social media is appropriated and turned into a domain of “governmentality” (foucault, 2010). increased control and surveillance by the state have further transformed the thai political landscape into a ‘predatorprey’ battleground, while widespread opposition and protest has in turn heightened the military’s sense of insecurity and thus surveillance efforts. it is worth noting that over the past five years the nature of the military surveillance system has shifted and intensified in several ways (sinpeng, 2014). first, cyberspace has become the military’s priority battlefield. second, internet surveillance has been attached to the military’s security agenda and institutionalized within the new military state. third, the surveillance agenda has been integrated into a variety of administrative institutions, such as in the newly established army cyber center, the ministry of information and communication technology, the police department, and the ministry of justice. and fourth, the military’s support of popular denunciation has become part of a campaign that serves to perpetuate and expand surveillance in order to eliminate ideological enemies. all of these efforts aim to uncover the so-called network of the anti-monarchy and conspiracies against the regime.this paper argues that the mili200 pinkaew laungaramsri  aseas 9(2) tarization of cyberspace in thailand represents the process in which cyber warfare capabilities have been expanded through other military forces and with the notable support from the urban middle-class masses. this process has been effective due to at least three significant mechanisms including mass surveillance, surveillance by the masses, and the normalization of surveillance. while in many countries, cyber militarization has primarily been an outward move toward external security threats, internet militarization in thailand, however, has been designed as a specific weapon that turns against internal threats and thus its own people. the 2014 coup and the post-coup government have turned social media into an absolute digital panopticon aimed to thwart protest, to wreck potential networks of dissents, and to infuse public fear. some scholars call this phenomenon the “cyber coup” (sinpeng, 2014), while others dub it “the martial law of the online” (arthit, 2015). i argue that the cyber dystopia created by the 2014 coup and supported by urban middle-class masses has served to sustain a state of exception – the suspension of the rule of law in the name of the public good (agamben, 2005) not only within the territorial boundaries of the nation, but also within the virtual space of civil society. the collaboration of mass surveillance and surveillance by the masses not only works to jeopardize thai democracy but also to stifle the culture of individual freedom within thai society. mass surveillance mass surveillance and secret warrants are not new in thailand. during the cold war period, thailand was the region’s largest information-gathering base for the united states and served as the center of intelligence gatherings from different countries over the world (kavi, 2013). anti-communist operations were carried out both by the police and the army. such operations included censorship, spying, purges, and imprisonment of those who were suspected as communist and communist sympathizers. in the post-cold war era, mass surveillance against communism subsided. the anti-communist act was repealed in 2001 and many intelligence agencies such as the internal security operation command (isoc) found themselves without mission. under the prayuth regime, the expansion of mass surveillance and the emphasis on cyber surveillance has put in place a new form of digital panopticon that differs both in scope and scale from that of the cold war mission. from the first day of the declaration of martial law, the military has initiated cyber warfare by systematically controlling the mass and social media.9 many junta orders were issued to forbid traditional broadcasts from distorting news reports, to censor online news, and to arrest hundreds of critics (freedom house, 2015). at the same time, several technologies have been used to block and censor the internet, such as caching, blacklisting domain names or ip addresses, or redirecting to a government 9 although cyber warfare is often defined as actions by a nation-state to penetrate another nation’s computer-based information system and networks in order to disable or disrupt essential services (clarke, 2010), the royal thai army uses the term to refer to military operations to eliminate cyber-crimes that posed serious threat to the internal security of the nation. as major general kongcheep tantrawanich, spokesman for the ministry of defense, stated, in the past, each branch of the armed forces worked uncoordinatedly in dealing with cyber-attacks – the establishment of a cyber warfare unit will enhance the army’s ability to work effectively in order to ensure the cyber security of the country (“cyber warfare unit”, 2015). 201mass surveillance and the militarization of cyberspace in post-coup thailand homepage.10 these measures are apparently employed in order to make ‘unsuitable’ websites appear unavailable. censorship on 28 may 2014, facebook was temporarily blocked for around one and a half hours in the afternoon by the mict in order to silence the anti-coup protest. according to the bangkok post, up to 30 million accounts across thailand were affected by the facebook outage (achara, 2014). in response to media criticism, the ncpo denied responsibility for the blocking, claiming that the problem was a gateway glitch. however, international media such as reuters cited surachai srisaracam, permanent secretary of the mict, in an interview stating: we have blocked facebook temporarily and tomorrow we will call a meeting with other social media, like twitter and instagram, to ask for cooperation from them . . . . right now there’s a campaign to ask for people to stage protests against the army so we need to ask for cooperation from social media to help us stop the spread of critical messages about the coup. (petty, 2014) according to freedom house (2014) – a us-based human rights advocacy organization – a spokesman for the telenor group, owner of the dtac mobile network operator, told the norwegian aftenposten newspaper that the telecommunications regulator national telecommunication commission (nbtc) had ordered mobile networks to block facebook on 28 may 2014. however, in the wake of this unauthorized remark, an nbtc official warned dtac for its “inappropriate comment” and threatened to investigate its foreign shareholder percentage and to ban it from the upcoming 4g spectrum auction. as a result, telenor issued an apology for actions which “damaged the public image of the nbtc and the ncpo” (“dtac punished”, 2014). a report from the citizen lab (2014) indicates that since seizing power in may 2014, thailand’s military junta has blocked hundreds of websites deemed a threat to national security. in the semi-annual report of the royal police department, police general somyos pumpanmuang, commissioner general, claimed that in the latter half of 2014 the police department closed down 25,069 websites disseminating lèsemajesté content (“six months report”, 2015).11 freedom house ranked thailand’s internet freedom in 2014 and 2015 as “not free” – a very low status in comparison to its neighboring countries, such as myanmar which was ranked “partly free” in 2014 10 blacklisting websites is ideal for this kind of web censorship since webmasters are usually unaware when their websites become blocked (race, 2004). 11 unlawful contents are usually classified by the police and relevant authorities into seven broad categories including pornography, sale of sex equipment, threats to national security, which includes criticisms of the monarchy, illegal products and services, copyright infringement, illegal gambling, and others. statistics by the royal police department show that prior to the 2006 military coup, the top illicit websites reported were mostly relating to pornography (“illicit website reported”, n.d.). the shift toward lèsemajesté or threats to national security as the prime target of censorship in the period after the 2006 coup reflects an increasingly turbulent political situation in thailand where the use of lèse-majesté has become a political tool to suppress dissident views against the military government. 202 pinkaew laungaramsri  aseas 9(2) (freedom house, 2014, 2015).12 clearly, in the aftermath of the coup, the numbers of websites that became blocked escalated with reasons shifting toward the violation of the lèse-majesté law. lèse-majesté law – a criminal code to protect the dignity of the majesty and members of the royal monarch – has an intriguing history. the law dates back to 1908, when the country was under the absolute rule of the monarchy. since 1932, when democracy was adopted with the king as head of the state, the protection of the king has continued to be recognized in the constitution and specifically in the criminal code under the article 112. any defamation, insult, or threat to the king, the queen, the heir-apparent, or the regent will be punished with imprisonment of 3 to 13 years. however, as some scholars have observed, in the transition to democracy, the use of lèse-majesté in thailand has been intensified – a tendency opposite to that of other countries with similar constitutional monarchies (somchai & streckfuss, 2008). between 1990 and 2005, only a few lèse-majesté cases per year were recorded and in some years (1993, 2002), there were no new cases received by the prosecution department at all (streckfuss, 2011, p. 111). but the statistics have increased 15 times between 2006 and 2011, with more than 400 cases being tried, and in most cases, bails were denied. since the military coup in may 2014, more than 50 lèse-majesté cases were brought to trial, three out of four of which were related to online message posting or sharing. under the military courts, even harsher sentences were enforced. in august 2015, a tour operator and a hotel worker were sentenced to 60 and 58 years respectively for an article posted on facebook. the sentences were reduced to half after a guilty plea (“thai courts give”, 2015). the incident marks the longest recorded sentence for lèse-majesté in the thai history. the intensification of lèse-majesté law over the past decade demonstrates a certain connection between the enforcement of this law and the political instability of thailand. censorship and political cleansing has been carried out extensively by several junta governments in order to thwart their opponents and weaken the democratic civil society. the far-reaching use of lèse-majesté law has turned thailand into what streckfuss (2011) calls the “defamation regime” where rules of law and freedom of speech have been suspended. as the definitions of insult and defamation have never been clearly explained, and details of the charges are never publicized under the pretext to avoid repeating the offensive remarks, the allegation of lèse-majesté can be random and arbitrary while the accusation can be made against anyone. a selfperpetuating mechanism of surveillance, the law along with other related legislations such as the computer crime act have become the most draconian tools employed by the junta to stifle the right of the people to freedom of expression, both in the real/ physical and virtual realms. deception/interception deception was a more advanced tactic used to deceive facebook users in order to gain access to personal information. according to the thai netizen network, a bangkok-based digital rights group, the thai police’s technology crime suppression divi12 thailand’s status of internet freedom declined after the year 2013 when it was still rated as “partly free” (freedom house, 2014). 203mass surveillance and the militarization of cyberspace in post-coup thailand sion (tcsd) created a fake facebook application which was part of the government program to monitor access to blocked websites (“thai police create”, 2014). in this application, users were asked to provide personal details such as their date of birth and email address. when users entered the page, four buttons would appear on the webpage – “close”, “sign in with facebook”, “sign in with google”, and “sign in with microsoft”. if users clicked “close” or “sign in with facebook”, they would be directed to a facebook page which then asked the users to grant permission for an application called “login” to access the users’ email addresses and public profiles. if users clicked “sign in with google”, they would be redirected to a google page which also asked the users to allow an application called tcsd to access the same kind of information. through these fake applications, users were under the impression that they were merely logging into a website via facebook or google. but by entering their information, users unintentionally gave permission to the tcsd to access personal data stored on their facebook pages. the tactic of deception via fake online applications was twice suspended by facebook. however, prachatai noted that hundreds of email addresses had already been harvested (“thai police create”, 2014). it is not clear how many suspects were arrested specifically because of their activity on social media, yet ilaw reported that by 21 august 2014 there had been 257 arrests for offensive comments; 30% of these (77 cases) were charged due to comments made on the internet. additionally, numerous charges concerning the violation of the lèse-majesté law were carried out through the interception of online activities. to equip the surveillance bureaucracies with greater capacity, the thai cabinet also approved eight draft bills which were planned to transform the country’s economy into a ‘digital’ economy.13 among these bills was the notorious cyber security bill which was designed to restructure and tighten the control of telecommunications in thailand. if further approved by the national legislative assembly, the bill would create a cyber security commission – a new body headed by the prime minister and authorized to access any type of digital information from the country’s providers of communication services without a court order. with full authority, the commission could also order all public and private organizations to cooperate against any perceived threat to national cyber security, summon individuals for questions, and grant legal power to any appointed officer to access emails, instant messages, and other forms of text-based communication as well as demand access to information on any computer system and listen to any voice conversations on any network in thailand (silfversten, 2015). with this bill, the martial law would be normalized and turned into an actual law that would grant the mict and the new state apparatus unlimited power and the most alarming means of surveillance in the digital history of thailand. 13 the eight draft bills are parts of the digital development plan for economy and society put forward by the committee on preparations for digital economy and society, chaired by prime minister prayuth chanocha. the plan covers 20 years of an administrative reform in order to establish the digital foundation of the country and to introduce digital technology in all sectors of the country. eight items of the legislation were proposed to be amended and approved as part of the plan. these include the (1) electronic transaction bill (amendment); (2) cybersecurity bill; (3) computer-related crime bill (amendment); (4) personal data protection bill; (5) digital economy promotion bill; (6) digital development for economy and society fund bill; (7) broadcasting and telecommunication regulator bill (amendment); and (8) electronic transaction development agency bill (amendment) (zeldin, 2016). 204 pinkaew laungaramsri  aseas 9(2) surveillance by the masses: cyber scouts and cyber witch hunts the militarization of cyberspace has been effective not only through the technique of mass surveillance, which has been deployed in various administrative organizations, but also, importantly, through the establishment of surveillance by the masses. military support of this process has been both direct and indirect as surveillance by the masses developed in both organized structures and more impromptu forms and settings. some organized surveillance networks of netizens have been initiated and supported by the government while others act independently. in the aftermath of the coup, the right-wing movement of the people’s democratic reform committee (pdrc) has transformed into a para-military network of netizens, assisting the military to wage cyberwar against the opposition. two significant programs that are actively at work are the cyber scout program and cyber witch hunt organized by the garbage collecting organization (gco). cyber scouts the cyber scout program was developed in 2010 by the ministry of justice and the ministry of information and communications and technology during the militarybacked abhisit government. it lapsed for several years and re-emerged again after the 2014 coup. the program is currently under the auspices of the mict. the objective of this program is to create a network that collaborates to eradicate ‘unsuitable’ and ‘disrespectful’ websites and to build a network of volunteers to protect the monarchy in the online sphere. unlike village scouts14 in the 1970s, the patrolling power of cyber scouts extends beyond the limits of physical boundaries.15 currently, there are 112 schools committed to the program which have signed a memorandum of understanding with the mict. the mict also claimed that it has so far ‘recruited’ more than 120,000 cyber scouts nation-wide and plans to double the size in the near future. cyber scouts are needed in order to enhance the state’s capacity of surveillance. as farrelly (2010) noted, the past efforts of the government to police the internet have enjoyed only partial success. although the military is able to block a number of websites, many of them re-surface with new ip addresses and new cohorts of internet users. at the same time, contentious content could be copied and redistributed, made more attractive and disseminated more widely. notably, the reinvention of cyber scouts also represents a significant mechanism to indoctrinate young internet users with ultra-royalist values. this agenda is timely, especially since university stu14 village scout was a country-wide organization founded by the thai border patrol police under the aegis of the ministry of interior during the 1970s. sponsored by the king and the queen of thailand, the aim of the organization was to promote national unity and to counter the communist insurgency. organized in small cells and trained in a five-day training course, village scouts acted as the surveillance apparatus of the state and would inform local officials about suspicious incidents such as strangers entering the villages. during the short period of the village scout establishment, it was estimated that over five million thais, or 10% of the population had completed the training program prerequisite to becoming a village scout (muecke, 1980, pp. 407-409). 15 since today’s boy-scout program is under the patronage of the king, it was easy to integrate the agenda of cyber surveillance into existing boy-scout activities. 205mass surveillance and the militarization of cyberspace in post-coup thailand dent movements have become more active in demanding democracy and freedom of expression. the program thus works as a counter-movement to thwart the potential growth of the student movement by turning school students into secret police. one cyber scout interviewed by afp was a 39-year old school worker in bangkok who patrolled the internet pages on his computer in search of offensive remarks that might constitute lèse-majesté (afp, 2011). trained in a one-day cyber scout camp, this man told afp: “my inspiration to be a cyber scout is the king. there are many ways to protect the institute, and this is one of them” (afp, 2011). like other cyber scouts, he would roam around certain websites and social networks in his free time and look for seemingly insulting posts. he claimed that he had not reported anybody to the authorities yet. but he assured afp that if he found any comments deemed offensive to the king, he would immediately contact the person who posted them. “not many people know about the project. they may think they are talking to a friend because i don’t tell them i’m a cyber scout”, he said (afp, 2011). in the post-coup era, cyber vigilantism and the 12 core values of the thai schools’ motto promoted by the prayuth regime work hand in hand in transforming schools across the nation into a panopticon unit of virtual surveillance to both protect the royal institution and further nurture the ultra-royalist ideology. cyber witch hunts historically, witch hunting, both literal and metaphorical, has always been characterized as an attempt to impose conformity to the ideology of the dominant class (federici, 2004). the practice of witch hunting involves an investigation of subversive activities in order to harass and punish those people with differing views. this was equally true for the cold war era in thailand when the label ‘communist’ could put one in jail and thus forced many people to join the insurgent movement in the jungle (thak, 2007). fear is used to regulate societal behavior while punishment is enforced on the divergent in order to bring conformity and order into society. in the history of anti-communism in thailand, rumor was enough to bring somebody to trial, usually resulting in the imprisonment of the accused. in many cases, the alleged communists were hunted down and violently killed as suggested by the phrase, coined by people in the south of thailand: “theeb long khao phao long thang dang”, literally meaning “kicking [them] down the mountain, burning [them] in the red tank” (pornteap, 2012).16 cyber witch hunting in contemporary thailand centers around accusations of anti-monarchy ideology disseminated online. this ultra-royalist movement acts in various forms, both individually and collectively. some journalists estimated that there were more than 20 ultra-royalist groups that work to monitor the internet in order to wipe out any criticism of the monarchy and hunt down offenders (thouvenot, 2014). many of the group leaders are associated with the military, some being former military officers or supporters of the coup. one of the most active groups is the garbage collecting organization. this group is led by the director of the mon16 it was estimated that more than 3,000 people in southern thailand were killed during anti-communist purges and witch hunts in the 1960s and 1970s (pornteap, 2012). 206 pinkaew laungaramsri  aseas 9(2) gkut wattana general hospital in bangkok, major general rientong nan-nah. the gco facebook page was set up in 2014 with currently more than 242,680 likes. the goal of the organization is to mobilize people to assist in witch hunting and increase the charge against those identified as ‘garbage’17. gco also provides online training for those who wish to become professional in hunting down anti-monarchy internet users. the recent death of the king has witnessed an escalation in witch hunting by ultra-royalists who individually and collectively harassed or threatened those who were accused of being disrespectful to the deceased monarch. those who did not demonstrate proper mourning etiquette, such as wearing black clothing, could be targeted for bullying, both physically and in virtual spheres (teeranai, 2016). online expressions of indifference toward the passing of the monarch were also dangerous as the person who posted such expressions could be hunted down by an angry mob or encounter a violent reaction by the organized royalist group (“angry mob demands”, 2016). most of the incidents of witch hunts took place in the acknowledgement of the government officials. witch hunting is often accompanied with the infusion of mass hate. according to ling (1996), mass hate is a form of social hysteria that emerges in response to a “socially stressful situation”, especially in cases of a perceived threat to the moral boundaries of the community. social stress may develop from shifts in authority or control and from the recognition of a boundary crisis. advancement of mass hate additionally depends on the existence of groups which can be vilified. ling (1996) also argues that mass hate is often established by identifying a ‘scapegoat’ as a powerful adversary, who, if not under control, will pose a threat to society. “patterned labeling” is then used to identify the ‘deviant’ and to make the crisis tangible by drawing the boundary between appropriate and inappropriate behavior (ling, 1996). in many cases, the deviant might also be subject to what garfinkle (1956) called a “degradation ceremony” – a public act in which the accused is given a derogatory label and is publicly punished or compelled to recognize the moral superiority of the accusers. at the same time, as ling (1996) argues, the definition of deviance may develop and change as the crisis continues and self-proclaimed “righteous believers” become more proficient in identifying the nuances of deviance. online mass hate in thailand has proliferated, especially in the transitional period of the post-coup era. cyber-smearing and systematic scapegoating have mushroomed to target people defined as ‘red shirt’, ‘red shirt supporter’, and ‘opponent of the military government’. patterned labeling such as ‘anti-monarchy’ (lom chao), ‘traitor’ (khaai chad), or other pejorative names have been created and used in degradation ceremonies where members of the pages collectively join in the process of cyber-libel to damage the reputation of an individual or a group. the rise of the cyber right-wing movement the emergence of the thai right-wing movement in the post-cold war period and especially after the 2006 coup is a subject that has gained little systematic investiga17 according to rientong nan-nah, the term garbage refers to those people who have never realized the royal grace of the king and who have continued to recklessly commit crimes of lèse-majesté. those people, as rientong insists, should not be considered human but the garbage of the country (“i will fight”, 2015). 207mass surveillance and the militarization of cyberspace in post-coup thailand tion. nidhi eeowsriwong (2013), a renowned thai historian and social critic, is probably the only scholar who attempted to explain the pdrc phenomenon. lending on hannah arendt’s (1973) notions of the “masses” and “totalitarianism”, he understands contemporary thai masses (i.e., members of the urban middle classes in thai society who support the military regime) as the product of the totalitarian regime. nidhi (2013) understands the mass as the power basis of a totalitarian dictatorship. the mass is neither mobs, nor classes, but consist of atomized individuals. isolated and having no tie to any political party or social relations, masses are prone to be indoctrinated toward unconditional loyalty to the totalitarian regime. well-aware of the differences between the wwii europe and present-day thailand, nidhi (2013) argues that a totalitarian-styled political movement is on the rise in thailand. similar to the nazis in interwar europe, the pdrc’s adherents – people who are “free from all attachments that they once had”, “unable to think anything aside from competing in the market in order to preserve their lives”, finding their lives “bleak, desolate, and meaningless”, “abandoned by politicians, by bureaucrats, by the media, by everything that comprises their existence” – yearn to be mobilized as part of the “meaningful” political movement (nidhi, 2013).18 thai society, nidhi (2013) argues, is transforming into an atomized and isolated mass-based entity where the members’ radical loss of self-interest and indifference has turned their passionate inclination toward the only remaining string of obligation – their superfluous loyalty to the monarchy. since loyalty to the monarchy is the only social and moral bond between the masses and the nation, the only way to maintain this bond is to ‘unfriend’ (in the online realm) or to physically get rid of those who do not share the same loyalty. the online surveillance masses who represent the contemporary right-wing movement, adhere to certain political views, despite their overall distrust in political parties. believing that social stratification and inequality are natural, normal, or even desirable, the thai right-wing masses justify their position by referring to the basis of natural law and the claim of the thai traditional principle of morality (khwaamdi, khunnatham). although their political views resonate with those of the previous right-wing forces in the 1970s, the components of the 21st century thai masses are different from those of their predecessors. they are not rural or gangster-like village scouts, red gaurs19 or nawapon20 , organized by the elite classes. on the contrary, these masses consist of educated tech-savvy middle-class urbanites, who are 18 see also an excellent review of nidhi eeowsriwong’s articles by tyrell haberkorn (2014). 19 the red gaur or krathing dang was a right-wing paramilitary organization established by the internal security operations command of the thai military to counter the country’s student movement after the democratic revolution of october 1973. members of the group composed of resentful, young, unemployed, vocational school students, and high school drop-outs, while the major cadres were veterans of the vietnam war, former mercenaries in laos, and former army soldiers dismissed for disciplinary contraventions (baker & pasuk, 2009, p. 192). 20 the nawapon (new force/ninth force) was a right-wing group of militia, police, buddhist monks, and others, active during thailand’s short democratic period in the mid-1970s. the organization was supported by the internal security operations command of the thai military with an aim to counter the people deemed subversive or communist, including students and members of the labor union. key supporters included kittiwuttho bhikkhu, a monk popular among the right-wing who notoriously stated that killing communists was not demeritorious (baker & pasuk, 2009, p. 192). 208 pinkaew laungaramsri  aseas 9(2) capable to work both independently and collectively. unlike the red shirt movement whose network and decisions to act are tied to the pheu thai party (ptp) and directives by the bangkok united front for democracy against dictatorship (udd); these right-wing masses are not based on any formal structures. since they are individuals who are loyal to the only one supreme monarch, they are ready to form coalitions with any group of people who share the same ultra-royalist ideology. the ability to form coalition across classes has more or less contributed to both the success of the pdrc’s movement in general (pitch pongsawat, 3 april 2015) and the strength of cyber surveillance by the masses in particular. in the post-pdrc movement, these atomized coalitions have transformed themselves into the surveillance mass of cyber witch hunters who have moved their battlefield from ratchadamnoen road to cyberspace. with or without the military regime, this right-wing movement will continue to sustain itself and work as a counter-movement against the perceived antimonarchy network. normalization of surveillance in the uk, wood and webster (2009) used closed-circuit television (cctv), also known as video surveillance, to demonstrate how, despite its ineffectiveness, this form of modern surveillance has gained popular enthusiasm and demand. the authors identify at least four reasons: first, as a ‘security theater’ cctv symbolizes safety in a society where everything is seen to be a potential source of risk, and where fear dominates – as a stage-set form of security, it is a symbol and a performer that deals with risk. second, cctv acts in the name of care as much as control. third, cctv has become part of the cultural landscape of britain; members of the society have not only been used for surveillance but have also enjoyed it in a certain way. fourth, cctv offers a visual narrative by which watchers are being animated, as if they were watching a tv soap opera – investing feelings and personalizing its contents (wood & webster, 2009). in thailand, surveillance has become an everyday experience, partly through the military discourse of “returning the happiness [to thailand]”21. like cctv in the uk, the thai junta’s internet surveillance claims to act out of care and with the aim to prevent political risk. alongside tight media, internet censorship, and the arrest of political dissidents, the junta government launched the campaign “returning happiness to the people” aiming “to create an atmosphere to gain trust and build confidence” (“thailand military leaders”, 2014). happiness, as claimed by prime minister 21 “returning happiness to thailand” is a song promoted by the thai military right after the 2014 coup. the lyrics were written by the junta leader and prime minister prayuth chan-ocha which features lines such as “we offer to guard and protect you with our hearts” and “we are asking for a little more time” (campbell, 2014). the discourse of “returning happiness to thailand/thai people” was subsequently turned into a military campaign and a friday night show where the thai prime minister appears on all free tv channels to address the nation and to provide updates about the work of the government. the friday night show would usually run for an hour or longer in the time slot generally reserved for the soap operas. in response to the public complaint about the length of his weekly address at the prime time of the tv program, prayuth stated that: “i talk on fridays for you to listen and not just watch lakorns [soap operas]! i’ll put up loudspeakers and broadcast into every village! don’t be bored by me – no pm has ever done such thing before!” (saksith, 2015). 209mass surveillance and the militarization of cyberspace in post-coup thailand prayuth, had long since gone from thailand: “the thai people, like me, have probably not been happy for nine years” (hodal, 2014). in the months following the 2014 coup and amidst military threats in various media, including social media, a song titled “returning happiness” was written by prayuth himself, free concerts with female dancers dressed in revealing military fatigues were organized, public petting of horses was provided by the army’s mounted guard, and prayuth’s weekly tv show, in which he sometimes speaks for more than an hour, was aired every friday night. as wood and webster (2009) recognize, surveillance works at the level of emotions, symbols, and culture. the normalization of surveillance becomes consolidated when surveillance colonizes these domains. thus, it is not only the proliferation of surveillance technologies that makes surveillance an everyday experience, but also the way in which surveillance operations are embedded in the norms and institutions of society. in justifying the military’s takeover of the country and its subsequent draconian surveillance scheme, prayuth cited the loss of the thai value of morality, which he claimed had been destroyed by politicians and prolonged political divisions: “people started to lose trust and faith in the whole system . . . laws were not being respected. we were thus becoming an immoral society”. this was the central reason to stage the coup and put the country back in ‘order’: a society without morality, without virtue, without good governance, could not move forward, . . . we were unhappy, so i had to ask myself, ‘can we let this continue?’ . . . so, what we are doing today is to try and bring everything back to normal. we intend to return happiness to everyone. (“thai police threaten”, 2014) concluding thoughts on cyber dystopia over the past two years since the 2014 coup d’état, mass surveillance in the name of ‘happiness’ has become a ‘normal’ part of everyday life, while the violation of human rights has become an anticipated form of governmentality by the urban masses. in response to media criticism, prayuth confidently stated: “the coup d’état did not cause any trouble to people, except to those who lost their political power. same with the draft of the digital bill . . . . what do you have to fear about if you have done nothing wrong?” (royal thai government, 2015). the domestication of surveillance has not only brought surveillance closer to homes, but has also integrated it as part and parcel of ‘good virtue’. surveillance, as prayuth’s statement implies, creates “security” and “happiness”, and not fear, for people of “good virtue” in thailand. the militarization of cyberspace through mass surveillance and surveillance by the masses, normalized by the everyday speech of “happiness” and the need to ensure a smooth transition of thai society propagated by the military, continues to characterize contemporary thailand. in a country where fear has been produced, manufactured, and woven into the discourse of security and morality, freedom of speech and expression has been cast out as ‘un-thai’ and ‘disloyal’ to the nation. but as the line that separates right from wrong has never been clear but arbitrary, machinations of fear have become a flourishing industry which can be used by anyone to threaten political opposition. furthermore, the definition of loyalty has now been extended 210 pinkaew laungaramsri  aseas 9(2) beyond the traditional sphere of monarchy-citizen relationships. a recent arrest of a man who shared a video alleged to mock and defame junta leader prayuth chanocha (pravit, 2016) suggests that thai authoritarianism has been fortified and made untouchable by the tools and power of cyber technology. cyber dystopia – a world in which the production of fear has been normalized, paternalized, and essentialized through the reification of the threat of violence and abjection – has become an everyday reality for thai netizens (linke & smith, 2009). to avoid becoming a victim of such politics of fear, many people have no choice but to stay silent or inactive in order to live safely in the hegemonic totalitarian society. militarization of cyberspace in the post-coup era, as i have attempted to show, has not only created a geography of fear based on systematic inclusion and exclusion of particular groups of population, it has also created a desirable type of ‘docile population’ that could be seduced into obedience by the state’s illusory promise of peace and happiness. the creation of new modes of surveillance organization and the expansion of the military ideology of surveillance into the civic realm have led to a redefinition of the concept of security. cyber dystopia, in the form of a digital panopticon, and cyber cleansing have come to characterize the everyday ‘security’ of the thai society.  references achara ashayagachat. 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(2015, august 7). bbc. retrieved from http://www.bbc. com/news/world-asia-33819814 thai police create fake fb app to get thai net users’ information, target users trying to open blocked sites. (2014, june 20). prachatai english. retrieved from http://www.prachatai.com/english/node/4140 thai police threaten junta’s online critics. (2014, june 7). japan times. retrieved from http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/06/07/asia-pacific/politics-diplomacy-asia-pacific/thai-police-threaten-juntasonline-critics/# thailand military leaders launch happiness campaign. (2014, june 8). the associated press. retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/thailand-military-leaders-launch-happiness-campaign-1.2668950 thak chaloemtiarana. (2007). thailand: the politics of despotic paternalism. chiang mai: silkworm books. the citizen lab. (2014). information controls during thailand’s 2014 coup. retrieved from https:// citizenlab.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/information-controls-during-thailand%e2%80%99s2014-coup.pdf thouvenot, d. (2014, june 15). thai cyber police step up royal slur patrols. retrieved from http://phys.org/ news/2014-06-thai-cyber-police-royal-slur.html trippi, j. (2004). the revolution will not be televised: democracy, the internet, and the overthrow of everything. new york: harpercollins. 213mass surveillance and the militarization of cyberspace in post-coup thailand van de donk, w., loader, b. d., nixon, p. g., & rucht, d. (eds.). (2004). cyberprotest: new media, citizens and social movements. london: routledge. wood, d. m., & webster, e. (2009). living in surveillance societies: the normalisation of surveillance in europe and the threat of britain’s bad example. journal of contemporary european research, 5(2), 259273. zeldin, w. (2016, june 14). thailand: digital ministry established as part of national digital economy plan. retrieved from http://www.loc.gov/law/foreign-news/article/thailand-digital-ministry-established-aspart-of-national-digital-economy-plan/ about the author pinkaew laungaramsri is associate professor of anthropology at the department of sociology and anthropology, faculty of social science, chiang mai university. ► contact: pinkaewl@yahoo.com acknowledgements i would like to thank michael herzfeld, duncan mccargo, pitch pongsawat, apiwat ratanawaraha, pandit chanrojanakit, aranya siriphon, tyrell haberkorn, and two anonymous referees of aseas for their constructive comments to improve this paper. islamic philanthropy in indonesia: modernization, islamization, and social justice aseas 10(2) | 223 islamic philanthropy in indonesia: modernization, islamization, and social justice amelia fauzia ► fauzia, a. (2017). islamic philanthropy in indonesia: modernization, islamization, and social justice. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 10(2), 223-236. this article discusses the potentials and constraints of social justice philanthropy in indonesia in the context of two trends – of growing islamization and modernization. it employs interviews and recent observations together with survey data. although the challenges facing social justice philanthropy remain immense, the pathways to development have been created; pathways through which the gap that exists between faith-based philanthropy and its secular counterparts may become smaller. looking at growing philanthropization in the last 15 years and the pre-existing popularity of the concept of social justice among the population, could social justice and developmentalism may become the future of islamic philanthropy in the country? the author argues that modernization and islamization encourage the practice of philanthropy, but that they do not necessarily contribute to the development of a philanthropy that focuses on social justice. the modernization of the philanthropy sector has shown scattered pictures of development into a form of social justice philanthropy, which remains small but nevertheless encouraging. keywords: development; indonesia; islamic philanthropy; islamization; social justice  introduction at the turn of the 21st century the situation in indonesia showed a kind of fever of islamic philanthropy, which added to the existing local and western private foundations. after two decades, the growing enthusiasm toward islamic philanthropy in the country is unlikely to fade in the near future. it is a development that rose steadily out of the economic crisis of 1997 that preceded the fall of the new order and that was later supported by the movement for political reformation and democratization (reformasi). various islamic philanthropy organizations were established in the course of this process. it obtained another endorsement from the islamization movement, via laws and other forms of legislation. the enthusiasm was further encouraged by the general islamization that has been taking place in the country (ricklefs, 2008, 2012). it received an unintended and painful ‘blessing’ from a series of large-scale disasters, from the 2004 aceh tsunami through to earthquakes in 2007. and then finally, it earned high attention from the indonesian government, although, whether this could be interpreted as positive or negative remains an open question. the government has recently been trying to embody zakat (almsgiving) into its development agenda, aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 17 .2 -6 224 | aseas 10(2) islamic philanthropy in indonesia something that the suharto government had tried but failed since the end of 1960s in their efforts to incorporate muslim charity with modernization and development. additionally, western private foundations and international development agencies have put in efforts to endorse and support the field. since 2002, the ford foundation has supported the development of philanthropy with a social justice approach and purpose, for both secular and islamic foundations and organizations.1 since 2004, the australian organization ausaid has entrusted the two largest muslim organizations, nahdlatul ulama and muhammadiyah, with the tsunami disaster relief in aceh. later, these organizations strengthened their humanitarian and philanthropic divisions. in the last two years, international development agencies from the islamic development bank (idb), the world bank, and the united nations development programme (undp) have tried to assist in encouraging the direction of the islamic philanthropy sector into development, including recent schemes for poverty reduction and sustainable development goals (sdgs) (noor & pickup, 2017; pickup, 2017). muslim philanthropy to benefit the public good has attracted many sectors and actors, from muslim organizations and the state, to corporations and development agencies, each according to their own purposes (fauzia, 2013; latief, 2010, 2014). the potential amount of zakat, sedekah (donation), waqf (endowment), and other charitable forms have been mentioned in many research papers, conferences and reports (abubakar & bamualim, 2006; kurniawati, 2004). the national development planning agency and the national zakat board (baznas) calculated the recent annual potential of zakat collection in indonesia ranging from idr 100 billion (usd 7.6 million) to idr 286 trillion (usd 22 billion) (the national zakat board center of strategic studies, 2016; firdaus, beik, irawan, & juanda, 2012). these do not include non-zakat donations and waqf assets. however, the de facto zakat collection by registered organizations is small and accounts for idr 3.7 trillion in 2015 (the national zakat board center of strategic studies, 2016, p. 9). the concept of social justice has always been of interest to indonesian scholars, starting with hamka’s keadilan sosial dalam islam (social justice in islam), published in 1966 and reprinted many times in almost every decade until recently in 2015. the concept was usually linked to the economy (mubyarto, 1995) and to the movements of islam (madjid, 1987/2008), including to practices of islamic philanthropy (mas’udi, 1993). sayyid qutb’s book, al-‘adalah al-ijtimaiyah fi al-islam (social justice in islam), first published in 1949 and later translated into indonesian language, has been the strongest inspiration for indonesian scholars and activists on the idea of social justice. apart from scholarly and activist discourse, the concept of social justice is rooted in the popularity of the state ideology pancasila, especially its last principle.2 pancasila has been taught at schools and read out loud by students at their weekly school assemblies. in addition, it seems that experiences of injustices since the 19th century have encouraged the idea of social justice. 1 the author was team leader of a research project on philanthropy for social justice in muslim societies (including indonesia), led by syarif hidayatullah islamic university jakarta from 2002 to 2004, funded by the ford foundation. 2 the five principles of pancasila are: 1) the belief in one god, 2) a just and civilized humanity, 3) the unity of indonesia, 4) democracy under the wise guidance of representative consultations, and 5) social justice for all the peoples of indonesia. aseas 10(2) | 225 amelia fauzia research on islamic philanthropy for social justice by syarif hidayatullah state islamic university conducted in 2003 (later referred to as the ‘2003 survey’) finds that philanthropy has been practiced in a traditional way, but has certain potential for a social justice approach and aim (abubakar & bamualim, 2006). following this study, a conceptual study on social justice philanthropy supports its potential practice in muslim societies (hasan, 2007). a possible transformation of the charity approach to social justice has been discussed by fernandez (2009) and by the author (fauzia, 2010a, 2010b). looking at growing philanthropization in the last 15 years and the pre-existing popularity of the concept of social justice among the population, social justice and development may become the future of islamic philanthropy in the country. but is one decade-and-a-half sufficient to show a convincing picture of the growth of social justice philanthropy? and what may contribute to or hinder its development? this article discusses the potentials and constraints of social justice philanthropy in the context of those twin forces of growing islamization and modernization in indonesia, focusing on the dynamics in the period from 2000 to 2017. the article defines islamic philanthropy organizations as nonprofit entities which aim to provide public good and assistance for poor communities, either through organizations or directly to individuals, and which are based on islamic values or having islamic aims. the analysis for this article deliberately excludes mass organizations, except for sections within the organizations that clearly do fundraising, charitable management, and the redistribution of assistance. both nahdlatul ulama and muhammadiyah have smaller organizations, called lazisnu and lazismu respectively, that collect and redistribute zakat, and also organizations that work on relief assistance. furthermore, this article does not include waqf because they have a different character in terms of managing charitable resources, although theoretically waqf is regarded as having strong potential for social justice philanthropy. in indonesia, the practice of philanthropy has transformed over time and the term has different nuances. this article acknowledges the conceptual difference between charity and philanthropy. whereas charity is understood as a service delivery for a short-term assistance, philanthropy is more of a long-term project that targets the root problems creating inequality and poverty (casey, 2016). since the difference between the terms is not seen clearly in practice in indonesia, the term philanthropy is used here. philanthropic organizations receive their main resources from donors (either from family donation, corporations, institutions, or individuals). they manage these resources and then (re)distribute them to beneficiaries, either directly or through other organizations. this article uses observations of organizations as well as interviews.3 to account for the limitations of these observations, it refers to data from a 2003 survey on understanding, opinion, and practices of islamic philanthropy at the national level (abubakar & bamualim, 2006). the author finds that the modernization of the philanthropy sector has shown scattered pictures of development into a form of social justice philanthropy, which remains small but nevertheless encouraging. the author argues that modernization and islamization encourage the practice of philanthropy 3 the author has been researching islamic charitable organizations since 2002. interviews used for this article have been conducted since january 2016 as part of a research project on islamic philanthropy networks in southeast asia at the asia research institute, national university of singapore (nus). 226 | aseas 10(2) islamic philanthropy in indonesia but that they do not necessarily contribute to the development of a philanthropy that focuses on social justice. in discussing this, the article is divided into four main sections: 1) islamization, modernization, and social justice in philanthropy, 2) modernization of the organization and programs, 3) examples of social justice practices, and 4) potentials and constraints of social justice philanthropy, and 5) some concluding remarks. islamization, modernization, and social justice in philanthropy the history of philanthropy in the post-reformasi period reveals a picture of modernization and islamization. islamization can be found in the deepening use of islamic sources, the involvement of a greater number of islamic organizations, the efforts toward more revivalist or conservative interpretations of certain practices, and the efforts to implement of zakat as an individual tax obligation to the state. islamization is “a process of deepening commitment to standards of normative islamic belief, practice and religious identity. those standards are subject to contestation among groups and individuals” (ricklefs, 2012, p. 516). the influence of islamization has also increased charitable activities within salafi networks from the middle east to indonesia. however, those activities are not as large as it has been assumed, and are exceeded by donations from local muslims (jahroni, 2015). modernization in the practice of philanthropy manifests itself in the use of modern forms of organization, modern technologies, and a modern model of ‘rational thinking’ in the collection, organization, and distribution of various forms of charitable giving. both islamization and modernization have become imbedded in the recent, growing development of islamic philanthropy in indonesia. among islamic organizations, the term philanthropy was new and was introduced through advocacy and the research program philanthropy for social justice in 2002. acceptance of this term and concept was not easy as it was regarded as secular and western. however, to date, the term has been widely used, including by islamic newspapers (such as republika) and by zakat organizations. the adjective ‘social’ when applied to justice endorses the acceptance of the term philanthropy. however, as this article later shows, the common understanding of the term among philanthropy organizations varies and there have been varied local adaptations. the practice of social justice philanthropy developed in the us as a continuation of the move from charity to philanthropy, and the move toward effective giving that endorses social change through intervention in the root causes of social problems (anheier & leat, 2006; hunsaker & hanzi, 2003; rabinowitz, 1990). the national committee for responsive philanthropy (ncrp) defines social justice philanthropy as “the practice of making contributions to nonprofit organizations that work for structural change and increase the opportunity of those who are less well-off politically, economically and socially” (hunsaker & hanzi, 2003, p. 6). this article follows the ncrps definition but adjusts it to indonesian and islamic contexts. islamic philanthropy for social justice works in terms of long-term grantmaking, social change, and inclusive giving. the 2003 survey, led by the author, did not only endorse giving for structural change and increase the opportunity of the weak, minority, and discriminated groups among society, but also highlighted the impartiality of giving without aseas 10(2) | 227 amelia fauzia discrimination with regard to groups, gender, ethnicity, and religion. these values were taken from the progressive understanding of islamic teachings. the growing trend of modernization and islamization in the last two decades needs an assessment of how the seeds of social justice philanthropy grew and to which direction these trends in islamization and modernization stir the practice of philanthropy. modernization of organizations and programs philanthropy organizations have modernized since reformasi in three important ways: 1) legal reform, 2) reform in management, and 3) reform in programs. the reformation period endorsed a legal reform related to philanthropy with the issuance of the zakat management law no 38 in 1999 – later amended with law no 23 in 2011, the foundation law no 16 2001 (amended in 2004), and the waqf law no 41 in 2004. muslim philanthropic organizations crystallized into three main types. first, zakat organizations, these are organizations that focus on the collection and distribution of zakat and that are supposed to register under the ministry of religious affairs and the national zakat board (baznas). there are state-based zakat foundations (like baznas) and community-based zakat foundations (like lembaga amil zakat or laz).4 these comply with the zakat law, even though they also manage non-zakat donations. second, there are charitable and humanitarian organizations. these focus on the collection of non-zakat donations, they report to the ministry of social welfare and are registered under the foundation law. the third type includes waqf foundations and bodies. they comply with the waqf law and they mainly manage waqf assets. these three types may also be legally registered as foundations or mass organizations, therefore complying with the foundation law or the mass organization law. additionally, there are zakat committees, or temporary committees working to collect zakat in mosques, islamic schools, and neighborhood associations.5 the three types of organizations have been endorsed to become modern in nature through laws and other government regulations, with expectations that they could work in a more effective and accountable way – not necessarily aiming for social justice. the move has been relatively successful for the non-zakat and zakat organizations, which as a result have more potential for social justice philanthropy. the second reform is on the level of management. the adoption of modern management leads islamic philanthropy organizations to use banking systems, hire full-time professional staff, improve organizational capacities, implement transparency and accountability principles, and have fundraising divisions. there has been a positive environment to do financial audits and publish reports, to provide an equal access for men and women, to do public fundraising, and offer the best service and programs to obtain public trust. the organizations also adjust to modern management by referring to contextual interpretation of islamic teachings, for example, on the acceptance of banking systems that were previously regarded as unlawful 4 the total number of baznas – from national, provincial, to districts – is 549 (decree director general for guidance of islamic community no 499/2016). the approximate number of community zakat organizations – according to the general secretary of zakat forum – is 231 (amin sudarsono, 28 august 2017). 5 the zakat committees at mosques approximately equal the number of mosques in the country, namely 731,095 (langkah strategis meningkatkan kualitas masjid, 2017). 228 | aseas 10(2) islamic philanthropy in indonesia (haram) by some ulama (islamic scholars) and organizations. the more modern the organization, the more it is open to women and to modern interpretations of islamic teachings on philanthropy. the third reform concerns programs. most islamic philanthropy organizations have expanded their activities into educational, health, disaster relief, economy, and socio-religious programs. some leading organizations, such as dompet dhuafa, have created divisions for advocacy, provide grants for research and the publication of journals and books, and run research and training institutes on zakat management. dompet dhuafa also supports anti-corruption programs, advocacy for victims of evictions, and campaigns for environmental conservation. following problems related to migrant workers, dompet dhuafa established a migrant institute and a branch in hong kong to provide assistance for female migrant workers (abilawa, 3 february 2016) (see also latief, 2014; also see this issue). these programs lead to the enhancement of practices of social justice philanthropy. this programmatic reform has broken the strong tradition of zakat giving, which is usually only for purposes related to religion and restricted to muslims. modern philanthropy organizations provide important means for the gradual inclusion of social justice in philanthropy practices. traditional charity may also have a social justice value, for example, giving without discrimination and giving to underprivileged groups. the non-organized character of traditional giving, however, tends to keep social justice values low so that it could not change into effective and strategic social change. while modernization, especially programmatic expansion, has developed well, islamic philanthropy organizations still keep traditional charitable activities in their programs, such as giving food and money to orphans, providing food for fast-breaking during ramadan, and providing cash for islamic preachers. in this respect, how organizations define social justice differs from one to another, as can be seen below. examples of social justice philanthropy this section discusses examples of social justice philanthropy developed by islamic philanthropy organizations and looks at the contexts from which these ideas and practices come. the first example discusses the establishment of non-zakat organizations, while the second and third show efforts for social justice philanthropy based on the indonesia humanitarian alliance for myanmar and the world zakat forum. establishment of non-zakat organizations as mentioned previously, there are charitable and humanitarian organizations which do not focus on zakat. this type of organization has flexibility in dealing with fundraising and managing donations that follow general regulations and not strict islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) on zakat. such organizations offer greater potential for social justice philanthropy. one example is the yasmin foundation which was founded by the intellectual chaidar bagir, an expert on muslim philosophy and sufism. yasmin was an abbreviation for yayasan imdad mustad’afin, focusing on empowering the poor. in 2016, it changed its brand name into amal khair yasmin and became a corporate social responsibility (csr) program of another of bagir's institutions, namely mizan aseas 10(2) | 229 amelia fauzia publisher, which is known as a progressive islamic publisher. yasmin has a school resource centre, an autis therapy centre, a health advocacy program, a second hand store, and many other activities. in early 2017, it advocated against hate speech and provided advice for polite communication, which seems to respond to social media hate speech against a christian chinese governor of jakarta (belajar bicara sopan santun, 2017). for yasmin, social justice means to give – not only to muslims – and to appreciate minorities. philanthropy organizations that are similar to yasmin are few in number. they are mostly founded by progressive muslim intellectuals. another example is the social trust fund (stf).6 established in 2012, stf is founded and supported by academics of the syarif hidayatullah state islamic university in jakarta. learning from the ford foundation and philanthropy in other countries, stf’s advocates for ‘philanthropy for social justice and peace’ that promotes equality and diversity, but adapted to an indonesian muslim context (philanthropy for social justice and peace, 2013). it aims to provide opportunities for the less advantaged, regardless of their religious or ethnic background, in order that they can have better access to education and welfare. its grants and activities include scholarships for schools in remote areas (in the ‘outer islands’) and peace scholarship grants for muslim and christian children in conflict zones (social trust fund uin jkt, 2014). it offers advocacy programs for empowering civil society and the philanthropy movement, such as supporting judicial reviews of the zakat law. stf’s views reflect progressive islam, as it has been influenced by muslim scholars from syarif hidayatullah university. as seen from the above activities, stf advocates for giving without discrimination as well as for the support of minority groups, peace and religious harmony, and long-term development programs. although having the same islamic values, these two examples represent a different cultural tradition than zakat organizations. they follow a more humanistic form of islam, which avoids ‘political islam’. this position differs from many zakat organizations that approach their beneficiaries solely as muslims and are therefore relatively close to political islam and dakwah (islamic propagation) movements. indonesian humanitarian alliance for myanmar the indonesian humanitarian alliance for myanmar (akim –  aliansi kemanusiaan indonesia untuk myanmar) was created in response to the humanitarian crisis concerning ethnic rohingyas in rakhine state, myanmar. the escalation of the conflict in october 2016 and in august/september 2017 resulted in more than 500,000 rohingyas fleeing as refugees to bangladesh.7 developed in early 2017 as a collaboration of islamic philanthropy organizations and supported by the ministry of foreign affairs, the alliance has accepted the minister’s policy on ‘soft diplomacy’, which is based on mutual respect and does not interfere in another country’s domestic affairs (tomy hendrajati, 30 november 2016). akim’s approach is to “give to the people in need for 6 the author is one of the founders of this organization. 7 the crisis arose from a complexity of ethno-religious conflict between rohingya-muslims and rakhinebuddhists, and a conflict between the military junta and militant islam, based on long-term discrimination and the negligence of the myanmar government to recognize the rohingya minority as citizens of myanmar. 230 | aseas 10(2) islamic philanthropy in indonesia both societies, without any discrimination” – a policy that was endorsed by minister marsudi (22 january 2017) and articulated by a limited number of organizations. this ‘soft diplomacy’ succeeded in making this alliance the only organization welcome to carry out humanitarian aid in rakhine state. in january 2017, akim inaugurated two schools (renovated by one member of the alliance) (kemenlu, 2017), and delivered aid given by the government (ten container trucks of food packages and sarongs). the alliance plans to help both muslim and buddhist refugees in rakhine state in four areas: education (such as through schools and libraries), health (through medical training), economy and livelihood, and relief for two years at the cost of more than usd 2 million. the long-term development and inclusive approach made by this alliance could be part of a social justice approach. akim is worth mentioning for two reasons: first, it could persuade a number of islamic philanthropy organizations –  some from conservative backgrounds –  to bring assistance not only to muslim-rohingya’s but also to rakhine-buddhist refugees. in fact, some of the money contributed for this project is zakat money (see the next section on zakat to non-muslims), which means that they accept a more progressive interpretation and an inclusive approach to distribute zakat money also to non-muslim beneficiaries. second, it marks an acceptance of a long-term development program focusing on building peace rather than a short-term ‘hit and run’ approach that most organizations tend to engage in (see the low percentage of giving to long-term purposes in the next section). the alliance has survived in the face of high politicization, from provocations of fundraising without clear objectives by individuals and unregistered organizations, as well as against reactions of hatred (such as those from radical organizations of the islamic defender front (fpi) who launched a war, declared as a jihad, against the rakhine buddhists) (hodge & rayda, 2017; kami, 2017). despite strong conservative and non-inclusive harassment, the alliance maintained its position. between march and august 2017, its membership decreased from 14 to 11 organizations but increased to 25 organizations later in september. today, there is increased public support for the alliance, including from the zakat forum.8 it remains premature to claim success for this alliance as an example of an inclusive and social justice practice of philanthropy, as we need to wait for a few years to confirm this. however, the project displays an early effort in a social justice approach toward giving that commentators need to take into account. world zakat forum the world zakat forum (wzf) is a network that consists of organizations, individual practitioners, and academics that together aim to enhance the practice of zakat worldwide. it was established in 2010, initiated by the dompet dhuafa and 8 the 11 organizations that signed the commitment are muhammadiyah disaster management centre, lembaga penanggulangan bencana dan perubahan iklim – nahdlatul ulama, pkpu human initiative, dompet dhuafa, rumah zakat, dompet peduli ummat – daarut tauhiid, lazis wahdah, laznas lembaga manajemen infaq (lmi), aksi cepat tanggap, lazis dewan da’wah islamiyah indonesia, and social trust fund – uin jakarta. more new members include four from social and humanitarian organizations, and ten zakat organizations. aseas 10(2) | 231 amelia fauzia supported by the national zakat board or baznas (purwakananta, 1 march 2017). the forum later received support from leading zakat organizations, including from organizations in malaysia. it aims to be an institutional platform to support the further movement of zakat for the welfare of the ummah and “the glorification of islam” (world zakat forum, 2017). it has held regular meetings to promote and enhance collaboration in zakat for poverty reduction. previous conferences and meetings aimed at the engagement of practitioners, individuals, and zakat organizations from many parts of the world, and tried to endorse progressive interpretations of zakat, which still remains a big challenge. between 14 and 16 march 2017, the wzf held its fourth general assembly conference in jakarta entitled “strengthening the role of zakat as a global instrument to eradicate poverty” (world zakat forum international conference, 2017) which was attended by about 300 participants (mainly from the national board of zakat) and representatives from 19 countries. its local host was the national board of zakat. it held a plenary session on zakat and sdgs, and it signed a cooperation agreement with the undp and the national development planning agency on zakat for development. although the forum remains exclusive for muslims and those who want to use zakat as a weapon against unbridled capitalism, liberalism, and for reinforcing solidarity among muslim nations, its platform is quite open for collaboration with international development agencies, such as the undp. it somehow follows the schemes of international agencies in the question of how zakat could be used effectively for development – specifically for poverty eradication – and fits with goals for sustainable development. the move toward zakat for development is made possible through the leadership of baznas and dompet dhuafa. this move is in accordance with the value of social justice philanthropy. for zakat organizations, agreement on the tools of sdgs and the development agenda indicates a big leap that may advance the agenda of social justice. although it is not clear how this forum could further endorse zakat organizations toward a social justice agenda, it shows a path toward the transformation of zakat for development aims. potentials and constraints for social justice philanthropy the examples above reveal the potential for the further development of philanthropy of social justice. this, to some extent, echoes several findings of the 2003 survey. first, looking at social capital and the principle of social justice, the survey finds that muslims in indonesia have the potential to develop social justice philanthropy. it finds that more than 65% of muslim respondents agree on certain principles of social justice, such as the importance of obtaining and securing rights, income equality, women’s rights, minority rights, and freedom of expression (abubakar & bamualim, 2006). almost all muslim respondents agree on the need to support equality and to have freedom of expression. it is clear that muslims are quite rational in responding to values of income justice, such as the agreement that income should be based on skill and talent, and that income equality may reduce or prevent social conflicts. the concern of muslims in this survey over women’s rights and the rights of minority groups are also moderately high, with over 70% expressing such concerns. however, these concerns and levels of support do not necessarily achieve congruence with the target 232 | aseas 10(2) islamic philanthropy in indonesia of giving. as mentioned in the previous section, a strong religious motivation and a traditional pattern and practice of giving have not brought the generosity of muslims to match the purposes of long-term social justice. second, the tendency toward social justice can also be seen from the motives for giving. a total of 11% of respondents stated that they give for 1) discharging ‘the rights of the poor’, 2) reducing poverty, and 3) helping the government to increase community wellbeing. these motives show evidence of concerns over other people’s rights and welfare, which is itself an indicator of the potential of social justice philanthropy. third, the target of giving to social justice purposes is low, even marginal. muslims give their sedekah directly to recipient organizations, ranging from schools to islamic associations and organizations working on human rights. however, while 94% of muslims donate to religious organizations, only 3% of them donate to human rights organizations, 11% donate to women’s organizations, and 11% to environmental organizations. giving to organizations is determined by religious affiliation and neighborhood attachments. this shows the domination of a traditional pattern of giving. what is clear is that issues related to the empowerment of human rights, or to women and labor rights, do not attract much attention from muslim donors. advocacy activities are somehow too abstract, so they are not popular targets of giving among muslim donors. in the same way, giving for ‘long-term purposes’, which has the character of social justice philanthropy, is also not popular. indeed, persuading and fundraising for social justice projects is a challenging task. the crucial question – fourth – is whether religion becomes a constraint for the development of social justice philanthropy. the 2003 survey shows that religion is an important cause for giving, and that muslims who donate to religious causes also tend to donate to social causes. analyzing the pattern of donors for neighborhood associations, i find that two thirds of the muslims surveyed donate to both religious and secular causes, whilst only about one third donate solely to religious organizations (fauzia, 2010b, p. 61). this finding shows a similar picture to that in the us, where religious people are most likely to give, and that the person gives not only for religious causes but also to secular causes (wuthnow & hodkinson, 1990). in the indonesian context, data is similar to that of mujani’s (2004) thesis, which finds that muslims who participate in religious activities will also participate in secular and community activities. this implies that muslims also donate to non-zakat and humanitarian organizations (such as discussed in the previous section) as well as to secular ngos. for example, in the aftermath of the tsunami in aceh, the sctv (tv news) foundation attracted a huge amount of donations for the victims of the tsunami (kehati, 2005). as one important element of social justice is the principle of non-discrimination, a further question is whether muslims agree with the notion of giving to others without considering their religion. survey results show that 77% of the respondents find no problem with this (fauzia, 2010b, p. 61). however, when the survey asked a more detailed question related to the possibility of zakat money being given to non-muslims, half of the muslim respondents (51%) voiced their objections, while 45% of the respondents agreed that money could be given to non-muslims, and 4% did not answer. six percent of the respondents stated that they had already given zakat to non-muslims (abubakar & bamualim, aseas 10(2) | 233 amelia fauzia 2006, p. 186). a possible hindrance to non-discriminative giving is related to interpretations of zakat (almsgiving), which is generally regarded as being given strictly to muslim beneficiaries, following conservative practices – although contextual and progressive interpretation, such as that by an-naim & halim (2006), has permitted zakat to be used for anyone who is in need. there are also many other forms of charitable donations that are not subject to such strict and detailed regulations such as sedekah. the 2003 survey data confirm that non-zakat organizations have greater potential for social justice philanthropy. this hindrance caused by interpretation does not diminish or detract from the humanitarian values of muslim donors. the survey found that 73% of muslim respondents shared a concern to improve their attitude toward minority groups. when they were asked the challenging question on their agreement as to whether or not to give to causes outside the traditional mainstream, their answers remained positive. 38% of muslim respondents wanted to give to non-muslims, 83% wanted to give to refugees, 56% agreed on the need to save sexual workers who were forced to work by giving them support, and 37% were even willing to give to victims of hiv/aids (abubakar & bamualim, 2006, p. 186). the willingness to give to and work on hiv-related projects was not typically supported, however, nahdlatul ulama and muhammadiyah had proved it was possible. both organizations collaborated with the global fund to fight hiv, tb, and malaria (rae, 2017), and this example, together with the survey findings and case studies discussed, build a picture of the potential for social justice philanthropy, especially in larger organizations. many organizations remain very strict or too careful in their interpretation and tend to follow the mainstream understanding, but a number of organizations have stepped up their work for the social justice practices of philanthropy. concluding remarks while a majority of indonesian muslims preserve a traditional way of giving, the innovation and reform pioneered by modern islamic philanthropy organizations contribute to the transformation of the sector. recent developments in the practice of islamic philanthropy discussed in this article have shown encouraging features from both recent case studies and the 2003 survey data. the contribution of modernization to legal reform, management, and to the program innovation of philanthropy organizations has increased the possibility of philanthropy for development and social justice, but remains very premature. islamization encourages the practice of islamic philanthropy, but it also impedes it due to the dominance of strict, traditional interpretations of jurisprudence (fiqh), and to the politicization of islam. the trend toward modernization has not necessarily led to thoughts that are inclusive. both modernization and islamization bring a notion of social justice philanthropy. progressive thoughts may arise from any religious tradition and a social justice perspective does not necessarily imbed itself in either modernization or islamization, but in the progressive thoughts inherent within the religion. this is similar to the argument that modern philanthropy is not necessarily socially just. even though modern philanthropy has potential in the addressing of social justice, in reality some of these thoughts are only modern in terms of aspects of their outlook; their concern is far from addressing injustices. 234 | aseas 10(2) islamic philanthropy in indonesia in indonesia, traditional – and strict – religious behaviors have complicated modern program management, and have hindered long-term structural programs as organizations face difficulties in adapting fiqh regulations established in the eighth and ninth century cultures of the middle east to the modern situation of indonesia. however, efforts toward reinterpretation have been on the way, not only in indonesia (abidin, 2004), but also in international islamic agencies (shirazi, 2014). practices of islamic philanthropy with an inclusive approach, non-discrimination, and long-term structural programs have been seen here and there, including in the establishment and support given to non-zakat philanthropic organizations and forums/associations. the transformation toward social justice philanthropy has benefited from dialogs and exchanges between islamic philanthropy organizations and secular ones, as well as with other faith-based organizations that are concerned with the agenda of social justice. indeed, there are many charitable foundations, such as media-based, csr, and family foundations that come from different spheres than zakat organizations but whose work is similar or complementary in intention and character. from the exchange initiated between 2002 and 2004, islamic philanthropy organizations learned from the development of the philanthropy sector in indonesia, asia, and the us, and about various issues such as environment and advocacy. it is likely that this dialog contributed to the discreet acceptance of the term ‘philanthropy’. zakat organizations continue to engage with secular ngos and work on public policies, on anti-corruption, on consumer affairs, on the empowerment of women, and on issues of social justice. overall, while not rapid, the continuance of the development toward social justice philanthropy has been clear. the account that asserts that religious charities have more interest in promoting their own confessions (benthall & bellion-jourdan, 2014) may continue to be challenged step by step by a more vibrant, inclusive philanthropy. the future of social justice philanthropy remains possible but will depend on a stable political and economic situation, support from the state, and the existence of a strong civil society.  references 2003 survey data. 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(2016). 2017 outlook zakat indonesia. retrieved from https://www.puskasbaznas.com/images/outlook/indonesia%20zakat%20outlook2017en_ puskasbaznas.pdf world zakat forum international conference. (2017). world zakat forum. retrieved from https:// worldzakatforum.org/events/wzf-conference-2017/84-world-zakat-forum-conference-2017 world zakat forum. (2017). vision. retrieved from https://worldzakatforum.org/home/vision wuthnow, r. & hodgkinson v. (1990). faith and philanthropy in america: exploring the role of religion in america’s voluntary sector. san francisco: jossey. about the author amelia fauzia is a visiting senior research fellow at the asia research institute, national university of singapore, working on islamic philanthropy networks in southeast asia. she is a lecturer at syarif hidayatullah state islamic university. ► contact: ameliafauzia@uinjkt.ac.id acknowledgements this article benefits from data from my current research on islam, ngos, & humanitarianism at the asia research institute, national university of singapore (funded by the asia research institute), and data from previous research on philanthropy for social justice in muslim societies (funded by the ford foundation, 2002-2004). searching for digital citizenship: fighting corruption in banten, indonesia searching for digital citizenship: fighting corruption in banten, indonesia muhammad zamzam fauzanafi ► fauzanafi, m. z. (2016). searching for digital citizenship: fighting corruption in banten, indonesia. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 9(2), 289-294. the expansion of digital technologies and social media in indonesia shifts practices of citizenship from a formal institutional level toward a more informal digital space. this paper presents the emerging results of research on digital citizenship in banten, indonesia, focusing on how new forms of citizenship are brought into being through digital acts that are defined as speech acts uttered through the use of social media. the paper follows digital acts of citizens in anti-corruption campaigns against the patrimonial and clientelistic regime of banten’s political dynasty that are predominantly staged on facebook and other online platforms. these digital acts produce and intensify affective publics through which forms of digital citizenship are enacted in opposition to the corrupt dynasty. keywords: banten’s political dynasty; corruption; digital acts of citizenship; facebook; indonesia  introduction indonesia today is among the top five countries with the highest number of social media users in the world (ambardi, 2014). a number of studies have looked into how social media are used in the context of civic activism in indonesia (lim, 2013; nugroho & syarief, 2012). however, most of the examples of civic activism projected in these studies focus on the notions of participation and mobilization rather than on the formation of digital citizenship in the course of encounter between the state and its citizens in the social media (isin, 2008; lazar, 2008, p. 3; neocosmos, 2009). if there is a focus on political agency formed through internet-based civic activism, it mostly refers to activism of civil society organizations. yet, to equate civil society organizations’ activism with “citizens in action” (nugroho, 2011) turns the notion of citizenship into something that is formal and programmatic. on the contrary, the expansion of new information and communication technologies and the growth of social media use have shifted both the meaning and practice of civic engagement from a formal democratic level toward a more informal level of “unorganized citizens” (cammaerts & van audenhove, 2005, p. 182). citizenship, in this sense, can be considered to be an “un-official, subjective, meso-level activity, taking place in a variety of sites” (papa & milioni, 2013, p. 27), including social media, and associated with performative activities, such as posting, commenting, liking, sharing, and so forth. forschungswerkstatt  research workshop w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 16 .2 -7 290 muhammad zamzam fauzanafi  aseas 9(2) this paper presents the emerging results of the author’s dissertation research examining the emergence of digital citizenship in indonesia not simply as the ability to participate in an online environment of prescribed ethical behavior (mccosker, 2014; mossberger, tolbert, & mcneal, 2008), but as a set of acts that designate political subjects emerging from the encounter between the state and its citizens on the internet and in social media (isin & ruppert, 2015). these sets of acts are conceived of as digital acts that are all speech acts uttered through online activities such as blogging, messaging, emailing, tweeting, posting, liking, and commenting (isin & ruppert, 2015). digital citizenship and tackling corruption this research focuses on emerging forms of citizenship in the discourse on corruption that appears on social media platforms in the region of banten, indonesia. as suggested by gupta (1995), it is the discourse of corruption that “turns out to be a key arena through which the state, citizens, and other organizations and aggregations come to be imagined” (p. 378). by digital acts such as reporting, posting, and commenting on corruption and on banten’s dynasty issues, people “construct the state symbolically and define themselves as citizens” (gupta, 1995, p. 389). banten is a province in indonesia that is characterized by the rise of a political dynasty and localized patronage network facilitated by the ongoing decentralization process (nordholt & van klinken, 2007). the term political dynasty refers to the patrimonial and familial connections of elected public officials who dispose of a clientelistic network of local strong men, or jawara, and business associations (hidayat, 2007). banten’s political dynasty grew when ratu atut was elected governor of banten for two subsequent periods (2007-2012; 2012-2017) and the other members of her family took up important positions in the local government. this created incentives for corruption. anti-corruption activists have been investigating the dynasty’s corruption cases since the foundation of the province of banten in the year 2000. some of these cases became not only a burning issue in local mainstream media but also a trending topic in social media. news, discussions, comments, and campaigns continue to appear today particularly on facebook sites such as fesbuk banten news (fbn) – a citizens’ journalistic page in which users recognize themselves as warga (citizens) of banten. postings, comments, and discussions among these warga relate to their ambitious desire to dismantle all corruption cases involving banten’s political dynasty. founded in 2010, fbn is one of most consistent and well-known citizen journalists’ social media pages in banten. it currently has 73,000 fans, mostly from the capital city of banten, serang; about 500,000 readers per week and a ratio of 2,000 to 20,000 readers per post. using a journalistic approach, fbn has become the social media platform that opens space for users to enact digital acts of citizenship. acts of witnessing one of the digital acts performed by the citizen journalists is the act of witnessing (isin & ruppert, 2015). citizens openly state what they perceive about corruption and 291searching for digital citizenship the dynasty’s political mal-practices. in the most-commented posting about the dynasty’s political campaigns and strategies to win the governor election in 2011, citizen journalists of fbn witnessed how members of the dynasty, especially ratu atut, used underhanded campaign strategies including money politics. citizen acts of witnessing injustice are particularly recognizable in their postings related to the corruption cases of banten’s political dynasty. citizen journalists of fbn shared information about the following cases: discretionary social assistance grant corruption case, ratu atut’s bribery case, bpk (badan pemeriksa keuangan, or the supreme audit agency) audit report case, ratu atut’s corruption in pandeglang elections, medical equipment procurement case, housing grant corruption case, pandeglang regent’s bribery case, and many more. figure 1. fesbuk banten news posting on local election campaign. in english: do you want to have a healthy and fast-growing baby so that he/she can vote for the next local election…? please eat this governor branded breast-milk companion biscuit. the biscuit has been circulated in the nearest community health center . . . . (figure by the author). 292 muhammad zamzam fauzanafi  aseas 9(2) acts of flaming one of the features of citizen journalism using social media platforms like fbn is that it not only enables citizen journalists and other users to perform acts of reporting or witnessing but it also facilitates the active participation of the ‘audiences’. these ‘new’ audiences no longer represent passive recipients of information but actively participate in its reproduction by making comments, liking, or sharing this information. analysis shows that the highest number of comments on postings on corruption cases in fbn can be categorized as ‘acts of flaming’ with the main targets being atut and banten’s political dynasty. flaming is defined as an act of “displaying hostility by insulting, swearing or using otherwise offensive language” (moor, heuvelman, & verleur, 2010, p. 1537 in mccosker, 2014, p. 205), or simply expressing “disagreement or an alternative opinion or humorous play” (mccosker, 2014, p. 205).1 the acts of flaming staged against ratu atut and the dynasty involve vitriolic speeches combined with irreverent and, sometimes, humorous expressions, as in the words of one facebook user: these rants and vitriolic expressions of warga aimed at dinasti (dynasty) are also dominant in all comments on postings of corruption and the dynasty, which can be seen from the following diagram of the words most frequently used in fbn. as figure 3 shows, dinasti (52%) and warga (42%) are the two most frequently used words in fbn. as such, these two terms become significant in fbn’s digital speech. moreover, the words of dinasti and warga have a substantial link in their context of co-occurrence, as it can be seen from the example in figure 4. the relation between the dynasty and citizens is antagonistic. citizens are the ones who are opposed to the dynasty. yet, in the middle of these two opposing words there is a huge cluster of harsh or vitriolic words such as tolol/bego/goblok/koplok (stupid/moron), taek (shit), bacot (shut your mouth), bangsat (bastard), edan/gelo (crazy), monyet (monkey), babi (pig), and geuleuh/muak/mual/seneb/seuneub (disgusted). conclusion these emerging findings suggest that acts of witnessing and acts of flaming are the most dominant digital acts of warga uttered against dinasti in social media in the region of banten. this emerging form of digital citizenship is essentially affective since it is enacted and manifested through the use of predominantly vitriolic words. 1 see also marc caldwell’s (2013) approach to ‘acts of flaming’ in online news forums by relating present notions of cultural citizenship to the concept of play. figure 2. screen capture of a comment on fesbuk banten news. in english: atut is only capable of taking care of her own face. you are a damn corruptor. look at your own face in the mirror, it looks like the face of a pig. (figure by the author). 293searching for digital citizenship as isin (2008) suggests, this kind of “hostile acts, as well as hospitality, indifference, love, friendship are not reducible to citizenship, but they can be intertwined with citizenship in significant ways” (p. 19). in this sense, online acts of flaming can be seen as an integral part of emerging forms of digital citizenship in the political context of banten. following the words that reflect the antagonistic position of citizens toward the dynasty, i choose to call these emerging digital citizens ‘disgusted citizens’. they are warga who are disgusted (seuneub/enek/geuleuh/muak) by a corrupted dinasti or degraded governments. these preliminary findings point to those new forms of (digital) citizenship that go beyond dominant theoretical frameworks that define ideal citizens as making decisions based on reason. to understand these new expressions, one has to account for the mediated and affective elements of communication and of figure 3. words-cloud of most frequently occurring words in fbn’s postings and comments. (figure by the author using nvivo 10’s word frequency query of texts in selected sources of fbn’ postings and comments on banten’s political dynasty and its corruption issues from june, 2010 until june, 2014). figure 4. screen capture of comment on fesbuk banten news. in english: those who protest will suffer ..? how if they fight ?? who will lose ? if they hurt who will pay for the treatment ..?? please think carefully ?? the corruptors are the one who will be happy . . . how much they will pay you .. ?? i am a citizen of banten, not all citizens of banten are in favor of atut’s dynasty .. they're so corrupt ??. (figure by the author). 294 muhammad zamzam fauzanafi  aseas 9(2) how citizenship is perceived, experienced, and practiced in and through digital social space.  references ambardi, k. (2014). mapping digital media: indonesia. london: open society foundation. caldwell, m. (2013). on the use of play theory in analyses of online public commentary. communicatio, 39(4), 501-517. cammaerts, b., & van audenhove, l. (2005). online political debate, unbounded citizenship, and the problematic nature of a transnational public sphere. political communication, 22(2), 147-162. gupta, a. (1995). blurred boundaries: the discourse of corruption, the culture of politics, and the imagined state. american ethnologist, 22(2), 375-402. hidayat, s. (2007). “shadow state”? business and politics in the province of banten. in h. s. nordholt & g. van klinken (eds.), renegotiating boundaries: local politics in post-suharto indonesia (pp. 203-224). leiden: kitlv press. isin, e. (2008). theorizing acts of citizenship. in e. isin & g. m. nielsen (eds.), acts of citizenship (pp. 15-43). london: palgrave macmillan. isin, e., & ruppert, e. (2015). being digital citizens. london: rowman & littlefield international. lazar, s. (2008). el alto, rebel city: self and citizenship in andean bolivia. durham: duke university press. lim, m. (2013). many clicks but little sticks: social media activism in indonesia. journal of contemporary asia, 43(4), 636-657. mccosker, a. (2014). trolling as provocation: youtube’s agonistic publics. convergence: the international journal of research into new media technologies, 20(2), 201-217. mossberger, k., tolbert, c. j., & mcneal, r. s. (2008). digital citizenship. the internet, society and participation. cambridge: the mit press. neocosmos, m. (2009). civil society, citizenship and the politics of the (im)possible: rethinking militancy in africa today. interface: a journal for and about social movements, 1(2), 263-334. nordholt, h. k., & van klinken, g. (2007). renegotiating boundaries: local politics in post-suhartoi indonesia. leiden: kitlv press. nugroho, y. (2011). citizen in @ction: collaboration, participatory democracy and freedom of information. mapping contemporary civic activism and the use of new social media in indonesia. university of manchester’s institute of innovation research & hivos regional office southeast asia. retrieved from http://www.betterplace-lab.org/media/citizens_in_action_id.pdf nugroho, y., & syarief, s. (2012). beyond click-activism? new media and political processes in contemporary indonesia. berlin: friedrich-ebert-stiftung. papa, v., & milioni, d. (2013). active citizenship or activist citizenship? a framework for studying citizenship in new social movements and the role of icts. media, communication and cultural studies association, 6(3), 21-37. about the author muhammad zamzam fauzanafi is a phd candidate at the department of anthropology and development sociology, leiden university, and junior lecturer at the department of anthropology, gadjah mada university, yogyakarta, indonesia. ► contact: mzamzamf@gmail.com aseas 12(1) | 1 editorial melanie pichler ► pichler, m. (2019). editorial. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 12(1), 1-2. aseas 12(1) features a thematically open issue on recent developments in southeast asia, ranging from qualitative case studies to wider socio-economic, political, and cultural dynamics in the region. the articles cover developments in myanmar, thailand, malaysia, indonesia, vietnam, and cambodia, but the analyses transcend national borders and also discuss, for example, the rising influence of china in southeast asia. dealing with historical events that shape current societies, hakimul ikhwan, vissia ita yulianto, and gilang desti parahita (gadjah mada university, indonesia) focus on the 1965 anticommunist killings in indonesia. they discuss the role of new media, especially youtube, in confronting the dominant narrative of the events happening in the aftermath of september 1965. centering their qualitative research – combining both online and offline sources – in memory studies, the authors find that the bourgeoning counter narratives do not echo the confrontational and propagandistic tone of the dominant narrative but provide nuanced and diverse forms of expression that keep the memories of the victims alive and may contribute to national healing. following up on the previous issue on forced migration (stange & sakdapolrak, 2018), two articles in this issue provide detailed case studies on different types of migration in southeast asia. prasert rangkla (thammasat university, thailand) explores the experiences of burmese migrants returning from thailand and seeking a better life in recently transitioning myanmar. he argues that the process of returning, rather than a straight forward, linear process, is shaped by friction and traction, supporting as well as impeding the plans of returnees. janina puder (friedrich schiller university jena, germany) focuses on labor migration from indonesia to malaysia’s oil palm plantations. in a qualitative case study, she analyses the implications of malaysia’s alleged shift towards a bioeconomy on the migrant plantation workers in sabah, east malaysia. she specifically reflects on the living and working conditions of low-skilled migrant workers that make their prospects of inclusion into the upward mobility target of the bioeconomy program highly unlikely. in another qualitative case study, dodi widiyanto (nagoya university, japan & gadjah mada university, indonesia) analyses the phenomenon of farmers’ markets in yogyakarta, indonesia. apart from traditional and modern markets, he identifies them as a third wave of food markets in indonesia and focuses especially on the meanings of local and healthy food. interestingly, widiyanto shows that local food is not necessarily associated with geographical proximity, that is, being grown in yogyakarta or the surrounding province, but also with social editorial w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 09 2 | aseas 12(1) editorial relations and values that are negotiated between vendors and consumers. in line with a previous focus on the political economy of new authoritarianism in southeast asia (einzenberger & schaffar, 2018), david j. h. blake (university of york, united kingdom) discusses the shift towards stricter authoritarianism in cambodia over the recent years. in an interesting argument, he borrows the concept of a “hydraulic society” from karl august wittfogel to analyze the interlinkages between infrastructure projects and authoritarian rule under hun sen. blake emphasizes the growing influence of chinese investment in hydropower infrastructure and the expansion of authority under hun sen as a satellite hydraulic state of china. also dealing with the rising influence of china in southeast asia, jacub hrubý and tomáš petrů (oriental institute of the czech academy of sciences, czech republic) investigate china’s cultural diplomacy in malaysia during the premiership of najib razak from 2015 to 2018. their article shows an intricate pattern of networks, involving various actors, both chinese and malaysian, state, semi-state, and non-state, whose interests converge and overlap with the aims of chinese cultural diplomacy. focusing on economic and financial trends in the region, hong-kong t. nguyen (phu xuan university, vietnam), viet-ha t. nguyen, thu-trang vuong, manh-tung ho, and quan-hoang vuong (phenikaa university hanoi, vietnam) present a review on the rising indebtedness of the emerging economy of vietnam, with a special focus on household debt and non-financial corporations. although traditionally a culture condemning debts, the authors provide data that shows the increasing levels of debt that also point to the relevance of consumerism and an emerging middle class. finally, ralph chan (university of vienna) and joshua makalintal (university of innsbruck) contribute a review of the german-language handbuch philippinen for an international community. rainer werning and jörg schwieger co-edited the compilation in its 6th edition this year with a focus on duterte’s populist authoritarian turn.  references einzenberger, r., & schaffar, w. (2018). the political economy of new authoritarianism in southeast asia. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 11(1), 1-12. stange, g., & sakdapolrak, p. (2018). forced migration in southeast asia. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 11(2), 161-164. the alternative agriculture network isan and its struggle for food sovereignty – a food regime perspective of agricultural relations of production in northeast thailand alexandra heis ► heis, a. (2015). the alternative agriculture network isan and its struggle for food sovereignty – a food regime perspective of agricultural relations of production in northeast thailand. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 8(1), 67-86. this paper uses the food regime analysis to visualize relations of domination and exploitation within the realm of food production and supply. starting with an outlook on how the food regime plays out in the thai context, the author goes on to elaborate its critical aspects fundamental for a food sovereignty critique: growing concentration of power on the side of transnational corporations, exploitative relations of production in agro-industry, and devastating effects for nature, small-scale producers, and increasingly also for consumers. in northeast thailand, the alternative agriculture network isan (aan isan) is struggling to secure income and subsistence agriculture for its members. this is achieved through a number of activities, some of which are introduced here in detail. producer cooperatives, organic farming, green markets, or a local herb medicine center all aim at empowerment within the present market situation by using aspects of the health discourse to support their arguments and at the same time reinforcing a specific local politics of identity, rooted in notions of culture and religion. keywords: alternative agriculture; food regime; food sovereignty; peasant identity politics; northeast thailand  mittels einer entlang des food regime-ansatzes inspirierten analyse zeigt die untersuchung vorherrschende machtund ausbeutungsverhältnisse landwirtschaftlicher produktion. mit einem einblick in die manifestation des globalen food regimes in thailand konzentriert sich der artikel auf jene elemente, die zentral für die kritik der food sovereignty-bewegung sind: monopolisierung der produktion und verteilung bei transnationalen unternehmen und negative folgen der agroindustriellen produktion für kleinbäuerliche produzent_innen, die umwelt sowie konsument_innen. das alternative agriculture network isan (aan isan) in nordostthailand setzt sich in diesem kontext für seine mitglieder ein. eine reihe diesbezüglicher aktivitäten werden hier detailliert beschrieben: produktionskooperativen, ökologische landwirtschaft, bauernmärkte sowie das örtliche kräuterzentrum. diese alle zielen darauf ab, die kleinbäuer_innen innerhalb der vorherrschenden marktverhältnisse zu stärken und greifen dabei sowohl auf aspekte von gesundheitsdiskursen als auch die frage der kulturell und religiös determinierten identität zurück. schlagworte: food regime; food sovereignty; kleinbäuerliche identität; nordostthailand; ökosoziale landwirtschaft aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 15 .1 -5 68 alexandra heis  aseas 8(1) introduction using the example of the alternative agriculture network isan1 (aan isan), this paper explores food sovereignty activities of a group of farmers in yasothon province, northeast thailand. the network is part of the international peasant organization la vía campesina, and its individual members and member groups have a long tradition as grass-roots activists and campaigners on ecological issues and issues of social and economic inequality. as a nation-wide organization, aan isan oversees government agricultural policies and provides a networking platform for its member groups. as a food sovereignty movement, it emphasizes peasant subsistence and empowerment. although it presents itself as a nation-wide network, its center certainly is the northeastern region of thailand. similar to other alternative development concepts of the global south, food sovereignty draws on local categories and non-western ontology. the concept of agrarian citizenship, for example, accentuates the cultural meaning of land and the understanding of agriculture not as a business, but as a way of being and is reflected in the politics of peasant identity. thereby, the peasants understand themselves as stewards of the earth and the land (wittman, 2010, p. 169; wittman, desmarais, & wiebe, 2010, p. 2). apart from the struggle for socio-economic equality, this is the beating heart of the aan isan. in the following, the paper shows how the aan isan embraces strategies of resistance in order to maintain and, when possible, enlarge their income and means of subsistence. the field of action of aan isan member groups is predetermined by the global food regime manifesting in the thai context – a set of food production and supply relations. hereby three major spheres were detected: organic agriculture, alternative marketing, and healthy diets. the paper shows how these are related to the food regime and where the scope of action for aan isan lies, and illustrates examples of all relevant strategies. one major theme figuring in the data is the specific notion of peasant identity as reflected in the agrarian citizenship concept mentioned above. the struggle over definition of healthy foods and diets has been noticed as crucial for legitimating a given food regime. it is shown how aan isan agents actively engage in such struggles by successfully addressing drawbacks of the corporate food regime and pointing to the beneficial effects of close consumer and producer relations, triggering solidarity and a locally rooted identity. the article is based on data collected during fieldwork in october 2011 through open, semi-structured interviews as well as informal talks. the sample of interviewees included representatives of the aan isan as well as the sustainable agriculture foundation,2 and leading figures of the aan isan interest groups. according to their specific interest, members of the aan isan are involved in such initiatives as the herbal group, the alternative marketing group, and the green market group. all of 1 on the english version of the aan isan website, isan has been transcribed into english as esan. this does not correspond to the general rules of transcription of thai language and is therefore not adopted in this paper. 2 sustainable agriculture foundation was established as a fund-managing organization in 1997 when larger amounts of funds were made available to alternative development social movements in the aftermath of the 99-day protest of the assembly of the poor (expert a & b, personal communication, october 2011). 69alternative agriculture network isan them are full-time farmers and only secondarily involved with the aan isan. furthermore, two scientists from the faculty of agriculture at the ubon ratchathani university were interviewed. the geographical focus of the study was the province of yasothon, which is some 500 km northeast of bangkok. it is one of the poorest of the 76 thai provinces, with a very low level of road infrastructure. however, the scope of aan isan covers several provinces of the northeast. this is the region with the highest share of agricultural holdings in numbers as well as in terms of area coverage in thailand (national statistical office & ministry of information and communication technology, 2003). the most important cash crop of the region is jasmine rice – a high-yield breed – and the most important industrial activity in yasothon is rice milling (kaufmann, 2012, p. 161). overall, eight semi-structured interviews and several informal talks were conducted mainly in english and local lao dialect. the interviews were conducted with the support of a native interpreter and transcribed with the support of a native translator fluent in german and english. analysis of data was based on grounded theory. this implies a hermeneutical, empirically grounded induction of theory, whereby collection of data and its analysis are at least partly interconnected processes making it a well-structured methodology (hildebrand, 2007, p. 33; strauss & corbin, 1990, p. 58). the paper starts with an explanation of the food regime framework and how it plays out in thailand. the second section places aan isan within a conceptual and historic context and points out its main food sovereignty aspects – its members’ peasant identity politics as well as its local strategies of resistance. the last section demonstrates the empirical findings and concludes with a discussion on the relevance of the network’s attempts to re-establish local farmers’ and consumers’ social and economic position and capacity to challenge the dominant food regime relations in thailand. the global food regime framework within the thai context the concept of food regime defines global food production and consumption patterns as related to a specific accumulation regime, global value chains, and resulting power relations. the analytical concept developed by friedmann and mcmichael (as cited in mcmichael, 2009) is a combination of regulation and world-systems theory, which allows for a nuanced examination of how unequal global relations of production in agriculture are spatially and socially localized. transformation and consolidation processes of food regimes are integrated within general, political, and economic transformations of power relations and require new cultural legitimation. herein a food regime is understood as a dynamic concept with uneven phases of transformation and consolidation and the focus is on its historical and procedural aspects. according to friedmann, a food regime in general is a “rule governed structure of production and consumption of food on a world scale” (as cited in mcmichael, 2009, p. 142). the more implicit such rules are the more binding they are, appearing as something natural. nevertheless, a food regime is not simply a top-down exercise of power or expression of interest, but an outcome of “political struggles among con70 alexandra heis  aseas 8(1) tending social groups” over power within dominant discourses and of “what works” (mcmichael, 2009, p. 143). ethical and moral perceptions provide cultural legitimation to a food regime, securing its stability. according to friedmann, it is especially the conflicts that indicate “newly delegitimized – i.e. previously naturalized – aspects of the old food regime and offer competing frames for resolving them” (friedmann, 2005, p. 335). in our case, it is mainly issues of health impact, the ecological effect, and the social relations of food production that carry conflictual potential or where renegotiation is most visible. such transformations are opened up by, and at the same time open up spaces for, social movements, which “act as engines of food regime crisis and transformation” (friedmann, 2005, p. 229) with the “power to legitimate or challenge regime cultures” (mcmichael, 2009, p. 160). one of such socio-ecological social movements that try to counter the tendencies of the current food regime is the food sovereignty movement. its critique of social relations of production and ecological effects as well as its programmatic orientation rests on food regime analysis (bernstein, 2014; wittman, 2011, pp. 89–90). on a global scale, food sovereignty aims at establishing a global moral economy (mcmichael, 2005, 2009, p. 148), reworking the metabolic connection between society and nature (wittman, 2011, p. 820) and thus establishing agro-ecology as a new agricultural paradigm. as will be shown in this paper, aan isan (and the food sovereignty concept itself) is far from being a counter-hegemonic project in thailand; it is yet able to exert resistance and to hold its ground against very powerful – corporate – players. it has detected major contested features of the current food regime, which it uses in order to challenge these power relations. according to mcmichael (2009, 2012) the current food regime is structured in compliance with rules of neoliberal political economy that favor the private as opposed to the public. this is equally valid for agricultural development and goes hand in hand with an increasing monopolization of power in the sphere of food supply and production. it also implies a bias regarding agricultural research and development activities where funding has shifted from public to private, too (pistorius & van wyk as cited in mcmichael, 2009, p. 150). in addition, a major geo-political shift towards the global south appeared in as much as ‘newly agricultural countries’ (friedmann, 1993) open up access to cheap means of production – land, water, and workforce – and help satisfying changing consumption patterns in favor of fresh, non-seasonal fruits and vegetables in the global north. the formation of these new economic structures has resulted in a new accumulation pattern oriented towards southern transnational corporations (mcmichael, 2009, pp. 150–151; mcmichael, 2013, p. 684). in consequence, there is a growing vertical integration of food production and supply chains shown in the growing dominance of subcontracting of southern peasants for the cultivation of specialty crops, animal husbandry or broiler, and shrimp production, as opposed to formerly independent cash cropping (goss, burch, & rickson, 2000; heft-neal et al., 2008) on the one hand and, on the other hand, in the increasing crowding-out of fresh markets by superand hypermarkets on the side of food distribution and rising control of supply of means of production (seeds, mills, technology, etc.) on the side of agricultural contractors. all of these are often one and the same company (goss et al., 2000). this process is also driven by deep changes of consumption patterns, whereby it is not really clear if it is demand that determines the supply or vice versa 71alternative agriculture network isan (campbell, 2009, p. 311). clearly, the increasing monopoly of corporate food supply with individual supermarket chains controlling up to 80 percent of national retail markets (burch, dixon, & lawrence, 2013, p. 215) does have a good deal of regulatory power as to the products on offer and the shaping of consumer choices. regarding the manifestation of the corporate food regime in thailand, three central aspects of legitimation appear: the benefits of supermarkets versus fresh markets (banwell et al., 2013), the issue of contaminated and unsafe foods versus healthy, organic products (sangkumchaliang & huang, 2012), and the question of just social relations of production and especially the situation of farmers and small-scale producers. all issues are interrelated as they are based on discourses about environmental production and the question of health and healthy, socially and locally embedded foods (campbell, 2009; dixon, 2009). these are also crucial to the struggle over cultural legitimation and thus the power to set up rules, and as such are contested by all social groups. a thai multinational enterprise, the charoen pokphang group (cp group), can serve as an example here (goss et al., 2000, p. 514). in their survey, goss et al. (2000, pp. 516–517) show how the originally thai agro-industrial company has grown into a transnational corporation in only two decades, mainly through inter-sectorial diversification and a high degree of vertical integration of elements of production within the production chains (goss et al., 2000, pp. 516–517). it now controls the entire production and supply chain for products of animal husbandry as well as shrimp farming on a global scale. it produces feeds, owns feed mills, contracts out broiler production, and even provides loans for contracting farmers, who otherwise could not enter into the contract (heft-neal et al., 2010, p. 47). according to the heft-neal et al. (2010) study of poultry production in khon kaen, northeast thailand, credits provided by brokers cover more than 45 percent of the farmers’ financial means (p. 47). contract farming basically involves a subcontracting large-scale supplier, the retail sector, the intermediary broker, and the producing farmer (shankar, posri, & srivong, 2010). the expensive agricultural input is provided to the farmers by the large-scale supplier via a broker and it is often acquired on credit, with no contract, or even specified rates of interest (delforge, 2007, p. 5; shankar et al., 2010, p. 144). not only does contract farming draw producers into extensive dependency relations that very much resemble former client-patron relations and informal credit markets where vulnerability of debtors is increased through lack of transparency and a missing legal status. the rigid coordination which is needed to keep up a constant quality and quantity level renders farmers de facto tenants and wage laborers on farms who, nevertheless, bear the entire risk of their enterprise (goss et al., 2000, p. 521; shankar et al., 2010, p. 144). this rigorous control over the processes of food production goes hand in hand with retail corporations increasing their monopoly power over the retail sector within national markets (burch et al., 2013, p. 215). in thailand, major multinational supermarket chains have increased their market shares constantly since the 1960s. the cp group is strongly involved in this trend. although it started with four major retail chains, after the financial crisis of 1997 it now holds the national franchise of the seveneleven’s convenient stores (boonying & shannon, 2015, p. 10; shankar et al., 2010, p. 140; shannon, 2009). in thailand, fresh markets still provide the major share of fresh fruit and vegetable supply. but the increasing monopolization of the retail market 72 alexandra heis  aseas 8(1) leads to a gradually declining number of independent fresh-market retailers, mainly due to customer distrust over safety of foods and hygiene in some market areas (banwell et al., 2013, p. 610; konsulwat, 2002). consumers feel attracted by the bright, clean, and well-stocked locations, which is equally true for small convenient shops as for huge hypermarkets (shannon, 2009, pp. 81, 83; banwell et al., 2013, p. 609). the corporate food regime, which brought about the so-called supermarket revolution, is based upon marketing strategies of clean and hygienic packing fostering especially healthy, safe, and affluent fresh foods. this changing retail situation in thailand and the expensive pricing of those products may negatively influence consumer food choices and subsequently their options for healthy diets. as the low-income population might lose access to fresh foods, which are now generally available at fresh markets for relatively low prices, it might force them to become dependent on cheap convenient foods with high energy density and low nutrient value (banwell et al., 2013, p. 609). this development already implies certain inequality in food supply according to customers’ purchasing power in thailand and will further lead to a growing number of people suffering from malnutrition, especially among the low-income populace (dixon, 2014, p. 202). according to dixon (2009), the question of healthy and adequate nutrition has always been part of the legitimation process of a given food regime. in her analysis of health and dietary aspects of a given food regime, she describes in detail the emergence of the nutricentric citizen whose dietary choices are steered by questions of technical functionality rather than cultural and social aspects (dixon, 2009, p. 329). this is supported by the so-called “diet making complex”, in which the world health organization (who), the united nations (un), and other health and nutrition related institutions supported by scientific research and financed by corporations with stakes in agriculture–food business make recommendations as to which nutrients are especially health-enhancing (dixon, 2014, p. 202). within the current food regime, the recommendations favor fresh but also processed and functional health foods or wellness foodstuffs, designed for self-optimization and self-improvement. such dietary recommendations, substantiated with health and medical discourses, not only dictate what is on offer in supermarkets, and at what price, but, to a great extent, they also shape consumer perception about what healthy food is and where to get it. last but not least, the issue of environmental protection is also very much used to legitimate the current food regime. although this is certainly more relevant in the global north, this topic is on the upswing in the global south, too. the environmental aspects of food marketing came to the fore after broad critique of the former food regimes, demanding environmentally friendly production as well as clean foods. the calls of social movements of consumers and producers for locally, ecologically, and socially produced foods (campbell, 2009, p. 313) have at least partly been picked up and co-opted by the retail and food producing sectors, however, according to their needs and in a way which would not hinder profits (friedmann, 2005, p. 254). the complex and costly certification procedures do bring about a certain degree of security for the conscious consumer; however, they particularly serve the needs of the retail companies, such as foregoing public control or to justify higher prices for organic foods. within this struggle, social movements such as food sovereignty movements are caught up in a dialectic relation with the corporate regime, which is constantly co73alternative agriculture network isan opting and appropriating their health, social justice, and environment related claims (campbell, 2009; dixon, 2009, p. 323). the following chapter will introduce the food sovereignty movement aan isan and the practices of its members. it will especially look at how the group reacts to and deals with such drawbacks of the current food regime. concerning the small-scale farmers in yasothon, these include the increasing monopolization within agricultural production and supply chains, the ecological and social effects of intensive agricultural–industrial production, as well as the question of who can best feed the world. in all these cases – health, environmental protection, and the retail situation – they are trying to establish their own definition and rules, thus aiming at destabilizing or at least gaining power within the corporate food regime. aan isan – local food sovereignty initiatives in northeast thailand aan isan is a loosely structured network of organic small-scale producers with its early beginnings in the 1970s, starting out from informal initiatives of yasothon and surin province peasants (expert a, personal communication, october 2011). at the end of the 1990s, aan isan became a nationwide organization and the sustainable agriculture foundation was founded to organize and administer its funds. with the massive protests of the assembly of the poor3 and the new constitution in 1997, there was some upswing of alternative development concepts in thailand and sustainable agriculture became part of the 8th national economic and social development plan in 1997. later, in 2006, the sufficiency economy philosophy4 became constitutional and funds were made available for relevant projects. at the time the study was carried out, the network was financed also by the government organizations codi (community organisation development initiative), the agricultural land reform office, and the national thai health foundation (alternative agriculture network esan, n.d.). this is especially interesting with regard to the intersection of the food regime and the health discourse legitimating it. some projects, especially in the realms of seed variety breeding and alternative economy, are at least partly conceptualized and sustained as research projects (alternative agriculture network esan, n.d.; expert d, personal communication, october 2011). the aan isan is active in the northeast of thailand, but its main focus is within the provinces of roi et, ubon ratchathani, yasothon, mahasarakam, khon kaen, kalasin, petchabun, and surin. the network structure is very dynamic; groups are mobile and inter-connected across provincial borders; meetings are held in different sites. interviews were conducted mainly with 3 assembly of the poor (aop) was the first nationwide closing of ranks of rural and ethnic minority ngos and social movements mounting a 99-day protest in front of the government offices in bangkok. the founding of the aop was also fueled by political activists who already were involved in opposition to the pak mun dam in ubon ratchathani province, among others the later spokeswomen of aop wanida tantawitthayapitak (glassman, 2001, p. 520). the aop protests were especially remarkable for their strategic and dramaturgical performance. nevertheless, the achievement was very limited and agreements were not renewed by the subsequent government (baker, 2000; missingham, 2003). 4 sufficiency economy philosophy was introduced by the king in his birthday speech after the outbreak of the crisis in 1997. it is an alternative approach opposing negative effects of capitalism with moderation and sufficiency. it is consists of buddhist moral and ethical concepts, such as the middle path (piboolsravut, 2004). 74 alexandra heis  aseas 8(1) representatives of the aan isan, the sustainable agriculture foundation as well as key members of the aan isan interest groups. while aan isan and the sustainable agriculture foundations are ngos and thus have a formal representational body, the interest groups do not. such groups have spokesmen and spokeswomen and indeed committees which take some organizational responsibility, but they are not autonomous or independent organizations. for example, the green market committee takes decisions about certain group activities, or just takes care of tasks which need to be done, such as ordering a car to pick up the right vendors on time (expert g, personal communication, october 2011). among the interviewees there were a person engaged in the establishment of community supported agriculture and the seed selection activities in kut chum district, the representative of the thai medical center at the temple wat tha lad, and one initiating member of the green markets in yasothon. after a short historical outline of aan isan farmers’ engagement in the struggle for food sovereignty and alternatives to development in general, special attention is given to its cultural and identity politics which are crucial for the legitimation of the peasants’ claims within the food sovereignty approach. the section concludes by pointing out some of the central food sovereignty strategies by which the aan isan offers an alternative to the current food regime. especially the focus of aan isan on environmental and health issues forms the legitimating backbone of the movement’s agricultural activities and self-representation attracting diverse local consumers. since the 1980s, after the successful repression of communist and socialist uprisings during the 1970s, thai alternative development has been dominated by a localism discourse articulated through the community culture school5 (parnwell, 2006). within this concept, disseminated above all by a group of socially motivated academics, often physicians, and rebellious monks, the pre-capitalist village and community culture perceived as a genuine thai lifestyle can lead the way out of the crisis-prone capitalist system. localism is often characterized as a somehow backward looking imagination of the past based on local religion, beliefs, moral, and ethics and avoiding involvement with general political and economic problems and ideologies (parnwell, 2006, p. 185). the thai king’s sufficiency economy philosophy is a variety of the community culture school in that it seeks endogeneous solutions for socioeconomic problems, caused mainly through exogenous factors, i.e. the deprivation of world-market prices for staples and primary goods, or the increasing out-migration of rural population into better-paid industrial occupation. it also largely draws on buddhist principles of moderation and the middle path. because it was formulated by the king, it has become leading in national policy making and even made it into the national constitution in 2006. it is central to a number of national and rural development policies and is recognized by the un development report on thailand in 2007 (kasem & thapa, 2012, p. 100). in parallel, there has also been a perceivable trend towards more radical tactics of resistance against capitalist development since the late 1980s (somchai, 2002, pp. 23–24). massive action of resistance in the northeast grew 5 community culture school has emerged at the end of the 1970s and grew in importance throughout the 1980s and 1990s as opposition to the negative effects of capitalist development. buddhism and the village culture are seen as its starting points for the achievement of a moral and ethical socio-economic system. the ideas have re-emerged as a neo-localism discourse in the sufficiency economy philosophy of the king (parnwell, 2006, p. 185). 75alternative agriculture network isan against projects of public–private partnership, which represented early forms of landgrabbing6 and threatened the livelihoods of thousands of villagers. amongst the issues of public concern were the large-scale ‘reforestation’ endeavors with heavily emaciating eucalyptus (lohmann, 1991; pye, 2008) or the construction of the prestigious pak mun dam in ubon ratchathani (tegbaru, 1998) which would have destroyed the livelihoods of villagers dependent on fishing in the mekong river. this protest finally spurred a nationwide protest movement, which cumulated in the foundation of the assembly of the poor (missingham, 2003). the forerunner organization of aan isan, the small-scale farmers’ association of northeast thailand, was one of the founding members of the assembly of the poor that successfully pushed for the integration of sustainable agriculture into national policies and assured funding and political support for alternative development projects, among others the aan isan (somchai, 2002, p. 24; supa, 2005; expert d, personal communication, october 2011). being a member of the food sovereignty movement la vía campesina, aan isan also embraces the concept of agrarian citizenship, reflected in its identity politics as well as strategies of resistance. the notion of agrarian citizenship is a response to the bias of social and political rights towards property and class relations inscribed in the concept of national citizenship (wittman, 2009, p. 807). agrarian citizenship emphasizes the cultural and ecological aspects as parts of political economy. at its center are the culturally and socially established relations of small-scale and subsistence farmers to land and food production. while in mainstream economy land is regarded as an asset or means of production, the agrarian citizenship concept stresses the importance of land for social reproduction of its people and their identity. to identify oneself as peasant implies a reciprocal relation of caring and protection between the land and its people (desmarais, 2008; wittman, 2009). this is especially relevant regarding the ecological crisis and global warming, where peasants and food sovereignty movements claim to be able to avert or sooth the ecological crisis. this established relation to land and nature provides a fundamental challenge to capitalist agricultural production. the following section shows in detail the specific politics of identity of the aan isan members and how they relate to the agrarian citizenship concept articulated through the food sovereignty movement. their economic strategies of resistance are based on their self-understanding as peasants and people of the land and will be elaborated hereafter. the described activities with regard to alternative – moral – forms of production and marketing of rice, herbs, and traditional medicine as well as local agricultural products illustrate the linkages between identity, political and economic struggle and their cultural legitimation. identity politics identity and cultural politics within the aan isan are a result of a conjunction of buddhist and vernacular concepts and identification as peasants (or people of the 6 regarding its manifestation within the current food regime, mcmichael (2012) defines land grabbing as a symptom “of a crisis of accumulation in the neoliberal globalization project” (p. 681). reflecting “changing conditions of accumulation” (mcmichael, 2012, p. 681) the land grab as an analytical category is far more than a simple acquisition of land under capitalism. 76 alexandra heis  aseas 8(1) land; wiebe as cited in desmarais, 2008, pp. 139–140) and the emphasis on community. these are based on mutual legitimation. the concepts of community and solidarity economy are understood as deeply rooted within the cultural and religious traditions of the isan people (parnwell, 2006; experts f & d, personal communication, october 2011). equally, rituals around seed selection and preservation are embedded within buddhist festivities and are often celebrated on temple or temple premises. the specific peasant relationship to the land and agricultural production is also supported by buddhist concepts, especially its holistic perception of nature and humanity. society and human deeds are thus seen as part of nature, not as separated from it (kaufman, 2012, p. 157; expert a & b, personal communication, october 2011). in addition, buddhist philosophy basically defines all phenomena as interwoven and interdependent, reflected in the principle of dependent origination – of cause and effect (ratankul, 2004). this worldview is widespread in thailand and forms part of the politics of identity of northeastern peasants. the aspect of this specific relationship to nature and natural resources is the major characteristic of a peasant and a distinction towards, say, a farmer or an agrarian entrepreneur (desmarais, 2008, p. 140). the politics of identity therefore play a major role within the food sovereignty discourse and the self-designation as peasant is in itself regarded as a specific act of resistance (desmarais, 2008, p. 139). in thailand, the terms chao na or chao ban7 are commonly used when referring to farmers or peasants respectively (walker, 2012, p. 9). these terms are also explicitly used by aan isan members in order to underline the social and cultural implications of being a peasant, for example in connection to the hed yu hed gin concept (as explicated below). also, when speaking english the term peasant is used (expert a, personal communication, october 2011). the agent’s re-identification as peasant is closely related to the concept of agrarian citizenship as defined above and carries strong political implications. local strategies of resistance the local strategies of resistance employed by members of aan isan mainly address the three contested realms within the present food regime: organic farming, social relations of food production, and health. in all of these, aan isan members have found strategies to oppose and at times even challenge the dominant power relations. subdivided into numerous specialized groups, with personal cross-linkages and multiple memberships, aan isan members above all continue to consolidate their socio-economic position as independent peasants and food producers. they explicitly evade any deeper integration into the corporate sector using the instruments of producer cooperatives and alternative marketing strategies. both are legitimized, at least partly, through the agent’s capacity to define what is healthy for human and nature, especially within the realm of organic agriculture, seed breeding and vari7 chao na means farmer in thai, while chao ban literally means villager. during the interviews both were used as self-designation, especially in the context of differentiation. however, there is no equivalent discussion regarding the meaning of the term peasant and its historical context as in english-language literature (cf. bernstein, 2006). there is however some political implication to the term chao na/chao ban (walker, 2012). from my own experience, these terms strongly emphasize the self-identification of the people with the locality and their profession, specifically stressing the actors’ agency and expertise. 77alternative agriculture network isan eties, rice milling and production of organic fertilizers, or the producer–consumer relations for increased transparency and trust (expert a, b, & e, personal communication, october 2011). their aspiration to earn a living as small-holders figures most prominently in the data – expressed as a vernacular concept of peasant livelihoods. what they call hed yu hed gin8 (literally “produce to live, produce to eat”) implies more than subsistence farming; it also includes empowerment and participation in the market, mainly through fair trade and alternative or direct marketing of their products (expert b, personal communication, october 2011; for the notion of hed yu hed gin, see also parnwell, 2006). this vernacular concept is substantially, i.e. in the way it is perceived by the agents, tied to perceptions of peasant identity and agrarian citizenship and mirrors food sovereignty’s central critique of capitalist agricultural production. especially in its current regime, agriculture is increasingly unable to provide for livelihood even to the farmers themselves (desmarais, 2008; jarosz, 2014; mcmichael, 2009). the hed yu hed gin concept is the most potent concept of the isan peasants’ resistance as it specifically points towards the ability of the peasants to fend for themselves. as small-scale and independent farmers cannot compete on the market dominated by large corporate companies and based on social and economic inequality (shankar et al., 2010, p. 141), their only chance lies in the establishment of alternative marketing circuits where they regain power over the definition of agricultural and food practices (desmarais, 2008, p. 140). the specific strategies pointed out below are all included within the hed yu hed gin concept. organic farming and producer cooperatives the main strategy of the aan isan is the promotion of alternative agriculture, i.e. agricultural practices independent of the mainstream corporate food regime – as far as possible. the issues of safe and clean food were already articulated by isan peasants in the late 1980s, mainly in consequence of serious health effects caused by untrained and heavy application of chemicals in agriculture (kaufmann, 2012, p. 175; panuvet et al., 2012). as a result, organic agriculture opened up as an option for concerned farmers and became a focal point of interest, especially for the early activists. for them, production without chemical input is not only a matter of marketing and sales increase; it is much more an act of resistance, as heavy use of chemicals and high-yield seeds was responsible for growing indebtedness and ecological destruction (robinson, 2010, p. 8; somchai, 2008, p. 109). although organic production has been picked up and heavily co-opted by the corporate sector, mainly for exports to the global north, only 0.02 percent of total agricultural land in thailand was farmed organically in 2012 (sangkumchaliang & huang, 2012, p. 88). members of aan isan are mainly active in further developing organic farming practices and marketing of their products, however outside the corporate sector. one major instrument of independent production is the establishment of producer cooperatives, such as organic and inorganic rice mills. the nature care club9 cooperative rice mill in na so village, located 8 this is a vernacular expression in the isan lao-dialect and does not exist as such in thai language. 9 the nature care club is one of the autonomous members of the aan isan. some of these groups are 78 alexandra heis  aseas 8(1) in the kut chum district in yasothon, was one of the first of the aan isan and was founded in the late 1980s as a joint initiative of consumers and producers. this early form of collective community supported agriculture is still a very successful model of direct producer and consumer relations and the mill even participates in international trade (expert a & b, personal communication, october 2011). certifications and labeling of organic, safe, and healthy food clearly is a corporate strategy (friedmann, 2005, pp. 230–231) and it is not possible to bypass these (costly) certification procedures on conventional markets. in thailand, the main organic certification body is the organic agricultural certification thailand (act) which is a private organization accredited by the international federation of organic agriculture movements (ifoam). act is also supported by the earth net foundation, the major promoter of organic production in thailand (sangkumchaliang & huang, 2012, p. 88). the rice mill and its members must apply for a membership with the act, however, in order to emphasize the community aspect, the mill has obtained a group guarantee. this social control system is based on the members’ mutual controls as to compliance with act standards (od-ompanich, kittisiri, & thongnoi, 2007, p. 32). regarding the club’s exports to europe, representatives of european certification bodies have visited and consulted the mill’s board on the subject of their requirements (od-ompanich et al., 2007, p. 32; expert h, personal communication, october 2011) the rice mill sets its prices based on principles of fair trade and thus helps its members to avoid the unfavorable dependency relation with rice brokers and keep a bigger share of the rice price for themselves (expert a & b, personal communication, october 2011), thus addressing one of the main food sovereignty claims. the remnants of the milling process are sold to farmers for the production of organic fertilizers and offer assistance to farmers who want to switch from conventional to organic agriculture (expert a & c, personal communication, october 2011). in thailand, farmers are strongly encouraged by the authorities to use seed varieties developed and distributed by state institutions (expert b, personal communication, october 2011). this has not only had an adverse effect upon the biodiversity, but also narrows local knowledge about seed selection, farmers’ self-determination, and local dietary preferences. in order to elude the necessity to purchase organic seeds from government or other suppliers, the club’s members are encouraged to select and preserve their own seed, and organic seeds are also supplied by the club. aan isan seed sovereignty groups organize seed fairs, socio-cultural seed exchange events as part of religious rituals, and cooperate with the agricultural department of the university of ubon ratchathani (kaufmann, 2012, p. 169; robinson, 2010; expert a & b, personal communication, october 2011). for example, black and red sticky rice, which were supplanted by high-yield and long-grain rice varieties are now being pushed by some aan isan members. peasants are involved in ongoing research about cultivation methods and processing of these rice varieties, which are then successfully marketed in green markets and through the community supported agriculture (csa) scheme. seed cultivation is partly facilitated as a research project by the ubon ratchathani agricultural institute (expert a & d, personal communication, octomore formal than others. as founder of the cooperative rice mill in naso, the nature care club is one of the more formal groups of the aan isan. the group existed before the aan isan was founded. 79alternative agriculture network isan ber 2011). by using and breeding their own seeds and elaborating local knowledge through educational workshops, peasants are actively re-establishing agency over their means of production, thus diminishing dependency from state agencies and the agro-industrial sector. related to the question of organic production is the more general concern over health. indeed, strategies of empowerment in food production and supply employed by aan isan are closely related to and embedded in the health discourse. supported by a dedicated medical doctor and the abbot of kud chum village, they got involved in activities aimed at the revival of traditional herb and healing practices. foregoing the establishment of the nature care club, the “healing neighbor” group was founded in 1983. at the same time, traditional herb medicine and healing practices were established at the kud chum hospital, which still functions as a center for traditional medicine. the herbal medicine group is still active, and a small village health center has been established at the local temple, where villagers can sell or exchange herbs for ready-made medicines and where planting of herbs, or collection of herbs in the forests, is promoted (od-ompanich et al., 2007, p. 27; expert c & f, personal communication, october 2011). currently, members of the “healing neighbor” group are also engaged in establishing and maintaining relationships with urban consumers and patients. these can call the center and order medicines or herbs, which will then be delivered to the green market in yasothon province, thus fostering producer– consumer relations and empowering both herb growers and patients. although this initiative started rather as a self-help activity within the nascent localism discourse, it now exerts impact upon provincial law and distribution of means from health care funds (expert a, personal communication, october 2011). according to the informants, there is a fixed budget on traditional medicine and therapy in the provincial health care budget and yasothon province is among the forerunners in combining alternative and mainstream treatment. alternative marketing strategies as mentioned above, individual aan isan members have recently picked up the community supported agriculture scheme, which is still in an experimental phase. milling, packaging, and transport are all carried out by the same person, who delivers his rice to a group of friendly consumers in bangkok (expert b & d, personal communication, october 2011). still another form of collective and alternative marketing is the weekly green markets. selling fresh, local products directly to consumers is one of the most basic strategies of food sovereignty with positive effects for both parties. these markets assure the producers the entire freedom of action as to their choice of offer, the pricing, and marketing. there are no discriminating or unequal relations in the process of distribution and according to the farmers’ experiences, their profit exceeds by far their expectations (expert b, c, & g, personal communication, october 2011). this is opposed to the widespread income situation of other farmers who are required to advance investments only to later depend on heteronomous market prices, which almost never cover the costs of production (heft-neal at al., 2008, p. 47; shankar et al., 2010). for consumers, it assures a direct and reciprocal relation with the producers and knowledge about the origin and production of their foods. 80 alexandra heis  aseas 8(1) by selling their own products directly to the consumer, peasants at weekly markets are indirectly but importantly contributing to the education on local biodiversity, especially for urban consumers and city dwellers, which, due to the all-year supply of fresh products, have lost knowledge about the seasonality of foods (campbell, 2009; expert c, personal communication, october 2011). old varieties are promoted and re-introduced at the green markets, such as the already mentioned red and black sticky rice varieties. some vendors manufacture prepared dishes, especially sweets and desserts, and sell them at the market, thus increasing the promotion of these varieties. also frogs, insects, and other specifically local foods are fostered. in line with the food sovereignty program, aan isan tries to oppose this trend of losing the knowledge about locality and seasonality of foods by emphasizing the relevance and advantages of local and seasonal foods for the consumers and producers alike. foods produced within the local cultural and ethical embedment is thus ascribed special value and quality (campbell, 2009). as was pointed out above, the aan isan is actively involved in legitimating its actions through health related discourses and with the help of health relevant actors, e.g. through funding. in yasothon province many activities have been supported by the district health office – among others the establishment of the green markets. it is here in particular that aan isan members can capitalize on health issues because the “diet-related health inequities and environmental externalities generated by the current food system have been contributing to a crisis of legitimacy for the major proponents of such as system” (dixon, 2009, p. 322). by presenting their products as healthy and cheap (or at least cheaper than average), class-based divergence and the increased inequality in access to high quality foods is challenged (dixon, 2014, p. 202). each food regime was based on the social legitimation of specific diets (dixon, 2009, pp. 324–327), and discourses regarding healthy foods and diets have been part of transformation and consolidation processes of food regimes ever since. one major player here is the codex alimentarius, an international organization leading the definition of food and dietary standards. however, according to consumer critique, representatives of agro-food industries and other food-related businesses are often included in the delegacies. the increasing blending of private and public interest in research and development casts further shadows on the decision making within the commission (bühte & harris, 2011, pp. 219, 224). until now, the debate over health effects of food was based in life sciences and dominated by discussions about nutrients, vitamins, and the advantages of animal proteins. but recently food related social movements, increasingly supported by ecologically oriented public health and life science research (dixon, 2014) were successful in forwarding claims that healthy food should also be socially, ecologically, and culturally sound (campbell, 2009, p. 313; dixon, 2014, p. 201; friedmann & mcnair, 2008). as was mentioned earlier, quality certifications and labels are one major characteristic of, and are driven by the corporate food regime, and there is, also in thailand, a large number of labels for environmentally friendly, healthy, and safe foods (sangkumchaliang & huang, 2012, p. 88; scott, vandergest, & young 2009, p. 71). nevertheless, as sangkumchaliang & huang (2012) point out, all those certifications do not really show consumers’ increased trust in organic and socially just relations of production. apart from ecological effects, most buyers of organic products also attach importance to the support of 81alternative agriculture network isan and contact with local farmers – needs which are only insufficiently addressed by corporate or national certification bodies (sangkumchaliang & huang, 2012, p. 95). from the producers’ perspective, organizing peasant markets and building relationships with consumers thus offers a valuable strategy to tackle this crucial discrepancy. knowing the producer increases consumers’ trust in production processes and makes food provenience and quality transparent and communicable. at this point, the aan isan peasants’ pricing policy also needs to receive attention, not only as means of marketing but also, and especially, as means of accessibility and affordability of healthy foods. the prices are chosen to be competitive to those at the other fresh market. selling peasants would go to the fresh market and find out what prices were demanded for specific products only to offer their products at a cheaper price. own input – mainly the labor necessary to mend the garden and collect the fruits and vegetables, or the time spent at the market – was not calculated (expert g, personal communication, october 2011). conclusion this paper has introduced food sovereignty activities in yasothon province, northeast thailand, using the example of the alternative agriculture network isan as set against the analysis of the thai context of the global food regime. food regime is not understood here as a static concept but rather as fluent, dynamic, and relational. as its participants are not static objects without agency, so the regime too is in a constant process of transformation and consolidation. the paper’s objective was to identify characteristics of the current food regime along which the aan isan activities could be analyzed with respect to their food sovereignty relevance. the global food regime as a set of exclusive and dominant relationships around food production and supply has very diverse local manifestations with at times severe effects especially for small-scale and independent farmers but also for consumers. the article has shown how small-scale producers in northeast thailand attain and maintain independence through a set of specific local strategies of resistance. aiming primarily at evading the corporate sector and hence its manifold dependence relations, these strategies have mainly local effects; they are however also globally embedded. such embedment is given in part through the global structure of its opponents and partly through its linkages to the transnational or global struggle of the food sovereignty movement. the paper has examined aan isan strategies of producer cooperatives, organic farming and seed sovereignty, and alternative marketing. each of these provides the peasants with possibilities to refrain from the corporate sector and its often exploitative relations, but at the same time to take part in the market, thus being able to earn a living. there is a clear linkage between the practices, the peasants’ self-identification, and their cultural and religious embedment. the center of social activities, such as seed exchange fairs or moral economy is often the local religious center – the temple and local activities are often supported by involved monks. all aan isan strategies are interdependent as the members’ focus on food and seed sovereignty covers the entire production and supply chain – from organization of means of production, over production processes, up to marketing strategies. although organic certifica82 alexandra heis  aseas 8(1) tions and labeling cannot be bypassed when offering their products at conventional markets (scott et al., 2009, p. 71), it is the framework of agrarian citizenship which provides ethical and moral standards of production rather than official certification bodies. the specific politics of identity – the self-designation as people of the land and people of the village – and therewith associated social and ecological responsibility stressed by the food sovereignty movement are central to the aan isan members’ self-understanding. apart from the moral and ethical implications of the agrarian citizenship concept which call for a holistic understanding of nature and natural resources (desmarais, 2008, p. 140), health discourse has shown to function prominently as a means of social legitimation of the peasants’ struggle. here, the actors especially pick up the mismatch between the certification and labeling constraints on the part of producers and the lacking trust and transparency of production processes perceived by consumers (sangkumchaliang & huang, 2012). producers therefore stress their cultural relation to land, as generalized in the agrarian citizenship concept, but which is deeply ingrained in their buddhist beliefs and the principle of interdependence of all phenomena (ratanakul, 2004). by pointing out their very own specific competence herein, the peasants are building relationships with consumers and by directly marketing their products they are able to bypass the certifications and meet the demands for more transparency. their claim that the peasants’ social relations of production are best suited to produce healthy and socially and ecologically responsible food is increasingly supported by ecologically oriented public health research.  references alternative agriculture network esan (n.d.). about the aan. retrieved from http://aanesan.wordpress. com/about/ baker, c. 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(1998). local environmentalism in northeast thailand. in a. kalland & g. persoon (eds.), environmental movements in asia (pp. 151–178). richmond, uk: curzon. walker, a. (2012). thailand’s political peasants: power in the modern rural economy. madison, wi: university of wisconsin press. wittman, h. (2009). reworking the metabolic rift: la vía campesina, agrarian citizenship, and food sovereignty. journal of peasant studies, 36(4), 805–826. wittman, h. (2010). mobilizing agrarian citizenship: a new rural paradigm for brazil. in p. mcmichael (ed.), contesting development: critical struggles for social change (pp. 165–181). new york, ny: routledge. wittman, h. (2011). food sovereignty: a new rights framework for food and nature? environment and society: advances in research, 2, 87–105. wittman, h., desmarais, a., & wiebe, n. (2010). the origins and potential of food sovereignty. in h. wittmann, a. desmarais, & n. wiebe (eds.), food sovereignty: reconnecting food, nature and community (pp. 1–14). halifax, ns: fernwood press 85alternative agriculture network isan acknowledgments this research was partially supported by the university of vienna through kwa funds (shortterm scholarships for research in foreign countries). the author is very grateful for cooperation and information provided by her informants. she would also like to acknowledge the very helpful comments made by the editors and their anonymous reviewers. about the author alexandra heis finished her ma in international development studies at the university of vienna in 2013. the article is based on research for her diploma thesis examining the peasant activities from the solidarity economy angle. her focus is on alternative development paradigms, social movements, and political economy analysis. ► contact: alexandraheis@hotmail.com reflection on the special gender stream: 2017 timor-leste studies association conference aseas 10(2) | 275 reflection on the special gender stream: 2017 timor-leste studies association conference sara niner ► niner, s. (2017). reflection on the special gender stream: 2017 timor-leste studies association conference. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 10(2), 275-279. the special gender stream of the 6th timor-leste studies association (tlsa) conference was co-convened by dr sara niner of monash university and theresa tam of the national university of timor lorosa'e (untl) where the conference was held over two days from 29 to 30 june 2017. this report summarizes some of the 25 presentations which represent the key issues of political participation, gender-based violence, development, and health that are crucial for the pursuit of gender justice in timor-leste and how the local women’s movement and aligned ngos are attempting to achieve this. gender equality and gender relations are growing fields of research in timor-leste, undertaken by a mix of academics, activists, government officers, and development practitioners (niner, 2017) that were represented at the conference. a well-documented gender inequity is evident in post-conflict timor-leste as is the case in most post-war societies. women have higher levels of malnutrition and illiteracy than men and overall women earn lower salaries, receive fewer benefits and opportunities to advance in their professional careers. the 2010 national demographic survey reported that a third of women have experienced physical violence from a current or former husband or partner (national statistics directorate [nds], 2010). however, the acceptance of gender equality as a general principle in timor-leste is documented, although the deeper social change required to have equal opportunities in everyday lives is a ‘work in progress’, as the following report shows. gender relations apparent in contemporary timorese society are the result of complex political and historical circumstances. the dominance of men in timorese history and politics, and the legacy of militarization and conflict with neighboring indonesia during the national struggle for independence (1974-1999), are significant issues in contemporary timorese society that pose enormous challenges for the women’s movement (niner, 2017). in the contested world of modern timorese history, the crucial and unique role of women during the conflict has not yet been fully acknowledged and this affects women’s full and active participation in society today. timorese women accepted that the struggle for women’s rights established in the early 1970s was not possible during their long war, but the struggle depended upon women’s substantial contributions and sacrifices therefore creating a pool of highly skilled and motivated women who no longer accepted the status quo. the post-conflict period has been significant for women and the struggle for gender justice in timor-leste. while women face cultural and political pressure to conform to patriarchal demands, after the war ended, key women leaders and women’s groups have resisted this and the conference papers discussed here are evidence of that. network southeast asia  netzwerk südostasien w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 17 .2 -1 1 reflection on the special gender stream: 2017 timor-leste studies association conference 276 | aseas 10(2) the opening panel, which set the agenda for the rest of the gender stream, sketched out the key political issues for women and gender relations in contemporary timor-leste. the panel was opened by maria ‘micato’ domingas fernandes alves, a senior woman representative of timor’s nationalist struggle, who provided a historical perspective on the women’s movement. as the portuguese news agency lusa reported: “experts considered today that violence against timorese women remains high, with patriarchal society that perpetuates gender inequality and prevents women from having access to development opportunities” (lusa, 2017). ‘micato’ alves was only a teenager when timor was invaded by indonesia in 1975 and she worked behind the front lines training resistance cadres with the first east timorese women’s organization, the popular organization of timorese women (organização popular da mulher timorense – opmt), which was founded as part of the revolutionary front for an independent east timor (fretilin). she went on to resist indonesian occupation in many ways and was a founder of the first women’s ngo in timor fokupers (celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2017).1 the ongoing discrimination and inequality faced by timorese women from portuguese colonization to opmt’s efforts during the indonesian occupation was highlighted in her paper but her major focus was on women’s contemporary solidarity and advocacy, including the establishment of the women’s network, rede feto timor-leste in 2000, and the strategic successes of the women’s movement.2 many of these issues were reiterated by the next speaker, nurima alkatiri (who was running for parliament with fretilin) focusing on the “high prevalence of violence against women and children, chronic malnutrition, one of the highest birth rates in the world, high rates of maternal and child mortality and low rates of women participation in the work force”. she explained how “violence against children is seen as a parenting educational mechanism, and marital rape is not even understood as a concept.” she advocated for increased programs for survivors of violence and the establishment of a new mindset that does “not accept violence and gender inequality as normal” (alkatiri, 2017). the youngest member of the panel berta tilman, who had recently established, timor’s first feminist network, spoke about how women are marginalized from the process of national development, giving the example of the inadequacy of programs such as the bolsa da mae (mother’s purse). the usd 5 per month provided per child to poor, often female headed households (about usd 9 million in total in the annual budget) was too little to shift families out of poverty, as compared to the approximately usd 100 million spent per annum on projects for war veterans. tilman presented a graph demonstrating how public funds spent on government vehicle maintenance outweighs money invested in human resources. evelina inan and mira fonseca from local women’s ngo the alola foundation, 1 after national independence, micato alves became the advisor on gender to the prime minister and established the national office of the secretary of state for the promotion of equality (sepi) which produced several significant texts on women’s participation in the independence struggle. she became minister for social solidarity but her next appointment as minister of defense in 2012 was rejected by the commander of the national army. 2 these were gender equity instruments/mechanisms recognised in the constitution, cedaw and unscr 1325 ratification, 2010 domestic violence law, the national action plan on gender based violence, women’s formal political participation ensured by quota system and most recently, the introduction of the social welfare payment for poor, often female headed households, the bolsa da mae. sara niner aseas 10(2) | 277 continued with more positive research undertaken on ‘women and leadership’, giving suggestions on how to increase women’s participation in suco (local council) leadership, through training. this research was deliberately driven and conducted by timorese women, active as co-researchers, process designers and informants ensuring contextual and cultural relevance while building research skills and ensuring ‘ownership’ over the findings. while the east timorese women’s movement has been highly successful at achieving strategic aims (such as the laws and quotas mentioned by micato alves), meeting the basic needs of women has not been as successful, particularly for poor rural women. several presentations showed the complex challenges to improving rural women’s health and wellbeing and how entrenched customary practices might be addressed. roumaldo amaral and domingos aquino brandao of haim health discussed increasing nutrition and empowering rural women through cultivation and consumption of the new ‘superfood’ moringa and joana gusmão and sherry ryan discussed how the timorese ngo empreza di’ak (good enterpise) is reviving cultural traditions with rural women to develop livelihoods in a culturally safe way. conference co-convenor therese tam of untl analyzed the challenges of introducing and adopting healthier and more environmentally friendly stoves in the face of adherence to the customary practice of cooking over wood burning fires which have added benefits of warmth, repelling insects and integration with a local belief system. although the women cooks might want to adopt technology because it would lessen their work burden, along with added health benefits, this significant household purchase also requires the family support of husbands and mothers who may not appreciate these benefits. high population growth and fertility rates in timor-leste are linked to high rates of child and maternal mortality, making this a key issue in improving women’s status and several presentations offered insights into these challenges. laura burke interrogated local understandings of reproduction and how they intersected with national and international perceptions about population growth. while big families were viewed positively as assets that increased household productivity and agricultural production, rapid population growth was also a reaction to the loss of life during the war and as a way to maintain knowledge systems and create a pool of good citizens for future national development. these deep insights will assist more broadly but a more pragmatic approach proffered was health alliance international’s liga inan (connecting mothers) program which uses sms technology to lower mortality rates by increasing safe birthing practices and post-natal visits. ruben lopes, olinda baptista, and sarah meyanathan reported that while the program was associated with these positive behavior changes, other key practices and powerful cultural beliefs had remained unchanged demonstrating the limitations of the methodology and the need for deeper understanding. the other key issue to improving women’s status is reversing the high prevalence of domestic violence. brett inder and amy duong’s statistical modelling of national survey data (nds, 2010) revealed the links between violence and men’s behavior described in survey responses. men who displayed controlling behaviors and patriarchal beliefs were significantly more likely to perpetrate domestic violence, while women who accepted domestic violence were more likely to experience it. these insights were clearly linked to other findings in the gender stream. xian warner, justino reflection on the special gender stream: 2017 timor-leste studies association conference 278 | aseas 10(2) sarmento amaral, and tamara failor also presented a re-analysis of data from the nabilan (to shine) survey (asia foundation, 2016). clear and distinct links were found between both the experience and perpetration of violence and poor mental health such as depression and suicide. increasing awareness of these links along with campaigns to reduce mental health stigma and ‘promote non-violent ways of being a man and reduce social acceptability of men’s use of violence’ were suggested. a more pragmatic solution to assisting victims was presented by guilhermina de araujo and livio da conceicao matos, from the midwifery department at untl, and australian academic kayli wild, who addressed the socio-cultural context for midwives responding to violence against women in clinical settings. although midwives offered their clients ‘security from below’ they themselves needed greater support to deal with the tensions between ensuring victims’ rights and respecting families. midwives suggested they needed a ‘whole health facility’ approach encompassing training, strong leadership, and links to communities integrated into the undergraduate health curriculum at untl and ministry of health policy. however, the most penetrating insights into the culture surrounding gendered violence in timor was provided from the qualitative research by deborah cummins and mira fonseca who reported on the experiences and understandings of young teenage mothers. from these narratives, the researchers concluded that young women have a lack of knowledge, choice, and agency in first sexual experiences leading to sexual abuse, unplanned pregnancies, and unhappy marriages. they found the concept of consent largely absent, with some young women unaware that their consent was even required. the acceptance of forced sex has also been found in previous studies (asia foundation, 2016; niner, wigglesworth, dos santos, tilman, & arunchalam, 2013). the rights of the less powerful was another issue reported on by anna yang who sketched out the high rates of child abuse (over 70% for both men and women) and presented two case studies of extreme physical abuse and neglect. the vulnerability of children in informal adoption arrangements and the powerlessness of ngo’s to protect the children while encountering the obstruction of government officials is a reminder of the patriarchal hierarchies of power within institutional settings that must be challenged if vulnerable people including children and women are to be protected in timorese society. an informal discussion followed about other contexts of child abuse in timor beyond the family, such as in schools, churches, and clubs which is another area in need of much more attention. a general observation from the conference from both timorese and international participants was that it provided a safe, secular space for intellectual discussions about challenging issues. the issues of gender relations discussed were crucial ones for peace, democracy, and equality in the new nation, particularly in the middle of an election campaign. tlsa has held a bi-annual conference in dili since 2007 and many timorese have taken up the opportunity to present at an international conference for the first time. conference panels are presented in a mix of timor-leste’s two national languages tetun and portuguese, and also in english and bahasa indonesian. the outcomes of the conference include peer reviewed published proceedings. this body of work now provides an archive of research material on timor-leste for use by all and it is freely available on their website (as below) and these proceedings are due out early 2018. the timor-leste studies association was established in melbourne, australsara niner aseas 10(2) | 279 ia in 2005 to provide a network for academic researchers interested in timor-leste and is affiliated with the asian studies association of australia. for more information please visit http://www.tlstudies.org/ and for the full 2017 program and abstracts please visit: http://www.tlstudies.org/conference.html/  references alkatiri, n. (2017). gender inequality in timor-leste: the need for investment towards change of mindset, socdem asia quarterly. retrieved from http://www.socdemasia.com/images/socdemasia_2017.pdf asia foundation (the). (2016). understanding violence against women and children in timor-leste: findings from the nabilan baseline study – summary report. dili: the asia foundation. lusa. (2017, june 29). sociedade patriarcal timorense continua a permitir violência de género ativistas (antonio sampaio). dili: news agency of portugal. niner, s., wigglesworth, a., dos santos, a. b., tilman, m, & arunachalam, d. (2013). perceptions of gender and masculinities of youth in timor-leste baseline study final report, dili: pyd. national statistics directorate (nds). (2010). timor-leste demographic and health survey 2009-10. dili: nsd, ministry of finance timor-leste, and icf macro. niner, s. (ed.). (2017). women and the politics of gender in post-conflict timor-leste, women in asia series. london: routledge. about the author dr. sara niner is a researcher and teaching associate with the school of social sciences at monash university. she is an expert in the field of gender and development with a long-term interest in those issues in the post-conflict environment of timor-leste and has widely published in this field. for more details please visit http://profiles.arts.monash.edu.au/sara-niner/ ► contact: sara.niner@monash.edu "if it's on the internet it must be right": an interview with myanmar ict for development organisation on the use of the internet and social media in myanmar “if it’s on the internet it must be right”: an interview with myanmar ict for development organisation on the use of the internet and social media in myanmar rainer einzenberger ► einzenberger, r. (2016). “if it’s on the internet it must be right”: an interview on the use of internet and social media in myanmar with myanmar ict for development organisation. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 9(2), 301-310. myanmar ict for development organization (mido) is a non-governmental organization in myanmar focusing on internet and communication technologies (icts).1 established in 2012, mido focuses on icts for development, internet freedom, and internet policy advocacy. in 2013, it organized the first myanmar internet freedom forum in myanmar, supported by freedom house. phyu phyu thi is both co-founder and research and development manager of mido. she holds a master’s degree in sustainable development from chiang mai university, faculty of social sciences in thailand, and a bachelor’s degree in science from yangon university. her interests include technology and development, social media, diffusion of information, and behavior. htaike htaike aung is co-founder and executive director of mido. she is working as a digital security and privacy consultant. she is also co-founder of the myanmar blogger society and co-organizer of barcamp yangon – a user-generated conference primarily focusing on technology and the internet which is part of a larger international network.2 keywords: cyber security; freedom of speech; hate speech; internet; social media  rainer einzenberger: can you please introduce your organization mido and its objectives and program briefly? htaike htaike aung: mido focuses on internet and communication technologies (ict) for development. we primarily focus on implementation, advocacy, and also capacity building programs. currently, we implement an initiative that is called lighthouses. these are community information centers. as part of our capacity building program, we develop curricula and trainings on digital literacy, media literacy, and trainings on digital security and privacy. as part of our advocacy work, we are also involved in research, for instance on hate speech, and additionally we work with our regional partners on baseline ict surveys for instance. additionally, we are doing short term research that focuses, for example, on digital security, network penetration, and mobile communication. 1 see http://myanmarido.org/ 2 see http://www.barcampyangon.org/ im dialog  in dialogue w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 16 .1 -9 302 rainer einzenberger  aseas 9(2) rainer: five years ago, access to the internet and smartphones was still extremely restricted in myanmar. sim cards used to cost hundreds of usd and internet access was also unaffordable to most people, limiting internet usage to less than 1% of the population. yet, this has changed quite dramatically in the past five years. now sim cards come at a price of only a few usd and mobile internet access is also affordable to many. can you give us an idea about the current use of the internet and smartphones in myanmar? htaike: so, for mobile coverage, if one combines all operators – myanmar post and telecommunication (mpt), oredoo, and telenor – more than 90% of the population are now covered by mobile networks. so, technically, most people should have access now. but i want to emphasize that this is in terms of population, not the geographic coverage. this is of course different from actual usage. a recent baseline survey showed that only 39% of the population had a mobile phone and sim card in 2015 (galpaya, zainudeen, & suthaharan, 2015). according to the plan of the mobile service operators as well as the government, by 2018, more than 50% of the population will have mobile phones. the increase is very fast since the infrastructure has been rolled out very quickly. i think our mobile market is very unique since it was entirely a ‘green field’ with little infrastructure and very few users. then, there were established operators from abroad (oredoo from qatar and telenor from norway) that came in. as soon as they started working, they very quickly built an infrastructure, such as radio masts for mobile phone signals. in terms of infrastructure, we are doing well and in terms of mobile usage, it is gradually growing. however, the accessibility of relevant content, applications, and people’s digital literacy will still take some time. phyu phyu thi: as for smartphones, we have now cheap smartphones from china; and migrant workers from myanmar’s rural areas who went abroad also send smartphones back to their families. so, poorer households are now using smartphones too. this is why the usage is already very high and we have ‘leapfrogged’ to the smartphone era. this situation benefits people with regard to access to the internet. but again, digital literacy and media literacy issues are very problematic at the moment. htaike: broadband internet is still rarely accessible here and people mainly access the internet through mobile phones. compared to mobiles, the ownership of laptops or desktops is very low. only 2% of the population access the internet through computers. rainer: is there still a digital divide in the country? what are the differences in usage and access between regions and with regard to gender, age, and ethnic groups? phyu: regarding gender, we found in our baseline surveys that ownership of mobile phones by women is a little bit lower than by men. and we can also say that women face more barriers in using mobile phones. furthermore, they give priority to their family members and share phones with their family members. but the internet usage of women is still very high. 303“if it’s on the internet it must be right” htaike: in general, rural areas are lagging behind in terms of access with a penetration of only 27% versus 65% in the cities. of course, when looking at some of the geographic areas that have not yet been covered, they consist of areas that are difficult to access, including ethnic areas like chin-state, other border areas, and also some areas in rakhine-state. so, we can assume that because of the connectivity issues there, they do not have access to the internet. phyu: recently, we also did a research on mobile connectivity. for example, in chinstate there is only mpt available in the capital of chin-state. in other big cities, the connection is very slow and some areas can only use the slow internet connection in the night time. so, there is a good coverage but the speed is very slow; this is crucial for accessibility as well. rainer: myanmar is a multi-ethnic country with over one hundred different languages. how is this reflected in the digital landscape and new media? htaike: it’s not reflected at all! the majority of the developed content is in burmese language. even the development of the unicode versions of the ethnic scripts is still ongoing.3 unfortunately, the ethnic scripts are not widely used by the general public. so, there is not very much multilingual content developed. just some small fractions, maybe in karen. we don’t see that much. we still have a problem with the standardization of the burmese script to the unicode. this is not completely solved yet. rainer: new media and social media have been playing a big role in myanmar since mobile phones and sim cards are now easily available and affordable and the mobile network has been expanded. how do you see the role of new media today in myanmar? how does it change society? htaike: well, when talking about new media and social media in myanmar, you can only talk specifically about facebook and, previously, blogs. but blogs are not that popular anymore, so everyone is on facebook. it is dominating everything: businesses, public, media, etc. everything that is going online in myanmar is on facebook. there is a saying here, that may also apply to other countries, that “facebook actually is the internet”. if you are not on facebook, then, you know, you can’t catch the trend or what’s happening, you can’t get the breaking news; it is very difficult to live without that. phyu: moreover, in the rural areas a lot of people use facebook but they don’t know how to create an account. so, they ask the mobile shop staff to install it for them, and they only use it by touching the icon on the screen. so, facebook applications and news applications are very important. people also use messaging applications like viber and btalk. these are very popular too. they receive news through news applications, facebook, and messenger. they think facebook is like a newspaper and use it for reading the news. 3 unicode is an international standard for the digital coding of scripts and signs and enables people to use computers in any language. 304 rainer einzenberger  aseas 9(2) rainer: is facebook then a challenge to the traditional offline media, print media, and tv? phyu: we can say that there is a difference between rural areas and urban areas. for the cities, people are used to getting print newspapers and journals which they can read on the very day of publication. but the rural areas have to wait another day, or in some remote areas they have to wait three or four days to receive printed newspapers. by that time the news is not really up to date anymore. facebook is instant. all the media outlets also have facebook pages where people can read the news. furthermore, the news applications on smartphones combine all the news from various news websites. printed journals are not that popular anymore. when we asked questions about news in our surveys, respondents were talking about facebook. but when we talked about tv they only used it to watch movies. it was not popular for news. tv is only for entertainment whereas facebook and the internet are for news. rainer: in many countries, social media, in particular facebook, has also been used as a tool by destructive political forces, in particular radical right-wing groups. in myanmar, nationalist and radical buddhist groups have been reportedly engaged in destructive use. how do they use new media for their agenda? htaike: there is a big new space now that is available for people to do anything. so, there are positive usages and negative usages as well. particularly in myanmar, the usage of the internet came so quickly. there is one thing that has led to this development, that is, we can say, people’s perception of the internet. unlike in countries where people gradually got used to the internet and learnt how to find good content, thus learning what is bad content, for myanmar this hype went straight up and people did not have the time to reflect on what the internet is actually about. this perception can be summarized in the phrase: “okay, if it’s on the internet it must be right”. this really is dangerous, particularly if there are people who are using the internet for the wrong agenda and propaganda. that’s how if you look a few years back, the use of online media to spread hatred and rumor was very common because of myanmar people’s perception of the internet. rainer: what can be done to tackle the problem of hate speech and negative propaganda on social media and what is mido already doing about it? phyu: first, we are doing baseline surveys to understand the issue. and we are also undertaking an anti-hate speech campaign together with our friends from different civil society organizations. it is called pan sagar campaign (literally “flower speech”) and includes the distribution of pamphlets, asking people to refrain from hate speech and more carefully consider the consequences of their actions on social media. the extremist groups use facebook as their amplifier. the ma ba tha (the patriotic association of myanmar) has their own facebook page and applications.4 the extremist 4 formed in 2014, ma ba tha is also translated as the association for the protection of race and religion. some members of the group are connected to the nationalist (and radical buddhist) 969 movement. a prominent member, known for his anti-muslim hate-speech, is the monk ashin wirathu from mandalay. 305“if it’s on the internet it must be right” monk ashin wirathu and other people have their facebook pages and regional pages as well. so, they develop a lot of facebook content on that issue. in our earlier study, we found that deceiving propagandist content, such as videos, songs, and photos, is additionally sent via bluetooth to mobile phones, for instance in tea shops – without people knowing where this content comes from and who is sending it. another thing is that facebook news is being printed and published on public campaigns by extremists. as i said earlier, people think that facebook is an official media and take it for real. these are the kind of scenarios we see. apart from the anti-hate speech campaign, we also run a monitoring project. based on our analysis, we develop a curriculum for training sessions to understand new media as well as to develop media literacy. furthermore, we initiate dialogue sessions to discuss about what is happening around, on, and off the internet. additionally, we engage with media people to discuss what is happening on facebook on a monthly basis. we’ve also created a facebook page called real or not to post photos and news and to analyze them. this is what we are doing right now. rainer: what are the limits to freedom of speech online? is the government also taking action against people engaging in hate speech? htaike: so, our government is known to be infamous in using laws to limit citizens’ rights to freedom of expression. if we look at the past five years, there was this law which we know as the electronic transaction law, passed in 2004, primarily regulating e-commerce, electronic transaction, and electronic signature. one particular clause in that law was very vague. that clause said that whoever commits “any act detrimental to the security of the state or prevalence of law and order or community peace and tranquility or national solidarity or national economy or national culture” by using electronic transaction technologies can be imprisoned up to 15 years.5 many political activists and journalists have been detained on the grounds of that clause. for example, if you use any communication tool to harass, defame, or bully someone, then you might become subject to this sort of charge. rainer: so, is this law a suitable legal means to prosecute people who engage in hate speech as it explicitly sanctions hate speech? wirathu has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for his speeches in 2003 by the previous military regime but was released in 2012 along with other political prisoners under president thein sein’s amnesty. 5 “whoever commits any of the following acts by using electronic transactions technology shall, on conviction be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend from a minimum of 7 years to a maximum of 15 years and may also be liable to a fine . . . doing any act detrimental to the security of the state or prevalence of law and order or community peace and tranquility or national solidarity or national economy or national culture . . . receiving or sending and distributing any information relating to secrets of the security of the state or prevalence of law and order or community peace and tranquility or national solidarity or national economy or national culture . . . creating, modifying or altering of information or distributing of information created, modified or altered by electronic technology to be detrimental to the interest of or to lower the dignity of any organization or any person.” (the state peace and development council, 2004). 306 rainer einzenberger  aseas 9(2) htaike: no, during the military government it was used to oppress political activists and journalists. but now we have another law for such cases: the telecommunications law. there is a clause in it that says that whoever uses electronic communication to harass, cyber-bully, or defame, is liable to a prison sentence of up to five years. so, in the past years, there have been a couple of people arrested because of what they posted online on the grounds of that law. rainer: what was the content of the postings? htaike: up to now, people that have been charged on the grounds of this law were people who posted things targeting the head of the military that were categorized as defamation; so basically criticism of the government. rainer: which action has been taken against radical extremists like ashin wirathu and the ma ba ta and radical nationalist buddhist organizations? has there been any prosecution on the grounds of this law? htaike: no, so you can see the problem with that. rainer: do you also follow the situation in your neighboring country thailand with regards to the computer crime act of 20076 and the increasing use of lèse-majesté legislation? what is your perspective on these developments given your own experience? htaike: in myanmar and thailand, we have been relying on each other in the activists’ scene. so, for myanmar, up to five years ago, the activist community went to thailand to seek refuge and to hold workshops and meetings if the case was sensitive. many of myanmar’s ngos that focused on supporting human rights were basically housed in thailand, many in the border areas. but now, since thailand’s situation has changed, things have kind of reversed a bit. just recently, we gave a training to some thai activists who came to myanmar to hold workshops on activism and campaigns. rainer: how do politicians and political parties now use social media? did social media play a role in the last elections and how do citizens respond to their new media presence? htaike: they really use it a lot; social media are heavily relied upon, and i think overly relied upon by the politicians and the government as well. they even forgot to create their own independent websites. even though there might be some websites, they usually contain only basic information that is not often updated. but facebook sites are being updated regularly. even now the president office and spokespersons 6 the computer crime act of 2007 contains several vague paragraphs regarding computer-related acts deemed detrimental to “public security and economic security” as well as acts damaging “the countries [sic] security or causing panic”. this led to the persecution and imprisonment of people expressing their political opinion online, also with regard to the monarchy, which were deemed by the authorities as lèsemajesté (insulting the monarchy). insulting the monarchy is punishable with prison terms of up to 15 years. the computer crime act has been updated by the military government in 2014 and continues to violate basic civil rights according to human rights defenders (“an unofficial translation”, 2007; thai netizen network, 2015). 307“if it’s on the internet it must be right” are using facebook to disseminate information and everything. in their profile, we can see a mix of official declarations and also personal information, like the place where they are having dinner. there is a mix of public and private information. phyu: and then, during campaign periods, some of the candidates use social media very effectively, like to update on their campaign trip, or doing voter education on facebook. if i am not wrong, only recently, one politician tried a live broadcast of a discussion over facebook through the application live. one group called open platform also organizes live discussions with members of parliament (mps) over facebook. there, you can watch and send questions directly to the mps who will then answer directly. so, a lot of mps are using social media, but they got a lot of problems, too, with people hacking their accounts or creating fake accounts. rainer: this brings me directly to my next questions: there have been many cases of cyber-attacks in europe and also the us recently. what is the situation in myanmar? htaike: so, concerning cyber security, we have a long history of websites being attacked for political reasons. like, for example, around four or five years ago, there was this big cyber-attack that targeted mostly independent burmese exile media like irrawaddy and mizzima. at that time, those websites were attacked and became inaccessible for weeks. so, we can say, it happened mostly due to political reasons. we also see that during some political tensions, like when there is a big controversy. for instance, concerning one of the islands that we might or might not share with bangladesh – there were a lot of cyber-attacks on websites from bangladesh, including some government websites. another case of cyber-attacks related to a case in thailand where two burmese citizens were accused of murdering two tourists on an island. then there were attacks on thai websites. these were mostly politically motivated attacks. this is one thing, and for cyber security, we do have a government team, called the myanmar computer emergency response team (mmcert), but this only considers cases at top levels. what they mainly do is monitor myanmar’s internet. but we don’t see them being active that much. however, in the future, as there will be much more e-government initiatives coming up, these institutions should become much stronger and more supportive. there has been some independent research on government websites, and it was recommended by security experts to close some of the security loopholes. for now, the government does not seem to be that interested in making cyber security stronger. so, the capacity of local institutions that work on cyber security should be strengthened in the future. phyu: concerning non-political things, we don’t see much of these issues yet. banking activities, for instance, are not yet happening online that much, but there might be a risk in the future. rainer: you are also helping to review and consult on ict laws. what would be your recommendation to the government regarding the ict sector? 308 rainer einzenberger  aseas 9(2) htaike: ict is now becoming a cross-cutting issue, for example in the health sector, in the financial sector, and in socio-economic sectors. this should be thought of when the government is trying to introduce new laws. for example, the government just drafted a privacy law which seems entirely bizarre in the sense of privacy being defined inconsistently throughout the whole law. it also lacks data protection and online protection mechanisms that should be part of a privacy law. that’s what happens when people don’t think of ict when trying to introduce new laws that are closely related to ict. phyu: in addition, the government is currently preparing a hate speech law that is being drafted by the ministry of religious affairs. yet, hate speech is not only about religion but also about many other issues. it can create a lot of problems if they approve this law and use it. there needs to be more inclusiveness in the drafting process. htaike: furthermore, the electronic transaction law has not been amended much; just the prison terms have been changed but not the unclear clauses. also, when looking at the telecommunications law, some clauses are very vaguely defined; that is a problem as well. rainer: one last question: you mentioned on your website that your objective is also to reduce poverty through the development of information and communication technologies. how can this be achieved and can you give us some examples? phyu: now we are working on the lighthouse information centers. the idea was to open around two hundred centers. now, there are 62 all over the country. these centers are information centers where people can come and access information and learn how to navigate themselves online. the centers provide information about health, education, and job opportunities as well. and now we also have a ‘safe internet’ education training which is a media literacy training. we set up these centers together with the mobile operator telenor, trying to reduce the digital gap in the rural areas. htaike: digital literacy is the key. that’s why we conduct trainings and develop curricula around that issue; and the lighthouse plays a big part in empowering rural areas, particularly in the use of ict. in the development sector, ict is already widely introduced. but i think that the very first step is to increase digital literacy. the second step will then be to deploy these skills. phyu: the costs are still a problem regarding the access to mobile communication and internet. the three operators still charge relatively high prices which is a big barrier for a country like ours with low income levels. since mobile phones are popular and became a kind of a lifestyle thing, the spending on internet and mobile phones is high compared to the income levels both in rural and urban areas. i personally worry about the impact of the financial burden resulting from the costs of mobile phones and telecommunication services. 309“if it’s on the internet it must be right”  references an unofficial translation of the computer crime act. (2007, july 24). prachatai english. retrieved from http://www.prachatai.com/english/node/117 galpaya, h., zainudeen, a., & suthaharan, p. (2015, august). a baseline survey of ict and knowledge access in myanmar. lirneasia. retrieved from http://lirneasia.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/lirneasia_myanmarbaselinesurvey_descriptivestats_v1.pdf thai netizen network. (2015). explanatory memorandum of thailand’s computer crime act (unofficial translation). retrieved from https://thainetizen.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/computer-relatedcrime-bill-20150106-en.pdf the state peace and development council. (2004, april 30). the electronic transactions law. retrieved from http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/un-dpadm/unpan041197.pdf  about the author rainer einzenberger is a phd candidate at the department of development studies, university of vienna. his research interests include political science, land and resource politics, critical geography, and indigenous movements with a regional focus on southeast asia. the interview was conducted in yangon in october 2016. ► contact: rainer.einzenberger@univie.ac.at aseas 12(1) | 3 the contestation of social memory in the new media: a case study of the 1965 killings in indonesia hakimul ikhwan, vissia ita yulianto & gilang desti parahita ► ikhwan, h., yulianto, v. i., & parahita, g. d. (2019). the contestation of social memory in the new media: a case study of the 1965 killings in indonesia. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 12(1), 3-16. while today’s indonesian democratic government remains committed to the new order orthodoxy about the mass killings of 1965, new counter-narratives challenging official history are emerging in the new media. applying mixed-methods and multi-sited ethnography, this study aims to extend our collaborative understanding of the most recent developments in this situation by identifying multiple online interpersonal stories, deliberations, and debates related to the case as well as offline field studies in java and bali. practically and theoretically, we ask how the tragedy of the 1965 killings is contested in the new media and how social memory plays out in this contestation. the study finds that new media potentially act as emancipatory sites channeling and liberating the voices of those that the nation has stigmatized as ‘objectively guilty’. we argue that the arena of contestation is threefold: individual, public vs. state narrative, and theoretical. as such, the transborder space of the new media strongly mediates corrective new voices to fill missing gaps in the convoluted history of this central event of modern indonesian history. keywords: 1965 killings; master vs. counter narratives; memory studies; new media; southeast asia  introduction indonesia experienced one of the 20th century’s worst mass killings. responding to what is commonly known as the september 30th, 1965 movement, it is estimated to have caused between at least five hundred thousand and more than a million deaths, not to mention the imprisonment and ongoing stigmatization of many victims (cribb, 1990, p. 14; marching, 2017). the 1965-66 mass killings preceded indonesia’s transition to 32 years of authoritarian rule known as the new order era. however, unlike other countries, where governments have issued national apologies for their past wrongs, there has been no systematic attempt to modify the discourse around the 1965 massacres in indonesia.1 although new evidence from both survivors and perpetrators has enabled more 1 other countries issued national apologies for actions taken against their own citizens. germany is the most prominent example of systemic government action after mass killings with an international criminal court to address the crimes of the nazi regime between 1933 and 1945. australia officially apologized in 2008 for the wrongs that the australian government had inflicted on the aboriginal and torres strait islander people. buenos aires apologized in 2004 for those who were killed and victimized by the state during argentina’s dirty war (1974-1983). aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 10 4 | aseas 12(1) the contestation of social memory in the new media scholars to identify systematic patterns of violence across the indonesian archipelago (hearman, 2018; mcgregor, melvin, & pohlman, 2018, p. 4), the official history of the tragedy remains dominant. hence, indonesia has a long way to go before it issues a national apology, let alone dispels the myths surrounding the event and its aftermath. important insights on the social memory of such historical events may come from memory studies. emerging in the early 1970s, maurice halbwachs’ early work of the social frameworks of memory (1925/1992) is often considered a seminal book on memory studies as it coined the notion of collective memory. building on halbwachs’ sociological theory, assmann and assmann (in van dijk, 2007, p. 12) split the notion of collective memory into cultural memory and communicative memory, and positioned cultural memory at one end of a complex structure which also involves individual, social, and political memory. in this study, we use the notion of social memory to share a strong affinity with assmann’s cultural memory while still highlighting the dynamic dimension of memory both at the individual and the collective level. at the same time, there has been an astonishing switch to virtually free and instant electronic communication, which has become massively popular and transformed societies in countries throughout the world (lengauer, 2016). since its introduction in the 1980s, it has been used by the public to archive and share information and to mediatize artefacts through time and space (boyd, 2010). combining memory and media studies, recent research has focused on contemporary memories of current occurrences and described how ‘netizens’ utilize digital media to archive, witness, share, and remember events (allen & bryan, 2011; hess, 2007; smit, heinrich, & broersma, 2017; recuber, 2012). furthermore, research investigated the use of digital media to portray current events commemorating past events or memorializing death (blackburn, 2013; döveling, harju, & shavit, 2015). markhotyrkh (2017), for example, has analyzed how digital media is used to remember events that occurred far before the emergence of digital media but have remained contentious and caused ongoing conflict. he emphasized utopian and dystopian views on youtube, including whether the platform is able to propel unbiased and tolerant perspectives of past events, in (t)his case related to the kyiv war. in the case of indonesia, several researchers have revealed how conventional media were used to propagate anti-communist messages during the new order (wieringa & katjasungkana, 2019), and how movies and news reports have tried to deconstruct the official memory of the 1965-66 killings (paramaditha, 2013). little attention has been given to the new media, in this case the video sharing site youtube, and how it has become a new space for contesting official and alternative memories of the killings. rather than studying the ‘hard facts’, this article focuses on exploring these representations and contestations of social memory in the new media. in doing so, we investigate the contestation of the narratives about the 1965-1966 killings as represented in videos uploaded to youtube, as well as grounded empirical data gathered from intensive offline fieldwork in java and bali. our study, conducted between march and december 2018, applies a mixed methods approach, combining descriptive content analysis and narrative analysis of selected videos related to the tragedy and multi-sited ethnography conducted online and offline at sites in java and bali (marcus, 1995; yulianto, 2015, pp. 69-92). it aims to serve as a nexus between aseas 12(1) | 5 hakimul ikhwan, vissia ita yulianto, & gilang desti parahita narratives of memory and the new media. owing to the flexibility and rewritability of digital media, narratives of memory in online media are infinite and diverse. as such, this research discusses counter and master narratives of the killings through the lens of memory and media studies. it draws on new popular narratives of the tragedy and analyses how the new media are helping to shape knowledge of the past. master versus counter narrative of the 1965 killings the official master narrative of the 1965 tragedy sconucceeded in concealing vast amounts of information on a dark chapter of indonesia’s past through at least two main instruments. the first was the book tragedi nasional percobaan kup g30s/pki di indonesia, written by nugroho notosusanto and ismail saleh in 1968. this book, published only three years after the event, was the first written document on the issue. the second instrument is a propaganda film entitled pengkhianatan g30s/pki, which roughly translates to “the betrayal of the communists”. directed by arifin c. noer and the most expensive film ever made in indonesia at that time, this film was a mandatory viewing for all students of the new order. neither the book nor the cinematic narrative is historically accurate. nonetheless, these instruments have proven very effective in shaping the social memory of the event and produced profound political consequences until today (heryanto, 2006). according to john roosa’s (2006) pretext for mass murder, the master narrative holds that in the early morning hours of 1 october 1965 a group calling itself the september 30th movement kidnapped and executed six generals of the indonesian army, including its highest commander. the group, affiliated to the communist party of indonesia (partai komunis indonesia, pki), claimed that it was attempting to pre-empt a military coup (roosa, 2006, p. 3). in this narrative, members of gerwani (gerakan wanita indonesia, indonesian women’s movement) have a central role, being the depraved and sexually licentious murderers of those six army generals (and one lieutenant), who danced naked in front of those generals before slashing them with razors, gouging out their eyes, cutting off their penises, and throwing their dead bodies into the well at lubang buaya (crocodile hole) (wieringa, 2002, p. 201). the suharto regime used this event as evidence for the massive and ruthless offensive by the pki against all non-communist forces and presented itself as the savior of the indonesian nation after defeating the movement (roosa, 2006, p. 7). scholarly articles, however, have questioned this master narrative. as shown by robert cribb (1990), ariel heryanto (2006), douglas kammen and katherine e. mcgregor (2012), and annie pohlman (2019), a military movement in the indonesian capital of jakarta led to the murder of seven military generals and three army officers in the night of 30 september 1965, which came to be known as the september 30th movement (g30s). although the official state narrative named the event ‘g30s/pki’, the killing actually happened at dawn of the following day (1 october 1965). in a preliminary analysis of the october 1, 1965, coup in indonesia, widely known as the ‘cornell paper’, historians benedict anderson and ruth mcvey (2009) argued that the g30s was essentially an internal army affair. harold crouch (2007) identified three actors that may have been involved in the coup. first, the coup may have been committed by military officers who were dissatisfied with the army leadership. second, 6 | aseas 12(1) the contestation of social memory in the new media it may have been masterminded by the pki, as espoused by the army. third, the coup may have been a collaborative effort between dissident officers and pki leaders. debate has also centered on suharto’s connection with the movement. many studies have regarded suharto as the initiator of the killings, as no other actor stood to gain more political power than him. a book by colonel abdul latief (1999), titled pledoi kolonel a. latief: soeharto terlibat g30s, stated that latief had reported the planned movement to suharto on 28 september 1965, two days before the killings. he again issued a report to suharto four hours before the generals were killed. suharto, according to latief, did nothing to prevent the attack. he did not even pass the reports on to general ahmad yani and general ah. nasution, who were at the top of the military command structure. latief ’s book has stirred speculation that suharto was somehow involved in and part of the conspiracy. last but not least, speculation has also revolved around the role of the united states’ central intelligence agency (cia) during the heightening ideological rivalry between that country and its allies and the eastern bloc in the cold war (scott, 1985; wardaya, 2006). finding the true mastermind of the 30 september movement is nearly impossible (cribb, 1990; ricklefs, 2001; roosa, 2006). however, recent developments have shown that discourse on the pki and communism in general continues to be broadly used to stigmatize individuals or groups that do not conform with mainstream political views; these are not just members of pki and affiliated organizations, but may be individuals of any political party in indonesia. as a consequence, during the 32 years of suharto’s authoritarian regime and even today, the dominant memory of the event has referred to the official history and its resulting stigmatization and political genocide of people allegedly affiliated with the pki. master and counter narrative in the new media as both dominant and resistant memories are widely and simultaneously shared in society (adam, 2018), digital reconstructions of memories about the events of 1965 are also diverse. this notwithstanding, it should be highlighted that the crux of digital memory of the 1965-66 events center around the film pengkhianatan g30s/pki. due to youtube’s algorithm, users’ behavior, and the cultural context of indonesia, this film can be searched, watched, and remediated, so that it remains far from obsolescence. before reaching this conclusion, we took several steps. we inserted the keywords peristiwa 1965, g30s-pki, g30s/pki, and komunisme into youtube’s search engine, and identified 39 videos with at least 300,000 viewers. the keyword peristiwa 1965 was chosen because the phrase is commonly used to refer to the genocide of 1965 and has a more ‘neutral’ tone than genocide or mass killing. the keywords g30spki and g30s/pki are widely used in indonesian society. unlike peristiwa 1965, the hegemonic narrative is embedded in these keywords. komunisme is an umbrella term referring to all issues and perspectives related to communism, but most commonly linked to the genocide of 1965. after the keywords were entered into the youtube search bar, we compiled all videos, ordered them using the “most views” filter, and selected those videos that had more than 300,000 views on the day we searched for them (september 1-10, 2018). videos that were the same, but uploaded by different accounts, we considered aseas 12(1) | 7 hakimul ikhwan, vissia ita yulianto, & gilang desti parahita different videos. however, this rarely happened. we retrieved and watched 39 videos. we found that most (29) of these videos amplify the hegemonic social memory of the 1965 killings. many individual users (not related to formal institutions like mainstream media companies) have uploaded pengkhianatan g30s/pki either in its entirety or in part. this may be related to the political economy of youtube, as the propaganda movie has become a popular commodity that offers financial benefits for uploaders (reading, 2014). in addition, the high number of viewers attracted to the propaganda movie might indicate that, within the cultural context of indonesia, it will not easily become obsolete. the film pengkhianatan g30s/pki that was uploaded by the youtube account of usep kartawibawa has gained nine million views. meanwhile, non-institutional or personal users have created new videos by taking photographs of the killed generals or other historical scenes – which are widely available online – and rearranging them into new narratives. for instance, self-produced videos include photographic stories of the killed generals and the lubang buaya museum’s dioramas, accompanied by the song gugur bunga, created by nusantara tv. videos or pictures showing the dioramas in the lubang buaya museum, indicating that the museum provides opportunities for youtube users to reproduce and perpetuate the dominant narrative of the event by using the dioramas as illustrations. interestingly, another self-produced video titled dn aidit setelah g30-s (dn aidit after the september 30 movement) contains a historical photographic collage and uses a computer-generated voice as its narrator. this might indicate that the uploaders have tried to distance themselves from their own creations, imitating the official memorials and museums that instill a sensation of distance in their audiences by scaling up the buildings and diminishing the size of the audience (haskins, 2007, p. 403). worth mentioning here is the fact that these popular videos were uploaded around september 2017. this was a period when indonesian discourse included strong debate, especially between majelis ulama indonesia (mui) and the ministry of education and culture of indonesia (kemendikbud) about whether the film pengkhianatan g30s/pki should be screened in schools (akbar, 2017). an authoritative tone has also been used by institutional users who are mainly content providers (visual tv, anshori tv, city network) or the official youtube accounts of mainstream media companies. videos created by institutional users (inews by mnc group, tvonenews by tvone) usually include new content on their topics. they may feature the children of killed generals or retired members of indonesia’s military. for example, eksklusif! kesaksian anak ahmad yani atas kejamnya g30s/pki (exclusive! the testimony of the son of ahmad yani on the cruelty of g30s/pki) by visual tv takes the form of a field report and asserts the truth of the propaganda by including the testimony of ahmad yani’s son, eddy yani, as well as scenes from the propaganda film and the song gugur bunga. having watched the 29 youtube videos, we found that the main themes of these videos and their dominant versions of historical memory included the killing of the generals, the lifting of the generals’ bodies from the hole (lubang buaya), and the suffering endured by the children of the generals. the narratives are constructed by having the descendants of killed generals give testimony, simulating the deadly event at the lubang buaya museum and the sasmita loka pahlawan revolusi museum, inserting clips of the song gugur bunga, clips of the propaganda film, or fully 8 | aseas 12(1) the contestation of social memory in the new media uploading the film. some videos, rather than using pengkhianatan g30s/pki as it is, remix the film to deconstruct the sanctity of the official memory it represents. this shows that youtube’s algorithms (tags, titles) also play a role in films with alternative memories having (less) popularity. the same rule applies to joshua oppenheimer’s films on youtube (the act of killing and the look of silence), which have been seen by some 500,000 to 1.5 million viewers but did not appear in our list as they were uploaded under their original titles, rather than using clickbait or provocative titles. while ignoring the rules for gaining popularity on youtube, some 22 other videos have successfully countered the power of the official history of 1965, as seen in our discussion below. the voices of silence and the emancipatory role of the new media from our online and offline fieldwork in java and bali, we found large segments of untold stories and numerous testimonies using multimedialities, that is, the simultaneous use of media formats including text, graphics, animations, pictures, videos, and sounds to present information related to our case study (van dijk, 2007, p. 175). we identified 22 different online multimedialities of interpersonal stories, deliberations, and debates on youtube related to our case study (see table 1). looking at these 22 titles, only a few directly reflect the killings of 1965 and their aftermath. it was not easy for us to find and identify these videos on the internet because most gave the impression that they differed from the theme we were looking for. take the first video, mwathitrika, as an example. the title of this puppet performance by papermoon puppet theatre (ppt) is taken from the swahili word for victim and provides no clue or indication of its subject matter. as such, viewers may have no idea of its subject matter unless they watch the film. the artistic narrative presents a non-verbal theatrical performance that recounts the genocide of 1965 through the eyes of those who were victimized, those whom the country has tried to forget.2 during a 2011 show in yogyakarta, maria and iwan – the initiator and director of papermoon puppet theatre (ppt) – said: although there have been hundreds of titles and films responding to the controversy of this gray history, how many young boys and young girls in our homeland know, watch, or read it? that is why we were moved to produce mwathirika. the narrative of mwathirika is based on the life experiences of maria and iwan’s family who faced discrimination for years, not only on the part of the state, but also on the part of their neighbors, friends, and even relatives. they had accepted their fates and kept silent. their political voice had been eradicated, and they continued to be considered by the new order regime to be proponents of the pki. as a result, they were situated differently in their political identities, economic, and social living conditions, and faced multiple forms of discrimination. a good number of victims were 2 see, for example, penumpasan pengkhianatan g30s/pki (1984), the act of killing (2012), noda lelaki di dada mona (2008), mwathirika (2010), setjangkir kopi dari playa (2011), or surat dari praha (2017). aseas 12(1) | 9 hakimul ikhwan, vissia ita yulianto, & gilang desti parahita no title director/producer genre 1 mwathirika papermoon puppet theater puppet theater 2 r.i. kotak hitam forum documentary 3 yang bertanah air, tidak bertanah kartika pratiwi documentary 4 mia bustam kotak hitam forum documentary 5 memori tentang buru kotak hitam forum documentary 6 dance of missing body kotak hitam forum documentary 7 lekra: gerakkan kebudayaan kotak hitam forum documentary 8 pelukis rakyat, lekra dan tragedi kotak hitam forum documentary 9 jembatan bacem yayasan wiludiharta/elsam documentary 10 masean's message dwitra t aryana documentary 11 the look of silence joshua oppenheimer documentary 12 the act of killing joshua oppenheimer documentary 13 para korban membongkar sejarah asian calling/tempotv/kbr 68h documentary 14 daulat petani ala mbah suko asian calling/tempotv/kbr 68h documentary 15 perempuan bekas tahanan 1965 melawan lupa asian calling/tempotv/kbr 68h documentary 16 api kartini kotak hitam forum documentary 17 mass grave lexy rambadetta documentary 18 road to justice lexy rambadetta documentary 19 efek teror pembunuhan massal 1965 hilmar farid/ javin tv documentary 20 noda lelaki di dada mona papermoon puppet theater puppet theater 21 setjangkir kopi dari playa papermoon puppet theater puppet theater 22 surat dari praha angga d sasongko film table 1. list of multimedia counter narratives on youtube (own compilation). burdened by poverty, largely the consequence of the legacy of discrimination and stigmatization they and their families faced. at this point, we understand that this tragedy is not only about the killings but also about the millions that were effectively deprived of their rights as citizens. going through ppt’s videos on youtube, we noted that the conversations between the performance groups are marked by gibberish. to communicate their messages to the audience, the group instead relies on puppets, gestures, music, videos, and special effects. the only words spoken clearly are the names of the characters. these symbolic representations are meant to destabilize the very idea of the propaganda film penumpasan pengkhianatan g30s/pki. mwathirika consists of nine scenes, each of which tells maria and iwan’s experiences as truly as possible. both offline and online performances of this narrative were aimed to provide them with alternative voices. for them, and for other survivors and their descendants, this representation is apparently a way of healing, of rejecting the injustice they have continued to face. the new media – and art – are helping 10 | aseas 12(1) the contestation of social memory in the new media them break their silence and giving them a voice (marching, 2017; see yulianto, 2017, and bieleki, 2018, for more information on the role of art in memory studies). another film, titled masean’s message, deals with the killings in bali after more than 50 years of silence. this remarkable work, produced by the young balinese filmmaker dwitra j. ariana, is worthy of special mention in our study. it is a documentary video of the socio-cultural reconciliation between the victims and perpetrators of violence in batu agung, a village in jembrana regency, bali, where an estimated 8,000 alleged pki members were killed between 1965 and 1966 (allen & pallermo, 2005). conflict resolution is presented as the main storyline by the film’s director and producer. it shows the audience that interpersonal or socio-cultural reconciliation has apparently been achieved by those involved in the mass killings in bali. as narrated in this 77-minute documentary, socio-cultural reconciliation did not begin or end with trials as survivors had no choice but to put aside their desire for revenge and start living side by side with those who murdered their loved ones. the filmmaker compiled the stories of perpetrators, victims’ families, traditional village communities, police officers, local soldiers, the head of jembrana regency’s local parliament, and residents outside bali, then transformed it into a message. in our offline meeting with dwitra, he told us: so, i was told by some locals here that there were always people who committed suicide every year. always . . . and the number was increasing. many people also saw a hideous head ghost intimidating them . . . at any rate, village life is not peaceful . . . many disturbances . . . and we balinese, we believe that there must be something wrong . . . finally an old man of 70 told us about a mass grave that he believed was the reason why village life had been destabilized. i hope this film can be a bridge to help us better understand that we are all actually victims; both those who have been killed and those who have killed. the uncovering of the mass grave and the presentation of this regional narrative, both offline and online, is a highly relevant example of how indonesians have coped with the legacy of mass killing that has also been contested. for example, while not blaming this local initiative, the institute for policy research and advocacy (elsam) mentioned in an offline interview that the exhumation of mass graves has in fact endangered the process of forensic identification as there was no autopsy for the exhumed bones. the mass graves were primarily exhumed to safeguard balinese cosmology – in this case, all those who died had to be cremated following the ngaben ritual, for their souls may be sent to the next life in peace. at this point, although we may see that both sides have a strong argument, the exhumation may definitely have deterred future examinations of this issue. elsam itself has produced a documentary film on the story/history/memory of jembatan bacem, also known as kretek bacem or bacem bridge. this bridge is located in the southern part of solo, central java, and is associated with the brutal murder of (suspected) pki members, whose bodies were dumped in the river in 1965. the documentary includes interviews with local people and their extended families, who have kept silent for more than 40 years because they were still haunted by fear. however, with the new media, current and subsequent generations may recall the past through aseas 12(1) | 11 hakimul ikhwan, vissia ita yulianto, & gilang desti parahita what ong (1982) identifies as memory’s technologization. without having to conduct academic research or physically visit solo, as we did in late june 2017, all people may learn from the media that local people broke their silence and held a spiritual ceremony called sadranan to remember and honor family members and relatives of the victims. from the video, as well as our interview with an old woman who lived next to the river, hope is evident that jembatan bacem may become a place to honor those who did not return. dance of the missing body, produced by kotak hitam forum, is a film that tells the story of traditional dancers in java who went ‘missing’ in 1965 after the government alleged them to be affiliated with the pki. the video was narrated by dyah larasi, an indonesian professor based at the university of minnesota. her grandmother, who was a javanese dancer, told her the story of her once fellow dancers. although the dance gandrung banyuwangi is still performed, dyah says that it is not the same, as its historical links have been cut. as dyah said: “the bodies that are removed from the missing dancers are replaced by charming bodies who conspire with the state through education institutions and local governments” (hartiningsih, 2008). “this helps and supports the state’s amnesia project”, she added. api kartini, on the other hand, tells the story of former political prisoners who revisit their prison camp in plantungan, central java. after the events of 1965, they were arrested and imprisoned as they were alleged to have been linked to or members of the pki. in the film, they tell the story of their lives behind bars, of their suffering in silence, of their memories of the government’s power, of their unspeakable trauma, and of their awareness of the need to remember past violence (for more information on this video see www.kotakhitamforum.org). c’est la vie is the title given to a short semi-fiction film directed by a 32-yearold man from jakarta who studied at a broadcasting academy. the movie recounts the memory of the filmmaker’s father who was jailed on buru island for many years. apart from the story of his father, however, the film also reflects on the young man’s struggle to cope with his family’s story, as he confessed offline: throughout my life, i was told hundreds of stories by my father. all of them are bitter stories. he told them flatly, without emotion, seemingly without hatred. many [stories] are fragmented and hard to believe . . . they may be true, they may be not . . . but what can i do? i recorded everything. i tried to find justification for what my father has told me, what i have found, what i have been looking for. both the film and the statement above clearly reflect the deep inner torment and struggle of those who the state has judged to be guilty. at this point, understanding the storyline of both the movie as well as the filmmaker’s memory of his father’s story is not easy. it is like peeling an onion with its many layers. being labeled a penyintas or survivor of 1965 left the filmmaker’s father, as well as his descendants, with an eternal burden. in fact, the filmmaker himself sometimes doubted what his father – who had been a political detainee for years during the biggest wave of the anti-communist campaign in late 1960s – had told him. in an offline meeting, he desperately told us of his deep inner sadness. 12 | aseas 12(1) the contestation of social memory in the new media if i was not the child of a former prisoner, i would have been able to live a normal life like other people. i would have had opportunities that only ordinary people have. sometimes, i deny this fact and long for the opposite . . . i do not want my children to experience insecurities like i did. we empathized with his experiences and memories. his decision to share his private memories with the public mediated between the private and the public. mediated memories, in this digital age, are as much creative reconstructions as they are documentary scenarios of what actually happened (van dijk, 2007, p. 173). the above cases demonstrate that individual – the intricacies of people’s own life histories – and social narratives are entangled with contextual factors, both those in the past and those in the present. furthermore, we may see two important points from the social memories above. first, memories are potentially contested in themselves. second, memories may also reflect significant dynamics in their evocative role to fill the gap of what has been ignored, forgotten, absent, or possibly manipulated by the official history, which in turn may shape how the history of the genocide of 1965 will be remembered. main characteristics of the 1965 counter narratives as an old proverb says, all rivers lead to the ocean: we believe that the goal and major motivation of all attempts to counter official narratives, no matter their approach, is ultimately justice. the methods or strategies that characterize how new counter narratives are presented is one important element of our research findings. we identified two main characteristics of such counter narratives. first, unlike the language and words of the official narrative, which are propagandistic and confrontative (e.g., fight (lawan), anti/opposition (tolak), the counter narratives have deliberately avoided the use of binary opposition in their diction. as we can see from the list above, producers tend to use soberly grounded narratives from the perspectives of the people themselves (i.e., an emic perspective). at this point, we note that language is not a neutral faculty, but conveys a particular meaning and association, and even a political statement. using a particular word, thus, might promote a particular meaning and association. for instance, dwitra, the balinese producer, chose to entitle his documentary massean massage to connect the excavation of the mass grave with balinese cosmology. this title is designed to strategically send a modest message, thereby promoting socio-cultural reconciliation – like that done in the village – over hopelessly waiting for justice from the state. second, although a number of films and documentaries have attempted to alter the official narrative, they have not been designed to be confrontative. survivors and human rights activists have instead countered the master narrative indirectly. content producers, as we confirmed through offline interviews, were clear that the production of digital narratives was not meant to intentionally fight against the official narrative of the new order. nor was content produced for profit. most said that they mainly wanted to keep their memories alive and to share their life histories with a broad audience, making them as widely available as possible. aseas 12(1) | 13 hakimul ikhwan, vissia ita yulianto, & gilang desti parahita conclusion findings from this new media analysis of the genocide of 1965 indicate that social memory is contested on three-levels, covering the individual familial level, the public vs. state level, and the theoretical level. the individual, familial level is evident, for example, in the film c’est la vie, in which the filmmaker recounts the sad narratives of his father, who was banished to buru island for years. these narratives remain ‘unbelievable’, as the director of the film puts it, highlighting his numerous questions and skepticism about his father’s stories and his family’s tragedy. the second level covers the official state narrative versus public counter narratives. whereas during the authoritarian new order, almost all alleged communists and their descendants were silenced, forced to bury their grief, and reconcile with the pain, residual bitterness, injustice, and total exclusion they experienced, this study finds that there are striking counter narratives freely available on the new media. these new counter narratives are arguably important in framing and reframing knowledge and understanding of indonesia’s dark past. although such new narratives undeniably retain a tense relationship with the dominant and official new order history, through the use of new media’s multimediality they have powerfully driven emancipatory goals, channeling the strength of survivors and the post-memory generation, while offering hope for emancipation and democratization to those whom the state has victimized. however, because youtube’s algorithm allows certain content to top the trending list, videos promoting the status quo tend to be more widely watched than videos promoting counter narratives, especially when they do not use the titles or keywords that are commonly used by dominant narratives. third, on the theoretical level, the article reveals that memory is concerned with the past, but is not something that is locked in the past. it is definitely omnipresent, a big part of our daily experiences, and is interwoven, intertwined with history. memory and history are closely linked. what differentiates memory from history is that it deals with emotion, with human feelings. further, as explained by lowenthal (1997, p. 32), while realizing that the past can never be retrieved unaltered, historians still strive for impartial, checkable accuracy, minimizing bias as inescapable but deplorable. others, though, see bias and error as normal and necessary. however, although historians realize that history always attenuates truth, beyond academia this deficiency is little known or largely denied. in most school texts, history remains one-dimensional, even where controversy is rampant (lowenthal, 1997, pp. 36-37). for example, indonesian textbooks on the events of 1965 continue to reproduce the new order’s official narrative and lead younger indonesians to be fixed and fixated on this narrative as the one true official history. the core issue is localized to the killing of six generals by the pki. a larger spectrum of untold facts, such as mass killings, civil unrest, sexual abuse, and the past and present mistreatments experienced by thousands of indonesian civilians in 1965/1966 as well as subsequent generations – has been deliberately marginalized or even silenced by those in power. however, dealing with social memory in oral culture (hirsch 2008) differs from today’s digital era. recent scholarship, as well as new social movements, have demonstrated how the recent advent of digital technology has brought fundamental changes in the way we remember the past and, in particular, how we deal with memories of 14 | aseas 12(1) the contestation of social memory in the new media the past. as vividly demonstrated above, narratives of social memory may 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(2017). remediating the past: youtube and second world war memory in ukraine and russia. memory studies, 1-16. marching, s. t. (2017). the end of silence. accounts of the 1965 genocide in indonesia. amsterdam university press. marcus, g. (1995). ethnography in/of the world system: the emergence of multi-sited ethnography. annual review of anthropology, 24, 95-117. mcgregor, k., melvin j., & pohlman, a. (2018). the indonesian genocide of 1965. causes, dynamics and legacies. london: palgrave macmillan. ong, w. j. (1982). orality and literacy: the technologizing of the word. new york: methuen. paramaditha, i. (2013). tracing fictions in the act of killing. film quarterly, 67(2), 44-49. pohlman, a. (2019). sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, and forced marriage as crimes against humanity during the indonesian killings of 1965-66. in s. e. wieringa, a. pohlman, & j. melvin (eds.), the international people’s tribunal for 1965 and the indonesian genocide (pp. 96-114). new york: routledge. recuber, t. (2012). the prosumption of commemoration: disasters, digital memory banks, and online collective memory. american behavioral scientist, 56(4), 531-549. ricklefs, m. c. (2001). a history of modern indonesia since c. 1200. stanford, ca: stanford university press. roosa, j. (2006). pretext for mass murder: the september 30th movement and suharto’s coup d’état in indonesia. wisconsin: university of wisconsin press. scott, p. d. (1985). the united states and the overthrow of sukarno, 1965-1967. pacific affairs, 58(2), 239-264. smit, r., heinrich, a., & broeresma, m. (2017). witnessing in the new memory ecology: memory construction of the syrian conflict on youtube. new media & society, 19(2), 289-307. van dijck, j. (2007). mediated memories in the digital age. stanford, ca: stanford university press. wardaya, f. b. t. (2006). bung karno menggugat!: dari marhaen, cia, pembantaian massal’65 hingga g30s. yogyakarta: galangpress group. wieringa, s. e., & katjasungkana, n. (2019). propaganda and the genocide in indonesia: imagined evil. oxon: routledge. wieringa, s. (2002). sexual politics in indonesia. new york: springer. yulianto, v. i. (2015). reframing modernities in contemporary indonesia. an ethnographic study of ideas of center and periphery in sulawesi and java. berlin: regiospectra. yulianto, v. i. (2017). art, change and collective memory in germany. ethnographic reference to indonesia? in l. simatupang (ed.), daya seni [the power of arts]. yogyakarta: pascasarjana universitas gadjah mada. about the authors hakimul ikhwan is a sociologist and lecturer at the department of sociology, faculty of social and political science as well as a researcher at the centre for population and policy studies at universitas gadjah mada, indonesia. ► contact: hakimulikhwan@ugm.ac.id vissia ita yulianto is a socio-cultural anthropologist. she is a researcher at the center for southeast asian social studies, universitas gadjah mada, indonesia, and a lecturer at the graduate program of performance and visual art studies at the same university. 16 | aseas 12(1) the contestation of social memory in the new media gilang desti parahita is a communication scientist and lecturer at the department of communication science at the universitas gadjah mada, indonesia. acknowledgements this article is a collaborative work funded by the faculty of social and political sciences as well as the department of communication science, universitas gadjah mada, indonesia. we dedicate this work to all our research informants who have shared their life memory and history. aseas 13(1) | 161 book review: dolezal, c., trupp, a., & bui, h. t. (eds.). (2020). tourism and development in southeast asia. london: routledge. isbn: 978-0-367-20925-4. 240 pages. richard s. aquinoa a school of hospitality and tourism, auckland university of technology, new zealand ► aquino, r. s. (2020). book review: dolezal, c., trupp, a., & bui, h. t. (eds.). (2020). tourism and development in southeast asia. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 13(1), 161-164. in recent decades, tourism has seen dramatic transformations, but with uneven development in southeast asia, a region promoted as a destination having unique biodiversity, diverse cultures, and hospitable people. these resources might be commodified into tourism experiences; however, this commodification is often fostered with the ultimate motivation of alleviating poverty, conserving threatened landscapes and ecosystems, empowering communities, and cultivating cooperation amongst southeast asian nations. claudia dolezal, alexander trupp, and huong t. bui’s tourism and development in southeast asia provides a current platform for critical debates on the adoption of tourism for development, and calls for implementation of alternative and sustainable development through tourism. this edited volume stresses persistent issues concerning the viability of tourism as a development strategy, which can be summarized into the following themes: equitable distribution of economic benefits, local community participation, environmental costs associated with tourism activities, and, governance. although most of the chapters have overarching foci on local communities, case studies situated in provincial, regional, and national contexts were incorporated. in terms of geographical settings, the chapters cover eight of the eleven countries in southeast asia. while it can be practically challenging to curate a volume with cases on all southeast asian nations, the editors were able to include contributions on lesser-researched, yet emerging destinations, such as lao pdr (chapter 7), myanmar (chapter 11), and cambodia (chapter 12). the volume features an even distribution of geographical concentration, compared to previously published collections on tourism in the region, which mainly presented research on popular and frequently-studied (as well as visited) destinations (e.g., indonesia, and thailand). the contributors to this volume have diverse academic backgrounds, making the collection multidisciplinary in nature. more importantly, contributors stem evenly from within (12 authors) and outside (12 authors) the region of southeast asia. unlike preceding works, which were mainly authored by outsiders to the region who are informed by western/euro-centric views and researcher gaze, rezensionen  book reviews w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 35 162 | aseas 13(1) book review: dolezal, c., trupp, a., & bui, h. t. (eds.). (2020). tourism and development in southeast asia. this edited collection celebrates local perspectives and features a balanced etic/emic assessment of the issues. this volume amplifies local academic voices on tourism and development in southeast asia. in doing so, it responds to the current calls to curtail the neo-coloniality of southeast asian tourism knowledge production (e.g., aquino, 2019; wijesinghe & mura, 2018) reinforced by global capitalist development mechanisms (wijesinghe, mura, & culala, 2019). the volume comprises 14 chapters, divided into four parts. part i introduces the theoretical and methodological foundations of the book. written by the editors, chapter 1 sets the scene by systematically reviewing published studies on southeast asian tourism and development, while chapter 2 (bui and dolezal) comprehensively narrates the evolution of tourism development in the region in line with development theories. these introductory chapters objectively position the volume within existing tourism and development paradigms and discourses, and invite readers to reflect on the sustainability of tourism development in southeast asia. chapter 3 discusses methodological insights into conducting fieldwork in southeast asia. however, instead of outlining rigid methodical steps, dolezal, trupp, and leepreecha share their practical experiences in the field. this chapter prompted me to reflect on my own fieldwork experiences (as a filipino academic doing research in the philippines), and relate with the same challenges experienced by the authors (e.g., gaining access, and social and power relations in the field). i concur with leepreecha’s argument that one cannot ever become a full insider into the communities being ‘researched’ – even though you may have been born in the same country. this chapter emphasizes that researcher positionality should not be neglected when conducting ethnographic research through fieldwork. moreover, this chapter is a valuable read for researchers, regardless of their geographic origin or cultural background, planning to embark on fieldwork in southeast asia. the dependency and management of tourism in natural environments are explored in part ii, addressing topics on funding, stewardship, and collaborative conservation. two protected area management models, namely co-management (with private enterprises and non-governmental organizations) and geoparks (or geological parks), that are becoming popular in the southeast asian context, are explored in this section. despite the novelty of these approaches, the meaningful involvement of communities was strongly stressed. perhaps, instead of the public-private partnerships (ppps) revealed in chapter 4 (by long and bui), another ‘p’ that stands for ‘people’ should be added to these models (e.g., baltic urban lab, 2018). as revealed by kausar, darmawan, and firmansyah (chapter 6), conservation programs and target outcomes are usually pre-determined by external stakeholders, not the communities themselves. although this is not a new occurrence in tourism development, these contributions point out that having strong community control is a more desirable way of managing protected areas. after all, adjacent local communities are the most important stewards of these natural areas. these chapters transition well to the contents of part iii: tourism, development, and local communities. the contributions in this part engage with current debates on community-based tourism (cbt), such as the impacts of tourism on the poor (chapter 7), entrepreneurship (chapter 8), and livelihood and cultural transformations (chapters 9 and 10). in many ways, the findings of these chapters accentuate aseas 13(1) | 163 richard s. aquino the common problems and negative outcomes concerning tourism (e.g., disempowerment), local communities, and ‘minoritized’ ethnic groups in the region. in this regard, i found yotsumoto’s contribution (chapter 11) particularly thought-provoking, especially on the value of self-determination for indigenous peoples. in his conclusions on the implications of modernity on the cultural landscape, tourism, and authenticity of the ifugao province in the philippines, yotsumoto wrote: farmers, however, are generally not interested in the preservation of traditional culture, which originated from outside and which reminds them of the past hard life. they have internalised the idea that modern life is a better life. thus, farmers’ pursuit of the modern life continues to undermine the authenticity of traditional culture and landscape which disappoints tourists. (p. 157) while it can be argued that cultural sustainability is an important aspect of sustainable development, these people’s pursuits of self-determined aspirations (e.g., having a modern house) are paradoxically hampered by tourism and other globalizing mechanisms (e.g., the world heritage listing). this chapter may prompt tourism stakeholders (e.g., visitors, planners, and experts) to re-think their positions in inculcating visions and desires for authentic experiences in host communities. part iv contains chapters that analyze another vital aspect of tourism development: governance. contributions here explore both macro(chapters 11 and 13) and micro-perspectives (chapter 12) on destination governance. in the latter chapter, müller, markova, and ponnapureddy’s analysis of cbt in cambodia showed that organic and non-formally organized tourism activities worked better for the locality under study. although not perfect, this case exemplifies that top-down tourism development strategies, whether initiated by the public or private sector, are not always ideal. top-down initiatives are often susceptible to poor coordination between actors from the top (e.g., funding agencies, governments, etc.) and the ground (e.g., communities) (see also chapter 11), further impeding their success. this edited volume offers well-crafted contributions to present debates on tourism and development in southeast asia. the editing of the chapters followed a consistent format, articulating the history of tourism development in each country, and guiding readers who are less familiar with the contexts of the featured countries. chapters 7 and 10 would benefit from more recent data; yet, this offers opportunities for researchers to follow up on these case studies. in the culmination of the volume, the editors recognized some topics that were not covered. in addition to these limitations, it would be great to see chapters situated in supranational contexts, such as the influence of the association of southeast asian nations (asean) economic community or china-southeast asia relationship/interventions on tourism development in the region. furthermore, this edited volume was published during the covid-19 pandemic, a time when tourism is almost non-existent worldwide, exposing the vulnerability of the industry to such crises. while many academics propose that this is the right time to re-imagine tourism (e.g., everingham & chassagne, 2020; haywood, 2020), readers of this volume must also reflect on whether tourism is the right solution to the problems of the developing world. overall, this volume is a valuable addition to tourism, development, and southeast asian studies. the chapters 164 | aseas 13(1) book review: dolezal, c., trupp, a., & bui, h. t. (eds.). (2020). tourism and development in southeast asia. in this volume can be utilized as teaching cases and references, but most importantly, have practical implications for tourism leaders, academics, and development practitioners in southeast asia.  references aquino, r. s. (2019). towards decolonising tourism and hospitality research in the philippines. tourism management perspectives, 31, 72-84. baltic urban lab. (2018). towards integrated and partnership-based planning of brownfield areas. retrieved from http://www.balticurbanlab.eu/file/525/download?token=3z3bygop everingham, p., & chassagne, n. (2020). post covid-19 ecological and social reset: moving away from capitalist growth models towards tourism as buen vivir. tourism geographies. advance online publication. doi:10.1080/14616688.2020.1762119 haywood, k. m. (2020). a post-covid future: tourism community re-imagined and enabled. tourism geographies. advance online publication. doi:10.1080/14616688.2020.1762120 wijesinghe, s. n. r., & mura, p. (2018). situating asian tourism ontologies, epistemologies and methodologies: from colonialism to neo-colonialism. in p. mura & c. khoo-lattimore (eds.), asian qualitative research in tourism: ontologies, epistemologies, methodologies, and methods (pp. 97-115). singapore: springer. wijesinghe, s. n. r., mura, p., & culala, h. j. (2019). eurocentrism, capitalism and tourism knowledge. tourism management, 70, 178-187. qatari philanthropy and out-of-school children in southeast asia: an interview with the director of educate a child aseas 10(2) | 265 qatari philanthropy and out-of-school children in southeast asia: an interview with the director of educate a child michael morrissey ► morrissey, m. (2017). qatari philanthropy and out-of-school children in southeast asia: an interview with the director of educate a child. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 10(2), 265-270. in september 2015, the un agreed on sustainable development goal 4 (sdg4), which aims to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” (sustainable development knowledge platform, 2017). embedded in this broad goal, educate a child (eac) is the only global support program that focuses solely on out-of-school children1 (oosc) across the world, including southeast asia. eac is an initiative of the education above all foundation of qatar. it works through co-funding interventions of trusted partners to bring oosc into quality primary education programs. it pairs with organizations to support innovative programs and methods of education for the most vulnerable children, especially those affected by poverty, conflict, natural disaster, and cultural barriers. eac’s partners range from international educational, development, and humanitarian organizations to locally-based groups. it currently has around fifty partners, also in southeast asia, among others, aide et action and its 25-ngo consortium in cambodia, the monastic education development group (medg), save the children, unesco, unhcr, and united world schools. dr. mary joy pigozzi is executive director of eac and member of the wise prize committee. keywords: out-of-school children; primary education; qatari philanthropy; sdg4; southeast asia  michael morrissey: dr. pigozzi, how did you come to direct the educate a child program? mary joy pigozzi: the educate a child program was launched in fall 2012 by its founder, her highness sheikha moza bint nasser. at the time, progress towards millennium development goal 2 (mdg2) calling for universal primary education by 2015, had stagnated. early progress during the period 2000-2008 was realized by the hundreds of countries that agreed to this goal, however, 60 million children world-wide remained out of primary school in 2011 and progress towards the goal had slowed. in 2010, her highness sheikha moza bint nasser was appointed an advocate for mdg2 by the then un secretary general ban ki moon. as such, and along with her history of supporting education in qatar, she committed to reaching 10 million out-of-school children and launched the program educate a child (eac) to achieve this goal. a new foundation, education above all, was set up to manage eac along with other international education 1 according to eac estimations, there are currently about 61 million children who have not received school education at primary level (educate a child, 2017). im dialog  in dialogue w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 17 .2 -9 qatari philanthropy and out-of-school children in southeast asia 266 | aseas 10(2) programs of qatar. early in 2012, i was approached by a representative from qatar. they knew about some of my accomplishments and considered me as a prospective candidate to head the new eac. although i was very happy in my former position, the more i learnt about the scope, ambition, and potential of eac, the more attractive it became. in the end, it was a challenge and an opportunity that i could not resist. i arrived in qatar as director at the start of the new program in late 2012. morrissey: how does eac determine which countries to prioritize? pigozzi: eac embarked on an extensive analysis of the global oosc landscape. reaching 10 million children is a daunting goal to achieve in a few years. so we began by identifying countries with significant numbers of oosc according to the unesco institute of statistics data-base. nevertheless, as a global program, eac did not prioritize any region. our singular focus remains oosc. eac supports activities that seek to eliminate the multiple barriers that keep children out of school such as poverty, lack of or distance to education opportunities, challenges resulting from conflict or displacement, gender and other forms of discrimination, poor educational quality, etc. we co-fund partners who have demonstrated that they understand the barriers children face and have identified ways to overcome these barriers and enable oosc to enter and complete a primary education program. it does not have to be formal education – we also support a range of alternative modalities to fit the needs of different groups of learners. morrissey: why is southeast asia a region of emphasis? pigozzi: southeast asia made enormous strides in basic education during the period of the mdgs. nevertheless, differences in development levels among asean countries remain. within many southeast asian countries, swathes of poverty persist and, as a result, several million poor and marginalized children do not have access to primary education. our decision to support countries in this region was based on data that indicated the need. there are also other reasons why this region was of interest. one is that eac is very keen on supporting innovative models that are designed to meet the learning needs of the most marginalized and bringing them to scale. this region has a good record of innovation in education. another reason is that many of the countries are undergoing population growth at quite high rates and we are aware that this will put pressure on the provision of primary education. we hope that our work can diminish the possible negative impact of this pressure on the most disadvantaged in the region. morrissey: how does eac go about working with countries? pigozzi: eac’s partnership process is based on respect for the knowledge and understanding local organizations have of the barriers and challenges that children face in sub-regions. oosc are not uniformly scattered about entire countries but tend to be in pockets of geographic, social, and economic strife. this approach is a critical aspect of how eac works. we are a genuine partner who is engaged in the same goal to reach oosc. we are not as a donor or charity prescribing what local organizamichael morrissey  aseas 10(2) aseas 10(2) | 267 tions should do. therefore, eac seeks partners who demonstrate success in reaching marginalized children at the primary level in a country and invest in broadening and scaling up their outreach. eac has consciously attempted to work with a range of implementing partners. we support multi-lateral organizations, international ngos, and national ngos. in every case, we expect our partners to align and coordinate with national authorities. in cambodia, for example, the minister of education assumed the chair of the coordinating committee of the ngo consortium established in response to eac’s offer of support. morrissey: what funding model does eac use? pigozzi: eac believes that sustainability of any given intervention relies on ownership and investment of the country and local partner. therefore, the funding model is a 50:50 proposition. with qatari funds covering 50%, the local partner provides at least 50% of the total project funding. not only has this model worked across the world, but also partners have become creative in their approach to providing their share by tapping into a variety of sources such as donors, host governments, private sector, foundations, and individual philanthropists. in addition, to receive eac funding a partner must demonstrate that it has a plan to sustain attention to oosc once eac funding is no longer available. morrissey: how is eac support allocated in the southeast asia region? pigozzi: eac is supporting projects in myanmar, thailand, cambodia, laos, philippines, and malaysia, reaching around 300,000 oosc by 2018. the projects vary according to oosc’s needs. one project in thailand supports a refugee camp for displaced children from myanmar. the consortium of ngos in cambodia is reaching children who face various barriers such as disability and urban poverty. another one focuses on remote ethnic minority children in communities that have never had any access to a school. eac does not allocate specific funding amounts to countries or regions. its financial allocations respond to need as demonstrated in a rigorous application process. thus, several partners may be supported in a single country using different approaches and focusing on different barriers faced by oosc. morrissey: how does eac know it has reached such large numbers of children? pigozzi: eac has a strong and robust monitoring and evaluation system to record the number of children reached. each project we fund must submit extensive technical, financial, and monitoring reports every six months. projects submit an online data report on numbers of oosc reached by each school or alternative education program, and whether these children stay in the school or education program over time. eac requires partners to track each individual student it enrolls by id (not by estimation). this requirement was put in place for two reasons: first, because marginalized children are hard to identify and reach, and secondly, because eac is interested to know if our investment is yielding the intended result, namely that oosc are given the opportunity to learn and participate in the full cycle of primary education. qatari philanthropy and out-of-school children in southeast asia 268 | aseas 10(2) morrissey: how does eac determine if the education the children receive is of high quality? pigozzi: that is an important question! quality is as critical as access because the goal is for children to learn. eac has very strict standards and criteria for the selection of partner organizations. potential partners must show how their strategies, interventions, models, approaches, and instructional methodologies result in children staying in school and learning. proposals that are not able to demonstrate quality education interventions are not funded. we conduct site-monitoring visits to assure ourselves of the quality of education the enrolled oosc are receiving. morrissey: what has eac accomplished so far? pigozzi: eac is supporting 51 projects in 48 countries in southeast asia, east asia, the mena, africa, and the latin america and caribbean regions. the status of the program accomplishments is continually being updated, therefore at the point of this interview (september, 2017), commitments are in place to reach more than 7.5 million oosc world-wide, with over 5.3 million of them already enrolled. eac’s financial commitment to date stands at over usd 548 million, with additional leveraged funds of more than usd 817 million in partner co-funding. the total funding for eac projects now exceeds usd 1.3 billion for our entire portfolio. morrissey: what do you see as the main challenges to successful program implementation? pigozzi: we have been fortunate that most of the partners have been able to exceed the targets that they had set for themselves. having said that, however, there are several challenges that partners face. conflict has broken out in several of the countries where we work resulting in delays and, in most cases, the need to re-program the intended activities to fit the new context. fortunately, this has not been the case in southeast asia. a significant proportion of our funding goes to projects for refugees and displaced children. the frequent need for these children to be mobile has presented data collection and learning continuity problems. as we require partners to monitor and report on individual children, this has been difficult for some of our partners who were not used to such rigorous data reporting requirements. finally, i would add that, in some cases, due to challenging or changing financial circumstances, some partners struggle to maintain their co-funding commitment. morrissey: how does eac communicate information on its program? pigozzi: our portfolio of projects is accessible through the eac website, www.educateachild.org.qa. there you will find individual project descriptions, profiles of implementing organizations, a map showing the locations of projects across the world, stories of children and how they have been impacted, and news about eac’s role in the global education community. our funder and patron, her highness sheikha moza, hosts an international conference in doha every other november – the world innovation summit in education (wise) – where world leaders, academics, partner michael morrissey  aseas 10(2) aseas 10(2) | 269 organizations, and the private sector gather to share ideas and offer solutions to the world’s pressing problems in education. southeast asia is always well represented. eac also publishes reports, studies, fact sheets, brochures, and success stories. these are disseminated at international meetings and conferences and through our website. morrissey: what is the future direction of eac? pigozzi: as you may know, the millennium development goals were set for the period of 2000-2015. they have been extended through the sustainable development goals, approved by the un in 2015, and carry the global agenda up to the year 2030. sdg 4 focuses on education, and eac is positioned to extend this focus to marginalized children and their right to a quality basic education. morrissey: what does this mean for the southeast asia region? pigozzi: eac funds multi-year projects so our footprint in the southeast asia region will continue for several more years. in addition, at the policy and advocacy level, there is movement towards pan-asean agreements on reaching all oosc in the region. morrissey: how can others become involved? pigozzi: eac welcomes implementing partners and funding partners to the table. research shows that more highly educated populations result in better socio-economic and health indicators for the country, and a higher quality of life for individuals and communities. there is a page on the eac website entitled ‘how to become a partner’ with details on procedures. investors and organizations are invited to consider participating in this worthwhile endeavor. morrissey: thank you for sharing the accomplishment of eac over such a short period of operation! southeast asian children have clearly benefited from qatari philanthropy. pigozzi: it was a pleasure to speak about eac and the importance of the southeast asia region in our program. her highness, and by extension eac, are passionate and committed about the right of children to opportunities to reach their full potential. it is good for them individually, good for their families, good for the community, and good for the country. everybody wins!  references educate a child. (2017). about us. retrieved from http://educateachild.org/about sustainable development knowledge platform. (2017). sustainable development goal 4. retrieved from https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg4 qatari philanthropy and out-of-school children in southeast asia 270 | aseas 10(2) about the author michael morrissey is an international education expert whose current regional focus lies on southeast asia. ► contact: morrisseyjakarta@gmail.com aseas 10(2) | 129 philanthropy, giving, and development in southeast asia rosalia sciortino ► sciortino, r. (2017). philanthropy, giving, and development in southeast asia. austrian journal of southeast asian studies, 10(2), 129-138. philanthropy – an elusive and changing concept this special issue on the evolving state of philanthropy in southeast asia provides an overview of the trends and tensions in this sector, which is being shaped by often conflicting notions of charity, development, and business. philanthropy is viewed as an age-old practice, yet not many are familiar with the term (payton & moody, 2008) and even fewer know its etymological origin from ancient greek, literally meaning ‘love to humankind’. classic definitions describe philanthropy as a private initiative for the public good (as cited by gardner in mccully, 2008) or a voluntary action for the public good (payton, 1988) aiming at improvement in the quality of human life (bremner, 1988). these definitions, however, are quite broad and leave open to interpretation what philanthropy actually implies in specific contexts and settings. in trying to operationalize the concept, practitioners tend to take a narrower view of philanthropy centered on its financial dimension as implying a donation or investment of private capital for the public good. they further distinguish its purpose from that of ‘charity’ in that philanthropy is meant to focus on the prevention and elimination of the roots causes of social problems rather than merely alleviating the suffering caused by those same social problems. while charity is seen as directed at meeting immediate needs, philanthropy is expected to be ‘problem-solving’ and persistent in addressing society’s challenges. its efforts do not provide immediate reprieve, but aim to enable disadvantaged people to gain the skills to improve their conditions while also creating opportunities for them to advance in society. in the words of steve gunderson, former president and ceo of the council of foundations: “charity tends to be a short-term, emotional, immediate response, focused primarily on rescue and relief, whereas philanthropy is much more long-term, more strategic, focused on rebuilding” (the melvin and bren simon foundation, 2015). this juxtaposition is inspired by the early anglo-american philanthropists in the 20th century, foremost andrew carnegie (1835-1919) and john d. rockefeller (1839-1937), and in successive years, henry ford (1863-1947). the private foundations they, and successive generations of us philanthropists, established with substantial endowments and generous tax deductions for their donations, aim to address the root causes of social ills (bremner, 1988; mccully, 2008; zunz, 2010). as rockefeller himself stated: “the best philanthropy is constantly in search of the finalities – a search for a cause, an attempt to cure evils at their editorial w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 17 .2 -1 130 | aseas 10(2) philanthropy, giving, and development in southeast asia source” (rockefeller, 1984; seim, 2016 p. 54). us foundations working internationally, such as ford, charles stewart mott, rockefeller, and w.k. kellogg, have traditionally also confided in the “power and potential of philanthropy to address problems as well as to strengthen civil society and democracy” worldwide (ambrose, 2005, p. 2). in this philanthropic model, the allocation of endowed resources is institutionalized and professionalized, with foundation officers strategically granting to selected organizations whose concerted funded actions are meant to address a specific issue and bring about societal change in a context-specific and synergic manner. going beyond spontaneous individual giving from one to another person or to a particular cause – which still constitutes the majority of giving in the us and elsewhere in the world – philanthropic resources are channeled through institutions to other institutions, mostly non-government and civil society groups. here, a distinction is made between private and public foundations, the first being established with donations of philanthropist individuals or families, and the second being funded from various sources, including private donations and public funding. on the ground, this translates into a multitude of foundations of various sizes and modalities. the foundation center estimated that in the us alone in 2012 there were 86,192 foundations with usd 715 billion in assets and usd 52 billion in giving. the largest of these and the highest number (78,582) were independent foundations established by individual donors or families. the remaining could be classified as corporate, operational, and community foundations (foundation center, 2014, p. 3; see table 1). if other kinds of organizations with an official non-profit status are included, the number reaches 1.4 million in the same year (statista, 2017). outside of the us, reliable numbers are lacking, also because legal systems and public opinion do not always distinguish the scope of foundation work from that of the larger nonprofit or civil society sector and different tax systems do not incentivize and thus also do not monitor philanthropic foundations. however, it is generally assumed that the third or non-profit sector is large and growing and home-grown philanthropy is expanding (ambrose, 2005, p. 3; “homegrown philanthropy”, 2014). table 1. a typology of (philanthropic) foundations (adapted from foundation center, 2014, p. 3; martens & seitz, 2015, p. 9) independent established by individual donors or donor families as separate legal entities are mainly engaged in grant-making activities operating primarily run their own programs, but some also make grants. generally established by individual donors or donor families corporate established by businesses ranging from major corporations to family owned shops, as separate or semi-independent entities community raise funds from the public. engage in grant-making primarily within a defined geographic area aseas 10(2) | 131 rosalia sciortino interestingly, the modality of foundations as non-profit is today being challenged by new conceptualizations of philanthropy that do no longer see this as one of the defining criteria. the rise in the last two decades of a more universalist, technocratic, and market-oriented approach in philanthropy – triggered by the establishment of the bill and melinda gates foundation (bmgf) – has emphasized the view that the commercial sector can serve as a model for the third sector in devising ‘global’ solution to development problems and that positive social and environmental outcomes as well as monetary gains can be pursued simultaneously. in the so-called venture philanthropy, branded by critics as ‘philanthrocapitalism’, donations or loans are given to organizations applying a commercial model like social enterprises and socalled social impact investments are made to seek social benefits as well as financial returns (heude, 2010; sciortino, this issue). while increasingly hailed by its proponents as the philanthropic model of the future, in contrast to the ‘traditional’, purely non-profit model of early foundations, this mixing of business and social purposes leaves open the question in how far 'private gain' can be considered ‘a public good’ for society and its most vulnerable groups (kvangraven, 2016). more pragmatically it can be questioned in how far tax incentives that have been granted by states, particularly the us and north european countries, to incentivize charitable and philanthropic donations and to promote the establishment of non-profit foundations and organizations as recipients, should still apply. this at a time when as the economist states “the idea that the state should subsidise giving to good causes is resilient, but not easily justified” (“sweetened charity”, 2012). the growing diversity of paradigmatic positions with its inherent tensions adds to the complexity of finding common ground among “private initiatives for the public good as diversely practiced around the globe” (harvey, 2011). societies show a wide range of “types and modes of philanthropy, of scope and funding purposes” often in contexts with poor differentiation of charity vis-à-vis philanthropy and the overall non-profit sector and with limited infrastructure and tax incentives, wherein “‘organized’ foundations are just one means for giving” (ambrose, 2005, p. 1; sciortino, this issue). to take this variety into account implies again an expansion of the conceptual boundaries to allow for an all-encompassing definition of 'global philanthropy' that: incorporates both giving and doing and includes both the traditional and non-traditional, the formal and informal, the religious and the secular. [this definition] recognizes that, across the planet, diverse kinds of philanthropic practice emerge out of a particular set of factors: cultural, social, religious, economic, political, legal and more. all are valuable, and all are ‘philanthropy’. (harvey, 2011) beside referring to the fast expansion of home-grown ‘local’ or ‘indigenous’ philanthropic practices worldwide in its various forms, global philanthropy is also commonly understood, especially among us-based organizations, to indicate that funds are directed at addressing causes across national borders either to international organizations operating overseas or to local organizations in foreign countries (harvey, 2011). the increased use in the last decade of this term in its multiple interpretations is a reflection of an increasing recognition of the role of foundations, both international and ‘indigenous’ in international development. 132 | aseas 10(2) philanthropy, giving, and development in southeast asia a global discourse on philanthropy and international development in recent years, we have seen the emergence of a global discourse on the growing influence of philanthropic actors in international cooperation (grady, 2014; oecd, 2017). donor nations confronted with financial crises and taxpayers who have a diminished appetite for shouldering the costs of overseas aid, have started to take a closer look at the rapid increase of private flows from aid-donor countries to developing countries, in order of volume investments, remittances and philanthropy, and their actual and potential contribution to development. these private flows were estimated to account in 2014 for 85% of the overall economic interaction with “government aid represent[ing] only 15 percent of the total engagement, the reverse of some 40 years ago” (hudson institute, 2016). convinced that “remittances and philanthropy continue to thrive and are important lifelines to the world’s poorest people” (hudson institute 2016, 2017), donor countries have welcomed private foundations as partners in international development efforts (center for global prosperity & hudson institute, 2013; grady, 2014; hénon, 2014; oecd, 2014, 2017). their governments have stressed the value of public-private partnerships, and argued that philanthropic foundations have comparative advantages of operational flexibility, consistency, innovation, and capacity to leverage funding. we are also reminded that that philanthropy should not be seen merely as “a ‘gap filler’ for oda”, but should be appreciated for its concern for “under-funded sectors like social inclusion, human rights, and gender equality”, its building of new fields and networks, and for its added value to the non-profit sector “through the creation of grant-making portfolios that help build communities of practice, disciplinary fields, and social movements for positive change” (grady, 2014, p. 5). among these rising expectations, philanthropic actors have been enlisted to contribute to the 2030 agenda for sustainable development adopted at the 2015 un summit and to help realize the 17 sustainable development goals (sdgs) aiming to “end poverty, protect the planet, and  ensure prosperity for all” (united nations [un], 2015). oecd analysis based on current sectoral funding trends of north-south flows expects philanthropic resources to significantly contribute in helping developing countries achieve sdg 3 (good health and well-being), sdg 4 (quality education), and sdg 16 (peace, justice and strong institutions (oecd, 2017). the turn to private foundations and global philanthropy in international development has been prompted by the international work of foundations from oecd countries, especially from the u.s. the lion’s share of attention goes to the bmgf, whose endowment of usd 40.3 billion (bmgf, 2017) overshadows those of such older foundations with overseas interests as the ford and rockefeller foundations, which have endowments of usd 12 billion (ford foundation, 2017) and assets just above usd 4 billion (rockefeller foundation, 2017) respectively. according to oecd (2017), in the period 2013-2015, bmgf contributed 60% of the total usd 19.5 billion in philanthropic giving from oecd countries to developing countries with over 11 billion in grants mostly in the health, population, and agriculture sectors, followed by the children’s investment fund foundation, ciff (4%), the dutch postcode lottery (3%), the ford foundation (3%), and the ikea foundation (2%). american foundations were the large majority, with only 19% of the total originating from europe and the remaining from india, japan, brazil, and mexico. aseas 10(2) | 133 rosalia sciortino the available data, skewed toward western countries, underrepresent foundations in other parts of the world and fail to include philanthropic initiatives in lesser affluent locations. yet the global discourse on philanthropy and development counts on the growing pool of local philanthropists in emerging economies to supply “a potentially better attuned and more sustainable income source for local humanitarian and development needs” (“homegrown philanthropy”, 2014). the expansion of home-grown philanthropy due to the greater economic concentration and polarization of wealth globally, changing fiscal spaces, and more integrated global systems is seen as a bonus at a time when the role of governments is changing and many are implementing austerity measures and downsizing the provision of social services. there is hope that these local sources will supplement or compensate for diminishing overseas aid assistance, while also providing more context-sensitive support. global interest mainly focuses on china, india, and other countries at a similar stage of newly advanced economic development, but more and more there is also attention for poorer countries with well-off elites, especially in africa. this growing role of philanthropy in development, while hailed by governments and multi-lateral institutions and corporations, is not without critics. most recently, the president of the heinrich-böll-stiftung, barbara unmüßig (2017), asked: “[the] narrative of the well-meaning philanthropist taking on the world’s troubles may seem attractive, but should we accept it unquestioned?” she set alarm bells ringing about the global development agenda being decided by private donors who promote a “market-based approach, relying primarily on technical solutions to complex problems” that benefit the corporate sector, and make top-down decisions without engagement of civil society and local people and experts. she argues that governments should do more for public good and generate the revenues they need trough taxation to fulfil their responsibilities, including to “provide multi-lateral organizations with enough resources to fulfil their missions” in order not to become dependent on private, unaccountable, funding (unmüßig, 2017; see also martens & seitz, 2015). worries also extend to home-grown philanthropy, as local donors show a tendency to write off a social change approach and, so far, seem inclined to avoid human rights and social justice and stay away from advocacy work and civil society (ambrose, 2005; “homegrown philanthropy”, 2014). as this issue will show, such observations are also of relevance to southeast asia. focus on an overlooked region this special issue of the austrian journal for south-east asian studies (aseas) highlights the unprecedented growth of institutionalized giving in southeast asia, a region rarely included in the global discussion of philanthropy, from both an academic and a practitioner’s perspective. in the opening overview article, i reflect on the evolving state of philanthropy in southeast asia driven by global and local factors and by often conflicting notions of charity, development, and business and ask “on whether institutionalized private giving combined or in substitution of public funding can help address developmental gaps or, at the very least, protect the most vulnerable groups”. (sciortino, this issue, p. 139). philanthropic trends and their implications are examined, including the decrease of presence and changing funding practices of international 134 | aseas 10(2) philanthropy, giving, and development in southeast asia foundations, the family-centered ‘indigenization’ of philanthropy, the advent of a business-oriented model of philanthropy, and the consolidation of faith-related giving. this analysis points to the need for a more emancipatory brand of southeast asian philanthropy if indeed it is to contribute to more inclusive and equitable development. the other articles deepen the key issues signaled in the overview by providing cases of specific foundations and countries. more particularly, mary s. zurbuchen in her article on legacies of cultural philanthropy focuses on the ford foundation, one of the major international actor in the region because of its long-lasting field presence, volume of direct funding to local organizations, and support of home-grown philanthropy. in her paper, she briefly sketches the history of the ford foundation work in the arts and humanities in asia and its sustained support for building capacity and knowledge. she shows the changes the program has undergone over time and how its most recent rendition may compromise the ‘unique leverage’ of a grant-making tradition that is implemented by staff and offices embedded in country contexts and enlightened by grounded insights. the focus then shifts to country-specific contexts. natalie phaholyothin discusses the evolution of charitable giving in thailand and how the increase in local giving does not necessarily imply a full transformation to full-fledged philanthropy. the philanthropic sector could, in her view, be best defined as “a home-grown repertoire of socially conscious forms of giving” (phaholyothin, this issue, p. 185). next, the early development of philanthropy, particularly corporate giving in myanmar as a country with an entrenched culture of giving is explored by cavelle dove. she raises questions about such ‘generous’ practices and wonders whether they should be examined in the context of the failure of the state to pursue development objectives and provide social services to the population. finally, two articles focus on indonesia and the rise of islamic philanthropy. amelia fauzia in her article positions islamic philanthropy as part of broader social trends in indonesian society, particularly modernization and islamization, and reflects on whether faith-based philanthropy can play a role in supporting civil society and promoting social justice and a pluralist society. hilman latief reflects on similar issues from a somewhat different angle, by examining the operation of the main islamic philanthropic foundation, dompet dhuafa and its overseas efforts in hong kong. adding a theological dimension, the article shows how religious concepts are reinterpreted to meet development purposes and better serve underprivileged groups, in this case indonesian migrant women workers residing in hong kong. in closing, an interview is presented that gives a flavor of the new international philanthropic actors in southeast asia. mary joy pigozzi, executive director of educate a child, an initiative of the education above all foundation of qatar speaks about the foundation’s efforts to reach out-of-school children of southeast asia. the issue also profiles sea junction, a knowledge center and public venue on southeast asia that has recently opened in bangkok, thailand and is founded collectively by so-called ‘founding partners’ who share the same vision and interest. this initial work on philanthropy in southeast asia hopes to inspire more indepth follow-up studies. academic analysis and public scrutiny becomes more urgent now that philanthropic practices are expanding and gaining more relevance for development and growth. for future initiatives, other countries of southeast asia should be included and more attention given to technological giving practices through electronic platforms and crowd funding among other topics. aseas 10(2) | 135 rosalia sciortino eulogy to an early practitioner in asia besides the desire to contribute to an emerging body of knowledge on philanthropy and development, our collective effort was sustained by the wish to pay tribute to a pioneer of international philanthropy in asia. this issue is dedicated to peter f. geithner, who has played a key role in the ford foundation’s programs and in the support for local philanthropy in the region and who died on july 2016 at the age of 84. geithner started working at the ford foundation in the 1960s and in the course of its almost 30 year-employment acted as deputy representative for india in new delhi, representative for southeast asia in bangkok, as program officer for developing country programs, as the foundation’s first representative for china, in beijing, and as regional director of the asia programs in new york. he was also an adviser to other institutions with an interest in asia including the asia center at harvard university, the china medical board, the japan foundation center for global partnership, and the rockefeller brothers fund (sidel, 2017). in 2000, he provided inputs for the establishment of the asia office of the rockefeller foundation in bangkok and in successive years he contributed to the formulation of the learning across boundaries in the greater mekong subregion (lab) regional program (sciortino, 2016). the philanthropic model that geithner represented and promoted operated through field offices staffed with program officers knowledgeable of the languages and socio-political dynamics in their coverage areas so as to be able to define and implement context-specific grant-making strategies responsive to local development priorities. the approach further emphasized building the individual and institutional capacity needed to address development challenges in priority sectors. in southeast asia, geithner helped shape programs in rural development; community forestry; population and women’s rights and sexual and reproductive health; governance and civil society, arts and humanities (as described in this issue by zurbuchen); and peace and security (geithner, 2008). in implementing the mission and values of the ford foundation, geithner showed acumen and sensitivity: in his own right, peter was an extraordinary philanthropic programmer. he understood and deployed the catalytic role that an organization like ford could play, with exquisite sensitivity to national priorities, customs and institutions. he worked both to build institutions, and to support and strengthen individual capacity, always making links between the two. his extraordinary ability to really listen to people, and his flexibility, integrity, political sense and the decentralized nature of ford’s work, made him the leading philanthropic programmer of his era in asia of any nationality. peter understood very early that philanthropy could build upon the long traditions of giving across asia towards developing newer philanthropic institutions and practices. long before most philanthropic colleagues, he deployed ford assets to build philanthropic and non-profit institutions and infrastructure in the region. today asia is studded with foundations and non-profits and philanthropy has entered a period of rapid growth. these developments owe much to institutions at local, national and regional levels, for many of which peter geithner was the inspiration". (sidel, 2017) 136 | aseas 10(2) philanthropy, giving, and development in southeast asia the contribution of geithner is felt to this day through the many organizations he helped establish and the work of all those he inspired, as this issue dedicated to him testifies. i was among those who benefited from his mentoring when i became a ford foundation program officer in indonesia and the philippines and from his continued advice when regional director of the rockefeller foundation and later idrc. today, i and others who continue to share his vision and programming approach, miss his leadership as well as his advocacy of a philanthropy that is “responsive to differences”, that is “helpful to those who can make a significant contribution” in the target countries, and for which “humility and not hubris is necessary” (geithner, 2008, p. 194). these are all values that can no longer be taken for granted in today’s climate as this issue’s articles indicate.  references ambrose, n. (2005). global philanthropy. council on foundations. retrieved from http://centreonphilanthropy.com/files/kb_articles/1251122428global%20philanthropy%20paper.pdf bmgf – bill & melinda gates foundation. (2017): foundation fact sheet. retrieved from https://www. gatesfoundation.org/ who-we-are/general-information/foundation-factsheet bremner, r. h. (1988). american philanthropy. chicago: the university of chicago press. center for global prosperity & hudson institute. (2013). the index of global philanthropy and remittances 2013. with a special report on emerging economies. retrieved from https://www.hudson.org/content/ researchattachments/attachment/1229/2013_indexof_global_philanthropyand_remittances.pdf ford foundation. (2017). ford foundation commits $1 billion from endowment to mission-related investments. retrieved from https://www.fordfoundation.org/the-latest/news/ford-foundation-commits1-billion-from-endowment-to-mission-related-investments/ foundation center. (2014). key facts on us foundations. edition 2014. new york. retrieved from http:// foundationcenter.org/gainknowledge/research/keyfacts2014/ geithner, p. f. (2008). the ford foundation in southeast asia: continuity and change. in a. m. murphy & b. welsh (eds.), legacy of engagement in southeast asia (pp. 181-194). singapore: iseas. grady, h. (2014, june) philanthropy as an emerging contributor to development cooperation. report commissioned by the united nations development program as a background paper for the conference international development cooperation: trends and emerging opportunities – perspectives of the new actors. istanbul. retrieved from http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/librarypage/corporate/philanthropy-as-an-emerging-contributor-to-development-cooperati.html harvey, j. (2011, august 4). defining 'global philanthropy’. alliance magazine [blog entry] retrieved from http://www.alliancemagazine.org/blog/defining-global-philanthropy/ hénon, s. (2014). measuring private development assistance. emerging trends and challenges. development initiatives report. retrieved from http://devinit.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/measuringprivate-development-assistance1.pdf heude, x. (2010, july 19). qualifying philanthropy as the art of giving requires explanation on what is giving [blog entry] retrieved from http://www.peersdirectinvestment.com/philanthropy/qualifyingphilanthropy-as-the-art-of-giving-requires-explanation-on-what-is-giving homegrown philanthropy. (2014, april 19). the guardian. retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/ global-development/2014/apr/19/homegrown-philanthropy-local-giving-global-south?cmp=twt_gu hudson institute. (2016). the index of global philanthropy and remittances. washington: hudson institute. hudson institute. (2017) hudson institute releases report measuring global philanthropy and remittances. press release. retrieved https://www.hudson.org/research/13404-hudson-institute-releases-reportmeasuring-global-philanthropy-and-remittances aseas 10(2) | 137 rosalia sciortino kvangraven, i. h. (2016, october 16) philanthropy in development: undermining democracy [blog entry] retrieved from https://developingeconomics.org/2016/10/16/philanthropy-in-development-undermining-democracy/ martens, j., & seitz, k. (2015). philanthropic power and development who shapes the agenda? aachen: bischöfliches hilfswerk misereor, brot für die welt & global policy forum. retrieved from https://www. globalpolicy.org/images/pdfs/gpfeurope/philanthropic_power_online.pdf mccully, g. (2008). philanthropy reconsidered: private initiatives, public good, quality of life. bloomington: authorhouse. payton, r. l. (1988). philanthropy: voluntary action for the public good. new york: american council on education. payton, r. l., & moody, m. p. (2008). understanding philanthropy: its meaning and mission. bloomington: indiana university press. oecd. (2014). development co-operation report 2014: mobilising resources for sustainable development. paris: oecd publishing. retrieved from http://observ-ocd.org/sites/observ-ocd.org/files/publicacion/docs/ informe_coop.desen_._2014_ocde.pdf oecd. (2017). global private philanthropy for development: preliminary results of the oecd data survey. retrieved from https://www.oecd.org/dac/financing-sustainable-development/development-financedata/preliminary-results-philanthropy-survey.pdf rockefeller foundation (2017). the rockefeller foundation financial statements december 31, 2016 and 2015. retrieved from https://assets.rockefellerfoundation.org/app/uploads/20171107102708/therockefeller-foundation-financial-statement-2015-2016.pdf rockefeller, j. d. (1984). random reminiscences of men and events. tarrytown: sleepy hollow press. sciortino, r. (2016). learning across boundaries: activist grant-making in the greater mekong sub-region. in o. salemink (ed.), scholarship and engagement in southeast asia (pp. 141-166). chiang mai: silkworm books. seim, d. l. (2016). rockefeller philanthropy and modern social science. new york: routledge. sidel, m. (2017). peter geithner: an appreciation. alliance, 22(1) retrieved from http://www.alliancemagazine.org/analysis/peter-geithner-appreciation/ statista. (2017). number of non-profit organizations in the u.s. from 1998 to 2013 (in millions). retrieved from https://www.statista.com/statistics/189245/number-of-non-profit-organizations-in-the-unitedstates-since-1998/ sweetened charity. (2012, june 9). economist. retrieved from http://www.economist.com/node/21556570 the melvin and bren simon foundation. (2015, march 23). is there a difference between charity and philanthropy? [blog entry] retrieved from http://www.brensimon.com/difference-between-charity-andphilanthropy/#more-362 unmüßig, b. (2017, november 20) private-sector billionaires setting global agenda. [blog entry] retrieved from https://www.boell.de/en/2017/11/20/private-sector-billionaires-setting-global-agenda united nations (un). (2015). transforming our world: the 2030 agenda for sustainable development. retrieved from sustainabledevelopment.un.org zunz, o. (2011). philanthropy in america, a history: politics and society in twentieth-century america. princeton: princeton university press. about the author dr. rosalia sciortino is associate professor at the institute for population and social research, mahidol university, visiting professor in the master in international development studies (maids), chulalongkorn university, and founder and director of sea junction (www.seajunction.org). formerly, she served as regional director for the international development research centre (idrc) in singapore and for the rockefeller foundation in bangkok, and as program officer in the ford foundation’s jakarta and manila offices. ► contact: rosaliasciortino@yahoo.com 138 | aseas 10(2) philanthropy, giving, and development in southeast asia acknowledgements this collection of writings by a mix of practitioners and scholars would not have been possible without the help of many, in particular the involvement of the two managing editors rainer einzenberger and alexander trupp from the planning and peer review process to the editing and final checking. alan feinstein and patrick mccormick further provided advice and moral supports, shared contacts, and expressed constructive comments. the authors also deserve credit for their creativity in piecing together often limited data and for their patience in undergoing multiple substantial and editorial reviews with the hope that this collection may show the dynamism of philanthropy in southeast asia and become a source for more in-depth research. the state of coal mining in east kalimantan: towards a political ecology of local stateness anna fünfgeld ► fünfgeld, a. (2016). the state of coal mining in east kalimantan: towards a political ecology of local stateness. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 9(1), 147-162. the article aims at expanding political ecology research towards the role and constitution of states by demonstrating how local stateness is negotiated within conflicts over natural resources. it draws on a qualitative field study on the conflict over coal mining in east kalimantan’s capital samarinda, indonesia, where certain characteristics of states, such as the monopoly of violence and the rule of law, are being affirmed, altered, or undermined through practices of state and non-state actors alike. these practices do not only challenge state representations, but also reveal the symbolic importance of ideas about the state. the theoretical framework is developed on the basis of joel s. migdal’s state in society approach together with a later work of pierre bourdieu and philip abrams’ thoughts about the nature of states. keywords: coal mining; indonesia; political ecology; practice theory; state theory  introduction conflicts stemming from the extraction of natural resources are on the rise in many parts of the world. in indonesia, which is known for its big variety of resources, the extraction and export of coal has been expanded remarkably over recent years, leading to the country’s current standing as the world’s largest exporter of coal by weight (energy information administration, 2014). more than three quarters of the total extraction is exported, mainly to neighboring asian countries (andruleit et al., 2011; energy information administration, 2014).1 in the major coal production areas of east kalimantan, south kalimantan, and south sumatra,2 strip mining has had profound and alarming impacts upon environmental and societal change, such as the destruction of landscapes and agricultural land and the contamination of water and soil.3 this is especially the case in east kalimantan’s capital, samarinda, where mining concessions cover nearly three quarters of the total municipal area. 1 for domestic purposes, coal is mainly used for power generation and cement production on java and bali, while east kalimantan – the most important production area – still lacks energy supply (ehrhardt, kelter, & lenz, 1999; susmiyati, & kotijah, 2007). 2 about 90% of the indonesian coal is extracted in kalimantan (wedig & battenschlag, 2008). 3 usually, strip mining – used for coal beds close to the surface – is the cheapest and hence the preferred form of extraction, which accounts for most of indonesia’s coal production (ehrhardt et al., 1999). aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 16 .1 -9 148 anna fünfgeld  aseas 9(1) however, it is not only the natural environment and the connected livelihoods of locals that are subject to a massive transformation. coal mining has come to play a major role in local politics and significantly impacts the appearance and functioning of the state. i argue that the practices of various actor groups connected to resource extraction add to the everyday enactment and de-enactment of basic political and social patterns that can generally be regarded as dimensions of stateness. while political ecology has significantly contributed to the understanding of socio-ecological conflicts on a general level, i argue that blind spots remain when it comes to conceptualizing such basic political categories as ‘the state’. this is especially remarkable as political ecology approaches are generally dedicated to “unravel[ling] the political forces at work in environmental access, management, and transformation” (robbins, 2012, p. 3). for example, in their fundamental writing on political ecology, bryant and bailey (1997) stress that “to appreciate the ways in which environmental change is politicized in the third world is in considerable measure to understand how the state has sought to manage the peoples and environments within its jurisdiction” (p. 48). yet, it is not only important to understand how states acquire power or how they influence environmental change, but as well as how they are constituted in the first place. this article therefore aims to contribute to a better understanding of the importance of the concept of the state in political ecology research by grounding it in the socio-economic and political dynamics arising from coal mining in east kalimantan. even though the incongruence of formal regulations and practices on the ground is by no means unknown, little effort has been made thus far to consistently theorize this phenomenon from a state theoretical perspective. i believe that for micro-level approaches, such as those applied in most political ecology research in recent years, it is of great importance to better understand the appearance of states on the local level and their interplay with struggles over nature. when developing a political ecology approach to local stateness, i will therefore look at the social realities of stateness, which i believe result from the practices of various actors corresponding with or contradicting common representations of states. i argue that practice-oriented approaches to the state, as developed within political science, sociology, and anthropology – like the state-in-society approach (migdal, 2001) – can significantly add to bridging this gap in political ecology. this is because they take into account the embeddedness of states within their societies, rather than looking for universal elements as a means to understand the functioning and appearance of the state on the local level. i ask how the state appears on the local level in east kalimantan, specifically in its capital samarinda, in the context of coal mining, and what significance this has for the ongoing dynamics in this specific policy field. moreover, relying on these findings, i show why stateness is an important category in political ecology research and how the complexity of the phenomenon can be better understood with a practiceoriented approach. a late work of practice theorist bourdieu (1994) is especially useful for grasping the structural, practical, and symbolic dimensions of stateness. i use the term ‘stateness’ instead of ‘the state’ in order to emphasize the coexistence of various state-related elements, which may be subject to change due to actors’ practices and variance in their interpretation in public discourse. furthermore, the concept 149the state of coal mining in east kalimantan emphasizes that a state may take on very different appearances in different local contexts or time periods. therefore, stateness is mainly geared towards analyzing a state on the micro level, where it finally emerges within concrete processes and practices. hence, the concept of stateness is not about creating another definition of the state. it rather aims at developing an analytical tool for the investigation of the constitution of the state on the local level. moreover, stateness emphasizes the complex and sometimes even contradictory nature of states, whose appearance on the local level very often is beyond the ideal type elements of a state, such as the monopoly of violence and the rule of law. the article is based on an empirical field study in samarinda between october and december 2011, which included participant observation, qualitative interviews, group discussions, and informal conversations. altogether, i conducted 28 qualitative interviews. most of my interview partners were inhabitants of samarinda’s subdistrict (kelurahan) makroman, ngo representatives, academics, administrative staff, and coal mining workers. i furthermore talked to local parliamentarians and representatives of a development agency and a coal mining company. the article is structured as follows: after providing an overview of current coal mining processes in indonesia and the different actors involved in conflicts connected to coal mining in samarinda, east kalimantan, i develop a theoretical approach of local stateness. in the third section, i discuss this approach against the empirical case study, before coming to a conclusion on the state of coal mining in east kalimantan. coal mining in indonesia coal mining in indonesia dates back to colonial times. between 1849 and 1945, comparably small quantities were extracted by the dutch in kalimantan and sumatra that mainly served as fuel for the shipping industry. large-scale extraction was significantly fostered by the suharto regime through the implementation of new mining and foreign investment laws since the end of the 1960s. however, due to low oil prices and limited foreign investment in the sector, the take-off period of the indonesian coal mining industry did not commence before the late 1980s (lucarelli, 2010). on top of this increase, indonesia saw an exponential rise of coal mining production since the introduction of democratization and regional autonomy reforms in 1998/9 (down to earth, 2010). today, the central regulation for coal mining activities is mining law no. 4/2009, which was implemented in 2010 and replaced its predecessor, mining law  no. 11/1967. inter alia, the new law, together with subsequent regulations, strengthened the position of the indonesian state in relation to private mining enterprises and fostered the involvement of indonesian-owned companies in the mining sector.4 before the implementation of the new regional autonomy law no. 23/2014, district and mu4 while according to mining law no. 11/1967 mining allowances were issued as contracts between the indonesian state and the private company, mining law no. 4/2009 introduced a system of mining concessions, which provided the indonesian state a stronger position, as it is able to impose sanctions on the companies in case of law-breaking. still, the coal contracts of work issued according to mining law no. 11/1967 remain in force. in particular, the large-scale pkp2b contracts (perjanjian karya pengusahaan pertambangan batubara) still represent a large share of the concession areas (susmiyati & kotijah, 2007). 150 anna fünfgeld  aseas 9(1) nicipality governments were responsible for licensing the mid-sized mining permits, which accounted for mining production areas up to 15,000 ha (mining law no.  4/2009).5 depending on the location, it was either the district head or the city mayor who was responsible for issuing the concessions.6 companies acquiring concessions are obliged to define development activities for the neighboring communities, assess the possible environmental impact (analisis mengenai dampak lingkungan, amdal), and set up a special fund for restoration after the closing of the mine (mining law no.  4/2009). furthermore, the law lists several other obligations concerning health and security at the workplace, waste disposal, and community empowerment. all government levels are responsible for ensuring adherence to social and ecological standards as well as those concerning public participation, but the respective paragraphs remain vague and the distribution of tasks is often unclear despite further regulations and technical directives (mining law no. 4/2009). according to the provisions of indonesian regional autonomy, the framework law has to be complemented by local laws (peraturan daerah, perda) in the districts and municipalities. in the municipality of samarinda, it took more than four years for perda 12/2013 to be issued. until then, the local administration was still working with perda 20/2003, which was based on the former framework law and therefore not in accordance with mining law no. 4/2009. these inconsistencies between the central and local administrative levels are not exclusive to the mining sector, but have cropped up in many different policy fields since the advent of decentralization. similar to cases of dual legislation, an absence of local implementation laws or technical directives often leads to confusion and an unclear basis for administrative work (fünfgeld, lücking, & platte, 2012). mining samarinda: coal mining in east kalimantan’s provincial capital coal mining is omnipresent in east kalimantan. at balikpapan airport, there are no posters displaying the beauty of the island of borneo to its visitors (similar to greetings common at other airports all around the world), but instead one runs into advertisements for heavy mining vehicles. when the airport bus takes local visitors to the province’s capital samarinda, one begins to grasp the physical reality of the fact that most of indonesia’s coal is extracted in this part of the country. likewise, when 5 according to mining law no. 4/2009, the central government was responsible for the issuance of large-scale special mining permits (up to 50,000 ha) and local governments for small-scale mining permits (up to 10 ha). as small-scale permits do not significantly add to the total coal extraction in samarinda and large-scale concessions can no longer be issued in the metropolitan area due to a lack of available territory, it is the mid-sized concessions that are important for the situation in samarinda. furthermore, there are also some older large-scale concessions (pkp2b), which also still cover a significant part of the city. 6 meanwhile, the new local government law no. 23/2014 has shifted all competences from district and municipal authorities to the central and provincial governments. provisions in mining law no. 4/2009 have not been adjusted to law no. 23/2014 yet. however, circular letter no. 04.e/30/djb/2015 issued by the minister of energy and mineral resources stating that district heads and mayors have no authority to administer the minerals and coal sector as of 2 october 2014 is used for guidance (cahyafitri, 2014; hamidi, 2015). 151the state of coal mining in east kalimantan sitting at the beautiful shores of mahakam river in the city center, barges loaded with high piles of coal pass by every few minutes. as in other parts of indonesia, there has been a significant rise in the issuance of coal mining concessions since the implementation of decentralization laws. presumably, this phenomenon is related to the shift of competences to local government heads, who gained control over the issuance of mining concessions (down to earth, 2010). these arrangements have obviously left space for self-enrichment amongst local authorities. several ngos have reported a considerable increase in coal mining-related ‘money politics’. this holds especially true during local elections, when many political candidates receive financial support from mining companies, which are then rewarded with the issuance of concessions after the elections. this connection between the extractive industry and local politics is not exclusive to coal mining activities around samarinda, but is ubiquitous in all areas of indonesia where natural resource extraction takes place. for example, berenschot (2015) has identified similar patterns for the palm oil business in central kalimantan. furthermore, many government officials, parliamentarians, and administrative staff are directly involved in the coal mining business in one way or another, and so take advantage of their political positions. in kutai kartanegara, samarinda’s neighboring district, several officials, including the former district head, have been convicted of using their political positions for the benefit of coal mining businesses (down to earth, 2010). samarinda is currently covered by 4 large-scale and about 70 mid-sized concessions, which together comprise roughly 71% of its total municipal area. the number of mid-sized concessions differs depending on who is providing the information, ranging from 67, as stated by the local mining department, to 76, according to a local ngo. while the mining department’s documents indicate that the last concession was issued in 2010, there is information suggesting that several post-2010 concessions have been predated in order to fit the regulations.7 the negative impacts of coal mining in the municipality of samarinda include environmental problems such as the contamination of water, air, and soil, as well as the destruction of landscapes through forest clearance, general clearing, and mining work (susmiyati & kotijah, 2007). these developments further erosion and thereby contribute to an increase in both the quantity and intensity of floods. as a result, samarinda has been dubbed kota banjir (flood city) (down to earth, 2010). furthermore, the consequences of mining activities are particularly harmful in the city’s outskirts, where many people make a living from agriculture. people in these areas are suffering from severe reductions of their harvests. many inhabitants of the sub-district makroman reported that their rice, fruit, and fish harvest had been reduced by up to 50% due to the accumulation of mud in rice paddies and fish farms. besides that, water that was formerly used for watering, drinking, and washing is so badly contaminated that fresh water has to be purchased. these problems exist in both active and inactive mining sites, as only a minority of the latter have been restored after extraction 7 interview partners agreed on the fact that there was no opportunity for the legal issuance of concessions after 2010 but explanations differ. while some people argued that there was not enough free space to issue another mid-sized concession, which according to mining law no. 4/2009 needs to be at least 5,000 ha, others said that the new auction procedures still lacked concrete regulations because of the absent perda. 152 anna fünfgeld  aseas 9(1) stopped (satriastanti, 2011). in theory, recultivation is supervised by local mining departments, but they lack funding and trained personnel (faizal, 2011; susmiyati & kotijah, 2007). in samarinda, only five trained and five untrained controllers are responsible for the supervision of more than 1,000 coal mines.8 moreover, insufficient funding of the department limits the objectivity of controllers as the companies not only provide transportation and accommodation for them, but also “little presents” (anonymous, 13 november 2011; sussmiyati & kotijah, 2007).9 despite several regulations stressing the right of local communities to access information about mining activities, it is rarely provided. before commencing mining activities, companies are required to present a working and budget plan to the mining department, containing details of their intended commitment to community development. at the same time, they also have to present an environmental impact assessment (amdal) to the local community before mining activities begin. however, amdal usually lack context-specific evaluation, as one and the same amdal is used for multiple sites. often, there is no presentation at all for the locals or it is held in technical language difficult for many to understand. in general, all of these processes are opaque and despite some promising articles in the mining law, many companies thoroughly neglect their responsibilities. in response to these developments, local anti-mining groups have emerged in some parts of the city.10 the largest and best publicized group of protesters in samarinda has emerged in makroman, a rural area located about 15 km from the city center. makroman is predominantly inhabited by ethnic javanese as it has been established as a transmigrant community since the 1950s. as most of the more than 7,000 inhabitants of the sub-district (kelurahan) make a living from farming and small-scale aquaculture, the immediate proximity of the mining sites to their residential and agricultural areas is a significant threat to their livelihoods. in order to stop the further worsening of their living conditions, about 50 people began anti-mining protests more than eight years ago, such as street blockades, demonstrations, and making inquiries to the local government. the group receives support from local ngos, several local academics, and parliamentarians, and was able to gain nationwide recognition through media reports. local protests against cv arjuna, a company operating in makroman with several sub-contractors since 2007, are thus embedded in nationwide and global campaigns primarily organized by the anti-mining ngo jatam (jaringan advokasi tambang). often, private or state security forces have inhibited protests such as demonstrations through threats of violence. several cases have been reported in which the suppression of protests surpassed the level of threats and included physical violence. according to local activists, the involvement of local policemen and -women in these incidences was fostered as they were bribed by mining companies. the activists sug8 the controller certificate can only be acquired through participation in training in bandung, which is why in addition to the five people who have this certificate, the department is also sending out five noncertified people. despite the financing of the workshop, it also seems to be a problem that the training is only offered once a year for about 35 people (susmiyati & kotijah, 2007). 9 further problems include the assumed involvement of mining department staff in mining activities. 10 the problems are not the same for all parts of samarinda. where people are employed by the mining company and where the share of farmers is minimal, there is usually less resistance to mining activities. 153the state of coal mining in east kalimantan gest that this may have led to the violent suppression of protests as well as to further threats and detentions. however, the companies are reportedly increasing the employment of private forces in order to safeguard their mining operations. these private forces include thugs (preman) and paramilitary groups, which are often registered as civil society organizations. the appearance of the paramilitary forces visually resembles the state military; they use military camouflage clothes together with jeeps and modern weaponry. furthermore, they are often trained by retired or still active army personnel. still, the anti-mining mobilization in samarinda has been able to gain significant recognition in local and national media and has thereby been able to exercise pressure on government officials. in 2010 and 2011, locals and jatam supporters were able to raise their concerns at hearings at the local parliament and meetings with the city mayor. as a result of the meetings, cv arjuna agreed to invest in infrastructure projects, an obligation they presumably have not met. however, facing the ongoing destruction of their livelihoods, many of the people in makroman have little hope for a bettering of their situation in the near future. some people view themselves as marginalized not only in terms of their economic situation, but also in political terms, as expressed by one interlocutor in her self-description as one of the “small citizens,” who are commonly ignored by politicians and civil servants alike until they actively engage in protests and demand their right to be heard as indonesian citizens. mining conflicts in samarinda seem to share many problems with resource extraction as documented in political ecology research elsewhere, such as the destruction of nature and connected livelihoods, which leads to conflicts over the access to and distribution of natural resources that are especially characterized by the opposition between involved companies and the local population affected by the changes within their territory. hence, i do not simply aim to provide an analysis of the constellations and power relations among the actors involved. rather, i want to specifically look at the interplay between this mining conflict and the practices related to the associated forms of political organization in the local context. i will thereby show, that what is generally considered to be ‘the state’ does not appear as a unitary entity anymore when investigating local practices related to it. moreover, the example illustrates how states are essentially embedded in their societies, which leads to a blurring of the common binary distinction between the state and the society. in doing so, i try to reveal the functioning of the state ‘on the ground’ in order to show the extent to which it is shaped by, and negotiated through, conflicts over nature. on stateness there exists a broad range of state theories that seek to explain how states evolved and why a state is needed for the bettering of people’s living conditions.11 however, these theories neither account for the difference between formal regulations and practices on the ground, nor for the impact of conflicts over natural resources, spe11 in early modern times, for example, the evolution of states was viewed as a result of people voluntary entering into a social contract, which would presumably weaken the negative impact of human nature (thomas hobbes), the introduction of money (john locke), or private property (jean-jacques rousseau), and thereby ensure more socially responsible behavior. 154 anna fünfgeld  aseas 9(1) cifically the practices related to them, on the shaping of stateness on the local level. in order to theorize stateness from a political ecology perspective and to elaborate on a state conception applicable to ongoing struggles over nature and natural resources, i mainly rely on migdal’s (2001) state-in-society approach. developed from the 1980s onwards, the approach has been applied to various fields within southeast asian studies (gainsborough, 2010; klinken & barker, 2009). the state-in-society approach rests on the assumption that in order to understand what a state is in practice, it is important to look at the general representation of states (here termed their image) and likewise at the practices of state and non-state actors. the image of the state is understood as a universalized set of ideas about the modern state, which are challenged or reaffirmed by the practices of state and non-state actors on a daily basis. it can be described by notions of the state as the central rule-making authority and main body of representation of the people living in its territory, strengthened through the implicit and explicit threat of violence, which is challenged by actors’ practices. instead of weighing the influence of state and non-state actors against each other and viewing them as diametrically opposed, the approach rests on the assumption that states are fundamentally embedded in their societies. this means that in order to understand the functioning of a state, we have to look not only at government regulations and actions, but also at the practices of non-state actors. therefore, it takes into account ongoing struggles continually occurring in every society over the arrangement of basic rules. from a micro-perspective, these practices can be found in daily practices and seemingly small actions such as passport controls, tax evasion, or the like (migdal, 2001; migdal & schlichte, 2005). in order to identify the universalized image of the state, migdal draws mainly upon central characteristics developed in classical state definitions such as those formulated by weber (1919/1992; 1921-2/2010) and jellinek (1900/1966). the state image, therefore, mainly consists of the ideas of the monopoly of physical force, a defined territory (staatsgebiet), a permanent population within this territory (staatsvolk), and the bureaucracy. a defined state territory requires the existence of borders in order to delineate the state’s domain internally as well as externally. importantly, the state’s rule applies to all people within its territory and not only to specific groups (benz, 2001; pierson, 1996). in contrast to pre-modern states (such as the southeast asian mandala state), effective wielding of power is not limited to the center, but applies equally to the whole territory. the people within this territory are either viewed in terms of an (imagined) nation (anderson, 1983/2006) or the definition is bound to the legal regulations of the respective state, which define who obtains citizenship of that state and who does not. therefore, both the concept of state population and state territory are based on exclusion as they define who and what belongs to a state and who and what does not (benz, 2001; pierson, 1996).12 according to weber, the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force is the pivotal characteristic of states. it is geared towards the protection of territory and people against external as well as internal threats and guarantees basic state competencies: the definition of binding 12 in contrast to the term ‘citizenship,’ ‘nation’ and ‘nationality’ do not rely on formal laws defining the membership, but are rather built on an imagination of ‘belongingness’. a nation, according to benedict anderson, is therefore an “imagined political community– and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign” (anderson, 1983/2006, p. 6). 155the state of coal mining in east kalimantan rules and their implementation (pierson, 1996; weber, 1921-2/2010). state authority is only considered legitimate if it serves the realization of law. the rule of law, which therefore can be considered another constituting element of states, implies the indissoluble link between state authority to established law (benz, 2001). the main basis for the state’s exercise of control is the effective administration of its people and territory. states therefore rely on their bureaucracies to implement universal codes, classification systems, and measurements, as well as mapping processes that serve the gathering of information (anderson, 1983/2006; scott, 1998). according to weber (1921-2/2010), it is the core of state rule, as only the bureaucracy possesses the competences required to exercise the state’s functions. one of the shortcomings of migdal’s approach is that by identifying universal elements of the state in classical western state theory, he ignores alternative notions of the state from other world regions. in southeast asia in general, and specifically in indonesia, a broad range of concepts and ideas about the state exist that are remarkably different from those developed in the western world (though they have also been partly developed by western scholars). the mandala concept, for example, describes how pre-colonial political formations in southeast asia were based on the understanding that political power descends in concentric circles depending on the distance from centers of power (wolters, 1999). the most vibrant discussions about the specific form of the indonesian state went on after independence (feith & castles, 1970). during this time, integralist state concepts, most prominently introduced by supomo and sukarno, dominated the debate. later, suharto built on many of these early ideas about the indonesian state and partly reshaped them to support and legitimize his rule. in recent years, the promises of democratization and the decentralization reforms are probably the most important narratives to take into account in this respect. therefore, extending migdal’s approach, i understand the image of the state as a set of specific characteristics ascribed to the state, deriving from scholarly and everyday understandings of the term. when looking at universalized state characteristics, it is furthermore important to understand how these images constitute the idea of the state as a seemingly unitary actor. independent of their different emphases in the appraisal of specific state elements, state theories generally frame the state as an “ideological thing” (abrams, 1977/1988) – in the sense that these approaches themselves contribute to a belief about the state as a politically institutionalized and coherent entity. “behind the appearance of thinking it [the state], most of the writings devoted to the state partake, more or less efficaciously and directly, of the construction of the state, i.e., of its very existence” (bourdieu, 1994, pp. 2-3). it is not only scholarly work, but also the act of thinking about the state in everyday interaction that contributes to its representation as a unified entity seemingly oriented towards general morality and common interests (abrams, 1977/1988; bourdieu, 1994). this constitutes the symbolic dimension of stateness. the idea of the state is such a powerful construction because of the functioning of its image elements as well as because of the overall symbolic power it bears. applying his basic practice theory concept of different forms of capital to the state, bourdieu (1994) calls the state “the culmination of a process of concentration of different species of capital [italics in original]” (p. 4). the construction of the state leads to the simultaneous construction of a field 156 anna fünfgeld  aseas 9(1) of power, which is “the space of play within which the holders of capital . . . struggle in particular [italics in original] for power over the state, i.e., over the statist capital granting power over the different species of capital and over their reproduction” (p. 5). the different species of capital emphasized by bourdieu are capital of physical force, economic capital, informational capital, and symbolic capital – albeit that they are interdependent and in sum constitute the state capital (capital étatique) (bourdieu, 1994). these forms of state capital can be related to the basic elements of states, as described above. the capital of physical force primarily rests on the image of the concentration of the means of coercion under one central unit. furthermore, physical violence is only to be exercised by a specific group, which is clearly identifiable and disciplined. the monopoly of physical force has to be asserted internally as well as externally. this, in turn, is based on the economic as well as informational capital of the state, as both are needed for the exercise of state control. informational capital, that is, the concentration, treatment, and redistribution of information through the state, is the basis for the functioning of the bureaucracy in general and for the establishment of a unified taxation system in particular. economic capital, gained through the establishment of a centrally controlled fiscal system in combination with the creation of a common market, is, in turn, a prerequisite for the concentration of the capital of physical force (bourdieu, 1994). the concentration of the means of coercion, the financial resources, and a large amount of information require and at the same time bring about the concentration of a symbolic capital of recognized authority. this means that the acknowledgment of the different forms of capital leads to their valorization. thereby, they become symbolic capital. juridical capital, which relies on the symbolic capital of the state and describes the assignment of rights to representatives of the state, is a sub-aspect of symbolic capital. it is fundamental to the authority of the state as it defines its power of nomination. it therefore enables the definition and implementation of laws. the state thus becomes a bank of symbolic capital, guaranteeing all acts of authority exercised by authorized personnel (bourdieu, 1994). combining these assumptions, in the following i look at how the practices of state and non-state actors as identified before correspond with the described images of the state, and how stateness on the ground is shaped by these practices. moreover, i show how the universalized images in turn influence these practices and what role the symbolic dimension of stateness plays in this respect. local stateness in east kalimantan in accordance with the practice-oriented approach to local stateness, the first step of the analysis was to identify the various actors involved in the coal mining conflict and the practices they are carrying out within this policy field. in a second step, i now relate these practices to their impact on the ideal type state characteristics as identified in the previous section of the article. hence, i explore how these practices possibly influence images of the state such as its monopoly of physical force, the functioning of the bureaucracy according to the rule of law, the idea of a staatsvolk, and the promises of decentralization and democratization, which are especially important for the image of the contemporary indonesian state. furthermore, i ask how the actors make use of the symbolic forms of state capital described by bourdieu when carrying out 157the state of coal mining in east kalimantan practices. in doing so, it becomes clear that the state at the local level by no means appears to be as monolithic as prevalent state theories tend to suggest. furthermore, it is evident that neither the confirmation nor the undermining of state characteristics necessarily depends on whether practices are carried out by state or non-state actors. various practices of private companies and state representatives in coal mining in samarinda obviously challenge the state’s monopoly of physical force. the inability of the state to implement its monopoly is most apparent in the companies’ practices of bribing police officers in order to gain their support for the repression of anti-mining protests. however, some of the companies further employ paramilitary groups and thugs in order to safeguard mining sites and activities. these groups not only threaten the local community but also exercise violence against them. by making use of their visual similarity to the national army, and of the knowledge and information from the army generals training them, they draw upon state capital to legitimize these practices. additionally, the formal registration of paramilitary groups as civil society organizations is an act of legitimization of their existence and actions as it evokes the idea of the rule of law and thereby rests on the juridical capital of the state.13 within the power field of local stateness, where multiple actors are struggling over the arrangement of rules, the formal state is not always the central rule-setting agency. rather, the state, as bourdieu writes, in fact serves as a bank of symbolic capital. yet it is not only state but also non-state actors who rely on this symbolic capital in order to enhance the legitimization of their practices. paradoxically, state capital is thus used in order to undermine basic images (and the functioning) of the state. the state’s security apparatus and its constitutional procedures are being exploited and actively used by the mining companies and their partners. by way of their visual appearance as state forces, paramilitary groups refer to state symbols and therefore represent some kind of legitimized rule, just as official police forces do. however, by their actions they interpret the symbolic elements – which eventually derive from the universalized idea of the state – in favor of the mining companies’ interests. the universal idea of the state is thereby reversed as the symbolic elements are no longer employed in the name of the common good, but instead are used to protect and enact the individual interests of coal concession owners. quasi-institutionalized practices of corruption, reportedly ever-present from the allocation of mining concessions and the ‘oversight’ of mining activities to the (non-) recultivation of mining sites, are also closely related to state capital. sometimes, they even influence lawmaking processes. state officials involved in these practices make use of the access they gain through their positions and thereby exploit the symbolic capital of the state, thus enabling themselves to contribute to a legitimization of these procedures. the subsequent mapping of illegally provided or predated concessions serves as a final symbolic enactment. rule of law is thereby being reproduced symbolically, but it lacks substance. 13 this aspect was similarly stressed by bakker (2015), who observed that paramilitary groups affiliated with the new order regime continue to play an important role and are closely intertwined with local political forces. according to bakker, when exercising their power they significantly draw on their formal registration as civil society organizations and the threat of violence, thereby placing themselves between the spheres of the state and society. 158 anna fünfgeld  aseas 9(1) the transfer of competences from the national to the local level under the decentralization reforms has not only fostered the self-enrichment of local elites, but has also opened up new opportunities for citizen participation. as the state has become more present, personal, and accessible on the local level, it is not only easier for coal mining companies to access local politicians and state administrators, but also for local communities to engage with their representatives. this constellation enabled a community located on a so-called ‘outer island’ such as the anti-mining group in makroman, to directly engage with the responsible institutions and people – the local people’s representative council (dewan perwakilan rakyat daerah) and the mayor of samarinda. while the results of these negotiations remain unclear, the locals were at least able to make their voices heard. their worries and wishes regarding the mining activities in their area directly shaped a policy paper by local parliamentarians and state officials, which was delivered to the parliamentary committee responsible for drafting the new perda. yet, although many promises of greater accessibility to state institutions through regional autonomy have not been followed up by institutionalized procedures, the practices of the anti-mining group appear to be at least a partial realization of the promises of regional autonomy. in this respect, non-state actors have implicitly enacted participation procedures in accordance with the image of the indonesian state as a state that takes into consideration local needs. therefore, notions of regional autonomy can be referred to as a form of symbolic capital, as the promises connected to it – such as bringing the state closer to the people and enhancing its responsiveness to them – have been the basis for their enactment by the protesting community in samarinda. this indicates that locals suffering from the impacts of coal mining in their area are not entirely paralyzed and disenfranchised, but have the opportunity to make use of the state’s symbolic capital, at least in some respects. however, despite the anti-mining group’s successful engagement with state representatives, many people in makroman feel detached from politics and view themselves as ‘small citizens’ without access to state representatives, and whose needs are generally disregarded in political decisions. they feel marginalized to a high degree and believe that basic citizens’ rights do not apply to them in the same way they do to others. this perception obviously challenges the idea of citizenship as a set of responsibilities and rights equally ascribed to the people living in a state’s territory. furthermore, it is remarkable that when talking about their living conditions and their access to basic services such as health service provision and education, many interlocutors from samarinda do not regard the indonesian state as having primary responsibility for fulfilling their demands in this respect. they rather emphasize their own responsibility for safeguarding their families’ living conditions. this aspect does not relate to any particular image of the state, but reflects the partial absence of the state’s responsibilities in the perception of some of the locals in samarinda. these examples not only indicate the manifold manifestations of stateness that are deployed on an everyday basis at the local level, but also the blurring of a clear distinction between so-called state and non-state actors. this is exactly one of the core characteristics of stateness, which reflects the profound embeddedness of states within their societies and thereby points at one of the main challenges for understanding stateness in indonesia today. in accordance with the state-in-society and 159the state of coal mining in east kalimantan similar approaches, these examples reflect the “uncertain” (mitchell, 1991) or “blurred” (gupta, 1995) boundaries which ultimately call into question the binary construction of states vis-à-vis societies in western mainstream political philosophy. the close entanglements of state and non-state actors, such as the mining companies and civil servants, reveal how grounded the indonesian state is within its society, which is fundamental to the understanding of current political processes in the field of coal mining in indonesia. furthermore, the different practices described are by no means balanced in the sense that they equally contribute to the appearance of the indonesian state at the local level. rather, they are embedded in and therefore dependent on societal power relations, which means that their potential to shape stateness at the local level highly depends on the actors’ positioning in society and their ability to make use of certain resources (or capital in bourdieu’s sense), such as their financial resources and political networks. for example, while the coal mining companies rely on their close ties to the bureaucracy and the security sector, the activists’ success is highly dependent on support from local ngos and other civil society actors. however, all of these practices, no matter how influential they may be in the long run, add to the shaping of stateness. conclusion the conflict over coal mining activities in makroman, samarinda, is essentially a conflict over access to and control of natural resources. however, mining conflicts are not limited to the negotiation of access to and distribution of resources, and the connected implications for living conditions. in equal measure, fundamental aspects of stateness are constantly negotiated and renegotiated amongst various actors involved in these conflicts. the case study reveals that perspectives on the state as a unitary and static entity with specific sets of characteristics cannot hold true. rather, stateness has to be redefined as a concept shaped by constant negotiations, which can be accessed through actors’ practices as well as through the images of the state to which they refer and which they reproduce or challenge. thereby, conflicts over natural resources may exert considerable influence on one of the basic political entities today: the state. however, the fact that many local practices appear to undermine state images and the resulting patchiness of local stateness due to the sometimes contradictory practices of different actors does not mean that the concept of the state loses significance. rather, the article has shown that state and non-state actors (e.g., mining companies and civil society groups) alike make active use of state images such as the monopoly of physical force, the rule of law, and indonesia-specific images connected to decentralization promises. they likewise utilize the symbolic capital of the state, which often adds to the blurring of a clear distinction between them. the micro-level policy analysis has shown how the concept of stateness can add to the understanding of conflicts over nature. the symbolic dimension of stateness in relation to actors’ practices within the policy field appears highly significant and contributes to the theoretical understanding of the term in political ecology on a general level. finally, i argue for greater commitment to the practice-oriented analysis of stateness in political ecology research and beyond as the state is 160 anna fünfgeld  aseas 9(1) “not the reality which stands behind the mask of political practice. it is itself the mask which prevents our seeing political practice as it is. it is, one could almost say, the mind of a mindless world, the purpose of purposeless conditions, the opium of the citizen” (abrams, 1977/1988, p. 82).  references abrams, p. 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(2009). state of authority. state in society in indonesia. ithaca: southeast asia program publications, cornell university. lucarelli, b. (2010). the history and the future of indonesia’s coal industry. working paper, 93. stanford: program on energy and sustainable development. migdal, j. s. (2001). state in society. studying how states and societies transform and constitute one another. cambridge: cambridge university press. migdal, j. s., & schlichte, k. (2005). rethinking the state. in the dynamics of states (pp. 1-40). burlington: ashgate. mitchell, t. (1991). the limits of the state: beyond statist approaches and their critics. american political science review, 85(1), 77-96. pierson, c. (1996). the modern state. london: routledge. robbins, p. (2012). political ecology. a critical introduction (2nd ed.). chichester: j. wiley & sons. satriastanti, f. e. (2011, june 1). miners failing at cleanup efforts: study. jakarta globe. retrieved from http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/nvironment/miners-failing-at-cleanup-efforts-study/444383 scott, j. c. (1998). seeing like a state. how certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed. new haven: yale university press. susmiyati, h. r., & kotijah, s. (2007). implikasi otonomi daerah terhadap pemberian kuasa prtambangan batubara di kabupaten kutai kartanegara provinsi kalimantan timur. laporan penelitian. fakultas hukum, universitas mulawarman, samarinda, indonesia. weber, m. (1919/1992). politik als beruf. stuttgart: reclam. weber, m. (1921-2/2010). wirtschaft und gesellschaft. grundriss der verstehenden soziologie. frankfurt a. m.: zweitausendeins. wedig, m., & battenschlag, w.-d. (2008). steinkohle in indonesien. politische, wirtschaftliche und technologische einflussgrößen. glückauf, 144(3), 97-102. wolters, o. w. (1999). history, culture, and region in southeast asian perspectives (revised ed.). ithaca: southeast asian program publication, cornell university. about the author anna fünfgeld is a phd student at the department of international politics, university of freiburg, germany. her research interests include resource governance in southeast asia and south america, political ecology, state theory, and neo-gramscian approaches. ► contact: anna.fuenfgeld@politik.uni-freiburg.de philippine mining capitalism: the changing terrains of struggle in the neoliberal mining regime alvin a. camba ► camba, a. a. (2016). philippine mining capitalism: the changing terrains of struggle in the neoliberal mining regime. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 9(1), 69-86. this article analyzes how the mining sector and anti-mining groups compete for mining outcomes in the philippines. i argue that the transition to a neoliberal mineral regime has empowered the mining sector and weakened anti-mining groups by shifting the terrains of struggle onto the domains of state agencies and industry networks. since the neoliberal era, the mining sector has come up with two strategies. first, technologies of subjection elevate various public institutions to elect and select the processes aimed at making the mining sector accountable and sensitive to the demands of local communities. however, they often refuse or lack the capacity to intervene effectively. second, technologies of subjectivities allow a selective group of industry experts to single-handedly determine the environmental viability of mining projects. mining consultants, specialists, and scientists chosen by mining companies determine the potential environmental damage on water bodies, air pollution, and soil erosion. because of the mining capital’s access to economic and legal resources, anti-mining communities across the philippines have been forced to compete on an unequal terrain for a meaningful social dialogue and mining outcomes. keywords: mining; philippines; political economy of development; protest politics; resource conflicts  introduction the philippines, with natural resources valued at almost usd 1 trillion, ranks fifth in the world in terms of mineral resources: third in terms of gold reserves, fourth in copper, fifth in nickel, and sixth in chromite (philippine rural reconstruction movement, 2010). this article analyzes how mining sector and antimining groups compete for mining outcomes.1 even though the philippine mineral industry has occupied a central role in the economy since the beginning of the 20th century (camba, 2015), the nature of these contentions has changed during the neoliberal era. while previous works have focused on the developmental potential of the mining sector (rovillos, ramo, & corpuz, 2003; rovil1 mining outcomes pertain to many overlapping and possible scenarios but often encompass the following: whether or not communities in the mining areas – in local philippine towns called the barangay or indigenous peoples groups – are given a voice to allow mining operations, fair compensation for the destruction of livelihoods and environments, employment and services for the communities and protection from harassments and legal threats. the mining sector includes transnational and local mining companies, national government agencies, and at times local government actors. anti-mining groups consist of social movements, people’s organizations, and local communities in the mining area. aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 16 .1 -5 70 alvin a. camba  aseas 9(1) los   & tauli-corpuz, 2012; santos & zaratan, 1997), social movement mobilization against the mining sector (holden & jacobson, 2007a), state violence on anti-mining communities (holden, 2005; holden & jacobson, 2007b), the political economy of the mining sector (camba, 2015; gomez, 2012; hatcher, 2014; israel, 2010, 2011; orfenio, 2009), local mineral governance (holden, 2012; la vina, de leon, & bueta, 2012), and everyday forms of resistance against mining projects (nem singh & camba, 2016), there has been relatively little discussion on the shifting terrains of contention where disputes between the mining sector and anti-mining groups take place. i argue that the transition to a neoliberal mineral regime has empowered the mining sector and weakened the anti-mining groups by shifting the terrains of struggle from protest in the streets into the domains of state agencies and industry networks. during the colonial (1901 to 1941), national (1945 to 1964), and authoritarian (1965 to 1985) mineral regimes, anti-mining communities across the philippines resisted the state and mining capital’s imperative to incorporate mineral lands into the circuits of extraction.2 however, during the neoliberal era (1986-present), the mining sector devised two strategies to forward its economic interests. first, technologies of subjection elevate public institutions, such as the mining government bureau (mgb), the national commission for indigenous communities (ncip), and the department of environment and natural resources (denr) to elect and select the processes aimed at making mining accountable and sensitive to the demands of local communities. though some branches of these institutions want to intervene to help local communities, they often refuse or lack the capacity. second, technologies of subjectivities allow a selective group of industry experts to single-handedly determine the environmental viability of mining projects with no oversight. mining consultants, specialists, and scientists chosen by mining companies determine the potential environmental damage on water bodies, air pollution, and soil erosion. because of the mining capital’s access to economic and legal resources, anti-mining communities across the philippines have been forced to compete on an inherently unequal terrain for a meaningful social dialogue and mining outcomes. i use what aihwa ong (2006) calls “neoliberal exceptions” to refer to how states in the global south deviate from their usual practices of governing in order to become more attractive investment destinations and legitimate players in the global economy. postcolonial states transform their often inefficient and rent-seeking government agencies into capable and effective ones in order to implement neoliberal policies. these agencies become “exceptions” from conventional governing principles and administration standards across the country. as a result of these changes, protest tactics have not only been inhibited by capital-intensive mineral extraction but also hindered by institutional constraints, diminishing the effectiveness of their anti-mining mobilizations and campaign efforts. to effectively compete for mining outcomes, the opponents of mining projects need to contest the implementation of the neoliberal mining frameworks on institutional grounds: adopting the language of the state and institutions and leveraging their own capacity to conduct science. 2 i draw on selected cases of anti-mining communities and social movements from my fieldwork conducted in the philippines in 2009 and 2014. the two broad national movements include alyansa tigil mina (alliance to stop mining) and kalikasan (nature). 71philippine mining capitalism this study fosters a dialogue of political economy, political ecology, and the sociology of labor (agarwala, 2013; silver, 2003; zhang, 2015). specifically, it shows the shifts in the strategies of the mining sector and the subsequent adoption by antimining groups as they become integrated in global circuits of production and consumption (elias, 2010; nevins & peluso, 2008; ong, 2006). the neoliberal mining regime has not only invited capital to open up new lands for extraction (nevins & peluso, 2008; ong, 2006; peluso, 1992), but also generated enormous socio-ecological consequences for communities in the mining areas. as political ecology deals with the “chains of explanation to exploring marginalized communities” (peet & watts, 2004, p. 3) by situating the environmental problems in a broader context, a study of the shifting strategies of mining companies and the later adoption by anti-mining communities could further our understanding of the neoliberal restructuring of the extractive sector in the global south. i follow the tradition of global ethnography pioneered by micheal burawoy (1985, 2013) in order to understand how economic production, state strategies, and local histories constitute with, and form through, each other. numerous scholars have presented cutting edge ethnography works on labor in different parts of the world but the extractive sector has largely been overlooked (bickhmam-mendez, 2005; dreby, 2010; france, 2011; parrenas, 2015). though there are some ethnographies on mining and development (kirsch, 2014), i aim to extend an ethnographic approach towards the philippine mining industry to understand how the mining sector and anti-mining groups compete for mining outcomes since the neoliberal restructuring in 1986. a study of how new state strategies subdued resistance and how the subsequent adaptation of anti-mining communities to neoliberal restructuring has the potential to explore how people in precarious situations and informal labor conditions become more empowered social actors under particularly contentious conditions (peet & watts, 2004). i draw on selected cases of anti-mining communities and social movements from my fieldwork in 2014 conducted in the provinces of camarines norte, abra, mountain province, romblon, and bohol. through interviews with community leaders, representatives of social movements, national and local government officials, and spokespersons of transnational mining companies, i attempt to reconstruct the terrains of struggle between the mining sector and the anti-mining groups. first, i develop a theoretical framework that examines neoliberalism as an exception in the extractive sector in the global south. second, i briefly discuss the philippine mining sector prior to and during the neoliberal period. in the main section of the article, i analyze the two strategies that emerged after the shift towards a neoliberal mining regime in 1986: technologies of subjection in elevation of national state agencies and technologies of subjectivities through the power of industry experts. in both strategies, i briefly discuss how communities have adapted to the new terrain of contestation. 72 alvin a. camba  aseas 9(1) neoliberalism as an exception: subjection and subjectivities in the extractive industry david harvey (2005, 2010), one of the prominent marxist theorists in the 21st century, argues that neoliberalism was an elite-led project that successfully reversed capitalism’s profitability crisis of the 1970s. across western europe, states experienced tightening budgets, staggering economic productivity, and rising labor unrest. these conditions pushed political elites to restructure the economy around the principles of neoliberalism: privatization of state enterprises, deregulation of goods and services, and the liberalization of economic production. neoliberal elites dismantled state regulations and empowered transnational companies across the world. harvey (2006, 2010) also portrays neoliberalism as a knowledge paradigm that empowered dominant modes of governance employed by local and national governments, influencing civil society and non-state organizations, capitalizing on the ideological cleavages between labor and social movements, and most pivotally, subsuming economic and political elites into the rubrics of neoliberal ideology. however, the neoliberal restructuring of economies varies across places and economic sectors. the extractive industry, a vast, interconnected, and multi-trillion dollar heavy sector, occupies a central position in the global neoliberal restructuring of economic production. mining communities in africa, asia, and latin america have resisted mining companies (kirsch, 2014; nem singh & bourgouin, 2013; peet & watts, 2004), but the vast networks of corporations facilitate transactions between the extractive sector and commodity producers, making the mining companies relatively anonymous and invulnerable to consumer boycotts, inter-state regulatory efforts, and labor unrest (kirsch, 2014). state actors and representatives of the mining sector justified the expansion of the industry by emphasizing the need to revitalize the economy and provide employment. a more recent example of these efforts is the branding of the sector as a ‘promoter’ of sustainable development (recidoro, 2013). however, despite such investments, recent transformations in technology have weakened the employment capacity and environmental viability of the mining sector. because mining companies rely heavily on machine-heavy, capital-intensive open-pit extraction, which minimizes the use of labor (kirsch, 2014), they employ fewer permanent laborers and rely instead on contractual workers to construct infrastructure and protect them from protest politics. even though capital-intensive mining extracts more minerals, it also produces 50 times the waste and tailing vis-à-vis underground extraction (kirsch, 2014). alongside this shift towards capital-intensive mining, the world bank and the asian development bank promoted the liberalization of the formerly protected mineral sectors across the world (bridge, 2004; camba, 2015). states in the global south amended their mining codes, dismantled labor and environmental protection, and provided new institutions to expand mineral extraction (bridge, 2004). to understand the neoliberal restructuring at the local level, aihwa ong’s (1999a, 1999b, 2006) formulation of “neoliberal exceptions” has been a more useful concept than macroeconomic theories and institutional approaches. in agreement with harvey’s assessment that neoliberalism empowered the state to implement neoliberal reforms, ong examines the micro-level transformations of governance and govern73philippine mining capitalism ing fostered by the global shift towards neoliberal restructuring. specifically, ong’s framework traces and locates how neoliberalism reconfigures the relationship between the state and the people, sovereignty and territoriality, as well as power and knowledge. she argues that neoliberalism re-conceptualizes state governance as apolitical and technical, territories as commodities, and knowledge paradigms as universally applicable. ong suggests that states in the global south need to transform the exceptions in their governing practices to compete for foreign direct investments. the monopoly of violence, which is the primary repertoire of the state, may attract unwanted international scrutiny and embolden resistance movements. widespread use of state violence may also become ineffective due to the considerable costs on citizen morale, ideology, international reputation, and social order. in the philippine mining sector, these practices becomes exceptions because the mgb, ncip, and denr become efficient agencies to implement neoliberal frameworks. before restructuring, these institutions were inefficient by western standards and controlled by rent-seeking elites, but they were transformed to forward global mining interest. local, rent-seeking elites controlled mining production in the past. under neoliberal restructuring, however, they need to follow the rules of the national government and relinquish control of production to the transnational companies. in my reformulation of ong’s argument, neoliberal exceptions divert the terrains of struggle from protest in the street to state institutions and industry networks. neoliberal exceptions assemble and constitute the new state strategies of subjection and subjectivities. technologies of subjection regulate the behavior of the governed in particular matters of social and economic outcomes (ong, 2006). these technologies not only privileged the mgb, the ncip, and the denr to determine and implement the procedures aimed at making mining socially accountable, but also monopolized important decision-making on mining claims at critical junctures, bypassing and ignoring democratic procedures in favor of expediting mining permits for mining companies. furthermore, these institutions limit anti-mining groups within asymmetric decision making structures, preventing them from deploying other weapons in their repertoires. technologies of subjectivities empower industry experts chosen by mining companies to determine the environmental viability of mining projects: water pollution, energy usage, mercury pollution, and soil erosion. members of the networks – holders of particular credentials – police the boundaries of their own membership, hindering outsiders even with similarly competitive credentials from cross-checking their assessments. not only are these practices dangerous, but they also prevent accountability measures by remaining inaccessible and unintelligible to the outside. furthermore, these networks also monopolize the interpretation of particular modes of dominant knowledge paradigms to occlude other social groups with different sets of beliefs (ong, 1999b, 2006). environmental assessments neglect and do not take into account alternative forms of local and gendered knowledge (nevins & peluso, 2008; peet & watts, 2004), obscuring the concerns of indigenous communities, labor organizations, farmers, and environmental groups. technologies of subjection by state agencies minimize anti-mining resistance through the emergence of state-led consultations and official registration. technologies of subjectivities, in the form of industry networks, go hand-in-hand with the technologies of subjection, casting a cover of scientific legitimacy, accuracy, and neutrality onto the decision74 alvin a. camba  aseas 9(1) making structures of state institutions. both technologies of subjection and subjectivities enable and deny options for the mining sector and anti-mining groups. these technologies not only assume that all governed citizens are and should be liberal subjects that can decide freely, manage rationally, and survive independently, but also privilege the role of state institutions that exalts the currency of economic, social, and cultural capital. for actors to successfully impede state power and the scientific credential, movements must therefore acquire the necessary economic, social, and cultural capital. economic capital, in terms of access to law firms, information, and local officials, prefigures the outcomes of many legal cases across the world. access to social and cultural capital, such as educational attainment and scientific literacy, increases the credibility of the actors. indeed, cultural capital at many times becomes the ‘proxy’ for an empirically reflexive, careful scientific examination of processes. because of the nature of the structures and rules of these institutions and networks, local communities and resistance movements ultimately lose out as a result of the mismatch of their strategies and tactics. from the colonial to the neoliberal mining regime this section presents a critical historical overview of philippine mineral industry: late colonial (1901-1941), national developmental (1945-1964), and state authoritarianism (1965-1985). i present the historical development of philippine mining to show the key changes under the current neoliberal mineral regime (1986-present). in the colonial mineral regime, the us army ravaged the mountainous provinces of the nonhispanized philippine provinces. the northern mountain province and moro regions in mindanao were targeted because the previous colonizer, the spanish government, had never controlled them. by 1903, a colonial mineral law was passed and over five hundred foreign investors applied to explore and extract minerals and export them to the global market. in 1921, the philippines evolved as a major gold exporter, which shipped a total amount of usd 3,217,843 during that year (camba, 2015). after the great depression, the us economy needed nickel, chromium, iron, and zinc from the philippines to manufacture products and build infrastructure under the state-led new deal program. near the end of the 1930s, there were 19 large mineral infrastructures owned by major foreign mining companies and more than five hundred smaller companies that operated a thousand mines of various size. these mines directly employed approximately 75,000 laborers and hundreds of thousands of other people for supporting auxiliary work. in 1940, the philippines exported precious and gold metals worth usd 39,229,352 (camba, 2015). in the course of this expansion, hundreds of communities were dispossessed of their lands and waves of soil erosion and deforestation occurred, while philippine elites consolidated political and economic power (camba, 2015). as mining operations expanded across the country, approximately 50,000-75,000 filipinos were turned into laborers for the mining industry. this transformation expanded their power as they occupied a position at the point of production.3 protest and resistance could, at times, stop mineral-related 3 beverly silver’s (2003) forces of labor and lu zhang’s (2015) inside china’s automobile factories argue that labor’s position at the point of production empower them to resist exploitation and bargain for better conditions. 75philippine mining capitalism operations and induce conflict in these mines (camba, 2015). before world war ii, numerous rallies and strikes occurred in the major mining companies of benguet and lepanto, and at the marsman corporation, which increased the cost of labor for companies (american chamber of commerce, 1937, 1939a, 1939b; brimo, 1953, 1961). labor started to acquire more attention from the state, but the interruption of war delayed working hour regulations and other demands into the post-war period. though laborers and peasant organizations fought for different reasons, they both mobilized and campaigned against the colonial mineral regime (american chamber of commerce, 1937, 1939a, 1939b). after world war ii, during the national mining period (1945-1964), the capacity of workers to stop production by leaving their work and taking the fight to the streets had limited the mining industry’s ability to capitalize on cheap labor. the mineral industry maintained steady profits, but could not bring back the conditions of profitability from the 1930s. the philippine senate and congress mandated the industry to pay the minimum wage and threatened to impose taxes on mining licenses, corporate tax, and real estate, making the political and economic situation for mining companies more costly (sanders, 1963). as domestic business interests purchased most of the major mining companies during the 1950s, filipino-owned mining companies such as benguet, atlas, marcopper, lepanto, and philex began to export minerals mainly to japan (alyansa tigil mina, 2010; orfenio, 2009). but it was only under ferdinand marcos (1965-1986) that the state sought to extract state revenues from the mining industry and subsequently altered the rules of the game in favor of large-scale mining (lopez, 1992; orfenio, 2009). the state supported the capitalization of domestic firms and aggressively promoted mineral exploration in peripheral regions. from a passive, non-interventionist policy framework based on the colonial treaties arranged with the us, marcos shifted the mining regime towards an “active, state-led” development model in 1974. he enacted presidential decree 464, which favored established business interests that could mobilize financial resources to explore, develop, and exploit minerals. the active promotion of large-scale domestic capital, however, also meant restricting the rules of foreign ownership (e.g., a cap of 40% equity ownership in companies), thereby effectively preventing the entry of foreign mining companies (lopez, 1992). during the national and the marcos period, communities were able to strike a bargain with the state and domestic capital through the political conditions of that time. for example, the benguet mining corporation provided workers with a fair share of compensation in health benefits, education plans, and retirement packages in return for their labor and support (m. dempte baluda, geological society of the philippines, quezon city, 3 april 2010). provincial officials in benguet recognized marcos’ rule in exchange for some level of autonomy over economic production. protest politics and various strategies limited the capacity of the state and capital to expand mineral operations. the ikelahans in nueva vizcaya, for example, resisted marcos’ plans to transform the province into a giant tourist city (d. de vera, executive director, philippine association for intercultural development, quezon city, 6 june 2014). the key point is that the incorporation of workers into the developing mining economy simultaneously increased their power to protest and resist exploitation. despite the us colonial and marcos regimes’ monopoly over the use of force, the 76 alvin a. camba  aseas 9(1) need to maintain legitimacy and keep ties to the provincial elites limited the use of military violence. there were certainly human rights violations and the impunity of violence, but they were concentrated on the anti-marcos activist groups, islamic separatist movements, the new people’s army, and the oppositional political parties. the fall of marcos paved the way for neoliberal restructuring at the beginning of corazon aquino’s presidency (1986-1992). the post-marcos governments consolidated the neoliberal model in the context of political instability and economic indebtedness. in 1987, corazon aquino approved the national economic and development authority’s medium-term philippine development plan (1987-1992) that stressed the role of foreign companies in national recovery by dismantling state monopolies. furthermore, she adopted the executive order (eo) 266 – an investment omnibus code – and strengthened administrative reforms (bowie & unger, 1997). eo 266 awarded generous tax holidays, duty-free import, and tax exemption for the first five years for any foreign investment (orfenio, 2009). beyond shifting the principle of land ownership away from the traditional leasehold system, the new code regarded the state as the initial tender that would treat land as a commodity for mineral exploration and extraction. president fidel ramos (1992-1997) embraced sweeping liberal economic reforms as a way of catching up with the country’s neighboring asian tigers. in particular, he secured multilateral investment treaties and promoted privatization of public services. president gloria macapagal-arroyo (2001-2009), during her period as senator, was the principal author of the philippine mining act of 1995 (ra 7942), which became the state’s answer to foreign mining investors’ demands to reduce uncertainties in the extractive industries (orfenio, 2009; vivoda, 2008). at the same time, more progressive political reforms were implemented, for example, the recognition of indigenous peoples’ rights through the indigenous peoples rights act of 1997 and the decentralization of power towards local government units to strengthen regional autonomy especially in mineral-rich mindanao. the neoliberal restructuring transformed the power of the mining sector over anti-mining organizations through shifting the terrains of struggle from the streets to the domain of state institutions: the passive ncip, the pro-mining stance of the mgb, and the conflicting interest of the denr, as well as the power of industry experts in deciding a mining project’s environmental viability. this is discussed in the following section. technologies of subjection: elevation of state institutions to begin with, the 1995 mining act has been shown to have weak mechanisms for local communities (together with civil society organizations) to channel their grievances towards state institutions. the expansion of large-scale mining has delegated the safeguards for political consent and social acceptability to the ncip and the denr. the primary instruments of local accountability in the mining industry are the social acceptability clause for barangays aided by local governments and the process of free, prior and informed consent (fpic) for indigenous peoples groups facilitated by the ncip. more importantly, the social acceptability clause and fpic are susceptible to self-interested individuals in mining, leading to numerous allegations that both consultation processes are largely hollow (congressional staff, committee on national 77philippine mining capitalism communities, quezon city, 19 october 2013). some problems identified by critics include the arbitrary selection of barangay captains or new leaders in the indigenous communities who are supportive of large-scale mining, the numerous consultations with the communities until they acquiesce to mining, the treatment of minority support from few members of the community as majority vote or consent, and the lack of specific procedures for the fpic that subject the consent-building process to multiple and often competing interpretations (r. halip, asia indigenous peoples pact, bangkok, 12 june 2014). because of the numerous, repetitive, and arbitrary consultation procedures, multinational firms and local elites are given opportunity to exploit the social acceptability clause of the fpic process, pushing numerous communities to acquiesce to mineral industry demands. though ncip and local governments weaken the acts of protest in the streets and constitute the legitimacy of due process to determine mining outcomes, indigenous people face more inhumane kinds of historical and contemporary violence. to begin with, the mining act fails to delineate government land, ancestral domains, and protected areas, on the one hand, and appropriates land with mining potential for exploitation, on the other hand. using the absence of documentary evidence as an excuse, state agencies have weakened indigenous peoples’ claim to systematic ancestral domain, landownership, and property protection (congressional staff, committee on national communities, 19 october 2013). according to a policy paper from the samdhana institute (2011), the ncip funnelled the majority of its budget to education, health, and development projects for indigenous peoples. the main responsibilities of protecting ancestral land from outsiders, registering landownership, and systematizing ancestral land domains were ignored. around 60% of the budget went to the salaries of personnel and only 40% went to administrative expenses and programs for indigenous people. from 2006 to 2009, only 17% was channelled directly to indigenous peoples and intercultural communities, which paid for scholarships, trainings, health programs, livelihood, and legal services. instead of recognizing indigenous peoples’ legitimate right to their lands, the ncip became a container of poverty. furthermore, the mining companies pay for the fpic procedures themselves, which undermines the ncip’s capacity to facilitate fpic. if mining companies supplement the income of underpaid ncip officials to conduct the fpic process, the process becomes a conflict of interest that erodes the legitimacy of the ncip and the philippine government (samdhana institute, 2011). there is currently no single standard for financial transparency regarding the transfer of finances from the mining companies to the ncip, making it difficult for anti-mining groups to acquire information and documentary evidence regarding the unfair situation. the refusal of indigenous people to participate in the preparation of ncip’s budget exacerbates the situation, accentuating the institutional rigidities of state agencies and the marginalized political participation of those in the peripheries. while the budget was channelled mainly to salaries, the overall state budget allocation for the ncip was arguably inadequate. ncip officials bemoan their inability to do their duties properly because of the lack of financial support from the government. in 2004, ncip provincial officers were paid around usd 210 every month. for instance, attorney jake dumala, an ncip officer in the southern province of davao del norte, said that they end up using their own vehicles, salaries, and time while 78 alvin a. camba  aseas 9(1) their support for indigenous groups “is being hampered by their meagre budget” (alama, 2004). dumala appealed for a small increase “for travel allowances to better serve our lumad brothers, an ip group in the south, who are almost living in far-flung areas” (alama, 2004), but the philippine government did not give them any financial redress. in 2015, the results of the ncip’s failure to protect indigenous people in davao del norte became clear. the lumads, the major indigenous group in the province, started to evacuate their lands due to the fighting between leftist groups and the philippine military. the clashes were reportedly over potential mineral lands that mining companies wanted to open up. another research conducted by academics from the university of the philippines baguio (upb) complements the samdhana study. during the four-day gathering of indigenous peoples in 2011, the up baguio academics suggested that the ncip’s budget management and internal financial mechanisms have been faulty, inefficient, and wasteful (sinumlag, 2011). they showed that the ncip has received donations from international donors and direct funding from the department of budget and management, but has had “unliquidated cash advances worth p 36.6 million, as well as an additional p 9.5 million” since 1997 (sinumlag, 2011). the research also indicated that the ncip has been significantly quicker to grant fpic approval for mining companies than to issue certificates of ancestral domain titles (cadt) and ancestral domain sustainable development and protection plans (adsdpp). indigenous people need to have titles registered in ncip for the legal protection of their lands. since the formation of the ncip in 1997, it has only granted a total of 159 cadt and 89 adsdpp in contrast to 312 fpic approvals (sinumlag, 2011). indigenous people who failed to register their lands with the ncip (or where the ncip was too slow) were not given the right to participate in the fpic process, which led to expedited mineral applications, exploratory mineral testing, and numerous other operations (congressional staff, committee on national communities, 19 october 2013). my own fieldwork shows that the fpic process gives the leader or the council of the indigenous peoples the freedom to choose what kind of operation to allow and under which conditions (alyansa tigil mina, 2010; national commission on indigenous people [ncip], 2012; philippine congress, 2013). however, questions of leadership and location of ancestral domains remained vague. the law not only prefigures a liberal logic, reducing people to individual subjects with ‘free’ choices like consumers in markets, but also violently abstracts the historically tenuous experience of the autonomous indigenous peoples from the ‘sin’ of philippine nation state formation. however, the inadequacy of the ncip does not come as a surprise. from 1997 until 2011, the ncip was under the office of the department of environment and natural resources. what is striking is that the ministry in charge of protecting the environment is also the state agency responsible for signing and approving mining leases. in other words, the neoliberal policy framework brought together irreconcilable objectives within a weak state that created frictions within the bureaucracy. in 2011, the ncip was finally transferred to the office of the president and mandated to formulate new fpic guidelines (ncip, 2012). some state actors have said that in the first 10 years of the ncip, the state barely gave support to fund the fpic. for example, a local government official in cotabato city reported that the ncip only had a staff of four people and an annual budget of usd 3,000 for traveling to remote 79philippine mining capitalism areas, supporting indigenous peoples’ livelihoods, and conducting counter studies (congressional staff, committee on national communities, 19 october 2013). many supporters of the anti-mining groups know of the ncip’s historical inability to protect indigenous peoples. in a privilege speech given to the 15th philippine congress, representative teddy brawner baguilat (2011) said: the government’s obsession for ‘mining at all costs’ stems from the perpetuation of executive order no. 270-a, issued on january 2004, which provided for guiding principles for the revitalization of the mining industry. this eo has led government agencies to violate indigenous peoples’ right to free prior and informed consent recognized in the ipra [indigenous peoples rights act] but undermined by none other than the national commission on indigenous peoples (ncip) with their issuance and implementation of the 2006 ncip guidelines on fpic, which has been criticized by indigenous peoples’ leaders and their support groups, more favourable to mining corporations and violative of the right to self-determination of the indigenous peoples. . . . another observed cause of conflict is the flawed or defective implementation of the free prior and informed consent requirement for indigenous peoples. in many cases, regulating agencies either bypass this requirement or the implementing agency in connivance with companies manipulated the acquisition of consent of the affected communities. at the end of the speech, baguilat (2011) called on “president simeon benigno aquino iii to immediately issue an executive order calling for the moratorium while we are in the process of improving our mining policies”. in sum, technologies of subjection elevated the ncip and the denr to elect and select processes to protect barangays and indigenous people by (1) disengaging from social conflict; (2) abetting the mining sector over indigenous people and barangays; and (3) denying state support to effectively protect indigenous peoples from outside actors. technologies of subjectivities: the rise of industry experts technologies of subjectivities empower industry experts and constrain public participation in emerging scientific networks. to begin with, the 1995 mining act requires the denr to implement pre-extraction monitoring measures (environmental work program, environmental compliance certificate, environmental protection and enhancement program). mining companies also need to submit post-extraction measures (final rehabilitation and decommissioning plan). apart from these mining specific policies, several other laws (e.g., the national integrated protected areas act or the wildfire resource conservation act) reinforce environmental protection (rovillos et al., 2003). after the environmental impact assessment (eia), mining companies need to acquire an environmental compliance certificate from the denr. the environmental management bureau of the denr together with the mine environmental protection and enhancement office review proposals and create an environmental assessment review committee to conduct scheduled inspections, public hearings, and open house testing of environmental impacts. within 120 days, the 80 alvin a. camba  aseas 9(1) proponents of the project need to submit the eia to the environmental management bureau. unless explicitly rejected, the proposal is considered accepted. after submitting the eia, the provincial environmental board of local governments needs to verify the study through various standards. pro-mining local governments delegate their members to the provincial board, keeping anti-mining groups away from important positions of influence. membership in the board requires political connections, economic resources, and social capital in the provinces. in case indigenous peoples protest against the result of the eia, their grievances go through the ncip’s regional heading office instead of the indigenous peoples’ own socio-political systems. criticism on the procedures of the eia has been widely voiced. the requirements of public information have been narrowed, the processing timeframes reduced, and the decision-making concentrated to the environmental management bureau (rovillos et al., 2003). mining companies conduct the eia themselves by contracting industry experts. since the mining company pays for the eia, the contactor-payee relationship spawns doubt on the authenticity, sincerity, and neutrality of the study. industry experts rely on the mining companies to pay for their services, producing a perverse incentive to present a rosy picture of the mining project and erode the findings of the eia (congressional staff, committee on national communities, 19 october 2013). with civil society organizations and communities unable to participate in adjudicating and externally verifying the findings, the eia becomes an ineffective tool to protect barangays and indigenous peoples (m. diego, mangyan taga-bukid, atsmata indigenous group, quezon city, 6 june 2014). the dynamics amongst industry experts, juridical procedures, and the mining companies constrain the opposition of indigenous peoples and social movements. ncip’s regional offices and the provincial regional courts act as the institutional mechanisms for hearing indigenous peoples’ grievances. the regional offices work like a regular trial court and quickly facilitate cases and favor those who have political connections to the local governments (congressional staff, committee on national communities, 19 october 2013). in some cases, members of the local government bodies hunger for the potential foreign direct investments in the mining sector, believing in credentials of industry experts and deferring to their understanding of the soil, wind patterns, water bodies, and many others (former local government unit staff, bayombong, 26 june 2014). both courts subsequently dismissed alternative governing standards, such as respect for ancestral domains and indigenous peoples’ livelihoods, as backward, superstitious, and ‘anti-development’. they lack the capacity to conduct their own independent studies and externally check the findings of industry experts, constraining the effectiveness of the procedures (d. de vera, 6 june 2014). even when trials take place, they require year-long attendance in the courts of the provincial capital (d. de vera, 6 june 2014). while mining companies can access expensive law firms that have a firm grip on the legal system of the land and the patronage networks across the country, civil society organizations, local communities, and indigenous groups need to pool their financial and social resources together in order to attend the trials (d. de vera, 6 june 2014). since many of these people rely on cultivating their land for livelihood, they gruelingly need to adjust their schedule to accommodate the court trials (t. fernando daing, indigenous group leader, quezon city, 18 june 2014). it may be convenient for mining company officials to drive to 81philippine mining capitalism the courthouse from their hotels but it takes half a day for indigenous peoples’ leaders to walk from their lands to the provincial capital (d. de vera, 6 june 2014). time taken away from farming and put into court attendance disrupts livelihoods and the already limited material reproduction of indigenous peoples. the courts neglect the asymmetric economic and political conditions between indigenous peoples and mining companies, ostensibly treating them as equal before the law. in the province of nueva vizcaya, the regional branch of the mines and geosciences bureau approved a mineral exploration permit prior to the company’s fpic process. titan mining corporation, the mining applicant, at that time, bypassed the fpic process with the ikelahans, the main indigenous group in the province (former local government unit staff, 26 june 2014). the nueva vizcaya branch of the bureau ostensibly gave the final permit even if it did not have the power to do so because of the size of the potential mining area. instead of scrutinizing the application, the bureau’s main office in manila quickly approved the permit in less than 30 days (d. de vera, 6 june 2014). other concerns such as the ancestral domain, community beliefs, and livelihood concerns were deemed irrelevant to national development (m. diego, 6 june 2014). the ikelahans were unable to present a viable environmental study to the bureau to rebut the findings of titan mining corporation (d. de vera, 6 june 2014). the tampakan mining project in south cotabato – with usd 5.8 billion the biggest investment in the philippine mining sector – serves as another example. the project exists in a quad-boundary with three other provinces: agusan del sur, davao del sur, and sultan kudarat. according to local government unit staff, smi-xstrata, the mining applicant, submitted a tampered and incomplete eia, which lacked geographic simulation information of the river basins of the surrounding provinces. regardless of the incomplete and manipulated data of the report, the ‘expertise’ and credentials of the industry experts railroaded the mining application through the provincial environmental board, the mines and geosciences bureau, and the department of environment and natural resources (former local government unit staff, 26 june 2014). in a meeting facilitated by the state, smi-xstrata used the impeccable scientific studies and the projected monetary gain to justify the project. exclusive membership in the industry networks and the state support enabled the mining companies to manufacture studies on the environmental viability of their operations. technologies of subjectivities enabled them to bypass the ancestral knowledge of the indigenous groups that was framed as suppositious and premodern. though technologies of subjection and subjectivities weaken opposition, antimining groups began to adapt their strategies to limit the mining sector’s growing power (f. sevilla, policy and research officer, alyansa tigil mina, quezon city, 19 june 2014). groups started to build broad, multi-sectoral alliances amongst interested parties. the ikelahans not only protested in the streets in manila and contested the legality of the mining application in the court, but also contacted legislators and other social movements to pressure relevant state institutions.4 the ikelahans contacted the local parliamentary representatives and key allies in congress that led to 4 after their experience of protesting against the incursions of the marcos regime, descendants of the ikelahans moved to white-collar careers in law and medicine in the cities. some of their members acquired their own networks to contest the titan mining corporation (d. de vera, 6 june 2014). 82 alvin a. camba  aseas 9(1) several interventions from congressional representatives, which pressured the denr to retract the mining application due to shaky conditions. subsequently, and in a possible act of vengeance, titan mining corporation sued the ikelahan leaders for libel and economic sabotage that led to year-long and costly meetings for the indigenous peoples: legal harassments, court hearings, meetings in the cities, and arbitrations (former local government unit staff, 26 june 2014). furthermore, anti-mining groups started to expand their capacity to conduct studies to counter the industry experts of mining companies. despite political support from the former president gloria macapagal’s administration to the tampakan project, a provincial referendum was organized by the national government, local governments, and civil society members to vote on mineral extraction. social movements and peoples’ organizations believed that the mining firm and the national government deliberately presented an incomplete, manipulated, and biased scientific assessment. their suspicions were exacerbated by the government’s refusal to make the controversial eia available to anti-mining groups (d. de vera, 6 june 2014). through the support of local people’s organizations, various indigenous peoples and national organizations such as alyansa tigil mina (atm) and the philippine association for intercultural development (pafid), conducted a counter assessment of the project. pafid’s study, supported by cambridge-based geologists, challenged the study made by sdmi-tampakan and proved that sdmi-xtrata’s study did not take the implications on the river basins of the surrounding provinces into account. the results of the provincial referendum united initially undecided local government officials, local barangays and indigenous peoples in four provinces to take a firm anti-mining position (d. arias, campaign and advocacy officer, alyansa tigil mina, quezon city, 19 june 2014). hence, the antimining vote won through the referendum culminated in one of the most controversial moratorium in the country (p. macling malayao, spokesperson, kalipunan ng mga katutubong mamayan ng pilipinas, quezon city, 15 june 2014). australian investors of the tampakan mining project, industry experts from the denr and mgb, chamber of mines, and national government officials were disappointed but had to relent to the referendum’s decision. hence, anti-mining groups have started to use the language of science against industry experts of the mining companies. conclusion using ong’s concept of neoliberal exceptions, this article discussed the changing terrains of struggle in contemporary philippine mining. i argued that the transition to a neoliberal mineral regime has empowered the mining sector and weakened the anti-mining groups through two new governing strategies. first, technologies of subjection have elevated state mining institutions to choose and put into effect the processes aimed at addressing the demands of local communities. second, technologies of subjectivities have privileged a selected group of industry experts to narrowly arbitrate the environmental viability of mining projects with little external review. because of the mining capital’s access to economic and legal resources, anti-mining communities across the philippines have been forced to compete on an unequal terrain for a meaningful social dialogue and mining outcomes. with allies in state institutions and science at their behest, the subjection of the institutions and subjectivi83philippine mining capitalism ties of science become seemingly incontestable spaces for the opponents of mining. the mining sector has been able to marginalize community concerns such as ancestral domains, social justice, and community subjectivities through the monopoly of, and skewed access to, the power of state institutions and the credentials of industry experts. there are three concrete findings for the philippines. first, state policies should consider expanding civil society, social movement, and community participation in state mining institutions. communities faced abusive policy decisions from the mining sector and state institutions as a result of the lack of checks and safeguards. successful mining cases in chile, brazil, and indonesia were built on state-society compromises. specifically, civil society organizations occupied important roles in the mining sectors of these states. second, anti-mining communities should continue to invest in capacity to counter the mining sector in their terrain: state institutions and scientific assessments. the bigger danger to communities is the incomprehensible nature of the mining sector’s new weapons within the neoliberal era. movements across the world must continue to shift their strategies alongside the continuing transformation of global capitalism. and last, postcolonial development in the philippines must be inclusive and just for those who have been abandoned by the state for decades. indigenous peoples have been the most abused and neglected group from the spanish regime until today. it is not fair for the mining sector and the state to transform their governing 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(2003). when the isles of gold turn into the isles of dissent: a case study on the philippine mining act of 1995. paper presented at the meeting on indigenous peoples, extractive industries and the world bank, oxford. rovillos, r. d., & tauli-corpuz, v. (2012). development, power and identity politics in the philippines. in s. sawyer & e. t. gomez (eds.), the politics of resource extraction: indigenous people, multinational corporation and the state (pp. 129-159). london: palgrave macmillan. recidoro, r. (2013). the ‘alternative’ mining: a bill designed to kill responsible mining in the philippines. pasig city: chamber of mines of the philippines. sanders, e. j. (1963, may). mining. american chamber of commerce, p. 244. santos, t., & zaratan, m. (1997). mining resources accounting: a technique for monitoring the philippine mining industry for sustainable development. journal for asian earth science, 15(2-3), 155-160. silver, b. (2003). forces of labor: workers’ movements and globalization since 1870. cambridge: cambridge university press. sinumlag, a. (2011). reform the ncip, said indigenous people’s groups. bulatlat news. retrieved from http://bulatlat.com/main/2011/08/23/reform-the-ncip-said-indigenous-peoples-groups/ samdhana institute. (2011). tracking national commitments for the protection of indigenous peoples rights in the budget. a study of the national budget of the national commission on indigenous peoples (ncip). cagayan de oro city: the samdhana institute. vivoda, v. (2008). assessment of the governance performance of the regulatory regime governing foreign mining investment in the philippines. minerals & energy – raw materials report, 23(3), 127-143. zhang, l. (2015). inside china’s automobile factories. the politics of labor and workers’ resistance. cambridge: cambridge university press. about the author alvin a. camba is a doctoral student in sociology at johns hopkins university. combining detailed ethnographic fieldwork and macro-comparative methods, he focuses on analyzing historical mechanisms that embed states in and toward particular development pathways within the global circuits of capital. at the moment, he focuses on chinese investments in southeast asia to make sense of the region’s emerging development dynamics. ► contact: aacamba@gmail.com 86 alvin a. camba  aseas 9(1) acknowledgements fieldwork for this article was conducted prior to the matriculation at johns hopkins university. i thank shirley m. lung for her support and comments during the writing process. i also appreciate the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful critique and suggestions. for facilitating access to interviews with local organizations, community leaders, government officials, and anti-mining activists, i would like to thank members of alyansa tigil mina (atm) coalition, pafid (philippine association for intercultural development), and kalikasan (nature). any naiveties, gaps, or errors in the argument and the research are mine alone. sailing to komodo sailing to komodo: contradictions of tourism and development in eastern indonesia maribeth erb ► erb, m. (2015). sailing to komodo: contradictions of tourism and development in eastern indonesia. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 8(2), 143-164. tourism is often pinpointed as a sector of growth for countries in the developing world, and this perspective has been readily accepted in indonesia. government officials in poorer sections of the country, such as nusa tenggara timur province (ntt) in eastern indonesia, have high hopes for the role that tourism can play in developing these poorer regions. this is not surprising, given the increasing renown of the komodo national park, just west of the island of flores, where the world famous komodo dragons reside. however, how exactly tourism is supposed to raise the standard of living and aid in development in ntt province is often unclear. in this paper i want to critically look at ideas about tourism and development in ntt, by focusing on the ‘sail komodo’ yacht rally, a major tourism event that took place from august to september 2013. sail komodo was as a marine tourism event expected to boost tourist numbers, lift the standard of living of people in this province and lower poverty levels. i critically analyze this event within the context of a ‘mega event’, and show how the contradictory ideas about how the event was meant to lead to prosperity for the poor can indicate the sometimes misguided relationship posited between tourism and development. keywords: development; indonesia; mega events; sail komodo; tourism  tourism and development: introducing a common dilemma tourists come from the outside to see the exotic: from the inside tourism is viewed as modernization. (bruner, 1995, p. 224) rather than viewing tourism simply as an industry aligned to neo-liberal thinking, tourism [should be] perceived as a powerful social force that needs to be better understood in order to connect it more effectively to development agendas that go beyond purely economic considerations. (spenceley & meyer, 2012, p. 301) the contradictory expectations of tourism in the developing world were summed up succinctly by edward bruner (1995), when he articulated the different hopes tourists and locals have of the touristic encounter, particularly in regards to issues of modernization or development. while the tourist desires to meet an unchanging, timeless community, embodying values thought to have disappeared in the modern world, locals see tourism as the opportunity to emaktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 15 .2 -3 144 maribeth erb  aseas 8(2) brace that which embodies the ‘modern’ and to begin to enjoy the fruits of development. this misfit of desires points to the rather ambiguous associations and expectations of what the relationship between tourism and development should be and may even lead, partially because of these conflicts of expectations, to underdevelopment (cole, 2008, p. 215; wood, 1979). in their book on the ethics of tourism development in the developing world, smith and duffy (2003) also underscore the ambiguities associated with modernization and tourism as a form of development. modernization is supposed to break with tradition, and yet traditional ways of life have increasingly become objects to be viewed and consumed within the expanding tourism industry (smith & duffy, 2003, p. 2). telfer and sharpley (2008) further point out how tourism and development must be increasingly understood as posing a dilemma, for while tourism is widely believed to bring economic benefits for poor communities, such as employment, increased income, and diversification of the economy, the reality is that tourism benefits are very often enjoyed by a local elite and global corporations, rather than by the poor. meanwhile, this also results in considerable environmental and social costs to the local communities that tourism is supposed to benefit. in this sense it can be understood why smith and duffy (2003) argue that the ambiguity and contradictory relationship between tourism and development is an ethical issue. this results from the way various neo-liberal strategies translate development into a focus on ways of generating capital. the irony, smith and duffy (2003) suggest, is that regarding tourism as primarily a form of economic development and pinpointing, therefore, tourism as a way of generating money, negates the kinds of values which a holiday is normally thought to embody (such as appreciating beauty, relaxation, friendship, and so forth) (p. 162). the emphasis on money also means that the benefits to communities can easily be hijacked by others. financial gain as the main thrust of tourism developments is often at the expense of other types of benefits, other types of values, and other types of development, which might be pursued through tourism (smith & duffy, 2003, pp. 8-9). prioritizing money may also undermine attempts to develop a community sustainably, and reverse the more normal ‘means-ends’ relationship. money becomes the end, not the means to an end, and what normally are the ends – relationships with people, places, things – become the means to get money (smith & duffy, 2003, p. 162). in this sense, scholars argue that the focus on purely economic concerns must be replaced with deeper understandings of the possibility for tourism to contribute to human development, to “fulfil ... human values and human needs” (higgins-desbiolles, 2006, p. 1205), and for tourism as “a powerful social force” (spenceley & meyer, 2012, p. 301). in her work on tourism policy-making in southeast asia, richter (1993) suggests that many of the negative results of relying on tourism as a pathway to development in the developing world have been due to a prevailing government attitude that tourism needs simply to be promoted, or “boosted” (p. 184), and there is frequently no thought about its need to be regulated. the impact of tourism in southeast asia was not only immense, but often disturbing, while 21st century tourism planning continues to be mostly focused on following tourist tastes (richter, 2009, p. 140) rather than on how tourism can lead to benefits for communities. there is also a tendency to favor the growth of elite tourism, which results in considerable foreign exchange 145sailing to komodo: contradictions of tourism and development in eastern indonesia leakage and encourages high economic dependency (richter, 2009; wood, 1979). this has meant that the type of tourism that could potentially benefit the development needs of poorer communities, such as budget or backpacker tourism, is neither promoted nor encouraged (cole, 2008; erb, 2000; hampton, 1998; richter, 1993; figure 1. the ‘sail komodo’ routes (map redrawn by mrs. lee li kheng, based on original from sail komodo festival 2013, retrieved from http://www.travelfoodfashion.com/sail-komodo-2013-festival/#). figure 2. ntt province (map drawn by mrs lee li kheng). 146 maribeth erb  aseas 8(2) scheyvens, 2002). additionally, non-decisions in regards to regulating tourism have led to serious problems such as exploitative sex tourism, human trafficking, and the uncontrolled spread of diseases (richter, 2009, pp. 139, 141-144). these earlier studies of tourism and development in the developing world, and specifically in southeast asia, indicate that the promised benefits of tourism as a development strategy often do not emerge. this is because the way tourism is meant to result in development is often poorly planned and misconceptualized. in this paper, i attempt to cast a closer look into such misconceptions by revisiting a recent event in eastern indonesia initially touted as an example of how tourism would lead to development for poorer and relatively neglected regions. this major event, covering three months in the summer of 2013 (from july to september) was called ‘sail komodo’ (figure 1), and was the 13th in the ‘sail indonesia’ series – an annual yacht rally starting from darwin, australia, on the fourth saturday of july and entering eastern indonesia via kupang, the capital of east nusa tenggara province (nusa tenggara timur, ntt).1 sail komodo reached its climax in the town of labuan bajo, on the western end of flores island – the major gateway to the komodo national park, which is the main tourist attraction in ntt province (figure 2). the komodo national park has been increasing in popularity internationally, partly due to the frequent featuring of its star attraction – the huge lizard known as the ‘komodo dragon’ – in documentaries and horror films.2 in recent years the park has also become a sought out destination among domestic tourists in indonesia, mainly because of its choice in 2011 as one of the new seven wonders of the natural world.3 i will examine the sail komodo event within the context of its promotion as a ‘megaevent’ in the eastern province of ntt, and as an event that was not only expected to result in a significant rise in tourist arrivals for this rather remote part of indonesia, but that was also promised to be a way to bring economic benefits to the local communities of a province known as one of the poorest in indonesia. i use this case study to highlight a number of issues about tourism development in ntt province, more specifically in the western part of flores: (1) the lack of proper understanding about how tourism can benefit local communities, (2) the lack of planning and regulations in regards to tourism developments, and (3) the contradictory results that misconceptualizations about tourism and development can bring. although my focus is on a specific remote place in indonesia, the issues raised in this case are more broadly part of the “imaginaries” of tourism. the concept of imaginaries has shown that ideas about what tourism might be for tourists, communities, businesses, and nation states, is circulated and adapted in different places in different ways (salazar, 2012; salazar & graburn, 2014). the suggestion here is that imaginaries are not necessarily 1 for more information on sail indonesia, visit the organisation’s website: http://www.sailindonesia. net/rally/organisers.php. 2 as timothy barnard (2009) suggests, the exoticizing of the komodo dragon has happened continuously since colonial times. 3 the new seven wonders were set up by the swiss canadian bernard weber to stimulate conservation of cultural and natural sites across the world in the new millennium (world of new seven wonders, n.d.). voting happened through websites and short cell phone messages over a period of 4 years. a lot of social media attention was given to the voting process in indonesia, stirring a lot of national attention to visit the site, which had previously been of little interest to domestic tourists. 147sailing to komodo: contradictions of tourism and development in eastern indonesia always connected to images of people and places, but also to hoped-for-dreams of what tourism might bring: prosperity, greater understanding of the world, positive relations with foreigners, and so forth (cole, 2008). thus, through an examination of sail komodo, i intend to highlight some of the ambiguities associated with tourism and development, focusing on the various ways that people imagine tourism to lead to development, as opposed to what the realities of tourism as a form of development actually are. examining indonesian tourism: mega events and sail indonesia tourism must be the leading sector and the engine of economic development in ntt … our target for the number of tourist arrivals to ntt … in 2013 … can increase to 1 million because of sail komodo. (abraham klakik, chief of tourism and creative development, nusa tenggara timur province, “ntt natural wonders to boost economic development”, 2012) like many other developing countries, indonesia has been pursuing a policy to develop the tourism industry over the past five decades as a means to earn foreign exchange and create employment. however, despite its many attractions, both natural and cultural, indonesia has never been particularly successful in fulfilling its potential of attracting large numbers of foreign tourists, particularly in comparison to neighboring countries such as singapore, malaysia, and thailand. while singapore had 15 million visitors in 2013, and thailand and malaysia over 25 million each, indonesia’s foreign visitor numbers totaled only 8.8 million (asean, 2015). promoting tourism had actually been a consideration as early as colonial times (picard, 1993, p. 75). after independence, however, the political regime – at that time rather anti-west – did not seek tourism as an economic growth strategy until the time of the new order regime (1965-1998), headed by suharto. the new order was extremely anti-communist, though still initially wary of the contaminating values of the west, which might be brought in through tourism (henderson, 2010, p. 8). with world bank encouragement (wood, 1979, p. 277), tourism was made an object of development planning in the late 1960s. tourism arrivals increased from roughly 6,000 visitors in 1960, to almost 130,000 in 1970 (wood, 1979, p. 276), and then to over half a million in 1980 (booth, 1990, p. 47; gunawan, 1997, p. 149). in the mid-1980s “diminishing endowments of natural resources, especially oil and gas” (gunawan, 1999, p. 148) led the government of indonesia to begin to rely more on tourism as a source of foreign exchange earnings (booth, 1990; picard, 1993, p. 80) and hence certain policy decisions were made to encourage tourism, including visa-free travel for key tourist markets, and landing rights for foreign airlines in several major points of entry (booth, 1990, p. 48). in the 1990s, tourism was identified as a “prime mover” of regional economic development (sofield, 1995, p. 691), and the target of 4.5 million foreign visitors by 1998, was easily reached before 1996, when indonesia enjoyed over 5 million visitors (hampton, 1998, p. 643). this was just before the economic crisis hit asia in 1997, significantly impacting tourism throughout asia (cochrane, 2009, p. 256; gunawan, 1999, p. 149). indonesia was particularly affected given that the economic crisis in the country was quickly followed by multiple political crises: protests that led to the fall 148 maribeth erb  aseas 8(2) of the suharto regime, violence targeted against chinese indonesians, and religious and ethnic conflicts that spread to various regions of indonesia up to the early 21st century. the attack on the world trade centre in new york in 2001, the terrorist bombings in bali and jakarta in 2002, 2003, and 2005, the spread and fear of sars in 2003, and the indian ocean tsunami of 2004 continued to affect tourist arrivals negatively. nevertheless, cole (2008) reminds us that the overall impact at the national level was minimal, since visitor arrival figures remained stable during that time at between 4.75 and 5 million (p. 56). the relative stability in visitor numbers for the nation as a whole, however, needs to be compared with the more devastating effect of these various disasters on the more remote areas of indonesia, such as ntt province, which easily saw a decline of over 50% in visitor numbers over that same time period (cole, 2008, p. 56). it was not until 2009 that the visitor figures for the komodo national park, the premiere destination in ntt, and to some extent a benchmark of the tourism recovery of the province, exceeded those of 1996 (see figure 3). as cole (2008) points out, generalizations made by some observers about tourism to indonesia cannot be applied to ntt, which has had a very different profile of visitors than many other parts of indonesia (p. 43). for example, in other places, domestic tourists may contribute the largest share of visitors (such as to toraja in sulawesi, see adams, 1998), and generally, visitors from other countries in asia make up a large percentage of foreign visitors to indonesia. neither of these is true for flores, where europeans and australians are by far the largest percentage of visitors (cole, 2008, p. 43; erb, 2009). one of the reasons why the recovery in tourism numbers took so long in eastern indonesia was the change to the visa policy in 2003, in which the free two month tourist pass introduced in the 1980s was replaced by a one month non-renewable visa on arrival (voa) at the cost of usd 25. the policy affected non-southeast asian foreign tourists most dramatically.4 cole (2008) argues that the policy was perceived as a “dramatic u-turn” in the country’s tourism history, and a clear indicator of misconception of the ways that tourism, particularly backpacker tourism, can benefit poorer communities (p. 45). backpackers were the most common visitors to ntt in the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s, but the amount of time necessary to travel to provinces where air travel was limited and the quality of roads poor meant that once the visa time was cut, visits were cut dramatically as well. the annual sail indonesia yacht rally is an event worth investigating against the background of the government’s concerns over tourism decline and the desire to find triggers for tourism growth. it is also an event that is interesting to examine against the perceived class issue that underlies the prejudice against backpacker/budget tourism. the sailors who own the yachts that enter eastern indonesia every year from darwin are perceived by the government to be an ‘elite’ class of tourist. as such, they are desirable, despite the fact that their numbers are exceptionally small, particularly in comparison to the young backpacker travelers who make up the bulk of visitors to the more remote regions of indonesia. starting in 2001, the sail indonesia annual event has grown from less than 20 yachts in 2001 to more than 100 yachts per year, in more recent years. the sail in4 most members of asean still received short stay visa free visits. 149sailing to komodo: contradictions of tourism and development in eastern indonesia donesia organization proudly proclaimed that since 2001 there have been almost 1000 yachts that have participated in this event (“links to stories”, 2015). one of the organization’s aims is the exploration of remote places in indonesia that lie off the beaten tourist track (“sail indonesia history”, 2015). over the years, local governments throughout eastern indonesia have enthusiastically given their support, seeing this event as an opportunity to showcase their cultural and natural resources to this mobile tourist population. after 2009, the central government became actively involved in organizing these annual marine events in eastern indonesia, as a way of siphoning money into the selected provinces for various infrastructural development projects to support tourism. the governor of ntt proposed to host a sail indonesia event in february 2011 (“menangkap peluang emas”, 2014). at the time the komodo national park – considered the ‘jewel’ of ntt tourism – was a finalist in the competition to be one of the new seven wonders of the world, which it eventually won in november 2011. the central government agreed to this proposal and promised idr 3.7 trillion (approximately usd 250 million) to the province of ntt for various infrastructural improvements in order to prepare for the event. as noted above, the hopes of the provincial tourism board were that the numbers of visitors to the province would increase substantially because of the sail komodo event, and that the event would raise the prospects for tourism to become a leading sector in ntt, and at the same time lifting the living standard and lowering poverty levels. it is an interesting puzzle why sail komodo, and sail indonesia in general, was designated as an important catalyst for tourism developments, given the extremely small numbers of foreign sailors actually entering indonesia for this event. why should this annual event, which over 14 years had seen less than 1000 participants, be the focus of such attention and hope for the development of indonesian tourism? what does the attention this event has received from the central government tell us about the indonesian government’s understanding of tourism, and the role of tour60000 45000 30000 15000 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 domestic visitors international visitors total (v is it o r n u m b er s) (years) figure 3. international and domestic visitors to komodo national park (1989-2013) (labuan bajo tourism board, 2014). 150 maribeth erb  aseas 8(2) ism for local development? what does it tell us about the perceived role the government should play in this regard? one way of framing an answer to these questions is to look at the event as a mega event. mega events are a type of special events that are appealing because of their “innate uniqueness …, which differentiates them from fixed attractions, and their ‘ambience’, which elevates them above ordinary life” (getz, 1989, p. 125). mega events are special events of international renown that are expected to raise the profile of the host city and thus are considered a significant tourism asset (bramwell, 1997, p. 168). in his speech at the conference on the impact of mega events in östersund, donald getz gave a detailed description of mega events as: planned occurrences of limited duration which have an extraordinary impact on the host area in terms of one or more of the following: tourist volumes; visitor expenditures; publicity leading to a heightened awareness and a more positive image; related infrastructural and organizational developments which substantially increase the destination’s capacity and attractiveness. (fayos-sola, 1997, p. 242) this definition of mega events appears to be part of the imaginary of the meaning a huge event would have for an area. although mega events are widely perceived and promoted as a means of urban regeneration and development, job creation, and a major boost to the host economy, many critics have questioned these promised impacts (among others baade & mathiesen, 2004; lee & taylor, 2005; pillay & bass, 2008). various issues have been assessed, including the huge expenses that are incurred, which may ultimately result in losses for the host cities; the substitution of gains in the event location for losses to other locations in the region; and the question of public expenditure reductions in other areas, taking away government spending on matters that might be more beneficial to the region overall (baade & mathiesen, 2004, pp. 345-346). these are issues that also surfaced in the assessment of the impact of sail komodo on the ntt province. although the event was miniscule in comparison to the mega events analyzed in the literature, it was clearly framed by the central and provincial government promoters as having the kind of potential benefits outlined above by getz. it was imagined that sail komodo would bring many tourists to ntt who would spend a lot of money and boost the incomes of local communities. it was imagined that the legacy of the event would be both a “heightened awareness” (to repeat getz’ words) of the beauty and potential of the province’s attractions, as well as improved infrastructure that would support the imagined future increase in tourists, stimulated by the event. methodology: a brief note my analysis in this paper is informed by many years of familiarity with western flores, starting first in the 1980s during my phd research on ritual and myth, and continuing in the 1990s on history and the revival of tradition. this research eventually led me to take an interest in tourism. i have been following tourism developments in western flores since the mid 1990s, with almost annual visits of a month or so. however, i 151sailing to komodo: contradictions of tourism and development in eastern indonesia did not have the opportunity to be present in ntt for the opening ceremony of sail komodo in the provincial capital kupang in july, 2013, or the closing ceremony in labuan bajo, in september, 2013. my understanding of the events of sail komodo are based on interviews and conversations that i had with people before the event in july and september, 2012, may-june 2013, and after the event in april-may 2014. i also accessed multiple postings either from online newspapers (such as kompas, flores bangkit, flores pos, pos kupang), or from youtube and facebook sites, from both event visitors and governmental sources, in order to get an idea of the (changing) assessments of observers and key policy makers as to the meaning and impact of the event, as well as a visual account of the events associated with sail komodo. my analysis consists of interpretations of the material derived from my own interviews, as well as interviews published in newspapers and internet sources. this analysis is informed by experiences of other tourism events that i have attended in western flores over the years, as well as numerous interviews and conversations with local community members, people in the tourist industry, ngo representatives, and government officials. therefore, before analyzing the sail komodo event, i will provide some more background on tourism developments in western flores, and examine how tourism events have been incorporated in tourism promotion in western flores and how they have been understood within the local context. a look at some of these earlier events will shed some light on the underlying contradictory ideas and misconceptions that i believe are held in western flores about tourism as a source of profit and development. tourism events, tourism promotion, and understandings of tourism in western flores let us hope that every cent that drops from the hands of tourists will fall into the pockets of people here in labuan bajo. (provincial head of tourism board in a speech at a tourism festival held in labuan bajo, july 16, 2004) in the 1990s, the booming tourism in indonesia was particularly obvious in the town of labuan bajo, in the district of manggarai on the west coast of flores – still a small town when i first visited in 1983. by 1996, when i visited the government tourism board to ask about tourism developments, the town had a hustle and bustle that was very different from the previous decade. the tourism officials recounted that tourism had taken off in 1989, when unprecedented numbers began to visit, and in the next several years the few small hotels and homestays available could not handle the numbers that began swamping the town. investors from other islands in indonesia were beginning to see the tourism potential of labuan bajo and land was becoming an attractive commodity. for example, one savvy hotel owner from bali, who was also head of the tourism association of eastern indonesia at that time, had bought numerous parcels of land from anyone who was willing to sell throughout the town and surrounding coastal areas. from 1990 to 1995, according to the tourist board calculations, there was an 18% increase of visitors on average every year (see figure 3). most tourists that passed through labuan bajo at that time were there to visit the komodo national park; they would later go east and visit “traditional” villages in cen152 maribeth erb  aseas 8(2) tral flores (cole, 2008) and from there to eastern flores to see the three colored lakes of kelimutu. they were, as mentioned earlier, mostly backpackers or young budget travelers, though there were a few small guided tour groups shepherded by bus across flores, and also some small cruise ships that held up to 20 passengers and stopped in several places in flores. komodo island and other islands known to be habitats for the giant lizards had been already a nature reserve during the colonial era. in 1980, komodo and some of the neighboring islands were designated as a national park, and in 1991, the park became a world heritage site. in 1995, the nature conservancy (tnc) – a large international environmental organization – began to assist the park authorities in monitoring the park, and recommended the expansion of the park’s boundaries to include marine areas and promote eco and dive tourism as a means of conservation. tnc designed a 25-year management plan that revised the zoning and resource use regulations in the park (borchers, 2008, p. 276; gustave & borchers, 2007). their monitoring was successful in curtailing dynamite and cyanide fishing practices blamed mostly on communities outside the park, but also produced resentment among local communities, especially when a number of fishermen on several occasions were shot for purportedly fishing illegally (erb, 2012). this tourism boom of the 1990s was cut short not only by the dramatic events mentioned above, but also by the already mentioned asian financial crisis and the fall of suharto, which led to violent conflicts and major political changes in indonesia in the late 1990s (kingsbury & aveling, 2003; kingsbury & budiman, 2001). the tumultuousness of this ‘reform’ era, and the other catastrophic events mentioned above, led to drastic drops in tourism numbers in labuan bajo, the komodo national park, and throughout the province of ntt. major plans were formulated for political decentralization and regional autonomy, which were to be the major motors for democratization and political transition, as well as economic transformations in the regions outside of java (aspinall & fealy, 2003; erb, sulistiyanto, & faucher, 2005; schultenordholt & abdullah, 2002). in the beginning of the 21st century, with the hope for major changes and a revival of the devastated economy, the word ‘investor’ had taken on a ‘golden glow’. it was at this time that sail indonesia was inaugurated and was seen as a means of attracting foreign investment to indonesia. in this sense, it is possible to see the blurring of the categories of ‘tourist’ and ‘investor’ taking shape in the indonesian imagination. tourist has usually meant ‘foreigner’ (erb, 2000), and foreigners as investors were increasingly seen and promoted as the way out of the crisis situations that were plaguing the indonesian economy at the time. in 2000, i was present in labuan bajo when tourism board officials from the province called a meeting with the district tourism board to discuss ways to better promote tourism in western flores. they suggested creating a permanent calendar of tourism events to be published on their website so that tourists could plan their journeys around these events. were there no traditional ritual events, they asked, which could be scheduled every year at the same time among the manggaraian people, the majority ethnic group living in the district? this suggestion to standardize cultural events for tourism promotion was a new idea for the local tourism board, and the staff pondered the difficulties associated with doing this.5 while in bali standardized 5 see yamashita (1994) on the inclusion of toraja funerals in the indonesian calendar of events as a form 153sailing to komodo: contradictions of tourism and development in eastern indonesia cultural performance schedules and calendars of events were regularly publicized, in ntt this was not yet a common way of planning tourism promotion. if tourists happened to be around when the new agricultural year’s ritual events were taking place, for example, where the famous manggaraian whip games called caci were played, then they were welcome to attend. there were also some cultural groups that would perform these whip games for a price if a tour group desired to see a display, but a regular calendar of events was still unimaginable in the context of flores. however, the idea of staging a big tourist event in order to bring more tourists to flores was an idea that began to stir among government planners out of necessity. with tourist visits so low, the head of the manggarai district asked for ideas to attract the tourists back to flores. one entrepreneur, a hajji originally from the island of lombok, suggested a multiple day event with sporting and cultural activities, called ‘komodo flores big promo year 2000’. the big draw would be a prize of idr 100 million (at the time around usd 10,000) for the winner of a cross-country race. since the government did not have that much money for a prize, the hajji devised a scheme whereby no one could actually win the prize.6 however, despite advertisements in lombok and bali, the cross-country race with its grand prize only attracted two tourists, and the low level of tourist attendance for the whole three-day event led to the government officials not taking the affair seriously. programs had been distributed, but locations kept changing, and everything started late because they hoped more tourists would attend. even though the event was promoted specifically to boost tourism, no one involved in most of the organization or announcing of various activities, spoke english. when the rules were read for the race, or the prizes distributed at the last days’ gala dinner, no one was designated to tell the two tourists involved what was going on. it appeared that though the local government really wanted to do something to attract tourists, they were not so sure how to go about it (erb, 2005). in 2003, the district of manggarai split into two – a move that was fuelled by the belief that a separate district of west manggarai, with labuan bajo as its capital, would have great potential to develop through tourism. subsequently, every year a cultural festival was held to celebrate the anniversary of the new district as one attempt to fulfill the wishes of the provincial government to have a regularly scheduled event. on the first anniversary in 2004, the head of the provincial tourism board attended and gave his motivational speech (partially quoted above), encouraging locals in labuan bajo to go forward with tourism as a development strategy. however, how locals were to persuade tourists to let money ‘drop’ from their pockets was not well identified. the festival itself was seen as a tourism promotion strategy where local cultural or art groups would showcase various traditional ritual performances, yet the audiences over the first several years were almost exclusively locals. information about the festivals was never successfully conveyed to tourists who were in town. the festivals were located at places not easily accessible to them, and information promoting the events at hotels was always written in indonesian. so these tourism of “manipulating tradition” (p. 80); and cole (2008) who notes that “fixing dates” is a form of commodification of ceremonies (p. 205), and also may cause social conflict (pp. 236-238). 6 the prize was not given to the person who finished first, but would only be given to the person who finished the race in the exact amount of time, to the second, which was determined beforehand and sealed up in a coconut. 154 maribeth erb  aseas 8(2) cultural festivals ended up being mostly cultural festivals put on by florenese for themselves. in 2005, west manggaraians elected their first definitive head of the new district. his support for uplifting tourism as the leading sector of the west manggarai economy was ostensibly evident in his signing of the agreement for a collaborative management of the komodo national park, set up to test out new strategies for privatization of tourism and for funding the management of the park (cochrane, 2013, p. 134). the collaboration was between the komodo national park authority, the local government, and a joint venture company, putri naga komodo. it was run by tnc and the bali based businessman who had bought up so much land in the area in the early 1990s (cochrane, 2013; erb, 2012). there was considerable resentment at the forming of this joint venture. many locals in the tourism industry wondered why outsiders were the ones awarded the concession to manage the park. there were also many who had protested against the tnc presence in the park, and had hoped for their withdrawal in co-management of the park after human rights abuse charges were brought up against them (see erb, 2012). in 2006, the same district head also invited another international ngo, swiss contact, into labuan bajo to aid in planning for the better management of tourism in the region. although ostensibly supporting pro-poor tourism7, swiss contact’s approach was very much pro-business, and after a few years of their assessments and recommendations for the improvement of tourism management in labuan bajo, big investors from bali and jakarta felt more confident to begin operations in western flores and the first starred hotels started to appear outside of town (erb, 2012). not long after this, foreign investors also began to move into the town and the neighboring islands in much greater numbers (erb, 2013). although the district head appeared to support tourism developments, in 2008, he allocated a concession for gold exploration to a chinese mining company, just outside of labuan bajo, right next to a small hotel resort and not far from the borders of the national park. the company began to drill for gold, and the drilling disturbed several small hotels in the vicinity. those working in tourism and conservation staged massive protests against the gold exploration, and fears grew about what kind of contamination and toxicity would seep into the park waters, if the company subsequently expanded their operations and actually began to mine for gold. within the following year and a half, this first district head was voted out of office, due to the massive unpopularity of his policies that appeared to not only misunderstand how to support community based tourism, but also appeared to be against the development of tourism and conservation in the national park (erb, 2011, 2012). subsequent years continued to see more and more foreign investors moving into the tourism arena of labuan bajo and local communities uncertain of how to profit from tourism. local ngos have attempted to start programs to engage people in production activities that would help them to benefit from tourism. the failure of these projects was especially acute in the area of agricultural produce; at least 80% 7 pro-poor tourism is an idea that is supported by many development agencies, governments, and tourism organizations, as the use of tourism to reduce poverty in the developing world. it has come under much criticism, since though pro-poor tourism is considered to be any tourism that benefits the poor, it is often the wealthy who benefit (see for example scheyvens, 2009, p. 193). this appears to be the case with the swiss contact’s programs as well. 155sailing to komodo: contradictions of tourism and development in eastern indonesia of florenese are farmers, but the produce to support the hotels and restaurants in labuan bajo have been continuously brought in from neighboring islands. local residents in labuan bajo, some of whom had land to farm, repeatedly complain about their inability to raise vegetables and fruit trees for produce. livestock, particularly cows, allocated by a central government program to support livestock raising for export, roam unchecked into farmers’ fields. since most of the cows are the property not of poor farmers, but government civil servants who refuse to pen them in, their rummaging for fodder keeps destroying the kitchen gardens and other plots of land dedicated to fruits and vegetables. for the farmers located further away from labuan bajo, where livestock destruction is not a problem, the cost of transporting fruits and vegetables from some of these more distant villages into labuan bajo is much higher than the cost of bringing them over by ferry from other islands. buses charge the price of one passenger for every large sack of produce conveyed to the town. conversely, farmers on neighboring islands can transport their produce free of charge on the ferry. sunspirit, a local ngo, showed through their study (dale, 2013, p. 139) that the failure of local agricultural production for tourism is a structural problem, not a problem of the unwillingness of farmers to produce for the markets of labuan bajo. however, the local government has not attended to either of these constraining conditions that keep local farmers from benefitting from selling their produce to the tourist market in labuan bajo. indeed, the continued misunderstanding of this problem is well encapsulated by the comment reputedly made by the governor of ntt in late april 2014: “now that sail komodo is over, i am hoping that i will not hear any more about vegetables being imported from bima, eggs being imported from bima, meat being imported from bima”. the governor believed that sail komodo itself would somehow make imported produce no longer necessary, when in fact nothing done during sail komodo had focused on the underlying structural problems. sail komodo: developing tourism through a national level event is it possible that ntt will lose its title as a poor province after the prestigious sail komodo 2013 event? let’s wait and see. (rahalaka, 2013) as i have shown in the previous section, people in western flores have had different ideas over the years about how to profit from tourism and how to ‘attract’ tourists through various events. the events, successful or not, however, never seemed to solve the problem of how local communities could actually develop through tourism. what was true at the local level in flores seemed to be also true at the national level. in 2009, when the central government started to coordinate national level marine events with the sail indonesia yacht rallies, they imagined and promoted these events as catalysts of tourism development. through these marine events the central government began to inject funds into the poorer eastern indonesian provinces for infrastructural developments that would support tourism. when i first heard about sail komodo in 2012, i was very perplexed over how people in labuan bajo perceived this event as contributing to development and to tourism in western flores. people talked about a number of sailing boats that were 156 maribeth erb  aseas 8(2) to travel around the region, and this was imagined as a huge tourism event. plans appeared to be all focused on the reception of the president in labuan bajo in the middle of september, but it was unclear to me how the travels of these sailing boats and the plans for a gala closing ceremony were supposed to develop tourism, or lead to benefits for the local economy. the large budget allocated for the closing event was accompanied by money to prepare the infrastructure in west manggarai: the construction of an international quality hospital, the building of good roads to all of the tourist destinations in the district, and the rebuilding of the airport terminal. despite the central government’s apparent emphasis on sail indonesia as a means to make infrastructural improvements to support tourism, at the provincial and district levels it was not entirely understood this way. since the event was depicted as a tourist event, the hopes were built up that it would be the tourist visits during sail komodo that would launch economic improvement and become evidence of the positive effect of tourism on development. in this respect, the build up by the government of what sail komodo would actually mean, and what its effect on tourism in ntt was likely to be, was way out of proportion to the reality. to me, as in the cases of tourism events discussed in the previous section, this indicates the lack of understanding, particularly on the part of local government officials both at the provincial and district level, as to what role a tourism event plays in local development and in the creation of benefits from tourism for local communities. for example, the head of the provincial tourism board enthusiastically announced in july 2013, at the time of the sail komodo preparations, that “130 countries had already signed up to join the sail komodo” (“sail komodo: sudah 130 negara”, 2013). by announcing the number of countries, instead of the number of the participants, the tourism head gave the impression that a massive amount of participants was likely to come. at the same time, the notion that the participants were ‘countries’, instead of individuals, gave a highly inflated idea of what the scale of the event actually would be, or ever had been. one month later, the tourism board head corrected this information and reported that the number of participants were only 73, and that they originated from 18 different countries, a much more modest statement about the likely size of the event (“peserta sail komodo, 2013”).8 the expectation that sail komodo would somehow directly benefit local communities was expressed in april 2013 by the district secretary of east manggarai, who announced to flores bangkit reporters that “we welcome sail komodo as an event that will bring profit to our people” (“sekda matim”, 2013), suggesting the local villagers would be able to sell their agricultural products, as well as their handicrafts, to the visiting sailors. the same view was expressed by the head of the tourism board in central manggarai district, but rather reversed. he expressed his disappointment that the schedule of places which participants were due to visit did not include any of the tourist sites in his district. “this means”, he told reporters, “there will be no direct benefit to the people of manggarai from the sail komodo event. since they are 8 the actual figures of participants fluctuated depending on who was reporting and when the report was made. the numbers provided by sail indonesia for the event were those i mentioned earlier: 106 participants from 26 countries. the discrepancy may have been due to the numbers of boats arriving at various locations, and especially the numbers that actually entered indonesia via kupang for the opening ceremony. 157sailing to komodo: contradictions of tourism and development in eastern indonesia not coming to manggarai, there will be no effect on the hotels, restaurants, souvenir sellers or tourism sites that are in this district” (“sail komodo tak ada untungnya”, 2013). later in august 2013, after sail komodo was already underway and quite a few places in ntt had already been visited by some sailors from the rally, the expectations of how the event was supposed to benefit local communities began to be dashed. the head of the destination section of the provincial tourism board in kupang proclaimed that “the economic impact of sail komodo towards the communities in the regions has been very small” (“kecil dampak”, 2013). the few sailors that appeared at the local ports were only buying food and drinks; very few were buying locally made products, even though at every location where the different boats pulled into port locals presented their crafts in expectation of a sale. however, the destination head qualified his disappointment by the hope that “someday” the local people would benefit from tourism; these sailors would return to their countries reporting about the potential of tourism in ntt, and more tourists would come later. thus, the impressions of how sail komodo would benefit local communities in ntt, as opposed to the reality, points to the misconceptualization of how tourism would bring development to local communities. after the event, in the following year when i visited labuan bajo, the cynicism about sail komodo had grown palpable. tales circulated of disorganization and the total lack of attention to those who were supposed to be the focus of the event – the sail indonesia yachtsmen and other tourists visiting labuan bajo. according to critics, ambassadors from various nations had been added at the last minute to the government guest list, while all of the rooms in the starred hotels in labuan bajo had already been booked for months. in order to make room for the ambassadors, all bookings were cancelled, and other visitors shifted to smaller places way out of town. the town was full of government officials and military, and any tourists who arrived in labuan bajo during the event could find no rooms and were forced to sleep at hotel reception areas, if they chose to stay in the town. at the swiss contact office, i was told that the government paid no attention to the sailors, who were the ostensible focus of the sail indonesia rally, and only the swiss contact staff went out to greet them when they arrived. as the major ceremony approached, the harbor was so full of navy ships and so noisy and intimidating, that the sailors left for bali before the arrival of the president and the grand closing ceremony. other more serious reasons for peoples’ negative assessments of the event surfaced. they referred to sail komodo as an “event to steal public funds”, or “a ceremony to use up money”, and there were many accusations of corruption, especially towards the central government elite. right after the final ceremony in mid-september 2013, a group of civil society organizations in labuan bajo demanded an immediate audit of the budget for sail komodo (“koalisi masyarakat”, 2013), since none of the programs funded by sail komodo money had actually been finished and much of the idr 3 trillion were yet to be accounted for. in labuan bajo, not only was the hospital still not built, but accusations were being made of the misappropriation of funds on various projects, such as water treatment and storage networks, and the money to renovate the houses of local residents (mammilianus, 2013; “mantan kadis”, 2014). local government office heads were being accused of misusing funds for the various programs they were supposed to facilitate during sail komodo. some people said it 158 maribeth erb  aseas 8(2) was the central government’s unrealistic demand to fulfill targets that forced these officials to finish the projects, even if they were not in the allocated places or for the designated people.9 some contractors were also not paid back the money that they used for projects, leaving one man, for example, no alternative but to run from his creditors. people interpreted this as evidence that the central government elite were using sail komodo to steal money for themselves, and setting up others to take the blame for the corruption. in this way, for many at the local level, sail komodo had become sial komodo (in english “unfortunate komodo”). one conversation i had with a hotel owner brought into focus the disorganized way the local west manggarai government had handled sail komodo, but also, in his opinion, some surprising benefits of the event. he owns one of the most popular hotels in labuan bajo and has often been the target of envy from local competitors, as well as government officials. his hotel consists of bungalows built on the side of a hill. his difficulties with the government began about five years ago, when they refused to let him build a small café at the top of the hill where his bungalows were located, arguing it would impede the view of the passing vehicles. since they forbade him to build a café (which would need a different building license), he built more bungalows instead and had apparently angered the government. his tussle with the government continued until 2013, when he received a notification from the local government that he would have to close his hotel, on a date that was two months before the final ceremony of sail komodo. this was despite the fact that the government had been worried for well over a year about accommodating the numerous visitors expected for the final ceremony. the hotel owner pointed out this flawed logic to the tourism board officials, and they intervened on his behalf with the appropriate government offices. however, despite the reprieve granted, he told me in may 2013 that he was fed up with being constantly harassed by the government and that right after sail komodo, in september, he would close his hotel. in may 2014, however, i found his hotel still open. sail komodo itself, he told me, had made him change his mind. it was evident to him that it was not the government or the foreign investors that kept things running during sail komodo, but instead the local people of western flores. hundreds of nasi bungkus (packets of rice with meat and vegetables) were prepared each day by the rakyat kecil (the little people) to feed all the different visitors who were staying in labuan bajo at the time. it was not the big restaurants run by foreigners, but the local, poor residents who had done their part to show their hospitality and make the event a ‘success’. the hotel owner thus said he had come to realize that it was these average people that made up the economy of labuan bajo, not the big investors. sail komodo had made him realize that he need no longer be afraid of the government and their threats; they actually did not have much power, he said, instead the power was with the people. as a local he had decided that he still wanted to remain part of the tourism industry, having faith that it was the locals who were the basis of the economy and that locals would eventually find their way to participate in tourism developments that would benefit them. 9 this was the case for the head of the department of social welfare, who could not find enough houses to renovate in the designated area, and so used the money to renovate houses elsewhere. he was accused of misappropriating funds and died of a heart attack before he could be brought up on charges. 159sailing to komodo: contradictions of tourism and development in eastern indonesia conclusion: tourism and development how is tourism expected to lead to development? mega events like sail komodo, are imagined as catalysts for employment, investment, tourist expenditure, and a way to put a particular place ‘on the map’, so that a ‘legacy’ is formed, and tourists will be attracted in greater numbers. this certainly was part of the imaginary of the sail komodo event in east nusa tenggara province. arrivals to the province were expected to substantially increase and poor communities were expected to directly benefit from these visitors. however, sail komodo, as so many other mega events, did not fulfill the expected imaginings. some of the issues raised by baade and mathiesen (2004, pp. 345-346) can be discerned, with some adjustment for the context, in what happened during and after sail komodo. particularly in labuan bajo, tourists themselves were actually displaced by the sail komodo final ceremony (the pinnacle of the mega-event) because of the numbers of central and provincial government politicians and officials who attended the ceremony, resulting in a type of “substitution of gains” (baade and mathiesen 2004, p. 345). the hotels were full, but not with foreign tourists. the government spending on tourist infrastructure for sail komodo, and public expenditure reduction on other matters, was another critical issue. apart from accusations of corruption (and incompletion of projects), people queried why only infrastructure that would be used by tourists was prioritized – a new airport, which only the wealthy would use, and roads to designated tourist attractions, instead of much needed roads into more remote villages. in this paper i have illustrated that there has long been a misconception about how tourism can lead to benefit for local communities in western flores. is simply the presence of tourists enough to guarantee that “money will fall from their pockets”? cole (2008, p. 106) talks of how the ntt provincial government provided several homestays in one traditional village in central flores, to act as a model for other villages to follow, so that they could profit from tourism. however, she also argues that no discussion was held with the people in the village to explain what the homestays were, no training given as to how to manage them, and no linkages made with tour operators so guests would be directed there. ultimately, the villagers ended up using the houses themselves, and they were never used as tourist accommodation. interacting and communicating with tourists, and hence benefiting from tourism, is a far more complex matter than simply dropping infrastructure into a village or a town. in the case of sail komodo, and sail indonesia in general, it similarly appears that the indonesian government has conceptualized tourism as the reason to offer development programs, instead of seeing tourism itself as a pathway to development. this is one reading of the sail indonesia endeavors – a way to channel money into the more remote regions to build infrastructure for tourists, but without actually showing the people how to benefit from tourism. the emphasis of these types of government programs – allocating huge amounts of money for development – appears to emphasize that tourism developments are simply receiving financial gain. money is needed to develop, so that money can be regained. returning to smith and duffy’s (2003) argument, money becomes the ‘end’, not the means to an end (p. 162). the actual dynamics of working with tourists, of communicating with them, and of understanding what they are looking for, seems to 160 maribeth erb  aseas 8(2) be lost in all of the tourism events that have been planned in the province of ntt. in the crudest way, the idea that “money will fall from the pockets of tourists” appears to encourage people to imagine it as an easy way to make money, without clearly thinking through what needs to be done to ‘make’ this money. investors have thus been sought by local governments, sometimes without consideration as to how different investments – a tourism concession in a national park and a gold mine on its periphery – might clash with one another. money is the sole aim, without much thought on how to regulate these investments. money also has become the main end for local residents in western flores, who have increasingly sold their land, which had multiplied in value, especially since komodo became one of the new seven wonders. this has become a concern of many ngos, although the government does not yet see this as a potential problem, nor has there been any move to regulate land sales. thus, in ntt the same critical remarks hold true that were made about tourism developments more generally in indonesia and elsewhere in southeast asia several decades ago by wood (1979) and richter (1993), as a type of “dilemma” (telfer & sharpley, 2008, p. xiii), benefiting more the elite and outside players, with considerable leakage of economic benefits and the growth of dependency. since 2008, outside actors have started to swarm into western flores and use the open arms of the western flores local governments towards tourism investment to open businesses and buy up land. what appears, in the long run, to be the only direct way that people in western flores have been able to profit from tourism development is through selling their land – 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(2009). tourism policy-making in southeast asia: a twenty-first century perspective. in m. hitchcock, v. t. king, & m. parnwell (eds.), tourism in southeast asia: challenges and new directions (pp. 132-145). copenhagen, denmark: nias press. sail indonesia: history, the organization and mission. (2015, february 2). sail indonesia. retrieved from http://www.sailindonesia.net/rally/organisers.php sail komodo tak ada untungnya bagi masyarakat. (2013, april 18). flores bangkit. retrieved from http:// arsip.floresbangkit.com/2013/04/sail-komodo-tak-ada-untungnya-bagi-masyarakat-manggarai/ sail komodo: sudah 130 negara mendaftar. (2013, july 8). flores bangkit. retrieved from http://arsip.floresbangkit.com/2013/07/sail-komodo-sudah-130-negara-mendaftar/ salazar, n. (2012). tourism imaginaries: a conceptual approach. annals of tourism research, 39(2), 863-882. salazar, n., & graburn, n. (eds.). (2014). tourism imaginaries: anthropological approaches. new york, ny: berghahn. scheyvens, r. 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(2008). tourism and development in the developing world. abingdon, uk: routledge. wood, r. (1979). tourism and underdevelopment in southeast asia. journal of contemporary asia, 9(3), 274-287. 163sailing to komodo: contradictions of tourism and development in eastern indonesia world of new seven wonders (n.d.). project history. retrieved from http://world.new7wonders.com/ about-n7w/the-new7wonders-foundation-campaign/ yamashita, s. (1994). manipulating ethnic tradition: the funeral ceremony, tourism and television among the toraja of sulawesi. indonesia, 58, 69-82. zoomers, a. (2010). globalisation and the foreignisation of space: seven processes driving the current global land grab. the journal of peasant studies, 37(2): 429-447. about the author maribeth erb is an associate professor in the department of sociology in the national university of singapore. she has been doing research on flores since the 1980s on topics such as ritual, kinship, tourism, political change, and environmental politics. she is the author of the manggaraians (times editions, 1999), co-editor of several collections on indonesian politics, and has authored many articles on her ongoing research in eastern indonesia. ► contact: socmerb@nus.edu.sg acknowledgements my first formal research on tourism was started in 2000-2001 under the auspices of the indonesian council of sciences (lipi) and the university of nusa cendana in kupang. many subsequent visits have been made over the past 15 years, with occasional affiliation to the university of indonesia in jakarta and gadja mada university in jogjakarta. funding for this research was provided by the national university of singapore. i express my gratitude for the institutions that have supported my research over the years. i would also like to thank wilhelmus anggal, lasarus jehamat, julia jetia, and agustinus jehadut for many conversations that helped to sharpen my understanding of tourism and politics over the years. philanthropy in southeast asia: between charitable values, corporate interests, and development aspirations aseas 10(2) | 139 philanthropy in southeast asia: between charitable values, corporate interests, and development aspirations rosalia sciortino ► sciortino, r. (2017). philanthropy in southeast asia: between charitable values, corporate interests, and development aspirations. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 10(2), 139-163. this article presents an overview of the evolving state of philanthropy in southeast asia, driven by global and local stimuli and shaped by often conflicting notions of charity, development, and business. despite the lack of a strong enabling environment, new, ‘homegrown’ foundations and local forms of institutionalized giving continue to emerge. at the same time, changes in the donor landscape and shifts in philanthropic paradigms towards business-like and technocratic approaches affect how development causes are funded. in the process, gaps have begun to appear in how work by civil society organizations on human rights and social justice is funded; this may jeopardize more equitable and inclusive development. keywords: charity; development; development financing; philanthropy; southeast asia  introduction southeast asia’s economic growth since the 1970s has been so impressive that foreign aid donors have felt justified in reducing their assistance, declaring that these countries ‘have graduated’. yet poverty remains widespread, socio-economic gaps persist and are widening, and economic progress has failed to lead to sustainable social and environmental paths for the countries to follow. encouraged by the growing role of philanthropic actors in international development cooperation and as partners in achieving the sustainable development goals (sdgs) agenda (see also sciortino, this issue) some have argued that in southeast asia philanthropy also has a role to play in fostering more inclusive growth. in this view, institutionalized private giving combined or in substitution of public funding can help address developmental gaps or, at the very least, protect the most vulnerable groups. others, however, contend that such giving practices are irrelevant to development needs and are in fact inherently linked to personal values and self-interest, create new dependencies, and are less accountable and transparent than government spending (hayling, sciortino, & anand, 2014). this debate on the benefits of philanthropy for development in southeast asia acquires particular relevance in view of the unprecedented accumulation of private wealth among elites and the growing public expectation that they contribute to society. as a greater number of more diverse philanthropic organizations are being established, there is interest in learning how these organized private sources are contributing to development and to what degree the early modern aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 17 .2 -2 140 | aseas 10(2) philanthropy in southeast asia: between charitable values, corporate interests, and development aspirations philanthropists’ differentiation of philanthropy from charity as “improving opportunity rather than relieving immediate suffering” (development assistance committee, 2003, p. 15) is pertinent to local giving practices. the rise in the last two decades of venture philanthropy with an emphasis on technocratic and business solutions to development problems through the likes of corporate social responsibility (csr), social entrepreneurship, and social impact investment, also poses questions about the degree of their adoption in southeast asia.1 in a region where the demarcation of private giving and business has traditionally been blurred, how do corporate interests intersect with aspirations for social improvement in home-grown philanthrophy? this article delves into these issues by giving an overview of local philanthropy in southeast asia, the global and local stimuli driving it, and the often contrasting notions of charity, development, and business that shape it. in examining the environment of philanthropy, i draw on literature as well as my own personal experience as a development practitioner in the region.2 the emergence of local philanthropic institutions, their characteristics and ways of operating are discussed before highlighting the implications of shifting paradigms of philanthropy and the evolving donor landscape for development causes, and the beneficiaries associated with them. i conclude that gaps have begun to appear in the funding of civil society organizations working on human rights and social justice; this may jeopardize more equitable development and fostering inclusive societies. a culture of giving southeast asian cultures are supportive of giving and showing concern for others in a multitude of forms. in rural thailand, for instance, water jars are traditionally placed outside people’s homes for thirsty passersby, and shelter may be provided (asia pacific philanthropy consortium [appc], 2001). the concept of mutual aid is also deeply ingrained in the cultural discourse of indonesia and the philippines, where it is called gotong royong and bahaniyan respectively and includes contributions of goods, services, and cash to others in times of need as well as of celebration (velasco, 1996). singapore, brunei, and malaysia also emphasize the spirit of gotong royong as part of their cultures and national identities (remember singapore, 2013). vietnam has a long tradition of volunteering, providing mutual aid and communal assistance, as in the folk saying, “whole leaves wrap torn leaves” (ninh, 2011). remarkably, even as early as the 15th century, the royal court had introduced tax reductions for rich people who helped the poor. later, the nguyen dynasty called for private contributions to families affected by crop losses. such good deeds were then recorded for posterity in monuments and posts granted by the courts (vietnam asia pacific 1 social entrepreneurship refers to both non-profit and profit organizations that apply commercial strategies to attain social and environmental outcomes such as microfinance, fair trade, ‘triple bottom line’ companies that besides economic gains also pursue social and environmental benefits, and, especially in asia, cooperatives. social impact investing is a new subset of the venture capital market that provides expansion capital to seek social impact and financial return (see further united nations global compact, 2012) 2 i served as program officer in the ford foundation’s jakarta and manila offices, regional director of the rockefeller foundation’s southeast asia office in bangkok, and as regional director for southeast and east asia at the international development research centre (idrc) in singapore. aseas 10(2) | 141 rosalia sciortino economic center [vapec] & asia foundation, 2011). philanthropy also had an early start in what is now singapore, where in the 18th century chinese immigrants to malaya provided funding for schools, health facilities, and religious institutions to help successive waves of migrants from extended kinship networks at a time when no government services were available (coutts, 2014). across the centuries, religion has proven a powerful source of inspiration for people to donate. zakat,3 a religious tax in the form of alms-giving and sadaqah or voluntary donations, have been practiced since the arrival of islam in southeast asia. in the 19th century, arab immigrants who travelled in the region as merchants and spread their faith established waqf, or perpetual bequests of land or other assets, for religious, educational, or charitable purposes (chung, nasution, & brown, 2010). christian teachings have encouraged charitable behavior in the philippines and timor leste since colonial time (goh, 2005; velasco, 1996). to this day, buddhist believers located predominantly in mainland southeast asia strive to accumulate merit by giving donations to faith-based institutions and alms to the poor, while hindu balinese communities subscribe to the concept of social contributions or datrta datrtva (public interest research and advocacy center, 2002, p. 8; swearer, 2010). state ideologies, too, inspire altruism. in vietnam, nationalist calls mobilize private resources through government channels to address the needs of the country (vapec & asia foundation, 2011). in thailand, loyalty to the king and his family fosters giving to royal foundations and development projects (appc, 2001). more generally, across southeast asia people give for a variety of reasons: expressing a sense of belonging, strengthening ethnic and religious identities, manifesting social cohesion, enhancing social status, or building patronage and social networks. the combination of these diverse factors results in high levels of generosity, as the world charity index has computed since 2010, employing three indicators: 1) helping a stranger, 2) giving money to a good cause, and 3) volunteering time. in 2016, of the seven southeast asian countries among the 140 countries surveyed, myanmar topped the overall index for the fourth year in the row (see also dove, this issue). it also ranked the highest in terms of monetary giving, with 91% of people who donated money in the last month. indonesia was second globally with 75%, while thailand, singapore, and malaysia, ranked among the top twenty-five countries, with percentages of more than half of the population having given for a good cause (charities aid foundation [caf], 2016). it is interesting to note that donation levels do not seem to be a direct reflection of a country’s economic conditions, with myanmar being among the least developed countries of southeast asia, and indonesia being less wealthy than thailand, malaysia, or singapore. local surveys confirm a widespread willingness to volunteer and donate, and a general preference for giving to individuals rather than organizations. however, patterns are dynamic and differentiate along socio-cultural lines. the biannual individual giving survey (igs) in singapore found a decrease in the rate of people making donations in the previous year from 83% in 2014 to 76% in 2016, but a doubling of donations to institutions. age and ethnicity were significant differentials, 3 there is a dissenting opinion that, being an obligatory taxation, zakat should not be categorized as charity or philanthropy (see cogswell, 2002) 142 | aseas 10(2) philanthropy in southeast asia: between charitable values, corporate interests, and development aspirations with malay citizens more likely to donate and middle-aged people being the most prevalent donors (national volunteer & philanthropy center [nvpc], 2015). in the philippines, a 2006 study on individual giving found that 99% of the population had donated to various causes in some form (venture for fund raising & social weather station, 2006).4 interestingly, a greater proportion of the poor gives than the rich and this in higher percentages (burgos & quismundo, 2011). this is in line with findings in malaysia and other parts of the region, as well as beyond, including the us and uk (anderson, 2015; cogswell, 2002; ward, 2001). not only are a country’s economic development level and a person’s income level poor predictors of individual donations in southeast asia, but – against a common expectation among philanthropy experts and practitioners – the norms and practices related to giving are hardly the product of enabling legal, fiscal, or regulatory systems, nor have they led to the formation of such comprehensive systems, at least for now. an uncertain environment for philanthropy the institutionalization of giving, or philanthropization, is a recent phenomenon in southeast asia. most governments have started only in the last two decades to legislate efforts to give, allocate, receive, and report donations and regularize the non-profit sector, including philanthropic and charitable institutions, with the less developed countries of cambodia, laos, myanmar, and timor-leste at an initial stage of experimentation. an exception is the philippines, which stands apart for its very early appreciation of the role of the private non-profit sector in national development. foundations were already acknowledged under philippine law in 1906 while the country was an american colony, and later endorsed as part of democratizing reforms: unique in the region, the 1987 philippine constitution expressly recognizes the contribution of non-government organizations (ngos) and other non-profit organizations, pledges financing to those that promote social welfare, and provides incentives for philanthropic contributions. since then, fiscal schemes have been established to grant tax breaks for donations made to private foundations and other bodies devoted to non-profit causes, whether religious, scientific, or promoting welfare (velasco, 1996). receiving organizations also benefit from various exemptions, such as from income tax, duties, charges on foreign donations, and from donor’s gift tax. these provisions are particularly generous for those who have acquired donee status from the philippine council for ngo certification (pcnc). fiscal incentives together with attention to professional standards and non-profit organizations’ autonomy and influence in formulating public policy have led to a highly professional philanthropic sector in the philippines. notable are umbrella organizations like the philippine business for social progress (pbsp), which was founded in 1970 and today comprises more than 260 member businesses that collectively fund development interventions. experienced bodies, such as the association of foundations and the league of corporate foundations, advocate for the interests of their members, and programs and networks strengthen the field and corroborate emerging philanthropic 4 remarkably, the philippines did not do well in the last world giving index (caf, 2016), but in view of the nature of the studies it is not possible to determine if such difference is due to methodology or the different time period. aseas 10(2) | 143 rosalia sciortino approaches. for instance, the institute for social entrepreneurship in asia (isea) and the philippine social enterprise network (philsen) were established in the late 1990s with the rise of the social entrepreneurship movement (british council, 2015). recently, singapore, and to a lesser extent also indonesia, have followed the philippines in emphasizing the relevance of philanthropy and corporate engagement in development. since the early 2000s, the singaporean government has systematically worked to reduce its role as the largest funder of the non-profit sector either directly or indirectly through government-backed foundations, instead encouraging its growing concentration of billionaires to donate to service organizations. policy innovations include giving tax deductions to government-selected charities and matching funds for donations in education and the arts. the government has also built support infrastructure, such as bank advisory services and capacity-building entities. the main ones are the national volunteer and philanthropy center established in 1999 to promote and coordinate volunteering and philanthropy, and the community foundation of singapore founded in 2008 to connect local donors with needy communities in the city-state. aware of burgeoning wealth in neighboring countries, the singaporean government has promoted the city as a regional philanthropic center, building on its status as southeast asia’s financial hub. attractive conditions have been created to draw in international charities active elsewhere in asia to establish their offices in singapore, and for foreign individual donors to use the city-state’s financial services. in 2011, symasia – an umbrella foundation managed by credit suisse – was granted charitable status for asia’s wealthy to channel their donations to elected causes (sharma, 2013). financially savvy singapore has also been quick to adopt venture philanthropy and to promote it regionally. the asian venture philanthropy network (avpn) and impact investing exchange (iix) asia are among an increasing number of impact investment firms and funds that aim to “connect the wall streets of the world to the backstreets of underserved communities” (impact investment exchange [iix], 2017) through financing of small and medium enterprises (smes) in asia that pursue positive social and environmental outcomes as well as monetary gains (šoštaric, 2015). planning for the future, in 2016 the government together with the tote board foundation founded the singapore centre for social enterprise (raise) to promote social enterprises and impact investments. the indonesian government has also taken new steps to capitalize on rising corporate wealth and incentivize private contributions to development initiatives. in 2007, indonesia was among the first countries globally and the only in southeast asia to make csr mandatory with law 40/2007 on limited liability companies, which obliges corporations exploiting natural resources to assign a percentage of their profits to charity or csr-related projects (gentile, 2014). in the same year, law 25/2007 specified the corporate responsibilities of foreign investors, and a ministerial regulation set the percentage that state-owned enterprises ought to direct to nine sustainable development sectors, including partnership and financial aid (tanaya, gunawan, pusaka, & nugroho, 2016). since 2010 the indonesian government has also required listed companies to report on the effects of their activities on society and the environment. to sweeten these obligations, which a large part of the business sector sees as burdensome, government regulation 93/2010 provides annual tax 144 | aseas 10(2) philanthropy in southeast asia: between charitable values, corporate interests, and development aspirations deductions up to a maximum of 5% of net revenue earned during the previous fiscal year for spending in fields like disaster management, research, sports, education, and social infrastructure (assegaf hamzah & partners [ahp], 2012). legislative reforms also extend to religious giving. building on law 38/1999, which first stipulated the management of zakat and validated the organizations, semi-public and private, to collect it, law 23/2011 sought to exert greater government’s control over financial flows and help semi-governmental bodies better exploit the zakat to achieve improved welfare in the country (saidurrahman, 2013). such innovations are spreading throughout the whole region. for instance, encouraged by indonesia’s bold approach, malaysia, the philippines, and thailand are now attempting to institutionalize csr by working to overcome companies’ resistance to government interference. the asean csr network (acn) was also established in 2011 to promote csr as an integral part of development in the region (asean csr network, 2017). other regional venues launched in the last decade to discuss emerging philanthropic approaches include the philanthropy in asia summit, the avpn conference, and the southeast asia international islamic philanthropy conference. these advancements, however, have yet to create a comprehensive fiscal and legal environment for philanthropy. a recent study of the highand middle-level economies of indonesia, the philippines, singapore, and thailand, acknowledges recent positive efforts and the possibility that the charitable sector in the region can progress in ways not even yet imagined, but somberly states: overall, this study finds the environment for philanthropy in the region to be quite challenging. tax policies are either neutral or ineffective in incentivizing philanthropy; opportunities for the charitably-minded to gain the skills necessary to address complex social problems are lacking; partnerships between civil society organizations and funders that enable the capabilities of each other are rare; and the data that would assist the nascent field in quickly prototyping and innovating are non-existent and to some extent resisted. (anand, 2014, p. 7) in particular, several constraints were identified: poor data availability and transparency; inadequate benefits related to income and inheritance taxes; ambiguous legal definitions and lack of policies specific to the sector, including no legal distinction between grant-giving and grant-seeking foundations (true even in the philippines); poor enforcement of laws when they exist (as in the case of mandatory csr in indonesia); and limited learning opportunities for donors. the generally mixed attitude of philanthropists towards ngos seen as playing an oppositional role, and government restrictions in controlling them, have also affected the development of the philanthropic sector, since ngos are the typical grant recipients. as an example, most ngos are unable to register as charities in singapore and, therefore, remain excluded from the privileges tied to charity status, foremost being exemption from income taxes and being allowed to raise funds publicly (anand, 2014). these observations are echoed in the index of philanthropy freedom 2015, the first-ever global report on legal and regulatory incentives and barriers to giving (adelman, barnett, & russell, 2015). with the exception of the philippines, all countries of southeast asia – as also in the rest of asia – scored below the global average aseas 10(2) | 145 rosalia sciortino on the three main indicators: 1) ease of registering and operating civil society organizations; 2) tax policies for deductions, credits, and exemptions; and 3) ease of sending and receiving cash and in-kind goods across borders. the report points to the limited space for human rights groups and other ngos to operate due to elaborate administrative and legal barriers, and to limitations on public gatherings and freedom of expression. for instance, malaysia shows a tendency to employ domestic security and counter-terrorism laws against ngos, while vietnam makes it impossible for organizations working on human rights, anti-corruption, or other sensitive issues to register. improvements were only recorded in myanmar, where in 2014, revisions to the association registration law liberalized the country’s regulations for civil society groups. in a climate of renewed authoritarianism and shrinking civil society space across the region (amnesty international, 2017), such restrictions can only be expected to become tighter. rules and regulations also do not encourage cross-border (including intra-regional) philanthropy. the most apparent case is singapore which, in spite of its eagerness to attract international organizations and donors, has an 80:20 ratio rule that prescribes that 80% of funds raised from the public must be used locally (hayling et al., 2014). more generally, the report concludes that the environment for philanthropy in the region is underdeveloped and does not provide a favorable fiscal space for promoting donations or developing the nonprofit sector (adelman, barnett, & russell, 2015). exogenous promotion of local philanthropy: the paradigm shift in spite of the uncertain environment and the enduring dominance of individual donations, home-grown foundations and other forms of institutionalized giving are multiplying. this is especially apparent in the wealthier countries of singapore, malaysia, indonesia, thailand, and the philippines, but even in the poorer countries, the philanthropic sector is gradually emerging. proliferation drivers for local philanthropy include: ever increasing amounts of accumulated wealth; public awareness of growing socio-economic disparities; mounting pressure on the better off and corporations to contribute to sustainable development; government’s backing down from providing public services and instead seeking partnerships with the private sector; and civil society groups’ search for alternatives to the declining support of foreign donors (johnson, johnson, & kingman, 2015). most recently, new revenue opportunities promised by venture philanthropy have generated an unprecedented buzz for social engagement in the region. an enabling role has historically been played by international, especially american, donors and foundations – foremost among them the ford foundation – that have promoted local philanthropy in southeast asia and other parts of the world since the 1980s. these foundations supported initiatives to build the philanthropic sector in the countries where they worked in the belief that “philanthropy has an important role to play in addressing human challenges and strengthening civil society” and that ultimately it would be more sustainable than foreign funding to tackle development issues (johnson et al., 2015, p. 4; johnson & simmons, 2003). in later years, lower international aid levels earmarked for asia (bhattacharjee, culshaw & anand, 2004) strengthened the motivation to support local funding sources that could 146 | aseas 10(2) philanthropy in southeast asia: between charitable values, corporate interests, and development aspirations continue nurturing the non-profit sector after foreign donors withdraw (alliance magazine, 1998). eventually, the focus became more normative as foundations shifted their emphasis “from encouraging a culture of philanthropy per se to promoting philanthropy that advances social change” (johnson et al., 2015, p. 8). the ford foundation and like-minded foundations, for instance, increasingly promoted social justice philanthropy in which grant-making is directed at systemic or institutional change and the overcoming of economic and environmental inequities to expand opportunities for disadvantaged populations (see also fauzia, this issue). along with these philanthropic concepts, practices and institutions originating in the west were also spread, as american foundations tended to replicate their experience. in southeast asia, like in other parts of the world, they aimed to create the conditions that, based on their own history, were considered necessary for local philanthropy to take off, including a clear legal framework, a tax structure providing incentives, an accountability system for grant-givers and grantees, sufficient institutional capacity, and sufficient resources (worldwide initiatives for grantmaker support, 2013). to realize this vision, they funded a wide variety of programs ranging from capacity building, research, and cross-country exchanges to the enactment of fiscal and regulatory reforms for the non-profit sector, the development of accreditation systems (such as pcnc), and the establishment of indigenous foundations and foundation-like entities. favored institutional models included community foundations that were considered suitable vehicles to connect local needs to resources, and – often as part of a donor’s exit strategy – endowed grant-making foundations similar to american foundations working internationally. they were thus expected to be fully devoted to grant-making, to be operated by professional officers, and governed by an independent board. their expenditures would be covered by gains from investing endowment funds, and their grants would operationalize a structured program strategy that would pursue specific development goals and would privilege civil society organizations as recipients of support. telling examples include endowed foundations established in the 1990s through grants and debt-for-development swaps under bilateral programs with the us, canada, and other partners, like the foundation for philippine environment (fpe) and the foundation for sustainable societies (fss) in the philippines; the indonesian biodiversity foundation (kehati) in indonesia; and the development cooperation foundation (dcf) in thailand (baron, 1997; ong, 2010; sabio & jaegal, 2010). later, governments in the region also initiated grant-making foundations with public funds, but operated and managed semi-independently by private boards of trustees. even if these hybrid foundations do not fit the classic definition, it will become clear below that they have established nevertheless a significant presence in southeast asia and in the way they operate to this day best represent the imported prototype, including in their funding of ngos, where governments allow it. international agencies also spearheaded the creation of national and regional networks, of which the most important was the manila-based asia pacific philanthropy consortium (appc). building on a series of conferences, the appc was launched in 1995 with the support of the ford foundation and other private and corporate donors in australia, south korea, japan, the philippines, and the united states. as a network of grant-making institutions, the appc aimed to promote local philanthropy and aseas 10(2) | 147 rosalia sciortino strengthen indigenous grant-making entities within each country. activities included a human resources program run by pbsp; a research program entrusted to the asia foundation; and a program of networking and exchanges for staff and principals of philanthropic organizations (alliance magazine, 1998). the exogenous strengthening of local philanthropy, with all its intended and unintended upshots, was eventually transformed by a drastic paradigmatic shift in the early 2000s with the establishment of the bill and melinda gates foundation (bmgf) and the global rise of venture philanthropy. its business-derived and technocratic paradigm dismissed “the cultural, humanistic, and political sides of the equation” (anft, 2015) directing grants towards technical aspects of agriculture, health, agriculture, entrepreneurship, and microfinance, instead of towards the ‘soft’ and less quantifiable fields, such as human rights, humanities, culture, and the arts (feinstein, 2012). following thomas friedman's (2005) view of the world as “flat”, development problems and solutions were now conceived as ‘global’ and managed from headquarters. this challenged the kind of socially-engaged and contextual grant-making practiced in southeast asia by american and, to a lesser extent, by japanese foundations such as the toyota, japan, and nippon foundations. even if these ‘traditional’ foundations did not fully adopt the more ideological tenets of the new paradigm and often kept to the old rhetorics, their modalities changed. increasingly field offices had to relinquish their functions, and if not shut down in the name of efficiency (as was the case of the ford foundation closing its thailand, philippines, and vietnam offices and leaving only that in indonesia open), they have been left providing little more than logistical support with limited responsive grant-making in southeast asia (with the rockefeller foundation’s regional office in bangkok being a case in point.) with this reduced presence, direct grant-making to local, especially civil society organizations suffered as the new foundations not only had other priorities, but also chose to fund from a distance and through intermediary grantees in their countries of origin. this bias clearly emerges from a quick scan of the bmgf’s grant database, which shows a scarcity of local institutions among grantees in the philippines, indonesia, thailand, and cambodia.5 moreover, as feinstein (2010, p. 92) summarizes: there is a corresponding devaluing of certain modalities of foundation support that were a hallmark of the old foundations, but do not fit well with the results-driven approach. these include, for instance, support for individual fellowships and scholarships, for which the rockefeller and ford foundations were famous; the building up of academic fields and departments; capacity-building grants including operational support for local institutions; and support for developing local philanthropy. none of these have great attraction in the new approach. direct promotion of home-grown philanthrophy diminished, and this affected organizations on the ground, including some high-profile associations like appc, which was absorbed into the asia foundation’s giving program give2asia in 2011 and eventually became inactive. some organizations in countries where field offices 5 an exception in southeast asia is vietnam, where the government received substantial amounts. 148 | aseas 10(2) philanthropy in southeast asia: between charitable values, corporate interests, and development aspirations have survived may still receive funding, but at the lower level and for participation in global initiatives. for example, the philanthropy association of indonesia (ipa), established in 2003 with ford foundation’s funding, has come to represent indonesia as one of the four pilot countries for the implementation of the sdg philanthropy platform, spearheaded by the ford foundation to foster greater local philanthropic involvement in the achievement of the sdgs (filantropi indonesia, 2017). an exception to this declining trend, deserving greater analysis, is the regional expansion of the open society foundation (osf) and its continued funding of those local foundations it helped establish such as the tifa foundation of indonesia in 2000 (darmawan triwibowo, director of tifa, march 2017). as old and new paradigms exist alongside each other, cross-fertilization of ideas and practices has become more diversified. funding streams in the region originate from a wider range of international foundations including those subscribing to a more businessand less social justice-oriented model of philanthropy. resources are channeled through more assorted layers of intermediaries, and for-profit organizations play a greater role in fostering local philanthropy of a different kind. in the late 1990s, csr was introduced to southeast asia by locally-based multinational companies (mncs) to ameliorate environmental and social damage caused by mining and the exploitation of natural resources. they, and western-based mncs through their local supply chains, served as a model for csr programs of local companies in the region, to the extent that some have described them as “western mimicry” (amran & siti-nabiha, 2009, p. 358). the concept of venture philanthropy that originated in the uk and us has also found fertile ground in southeast asia, as exemplified in the previously mentioned singaporebased avpn, which is modeled after the european venture philanthropy association (evpa) and shares with it the same founder chairman (asian venture philanthropy network, 2017). more and more international banks, such as credit suisse and lgt capital partners, provide locally based services to philanthropists and impact investors and fund research on the philanthropic sector in southeast asia. as part of the paradigm shift, social enterprises or simply enterprises that promise financial as well as social returns are now the privileged partners of external donors, and ngos, when funded, are expected to provide operational services rather than advocating for social change. in parallel, efforts to promote home-grown philanthrophy no longer target givers of all financial means and backgrounds. taking center stage now are the extremely rich – starting from ‘high net worth individuals’ (hnwi), who have more than usd 1 million in liquid financial assets, onwards up to local billionaires, such as in the giving pledge, which was initiated by bill and melinda gates and warren buffet in 2010 in the us and later expanded to emerging economies. despite criticism as a public relations stunt culturally inappropriate for asia (wilkson, 2013), two southeast asian billionaires, dato tahir, chairman and ceo of the mayapada group and the tahir foundation in indonesia, and vincent tan chee yioun, founder of berjaya group berhad and chairman of better malaysia foundation in malaysia, have responded to the call to donate the majority of their wealth to philanthropic causes (the giving pledge, 2017). in 2013, the gates and tahir foundations made a joint commitment of usd 65 million each to the global fund to fight aids, tuberculosis, and malaria, with 75% earmarked for indonesia (morrison & bliss, 2013). this partnership continued in 2014 with the launch of the indonesia health fund to attract aseas 10(2) | 149 rosalia sciortino private and corporate donations during the subsequent five years for better health care in the country, in collaboration with eight indonesian “philanthropist tycoons” who pledged to donate usd 5 million each (anh ton, 2014). these developments are a strong indication of how much personal wealth has been accumulated in the region, and how it is being increasingly harnessed for philanthropy. family-centered ‘indigenization’ of philanthropy as capacity-building efforts from outside the region wane, the process of indigenization is accelerating regionally and nationally. for instance, after the demise of the appc in 2015 singaporean philanthropists stanley tan and laurence lien and indonesian philanthropist cherie nursalim founded the asian philanthropy circle (apc). this private membership platform aims to “advance a distinct asian brand of philanthropy to accelerate the public good in asia” and foster peer learning and collaboration among asian philanthropists in order to maximize impacts (coutts, 2015). what this ‘distinct brand’ implies for southeast asia still needs to be fleshed out, but as noted in the previous section, it does not seem to require all of the key regulatory and fiscal elements generally considered necessary for local philanthropy to grow. it also appears that most home-grown organizations have not followed the path international foundations initially envisioned. as hinted above, most of the region’s endowed foundations are government-backed rather than privately funded institutions, while individual and family donors generally operate through informal or corporate channels. already in 1997, a study by the asia foundation identified these conditions as specific to philanthropy in east asian, including southeast asian countries: • there is great diversity in the types of philanthropic institutions and foundation-like entities in east asia. unlike the u.s., however, there are still very few private foundations based on individual or family wealth. . . . • most philanthropic entities in the region are corporate foundations or, even more commonly, corporate giving programs funded on an annual basis rather than endowed. . . . • the emergence of several new kinds of grant-making foundations, which are at the interface of the public and private domains – those which are endowed with public funds but managed by at least semi-private boards of trustees. (baron, 1997) in relation to the scarcity of individual foundations, it has been argued that their establishment has been discouraged by cultural values that inhibit displays of wealth. rich individuals are expected to be communal and prioritize their families, clans, or patronage networks to justify as well as build their social position rather than endow an independent organization (baron, 1997). the fact that wealth is concentrated in the hands of ethnic chinese, who must be cautious in the face of varying degrees of discrimination throughout southeast asia, may also have acted as a deterring factor, although it may also have had the opposite result of driving them towards philanthropy in order “to secure a social license to operate” (department of foreign affairs and trade [dfat], 2015, p. 23). 150 | aseas 10(2) philanthropy in southeast asia: between charitable values, corporate interests, and development aspirations in the less frequent occasions when foundations are formally established, they are mostly family ventures, with funds coming from members of a single, often multi-generational family with strong ties to the family business. the ubs-insead study on family philanthropy in asia, which included indonesia, malaysia, the philippines, singapore, and thailand, identified “ensuring the continuity of family values or creating a lasting legacy” as the most common cause for establishing a foundation (ubs philanthropy services & insead, 2012, p. 17). other considerations seen as key to the foundation as well as to the underlying business were developing family cohesion and enhancing leadership and management capabilities of younger generations. less commonly enunciated pragmatic reasons were exerting influence for political or business purposes; patronage; and increasing standing in the community. like the unstructured giving of prosperous individuals, these family foundations are also meant to meet communal expectations and, if in diaspora, maintain a connection to the country of origin, most often china (hayling et al., 2014; ubs philanthropy services & insead, 2012). the institutionalization of what still remains a minority of philanthropic initiatives is a recent process. of the 203 family foundations surveyed in the ubs-insead study more than 75% were legally established after 1980, and about 60% after 1990. in indonesia, malaysia, and singapore, about 50% were only founded after 2000. this is in line with observations that intergenerational change is occurring and the younger generation is more inclined toward institutionalized philanthropy (ubs philanthropy services & insead, 2012, pp. 13, 42). in this initial stage, southeast asian family foundations are operationally oriented and mix grant-making activities with direct implementation of programs. they also raise funds from other sources for their projects, thus becoming competitors with the very organizations they could be funding. when grants are provided, they tend to be ad hoc and given to persons and institutions known to the family. often personnel and administrative systems from family business are used to simplify processes and economize resources. some foundations will also make use of company profits and not only personal wealth for philanthropic engagements. such was the case of 22% of the family foundations surveyed in the ubs-insead (2012, p. 23) study, which reports: one has to be cognizant of the fact that in asia it is hard to establish degrees of separation between family philanthropy and company philanthropy/csr. often what is seen as individual or family giving is ‘company giving’ now practiced through the establishment of company foundations and trusts. funds flowing into these foundations include those of owners, investors, employees, and other stakeholders. this intertwining of family foundations with family business is unsurprising in a region where “the family continues to be an exceptionally strong locus for business and philanthropic activities” (ubs philanthropy services & insead, 2012, p. 16). moreover it reflects a more general bias of the philanthropy sector in southeast asia towards corporate entities and giving programs and business-derived approaches. aseas 10(2) | 151 rosalia sciortino corporate philanthropy pervades the landscape institutional models reflecting the complex relationship between philanthropy and business vary from complete fusion to separation of business and philanthropic functions as can be seen in table 1, with the great majority maintaining close connections between brand, funding, management, and focus of giving. table 1. philanthropy and business. (ubs philanthropy services & isead, 2012, p. 4). philanthropy and business interrelationship model mode mode of action example complete fusion the business is conceived and runs with the objective of social impact, but operates as a for-profit entity. today, in india, a family group runs an extensive network of for-profit educational and healthcare facilities that have made a substantial contribution to higher education in india. the group’s corporate foundation also supports thousands of young indians with scholarships. close connection brand the family brand is leveraged across the business, social, and political sectors. the ayala foundation is a foundation funded by the ayala corporation, the principal holding company of one of the largest philippine family groups. the foundation also solicits funds from other ayala group companies and from third parties. it also benefits from bearing the well-known family name. funding profits from the business sustain the philanthropic activities on a systematic basis. the tunaram group in singapore is involved in fast moving, consumer goods, and energy and infrastructure projects. profits are used to support corporate social responsibility (csr) and family philanthropic initiatives in singapore, other parts of asia, and africa management the philanthropic activity is actively managed with the support of business executives. one of the companies run by thailand’s chearavanont family – the magnolia corporation – has a csr program that is largely administered by company executives, who are also integral parts of the business side. contributions the focus of giving is closely tied to the focus of business. the founder of bigfoot entertainment – a film and media group with the most substantial operations in the philippines – has established a foundation which provides education in villages in the philippines through the use of film and new media. partial separation formal separation, crossover benefits the philanthropic activity is separately funded and managed, but may enjoy crossover benefits from the business. yusuf achmed, the chairman and managing director of one of the leading pharmaceutical companies in india, contributes to health care in developing countries. formal separation, minimal benefits the philanthropic activity is separately funded and managed, and crossover benefits are minimized. a major thai family is extremely private about its substantial philanthropic activities. the philanthropy venture does not receive funds from the business, has its own management, and is named differently from both the family name and the business name. complete separation principled delinking as a matter of principle, philanthropic and business activities are kept completely apart. the personal foundation of an established singaporean entrepreneur in the fashion, hospitality, and luxury industries operates on a distinct grant-making agenda while her business invests in csr and sustainability initiatives. 152 | aseas 10(2) philanthropy in southeast asia: between charitable values, corporate interests, and development aspirations the rare corporate foundations that are established as separate entities still continue to promote brand loyalty and strengthen the corporate reputation of the ‘mother company’ through the use of logos and brand names and by engaging in project areas relevant to their corporate interests. not many have endowments or yearly budgets, and resources are often allocated following requests from the company management and board members. this, compounded by the lack of public disclosure laws, makes it difficult to estimate their size, but it appears that most initiatives are in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. a few, however, have annual funding budgets in the millions of dollars (see table 2), with some of the largest even surpassing those of locally based international foundations. for instance, the ford foundation’s budget for indonesia in 2015 was usd 14 million, and thus less than that of the tahir foundation and the chairul tanjung foundation, which each had budgets of usd 19.7 million in that financial year (dfat, 2015, p. 5)6. in spite of their growing significance in the home-grown philanthropy sector, corporate foundations still do not match the resources and reach of religious and faith-based institutions (see section below). moreover, they generally have less spending capacity than government-backed yet autonomous grant-making foundations, which, as previously mentioned, feature prominently in southeast asia. for instance, in singapore, the two largest operations are the government-backed tote board, which was established in 1988 and gives out annual grants from gaming surpluses ranging between usd 357 million and usd 714 million per year to vulnerable communities, and the community chest, with annual funding of about usd 57 million to voluntary welfare organizations. only then comes the largest private foundation, the lee foundation of the lee group, which since its creation in 1952 through 2015 donated a total of about usd 714 million to various causes (chan, 2015). in the philippines and indonesia, the already mentioned environmental foundations based on debt swaps are among the largest grant-givers, with endowments topping millions 6 figures in this section are given for indication purposes only. indonesia tahir foundation usd 19.7 million (fy 2015 chairul tanjung foundation usd 19.7 million (fy 2015) sampoerna foundation usd 14.9 million (fy 2015) philippines the ramon aboitiz foundation usd 11.7 million (fy 2014) ayala foundation usd 8.4 million (fy 2015) vietnam kind heart foundation of vina group usd 11.4 million (fy 2015) table 2. annual funding budgets of the largest company-related/company-owned (mostly family-based) foundations in selected southeast asian countries fy 2015 or fy 2014. (dfat, 2015, p. 5). aseas 10(2) | 153 rosalia sciortino of dollars and a large grantee base mostly composed of ngos. in thailand, the thai health promotion foundation, an “autonomous government agency”, has annual revenue of about usd 120 million derived from a 2% surcharge on excise taxes on tobacco and alcohol (thaihealth, 2017), which makes it the largest funder, especially of civil society organizations, in the country. in assessing the financial relevance of corporate philanthropy, we should also note that the bulk of it is channeled through a wide range of often informal business-related philanthropic initiatives undertaken by the company itself. an increasing number of local companies have adopted csr as a model of philanthropy that is also effective for risk management purposes and as a branding and marketing tool, and this includes the numerous state-owned enterprises expected by law or society to follow responsible business practices. conducive factors have been the greater availability of training and support, having to comply with global market requirements, and, in some countries, pressure from ngos. government intervention has also been crucial. in indonesia, after the enactment of the csr law, self-reported engagement increased from 27% of 376 listed companies in 2008 to 94% of 486 listed companies in 2013 (tanaya et al., 2016). in thailand, fiscal incentives have been a primary motive for thai companies to adopt csr, followed by cost management and government pressure. as early as 2003 it was noted that their level of csr penetration was higher than among international companies in the country and in comparison to domestic companies in neighboring countries (chambers, chapple, moon, & sullivan, 2003) – a trend still observable today. whether due to carrots or sticks, between 2001 and 2013, csr boomed in indonesia, malaysia, philippines, singapore, and thailand while it started to grow in vietnam, laos, and cambodia. at the time, myanmar was out of the picture, but after its opening to the outside world csr has been gaining ground there, too (see dove, this issue; liong, 2013). this expansion, however, says nothing of the quality of reporting, performance, or the comprehensive nature of the approach. a recent review of csr in asian, including southeast asian, economies observed an inclination to ‘give back’ to communities through financial donations and non-cash contributions, with too little attention being paid to accountability and the enactment of gender, ethical, employment, and environmental standards in business practices (sharma, 2013). this resonates with a recent regional baseline study on the topic that concluded: “unfortunately, the existing trends of csr in southeast asia (e.g., ‘voluntary’, ‘top-bottom’, and ‘philanthropic’) are insufficient means for businesses to respect human rights” (thomas & chandra, 2014, p. 7). social entrepreneurship and social impact investment are also proving popular in southeast asia, especially among younger generations of philanthropists (ubs philanthropy services & isead, 2012, p. 52). the number of social enterprises initially started as non-profit organizations and now operating as businesses is growing. long-standing examples in thailand include the population and community development association, which provides diversified services from environmental and health programs to microcredit, and the doi tung development project, which is involved in high-end tourism, handicrafts, and organic food. their footsteps are followed by a myriad of small and medium businesses concerned with the environment, fair trade, and healthy lifestyles (chhina, petersik, loh, & evans, 2014). 154 | aseas 10(2) philanthropy in southeast asia: between charitable values, corporate interests, and development aspirations gradually, new-generation social enterprises have emerged that are fully for-profit, but committed to pursuing social goals. in business speak this is presented as aiming for a double (financial and social) or even triple (financial, social, and environmental) bottom line. for instance, the social enterprise quality index (seqi) developed by philsen in 2009 set out criteria for “doing well” in terms of business performance, “doing good” in terms of social performance, and “doing just” in upholding the environment, cultural soundness, and gender equity (ballesteros & llanto, 2017). although it is still to be proven the degree to which this multiple bottom line can be achieved and to what extent social enterprises can be accountable, effective, and profitable, they have gained the trust of venture philanthropists, foreign and local private investors, and corporate foundations (dfat, 2015). a sign of widespread regional interest was the launching of the usd 36 million dbs foundation in singapore in 2015 to mark the city-state’s 50th anniversary with the official mandate to champion social entrepreneurship. since then, it has provided capital to 80 social enterprises in singapore, india, indonesia, china, taiwan, and hong kong (dbs foundation, n.d.) through these various philanthropic forms, a multitude of causes are funded. generally, giving by corporate and family foundations concentrates on education (especially to construct buildings or provide scholarships) and, to a lesser extent, on medical care, preferably hospital buildings and helping to provide treatment for underprivileged groups, on community development in the area surrounding the company, and on ad hoc responses to disasters or community events. contributions to arts and culture, human rights, gender equity, and the environment are minimal, although younger philanthropists seem more interested in such causes than their parents. csr activities do support arts and culture, but more generally focus on mitigating environmental impacts and meeting social needs. compelled to deliver that multiple bottom line, social enterprises opt to provide services or undertake other profit-making social welfare activities in their field of choice. a 2014 study in singapore found that 56% of social enterprises provided services (including business-related), 10% were engaged in food and beverage, 10% in education, 8% in trade, and 6% in other fields (prakash & tan, 2014, p. 13). irrespective of the focus, there are few cases of the kind of philanthropy oriented towards structural change, as us foundations used to promote in local philanthropy. among the few examples active in the public arena is the singaporean lien foundation’s ‘radical philanthropy’, which explicitly aims to get at the roots of problems in elder care and end-of-life care, child education, and water (lien foundation, 2017). the majority of foundations, csr initiatives, and social enterprises are willing to work on ameliorating social and environmental problems with some intervention in economic processes, but they avoid engagement in political processes, policy reforms, or governance and human rights support. as a recent report concluded: “one finding that can be generalized across the region is that few philanthropic organizations engage in policy-related discussions or activities” (dfat, 2015, p. 7). some relate this stand to a heightened concern for reputational risks and potential conflict with the government and other parties that may also affect their business interests. as a result, ngos may not be funded or may see their funds decline if they engage in advocacy for structural change. this was the case for two leading women’s organizations in malaysia that lost corporate funding for women’s health and shelter aseas 10(2) | 155 rosalia sciortino when they started challenging human rights abuses and advocating for socio-economic reforms (cogswell, 2002, p. 118). others note that philanthropists’ hesitancy does not extend to using personal influence and connections, and at times funding, to advance their own agenda or the priorities of their company. still others argue that the mixing of corporate and social development purposes may not always serve the public interest as illustrated by the philanthropic activities of tobacco companies and related foundations, like the sampoerna foundation in indonesia (sciortino, 2015; tandilittin & luetge, 2015), and that it may even obstruct needed reforms: elites’ control of political, economic, social and cultural power can also be a barrier to change. in countries like the philippines and indonesia, a small group of families control large sections of economic activity, which means they provide many millions of jobs. but they may also restrict access to resources, such as land ownership, through their efforts to protect their business interests. some of the most significant philanthropic contributors may also be those standing in the way of important economic and political reforms. (dfat, 2015, p. 7) these and other possible reservations about the genuine motivations of csr and more generally corporate philanthropy contrast with the broad trust enjoyed by religious organizations and their being upheld as the ‘good samaritan’ in society, though they may not necessarily be more transparent in their practices. in between charity and philanthropy religious institutions can be seen as the precursors of institutionalized giving in southeast asia. as early as the 16th century, the catholic church launched its charitable legacy in the philippines. during the spanish occupation, gifts received from the wealthy were channelled to obras pias or charitable foundations for the sick or for orphans, as well as to finance maritime trade and other activities that would benefit the church and its endeavours. centuries later, during the american colonial period, protestant missions started charitable activities and funded orphanages, hospices, hospitals, schools, and universities, at times with substantial support from american philanthropists like john d. rockefeller (angara, 2016). christian charities and their networks of hospices, hospitals, and schools were also established in other parts of the region following the spread of european mercantile and colonial interests (goh, 2005). in muslim southeast asia, the early waqf funds established in the 19th century contributed not only to the building of mosques and burial grounds but also to the construction of urban infrastructure still visible today, as in malaysia’s georgetown and singapore (brown, 2013; nagaoka, 2016). this faith-based giving tradition continues to figure prominently in southeast asia in terms of numbers of religious organizations, the level of donations they receive, and the extent of the funded and implemented activities. in singapore, of the 2,217 registered charities in 2015 more than the half, or 1,290, were religious charities, trailed by charities promoting welfare (383), health (134), education (121), arts and heritage (137), community (87), and sports (59) (ministry of culture, community, and youth, 2016). in the philippines, the catholic church and its religious orders form the 156 | aseas 10(2) philanthropy in southeast asia: between charitable values, corporate interests, and development aspirations largest non-profit organization in the country with an unmatched network of funded or affiliated organizations including health and educational institutions, schools, media agencies, and community groups (cariño, fernan iii, martinez, barlis, & tupas, 2001; fernan, 2002). in thailand, for the majority buddhist population temples are the locus of philanthropy both in terms of giving as well as receiving, distributing a large part of the collected donations to a variety of social causes, including care to aids patients and for community development activities (wattanasiritham, 2007). mosques play a similar function in muslim communities across southeast asia. they collect and distribute donations, religious taxes, and manage the assets of waqf endowments for assistance to surrounding communities, also in countries where islam is a minority religion. for instance, in singapore there are more than 100 registered waqf, and in thailand, diverse muslim ethnic groups all have their specific waqf to fund religious, educational, and welfare institutions, buildings, and activities for their communities (brown, 2013; brown, 2014; prapertchob, 1991). aside from traditional charity forms centred in mosques and islamic boarding schools and few foundations started by wealthy muslims, in the last two decades professional islamic philanthropic organizations have emerged, which are specifically devoted to the management of financial resources for socio-economic purposes. they have revitalized investments of cash waqf and introduced more efficient collection systems for zakat and sadaqah. the most progressive among them have adopted development-oriented theological interpretations of zakat enabling wider funding of non-religious causes and the financing and implementation of a variety of development and relief programs. an illustration of the recognition of the relevance of islamic philanthropy regionally is the awarding of the ramon magsaysay award – viewed as the asian equivalent of the nobel price – to the first and largest professional islamic philanthropic organization in indonesia, dompet dhuafa (dd), in 2016 for its contribution to addressing social problems since its establishment in 1993 (see fauzia as well as latief, this issue). the substantial resources of this wide range of faith-based charitable and philanthropic organizations typically do not come from institutional grants. unlike in the u.s., in southeast asia family and corporate foundations, even when motivated by religious convictions, do not prioritize funding to religious causes. among the exceptions are the buddharaksa foundation of the chearavanont family and the related dt group in thailand, which has an explicit focus on religion and funds buddhist schools, monasteries, and nunneries (thai giving, 2017), and the nanang felicidad t. sy foundation, related to the sm group, which is directed at endorsing catholicism. generally, however, religious institutions are critically dependent on cash and in-kind donations from individuals and families, and only secondarily count on income-generating assets and, increasingly, payments from social services. to give some indications of the sums involved: the approximately 40,000 temples in thailand receive about usd 2.83 billion annually in individual donations (see phaholyothin, this issue). in indonesia, dd is considered the largest philanthropic organization nationally in terms of donations, having collected in 2015 a total of voluntary contributions and zakat taxes equivalent to about usd 23 million (dana zakat dominasi, 2017). in the same year, the overall total of zakat collection by entitled semi-public and private institutions reached almost usd 3 billion and aseas 10(2) | 157 rosalia sciortino the annual potential amount is estimated to be hundreds of times higher (general directorate of taxation, 2016). this reflects people’s inclination to give to religious institutions, when they donate to organizations rather than to individuals in their community as is commonly the case. in the philippines of the 86% of households that donated to organizations in the period 1999-2000, 73% gave to churches and 29% to social services, with a minimal percentage going to, in decreasing order, culture and recreation groups; education and research; local neighbourhood groups; health groups; and development and housing. most of the recipients focused on the surrounding communities, while less than 10% of households gave to advocacy and ngos with broader mandates. as the study concludes, people prefer to give to those that address local concerns, while “organizations that go beyond the purely local and towards more abstract and policy type issues tend to attract less individual giving” (fernan, 2002, p.2). likewise, in indonesia, a 2006 study of islamic philanthropy by the syarif hidayatullah state islamic university found that while 94% of the muslim population gave to religious institutions, only 11% donated to environmental groups, 11% to women’s organization, and 3% to human rights organizations (see fauzia, this issue). a 2012 survey of giving in five provinces across thailand7 found that temples are the most frequent beneficiaries of giving to organizations (93%), followed by educational institutions (83%), hospitals and health organizations (74%), community organizations (65%) and royal-affiliated projects (49%). the same survey also found that temples are perceived as the most trustworthy and effective charitable organizations, followed by royal-affiliated projects (assumption university in chhina., petersik, loh, & evans, 2014, p. 92). even if widely trusted by the public, religious organizations do not always have transparent financial and management systems, and there have been highly publicized occurrences of corruption and mismanagement such as the mega-church scandal in singapore, or the usd 20 million temple embezzlement case in thailand (farley, 2017; lesley, 2015). like corporate and family foundations, religious organizations tend to provide only scant information to the public on the funds involved and even less on their use and impacts. there are worries, also at the government level, that accumulated resources are not always promptly disbursed and assets remain unproductive. concerns have also been raised on the sectarian inclination of religious institutions. while many do work for the broader society, there is a tendency to employ resources to advance the congregation’s well-being, or to proselytize. christian groups have a long tradition of promoting their faith through educational and health activities (goh, 2005). in thailand, temple assistance mainly concerns the buddhist community, and mosques’ resources focus on muslim communities (prapertchob, 1991). for malaysia, cogswell (2002) notes that despite legal requirements and official statements that stress inclusive philanthropy, most charity and philanthropic institutions, and especially religious ones, are organized according to the ethnic and religious lines of buddhist-chinese, muslim-malays and hindu-indians with giving mostly directed to “the religious or cultural preservation of the ethnic group of the donor” (cogswell, 2002, p. 107). 7 the survey locations were greater bangkok, chiang mai, khon kaen, chonburi, and songkla. 158 | aseas 10(2) philanthropy in southeast asia: between charitable values, corporate interests, and development aspirations in recent times, fears have also surfaced about the rise of fundamentalism in the region and the financial support channelled by international (as well as national) faith-based donors. after 9/11, the focus has mainly been on islamic humanitarian organizations and on trying to differentiate those that may use aid to finance islamist groups from those that seek to alleviate suffering and foster economic development (ibrahim, 2014). some attention is also given to trans-border connections among extremist buddhist movements and foundations in sri lanka, myanmar, and thailand (arora, 2014). in singapore and the philippines, links of conservative local christian groups with those in the us and the external funding of mega churches and evangelization efforts have been questioned. donations also flow the other way around; for instance, in indonesia there are often fund-raising campaigns for humanitarian issues that have been politicized by radical groups such as the persecution of the rohingya community in myanmar and the palestine cause. a more general point of debate concerning religious organizations in southeast asia as in other parts of the worlds is whether they engage in charity or philanthropy. indeed, much of their work is ad hoc and focused mainly on religious activities and otherwise on alleviating the suffering of the poor, orphans, disabled people, and other vulnerable groups. although many also contribute to more sustainable community development, including education, health, and welfare, it can be generalized that for religious communities, like their corporate counterparts, structural change is rarely part of their agenda. conclusion in a region undergoing rapid and unequal economic growth, accumulated wealth is increasingly being used to ameliorate the underprivileged conditions of those lagging behind. in spite of the uncertain fiscal and legal environment, home-grown philanthropy is flourishing compounded by cultural traditions, religious aspirations, and corporate interests. institutionalized giving is predominantly organized in family and corporate initiatives, semi-autonomous foundations funded by government sources, and faith-based institutions. an assessment of the extent of their overall contribution to southeast asia’s development is challenged by the lack of detailed information on the available financial resources and how they are used. there is sufficient evidence, however, to conclude that their contribution is valuable in enhancing the welfare of individuals and families through the provision of social services and education and for the relief of immediate suffering. other sectors receive less attention; in particular, philanthropic and charitable funding shows scant appreciation for the importance of the arts and humanities and the ‘soft’ sides of development for society. with the enthusiastic adoption of venture philanthropy in southeast asia and further blurring of philanthropy and business, this lack can be expected to remain if not expand in the years to come. given the authoritarian trend in the region, home-grown philanthropy also seems to deny a place to human rights advocacy and the pursuit of structural change. religious giving caught in between charity and philanthropy is generally not geared towards transformative processes and often does not propose an inclusive approach. sectarian and extremist trends in all faith denominations deserve further research to better aseas 10(2) | 159 rosalia sciortino understand their implications. albeit for different reasons, the currently validated models of csr, social entrepreneurship, and social impact investment, by their very nature, do not appear promising for a social justice agenda. in the past, international foundations provided support to more critical causes, but with a decline in foreign aid and a paradigm shift toward a more technocratic and business approach to philanthropy, the level of funding from such sources has dropped and can be expected to decline further. as i argue in another paper (sciortino, 2016), this does not imply that humanistic and social justice approaches are no longer relevant. on the contrary, with the acceleration of regional economic integration and the strengthening of fundamentalist and nationalist discourses, questions of equitable and inclusive development are more pressing than ever. this article thus leaves unresolved how efforts to address these questions can be resourced and how can concerned civil society groups find alternative sources of funding to remain vibrant. experiments are underway to broaden the donor base with crowd-funding and electronic platforms, but it is too early to judge their value for advocacy and human rights ngos. this article also brings us to reflect on whether giving that focuses on profit and corporate branding – without aiming at bringing about structural change – should be seen as just another form of doing possibly more accountable business, rather than philanthrophy. this all suggests that moving past the rhetoric on partnership in attaining sustainable development goals will require a more emancipatory brand of southeast asian philanthropy. at the moment, however, that looks more like wishful thinking.  references adelman, c., barnett, j., & russell, k. 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(2013). infrastructure in focus: a global picture of organizations serving philanthropy. report. retrieved from https://c.ymcdn.com/sites/wingsweb.site-ym.com/ resource/resmgr/files/17730.pdf about the author dr. rosalia sciortino is associate professor at the institute for population and social research, mahidol university, visiting professor in the master in international development studies (maids), chulalongkorn university, and founder and director of sea junction (www.seajunction.org). formerly, she served as regional director for the international development research centre (idrc) in singapore and for the rockefeller foundation in bangkok, and as program officer in the ford foundation’s jakarta and manila offices. ► contact: rosaliasciortino@yahoo.com acknowledgements i am grateful to margot cohen, patrick mccormick, and alan feinstein for their comments and editorial assistance. aseas 12(2) | 149 police use of deadly force in the philippines: comparing levels and patterns before and since duterte peter kreuzer ► kreuzer, p. (2019). police use of deadly force in the philippines: comparing levels and patterns before and since duterte. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 12(2), 149-166. this article provides a detailed analysis of pre-duterte and duterte police use of deadly force in the philippines. it first develops a set of indicators that allow for assessing the magnitude of police use of deadly force in “armed encounters”, its relation to the threat environments in which the police operate, and the lethality of such violence. then, based on a self-developed dataset for the pre-duterte decade and the abs-cbn dataset on duterte period police killings, it establishes the past and current patterns of police use of deadly force. the analysis shows that in the past decade as under duterte inter-provincial spatial and temporal variation of police use of deadly force has been very high. differences in the threat environment play only a minor role in explaining this variation. differences in sub-national units’ reactions to the duterte campaign mirror those in police use of deadly force during the earlier decade, signaling strong path-dependency. lethality-levels have been outstanding in both periods despite dramatically differing levels of lethal violence. clearly, philippine police tended to shoot-to-kill already before duterte granted them a carte blanche. keywords: duterte; philippines; police killings; police use of force; police violence  introduction the history of the modern philippines is also a history of political violence that comes in many forms. the philippines still harbors a revolutionary movement that challenges the state. the long-standing ethnopolitical armed conflict seems currently to be coming to an end after half a century of intermittent fighting. further, the philippines stands out with respect to less prominent forms of political violence in southeast asia. despite being the oldest democracy in the region, philippine elections are regularly accompanied by the killing of officeholders, candidates, and political supporters; not to mention that the philippines are the regional front-runner with respect to killed journalists, political activists, and human rights defenders. finally, one should also mention that the philippines have by far the highest homicide rate in southeast asia. taken together, these observations signal that by regional standards the philippines seem to have a multidimensional problem of violence. whereas the spatial and temporal patterns of most of the above-mentioned forms of violence are fairly well documented, police use of deadly force against criminal suspects has escaped public and scholarly attention almost completely in the past. aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 19 150 | aseas 12(2) police use of deadly force in the philippines this has only changed recently, when rodrigo duterte instigated a vast anti-drug-crime campaign as he took over as president of the philippines on 30 june 2016. reports on campaign-like killings of criminal suspects focused almost completely on the dirty work of death squads that were generally perceived to have been instigated and led by local politicians and manned to a significant extent by moonlighting policemen. this made the everyday violence perpetrated by the police under the label of “armed encounter” largely invisible in the media. with the philippine national police (pnp) proudly reporting success measured not only by the number of arrests, but also by the number of suspects killed in “legitimate encounters”, police use of deadly force became a prominent subject of public discourse. yet, attention is mostly focused on the obvious, on the monstrous phenomenon that catches the eye. a number of questions are largely left unanswered: what was the magnitude of police use of deadly force before duterte? what did its spatial dispersal look like? how much did violent police behavior increase under duterte as compared to earlier police use of force? do we see much path-dependency, or do sub-national units react differently from what might be expected on account of their past records of police violence? to what extent do magnitude as well as spatial and temporal variations of violence relate to objective factors of threat and danger to which policemen are exposed to different degrees in varying environments? and, how many of the killings do not result from selfdefense, but must be categorized as extra-judicial killings? some of these questions have been left unanswered for lack of empirical data, others for want of a suitable approach. when answers are provided these are generally based on analyses of a small number of cases. whether these are representative of the general situation or rather exceptions is as unclear as whether there is one general pattern of police use of deadly force and not an array of different local patterns. this article intends to fill these gaps by providing a comprehensive analysis of armed encounters between the pnp and (supposedly) armed suspects on the sub-national level from 2006 until 2018. spatial and temporal analyses allow for the creation of a detailed map of such violence that uncovers patterns that are lost in works based on small samples of rather prominent cases, as for example studies on earlier vigilantism in davao under duterte, in cebu city under mayor tomas osmeña, or in other cities and municipalities (human rights watch, 2009). these patterns also escape most analyses of current police violence under duterte that tend to miss the extraordinary spatial and temporal variation in the concrete patterns police deadly use of force takes in the various provinces of the philippines. the rest of the paper is organized as follows. section two summarizes literature on police violence in the philippines. section three introduces the concepts and indicators that i use to analyze police violence. section four describes the datasets used in the analysis. finally, in section five i investigate the temporal and spatial patterns of preduterte and duterte police violence as well as the role of the threat and the lethality of pnp use of deadly force. police violence in the philippines: a short overview of the literature even though police use of deadly force is a regularly reported by philippine media, it has been largely ignored by social scientific research. in general, it has been subsumed aseas 12(2) | 151 peter kreuzer under the broader heading of extralegal, summary, and arbitrary executions by human rights groups, as for example by the free legal assistance group (2007) and the special report of the united nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, philip alston (2008a, 2008b, 2009), which, however, gave prominence to violence exerted against journalists, human rights defenders, and social activists (see also, parreño, 2011). studies that focused on violence against suspected criminals focused exclusively on the phenomenon of death squad killings (breuil & rozema, 2009; human rights watch, 2009; picardal, 2016). karapatan, a left-wing ngo that provides the most comprehensive account of state-perpetrated violence likewise does not cover fatal violence against criminal suspects in its statistics1. one of the first studies to explicitly take note of this specific form of violence was a study on the role of violence in upholding domination by political families in pampanga (kreuzer, 2012) that established a typology of “top-down violence” that included police shoot-outs as a distinct category (kreuzer, 2012, pp. 24-26). even prominent “armed encounters” as the one in atimonan (quezon province) in 2013, in which 13 suspected members of a drug syndicate were summarily killed by combined forces of the pnp and the armed forces of the philippines (afp) at a checkpoint, did not elicit serious scientific interest, even though in this case a forensic report by the philippine national bureau of investigation concluded: “the apparent objective of the operation was to kill all the victims” (national bureau of investigation, 2013, p. 49). it is no exaggeration to argue that scholarly research on police killings in the philippines started with the duterte campaign in 2016. in late 2016, reyes (2016) and curato (2016) offered two analyses that both focus on the phenomenological side of the current campaign. both address the seeming paradox that a policy that victimizes thousands of people apparently has enduring public support. whereas curato (2016) links this to penal populism, reyes (2016) conceives of police killings as spectacles of violence conveying the message that certain people do not belong to the people and can (or should) be killed in order to “enhance personal safety, public safety and law and order, which is very appealing to ordinary people who experienced insecurity in their daily lives” (reyes, 2016, p. 118). sheila coronel (2017) sets out from a different vantage point that focuses closely on the economic logic underlying police perpetrated killings of suspects. she argues that, under duterte, police-officers are rewarded with money and promotions if they meet the president’s demands; theft of victims’ belongings during police operations is tolerated as is extortion from drug suspects. she concludes that to many police officers, the drug-war has become a thriving business. linking the present to reports of past police involvement in crime, she also argues that police officers directly profit from the new opportunities to neutralize opponents in various spheres of illegal business. according to her, “duterte’s drug war was waged by a police force accustomed to extortion and execution”, a force that embraced the opportunity provided by duterte’s policy “as entrepreneurs looking for maximum gain” (coronel, 2017, p. 189). her argument is given a further twist by jensen and hapal (2018). they provide an analysis of past and present police practice in the largest barangay2 of the philippines, located in quezon city, that harbors 1 http://www.karapatan.org 2 smallest administrative division in the philippines. 152 | aseas 12(2) police use of deadly force in the philippines a large community of urban poor. they argue that violent police coercion should be interpreted as a specific activity in exchange relationships that link the police to the (poor) local communities. in the past, selective extralegal killings provided the iron fist behind a normally smoothly working system that allowed police officers to extort money from suspects in exchange for release. duterte’s war on drugs “reconfigured the parameters of these relationships” to the advantage of the police, as “the price of survival seems to have gone up significantly” (jensen & hapal, 2018, pp. 57-58). while these studies are insightful with respect to certain dynamics driving police violence, it is still largely unclear in how far the observed patterns are representative for the philippines. further, the extent as well as the temporal and spatial variation of pre-duterte police use of deadly force is not dealt with. in june 2018, david, mendoza, atun, cossid, and soriano (2018) published the first quantitative analysis of the lethal violence associated with the anti-drug campaign from may 2016 to september 2017. their core results closely tally the analysis below. my analysis goes further in two respects: it extends to july 2018 and includes the provincial level, whereas david et al.’s (2018) analysis focuses on the regional level only. they conclude that lethal police (and vigilante) violence is distributed highly unevenly with the vast majority of killings happening in the national capital region (ncr)3 and the directly adjacent regions 3 and 4a (see, figure 1). like the abs-cbn news (n.d.) dataset employed in this study (see below), david et al. (2018) only list the numbers of suspects killed but neither the number of the suspects wounded nor the police officers killed or wounded. their dataset further does not allow to draw any conclusions about continuity and change from pre-duterte to duterte-period police use of deadly force. indicators for measuring and evaluating police use of (deadly) force indicators for three core dimensions of police violence that allow for a fairly comprehensive mapping will be established: indicators for measuring magnitude, threat level to which police officers are exposed, and lethality of police violence. these rest on initial efforts of paul chevigny (1990, 1991), which, however, have only sporadically been used in research on police violence during the past decades. a first scale for measuring the magnitude of police violence parallels the one used for measuring crime: police use of deadly force in relation to population (suspects killed per million inhabitants). a second scale, number of suspects killed divided by criminal killings, takes into account the abstract threat faced by police officers depending on the environment in which they operate. it assumes that police officers who operate in a dangerous environment (based on the ratio of murder and homicides per million population) will be more prone to use potentially deadly force than police officers who operate in peaceful environments. this second indicator of the relative magnitude of police violence already factors in one core explanation or justification for lethal police violence: the potential threat to which police officers are exposed. in so far it serves a dual purpose: to establish a relative scale for magnitude and simultaneously provide an answer to the question of whether police violence is a reaction to the objective threat level of the environment. 3 that is, metropolitan manila. aseas 12(2) | 153 peter kreuzer this dimension of ‘threat’ can be further specified by focusing on the direct threat experienced by police officers in a given environment, that is, the number of police officers that have been or are currently victimized in encounters in relation to the size of the police force (police officers killed/police force). this scale can be broadened by also considering how many police officers have been wounded in armed encounters (police officers wounded/police force). the final two scales focus on the levels of lethality of police use of force in armed encounters. here the core assumptions come, on the one hand, from the legal frameworks for police use of force that stress that use of force has to be reasonable and is legitimate only to avert imminent threats to the lives and well-being of the police officers or other persons. on the other hand, if police shoot-to-kill only in situations of self-defense in armed encounters, and when reports regularly state that suspects fired first, then one should assume a certain number of killed or wounded victims on the side of the police too. these two assumptions can be translated into two indicators for the lethality of police violence. first, given a large number of armed encounters, the absence or extraordinarily low numbers of killed or wounded police-officers signals excessive violence. this makes the ratio of suspects killed to police officers killed in such encounters a strong indicator for or against the assumption of extralegal killings as a prevalent police-practice. a second indicator for assessing the lethality of police use of force operationalizes the duty to apply only the minimum requirement of force necessary to subdue the threat. if this is the case, the number of suspects wounded should be higher than the number of suspects killed, given a sufficient number of cases. otherwise, as chevigny (1991) argues, one should “infer that deadly force is being abused” (p. 191). this leaves us with the following five indicators for the categorization and evaluation of police use of lethal force: indicator measurement absolute magnitude suspects killed million population relative magnitude abstract threat suspects killed criminal killings concrete threat killed police officers size of police force lethality and threat suspects killed police officers killed lethality as expression of shoot-to-kill practice suspects killed suspects wounded a short introduction to the datasets for the analysis of duterte period police violence in armed encounters, i rely on a dataset established by abs-cbn news (n.d.). while being by far the most detailed and table 1. indicators of police use of deadly force. 154 | aseas 12(2) police use of deadly force in the philippines precise documentation of current police-violence since may 2016, it neither allows for a comparison of police deadly to non-deadly use of violence, nor does it allow an assessment of the threat to which police officers are exposed in such encounters as it only documents the number of suspects killed by the police, but not the victims on the side of the police, nor does it document armed encounters in which nobody is hurt or killed. one small remedy for this problem is a detailed analysis of the data for one province, bulacan, for which a high-quality dataset based on the provincial pnp operation reports was established. the dataset used for the analysis of the pre-duterte decade from 2006 to 2015 has been developed during the past years by the author. similar to the abs-cbn news (n.d.) dataset or the the washington post (n.d.) and the guardian (n.d.) datasets on police violence in the united states, it relies on extensive online media research in both english and filipino, covering not only national, but also local media. coded were 11 regions of the philippines. the regions are broadly representative for the regional variation of the philippines, with a slight overrepresentation of highly urbanized areas and the luzon island group due to the inclusion of the ncr that, with nearly 13 million inhabitants, is by far the largest urban agglomeration in the philippines. the dataset includes regions that encompass approximately 70% of the philippine population. in order to ensure comparability of the data, the analysis below will only cover those regions that have been included in both datasets, that is, the ncr; regions 1, 3, 4a, and 4b belonging to the island group luzon; regions 6, 7, and 8 belonging to the visayas island group; and regions 10 and 11, both of which belong to the mindanao island group. the initial search was performed as a google search with the search term “police shoot-out” in various spellings and the provincial name on an annual basis. in many cases the names of cities were also utilized, especially, when these were self-governing and not part of the adjacent or surrounding province, as in the cases of angeles city (surrounding province: pampanga) or olongapo (adjacent to zambales province). sources encompass a total of 65 national and local news-outlets. wherever possible, a second search of the archives of individual newspapers was conducted with the same search terms. by including local outlets like the mindanao times, panay news, the visayan daily star, or tarlac today, chances were maximized to detect also those cases that escaped the attention of the national media, like the philippine daily inquirer, the manila standard, or the philippine star. coding was by province and year. four categories for coding the individual incidents were applied: suspects killed; suspects wounded; police-officers killed; and police officers wounded. news that reported shoot-outs with no victims were also included.4 as the pnp does not provide any data on police shoot-outs or the number of victims, corroboration of the data is problematic. however, the provincial pnp of bulacan province has for the past years provided detailed accounts for all its major operations that run into several hundred pagers for each year (bulacan philippine national police, n.d.).5 a 4 for further details on the datasets, the news-media, and the coding, see the electronic appendix at: https://doi.org/10.7910/dvn/cbr3g3. 5 this source has been discontinued in july 2019. the content was erased shortly afterwards. since september 2019, the website is “under construction”. the most recent version that can still be accessed via the internet archive wayback machine provides data to april 2019. the shift in policy seems to have been triggered by an amnesty international report (2019, p. 10) claiming that central luzon and specifically aseas 12(2) | 155 peter kreuzer comparison (table 2) shows that the results of the media analysis closely fit the numbers of suspects killed in armed encounters as reported by the provincial police. the extraordinarily low number reported by the pnp for 2013 may be a result of a different “publication policy” of the then provincial police director. this hypothesis would fit a drastic change in spring 2018, when the formerly detailed reporting was temporarily discontinued after a new police director took office. initially, the bulacan pnp shifted to news provided by the philippine news agency that omitted many of the bulacan operations. it is only since the end of july 2018 that the provincial news by the local pnp is back with considerable detail on police operations. 2012 2013 2014 2015 bulacan pnp 17 2 15 40 own data 19 7 13 38 detailing philippine police violence the indicators established above will now be applied to the two datasets on philippine police-violence. first, i will provide an analysis of the magnitude of police encounter-violence that also allows for a mapping of temporal and spatial variation on the provincial level. then, i will analyze whether threat provides a plausible explanation for police use of deadly force, followed by an account of the lethality of police violence. finally, i will place duterte and pre-duterte police violence in international comparison to assess its ‘severity’. sub-national magnitudes of police use of deadly force before and under duterte a detailed analysis of available data for the two periods before and under duterte yields three types of key information: first, the change in overall numbers; second, variation in sub-national magnitude of violence during the two phases; and third, the relationship between the pre-duterte and duterte ranking of provinces and cities with respect to deadly police violence. in the 11 regions analyzed, a total of 1,744 suspects were killed by the police in armed encounters in the decade from 2006 to 2015 (figure 1). however, this violence was split very unevenly across the various regional and sub-regional units. adjusted to population, the highest levels of deadly police violence could be observed in the ncr and the directly adjoining regions 3 and 4a. however, even within these regions, variation was high with outstanding levels for manila and quezon city. the corresponding number to the 174 suspects killed per year in the sample regions from 2006 to 2015 is a staggering 1,202 persons killed per year for the first 25 months under duterte (with a total 2,506 suspects killed from july 2016 to july 2018 bulacan province have become the “epicenter of killings” in the philippines directly implicating provincial police director bersaluna of complicity. table 2. police use of deadly force 2012-2015 in bulacan. (bulacan philippine national police, n.d.; own compilation). 156 | aseas 12(2) police use of deadly force in the philippines in the 11 regions; figure 2), based on the abs-cbn news (n.d.) data. this is a rise by 590%. yet, the distribution of violence remained rather stable. the vast majority of police use of deadly force adjusted to population occurred in the same regions: the ncr and the adjacent regions 3 and 4a. again, within-region variation is high. figure 1. suspects killed per year per million population 2006-2015. (own compilation). aseas 12(2) | 157 peter kreuzer figure 2. suspects killed per year per million population from july 2016 to july 2018. abs-cbn news, n.d.; dataset and 2015 census by philippine statistics authority, 2016; own compilation). 158 | aseas 12(2) police use of deadly force in the philippines despite some variation between pre-duterte and duterte patterns of police use of deadly force, overall path-dependency is very strong. the spearman rank correlation coefficient reveals a high and statistically highly significant correlation between pre-duterte and duterte violence levels (rs=0.728; n=69; p<0.000001).6 put simply, this means that while levels of violence changed dramatically, in general, the subregional units reacted as could be expected on the basis of their prior patterns. the scatterplot7 further reveals a broad variation in the reaction to duterte’s war on drugs amongst those units that had the lowest levels of police violence during the preceding decade (figure 3). nine of them did not react at all: from batanes, the northernmost province of the philippines, to quirino, marinduque, romblon, guimaras, siquijor, eastern samar, and camiguin to davao occidental at the southern end of mindanao. all of them are rather small and remote areas with rather small numbers of inhabitants. this also holds true, albeit to a lesser degree, for the following units of capiz (6), ilocos sur (7), and northern samar (8) that also reacted rather weakly to the duterte-campaign. variation among the others is very strong, with one (pateros in the ncr) rising from zero before to one of the top-scorers under duterte. this suggests that peripheral location may be one factor that explains lackluster response to the duterte campaign. however, a number of provinces near or component cities of the ncr also reacted rather hesitantly (las pinas, taguig, and makati city, all in the ncr, or tarlac in region 3), whereas other rather peripheral areas that earlier had exhibited low levels of violence before duterte reacted vigorously (e.g., la union, isabela, palawan). 6 the spearman rank correlation coefficient is the numerical expression of the relationship between two rank orders. it measures the strength and direction of this relationship. the maximum value of 1 signals a perfect positive and -1 a perfect negative correlation of the ranks of the two variables. values around 0 indicate a lack of correlation between the rank-orders of the two variables. 7 tied ranks at the lowest levels (0) have been adjusted to 0 with a similar reduction of all corresponding ranks. figure 3. comparing the ranks with respect to suspects killed per million population per year 2006-2015 and from july 2016 to july 2018. (own calculation). aseas 12(2) | 159 peter kreuzer these preliminary results signal that explanations for police violence must go beyond uniform assumptions for the philippines or the pnp. they show that there were options for local executives and police commanders to resist or at least dilute the duterte government’s centrally propagated policy advocating the killing of suspects. before turning to the temporal variation in police use of deadly force, it should be analyzed whether police officers’ use of deadly violence varied with the danger emanating from the environment in which they operate. this ratio had to be established on the regional level as there are no data on murder and homicide available for the past decade on the sub-regional level. data on murder and homicide are only available for the years 2006 and 2014 on the regional level. the corresponding spearman rank correlation shows a rather surprising result: a negative (albeit non-significant) correlation (rs=-0.5364; n=11; p two-tailed=0.088). a similar correlation for the year 2017 yields no correlation at all (rs=-0.1091; n=11; p two-tailed=0.749). even though data availability with respect to this dimension is only partially satisfying, it suffices to discount the assumption that higher levels of police violence are a result of police officers having to work in a more threatening environment. temporal variation of deadly police use of force another important result of the analysis of the philippine data on deadly police violence refers to temporal variation. while there are various different temporal patterns of variation with respect to deadly police violence on the sub-regional level, they add up to a wave-like pattern both for the decade before and the first 25 months under duterte (figures 4 and 5). whereas in the decade before duterte the consecutive waves entail an underlying rise of deadly police violence of more than 120%, the duterte period police campaign against drug-related crime until july 2018 saw an overall decline of deadly police violence from its initial heights during the first few months after duterte’s inauguration as president. yet, even during the second year from august 2017 to july 2018, deadly figure 4. suspects killed per year 2006-2015. (own compilation). 160 | aseas 12(2) police use of deadly force in the philippines police violence was still substantially higher than during any of the pre-duterte years. despite this caveat, it is important to note that current levels of police use of deadly force are slowly diminishing even though the rhetoric of the government’s anti-drugcrime campaign has not changed. considering the short-term spikes and the long-term pre-duterte trend of rising police violence, it is clear that duterte ‘only’ amplified a pre-existing trend of enhanced police use of deadly force. the low tides in the years 2007, 2010, and 2013 suggest that under ‘normal’ circumstances there may be a link between the philippine electoral cycle and deadly police use of force, as all three years have been election years, during which the police has been busy in preventing election violence during the periods preceding and succeeding the elections. underlying these cumulative trends are various types of temporal variation at the local level that defy a uniform explanation. they again point to the need to take a closer look at local-level politics as a potentially crucial dimension for the explanation of both the magnitude of police use of deadly force and its variation. the influence of environmental threat on police use of deadly force as detailed in the introduction, at first sight it seems sensible that police use of deadly force should depend on the type of environment in which the police operate. environments characterized by higher levels of threat to the life and well-being of the police officers should elicit higher levels of deadly police violence, as police officers should tend to resort to violence in a number of situations that would warrant non-violent strategies in more peaceful environments. this abstract ‘threat hypothesis’ has already been tested and discounted above. clearly, in the philippines higher levels of deadly crime (murder and homicide) are not associated with higher levels of use of deadly force by a police force that reacts to a more hostile environment. a second and more precise option for evaluating the relevance of threat for police behavior is to establish the ratio of police officers killed in relation to the strength of the police force, on the one hand, and correlate this with the respective ratio of police use of deadly force against suspects, on the other hand. this is possible only for the figure 5. suspects killed per month from july 2016 to july 2018. (abs-cbn news, n.d.). aseas 12(2) | 161 peter kreuzer component segments of the ncr for the years 2011 to 2015. however, a spearman rank correlation only shows a very weak and statistically not significant positive relationship (rs=0.2519; n=17; p two-tailed=0.328). the scatterplot (figure 6) likewise shows no relation between these two variables. given the rudimentary data, all that can be said is that police tend to use higher levels of deadly violence if there has been at least one victim on the side of the police during the past years. clearly there is significant need for additional research about the relationship between threat experienced by the police and their predilection to use deadly violence. the rough analysis above suggests that police threat-experience is no predictor of police use of deadly force against suspects. the lethality of philippine police violence before and under duterte while information on the magnitude of police violence provides initial indicators for assessing whether such violence is excessive and may be characterized as masked extra-legal killing, this question is best dealt with by analyzing the precise patterns of police shoot-outs with respect to the numbers and ratios of victims on both sides. unfortunately, the abs-cbn news (n.d.) dataset does not provide the necessary data for the duterte period as it only documents suspects killed. therefore, the following analysis is confined to pre-duterte armed police-encounters. however, an illustrative analysis will be added on the province of bulacan, as the provincial police of bulacan reports in detail on its daily operations, which allows for the establishment of a respective dataset. as argued above, an initial indicator of the lethality of police violence is the ratio between suspects and police officers killed in so-called armed encounters. if encounters are ‘real’ and suspects actually target police officers, as is regularly asserted in police depictions of the incidents, then one should expect a non-trivial number of figure 6. relation between police use of deadly force and direct threat to the life of police officers in the ncr 2011-2015. (national competitiveness council philippines, n.d.; own compilation). 162 | aseas 12(2) police use of deadly force in the philippines victims on the police side. however, for the overall set of 69 provinces and cities the online search could document a total of 1,744 suspects killed, whereas only 50 police officers died in the encounters (or a ratio of 34.88 suspects killed for each victimized police officer) in the ten years from 2006 to 2015. this already excessive ratio hides extreme cases like bulacan province (146/1), manila city (243/3), quezon city (391/4), rizal (98/1), or davao del sur including davao city (51/0). there were a total of 43 provinces with no victims on the police side, of which 24 had also no reports on suspects killed. these results illustrate that there is a clear problem of excessive police violence, which, however, is not uniformly present in the philippines but concentrated in some regions. an even more obvious proof of a regionally established shoot-to-kill policy is provided by the analysis of the relationship between suspects killed and wounded by the police. as argued above, the numbers of wounded must in any case exceed the number of killed, if one is to assume that police officers make use of reasonable force to avert imminent danger. however, the actual overall ratio for the ten years from 2006 to 2015 stands at 1,744 suspects killed against only 96 wounded or a staggering 18.2 killed suspects for each wounded. again, the overall number masks dramatic differences on the local level. extreme cases are again bulacan (146/3), rizal (98/1), davao del sur including davao city (51/0), but also laguna (101/3) and caloocan (46/1), pampanga including angeles city (54/0), or tarlac (46/0). there is not a single province with more reported suspects wounded than killed. these results show that although the absolute number of police deadly use of force was much lower before duterte’s anti-drug campaign, the past “legal encounters” were already utilized as a legally masked means to kill suspects, or one might say as the administering of an ‘informal death penalty’. this continued unabated under duterte as the scarce information provided by the pnp suggests. the pnp reported 68 police officers killed and 184 wounded for the period from 1 july 2016 to 26 july 2017. for the same period, they reported 3,451 “drug personalities who died in anti-drug operations” (philippine national police, n.d.). while these data only comprise the drug-war related shootings, the ratio of 50.75 suspects killed for each police officer killed is worse than the corresponding ratio of pre-duterte police violence. an analysis of the operation reports of the bulacan pnp for the year from june 2017 to may 2018 reveals a total of 250 suspects killed in police operations (including august 2018 the number rises to 291). however, the reports only mention two suspects wounded. in the same period, one police officer was killed and three reportedly wounded. this makes for a ratio of 250/1 for suspects to police officers killed and a ratio of 125/1 for suspects killed to wounded. while one may at first sight assume that non-fatal injuries have been underreported, this most probably is not the case as even slight injuries of police officers were reported. of the three injured policemen (all in one encounter) one was reportedly shot in the foot, whereas another “sustained minor injury on its [sic] right eyebrow” and the third “a minor injury on his left eyelid” (bulacan philippine national police, 2017). the bulacan pnp data reveal a further important detail on deadly police use of force: there is an almost complete separation between operations in which all suspects are killed and operations in which the suspects are arrested, but none is killed or wounded. operations with mixed results are almost completely absent. this suggests that at least in aseas 12(2) | 163 peter kreuzer bulacan and during the duterte presidency it is generally decided in advance whether an operation aims at arresting or killing the target persons. one final stunning point should be mentioned: in bulacan more people have been killed by the police than killed intentionally otherwise (188/181) – at least for the ten months from september 2017 to may 2018 and the month of august 2018. conclusion and outlook this article provided a comprehensive analysis of deadly police violence in the philippines. it established detailed data for the analysis and comparison of preduterte and duterte violence that also allow for a comparison to other countries. the past two years of police violence under duterte brought a dramatic rise in violence. however, the temporal analysis showed that this violence evolved in slowly abating waves following the initial climax during the first months after duterte’s inauguration as president. this suggests that even under a strongman-president as duterte the philippines may return to the much lower levels of deadly police violence in the next years. the slow, but fairly constant, rise of police violence during the earlier decade from 2006 to 2015 demonstrated that the dramatic increase in deadly police violence under duterte was based on a longer trend that may have facilitated the quick response to duterte’s ‘invitation to kill’ suspects. the analysis of sub-national data revealed a huge amount of variation between sub-national units and fairly high levels of path-dependency of sub-national units. those that had high levels of police use of deadly force before reacted more strongly under duterte, whereas others hardly reacted at all. these differences did not correspond to levels of murder and homicide. this suggests that variations of the threat factor emanating from different environments in which police officers operate does not play an important role in explaining different levels of police use of deadly force. taken together, these results suggest the need for further analysis that takes into account the provincial level and below. the host of variation in reaction to duterte’s ‘license-to-kill’ and the at times significant variation of police violence in single units over time suggests that local political determinants should be given additional attention in research. in the philippine context of “bossism” (sidel, 1999), one obvious starting point would be the analysis of the attitudes of local chief executives, their relationship to the municipal and provincial police directors,8 and the dynamics of electoral political competition at the local level. coronel’s (2017) and jensen and hapal’s (2018) focus on the (most probably uneven) entanglement of local politicians and police in illegal business might provide an alternative angle which may allow for 8 this seems a crucial vantage point as in actual practice local executives wield enormous influence over the local police at their respective levels, an influence only insufficiently visible in the already rather broad powers granted by section 51 of republic act no. 6975 (congress of the philippines, 1990) that inter alia grants the following powers to local executives: to choose the local police director from a shortlist; to exercise operational supervision and control of pnp units; to impose disciplinary penalties for minor offenses committed by members of the pnp; to recommend the transfer, reassignment, or detail of pnp members as well as recommend the appointment of new members of the pnp. these powers have been further strengthened in the past decades by the pnp reform act (no. 8551, sections 62, 63; congress of the philippines, 1998). in addition, the local government units shoulder a non-trifling part of the operating expenses of the local pnp units. 164 | aseas 12(2) police use of deadly force in the philippines making sense of the overall magnitude of police use of deadly force as compared to the philippines’ neighbors and its subnational spatial and temporal variation. the final dimension analyzed was the lethality of police violence before and during the duterte presidency. despite huge differences in the magnitude of police violence in armed encounters, the philippines (or, more precisely, many regions of the philippines) have been outstanding both before and under duterte. in both periods, the ratios of suspects killed per police officer killed and suspects killed per suspect wounded clearly show that in most regions the pnp takes no risk when confronting suspects and shoots-to-kill instead of applying the minimum amount of force necessary to overcome resistance. in the rather calm decade before duterte, the lethality rate stood at 18.2 suspects killed for any single suspect wounded and at 125 for bulacan in the year from june 2017 to may 2018. this is much worse than the respective data for mexico, a country engulfed in a notorious war on drugs. there, the respective ratio of suspects killed to wounded stood at 6.6 on average for the years 2008 to 2014 (forné, correa, & rivas, n.d.). this article aimed at laying the foundation for and stimulating more research on police violence in the philippines that goes beyond the preoccupation with the current surge under rodrigo duterte. it showed that crucial dimensions of present-day police violence have their precursors in past practices. most importantly, this article established that it is problematic to analyze police violence as if it were a rather uniform phenomenon given the huge amount of spatial and temporal variation before and during the duterte presidency. future research should especially focus on the catalysts at the local level that may either amplify or inhibit such violence. it should also focus on explanations for the extraordinarily high lethality rate of philippine police use of force in ‘armed encounters’ which could be ascertained irrespective of the actual magnitude of such violence. finally, it is important to add a comparative perspective to this research that aims at relating the philippines to other countries in order to better establish a yardstick for evaluating the past and present seriousness of the problem of police use of deadly force.  references abs-cbn news. (n.d.). map, charts: the death toll of the war on drugs. retrieved from https://news.abscbn.com/specials/map-charts-the-death-toll-of-the-war-on-drugs alston, p. (2008a). report of the special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, philipp alston: summary. un-document a/hrc/8/3. retrieved from http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/ hrcouncil/docs/8session/a-hrc-8-3.doc alston, p. (2008b). report of the special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, philipp alston: addendum mission to the philippines. un-document a/hrc/8/3/add2. retrieved from https:// documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/g08/130/01/pdf/g0813001.pdf?openelement alston, p. (2009). report of the special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, philipp alston: addendum. un-document a/hrc/11/2/add.8. retrieved from https://documents-dds-ny. un.org/doc/undoc/gen/g09/130/39/pdf/g0913039.pdf?openelement amnesty international. (2019). ‘they just kill’: ongoing extrajudicial ececutions and other violations in the philippines’ ‘war on drugs’. retrieved from https://www.amnesty.org/download/documents/ asa3505782019english.pdf aseas 12(2) | 165 peter kreuzer breuil, b. c. o., & rozema r. (2009). fatal imaginations: death squads in davao city and medellín compared. crime, law and social change, 52(4), 405-424. bulacan philippine national police. (2017). 8 armed drug pushers killed, 12 arrested as cops wounded in bulacan police operations. retrieved from http://bulacanpnp.com/news%20press%20release%20 jun%202017.html#june302017 bulacan philippine national police. (n.d.). bulacan’s accomplishments. originally retrieved from https:// bulacanpnp.com/ (no longer online since july 2019); most recent accessible version https://web.archive. org/web/20190718100846/https://bulacanpnp.com/) chevigny, p. g. (1991). police deadly force as social control. jamaica, brazil, argentina. in m. huggins (ed.), vigilantism and the state in modern latin america: essays on extralegal violence (pp. 189-218), new york: praeger. chevigny, p. g. (1990). police deadly force as social control. jamaica, argentina, and brazil. criminal law forum, 1(3), 389-425. congress of the philippines. (1990). republic act no. 6975: an act establishing the philippine national police under a reorganized department of the interior and local government, and for other purposes. retrieved from https://www.lawphil.net/statutes/repacts/ra1990/ra_6975_1990.html congress of the philippines. (1998). republic act no. 8551: an act for providing for the freedom and reorganization of the philippine national police and for other purposes, amending certain provisions of republic act numbered sixty-nine hundred and seventy-five entitled “an act establishing the philippine national police under a re-organized department of the interior and local government, and for other purposes”. retrieved from: https://www.lawphil.net/statutes/repacts/ra1998/ra_8551_1998.html coronel, s. s. (2017). murder as enterprise. police profiteering in duterte’s war on drugs. in n. curato (ed.), a duterte reader. critical essays on rodrigo duterte’s early presidency (pp. 167-198). quezon city: ateneo de manila university press. curato, n. (2016). politics of anxiety, politics of hope. penal populism and duterte’s rise to power. journal of current southeast asian affairs, 35(3), 91-109. david, c. c., mendoza, r. u., atun, j. m. l., cossid, r. p. n., & soriano c. r. r. (2018). the philippines’ antidrug campaign: building a dataset of publicly-available information on killings with the anti-drug campaign. ateneo school of government working paper 18-001. retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ ssrn.3201814 forné, c. s., pérez correa, c., & rivas r. g. (n.d.). índice de letalidad 2008-2014. disminuyen los enfrentamientos, misma letalidad, aumenta la opacidad [decreasing encounters, same lethality, increasing opacity]. retrieved from http://www.elfaro.net/attachment/913/%c3%8dndice%20de%20letalidad%2020082014%20(m%c3%a9xico).pdf free legal assistance group. (2007). extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions in the philippines, 20012006. retrieved from http://philrights.org/oldsite/images/extrajudicial,%20summary%20or%20 arbitrary%20executions%20in%20the%20philippines,%202001-2006.doc human rights watch (2009). “you can die any time”. death squad killings in mindanao. retrieved from https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/philippines0409webwcover_0.pdf jensen, s., & hapal, k. (2018). police violence and corruption in the philippines. violent exchange and the war on drugs. journal of current southeast asian affairs, 37(2), 39-62. kreuzer, p. (2012). mafia-style domination: the philippine province of pampanga. peace research institute frankfurt prif-report no. 114. retrieved from https://www.hsfk.de/fileadmin/hsfk/hsfk_downloads/ prif114.pdf national bureau of investigation. (2013). nbi probe report on the atimonan, quezon incident: executive report. retrieved from http://www.gov.ph/downloads/2013/03mar/20130306-nbi-report-atimonanquezon.pdf (no longer online) national competitiveness council philippines. (n.d.). cities and municipalities index. retrieved from https://www.competitive.org.ph/cmcindex/pages/historical/?lgu= followed by the name of the local government unit, which had to be added manually (no longer online available) parreño, a. a. (2011). report on the philippine extrajudicial killings 2001-2010. retrieved from https://www. asiafoundation.org/resources/pdfs/reportonphilippineejk20012010.pdf 166 | aseas 12(2) police use of deadly force in the philippines picardal, a. (2016). the victims of the davao death squad. consolidated report 1998-2015. cbcpnews. retrieved from http://www.cbcpnews.com/cbcpnews/?p=76531 philippine national police. (n.d.). #realnumbersph update. retrieved from http://www.pnp.gov.ph/ images/2017news/realnumbers/rn_731.pdf philippine statistics authority. (2016). highlights of the philippine population 2015 census of population. retrieved from https://psa.gov.ph/content/highlights-philippine-population-2015-census-population reyes, d. a. (2016). the spectacle of violence in duterte’s “war on drugs”. in: journal of current southeast asian affairs. 35(3), 111-137. sidel, j. t. (1999). capital, coercion, and crime. stanford: stanford university press. the guardian. (n.d.). the counted. people killed by police in the us. retrieved from https://www. theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/01/the-counted-police-killings-us-database the washington post. (n.d.). fatal force. retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/ national/police-shootings-2019/; (direct link to the dataset: https://github.com/washingtonpost/datapolice-shootings/blob/master/fatal-police-shootings-data.csv) about the author peter kreuzer is senior researcher and member of the executive board of peace research institute frankfurt (prif). he is working on political violence in the philippines. ► contact: kreuzer@hsfk.de aseas 11(1) | 35 the iron silk road and the iron fist: making sense of the military coup d’état in thailand wolfram schaffar ► schaffar, w. (2018). the iron silk road and the iron fist: making sense of the military coup d’état in thailand. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 11(1), 35-52. in may of 2014, the military of thailand staged a coup and overthrew the democratically elected government of prime minister yingluck shinawatra. the political divisions in thailand, which culminated in the coup, as well as the course of events leading to the coup, are difficult to explain via thai domestic policy and the power relations between thailand’s military, corporate, and civil entities. the divisions can be more clearly revealed when interpreted in the context of the large-scale chinese project “one belt, one road”. this ambitious infrastructure project represents an important step in the rise of china to the position of the world’s biggest economic power and – drawing on world-systems theory – to the center of a new long accumulation cycle of the global economy. against this backdrop, it will be argued that developments in thailand can be interpreted historically as an example of the upheavals in the periphery of china, the new center. the establishment of an autocratic system is, however, not directly attributable to the influence of china, but results from the interplay of internal factors in thailand. keywords: belt-and-road initiative; coup d’état; high-speed train; thailand; world-systems theory  the return of authoritarianism in thailand on 22 may 2014, the military in thailand staged a coup d’état and removed the elected government of yingluck shinawatra, the sister of the exiled former prime minister thaksin shinawatra.1 this coup marked the climax of the political division of thailand into two camps: the yellow shirts, which are close to the monarchy and to the royalist-conservative elites, and the red shirts, who support thaksin. with the coup, which was preceded by the concerted demonstrations of the yellow shirts, the royalist-conservative camp seized power. while after previous coups the respective juntas had rushed to promise a return to democracy and presented their seizure of power as a temporary measure necessary to remedy a defect in the political system, the present junta made clear that they had come to stay. the state of emergency imposed after the coup was maintained for almost a whole year, elections were postponed indefinitely, and a handpicked group of lawyers were commissioned to draft a new constitution, which would guarantee the influence of the military. with the lasting 1 to be exact, yingluck shinawatra had already been removed from premiership a few weeks earlier by a court decision. aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 18 .1 -3 36 | aseas 11(1) the iron silk road and the iron fist: making sense of the military coup d’état in thailand establishment of a military regime, thailand fits the global trend of an expanding authoritarianism, which also shows repercussions in other countries of southeast asia – such as the philippines, cambodia, and indonesia. outside southeast asia, we find similar developments in egypt, turkey, and russia, and increasingly in eastern and other european countries. in 2018, the freedom house index – an index measuring the level of democracy worldwide concluded that by 2017 “democracy faced its most serious crisis in decades” (freedom house, 2018). research on new authoritarianism is an emerging field and a variety of explanations have been proposed. materialistic accounts see the present trend as a continuation and intensification of neo-liberalism (bruff, 2014) which is used as strategy to cope with the continuing economic crisis (demirović, 2018). in search of an explanation for new authoritarianism in specific regions, such as southeast asia, analysts point to the influence of china as new hegemonic power. extensive literature on the role of china in africa argue that china’s readiness to cooperate with authoritarian regimes has fostered authoritarianism (broich, 2017; for a critical view, see lagerkvist, 2009). the same can be discussed for the case of the philippines, where the elections in 2016 not only brought into power rodrigo duterte as a highly authoritarian strongman, but also a reorientation away from the philippines’ old allay, the united states, towards china. if we follow kneuer and demmelhuber (2016) and see china as one of the world’s new authoritarian gravity centers, what remains to be answered, however, is the question how concretely the process of taking influence can be conceptualized. china could either be directly supporting authoritarian forces abroad or even launch direct interventions into neighboring countries – in the same way authoritarian regimes used to be directly supported by the united states during the cold war on grounds of their anti-communist stance. an indirect support of authoritarian regimes might result from china’s quest for stability in the countries that are the destination of large-scale chinese investment. this article will examine such questions at the example of the coup d’état in thailand and scrutinize the influence of china on thai politics. methodologically, the paper will depart from the incident of the coup itself and re-interpret the circumstances of the coup as well as political developments since the turn of the millennium against the backdrop of world-systems theory, drawing on wallerstein (1974-2011) and frank (1998).2 the 2014 coup and echoes of fascism the coup of 2014 was only the climax of a longer process in the course of which multiple outbreaks of surprisingly severe political violence had already taken place several times. in the spring of 2010, the red shirts launched their largest-ever political campaign. the background of the mobilization was that in 2008 the government 2 this theoretical choice, however, comes with a certain blindness for the agency of lower classes. while i agree with one anonymous reviewer that this is a serious shortcoming, the limited space of this article does not allow a detailed analysis of the class structure and the class struggle underlying the thai political development since 2000. aseas 11(1) | 37 wolfram schaffar of the royalist-conservative camp had come into office under dubious circumstances.3 consequently, in 2010, the red shirts simply demanded elections, knowing well that they still had the majority of the population behind them. the government, however, was unyielding, and after several weeks of protests at different places in the city, the demonstrators set up barricades in the central business district of bangkok. more than 90 people were killed when the army moved in with heavy equipment and dissolved the protest camp (montesano, pavin, & aekapol, 2012). considering the demands of the protestors, which were in no way radical, the question arises as to why the royalist-conservative position was so uncompromisingly keen to hold on to power and did not hesitate to deploy the military to an exposed place in the middle of the city. when, in 2011, a new parliament was finally elected after several postponements of the election date, the party from the thaksin camp was, as expected, again victorious, and yingluck shinawatra became prime minister in july 2011. her leadership is commonly characterized as defensive and low profile, reflecting the strategy of not providing any target for the royalist-conservative camp and giving the yellow shirts no reason for new demonstrations. in spite of this, in november 2013 the yellow shirts again launched a concerted campaign to overthrow the government. using the slogan “shut down bangkok restart thailand”, the demonstrators blocked the central traffic intersections of the bangkok city center, following the example of the occupation of the airport in 2008. the enormous led screens on the central stages and the nationwide transmission via television and print media, which is closely associated with the royalist-conservative camp, indicated the financial and logistical support of influential groups. from these stages, demands were voiced to abolish elections altogether and to replace the government and the parliament with a reform committee consisting of appointed representatives of professional groups. armed security groups emerged around the protest booths and began baiting political opponents. similarly, on the internet, the so-called rubbish collector organization emerged – a facebookbased group, founded by the head physician of a renowned hospital and supported by prominent representatives, professors of leading universities, and politicians. according to its own statutes, the group aimed to ‘purify’ thailand of ‘social waste’ within two years, referring to people who show themselves to be disloyal to the monarchy. via facebook, lists of names were published and members mobilized for actions directed against these individuals (pinkaew, 2016; pirongrong, 2016; schaffar, 2016). the emergence of violent actors in times of deep political division as well as the demands to abolish the parliamentary system is reminiscent of the processes which led to the establishment of the austrofascism or the estato novo in portugal in the 1920s and 1930s in europe (pinto, 2014; tálos, 2014): the country is divided into two camps, neither of which is strong enough to conclude the conflict and take power. the cornered royalist-conservative camp, which could mobilize supporters among the urban upper middle class, recruited and organized violent thugs who were to intimidate political adversaries and precipitate a resolution to the power struggle. 3 following political pressure of street protests, specifically in the course of the occupation of the bangkok airport by the yellow shirts, the constitutional court dissolved the ruling pro-thaksin party and, thus, the opposition democratic party, the political arm of the yellow camp, was elevated to government without running for elections. 38 | aseas 11(1) the iron silk road and the iron fist: making sense of the military coup d’état in thailand the aim of the campaign was to cement the social status quo through the abolition of the parliamentary system and the establishment of a corporatist system of political representation. the bourgeoisie – the upper middle class in bangkok – disempowered itself politically in order to maintain its social status.4 the folk festivals organized by the junta after the coup, using the slogan “bring happiness back to thailand”, included small gift packages and meals handed out to the public as well as pop stars in camouflage-patterned clothing showcasing “the happiness song” of the junta. these developments evoke associations of a nascent, orwellian fascist regime.5 many theories stress political polarization as structural condition for the rise of fascism. as in the social clashes between organized workers and the bourgeoisie in europe in the 1920s and 1930s, the two factions in thailand are oftentimes characterized as extreme opposites and as supporters of two diametrically opposed economic projects: the yellow shirts portrayed yingluck shinawatra as a representative of a ‘grabbing capital’6 oriented towards rapid gains in the global market. interestingly, and as will be seen later, tellingly, only occasionally the defamation campaign against the shinawatra family pointed to the fact that the shinawatra were “chinese”, although in thailand – as in other countries of southeast asia – there is a long tradition of marginalization and pogroms against the chinese as “exploitative, grabbing capitalists”.7 as a counter-project to thaksin, the representatives of the royalistconservative camp present themselves as supporters of a gentle, sustainable development based on local structures. the royal concept of the sufficiency economy – an indigenous alternative development concept based on buddhist principles – serves as a reference point here and is embellished with an essentialist discourse of national identity, that of ‘thainess’ (isager & ivarson, 2008; rossi, 2012). high-speed trains and the chinese iron silk road project beyond this discourse on the difference between the two camps, some of the events related to the coup allow a different interpretation. among the central accusations against yingluck shinawatra was her plan to build a network of high-speed trains in thailand. this infrastructure project was ambitious: with an investment package of usd 44 billion, in addition to the development of public transport in urban centers and the development of roads, almost half was to be invested in the construction of two high-speed rail tracks. these were to follow routes from southern china and laos, passing through the north and the northeast and south over the malay peninsula to singapore. accordingly, plans were prepared in the second half of 2013. in october 2013, the chinese state railway company, the project-executing 4 this analysis refers to august thalheimer’s (1930) seminal work “über faschismus”. an exact class analysis of the thai situation, however, would need a more sophisticated characterization of the different groups involved. 5 for a more detailed discussion of the fascist nature of the regime, see schaffar (2018). 6 schaffendes vs. raffendes kapital (creative vs. grabbing capital). for a similar analysis, see glassman (2004). 7 in 1913, king vajiravudh published a pamphlet titled phuak yio haeng burapha thit lae mueang thai jong tuen toet. [the jews of the east and wake up thailand!], in which he used anti-semitic tropes from europe to classify the chinese minority in thailand (baker & pasuk, 2009). aseas 11(1) | 39 wolfram schaffar agency, initiated an exhibition on high-speed trains in bangkok and the government of yingluck shinawatra began brisk diplomatic activities to drive the project and its funding forward. the investment – a huge sum considering the national budget of usd 71 billion in 2013 and a gdp of usd 420 billion in 2013 (national statistical office, 2018) – was to be generated by thailand through supply of rice and natural rubber to china. these plans were branded as scandalous by the yellow shirts and presented as proof of unscrupulous handling of the budget and as an indication of corrupt practices. in parallel with taking the issue to the streets, the opposition party in parliament appealed to the constitutional court. in a televised hearing at the beginning of january 2014, a senior judge not only concluded that the investment amount was too high, but also that “thailand is not yet ready to use high-speed trains”. on the contrary, gravel roads would have to be paved first (bangkok pundit, 2014). with this political statement, the court, overstepping its authority, positioned itself on the side of the yellow shirts – a move, which, however, was to be expected, since the courts had been politicized since the political split and acted on the part of the royalist-conservative elites (hewison, 2014). at the beginning of march, the project was stopped by the courts. at the beginning of may, in respect of another legal proceeding, yingluck was relieved of her post for misuse of office. thus, the courts became a key player in the coup before the military formally took over power a few days later (veerayooth & hewison, 2016). against the backdrop of the public debate on high-speed trains, the publicly staged trial, and the role played by this project in removing yingluck from office, it is surprising how the project went on. just a few weeks after the coup, the now ruling junta announced that it would implement exactly this project with the same investment sum (amornrat, 2014). since then, prayuth chan-ocha, appointed prime minister, has positioned himself as a committed supporter of railway expansion. in summer 2017, he even invoked article 44 of the interim constitution – an article which grants to the prime minister the prerogative to circumvent legal and administrative procedures – to get the project off the ground (chatrudee, 2017). a different analysis of these developments became apparent only when, at the end of march 2015, the full extent of the chinese infrastructure project, belt-and-road initiative (bri), became accessible to a broader public. only then it became clear that the tracks to be laid by thailand were a sub-project of the bri. in a joint press conference by the national development and reform commission, the ministry of foreign affairs, and the ministry of commerce, and in a speech by the chinese president xi jingping on the same day, the chinese government revealed that the project, also known as the “iron silk road” aimed at nothing less than the development and integration of the entire eurasian continent. the project, which is estimated to be worth usd 21 trillion (eyler, 2015), is supported by two new development banks controlled by china – the brics bank and the asian infrastructure investment bank (aiib) – as well as a special investment fund (chen & mardeusz, 2015). in this context, the antagonism between the thaksin camp and the royalist-conservative elite is less a conflict between different economic models and more a competition for the same project – competition for access to and decision-making competence in the chinese large-scale project, a project which commentators 40 | aseas 11(1) the iron silk road and the iron fist: making sense of the military coup d’état in thailand characterize as a tectonic shift in the world trading system. it is along these lines that foreign as well as chinese analysts compare the project with the road network and aqueduct construction of ancient rome, with the maritime expansion of the chinese ming empire of the 14th century (godehardt, 2016), the japanese project of a great east asian prosperity sphere, or with the u.s. marshall plan after world war ii (eyler, 2015). in march 2015, however, chinese foreign minister wang li rejected comparisons with the marshall plan as a cold war memorial, insisting that it was a peaceful enterprise solely based on integration through trade (zhang, 2015). nevertheless, there is more to the plan than just an improvement in transport routes for the sales of chinese goods. china’s rapid economic rise in recent years has led to a wealth of literature that predicts a shift in the center of the global economy away from the us to china. against this background, and considering the massive scale of investment, the question arises whether or not the new orientation of the chinese economic policy is connected to a new geostrategic project (zhao, 2016). the wording to “rejuvenate the chinese nation”8, and to unite china’s asian neighbors into a “community of shared destiny”9 (godehardt, 2014, 2016; wang, 2013) points to the historic dimension which the chinese government connects with the project. moreover, the belt-and-road initiative is seen as part of a general new orientation of chinese foreign policy under xi jinping, which moves away from political restraint and conceptualizes china’s rise in economic, military, and geostrategic perspective (arase, 2015, pp. 14-17). the announcement to establish a “new type of great power relations”10 is a clear program (godehart, 2014, pp. 7, 22). in fact, for china, there are good reasons to use a new geostrategic project in order to stand up to various challenges. until recently, with programs like "pivot" or "rebalancing" (the white house 2015), the us administration took strong efforts to establish a network of free trade agreements around china with the transatlantic free trade agreement (ttip) between the u.s. and the eu and the transpacific partnership (tpp). the common interpretation was that the ultimate aim was to support the economic structures that favor the west and to contain china. in this context, the bri represents a visionary step of chinese economic strategy and has a global significance. it is not only the construction of a rail network, which, in addition to setting up a direct road to the european markets, also opens up resource-rich regions in central asia. but it also includes a sea route to india, the arab world, and east africa, via various corridors through southeast asia. with the belt-and-road initiative, china enters into direct competition with the efforts of the usa to maintain their hegemony. compared to the us, which attempts to promote integration by means of trade agreements, the chinese project has a completely different character. china relies on the expansion of physical infrastructure and counts on the integrating power of material presence. this qualitatively different project has a significant impact on the countries under the chinese sphere of influence, for example, thailand. 8 中华民族伟大复兴 ‘rejuvenation of the chinese nation’. for a discussion of “rejuvenation of the chinese nation” versus “the rise of the chinese nation” see zheng wang (2013). 9 命运共同体, ‘community of shared destiny’ or officially ‘community of common destiny’. 10 新型大国关系, ‘new type of great power relations’. aseas 11(1) | 41 wolfram schaffar the influence of the chinese infrastructure project the interpretation that both political camps in thailand are in competition for the chinese project is supported by more pieces of evidence: the diplomatic initiatives, for example, that the royalist-conservative camp has been developing since 2013. in parallel to the state visits, where yingluck shinawatra negotiated the memorandum of understanding (mou) with the chinese authorities, princess sirindhorn, who is regarded as an important representative of the thai royal house, traveled to china several times and met high representatives of the chinese government during her travels, despite the fact that – officially – the visits were devoted to science or culture. the friendly relations between the thai royal family and china, as well as the common interest in working closely together on development and technology, was repeatedly emphasized in the coverage of the visits (zhao & zhang, 2015).11 another piece of evidence can be drawn from literature which documents and analyses a more general tendency of the economic elites in thailand towards china. as in many southeast asian countries, the economic elites as well as the urban middle class are of chinese descent. in thailand, these “lookjin” seemed to have been assimilated into the thai majority. recent accounts, however, show that the urban (upper) middle class, which make up the most important and strongest part of the yellow shirt demonstrators, as well as the royal-conservative elites rediscover and cherish their chinese roots (kasian, 2017; somsak, 2016). it seems as if not only thaksin, who – as will be argued below – openly sought a close relation to china as part of his economic project, but also the yellow shirt camp show a strong tendency to connect to china. against this background, it is quite striking that – despite the general interest in china – there was almost no public debate in thailand about china’s gigantic infrastructure program. only in late 2016, the first english-language newspapers started publishing introductory articles to the belt-and-road initiative, albeit without mentioning that thai high-speed trains are part of it (hashim, 2016). this supports the impression that – in addition to the political rift which started in 2005/2006 – the coup against yingluck and the establishment of an authoritarian system in thailand can be viewed in connection with the chinese large-scale project. one popular trope is that the spread of authoritarianism is linked to the influence of china and in particular to economic and development cooperation with it. particularly in development cooperation projects in africa, it is often stressed that china does not link its economic commitment to conditions such as respect for human rights, nor does it shy away from working with dictators. as a result, the consensus of the traditional western donor countries gathered in the organization for economic cooperation and development’s (oecd) development assistance committee (dac) to promote democracy via development cooperation projects is undermined. similarly, reilly (2013) and grävingholt (2011), which are only two examples of a whole genre of contributions, assume a direct connection between the failure of democratization processes in southeast asia and the influence of china. the underlying idea is that china is the source of an authoritarianism, either directly 11 there are a lot of rumors about a hidden agenda of sirinthorn’s visits to china – including rumors saying that she was trying to reserve a share of the project for the royal-conservative capital group. at the present stage of political conflict and the general restrictions to investigate issues connected to the royal family, such rumors cannot be verified. 42 | aseas 11(1) the iron silk road and the iron fist: making sense of the military coup d’état in thailand advanced by the export of authoritarian governance techniques, or made to appear particularly attractive in the light of its economic success. the idea that the new global wave of authoritarianism can be traced to “authoritarian gravity centers” (kneuer & demmelhuber, 2016) points to the same direction. this thesis is to be examined critically in the context of the processes in thailand. the relationship between thailand and china from the perspective of world-systems theory in view of the fact that the belt-and-road initiative is perceived by commentators in historical dimensions, contributions on the chinese ascent from the perspective of world-systems theory are particularly relevant (schmalz, 2010). giovanni arrighi (arrighi, 2007; arrighi & silver, 2011; robinson, 2011) and andré gunder frank (1998) have dealt with the rise of china, but interpret this ascent very differently. arrighi and silver’s (2011) focus is on the development of the capitalist world system, which they track in several distinct cycles and characterize as an expansion movement. they distinguish four consecutive cycles, beginning with a cycle dominated by the city of genoa in the 16th century, which then passed into a cycle dominated by the netherlands in the 17th century. in the 18th and 19th centuries, the center moved to great britain to be replaced by the united states after the second world war. the shift of the center of the world economy to china is interpreted as a new development; a rupture that represents a transition into a new long century – a new order with a new hegemon. in reorient, frank (1998) interprets the current rise of china from an entirely different angle. he argues that long before the imperialist expansion of england and the united states, an integrated global world trading system existed, the center of which was in asia. in concrete terms, he assumes that there was a period of economic expansion from 1400 to about 1760, which began with the development of trade routes and the establishment of production capacities by chinese traders and flowed into an expanding financial system controlled by china. it is to this that numerous chinese sources allude when they compare the belt-and-road initiative with the expeditions of admiral zheng he on orders from the ming emperors in the early 15th century. from this global point of view, the simultaneous developments in genoa and the netherlands are only an insignificant western adjunct of a larger cycle – and the importance given to this cycle by arrighi and silver rather proves the distorted perspective of a eurocentric historiography. from frank’s point of view, however, the center does not migrate to a new place, but returns to the place where it has been since the beginning of the 15th century. the periodization of arrighi and silver and the still larger arcs that frank spans can certainly be criticized as simplistic. wood (2002) pointed out that the genoese and the dutch cycle cannot be understood as capitalist accumulation cycles. likewise, the suggestive comparison between the chinese expansion of the 15th century and china’s present rise seems flawed when we take into account that the trade empire of the ming era was based on a non-capitalist economy. moreover, the historical method of world-systems theory is that it draws retrospective conclusions through the interpretation of large amounts of data. its explanatory power of the present is therefore aseas 11(1) | 43 wolfram schaffar limited. this is shown by arrighi’s assessment that present day’s china is not a capitalist country but that its rise is based on the expansion of a market economy of a different, non-capitalist kind (arrighi, 2007, pp. 331-332) – a characterization unlikely to stand up to a sociological analysis of conditions of production. the present text draws on arrighi, silver, and frank, despite all their limitations, as these concepts open up an angle under which the current developments in thailand can be interpreted in their historical continuity. moreover, in the work of evers, korff, and pas-ong (1987) on thailand, we find a strong argument for frank’s analysis, i.e. that the rise of the west was not so much based on a development of new production capacities but rather on a redirection of trade flows. it must have been by accident that frank did not take this work of evers, korff, and pas-ong (1987) into account in his book because it illustrates precisely this transition by the example of the state formation of siam.12 the influence of trade with china on the formation of the siamese state evers, korff, and pas-ong (1987) respond with their work to the literature of thai marxist historiography, which has been concerned since the 1950s with the question to what degree siam/thailand is to be described as capitalist. the question arose since in other countries and regions of asia (india, burma/myanmar, indonesia, and indochina) the capitalist mode of production was regarded as a system imposed by the colonial powers. since siam had never been formally colonized, the question was whether thailand would still have to be analyzed as feudal (reynolds & hong, 1983). according to a widespread marxist reading, the bowring treaty of 1855, a free trade agreement between siam and the united kingdom, was the turning point through which a forced market opening, abolition of the corvée labor, and thus a break in the feudal structures was introduced and a capitalist economic system established. in this way, so the interpretation goes, a semi-colonial system was created in which the country was integrated into the world system by chinese traders as intermediaries. evers, korff, and pas-ong (1987) show that even before the bowring treaty the entire state formation of siam had been determined by its integration into the world trade, which prior to 1855 meant trade with china. after the old capital of ayutthaya had been completely destroyed in 1767 in the war with the burmese, the landlocked, feudalistic state of ayutthaya ceased to exist. instead of the old center, a new maritime trading hub in thonburi (bangkok) became the capital and crystallization point for a new, foreign trade oriented state at the mouth of the chao praya river. the central figure of this newly founded siamese state was taksin, who in traditional thai historiography plays the role of the unifier. using his familial ethnic links to south china, he succeeded in getting loans from china to import food and weapons, and on this basis, he gradually brought many regions of the country back under military control. however, as evers, korff, and pas-ong (1987) showed, this control was not feudal but followed the rationale of a trade nation where revenue is not derived through compulsory labor but from taxation of trade activities with china. even 12 the state at the mouth of the chao praya river was known as siam and was not called thailand until 1939. 44 | aseas 11(1) the iron silk road and the iron fist: making sense of the military coup d’état in thailand these founding years of siam were dominated by coups. thai national historiography reports that by 1782 taksin had become “crazy” and was deposed and executed by general phraya chakri, the founder of today’s chakri dynasty. through evers, korff, and pas-ong (1987), we can re-interpret this coup as a process by which a competing merchant dynasty with chinese roots acquired the political control of trade flows. the complete physical eradication of the taksin family which followed the coup is the first historical reference to the existential character of these conflicts between rival capital fractions in times of transition from one long century to the next.13 the integration of siam into the british-dominated world-system bowring, the british governor in hong kong, arrived on a war ship in siam in the 1850s. the conclusion of the free trade agreement he negotiated marks the integration of siam into the trading system under the pax britannica. according to terwiel (1991), this agreement only came about because the siamese economy was in a crisis after several boom phases since 1840. against this backdrop, the newly enthroned siamese king monkut hoped for new opportunities for development, but above all wanted to appease the aggressive colonial powers (terwiel, 1991). in this way, the conclusion of the bowring treaty illustrates the pattern which frank (1998) generally identifies for the transition to the english cycle: in times of economic weakness, england appears as a militarily dominant power and can force a redirection of existing trade flows westward by means of exemption of customs duties – free trade treaties. a similar treaty with prussia in 1863 and one in 1869 with the austro-hungarian empire followed the bowring treaty. in this sense, evers, korff, and pas-ong (1987) emphasize that free trade was only seemingly free; in reality, it brought about a western dominance of the economy on western terms. while the position of siam in the global economic system led to a formation of mono-structures, especially rice monocultures in the chao-phraya delta and the extraction of teak and mineral resources, the ruling family who controlled the trade routes was able to achieve profitable income from the expansion of the trade. as a part of the western-dominated trading system, siam also experienced the critical transition to the us-dominated cycle, and here, too, the effects on domestic policy have been significant. after the collapse of the world economy in 1929, social unrest shook the country. thai historiography sometimes refers to the promulgation of the constitution of 1932 and the transition from an absolute to a constitutional monarchy as a democratization from above, in the course of which an enlightened monarch gave the subjects a constitution. a more adequate account may be to characterize the events as a revolution: against the backdrop of social unrest, a group of determined military and bureaucrats took over the political control and carried out administrative and economic reforms (ji, 2003). alongside the royal family, new capitalist bureaucratic elites established themselves in the newly started accumulation cycle (riggs, 1966). the royal house itself was limited to representative functions; 13 today, numerous myths surround the death of king taksin. the resemblance of his name to thaksin shinawatra and the fact that both are considered political opponents of the chakri dynasty inspired the red shirts to begin their great protest campaign in 2010 with a ceremony at the monument of king taksin. some even consider thaksin to be a reincarnation of king taksin, having come back to take revenge. aseas 11(1) | 45 wolfram schaffar physically, the kings were only periodically in thailand and spent most of their time abroad. cut off from direct access to state tax revenues, the financial livelihood of the house of chakri was secured by the establishment of the crown property bureau, an institution which managed the assets of the family, especially its property, and had the task of ensuring an appropriate income. for this purpose, a special legal status was created which exempted the treasury from all taxes and duties and from any accountability (porphant, 2008). the constructive phase of the new accumulation cycle, under the pax americana – the dominance of the united states – led to a specific economic structure and influenced the economic development of thailand in a lasting way, i.e. firmly integrated into the military security architecture of the us as a military base for the vietnam war and as a location for many recreation centers for soldiers. similar to the japanese zaibatsu or korean chaebol, merchant families of chinese descent formed bangkok’s conglomerates, the core of which was formed of a bank and a trading house. these nascent structures gradually expanded into different productive sectors and formed industrial complexes (suehiro, 1989; krirkkiat & yoshihara, 1983). the royal treasury was one of the five conglomerates, at the center of which was the thai farmers bank and industrial companies such as siam cement (porphant, 2008). the reorganization of the thai capital in the wake of the asian crisis and the emergence of contesting political camps the asia crisis in 1997/1998 shook this system to its foundations. the boom of the 1980s and early 1990s had led to a real estate bubble. the banks had speculated mainly in the real estate sector and when the thai baht’s peg to the dollar had to be abandoned and massive devaluation followed, several banks went bankrupt and dragged the industrial sectors they controlled down with them. the international monitory fund (imf) granted emergency loans linked to structural adjustment programs, which the government invested in bailouts. porpant (2008) was able to show how the strategic selectivity of state apparatuses (jessop, 1999) helped the group around the crown property bureau profit disproportionately from the bailouts and ultimately emerge from the crisis as the only group grown even stronger. in this manner, the crown property bureau grew to become the largest capital group in bangkok by the turn of the millennium. in 2011, the forbes magazine estimated the assets of the crown usd 30 billion, making the thai king the richest monarch in the world (the world’s richest royals, 2011). in the shadow of the crisis, new capital factions in the provinces were also able to reorganize their assets.14 thaksin shinawatra, whose family – also of chinese descent – comes from the northern thai city of chiang mai, belongs to this group of new capitalists who sought ways out of the recession together with the strengthened crown property bureau. thaksin was elected prime minister as a strategic partner of bangkok’s urban elites in 2000/2001 and took office with the promise to lead thailand out of the crisis. the present division of thailand into a red and a 14 this development can be compared with the rise of the acp in turkey. the most obvious parallel is the latent competition with the established capital fractions of the respective capitals. (mccargo & zarakol, 2012). 46 | aseas 11(1) the iron silk road and the iron fist: making sense of the military coup d’état in thailand yellow camp began during his premiership. through a dual-track economic policy – a combination of neo-liberal restructuring and extensive infrastructure and social programs – thaksin succeeded in achieving high growth rates within a short period of time and continuing the boom years of the 1980s and early 1990s. this success, but above all, the infrastructure and social programs, especially the introduction of a general health insurance, secured him broad support among the poor in the provinces of the north and the north east. on this basis, he succeeded in 2005 with a brilliant re-election – a novelty in the history of thailand during which hardly any premier succeeded in seeing out a full term, let alone win a second election (pasuk & baker, 2004). the economic power of thaksin, whose own business empire benefited enormously from the new economic growth, became an increasing threat to the old elites. the royal house, which traditionally advocated for the poor and sought to promote gentle progress through rural development programs, feared the political power that thaksin was able to gain in rural areas through his popular infrastructure and social programs. eventually, the increasingly authoritarian style of government and the neo-liberal restructurings gave rise to the opposition of ngos and trade unions of the state enterprises (pye & schaffar, 2008). in this conflicted situation, the bloc of yellow shirts was formed. under the leadership of royalist-conservative circles, various movements, ngos, and trade unions organized mass demonstrations in bangkok against thaksin over the period of several months. these protests paralyzed thaksin’s government substantially, but could not expel him from office, in part due to his continued large support among the rural population. finally, in september 2006, the military took the initiative and arranged a coup (ji, 2007). on the evening of the coup, a small group of democracy activists and intellectuals gathered to demonstrate against the military’s takeover. the key points were the right to self-determination, freedom of expression, and the general rejection of a political role of the military. this group formed the nucleus of a new opposition, which, however, only swelled to a broad movement after collaboration with the party and the party apparatus of the ousted premier thaksin shinawatra. to distinguish itself from the yellow shirts, it chose the color red as that of its corporate identity. red was not originally chosen as an identification of the movement with international socialism or communism. in spite of this, since the demonstrations of 2010, the red shirts have used a class rhetoric and referred to themselves as phrai (commoners, or dependents) who position themselves against amat (feudal lords). on the membership cards of the red shirts, issued in advance of the mobilization of 2010, however, the slogan used was “for a free market economy”. the lords, amat, were also understood in terms of entrenched, quasi-feudal structures against which freedom, even in the liberal sense of free enterprise, was demanded. an analysis by walker (2012) has shown that the most active supporters of the reds in the north and northeast were less workers or rural poor, but rather politicized farmers, in fact, a lower middle class. however, during the mobilization, the demonstrations of the red shirts became the starting point for many of the poor and marginalized, and some of the intellectual leaders of the reds also have an internationalist past. even though the choice of color was not communist/socialist in the beginning, the activists readily accepted the ambiguity created by the connotations of red. aseas 11(1) | 47 wolfram schaffar thus, the elite conflict between the two capital fractions around thaksin and the crown property bureau became a crystallization point, where social conflicts were being articulated (schaffar, 2010). as already discussed, the antagonism between these two fractions is often explained through different development and economic models. on the one hand, thaksin is characterized as the representative of a capital fraction which profits primarily from its embrace of globalized economic structures. his success in the media and telecommunication sector is exemplary, not only because telecommunications is a new business area connected with the communication revolution and globalization, but also because he pursued business opportunities beyond the borders of thailand in neighboring countries (cambodia and myanmar) just as naturally and successfully as in thailand itself (pasuk & baker, 2004). numerous innovative business ideas oriented towards a global market provided a model for the economic policy orientation and the close interlinking of business with state economic policy. for instance, thaksin’s proximity to the thai transnational corporation cp, which had grown by way of vertical integration of its production chain from the world’s largest feed manufacturer to a food company and a fast food chain. the state-sponsored foreign trade campaign, using cp to make thailand the “kitchen of the world” (delforge, 2004), was only the prelude to placing cp as a competitor of wal-mart on the chinese market. one of thaksin’s development programs was the so-called “one tambon one product” program – a funding pool for regional development where municipalities were encouraged to choose a local product and apply for state support to assist in its export-oriented production. thaksin also advocated the negotiation of a us-thai free trade agreement. against this turbo-capitalism, the royalist-conservative capital group positioned itself as a counter-project where the development paradigm supported by the king, the sufficiency economy, was propagated as an economic and development model in which small-scale production necessary for local markets and needs – a shift away from western lifestyle consumerism – was instead endorsed (isager & ivarsson, 2008; walker, 2008). in brief, thaksin’s economic miracle was based on a further capitalist penetration of thailand into new sectors (the health care market, telecommunications) and rural regions that had not yet been directly integrated into industrial production contexts. prior to his term, the provinces in the north and northeast were perceived as merely a pool of migrant workers; the provinces were useful for the production of foodstuffs and, because of their partly intact subsistence structures, were fallback options for unemployed workers, who returned there in droves in the wake of the asian crisis. in this respect, thaksin’s economic project is indeed a qualitative innovation that, in the context of the genesis of the thai state as a bangkok-centered trading state, represents a historic rupture. thailand, the economy of which has been oriented since the founding of the state towards the maritime trade hub of thonburi/bangkok, is one of the most heavily centralized countries in the world, in which an equally record-breaking social inequality is articulated along an urban/rural divide. thaksin’s approach to developing precisely the regions in the neglected provinces through investment programs met with a historic transitional situation: the accumulation cycle, aligned with england and the usa, with which siam/thailand was connected to via the hub of bangkok, was drawing to an end. the plans of thaksin’s sister, yingluck shinawatra, 48 | aseas 11(1) the iron silk road and the iron fist: making sense of the military coup d’état in thailand to systematically link newly developed regions of the hinterland to china with highspeed trains is part of a radical historic shift. this new orientation, which means far more than a different accentuation in economic policy, led to a fierce competition between the two antagonistic capital groups over the control of this process. in spite of their rhetoric of alternative development models, the royalist-conservative elites took on multiple political projects and business ideas of the red predecessor governments. for example, the royalist-conservative government, which had come into power through the 2006 coup, kept the health system and the rural investment funds introduced by thaksin – after having previously opposed them as populist programs. in the same way, the present junta began to implement the program for high-speed trains which they fiercely opposed before the coup, only a few days after taking over the power. implications and outlook if the last coup of 2014 is historically read in light of world-systems theory, it mirrors the development trajectories between 1767 and 1855, but in the opposite direction. the capital group gathered around the thai royal house, established as a commercial monarchy in 1767 and reoriented westwards with the bowring treaty in 1855, underwent a further transformation. if one follows frank (1998), it is a return to the trade structures that were dominant before 1855, – it means a reorientation to china. at the present time, thai political sciences and history have to remain in the state of court historiography with hagiographical features because of the draconian penalties for lèse majesté provided for by section 121 of the criminal code. in earlier decades, critical social science and history with emancipatory ambitions had to be fought for by students and committed scholars. some of these colleagues have been openly prosecuted since 2014 or are in exile (thai political prisoners, 2015). confronted with the authoritarian shift in thailand, which is part of the global rise of authoritarianism, it is the duty of concerned scholars to name the economic elites of thailand and analyze their appropriation strategies. above all, it is important to highlight the role they play in the process of establishing an authoritarian regime. the confrontation of the two capital groups that emerged in thailand in the wake of the asian crisis and their struggle over the control of the transition to the next accumulation cycle seem to leave no space for balancing interests and co-existence, as previous capital groups have practiced, for example in the 1970s and 1980s. the confrontation seems to be not about a piece of the pie but – if we consider the coup of 1782 – about the very existence of respective capital groups. this is why democratic means to balance interests have been buried in favor of an authoritarian system with fascist traits. it should be noted, however, that the de-democratization of thailand, which was correlated with the reorientation of the royalist-conservative elites, is not due to a direct influence from china. on the contrary, the chinese government seems to have kept out of the internal conflict in thailand. in terms of economic policy, one should assume that thaksin’s project is closer to the preferences of china. in fact, china has signed the mou for the project of high-speed trains with yingluck shinawatra as well as expressed its hope that her early re-elections, scheduled for february 2014, may have a positive outcome. however, in the same matter-of-fact way, the chinese aseas 11(1) | 49 wolfram schaffar government continued to pursue the project after the coup in may 2014 and worked with the new royalist-conservative military rulers. work in the style of reilly (2013), grävingholt (2011), or the concept of gravity centers of authoritarian rule (kneuer & demmelhuber, 2015) may highlight a proximity of the chinese government to the authoritarian nature of the new administration. ideologically, however, there is much that separates the nominally communist party of china from a government that is openly royalist. the indifference of china towards the respective administration with which it cooperates points to the different character of the chinese integration project. unlike the usa, which was attempting to secure its sphere of influence by means of treaties that require the political will of like-minded governments, china organizes its new project via the physical expansion of its infrastructure and relies on its physical presence. the authoritarian regime, which was established by the royal elites through the coup in 2014, however, is not a copy of chinese-style authoritarian rule. it is a genuine ‘thai-style’ authoritarianism, borne out of the fierce competition for access to the next grand economic accumulation cycle.  references amornrat mahitthirook. 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(2016). china’s one belt one road: an overview of the debate [trends in southeast asia #06]. singapore: institute of southeast asian studies. retrieved from https://www.iseas.edu.sg/articles-commentaries/trends-in-southeast-asia/item/3226-chinas-one-belt-one-road-an-overview-of-the-debate zhao yanrong. & zhang haihou (2015, july 3). family ties. china daily asia. retrieved from http://www. chinadailyasia.com/asiaweekly/2015-07/03/content_15285479.html about the author between 2010 and 2018, wolfram schaffar has worked as professor for development studies and political science at the university of vienna. prior to this he worked at the university of bonn, at chulalongkorn university in bangkok, and at the royal netherlands institute of southeast asian and caribbean studies (kitlv) in leiden. his fields of interest are state theory of the south, social movements, new constitutionalism and democratization processes, as well as new authoritarianism. ► contact: wolfram.schaffar@gmx.de acknowledgements special thanks to alex demirović, who was the first to draw my attention to the impact of the belt-and-road initiative and gave important impulses to an earlier version of the text. aseas 12(2) | 267 “the danger of intolerant above-ground, non-clandestine organizations is bigger for indonesia than violent extremism”: an interview with sidney jones on religious extremism, political violence and conflict dynamics in indonesia gunnar stange ► stange, g. (2019). “the danger of intolerant above-ground, non-clandestine organizations is bigger for indonesia than violent extremism”: an interview with sidney jones on religious extremism, political violence, and conflict dynamics in indonesia. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 12(2), 267-274. sidney jones is director of the jakarta-based institute for policy analysis of conflict (ipac).  from  2002 to 2013, she worked with the international crisis group, first as southeast asia project director, then from 2007 as senior adviser to the asia program. before that she worked for the ford foundation, amnesty international, and human rights watch. she is an expert on security in southeast asia, particularly islamic terrorist movements in indonesia.  jones has analyzed and extensively written on separatist conflicts (aceh, papua, mindanao), communal conflicts (poso, moluccas), and ethnic conflict (kalimantan) in indonesia. she also has studied islamic radicalism, producing reports on the islamist terrorist network jemaah islamiyah and its operations in indonesia and the philippines, as well as issues of security sector reform and decentralization in indonesia. this interview was conducted and recorded at ipac office in jakarta on 20 august 2019. it focuses on questions of religious extremism, political violence, and conflict dynamics in contemporary indonesia. keywords: conflict analysis; conflict transformation; indonesia; radicalization; violence  gunnar stange: first of all, thank you very much for taking the time for this interview. what is your motivation for your work with ipac?1 sidney jones: it has changed over time, i think. when i first came to indonesia in 1977, i had no background on asia, let alone southeast asia or indonesia. i worked with the ford foundation. it was the most fantastic job imaginable because i was giving grants in the fields of islamic education, public interest ngos, preservation of the traditional arts, assistance to provincial law faculties. and then, nine years later, i left to work with amnesty international (ai) for a variety of reasons; it was the islamic dissidents i was particularly interested in, especially those who were arrested under the suharto government for wanting to establish 1 ipac was founded in 2013 as an indonesian ngo after the international crisis group (icg) discontinued its indonesia program. ipac (2013) mainly focuses on indonesia, timor-leste, and the southern philippines in its “mission is to explain the dynamics of conflict – why it started, how it changed, what drives it, who benefits – and get that information quickly to people who can use it to bring about positive change” (n.p.). im dialog  in dialogue w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s 0 02 5 “the danger of intolerant above-ground, non-clandestine organizations is bigger for indonesia than violent extremism” 268 | aseas 12(2) an islamic state. in a way, it was in amnesty international that the marriage of interest in human rights and in islamic extremism came together. my current interest is more to understand islamist extremists’ networks after they had been arrested, but not to get them released, although i want to ensure that they are treated properly. after 4 years at amnesty international and nearly 16 years at human rights watch, i was finding that a human-rights-focus alone was too constricting. it did not allow you to actually get the nuances of what was taking place, especially in conflict affected areas like aceh2. i wanted to look at the conflict more generally and wanted to understand it in more than just human rights terms. that was one of many reasons that i left human rights watch. and then, this opening came up with the international crisis group (icg). back then, in 2002, the singaporeans and the malaysians had started a crackdown on extremists. they all were mentioning this organization jemaah islamiya and the name abu bakar ba’asyir. i said i know those names as i was working on these cases at amnesty international. in my files, i had the original trial documents of abu bakar ba’asyir in 1983.3 so, i asked icg if they were interested in a paper on the antecedents of these cases, and they said yes. that paper came out two months before the bali bombing.4 it became a kind of reference point. that is how it all began. stange: do you intend to affect change with your work? jones: yes, and i think we can. you cannot transform a society overnight. but what you do is you take broad objectives and then you break them down into doable parts. if you think about it in that way, i think you can affect change. even if it is something as relatively small as bringing a group interested in reintegration into contact with a group that conducted reintegration successfully somewhere else. even just by having standards in your own research where you insist that people doublecheck their sources. that can actually have a transformative change down the line. on the extremism side, we are doing a lot of training with senior police officers. we can take policy ideas and give them directly to people who are in responsible positions. there was one project we did on west kalimantan before the local elections in june 2018. because of identity politics the tensions between dayak christians and malay muslims were rising to a point that there was a serious possibility of violence. one of the police [officers] took the report5 and the introduction and recommendations and ensured that every police station in kalimantan had a copy. because of the warnings in the report, they increased temporarily the number of police officers in pontianak6 and the surrounding areas. we do not know about cause and effect, but fact is that violence did not transpire. i think that is impact. 2 in the northern-most indonesian province of aceh, a thirty-year armed conflict between the indonesian government and the free aceh movement (gerakan aceh merdeka, gam) was finally ended in august 2005 by a peace agreement between the conflicting parties (aspinall, 2009). 3 the radical islamic cleric ba’asyir is one of the co-founders of the clandestine islamist terrorist network jemaah islamiyah that is responsible for major bomb attacks in indonesia during the early 2000s (icg, 2003). 4 see, icg (2002). 5 see, institute for policy analysis of conflict (2018). 6 pontianak is the capital of the indonesian province west kalimantan. gunnar stange aseas 12(2) | 269 stange: if we look at the results of this year’s indonesian general elections,7 it seems that indonesia is deeply divided between those who favor a rather conservative and even autocratic style of politics and those who want indonesia to be an open and pluralist society. how do you think this affects the political climate in indonesia? jones: there were certainly a lot of tensions around the election time, but it dissipated remarkably speedily after the elections were over. it does not mean that the divisions are not there but the saving grace about indonesia is that the divisions are all cross-cutting. it means you are divided on one issue, but you are aligned on the principle ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ on another issue. so, you do not get the kind of polarization that would come if the only division was conservative versus moderate islam. that is one dividing line, but we also have the java/off-java dividing line, which was very evident in the elections. we also have majority/minority divisions. we have age divisions, we have gender divisions, and within each camp of opposing groups there are all those internal divisions. they spend as much time fighting each other as they do fighting whatever external enemy happens to be there. i think, broadly speaking, it is true that indonesia has become more socially conservative over time. it is also true that the political power of majoritarian islam has increased. that is very clear from survey data now. that has consequences for indonesia going forward. but it is also the case that finally there is a backlash against that. one of the forms that the backlash takes is the mobilization, particularly of nahdlatul ulama (nu)8 into a much more dynamic organization that sees one of its roles as fighting extremism. i remember about ten years ago i was talking to one man with an nu background who was kind of despairing of the fact that nu was depending on its cultural inheritance rather than actively recruiting people for its survival as an organization. at the time, they were losing members to salafi organizations such as hizbut tahrir indonesia (hti)9 to more militant organizations that had a greater appeal. he said at this point, we have to learn how to be militantly moderate. and that is what is happening now. now, we are working on a paper that is looking at the paramilitary part of ansor, banser, and how they now have indoctrination programs and military training.10 they have kind of taken a leaf from the model of militant organizations and are applying it to their model. one of the consequences is perhaps an increased risk of violence between those paramilitary groups. 7 general elections were held on 17 april 2019. incumbent president joko widodo, known as jokowi and considered to represent a multi-religious and pluralist vision of indonesia, won the race with 55.5% of the popular vote against his sole competitor prabowo subianto, representing a rather islamic conservative and authoritarian vision of the country. after the official results of the race were publicly announced in may 2019, supporters of prabowo started rioting in the streets of jakarta accusing election officials of widespread fraud. (suhartono & victor, 2019) 8 nu is the largest islamic mass organization in indonesia deeply rooted in the javanese tradition of islam. it claims to have more than 40 million members. (see, bush, 2009) 9 hizbut tahrir was one of the leading radical islamic organizations in indonesia. it was banned in 2017 by a decree signed by president joko widodo for opposing the state ideology pancasila and seeking to establish a caliphate. (see, osman, 2018) 10 gerakan pemuda ansor (gp ansor) is an indonesian islamic youth movement affiliated with nu. banser (barisan ansor serba guna, multipurpose ansor front) is a militia organization and the military wing of ansor. (see, ronika, syamsuddin, & kuswanjono, 2019) “the danger of intolerant above-ground, non-clandestine organizations is bigger for indonesia than violent extremism” 270 | aseas 12(2) stange: would you say that indonesian society has become more violent or has indonesian society become more ready to accept violence as a political means? jones: it depends what you are comparing it to. if you compare it to the killings in 1965/66, no. the problem of looking at indonesia is that most people’s time frames are too short now. we did a study looking at the attitudes of indonesian students studying in turkey and egypt toward the developments in those countries in 2015 just after mursi had fallen and as erdogan was becoming more authoritarian in turkey. what was shocking was that these kids were not remembering 1998. we were in a generation that had grown up and reached their maturity after the transformation from the new order that had taken place. the only system they knew was democracy. they could not relate developments in turkey or egypt to what had been happening in indonesia. they did not remember it. i think there is a lot of people now that see indonesia becoming more authoritarian. and there are some worrying indications. this includes people who do not remember the new order. those people who do remember the new order and are seeing danger signs deserve more attention perhaps because they understand what these indicators can lead to. for example, there are many of us who thought the banning of hti was not a good idea. i do not think that the banning of the front pembela islam (fpi, islamic defenders front)11 is a good idea. what you should do, you arrest the people who are committing crimes, but you do not suddenly ban associations. that can become a tool that people can use against anybody, any organization that they dislike. i think this is a potentially authoritarian tool. it is not necessarily being used yet in an authoritarian way, but it is certainly a danger sign. stange: speaking of potential outbreaks of violence, against the backdrop of the 2018 surabaya bombings, how likely do you think it is that indonesia will be seeing another wave of terrorist attacks in the near future? jones: i think the danger of intolerant, above-ground, non-clandestine organizations is bigger for indonesia than violent extremism. i think the terrorism problem is being managed, but partly because indonesia is not that conducive to the growth of terrorist organizations more generally. it is not under occupation. it does not have a repressive government; it is not a muslim minority situation where muslims are being persecuted. there is not a sense of injustice or grievance. we don’t have internal conflicts – as in ambon and poso – that are leading to that idea that muslims are the victims. and, there are no nasty neighbors stirring things up. why should there be terrorism? in some ways the question is why is there terrorism at all? it is manageable, but i would not attribute it all to good law enforcement. that is a factor, but that is not the whole story. 11 fpi is an indonesian islamist civil society organization that was founded in 1998. it positions itself as islamic moral police and is notorious for vigilante actions against people, organizations, and places that its members consider morally unacceptable according to their interpretation of islamic values. (see also, seto, 2019, in this issue) gunnar stange aseas 12(2) | 271 stange: moving on to a related topic that has been hotly debated in recent years, why do you think the otherwise quite capable indonesian security sector fails time and again to protect religious minorities against assaults and guarantee religious freedom? do you think that there is a rationale behind it? jones: it is very significant that 97% of minorities in indonesia voted for jokowi as opposed to prabowo because they think that conservative islam is turning them into second class citizens. the majoritarian flavor of some speeches and stances of some mass organizations have come to the point where it is now impossible for any christian to ever be considered as president, head of the armed forces, or senior leader of almost any organization related to security. the idea that muslim majority areas have to be ruled by muslims has taken real root. i should say that in eastern indonesia the same idea has taken hold among christians, and there are very similar incidents of local communities refusing to have mosques build and so on. but, of course, the scale is overwhelmingly different, and even if those incidents take place it does not swage the fears of minorities that live on java or the major islands that their continued rights as citizens of indonesia are in jeopardy. i think there are several reasons why the state has not come to the protection of non-muslim citizens. one of them has to do with the transformations that took place in 2005 that allowed direct local elections. when it became possible to elect figures directly at a local level in muslim majority areas, it gave real power to civil society actors who represented hardline muslim organizations to actually affect political campaigns. i think 2005 was a real turning point. i also think that the ambon and poso conflicts were a real turning point, the first real turning point in post-suharto indonesia,12 because both of the conflicts were the first time when muslims saw christians as a serious threat to their survival. and, in both conflicts, there were more muslims killed than christians. it is a fact that a lot of people outside indonesia do not realize that. they have that vision of extremist muslims massacring christians. it happened, but there were more on the other side that took place. i think that transformed the attitudes of many muslim organizations to a majoritarian stand: “this is our country. we have to defend it. if we don’t, our survival could be at stake.” additionally, the success of the fundamentalist islamic partai keadilan sejahtera (pks, prosperous justice party) in its initial ventures into politics actually convinced people that an islamic agenda in the polls could succeed. even though, by and large, islamic parties have not been successful. all of the advances in the political have taken place from civil society organizations operating from outside the political sphere. but, all of that combined reinforced this feeling, even within the security forces, that their allies that they needed to partner with were on the islamic side and not on the minority side. it violates every element of the basis on which indonesia was founded. i still think there are many in indonesia who see a broader inclusive society as desirable and something that should be maintained. 12 for a detailed study on the communal violence on the maluku islands between 1999 and 2002, see schulze (2017). “the danger of intolerant above-ground, non-clandestine organizations is bigger for indonesia than violent extremism” 272 | aseas 12(2) but i think there is no question that they have lost ground. at one of my lectures at a police institute, i talked to indonesian police sitting around the table after a brutal incident that involved mob action in which three ahmadis were beaten to death.13 i asked, “why don’t you arrest these people when they commit crime?” three hands went up. the first one said, “we did not get any instructions from above”. the indonesian police is a very centralized organization, and it is true, nobody dares to move unless it comes down from the top. the second one said, “if we go against them, they will come after us.” so, the mob situation was another factor. the third comment was, “we still use them as partners”. that is true. for example, in one case the police hired the fpi to sit in a court room when one of the extremists was being tried. so, there was no room for that guy’s own supporters to be in the court room. it was full of white-robed people, but they were all opposed to the person being tried. stange: in how far do you think has decentralization affected conflict management in indonesia? jones: decentralization has thrown up all sorts of possibilities for conflict, particularly through the role of pemekaran (expansion; the possibility to form new districts and provinces) and this process of dividing existing districts or provinces into smaller units. in many areas of indonesia, particularly eastern indonesia – sulawesi, kalimantan, papua, maluku – pemekaran is effectively dividing up indonesia by ethnic groups. when you have a district that is multi-ethnic, and there is one dominant ethnic group, the number two ethnic group can become the dominant majority, if they have a specific geographic territory where they are dominant, once they split off. as long as they can pay the people you need to pay, because it is a very corrupt process, you can get your district. only fairly recently, there was a moratorium placed on the creation of new districts and new provinces. i don’t think that there is any way that decentralization can end up contributing to better management of conflict. it is exactly the opposite. stange: moving on to papua, do you see signs that jokowi will use the relative freedom of his last term to attempt bringing the conflict in papua to a lasting solution? jones: no. even if he wanted to, it is not possible. but i do not think he wants to. i do not think that this aspect of it plays any role in his thinking. like any other president before him, he believes it even more that infrastructure and economic development will solve the political problem. that is why he will go there and support the transpapua highway14. there is no understanding that money will not buy you peace. they did not learn any lessons from east timor, and they did not learn any lessons from aceh. the conflict in papua is not a single conflict. it is multiple conflicts on multiple levels in multiple areas of papua. 13 on 6 february 2011, 1,500 muslim rioters surrounded an ahmadi neighborhood in cikeusik, banten province. three ahmadis were beaten to death and five were injured, with police officers witnessing the scene without interfering. (human rights watch, 2013, p. 1) 14 the  trans-papua highway  consists of 12 partly unfinished road segments across  papua  and  west papua provinces with a total length of 4,325 kilometers (see, sloan et al., 2019). gunnar stange aseas 12(2) | 273 i think the idea of up4b15 was a correct one, that you should have in the government one person responsible to the president who is the strategist on papua policy. but, unlike up4b, that person needs authority and a budget with a veto power over line ministries to actually effect policy change in papua. but there is an assumption, which is wrong, that if only the javanese would go away, papuans would be able to solve problems by themselves. that is not the case. papuanization in terms of putting papuans in charge of local government has only increased corruption, has only increased sukuization16 in terms of clan structures, and has only increased mismanagement and bad governance. it does not bode well for what would happen if you gave them even more authority. what you need is a combination of papuanization and oversight from jakarta. one of the things that happened with the special autonomy law for papua is basically that jakarta threw up its hands saying, we give you all that money and you do what you like with it, and we hope you will not be doing very much with it because it is actually in our interest that you mess it up. there is all of this talk about dialogue. i do not think the preconditions for having a useful dialogue are present. i think the idea of this jaringan damai papua (jdp)17 under muridan satrio widjojo, the late wonderful lipi18 scholar, who helped to draft that papua road map,19 was absolutely right. what you need is to build a united voice in papua that can articulate specific goals that then be presented to the government as expressing the will of papuans. and his vision was to have public consultations across different parts of papua and then frame the results in a way that would provide guidelines for different policies. the problem was it got hijacked by papuans who were more interested in their own interests than actually trying to craft a single voice. i don’t see how it is possible to be optimistic about papua. stange: when it comes to violent conflict in indonesia, where do you see the country in five years? jones: i will not answer this because every prediction that i have made about this country has been wrong. it really is hard because indonesia defies prediction. it is a country that never meets people’s hopes, but it also never falls into your worst fears. it goes its own way in a way that suddenly throws up people. who heard of jokowi two years before he was elected? i do not know what is going to happen. stange: sidney, thank you very much for taking the time for this interview. jones: you are welcome. 15 unit percepatan pembangunan provinsi papua dan provinsi papua barat  (unit  for the acceleration of development in papua and west papua). 16 the term suku means people or ethnic group. 17 established in 2010, the papua peace network facilitates dialogue between papuans and the indonesian government (pamungkas, 2017). 18 lembaga ilmu pengetahuan indonesia (indonesian institute of sciences). 19 the papua road map was drawn up by a team of lipi scholars in 2008, a model for the solution of conflict in papua that adopted a justice approach based on recognition, development, dialog, and reconciliation (widjojo, 2008). “the danger of intolerant above-ground, non-clandestine organizations is bigger for indonesia than violent extremism” 274 | aseas 12(2)  references aspinall, e. 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(2017). the “ethnic” in indonesia’s communal conflicts: violence in ambon, poso, and sambas. ethnic and racial studies, 40(12), 2096-2114. seto, a. (2019). islamist buzzers: message flooding, offline outreach, and astroturfing. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 12(2), 187-208. sloan, s., campbell, m. j., alamgir, m., engert, j., ishida, f. y., senn, n., ... & laurance, w. f. (2019). hidden challenges for conservation and development along the trans-papuan economic corridor. environmental science & policy, 92, 98-106. suhartono, m., & victor, d. (2019, may 22). violence erupts in indonesia’s capital in wake of presidential election result. the new york times. retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/world/asia/ indonesia-election-riots.html widjojo, m.s. (2008). papua road map. inside indonesia, 94, october-december. retrieved from https:// www.insideindonesia.org/papua-road-map about the author gunnar stange is a post-doctoral researcher in the research group population geography and demography at the department of geography and regional research, university of vienna, austria. his research interests include peace and conflict studies, development studies, and forced migration studies. his regional focus is on southeast asia. ► contact: gunnar.stange@univie.ac.at aseas 12(1) | 31 excluding migrant labor from the malaysian bioeconomy: working and living conditions of migrant workers in the palm oil sector in sabah janina puder ► puder, j. (2019). excluding migrant labor from the malaysian bioeconomy: working and living conditions of migrant workers in the palm oil sector in sabah. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 12(1), 31-48. in 2012, malaysia launched its bioeconomy program, with the palm oil sector as one of the main pillars. in focusing on the societal processes that accompany the malaysian plans to establish a bioeconomy, it is of special interest to understand which occupation groups in the palm oil sector are included and which are excluded from the socio-economic targets of the program. research on the bioeconomy, as well as a green economy more broadly, often neglect the possible effects of green economy models on labor markets. i argue that low-skilled migrant workers employed in the malaysian palm oil sector are structurally excluded from the national goal of enhancing the living and working conditions of the population by transforming into a bioeconomy. this exclusion intersects with a specific precarity caused by the socio-economic status of low-skilled migrant workers. the article shows that malaysia’s bioeconomy program reinforces the precarity of this group of workers, expressed in the lack of perspectives for upward mobility, their discrimination on the labor market, and in social barriers preventing them from further training. the findings presented are based on expert interviews and semi-structured qualitative interviews with workers from sabah. keywords: bioeconomy; labor migration; palm oil; social exclusion; working and living conditions  introduction in the 1990s, malaysia started to invest in biotechnology in order to capitalize the state’s rich biodiversity endeavors into “biobusiness and wealth” (arujanan & singaram, 2018, p. 53). in the following years, the expansion of the biotechnology sector became a central concern of subsequent macro-economic development policies. in 2012, malaysia launched the bioeconomy transformation programme (btp), joining countries such as germany and south africa dedicated to establishing bioeconomy as a way to create a sustainable, green growth model. designed as a platform for private-public partnership, the btp focuses on the upgrade of “industries and economic sectors that produce, manage and utilise biological resources” (biotechcorp & mosti, 2017, p. 36). moreover, with the launch of the program, malaysia stressed a new development paradigm that links the promotion of biotechnology and the expansion of biomass use to the long-term development objectives of the state to reduce poverty in rural areas and increase aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 12 32 | aseas 12(1) excluding migrant labor from the malaysian bioeconomy the human capital of malaysians, eager to develop into a high-income country by 2020. in doing so, the state aims to reduce the income gap between the rural population – characterized by a high poverty rate, income insecurity, and limited social mobility – and the urban, higher skilled sectors of malaysia’s population. hence, the program must not only be understood as an economic development strategy but also as a political project targeting socio-economic restructuring through the advancement of the living and working conditions of the rural population (biotechcorp & mosti, 2017, p. 7; pye, 2009). in realizing these goals, the state depends on a vast supply of biomass (kamal, 2016) and the industrial upgrading of the palm oil sector. malaysia is, after indonesia, the second largest producer of palm oil worldwide (united states department of agriculture [usda], 2018). in 2017, agriculture made up the third largest share of malaysia’s gdp; significantly driven by the palm oil production (department of statistics malaysia [dosm], 2017). in the same year, 73% of agricultural land was used to cultivate oil palms (kotecha, 2018, p. 2). the competitiveness of and high demand for palm oil on the global market for vegetable oils and the low salaries in the agricultural sector make palm oil particularly attractive for state and private investments (cramb & mccarthy, 2016, p. 33; pye, daud, & harmono, 2012, p. 331). economically, the palm oil industry is considered a core sector serving “as a valuable source of feedstock to complement a multitude of novel food and non-food industries” for the production of “biofuels, bio-materials and chemicals” (kamal, 2015), boosting malaysia’s ‘green’ competitiveness on a regional and global scale (biotechcorp & mosti, 2017, n.d.). from a socio-economic perspective, the palm oil industry is identified as a strategic area serving a twofold purpose: first, as an essential income source and driving force for infrastructure development, the palm oil industry has a crucial impact on the development of rural areas. second, with the industrial upgrading of the sector, the state expects the creation of new jobs in the upand downstream areas as well as further skill-development and training possibilities (kamal, 2015). a more detailed analysis, however, reveals that a significant share of the malaysian work force appears to be excluded from the promise of an encompassing social upgrade through the transformation of the economy into a bioeconomy – namely labor migrants. as the biggest “net-importer” of foreign labor in southeast asia (ford, 2014, p. 311), migrant workers make up at least a quarter of the total work force in malaysia. in the labor-intensive palm oil plantation sector, migrant workers are the dominant source of wage labor (cramb & mccarthy, 2016, p. 43). in 2012, approximately half a million registered and presumably just as many unregistered foreign workers were employed in the malaysian palm oil sector (pye, daud, manurung, & siagan, 2016), with an estimated 90% coming from indonesia (pye, 2013, p. 10). taking the social restructuring measures targeted in the btp into account, it must be noted that higher paid jobs with better working conditions and training possibilities in the palm oil sector are currently reserved for malaysians, whereas migrant workers are hired to perform so-called ‘dirty’, ‘dangerous’, and ‘degrading’ jobs. the btp seems to reproduce this segmentation between malaysian and non-malaysian workers in the palm oil sector, disregarding the specific vulnerabilities of migrant workers in the country. focusing on the socio-economic transformation processes that accompany the malaysian plans to establish a bioeconomy, this article asks about the mechanisms aseas 12(1) | 33 janina puder that are likely to exclude so-called ‘low-skilled’ migrant workers in the palm oil sector from the socio-economic restructuring measures of the btp. academic literature on the bioeconomy, and the green economy more broadly, often underexposes the effects of green economy models on labor markets (anderson, 2016; birch, 2019; birch & tyfield, 2015; brand & wissen, 2015; mccormick & kautto, 2013). however, studies by the oecd (2017) and the german federal environment agency (umweltbundesamt [uba], 2014) have shown that green transformation models are expected to benefit high-skilled while disadvantaging low-skilled workers. in order to capture the (possible) effects of the btp on migrant workers, it is necessary to explore the current socio-economic status of low-skilled migrant workers in the palm oil sector. by doing so, it becomes possible to shed light on the extent to which corresponding economic policies and political strategies address existing or evolving patterns of social inequalities in the work sphere. against this backdrop, the article explores how working and living conditions of low-skilled migrant workers in the malaysian palm oil sector are affected by the btp. the article proceeds as follows: i give an overview on the state of the art on working and living conditions of migrant workers in the southeast asian palm oil industry. following this, i situate the btp within the malaysian labor migration regime. by emphasizing the regulatory dimension of the regime, flanking the socio-economic status of low-skilled migrant workers, i argue that this group is politically excluded from the socio-economic targets outlined in the btp. i continue by presenting findings from interviews i conducted during fieldwork in sabah (east malaysia), exploring the socio-economic status of low-skilled migrant workers in the malaysian palm oil sector. based on the analysis of these interviews, i show the mechanisms that exclude migrant workers from the socio-economic objectives of the btp. working and living conditions in the palm oil sector research on the social and socio-economic aspects of the southeast asian “oil palm complex” (cramb & mccarthy, 2016b) often concentrate on the land dispossession of the rural population (li, 2014; mccarthy, 2010; peluso & lund, 2013; pichler, 2015) and the subsequent integration or exclusion of ‘liberated’ landless peasants into the palm oil industry (bissonnette, 2012; cramb, 2016; mccarthy & zen, 2016; neilson, 2016; white & dasgupta, 2010). in order to assure the livelihood of the family household, former subsistence farmers often choose or are forced to migrate internally (li, 2015, 2016) or to another country (sanderson, 2016, p. 387) – with malaysia being a frequent destination within the region (ford, 2014). empirical research on migrant workers in the malaysian palm oil sector commonly explores the social effects of legal and political regulations. from a legal perspective, foreign workers have to apply for a working permit which is valid for three years, with the possibility of applying twice for a one-year extension. the malaysian state grants different types of permits to specific national groups to work in selected branches of the economy, resulting in a state-regulated division of labor (khoo, 2001, p. 181). migrant workers are legally bound to a specified employer and are unable to choose or change jobs on their own (pye et al., 2016). they are also required to attend regular medical check-ups. in case a worker is pregnant or severely ill he or 34 | aseas 12(1) excluding migrant labor from the malaysian bioeconomy she faces immediate deportation (pye, 2015, p. 192). in this context, another research strand concentrates on the illegalization of migrant workers and their dependents (saravanamuttu, 2013). when migrant workers switch jobs without legal permission, when their working permits are withdrawn or expired, and they choose to (re)enter or stay in malaysia without proper documents, they are illegalized (pye et al., 2016). in comparison with documented workers, their position on the labor market changes in two contradicting ways. on the one hand, undocumented workers are free to “move from one job to another, they do not pay taxes and it is much more difficult to make them leave the country” (garcés-mascareñas, 2012, p. 84). on the other hand, they constantly fear being caught by state authorities or vigilante groups and eventually being deported (pye et al., 2012, p. 332). migrant workers are neither allowed to bring family members nor to marry or start a family in malaysia. since plantations and mills “are far away and spatially separated from everyday malaysian life” (pye et al., 2012, p. 334), they are largely excluded from other parts of the (rural) population (sanderson, 2016). plantations and mills “cannot be reached by public transport and workers usually have no cars”, resulting in their “isolation” (pye et al., 2012, p. 334) from urban areas and public infrastructure. as malaysian workers are mostly unwilling to work in the low-wage segment of the palm oil sector, companies and smallholders fall back on foreign workers (pye et al., 2012). workers migrating to malaysia are foremost “attracted by . . . higher wages” and the “hope to save enough money in malaysia to improve their livelihood possibilities at home” (pye et al., 2016). but migration can be costly (lindquist, 2017), and salaries of low-skilled migrant workers in the palm oil sector are usually significantly below the national average (ford, 2014; ilo, 2016). this also applies to mill workers, who usually also have a migrant background. studies have shown that within the palm oil sector there are great variations in the payment system different types of employers install, ranging from permanent contract-based payments to (in)formal payments determined by harvesting quotas (pye et al., 2016). in order to exceed or even reach the minimum wage and in search of ways to bridge income insecurity, migrant workers rely on overtime work and/or additional sources of income (pye et al., 2012, p. 333). in addition, plantation workers are often exposed to heavy manual labor and work tasks hazardous to their health (tenaganita, 2002). the malaysian state externalizes reproduction costs to the country that sends foreign workers (pye, 2015, p. 193). for example, as migrant children are not allowed to attend public schools in malaysia, they may be sent to their country of origin in order to receive basic or further education, where they either stay on their own or female family members take care of them. in this context, remittances are an essential feature of the socio-economic organization of “transnational families” (pries, 2018; pye et al., 2012, p. 332). in the case of indonesia, they are also of economic importance to the sending country, resulting in state-supported labor migration in order to manage “labor surpluses and to earn foreign currency” (missbach & palmer, 2018). in a critical analysis of the working and living conditions of migrant workers in the malaysian palm oil sector, pye et al. (2012) elaborate on the concept of a dual labor regime, which institutionalizes a specific form of social and political precarity. in dealing with their precarious situations, pye (2017) examines individual coping strategies of migrant workers, characterizing them as “everyday resistance” (p. 951). aseas 12(1) | 35 janina puder everyday resistance includes consciously choosing to work as undocumented workers to gain autonomy, using social networks to find employment, or cheating public officials to extend one’s stay in malaysia. research on the socio-economic dimensions of the southeast asian oil palm complex currently lacks a perspective that analyzes structural processes of social exclusion of low-skilled migrant workers employed in the palm oil sector in view of the state’s ambition to improve the working and living conditions of the rural population through the establishment of a malaysian bioeconomy. in this context, social exclusion defines the marginalization of a group within a given societal context, mediated by directly or indirectly denying this group the access to basic public goods like welfare services (mohr, 2005), spatially marginalizing it, preventing it from political participation, or the like (bude & willich, 2006; kronauer, 2010). processes of social exclusion become structural when state policies and social practices reinforce social segmentation over a period of time without destabilizing society as a whole (bude & willich, 2006, p. 22). in order to analyze the structural social exclusion of migrant workers from the socio-economic prospects of the malaysian bioeconomy, i understand the btp and respective policies as a political project aiming at the productive and social transformation of the country’s model of capitalist development in order to become a fully industrialized country pioneering in green technologies and innovations. as the btp operates within the framework of existing social inequalities, which structurally disadvantages low-skilled migrant workers on the labor market, the initiative must be analyzed against the backdrop of the state’s migration regime co-structuring the labor market. the malaysian migrant labor regime in the wake of the nascent bioeconomy since the early 20th century, malaysia has relied on the ‘import’ of foreign labor, which led to the gradual institutionalization of a state regulated “labor migration regime” in the beginning of the 1970s (garcés-mascareñas, 2012, p. 56). today, malaysia has one of the largest migrant worker populations worldwide (kotecha, 2018, p. 2). the largest shares consist of low-skilled workers from indonesia, the philippines, nepal, myanmar, india, and bangladesh (ilo, 2016). for the most part, they work in the plantation, construction, and service sector (including domestic care) (sugiyarto, 2015, pp. 281-282). the low wage level in these employment sectors was and still is an important determinant for their steady development and positive economic performance. historically, since colonial times, the economic development model of malaysia was marked by an ethnic division of labor (khoo, 2001, p. 181), which, in the course of the state’s nation building, was later replaced by a segmentation of the labor market based on citizenship. the resulting regulation of labor migration “sought to let in migrant workers, but only in places where they were needed and for as long as they were needed” (garcés-mascareñas, 2012, p. 74). to this day, low-skilled workers migrating from different countries to malaysia dominate certain low-wage segments of the malaysian economy, whereas domestic workers are deployed in better-paid work, with higher skill requirements (garcés-mascareñas, 2012, pp. 49, 196). 36 | aseas 12(1) excluding migrant labor from the malaysian bioeconomy the specific historical form of malaysia’s labor migration regime was always shaped by the competition between malaysian and non-malaysian wage workers on the labor market (garcés-mascareñas, 2012, p. 68; kaur, 2006, p. 44; khoo, 2000, p. 222). in the course of various waves of (de)regulation, labor migration became increasingly flexible (kaur, 2004). today, the relative share of low-skilled migrant workers depends on the one hand on the market demand for cheap labor and on the other hand on the political power of nationalist, employee-friendly actors to limit labor migration in favor of the domestic labor force (garcés-mascareñas, 2012). the tension between the concerns of the domestic labor force and the profit-driven interests of businesses and the state have steadily reinforced the segmentation of the malaysian labor market. but the extensive use of low-skilled migrant workers must also be understood as a political strategy to curb a rapid rise in the general wage level (garcés-mascareñas, 2012, p. 62). in taking the specifics of the malaysian labor migration regime into account, the btp is embedded in a historically grown socio-economic development and growth model in which the precarisation and flexibilization of migrant labor is historically rooted. as an economic development program, the btp concentrates on the industrialization and expansion of the agricultural sector, with emphasis on the palm oil industry. in its economic and socio-economic dimension, the btp is designed as a full value-chain approach promoting the establishment of small and medium bio-based businesses oriented towards the export market and the modernization of raw material supply (kamal, 2015). for example, a partial strategy of the btp targets an income increase for farmers of up to myr 4,500 per month (approximately eur 960) through buyback guarantees for raw materials and private-public partnerships creating links between agriculture and bio-based industries to improve the welfare of rural communities. in what way, the program plans to address the specific needs of rural households remains uncertain. while the btp promotes the qualitative improvement of working and living conditions, the quantitative number of estimated new job opportunities is difficult to determine, ranging between 1,500 and 2,000 new jobs in the upand downstream area of the palm oil industry within an indefinite timeframe (kamal, 2016). bearing in mind that more than half a million documented labor migrants are employed in the palm oil sector and that malaysian workers receive preferential treatment over non-malaysian workers on the labor market, it appears unlikely that low-skilled migrant workers will gain access to these new work areas. all political measures of enhancing working and living conditions of the rural population in the btp are tailored to the domestic workforce (biotechcorp, 10 april 2018; khoo, 2000, p. 216, 2001, p. 184), excluding migrant workers from the socio-economic prospects of the program. but how do these political mechanisms of exclusion translate into everyday working and living conditions of migrant workers employed in the palm oil sector? approaching the field the findings in this article are based on field research i carried out from february to april 2018. the qualitative fieldwork concentrated mainly on one-to-one interviews with low-skilled migrant workers in the palm oil sector, predominantly from indonesia, in the east malaysian state of sabah. aseas 12(1) | 37 janina puder expert interviews focusing on migrant workers and the bioeconomy in malaysia with ngos, a union representative, state institutions, and academics rounded out the findings from the interviews with migrant workers. additionally, two smallholders that employed migrant workers were interviewed. participant observation in the form of visiting palm oil plantations and mills as well as joining a strategy meeting of union secretaries complemented the field research. the malaysian palm oil industry consists of three main production sites: oil palm plantations, palm oil mills, and palm oil refinery plants. low-skilled migrant workers dominate oil palm plantations and processing mills. except for the specific production site they work in, they share core characteristics in working and living conditions. the group of migrant plantation workers encompasses all jobs linked to maintaining the estate (i.e., harvesting, fertilizing, collecting loose fruit, tree nursery, and basic services such as cleaning). this excludes, for example, the staff who is responsible for managing the production flow. in the case of mill workers, i concentrated on workers directly involved in processing procedures (e.g., operating the oil press or weighing fresh fruit bunches). i chose sabah as my field site for two main reasons: first, the palm oil sector has become an important income source for the rural population in sabah and currently records the highest growth rates within malaysia. it is, therefore, an adequate site to analyze socio-economic transformation processes against the backdrop of the expansive development dynamic of the sector in the context of the btp. second, the standard of living in the predominantly rural areas of east malaysia is considerably lower than in more urban and modern regions of peninsular malaysia. accordingly, one strand of the malaysian bioeconomy strategy explicitly focuses on the establishment of ‘green’ production branches in sabah, targeting the advancement of living and working conditions in the east malaysian state (rahmat, 2015, pp. 6, 32-33, 36). in order to understand in what ways the socio-economic measures of the btp (dis)regard low-skilled migrant workers in the palm oil sector, the fieldwork sought to explore the socio-economic status of this group by gaining empirical insight into their current working and living conditions. i define the socio-economic status of workers as determined by their economic situation within a given, historically grown, number of respondents occupation area of work male female 6 4 plantation worker sandakan 1 2 plantation worker tawau 3 2 mill worker kunak ethnic bugis 6 7 other 4 1 age span approx.: 30-54 years old total: 18 table 1. informants’ details (own compilation). 38 | aseas 12(1) excluding migrant labor from the malaysian bioeconomy and socially embedded economic system (mikl-horke, 2011, p. 13; weber, 1985). this provides insight into the objective living conditions of individuals or groups within society, induced, for example, by working conditions, access to education, and property (mikl-horke, 2011, p. 13). in doing so, the questionnaire covered the following topics: (1) general working conditions, (2) income situation and distribution, (3) organization of the family household (internal division of labor), (4) community life, (5) dealing with work and income related problems, and (6) future aspirations. the interviews were analyzed and coded following the procedure proposed by richards (2005). variations in working and living conditions the immediate living conditions of migrant plantation and mill workers in malaysia vary according to the type of employer they work for. i interviewed workers employed by smallholders, medium-sized companies, and a large international company.1 the living areas of workers employed by larger companies resemble village structures. workers are accommodated side-by-side within the plantation or next to the mill in houses owned by the company assigned to them. while managers and the staff live in separate areas in more spacious and modern houses, plantation and mill workers’ homes are all of the same basic design, regardless of the size or needs of the respective household. as a result, large households often appear crowded, lacking sufficient space for all family members. workers on large estates are provided with facilities, such as a small health clinic or a religious institution as well as with basic services like electricity, water, or a school bus for their children. working and living on estates with basic infrastructure goes along with a certain self-contained communal life. workers may shop in small grocery stores, participate in sport activities, and in many cases they live next door to family members. more importantly, larger estates are perceived as protected areas where migrant workers (who are not permitted to hold their own passports) are safe from deportation. some respondents working for such companies hinted that they mostly stay within the estate. one worker even stated that she has never been to another estate: “[i was raised in this estate.] i have never been anywhere else. until now i have grandchildren here” (female plantation worker, 13 march 2018). this especially applies to migrant plantation workers without a (valid) working permit and to those who migrated at an early age to malaysia or were even born as second-generation workers on the estate. in contrast, smaller companies are less well equipped and maintained. respondents employed by such companies or by smallholders problematize the poor organization of the plantation infrastructure, which makes them more dependent on external facilities and services. on the other hand, workers are less monitored in their hours off work and enjoy more freedom of movement. migrant workers 1 for the purpose of this article, i provisionally define a large company in the palm oil sector as an internationally operating enterprise, usually active on more than one link in the value chain. i define a mediumsized company as a business rather concentrated on one level within the value chain, primarily focused on national and regional markets. the distinction of business size by these criteria appears to be more useful for the purpose of this research than to differentiate them, for example, by the size of the plantation area or the enterprise value. aseas 12(1) | 39 janina puder employed by smallholders or small companies often lack access to water, experience electricity cuts, or are provided with insufficient housing. one respondent working for a smallholder mentioned that his household suffers from irregular power supply, complaining that “it gets hot in the evening” (male plantation worker, 8 march 2018), while another smallholders’ worker stated that his family uses rain water and water from the pipeline connected to the farm for cooking and drinking and worried about its quality (male plantation worker, 9 march 2018). migrant plantation workers employed by smallholders regularly perform tasks autonomously and without guidance from plantation owners. while larger and medium-sized companies provide for basic training and safety briefings, smallholders’ workers receive no training at all and are forced to rely on previous work experience or self-taught skills. they usually stem from rural areas where they worked as farm laborers and/or practiced subsistence agriculture. some of them arrive already having gained practical experience working with oil palms before. smallholders are more concerned with selling the fresh fruit bunches (ffb) than with actively intervening in the production process. as a result, respondents working for smallholders get the impression they work on their own farm, which employers encourage by granting them far-reaching autonomy, as this statement of a smallholder exemplifies: “we just let them do it in their own way. . . . they are the ones who decide on when they should carry out [tasks]” (male smallholder, 22 march 2018). furthermore, working for smallholders requires workers to perform multiple tasks, of which some are unpaid, and working hours are handled flexibly, whereas on the plantations of larger companies there is a distinct division of labor with fixed working hours and formalized rules concerning overtime. in consequence, even though workers of smallholders are formally wageworkers, in practice their actual working conditions seem to resemble those of small farmers. the btp’s focus on training and skill development is based on the perception that through the promotion of private investments and the state support for higher education in the area of biomass production and biotechnology, the socio-economic status of the rural population will automatically improve. in the palm oil industry, employers do not promote any explicit measures to further the qualification of migrant workers. none of the respondents mentioned advanced training measures or job promotions, which would indicate steady skill-development. the enclosed space migrant plantation and mill workers live in isolates them from surrounding areas, which means they will not benefit from the prospects of the btp to develop a modern rural infrastructure. the immediate living conditions of migrant workers are determined by their employer rather than by social policies. the implementation of the socio-economic objectives envisaged by the bioeconomy program, hence, depends on efforts made by private actors. while the btp mentions the advancement of the living conditions of smallholders (biotechcorp & mosti, n.d.), it does not address the fact that smallholders usually pass the pressure induced by the market onto their workers, which is why the particular precarious situation of their workers remains unchallenged. the two-level family household as a socio-economic reference when asked about personal property, land ownership, or future plans in the interviews, it became evident that the household is the most important socio-economic 40 | aseas 12(1) excluding migrant labor from the malaysian bioeconomy reference point for migrant workers. analytically, i divide the household in two interconnected spheres. the typical immediate nuclear family household encompasses a married couple with usually two or more children. the transnational extended family household might include parents, siblings, in-laws, and cousins in the country of origin as well as in malaysia. family members of both household levels undertake different economic roles. they either contribute or they are dependent on income from family members working in the malaysian palm oil sector, performing reproduction or subsistence work in malaysia or the country of origin. the division of labor within the nuclear family household in malaysia is replicated in the extended family household as migrant workers depend on the reproduction work of family members at home, taking care of purchased land, children, or pregnant family members. excluded from the public welfare system in malaysia and with limited access to welfare services in their country of origin, the two-level family household serves as a socio-economic redistribution network (ferguson & mcnally, 2015, pp. 13-14). it functions as a cross-border support network concerning issues such as financial squeezes, care work, or job promotions. especially the latter is important for migrant workers to gain foothold in malaysia, as relatives who work or who are in touch with workers and employers in the palm oil sector help promote family members who seek to work for good employers. the btp is designed as a national development strategy which structurally disregards the transnational context that migrant workers are dependent on. while the need to support the two-level family household by working in malaysia results from the marginalization of low-skilled migrant workers in their country of origin (li, 2009), the internal organization of the household must be understood as a strategy to enforce social stability. its economic organization helps their members to deal with their precarious working and living situations. insecurity of the nuclear family household income most respondents explained that they spend the largest share of their salary on basic needs, as one male mill worker stated: “i have no savings. all of it becomes food” (male mill worker, 15 march 2018). as a result, migrant workers must seek additional income should they encounter a budget squeezes or hope to advance their socio-economic status. the more immediate family members depend on income earned from working on a plantation or in a mill without contributing to the overall household income, the greater the pressure to find additional income sources – most of them being informal. this especially applies to family members who are residing or working illegally in malaysia and are therefore excluded from the labor market. almost all respondents had to deal with income insecurity on a daily basis, shifting between formal wage work and informal work. this includes, for example, female family members selling candy, pastries, or fruits to other plantation workers, the staff, or on the weekly market as well as sewing works for co-workers in return for small compensations or personal favors. the income of workers employed by smallholders is usually more precarious, as their basic salary varies significantly depending on the employers’ willingness and ability to pay, the amount workers are capable of harvesting, the weather, and other seasonal factors (pye et al., 2012, pp. 333-334). a frustrated worker with multiple income sources exemplifies this situation: aseas 12(1) | 41 janina puder my future depends on how many fruit bunches i can harvest. . . . to me, the amount paid [as wage] is not suitable. . . . but i also think about my employer. he also could not afford to give me a minimum wage. . . . i told my employer a few times to increase my salary but it still maintains the same. (male plantation worker, 9 march 2018) workers perceive the need to find various income sources as a form of flexibility in a twofold sense. on the one hand, they experience it as a form of freedom to gain additional income as long as they achieve targeted quotas. on the other hand, they constantly feel pressured to find additional income sources to sustain or advance the household’s livelihood. both contexts must be understood as an expression of migrant workers’ precarity. an extreme example of this can be illustrated by the case of a worried male mill worker with six children. he stated that his family regularly suffers from food shortages. his salary is just enough to buy basic foods, such as rice, sugar, and salt. only if he is able to work overtime or find other sources of income he can buy fresh fish and vegetables for his family (male mill worker, 15 march 2018). formally considered as ‘overtime’, working extra hours to increase the household income or to acquire savings is actually an integral part of the typical workweek of migrant plantation and mill workers, blurring the lines between regular working hours and overtime. in malaysia, migrant workers will perform subsistence work if they have access to small pieces of land provided by their employers or by squatting land. in their country of origin, family members will use the remittances their relatives send from malaysia to buy up and cultivate land for subsistence. when migrant workers return to their country of origin, the purchased land becomes their main income source and/or will be used to build a house. consequently, owning and cultivating land has a big influence in both contexts, but is much harder to achieve for migrant workers in malaysia than in the country of origin (cramb & mccarthy, 2016, p. 54). the socio-economic targets of the btp align with the ideal of standard employment relationships and therefore the sphere of wage work. thereby, the program fails to acknowledge diverse forms of precarious employment and the various modes of production migrant workers are engaged in as wage, subsistence, or informal workers. in order to improve their socio-economic status, migrant workers try to amass savings instead of seeking further qualification in the hope of finding better-paid jobs. persistent income insecurity, the lack of employment opportunities at home, and absent possibilities for further skill development then blocks the way for longterm strategies to improve their standard of living, as proposed by the btp. citizenship and residence status migrant workers are legally prevented from establishing a life beyond working and living on the estate or the small piece of land provided by smallholders, unless they successfully apply for a malaysian identity card (id), which is as a rare possibility (sabah plantation industry employees union [spieu], 14 march 2018). many migrant workers, thus, lose – temporarily or permanently – their documented status. such illegalized migrant workers may gain autonomy by working for the employer who 42 | aseas 12(1) excluding migrant labor from the malaysian bioeconomy pays them best, as this statement demonstrates: “to me, an indonesian citizen, if the employer pays one ringgit but another employer pays two ringgit, of course we will go there. i want to earn more” (male plantation worker, 14 march 2018). on the other hand, undocumented migrant workers may lose autonomy as they become dependent on a social network protecting, supporting, or even hiding them. undocumented migrant workers may even depend on the employment of legal migrant workers. this can be illustrated by one case in which a female plantation worker helped her friend who works for a subcontractor, sharing her salary: i was supposed to leave malaysia in march but i do not want to go back with [my husband to indonesia]. . . . i will not be here long [anymore]. my friends are doing good deeds to me although it is not legal. (female plantation worker, 14 march 2018) the outlined nexus between the malaysian labor migration regime and the socio-economic prospects of the btp has shown that the socio-economic status of workers is substantially defined by the citizenship of workers and their legal status. because low-skilled labor migrants are reduced to their labor power, managed and regulated through working permits and the market demand for cheap labor, the specific living circumstances are neglected by the socio-economic measures of the btp. especially illegalized workers fall beyond the reach of political policies such as those associated with the bioeconomy program. in order to sustain their livelihood in malaysia, they rely on the help of their social network rather than on the support and protection of the state. uncertainty and flexible adaption uncertainty is caused by various factors. if workers are unable to carry out their work because of heavy rainfall, sickness, or a family issue that requires them to go back to their country of origin, they will not get paid. uncertainty may also arise when workers are not in possession of a formal working contract, or when they are unaware of the content of the documents they are signing (spieu, 14 march 2018): “we just have to sign it only. we wouldn’t read it because the document is thick” (female mill worker, 16 march 2018). some respondents were even unsure if they signed a working contract at all. hence, the majority of the interviewed migrant workers were unaware of their legal rights, such as the right to join a union or to demand safety training and equipment. migrant workers try to cope with uncertainty through friends or relatives promoting workers to better-paid jobs, family members giving financial support, or establishing a network to share information about working conditions of different employers, legal rights, or the like. this way, migrant workers flexibly adapt to legal obstacles and socio-economic hurdles. if migrant workers’ households run short of money, it is a common coping strategy to either borrow money from relatives or buy groceries in a take-now-pay-later system. the latter may even be institutionalized by companies. for example, in case workers want to purchase food on credit from a small store within the estate, the company will deduct the outstanding payment from aseas 12(1) | 43 janina puder the worker’s next paycheck (male plantation worker, 14 march 2018). as especially precarious migrant workers may rely on the take-now-pay-later system to satisfy basic needs, a minimum standard of living based on debt becomes normalized. this form of imposed flexibility again shows that migrant workers in the malaysian palm oil industry tend to make use of informal networks to access better jobs or to cope with uncertainty rather than searching for training programs. the lack of basic knowledge about their rights and about opportunities to enter new areas of employment goes along with a general lack of knowledge about the btp and its socio-economic targets. consequently, migrant workers can direct neither expectations nor demands towards the malaysian state in designing a socially inclusive bioeconomy that takes the specific needs of migrant workers in the palm oil sector into account. future aspirations: prospects of social mobility it is common for family members of migrant workers in the malaysian palm oil industry to work in the same sector with little variations in working and living standards. in fact, the extended family network within malaysia often encompasses the whole palm oil plantation sector, providing relatives with job opportunities and employers with new workers. this can apply to more than one generation as job positions may even be ‘inherited’: “my father promoted me for the job. he quit and went back to indonesia. then i replaced [him]” (male plantation worker, 09 march 2018). despite the fact that almost all respondents stated that their income from working in the malaysian palm oil sector was enough to finance basic living expenses in malaysia and that working conditions were considered at least moderate, many of them desire to do something else in the future. while future plans were articulated in an abstract manner, such as: “for my goal, i want to achieve something higher” (male plantation worker, 14 march 2018), two occasionally mentioned goals migrant workers shared stood out. first, some workers aimed to open up a small business once they return to their country of origin: i want to have my own business. if i rely on my wage that i earn, i run out of money easily. . . . i have no capital to start. . . . anything would do, as long as i’m self-employed. (female mill worker, 15 march 2018) second, in the case of migrant workers unable to settle permanently in malaysia, plans for the future aligned with the general goal to possess land in their country of origin. besides securing the livelihood of the extended family household, land ownership is an essential socio-economic resource and subsistence safeguard for migrant workers when they are required to leave malaysia: “now i don’t have land back home. when it is time for me to leave malaysia, i must buy a piece of land, do many things there” (male plantation worker, 14 march 2018). both targets, being self-employed and acquiring land, are indirectly associated with the hope for a better life and upward mobility. furthermore, migrant workers directly raised the issue of social mobility in the context of future aspirations for their children. in order to achieve an improved 44 | aseas 12(1) excluding migrant labor from the malaysian bioeconomy living standard for their children, education was identified as the most important factor: “if they do not want to go to school, they will end up like their mother. look at your aunt, she is a teacher, every month she will get paid” (male plantation worker, 9 march 2018). education is perceived a crucial strategy to escape harsh working and precarious living conditions. the precarious socio-economic status of low-skilled migrant plantation and mill workers is reflected in their envisaged life perspectives. often projected to the country of origin, plans for the future become abstract vanishing points without a definite understanding of how to achieve or finance them. future aspirations shift, or may even become more concrete, when migrant workers have the opportunity to acquire a malaysian id, reinforcing future plans to building a life in malaysia. when mentioning aspirations for their children, migrant workers take up the idea of social advancement through higher education and training presented in the btp. here, education is understood as an opportunity for the next generation to escape precarity and to step out of structural constrains with respect to upward mobility. as all migrant workers without permanent resident status mentioned, they want to return to their country of origin in the future to become (part-time) subsistence farmers, they may move even further away from the sphere of wage labor on which the btps social measures concentrate. conclusion in this article i examined the question of what mechanisms are likely to exclude lowskilled migrant workers in the palm oil sector from the socio-economic restructuring measures proposed by the malaysian bioeconomy program. in order to answer this question, i initially argued that the btp equates further qualification and training with an improvement of employment opportunities, higher income, and the advancement of the standard of living of the rural population. furthermore, i showed that the segmentation of the labor market, which functions as a mechanism of political exclusion of low-skilled migrant workers from better employment opportunities, remains unchallenged by the btp. as domestic workers receive preferential treatment on the labor market, and socio-economic policies in the context of the btp address directly this group, the specific precariousness of low-skilled migrant workers in the palm oil industry is disguised. the btp politically reinforces the existent migrant labor regime, whereby low-skilled migrant workers are solely treated as cheap sources of labor excluded from measures of socio-economic advancement. hence, only a small part of the rural workforce – predominantly already established smallholders and workers employed in downstream areas of the palm oil industry – can be expected to benefit from the measures proposed by the btp. moreover, by investigating the socio-economic status of migrant workers in the palm oil sector in the state of sabah, the article revealed that the btp operates within existing patterns of social inequality in which the political exclusion of lowskilled migrant workers from the socio-economic prospects of the program translates into social barriers preventing them from enhancing their working and living conditions through the establishment of a bioeconomy. the analysis of the interviews with migrant workers has shown that general living and working conditions as well aseas 12(1) | 45 janina puder as further training of low-skilled migrant workers in the palm oil industry depend on efforts undertaken by employers rather than on social policies. in this context, i argued that migrant workers are excluded from the socio-economic measures of the btp. ultimately, it is not in the interest of employers and companies to promote the further training and skill development of their workers since low-skilled migrant workers are deployed to perform heavy manual labor that is highly unattractive to malaysian workers and, especially in the palm oil plantation sector, hard to rationalize. designed as a national development strategy, the btp disregards the context of the transnational household, which is the most important reference point for migrant workers when determining their socio-economic status. furthermore, in order to improve their socio-economic status, migrant workers focus on savings instead of seeking further qualification in the hope of finding better-paid jobs. income insecurity and absent opportunities for further skill development in the malaysian palm oil sector block the way for long-term strategies to advance their living standard, as proposed by the btp. illegalized workers especially become excluded from political policies such as those associated with the btp. in summary, the mechanisms of exclusion presented in this article are mediated through the political reinforcement of the labor migration regime, the neglect of the socio-economic importance of the transnational family household and its internal division of labor, the lack of access to and opportunities for further training, and the one-dimensional concentration of the btps socio-economic measures on the sphere of wage work. these mechanisms of exclusion indicate that it is unlikely that lowskilled migrant workers in the palm oil industry will improve their working and living conditions in the course of the establishment of a bioeconomy in malaysia.  references anderson, z. 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(2010). agrofuels capitalism: a view from political economy. the journal of peasant studies, 37(4), 593-607. about the author janina puder is a sociologist and researcher in the junior research group “bioeconomy and inequalities. transnational entanglements and interdependencies in the bioenergy sector” at the friedrich schiller university jena, germany. in her phd project she observes transnational rural labor conditions in the context of the emerging bioeconomy in malaysia exemplified by the case of migratory labor. ► contact: janina.puder@uni-jena.de acknowledgements the research was funded by the german federal ministry of education and research (bmbf) in the course of the junior research group “bioeconomy and inequalities. transnational entanglements and interdependencies in the bioenergy sector”. i would like to thank the members of the junior research group, two anonymous reviewers, and the editors of aseas for their helpful comments as well as ramlah binti daud and ryan mukit from the universiti malaysia sabah (ums) for their support during my field research. commodification and politicization of heritage commodification and politicization of heritage: implications for heritage tourism at the imperial citadel of thang long, hanoi (vietnam) huong t. bui & timothy j. lee ► bui, h. t., & lee, t. j. (2015). commodification and politicization of heritage: implications for heritage tourism at the imperial citadel of thang long, hanoi (vietnam). aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 8(2), 187-202. the current study deconstructs the process of turning heritage resources into tourism products. a case study of the central sector of the imperial citadel of thang long, a unesco world heritage site located in the capital city of vietnam, hanoi, provides an in-depth understanding of the plural use of heritage. findings from the study reveal issues of heritage dissonance inherent in the process of resource selection, interpretation, and targeting for different audiences. it is apparent that commodification cannot be separated from the politicization of heritage. in the case of heritage of national importance and international significance, politicization has been prioritized and results in diminishing the utilization of heritage for commercial purposes such as tourism. keywords: commodification; heritage; identity; tourism; unesco world heritage  introduction heritage is defined as “a contemporary commodity purposefully created to satisfy contemporary consumption” (ashworth, 1994, p. 16). historical monuments become heritage products through a process of commodification, and heritage products influence place identities via politicization. heritage tourism, a form of economic use of heritage is an arena operationalized by both commodification and politicization. the triangular relationship between heritage, identity, and tourism is summarized by ashworth (1995): (1) heritage contributes toward political identity (politicization); (2) heritage supports tourism (commodification); and (3) heritage tourism contributes toward the individual’s appreciation of places and political identification. similar to the propositions of ashworth (1994), smith (2006) contends that heritage symbolically represents identity through a cultural process that encompasses experience, memory, and remembrance. the plural use of heritage depends on the socio-political and economic context of the respective society. since “the past, transformed into heritage, is a ubiquitous resource with many contemporary cultural, economic and political functions” (ashworth, graham, & tunbridge, 2007, p. 1), it is necessary to deconstruct how heritage is transformed for contemporary use within particular cultural, economic, and political contexts. for example, hitchcock, king, and aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 15 .2 -5 188 huong t. bui & timothy j. lee  aseas 8(2) parnwell (2009) have set their conceptualizations and representations of heritage in southeast asia against relationships between culture, nature, tourism, and identity. earlier work by peleggi (2002) analyzing the politics of ruins and the business of nostalgia revealed that selected historical sites enjoy special visibility as symbols of thai identity within the larger construct of the national heritage, at the same time as they are being commodified and consumed as tourist attractions. thailand, however, never having been a colony, is a different case to other southeast asian countries that are former colonies. in the course of gaining independence, the political elites of southeast asian countries constructed narratives of their origins that have often been concerned with nation-building and creating distance from their former colonial masters (hitchcock, king, & parnwell, 2009); a process in which heritage plays an important part. moreover, recent criticism of the eurocentric biases of the global heritage movement recognizes the need for the development of heritage frameworks that are sensitive to the complexities and socio-cultural specificities of the asian region (long, 2012; winter, 2009; winter & daly, 2012). rapid growth of travel for leisure and recreation within asia today is presenting new challenges for policy makers regarding the management and presentation of heritage sites. these trends stimulate the discussion on heritage politics in the new era (timothy & boyd, 2006) and particularly within the political systems of asian communist states (long, 2012). previous studies of heritage in communist states have discussed the utilization of heritage for tourism (henderson, 2000, 2007) as well as the hybridity of heritage that accommodates contemporary strategies of commemoration and tourism in the context of vietnam (bui, joliffe, & nguyen, 2011; long, 2012). however, none of the work concerning heritage tourism in vietnam has addressed the complicated nature of the interrelationship between heritage, identity, and tourism, leaving a large gap in scholarly research of southeast asian studies. this study contributes to existing literature by investigating the process of commodification and politicization of heritage within the context of contemporary vietnam. using a case study of the unesco world heritage site (whs), the central sector of the imperial citadel of thang long – hanoi, the analysis drills into the issue of heritage politics bounded up in the process of political and ideological legitimation and economic development. literature review adopting the notion that “heritage is not a ‘thing’, a ‘site’, a building or another material object, but heritage is what goes on at these sites” (smith, 2006, p. 44), this review of literature clarifies the politicization and commodification of heritage (ashworth, 1994) in the triangulation of heritage, identity, and tourism. existing literature on heritage tourism in southeast asia and the context of the imperial citadel of thang long, hanoi (vietnam), has also been reviewed. commodification and politicization of heritage heritage is defined by smith (2006) as “a cultural process that engages with acts of remembering that work to create ways to understand and engage with the present, and 189commodification and politicization of heritage the sites themselves are cultural tools that can facilitate … this process” (p. 44). conceptualizing heritage as “what goes on at the site”, smith emphasized that “heritage had to be experienced for it to be heritage” (p. 75). other important aspects of heritages include memory, remembering, and performance. the meanings and memories of past human experiences are recalled through contemporary interactions with physical places and landscapes (smith, 2006). attention has increasingly been devoted to the ways in which cultural phenomena are deployed to make statements about identity. providing “meaning to human existence” (graham, 2002, p. 41), heritage is used as a legitimizing discourse in constructing and maintaining a range of ‘identities’ (crouch & parker, 2003, p. 405). heritage plays a majorly important part in the process of trying to distance independent southeast asian states from their former colonial powers (hitchcock, king, & parnwell, 2009). in post-colonial developing states this is an urgent task to select and deploy archaeological finds and heritage sites to present images of national resilience, unity, and innovation, often in the context of an “imagined” (anderson, 1991, pp. 178185) golden or glorious age of endeavor and achievement which was subsequently eclipsed by colonialism (glover & bellwood, 2003). this point was addressed in an earlier work of richter (1999) on cultural politics of heritage in asia where “even the very substance of a heritage is a political construction of what is remembered” (p. 109). heritage has been politicized in shaping sociocultural identities in support of particular state structures. the “dominant ideology hypothesis” (ashworth, 1994, p. 20) asserts that governments will project message legitimating their position. official narratives are highly selective, particularly in communist states, where the official attitudes to the past, including approaches to heritage, contribute to “the effort to create more purely nationalistic narratives” (long, 2012, p. 210). in some cases such as china and russia, heritages are laboratories and mirrors of new cultural practices and ideologies that reflect the two countries’ different historical traditions (breidenbach & nyiri, 2007). the state, and particularly the state in the developing world, enters into a relationship between tourism and identity because both are seen to require statedirected political action (hitchcock, king, & parnwell, 2010). heritage and associated narratives of identity, however, appear in a different manner to domestic and international visitors. places of heritage are commonly used to build patriotism at the domestic level and spread propaganda to international visitors (timothy & boyd, 2006). according to richter (1989), formal planning of tourism in developing asia started around the beginning of the 1970s, and in general gave greater priority to international over domestic tourism, western over asian tourists, and up-market over low-spending clientele. the single most important objective was ‘more tourism’. however, current trends of heritage tourism promotion show a shift in market focus. for example, peleggi (1996) addressed growing appreciation of cultural heritage in the domestic arena. heritage is a political tool in negotiations over identity, but it is also a part of an ‘industry’ – a heritage, tourism, and leisure industry. cultural tourism was once regarded as a specialist, niche activity that was thought to be pursued by a small number of better educated, more affluent tourists who were looking for something other than the standard sun, sand, and sea holiday. now, it is viewed as part of mainstream 190 huong t. bui & timothy j. lee  aseas 8(2) figure 1. commodification of heritage (adapted from ashworth, 1994, 2000). tourism (du cros & mckercher, 2015). the transformation process actualizes the potential of the asset by converting it into something that tourists can consume. in order to facilitate this consumption, cultural heritage assets must be transformed into products. despite the fact that cultural tourists want to consume a heritage experience, not everyone is capable of having the same depth or quality of experience (du cros & mckercher, 2015). concerning how heritage has been selected, interpreted and targeted to different markets, ashworth (1994, 2000) proposed a model of heritage commodification presented in figure 1. in this model, resources are selected based on the criteria of consumer demand and created through interpretation for targeting certain markets with particular heritage (tourism) products. in fact, “the interpretation, not the resource, is literally the product” (ashworth, 1994, p. 17). the interpretation and representations of the heritage resource are selected according to the demand of the present (ashworth, graham, & tunbridge, 2005). the discrepancy between the interpreted heritage product and ‘objective historical truth’ also results from different experiences perceived by visitors in regards to the heritage asset. here, personal experience, attachment, relevance, and emotional elements are brought into heritage construction (timothy & boyd, 2006). the touristic uses of heritage, however, have the potential to cause heritage dissonance as the creation of “heritage products endow those products with the tensions and dilemmas inherent in all commodification for contemporary markets” (ashworth & tunbridge, 1996, p. 21). the root cause of the dissonant nature of heritage lies in their observation that heritage is created through interpretation. not only what is interpreted, but how it is interpreted and by whom will create different messages about the value and meaning of specific heritage places and the past represented (ashworth & tunbridge, 1996). this issue, however, has been explored only to a limited extent in the context of southeast asian tourism, and vietnam in particular. heritage, identity, and tourism in vietnam vietnam is a socialist country with strongly centralized political structures. since 1986, the country implemented market economy reforms. central government also other resources heritage resources tourism products tourism markets heritage agencies assembly interpretation packaging s e l e c t i o n t a r g e t i n g 191commodification and politicization of heritage exerts an influence at cultural levels. aligning with economic reforms, during the 1990s the vietnamese government came to realize that one way to win international recognition for hanoi was through promoting its heritage (logan, 2009, p. 90). in june 2001 the national assembly introduced the law on cultural heritage that focuses primarily on defining tangible or intangible cultural heritage, historical-cultural sites, scenic landscapes, relics, and antiquities. at the national level, heritage has been extensively used to express the cultural, social, and political beliefs of the political leaders under the mainstream interpretation of patriotism and national identity in the context of the capital city of vietnam (bui, joliffe, & nguyen, 2012). designation of unesco world heritage status is believed to be a top tourism brand that places destinations among the pantheon of other world-class destinations (li, wu, & cai, 2008). the approach to designating a unesco world heritage in vietnam is found to be similar. in a newspaper interview in 2007, vietnam’s deputy minister for foreign affairs, nguyen van tho, gave five reasons for embracing the world heritage program for: building and advanced vietnam culture with strong national identity; it promotes national pride and vietnam’s image in the world; it offers a global brand, and was prerequisite to developing human resources, attracting foreign investment, especially in tourism; and it could be a good and convincing tool to introduce vietnam’s national identity to the world, especially its age-old history and rich culture. (cited in logan, 2014, p. 70) starting in the 1990s, the growth of the tourism industry and the development of cultural heritage policy in vietnam became deeply intertwined. the government saw heritage tourism as a powerful economic and diplomatic tool; consequently heritage preservation received a great deal of attention relative to other cultural endeavors (saltiel, 2014). cultural tourism emerges as the most important economic activity in vietnam (lask & herold, 2004). hue and hoi an, two cities in central vietnam, are key examples of how inscription on the unesco world heritage list brings public relations and economic benefits. in hoi an and hue, through the sale of tourist entry tickets to the world heritage site, the municipal government has been able to restore properties, both state-owned and private, and has transformed the once deteriorating heritage town into a thriving tourist destination. it was believed that the inscription of thang long citadel is expected for the boost of tourism, and for further international recognition of vietnam and its governance structure after being designated world heritage status in 2010 (logan, 2014). this is positively perceived by the residents of the city (nguyen & nguyen, 2013). the imperial citadel of thang long – hanoi thang long is the ancient name of hanoi, the capital city of vietnam established in 1010. the archeological evidence shows the sign of early residence dated back to the seventh century. the transformation of thang long follows a cyclical pattern; the city began as the provincial capital of an external power before becoming capital of an independent vietnamese state (whitmore, 2013). the city served as the political 192 huong t. bui & timothy j. lee  aseas 8(2) and economic center from the early 11th century to the late 18th century. although from 1802 onwards, the imperial city was moved to hue, thang long, remained an important political center in northern vietnam. capturing hanoi in 1874, the french demolished the ancient citadel, tore down the imperial palace, and in the place of the former citadel, erected the military headquarters of colonial power for the vast region ensemble of french indochina (modern vietnam, laos, and cambodia). after the first war of independence (also called indochina war, 1946-1954), followed by the division of vietnam into two entities in 1954, the citadel became the military headquarters for north vietnam during the second war of independence (so called vietnam war, 1954-1975). between 1994 and 2004, the ministry of defense gradually abandoned its use of the property, handling it over for cultural and historic purposes. the citadel reclaimed its cultural identity thanks to a break-through archeological excavation in 2002 for the construction of a new national assembly hall at 18 hoang dieu (now an annexed archeological site). the central sector of the imperial citadel of thang long-hanoi was designated unesco world heritage status at the 2010 world heritage meeting in brasilia in the year of its 1000th birthday. the universal outstanding values (ouv) of the thang long citadel are reflected in criteria (ii), (iii) and (iv) in its longevity and continuity of a political center as stated in the description of the property on unesco world heritage center (2015). on criterion (ii), the property features cross-cultural exchanges that contributed to the formation of a unique culture in the red river delta. criterion (iii) was justified by the almost uninterrupted role that the citadel has played as the center of power from the 11th century up to now. criterion (iv) states that the citadel, with its political function and symbolic role, is directly associated with numerous and important cultural and historical events that have marked the formation and deployment processes of an independent country over a thousand years, including through the colonial period and the two modern wars of national liberation and unification. methods the case study method employed in this study is an in depth empirical inquiry investigating a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context (yin, 2009). the mutual interdependence of the commodification and politicization of heritage as a case should better be examined with the heritage designated with unesco world heritage status. thanks to its global significance, this designation attracts great attention from policy-makers and the tourism industry for both the purposes of nation-building and economic enhancement. located in the capital city with a long history of being the political and cultural center of the country, thang long – hanoi imperial citadel has long been an essential part of the history of the capital city and of the country as a whole. more importantly, the citadel has been selected as a prime target in the strategy to boost heritage tourism in hanoi (thang long conservation center, 2013), where the unesco world heritage label functions both for reaffirmation of political identity and as an asset for heritage tourism. data for the research was derived through participant observation by one of the authors, who has been witness to the transformation of the citadel for many years. the team conducted ten interviews with heritage custodians, government officers 193commodification and politicization of heritage in the tourism industry, and scholars to gain an in-depth understanding of the patterns of heritage governance. in the interviews, respondents talked freely about their concerns with regards to issues of heritage governance and in relation to tourism development. instead of using a structured approach, the conversations with selected respondents were conducted in a flexible manner, adopting a semi-structured framework. interviews and participant observation were carried out with fifteen tourists in 2014 and 2015. a researcher approached tourists and talked to them as they toured different sections of the citadel. the questions centered on their observation and perception of interpretation programs at the heritage site. in addition, an extensive review of scholarly publications and the attainment of data from governmental and non-governmental organizations involved in the conservation and development of the site, adds more insightful understanding of the triangular relationship of heritage, identity, and tourism development at this unesco world heritage site. fieldwork data was projected against the framework of heritage commodification by ashworth (1994) presented in figure 1. data was sorted and arranged into themes reflecting different components of the framework. findings analyzing the responses of visitors and actors involved in heritage management and interpretation, the findings from our current study shed light on three major actions in the convergence of heritage resource to tourism products. first, ouv of the heritage determined the selection of central themes presenting heritage identity. second, interpretation of heritage identity features the ouv while relatively neglecting tourists’ interest. third, interpretation targets domestic tourists for fulfilling political purposes and thus leads to dissonance in perception of international tourists. examining the process of converting heritage resources into tourism products, we discovered that the narratives of the vietnam war parallel with the narration of historical heritage’s ouv. despite limited interpretation of the vietnam war at the citadel, tourists found the heritage of war fascinating and demanded more information. selection commenting on potential resources for tourism development in the early 1990s, gillespie and logan (1995) noted: “there is no doubt that vietnam will become a tourist mecca within the next ten or fifteen years and not only because of its recent war history but also because of its imperial monuments at hue and natural scenery at ha long bay and along its southern coastline” (p. 105). interestingly, resources from the recent history of wars came into the narrative prior to cultural and natural resources. wars and national struggles for independence are presented as parallel to the cultural values of the heritage in the ouv statement of the citadel. in further detail, criteria (iv) refers to the symbolic role of the long history of resistance against invaders remarked by various wars: it was within this distinctive vietnamese cultural and power center that key events in the consolidation and defense of national independence from china 194 huong t. bui & timothy j. lee  aseas 8(2) led to the red river area, with thang long – hanoi at its center, becoming, in effect the ‘border zone’ between southeast and east asia. the defense of vietnamese independence from mongol invasion in the 13th century, an event of great regional importance, served to perpetuate the separation of southeast asia from china ….the meeting of east and west and the struggle for power under the colonial period have also left remarkable imprint on the heritage site. … vietnam played the leading role in the war against colonialism and the national liberation movement in the 20th century in southeast asia and asia as a whole. (thang long conservation center, 2012, pp. 90-91) the interpretation and exhibits displayed in the area of the citadel mainly present ouv criteria (ii) referring to cross-cultural exchanges and criterion (iii) for the center of power since the 11th century. for example, the panels introducing outstanding values of heritage at the entrance contain no information on the two contemporary wars: the heritage with its architectural remains, construction technology, town planning, landscape design and monumental and plastic arts, represents the contacts and exchanges of ideas of buddhism, confucianism, taoism, colonialism and communism on the background of local culture of vietnam. they are adjusted, adopted and modified to create a unique and typical vietnamese culture that exists, over a thousand year of history. the heritage is the prominent emblem of the evolution of asian civilization of the vietnamese that being formed and proceeded in the northern delta from the 7th century to the 19th–20th century. (panel “outstanding values of thang long-hanoi imperial citadel” at archaeological site 18 hoang dieu, ha noi, vietnam) the information exhibited on the two major wars, indochina(1946-1954) and vietnam wars (1954-1975), however, is relatively limited. panels in the interpretation center do not provide much information related to the wars. while there are three buildings dedicated for archaeological exhibits and displays, the information related to the wars can only been found in two panels of d67 building and d67 bunker that very briefly introduce their functions: this building was constructed in 1967 at the height of the american war (vietnam war). it housed the general headquarters of the people’s army of vietnam …the d67 building was erected on the northern part of the kinh thien palace foundation. (panel at d67 building – the central sector of thang long – hanoi citadel) the army dug a system of bunkers beneath the citadel. the most important section was constructed in 1967 under the d67 building and liking to the dragon house. in this d67 bunker (also called the central military commission bunker) the politburo, central military commission and army commanders met to make key decisions about the conduct of the american war. (panel at d67 bunker – the central sector of thang long – hanoi citadel) selecting resources is arguably influenced by the structure of heritage governance. heritage, with universal outstanding value and national importance, is managed within horizontal and vertical axes of governance. on the horizontal axis, gov195commodification and politicization of heritage ernmental agencies including the ministry of culture, sport and tourism provide a leadership role, while the information and narratives are controlled by the central bureau for culture and ideology. international agencies such as unesco play a monitoring role, parallel to the national agency the department of heritage that serves as the advisory board under the leadership of the ministry and the bureau. on the vertical axis, governance of heritage is directed by hanoi’s people committee in liaison with the department of culture, sport and tourism. research and investigation work at the site is the responsibility of the archaeological institute and citadel research institute, two research divisions of the vietnam academy of social science. the thang long conservation center functions as a focal contacting point dealing with operational issues at the heritage site. the center receives financial resources from the hanoi’s people committee, administers the operation of the site, and coordinates with research institutions to conduct research and site planning which is monitored by unesco. the horizontal and vertical axes of heritage governance and unesco’s monitoring role warrant the elements and stories which are selected and shaped in order to satisfy internal consumption for vietnamese domestic tourists and fulfill political duty rather than aiming to entertain or educate international tourists. interpretation a survey by unesco on domestic visitors found that even though 97% of respondents agreed that the property represents national identity the heritage site has failed to retain visitors, evidenced by a low degree of repeated visits (unesco, 2013b). the results of the survey on domestic tourists reveal that close to 80% of the visitors came to the site due to curiosity, motivated by friends and relatives (77.5%), and sightseeing (78.5%). visitors highly evaluate the historical values of the site and its setting at the heart of the historical area in hanoi. with a spacious area and an impressive main gate (doan mon) that’s in a good shape, the citadel is popular for many public gettogether events, such as graduation ceremonies, school visits, and other educational trips. the heritage site has been the venue for educating students about vietnamese tradition and history, resulting in much information and interpretation being presented in vietnamese. information at the site is presented in various panels, pictures, and exhibits in vietnamese and also in english to a limited extent. reading the panels is the only way to grasp the information, if a guide is not provided. if tourists are not able to read english, the interpretation contained little meaning to them. a heritage expert admitted limitation of site interpretation stating that “without a guide, tourists can hardly understand anything” (personal communication, march 2014). a personal guided tour is only available in english, therefore there are limited opportunities for tourists with a language background other than english and vietnamese to get indepth information. at some sites this limitation can be overcome by the provision of audio guides in different languages, but this is not the case at the thang long – hanoi citadel. at the time of the study, there had been no audio-visual guide to aid tourists in understanding the site. regarding the lack of appropriate aids in interpretation, international visitors regarded the interpretation of the authentic historical aspect as overwhelming. 196 huong t. bui & timothy j. lee  aseas 8(2) too much information. it is hard for first-time visitors to understand. (tourist from thailand, march 2015) audio guide is needed, due to there is not enough signs in foreign languages and site guides. (tourist from china, march 2015) international visitors, however, found it hard to follow the interpretation without a mental connection to the history being presented. the history details are mostly available in vietnamese, so if there is not a tour guide that can explain deeply about the history, it would be hard to understand the concept and purpose of the heritage. (tourist from china, march 2015) heritage includes tangible elements of the past (buildings, monuments, artifacts, sites, and constructed landscapes) as well as intangible culture expressed in behavior, action, performance or mythology (hitchcock, king, & parnwell, 2009). at the citadel, visitors only see the tangible built environment, of which the most impressive features were destroyed. there is no single form of display of intangible elements such as stories or personalities aiding tourists’ imagination. the heritage asset has been perceived as an inactive archaeological relic that does not stimulate the interest and curiosity of the visitors to learn more. it is evident that the heritage resource here carries heavy political responsibility for nation-building; but the site is poorly equipped with simple tools in order to communicate this message to the audience. referring to ashworth’s (1995) argument that heritage tourism contributes toward the individual’s appreciation of places and, consequently, political identification, this linkage seems to be missing at the citadel. targeting the target of heritage interrelation is to increase visitors’ awareness of the heritage ouvs. as stated in the ouvs of the heritage, it is the longevity, continuity, and diversity of culture and political power of feudal vietnam that are presented. it seems that authentic cultural tradition is part of the message imbedded in the interpretation, in addition to the cultural heritage tourism products that target both international and domestic cultural heritage tourists. interviews with tourists at the site revealed that cultural tourism products have not been well-perceived, if to not say, that they fail to attract tourists. the citadel in hanoi didn’t really impress me much. i couldn’t tell any outstanding point of it. (tourist from indonesia, march 2015) the archeological site is only interesting for researchers and people interested in conservation. the archeological site is all brick and dried land, very unattractive. (tourist from thailand, february 2015) while the information in relation to the vietnamese culture and history is presented excessively, the narratives about the vietnam war that brought international attention to vietnam back in 1960s and 1970s, have almost been neglected. as men197commodification and politicization of heritage tioned earlier, limited information on the vietnam wars without much context of the war made tourists feel that it was hard to understand the topic. the colonial architecture of buildings at the heritage site contrasted with the presentation of unique vietnamese culture and also made tourists feel confused: there was a lot of information to take in from the guide, while clear, there was too much history covered and went back and forth. also was not expecting vietnam war to show up at the citadel. (tourist from usa, march 2015) while the supply side promotes the citadel as witness to a thousand years of cultural history, on the demand side, international visitors in particular, associate the country with the recent wars (henderson, 2000, 2007). this site is also good for those interested in war (vietnam war). i was hoping for some footage of the history of war, just anything to aid me better. (tourist from usa, march 2015) concerning promotion and advertisement, visitors commented that there has not been enough information on road signs, tourist brochures, and guidebooks. the need for active marketing of the heritage of thang long is also highlighted in the management plan for the site. until recently, it has not appeared in the school history textbook or in the agenda for out-of-class room teaching. much work is needed in connecting the site with existing heritage to form a story line of vietnamese culture, history, and tradition. conclusion analyzing the case of thang long – hanoi imperial citadel in hanoi, vietnam, this article investigated the process of commodification and politicization of heritage in a communist state. using the theoretical framework on heritage commodification (ashworth, 1994, 2000), the authors examined conflicts that arise from plural functions of heritage, reflecting on the concept of heritage dissonance by ashworth and tunbridge (1996). beyond the claim of logan (2014) that the state parties use heritage and the world heritage system for their own nationalistic and political purposes, the interviews with tourists and policy makers provided evidence that the intended messages of longevity, continuity, and diversity of the heritage ouvs have yet to be successfully communicated to tourists. exhibits, displays, and interpretation have not yet been impressive enough to communicate a message of the universal importance of the heritage. the results of the analysis, however, challenge ashworth’s (1994) comments that successful commodification is demand-driven. when heritage is heavily politicized for national pride and carrying out the official interpretation, the control over the selection and interpretation of heritage results in heritage resources being displayed in the way the ideological doctrine governs. interpretation, therefore, has been determined by supply instead of demand. the mismatch between what the tourists want to see and how the heritage is displayed exemplifies this aspect. while the heritage 198 huong t. bui & timothy j. lee  aseas 8(2) figure 2. commodification and politicization of heritage (own compilation). on exhibit drills into the authentic tradition of ancient vietnam, it neglects the contemporary aspect of the history, which appears to impress many visitors to the site. in other words, supply-demand tension in the selection and interpretation of resources was directly influenced by the characteristics of vietnam’s political system. as a result of this study, adjustment has been made to the model of commodification of heritage proposed by ashworth (1994, 2000). the dimension of heritage politicization is argued as influencing the entire process of commodification through the selection of heritage resources and targeting to different markets via tourism products under the direction of government agencies. a new model integrates commodification and politicization of heritage, as proposed in figure 2. a unique aspect of heritage politics emerges from the analysis of interviews with tourists, and that is the culture-war interactions at the thang long citadel. on the one hand, the relics at the citadel remind us of a thousand year history of cultural diversity in northern vietnam, but the citadel itself has long been the military headquarters of the french union in the indochina war, and of north vietnam in the vietnam war. it is evidenced, in the case of the citadel, that tourists were interested in the heritage related to more contemporary wars versus the older historic ones. the parallel of war heritage and cultural heritage is not a surprise in a country like vietnam with a history written by many wars. this uniqueness of the heritage should be brought into the tourism development strategy, as it is the ‘selling point’ of such heritage sites. the results of the case study of thang long citadel have several implications for the heritage tourism industry and heritage management for the city of hanoi. reflecting on du cros and mckercher’s (2015) comments that within the transformation process from heritage asset to heritage tourism product, the asset should be converted into something that tourists can understand and enjoy, several suggestions emerge for successful transformation from heritage resources to tourism products. firstly, interpretation at the heritage site, currently mainly serving the domestic market, is to be designed with its users in mind. more attractive and interactive other resources heritage resources tourism products tourism markets heritage agencies government agencies assembly interpretation packaging s e l e c t i o n t a r g e t i n gp o l i t i z a t i o n 199commodification and politicization of heritage methods of interpretation are recommended to attract international visitors. the material presented should assume little prior knowledge of the site and subject being interpreted. currently, the interpretation at the thang long citadel is dominated by panels and to a lesser extent, the interpretation presented by onsite guides. instead of text-heavy interpretation boards, other media such as audio and video can be introduced. in addition, related off-site installations, educational programs, and community activities are among possible aids to on-site interpretation. secondly, market-based product development is recommended for heritage tourism at the thang long citadel. it is important to understand the nature of demand for heritage so that product development and promotional strategies may be designed in accordance with the needs and expectations of visitors. furthermore, demand for heritage product varies at different parts of the site (the central sector and archaeological site), and among different groups of visitors (domestic and international). identification of these variations is essential to enable individual sites to design their development and promotion policies in accordance with the requirements of cultural tourists. in sum, heritage is characterized inherently by a dissonance created through its simultaneous commodification and politicization. although this paper examines the complexity of the politics of heritage in hanoi from heritage tourism perspectives, further research is needed to understand the relationship that exists among stakeholders in similar heritage sites where the surrounding population has a different interest. future research may involve either qualitative or quantitative field studies with tourists at the citadel to better understand their behavior and expectations.  references anderson, b. 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(2014). making the most of heritage in hanoi, vietnam. historic environment, 26(3), 62-72. nguyen, q. v., & nguyen, l. l. (2013). the relationship among expectation, satisfaction and loyalty of international visitor to hanoi, vietnam. journal of global management, 5(1), 30-43. peleggi, m. (1996). national heritage and global tourism in thailand.  annals of tourism research,  23(2), 432-448. peleggi, m. (2002). the politics of ruins and the business of nostalgia. bangkok, thailand: white lotus. richter, l. k. (1989). the politics of tourism in asia. manoa, hi: university of hawaii press. richter, l. k. (1999). after political turmoil: the lessons of rebuilding tourism in three asian countries. journal of travel research, 38(1), 41-45. saltiel, l. (2014). cultural governance and development in vietnam. university of pennsylvania journal of international law, 35(3), 893-915. smith, l. (2006). uses of heritage. london, uk: routledge. thang long conservation center (2012). the central sector of the imperial citadel of thang long – hanoi: management plan. hanoi, vietnam: thang long conservation center. timothy, d. j., & boyd, s. w. (2006). heritage tourism in the 21st century: valued traditions and new perspectives. journal of heritage tourism, 1(1), 1-16. unesco (2013a). preservation of cultural heritage complex of thang long – hanoi (2010–2013). hanoi, vietnam: unesco. unesco (2013b). survey on socio-economic value of the central sector of the imperial citadel of thang long – hanoi (unpublished document). whitmore, j. k. (2013). transformation of thang long: space and time, power and belief.  international journal of asian studies, 10(1), 1-24. winter, t. (2009). the modernities of heritage and tourism: interpretations of an asian future. journal of heritage tourism, 4(2), 105-115. winter, t., & daly, p. (2012). routledge handbook of heritage in asia. london, uk: routledge. world heritage center (2015). central sector of the imperial citadel of thang long – ha noi. retrieved from http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1328 yin, r. k. (2009). case study research (4th ed.). london, uk: sage. 201commodification and politicization of heritage about the authors huong t. bui is an assistant professor of tourism and hospitality at ritsumeikan asia pacific university (apu), beppu, japan. her research interests are asian tourist behavior, cultural heritage tourism, and dark tourism in southeast asia. she is also a consultant for tourism development projects in vietnam. ► contact: huongbui@apu.ac.jp timothy j. lee is a professor of tourism and hospitality at ritsumeikan asia pacific university (apu) and deputy director of the research center of asia pacific studies. his research interests are health and wellness tourism, ethnicity and identity in tourism and hospitality industry, cultural heritage tourism, and dark tourism in the asia-pacific region. he has published widely in international journals on topics including tourist behaviors, tourism marketing, festivals, and events. ► contact: timlee7@apu.ac.jp acknowledgements this research was funded by grant-in-aid (number 24530382) of japan society for the promotion of science and academic research subsidy of ritsumeikan asia pacific university (apu). we would like to thank prof. lee joliffe of the university of new brunswick and the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on earlier versions of this article. aseas 11(1) | 149 “trust me, i am the one who will drain the swamp”: an interview with walden bello on fascism in the global south wolfram schaffar ► schaffar, w. (2018). “trust me, i am the one who will drain the swamp”: an interview with walden bello on fascism in the global south. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 11(1), 149-155. since the election of narendra modi in india in 2014 and donald trump in the usa in 2016, political analysts and commentators around the globe have increasingly used the concept of fascism to capture the rise of new right-wing authoritarianism in various countries. activists and academics in europe are much more reluctant to use the word fascism, for several reasons. one reason is that – because of the alarming associations which fascism evokes in german – the term was often instrumentalized, and used to discredit political opponents, without a sound theoretical analysis. there is also a big reluctance to transfer the term to countries outside europe, especially to the countries in the south – because it would further relativize the concept. walden bello is a prominent voice who started using the concept of fascism since early 2017 for the new regime under rodrigo duterte in the philippines. he repeated his analysis of duterte as a “fascist original” and his regime as “creeping fascism” at the international convention of asia scholars (icas) in july 2017 as well as in recent articles (bello, 2017). in october 2017, bello was among the founding members of a new group, the laban ng masa coalition to combat the “fascist” policy of duterte (villanueva, 2017). in his most recent paper in the journal of peasant studies, he broadened his analysis and compared the rise of fascism in italy in the 1920s with the establishment of the new order under suharto in indonesia in 1964/1965, chile at times of the coup d’état in 1973, thailand in 1976, and the philippines today (bello, 2018). with his articles and his political campaigns, he opened a new chapter of academic discussion and political activism on fascism in the south. walden bello is currently a professor of sociology at the state university of new york at binghamton and senior research fellow at the center for southeast asian studies of kyoto university in japan. he served as a member of the house of representatives of the philippines from 2009 to 2015, during which he was chairman of the committee on overseas workers affairs. in our interview conducted in december 2017, we discussed theoretical problems in dealing with the concept of fascism as well as strategic challenges for political activism. keywords: fascism; middle-class; new authoritarianism; philippines; thailand  wolfram schaffar: since early 2017, you started using the word fascism for the new regime under rodrigo duterte in the philippines. recently, in a meeting of academics and activists from different parts of the world on the current rise of authoritarianism, many participants from the south rejected the analysis of a new fascism as too alarming and eurocentric. they argued that in the south, people have continuously been exposed to authoritarian regimes of different kinds. now, you do use the term fascism, you use it for regimes and movements outside europe, at different historic periods, and with an explicit political agenda. what is the basis of your analysis? im dialog  in dialogue w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 18 .1 -9 “trust me, i am the one who will drain the swamp” 150 | aseas 11(1) walden bello: since the post-war period there have been several right-wing dictatorships that have taken over a number of countries in the south. rather than stressing too much the nomenclature – whether to use fascist, neo-fascist, or something else – for me the important thing in terms of looking at these movements in the south has been the counter-revolutionary aspect that they have. are they a counterrevolutionary force, reacting to an upsurge of the left or a reaction to a failure of liberal democracy to deliver the goods? the other thing important to me has been the role of the middle-class. in quite many countries where right-wing dictatorships took over, these two aspects – counter-revolution against a perceived revolutionary threat or a counterrevolution in the sense of disaffection with liberal democracy and the central role of the middle-class in these movements – have been really the focus of my attention. when people say that we always had such phenomena in the global south i think, that on the one hand that’s true. but what i would say, though, is that, on the other hand not all these dictatorships that have prevailed in the south would count as counter-revolutionary or fascist. some of them would be just pure predatory governments such as the government of mobutu in the congo in africa and marcos in the philippines. in my study, i have looked at indonesia, chile, thailand, and the philippines at different historic periods (bello, 2018). what i think distinguishes these regimes is the counter-revolutionary aspect that they have. that would fit the fascist tag. schaffar: now one thing you are mentioning is this disaffection with liberal democracy. isn’t that a little bit too weak? fascism in the 1930s came as a reaction to an enormous economic crisis. wouldn’t you see an economic trigger and not just disaffection with liberal democracy? bello: well right, what i understand from my acquaintance with european history is that fascism certainly in italy and in germany were responses to what was perceived as threats from the left. whether real or not, there was a strong perception that the left was the enemy. i think the secondary aspect of this process was a disaffection with liberal democracy. this disaffection took different forms in france, britain, or in germany. but the disaffection with liberal democracy was about the perception that it had proven to be a weak barrier against the rise of the left. moreover, many classes in germany and france had never been reconciled to the emergence of democracy. now, in terms of the countries that i have looked at in my study (bello, 2018), this certainly is very much the case in the philippines. i think the left is quite weak in the philippines, so i don’t think that the mobilization of the middle-class for duterte could be explained with a revolutionary threat. but what happened is that the middle-class, which was behind the 1986 edsa1 uprising and was a central force behind bringing forth democracy in the philippines, basically has now turned around, precisely because the expectations that had come with the liberal government were not fulfilled. from being the base of a edsa revolution now the middle-class has become the base of dutertismo because of the failure of the edsa uprising. 1 edsa is the acronym for epifanio de los santos avenue in metro manila. since all major demonstrations took place on this highway, it stands for the uprising against president marcos. walden bello also uses the term “edsa republic” for the political system which was established after the ousting of marcos. wolfram schaffar aseas 11(1) | 151 fascism comes in different ways in different countries. but there are some similarities with respect to thailand, which i also have looked at in my study. in 1992 the democratic upsurge, which people thought would finally put an end to authoritarian rule, was a middle-class based revolution. but when that system and the emergence of thaksin began to provide the opportunity for the lower classes to organize for class demands, then the middle-class goes into a different direction, which is to endorse the right-wing military regime. so, this is the difference between the disaffection with liberal democracy in the european interwar period and what we see right now happening in some countries in the south like the philippines and thailand. schaffar: thailand seems to be a very clear case: the rural poor make good use of the electoral system, the middle-class feels threatened and demands to abolish the entire system of voting, introduces this corporatist way of political representation, very close to 1920’s portuguese estato novo. but in the philippines, we are struck by the rate of approval which duterte enjoys. if duterte is supported by currently 85% of the population, then it’s more than the middle-class. it seems to be a broad class alliance. bello: yes definitely, i would be the first to say that large numbers of people that are marginalized at some point – workers in traditional industries, the poor – were definitely part of the electoral wave that brought duterte to power. but when i am talking about the middle-class, i focus on ideological activists – the people who dominate the internet, the people who express their anger in all sorts of ways via the internet. these are not working-class people, these are definitely middle-class people, including a whole range from lower-middle-class people to the elite who are very much supportive of duterte. in the case of the philippines, there is definitely more than a middle-class base. but the distinction i make is that – drawing on gramsci’s concept of active and passive revolution – the middle-class has an active consensus whereas the poor classes are more passive.2 their link is also weak. especially now, that it is becoming clear that the people who were being killed by the regime are mainly from poor communities. there is a wider and wider acceptance that duterte, in his so called “war on drugs”, is waging a war against the poor. this is why duterte’s base among the poor is eroding; slightly perhaps at this point, but it is going to be a big problem if the government does not deliver in terms of economic goods or social reform. that will determine the future of this regime: will it deliver on social reform? schaffar: do you have an explanation why in so many countries new authoritarianism/ fascism comes exactly at this point of time, both in the north and the south? bello: what unites the north and the south has really been the experience of globalization, the kind of corporate-driven globalization with its accompanying neo liberalism 2 antonio gramsci’s distinction between an “active” and “passive revolution” was a contribution to the marxist debate on the nature of fascism in the early 1930s (gramsci, 2011). the question was in how far fascism has to be analyzed as purely reactionary and counter-revolutionary, or also shows revolutionary elements. gramsci argues that there are revolutionary elements to be considered – albeit in a short-lived, top down process, where subaltern masses are incorporated only passively. a “passive revolution” in his sense describes the development of a new political formation without any reordering of social relations. “trust me, i am the one who will drain the swamp” 152 | aseas 11(1) which has created tremendous problems in the north in terms of the expectations and institutions that supported the working-class. in the united states, we have seen that with the base of trump. those are people who have been hurt by globalization. the same happened in the south, for example, with the kind of economic regimes that were promoted by the edsa republic.3 the common denominator has been that all regimes in the north and in the south endorsed neoliberal policies, and these neoliberal policies have now created all these undercurrent impacts. this is what unites phenomena of rising right-wing movements in the north as well as in the south. schaffar: you are also writing that in the philippines, there is not much of an ideological orthodoxy. duterte has no real program – neither political nor economic. but who are the drivers, what are their economic interests? fascism in the 1920 in northern italy was about securing the capitalist interests. is there something that compares to that? is there a political economy of new authoritarianism? bello: depending on the country where it manifests itself, authoritarianism or fascism has its own unique features. in thailand, what we are seeing is the effort by middle-class to create an ideology that would attack the very basis of democratic rule, which is the majority rule. it is basically the effort to institutionalize this in a system with an upper house consisting of 250 people that will be hand-picked by the military, and which will be able to overturn any kind of legislation coming from the national assembly. in the discourse, you find a cherry-picking from different theories of democracy – the idea that you need a body that would act as a break on the masses, this notion of the tyranny of the majority. we find this kind of re-articulation of conservative drives with some aspects of traditional democratic ideology, coming together and trying to institutionalize it in the new constitution. in the philippines, there is no ideology like that. what you have is a discursive style where the president basically leads. he is creating this image, that the country is suffering from what has been brought about by the yellow forces4 – parts of the traditional elite and all these forces in the past that had adopted western notions of human rights, western notions of democracy, but were out of touch with what people really wanted. these were also the people who were corrupt. but it is not articulated in a more coherent ideological form. it is more of an image, it is more of a discourse. the notion of coherence of duterismo, to some extent, would be like that of mussolini or hitler, although there was much more of ideological content of course – both hitler and mussolini; duterte does not have that. schaffar: you also pointed out that migrants – the philippino/as outside the philippines – are among the most ardent supporters of duterte. the same may be true for thailand, where many thai abroad are supporting the military regime. why is that so? 3 the political system and the governments following the overthrow of the marco regime. 4 yellow forces refer to the people who got into power after the overthrow of marcos during the edsa or yellow revolution. it is sometimes called yellow revolution due to the presence of yellow ribbons in the demonstration following the assassination of ninoy aquino in 1983 – one starting point of the 1986 edsa revolution. wolfram schaffar aseas 11(1) | 153 bello: i think if you look at the class affiliation of philippino/as abroad, quite a number of them are from the lower middle-class: people who are educated but have no economic opportunities in the country, who think that a lot of the problems of the country come from political corruption. many of them also feel that the big oligarchy has really controlled the country and that the solution to that is a strongman to break that oligarchy as well as to imprison the corrupt politicians. i think this simplistic view is a very strong motivation, which they share with the middle-class people inside the philippines. the simple issues that people focus on are corruption and oligarchy, and the idea that an authoritarian leader like duterte is going to break that. so even though they are in a working-class occupation, say in europe or in the middle east, their ideological cast is still very much in the middle-class. the structural analysis, which focuses on land grabbing in the philippines, on globalization, on the structures that keep the philippines marginalized in the global economy, is ignored. also, many of the people who are abroad are women who have left their families behind. they have been particularly permeable to the appeals of duterte’s war on drugs. this idea that all that they have worked for will be taken away by drug addicts who will corrupt their children is a very effective electoral mechanism and duterte was able to appeal. schaffar: you have set up new coalition in the philippines countering duterte’s politics. what is the specific strategy? when we look into history for instance, otto bauer in austria strongly argued to defend parliamentarism as a strategy to counter fascism, because they were confident that they would win on the parliamentary floor. but if – according to your analysis – the parliament and the democratic institutions as we know them are discredited, what can be our vision to argue for, in order to counter new authoritarianism? bello: there is definitely a lot of educational effort that needs to be done, because we cannot be defending a system that has failed. clearly what happened in the philippines was that the elites – economic and political elites – were able to hijack the edsa revolution. the economic structures were frozen. at the same time there was electoral competition, but only electoral competition among the elites. what we need to do is to move people to understand that the reason the edsa revolution failed was that it was corrupted by the elites which brought the system into an anti-democratic direction. we need to fight for a thorough economic change: pushing for completing the land reform and fighting for the right of labor. on the democratic front we need to move from a system of very limited representative democracy to a more participatory democracy. as you can see it’s a tall order at this point in time. on the one hand, you have to defend an open system, but at the same time not defend the processes and the discourse that in fact led it to become quite ineffective. this is a challenge of the left all over at this point of time. how do we divorce ourselves from the formal democracies that have been corrupted by corporate driven globalization and have a different vision that is much more profoundly democratic? i think that is really the big challenge to all of us at this point of time. it’s a big challenge because i think whether it’s in the north or in the south, the big enemy that we are up against are authoritarian figures like trump that promise simplistic solutions. “trust me, i am the one who will drain the swamp” – that is what he says about the elites in washington, establishing this personalist relationship between him as an authoritarian figure and “trust me, i am the one who will drain the swamp” 154 | aseas 11(1) the people. this is what figures like trump and duterte have in common, and we will be having more and more figures like them coming up on the political scene all over. schaffar: did it help your discussions and your political campaigns in the philippines to call duterte a fascist? does it trigger something in the philippines’ discourse? obviously, it doesn’t trigger that much in thailand. bello: the problem we have in the philippines is that, to some extent, “fascist” to many people is still a foreign word. although some of us might feel that it expresses precisely what the regime is all about, in that it combines a charismatic figure with a middle-class based authoritarian project. maybe we need to have a better term for it, but for the meantime, popularizing what fascism means, is the best way to go. first, we need to break down what we mean by fascist. and then we need to engage people to think whether this is what duterte fits to, whether we agree with the future that he is offering. the discourse is going to be one of the terrains, and so far we still have to win the battle on discourse, because the duterte discourse obviously has captured quite a number of people. schaffar: a final question: considering the correlations and mechanisms in different countries, what would be an international answer, an international strategy to counter these new authoritarian / fascist tendencies? bello: i think it would be extremely important to link up with kindred spirits everywhere. but the analytical expertise has to go hand-in-hand with the political effort. i think international solidarity will be very important at two levels: one is of course exchanging our analysis of these different regimes, and secondly, forming links across borders in which we will be able to help one another in terms of support of our particular new progressive projects. but i think definitely, international solidarity, both at the discursive level, the ideological level, and the level of actual mutual support will be extremely important.  references bello, w. (2018). counterrevolution, the countryside and the middle-classes: lessons from five countries. the journal of peasant studies, 45(1), 21-58. bello, w. (2017, january 2). rodrigo duterte: a fascist original. the rappler. retrieved from https://www. rappler.com/thought-leaders/157166-rodrigo-duterte-fascist-original bello, w. (2017, december 10). philippine president rodrigo duterte is a wildly popular fascist – now what? international viewpoint. retrieved from http://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article5261 gramsci, a. (2011). prison notebooks (vol. 1). new york: columbia university press. villanueva, r. (2017, october 30). new group vows fight vs fascism. the manila times. retrieved from http://www.manilatimes.net/new-group-vows-fight-vs-fascism/359567/ wolfram schaffar aseas 11(1) | 155 about the author between 2010 and 2018, wolfram schaffar has worked as professor for development studies and political science at the university of vienna. prior to this he worked at the university of bonn, at chulalongkorn university in bangkok, and at the royal netherlands institute of southeast asian and caribbean studies (kitlv) in leiden. his fields of interest are state theory of the south, social movements, new constitutionalism and democratization processes, as well as new authoritarianism. ► contact: wolfram.schaffar@gmx.de aseas 13(2) | 275 book review: samuels, a. (2019). after the tsunami: disaster narratives and the remaking of everyday life in aceh. hawai’i: university of hawai’i press. isbn: 0824878264. 214 pages. daniela paredes grijalvaa a isa – institute for social anthropology, austrian academy of sciences, vienna ► paredes grijalva, d. (2020). book review: samuels, a. (2019). after the tsunami: disaster narratives and the remaking of everyday life in aceh. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 13(2), 275-278. after the tsunami represents an in-depth study of survivors of the 2004 tsunami in the badly-hit indonesian province of aceh. annemarie samuels interrogates disaster narratives and the efforts of survivors to remake everyday life in the midst of destruction, loss, humanitarian aid, and political change after decades of an armed conflict that was finally settled in august 2005. the book focuses on how people speak, or remain silent, about the tsunami and its aftermath, and adds important insights to the anthropological study of disasters by exploring how subjectivities are constructed through disaster narratives. samuels presents her rich ethnographic material and interview excerpts, which were gathered in a period of more than ten years, in a clear and accessible language. this clarity is also reflected in the structure of the book. its five chapters are organized in a rather linear time fashion, starting with before the tsunami, and finishing with acehnese speculations about a future. the introduction makes mention of social science framings of disasters, and sets annemarie samuels’ work as a continuation of subjectivities studies within psychological anthropology. the author argues that, although scholars call for processual and historically informed analysis of disasters, pointing at asymmetries of power and the social construction of vulnerabilities, for tsunami survivors the framing of the disaster is first and foremost that of an event. she asserts that “post-disaster recovery is not only a social and cultural process, but also a fundamentally subjective one” (p. 7). the author proposes narratives as a methodological device to examine how subjectivities and everyday life are made through them. narratives, she writes, are also an epistemological device. for example, storytelling itself is an essential component of remaking. the first chapter looks at the immediate aftermath of the tsunami and centers survivors’ agency vis-à-vis indonesian government representatives and foreign humanitarian aid. especially with regard to the reconstruction phase, the author skillfully presents how the figure of the local broker and the proposal, that is local efforts to approach authorities in a bureaucratically acceptable form, mediate negotiations among citizens and authorities. taking the issues of housing, citizen complaints of corruption, and time lags or inaction of government institutions, the author teases out the threads of patronage relations from the rezensionen  book reviews w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 36 276 | aseas 13(2) book review: samuels, a. (2019). after the tsunami. village to the national level. these relations were also shaped by decades of conflict whereby aceh was thought of and often effectively treated as ‘outside of indonesia’. by framing humanitarian aid as a gift and actively expressing their thanks, acehnese narratives of gratitude can be understood in terms of reciprocity linking acehnese people to the international (humanitarian) community. while certainly the impact on relations between ‘the world’ and aceh did not translate into lasting international cooperation, this repositioning mattered much for domestic postdisaster and post-conflict politics. this line of thought builds on critiques of humanitarianism that claim beneficiaries are muted when they cannot speak at the global level for themselves. the author argues instead that, although this may be true, in a post-disaster moment local needs may be more pressing than having a global voice: “although indeed not directly giving people a voice on the global stage, locally, humanitarian aid made disaster survivors speak out loud” (p. 55). by analyzing both narratives of protest and narratives of gratitude, the chapter highlights how people’s agency should not be reduced to resistance towards an overarching force, but rather develops in relation with humanitarian and government actors. chapter 2 focuses on embodied narratives of disaster, often retelling the event itself and with abundant metaphors. these narratives often highlight extraordinary human capacities – a girl running like never before; of ruptures with social norms – a naked woman whose clothes had been washed away; or of immense loss – a daughter visiting mass graves, uncertain of where her parents were buried. they are embodied, the author states, in two ways – that is, they are told through bodies (phenomenological dimension), and they are about bodies (symbolic representation of disruption). by analyzing these narratives, samuels shows how the remaking of the everyday is infused with the experience of the tsunami. in her third chapter, samuels delineates the ways in which islam shapes grieving, trauma, and remaking. among a list of religious practices, which include contemplative prayer (doa), islamic ritual worship (shalat), and chanting (zikir), the author focuses on non-ritualized prayer, namely the individual ways in which people prayed in the moments of and immediately after the disaster, as well as ways of dealing with grief. as embodied practices, they can reposition a person in the social world, for instance following personal ethical projects, but can also have effects on the social world of both the living and the dead. by elaborating on this kind of non-ritualized prayer, which is the most relevant religious practice for tsunami survivors according to samuels, the author makes an important contribution to the literature on islamic responses to disasters. another important contribution is samuels’ nuanced analysis of emotion and religion along gender lines that deconstructs taken-for-granted dichotomies. for instance, prescribed roles for men in dealing with grief involve akal, reason, while for women it is only ‘natural’ to express emotions uncontrollably. while at first glance this may be the case, the author carefully distinguishes that in the informal settings of the private sphere, many of her interlocutors did not adhere to strict gender roles. the author’s rich ethnographic material reveals that men may cry, remember, and suffer while women may make proficient reference to islamic values engaging in serious ethical projects of self-disciplining. in the fourth chapter, the making of urban space and memory is examined. aseas 13(2) | 277 daniela paredes grijalva looking at official discourse, the author traces how politics and affect are entangled in commemorating the past and looking towards the future. post-disaster settings have proven to be fertile ground for political narratives of overcoming and optimism. in aceh, the author recognizes how this narrative triumphalism intentionally left little room for commemoration of violent histories, starkly overshadowing the legacies of the separatist conflict. this became evident in speeches and brochures, but more importantly in monuments: authentic monuments (monumen asli), such as boats pushed inland by the tsunami, and artificial ones, such as the tsunami museum. the final chapter is adequately dedicated to the question of temporality. framed within islamic notions of time and destiny, the tsunami has been understood by the author’s interlocutors as fate, test, or gift. in aceh, a temporal optimism accompanied the re-construction phase, something disaster scholars have pointed out before. however, the author expands this well-known fact by carefully distinguishing the timing and the kind of narratives that circulate. while in the early post-disaster phase hardship was explained in religious terms and followed by the improvement momentum of “building back better”, later, when international aid had left, and incomplete buildings revealed some of the failures, people turned to explanations of corrupt politics. the conclusion ties up the book by emphasizing that post-disaster recovery is a long subjective process reflecting the work of individuals immersed in society. this path needs to be searched and carved out by survivors, in their own diverse ways. and this is precisely why the study of individuals’ narratives offer such a significant vantage point. the author has revealed a series of paradoxes and ambiguities that infuse post-disaster life: that people in aceh have an immense capacity to remake life in the face of immense loss; that both remembering, as in prayers and monuments, as well as forgetting, as in traumatic experiences, are necessary for the process of grieving; and that the tsunami can be framed both as misfortune (musibah) and as divine wisdom (hikmah). disaster and crises scholarship has established that crises are moments where much of a society can be reconfigured, and samuels demonstrates that aceh is no exception in this regard, having signed a peace agreement and gained special autonomy. while the author builds on much of this literature by studying reconfigurations at political and societal levels, after the tsunami enriches this approach by focusing on the agency of survivors, their narratives, and how they rearrange their everyday lives. the book convincingly shows that narratives are an essential part of the remaking of life in post-disaster contexts. overall, the book contributes to the anthropological literature on disasters in southeast asia and beyond, and particularly on the intersection of religion and disasters. it provides a unique account of the importance of religious and particularly islamic practices in post-disaster contexts. moreover, with a sharp anthropological skill, eurocentric assumptions such as that aid beneficiaries are helpless and passive are scrutinized from different perspectives, contextualized, and reinterpreted. the author shows how narratives of aid as gift reposition aceh discursively within northsouth asymmetries of power. in a similar vein, samuels’ careful analysis of the remaking of life in aceh nuances gender analysis by looking at it through the lenses of space and scale. after the tsunami is an excellent read, diving deep into intimate 278 | aseas 13(2) book review: samuels, a. (2019). after the tsunami. moments of people’s lived experience. samuels’ findings expand our understanding of framings and makings of disaster in taking us into perhaps some of the deepest layers of social life that anthropology can investigate by examining narratives and subjectivities within the recovery process after a catastrophic event.  about the author daniela paredes grijalva is a researcher at the institute for social anthropology, austrian academy of sciences. her interests include environmental change, mobilities, gender, and disaster in indonesia. for her doctoral studies at the university of vienna she has been awarded a doc fellowship by the austrian academy of sciences. ► contact: daniela.paredes.grijalva@oeaw.ac.at aseas 12(1) | 111 china’s cultural diplomacy in malaysia during najib razak’s premiership jakub hrubý & tomáš petrů ► hrubý, j. & petrů, t. (2019). china’s cultural diplomacy in malaysia during najib razak’s premiership. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 12(1), 111-129. this article aims to provide an analysis of china’s cultural diplomacy (ccd) in malaysia in the latter years of the premiership of najib razak (2015-2018). it intends to reflect on the efforts china has been exerting in order to increase its soft power in the southeast asian nation. the authors have identified and analyzed four major fields of ccd: the activities of two confucius institutes; the first overseas campus of a renowned chinese university; invocations of shared history, embodied mainly by the figure of the legendary admiral-eunuch zheng he, regularly commemorated as china’s historic envoy of peace; and malay translations of classical chinese novels. the article’s findings reveal an intricate pattern of networks involving various actors, both chinese and malaysian, state, semi-state, and non-state, pursuing their own particular interests, which tend to converge and overlap with the aims of chinese cultural diplomacy. the implementation of ccd has also been formed by the local political and societal structures: a) a ‘special’ relation between razak’s cabinet and the prc leadership, revolving around party-based diplomacy and intensive economic cooperation especially between 2015 and may 2018; b) the presence of a large chinese community, which provides opportunities and, at the same time, creates limitations for the china´s cultural diplomacy practice in malaysia. keywords: china-malaysia relations; confucius institute; cultural diplomacy; soft power; tertiary education; zheng he  introduction aspiring to the position of a global player, the people’s republic of china (prc) has been exerting a great effort to increase its soft power in world politics. the past two decades have seen heightened activity in the field of public diplomacy, which has been used to promote a positive image of china as a responsible stakeholder and peaceful rising power. this has been especially true in the case of neighboring countries. southeast asia is perceived as a strategic region which is of vital importance for maintaining the security of china’s borders as well as establishing thriving economic relations (d’hooghe, 2015, pp. 185-187). given the geographic proximity and long-standing presence of the chinese element in the region, the prc is eager to establish close relations with this part of the world, cultivating existing historical ties and offering a vision of an allegedly mutually beneficial partnership based on shared interests (shambaugh, 2013, pp. 95-105; suryadinata, 2017). aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 16 112 | aseas 12(1) china’s cultural diplomacy in malaysia during najib razak’s premiership first conceptualized by joseph nye, the soft power theory postulates that the attractive appeal of a state’s culture, values, and institutions can be nurtured and used in order to influence others and make them well disposed towards one’s needs and interests (nye, 2004, pp. 5-11). symbolic soft power acquired in this way is described as “the ability to affect others through the co-optive means of framing the agenda, persuading, and eliciting positive attraction in order to obtain preferred outcomes” (nye, 2011, p. 13). as such, it stands in opposition to hard power, which is based on coercion. while nye identified military might and economy as the sources of hard power, later theorists developed a more nuanced interpretation, speaking about hard and soft uses of power, arguing that particular sources are neither inherently soft nor hard, but can be used as such depending on the given conditions and needs (li, 2011, p. 3). the official chinese understanding of the concept is also broader, encompassing also economic tools, such as aid and investments, or membership in multilateral organizations (kurlantzik, 2007, p. 6; lai & lu, 2012). aware of the potential of soft power, the prc leaders have embraced the concept, repeatedly stressing the importance of chinese culture for establishing the country’s international standing and acquiring its desired influence in world affairs (“hu jintao calls for”, 2007; “xi: china to promote”, 2014). these goals are to be achieved mainly through public diplomacy, which is perceived as a tool of soft power. so far, there is no generally accepted definition of public diplomacy (gilboa, 2008), yet it can be described as a “process by which direct relations with people in a country are pursued to advance the interests and extend the values of those being represented” (sharp, 2005, p. 106). with public opinion playing a still greater role in international relations, public diplomacy is becoming important for the promotion of a positive image of a given country in the minds of foreign peoples, which might eventually enable that country to advance its interests. while in the past public diplomacy was perceived primarily as “a government’s process of communicating with foreign publics in an attempt to bring about understanding for its nation’s ideas and ideals, its institutions and culture, as well as its national goals and policies” (tuch, 1990, p. 3), there has been a shift from this hierarchical, unilateral, and state-centered understanding of the concept to the so-called new public diplomacy (melissen, 2005), which stresses the involvement of non-state actors. the new approach is multilateral, focusing on networks (pamment, 2012, pp. 3-4) formed by various cooperating actors, who happen to share certain interests. these are not to be seen as mere recipients of public diplomacy, for they are often actively involved in shaping its message, influencing the outcome of the overall diplomatic effort (hocking, 2005, pp. 37-38). our understanding of cultural diplomacy is based on the work of ingrid d’hooghe who has extensively researched the public diplomacy activities of the prc (d’hooghe, 2011; d’hooghe, 2015). she sees cultural diplomacy as one of the three subsets of tools subsumed within the concept of public diplomacy, the other two being citizen diplomacy and strategic communication. referring to an ongoing theoretical debate (gienow-hecht & donfried, 2010; mark, 2009), she identifies cultural diplomacy with “activities such as cultural performances, exhibitions, cultural and film festivals, language promotion and participation in world expositions” (d’hooghe, 2015, pp. 28-29). the change of paradigm brought about by the new public diplomacy shift has broadened our understanding of public diplomacy dynamics. however, the focus on aseas 12(1) | 113 jakub hrubý & tomáš petrů non-state actors tends to overlook the continuing involvement of the state. if public diplomacy is considered a part of the diplomatic effort – that is, something which should serve the interests of a given country – then it is presumed that the state agenda constitutes one of the forces behind public diplomacy. this is especially the case in china, where non-state actors are never totally independent (d’hooghe, 2011, p. 22). the exact role of the state may differ, ranging from initiator, to sponsor, or mere formal patron, yet it should be taken into account as one of the actors participating in the process. therefore, in our contribution we follow the approach of vera exnerova, who proposes using the theory of transnational societal spaces (faist, 2006; pries, 2005; pries, 2008) and perceiving the dynamics of cultural diplomacy not as a dichotomy of state–non-state actors or centre-periphery, but as a network of transnational relations involving many different actors, including the state, which is non-hierarchical and polycentric in nature (exnerova, 2017). the way the network functions is further shaped not only by the actors involved, but also by so-called domestic structures, which influence the possibilities of promoting one’s culture as well as the reception of the message projected by cultural diplomacy. according to risse-kappen (1995), the domestic structures consist of the political institutions of the state, societal structures, and the policy networks that link them together (p. 20). in other words, the content of ccd may originate in china’s own perception of its culture, but at the same time the local conditions of the target country further delimit the space for ccd and partially shape both its form and content. while many aspects of china’s engagement with southeast asia have received scholarly attention, chinese cultural diplomacy has only been partially researched, often within the scope of a wider overview of its public diplomacy (d’hooghe, 2015; kornphanat, 2016; shambaugh, 2013; shuto, 2018). the prc maintains a varying degree of presence in all eleven countries of the region, yet malaysia holds a special position in terms of strategic importance and economic partnership. since 1974, when malaysia became the first country in the region to recognize the prc, their friendship has evolved into a ‘special’ relationship underlined by the previous razak government (2009-2018). despite a substantial political change in may 2018, when the new government of mahathir mohamad announced a ‘reset’ in the relations with china, bilateral relations remain on good terms. secondly, the waterways controlled by malaysia are of pre-eminent importance to the prc as they include vital arteries of the maritime silk road for the 21st century, which is a part of the belt and road initiative (bri), launched in 2013 by china’s president xi jinping. in line with that, china has exploited various tools of soft power to win the ‘hearts and minds’ of malaysian people with the aim of maintaining good rapport and bolstering its position in the country. based on the aforementioned concepts, the article will outline several examples of cultural diplomacy in malaysia conducted either by the prc, or by local state and non-state actors on behalf of, and to the benefit of china. it will show that ccd is not a straightforward process of the promotion of images and values projected from china to the ‘target’ country. instead, these activities should be perceived as polycentric transnational networks in which various actors get involved for various reasons, and in which they have various interests that happen to converge with the interests of the prc. it is their willingness to promote china’s vision of its culture 114 | aseas 12(1) china’s cultural diplomacy in malaysia during najib razak’s premiership that facilitates the prc’s diplomatic effort. focusing on different actors, both state and non-state, chinese and malaysian, who have for their own reasons contributed to the promotion of the positive image of china as a good neighbor, responsible partner, and source of economic benefits, the article identifies the converging interests of individual actors, and thereby outlines the intricacy of the prc’s cultural diplomacy in malaysia as well as the complexity of china-malaysia relations throughout the later phase of najib razak’s government (2015-may 2018). the case studies are followed by an analysis of the domestic structures influencing the possibilities and actual dynamics of ccd in malaysia. this will shed more light on chinese diplomatic efforts in the region and will also contribute to our understanding of cultural diplomacy, for it will show how the political and societal structures of a recipient country are prone to modify its form and means. our research is based on empirical data, including academic literature, official and media reports, and textual sources produced by various local actors involved in the promotion of ccd in malaysia. further information was gained through semi-structured interviews conducted with members of the malaysian chinese community, and researchers at the institute of china studies, university of malaya (ics), the centre for policy and global governance, universiti kebangsaan malaysia (ukm), and the centre for malaysia chinese studies in kuala lumpur, as well as malaysian students graduated from chinese universities, and members of local ngos. data collection, which took place in spring 2016, also included participant observation in activities of the kong zi institute and a visit to cultural sites that have adopted the message of chinese cultural diplomacy. confucius institutes in spite of china’s intensive campaign to promote its culture and use it as a tool of soft power the world over, in malaysia the manifestations of ccd have not been especially pronounced so far.1 as in other countries, the most visible actors are two confucius institutes, sometimes likened to organizations such as the goethe-institut or the british council. they constitute a network of institutes, set up in collaboration with a chinese university and a partner institution in the recipient country, whose stated mission is to promote the understanding of chinese language and culture and to develop friendly relations between china and other countries. however, unlike european initiatives, the cis are not independent as they are affiliated to hanban, the office of chinese language council international, which then reports to the chinese ministry of education, and are regarded as a government entity – an instrument of ccd to bolster the prc’s soft power (gil, 2015; hartig, 2012). the story of the founding of the first ci in malaysia is representative of the role of domestic, political, and societal structures in shaping cultural diplomacy. despite beijing’s efforts, malaysian leaders did not at first feel the need to open a local confucius institute, due to the existence of more than 60 chinese schools and colleges in the country. operated by various malaysian chinese entities, these institutions have 1 this opinion was repeatedly endorsed by our informants in the interviews conducted in kuala lumpur and malacca in may 2016, who all agreed that china has not been overly active in this sphere. aseas 12(1) | 115 jakub hrubý & tomáš petrů provided mandarin courses to the local chinese, as well as non-chinese populations. that is why it took five years of negotiations before china succeeded in establishing a ci attached to the university of malaya (e. yeoh, 31 may 2016). initially scheduled for 2007, the opening of the ci was postponed until november 2009 due to another contentious issue. as the name of confucius was deemed unacceptable in majority-muslim malaysia for allegedly propagating idolatry, it had to be renamed the kong zi institute (ics researcher, 25 may 2016).2 nonetheless, the importance that china attributed to the opening of the first ci in malaysia is indicated by its willingness to agree to a name change. initially, the activities of the institute were rather basic (not exceeding the basic requirements from hanban that apply to all the institutes) and mainly targeted the malay community. the institute presented itself as a venue where malays and other non-chinese malaysians could study chinese and also learn some ‘fun’ knowledge about china. however, the scope of the kzium (kong zi institute university of malaya) operations has been broadening ever since. for instance, in 2016, in addition to providing chinese language courses to students at the university of malaya, there were altogether 28 language tutors teaching mandarin courses at 11 other state universities. the institute has also been offering courses in calligraphy and chinese chess (z. chen, chinese director of kong zi institute, 25 may 2016). since 2016, the institute’s activities have markedly intensified. firstly, the selection of language courses at kzium has widened, with six knowledge levels of mandarin on offer, plus chinese for business. furthermore, the institute arranges for malaysian secondary school students to participate in annual summer and winter camps in beijing, and offers different types of scholarships funded by hanban (hanban scholarship). the institute also organizes special language courses for state officials, police corps, and the management of the maybank and petronas (ics researcher, 25 may 2016), which demonstrates the appeal of mandarin within malaysian social and economic elites as it is rapidly becoming a strategic asset in the world of business and facilitates negotiations on the official level. these courses are paid for by the respective institutions, and the collected fees are used to finance other activities, such as the celebration of the lantern festival or a contest for writers in chinese (z. chen, 25 may 2016). the institute also realizes the importance of reaching out to the malay-muslim majority through islam, having (co-)organized two forums on islam in china in 2016 and 2017, which included the 3rd international seminar on the modernization of islam in china held by the state university of kuala terengganu (chiam, 2017). these forums invited scholars from china to address current developments and issues related to islam in china – within approved official parameters (ngeow, 2017b). to sum up, the kong zi institute has gone beyond the pattern of teaching mandarin and organizing cultural courses, working to address various social strata, while showing different aspects of china and its culture. another confucius institute in malaysia was established in 2014 at segi university, a private university in selangor, in collaboration with hainan normal university 2 in fact, kong zi is just a transcribed version of the name confucius in chinese. however, unlike its international counterpart, it is not readily associated with the figure of a religious thinker and founder of confucianism. 116 | aseas 12(1) china’s cultural diplomacy in malaysia during najib razak’s premiership (“exciting programme planned for”, 2016). the institute provides mandarin lessons, promotes cultural activities, and organizes students under the confucius institute scholarship. its activities include events such as the china cultural summer camp programme, which receives assistance from the chinese embassy in malaysia and is aimed at giving malaysian students an opportunity to experience chinese culture on hainan island. another activity was the training program of local preschool chinese teachers, organized in may 2017, with support from hanban and hainan normal university. the segi confucius institute has also embarked on the promotion of the bri, organizing student excursions such as trailing the belt and road once taken: a trip to the unesco world heritage city of malacca, which was to highlight the shared historical links between malaysia and china, habitually used as a precedent for ongoing infrastructure projects. the existence of another confucius institute in the capital city of malaysia reflects the fact that ccd is not always implemented by strictly official circles, but that actors such as a local chinese university and a private malaysian institution can also contribute to the effort. university education the educational activities of chinese actors are not limited to language courses offered by confucius institutes. in late 2015, xiamen university, a top-ranking chinese institution, established its branch in malaysia (“china’s xiamen university officially”, 2016). the choice of malaysia underlines the historical ties binding the two countries as well as the attention some circles in china are paying to malaysia and its potential. xiamen university happens to have a strong link to malaysia: it was founded in 1921 by tan kah kee, a wealthy overseas chinese from what was then british malaya. the university has maintained academic ties with malaysian educational institutions to this day; for instance, the 90th anniversary celebration held in 2015 in xiamen, was attended by delegations from many malaysian chinese associations (e. yeoh, 31 may 2016; “nostalgic ties with malaysia”, 2018). the good rapport between china and the malaysian chinese community, and their interest in having a top chinese university in malaysia, are evidenced by the generous donations from chinese malaysians including the tycoon robert kuok, also known as the “sugar king of asia” (“china’s xiamen university officially”, 2016). the school’s new foreign campus in sepang, officially named xiamen university malaysia (xmum), began student enrolment in december 2015. xmum offers a variety of courses in english, ranging from journalism, international business and accounting to digital media technology, as well as two programs in chinese. our interviewees agreed that the whole project is largely profit-driven, yet they also admitted that this might be a good chance to propagate the chinese style of education, and chinese views and values along with it (ics, 25 may 2016; members of centre for malaysia chinese studies, 28-29 may 2016). tertiary education promises to open up new possibilities for advertising a positive image of china as a modern and developed country offering to share its knowledge, know-how, and experience with the world. indeed, cctv (china central television)conducted interviews with the freshly arrived prc students at the xmum campus revealed that these freshmen thought of themselves not only as envoys of a newly aseas 12(1) | 117 jakub hrubý & tomáš petrů rising china, but also as representatives of the bri (xiamen university malaysia, 2018). looking at this development, it seems that the educational sector is increasingly proving to be a suitable field for the implementation of ccd in malaysia. its rising importance is the result of a confluence of factors – from the interest and endorsement of the malaysian government, to china’s universities ‘going global’, to chinese communities wishing to reach out to mainland china for trading links. despite the vested interests of the various actors involved, the objectives remain the same: the spreading of chinese values and language, with the ultimate goals of improving china’s image and increasing chinese influence in malaysia. ming dynasty admiral a different network of ccd in malaysia is represented by various activities centered on the person of zheng he, a chinese, muslim-born eunuch admiral who led seven naval expeditions to the indian ocean between 1405 and 1433. his voyages are regularly invoked by the prc when dealing with maritime countries targeted within the bri as a symbol of a shared past characterized by friendly relations and flourishing commerce. however, its message is particularly potent in the case of malaysia, for zheng he is credited with providing support to the sultanate of malacca (wong, 2014; chia & church, 2012, p. xxii), which is perceived as the political predecessor of present-day malaysia. the ming maritime enterprise is therefore seen as an influence of great importance standing at the very inception of malay statehood. moreover, as some of the crew settled down in malacca, these voyages were instrumental in introducing the chinese element to the region, the presence of which has become an inseparable feature of malaysian society and culture. while the majority of western historians agree that the main aim of zheng he’s enterprise was to display the wealth and might of the empire in order to awe local rulers into formal acknowledgment of chinese superiority (dreyer, 2007; wade, 2005), the official prc narrative tends to portray the voyages differently. zheng he is celebrated as an explorer who had ventured into the unknown on a quest for knowledge long before the european ‘age of discoveries’ (li, 2005). however, the prc authorities claim that unlike the western explorers, who allegedly brought only violence and exploitation, ushering in the period of colonization, zheng he’s was a peaceful mission which has facilitated the economic growth of the region (murphy, 2010). in this respect, he is invoked as an envoy of peace and a harbinger of civilization, introducing advanced technologies and spreading chinese culture to the outside world (li, 2005). the figure of the ming admiral has gradually come to stand for peaceful trade and harmonious cooperation and is often used as proof that china is a good neighbor whose peaceful rise to power should not be feared, but rather embraced as an opportunity for further development (“full text of premier’s”, 2015). at the same time, the technological superiority of the ming fleet has become a symbol of the recent achievements in advanced technologies and general development of present-day china. this new perception of zheng he became more pronounced in connection with the sexcentenary anniversary of the admiral’s first voyage in 2005 (“shipping news: zheng he’s”, 2005). part of the official celebrations was a traveling exhibition co-organized by the ministries of culture of both china and malaysia, envoy of peace from china, which 118 | aseas 12(1) china’s cultural diplomacy in malaysia during najib razak’s premiership was opened in malacca in july 2005 by then malaysian prime minister, abdullah badawi. according to xinhua, the exhibition “highlights the spirit of peace and friendship embodied in zheng he and expresses china’s wish to carry out dialogue and exchanges with all other countries in the world” (“malaysian pm unveils”, 2005). the same message was conveyed by the sea voyage of a training vessel named zheng he, which set sail to circumnavigate the globe in 2012. this “harmonious mission” was aimed at “consolidating and developing the relations between china and various countries” (li & cao, 2012). when calling at malacca, a group of chinese naval cadets visited places associated with the admiral “to cherish the memories of the great achievements of the great maritime pioneer and messenger of peace and friendship” (“chinese naval servicemen visit”, 2012). similar statements are regularly expressed by chinese representatives, who never forget to invoke zheng he during their official visits to malaysia (“president xi jinping meets”, 2013; “full text of premier’s”, 2015). yet, it is apparent that the fanciful narrative of a peaceful enterprise bringing commercial opportunities is also attractive for different local actors in malaysia who are ready to adopt and even elaborate on this narrative, thereby contributing willingly (if unwittingly) to the prc’s cultural diplomacy effort. the most visible example is the zheng he cultural museum in malacca, a private institution run by tan ta sen,3 a singaporean chinese scholar-cum-businessman who has been very active in promoting the legacy of zheng he’s voyages, founding the international zheng he society, publishing books, and organizing talks and conferences (hong & huang, 2009, pp. 300-301). open since 2006 on the supposed site of the admiral’s fortified depot (international zheng he society, n.d.), the museum conveys a message of peaceful relations, stressing the role of zheng he’s diplomatic and trading activities in the rise of the malacca sultanate. china is portrayed as a benign protector and source of technological know-how whose support enabled malacca to become a vibrant and racially diverse emporium.4 according to its founder, the museum should celebrate the diplomatic, cultural, and economic contribution of the voyages to malacca and the whole region and promote “zheng he’s spirit”, understood as the legacy of peace, equality and racial harmony (tan, 2014, p. 85). tan ta sen’s private initiative has been officially endorsed by china’s leading representatives, including prime minister li keqiang, who deliberately visited the museum. although the zheng he cultural museum could be viewed as a purely profitdriven enterprise promoting heritage tourism, it is important to realize that its obvious commercial potential converges with other interests of its proprietor as a member of the chinese diaspora, for whom zheng he has become a special figure of identification, spiritually linking overseas chinese communities to their original homeland (ptak & salmon, 2005, pp. 20-21). by invoking zheng he and his voyages they are able to reaffirm their distinct identity as members of the greater chinese world vis-à-vis the ethnically and culturally different malay majority. it also serves as a potent reminder of their long presence in the region and constitutive role in the 3 see its webpage at http://www.chengho.org/museum/. for more details about the zheng he cultural museum and its exhibitions, see lim (2018). for ta ta sen’s activities promoting zheng he’s legacy see hrubý (in press). 4 based on the author’s visit to the site in may 2016. for the layout of the museum and its exhibitions, see also tan (2014, p. 85-86) and the webpages of the museum http://www.chengho.org/museum/. aseas 12(1) | 119 jakub hrubý & tomáš petrů emergence of the present-day nation-state. it seems that the chinese community in malacca has become more active in promoting zheng he, using his legend for marketing tourist attractions in this historical city (murali, 2013). the increasing visibility of chinese heritage has been made possible by a gradual change in the attitude of the malaysian government. while the official narrative in the 1970s and 1980s emphasized a rather malay-centric version of malaysia’s history (worden, 2003), the pragmatic effort to win the goodwill of china and strengthen friendly ties with the new strategic partner has made the government more willing to grant public space to the malaysian chinese past (thirumaran, 2007, pp. 202-203). malacca is viewed as a symbol of historical ties between the two countries, through which china’s protection and trade cooperation facilitated the transformation of a small malay polity into a regional power. the malaysian government is therefore eager to promote the zheng he narrative, taking it as a pledge of malaysia’s new economic significance within the scope of the new maritime silk road (jiang, 2015). already in 2004, when malaysia was celebrating 30 years of diplomatic relations with china, the main state museum in malacca opened the cheng ho gallery (galeri laksamana cheng ho), dedicated to the voyages and zheng he’s role in the history of the malay-chinese relations (hong & huang, 2009, pp. 302-303). the exhibition displays “the success of the voyages in fostering a brotherhood relationship between china and the african and asian countries and opening doors for fair business” (galeri laksamana cheng ho, n.d.). ever since, the malacca museums have been active in organizing international conferences and publishing books on zheng he (chia & church, 2012; suryadinata, kua & koh, 2012). one of the reasons why the malaysian government is ready to adopt this narrative seems to be that it supports the official national history discourse and corresponds to the nation-building efforts of the state. above all, in the story of zheng he’s coming to malacca, the legacy of chinese influence is inseparably bound up with the perceived beginnings of the malay nation state. in this way, the narrative of peaceful encounters between the two countries shows that the malays and the chinese can live side by side in mutual respect and tolerance, working hand in hand for the benefit of their common interests. chinese mosques the growing state support for chinese heritage is also evident in several new mosques for chinese muslims built in the chinese style and funded by the federal government together with malaysian chinese muslim associations. the first appeared in rantau panjang in kelantan and is locally known as the ‘beijing mosque’ because its architecture is reputedly modeled on an ancient mosque in beijing (“pagoda-like mosque all set”, 2009). it was later followed by mosques in ipoh (kaur, 2013), rawang, and, finally, by the chinese mosque in krubong, malacca, which opened in june 2014. each mosque displays a unique combination of an islamic architectural style with peculiar features of famous historical mosques in china. the new mosques are intended to serve not only as places of worship but also as spaces where members of chinese communities can share their distinctive culture, regardless of their religion. the religious authorities plan to organize various cultural events, such as competitions in dumpling-making, or chinese new year celebrations 120 | aseas 12(1) china’s cultural diplomacy in malaysia during najib razak’s premiership (beck, 2014; zarizi, 2013), which should contribute to a better understanding of islam among the malaysian chinese. in this way, the malaysian government is trying to reach out to the chinese community in an effort to show that islam “does not promote hatred towards other religions” (looit, 2009), stressing its universal appeal. chinese-style mosques prove that even the ethnic chinese can embrace islam without losing their racial or cultural identity. at the same time, the mosques should provide the malay majority with a window into a different culture with a long islamic tradition of its own (“no harm in having”, 2007). it is hoped that the construction of chinese-style mosques “could help to ease current racial tensions between muslims and non-muslims” (looit, 2009). while such public support of the malaysian chinese muslim community has undeniable nation-building potential, the officially endorsed display of chinese muslim heritage simultaneously highlights the image of china as a country friendly towards islam, sporting an ancient islamic tradition of its own. in this way, the malaysian government promotes awareness of the existence of the strong muslim community living in china and helps to enhance the credibility of the prc’s public diplomacy, which seeks to advertise china as a prospective market for islamic financial operations conducted by major malaysian banks as well as malaysian halal products (lee & alam, 2015). translations of chinese literature a kind of synergy that is identical in principle, involving the local chinese community, the malaysian government and the prc’s cultural diplomacy, is at work in a longtime effort to make selected masterpieces of the classical chinese novel available in malay. the first to appear was the translation of water margin (2002), followed by romance of the three kingdoms (2011), and journey to the west, which was published in 2014. the novels were translated by the malaysia translation and creative writing association and published jointly with the language and literature council (dewan bahasa dan pustaka), a government agency responsible for coordinating the use of the malay language and malay literature. it is hoped that the publication of these literary masterpieces will promote friendship between ethnic groups living in malaysia by contributing to a better understanding of chinese culture and values. according to a representative of the translating association, the story of the monkey king “emphasized moral values, as well as the importance of team work and cooperation” (“chinese classic ‘journey to”, 2014). at the same time, it should also help to strengthen friendly bilateral ties between malaysia and china, because “the chinese government would be proud that non-chinese malaysians have the opportunity to appreciate these literary works” (“chinese classic ‘journey to”, 2014). and, indeed, chinese prime minister li keqiang gladly used the malay version of the journey to the west as a gift during his official visit to malacca (“li keqiang visits malacca”, 2015). the set of the chinese classical novels was made complete by the translation of the dream of the red mansion, which appeared in 2017, as a result of a decade-long project of yayasan karyawan and the alumni association of the department of chinese studies of the university of malaya. published in collaboration with dewan bahasa dan pustaka, the book attracted a great deal of attention. on the occasion of its launch, aseas 12(1) | 121 jakub hrubý & tomáš petrů the malaysian prime minister, najib razak, declared again that the publication of the translation was a “part of efforts to strengthen the literary and cultural relations between the malay and chinese civilisations”, and that the novel “highlights the universal values that can be practiced by malaysians in order to maintain a harmonious environment” (“classic china novel now”, 2017). domestic structures influencing china’s cultural diplomacy in malaysia activities connected to the promotion of chinese culture and the positive image of china described in the preceding sections show that ccd in malaysia often works as a transnational network which is polycentric and non-hierarchical. while the prc government might be seen as the original source of the narrative of the peaceful rise of china promising a vision of economic cooperation and development for all, it is not necessarily directly involved in these activities. leaving aside both confucius institutes, other various actors, such as xiamen university, malaysian chinese and non-chinese entrepreneurs, malaysian state agencies, and local muslim associations, take the initiative and, pursuing their particular interests, promote the same chinese narrative. by doing so, they contribute to the prc’s public diplomacy goals. yet, it is important to realize that china’s actual role in these activities might range from that of a co-organizer, to a fellow participant, a sponsor, or even a non-participating recipient of the benefits of cultural diplomacy conducted by other actors. observing the dynamics of china’s cultural diplomacy in malaysia, it seems that the prc government as well as chinese non-state actors tend to focus on specific fields where their interests converge with the interests of the malaysian government. besides invoking historical ties binding malaysian and chinese peoples and highlighting its own muslim heritage, chinese activity appears to be primarily confined to the educational sector. at the same time, it seems that the prc has so far not been overly active in the field of cultural diplomacy, prioritizing other means of public diplomacy and economic incentives. the degree of china’s involvement in cultural diplomacy, its choice of means, and the content of its message have been significantly determined by the existing domestic structures in malaysia, the most important of which are: (a) the ‘special’ relationship between the governments of china and malaysia under najib; and (b) the specific position of malaysian chinese communities within malaysian society and vis-à-vis the malay majority. up to 2018, razak’s government repeatedly declared that malaysia was enjoying a “special relationship” with china (bentley, 2018, p. 134). there are strong economic ties not only on the national level with the prc government but also on the level of provincial governments, with several chinese provinces vying with each other to secure the best investment opportunities under the auspices of initiatives such as the bri (cheng, 2013, pp. 320-332; kuik, li & sien, 2017, pp. 261-263). china has been malaysia’s largest trading partner for ten consecutive years (rosli, 2019), and malaysia was china’s number one business counterpart in asean from 2009 to june 2018, when it was surpassed by vietnam (“vietnam overtakes malaysia”, 2018). in line with that paradigm, najib’s cabinet was keen on boosting the economic cooperation even further. there had been plans to establish high-speed train connections across the 122 | aseas 12(1) china’s cultural diplomacy in malaysia during najib razak’s premiership malay peninsula linking thailand (and eventually china), malaysia, and singapore, and deep-sea harbors to be built in malacca, carey island, kuala linggi, and kuantan (ignatius, 2017). there was even a special second minister of international trade and industry, a malaysian chinese, whose agenda focused mainly on china-malaysia economic cooperation (“moving up the value”, 2017). relations during najib’s term were equally good on the political level. there was a sense of mutual respect, support, and even admiration between the chinese communist party and malaysian umno (ics researcher, 25 may 2016), which were both authoritarian regimes eager to retain their political dominance. both parties signed an mou, and regular visits of party members took place, as well as training in governance organized for umno members and government officials in china (ngeow, 2017a, pp. 75-77). however, it was not a one-way process in which only china provided ‘guidance’ and ‘instruction’. as a matter of fact, chinese representatives also looked up to malaysia for inspiration, given umno’s former political longevity (shambaugh, 2008, pp. 95-96). as long as the prc government was able to maintain the support of malaysian ruling circles, there was not much need for china’s representatives to use culture diplomacy to improve the image of the prc. until najib’s fall in may 2018, china had enjoyed the goodwill of the malaysian government, which frequently intervened and defended the good name of its special economic and political partner, externally smoothing international tensions within asean, and internally explaining away potentially offensive statements and behavior of china’s government and its representatives in malaysia (ukm researcher, 19 may 2016). however, the political paradigm in malaysia has completely changed since mid-2018 as a result of the defeat that barisan nasional suffered at the 14th general elections. in may 2018, after 63 years in power, the ruling coalition lost the elections to the pakatan harapan (the coalition of hope), led by the previous prime minister mahathir mohamad. it was a confluence of factors which undermined najib’s position and led to his political fall: his financial scandals, some of which were related to chinese investments, the sale of national strategic assets to china, and his endorsement of controversial contracts assigned to chinese companies (malhi, 2018). the issue of china’s growing influence in the country thus became a highly contentious matter during the campaign, and a key factor in the vote against najib. shortly after the elections, mahathir announced a shift in malaysia’s relations toward china, which are “not to be anti-china but more pro-malaysia” (ignatius, 2018). the probable implication of the announced reset of mutual relations is that the prc will need to reassess its approach toward cultural diplomacy. in the near future, china might find it expedient to rely less on the economic hard power and instead try to step up its ‘charm offensive’ through more intensive use of cultural diplomacy per se. another factor representing domestic structures, which determine the prc’s cultural diplomatic activities in malaysia, is the presence of the chinese minority. groups of chinese descent today make up 22.6% of the malaysian population (ethnic groups of malaysia, 2018). many of these communities have been living in malaysia for generations and today are perceived as an integral part of local society. various malaysian chinese associations are active in organizing a range of activities propagating chinese culture, which is therefore considered a part of the wider malaysian aseas 12(1) | 123 jakub hrubý & tomáš petrů cultural heritage. as a result, any attempt to promote chinese culture in malaysia might either be seen as superfluous or perceived as an initiative to promote part of a well-known domestic culture, something not necessarily associated with the prc (p. lim, 20 may 2016). as many features of chinese culture are familiar within the region, they seem to lack the intended appeal. what is more important is the fact that, while the ethnic chinese diaspora might be perceived as an ally of the prc in promoting its culture and values, it is in fact the very existence of these communities and their standing within malaysian society which is in a way restrictive for the possibilities of the ccd and limits its activities. in the words of cheun hoe yow (2016), “malaysia’s multicultural configuration and identity politics continue to play a crucial role in structuring the possibilities and limitations of diasporic chinese engagements as well as those of malaysia-china relations” (p. 837). while beijing would certainly appreciate a more active involvement of ethnic chinese communities in promoting the friendship between china and malaysia (“jia qinglin delivers a speech”, 2013), there are tensions inherited from the past and internal political issues lurking behind the façade of the ‘special relationship’. while a new perception of china as an important global player and crucial partner has emerged within malaysian ruling circles over the past two decades (kuik, 2013, p. 448), a degree of distrust of the malay muslim population towards the prc still lingers. it is a legacy of the malayan emergency (1948-1960), when beijing backed the malayan communist party-led insurgency (yao, 2016), which is why there is still a latent concern that the prc might eventually try to tamper with the internal politics of the state (thirumaran, 2007, pp. 195-196). in this respect, the future loyalties of the malaysian chinese community continue to pose an important issue, despite the fact that today a great majority of malaysian chinese identify themselves politically with malaysia (y. chiam, 21 may, 2016). they see themselves first and foremost as citizens of malaysia, and their allegiance belongs to their country of residence. however, culturally they tend to identify themselves to varying degrees with china (not to be confused with the prc; chang, 2018). in other words, while pride in being a part of the great chinese civilization may still loom large among the malaysian chinese, their political loyalty to malaysia appears to be unquestionable, in spite of the unfair racial paradigm dominating malaysian society. yet, many malaysian chinese are supportive of china’s economic ventures and view its rise to power with certain expectations (p. lim, 20 may 2016), which range from securing more business opportunities to hoping for china’s positive influence on the unequal position of the chinese in malaysia (ics researcher, 25 may 2016). the sensitivity of this issue was illustrated by a 2015 incident caused by the chinese ambassador to malaysia, huang huikang’s involvement in the kuala lumpur chinatown dispute. after learning about a planned march of malay nationalists in protest against alleged dishonest practices of chinese businessmen, he stated that beijing “will not tolerate (violent) anti-chinese demonstrations” (“the truth about china’s”, 2015). the disagreement was aggravated when huang refused to be summoned by the ministry of foreign affairs. it clearly shows that even under najib’s administration an inopportune statement by the chinese ambassador could cause the displeasure of politicians as well as an outcry among the malay public, who perceived huang’s action as an 124 | aseas 12(1) china’s cultural diplomacy in malaysia during najib razak’s premiership attempt to interfere in malaysian internal politics and a “sign of disrespect towards malaysia’s sovereignty” (“chinese envoy must apologise”, 2015). the lingering mistrust, and the fear that the chinese minority in malaysia may act as the proverbial fifth column (baviera, 2011, pp. 176-177), together with wariness of ever-increasing influence of the prc, make the malaysian population sensitive to any display of what might be perceived as meddling. therefore, overt support of local chinese communities (let alone their use as possible tools of ccd) remains a sensitive issue and is possible only within certain limits. conclusion the implementation of the development schemes envisaged within the bri has been accompanied by heightened diplomatic activity of the prc. its public and cultural diplomacy offensive aims to promote an image of harmonious cooperation in an attempt to increase its soft power and allay the fears of prospective partners by emphasizing the peaceful nature of china’s recent rise. in the case of malaysia, the situation appears to be complicated by the politically sensitive position of the wealthy chinese minority. china has to be careful about how it engages with the malaysian chinese community because overstepping the mark might endanger the desired diplomatic outcomes. for this reason, the prc seems not to be too active on its own accord and has tended to cater to the needs of its malaysian partners. as malaysian ruling circles have been keen to court chinese goodwill in order to secure economic benefits, more possibilities for the promotion of chinese culture have opened up. we have seen that najib’s government was ready to adopt the narrative of the inherently peaceful nature of chinese civilization, actively promoting the vision of friendly cooperation along the maritime silk road in the hope of promoting new economic incentives. this fanciful narrative also finds its place in the ongoing nation-building efforts of the malaysian government, which is increasingly willing to grant the malaysian chinese population more space within malaysian culture and the national historical discourse. supporting cultural activities and perpetuating notions generated by the prc’s cultural diplomacy enables state authorities in malaysia to make an appeal for mutual understanding, harmonious coexistence, and political unity, in spite of the racial and religious rift between the malay majority and other constituent ethnic groups. however, the groundbreaking outcome of the 14th general election of may 9, 2018, which ended the long rule of barisan nasional, has led to a shift in malaysiachina relations. while the new prime minister mahathir mohamad does welcome intensive economic cooperation with china, he urges more caution in relation to some controversial chinese investment projects that might jeopardize malaysia’s sovereignty and throw the country into a debt trap. he has even warned of the danger of a new version of economic “colonialism”, in which “poor countries are unable to compete with rich countries in terms of just, open, free trade” (“mahathir warns against new”, 2018). this implies that, in spite of mahathir’s reassertions of continued friendly ties and high trading interconnectedness, the prc will need to redefine some of their assertive economic plans, reducing the use of hard power tools while employing more (charming) elements of soft power. aseas 12(1) | 125 jakub hrubý & tomáš petrů the article has also shown that the presence of a robust chinese community is an important factor delimiting the range of ccd in malaysia, often influencing both its form and content. on the one hand, the malaysian political and ethnic situation seems to limit the possibilities of china’s engagement, but, on the other, it is obvious that local chinese communities do play a significant role in promoting chinese culture. nonetheless, they are neither targets nor passive tools of ccd. even though they often seem to be quite proactive in playing the role of agents of chinese cultural promotion, the relationship is more complex, and their willingness to participate in the prc’s diplomatic effort reflects their own particular interests. invoking the memory of zheng he, building chinese-style mosques, or translating chinese literary masterpieces are activities through which these communities are able to identify themselves with chinese civilization without compromising their political loyalties as citizens of malaysia. a detailed analysis of the malaysian case reveals an intricate pattern of involvement of various actors, both chinese and local, state, semi-state, and non-state, pursuing their own interests, which tend to converge and overlap with the aims of chinese cultural diplomacy, forming a synergy that helps to promote a 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(2012, april 17). naval training ship going round the globe. china daily usa. retrieved from http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/epaper/2012-04/17/content_15068906.htm about the authors jakub hrubý is research fellow at the oriental institute of the czech academy of sciences. in addition to his long-term focus on the political, social, and institutional history of medieval china, hrubý is also interested in china-southeast asia relations. as of late, he has been researching misrepresenting historical narratives in the framework of china’s cultural diplomacy. ► contact: hruby@orient.cas.cz tomáš petrů is research fellow at the oriental institute of the czech academy of sciences. he is also assistant professor of indonesian studies at charles university in prague. he co-authored the first full-fledged monograph on the history of indonesia in the czech language, dějiny indonésie (nln, 2005) and authored two dozen articles and chapters on indonesian, malaysian, and wider southeast asian history and politics. in his research, petrů has been focusing on the interaction of politics, ethnicity, and religion in indonesia and the malay world. acknowledgements this article is the result of the grant project entitled china’s cultural diplomacy: role of nonstate actors and regional variations (ga15-21829s), funded by the czech science foundation, implemented in the oriental institute of the czech academy of sciences in 2015-2017. 130 | aseas 12(1) aseas 11(1) | 81 national human rights institutions, extraterritorial obligations, and hydropower in southeast asia: implications of the region’s authoritarian turn carl middleton ► middleton, c. (2018). national human rights institutions, extraterritorial obligations, and hydropower in southeast asia: implications of the region’s authoritarian turn. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 11(1), 81-97. this article examines the role of national human rights institutions (nhris) and transnational civil society in pursing extraterritorial obligation (eto) cases in southeast asia as a means to investigate human rights threatened by cross-border investment projects. two large hydropower dams under construction in laos submitted to nhris from thailand and malaysia, namely the xayaburi dam and don sahong dam, are detailed as case studies. the article argues that the emergence of etos in southeast asia, and its future potential, is dependent upon the collaborative relationship between the nhris and transnational civil society networks. whilst nhris are in positions of political authority to investigate cases, civil society also enable cases through networking, research, and public advocacy. further institutionalization of etos is significant to emerging regional and global agendas on business and human rights, including the un guiding principles on business and human rights that both the thai and malaysian governments have expressed commitment to. however, in thailand and its neighboring countries where investments are located there has been an authoritarian turn. reflecting this, there are weakening mandates of nhris and reduced civil and political freedoms upon which civil society depends that challenges the ability to investigate and pursue cases. keywords: civil society; don sahong dam; mekong river; national human rights commission of thailand; xayaburi dam  introduction in southeast asia, new means are needed to ensure that governments and businesses protect and respect human rights. transnational business activities are well-documented to have threatened or violated substantive and procedural human rights across the region, including industrial projects and special economic zones, the extractive industry, hydropower dams, and agribusiness (business and human rights resource center, 2015; middleton & pritchard, 2013). in response, civil society have networked across the region and innovated new strategies, including working with the national human rights commission of thailand (nhrct) to conduct cross-border investigations of thai business practices in neighboring myanmar, cambodia, and laos (thailand’s extraterritorial obligations watch & community resource center, 2018). the basis aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 18 .1 -5 82 | aseas 11(1) national human rights institutions, extraterritorial obligations, and hydropower in southeast asia of these investigations is that the thai state has a responsibility to ensure that the practices of businesses operating from within its territory also respect human rights outside of it, especially in places where access to justice may be weak. these state duties towards protecting human rights beyond borders are known as extraterritorial obligations (etos) (eto consortium, 2013). despite a tangible push back by governments across southeast asia against human rights and its institutionalization (gomez & ramcharan, 2016; welsh, 2017), and a broader turn towards political authoritarianism (einzenberger & schaffar, this issue; dittmer, 2018; pongsudhirak, 2018), the nhrct and civil society have had some qualified success in pursuing eto investigations. in this article, i argue that the emergence of etos in southeast asia, and its future potential, depends upon a productive relationship between the national human rights institutions (nhris) and transnational civil society networks. the implication of this argument is that both appropriately mandated nhris and an active civil society empowered with political and civil freedoms – including across borders – are necessary for the further institutionalization and effective utilization of etos in the region. to substantiate this argument, i examine two dams currently under construction on the mekong river’s mainstream, namely the xayaburi dam in northern laos and the don sahong dam in southern laos. for the xayaburi dam, which has been investigated by the nhrct, thai construction firms and financiers are undertaking the project. for the don sahong dam in southern laos, the lead developer is a malaysian firm, and the project was considered by the human rights commission of malaysia (suhakam). while i do not claim that nhris and etos are the sole – or even the most important – means to redress power imbalances and facilitate access to justice,1 i suggest that given the limited avenues for transnational justice in southeast asia they are important despite their constraints. for example, they enable a degree of access to information, offer an arena for deliberating the impacts of projects, and can raise public awareness via media coverage of investigations. indeed, despite growing authoritarianism in southeast asia, transnational civil society and nhris to date have managed to maintain momentum towards building eto investigations. conceptually, this article builds upon hensengerth (2015) who examined the politics of decision-making and sources of political authority associated with hydropower projects on transboundary rivers. taking the xayaburi dam as his case study, hensengerth argued that the government of laos (gol) worked through a transnational network to bolster its political authority to proceed with the project, including the thai private hydropower consortium, the thai state-owned electricity utility, and two international consultancy firms, which it commissioned to undertake key studies. hensengerth focuses on how the gol was able to proceed with the xayaburi dam despite resistance from neighboring states – in particular vietnam and cambodia, and to an extent also thailand (rieu-clarke, 2015a) – as well as an active transnational civil society campaign. in his analysis, he brings into relation state actors who are in authority “to resolve procedural issues”, and non-state actors who are an authority “to legitimize claims” (hensengerth, 2015, p. 915). he argues that 1 see also khalfan (2013) cited in grennan et al. (2016), and middleton and pritchard (2016), who list a range of accountability mechanisms that may be utilized in eto cases, of which nhris are only one. aseas 11(1) | 83 carl middleton through collaborating with transnational non-state actors, including private sector, selective civil society actors, and supportive state agencies of neighboring countries (e.g., thailand’s ministry of energy and the state electricity utility), an apparently weak government such as the gol could bolster its regional political authority and ultimately proceed with the controversial hydropower project. in contrast, this article explores the relationship between nhris and transnational civil society networks that produces countervailing political authority challenging large dam projects. the importance of transnational civil society networks in environmental politics is well-recognized (doherty & doyle, 2008), including how transnational civil society networks create “advocacy networks” with state actors to influence state action either at the national or international level (betsill & bulkeley, 2004). social movement theory demonstrates how civil society strategically networks and builds allied coalitions where shared values and interests exist (mccarthy & zald, 2001). civil society may simultaneously challenge some agencies of the state while building alliances with others (middleton, pengkam, & tivasuradej, 2017). following hensengerth (2015), nhris are autonomous state agencies in positions of political authority, although their power is relatively limited. in southeast asia, for example, they may conduct investigations but not prosecutions (grennan, velarde, zambrano, & moallem, 2016). conventionally, nhris are considered national political authorities given that their investigations occurred only domestically. however, with the push towards investigating cases where investors from their country are building projects in neighboring countries, nhris are also emerging as transnational political authorities through innovating the use of etos. meanwhile, transnational civil society networks that have also responded to cross-border investment projects, and which are formed of organizations and community representatives in the host and home country, constitute actors who are an authority. the article is structured as follows: in the next section, the research method is detailed, followed by a contextual discussion on the region’s authoritarian turn and the implications for nhris and civil society. i then outline key moments that have marked the emergence of etos in southeast asia, before turning to etos and the xayaburi dam and don sahong dam. this is followed by a discussion and conclusion on the prospects for etos in the region. method this research is based upon in-depth interviews and participatory observation with community representatives, civil society groups, nhris, and the asean intergovernmental commission on human rights (aichr). it is triangulated with literature reviewed from academic and civil society sources as well as credible news outlets. expert interviews were conducted with senior campaigners (n=6) from five leading regional civil society organizations based in thailand in mid-2016 on their work and experience of the regional human rights system in relation to hydropower development. community leaders (n=4) involved in the campaigns on the mekong and salween rivers were also interviewed. two interviews were conducted with a recent commissioner from the nhrct (march 2016) and a current commissioner from suhakam (october 2016). in malaysia, a leading civil society organization 84 | aseas 11(1) national human rights institutions, extraterritorial obligations, and hydropower in southeast asia and a researcher on etos were interviewed (october 2016). the researcher also participated as a presenter in three aichr regional workshops on environment and human rights in september 2014, september 2015, and october 2017 where crossborder responsibilities were an emergent topic of discussion. in february 2018, the researcher met with representatives from the lead developer of the xayaburi dam. in my role as an academic, i co-organized the first major conference on etos in southeast asia at chulalongkorn university (bangkok, thailand) in september 2014. i have joined numerous workshops and seminars on the topics of business, environment, etos, and human rights in southeast asia with civil society, academics, and state actors over the past five years, often as a presenter. overall, as a regionally-based academic, i have maintained a close relationship with civil society working on etos. the authoritarian turn and its implications for human rights institutions political authoritarianism is deepening across southeast asia (pongsudhirak, 2018). in this section, i briefly survey features of this authoritarian turn and their implications for nhris and civil society. i address in particular state-nhri and state-civil society relations, and the political and civic space for civil society and media. given that it is the nhrct that is most active on etos, i focus first on thailand, and then more briefly on malaysia given that suhakam only recently considered the don sahong dam as an eto case. i then discuss laos, where the xayaburi dam and don sahong dam are located. thailand in thailand, a military coup in 2014 heralded an increasingly limited space for civil and political rights, including a tightening space for media freedoms, increased use of the lese majeste law and computer crimes act, and a constrained space for civil society (mérieau, 2018; peoples’ empowerment foundation, 2018). section 44 of the interim 2014 constitution gave the military government unlimited legislative, executive, and judicial power. a new constitution was ratified in april 2017, paving the way for elections that are called for by a growing proportion of the population (mccargo, 2018). the new constitution considerably constrains the power of elected politicians (mérieau, 2018).2 the 2017 constitution affirmed the nhrct’s continued existence, which for a while was in doubt. under the military government, in 2015, a third batch of commissioners was selected by a committee that was not inclusive of broad civil society and lacked transparency (ashayagachat, 2015). as a result, the global alliance of national human rights institutions (ganhri, 2017) downgraded the nhrct from a (fully compliant) to b (partially compliant) as gauged by the paris principles, which are an international benchmark assessing nhris capacity to work to protect and promote 2 significant powers have been given to the constitutional court, anti-corruption bodies, the senate which had been fully appointed by the current military government for the first five years, and the national strategy committee formed of 35 military government appointed members who have defined a 20-year national strategy for thailand. aseas 11(1) | 85 carl middleton human rights.3 the 2017 constitution also required a new organic act on national human rights commission 2017, passed in august 2017. under this new legislation, the nhrct lost the power to file lawsuits to the court of justice, and to refer cases to the administrative or constitutional courts. in addition, a new responsibility to review and comment on the accuracy of reports produced by human rights organizations and release their findings was allocated to the nhrct, raising concerns among civil society that the nhrct might be called upon to defend the state (peoples’ empowerment foundation, 2018). civil society organizations have raised other concerns regarding the reduced role for them on the nhrct’s sub-commissions, which they previously viewed as a key means for substantive civil society participation. the pre-2015 nhrct has not been without controversy either. however, a key flashpoint was the nhrct report on major political protests in bangkok in 2010, published at a time of high tension in 2013, that was criticized by some “for allegedly absolving the authorities while placing the blame for instigating the violence that led to the military crackdown on the united front for democracy against dictatorship” (“nhrc under fire for”, 2013). malaysia until the recent election in may 2018, the same party coalition – the united malays national organization (umno) – ruled malaysia as a parliamentary democracy for almost six decades (milner, 2018). regarding political and civil liberties, freedom house (2016) labels malaysia as “partly free”. access to the political space and the capacity of civil society organizations are relatively limited, the media is not overly critical of the government, and the government largely maintains its authority to censure the press and to detain dissidents, including opposition politicians (see also juego this issue). operating under these conditions, although rated as grade a (fully compliant) according to the paris principles, suhakam investigation recommendations have “consistently failed to be tabled and debated in parliament due to the government’s indifference” (suara rakyat malaysia, 2018, p. 22). despite the political challenges it faces, suhakam is recognized as having made some progress on indigenous rights to land, on establishing a business and human rights agenda, and on maintaining its engagement with civil society (interview with suhakam commissioner, 2016; interview with malaysian civil society leader, 2016; suara rakyat malaysia, 2018). the implications of the election of pakatan harapan in may 2018 for suhakam’s role and space for civil society remains to be seen. laos laos is a single party socialist state. since 1986, it has increasingly transitioned towards a market economy facilitated by a mixture of illiberal and quasi-neoliberal institutions (barney, 2012). the single-party state remains strongly authoritarian with entrenched patronage networks (gainsborough, 2012). while expanding the 3 the global alliance on national human rights institutions (ganhri) is a global umbrella body that assesses and accredits nhri (see also grennan et al., 2016, pp. 12-13) 86 | aseas 11(1) national human rights institutions, extraterritorial obligations, and hydropower in southeast asia economy, accelerating ‘resourcification’ via hydropower dams, mining, and land concessions is rapidly producing resource scarcity and numerous impacts on local communities (lagerqvist, 2017). with regard to freedom of the press, domestic media is largely owned by the state. the constitution of laos forbids mass media activities that are contrary to “national interests” or “traditional culture and dignity” (lintner, 2016). liberal forms of civil society are limited (rehbein, 2011), and most “non-profit associations” (npas) are service-oriented or community-based and cannot undertake overt advocacy work (belloni, 2014). in the late 2000s, political space for civil society appeared to be growing, cumulating in the 9th asia europe people’s forum (aepf) in vientiane in october 2012 (kepa, 2015). however, shortly afterwards, in december 2012, the ramon magsaysay award winner sombath somphone, who was also co-chair of the aepf lao national organizing committee, forcibly disappeared. sombath’s disappearance has had a “chilling effect” on laos’ civil society (freedom house 2016; interview with thai civil society leader, 2016). economic regionalization and the emergence of etos in southeast asia since the mid-1980s, governments and business in southeast asia have pursued economic regionalization and liberalization as a key policy agenda. from the 1990s, regionalization was principally pursued through the asian development bank’s greater mekong subregion program, since the mid-2000s also as a vision of asean economic integration leading to the asean economic community (aec) in 2015, and most recently via the china-led belt-and-road initiative. large-scale infrastructure has been central to these programs, including roads, railways, special economic zones, and hydropower dams, which have been associated with a range of human rights violations. substantive human rights include the right to life, the right to health and the right to food. procedural human rights include the right to participation, the right to access information, and the right to access justice (business and human rights resource center, 2015; middleton & pritchard, 2013). despite the challenge to human rights, numerous civil society groups including public interest lawyers, ngos, and community groups have sought to defend, reinforce, and innovate the region’s human rights system (asian ngo network on national human rights institutions [anni], 2017). given that domestic access to justice in some countries in southeast asia such as laos, cambodia, and myanmar is extremely weak, civil society organizations have sought to make cross-border investments more accountable through utilizing arenas within the home countries of investors rather than the location of investment. this effort has led to the emergence of etos, especially in thailand (thai eto watch wg, 2017). the nascent practice of etos reflects a wider global trend in which transnational obligations are increasingly referenced in international human rights pronouncements (the global initiative for economic, social and cultural rights, 2017).4 etos are, however, not universally endorsed, including due to the difficulties of conducting extraterritorial 4 the implications of etos in international human rights law, in particular as it relates to economic, social and cultural rights, is mapped out in the maastricht principles (eto consortium, 2013). aseas 11(1) | 87 carl middleton investigations (grennan et al., 2016). in southeast asia, the government-claimed ‘asean way’ of non-interference also makes etos a politically sensitive issue that bounds the scope in which nhris may act. yet, there are numerous examples of regional agreements that set in place bounds on sovereignty, for example, the 1995 mekong agreement that mandates the mekong river commission, and various commitments within asean. the first eto case investigated in southeast asia was a sugarcane economic land concession (elc) in koh kong province, cambodia, by the nhrct. in 2006, the cambodian government awarded the elc to thailand’s khon kaen sugar industry and a domestic company owned by an influential cambodian senator. 456 households were dispossessed of approximately 5,000 ha of upland land where they grew swidden rice and various cash crops and raised cattle (earthrights international [eri] & cambodia legal education center [clec], 2013). the nhrct complaint was filed in january 2010 by a cambodian ngo, the community legal education centre of cambodia (clec), and designated to the subcommittee on civil and political rights (scpr). in july 2012, the scpr concluded that it had jurisdiction to investigate the case, despite the investment’s location in cambodia (nhrct, 2012a). the commission’s report, published in 2014, concluded that human rights violations had occurred, including the right to manage and benefit from resources and the right to life (nhrct, 2015). it also concluded that the thai government and the thai company involved had failed in their respective duties and responsibilities towards human rights, and made a series of recommendations to the company and thailand’s ministry of foreign affairs and ministry of commerce. the koh kong case entailed a transnational civil society movement undertaking advocacy to challenge the elc developer (sokphea, 2017). a range of actions were taken in addition to the complaint registered with the nhrct, including direct protest, submission of a case to the koh kong provincial court, direct communication with the company, a complaint submitted to the industry group bonsucro and the oecd, and an attempted litigation in the uk court (where the purchaser of the sugar was based) (middleton, 2014). while some families received compensation due to these actions, as of the time of writing, there remain families who are uncompensated for the loss of their land. addressing why the case was so difficult to resolve, sokphea (2017) highlights how a powerful constellation of political and economic elites in cambodia sought to repress the civil society groups and community movement, together with the complexity of the sugar industry’s global supply chain that complicated accountability. this first eto case demonstrates the close relationship between civil society groups (as an authority) and the nhrct (as in authority). civil society groups working in a transnational network from cambodia and thailand first brought the case to the nhrct and subsequently supported the investigation through the provision of research reports, meetings with community leaders, and other forms of evidence. they also undertook public advocacy to maintain public awareness about the case and thus assert political pressure. meanwhile, at the nhrct, a progressive commissioner and key support staff were able to proceed with and conclude the case (grennan et al., 2016; interview with nhrct commissioner, 2016). while at first it was individuals within the nhrct who pushed forward an eto agenda, over time with a now growing number of investigations they have, to-an-extent, become more institutionalized. 88 | aseas 11(1) national human rights institutions, extraterritorial obligations, and hydropower in southeast asia until this case, nhris in southeast asia had interpreted their human rights obligations as applicable only within their own borders. as the possibility of investigating cross-border cases became recognized, a discussion emerged in thailand and more widely among asean civil society on the potential for etos in southeast asia. for example, in september 2014, chulalongkorn university in bangkok hosted a regional conference titled “rights-based governance beyond borders: the role of extraterritorial obligations (etos)”. in april 2015, a session at the asean peoples forum in kuala lumpur, malaysia, titled “etos in cross-border investment: the role of human rights institutions” was organized. in october 2014, five nhris in southeast asia together with eleven civil society groups signed the “bangkok declaration on extraterritorial human rights obligations”, stating: we recognise the urgency of advancing the implementation of extraterritorial obligations (etos) given the accelerating pace of trade, investment, and broader economic integration between states in south-east asia; the impending creation of the asean economic community; increasing levels of migration and human trafficking in the region; and an increasing amount of cross-border economic, political, social, and military activity in the region and globally. (asia pacific forum on women, law and development [apwld], 2014) hydropower, human rights and etos the construction of a large hydropower dam has the potential to violate a range of substantive and procedural human rights (hurwitz, 2014). in southeast asia, an increasingly extensive program of large hydropower dam construction is underway in laos, vietnam, cambodia, and myanmar to meet domestic electricity demand and for power export to neighboring thailand, vietnam, and china (middleton & dore, 2015). since 2006, plans for a cascade of up to eleven dams on the lower mekong river’s mainstream have been revived (international center for environmental management [icem], 2010). two projects are under construction in laos (xayaburi and don sahong) and a third project, the pak beng dam, commenced the mekong river commission’s (mrc) regional-level consultation process in december 2016. in this section, i first consider the role of the nhrct in the xayaburi dam case.5 i then contrast this case with the role of the suhakam in the don sahong dam case.6 5 the 1,285 megawatt xayaburi dam in xayabouri province, northern laos, will export 95% of its electricity to thailand, and is owned and operated by a predominantly thai private-sector consortium. the government of laos and the project developer signed a memorandum of understanding for the xayaburi dam in may 2007, a project development agreement in november 2008, and a concession agreement in november 2010. the mrc-facilitated procedures for notification, prior consultation and agreement (pnpca) process was initiated in september 2010 and claimed concluded by the lao government in april 2011 (although the governments of thailand, vietnam, and cambodia requested further studies). the power purchase agreement between the electricity generating authority of thailand and the project developer was signed in october 2011. as of february 2018, the project is 90% complete. for details, see matthews (2012), international rivers (2014), rieu-clarke (2015a), and middleton and pritchard, (2016). 6 the 260 megawatt don sahong dam is located 2 km upstream of the cambodia border in the siphandone island complex on the mekong river in champasack province, southern laos. the project developer, the malaysian company mega first corporation berhad (mfcb), first signed a memorandum of understanding with the lao government in march 2006. following the preparation of various studies, in aseas 11(1) | 89 carl middleton nhrct and the xayaburi dam the nhrct, under the second batch of commissioners, accepted the case of the xayaburi dam after receiving a complaint from the network of thai people in eight mekong provinces, submitted in may 2011. the complaint was based “on the grounds that the project lacked information disclosure and public participation, including an environmental impact assessment (eia) and health impact assessment (hia)” (nhrct, 2012b). the sub-committee on community rights and natural resources (sccrnr) of the nhrct was assigned to investigate the complaint. the nhrct sent a written request to the project’s main developer, ch. karnchang, to submit a written testimony in response to the complaint, together with relevant government agencies including the central bank and the ministry of energy. they also approached the thai commercial banks that provided loans to the project (international rivers, 2012). as the inquiry proceeded, a nhrct commissioner also visited impacted areas to talk with the communities. the nhrct encouraged the community to conduct research that could be an input into the inquiry. these activities were coordinated with civil society (interview with nhrct commissioner and civil society groups, 2016). on 21 february 2012, five months after the project’s power purchase agreement (ppa) had been signed, the nhrct organized a public hearing. in may 2012, the nhrct issued an opinion where they recommended that “the prime minister should review the implementation of the dam construction” (nhrct, 2012b). issues of concern that raised questions about the signing of the ppa included the limited eia prepared for the project, which did not include an assessment of transboundary impacts; and little sharing of information with the public about the project before the ppa had been signed (king, 2015). the public statement of the nhrct (2012b) wrote: we found that although this project may affect to the said issues [impacts on natural resources, environment and way of life of affected communities], the egat and the thai government have not disclosed the ppa or any other relevant information to the public before concluding the agreement. it is therefore not in line with the human rights protection principle, as prescribed in the constitution of thailand, and a breach of the cabinet and nepc’s [national energy policy council] resolutions, including on the 1995 mekong agreement and good governance. on completion of the inquiry by the nhrct, a preliminary report was issued by the sub-committee, but a final report has not been completed and in principle is now the responsibility of the third nhrct committee. however, it is not clear if the final report will be produced (interview with civil society, 2016). june 2014, the lao government initiated the mrc-facilitated pnpca. in june 2015, the mrc shifted this process to “diplomatic channels” when agreement could not be reached. the project’s concession agreement was signed in september 2015 and a power purchase agreement with electricite du laos signed in october 2015. project construction officially commenced in january 2016. for details of the don sahong dam, see baird (2011), international rivers (2015), and earthrights international (n.d.). 90 | aseas 11(1) national human rights institutions, extraterritorial obligations, and hydropower in southeast asia interviews with civil society groups who had worked with the network of thai people in eight mekong provinces said that the nhrct was “a very useful mechanism for getting copies of documents that were unavailable, getting meetings with companies and government who weren’t available, and having an independent body investigate the situation and then file a report that was publicly available.” in a public meeting in 2018, another prominent campaigner commented that although the project was not stopped, the civil society campaign did improve the project, including the construction of a fish passage structure and revised design for maintaining sediment movement reportedly at a cost of usd 100 million (“xayaburi dam project commits”, 2012). they also noted that the most recent proposed project, the pak beng dam, had prepared a transboundary eia study. since the release of the preliminary report, civil society efforts shifted from the nhrct process to the submission of a case to thailand’s administrative court in august 2012, which had the potential to make more enforceable requirements on the involved state agencies (but not the private-sector developers) (interview with civil society group, 2016). the case was submitted by community leaders from eight thai provinces along the mekong river on the basis that the decision-making process had not followed thailand’s constitution that requires adequate public consultation, and that a transboundary eia had not been prepared. although the project is located in laos, they claimed that the case should be under the court’s jurisdiction as thai state agencies were key decision makers (also as electricity purchasers) and impacts could occur in thailand due to the project being located on the mekong river (suriyashotichyangkul, 2012). in february 2013, however, the court announced that it did not accept jurisdiction on the case. in march 2013, the plaintiffs appealed to the supreme administrative court of thailand, and in june 2014, the supreme administrative court of thailand reversed the lower court decision. on 25 december 2015, the supreme administrative court rejected the case, and an appeal was filed in january 2016 that has not yet been concluded. the court case, however, was unprecedented for thailand, as it investigates the implications of thai investment in a neighboring country, even though it only considers the extent of the project’s impacts on thai communities and thus is not fully an eto case. however, in april 2018, the thai courts received a case submitted by cambodian farmers against a thai sugar producer that they claim has dispossessed them of their land, which if accepted would set a further precedent in terms of eto cases in the thai court system (“cambodian farmers sue thai”, 2018). the complexity of the role of nhris investigating cross-border investments is apparent from this case. the nhrct emphasized its mandate to investigate and ensure compliance with thailand’s human rights obligations in domestic law, international obligations, and those of the asean human rights declaration passed in 2012 related to the activities of thai state agencies and private sector, including practices that occur outside of thailand (interview with nhrct commissioner, 2016). at the same time, it does not have jurisdiction to inquire into state agencies of neighboring countries. to fulfill its constitutionally defined role requires a collaboration with civil society to enable meetings and further investigation with affected communities. aseas 11(1) | 91 carl middleton suhakam and the don sahong dam on 20 october 2014, six ngos from cambodia, thailand, and the united states submitted a complaint against mega first corporation berhad (mfcb), the developer of the don sahong project, to suhakam. the basis of the complaint was the risk that the project posed to the right to health, the right to life and the right to livelihood that are threatened by harms to fish stocks. furthermore, violations over the right to information and the right to participation for riverside communities formed part of the complaint (community resource centre, earthrights international, international rivers, ngo forum on cambodia, northeastern rural development, & cambodian rural development team, 2014). the complaint is stated to be on behalf of cambodian communities from kratie and stung treng provinces and thai communities from ubon ratchathani, chiang rai, nong khai, and bueng kan provinces. in contrast to the nhrct, suhakam stated that they are unable to conduct an onsite visit to verify the claims of the complaint, given that “the commission’s power and mandate are limited within the boundaries of malaysia” (suhakam, 2015, p. 95). instead, suhakam considered itself as a mediator (interview with suhakam commissioner, 2016). suhakam first met with mfcb to discuss the complaint in february 2015, and following a response by the complainants to mfcb’s initial response, a second meeting was held in august 2015 at which mfcb disputed the complainants’ analysis. suhakam concluded that: given that there is no national human rights institution in laos, the commission finds it difficult to proceed further with the inquiry into the complaint. therefore, guided by its mandate to provide recommendations on issues involving human rights, the commission wrote to mfcb on 8 december, and recommended mfcb to ensure that its business operations and activities are conducted in a manner which respects the human rights of the people living in the affected areas, besides generating profit out of the project. (suhakam, 2015, p. 96) suhakam also recommended to the malaysian government to “formulate policies or guidelines to monitor malaysian companies operating outside of malaysia in order to ensure compliance with applicable human rights principles and standards as provided under principle 3 of the un guiding principles on business and human rights (ungps)” (suhakam, 2015, p. 96). several interviewees highlighted that there was comparatively little political pressure upon the malaysian government and mfcb to respond to the issues raised by suhakam due to the limited media coverage in malaysia on the impact of the don sahong dam. this reveals the crucial role of civil society in working with the nhri. cambodian and international civil society groups brought the case to suhakam, generating media interest in mainland southeast asia, which is not surprising given the broader public interest in the mekong mainstream dams. however, in malaysia there is a comparatively limited civil society, with little experience on etos, and thus few opportunities to build public awareness that contributed to the lack of traction in the investigation. 92 | aseas 11(1) national human rights institutions, extraterritorial obligations, and hydropower in southeast asia momentum towards etos in thailand and beyond there has been a growing trend for thai-based companies to invest overseas since the 1980s. in 2015, 37% of the 517 firms listed on the stock exchange of thailand invested outside of thailand, with 60% of these firms investing in cambodia, laos, myanmar, or vietnam (set research department, 2016). according to research by the thai eto watch working group (2017), among these are at least 13 megaprojects, including large agricultural land concessions, industrial special economic zones, and energy projects (gas, hydropower, coal-fired power stations) that have been documented to create environmental and social harms. these projects, if built in thailand, would have been challenged legally and through community protest. therefore, developers are exploiting weaker civil and political freedoms, legal standards, and institutions in neighboring countries (interview with civil society 2016). thai civil society groups have called on the thai government to regulate these investments through an outbound investment law and oversight body. a significant development occurred in may 2016, when the thai government issued a cabinet resolution on outbound investment recommending compliance with the united nations guiding principles on business and human rights (ungp). the resolution was directed at the ministry of foreign affairs, ministry of commerce, and ministry of justice, and was at least partly in response to the nhrct’s eto investigations into the dawei special economic zone in myanmar and hongsa lignite-fired power station in laos (suk, 2017). the ministry of justice was also given responsibility to develop thailand’s national action plan (nap) for the ungp, working with the other two ministries. a second cabinet resolution was issued in may 2017 regarding an eto investigation into a sugarcane concession in cambodia in oddar meanchey. these resolutions have also been interpreted by the nhrct as mandating its role in investigating eto cases (public statement by nhrct commissioner, 2018, 1 june). prime minister general prayuth chan-ocha has spoken on several occasions on his expectation that businesses adopt the ungp (ministry of finance, 2017). most recently, a high-profile invited visit by the united nations working group on business and human rights in april 2018 assessed a range of areas of progress as well as outstanding problems, including closing civic space and the need to restore and further strengthen the nhrct’s mandate (united nations human rights office of the high commissioner, 2018). over the duration of this recent interest in the ungp by the thai government, thai civil society groups have maintained a watchdog role on its implementation. for example, in november 2017, the thai eto watch working group presented their analysis to the un business and human rights forum in geneva (thai eto watch wg, 2017). according to the thai eto watch working group (2017): the drafting of the nap has involved input from csos [civil society organisations] working on migrant labor, human trafficking, lgbt rights and discrimination, and land and natural resource rights within thailand. however, thailand’s current draft nap fails to integrate the extraterritorial obligations of thai investors, nor does it include a mechanism for affected communities to seek justice and remedies. (p. 7) aseas 11(1) | 93 carl middleton meanwhile, the third round of the nhrct commission has also taken up a number of eto cases, including on the heinda mine and dawei special economic zone in tanintharyi region, myanmar, both of which involve thai companies (wongcha-um, 2017). additional hydropower projects are investigated on the mainstream of the mekong river and salween river (sukprasert, 2017). asides from attempting to maintain the principle of investigating etos, the nhrct aims to further the implementation of the ungp in thailand. conclusion and outlook this article has evaluated the roles, opportunities, and challenges for nhris to protect and promote human rights via etos, which are of growing interest in the region. it has detailed how, in spite of the region’s growing political authoritarianism, it has been possible for thailand’s nhrct in particular to (continue to) undertake eto cases. the article has argued that the interaction of the nhri as in authority and transnational civil society as an authority is crucial to the innovation of etos in the region. within a relatively short period, since 2010, etos have emerged as an increasingly established mechanism, in thailand at least. in the cases of both xayaburi dam and don sahong dam, the role of civil society was important for raising the case in the first place, drawing upon transnational networks, and then providing evidence and maintaining political momentum. regarding the xayaburi dam, while it is arguably the national court case that has had the greatest impact in thailand in terms of seeking to hold state agencies accountable for the project, the complaint first submitted to the nhrct was an important initial attempt by communities and civil society groups to raise questions about the project and its environmental, social, and human rights impacts. together with other eto cases, it has contributed to a broader momentum towards the ungp and the preparation of a national action plan in thailand. for the don sahong dam, while the impact upon the project is less clear and the case within suhakam did not proceed beyond a limited discussion with the company, the case did draw some attention to the responsibilities of malaysian companies investing overseas and led to recommendations towards the government which could be considered significant as malaysia also works towards developing a national action plan for the ungp. an examination of the co-productive relationship between nhris and civil society on etos also offers some insights in ongoing research about legal pluralism in southeast asia (breslin & nesaduri, 2018). while certainly not discounting the role of the state, these studies draw attention to the role of non-state actors in producing norms, rules, standards, and practices that reshape ecological governance in a range of sectors, including transboundary water governance (boer, hirsch, johns, saul, & scurrah, 2016; rieu-clarke, 2015b). studying the emergence of etos reveals the significance of interaction between allied state and non-state actors in producing a new transboundary governance regime, where the normative basis of etos draws on the government’s already stated commitments to international human rights law and civil societies’ expectation that these commitments be fulfilled. overall, etos as a recent innovation in the regional human rights system have offered new opportunities for access to information and public participation in particular. however, there are contradictions within the rise of the governments’ business 94 | aseas 11(1) national human rights institutions, extraterritorial obligations, and hydropower in southeast asia and human rights agenda. in thailand, the current national council for peace and order (ncpo) government has publicly stated its support for the ungp agenda and instructed state agencies to prepare plans accordingly (although not specifically on etos). at the same time, there has been a closing space for political, civil, and media freedoms with implications for civil society and community activists, together with a weakening of the mandate of the nhrct. the implications are that even as limited discussion on business and human rights is officially invited by the government, the means to investigate and pursue cases where human rights have been threatened or violated are in fact weakened. meanwhile, in neighboring countries, the closing of civil and political space for civil society to work on human rights, both domestically and across borders is also an important consideration for the potential of future eto cases. in cambodia, for example, ngos and critical media outlets have been shut down and the main opposition party disbanded since 2016, which holds implications for how cambodian civil society working on human rights can operate and network, including in cross-border cases. given the transnational character of some human rights cases in southeast asia, including in the case of large hydropower dams on transboundary rivers, and the uneven access to justice across the region, etos could be a significant transboundary justice mechanism. however, to consolidate and institutionalize etos will require sustained work by both nhris and civil society.  references asian ngo network on national human rights institutions. 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(2012a). findings of the subcommittee on civil and political rights of the national human rights committee of thailand on the koh kong sugar cane plantation in cambodia. bangkok: nhrct. national human rights commission of thailand. (2012b, may 4). national human rights commission of thailand’s press release on xayaburi (unofficial translation). bangkok: nhrct. nhrc under fire for being ‘partial to impartiality’. (2013, august 18). bangkok post. retrieved from https:// www.bangkokpost.com/news/investigation/365167/nhrc-under-fire-for-being-partial-to-impartiality peoples’ empowerment foundation. (2018). thailand: operating under military coup government. in y. s. seng & a. juanda (eds.), 2017 anni report on the performance and establishment of national human rights institutions in asia (pp. 52-66). bangkok: forum asia. pongsudhirak, t. (2018, january 1). authoritarianism is accelerating in southeast asia. nikkei asian review. retrieved from https://asia.nikkei.com/editor-s-picks/looking-ahead-2018/authoritarianism-is-accelerating-in-southeast-asia rehbein, b. (2011). laos. in t. chong & s. elies (eds.), an asean community for all: exploring the scope for civil society engagement (pp. 63-72). singapore: friedrich-ebert-stiftung. rieu-clarke, a. (2015a). notification and consultation procedures under the mekong agreement: insights from the xayaburi controversy. asian journal of international law 5(1), 143-175. rieu-clarke, a. (2015b). transboundary hydropower projects seen through the lens of three international legal regimes: foreign investment, environmental protection and human rights. international journal of water governance, 1, 27-48. set research department. (2016). 2015 outward foreign direct investment of thai listed firms. bangkok: stock exchange of thailand (set). sokphea, y. (2017). transnational advocacy networks in global supply chains: a study of civil society organizations’ sugar movements in cambodia. journal of civil society, 13(1), 35-53. aseas 11(1) | 97 carl middleton suara rakyat malaysia. (2018). malaysia: a misrepresented commission and the executives alibi for violation. in y. s. seng & a. juanda (eds.), 2017 anni report on the performance and establishment of national human rights institutions in asia (pp. 22-30). bangkok: forum asia. suhakam. (2015). suhakam annual report 2015. kuala lumpur: human rights commission of malaysia (suhakam). suk, w. (2017). writing the rulebook: will thailand force its businesses to respect human rights? retrieved from https://www.earthrights.org/blog/writing-rulebook-will-thailand-force-its-businesses-respecthuman-rights sukprasert, p. (2017, march 19). the dawei development dream left high and dry. bangkok post. retrieved from https://www.bangkokpost.com/news/special-reports/1217529/the-dawei-development-dreamleft-high-and-dry suriyashotichyangkul, c. (2012) spirit of the mekong: a big day for the future of the river. retrieved from http://www.earthrights.org/blog/spirit-mekong-big-day-future-river thai eto watch wg. (2017). thai outbound investments in the mekong region and myanmar: protecting human rights and ensuring due diligence in thailand’s outbound investments. bangkok: thai eto watch wg. thailand’s extra-territorial obligations watch & community resource center. (2018). thai outbound investments in asean: human rights violations, extra-territorial obligations and accountability. in business and human rights: learnings from asia. working paper series: asian perspectives on international human rights landscapes number 3: march 2018 (pp. 25-38). bangkok: forum asia. the global initiative for economic, social and cultural rights. (2017). human rights law sources: un pronouncements on extra-territorial obligations. geneva: the global initiative for economic, social and cultural rights. united nations human rights office of the high commissioner. (2018). statement at the end of visit to thailand by the united nations working group on business and human rights. retrieved from http:// www.ohchr.org/en/newsevents/pages/displaynews.aspx?newsid=22915&langid=e welsh, b. (2017). tough year for human rights in southeast asia. new mandala. retrieved from http:// www.newmandala.org/tough-year-human-rights-southeast-asia/ wongcha-um, p. (2017, april 5). thai-owned mine in myanmar investigated for human rights violations. channel news asia. retrieved from https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asia/thai-owned-minein-myanmar-investigated-for-human-rights-violati-8710266 xayaburi dam project commits 100 million dollars to redesign. (2012, july 19). the nation. retrieved from http://www.nationmultimedia.com/ breakingnews/ xayaburi-dam-project-commits-100-milliondollars-t-30186538.html about the author carl middleton is deputy director of the ma in international development studies program, and director of the center for social development studies at chulalongkorn university, thailand. his research interests orientate around the politics and policy of the environment in southeast asia, with a particular focus on social movements, environmental justice, and the political ecology of water and energy. ► contact: carl.chulalongkorn@gmail.com acknowledgements this research was funded by the shape-sea project. this article is partly based on a paper presented at the “international conference on national human rights mechanisms in southeast asia: challenges of protection”, 13-14 july 2017, asia center, bangkok, thailand. aseas 14(1) | 145 book review: bijl, p., & chin, g. v. s. (eds.). (2020). appropriating kartini: colonial, national and transnational memories of an indonesian icon. iseas. isbn 978-981-4843-92-8. 198 pages. vissia ita yuliantoa & g. r. lono lastoro simatupanga a universitas gadjah mada, indonesia ► yulianto, v. i., & simatupang, g. r. l. l. (2021). book review: bijl, p., & chin, g. v. s. (eds.). (2020). appropriating kartini: colonial, national and transnational memories of an indonesian icon. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 14(1), 145-148. in the first chapter of their edited book appropriating kartini, paul bijl, a dutch historian based in utrecht, and grace v. s. chin, a feminist historian at university sains malaysia, introduce the national, regional, and transnational appropriations of kartini – a young javanese woman who lived in jepara, central java, between 1879 and 1904. as they indicate, today kartini is recognised internationally as an iconic feminist and nationalist indonesian figure and is, after anne frank, the most widely-read and influential, (originally) dutch-language author worldwide in the 20th and 21st centuries. since 1911, her letters, first published in dutch as door duisternis tot licht (lit. through darkness to light), have been translated into numerous languages including french, russian, japanese, javanese, sundanese, and arabic. several versions of indonesian and english translations also exist. in the 1960s, a republication of the first 1920 english-language translation of a selection of her writings was included in the unesco collection of representative works. this book discusses a diversity of appropriative acts and examines the significance of the roles played by a variety of actors and institutions who produced and claimed their versions and interpretations of the kartini persona (mohamad, 2004). all eight chapters of the book are written by non-indonesian scholars and are, thus, strongly oriented towards western contexts and appropriations, drawing on classical theories of modernity or european enlightenment. the chapters are arranged along a colonial-postcolonial trajectory, providing a good overview of the different settings of a continuing contestation, appropriation, and debate over kartini’s biography, memory, and legacy. the second chapter, written by joost coté, a dutch-australian historian, is entitled “crafting reform: kartini and the imperial imagination, 1898-1911”. this chapter points to how contemporary imperial interests silenced kartini’s other voice, including her criticism of european racism, sexism, and exoticism, as well as her ridicule of dutch paternalism. coté investigates how kartini had already been imagined by dutch colonials in the colonial capital and abroad at the time her name and writings began circulating in the media in the netherlands and its east indies colony while she was alive, and increasingly after her edited letters were published rezensionen  book reviews w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 46 146 | aseas 14(1) book review: bijl, p., & chin, g. v. s. (eds.). (2020). appropriating kartini. in 1911, to conjure up a new vision of an imperial mission (p.17). in her 1903 memorandum to the colonial government “give the javanese education”, kartini had pointed to an emerging reformist imperial discourse advocating “native education” – a discourse which then referenced her in a critique of the colonial moral order and of the rationalization for the conquest of “backward” feudal states and for the reform of “primitive” native societies. this position was appropriated by jacques abendanon, the colonial director of native education (1900-1905), in the pursuit of his progressive agenda for a greater access to (dutch) education for the javanese people and an ethical policy (p.19), which later motivated his publication of kartini’s correspondence (abendanon, 1911). in the third chapter, entitled “hierarchies of humanity: kartini in america and unesco”, bijl reflectively examines how kartini has been presented and used by many of her western appropriators as a rare historical figure. placing kartini on a global stage, bijl argues, thereby reproduces structural inequalities – a double hierarchy, namely, between “provincials” and “cosmopolitans” – despite the fact that kartini was aware of the colonial discourse and very often uses irony as a strong weapon to criticize the way westerners maintain european racialized discourse/scientific racism, sexism, exoticism, paternalism, or eurocentrism at large. in the us, where kartini appears in the prestigious atlantic magazine, she is presented as a lonely voice in an “unknown” land, “a saint of the lower order” who strived for “a city upon the hill” (p. 66). here, as bijl shows, kartini’s own appropriation of western, liberal conceptions of human equality and inequality were in turn appropriated to offer readers a dose of cosmopolitanism as well as to bolster a us sense of exceptionalism (p. 56). this was clearly the case with regard to the original 1920 english translation, “letters of a javanese princess”, designed to advance a cosmopolitan feminism. bijl provides here a very reflective and grounded piece on the trajectories of western cosmopolitan discourse. the fourth chapter, written by grace v. s. chin, is entitled “ambivalent narration: kartini’s silence and the other woman”. this section problematizes the way kartini presented herself and her status as a female priyayi through her use of (eloquent) dutch language to her dutch friends. here, chin asserts that kartini’s performativity is characterized by ambivalence, as she lived within a javanese social world with its complex feudal system and its male-centric discourses of javanese nobility (p. 77). she points out how kartini’s narration underlines the continued dominance of the javanese elite in indonesian political life (cf. rutherford, p. 119, for a different view, where kartini is said to have had no need to choose between rakyat, ordinary citizen or the people, and ningrat, the javanese royal nobility). the fifth chapter is a republication of danilyn rutherford’s 1993 article, entitled “unpacking a national heroine: two kartinis and their people”. rutherford – a cultural anthropologist who has written extensively on west papua – emphasizes how door duisternis tot licht was a bestselling book produced within the net of dutch scholarship and colonial frames, and compares this with the post-colonial indonesian reading and translations by pramoedya ananta toer1 and siti soemandari soeroto2. 1 pramoedya ananta toer (1925-2006) is indonesia’s greatest political author. he spent most of his lifetime incarcerated by the colonial powers and, later, by different indonesian governments. his works have been translated into 20 languages and distributed worldwide. 2 siti soemandari soeroto (1909-1994) is an indonesian feminist and journalist. she published a book on kartini’s biography in 1979. aseas 14(1) | 147 vissia ita yulianto & g. r. lono lastoro simatupang she further explains how kartini occupies a position in discourse as well as in history. she argues that kartini’s ambiguity presents a source of challenge that reflects both modern contradictions as well as colonial ones. chapter six is written by kathryn robinson, an australian feminist, and is entitled “call me kartini? kartini as a floating signifier in indonesian history”. in line with the title, robinson argues that kartini’s ideas have become a floating signifier that has been shifted and developed politically, culturally, and as part of a system of meaningmaking, not limited to gender relations and women’s social roles in indonesia. chapter seven is also a republication of an earlier chapter by paul bijl, entitled “kartini and the politics of european multiculturalism”, in which readers are invited to reflect on the way “sound” and “silence” are always unevenly distributed. here, bijl shows how kartini uses her voice and meaningful silence in criticizing javanese feudalism as well as dutch scientific racism. in the reflective and critical afterword of chapter eight, jean gelman taylor – an australian historian of indonesia – emphasises again that kartini has become attached to the specific interest of commentators, politicians, and scholars over the past years. she further appreciates what coté (2014) has brought to the fore in his more recent compilation of kartini’s writings, namely, activities of kartini that have been neglected or unknown by most critics, translators, and academics. taylor also suggests that the many different views contributors have offered in this study of the appropriations of kartini should encourage readers to reflect on themselves as creators of words and to consider more deeply how they (we) write histories. notwithstanding the discourse these scholars evoke, the word ‘appropriation’ in the book’s title also deserves mention. the term adequately represents the ambiguous nature of the readings of each author as well as of kartini the person. on the one side, appropriation can be understood negatively, as an act likened to stealing, while, on the other, appropriation can be seen as a positive and an unavoidable act of making something proper to one’s self (cf. young, 2010). we believe that the book encourages the readers to understand appropriation in the latter sense. overall, to read and re-read kartini, who died at the young age of 24, and to read and re-read the appropriations of her, continues to provoke emotional and postcolonial sensitivities, as well as incite intellectual introspection. this book is a valuable contribution to what has already become a century-long national and international reflection on the person of kartini and on what she has come to symbolize over time. it will be of interest not only to those concerned with the continuing appropriation and transnational representations of kartini, but also to a wider readership, including young scholars of modern history and social sciences in southeast asia and beyond.  references abendanon, j. h. (ed.). (1911). door duisternis tot licht: gedachten over en voor het javaansche volk van raden adjeng kartini. [through darkness to light: consideration about and in the interest of the javaneese]. g. c. t. van dorp & co. coté, j. (2014). kartini: the complete writings 1898–1904. monash university press. 148 | aseas 14(1) book review: bijl, p., & chin, g. v. s. (eds.). (2020). appropriating kartini. mohamad, g. (2004). foreword: kartini sebuah persona. in kartini, r. a., aku mau...: feminisme dan nasionalisme: surat-surat kartini kepada stella zeehandelaar 1899-1903 (pp.vii-xix, v. i. yulianto, trans.). buku kompas kpg & irb press. (original work by j. coté, on feminism and nationalism, kartini’s letters to stella zeehandelaar 1899-1903, published 1995). young, j. o. (2010). cultural appropriation and the arts. john wiley & sons. about the authors vissia ita yulianto is an indonesian social scientist. her areas of expertise are post-coloniality, socio-cultural anthropology, cultural studies, and southeast asian studies. she is a researcher at the center for southeast asian social studies and a lecturer at the master program of performing and visual art studies, universitas gadjah mada. ► contact: vissia.itayulianto@ugm.ac.id g. r. lono lastoro simatupang is an anthropologist lecturing at the department of anthropology, faculty of cultural sciences, and at the performing and visual arts studies, school of gaduate studies, universitas gadjah mada. his current research focus includes performance studies, cultural heritage, and cultural policy. ► contact: roosmargo@ugm.ac.id aseas 12(1) | 69 recalling hydraulic despotism: hun sen’s cambodia and the return of strict authoritarianism david j. h. blake ► blake, d. j. h. (2019). recalling hydraulic despotism: hun sen’s cambodia and the return of strict authoritarianism. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 12(1), 69-89. mirroring trends elsewhere in southeast asia, cambodia has witnessed a pronounced shift towards stricter authoritarianism over recent years. the state appears more firmly ruled by prime minister hun sen than at any time during the past three decades, while the de facto status of the cambodian people’s party (cpp) more closely resembles the single party regimes of neighboring states. one of the major tools of political control and expansion of authority employed by the hierarchical cpp network is the construction of major infrastructure projects, most notably hydropower dams and irrigation schemes. this article focuses attention on the hydraulic infrastructure aspects of exacting political authority and social control by the elite over the nation, drawing upon wittfogelian perspectives for a conceptual framework. it maintains that cambodia increasingly represents a modern variant of a hydraulic society, but primarily functions as a satellite hydraulic state of china. the growing influence of china over cambodia’s hydraulic development has helped elevate hun sen to resemble a neo-classic hydraulic despot. hydraulic society concepts help provide partial understanding of contemporary power relations and partystate ascendency, including the longevity and resilience of hun sen’s supremacy. keywords: authoritarianism; cambodia; hun sen; hydraulic society; wittfogel  introduction over the course of 2017-18, cambodia demonstrably shifted towards a considerably harsher form of authoritarian governance, with several senior political opponents to the incumbent regime jailed, intimidated, exiled, or threatened with violence amidst a general crackdown on pro-democratic groups, free speech, and civil liberties (morgenbesser, 2019). there was a rise in the use of extra-legal violence against environmental and human rights activists, including several state-linked assassinations, while a climate of impunity was widely recognized to be the norm for members of cambodia’s well-connected elite who had been implicated in a range of alleged crimes. this is not to imply that any of these symptoms of “hegemonic authoritarianism” (morgenbesser, 2019) were not previously present, but merely that the indicator gauge of democratic freedoms had lurched further into the red zone, and few observers held any illusions that there would be a rapid reversal. the trend in cambodia matches a general trend seen across southeast asia towards an authoritarian “problem region” (einzenberger & schaffer, 2018, p. 2; pongsudhirak, 2018) and, indeed, a wider aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 14 70 | aseas 12(1) recalling hydraulic despotism global pattern of more populist, nationalist, and authoritarian regimes (freedom house, 2017). this retreat of democracy is mirrored by a notable rise in personalist dictatorships, defined as regimes where power is highly concentrated in the hands of a single individual, changing from 23% in 1988 up to 40% of authoritarian regimes in 2017 (kendall-taylor, frantz, & wright, 2017). this rise in authoritarianism comes at a time when the development of hydraulic infrastructure has been accelerating across the mekong region, with china being the main investor. this article begins by examining cambodia’s recent shift towards a stricter form of authoritarianism, arguing that this should be viewed as part of a longer historical trend, in part reflecting the ostensible failure of western attempts to liberalize and democratize cambodia (un, 2011). this failure cannot be separated from the parallel assertion of economic and political hegemony by china throughout the mekong region, showing its strongest expression in cambodia in the throes of being transformed into a bulwark state for chinese state expansionist interests over resources on land and at sea, raising concerns of neo-colonialism (caceres & ear, 2013). the article posits that examining these political developments through a lens that acknowledges wittfogel’s (1957) hydraulic society thesis – in particular claims that such states are generally ruled by autocratic leaders he labelled as “hydraulic despots” – would allow for a more nuanced way of understanding some of the inherent socio-political dynamics and processes at work in contemporary cambodia, both internally and at the level of inter-state relationships. adopting this conceptual framework allows for an examination of the contention that a key tool and mechanism used by the increasingly centralized state to enact its authority over the nation, particularly its periphery, is via the construction of hydraulic infrastructure, especially hydropower and irrigation schemes. the timeframe examined is primarily the post-khmer rouge period since hun sen’s rise to power, with a strong emphasis on events of the last decade. taking this line of argumentation further, the article proposes that cambodia is moving incrementally towards becoming a satellite hydraulic state of china, doing its bidding on the regional geopolitical stage in return for political gifts and favors to the elite, a cultural practice that aids hun sen’s personalized, neopatrimonial style of political rule (un, 2011). the article is based on an extensive literature review, supported by the author’s empirical observations in several provinces of recent hydraulic infrastructure developments during field visits between 2017 and 2018. cambodia’s recent shift to personalized authoritarianism the slide towards deeper authoritarianism in cambodia culminated during the run up to the 2018 general elections. the main opposition party to the ruling cambodian people’s party (cpp), the cambodian national rescue party (cnrp) was dissolved on 16 november 2017 by the supreme court, while 118 of its senior members were banned from politics for 5 years and its 55 national assembly seats were redistributed to the cpp (sutton, 2017). the cnrp’s former leader, kem sokha, was accused of conspiring with foreign governments to overthrow the incumbent regime and was arrested on 3 september 2017 on charges of “treason and espionage” (agence francepresse, 2017). leading hun sen opponent, sam rainsy, was earlier forced into exile in france and has little chance of being granted a safe return to cambodia to rejoin the aseas 12(1) | 71 david j. h. blake political fray. in the june 2017 commune council elections the cnrp won 44% of the national vote, a result which was perceived to have rattled the confidence of the cpp about its chances of outright victory at the 29 july 2018 general elections.1 sutton (2017) argues that the deliberate break-up of the cnrp marked a “turning point” in cambodian politics, from “a system that was relatively balanced at the elite level into a personalist dictatorship centred on hun sen”. he notes the death of king norodom sihanouk in 2012, then the demise of senate president chea sim who commanded a powerful internal faction in june 2015, followed by the quashing of the cnrp, have allowed hun sen an opportunity to consolidate and expand his already formidable power base. hun sen has been quick to shrug off any foreign accusation of a power grab. reacting to eu threats to impose sanctions on cambodia, potentially freeze the overseas assets of senior officials, and remove cambodia’s preferential trade status in the everything but arms agreement over the dissolution of the cnrp, hun sen berated the eu by stating, when we break the legs of their children, who robbed and stole things from us . . . the father will be furious . . . the father is furious because his children got broken legs while they crawled to set bombs in our house (sokhean & kijeswki, 2017). hun sen’s reference to “the children” was apparently aimed at the cnrp leadership whom he accused of fomenting “revolution”, supposedly with the help of the eu and us. the use of extreme metaphors and even direct threats of violence by hun sen have become increasingly commonplace in recent years. for example, during a rally for garment workers in late november 2017, hun sen claimed that he would have assassinated opposition leaders sam rainsy and kem sokha, had he watched a video from 29 december 2013 in which the two had apparently called on the large crowds at a non-violent protest to “organize a new government” and contest the close-run result of the earlier general elections (niem & chen, 2017). hun sen is quoted in the same source as saying, if i had seen that at the time they would already be dead; it would be their funeral. they are lucky that i missed it. if i had watched that clip on the day they announced that, a few hours later, i would have attacked from all sides at once (niem & chen, 2017). the same article reported that during the run up to the 2017 commune elections, hun sen had threatened “to eliminate 100 to 200 people” in the event of protests against the result, claiming this would be in the interests of national stability and security. simultaneously with the extensive and systematic persecution of political opposition figures and parties, hun sen has waged an unrelenting attack against civil society, including attempts to silence media outlets deemed unsympathetic to him, while threatening certain outspoken ngos with violence, censure, and closure. for 1 in the event, the cpp won by a landslide, taking all 125 seats in the national assembly and 76.9% of the popular vote. funcinpec, the closest party to cpp gained just 5.89% of the vote, amidst widespread claims that the election had been “a sham” (morgenbesser, 2018a; prak chan thul, 2018b). 72 | aseas 12(1) recalling hydraulic despotism example, the cambodian center for human rights (cchr), founded by kem sokha, incurred the wrath of hun sen at a november 2017 rally, stating that the center “must close because they follow foreigners” (sokhean, 2017). two months earlier, the government forced the cambodia daily newspaper to cease operations after 24 years of independent journalism, claiming it owed a usd 6.3 million tax bill (baliga & chheng, 2017). the final edition of the paper ran with the headline, “descent into outright dictatorship”. its closure coincided with a state clampdown on other print and broadcast media sources such as radio free asia, voice of america, and voice of democracy, amongst 15 domestic radio stations ordered shut by the ministry of information (dara & baliga, 2017). the remaining english language daily, the phnom penh post, is now run by a malaysian businessman with alleged connections to hun sen (styllis, 2018). by the end of 2017, accusations that cambodia was sliding towards a fully-fledged dictatorship or autocratic state appeared more frequently in mainstream media sources (e.g., hoekstra, 2017; hurst, 2017; ward, 2017). hun sen has shown strong indications that he aims to establish a ruling family dynasty by appointing several of his sons and other family members to key positions within the government and military (morgenbesser, 2019; strangio, 2014). cambodia has been recognized as one of the most dangerous countries in the world for grassroots human rights and environmental activists, following systematic state intimidation and violence directed towards innumerable activists over recent years, a reality reinforced by the 2012 murder of prominent forest defender chut wutty at the hands of a military police officer (parnell, 2015) and the assassination of political activist kem ley in july 2016 (morgenbesser, 2019). in january 2018, a court jailed two environmental activists with the ngo mother earth for filming suspected illegal sand mining activity in koh kong province (prak chan thul, 2018a). while it seems apparent that cambodia has become decidedly more authoritarian over the last few years, with hun sen more firmly at the helm than ever and driving forward new hydraulic mega-projects, how best to conceptually account for this shift towards a more centralized bureaucratic and patrimonial polity? einzenberger and schaffar (2018) point to the possibility that china may be serving as a role model for nearby countries, in part through its economic engagement and desire for political stability. the article proceeds by offering a brief recap of the general theory of hydraulic society via a consideration of wittfogel’s claims concerning the peculiar quasi-theocratic nature of despotic rulers that i maintain takes on some relevance to the contemporary cambodian context. wittfogel’s hydraulic society thesis revisited wittfogel (1957/1981) originally theorized that control of water through large-scale irrigation and other hydraulic works was the basis of a peculiarly “asiatic mode of production”2 and accompanied the rise of an attendant, powerful, and exploitative ruling 2 wittfogel devotes an entire chapter in oriental despotism to an analysis of “the rise and fall of the theory of the asiatic mode of production” (chapter 9), calling for its re-examination, based on the twentieth century rise of totalitarian states under the banner of ‘marxism-leninism’. aseas 12(1) | 73 david j. h. blake class (termed the “hydraulic bureaucracy”). following emigration from germany to the united states prior to the second world war, wittfogel started to substitute the phrase “oriental society” with “hydraulic society” to indicate the water controlling mode of production and its associated social order, although he retained the former term in the title of his magnum opus, oriental despotism: a comparative study of total power, inviting criticisms of cultural determination or orientalism3 (e.g., robbins, 2004). control of water for irrigation expansion purposes took on special significance in the emergence of certain early asian societies centered on rivers flowing through semi-arid or arid environments, which differed fundamentally from the more feudalistic development pathway of most early european states, which were mostly based on rainfed agriculture. according to the theory, only a powerful and complex state organization can manage the multiple activities and problems associated with large-scale irrigated agriculture, such as its planning, construction, enlargement, operation, and maintenance, the allocation of water between upstream and downstream cultivators; the arbitration of conflicts, and tax collection functions. the hydraulic state occupied a position of “unrivalled operational leadership and organizational control” over the construction of productive and protective public works, plus the labor force required to build them (peet, 1985, p. 8). furthermore, wittfogel maintained the highly centralized power afforded by technological control of water resources resulted in fundamentally despotic forms of governance found in such early hydraulic civilizations as egypt, china, mesopotamia, sri lanka, the indus valley, and pre-columbian mexico and peru.4 absolutism was presumed to be the norm, while civil society was characteristically poorly developed and routinely oppressed wherever it appeared. wittfogel noted that these societies demonstrated particular class differentiations, labor divisions, and specialization typical of centralized urban life within a limited core area, surrounded by large interstitial and peripheral areas connected to the center. wittfogel (1981) maintained that a defining feature of any hydraulic society was the presence of an autocratic emperor, pharaoh, or king (often revered as a semi-divine deity), who would be responsible for playing “the decisive role in initiating, accomplishing, and perpetuating the major works of hydraulic economy” (p. 27). he referred to the existence of an organizational web for managing the hydraulic works covering the whole, or at least the “dynamic core” of the nation; emphasizing that “those who control this network are uniquely prepared to wield supreme political power” (p. 27). in considering the nature of the power of the leader of a hydraulic society, wittfogel described it as “benevolent in form, oppressive in content” (p. 136) and noted an absence of effective constitutional or societal checks on its absolutism. consequently, the ruler tends to “expand his authority through alliances, maneuvers, and ruthless schemes until, having conquered all other centers of supreme decision, he alone prevails” (wittfogel, 1981, p. 107). 3 in fact, wittfogel identifies a number of societies lying outside the classical ‘orient’ in his classification scheme of hydraulic societies, including several in central and south america. 4 it should be acknowledged that wittfogel makes no mention of the khmer empire or cambodia in oriental despotism, suggesting he had not studied the nation in any detail and offered no opinion as to its hydraulic credentials. 74 | aseas 12(1) recalling hydraulic despotism the (re-)emergence of a hydraulic society in modern cambodia reflected in hun sen’s rise most critiques of wittfogel’s concepts concerning southeast asia have primarily been interested in the context of pre-modern societies, usually paying scant attention to the theory’s applicability to contemporary nation states and modern geopolitics. price (1994) noted a tendency for some anthropologists studying irrigation to ignore wittfogel’s work “or to merely cite it to dismiss it instantly as ‘reductionistic’, ‘simplistic’, or ‘mechanical’” (p. 193). also referring to a slew of scholarly dismissals, worster5 (1992) maintained that one of the most serious weaknesses in that literature [anthropological scholarship of the 1960s and 70s], it must be said straight off, is that the modern experience with irrigation hardly appears in it. nowhere do the ecological anthropologists – nor does wittfogel for that matter – seem to realise that the link between water control and social power might occur in places other than the archaic cradles of civilization nor that the past hundred years have seen more irrigation development than all of previous history (p. 30). this criticism of a failure to consider the modern context could equally apply to some anthropological portrayals of cambodia that have stoked a long-running debate regarding the validity of the hydraulic society hypothesis to the formation of the ancient khmer empire (e.g., rigg, 1992). while it is now generally accepted amongst academics that the impressive reservoir structures (known as barai) around angkor were unlikely to have been built for irrigation, but rather for domestic water supply and more significantly, theocratic displays of power and religious symbolism (mabbett & chandler, 1995; van liere, 1980), the irrigation trope is now part of modern khmer folklore. the lack of an irrigational purpose has not prevented contemporary powerful irrigation promoters from regularly invoking the memory and symbols of angkor kings in speeches and development propaganda (hughes, 2006). rather than disturbing historical constructions concerning early state formation, this article is primarily concerned with examining the modern cambodian state since the end of the khmer rouge regime (1975-79), a period when wildly ambitious, poorly designed, and ecologically illiterate irrigation schemes were built with the technical assistance of chinese advisors and the forced labor of tens of thousands of citizens, only to fail alongside the regime’s own disintegration (himel, 2007). but it is the late 20th and early 21st century experience of concerted hydraulic infrastructure expansion, the emergence of an increasingly centralized bureaucracy, and the cpp hierarchy pursuing a more subtle form of irrigation-driven social engineering than the khmer rouge employed, that warrants closer scrutiny with regards to the nature of contemporary modes of hydraulic governance. 5 worster’s (1992) book rivers of empire: water, aridity and the growth of the american west documents the extent to which the irrigation development paradigm of the modern “hydraulic west” has resulted in extensive ecological damage, a reallocation of power (as well as water) to bureaucratic and corporate elites, and societal conflict. aseas 12(1) | 75 david j. h. blake in discussing the nature of archetypal sovereigns ruling over hydraulic societies, wittfogel noted how power was invariably concentrated and operationalized through a single, absolute leader: in his person the ruler combines supreme operational authority and the many magic and mythical symbols that express the terrifying (and allegedly beneficial) qualities of the power apparatus he heads. because of immaturity, weakness, or incompetence, he may share his operational supremacy with an aide: a regent, vizier, chancellor, or ‘prime minister’. but the exalted power of these men does not usually last long. it rarely affects the symbols of supreme authority. (wittfogel, 1957, p. 305) for most cambodians born after 1980 (in other words the vast majority, given the relative demographic youth of the nation), hun sen has been the only national leader they have known. he is regarded as a consummate and skillful politician throughout his career, carefully plotting a rise to power, by ruthlessly out-maneuvering rival factions and individuals at each stage to ensure no one can seriously threaten his personal supremacy (morgenbesser, 2018b). as strangio (2014) notes, hun sen has played many roles during his three decades at the apex of the cambodian political hierarchy, including “apparatchik and reformer, strongman and statesman, demagogue and free-wheeling marketer” (p. xiii). yet beyond these external guises, he stresses that hun sen has “ruled in the traditional cambodian way, through a system of personal patronage in which money was passed upwards in exchange for protection” (p. xiii), displaying a personality that offered little tolerance for internal dissent, with a penchant for unpredictable behavior and violence when rattled. it is pertinent to note that hun sen arose from relatively humble beginnings to assume the prime ministership and at one time was a khmer rouge cadre, yet now blithely assumes the honorific title samdech akka moha sena padei techo, which roughly translates as “illustrious prince, great supreme protector, and famed warrior” (strangio, 2014, p. 116). he has actively encouraged the (re)creation of a hierarchical bureaucratic and parallel societal structure that recalls an absolute royal past, evident, for instance, in state propaganda in which the official narrative increasingly paints him as a near-legendary, rags-to-riches “peasant king” (strangio, 2014, p. 117-119). in the manner of an angkorian god-king, he has begun to bestow the equivalent of royal ranks to generous benefactors from the cambodian elite, such as the title okhna to anyone contributing over usd 100,000 for the purpose of “national reconstruction”. hun sen’s hold over the cpp strengthens and the shift to a hydraulic paradigm formerly known as the kampuchean people’s revolutionary party (kprp), the cpp’s rise to prominence dates back to the 1980s period of civil war and domestic chaos, as the united nations transitional authority in cambodia (untac) and western governments slowly returned with financial aid, development projects, and the promise 76 | aseas 12(1) recalling hydraulic despotism of democracy.6 donors showed considerable interest in financially supporting a slew of irrigation development schemes as a key component of returning the country to some degree of socio-economic ‘normalcy’ and peace, even though consultants’ reports often cautioned against pushing too rapid an expansion of infrastructure, on account of a raft of technical, environmental, economic, and political risk factors (blake, 2016). invariably their words of caution were not heeded, with entirely new irrigation systems built or khmer rouge era systems rehabilitated and expanded, only to quickly fall into disrepair or be abandoned due to myriad technical deficiencies (treffner, 2010). through the 1980s and 90s, the cpp emerged as the party most experienced and skilled at harnessing foreign donor-funded infrastructural development aid to benefit its own narrow interests, both as a political party and in terms of individual economic advancement. simply put, the more senior the position attained in the party hierarchy, the greater the sense of entitlement to the spoils of development came with that office, with authority over infrastructure projects being regarded as a key reward within an entrenched patron-client gifting culture (hughes, 2006; norén-nilsson, 2016; roberts, 2002). as mccargo (2005) has argued, the cpp held virtual hegemony over cambodian politics during the start of the 21st century, and any transition to a liberal democracy was largely illusory and wishful thinking on the part of the international community. during several coalition governments, the cpp usually ensured that its politicians controlled the most lucrative and influential government bureaucracies, including agriculture, forestry, and water resources agencies, after which it would stuff the agencies with followers in a nepotistic manner, carving out a solid fiefdom for personal enrichment (un, 2005). in cambodia, as is the case in thailand (blake, 2016), irrigation projects are invariably considered, on the one hand an integral component of an electoral strategy employed by politicians to offer rural people an incentive to vote for them, and on the other hand a means for elites to reward loyal bureaucrats, contractors, party members, and politicians (depending on their position within the patron-client hierarchy) through mutual rent-seeking opportunities during the scheme’s construction (blake, 2019; sok, 2012). following the 2008-09 spike in paddy prices, the cpp referred to itself as “the irrigation party” (thavat, 2006) and has in subsequent elections repeatedly promised rural voters greater prosperity from the construction of irrigation schemes that would supposedly allow double cropping of rice (blake, 2016). having de facto control over much of the bureaucracy, in particular the ministry of water resources and meteorology (mowram) and the ministry of agriculture, forestry and fisheries (maff), has allowed the cpp to exercise control over water flows, people, and development funds (whether domestic or international aid), with little interest in questions of equity, sustainability, or the environment (venot & fontenelle, 2018). the personalization of political elite gifting practices is epitomized by cpp posters featuring paternalistic images of hun sen and heng samrin7 situated above pictures of state-funded infrastructure projects, including irrigation canals, that seemed ubiquitous in the countryside during the run-up 6 the kprp formally changed its name to the cpp in 1991, less than a week before the signing of the paris peace accords established the untac and paved the way for ‘free’ elections in cambodia (frings, 1995). 7 heng samrin was a former army commander in the khmer rouge, general secretary of the kprp from 1981 to 1991 and has been president of the national assembly of cambodia since 2006. aseas 12(1) | 77 david j. h. blake to the july 2018 elections. the cpp posters dominated those of minor party rivals in size and frequency, seen next to both relatively small irrigation projects, such as one funded by australia in prey kabbas district, takeo province (blake, 2018a), and a chinese-funded mega-project (albeit failed) in prey veng province (blake, 2018b). that hun sen’s party swept the board in every constituency was not surprising and points to the emergence of a hydraulic society, where all public infrastructure is ultimately associated with a single ruler and party. with regards to the potential for national harm caused by poorly planned hydraulic development (both domestically and internationally), it is salient to note the quixotic nature of hun sen. this is reflected in a switch from adopting a rhetorical position of mild opposition towards large-scale hydraulic developments upstream on the mekong river in the early years of the 21st century, including those in china, to offering unreserved support and even contemplating building its own ‘mega-dams’ on the mainstream mekong in recent years, presumably reflecting altered geopolitical loyalties as main funding sources have changed. while it is most unlikely that he personally wrote the opening address for the second international symposium on the management of large rivers for fisheries held in phnom penh in february 2003, it is still instructive that hun sen stated that in terms of the mekong hydraulic development, “continued upstream dam construction” and a “commercial navigation plan” were “a major concern” to cambodia’s interests, creating a worry that “the tonle sap could dry up, ending the famous river fishing industry” (hun sen, 2003). however, even while the threats from upstream have increased, such concerns for potential social and environmental damage seem to have vanished in recent years, with hun sen ostensibly silent about major upstream riverine schemes, just at the time that (mostly) chinese-funded hydraulic developments have blossomed in cambodia and new plans are regularly being proposed. he has also advocated staunchly in favor of a mainstream dam just across the border in laos, which a wide range of stakeholders have warned could be disastrous to fish migrations in the entire lower mekong system (boer et al., 2016). since an announcement by the laos government of the development of the 256 mw don sahong dam in 2014, civil society actors and cambodian government officials have publicly expressed worries about the potential negative impacts this project might have on local communities reliant on eco-tourism and the wider mekong ecosystem, in particular the agriculture and capture fisheries sectors of the economy (phak, 2016). yet after a long period of uncertainty regarding a market for the power generated by the dam, in 2016 with record low water levels on the mekong causing negative impacts to reliant riverside communities, hun sen stepped up to offer a strong public endorsement of the project, shortly after it was announced that the malaysian developer had done a deal with cambodia (khuon narim, 2016). during a visit to the dam site in january 2017, he cordially thanked the laos government “for selling cheap electricity to cambodia” (van roeun, 2017). the prime minister, in echoes of the hydro-meteorological pronouncements of thailand’s king bhumibol (blake, 2015), pronounced that unusual water level changes had nothing to do with mainstream dams, but were instead the result of a capricious climate (khuon narim, 2016). it was significant that mega first corporation berhad, the malaysian company developing don sahong with reportedly no prior experience of dam development, 78 | aseas 12(1) recalling hydraulic despotism invited sinohydro corporation to become the main contractor (banktrack, 2016). it is unlikely to be coincidence that since the construction of the lower se san 2 (ls2) hydropower project began in 2014 (see section below for further details), the cambodian government has tried to kickstart two highly controversial mekong mainstream mega-dam projects downstream of don sahong, namely the stung treng and sambor projects, that were previously no more than dormant plans with little international support (peter & ben, 2017). like ls2, both proposed mekong projects are under the control of the royal group, in association with chinese state enterprise partners providing finance and technical capability (international rivers, 2017). the proposed 2,600 mw sambor hydropower project is seen by external analysts as having the most destructive potential of all the mainstream dams planned, due to its sheer size, impact on flows, and ability to block irreplaceable fish migrations at a critical point of the entire lower mekong ecosystem (icem, 2010; national heritage institute, 2017). if constructed at full-scale,8 it would lead to the resettlement of approximately 20,000 people, diminish the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands more in cambodia, laos, thailand, and vietnam, and likely lead to the extirpation of the mekong’s last population of endangered irrawaddy dolphins (peter & ben, 2017). the role of china in exporting a hydraulic society model to satellite states china, as the world’s foremost dam building nation (world commission on dams, 2000), is considered the pre-eminent promoter of large dam schemes abroad. chinese companies are said to be involved in 360 dams in 74 countries, and an estimated 39% of these projects are overseen by a single company (sinohydro corporation) (yeophantong, 2016). since the ascension of xi jinping to china’s “paramount leader” in 2012, there has been a redirection of china’s foreign policy, with global south nations, including cambodia, becoming enthusiastic recipients of the chinese government’s expanding penchant for overseas infrastructure construction (caceres & ear, 2013; schaffar, 2018), much of it placed under the belt and road initiative (bri). regionally, this has been interpreted as a sign of beijing’s strategy of “peripheral diplomacy” (callahan, 2016), or alternatively, part of a “regional soft-power offensive” southwards to asean countries (yeophantong, 2016); though neither of these terms adequately captures the extent to which infrastructure specifically can be used as a tool of interstate “technopolitics” (see sneddon, 2015, for a study of the united states of america’s own dam diplomacy attempts during the cold war era). since the turn of the 21st century, there has been significant investment channeled to cambodia for implementing a range of hydraulic infrastructure projects by chinese state-run companies, in the form of official direct assistance (oda) grants, subsidies, and soft loans, usually given with few conditions compared to those demanded by western nations (harris, 2016; heng, 2012; siciliano et al., 2016). for example, at the opening ceremony of the chinese-funded and built kirirom-iii hydropower project in koh kong province in february 2013, hun sen (2013b) lauded that one of the advantages 8 it should be noted that there are several possible design proposals under consideration, some less environmentally destructive than the original design, following the us-based natural heritage institute (2017) being hired by the ministry of mines and energy to study alternatives. aseas 12(1) | 79 david j. h. blake of chinese investment was that it did not come with onerous debt terms for the cambodian government to bear and that the projects all met their deadlines because they were well financed, with the backing of the bank of china, thus helping chinesecambodian relations reach “a new stage”. chinese investments have included the construction of numerous large non-hydraulic infrastructure projects, including special economic zones (sezs), airports, ports (sihanoukville being the largest), highways, it networks, electricity distribution networks, and agri-business investments, including large and controversial economic land concessions (elcs) (sok serey, 2017). one estimate calculated that between 1994 and 2012, china had invested a total of usd 9.17 billion in cambodia, and chinese companies consistently head tables of foreign direct investment (sullivan, 2015). another source, citing the official website of the chinese embassy in phnom penh, claimed that 80% of all power produced in cambodia was provided by chinese companies in 2016, with investment totaling usd 2.4 billion in seven plants built over the last decade (kawase, 2017). at a speech delivered at the opening of a march 2016 conference in phnom penh entitled “getting things moving – regional and national infrastructure and logistics for connectivity, growth and development”, hun sen stressed that the royal government of cambodia’s priorities were developing “roads, water, electricity and human” resource sectors in the national development strategy, as part of a move to improve regional connectivity and integration (hun sen, 2016). he welcomed the establishment of the asian infrastructure investment bank (aiib) and the silk road fund as key sources of finance in supporting the nation’s infrastructure investment plans.9 indeed, cambodia has become a near model client state for china in recent years, both in terms of facilitating chinese investment in cambodia and in supporting its foreign policy goals in southeast asia. hun sen met with chinese premier xi jinping twice in 2017, reinforcing a close bond of friendship between the two. as the china daily reported, “xi called hun sen a good friend, old friend and true friend of the cpc and the chinese people”, noting that “cambodia always firmly supports china on issues concerning its core interests” (xinhua, 2017). a prime example of the support offered by cambodia towards china’s “core interests” was provided in 2012 when the cambodian government, acting as rotating chair of asean, prevented the foreign ministers of asean countries from issuing a joint communiqué expressing concerns about the chinese annexation of large swathes of the south china sea, arguing that this was merely a bilateral issue between china and the countries concerned (kawase, 2017). the interference caused a significant degree of friction within asean at the time, as all the claimants of the disputed maritime areas are other asean nations and stood to lose considerable resource right claims. cambodia has proven a staunch supporter of china’s one-country policy by recognizing its territorial claims over taiwan, while offering up its strategic port of sihanoukville to significant chinese investment (sullivan, 2015), including the construction of a new highway between the port and the capital. the apparent advantages to hun sen nurturing a cosy relationship with china over more onerous and less generous aid terms 9 according to a 2017 conference on resilient infrastructure, 70% of cambodia’s roads have been financed by china (open development cambodia, 2015). 80 | aseas 12(1) recalling hydraulic despotism required by western governments were once more apparent at the mekong-lancang cooperation (mlc) summit, held in phnom penh on 10-11 january 2018. at the end of the summit, the chinese premier li kequiang “signed 20 new development agreements with host cambodia worth several billion dollars”, while simultaneously stressing “the mlc’s firm commitment to non-interference in other members internal affairs” as part of a “phnom penh declaration” and prerequisite to a five year action plan (hutt, 2018; see also nachemson, 2018). insisting that cambodia would never allow a foreign country to interfere in its internal affairs, hun sen insisted at a february 2019 ground-breaking ceremony for a usd 50 million chinese-funded hospital, “china’s approach to foreign policy is that it does not want to control any countries [sic]. china only wants to develop friendships around the world” (lipes, 2019). the author contends that an important aspect of the deepening bilateral relationship between the two states is cambodia’s emergence as a satellite or peripheral hydraulic state of china, adding a new dimension to the hydraulic society hypothesis. this is manifested by the numerous, but rather opaque, chinese-funded hydropower and irrigation schemes steadily appearing that are fundamentally altering the socio-natural landscape in a manner not seen since the khmer rouge era. according to macan markar (2013), chinese investment in hydropower projects in cambodia amounted to usd 1.6 billion in 2013 and was described as, “the most potent symbol of bilateral ties between the two countries”. the largest and most controversial of the schemes constructed thus far has been the usd 816 million ls2 hydropower project in northeast cambodia, built by a consortium including china’s hydrolancang international energy co. ltd. (51% share), the royal group (39% share), and electricity of vietnam international joint stock company (harris, 2016). construction commenced in 2014, and the controversial 400 mw installed capacity hydropower project was completed in december 2018, with a grand opening ceremony attended by hun sen (soth komsoeun, 2018). financing for the project has reportedly come from shareholder company capital (30%) and an undisclosed loan from a chinese bank (70%), believed to be the china development bank (banktrack, n.d.). some 4,800 people were resettled for the project’s reservoir, and a further 80,000 people could be affected through loss of migratory fisheries and other environmental impacts. much domestic and international criticism has been directed against the developers for inadequate levels of compensation and rights afforded to affected communities (harris, 2016), while several villager and ngo protests have been violently suppressed by state forces. however, the criticism seems to have made little difference to the eventual outcome. the chairman of the royal group, kith meng, controls extensive banking and business interests and is known to have close links to hun sen (powell, 2011). besides ls2, china has been involved in the construction of at least seven large dams in cambodia, including the 194 mw kamchay hydropower project in kampot province developed by sinohydro; the 18mw kirirom iii hydropower project in koh kong province developed by state grid xin yuan company; the 338 mw lower russei chrum hydropower project in koh kong province; the 246 mw stung tatay hydropower project developed by china national heavy machinery; the 120 mw stung atay hydropower project in pursat province developed by datang corporation; and the 12 mw kirirom i hydropower project in kompong speu province, developed aseas 12(1) | 81 david j. h. blake by china electric power technology import and export corporation, a subsidiary of the state grid corporation of china (grimsditch, 2012). in addition to these existing projects, other chinese corporations exploring the potential of developing further hydropower schemes in cambodia include china gezhouba group corporation, huadian, china southern power grid, and china guodian corporation (grimsditch, 2012). to take one example from the above list, the kamchay dam built between 2006 and 2011 by sinohydro at an estimated cost of usd 311 million was financed by the china exim bank as part of a usd 600 million aid, trade, and investment package extended to cambodia. the project was “strongly supported and driven forward by the cambodian prime minister” (siciliano et al., 2016, p. 3) and became the first of a series of large dams built with chinese money. indeed, the dam was officially opened by hun sen in december 2011, the same year that china and cambodia deepened bilateral relations with a “comprehensive strategic partnership of cooperation” (sullivan, 2015, p. 123). on the basis of fieldwork conducted around the dam site and stakeholder interviews, siciliano et al. (2016) conclude that within cambodia, “the political alliance at the top level crushes much opposition or concerns at the local level” (p. 13). they note that while local people had suffered immediate and perpetual losses of livelihood and access to natural resources as a result of the kamchay dam, mostly uncompensated, the developers would receive potential benefits from electricity revenue over 44 years under a build, operate, transfer (bot) agreement. there appeared to be a singular lack of communication between sinohydro and relevant bureaucracies on the one hand and impacted persons on the other hand at each stage of planning, construction, and operation, including sudden releases of water leading to downstream flooding, probably reflecting the inter-elite nature of this project and prevailing power inequities in cambodia (siciliano et al., 2016). beyond hydropower – chinese-funded irrigation development schemes beyond the hydropower sector, china has also been the major bilateral aid donor and source of loans for irrigation development by a significant margin. after the transport sector, irrigation infrastructure accounted for the second largest target of state funds between 2008 and 2012, with much of the funds being channeled towards constituencies that support the cpp (blake, 2019). a list of agricultural water management sector infrastructure projects derived from an asian development bank inception report suggested that china had loaned usd 601 million on seven projects for the period from 2010 to 2015, putting it far ahead of all other bilateral and multilateral aid donors involved in the sector (pech et al., 2013). this sum included a purported usd 260 million figure for constructing two phases of the vaico river irrigation development project in eastern cambodia,10 supposedly completed in 2015 but which was in a non-operational mode when the author visited the area in march 2017 (blake, 2017) and again in july 2018 (blake, 2018b). this project was built to supply irrigation to a large area of poor-quality land in an area that does not drain well in the 10 the project was awarded to guangdong foreign construction co. with the cambodian government securing a reported concessionary loan from the export-import bank of china. it has a targeted irrigation command area of 300,000 ha across prey veng, svay rieng and kampong cham provinces (blake, 2017). 82 | aseas 12(1) recalling hydraulic despotism wet season and was deemed “marginally suitable” or “not suitable” for irrigated agriculture investment by a western consultant’s report in the early 1990s (blake, 2017). the field visits revealed that not a single hectare of land has been irrigated by the scheme, despite the digging of a reported 78 km of canals and associated hydraulic infrastructure, pointing to a fundamental technical design flaw by the joint chinese designers and cambodian bureaucratic agencies involved. despite the outright failure of cambodia’s most extensive and expensive irrigation scheme, tellingly there has been no discernible outcry from domestic civil society, academia, or the media. while western-funded irrigation schemes elsewhere have also suffered from abandoned, non-functional, or partially-functional infrastructure over many years and attracted some criticism as a result (blake, 2019; treffner, 2010), the vaico project represents the most striking example of a transnational cultural gifting phenomenon that benefits few beyond national elites, but harms many. that it is being implemented in plain sight (a brief reconnoiter of the relevant google satellite image of prey veng is instructive) yet simultaneously obscured from public view or discussion, points to a cowed populace fearful of retribution should they speak out against such monumental examples of environmental destruction, corruption, and official ineptitude. concentrating power through hydraulic modes of governance the consequences of this remarkably rapid hydraulic infrastructure development trajectory have been profound and have been felt beyond the geographical limits of the individual projects themselves to affect state-society relations from local to national levels. this is a result of both the concentration of wealth and political power that the hydraulic development paradigm enables amongst elites, but also due to the altered characteristics of cambodia’s party-state machinery and associated centralization of bureaucratic power, now under the control of a single tyrannical ruler similar to that envisaged by wittfogel. hydraulic infrastructure, in particular large-scale irrigation, offers potential opportunities to create order and stability through its re-configuration of the rural landscape, a key concern of the cambodian elite (springer, 2009) and inherently recognized by pol pot and chinese maoist state backers during the khmer rouge period (bultmann, 2012). there are now distinguishable similarities between some aspects of the khmer rouge ideological discourse over irrigation development and that of the present regime’s visions (blake, 2019). as with the case of china and its “controlocracy” (ringen, 2016), cambodia now employs a two-tier system of socio-political control, with an interdependent bureaucratic state and single dominant party, where the state controls society and the cpp controls the state (hutt, 2017). each large-scale hydraulic project built offers multiple opportunities for the state to incorporate previously unrealized social engineering potential and subjectivization of marginalized peoples (scott, 1998). imposing a supposedly modernizing, technological solution, whether a hydropower dam, flood control project, or irrigation scheme on a river system allows for a fundamental reordering of society according to (dis)utopian, state-centric visions. this implies the forced mass movement of people from the reservoir footprint to resettlement sites, allowing for the imposition of state and expert-led development practices, processes, and propaganda that invariably leave those impacted considerably worse aseas 12(1) | 83 david j. h. blake off economically and socio-culturally more impoverished than before (see scudder, 2019, for examples from across the developing world). the administrative gridlines that water control, irrigation canals, and parallel roads create, provide enhanced opportunities for authoritarian states to more easily subjugate citizens in line with the will of the ruling elites, weakening any remnants of civil society in the process. it unfolds in a more hegemonic and less coercive manner than during the forced corvée labor parties of the khmer rouge era (bultmann, 2012), but nevertheless still leads to the incapacitation of local initiative and suppression of opposition voices. blake and barney (2018), for example, document the case of the theun-hinboun hydropower dam, which became a vehicle for the increasingly authoritarian lao state to impose its will and vision on subaltern peoples, described in terms of “structural injustice and slow violence”. there are strong parallels between the contemporary socio-political paradigms of hydraulic infrastructure development in laos and cambodia. at the same time, there seems to be sufficient evidence to suggest that the open armed receipt by hun sen of significant amounts of chinese development grants, loans, and technical assistance to construct numerous large-scale hydraulic infrastructure projects, conducted under a cloak of opacity, is pulling cambodia away from traditional close links to vietnam’s polity towards china’s embrace. china’s domestic approach to hydraulic development has always been to first attend to the construction of infrastructure on a grand scale, which has allowed for the exertion of greater social control and bureaucratization from the center, leaving concerns about actual demand for water or electricity to later. this has led to the vast over-supply of hydropower capacity such as that currently found in yunnan (kynge & hornby, 2018). china seems to currently export this development model to other countries and, creating satellite hydraulic states in the process. conclusion this article has argued that cambodia is tending towards certain characteristics that resemble a modern variant of a hydraulic society, in particular the rise of an unashamedly autocratic ruler directing the workings of a state that is increasingly organized along hydraulic lines. cambodia clearly does not exhibit a typical hydraulic core configuration, as found in a number of other classical hydraulic societies, which were established in discrete arid or semi-arid large river basins. the topography, climate, and hydrology of cambodia are significantly different from that found in the ancient hydraulic societies, but rather the landscape lends itself to what wittfogel (1981) termed “hydro-agriculture” (p. 3), with most agriculture relying on rainfed and flood recession conditions. however, in cambodia’s case these limitations have not formed an obstacle to the whims of an aspiring hydraulic ruler wanting to (re-)create a hydraulic society, buoyed on by the influence and technological assistance of an expansionist chinese hydraulic state and nationalist visions of past khmer greatness. indeed, the inherent geo-physical limitations help to explain the failure of a series of large-scale irrigational developments, spectacularly demonstrated again by the vaico river project. by adopting a ruthless approach that has virtually destroyed all internal opposition, hun sen now commands the state polity in a similar manner to past 84 | aseas 12(1) recalling hydraulic despotism rulers of classical hydraulic societies. examples such as the se san 2 and vaico projects, where local people impacted are cowed by fear to protest, tend to confirm one of wittfogel’s (1981) key observations concerning the despotic nature of the ruling class of hydraulic states and a corresponding weakened civil society, described as a “beggar’s democracy” (p. 108). without a doubt, he has attained supreme operational authority over the nation and demonstrated machiavellian adroitness by deepening control of the most important institutions of statecraft. morgenbesser (2018b) has described hun sen’s cambodia as a “party-personalist dictatorship”, a state of affairs that recognized the ruler’s tendency towards an autocracy that relies on the complete dominance of the cpp. as i have argued, such an analysis overlooks the hydraulic control dimensions of this style of statesmanship, which is best accounted for through wittfogel’s hydraulic society hypothesis. the cambodian government has over a relatively short period of time allocated escalating resources for the construction of grandiose hydraulic infrastructure projects, which in many instances are designed, bankrolled, and constructed by chinese state-owned enterprises, with the implicit (and occasional explicit) benediction of hun sen and xi jinping. whether hun sen or his immediate family have directly profited from the massive chinese investment in such projects over the last decade can only be speculated upon due to the opacity surrounding the finances of such deals conducted between secretive regimes. thus, this article may be seen as tentatively contributing to a more nuanced understanding of wittfogel’s hypothesis in the light of recent geopolitical developments where a weak state has fallen into the patron-client orbit of a deeply entrenched and powerful hydraulic state to emerge as a new form of hydraulic society on the periphery. this contention is worth further investigation in future research. while the lines between authoritarianism, autocracy, and despotism are patently blurred, it is apparent that many of the concrete actions taken by the hun sen regime in the last few years reflect an autocratic tendency to centralize control and destroy any credible political opposition, including rivals within the ranks of the cpp. the last two years have demonstrated that hun sen’s firebrand public rhetoric is frequently matched by violent and coercive actions, leading to a severely diminished civil space in cambodian politics, replaced by fear and self-censorship amongst its citizens. however, while hun sen closely resembles a wittfogelian hydraulic despot and is being helped in this quest by the actions of china, this does not imply that cambodia is or ever will be a strong hydraulic state, as it lacks the necessary basic environmental conditions. at best, it can function as a weak, satellite hydraulic state under the ultimate suzerainty of china, which will continue to dominate cambodia at the expense of any former influence exerted by western states and vietnam, as altered geopolitical poles reflect new hegemonic realities.  references agence france-presse. 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(2016). china’s dam diplomacy in the mekong region: three game changers. in d. j. h. blake & l. robins (eds.), water governance dynamics in the mekong region (pp. 123-148). petaling jaya: strategic information and research development centre. about the author david j. h. blake holds a phd from the school of international development, university of east anglia, uk. his research focuses on the political ecology of water resources development, environmental politics, critical human geography, and food systems, with a regional focus on southeast asia. ► contact: djhblake@yahoo.co.uk 90 | aseas 12(1) aseas 12(2) | 167 machinery of male violence: embodied properties and chronic crisis amongst partners in vietnam helle rydstrom ► rydstrom, h. (2019). machinery of male violence: embodied properties and chronic crisis amongst partners in vietnam. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 12(2), 167-185. this article takes the notion of crisis as a helpful analytical entry point to unfold the temporalities and modalities of the machinery of violence as manifested in men’s abuse of their female partners in vietnam. based on ethnographic research i conducted over the years, the article argues that some types of crises might be episodic, and thus a bracketing of daily life, while others, such as intimate partner violence, might settle as a crisis of chronicity; as a condition of prolonged difficulties and pain that surreptitiously becomes a new ‘normal’. the machinery of violence, the article shows, refers to processes of symbolic and material transformations of a targeted woman, shaped in accordance with a perpetrator’s essentialist imaginations about her embodied properties (e.g., gender, sexuality, age, ethnicity, and bodyableness). such violence is invigorated by a patrilineal organization of society and a systemic permissiveness to male-to-female abuse. a battered woman is confined to an interregnum; a space in which the laws of protection do not apply and male violence is perpetrated with impunity. yet, men’s violence against their female partners also is combatted and resisted in vietnamese society. keywords: body; gender; intimate partner violence; masculinity; vietnam  introduction in brutally crossing boundaries, the forces of violence are not unlike machinery. the ubiquitous ways in which violence inflicts damage upon those it is imposed resembles the menacing drive of a persisting engine. yet, this is machinery without any ontological status because violence, as hannah arendt (1970) has reminded us, has no essence. violence emerges as an instrumental means that needs justification through the ends it pursues, because the application of violent techniques “like all other tools, are designed and used for the purpose of multiplying natural strength” (arendt, 1970, p. 46; see also, schmidt & schroder, 2001). the repertoires and techniques of abuse applied in direct violent encounters differ in character. the tools of violence are designed as the result of fantasies about a target’s embodied properties including gender, sexuality, age, ethnicity, class, and bodyableness. in this article, i focus on men’s violence against their female partners, as a gendered and sexualized machinery of male violence.1 i am considering how a 1 during various periods of anthropological fieldwork conducted in vietnam, i have collected ethaktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 20 168 | aseas 12(2) machinery of male violence number of body typologies come into play when a woman or anybody else is violated as vehicles for processes of transformation of the phenomenological human body into an object of abuse; into dehumanized naked corporeality (agamben, 1998, 2005; mbembe, 2003; rydstrom, 2012, 2015).2 the world health organization (who) (2017) estimates that 35% of all women across the globe have experienced physical and/or sexual violence and intimate partner or non-partner sexual violence. 30% of this violence is perpetrated by an intimate male partner, while 38% of all murders of women are committed by a partner (see also, true, 2012).3 in times of war, conflict, and catastrophes, intimate partner violence might be fueled, while violence against the female population in public spheres might increase.4 in obscuring the line between natality and mortality, violence exacerbates precariousness and insecurity. violence ruins the foundation of lifeworlds (stoler, 2013) by impairing the possibility for a return to how life used to be; hampering agency (das & kleinman, 2000; kleinman, 2000); and imprinting a “poisonous knowledge” (das, 2000, 2007) about the realities and perils of harm. the rupturing powers of violence provoke a state of crisis for the survivor, her household, and by extension for society at large (see united nations vietnam, 2012; world health organization, 2017). crisis is a notion that provides a helpful analytical entry to unfold the modalities and temporalities of the machinery of violence, as manifested in men’s violence against their female partners and the ruination it impacts on lifeworlds. while some types of crises are episodic and thus reduced to a bracketing of daily life, other types of crises grow into a more permanent condition (rydstrom, 2019). men’s violence against their female partners epitomizes how a specific type of crisis can transmute into a “crisis of chronicity” (vigh, 2008), which, however, can be challenged and even curbed (roitman, 2014). nographic data on gendered and sexualized violence by unravelling the hierarchies, privileges, and powers with which gender based violence is imbued. thus, from 1994 to 1995, i carried out fieldwork in a northern rural commune, which i call thinh tri, to study gender socialization. when conducting a second round of fieldwork in thinh tri from 2000 to 2001, i focused on violence and sexuality from an intergenerational perspective. in 2004, 2006, 2012-2013, and 2016, i carried out fieldwork in the larger region of hanoi and in a northern semi-rural area, which i refer to as quang vinh, to study gender and harm. from 2004 to 2011, i was the swedish coordinator of the rural families in transitional vietnam project under the frame of which data were collected in 1,100 households in the north, center, and south of vietnam. in 2015, i conducted fieldwork in coastal vietnam in a community, which i call long lanh, to study climate disasters, gender and violence. in 2018 and 2019, i carried out fieldwork to examine the gendering of labor and harm in the industrial zones of northern vietnam. all names of persons and communities are pseudonyms to protect the anonymity of those involved in my research. 2 “the term ‘violence against women’”, the united nations (un) (1993) declaration on the elimination of violence against women reads, “means any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life”. 3 “violence”, according to the world health organization (2002, p. 5), “is the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against … another person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, mal-development or deprivation.” 4 “intimate partner violence” (ipv) is a term which avoids any a priori gender categorization of perpetrator and victim in defining ipv as “an intimate partner or ex-partner that causes physical, sexual or psychological harm, including physical aggression, sexual coercion, psychological abuse and controlling behaviors” (world health organization, 2017). aseas 12(2) | 169 helle rydstrom to explore the ways in which the machinery of male violence is intrinsically gendered and sexualized, i consider various components that together provide the conditions which allow for the perpetuation of men’s violence against their female partners. hence, i will first, outline how violence manipulates the human body; second, introduce figures and debates on male-to-female violence in the vietnamese context; third, address a masculinized organization of social life as a framework for male powers, privileges, and abuse; and last, highlight how men’s violence against women and girls in the vietnamese context is rejected and combatted. dehumanized bodies men’s violence against their female partners is shaped through a perpetrator’s essentialist and stereotypical fantasies about a woman’s embodied properties (e.g., gender, sexuality, age, ethnicity, and bodyableness) (rydstrom, 2012, 2015). the processes through which human beings are reduced to an object of abuse, a naked corporeality, or what giorgio agamben (1998) has conceptualized as “bare life”, are tied to the ways in which a sovereign power takes biological life as its target, as corporeality upon which violence and death can be enacted (see also, foucault, 1978; mbembe, 2003). how lives are attempted to be laid bare by the means of violence, i argue, refer to symbolic and tangible processes of transformation undergone by the abused body (rydstrom, 2012, 2015, 2017). violence is a direct attack on the physical and mental integrity of the phenomenological body; the first body typology, which is the foundation for our being-in-the-world and how we sense, feel, perceive, think, experience, and remember (bourdieu, 1992; grosz, 1994; merleau-ponty, 1996; rydstrom, 2015). this body incorporates our life story and memories, including “poisonous knowledge” about pain and agony (das, 1997, 2000; scarry, 1985; valéry, 1990). the surface of the human body materializes as a second body typology, as corporeality that meets the ‘outside world’. this body is rendered intelligible and categorized by others due to its physical appearance, properties, and qualities (merleau-ponty, 1996; rydstrom, 2015; valéry, 1990). it emerges as a site upon which discursive socio-cultural powers operate in accordance with ideas about gender, sexuality, age, ethnicity, class, and bodyableness to establish ideas about privileges, hierarchies, and rights (foucault, 1978; grosz, 1994; rydstrom, 2015). the violated body is a third body typology, which concerns the ways in which the infliction of violence involves “thingification” (barad, 2003) of the phenomenological body through the design of abusive techniques and repertoires of abuse. this body is wrought physically, mentally, and ethically as a result of the destructive ways in which a perpetrator transgresses the boundaries of the body and mind. stereotypical and essentialist imaginations lie behind the dehumanization of the person upon whom the violence is perpetrated (agamben, 1998; butler, 2010; rydstrom, 2015). the body of fantasies refers to a fourth body typology which appears as the vector of a “field of immanence of desire” (deleuze & guattari, 2002, p. 154). such desires are modelled in accordance with fantasies about superiority over the bodies of others due to their gender, sexuality, age, ethnicity, class, and bodyableness. this body typology concerns the ways in which the distribution and projection of imaginations, including those which are profoundly violent, inform differentiated and specialized forms of harm (braidotti, 1994; deleuze & guattari, 2002; rydstrom, 2015). 170 | aseas 12(2) machinery of male violence these symbolic and corporeal body typologies are intimately intertwined with one another as volatile and dynamic processes that come into play when human bodies are subjected to the intrusive and destructive powers of a machinery of violence (rydstrom, 2012, 2015, 2017, 2019). these processes result in the configuration of the emblematic figure which agamben (1998) has conceptualized as homo sacer. banned from society by a sovereign power, homo sacer is included by exclusion, captured in a space of impunity where it is “permitted to kill without committing homicide and without celebrating a sacrifice, and sacred life [i.e. homo sacer]—that is, life that may be killed but not sacrificed—is the life that has been captured in this sphere” (agamben, 1998, p. 83; italics removed). manipulated by techniques of violence, an abused woman is caught in a “zone of exception”; a space in which the rule of law does not apply and impunity prevails (agamben, 1998; mbembe, 2003; rydstrom, 2012, 2015, 2017). here, female life is defined by a machinery of male violence, which truncates the possibilities for agency and the potentialities for positive change (vigh, 2008). crisis of chronicity as decisive moments, which forcefully can differentiate, select, and separate, crises can be seen as “conditions that make outcomes unpredictable” (habermas, 1992/1976, p. 1). the term crisis is a latinized form of the greek krisis, which refers to “a turning point in a disease” (etymonline.com, n.d.; merriam-webster dictionary, n.d.). for this reason, a crisis tends to be associated with a figurative purification, catharsis, understood in terms of an avenue to a new beginning (endres & six-hohenbalken, 2014; vigh, 2008; walby, 2015). a crisis could lead to renewal, but it might as well open to a path fraught with difficulties and suffering (see, etymonline.com, n.d.; merriamwebster dictionary, n.d.). in disrupting coherency and augmenting uncertainty for future prospects (habermas, 1992), a crisis could swiftly change from a state of emergency (benjamin, 1999/1968) into a condition of ahistorical permanence (bhabha, 1994). an episodic interaction of sudden harm might lead to repeated abuse (das, 2000; true, 2012). repeated intimate partner violence can over time transmute into a banality of daily life (arendt, 1970; rydstrom, 2017), and in doing so morph from a momentary crisis into a crisis of chronicity (vigh, 2008). such a crisis is characterized by stillness in the sense that “the crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear” (gramsci, 1971, pp. 275-276). approaching crisis as a chronic condition might appear as if it neither had a beginning nor an end (roitman, 2014) as if freed “from its temporal confines” (vigh, 2008, p. 9). a crisis determined by a machinery of male violence precisely is characterized by not appearing as coming to a closure anytime soon. temporality needs to be approached as a subjective phenomenon to capture the modalities and intensities by which specific types of crises are composed. in some tempo-spatial pockets, a crisis might pass quickly, while in others it might compartmentalize as a permanent situation, as if separated from predominant understandings of the progression of time. repeated violence can create a parallel crisis universe, a zone of alternative tempi and speeds in which time seems to have stopped and the horizon been blurred. that is an aseas 12(2) | 171 helle rydstrom interregnum, an ahistorical permanence (gramsci, 1971), in which there is no return to how life used to be prior to the violence and a violence-free life seems out of reach (rydstrom, 2015, 2017, 2019). reiterated violence gathering around small plastic tables squeezed into the shade of a cluster of trees for protection against the blistering morning sun, a group of men from long lanh in central coastal vietnam were sharing their experiences of intimate partner violence. several of the men told how they used to be abusive against their female partners and how they eventually had ended their violent behavior. one of the men, van, suddenly stated that “women also beat men” (phự nũ cũng đánh đàn ông chứ). this was not the first time that a man in the vietnamese context had let me (a female researcher) know that not only men but also women are violent.5 violence is harmful to anyone and abuse against boys and men renders the risk of being overlooked if gendered violence is equalized with women. the comment, however, does not reflect the realities on the ground in vietnam, or anywhere else, but rather appears as a way of dealing with a legally, morally, and emotionally loaded problem (kimmel, 2002). joan kelly and michael johnson (2008) thus have observed that “when advocates for men claim that domestic violence is perpetrated equally by men and women … they are describing situational couple violence, not coercive controlling violence” (p. 481). kelly and johnson (2008) have defined “coercive controlling violence”, which is in the fore of my discussion, as various combinations of physical intimidation, asserting male privilege, coercion, and threats, emotional abuse, isolation, use of children, economic abuse as well as belittling, denying, and blaming a partner. the symmetry argument, reflected in van’s comment, has been rebutted by figures on gender-based violence provided by various international organizations. according to the who (2017), statistics on male intimate partner violence vary from 23.2% in high-income countries to 24.6% in the western pacific, 37% in the eastern mediterranean region, and 37.7% in southeast asia. mirroring such numbers, a study conducted by united nations women vietnam (2012) shows that 34% of ever-partnered women in the vietnamese context reported “lifetime experience of physical and/or sexual violence, with 9% experiencing physical and/or sexual violence in the last 12 months” (p. 13). these startlingly high numbers indicate that men’s violence against their female partners is a problem of “pandemic” proportions (united nations, 2018; united nations women, 2018), and the most prevalent human rights violation experienced by women and girls in the world today (united nations statistics division, 2015; united nations population fund, 2019). according to a study carried out by kathryn yount et al. (2016) in northern vietnam on intimate partner violence, 36.6% out of 522 interviewed men (18-51 years) reported that they had perpetrated some form of abuse, especially physical violence against their wife. a minority of respondents, only 0.2% of the interviewed men, said 5 the comment resonates with the symmetry debate which erupted in the 1990s, when men’s organizations, especially in the usa, claimed that despite statistics intimate partner violence is experienced in equal proportions by both women and men (kimmel, 2002). 172 | aseas 12(2) machinery of male violence that they had perpetrated sexual violence against their wife. in the same study, 12% out of 533 interviewed married women (18-51 years), however, reported that they had experienced sexual violence committed by their husband.6 discrepancies in men’s and women’s reporting of sexual violence resemble earlier findings in vietnam, according to which sexual violence “was seen as a problem to be tolerated by female focus groups, while the male groups did not consider it to be a serious issue” (world bank 1999, p. 2). hence, the conviction rate of men who have perpetrated violence against their female partners is remarkably low. while about 43% of violent crimes are referred to the police, only 12% of reported cases result in criminal charges, and as few as 1% of reported cases of men’s violence against women lead to conviction (duvvury, carney, & minh/united nations women, 2012; khuyên, 2016).7 such findings epitomize how violence against women has become an integrated, and in that sense ordinary dimension of female life, which holds power to turn life into a chronic crisis defined by insecurity and danger (arendt, 1970; rydstrom, 2003b, 2017, 2019; vigh, 2008). in the vietnamese context, men’s violence against their female partners frequently has been associated with vietnam’s opening into the global economy; with the introduction of the đổi mới (renovation) policy in 1986 (le, 1992, p. 263; ljunggren, 1993). in the wake of the đổi mới policy in december 1995, the vietnamese government launched resolution 87 as a means to eliminate any “social evils” (tệ nạn xã hội); a label which refers both to illicit activities as well as morally condemned behaviors such as domestic violence, gambling, and drug addiction (koh, 2001; marr, 1981; nguyen-vo, 2008; rydstrom, 2006; vijeyarasa, 2010). jayne werner (2008) has discussed how social issues with the introduction of the đổi mới policy increasingly have been defined as household problems and individual concerns. well-socialized citizens would promote “equality of men and women” (nam nữ bình đẳng) (hoang, 2002) and engage in the building of a “happy and harmonious family life” (gia đình hạnh phúc hòa thuận) which would not suffer from any conflicts or crises (drummond & rydstrom, 2004; leskhowich, 2008; rydstrom, 2003a, 2003b, 2009, 2017). silencing men’s violence against women international attention to men’s violence against women, as highlighted by the united nations general assembly’s declaration on the elimination of violence against women (launched in 1993) and the beijing declaration (adopted in 1995 by the fourth world conference on women, see united nations, 1995), provide the backdrop for debates on men’s violence against women in vietnam. prior to the introduction of the đổi mới policy, men’s violence against women was not recognized as a problem (khuat, 2004). the tendency to silence men’s violence against women thus prompted le thi quy (1992), an official voice of the national women’s union (hội phụ nữ),8 to introduce the term “family violence” (bạo lực gia đình) and to explain the 6 for a definition of sexual violence, see world health organization (2017). 7 see also, general statistics office of vietnam, 2010; schuler, lenzi, hoang, vu, yount, & trang, 2014; vietnam women’s union, 2017; yount et al., 2016. 8 as one of the mass organizations, the union is responsible for identifying women-specific problems in the household and in society at large (endres, 1999; rydstrom, 2016; waibel & glück, 2013). aseas 12(2) | 173 helle rydstrom visible as well as invisible harm violence inflicts upon women (see also, pistor & le, 2014). following le thi quy (1992), le thi nham tuyet and ho thi phuong tien (1996) highlighted the invisible features of male-to-female violence, while doan bao chau (1998) drew attention to a public neglect of the silent female suffering caused by men’s physical and sexual abuse (see also le, 1998). thus, these voices identified how corporeal properties of gender and sexuality in intersection with other parameters such as age inform male violence. the study gender-based violence: the case of vietnam (world bank, 1999) provided an early empirical overview of the prevalence of men’s abuse of women in vietnam, and even indicated that the onus for male-to-female violence tended to be placed on the abused woman. in 2010, on the international day for the elimination of violence against women (november 25), the general statistics office of vietnam (gso) published the large-scaled national study, keeping silent is dying: results from the national study on domestic violence against women in viet nam, which offered novel quantitative as well as qualitative insights into the ways in which men’s violence against their female partners harmed women, ruined their lifeworlds, limited their participation in social and economic life, and sometimes even cost them their lives. the study indicates that women who have been subjected to a male partner’s violence feel ashamed and worried about “losing face” (mất mặt) because of what they see as an inability to manage their family and marriage well. they would thus remain silent about the abuse and “endure the suffering” (chịu đau khổ). sexually abused women even stated that there would be no solutions to end such abuse because of a wife’s assumed obligation to satisfy her husband sexually. some women, though, told in the report that they had encouraged their husband to consult sex workers and thereby transfer the problem to another realm (general statistics office of vietnam, 2010, p. 92; see also horton & rydstrom, 2011).9 vietnam’s #metoo movement has evolved as an attempt to interrupt the machinery of male violence and, in doing so, even the crisis of chronicity in which an abused woman is caught. the movement in vietnam corresponds with a current global social media movement, which efficiently has drawn public attention to men’s sexual abuse of women, called for recognition of the harm such violence inflicts upon women, and for legal punishment of sexual violence perpetrators. under the hashtag #ngungimlang/#ngừngimlặng (stop staying silent), the tendency to mute and neglect men’s violence against women has been critically debated on social media. in addition, female survivors of sexual violence have shared their testimonies on being sexually abused in the domain of the home or at the workplace (see also “phong trào #metoo liệu”, 2018; “#metoo, vietnam”, 2018; “vietnam’s #metoo movement begins”, 2018). from laws to practices while an elaborated legislation on the prevention of violence is in place in vietnam (schuler et al., 2014; yount et al., 2016), the law does not necessarily prevent violence taking place at home. the gap between the letter of the law to prevent and combat violence against women and the implementation of the law was epitomized at the 9 these comments accord with my own data from vietnam. 174 | aseas 12(2) machinery of male violence smiling tears (nước mắt cười) exhibition held in hanoi in 2012 (“everyday items used for”, 2012). focus at the exhibition was on men’s violence against their female partners, and the explicitness of the exhibition was horrifying. tools used by men to maltreat and injure their female partners were on display, including a saucepan and batons. in addition to these instruments of brutality, female survivors of partner violence shared their experiences of being abused and even told about the energy they had been able to muster to leave an abusive partner and terminate a life impaired by a crisis of chronicity encroached by a gendered and sexualized machinery of male violence (see also, kwiatkowski, 2008, 2011; rydstrom, 2003b, 2006, 2017). according to the keeping silent is dying report (general statistics office of vietnam, 2010) it is of paramount importance to strengthen the enforcement and implementation of existing policies and legal frameworks related to violence prevention and response through enhancing the capacities of duty bearers (the national assembly, the government of viet nam and mass organizations) at all levels and developing structured multi-sectoral coordination mechanisms to improve the coherence of policies, laws and programs related to violence (p. 111). vietnam ratified the convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women (cedaw) in 1982 and both the penal code of 1999 (no. 15/1999/ qh10) as well as the law on marriage and family of 2000 stipulate that the use of violence is prohibited. according to the civil code of 2005 (no. 33-2005-qh11) (national assembly of vietnam, 2005), the civil rights of a person entitles that person to request the court or other relevant agencies to protect them (art. 9). in 2006, the national assembly debated the draft law on preventing domestic violence, which was passed in 2007 as the law on domestic violence prevention and control (no. 02/2007/qh12) (national assembly of vietnam, 2007). with the new law an important step was taken in the prevention and combat of violence in the household, and beyond. while the law does not call for criminal sanctions, it does encourage civil solutions, including reconciliation with the aid of third party mediators such as kin, health care clinics, or local reconciliation units; fines; prohibition orders; and the re-education of male perpetrators (see also, duvvury, carney, & minh/united nations women, 2012; kwiatkowski, 2008, 2011; nguyen & rydstrom, 2018; rydstrom, 2017, 2019). scales of harm when domestic violence breaches the criminal law, article 104 under the penal code of 1999 (no. 15/1999/qh10) may apply (see also, united nations women, vietnam, 2012). the seriousness of violence is defined in accordance with a number of stipulated infirmity rates required for an action to be a criminal act.10 regarding the seriousness of abuse, article 104 (penal code) (national assembly of vietnam, 1999) clarifies that 10 for details on the infirmity rate, see national assembly of vietnam (1999). aseas 12(2) | 175 helle rydstrom those who intentionally injure or causes harm to the health of other persons with an infirmity rate of between 11% and 30% …11, shall be sentenced to non-custodial reform for up to three years or between six months and three years of imprisonment. the infirmity rate is determined by a medical examiner who issues a certificate to verify the level of harm. such a document, however, does not always come without a cost. those women who cannot afford a certificate or those who find unauthorized fees unacceptable will not be able to obtain the needed certificate (borgstrom, 2012; general statistics office of vietnam, 2010; hakkarainen, 2014; vian, brinkerhoff, feeley, salomon, & vien, 2012). the infirmity rate sheds light on how the gravity of men’s violence against women is understood legally at a systemic level and even how a culture of impunity is facilitated. when female bodies are manipulated from phenomenological fellow human beings into objects of abuse, into naked life, by the aid of repertoires and techniques of abuse, local authorities are in charge of determining the scale of harm. serious cases of male-to-female violence are those which lead to hospitalization and/or have lethal consequences, according to a representative from the women’s union from the northern quang vinh area. local women’s union units, health care clinics, and reconciliation units might dismiss a case of violence because the damage is determined to fall under the 11% infirmity limit. as it is both tedious and costly in terms of time, money, and dignity to approach relevant agencies to pursue a legal procedure, much abuse is never registered, thus not recognized, but rendered silent as an individualized problem and a chronic crisis to endure (general statistics office of vietnam, 2010; nguyen, 2011; nguyen & rydstrom, 2018; rydstrom, 2003b, 2017; united nations office on drugs and crime, 2011). the power to define violence can in itself be seen as a kind of harm, as a violence which “is built into the structure and shows up as unequal power and consequently as unequal life chances” (galtung, 1969, p. 171). as a nexus of various societal inequalities (farmer, 2004), this kind of violence is symbolically shaped and operates throughout the societal system as systemic harm (nguyen & rydstrom, 2018). systemic harm fosters a machinery of male violence through larger socio-economic, cultural, and political structures as these serve to establish a political discourse of permissiveness and a culture of impunity (derrida, 1990; nguyen & rydstrom, 2018). systemic harm is intertwined with men’s violence against women on the ground, as two types of violence in a socio-cultural continuum of harm. these types of violence capitalize upon and might even galvanize one another as “rebounding violence”, which thus refers to a dialectical relation between these two levels of violence and how they perpetually interact with and inform one another (bloch, 1992; nguyen & rydstrom, 2018). these dynamics of violence condition the production and reproduction of gender-based abuse as a justified practice, which is reduced to a banal dimension of the ordinary (arendt, 1970). 11 that is, “or under 11% but in one of the following circumstances”. these include, amongst others, using weapons, causing harm to more than one person, causing minor permanent damage to the victims, committing the crime more than once or against children, pregnant women, and other people considered to be weak, or against parents. for details, see national assembly of vietnam (1999). 176 | aseas 12(2) machinery of male violence patriliny, masculinity, and violence patriliny informs social organization in the household and by extension society at large (king & stone, 2010; sandgren, 2009). in addition to a gender perspective, which provides a lens for critical assessments of how socio-cultural logics produce particular images, narratives, and practices with regard to men and women, the machinery of male violence encourages a focus on masculinity (bourdieu, 2001; butler, 2004; schrock & schwalbe, 2009). even though not all men agree with an influential type of masculinity, they are under pressure to conform to influential ideas about men, maleness, and masculinity as are women to assumptions about women, femaleness, and femininity (connell, 1987; hearn, 1998; horton, 2014; horton & rydstrom, 2011). the patrilineal and heterosexual family remains common in vietnamese society despite an increase in same-sex partnerships, single-headed households, and co-habitation prior to marriage (braemer, 2014; horton, 2014; newton, 2012; nguyen, 2015; rydstrom 2016). the “pillar of the house” (trụ cột gia đình; literally the pillar of the family) is a role which the most senior male (in terms of age and status) of a household is supposed to hold. the continuation of the patrilineage is considered critical and male progeny therefore valued. as “inside lineage” (họ nội), sons enjoy privileges and powers which daughters do not. descent traced along the male line means that daughters come to stand in a position of exteriority to the patrilineage as “outside lineage” (họ ngoại) (rydstrom, 2003a, 2003b; bourdieu, 2001; sandgren, 2009). a dichotomic and ontological way of rendering men and women meaningful prevails in vietnamese society, meaning that men generally are associated with masculinity and women with femininity. considered as the result of the merging of “physiology” (sinh ly ́ ho ̣c), “psychology” (tâm lý), and a person’s “character” (tính cách), male bodies are understood as being related to the forces of dương (yang in chinese) and female bodies with the forces of âm (yin in chinese). the forces of dương would make a man “hot” (nóng; also meaning bad tempered), while a female body would be “cold” (lạnh) due to the forces of âm (see also, sandgren, 2009). “hot” bodies are associated with active and centripetal energies, or masculinity, and “cold” bodies with passive and centrifugal energies, or femininity. these two forces of the phenomenological body would ideally complement one another and ensure harmony in the household and by extension in society (jamieson, 1993; leshkowich, 2008; ngo, 2004). women’s inferior position is expected to be balanced through a sociality of femininity that is called tình cảm (sentiments/emotions/feelings) and the various qualities of which it is composed, including “respect” (kính), “self-denial” (nhường), “endurance” (chịu), and “holding back oneself ” (nhịn). even though, tình cảm also is appreciated in men, tình cảm is associated with female capacities thanks to which they can verify their “good morality” (đạo đức tốt) and navigate the asymmetrical reciprocity inherent to the patriliny.12 the qualities associated with tình cảm ideally stimulate the fostering of “happy and harmonious family life” (gia đình hạnh phúc hòa thuận) (rydstrom, 2003b, 2009, 2010, 2017). 12 such a gendered asymmetrical reciprocity, furthermore, is illustrated by confucian dictums such as the four virtues (tứ đức), which dictate female behavior beyond tình cảm (ngo, 2004). for a discussion of gendered asymmetrical reciprocity, see also young (1997). aseas 12(2) | 177 helle rydstrom an official representative of the women’s union in quang vinh, for example, emphasized that women need to be aware of the social hierarchies and behave accordingly.13 in daily life, women are expected to navigate a patrilineal hierarchy and manage ideals regarding family happiness by practicing tình cảm. this capacity is recognized as a critical means by which women can attempt to prevent the “rice” from “boiling” (sôi); or more precisely hinder a male partner from being “enraged”/“mad” (nổi khùng) and maybe even from becoming violent (rydstrom, 2003b, 2009, 2010, 2017). hierarchies, energies, and powers composed of gendered energies, the phenomenological body interlocks with a patriliny, which creates “openings towards violence [and] towards misogyny” (connell, 1987, pp. 185-186). this was illustrated by a thinh tri health care clinic worker in northern vietnam, who explained that “due to their hot character and hard work it is normal that men get angry”. “hot characters” contain “hot” blood which produces “strength” (mạnh mẽ) and “energy” (năng lượng) in men and boys. this does not only mean that they might be aggressive but even could “explode” (hăng lên) (see also, dao, hoang, & kanthoul, 2012; general statistics office of vietnam, 2010; horton & rydstrom, 2011; martin, 2013; pells, wilson, & nguyen, 2016; yount et al., 2016). in a similar vein, a thinh tri nurse explained that “women should hold back themselves and … not explode”. if women were exploding, a conflict could easily escalate, and women are therefore expected to remain calm, or stay cool, if a partner becomes hot tempered. not all women, however, are willing to cool down a “hot” partner by “enduring suffering”. bian, a young woman in her early twenties from northern quang vinh, for example, related how throughout her childhood she had witnessed violent encounters between her parents, thus remembering that, my father had extramarital affairs and my mother knew about it. when she complained, my father beat her. he did so instead of explaining and talking with her. but women talk too much. for instance, my mother brought up his extramarital affairs even if we were having a good time. women often criticize [their husband]”. even though bian emphasized that she finds men’s violence against women unacceptable, she also held her mother accountable for the repeated incidents of violence between her parents. placing the responsibility for the violence to which women are subjected on the abused woman is not uncommon, as indicated by a male interviewee in the keeping silent is dying study, who suggested that “women are often mean and often fuss about small things. that is why violence occurs. the main cause of conflict in the family is women” (general statistics office of vietnam, 2010, p. 76). what is criticized as a woman’s “grumbling”/“complaning” (càm ràm) attitude frequently is referred to as a reason for men’s violence against their female partners. in this vein, hiep from northern vietnam stated that women do not understand their husband 13 this statement resembles the confucian dictum “showing respect for the superior and self-denial for the inferior” (biết kính trên nhường dưới). 178 | aseas 12(2) machinery of male violence because they “have big mouths and talk too much” (see also, dao et al., 2012; horton & rydstrom, 2011; rydstrom, 2003b, 2006, 2010; trinh, 2008; yount et al., 2016). women who do not act with tình cảm tend to be looked down upon as incapable of balancing a “hot” partner by “cooling” him down appropriately. such assumed feminine ‘flaws’ are frequently taken as justification for a man’s beating of his wife by men, women, and even by official representatives. thus, a woman who “grumbles/complains” would often be condemned in the vietnamese context for her lack of ability to stimulate harmony in the household by showing tình cảm appropriately (rydstrom, 2003a, 2003b, 2017; see also, kwiatkowski, 2008, 2011; yount & krause, 2017). oanh, a woman in her late thirties who lives in central coastal long lanh, recalled an incident of abuse which she at the same time minimized by saying, “i was beaten once by my husband because i complained. it was not a big thing. he was drunk and hot-tempered and then he beat me”. oanh’s comment illuminates how a man’s violence against his female partner is downplayed and thereby serves to surreptitiously transform abuse into a common and even expected male practice. giang, who also lives in long lanh and is about twice as old as oanh, related in a similar vein how she had begun to “grumble/complain” due to the extramarital affairs of her husband and how the confrontations had resulted in him abusing her. on these occasions, giang would flee to her parent’s place together with the couple’s children, but she would always return. after a particularly terrifying incident of abuse, giang and her children, however, left and stayed to reside with her parents (rydstrom, 2019). uyen, who lives in the same community as oanh and giang, belongs to the same age bracket as oanh. independently of oanh and giang, uyen reiterated ideas about how women’s behavior fuels conflict and violence in a marriage. she thus explained that her husband’s violence had been spurred by what she saw as her “grumbling/ complaining” behavior and “provoking” (khiêu khích) attitude (nguyen & rydstrom, 2018; rydstrom, 2017, 2019). after getting married, uyen’s husband became violent, and she was, as she remembered, “hit many times”. also, uyen would escape her husband’s violence by fleeing to her parents’ home where she would find safety. uyen, however, was determined to divorce her abusive husband and therefore gathered information from the authorities about how to initiate a divorce process. the divorce plans, though, were put to rest due to the advice of close kin and neighbors, who suggested that she should not leave her husband but rather stay for the sake of their children. blaming the survivor of violence for the abuse appears as a strategy, albeit self-destructive, which is employed by women to cope with the forces of a machinery of male violence and the ways in which it determines life as a chronic crisis. crisis of chronicity interrupted while men’s violence against women in the vietnamese context has mainly been restricted to the realm of the household, recent reports indicate a surge in the abuse of women in public spaces. recordings shared on social media have caused alarm in vietnamese society, including a clip which showed how a woman was beaten by her husband in central hanoi, in close proximity to a cafeteria, and another one from the international airport in hanoi, which displayed how two men attacked a young woman on vietnamese women’s day (20 october). another video clip showed how aseas 12(2) | 179 helle rydstrom a mixed group of young boys and girls were beating up girls on the streets in the province of nghe an and in ho chi minh city (i.e., former saigon). hoang giang son of the institute for studies of society, economy, and environment (isee), a hanoibased ngo, concluded in connection with these incidents that “violence against humans, particularly against women, is escalating in our society” (khuyên, 2016). conveying footage of male-to-female violence to a global audience through social media platforms elucidates how secondary virtual types of abuse and humiliation can be added to first grade direct physical violence. social media, however, at the same time has become an important means for international and national agencies as well as ngos devoted to prevent men’s violence against women in the domestic and public spheres. social media offer a platform from which agencies and organizations can provide information to abused women to break their isolation and escape a crisis of chronicity. organizations and agencies such as the vietnam women’s union have set up hotlines and platforms such as the facebook page called “families without violence” (gia đình không bạo lực) to reach out to women to inform them about anti-violence legislation, rights, and programs aimed at combatting men’s violence against women (domestic violence in vietnam, 2016; see also, rydstrom, 2017, 2019). as part of the international november campaign “say no – unite to end violence against women” launched by the un women, various activities have been initiated in vietnam to mark opposition to men’s violence against women. in 2016, for example, vietnamese ngos and institutes dedicated to mobilizing resistance against male-to-female violence organized events, lectures, and meetings as part of the national campaign “say no to violence” (nói không với bạo lực). the “say no – unite to end violence against women” annual campaign has gained traction and broad public support in vietnamese society. many women – and men – wear clothes in the campaign’s signature color orange when attending demonstrations and activities to end men’s violence against women during the campaign month. the following year, in 2017, in connection with the un women “say no – unite to end violence against women” campaign, a large event called “zumba festival: love’s steps” was held in the thong nhat park in hanoi. thousands of girls and women participated in the demonstration, which encouraged female survivors to voice their experiences of male violence as a way of ending the silencing of male-to-female abuse.14 such initiatives have become recurrent annual activities, as illustrated by the #hearmetoo campaign of 2018 (doan, 2018). in response to the 16 days of activism against gender-based violence campaign 2018, the un secretary-general’s unite orange the world campaign, the un women, and the un’s gender thematic group, social media and videos were used to disseminate information across the country about men’s violence against women. a national workshop on gender-based violence prevention and safe city models was organized by the un women and the department of labor, invalids, and social affairs (molisa) in ho chi minh city to develop strategies aimed at tackling the problem of men’s violence against women in 14 the zumba event was launched by the center for studies and applied sciences in gender, family, women, and adolescents (csaga) in collaboration with the united nations population fund (unfpa), department of gender equality under the ministry of labor, invalids and social affairs (molisa), and ho chi minh communist youth union in hanoi amongst others. even international ngos and agencies supported the initiative (dance campaign aims to stop, 2017, december 3). 180 | aseas 12(2) machinery of male violence the home as well as in urban spaces. the workshop selected “safer cities for women and girls” as the action theme of the vietnam women’s union for the year of 2019, which might imply that the movement is driven by women located in the cities. while the majority of vietnamese women live in the countryside, bridging between experiences from urban and rural spaces plays an important role in promulgating the impact and success of the anti-violence campaigns (united nations women, 2018). conclusions masculinized social structures and the ways in which these create a framework for the production of systemic harm are reciprocally connected with male-to-female violence perpetrated on the ground. in a patrilineally organized universe, where women are rendered inferior and men superior, the machinery of male violence is enforced to multiply strength in highly gendered and sexualized ways (arendt, 1970). the design of repertoires, techniques, and tools implemented by men to harm a female partner is inseparable from masculinized hierarchies, privileges, and powers, as configured in the vietnamese context. the violence imposed by a man upon his female partner is shaped in specific encounters, i have argued, when a perpetrator’s essentialist and stereotypical fantasies about a woman’s embodied properties (i.e., gender, sexuality, age, ethnicity, class, and bodyableness) degrade the female phenomenological body into a corporeal object of abuse through processes of transformation between the first, second, third, and fourth body typologies. the male machinery of violence attempts to reduce the female body into “naked life” as the result of a process of what i have referred to as “thingification”. a battered woman is in this sense dehumanized and constrained to a “zone of exception” (agamben, 1998) where the laws of protection do not apply and male violence is perpetrated with impunity (mbembe, 2003; rydstrom, 2012, 2015, 2017). repeated violence inflicted by a man upon his female partner confines life to a tempo-spatial “interregnum” (gramsci, 1971); into a “crisis of chronicity” (vigh, 2008), which impedes agency and the possibilities for positive change. a “poisonous knowledge” about the realities of violence and the perils of harm thus holds power to ruin the very foundation of the lifeworld of an abused woman (stoler, 2013). yet, women do not passively comply with a violent male partner. as i have discussed, abused women resist and counter the violence to which they are subjected and the pain and damage they have experienced. vietnamese agencies as well as national and international organizations offer support to abused women and raise public awareness about a severe and dehumanizing problem that has been, and even continues to be, silenced. in dealing directly with the ways in which a gendered and sexualized machinery of male violence manufactures a crisis of chronicity, organizational initiatives can provide critical support to abused women. empowered women – anywhere in the world – might be able to eschew the stillness imbued in a crisis of chronicity defined by male violence. “making time moving again” means to turn a crisis of permanency into a bracket which eventually could provide a path to positive change; 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(2002). world report on violence and health, summary. retrieved from https:// www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/violence/world_report/en/summary_en.pdf young, i. m. (1997). asymmetrical reciprocity: on moral respect, wonder and enlarged thought. constellations, 3(3), 340-363. yount, k. m., & krause, k. h. (2017). gendered social learning, nonfamily institutions, and attitudes about recourse after partner violence. psychology of violence, 7(1), 128-139. yount, k. m., higgins, e. m., vanderende, k. e., krause, k. h., minh, t. h., schuler, s. r., & anh, h. t. (2016). men’s perpetration of intimate partner violence in vietnam: gendered social learning and the challenges of masculinity. men and masculinities, 19(1), 64-84 about the author helle rydstrom is a professor at the department of gender studies, lund university, sweden, specialized in the anthropology of gender in asia. her research examines the ways in which gender informs violence, (in)security, and precariousness in social life and in sites of conflict and war, on the one hand, and how gendered power relations and hierarchies frame socialization, sexuality, and education, on the other. she recently edited a volume (with catarina kinnvall) climate hazards, disasters, and gender ramifications (routledge, 2019). ► contact: helle.rydstrom@genus.lu.se acknowledgements the projects for this article have been generously funded by the swedish international development cooperation agency (sida), the swedish research council (vetenskapsrådet), and the swedish foundation for humanities and social sciences (riksbankens jubileumsfond). i greatly appreciate the support offered on various occasions in connection with the conduction of these research projects by dinh hoai, ho ha, hoang n. an, luong a. ngoc, ngo huong, nguyen hanh, nguyen mai, nguyen h. minh, nguyen t. t. huong, pham hoan, thanh b. xuan, tran t. c. nhung, and tran t. k. thuan. my gratitude goes to those who have shared their experiences with me, but who cannot be mentioned for anonymity reasons. ongoing communication with don kulick, nguyen-vo thu-huong, nguyen t. t. huong, jeff hearn, and members of the pufendorf institute for advanced studies theme on crisis, which i am coordinating, has been inspiring for my analysis. many thanks to the anonymous reviewers who provided helpful comments and to the editors of this special issue for all their work. aseas 13(1) | 123 gold rush abroad: the trajectory of singapore-based thai transsexual (male to female) sex workers in global sex tourism witchayanee ochaa a rangsit university, thailand ► ocha, w. (2020). gold rush abroad: the trajectory of singapore-based thai transsexual (male to female) sex workers in global sex tourism. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 13(1), 123-141. sex work is part of thailand’s tourism-based economic development model. the country’s global reputation as a ‘queer paradise’ is an important factor shaping thailand’s sex tourism and linking it to the global sex industry. this paper addresses transnational routes and networks of the global sex trade through thai transsexual (male to female) sex workers who travel out of the country to singapore for short periods to meet global demand. the research is based on in-depth interviews with 75 thai transsexual sex workers who are working in districts such as orchard towers, little india, and geylang in singapore. for some informants, singapore is a final destination; for others, it is just a stop along the way to other places abroad. the findings show that the commercial sex trade involving these individuals is global in every sense, including the way it is funded, developed, structured, and organized. keywords: agents; sex tourism; sex workers; singapore; thai transsexuals  introduction transnational mobility appears to be a way to break away from oppressive local conditions (limpangog, 2013; kempadoo, 1998; kim, 2012). the combination of capital flows, globalization, international sociopolitical changes, and communication technologies has transformed the ability of people to contact, interact, and encounter each other (schiller, basch, & blanc, 1995). this study addresses the trajectory of 75 singapore-based thai transsexual (male to female) sex workers. their decisions are influenced by push factors such as the economic recession and political tensions related to a military coup (2014-2019), and the fact that the ‘legal non-acknowledgment’ of marginalized identities in thailand motivates thai sex workers to travel out of the country. pull factors include the strong economy of singapore and the nature of commercial sex in singapore. in this transnational migration process, a type of broker or agent/agency referred to as “mae tact”, an established term in the thai transgender subculture, facilitates the journey and work of transsexual sex workers abroad. in this paper, the author focuses on two aspects of the sex workers’ experience: 1) the movement of thai transsexual sex workers, in which the role of agents becomes a crucial issue in the global sex trade, and 2) the working aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 32 124 | aseas 13(1) gold rush abroad conditions for the commoditization of sex work in the social and cultural context of singapore. to date, there has been very little academic study of the working conditions of thai transsexual (male to female) sex workers abroad. this paper shows that sex is not simply being bought and sold in a global market; rather, it reflects global social and economic inequalities. literature review thailand’s sex tourism thailand has one of asia’s most developed tourism markets, which largely contributes to the country’s employment and gdp. the ‘land of smiles’ is known for its hospitality, beautiful beaches, historical places, highland areas, eco-attractions, world-famous cuisine, good infrastructure at reasonable prices, and red-light industry (cohen, 2008). international visitor numbers have grown rapidly from 15.9 million in 2010 to 38.3 million in 2018 (unwto, 2019). according to the world travel & tourism council (wttc, 2019), the total contribution of thailand’s travel and tourism to the gdp is 21.6% – although this dynamic development is currently interrupted due to the covid-19 pandemic. international sex tourism in thailand can be traced back to the vietnam war, when thailand was visited by u.s. soldiers during their ‘rest and recreation’ time. during that period, thailand gained an international reputation as a sex tourism destination (cohen, 2001; wathinee & guest, 1994; yot, 1992). this phenomenon has produced the modern version of the go-go bar in thailand (meyer, 1988). after the end of the vietnam war and the phase of ‘rest and recreation tourism’, thailand launched its first national tourism development plan in 1976, aimed at further supporting and developing tourism regions such as bangkok, pattaya, chiang mai, and phuket (phayakvichien, 2005). during thailand’s economic growth in the 1980s and early 1990s, favorable economic conditions inadvertently supported thailand’s development of entertainment services for gay men, and, at the same time, affirmed the country’s global reputation as a queer paradise (matzner, 2002). in 2014, out of a total of 26.74 million tourists, 11.23 million tourists were men suspected by ngos to have come to thailand explicitly to consume sex (lines, 2015). while sex work in thailand boosts the economic and tourism development in the country, there were several instances in which international attention was focused negatively on thailand’s sex industry. one of the first was a time magazine article in 1993 on prostitution, “the skin trade,” which included a picture of a thai bar girl on the front cover, stating that there were two million prostitutes in thailand (hornblower, 1993). soon after the time article, in the new longman dictionary of english language and culture (1993), bangkok was described as “a city known for its buddhist temples and as a place where there are a lot of prostitutes” (“thais ban dictionary over”, 1993). the government of prime minister anand panyarachun persuaded the publisher to withdraw the dictionary and amend the entry for bangkok. another well-known incident was “a television program on the bbc that identified thailand as one of the most dangerous tourist destinations. the danger referred to both physical violence and the possibility of contracting aids” (wathinee & guest, aseas 13(1) | 125 witchayanee ocha 1994, p. 17). on the one hand, the sex industry is an important attraction and revenue generator for the tourism market, but on the other hand too much focus on sex and prostitution can also have negative impacts on the development of other tourism markets (wathinee & guest, 1994, p. 18). hence, indirect promotion of the sex industry, coupled with public denial of the size of the industry has gone hand-in-hand. thailand is often described as a sex tourist destination for heterosexual men but this image has become more diverse due to an increasing number of male and kathoey1 sex workers (gallagher, 2005; witchayanee, 2013). in thailand, transsexuals are often labeled ‘lady boys’ or kathoey. originally, the term kathoey described hermaphrodites, but the word was later broadened to describe transgender, transsexual, and third gender individuals. however, the term kathoey does not carry the specifics of sexual subcultures with it (witchayanee, 2015). kathoey were not perceived to be unusual or bizarre until the western emphasis on binary sex started to dominate public opinion (witchayanee, 2013). in old siam, kathoey enjoyed a historical role as popular entertainers: “it does not stretch credulity to see the modern cabaret shows as a continuation and adaptation of older forms of performance” (totman, 2003, p. 85). jackson (1995) further speculated that kathoey might have historically served as safe sexual outlets for young, unmarried men, and that might be the precedent to their present involvement in sex work. as stated, kathoey might include transgender or transsexual identity. in the present paper, the author uses “transgender” to refer to “anatomically male people who identify as a third gender and live as women but who have not undergone sex reassignment surgery” (witchayanee & earth, 2013, p. 197). in contrast, the term “transsexual” implies “an engagement with medical institutions in order to gain access to hormonal and surgical technologies for embodying one’s internal identity” (stryker, 2004). sex reassignment surgery (srs) to change the body to fit the self-image was established in thailand in 1975 (prayuth & preecha, 2004). aizura (2011) pointed out that thailand has become one of the main global destinations to obtain vaginoplasty and other cosmetic surgeries. bangkok is advertised by many surgeons as “the ‘mecca’ of transsexual body modification” (aizura, 2011, p. 144). although the exact number of transgenders in thailand is unknown, winter (2004) writes that “thailand probably boasts one of the highest incidences of transgenders worldwide” (p. 7). furthermore, arunrat, banwell, carmichael, utomo, and sleigh, (2010) note that 2.1% of the northern thai male youth whom they studied considered themselves kathoey. the twenty-first century led to a geographical expansion and increasing visibility of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (lgbt) communities in asia, while thailand’s capital city bangkok emerged as the central focus of an expanding network connecting other asian destinations, such as hong kong, singapore, taiwan, and the philippines (jackson, 2011). thailand also actively promotes lgbt tourism in the country, e.g. through the gothai.befree website (https://www.gothaibefree.com) launched by the tourism authority of thailand, or the miss tiffany’s universe contest, 1 kathoey now refers almost exclusively to “biological males” who have a transgender identity (jackson & sullivan, 2000, p. 4). kathoey are often described in the thai language as sao (or phuying) praphet sorng (a second kind of woman) or phet thi sam (the third sex/gender). unlike the word kathoey (which suggests to some a subset of male), the latter terms portray the male-to-female (mtf) transgender as either a subset of female or an entirely different gender (winter, 2005, p. 3). 126 | aseas 13(1) gold rush abroad which has been annually held in the city of pattaya since 1984 to find thailand’s representative to compete for miss international queen, the world beauty contest for transgender women. however, many of the transgender people in thailand work in the sex industry because they often cannot find work in the public or private sector (slamah, 1998). since transgenders often cannot easily hide their sexual identity, they regularly suffer employment discrimination in thailand, and their job opportunities are often constrained to working in roles in hospitality, entertainment, or the sex work industry (undp, 2014). earth (2006) explains that transgender sex workers in phnom penh, cambodia, sell sex both as a way of expressing their sexuality and as a livelihood. pro-sex work scholar-activists see sex workers not as victims, but as agents who have the right to self-determination. they perceive sex work as a form of labor (brenman, 2004). this paper shows that thai transsexual sex workers often value sex work as a good way to earn an income to pay for their gender reassignment surgeries (since the cost of srs is too expensive for most thais), to achieve a better standard of living, and to support their family. most recently, the internet has added a new dimension in the advertisement of sex and bodies. sex work and sex videos are increasingly offered online (billard, 2019). the involvement of kathoey in sex work is also reflected in the abundance of pornographic websites featuring thai ‘lady boys’ which are predominantly owned and operated by westerners (prayuth & preecha, 2004, p. 1403). the internet has thus allowed clients to order specific individual sex workers to travel to specific destinations to meet global demand. push and pull factors of sex workers’ transnational mobility thai sex workers regularly travel to singapore, especially during the low season (julyoctober) when fewer tourists visit thailand. furthermore, during the political crisis of 2008, the floods in 2011, the shut-down of bangkok (2013), and the last a military coup in 2014, fewer european tourists visited thailand, but chinese tourist numbers increased. the number of tourists visiting thailand fell by 6.6% from 2013 to 2014 (from 26.5 million to 24.8 million) because of the kingdom’s political tensions (military coup). this generated 1.13 trillion baht or 5.8% less revenue in 2014 compared to the previous year (turner, 2015). european tourists are generally considered ‘high-spending’ and ‘culturally sensitive’ visitors (richards, 1999). in many cases, they spend more on hotels and other living expenses than other tourists in thailand. the average european tourist spends about one third more of what an asian (including chinese and japanese) visitor spends while on holiday in thailand (thaiwebsites, 2020), which is mainly related to the fact that europeans have a longer duration of stay in the country. since 2014, thailand has suffered a rare drop in european tourist arrivals. the military government has been trying to boost the number of other tourists by taking steps such as allowing temporary visa-free entry for more nationalities, particularly from china. consequently, overall tourist arrivals have been increasing: 29.9 million in 2015, 32.6 million in 2016, 35.4 million in 2017, 38.3 million in 2018 (unwto, 2017, 2019). this number was expected to reach more than 40 million in 2020 (association of thai travel agents, 2018), before the outbreak of the corona pandemic. over the aseas 13(1) | 127 witchayanee ocha last decade, thailand experienced an increasing influx of non-western tourism markets, particularly from china (trupp, 2017). chinese tourists comprised 28% of all foreign tourists in thailand in 2018 (“indian tourists: new hope”, 2019). however, the emergence of the “zero-dollar tours,”2 especially from china, has resulted in greater economic leakages (tuohy, 2018). most interviewed transsexual sex workers still strongly rely on european visitors. consequently, and as a result of limited economic opportunities in their home country, many decided to travel out of thailand to find more international opportunities. in addition to these economic considerations, political push factors have played an important role in influencing their decisions to move abroad. thailand’s lgbt community first attracted local media attention in the 1960s when kathoey, tom, and dee were stereotyped as part of the ‘homosexual problem’ (martin, jackson, mc lelland, & yue, 2008). jackson explains that “social sanctions against gender variant in thailand do not usually take the official, legal forms found in the west” (jackson, 1995, cited in sinnot, 2000, p. 99). it has been argued that thai society has a reputation for being tolerant and accepting towards its large and vibrant lgbt communities (winter, 2011). however, thai constitutions and laws have not protected the rights of gender/sexual minorities (yutthana, 2000; warunee, 2003), with hostility and prejudice, as well as institutionalized discrimination against lgbt communities still being prevalent (undp, 2014). transsexuals are particularly affected by legal issues because the thai state does not legitimize any gender or sex transition through altering of personal documentation (nhrc, 2008; warunee, 2003). according to ojanen (2009), this “legal non-acknowledgment has several consequences” such as being denied the right to marriage or registered partnership, barred from receiving welfare provisions that are given to heterosexual couples who live together, not treated as couples by taxation authorities (which would lead to tax reductions), denied the right to adoption, and not given rights to the inheritance of wealth created together as a couple (p. 11) recent movements in thailand to protect the rights of sexual minorities have unfortunately met with limited success. these include the campaign, “lift to touch the sky,” organized by the lift foundation in bangkok. in july 2019, it proposed to the new government of prime minister prayut chan-o-cha to recognize the sex change operation by allowing transsexuals to change their official title from mister to miss under thai law. the foundation handed in 10,000 signatures in support of the campaign to the parliament in august 2019. the movement is led by jakkaphong jakrajutatip (nickname anne), the only billionaire transsexual in thailand. furthermore, the opposition party, “the future forward party,” under party leader thanathorn juangroongruangkit has proposed that the new government promotes 2 “the popular package tours—organized by proxy companies with chinese owners, but registered in thailand—the way they are managed and financed by chinese nationals—much of the revenue generated goes back to companies in china, at the expense of local thai hoteliers and restaurateurs, who receive a much smaller portion of the revenue. the tours also avoid local taxes, depriving the thai treasury of millions of dollars” (tuohy, 2018, p. 2). 128 | aseas 13(1) gold rush abroad human dignity, especially by allowing same-sex marriage for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, questioning, intersex (lgbtqi) people in thailand. unfortunately, not only have these requests not been responded to by the current government, but also the constitutional court of thailand took the decision (on 21 february, 2020) to dissolve the opposition future forward party and ban its 16 executive members from politics for 10 years, supposedly because the party took an illegal loan from its leader (human rights watch, 2020). thus, there continues to be a lack of significant progress in thailand towards respecting basic human rights for sexual minorities. in addition, kathoey have also experienced implicit and explicit discrimination and stigmatization within educational institutions and the workplace (prayuth & preecha, 2004; undp, 2014). at the same time “there has been limited progress in taking legal measures against discrimination,” according to ojanen et al. (2018, p. 3). some limited progress can be found in the gender equality act of 2015, which makes it illegal to discriminate against a person “due to the fact that the person is male or female or of a different appearance from his/her own sex by birth” (human rights watch, 2015). some kathoeys manage to become successful in business, but many find themselves edged out of mainstream jobs associated with males and into stereotypically female professions. prejudice often causes them to feel marginalized and ostracized by others, often forcing them into sex work. while conditions in thailand in recent years ‘pushed’ sex workers to find their fortunes abroad, ‘pull factors’ attracted them particularly to singapore. the city-state ranked second as the most globalized economy in the world (schwab, 2015). many expatriates work in singapore since english is an official language, which supports the international working environment. singapore boasts a competitive, open business environment and says that its working conditions can be a rewarding experience for foreigners. expatriate presence in singapore, along with stronger economic conditions, could motivate thai transsexual sex workers to travel out of thailand, particularly during the low tourist seasons, to search for potential customers. migration from thailand for sex work can therefore be understood as economically motivated (kitiarsa, 2008). despite these incentives, chan (2020) points out that thai migrants in singapore who are construction workers, foreign wives, and sex workers, are not held in high esteem in the city’s capitalist-consumerist society. moreover, “the government of singapore perceives gays and lesbians as people who disgrace the singaporean norm and punishes male persons found guilty of same-sex sexual activity crime with up two years prison” (jutathorn, 2018, p. 28). in principle, sex work is not illegal in singapore, but various sex work-related activities are criminalized (xinghui, 2017). while there are legally operating brothels in singapore, where the sex workers are regularly given health check-ups and must carry a health card, there are also informal and non-registered sex workers in singapore. sex workers in singapore can be found in a number of venues, including brothels, go-go bars, hostess bars,3 and streets. some of these venues can be registered as a leisure, or service type of business, which is 3 in hostess bars, customers pay for drinks, and no entrance fees are required for entry. there are no special shows in hostess bars so no training is required for sex-workers. they must teach themselves how to speak english and how to please customers. as in all other cases of sex workers, the more experience they have, the more money they can earn. customers enjoy more drinking and conversation with sex workers in the hostess bars. aseas 13(1) | 129 witchayanee ocha monitored by the government to ensure proper operation. however, the singaporean ministry of home affairs reports a 40% rise in the number of unlicensed massage parlors in singapore between 2013 and 2016, and these establishments are often a front for sex work (xinghui, 2017). freelance sex workers such as “street sex workers”4 (working in an informal and unregulated environment) operate from the streets of popular commercial districts and designated red-light districts such as orchard towers, geylang, and little india. methodology the qualitative information presented in this paper is based on observations and in-depth interviews with 75 transsexual sex workers who – during the time of research – were working at orchard towers, little india, and geylang in singapore. data collection was further supported through semi-structured interviews with 3 bar proprietors (who are all westerners), 5 bar managers (3 thais and 2 singaporeans), and 25 customers (20 westerners and 5 asians). the sex workers who participated in this study were over 20 years old and have at least one year of experience engaging in sex work. they were encouraged to express their views freely and to talk about their working experience abroad. the respondents had the right to refuse to answer questions or to terminate the interview at any time. a few potential participants withdrew because of time constraints. almost all the qualitative data was collected sequentially by direct observation, semi-structured interviews, and an in-depth special session of interviews. all names appearing in this paper are pseudonyms to protect the identities of respondents. the research followed the ethical standards of the ethics review board of rangsit university. informed consent was obtained from all participants in the study. first, the author approached thai transsexual sex workers in singapore through key informants. some bar proprietors were westerners serving as contacts, and a few thai bar managers were key informants to arrange the interview settings with sex workers, customers, and bar proprietors. appointments with sex workers were made a few days in advance so that they could arrive early for interviews at their workplaces. semi-structured interviews with customers were conducted randomly at the bars with assistance from thai bar managers. an interview guideline was initially used, but more questions were added as the conversations took place. semi-structured interviews were also conducted with bar proprietors and bar managers to get a complete view of commercial sex in singapore. second, an observational guide was also used to keep track of the behavior of each informant and the settings of their workplaces. last, in-depth interviews were recorded, and notes were taken. for sex workers employed in bars, interviews were conducted ‘off stage’ in the performers’ dressing rooms. each sitting was approximately one hour with two or three repeat visits with each informant to build rapport and follow up on previous information. for street sex workers, the author made appointments to interview them later in other places such as thai town, thai restaurants, coffee shops, and temples. the last meeting included a review of the interview notes by the informant. 4 a common sex worker who walks along the streets to find the customers randomly on their own without middle persons or specific sexual settings. the price for sexual services varies. 130 | aseas 13(1) gold rush abroad the information was analyzed inductively. the narrative analysis was based on “data triangulation” to crosscheck the similarities shared in the three methods in the three places. data triangulation is a “method of cross-checking data from multiple sources to search for regularities in the research data” (o’donoghue & punch, 2003, p. 78). the author applied axial and selective coding (strauss & corbin, 1994) of the qualitative data, developing it into categories and themes. findings background of participants this study included 75 transsexual sex worker informants, ranging in age from 25 to 35 years. most of them received a high school education. of these transsexuals, 43 work in hostess bars, 22 work in go-go bars, and 10 are street sex workers. the respondents reported that their level of family financial security in thailand was “low,” and all sent money home on a monthly basis with the average amount of eur 800 (sgd 1,250)5. in thailand, the minimum wage is about thb 300 per day or eur 9 (sgd 13), and the average monthly salary of a person with a bachelor’s degree is approximately thb 15,000 baht or eur 430 (sgd 672). the sex industry offers the potential to attain an income much higher than the average income in thailand. therefore, the informants entered the sex trade as routes to a better standard of living and to pay their debts (such as for sex reassignment surgeries and agency fees), rent, and food bills. they stated that they work in the sex industry to support their family income and to ‘buy’ the right to sexual and personal autonomy. the interviews revealed that respondents face many hardships and prejudices throughout their lives in thailand, in particular regarding education, travel, marriage, and employment. many of these problems stem from the fact that transsexuals appear female from the outside (and, indeed, identify fully as females), but are legally male on all official documentation, even after full sex reassignment surgery has been completed. prejudice often causes them to feel marginalized and ostracized by others, often forcing them to search for other opportunities outside thailand. the informants travel to singapore because they have “nothing to lose” to earn a better income in richer countries, and to break away from oppressive local conditions. all the interviewed transsexual sex workers admitted that they lie to their families about their jobs and tell them that they are working in a thai restaurant, a thai spa, or in thai massage in singapore. jib illustrated the situation in thailand, which influenced her decision to move to singapore: in thailand, the economy is getting worse. since the coup in 2014, less european tourists visit thailand. chinese tourists have been away from thailand after the phoenix’s boat disaster in phuket in 2018. in pattaya, i see more arab and indian tourists around. when my (transsexual) senior friends who are currently working in singapore asked if i want to come to singapore for gold rush (khud thong). yeah, why not? (jib, 22 years old, a transsexual sex worker who worked in pattaya, currently working in orchard tower, 3 may 2019) 5 thai currency which the exchange rate is approximately 1sgd per thb 22.33 and eur 0.64. aseas 13(1) | 131 witchayanee ocha based on the fieldwork, all informants claimed that their income in thailand decreased over the past five years. previously it was not necessary to leave the country, even during the low season. the informants usually criticized thailand’s political and economic instability which ‘pushes’ them to search for more customers abroad to secure their incomes. they are not confident after thailand’s national election (23 april 2019) that the formerly ‘peaceful’ situation of the country will return. their potential customers in singapore are european expatriates. most respondents prefer customers who are europeans for their generosity while a few like asians because of their similar appearance. when customers were asked of their opinion of thai transsexual sex workers in singapore, one responded: i’m a member of this bar. i’m close to the bar proprietor who is a westerner. the bar manager is thai, she tells me what is new. they organize sex tour arrangements sometimes. i know that this bar rotates sex workers from thailand. there is a website showing these [trans] women photos/video clip advertisements. it can take a month until they travel here to singapore after my request. i prefer to change new faces. (ben, 35 years old, european customer in singapore, 22 may 2019) sexual exploitation comes under many guises, such as mail order, and sex tours arranged through agencies. respondents have to learn new technologies and computer skills, such as how to use social media, or video clips, as well as the english language to advertise themselves through social media. accordingly, sex workers travel arrangements to singapore can be classified into three groups (see table 1). 10 of the respondents travelled independently, 15 with other friends or a senior group, and the majority of the 50 informants through the facilitation of an informal broker agency (mae tact). access to the global market out of the 75 respondents, 62 had experience working abroad before traveling to singapore, 37 travelled regularly to work in singapore, and for 38 this was their first time in singapore. of these 38, 13 respondents had not worked abroad before. 15 respondents had worked in the netherlands, 5 worked in germany, and 5 respondents worked in the uk. among all the respondents, 37 travel regularly to the netherlands, and 7 have experience working in both singapore and the netherlands. 15 respondents have worked in all these countries before (see table 1). this study found a connection between thai sex workers and dutch agencies. all of the 75 respondents are complete transsexuals; 40 interviewees have debts from srs, of which 33 reported that their sex-change surgeries in thailand were funded by dutch agencies that employ them as sex workers. these agencies traded off the costs of srs against their sexual services for a few years in amsterdam, where some earned money as sex workers under similar conditions as working in singapore under the agency. after that, they returned to thailand and worked in sex tourism before moving to singapore. of these 40 respondents, seven interviewees reported borrowing money from thai agencies (mae tact) for their medical treatments in thailand before traveling to singapore. full srs costs approximately eur 5,334 to 132 | aseas 13(1) gold rush abroad 13,334 (sdg 8,334–20,834), which is out of reach for an average income earner in thailand. consequently, many transsexuals are motivated to do sex work to pay for their srs and other surgeries to look ‘perfect.’ the sex industry offers the potential to earn an income much greater than that of ordinary work, which is why informants are confident that they will be able to repay their debts and earn good money by working as transsexual sex workers abroad. mai is a transsexual sex worker who regularly takes some months off from her work in thailand to work in singapore through mae tact. she was moving to aseas 13(1) | 133 witchayanee ocha amsterdam to earn more money in the european market right after the singapore trip. according to mai: thai sex workers are quite popular here. i earned eur 8,000 (12,500 sgd) for two months in singapore. i’m moving to amsterdam for more money next month. my dutch agency has funded me for srs the last 3 years. i have to work in amsterdam 3 months a year for 3 years to pay back all my debts. i hope that i can pay my dutch agency for my last debt next year. european tourists have a reputation for paying well and tipping big. i can’t pay back all my debts if i work only in thailand. there are not so many (european) tourists anymore. (mai, 25 years old, a transsexual sex worker who worked in patpong, currently working in orchard towers, 5 may 2019) according to the interviews, most respondents still have debts that force them to earn much more than average. only 35 interviewees working in singapore are free from debts for srs. however, they might have other debts such as traveling costs owed to the ‘agency’ that facilitated their work in singapore. travel to singapore: alone, with peers or through mae tact this research identified three common ways in which thai transsexuals travel to singapore (see table 1). first, 10 of the 75 respondents travel to singapore alone and work as street sex workers. this is not a popular method, as it takes greater risks to work in foreign cultures, isolated from support networks of friends and colleagues. sex workers explained that it is very risky for thai transsexuals to travel abroad alone and provide sexual services, especially in a country that views trafficking sexual workers as a very serious crime and imposes severe punishments. of the 10 street sex workers, 2 worked in orchard towers, 4 in geylang, and 4 in little india. they planned to work in singapore for 7-14 days and have both european and asian customers. they considered returning to work in singapore in the future. second, 15 respondents traveled to singapore through connections made by their senior peer group. older thai transsexuals who have successfully traveled abroad may have rich contacts and can put their younger colleagues in touch with the right people. of these 15 respondents, 13 work in hostess bars (7 in geylang, and 6 in little india), and 2 work in a go-go bar in orchard towers. these respondents worked for 15-30 days in singapore on average. ten of them planned to return to work in singapore next time, while five wanted to move to the netherlands. third, 50 out of the 75 interviewees, the overall majority, traveled to work in singapore under “mae tact” through an agency. of these 50 respondents, 30 worked in hostess bars, and 20 worked in go-go bars (24 worked in orchard towers, 16 in little india, and 10 in geylang). thereby they sign a contract with an unofficial agency that is responsible for facilitating travel and work abroad. although this is the most expensive way to get work abroad, it offers the least risk and it is the most popular method for thai transsexuals to get work outside thailand. yet, the informal nature of a mae tact agreement brings its own risks as further explained below. the interviewees who are under “mae tact” explained that “mae tact” works like an illegal job recruitment agency to help kathoeys find sex work abroad. it is usually 134 | aseas 13(1) gold rush abroad arranged through senior kathoeys with great working experience abroad, and it can be arranged through an individual person or through an unofficial agency formed by a group of experienced individuals. senior kathoeys have connections with transgender clubs in amsterdam, which occasionally arrange for many thai transsexual sex workers to travel from singapore to work in amsterdam based on orders made through the internet. the transgender clubs must bring in new sex workers to attract customers. many returning customers prefer to pick up new sex workers rather than pick the ones they have met before. the mae tact recruitment has links with bars, clubs, pubs, discotheques, and other sexual outlets. some have connections with thai officers who encourage the emigration of sex workers, as it is convenient for them if they operate in other countries. the service fee for mae tact is approximately eur 264–2,627 (sgd 411–4,104) depending on the destination country and the included ‘services,’ which may include organizing travel, visa, accommodation contacts, and employment. however, there is no formal contract and not every mae tact is honored. some agencies abuse the system by taking sex workers abroad and abandoning them with no support once the full fee has been received. getting a reliable mae tact is often just a matter of luck as there are no regulation on this business because of its illegal nature. despite this risk, it was still worth it to the respondents of this research; without the mae tact, they would probably have to resort to selling themselves on the streets and therefore risk arrest and possible deportation. the sex workers under the mae tact system usually stay in singapore for about 30 to 90 days per year. singapore: the ‘gold rush’ of asia for some informants, singapore is the main destination in asia before they move to amsterdam, the center of the european market. a flight from bangkok to singapore is convenient and takes only about two hours. there are also direct buses from hat yai in southern thailand to singapore (taking about 17 hours), and direct trains from bangkok to singapore (taking 2 days). visa exemption or visa-free access allows thai citizens to stay in singapore for up to 30 days. although it is difficult to get a working visa for entry to singapore, the potential earnings in the country are very high. nevertheless, there are expenses too, including the rate for getting a mae tact to work in singapore, which is approximately eur 533–800 (sgd 833–1,250). despite these expenses, the hardships and the serious punishment for illegitimate sex work, many transsexuals will pay this amount for the chance to earn a potential fortune, turning the mae tact into a viable economic prospect. interviewees explained how difficult visa negotiations often coincided with troublesome, uneasy political relations between thailand and singapore. in the past, when relations were strained, singapore would agree only to a short stay visa of one week, but because of current positive political relations, visas of one month are the norm. kae, a 25-year-old transsexual sex worker provided information from her own experience and from some transsexuals she met. she suggested the average income of thai transsexuals could be around eur 1,814 (sgd 2,834) for one or two weeks spent working in singapore. the downsides of this are the possibility of being caught by the police in singapore for providing sex and even having visiting rights to singapore aseas 13(1) | 135 witchayanee ocha rescinded permanently. since march 27, 2020, singapore has, however, closed bars, nightclubs and denied entry or transit through singapore for all short-term visitors in an effort to contain a sharp rise in coronavirus cases. many thai transsexuals experience difficulties at immigrations, as singapore is aware of the fact that some thai transgender enter the country to provide sexual services. this causes many problems, particularly with travelling. the difference between their physical appearance and the information provided in their passport increases the possibility that they are refused entry and even suffer the indignity of anatomical inspections. it is necessary for transsexuals to be able to declare that they have a job for the visa application process. here the mae tact can help through the connections of the experienced bar owners, to provide employment papers confirming jobs such as an ‘artist’ for the bars. they would then be allowed to work in singapore for one to three months, which is one of the ways that mae tact can help things run more smoothly. prakrong, the manager of a transgender club in orchard towers (owned by a westerner) explains that thai transsexual sex workers are popular as they are ‘exotic’ to european customers in singapore. transsexuals could earn eur 80-160 (sgd 125-250) for ‘fast sex’ in singapore. the cases of transsexuals providing sexual services abroad vary: some may leave thailand only once a year to make a considerable amount of money, while others do it regularly, taking a few months off from their work in thailand to take a contract working abroad. for example, twenty-one-year-old bomb trained as a nude model to afford medical treatment for transsexualism. bomb is a transsexual who travelled to singapore already three times through mae tact, where she earned eur 1,333 (sgd 2,083) in one week. she explains that tips are less common in asian societies, so she is also planning to move to the netherlands: i’m moving to amsterdam and the european market for more money next month. i have never been in the netherlands before. i have heard from transsexual friends who work there that the environment in the netherlands is friendly to us [transsexual sex workers] in terms of the legalization of sex work. i’ve heard that dutch law allows same-sex marriage and even the right to change the title [from mr. to miss] there. (bomb, 21 years old, a transsexual sex worker who worked in patpong, currently working in little india, 1 july 2019) based on the fieldwork, most informants were encouraged by their experiences in singapore to become familiar with english communication and to develop techniques in bargaining a higher price. this might help them in their work in other international destinations. of the 75 respondents, 20 wished to return to singapore for the next trip abroad, while 55 were looking further for other opportunities in europe. out of these 55, 40 wanted to move to the netherlands, 10 to germany, and 5 to the uk (see table 1), with the netherlands being a particularly popular destination for thai sex workers to gain experience abroad due to the legal status of sex work. the respondents believed that amsterdam is the sex capital of europe, attracting european tourists for its nightlife. often the financial aspect attracted these informants to join the gold rush abroad. furthermore, thai transsexual sex workers 136 | aseas 13(1) gold rush abroad also reported that they were interested in entering the sex scene in the netherlands because of anti-discrimination (gender reassignment) regulations in dutch law. experiences of violations and insecurity the bar managers stated that there are various outcomes for thai transgenders who go for the gold rush abroad. some trade sex for money and then return to thailand with a large amount; some are cheated and trafficked as sex slaves, and some marry foreigners by law and settle down. some, however, are less fortunate and might even return to thailand with hiv/aids, impacting heavily on their health. however, these are not all of the downsides to the job: out of the 75 respondents, 15 were violated by customers. one informant described her experience of being violated as well as her vulnerable status in commercial sex in singapore: i do not plan to do this [selling sex] in singapore longer than 2 weeks. i take a high risk going out with customers. i got beaten by a customer before. i was afraid to inform the police… it might be even worse if the police demand cash or sexual favors in order to turn a blind eye to my activities. i do not know singaporean law. life is so stressful here. it was very expensive to go to the hospital. i feel insecure and lonely. i’m just collecting money to build a small house for my parents in rural thailand. in my village, there are many seniors who have done a gold rush abroad before. i’m counting days to get back home. nowhere is better than home. (kwan, 21 years old, a transsexual sex worker who worked in patpong, currently a street sex worker in geylang, 15 may 2019) in the interviews, informants said they are likely to group together in workplaces and rented rooms that are well-known places for thai transsexual sex workers, mainly for reasons of feeling more secure. the respondents also make use of strong networks and connections to survive in the commercial sex industry in the social and cultural context of singapore. all informants noted that they received less pay than sex workers from other nationalities in the global market. they reported feeling insecure and lonely, especially when they got sick or had trouble abroad. they also found themselves operating outside of the protection of the labor laws, often in poor and exploitative working conditions, because of their location at ‘the margins of the margin.’ discussion and conclusion thailand has become the tourism hub of southeast asia, and tourism is one of the country’s significant strategies for development. the sex tourism industry is part of these developments (witchayanee, 2012). although sex workers are usually thought of as females who are forced to work in the sex industry, a growing number of those marginalized identities who have entered the sex trade voluntarily, began to tell their own, often very different, stories in the present paper. the growth of the sex industry in thailand is not only an accidental by-product of poverty. rather, the increase in sex work abroad results from a systematic strategy of economic development where globalization has been accompanied by tourism as the catalysts of growth. while thailand’s national tourism organization, as well as tourism destinations such as aseas 13(1) | 137 witchayanee ocha pattaya, actively promote the image of thailand as an lgbt paradise, discussions of sexuality in society are still often taboo, and specific laws referring to sexual orientation and gender identity do not exist (undp, 2014). the research found that thailand’s sex tourism has expanded and crossed boundaries because of the transnational mobility of thai transsexual sex workers around the globe. this is the result of various push factors: first, a downturn in the thai economy because of the military government and related decline of certain tourism source markets; second, the high cost of srs; third, the lack of legal recognition of transsexual identities in thailand; and, fourth, social stigma of sexual minorities in thailand. pull factors that attract thai transsexual sex workers to travel to singapore are: first, the opportunity for a higher income; second, the geographic proximity to and accessibility from thailand; and, third, the legalization of sex work in singapore in certain areas, which allows established, though informal, agencies/networks to arrange thai sex workers to work in singapore. however, there are also a range of constraints of working conditions in singapore, such as problems with immigration, the need for an agency to arrange personal contacts to work, and the threat of trafficking, as well as the risk of sexually transmitted diseases, exploitation, and abuse. this paper also showed that transsexuals face many problems, particularly with travelling. thereby, agencies and the mae tact system can play a significant role in funding srs, traveling fees, employment papers, bar arrangements, advertisement websites, mail orders, sex tour arrangements, and even security and protection. based on the fieldwork data, thai transsexuals usually travel to singapore through an agency-broker support, which allows them to be employed in bars for up to three months and protects them from being violated by customers. this paper found that most respondents had experience working abroad before traveling to singapore. many respondents have debts for srs, which is mainly funded by dutch agencies before they travel out of thailand. therefore, they are willing to take risks to perform sex work abroad to break away from oppressive economic and socio-political conditions in the country, and to search for financial gain, either for themselves or for the well-being of their families. street sex workers, who usually travel alone, take higher risks than sex workers who are employed by bars, as the former are isolated from support networks of bar owners and colleagues. however, it is costly to pay agency fees, which significantly reduce a sex worker’s income and force them to provide more services than they would otherwise deem necessary. on the face of it, it seems that the majority of thai transsexual worker choose to work abroad in search of other opportunities. nevertheless, this study finds that they are often tied into unwanted arrangements and debt. this kind of treatment has also been classified as “at least a type of forced labor and at worst could be classed as slavery, illegal under international law” (human rights watch world report, 1995, p. 213). despite their willingness to work as sex workers, the conditions to which they are subjected should not be ignored. most of the respondents still look for other opportunities in europe, especially countries that recognize sex work and legitimize any gender or sex transition by altering personal documentation, such as, for example, the netherlands. given these complexities, understanding the relationships between the flow of sex workers, sex work, and sex tourism under the context of ‘legal and voluntary work’ is still problematic. 138 | aseas 13(1) gold rush abroad race, gender, class, and sexuality intersect within the global sex industry in many ways and produce economic inequalities. differences in race and ethnicity are seen as ‘exotic,’ at least from the perspective of customers who at times demand ‘exotic’ sex workers, specifically given that most customers (who consume sex work) and most bar proprietors are reported to be westerners. this phenomenon goes beyond purely sexual desires. the marketplace is not driven simply by sex being bought and sold; 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(2000). rights and liberties of male homosexuals under the constitution law: analyzing from thai social problems. master thesis, faculty of law, chulalongkorn university. about the author witchayanee ocha is an assistant professor at the institute of diplomacy and international studies, school of politics, economics and globalization, rangsit university, thailand. she has completed her ph.d. in gender and development studies at the asian institute of techaseas 13(1) | 141 witchayanee ocha nology (ait). she has been researching gender, globalization, and international development paradigms. she has experience and skills in conducting qualitative research in the area of human rights movement with marginalized communities in asia and europe. ► contact: witchayanee.o@rsu.ac.th, witchayaneeocha@gmail.com acknowledgements this research paper is a part of the research project, “a development agenda for sexual minorities: the case studies of thailand and singapore” (2019). the author declares no conflict of interest. this article is developed further from the results of her research project during her participation as an “asian graduate student fellow” at asia research institute (ari), national university of singapore (nus), singapore, 2010. 142 | aseas 13(1) aseas 13(2) | 229 institutional prospects and challenges to transdisciplinary approach in the knowledge production system of vietnam: reflections on a north-south partnership project nguyen minh doia a ho chi minh city open university, vietnam ► doi, n. m. (2020). institutional prospects and challenges to transdisciplinary approach in the knowledge production system of vietnam: reflections on a north-south partnership project. austrian journal of southeast asian studies, 13(2), 229-242. drawing on neo-institutionalism in policy studies, this paper aims to demonstrate that transdisciplinarity is a new logic that could challenge the existing institutional logic of the knowledge production system in vietnam. this institutional interplay is examined by analyzing the institutional response, interactions, and choices of stakeholders participating in an eu erasmus+ capacity building project. the analysis shows that the transdisciplinarity concept can be used as a potential framework for the development path of the dominant logic characterized by the shift from a traditional statist to a market-oriented model for knowledge production. nevertheless, there are challenges like power relations in the interplay processes among actors who try to reproduce existing institutional logic and those who support transdisciplinary logic, as well as regarding relevant decision-makers to make institutional choices. the discussion shows that when applying transdisciplinarity, one should consider the motivation and barriers regarding state control, transdisciplinary readiness, hybrid models, funding, and experience. keywords: transdisciplinarity; institutional interplay; knowledge production system; vietnam  introduction defining knowledge is an ongoing debate: it predates plato’s introduction of his well-known conceptualisation “justified true belief ” and has given rise to various theories. it is an undeniable fact that knowledge has a strong influence on driving contemporary economic and social progress (unesco, 2014). simply stated, the term knowledge relates to “facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education” and “the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject” (lexico dictionaries, 2020). knowledge is generated by knowledge production systems, which can be seen as the wide, complex structure made of universities, public agencies, private bodies, international organizations, and civil society, which enables the determination, production, distribution, and evolution of all disciplines (king, bjarnason, edwards, gibbons, & ryan, 2003). as a subset of the social system, knowledge production systems are said to play an essential role in promoting public values, and reducing social inequality and aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 41 230 | aseas 13(2) institutional prospects and challenges to transdisciplinary approach environmental degradation, as well as being an essential pillar in closing the development gap between north and south on a global level (world bank, 1999). while the global north currently still dominates knowledge production, the countries of the global south are trying to reinvent their knowledge production systems to not only meet the challenges of development, but also to participate in global knowledge production and thus change global knowledge asymmetries (webster, 2016). hence, they are seeking and applying new frameworks to foster knowledge production for local purposes in the south and balancing the global knowledge divide are some of the leading concerns in the recent north-south partnership on knowledge co-production. such a new form has emerged in the debates on discipline and modes of knowledge production: transdisciplinarity. embedded in the key attributes of mode-2 knowledge production1 (gibbons & nowotny, 2001), “transdisciplinarity concerns that which is at once between the disciplines, across the different disciplines, and beyond all disciplines. its goal is the understanding of the present world, of which one of the imperatives is the unity of knowledge” (nicolescu, 1997). further, this paradigm focuses on equal partnerships between researchers and practitioners through constructive interplay and using the respective strong points of each other to produce knowledge with place-based and reality-oriented solutions (steiner & posch, 2006; see also bärnthaler, 2020, this issue). however, this framework is a product of scholars of the global north, where mode-2 knowledge production has been relatively institutionalized. therefore, the question must be asked, as will be done in this paper, whether there are typical challenges faced by applying transdisciplinarity in the global south, in this case vietnam, where the institutional logic of mode-2 is not dominant, and transdisciplinarity has not yet become a buzzword. after the doi moi2, the national knowledge production system in vietnam was also changed within the transformation from the statist (soviet) model towards the model of the socialist-oriented market economy. the shift has generated a dynamic institutional environment with distinctive institutional characteristics. the current institutions tend to maintain the prominent role of the state in knowledge production systems through policies, laws, regulations, funding, and governing the relevant organizations. they, however, simultaneously support individuals or organizations engaging in system transformations by selectively testing, accepting, or promoting institutional reforms toward international standards (minh & hjotrsø, 2015). this implies that institutional innovations at the macrolevel are embraced and legitimized by the state, which is, however, still practicing 1 in the mid-20th century, a new form of knowledge production began emerging. to distinguish this form from the traditional one, gibbons et al. (1994) denominate the new mode of knowledge production as “mode-2”, and named the classical way “mode-1”. they argued that the two modes have contrasting characteristics as follows: • mode-1: problems proposed and resolved by a specific community; disciplinary; homogeneity; hierarchical organisation; permanent; peer quality control; less socially accountable. • model-2: problems proposed and resolved in the context of application; transdisciplinarity; heterogeneity; heterarchical organisation; transitory; quality control by diverse actors; more socially accountable and reflexive. 2 đổi mới is the name given to reforms policy in vietnam in 1986 shifting from a centrally planned economy to a socialist-oriented market economy. aseas 13(2) | 231 nguyen minh doi institutional control, at least as long as institutional response and interaction do not conflict with state objectives. this dominant logic is strictly controlled in international cooperation activities, especially in north-south partnership projects regarding politically sensitive topics. because of the complex transition process toward market orientation, institutional change at the organizational level is characterized by internal contradictions. the tension between the tradition of strong mono-disciplines and ‘global’ pressure for interdisciplinary research leads to hybrid modes of knowledge production lacking academic freedom and knowledge fusion. the trend of organizational autonomy (mainly financial autonomy) directly affects scientific research resources and motivation. especially in the social sciences, the scientific quality and practical applicability of many studies cannot be guaranteed (bui, 2016). the institutional values affected by state control and traditional monodisciplines, which still dominate, are responsible for actors’ often narrow views, short-sightedness, and superficial thinking in research and teaching (tuy, 2019). in short, the existing institutional logic of knowledge production in vietnam is approaching isomorphism in the context of the globalisation of mode-2 but still carries the legacy of mode-1. as one of the most radical and progressive approaches in mode-2 knowledge production, transdisciplinarity marks a shift towards social problem solving by integrating different types of scientific and non-scientific knowledge. such ambitious collaboration reflects the need for relevant institutional logic to support in-depth participation and knowledge integration. transdisciplinarity logic at the individual level relates to the involved actors’ abilities, such as a shared understanding of different types of integrative research, collaborative skills, and a sociable attitude to form transdisciplinary teams. at the meso-level, organizations search for regulations and processes for transdisciplinary, collaborative learning, and studying processes. capacity building, projects and programs, and funding schemes are priorities for institutional development to further and implement transdisciplinarity. finally, governance at the system level needs to focus on socially robust knowledge development, and policies should develop collaborative governance processes. given the characteristics described, when transdisciplinarity is applied in vietnam, its institutional logic can generate tensions with the existing system. thus, this concern prompts the main objective of this article, which is to analyze the institutional logic interplay between transdisciplinarity as a framework of knowledge production requiring a new institutional logic and the dominant logic of vietnam’s knowledge production system. furthermore, i will discuss the institutional prospects and challenges of this new framework in the context of knowledge co-production in north-south partnerships. i first describe the neo-institutionalist perspective in policy studies, which provides an analytical framework to investigate the relationship between these two systems. after that, i provide details of my case study and qualitative methodology. next, i present the research results, showing the institutional response, interaction, and choice among relevant actors, organizations, and systems; then analyzing their power relations. lastly, i will discuss institutional prospects as well as challenges of transdisciplinarity in the context of vietnam and more generally in the global south. 232 | aseas 13(2) institutional prospects and challenges to transdisciplinary approach analytical framework in a knowledge production system, institutional interplays – as in the north-south partnership project – are common occurrences that can generate encounters between different forms of logic. these intersections can drive change in specific ways, including conflicts and clashes. therefore, understanding institutional interactions is critical to know how to identify, manage, and exploit tensions to achieve institutional goals. the neo-institutionalism perspective in policy studies, which focuses on institutional isomorphism and institutional logic change, can help (dimaggio & powell, 1983; friedland & alford, 1991; meyer & rowan, 1977; van vught, 1996). when a new logic is embedded into an existing institutional logic, it gives rise to responses within multiple levels of institutional structure. here, this research focuses on three levels of responses, including the individual, organizational, and system level. at an individual level, institutional change depends on cognition and beliefs (north, 1990). it occurs when the ideas or knowledge of one actor or organization influence the perceptions, preferences, and behaviors of another, primarily at an individual level (dimaggio & powell, 1983; meyer & rowan, 1977). this cognitive response is considered the first phase of the inter-institutional learning process. in a north-south partnership project focusing on knowledge production, the participants constantly update, give feedback, acquire, and adopt new information. this process then shapes or changes their perceptions, preferences, and behaviors. institutional response at an organizational level refers to specific rules, norms, and decisions, as well as strategies that organizations adopt to react when faced with an intersecting logic (oliver, 1991; pache & santos, 2010; underdal, 2004). the system level refers to coherent bundles among relevant systems (political, financial, systems, research, legal, business systems, etc.). institutional response at this level relates to law and policy that typically regulates macro situations and relationships in knowledge production (linder & peters, 1990; van vught, 1996). the existence of tensions between the new and existing institutional logic can activate interaction and change among individuals and organizations in the areas of structure, process, and governance. for example, consider two ways of fostering institutional interaction in a knowledge production system through a north-south partnership project. one way is for members of one organization to agree upon a relevant obligation for the project from the other organization's perspective through a partnership commitment regarding preferences for the desired changes. the other way refers explicitly to the bottom-up approach to devise a solution to challenges an organisation faces, such as capacity building, policy consultation, and co-creation (oberthür & gehring, 2006). in both cases, the values generated can be accepted or refused though the institutional choice process. the interactions within the encounter between existing and new logics can generate and be divided into two main institutional choices: change or resistance (zietsma & lawrence, 2010, p. 190). this process reflects power relations among individuals and organizations through their level of impact on choosing the dominant logic. concerning such relationships within power and institutions, lawrence (2008) introduced a model of institutional politics to understand the interaction characterized by power relations among agents in the process of institutional transformation. aseas 13(2) | 233 nguyen minh doi first, institutional control describes the impact of the dominant institutional logic on individual and organizational actors. second, the institutional agency is the work that individual and collective actors perform to create, transform, and disrupt institutions. finally, institutional resistance is the work of decision-making actors to impose limits on both institutional agency and institutional control. this model shows that more powerful actors have advantages such as ideology, authority, legitimacy, and resources to foster their logic in negotiations among actors. moreover, power relations also reveal the capacity of actors to react and act to frame and serve their interests (fligstein, 1997; dimaggio & powell, 1983; scott et al., 2000). based on this process, i developed an analytical framework to address the concerns of institutional interplay in a knowledge production system. accordingly, the framework requires proof of institutional responses at different levels, which leads to interaction among actors, and then can later be a fundamental driving force of institutional choice (gehring & oberthür, 2004; seo & creed, 2002). this framework may also be used to explain power relations within the institutional interplay process. figure 1. analytical framework for studying institutional logic interplay between existing institutional logic and new logic (own elaboration). 234 | aseas 13(2) institutional prospects and challenges to transdisciplinary approach case and methods the study is based on the examination of the reflections of the knots project (fostering multi-lateral knowledge networks of transdisciplinary studies to tackle global challenges) (see dannecker, 2020, this issue). from the idea of training and applying transdisciplinarity, the knots project represented an encounter between transdisciplinarity and existing institutional logic of knowledge production in vietnam. accordingly, the dominant institutional logic is affected by the pressures of transdisciplinarity as a new logic. more precisely, this interplay relates to institutional responses, interactions, and choices among actors from three partners in the project, including one university and two research institutes, as well as related agencies (e.g., ministry of education and training, local government). thus, applying the analytical framework of analysis to this case helps to identify institutional tensions and challenges among various stakeholders in the project, and reveals power relations within the process. in the following, a qualitative method was chosen to collect empirical data to analyze the institutional interplays among stakeholders through knots. the focus will be on the reflection of my vietnamese colleagues participating in the project, and my observations as a project trainee in the first year. the data is based on participant observation and semi-structured interviews with 27 vietnamese participants in different roles (table 1), as well as on the literature produced in the frame of the project. data analysis was guided by conceptual themes of the existing institutional logic of the knowledge production in vietnam and transdisciplinarity logic. all transcripts were coded under three themes: institutional response, institutional interaction, and institutional choices. when all the texts had been coded, the actors identified under the first two themes were further grouped into institutional control, institutional agency, and institutional resistance. table 1. list of interviews conducted with vietnamese colleagues related to the project. the anonymized code for quotes is composed by their organizations and roles in the project. aseas 13(2) | 235 nguyen minh doi institutional response caused by institutional pressure of transdisciplinarity the analysis of the interviews revealed that for all vietnamese participants transdisciplinarity is more than a new research methodology. they all stated that through the different knots activities, their awareness of academic and practical knowledge integration, equal participation between different actors, as well as the knowledge production issues vietnam is facing, increased. before participation, most of them were not experts in participatory studies and tended to focus on mono-disciplinary studies. through the interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary experiences in the project, they changed in their problem-solving approach toward a multi-dimensional and practice-based approach. they stated further that transdisciplinary negotiations, which stress and internalize practical knowledge from many different stakeholders, are essential not only for the development of communities but can also amplify their insights by increasing “up to date” knowledge and skills. nevertheless, the level of the perception of transdisciplinarity is different for each person because of their experiences through knots. the more advanced participation in the project (staff, trainers, and trainees who joined more than one summer school and field trip), the more improved their degree of understanding and ability to share the meaning of transdisciplinarity across divergent perspectives. one insight into the different perceptions of transdisciplinarity of participants regarding their point of view is that transdisciplinarity can play an important role in reducing knowledge inequality between north and south. the staff and trainers agreed that this framework could provide a new scheme of knowledge production, which can boost the balance of global knowledge. instead of applying dominant theories of scholars from the global north, they see in the framework an opportunity to contribute their knowledge, debate, and verify transdisciplinarity based on their practice and experiences as scholars from the global south. however, most graduate trainees said that “i usually stayed quiet during group discussions because i am not fluent in the english language and feel reluctant to argue with professors and dignitary” (te1d4). furthermore, they agreed that they were passive in group discussions with professors and students from europe and thailand because of the limitations of their theoretical background, research methods, and foreign language ability (dannecker, 2020; seemann & antweiler, 2020, this issue). they also believed that unless they could build their extensive capacity, it would be impossible to contribute their knowledge equitably to transdisciplinary discussions and research with the partners from the global north. hence, this shows that the level of perception change is shaped by an individual’s current cognitive load capacity. the noteworthy point is that, after the project, participants in vietnam, especially young scholars, stated that they were still not ready to apply transdisciplinarity in research because they need at least a decade to gain more comprehensive transdisciplinary abilities such as relevant knowledge, skills, and attitudes. in other words, there is a lack of “transdisciplinary readiness” in the sense that they lack experience and that interand transdisciplinary knowledge has not generated in vietnam so far. the most challenging point in transdisciplinary research is, from their point of view, to deal with complex relationships and networks involving academic actors as well as 236 | aseas 13(2) institutional prospects and challenges to transdisciplinary approach non-academic stakeholders. to manage this collaboration, researchers need decades of experience and more professional skills. furthermore, transdisciplinary researchers face resource problems, as funding in vietnam comes along with complex rules, procedures, and short time frames. as one project staff said: “in vietnam, applying this approach takes too much time and effort for administrative procedures, is concerned about sensitive political topics and involves foreign participation” (sc1). in other words, the current policies and management activities for scientific research in vietnam are not supportive to an interdisciplinary approach. “at this moment, applying transdisciplinarity can bring a lot of risks to my new project because there is no precedent and relevant regulations” (trd2). consequently, young participants prefer alternatives based on their relative utility rather than doing transdisciplinary research at this time. while the participants changed their perceptions of transdisciplinarity through the projects, the responses of three relevant representatives of the organizations participating in the project were indifferent. there was no clear reaction in terms of strategies, structures, or resources at the organizational level during the knots project. only one out of three organizations showed a specific interest in the transdisciplinary framework, by proposing, for example, the application of transdisciplinary framework through the design of a subject in a bachelor program because of the multidisciplinary nature of the social sciences. during the project, the response at the system level was also negligible. the governing bodies (at the head of the research and education system) of these three organizations simply played their roles as licensors. a ministerial-level leader, who was in charge of the project and used to be the leader of a participating organization at the beginning, appreciated the benefits of transdisciplinarity but did not direct any specific activities that would suggest spreading this framework in the knowledge production system after the project. he explained, “the idea of interdisciplinary is very good, but to do so, we need time and route” (la1). institutional intersection based on quality of institutional responses in vietnam, there are five main types of stakeholders involved in the knowledge production system: the state; society; international agencies; the market; and research institutions, which includes educational organizations. the dominant logic through all levels is the state’s perspective, which is policy driven and implemented through funding. this has resulted in inequality and deficiencies in knowledge production through “low quality and political priorities” (minh & hjotrsø, 2015) concerning research and projects. among stakeholders, a process toward mode-2 knowledge production is emerging, and the state is generating initiatives to slowly socialize knowledge production toward enhancing the autonomy of public sectors and the privatization of research and education fields. therefore, the state accepted knots as a part of the integration process to promote the quality of research and education, capacity building, and governance practices. applying transdisciplinarity is quite challenging in such a structure. the project participants, accordingly, played an important role in the interaction among different types in all institutional logic. aseas 13(2) | 237 nguyen minh doi they showed that a strong institutional response to transdisciplinarity had challenged the traditional perspectives of others, especially on participatory research through training, conferences, media, and their networks. however, these meager efforts involving a single project cannot change cognitive and institutional structures, which are strongly influenced by the dominant institutional logic that still dominates concerning state control and fragmentation of knowledge. based on the relevance of transdisciplinarity in the process of research and learning through the project, there are two main types of stakeholder interactions. one is open to change, and the other is conservative. the participants and faculties, which many knots project members joined, were in favor of a policy of supporting transdisciplinarity in teaching and research, despite, as the empirical data shows, being doubtful about implementation capacity. however, the majority of their colleagues from other faculties were more conservative because they were afraid that this new framework was too strict and the requirements were too ambitious. in training sessions at the organizational level, there were controversial discussions over this approach. some researchers feared that this approach is a “utopian” framework because it might become a new bureaucratic process rather than an effective framework in the context of vietnam. it was also expressed by a lecturer who has extensive experience in participatory research: “who will guarantee the quality of participation from non-academic actors in transdisciplinary research? while many kinds of participant research, funded by the government, are reflected that is insufficient in-depth participant and only as a formality” (trc1). expressing the same point of view, the trainees referred to the experiences that, during their previous research, they had observed during field visits in which state-actor stakeholders (considered as the key actors in their research problems) tended toward formalism in cooperation rather than sharing knowledge and practical experience. the institutional interaction at the system level clarifies the contrast between these two kinds of logic. the existing, institutional logic provides meaning mainly to the knowledge production systems in the public sphere. it lacks “rules of game” for participation and collaboration from other systems, such as the private and international sphere, which is crucial for transdisciplinary logic. while the project participants who are at the “grassroots level” of the academic research system in vietnam have responded positively to transdisciplinarity, other systems are ambivalent. although “wicked problems” require a broader holistic approach, in vietnam, they are in fact “controlled” by the state. the participants of knots reflected thus that local government actors were skeptical about their roles in a transdisciplinary research because it often involved solving their own mistakes or shortcomings. additionally, there is a lack of space for civil society and private sector actors. they still have not a good position to collaborate with the state in tackling wicked problems. a lecturer who has extensive experience in participatory research also expressed that: “a comprehensive participation of all parties in the spirit of this approach is difficult to implement in vietnam because it is difficult to find a neutral voice with the state” (te2d1). thus, there is a governance challenge relating to the passive, institutional interaction of the system level regarding the complex top-down power structure between the political system in vietnam, rather than collaborative governance. 238 | aseas 13(2) institutional prospects and challenges to transdisciplinary approach institutional choice as a result of asymmetries in power and interest conflict the internal components of a knowledge production system can create the institutional responses at various levels according to the autonomy and ability of actors to accept or resist transdisciplinarity logic, as well as to frame and serve their interests. this process can be examined through power relations regarding institutional control, institutional agency, and institutional resistance. institutional changes toward mode-2 knowledge production in vietnam are explicitly promoted for both ideological and more pragmatic reasons by different actors. in the project, vietnamese participants, as well as institutional agencies, took advantage of the project to influence others regarding transdisciplinarity. in other words, institutional agencies fostering transdisciplinarity are comprised of individuals and organizations such as leaders of faculties, departments, universities, institutions, ministries, and local governments, even professors, researchers, or staff, who have enough power and influence to decide to use transdisciplinarity as a framework for their organizations, projects, research, and teaching activities. during the project, the institutional interaction produced “individual and collective change” (emirbayer & mische, 1998, p. 1011) in perception for relevant actors regarding a transdisciplinary approach. however, these agencies and actors lack capacities, as well as autonomy, to change institutional logic and habits or to pursue prospects in this framework. additionally, the goal of the project focused explicitly on building and developing capacities in research on and teaching of transdisciplinarity only for academic actors, instead of building up comprehensive capacity for both academic and non-academic actors who also influence the implementation and the success of “transdisciplinary readiness”. when this capacity is not sufficient to produce quality responses through research products, the agencies applying this framework cannot expect support from others who follow the traditional logic, and instead face strong resistance. institutional control is found in the responses and interactions of existing institutions to transdisciplinarity as a new logic. this relationship is characterized by the state’s dominance in laws, policies, and state funding in the field of knowledge production. although participants changed considerably concerning transdisciplinary awareness, as the interviews revealed, their behavior is still influenced by the state research systems and traditional practices. analysis of the reaction process and interaction of knots participants shows that institutional control still strongly dominates the knowledge production system in vietnam. this institutional control is embedded in the political and cultural environment characterized by the transition from a subsidized, centralized model to a market-oriented model. such an environment does not yet allow a dynamic civil society and diversity of relevant actors when it comes to solving complex, practical problems. this fact does not favor a transdisciplinary approach because the centralisation of state power in a complex hybrid model limits the freedom of dialogue, as well as autonomy, in the process of participation of relevant individuals and organizations, which is an important dimension in transdisciplinary research. under the pressure of the encounter between institutional agencies who support transdisciplinary logic and institutional controls that want to defend the prevailing aseas 13(2) | 239 nguyen minh doi institutional logic, leaders of universities, institutions, and the government must make their decision. the practices of these decision makers are based on two main institutional choices: reproduction of or change to existing institutional logic. however, because the knots was only a trigger event for transdisciplinary logic, there is no decision yet regarding the institutional choice. the knowledge production system is still organized by the dominant institutional logic, even though two or more institutional logics may exist at the same time. in the institutional pressure environment generated by knots, decision makers face contradictions caused by tensions between different groups or actors. they minimize conflict and clashes through transitional solutions such as experiments and pilots. discussion on prospects and challenges of applying transdisciplinarity logic in vietnam through knots, the transdisciplinary approach and its logics created a drive to change, but also put pressure on the dominant logic of the knowledge production system in vietnam. examining the institutional interplay between two kinds of logic is very important in assessing the potential and challenges of institutionalizing this approach by its rules and norms in the context of vietnam. the first issue is the existing asymmetrical power relations that favor the interests of the state in the knowledge production system of vietnam. state control has kept the institutional autonomy of academia somewhat limited. also, its existing hegemony in civil society can lead to politicization and failures of transdisciplinarity by a lack of research motivation, the domination of public bodies, and insufficient indepth participation in different phases. in the face of this ideological problem, the transdisciplinary approach in vietnam can be implemented slowly through certain topics that can be recognized by the state. moreover, this approach should implement international collaboration, such as north-south partnership projects that can increase the tension on institutional control and promote more progressive institutional targets towards mode-2 knowledge production. the second issue is the capacity of actors and organizations to reach “transdisciplinary readiness”. the reflection from knots shows that the capacity gap among actors is one of the significant challenges to transdisciplinary knowledge production. the capacities needed a general knowledge of research issues, research methods, collaborative ability, and the issue of language competence. also, efforts must be made to improve regular and cumulative knowledge acquisition of stakeholders, not only in the academic sector but also in the practical area. accumulating human resource capacity for scientific research requires a high application of innovation and internationalization in higher education related to the desired training programs and methods. third, the lack of institutional background to the diffusion of mode-2 knowledge production is often brought up as a crucial barrier to institutionalize transdisciplinarity logic. a transdisciplinary approach is not easily implemented within an institutional environment characterized by the shift from traditional statist to a market-oriented model for knowledge production. there will be institutional decoupling when applying transdisciplinarity in such a system. on the one hand, the decoupling 240 | aseas 13(2) institutional prospects and challenges to transdisciplinary approach effect can motivate and help to standardize slowly the process of applying a transdisciplinary approach. on the other hand, if the decoupling is not well controlled, it will lead to the appearance that this framework is being used as a fashionable concept to acquire financial and publishing benefits rather than focusing on its real values. the consequences of this ethical breach will lead to another challenge for the development of the knowledge production system: hybrid models that are not radical enough. the last issue is related to financial resources and experience in transdisciplinary projects. the story of knots shows that institutional agencies cannot interact intensively when there is currently no quality cross-industry project in vietnam. this might be convincing evidence that, when a lack of funding, specifically for transdisciplinary projects, occurs, the system cannot be penetrated. in the immediate future, therefore, there should be investments in pilot projects applying transdisciplinarity to motivate researchers, and then the replication of successful models. furthermore, the sources of funding should be diversified and minimize one-sided funding that can lead to unbalanced problem ownership. conclusion based on a neo-institutionalism perspective for understanding the interplay between different institutional logics, this paper demonstrated that transdisciplinarity as a new logic through the knots project could challenge the dominant logic of the knowledge production system in vietnam, and, at a certain level, it is also a promising framework for research, teaching, and further north-south partnership projects in the vietnamese context. as the results present, while the existing institutional logic in knowledge production is characterized by a shift from the traditional statist to a market-oriented model, transdisciplinarity is, to a certain extent, consistent with the development path of the dominant logic toward decentralization and mode-2 knowledge aiming to promote social progress. however, there is still a gap regarding capacity, resources, and the issues of power relations hindering the adoption of this new logic of transdisciplinarity. from the findings, this paper discusses some problems that need to be kept in mind when promoting transdisciplinarity logic in knowledge co-production in vietnam.  references bärnthaler, r. 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(2002). institutional contradictions, praxis, and institutional change: a dialectical perspective. academy of management review, 27(2), 222-247. steiner, g. and posch, a. (2006). higher education for sustainability by means of transdisciplinary case studies: an innovative approach for solving complex, real-world problems. journal of cleaner production, 14(9), 877-890. tuy, h. (2019). xin được nói thẳng (to be honest). hanoi: the gioi publishers. underdal, a. (2004). methodological challenges in the study of regime effectiveness. in a. underdal & o. r. young (eds.), regime consequences: methodological challenges and research strategies (pp. 247-279). dordrecht: springer. 242 | aseas 13(2) institutional prospects and challenges to transdisciplinary approach unesco. (2014). unesco education strategy 2014–2021. retrieved from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/ images/0023/002312/231288e.pdf van vught, f. a. (1996). isomorphism in higher education? towards a theory of differentiation and diversity in higher education systems. in v. l. meek, l. goedegebuure, kivinen, o. & r. rinne (eds.), the mockers and mocked: comparative perspectives on differentiation, convergence and diversity in higher education (pp. 42-58). bingley, uk: emerald. webster, e. (2016). building a sociology for the global south: assessing a south-south research network. in keim, w., çelik, e., & wöhrer, v. global knowledge production in the social sciences: made in circulation (pp. 153-172). london; new york: routledge. world bank. (1999). knowledge for development: world development report 1998–99. washington, dc: the world bank and oxford university press. zietsma, c., & lawrence, t. b. (2010). institutional work in the transformation of an organizational field: the interplay of boundary work and practice work. administrative science quarterly, 55(2), 189-221. about the author nguyen minh doi is a lecturer at the faculty of economics and public management, ho chi minh city open university, vietnam. his research interests include public policy, local governance, and development. ► contact: doi.nm@ou.edu.vn aseas 13(2) | 193 conflict, controversy, compromise, and compression: the pragmatics of transdisciplinary (development) projects richard bärnthalera a vienna university of economics and business, austria ► bärnthaler, r. (2020). conflict, controversy, compromise, and compression: the pragmatics of transdisciplinary (development) projects. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 13(2). 193-210. drawing upon qualitative interviews, this article narrates some central controversies and conflicts that scholars in the field of ‘development’ face in their daily work. based on how such conflicts and controversies have been reconstructed, i place them in a discourse on transdisciplinarity, drawing into question the claims to authority and novelty around the term ‘transdisciplinarity’ that western institutions have attributed to themselves in recent years. i also address the question of collaboration: how can transdisciplinary projects deal with the fact of pluralism, on the one hand, and the necessity to work towards shared problem definitions, and strategies, on the other hand? in this context, i make a case against transdisciplinarity’s oft-cited conceptions of harmony, comprehensiveness, totality, and unity; and a case for conflict, compromise, partiality, and joint contextual strategies. the “art of deliberation” thus replaces the notion of transcendence as a central competence of transdisciplinary scholars. keywords: development research; disagreement; pluralism; situated judgments; transdisciplinarity  introduction if there is one experience that transdisciplinary scholars share, it is the fact of heterogeneity. this was certainly true for the project fostering multi-lateral knowledge networks of transdisciplinary studies to tackle global challenges (knots), upon which this special issue reflects. evolving around issues of transdisciplinary research and teaching, knots was inter alia characterized by a diversity of actors (both extra-scientific and scientific, the latter occupying different academic positions and career stages), disciplines, institutions, and regional contexts. a shared concern, nevertheless, evolved around the ambiguous notion of ‘development’. the resulting problématique is, thus, not difficult to locate: facing the fact of pluralism in transdisciplinary projects, how is collaboration possible in practice? how to jointly define a shared problem or goal and produce practically relevant knowledge and common strategies in the face of a diversity of (epistemic) cultures and life-worlds? to answer these questions, i empirically reconstructed situations of disagreement to learn about the kind of deliberations made and decisions taken in such situations. i have been personally involved in knots from the outset, in both aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 38 194 | aseas 13(2) conflict, controversy, compromise, and compression scientific (e.g., lectures, fieldtrips, and the development of a teaching manual) and administrative (e.g., program planning, finances, and documentation) capacities. my main role has been in the area of project management. the arguments in this article are certainly influenced by these experiences. the data that i draw upon explicitly, however, derive from individual, face-to-face, semi-structured guideline-based expert interviews (oral), which i conducted over two weeks in 2018 during a summer school in chiang mai (thailand), and subsequently explored through qualitative content analysis (cf., gläser & laudel, 2010). seven (senior) academic members of knots were interviewed (three from universities in thailand and four from universities in austria and germany). their disciplinary backgrounds ranged from sociology, ethnology, anthropology, and political science to global history. before conducting the interviews, i asked the interviewees to imagine, describe, and prepare a familiar situation reflecting their everyday practice as researchers. this situation concerned a scientific disagreement with a colleague within the interviewee’s field of expertise, whom the interviewee broadly considered as well-informed and professional as themselves. such simulations are particularly useful when an interview’s central questions prove difficult to answer directly or explicitly (patton, 1990, 2002). to guarantee anonymity, i use abbreviations for each interviewee: fe/ma refers to sex, auge/th refers to the region (austria/germany or thailand), and the numbers refer to the sequence of interviews taken.1 this article proceeds as follows: based on the interviews, i will (1) sketch out central controversies and conflicts that scholars working in the field of development face in their daily work. subsequently, i will discuss (2) how the specific reconstructions of these conflicts and controversies can be placed in the discourse on transdisciplinarity. at this stage, the definition of transdisciplinarity is deliberately kept minimalist2 and evolves around three practices, which can take different forms: collaboration among different scientific disciplines, the involvement of extra-scientific actors, and the production of socially relevant outcomes.3 finally, i will (3) turn to the question of collaboration: what preconditions enable collaborative work? how can transdisciplinary projects deal with the fact of pluralism on the one hand, and the necessity to work towards shared problem definitions and strategies on the other hand? vignettes of central conflicts and controversies in development research during the interviews, five major topics of disagreement were reconstructed. the first concerns the fact that most development research evolves in the global north, 1 i would like to emphasize that this article is about transdisciplinary development projects (its conflicts, controversies, and forms of collaboration). this, however, does not imply that my study is (or even should be) itself transdisciplinary. thus, neither the interviewees nor extra-scientific actors were involved in the analysis. 2 this is also to accommodate the fact that, within knots, we were “neither able to develop a shared definition nor a shared understanding of transdisciplinarity” (knots, 2019) within the three-year project lifespan. hence, while some problems discussed in this article will be unique to scholars engaged in transdisciplinary development projects, others will relate also to those engaged in multior inter-disciplinary studies. the analysis of these commonalities and differences, however, is beyond the present scope. 3 scholars who, to my understanding, embrace these three practices in the context of transdisciplinarity are kotter & balsiger (1999), scholz & marks (2001), and lawrence (2004). aseas 13(2) | 195 richard bärnthaler and whether (or under which circumstances) it is possible for scholars to conduct research under these conditions. a european female researcher summarized the major discussion points aptly: what does it mean that we as western researchers have the opportunity to go to [the global south] and do our research? and what does it actually mean that it’s hardly ever the other way around? . . . that’s a fundamental question: as in how far are we allowed to do that? . . . research has always to do with interpretation. and how much more difficult, or how much more impossible perhaps, is such an interpretation if one faces a different cultural context, if one faces a language problem? how can interpretation actually happen at all? how many steps are you actually removed from what was told? (feauge1) a researcher from a thai university continued in a similar vein: often people don’t see the legacy of what’s happened before in a certain place, . . . the importance of historical and locational specificities. . . . i just don’t feel that one can compare one place with another. . . . and if you want to engage in a place, then knowing that place very well is very important. you can’t generalize. (math4) the second topic addressed the usefulness and appropriateness of practical (e.g., political) interventions in the subject-matter of one’s research. while some interviewees (all the thai scholars, and one from austria/germany) identified themselves explicitly as academic activists, others expressed skepticism in this regard: we clearly have different positions [in the department]. for example, my colleague has a leftist and at the same time a strong activist position. . . . and i think that too activist positions are problematic, because they conflict with the scientific attitudes that try to be rather detached, not from social reality, but from the impact on social reality, from politics. (maauge6) the third thread of disagreements epitomized the widely discussed trend from structural theories towards more actor-oriented approaches4 in development research (cf., schuurman, 2007). to be more precise, the interviews did not suggest a significant decrease of structural theories (which does not mean that this is in fact not the case), but instead expressed the conflict between structureand agency-oriented approaches: many theorists believe that you depend upon what the structural conditions force upon you. but for me, agency has the power to change the phenomena around you. (feth3) 4 the debate over the primacy of structural or agency-oriented theories concerns the question whether human behavior can be better explained via socialization (i.e., social structures as recurrent patterned arrangements that influence, or in radical understandings, determine, human behavior) or autonomy (i.e., free agents acting according to free choice). 196 | aseas 13(2) conflict, controversy, compromise, and compression well, some approaches focus more on structural conditions . . . . you have regulation theorists. you have marxist critical approaches . . . . and then you have approaches that are much more actor-centered. . . . and it is precisely this connection – to look at this structural level, but also, so to speak, informed by the actor level – that would be something that is complementary to think about. and this is done too little. (feauge1) a fourth point of discussion was to what extent different disciplines can work together and incorporate insights from others. the increasing dominance of neoclassical economic thinking in development research (bernstein, 2007) was a predominant concern. several interviewees (feauge2, feth3, math4) stressed that neoclassical economics has occupied such a hegemonic position in the field that it has become difficult to enter into processes of collaboration with its proponents. lastly, many interviewees mentioned communication difficulties with regard to certain basic definitions and concepts – such as the body, the self, structure, agency, power, culture, society, democracy, and even water and electricity – due to the broad variety of disciplinary influences in development research: for example, a sociologically-oriented . . . and an ethno-oriented researcher, two subjects that are very close to each other. even those have problems if they talk about basic concepts such as society and culture, the basic concepts of their subjects. if i talk about culture, sociologists mean something significantly different than ethnologists. . . . i’ll give you an example. i, as an ethnologist, focus, in terms of methods and theories, rather on small sections of human reality – cultural groups, networks, social fields – that can be explored with experiential research. while sociological approaches are rather oriented towards mesoor macro-scales. they thus make statements about, say, the society of thailand or the society of indonesia, what most ethnologists would avoid like the devil would avoid holy water. (maauge6) it is often difficult to come to an understanding of the definition of what a body actually is. . . . there are, for example, post-structuralist and feminist approaches. and on the other side, there are phenomenological approaches. it already becomes obvious in the terminology. does one speak of the social body and of the leib, that is the subjective body? or does one rather take a phenomenological approach, which proceeds very strongly from the subject? here, body means the objective material body and leib is, so to speak, the inside feel. so, you work with different body definitions and with the same word you often mean completely different levels. (feauge1) my colleague has a platonic understanding of democracy. . . . my starting point is the enlightenment, with the social contract. therefore, we have a very different basic paradigm and mean different things when referring to democracy. (feth3) for instance, i worked with people from electrical or civil engineering on a project concerning the construction of a dam. they count how many megawatts the dam produces, that is, they say, if the dam is operated appropriately, you will get that and that much electricity. so, for them water is a commodity and aseas 13(2) | 197 richard bärnthaler electricity is a commodity. that led to a dispute, because if local people in the area lose their jobs or have to change their occupation because of the dam’s construction you cannot just think in price-value ratios, but rather need a nonprice thinking. (feth3) what further complicates these semantic complexities is the variety of different regional contexts in which certain concepts are uttered. this is closely related to the first topic of discussion – the fact that most development research evolves in the global north. as rigg (2002) highlights, terms likes “participation”, “sustainability”, “development”, or “empowerment” are: often coined in the west, translated into local languages, and then transposed onto the local developmental landscape. western researchers (probably not conversant in the local language) may then find such terms being translated back to them as if they have one and the same meaning in each language. (p. 46) in other words, the same signifier might not point to the same signified, and the same term can have different context-specific meanings as well as related practices (cf., stigendal & novy, 2018). it hardly needs mentioning that any list of conflicts is non-exhaustive. the controversies described should rather be understood as vignettes – short impressionistic scenes that provide a trenchant impression of the atmosphere in development research – an atmosphere that is pluralistic on several levels. to mention a few, the vignettes identified through the interviews suggest a pluralism on the level of disciplines, regional and cultural contexts, methods (e.g., microversus macro-approaches), explanations (e.g., structure versus agency), ethics (e.g., in how far can scholars conduct research in the global south), semantics (e.g., what is development, society, or the body), theories (e.g., neoclassical economics versus heterodox approaches), and aims (e.g., instrumental research versus a more critical attitude towards interventionism). although these issues of contestation reflect well the literature on the major characteristics of development research, its conflicts, controversies, and developments (cf., bernstein, 2007; harriss, 2002; kothari, 2016, 2007; molteberg & bergstrøm, 2000; olukoshi & nyamnjoh, 2007; rahnema, 1997; schuurman, 2007; sumner & tribe, 2008), the interviews revealed striking differences in the framings of situations of disagreement. this aspect is widely neglected in the literature and will be discussed in the following section. transdisciplinarity: a western venture? it is interesting to note that, unlike my interviews with scholars in austria and germany, when speaking with scholars from thailand, i found it hard to reconstruct a situation of disagreement between scientific colleagues. while the western interviewees drew a picture that seemed capable of demarcating the term ‘science’ (the signifier) – and, thus, the category of ‘scientific colleague’ – rather unambiguously from extra-scientific practices (the signified), the interviews with thai scholars expressed a more ambiguous interpretation of what constitutes ‘scientific’ (and, thus, 198 | aseas 13(2) conflict, controversy, compromise, and compression what constitutes a scientific colleague). compare these interview excerpts from a german and a thai scholar: i think we need to agree on what scientific principles are, and that they are different from principles of religion or other meaning-seeking systems. science is not concerned with the search for meaning, but with intersubjective knowledge. i think we would need to accept that science does not necessarily have to make you happy, that is not its purpose. science concerns intersubjective knowledge, which is a specific human activity that is not only western, but universal. . . . i increasingly see an attitude in our universities such as: science is a system of knowledge on the same level as others. any wisdom is allegedly just as relevant. . . . those are dangerous tendencies. (maauge6) i have a problem of understanding. what do you mean by scientific? well, i give you an example and then you can treat it as scientific or not. (math7) the examples that followed from thai scholars were primarily reconstructed controversies with policy-makers or other extra-scientific actors.5 hence, the interviews suggest that the constitution of the ‘other’ (the non-scientific) – which is the precondition for the constitution of a ‘self ’ (the “scientific self ”, cf., mouffe, 2005) – has a less clear-cut and rigorous meaning in thailand compared to austria/germany. in other words, both the scientific self and the other are more permeable. different socio-political as well as institutional contexts in austria/germany and thailand provide an explanation for this marked semantic difference.6 i will address these aspects in the remainder of this section. socio-politically, the interviewees from thailand frequently highlighted the entanglement of their academic lives with the prevailing national politics.7 all of them explicitly mentioned what none of their western peers did8 – that their academic careers cannot be understood without considering political developments in their country: i might say that i am not one who intended to be an academic, but, because of the political situation in thailand, being an academic is quite the best for me, because . . . it gives me enough freedom, academic freedom. . . . i think being an academic is a kind of luxury because people tend to listen to you. so, being an academic means that you can talk. . . . and since my personal background is 5 those controversies dealt particularly with economics-oriented approaches (which were considered to be in line with national development agendas that privilege technological-fix solutions) versus other, often local, concerns of development, well-being, and livelihood. 6 my mode of reasoning here is abductive, that is, inferring the best explanation. the rather small number of interviews conducted, however, only allows me to suggest a probable explanation. further research would be needed in order to make claims that are more robust in this regard. 7 an anonymous reviewer suggested the importance of adding that this entanglement is prevalent in southeast east asia and not specific to thailand only. i would like to add that, while this might be true, it is not backed by my empirical data, as i only conducted interviews with thai scholars. i must therefore refrain from such a generalization – not out of skepticism, but from empirical rigor. 8 hence, the comparison here refers to what has been said and what has not been said (which, by definition, cannot be quoted from interview excerpts). aseas 13(2) | 199 richard bärnthaler involved with social activities and political activism, i intend to give more voice to those who are not heard. (feth3) i see myself as an academic activist. a kind of hybrid. and this identity has been shaped by the social reality when i came back from my training in the united states. we had to work with local people. in that time, there was a peasant movement, also with ngos involved. so, we served as advisers, sometimes trainers for them. (math7) additionally, the local nature of global challenges (such as social inequality, climate change, and so forth) implies that central societal and environmental problems are “still much more burning here”, as a scholar from thailand (math7) remarked. he continued: and here i should add that it is unlike the united states or europe. . . . in developing countries like thailand, it is very difficult to separate between theoretical and applied research. we cannot just study the culture, study social relations, and then just write our articles, papers, and go to conferences. but we also have to use anthropological understanding to help us to better understand the transformation that takes place among the underprivileged people here. (math7) take, in contrast, the remarks of a european interlocutor: we will conduct a workshop soon, where we specifically invite a very small group of academics who come from different schools: from actor-network theory, . . . post-structuralism, phenomenology, feminist approaches. we will provide them with specific questions beforehand to discuss different conceptual understandings and how they overlap. this will be very exciting. (feauge1) this is by no means to suggest that western scholars are indifferent about their impact on major societal challenges. nor does this suggest that there are no burning issues in the western hemisphere. the central point that i seek to make here is that diverging socio-political contexts affect academic lives, meanings, and practices – and thus the constitution of the ‘scientific self ’ (i understand practices as embodied or incorporated; reckwitz, 2002). institutional differences in academic organizations in austria/germany and thailand respectively add to this argument. they similarly affect one’s self-understanding as a scientist and related practices. the literature as well as the interviews point towards different academic practices, and different ways of doing scientific work, in the global north and global south. with regard to the global north, several studies (felt, igelsböck, schikowitz, & völker, 2013; schmidt & pröpper; 2017; spangenberg, 2011) observe that the existing reward systems in science are actually hostile to transdisciplinary research, since the pressure to ‘publish or perish’ encourages scholars to focus on their own disciplinary competences and thus to experience transdisciplinary research as an extra burden. furthermore, as mccargo (2016, p. 111) recognizes, while “in western societies, mutual respect among academics is derived largely from reputation based upon published work”, which is constantly being 200 | aseas 13(2) conflict, controversy, compromise, and compression reassessed, “in most southeast asian societies, this is simply not the case”. status (e.g., having attended a well-known university abroad, or being known to a wider audience beyond academic circles) rather than output “remains the core measure of achievement in most southeast asian contexts” (p. 111). hence, there are differences and variations between academic cultures – what cribb (2016) termed “circles of esteem”. on top of that, due to the financial concerns of often chronically-underpaid researchers in southeast asia, many of them “use their spare time to boost their earnings by teaching extra classes (often at other universities), engaging in consultancy, writing for newspapers, appearing on television and radio and running businesses” (mccargo, 2006, pp. 110-111) therefore, while being a ‘recognized’ researcher in the global north is increasingly measured against the number of publications in high-ranking journals and the accompanying citations, the construction of what it means to be a ‘good’ scientist seems to follow other paths in thailand. a lack of english language skills as well as access to journals prevents many thai social scientists from publishing in international (high-ranking) journals, and thus teaching and other forms of dialogue with, and outreach to, extra-scientific actors take priority: well, again, when you have to work on both teaching and research for these kinds of key performance indicators, but then you also have to work on local issues with the local civil society, it is difficult to sort of catch up with the modern or contemporary cutting-edge theories as american or european researchers do. we sometimes don’t even have access to journals. . . . the social science association in thailand was only established in 1968. . . . but still, until now, there is no real thai journal, in thai language. . . . most of us are, unlike for example malaysian, singaporean, or philippine scholars, not so much equipped with language skills in writing or speaking. thai anthropologists are less trained in the use of english. so, you do not see so many publications by thai anthropologists as compared to maybe singaporeans, or the us, or taiwanese, or indian. (math7) the interviews with thai scholars in the field of development, therefore, indicate that, due to specific institutional configurations, their use of the signifier ‘scientific’ corresponds to practices that seem more conducive to extending their space of interaction beyond their academic peer-community. put differently, the thai academic self (which is itself a questionable concept that surely lacks differentiation) in the field of development seems to be much less constituted by producing outcomes for scientific peers than by engaging in societal and political debates via interaction with extra-scientific actors. different practices and related skills are therefore necessary. for example, when asked about his academic career, one interviewee (math4) remarked that he “had a very steep learning curve working with an international ngo in terms of building campaign and communications skills”. this once more highlights how the practices, skills, and capabilities constitutive of a scientific self in thailand (in the field of development) tend to systemically break the mold of what is narrowly defined as scientific in the global north. put differently, the signifier ‘scientific’ signifies different meanings and practices in different socio-political and institutional contexts. this both complicates but also enriches transdisciplinary collaborations, since the current literature on transdisciplinarity does not, quite aseas 13(2) | 201 richard bärnthaler intentionally,9 propose a coherent theory or methodology, but foregrounds different skills that researchers should bring along. this gives rise to the deeper puzzle of what constitutes ‘knowledge’ in different contexts. if we follow a pragmatist understanding of knowledge, that is, knowledge (the signifier) is what is useful (the signified), then we clearly see that usefulness varies among different contexts and is deeply entangled with institutional and socio-political differences. in this regard, mccargo (2006) differentiates between three research practices that are embedded in particular institutional arrangements: pragmatic, committed, and idealistic. pragmatic practices seek to link research agendas “to projects of interest to states or power-holders” in order to “influence policy processes” and to reach a “wider audience” via public intellectualism, newspaper columns, radio comments, or easily accessible books in the local language that are a “kind of political commentary rather than genuine research” (mccargo, 2006, p. 112). committed practices are more “dedicated to furthering the lot of the underprivileged”, making use of academic positions to legitimate “roles as activists and public intellectuals, typically as critics of government policies” (p. 113). finally, idealist practices are primarily performed to pursue a “personal intellectual agenda” (p. 112) of “pure” research within academic boundaries. mccargo argues that this last category of practice is most dominant in the western hemisphere, where usefulness is primarily measured against the background of a scientific community. furthermore, pragmatic practices are said to be most dominant in the southeast-asian context, albeit with a “significant minority” (p. 112) of the “committed” type. my own empirical findings confirm these admittedly ideal types, though the “committed” type clearly dominated within my set of interviewees from thailand (compare the interview excerpts above). hence, in these socio-political and institutional contexts, knowledge constitutes its usefulness primarily via entering into dialogue with a wider audience, be it local communities or national authorities. to sum up, if we accept that practices that involve extra-scientific actors are a necessary condition for transdisciplinary endeavors (compare my minimalist definition outlined in the first section), the above discussion draws into question the claims to authority and novelty around the term transdisciplinarity that western institutions have ascribed to themselves in recent years. such authority is not least ingrained in european project formats like capacity building in higher education projects (cbhe, the format through which knots was operationalized). cbhe is characterized by a developmental nature (european union, 2016) and inherent center-periphery relations, bringing together different (cultural, political, financial, and so forth) backgrounds, hierarchies, and epistemologies as well as diverging interests, incentives, and institutional reward systems (schmidt & pröpper, 2017). the notions of ‘modernization’ and ‘convergence’ – explicit aims of cbhe (cf. european commission, 2018) – hint at potential power asymmetries, since such terminology epitomizes the idea that knowledge, skills, and tools would have to be transferred linearly from the global north towards the global south and consequently entails geographical temporalizations (those ‘others’ are ‘lagging behind’). 9 this is also highlighted in the final summary (knots, 2019) on transdisciplinary research and teaching developed by the knots project: “it is important to emphasize that in our understanding, there is no such thing as a transdisciplinary research methodology or method.” 202 | aseas 13(2) conflict, controversy, compromise, and compression such logic is, for example, also apparent in funding regulations in which budget for training and re-training purposes is only available for staff members from partner countries (global south) participating in training programs in program countries (global north), but not vice versa. put polemically, in this logic the ‘underdeveloped’ institutions of the global south have to learn from – and converge towards – the ‘rational’ institutions of the global north. the idea that program countries could learn from the partner countries is hardly considered; at most, the former might benefit “indirectly” (european commission, 2018). it is inter alia at this conjuncture where the western claim to authority and novelty around the term transdisciplinarity takes hold, that is, transdisciplinarity is conceptualized as an innovative and novel western idea that needs to be ‘transferred’ to the global south. this, however, neglects that practices10 central to transdisciplinary endeavors (the signified), in contrast to the western-coined term transdisciplinarity (the signifier), are already present in these contexts – they are already performed.11 the contextual and pragmatic nature of transdisciplinary work: situated judgments, compromises, and compression the highly pluralistic nature of development research, although provoking many controversies and conflicts, undoubtedly has its benefits. chang (2012) argues that pluralism in science has the potential for two kinds of benefit: (1) benefits of toleration (hedging bets, dividing domains, satisfaction of different aims, and multiple satisfaction) and (2) benefits of interaction (ad hoc integration, co-optation, and competition). for chang, it would be a wasted opportunity if the second benefits were left unreaped. the interviews substantiate this claim. the importance of interaction amongst different approaches was frequently stressed – all interviewees embraced critical interaction among different approaches and highlighted the necessity of fostering it in practice. interaction, thus, represents their normative goal.12 as in the previous section, however, differences between german/austrian and thai scholars came to the fore. while the former stressed interaction with academic peers, the latter mainly focused on interaction with policymakers and other extra-scientific 10 see, for example, thai baan research (chayan, n.d). 11 as a sidenote, i deem it important to stress that the understanding of transferability also runs the danger of pursuing a fallacious technocratic “understanding about scalability through straightforward diffusion of knowledge and best practice from one context to another” (moulaert & maccallum, 2019, p. 35), thereby neglecting that “transdisciplinary research methodologies designed for developed [sic] world contexts cannot merely be replicated and transferred to developing [sic] world contexts” (van breda & swilling, 2019, p. 823). 12 the interviews revealed three (institutionalized) possibilities for how such interaction could be enabled, enhanced, and intensified. first, work with students was highlighted as a central opportunity; this may include joint curricula and co-teaching of classes in which different approaches work together towards a common goal, namely productive and fruitful work with students. second, the problem of current conference settings was discussed. huge conferences, often with several parallel panels, predominantly preclude possibilities for critical interaction. small workshops (as well as small reading groups within or among departments) were mentioned as significantly more productive. lastly, joint project frameworks across disciplines and regions, also including extra-scientific actors, were considered highly beneficial for critical interaction. crucially, the interviewees stressed that much more financial support must be given to researchers in the global south to conduct and lead such joint projects in the global north to counter academic hegemonies that tend to restrict critical interaction. aseas 13(2) | 203 richard bärnthaler actors. the juxtaposition of two statements (the first by a thai scholar, the second by a european one) when the interview turned to ideal forms of interaction exemplifies this difference: i mean, i mentioned that i have a background between civil society and academia. and so, i am interested in engaging in these sorts of debates not just commenting on them. (math4) i know that there are a few magazines that allow for detailed discussion. for example, an author writes an article, then 20 people are invited to comment, and then you can reply on it again. in such processes, one can learn a lot. (maauge6) these statements underpin my argument in the previous section concerning the substantial variegations in different circles of esteem. the normative goal of interaction raises a central question: what are the preconditions for interaction to be possible? is there a common basis upon which the interactors need to agree? the interviews provided two insights: first, a common basis needs to exist, and second, such a basis is not merely epistemic. the examples given by interviewees when asked about aspects that possible interactors would need to agree upon included ethical working procedures (feauge1), the rejection of inhuman or racist attitudes (feauge2), the goal of emancipation (maauge5), and the rejection of approaches that would justify physical, structural, or cultural violence (feauge3), as well as common visions such as “for the good of society”, “for the good of the department” (feth3), “for the well-being of the people”, or “for a sustainable and inclusive use of resources” (math4). some interviewees (feauge1, math4, maauge6) also mentioned that sometimes different ontological assumptions or worldviews make interaction almost impossible. in terms of epistemic criteria, almost all interviewees stressed that they could only collaborate with peers if their approaches are open to “empirical surprises”, that is theoretical pre-considerations should never determine the outcome of research. additionally, internal coherence (feauge1), the traceability or transparency of methodical procedures (math4), as well as the requirement of not distorting other positions that one seeks to attack or engage with (maauge6), were stressed. the abstract nature of these shared principles or desiderata are quite obvious: ethical working procedures, openness to empirical surprises, coherence, transparency, non-distortion, non-racist attitude, emancipation, and non-violence, as well as broad common visions, can be interpreted in very different, often even contradictory, ways. one scholar came straight to the point: a common basis would be, well, something like well-being or that people’s well-being is important. that would be a shared view. but how to achieve this i think is quite diverse by the interpreters. . . . . i think most interventions would say that ‘we are doing this for the good of the people’, but that could range from very local civil society groups working with individual communities that say ‘well, we’re working with the community to protect the way that things are because that’s mostly in their interests’ all the way to ‘we need economic growth in order to improve material well-being, and that’s for the good of the country’. (math4) 204 | aseas 13(2) conflict, controversy, compromise, and compression thus, shared principles such as well-being allow for a variety of different (and even contradictory) approaches, since their content only becomes determined after situated judgments.13 put differently, local (in this case, the field of development research), abstract, and weak meta-standards leave plenty of room for controversy and pluralism – a pluralism among different belief-value systems rather than merely epistemic ones. at the same time, pluralism is by definition (in terms of both toleration and interaction) based on the precondition that different situated judgments can be expressed and mutually acknowledged. this presupposes self-reflection on the contingency of one’s own views, the ability to (at least to some extent) step outside one’s own belief-value system. in this context, the centrality of socialization was frequently highlighted in the interviews, since one’s own position needs to be understood against the background of “your training” (feth3) and often emerges “almost as a coincidence depending on whatever you have picked up in life at some point” (maauge6). “you only understand how research questions form when you examine your academic socialization and the literature that exists there, theoretical but also empirical” (feauge1). thus, self-reflection is a vital precondition for forms of critical interaction that can, at the least, (1) sharpen each approach “as a response to challenge and criticism”, and (2) make the limitations of each approach evident “by the articulation of questions that they are not designed to answer” (longino, 2006, p. 127). hence, without a self-reflective attitude as a precondition for mutual recognition, transdisciplinary research cannot be conducted productively. consequently, we can agree with breitenbach and choi (2017), who argue that pluralism “excludes only but all exclusionary projects” (p. 397). it is, therefore, not enough to agree on shared abstract principles, but concrete situated judgments must be acknowledged in order to make interaction and collaboration possible. all interviewees stressed this precondition, although in different terms. maauge5 differentiated between knowledge for the sake of action or control (herrschaftswissen) and emancipatory research. interaction and collaboration is only possible within the limits of the latter, since the former excludes other approaches by definition and thus gives no space for emancipatory research. feauge1 made similar 13 the term “situated judgment” implies that judgments always evolve in a particular context or community, that is, they are based on experiences from within a particular thought collective (fleck, 1935/2012), which molds how reality is perceived. a plurality of such experienced realities thus brings about a multitude of situated judgments. the idea of situatedness is characteristic of all traditions in feminist epistemology, be it standpoint theory, feminist postmodernism, or feminist empiricism (anderson, 2017). standpoint theory claims that particular socially-situated perspectives (oppressed perspectives) are in an epistemically-privileged position (cf., collins, 1986). feminist postmodernism tends to reject claims of privilege, stressing a radical instability and contingency of social identities and their representations (cf., butler, 1990). empiricism “seeks standards . . . for differentiating the circumstances in which situatedness generates error and in which it constitutes a resource that can be harnessed to advance knowledge” (anderson, 2017, n.p.; cf., campbell, 1998). hence, despite their differences all three traditions emphasize locality, partiality, and situatedness. as haraway (1988), an exponent of standpoint theory, puts it, “i am arguing for politics and epistemologies of location, positioning, and situating, where partiality and not universality is the condition of being heard to make rational knowledge claims. these are claims on people’s lives. i am arguing for the view from a body, always a complex, contradictory, structuring, and structured body, versus the view from above, from nowhere, from simplicity” (p. 589). objectivity is thus not a view from nowhere, but “views from somewhere” (haraway, 1988, p. 590). aseas 13(2) | 205 richard bärnthaler remarks regarding an academic hegemonism of the global north. feauge2 noted the impossibility of interaction when the counterpart expresses a kind of “religious belief ” in their approach. she further argued that for a fruitful interaction one needs to have particular “constellations of power . . . in which a confrontation can be carried out and taken up by both sides in a way that yields fruitful results”. similarly, maauge6 highlighted that interaction can only work if the opponent engages with one’s arguments and criticism rather than insisting upon their standpoint. feth3 discussed the problem of power hierarchies in which colleagues “look down” on you, “do not listen”, and “only stick with their own idea”: we might still be friends . . . but we will not debate about our perspectives anymore, because we know that we are different. . . . and in that case, we just say, well, we can be colleagues, but not a peer in a scientific way. math7 stressed a very similar dilemma that can complicate interaction. he described the problematic power asymmetries between engineering and the social sciences in many research projects: “usually, the authority would give priority to scientific engineering and technological research”. this pushes social science into a sub-role within projects, fulfilling tasks of “lip service” or merely “helping them”. lastly, math4 mentioned problematic hierarchies of ontologies or worldviews in which marginalized voices do not get heard, while an economic-growth paradigm is privileged. hence, albeit in different terms, all interviewees expressed the necessity of a level playing field for interaction to be possible. transdisciplinary work cannot allow for exclusionary projects, nor can it allow for dogmatism. this necessity for inclusiveness, however, does not imply that conflicts dissolve or that the outcome of a disagreement needs to be entirely harmonious. acknowledging different situated judgments does not imply agreeing with, let alone sharing them: i can understand different arguments, for sure. but i don’t have to share them. . . . i can comprehend how a certain position came to its understanding, to its view. i can comprehend that if i know, for example, how they have been, so to say, socialized academically. then i can understand that. but i do not have to share it because of that. (feauge1) while transdisciplinary research needs to accommodate the goal of including multiple perspectives (both disciplinary and extra-scientific) in the process of knowledge production, thus creating a common framework via giving space to different situated judgments, decisions can and need to be made for a common endeavor to be relevant in practice. transdisciplinarity, therefore, also needs to embrace the capacity of actors to act in a given context, situation, or environment. in other words, while different – and, potentially, even conflicting – perspectives need to be mutually recognized, a common strategy can only be operationalized by allowing for possibilities of deciding between those conflicting views. this is key to avoiding deadlock and an incapacity or inability of the actors working together in a transdisciplinary framework to act and move forward on a project to produce socially relevant outcomes (for example, by providing viable policy recommendations). 206 | aseas 13(2) conflict, controversy, compromise, and compression any form of harmony in transdisciplinary research is, therefore, contextual and pragmatic. it focuses on the practical consequences in a specific context and balances multiple interests and situated judgments in a specific situation. in this context, feauge1, feauge2, and math4 explicitly stressed that harmony, or the dissolution of divergent approaches into one whole, is neither possible nor desirable. “science, like life, is mostly characterized by conflict.” (feauge2) while the pragmatic nature of contextual unity in transdisciplinary research acknowledges these conflicts, it also recognizes the necessity of decisions for the research to be relevant in practice. as schmidt and pröpper (2017) put it, “being realistic about transdisciplinarity requires acknowledging that the (almost romanticized) image of a mutual and equal knowledge co-production is hardly attainable, and indeed blanks out existing hierarchies, spheres of interest, and power structures” (p. 377). some interests or situated judgments will always need to be sacrificed for others. transdisciplinarity should not reject this instrumental necessity, but be all the more reflective on questions of representation (whose voices, knowledge, and expertise counts) and impact (who owns the research output, what impact does it make, and who will benefit). in so doing, it counteracts the tendency towards de-politicization that often comes with promises of unification. math4, for example, noted that attempts at technocratization exemplify such a problematic form of unification, as they explicitly follow an ideal of a-politicized science, thus pursuing an illusion of universalized knowledge. this is why pluralism is so essential for transdisciplinary research. it is founded on multiple situated judgments – be it of different scientific disciplines, ethnic minorities, women’s groups, policymakers, or trade unions, to mention only some – that are ultimately being compressed into a common contextual strategy. i suggest that the idea of compression – that is, the establishment of a pragmatic unity in a specific situation or, in other words, the essential ability to make decisions between a plethora of different situated judgments that might be incompatible – is a central practice in transdisciplinary research, related to three interlinked statements expressed by dupré (1995). first, scientific criteria to distinguish certain parts of reality are “chosen in part for anthropocentric reasons such as ease of human application” (p. 36). second, “epistemological standards for science” are at least partly normative (p. 243), meaning that scientists’ epistemic practices are in some respect influenced or constituted by non-epistemic values. lastly, and in line with the two former arguments, aiming at universally unified sciences at a single scientific enterprise regardless of local context would require “a society with absolutely homogeneous, or at least hegemonic, political commitments and shared assumptions. . . . [universally] unified science, we might conclude, would require utopia or totalitarianism” (p. 261). compression, thus, is always contextual, partial, pragmatic, and contingent, because “it is not the only possible rational outcome. a different constellation of arguments and situated judgments could have led to a different outcome” (kinzel & kusch, 2018, p. 66). compressive decisions are, in this sense, based on their “pursuit worthiness” in a specific situation. pursuit worthiness, as opposed to other (often stronger) forms of acceptance, does not concern a retrospective assessment of truth-conduciveness (similar to the traditional idea of theory confirmation), but is an appraisal of heuristic or pragmatic deliberations regarding a research direction’s fruitfulness in a specific local situation (nickles, 2009; šešelja, 2017). aseas 13(2) | 207 richard bärnthaler to sum up, all that inclusiveness in transdisciplinary research can require is that space is given to different situated judgments to be expressed, recognized, and taken seriously. conflict and the rejection of positions within this space will, however, in most cases be unavoidable. decisions need to be made. we should, therefore, be critical about ideas of transdisciplinarity that place a strong emphasis on “total systems” (piaget, 1972), “comprehensiveness” (molteberg & bergstrøm, 2000), or “unification and harmony” (choi & pak, 2006), particularly if such unity/unification is framed in its most comprehensive sense, this is, “looking for unity in an overarching synthesis in the grand and sweeping manner of marxism, systems theory, sociobiology, and so on” (kellert, 2006, p. 219). instead, more emphasis needs to be placed on partiality, conflict, compromise, and joint contextual strategies (cf., e.g., van breda & swilling, 2019). conclusion in this article, i have sought to (1) provide vignettes of central scientific conflicts and controversies in development research to hint at potential difficulties that may arise in interor transdisciplinary endeavors around the notion of development. a plurality of different approaches in terms of disciplines, regional and cultural contexts, methods, explanations, ethics, semantics, theories, and aims were empirically identified. based on how the interviewees reconstructed their respective controversies in their daily work, i (2) questioned the claim to authority and novelty that western institutions have built around the term transdisciplinarity (the signifier) – which is nurtured and reinforced through european project frameworks – since institutionalized practices (the signified) in thailand seem to be more conducive to the inclusion of extra-scientific actors than those in the global north. subsequently, i showed that (3) critical interaction within the arena of conflict and controversy represented in (1) is not only a normative goal in development research, but seems also vital to unfold the potentialities of transdisciplinary work. the abstract nature of a necessary, common basis for interaction, which the interviews highlighted, suggests a focus on diverse, situated judgments that define the concrete content of these abstract meta-standards. based on my empirical analysis, i argued that transdisciplinary work can only unfold its potentialities when different, situated judgments are acknowledged. this presupposes the ability of self-reflection among those involved. mutual acknowledgment must, however, not be confused with sharing a particular view or position. if transdisciplinary endeavors aim to induce practical consequences, decisions between different situated judgments are necessary. i termed this process compression, which is always contextual, partial, contingent, and pragmatic. transdisciplinarity’s often-held ideals of harmony, comprehensiveness, totality, and unity should, therefore, be replaced by conflict, partiality, compromise, and joint contextual strategies. the idealistic fantasy of transcending one’s situatedness thereby gives place to “the art of deliberation” (novy et al., 2020) as the central competence of transdisciplinary scholars.  208 | aseas 13(2) conflict, controversy, compromise, and compression references anderson, e. 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(2008). international development studies: theories and methods in research and practice. london, uk: sage publications. van breda, j., & swilling, m. (2019). the guiding logics and principles for designing emergent transdisciplinary research processes: learning experiences and reflections from a transdisciplinary urban case study in enkanini informal settlement, south africa. sustainability science, 14, 823–841. about the author richard bärnthaler holds a research assistant prae-doc position at the institute for multi-level governance and development, vienna university of economics and business. his research 210 | aseas 13(2) conflict, controversy, compromise, and compression interests include transdisciplinarity, urban studies, social-ecological transformation research and the philosophy of science (particularly the sociology of knowledge as well as relativism and pragmatism). ► contact: richard.baernthaler@wu.ac.at acknowledgements i wish to thank martin kusch for his helpful feedback on several (extended) versions of this article, sarah ware for her comments on my final draft, two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions, as well as john billingsley for proofreading the accepted version of this article. forming 'forbidden' identities online: atheism in indonesia forming ‘forbidden’ identities online: atheism in indonesia saskia schäfer ► schäfer, s. (2016). forming ‘forbidden’ identities online: atheism in indonesia. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 9(2), 253-268. this article discusses the online activism of indonesian atheists. while most of the little existent scholarship on atheism in indonesia views the controversial cases in the light of the violation of western-style rights to free speech and religious liberty, a closer look at the public discourses both online and offline reveals a more complex picture. the article embeds atheist activism and the well-known case of alexander an in the changing landscape of religion and state in post-suharto indonesia. it points at the intricate relationship between atheism and blasphemy and shows how activists not only carve a space for themselves online, but also seek to counter the negative and anti-religious image that decades-long campaigning has created for atheists. activists use facebook, twitter, messaging systems, and forums such as quora, both to become visible and yet allow for anonymity. their online communication and activism is often coupled with offline meetings. in this way, atheists allow for a thriving ‘community’, and also present atheism positively in public. however, to defend atheism this way also has its downsides, as it aligns indonesian atheists with an international network of mainly western-funded human rights activists and thus runs the risk of further alienating them from a nation that strongly defines itself along religious identity. keywords: atheism; indonesia; islam; non-religious minorities; social media  introduction when self-described indonesian atheists meet in public places, more commonly than not they have already met online. in a space that allows for the use of pseudonyms, hundreds of skeptics find like-minded doubters and non-believers in a society where religiosity is the norm. across the archipelago, these atheists regularly organize offline meetings. some just want to watch a movie or share a meal with fellow non-believers, while others want to discuss the difficulties of having to pretend to be religious for their families and colleagues, or to partake in religious rituals for fear of reprisals. all of them are aware of the stakes involved in framing their activities as ‘atheism’, especially since 2012, when alexander an, a civil servant in the dharmasraya regency of west sumatra, was first attacked and then imprisoned by local authorities for his facebook posts against islam. human rights organizations such as amnesty international called for his unconditional release, while muslim hardline organizations such as the islamic defenders front (front pembela islam, fpi) demanded his execution. finally, the local judges at the muaro sijunjung district court found him guilty of disseminating hatred and sentenced him to two and a half years of prison (huaktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 16 .2 -5 254 saskia schäfer  aseas 9(2) man rights watch, 2013). for many human rights activists, this case is a proof that atheism is being officially prohibited in indonesia. yet, atheism is only one of several ‘-isms’ that have been discussed controversially in the post-suharto era. after verbal and semi-legal attacks against “sekularisme, pluralisme dan liberalisme” (“secularism, pluralism, and liberalism”) in the mid-2000s (majelis ulama indonesia, 2005; gillespie, 2007), and the rejection of an appeal to revoke the so-called blasphemy law in 2010, the so called aan case (aan being alexander an’s nickname) sparked a heated debate on ateisme, and on the state’s regulation of religion and irreligion. like sekularisme, pluralisme, and liberalisme, ateisme is a controversial term, and most indonesians would frown at someone’s declaration of being an atheist.1 the term seems to carry a certain dose of hostility against religion, and thus people’s understandings for moral conduct. human rights activists and foreign as well as local scholars interpret the case as a straightforward example of growing intolerance and the shrinking space for expressing non-religious views in indonesia (hasani, 2016). however, there is more to the case than the question of freedom of expression. in this paper, i examine the case of alexander an from a discourse-oriented perspective. i argue that this case served as a discursive battleground for reconfiguration of the relationship between the state and religion. nationalists, liberals, and promoters of varying nuances of the political involvement of religion have been rethinking the position of islam vis-à-vis the state with new fervor since the fall of suharto in 1998. in these discourses, a new voice is slowly beginning to rise and enter public discourses via online platforms: a number of indonesian atheist activists today are striving to carve out a legitimate presence for atheist identities. yet, after decades of demonization as ‘communists’ since 1965/1966, during which religiosity became an expression of being anti-communist (bertrand, 2004, p. 74), this form of social activism is still highly controversial. adopting critical discourse analysis, this article focuses on the case of alexander an because of its dialectical relationship with the social structures and institutions which frame it. in other words, “the discursive event is shaped by them, but it also shapes them” (wodak & fairclough, 1997, p. 258). this article thus eschews any detailed discussion of the history or contemporary practices and intellectual discussions related to atheism, but rather seeks to situate the case of alexander an in the public discourse on religious minorities and on the changing relationship between religion and the state. it analyzes how this case became so widely discussed, and how it changed the discourse on islam and the state. the case of alexander an is a critical point of entry for broader questions on non-belief and online activism in indonesia that have been widely discussed by local and international media and human rights reports, but that have not yet been the focus of scholarly research. critical questions with this regard are: what did aan’s opponents and the state find so offensive about his comments, and how does this case relate to atheism and the online presence of non-belief in indonesia more generally. to answer these questions, this article unpacks the circumstances under which aan’s case became an offence to the state. the main method employed is media analysis, complemented by online and offline con1 i observed this during my fieldwork on notions of orthodoxy and deviance in indonesia. between 2008 and 2014, i spent several periods of altogether 18 months in various cities and towns across java. 255forming ‘forbidden’ identities online versations and interviews during and after my fieldwork in java between 2009 and 2013 when i was working on deviant sects, or aliran sesat. the aan case opens a window to a small but well-connected group of activists who use the internet to push the boundaries of the sayable and tolerable. given the aggressive climate that works against the public propagation of atheism in indonesia today, as indicated by the case itself, online forums and chat groups are the only promising space that allows for atheist expressions – a space where a concerned group of atheists strives to educate an internet-savvy public about their lives and non-religious views. what they insist on is the possibility of non-belief without insulting religion, which i will illustrate in some examples below. the case of alexander an and the online presence of other atheist activists form an ideal site to study the boundaries of what is publicly tolerable and to investigate under what conditions these boundaries become contested. the aan case and atheism in indonesia more generally speaking, scholarship on irreligion differentiates between atheists and people without any religious affiliation. atheism usually refers to not believing in the existence of one or several gods, and non-religion refers to either those without beliefs or those whose beliefs are not recognized as religious. some of the academic literature on this subject (e.g., beaman & tomlins, 2014; lee, 2015) points at the broad palette of nuances, ranging from non-theist religious practice to irreligious beliefs, which often gets overshadowed by the crooked binary of atheism versus religion. in indonesia, however, the state’s foundational political principles of pancasila prescribe to its people monotheism, since religion or agama is per se defined as the belief in one god only. in this context, even hinduism is constructed as a monotheistic religion (mcdaniel, 2013). besides the six officially recognized religions, the indonesian constitution also recognizes kepercayaan, literally belief, to refer to local beliefs which are not referred to as atheism, and are not part of the discourse on atheism. thus, while they may not necessarily be similar elsewhere, in the context of indonesia, atheism and non-belief mean one and the same thing. in addition to the more general differentiation between atheism and non-belief, a growing scholarly work focuses on different kinds of atheism such as, for example, negative atheism, which is defined as the not-believing in the existence of a god, or positive atheism, or the believing that there is no god (martin, 2007). these categorizations, however, are mainly based on western experiences (which self-evidently is not to say that non-western experiences of irreligiosity and non-belief do not exist; they just have not informed the currently globally salient category of atheism). in many societies where religion and state are more formally connected and constitute the social norm, atheists are too concerned about even voicing their skepticism to refine their disbelief. the atheists that this article focuses on demonstrate a newly forming identity in indonesian society today. after decades of worrying about being associated with communism – still a deeply stigmatized category, even 60 years after the mass-killings in the transition period leading to the new order – a loose network of activists is attempting to rehabilitate the term ateis. they claim not only the right to not believe in the existence of god, but also the right to express this skepticism or disbelief in public. many of them remain anonymous online, but their nicknames and their frequent use of english suggest a 256 saskia schäfer  aseas 9(2) cosmopolitan upbringing or outlook: some, yet not all of the activists, belong to the indonesian diaspora. a more detailed look at the case reveals that alexander an was not simply imprisoned for being an atheist, or even for creating an online platform for atheists – almost 1000 facebook users supported (‘liked’) his facebook fan page entitled ateis minang. aan went much further than publicly announcing his disbelief and inviting others to discuss it with him. in january 2012, one of his posts read: “if god exists, why do bad things happen? . . . there should only be good things if god is merciful”. he then declared heaven, hell, angels, and devils to be myths (mitos) and posted an article describing muhammad as “attracted to his daughter-in-law” as well as comic strips depicting him and a servant during sexual intercourse (bachyul, 2012; mckinnon, 2012). these posts go beyond mere statements of atheism. they combine an atheist stance with anti-islamic commentary. shortly after these posts, on his way to work, aan was violently attacked. rather than arresting the perpetrators, the police took aan into protective custody. he was later charged with religious blasphemy, atheism propagation, and dissemination of religious hostility. prosecutors sought a three-and-a-half-year jail term for him. in june 2012, the court eventually convicted him of the most serious charge and decided to drop the other two. the judge found aan guilty of having violated article 28 of the information and electronic transaction law, more precisely of “disseminating information aimed at inciting religious hatred or hostility” (amnesty international, 2012). for this, the court sentenced aan to two and a half years of imprisonment and a fine of idr 100 million. public commentary on the case reflects the broadness of the spectrum of responses to avowals of atheism in indonesia. on the respective facebook page alone, comments ranged from calls for beheading aan to vocal support of his cause. several national as well as international human rights groups called for his release; amnesty international, for example, filed him under its category “prisoner of conscience” (abbott, 2014). at the other end of the spectrum, the islamic society forum (forum umat islam, fui) insisted that a five-year jail term for aan would not suffice: “he deserves the death penalty, even if he decides to repent. what he has done cannot be tolerated. it is important to prevent this group from spreading atheism in this country”, said the organization’s secretary general muhammad al-khaththath (“calls to behead”, 2012). it cannot fully be determined whether their hatred was sparked by aan’s declared disbelief, or by the insults he had posted. human rights reports and a number of newspaper articles simply claimed that aan was sentenced for his atheism. but atheism itself, albeit uncommon and shunned, is not illegal in indonesia. it was not his non-belief that aan was punished for, aan was punished for making his atheism public in a particular way. it appears that it was the public display of non-belief and anti-religious views that crossed the border of what is acceptable. among the 240 million indonesians classified as muslim, protestant, catholic, buddhist, hindu, or confucian, there are many who do not believe in any god. among those, many joke about or question religious beliefs in small groups. but the difference between these atheists and atheist activists such as aan, is that the latter claim their right to speak publicly about their views – they claim their share of public space. aan strengthened this visibility by using his real name. thus, he was targeted for spreading (menyebar) atheist beliefs. many atheist activists would argue that they do not wish to convert believers to atheism, but that they simply want to be accepted in their non-religious 257forming ‘forbidden’ identities online identity. but the line between acceptance and missionary intentions is blurred: greater acceptance and visibility of a belief or conviction, circulating details concerning practices, and the possibility of discussion all have the potential to lure those out of the closet2 who have hitherto been in hiding. in indonesia, the accusation of proselytization weighs heavy. ever since the first european encounters, and especially since the days of anti-colonial struggle, many muslims have been worried about foreigners spreading christianity, or christianization (kristenisasi) (boland, 1971, p. 230; steenbrink, 1998, pp. 329-330). in the post-independence period, fear of conflict through proselytization was so widespread that it was legally prohibited (steenbrink, 1998, p. 330). until today, the proselytizing guidelines (ministerial decision no. 77/1978) and the guidelines for overseas aid to religious institutions in indonesia (ministerial decision no. 20/1978) regulate and restrict the dissemination of religious convictions. viewed in this light, it is not surprising that many indonesians keep a close and skeptical eye on the public visibility of atheists. two main factors seem to have contributed to the sentence against alexander an. first, what many presented as a case of atheism came in combination with what was perceived as a deliberate insult of islam. in fact, the case could be analytically reduced to blasphemy if one were to ignore the discursive event surrounding it, which presented the categories of atheism and insult as deeply enmeshed. second, the outrage this case sparked among different circles positioned it on a public stage. arjun appadurai’s (2006) work on inter-ethnic conflict helps to understand why even ‘small numbers’ are often, as in this case, perceived as a major threat to national majorities. nationalism, he argues – and this applies to many interpretations of religion as well – is ultimately built on notions of exceptionalism, namely the belief that a national ethnic or a particular religious group is unique and ultimately different to, if not better than others. this uniqueness is based on narratives of certain shared characteristics, and minorities challenge such narratives of social cohesion and homogeneity. in indonesia, the dominant narrative is that of religious harmoni. aan’s statements can thus be viewed as a visible impurity. the visibility of non-belief coupled with anti-islamic sentiments thus challenges the narrative of both ummat indonesia and a multi-religious but monotheistic and harmonious indonesian society. the major challenging factor of the aan case is not so much atheism or even the blasphemous insult per se, but rather the spreading or, in the words of the court’s sentencing, “the disseminating of information” (mahkamah agung republik indonesia, 2012). it is not so much the contents of aan’s message, but the quality and eventually the produce of their dissemination. during the sentencing, the presiding judge eka prasetya budi dharma described aan’s actions as having caused “anxiety to the community and tarnished islam” (“keresahan dalam masyarakat dan menodai islam”) (mahkamah agung republik indonesia, 2012). this judgement was linked to the le2 activists speak of “being in the closet” and “coming out”, either in english or in direct translation, as in keluar dari kloset/kakus. “closeted” and “in the closet” is a central metaphor of the 20th century lgbtq movement. it describes people who have not disclosed their sexual orientation or gender identity, and who hide a part of their personality because of social pressure (sedgwick, 1990; seidman, meeks, & traschen, 1999). those who use this metaphor to refer to atheists argue that most atheists hide their critical stance toward religion in order to remain safe, or simply in order to avoid harassment, and that they suffer from having to hide part of their identity. 258 saskia schäfer  aseas 9(2) gal upholding of the so-called blasphemy law in 2010: after a group of activists had demanded its revocation, the judges explicitly declared that indonesia is a country with belief in god, not an atheist country, and that campaigning for the freedom not to have a religion was neither provided for, nor possible in indonesia (crouch, 2012; menchik, 2016; schäfer, 2013). in both cases, the judges were careful to reach a compromise between extreme demands. the second aspect this case reveals is that there is a liberal public in indonesia that demands not only the right to publicly express its non-belief, but also, inextricably, the right to blaspheme. while many atheist activists work hard to maintain a respectful and positive relationship with believers, others conclude that they can only fully exercise their right to free speech if there is no exception for religious sentiments. one might argue that their situation in indonesia forces non-believers and those deemed deviant to demand the right to blaspheme, since any atheist statement is prone to be punished under indonesia’s blasphemy laws. blasphemy and atheism are thus deeply enmeshed. atheist activists cannot escape this matter, and they use it to push forward their demand to the right to speak their mind freely: no atheist activist can seriously campaign for his or her right to speak freely on the basis of their non-religious identity without also demanding a public space for blasphemy. outspoken atheists are not only different from most indonesians. for those who fear religious insult, they are the ‘blasphemous other’. it is this particular connection between atheism and blasphemy together with its public delivery that caused the case of alexander an to explode.3 indonesia’s blasphemy laws and online media in 1961, president sukarno accepted the selection of six religions as suggested by the ministry of religious affairs. based on the four criteria of having a holy scripture, a prophet, one lordship, and a system of rules for its followers, islam, protestantism, catholicism, hinduism, buddhism, and confucianism became officially and legally recognized religions in the young republic of indonesia.4 arising from the effort to satisfy the faction that demanded an official place for islam in the formation of the independent state without excluding the adherents of other religions, the fifth principle of the official state ideology pancasila prescribed the belief in “one lordship” or “ketuhanan yang maha esa” (darmaputera, 1988, pp. 84, 153).5 but despite these regulations, the formal adherence to a religion is not prescribed constitutionally.6 indonesian atheists today face difficulties on two legal levels: the level of registration of religious affiliation, and the level of banned blasphemy. the indonesian national identity card requires filling in a religious affiliation. although it is legally 3 elsewhere, i have concluded that the combination of visibility, foreignness (real or ascribed), and growing numbers of followers (real or reported) are highly likely to make a group a target (schäfer, 2015). 4 after being banned at various times, confucianism has again been officially recognized as a religion since 2006. 5 ketuhanan yang maha esa has been translated in various ways, but the choice of words, which eka darmaputera convincingly argues can only be correctly translated as “one lordship” (darmaputera, 1988, pp. 84, 153), suggests that it was intended to prescribe monotheism. 6 for a more detailed discussion of the constitutional situation of atheists, see hasani (2016, pp. 201205). 259forming ‘forbidden’ identities online possible to register as not adhering to any religion by filling in “not existent” (“tidak ada”) in the blank space provided for the category of religion, very few actually make use of this option. many bureaucrats refuse to oblige, and the danger of being discriminated when registering at school, at university, or at work is considerable. many atheists say they fear repercussions when they are known to be non-believers.7 even greater is the legal difficulty in the case of marriage. indonesian law has no provision for non-religious civil marriages. according to the marriage law of 1974, every marriage needs to undergo a religious ceremony led by an officially recognized religious leader in order to be recognized as a legal marriage by the state. the other set of laws that atheists may face difficulties with are the anti-blasphemy laws. religious blasphemy is prohibited in indonesia under law no. 1/pnps/1965. within the penal code, blasphemy is prohibited under article 156a. paragraph (a) of this article employs a vague language in its prohibition of any acts and expressions of views which are considered to be blasphemous, and carries a maximum punishment of five years imprisonment. a similar maximum punishment is also carried by paragraph (b) of the same article, which prohibits any acts and expressions of views calling for others to embrace atheism. further, article 28 of the 2008 information and electronic transaction law makes the dissemination of information aimed at inflicting hatred based on ethnicity and religion punishable. both laws are often used against individuals who are considered deviants within their own religions, or who are accused of insulting a particular religion, for instance by mocking religious practices or prophets. yet, only the latter is the one applied in the case of alexander an. this move undoubtedly aimed at encouraging self-censorship and robbed indonesians of the illusion that the internet is an unregulated space. in 2015, freedom house ranked indonesia as “partly free”, with a score of 42 (midway between 0 as best and 100 as worst) (freedom house, 2015). in indonesia, this type of freedom – the kind that is bound to the western notion of freedom of speech – is more easily obtained on the internet than in print media, on tv, or on the radio (lim, 2012). this is at least partly due to the inconsistency of indonesia’s internet regulations, and because digital spheres allow for the use of pseudonyms. while pseudonyms and second accounts could technically be traced back, the offence at stake here is not the type that aggravates a tightly controlling state – such as in the case of thailand, or china – but rather sits unevenly with members of the public. those who oppose atheists or religious and political diversity do not have the sophisticated means that would be necessary to trace internet users. their technical limits mean more online freedom for those who wish to make their ideas visible, but not themselves. alexander an decided to not make use of a pseudonym, but openly revealed his identity. this may have prompted the physical attack on him and, shortly after, his imprisonment. yet, many indonesians seem to have learned from his experience, as they make ample use of the anonymity that the internet still offers today. indonesia’s media landscape is vibrant and open, with few certainties and sometimes surprising restrictions. before 1998, media was highly supervised both by the ministry of information and through mechanisms of self-censorship (hill, 1994). issues 7 edgell, gerteis, and hartmann (2006) have shown a high likeliness of being discriminated also for usamerican non-believers despite increasing acceptance of religious diversity in the states. 260 saskia schäfer  aseas 9(2) that were not to be openly discussed included suku (ethnicity or tribal affiliation), agama (religion), ras (race), and antar golongan (groups with different affiliations and background), also known under the acronym sara. journalists were expected to avoid these topics and to take positions stressing national unity. since then, freedom of expression has increased considerably and the indonesian media are now considered among the freest in asia. however, restrictions and regulations remain. international observers from reporters without borders ranked the country 132nd out of 180 countries in their 2014 world press freedom index (reporters without borders, 2014). indonesia ranks that low, not so much because of media censorship or government control, but mainly because of the murders of several journalists which were never properly resolved or prosecuted. issues such as corruption or papua’s struggle for greater autonomy are among those topics that are still particularly dangerous to discuss in public. besides legal regulations and violence against journalists, ownership is an important factor that affects indonesia’s media landscape. despite fairly diverse media ownership patterns, business networks rapidly gain influence vis-à-vis the state (hill & sen, 2012). today, in indonesia, more than 55 million people use the internet regularly to access various websites – including the websites of local and national newspapers – with almost half of them surfing the web via mobile devices. mobile phones are an important status symbol in indonesia (pousttchi & wiedemann, 2009, p. 148). the country boasts the world’s second largest number of facebook users and the third largest number of twitter users (indonesia investments, 2014). the majority of young indonesians have grown up in a very mobile, fast-moving society in which mobile phones have been one of the easiest ways to stay in touch with family and friends back in the leftbehind hometown. the digital divide disadvantages rural areas and ensures faster, more regular, and more reliable access to the internet to urban indonesians. among these urbanites are those who have grown up with a cosmopolitan outlook on individuals and society. many of them compare practices at home with those they find on tv and online, and situate themselves in a broader frame of reference than the village, the city, or even the nation state. their global outlook becomes apparent in their consumption of both international as well as national english-language media; their frequent use of english in discussion boards; and either their applications for studies abroad, or their fondness of movies whose main characters often live torn between their loved ones back in indonesia and their studies abroad. among these cosmopolitan urbanites are those who actively seek to broaden the spectrum of acceptable identities in indonesian public discourse. online atheist activism as a claim to public space online activism for atheism forms maybe the most important frontline in the broad campaign for the right to freely express skepticism toward religion. atheist groups have systematically and regularly maintained online groups, discussion threads, and websites in order to make their views public to an internet-savvy audience. the activist group indonesian atheists, founded in 2008, has its own blog decorated with its own logo; it also maintains the most popular facebook group and is active on youtube and twitter. its founder is karl karnadi, an indonesian expat in germany and 261forming ‘forbidden’ identities online the us. eight years after its founding, it reached 1700 members (who call themselves indonesian atheists).8 another group is the indonesian atheist community, with about 500 likes on their facebook fan page.9 many sign into the group with their real names, while others establish a second account with a pseudonym to protect their identity, either for safety reasons or for fear of alienating their families. some share stories of being disowned by their parents, and so there is not a general encouragement of ‘coming out’ as an atheist. another popular group on facebook, indonesian atheist parents, is dedicated to questions of atheist parenting. this is a closed group with about 400 members.10 atheists with children discuss questions of religious education and of raising children without faith in a society in which religiosity is the norm. these groups mainly function as forums for atheists and non-believers to exchange their experiences. in addition to these online forums, atheist groups organize regular offline meetings. these often have less of an activist character, but are gatherings for dinner or movie-watching, offering an opportunity to “[have] fun with fellow nonbelievers, where they can be themselves for a while and not [have] to pretend (to be religious or someone they’re not)” (karl karnadi, 7 february 2016). from these general offline meetings, smaller activist groups emerge and continue their communication online via instant messaging systems such as whatsapp and line. the constant threat of physical violence is one of the reasons why atheist campaigning continues to thrive online. another related reason is that atheists often become outspoken only after they have left indonesia to live abroad. members of the indonesian diaspora support atheist activism in the motherland by publicly showing their face and name without the same fear of attacks that they would suffer in indonesia.11 besides serving as meeting platforms, online groups and websites also provide a space for atheism in a semi-public realm. atheists gather online not only to exchange experiences and opinions but also to educate an internet-savvy public about their own perspectives. this becomes clear in the online forum anda bertanya ateis menjawab (you ask, atheists respond). the group is also active on facebook and twitter. here, a group of activists “positively interact[s] with the public through [a] strongly moderated q&a format” to “soften the devilish image of atheists” in the indonesian public (karl karnadi, 7 february 2016). on their facebook page, liked by more than 55.000 users12 , they share information on atheism, but also regularly post greetings on major religious holidays such as muslims’ eid, christians’ christmas, or chinese happy lunar new year. after decades of demonization, this online outreach and the 8 while some members will only join the group to inform themselves over its activities, it is safe to conclude that the number of its members does correlate with the significance of the group. for more information, see indonesian atheists’ facebook fan page at https://www.facebook.com/groups/ indonesianatheists/?fref=ts. 9 in october 2016, the site had 496 likes. 10 in october 2016, the group had 400 members. 11 this is not to say that activism is restricted to diaspora indonesians; it is just easier for them to use their real names. from the comments on the respective websites, it is clear that many participants in the online discussions are based in indonesian cities. users have hitherto organized offline meetings in at least nine cities, including jakarta, bandung, jogjakarta, semarang, surabaya, and malang in java, medan in aceh, and various places in bali. indonesians abroad organize their own meetings. 12 this number refers to october 2016. 262 saskia schäfer  aseas 9(2) notion of community that these websites and forums create in tandem with regular offline meetings seem to help soften social schisms, and even indicate efforts to differentiate between different facets of non-belief. this mixture of online and offline engagement is reminiscent of gay parades, where the mass character of the event together with practices of donning masks and costumes allowed homosexuals to gather and spend time together, and to simultaneously be present and visible in the public space without exposing themselves to the same vulnerability that they would risk in daily life. in other words, online forums, groups, and websites have a double function: firstly, they offer atheists a space to seek advice and exchange opinions and strategies; secondly, and more importantly, they make visible their claim to the right to exist as non-believers. atheist activists use the internet as a semi-public space that allows them to be simultaneously visible and anonymous. online activism gives atheists a share of the public realm and allows their cause to be visible and present. international support for local activists the skepticism toward atheism stems from its supposedly direct link to communism reflected, for example, in the reactions to the 1949 novel ateis by achdiat karta mihardja, in which the lead character, a muslim called hasan, begins to question his faith after conversations with his marxist-leninist friends. several comments uttered by politicians in the years to follow show how atheism was ideologically constructed as connected to communism (hasani, 2016, p. 199). today, much of the skepticism toward atheism is framed in and enhanced by its international dimension, particularly in connection to western societies and governments. in addition to the attention which western media cast upon the issue, and which some indonesians are well aware of, recognition from abroad comes in two forms: via the language of human rights and via the international support from other atheist organizations. both entail not only moral, but also financial support, particularly in the legal realm. locally, many look at these connections skeptically, and accuse local ngos of being subverted agents of foreign interests. notwithstanding, many atheists debate their existence in the vocabulary of human rights. indeed, the language of human rights has become omnipresent in indonesia since 1998. the reformasi period brought a mushrooming of civil society organizations, and many of them rely entirely on foreign support from usaid, ausaid, and so forth. those organizations not only speak the language of human rights themselves, but also disseminate this language into indonesian society through their public outreach in newspapers and other media, and through the jargon of applications. salaries from international agencies are often not only competitive but generous, and many educated indonesians regularly try to get their activism funded by an international agency. an important aspect of the human rights regime is the increased importance of the concept of minority since the early 1990s.13 in their 2013 report on “abuses against religious minorities”, human rights watch dis cusses the case of alexander an at length, thereby suggesting that atheists are a reli13 two minority agendas are reflected in the “declaration on the rights of persons belonging to national or ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities”, adopted by the un in 1992, and the “declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples”, adopted in 2007. 263forming ‘forbidden’ identities online gious minority in need of protection (human rights watch, 2013). atheist organizations in indonesia not only speak the language of human rights, but focus on the right to non-belief. for them, agnosticism, humanism, or atheism, are group identities that deserve state protection. they advocate for those they perceive as part of their group. in the case of alexander an, the american humanist association – a us-american organization that provides legal assistance to defend the rights of non-religious and religious minorities and actively lobbies for the separation between church and the state in the united states and abroad – discussed his case and offered to assist him with legal support (bulger, n.d.). this foreign recognition further strengthens atheism as an identity category. as a comment by karl karnadi on the online platform quora illustrates: when international organizations like human rights watch mentioned atheists as one of indonesian minority groups for the first time in . . . [sic] probably ever, it has brought confidence to many indonesian atheists. i saw some atheists were starting to come out, even though most of them do it very carefully and in limited circles of friends and families. it’s a good start. (“what is it like”, n.d.) when they reveal their views, many atheists become disowned by their families and find consolidation and support in online communities. yet, members of online communities tell journalists that they are also ready to form an offline community. this happened when, in 2013, a large sum of money was donated to a non-believer by other atheists, so that he could pay the debts to his estranged father (schonhardt, 2013). for campaigners like karl karnadi, the online presence and the connected offline meetings of atheist groups are only the beginning of what they envision as an indonesian society that holds a place for atheists, just as it holds a place for different religious groups. such a society would, most of all, allow atheists to speak their mind openly and publicly, and it would allow them to publicly show their identity as atheists just as others show their identity as muslims, or christians. yet the path they have chosen is rather problematic as it builds on the international terminology of identity and, hence, underlines their (ir)religious identity. in other words, they claim the right to be something rather than the right to do something. by this, they defend the freedom of religion rather than the freedom of speech, and thus end up using religion as their central frame of reference. the political theorist elizabeth shakman hurd (2015) has investigated the consequences of a religious rights and freedoms model that singles out groups for legal protection as religious groups. according to hurd, this model molds religious groups into discrete faith communities with clean boundaries and governs difference through religious rights. social differences of various kinds get reduced to the category of religion. with such a narrow focus, the exploration of reasons for social exclusion and violence gets blocked. the focus on religious affiliation reduces possibilities for both understanding of and campaigning against social exclusion. a major effect that this sectarianization (hurd, 2015) has for religious groups is the strengthening of boundaries and of claims to orthodoxy and authority. as i have argued elsewhere, 264 saskia schäfer  aseas 9(2) the use of online media in tandem with a rhetoric of minority rights has reinforced the identities of shia and ahmadiyya muslims in indonesia and malaysia (schäfer, 2015). however, many of the problems of center-staging religious identity do not only concern those who are categorized as belonging to a particular religious group, but also, comparable to a strong ethnic group identity, apply for atheists and other nonbelievers. atheists and others who vocally distance themselves from religion do so by relating themselves to religion or to (ir)religious minorities. in other words, they style their own identity as a community within the same model and frame which religious identities build upon. religion again becomes the main marker of identity, and thus also contributes to what hurd (2015) calls the “sectarianization” of irreligious or atheist groups. even more so than in the case of those deemed deviants from their own officially recognized religion, atheists are vulnerable to this accusation, simply because of the term itself. the term ateis is neither of malay nor arab origin, but derives from ancient greek. its foreign taste on the indonesian tongue (wrongly) suggests that there has never been any local form of non-belief, or belief without gods. the perceived ‘foreignness’ of the category invites both religious as well as nationalist critics to speculations and conspiracy theories. this hostility is only strengthened by the moral and financial support offered by foreign agencies to atheist groups. this perceived foreigness of atheism might as well be the reason why those local beliefs (kepercayaan) that are not officially recognized as religions and that are not centered on a particular deity were rarely attacked of being blasphemous, as atheist expressions were and continue to be today. concluding remarks: forming forbidden identities online formally, post-suharto indonesia is neither a religious, nor a non-religious state. when the judges upheld the old laws against blasphemy in 2010, they declared that indonesia is a country with belief in one god, not an atheist country. even though atheism is not technically illegal, religious affiliation is the norm. it is enshrined in the pancasila, the state philosophy, and it is preserved in various laws, such as the marriage law, as well as in other administrative practices, such as the official id card. blasphemy is punishable by law, and with blurred boundaries, some atheist activism is deemed blasphemous by the state. the key aspect here is not the content of the message per se, but its visibility, which has been on the rise since the introduction of new media technologies in indonesia. in a media landscape where journalists often financially depend upon the people they report about, the internet has become a very important platform for self-representation and the dissemination of dissent. for those who do not have the resources to pay journalists for favorable reporting, the internet offers an array of possibilities. they can not only design their own long-term web presence, but also transmit their own perspectives via social media. in indonesia, the persecuted ahmadiyya community has experimented with its own youtube channel (schäfer, 2015), and has also successfully secured a place for ahmadi perspectives in talk shows and reports. in a similar vein, atheist activists, many of whom live abroad, use the internet to make their own voices heard. in a sectarianized society in which religion occupies central stage, some atheist activists fit their views and the discrimination against them by 265forming ‘forbidden’ identities online turning atheism into a visible form of identity, standing side by side with the religious ones. when they avoid using their real names, the internet allows activists to exchange views and to become visible without exposing themselves to the danger of violent attacks. in the same way, they use the internet as a semi-public space to establish an identity that is formally discouraged in indonesia. not only did the indonesian society discourage atheism within its long-lasting campaign against communism – also the indonesian state, in principle, sanctions atheism and public atheist identities, as in the case of alexander an, who coupled his atheist online presence with anti-islamic insults and thus overstepped the line of what is tolerable in a religiously defined public sphere. the aan case, however, produced a heightened awareness and sensitivity about the state’s regulation of belief. it also revitalized the public debate about what is and is not publicly tolerable and about the state’s role in limiting the freedom of speech in matters of religious sensitivities. those who opposed a relaxed attitude toward what should publicly be tolerable were able to demonstrate the limits they wanted to impose. moreover, the state used the opportunity to reiterate its middle-ground stance on religious matters, as already demonstrated in the 2010 blasphemy law controversy. the international attention that the case garnered, together with the online network of various atheist websites that commented on the case, show how the indonesian atheist community is further boosted, and also determined by international support. this is done not only through the increasing demand for religious freedom and the prevailing language of human rights, but also through moral and financial provisions of international atheist organizations flowing to their indonesian counterparts. in this context, sectarian identity becomes ever more important: the campaigns of international organizations encourage much more sharply differentiated profiles of indonesian atheists – and other minorities – than they might otherwise adopt. thus, for indonesian atheist activists, their newly gained visibility and confidence brings about the danger of reducing their identity to their stance toward religion at large. these markers of difference concentrate pressure at precisely the spot where the indonesian society is most sensitive. in a nation that is already rapidly fragmenting into various religious and political camps, the growth of internationally well-connected communities may thus increase social tensions within society. yet, for those whom online activism has enabled to ‘come out of the closet’ and finally connect with likeminded non-believers in indonesia and abroad, this sacrifice might be worth the price.  references amnesty international. 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(2013, april 27). for indonesian atheists, a community of support amid constant fear. the new york times. retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/27/world/asia/26iht-indonesia26. html?_r=0 sedgwick, e. k. (1990). epistemology of the closet. berkeley: university of california press. seidman, s., meeks, c., & traschen, f. (1999). beyond the closet? the changing social meaning of homosexuality in the united states. sexualities, 2(1), 9-34. steenbrink, k. a. (1998). muslim-christian relations in the pancasila state of indonesia. the muslim world, 88(3-4), 320-352. what is it like to be an atheist? (n.d.). quora.com. retrieved from https://www.quora.com/ what-is-it-liketo-be-an-atheist-in-indonesia wodak, r., & fairclough, n. (1997). critical discourse analysis. in t. a. van dijk (ed.), discourse studies: a multidisciplinary introduction (vol. 2, discourse as social interaction; pp. 258-284). london: sage. about the author saskia schäfer is a political scientist with a focus on southeast asia. she is currently a visiting scholar at the chinese university hong kong, where she is working on a book about the ahmadiyya and questions of heterodoxy and state-islam relations in southeast asia. ► contact: saskia.schaefer@fu-berlin.de acknowledgements this article had benefitted from comments on earlier versions by tobias berger, thomas meaney, two anonymous reviewers, and the editors of this issue. to all of them i am grateful. this article emerged from my main research on deviance and notions of heterodoxy in south east asia, for which funding was provided by the deutsche forschungsgemeinschaft, the berlin graduate school of muslim cultures and societies, and the dahlem research school at freie universität berlin. aseas 14(2) | 149 multi-lingual and multicultural education in globalizing southeast asia thithimadee arphattananona a mahidol university; thailand ► arphattananon, t. (2021). multi-lingual and multicultural education in globalizing southeast asia. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 14(2), 149-153. countries in southeast asia share similar characteristics in terms of ethnic and cultural diversity. each country is rich with its population of different ethnicities, religions, and languages (ooi & grabowsky, 2017). to keep a balance between unity and diversity is a challenge that countries in the region commonly experience. compared to the present time, the management of cultural diversity had not been an issue in the past. in many vassal states, ethnic groups could retain their linguistic and cultural identities. the existence of cultural diversity among tributary states helped strengthen the power of the overlords (sattayanurak, 2016). but, in the beginning of the 19th century, this gradually changed. in thailand, the encroachment of western imperialism made the ruling classes to initiate nationbuilding projects. since then, people of diverse ethnicities and cultures have been subsumed under the same national identity (baker & phongpaichit, 2005). in other southeast asian countries, nation-building projects became prominent after gaining independence following the end of world war ii. most countries relied on the centralized, unitary nation-state model to assimilate people of diverse ethnicities and cultures living within the same territory (he & kymlicka, 2005). in almost all southeast asian countries, ethnic, religious, and cultural diversity has been perceived as a threat to national unity, and education is one of the tools that southeast asian countries have used to unify people. mono-cultural educational policies, such as the prohibition of other languages in schools, a centralized curriculum, or the closing of schools set up by ethnic and religious groups, were implemented across countries in the region (aguilar, 2017). these policies deprived ethnic groups and indigenous people of their cultural practices and identities. the result was resentment, marginalization, and at times, persistent conflicts, as in the case of muslims in the southernmost provinces of thailand. however, upon entering the 21st century, a shift in language policies reflecting an ostensible acceptance of cultural diversity has been witnessed in many parts of southeast asia. articles in this special issue document such policy shifts and the movements to reclaim linguistic and cultural rights, as in the case of thailand, myanmar, malaysia, and indonesia. (multi-)linguism and ethnicity in the context of nation-building myanmar is inhabited by 135 ethnic groups, each of which has distinguished languages and cultures. this rich linguistic and cultural diversity has long been editorial w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 64 150 | aseas 14(2) multi-lingual and multicultural education in globalizing southeast asia suppressed and dominated by the burmese majority since the government of general ne win rose to power in 1962 (anui & arphattananon, 2021, this issue). however, in 2011 when the political landscape of myanmar changed towards democracy, the linguistic and cultural rights of ethnic groups were acknowledged. in education, this change was reflected in the 2014 national education law, which stipulated the integration of ethnic languages and cultures into the mainstream curriculum for the first time since myanmar gained independence. the article by anui and thithimadee arphattananon (2021, this issue) traces the implementation of the policy in kachin, kayah, karen, and mon states. through interviews with stakeholders, observations in classrooms, and the examination of policy documents and instruction materials, the authors examine the ways in which ethnic languages and ethnic content were included in the primary school curriculum. the study sheds light on the types of content that were included in the curriculum, and the ways they were taught in the framework of the landmark national education law. although the political tide in myanmar swung back to military rule again after the coup in february 2021, this article documents the positive results of the education policy, which values the cultural and linguistic diversity of ethnic minority groups. malaysia’s multiculturalism is represented by the rich linguistic diversity of its multiethnic population – malays, chinese, indians, and indigenous groups (ibrahim, 2007). in malaysia, 137 languages are spoken, with the official and national language being malay. the other major languages representing the diverse culture of the population are mandarin, tamil, and english (pillai, kaur, & chau, 2021, this issue). since the country became independent from british rule, malay was designated as an official language to strengthen the malay identity and, at the same time, to distance itself from the colonial past. the purpose of promoting malay language, along with malay culture and islamic religion, was to unite and integrate different ethnic groups (albury, 2021; ibrahim, 2007). the english language, which had been used in state offices during the colonial period, gradually decreased in importance. although mandarin and tamil could be used as a medium of instruction in vernacular schools,1 for chinese and indian students respectively, the malay language has been given a more prestigious status as a national and official language, especially since 1970, due to the force of nationalism and islamic resurgence (ibrahim, 2007). however, at the turn of the 21st century, a seismic shift in language policy was witnessed in malaysia. a policy to teach science and mathematics in english known as pengajaran dan pembelajaran sains dan matematik dalam bahasa inggeris  (ppsmi, teaching and learning of science and mathematics in english) (albury, 2021) was implemented under the government of prime minister mahathir mohamad. after being in place for six years, the policy was terminated in 2012 through lobbying efforts by nationalist groups (gooch, 2009). however, when mahathir mohamad was re-elected as prime minister in 2018, the policy was resurrected. in their article, stefanie pillai, surinderpal kaur, and meng huat chau (2021, this issue) trace the pendulum of language policies in malaysia that have swung back and forth between malay and english since 2000. they examine official statements 1 vernacular schools in malaysia provide education for children of chinese and indian ethnic groups. mandarin is used in chinese schools, whereas tamil is used in indian schools as the medium of instruction (ibrahim, 2007). aseas 14(2) | 151 thithimadee arphattananon regarding the rationale behind language choices in malaysia to see the stances towards language diversity in the country. using critical discourse analysis, the authors studied 30,508 articles published from 2000 to 2020 in two major newspapers in malaysia. they found that globalization and employability, as well as ethnic and national identities, influenced the shifts in language policy. the emphasis on english and mandarin is based on the belief that proficiency in these two languages will enhance the opportunity to access the globalized world and thus, increase employability. on the contrary, the official statements that support the use of malay were based on the reasons of strengthening national identity, with an added emphasis on multilingualism. such statements argue that malaysians who are proficient in multiple languages are better able to compete in a globalized world. this resonates with the language policies in other southeast asian countries. in thailand, the use of malay and chinese languages, which had been prohibited in the 1950s and early 1960s as part of nationalist policy, has been promoted in schools in recent years (arphattananon, 2011). in other words, in a globalized era, proficiency in languages is seen as having productive value that contributes to the economic development of a country. ethnic and highland indigenous groups in southeast asia suffer from uneven development policies between rural and urban areas, which has resulted in income inequality, making them one of the most economically disadvantaged groups (clarke, 2001; gradin, 2016). the agricultural produce that has been their main source of income is unstable in terms of price and yield, and many have left their communities to find jobs in the city. when the tourism industry began to boom in thailand in the 1960s (trupp & dolezal, 2020), catering for the tourist trade has been a new source of income for many highland indigenous groups. cultural objects such as necklaces, bracelets, costumes, and food products have been commodified. although this has brought them increasing monetary return, they are on the edge of losing their cultural heritage as the commercialized cultural objects are removed from their original cultural meaning. thus, a struggle for sustainable tourism has been an issue for ethnic and indigenous groups in the region. the karen ethnic group in doi si than (translated as four creeks mountain) in the province of chiang mai is one of the many groups that sees their cultural heritage endangered. the villagers have relied on agriculture as a means of living, but the agricultural yields are so uncertain to sustain their living that many karen villagers, especially the younger generations, have had to move to the city to find – mostly labor-intensive – jobs. the article by jitjayang yambhai, riemer knoop, and patoo cusripituck (2021, this issue) is based on their participatory action research with karen villagers in doi si than to revive their cultural assets for sustainable living. through the process of dialogues, the villagers were invited to reflect on the meanings of their cultural heritage and critically examine the ways in which they can harness them for the sustainable development of their community. based upon the critical consciousness approach (freire, 2014), the authors used the design thinking technique to enhance community-based learning. through the process of dialogue, reflection, and decision-making facilitated by the authors, the villagers were able to redefine the meanings of their material cultures, namely chili paste, necklaces, and bracelets, and to capitalize on them to serve as marketable cultural products. karen communities also make their own spirits that are used on several occasions, such as to start a 152 | aseas 14(2) multi-lingual and multicultural education in globalizing southeast asia sowing or harvest season, or in wedding and funeral ceremonies. in this participatory research, a distilling house for spirits was transformed into an ecomuseum where visitors can experience the spirit-making of the karen communities. the involved karen communities came up with new design and business models to marketize their cultural products, and identified sustainable ways of living for their communities. multicultural and multi-lingual education in practice the recent increase in the number of labor migrants in thailand from its three neighboring countries – myanmar, cambodia, and laos – has a tremendous effect on education as many migrants bring with them or give birth to children in thailand. since the thai government has approved the enrollment of migrant children in government schools, there has been an increase in cultural diversity in thailand’s educational system. the article by thithimadee arphattananon (2021, this issue) explores the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to teach in multicultural settings possessed by teachers in schools where migrant and thai students study together. from the results of her action research, which included the development and implementation of a training program for teachers in multicultural schools, arphattananon (2021, this issue) found that teachers who have been trained in the program had higher levels of knowledge, skills, and attitudes regarding the education of migrant children compared to those who did not participate in the training program. in thailand, teachers who teach in schools that enroll migrant children have been put in a ‘sink-or-swim’ situation as there is no systematic professional development program to support them to teach in multicultural settings. arphattananon’s article points to the importance of having a systematic and continuous professional development program that incorporates elements, such as the rights of education of migrant children, prejudice and stereotype reduction, cultural issues significant to migrant children, and pedagogic approaches for culturally diverse classrooms. the article by kulthida saemee and jaewon jane ra (2021, this issue) explores the perceptions and practices of school personnel and parents regarding language teaching and learning of migrant students from laos, myanmar, and cambodia in a thai government school. through interviews with parents, teachers, and administrators, and in-classroom-observations, the authors conclude that school personnel – administrators and teachers in particular – play an important role in the learning experiences of migrant students. the article particularly focuses on the communicative functions of language in the school where thai and migrant students study together, and the role of the professional learning community formed among school personnel and parents as a mechanism that supports the education of migrant students. the article by chutiwan rueangdej and singhanat nomnian (2021, this issue) investigates how cultural identities of migrant students are presented in english language textbooks used in thailand’s schooling system. they argue that, although english is widely used across the world, textbooks should contextualize and reflect the cultures in the places where they are being used. based on their study in a school that enrolls thai and migrant students in samut sakhon province, the authors conclude that english language textbooks should include more content about southeast asia to reflect the lives and experiences of students and their families. aseas 14(2) | 153 thithimadee arphattananon the forces of globalization put additional challenges to countries in the region as to how to deal with an increasing diversity brought about by the migration of new groups and the pressing issues of economic and social development. the articles in this special issue illustrate how globalization, characterized as the transnational movement of people and trade, has influenced the shift in education and language policies in many countries in southeast asia.  references aguilar, f. (2017). towards community formation in southeast asia? history education, asean and the nation-state. sojourn: journal of social issues in southeast asia, 32(1), 137-169. albury, n.j. (2021). language policy, ideological clarification and theory of mind. language policy, 20, 193214. arphattananon, t. (2011). the shift on policy of language of instruction in schools in three southernmost provinces of thailand. pertanika journal of social sciences and humanities, 19(1), 113-122. baker, k., & phongpaichit, p. (2005). a history of thailand. cambridge university press. clarke, g. (2001). from ethnocide to ethnodevelopment? ethnic minorities and indigenous people in southeast asia. third world quarterly, 22(3), 413-436. freire, p. (2014). the pedagogy of the oppressed. bloomsbury academic. gooch, l. (2009, july 8). malaysia ends use of english in science and math teaching. the new york times. https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/09/world/asia/09iht-malay.html gradin, c. (2016). poverty and ethnicity in asian countries. adbi working paper 624. asian development bank institute. he, b., & kymlicka, w. (2005). introduction. in w. kymlicka & b. he. (eds.), multiculturalism in asia (pp. 1-21). oxford university press. ibrahim, r. (2007). multiculturalism and education in malaysia. culture and religion, 8(2), 155-167. ooi keat, gin & grabowsy, v. (2017). introduction. in ooi keat gin & v. grabowsky (eds.), ethnic and religious identities and integration in southeast asia (pp. 1-27). silkworm books. sattayanurak, s. (2016). prawatsart ratthai lae sangkom thai: krobkrua chumchon chiiwit saamanchon kwamsongjam lae attaluktaang chartphan [history of the thai state and thai society: family, community, lives of the ordinary, memories and ethnic identities]. chiang mai university press. trupp, a., & dolezal, c. (2020). tourism and the sustainable development goals in southeast asia. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 13(1), 1-16. about the author thithimadee arphattananon is an associate professor at the research institute for languages and cultures of asia, mahidol university, thailand. her research focuses on how education and instructional practices in schools can go beyond the recognition of cultural differences and achieve the goal of equality for students from diverse social and cultural backgrounds. until present, she has conducted research that examined multicultural education policies in thailand and the practices in schools that enrolled students from diverse cultures. ► contact: thithimadee.art@mahidol.ac.th contested development in indonesia: rethinking ethnicity and gender in mining contested development in indonesia: rethinking ethnicity and gender in mining kristina großmann, martina padmanabhan & katharina von braun ► großmann, k., padmanabhan, m., & braun, k. von (2017). contested development in indonesia: rethinking ethnicity and gender in mining. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 10(1), 11-28. this article reviews the literature on the relationship between gender and ethnicity in indonesia’s mining sector and outlines shortcomings and prospects for further research. recent studies on mining and gender focus predominantly on women and how they are negatively affected by mining. ethnicity, although a growing asset in struggles on environmental transformations, is hardly included in research on mining. the intertwinement of ethnicity and gender in elaborations on mining is often depicted in literature of development programs and environmental organizations in which indigenous women are homogenized as marginalized victims. we argue, however, for a multidimensional approach on mining that takes into account the institutionalization of gender and ethnicity in mining governance as well as the role of gender and ethnic identities. feminist political ecology and institutional analysis are pointing the way for such an approach. furthermore, other relevant categories such as class, age, or status should be considered in the analysis of the complex and multidimensional environmental transformations of the mining sector in indonesia. keywords: ethnicity; feminist political ecology; indonesia; institutions; mining  introduction gender and ethnicity are used to downplay and upgrade particular rights, access, control, and discursive power with regard to natural resources, and shape diverse understandings of development. in research on the masculinized mining industry, gender constitutes a critical variable in human-nature-relationships and related issues of development. as ethnicity also has strong impact on identity and group formation, this category is expected to feature prominently in the literature on mining in indonesia, but this is not actually the case. in this article, we discuss, based on a literature review, how researchers and development practitioners elaborate on the intertwinement of gender and ethnicity. in a further step, we frame shortcomings with regard to institutional analysis and give future prospects for further research. with special focus on indonesia, we focus on gendered roles, access, control, and knowledge on processes of identity-formation and how these are instrumentalized in struggles over mining projects embedded in development discourses. this contributes to an understanding of how research in the field of gender, ethnicity, development and mining analyzes and describes the role and influence of different actors and aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 17 .1 -2 12 kristina großmann, martina padmanabhan & katharina von braun  aseas 10(1) discourses, as well as the relationship between ethnicand gender-coded power relations and socio-ecological transformation in indonesia. economic growth through mining in indonesia indonesia, as many other countries, links development with resource extraction and mining which is directly associated with economic and social development. during the former president suharto’s developmentalist authoritarian regime until 1998, the top-down agenda of development (pembangunan) was based on the economic extraction of the peripheries for the sake of the center’s progress (haug, rössler, & grumblies, 2017). in most cases, the large-scale exploitation of natural resources was materialized through contracts with foreign companies within the contract of work system (kontrak karya) which was regulated in law no. 11 of 1967. a kontrak karya is an agreement between the government of indonesia as the principal and a foreign company as the contractor, giving the latter a strong position with regard to tax payments, revenue sharing, and dealing with environmental pollution and human rights abuses. in 2009, law no. 4 of 2009 on mineral and coal mining replaced the kontrakt karya system by a mining permit system (izin usaha pertambangan) in the framework of a more protectionist economic approach. as global demand for scarce energy resources is mounting rapidly, the coal mining sector promises massive revenues (barma, kaiser, le, & vinuela, 2012). however, the resource curse thesis suggests that natural resource abundance generates a series of economic and political distortions which ultimately undermine the contributions of the extractive industry to development through civil conflict (sachs & warner, 2001). the debate on the prospects and dangers of mining can be seen as an exemplification of the debate around the country’s development model. the state’s strong emphasis on economic growth through resource extraction can be seen in the expansion of indonesia’s coal industry. the mineral resources sector accounts for more than 17% of export revenues of the indonesian economy (price waterhouse coopers indonesia, 2013) and globally, indonesia is the second-largest coal producer and the largest exporter of thermal coal (devi & pragoyo, 2013).1 the benefit of mining to inhabitants living in resources rich regions – including ethnic groups – can materialize in the contribution to the development of local suppliers and local employment. however, the assessment of the impact of the mining industry on development depends on the definition of development. multiple concepts of development exist – related to different approaches in the organization of social and production systems, orientations toward the past and the future, and philosophies of science and epistemology. the role of nature in development is a fundamentally distinguishing feature of the different concepts. a rather implicit classification has prevailed, with economics and development on one side, and the conservation of nature and ecology on the other (colby, 1990). as a result of the negotiations on the sustainable development goals, we may observe a convergence of the two streams in the international arena. shaping the future in a sustainable way is 1 between 1998 and 2013, the extraction of coal increased from 4.4 million tons (lucarelli, 2010, p. 25) to 489 million tons, from which 426 million tons were exported (world coal association, 2014). 13contested development in indonesia: rethinking ethnicity and gender in mining essentially based on the fair distribution of resources among those living today and future generations, and implies questions of distributive justice, development, future ethics, and causality (muraca, 2010; ott & döring, 2004). sustainability is thus a predominantly normative concept intended to influence the political and social spheres, and as such collides with the practices of natural resources use, as far as those norms are not respected in the mining sector. since the end of the authoritarian new order regime under president suharto, the indonesian mining sector has undergone considerable changes with respect to policies and regulatory frameworks. this is largely due to democratization and decentralization processes resulting in greater regional autonomy (haug et al., 2017). although decentralization aims at promoting accountability, transparency, and public participation, conflicts over power and access to resources have increased as new elites strive for power (mccarthy, 2004; van klinken, 2007). priorities and interests differ between communities, the state, and mining companies (resosudarmo, resosudarmo, sarosa, & subiman, 2009). conflict is caused by illegal mining, pollution, environmental impacts, as well as uncertainties surrounding the livelihoods of local residents after mining closure. policy and regulatory uncertainties over land use and property rights relate to the overlap of mining areas with community lands, protected areas, and indigenous conservation sites (ballard, 2001; ballard & banks, 2003; fünfgeld, 2016). negative impacts on the environment and the people are seen in the case of one of the world’s largest gold and copper mines, the grasberg-mine in west papua which is operated by the us-american company freeport-mcmoran. in 1967, freeport was the first foreign company to enter a contract on the exploration and production of natural resources with the indonesian government. therefore, it has enjoyed broad fiscal privileges as well as protection by the indonesian military. immense exclusion and deprivation of the local population, human rights violations, and massive destruction of the environment have led to protests and violent clashes between the indonesian military and the free papua movement (organisasi papua merdeka, opm) (leith, 2002). concerns also relate to the poorly implemented national environmental impact assessment system in indonesia (analisis mengenai dampak lingkungan, amdal), the relaxation of controls on environmental performance to stimulate investment, and the provision of increased access to nature reserve areas (ballard, 2001; großmann & tijaja, 2015). corporate social responsibility and community development (csr/ cd) could be a means to develop better standards of living for affected populations, if natural resource extraction occurs. however, in indonesia, csr predominately focuses on infrastructure projects and tends to exclude vulnerable groups (welker, 2014). devi and prayogo (2013) state that csr/cd tends to be used to secure the mining business and to cover up (or avoid) tensions and conflicts between companies and local communities. in such circumstances, csr programs are developed in the form of charity, which tends to provide only short term benefit. in some cases, it may even escalate the pre-existing and unresolved issues. (p. 48) 14 kristina großmann, martina padmanabhan & katharina von braun  aseas 10(1) therefore, communities are disappointed and distrust the implementation of csr/cd programs. the rapidly expanding indonesian coal industry is concentrated in kalimantan where 83% of indonesia’s overall 5,462 million tons of coal reserves are expected (lucarelli, 2010, p. 40). the national masterplan for the acceleration and development of the indonesian economy (masterplan percepatan dan perluasan pembangunan ekonomi indonesia, mp3ei) from 2011 to 2015 aims at establishing kalimantan as a “center for production and processing of national mining and energy reserves” (government of indonesia, 2011, p. 96). whereas east and south kalimantan are already established mining areas, central kalimantan is the new frontier for coal exploration. large coal deposits have been found in the province’s upper barito river (kapuas) basins. much of indonesia’s mineral resources are found in areas of rich biodiversity or within indigenous territories. therefore, large-scale mining often entails struggles over access, control, and benefit pertaining natural resources. in central kalimantan, a number of indigenous groups are experiencing drastic changes in their livelihoods due to the expansion of palm oil plantations, deforestation, and existing mining activities (mccarthy, 2004). the influx of workers from other provinces, rivalry over employment, and competing land-rights pose considerable threats to local communities (böge, 2007). in extractive economies, large-scale mining occupies one end of the spectrum whereas artisanal or small-scale mining occupies the other, “with a complex array of informal, mineral-based livelihoods lying in between the two” (lahiri-dutt, 2012a, p. 201). artisanal mining is characterized by non-mechanized and labor intensive mining activities, often in the informal sector, and is associated with visions of chaos and plunder invoking fear and insecurity amongst economists and policy-makers (lahiridutt, 2006). in fact, small-scale mining operates under hazardous conditions and has negative impacts on environment and health such as land erosion, river pollution as well as intoxication. frequently, artisanal mining is not formally authorized by the government but has been contributing to the livelihoods of people living in resource rich regions for centuries, even before governments existed (lahiri-dutt, 2004; lestari, 2011; spiegel, 2011). ethnicity and mining ethnicity is a crucial issue in indonesia – given the large population of indigenous peoples and the conflictual history of ethnic relations on the island (bertrand, 2004; davidson & henley, 2007). during the suharto era, ethnicity, religion, race, and group affiliation, the so-called sara (suku, agama, ras, dan antar golongan) topics, were officially forbidden in political discourse due to fear of national disintegration. on the other hand, suharto’s developmentalist authoritarian regime highly politicized and instrumentalized ethnicity. for example, the connotation of being a dayak was derogative, associated with living in a remote area and being underdeveloped, backward, primitive, and a member of an ‘isolated tribe’ (suku terasing) and, therefore, subject to discriminative and paternalistic development programs (duncan, 2007; li, 1999; sercombe & sellato, 2007). with spatial and social dimensions always being connected to power relations, suharto’s regime defined marginality as geographically and socially distant from jakarta which represented the absolute center (grumblies, 15contested development in indonesia: rethinking ethnicity and gender in mining 2017). therefore, the outer islands and especially the uplands were constructed as marginal areas and their inhabitants were expected to give up swidden agriculture and their nomadic mode of subsistence as well as convert to an officially recognized religion in the name of development and modernization (li, 1999). this led to the rejection of ethnic belonging, identity, and difference amongst members of ethnic groups (for the bentian ethnic group, see sillander, 1995, p. 82; for the meratus, see tsing, 1984, p. 32). since the post-suharto reformasi era, ethnicity has experienced revitalization, predominantly because it has become a central bargaining power in struggles over land and natural resources. the revival of tradition in indonesian politics (davidson & henley, 2007) has also to be seen in the context of the parallel strengthening of indigenous identity supported by the global indigenous movement. new international agreements on the rights of indigenous peoples encouraged the self-assertion of communities that had been oppressed under the new order regime (hauser-schäublin, 2013). the internationally funded indonesian organization alliance of indigenous peoples of the archipelago (aliansi masyarakat adat nusantara, aman) coined the indonesian term masyarakat adat (people who adhere to customary ways) – now officially used to designate customary law communities (afiff & lowe, 2007). with customs (adat) playing an important role in communities’ self-definition, the concept of masyarakat adat has become central to the rethinking of the relationships between nature and nation. aman (2012) classifies 50 to 70 million people of indonesia’s 230 million inhabitants as indigenous.2 masyarakat adat are defined as a group of people from the same ancestral lineages who inhabit a certain geographical area and have a distinctive set of ideological, economic, political, cultural, and social systems and values as well as a territory (aman, 2012, p. 3).3 aman states that indigenous peoples traditionally live on their ancestral land and depend on nature, thereby having accumulated their own knowledge on how to manage this natural environment. they believe the earth is a common property that deserves protection to maintain sustainability. aman indicates that indigenous peoples in indonesia mostly live in rural environments rich in natural resources but many of them suffer from impoverishment as the government of indonesia does not acknowledge their rights to land and natural resources. oftentimes, the transfer of rights to land and natural resources has resulted in the loss of their livelihoods and they suffer from poor education and health, lack of mobility and information (aman, 2012). in struggles over natural resources, indigenous identity has become a means to strengthen community rights over and against state and corporate claims (li, 2000). in 2013, aman won a lawsuit requesting the constitutional court to review parts of the 1999 forestry law, giving indigenous communities the right for land titling. the 2 indonesian law uses diverse terms for indigenous peoples, for example, masyarakat suku terasing (alien tribal communities), masyarakat tertinggal (neglected communities), masyarakat terpencil (remote communities), masyarakat hukum adat (customary law communities) and, more simply, masyarakat adat (people who adhere to customary ways). aman states that most of these terms comprise a negative connotation (aman, 2012, p. 4). 3 therefore, aman characterizes indigenous peoples through their specific way of living and economic activities. they are described as living in forested, mountainous, or coastal regions, being nomadic and/or sedentary, engaged in gathering, rotational swidden farming, agroforestry, fishing, small-scale plantations, and mining for subsistence needs. 16 kristina großmann, martina padmanabhan & katharina von braun  aseas 10(1) legal review states that adat forests are no longer categorized as part of state-owned forests and therefore can be owned by indigenous communities. in january 2017, the president joko widono enacted the constitutional court’s decision and announced the recognition of the rights of nine indigenous communities (mongabay, 2017). based on the particular characteristic of their adat, indigenous groups distinguish themselves from others in order to substantiate their claims for the restitution of their traditional rights – namely land or other natural resources. in the course of the decentralization process, for example, the indigenous group of the dayak – a term referring to a heterogeneous population of non-muslim or non-malay natives of the island of borneo (sercombe & sellato, 2007) have experienced new power constellations that strengthened the regional elites (haug et al., 2017; schulte nordholt, 2014). the dayak revitalized their identity in kalimantan in the course of this process as they experienced an increase in political and economic participation (duile, 2014; haug, 2007; schiller, 2007). although the formal absence of effective forms of accountability hindered the systematic redistribution of power, some groups were enabled to assert customary adat claims, for example, the muluy dayak community in east kalimantan. they try to resist large-scale mining operations by depicting smallscale mining as part of their indigenous customs and identity. mulut dayak communities emphasize that some of the rituals and religious ceremonies carried out are intrinsically connected to artisanal mining (down to earth, 2001). gender and mining indonesia is of specific relevance within gender studies as researchers point out the prevalence of communities which are barely stratified along the dimension of gender and tend to lack the domination of men. gender complementarity is stated amongst the minangkabau in sumatra (sanday, 2002) with matrilineal structures. symmetric gender relations are found among some ethnic groups, for example, the dayak (haug, in this issue; for specific dayak groups such as the meratus, see tsing, 1990; for the kenyah, see colfer, 2008). despite the acknowledgment of complementary and symmetric gender relations, researchers depict mining as an exceptionally masculinized industry in terms of the composition of its workforce and its cultures of production as well as of symbolic exploitation of feminized nature. according to robinson (1996), mining “is so ‘naturally’ masculine [that] its gender effects are invisible” (p. 137). until the beginning of the 21st century, studies on mining have neglected to focus on gender and the social position of women as workers, providers, and wives. current research on gender and mining asserts that women’s land rights and their rights to representation within the mining community are commonly diminished in the context of mining activities. the loss of land and resources to mining projects along with the pollution of the environment impact most heavily upon women in local communities who are seen as key subsistence providers (down to earth, 2001, 2014). furthermore, mining often puts additional pressure on women to perform as the maintainers of kinship networks owing to male absenteeism (ballard & banks, 2003). civil society groups stress augmented domestic violence and transformations in patterns of marriage and sexuality, leading to increases in the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases for women (international women and mining network, 17contested development in indonesia: rethinking ethnicity and gender in mining 2004). the efforts of companies’ csr programs predominantly concentrate on men and thereby tend to overlook women or homogenize women as victims of mining (mahy, 2011). studies also point out that the rapid influx of cash as land compensation or income to indigenous men impacts on gender relations and pushes women further into marginalization (byford, 2002; lahiri-dutt & mahy, 2007; macintyre, 2002). in artisanal mining, women generally play a much larger role than in large-scale mining. they occupy a broad range of activities like crushing, grinding, sieving, and panning. moreover, they are involved in the hazardous processing of mining products, involving, for example, mercury in the case of gold. amalgamation is often conducted at home which means great risk of mercury poisoning and silicosis (hinton, veiga, & beinhoff, 2003). furthermore, women are involved in cooking and running small food and drink stalls. the gendered impacts of mining often cut across different ethnic groups and classes but poorer women (and men) are described as more negatively affected. women of some ethnic groups do participate to some extent in small-scale mining when cultural, historical, and legal aspects prevent them as moretti (2006) shows in his study on the anga in the kaindi area of papua new guinea. he ascertains that pollution beliefs, land tenure practices, the unequal control of household resources, the gendered division of labor as well as the gendered history of the colonial goldfields, contemporary national law, and company practice marginalize women in the extractive sector. in summary, the existing literature exhibits a tendency to focus on women rather than on gender relations and tends to represent women as victims, deploying a duality of women as either wives or sex workers and men as either miners or exploiters. in counterbalancing this, lahiri-dutt (2012a) argues for a post-capitalist feminist approach which aims to reveal women’s agency and involvement in mining. in a recent study, lahiri-dutt (2012b) explores the articulations and enactments of race-genderclass in a company town in east kalimantan and analyzes the performances of differential power enjoyed by women and men, foreigners and indonesians in different sites of social interactions. in his study on men and masculinity, cannon (2003) explores the discourses and practices of expatriates in the mining industries of papua new guinea and indonesia. he describes that the strongly patriarchal nature of the industry and its workforce fuels a transnational mining labor culture that places a premium on expressions of masculinity, alcohol, and violence. intersectionality of ethnicity and gender in mining gender-based inequalities are often intersected with inequalities based on class, age, race, and ethnicity. intersectional approaches examine how these axes of stratification are mutually constructed and reinforce each other. ethnicity and gender are two overlapping categories that “bring to the fore the intertwined aspects of economic, ecological and cultural distribution” (escobar, 2006, p. 10). both gender and ethnicity are critical variables in shaping access to, knowledge and organization of natural resources (resurrection & elmhirst, 2008; rocheleau, slayter-thomas, & wangar, 1996). moreover, gender and ethnicity function as markers for identities. both indi18 kristina großmann, martina padmanabhan & katharina von braun  aseas 10(1) vidual and collective identities are (re-)produced in a dialectical process of internal and external identification and have a flexible and situational character (hall, 2000; jenkins, 2014). therefore, multiple identities reflect the coexistence of diverse ethnic or gender identities whose particular meaning depends on situation and context. identities not only coexist but also intersect. gendered identity does not necessarily carry the same meanings for members of different ethnic groups. similarly, women experience ethnic identity differently than men. drawing on the concept of intersectionality, gender and ethnic identities are complementary or competing and ethnicity disrupts or reinforces the existing gender order. strategic essentialisms: indigeneity, women, and development the instrumentalization of ethnicity and gender as identity markers can be understood as strategic essentialism (spivak, 1988). strategic essentialism relates to identity politics, a term signifying political activism founded in the shared experiences of injustice as a social group. with the goal of greater self-determination, groups assert their understanding of distinctiveness to challenge dominant oppressive structures and processes. oppressed groups deploy strategic essentialism, for example, women may retrieve modes of essentialism to combat the ideological representations of masculine superiority. however, social struggles channeled through a discourse of identity-based rights and law can also be highly problematic. identities may be reinterpreted or even imposed upon actors, often as a result of inequalities of power and authority, thus becoming divisive and repressive. just as gender may serve as a strategic tool, different actors may also use ethnicity in an essentialist way to pursue certain interests (mccarthy, 2006). similarly, ethnicity is not a natural category of difference that precedes social relations but is rather formed by and through contested and historically contingent relations of power. as described above, in the context of the revitalization of dayak identities, ethnic identity became central in struggles over natural resources. reasons for rising claims on rights and control are not only to sustain people’s livelihood but also to preserve customary rights. civil society organizations and development institutions deploy rather frequently strategic essentialisms in the context of gender and ethnicity. the un briefing note 5 on gender and indigenous peoples asserts that indigenous peoples believe that there is a holistic interconnection among all things on the planet: animals, plants, natural forces, human beings and the supernatural life. the state of environment will predict the health and state of people who depend upon its provisions. the environment is the provider of life for all human beings who depend on its bounty to survive. . . . indigenous women have played a fundamental role in environmental conservation and protection throughout the history of their peoples. (united nations, 2010, p. 23) another example are the guidelines on integrating indigenous and gender aspects in natural resource management that state: 19contested development in indonesia: rethinking ethnicity and gender in mining the draft platform argues that women, particularly indigenous women, have pivotal roles in environmental conservation. .  .  . the proposed actions are designed to promote the involvement of women in environmental decisionmaking at all levels and to ensure the integration of women’s needs, concerns, and perspectives in policies and programs for environmental and sustainable development. in most developing countries, women are responsible for obtaining water and fuel and in managing household consumption. as a result, they are especially concerned with the quality and sustainability of the environment. (kiørboe, vinding, salazar, tuxen, & munk-ravnborg, 2005, p. 4) and the manukan declaration of the indigenous women’s biodiversity network (2004) reads: we, indigenous women, secure the health of our peoples and our environment. we maintain a reciprocal relationship with mother earth because she sustains our lives. indigenous peoples have developed our own health systems, and indigenous women are the fundamental conservers of the diversity of medicinal plants, used since the time of our conception. (n.p.) these examples show that indigenous peoples are often connected to a more monistic conception of human-environment relationship and are seen as entertaining a stronger reciprocal relationship between themselves and the environment. this naturalist approach of women being closer to nature is directly related to ecofeminist perspectives which argue that women and nature have been subject to a shared history of oppression by patriarchy and the domination of western culture (biehl, 1991; mies & shiva, 1991). they emphasize the ‘natural connection’ between women and nature and construct women as unrecognized vanguards of the environment (dankelman, 2003; dankelman & davidson, 1988; rodda, 1991). ecofeminism is grounded in a form of radical environmentalism and aims at transforming social and environmental injustices by giving women a central role in the process of change. this approach overlaps with the women, environment, and development (wed) framework, which has primarily been applied within development policies since the 1980s, as both put women at the center of environmental action. however, mainstream development agencies have tended to echo ecofeminist discourses in their statements and designs for environmental programs in much less radical ways, thereby depoliticizing them (leach, 2007). the naturalist approach of ecofeminism is criticized by a large body of scholarly work because of its essentializing and homogenizing of women and gender relations and concentrating merely on one aspect of oppression in society, namely that of men over women (agarwal, 1992; jackson, 1993; rocheleau et al., 1996). thus, scholars within the feminist political ecology (fpe) framework analyze the relation between environmental transformations and certain categories of inequality, including gender, and elaborate on multifocal power relations, access and control in political economies, processes of commodification, and changes in women’s labor conditions (elmhirst, 2011; elmhirst & resurreccion, 2008). furthermore, they contribute research on gendered environmental knowledge (howard, 2003; jewitt, 2002; padmanabhan, 20 kristina großmann, martina padmanabhan & katharina von braun  aseas 10(1) 2011) as well as on development policy and governmental development programs (cornwall, harrison, & whitehead, 2007; leach, 2007). fpe re-established a more differentiated and politicized perspective and debate concerning the gender-environment-development nexus. despite this critique in academic circles, an essentialist take on women still plays a central role in development programs, both in their ideologies and in their practical applications. for instance, women are often appointed as effective managers of natural resources and constructed as key actors in conservation programs (suma & großmann, 2016). references to such approaches are also found within sustainable development policies related to mining where women are either invisible or depicted predominantly as victims to be targeted in economic and social empowerment programs for the enhancement of national development. the guidelines of mainstreaming gender into extractive industries projects by the world bank (2006) assert that improving women’s economic and social empowerment is an integral part of the development agenda. it strengthens countries’ abilities to grow, reduce poverty, and govern effectively. improving gains from extractive industries for women stakeholders will not only leverage their untapped potential in increasing growth, reducing poverty, and fostering positive conditions for sustainable development, but also improve the development effectiveness of oil, gas and mining operations for communities and countries as a whole. (n.p.) mapping ways out: institutional perspectives on gender and ethnicity in mining institutions, understood as providers of norms and rules, regulate government, private sector, and civil society. similar to doing gender (west & zimmerman, 1987), we may speak of doing ethnicity (groenemeyer, 2003) as an institutional and discursive process. in order to elaborate on the intertwinement of ethnicity and gender as well as to understand the social-ecological dimension of mining, we suggest to unpack what hagedorn, arzt, and peters (2002) consider the “four institutional perspectives”, namely (a) the property of the resource, (b) the characteristic of actors, (c) the property rights, and (d) the governance structures. the property of the resource shapes the societal relations to nature, grounded in material expressions of human-nature relations. in the case of mining, the conceptual danger arises to equate the categories of gender and nature/culture, whereby women and nature are seen as both subject to exploitation. it is analytically more rewarding to move beyond the topos of indigenous women as victims and critically look into the gendered structures of the mining industry. the symbolism of the sheer size of operations, required technology, and capital refers to an engineering culture that embodies masculinity. remote sites and dangerous work along with new community patterns give rise to social and institutional change. the properties of mining require enormous investments, resulting in a specific social organization of mining operations. shift work or shuttling workers in and out of site results in new arrangements intersected by ethnicity and gender. the hierarchy of the enterprise is mirrored in the social hierarchies on the ground and the larger mining towns (robinson, 2015). 21contested development in indonesia: rethinking ethnicity and gender in mining the second institutional perspective refers to the actors on mining sites who are subjugated to a vertical and stratified division of labor. in some historical sites, men might have dug and women carried and processed (lahiri-dutt, 2012a). in any case, different spaces of work require different physical technologies which eventually become labeled male or female. while open-pit mining has seen more involvement of women and children, shaft-mining resulted in their exclusion. the miner is seen as quintessentially male. according to the doctrine of separate gendered spheres, true womanhood is portrayed in the miner’s wife as the only legitimate woman on the mine, creating the dualism of mine versus home (echoing the public-private divide). the alternative model is that of the prostitute, the ‘fallen woman’, often counted as evidence for victimhood. rereading sexual services as one of the few strategies open to (unskilled) women to participate in the riches from mining provides a new dimension to the analysis of the resource curse. the third institutional factor is property rights. property rights to nature’s components are outcomes from institutions of environmental and political coordination that decide about gendered and ethnic access to and control over benefit streams. these property rights are embedded in larger governance structures with implicit gendered and ethnic regulations that are subject to changing patterns of participation. whether women are able to realize economic gains in the wider mining sector depends on formal and informal property rights. in indonesia, the state is the major formal landowner while land use often follows adat rules. property rights play out in regimes of kinship, rules of inheritance, and layered use rights and result in either agency or powerlessness. as land is a crucial resource in mining, the access to and control over land titles determines participation, for example, through the payment of compensation. tremendous social change is induced if formal rules contradict informal social organization, for example, the breadwinner concept in relation to equal responsibilities or the discrimination against women in unions. equal decision-making over and access to budget and investments can then be diminished by insecurity in case of divorce, widowhood, or the absence of men for labor (li, 2015) in an increasingly commodity based economy. additionally, the distribution of the costs and benefits of mining and the provision of services – such as social services, income, or skills development and educational facilities through local governments and mining companies – differ between men and women. especially women’s rights organizations assert that through the erosion of subsistence economies by mining, women become marginalized in their position as food producers and their traditional role as gatherers, providers, care givers, and nurturers dissolves (asia pacific forum on women, law and development, 2009, p. 108). an institutional approach informed by intersectionality can help to unravel the wo/men-nature relationship embedded in the material interactions around mining sites. the fourth institutional perspective is governance structures. it comprises the complex and dynamic interplay between different institutions like the state, transnational regimes (e.g., the international monetary fund), private multinational mining companies, the local businessmen, and local people. here, crony economies and illegal exploitations (aspinall & van klinken, 2011) are strongly intertwined with the state’s paternalistic development efforts, whereas government power is often overruled by neoliberal forces (gellert, 2010). moreover, the economic spaces of mining 22 kristina großmann, martina padmanabhan & katharina von braun  aseas 10(1) are influenced by the culture and control of international mining. this “corporate machismo” (lahiri-dutt, 2012a, p. 197) of a global industry expands from the shareholders in the global north to the local outplay on gendered and ethnic livelihoods. the emerging new mining communities as a diverse mix of gender, class, and ethnicity reproduce the male-dominated state in company structures, labor organizations, and unions. representations of the hypermasculine miner and overpaid executives (re)presented in the media establish industrial mining as the only legitimate extraction. this hides women’s work in artisanal mining where their labor force is on the rise worldwide. conclusion and future prospects recent studies on mining and gender focus mainly on an essentialist category of women and the negative effects of mining on women’s well-being, livelihoods, and working conditions. women’s precarious access to and control of natural resources and their marginalization and exclusion within processes of environmental change as well as possibilities and strategies of empowerment in mining are major areas of concern. ethnicity, although a growing asset in struggles on environmental transformations, is hardly included in research on mining. the intertwinement of ethnicity and gender in elaborations on mining is mostly dealt with in the literature of development programs and environmental organizations in which indigenous women are homogenized and depicted as marginalized victims who should be empowered. as these organizations fight to enhance women’s rights, this homogenization as a means of a strategic essentialism may be effective and justified. however, scholars criticizing this approach aim at breaking up simplified notions and depict a rather heterogeneous picture in which women’s agency, involvement, and symmetry is stressed. frameworks like feminist political ecology or institutional perspectives underline the multidimensional complexity of gender, ethnicity, and natural resource extraction. however, the intertwinement of gender and ethnicity as important signifying forces, represented by a polymorph approach to power and acknowledging the complexity of identity formation, is rarely dealt with in existing studies. we therefore suggest a multidimensional approach in future studies on mining in indonesia, taking into account the institutionalization of gender and ethnicity in mining governance and the role of gender and ethnic identities. such a new research agenda investigates the norms and rules which regulate decisions, actions, and interactions as well as multifocal power structures in mining governance along the line of ethnicity and gender. furthermore, elaborations on the (re)production of identities and roles relating to gender and ethnicity may elucidate the disruption or reinforcement of gender/ethnicity orders and regimes in mining activities and facilitate differentiated approaches in development concepts. moreover, categories beyond gender and ethnicity are relevant to consider (e.g., class, age, status) in order to unravel the complex and multidimensional environmental transformations taking place in the mining sector in indonesia. 23contested development in indonesia: rethinking 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(2014). coal facts 2014. london: world coal association. 27contested development in indonesia: rethinking ethnicity and gender in mining about the authors kristina großmann is an assistant professor at the chair of comparative development and cultural studies with a focus on southeast asia at the university of passau, germany. her main research interests are environmental transformations, dimensions of differentiation in ethnicity and gender, and civil society organizations in southeast asia. ► contact: kristina.grossmann@uni-passau.de martina padmanabhan is professor and holds the chair in comparative development and cultural studies with a focus on southeast asia at university of passau, germany. she received her phd in rural sociology from the university of göttingen, germany. she focuses on socialecological research, organic farming, gender studies, institutional analysis, sustainable development, and the theory and practice of transdisciplinary research. katharina von braun holds a ba in anthropology from the university of heidelberg, germany, a ma in international development studies from the university of marburg, germany, and a postgraduate ma in democratic governance from the eiuc in venice, italy. currently, she is working at the directorate-general for european civil protection and humanitarian aid operations (echo) in brussels, belgium. acknowledgements we duly acknowledge funding from the deutsche forschungsgemeinschaft (dfg), (pa 1229/51) for (1) the international workshop “environmental transformation, ethnicity, and gender in kalimantan, indonesia”, 10.-12. june 2015, university of passau, germany, organized by martina padmanabhan, kristina großmann, and katharina von braun; for (2) a preliminary explorative research trip to indonesia by kristina großmann in 2015, and for (3) the visit of suraya afiff as guest professor at the university of passau in 2016. we also duly acknowledge funding by the bavarian research alliance (bayfor) for an exploratory research trip to indonesia by martina padmanabhan, kristina großmann, and andrea höing in 2014. aseas 13(1) | 143 deciphering the development of smart and sustainable tourism cities in southeast asia: a call for research marcus l. stephensona & graeme j. dobsonb a sunway university, malaysia; b university of birmingham, uk ► stephenson, m. l., & dobson, g. j. (2020). deciphering the development of smart and sustainable tourism cities in southeast asia: a call for research. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 13(1), 143-153. a recognized desire is noticeable within asean nations to develop more sustainable approaches to urban development and tourism. one solution has been to promote the expansion of both smart cities and smart tourism practices. recently, these smart approaches have been implemented across a variety of different cities and locales. the purpose of this paper is to discuss the potential for further research in developing relationships between ‘smart cities’ and ‘smart tourism’ practices in southeast asia. rather than present a review of the entire region, three potential case studies located in myanmar, lao pdr, and thailand are discussed. these include yangon as a case of smart approaches in a primary city, vientiane as a case of smart approaches in a smaller city, and phuket as a case of smart approaches in an area which suffers from overtourism. the authors maintain that this type of case study research within asean states can provide critical insights and local solutions to the advancement of smart and sustainable tourism destinations. keywords: asean; case studies; smart cities; smart tourism; sustainable development goals  introduction as one of 17 interconnected and integrated sustainable development goals (sdgs) (united nations, 2015), sdg 11 emphasizes the need to make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable. this goal provides a clear vision of the need to improve cities through a range of objectives, including enhanced transport, housing and planning, and also creating a more sustainable urban environment – whether in terms of the physical, social, or cultural environments. however, many cities also face challenges caused by both domestic and international tourism, increasingly being overstretched by the significant impact of growing tourism infrastructures and touristic influences in general. this is especially the case within selected states belonging to the association of southeast asian nations (asean), such as thailand, myanmar, and laos, which provide the geographical focus of the present study. in the ten member states of asean, around 133.1 million tourists arrived in 2019, representing an increase of 7% from 2018. the 23rd meeting of asean tourism ministers in bandar seri begawan (brunei darussalam) emphasized the importance of sustainable and inclusive forms of tourism in the region. forschungswerkstatt  research workshop w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 33 144 | aseas 13(1) deciphering the development of smart and sustainable tourism cities in southeast asia accordingly, the strategic importance of safety and security, the prioritization of the protection and management of heritage sites, and the increased responsiveness to environmental protection and climate change were reiterated (asean, 2020). this integrated and sustainable approach was grounded in the asean tourism strategic plan 2011-2015 (asean, 2015), which emphasized the importance of moving towards “an economic growth scenario that is more ‘inclusive’, ‘green’ and ‘knowledge-based’ ”. the smart city-state of singapore has already realized the ramifications of a sustainable agenda, pledging that by 2030 around 80% of its buildings will attain green mark certification, and energy consumption will decrease by 35% (helmy, 2019). ‘smart sustainable cities’ offer a potential strategic solution to attaining urban sustainability by utilizing information and communication technologies (ict) (see bibri & krogstie, 2019). against this background, the present paper offers three potential case studies that could be used to interrogate the complex intersection of smart cities, sustainability, and smart tourism. rather than providing answers, this paper suggests a starting point for further analysis to inform and critique ways in which smart approaches to sustainability and sustainable tourism have the potential (or not) to deal fully with the impacts of tourism and tourism-related development. ‘smart cities’: a question of definition the term ‘smart city’ sees increased usage, though with little consensus on how this is defined both practically and ideologically (hollands, 2008). despite this ambiguity, a general understanding exists that ict intersects with the urban environment with the aim of improving urban planning, management, and overall efficiency (gonzálezreverté, 2019). this is gained through the use of ict to augment a range of ‘smart’ components, including technology, energy, transport, education, environmental monitoring, and government (lacinák & ristvej, 2017). nonetheless, many elements of the sustainable city remain elusive, including, for example, the need to develop sustainable solutions to deal with the impacts of urban density and its associated environmental, ecological, and social challenges (albino, berardi, & dangelico, 2015; anttiroiko, valkama, & bailey, 2014). irrespective of the lack of possible synergies between what makes a smart and a sustainable city, ict has significant capacity for supporting the transition to more sustainable cities through the management of urban systems. one key dilemma on this pathway concerns the management of public infrastructure and the response to the needs of citizens, while at the same time working towards reducing consumption, especially key utilities. these utilities include not only energy and water, but also amenities such as public spaces and attractions. here the challenge is to modify “consumption to actual need . . . to promote more sustainable behaviors” (harrison et al., 2010, p. 14). bibri and krogstie (2017) suggest that the development of socio-technical systems may provide some answers to this dilemma, not just in the field of transport, environment, and energy, but also healthcare, education, and planning. there is clear potential for alignment between the conceptual significance of ‘smart cities’ on one hand and the objectives shared within sdg 11 on the other, especially through the reduction of consumption. this could have clear ramifications for a range of social, cultural, economic, environmental, and ecologically-oriented aseas 13(1) | 145 marcus l. stephenson & graeme j. dobson benefits for cities. accordingly, there is potential for a more holistic approach to sustainable tourism development to be achieved through reconceptualizing and integrating these opportunities through the lens of smart tourism. the possibilities of this kind of tourism are endless; for instance, smart airports, smart hotels, and smart transportation systems could be created (khan, woo, nam, & chathoth, 2017, p. 4). nevertheless, the current covid-19 epidemic and the emergence of the ‘new normal’ could influence ways in which smart tourism develops and is duly characterized. it is anticipated that smart tourism priorities will focus on the health concerns of urban environments, communities, and the tourists themselves, such as utilizing technologies so as to ensure that tourists feel safe in environments that are traditionally perceived to be crowded, and also to protect resident communities from the health threat posed by tourists and other city visitors. this may involve the widespread use of thermal imagery sensors, with the intention of developing policy and planning guidelines so that safe city infrastructures are fully established (allam & jones, 2020). tourism destinations: sustainable and smart utilizing ict can support cities to coordinate their activities and services to become accessible and pleasurable for both residents and guests alike (buhalis & amaranggana, 2014). in turn, the aligned concept of smart tourism has arguably been developed to improve tourist behavior and consumption by improving, for instance, travel and traffic flows. as gonzález-reverté (2019) notes, in barcelona, a general realization can be noticed that the populace is being overrun by tourists through an over-concentrated tourism agenda. therefore, strategies are being devised to deal with the need to manage tourist flows, streamline parking sites, and dispersing tourists away from congested areas. gonzález-reverté (2019) further suggests that: the introduction of technology as a solution for urban problems offers smart tourism destinations a different route towards urban sustainability. the mass presence of icts in the smart cities that are connected to different urban areas mutually providing and exchanging information enables cities to become more sustainable and improve the quality of life for their citizens. (p. 7) despite the allure of ict as the mediator between tourism behavior and the reduction of consumption, it is also important to recognize its role in touristic overconsumption as a catalyst of overtourism (ivars-baidal, garcía hernández, & mendoza de miguel, 2019). coca-stafaniak (2019) noted that those cities experiencing significant overtourism concerns also have a reputation for advancing smart tourism, particularly such european cities as amsterdam, barcelona, berlin, prague, rome, and venice. therefore, the implication is that smart tourism’s emphasis on marketing, tourism innovation, and related forms of urban tourism development have a role to play in stimulating heavy consumption patterns and behavioral concerns associated with overtourism. indeed, overtourism and overconsumption would seem to have a profound impact on urban environments and societies. this is recently implied by the mobility control orders due to covid-19, with harvey (2020) arguing: 146 | aseas 13(1) deciphering the development of smart and sustainable tourism cities in southeast asia to the degree that contemporary consumerism was becoming excessive it was verging on what marx described as “overconsumption and insane consumption, signifying, by its turn to the monstrous and the bizarre, the downfall” of the whole system. the recklessness of this overconsumption has played a major role in environmental degradation. the cancellation of airline flights and radical curbing of transportation and movement has had positive consequence with respect to greenhouse gas emissions. air quality in wuhan is much improved, as it also is in many us cities. ecotourist sites will have a time to recover from trampling feet. the swans have returned to the canals of venice. to the degree that the taste for reckless and senseless overconsumerism is curbed, there could be some long-term benefits. despite these concerns, it is unlikely that such places will remain empty ad infinitum. instead, haarstad (2016, p. 9) notes of a range of passive smart approaches to promote sustainable solutions in a city, and where consumption can be controlled and monitored by the authorities rather than proactive individuals. these passive solutions are also applicable to areas that are highly concentrated with tourists and include a diverse range of utilities including electrical buses, smart street lighting, and smart waste collection. meanwhile, femenia-serra and neuhofer (2018) focus on the relationship between the consumption of these utilities and tourism. for example, they highlight that the provision of free wi-fi zones in particular tourist areas of palma de mallorca has enabled the destination marketing organisation to collect usage data and thus look into ways to control tourist flows. garcía-hernández, ivars-baidal, and mendoza de miguel (2019) indicate ways in which technological interaction can help mediate the intersection between tourist behaviors and sustainable practices. this approach is exemplified by the ‘enjoy & respect’ campaign in amsterdam in 2018, which targeted those aged between 18 to 34 from the netherlands and the uk, sending them informative messages on the dos and don’ts in the city and the associated ramifications (i.e., fines), as well as sending them messages letting them know when they enter congested areas of the city. also, singapore has heavily invested in an efficient public sector transport system, which not only helps to ease road congestion but also to reduce atmospheric pollution. there has been considerable interest in technology adoption for customer experience enhancement, through ensuring that public transport systems are more accessible, convenient, sustainable, and affordable. singapore’s land transport authority has partnered with such leading companies as citymapper, google, hugo, and quantum inventions to establish enhanced trip planners (knupfer, pokotilo, & woetz, 2018). these passive approaches have been augmented by more active participation involving tourists themselves. the internet, social media, and social networking sites have encouraged individuals to be actively involved in co-creating values for the services and products that they consume. although there has been a demand for sustainable experiences, opportunities to participate in more responsible and sustainable forms of tourism have become available through electronic forms of communications, where the individuals can seemingly become co-creators of sustainable tourism experiences and co-managers of tourism resources in the sustainable management of tourism assets and reaseas 13(1) | 147 marcus l. stephenson & graeme j. dobson sources at the destination (p. 3). . . behave as guests and respect their hosts; and try to ensure a mutually beneficial experience for themselves and for the local communities (shen, sotiriadis, & zhou, 2020, p. 11). smart sustainable tourism cities in the asean region: challenges and opportunities a range of primary cities in the asean region, such as bangkok, ho chi minh city, jakarta, kuala lumpur, manila, singapore, and yangon have experienced accelerated growth and urbanization. around half of the population of the asean region resides in urban areas, a number that, by 2025, is anticipated to grow to around 70 million people, which is why these cities are required to address increasing urbanization through the provision of effective and sustainable urban infrastructures (asean secretariat, 2018). accordingly, cities in southeast asia can still potentially develop in a smart manner and also advance in a sustainable way, though the key question concerns the extent to which they can do this while at the same time attract international visitors. the drive to become smart cities is not restricted to primary cities. smaller cities containing a population of less than one million, such as bandar seri begawan, luang prabang, phuket, siem reap, and vientiane have also been identified as candidates for ‘smart cities’ within the asean smart cities network (ascn), perceived as cities that will grow rapidly and have significant green areas for smart, sustainable forms of development to advance (mckinsey global institute, 2018). this network, in which asean states help promote and cultivate the wider use of technology, was established in 2018. since then, 26 pilot cities (including non-capital cities) in member states of asean have been identified for smart and sustainable development: • bandar seri begawan (brunei); • battambang, phnom penh, and siem reap (cambodia); • banyuwangi, jakarta, and makassar (indonesia); • luang prabang and vientiane (laos); • johor bahru, kota kinabalu, kuala lumpur, and kuching (malaysia); • mandalay, nay pyi taw, and yangon (myanmar); • cebu city, davao city, and manila (philippines); • singapore; • bangkok, chonburi, and phuket (thailand); • and da nang, hanoi, and ho chi minh city (vietnam). these cities have been included in the ascn network partly on the basis that each country selects several cities that can work toward smart city development, as well as pursue technological progress and innovative approaches encouraging quality of life in the city (tortermvasana, 2018). the objective of ascn is to a. promote cooperation on smart city development among asean cities; b. develop commercially viable projects together with private-sector solution 148 | aseas 13(1) deciphering the development of smart and sustainable tourism cities in southeast asia providers; and c. facilitate collaboration with asean’s external partners, through funding and other avenues of support (centre of liveable cities, 2018, p. 2). at a strategic level, the smart asean city intersects with the requirements of sdg 11. an emphasis is placed on striking a balance between three interdependent objectives: (1) a competitive economy; (2) a sustainable environment; and (3) a high quality of life (centre of liveable cities, 2018, p. 12). indeed, as utomo (2019) states, “with the ascn, asean is expected to be able to answer classic urban problems in developing communities such as traffic jams, poverty, pollution, and homelessness”. as suggested earlier, this strategy has the potential to facilitate more smart forms of sustainable tourism. the challenge is to provide further evidence of this complex intersection. what follows are three potential cases studies within the asean region that illustrate how the creation of smart cities can also support the development of smart tourism. in turn, these innovations have the potential to benefit residents and tourists alike through attention to sustainable systems and applications. the first example (yangon) could become a case study of smart tourism in a primary city, whilst the second (vientiane) concerns smart tourism in a smaller southeast asian city, and the third (phuket city) focuses on smart tourism as an approach to overtourism. in all three cases, the complex intersection of smart cities, sdg 11, and smart tourism provides opportunities for further research in order to achieve more sustainable tourism cities. large scale approaches yangon yangon has been earmarked by the government of myanmar as having smart city potential, whilst also being able to offer culturally sustainable experiences to tourists, implying that preservation and representation of culture and heritage can be pursued through a smart and sustainable tourism approach. the ambition of an initial usd 1.5 bn. planned investment involves the creation of a redesigned city with designated green spaces, world class technology, an innovation hub and cultural corridor, and new residential complexes (board, 2019). part of this plan includes the redevelopment of the city’s central area through a process of heritage preservation and repurposing of its derelict colonial heritage buildings. this is the case despite the conservation of such heritage buildings running “the risk of erasing colonial abuses and masking entrenched urban inequalities” (roberts, 2017, p. 41). for example, the neo-classic rangoon architecture from the latter part of the 19th century symbolizes a declaration to british superiority. the court house, for instance, which was built in 1868, signifies the “british right to rule” (2017, p. 45). nonetheless, a geographic information system (gis)-orientated building usage map is being developed of the downtown area, particularizing site use, site characteristics, and built area coverage (centre for liveable cities, 2018). some concern rests with how the new yangon may succumb to the economic prowess of china and its advancement of the china-myanmar economic corridor, as part of the belt and road initiative. chinese infrastructural development and investment could partly dictate the city’s future direction in a way that is not fully reflective of the interests of the city. nevertheless, the plans have been commended for being aseas 13(1) | 149 marcus l. stephenson & graeme j. dobson aligned somewhat to the socio-economic conditions of the city, such as recognition of the need to retain village communities and strengthen access to the physical infrastructure (yifan, 2019). if there are plans to deeply consider the socio-economic, political, and cultural sensitivities pertaining to the anticipated developments in yangon, then smart and sustainable forms of tourism could indeed unfold. consequently, yangon would make a useful case study of utilizing smart technology to monitor site use and develop or support touristic infrastructure. here, a focus could be put on resource use, cultural asset management, demographic characteristics of visitors, and tourist flows. this could serve multiple purposes, including the monitoring of both the sustainability approach and the touristic potential of these sites. small scale approaches vientiane vientiane (lao pdr) has significant capacity to be smart and sustainable. both are important, as the city has substantial tourism potential. indeed, it is a capital city of a country that has witnessed a 5% increase in tourism traffic in the first half of 2019, as compared with the same period in the previous year (xinhuanet, 2019). vientiane holds significant cultural capital, characterized by a strong colonial heritage, buddhist history, and adherence to laotian traditions. to be able to comfortably sustain residents and visitors alike, it is recognized that vientiane needs to have a more effective waste management system in place. thus, there is an identified need to technologically administer waste in such a way as to be able to deal with over 300 to 500 tons of waste daily, and thus reduce the threat of human illnesses (bhattacharya, 2018). in addition, the vientiane sustainable urban transport project, approved in 2015, intends to encourage a more environmentally friendly transport system (government of the lao people’s democratic republic, 2018). however, the endeavor for vientiane is to become smart and at the same time also sustainable, especially to avoid pursuing a development path that is more ad hoc in nature and form, as is the case of particular cities in cambodia. in phnom penh, for instance, a rather unrestricted approach to tourism development has taken place, which has led to such concerns as waste dumping and deficient building code requirements (thomas, 2019). vientiane would therefore provide a useful case study of the development of a smart, sustainable infrastructure that benefits both residents and tourists alike in a developing tourist locale within the asean region. a reaction to ‘overtourism’ phuket thailand has a long-standing reputation and image as a popular tourist destination in southeast asia. here, intensified tourism demand has led to significant socio-cultural and economic impacts. one major tourist center, the city of phuket, has been targeted by the thai government to be a pioneering smart city. the objective is to establish a “multipronged smart city action plan”, which attends to the environment, economy, governance, education, healthcare, and safety (mckinsey global institute, 2018). another aspect of the plan is to promote both tourism development and digital-related investment (tortermvasana, 2016). accordingly, one objective is to monitor overtourism and ensure that the destination can grow smartly and sustainably, serving as 150 | aseas 13(1) deciphering the development of smart and sustainable tourism cities in southeast asia a role model for other cities in southeast asia (mckinsey global institute, 2018). the smart tourism initiative consisted of an initial assessment of the types of tourists and tourism movements within the city, which has been enabled by free wifi hotspots and cttv cameras. developments include tracking to improve safety for both tourists and residents through an elaborate surveillance system (the asean post, 2018). therefore, phuket would provide a useful case study on the development of smart technology to monitor and challenge the impact of overtourism. this data could be used to inform the development of more sustainable tourist practices in phuket and across the asean region as a whole. conclusion the current paper highlights the potential of utilizing existing projects within the asean region, such as those discussed above, to provide single-case examples of approaches to developing smart, sustainable tourist solutions. these solutions can be used to augment and understand the significant impact of overtourism. additionally, they may also provide a range of potential solutions and pitfalls to better understand the development of systems that can support more responsible and sustainable tourism solutions. by locating these three case studies in the asean context, the potential for asean states to provide solutions within their own socio-political environments was unraveled through evidencing their journeys in contributing to sdg 11. one step on this journey can be the integration of smart cities and a smart and sustainable tourist infrastructure. nonetheless, there are imminent challenges ahead, such as the obvious challenges posed by privacy intrusions (including face recognition technologies, etc.), or of technology companies forming partnerships with city-level public sector agencies to profit from projects. however, at the same time, it has also been inferred that smart city developments face consternation for not always being able to secure adequate financial support, and for limitations in capacity development (see smart cities world, 2019). the former concern is exacerbated by the current economic hardships that asean cities face in light of the economic costs of covid-19 lockdowns, including rapidly reduced forms of tourism consumption (and production). the latter concern relates to the need for specific skillsets in the region, calling for critical assessment of the degree to which personnel in the service sector industries – in this case the tourism industry – are educationally trained and equipped to be smart and sustainable in a synergetic manner. another potential challenge concerns the immediate post covd19 era, where asean countries and cities may believe that they have no other choice but to aggressively retarget domestic and international tourists. hence, economic sustainability rather than other crucial forms of sustainability may well become the ultimate priority. nevertheless, now is an opportune time for asean cities to develop repositioning strategies to become both smart and sustainable by focusing on an integrated and holistic developmental framework. however, this strategy ought to center on the social, cultural, environmental, and ecological elements of the city – enabled through the application of technological innovations and transformations.  aseas 13(1) | 151 marcus l. stephenson & graeme j. dobson references albino, v., berardi, u., & dangelico, r. m., (2015). smart cities: definitions, 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(2019, november 27). asean smart city network: thinking beyond ceremonial paradiplomacy. the diplomat. retrieved from https://thediplomat.com/2019 /11/asean-smart-city-network-thinkingbeyond-ceremonial-paradiplomacy/ xinhuanet.com (2019, november 25). lao capital vientiane on track to reach targeted number of tourists for 2019. retrieved from http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2019-11/25/c_138581666.htm. yifan, j. (2019, november 29). new yangon city: a controversial blueprint, china dialogue. retrieved from https://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/11687-new-yangon-city-a-controversialblueprint about the authors marcus l. stephenson is professor of tourism and hospitality management and dean of the school of hospitality at sunway university (malaysia). professor stephenson is the coauthor of tourism and citizenship: rights, freedoms and responsibilities in the global order (2014, routledge) and co-editor of international tourism development and the gulf cooperation council states: challenges and opportunities (2017, routledge). he has been involved in research projects in the caribbean, uk, tanzania, middle east, and the pacific. he has published extensively on the sociology of tourism, especially on issues concerning nationality, race, ethnicity, culture, and religion. ► contact: mstephenson@sunway.edu.my aseas 13(1) | 153 marcus l. stephenson & graeme j. dobson graeme dobson is a senior lecturer in the school of education at the university of birmingham. he has had a varied career in education working predominately in schools and local authorities within urban areas within the uk. graeme’s research interests include career interest, decision making, migration and mobility, and educational resource issues. ► contact: g.j.dobson@bham.ac.uk 154 | aseas 13(1) "only if you really, really need it": social rights consciousness in the philippines “only if you really, really need it”: social rights consciousness in the philippines niklas reese ► reese, n. (2017). “only if you really, really need it”: social rights consciousness in the philippines. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 10(1), 83-100. this article argues that communitarianism, as the prevalent citizenship paradigm in the philippines, observable also in modest expectations towards government services among filipinos and a high emphasis on individual and community action, can be used to explain the lack of political change in the philippines. in its first part, the article presents data on the sense of citizenship and concepts of social rights and obligations among filipinos by combining findings from a series of problem-centered interviews with young urban professionals and quantitative data collected within annual surveys by the international social survey programme (issp) on government, social inequality, and citizenship. the second part of the article attributes these findings to everyday concepts of citizenship as ideal-typical state responsibility theories and modern citizenship paradigms. by including ethnographic data, it discovers significant traits of communitarianism in philippine everyday life. this section goes on to present how communitarianism (with its inherent character of exclusivity) impedes a democratic culture and moreover, how it is unable to serve as a guiding social philosophy in unifying a large-scale society mainly consisting of citizens who are strangers (ibang tao) to each other. nevertheless, in conclusion, the article suggests the possibility of deepening and broadening the sense of citizenship in the philippine society and its respect for the stranger by drawing on elements of filipino culture. keywords: citizenship; communitarianism; philippines; political culture; social rights  introduction poverty persists in the philippines despite economic growth. political patronage and oligarchic rule remain the order of the day. on the other hand, the rhetoric of change is pervasive in civil society discourse (department of political science [dpc], 2010). this article draws on research with a focus on the sense of citizenship in the philippines (reese, 2015) asking to which extent filipinos and filipinas are willing to stand up for their political beliefs and personal goals (active citizenship) and which role they allot to the public, the government, and the state to provide for or at least support these beliefs and goals. the first part of the article focuses on the extent of social rights that respondents feel entitled to and whether they consider the government to be the main duty bearer to fulfill these rights. utilizing a qualitative approach and backing it up with quantitative data reveals filipinos’ general readiness to take political action (active citizenship) as well as their general expectations towards the state aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 17 .1 -6 84 niklas reese  aseas 10(1) (passive citizenship). however, when respondents are asked to spell out these expectations (for instance, in terms of actual and concrete services), these are comparably modest and very basic. here, i show that most filipinos have modest expectations regarding government service and that most place high emphasis on individual and community action as the source of change in their lives. the second part of the article attributes these empirical findings to ideal-typical state responsibility theories and modern citizenship paradigms (e.g., liberalism, communitarianism, and republicanism). here, i argue that communitarianism is the prevalent “state responsibilization theory” (zintl, 1996, p. 306) amongst filipinos, which is further supported by ethnographic data. communitarianism (with its inherent character of exclusivity), however, is proven to impede a democratic culture and is unable to serve as a guiding social philosophy in unifying large-scale societies mainly consisting of citizens who are strangers (in the philippines, ibang tao) to each other. the qualitative data employed in the article was gathered within a series of problem-centered interviews conducted between 2010 and 2012 with 28 young urban professionals from manila, davao, and dumaguete, chosen by theoretical sampling.1 variables used for the theoretical sampling were, among others, age, gender, years in college visited, place of origin (city or countryside), as well as occupation of the parents (socio-economic background). however, the only variable which turned out to be significant for their sense of citizenship was the organizational background of the respondents. those who had been involved in a structurally transformative (left) activism had a much stronger sense of citizenship than those who had been involved in non-transformative activism or even those who had never been involved in any political organization at all. my research focused on the political attitudes of urban professionals in precarious (prekarisierte) work settings, in this case, agents working in international call centers. they can be understood as part of the lower middle class.2 the 28 respondents were interviewed three times: an introductory biographical interview was followed by two problem-centered interviews. while the first problem-centered interview focused on the question of how they solve problems at work (enterprise-level citizenship), the latter focused on citizenship activities and their sense of entitlement towards the government and other duty bearers (such as family and friends). the questionnaires were comprised of semi-structured and open questions, but also included several items which were to be answered within an ordinal scale.3 following a dual research strategy, the findings of these interviews were compared with quantitative data mainly by triangulating the qualitative data with the results of surveys done by the international social survey programme (issp) on government, social inequality, and 1 in the following text, short phrases and statements from interviews are used randomly to illustrate respondents’ attitudes and general concerns. 2 to identify which attitudes may be considered specifically middle-class, the study conducted control interviews with people classified as lower class. 3 the interviews were conducted in a mix of english, tagalog, and cebuano, the dominant language in the southern philippines. this is why some quotes are in english, while others are in filipino vernaculars. furthermore, i indicated the tagalog phrases used in the issp surveys. 85“only if you really, really need it”: social rights consciousness in the philippines citizenship (issp, 2008; issp, 2012a; issp, 2012b). the analysis was further enriched by a validation process undertaken in the form of focus group discussions with the respondents and expert interviews.4 why a sense of citizenship? gaventa and barrett (2010) define citizenship as “the ability to exercise voice and claim rights from states and political authorities” (p. 57). citizenship is therefore made up of two dimensions – an active dimension (exercising voice) and a passive one (claiming rights and demanding accountability). both dimensions are considered core elements of good governance – next to elements such as government effectiveness, rule of law, political stability, absence of violence, regulatory quality, and control of corruption (kabeer & haq kabir, 2009). moreover, a pronounced sense of citizenship is considered necessary for political change to happen. even if political institutions (such as an independent judiciary and a strong legislature) have developed, they are likely to eventually weaken if not inhabited by politically-minded citizens. righting institutions, which is at the center of the debate around good governance, is thus not sufficient. “there is no lack of laws . . . the problem is enforcement”, as michael tan (2014b) resonates a widespread sentiment in the philippines. the sense of citizenship used in this article can thus be defined as (a) considering oneself or others to be rightfully entitled to something (a passive sense of citizenship, or a sense of entitlement) and (b) being ready to stand up for what one considers ‘right’ (active sense of citizenship and readiness to political action). in the absence of a sense of having claims and rights (a sense of passive citizenship) towards the government, there is no demand for rights or political change, and those in charge will not be held accountable (a sense of active citizenship). to understand the persistence of inequality and oligarchy in the philippines, it might therefore be a useful endeavor to investigate the cognitive structures of ordinary citizens that facilitate (or impede) their readiness to act. citizenship in its active and passive dimension is a strongly normative concept as it is closely connected to the notion of modern statehood, which is built on the participation of its members (democracy) as well as on the government’s provision of social services to its citizens (development research centre on citizenship, participation and accountability [drc], 2011). active citizenship for emancipatory ends is tacitly presumed as the only (legitimate) form of citizenship (claussen & geissler, 1996), denying ‘ugly citizenship’ (for example political action limiting rather than expanding universal democracy as witnessed within the current rise of right-wing populism) to be a form of citizenship as well as denying people the option of not connecting to civic affairs. likewise, such passive citizenship (amna, 2010), however, is included into the formal working definition of this research, as is ‘ugly citizenship’. the research thus avoided equating citizenship with “professional citizenship . . . [of 4 such a procedure is recommended in a research setting as the philippines, where quantitative data are even more in need of communicative validation often considerably contradicting common sense, as randy david, one of the leading sociologists of the philippines, pointed out during a validation interview undertaken with him as part of this study (quezon city, 13 august 2014). david considers quantitative research as foreign to the oral and personalized culture prevalent in the philippines and suggests that quantitative data, should, if at all, only be used for validating qualitative or ethnographic data. 86 niklas reese  aseas 10(1) an] ever-vigilant civic individual”, which amna (2010, p. 200) identified as the predominant model in citizenship studies. why the philippine case? in political theory, as much as in public discourse, concepts of ideal statehood which emerged in the west (and have precipitated in the philippine legal system) have been used as benchmarks and are often contrasted with lacking philippine realities (dpc, 2010). this often sets off a negative narrative, referring to the philippines as a “failing state” (romero, 2014). comparing “democratic ideals and [philippine] realities” – as the title of an introduction into philippine politics by the department of political science of the ateneo de manila university goes (dpc, 2010) – yet calls for some caveats. like in many other post-colonial countries, constitutional norm and constitutional reality are far apart – a situation activists have likened to an “ampaw republic” comparing the philippine political system to the rice crispies – “tasty but all it has inside is air” (santiago, 2014). social and political rights, even if codified, may only be selectively enforced. a study by the international textile garment and leather workers’ federation on working conditions in the philippines conducted in early 2011 arrived at the finding that violations of national as well as international labor laws “were the rule” (“labor abuses exposed”, 2011). neoliberal-inspired policies have furthermore ‘pinched’ the developing state in the philippines by bringing its expansion to a halt. these policies expect people to increasingly fend for themselves, thereby eroding the idea of citizens’ entitlement towards the government as duty bearer. where the state takes on a negligible role in shaping entitlements in everyday life, non-state actors such as families, communities, and enterprises are expected to play the bigger role as service providers and addressees of accountability. lastly, participation of citizens in political affairs is largely taken as money and pedigree dominated decision-making in an oligarchic state of affairs. this setting of a contested and precarious statehood is the ‘habitat’ from which the data this article builds on were collected. nevertheless, the (nation) state remains the significant space of active as well as passive citizenship. furthermore, the state has been awarded the role of the main rights guarantor in modern political theory and draws much of its legitimacy from this claim. this explains why a research focused on citizenship within the state sphere is not an anachronistic endeavor. part one: prevalent concepts on social rights and obligations findings from problem-centered interviews on citizenship: public problem solving as predominant understanding of citizenship asking what filipinos expect from the government and in how far they are ready to get involved in taking citizenship action, the problem-centered interviews could identify significant differences between respondents who have been active in a political or a community organization and those who have not. three subgroups of respondents emerged: the non-activists or those who have never been active in a political or community organization (12 of 28 research participants); the left activists 87“only if you really, really need it”: social rights consciousness in the philippines or those who have been a member of an organization with a left orientation (8 of 28); and the non-left activists or those who have been a member of other organizations (also 8 of 28). despite the differences between the three subgroups, there are significant attitudes which point in one direction, no matter which organizational background the respondents belong to. these basic congruencies serve as the basis to identify general traits of a sense of citizenship in the philippines. in general, all respondents expressed expectations from the government when it comes to social and public services. among those who had no left organizational socialization, however, these expectations are more or less limited to times of dearth or, as one respondent put it, “only if you really, really need it”. especially respondents without any organizational background (non-activists) strongly promote local activism. they have a good understanding of civil obligations and are willing to perform these, but they rather tend to act on problems concretely, while shying away from ‘big politics’ on a national scale. instead of changing the set-up, they try to make the system work. this is manifested by strong moral orientations and by expressing attitudes that governmentality studies term as “responsibilization” (bröckling, 2007), for example highlighting a “doit-yourself ” attitude and considering the government as the “last resort”, as termed by one non-activist. when asked to define citizenship, respondents without an organizational background assert that it “starts with your family” and that it is everyone’s duty to “help each other”. another non-activist says that it is “not only [about] helping others but also helping yourself ”. when asked what is needed to make the philippines a better place, especially non-activists merely identify personal change and see individual improvement (“moral recovery”) as the only remedy. this strongly personcentered and morally-charged political discourse most often displaces the idea of setting the structures and rules right. one non-activist puts this general sentiment into a nutshell, stating that “each one of us has a contribution to what is happening to the entire society . . . . if you eat candy and it’s just okay to throw your candy on the road, that’s already a speck of contribution to the whole garbage”. non-activists strongly believe that “if everybody leads a moral life, the public world of wider society should be in good order” (with a prevalence index [pi] of .85), while activists without a left background are more skeptical about this (pi = .57) and left activists largely reject this statement (pi = .38).5 however, while non-activists consider moral values (be it neglect for the fellow human being, greed, or the lack of honesty) as the overarching reason for poverty, these factors are also highlighted by respondents with an organizational experience. nevertheless, like in many other items here, 5 the prevalence index is computed by weighing the responses to an item. with five options, the answer “totally agree” is weighed with 1 and “don’t agree at all” with 0. an “agree more or less” is weighed with .75; a “no idea/neither nor etc.” with .5; and “actually don’t agree” with .25. when everyone totally agreed, the prevalence index thus would be 1; if no one had agreed at all, it would be 0. quantitative methods such as computing a prevalence index here are used in the first instance to describe the sample and illustrate relations within the survey group, as suggested by prein, kelle, and kluge (1993) in their landmark article on strategies for the integration of quantitative and qualitative evaluation methods. i undertook simple quantitative evaluation (and beforehand made use of quantitative survey methods), assuming that the calculated figures at least allow for stating trends. here, i follow lamnek (2005) who aims for at least “a modest level of generalization” (p. 186) of qualitative data: “a sociologist should not stop with being amazed by ‘what’s out there (was es nicht alles gibt!)’, but rather move on in searching for the ‘typical’ and ‘significance’ of a single case” (p. 187). in the case of results that are obtained in such manner, lamnek speaks of “representation” or “typical” (but not of representativeness in a statistical sense). 88 niklas reese  aseas 10(1) the differences between those with and those without organizational background are merely of a gradual nature. non-activists prefer to act as individuals and less by joining organizations. evangeline sucgang (2006) termed such concept of citizenship as “public problem solving”, distinguishing it from an attitude of “proactive citizenship”. the study could identify an attitude of proactive citizenship especially among those who have spent some time of their formative years in an organization with a left orientation (the so called aktibistas). proactive citizens, defines sucgang (2006), are those who understand political citizenship as proactive engagement in the public arena, for example by running for public office or joining political rallies and street demonstrations. citizenship theory usually only considers proactive citizenship as a form of citizenship (issp, 2012b). however, both approaches (the individual model behavior stressed in the interviews, and the pressing for structural change) express a strong sense of agency. instead of being apolitical per se, those termed non-activists are in fact rather supporting and performing a different kind of citizenship. correlating with the prevalent community orientation, the research could detect a pronounced focus on hard work (maningkamot, as termed by those respondents speaking cebuano, the main language in the southern philippines). when asked to rate the importance of selected factors of umangat sa buhay (literally, getting ahead in life) – an item taken from issp (2012a) –, hard work was considered “essential” by non-activists (pi = .97) and activists without a left background (pi = .95) and still as “very important” by left activists (pi = .79). next to education and ambition, hard work is thus considered a panacea for “getting ahead in life”, while societal determinants such as political connections (pi = .43), coming from a wealthy family (pi = .38), or giving bribes (pi = .21) are considered of much lesser importance. such focus on individual aspiration is confirmed by the issp on social inequality (issp, 2012a) for the philippines in general: while education, hard work, and ambition receive a prevalence index of > .80, knowing the right people, coming from a wealthy family, or political connections wither only between .43 and .55, and giving bribes is even considered irrelevant (pi = .24) for “getting ahead in life”. in the same way, people from the lower classes seem to be influenced by the principle of merit (which serves as the integration mode of modern-capitalist societies), as they did not show lower returns on such meritocratic items. finally, when asked what makes a “good citizen”, especially non-activists underline the performance of civil duties more than the exercising of citizen rights as the important traits. even activists with leftist backgrounds do not demand rights without obligations: to a lesser extent they also believe that when rights are fulfilled (such as that to free college education), corresponding duties are called for (like public service after graduation). the realization of rights is seemingly seen as a cooperation between the government and the individual citizen, as evidenced by several respondents emphasizing the idea that availing of government services should be based on the giving of a counterpart. most respondents also tend to understand the government as an enabler and less as a provider. for them, people should first try to help themselves (and their family) before turning to the government. matuschek, krähnke, kleemann, and ernst (2011) term such a mode of referring to a state order as “subsidiarity . . . [for example 89“only if you really, really need it”: social rights consciousness in the philippines the] acceptance of the existing social order, while its deficits must be compensated by initiative of members of society” (p. 145). the issp survey on government (issp, 2008) mostly supports the findings gathered from the qualitative data, which implies that while most filipinos do not support the idea of a laissez-faire state (which leaves most to the private), they also do not support what matuschek et al. (2011) call “social etatism”, that is the “awareness of the benefits of a providing, paternalistic society with extensive social systems and regulations of economic life” (p. 145). while it is acknowledged that the government has social obligations, these are considered as subsidiary, which also follows the understanding of the government as the “last resort”. the fact that civic duties are defined as “helping yourself ” might be the reason why most respondents do not favor benefits for the unemployed but rather approve of increasing employment opportunities. in this regard, the respondents (except the left activists) overwhelmingly believe the poor can escape poverty, “if they only try hard enough” (16 of 20 non-left respondents believe so, with only one ruling this out). additionally, the respondents do not even expect the government to be able to fully provide them with their needs: while 20 of 28 respondents think that it makes sense to turn to the government for services, only 8 of 27 said they expect help from the government: “somehow, gamay nag-expect ko (i expect a little)”, one respondent explained. non-activists are very lenient with the government, not expecting much and willing to recognize its good will. they also (more than others) believe that the government is at least partly fulfilling its job. among the respondents to the qualitative study, only the left activists considerably think of holding the government accountable instead of simply sighing “government kasi (it’s government, that’s why)”. the sense of entitlement turned out much stronger when respondents consider public service as a service in return, for example for taxes or contributions. one respondent even termed government service as “customer service” in return for taxes paid. such an understanding of the state is transactional rather than rights-based.6 this resonates with an inimical attitude to the idea of passive citizenship (benefits through citizenship) among the middle class (i.e., taxpayers) in general. jemy gatdula (2012) summarizes such an attitude in a nutshell as he criticizes pro-poor legislation as one that “merely encourage[s] people’s sense of entitlement [and] also ridiculously abandon[s] the idea that rewards should be based on merit”. validation with the quantitative data: modest and very basic expectations the observations made in the problem-centered interviews with young urban professionals are largely supported by data from the issp. the issp on social inequality (issp, 2012a), for instance, shows that filipinos less favor redistributive measures (such as progressive taxation), but give more importance to creating opportunities for a decent income. social rights such as the right to housing (pi = .75) or to a decent living standard (disenteng pamumuhay) for the unemployed (pi =  .73) get widely affirmed but are essentially restricted to a basic definition of these rights (issp, 2012a). this, however, is not proof that filipinos do not appreciate the idea of social equality. 6 whenever it comes to the right of state services, this is rather justified by mercy-related terms such as luoy or kawawa (literally, pitiful) for those in need. the respondents, most of whom consider themselves to be middle-class, at the same time clearly rule out to claim state services for themselves on such a basis. 90 niklas reese  aseas 10(1) for example, according to the issp on citizenship (issp, 2012b), 69.2% of the filipino respondents, agree that it is “definitely” or “probably” the government’s responsibility to reduce income differences between the rich and the poor (pi = .67). however, at the same time, filipinos widely agree with social inequality (or have come to terms with it): 64.3% find it “just” that people with higher incomes can buy better health care (pi = .68) and roughly the same number consider it “just” that people with higher incomes can buy better education (pi = .68). for comparison, in germany, only 12.3% give such a response (pi = .28). the government is expected to create equal opportunities (provide job opportunities, help indigent students, but also keep prices low) but at the same time, is not seen to have the task of creating social equality by redistributive measures. such focus on personal initiative is also shown in the strong emphasis given to the responsibility of the family, especially when it comes to personal care: 96.8% of the filipino respondents said that they expect family members to primarily take care of children under school age and they do not even expect the government to support them financially in this regard. at the same time, a majority of the filipino respondents to the issp on government (issp, 2008) said that they consider public service to be very committed (talagang seryoso) to serving the people (pi = .61). the satisfaction rates with government programs on unemployment, providing health care for the sick, or providing a decent living standard for the elderly, all showed pis of at least > .5. (the high approval rates received by general statements regarding this topic however drop as soon as concrete examples of government performance are being rated.) this leniency might be explained as the result of a weak sense of entitlement to public service qua citizenship. everyday observations on the interactions between people and the government confirm that filipinos seem to consider welfare policies less as obligations of an impersonal state but more as something one must request or ask for (hingi). it is quickly considered bastos (literally, improper) to insist on one’s right but advisable to appeal to the generosity (pagkamapagbigay) and goodness (kabaitan) of a government official. or as randy david (2009) framed it: “the ideal citizen is loyal and grateful, rather than informed and assertive of his rights”.7 limited spaces of imagination the general conclusion that can be drawn from the data presented is that (a) there is a high approval for social services in the philippines, (b) however, the actual expectations towards the state lag far behind. in explaining these modest imaginative spaces of what a government could be good for, one might draw on bourdieu and foucault and their concept of normality (bröckling, 2007). for instance, despite objectively rudimentary and purchasing power-biased social services in the philippines, the issp surveys found hardly any other country where more respondents were satisfied with its public health care system, with 49% of the filipino respondents being (very) satisfied (issp, 2008). in germany, for comparison, the satisfaction rating is lower by 9%, despite its more extensive and more universal health care system. in many post7 the tagalog terms indicated in brackets are everyday concepts (see zintl, 1996) which are considered specific for the philippine political political thinking and which are also drawn upon in media and political discourse, even when english remains the prevalent language. 91“only if you really, really need it”: social rights consciousness in the philippines socialist countries like bulgaria, hungary, or russia, where public service was curbed after the breakdown of state socialism, only 14-24% are (very) satisfied with government performance on health care. such contingencies can also be observed in many other items of government service and usually surpass determinants such as class, age, or urban-rural differences, assuming that the country of origin is the most significant determinant for citizenship attitudes. it is apparent that satisfaction rates are less connected to the real extent of public service, but more to subjective expectations. this is shown by the fact that the extent of public service varies much among countries with similar satisfaction rates in the issp surveys. satisfaction (or fulfillment of expectations) seems to rather depend on what one has already experienced, what one is familiar with, and what one considers as ‘reasonable’ to expect. such findings show that historical experiences and path dependencies seem to matter. while citizens in post-socialist countries tend to compare the performance of today’s government with the extensive social service during state socialism, filipino respondents explain their low expectations in the context of the underdeveloped state of public service delivery in the philippines, by counterasking: “what would you expect, the philippines is a third world country, we could not expect more”. in the absence of divergent experiences, the given structures and ways of living are considered normal. “people who do not know what they should be getting are always happy with what they have. ignorance is bliss, after all”, carmelle harrow and jereco paloma (2011) sigh in reference to the poor state of public education. a history of colonialism, feudalism, capitalism, traditional catholicism, and finally, neoliberal structural adjustment programs – all of which are connected to a partisan and low-intensity governance accompanied by a pronounced social inequality and largely communitarian ideas – have been virtually embodied by filipinos in a culturally specific form of “social habitus” (elias, 1976). people then “tend to consider the possible for the only possible, the achievable for the appropriate and to conform to the given social order without much reflection” (bourdieu, 1982, pp. 734-735). as the welfare (and participatory) dimensions of the state expansion in the philippines have been experienced only incompletely, its people still seem to consider the government mainly not as the provider of public service but as an “encumbrance” (teodoro, 2014). in explaining the continuous high approval ratings of the administration of president benigno aquino iii (2010-2016), teodoro (2014) assumes that the government is more appreciated for “not what it has done, but what it hasn’t: compared to past administrations, it hasn’t killed as many, for example; been involved in as many scandals; or has been as corrupt”. left organizations as schools of citizenship among the respondents to the qualitative study, mainly those who were involved for some time in a left political organization have broader spaces of imagination with regard to government service. they not only show the highest dissatisfaction with the current political and economic system, but are also the only ones who expect 92 niklas reese  aseas 10(1) more than basic services from the government and who aim to hold it accountable.8 it appears that mainly ‘leftists’ are influenced by an understanding of the state often assumed in the citizenship discourse: one that is not reduced to providing safety nets and equal opportunities, but that also takes the role of correcting social inequalities and securing broad social rights – a state surpassing what matuschek et al. (2011) termed “subsidiarity”.9 the rights-based approach on which much advocacy of civil society is buttressed seems to have mainly taken root among the left respondents. part two: communitarianism as a prevalent state responsibilization theory in the philippines reinhard zintl (1996) differentiates between three ideal-typical state responsibility theories as everyday theories. the empirical findings show that filipinos in general favor neither what zintl terms state interventionism where “the economy only works with constant state intervention”, nor a laissez-faire state where “the economy operates without single state interventions, [and where] at the most, the state creates an acceptable general set-up” (p. 306). rather, the data shows that among most respondents (a) a community and family orientation is prevalent and (b) expectations towards the government are only modest. while the government is considered to have social obligations, these are taken to be merely subsidiary. thus, (c) civil duties are more pronounced than citizen rights and (d) hard work and education are considered the main means of “getting ahead in life”. all of these features can be attributed to zintl’s third state responsibilization theory, which he somewhat unfavorably names patronage: here, the economy is experienced as a network in which the state appears as one actor among others. while not able to steer it, it is influential enough to favor or limit individual opportunities. one can only watch out how to save one’s own skin. (zintl, 1996, p. 308) this is similar to what matuschek et al. (2011, p. 145) termed “subsidiarity”, or what in political theory is known widely as communitarianism, differentiating it from two other basic paradigms of modern citizenship, namely the liberal and the republican (reese, 2015, pp. 272-278; also jones & gaventa, 2002). while liberalism considers society a cold project among monadic individuals resulting in the state’s main function to provide institutions for the settling of competing interests, communitarianism has a strong community orientation. it is a political order that relies on moral virtue wherein concrete others (like family and parents) are considered to be mainly responsible for the advancement of an individual (like children). most barriers to a democratic culture in the philippines, identified by fernando zialcita’s contribution to the benchmark compendium on democracy and 8 as the socio-economic variables collected in the issp surveys do not offer a meaningful indicator for political affiliation, this assumption however can only be based on the qualitative data and not backed up by the issp-data. 9 however, even the left activist respondents do not expect the state to simply just provide, but are also ready to give their counterpart. 93“only if you really, really need it”: social rights consciousness in the philippines citizenship in filipino political culture (diokno, 1997), directly or indirectly reflect a communitarian orientation. clearly, this applies to the traits which zialcita (1997) terms “familialism”, “personalism” (with the prevalence of loyalty to persons over the obedience to norms), and the “weak sense of public good” (p. 41). all these traits express a focus on the concrete other or not-stranger (hindi ibang tao, or literally, not another person) and on the immediate community as typical for communitarianism. applying an ethnographic approach makes it even easier to track this weak sense of public good and familialism in the philippine society. it manifests itself in a pronounced delineation between the public and the private. the public space seems to be neglected, conceived as dirty and chaotic (borchgrevenik, 2014), with the street being an arena of competition, rivalry, and the world of the undetermined. on the other hand, private spaces, such as the family, the barkada (peer group), gated communities, and other forms of gemeinschaft, are given high relevance. the house is considered the space where everything has to be in place. such divide also leads to a kind of legal pluralism (franco, 2011), in which private rules (be it those that the parents set, or company rules) compete with public law. government intervention is then often considered as trespassing; and in the case of a company, it cannot be taken for granted that the labor code is accepted as the overriding legal principle (reese & carreon, 2013). this makes the philippines a territory dotted by millions of tiny kingdoms with their private set of rules, interrupted by public spaces which are considered the responsibility of the government – “and government is not you”, as randy david explains (quezon city, 13 august 2014). such dichotomy of public and private is also reflected in the strict division between hindi ibang tao (one of us) and ibang tao (stranger), which enriquez (1992) considers as basic for social understandings in the philippines. while family and community values among those considered hindi ibang tao are well developed in the philippines, a culture of encounters (begegnungskultur) with strangers (ibang tao) seems to be largely absent. sociologist randy david (2012a) observed that “forms of solidarity are rooted in a sense of duty to people with whom we share personal space . . . . in the anonymous setting of the modern city, we no longer feel so obligated”. poverty, another barrier listed by zialcita (1997), also shows a strong connection to communitarianism as it leads people to favor communitarian solutions. the immediate vicinity is globally the preferred space of activity for poor people as this is where they feel more in control than in middle and upper class biased politics (berner, 1997). being treated in a derogatory way in their work life or when dealing with government bureaucracy and people of higher ranking, only friends, neighbors, or the family offer a level of reliability. the space outside of one’s own community is furthermore considered to be terra incognita, or a foreign territory: there, others have the say, make the rules, and decide how these are to be interpreted – in a language that is highly incomprehensible for the poor and those with no formal education, be it the legal language or english, as is the case in the philippines. politics is not only up there but also out there. however, activities within one’s vicinity, this is the sphere in between the family (the private) and formal politics (the public), not only play an important role for service delivery, but also serve as building blocks of democracy where “members learn about their rights, and develop more effective citizenship skills and practices” (drc, 94 niklas reese  aseas 10(1) 2011, p. 21). communitarianism thus is not pre-democratic but a different kind of democracy – just like “public problem solving” (sucgang, 2006) is a different form of citizenship. yet, it is a limited form of democracy – one that is based on selective association and parochialism, a democracy of “a thousand petty fortresses” (walzer, 1998, p. 348). in filipino terms: the attitude of tayo-tayo (amongst us) or barrio-barrio (amongst our village) prevails; extending the exclusive “me/we” (kami) to an inclusive “we” (tayo), but only including those who are identified to be one of “us” (namin). it is a space where “we” are not alone, but at the same time where “we” can stay just among ourselves. tayo-tayo is more than the liberal kanya-kanya (everyone for themselves or for their loved ones), but it is an exclusive inclusivity nevertheless. here, there might be tolerance but no hospitality towards the other (ibang tao), as rodriguez (2009) explains. as shown above, communitarianism is closely entangled with the barriers to a democratic culture that are related to space or, as zialcita (1997) points out, to the inclination towards the concrete and proximate. the other barriers that zialcita identifies – these are the hierarchical relations (leading to a lack of discourse culture) or a limited discourse on democracy and its meaning in the vernacular – are less obviously connected to communitarianism. nevertheless, communitarianism facilitates the persistence of these barriers. as the identity of the individual – and, within a rudimentary welfare regime such as the philippines, also social security – is strongly linked to membership in a family or community, and there is the tendency to let collective needs and communal solidarities prevail over individual rights. individuals are expected to be empathetic (pakiramdam), to give in, and to get along with the group (pakikisama), which often means: to comply with the group. from a very young age, people experience that those who are questioning and objecting (hirit, or literally, talking back) are labeled as disturbo (troublemaker) or as makulit (pushy). likewise, it is still considered as walang respeto (disrespectful) by many parents if their children (merely) answer back (sumasagot). not used to a critique-friendly culture, many filipinos take criticisms personally and then react easily pikon (touchy) – even if these criticisms are aired out in relation to their function (for example, as public official) and not to them as an individual, as randy david explains (quezon city, 13 august 2014). this attitude complicates the emergence of a public discourse. “our political culture is not used to frank talk”, says the editorial of the philippine daily inquirer: “between political bombast (or bomba) . . . and political praise or promise (or bola [to flatter someone] as everyone still says) . . . , there is hardly anything” (“candid talk”, 2012). such tendency towards pakikisama (to comply with a group) might also be partly responsible for the lack of reflection and discourse – values which zialcita (1997) considers as further barriers to the development of a democratic culture in the philippines. the management association of the philippines complained that, in 2010, 4 out of 10 new graduates were not hired because they lacked “soft” competencies, among them critical thinking, initiative, and effective communication skills (“not all sunlight”, 2010). citizenship theory, however, considers the ability to be critical – this is post-conventional thinking – and to question the given (hirit) as essential for developing citizenship attitudes (claussen & geissler, 1996). yet, the mainstream philip95“only if you really, really need it”: social rights consciousness in the philippines pine educational system is considered to largely produce pre-conventional fear and incentive-driven characters (tan, 2014a) or “good girls and boys” – compliant persons within a conventional moral system in the terms of lawrence kohlberg (1971). overlooking the individual and focusing instead on the community (families or households) as the smallest unit of accountability and responsibility also makes communitarianism prone to idealizing communities and neglect inequalities and power asymmetries within the community (berner & philipps, 2004). furthermore, there is a connivance of communitarianism with a feudal setting: while communitarianism in its ideal type is based on a society of equals, it shares with feudalism a similar concept of public service, which they both conceptualize more as benevolence and less as a right – even though resulting from a different logic. while communitarianism stresses sympathy, feudalism builds on the idea of asymmetrical rights. both social systems, however, are not supportive of claim-making by commoners. both in communitarianism and feudalism, claims are framed as personal requests (hingi), asking for favors. attitudes such as mabait (generous), madaling lapitan (approachable), or malapit sa mahihirap (pro-poor), which david (2012b) considers “the most common words one hears when filipino voters talk about the politicians they like”, are consistent with the communitarian logic of proximity (lapit) although “proceed[ing] from the standpoint of the subjugated in a sharply hierarchical society”. in such a context, citizen’s charters and citizenship education tend to stay rather ampaw (see the analogy to rice crispies), as they are merely symbolic and do not (yet) figure as an integral part of the social order. the hidden curriculum of everyday culture, such as for instance considering it as bastos (improper) to contradict (hirit) a person of authority, is then more influential on political action than the manifest content of formal citizenship education. connivance of communitarianism and neoliberalism communitarianism not only connives with feudalism but also with liberalism and its current specification, neoliberalism. even if communitarianism is based on different premises than neoliberalism (the political theory most equivalent to the state responsibility theory of laissez-faire), they meet in their promotion of a lean state and in considering the government as the “last resort”. both focus on responsibilization and are biased towards voluntarism. those pushing for neoliberal reforms can therefore make use of communitarian ideas to propagate their agenda. both approaches result in a kind of proto-welfare state that does not offer more than basic provisions and contribute to the persistence of a weak state/strong society dichotomy. the legal pluralism mentioned as characteristic for philippine legal culture is an example for this. in a framework of responsibilization/voluntarism, economic problems are constructed as personal problems, suggesting the use of individual survival strategies like maningkamot (hard work) and making people responsible for their own unfortunate situation. instead of calling for concerted state action, socially developed circumstances are framed into personal failure, thereby becoming politically defused: “it’s up to you”, a remark one often hears in the philippines. furthermore, communitarianism is not a functional solution to ensure the institutionalization of the principle of rights and dignity to every human being. while 96 niklas reese  aseas 10(1) kindness (bait), charity (awa), and intersubjectivity (pakikipagkapwa) are mainly situated within a space where people can see and know each other, such communitarian gemeinschaft cannot serve as a model in highly differentiated, pluralistic mass societies (reese, 2015, pp. 529-533). as zialcita (1997) identifies, “one major problem in the philippines [is that] the rights of the anonymous stranger continue to be disregarded. . . . although we are extremely helpful towards those whom we have met face-to-face and whom we trust, we tend to ignore the rights of those whom we do not know and will never meet” (p. 42). pakikiisa, or “being one with another”, cannot assure the rights of the ibang tao which others are considered to be within anonymous largescale societies. furthermore, pakikiisa requires that the involved are “nearly equal in social status, i.e. in money, power, and influence”, as enriquez (1992, p. 66) points out. while compassion might be a necessary requirement for rights to be respected and granted as moral action theory assumes (reese, 2015, pp. 84-86), at the same time, it is not a sufficient basis for a rights-based approach since it builds on and even reinforces social asymmetries (as the prevalence of drawing on pity (kawawa) as the basis for one’s social action towards the poor, as the qualitative research amongst middleclass respondents illustrates). compassion and moral discernment are too unreliable and selective to serve as the basis for rights claims, and they eventually overwhelm resources of solidarity. the prevalence of communitarianism in the philippines leads to the reign of two dichotomist social philosophies in society: while the gemeinschaft of the hindi ibang tao (the concrete other or non-stranger) is governed by communitarian principles, the gesellschaft is de facto ruled by a vulgar liberalism bordering to the pre-contractual natural state in liberalism. in such a state of society, where kanya-kanya (everyone for themselves or for their loved ones) serves as the overriding principle, indifference is the normal state of affairs, and interest in the other only comes up in looming win-win situations, as conflict arises when there is competition over scarce resources (david, 2012a). eventually, many features that categorize a society as liberal are thus characteristic of the philippine society: employers have de facto extensive dispositional rights as economic citizens in their own company; the taxation of income and wealth is moderate; the social system is based considerably on self-responsibility, while education privileges children of the propertied and educated classes. outlook: deepening the sense of citizenship by transcending communitarianism one of the challenges for those interested in consolidating the sense of citizenship in the philippines lies in broadening the definition of concrete state responsibilities, that is making claims towards the government thinkable as much as considering “big politics” to be shapeable by common citizens (and not prerogative of the oligarchy). however, deepening citizenship does not imply the need of resorting to liberalism as citizenship paradigm. several elements of filipino culture might as well support a republican set-up for a society (as elaborated in reese, 2015), in which no one is left behind even if one is of no use to others (as in liberalism) nor loved by others (as in communitarianism). here the social philosophy which jones and gaventa (2002) identify as republicanism might be a way out: it aims to synthesize communitarian 97“only if you really, really need it”: social rights consciousness in the philippines and liberal elements by “attempt(ing) to incorporate the liberal notion of the selfinterested individual within the communitarian framework of egalitarianism and community belonging” (p. 4). it is similar to communitarianism in so far as it is based on the anthropology of an embedded self (kapwa). but it is also like liberalism since it sticks to the idea of universal understanding of rights and follows liberalism in situating the human rights conceptually and ontologically as prior to society, therefore not compromising individual for group rights. striving for republicanism suggests a creative reinterpretation of basic concepts of filipino political culture that underpin communitarianism. it is essential in deepening a rights-based perspective that rights are not only accorded and asserted for those one identifies as hindi ibang tao (the concrete other) but that every single individual is acknowledged and recognized as a rights bearer. concepts such as pakikisama (joining and complying with others in a group) and bayanihan (mutual support) or concepts such as malasakit (compassion) and pakikiramdam (empathy) may also serve as resources. likewise, traits such as respect (respeto), recognition (pagpapahalaga), dignity (dangal), and pride (amor proprio/garbo) might also be tapped as resources to develop the recognition of the rights of others. at the same time, these traits can serve as important ingredients for citizenship action. this can be done by developing a consciousness to “have the right to have rights”, as hannah arendt (1949, p. 7) once put the concept of human rights in a nutshell. attitudes such as acting tampo (sulky), kulit (persistent), or pasaway (defiant) as well as making reklamo (complain) to get what one believes one is entitled to, at least show that the rights-consciousness in the philippines goes beyond merely being masunurin (obedient) and the overriding preference for conflict avoidance and smooth interpersonal relations (abbreviated as sir) that are often considered typical for philippine society. in the end, it is not the filipino culture per se, but feudalism, social inequality, and the hierarchical and authoritarian elements dominant in society which are major stumbling blocks to the development of a kind of citizenship that is grounded on the fundamental idea of equality among all citizens. not falling for a voluntarist shortcoming, this paper does not mainly blame the lack of citizenship action on the filipino citizens themselves. instead of supporting moralism (that is focusing on value formation and individual redemption), which is identified as a typical trait of communitarianism, the paper supports the perspective of jemy gatdula (2010) that “we are not definitely a damaged culture. . . . if our electorate has not matured, it’s precisely because the economic circumstances of our citizens did not allow such maturity to happen and the elite, by maintaining protectionist attitudes and patronage system in business and politics, ensures that such maturity did not happen”.  references amna, e. (2010). active, passive, or stand-by citizens? latent and manifest political participation. in e. amna (ed.), new forms of citizen participation (pp. 191-204). baden-baden: nomos. arendt, h. (1949). es gibt nur ein einziges menschenrecht. die wandlung, (december), 754-770. bernardo, a. (2013). social dominance orientation and attitudes towards the poor: contrasting lower and higher socioeconomic groups in the philippines. philippine journal of psychology, 46(1), 39-69. 98 niklas reese  aseas 10(1) berner, e. (1997). defending a place in the city: localities and the struggle for urban land in metro manila. quezon city: ateneo de manila university press. berner, e., & philipps, b. (2004). selbsthilfe oder unterlassene hilfeleistung? die flucht des entwicklungsstaats aus der fürsorgepflicht. peripherie, 9, 500-514. borchgrevink, a. (2014). clean and green. knowledge and morality in a philippine farming community. quezon city: ateneo de manila university press. bourdieu, p. (1982). die feinen unterschiede. frankfurt a. m.: suhrkamp. bröckling, u. (2007). das unternehmerische selbst. soziologie einer subjektivierungsform. frankfurt a. m.: suhrkamp. candid talk, but…. (2012, september 13). editorial. philippine daily inquirer, 11. claussen, b., & geissler, r. (eds.). (1996). die politisierung des menschen: instanzen der politischen sozialisation. opladen: leske+budrich. david, r. (2009, september 5). hopes for modern politics. philippine daily inquirer, 10. david, r. (2012a, february 29). gridlock culture. philippine daily inquirer, 12. david, r. (2012b, april 11). what’s wrong with our politics? philippine daily inquirer, 7. diokno, m. (ed.). (1997). democracy and citizenship in filipino political culture. quezon city: university of the philippines press. department of political science. 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(2006). typology and correlates of political participation among filipinos. philippine journal of psychology, 39(2), 31-65. tan, m. (2014a, january 28). child rights and wcst. philippine daily inquirer, 8. tan, m. (2014b, april 3). cctv god. philippine daily inquirer, 12. teodoro, l. (2014, january 23). government as encumbrance. business world, 10. walzer, m. (1998). membership. in d. jacobson (ed.), the immigration reader. america in a multidisciplinary perspective (pp. 341-364). oxford: malden. zialcita, f. (1997). barriers and bridges to a democratic culture. in m. diokno (ed.), democracy and citizenship in filipino political culture (pp. 39-68). quezon city: university of the philippines press. zintl, r. (1996). politisch-ökonomische rahmenbedingungen und individuelle wirtschaftliche lage als determinanten politischen verhaltens in deutschland. in b. claussen & r. geissler (eds.), die politisierung des menschen: instanzen der politischen sozialisation (pp. 299-307). opladen: leske+budrich. about the author niklas reese is a social scientist and freelance journalist with regional focus on the philippines, germany, and latin america. he has been working on issues of democratization, gender, migration, social movements, and social security. he completed his phd on the sense of citizenship in the philippines in 2015. since 1997, he is engaged in political solidarity work through his involvement with the philippinenbüro – a socio-political information center on the philippines in germany. ► contact: reese@asienhaus.de aseas 13(2) | 165 ‘transdisciplinarity’: a framework of knowledge production in north-south partnerships? petra danneckera & alexandra heisa a university of vienna, austria ► dannecker, p., & heis, a. (2020). ‘transdisciplinarity’: a framework of knowledge production in northsouth partnerships? austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 13(2), 165-174. introduction this issue of aseas brings together different articles reflecting and discussing scientifically, as well as more practically, challenges faced during the implementation of a capacity-building project on transdisciplinarity. the papers are the outcome of a common endeavor that was undertaken between 2016 and 2019 by universities from southeast asia and europe in the context of the erasmus+ capacity building in higher education program funded by the european union. the project fostering multi-lateral knowledge networks of transdisciplinary studies to tackle global challenges (knots)1 and its implementation process, as well as conflicts, discussions and transformations that occurred during the various capacity-building activities on transdisciplinarity, will be discussed in the papers from different perspectives and with different foci. taking transdisciplinarity as a departure for capacity-building activities and collaborations in the course of the knots project was a response to trends and challenges in world development requiring new frameworks of knowledge production. all the participating institutes and universities in vietnam, thailand, germany, the czech republic, and austria saw the necessity to rethink what knowledge is and how research is done. all participating institutes and their members had either social science or humanities backgrounds and were working in interdisciplinary or disciplinary contexts. some of the participants and the respective institutes were acquainted with the history and the concepts of transdisciplinarity, while others became familiar with transdisciplinarity only during the project. what all share, especially but not exclusively those coming from development studies, is the realization that the gravity and the scope of global transformations and inequalities due to climate change, migration or capitalist development and their interplay require a new “synthesis of knowledge” (basile & baud, 2019, p.11). this synthesis of knowledge not only includes various disciplines and non-academic actors and their knowledge, but especially knowledge, approaches, and contributions from scientists from the so-called global south, as well as experiential knowledge from practitioners and/or marginalized social groups. it is this knowledge that 1 for detailed information on the knots project, see: https://www.knots-eu.com editorial w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 44 166 | aseas 13(2) ‘transdisciplinarity’: a framework of knowledge production in north-south partnerships? often remains unrecognized in knowledge production in development studies and beyond. this is due to the persistence of unequal power relations in knowledge production in general and south-north research partnerships in particular (baaz, 2005; melber, 2019). the knots project should be conceived as a common attempt to come to know whether transdisciplinarity can be an answer to the urgent need to widen and change not only the (uneven) production of knowledge but also its organization in order to understand and address local and global problems and challenges. even though the project proposal was primarily developed by the coordinators of the project (dannecker, 2020), we shared with our academic colleagues from southeast asia and europe the aim to get engaged and work together on a new framework of knowledge production through scientific as well as methodological discussions regarding transdisciplinarity. especially, the vision that transdisciplinarity “is about dialogue and engagement across ideologies, scientific, religious, economic, political and philosophical lines” (shrivastava & ivanaj, 2011, p. 85) and the point made by nicolescu (2010; 2014) and summarized by mcgregor that “no perspective, discipline or worldview constitutes a privileged place from which to understand the world or these intractable problems” (2017, p. 1) were seized as promising. these inspired the coordinators of the project and – as the implementation of the project has shown – doubtlessly also colleagues from the various participating universities (doi, 2020). the knots project the knots project was not a transdisciplinary research project, which is important to highlight. it aimed to discuss different transdisciplinary perspectives and approaches and to develop transdisciplinarity further to increase – depending on the local context – transdisciplinary capacities in research and teaching in all the participating universities and institutes. therefore, a broad variety of activities such as summer schools and fieldtrips, workshops and conferences took place throughout the course of the project. creating spaces to discuss the different transdisciplinary perspectives and approaches, as for instance during the three summerschools in vietnam (2017 and 2019) and thailand (2018), was as important as the subsequent fieldtrips to practice transdisciplinary collaborative work. this meant primarily to form teams comprising members from the different universities with different disciplinary backgrounds and different academic positions. the teams discussed and experienced together with non-academic actors, in different local settings and focusing on different topics, how collaborative problem framing could take place and how the problems identified could then be addressed. none of the papers in this issue focuses explicitly on fieldtrips, but the papers by dannecker (2020), heis and chayan (2020), and seemann and antweiler (2020) refer to these activities, thereby discussing and analyzing group learning processes and challenges. shifting values and reflecting social, cultural, or political power structures often influenced effective group learning in different ways, as has also been shown in papers of students from the university of vienna, who participated in a summer school and fieldtrips, conducting research about the project and the related aseas 13(2) | 167 petra dannecker & alexandra heis activities.2 as these papers reveal, time plays an important role (the field trips were prepared in the context of the summer schools and lasted around one week in different locations) as well as reflexivity. to manage, as pointed out by klein (2008), conflicting approaches – differences between academic and non-academic actors and within groups – creates not only questions of how much time groups have for communicating and compromising, but depends primarily on whether reflexivity can be accommodated. the articles by dannecker (2020), bärnthaler (2020), and heis and chayan (2020) explicitly argue that reflexivity – as for example discussed theoretically as well as methodologically in feminist or postcolonial approaches – should be focused on and integrated into all approaches, discourses, and discussions aiming to develop transdisciplinarity further. especially, reflexivity about positionalities, privileges, and power asymmetries, as put forward in feminist and postcolonial approaches dealing with power differences and hierarchies related to knowledge production and truth claims, are, as argued, important to conceptualize and to develop transdisciplinarity further. this would also allow us to include theories and methodologies for collaborative and emancipative knowledge production from the global south, such as thai baan, as explicitly discussed in the paper by heis and chayan (2020). the non-academic actors from civil society and the public sector participating in the knots project were proposed and selected by the academic partners in thailand and vietnam ‘representing’ those groups who are facing ‘wicked problems’ such as migration, climate change, or inequalities in their lifeworld. these topics have been identified by the participating academic actors as the most pressing ones globally as well as locally, unfolding in very complex phenomena especially in thailand and vietnam. the training sessions during the field trips took place in diverse localities, focusing on environmental changes, migration, resources and their distribution and thus ‘new’ inequalities, to name just a few. 170 students from the participating universities partook in the activities, the majority coming from vietnam and thailand, along with 95 colleagues from the different departments of the involved universities. besides a fluctuating majority of student participants and some university staff who joined only one or two summer schools or field trips, there was a core of academics working together closely throughout the project lifetime. many of these colleagues also joined the workshops that took place at least once per year aiming to develop a teaching manual based on the approaches and methodologies that had been discussed, developed, and practiced during the summer schools and field trips. the outcome of this process, which also included train-the-trainer and train-the faculty workshops at the universities in vietnam and thailand, is the open-access teaching manual (knots, n.d.),3 providing a resource as well as a toolbox for university teachers, researchers, students, and interested audiences. the teaching manual reflects the ’learning-by-doing’ approach: it consists of different sections, themes, and topics, which, in the broadest sense, reveal the participants’ examination of and involvement with the literature on transdisciplinarity, as well as reflections 2 in the context of a research seminar, ten ma students from the department of development studies at the university of vienna did empirical studies on participation, dissemination, and power structures during the summer school and field trips in thailand (2018). two of the four final group papers have been published as working papers (see, braunhuber, goisauf, & reinisch, 2019; semmler, 2019). 3 the teaching manual is available online: https://www.knots-eu.com/the-teaching-manual 168 | aseas 13(2) ‘transdisciplinarity’: a framework of knowledge production in north-south partnerships? about theoretical issues (e.g., knowledge production and science-public relations), evaluations of transdisciplinary projects, and ideas about how to teach transdisciplinarity and methodologies. the sections of the teaching manual are the result of this learning process and reflect the different expectations, experiences, and priorities of the colleagues and students involved. those differences emanated from different ‘local’ contexts (e.g., culturally and institutionally) and the resulting varieties in modes of teaching and learning as well as different understandings of knowledge and knowledge (co-)production. thus, the teaching manual features different positions and perspectives in relation to research and teaching. besides these activities – which were essential pillars for the development of the teaching manual – roundtrips, workshops, and conferences also took place. these activities provided spaces for preparing the different activities, negotiating the agendas for the collaborations, and trying to reach consensus as to what capacities are locally needed for pursuing transdisciplinarity in research and teaching and who has which capacities that can be shared and/or developed further. additional to these activities, which focused explicitly on transdisciplinarity, workshops and meetings regarding the implementation of the administrative provisions and guidelines such as quality assurance, evaluation, and dissemination that the eu as the funder foresees and requires (and that are discussed especially in the paper by seemann and antweiler, 2020) took place, including primarily the consortium members from the eight participating universities4 and the administrative staff in charge. during the final conference in thailand in 2019, firsthand experiences were presented, especially by younger scholars who have ‘translated’ transdisciplinarity into their research projects providing insights into the broad variety of challenges they faced locally. the challenges that they encountered also structured the collaborations in the context of the knots project. these were power structures between the different actors due to gender, socio-economic position, age or ‘race’, and the interplay between these social categories. in the context of the knots project, power hierarchies between the global north and the global south, between different university cultures as well as hierarchies within universities and institutes accompanied the implementation of the activities, structuring the discussions, and hindering mutual learning processes, especially in the beginning. in all articles in this issue, these challenges are analyzed from different scientific perspectives and positionalities. since all papers refer to transdisciplinarity but are embedded in the authors’ understandings and interpretations of the concept and the approach or framework of knowledge production, a short introduction about the development and the scientific discussions about transdisciplinarity will be given in the following section. some remarks on transdisciplinarity doubtless there is a “plurality of transdisciplinary models” (nicolescu, 2008, p. 13) as well as philosophical, theoretical, and conceptual perspectives (bernstein, 2015; darbellay 2015; du plessis, sehume, & martin 2013; klein, 2014; mcgregor, 2017; 4 one university from germany, one from the czech republic and one from austria, two universities from thailand and three from vietnam. aseas 13(2) | 169 petra dannecker & alexandra heis mittelstraß, 2000; nicolescu, 2006). in earlier definitions of transdisciplinarity, the focus was primarily on the synthesis of disciplines (piaget, 1972), aiming for a betterment of humanity (mahan, 1970), and problem solving. the notion was to develop “an overarching framework from which selected problems and similar problems should be approached” (kockelmans, 1979, p. 128), to overcome disciplinary specialization, and to bring continuity to inquiry and knowledge (mahan, 1970, pp. 194-195). since then, mainly two perspectives or approaches can be identified. the first approach interprets transdisciplinarity as a new principle for science and research and an overarching theoretical framework (nicolescu, 2002). this framework, as augsburg (2014) argues, focuses on the creation of new forms of integral knowledge production by those inside and outside academic disciplines. this approach or perspective is often connected to nicolescu (2002; 2006; 2008), who criticized modern science for assuming that reality is completely independent from the person observing, which has created the misconception that scientific methods produce neutral and objective knowledge. for him, as discussed in detail by mcgregor (2015, p. 4), transdisciplinarity involves values, it is about identifying new knowledge between, across, and beyond disciplines, since no perspective, discipline, or world view has a privileged place from which to understand everything (nicolescu, 2014). from this perspective, transdisciplinarity is a ‘new’ methodology (not method) for knowledge production. the second approach understands transdisciplinarity as a problemand solutionoriented research approach by integrating scientists as well as non-academic actors to produce socially robust knowledge (klein, 2004; nowotny, scott, & gibbons, 2001). the focus is on combining existing disciplinary knowledge with stakeholder knowledge. the aim is “a synthetic reconfiguration and recontextualization of available knowledge” (klein, 2001, p. 49), especially in the context where knowledge should be applied. thus, transdisciplinarity is seen primarily as another type of research within the spectrum of existing research, one that strives to do better science to deal with the complexity of society (and not strive to understand the world as in the first approach) (mcgregor, 2015, pp., 11-12). the second approach has been translated into funding schemes and research policies in europe in the last two decades, especially, but not exclusively, in the area of sustainability (jahn, bergmann & keil, 2012; spangenberg, 2011). to summarize, the different understandings or approaches reflect disparate perceptions of knowledge and science as well as distinct university cultures and research practices (felt, igelsböck, schikowitz, & völker, 2015). all this could be observed in the context of the knots project and is discussed differently in the articles of this issue. the contributions the first three papers by petra dannecker (2020), richard bärnthaler (2020), and alexandra heis and chayan vaddhanaphuti (2020) engage with and aim to contribute to transdisciplinarity on the basis of observations, experiences, or qualitative interviews. all three articles focus on questions of knowledge – whose and which knowledge made in the context of the implementation of the knots project counts – and the role of science in general, pluralism in particular, although from different perspectives. 170 | aseas 13(2) ‘transdisciplinarity’: a framework of knowledge production in north-south partnerships? dannecker (2020) introduces the knots project, focusing on power structures and relations that became apparent already when writing the project proposal. it is shown how the two understandings of transdisciplinarity framed the development of the project proposal and the expectations of the actors involved, and influenced the development of a common understanding of transdisciplinarity between the academic actors. the paper analyzes how the different understandings of knowledge and science, science and politics, and between disciplines and different actors representing different university cultures and relations are embedded in power asymmetries between the global north and the global south, but also reflect power relations due to age, gender, or university positions. based on her observations and experiences it is concluded that transdisciplinary scholarship and practice could benefit from postcolonial and feminist traditions since both focus on reflexivity and positionality. bärnthaler (2020) focusses in his paper on pluralism and transdisciplinary collaboration, the latter postulating mutual learning and knowledge generation. his concern is to analyze how the controversies and conflicts, which scholars working in the field of development studies experience, are getting reconstructed by the scientific actors and how these constructions shape collaborations. on the basis of interviews conducted with (senior) academic members of knots from thailand and europe, it is convincingly argued that even in ‘disciplines’ such as development studies pluralities exist. those pluralities do not only regard methods, ethics, semantics, approaches, or aims but, as shown, also the self-understanding of the academic actors influenced by, for example, the perception of scientific standards developed in the global north or the local contexts. the ways that scientists from thailand construct and interpret their roles as scientists, and the relations between science and society are, according to bärnthaler, conducive to integrate non-academic actors in transdisciplinary endeavors and important to unfold the potentialities of transdisciplinary work. heis and chayan (2020) discuss two collaborative research designs and their different political, academic, and geographic genealogies, each focusing on slightly different aspects of social transformation. developed in the global north, transdisciplinarity is one among many different frameworks of pluralistic and contextsensitive research frameworks. thai baan, developed in thailand, is a decolonial, counter-hegemonic methodology addressing explicitly regional power imbalances and socio-ecological injustice. both – thai baan and transdisciplinarity – are explored regarding their respective concepts of knowledge, their understanding of collaboration, as well as their transformative outlook. it is argued that, while overlapping in many ways, transdisciplinarity speaks primarily to scientists as the main subjects of transdisciplinary research, and hence conceptually reinforces the academia-practice divide. in contrast, thai baan presupposes a shared basis of political activism and problem definition from which to start. born out of political action, it creates a situated and partial but marginalized knowledge. however, both can learn from each other, thai baan in terms of a theoretical advancement, and transdisciplinarity by establishing a power-sensitive foundation. the papers by nguyen minh doi (2020), frank seemann and christoph antweiler (2020), as well as the personal account under the category research workshop by barbora nováková and marta lopatková (2020) focus on the knots project itself and its dynamics. whereas doi is examining why a new framework of knowledge aseas 13(2) | 171 petra dannecker & alexandra heis production is difficult to discuss and to adopt in the academic sector in vietnam, seemann and antweiler share and analyze their experiences with the administrative tasks and requirements specified by the eu. nováková and lopatková are discussing ethical issues that they observed and encountered during the implementation of the knots activities. doi (2020) analyses the difficulties to establish and foster transdisciplinary collaboration practice in vietnam at the institutional level. in a politically tightly controlled setting of academia and research in vietnam, the author sees transdisciplinarity as a possible means of advancing the dominant, statist, market-oriented model of knowledge production, which seems inflexible. however, the institutionalized mode of knowledge production comes with high personal stakes for some actors, decision-makers in research agendas, or those reproducing or supporting the existing mode of knowledge production. possible losses of control, as well as losses of status, stir the resistance to change. the paper examines the difficulties of transdisciplinary work at the institutional level in an environment where government and academic institutions are strongly linked and interdependent. drawing on his experiences from the knots project, doi describes and analyses these challenges from a neo-institutionalist perspective, pointing out that institutional choices are not taken ‘objectively’, for the benefit of research outcomes as such, but respond to very particular, multi-level power relations and conflicts of interests. seemann and antweiler (2020) investigate processes within the knots consortium and its wide-ranging activities, including three summer-schools and field trips, as well as the kick-off event, the round-trip, and the closing conference. the authors focus on the learnings in project management as well as the implementation of a complex project in a diverse team. the authors were not only working as researchers and university lecturers in the project, but were also responsible for the quality management. the article therefore also reflects the difficulties of academics to carry out managerial and administrative tasks, which were quantitatively overwhelming for all and at times outweighed academic activities. the hybrid nature of the project made the assignment rather challenging, particularly for those who were involved in the different aspects of the project – teaching and management – in personal union. in addition, the authors explore how the promise of collaboration gnaws on established hierarchies and learned seniority principles, which they locate mainly, but not exclusively in the north-south divide. the article provides an apt overview of lessons learned – in terms of experience, seniority, disciplinary background, gender, and nationality – and offers a positive outlook: with good will, friendly atmosphere, and a focus on mutual learning, many structural constraints, if not all, can be overcome. from the perspective of humanities scholars of vietnamese studies, nováková and lopatková (2020) ask how to deal with ethical questions central to collaborative research designs, which are ingrained in power inequalities, difference, and disconnection. the very aim of collaboration is to reach out for mutuality beyond difference and to find common grounds for working together. as vietnamese studies scholars, the authors found themselves in a peculiar situation in different ways. although acquainted with social science methods, which are at the core of transdisciplinary participative research, these were never part of their training. rather, their curricula comprise the study of literature, language, and cultural styles. proficient 172 | aseas 13(2) ‘transdisciplinarity’: a framework of knowledge production in north-south partnerships? in vietnamese language, customs, and cultural systems, the authors were particularly susceptible to ethical questions and questions of appropriate and suitable forms of interaction during the knots project. despite all other differences and biases in place, inter-cultural pitfalls are worthy consideration too, and should not be neglected. this very personal account of how to navigate different aspects of one’s own identity reflects the journey of the authors along the lines of cultural brokerage and the outsider/insider positionality in a transdisciplinary and transnational team. to summarize, this issue seeks to engage with transdisciplinarity and transdisciplinary capacity building as experienced by different authors coming from different universities, having different disciplinary backgrounds and different research foci and experiences. what they all have in common is that they worked and ‘struggled’ together for three years in an eu erasmus+ capacity building project. the space the project provided, as the papers reveal, made visible a broad variety of processes, power relations and structures that accompanied the implementation of the project. all papers reflect and analyze these challenges, processes, and experiences from different perspectives. however, all intend to contribute to transdisciplinarity or, to put it differently, to contribute to a dialogue on knowledge production. transdisciplinarity can lead to democratization in processes of knowledge production and is a framework that can support questioning the hierarchy of scientific knowledge and between scientific and lay knowledge. transdisciplinarity as a collaborative framework has the potential to open-up and ease entrenched academic forms of knowledge production – after all, life is dynamic, and so research must be, too. however, the individual and collective diversities, the different values, agendas, power relations and positions, interests and perspectives are a profound challenge, as shown in the papers – a challenge not only for transdisciplinary endeavors but also for carrying out such complex north-south projects. the knots project as well as the papers presented in this issue demonstrate that transdisciplinarity can be an approach or an implemented practice to engage in a necessary dialogue about knowledge production, power asymmetries in knowledge production, and the relation between science and society. the knots project also displayed how difficult it is to communicate and to respect different viewpoints, epistemologies, and methodologies before and during collaborations and to question privileges. the present issue aims to share our discussions, thoughts, and observations with an interested audience. by sharing our lessons learned, and our conceptual tools, we want to engage in wider debates on transformative science and practice.  references augsburg, t. (2014). becoming transdisciplinary: the emergence of the transdisciplinary individual. world futures: the journal of new paradigm research, 70 (3-4), 233-247. baaz, m. e. (2005). the paternalism of partnership: a postcolonial reading of identity in development aid. london: zed books. bärnthaler, r. (2020). conflict, controversy, comprise, and compression: the pragmatics of transdisciplinary (development) projects. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 13(2), 193-210. aseas 13(2) | 173 petra dannecker & alexandra heis basile, e., & baud, i. (2019). introduction: reflecting on development studies in the new millennium. in i. baud, e. basile, t. kontinen, & s. von itten (eds.), building development studies for the new millennium (pp. 1-22). cham, switzerland: palgrave macmillian. bernstein, j. h. (2015). transdisciplinarity: a review of its origins, development, and current issues. journal of research practice, 11(1), 1-20. braunhuber, b., goisauf, t., & reinisch, j. 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(2020). institutional prospects and challenges to transdisciplinary approach in the knowledge production system in vietnam: reflections on a north-south partnership project. austrian journal of south-east studies, 13(2), 229-242. du plessis, h., sehume, j., & martin, l. (2013). the concept and application of transdisciplinarity in intellectual discourse and research. johannesburg: mapungubwe institute for strategic reflection. felt, u., igelsböck, j, schikowitz, a., & völker, t. (2015). transdisciplinary sustainability research in practice: between imaginaries of collective experimentation and entrenched academic value orders. department of science and technology studies, university of vienna. retrieved from https://sts.univie.ac.at/ fileadmin/user_upload/i_sts/publikationen/preprints/preprints_transdisc.pdf heis, a,, & chayan, v. 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(1979). why interdisciplinarity? in j. j. kockelmans (ed.), interdisciplinarity and higher education (pp. 123-160). university park, pa: pennsylvania state university. mahan, j. (1970). toward transdisciplinary inquiry in the humane sciences. phd dissertation, united states international university. mcgregor, s. (2017). challenges of transdisciplinary collaboration: a conceptual literature review. integral leadership review, 17(1), 1-15. mcgregor, s. (2015). the nicolescuian and zurich approaches to transdisciplinarity. integral leadership review, 15(2), 1-18. melber, h. (2019). knowledge production, ownership and the power of definition: perspectives on and from sub-saharan africa. in i. baud, e. basile, t. kontinen, & s. von itten (eds.), building development studies for the new millennium (pp. 265-287). cham, switzerland: palgrave macmillian. mittelstraß, j. (2000). transdisciplinarity – new structures in science. in max-planck-gesellschaft (ed.), innovative structures in basic research (pp. 43-54) (ringberg-symposium, 4(7)). munich. nicolescu, b. (2014). methodology of transdisciplinarity. world futures, 70, 186-199. 174 | aseas 13(2) ‘transdisciplinarity’: a framework of knowledge production in north-south partnerships? nicolescu, b. (2010). methodology of transdisciplinarity – levels of reality, logic of the included middle and complexity. transdisciplinary journal of engineering and science, 1(1), 19-38. nicolescu, b. (ed.). (2008). transdisciplinarity: theory and practice. creskill, nj: hampton press. nicolescu, b. (2006). transdisciplinarity: past, present and future. in b. haverkort, & c. reijntjes (eds.), moving worldviews – reshaping sciences, policies and practices for endogenous sustainable development (pp. 142-166). leusden, netherlands: compas editions. nicolescu, b. (2002). manifesto of transdisciplinarity. new york: state university of new york press. nováková, b. & lopatková, m. (2020) ethics and the role of humanities in transdisciplinary research? a short reflection on the knots project. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 13(2), 261-266. nowotny, h., scott, p. b., & gibbons, m.t. (2001). re-thinking science, knowledge and the public in an age of uncertainty. cambridge: polity press. piaget, j. (1972). the epistemology of interdisciplinary relationships. in centre for educational research and innovation (ceri) (ed.), interdisciplinarity: problems of teaching and research in universities (pp. 127-139). paris, france: organisation for economic co-operation and development. seemann, f., & antweiler, c. (2020). linking european and southeast asian transdisciplinary knowledge production – lessons learnt by doing evaluation. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 13(2), 243-259. semmler, l. (2019). dissemination and communication of the transdisciplinary project “knots”. working paper no. 7, department of development studies, university of vienna. retrieved from https://ie.univie. ac.at/fileadmin/user_upload/p_ie/institut/publikationen/ie_publications/ieworkingpaper/ ie.wp7_semmler_2019-12.pdf shrivastava, p., & ivanaj, s. (2011). transdisciplinary art, technology, and management for sustainable enterprise. transdisciplinary journal of engineering and science, 2, 81-92. spangenberg, j. h. (2011). sustainability science: a review, an analysis and some empirical lessons. environmental conservation, 38, 275–287. about the authors petra dannecker is professor of development sociology and, since 2011, head of the department of development studies at the university of vienna. before coming to vienna, she was assistant professor at the department of sociology at bielefeld university, germany, and senior research fellow at the german development institute in bonn. her research interests include development politics, globalization and migration processes, transnationalism and gender, and migration and development. her regional focus is south and southeast asia. ► contact: petra.dannecker@univie.ac.at alexandra heis is a phd candidate at the department of development studies, university of vienna. her research interests include social science methodology, transdisciplinarity, collaborative research, rural development, urban studies, critical migration research, and intersectionality. ► contact: alexandra.heis@univie.ac.at acknowledgements as guest editors of this issue, we thank first of all the authors of this issue for their contributions. thanks also to the anonymous reviewers for their constructive and helpful comments, all papers benefited from their inputs. special thanks to alexander haas for proofreading some of the papers before handing them in. we gratefully acknowledge the support of the european union without which the project could not have been carried out. aseas 14(1) | 121 social media in research on a marginalized identity: the case of atheism in indonesia timo duilea a university of bonn, germany ► duile, t. (2021). social media in research on a marginalized identity: the case of atheism in indonesia. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 14(1), 121-128. social media have played a major role as a place where one can meet and socialize with like-minded people, and this is especially important for marginalized groups. atheists depict such a group in indonesia where public expressions of atheism are punishable. whereas social media often plays an important role in finding like-minded people, it is also potentially dangerous to reject religion on social media. in this research workshop, i argue that insights into the ways in which atheists use and engage in social media groups are crucial if one wants to know more about atheist ways of life in indonesia. however, atheist groups are subject to internal fragmentation, as atheism in indonesia is highly diverse, and, as a researcher, one can find oneself caught up in these internal struggles. finally, i argue that social media research is an important addition to offline research, since it enables the researcher, especially when dealing with sensitive issues and identities, to directly enter and critically engage with the premises in which such identities are constituted and developed. keywords: atheism; indonesia; online participant observation; social media  introduction countless studies on identity and belonging in southeast asia deal with religion, as religious diversity is one of the crucial features of the area. especially when a religious community has the status of a minority within a country in which religion plays a crucial role in general, researchers are used to consider and analyze it as an anchor of identity. against this backdrop, atheism constitutes an interesting case. atheism as an identity is especially important in countries where religion plays a crucial role in both politics and society, precisely because atheism is perceived as problematic by large parts of the population. whereas in secular countries, atheism usually does not depict the departing point of one’s identity, this is rather the case in religious societies where atheists have to deal with discrimination and prejudices. though the topic of atheism in religious societies in asia has been neglected for a long time, there have been some publications on this issue in recent years (e.g., al hariri et al., 2019; binder, 2020; quack, 2012;), and even some regarding southeast asia specifically (schäfer, 2016; blechschmidt, 2018). these studies are forschungswerkstatt  research workshop w w w .s ea s. at 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 49 122 | aseas 14(1) social media in research on a marginalized identity important contributions, as they enable us to observe these societies from a new, that is, explicitly non-religious, yet nonetheless emic, perspective. my research on atheism in indonesia, where it is de-facto mandatory for citizens to subscribe to one of the officially acknowledged religions, contributes to this effort. in 2015, i began my research on non-believers in indonesia. my aim was – and still is, as this is designed to be a long-term project – to understand how atheist identities develop in an overwhelmingly religious society and how atheist subjects establish their ways of life within a country based upon the concept of a divine entity (ketuhanan yang maha esa) as the staatsfundamentalnorm (sinn, 2014, p. 231). since 2005 especially, indonesian society has generally become more religious and islam has played an increasingly important role in politics (bruinessen, 2013), which often leads to precarious circumstances for atheists, both in political/juridical and social terms. when it comes to identity formation and political as well as social organizing of marginalized identities, social media have emerged as a crucial arena and tool. that holds true for many groups such as political dissidents in authoritarian states, lgbtiq people in hostile social and political environments, or ethnic minority groups. the role of social media has been conceptualized as a powerful and empowering tool from the very beginning. meanwhile, however, the view is more sophisticated. the role of social media as a tool for surveillance, state-sponsored troll armies, endemic problems of hate speech, and right-wing mobilization has changed our perception of social media as an empowering tool for minorities. against this backdrop, from the very beginning of my research, i considered social media groups to be important as they give new opportunities to communicate more safely with like-minded people. however, there is also the risk of provoking hostile responses from religious people if the content critical of religion is spread to them (hasani, 2016, pp. 197-198; schäfer, 2016, pp. 255-258). in this short essay, i explain my engagement with atheists in social media groups and argue why such engagement is crucial, especially when dealing with identities that are at odds with mainstream society. i also discuss how social media groups are subject to internal fragmentation and researchers can find themselves entangled within internal struggles when carrying out online participant observation. my example considers the case when my interlocutors actively responded to my activities and took their views on a publication into their social media groups. finally, i relate this experience to insights into how atheist identities are expressed and negotiated in social media. engaging with atheists in social media social media became an important tool, especially during the first stage of the research when i was looking for interlocutors i wanted to interview. social media, most of all facebook, are home to several groups for atheists, agnostics, and freethinkers in indonesia. some groups are open to the public, for instance the facebook group anda bertanya atheis menjawab (lit., you ask, atheists answer) which was set up as a tool to establish conversations between atheists and believers (valbiant, 2020). the aim is to demonstrate that non-believers are, contrary to state propaganda, not aseas 14(1) | 123 timo duile ‘dangerous communists without morals’, but ordinary citizens one can have meaningful discussions with. on the other hand, there are groups exclusively for atheists. these groups are more difficult to find, and, due to potential threats and in order to protect the identity of the members, these groups are not open. membership usually requires filling out a form where users, for instance, have to explain their reasons for joining the group. schäfer (2016) emphasizes that atheist online groups aim to present atheism positively in public. this is certainly true for groups designed as open discussion groups, but most atheist groups on social media have no such aim; they are exclusively by atheists and for atheists. other smaller social media groups derive from offline-meetings, and these are the most intimate, private groups since all members know each other in person. atheist online groups are, so far, not subject to persecution by state authorities as long as they do not enter a larger public sphere where expression of atheism might be valued as a threat to religion. after a period of coming together as atheists and engaging in discussions with like-minded people in social media between 2008 and 2016, many non-believers refrained from further engagement in social media, and generally atheist online groups developed towards rather private groups. atheist online groups, thus, do not represent a coherent atheist community; rather, different groups – both onand offline communities – have emerged, sometimes loosely connected but sometimes at odds with each other. in an interview conducted with a member of the department of religious affairs in 2016, it turned out that the ministry was aware of the existence of atheist groups – onand offline – but it was not bothered by the fact that atheists meet, as long as they did not reach out to the public (duile, 2018, p. 167). but it is not only the state with its laws that poses a potential threat (see hasani, 2016, pp. 200-202): vigilant religious extremists or even relatives might attack people for their atheist expressions. due to these circumstances, i was careful in my research. my engagement raised some ethical questions about which information i got from atheists that i could also use for my research. on the one hand, participant observation within these groups helped me a lot in understanding the phenomenon of atheism in indonesia, and it, therefore, had to be taken into account in my ethnography. on the other hand, i knew that the topic is sensitive, and peoples’ identities had to be protected. in addition to the usual anonymization in my offline research, i refrained from taking any screenshots, and never mentioned what a specific person shared in a closed social media group. while i came to the conclusion that social media groups in general are important for non-believers, i did not mention the names of atheist groups if they were closed to the public. for my research, i was only interested in the general topics discussed in online groups as they showed what atheists considered important. becoming a researcher and becoming a member in social media groups designed for discussion between nonbelievers, i managed to find atheists who were willing to share their experiences and thoughts with me. online groups became one entrance to my field research. one group was especially well known among non-believers and agnostics in indonesia. in 2015, it had some 1,700 members, but the number of people actively participating in discussions was around a few dozen. for some of the atheists i met between 2015 and 2019, this group 124 | aseas 14(1) social media in research on a marginalized identity was important as it made the somehow diffuse fact that they are not alone in their disbelief more concrete, and it, thus, helped them to cope with social stress resulting from their position as outsiders in the religious society of indonesia. the majority of my interlocutors later left the group or refrained from regular engagement in online groups. their reasons were manifold. among others, an internal divide developed between 2016 and 2018, when some influential members argued for ‘purification’: only active members should be tolerated, and members should be “real atheists” (benar-benar ateis), as a former member of the group said to me. furthermore, some of the people who had been kicked out of the group told me that it was due to ideological issues. according to them, especially leftist atheists and non-believers who engaged in religious communities, were not perceived as ‘real atheists’ anymore. the group became more exclusive, and some members accused others of sharing content from the group with outsiders. some argued that the group should be closed to the public completely, even though the existence of the group was hardly a secret. there was even an article on wikipedia about it and several newspapers had mentioned it. my engagement with that online group and some of their members became insightful for my research, but it also demonstrated how a researcher could become part of a group’s internal struggles. one of my starting points was an atheist facebook group. in 2015, i explained my research to the administrator and asked if i could approach atheists through the facebook group. after the administrator declared that he had no objections, i posted a text in which i explained my research and that i was looking for interlocutors. within only a few days, i got dozens of e-mails and messages, and later met many of these non-believers also in person. in 2017, in a contribution to a popular scientific online-magazine (duile, 2017), i wrote about ideological divides that arose within online (though not exclusively online) groups. while many atheist interlocutors responded that i had made a good point, the piece also received some criticism from other atheists, who argued that the way i categorized atheists was inaccurate. indeed, they persuaded me that the divisions within the atheist community are more complex. their critique and the following discussions helped me to rethink my categories of atheists (for a preliminary refinement, see duile, 2020) as i had conceived of them in the early stages of my research. from this point of view, ongoing discussions with non-believers about my findings helped a lot, as critical atheists expressed their objections to my findings openly. fragmentation and positioning in 2018, i talked to a journalist who then published a piece in the jakarta post (pearl, 2018). the only part of the article mentioning my name was about atheists’ strategies for being discreet and avoiding expressing atheism in public. a few weeks later, a vocal member of an online atheist group asked me whether i had talked about atheism with a journalist. i affirmed. i did not believe that i had talked about anything discrete or potentially endangering. however, similar to those members who had gotten into arguments with more influential parts of the group, i was removed from the group as well. later, i found out that some had accused me of sharing information from within the group, although i had not talked with the journalist about specific social media groups. according to some informants, i was expelled because some aseas 14(1) | 125 timo duile group members considered me too close to members who were expelled from the group. this happened even though i tried to occupy neutral positions within arguments and discussions. however, participant observation in such discussion groups – both onand offline – requires engagement, and, within ideological splits, can lead to situations where a researcher does not appear neutral in the eyes of some members. the alternative would be to be a ‘silent reader’, but some atheist friends invited me to join the discussions. i was also confident that i could learn much more about atheist life if i engaged into sometimes quite controversial discussions with them. after considering the alternative approach of being just a silent reader, i found it less ethical. joining discussions meant openly contributing. this engagement, however, was, and is, potentially dangerous when ideological conflicts occur, as it threatens the neutral position i, as do many researchers, wished to occupy. feeling safe in online space is a subjective issue; i reconsidered my participation in that group after some of the members did not feel safe as a result. after all, i understood that this group was not designed for use by researchers. just like ethnographers in villages, we are only guests in social media groups. for my research, the consequences of no longer being a member of this particular online group were very limited. interlocutors whom i had initially engaged within the online group still met with me in person. relationships with atheists who were expelled from the group, in some cases, became stronger after they found out that i was excluded as well. this effect was, however, only temporary, as the ‘cleaning’ of the group became less an issue over time when atheists found alternative groups both onand offline. lessons and observations what lessons can one learn from this experience? on the one hand, engagement in and with social media groups is crucial when dealing with identities or issues that are regarded as sensitive in the societies in which we are doing research. online groups are a means to get in touch with interlocutors in the first place and provide first insights into which topics matter for the interlocutors. this approach has also been helpful in research on other identities that are perceived as controversial by mainstream society in indonesia, for instance, research on lgbtiq (ridwan & wu, 2018, p. 123). however, the researcher’s (ethical) position in online groups is not different from offline research, and by engaging in a social media group one can quickly become a contributing part of that group. whereas such status is desired in participant observation, it makes it difficult to appear as neutral when internal fractions occur. although my approach of introducing myself, declaring my aims and background, and sharing my publication earned the trust of many atheists in these groups, some remained skeptical about my presence as a researcher. just like offline settings, social media groups have their own social dynamics, and developing a sense of them requires constant (participant) observation and engagement with all factions within a group. another observation i made was that the notion of privacy changed over time. in the beginning, the group sought to attract as many members as possible, but eventually it became increasingly exclusive. inactive members as well as members whose atheism became a subject of doubt (as they, for instance, engaged with religious groups) were expelled. this indicates a certain fragility in the concept of private 126 | aseas 14(1) social media in research on a marginalized identity versus public. the online group was conceptualized as a group exclusively for atheists from the very beginning, but later, loyalties, ideologies, and personal connections became increasingly important. the online environment ultimately became more intimate for those who were still accepted. sometimes members in atheist social media groups shared content making fun of radical believers. occasionally, there were discussions in which non-believers contrasted science with religion. for some atheists, science is an important reference for their atheist identity. this is particularly true for those atheists whom i have called santri atheists. just as the muslim santri (the term was originally introduced by geertz to refer to pious muslims in java), the santri atheists usually interact with other atheists and develop a coherent atheist identity (an identity usually contrasted against religion) that they express within their community, both onand offline (duile, 2020, p. 11). especially the santri atheists are more concerned with private groups where they are exclusively among each other. being in such private groups can give a sense of safety, and it may also be a tool for coping with a society deeply at odds with atheism and a strategy to affirm atheist identity. from my engagement with atheist social media groups, i have come to the (provisional) conclusion that atheist ways of life are not so much about constantly expressing their difference from mainstream religious society, but rather about finding like-minded individuals, which gives them a sense of belonging. this belonging is not only evoked through atheism in contrast to mainstream religious society, but by creating onand offline groups in which people can discuss everyday topics, from political to culinary issues. the latter aspect often gains importance when atheists engage in smaller groups. the fact that the people in these groups are non-believers is not always made explicit. it is rather the underlying assumption that all members are atheists that creates a social bond, and it gets less important the more intimate a group is. in this sense, online atheist groups are not sites of subversive conspiracies, but mimic other social media groups not based upon controversial identities, with occasional hints of their difference, for instance, when inviting others to join dinner at a ‘haram restaurant’ or ironically calling influential atheists ‘prophet’ (nabi). one group even organized a secret santa at a gathering where participants gave each other gifts such as atheist books or ‘unchristian’ items such as sex toys. humor is a strong indicator of group intimacy. conclusion social media matters for atheists, as the (perceived) anonymity helps them to get in touch with like-minded people. however, i do not want to overestimate the role social media has for them: the majority of my interlocutors only joined these groups for a limited amount of time and eventually shifted to offline relations with like-minded atheists, which were, however, often accompanied by smaller whatsapp groups. in many cases, facebook groups are often the first social media groups new de-converts engage with and, later, they move to rather smaller and private groups on other platforms. other atheists never felt the desire to engage in online groups. most importantly, online groups are not sites of atheist activism. they do not reach out to the public and, as i have demonstrated above, they even tend to become closed social aseas 14(1) | 127 timo duile spaces as a response to both external threats and internal fragmentation. external threats can derive from organized, vigilant muslims or, as in the case of alexander aan, an angry mob (kovacs, 2012, p. 4), but also from state institutions that might conclude that atheist postings or comments disrupt social order. internal fragmentation might be caused by different political ideologies or simply by distinct social habitus. some interlocutors have chosen to declare their atheism publicly, but they did so as individuals. the tendency of atheist online groups to develop towards rather closed and private groups makes it unlikely that social media are used as a means to promote atheism publicly in indonesia. for my research, my engagement with atheists on social media showed that a large part of this fragmented community seeks rather private spaces, both onand offline, and fragmentation within the community is a means to constitute smaller sub-communities that are more private in their nature. within this process, it is not surprising that concerns over privacy have gained importance over the last years. for the further research process, my experiences have demonstrated that it is much easier to focus on open groups or entirely switch to ‘traditional’ methods of offline research. finally, it is important to consider why one wants to take social media into account and to strictly limit the information processed in the research to that goal. in my case, it is sufficient to refer to social media groups only when giving insights into broader issues and topics to be discussed. concrete discussions could be used to illuminate the cases in point, but due to concerns over privacy, it is sometimes better to refrain from using online discussions as ethnographic material in publications at all.  references al hariri, y., magdy, w., & wolters, m. (2019). arabs and atheism: religious discussions in the arab twittersphere. in i. weber, k. darwish, c. wagner, e. zagheni, l. nelson, & s. aref (eds.), social informatics. socinfo 2019. lecture notes in computer science (pp. 18-34). springer. binder, s. (2020). total atheism: secular activism and politics of difference in india. berghahn. blechschmidt, a. (2018). the secular movement in the philippines: atheism and activism in a catholic country. dissertation, university of zürich. https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/157305/1/157305.pdf bruinessen, m. van (2013). introduction: contemporary developments in indonesian islam and the “conservative turn” of the early twenty-first century. in m. van bruinessen (ed.), contemporary developments in indonesian islam. explaining the “conservative turn” (pp. 1-20). iseas publishing. duile, t. (2017, september 13). indonesian secularists and atheists live under the shadow of stigma. the conversation. https://theconversation.com/indonesian-secularists-and-atheists-live-under-theshadow-of-stigma-82697 duile, t. (2018). atheism in indonesia: state discourses of the past and social practices of the present. south east asia research, 26(2), 161-175. duile, t. (2020). being atheist in the religious harmony state of indonesia. the asia pacific journal of anthropology, 21(5), 450-465. hasani, i. (2016). the decreasing space for non-religious expression in indonesia. the case of atheism. in t. lindsay & h. pausacker (eds.), religion, law and intolerance in indonesia (pp. 197-210). routledge. kovacs, a. (2012). religiöse diskriminierung in indonesien – ambivalente rechtslage und politische passivität [religious discrimination in indonesia – ambivalent legal situation and political passiveness]. giga-focus nr. 11. https://pure.giga-hamburg.de/ws/files/23176491/web_asien_2012_11.pdf 128 | aseas 14(1) social media in research on a marginalized identity pearl, h. (2018, july 11). living a double life: indonesia’s atheists fear jail or worse. jakarta post. https:// www.thejakartapost.com/news/2018/07/11/living-a-double-life-indonesias-atheists-fear-jail-or-worse. html quack, j. (2012). organized atheism in india: an overview. journal of contemporary religion, 27(1), 67-85. ridwan, r., & wu, j. (2018). ‘being young and lgbt, what could be worse?’ analysis of youth lgbt activism in indonesia: challenges and ways forward. gender and development, 26(1), 121-138. schäfer, s. (2016). forming ‘forbidden’ identities online: atheism in indonesia. austrian journal of southeast asian studies, 9(2), 253-268. sinn, s. (2014). religiöser pluralismus im werden. religionspolitische kontriversen und theologische perspektiven von christen und muslimen in indonesien. mohr siebeck. valbiant (2020). civility. indonesian atheist ‘ask me anything’ group promotes civil online discussion of a hot topic. inside indonesia, 140. https://www.insideindonesia.org/civility about the author timo duile is postdoctoral researcher at the department of southeast asian studies at bonn university. after he obtained his phd in southeast asian studies with focus on indigeneity and concepts of nature in kalimanatan, his current research focuses on relations between indigenous peoples, state, and economy, on political ideologies and social media, as well as on non-believers in indonesia. for his research, he has carried out fieldwork in kalimantan, jakarta, and south sulawesi, and was guest researcher at tanjugpura university (pontianak), the indonesian conference for religion and peace (jakarta), as well as at hasanuddin university (makassar). ► contact: tduile@uni-bonn.de 404 not found aseas 12(2) | 209 state appropriation of traditional actors and oral narratives in timor-leste lúcio sousa ► sousa, l. (2019). state appropriation of traditional actors and oral narratives in timor-leste. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 12(2), 209-223. in timor-leste, the lia na`in (lian = word; na`in = lord, master) – leaders of customary practice – are becoming key to tradition, to “kultura” (culture), an emerging area of public cultural policies. traditionally associated with the local communities and the mountains, they are the ones that know and pronounce the words that uncover the origin of the world, and the relationship between mankind, nature, and ancestors. since 20 may 2002, when political power was handed from the united nations to the timorese authorities, several episodes have illustrated that the involvement of the lia na`in has shifted from their traditional local contexts to national ones. from small-scale sociopolitical agents, the lia na`in became a resource as buffers of conflict or of reconciliation, as council members of the suco, the smallest administrative division, and as actors in national state ceremonies, taking part in the process of (re)creating the nation’s cultural identity. the purpose of this article is to discuss the role assigned to lia na`in in state affairs and the nation, particularly the role concerning conflict resolution. the argument, i propose, is that the participation of the lia na`in, as a ritual authority, in state-sponsored ceremonies has become a major resource of credibility to the new national authorities. keywords: nation building; oral tradition; peacebuilding; political legitimacy, timor-leste  introduction: scale of ideologies the lia na`in of timor-leste is traditionally associated with the local community, the small-scale locality framed by parochial sociopolitical traditional power structures in which they have a particular ritual role. they are the ones that know and pronounce through words the mythical stories that uncover the origin of the world, and the relationship between mankind, nature, and ancestors. in this sense, they play a major role in the flow of life, of people, animals, and plants (fox, 1980). they deal with the lulik (sacred or forbidden), a major potency rooted in the local beliefs. they do this through words that are part of ritual knowledge and also a power, with the ability to either foster or manage violent threats and promote peace. towards outsiders, the lia na`in usually have depicted themselves as a voice in the silence, in the shadow (traube, 1986), the peripheral interior realm versus the exterior, the center, the government, the secular power (sousa, 2009; traube, 1986). the realm of these men is the small-scale traditional locality in the mountains, where most of the uma lulik, the sacred houses, a major cultural and identity reference for east timorese, are located. its opposite pole is the big scale aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 22 210 | aseas 12(2) state appropriation of traditional actors and oral narratives in timor-leste theater of the capital city, dili, in the littoral plains. as the first is associated with traditional powers, the city is associated with modernity, the government, and the state (hicks, 2007; sousa, 2009). these different scales are bound by contrasting ideologies of precedence as both poles have centripetal imaginary forces in the relationship. the mutual intelligibility between the mountains and the cities, the local communities and the state, is not just part of imagined constructions of “community”, or “nation” (anderson, 2003), they are essential in the social and political negotiation process of framing the new state (silva, 2014). they are part of the production of the “ideologies of scale” (tsing, 2000), from two different perspectives, one seen from the mountains, the other from the capital. the emergence of the lia na`in from its highland locality into the timor-leste national political arena cannot be separated from the process of (re)creating the nation’s cultural identity as a political means to foster the identity and union of the young state (sousa, 2016), particularly in the process of reconciliation and in the context of political and military crisis. they are deemed as leaders of customary practice, associated with “ritual power”, the “traditional values” (trindade, 2008, p. 28), and as such, “most importantly, attention should be given to traditional east timorese leaders and customary practice [sic]. ways of integrating local traditions into the nation's political and legal/practice system should be explored" (soares, 2003, p. 275). this resurgence is part of an ongoing adaptation and dynamism. as stated by palmer (2007), “the resurgence of customary laws and traditions is not about ‘going back’ ... but is about recognizing the ongoing adaption and dynamism which informs the customary law-making processes at work in people’s everyday lives” (p. 36). this is what viegas and feijó`s (2018) have referred to as “cohabitation”, a process to overcome what trindade (2008) considered as paradigms in conflict. the question is, then, whether lia na`in’s participation in state ceremonies is a form of timor-leste’s “domestication of ceremonies” as referred to by pemberton (1994) concerning the way in which the suharto regime incorporated traditional art (kesenian) in indonesia. or, as stated by hohe (2002) about timor-leste, are lia na`in merely a “ceremonial colour, ‘folklore’ or an obstacle to liberal values” (p. 570)? although the participation of the lia na`in in state ceremonies reveals a degree of integration of small-scale agents in the larger scale of the nation, it has, above all, a legitimizing purpose for the state and its agents. nevertheless, i argue that the participation of the lia na`in and their ritual performance provide a significant role in national contexts. this can be compared to the situation discussed by may (2004) in the case of papua new guinea1, where in the mid-1990s, traditional authority was “(re)discovered” and political discourse on “chiefs” emerged, aiming at restricting local level government. the appropriation and incorporation of the lia na`in can be understood as part of what i would call, adapting silva’s (2016) idea of “economic pedagogy”, a “political pedagogy”, in which through mimicry the state appropriates the action of local practitioners for its advantage. this paper is based on extensive ethnographic field research in timor-leste between 2002 and 2014, in which i had also the opportunity to live one year in a 1 i do not discuss here the fact that, in a local context, the lia na`in do not consider themselves to have a higher status because of their participation at national level events. aseas 12(2) | 211 lúcio sousa mountainous village. the next section delivers a brief and simplified historical overview of the four centuries of conflict which took place in timor-leste. the third section discuss the related timor-leste literatures on lia na`in, followed by the fourth section in which i provide three examples where the lia na`in play roles in different scales in reconciliation ceremonies. my research focus was the maintenance of ritual practices and its social actors and social structures amidst the changes that have overcome the country. although the bulk of my research was conducted in a local community, i also included bobonaro, maliana, and dili as parts of my research field areas. this work delivers an anthropological perspective that considers the ideological scale, this is, the conception of the difference between the two perspectives (the mountains and the capital), as a unit of analysis and a heuristic tool. enduring violence in timor-leste timor-leste is a small, young country located in southeast asia. for around 400 years it was a portuguese colony, but the occupation of the territory began effectively after 1912, following the defeat of the last great native revolt, the manufahi rebellion led by dom boaventura da costa (pelissier, 2007; sousa, 2016). portuguese rule was based on a fragile relationship with the kingdoms of timor, which shifted between a volatile and ambivalent alliance. the rebellions united several kingdoms, that could, over time, change their alliance to the portuguese authorities, or among themselves (durand, 2011; pelissier, 2007; roque, 2010). despite portuguese neutrality in world war ii, portuguese timor was occupied by the japanese in 1945, making the island into a battleground between the australian forces, who used guerrilla tactics and were supported by some portuguese and timorese, and japanese forces employing “black columns” battalions composed of dutch west timor natives. such involvement of the natives in global events shows the extent to which the war was indigenized (tsuchiya, 2018). it is estimated that 40,000 timorese died during this period (figueiredo, 2011). the last rebellion during portuguese rule, the viqueque rebellion, took place in 1959 and was violently repressed, despite taking place in a remote location (gunter, 2008). however, unlike other portuguese colonies, there was no armed struggle for liberation in portuguese timor. the decolonization of timor-leste only began after the carnation revolution in portugal took place on 25 april 1974, and political parties emerged in east timor. in this transition process, civil war broke out in august 1975 between the then-conservative timorese democratic union (udt), which supported further presence of the then portuguese government, and the leftist revolutionary front for an independent timor-leste (fretilin), which demanded total independence. the civil war resulted in the withdrawal of the portuguese authorities to the nearby island of ataúro. they soon returned to portugal, while the udt members fled to nearby indonesian timor. the situation gave fretilin the upper hand leading to the country’s declaration of independence on 28 november 1975. during this time, the indonesian military saw the absence of power and transition process as an opportunity to occupy timor-leste and already had invaded the western border. the indonesian military eventually besieged the capital city of dili on 7 december 1975. during the following 20 years of occupation, indonesia faced fierce 212 | aseas 12(2) state appropriation of traditional actors and oral narratives in timor-leste resistance from east timorese led by the armed forces for the national liberation of timor-leste (forças armadas da libertação nacional de timor-leste/falintil). the war against the indonesian invasion marks the “militarization of timorese society” (commission for reception, truth and reconciliation in east timor [cvar] 2013, p. 362). timor-leste became one of the world’s rare cases where violence truly was endemic, and most of the society was involved in the war. cvar (2013, p. 502) estimates that war and starvation claimed at least 183,000 lives. the violent tensions attracted massive global attention when the footage of british journalist max stahl documented the 1991 military attack on the peaceful civil protest in the santa cruz cemetery in dili, during which 200 people were killed (gunn, 1999). from-below, however, the peacebuilding effort was ceaseless with carlos filipe ximenes belo, the bishop of dili, and ramos horta initiating various dialogue forums to end indonesian military oppression and structural violence. their efforts were internationally recognized with the awarding of the nobel peace prize in 1996. in 1999, after the united nations-mediated negotiations between the indonesian and portuguese governments, a referendum was set to decide timor-leste’s future. there were two options: either make the entity an autonomous province or an independent state. preceding the referendum, again, timor-leste plunged into severe violence because of agitation from pro-indonesian militias and indonesian soldiers (durand, 2011). following the referendum, which resulted in a majority vote (78.5%) for an independent state, the indonesian military and militia retaliations murdered over 2,000 timorese – the victims being mostly those who supported independence. more than 550,000 people were forced to flee, including 250,000 people who were relocated to the indonesian province of west timor. seventy percent of the country’s major infrastructure was destroyed and villages raided (cvar, 2013, pp. 299-300). peace could only be restored after the intervention of the international force east timor (interfet) – an international joint military intervention force organized by the un and led by australia. on 20 may 2002, two years after the transition government united nations transitional administration in east timor (untaet) had been installed, power was eventually transferred to the timorese authorities. xanana gusmão, the historic leader of the falintil, captured by indonesian authorities in 1992 and released in 1999, became president, and, mário alkatiri, the leader of fretilin, who had been abroad in exile, became the appointed prime minister. the emergence of the lia na`in during the portuguese colonial period, the liurais, or the local kings, were the main focus of local political partners within the portuguese administration, particularly after the 1912 rebellion when many of these kings were replaced with those loyal to the colonial administration. the figure of the lia na`in is rather absent from the 19th century literature (castro, 1867; frança, 1890). however, there are references to the existence of the “dato luli”, the noble lord of the sacred, or “railuli”, the caregiver of the sacred land, the caretakers of the “uma lulik”, and the one who speaks with the “luli”, the sacred or forbidden (castro, 1867, p. 317). forbes (1885, pp. 446-447) also mentions the “dato-luli”, who, according to him, were of paramount relevance in aseas 12(2) | 213 lúcio sousa local ritual processes, both in peace and in war times, giving a description of such a performance: “the dato-luli, then in front of the great stone, invokes the spirits of their dead, maromak of the heavens, and him of the earth” (p. 467). one of the first references to the term can be found in rafael das dores’ (1907) dictionary of tetum-portuguese, which defines lia na`in succinctly as “orator” (p. 156). it is not until half a century later, in the 1950s and 1960s, that the lia na`in comes to the fore, emerging in several ethnographic works that started to emerge as anthologies of oral traditions (e.g., pascoal, 1967; sá, 1961). sá (1961) mentions, briefly, that “they are the masters of the word, the classics of their oral literature” (p. xxv). a more detail description of lia na`in’s role in society can be found in pascoal’s (1967) work: [the lia na`in are those who] … know how to tell myths and how to challenge genealogies – myths and genealogies which, for them and the rest of the people, constitute history, however implausible and however mixed-up or non-existent their sense of time might be. holders of the voice of the past, on the one hand, the lia na`in cannot allow it to be silenced, while on the other, to uphold their function, they strive to prevent it from becoming commonplace. this cautious protection has done much to contribute towards the mystery in which it is shrouded. the lia na`in is a kind of living, precious book, which makes them a focus of attention for the entire population. for the pagan mob, when it comes to their beliefs, they are the supreme source of credibility. their testimony is immutable truth. they have a separate place in the clan’s hierarchy. (p.15) to note, pascoal’s work contains biographies of the narrators and the lia na`in. the distinction between narrators and lia na`in is pertinent as it identifies the difference between the types of narratives concerned, myths, legends, and ‘mestizo’ stories, as well as the ability to tell them. according to pascoal (1967, pp. 367-370), the lia na`in are those who have the knowledge and right to express those most revered words, but they can also be guardians of the lulik, or they can also be suco2 leaders. this echoes the description provided by forbes (1885) which draws attention to the complexity of the role of lia na`in as lulik na`in (lord of the sacred), as someone who deals with the sacred, and, in modern context, act as suco leader, and as such form part of the state administrative structure. such relations between the lia na`in and local state power structures was not, however, further pursued by other authors. in fact, the common image of the lia na`in in the 20th century would, above all, continued as a representative of timorese culture, embellished in photos as an old man with a quiet posture, like in cinatti’s (1964) description: in each group of villages, united by kinship and equal political leadership, there is an individual whose functions give him the right to speak in public, on occasions of social relevance. known by the term “lord of the word,” he renews the great timorese traditions, recounting the deeds of the ancestors and reciting the poetic allegories in which the worlds of the living and the dead are structured. (p. 8) 2 administrative unit. there are currently 442 sucos in timor-leste (timor-leste ministry of finance, 2019). 214 | aseas 12(2) state appropriation of traditional actors and oral narratives in timor-leste anthropological works in the 1960s and 1970s describe these men as ritual authorities, but do not discuss their practical role in mundane worldly affairs, including politics (clamagirand, 1982; hicks, 1976/2004; traube, 1986). such descriptions contrast with my findings that reveal the diversity of the roles these authorities fulfill, which to some degree echoes pascoal’s (1967) insights about the roles of lia na`in and the overlapping of their functions in society. understanding the complexity of the duties of lia na`in is significant because this provides insights into the relevance of the presence of these men in small scale communities, where relationships and social transactions, particularly kinship, have a profound effect on peacebuilding and the current political situation in timor-leste. i conducted my research in a small bunak-speaking community in the bobonaro area (see also, sousa, 2010a). the lia na`in, or lal gomo in bunak, can have official or non-official status. the official status exists when some men hold a particular office in the local social-political structure and can perform the recitation of the oral history and sacred words. such status, however, becomes problematic when the holders of office do not know how to perform their roles. in such cases, they can delegate the task to someone who knows, usually a member of one of the sacred houses (deu po`), to do the recitations. in the village of tapo, for example, each one of the 18 sacred houses has a matas, the head of the sacred house, who could conduct the recitation. but, the matas can also be an okul gomo, a lord of the ritual, performing in his sacred house or at community rituals. in the local traditional structure of authority, there are offices that also need to be prepared to speak the words, namely the three matas gonion, an office associated with inner power and attributed to the three main sacred houses, represented each by their respective matas, or the office of bei, the leaders of the external power, held by four houses (sousa, 2010a). once chosen, the delegated novice matas is expected to go to ‘school’ to learn the sacred words that will be essential in exercising his authority in a ritual and social context. a similar procedure is followed with the offices of bei gonion and with their use of the word in community rituals. when a matas does not know the words, he may delegate his capacity to another person, thus revealing a lal gomo who, even without the office, performs the event. thus, in such a case, lia na`in is not a minor reproducer of legends and myths, a voice of the past, who recalls the ancestors. the “stories” mastered by the lia na`in, either from the sacred house or from the community, and from the world, are essential as they are narratives that legitimate the (re)production of social and ritual precedence and hierarchy within the framework of social mechanisms, such as kinship, the sacred houses, and community power structures and those responsible for them. turning again to the performances of lia na`in, in the village of tapo, the example of the magalia, the narrative of the path of the house, illustrates the argument. the magalia recalls the history of the sacred house, performed at the time of its reconstruction (i participated in two in 2003). this recitation recounts the journey and arrival of the ancestors, and the relations that they established with others (berthe, 1972). this “topogeny” (fox, 1997) justifies the institution of precedence among the sacred houses and the offices that each has in the community traditional structure. this can lead to disagreement, as sometimes there are conflicting perspectives. in another recitation in 2006, during the construction of a sacred house in aseas 12(2) | 215 lúcio sousa oeleu, another suco close to tapo, i witnessed such conflict. all seemed well until the moment one of the matas recounted a different path to the ancestor of the house, which led to an interruption of the recitation and discussion. immediately, they demanded me to stop recording the recitation ritual. let us now turn to the national scale. the lia na`in emerged in the national context mainly after 1999, or right after the independence referendum. their presence was symbolically acknowledged through their participation in the 20 may 2002 ceremonies held at tasi tolo, in dili, when governmental power was passed from the united nations to the timorese authorities. in the ceremonies, representatives of the 13 districts performed the recitation of the oral narratives about the origins and greeting of the nation in the allocated two minutes presentation for each. during the selection and first meeting of the representatives of bobonaro district, i noted that one of the main concerns of those men was who would do the translation and how accurate it would be. the presentation in dili eventually did not have any translator. at the same time, in bobonaro, an assemblage of lia na`in also addressed the new nation represented by the new flag (sousa, 2010b). the walk of the flag, already described by traube (1980) as the way in which the portuguese flag arrived, depicted in oral narrative, was now performed for the timorese flag. after these ceremonies, all the sucos would receive their flags. however, in tapo, as also in some other cases, the national flag is not kept in the suco office, the official administration of the state, but in one of the sacred houses. accordingly, when taken to official state ceremonies, the flag is taken by a traditional leader from another sacred house that executes this function. such location denotes that the traditional central institution of the village, the sacred houses and their caretakers, are given the symbol of the nation to place in their care. the framework for the new state and the acknowledgement of the role of “norms and customs” in its order is the 2002 national constitution: “the state shall recognize and value the norms and customs of timor-leste that are not contrary to the constitution and any legislation dealing specifically with customary law” (the constituent assembly of the democratic republic of east timor, 2002, section 2, point 4). the lia na`in are formally recognized in the law of sucos (democratic republic of east timor, 2016), where the role of the lia na`in in the local context is acknowledged through three different articles. article 10 positions the lia na`in as part of the structure of the suco council, in which they participate jointly with the head of the suco, the village chiefs, the delegate of each suco village, and a women’s and youth representative. historically, this new administrative position for the lia na`in is significant since article 5, point 1.d explains that the suco now has specific duties regarding tradition, that is, “defend, ensure and promote the traditional customs and practices of the community”. such duties are followed by the expected competencies of the suco: a) promote the resolution of conflicts that arise between community members or between aldeias [sub-villages], in accordance with the traditions and practices of the community and the respect for the principle of equality; b) to promote and defend the knua3 as fundamental elements of cultural identity of 216 | aseas 12(2) state appropriation of traditional actors and oral narratives in timor-leste the timorese people; c) preserve the existence of the uma-lulik or uma-lysan in the community; d) collaborate in the organization of festivities, ceremonies, rituals and other activities for the affirmation of the traditions, practices and customs that form the identity of the community's customs, without prejudice to the demands that are proper of the social and economic development of the community; e) promote the holding of activities for the inter-generational transmission of practices, traditions and customs of the local community (democratic republic of east timor, 2016, article 6, paragraph 1). with the formalization of the suco and its council as recognized authorities, the “centrality” of the suco in the construction of the political community in timor-leste becomes paramount. after a long period of militarization of timor-leste, as previously described, the law marks the importance of civil society in from-below state building, no longer simply being accorded a role as passive citizen who becomes the object of political change (brown, 2015). the lia na`in and the nation: conflict and reconciliation the recognition of lia na`in’s role through the suco law is not an abrupt development. over the course of fifteen years after the independence of timor-leste in 1999, their capacity to mediate conflicting sides has become increasingly essential in post-conflict society and in the general reconciliation process. they became actors that emerged as bridges in reconciliation processes in the country where local and national scales intersect. in the following section, i discuss three examples for this. customary rule of law in the mountains the events of 1999 were critical to the existence of timor-leste. after the announcement of the referendum’s results, deadly violence and destruction spread around the country. around 250,000 people fled, many of whom were former indonesian civil servants and their families, but also many others whom the militias randomly collected and deported to west timor, indonesia (cvar, 2013; molnar, 2010). in the late months of 1999 to 2000, about 200,000 of these refugees returned to timor-leste. dealing with the reconciliation process, namely between those affiliated with the autonomy movement – in particular former militias – and indonesia, the lia na`in had a major role in the process of conflict resolution and local reconciliation (cvar, 2013). according to my interlocutors, their narrative was viewed by timorese as more credible than that of the state because they were representatives of an order associated with the ancestors, and because they are the ones who traditionally solve disputes in the communities. in 2000, a mountain sub-district leader told me that he usually called the lia na`in to resolve disputes, not only related to the process of reconciliation, but related to other issues like stealing or suco borders quarrels, claiming that sanctioning of a supernatural nature commanded greater respect than the state. this was the best way to solve small problems that presumably could become more problematic on a larger scale. the articulation between tradition and the new state structure, however, is not always easy. in 2003, i attended a ritual at oeleu concerning a case of cow theft by aseas 12(2) | 217 lúcio sousa a young man in a neighboring suco. to amend the sin of the crime the sacred house of the perpetrator declared that not only should money of the amount of the stolen cattle be paid to the claimant, but that the perpetrator should also provide a buffalo for sacrifice. a public ritual was staged at the sacred village site, involving the representatives of both sucos. this was seen as a traditional way to solve the problem and establish peace between the two villages. the new district administrator and the police chief also attended the ceremony. they were invited to publicly affirm that the dispute was solved. they stood apart during the entire ceremony, but when the major ritual acts were completed in the afternoon, they called the young man into a house and questioned him. this sparked a turmoil because, to the traditional leaders, the problem, or the criminal case, should have been closed when the ritual was completed. for the new authorities, however, there was also the need to mark their presence and register the fact because they were representing the state. customary power in the reconciliation process tradition, or customary power (lisan), and its representatives, the lia na`in, acquired a national relevance as they conducted ritual acts during the local hearings that were part of the reconciliation process carried out by the cvar. the cvar was established in 2001 to inquire into the human rights violations that took place between april 1974 and october 1999. these acts, performances that involved the sharing of areca and betel, and other goods as well as words, in concrete settings, are local-scale events, but affected the national scale and have prevented further violence, both locally and nationally. nevertheless, if the lia na`in and their ritual knowledge were instrumental, there were still difficulties when the scale of relations was shattered by different groups from different localities and different lisan practices: “lisan played a significant part in about three-quarters of crp [community reconciliation process] hearings. one of the reasons for the absence of lisan in the remaining cases was that the crp sometimes involved parties belonging to different lisan groups” (cvar, 2013, p. 2455). in 2006, another event would bring violence to timor-leste on a scale that few had anticipated. in may 2006, 600 soldiers who had protested regional discrimination in promotions were sacked from the timor-leste forces of defense (fdtl), mainly those from the west zone, or the origin area of the kaladis group. during this conflict, there was a strong social perception of two distinctive regional groups of citizens in timor-leste, namely the firakus (easterners, or those who dwell in the east part of the island) and kaladis (the westerners). as i witnessed the chaos, forced migrants also fled following this pattern of polarization. fighting broke out in dili, resulting in 60 deaths and 180,000 internally displaced people (lusa, 2006). the conflict grew as distrust between political factions mounted and political elites started to blame each other for the social unrest. as the nation was facing political crisis, riots also erupted across the country. the situation once again led to the intervention of an australian military force, which remained in the country for about two years (seixas, 2010). this first post-colonial war in timor-leste (seixas, 2010) led to mari alkatiri’s resignation as prime minister in june 2006. in 2007, following the parliamentary and presidential elections, ramos horta became president, and xanana gusmão, the 218 | aseas 12(2) state appropriation of traditional actors and oral narratives in timor-leste head of a new party, the national congress for timorese reconstruction (congresso nacional de reconstrução de timor, cnrt), became the appointed prime minister. the new government nevertheless could not end the conflict. in 2008, president ramos horta was shot by rebels. following the attack, president gusmão declared a 48-hour state of emergency, including a curfew. the attack led to a military counter-operation resulting in the death of the rebel leader, alfredo reinaldo (kingsbury, 2009, p. 190). during my stay at that time, many people in dili and the mountain area told me that the war would not be over unless the authorities assembled the lia na`in from each one of the 13 districts to resolve the national unrest by bridging the differences among political parties, party leaders, and their supporters. this assembly eventually took place in dili in december 2006. nevertheless, braithwaite, charlesworth, and soares (2012) reported that while the ceremonial discussion was “attended by the political elite, there appeared very little public engagement and no sense of an outcome, let alone any kind of binding compact between parties” (p. 228). my informants explained that such a state of affairs came about because the youth and politicians no longer respect the “old ways and beliefs”. the president of timor-leste, ramos horta, was seriously wounded in the attack but recovered. after this period of crisis, the state promoted a unity program of peacebuilding and development, namely “ita uma deit” (only one house) – one house being synonymous with one country. during my visit in 2010, the walls of dili were already covered with paintings made by different groups of young artists sponsored by state institutions, which depicted symbolic images of the union and inseparableness of all the timorese, like the portuguese word unidade (unity) or, more elaborately expressed in a traditional couplet, characteristic of oral narratives: “hun ida, abut ida hamutuk mai ita halao desenvolve domin dame no paz” (one origin, one root, together we will develop love and peace). in this peace building program, the lia na`in were called upon to bless – thus legitimizing – the new national economic and political undertakings. in 2008, for example, an “association of lia na`in”, on the behalf of the united east timorese people, granted xanana gusmão the authority to negotiate the country’s minerals (la`o hamutuk, 2013). unlike the suco council, which emerged from a traditional institution, this “association of lia na`in”, however, is not a traditional one. as matter of fact, la`o hamutuk (2013), the timor-leste institute for development monitoring and analysis, explains that the association was founded by the state’s secretariat for natural resources. although the association is relatively unknown until today, it marks how the state views the importance of such traditional leadership in political conduct. their blessing symbolizes people’s legitimation, which represents unity between the people and the politicians as the personification of the state in the post-conflict nation. aside from a scale of space, there is also a temporal scale that emerged in timorleste’s efforts to reconcile what are considered to be unresolved conflicts. in fact, a structural time of memory that persists around the violence of the past and the divisions of the timorese were addressed in 2012, the year that marked the 100th anniversary of the 1912 manufahi rebellion.4 in the anniversary, a statue dedicated 4 i did not participate in this ceremony, but in 2013, i had the opportunity to interview the local repreaseas 12(2) | 219 lúcio sousa to the liurai dom boaventura da costa was inaugurated in same. the ceremony was considered a moment of national reconciliation. the close relationship between old conflicts (the 1912 manufahi rebellion) and the present (the 2006 timor-leste crisis) is relevant as it allows the reasons for the division to be left behind while giving the current actors a role to play in resolving them. for the ceremony, once again, the lia na`in from every district in the country were invited. they were not only to fulfill their traditional role of paying tribute to and appeasing the ancestors, but also to talk about cementing national unity in the present. as one participant explained to me in maliana in 2013, going to the site had allowed peace to come and the conflicts to reach closure. he explained that the 1912 rebellion had not only caused a lot of deaths, but also many women had been brought and incorporated into the sacred houses of those who won. these facts needed to be mutually acknowledged between all parties, in this case all districts of timor-leste, so that they could be forgiven by sharing these memories. the formal organizers of the event said: the commemoration of 100 years of the manufahi rebellion, which is being celebrated in same, shall begin with a traditional ceremony, “nahe biti boot”, performed by the traditional leaders of the 13 districts. the ceremony aims to cleanse all the sins the ancients left at the time of the manufahi rebellion. the deputy prime-minister, fernando la sama de araújo, representing the government, introduced this traditional ceremony, saying that, in the past, our grandparents had harbored old hatreds which this ritual ceremony now aimed to redeem, uniting all timorese in the promotion and development of timor-leste. (cjitl/benny, 2012) the ceremony connecting two periods in timorese history was an enactment of unity among people and ancestors, claiming a common identity. customary on demand the last example involves, again, the 2006 conflict, and it recalls the power of words in timor-leste. after the general elections on 22 june 2017, the newly elected prime minister, mari alkatiri, held a ceremony in dili outside the government palace on 27 september 2017. the purpose of this ceremony was to withdraw his own words, pronounced on 26 june 2006, when, after his resignation, he swore never to take up the post again. the event illustrates the relations that are being woven between individuals who represent the state and tradition, particularly lia na`in. the ceremony, once again involving representatives from the various districts (but not all), was named ‘dada ikas’ (withdrawing the oath) and ‘loke dalan’ (opening the way) and was extensively covered by the media. the result of the final divination process of the livers of three sacrificed roosters as declared by the lia na`in in the ceremony was that “the road will be long, but straight” (manu-teen lulik loke, 2017). mari alkatiri acknowledged that “they were unanimous in saying that the sentatives from maliana and bobonaro districts about their experience in participating in the ceremony and how it has become meaningful for them. 220 | aseas 12(2) state appropriation of traditional actors and oral narratives in timor-leste road is open, but also that i have to walk carefully because there are always obstacles ahead” (“pm timorense regressa 11 anos”, 2017). nevertheless, the obstacles were paramount, and after turbulent months with mari alkatiri’s government program rejected and him being unable to implement his budget proposal, the president of timor-leste, francisco guterres, dissolved the parliament in january 2018, followed by new elections (european union, 2018, pp. 6-7). conclusion the timorese state is coming to terms with tradition while struggling to find new ways for nation and peace building in a post ‘militarized’ society. the lia na`in have played a significant role in this post-conflict society. they are helping to restore order and promote peace, especially in places where state institutions and law enforcement have been weak, and there has been huge distrust between various segments of society which previously had been polarized, even militarized, in political conflicts. it recognizes the important role of tradition in local contexts, namely in the resolution of local disputes. in the process, the state formally acknowledges the figure of the lia na`in in the administrative structure of the suco, with a consultative position. however, their role is attached to mainly ceremonies and rituals to be performed in a local context and within local politics. the relevance of local customary law in general is confirmed by recent studies (graça & menezes, 2017) and is manifest in the ongoing process of local consultation with traditional authorities, namely lia na`in, undertaken by the government in several districts of the country. on the national scale, lia na`in are obviously involved in the discourse of conflict resolution. however, it should be further questioned whether the state’s legal formal recognition of their presence is also part of a process of the state’s incorporation of traditional actors as part of a top-down peace building. the lia na`in and their narration capability and oratory skills reflect a ‘local wisdom’ of creative peace building in a young nation as it plays a role on local and temporal scales. but once it is appropriated by the state – through the law, state invitations, associations – it may lose its meaning. similar to the local context, the ceremonies performed at state events strive to deliver the idea of a symbolic whole: the lia na`in are from the 13 districts, or at least the material and symbolic supplies, like the baskets for the areca and betel, would be used in this number, symbolizing the presence of all regions. in dili, the capital, there are currently two main lia na`in who have performed on behalf of the entire country. these performances are, according to silva (2019), being “spectacularized” (silva, 2019), very much like acciaioli (1985) claims concerning the appropriation of adat (customs) in indonesia. the presence manifests the symbolic links of the mountain and the capital, encompassing the scales of the local and the national. another scale that is being addressed is the temporal scale; tying the past and the present denotes that a particular event has historical importance and is an arena of contestation. the temporal scale underlies the need to link common purposes and overcome contemporary divisions. i can say that the state recognizes the need for the idea of the whole, the assemblage of these small scale “localized territorialities” (santos, 2001) in the scale of aseas 12(2) | 221 lúcio sousa national undertakings, namely the resolution of conflict (i do not discuss here the outcome of the events). but this is also a way to integrate these actors, recognizing the existence of such diversity but also showing the capacity of the state to assign them a role, even if this seems mainly aesthetic. it concedes the small-scale intervention at suco level in the resolution of local disputes and in the process of local reconciliation. the need for the presence of lia na`in at national events reveals the fabric of a state, which indicates that, in scales of space and time, synchronically and diachronically, the state needs its symbolic local agents to, as pascoal (1967) asserts, establish their “credibility”.  references acciaioli, g. 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(2017). transformations in independent timor-leste. dynamics of social and cultural cohabitations. london: routledge. about the author lúcio sousa is professor of anthropology at the department of social sciences and management at universidade aberta, portugal, and a researcher at the institute for the study of literature and tradition (ielt-fcsh-unl). ► contact: lsousa.uab@gmail.com acknowledgements i deeply acknowledge the valuable and pertinent comments made by the reviewers and the editors. a first version of the text was translated with the support of the fundação para a ciência e tecnologia (fct) through the centro de estudos das migrações e relações interculturais (cemri). aseas 13(1) | 17 local tourism businesses in indonesia: a pathway to crisisresilient development? heidi dahlesa, b, titi susilowati prabawac, & juliette koningd a griffith university, australia; b cambodia development resources institute (cdri); c universitas kristen satya wacana, indonesia; d oxford brookes university, uk ► dahles, h., prabawa, t. s., & koning, j. (2020). local tourism businesses in indonesia: a pathway to crisis-resilient development? austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 13(1), 17-33. the aim of this paper is to explore ways in which small tourism-based enterprises can offer a crisis-resilient pathway to sustainable development. based on a mixed-embeddedness framework, this paper explores the multiple strategies that small enterprises in the silver souvenir industry of kotagede (yogyakarta, indonesia) applied to cope with hardship during the indonesian decade of crisis (1996-2006). the data on which this paper builds stem from qualitative research conducted in yogyakarta over a time span of 20 years. this paper makes two contributions to the current literature. the first contribution is to offer empirical, longitudinal, primary data on small-firm performances against the background of fluctuations in the tourism industry. the second contribution is conceptual, arguing that an embeddedness approach, sensitive to location-specific characteristics, promises a better understanding of small tourism enterprises as crisis-resilient development pathways. in doing so, this paper also asserts that small businesses, due to their embeddedness in household economies and subcontracting arrangements that include rural labor, have the capacity to become agents of the united nation’s sustainable development goals. keywords: embeddedness framework; indonesia; silver souvenir industry; small business; sustainable development goals  introduction meeting the ambitions of agenda 2030, with its 17 sustainable development goals (sdgs) at heart, implies an unprecedented effort by all stakeholders, including governments, civil society, and the private sector (verboven & vanherck, 2016). as small, private enterprises account for an overwhelming majority of economic activity in both developed and developing countries, business has a significant role to play in this process (kamal-chaoui, 2017). the current discourse revolves around what businesses, large or small, can do to contribute to the sdgs (apostolopoulos, al-dajani, holt, jones, & newbery, 2018). at the same time, there is an undercurrent implying that small businesses, particularly in developing countries, may lack the resources, knowledge, and motivation to advance the sdgs (auemsuvarn, 2019). equally, small entrepreneurs may wonder what the sdgs can do for them to keep their businesses afloat in the face of economic hardship, adverse regulations, and weak institutions. aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 27 18 | aseas 13(1) local tourism businesses in indonesia this paper argues that the sdgs can only be achieved if countries manage to build strong small businesses. the tourism industry has been widely commended for its potential to help achieve sustainable development, as small tourism businesses, in particular, have been acknowledged for providing income and jobs for many people. in doing so, they contribute to poverty alleviation efforts (scheyvens & hughes, 2019, p. 1067). to develop this line of thought, this paper presents a case study focusing on local silver workshops in the neighborhood of kotagede in yogyakarta (indonesia), which rose to international fame in the 1980s and 1990s when its ancient silver industry became a major tourist attraction. yogyakarta is indonesia’s second tourist destination after bali, and is renowned for its cultural heritage (dahles, 2001). starting in the mid-1990s, crisis after crisis hit indonesia, badly affecting international tourist arrivals. what is known as the ‘decade of crisis’ (susilowati, 2010) began with forest fires ravaging kalimantan, followed by the asian economic downfall in 1997, which initiated social unrest, political riots, and, in 1998, a change of government. while still politically unsettled, indonesia’s primary tourist destination, the island of bali, encountered terrorist attacks in 2002 and 2005. the earthquake that struck yogyakarta in 2006 destroyed the livelihoods of many local people and had a profound impact on visitor arrivals to the city, as table 1 illustrates. to the present day, the silver industry in the neighborhood of kotagede represents one of the vital tourist attractions in the yogyakarta region. comprised of small silver workshops and retail outlets, this industry is embedded in both the local, particularly tourism-based, and global economies, in terms of the silver market and handicraft trade. the concept of embeddedness is pivotal in understanding the decline and survival of the silver industry. developed in the context of entrepreneurship studies, the embeddedness perspective is a heuristic device that understands entrepreneurship and small businesses as closely intertwined with their social contexts and institutional environments (granovetter, 1985; jack & anderson, 2002). from an embeddedness perspective, the aim of this paper is to investigate how the owners of kotagede’s silver workshops responded to challenges emerging from crises unfolding between 1996 and 2006, and how decisions taken at the time led to the survival of many individual businesses, but also the demise of the silver industry. this perspective demonstrates how a longitudinal approach can add to our understanding of “historically constituted strategic agency” (vaara & lamberg, 2015, p. 633). this paper makes two contributions to two diverging but interrelated bodies of literature. the first contribution is conceptual, proposing a multidisciplinary approach to tourism businesses by marrying findings from tourism studies to entrepreneurship studies, particularly through a contextualized understanding of small firm strategy. this paper argues that an embeddedness approach, sensitive to location-specific characteristics, promises a better understanding of small tourism enterprises as crisis-resilient development pathways. the second contribution is empirical, offering detailed and longitudinal primary data on small, tourism-dependent firm performances against the background of fluctuations in the tourism industry. the data on which this paper builds stem from repeated qualitative research conducted in the city of yogyakarta over a time span of 20 years, and provide important insights into business resilience. in analyzing these aseas 13(1) | 19 heidi dahles, titi susilowati prabawa, & juliette koning data, this paper also addresses the question of what potential small businesses offer to become agents of the sdgs. the next section of this paper discusses the conceptual embedding of the research and the research approach, including the research setting. this is followed by an empirical part presenting the shifting coping strategies of the silver producers in the yogyanese neighborhood of kotagede during the decade of crisis and beyond. these findings are then analyzed and interpreted in terms of a mixed embeddedness approach. the paper concludes with a conceptual reflection and an outlook on postcrisis recovery, proposing small businesses’ contributions to the sdgs. 20 | aseas 13(1) local tourism businesses in indonesia small firms, mixed-embeddedness, and networks in entrepreneurship studies, there is a growing interest in the concept of embeddedness, particularly for research at the intersections of economics, sociology, anthropology, and organization sciences. from an embeddedness perspective, entrepreneurship and small enterprises are understood as contextualized social phenomena (drakopoulou dodd & anderson, 2007; granovetter, 1985; jack & anderson, 2002; kalantaridis, 2009; su & chen, 2017; swedberg, 2012). economic activities, the entrepreneurial process, and the entrepreneur are seen as socially embedded, as social relations are considered valuable to firm creation and, “the art of running a business” (ulhoi, 2005, p. 941). such social embeddedness is relevant because it helps the entrepreneur identify the necessary resources for founding a firm (jack & anderson, 2002), or further developing the enterprise (drakopoulou dodd & anderson, 2007). in this vein, embeddedness has become an important concept in development literature to consider the resources that networks and institutional environments offer to individuals and organizations (e.g., su & chen, 2017; trupp, 2015). originating in karl polanyi’s (1944) work, the embeddedness perspective is critical towards the homo economicus of neo-classical economics, and challenges the suggestion that markets operate independently of, and are unaffected by, social relations and cultural dynamics. instead, polanyi (1944) argued that economies are socially constructed, politically mediated, and historically situated. in reintroducing polanyi’s embeddedness concept, granovetter (1985) has been responsible for what portes (2010) coined, “the rebirth of the sociological study of the economy” (p. 17; see also, aspers & dodd, 2015, p. 4). granovetter’s perspective on social embeddedness has received some criticism, particularly from the adjacent field of immigrant entrepreneurship studies. kloosterman and rath (2001) criticized this concept for neglecting the macro-level, or the politico-institutional dimensions such as state policies for business start-ups and the opportunity structure. changes in the economy that create or obliterate opportunities for new businesses and/or for expanding existing firms are as relevant as social embeddedness, kloosterman and rath (2001) argue. to capture these complexities, kloosterman and rath (2001) developed a framework that offers a more comprehensive approach to the study of economic behavior. their mixed embeddedness perspective (kloosterman, 2003, 2010; kloosterman & rath, 2001; kloosterman, van der leun, & rath, 1999) pays equal attention to the entrepreneur or business owner – who is embedded in social relations that provide access to capital, labor, and opportunities – and to the institutional environment, including rules and regulations, urban developments, and the economic and political environment. the mixed embeddedness perspective is a relevant addition to the field because of the combined attention to the micro-level (the entrepreneur), the meso-level (the local opportunity structures), and the macro-level (the institutional environment) (kloosterman, 2010). while this model has become a prominent conceptual device in the study of ethnic or immigrant entrepreneurship, it is applicable to small businesses at large (kloosterman, 2010, p. 40). for the purpose of this paper, the meso and macro dimensions of the mixed embeddedness perspective are highly relevant, as the small business owners under study experienced rapidly changing opportunity aseas 13(1) | 21 heidi dahles, titi susilowati prabawa, & juliette koning structures caused by a series of crises while dealing with a volatile institutional environment, particularly the 1998 regime change and its aftermath. at the micro-level, that of the individual small business owner, much attention has been directed to the role of networks and networking (see in particular, hoang & antoncic, 2003; jack, moult, anderson, & dodd, 2010; nee & opper, 2015; neergaard, 2005). social networks provide access to a variety of resources, including a plethora of social arrangements for individual members of households who rely on social networks for their livelihood, as much as for enterprises that employ network relations in order to gain access to resources (philipson, bennett, lowe, & raley, 2004). however, a few questions remain unanswered, such as: what kind of social relations play what kinds of roles in a given network? are all social relations beneficial to an actor in the same way? to answer these questions, it is worthwhile to turn to another work by granovetter (1973), on the strengths and weaknesses of social ties, which offers a conceptualization of different forms of social relations in a network. the strength of social ties, granovetter (1973) argues, is related to time, intimacy, and reciprocity. in other words, the higher the level of emotional intensity, intimacy, and reciprocal services, the stronger the ties are. strong ties typically are associated with friendship and familial relationship. in contrast, weak ties entail relationships with less investment of time and intimacy, and may transpire among social acquaintances (granovetter, 1973). various authors (peng & zhou, 2005; stewart, 2003) emphasize that entrepreneurs need both extensive weak ties and strategic strong ones in order to remain flexible in a rapidly changing market. such work that focuses on strong and weak social ties, provides an understanding of networking, but much less so of the network itself; in other words, such work is more process-oriented and less concerned about the actual network structure (jack et al., 2010). literature on networks and networking seems to lean towards a rather instrumental and resource-based focus, addressing the ways in which networks and networking provide information and access to resources. this paper argues that, by incorporating network ties into a broader embeddedness approach, a more nuanced perspective is offered. taking the local context seriously implies that the role and meaning of norms, values, and systems of reciprocity and exchange are taken into consideration (see hüsken & koning, 2006). social networks are in fact maintained by systems of exchanges. exchange is a classic topic in (economic) anthropology, addressing the idea that there are various exchange models and that the manner in which material goods are distributed is in agreement with the basic values and institutions of the society under study. apart from economic benefits, networks also generate several immaterial benefits, such as enhanced well-being, a sense of identity and belonging, social status, and prestige. as the aim of this paper is to provide a contextualized exploration of the ways in which small business owners manage profound change unleashed by enduring crises, a focus on the material and immaterial qualities of network ties is needed. all of these considerations contribute to an analytical framework that is based on the concepts of mixed-embeddedness, as coined by kloosterman (2010) and inspired by kalantaridis’ (2009) idea of small businesses as contextual agents. hence, this paper employs three levels of investigation: (1) the macro-level, consisting of the 22 | aseas 13(1) local tourism businesses in indonesia institutional environment, in this case encompassing state regulations related to industry and national concerns (indonesian government, tourism, and crisis); (2) the meso-level of the opportunity structure, in this case represented by market opportunities and threats related to the recurring crisis incidents in the city of yogyakarta in the decade of 1996-2006, and post-crisis market transformations; and (3) the microlevel of the entrepreneur and the small firm, the interactions of social relationships (networks, strong and weak ties), firm size (small and medium), and business characteristics (product, market, pricing policies, labor/employment, diversification, and assets). the aim of this framework is to guide the analysis towards a comprehensive and dynamic understanding of business conduct among small firms, viewed as embedded agents of crisis-resilient development. methodology this paper builds on the interpretive tradition in social research in that it aims to understand the ways in which business owners, as knowledgeable actors, interpret their own and other people’s actions and behaviors (berger & luckmann, 1967). since human sense-making is viewed as constructed and negotiated (schwartz-shea, 2006), this paper is concerned more with the “description of persons, places and events” (janesick, 1998, p. 50) than with attempts at generalizing across time and space. in order to obtain such in-depth understanding, considerable time was spent with the people under study. the research has been conducted in the city of yogyakarta in three separate phases stretching over a time span of 20 years. the baseline study was undertaken in pre-crisis yogyakarta, in 1995-1996, focusing on ways in which small-scale businesses engaged with international tourists (dahles, 2001). the city is a gateway to the famous temple complexes of borobudur and prambanan, and visitors stay in yogyakarta a few more days to enjoy its cultural attractions, particularly the traditional javanese arts and crafts. one of the focal tourism areas investigated was the neighborhood of kotagede. a decade on, in 2005-2006, another in-depth study was conducted in the city, which was already affected by a decline in international tourist arrivals in the aftermath of the asian financial crisis and the bali bombings. during the fieldwork, the area was hit by the 2006 earthquake which caused major destruction, particularly in kotagede, and dramatically affected local livelihoods (dahles, 2018; dahles & susilowati, 2013, 2015; ferguson, dahles, & susilowati, 2017; susilowati, 2010). in 2017, follow-up research was undertaken in kotagede in order to establish what became of the silver workshops a decade after the end of the crisis. kotagede, established in the 16th century as the former capital of the mataram kingdom, is a center of javanese arts and crafts, including silver craft, and renowned for its traditional javanese houses with their joglo roofs (wijayanto, 2014). when tourism was soaring, the narrow streets of kotagede, lined by hundreds of workshops and showrooms, were packed. in the late 1990s, about 650 craftspeople worked in kotagede, producing silverware for local use and export (yuliantoro, 2009). after the earthquake, their number fell to 60-100 according to varying unofficial estimates (yuliantoro, 2009). gadja mada university, supported by overseas sponsors, is running a program to revitalize the silver craft industry (ikaputra, 2011; wijayanto, 2014). aseas 13(1) | 23 heidi dahles, titi susilowati prabawa, & juliette koning in all three research phases (1995-1996, 2005-2006, and 2017), data gathering was organized around a business-life history approach that investigates narratives of personal experiences in tandem with records of business development (dahles, 2004; koning, 2010; vaara & lamberg, 2015). the firms in our sample are small enterprises employing between 4 and 20 workers. the employment model of these firms includes a mix of waged and family workers, with flexible job descriptions and simple management structures. the dataset was established by means of purposive sampling. most of the silver showrooms lining the main street of kotagede were visited, and an interest was shown in the products displayed. in cases where these visits resulted in friendly conversations with the salespersons, the wish to meet with the business owners was expressed and the research purpose of the visit was revealed. this approach resulted in eleven enterprises willing to collaborate with this research over an extended period of time. during the height of the crisis, only five of these firms were available for the research as many were temporarily out of business due to the destruction caused by the 2006 earthquake. in 2017, the original eleven enterprises participated again in our post-crisis assessment. throughout the three research phases, repeated semi-structured interviews with the owners were conducted in order to explore the nature and structure of the businesses, the challenges faced, achievements reached, and coping strategies employed under changing conditions. observations complemented this method and focused on interactions between owners and employees, users and buyers at the business level, and between businesses at the neighborhood level. the data gathering was conducted in the javanese or indonesian language, and occasionally in english. most of the interviews were tape-recorded in agreement with the interviewees, whose informed consent was obtained. in some cases, where recording was refused or impossible, notes were taken, which were elaborated into full reports soon after the interviews were completed. the recorded data were transcribed and translated into english. the texts were then matrix-analyzed at two different levels, a descriptive level and a synthesizing level (see miles & huberman, 1994; ritchie & lewis, 2004) in order to identify the similarities and differences in the business strategies and coping mechanisms between the eleven firms and across the three different time-frames. in the following section, these business strategies and coping mechanisms will be presented and their post-crisis outcome will be discussed. the silver production sector in kotagede originally established to provide silverware and jewelry for the royal palace in yogyakarta, kotagede’s silver industry changed over time in response to the needs and the tastes of the market (wijayanto, 2014). international tourism had a profound impact on this industry and the livelihood of the kotagede silver producers. they gradually invested their increasing income in the expansion of their property and businesses, hired more laborers, built more workshops, and produced more merchandise (dahles, 2001). by 2005, after about 25 years of continuous market growth, the silver production in kotagede was still very much family-based, as susilowati’s (2010) research on economic strategies of the small silver workshops shows. family members carried the primary responsibility for the production and sale of the 24 | aseas 13(1) local tourism businesses in indonesia home-produced silver items; and a flexible workforce affiliated with the workshop was hired when needed. production served different markets (retail, wholesale, and export) and was commonly organized in a combination of the factory-based and the putting-out system. in the factory-based system, a business owner hired craftsmen who specialized in one particular task in the production line, to come to work in his home-based workshop. in pre-earthquake kotagede, most silver workshops combined onsite production in the business owner’s home, with the sales of these home-made products in a streetside shop. tourists who entered the shop were invited to visit the workplace in the backyard. in the putting-out system, on the other hand, the business owner outsourced the production to a third party, an intermediary, who then hired craftsmen working from their own homes. in this system, the production process was broken down into smaller and smaller tasks, which were subcontracted and spread throughout a network of collaborating craftsmen and workers. in pre-earthquake kotagede, most business owners used the putting-out system to reduce their workload while maintaining their network of skilled craftsmen in the rural areas. before the 2006 earthquake, the silver producers, in response to a series of crises that unfolded from the mid-1990s, were forced to introduce a number of measures to cope with declining sales and rising business costs (susilowati, 2010). the economic crisis of 1997 increased the exchange rate of the u.s. dollar towards the indonesian rupiah, which was subsequently followed by an increase in the price of raw silver. as a consequence, many silver producers with a local market orientation went bankrupt. however, those local businesses that served an international export market could temporarily enjoy huge profits because their sales rates were in u.s. dollars. this situation did not last long because a series of political and social upheavals, related to the 1998 regime change, caused tourist arrivals to drop drastically (see table 1), and silver sales for both export and local markets slowed down (susilowati, 2010). the difficulties were building up and the silver producers faced the need to reduce production costs and decrease the number of workers (susilowati, 2010). inevitably, employment in the silver industry came under pressure and seven out of the eleven producers in our sample gradually laid off their workers. unsurprisingly, the putting-out system received a boost, as business owners had to adjust logistics from keeping stocks to producing only on order to avoid financial loss. the independent craftsmen operating under the putting-out system were provided with raw silver and received their payments upon delivery of the finished products. as the crisis deepened, many workers abandoned the silver trade for better paid jobs, such as in the construction industry, while the workshops resumed to involve un(der)paid family members in the production process. finally, business owners had to use their savings to pay for rising living expenses. in the most pressing situations, they melted their silver stocks and sold the silver to feed their families. as the crisis mainly affected international tourist arrivals, domestic tourism continued to thrive in yogyakarta (see table 1). in response, the silver producers began to explore the domestic retail market, which required drastic changes in their assortment and pricing policy. first of all, the business owners, while grappling with high prices for raw silver, had to offer sharper discounts to attract domestic customers, who outnumbered international tourists but whose purchasing power was much aseas 13(1) | 25 heidi dahles, titi susilowati prabawa, & juliette koning 26 | aseas 13(1) local tourism businesses in indonesia weaker. in the late 1990s, after the economic crisis, many shops started to sell cheap, machine-made, mass-produced silver products purchased from balinese wholesalers. producers also reverted to plating rather than using pure silver. table 2 above provides an overview of the coping strategies developed by the workshops in our sample, differentiated by crisis and duration. the 2006 earthquake severely affected kotagede as the epicenter was located close to this area. many buildings were wiped out and all economic activities in kotagede were paralyzed for several months. the earthquake caused six out of the eleven enterprises in our sample to temporarily shut down production, as their homes and workshops were either destroyed or seriously damaged. many entrepreneurs had to use their business capital to pay for their daily needs and to repair their houses. due to their traditional financial management, in which there was no separation between household and business finances, entrepreneurs could flexibly divert cash from their businesses to cover household expenses (susilowati, 2010). while most kotagede households were eligible for modest government support, these payments were not sufficient to cover the costs of home repairs and daily needs. hence, local people sought alternative employment to make ends meet. during the authors’ recent fieldwork in 2017, eleven years after the earthquake struck, kotagede still wore the scars of disaster. many of the destroyed buildings had not been fully restored, and the silver workshops they once accommodated were gone. the main street of kotagede is still lined by silver shops, among which are ten of the businesses in our sample. all but one have survived the decade of crisis, including the earthquake, and are back in business (see table 2). however, these shops are only retail outlets and the workshops in the backyard are gone. the owners have given up the production of traditional kotagede silver, and the local craftsmen they used to employ have moved to rural areas or sought employment in other industries. kotagede’s silver shops are currently buying their merchandise in gunung kidul, a poor rural area east of yogyakarta, and in east java or bali, where small manufacturing businesses have emerged, producing cheap, machine-made silverware. to cater to an increasingly domestic tourism market (see table 1), these shops also offer cheap souvenirs and trinkets made of aluminum and copper. discussion between 1996 and 2006, three coping strategies stand out as most widely applied by the kotagede silver producers: (1) the use of savings/assets, (2) the switch to the domestic market, and (3) changes made to employment arrangements. in this section, these three strategies will be discussed in tandem with the multi-level framework developed above, distinguishing between the macro (political-institutional), meso (opportunity structure), and micro (small business) level of embeddedness (see kloosterman et al., 1999; kloosterman, 2003, 2010). the first and widely applied coping strategy was the use of financial savings and other assets, which was particularly significant at the start of the crisis in 1997/1998 and after the earthquake in 2006. in fact, using savings was not uncommon in tourism-related businesses, as this was often required to bridge the low tourist season when there was no income. the silver producers resorted to selling raw silver aseas 13(1) | 27 heidi dahles, titi susilowati prabawa, & juliette koning material because production was slowing down and a small profit could be made from price fluctuations. under crisis conditions, there was a depletion of resources to reinvest in businesses, and, in the long run, this had severe consequences for future business development and led to the demise of traditional silver craftsmanship in kotagede. as the consumption of personal and business assets brought only temporary relief, the severity of the crisis called for more drastic measures. a second, widelyembraced business intervention in response to the economic crisis was to switch from the international to the domestic market. this intervention was encouraged by government policies. the indonesian government launched an intensive campaign to promote domestic tourism in 1997, and, after the first bali bombing in 2002, extended the number and duration of national holidays. this policy had a positive effect on the flow of domestic tourists to a variety of popular tourist destinations, including yogyakarta. the government’s leisure policy ‘created’ a demand by facilitating ‘time’ to local tourists to travel to different parts of the country. here, we witness the interaction between the institutional dimension and the subsequent opportunity structures, or the macro and meso dimensions in the mixed embeddedness framework. as argued by kloosterman (2003, 2010), opportunities (e.g., to start a specific business or launch a specific product) go hand in hand with the interplay of supply and demand of markets. however, the entrepreneurs also need the appropriate resources (such as social networks and capital) in order to be able to access a particular opportunity. this connects the institutional and opportunity level to that of the small business owner (see kalantaridis, 2009; kloosterman et al., 1999). however, the case of the kotagede silver producers shows that the small firms did not have access to the appropriate resources, nor did they offer the right product. the silver producers were flexible enough to adapt to the adverse situation and eventually adjusted to the changing market. unfortunately, this adaptation came at a cost – a loss of income, skilled labor, and favored clientele – and contributed to the demise of the traditional kotagede silver craftsmanship. over the years, the silver industry had adapted its businesses to foreign tastes and budgets. this focus enabled them to maintain a relatively high price level that met the demands of foreign tourists. the shift to the domestic market was perceived locally as a step back in terms of the quality of the silver crafts offered and the earnings generated. facing toughening competition in the local tourism industry, the silver producers had to offer their products at a lower price and make adjustments to their assortment to please the tastes and budgets of the domestic buyers. cheap, machine-made and mass-produced products entered the kotagede silver shops and are there to stay. however, there were exceptions from which we can draw insights into the role of networks. one of the businesses in our sample managed to maintain their traditional silver production as they kept working for the export market due to their far-flung foreign network. unquestionably, overseas connections helped to avoid the economic downturn due to a decline of international tourism. instead, this business generated substantial financial resources, particularly through foreign currencies that were an invaluable asset during the economic crisis. indeed, the international antiques market is still particularly interested in authentic kotagede silver, but only 28 | aseas 13(1) local tourism businesses in indonesia a few craftsmen have access to this market (yuliantoro, 2009). this particular business owner had picked up expertise in promoting and marketing his business beyond yogyakarta. combined with the financial resources and extensive network connections overseas, this strategy gave this silver producer a competitive advantage over the majority of other silver businesses in kotagede. this particular case argues in favor of the strength of weak ties (burt, 2000; granovetter, 1995) for access to critical resources, particularly international trade connections and supply chains. the third crisis-born business intervention targeted employment arrangements. as the crisis deepened in the early 2000s, the silver workshops ran out of orders and employees were, in fact, redundant. yet, business owners delayed retrenching their workforce as long as possible. instead, they left the decision to leave to their employees. an explanation for this pattern can be found in the embeddedness of the businesses in the specific social environment, or in the local cultural context and the norms and values of social connectedness (cf., hüsken & koning, 2006). despite the financial problems they experienced, the kotagede entrepreneurs generally felt obliged to protect and support their workers, while the workers in their turn also felt obliged to seek employment elsewhere when the impact of the crisis became intolerable. as the majority of the silver producers involved themselves in different kinds of jobs and trades, while continuing their core businesses during the crises, many craftsmen and workers were absorbed by informal labor arrangements. the informalization of labor was reflected in the putting-out system that gained prominence throughout the decade of crisis. subcontracting is a flexible industrial production strategy that enables businesses to reduce labor costs (leonard, 2000, p. 1079). in kotagede, the putting-out system absorbed the labor that had become redundant in the factory-based system, and provided the flexibility required to stay in business and avoid the loss of skills (susilowati, 2010). retrenched employees of the silver workshops generally came to serve as subcontractors of their former employers. this was only possible because both sides had made an investment in their relationships, as well as in skill development and expertise. as argued by kloosterman (2003, 2010) and kloosterman and rath (2001), the individual small business owner is embedded in social networks that provide access to a variety of resources, including labor. however, the kinds of roles in such networks are shaped by norms and values and systems of reciprocity and exchange in agreement with the basic societal institutions (cf., hüsken & koning, 2006). at this interface of the institutional (macro) level and the small business owner (micro) level, both economic and immaterial benefits surface, such as duty of care, mutual commitment, and a sense of shared responsibility. in kotagede’s subcontracting system, the bonds established between employees and their employers were maintained so that they could activate their relationships when needed. this is reminiscent of the debate on the strength and weakness of social ties (granovetter, 1995; peng & zhou, 2005; stewart, 2003). the benefits of the subcontracting system for both employers and employees in times of crisis support the claim that dense networks with strong social ties are needed to assure the survival of small firms and the skill sets developed in a particular industry (lin, ensel, & vaughn, 1981). using this strategy, the employers could at least be assured of the quality of the work produced. additionally, they could also flexibly adjust production to demand and thus aseas 13(1) | 29 heidi dahles, titi susilowati prabawa, & juliette koning ensure the survival of their businesses. coupled with the benefits of weak ties for maintaining successful overseas trade relationships over time, as discussed earlier, entrepreneurs indeed need both extensive weak ties and strategic strong ones in order to remain flexible in a rapidly changing market (peng & zhou, 2005; stewart, 2003). however, only a few small silver producers in kotagede were able to do so. conclusion the aim of this paper is to come to a better understanding of small tourism-based enterprises as crisis-resilient pathways to sustainable development. the case of small businesses in the silver industry in kotagede is explored during the indonesian decade of crisis in order to better understand the ways in which small enterprises cope with enduring hardship. between 1996 and 2006, the tourism industry had to cope with declining numbers of international visitors as a consequence of a severe economic downturn, terrorist acts, and natural disasters. the mixed-embeddedness framework applied in the analysis of this case emphasizes that enterprise activity can be fully grasped and appreciated only through a contextualized understanding. consequently, an integrated analytical scheme combines the dimension of individual business owners and their social embeddedness (networks, norms and values, firm specific characteristics), the local opportunity structures (changes in demand), and the macro-institutional context (government policy, economic climate). the exploration of the coping strategies in the silver craft industry leads us to conclude that, in the face of enduring crises, many small entrepreneurs persevered and were able to continue their business operations. a full understanding of the extraordinary resilience of the small silver businesses in kotagede is offered when the dynamic interplay of the entrepreneurs’ micro-level embeddedness in local and family-based networks is coupled with other forces, such as shifting opportunity structures (meso-level) and an institutional environment (macro-level) that is conducive to adaptation, such as government measures to stimulate domestic travel and the informalization of labor, offering continuous, additional income opportunities. in conclusion, the question that remains is what potential small businesses offer to become agents of the sdgs? it seems obvious, that among the 17 sdg goals identified by the united nations (verboven & vanherck, 2016), those pertaining to poverty alleviation (sdg1) and decent work stand (sdg8) out. not only did many of the kotagede silver workshops persevere throughout a decade of crisis, but they also continued to employ local people and integrate them in the value chain by means of subcontracting. in doing so, these enterprises engaged in business-driven poverty alleviation that mitigated the impact of the enduring crisis on the poor. moreover, they encouraged entrepreneurship among the workers they had to lay off and helped establish a home-based industry in areas where these workers lived. in creating this rural industry, the inequality between the prosperous urban area of yogyakarta and its poor rural hinterland was mitigated, which calls to mind sdg10, promoting the reduction of the urban-rural divide (verboven & vanherck, 2016). however, as our study is limited in scope and scale, future research is needed to establish the extent to which the subcontracting arrangements actually provide 30 | aseas 13(1) local tourism businesses in indonesia adequate livelihoods and contribute to poverty alleviation in the rural hinterland. more research is needed into the quality of the work, as defined by sdg8, since subcontracting systems rarely provide benefits beyond a basic income. moreover, these systems increase the reliance on unpaid domestic work and increase the burden of women in particular. this undermines the goals set by sdg5 that focuses on gender equality and empowerment of women (verboven & vanherck, 2016). in kotagede, the silver businesses fostered the entrepreneurial culture and upheld the skillsets vital to the industry. these businesses introduced innovations and sought creative solutions to ongoing challenges. after the earthquake, the surviving silver workshops substantially contributed to the restoration of traditional buildings and the rebuilding of the local community – a community that has been lost to foreign developers in other parts of yogyakarta (dahles & susilowati, 2015). in this respect, these businesses performed a critical role in making the neighborhood ‘resilient and sustainable’, as defined in sdg11. however, in the process of surviving the decade of crisis, the traditional silver industry has been destroyed. it is contentious whether recent transformations have brought any innovation, as defined in sdg9, to the industry. efforts to revitalize the traditional craft have so far been left to private initiatives. in recognition of the substantial contribution of the small businesses to poverty alleviation and social cohesion, and their potential to support sustainable developments in the future, the indonesian government would be well advised to make small businesses the centerpiece of their efforts to achieve the sdgs. bold measures are called for to mobilize the dormant skills of silver crafting and to recover, for the benefit 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(2014). managing kotagede heritage districts after 2006 earthquake. journal of disaster mitigation for historical cities, 8, 279-286. about the authors heidi dahles, phd, is adjunct professor at the griffith institute for tourism (gift), griffith university, brisbane (australia), and visiting professor at the cambodia development resources institute (cdri). her research interest is in the interface of development, entrepreneurship, and tourism in southeast asia. she published over 40 chapters in edited volumes and 60 articles in peer-reviewed journals such as annals of tourism research, journal of sustainable aseas 13(1) | 33 heidi dahles, titi susilowati prabawa, & juliette koning tourism, asia-pacific journal of tourism research, journal of developmental entrepreneurship, journal of contemporary asia. dahles actively engages with academic journals in the field of tourism and business as editorial board member and reviewer. ► contact: heidi.dahles@gmail.com titi susilowati prabawa is a senior lecturer at the development studies department and the dean of faculty of interdisciplinary studies at universitas kristen satya wacana, salatiga, central java (indonesia). she holds a phd from the department of culture, organisation and management (com) at vrije universiteit, amsterdam. she focuses on qualitative research in sustainable tourism development, entrepreneurship, small business organization, and livelihood. she has published in international academic journals such as annals of tourism research, journal of small business & entrepreneurship, and asia pacific business review. . ► contact: titisusilowati@gmail.com juliette koning is professor in organizational studies and director of the centre for business, society and global challenges at oxford brookes business school, oxford brookes university (uk). she holds a phd in social anthropology from the university of amsterdam. her research focuses on small business organizations in southeast asia; the organization of security in indonesia and south africa; and qualitative research, particularly ethnography and creative approaches. her work has been published in such journals such as entrepreneurship, theory & practice; organization studies; entrepreneurship & regional development. she recently co-edited new religiosities, modern capitalism and moral complexities in southeast asia (palgrave). ► contact: j.koning@brookes.ac.uk 34 | aseas 13(1) separating sisters from brothers: ethnic relations and identity politics in the context of indigenous land titling in indonesia stefanie steinebach & yvonne kunz ► steinebach, s., & kunz, y. (2017). separating sisters from brothers: ethnic relations and identity politics in the context of indigenous land titling in indonesia. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 10(1), 47-64. environmental and social transformations in jambi province, indonesia, are inextricably interlinked. large-scale agro-industrial development and nature conservation policies equally alienate local communities from their agricultural lands and turn land into a scarce resource. consequently, access to agricultural land becomes increasingly contested, not only between communities and state institutions or companies but also among communities themselves. to secure or restore local ‘indigenous’ land rights against land grabbing and green grabbing by states and companies, indigenous land titling has become a powerful tool all over the world. ongoing activities of indigenous land titling in indonesia have been largely perceived as an act of justice by indigenous and land rights activists and affected communities. yet, a challenging step towards titling is the identification of who is and who is not ‘indigenous’. this highly political process creates ethnicity-based identities tied to rights and possibilities around land as a contested resource. based on a case study of a national park in central jambi, this paper shows that what is perceived as an act of justice against the state can also produce injustice among local communities by heavily impacting and transforming local social structures and relations. keywords: ethnic identity; indigenous land titling; indonesia; jambi; land use conflicts  introduction the explosion of (trans)national commercial land transactions has triggered public and scholarly debates on economic and political strategies of land grabbing, including green grabbing (borras & franco, 2012; stephens, 2011). largescale commodification of land for whatever production or conservation purpose is entangled with land reforms, agricultural dispossession, enclosures, and exclusions governed by complex regimes (borras, hall, scoones, white, & wolford, 2011; hall, hirsch, & li, 2011; li, 2010). one focus of public and scholarly land grabbing debates is the emergence of conflicts where companies restrict local communities’ access to resources or drive indigenous people off their land (turner & caouette, 2009). in southeast asia, the agrarian transition has created new sites of struggle in which counter-hegemonic movements and forms of resistance take place in often very novel ways by tapping into collective frames such as ethnicity and identity (potter, 2009). worldwide, the transnational conaktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 17 .1 -4 48 stefanie steinebach & yvonne kunz  aseas 10(1) cept of indigeneity has become a powerful tool in conflicts over land and restoration between local communities and other stakeholders. the concept itself has advanced from references to doomed or dying tribes to positive, rights-based discourses (dove, 2006, p. 192; merlan, 2009; tyson, 2011, p. 653) and it is often central in reclaiming localities and formulating territorial claims by communities and villages. for instance, the international labour organizations’ (ilo) indigenous and tribal peoples convention 1989 (no. 169) in independent countries decreed that national governments should give back lands that were traditionally occupied by indigenous peoples and let them set their own priorities (colchester, anderson, firdaus, hasibuan, & chao, 2011). as the concept of indigeneity is related to special rights and entitlements, the identification of indigenous peoples is a demanding process that seemed to be solved by stressing people’s right of self-identification (ilo, 1989). yet, apart from several characteristics suggested in the ilo convention,1 indigeneity has been taken to imply firstorder connections between group and locality (dove, 2006; merlan, 2009). whereas indigenous rights activists often pursue a “strategic essentialism” (li, 2000, p. 399, see also großmann, padmanabhan, & von braun, this issue) to legitimate territorial claims, there is a broad consensus in scholarly debates on the relational character of indigeneity (dove, 2006; li, 2010; merlan, 2009). indigenous peoples are defined as much by their relation to the state as by any other intrinsic characteristic they might possess (merlan, 2009, p. 305). indigenous peoples, scholars suggest, should be firmly set against the modern nation state which they reside in or are enclosed by (tyson, 2011, p. 653). at the same time, the category of indigeneity distinguishes ‘natives’ from others. the self-identification as ‘indigenous’ is thus a process and a positioning (li, 2000) that realigns the ways groups and communities relate to the nation, the state, and the ‘non-indigenous’ population (steinebach, 2012). whereas shifting power relations between the state and indigenous groups have been the focus of scholarly and public debates, the relation between the indigenous and non-indigenous population has not received much attention. this applies to the indonesian context as well, in which land conflicts are virulent and can be found on a total area of 1.28 million ha. the conflicts are mainly related to the plantation sector (konsorsium pembaruan agraria, 2016, p. 5). in such conflicts, the strategic employment of collective frames such as ethnicity and local (indigenous) identity has been essential for legitimating territorial claims (peluso, 2009) and has proven successful to reclaim “ethnic homeland” (hall et al., 2011) from the state (benda-beckmann, 2005, 2011; hein et al., 2016; mccarthy, 2005, 2007, 2009). while community-state relations have been in the center of much research (peluso, 1995; steinebach, 2012; thorburn, 2004), the shifting power relations between communities themselves have been paid only little attention (afiff & lowe, 2007; bakker & moniaga, 2010). in this article, we focus on the process of creating ‘indigenous’ and ‘non-indigenous’ communities as an effect of state policies and the ways the state relates to its population. along the example of a land use conflict and indigenous land titling process in jambi province in sumatra, indonesia, we show that the identification and categorization of indigenous 1 tyson (2011, p.653) identifies four criteria to form the basis for this special distinction: the principle of first come (descendants of pioneers), non-dominance (people living under alien state structures), cultural difference (being special), and self-ascription. 49separating sisters from brothers peoples and related rights can produce both justice and injustice for non-indigenous parts of the population. empirical data was gathered during altogether 15 months of fieldwork in the bukit duabelas area, where a national park was established in 2000. fieldwork among the orang rimba and sedentary villagers surrounding the national park took place between 2003 and 2005, with several restudies in the years 2006, 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013. these villages are comprised of local pre-colonial villages and transmigration villages. the article is structured as follows: we start by describing the legislative framework of this case study by providing an overview on forestry laws and indigenous land titling in indonesia. we then continue by introducing the contested national park area and the conflicting parties. from this starting point, we travel back in history to show how colonial and postcolonial land use policies heavily impacted local social structures by setting the basis for differentiating neighboring local communities as indigenous and non-indigenous. forestry laws and indigenous land titling in indonesia most land use conflicts registered in jambi province are rooted in land dispossession of local rural communities during the suharto era (1965-1998). in 1967, the forestry law2 declared about 70% of indonesia’s territory as forest land under the jurisdiction of the state (contreras-hermosilla & fay, 2005, p. 9; indrarto et al., 2012, p. 23). the forestry law of 1967 was revised in 19993 but still decrees that all forest, and the natural richness within it, is under the control of the state (article 4) and instructs the central government to regulate its management and exploitation. the law then (article 5) discerns between state forest (hutan negara), where no private rights can be obtained, and private forests that are “subject to rights” (hutan hak). according to the forestry law, customary forest (hutan adat or hutan ulayat) is classified as a subcategory of state forest and can only be recognized (not owned) when found to be still relevant and not in conflict with national interests. the vague definition of ‘national interests’ left the state with virtually uncontested power and control (bakker & moniaga, 2010, p. 189). against this background, the constitutional court released a remarkable decision in may 2013, causing much cheer among indonesian indigenous peoples and land rights activists. with this decision, commonly referred to as mk 35 the court accepted the juridical review of some parts of the 1999 forestry law requested by the indigenous peoples’ alliance of the archipelago (aman) (aliansi masyarakat adat nusantara [aman], 2013). mk 35 declares that customary forest is no longer categorized as a part of state-owned forest, recognizing customary communities (masyarakat hukum adat) as right-bearing subjects (rachman, 2013, p.  3). this shift of status and categorization resulted from the erasure of the word “state” from article 1.6 of the forestry law no. 41/1999 that now reads: “adat forests are forests located in customary communities’ territory”. 2 undang-undang republik indonesia no. 5 tahun 1967 tentang ketentuan-ketentuan pokok kehutanan, republic of indonesia, 1967. 3 law of the republic of indonesia nr. 41 of 1999 regarding forestry, republic of indonesia, 1999. 50 stefanie steinebach & yvonne kunz  aseas 10(1) figure 1. revision of forestry law no. 41/1999 through mk 35. (own compilation). this opportunity of land titling for customary groups within forest areas caused unease in the ministry of forestry (mof) which feared losing authority over vast forest areas. the ministry reacted by sending out a curricular (surat edaran) addressed to all provincial governors and district heads as well as to all heads of regional-level forestry services (down to earth, 2014, p. 7). this immediate response to mk 35/2012 by the mof was a legal regulation (62/2013) which sets out the rules for and stages involved in gazetting (legally determining) the forest zone. the document informed the authorities on mk 35 and, referring to the amended article, asserted that determining the status of customary forests required the legal recognition of indigenous peoples through a regional regulation (perda) (down to earth, 2014, p. 8). in an interview, then minister of forestry, zulkifli hasan, stated that he saw “no problem with mk 35 as long as the customary forests are proposed and legalized by regional regulations”. in addition, he asserted that “it should be clear who the community members are” (huma, 2013). this question of identification is central in the discussion of this article. contested national legislation and local realities in jambi province jambi province is one of indonesia’s most important locations for the production of rubber and palm oil.4 the area of agricultural land that is legally available to farmers 4 the province has a total size of 5.3 million ha (badan pusat statistik provinsi jambi, 2011, p. 3). in 2010, licenses to plant 1.3 million ha with oil palms were issued to several agro-business companies (rambe, 2014, p. 7). approximately 800,000 ha are already reserved for mining purposes (biro perencanaan sekretariat jenderal kementerian kehutanan, 2013, p. 86). another 650.000 ha of the province are planted with rubber trees by independent farmers (dinas perkebunan jambi, 2011) while 2.1 million ha are defined as state forest and are under control of the ministry of forestry, including industrial timber plantations and 51separating sisters from brothers figure 2. map of bukit duabelas national park and air hitam. (figure by carola beckers). and communities is limited for the benefit of large-scale plantation business. nationwide increasing numbers of land use conflicts mirror the heavily contested access to land in jambi. in 2011, 44 conflicts were reported from jambi (priyan, 2012). bukit duabelas national park (taman nasional bukit duabelas, tnbd) is one of these contested areas. the park was established in 2000 and encompasses 65.000 ha of tropical lowland rainforest where any kind of human agricultural activity is prohibited by law. the conservation area falls into the administrative jurisdiction of several regnancies and districts and is surrounded by oil palm plantations and different kinds of villages. in this article, we focus on the southern area of tnbd and its surroundings located in the district of air hitam.5 the district encompasses nine villages, four of which are transmigration settlements established by the suharto government (see figure 2) as part of social engineering and development policies as well as nation building programs. landless peasants from the densely populated island of java were allocated huts and approximately 3 ha of land per household, accompanied by a certificate of ownership (surat hak milik) which made them official holders of legal land titles (fearnside, 1997). the remaining five villages already existed before dutch colonial rule, which came to jambi province in the year 1906. the melayu residents of these precolonial villages (lubuk kepahiang, lubuk jering, dusun baru, sungai jernih, semurung, see figure  2) claim parts of tnbd as customary land and forest (tanah adat and hutan lindung). yet, these villagers usually do not hold any de jure title for private or communal land.the national park area is additionally inhabited by about 3000 orang conservation areas (biro perencanaan sekretariat jenderal kementerian kehutanan, 2013, p. 85). 5 air hitam covers an area of 47,100 ha and consists of 9 villages. according to local statistics, the population in 2010 was comprised of 23,650 people with a population density of 50.21 people/km2 (badan pusat statistik provinsi jambi, 2011). 52 stefanie steinebach & yvonne kunz  aseas 10(1) rimba (literally people of the forest) – semi-nomadic rainforest dwellers whose ethnic identity is inseparably linked to their rainforest surrounding. the orang rimba’s livelihood consists of hunting, gathering of forest products as well as shifting cultivation and cultivation of jungle rubber (steinebach, 2012). like the non-transmigrant villagers, orang rimba claim the national park area as their customary land (tanah adat). as there is no agricultural land available outside the national park area, the still forested national park area has turned into a contested island of livelihood security for both groups. both cultivate cassava or rice and especially rubber as a cash crop and a major source of income.6 both orang rimba and the non-transmigrant villages have a long history of cultivating forest gardens consisting of various fruit trees (e.g., durian, rambutan). the malay groups in the area practiced shifting cultivation to grew staples like cassava and dryland rice already before dutch colonization. the orang rimba reportedly started the cultivation of rice in the middle of the 20th century. in line with colonial politics, the malay population started to cultivate rubber as a cash crop in the 19th century, whereas the orang rimba adopted rubber cultivation on initiative of their malay trading partners several decades later. particularly for the orang rimba, the growing of rubber has proven to be a powerful means of land demarcation as – in contrast to forest trees – both villagers and the orang rimba regard them as property (of individuals or groups). thus, others cannot easily fell rubber trees without heavy sanctioning. as a result, the orang rimba strategically use the planting of rubber as a proof of territorial authority: in sensitive or contested areas, they plant rubber as a ‘living fence’ to prevent intruders and illegal land clearing by villagers. conflicts mainly occur between the national park management (npm) and the orang rimba, but also between the npm and villagers.7 both the orang rimba and villagers are at conflict with npm concerning the rubber plantings which are regarded as illegal by the npm. several times, when the npm felled rubber trees, it was afterwards threatened by armed villagers. the npm also utilizes the rubber plantings as evidence that the orang rimba do not depend on the forest for their livelihood subsistence alone and therefore should be removed from the park area. based on the same argument, their identity as truly indigenous forest peoples is questioned and resettlement areas are provided in the buffer zones of tnbd. most of the orang rimba actively resist these accusations and resettlement orders. at times, violent conflicts over land and tree tenure inside the tnbd have also evolved between the orang rimba and the villagers. reasons for these conflicts include illegal logging, felling of sacred trees, the destruction of orang rimbas’ rubber gardens, unauthorized forest clearing, or the trading of forest land or rubber gardens among the villagers. under such conditions, the possibility of indigenous land titling seemed a promising endeavor for the orang rimba communities to regain authority over customary land. 6 illegal logging and rubber plantings by the sedentary population impact most of the national park area. consequently, the orang rimba can no longer fulfill their subsistence needs from the forest alone. 7 the forestry department in cooperation with the social department of jambi province have made various efforts to resettle the orang rimba from the park area. for example, the orang rimba were offered permanent housing and food supply for the first year of sedentary residence outside the forest. yet, these measures proved unsuccessful as the orang rimba returned to their semi-nomadic lifestyle as soon as the food supply was stopped. 53separating sisters from brothers after the court’s decision on mk 35, they started to map their claims with the support of local ngos. according to aman, the orang rimba could (despite their rubber cultivation) be easily identified as indigenous people in contrast to the melayu villagers with their competing claims. in order to understand the impact of the court’s decision on these groups and in course of the social structure of the air hitam region, a look back in history is indispensable. pre-colonial legitimation of post-colonial claims the current population of the bukit duabelas area traces their origin back to the founding of the islamic sultanate jambi melayu ii in the 15th century. by that time, different ethnic (suku) or cultural (bangsa) groups inhabited jambi, following their own customary laws (adat) (locher-scholten, 2003, p. 48). adat not only regulates social interaction within society, but also the use of natural resources and land tenure. settlements were found along the nine main rivers and their tributaries determining jambi’s infrastructure until the 21st century. the sultan’s court was settled at the batang hari river. along this central river and its larger tributaries, the territories (kalbu) of the so-called bangsa duabelas, or literally the twelve people, were located (see figure 3). figure 3. villages and rivers in the research area around 1900. (hagen, 1908; highlights by the authors). the bangsa duabelas have held genealogical ties with the sultan’s court since the 15th century and, due to their common descents, formed what the dutch later called “genealogical adat communities” (genealogische rechtsgemeenschappen; haga, 1926). the dutch distinguished them from the “territorialized adat communites” (terri54 stefanie steinebach & yvonne kunz  aseas 10(1) toriale rechtsgemeenschappen; haga, 1926) which did not hold kinship ties with the sultan’s court and are not of common descent. the bukit duabelas area was part of the bangsa duabelas territories and air hitam was ruled by a line of queens – descendants of the sultan’s sister. land was allocated to the residents for communal use and borders between village communities were defined by the hearing distance of a gong sound (nasruddin, 1989). the villagers were not able to privately own, sell, or buy land. the inhabitants of air hitam were responsible to deliver firewood from the forest – that is the bukit duabelas national park today – to the sultan’s court due to their kinship ties (guillaud, 1994; haga, 1926). the orang rimba were part of these complex socio-political structures in different ways: they were never direct subjects of the sultan but they maintained economic relations with the ruler’s middlemen (jenang) and with the sedentary melayu population around them. the orang rimba also claim genealogical bonds with the sultan’s ruling dynasties. with the local elites, the orang rimba maintained a patron-client relationship that lasts until today. memories of common origin shared by the orang rimba and sedentary jambi-melayu residents which identify them as descendants of brother and sister legitimate this patron-client relationship: a bachelor left his community from shame of not yet being married. he took shelter in the forest where he found a fruit (buah kelumpang) that turned into a beautiful maiden and became his wife. the couple had four children: two sons and two daughters. the siblings parted, the female descendants continued to live in the forest and the male descendants started a village life outside the forest. before their farewell, the siblings swore an oath to be responsible for each other’s well-being. thus, the relationship between the orang rimba and the respective village residents is imagined like that of brother and sister with the orang rimba holding the female position. (rio sayutti & temenggung mirak, 13 june 2004) the orang rimba, like the sedentary melayu, combine matrilinearity with uxorilocal and matrilocal residence patterns and matrilineal inheritance structures of land, forest, and tree tenure. in case of divorce, the man returns to his sister’s place as she is held responsible for her brother’s livelihood. as the orang rimba are regarded as progeny of the female sibling, they are obliged to perform their respective duties in the patron-client relationship with the villagers conceptualized as descendants of the male lineage (steinebach, 2012). the intensity of contact between the orang rimba and people from outside the national park area has changed due to the socio-economic development in the area, including nature conservation and ngo activities. the patron-client relationships with the residents of surrounding pre-colonial villages, however, have been extended and expressed in the following proverb: “pangkol waris tanah garo, ujung waris tanah serengam, air hitam tanah berjenang” [the origin of the waris is tanah garo, the leading edge is serengam and air hitam is the land of the jenang]. tanah garo and serengam are names of villages whereas air hitam refers to the regions’ five hamlets, including lubuk jering, which are all related by kinship ties. these three entities in effect formed a triangular external power structure around bukit duabelas. in the northern part of bukit duabelas, such relations were maintained with the triangular 55separating sisters from brothers structure’s base (pangkol) waris (literally lineal heir) in the north central village of tanah garo and the top (ujung) waris located in the northeast village of serengam pakuaji. the function of the waris is similar to the jenang (middleman): they maintain trading relations, are a source of adat law, and serve as orang rimba’s intermediaries to the outside world. the positions, either as waris or jenang, define differing socio-political and economic bonds between the orang rimba and the holders of the respective positions. the transformation from social to ethnic groups in the first half of the 20th century, far-reaching administrative and juridical changes came with dutch colonial rule. the dutch introduced western concepts of natureculture dichotomies turning socio-cultural landscapes into empty spaces and exploitable resources. additionally, european concepts of property were applied and all, especially forested, areas that did not show signs of agricultural cultivation to the dutch were declared as property of the state (domein verklaring) (biezeveld, 2004, p. 140). the differentiation of forest and agrarian laws produced different categories of land and land rights. also after the arrival of the dutch, ideas about geographically figure 4. kinship relation between orang rimba and melayu villagers. (own compilation). 56 stefanie steinebach & yvonne kunz  aseas 10(1) anchored communities started to circulate on a much larger scale (goebel, 2013, p. 4). by the early 1870s, the archipelago had been divided into distinct ethnic groups (e.g., sundanese, javanese, madurese), each with their own language and culture (moriyama, 2005). the complex cultural diversity of the region was put into order through the category of ethnicity, which commonly points to a community that lives in a particular region and speaks a particular regional language. the dutch captured these ideas about territorial ethnic groups in the legal system with the notion of adat, which encompassed concepts concerning custom, law, tradition, and territory (burns, 2004; elmhirst, 1999; goebel, 2013). during colonial administration in jambi, the territories known as kalbu were mutually divided and merged into 30 districts. in their efforts to consolidate state power, the dutch created adat districts called daerah hokum (in dutch, rechtsgebied) that erased all differences in status and title between the bangsa duabelas and the non-court related groups (nasruddin, 1989, p. 299) in the bukit duabelas area. instead, the population was divided along the lines of foreigners (vreemdlingen) versus indigenous natives (inlanders). the latter were subsumed and collectivized as pribumi8 or “sons of the earth/soil” (oorspronkelijk). the meaning of kinship and social relations as markers of difference were superseded and subsumed under the homogenous category of pribumi – creating indigenous natives with equal rights and obligations towards the state. this social homogenization and formal erasure of social hierarchies impacted and restructured existing power relations among the residents of jambi.9 dutch colonial rule separated sisters from brothers as they replaced kinship-based socio-political structures and land tenure systems with concepts of territory-based ethnicity and legal frameworks based on ideas of the european nation state. in jambi, it also transformed the population of the bukit duabelas region from differentiated ruling dynasties into homogenous native groups. nation-building and the creation of citizens and indigenous communities following indonesian independence in 1945, the implementation of the 1976 forestry law again changed the local rights of (forest) resource use, land tenure, and concepts of communal ownership (tanah adat, hutan adat, hutan lindung, etc.). sumatra, as one of the “outer islands”, was conceptualized by the regime as a remote area that is scarcely inhabited and provided endless ‘free’ land and unclaimed natural resources that only waited to be exploited. in jambi, large-scale timber exploitation and infrastructural access by road building projects in the 1980s posed the preconditions for the realization of transmigration projects. these projects were not only for relieving population pressure and poverty on java but also for fulfilling a political purpose in the context of nation-building that had already been started by dutch colonial rule. 8 the word pribumi combines the javanese prefix pri with the sanskrit loanword bumi (earth, soil) (siddique & suryadinata, 1981, p. 663). 9 for example, it is reported that the arabs (orang arab) who had been integrated into jambinese society for five generations through marriages with jambinese women and who had always played an important role at the kraton of jambi asked to get the status of pribumi from the dutch in order to acquire the same access and land rights as natives. 57separating sisters from brothers between 1983 and 1997, around 25,000 households, mainly originating from central and eastern java, were relocated to the bukit duabelas area. each family roughly consisted of four members. the justification for the site selection can be found in a world bank report (1979) that states: as the proposed settlement sites [in the bukit duabelas area] are mainly primary dryland forest, they have practically no indigenous population. generally, the population density (12-18 persons/sq km) of the two districts (kabupaten) in which the project sites are located is low, even when compared to jambi province (22 persons/sq km) or sumatra as a whole (44 persons/sq km). (p. 16) striking in this formulation is not only the negotiation of the existence of until then privileged subjects of pre-colonial times but also the distinction between categories of indigenous (jambinese) and non-indigenous (javanese). in the air hitam region, state transmigration projects heavily impacted land rights. the two villages pematang kabau and lubuk jering used to share common roots and trace back their origin to pre-colonial times. the founders of lubuk jering reportedly belonged to the local elites and shared genealogical ties with the sultan. pematang kabau was a smaller hamlet founded by the same community and therefore administered as part of the village lubuk jering. in the wake of transforming and homogenizing local political and administrative structures, pematang kabau was administratively split from lubuk jering and the area was assigned as a transmigration settlement. this area used to be customary land (tanah ulayat or tanah marga). in 1986, 323 households were settled in pematang kabau. the transmigration areas were situated on a land that had just lost its status as tanah adat and turned into state land. it was confusing to the village population that the residents of pematang kabau who decided to become part of the transmigration scheme lost their rights to the customary land, whereas the ones who did not take part in the scheme continued to hold their adat rights to the land that was designated as a transmigration site.10 this situation has caused various conflicts because the area used to be forested area which the migrants – as a contribution to receive formal land titles – had to clear first.11 parallel to these transmigration projects, in 1979, another governmental decree12 restructured the political and social organization of the population in the bukit duabelas region. the former village entities (dusun or kampong) were turned into so-called desa and given new political structures, hierarchies, and institutions that should formally replace the customary structures and laws of adat (warren, 1990, p. 24). the former head of the community who, according to the jambi melayu political system, had to have close kinship ties to the groups’ elders and former political leaders was replaced by an officially appointed village head.13 10 in the frame of transmigration settlements, 20% of the utilities (housing, land, subsistence) should be set aside for the local population to facilitate economic development in the respective areas. 11 today, nine villages in the region air hitam claim ulayat rights to the area of the former marga air hitam. 12 undang undang republik indonesia no. 5/1979 tentang pemerintahan desa, republik of indonesia, 1979. 13 after the fall of suharto, the existing village government law was replaced with the legislation 58 stefanie steinebach & yvonne kunz  aseas 10(1) the villages in the district of air hitam were allocated communal land, village boundaries were redefined, and resident identity cards were issued. even though the village borders did not match with the communities’ former territorial claims, the act of village constitution finally turned the village residents into acknowledged citizens of the indonesian nation state. the formerly scarcely populated but socially complex and historically rich area suddenly became a place of state activities and control. the resettling of javanese majority population was seen as a measure to establish state presence and weaken the power of local political elites (elmhirst, 1999, pp. 813-815). moreover, the transmigration program was an attempt to create uniformity across different cultural groups and homogenize socio-political structures of organization at village and community as well as at family level. in contrast, forest dwelling groups like the orang rimba were defined as “traditionally remote communities” (komunitas adat terpencil, kat) (direktorat pemberdayaan komunitas adat terpencil, 2003). the state and public opinion stereotyped them as remote, uncivilized, and backward (bertrand, 2004, p. 45; li, 2000, p. 149). the social department of jambi stated that there is a “big gap and much difference in the aspects of value system between [the orang rimba] and local socio-culture” (direktorat pemberdayaan komunitas adat terpencil, 2003, p. 10). by categorizing the orang rimba as traditionally remote, the state neglected their position in the socio-political system of the bukit duabelas area. instead, they became categorically isolated and turned into a minority group deprived of any rights. again, state policies and national legislation continued to transform local kinship-based socio-political structures and land tenure systems into administrative categories of citizenship and codified legal rights. the orang rimba, like other communities all over indonesia, became the constituting ‘other’ of the modern indonesian villager and citizen. thus, again ‘sisters’ were separated from ‘brothers’ as they were now categorized as a remote community and as non-citizens living next door to their ‘brothers’ who became fully acknowledged citizens. yet, at the end, both the orang rimba and local villagers were equally deprived of their customary land tenure by the nation state. global discourses meeting local realities these politics of marginalization, suppression, and dispossession generated smoldering conflicts that erupted after the fall of suharto and with the beginning of political decentralization and a more ngo-friendly climate in the year 1999, when freedom of speech allowed the questioning of political decisions and articulation of local (indigenous) identities along rights over natural resources. against the official line of suharto’s regime – which implied that indonesia is a nation with no indigenous people or that all indonesians are equally indigenous (bertrand 2004, p. 45; li 2000, p. 149) –, growing political freedom facilitated the foundation of aman which has mobino. 2/1999 which reopened the space for local structures of governance and political organization. a significant change was that the village head became accountable to the village representative body (badan perwakilan desa, bpd) instead of the district head. uu no. 5/1979 was revised to uu no. 32/2004, which states that each village, district, and province has authority over its internal affairs. regulation uu no. 32/2004 reinforced the law it replaced, by allowing regional governments to restructure their formal administrative area as long as it did not inhibit economic development. 59separating sisters from brothers lized isolated groups in many regions of indonesia and promotes their interests on a national level. this movement draws its legitimacy from the notion of ‘indigenous peoples’ as identified by the ilo convention 169 (benda-beckmann, 2011, p. 185). in doing so, it links the local concepts of traditional communities to global discourses of indigeneity and indigenous rights. the convention aims to protect tribal peoples in independent countries whose social, cultural and economic conditions distinguish them from other sections of the national community, and whose status is regulated wholly or partially by their own customs or traditions or by special laws or regulations; peoples in independent countries who are regarded as indigenous on account of their descent from the populations which inhabited the country, or a geographical region to which the country belongs, at the time of conquest or colonization or the establishment of present state boundaries and who, irrespective of their legal status, retain some or all of their own social, economic, cultural and political institutions. (ilo, 1989, article 1(1)) along these criteria, self-identification is considered fundamental for the identification of indigenous and tribal peoples. members of the orang rimba community from air hitam were part of the first congress of indigenous people of the archipelago in 1999, which also marks the birth of aman. for them, the categorization as remote adat community suddenly offered the chance to join aman and to transform this derogatory national categorization into a global category of rights. the acknowledgement as ‘indigenous people’ marked the orang rimba, as tyson (2011) called it, different and ‘special’. while they still formed a constitutional other, discriminating national laws and politics could be challenged by referring to international rights and regulations that often overlapped with national legal orders. this also applies for endeavors of indigenous land titling, as one of aman’s central fields of activity. the orang rimba can now reclaim their customary forest area as hutan adat, as they can easily be identified as indigenous people by the forestry department. (campbell, 2002, p. 114) ironically, the orang rimba and sedentary melayu villagers formulate the same historically rooted land claims in the bukit duabelas area. both relate themselves to each other as sisters and brothers. yet, during dutch colonial rule, they were separated into different ethnic groups and assigned different administrative territories. after independence and under the suharto regime, the orang rimba were turned into remote non-citizens, without any rights. they were left to live according to their customary adat. the melayu villagers, in contrast, were forced into the category of citizens and their adat structures were forcefully replaced by new state-defined sociopolitical structures. now after the end of the suharto regime, due to their ‘customary’ lifestyle, formerly neglected orang rimba were rehabilitated with the support of global indigenous rights discourses and meet the criteria to be identified as indigenous people by the forestry department. even though the melayu village communities would fulfil the criteria of indigenous peoples according to the ilo convention, due to the transformation of socio-political structures and the setting of territorial 60 stefanie steinebach & yvonne kunz  aseas 10(1) boundaries by the suharto regime, the government institutions do not acknowledge their claims. the village communities in air hitam cannot formulate claims to hutan adat despite their pre-colonial existence. the contradictions between territorial policies of the nation state and the local histories of the people become clear in a statement of orang rimba political leader tenganai lengkap: yes, the border is now called national park. but we are having a border since former times – this border follows the river berenai and comes from sultan taha, in former times. this is the case, since mankind walks on two legs. the borderline [between the orang rimba and the villagers and the national park borders] are not the same. our borders have existed since ages, since the colonial times. i will say, since the colonial time, this has been a bordered area. in history, the elites used to be the rulers over the territory. this means, the law of the government has not grown in this area, but the law lies within the hands of the people that hold the history. from the beginning until today. this territory lies within the indonesian state. the history is until today in the hands of the jenang local elites. (tengannai lengkap, 23 december 2014) conclusion the case study in this article presented a situation where the complex interaction of global discourses, international regulations, and national legislations shape local realities and identities that restrict and enlarge people’s agency at the same time. the global category of ‘indigenous peoples’ touches upon political and social dimensions of power relations between citizens and the state. it can be understood as a dispute over the legitimacy of alternative forms of land tenure, and over the value of alternative notions of property tied to local identities and agro-ecological regimes, and finally over who should have privileged access to local resources. to understand land tenure, it is indispensable to fully understand the political and historical context that has shaped it. cultural differences have been highlighted while territorialized and historical ties with the sedentary population have been erased and replaced by antagonisms of ‘specialness’ and ‘citizenship’. notably, both categories define relations of local communities to the nation state: either as citizen and therefore the central subject of the state or as constituting ‘special’ or ‘other’. our case shows that whether a group is defined as one or the other – as citizens or indigenous – is an act of arbitrariness pushed by colonial and postcolonial policy-makers in relation to land use. in effect, state policies not only determine communities’ territorial rights but also transform communities’ identities and relations among each other. thus, while indigenous land titling may indeed be seen as an act of justice, if viewed from the perspective of community rights and long neglected communal claims against the state, on the horizontal level – the level of community relations – it can also create social injustice. in our case study, an act of justice from a global perspective creates injustice on the local level as it separates sisters from brothers and produces winners and losers with respect to historically equally rooted land tenure. 61separating sisters from brothers  references afiff, s., & lowe, c. 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(1981). bumiputra and pribumi: economic nationalism (indiginism) in malaysia and indonesia. pacific affairs, 54(4), 662-687. steinebach, s. (2012). der regenwald ist unser haus: die orang rimba auf sumatra zwischen autonomie und fremdbestimmung. göttingen: universitätsverlag göttingen. stephens, p. (2011). the global land grab: an analysis of extant governance institutions. international affairs review, xx(1), 1-21. world bank. (1979). report and recommendation of the president of the international bank for reconstruction and development and the international development association to the executive directors on a proposed loan, development credit and eec special action credit to the republic of indonesia for a transmigration project. report no. p-2549-ind. turner, s., & caouette, d. (2009). shifting fields of rural resistance in southeast asia. in d. caouette & s. turner (eds.), agrarian angst and rural resistance in contemporary southeast asia (pp. 1-24). london: routledge. tyson, a. d. (2011). being special, becoming indigenous: dilemmas of special adat rights in indonesia. asian journal of social science, 39(5), 652-673. warren, c. (1990). the bureaucratization of local government in indonesia. working paper 66. centre of southeast asian studies, monash university, australia. retrieved from http://core.ac.uk/download/ pdf/11242753.pdf about the authors stefanie steinebach holds a phd in anthropology and a diploma in forestry and is a lecturer for conflict management at the faculty of resource management, university of applied sciences hildesheim holzminden goettingen, germany. over the last two decades, she has worked intensively in indonesia on ethnic identity, natural resource use, and resource use conflicts. ► contact: stefanie.steinebach@hawk-hhg.de yvonne kunz holds a phd in geography and is research associate at the division of human geography at the university of goettingen, germany. her research focuses on the political ecology of regulative structures governing landscape transformation in indonesia. ► contact: yvonne.kunz@geo.uni-goettingen.de aseas 14(1) | 99 livelihood and poverty: the case of poor women in the rural areas of ca mau province, vietnam thi kim phung danga a ton duc thang university, vietnam ► dang, t. k. p. (2021). livelihood and poverty: the case of poor women in the rural areas of ca mau province, vietnam. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 14(1), 99-119. poverty in rural areas remains a major concern for developing countries. in order to improve the lives of poor rural people, it is important to identify the key factors behind their poverty. over the past two decades, rural development policy and research have focused on livelihood perspectives that help to explain intertwining factors affecting the way rural residents make a living. yet, critics point out that the livelihood perspective focuses heavily on the livelihoods of households at the micro level and does not recognize the impact of wider socioeconomic contexts in the lives of rural people. the livelihood literature also gives little attention to power relationships, particularly gender issues. this paper seeks to address these knowledge gaps by investigating the livelihoods of poor women in ca mau province, a coastal region of vietnam. the study employed both quantitative and qualitative research methods with questionnaire surveys, indepth interviews, observations, and focus group discussions. research findings show that women in the area possess poor livelihood capitals, particularly in human capacity and financial capacity. moreover, some rural development policies are still not accessible, and they do not provide sufficient inputs for farming. the findings presented here uncover the deep interlinkages between livelihood capitals and the impact of the wider socioeconomic contexts on household livelihood activities and outcomes. keywords: livelihood; poverty; rural development policy; vietnam; women  introduction livelihood has become a key notion in rural development research and practice since the 1990s (scoones, 2009). although the concept is defined in a variety of ways, livelihood generally refers to “people’s capacity to maintain a living” (chambers & conway, 1991). in 1992, the united kingdom’s department for international development (dfid) introduced the sustainable livelihood framework, which provides a multi-faceted definition of livelihood: “a livelihood comprises of the capabilities, assets (including both material and social resources) and activities required for a means of living” (scoones, 1998). the five livelihood assets – human, physical, financial, natural, and social capital – together with a household’s activities determine its standard of living (ellis, 2000; fanga et al., 2014). the livelihood perspective, which goes beyond material assets to recognize a set of interlinked factors that determine the standard of aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 47 100 | aseas 14(1) livelihood and poverty living (baumann, 2006), has shaped poverty reduction research and practice over the past two decades. knowledge about livelihood capitals is considered crucial to understand the main causes of rural poverty (lawal et al., 2011; peter, 1999; su & shang, 2012), and international donors (oxfam, action aid, and care) growingly support the livelihood perspective in poverty reduction programs (batterbury, 2007; khatiwada et al., 2017; mdee, 2002; okali, 2006). despite this enthusiasm, critics point out that the livelihood perspective focuses heavily on the micro level of households. some authors try to quantify livelihood capitals and their relationships (mdee, 2002), but ignore the broader socioeconomic contexts under which these livelihoods operate (dorward et al., 2003). furthermore, the livelihood literature does not provide enough insight into the linkages and tradeoffs among livelihood capitals and the factors affecting these. the link between livelihood capitals and household strategies in livelihood activities is also underresearched (fanga et al., 2014). in addition, little attention is given to power relations, especially gender issues (de haan, 2012; khatiwada et al., 2018). though women’s livelihoods vary from those of men in their control of income, resource use and production, and land rights (flora, 2001; radel, 2012), most frameworks used for poverty alleviation and community development are heavily based on capital assets, neglecting the “gendered nature of livelihoods” (radel, 2012, p. 4). a number of livelihood studies show women’s lack of control over financial and natural resources (fletschner & kenney, 2014; lovell et al., 2020). women also have less access to knowledge required to develop their human and social capitals (okali, 2006). both previous and current research reveal that obstacles to women’s livelihoods stem from the macro structural context and the bias of gender-based division of labor within the household. these obstacles have also been identified in studies on women’s livelihood in vietnam. tuijnman et al. (2020) discover that the local authority’s allocation of land to the head of the households (mainly men) for both commercial and agricultural purposes has given them the ability to choose how to use the land in production. women thus earn little money from the house’s land since it is recorded under the husband’s name. nguyen nhat (1997) and lovell et al. (2020) observe differential access to knowledge from extension trainings between men and women, as the majority of participants are male farmers and female-headed households do not have fair access to or show active participation in the trainings. women in male-headed households, for example, are often refused enrollment in extension training courses because extension staff prefer to deal with household decision-makers, assuming that the information would be passed on to other household members (ragasa, 2014). there are also different baseline conditions for women and girls, related to gender-based division of labor in the family, which bind women with family duties and childcare. for example, although migration is becoming an increasingly significant source of income for rural people (nguyen & locke, 2014), women’s migration is often hampered by their reproductive roles, such as giving birth, raising children, and taking care of sick or frail family members (thao, 2013). educational disparities are perhaps the clearest and most significant cause of the unequal application of agricultural practices between men and women (lovell et al., 2020). the gender disparity of labor impacts rural women in vietnam in a variety of ways. as ragasa (2014) shows, despite adequate preparation, women aseas 14(1) | 101 thi kim phung dang often lack the time and energy needed to fully execute the activities derived from extension training. this paper extends on these studies and investigates the livelihoods of poor women in the rural areas of ca mau province, vietnam, with particular attention to the inter-linkages between livelihood capitals and the impact of the wider socioeconomic context on household livelihood activities and outcomes. rural areas in ca mau province are poverty-stricken, and poor women have become the target of vietnam’s poverty reduction policies. although poverty reduction research and practices in vietnam have recently embraced the livelihood perspective, a number of livelihood studies in the mekong delta, the central highlands, and the northern uplands of vietnam do not adequately address capital inter-linkages and the wider socioeconomic impact of the country’s rural poverty (bui & schreinemachers, 2011; ha et al., 2014; hossain et al., 2006; luttrell, 2001; phuoc et al., 2001; thulstrup, 2015). using the method of the sociological survey via questionnaires and semi-structured interviews with key informants from local communities and relevant actors, this study seeks to clarify the linkages between the livelihood capitals of poor women in the rural areas of ca mau provinces and the impact of rural poverty as well as other factors on these livelihood capitals. much in line with previous studies, we found the factor of gender playing a central role on women’s livelihoods. by combining the micro level of households’ livelihoods and the impacts of the broader socioeconomic context of rural poverty at a macro level, this study contributes to attempts to expand the livelihood perspective, which have been particularly useful for studying rural poverty at the local level (thulstrup, 2015). analytical framework and research method this paper focuses on the link between livelihood capitals, activities, and outcomes of poor women in rural areas, and the impact of the socioeconomic context including related, affecting factors. its analytical framework builds on ellis and allison (2004) who describe livelihood as the combination of “what people do in order to make a living” (p. 10), the capitals they use to do so, the difficulties linked to these capitals, and the broader natural socioeconomic contexts in which they live. ellis and allison (2004) identify five livelihood capitals: human capital (skills, education, health), physical capital (houses, production equipment, household’s appliances), financial capital (money, savings, loan access), natural capital (land, water, trees), and social capital (networks and associations). socioeconomic contexts include policy and institutional settings but also less-clear circumstances, such as vulnerability. the livelihood framework is presented in figure 1, while the analytical framework is summarized in table 1. study locations ca mau is a coastal province at the southern end of vietnam with an area of 5,221.2 km2. in 2018, its population was 1,229,600 people (tong cuc thong ke, 2018). the province has one city and eight districts (cai nuoc, nam can, dam doi, ngoc hien, phu tan, thoi binh, tran van thoi, and u minh). as of april 2019, ca mau had 19 ethnic 102 | aseas 14(1) livelihood and poverty groups, including the kinh, the dominant ethnic group in vietnam (1,167,765 people), khmer (29,845 people), hoa (8,911 people), and other minority groups (tay, thai, cham, and muong) (tong cuc thong ke, 2018). ca mau is the largest shrimp production area in the mekong delta. the main economic activities of its rural areas are agriculture, forestry, and fisheries, all of which contribute 29.2% of the province’s gdp (le anh, 2017). poverty rates decreased from 12.14% in 2011 to 7.96% in 2017. located in the southeastern part of ca mau province, 19 kilometers from ca mau city, dam doi district has an area of 823,2 km2 accounting for 15.5% of the province with a population of 187,000 people (tong cuc thong ke, 2018). the district administration includes one town and 15 communes. dam doi has favorable natural conditions and great potential for an offshore fishing economy with a coastline of about 25 km. with more than 70,000 ha of aquaculture, dam doi is also the key shrimp farming zone in ca mau. the whole district has 38,300 ha of improved, extensive shrimp farming, and variables sub-variables criteria livelihood capitals human capital skills, education level, health physical capital houses, production equipment, roads, electricity, internet financial capital money, savings, loan access natural capital land, water, trees, ... social capital networks and associations natural socioeconomic contexts policies institutional settings • provincial/district development master plan • rural development programs • poverty reduction programs vulnerability • natural disasters (droughts, floods) • diseases livelihood activities jobs to obtain income livelihood outcomes incomes from livelihood activities figure 1. basic livelihood framework. (adapted from ellis & allison, 2004). table 1. analytical framework. (own compilation). aseas 14(1) | 103 thi kim phung dang 2,800 ha of intensive and super-intensive shrimp farming (duy anh, 2018). with the goal of striving to become a dynamic economic region, dam doi is actively inviting and attracting investment in the strong economic fields of the district (duy anh, 2018). located in the northwestern part of ca mau province, about 72 kilometers from ca mau city, u minh district has an area of 774.14 km2 accounting for 14.62% of the province’s natural area and a population of 104,800 (tong cuc thong ke, 2018), including 3 ethnic groups: kinh, khmer, and hoa. the district includes u minh town and seven communes (khanh an, khanh hoa, khanh hoi, khanh lam, khanh thuan, khanh tien, and nguyen phich). agriculture and aquaculture play a key role in the district’s economy. the district’s farming area is over 37,500 ha, of which 21,000 ha are shrimp farming, which contributes significantly to increasing the district’s general income. extensive shrimp farming has been developed from more than 10,000 ha of land comprised of contaminated salty alum and low-yield rice lands. traffic in u minh consists mainly of a waterway system through canals, which makes the development of industrial production and other non-farm activities difficult and negatively impacts people’s lives (tan tai, 2019). data collection and analysis surveys, interviews, and group discussions are common methods for gathering data on livelihood capital. surveys are used to obtain the demographic characteristics of the participants and their livelihood capital (khatiwada et al., 2017). some authors (ghosh et al., 2012; khatiwada et al., 2017; mdee, 2002) have attempted to quantify these capitals using quantitative data collected from surveys and sophisticated statistical analysis. in addition, interviews are useful to gain more insights into participants’ detailed experience in livelihood activities and into a number of other issues that surveys cannot go into in depth (radel, 2012). scholars also use group discussions to gain insight into the contexts under which livelihoods operate (khatiwada et al., 2017). this study combines both qualitative and quantitative methods, including document analysis, questionnaire surveys, semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, and observations. for quantitative data collection, a survey of 362 women from poor households1 was carried out in u minh and dam doi in november 2019. in each district, two key villages were selected for the survey: quach pham and tran phan in dam doi, and khanh thuan and khanh tien in u minh. the selection of 90 respondents from each village followed the method of stratified random sampling. the questionnaire contained 40 questions, including questions on the respondent’s general data and attitude and perceptions on livelihoods. for qualitative data collection, 44 semi-structured interviews (11 interviews in each village) and 8 focus group discussions (4 discussions in each district) were conducted in the context of this study. key informants included local authorities, villagers, the association of farmers, and the association of women. other informants were selected by using the snowball sampling technique. the interviews focused on livelihood capitals and the issue of poverty. 1 in vietnam, the government considers a rural household as poor when the monthly income per person is less than vnd 700.000, equivalent to approximately usd 30 (chinh phu viet nam, 2015). 104 | aseas 14(1) livelihood and poverty for data analysis, the author used spss software to analyze the questionnaires and investigate the inter-linkages among the five livelihood capitals and the correlation between livelihood capitals and livelihood strategies. for qualitative analysis, the semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions were transcribed and thematically analyzed with topics relating to livelihoods. since previous studies found obstacles stemming from both the macro context and women’s baseline conditions, data analysis paid particular attention to whether and why women in these areas have faced the same or different obstacles in their access to and control of resources. paying further attention to the factor of gender, both data collection and analysis centered not only on livelihood capitals, but also on policy and social background as well as gender division in the household, all of which affect women’s access to various livelihood capitals. research results this section presents a detailed picture of the respondents and their livelihood activities and outcomes, as well as the factors affecting them, including livelihood capitals and the socioeconomic context. interconnections among these three are discussed in the latter part of the article. livelihood activities questionnaire surveys showed that 34.5% of respondents made a living from offfarm activities earning low and unstable incomes, mainly as wage laborers. other respondents earned incomes as workers/handicraftswomen and small traders at local markets or sold groceries/fish in villages. of the respondents, 30.1% carried out onfarm activities: 21.8% worked on farming, such as cultivating rice, vegetables, and fruit trees, and raising domestic animals (pigs, cattle); 7.2% worked in shrimp farming; and 1.1% had contracts with the forest management board to plant and protect mangrove forests (table 2). livelihood activities frequency % 1. on-farm activities 109 30.1 • crop farming + domestic animal rearing 79 21.8 • aquaculture 26 7.2 • forestry contractors 04 1.1 2. off-farm activities 125 34.5 • workers, handcrafters 05 1.4 • street vendors 16 4.4 • wage labors 104 28.7 3. unemployment 128 35.4 total 362 100 table 2. livelihood activities. (author’s compilation). aseas 14(1) | 105 thi kim phung dang of the respondents that were engaged in agriculture and fisheries, 54.1% of their products were purchased through intermediaries and 11.3% were used in households. only 32% of respondents had stable jobs and more than a third of the sample (primarily young women) reported being unemployed. they explained that they did not have a regular job, spending much of their time at home as housewives caring for their children (figure 2). they sometimes worked as wage labor for other farmers or went to the local market to sell some fruit from their garden or shrimps from their ponds, but the revenues from these jobs were sporadic and low. respondents’ households that did not hold regular jobs accounted for 63.5%. interviews with key informants revealed that there were not enough off-farm jobs in the area. one of the causes of that problem was the inconvenient transportation to the areas, which consisted mainly of small boats and low-quality roads. there were some industrial companies in other districts, but the women lacked the skills required for the work. they also hesitated because they had to care for small children. livelihood outcomes of the livelihood activities listed in table 2, the average income of the respondents was vnd 2,379,500 (usd 104.8) per month. however, 61% of respondents had no regular income and the remaining 39% had monthly incomes ranging from less than vnd 1 million (usd 44) to more than vnd 30 million (usd 1,321). only 2% of respondents earned more than vnd 10 million (usd 440.4) per month. the respondents’ average household income was vnd 3,496,084 (usd 154) and 66.6% earned less than vnd 3 million (usd 132) per month. on average, women contributed 38% of the household’s income. most of the respondents identified themselves as housewives, and the family income was dependent on their husbands’ jobs. these men worked as wage labors for other farmers, but these jobs were not regular. many respondents (75%) blamed their poverty on the lack of money to invest in aquaculture and means of production. some (22.5%) recognized that their low education and low figure 2. respondents’ work status. (author’s compilation). 106 | aseas 14(1) livelihood and poverty skill levels were causes of their unemployment and thus their poverty. a large number (42%) reported that they lost money in agricultural and aquaculture production, and 47% mentioned the unfavorable climate and weather. when asked what they need to improve their livelihood and get out of poverty, most respondents expressed a need for capital in order to develop agriculture production: 46.4% needed money to invest in agriculture and 30% required more land. only 17% needed plant seeds and animals to breed, and 18.8% answered that they were in need of off-farm jobs. some would have liked to have been forestry contractors but did not get the chance. when asked about migration to other cities for work in factories, 46% acknowledged they had used this strategy and 54% responded that they needed jobs in the district, or in ca mau province, so that they were able to take care of their young children and senior members in the family. factors affecting livelihood activities and outcomes factors affecting the respondents’ livelihood activities and incomes pertained to natural socioeconomic contexts and livelihood capitals. natural socioeconomic contexts the long coastal zone and suitable climatic conditions give ca mau natural advantages for aquaculture (le anh, 2017). the province ranks first in the country in terms of land area of brackish water shrimp farming (vietnam association of sea food exporter and producers, 2019), the main economic activity of ca mau’s rural regions. over the past years, the province’s shrimp farming area has always been stable at about 280,000 ha, accounting for more than one third of the country’s shrimp farming area (vsep, 2019). implementing the government’s resolution no. 09/2000 / nq-cp of 15 june 2000 on economic restructuring and agricultural product consumption, decision no. 1116 / qđ-ctub of 19 november 2001 by the provincial people’s committee approved a plan to develop fisheries-agriculture-forestry production in ca mau province for the years 2001-2010 (dang kim oanh, 2010). following the decision, rice-growing land of the province (169,875 ha) was reduced to 145,000 ha (in 2010) for shrimp farming. the decision also allowed farmers to combine shrimp farming with rice farming and forest cultivation (dang kim oanh, 2010). in implementing the decision, the provincial government created favorable conditions (such as extension services, irrigation) to deploy and replicate the shrimp-rice production model, especially in the north region of ca mau. with the province’s decision no. 1116, the two districts, dam doi and u minh, have considered the development of shrimp farming as their economic development strategy and a key solution to poverty alleviation in the districts. in the period 2014-2016, farmers mainly utilized traditional extensive shrimp farming, which completely relied on natural food sources. this model suffered low productivity and resulted in shrimp diseases, causing losses for farmers. this method of shrimp farming also heavily polluted the farming environment. in 2006, an improved extensive model was developed with the addition of seeds and feed. since 2016, farmers have aseas 14(1) | 107 thi kim phung dang been introduced to the improved extensive shrimp farming (male farmer, 36 years old, personal communication, nguyen buu san, 2020), and u minh used this method across more than 20,000 ha. high profitability is the reason behind the development of shrimp farming in dam doi and ca mau districts. interviews demonstrated that shrimp farming yields high profits, depending on the model. the traditional extensive farming model yields about 200-300 kg per ha in a year, providing an annual income of vnd 20-25 million per ha. the improved extensive model showed a stark improvement with yields of 500-700 kg per ha each year and an annual income of vnd 120-150 million per ha. the intensive model made a further improvement with a yield of 60-70 tons per ha in one year, giving farmers annual earnings of vnd 500-800 million. however, most villagers invested in extensive or improved extensive farming due to the high investment for the intensive model. though profitable, shrimp farming requires high inputs. farmers had to invest nearly vnd 50 million for a 1000 m2 pond for extensive farming and vnd 70 million for a 1000 m2 pond utilizing improved extensive farming (tran thanh hai, 2019). further investments included vnd 150-200 million for breeding, food, and veterinary expenses (loan phuong, 2020). the intensive model requires extremely high input (around vnd 700 million per ha) and few villagers can afford it. although agricultural development policies provide loans for shrimp farming, banks hesitate to lend for proposals with intensive and super-intensive shrimp farming. in addition, bank loans do not provide enough capital for intensive and super-intensive shrimp farming, so farmers are unable to invest in this method (vsep, 2019). respondents said that shrimp farming was risky, with high failure rates due to disease and unstable selling prices. if everything went smoothly, they could escape poverty and even become well-off after two or three successful harvests. otherwise, they would become bankrupt. shrimp cultivation has affected the environment negatively, which in turn caused a backlash on the shrimp farming industry. in the early years, most shrimp farming produced relatively high yields because the land was rich in nutrients, the water source was not polluted, and the breeds generated high prices and were of good quality. however, over the years, the productivity and output of farmed shrimp have decreased due to land degradation and shrimp diseases (male farmer, 36 years old, personal communication, nguyen buu san, 2020). furthermore, since farmers have to bring seawater into the fields to set up shrimp ponds, large-scale saline intrusion has increased in the two districts (huynh anh, 2019). the transfer of rice-growing land to shrimp farming worsened the situation. because of this environmental issue, other farmers have experienced poor productivity in both crop cultivation and livestock raising (van mach & tran trương, 2019). human capital the sample included 362 poor women between the ages of 16 and 60. the sample’s average age was 41 years, and 80% were under 40 (figure 3). most of them live with a household (their own family or an extended family), whose size varied between 4-6 persons. the respondents’ education level was low: 42.3% finished primary education, 108 | aseas 14(1) livelihood and poverty 32.3% attended lower secondary school, 4.1% went to high school, and 11.2% were illiterate (figure 4). these numbers and interviews showed that, while the government has implemented national compulsory universal education programs for both girls and boys in the areas, the traditional perspectives of rural people in vietnam that girls did not need to study and ought to get married as soon as possible (when they turn 18) still prevailed. therefore, compared to their husbands, women’s education was low. a young woman in tran phan village (dam doi district) confirmed this observation: my parents said, i only need to learn how to read and write. this is because girls will get married and their husbands will take care of them. the boys need to study because they will become the head of their own families later. (female respondent, 25 years old, personal communication) figure 3. respondents’ ages. (author’s compilation). figure 4. respondents’ education levels. (author’s compilation). aseas 14(1) | 109 thi kim phung dang although shrimp farming is a household’s activity for many farmers in the two districts, most of the poor farmers in these areas lacked the necessary skills in shrimp farming. training on techniques for shrimp farming is mainly provided by local extension services. farmers also get some guidance from experts on national television shows and local newspapers pages (41.7%). they also got information from relatives, friends (27.1%), and traders (12.7%).2 moreover, women also lacked skills in shrimp farming. as participant in the group discussion in khanh tien village (u minh district) recalled: we worked as farmers because our parents were farming in the past. we only know how to sow the seed and how to take care of rice and vegetables in general. as for shrimp farming, we watched how our neighbors did and followed. we did not know how to treat the shrimp disease, we called the veterinarians, but they also could not solve the problem, so most shrimps in our ponds died and we lost money. (female respondent, 28 years old, personal communication) the survey results showed that only 30.9% of the respondents said that they had access to knowledge about production, especially farming and shrimp farming (compared to 40.9% who said their husbands did have access to this knowledge). the other 69.1% had difficulties in acquiring knowledge because their husbands were considered heads of the households and would represent the households at training programs. regarding ethnicity, 93.7% of respondents were kinh, the largest ethnic group in vietnam, and 6.3% were khmers. of the respondents, 86% were married, 4% were single, and 10% were either widowed or divorced. the respondents were mostly healthy, although 34% reported mild symptoms of joint pain, fatigue, and ear, nose, and throat issues. in general, the respondents’ ages and health status were favorable for joining the workforce. despite this advantage, 86.7% of respondents were housewives without any specific skills for off-farm jobs. in particular, only 36.4% were applicable for being workers of industrial companies, which required candidates to have lower high school3 certificates. there are no employment or human resource services to help respondents find well-paid, off-farm jobs at factories in ca mau or other provinces. they could only work as wage laborers, street vendors, or sellers in local markets – all of which delivered unstable incomes. the surveys and interviews revealed three reasons why these women quit or did not go to work in factories. first, they lacked the requisite skills to work in these factories. second, the factories were not located in the districts but in ca mau or in other provinces, and they were hesitant to relocate due to their precarious financial situations. third, they had young children but the neighborhoods lacked kindergartens and the tuition fees of the ones near the factories were too high. some even had to care for their aging parents/parents-in-law. as a result, they agreed with the family to remain at home. 2 only 1.1% of respondents said they got information from the internet and social media. 3 lower high schools in vietnam include classes from grade 6 to grade 9. 110 | aseas 14(1) livelihood and poverty financial capital the low capacities of the respondents, which led to unstable and low-income jobs, jeopardized the respondents’ financial capital needed for their livelihoods. nearly 80% of respondents reported having no savings because they could only make ends meet with unstable, off-farm jobs or because of the low productivity of agricultural crops and shrimp farming. one woman in dam doi confided in saying: every day, my husband and i only tried to earn enough to buy rice and food for the 4 children. you know, there are not many jobs offers here, especially after the crop harvest. we work for the owners of shrimp farms in our village and also in other villages. (female respondent, 39 years old, personal communication). another woman living in u minh complained: my husband works for the fishery boat and i am only at home taking care of the children. we do not earn enough to have a saving though we want to. (female respondent, 26 years old, personal communication). eleven percent of the surveyed women saved between vnd 450,000 and 10,000,000, and only 1% had savings over vnd 10,000,000. a total of 54.4% of the women were able to obtain loans from local organizations such as the veteran association, the women association, the poverty reduction fund, the employment fund, and the policy bank. more than one third of respondents (45.6%) received money from the women association and the policy bank (table 3). the average loan amount was vnd 10-30 million (usd 431.48-1.294.44; figure 5), which was not enough to invest in shrimp farming, the lucrative livelihood of the districts. besides, only 42.3% respondents said they could control and make decisions concerning the use of the loan. others said their husbands, as the heads of the family, were the ones to take decisions. married men can borrow money from the bank if they have a plan in production approved by the bank. they can also get a loan from a number of national/provincial rural development programs. in general, banks hesitate to lend to poor farmers who do not have some assets to deposit. thus, poor farmers tend to get loans from rural development programs. sources frequency % amount (vnd) poverty reduction fund 20 5.5 1m-15m veteran association 2 0.6 10m-12m women association 71 19.6 1m-40m the policy bank 94 26.0 1m-50m employment fund 3 0.8 10m-30m other funds 7 1.9 1m-80m total 197 54.4 table 3. respondents’ access to loan. (author’s compilation). aseas 14(1) | 111 thi kim phung dang physical capital among the respondents, 4.4% had no home but leased a place to stay. among the other households, 46.1% had temporary houses made of wood with corrugated iron or thatched roofs. this type of housing is common in both districts. according to construction regulations in vietnam, 22.1% had housing that was ranked fourth.4 for home appliances, 81% of the respondents had a tv in the home, providing them with information and entertainment, but only 4.4% had access to the internet. like other vietnamese households, 58.8% owned one motorbike for travel, and 16.6% households had small boats utilized for transportation, not for fisheries. it should be noted that these assets were considered the household’s property. although both husband and wife contributed to these properties, 50% of respondents said their husbands were the ones to control them. some respondents said that, in the past, they had had some personal assets, such as gold jewelry given to them by their parents when they got married, but they had to sell them eventually in order to make ends meet. rural infrastructure was still unfavorable, with poor-quality rural roads. the main transportation mode was by boat. more importantly, 100% of respondents’ households did not own any production equipment for farming, such as water pumps or plows. the lack of physical capital was responsible for the low productivity and high costs of agricultural crops and shrimp farming. natural capital nearly one-fifth of the sample (19%) owned no land. some respondents (15.2%) owned a plot for growing rice (on average 4,506 m2), and 44% of respondents had much larger plots for shrimp farming (an average of 74,883 m2). others had small 4 this is housing made of bricks and wood, with enclosed walls and partitions made of bricks, tile roofing, or fibrocement considered low-quality finishing materials and, thus, low living facilities. 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 <1 m -5m >5 m -10 m >1 0m -1 5m >1 5m -3 0m >3 0m -5 0m >5 0m -1 00 m >1 00 -30 0m >3 00 m -50 0m pe rc en t amount of loans (vnd) figure 5. amount of loans. (author’s compilation). 112 | aseas 14(1) livelihood and poverty plots of 300-600 m2 for raising cattle (cows and oxen), poultry, vegetables, and fruit trees (tables 4 & 5). a small percentage (4.4%) used land contracted with local forestry agencies for planting forest trees (on average 1-5 ha). respondents with small rice plots said their products were primarily used within the household. the same held true for respondents with small plots of land for vegetables and fruit trees, though some of their produce was sold at the local market. respondents with shrimp farms mostly sold their products to intermediate buyers. gender inequalities highly impacted the women’s natural capital. around 80% of cases involved respondents whose husbands were considered heads of the household. only 5% of respondents were family heads because they were widowed or divorced. as a result, just 13.3% of respondents were able to access land and houses, and only 8.4% were involved in managing these resources. as a woman living in dam doi said: my husband keeps the documents of the land and house; he just gives me money for expenses. i do not know much about these properties because he is the head of the family. every time we need to make a decision such as selling or buying something, he is the one who decides. (female respondent, 26 years old, personal communication). types of land frequency % shrimp farming 159 43.9 rice 55 15.2 poultry 43 11.9 fruit trees 18 5 vegetables 16 4.4 cattles (cow and oxen) 1 0.3 total 292 80.7 types of land average area (m2) shrimp farming 74,882.85 rice 4,505.87 poultry 398.04 fruit trees 597.35 vegetables 249.17 cattles 0.0 social capital although 67% of respondents joined local groups and associations (mainly the commune women’s union), 60% said they often seek help from their families and relatives in case of need. only 27% acknowledged that they received some support from local governments and other organizations (women’s organizations, communist farmers’ organizations). these networks mainly act as intermediaries between table 4. types of land. (author’s compilation). table 5. area of land. (author’s compilation). aseas 14(1) | 113 thi kim phung dang villagers and poverty reduction programs to provide low-interest loans for farming. in both districts, the government had implemented some rural development and poverty reduction programs, such as program 135, providing socioeconomic development for ethnic minorities and mountainous communities; and program 134, supporting productive land, residential land, housing, and domestic water for poor ethnic minority households. interestingly, a high proportion of the respondents were generally unfamiliar with rural development programs (table 6). respondents’ awareness have not heard know no interest program 135 63.8 28.9 2.8 program 134 84 14.4 1.6 program to invest and upgrade commune’ clinics 77.3 21 1.6 program to develop rural roads 47.9 50.2 1.9 program on clean water and environmental sanitation 63.5 35.9 0.6 program giving loans for jobs 42.4 55.9 1.6 training programs for exporting labor 21.6 75.4 3.0 credit programs 28.7 68 3.3 since most husbands of the families had to work in the areas of farming and wage labor, the majority of wives (more than 60%) attended village meetings and other community activities. though representing their households in local meetings, the women still lacked knowledge of specific programs related to them. this is because these meetings addressed not only rural development programs, but also revolved on various other topics such as news concerning the socioeconomic situations of the districts, legislation, and other social issues. the women reported that they only paid attention to programs for which they were the beneficiaries. furthermore, only programs’ beneficiaries (mainly men as household heads) received special briefings on the programs’ specifications and procedures. women obtained information on agriculture and aquaculture products mainly from mass media. a majority of 40% acquired information from television and newspapers and 20% from friends and neighbors. only 8% received information from local authorities. poor social capital explains why female respondents lacked the ability to respond to and cope with vulnerabilities that occur in agriculture, such as shrimp disease and droughts. discussion research on livelihoods emphasizes the important role of all five livelihood capitals to livelihood activities and outcomes (erenstein, 2011; kibria et al., 2018; oumer & de neergaard, 2011; scoones, 2009; shah, 2005; sharifi & nooripoor, 2017). however, the importance and contribution of each capital varies and remains a matter of debate. table 6. respondents’ awareness on rural programs in the two districts. (author’s compilation). 114 | aseas 14(1) livelihood and poverty sharifi and nooripoor (2017), for example, ranked physical capital above human, natural, and social capitals in their contribution to rural livelihoods. other authors (sadik & rahman, 2009; shah, 2005) have also highlighted the important role physical capital plays in supporting livelihoods. kibria et al. (2018), however, underlined the significant role that financial capital played in resource extraction, and stressed that human capital and social capital helped rural residents gain access to resources. sadik and rahman (2009) further point at the importance of social capital for livelihood activities and outcomes. in line with kibria et al. (2018), findings from the case studies in dam doi and u minh districts highlight the significant role of human capital in shaping respondents’ choices in livelihood activities. due to low education levels and the lack of skills to perform non-farm jobs, the respondents, although young and healthy, still worked in agriculture and shrimp farming, despite the limited land they had for such activities. in this choice of livelihood activities, human and financial capitals are crucial for livelihood outcomes. although shrimp farming is highly lucrative, shrimp yields are susceptible to diseases, which can lead to low productivity. respondents’ poor knowledge and skills in shrimp farming and their lack of savings and poor access to loans rendered them unable to fully invest in shrimp breeding, feed, and needed veterinary services. as a result, women cannot get out of poverty. their lack of natural and physical capitals worsens the situation. having only small plots of land for growing rice, vegetables, and fruit trees, they mainly use the products for their families and sell some on local markets. production costs increase because they lack production equipment (plows, water pumps, etc.) and had to rent these tools for production. small land plots and temporary housing also served as disadvantages for securing loans from local banks that require borrowers to offer guarantees in the form of properties. for the ones who obtained loans from poverty reduction programs, the amount of the loan was not sufficient for shrimp farming. findings also indicated that the weak social capital did not help respondents gain access to agricultural extension and loan services geared toward shrimp farming. while most studies focus on livelihood capitals as the main factors shaping farmers’ livelihood strategies (kristjanson et al., 2005), this case study shows mixed impacts, including that of the wider, natural socioeconomic context, on livelihood activities and outcomes in the two districts. on the one hand, the province’s policy to develop shrimp framing has made it a popular livelihood activity in dam doi and u minh as well as in other rural areas in ca mau. this policy has directed governmental support in infrastructure (irrigation) and extension services. it has also allowed private actors to invest in intensive shrimp farming. overall, the policy has created opportunities for farmers to get involved in this lucrative activity. on the other hand, there were trade-offs between rural development policies and livelihood capitals in performing shrimp farming – the main livelihood activity of the two districts. as the analysis shows, the five livelihood capitals of the respondents are minimal, rendering them incapable of participating in the popular and profitable livelihood activity of shrimp farming. the fact that 20-40% of respondents did not hear about or have access to rural development and poverty reduction policies shows the small degree to which impoverished rural women take advantage of these programs. for respondents who did access the loan programs, the money received was insufficient to carry out aseas 14(1) | 115 thi kim phung dang profitable livelihood activities like shrimp farming. some respondents did use the loan for shrimp farming but suffered losses due to shrimp disease. also, training programs on shrimp cultivation and saline intrusion were generally lacking. the research findings confirm the vital role of the factor of gender based on two central gender issues concerning poor women in the rural areas of ca mau when pursuing their livelihoods, namely, one related to the broader institutional contexts and one related to the gender division of labor within the households. the traditional view on men’s role as heads of the family was not only confirmed by villagers but also promoted by government policies in rural development. villagers give priority to the education of boys over girls. male heads of households are the primary beneficiaries of rural development policies, reducing women’s opportunities to improve their human, financial, natural, and social capital. more importantly, the gender-division in the household places the burden of childcare and elderly care on the shoulders of women, which poses an additional obstacle to them in improving their assets and thus their livelihood. although employment is perceived as the key to lifting these women out of poverty, rural development policies and poverty reduction programs in the province focus on availing loans for shrimp farming and thus fail to create employment, especially off-farm jobs for women. rural policies in the two districts are created for two different goals (roads and clinics), and there is a strong lack in synthesis of different policies in the area. their effects are, therefore, scattered and do not combine to create an effective force for rural poverty reduction. poverty reduction programs also fail to improve human capital (or skills) and social capital (or a minimal access to poverty reduction support). conclusions poverty reduction remains a core priority in vietnam’s rural development strategy. studies on this subject pay great attention to livelihood approaches for identifying the causes of poverty, which are important so that policy makers can form poverty reduction solutions. this study explored the livelihoods of poor women in the coastal province of ca mau. using questionnaire surveys and semi-structured interviews, the research findings revealed the essential and intertwined roles of human capital in influencing respondents’ choice of livelihood activities: financial capital (money, savings, loans) in determining their livelihood outcomes in terms of limited human capital (educational levels, skills); physical capital (houses, means of production); and social capital (access to agricultural extension services and poverty alleviation loans). the results highlighted the mixed impacts of livelihood capitals and the socioeconomic context on rural livelihoods. in both districts, rural development policies followed different objectives and no integration was attempted to build up development capacity. rural development policies have not yet been accessible to some villagers and have not provided enough input into shrimp farming as the main solution for poverty reduction. therefore, there is a need to open up access to loans and training that are not gender-biased in order to increase human and financial capitals for shrimp farming. poverty reduction programs also need to create employment, especially off-farm jobs for women. two gender issues facing poor women in rural areas of ca mau include prevailing traditional views on men’s role as heads of 116 | aseas 14(1) livelihood and poverty the family and the responsibility to look after children and the elderly placed overwhelmingly upon women. addressing these impacts and further including a gender perspective in policy and 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(2019, april 18). nuoi tom sieu tham canh o ca mau [super-intensive shrimp farming in ca mau]. http://vasep.com.vn/tin-tuc/1202_55166/nuoitom-sieu-tham-canh-o-ca-mau.htm about the author thi kim phung dang graduated from wageningen university in the netherlands with a phd in policy and management. governance, discourses, and the relationship between society and environment, as well as society and development, are among her research interests. in 2018, she won a newton mobility grant (british academy) for the project “between dark heritages and ecotourism: post-colonial ecologies in vietnam”. her current affiliation is with the faculty of social sciences and humanities, ton duc thang university, ho chi minh city, vietnam. ► contact: dangthikimphung@tdtu.edu.vn aseas 14(1) | 119 thi kim phung dang acknowledgements this research is funded by the foundation for science and technology development of ton duc thang university (fostect), website: http://fostect.tdtu.edu.vn, under grant fostect.2018.02. i thank the editor-in-chief and the two anonymous reviewers for the detailed and insightful comments on the manuscript. my sincere thanks also go to the professor bui loan thuy and the lecturers of the faculty of social sciences and humanities (ton duc thang university, vietnam) for their assistance in data collection in ca mau province (november 2019). i am very much grateful to ms. nguyen thi thuy (the women’s union of ca mau province), for her help in contacting the key informants. the research would not have been possible without the cooperation of participants in the four villages. i thank you all! 120 | aseas 14(1) aseas 12(1) | 131 book review: werning, r. & schwieger, j. (2019). handbuch philippinen. gesellschaft-politik-wirtschaft-kultur. berlin: regiospectra. isbn 9783947729067. 498 pages. ► chan, r., & makalintal, j. (2019). book review: werning, r. & schwieger, j. (2019). handbuch philippinen. gesellschaft-politik-wirtschaft-kultur. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 12(1), 131-133. with the election of rodrigo duterte in 2016, the philippines, considered as asia’s oldest democracy, has once again succumbed to a populist authoritarian turn. the three years that have transpired since then are tainted with rampant human rights violations and regressive policies advanced by an impulsive demagoguery, characterized by the political scientist rainer werning and other scholars as dutertismo. werning and his co-editor jörg schwieger, a protestant theologian, together with filipino and non-filipino scholars, practitioners, and activists, raise their voices against assorted social ills in this extensive primer on philippine society, which now includes a variety of analyses of the ramifications of the duterte presidency. the book is written in german and can be seen as a collection of readings for a german-speaking audience. the contributions of the filipino authors were likewise translated into german. the sixth edition of the handbuch philippinen, dedicated to those who have lived and worked for social justice, democracy, and human rights in the philippines since the marcos dictatorship, puts a critical lens on how to view and understand the ‘pearl of the orient’. divided into eight sections (regional studies & history, life, people, land & ecology, politics & economy, culture, religion, and east-west perspectives) and 80 chapters, with 35 contributors (13 filipin@s (both in the diaspora and based in the philippines) and 22 europeans), the handbook is not meant to be a travel guide but rather a manual aimed at exposing the realities that affect everyday life in the southeast asian country. it also aims at supporting those who want to change the current situation; so it comes as no surprise that the perspective taken by the editors and authors is the everyday life of the people – a perspective from below. a fascinating aspect about the book is how it accomplishes showcasing how diverse the philippines is when it comes to the people and their stories as well as the country itself. by doing so, the editors and authors managed to open new perspectives and styles of reading the various book chapters. starting with some structural data and information about the country’s demographics, history, and geography, they highlight how culture, religion, politics, and the economy are interrelated to each other. “the philippines is not a poor country, they are a country with many poor people” (p. 53). this quote is both puzzling and illuminating as it shows not only the reality faced by filipin@s but also the perception of people from abroad. the country is typically known for its white beaches, picturesque landscapes, and dire political situation, especially today. this is, however, a simplistic perception rezensionen  book reviews w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 17 132 | aseas 12(1) book review: werning, r. & schwieger, j. (2019). handbuch philippinen. that sometimes makes one forget that the country has more to offer such as its rich history, people, and traditions upheld since colonial times. although the editors did a great job in showing the diversity of personal stories they failed to show the differences in perspectives between filipin@s living in the philippines and those living abroad. a more in-depth overview of the lives of the diaspora communities is missing. compared to the other chapters, such as regional studies & history or culture, the book’s section on politics & economics is the most extensive one, despite being overwhelmingly written by the sociologist niklas reese, the former co-editor of the handbook, and werning. it is chronologically and thematically well-structured, starting with an overview of the country’s contemporary political and justice system as well as its human rights situation. the substantial focus on the marcos era and the post-dictatorship regimes are also worth noting, with a sharp and critical analysis of successive governments’ policies that have in effect paved the way towards duterte’s rise to power. werning describes dutertismo as an embodiment of the persona of davao city’s “punisher”, in which he metaphorically interprets his political style as a horse gone berserk in a horseracing event, connecting his behavior to his disrupting the mainstream leadership styles of his predecessors. though this description does not capture the politics of the strongman in its entirety, considering that his government has also embraced policies of previous administrations, the term can, nevertheless, be further expounded by referring to nicole curato’s (2017) characterization of dutertismo as something that “disrupts and perpetuates the philippines’ elite democracy, marked by its stark inequalities in political power […]. his rise to power forces a rethinking of […] what it means to be a democratic country amidst the global crisis of liberal democracy, and what freedoms citizens are willing to sacrifice” (p. 2). the section is up-to-date indeed as it highlights the latest key events since duterte’s rise to power, from the failure of the peace talks with the maoist left, to the conflict in marawi and the subsequent imposition of martial law in mindanao, to the ousting of the chief justice, and the prospects of the 2019 midterm elections, highlighting the involvement of traditional politicians and ruling dynasties. the human rights situation under the current administration deserves particular emphasis, and the book did justice to this by highlighting the fact that duterte’s “war on drugs” is a mass-murder campaign that has taken the lives of over 20,000 people, involving systematic state coordination evocative of ethnic cleansing campaigns. this leads to the suggestion that the current government is perpetrating crimes against humanity. when it comes to addressing the forces that led to duterte’s ascent to the presidency, reese’s chapter on the middle class is worth noting and commending. the inclusion of a class dimension in analyzing philippine state and society deserves reiteration since this particular sector of society is seen as the key driver of determining the nation’s political prospects, as seen in the “people power” revolts that ousted presidents marcos and estrada as well as the movements behind duterte’s rise to power. this volatility of the middle class, as walden bello (2017) puts it, has made them both a force for democracy and a mass base for authoritarianism, citing historical accounts in both the global south and global north. on the topic of resistance against the current administration and the challenges facing social movements in the country, werning and reese’s dedication of two whole aseas 12(1) | 133 ralph chan & joshua makalintal chapters to the struggles of civil society gives an adequate analysis on the country’s vibrant progressive movement as well as the struggles of the philippine left, including its spirited and dark history. however, it misses mentioning key events such as the extrajudicial killings of students suspected of being drug dealers and the subsequent protest movements that arose and triggered fresh opposition against dutertismo. as mentioned, the handbuch is quite well updated, especially when it comes to recent political developments, but some references and statistics nevertheless remain outdated, in particular the section on the media, where the philippines’ notorious reputation as one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists is emphasized. but the crackdown against the free press has intensified under the duterte administration, with the targeting of the critical news site rappler as well as the arrest of its founder and journalist maria ressa (stevenson, 2019). in addition, duterte’s foreign policy, which is hardly mentioned in the book, is a huge gap, especially when it comes to his hostility towards international institutions as well as his diplomatic inaction towards the south china sea dispute. the illustration of the country’s various societal, political, economic, and cultural characteristics is indeed evident in the handbook. however, the fact that most chapters (62 out of 80) were written by europeans might lead to the questioning of the book’s potential orientalist perspective. but despite justified criticisms of a potential eurocentric bias in the book’s narrative, it still warrants some warm approval for highlighting a down-to-earth approach in analyzing philippine society, focusing on the grass roots level and in particular giving a voice to those at the margins. this deserves a read. ralph chan university of vienna, austria joshua makalintal university of innsbruck, austria  references bello, w. (2017). counterrevolution, the countryside and the middle classes: lessons from five countries. the journal of peasant studies, 45(1), 21-58. curato, n. (2017). we need to talk about rody. in n. curato (ed.), a duterte reader (pp. 1-36). quezon city: ateneo de manila university press. stevenson, a. (2019, march 28). maria ressa, journalist critical of duterte, is arrested again in philippines. the new york times. retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/28/business/media/mariaressa-arrested-philippines-rappler.html aseas 15(1) | 43 gender in academic journals: experience from indonesia ella prihatinia, b & wendy prajulia a bina nusantara university, indonesia; b university of western australia, australia received: 27 july 2021 / accepted: 27 may 2022 / published: 30 june 2022 ► prihatini, e., & prajuli, w. (2022). gender in academic journals: experience from indonesia. advances in southeast asian studies, 15(1), 43-59. the literature on the gender gap in political science and international relations (ir) has increased significantly in the last couple of decades. however, little is known about how male and female scholars are publishing their works in non-western-based ir journals. our study aims to unpack this by examining publications and authorship patterns in ir journals published in indonesia. the case study represents a non-english speaking country with pivotal roles in international politics and geopolitical aspects, particularly in the indo-pacific. indonesia is the world’s fourth most populous nation and the third largest democracy, located between the indian ocean and the china sea. the country is critical to regional stability and progress in southeast asia. indonesia also has over seventy ir departments in various universities nationwide, and one professional association that aims to support teaching and research on ir. we asked whether men always outnumber women in terms of publishing academic papers. what is the pattern of topics published? and are there any shared interests between the two sexes? using bibliographic data from seven ir journals published in indonesia between 2000 and 2019 (n = 783), this paper highlights some key similarities with previous studies in western societies. the findings suggest women produce fewer articles than men, and ‘gender homophily’ among men limits women’s leadership in scholarly publication. yet, men and women shared equal interest in topics such as ‘security’, ‘military’, and ‘governance’, indicating that gendered preferences may not always be the best evidence to suggest that ir is a masculine discipline. keywords: gender; bibliometric analysis; indonesia; international relations; publication; global south  introduction the gender gap in academia is a persistent global phenomenon, as fewer women work as lecturers and professors than would be expected given the relatively equal numbers of men and women as graduate students (aiston & fo, 2020; aiston & yang, 2017; breuning et al., 2018; knights & richards, 2003; monroe & chiu, 2010). this is, in particular, a continuing challenge for international relations (ir), a subfield of political science, where male academics dominate the professional ladder and academic publications (atchison, 2018; breuning, current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 68 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5518-2233 44 | aseas 15(1) gender in academic journals: experience from indonesia 2010; hancock et al., 2013; maliniak et al., 2008; østby et al., 2013; phull et al., 2019; timperley, 2013; williams et al., 2015). the literature on gender disparities in ir has increased significantly in the last couple of decades, especially the literature based on teaching, research, and international policy (trip) surveys of scholars in the united states (maliniak et al., 2008; maliniak & tierney, 2009), australia, new zealand (sharman & true, 2011; westendorf & strating, 2020) and 20 other countries, including some from asia (maliniak et al., 2012). moreover, prior studies available on gender, journal authorship, and citation suggest that discussions were dominated by the global north setting (breuning, 2010; breuning & sanders, 2007; evans & moulder, 2011; hancock et al., 2013; key & sumner, 2019; williams et al., 2015), leaving a vacuum of research about how women fare in ir in non-western countries. to date, there has not been a systematic investigation of how male and female scholars are publishing their works in non-western-based ir journals. incorporating the insights from quantitative and qualitative analyses, and using indonesia as a case study, we empirically investigated gender disparity in ir publications. this paper represents a non-english speaking country with pivotal roles in international politics and geopolitical aspects, particularly in the indo-pacific. indonesia is the world’s fourth most populous nation and the third largest democracy, located between the indian ocean and the china sea. the country is critical to regional stability and progress in southeast asia. it also has over seventy ir departments in various universities nationwide and one professional association that aims to support teaching and research. publishing often determines career advancement in academia. this measurement of achievement continues to play a central role in requirements for tenure and promotion (breuning, 2010) in almost all sorts of higher educational institutions. in particular, “peer-reviewed journal articles [. . .] are the coin of the realm when it comes to tenure and promotion” (maliniak et al., 2008, p. 131). the significance of publishing in peer-reviewed journals makes it important to understand the patterns of authorship and research themes, which will further explain the careers of women academics in countries including indonesia. by the time of this writing, the country has only ten professors in ir and one of them is female1. why are so few ir scholars obtaining full professorships in indonesia? one possible explanation for this lies in the publication aspect, which plays an important role in indonesia's higher education sector. hence, the current paper aims to examine how men and women fare in publishing ir scholarly works in indonesian journals. drawing on a bibliographic dataset, which consists of 783 published articles in seven indonesian ir journals accredited and listed highest in indonesia’s academic journal index, sinta (science and technology index), our study suggests that the number of publications by solo women is significantly lower (31.4%) than those by solo men (48.4%). this result is predictable as almost 60% of ir lecturers in indonesia are male (ristek dikti, 2020a). however, it is worth noting that the productivity gap is not as severe as in the us, where female authors comprise only 14% (1980–2007) and 19% of all published articles in the top 12 ir journals between 1 another female ir professor was inaugurated in november 2021 and she had been working as a lecturer for over 25 years (https://scholar.ui.ac.id/en/persons/evi-fitriani). https://scholar.ui.ac.id/en/persons/evi-fitriani aseas 15(1) | 45 ella prihatini & wendy prajuli 2004 and 2007 (maliniak et al., 2008). the data also indicates gender homophily in co-authored articles (men co-publishing with men, and women co-publishing with women), which is significantly high among men, limiting women’s leadership in scholarly publications. expanding from the literature on gender and keyword choices, our study contends that, compared to male scholars, female scholars are more likely to publish research with keywords such as ‘workers’, ‘migrant’, ‘gender’, and ‘environment’. on the other hand, male scholars tend to explore topics with keywords that include ‘defense’, ‘theory’, ‘crisis’, and ‘trade’. nevertheless, as both sexes are equally interested in examining ‘security’, ‘asia’, ‘military’, and ‘cooperation’, we argue that gendered preferences may not always be the best indicator to strengthen perceptions that suggest ir is a masculine discipline (kadera, 2013; tickner & sjoberg, 2011). following this introductory section, the rest of the article proceeds in five subsequent sections. the second section introduces the literature on gender and authorship in ir journals. the third section presents a case study of indonesia as the representation of the global south. in the fourth section, we discuss the data and methods used, while in the fifth section, we elaborate on the findings from both the quantitative and qualitative analyses. finally, we discuss key conclusions and directions for future research in understanding gendered publication in the ir field. literature review: gender and authorship in international relations journals political science is still very much a gendered institution (acker, 1992), and “far from ideal” as the experiences of women in the discipline differ significantly from those of men (tolleson-rinehart & carroll, 2006, p. 511), and cultural sexism has become an ordinary feature of women’s academic lives (savigny, 2017). prior studies have demonstrated women are underrepresented in this discipline in the us (maliniak et al., 2008; mitchell & hesli, 2013), europe (akhtar et al., 2005; bates & savigny, 2015; bonjour et al., 2016), the uk (bates et al., 2012; bennie & topf, 2003; knights & richards, 2003), new zealand (curtin, 2013; timperley, 2013), and japan (steele, 2016). globally, women comprise less than a third of political scientists (livingstonepeters, 2020), as reflected in almost all national political science associations’ (psa) memberships, except in tunisian and turkish psas, where women made up 57.5% and 53.6% of members, respectively (abu-laban et al., 2018). women are, therefore, working disproportionately in lower levels of the profession; for example, in the us, they made up 67% of non-tenure track positions and merely 18% of full professors (american political science association [apsa], 2005). furthermore, women are scarcer in ir departments than they are in other fields of political science; one possible explanation for this relates to the masculinism embedded in ir and security professions (fotaki, 2013; sjoberg, 2008; tétreault, 2008). based on the trip survey of ir scholars in the united states in 2007, women comprise merely 14% of all full professors, and they “are still second-class citizens” within the profession with research differing from that of male scholars (maliniak et al., 2008, p. 123). a larger trip project, which involved 20 countries, five languages, 46 | aseas 15(1) gender in academic journals: experience from indonesia and nearly 3,500 respondents, corroborates this assertion, highlighting that women’s underrepresentation in teaching and research areas of ir is, in fact, a global phenomenon. similarly, indonesia experiences the underrepresentation of women at the senior level; this raises the question of what factors contribute to this disparity. a study by apsa (2005) suggested that women’s lack of representation in political science is explained by four obstacles: • the ‘leaking pipeline’ of women exiting the profession after undergraduate and graduate programs, dropping out from doctoral programs or pursuing an alternative career outside academia; • the ‘dual burden’ of family and tenure track responsibilities; • the ‘institutional climate’ that all too frequently remains inhospitable to women; and • the ‘culture of research’ in the discipline that often undermines topics related to women’s issues. the final factor significantly hinders the ability of women to advance their careers, since publishing is often the key to career advancement in academia (weisshaar, 2017). an observation of 2,055 dissertations in political science published between 2000 and 2013 found that topics disproportionately written by women include race, healthcare, narrative and discourse, and branches of government (key & sumner, 2019). on the other hand, men dominated the ‘big’ topics in political science: voting, campaigns, and interstate war. the trend continues to shape the gendered publication as topics favored by women tend to appear at low rates in three top political science journals: american political science review, american journal of political science, and journal of politics. breuning’s (2010) study on the literature of international studies highlights that women’s presence in prestigious ir journals lags substantially behind their presence in the discipline. she measures gender parity in publishing as women publishing in proportion to their membership in the discipline. for example, out of the eight ir prominent journals observed, international studies review between 2004 and 2008 performed the best with 85% of parity, while international studies quarterly between 1999 and 2003 only showed a parity of 53%. the productivity gap further reflects how women are systematically less cited than men even after controlling numerous variables, including the year of publication, methodology, tenure status, and institutional affiliation (maliniak et al., 2013). by looking at more than 3,000 articles published between 1980 and 2006 in 12 influential peer-reviewed ir journals, maliniak et al. (2013) found that articles authored by men garnered an average of 4.8 more citations than those authored by women. a couple of factors help in explaining this gender citation gap. firstly, women cite themselves less than men. male-authored articles have 0.4 self-cites on average, while articles authored by one woman self-cite 0.25 articles (maliniak et al., 2013). the second explanation suggests ir scholars tend to cite along gender lines, as men cite male-authored articles more than female-authored articles, and vice versa (dion & mitchell, 2020). this ‘homophily effect’, therefore, could account for the gender aseas 15(1) | 47 ella prihatini & wendy prajuli gap in citations since the number of men in the field is significantly higher than that of women. the disparity in publication productivity and the citation gap combined are two pivotal aspects that make women less successful in climbing the academic ladder (sjoberg, 2008; teele & thelen, 2017). women and ir in indonesia like in many countries, ir in indonesia is a subfield of political science and is often a department in faculties of social sciences or humanities. we sought to identify universities that offer ir courses from the indonesian association for international relations (asosiasi ilmu hubungan internasional indonesia) and the directorate general of higher education of the ministry of education and culture of the republic of indonesia (ditjen dikti). these two sources provided a list of universities and the details on the establishment, faculty members, and lecturer-student ratio. an ir program was first offered by the national university (universitas nasional) in 1949. the field has then expanded, with a total of 73 universities across the country offering ir programs to date (aihii, 2022a). in line with this growth is the effort both by academics and universities to publish scientific research in scholarly journals. as of the time of writing, there are 27 academic journals run by ir departments in various indonesian universities. in terms of the composition of the lecturers, a smaller gender gap exists in the indonesian context compared to other countries, with women comprising nearly 41% of all registered lecturers (see table 1). regarding educational attainment, however, more men than women have doctoral degrees. this could have serious implications because the professional ladder in indonesian universities is strongly influenced by educational level. this gap partly serves as an explanation as to why indonesia has only a few ir professors. the requireements to become a full professor in indonesia consist of a doctoral degree, reputable international publications, and at least 10 years of teaching experience. however, the last condition can be waived if the person has an outstanding performance in publishing scholarly articles in top journals indexed in scopus. the publication requirement often becomes the biggest hurdle for academics to get a full professorship. some academics blame the workloads that heavily focus on teaching rather than research. as a result, in 2009, indonesian ir scholars launched aihii to provide support systems for themselves. from the aihii website (www.aihii.or.id), the organization claims it has 80 registered members (72% male and 28% female). the gender number of lecturers (%) educational attainment (in %) phd master’s degree bachelor’s degree male 496 (59.05) 11.17 82.46 3.33 female 344 (40.94) 7.98 85.80 3.52 table 1. registered ir lecturers: gender and level of education of the lecturers. (ristek dikti, 2020a) http://www.aihii.or.id 48 | aseas 15(1) gender in academic journals: experience from indonesia domination of men in this organization can also be seen in the current committee (2020–2023) members of whom only 36% are female. data and methods this study aims to examine the patterns of gendered authorship within peer-reviewed ir journal articles in indonesia in the last two decades by analyzing seven journals. these journals were purposefully selected from 27 journals registered on aihii’s website (2022b). the selected articles are written in either indonesian or english. the authors are not limited to indonesian citizens, as some journals actively invite works by people affiliated with overseas institutions and universities. we limit our observation by only including journals that have been accredited and listed in sinta. the director-general of strengthening research and development, ministry of research technology and higher education of the republic of indonesia, initiated sinta in 2016 in an effort to measure the performance of researchers, institutions, and journals in indonesia (ristek dikti, 2020b). as a web-based research information system, sinta provides benchmarks and analysis, and identification of research strengths of each institution to develop collaborative partnerships. sinta has six tiers, which indicate the impact of the journal, with those coded as s1 referring to journals that are also indexed in scopus. as of april 2021, the journal of asean studies has been included in scopus, making it the first indonesian-based journal focusing on ir indexed in the database. this study also incorporated journals in the next tier, s2 (see table 2). all the journals selected in this study are published by universities. we accessed articles that are available online from the journals’ websites. this selection has some limitations, such as the exclusion of articles written in journals ranked lower in sinta. it also excludes works by indonesian authors published in international journals. however, this inclusion and exclusion strategy is in line with the aim of the study, which is to examine the gendered patterns in indonesian ir journals, representing a global south setting and the dissemination of knowledge in a non-western country. yet, it does not give a general picture of the journal title publisher editor’s gender year established 5-year citations number of articles global: jurnal politik internasional universitas indonesia male 1990 101 164 jurnal ilmiah hubungan internasional universitas katolik parahyangan female 1997 70 87 jurnal hubungan internasional universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta male 2004 124 149 global strategis universitas airlangga female 2007 68 200 andalas journal of international studies universitas andalas female 2012 43 79 journal of asean studies universitas bina nusantara male 2013 62 71 intermestic: journal of international studies universitas padjadjaran male 2016 39 33 table 2. list of indonesian ir journals observed. (authors’ compilation) aseas 15(1) | 49 ella prihatini & wendy prajuli publication situation in the global south. it acknowledges that other regions, such as latin america, africa, and other parts of asia, have different dynamics and contexts. in the next stage, we manually collected all the bibliographic information of the 783 articles published in seven journals from each journal’s year of establishment up to the end of 2019. we collected all articles from each journal’s website by searching all volumes available. the collected information includes the gender of the author(s), language used, title, abstract, and keywords. in cases where the articles were written in indonesian, we provide the english translation for the title, abstract, and keywords in order to make the analysis consistent. we used the online text-analysis tools textalyser and datawrapper to depict the detailed statistics of the bibliographic text and run visualizations. findings and discussion most findings presented in this section are descriptive, as the paper examines the patterns of how men and women are published in ir journals in indonesia. nevertheless, we intend to incorporate with these findings a discussion to explore the reasons behind the differences, and to compare the indonesian case with other countries in the world. the first pattern is productivity. did men always outnumber women in terms of publishing academic papers? if so, what is the trend in the years we observed? following that is collaboration, which we are interested in examining to determine whether men and women show significant differences in working as a team. did men tend to publish more collaborative papers than women? and what is the pattern of female authors working as a group? the next section deals with the use of english and indonesian in the published articles. we examine if men and women have different levels of preference in publishing in a foreign language and what is the trend in using english for both men and women. finally, and more importantly, we analyze what topics are discussed by male and female authors. here, we break down the preferences by observing the title and keywords used in each paper and ask: what topics do women mostly engage in? and are there any shared interests between the two sexes? productivity as previously discussed in the literature review, men and women published in ir journals with notable gaps in productivity (maliniak et al., 2008; østby et al., 2013; teele & thelen, 2017). the indonesian experience aligns with the global trend as solo male authorship has been the most common pattern (teele & thelen, 2017); the only exception was between 2009 and 2011 (see figure 1). interestingly, in 2002 the percentage of men and women as single authors was equally distributed, while collaborative papers were simply nonexistent. although ir departments have been established in 73 universities around the country, delivering study programs for more than 20 years, academic publication only started to flourish in 2012. the clearest indication of this development is the emergence of new journals. this development is due to the central government’s encouragement policy. since the mid-2000s, the indonesian government, especially 50 | aseas 15(1) gender in academic journals: experience from indonesia the directorate general of higher education (dikti), has encouraged indonesian academics to establish national academic journals, as well as to publish academic works in national and international journals (see law no. 14/2005 on teachers and lecturers and law no. 12/2012 on higher education). in 2012, to improve the publication of national journals, the dikti released a controversial circular letter that obliged undergraduates to publish their theses in national journals (dikti circular letter no. 152/e/t/2012). the reason behind the policy was to increase the number of publications by indonesian academics, which is lower compared to other southeast asian countries. the policy of encouragement, therefore, inspired various departments, including ir, to establish their own journals. in return, dikti generates national accreditation and ranking systems to improve the quality of the journals. collaboration scholarly publications in indonesia, particularly in the field of ir, are currently in the infancy stage. therefore, the enthusiasm to conduct research and publish research findings is fresh hope for the advancement of this field of social science in the future. nevertheless, the following graph suggests that the number of collaborative works remains relatively low. only one out of seven journals observed has the composition of collaborative articles exceeding 30%, while the overall average sits at 23%. the low number of collaborative works was caused by a couple of factors. firstly, interaction among ir scholars is still low. there are no programs or regulations, either from the government or universities, that support academic interactions and communications among scholars, such as fellowship programs. the lack of such support has created limited mobility for interaction and communication among scholars that could lead to ideas for writing collaborative papers. aihii holds an annual convention as a forum of interaction for ir scholars in indonesia. however, large workloads and inadequate funding limit the forum’s capacity to provide interaction and communication among ir scholars. hence, it is not easy for scholars to explore new ideas and find potential co-authors. another problem is the gap in competency among scholars. based on our observation, there figure 1. productivity by gender, 2000–2019. (authors’ compilation) aseas 15(1) | 51 ella prihatini & wendy prajuli is a ‘culture’ among indonesian academics where they tend to write papers not based on their expertise but on pragmatism. for example, a scholar who has expertise in military security might co-author a paper that discusses political-economy issues. consequently, such collaborative papers reveal expertise gaps among members of a team: some are competent on the issues, while others are not. lastly, due to a heavy workload involving mostly administrative tasks, authors often find it difficult to sit together and discuss their writing plans. this is a major problem among indonesian scholars in all fields of study, not only in political science and ir, and has become a national issue that is acknowledged by the minister of education (putra, 2020; sucahyo, 2018). our data also demonstrate that the age of the journal and the percentage of collaborative work are strongly correlated (see figure 2). younger journals have published more collaborative papers than the older ones; for example, global: jurnal politik internasional, the oldest journal, has the lowest percentage of collaborative papers at 12%. meanwhile, intermestic: journal of international studies, which was established in 2016, has 36% (male-led groups comprise 21%). meanwhile, the overall authorship pattern (table 3) indicates men tend to work and publish with other men, as the percentage of the all-male team is almost double that of the all-female team. this higher gender homophily among men limits figure 2. percentage of collaborative papers by journal. (authors’ compilation) authorship pattern % solo male 48.40 all male team 7.79 male-led collaboration 4.60 solo female 31.42 all female team 3.70 female-led collaboration 4.09 table 3. gendered authorship pattern. (authors’ compilation) 52 | aseas 15(1) gender in academic journals: experience from indonesia women’s opportunities for leadership in scholarly publications (dion & mitchell, 2020; teele & thelen, 2017). in addition, as we look deeper into the patterns of collaboration in each journal, it is evident that men are more inclined to collaborate with other men: 33% to 52% of collaborative papers were published by male-only authors. in contrast, all-female teams range from as low as 5 to 25% (see figure 3). hence, the data suggests women’s leadership fares differently in ir journals, with the strongest shown in the andalas journal of international studies and the weakest in the journal of asean studies. language all indonesian ir journals except the journal of asean studies accept manuscripts both in indonesian and english. however, the trend suggests that men are more likely than women to write in english (see figure 4). male contributors and male-led authors consistently published their articles in both english and indonesian, except in 2004 when all their articles were in indonesian. meanwhile, all papers by female contributors and female-led authors were in indonesian during 2001–2006 and in 2008. the graph indicates a gender gap in the level of preference in publishing in english. this lack of preference, then, contributes to the lower share of female authors in the journal of asean studies, the english-only journal. nevertheless, female authors are showing promising development as the percentage of english articles has tripled in the last decade. thus, the overall comparison shows that in some years both genders had published more papers in english than in indonesian. these trend lines reflect that more papers could be published in english in the future, allowing studies published in indonesian ir journals to have a wider readership, and potentially increase citations. figure 3. distribution of collaborative papers by journal. (authors’ compilation) aseas 15(1) | 53 ella prihatini & wendy prajuli topics titles the following table displays the top 10 words used in the titles of articles. both men and women have written mostly about ‘indonesia’ and ‘asean’. the latter is quite self-explanatory as the country is one of the major players in the region. it was also evident that both genders are equally interested in observing ‘china’ as a dominant power in asia. they also shared great interest in the study of ‘security’, ‘policy’, ‘diplomacy’, and ‘development’. aside from the similarities in interests, women used words such as ‘environmental’, ‘women’, ‘human’, and ‘japan’ significantly more than men in their article titles. figure 4. percentage of papers in english and indonesian (2000–2019). (authors’ compilation) rank men women words % words % 1 indonesia 2.1 indonesia 2.4 2 policy 1.6 international 1.3 3 security, asean 1.3 asean 1.2 4 international, china 1.2 policy, security 1.1 5 economic, indonesian 1.1 china, diplomacy 1 6 relations, foreign 1 foreign, south, indonesian 0.9 7 global 0.9 development, role, cooperation, women 0.8 8 south, diplomacy, asia 0.8 government, countries, asia 0.7 9 development, conflict, maritime 0.7 relations, economic, japan 0.6 10 crisis, southeast, political, analysis 0.6 conflict, challenges, human, perspective, environmental, issues, states, united, chinese 0.5 table 4. top 10 words used on title by gender. (authors’ compilation) 54 | aseas 15(1) gender in academic journals: experience from indonesia this finding from indonesia is in line with studies in the us and other western societies, where issues related to women and the environment seem to be less attractive for male authors to engage in (key & sumner, 2019). women tend to write less about ‘maritime’ than men, indicating the interest gap between the two sexes. keywords in order to further scrutinize the interest gaps between men and women in their scientific writings, we analyzed the keywords from each paper published. we then plotted the words with the point disparities shown in figure 5. the prevalence of keywords used by female authors is presented in red dots, while those of the male authors are in blue. topics in which women are strongly dominating include ‘public’, ‘rights’, ‘culture’, ‘japan’, ‘gender’, ‘women’, ‘people’, ‘environmental’, ‘trafficking’, and ‘workers’. the disparity between men and women in these subjects is in a range between 0.5% and 0.6%. also used more frequently by women authors, and yet with less disparity, are keywords such as ‘migrant’, ‘identity’, ‘migration’, ‘social’, and ‘cultural’. meanwhile, male authors are by far more interested than females in writing on topics such as ‘global’, ‘defence’, ‘theory’, ‘crisis’, and ‘trade’, with the gap ranging from 0.4% up to 0.9%. furthermore, although both sexes shared an interest in writing on ‘terrorism’, ‘democracy’, ‘strategy’, and ‘conflict’, the prevalence of men covering these issues is slightly higher (0.1% to 0.3%). one important takeaway from this is how men and women are covering some topics with the same level of prevalence. ‘security’ comprises 2.1% of all keywords from both camps, suggesting men and women are equally passionate about exploring aspects relevant to security. this is a contrast to the findings of others that suggest men are more likely to write about security issues rather than women (maliniak et al, 2008). likewise, the gender gap also does not exist for topics like ‘asia’, ‘military’, ‘cooperation’, and ‘governance’. these results further indicate that scholars in indonesia have an inward-looking perspective. this is not surprising because indonesia has long been known as an inward-looking country in many aspects: economy, security, and foreign policy (arif & kurniawan, 2017; myint, 1984; scott, 2019). hence, papers that discuss international politics are influenced by proximity factors, with asia, asean, and china being the most frequently discussed topics. lastly, security, in the broadest sense, continues to be the most attractive topic for indonesian scholars. for the male scholars, security is possibly related to realism, because we can see from the chart that men frequently use the keyword ‘realism’ more than women. this follows the global trend that realism is the most attractive paradigm for male scholars (maliniak et al., 2008). conclusion as presented in this article, the data from indonesia offers an interesting insight into the nature of gendered authorship in a global south context. some of the findings corroborate previous studies that highlight the productivity gap between male and female ir scholars (hancock et al., 2013). however, the gap is not as severe as in the aseas 15(1) | 55 ella prihatini & wendy prajuli figure 5. prevalence of keywords by gender. (authors’ compilation) 56 | aseas 15(1) gender in academic journals: experience from indonesia us, where female authors comprise only 14% of all published articles in 12 top ir journals between 1980 and 2007 (maliniak et al., 2008). another similarity is research interests that tend to divide men and women into so-called masculine and feminine topics (key & sumner, 2019). women dominate conversations that include keywords such as ‘culture’, ‘gender’, ‘environmental’, ‘trafficking’, and ‘workers’. on the other hand, male authors are by far more interested in writing on topics with keywords such as ‘theory’, ‘crisis’, and ‘trade’ than female authors. however, it is worth noting that there is no gender gap for topics such as ‘security’, ‘military’, and ‘governance’. this finding offers little support to a previous study that suggested that men are more likely than women to write about security issues in an international context (maliniak et al, 2008). research on these three issues seems to be a shared interest between both sexes of ir scholars in indonesia. therefore, we argued that gendered preferences may not always be the best evidence to suggest that ir is dominated by men (kadera, 2013; tickner & sjoberg, 2011), at least not according to the experience of indonesian ir scholars. some limitations to this study need to be acknowledged. one caveat is that the study focuses only on gendered authorship in academic journals. future research should consider analysing textbooks and ir curricula in indonesia and other developing countries. it will also be interesting to observe the citation gap between male and female authors in the global south setting. despite the current limitations, this study contributes to an understanding of how gendered authorship takes place in a non-western setting. more research is needed to unpack the connection between research and foreign policy. does research influence foreign policymaking, or does it work the other way around? which foreign policy dictates the themes, narratives, and scientific conversations?  references abu-laban, y., sawer, m., & st-laurent, m. 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(2015). gender and journal authorship: an assessment of articles published by women in three top british political science and international relations journals. european political science, 14, 116-130. about the authors ella prihatini teaches international relations at bina nusantara (binus) university, jakarta, indonesia. she received her phd in political science and international relations from the university of western australia (uwa). her research interests focus on women’s political participation, digital diplomacy, comparative studies, and electoral politics in indonesia. she also serves as an honorary research fellow at the centre for muslim states and societies (cmss), university of western australia (uwa), perth. ► contact: ella.prihatini@binus.edu mailto:ella.prihatini@binus.edu aseas 15(1) | 59 ella prihatini & wendy prajuli wendy andhika prajuli is a lecturer at the department of international relations, bina nusantara (binus) university, jakarta. currently, he is pursuing his ph.d. at the department of southeast asian studies, humboldt university, berlin. ► contact: wprajuli@binus.ac.id disclosure the authors declare no conflict of interest. mailto:wprajuli@binus.ac.id aseas 15(1) | 133 book review: rafael, v. l. (2022). the sovereign trickster: death and laughter in the age of duterte. duke university press. isbn 978-14-7801-779-0. 173 pages. william n. holdena a university of calgary, canada received: 6 may 2022 / accepted: 14 june 2022 / published: 30 june 2022 ► holden, w. n. (2022). book review: rafael, v. l. (2022). the sovereign trickster: death and laughter in the age of duterte. advances in southeast asian studies, 15(1), 133-137. since his 2016 election, and the commencement of the war on drugs (a campaign waged through extrajudicial killings), philippine president rodrigo duterte has become a global sensation. winn (2019) declared the war on drugs to be “among the bloodiest massacres in recent southeast asian history” (p. 25) and a phenomenon “racking up a body count seldom seen outside large-scale land battles” (p. 128). among many outside the philippines, the duterte phenomenon is poorly understood and is another example of how, according to mishra (2017), “unable to discern a rational design in worldwide mayhem, many intellectuals seem as lost as politicians today” (p. 39). rafael explains the causes of duterte’s war on drugs as opposed to simply decrying it as an act of savagery. in rafael’s book there are no normatively charged statements, such as winn’s 2019 declaration “the philippines is run by an elected leader with the bloodlust and dangerous unpredictability of a dictator” (p. xvi), or miller’s 2018 description of the war on drugs as a “daily bloodbath splashed across the headlines” (p. 3). as rafael states at the outset of the book, “i try to recast duterte from the unforgiving authoritarian and over-masculinized figure that many see him as into a more complex, fragile, and ambiguous character” (p. 5). rafael’s explanation of duterte’s rise, acquisition, and consolidation of power is useful for philippine scholars as well as those interested in the global growth of authoritarianism; as mishra (2017) states, “authoritarian leaders, anti-democratic backlashes and right-wing extremism define the politics of austria, france and the united states as well as india, israel, thailand, the philippines and turkey” (p. 9). rafael attempts to explain the duterte regime, and the drug war, by looking at the relationship between life and death under duterte. rafael does this by using the concepts of biopower (power over life) developed by foucault (2010), and necropower (power to kill) developed by mbembe (2003). consequently, the book’s theme is, “what is the relationship between life and death under duterte” (p. 3)? this “thematic thread”, as rafael describes it, runs as the red thread connecting all chapters (p. 3). rafael continually discusses how the duterte regime book reviews w w w .s ea s. at 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 69 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3929 -3704 134 | aseas 15(1) book review: rafael, v. l. (2022). the sovereign trickster. acts to have power over life and to, simultaneously, exert its power to kill. the book consists of an introduction, five chapters, and a conclusion. between the chapters are a series of short essays, which rafael calls ‘sketches’, dealing with topics related to the book’s theme. rafael cautions the book “is far from being a definitive history of the age of duterte” (p. 4). in terms of methods, the book is based on an extensive, thorough examination of secondary sources. there are no fieldwork interviews, such as those conducted by warburg (2017). this may appear to be a weakness, but conducting fieldwork research on the war on drugs is dangerous for both the researcher and participants (holden, 2021). also, the book was published six years into the duterte regime, and, by this time, an extensive body of literature had been published on duterte’s government, which rafael effectively utilizes. rafael begins by discussing the historical conditions facilitating duterte. throughout philippine history, elections have enabled the proliferation of armed vigilantes and death squads to coerce political rivals. according to rafael, “death squads, vigilantes, and paramilitary volunteers of all sorts have long been an integral, though disavowed, feature of the state” (p. 16). while the 1986 people power protests may have ended the marcos dictatorship, many of its institutions remained in place and succeeding administrations resorted to extrajudicial killings of criminals, leftists, journalists, activists, and muslim secessionists. rafael discusses duterte’s background as mayor of davao city on mindanao. in 1986, as corazon aquino replaced marcos, aquino replaced all governors and mayors, and duterte, a prosecutor, was appointed vice mayor and officer in charge of davao city. in 1988, duterte was elected mayor – a position he held, subject to term limits, until elected president in 2016. while mayor, duterte incorporated elements of both anti-communist vigilantes and former new people’s army members into his regime, creating the davao death squad, which mercilessly dealt with drug personalities (people using or selling drugs) and petty criminals, while earning duterte the nickname ‘the punisher’. to rafael, duterte’s time in davao gave him a hobbesian worldview, where life is in a state of “perpetual civil war” (p. 58). “for duterte”, wrote rafael, “justice means revenge. it is about the right to seek satisfaction for an injury” (p. 58). in duterte’s worldview, human rights are an abstract western imposition infringing on philippine sovereignty. following kusaka (2017a, 2017b, 2020), rafael uses the concept of moral politics to explain the duterte regime and the war on drugs. starting with fidel ramos’ presidency (1992-1998), successive philippine governments have been committed to neoliberalism – a paradigm eschewing income and wealth redistribution (holden, 2021). with neoliberal doctrine preventing income and wealth redistribution, society is differentiated into ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ citizens. the former are hard working, decent, upright people engaged in “contractual service jobs such as overseas work, tourism, construction, and call centers”; the latter are “drunks, drug addicts, or criminals, [and] they are liable to be ostracized, arrested, jailed, and in some cases, killed” (p. 31). to rafael, this demonstrates the stark difference between biopolitics (the politics of life) and necropolitics (the politics of death) and the “biopolitics of neoliberalism thus requires a necropolitics of moral cleansing” (p. 31). moral politics is an effective strategy for duterte’s strongest supporters, members of the aspirational middle class. these people want to move up socially while fearing being forced aseas 15(1) | 135 william n. holden to move down. the drug war assures these people something is being done and it “assuages the fears of precarity and displacement among his supporters” (p. 82). rafael discusses duterte’s scientifically unfounded views of methamphetamine (hart, 2014, 2021), which regards methamphetamine “as thoroughly destructive, driving users into acts of extreme violence” (p. 67). in duterte’s mind, methamphetamine users “have no qualms about raping children and killing innocent people”, and consequently “they cannot be considered human, let alone claim to have any rights” (p. 67). rafael explains an important component of duterte’s contempt for drug users, which is his resentment of their enjoyment of drugs (known in french as jouissance). to duterte, drug users enjoy something illicitly and he wants to stop this illicit enjoyment by destroying them. this exemplifies how “drug policy”, to proudfoot (2019), “revolves around a concern with the jouissance of others” (p. 223). rafael examines how the war on drugs resembles a counterinsurgency campaign. this is a point made by linnemann (2016) who wrote, “counternarcoterror projects are best understood as counterinsurgency projects, aiming to pacify certain territories and populations” (p. 186). rafael discusses how, in 2016, the philippine national police issued command memorandum circular number 16 calling for “a ‘drug clearing policy’ entailing the ‘neutralization’ and ‘negation’ of ‘drug personalities nationwide’” (p. 68). neutralization is a term frequently used in counterinsurgency and is a euphemism for killing (holden, 2009; mccoy, 2009). by discussing drug personalities as those needing to be neutralized, rafael demonstrates how the war on drugs is conducted as a counterinsurgency campaign. “in duterte’s philippines”, writes rafael, “the drug addict currently occupies the position of the most dangerous insurgent” (p. 70). rafael provides an intellectual discussion of one of the drug war’s most notorious aspects – the public disposal of victims’ bodies after being killed either by the police (in ‘buy bust’ operations) or by unknown killers. rafael examines foucault’s concept of punishment, and the importance of marking the body of the condemned to demonstrate the power of the sovereign (foucault, 1975). to rafael, when victims’ bodies are publicly disposed of they constitute “gruesome reminders of their putative crime” and “fearsome signs of the sovereign’s power” (p. 72). this demonstrates what mccoy (2017) calls “performative violence” with “scattered corpses written upon and read as virtual political texts” (p. 517). when bodies are disposed of in this manner and then photographed by the night crawlers (a group of photojournalists documenting the war on drugs), they become “a stage to perform the basis of the president’s authority” (p. 111), or what mccoy (2009) calls “a proscenium of psychological terror” (p. 407). the police, by leaving bodies behind to be photographed, are demonstrating “the fearsome power of the state delivering a kind of justice as cruel as it [is] inescapable” (p. 127). rafael also points out how the photojournalists publicizing the killings have also pushed back against the drug war by turning “the nightly occurrence of violence into a narrative of injustice meant to indict the powerful” (p. 120), and this has directed global, negative attention to duterte’s regime. intimately related to the public disposal of bodies is the republic’s weak legal system “where courts are backed up, and where judges, as well as the police, are badly paid” (p. 75). by forgoing “the uncertain, and time-consuming process of court trials,” extrajudicial killings provide swift, visible, and unassailable punishment (p. 75). to rafael, extrajudicial killings are 136 | aseas 15(1) book review: rafael, v. l. (2022). the sovereign trickster. sold to the public as a remedy for the weak legal system, normalizing mass murder (especially of the poor), foregrounding fear as a governance technique. in the final chapter, rafael examines urban poor support for the war on drugs even though the vast majority of those killed are from the urban poor. despite mixed feelings regarding the killings, writes rafael, the drug war “continues to enjoy widespread approval, especially among the poor” (p. 140). rafael addresses duterte’s popularity in urban poor communities by discussing how their tight quarters cause people to live in “a community of intimacy” (p. 136). this forces people to get along, but when people engage in antisocial behavior, such as abusing drugs, they threaten this community of intimacy. these disruptors are then identified for execution and killed in what rafael describes as “a kind of regenerative violence necessary for the removal of the undeserving who endanger community” (p. 139). rafael refers to this process of removing disruptive community members as “autoimmunity” (p. 139). when a disruptor is killed, their death confirms their lack of belonging and means they no longer threaten community safety. in conclusion, the book provides a detailed, intellectual, historically-grounded explanation of the duterte regime and its war on drugs. the book ends on a pessimistic note as rafael writes, “with duterte’s scheduled exit in 2022, the drug war, and its authoritarian appeal, will not end but will most likely continue by other means and through other figures” (p. 142). elements of duterte’s governing style, which some have described as ‘dutertismo’, will “continue to be emulated by his followers” (p. 4).  references foucault, m. (1975). discipline and punish: the birth of the prison (trans. a. sheridan). vintage. foucault, m. (2010). the birth of biopolitics: lectures at the college de france, 1976-1976 (trans. g. burchell). picador. hart, c. l. (2014). high price: a neuroscientist’s journey of self-discovery that challenges everything you know about drugs and society. harper perennial. hart, c. l (2021). drug use for grown ups: chasing liberty in the land of fear. penguin press. holden, w. n. (2009). ashes from the phoenix: state terrorism and the party-list groups in the philippines. contemporary politics, 15(4), 377-393. holden, w. n. (2021). president rodrigo duterte and the war on drugs: fear and loathing in the philippines. lexington books. kusaka, w. (2017a). bandit grabbed the state: duterte’s moral politics. philippine sociological review, 65, 49-75. kusaka, w. (2017b). moral politics in the philippines: inequality, democracy, and the urban poor. kyoto university press. kusaka, w. (2020). disaster, discipline, drugs and duterte: emergence of new moral subjectivities in post-yolanda leyte. in k. seki (ed.), ethnographies of development and globalization in the philippines: emergent socialities and the governing of precarity (pp. 71-97). routledge. linnemann, t. (2016). meth wars: police, media, power. new york university press. mbembe, a. (2003). necropolitics. public culture, 15(1), 11-40. mccoy, a. w. (2009). policing america’s empire: the united states, the philippines, and the rise of the surveillance state. university of wisconsin press. aseas 15(1) | 137 william n. holden mccoy, a. w. (2017). philippine populism: local violence and global context in the rise of a filipino strongman. surveillance & society, 15(3/4), 514-522. miller, j. (2018). rodrigo duterte: fire and fury in the philippines. scribe. mishra, p. (2017). age of anger: a history of the present. farrar, straus & giroux. proudfoot, j. (2019). the libidinal economy of revanchism: illicit drugs, harm reduction, and the problem of enjoyment. progress in human geography, 43(2), 214-234. warburg, a. b. (2017). policing in the philippine ‘war on drugs’: (in)security, morality and order in bagong silang. master’s thesis, aarhus university, denmark. winn, p. (2019). hello, shadowlands: inside the meth fiefdoms, rebel hideouts, and bom-scarred party towns of southeast asia. icon books. about the author william n. holden is an associate professor at the department of geography, university of calgary, in calgary, alberta, canada. holden’s current research includes the war on drugs in the philippines. ► contact: wnholden@ucalgary.ca “dry feet for all”: flood management and chronic time in semarang, indonesia lukas ley ► ley, l. (2016). “dry feet for all”: flood management and chronic time in semarang, indonesia. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 9(1), 107-126. this article describes flood management in poor communities of semarang, a second-tier city on the north coast of central java, indonesia. using ethnographic material from participant observation and interviews, the article argues that flood management upholds an ecological status quo – a socioecological system that perpetuates the potential of crisis and structures of vulnerability. while poor residents have developed coping mechanisms, such community efforts follow the logic of maintaining a precarious minimum of safety. designed in 2009, dutch-indonesian anti-flood infrastructure (polder) is supposed to put an end to tidal flooding, locally called rob. as a short-term project, the polder promises to regulate water levels and improve the lives of local residents. while it wants to make flood control transparent and accountable to riverside communities, the project ultimately fails to escape the institutional logic of chronic crisis management. by investigating the temporality and politics of the polder project, this article aims at contributing empirical and theoretical insights to scholarship on socioecological conflicts and crisis. keywords: crisis; flood prevention; indonesia; social anthropology; urban political ecology  crisis used to be defined by its short-termness – requiring a decision on the spot, with no possibility of deferral, evasion, or repression. a crisis means we can, perhaps, suspend our usual rules and ethical standards because we must ‘act now!’ but something has happened on the way to the shelter. the bombs have been launched, but they are suspended overhead, allowing us to continue our lives under the shadow of destruction. (cazdyn, 2012, p. 3) introduction a polder is a hydrological system that controls water levels in a geographically bounded territory. in the netherlands, where polders were invented and are a common feature of urban landscapes, polders keep reclaimed land from being inundated. to that end, a polder is surrounded by dikes or embankments. undesired water can be controlled either by being run off through a sluice or by being pumped out. “a polder is a triumph of technology”, notes brett-crowther (1983) appreciatively. but making dutch polders has always been a political undertaking, too, since technical development was made possible through a simultaneous process of institutional development (schoubroeck, 2010). local councils usually oversee technical and social aspects of polders and therefore have aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 16 .1 -7 108 lukas ley  aseas 9(1) considerable power over territorial matters. a polder is a striking example of how societal change and technological development have shaped nature: by reclaiming land from the sea, polders are credited with creating the very foundation of daily routines and economic activities that make the netherlands one of the wealthiest countries in the world. like dams and other large-scale projects of modernity (kaika, 2006), polders demonstrate the dialectics between the production of nature and the production of cities – their mechanisms, form, and cadence. this article takes its cue from the observation that “for both the developed and the less-developed parts of the world, modernization is an ongoing project in which natures, cities, and people are woven together in an inseparable dialectic of creation and destruction” (kaika, 2006, p. 297). this vision of dialectic modernization, however, risks overlooking or entirely dismissing the specific arrangements made between actors that allow for the destructive potential of modernization to remain a driving and often unchallenged force. this article describes the development of a community-run polder under dutch supervision in semarang, the capital of central java, indonesia. twelve years ago, northeastern neighborhoods of this second-tier port city were chosen to become the pilot site of a relatively simple polder system designed by a dutch consultancy (in cooperation with indonesian public agencies) that is supposed to put an end to seasonal and tidal flooding. tidal highs regularly inundate the whole neighborhoods of north semarang (marfai & king, 2008), leaving puddles of toxic river water (rivers serve as sewer and drain at the same time) on roads and in people’s houses. the polder – an assembly of embankments, pumps, and a dam – is supposed to regulate influx and discharge of water in the densely populated area. notably, the polder was conceptualized as a means to alleviate and not remedy flooding: to buy the floodplain inhabitants time so that they could revitalize their neighborhood. according to its design, the polder will stop functioning in 15 years, in view of the exorbitant rate of land subsidence (10-15 cm/year) compounded by the projected sea level rise (1 cm/ year) (marfai & king, 2008, p. 95). despite the original purpose, i argue, the polder project resulted in reproducing the chronic ecological crisis faced by riverside residents. questioning the managerial, expert-driven approach to a deeply social and political problem, i also explore how the project is framed as a mere economic necessity. an ethnographic account of the polder project serves the purpose of situating the polder vis-à-vis a management of crisis that allows poor residents to continue their lives “under the shadow of destruction” (cazdyn, 2012, p. 3). in this chronic mode, tame public participation is encouraged, while real alternatives are suppressed. still, crisis elicits criticism – often expressed in frustration and despair – by those whose lives are continually put to the challenge. in fact, the polder project came to coexist with a specific, local critique of public projects. the management of crisis thus unfolds against a backdrop of muted critique, which never erupts onto the political stage. instead, arising conflicts come to be moderated by the local communities (and their representatives) themselves. my contribution raises several empirical and related theoretical questions: what are the kinds of conflicts that arise in sociopolitically marginalized and ecologically endangered areas? further, what role does the management of socioecological conflicts play in sustaining these structures? instead of creating the conditions for radical change, contesting ecological endangerment simply allows some individuals and col109flood management and chronic time in semarang, indonesia lectives to produce the conditions necessary to ‘endure’ situations of social instability and uncertainty. drawing on participant observation and interviews, i describe the daily challenge of tidal flooding in northern neighborhoods of the low-lying delta. marked by a history of political and economic marginalization, the north of semarang is a complex product of colonial town planning (cobban, 1988; coté, 2002, 2014) and water taming (mrázek, 2001), capitalist development, and international development projects. as a space that exists in the “margins of the state” (das & poole, 2004), local arrangements have played an important role in shaping (more or less respected) social norms that regulate, for example, land use, inheritance, and appropriate conduct. given the oppressive governing style of past regimes, conflicts between civil society groups and the state are a relatively new phenomenon in indonesia. my contribution, therefore, also attempts to build an understanding of conflicts around tidal flooding – a phenomenon expected to become a key challenge in the future (lassa, 2012). this contribution builds on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in semarang between 2014 and 2015. following moore (2005), i consider fieldwork as a discursive practice and a located labor process. in semarang, traversing multiple sites – poor neighborhoods called kampungs in indonesian, offices and boardrooms of municipal agencies and local governments, or public events – helped me appreciate the “cultural politics of location,” that is, the salience of scale and spatiality for the “micropractices of power” (moore, 2005, pp. 26-28). living in the kampung has further allowed me to observe, as a participant in daily kampung life, the rhythms and patterns of tidal flooding and infrastructural adaptation. like most ethnographic work, this article tries to tell a story and precedes from first-hand information to a certain level of abstraction. it, however, recognizes the influence of theoretical thinking on both analysis and methodology. thus, i provide an overview of relevant theory at the beginning. then, i provide insights into the everyday life and struggles of residents of the designated polder territory. i develop the affective contours of a ‘hard place’ where crisis is always just a moment away, due to lack of resources and unreliable infrastructure. the subsequent section argues that ‘natural’ events, like tidal highs, and progress are linked in the way that their breakdown in relations can be “built back up again by a different set of relations within the same system” (cazdyn, 2007, p. 649). as such, the section provides the necessary contextual background to understand the workings and effects of the polder project described in the next section. i show that despite initial widespread enthusiasm about the ‘bottom-up’ initiative, public frustration and a sense of urgency threatened to erode the democratic facade of the much-delayed polder project. a conflict between the city government and eviction-refusing settlers makes the project’s beneficiaries stand united behind the project, while unruly elements of society are blamed for standing in the way of progress. political ecology, crisis, and the “chronic present” by combining approaches to crisis from anthropology and political ecology, this section extends the understanding of crisis into the concept of “chronic time”. narotzky and besnier (2014) contend that “crisis refers to structural processes generally understood to be beyond the control of people but simultaneously expressing people’s breach of confidence in the elements that provided relative systemic stability and 110 lukas ley  aseas 9(1) reasonable expectations for the future” (p. s4). in other words, while crisis renders impossible the regular way of doing ordinary things, it is often triggered by mundane practices, such as subprime trading (roitman, 2013), and despite well-established facts; for example, that segregation and poverty make certain groups of people more vulnerable to disasters (scheper-hughes, 2005). the sheer force of moments of crisis erodes structures and sows apprehension. except in extreme situations, people therefore “innovate practices and institutions” when faced with crisis. such adjustments are supposed to take the edge off the effects of instability, thereby “enabling a sense of continuity over time”. returning to a normal way of doing things has its costs, however: such inventive strategies “may involve exclusionary practices that create and demonize an other, which becomes the target of violence in struggles over access to resources and respect” (narotzky & besnier, 2014, p. s8). this double bind of crisis pre-assumes two things: first, it occurs within socially structured lifeworlds and crisis assessments are observations, not objective truth. second, when dealing with crisis, actors draw on the resources of an environment that is “largely not of their own making but in which they have to live” (narotzky & besnier, 2014, p. s8). political ecology has provided important answers to the question of how environments are produced and what roles people, institutions, and the economy play in this process. political ecology is generally understood as a critical investigation of the production of nature and environment that aims at understanding “the ways in which (produced) natures and environments help shape social relations” (mann, 2009, p. 336). while studies in this vein have addressed human politics as an element in environmental change, i will focus on the (engineered) environment “as site and partial product of human politics” (mann, 2009, p. 337). crisis is a key theme in political ecology studies on environmental change. in fact, political ecology often assumes that crisis occurs as a result of capitalist reproduction. what is considered important in political ecology is that, in keeping with marxist readings of social change, individual crisis does not produce systemic change, while crisis (whether real or imagined) befalling macro-social systems does not necessarily translate into tangible changes at the individual level.1 i see a link between contemporary crisis management and the politics of “chronic time” laid out by cazdyn (2007, 2012). this perspective allows me to situate the experience of risk – in the form of tidal floods – and their prevention in the context of protracted socioecological vulnerability that affects individuals and communities in north semarang. if, as some anthropologists contend today, the “experience of chaos and permanent vital insecurity” (narotzky & besnier, 2014, p. s8) is the situation that defines the arena in which many people have to play, and uncertainty has become a common experience, how do social conflicts and infrastructural projects relate to this new temporality? by understanding the institution of chronic time, are we perhaps better analytically positioned to speak about individual crisis? in crisis, as i argued above, people come up with solutions. what kind of imagined futures or opportunities do crises produce? by thinking of crisis as built into chronic time rather than being an exception, i bring to light the specific types of agency that chronic time imposes on individuals living in “economies of abandonment” (povinelli, 2012). i also contrast other environmental imaginaries with the “new chronic”. 1 for a more poststructural thinking of crisis and conflict within political ecology, see rocheleau (2015). 111flood management and chronic time in semarang, indonesia when the solution to an environmental problem, like climate change, floods, or pollution, is reduced to the ‘meantime’ and to a ‘for now’, the category of environmental disorder is always in flux, never clearly articulated. for some individuals, the question remains: how does one determine risk, for example, posed by recurrent floods and economic stagnation? how does one plan the future? as cazdyn (2012) notes, “the future cannot be put off, crisis and disaster cannot be totally managed, life can never be safe, and we do not all experience time – and certainly not the political effects of time – in the same way” (p. 14). this poses the question of what role conflicts play with regard to crisis. much literature on socio-ecological conflicts sees the potential of rupture or defeat of structures of domination – as if conflict was intrinsically about social justice and change wrought from denouncing inequalities. here, crisis can beget creative and savvy alternatives to existing ideological frameworks and governmental structures. to be sure, conflict can produce a state similar or equal to crisis, in which relations break down and ultimately resettle in a new constellation. but that is not my point. after shedding primordialist stances and cultural essentialism (appadurai, 1996) – theoretical constructs seeing in cultural or ethnic difference the cause of conflict – anthropologists pioneered a critical reading of the complex historical, social, and economic processes involved in producing and escalating conflict. anthropological research has, ever since, allowed the unsettling of simplistic theories of conflict, ascribing blame often to the very policies and measures that aimed at reducing the environmental and social costs of industrialization and economic growth. similarly, i draw attention to the incremental construction of conflicts against a background of starkly uneven urban development (smith, 2008). in indonesia, where colonial and authoritarian regimes have left a strong imprint on nature and society alike, conflicts are never just environmental, spatial, or political. they are hybrid and interrelated symptoms of variously experienced “ecologies of fear” (davis, 1998) in which individuals cope with different degrees of socioecological vulnerability and hazard exposure (bankoff, 2003). by introducing the notion of the “new chronic” to this social-historical approach to conflicts, i wish to set off a discussion about the consolidation of temporality through socioecological interventions, such as anti-flooding infrastructure and the formalization of flood prevention. the consolidation of time in a chronic configuration here happens to the detriment of a specific urban other. the contours of a “hard place” thereupon, in the journey of time the sea retreated from the continent the mud was reborn as swamp and the swamp grew into a city . . . sticky air, dirty skies, stuffed gutters traffic jam nature has become savage, values being calculated in fixed sums! o my true cover. is there still hatta, dalam perjalanan masa laut menjauh dari benua lumpur menjelma menjadi rawa rawa pun tumbuh menjadi kota . . . udara pengap, langit kotor, saluran mampet, lalu lintas macet alam telah menjadi ganas, nilai-nilai dihitung dengan uang pas! o, hamparan kesetiaanku. masih adakah 112 lukas ley  aseas 9(1) djawahir muhammad (2011), from semarang surga yang hilang (semarang, a lost paradise)2 at a meeting between indonesian provincial agencies and a dutch consortium of ngos and technical consultants, i had the opportunity to speak with a member of an organization tasked with rehabilitating a sizeable stretch of coastal mangrove forest east of semarang. intrigued by the surging presence of dutch development projects in semarang, i asked her why her team had decided to work on the margins of greater semarang. her answer was straightforward: “the coast of semarang city is too hard for this kind of project.” it sounded logical: today, it is difficult to imagine semarang’s preindustrial coast ecologies being restored to life. industrialization turned semarang’s coast, formerly a space for aquaculture and paddies, into a frontier of urbanization and playground for investors – a saturated and densely populated space. the poldering of urban space – that is, embanking, damming, and hydraulically engineering the flow of local rivers – is taking the ‘hardening’ process of semarang’s littoral to the next level. while major rivers (kali semarang, kali bulu) once shaped the city’s littoral ecology,3 it is now oversewn by bio-technical assemblages that create a deeply polarized urban landscape (gandy, 2005). turning rivers into polders means cutting off their flow and preventing sedimentation in the estuary. the excerpt from djawahir muhammad’s poem cited at the outset of this section speaks to similar physical mutations of north semarang. in the locally famous poem, he describes the dawn of a coastal settlement in which people cohabit happily with the delta’s nature; a nature that is benevolent, malleable, and pregnant with possibilities. the passage of time goes hand in hand with change and ecological metamorphosis, until suddenly time and nature stop working for humans. having been enclosed and commodified in the wake of industrial capitalism, nature grows ‘savage’ and rebels. the north turns into an eternal hell. the poet4 specifically refers to poor residents whose lives are depicted as stagnating in a toxic mixture of air pollution and filthy flood water. a feeling pervades of being stuck “for the rest of time” in this lasting apocalyptic moment. the remainder of this section describes local discourses of being stuck and what being stuck looks and feels like from both quotidian and diachronic perspectives. as a way of making sense of the socioecological status quo, which is expressed as a repetition of the same ad infinitum, incidents of excess – like seepage, porosity, and 2 i want to express my gratitude to the poet for allowing me to cite his work. further, i would not have come across his writings if it had not been for my good friend wahyu. the full poem was published in membela semarang! by pustaka semarang 16. 3 presumably because of its many canals and rivers, the dutch called semarang venetië van java – the venice of java. 4 djawahir muhammad grew up in north semarang and calls himself a witness (saksi) of the area’s inhabitants’ plight. the light of full moons for all the urbanites and unemployed for the losers who lost hope for the urban citizens logged in tidal and river water for the rest of time? purnama cahaya bagi para urban dan pengangguran bagi orang-orang kalah yang kehilangan harapan bagi warga kota yang tergenang rob dan banjir sepanjang zaman? 113flood management and chronic time in semarang, indonesia abrasion – are interpreted as representing two things: the impossibility of restraining nature and the corrupt nature of state infrastructure projects. relying on first-hand experiences of residents and observations of the rhythms of everyday life, i try to capture the ‘savage nature’ of north semarang. i pay particular attention to two northern neighborhoods that belong to two different yet neighboring subdistricts (kelurahan) divided by a main road.5 these neighborhoods have developed in the “margins of the state” (das & poole, 2004). i do not mean to say that they are autonomous, because power barely manifested or has not been fully articulated here. rather, i hold that kampungs have been assiduously constituted by different regimes of power, both colonial and precolonial. today, the indonesian state efficiently relies on kampungs as partly self-governed housing projects for the indispensable workforce. by withdrawing from the scene of the kampung, it therefore makes its otherwise ubiquitous presence less felt (newberry, 2008). the neighborhoods continue to attract a significant number of migrants from rural areas of java looking for jobs in the harbor manufacturing industry. regardless of such influx, other residents have lived their whole life in these riverside kampungs, their families looking back on two generations of urban development and large-scale modernization projects. deni on rainy days, the humid kampung air can reek of sewage and wet debris, intensified by waste flushed into the banger river (banger means stinky in javanese) through polluted drainage capillaries. i sat many times with deni and his family in front of their riverside house. deni is married and has three children. his youngest son, putra, is a lively, constantly babbling boy and superhero fanatic. the family’s brick house is separated from the river by a narrow embankment road (jalan inspeksi) mainly used by pedestrians and motorcyclists. cars and trucks avoid it. alternatively, we would chat at deni’s food stand by the main street. here, loaded camions of the state-owned oil company pertamina and tourist buses would roar past us, while thirsty mosquitoes whirred around our heads. most of deni’s routines take place between the river and his food stand, which are connected by a paved alleyway (gang). he often contrasted the smallness of his everyday life to a past life rich with activities: “i used to be an english teacher and a tourist guide. now, i can barely remember english”. deni’s oldest son, who wishes to study abroad, once told me that many neighbors have already moved uptown (naik ke atas) to escape the floodplain and socially stigmatized area. economic success in semarang often translates into social and geographical ascension. if residents have the means, they prefer to leave their downstream residences behind. “too hot” and “too much flooding” are what i heard a few times. deni’s son deplored that the successful stopped caring about the floodplain kampungs, as if they wanted to excise this place from their identity and present. deni himself regularly complained about a lack of public commitment to improve water infrastructure in his subdistrict, and a dearth of public figures who might lead the way (tokoh masyarakat). getting worked up, he lamented that nobody stepped up for them, not even 5 the kelurahan is the lowest echelon of government administration in indonesia. it is headed (lurah) by a civil servant appointed directly by the municipal government. 114 lukas ley  aseas 9(1) the wealthy neighborhood chief (in whose flood-safe house i was renting a room). deni’s family especially worried about high tides during dry season months – the river bank (tanggul) was then barely standing the additional pressure of in-flowing water. at high tide, the banger river looks like it is on the verge of bursting. because the river water does not visibly flow, the river’s physical mutation is better approximated by the notion of gradual swelling. multiple times residents have informed the subdistrict government of the river bank’s obsolete state, but nothing had been done, according to deni. his house is almost flooded daily due to the river’s tidal expansion. in the meantime, they tried to stack bricks against the bank in hopes of increasing its stability. in semarang and many other javanese coastal cities struggling with increasing tidal highs and land subsidence, such flood events are called rob (see figure 1). a young resident of the area once told me that most residents welcomed daily floods for two reasons: first, their regularity allows to make reasonable predictions of flood risk, as people know what normal and abnormal river levels amount to. if rob is strong, for example, coincidental rainfall will assuredly cause rivers or canals to overflow. second, tidal floods provide rezeki, a term that can variably mean livelihood or luck. rob is the pulsating vein of everyday economic and social life. in the presence of flood risks, residents have made their lives, pursuing their own projects with more or less success. more importantly, however, floods are not regarded as impeding success. with the regularity of rob, the challenge becomes one of succeeding in life in an area whose economy is stagnant, whose infrastructure is outdated and porous, and whose built environment shrinks yearly. welcoming rob is then not the same as normalizing crisis and risk, but assuming a relatively stable place in society from which to try your best shot at social ascension or wait for better times. when i came by deni’s house a few months later, i saw the whole family sitting by the river. i stopped to talk as i noticed with curiosity that workers (tukang) were busy dredging the gutter (saluran) in front of the house. wider and deeper, the gutter now looked like a small water conduit with concrete edges. putra was absorbed in overseeing the works and ran around cheerfully in his spiderman pajamas. deni explained to me that they were carrying out kampung improvement work (kerja bakti) as they had received idr 16 million (ca. usd 1200) from the government for repairs. he added proudly that he had been elected substitute neighborhood head (wakil rw). repairs were deemed necessary because water in the gutter had been barely flowing. after the deepening, it could run more easily to the pumping station (lebih lancar sampai pompa air) from where it was pumped into the river, deni explained in a workmanlike manner. he leisurely snipped his cigarette stub into the river. we agreed, though, that they still had to increase their floors if they wanted to be out of rob’s reach. in fact, that was why they saved the brown soil from dredging the gutter in an adjacent roofed part of their house. deni’s daughter said smilingly that this free dirt (tanah uruk) will come in handy in the future. arief another daily fieldwork interlocutor of mine was arief. although not being native to the area of semarang, arief devoted much of his leisure time to improving his 115flood management and chronic time in semarang, indonesia figure 1. rob in front of deni’s house. (photo by author). neighborhood. “this is my turf (wewenang)”, he once told me laughingly, meaning a stretch of about hundred meters along the embankment. even before being elected as a neighborhood head (ketua rw) three years ago, arief felt deeply responsible for the cleanliness in his territory: he swept the street separating the river and his house daily, he cleared waste off the gutters manually, and he assigned space for garbage disposal. he attended most meetings at the neighborhood level and convened the neighbourhood heads (ketua rt) every month. arief ’s commitment to cleanliness, civil engagement, and honesty have produced tangible results in his eyes. he was convinced that his ‘turf ’ was the cleanest in the whole subdistrict. in fact, when the mayor announced an official visit shortly before ramadan, the subdistrict head (lurah) suggested a solemn inspection of arief ’s territory, which served as an example of successful local governance. his volunteer work often left arief exhausted to the point of passing out during conversations. when we attended neighborhood meetings together, arief was often the first to doze off. his unpaid neighborhood engagement also meant that he had to rely on his daytime job earnings – he made the minimum wage6 in a local baseball factory. his wife sold snacks and beverages in a makeshift canteen by the river. located on the river bank and about 1 m below street level, arief ’s house is literally flooded every second day. whenever i visited the family, the floor tiles were regularly inundated; chairs, benches, and dressers standing in a brownish liquid. if it was 6 the minimum wage was idr 1,685,000 per month in 2015 which equals usd 117. 116 lukas ley  aseas 9(1) midday, the adjacent diesel pump would be running to normalize the water level in the street gutter. during high tide, however, rob prevented them from pumping runoff water into the river, because it could not absorb it. “it makes no sense to pump out the water now as it would return just as quickly”, arief explained to me. this year, they were able to save enough money to raise the floors of their bedroom so that they would not have to sleep in a dark puddle. but the other rooms would have to wait. arief never seemed to be concerned about his socioeconomic status. instead of worrying about money, insurances, or material things, he valued above all being reliable and of use to his “citizens” (warga). “i don’t even have a motorbike. i prefer to take the public minibus (angkot) so i can chat with other passengers.” a few years ago, his unfailing engagement earned his community the cherished diesel pump which they run as often as possible. arief suggested a nonbinding monthly community tax (iuran) to pay for maintenance and operation expenses – a rule most of his constituents gladly complied with. for now, rob was “under control”, since they were taking water management in their own hands. when i asked him why he invested so much personal time and labor in a neighborhood organization, he answered: i tell my friends not to expect help [from the government]. poor people (orang tidak mampu) ask for help. help comes only once. but we work in the name of god (ibadah). our thinking has to be focused on the long term. in the past, we didn’t have our own pumps (pompanisasi) and everybody had to see for themselves (masing-masing harus bertahan). this type of self-government as a form of religiously justified labor is typical for indonesian kampungs. self-governed kampungs on the margins of urban centers can be traced back to colonial land governance (cobban, 1974), which strictly divided dutch property and native land. economically autonomous but politically marginalized, kampungs developed sociocultural mechanisms to compensate for the absence of welfare structures and public infrastructure. while the indonesian state has devised a number of bio-politically motivated schemes to improve living conditions in kampungs (kusno, 1998; silver, 2011), urban neighborhoods retain a certain degree of social autonomy. newberry (2008) described kampungs as community forms “reproduced through governance across various regimes but also through daily exchanges and support between inhabitants” (p. 241). the case of arief, however, underlines the tremendous role that personal labor plays in creating and maintaining a viable environment and working infrastructures. in a social-entrepreneurial spirit, arief has decided to take matters into his own hands. but in the absence of long-term public investment in the area, the rising tide itself becomes a barrier for sustaining his projects. like the urban economy, then, the river is unable to absorb the result of his work. at a certain point during my research, after news broke that the city government would expedite a delayed polder project by using municipal funds, arief ’s neighborhood was jubilant. there was a feeling of contentment and change in the air. the community was assured now that polder banger would become reality – sooner or later. they had made it through the rainy season without major flooding. at a neighborhood meeting presided by arief, which aimed to be ready for the mayor’s visit, the 117flood management and chronic time in semarang, indonesia lurah held a zealous appeal. of note is that the subdistrict head rarely attended such meetings, but, as i mentioned earlier, arief ’s community had shown exemplary commitment and willingness to cooperate with the local government. the community would play an important role in the mayor’s upcoming participation in their annual river cleaning event. concerning the mayor’s visit, our collective behavior has to reflect a clean banger river and local youth. . . . i want to show that the residents of this area care about waste, that’s where i’ll be pointing. sure, in the meantime, our drainage is still like this, but garbage makes rob look worse. .  .  . those are old habits but they have a strong impact. i want residents to look united (guyung) and motivated so that we come across as residents that are actually interested in making a better environment. the mayor told me that if he gets reelected, we will receive more help. this year, we got a lot of help already – 50 billion rupiah [ca. usd 3,470,000] for polder banger. the lurah’s speech reflects the importance of the large-scale intervention project for the subdistrict. although several other subdistricts would benefit from the antiflood project, he makes it sound as if they in particular had been rewarded with public investment in the area for changing their “habits”. on the day of the mayoral visit, arief had a stroke. at some point, his face became weirdly disfigured; one side of his mouth having dropped beyond redressal. strokes being rather common among middle-aged adults in indonesia, arief was immediately aware of his affliction, but regardless continued the inspection along with other public figures of his neighborhood. weeks after the incident, i accompanied him to a weekly check-up at the hospital. he had been diagnosed with a stroke due to exhaustion (kecapaian). despite admitting his extreme tiredness, he explained that he would continue to “serve the community so that his life would not be useless” (mengabdi supaya hidup saya tidak sia-sia). his exhaustion and sickness were therefore a case in point: financial assistance and infrastructural state projects would not change their dire situation. only by forming a self-sufficient pumping community and working hard could they face their life in poverty (melawan kemiskinan). while flooding is read as evidence of the system’s failure, it is also considered as a ‘normal’ crisis, texturing the expectations and future of riverside dwellers. maintaining the system is an endurable state and therefore demands minute attention to and care of infrastructure. but for deni, the infrastructure crisis of his neighborhood produces frustration, since the chronic present stifles his and his children’s ambitions. to close this section, i return to the dutch mangrove expert’s comment regarding semarang’s coastal infrastructure. on the face of it, her assessment of a solidified urban environment captures well the ‘hard’ reality of riverbank dwellers. but it is more complex than that. the hardness of infrastructure – as in concrete, built, developed – does not translate into certainties and safety from flooding. a feeling that could be approximated by being stuck ‘between a rock and a hard place’ arises when riverbanks are alternatively seeping or breaking. my interlocutors represented infrastructure as fragile and unreliable, while the subsiding ground drowns and swallows houses in ever-shortening intervals. they have two equally unsatisfying options: waiting for government projects and doing nothing in the meantime, which puts them at risk 118 lukas ley  aseas 9(1) of gradually losing their homes to the rising tide. or, actively inhabiting an environment that is at the mercy of tenuous and fragmentary interventions. the new polder was supposed to at least smooth out this predicament. “dry feet for all”: the polder project in 2009, the design of indonesia’s first democratically steered polder was cheerfully released at novotel semarang. shortly after, a polder board (sima7) was created by a memorandum of understanding and a mayoral decree (perwal) that made the dutch embassy and the municipal government of semarang primary partners in the project.8 the creation of an advisory board with civic representation followed the recommendations of a working group that consisted of indonesian state agencies and dutch water experts. the board is supposed to run the polder independently, that is, without interference from municipal actors. the idea was to imitate the model of autonomous, ‘democratic’ dutch water authorities that involve the community in both operation and maintenance of the polder system. the dutch cooperation partner suggested a catchy project slogan – “dry feet for all” – which suggested a socially inclusive solution to the flooding problem. the jakarta-based dutch consultant company witteveen & bos won the tender to provide the technical design of the polder. in short, the polder infrastructure was to consist of a low-budget ensemble of dams and dikes, five pumps, and a water retention basin. on the one hand, sediment dredging and transferring excess water to the nearby flood canal would have lowered the water level of banger river by approximately 1.7 m (witteveen & bos, 2014), restoring banger’s historical water volume. on the other hand, a dam positioned where the stream hits the tide and a dike along the northern edge of karang sayu promised to stop rob, as it would block out sea water from the system. banger river would have been reborn as banger polder. the local government asked the responsible engineers to fuse the new infrastructure as much as possible with the existing urban landscape, as the budget could not cover expensive resettlement plans. however, creating space for the pumping house did initially necessitate the eviction of residents. the land issue was resolved quietly. the second set of evictions, supposed to be carried out shortly after the pumping house had been built, however, was delayed by repeated disputes over land ownership and housing rights. in july 2014, the consultant company witteveen and bos deplored that despite commencement in 2010, “no, or very less progress has been achieved since november 2013” (witteveen & bos, 2014). along with other kampungs in eleven sub-districts, arief ’s and deni’s neighborhoods were supposed to benefit from the dutch-indonesian pilot project. by reduc7 sima is a compound word carrying the first syllable of the dutch board’s name and the second syllable of semarang. further, the term is reminiscent of shima, the female monarch of kalingga, a kingdom on the northern coast of central java. the queen is known for her truthfulness reflected by her introducing a law against thievery. 8 at the moment, the embassy still covers most administrative costs of sima, while it has not committed to any expenses for physical components of the polder. please note also that the group of indonesian and dutch actors involved in the project has undergone several changes. however, one dutch water authority, the hoogheemraadschap van schieland en de krimpenerwaard, has been an important institutional partner since the get-go and continues to be deeply involved in the project. 119flood management and chronic time in semarang, indonesia ing flooding – not by providing economic incentives or access to jobs – the area was expected to prosper wholesale. relieved of expenses for yearly renovations, residents were expected to use their income more adequately and towards economic betterment. a ‘democratic’ handling of the flooding issue did not entail a fair redistribution of resources and risk or equal access to urban services, but aimed at providing riverside kampung inhabitants with the environmental and infrastructural preconditions for improving their economic lot. this motif of ‘empowerment’ was further important in justifying taxation: the polder board aspires to financial autonomy in the near future, which would seal its independence from indonesian state budgets. using the term ‘contribution’ (iuran), which arguably emerged from a colonial context in which kampungs were legally autonomous (cobban, 1974) – the project designers operated from within local discourse to endow the project with communitarian sentiment. it also managed to create strong local legitimacy, while reinforcing local structures of leadership, as residential contributions are normally drawn (tarik) by elected neighborhood chiefs. according to the project design, residents were already used to paying iuran (bpp banger sima, 2012), assuming that all residents had the same interest in this. the second major goal of the project was to raise awareness: supposedly, riverside communities did not know the degree to which their daily “behaviors” impacted the delta’s drainage systems and urban ecology. as such, they needed to be educated about the negative effects of littering. for example, sima ran a campaign called budaya bersih (culture of clean) in most participating sub-districts that was supposed to reduce waste disposal into the banger river by informing residents about alternative ways of waste disposal. in short, securing the future of the kampung hinged on inducing different environmental practices on the part of riverside dwellers. while state intervention into water infrastructure in indonesia has often aimed at creating governable subjects (kooy & bakker, 2014), the polder project conjures a subject that wants to govern itself through culturally informed and local norms of conduct. while this suggests a critique of state-run development projects, it also relieves the municipal government of subsidies by devolving responsibility to the community. lastly, it redefines pollution as a disturbance of the river’s new urban function, which is mainly flood prevention, thereby externalizing accumulated environmental costs. many residents were ostensibly hopeful that the polder would improve the overall situation by substantially reducing flooding. though some residents felt uneasy about the fact that the former oppressor had been summoned for help, the dutch involvement was generally welcome. long before the completion of the polder infrastructure, the project showed positive effects: the area was regularly in the news and discussed in municipal meetings. the promised improvements attracted further investment, reflected in the emergence of multiple small kampung improvement initiatives, such as the ministry of public work’s program for community-based regulation of the environment of settlements (plpbk – program penataan lingkungan permukiman berbasis komunitas). the massive delay of the project was therefore highly controversial. at the time of writing, the polder has failed to fully materialize and completion lags three years behind. while a pumping house has been constructed at its northern edge, the main components of the polder system are still missing. the lonely pumping house haunts the original ambitious plan to get a grip on flooding. the edifice too is subject to land 120 lukas ley  aseas 9(1) subsidence and has started to sink. bringing the intervention to fruition ultimately required the clearance of settled land to make space for the retention basin. the formal owner of the land, the indonesian railways company (pt kereta api), claimed that it was not responsible for evicting the people living on the plot. the municipal government, which is leasing the land, however, insisted that the owner had to make sure the land was in constructible condition. an agreement was reached according to which the company had to carry out the evictions, offering a lump sum to the evictees. compensations did not take into account land ownership but only the surface actually occupied by the house. in return, the government slightly increased the lease it was paying the company. in an indirect way, the municipal government, then, forced the eviction via financial settlement. however, semarang’s city council is currently evaluating complaints from the residents in question that bemoan inappropriate financial compensation for losing both land and habitation (idr 250,000/m2), in case the retention area is built. basically, the residents are challenging the legitimacy of the company’s claim to land ownership, having produced evidence (in the form of a newspaper article) that suggests that title deeds were officially bequeathed to occupants by president suharto himself. nobody, even the complainants, thought that their appeal would stop the evictions, but their evidence raised doubts as to the eviction methods of the company. in fact, pt kereta api turned into an ‘enemy’ of the local people, while it was really the polder project that caused the trouble in the first place. this process is far from unique for indonesia. van voorst and hellmann (2015) described recent evictions of ‘illegal’ dwellers in jakarta that followed calls of ‘improvement’. after often oblique promises of recognition, governments and local residents arrange deals that are most often not beneficial for the majority. in fact, in what follows, i show how residents of the subdistrict came to prefer a rigorous and exclusionary handling of the land conflict. their claims in a sense echoed the discourse of the government which, as the democratic facade of the polder project began to crumble, resorts to criminalization in order to expedite the project completion. an apocalyptic floodplain i headed north in the afternoon, cycling on the recently raised embankment road (jalan inspeksi) along the banger river until i reached semarang’s subdistrict karang sayu. i had planned to spend some time at adin’s, who has been a local member of the polder board sima since 2010. being responsible for public relations, he promotes the project in other neighborhoods and represents residential interests. also, he is a locally known social activist with a vast local network. as usual, adin and i ended up talking about whatever came to our minds, while smoking too many clove cigarettes in his house. looking at the roughly plastered wall and bare floor, i was reminded that he had recently hired workers to raise his floors and heighten the walls. finishing touches would have to wait. his wife’s income was currently just enough to put food on the table, as his mainly voluntary activist work could not pay their bills. that day, he shared some thoughts on nature with me. he spoke about centuryold maps of semarang that, so he believed, showed the delta as it looked when the portuguese arrived in semarang. the shoreline was many kilometers south of to121flood management and chronic time in semarang, indonesia day’s ocean frontier (batasan laut). in the not so distant past, my research site must have risen from the javanese sea, i pictured. when adin was young, many fishponds (tambak) as well as mangrove forests (hutanan) separated his neighborhood and the ocean. he explained how these ‘natural’ structures protected the settlements from tidal waves. they were an integral part of a long gone “nature equilibrium” (keseimbangan alam). when settlers began occupying land north to the pengapon corridor, a process of informal urbanization was launched. people laid claim to unmapped land, privatizing it while also creating communities, of sorts, that had rules for conduct and self-imposed regulations. the dutch kept redrawing the ‘natural’ limits of the harbor which led to the gradual destruction of the protective mangrove belt. but nature cannot stay unbalanced forever, adin forewarned me. he considered tidal flooding as nature’s way of taking back stolen land: it is seeking to restore an equilibrium. unfortunately, this would cause disaster for humans. the more people lived in places out of synch with nature, the more people were in harm’s way. to solve this problem, he mused with a touch of irony, humans invented technology. since the dutch had been living with comparable flood risks for centuries, he concluded, indonesia’s best bet was therefore to adopt their technology. after chatting in his house, we went for a walk through the neighborhood and stopped to sit on the banger river embankment for a while. from here, we contemplated the neighborhood’s remaining fishponds, a stagnant body of water framed by elevated train tracks to the south, a permanently inundated road to the west and the relatively new toll road to the north. the riverbank we sat on, staring absentmindedly into the distance, separates the fishponds from the banger river. since 2009, when the city government officially released the design for polder banger, the fishponds have been slated to become a retention basin with a catchment surface of 9 ha.9 poor families built small houses along the fishpond or rented rooms in apartment blocks. “i have many friends in the settlement”, adin stated, well aware that the government was planning to evict roughly 80 families.10 i asked him who was going to compensate the evictees’ losses in terms of property (pengantian rugi) and carry out the eviction. he answered: “this is a government affair. i don’t want this to be a conflict between people. it ought to be a government job (seharusnya pemerintah).” while he advocated for the polder, adin hoped to avoid a conflict between its beneficiaries – in theory, all local residents regardless of residency status – and the people rejecting the planned retention basin – branded as squatters. adin liked to explain that he was speaking and acting in the name of residents like arief and deni (both well-known to him); poor kampung dwellers whose lives were stuck somewhere between ecological, economic, and medical crises. however, adin obviously realized that the planned evictions ran counter to the participative and inclusive approach of the polder project that he wholeheartedly promoted and even helped develop. all residents – regardless of their residency status – deserved to be rescued from the rising tides, especially the poor ones. the residents by the fishponds simply happened to exist at the wrong place at the wrong time. this unfortunate situation posed an inner conflict (konflik batin) for 9 in fact, the size of retention area has been subject to contestation and re-evaluation by public and state actors. 10 an exact number of evictees was never established. 122 lukas ley  aseas 9(1) adin, as he knew that it was neither exceptional nor coincidental. many times before, the government had evicted residents to make space for ‘better’ and more ‘modern’ infrastructure that would solve the flooding problem. this time, however, he had allied himself with the government to produce a more just solution. many residents had misgivings about the ways in which the government handled flooding. helping poor residents was just “politics”, i heard many residents complain. from experience, adin and his activist friends knew that ‘upgrading’ poor neighborhoods did not change the long-term lot of their inhabitants. adin was convinced that access to education (pendidikan) and business opportunities were just as important; not simply infrastructure (fisik): “the government thinks that welfare in kampungs will increase with physical development (pemerintah pikir dari pembangunan fisik kampung mengalami kenaikan), but they are wrong, it does not result in empowerment. it is useless (tidak terjadi pemberdayaan, sia-sia).” in reality, after improvement programs, many kampung residents decided to sell their house and land for a profit as property prices went up. profits allowed them to make short term investments or pay debts. then, they resettled in an area as deprived and endangered as their previous neighborhood. adin had seen many times that these people ended up as poor and marginalized as they had been before (tetap miskin dan dipinggirkan). in view of the government’s eviction plans, adin foresaw that the polder project would have very similar consequences. without paying attention to other sectors of society (i.e., education and economic empowerment), the polder project would intervene in the neighborhood’s ecological crisis without providing the grounds for actual change. though cloaked in discourses of democracy, the project was not going to provide a fairer future. alleviating flooding in fact not only perpetuated the exclusivist tendencies of development, but also further enshrined this ideology in the polder project. dooling (2009) coined the concept of “ecological gentrification” to explain the ideological exclusion of certain categories of citizens from specific urban natures, such as park space. equally, the polder project required the elimination of built structures that disturbed the technological intervention supposed to restore ecological balance and thereby flood safety. while adin supported a smooth and peaceful resolution of the land conflict, the process by which development ended up looping poor people back into hard reality where ecological risks loom on the horizon raised important political questions for him. those questions, however, never surfaced in meetings, where the squatter problem was discussed. the fact that adin could imagine an apocalyptic present – somehow beyond colonial rule and capitalism – invites a conversation about alternatives but also points to the way in which he perceives his reality: a chronic situation beyond human redressal. epilogue: water governance and the new chronic in this paper, i have adopted the metaphor of a ‘hard’ coast to build an understanding of material and social processes that result in the precarious situation faced by poor riverside residents in the north of semarang. while mangrove forests have been cemented over and over again, rivers embanked, and estuaries constructed, the subjects inhabiting these structures today feel ‘stuck’ physically, politically, as well as socially. 123flood management and chronic time in semarang, indonesia in other words, the present political configuration of ecology and uneven exposure to risk limits their room of maneuver in ways that are deeply felt to them. the polder project which comes with promises of empowerment and economic improvement not only relegates the search for alternatives to the future, but also ends up rehearsing discourses that blame riverside dwellers for the ongoing crisis, encouraging them to be more collaborative and aware. disaggregating capitalist development, as the polder project currently attempts to do by introducing catchy concepts such as public participation and transparency, does not address the root of the problem. the pilot project prevented meaningful political contestation of certain aspects of the plan – its experimental character effectively sidestepping public scrutiny. further, the project is vulnerable to co-option by elements in the municipal government, precisely because in indonesia policy is often outweighed by projects that briefly concentrate funds and actors before simply dissipating (li, 2015). while the polder project depends on conjuring a flood-less future, its investment in the present and temporal scope are minimal. fast-tracking the project to prevent its certain ‘death’ may have allowed for extra-legal evictions, rendering settlers a mere obstacle dealt with monetarily instead of democratically. while i have reason to believe that both dutch and indonesian creators of the project had good intentions, the polder in fact undermined progressive change. without having achieved significant progress in the fight against poverty, the ‘inclusive’ polder model comes at a high social cost. the presented case allows me to build a theoretical argument about chronic time with regards to semarang’s poor floodplain communities. it may, however, not be so unique in view of similar problems faced by other southeast asian cities. in north semarang, time is written into the environment and the infrastructures proposed to manage it. tidal flooding happens daily, having more or less dramatic outcomes, and is aggravated by seasonal fluctuations. according to cazdyn (2012), the chronic is about a certain relation to time and the experience of time as following a logic “that assumes that everything will remain the same as the present turns into the future” (p.  17). residents rejoiced when the government paid attention to their drowning neighborhoods and welcomed the institutionalization of transparent and locally governed water governance. yet, riverside dwellers’ relationships are supposed to align with the technical and temporal logic of a polder that has a clear expiry date. catastrophe, in this sense, is merely pushed off. instead of opening a politically viable discussion about the future, the chronic mode insists on “maintaining the system and perpetually managing its constitutive crisis, rather than confronting . . . the system’s own death” (p. 5). operating in this chronic mode allows the government to externalize important environmental and social costs. floods pose a threat to the system. they are, however, only symptomatic of an ongoing crisis embodied by land subsidence, which is why the polder project presupposes the “impossible location” (p. 4) of flood safety. like a self-fulfilling prophecy, fragmentary and voluntary investments in a systematically under-financed drainage system only slow down the present flood crisis, producing a similarly uncertain future due to both land subsidence and sea level rise that are felt most strongly by the poorest. in the end, adin suggested to simply use the fishponds as retention space and abstain entirely from building a real basin. he did not specify whether this meant 124 lukas ley  aseas 9(1) to protect the squatters or expedite the polder implementation. in any case, his creative suggestion as representative of the polder board may have helped preserve the homes of kampung dwellers, but it would also have underwritten the chronic tendency of infrastructural deficiency of his neighborhood.  references appadurai, a. (1996). modernity at large: cultural dimensions of globalization. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. bankoff, g. (2003). constructing vulnerability: the historical, natural and social generation of flooding in metropolitan manila. disasters, 27(3), 224-238. bpp banger sima. (2012). sima news edisi mai. semarang. brett-crowther, m. r. (1983). pondering on polders. food policy, 8(2), 157-159. cazdyn, e. m. (2007). disaster, crisis, revolution. south atlantic quarterly, 106(4), 647-662. cazdyn, e. m. (2012). the already dead: the new time of politics, culture, and illness. durham: duke university press. cobban, j. l. (1974). uncontrolled urban settlement: the kampong question in semarang (1905-1940). bijdragen tot de taal-, landen volkenkunde, 130(4), 403-427. cobban, j. l. (1988). kampungs and conflict in colonial semarang. journal of southeast asian studies, 19(2), 266-291. coté, j. (2002). towards an architecture of association: h. f. tillema, semarang and the construction of colonial modernity. in p. j. nas (ed.), the indonesian town revisited (pp. 319-347). singapore: institute of southeast asian studies. coté, j. (2014). thomas karsten’s indonesia: modernity and the end of europe, 1914-1945. bijdragen tot de taal-, landen volkenkunde, 170(1), 66-98. das, v., & poole, d. (eds.). (2004). anthropology in the margins of the state. santa fe: school for advanced research press. davis, m. (1998). ecology of fear: los angeles and the imagination of disaster. new york: metropolitan books. dooling, s. (2009). ecological gentrification: a research agenda exploring justice in the city. international journal of urban and regional research, 33(3), 621-639. gandy, m. (2005). das wasser, die moderne und der niedergang der bakteriologischen stadt. leviathan, 33(4), 522-543. kaika, m. (2006). dams as symbols of modernization: the urbanization of nature between geographical imagination and materiality. annals of the association of american geographers, 96(2), 276-301. kooy, m., & bakker, k. (2014). (post)colonial pipes: urban water supply in colonial and contemporary jakarta. in f. columbijn & j. coté (eds.), cars, conduits, and kampongs: the modernization of the indonesian city, 1920-1960 (pp. 63-86). leiden: brill. kusno, a. (1998). beyond the postcolonial: architecture, urban planning, and political cultures in indonesia. ann arbor, mi: umi. lassa, j. a. (2012, october 6). semarang joins the ‘sinking cities network’. the jakarta post. retrieved from http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2012/10/06/semarang-joins-sinking-cities-network.html li, t. m. (2015). governing rural indonesia: convergence on the project system. critical policy studies, retrieved from http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19460171.2015.1098553 mann, g. (2009). should political ecology be marxist? a case for gramsci’s historical materialism. geoforum, 40(3), 335-344. marfai, m. a., & king, l. (2008). tidal inundation mapping under enhanced land subsidence in semarang, central java indonesia. natural hazards, 44(1), 93-109. 125flood management and chronic time in semarang, indonesia moore, d. s. (2005). suffering for territory: race, place, and power in zimbabwe. durham: duke university press. mrázek, r. (2001). engineers of happy land: technology and nationalism in a colony. princeton: princeton university press. narotzky, s., & besnier, n. (2014). crisis, value, and hope: rethinking the economy: an introduction to supplement 9. current anthropology, 55(s9), s4-s16. newberry, j. (2008). double spaced: abstract labour in urban kampung. anthropologica, 50(2), 241-253. povinelli, e. a. (2011). economies of abandonment: social belonging and endurance in late liberalism. durham: duke university press. rocheleau, d. (2015). roots, rhizomes, networks and territories: reimagining pattern and power in political ecologies. in r. l. bryant (ed.), the international handbook of political ecology (pp. 70-88). cheltenham: edward elgar. roitman, j. (2013). anti-crisis. durham: duke university press. schepher-hughes, n. (2005). katrina: the disaster and its doubles. anthropology today, 21(6), 2-4. schoubroeck, f. van. (2010). the remarkable history of polder systems in the netherlands. international consultation on agricultural heritage systems of the 21st century. chennai. silver, c. (2011). planning the megacity: jakarta in the twentieth century. london: routledge. smith, n. (2008). uneven development: nature, capital, and the production of space (3rd rev. ed.). athens: university of georgia press. swyngedouw, e. (2011). depoliticized environments: the end of nature, climate change and the post-political condition. royal institute of philosophy supplement, 69, 253-274. voorst, r. van, & hellman, j. (2015). one risk replaces another. asian journal of social science, 43(6), 786-810. witteveen & bos. (2014, may 21). site visit report semarang. unpublished document. about the author lukas ley is a phd candidate at the department of anthropology, university of toronto, canada. his research analyzes the socio-ecological effects of tidal flooding in semarang, indonesia. he is particularly interested in a spatiotemporal optics of climate change that is grounded in the lived experiences of downstream dwellers. lukas ley is co-founder and editor-in-chief of the independent anthropological journal of urban life (www.julonline.com). ► contact: lukas.ley@mail.utoronto.ca acknowledgements i would like to thank all who participated in this research. their generosity, time, and insightful contributions have made this article possible. i would also like to thank nadine hare for being a patient and loving partner. aseas 15(1) | 5 indonesian government intervention in the management of indonesian migrant workers’ remittances: is it constitutionally justified? annisa ayuningtyasaa & mailinda eka yunizaa* a universitas gadjah mada, indonesia *corresponding author: mailinda@ugm.ac.id received: 2 september 2021 / accepted: 30 may 2022 / published: 30 june 2022 ► ayuningtyas, a., & yuniza, m. e. (2022). indonesian government intervention in the management of indonesian migrant workers’ remittances: is it constitutionally justified? advances in southeast asian studies, 15(1), 5-21. the latest law on the protection of indonesian migrant workers (imws), law number 18 of 2017 (law 18/2017), obliges the indonesian government to conduct economic protection through remittance management by involving certain institutions. nonetheless, there is a lack of clarity about how this intervention would occur. the private nature of migrant workers’ remittances leads to the question of constitutional justification essential for the government’s authority to intervene – particularly in indonesia as a constitutional state in the form of a welfare state – besides skepticism concerning the applicability of the norm. this paper emphasizes the constitutional silence with regard to state intervention in human resources allocation, as it makes the deployment of indonesian workers abroad constitutionally groundless. consequently, the discretion infiltrates the remittance, a component of national income that is essentially a private transfer in which the management should be fully controlled by the families. through review of the scientific literature and legal document analysis, this research found that the inclusion of a state intervention provision on human resources into the 1945 constitution is still required. keywords: constitutional justification; government intervention; indonesia; migrant workers; remittance management  introduction in the indonesian context, migrant workers who originated from the state have been labelled as ‘the hero[s] of foreign exchange’ (pahlawan devisa) for a long time. however, the demand for their protection has been – ironically – a tough and lengthy struggle (see dewanto, 2020; eddyono et al., 2020; setyawati, 2013). law no. 18 of 2017 on the protection of indonesian migrant workers (law 18/2017) eventually emphasizes the protection aspect, after 47 years of frequent changes of statutory laws that mainly emphasized the placement aspect of current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 66 mailto:mailinda%40ugm.ac.id?subject= http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5797-5544 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8086-2177 6 | aseas 15(1) indonesian government intervention in the management of indonesian migrant workers’ remittances official indonesian migrant workers (imws). this relatively significant shift deserves appreciation, but there is something perturbing about one of the protection forms introduced by the law. this newest law imposes an obligation and gives authority for the central and local governments to conduct economic protection towards imws through remittance management by involving banks or non-bank financial institutions within the country and the placement country.1 this measure is – by the article formulation – meant to be separated from financial and entrepreneurship education.2 the accessible statutory laws show that the government intervention on imws’ remittances has actually occurred since 1983 in capricious forms. examples include the mandatory requirement for imws deployed to saudi arabia to set aside at least 50% of their income to send to their families through the government’s bank;3 the requirement to attach a savings book for remittance in order to obtain a migrant worker identity card;4 the obligation to join a remittance program;5 and remittance monitoring.6 however, the exact measure of remittance management intervention according to law 18/2017 remains questionable. the inclusion of remittance management within the law 18/2017 seems to show a disparate nuance – compared to the previous formulations of government intervention – as it is stated in the framework of economic protection, but there are several considerations in regards to the norm applicability. first, neither further regulation in another article nor any explanation in the elucidation is provided within this law.7 1 art. 35 of law 18/2017 2 art. 35 of law 18/2017 reads: “the central and local governments, in accordance with their authorities, are obliged to conduct economic protection for indonesian migrant workers and/or the candidate through: a. remittance management by involving banks or non-bank financial institutions within the state and the placement state; b. financial education, so as imws and their families can manage their remittances result; and c. entrepreneurship education.” by dividing this economic protection into three different points, the government intervention on imws’ remittances is placed as a clearly distinctive measure separated from both financial and entrepreneurship education. this is also affirmed in art. 28 para. (1) of the government regulation no. 59 of 2021 on the implementation of indonesian migrant workers protection (government regulation 59/2021) that also separates remittance management from financial and entrepreneurship education. 3 art. 7 para. (1) of the ministry of manpower decree no. per 149/men/1983 on the procedures for implementing the deployment of indonesian workers to saudi arabia 4 art. 50 para. (2) of the ministry of manpower and transmigration decree no. kep-104a/men/2002 on indonesian workers placement abroad 5 art. 33 of the ministry of manpower decree no. per-01/men/1991 on inter-state inter-work, art. 34 of the ministry of manpower regulation no. per-02/men/1994 on workers placement inside and outside the state and art. 47 para. (1) of the ministry of manpower decree no. kep-44/men/1994 on the implementation guidelines of workers placement inside and outside the state 6 art. 6 para. (4) jo. art. 5 para. (1) point d of the head of national authority for the placement and protection of indonesian overseas workers regulation (bnp2tki) no. 10 of 2016 on the organization and work procedures of the technical implementation unit for indonesian workers placement and protection assigns the protection and empowerment section under the agency for the service, placement and protection of indonesian overseas workers (bp3tki) to monitor imws’ remittances, while art. 8 para. (4) jo. art. 7 para. (1) point d assigns the protection and empowerment officer under lp3tki to do the monitoring. 7 in indonesian statutory law design – according to the attachment ii of law no. 12 of 2011 on the statutory laws formation as amended by law no. 15 of 2019 – elucidation functions as the statutory law-makers’ official interpretation of certain norms, and is a means of clarifying the norms contained in the statutory laws’ body. aseas 15(1) | 7 annisa ayuningtyasa & mailinda eka yuniza second, there are some problems with the implementing regulation. the law 18/2017 has mandated further regulation on economic protection to government regulation, which ought to be stipulated at the latest two years after the promulgation of the law.8 however, economic protection is not the first priority in the implementing regulation, as the very first government regulation established under this law solely focuses on placement procedure.9 now that there is finally a government regulation reaching the economic protection issue, the provision leads to inclusive financial policy – saving, transfer and access to capital – as an option, leaving a space for another measure that is possibly unpredictable.10 third, most authorities in the state of origin seem confident that migrant workers’ remittances impact has been 100% positive, yet this actually depends on the specific circumstances under which such migration occurs, as well as the general political and economic conditions within the state (international labour office, 2010, pp. 7, 25, 42-43). fourth, – and most importantly – government authorities over imws’ remittances need to be clarified, as migrant workers’ remittances are essentially a private household transfer (international labour office, 2010, p. 25). thus, the state is just bypassed as a consequence of the fact that the remittance receivers are within the jurisdiction of the state. the private nature of migrant workers’ remittances appears to be the main reason behind the skepticism concerning such norm applicability – leading to the difficulty in formulating any implementation step – and there is a more basic issue involved when juxtaposed with indonesia’s character as a law state: the constitutionality of such government intervention. in the context of indonesia as a law state with the type of welfare state, the state has a very large discretion in regulating the lives of its people. nonetheless, this ought to be followed by the constitutionality of the measures taken. a strong constitutional justification is undoubtedly required as the government intervention on imws’ remittances has shown that a private law matter is drawn into the public law arena. this paper discusses the intervention of a welfare state government towards migrant workers’ remittances, wherein the state acts as the migrant workers’ state of origin in the context of international labor migration. it aims to introduce migrant workers’ remittances as a particular object of discussion in constitutional and administrative laws, yet contribute to migrant workers’ remittances studies by taking into account the perspective of constitutional and administrative laws, as academic 8 art. 36 in conjunction with art. 90 of law 18/2017. 9 amidst various substances mandated to the government regulation – duringand after-work protection procedures; legal, social and economic protection; one-stop integrated services; central and local governments’ duties and responsibilities; imw placement procedures by the non-ministerial government institutions in charge as the integrated imw protection and services policy executor; imw placement company’s duties and responsibilities; crew and fishery sailors’ protection and placement; coaching to institutions related to imw placement and protection; supervision to imw placement and protection implementation – procedures of imw placement by such non-ministerial government institutions are the only matter followed up through the stipulation of government regulation no. 10 of 2020 on the placement procedures of indonesian migrant workers by indonesian migrant workers protection agency, and this is also overdue. 10 art. 28 para. (2) of government regulation 59/2021 reads: “the implementation of economic protection as in paragraph (1) may be conducted through inclusive financial policy in accordance with the statutory laws.” 8 | aseas 15(1) indonesian government intervention in the management of indonesian migrant workers’ remittances research on migrant workers’ remittances mostly adopts economic development and sociological perspectives,11 and when the focus is oriented towards policy, the orientation is directed towards maximizing the remittance utilization (see carling, 2004; o’neill, 2001). in the indonesian context, existing research on imws’ remittances management merely describes the remittance management from the experience of imws’ families (yuniarto, 2015, pp. 81-83). this doctrinal legal research with a more interdisciplinary direction is a positive-law-oriented-research seeking for the justification of the indonesian government’s intervention in the management of imws’ remittances. the law-in-context approach is used to understand the law. research materials used in this study comprise of, first, normative resources mostly in the form of statutory laws relevant to imws’ protection, fund transfer, state finance, and national economic and national development plans; second, authoritative sources in the form of scholarly legal writing, mostly concerning the role of government in a welfare state; third, additional resources consisting of some documents – such as the balance of payments and international investment position manual, neraca pembayaran indonesia (indonesia’s balance of payment, npi), and so forth – as well as non-legal writings. these research materials were analyzed qualitatively. the existence of law in regulating remittances is important because the remittance mechanism is quite complex and requires legal certainty. fund transfers that are carried out require a different system and are difficult to track compared to simply transferring funds between domestic banks. it is the cross-border transfer of funds that is feared to become a loophole in the breach where this service can be misused, such as financing terrorism, money laundering, or crimes committed between countries (“a draft framework for”, 2021; engle, 2004, p. 39). in addition, based on the facts on the ground, migrant workers tend to look for the simplest and cheapest way of sending remittances; if their funds are not channeled by competent and appropriate institutions, the possibility of misuse of funds, as mentioned above, will be even greater. therefore, indonesian banking law, with its characteristics as administrative penal law, should accommodate a definite administrative mechanism for regulating remittances in order to prevent such cases. the indonesian government recognizes the importance of the existence of a law in the midst of complicated and crime-prone remittances. therefore, the government issued several regulations related to the protection of migrant workers, especially regarding their remittances. migrant workers, as the ones who receive work and wages outside the territory of indonesia, should not necessarily lose their rights as indonesian citizens. one of these is the right regulated in art. 28d para. (2) of the 1945 constitution of the republic of indonesia (the 1945 constitution), which regulates the right of everyone to work and to receive fair and proper compensation and treatment in work relations. however, the remuneration obtained by migrant 11 much research from an economic development perspective can be found on a national scale (see adams, 1991; campbell, 2008; garip, 2012; gerber & torosyan, 2013; knowles & anker, 1981; oberai & singh, 1980), but there are also studies with a broader scope (barham & boucher, 1998; djajić, 1986; taylor, 1999). from the sociological perspective, discussions are varied, ranging from the motivations to remit (lucas & stark, 1985) to the actors involved in the remittance (dewi & yazid, 2017), and to the remittanceuse (chandravarkar, 1980). aseas 15(1) | 9 annisa ayuningtyasa & mailinda eka yuniza workers outside indonesia who then enter the territory of indonesia is known as remittances, as discussed above. the remittance itself does not have a clear position in the constitution, but the regulation is found in law 18/2017 without any authentic definition. the existing law is one of the administrative penal laws that regulates several criminal provisions in it, but its main focus is not on eradicating criminal acts. that existing law focuses on administrative legal matters relating to the protection of migrant workers. art. 35 a quo states that the central government and regional governments, in accordance with their respective authorities, have an obligation to provide economic protection for prospective indonesian migrant workers and/or indonesian migrant workers, one of which is through the management of remittances by involving domestic banking institutions or non-bank financial institutions and the destination country of placement. remittance and the remittances of migrant workers: the absence of authentic definition there are distinctions in what refers to the definitions of migrant workers’ remittances and remittance in general. bouvier’s law dictionary (n.d.) defines remittance as the money sent by one merchant to another, either in specie, bill of exchange, draft, or otherwise. black’s law dictionary provides a broader definition by defining remittance not only as (1) a sum of money sent to another as payment for goods or services, or (2) an instrument – such as a check – used for sending money, but also (3) the action or process of sending money to another person or place (garner & black, 2009, p. 1409). meanwhile, engle (2004, p. 38) defines migrant remittance specifically in terms of migrant workers, as money and goods generated during work abroad and sent home. ratha (2020) perceives workers’ or migrants’ remittances similarly, as part of migrants’ earnings in the form of either cash or goods to support their families. the international monetary fund (imf) also implies that remittances assume the form of cash or credit transfers and transfers involving transfers of goods (statistical office of the european communities & international monetary fund, 2009, p. 6). remittances are, indeed, sent by the majority of migrants, wherein all types of migrants remit funds, and the best understood form of remittance is hence formal money transfer (engle, 2004, pp. 38-40). however, remittance can also be transferred in the form of physical or social assets – items of health care and basic needs, consumer goods, jewelry, livestock, and items that can be used for marriage dowry. to summarize, (1) remittance does not pay attention to who sends the money, contrary to migrant workers’ remittances wherein migrant workers are obviously the subject; and (2) remittance’s object is money or the instrument used for sending money, while goods – besides money – can also be the object of migrant workers’ remittances. amidst these distinctions, there is an absence of authentic definitions in the indonesian context as no statutory laws define remittance and migrant workers’ remittances. the central bank thus discerns remittance in terms of migrant workers as part of imws’ earnings – either money or goods – sent to indonesia and/ or brought back home by the concerned imws (yudanto et al., 2009, p. 3), while perceiving remittance as part of fund transfer that is generally conducted without underlying economic obligation fulfilment, having low value, and carried out between 10 | aseas 15(1) indonesian government intervention in the management of indonesian migrant workers’ remittances individuals (bank indonesia, n.d.). fund transfer itself is authentically defined as a series of activities beginning with the originator’s order to transfer certain amounts of funds to the beneficiary mentioned in the fund transfer order and ending with the reception of such fund by the beneficiary.12 consequently, art. 35 point a of law 18/2017 mentioning “banks or non-bank financial institutions” in the remittance management indicates a simplification of imws’ remittances under the term remittance, wherein remittances are considered part of fund transfer. this is because banks and non-bank financial institutions obviously function to mobilize and to channel funds,13 while fund refers to money, overdraft, or credit facility.14 in other words, the simplification of migrant workers’ remittances through a narrow, formal money transfer-oriented formulation has neglected the non-formal money transfer and transfer of goods as the other forms of migrant workers’ remittances. the postal network – as one of the formal channels used by migrant workers to remit (engle, 2004, pp. 38-39) – is not involved accordingly, as the services provided also cover the transfer of goods besides money transfers (“about upu”, n.d.; “postal and telecommunications services sector”, n.d.). meanwhile, the postal network is also a popular remittance channel used by imws (dewi & yazid, 2017, pp. 216-218). migrant workers’ remittances: a component of national income infiltrated by the government as a private transfer, migrant workers’ remittances are a component of secondary income in the balance of payment15 that can be included in the national income calculation (ou, 1946, pp. 294-296). there are different ideas reflecting what is meant by national income (see barna, 1942; clark, 1948; kuznets, 1940) as well as different methods of measurement, such as product, income, expenditure, and value-added methods. neither national income nor other terminologies equal to it are available 12 this authentic definition is found in art. 1 point 1 of law no. 3 of 2011 on fund transfer (law 3/2011) and art. 1 point 1 of bank indonesia regulation no. 14/23/pbi/2012 on fund transfer. 13 this is based on (1) the authentic definition of bank in art. 1 point 1 of law no. 7 of 1992 on banking in which these functions are defined, although the authentic definition has been slightly changed by law no. 10 of 1998 on the amendment of law no. 7 of 1992 on banking; and on (2) some regulations referring non-bank financial institutions to – among others – insurance companies, pension funds, and financing institutions. 14 art. 1 point 4 of law 3/2011 – similarly to art. 1 point 4 of bank indonesia regulation no. 14/23/ pbi/2012 on fund transfer – defines fund as (1) cash money turned over by sender to the receiving provider; (2) money saved in sender’s account on the receiving provider; (3) money saved in receiving provider’s account on another receiving provider; (4) money saved in beneficiary’s account on the final receiving provider; (5) money saved in receiving provider’s account allocated for the purposes of the beneficiary who does not have account on such provider; and/or (6) overdraft or credit facility given by provider to the sender. 15 see international monetary fund, 2009, p. 210. a relatively minor change is made by the balance of payments and international investment position manual, sixth edition (bpm6) – the current basis for indonesian balance of payment arrangement – by replacing ‘workers’ remittances’ known in the fifth edition of the balance of payments manual (bpm5) with a broader terminology of ‘personal transfer’. nonetheless, the bpm6 still acknowledges the definition of workers’ remittances, and personal transfers – which includes workers’ remittances – remain under the secondary income account. aseas 15(1) | 11 annisa ayuningtyasa & mailinda eka yuniza in indonesian statutory laws. in the 1945 constitution, which consists of a specific chapter on national economic and social welfare besides financial matters, some aspects of state finance, including the state budget, tax and other levies, central-local governments’ financial relations, and audit boards; currency; central bank; principles underlying national economics; state control over land, water, and natural resources as well as important sectors of production are encompassed.16 some terminologies – which might seem similar – existing in the statutory laws are state finance, state revenue, state income, and state ownership,17 but none of them are comparable to national income since both terminologies count heavily on the state as the right holder and/or duty bearer. by giving a space for the government in the remittance management, law 18/2017 seems to attract migrant workers’ remittances to an area in which the state has an active role, while such remittances are a private transfer in which the management is – logically – fully controlled by the families. the indonesian government’s obligation to give an economic protection towards imws through remittance management by involving banks or non-bank financial institutions within the state and the placement state – imposed by law 18/2017 – triggers a question on whether such remittance management can really be conducted and how this will be conducted because neither further provisions nor explanations are provided in the law, while the implementing regulation is also problematic. given the unprecise implementing regulation that makes the form of so-called ‘economic protection’ unclear, the following two sections will show that imws’ remittance is an area infiltrated by the government beginning from a constitutionally groundless measure. deployment of indonesian workers abroad within the absence of a constitutional basis for state intervention on human resources allocation economic provisions in the 1945 constitution have been criticized for being insufficient, including the state’s intervention in economic resources allocation that merely covers natural resources and important sectors of production.18 as the activity 16 see the arts. 18a para. (2); 23 para. (1); 23a; 23b; 23d; 33; and the chapter viiia specifically focused on the audit board. the principles underlying national economics are explicitly mentioned, and the production sectors necessary for the state as well as natural resources are explicitly stated as ‘under the powers by state’ (dikuasai oleh negara). the other matters might not be treated similarly, but those are mandated to legislation. 17 see art. 1 points 1, 9 and 13 as well as art. 2 of law no. 17 of 2003 on state finance; general elucidation of law no. 31 of 1999 on the corruption eradication; ministry of finance decree no. kep-225/ mk/ v/4/1971 on implementing guidelines for the inventory of state-owned property/state assets; ministry of finance decree no. 01/km.12/2001 on guidelines for the capitalization of state-owned property/state assets in the government accounting system; and law no. 15 of 2004 on the examination of state finance management and responsibility. see also “beda keuangan negara” (2014). 18 as documented by the mahkamah konstitusi indonesia (constitutional court of the republic of indonesia) (2010b, pp. 534-536), bambang soedibyo – in his capacity as the expert team member in the third amendment of the 1945 constitution – criticized the economic provision within the 1945 constitution for being insufficient as there are four areas of economic technocracy necessary to be regulated while the regulation is still very minimal. while fiscal matters – the management of state finance and assets – are only half provided with a constitutional basis, the monetary matters are not even regulated; market 12 | aseas 15(1) indonesian government intervention in the management of indonesian migrant workers’ remittances producing imws’ remittances, imws’ deployment abroad is actually a form of government intervention in human resources – a component of economic resources clearly distinct from natural resources and irrelevant to the interpretation of important sectors of production19 – lacking a constitutional basis. however, in response to the high demand for manual and domestic workers in the middle east in 1970, the indonesian government declared that it “may agree on exporting indonesian workers” and even promoted this as a national development program (dewanto, 2020, p. 509). the number of workers to be deployed abroad was explicitly targeted in the rencana pembangunan lima tahun (five-year development plan, repelita) era, starting from 100,000 workers during the repelita iii;20 225,000 workers during repelita iv;21 500,000 workers during repelita v;22 and at least 1,250,000 workers during repelita vi.23 since repelita iv24, a specific institution as well as state intervention on this are also unregulated, and market management and state intervention on economic resources allocation have no constitutional basis at all. these are still relevant, as the chapter xiv – national economy and social welfare’s alterations brought by the fourth amendment of the constitution do not answer these criticisms. soedibyo even argued that state intervention on economic resources allocation is totally constitutionally groundless (mahkamah konstitusi republik indonesia, 2010b, p. 536). however, some constitutional bases can actually be seen in art. 33 para. (2) of the 1945 constitution addressing state intervention in important sectors of production and in para. (3) addressing state intervention in natural resources. 19 there is still no clarity about what is meant by important sectors of production, but human resources are a production factor rather than a production sector. during the constitution amendment process, hendi tjaswadi, in his capacity as the spokesman of the indonesian national army faction in the second amendment of the 1945 constitution, referred “the control by the state” to state companies, by mentioning the state electricity company and telkom – the state-owned information and communications technology enterprise and telecommunications network in indonesia – as an example (mahkamah konstitusi republik indonesia, 2010b, pp. 507-508). this was also the concern of the constitutional court in 2003 (constitutional court decision no. 001-021-022/puu-i/2003, p. 331), but this is also irrelevant to human resources, as the context was on whether electricity is a production sector important to the state and affecting the lives of many people. 20 see the attachment to presidential decree no. 7 of 1979 on the third five-year development plan (repelita iii) 1979/80-1983/84s (presidential decree 7/1979), chapter v on the expansion of employment opportunity, p. 292. 21 attachment to presidential decree no. 21 of 1984 on the fourth five-year development plan (repelita iv) 1984/85-1988/89 (presidential decree 21/1984), pp. 341-345, gives more detail as 35.000 workers were planned to be deployed in 1984/1985; 40.000 in 1985/1986; 45.000 in 1986/1987; 50.000 in 1987/1988; and 55.000 in 1988/1989. 22 attachment to presidential decree no. 13 of 1989 on the fifth five-year development plan (repelita v) 1989/90-1993/94 (presidential decree 13/1989), pp. 397-398, details that 50.000 workers were planned to be deployed in 1989/1990; 75.000 in 1990/1991; 100.000 in 1991/1992; 125.000 in 1992/1993; and 150.000 in 1993/1994. 23 see the attachment to presidential decree no. 17 of 1994 on the sixth five-year development plan (repelita vi) 1994/94-1998/99 (presidential decree 17/1994), chapter x on labor and the expansion of employment opportunities, pp. 118, 130. 24 see the attachment to presidential decree 21/1984 and the attachment to presidential decree 13/1989. the amount recorded in repelita iv are usd 4 million in 1978/1979; usd 15 million in 1979/1980; usd 27 million in 1980/1981; usd 39 million in 1981/1982; usd 55 million in 1982/1983; and usd 48 million in 1983/1984, with an average growth rate of 64,4%. repelita v records migrant workers’ remittances to the amount of usd 46 million in 1983/1984; usd 56 million in 1984/1985; usd 64 million in 1985/1986; usd 75 million in 1986/1987; usd 90 million in 1987/1988; and usd 110 million in 1988/1989, with an average growth rate of 19,0%. aseas 15(1) | 13 annisa ayuningtyasa & mailinda eka yuniza chapter on the balance of payment records of migrant workers’ remittance as a component of net factor income included workers deployment as a means to increase foreign exchange income sourced from remittance25 and estimated the amount of foreign exchange income from imws.26 the rencana pembangunan jangka menengah nasional (national medium term development plan, rpjmn) still realizes the need of opportunities to work overseas due to the huge amount of unemployment within the state, but the number of imws to be deployed is no longer visible.27 the number of imws’ remittances is also no longer clearly stated as a balance of payment component, but its contribution to foreign exchange income is still acknowledged.28 law-based state, constitutional supremacy, and silence in the 1945 constitution as an economic constitution the dynamic of the 1945 constitution unequivocally shows that indonesia is a law-based state. the pre-amended version states that indonesia is based on law by referring to rechtsstaat in opposite to machtstaat, but this statement is only placed in the elucidation. the desire to elevate this position has been around since the discussion of the first amendment of the 1945 constitution (mahkamah konstitusi republik indonesia, 2010a, pp. 389-477), until the third amendment finally embraced it.29 the position is now more assertive, but there is another concern as rechtsstaat is no longer mentioned. what the best formula would be was obviously the main object of discussion, as it revolved around a number of options, including the “law-based state” (negara berdasar atas hukum); “law state” (negara hukum); “law state upholding human rights” (negara hukum yang menjunjung tinggi hak asasi manusia); and “democratic law state” (negara hukum yang demokratis). to mention or not to mention the 25 see the attachments to presidential decree 21/1984, 235, 239; presidential decree 13/1989, 295; and presidential decree 17/1994, 392. repelita iv emphasizes the deployment to and remittance from the middle east. repelita v still acknowledges the potency of indonesian migrant workers’ remittances as a source of foreign exchange income. repelita iv includes indonesian migrant workers’ remittance as a means to increase foreign exchange income from the services sector to control the deficit in the services sector. 26 repelita iv estimates that the remittance will reach usd 48 million in 1983/1984; usd 200 million in 1984/1985; usd 348 million in 1985/1986; usd 530 million in 1986/1987; usd 805 million in 1987/1988; and usd 1230 million in 1988/1999, with an average growth rate of 91,3%. repelita v estimates that the remittance will reach usd 110 million in 1988/1989; usd 126 million in 1989/1990; usd 143 million in 1990/1991; usd 157 million in 1991/1992; usd 181 million in 1992/1993; and usd 218 million in 1993/1994, with an average growth rate of 14,7%. repelita vi estimates that the remittances are increasing with an average of 26,8% per year from usd 291 million in 1993/1994 to usd 953 million in 1998/1999. repelita vi estimates that foreign exchange income from the deployment of indonesian migrant workers is usd 3,0 billion. 27 see the attachment to presidential regulation 7/2005, part iv.23, p. 3; the attachment to presidential regulation 5/2010, p. ii.3.34.; and the attachment to presidential regulation 2/2015, pp. 3-59. 28 see the attachment to presidential regulation 7/2005, part v.34, p. 7; the attachment to presidential regulation 2/2015, pp. 3-60, 4-13; and the attachment to presidential regulation 18/2020, pp. ii.6-ii.7. 29 art. 1 para. (3) of the 1945 constitution exactly reads, “the state of indonesia is a law state” (negara indonesia adalah negara hukum). mahkamah konstitusi republik indonesia (2010a, pp. 389-477) has documented that the debate on what the best formulation would be was driven by, among others, a concern with the world’s history, which shows that many states are law states and yet dominated by certain powers – including indonesia’s experience during the new order regime. however, the notion behind this final formula is to elevate rechtsstaat. 14 | aseas 15(1) indonesian government intervention in the management of indonesian migrant workers’ remittances word rechtsstaat was not specifically addressed. there is no trenchant clue in the discussion, but such a final formula seems to avoid a rigidly bound concept as the ‘rule of law’ or rechtsstaat.30 indeed, both rechtsstaat and the rule of law investigate what it means for a person to be governed by law as opposed to being subject to the dictates of the powerful, and the narrowest understanding of each concept will require discretionary powers accorded to officials constrained by law (barber et al., 2003, pp. 444-445). in spite of the fact that these concepts are actually distinctive,31 these similarities were presumably a matter of high concern during the discussion of the amendment, as the intention to elevate the idea of a law-based state was to explicitly ensure commitment to the supremacy of law. such an idea is closely related to constitutionalism that essentially focuses on the regulation and limitation of power, or commonly known as the limited government principle (asshiddiqie, 2011, pp. 20-23). constitutionalism is a legal device for the prevention of tyranny and the protection of the rights of man (patterson, 1948, p. 427). it is defined (1) in a minimal sense, as the existence of norms not only creating legislative, executive, and judicial powers, but also imposing significant limits on these powers; and (2) in a richer sense, as an idea that government can/should be limited in its powers and that its authority depends on its observation of these limitations (waluchow, 2018). both constitutionalism and the terms rechtsstaat and rule of law have a basic idea to limit the power and authority of the government, but constitutionalism is more specific as it requires the limitation to be placed in the constitution, in convenience with the ideal of constitutionalism expressed in the concept of constitutional supremacy (andreescu & andreescu, 2017, p. 19; waluchow, 2018). one of the main purposes and functions of a constitution is to both authorize and create limits on the powers of political authorities (gavison, 2002, p. 90), in which restraints imposed by the constitution to the government are a manifestation of constitutionalism (see “entrenchment” in waluchow, 2018). hence, it is very important to assesses whether certain government actions have a legal basis in the constitution. in the indonesian context, constitutional supremacy has also been explicitly committed by the 1945 constitution through, among others, (1) the elucidation of the pre-amended version stating that the government is based on the constitutional system; (2) an article regulating that the president holds the power of government in accordance with the constitution;32 (3) the third amendment establishing a 30 this can be seen from some opinions documented by mahkamah konstitusi republik indonesia (2010a, pp. 451, 447, 466). for example, (1) what is meant by “law state” (negara hukum) is “law-based state”, also known as rechsstaat in german, or the “rule of law” in anglo-saxon, and essentially has the same meaning, although differently explained in the european (rechtsstaat) and the american traditions (rule of law); (2) rule of law – along with the constitutional system and human rights protection – is contained in the term law state (negara hukum); (3) the formula “indonesia is a democratic law state” is related to rechtsstaat or the rule of law, emphasizing the urgency of the supremacy of law, and so forth. 31 for instance, barber, et al. (2003) observe that (1) rechtsstaat rests on some sort of connection between the legal system and the state, while the rule of law is a quality of – or theory about – a legal order; and (2) rechtsstaat brings with such a connection an aspiration to harmony, in contrast to the rule of law that contains no implicit ambition to find a harmonious relationship between law and the state. 32 see art. 4 para. (1) of the 1945 constitution. the provision has been around since the creation of the 1945 constitution and is consistently maintained to date. aseas 15(1) | 15 annisa ayuningtyasa & mailinda eka yuniza constitutional court authorized to conduct the constitutional review;33 and (4) the special procedures required for amending the constitution.34 as government action is measured according to the 1945 constitution that is still in force, the absence of provision with regard to state intervention in human resources allocation has rendered imws’ deployment overseas by the government – that further extends to the government’s intervention in imws’ remittances – neither legitimate nor restricted. constitutional supremacy renders a constitution to be the source of all regulations – in political, economic, social, and legal areas – and its most important consequences are the conformity of the entire legal system with the constitutional norms as well as the fundamental obligation for state authorities to perform their attributions within the limit and in the spirit of the constitution (andreescu & andreescu, 2017, p. 49). according to developing perspectives concerning the indonesian constitution, the existence of economic articles within the 1945 constitution prior and subsequent to amendments shows that it has been consistently an economic constitution since its emergence,35 rather than merely a political one.36 nonetheless, inadequate economic provisions – even after being amended for the fourth time – should be of high concern. there are many substances commonly covered in an economic constitution (asshiddiqie, 2013, pp. 19-20), and the absence of a constitutional basis for state intervention on human resources allocation, as an economic resource, should be fully scrutinized, as labor is one of the covered substances. the closest reason for this absence might be because this issue was not anticipated (dixon, 2015, p. 821; dixon & ginsburg, 2011, p. 640), as “human resources” was vaguely mentioned during the discussion of the fourth amendment of the 1945 constitution, and it seemed neglected afterwards.37 silences in a constitution allow “time and experience” for improvement and completion, as a constitution is an evolutionary achievement (loughlin, 2018, pp. 922-923). the long practice of imws’ deployment abroad as constitutionally groundless has shown “time and experience”, but the constitution on this particular issue has not been improved yet. this unfortunately hinders the 1945 constitution to optimally safeguard the civic virtues of the citizens and to simultaneously impose limits on the abuse of political power and citizens’ exploitation (faria, 1999, p. 177). yet, this is especially important for the specific issue of imws’ deployment and remittances – wherein the interventions merely based on ministerial decrees until law 25/1997 33 see art. 24c para. (1) of the 1945 constitution. 34 see art. 37 of the 1945 constitution. 35 see asshiddiqie, 2013, pp. 8-10. economic constitution refers to the highest law in the economic field, and a constitution is named as an economic constitution if it contains economic policy. this policy will be an umbrella and provides direction for the development of a country’s economic activities. 36 some economic articles – among others, concerning the principles underlying economic matters as well as state power over the important sectors of production and natural resources – have existed in the original version of the 1945 constitution, and are maintained – with some additional articles – even after the last amendment. 37 see mahkamah konstitusi republik indonesia (2010b, pp. 604-718). there was an interesting opinion from a. m. lutfi on behalf of the reformasi fraction saying that chapter xiv on the national economic and social welfare would guide the nation in managing natural and human resources for the welfare of all its inhabitants. however, nothing in the further discussion responds to or addressed the management of human resources. 16 | aseas 15(1) indonesian government intervention in the management of indonesian migrant workers’ remittances and law 18/2017 appear as a strong justification after the policies have been carried out for decades – because placing economic provisions as constitutional norms will make them a standard of reference in all economic policies. hence, the annulment of economic policies contradictory to the standard can be pursued through a judicial process. indonesia in the international labor migration: a welfare state in a globalized world remittance can be considered as the most tangible benefit of international labor migration for developing countries (international labour office, 2010, pp. 41-42), and various forms of government intervention on migrant workers’ remittances do occur in many states (puri & ritzema, n.d., pp. 19-25). for instance, there are foreign currency denominated bonds in pakistan, bangladesh, and india; a non-repatriable investment scheme in pakistan, advisory service on investment opportunities as well as supplementary loans for migrant-worker customers of bangkok bank in thailand, training centers in high-migration regions in the philippines, and so forth (puri & ritzema, n.d., pp. 20-21). some governments – as in the philippines, thailand, bangladesh, indonesia, and the republic of korea – require certain percentages of remittances to be transferred through the domestic banking system of the migrant workers’ country of origin, but this has worked effectively only in the republic of korea (puri & ritzema, n.d., pp. 19-20). temporary migration programs tend to be advocated, based on the belief that temporary migrants would remit more money, resulting in more advantages for the development of the states of origin (de haas, 2007, p. 9). however, remittances are actually found to have varied impacts in each region as these critically depend on the specific circumstances under which migration occurs (international labour office, 2010, pp. 42-43), and the discussion on remittance impact has essentially changed over time. in the development and migration optimism before 1973, there was a general expectation that remittance flow – besides experiences, skills, and knowledge – would greatly help developing states’ economic take-off (de haas, 2007, pp. 3-4). in this period, developing countries’ governments started to actively encourage emigration due to a consideration that this is a foremost instrument to promote national development (de haas, 2007, p. 3). in the development and migration pessimism between 1973 and 1990, it was argued that remittances were mainly spent on conspicuous consumption and consumptive investment, yet rarely invested in productive enterprises (de haas, 2007, pp. 4-5). besides weakening local economies and increasing dependency, the increasing consumption and land purchases by migrants were then reported as the trigger of inflationary pressures and soaring land prices (de haas, 2007, p. 5). the main “positive” effect of migration – that is migrants’ and their families’ welfare improvement – was considered to be artificial and dangerous, as remittances were assumed to be an unstable and temporary source of revenue (de haas, 2007, p. 5). it was also argued that migration provokes the withdrawal of human capital – and the breakdown of traditional, stable village communities and their economies – leading to the development of passive, non-productive, and remittance-dependent communities (de haas, 2007, pp. 4-5). aseas 15(1) | 17 annisa ayuningtyasa & mailinda eka yuniza as a response to these contradictory perspectives, the new economics of labor migration (nelm) emerged in the 1980s and 1990s by offering a more subtle view of migration and development by connecting migration causes and consequences – which remittance is part of – more explicitly instead of determining whether migration affects development positively or negatively (de haas, 2007, p. 7). nelm opens up the possibility for both positive and negative development responses by questioning (1) why migration has contributed to development in some communities and much less – or even negatively – in others, and (2) what factors explain such different results (de haas, 2007, p. 6). in essence, the impact of migrant workers’ remittances on the development of their states of origin fundamentally depends on more general development conditions in the migrant-sending societies (de haas, 2007, p. 25). it is rather naïve to expect that government intervention in migrant workers’ remittances would be likely to succeed as long as the general political and economic conditions in the state of origin of the migrant workers concerned remain unfavorable (de haas, 2007, p. 25). the most plausible justification for the indonesian government to intervene in the management of imws’ remittances is that indonesia aims to advance public welfare and underlies the principle of social justice.38 an expansion of the government’s functions, hence, emerges as a consequence of welfare service demands in the framework of a welfare state (palguna, 2019, pp. 71-73), but government intervention – in relation to the concepts of democracy and constitutionalism – is only allowed if it is approved by the people, meaning that every attribution shall emerge at least at the legislation level. imws’ deployment abroad, thus, did not meet this requirement until the law 25/1997 – that includes the indonesian government as one of the parties that may conduct workers’ placement services both inside and outside indonesian territory39 – was enacted. similarly, the indonesian government’s intervention in imws’ remittances has also just been justified since 2017 through its inclusion in law 18/2017. although these laws appear to act as a justification, there are some points that need to be taken into account. first, the absence of a provision on state intervention in human resources as an economic resource in the 1945 constitution is still an obstacle (ayuningtyas, 2020, p. 49). human resources are, indeed, granted human rights in the constitution, but how state activities are interlocked with the market and family role in social provision – besides human rights entitlement – must be taken into account in a welfare state (esping-andersen, 1990, p. 21). the inclusion of a state intervention provision on human resources into the 1945 constitution is, therefore, still required. second, welfare states exist in a global political economy that is increasingly interdependent and yet divided into zones of sharply disparate conditions. hence, national economies are structurally integrated into a larger system and engaged in systematic exchanges with it – but a welfare state is, by its nature, meant to be an exclusive system (freeman, 1986, pp. 52-55). welfare states’ logic implies the existence of boundaries distinguishing those who are citizens and those who are not, and such boundaries are required, as welfare states establish a principle of distributive justice 38 see para. 4 of the 1945 constitution’s preamble. 39 art. 144 of law 25/1997 gave the same right and opportunity to every laborer to obtain labor placement services within and/or outside indonesian territory, while art. 145 mentioned that labor placement services can be executed by the government and/or the people. 18 | aseas 15(1) indonesian government intervention in the management of indonesian migrant workers’ remittances that departs from the distributive principles of the free market (freeman, 1986, pp. 52–53). accordingly, international labor migration, as the activity producing migrant workers’ remittances, intrudes and challenges the endogenous nature of the welfare state (freeman, 1986, p. 52). the welfare state as a closed system is essentially inward looking – seeking to take care of its own while its ability to do so is premised on its ability to construct a “safe house” to shelter its members from the outside world (freeman, 1986, pp. 54-56). hence, the implications for welfare states playing different roles in the international labor migration process are different. for a welfare state acting as the placement state, migration addresses problems caused by the welfare state’s constraints on the flexibility of the labor market only if migrant workers are excluded from the exercise of welfare state rights (freeman, 1986, pp. 54-56). for a welfare state acting as the state of origin – such as indonesia in the context of imws – the demand to construct such a “safe house” should be translated into a real protection for imws as its members (ayuningtyas, 2020, pp. 51-52). conclusion it is difficult to conclude that the indonesian government’s intervention in the management of imws’ remittances is constitutionally justified. silence in the 1945 constitution has been the main problem. by taking into account the constitutional supremacy and economic constitution applied in indonesia, the absence of provisions on state intervention in human resources allocation obviously makes imws’ deployment abroad practiced by the government constitutionally groundless. most importantly, it imposes no restrictions, so that the intervention eventually infiltrates the financial output generated. it is hard to argue that welfare state’s demand and endogenous nature are unconformable, particularly in the context of international labor migration. meanwhile, indonesia has to deal with international labor migration, as the lack of employment within the state has been a persistent problem. legislations, hence, seem to emerge as an effort to give a justification to the government’s actions, but they eventually create problematic rules as the most fundamental substruction remains vacant. this is exemplified by the considerable problems coming with the indonesian government’s obligation to conduct “economic protection” through remittance management, including the simplification of migrant workers’ remittances’ scope and channels as well as the legal vacuum on implementing the regulations.  references a draft framework for money laundering/terrorist financing risk assessment of a remittance corridor (p. 34). 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(2018). constitutionalism. in e. n. zalta (ed.), the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. metaphysics research lab, stanford university. retrieved 24 november 2020 from https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2018/entries/constitutionalism/ yudanto, n., prasetyo, a. y., hirzam, h. t. u., nugroho, f., anggraeni, a. m., & sadha, p. u. a. (2009). laporan survei nasional pola remitansi tki tahun 2008 [national survey report on the pattern of indonesian migrant workers' remittances of 2008]. direktorat statistik ekonomi dan moneter bank indonesia. retrieved 14 july 2020 from https://www.bi.go.id/id/publikasi/lain/lainnya/pages/ remitansi_tki_2008.aspx yuniarto, p, r. (2015). siasat bertahan, model pengelolaan remitansi, dan usaha mikro keluarga buruh migran [defense strategy, remittance management model, and micro enterprises of migrant worker families]. populasi, 23(1), 71-87. about the authors annisa ayuningtyas is an llm graduate from the faculty of law, universitas gadjah mada (ugm), indonesia with the major of law and governance. she is currently a researcher at the research centre for law, gender and society at the faculty of law ugm. her primary area of interest is the remittance of migrant workers. she is also involved in research on several vulnerable groups including migrant workers, women, and transgender people. ► contact: annisa.ayuningtyas@mail.ugm.ac.id. dr. mailinda eka yuniza is an associate professor at the administrative law department, faculty of law, universitas gadjah mada (ugm), indonesia and has been with the university since 2005. she is also a researcher at the center for energy study, ugm. she obtained her ll.b. in 2004 at ugm, and llm at melbourne university before she acquired her phd from ugm. her primary areas of interests are administrative law, energy law, and health law. she is heavily involved in policy-making in indonesia, in particular helping to provide consultation to government institutions. as an ardent academic and researcher, she has been publishing in peer-reviewed journals and presented papers in several national and international conferences. ► contact: mailinda@ugm.ac.id acknowledgements this work is based on a master’s thesis written by annisa ayuningtyas in 2020 under the supervision of dr. mailinda eka yuniza at the faculty of law, ugm, titled “the role of indonesian government in the management of indonesian migrant workers’ remittances: justification and restriction.” this work improves and expands upon the administrative and constitutional laws perspectives. it obtained a research grant from ugm under the rekognisi tugas akhir (final assignment recognition, rta) program. disclosure the authors declare no conflict of interest. mailto:annisa.ayuningtyas@mail.ugm.ac.id 22 | aseas 15(1) aseas 15(1) | 87 trash or treasure? a qualitative exploration of gleaning by-products in tourism supply chains in remote filipino fishing communities brooke a. portera , mark b. oramsa , michael lücka & enrico maria andreinib a auckland university of technology, new zealand; b legacoop agroalimentare, italy received: 25 january 2021 / accepted: 30 october 2021 / published: 13 december 2021 ► porter, b. a., orams, m. b., lück, m., & andreini, e. m. (2022). trash or treasure? a qualitative exploration of gleaning by-products in tourism supply chains in remote filipino fishing communities. advances in southeast asian studies, 15(1), 87-102. souvenirs have become an integral part of consumptive tourism with marine curios being a common offering in coastal destinations. the philippines, an emerging coastal destination is also a large exporter of marine shells. there is some overlap in the species exported as shell souvenirs and those that serve as an important protein source for coastal residents. in some such communities, following consumption of the mollusc, the shell by-products are discarded. given the state of poverty common to many remote artisanal fishing communities coupled with the tourism demand for shell curio and handicraft, it is expected that potential opportunities exist for small-scale revenue generation from the sale of discarded shells. using supply chain theory, this paper investigates the post-consumption use of shells obtained via gleaning activities in four remote filipino fishing communities. qualitative interviews revealed potential gaps and breakages in the supply chain that currently limit the potential for transitioning shells as waste/by-products to souvenir products in the tourism sector. the findings are discussed in terms of potential applications for environmental management and social development. the results suggest the potential for the transformation of an existing practice – gleaning and its by-products – into an in-demand curio product as a supplemental livelihood for impoverished fishing communities. keywords: gleaning; shell handicrafts; souvenir; supplemental livelihoods; tourism development  introduction in the philippines, a rapidly growing population and increasing illegal, unreported, and unregulated (iuu) fishing places filipino fisher-folk among the most economically vulnerable (castro & d’agnes, 2008; green et al., 2003). the incidence of poverty among fishing households in the philippines is twice that of the national rate (castro & d’agnes, 2008), though it is noted that income-associated challenges cannot necessarily be equated to quality of life and occupation satisfaction (cf., knudsen, 2016; pollnac, 2001; porter & orams, 2014). as fishing households struggle to meet their daily needs, resource over-exploitation becomes common (turner et al., 2007). globally, near-shore fisheries are already current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 56 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6806-7891 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8183-9662 88 | aseas 15(1) trash or treasure? in decline (fao, 2018) and previous research suggests that the degradation and decline of capture fisheries will continue (belton & thilsted, 2014). in the philippines, the use of by-products for economic gain has been pushed to extremes. especially in cities, it is common for poorer families to survive on pagpag, or food scraps scavenged from trash piles or waste facilities that are recooked and resold (cf., pilario, 2014). while surviving on pagpag is less common in coastal areas where residents can supplement their diet with leftover catches or through gleaning, pagpag is an example of the use of by-products to, albeit grossly, extend or add value to a market supply chain. in coastal areas of the philippines, gleaning, the collection of small molluscs for consumption purposes, is practiced by many households. some of the same species used for consumption can also be found as parts of shell souvenirs throughout the country, and in other coastal locations across the globe. for those dependent on marine resources for livelihoods, the continued degradation of the near shore marine environment will likely result in the pursuit of alternative economic activities. the philippines is an example of a country with a highly developed shell trade (floren, 2003). in the context of remote artisanal fishing communities, small marine molluscs obtained from gleaning practices are currently valued as protein or sold intact as a source of financial revenue for local members of fishing communities (porter, 2014). the potential use of the discarded shells in the curio trade has been largely overlooked. this paper explores practices related to the harvest of small, shelled invertebrates from coastal communities in the philippines. supply chain theory is used to examine the potential overlap of gleaning of small marine-shelled organisms as a sustenance fishery and the potential for the shell by-products to be used in the souvenir trade. this research seeks to uncover issues impacting the current lack of engagement with the shell souvenir and handicraft production and trade in coastal communities where economic resources and opportunities are marginal. in doing so, it aims to address a current gap in the literature on poverty alleviation through souvenir production (thirumaran et al., 2014), as well as the social implications and potential benefits of tourism development as they relate to production of souvenirs (cf., swanson & timothy, 2012). overview of relevant literature significance of souvenirs research on souvenirs, though not new, continues to be sporadic. swanson and timothy’s (2012) comprehensive review of literature on souvenirs identified three major themes: “souvenirs as holders of meaning, souvenirs as tradable commodities, and souvenirs as products of commodification” (p. 491). trihnh et al. (2014) found similar themes regarding souvenirs when researching the perspectives of the retailers. decrop and masset (2014) proposed a typology of souvenirs defining four types of souvenirs and their associated role or function: (1) tourist trinkets: categorisation; (2) destination stereotypes: self-expression; (3) paper mementoes: connection; and (4) picked-up objects: self-creation. as general examples, these four categories incorporate cheap souvenir mugs or t-shirts, models of the place (e.g., a miniature eiffel tower), ticket stubs, and shell artefacts (e.g., gifted piece of coral), respectively aseas 15(1) | 89 brooke a. porter, mark b. orams, michael lück & enrico maria andreini (decrop & masset, 2014). cater and cater (2007) noted that even rubbish, such as washed-up flip-flops, is being converted into innovative souvenirs such as key rings, bracelets, necklaces, cushions and mosaic pictures. more recently, haldrup (2017) explored the ‘magic’ of the souvenir, noting that anything can become a souvenir; he describes the souvenir as an actant or ‘shape-shifter’ with the ability to transform, integrate, perform, and even manipulate spaces. shifting from the importance of the souvenir in the tourism experience, there is increasing support from the literature on the role of souvenir development as it relates to host communities. for example, swanson and timothy (2012) suggest the need to better understand how communities may benefit from participation as souvenir producers. similarly, thirumaran et al. (2014) push for the inclusion of souvenirs in larger scale tourism development plans, suggesting souvenirs as a means of [economically] supporting rural handicraft producers. despite its existence since the concept of ‘travel’, the souvenir remains a complex phenomenon (thirumaran et al., 2014). marine organisms as souvenirs the ideas presented by decrop and masset (2014), cater and cater (2007), and haldrup (2017) postulate that any object found by a visitor can become a souvenir. this idea is especially relevant to the discussion of marine shells as souvenirs and souvenir materials given the popularity of beachcombing as a tourist activity (kenchington, 1993). just as collected shell specimens can become a treasured souvenir to a beachcomber, they also serve as materials in the production of more complex handicrafts (see figure 1). figure 1. shell chandeliers being sold at a souvenir booth on white beach, bolinao, pangasinan, luzon, philippines. bottles of small shells are also being sold as souvenirs (bottom right of photo). the shells used to craft these souvenirs are representative of the different shell organisms consumed by many coastal residents. (photo by brooke porter). 90 | aseas 15(1) trash or treasure? the use of marine organisms and by-products (e.g., sea turtle shells) for handicrafts have a long history as souvenirs and have been traded for centuries (gössling et al., 2004). mollusc shells are a predominant source of these ‘curio’ and souvenir products (grey et al., 2005; salvador et al., 2015; wood & wells, 1995). new and emerging coastal destinations have responded to significant tourism growth, and resulting increased demand for souvenirs and handicrafts, with an increased harvest of marine shells (dias et al., 2011; gössling et al., 2004; shyam et al., 2017). other research has indicated souvenir-related markets, such as the shell trade, offer direct access opportunities for members of fishing communities (shyam et al., 2017). in addition, coastal areas that are not currently considered tourism destinations are taking advantage of the economic opportunities through the export of shells and shell-based products to be sold in other locales where tourism is present (cf., dias et al., 2011). notably, many of today’s souvenirs are sourced from regions where the shells, labour, and other supplies involved in creating the souvenir products are affordable (notar, 2006). given that the economic utilisation of marine shells for the purpose of the souvenir/curio trade often extends well beyond the initial harvest site, there has been an associated commodification of shells. such a use of ‘foreign’ marine resources, resulting from the globalisation of shell-based souvenirs, has an obvious environmental footprint; however, it may also impact the authenticity of the touristic experience. an example of this begins in the philippines and ends in hawai’i. the shells used in the iconic ‘hawai’ian’ shell lei (necklace) are commonly imported from the philippines (e.g., natural shell jewelery, n.d.). the idea of being greeted with a lei is part of the iconic hawai’ian tourist experience (linnekin, 1997); yet these imported shell lei, manufactured in the philippines (or elsewhere), are neither authentic nor representative of the host culture. this example of shell lei, beginning in southeast asia and ending in hawai’i is indicative of what chutia and sarma (2016) refer to as sponsored commercialisation; in other words, the intermediaries are responsible for the decisions related to the product rather than the artisans. similarly related to the context of souvenir out-sourcing, notar (2006) describes this loss of authenticity, explaining that “a souvenir should carry the spirit of the place where it was purchased (or found, or taken)” (p. 65). it is important to note that in the wake of a global pandemic, communities are reconsidering their roles in creating tourism. considering previously overlooked aspects of communities’ roles in tourism, such as pride in place and product (see also, porter et al., 2014), may become increasingly important. finally, in addition to the loss of destination-associated authenticity, and negative environmental impacts of out-sourced souvenirs (appukuttan & ramadoss, 2000; kowalewski et al., 2014; newton et al., 1993; notar, 2006), the removal of mollusc species may impact the food security of coastal residents in lesser-developed regions. souvenirs or sustenance? some of the smaller mollusc species harvested and removed for trade into the souvenir market are considered an important source of sustenance for many coastal residents in lesser-developed regions (dias et al., 2011; wood & wells, 1995). while such marine by-products may provide an important trade/economic activity in the tourism sphere or elsewhere, the sale of marine by-products is influenced by the aseas 15(1) | 91 brooke a. porter, mark b. orams, michael lück & enrico maria andreini comparative economic value of their potential as a source of food (wood & wells, 1995). in the philippines, the shell trade is a well-established and important economy (dolorosa & dangan-galon, 2014; floren, 2003), with over 1,000 documented species of molluscs being exported (woods & wells, 1995). similarly, in india, shyam et al. (2017) found that small molluscs as bycatch generated an important product for fishers. in addition to providing economic opportunities, many of the described smaller molluscs also serve as an essential food and protein source for coastal residents (appukuttan & ramadoss, 2000; floren, 2003). in the philippines, as well as other coastal areas, smaller-shelled invertebrates are gathered in coastal fishing referred to as ‘gleaning’. gleaning is considered a subset of artisanal fishing (see figure 2) and is practiced commonly by both women and men in coastal areas of the philippines and in other coastal communities in the coral triangle region (kleiber et al., 2014; nieves et al., 2015; weeratunge et al., 2010). in remote artisanal fishing communities in the philippines, it is common for coastal residents to utilise gleaning activities as an important food source (cf., porter, 2014). despite this widespread practice of gleaning and the associated by-products of shells and an established market for them (dolorosa & dangan-galon, 2014), it is unclear why more coastal residents do not participate in the sale of these shells, as previous research suggests that members of such fishing communities consider their situation as impoverished (porter & orams, 2014). figure 2. women gleaning on the coast of dimipac island, coron, philippines. (photo by brooke porter). 92 | aseas 15(1) trash or treasure? research design and methods used a supply chain lens both formal and informal economies are important in the lesser developed regions (bacchetta et al., 2009). bacchetta et al. (2009) estimated that up to 60% of workers in lesser-developed regions are employed in informal economies. fisheries and other artisanal-level activities (e.g., handicrafts, souvenirs) often go undocumented and, thus, are considered informal activities. swanson and timothy (2012, p. 493) define the souvenir supply chain, saying that: the souvenir supply chain represents the flow of goods from point of production to point of consumption, or the distribution of the souvenir product from producer/manufacturer to final tourist consumer. the supply chain includes producers who convert raw materials into souvenir products; manufacturers who mass produce souvenir products on a large-scale; wholesalers who facilitate distribution by buying larger quantities of souvenir goods and reselling smaller quantities to other suppliers; and retailers who sell products to consumers-tourists who derive personal benefits from the object and the experiences it represents. thus, we approach this study through a supply chain lens with emphasis on the producers while noting the relevance of supply chain theory, which applies to and often combines both formal and informal economies (e.g., holt & littlewood, 2014). in addition, supply chain theory is a well-understood and commonly applied concept in smallscale rural markets and entrepreneurial processes in lesser-developed nations (holt & littlewood, 2014); it is also a common approach used by international development and aid agencies (cf., e.g., chorn et al., 2015). rural product supply chains may be established opportunistically or may occur in a more organised manner. a common characteristic of these supply chains are the opportunities at each stage for value extraction (see figure 3). marine resourcebased product sold on to another seller in same area sold by fisher directly on roadside truck driver individual customers passing by sold from roadside stands sold en route to roadside stallholders brought into town and sold to market sellers sold on to small shops and roadside stands individual customers figure 3. example of a marine product supply chain. the product journeys through varied and multiple stages before arriving at the consumer/customer. (adapted from holt & littlewood, 2014, p. 203). aseas 15(1) | 93 brooke a. porter, mark b. orams, michael lück & enrico maria andreini this paper explores such scenarios associated with gleaning in four coastal fishing communities in the philippines. it has been argued that fisher-folk should be considered central persons in coastal and fisheries research (grafton et al., 2006), because they are permanent residents, have familiarity with their local resources, and are able to accurately describe the fisheries and accompanying processes (bunce et al., 2000; turner et al., 2007). building on this idea of fisher-folk as gatekeepers of important fisheries and environmental knowledge, semi-structured group interviews were used to collect qualitative data. members of fishing households from four coastal communities in the luzon region of the philippines were interviewed by the primary researcher (see figure 3). the locations were chosen out of convenience based on availability of local guides, translators, and in-kind support (e.g., accommodation). in all locations, interviews were supported by the help of translators and local guides. interviewee responses were immediately translated from bolinay, visaya, or tagalog to english. due to the larger sizes of group interviews at natipuan (fourth research site), the recorded interviews were transcribed by a native tagalog speaker. semi-structured interviews are considered important in social fisheries research to generate detailed qualitative information (cf., bunce et al., 2000). in all locations, purposive and snowball sampling were used to recruit participants. participation was voluntary and confidentiality was maintained. participation in the group interviews was restricted to persons at least 16 years of age residing in a household where fishing was an important activity undertaken by themselves or other members of that household. group interviews occurred in two main stages. the first stage of data collection included three research sites bound primarily by barangays, which are the smallest administrative divisions in the philippines: (1) barangay victory; (2) barangay decabobo; and (3) dimipac island (barangay quezon) (see figure 4). the first stage of fieldwork focused primarily on understanding fishing activities and livelihoods. as part of these interviews, participants were asked about their gleaning activities and their practices using shell by-products. data from the first stage revealed the discarding of shell by-products as a frequent practice. as a consequence, the second stage of interviews was designed to gain a better understanding of why shell by-products were often being discarded rather than used in the shell souvenir industry. the second stage of fieldwork was conducted figure 4. map of the research sites. the research sites are indicated by black dots. the entire region of luzon has been shaded light grey, while the provinces of the research sites appear in a darker shade of grey. (authors’ compilation). 94 | aseas 15(1) trash or treasure? in the coastal community of natipuan, in the luzon region (see figure 4). during this stage, interview questions were developed to collect exploratory data on gleaning activities and to investigate in more detail the community members’ use or non-use of shell by-products in the shell souvenir trade. results from the two stages of fieldwork are presented below. table 1 provides a summary of the interviews undertaken at the four study sites. results gleaning was considered a ‘way of life’ for most participants. in total, 49 participants reported they regularly undertook gleaning for gastropods (see figure 5). participants reported eating the meat (average size 1 cm3) collected from these shells using a small pin or needle. during the interviews from stage 1 of the study, it was common to observe large piles of discarded shells (primarily small gastropods) near or around participants’ homes. at each of the research sites, the majority of, and in some cases all, residents reported discarding the shells collected from their gleaning activities as opposed to selling them into the souvenir trade (see figure 5). research site number of participants total number of interviews victory 21 12 decabobo 7 4 dimipac 16 3 natipuan 12 2 total 56 21 table 1. summary of interviews undertaken. (authors’ compilation). figure 5. gleaning activities and shell economies in four philippines coastal communities. the stacked bars in each column are representative of the four research sites/communities. (authors’ compilation). aseas 15(1) | 95 brooke a. porter, mark b. orams, michael lück & enrico maria andreini the gender representation in gleaning was near equal with slightly more male (n = 27) than female gleaners (n = 22). in natipuan, participants specified that gleaning is done by both genders: “it can be either men or women. there are also children”. figure 5 highlights the number of respondents participating in gleaning. nearly 90% of respondents reported participation in gleaning activities. only 14% of gleaners reported active or partial participation in the sale of empty shells. a common response was that gleaning catches were “only for meat”. it was slightly more common for participants to sell shells with meat for profit (22%). a representative statement of this was, “sometimes we eat the meat, sometimes sell it [shell with meat]. but [when we eat the meat] we throw away the shells”. it is also worth noting that most of the respondents participating in the sale of shells related to souvenirs came from barangay victory. likewise, the majority of those selling shells with meat came from victory; however, two similar cases were reported in decabobo and two in natipuan. whereas most participants stated that their gleaning catches were for “eating only”, two women from victory declared an active participation in the souvenir trade, with one of these women stating the buying and selling of shells for shell craft as her primary occupation (see figure 6). she stated, “i sell the shells and eat the meat”. the other woman, who identified her primary occupation as a housewife, reported sometimes making shell crafts saying that “i use them [the leftover shells] for crafts.” natipuan interview questions in natipuan focused on better understanding gleaning waste. barangay natipuan community is a coastal town situated in close vicinity to tourist resorts. many of its members actively participate in the fisheries to supplement their figure 6. barangay victory resident (woman with hand on chair) selling shell necklaces to visitors. (photo by brooke porter). 96 | aseas 15(1) trash or treasure? incomes. a total of 12 community members were interviewed in two interview groups. all participants were female as this research was combined with a separate inquiry. the all-female sample was thought to have positively impacted the data as it is generally women who are responsible for shell handicraft production. interview questions related to gleaning and shells as by-products focused on participation in the gleaning fishery, the use and sale of gleaning catches, and participation (or lack thereof) in the souvenir trade/industry. all of the natipuan participants reported being members of gleaning households who regularly relied upon gleaning catches for protein sustenance. none of these participants reported active participation in the souvenir trade, including the processing or selling of shells leftover from gleaning catches. one woman reported the occasional and opportunistic sale of shells stating that she will sell the shells as souvenirs, “if someone will buy it”. however, in natipuan, it was common for participants to decorate their homes with the shell by-products. participants described the various uses, mostly as outdoor decor, of washed shells post-consumption: “we put it [the shells] in the plants, … in the garden, … inside a vase, … in the pots, … on the side of the pots”. still others recognised that, although shell handicraft was not common in natipuan, “in other places they are doing that [creating souvenirs] … they are creating lamps, curtains”. when asked why this does not happen in natipuan, some felt there were only enough shells for consumption: “we don’t have enough shells here … only enough for food”, or that the shells were too small and too few: “we don’t have much shells here”. other participants, responding to the question as to why they don’t make handicrafts to sell with the shells post-consumption (e.g., shell chandeliers, necklaces), felt they did not have the knowledge or skill necessary to produce shell handicrafts or souvenirs. a consistent response regarding knowledge-base was, “we don’t know how”, accompanied by embarrassed laughter. discussion the combined data sets from face-to-face, semi-structured interviews showed that many participants were reliant upon gleaning as a staple food and protein source. despite a large and globally significant shell trade in the philippines, many participants (43 in total) reported discarding rather than selling the leftover shells. while some reported selling gleaning catches (shells with meat) for supplemental income, few regularly sold empty shells post consumption. specific to natipuan, some participants reported washing and using the shells post consumption as decorative ornaments for personal households. the results from natipuan, where the practice of decorating gardens and houses with shells was common, suggest that, in some cases, participants are associating an aesthetic value with shelled organisms used for sustenance. this finding is loosely supported by swanson and timothy (2012) who described the utilitarian uses of handicrafts in traditional societies; however, their research found that in many places ‘kitsch’ items desired by tourists, despite their lack of relevance to the host culture, were being produced due to a demand by tourists (e.g., carved masks). remarkably, the consumption of the gastropods requires the removal of meat, resulting in a ‘clean’ and potentially market-ready shells. thus, it could be argued that they are missing supplemental livelihood opportunities associated with the production of handicraft and souvenirs. aseas 15(1) | 97 brooke a. porter, mark b. orams, michael lück & enrico maria andreini the souvenir industry is worth billions of dollars globally, and souvenirs have become an inseparable part of the consumptive tourism experience (swanson & timothy, 2012; thiruaman et al., 2014). previous research has documented the importance of the shell souvenir industry in the philippines (cf., floren, 2003). participant responses demonstrated the existence of rural supply chains for marine resourcebased products, such as gleaning catches (meat included), with some selling catches; however, the supply chain typically ends post-consumption. the data from the second stage of the research provide insight into such potential issues. in general, there are numerous factors that may influence the efficacy of a supply chain. we simplify these into two broad categories: product-related and market-related. examples of the first category include product quality and available quantities. examples of the latter category include market saturation and market linkages. data from this study indicate particular issues with market linkages. factors are discussed individually below. product-related issues with regard to product-related factors, product quality, both structure and colour, are concerns within the shell trade (nijman et al., 2015). however, the smaller sizes of the shells collected by gleaners (e.g., cikad) makes them less susceptible to breakage and colour-type imperfections. thus, quality, in the case of gleaning by-products, is considered to have a negligible influence on the supply chain. further, given that the shells under discussion are the result of a subsistence practice and an existing by-product, it would be possible for participants to discard poor quality shells while still building up a stock of premium-quality specimens. this suggestion is further supported by researcher observation: during the first stage of fieldwork, metrehigh piles of discarded shells, seemingly suitable for shell handicrafts, were observed around participants’ homes. kleiber et al. (2014) demonstrated the frequency and importance of gleaning as a fisheries subset and, similar to this study, they showed that both women and men frequently participated in gleaning. given the importance of gleaning for sustenance and the frequency with which it occurs (floren, 2003; kleiber et al., 2014), a surplus of shell by-products would be expected at a collective community level. again, given the establishment of the gleaning as a mostly subsistence fishery, it is unlikely that fishing effort would need to change to utilise discarded shells as handicrafts for what would be a theoretically supplemental livelihood. thus, our findings and interpretations indicate that product-related factors are unlikely to impact the participation of remote artisanal fishers in the shell souvenir trade. market-related issues although product-related issues were not apparent, it is likely that there are potential issues with market-related factors. the philippines has a substantial influence on the global shell trade; however, despite consistent collection efforts, reported catches are in decline (floren, 2003). this decline in catch indicates that stock depletion is more likely to influence the supply chain than market saturation. thus, we attribute that market-related issues such as gaps in market linkages may be present. for example, the geographical remoteness of a location may affect participation in a supply chain; 98 | aseas 15(1) trash or treasure? another potential limiting factor is economic capability (holt & littlewood, 2014). geographical remoteness is an issue for many remote fishing communities; given that the four research sites could be considered remote, location may impact the ability of a community to participate in the shell souvenir trade. however, participation in other fisheries-related supply chains (e.g., live reef fish trade, aquarium trade, food fisheries) found in the four communities surveyed present evidence of efficient and functioning options for the transportation of goods. economic capability was not thought to be a limiting factor as the ‘supplies’ necessary to participate are already on-hand as by-products of an existing practice. instead, our findings suggest that the most likely limiting factor is a lack of awareness of market opportunities and a lack of perceived skill (palmer, 2007; thirumaran et al., 2014). this was emphasised by participants indicating their lack of knowledge and skill in transforming shell by-products into desired souvenirs (e.g., necklaces, chandeliers, lamps, and sculptures). participant responses explaining this lack of knowledge, such as “we don’t know how to [create curtains or lamps]”, were often marked by embarrassed laughter. indeed, while souvenirs such as shell chandeliers require some skill to create (see figure 1), the skills needed to create many types of shell souvenirs are basic (e.g., the single-strand necklaces being sold in figure 6). figure 7 focuses on issues within the first stage of the supply chain (expanded upon from figure 3). the first stage, marine resource-based products, has been expanded to include productand market-related issues based on our findings. the results from this study indicate the presence of problems in the first stage of this rural supply chain. many participants simply did not have the knowledge and/or confidence to transform the shells from gleaning by-products into shell handicrafts or souvenirs. it is noted that some participant responses indicate market-related issues (e.g., finding a buyer); however, it is likely that problems with the creation and production of shell products are more pressing. thus, on-the-ground efforts, as well as future research, should focus on education and training in handicraft production. whereas learning exchanges with communities actively involved in the shell souvenir trade may seek to resolve some market-related issues (dolorosa & dangangalon, 2014), previous research suggests that market-related issues be successfully addressed through the inclusion of souvenir development in broader tourism planning (cf., thirumaran et al., 2014). !"#$%"&'()"*+ ,-.#*'/0'1 2"+'$ 3"()-'$('+.4(5'12"+'/$ 6(./45& 7.*/$ .-$&.$ "-.&8'($ +'**'($ )-$ +"%'$ "('" 7.*/$ 29$ :)+8'($ /)('5&*9$ .-$ (."/+)/' ;(45<$/()='( >-/)=)/4"*$ 54+&.%'(+$ 6"++)-0$ 29 7.*/$ :(.%$ (."/+)/'$ +&"-/+ 7.*/$ '-$(.4&'$ &.$(."/+)/'$ +&"**8.*/'(+ ?(.408&$ )-&.$ &.#-$ "-/$ +.*/$ &.$ %"(<'&$ +'**'(+ 7.*/$ .-$&.$ +%"**$ +8.6+$ "-/$(."/+)/'$ +&"-/+ >-/)=)/4"*$ 54+&.%'(+ figure 7. a closer look at the product and production in a marine resource-based supply chain. the dashed lines indicate issues impacting the supply chain. (authors’ compilation). aseas 15(1) | 99 brooke a. porter, mark b. orams, michael lück & enrico maria andreini conclusions the importance of the souvenir in travel is unlikely to wane. this research explored issues related to production in the shell-souvenir supply chain in four impoverished coastal fishing communities in the philippines. in doing so, it provided an interdisciplinary look at the economic, environmental, and social role of souvenirs. the findings contribute to previously identified gaps in the literature, such as rural/souvenir supply chain (swanson & timothy, 2012) and the nexus of tourism souvenir development (swanson & timothy, 2012; thirumaran et a., 2014). in addition, this research advances the discussion on the potential for tourism and tourism-associated activities, such as shell-handicraft production, as a potential supplemental livelihood for fishing communities (porter & orams, 2014; shyam et al., 2017; swanson & timothy, 2012; thirumaran et al., 2014; trihnh et al., 2014). finally, it also provides insight on potential future response strategies for the degradation of near-shore marine resources associated with souvenir-related shell harvest (floren, 2003). with the notable existing market for shell souvenir products originating from the philippines, our data revealed a lack of participation in this sector from the four communities. this was attributed to a poor understanding of market opportunities in the souvenir supply chain, rather than a lack of desire to engage in the sector. feasible efforts, such as training and knowledge sharing (dolorosa & dangan-galon, 2014), may address these market-related issues by creating a value-added benefit to an existing waste product of gleaning. such skills trainings, combined with a change in current practices from discarding shell by-products to building raw product reserves, have the potential to provide sufficient stock, both in quantity and quality, for participation at a cottage industry level in the shell souvenir tourism trade. on a larger scale, the issues revealed in this research may be addressed at various governmental levels through future inclusion of souvenir development in tourism planning efforts (thirumaran et al., 2014). the findings of this study also suggest a lack of linkage between commercial and sustenance fisheries in the context of molluscs (shelled organisms). while, currently, the fisheries are functioning in separate capacities, a continued decline in commercial harvest coupled with a consistent or increased demand in shell souvenirs may force stakeholders to source products from communities, such as the ones described in this research. we agree with previous scholars that issues surrounding souvenir production are in need of more research (swanson & timothy, 2012; thirumaran et al., 2014). the results from this study emphasise a need to better understand if and how education (e.g., artisanal skills to create shell souvenirs) impacts participation in the shell souvenir supply chain at a rural level. an additional area of consideration for those working on ecosystem management and resilience would be exploring how the use of post-consumption waste from gleaning could serve to alleviate some direct commercial fishing pressure on shelled marine invertebrates through the use of any already harvested resources. souvenirs, in general, are a consumptive part of the tourism experience. ideally, this sector needs to be formally recognised and subsequently organised to promote social, economic, and environmental benefits, especially at the cottage level. this research demonstrated the potential of 100 | aseas 15(1) trash or treasure? transforming existing post-consumption (by-product) waste from a coastal fishery into a consumptive souvenir product that is synonymous with the tourism experience.  references appukuttan, k. k., & ramadoss, k. 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(2007). declining reliance on marine resources in remote south pacific societies: ecological versus socio-economic drivers. coral reefs, 26(4), 997-1008. weeratunge, n., snyder, k. a., & sze, c. p. (2010). gleaner, fisher, trader, processor: understanding gendered employment in fisheries and aquaculture. fish and fisheries, 11(4), 405-420. wood, e., & wells, s. (1995). the shell trade: a case for sustainable utilization. in e. a. kay (ed.), the conservation biology of molluscs: proceedings of a symposium held at the 9th international malacological. international union for conservation of nature. 102 | aseas 15(1) trash or treasure? about the authors brooke porter is a specialist in conservation strategy with a focus on the human dimensions of management. she currently works with unfao as an instructional designer developing content supporting environmental management strategies in lesser-developed regions. brooke has worked in various capacities with ngos, international aid agencies, and educational institutions across the globe. ► contact: bporter@aut.ac.nz professor mark b. orams is a researcher with a focus on marine recreation, tourism, and sport. he is currently dean of the graduate research school at the auckland university of technology in aotearoa, new zealand. ► contact: morams@aut.ac.nz michael lück is a professor at the school of hospitality and tourism at auckland university of technology, new zealand. he is founding co-chair of the international coastal & marine tourism society. his research interests include (marine) wildlife tourism, the cruise industry, ecotourism, interpretation and education on wildlife tours, the impacts of tourism, and aviation. he has published in a number of international journals, is founding editor of the academic journal tourism in marine environments, associate editor of the journal of ecotourism, and editorial board member of marine policy and frontiers. ► contact: mluecj@aut.ac.nz enrico andreini is an international expert in fisheries development and seafood supply chains. enrico currently works with legacoop agroalimentare managing a fisheries development project in the mediterranean. he has worked on fisheries development projects across the globe, focusing on the complexities in fisheries management and the importance of community voices in the development and design of fisheries projects. ► contact: enrico.andreini@gmail.com acknowledgements this research would not have been possible without the in-kind support of staff from the coral triangle conservancy (ree.ph), namely scott countryman, who provided lodging, transportation, and logistical support for fieldwork at three research sites. in addition, the authors would like to extend their thanks to dr. annette menez and all of the bolinao marine science institute, who provided incredible logistical support, as well as acted as local guides for one field site; joanne garcia, who provided translations at two field sites, as well as helped care for the lead researcher’s child at two field sites; beth uy, who assisted with the interviews; dr. mianne silvestre, who provided translations, as well as invaluable medical support to participants in napituan; and finally, the respective local government units of the four baranagays, who supported the research and facilitated access to their esteemed community members. aseas 14(1) | 81 marginalized minorities in malaysia? a case study of a demolished estate hindu temple in penang sue ann teoa a victoria university of wellington, new zealand ► teo, s. a. (2021). marginalized minorities in malaysia? a case study of a demolished estate hindu temple in penang. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 14(1), 81-97. in the literature, malaysian indians, as minorities, are marginalized and discriminated against, while their agency is either conspicuously lacking or one-dimensional. as a result, the mainstream discourse concerning malaysian indians is discursive and renders them subordinate. i argue that despite the marginalization and discrimination, grassroots malaysian indian hindus are not powerless. with a case study of a demolished estate hindu temple in penang, i unpack their agential compliance and lack of confrontation when the state government destroyed their community temple. their agential responses reflect their diverse political and social experiences as minorities and the myriad ways of interpreting the political rivalry between the ruling federal and opposition-led state government. analysis of the case study is derived from ethnography and in-depth interviews with the estate hindus. keywords: hindu temple demolition; hindus; malaysia; penang; religious minority  introduction changes in the political status quo of malaysia during the last two decades have proven that there are limitations to the existing literature about malaysian indians as minorities. more importantly, the erosion of political dynamics has brought to surface the contour of power relations at the grassroots levels – this is, between the government and minority groups. this article aims to address the absence of such complex and complicit power relations in the mainstream discourse. i argue that the existing mainstream discourse, which has been consistently rendering malaysian indians, especially the hindus, as subordinate and powerless, is problematic. with a case study of a demolished estate hindu temple in penang, i demonstrate malaysian indians in diverse and changing social and political realities from individual to group associations and communal representations. this case study also challenges the discursive notion that the demolition of hindu temples in malaysia is mainly caused by the predominantly malay muslim ruling government as the perpetrator. the demolished estate temple was located on land belonging to the state government of penang. at the time, penang was governed by the opposition political alliance, pakatan rakyat (pr). pr was a coalition formed by the democratic action party (dap), people’s justice party (pkr), and aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 53 82 | aseas 14(1) marginalized minorities in malaysia? the pan-malaysian islamic party (pas) on 1 april 2008, after the 12th general election. dap and pkr are multi-racial political parties, and pas is an islamic political party. the state was one of the five states that pr won over during their unprecedented political victory in the 2008 general election.1 the election was popularly known within malaysia as a political tsunami, as it was the first time in its history that the ruling alliance, the predominantly malay muslim barisan nasional (bn) coalition, had come close to losing an election to their opposition counterparts. many scholars argue that the mass rally by malaysian indian hindus in november 2007 was an important contributing factor towards the result of the 2008 general elections. the impetus for the rally was precisely the continuous demolition of hindu temples by the ruling government (noor, 2008), and the rally is seen to be a major factor in rattling the political status quo of the country, which was reflected in the results of the 2008 general election (noor, 2008). more importantly, the opposition political parties had shown their public support to the hindu leaders and the rally, and that show of support had won them a substantial amount of electoral votes from the malaysian public (mokhtar, 2008, p. 96). the political victory of the pr in penang may lead to an assumption that hindu temples in that state, especially those located on privately owned lands, were safer from demolition than hindu temples in states governed by the bn. but the following case shows a contrasting view. the primary focus of this article is the response of the estate hindus when the authorities announced their intention and subsequently demolished their community temple. by presenting their responses, i will demonstrate a dimension of complexity in the issue of the demolition of hindu temples as derived from the agency of grassroots hindu minorities directly. my analysis includes ethnographic data related to their sentiments when the temple was demolished and ‘relocated’ – this is, their recounts of the process of negotiation with the authorities, and of the demolition and relocation day, as well as their sentiments about the temporary temple that the authorities helped to establish for housing the murtis. this case study suggests a deep understanding of the agential roles of malaysian minorities, as the estate hindus conform while indirectly demonstrating their objection and scepticism towards the authorities. their responses demonstrate a subjective embrace of the attributes of being members of the religious minority. understanding their agential roles complicates the mainstream discourse that presents malaysian indian hindus as powerless to the dominance of the authorities. as i further demonstrate in the analysis, their subjective embrace had enabled them to make civic and political claims on the national community (mahmood, 2012, p. 438). methodological and theoretical approach i anchor my argument in a case study of a demolished hindu temple in penang, malaysia. ‘demolition’ in this article is defined as tearing down of a building structure. however, this case study demonstrates that the process of demolition is often 1 the coalition was dissolved officially on 16 june 2015 due to insurmountable friction, especially between pas and dap. subsequently, dap and pkr joined the pakatan harapan coalition with malaysian united indigenous party (bersatu) and national trust party (amanah) on 22 september 2015. during fieldwork for this study (between 2013 and 2014), the state government of penang was led by the pr coalition with the chief minister from dap. aseas 14(1) | 83 sue ann teo complicated, intertwined with political rivalry between the ruling and opposition political parties at both the state and national levels and the specificity of malaysian hindus’ reputation as a marginalized and discriminated minority. due to the heavy politicking between the ruling and opposition political parties over this issue, the term demolition often entails a de facto necessity of relocating the temple, and it is often decided after a public negotiation between the management committee of the temple and the authorities, which could be national or state government agencies, or local municipalities. as the relocation is decided and agreed upon, the case of demolition is known as ‘relocation’ of the temple. however, as i will demonstrate in this case study, the relocation does not proceed conventionally. indeed, the relocation of hindu temples is nothing new. in india, for example, the relocation of a hindu temple is an auspicious event, which entails identification of a new location, followed by a ground-breaking ceremony, and then, after the completion of the new temple structure and the shifting of the murtis from the former temple building into the new one, by a consecration ceremony. the demolition of the estate hindu temple in penang demonstrates that the ‘relocation’ took place before authorities had identified a new location and constructed a new temple building. the murtis of the temple were instead housed in a temporary, simple-structured building. this case study stems from a series of more extensive studies of hindu temples in penang, which i have conducted since 2011. my first direct encounter with the demolition of hindu temples came through a mapping exercise commissioned by the penang hindu endowment board. during this mapping exercise, i visited over two hundred hindu temples, wayside and family shrines, and demolished hindu temples and shrines. three years later, in 2014, i revisited some of these temples for my phd dissertation. on my first day of revisiting, i was surprised to find that this estate temple had been demolished (see figure 1), although data obtained from the previous mapping exercise clearly showed that the land on which the temple was located belonged to the penang state government. i also recalled that the temple committee stressed that the authorities had allowed rebuilding the temple on the land. figure 1. the demolished estate temple. this was my first sight of the demolished temple during the first day of revisiting. (photo taken during fieldwork). 84 | aseas 14(1) marginalized minorities in malaysia? i subsequently chose this temple as a case study after obtaining the consent of the management committee. this case study is derived from ethnographic research and in-depth interviews with members of the management committee and estate hindus.2 throughout this study, pseudonyms are used in place of real names to protect the confidentiality of the participants. ethnographic data is obtained from field observations and informal conversations with the estate hindus when i visited their housing area located about three hundred meters away from the temple. i visited the estate and the housing areas continuously for a period of three months. the conversations took place outside and inside their homes, which attracted the curiosity of other neighbours, who often joined in the discussions. at the outset of the fieldwork, there were tensions and contradictions in the temple committee and the estate hindus’ responses. on the one hand, the management committee explained the inevitability of complying with the state government for demolishing the temple. on the other hand, many members of the estate hindu community expressed their disagreement and discontentment for their community temple to be destroyed before a new location was identified for rebuilding, as the state government had promised. furthermore, the management committee and some members of the estate hindus stressed that they did not protest and conformed to the arrangement by the state government. however, some other members of the estate hindus were able to narrate the incident of their protest during the day when the officials bulldozed their community. besides the contradictory claims, a statement of ‘what to do?’ was often echoed in the interviews with the estate hindus. i argue that the rhetorical question indicates an agential response that is embedded in the lived experience of patron-client relationships between the authorities and the estate hindus. literature discerning political transactionalism has shown how patron-client relationships between the authorities and the people are widely manifested in southeast asia (scott, 1972; simandjuntak, 2012; van klinken & berenschot, 2014). in malaysia, even the seemingly rigid and orthodox pas is found to negotiate the party’s moral compass to woo political support from the youth (müller, 2015). this negotiation indicates the influence of informal power relations embedded in the dependencies within patron-client relationships. scott (1972, p. 92) argues that informal patron-client relations are powerful enough to undermine the formal institution of authority. such informal power relations are vividly narrated by the estate hindus, as they compared the change of state government from the ruling bn to the opposition pr. this case study also illuminates the complex interconnections of patron-client power relations between politicians and grassroots and social structure, which contributes to the literature of how the concept of democracy is shaped from the bottom up (simandjuntak, 2012; van klinken & berenschot, 2014). the fieldwork took place after the estate hindus had waited for about 18 months. since the demolition in june 2014, the estate hindus had waited for the state government’s arrangement of a new land for rebuilding the temple. a participant, magesan (56 years old, retired; personal communication, 17 october 2016) said: 2 members of the management committee consisted of residents living at the estate. they are distinguished from other estate hindus by their position in the temple committee. aseas 14(1) | 85 sue ann teo he [the second deputy chief minister of malaysia] said two years. in two years, the state government will rebuild for us . . . but now, we don’t know where he is, if he wins the next general election, then we are probably fine. but what if he loses? such compliance imbued with scepticism was the general sentiment among research participants, both the management committee and the estate hindus. however, i argue that their sentiments require a nuanced unpacking. furthermore, the frictions between the management committee and estate hindus who opposed their decision to comply with the state government indicate another layer of complexity to their responses. i further argue that their diverse responses and sentiments indicate their agency concerning the demolition of their community temple. many studies have been conducted focusing on the agency of minorities and subordinated groups. for instance, scott (1990) insists that “the powerless have . . . a self-interest in conspiring to reinforce a hegemonic appearance” (p. xii). he argues that the conspiracy is to adopt a strategic pose in the presence of the powerful (scott, 1990, p. xii). one possible strategic pose is the submission to a hegemonic relationship with the authorities. mahmood (2012) argues that the agential submission of minorities and subordinate groups is institutionalized in the evolution of their political and social situations as contextually shaped strategies. the context includes national and international regulations that shape the notion of “freedom” and “unfreedom” of religious minorities (mahmood, 2012, p. 412). as a religious minority, their social and political realities are indexical of the problematic space their identities occupy as distinct from the nation (mahmood, 2012, p. 439). fundamentally, these studies stress a notion of power as constructive and not repressive (asad, 2009, p. 17). participants in this study demonstrated their constructive creativity and pragmatism in manoeuvring their way through hegemonic relationships with the government and in their public transcript. scott (1990, p. 2) conceptualized the term “public transcript” as “action that is openly avowed to the other party in the power relationship”, including non-speech acts and expressions. in the following, i will demonstrate how the management committee and estate hindus both affirmed and naturalized the power of the dominant elites differently (cf. scott, 1990, p. 18) and the difference in their self-interest in conspiring to reinforce a hegemonic appearance (cf. scott, 1990, p. xii). i also structurally unpack the effectiveness of their agential submission as a manipulating instrument of their oppression and as a means to assert religious freedom collectively as a minority (cf. mahmood, 2011, p. 7). iterating the past and safeguarding the future of the temple the demolition of hindu temples in malaysia cannot be explained through an overarching discourse; rather, one must consider historical, political, social, and personal orientations. therefore, the arrival of indian migrants to malaya and the temple establishment during the colonial period remains relevant for the participants of this case study. however, the interpretation must also consider how participants narrate and highlight this history and how they make their discrimination legible in terms of the mainstream discourse on religious rights and freedom. 86 | aseas 14(1) marginalized minorities in malaysia? according to participants, the european planters built the temple at the estate in the 19th century. after independence, the estate changed hands, and the penang development corporation (pdc) – an agency of the penang state government – bought it over in 2001. pdc identified a new location closer to the quarters of the estate hindus for constructing a new temple. nevertheless, the land identified for the new site still belonged to the pdc. such history of relocation demonstrates how a hindu temple built for the hindu labourers in the estate had been susceptible to demolition over time regardless of their century-old cultural legacy. although it might be correct to state that the european planters built the temple for the labourers, the management committee did not have any documentation concerning the historical accuracy of the temple’s construction. instead, the legacy of the temple was inherited through oral history. for example, 58-year-old muthu (a former member of the management committee for the temple) said: my father and i were born here. i got married and had my children here. i used to stay with my parents over there before we moved to this house. we have stayed in this house since 1978. i started going to the temple since i was five years old. such inherited oral history linking the temple to its colonial past has two crucial implications worth dissecting here. firstly, the inherited legacy of the temple establishes a continuity of the colonial discourse that victimizes malaysian indians as a marginalized and powerless minority. especially with racially-based politics taking shape in malaysia after independence, and the nationalism and islamization movements that caused a series of race-based conflicts, scholars have often found that the conditions of working-class indians have barely improved. indian hindu leaders have claimed that “indians in malaysia, who have lived in malaysia for up to five generations in many cases, find ourselves hemmed in and blocked by a racist and religious extremist malaysian government” (gill & gopal, 2010, p. 137, emphasis by the author). therefore, in order to fend for their culture and the sovereignty of their religion, “malaysian indians have become more introverted and, to some extent, paranoid about race-religious relations” (gill & gopal, 2010, p. 139). presumably, in the political context of penang after 2008, such discourse of malay muslim dominance may not seem to apply, as the opposition alliance, the pr, had governed the state. nevertheless, some participants claim to have experienced similar discrimination even from the pr-led state government. mani, a 60-year-old born and bred on the estate, recalled: during the time of the bn, the datuk [who is also a member of parliament] said, this is my place and my people cannot be evicted, not until we have found a new place for the people, then we will ask them to relocate. but now with these new people taking over, i don’t know what will happen to us.3 (personal communication, 14 september 2019) 3 datuk is a honorary title conferred by yang di-pertuan agong (king of malaysia) – a reward of recognition for an individual’s great contribution to the nation. aseas 14(1) | 87 sue ann teo indeed, state governments in malaysia have exclusive authority over land allocation to construct houses of worship and cemeteries. mani compared the previous (bn) and current (pr) state governments to highlight that the pr-led state government is obliged to allocate a new place for them to rebuild their community temple and remain at the location permanently. mani emphasized how the datuk claimed the temple and the community as “his people” and “his place”, indicating that the previous leadership had respected their religious needs and freedom, while the pr-led state government did not. during the interview, his wife sita, a 60-year-old housewife, asked me: sis, let me ask you, why they [the state government] don’t disturb that new malay village over there. they have all gotten a house from the government. the government constructed terrace houses with stories for the malays. after they completed the construction, then they asked the people to move in. we, the tamil. why ramasamy [the second deputy chief minister of penang] gave them four thousand ringgits, but he never gave us that?4 (personal communication, 16 september 2019) as a religious minority, malaysian hindus have often been discriminated against and marginalized by the development policy of the bn-led government that favors the malay muslim majority (lee, 1988; ramanathan, 1995; willford, 2015). hence, sita’s statement of being discriminated against as a non-malay and non-muslim by the pr-led state government of penang falls outside this mainstream discourse. considering the political rivalry between the pr and bn, both sita’s and mani’s responses show how they practically evaluated the political situation and exercised modalities of agency. the second implication is that, in line with sandhu (1969, p. 233), the old tamil saying “kovil illa uril kuti irrukka vendam” (lit., “do not live in a town where there is no temple”) appears to have been observed by the indian hindu laborers. for them, temples helped establish a sense of locality through the worship of their village deities (prorok, 2015, p. 267). within the temple realm, the laborers could feel at home and overcome their labor tedium (arasaratnam, 1979, pp. 66-67; khoo, 2009, p. 23 & 25; sandhu, 1969, p. 233). european planters realized that they could use the significance of temples to encourage the influx of more indian labourers to work in malaya (arasaratnam, 1993/2006; kent, 2005, p. 30; prorok, 2015; sinha, 2011, p. 84). as a result, the numbers of hindu temples increased in parallel to the increasing number of indian hindu migrants to malaya. it is noteworthy that these hindu laborers intended to return to their home countries upon fulfilling their labor contracts. as most of them were temporary residents, hindu temples built for them were also temporary and unregistered (kaur, 2012; lal, 2006; sandhu, 1969, p. 185). over time, even though many of the descendants of indian laborers decided to reside in malaya (chanderbali, 2008, p. 34), most of them continued to work as estate and plantation workers. concomitantly, hindu temples, which were initially 4 p. ramasamy has been the first indian appointed for penang’s second deputy chief minister since 2008. by having two deputies – the first deputy being mohammad fairus khairuddin – the then chief minister opined that penangnites would be effectively represented in politics across three major races. 88 | aseas 14(1) marginalized minorities in malaysia? temporary, also became enrooted on the lands. it was financially impossible for these hindu laborers to obtain land titles or grants (lal, 2006), as most of them remained in poverty due to low salaries. indian laborers were known as “cheap and reliable” (polak, 1941, p. 88) and were amenable to low wages and better adjusted to the low standard of living (sandhu, 1969, p. 57). as the landownerships changed hands after independence, these temples became illegal structures. most estate hindus are descendants of the hindu migrants who have lived in the estate for at least three generations. although they remained in the estate, occupations among the hindus diversified. while some worked in the estates, many of them had elementary jobs or were unemployed, making it impossible for them to acquire the land for the temple. nonetheless, given the chain of equivalences, participants suggested that the government redress the lack of land ownership with their history of living in the estate for two or more generations. besides the historical context, participants also stressed that the sacredness of the temple deities should be of primary concern because the deities had been with the estate hindus for generations. the long-term arcannai relationship between the deity and the estate hindus made the former location a strategic sacred ground. arcannai is a reciprocal relationship initiated by the worshippers towards the deity to seek divine intervention for crises, move towards different levels of life-cycle, and express gratitude for divine blessings and interventions (appadurai & breckenridge, 1976, p. 195). through arcannai, worshippers establish a personal relationship with the deity, which further animates their belief that the deity is a living being. in this case, one of the participants claimed that, before the demolition, he had heard the sound of anklets at night, signifying that the deity was patrolling their quarter warding off evil spirits. he stopped hearing it after the demolition of the temple. he believed that the demolition had disturbed the manifestation of the divinity of the deities. magesan (personal communication, 16 september 2019) explained: when the temple was at the corner, she protected all the people. during the mornings, before we go to work, and after work, we would pass by the temple, and she would cover (protect) us. whatever ought to come, she would cover. now the temple is no longer there. they took everything and put it there. they just transferred everything there, how could they simply transfer the temple like that? the participants’ narratives about the temple and its sacred place also suggested their insecurity about the temple’s future. their indication that the deities desired the temple to remain further indicated that the mundane ownership of the land was rendered secondary. instead, estate hindus believed that the demolition had agitated the deities. “she is not like any other deities . . . she would not be so forgiving anymore” (magesan, personal communication, 16 september 2019). or, as another participant exclaimed, “if you lie to her, she will cut off your tongue” (personal communication, 18 september 2019). such threats further indicate a sense of insecurity among participants that the state government will not uphold the agreement to provide new land for rebuilding the temple. aseas 14(1) | 89 sue ann teo agential submission and objection of the estate hindus participants’ responses revealed tensions between those who supported and those who opposed the conformity of the temple committee with the government in the demolition of their community temple. their accounts of the demolition and relocation processes were contradicting and ambiguous. more importantly, since the demolition of the temple, the estate hindus had not confronted the government. instead, they chose to wait even though they had not received news about any proposal of a new land where they could rebuild the temple. this section demonstrates that their seemingly idle waiting was not the whole story. their lack of confrontational approach is a necessary and pragmatic resignation, which, as scott (2008, p. 329) argues, does not equate the inevitable with the just. instead, similar to scott (2008, p. 304), their docile appearance often underlies innumerable and anonymous acts of resistance. i further contend that they calibrated their responses to the rationality of the changed state government of penang after the 2008 general election. their rationality brought to surface the prevailing patron-client relationships that are fundamental for most malaysian politicians to maintain their powerful positions. scott (1972) and simandjuntak (2012) have noted how general elections in malaysia and southeast asia often improved the bargaining power of the clients (the voters) by giving them the capacity to choose their patron (the political party candidates). in this section, i demonstrate the rationality of the estate hindus from their narrations of the negligence of the state government after demolishing their community temple. forty-eight-year-old pavalan was a member of the management committee. he admitted that they had been aware that the discontentment of the estate hindus grew with the approaching two-year deadline given by the state government. nevertheless, he was adamant that the temple committee had made the right decision to conform to the state government’s arrangement for demolishing the temple. despite his obstinate belief in their decision, as he later revealed in the interview, their conformance did not necessarily translate into submission to the state government: you [the state government] want to do development? never mind, you are the state [government], you want to acquire the land, and all, it is government land. must acquire, this i agree. but you must fulfil whatever you said to the people. if this is not done, i will be the first person to face the state government and strike over here. (personal communication, 10 september 2019) pavalan had been thinking about a contingency plan if the state government did not keep its promise. the threat of organizing a strike indicated that he was aware of how the protest would attract media attention and public interest about the temple. this would then enable the bn coalition to allege that the pr was discriminating against grassroots indian hindus. nonetheless, other members of the estate hindus claimed that they had indeed protested on the day the temple was demolished: the police came with the chairman and ramasamy, and they demolished the temple. all . . . they pushed . . . pushed . . . pushed . . . all destroyed. all the heads 90 | aseas 14(1) marginalized minorities in malaysia? of the statues [attached to the structure of the temple] were destroyed . . . the temple was destroyed . . . the malay villagers came and asked us, ‘why they do this to your temple, they should give a place, build a temple, then you move’. (magesan, personal communication, 14 september 2019) magesan’s dramatic recount implied that the assumed conformance of the management committee with the state government was a sell-out of their community temple. besides, his mention of the malay villagers as witnesses to the demolition was significant in suggesting that even they, as outsiders, recognized the importance of the temple for the estate hindus, but the state government did not. such an account of the demolition was surprising, as pavalan did not mention any dramatic protest by the community. moreover, when i asked muthu about the protest, he not only denied it but also opined that it was strategic and pragmatic to conform with the arrangement by the state government: those who don’t know politics, they talked and made noise about the issue, they don’t know that is useless . . . the government has already taken over the land; we should not disturb. we ask that the government give us a place, and we will stay quiet. the government thinks that they can do anything. don’t interrupt. the government will give houses and temple. no need to protest. politics are their business. they have a different intention. it is their problem. (personal communication, 1 october 2019) muthu did not only think that protest or any form of confrontation was counterproductive. the tactic of conformance for muthu was to let the state government demolish their community temple and gazette new land for the temple to be relocated permanently. indeed, his response also implied that there was a possibility that the state government would not uphold the agreement of new land: i have my theory…if we want to know what would happen to us, we have to wait until the year 2017 for the next general election. when we are about to vote, only then we would know what kind of houses and where would they build these houses for us. now, the state government will only tell us different stories. (personal communication, 1 october 2016) muthu’s theory implied a prevailing patron-client relationship that underlies the power relations between local politicians and the grassroots. with the next general election around the corner, his logic of conformance indicated that it is still necessary for the performance of powerlessness in the seemingly hegemonic power relations with the state government. staging a protest would backfire. instead, submission and conformance would benefit their situation by not providing reasons for the state government to overturn the agreement with them. nonetheless, this did not mean that muthu equated the inevitable with the just: he emphasized that submissiveness did not equate to unwavering support for ramasamy and the pr-led state government. stressing that submission was an act of necessity to safeguard the temple from permanent destruction, muthu recounted the day when the convoy of state government aseas 14(1) | 91 sue ann teo representatives had made the announcement, and he had stood up and asked the deputy chief minister: “professor [ramasamy], now you have one more year to sit in the position [as the second deputy chief minister]. but when the next election comes, you might contest in another place, what will happen to this place?” he [ramasamy] got mad and said, “you can’t say such a thing.” and left [the matter] just like that. (personal communication, 1 october 2019) there was a smile on muthu’s face as he recalled how ramasamy was agitated by his rhetorical question. muthu believed that, at that moment, ramasamy understood his euphemistic question, which implied that ramasamy’s position as the second deputy chief minister might change during the next general election due to a lack of popularity and support. with the presence of government representatives and members of estate hindus, muthu’s question implied a subtle and indirect warning that the pr needed to treat the relocation of their community temple with caution. ramasamy needed grassroots support, such as the estate community, to secure his position in penang's state government and his position as the second deputy chief minister. the possibility of not obtaining substantial electoral ballot supports may prompt the state government, as patron, to meet at least the minimum standard of exchange with its client, the estate hindus (cf. scott, 1972). nonetheless, not all estate hindus showed such subtlety as in the counter-hegemonic tactics demonstrated by muthu. sita, who alleged that the pr-led state government was marginalizing them as an estate community, warned: “i speak the truth from my heart. i am not afraid. ramasamy should be afraid of us” (personal communication, 16 september 2019). sita’s remark stresses the importance of their support for ramasamy to maintain his political position. her husband, mani, followed: “they [dap] will lose five hundred to one thousand voters here” (personal communication, 16 september 2019). by highlighting the votes that the pr would lose, he further demonstrated the valuable currency of their ballots for the next general election. besides pavalan and muthu, i met bala (60 years old) – another member of the management committee – who responded: “what can we do? they [the state government] also don’t like us [the managing committee]” (personal communication, 5 october 2019). he claimed that the demolition and subsequent delay in allocating a new piece of land were because of this dislike. the reason for the disapproval was the political affiliation of the management committee with the bn coalition: “last time we were all jkkk for the bn government” (bala, personal communication, 5 october 2019). after dap’s victory in penang, members of the management committee left their positions and joined the federal village security and development committee (jkkp), established by the bn federal government as a counterpart to the village security and development committee (jkkk) at the state level. after the general election in 2008, the federal minister of rural and regional development encouraged the jkkk members to resign from their positions, promising them that they would receive an allowance from the federal government after their resignations. as many of the previous jkkk members left, the pr state government appointed a new 92 | aseas 14(1) marginalized minorities in malaysia? village committee, resulting in two different sets of village committees (loh, 2010, p. 134). such a patron-client system has been prevalent in malaysian politics since the colonial period (hazis, 2015, p. 11). as andrew c. willford (2002, p. 256) points out, working-class indians were often forced to turn to their elected representatives to seek guarantees for their cultural and social spaces. bala further explained that the patronage relationship with the government was necessary as they were politically under-represented minorities. nonetheless, by revealing his jkkp membership, bala suggested that the patron-client relationship was mutually beneficial: sometimes we are invited by umno people to attend the meetings of jkkp. if we go to their meetings, they will give us fifty ringgits. they will ask us what they can do to help the community. we will tell them what kind of help we want from them and what the dap has done to help the community. 5 (personal communication, 18 september 2019) bala’s affiliation with bn was a surprising discovery, especially knowing that pavalan worked for the pr-led state government. this implies that the management committee was involved in a patron-client relationship with both political parties. simultaneously, two forms of patron-client relationships, traditional and modern, as coined by simandjuntak (2012), were ongoing between the management committee and the government (both federal and state). this explains their different attitudes. for bala, his practical evaluative response was to show submission: “[now] they [the state government] are all dap people . . . that’s why now we can’t do anything” (personal communication, 18 september 2019). his portrayal of powerlessness implied that they were marginalized due to the lack of a patronage relationship with the new pr-led state government. as a result, bala claimed that it was difficult for the management committee to protect the temple from demolition. bala’s expression of powerlessness was also to demonstrate that they could not prevent the discontentment of the local hindus. when the local hindus who opposed the demolition learned that i intended to interview the management committee, they discouraged me: “no need to interview them. you won’t find them. they will run if they know that you interview them about the temple” (mani, personal communication, 18 september 2019). it did take me several visits to meet with bala and obtain his consent for a brief interview. his wife’s remark accompanied his submission response: “they (the estate hindus) all don’t like us now”. the committee’s affiliations with both pr and bn proved to be helpful during later developments of the case. pavalan later revealed that he had obtained a message from the ministry of education, a federal government agency led by bn. the news said that the state government of penang had proposed to close down the estate tamil primary school that was located next to their demolished community temple. their affiliation with bn had allowed the management committee to obtain the message before a decision was made. “i am not sure if the state government of penang know about this”, pavalan exclaimed and was determined to get an answer: 5 the united malays national organisation (umno) was the leading political party of the bn alliance until 2018. many members of the party held key positions in the malaysian government. hence, as demonstrated by the participant, the party was often referred to as the malaysian government, especially prior to 2018. aseas 14(1) | 93 sue ann teo maybe next week i will make an appointment with professor ramasamy… because this means something is wrong… he promised everything… the land, and the temple also will have a temple, school, and housing project… suddenly we heard this issue. this is very sad news. (personal communication, 1 october 2019) the news of the demolition of the tamil school was, indeed, alarming for the management committee. pavalan appeared to have easier access to speak to ramasamy directly. the effectiveness of their affiliations became more evident when the committee sought media attention on the matter of the school. a news report stated that the estate hindus would not let the state government demolish the school without putting up a fight and also demanded proper compensation for a new location and the cost of rebuilding the school before demolition, and the report cited on the news that ramasamy responded through a tamil daily newspaper that the school was in no danger of destruction and relocation (the star online, 2016a). however, the mainstream media reported the possible relocation of the school again. the report focused on the first deputy education minister, datuk p. kamalanathan, who was quoted saying that the pdc should identify a new location, one that is agreeable to the estate community before moving the school (the star online, 2016b). kamalanathan was a member of the malaysian indian congress (mic)6 and a member of the parliament in selangor. as it appeared, he delivered his speech in a ceremony to hand over the bn government’s myr 400,000 aid to the school (the star online,2016b). kamalanathan’s intervention on this matter reveals the constant political interest in the relocation of the estate community. the discontentment of the estate hindus who opposed the demolition of the community temple was felt and seen in their deserted temporary shelter for housing the murtis (see figure 2). during my fieldwork, i had found the temporary temple to be closed most of the time. only occasionally would a priest be seen at the temple conducting prayers alone at night. this priest was a volunteer as the previous one had resigned, and now he would only open the temple if he got off work early. mani recalled that on the day when they had to transfer the murtis from the old temple to the new temporary shelter, no one from the community wanted to help: “i went to carry the statues (of the deities) to the new place. no one wanted to go. only siva and i were there” (personal communication, 14 september 2019). the volunteer priest was also aware of the refusal of the estate hindus to visit the temporary temple: “after the temple has moved here, the community said it is too far. but their houses are just nearby; they refuse to come” (personal communication, 10 october 2019). the refusal to use the site as a temporary replacement was an indirect act of insubordination, which was made clear by the estate hindus: “nobody wants to go to that temple. during prayer time, only a small number of people attends the prayers” (sita, personal communication, 18 september 2019). magesan also spoke of his refusal to visit the new temple: “i have not gone to the temple because my heart is burning with anger. they [the management committee and the state government] broke the 6 the malaysian indian congress is a political party (established in 1946) that was supposed to represent malaysian indians and formed a coalition with the alliance, and then with the bn, in establishing the malaysian government (from 1957 until 2018). 94 | aseas 14(1) marginalized minorities in malaysia? temple and put it there” (personal communication, 14 september 2019). although mani had helped to relocate the murtis into the temporary temple, he described the place as macam pondok lembu kandang (lit., “just like a cattle barn”; see figure 3). such a description blatantly expressed his disgust with the arrangement of the temporary temple despite his devotion to the deities. the desertion of the temporary temple was an expression of the estate hindus’ denial of the temporary temple. their actions were practical in evaluating the ongoing uncertainty of the future of the temple. they were also aware that their discontent did not warrant outright confrontation with the state government and that the sight of the abandoned temple appeared as a longer-lasting momentum compared to ad hoc open protests. the state government and the temple’s management committee could not prevent such a quiet act of routine practical resistance that occurred on a daily basis (cf. scott, 2008, p. 322). the responses of the estate hindus, including the management committee, demonstrated how they safeguarded their community temple from permanent demolition in various ways and different contexts. although their actions may appear subservient and docile on the surface, their actions reflected varying manoeuvrability, inventiveness, and reflective choices. more importantly, as the desertion of the temple by the estate hindus suggests, they exercised full control over their beliefs and interpretations. the state government and the temple committee could not control their social lives entirely, even as the estate hindus chose to maintain their subordiante roles (scott, 2008, p. 329). conclusion in this article, i analysed the agential responses of the estate hindus and the management committee to a demolished estate hindu temple in penang. the fieldwork took place 18 months after the demolition, as the murtis of the deity were housed figure 2. murtis housed in the temporary shelter. these murtis were housed in this shelter for over 18 months and few had come for worship after the demolition. (photo taken during fieldwork). aseas 14(1) | 95 sue ann teo in a temporary, simple shelter while the estate hindus waited for news concerning relocation. as demonstrated, participants’ responses suggest their awareness of their longstanding representation as marginalised and discriminated minorities in malaysia. they also responded based on the context of political rivalry between bn and pr and their realisation of how the demolition had positioned them between bn (which had governed the state previously) and pr (the current state government). their responses demonstrated how they could interweave the past, when bn was governing penang, with the future in which their community temple would be rebuilt and serve the community. indeed, the estate hindus did not deny their minority status. they showed their subordination through submissive conforming and indirect protest by deserting the temple. however, their explanations, rationality, and justifications demonstrate diversity imbued with complexity and contradiction. it is also worth stressing that although they had expressed helplessness, discontent, grief, and a sense of betrayal, the estate hindus had also made clear that their responses were not equal with subordination or disempowerment. instead, they chose to comply on different levels, considering their current political and social realities. this analysis of the agency of estate hindus proposes a shift in the epistemological understanding of grassroots working-class malaysian indians. with this case study, i suggest that, as minorities, grassroots malaysian indians can contextualise their political and social realities as active respondents. their agential responses are intertwined with their colonial past and presently-felt fears that their community temple might become permanently destroyed in the future. this case study underscores the paramount of contextualising agency and complicating the diverse political and social realities of malaysian hindu minorities by accounting for their thoughts, experiences, and actions. my analysis accentuates their agentic capacities in reconstructing the past, understanding the present, and defining the future by locating the responses of the estate hindus in penang within their different political and social contexts. figure 3. the temporary shelter for the murtis. this temporary shelter was built with help from the state government. 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(2015). tamils and the haunting of justice: history and recognition in malaysia's plantations. nus press. about the author teo sue ann received her doctorate in religious studies from the victoria university of wellington, new zealand. her research interests in the fields of anthropology and sociology include (hindu) minorities, gender, and politics. she also works as a researcher in the localisation of sustainable development goals in malaysia for all-party parliamentarian groups and as a liaison officer for the northern region. her current focus lies on intra-communal relations among malaysian indian hindu communities and casteism. ► contact: teosueann@gmail.com acknowledgements i thank all research participants for their valuable time and views contributing to this research. i also thank the reviewers and editor for their patience, reviews, and comments that helped to strengthen my arguments in this article. 98 | aseas 14(1) aseas 12(1) | 17 future-making and frictional mobility in the return of burmese migrants prasert rangkla ► rangkla, p. (2019). future-making and frictional mobility in the return of burmese migrants. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 12(1), 17-30. this article explores the experiences of recent returnees from thailand to southeast myanmar and the complicated landscape of their future-making. in looking at the arduous journeys of burmese migrants both in myanmar and thailand, i discuss how economic and political developments in reform-era myanmar have informed burmese migrants’ idea of return migration. seeking a better life through coming home, they have encountered factors of friction and traction that either support or impede their plans. accordingly, i argue that the return of these burmese workers has become frictional mobility rather than a straightforward return. ethnic politics and land boom in the region have intensified social inequality and conflicts that eventually make the organization of return more complex. the situation allows migrants to settle in their home country, postpone the return, and continue shuttling at the border while using the pattern of movement as a livelihood. keywords: burmese migrants; future-making; mobility; myanmar; return migration  introduction the recent reforms in myanmar (or burma) since president thein sein’s government (2011-2016) have significantly changed the country’s conditions. the political democratization increasingly promotes optimistic views about the future, particularly in light of the general elections in 2010 and 2015 (lall, 2016). the country has received an increase in technical and financial assistance from foreign governments and international agencies. myanmar’s economy is growing rapidly, with a gdp annual growth rate of 6-8% during the period between 2012 and 2016 (asian development bank, 2017). the positive economic situation of this period appeals to foreign investment and general commerce. at the individual level, people are more willing to spend money on daily consumption and property acquisition. a larger variety of commodities and services are available to burmese people at local markets. regional and international trade and other economic transactions boost myanmar’s overall economic performance. some burmese who once experienced displacement from political suppression, civil war, and economic underdevelopment are making the decision to go back to myanmar and become part of these seemingly promising changes. traveling back to one’s country of origin is known as ‘return migration’ in academic literature. much attention has been paid to the patterns and push-pull aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 11 18 | aseas 12(1) future-making and frictional mobility in the return of burmese migrants factors of return migration (gashi & adnett, 2015; hirvonen & lilleør, 2015). major pull factors that attract migrant workers to return include the improvement of sociopolitical conditions and the increased economic opportunities in the home country. at the same time, push factors of the receiving countries, such as high costs of living and xenophobia, also motivate migrant workers to return. migrant workers keep watching the social and institutional situations in their countries of origin. according to cassarino (2004), migrant workers often intend to stay abroad temporarily and have prepared their return migration plans, including migration duration and savings target. they also anticipate how their skills and financial resources could be put to good use in the country of origin. a number of burmese migrant workers in thailand express their intention to return to their own country in the long run. recent socio-economic developments in myanmar, including foreign direct investment, deregulation, and public services improvement, persuade many burmese to return. better job opportunities and political stability are major pull factors for return migration. according to mya thet & pholphirul (2016, p. 1012), investment opportunities have a greater influence on burmese migrant workers’ return than job availability or wages. workers do not want to go back and just work in low-wage jobs. even though economic, especially employment, prospects are improving, wage and working conditions at home are still significantly inferior. they rather prefer to run their own business upon return than look for jobs. with greater job opportunities in thailand, many burmese workers thus remain and continue to work there in order to accumulate enough savings to start their own business in myanmar. they remain outside the country, watching and waiting for the right time to return. however, studies that emphasize macro-level analysis pay little attention to the actual experience of return migration. this article argues for the necessity to take the experience of movement seriously, as also suggested by mobility studies (hannam, sheller, & urry, 2006). according to cresswell (2010), mobility is not simply a ‘free flow’, but is channeled and sometimes stopped through friction or resisting forces. instead of assuming a linear movement, this article asks how returnees to southeast myanmar experience, make sense of, and organize their return. how does the complex scenario of a long-stunted, now growing, yet still limited economy effect burmese migrants’ decisions and future-making? this article forms part of a qualitative research project entitled “future and possibility of life: a study of burmese migrants and temporality”. data collection includes literature review, participant observation, and in-depth interviews with approximately 30 key informants, both in thailand and myanmar. fieldwork was conducted for three months in 2017 in southeast myanmar (myawaddy, hpa-an, and mawlamyine) and for another three months in 2018 in thailand (prachuap kirikhan province). my key informants were mainly identified and contacted through a snowball technique. although their ethnic backgrounds are diverse – karen, burmese, mon, and pa-o – this article refers to them as burmese in order to emphasize their shared experience of the national reform and transformation. i interviewed some key informants who are small business owners in myanmar and some who remained in thailand with enthusiasm for the return. most of them once fled the protracted civil war and economic underdevelopment under the burmese military governments aseas 12(1) | 19 prasert rangkla and have worked long-term in thailand. although real town and village names are retained here, i use pseudonyms for all interviewees’ names to guarantee anonymity. at the beginning, the article reviews the pull factors or the opportunities that encourage burmese workers to return to their home country. the article continues with an ethnographic vignette illustrating how the return of a burmese worker has been shaped by expectations of the future, which is referred to here as “future-making” (kleist & jansen, 2016). it then explains the factors of friction that have impeded and slowed down burmese return mobility. the subsequent two sections explore myanmar’s land boom, which has become a boon for some returnees and a barrier for others, and the consequential upsurge of social inequality. finally, the article argues that the complex landscape of myanmar in transition both helps and impedes burmese migrants’ future-making through return, allowing them to either settle, or postpone the return, or even continue shuttling across the thai-myanmar border. return with entrepreneurial skills southeast myanmar has experienced an economic boom after the policy reforms since 2011, evident in the growing import-export trade and development of new infrastructure. the cross-border trade between thailand and myanmar has increased substantially. the merchandise export values at the mae sot (thailand)-myawaddy (myanmar) border crossing point have jumped from less than usd 1 billion in 2011 to usd 2.1 billion in 2015. a large number of people in myanmar have benefitted from the country’s open economic policy. many research informants are doing business by relying on imported commodities from thailand, for example, food supplies for restaurant owners; tools and equipment for hairdressers, mechanics, and technicians; clothes and sports equipment for shopkeepers. another factor underlying this growth is infrastructure investment. in the study area, a new, better-quality road was constructed, which officially opened in september, 2015, linking the burmese eastern borderland to other commercial cities. business opportunities in the newly-open economy are, however, limited. crumbling infrastructure and military cronies’ influence in politics and business impose constraints on commercial investment and commodity production (chia, aung, & shawng, 2016). consequently, recent burmese returnees’ businesses focus only on basic services and small-scale trade. burmese returnees choose to make a living in three different categories of business. first, many provide shipping and transport services. while logistic services facilitate linking the cross-border trade between thailand and myanmar, passenger transport has become a public service to travelers, including those migrants moving out of the country to work in thailand. second, some returnees work in the construction sector and property agencies, such as construction materials shops and land brokerage. finally, many earn their living in the service sectors. these include hair and beauty salons, tea and coffee shops, food and beverage shops, groceries, clothes-selling shops, chicken-raising farms, video recording services, remittance services, and betel nut vending. notably, these new business-operators can be seen as small-scale entrepreneurs. their stories sound intriguing, especially their alertness with regard to and their navigation of myanmar’s political-economic changes. many observed the political 20 | aseas 12(1) future-making and frictional mobility in the return of burmese migrants transformations in myanmar while they worked as paid laborers abroad. they then discovered profit opportunities hitherto unnoticed – the ability that israel kirzner (1997) defined as “entrepreneurship”. their present lives and future possibilities are re-examined by their constant observations. some try out pilot businesses in their home country, and, if these go well, eventually pursue this venture. their re-engagement with myanmar-in-transition shapes their new experiences. they learn about the economic gaps that they can fill to earn their livelihoods. for example, food-shop owners know what their customers want to eat at affordable prices, and clothing shop-owners know their customers’ taste in clothing fashions. their entrepreneurial acuity keeps them monitoring trends and so re-conceptualizing their own opportunities back home. to realize the economic opportunities in myanmar, these individual returnees rely on three kinds of capital. the first and most important one is financial capital, or their savings. the money serves to materialize their business ideas. some types of enterprises, such as chicken-raising farms, require a large sum of money, initially and for maintenance. since it is virtually impossible to get a loan in myanmar, savings are so crucial and become the main source to fulfill entrepreneurial plans. the second kind of capital is the technical expertise gained and practiced while working abroad. the knowledge of mechanics, technicians, hairdressers, and culinary workers can be transformed into career opportunities. the final type of capital is knowledge of business management. some returnees were self-employed while they were living in thailand. they understand the management of rental spaces, procurement, material storage, staff employment, and customer services. with these kinds of capital, returnees have the potential to pursue their post-displacement projects. these returnees’ alertness to opportunity cannot be analyzed without taking into account existing socio-political conditions. becoming an entrepreneur is not a predetermined expectation of individuals, as conventionally discussed. their recognition of, creation of, and initiative to seize opportunities are linked with multiple structuring factors (gough, langevang, & namatovu, 2013, p. 298). the more relaxed political atmosphere in myanmar, for example, has had a profound impact on returnees’ decisions, providing basic freedom and everyday security. burmese people are able to travel around and to earn their living without fear of being persecuted. town residents confirm that travelling at night has become safer compared to the past. burmese returnees see major urban towns as places of commercial opportunity, because they represent transport hubs, having better basic infrastructure and large numbers of clients. many burmese emigrants, thus, do not return to their homes in rural areas of karen state and mon state. going back to myanmar therefore means earning their living in commercial towns. they invest different kinds of capital to pursue the economic opportunities there. future-making in return to return to myanmar and survive with a small-scale business has attained specific significance in southeast myanmar, where emigration has been common for decades. narratives of economically-possible return create hope about a future life at home for many burmese working abroad. recent returnees have expressed their desire to aseas 12(1) | 21 prasert rangkla be able to make a living in myanmar. they seek economic opportunities to enable them to sustain their return. hope plays a major role in future-making. hope poses a temporal landscape that becomes a palimpsest of the past, present, and future, with varying intensity. in hope, there is “a wish for a change that cannot be effectuated in the moment” (dalsgård, 2014, p. 99). kleist and jansen (2016) suggest that anthropologists should investigate hope “as it occurs in concrete social settings and geo-political-moments” (p. 374). imagining the future has been an important element of burmese returnees’ life, also for jor hoe and his wife who returned to myanmar in late 2013. the couple was very optimistic about the possibility of living in transitioning myanmar. in thailand, they had worked in a factory producing stereo speakers for 13 years but left the workplace due to internal conflict. jor hoe did not return to his home village near mawlamyine, but went to a border town in karen state, named myawaddy. he co-invested with a younger brother in opening a shop repairing exhaust pipes for cars and motorcycles. his brother worked in an automotive garage with an uncle for five years. as he planned to start his own business, he asked jor hoe to join in. the latter believed that his brother had experience in the business, so he chose to move there. they rented a building in a good location, close to a bus station and a road junction. a former garage owner sold them a set of mechanic equipment at a low price. since the opening, jor hoe has tried hard to make the business profitable and to adapt to the economic forces that prevail in the country. for a newcomer, running a business inevitably involves difficulties. the shop initially had only a small number of customers. the brothers turned to accepting different jobs involving metal and steel welding to expand their services with existing tools. however, they still had to cope with the high costs of financing the building lease. the rent costed them about usd 1,700 every six months, and the whole sum had to be paid in advance. in late 2014, they found that they could share the building for commodity storage, which alleviated some of their rent burden. both of their wives also helped out by running a food and tea shop in the building. jor hoe himself found other ways to increase his income, such as providing motorcycle taxi services and finding customers to rent a car owned by another younger brother. jor hoe’s striving under the conditions of transitioning myanmar has been shaped by the ongoing infrastructure developments and economic growth in southeast myanmar. myawaddy, the present location of jor hoe’s business, has been bustling with cross-border trade with thailand. the increasing commerce required more transport and passenger vehicles that eventually increased the brothers’ potential customer base. the poor and limited infrastructure in the region is also gradually upgraded. the construction of a new road replaced a one-way road winding across steep mountains. it helped ease traffic congestion between myawaddy and other burmese cities, facilitating logistics and passenger transport. another new thailandmyanmar border-crossing bridge is also under construction. as soon as the bridge is opened, border trade and other economic activities between the two countries are expected to flourish. running a business in maywaddy appears to be a good decision, yet living in myanmar’s transition period entails an inevitable uncertainty. jor hoe’s planned return to myanmar is still far from achieving a financially secure life. after a year 22 | aseas 12(1) future-making and frictional mobility in the return of burmese migrants and a half, he and his wife took different jobs for their economic survival. they have put a lot of effort into struggling with existing conditions. their hope for a better life is based on their striving practices. jor hoe took any paid jobs related to metal and steel welding. he sometimes asked his skilled father to help him with certain kinds of work he could not do by himself. he anticipated that his small shop could be turned into a garage, seeing the town’s booming economy. jor hoe’s wife co-invested with her sister in selling second-hand appliances. furthermore, she persuaded her husband that opening a cheap plastic utensil shop is a promising business, as none of this type exists in the region. the story of a burmese returnee, like jor hoe, demonstrates the effort to “modify or customize various aspects of our temporal experience and resist external sources of temporal constraints and structure” (flaherty, 2011, p. 3). their ideas about the future determine how they act in the present moment. however, the success of their efforts is not guaranteed. in the case of jor hoe, his 18-month experience in returning and running a small business was confronted with challenges and setbacks. the low number of customers hampered his hopes and realization of commercial success. his garage had insufficient income for the high rental costs. according to latest information, jor hoe’s joint business collapsed, and he started earning money from a small vending stall in the same town. the following section investigates why future-making projects like his have had limited chance of success in contemporary myanmar. encountering friction future-making, can be a naïve projection of a better life if it ignores what is actually happening on the ground. returning to myanmar-in-transition, burmese migrants inevitably face challenges and uncertainty against the background of two distinct processes: myanmar’s new economic prosperity, which has been described earlier, and flawed peace-building endeavors. the latter comprises myanmar’s peace process during the period between 2012 and 2015, during which the national ceasefire agreement (nca) between the myanmar government and different armed ethnic groups was reached. the nca mitigated armed fighting in southeast myanmar. the pacification provided personal safety and overall security. however, the peace agreement provides no guidance regarding the surrender of weapons and armed group dissolution. subsequently, rare incidents of low-intensity fighting continue to have negative effects on daily routines and economic activities. a group of burmese returnees in myawaddy complained that their inter-town shuttle service was sometimes suspended during tense periods. when the conflict settled down, it took a few days before passenger transportation and shipping could return to its normal levels. large areas of karen state in myanmar have been under the dynamic influence of armed conflict between the burmese army and the karen insurgent group. internal conflicts within the latter led to the formation of small karen factions whose relationships with the burmese government are discretely structured by different negotiations (for details on karen’s internal fragmentation, see gravers & ytzen, 2014). all karen armed groups initially reached a ceasefire agreement and finally signed a peace agreement with the government in 2015. while all groups remained armed, the government gave them unofficial authority over particular territories in karen state. aseas 12(1) | 23 prasert rangkla the quasi-autonomous zones have high potential for future economic investment. these are, for example, around myawaddy, which is the border gate to thailand, and around hpa-an, karen state’s capital, where many new economic projects have recently been launched. personal economic interests have been integral to the flawed peace process. the burmese government awards lucrative assets to karen armed groups who signed the peace agreement, increasing their local influence. their political power is thus closely bound to their economic power, especially in the selling of imported secondhand cars and property development. their local influence includes owning specific plots of land near highways, controlling the assigned land and community living on that land, gaining access to business licenses, authorizing mining concessions, and smuggling merchandise. when different karen groups and the burmese army claim authority over the same resource sites, competition leads to shootings and other armed battles. recently, most conflicts have been related to contested resource control between different groups, including burmese authorities. the decision whether to return to myanmar is thus also based on an evaluation of political circumstances in the region. different interest groups can take an active role in shared political authority. some leaders of karen armed groups can take control over any movements in their own areas. returnees living in myawaddy and other major economic centers in southeast myanmar inadvertently confront difficulties caused by such political dynamics. this article argues that the burmese return trajectory is under the influence of ‘friction’. friction, a physical force of resistance, is also a social and cultural phenomenon that is experienced as one is, for example, stopped while driving through a city, or encounters suspicion at check-ins at international airports (cresswell, 2014). friction may slow down movement, or impede it. inaction, slowness, congestion, and blockage result when people, things, and ideas ‘rub’ against each other. friction then implies particular kinds of uneven power arrangements in human movements. the return of burmese to myanmar has unavoidably become a ‘frictional mobility’, as it rubs against other entities and their movements. in the post-military era, different groups have mobilized towards reaching different ends: state agencies and locally influential persons have accelerated several economic development projects. leaders of armed groups have been influential players in certain businesses. at the very least, their actions disturb, slow down, or impede burmese workers’ movement and mobility. traction and land boom friction, as explained above, does not only impede the possibility and potential of mobility but also enables particular forms of traction. the domination of armed group leaders in karen state is far from completely obstructive to mobility. traction appears through the booming trend in private land acquisition in the areas under study. a ‘land rush’ is especially evident in myawaddy, where money-making is comparatively much easier than in other places in southeast myanmar. the town itself has been the transit point of human, commodity, and financial flows between myanmar and thailand. burmese from elsewhere as well as burmese migrants in thailand move to 24 | aseas 12(1) future-making and frictional mobility in the return of burmese migrants this town with the hope of being able to take advantage of economic opportunities. the land transaction boom in myawaddy and other nearby towns takes place at two different markets. the first market is land acquisition for investment and other commercial purposes. another one appears among small-scale land buyers for general housing. commanders of different karen armed groups oversee land supplies for both markets. some groups who have prevailed in the area since the 1990s occupy vast, scattered areas. some locations were previously used as military posts; other plots are deforested areas claimed after the end of a timber concession. recently, the size of myawaddy town substantially expanded towards forest-cleared areas. land plots along the asian highway no. 1 rank as first priority for business investors, and are usually overpriced. karen commanders built new dirt roads linking occupied land to the main roads. some sites even provide basic facilities, such as water, electricity, and a drainage system. it is then divided into small plots that are sold for house construction. the land market targets ordinary burmese, especially those with savings from working abroad. a number of burmese migrant workers in thailand bought these plots of land with expectations for future use. the land boom underlines the key role of ethnic armed groups at the thailandmyanmar border. during the past four decades, they have sought to control the cross-border movement of people and commodities. their capacities have waxed and waned through different political periods (smith, 1999; south, 2008). after the county opened up, they became informal agents selling land to burmese emigrants. during the period between 2013 and 2015, the number of emigrants buying land around myawaddy increased significantly. plot sizes offered by developers vary, depending on and responding to purchasing capacities. the smallest land parcel is the most popular one, 40 feet by 60 feet. its price ranges from usd 1,400 to usd 3,000, depending on location, facilities, and speculated profit potential. the preferred transaction is in thai baht. the owner can build a small house in a given area, with some leftover vacant space. certain estate sites turn into residential communities, with a number of home owners, grocery shops, and sometimes buddhist monasteries. however, some developed sites are still unoccupied, equipped with no basic facilities except for a paved road. the developers have done no more than clear and fence the land with pillars and barbed wire. when visiting a new neighborhood at the northern fringe of a town named thit ta ping (which means single tree in english), one can notice more than 30 houses that have recently been constructed, while some others are still in the process of building. the origins of its residents are diverse. most bought land in the community following the word-of-mouth of friends and relatives who had been there. thit ta ping is a good example of a successful estate development in high demand. it is situated just 4 km north from the current center of myawaddy and close to many infrastructure projects planned for construction, such as the second thailand-myanmar friendship bridge and a new wet market. many burmese emigrants with financial capital are interested in buying land there, as the location is forecast for urban expansion and business opportunities. walking out of the community to the west, one will also find vacant plots of land. a karen fellow explained that all of them belong to private owners. they bought them for future opportunities and their economic potential, although many of them still work elsewhere. aseas 12(1) | 25 prasert rangkla thit ta ping is a land allocation project initiated by a vice-commander of division 999 of the democratic karen buddhist army (dkba), which has now been transformed into the border guard force (bgf). its initial phase started in 2008, aiming at the housing demands of ordinary burmese. it drew more attention and activity when the open economic policy was launched and a ceasefire signed between the karen insurgent group and the myanmar government. these plots of land have since then become housing land for recent returnees. some burmese even operate their business there, such as grocery stores, noodle shops, and small-scale manufacturing. notably, all of these transactions are carried out without legal documents related to private land tenure rights. the buyers only get certificates signed by local leaders who actually work under the bgf commander’s supervision. these informal papers possess no legal validity in myanmar. they are merely guarantee documents from the ethnic armed groups, and buyers have to put their trust in the sellers. the close encounters between burmese returning for projects related to livelihood and armed groups’ influence have not prevented or stopped further human movement. the friction simply causes delays in some moving practices and enables mobility within other particular social contexts. burmese emigrants have seen the opportunities of land access and possession and other affiliated benefits in economically booming towns. many returnees materialize their dreams of returning home through different channels. they purchase land parcels, build houses, and earn a living there. these dwellers then tell their siblings and friends who still work in bangkok to grasp the opportunity too. the latter usually make a short visit to check out the situation and buy the land offered to them. some buyers may have no idea of what to do next. if someone else then makes them an offer to buy the land, they are willing to sell it for a lucrative profit. while some returnees invest in their future through land acquisition, what is the impact of the current land situation on the region and future opportunities of return migration? unequal distribution of hope the land rush illustrates how frictional mobility impedes the future-making of burmese returnees. the setting of myawaddy and neighboring areas brings about speculative land transactions and expensive land prices. the increasing demand for land pushes prices too high for easy acquisition. some land parcels change hands very quickly, with the price increasing each time the parcel is resold. when a land owner earns a big profit from a land deal, the neighbors usually increase the value of their own land parcels too. the owners of vacant land nearby also put it up for sale. every land owner takes advantage of the boom for greater profit margins. this land speculation has profound social consequences for the burmese community and the choices of those who plan to return in the near future. first, the business strengthens the influence of ethnic armed groups who have not disarmed following the 2015 nationwide peace agreement. the commanders of ethnic armed groups become the real beneficiaries of the land boom. the development of their estates brings them greater wealth. the earned money is spent on their own investments and certainly on increasing their armaments. this entails a re-invigoration of their political control. the social and political relations in karen state are transforming 26 | aseas 12(1) future-making and frictional mobility in the return of burmese migrants along considerably complicated patterns. the ethnic armies have become strong contestants to government power. it will be difficult to transform them into civilian entities. future return to myanmar is inevitably confronted with their mafia-like influence. another consequence is the emergence of new land dealers and their speculative schemes. ordinary burmese become land agents, selling land plots for big profit without producing anything valuable. the lucrative financial benefits lure them to participate in this activity. some of them earn a lot of money and spin speculations further. the story of ti wa shu, a karen returnee living in myawaddy, demonstrates this well. he came back to myanmar without regular employment in early 2013. he bought a 6 ac plot of land around thit ta ping for housing and small-scale farming, as a revered buddhist monk had advised him to do. a year later, another land-seeker bought half of his land, by paying him five times the amount he had paid for the whole parcel. he sold another quarter of the land for a profit in 2015. he planned to do future speculation by forming a partnership with another three friends to buy a large land plot. they thought that if the future burmese economy continued to grow, their investment would yield them great profit when selling the land later. the situation in myawaddy shows early returnees fulfilling their dreams of the future at the expense of more recent returnees. as noted by ghassan hage (2016), there is an unequal distribution of hope, as certain burmese acquire more profit potential than others. land speculation, as in the case of ti wa shu, along with the economic growth, generates the problem of overpricing. for those who return and buy land and a house, future-making in myanmar is much more promising and secure than for poor emigrants with less financial capability. the latter find it difficult to resettle in myanmar. new allocated land plots are so expensive that they cannot afford them with their savings. the speculation business has explicitly mitigated the possibility of realizing their hopes in their return. the pursuit of future possibilities creates not only economic but also political uncertainties and daily pressures that become constitutive of more complicated relations in southeast myanmar. the flawed peace arrangements and strengthened local armed groups increase risks for future returnees. when interest groups like these interrupt the general business climate through their local domination, ordinary burmese wishing to do business there might have to reconsider their dream of enjoying the seemingly flourishing economy of myanmar-in-transition. intervention by these armed groups or small flare-ups of fighting can undermine their capacity for profit-making. land allocation projects have facilitated the hopes of some, but the politics of hope now point to uncertainty and exploitation. land speculation has contributed to the escalation of social inequality among the burmese and negatively affected the probability of the future return of burmese emigrants. towards complex mobility the burmese return phenomenon from thailand brings about enthusiasm for a future life in myanmar. in local communities, stories of returning become important narratives. people talk about successful and failed cases of returnees with great enthusiasm. they admire certain outstanding returnees who have demonstrated aseas 12(1) | 27 prasert rangkla economic endurance. as a matter of fact, only a small number of burmese emigrants can attain such an achievement back in their homeland. for example, in taunggalay, a karen village near hpa-an, a group of villagers praised a burmese named jor la thu who was good at money-making. the man is an agent buying and selling secondhand cars imported from japan through the border with thailand. he has become a role model who knows well how to use entrepreneurial skills to earn money, despite little financial capital. his career path draws further conversation, as he co-invested with a friend and bought a second-hand tractor which he hires out for field plowing. many landowners in the village use his services in order to clear weeds and bushes on their farmland. those who remain outside myanmar closely observe what happens to their friends who have returned. for burmese migrants in thailand, going back to myanmar eventually becomes a necessity when they get old. the stories of the future carried by recent returnees to myanmar have significantly shaped the hopes of the burmese working abroad. these burmese migrants ought to be seen not only as migrant workers, but also as subjects who make their own dreams about what the future holds, based on the transformations taking place back in myanmar. burmese migrants in thailand not only think of returning home; some even engage in the return experiment. yet, there are a lot of uncertainties and unequal distribution of resources and hope in myanmar. the overall situation encourages burmese migrants to embark on a return experiment before returning indefinitely. during my interview with jor la thu, taunggalay’s appraised businessman, he introduced me to one of his friends, ma cho. she is a married mon woman, who was 50 years old. at that time, ma cho and her husband took a three-week leave to visit ma cho’s family in hpa-an. her parents escaped fighting and moved from a rural mon village to the town in the mid-1980s. in the early 1990s, ma cho and her husband moved to work as undocumented workers in thailand, due to unemployment at home. the couple had four children. the two older sons worked with the parents in thailand, while the other two ones were with their grandmother in hpa-an. in thailand, they have been employed in different kinds of work in the fishery industry. in the meantime, ma cho also has her own small business. she buys and dries cuttlefish’s black ink-like deposit and sells it to animal feed production mills. ma cho thinks about future return to myanmar, but she does not know how to survive economically there. two years ago, ma cho bought five wooden houses on scattered plots from neighbors in her family’s community. she rents out dilapidated shanties there to rural migrants who move to work in the town. during the trip, when i met her in hpa-an, she decided to buy another land plot suggested by jor la thu. it is near the newly established industrial zone. she explained her decision to me: land plots are going to be more expensive. if i don’t get some today, it will be impossible to buy later. land in my mother’s community is not suitable for business. it is a residential slum and is flooded in the rainy season. . . . i don’t know what to do with this new plot. i might run an ice-production site; there are quite a few ice sellers here. 28 | aseas 12(1) future-making and frictional mobility in the return of burmese migrants the couple’s wish to return has involved multiple moves in recent years. ma cho’s husband remained in hpa-an after that visit. he planned to investigate the possibility of the return for the whole family. later, he came back to stay with ma cho in thailand. he found it was difficult to find ways to earn an income there. the following year, ma cho herself went back to stay in hpa-an for six months, and returned to thailand with similar results. she found her hometown lacked opportunities to earn money, and her daily expenses were much higher than her income. she therefore postponed the timing of the return. some of ma cho’s friends in her burmese community in prachuap kirikhan, who once experimented with returning, have recently also shown less enthusiasm. some returnees take their re-engagement with myanmar as a continuous movement. a case in point is that of tun myint, an ethnic pa-o man. tun myint returned from working in bangkok in 2013 and started running a motorcycle repair shop. his shop also sold second-hand motorcycles and bicycles. he usually traveled to thailand and looked for second-hand small pickup trucks. he bought one on each trip and took the vehicle to sell it in myanmar. he could earn a good profit from the smuggling business. the trip usually took place in the monsoon season when his shop had only a few customers due to the heavy rain. tun myint is only one of many male returnees who live their lives on the move. they return to stay with their family in myanmar but continue taking short trips back and forth for commodity smuggling. imagining the future has driven burmese migrants to spend their savings on investment and make an effort to realize their return to myanmar. their experiences of the situation on the ground have been an unpleasant reminder of the uncertainty and ambiguity of the future. the improved socio-economic situation they see stands against the pitfalls of the national peace-building process. while returning to their home country is largely anticipated by displaced burmese people, the realization is far from a linear process of return migration. the ongoing political and economic dynamics in present-day myanmar enforce particular patterns of return mobility, which are rather complex and uncertain. conclusion in this article, i have shown how the return of burmese migrants from thailand to southeast myanmar has been configured by the complicated landscape of hope and future-making. the economic and political transformations in the reform-era myanmar have generated factors of friction and traction that either support or impede the plan of homecoming and life-earning there. the burmese return happens against the background of political reform, economic growth, and political influence of local armed groups. the return trajectory, in fact, experiences resisting forces, engendered through the flawed peace process. return then becomes frictional mobility rather than straightforward return migration. the contestation of political power disrupts the newly emerging economic opportunities in their homeland. existing constraints push returnees to make more efforts on their return plan, or even reconsider it. the overall situation in southeast myanmar shows that ethnic armed groups remain influential agents. their control over land and active involvement in the aseas 12(1) | 29 prasert rangkla property business, along with the land acquisition of return migrants, aggravate the conflict and increase social inequality in the region. the land rush has greatly impacted burmese society and return migration. the karen armed groups are dominant players in resource allocation for ordinary returnees, especially with regard to access to land and housing in southeast myanmar. such business strengthens the financial and political power of these armed groups and the return opportunities of ordinary people grow more complicated. contested political power intensifies the social inequality in myanmar and further delays the probability of return for burmese migrants from thailand. these circumstances bring about an unequal distribution of hope, allowing some burmese to have greater access to resources than others. this article shows how their return mobility turns into a complex moving project. hope for success of one person, through land investment, comes at the expense of the hopes of others. one thing should be noted here: the interest in returning to the home country is not a static idea, it may greatly intensify or attenuate over time. in the early years of open economic policies, burmese migrants monitored actual changes at home and participated in the flow of homeland re-engagement. they now increasingly recognize that there are many obstacles awaiting them there. while some burmese struggle to realize the possibility of future lives in myanmar, others are still reluctant to pursue the full project of return migration.  references asian development bank. 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(2011). the textures of time: agency and temporal experience. philadelphia: temple university press. gashi, a., & adnett, n. (2015). the determinants of return migration: evidence for kosovo. croatian economic survey, 17(2), 57-81. gough, k. van, langevang, t., & namatovu, r. (2013). researching entrepreneurship in low-income settlements: the strengths and challenges of participatory methods. environment and urbanization, 26(1), 297-311. gravers, m., & ytzen, f. (2014). burma/myanmar: where now? copenhagen: nordic institute of asian studies. hage, g. (2016). questions concerning a future-politics. history and anthropology, 27(4), 465-467. hannam, k., sheller, m., & urry, j. (2006). mobilities, immobilities and mooring. mobilities, 1(1), 1-22. 30 | aseas 12(1) future-making and frictional mobility in the return of burmese migrants hirvonen, k., & lilleør, h. b. (2015). going back home: internal return migration in rural tanzania. world development, 70, 186-202. kirzner, i. m. (1997). entrepreneurial discovery and the competitive market process: an austrian approach. journal of economic literature, 35(1), 60-85. kleist, n., & jansen, s. (2016). introduction: hope over time – crisis, immobility and future-making. history and anthropology, 27(4), 373-392. lall, m. (2016). understanding reform in myanmar: people and society in the wake of military rule. london: c. hurst & co. mya mya thet, & pholphirul, p. (2016). the perception of myanmar development on its return migrants: implications for burmese migrants in thailand. international migration & integration, 17, 995-1014. smith, m. (1999). burma: insurgency and the politics of ethnicity. london: zed books. south, a. (2008). ethnic politics in burma: states of conflict. new york: routledge. about the author prasert rangkla is an assistant professor at the faculty of sociology and anthropology, thammasat university, thailand. he is interested in migration and displacement along the thailand-myanmar border. his current research focuses on the moral economy of a burmese immigrant community in thailand. ► contact: prasertran@gmail.com acknowledgements i am grateful for the financial support of this research granted by the academic research division (ard), thailand research fund (trf) [grant no. mrg6080257]. i also thank two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions. aseas 11(1) | 13 frontier capitalism and politics of dispossession in myanmar: the case of the mwetaung (gullu mual) nickel mine in chin state rainer einzenberger ► einzenberger, r. (2018). frontier capitalism and politics of dispossession in myanmar: the case of the mwetaung (gullu mual) nickel mine in chin state. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 11(1), 13-34. since 2010, myanmar has experienced unprecedented political and economic changes described in the literature as democratic transition or metamorphosis. the aim of this paper is to analyze the strategy of accumulation by dispossession in the frontier areas as a precondition and persistent element of myanmar’s transition. through this particular regime of dispossession – described as frontier capitalism – the periphery is turned into a supplier of resource revenues to fuel economic growth at the center. the paper takes up the case study of the mwetaung (gullu mual) nickel mine on the border to chin state and the “politics of dispossession” around this project. it analyzes the strategies, motives, and objectives of a broad ad-hoc coalition that emerged in 2013 to defend their access to land against forms of legal dispossession by the state. in this case, the attempted dispossession has been successfully challenged, by making use of new opportunities for political participation. keywords: chin state; frontier; mining; myanmar; politics of dispossession  introduction following the 2010 elections, myanmar seemed to go against the general trend in southeast asia towards increasing authoritarianism. while other countries in the region were returning to authoritarian rule (thailand, for instance, entering its fifth year of military dictatorship in may 2018), myanmar’s elected semi-civilian government seemed to push towards political liberalization. especially after the electoral victory of the national league for democracy (nld) in december 2015, hopes were high for a ‘speeding-up’ of a democratization process under the leadership of nobel prize laureate aung san suu kyi whose stated aim is the “emergence of a democratic federal union” (“state counsellor daw aung san suu kyi’s”, 2017).1 indeed, the majority of observers and academics understood 1 even though aung san suu kyi was barred from officially becoming president for constitutional reasons, she assumed the newly established position of state counsellor and ministerial posts. she became the de facto leader of the semi-civilian government. president htin kyaw, installed by aung san suu kyi, remained largely in her shadow, getting little attention and media coverage. however, he resigned recently and was replaced by win myint who is said to be as loyal to aung san suu kyi (“myanmar parliament elects suu kyi”, 2018). aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 18 .1 -2 14 | aseas 11(1) frontier capitalism and politics of dispossession in myanmar the recent developments as an ongoing transition from authoritarian rule under a former military junta towards a more liberal electoral democracy. they point to a number of major political achievements, such as the release of political prisoners, easing of media censorship, growing freedom of expressions, new ceasefire agreements and more (egreteau & robinne, 2015, p. ix). others are taking a more cautious approach and characterize the process as a “‘protracted transition’ in which oppositional forces, ethnic groups, and the military have started to renegotiate political power” (bünte, 2016, p. 370); or as a “caretaking democratization” highlighting the continuing influence of the military and the top down nature of the political reform (egreteau, 2016). thus, a core question concerns the structural changes and continuities which influence the country’s political trajectories. egreteau and robinne (2015) consequently opted for the notion of a “metamorphosis” rather than a “transition” to describes the “deep-seated, incremental and observable transformations but with elements of resilience if not (frustrating) persistence, such as the political salience of the armed forces” (p. 4). at least since the renewed outbreak of violence in rakhine state in 2012 and military confrontation in the north of the country, this became painfully clear (burma news international, 2017; doyle & rigby, 2016). the “unprecedented violence” against self-identifying rohingya involving security forces, civilians, as well as militant armed groups, attracted massive international attention and was qualified by the un as an act of “ethnic cleansing” (international crisis group, 2017; united nations human rights office of the high commissioner, 2017). analyzing myanmar’s transition from a political economic perspective, jones (2014a) suggested that the “military has been left ‘holding the ring’ placing broad constraints on the reform process” (p. 156). rather than myanmar becoming the next democratic poster child he sees the country transforming into a more “normal” southeast asian state, with state power serving only a “narrow social constituency” (pp. 167-168). pointing towards a scenario potentially similar to the cambodian experience, he describes myanmar’s recent capitalist development as “highly rapacious and coercive” in an early phase of primitive accumulation (p. 167). a precondition for the recent transition (contrary to earlier attempts) was the incorporation of the periphery through an emerging “ceasefire-capitalism” (woods, 2011). the co-optation of ethnic armed groups in the border areas through business concessions and transnational capital allowed the regime to re-focus on its roadmap to ‘disciplined democracy’ and ensure its own economic survival (jones, 2014b). the specific accumulation regime, mainly based on the extraction and dispossession of land and natural resources in the frontier areas through authoritarian means (including but going beyond ceasefire agreements) is termed here as frontier capitalism. it builds on the concept of the frontier which traces the particular process of accumulation, enclosures, and contested property regimes in areas of fragmented authority as a result of coercive incorporation into the national state and global circuits of capitalism (geiger, 2009; kelly & peluso, 2015; peluso & lund, 2011). the aim of this paper is to analyze frontier capitalism and the related politics of dispossession as a persistent element of myanmar’s transition. while it does not intend to further theorize myanmar’s political transition on a macro level (see jones, 2014a, 2014b), it offers empirical evidence and insights into the dynamics of the transition at the sub-national and local level. it looks at the particular case of the mwetaung aseas 11(1) | 15 rainer einzenberger (gullu mual) nickel mine project in northern chin state, a politically relatively ‘stable’ area under ceasefire since 2012. while in other frontier areas local resistance to dispossession led to the breakdown of ceasefires and renewed armed conflict (brenner, 2015; burma news international, 2017), civil society in chin state is making use of increasing political spaces to voice their resistance. by focusing on grassroots mobilization during the period from 2013 to 2014, the article aims to contribute to a growing body of critically engaged literature on the “politics of dispossession” (levien, 2013a) in contemporary myanmar (prasse-freeman, 2015; zaw aung & middleton, 2016). it documents a notable ‘success story’ of an anti-dispossession movement which has received little attention in media and academic literature so far (for an exception, see mark, 2016). the research presented in this paper is part of an ongoing research project on “contested frontiers” in myanmar (einzenberger, 2016a). it is based on literature review and multi-sited field research conducted between 2015 and 2017 over several months in yangon, kalay, hakha and other locations, particularly in chin state. semistructured interviews and open interviews were conducted with civil society activists, representatives of communities, investors, political parties, local government, and others.2 in addition to interviews (conducted partly in english and in local languages with the support of local interpreters), the information gathered was cross-checked with documentation provided by the chinland natural resources watch group (cnrwg, 2013) as well as (local) english online media sources (ei ei toe lwin, 2013; khaipi, 2013; kyemon & ju nine, 2013; mirante, 2017; thawng zel thang, 2013).3 the article proceeds as follows: the first part introduces the theoretical core concepts followed by a summary of the historical background of myanmar’s economic transition from a ‘pseudo-socialist’ isolated economy to a more liberalized market economy. the second part of the article discusses the empirical findings of the case study with a special focus on the role of local civil society, political parties, and the local government. furthermore, it explores the importance of land rights and indigenous rights issues for the anti-dispossession movement. frontier capitalism and politics of dispossession from a theoretical perspective, the specific process of (re-emerging) capitalist development in the periphery areas of myanmar can be framed as “frontier capitalism” (laungaramsri, 2012).4 here, frontier capitalism means the specific “regime of dispossession” (levien, 2013b) 5, in particular the dispossession of land and natural resources 2 the names of the local communities as well as the names of the persons interviewed remain anonymous in order to protect their identity. 3 i would like to thank the cnrwg for their permission to translate the burmese language report into english. 4 while laungaramsri (2012) does not clearly define “frontier capitalism”, she argues that “provincial authorities have engaged in widespread transboundary and joint economic enterprises, particularly in the peripheries. such collaboration, which often bypasses central governance, with chaotic boundaries between what is recognized as ‘used (or productive)’ and ‘unused (underproductive)’ resources, along with unclear regulatory control, allow the growth of what i call ‘frontier capitalism’” (p. 466). 5 levien (2013b) defines “regimes of dispossession” as “socially and historically specific constellations of state structures, economic logics tied to particular class interests, and ideological justifications that generate a consistent pattern of dispossession” (p. 383). 16 | aseas 11(1) frontier capitalism and politics of dispossession in myanmar in border or frontier areas through authoritarian or outright violent means facilitated by the state for the benefit of a narrow elite. the concept of the frontier is a helpful analytical tool to explain processes of incorporation and transition of ‘unproductive land’ in the periphery into the national economy and ultimately the capitalist world system (geiger, 2009; hall, 2012, 2013). frontiers are defined as sparsely populated areas, close to borders and rich in natural resources, where land and territory is contested. often the state claims sovereignty over those areas, but in practice falls short of exercising full administrative control (geiger, 2009; hall, 2013). apart from being a zone of transition, the frontier can also be understood as a process “where authorities, sovereignties, rights, and hegemonies of the recent past have been challenged by new enclosures, property regimes, and territorializations” (peluso & lund, 2011, p. 667). the corresponding representation of the ‘imaginary frontier’ as ‘wild’, ‘unused’, or ‘virgin’ serves as a legitimating ideology for its exploitation. local claims, usage rights, and customary practices are thus ignored or disregarded by the state, to be sacrificed for national development (barney, 2009; geiger, 2009; kelly & peluso, 2015). processes of enclosures and primitive accumulation (or accumulation by dispossession) are a defining feature of incorporation and transition in the frontier (foweraker, 1981; geiger, 2009; hall, 2013; harvey, 2003). to this end, the state (and non-state actors) employ a variety of strategies and mechanisms, including both “the rifle and the title” (grajales, 2011). this means, capitalist relations are not only achieved by outright violent dispossession but also by other more subtle means such as “legal dispossession” involving the state (pichler, 2015). thereby, state legislations (for instance land laws) can play a crucial role in establishing the legal basis for a new land market through commodification of land and codification of ownership. unsurprisingly, processes of coercive incorporation and dispossession in the frontier are often met with resistance by the local population (hall, 2012, 2013). they challenge the forced imposition of capitalist relations based on state legislation, which mostly disregard customary practices and local modes of production. according to levien (2013a), the “dispossession of land creates a specific kind of politics” which he calls “politics of dispossession” (pp. 355-356). this involves forms of resistance mainly targeting the state and applying “physical, political, and legal means to maintain possession against the dissipating force of brokers, and the coercive force of the state” (p. 366). before discussing the “politics of dispossession” around the particular case of the mwetaung project in more detail, the next section provides an overview of myanmar’s broader economic transition since the beginning of the 1990s, and its impact on the frontier areas. from burmese way to socialism to ceasefire capitalism since myanmar abandoned its burmese way to socialism and opened up its economy to international investors in the beginning of the 1990s, the country’s economic development was essentially based on processes of primitive accumulation and resource extraction (bissinger, 2012; jones, 2014a; lambrecht, 2004; maclean, 2008; schaffar, 2008). the main motive for its ‘open-door policy’ was the desperate economic situation, after decades of self-imposed isolation and economic mismanagement under military rule, which also triggered the mass uprisings of 1988. after aseas 11(1) | 17 rainer einzenberger staging a coup and crushing the uprisings, the state law and order restoration council (slorc) took an “entrepreneurial turn” (maclean, 2008), offering “the right to exploit the rich untapped natural resources of burma to foreign investors in joint venture with state enterprises” (mya maung, 1995, p. 679). a series of laws, such as the wasteland instructions (1991) and mining laws (1994), were introduced to facilitate a market-based economy and private investment (franco, 2016; moody, 1999). the much-needed foreign exchange allowed the military junta to purchase new arms from china, expand its army, and tighten its grip to power against the will of the majority population (mya maung, 1995). in particular, myanmar’s neighboring countries thailand and china were more than willing to exploit the natural resources across their border and establish friendly relations with the military junta. already a few months after the slorc takeover, the thai military and associated companies negotiated concessions for teak extraction in myanmar, since thailand’s own forests had already been depleted (bryant, 1997). in the early 1990s, the yadana and yetagun pipelines were built by a consortium of international companies to import natural gas from the andaman sea to thailand to secure energy for its fast-growing economy. this caused widespread human rights abuses and environmental degradation (earthrights international, 2000). a few years later, china started to invest in myanmar following its ‘going out’ policy, overtaking thailand as its biggest investor in 2010 (inclusive development international, 2016). china mainly invested in (hydro) power (63%), oil and gas (25%), as well as in mining (11%) (dunn, ji, & peng, 2016; earthrights international, 2008). following the 1990 elections, the military also changed its tactics towards its border areas from military interventions to ‘business solutions’. in a process described as “ceasefire capitalism” (woods, 2011), members of the military regime brokered business deals with ethnic armed groups. legal concessions for the extraction of natural resources in the border areas and other lucrative business were offered to ethnic elites in return for ceasefire agreements (jones, 2014b; schaffar, 2008; woods, 2011). according to woods (2011), the burmese army used “land concessions in ceasefire zones as an explicit postwar military strategy to govern land and populations to produce regulated, legible, militarized territory” (p. 747). the ceasefires “weakened and co-opted much of the opposition” (jones, 2014b, p. 780) and allowed the military regime to refocus on its roadmap to a ‘disciplined democracy’ in order to safeguard its long-term political interests. continuing this approach, in 2011, president thein sein initiated a new round of ceasefires, which led to the signature of the national ceasefire agreement (nca) in 2015. yet, some ethnic armed groups who had already existing ceasefires (such as the kachin independence army) were not included in the latest round. this was partly related to competing claims over access to natural resources in the region (burma news international, 2017).6 as a result of the expansion of ceasefires and increasing exploitation of land and resources, “politics of dispossession” have clearly been on the rise since 2011 (buchanan, kramer, & woods, 2013). local media has documented land conflicts virtually on a daily basis (for some recent cases, see htike nanda win, 2017; myint moe, 2017). until 2015, 6 the 1994 ceasefire “broke down after the military took control of a kia outpost near a chinese-run dam in 2011” (burma news international, 2017, p. 7). 18 | aseas 11(1) frontier capitalism and politics of dispossession in myanmar the farmland investigation commission (installed by the usdp – union solidarity and development party – government following public pressure) recorded more than 11,000 official complaints related to conflicts over land (htoo thant, 2015). prior to 2012 communities rarely dared to speak out in public, due to heavy restrictions on the freedom of expression and media censorship. since 2012 people have begun to exercise their ‘new freedoms’ offered by gradual political liberalization (bünte, 2016).7 in particular, several large-scale chinese investment projects attracted widespread attention in relation to land confiscation and were targeted by public protests. the best-known cases were the letpadaung/monywa copper mine near mandalay and the myitsone hydropower dam in kachin state with an investment volume of about usd 3.6 billion (simpson, 2013). the letpadaung/monywa mining case became internationally known due to the violent crackdown of myanmar security forces on peaceful protestors (including buddhist monks) (zerrouk & neef, 2014). for many it symbolized the continuation of authoritarian means employed by the government to ensure an extractivist accumulation regime even after an apparent political liberalization. even the former opposition leader and current state counsellor aung san suu kyi publicly defended the continuation of the mining project despite heavy criticism (“aung san suu kyi support”, 2013). the myitsone dam on the other hand has been considered a success story for the anti-dispossession movement. in a nationwide “save the irrawaddy” campaign framed in ethno-political opposition to ‘chinese exploitation’, a broad coalition could be formed between local ethnic activists from northern myanmar (in particular kachin state) and urban based environmental and pro-democracy groups (kiik, 2016). the hydropower project was finally suspended by president thein sein and not continued until today (einzenberger, 2016b; oh & andrews-speed, 2015). in the following section, i will discuss in more detail the politics of dispossession around another, less known investment project proposed by chinese investors on the border to chin state – an area under ceasefire since 2012. the case of mwetaung (gullu mual) nickel mine in chin state the mining project known as mwetaung/phartaung project (which translates from burmese as snake and frog mountain) or gullu mual (after the local name) is situated right at the border between chin state and sagaing region (see figure 1).8 chin state is part of the western frontier of myanmar towards india and bangladesh and is often described as the least developed region in myanmar, difficult to access, and mostly mountainous. until recently, the government had little economic interest in the remote region. unlike the eastern and northern frontier, it was hardly known for large-scale resource extraction, except for some logging (callahan, 2007). this is partly explained by its particular location bordering northeast india, itself long isolated and ‘cut off ’ from the rest of india. armed conflict remained relatively low key in the region with the chin national front (cnf) taking up arms only in 1988.9 7 at times, protest can take on dramatic forms such as the case of a farmer in shan state who burned himself to death in protest against the seizure of his land by the military (wa lone, 2015). 8 hereafter, the name “mwetaung” will be used following the use in the cnrwg report and other official documents (cnrwg, 2013; nmic, 2013). 9 the cnf is a chin nationalist political organization founded in 1988 and dedicated to ensuring selfaseas 11(1) | 19 rainer einzenberger nevertheless, following 1988, chin state experienced considerable militarization and expansion of army battalions and with it regular human rights abuses (callahan, 2007; chin human rights organization, 2012; sakhong, 2010). the mwetaung project is the first major extractive industries project recently proposed in chin state. it is located in tiddim township in the natmyaung reserved forest area, close to the town of kalay (north mining investment company ltd. [nmic], 2013). officially in sagaing region, kalay functions as a sort of ‘gateway’ to nearby chin state. with around 130,000 inhabitants (ministry of immigration and population, 2014), the majority of which are reportedly ethnic chin or zomi10, it is also an important trading hub along the road to nearby india (bordering the northeastern state of manipur). until very recently, kalay also accommodated the only university and airport in the vicinity of chin state.11 the border between sagaing region and chin state begins right at the end of the town near kalay university campus at the chin foothills.12 the history of the mwetaung project dates back to the 1960s (see table 1), when the chin geologist ngaw cin pau discovered major nickel deposits in the mwetaung/ phartaung hills (barber, zaw, & crow, 2017; vumson, 1986; win & myint, 1998). however, for decades, no further plans for exploration progressed. the self-imposed international isolation under the burma socialist programme party (bspp) (1962– 1988) and the lack of capital investment and technology inhibited any large-scale exploitation (oh & andrews-speed, 2015). following its entrepreneurial turn in the early 1990s, the junta actively promoted foreign investment into mining in several “geologically favorable” areas including the mwetaung hills (“invitation to mining investors”, 1995). in 1994, the military government passed the myanmar mines law in order “to fulfill the domestic requirements and to increase exports by producing more mineral products” (leckie & simperingham, 2010). however, it took until the early 2000s before the first plans for an exploitation of the mineral deposits emerged. prior bids for exploration of the mwetaung area by western companies in the 1990s lead to nothing (moody, 1999). they either shunned the political risk or questioned the profitability (interview with former employee of nmic, yangon, december 2017). only chinese companies showed interests in further exploration. a 2008 report listing chinese investment projects in myanmar mentioned kingbao (jinbao) mining co. determination for chin state. its armed wing is the chin national army with more than 200 armed soldiers. about least 70 cna soldiers were killed during fighting with the myanmar military between 1988 and 2012. after 2003, fighting with government troops stopped (burma news international, 2017). the ceasefire agreement with the cnf on state level was signed on 7 january 2012 (“breakthrough: cnf signed ceasefire”, 2012). 10 in northern chin state, the local population prefers to call themselves zomi instead of chin and there is some controversy around the naming. the zo historian vumson (1986), for instance, prefers the term zo because “he believes that names such as kuki and chin which originated as abuse names should not be adopted as designation of a people”. sakhong (2010), on the other hand, prefers the term chin as a name for a collective identity. however, there is no available official data on ethnic categories in the census data. 11 in the meantime – as of 2018 – a new airport is planned near the town of falam and a new university was opened in hakha. 12 at one of the first research trips to the region in 2015, i had to pass a checkpoint and show my passport right at the ‘border’ between sagaing region and chin state, reinforcing the impression that it is more than just an internal administrative border. until the ceasefire agreement in 2012, chin state was only accessible with a special permit. 20 | aseas 11(1) frontier capitalism and politics of dispossession in myanmar having signed an agreement with the ministry of mining no. 3 to conduct exploration and feasibility studies on the mwetaung (earthrights international, 2008). according to local residents in the early 2000s, some chinese workers visited the area for exploration. yet, the contract was cancelled, and new negotiations were held in 2012 with the north petro-chem corporation of china (“union mines minister receives”, 2012). finally, in may 2012 a contract for a feasibility study was signed with another chinese company, north mining investment company ltd. (nmic) (“agreement inked to assess”, 2012). around that time, the market price for nickel on the world market had reached a peak of over usd 20,000 per ton (infomine, n.d.). the investing company nmic submitted a feasibility study to the ministry of mining in february, 2013 (nmic, 2013). according to what little is known about the project plans for the opencut mining, the project was to cover around 55 acres (about 22 ha), including several buildings for housing, offices, and storage as well as two 15-megawatt coal-fired power plants. the ferronickel concentrates extracted from the mine and produced on site in a smelter would be transported via a newly built access road and the india-myanmar friendship road to a new jetty on the chindwin river. from there, the minerals would be shipped to yangon then further to china (cnrwg, 2013). village consultations and civil society movements in late 2012, the local population took notice of the planned mining project for the first time. a yangon-based service company named asia guiding star services company limited (agss) assigned by nmic visited some of the 15 villages surrounding the mwetaung/phartaung area to collect data for the environmental, social, and health impact assessments.13 the service company acted as an initial intermediary between the chinese investor, the government, and the local population. in this role, the firm tried to put pressure on the village heads to give their consent for the planned mining project: workers from agss company came to collect data about the water and the soil; their main point was to get the consent from the local people; it was only the first time we heard about this and it was too early to give our consent, we needed to discuss first; in other villages they tried to meet the village head and get the consent. (interview with local residents, november 2016) in order to convince village heads to give their consent, agss promised ‘development’ for the area including new schools, hospitals, roads, and electricity. they generally ignored questions concerning negative impacts, while they highlighted the positive impacts such as jobs. indecisive about how to respond to the proposal, several villagers contacted local civil society organizations in the nearby town of kalay. the civil society groups had already been active in civic education and other political awareness raising programs as soon as the opportunity had emerged in 2012. the awareness raising programs included “basic understanding of democracy”, “civil 13 according to its own website, the company has been involved in the construction of the yadana and yetagun gas pipeline, the traders hotel, and many other construction projects during the time of the military regime prior to 2010 (asia guiding star services company limited [agss], 2012). aseas 11(1) | 21 rainer einzenberger society organizations”, and, “development and democracy”. the loose network of local civil society groups organized several rounds of public consultations. over one hundred meetings and information events were organized within the first few months of 2013 alone (cnrwg, 2013). in the beginning, villagers were divided on how to respond to the proposed mining project, with one faction supporting and the other opposing the project. previous experience of oppression under authoritarian rule and fear of the central government played a major role in local perceptions. moreover, the escalation of violence at the letpadaung mine (located in sagaing region) had an intimidating effect. some of the civil society actors from kalay were also active themselves in the letpadaung case before 2012. in general what they [the villagers] said is that we have no choice because this is the agreement between the government and the foreign company so it is useless to resist; but in my opinion it was influenced by fears which are rooted in a long history of military oppression; they don’t accept it but they at least wanted to take advantage of the company, this was before civil society leaders came for awareness raising. (interview with cnrwg, november 2016) shortly after the first consultations, a broad coalition comprising of affected villagers and urban based civil society organizations (youth groups, student groups, political activists) from kalay was formed as a ‘watch group’ on the mwetaung project. this ad hoc coalition was subsequently officially named the chinland natural resources watch group (cnrwg). remarkably for a majority chin/zomi ethnic network in a predominately christian area was the inclusion of non-ethnic as well as buddhist groups. indeed, one of the first big assemblies was held in a buddhist monastery in kalay where the head monk actively supported the coalition. thus, the coalition tried to gain legitimacy and leverage with the buddhist majority population similar to other protest movements in the country drawing strongly on buddhist symbolism (prasse-freeman, 2015; zaw aung & middleton, 2016). in addition to crossing ethnic and religious lines, it also had a cross-class character (including peasants and urban residents) not uncommon for anti-dispossession movements (levien, 2013a). considering itself a loose grassroots movement, the cnrwg opened up a public space for deliberation and consultation on the contested mining project. we recommend, if you don’t know if it is good or bad, don’t make any decision. the conflict was so hot at that time. the group who opposed the project was accused to oppose the development. . . . the government also said like the company; they came together and put pressure on the villagers to sign to agree. after this, our group and the villagers demanded the companies and the government to explain to the public how they work, to explain the plan to the public. (interview with cnrwg, november 2016) the role of the government and political actors while initial steps towards the exploitation of the mwetaung/phartaung hills were already taken under the previous military regime, the first activities on the ground 22 | aseas 11(1) frontier capitalism and politics of dispossession in myanmar coincided not only with the early period of the newly inaugurated semi-civilian government, but also with increasing activities of the local government and local political parties.14 although vested with limited powers and led by the usdp – a party known for its close ties to the military – the creation of state level political institutions, with a high representation of chin ethnic parties, provided an opportunity for the civil society network to advocate for more transparency, participation, and democratic decision making (nixon, joelene, kyi pyar, thet aung, & matthew, 2013; united nations development programme, 2014). one major achievement was to push the chin state government, including the chinese investor nmic, to public consultations. a meeting was held at the town hall in tiddim in april 2013 with both members of the cnrwg and concerned villagers in attendance. in preparation for the meeting, the network had collected a long list of questions for nmic in order to demand detailed information on the expected project plan and its potential impacts. yet due to heated debates and furious villagers insisting to get clear answers the meeting was cut-short by the chin state government. subsequent visits by representatives of nmic and the chin state government to the affected villages ended without any results. the sticking point was the question about potential impacts and distribution of costs and benefits of the proposed project (cnrwg, 2013). after several rounds of public consultation and deliberation without any clear answers by the mining company and the local government, the majority of the villagers did no longer believe in any beneficial arrangements. nevertheless, the chin state government reported to the union government that villagers had agreed with the mining project (thawng zel thang, 2013). reportedly, the chin state minister responsible for mining was facing considerable pressure from the central government in naypyidaw to ensure consent for the project and support nmic. given the mixed experience with the chin state government and its limited role regarding questions of resource governance (lynn & oye, 2014), civil society actors finally turned to chin/zomi members of parliament (mps) at the union level: we changed our way of approaching; we went to the union hluttaw. the executive branch was directly influenced by the military; the mps were a little more flexible than the ministers. the ministers are not elected persons. they don’t look at our local people’s rights. they don’t look down; they look up [to the central government], also this time. our way at that time was to convince them [hluttaw mps] to be on the side of the local people. if they are powerful in their respective parties they will push the ministers, we hoped. and we can say we were successful. (interview with civil society activist near mwetaung, november 2016) while the civil society network was autonomous from party politics, political parties played an important role in the political dispute around the mwetaung project. 14 “about five parties participated in the 2010 election in chin state. the national league for democracy boycotted the election nationally and parties to which it was allied in chin also boycotted the ballot. the parties that competed in the state in 2010 included the chin national party (cnp) and chin progressive party (cpp), representing the chin people at a state level, and the union solidarity and development party and the national unity party. the two chin parties each won five seats in the 24-member state hluttaw” (sithu aung myint, 2015). the chief minister in the 2010 cabinet, appointed by the president, was pu hung ngai from the usdp – a former member of the army. he appointed the ministers of his cabinet. pu kyaw ngein from cpp was the minister responsible for mining (“chin state ministers”, 2013). aseas 11(1) | 23 rainer einzenberger while their positions seemed to be unclear or even contradictory at the beginning, four of the chin parties finally set out to conduct their own survey on the mwetaung case in 2013 to get a better understanding of the local perception.15 the survey concluded that – contrary to the findings of the state government – the majority of affected villagers disapproved of the project. the report also criticized the involvement of a chinese company and stated that “local communities prefer mining companies from a democratic country to those from china if the project must proceed, although the majority objects to its implementation” (thawng zel thang, 2013). towards the end of 2013, the chin political parties finally aligned their position with that of the local civil society network after considerable grassroots lobbying. a statement was put forward citing “lack of information” and “lack of rule of law” as well as “little benefit” for chin state, and the parties expressed their “deep concern” on the implementation to the project (cnrwg, 2013). while the chin national front (cnf), the only ethnic organization with an armed wing (the chin national army) had strong influence on regional and national politics, in particular since the ceasefire agreement in 2012 (burma news international, 2017), its direct involvement in the anti-dispossession movement against the mwetaung project is less clear. however, the cnf publicly stated that it rejects extractive industries in chin state at this moment (“cnf wants to halt”, 2016). in november 2013, the speaker of the pyithu hluttaw (lower house of the union parliament), shwe mann, and regional ministers visited kalay and met with local civil society. responding to the concerns voiced by the local population, the speaker promised to ensure that “the project won’t damage the lives of people” (cnrwg, 2013). since 2014, the project has apparently been on hold. according to some residents, nmic pulled out of the project due to increasing public pressure and local resistance. however, a former employee of nmic cited failed resource sharing negotiations between the company and the ministry of mines and the declining world market price for nickel (from usd 20,000 to under 10,000) as the main reasons for the pull-out from the project.16 in any case, local civil society groups see the suspension of activities as a consequence of their own continuous efforts and as a success story of civil society mobilization (interview with villagers near mwetaung, november 2016). yet, according to recent media reports and local activists, other investors, local companies, and investors from india have shown new interest to explore the mining deposits in the area (“cnf wants to halt”, 2016; mirante, 2017). land rights and resource sharing an immediate concern for the local people regarding the mwetaung project was the potential loss of their farmland on which they largely depended for their livelihood. this was despite assurances by the mining company that no village land would be affected or taken (cnrwg, 2013). given the experiences of other communities 15 according to ethnic media reports, the chin national party (cnp), chin progressive party (cpp), ethnic national development party (endp) and asho chin national party (acnp) met with more than 700 people from 14 villages and over 10 organizations in both chin state and kalay from 2 to 9 september 2013 (thawng zel thang, 2013). 16 according to the former nmic employee, the company was dissolved after the related concessions by the myanmar investment commission had expired. 24 | aseas 11(1) frontier capitalism and politics of dispossession in myanmar with mining projects (in particular the letpadaung mine), however, local communities stayed alerted. already long before the first news of the mining project broke, villagers were afraid of being dispossessed of their land. the reason was that, as in many frontier areas, most farmers do not own any legal land titles for their farmland.17 in accordance with local customary practices, they practice swidden (shifting) cultivation along the slopes around mwetaung (ewers anderson, 2014; mark, 2016). in government maps, however, their farmland is officially categorized as ‘reserved forest’ under the jurisdiction of the ministry of environmental conservation and forestry. according to government sources, this designation originated from colonial times and has never been changed or verified since (kyemon & ju nine, 2013). typically for frontier regions, there is an overlap of claims and a mismatch between the official and actual land use around the mwetaung area (nmic, 2013). registration of their farmland is challenging, if not impossible, since the national land laws introduced in 2012 did not recognize customary practices of upland agriculturalists such as shifting cultivation. customary rights are only enforceable as long as there is no interest from outside the region. the overall changes in the political economy following myanmar’s opening and the new land laws and investment laws threatened customary institutions (ewers anderson, 2014). a local land rights activist criticized that the new farmland law (farmland act, 2012) and vacant land laws (the vacant, fallow and virgin land act, 2012) had actually turned the villagers into “illegal settlers” although they had been farming in the area already for generations. moreover, he complained about the “burman bias” of the legislation since “the burmese don’t know anything about the traditional customary law of the ethnic people” (interview with land rights activist, kalay, november 2016). also, the communities themselves were very conscious of the situation and challenged the state’s image of the frontier as an ‘empty’ and ‘virgin’ space to be brought to ‘productive’ use with the support of foreign investment. the union government does not care about our chin customary law. in british times, this was practically applied even in the high courts, but this government does not care at all. there is no land which is not occupied by our own people in chin state. the villages have exact boundaries and they occupy all areas. there is not even a single inch of land not occupied in our chin customary land use system. but this is not accepted by our government. (interview with villagers near mwetaung, november 2016) even though the 2016 national land use policy (nlup) envisions the recognition of customary land use systems and calls for the revision of land use maps and records through public consultation processes, little has happened on the ground (the republic of the union of myanmar, 2016). on the contrary, in late 2016, the parliamentary commission for legal and special issues analysis pointed out that “it is not necessary to include the ethnic nationalities’ land use rights as a separate part in the national land use policy” (the commission for legal and special issues analysis, 2016). also, according to land rights activists, the national league for democracy 17 according to ewers anderson (2014), only an estimated 15% of all land in myanmar is titled. aseas 11(1) | 25 rainer einzenberger (nld) government did not follow up on the nlup implemented under their rival usdp government. even though solving the land problems was one of the central promises of the nld during its election campaign, the government was slow to solve existing problems or reform laws. to take matters in their own hand, some villagers around mwetaung are meanwhile seeking legal protection through community forest registration, even if the process is complicated and slow. this gives communities the opportunity to obtain official permission from the forestry department to use a demarcated forest area for 30 years. yet, it is still unclear if this approach will be feasible and ensure the long-term interests of the communities (einzenberger, 2017; kyaw tint, springate-baginski, & mehm ko ko gyi, 2011). in addition to the immediate dangers of dispossession, villagers also rejected the government’s justification for the mining project and the terms of the deal. one argument brought forward by the central government was that chin state should also contribute to the national budget to finance national development, since the poor state was still a net receiver fully financed by the union. in addition, according to media reports and chin politicians, only 2-5% of the benefits or around usd 500,000 were earmarked for chin state (ei ei toe lwin, 2013; mirante, 2017). the resisting villagers, framed as ‘narrow minded’ and ‘anti-development’ by the investor and the government, rejected the project’s unfair distribution of costs and benefits. the promised benefit would amount to only around one us dollar per year and capita, as one villager amusedly remarked in an interview. the major bulk of the benefits would go to the central government’s budget, and the chinese investor according to the sharing agreements (which in the end failed). in public statements, the communities made clear that they regarded the mineral deposits in the mwetaung area as ‘chin property’ to be used for future generations only under a federal system which guaranteed the self-determination of chin state. local land rights activists also claimed that the central government tried to gain control over the mwetaung area by other, more indirect means. they accused the government of shifting the demarcation of the border between chin state and sagaing region and thus shifting the mwetaung area out of the jurisdiction of chin state into the more “mining friendly” sagaing region (mirante, 2017). this process has become known as the ‘boundary issue’. already in 2008, the cnf officially “lambasted the burmese military junta over its plan to add some parts of zomi (chin) state into sagaing division”. according to a media report, “around 8,000 acres of farmland, teak forests and gulu mual called ‘mwe taung’ nickel and chromium mining areas” would be included in the sagaing division (“cnf criticizes burmese regime”, 2008). local land rights groups recently tried to collect historical evidence to prove that chin state slowly lost territory, which had been incorporated by the ‘lowland regions’ since independence, and started to advocate with the local government (interview with land rights activist, january 2017). indigenous rights and transnational mobilization the local communities’ historical and identity-based claims of ownership were also accompanied by international indigenous rights discourses. one of the first public events organized by local civil society groups during the mobilization campaign 26 | aseas 11(1) frontier capitalism and politics of dispossession in myanmar took up the issue of free prior informed consent (fpic). banners donated by a local civil society organization were displayed at public exhibitions at villages around the mwetaung area (cnrwg, 2013). the banners explained the un declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples (undrip) and the concept of fpic as one of its core principles in the burmese language (united nations, 2008). villagers resented the complete lack of information and transparency around the mining project. neither the local government nor the investing company had informed the residents in advance about the plans, despite long running preparations (see table 1). instead, villagers were pressured to provide their consent to the project ad hoc without any clear and detailed information, being only provided with some vague pamphlets (described by one activist as propaganda). also, the environmental impact assessment (eia) and social impact and health assessment (sia/hia) reports, which according to nmic were submitted to the ministry of environmental conservation and forestry in march 2013, were never disclosed to the public (nmic, 2013).18 drawing on international indigenous rights instruments, local civil society groups made use of an emerging transnational indigenous rights discourse in order to defend their interests (myanmar centre for responsible business, institute for human rights and business, & the danish institute for human rights, 2016). in 2015, a coalition of indigenous peoples in myanmar/burma, a network of over 20 (ethnic) organizations (including chin organizations), submitted a report for the 2015 universal periodic review to the un human rights council in geneva. in the report, the network criticized the increasing confiscation of land and the violation of indigenous rights, citing also the mwetaung case (coalition of indigenous peoples in myanmar/burma, 2015). a transnational dimension to the mwetaung campaign was added to the local movement in august 2013 when exile groups, identifying themselves as ‘indigenous zomi’, gathered in cities in the united states, norway, india, australia, and other countries to protest against the planned mining project in their ‘homeland’. in washington dc, representatives of the world zomi congress condemned the suspected “confiscation of land” and exploitation of natural resources in chin state in front of the chinese embassy and called for an immediate stop of the project (khaipi, 2013). in their public statements, they directly referred to the undrip and claimed ownership over their “indigenous land”: we are here today as zomi national indigenous people from burma who are oppressed by our government. the reason we are here today is that the chinese north mining company and the chinese government and the burmese government are mining in our land, our indigenous, own land. . . . as the indigenous people in myanmar, we have the right to claim according to undrip article 25 and 27. that is why the gullu mual nickel project . . . is our own property and we are here to stop it today. therefore, until the burmese government has changed our constitutional law which will give us the right to own our land, we will stop this project. (wzc channel, 2013 [transcript of youtube video, min. 8:45-11:16]) 18 local villagers and activists only received pictures of the report cover, but never copies of the full report. aseas 11(1) | 27 rainer einzenberger while locally the civil society alliance was crossing ethnic and religious divides, including burman buddhist groups, as well as christian ethnic groups, identity-based claims (such as in the quote above) were still obvious. in public consultations, local villagers repeatedly claimed that the mineral deposits were “chin property” to be preserved for future generations and that the myanmar government or chinese investors had no right to extract them. however, in what way local coalitions were directly linked with transnational ‘indigenous zomi’ campaigns against the mwetaung project is still unclear. according to the cnrwg, there was only limited contact with groups overseas. conclusion the case of the mwetaung mining project discussed in this paper illustrates the strategy of accumulation by dispossession in the frontier areas as a persistent element of myanmar’s political economy. through this particular regime of dispossession, described here as frontier capitalism, the periphery is gradually turned into a supplier of resource revenues to fuel economic growth at the center while gaining little benefits itself. the country’s latest transition, including the introduction of a series of legal and political reforms, facilitated investment (in particular from its neighbors) and provided a new dynamic for the expansion of the frontier. this expansion relies on the support of foreign capital, in particular china, since the early 2000s. in the case of the mwetaung project, the attempted dispossession has been successfully challenged, at least for the moment, by a local civil society coalition using new opportunities for political participation. the politics of dispossession in this case were characterized by political strategies targeting newly established democratic institutions. the mobilization was initiated by an ad hoc grassroots coalition based on emerging civil society actors since 2011 (such as the cnrwg). the movement was independent from political parties, but targeted political actors on regional, national, and even transnational political scales. despite bridging ethnic and religious divides locally, demands for indigenous rights and self-determination, including land and resource governance rights were voiced by actors identifying themselves as ethnic chin or indigenous zomi. this divergent and even contradictory character is not uncommon for anti-dispossession movements. while local initiatives did not reject extractive development projects as such, they rejected the authoritarian and non-transparent manner in which this particular project was unfolding. a main concern was the dispossession of their agricultural lands, which are not legally recognized under the current legal framework introduced as part of the current transition. this framework is considered biased towards the majority lowland population and ignorant of ethnic customary practices. given the particular political history in this frontier region, local communities rejected the government’s demands as illegitimate and showed little trust in the promises made by the government and investors. this was mixed with strong anti-chinese sentiments – a legacy of recent experiences in the region and beyond. yet, the frontier regions, including chin state, will likely face further coercive integration and exploitation in the context of future regional initiatives such as chinas belt and road initiative (bri). following china’s involvement, india is also seeking to enhance the integration of trade and investment in the northeast 28 | aseas 11(1) frontier capitalism and politics of dispossession in myanmar through its bangladesh–china–india–myanmar forum for regional cooperation (bcim) economic corridor. unless the central government and investors are prepared to change their approach and renegotiate conditions of integration, including decentralized decision-making and benefit-sharing agreements, politics of dispossession will continue to shape myanmar’s transition. date chronology of events around the mwetaung (gullu mual) mining project 1960s initial geological surveys by dr. ngaw cin pau 1988 slorc takes over power after uprising in august 1988 1994 slorc adopts new mines law 1995 announcement in government newspaper invites foreign companies to conduct mineral prospecting and exploration operations 2005 kingbao (jinbao) mining ltd of china signed an agreement on nickel mineral exploration and feasibility study with no. 3 mining enterprise of the ministry of mines. after initial explorations, the contract expires. 2010 general elections on november 7 2012 cnf signs 9-point state level ceasefire agreement in january 2012 new negotiations are held in april concerning exploration of minerals in mwetaung with the north petro-chem corporation of china 2012 cnf signs union level 15-point ceasefire agreement in may 2012 north mining investment co. ltd receives permission for ferro nickel deposit feasibility study in may 2013 asia guiding star services company limited (agss) starts to collect data for eia/sia surveys in january 2013 local communities seek advice concerning mwetaug project from kalay csos in january figure 1. location of mwetaung mining project, bordering chin state and sagaing region. (myanmar information management unit, figure by the author). aseas 11(1) | 29 rainer einzenberger 2013 formation of local cso networks at local monastery in kalay 2013 media campaign in kalay town 2013 poster exhibitions on fpic in local villages 2013 village consultation meetings around mwetaung area between january and february with hundreds of participants 2013 civil society coalition on mwetaung is renamed to chinland natural resources watch group (cnrwg) in february 2013 north mining investment co. ltd submits feasibility reports on 'mwetaung nickel smelt-ing project' to the ministries of mines, and environmental conservation and forestry 2013 reports of environmental impact assessment (eia), social impact assessment (sia) and health impact assessment (hia) are submitted to ministry of environmental conservation and forestry 2013 meeting with local political parties in march discussion of mwetaung project at chin state parliament 2013 public consultation with local government and nmic in tiddim town hall, nrwg pres-ents 48 questions in april 2013 nmic holds village meetings 2013 buddhist monk and cnrwg members meet with local media 2013 meeting with chin regional government and chin mps in hakha in may 2013 meeting at tiddim town hall: manager from nmic answer 46 questions 2013 cnrwg sends letter to the mr. quintana, un special rapporteur on myanmar in august 2013 cnrwg and gdi conduct collaborative research in mwetaung area in august and sep-tember 2013 representatives of four chin political parties conduct a survey on the mwetaung project with local communities in september 2013 chin parties meet with state government in hakha 2013 press conference in yangon with cnrw, gdi, chin political parties and civil society representatives 2013 meeting with speaker of union parliament (lower house) shwe mann in kalay in november 2014 according to media reports in january, the gullu mual project has been suspended table 1. chronology of events around the mwetaung (gullu mual) mining project. 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(2016). social movement resistance to “accumulation by dispossession” in myanmar: a case study of the ka lone htar dam near the dawei special economic zone. in d. blake & l. robins (eds.), water governance dynamics in the mekong region (pp. 181-207). selangor: strategic information and research development centre. zerrouk, e., & neef, a. (2014). the media discourse of land grabbing and resistance during myanmar’s legal reformation: the monywa copper mine. law and development review, 7(2), 275-312. 34 | aseas 11(1) frontier capitalism and politics of dispossession in myanmar about the author rainer einzenberger is a phd candidate at the department of development studies, university of vienna. his research interests include political science, land and resource politics, critical geography, and indigenous movements with a regional focus on southeast asia. ► contact: rainer.einzenberger@univie.ac.at acknowledgements i would like to thank all persons involved who supported the research for this paper, in particular the chinland national resources watch group (cnrwg), my friends from chin state, as well as two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. the research and publication was financially supported through grants by the university of vienna (kwa) and the faculty of social sciences. assembling resistance against large-scale land deals: challenges for conflict transformation in bougainville, papua new guinea anne hennings ► hennings, a. (2016). assembling resistance against large-scale land deals: challenges for conflict transformation in bougainville, papua new guinea. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 9(1), 33-52. responding to the academic void on the impact of socio-ecological conflicts on peacebuilding and conflict transformation, i turn to resistance against large-scale land acquisitions in post-war contexts. promising in terms of reconstruction and economic prosperity, the recent rush on land may, however, entail risks for reconciliation processes and long-term peace prospects. with reference to post-war bougainville – as yet an autonomous province of papua new guinea – the article aims to conceptualize the impact of resistance against large-scale land deals on conflict transformation processes. applying assemblage theory thereby allows not only analyzing multilayered dynamics in post-conflict societies but also new perspectives on socio-ecological conflicts. the findings suggest increasing resistance against land deals and state territorialization in bougainville with resemblances to pre-war contentious politics against panguna mine. yet, the lasting war trauma, a high weapon prevalence, and growing social friction add to destructive deterritorialization processes that are currently slowed down by the upcoming independence referendum. keywords: assemblage; conflict transformation; land grabbing; papua new guinea; resistance  introduction in times of climate change and a combined energy, food, and financial crisis (mcmichael, 2013; ross, 2014), access to and control over land and certain resources are increasingly contested (hall et al., 2015, p. 467). although far from being a new phenomenon, the nature of contemporary commercial land and resource acquisitions indicates a shift towards new spatial-temporal dimensions (wily, 2012). ever-larger tracts of land or forests are leased for 50 up to 99 years to corporations mainly from brics countries, the middle east, europe, and north america. most host governments offer a variety of economic and legal incentives, while investors, in turn, promise employment opportunities, infrastructure development, technological transfer, and contributions to local or national food security (anseeuw et al., 2012; bloomer, 2012). however, displacement, long-term environmental damage, and socio-cultural as well as political marginalization give rise to increasing resistance against large-scale land acquisitions aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 16 .1 -3 34 anne hennings  aseas 9(1) and land grabs1 in the global south. following the development in sub-saharan africa (hall, scoones, & tsikata, 2015), a large number of land transactions have taken place in southeast asia in recent years. despite certain risks to acquire vast areas for agriculture, mining, or carbon offsetting purposes, profitable conditions increasingly attract investors in post-conflict countries (tripathi, 2011).2 countries as diverse as cambodia, the lao pdr, papua new guinea, or the philippines, while struggling to stabilize after years of violent conflict ranging from genocide to anti-regime and secession wars, face a contemporary rush on their lands, forests, and mineral resources (land matrix, 2015). at the surface, these developments may seem promising in terms of reconstruction and economic prosperity (anseeuw et al., 2012; fao, 2013; locher & müller-boker, 2014). however, they may also entail risks for reconciliation processes and long-term peace prospects due to changing formal and informal land ownership and the often unjust distribution of negative externalities and benefits. this article refers to the specific situation of reconciliation, land acquisitions, and resistance in post-war bougainville. selecting the case of bougainville, as yet an autonomous province of papua new guinea (png), is interesting for two reasons. first, armed resistance against the negative socio-ecological impacts of the panguna copper mine in bougainville triggered a decade long civil war (1988-1998) – referred to in the earlier period of peace as the “world’s first successful eco-revolution” (rotheroe, 2000). second, the independent state of bougainville (the referendum is expected to take place until 2020) will certainly depend on revenues from foreign direct investments (kangsi & damana, 2014, p. 14). due to the worsening economic situation, the autonomous government is already under pressure to seek (external) financing opportunities such as in the mining or agricultural sector. taking these recent developments in bougainville into account, the article aims to conceptualize the impact of resistance against large-scale land deals on socio-economic and political conflict transformation dynamics. drawing on deleuze’s and guattari’s (1987) poststructuralist assemblage approach, i analyze territorialization processes (e.g., dynamics of land tenure shifts, displacements, and reconciliation) that strengthen or destabilize the identity and capacities of assemblages. assemblage thinking takes socio-spatial relations into account and permits an expanded understanding for the processes and interactions on different levels and between heterogeneous actors and the environment. the article is organized as follows. i briefly review the existing literature on land deals, conflict transformation, (liberal) peacebuilding, and resistance. building upon a brief introduction of the assemblage perspective, i develop the theoretical framework. using the case of bougainville, the conceptual framework will be further outlined by scrutinizing the issue of land acquisitions, territoriality, as well as the emergence and 1 following the tirana declaration (2011), land grab indicates large-scale land deals associated with at least one of the following aspects: human rights violations, lacking participation, information or compensation of affected communities, or a lack of thorough environmental or social assessments. whereas the terms land deals, land acquisitions or foreign direct investment generally refer to the commodification of land, they also subsume the predominant phenomenon of land grabbing (cotula et al., 2014). i mainly use the terms land deals or acquisition, unless i want to highlight implications specifically related to land grabs. 2 post-conflict situations are vulnerable political and economic transition phases. according to badran (2014), “peace failure is likely at any time during the first two decades” (p. 213). 35assembling resistance against large-scale land deals impact of resistance in fragile post-war contexts. in this regard, i draw parallels to historic developments, such as earlier resistance practices against panguna mine on the verge of civil war. land deals, resistance, and post-conflict contexts only recently taken up, resistance and conflicts related to large-scale land use changes and commercial land acquisitions still remain underexplored in scholarly debates (brent, 2015; hall et al., 2015). while recent studies dealing with the contemporary land rush are often limited to conflicts around displacement or marginalization (cotula et al., 2014; ince, 2014; mittal, 2013), scant attention has been paid to the impact of emerging resistance and their implications for local or national stability.3 when examining resistance, the land grabbing literature, as some scholars criticize, usually perceives peasants as victims, whose traditional livelihoods are threatened and who inherently oppose large-scale land deals (schneider, 2011). few exceptions challenge this generally accepted assumption, such as mamonova’s (2015) analysis of non-resistance of ukrainian peasants. this said, most affected communities in some way or other, however, react from below against land deals and particularly land grabbing in various and complex ways (hall et al., 2015). local communities are thereby not passive victims but “powerful and potentially transformative agents” who frame their resistance by interpreting their own experiences of marginalization and injustices (cavanagh & benjaminsen, 2015, p. 730). when dealing with resistance against land grabbing in the global south, most scholars apply framing (benford & snow, 2000) and mobilization approaches (edwards & mccarthy, 2004) or adopt scott’s (1985) concepts of everyday resistance and weapons of the weak (adnan, 2013; cavanagh & benjaminsen, 2015; malseed, 2008). for instance, schneider (2011) scrutinizes the complex case of cambodia and discusses the efficacy of (un-)organized resistance. accordingly, three kinds of rural resistance can be distinguished: official politics within the respective authorities; everyday resistance which is rather unplanned and indirect; and direct, organized, mostly overt advocacy politics. depending on external (mainly political) circumstances, resistance may easily transform from everyday resistance to advocacy politics or vice versa. instances of extreme political repression, coercion, or marginalization can push peasants to “cross the threshold of fear and insecurity” (adnan, 2007, p. 214). this either means that everyday resistance takes a backseat in favor of more confrontational overt forms of resistance or, conversely, peasants have to find all the more covert means of everyday politics. referring to this literature, this article considers everyday resistance as well as advocacy politics and centers around the implication of resistance for conflict transformation processes. i refrain from a detailed analysis of resistance against large-scale land deals in bougainville including framing strategies, organizational structures, and resource mobilization. instead, the article explores the motivations and means of resisting groups and reveals implications for “(un)peaceful relations” (menzel, 2015) in post-conflict contexts. 3 the recent publication of the journal of peasant studies (hall et al., 2015) on land grabbing and resistance is an overdue exciting exception. 36 anne hennings  aseas 9(1) war-torn societies, donors, and most governments would agree that rebuilding a country in the wake of violent conflict generally aims at establishing conditions that enable sustainable peace in the long run (pugh, cooper, & turner, 2011).4 mostly external-driven peacebuilding interventions address four main pillars, each encountering various obstacles: security; justice and reconciliation; social and economic wellbeing; governance and participation (jarstad & sisk, 2008; schneckener, 2005; woodward, 2013). for years, donors and international organizations have favored the neoliberal approach to peacebuilding (woodward, 2013, pp. 141-143). in contrast to institutional, security-centered, and civil society approaches, liberal peacebuilding comprises a set of economic and political measures that primarily promote democratization, early elections, and – most important – a free market economy (campbell, chandler, & sabaratnam, 2011). accordingly, corporations and liberal politicians continue to advocate for the stabilizing and long-term advantages of corporate peace (haski-leventhal & shippa, 2013; pugh, 2016) which, in turn, further legitimizes foreign direct investments. at the same time, the social dimensions of post-war development are often disregarded (menzel, 2015), questioning the durable objective of peacebuilding. likewise, little attention has been paid to the social and symbolic dimensions of land or natural resources in the wake of conflicts (auweraert, 2013). here, particularly unruh’s and williams’ (2013) work stands out. they show that contested access and control over land and natural resources not only encourages (armed) conflicts but that the (re-)distribution of land remains a key risk factor during conflict transformation. in a similar vein, unep and undp (2013) jointly analyzed the natural resource and demobilization, disarmament, reintegration (ddr) nexus with regard to conflict risks and long-term peace prospects to conclude that natural resources and access to land is key to economic recovery and successful reconciliation. this being said, few scholars have explored the specific impact of large-scale land acquisitions in post-war countries despite potential risks to conflict transformation. taking land use change, identity, and external interests into account, gertel, rottenburg, and calkins (2014) offer a starting point with a profound analysis of multilayered conflict dynamics resulting from land and resource investments in sudan. millar (2015a, 2015b) reveals potential destabilizing effects of land grabbing, that is, increasing economic inequality, in post-conflict sierra leone. however, millar does not consider communal coping strategies or potential synergies between war experiences and means of resistance. with that said, i particularly focus on contentious politics against land deals in bougainville and aim to reveal resemblances to earlier forms of resistance against panguna mine that eventually resulted into a full-scale war. conceptualizing assemblage and territoriality assemblage concepts have become increasingly popular tools for expanding understanding of new social formations arising in consequence of the multiple crisis of capitalism and climate change (larner, 2011). inspired by the poststructuralist forest 4 reychler and paffenholz (2001) refer to sustainable peace as a “situation characterized by the absence of physical violence; the elimination of unacceptable political, economic and cultural forms of discrimination; a high level of internal and external legitimacy or support; self-sustainability; and a propensity to enhance the constructive transformation of conflicts” (p. 12). 37assembling resistance against large-scale land deals carbon and tenure literature, scholars started drawing attention to the concepts of assemblage and territorialization to explore the impacts and dynamics of large-scale land deals (mcmichael, 2012; sassen, 2013). thus far largely applied in geography, sociology, and anthropology, assemblage can also add new perspectives to the field of peace and conflict studies, as demonstrated by hoffman’s (2011) differentiated analysis of “war machines” – about the role of young men in the sierra leonean and liberian civil war. setting out constructivist accounts of socio-spatial relations and proposing a non-dualistic understanding of nature and society, assemblage theory provides an alternative approach to modernist thinking in terms of conceptualizing the social and natural world. whereas it shares this critique of modernization theory with political ecology approaches, assemblage theory criticizes the structural (marxist) thinking in political ecology that seeks to explore causal rather than emergent linkages and neglects the agency of nature (blaikie & brookfield, 1987; bryant, 1998; neumann, 2015; zimmerer & bassett, 2003). in order to compensate for these shortcomings, political ecology scholars have increasingly turned to latour’s actor-network theory (ant). ant can, however, only partly address these shortcomings (braun, 2004; mutersbaugh & martin, 2012) as it leaves “little room for politics” (loder, 2012) and hence, falls short in scrutinizing resistance against large-scale land deals in politically contested post-conflict settings. in contrast to structural approaches, the strength of assemblage theory derives from its focus on the relationality of things and people (ong, 2014) that “permits the researcher to speak of emergence, heterogeneity, the decentered and the ephemeral in nonetheless ordered social life” (marcus & saka, 2006, p. 101). the notion of assemblage entails a theory of practices and interaction since relations “are made and remade in practices” (bueger, 2014, p. 62). accordingly, assemblage thinking moves beyond anthropocentrism and proposes an approach to overcome the highly debated dichotomy between agency and structure (anderson, kearnes, mcfarlane, & swanton, 2012, p. 172). instead of emphasizing the being, assemblage apprehends the making of socio-natures “whose intricate geographies form tangled webs of different length, density and duration, and whose consequences are experienced differently in different places” (braun, 2006). this conceptual perspective enables a comprehensive understanding of emerging resistance against land acquisitions in complex conflict transformation situations. in the following, i outline key terms and characteristics of assemblages and develop a conceptual framework. assemblage and power from a socio-spatial perspective in this article, i largely draw on delanda’s (2006, 2011) assemblage approach and ontology that builds on deleuze and guattari (1987). following assemblage ontology, each entity can be understood as immanently historically produced; be it a city, a community network, or a nation state. the relation between component parts is contingent obligatory as “a historical result of their close coevolution” (delanda, 2006, p. 11). assemblages do not form a seamless whole (delanda, 2011, p. 188; deleuze & guattari, 1987, p. 698), but imply emergence resultant from its interacting entities (li, 2007, p. 264). during the process of emergence, component parts retain 38 anne hennings  aseas 9(1) their identity and autonomy and, once stabilized, can become component parts of another (larger) assemblage. while the emerging property or features of the larger assemblage may change, the identity of the respective component parts remains. the occurrence of emergent properties depends on interactions that are defined, more specifically, by the entities’ capacities (delanda, 2011, p. 205). entities are characterized by a mixture of material and virtual or expressive roles, whereby the latter includes linguistic, but also social expressions, such as solidarity, legitimacy, or prestige. for instance, the expression of identity through architecture or the symbolic relation to land can be regarded as virtual dimensions of a rural community assemblage while the material dimension concerns the physical neighborhood, infrastructure, village gatherings, fields, or forest, to name but a few. according to deleuze and guattari (1987, p. 27), vertical relations are a feature of social space, whereby they understand power as a relation between forces, not between subjects. force means “any capacity [be it physical, socio-economic, legal, mystical] to produce or change a ‘becoming’” (parr, 2011, p. 111). as a consequence, every event or phenomenon results from hierarchical interaction patterns between forces. hence, power can be neither apprehended as central governing nor equally distributed but “as a plurality in transformation” (anderson & mcfarlane, 2011, p. 125). this means different and even contrary kinds of power, for example, resistance, domination, authority, manipulation or inducement (allen, 2004), emerge and operate simultaneously and thus, go beyond commonly applied global-local or state-civil society divisions (mcfarlane, 2009, p. 565). power is also an integral part of territoriality. often reduced to socially or institutionally occupied space, territory rather encompasses interactions of social life and power. territory encompasses more than physical tangible land. rather, it emerges from claims to land (gertel et al., 2014; sassen, 2006; scott, 1998) and is characterized by the dimensions of identity, authority, and economic efficiency. according to sack (1986), territoriality is an attempt to control or influence people, phenomena, and relations by asserting control over a certain geographic area (pp. 387-388). notably, nation states apply this logic (hassner, 1997; vandergeest & peluso, 1995) but territoriality also matters in armed conflicts when control over a certain area is established or expanded. however, territoriality cannot be reduced to those who assert control as it may be contested or resisted (scott, 1998). politics are in a never-ending state of becoming since a “political assemblage [is] continually made anew, continually reinvented” (hardt, 1993, p. 121). thereby, new assemblages representing new interests and organizational structures (e.g., resisting groups) seek to increase their capacities in order to alter contemporary hierarchical patterns. assembling the land grabbing, resistance, and conflict transformation nexus assemblages are determined along two axes; namely, the processes of territorialization and coding. between these two processes heterogeneous entities come together and fall apart (anderson & mcfarlane, 2011). territorialization concerns the internal homogeneity of an assemblage and can be differentiated threefold – although each entity of an assemblage may be involved in all processes simultaneously (delanda, 39assembling resistance against large-scale land deals 2006, pp. 13-14, 123; deleuze & guattari, 1987, pp. 703-705). analyses along territorialization and coding processes allow revealing spatial and material features of territories whilst taking social relations into account. in the following, i illustrate and discuss both territorialization and coding processes with regard to resistance against large-scale land deals in post-war societies. territorialization stabilizes the identity of an assemblage by strengthening the internal homogeneity and defining its (spatial) boundaries; usually facilitated by the state that “distinguishes the legal from the illegal, the legitimate from the illegitimate, the licit from the illicit” (hoffman, 2011, p. 8). in this way, the state not only regulates access rights to territory and resources, but also expands control over its population, what vandergeest and peluso (1995) critically refer to as “property rights over people” (p. 394). accordingly, state territorialization implies the exclusion of certain social groups and the monopolization of economic benefits through resource control. this being said, reactions from below can be differentiated threefold: either communities accept, ignore, or oppose state territorialization efforts (berry, 2009, p. 24). although not inevitably linked, large-scale land acquisitions can in most cases be understood as an act of state territorialization that goes beyond the mere material appropriation of land and commodities. rather, it is an act of gaining control over social, cultural, and economic resources which is sometimes closely associated with elite capture (dina & sato, 2014; hall, 2013). in the case of the panguna mine, the central government of png in port moresby not only failed to facilitate a constructive dialogue, but also deliberately promoted labor migration from other parts of the country, thereby further disadvantaging and alienating bougainville’s communities. generally, the government’s willingness or commitment to address claims against land grabbing to guarantee free prior and informed consent or compensation for affected communities can be regarded as the virtual or expressive role of the authorities (delanda, 2006, p. 57). while land deals may be an act of state territorialization, they are the more if resistance against these practices is suppressed. opposing groups may be pushed to assemble their forces and strengthen their identity which contributes to territorialization processes within resisting communities. in this respect, the bougainville revolutionary army (bra) is a case in point. while the government of png ignored local claims, acts of everyday resistance and related advocacy politics strengthened the movement’s identity that has been closely intertwined with panguna. deterritorialized assemblages, on the other hand, are rather unstable, heterogeneous, show fuzzy boundaries, and can be distinguished as relative or absolute deterritorialization (braun, 2008). the former, reterritorialization, refers to destabilizing processes opening assemblages up to change which may yield an alternative identity (delanda, 2006), for instance, when state-owned land is transferred to an indigenous administration or resistance movements succeed (braun, 2008; woods, anderson, guilbert, & watkin, 2013). in contrast, the process of absolute deterritorialization shows rather destructive tendencies and involves a much more radical identity change, for instance caused by violence or a severe loss of livelihoods. both deterritorialization processes can occur simultaneously in the wake of large-scale land deals. the top-down exclusive commodification of land, forests, and minerals destabilizes an assemblage since the former is contingent upon the separation of land from social meanings and its transformation into valorized capital (gertel et al., 2014; sassen, 40 anne hennings  aseas 9(1) 2006). hence, the range of interactions between the land and its former owners or utilizers inevitably changes and is replaced by a primarily economically motivated relation which often holds resemblances to exploitative patterns. confronted with eviction and dispossession, communities need to find coping strategies that are often related to certain means of contestation. if (non-violent) resistance succeeds, alternative coping mechanisms do not harm other communities or the environment or in cases where new negotiation opportunities open up, one can speak of reterritorialization. by contrast, in cases of extreme repression or coercion – often (in)directly supported by investors or donors through controversial infrastructure or land governance projects (fairhead, leach, & scoones, 2012; mousseau & moore, 2013; neef, touch, & chiengthong, 2013) – communities may be pushed to engage in more confrontational and riskier forms of resistance (kerkvliet, 2009) as in bougainville during the 1980s. accordingly, violence easily escalates and undermines state authority which further accelerates absolute deterritorialization. this may entail destructive long-term impacts, disrupt peace and reconciliation processes, or even promote new armed conflicts (hoffman, 2011, p. 9). complementing territorialization, coding sharpens and maintains the identity of assemblages and is often facilitated by the media. type and acknowledgement of legitimate authority plays a key role for (de-)coding processes. highly coded assemblages usually occur in very formal environments, such as hierarchically organized societies in which authority is uncontested. if formal governance or legitimate authority are weakened, for instance as a result of war, assemblages can be referred to as decoded. however, many social assemblages are neither highly coded nor territorialized (delanda, 2006, p. 15). interactions of resistance are regarded as not yet coded. referred to as “non-place” in spatial terms, resistance suddenly emerges “within historical arrangement(s) of power relations” (lambert, 2006, pp. 143-144) on the margins of an assemblage. created at the edge, where the “entity experiences an outside” (sutton & martin-jones, 2011), resistance may transform the whole assemblage. the success of resistance again is closely related to the response of the addressed legitimate authority; be it negotiation, coercion, or disregard. assembling reactions from below in post-conflict bougainville in the following, embedded into historical trajectories i give a brief overview on current land-related developments in bougainville that became an autonomous province of png in the aftermath of the civil war in 2000. in doing so, i seek to uncover resemblances between former and contemporary resistance dynamics against state territorialization through land and resource commodification. png ranks among the top ten target countries of large-scale land deals. so far, more than 5.2 million ha of land have been leased, mostly to foreign investors (land matrix, 2015) covering roughly 12% of the total surface. affected communities were left largely uninformed and excluded from negotiation or participation (global witness, 2014). investors are not only interested in png’s rich mineral resources but also in commercially untouched rainforest areas that are suitable for agro-industrial plantations. meanwhile, the government faces various challenges that are (in)directly linked to the land rush, such as illegal logging, massive soil and water degradation, community displacement, 41assembling resistance against large-scale land deals and increasing food insecurity (mousseau, 2013). in mid-2014, a court decision revoked one third of the special agricultural business leases (sabl) due to ongoing discrepancies with existing community land tenure. notwithstanding, the judicial review of the other sabl is still pending while the federal court stopped the implementation of the court decision in early 2015 (kalebe, 2015). increasing state territorialization the autonomous status of bougainville exempts the island’s resources from sabl regulations but nonetheless the island increasingly attracts investors. in the wake of the secession war (1988-1998), a debate on (sustainable) mining and alternative ways of foreign direct investments was initiated in the early 2000s. after seven years of negotiation, the autonomous bougainville government (abg)5 passed a new interim mining act in august 2014 to address bougainville’s specific needs. according to the new bill, minerals are now owned by traditional landowners who also have veto power over exploration licenses, while the abg owns minerals of non-customary land (png mine watch, 2014). however, critics claim the new law paves the way for the long contested panguna mine6 to re-open without landowner consent and, moreover, privileges former operator bcl in negotiating new mining licenses in the area. amid this controversial discussion on long-term sustainable investments, conflict transformation7, and low financial capacities, the bougainville inward investment bureau (biib) was recently established. aiming to attract responsible investment that meets bougainville’s specific context and needs, the biib developed ethical principles and identified four key investment sectors including agriculture, tourism, fisheries, and mining (biib, 2014). still, the biib needs to prove its commitment and involve bougainvilleans a lot more into the negotiation process of utilizing the country’s resources. the pending re-opening of panguna mine, the allocation of further exploration licenses, and increasing agro-industrial acquisitions suggest that a contrary development is underway. president momis has always supported large-scale mining and advocates for its (mainly financial) advantages (kangsi & damana, 2014, p. 14). moreover, corruption undermines a constructive debate on the pros and cons of large-scale mining and thus helps to mobilize pro-land and resource investment forces within the abg and the elite. in addition to internal power dynamics, external pressure due to financial dependencies mainly from australia, png (see cochrane, 2016, on png’s ambitions to buy rio tinto’s panguna shares), and particularly china encourages the abg to sell off its land, forests, and minerals (roka, 2014). these de5 following the peace agreement between the government of png and the bougainville revolutionary army (bra), the abg was established in 2000. regarded as one of png’s great elder statesman, president grand chief dr. john lawrence momis was re-elected in 2015. during the 1970s, he co-drafted the constitution of png but also helped to establish secessionist movements in the north solomons (which includes bougainville). taken hostage by the bra in 1997, he nevertheless continued advocating for reconciliation between ex-bra combatants and the papua new guinea defense force whilst preparing for the independence referendum (radio new zealand, 2015). 6 see vernon (2005) for more detailed information on the socio-ecological impact of the panguna copper mine. 7 for further information on the peacebuilding process see regan (2002) and braithwaite, charlesworth, reddy, and dunn (2010). 42 anne hennings  aseas 9(1) velopments point to increasing state territorialization that is closely linked to broader dynamics of bougainville’s state formation and consolidation (corson, 2011; see cavanagh & benjaminsen, 2015, on similar dynamics in uganda). contested land deals and the risk of re-opening panguna recently, there has been growing discontent and public resistance against the allocation of land to investors and commodity commercialization. for instance, affected communities in tinputz that have occupied the plantations since the end of the war continuously oppose the unjust allocation of land to foreign investors (laukai, 2009). since 2011, a number of protests, for example, against the torokina palm oil plantation and related cases of corruption, have been reported (ambros, 2014). these and other examples reveal that rural resistance in post-war bougainville is fairly well organized despite decentralized and weak political structures (simili & chand, 2013). since autonomous bougainville can be referred to as neither highly coded nor territorialized, it enables overt and public forms of resistance. as such, opposing groups address their claims directly to responsible authorities by means of advocacy politics like demonstrations, sit-ins, or through legal means. the current forms of resistance indicate processes of non-violent reterritorialization that may alter the whole assemblage. however, bougainville’s history and the outbreak of civil war shows that contentious politics may easily turn into armed resistance. back then, mingling with the idea of secession, initial protest against the socio-ecological impacts of panguna copper mine (e.g., contamination-related health risks, increasing conflicts with labor migrants, and social differentiation) turned into a full armed conflict. certainly, the roots of war are much more complex but the legacy of the conflict and particularly panguna mine grievances are still present and influence contemporary politics (ipp & cooper, 2013). shortly after the war, affected communities claimed for redistributive justice concerning still pending compensation payments by legal means. in 2000, a group of affected panguna residents filed a human rights suit in the us against panguna mine operator riotinto/bcl but lost the case in 2013. panguna remains a symbol of social injustices in bougainville and the envisaged re-opening, eagerly promoted by president john momis (png mine watch, 2015), is highly contested. it has been argued that the abg provokes a new armed conflict if it continues to ignore the grievances and growing frustration of the population (kangsi & damana, 2014, p. 15). the abg consultation process (20102014) on the future of the mine adds to this and has led to growing mistrust in the government. communities have criticized that the consultation was neither fully inclusive nor transparent; many felt misrepresented going along with suspicions of local elite bribery or manipulation of the public opinion (kangsi & damana, 2014, p. 34). yet, it seems that affected communities would agree to re-open panguna mine under certain conditions: after independence; under local ownership/control; after compensation, reparation and reconciliation; and after alternative options for economic development have been explored (kangsi & damana, 2014, p. 32). as it is unlikely that bcl will agree to these terms, the re-opening remains highly disputed. 43assembling resistance against large-scale land deals early resistance, emerging war, and bougainville’s reterritorialization contemporary means of non-violent resistance against land acquisitions, such as demonstrations, sit-ins, petitions, or public media campaigns, resemble advocacy politics and mobilization efforts from the 1960s to the 1980s, prior to the outbreak of armed conflict (ejolt, 2014; may, 2004). from an assemblage point of view, years of resistance politics ‘on the margins’ successfully transformed, and in this case deand reterritorialized, the whole assemblage. analyzing the early years of opposition, it becomes clear that port moresby’s disregard and the continuing marginalization of indigenous and peasant populations largely contributed to transform advocacy politics into more confrontational violent resistance and, hence, slowly facilitated deterritorialization. during the exploration phase, confronted with claims of the panguna landowners association (pla) the png government offered compensation and an unpopular revenue sharing scheme (ipp & cooper, 2013). however, the promised payments never materialized. at the same time, the emergence of a relatively wealthy local elite encouraged the intensification of social frictions which also involved longstanding family or village disputes over access to land (kangsi & damana, 2014, p. 8). growing concern over the health-related consequences of mining which came to light after the environmental assessment was published in late 1988 eventually triggered the shift from protest to armed resistance (kangsi & damana, 2014; may, 1990). francis ona, leader of the militant pla wing and former bcl employee, adopted the post-colonial and anti-missionary critique of the bougainvillean hahali and dameng movements8 in order to mobilize and legitimize violent dissidence within the population (regan, 2002). in sharp contrast to the common assumption that bougainvilleans are “a united people, resisting colonialism, mines, and, later, papua new guinea” (regan, 2002), opinions on grievances, means of resistance, or separatism vary widely depending on the socio-economic status and the colonial experience of individuals or on community level. during the course of war, this led to separations within the resistance movement and new conflict lines between rivaling groups. francis ona realized the importance of unity and a strong internal identity (one could speak of highly territorialized and relatively coded resistance) for the movement’s success and, thus, linked the struggle against panguna mine to claims for independence: “we are not part of your country any more. . . . we belong to the republic of bougainville and we are defending our island from foreign exploitation” (francis ona, 12 april 1989, cited in may, 2004, pp. 274-275). the early territorialization of the resistance movement manifested the wish for sovereignty in bougainville which was, at that time, only expressed by few less influential groups. supported by mining operator bcl, port moresby’s (para-)military answer to the uprisings and a nine month embargo of the panguna area strengthened local solidarity and, hence, internal territorialization of the, by then, armed resistance movement. in turn, this facilitated socio-political reterritorialization dynamics in the province of bougainville, which continue to this day. access to power and the 8 the dameng have supported the armed struggle since 1989 while criticizing panguna mine in three respects: the degradation of land that is key to all social relations, the negative impact of money that was introduced as means of payment in a previously egalitarian society, and the scale of labor migration. for more information on post-colonial movements and resistance in bougainville, see griffin (2005). 44 anne hennings  aseas 9(1) distribution of resources in the emerging national state remain continuously negotiated and contested. moreover, as a consequence of the war, the mode of coding changed in favor of traditional authorities (e.g., the council of elders9 and the community auxiliary police) that filled the institutional void after png’s state authority withdrew. ever since then, traditional authorities have once again become key institutions in communal decision making and conflict resolution processes (braithwaite et al., 2010; regan, 2002). despite a patriarchal tendency resulting from colonial influence, the political representation of women has a long history in bougainville and women played a pivotal and recognized role in the peace talks (quay, 2012).10 deterritorialization dynamics: reconciliation under threat? against this backdrop, large-scale land deals seem to be an all the more sensitive issue in contemporary bougainville and the threshold to take up violent everyday means of resistance is relatively low. reasons for the potential of (violent) conflict are manifold and include a generally high readiness to stand up for one’s rights, the frustration about the lost rio tinto/bcl trial, and the overall difficult socio-economic situation in bougainville (ipp & cooper, 2013; jennings & claxton, 2013). moreover, the disarmament process lead by the un peacekeeping mission was not successful, that is, a large number of weapons still remain in circulation (ipp & cooper, 2013; spark & bailey, 2005). some villagers, ex-combatants, and gangs kept their weapons to guarantee self-protection in case of anew land or resource grabs facilitated by the (ignorant) state and powerful corporations (png mine watch, 2015). while similar narratives are also common in other post-war disarmament contexts, the experience of a successful uprising against operator bcl and port moresby reinforces the self-defense discourse in bougainville. this being said, panguna mine is still under the control of former bra rebels who claim control and access to the mine and stop any further explorations. growing friction between the abg and most bougainvilleans – mainly resulting from the government’s contemporary land and resource investment policy – adds to decreasing trust in state authorities and hence, to slow deterritorialization and decoding in the autonomous province. while the government seeks revenues, many bougainvilleans advocate for a people-centered development. they demand alternatives to intensive mining, such as subsistence horticulture, animal farming, alluvial gold panning, or fishing and prawn farming (kangsi & damana, 2014, p. 43). the allocation of land to influential investors from china, png, or australia will, hence, remain among the core challenges to bougainville’s future. threats to access to and control of land may have far reaching socio-cultural implications and could easily escalate local conflicts that are often legacies from colonial times aggravated through the war (ipp & cooper, 2013). whether the destructive impact of deterritorialization materializes will depend on the government’s response to current claims of groups 9 the council of elders facilitates a “symbiotic relationship between customary authority and state authority” (braithwaite et al., 2010). elected or based on heredity, elders could also be church, women, or youth leaders. 10 clan membership is mainly determined by matrilineal lines and in many parts of bougainville land is owned by women (kangsi & damana, 2014). 45assembling resistance against large-scale land deals resisting land deals and the consideration of the lasting panguna trauma. even more important, the government’s willingness to enter into a genuine dialogue with concerned communities will influence whether resisting groups pursue currently applied advocacy strategies or shift to everyday resistance including violent means. for the time being, the immanent independence from port moresby seems to be of higher priority and a catalyst for a united peaceful bougainville, thus slowing down deterritorialization. nonetheless, critiques concerning the continuing land allocation to investors and the re-opening of panguna mine which can severely undermine the peace and reconciliation process abound (ipp & cooper, 2013). conclusion the developed framework and the explorative approach of this article are a first attempt to conceptualize the nexus of resistance, land acquisitions, and conflict transformation by using the case of bougainville. embedded in the global land grabbing discussion, the article illustrates the fertility of assemblage thinking for analyzing socio-ecological conflicts and linking various academic fields, such as peace and conflict studies, political ecology, and agrarian studies. the assemblage approach enables new perspectives on post-war state territorialization efforts, related conflict transformation, and peacebuilding obstacles and reveals potential conflict dynamics. the analysis exemplifies how early resistance against the panguna mine emerged on the margins and eventually transformed the whole assemblage. the success of the resistance movement, the victory of bra, and bougainville’s path to independence can be understood as a perpetuation of these dynamics. this said, applying assemblage theory offers insights into the transformative power of (successful) resistance struggles and their socio-economic and political impact on various levels. exemplifying the developed framework with reference to the case of bougainville also gave insights into its possible shortcomings and strengths. albeit every theory sooner or later fails to do justice to the complexity of the world, assemblage is able to grapple with a fair share of complex and ever-changing realities. applying this perspective unveiled co-occurring and partly contrary territorialization processes with regard to bougainville’s path towards independence, ongoing conflict transformation processes, and more specifically local resistance against land and resource commodification. this multilayered focus may complicate the analysis but allows a thorough snapshot of contemporary issues and dynamics around land deals, questions of (sustainable) development, and contentious politics. it became apparent that bougainville’s continuing reterritorialization process goes back to earlier post-colonial movements and contentious politics against panguna mine. yet, concurrently large-scale land deals add to deterritorialization tendencies that have gained strength although decelerated by the struggle towards independence and the reconsideration of traditional authorities. in recent years, bougainville’s governmental authority has gained increasing legitimacy which indicates a gradual development towards a more coded assemblage. whether deterritorialization may challenge the newly independent nation depends on the government’s willingness and ability to implement its sustainable development policy. non-consensus based agro-industrial projects or mining may offend local communities and pose a threat to bougainville’s very identity which 46 anne hennings  aseas 9(1) is closely intertwined with (ancestral) land, the trauma of panguna, and the civil war. additionally, the dwindling threshold to take up violent means combined with a high weapon prevalence may cause serious harm to reconciliation and conflict transformation. finally, the findings reveal the complexity of contestation on the one 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(2013). rhizomic radicalism and arborescent advocacy: a deleuzo-guattarian reading of rural protest. environment and planning d: society and space, 31(3), 434-450. woodward, s. l. (2013). the ifis and post-conflict political economy. in m. r. berdal & d. zaum (eds.), political economy of statebuilding. power after peace (pp. 140-157). new york: routledge. zimmerer, k. s., & bassett, t. j. (2003). approaching political ecology: society, nature, and scale in humanenvironment studies. in k. s. zimmerer & t. j. bassett (eds.), political ecology. an integrative approach to geography and environment-development studies (pp. 1-28). new york: guilford press. about the author anne hennings is a phd fellow at the institute of political science, university of muenster, germany, and a visiting researcher at the heinrich boell foundation in phnom penh, cambodia. her research focuses on the politics of contested land deals and its impact on post-conflict dynamics in southeast asia and sub-saharan africa. anne is speaker and co-founder of the working group “nature, resources, conflict” of the german association for peace and conflict studies. ► contact: anne.hennings@wwu.de 51assembling resistance against large-scale land deals acknowledgements i gratefully acknowledge helpful comments and suggestions from the two anonymous reviewers and the editors. an earlier version of this article was presented at the third ldpi conference 2015 in chiang mai, whose participants provided much appreciated feedback. i would also like to thank my research assistants julia henn and naemi hüsemann. aseas 13(1) | 57 language and community-based tourism: use, needs, dependency, and limitations singhanat nomniana, alexander truppb, wilawan niyomthonga, prakaimook tangcharoensathaporna, & anan charoenkongkaa a mahidol university, thailand; b sunway university, malaysia ► nomnian, s., trupp, a., niyomthong, w., tangcharoensathaporn, p., & charoenkongka, a. (2020). language and community-based tourism: use, needs, dependency, and limitations. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 13(1), 57-79. language and tourism are essentially interconnected by the cross-border movement of tourists and the resulting encounters of people who often speak different languages. these relationships, however, have not been explored very much in the context of communitybased tourism (cbt), a kind of tourism that has the potential to enhance communities’ socioeconomic growth, language skills, and cultural heritage. this study explores local communities’ perceived english language needs and challenges for tourism purposes in thailand’s second-tier provinces of chiang rai and buriram. informed by fieldwork observations, semi-structured, and focus-group interviews, the findings reveal four key issues: i) the limitations of host-guest interaction and communication, ii) dependency on tour guides, iii) communities’ current communicative english needs, and iv) language users’ sociocultural and linguistic identities. in the cross-cultural tourism encounter, english was needed by the communities despite its limited use by cbt leaders and members. cultural identities of the communities and individual speakers were constructed by tour guides whose interpretations of cultural meanings could have been lost in translation. despite the hegemonic lingua franca status of english, multilingual competence among cbt professionals should be promoted to facilitate community communication and more independence from external translators and cultural brokers. driven by thailand’s current economic development model, information and communication technology (ict) could be used to help meet sustainable development goals (sdgs) 4 (quality education) and 8 (decent work and economic growth) by promoting lifelong learning opportunities and socioeconomic development for remote tourism destinations. keywords: community-based tourism; english as a lingua franca; language learning needs; language use; sustainable development goals  introduction language and tourism have been intricately intertwined and reciprocally underpinned due to globalization and the mobility of tourists, leading to the inadvertent flows of languages and cultures across nations (thurlow & jarworski, 2010). language barriers, as many travelers and hosts in tourism destinations experience, can pose major obstacles to host-guest interactions and aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 29 58 | aseas 13(1) language and community-based tourism cross-cultural communication (cohen & cooper, 1986; dolezal, 2015; jhaiyanuntana & nomnian, 2020). few studies (cohen & cooper, 1986; hall-lew & lew, 2014; majidi, 2013; satarat, 2010; stainton, 2018; thurlow & jaworski, 2010), however, focus on the extent to which language plays a role in the tourism industry, particularly with community-based tourism (cbt), which has been promoted in the tourism field since the 1990s. according to han, eom, al-ansi, ryu, and kim (2019), cbt could lead to sustainable tourism in a way that not only realizes socioeconomic benefits, but also increases sustainability for communities at local levels. although cbt has been defined in various ways (aslam, cooper, othman, & lew, 2016; boonratana, 2010; dangi & jamal, 2016), this study adopts the definition provided by the asean secretariat, which is commonly employed for regional use. cbt in this context is defined as a tourism activity, community owned and operated, and managed or coordinated at the community level that contributes to the well-being of communities through supporting sustainable livelihoods and protecting valued socio-cultural traditions and natural and cultural heritage resources. (asean secretariat, 2016, p.2). cbt in southeast asia is promoted for national socioeconomic development and shows potential to enhance the sociocultural values of local communities (trupp, dolezal, & bui, 2020). the principles and practices of cbt are claimed to be an alternative that advocates a more impartial and redistributive approach to tourism, which can reduce socioeconomic inequalities and uphold social justice, the allocation of resources, ownership, and community empowerment (giampiccoli & saayman, 2016). even the thai government’s new economic model called “thailand 4.0”, which aims to develop an innovative and value-based economy for the prosperity, security, and sustainability for the nation, suggests the inclusion of cbt approaches (charoensit & emphandhu, 2018). dodds, ali, and galaski (2018), however, claim that there are barriers to successful cbt, including financial viability (i.e., lack of funding and finance skills), marketing (i.e., little direct marketing to foreign visitors), product development (i.e., non market-ready products), capacity building (i.e., lack of access to markets), and land management/governance (i.e., lack of empowerment of local communities). recently, tourism researchers have increasingly been addressing the linkages between tourism development and the sdgs, either by focusing on the overall sdg framework (hall, 2019; siakwah, musavengane, & leonard, 2019), or by studying a specific sdg, such as sdg 1 (no poverty) (scheyvens & hughes, 2019), sdg 5 (gender equality) (alarcón & cole, 2019), or sdg 8 (decent work and economic growth) (robinson, martins, solnet, & baum, 2019). however, such research is yet to be applied to a southeast asian context (dolezal, trupp, & bui, 2020), and has not yet examined the linkages between tourism and language learning, which essentially form part of sdg 4 (quality education). charoensit and emphandhu (2018) suggest that cbt knowledge sharing is one of the research gaps in cbt, especially with regard to foreign tourists, who could learn about and appreciate local lifestyles and cultures. however, host-guest interactions and cross-cultural communication in thailand’s tourism encounters are often constrained by language differences. most visitors to thailand are not able aseas 13(1) | 59 s. nomnian, a.trupp, w. niyomthong, p. tangcharoensathaporn, & a. charoenkongka to communicate in thai or the other local languages, and thailand generally ranks low on existing english proficiency indices (kaur, young, & kirkpatrick, 2016). dolezal (2011), for instance, points out that language barriers between local community members in thailand and international tourists are often overcome by tour guides who may simultaneously narrow the communication gap but widen the personal distance between the locals and tourists. on the one hand, language barriers lead to a reliance on a non-local guide or interpreter, who may misrepresent the community or make mistakes in interpretation (toyota, 1993; trupp, 2014b). on the other hand, local communities may utilize regular interactions with international tourists as an opportunity to practice and improve their foreign language skills, particularly english (sakata & prideuax, 2013; trupp, 2014a, 2017). teaching and learning english as a foreign language for tourism purposes not only meets the need for more meaningful communication and shared experiences among guests and their host communities, but also contributes to the dominance of english “in every domain of communication within both local and global contexts” (stainton, 2018, p.123). in the southeast asian tourism domain, english has been chosen as the working language of the asean community since 2015, according to the asean charter (article 34) (asean secretariat, 2008). despite and because of its global status, english is often considered a threat to indigenous languages that have been under constant marginalization (majidi, 2013). the global dominance of english has been examined from different critical perspectives, including phillipson’s (2013) linguistic imperialism, “analyzing how political independence led to a linguistic liberation of third world countries, and if not, why not” (p.1). cohen and cooper (1986) note that language and tourism are reciprocally interrelated in terms of how communication between different linguistic groups and tourists is accommodated and negotiated due to an imbalance in power relations as a result of different sociolinguistic, economic, and educational backgrounds. in thailand, as well as in other non-english, native-speaking countries across the region, english has been appropriated into the tourism industry. it is the main language in situations of institutionalized tourism, such as promotion and marketing, reservations and bookings (for hotels, restaurants, transport, etc.), and conversations in tourism establishments. this study has two main objectives. first, it aims to assess english language needs of remote, second-tier village communities involved in cbt, namely baan pha-mee (chiang rai province) and baan kok muang (buriram province) in thailand. second, it aims to address and analyze the existing challenges in host-guest communication in these two cbt contexts, where english has retained its hegemonic power despite its limited use in the areas. findings thus contribute to theoretical underpinnings of english in tourism contexts and align with sdg 4 (quality education) and sdg 8 (decent work and economic growth), which aim to equip people with technical and vocational skills for employment and entrepreneurship (united nations, 2019). the article proceeds with a literature review on the topics of language and the host-guest encounter, english as a form of capital, and english learning and the thai context. after introducing the research sites and the qualitative methodologies, the findings discuss four key issues: i) the limitations of host-guest interaction and communication, ii) dependency on tour guides, iii) communities’ current communicative english needs, and iv) language users’ sociocultural and linguistic identities. 60 | aseas 13(1) language and community-based tourism literature review language and the host-guest encounter international tourism and host-guest encounters in cross-cultural and cross-language contexts have expanded significantly in recent decades. following the history of the linguistic landscape and contemporary language use that establishes the relationship between language, tourism, and place, the micro-level of individual language users’ interactions between tourists and locals requires various linguistic and non-linguistic resources to meet communicative objectives in situated tourism settings (hall-lew & lew, 2014; yumatov et al., 2017). hoffman (1992) notes that the cultural landscape has been hybridized and transformed by english used by tourism workers and on commercial and road signs. communication in cbt settings between local communities and foreign tourists requires mutual intelligibility, since both groups have possibly different expectations and needs (cohen & cooper, 1986). hall-lew and lew (2014) claim that tourists have certain expectations of the hosts’ communicative abilities, including acquiring essential tourism vocabulary providing basic information for tourists’ comfort and convenience, whereas the hosts expect the tourists to adapt themselves within the target speech community; and thus, language learning may alleviate linguistic barriers and cultural differences between residents and tourists. however, much of the host-guest interaction and communication in tourism contexts is mediated by tour guides who, in many cases, also act as cultural intermediaries and translators (cohen, 2001; trupp 2014b). they are often not able to accurately explain local culture to international tourists (theerapappisit, 2012). tour guides and translators directly construct the image of the locations and local communities they visit, and they convey this to the wider outside world (toyota, 1993). their role becomes even more significant in countries like thailand where the local alphabet used in signage is different from that which international visitors are familiar with (hall-lew & lew, 2014). the linguistic heritage context addresses the sociolinguistic backgrounds of tourism destinations, illustrating the historical relationships between people and their linguistic landscape (hall-lew & lew, 2014). in the north of thailand, thongtong (2016), for instance, claims that both english and chinese are the key foreign languages used in thai tourist markets and public spaces due to the influx of chinese tourists. in bangkok, however, sarot and kraisame (2018) suggest that businesses in the north nana district use two or more languages, including english and arabic to communicate with customers from the middle east. this is done using signs in multiple languages, which stand out from the ubiquitous thai, and help raise linguistic awareness in trade and tourism. thongtong (2016) regards tourist sites as part of the linguistic landscape that can be a practical and meaningful educational resource for language teaching and learning. at the macro-level, the linguistic heritage history of a particular tourism location can provide a platform for the contemporary sociolinguistic context that can then address the role and functions of language in the local tourism community (hall-lew & lew, 2014). aseas 13(1) | 61 s. nomnian, a.trupp, w. niyomthong, p. tangcharoensathaporn, & a. charoenkongka english as a form of capital the ability to speak foreign languages is an advantage, especially in the tourism industry where people of different linguistic backgrounds interact. a good command of english plays an important part for delivering quality services in the tourism and hospitality industry (zahedpisheh, bakar, zulqarnain, & saffari, 2017). this is also evidenced by a growing number of educational and academic resources for learning and teaching english in tourism contexts (see for example, eghdami, moinzaheh, & barati, 2018; ennis & petries, 2020). language has not only been conceptualized as a medium of communication but also as a form of capital, and thus, power (bourdieu, 1986). bourdieu (1991) evaluated the relationship between language and power, and how the former is socially evaluated. in his study on language and symbolic power, bourdieu demonstrated how the standard parisian dialect became the dominant and official language in france, which in turn provided the local bourgeoisie a “monopoly of politics, and more generally of communication with the central government and its representatives” (bourdieu, 1991, p.47). similarly, in thailand, central thai has been enforced as the national language by banning other languages and dialects from the formal education system. more recently, the ability to speak english has become a form of symbolic capital in many asian countries. gao (2012) shows how english skills in contemporary china have become a social stratifier, which is closely linked to prestige and social and occupational upward mobility. drawing upon mietzner and storch (2019), language use in the tourism industry not only reflects socioeconomic status, but also demonstrates social injustice and educational inequity in particular tourism-oriented communities. in myanmar, for example, english remains a barrier to cbt, even though english translators are available to facilitate communication between guests and hosts (lusby & eow, 2015). english learning and the thai context english has been a major challenge for thai businesspeople lacking language proficiency for international communication, especially since english is considered one of the foreign languages commonly used in education rather than work settings (inpeng & nomnian, 2020; phumpho & nomnian, 2019). however, in 2015 english became the official working language of asean. this decision reflects increasing economic and political integration in the region and also pushes thai people’s need to be equipped with english skills to remain competitive in the regional and international labor market. the national curriculum of thailand includes english as a compulsory subject for all young language learners at kindergarten and primary levels in order for them to acquire the language as early as possible (nomnian, 2013). english language teaching and learning in thailand can be quite demanding due to strong pressure from socioeconomic, cultural, and political sources in government and at school, as well as from parents and communities (nomnian & thawornpat, 2015). thai students are expected to attain english language proficiency suitable and applicable for communicative functions at national and international levels (nomnian & arphattananon, 2018a, 2018b). 62 | aseas 13(1) language and community-based tourism in english language education, tourism english is considered as one branch of ‘english for specific purposes’ (esp). strevens (1988) states that esp is designed to meet learners’ specific needs based on the skills required for the activities and functions for which the language is to serve. these days, however, english has become a lingua franca – a language used by speakers who do not share a common first language – and is used to achieve mutual intelligibility between interlocutors (nomnian, 2018a). to facilitate this, thai speakers of english often employ additional pragmatic communicative strategies, including simplifying lexical choices or sentences, repetition, and non-verbal communication (inkaew, 2018; nomnian, 2018b; suebwongsuwan & nomnian, 2020). despite the growing demand for english for tourism purposes, it has also been positioned as a threat endangering local knowledge and practices. perceptions vary depending on the extent to which language users within particular communities value, need, and have specific expectations of it (majidi, 2013). host languages, on the other hand, may be useful as heritage resources for tourism purposes (hall-lew & lew, 2014). inphoo and nomnian (2019) suggest that the integration into english language classroom activities of historical background information about sociocultural environments can help language learners appreciate their local community, practices, wisdom, heritage, and traditions, which will stimulate communication events with foreign tourists and visitors. as far as this study is concerned, although communities’ need of english and language learning materials are its main focus, it is important to note that the indigenous languages and local cultures of the two case study areas in question (chiang rai and buriram) are taken into special consideration. their specific heritage resources and local knowledge are an important part of the cbt experience. in thailand, english for cbt has referenced possibilities that have become important and dynamic areas of english for tourism. prachanant (2012), for instance, suggests that although the key main tourism english functions needed by thai tourism employees were giving information, providing services, and offering help, many employees experienced challenges understanding foreigners’ accents, certain words and expressions, vocabulary, and syntactic structure. nitikasetsoontorn (2015) suggests that cbt enterprises and members should be trained in english communication so as to engage in capacity building for language proficiency and the skills necessary to encourage sustainable development. drawing upon focusgroup interviews exploring commercial raft entrepreneurs’ english language needs, nomnian (2014a, 2014b), has developed a handbook comprising a transliteration of english/thai expressions commonly used in kanchanaburi and an english handbook of tourism english detailing tourist information, directions, and modes of transport together with communicative functions such as giving directions and describing tourist attractions in the province. this study thus derives its conceptual foundations from these main sources: (i) language and the host-guest encounter, (ii) english as a form of capital, and (iii) english learning and the thai context, which underpin an analysis of targeted research sites with regard to their cbt and language use, needs, dependency, and limitations. aseas 13(1) | 63 s. nomnian, a.trupp, w. niyomthong, p. tangcharoensathaporn, & a. charoenkongka research methodology research sites employing purposive sampling, this study was undertaken in two villages in two different regions in thailand: north and northeast, namely the villages of baan pha-mee and baan kok muang respectively. according to ruiz-ballesteros (2017), a multiple case studies approach to cbt research offers a better understanding of internal diversity and external factors shaping the particular tourism experiences, activities, and contexts being investigated and compared. these sites are second-tier tourist attractions that the tourism authority of thailand (tat) promotes as part of its “amazing thailand go local” campaign aimed at better balancing the distribution of tourist arrivals between urban and rural areas (tat news, 2018). such community-involved tourism projects are further promoted by commercial airlines like air asia, whose flight network includes such second-tier destinations (citrinot, 2017). in the following, the two distinct destinations and research sites are further described. baan pha-mee (northern thailand) baan pha-mee, meaning “bear mountain”, is situated in mae sai district, chiang rai province in northern thailand, bordering myanmar and lao pdr. the village is home to the indigenous1 akha community. speaking the akha language of the southern lolo branch of the tibeto-burman language family, the approximately 2.5 million akha people have settled throughout the southern part of xishuangbanna, yunnan province, china, northeastern myanmar, northern thailand, and lao pdr (boonyasaranai, 2017, p.38). historically, the akha language was a predominantly spoken language, since no script existed until christian missionaries developed a roman-based writing system for it (boonyasaranai, 2010). however, alting von geusau (2000) argues that oral akha histories indicate that akha groups once possessed a script that was gradually abandoned. more recently, a common akha orthography system has been developed by akha native speakers across highland southeast asia (boonyasaranai, 2010), yet akha remains a rather marginalized language within the thai context. according to sujachaya and sitisarn (2005), akha culture and traditions are well-preserved due to the rather remote locations of some of their villages and a strong engagement with akhazhang, the akha way of life (alting von geusau, 2000). some of the akha cultural features and characteristics have been commodified for ethnic tourism representing the exotic other, and meeting tourists’ demand for staged authenticity (trupp, 2014a; trupp, 2015). over the last five decades, thailand’s highland areas and populations, such as the akha, have experienced manifold socioeconomic and cultural transformation processes, including assimilation policies implemented by the thai state, loss of land and forest rights, improvements in road and communication infrastructures, market integration, religious change, tourism, and urban-directed migration (mccaskill, leepreecha, & shaoying, 2008; tooker, 1 within thailand, a “deterritorialisation of the ethnoscape” has taken place leading to a stronger identification with the concept of ‘indigenous people’ rather than previously used terms such as ‘tribal people,’ ‘hill tribes,’ and ‘ethnic minorities’ (leepreecha, 2019, p. 32). 64 | aseas 13(1) language and community-based tourism 2004; toyota, 1998; trupp, 2017). many of these sociocultural and economic changes have been driven by external institutions and initiatives such as various ministries, the royal highland development projects, international organizations, religious institutions, and non-governmental organizations (buadaeng & boonyasaranai, 2008; gillogly, 2004). thus, most of thailand’s highland groups have experience in coping with change in accordance with international and national development programs. theerapappisit (2012), however, suggests that local ethnic groups still need skills training in hospitality, communication, and management in order to earn more income and promote social equity. in baan pha-mee, fruits such as oranges and lychees, as well as the internationally acclaimed doi pha-mee coffee harvested and sold by villagers, play an important economic role. coffee tourism has increasingly become a thriving industry that attracts thai and international tourists who are interested in not only acquiring coffee-related knowledge from farming to brewing, but also learning about local ethnic cultures and traditions by virtue of english-speaking local tourist guides (smith, suthitakon, gulthawatvichai, & karnjanakit, 2019). coffee shops, homestays, akha restaurants, and a giant akha swing are frequently visited by tourists. recently, the community became famous after the world-renowned cave rescue of the 13 boys, known as “the wild boars”, took place. despite its remote location, the community receives mobile phone signals, has electricity, and provides accommodation for tourists. recent studies (e.g., pudwong & monpanthong, 2019; rattanasaengsawang, 2018) suggest that chiang rai has extended its business and tourism networks along the north south economic corridor leading to increased trade and leisure-based mobility. in 2018, chiang rai province received three million domestic and 600,000 international visitors (tat, 2020). baan kok muang (north-eastern thailand) the second village, baan kok muang, is located near muang tam sanctuary, which is the site of a historical city of the former khmer empire in prakhon chai district, buriram province. buriram is located in the northeast of thailand, bordered by cambodia to its south. the village of baan kok muang is situated near muang tam sanctuary, a 1,400-year-old khmer temple, so historical and cultural sites make it a highly recommended destination for educational tours (khan & hassan, 2016). most villagers are engaged in rice farming, and arts and crafts. reed mats and woven silk are locally hand-made products, and craftsmanship is enjoyed by tourists who wish to try making their own personal souvenirs as part of a workshop. besides the tangible heritage, intangible cultural practices and beliefs represent the community’s identity. according to moolsin and sripirom (2019), baisrisukwan – the reproduction of cultural capital and ritual ceremony – exhibits the local hospitality that warmly welcomes tourists to the community with blessings from the elderly members. e-sarn language is commonly spoken by villagers in this northeastern region of thailand, and different dialects of this region are more closely related to the lao and khmer languages than to central thai (premsrirat & hirsh, 2018). whether to regard thai, lao, and e-sarn as distinct languages or rather as dialects is debated among linguists (see for example enfield, 2002). aseas 13(1) | 65 s. nomnian, a.trupp, w. niyomthong, p. tangcharoensathaporn, & a. charoenkongka the businesses of local entrepreneurs are related to the production and/or sales of herbs, silk cloth, reed mats, and the provision of homestay accommodation. the one tambon one product (otop) center – an initiative promoting locally made products – is also famous among travelers who wish to purchase locally-produced handicrafts and souvenirs. there are a number of natural and cultural activities for tourists, including bicycle tours around the village, a visit to muang tam sanctuary and the nearby barai reservoir, merit-making by offering alms to monks, and experiencing local meals at a homestay. tourists can have a hands-on experience learning how to make handicrafts from reeds, weave on handlooms, or dye clothes with fermented mud. recently, buriram has positioned itself as the province of sport tourism along with its historical and sociocultural attractions (leruksa, chaigasem, & suephakdee, 2019; watjanasoontorn, viriyasuebphong, & voraseyanont, 2019). despite these concerted efforts, the province receives relatively little tourist attention, with just 2.1 million domestic and 73,000 international visitors annually (tat, 2020). data collection and analysis to explore these two communities’ needs for english language learning, a qualitative research approach was employed, including observations, semi-structured interviews, and focus groups comprising stakeholders such as community leaders, villagers, and local entrepreneurs. accompanied by a local gatekeeper, who was an entrepreneur or cbt project member at each site, we (the third, fourth, and fifth authors of this paper) introduced ourselves to the head of the village and relevant stakeholders, and shared with them the objectives of our study. they welcomed the project, which they considered important for stimulating the community’s use of english in a tourism context. at least five visits were made in each village, for a few days each time. the participants’ names were anonymized, and the research ethics of this study were approved by the institute of population and social research, mahidol university. participatory observations were conducted by engaging in community activities such as cooking, cycling, and making handicrafts, which enabled us to understand and familiarize ourselves better with community members and the tourism-related activities. we observed locals doing their daily chores at the homestay and in their neighborhood, and visited local markets, otop centers, coffee shops, and restaurants. through field notes, we documented villagers’ routines and communications with tourists. wijingaarden (2017) claims that qualitative researchers in tourism studies normally conduct fieldwork among hosts, guests, and the illiterate so as to gain insights into the perspectives, attitudes, and ways of life of those living in the vicinity of tourist sites. in total, 29 people from two communities participated in the semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions. at baan pha-mee, chiang rai province, 15 villagers participated in total, six of whom were micro-entrepreneurs working as baristas and homestay owners, and the remaining nine were villagers with different roles in the cbt project. at baan kok muang, buriram province, 14 participants formed part of the study, including the district leader, community leader, otop keepers, entrepreneurs, and villagers. semi-structured interviews were conducted 66 | aseas 13(1) language and community-based tourism with entrepreneurs and community leaders who were instrumental in cbt activities. focus-group discussions were undertaken with villagers as this method facilitated an open forum for exchange, argument, clarification, and the questioning of viewpoints and their underlying reasons or explanations in a safe and familiar environment. the interview questions covered the following broad topics: socioeconomic background of interviewees, tourism and cbt-related product and activities, issues and challenges in tourism, communication with international tourists, language use with international tourists, perceived needs of english skills, role of cbt in enhancing english language skills, and existing and required english language-learning support and materials. the semi-structured, and focus group interviews were conducted in thai language at the participants’ homes or at local community centers, which lasted approximately 30 to 45 minutes, and were recorded using a digital voice recorder. next, the interviews were transcribed verbatim and translated into english, and then cross-validated by another researcher for accuracy. the confirmed transcripts were analyzed using thematic analysis, and based on the conceptual framework, key themes in this study were identified. according to walters (2016), thematic analysis is an appropriate tool for analyzing identified themes that can reveal interpreted cultural meanings, which become primary issues for the findings and discussion in tourism research. results and discussion limitations of host-guest interaction and communication the two communities have different linguistic contexts. the first one is akha, deriving from the tibeto-burmese language family (boonyasaranai, 2010), at the akha village of baan pha-mee. the second is e-sarn (also referred to as north-eastern thai), as spoken by villagers at baan kok muang, being part of the tai-kadai language group (premsrirat & hirsh, 2018). indigenous languages in thailand are generally marginalized due to the thai state’s long-established assimilation policies (winichakul, 1994) resulting in their limited use in broader contexts (majidi, 2013). for most villagers in pha-mee, akha is their first language (spoken at home, with family and friends) and thai is their second language, spoken in schools, for public affairs, and outside the village. from the fieldwork observation and interviews, the majority of villagers of both communities were in their 50s or older, with a basic, primary education. this demographic structure is characteristic of the aging population and a result of the urban-directed migration of the younger generation in contemporary thai society (rigg, 2019). communicative english courses were introduced in primary education as part of the national curriculum 2008, and thus not mandatory for the older generation when they were at school. as a result, their english proficiency was relatively limited (hayes, 2010; kaur et al., 2016; nomnian, 2013). although community schools should have taught english as a subject, this was not the case in baan pha-mee due to the lack of competent teachers. some villagers then decided to send their children to learn english in provincial schools and universities in order for them to become proficient in english, and these village children later became cbt coordinators who aseas 13(1) | 67 s. nomnian, a.trupp, w. niyomthong, p. tangcharoensathaporn, & a. charoenkongka could use thai, akha, and english. community leaders and coffee shop owners educated in provincial schools were able to use basic english. based on the observation data from both communities, foreign tourists could find communication with the local community members challenging, so tour guides or interpreters were needed to facilitate communication between foreign tourists and local hosts. at both communities, tour groups and solo travelers normally came for a day visit or overnight stay to taste the local cuisine and experience the cultural attractions and activities. however, individual foreign visitors appeared more eager to explore local culture and traditions like silk fabric production than tourists visiting as part of a tour group. tourists tended to use short english expressions for day-today functional purposes, such as checking in and out of accommodations, asking for directions, and ordering food. villagers would reply in single words or short phrases, as well as gestures and non-verbal cues such as smiling and head nodding. some villagers responsible for local tourism in both communities also learned english through a language training program offered by flight attendant volunteers, but this was not regular as it depended on availability. foreign tourists visited either as independent travelers or part of a tour group. the former often experienced communication difficulties, whereas those in groups were usually accompanied by thai-english speaking tour guides who facilitated exchanges by serving as interpreters between visitors and locals. this is illustrated in the interview extract below: tourists often ask me how silk worms are born, become pupas, and then create silk. i can’t explain it to them so i show pictures. if there is a tour guide, the community doesn’t have difficulties. i would like to have materials on silk making. (villager, focus group interview, baan kok muang) as indicated in the quote above, the interviewed villager tried to provide information on silk making, but he was not able to do so; thus, pictures of the silk making process were helpful. he also preferred tour guides to be available to ease communication. similarly, another community leader wanted to learn basic english to be able to communicate with foreign tourists, explaining: i need basic communicative english because our community normally has annual festivals. i have opportunities to meet a lot of tourists, but i can’t take care of them. i can just greet them with a few simple expressions. i don’t have the functional language for selling community products. (villager of community learning center for dyed clothes, focus group interview, baan kok muang) as the community leader was in his 50s, his need for basic communicative english suggests that he learned little english at school. this is unsurprising since the national curriculum of the past did not oblige pupils to start learning at kindergarten, and time spent on learning languages was far less than required. likewise, entrepreneurs at baan pha-mee encountered similar challenges in terms of inadequate english skills: “my english foundation is not good, so i have to pay attention and listen carefully to tourists in order to understand their needs accordingly” (entrepreneur, 68 | aseas 13(1) language and community-based tourism semi-structured interview, baan pha-mee). similarly, a restaurant owner stated: “i would just like to learn to say simple words, not whole sentences, such as toilet, left, right” (restaurant owner, semi-structured interview, baan pha-mee). many of the interviewed villagers involved in tourism lack even basic english skills. at the same time, it is evident that linguistic assets in these two communities were not fully recognized and valued, because akha and e-sarn languages are not utilized in tourism contexts. while e-sarn language is linked to central thai and understood at least partly by many thai domestic tourists, akha derives from a different language family and is thus not understood at all by the vast majority of thai visitors. these heritage languages could not be utilized to generate income for the communities, while english could. english can thus be regarded as a language that dominates other minority ones (majidi, 2013). findings show that most research participants are under-trained and ill-equipped with the english language skills they needed. these communication challenges may reflect the communities’ deep-rooted attitudes toward heritage languages and poor english language education, a point that concurs with mietzner and storch’s (2019) observation of social injustice and educational inequity in certain tourism contexts. boonyasaranai (2017) suggests that minority and indigenous languages can be preserved and maintained with the involvement of local educational institutes that recognize and can address these linguistic issues effectively and sustainably via research and development projects. dependency on tour guides tour guides play a crucial role in the two cbt villages under study since they are the main communicators, translators, and facilitators for host-guest interactions that require verbal and cross-cultural communication between members of the local communities and tourists. educated in english, equipped with regional knowledge about thailand and tourism studies, the tour guides accompanying international tourists to the two villages are usually not locals in the sense that they were not from either village and worked for travel agencies based in bangkok or the provincial capital cities. the main communication between local community members and foreign tourists is facilitated by external guides (i.e., from outside the villages) who do not speak the local languages. however, due to their frequent visits, the guides could speak and understand some frequently-used local language terms, even though their communication mainly switched between english and thai. the main topics translated by the tour guides relate to the villagers’ ways of life, occupations, handicrafts, and souvenirs. while most guides leading the tours in northeastern thailand can communicate in e-sarn language, guides for northern thailand hardly understand akha language. tour guides would inform the cbt leaders of their itinerary a few days before their visits, including details on the tourists’ nationalities, the number of tourists, types of accommodations (normally homestays), local transports, special diet requirements, activities, and places to visit, to ensure everything was precisely arranged and services were of a professional quality. cbt members had to inform villagers to prepare to meet the expectations of the tour companies whose promotions guaranteed customer satisfaction. aseas 13(1) | 69 s. nomnian, a.trupp, w. niyomthong, p. tangcharoensathaporn, & a. charoenkongka at baan pha-mee, for instance, the coffee shop owner, who was akha, was not only an entrepreneur, but also a community leader and cbt coordinator who often mediated contacts between tour guides and the locals by code-switching between thai and the english he had learned at a local university. he thus took on the role of a language broker, as explained below: i can speak three languages: akha, thai, and english. i learned to speak thai and took an english program at a local university. after graduation, i came back to the community to open a coffee shop that was considered as a cbt center to help tourists with key information such as homestays and tourist attractions. (coffee shop owner, semi-structured interview, baan pha-mee) a lot of foreign tourists always ask me about my coffee. i often tell them how the coffee is made here in our village and every coffee shop is also different in terms of the taste and environment. my shop is like a one-stop service for foreign tourists as i can give them basic tourist information in english. (coffee shop owner, semi-structured interview, baan pha-mee) equipped with three languages, the multilingual coffee owner could switch between akha, the villagers’ first language, and thai for the benefit of the tour guides, who would later relay the information to the tourists in english. being able to communicate in english put him in a privileged and rather unique position within the village, since most other community members lacked these language skills and so had little opportunity to communicate their ideas and sell their products directly to international visitors. communities’ current communicative english needs the communities’ current communicative english needs include speaking and listening skills that are necessary and relevant to tourism communication between the thai hosts and international visitors since, as a lingua franca, english is essential for exchanges of information in various situations such as at the coffee shop, homestays, restaurants, and community learning centers. english is a form of linguistic capital for local cbt enterprises that can present products that reflect the community’s identity (hall-lew & lew, 2014). in such contexts, villagers also wish to share local knowledge as expressed in the quote below. i would like to present and demonstrate the community identity of local herbs in the form of welcome drinks such as butterfly pea drink with lime. i want to explain to tourists how it’s made and its medicinal benefits. (villager of community learning center for herbal products, focus group interview, baan kok muang) at baan pha-mee community, the main enterprises were the coffee shop, homestays, and restaurants. all these businesses include services that were necessary for tourists. therefore, functional english focused on giving and asking for directions 70 | aseas 13(1) language and community-based tourism to tourist attractions, introducing local food, recommending accommodation, and local shops, as well as sharing community history. i need to develop my speaking skills the most because i have to provide information to tourists regarding tourist attractions, activities, restaurants, accommodations, directions, and community history. (coffee shop owner, semi-structured interview, baan pha-mee) community members in baan pha-mee and baan kok muang needed english speaking and listening skills, starting with practical vocabulary and simple expressions. moreover, those who speak some english often find it difficult to understand the different english accents of visitors, as experienced by one of the business owners: “listening is as important as speaking. tourists have different accents in english. if i can’t recognize these varieties, miscommunication may happen” (homestay owner, semi-structured interview, baan pha-mee). these communities’ need for english supports inkaew’s (2018) study that highlights how thai tourism personnel not only lacked confidence, but also had limited access to terminology, lexical choices, and grammar, and were also unfamiliar with different english accents – all of which impede successful communication. to make communication with foreigners easier, most entrepreneurs and villagers at baan pha-mee and baan kok muang preferred to use a bilingual english-thai photo book, brochure, or vinyl poster that could provide and illustrate essential community information via pictures, such as of tourist attractions, ways of life, food, and accommodations. some of them expressed their preferences as follows: “i would like to learn vocabulary or short conversations in thai and english” (restaurant owner, semi-structured interview, baan pha-mee); also a villager from baan kok muang stated: “i would like to have a thai-english photo book with a listening cd for illiterate people” (villager of community learning center for reed mats, focus group interview, baan kok muang). interestingly, villagers stated a preference for printed materials and cds for learning english as a foreign language. smart phones, mobile applications, and internet access is generally widespread in thailand, but most interviewees preferred traditional learning materials to modern devices, due to the unstable and slow internet speeds available to them. language users’ sociocultural and linguistic identities at the micro-level, with regard to the individual language use in cbt, most participants in the communities were eager and hospitable to help and welcome foreign tourists despite the fact that they found english communication challenging. community members’ identity construction as good hosts involves effective intercultural communication using both verbal and non-verbal cues. i want to use english to welcome tourists. sign language is not enough to communicate with them. in certain situations, i would like to exchange cultural information with them as well. i want the tourists to feel at home staying in our community. (villager, focus group interview, baan kok muang) aseas 13(1) | 71 s. nomnian, a.trupp, w. niyomthong, p. tangcharoensathaporn, & a. charoenkongka the community leader and interviewed villagers in ban kok muang stated that they would like to create a “home away from home” atmosphere for foreign tourists. coffee shop and restaurant owners at baan pha-mee wanted to be able to explain how their raw materials were harvested and prepared for their foreign customers. i would like to learn vocabulary about the coffee shop such as types of coffee and explain briefly about coffee harvesting and coffee making because tourists normally ask me about these. (coffee shop owner, semi-structured interview, baan pha-mee) the photo book should have vocabulary concerning food such as what it’s made from and ingredients, especially local cuisine. nowadays, i can’t explain to tourists about our local food, so they usually only order regular thai dishes. (restaurant owner, semi-structured interview, baan pha-mee) baan kok muang community learning centers sell local silk clothes and herbal products, but community leaders would go further and share their ways of life with tourists for value-added appreciation. villagers might find the process of silk making and medicinal benefits of herbal products difficult to explain: our herbal products are made from different ingredients. i want to learn simple vocabulary related to all the herbs and their health benefits. although tourists are interested in our products, they don’t buy them because they don’t know how to use them. (villager of community learning center for herbal products, focus group interview, baan kok muang) the interview extracts above demonstrate that the participants in these two communities not only saw themselves as community members, but also community ambassadors who wished to share local products, cultural assets, and traditional knowledge with the tourists. generally, local villagers are keen to see foreign tourists visiting their centers or businesses, so that they could give first-hand, authentic and non-distorted information, knowing it would be appreciated. however, most of them were not well-equipped with english. traditional wisdom and culture, according to inphoo and nomnian (2019), are added value to local cbt products. local community members’ concerns over their ineffective communicative english rested mostly on their insufficient vocabulary, inadequate grammar knowledge, and inability to understand different accents in english, which led them to a lack of confidence in english communication (inkaew, 2018). tour guides as mediums for conveying community information may help overcome this issue (dolezal, 2011), but at the risk of diminishing local sociolinguistic and identities and sense of community ownership. the abilities to communicate and negotiate in english represent – and can be transformed into – different forms of capital (bourdieu, 1986), since these bring about economic advantages for running small businesses and simultaneously allow villagers to gain greater control over their cultural representation. personal identities as community members were not recognized, as villagers were unable to effectively express themselves in english; thus, many of them voiced the need for thai-english bilingual 72 | aseas 13(1) language and community-based tourism photo books with short english phrases and tourism terminology to promote better mutual intelligibility. multilingual competence among tourism professionals, however, should be promoted for cbt, as it facilitates communication events among community members and outsiders. practical implications and conclusion practical implications drawing upon the results that highlight linguistic gaps between local languages and global communication, communities’ current communicative english needs, and language users’ identities, this study has implications for sdgs 4 (quality education) and 8 (decent work and economic growth). local cbt enterprises and community members in second-tier tourism destinations should be upskilled, or taught with new skills, for english and other key business functions to better reflect the concept of life-long learning (kontogeorgopoulos, churyen, & duangsaeng, 2014; nitikasetsoontorn, 2015; prachanant, 2012). similar to the issue of language learning materials addressed by nomnian (2014a, 2014b), english can be used to display the communities’ sociocultural identities through bilingual thai-english photo books, brochures, or vinyl posters that present the community in pictures with brief supporting information that foreign tourists can easily understand. the integration of information and communication technology (ict) can be implemented in order to strengthen the economies of local communities and promote equitable high-quality education for them. charoensit and emphandhu (2018) suggest that cbt knowledge regarding local lifestyles and cultures should be shared with foreign tourists by means of social media technology. thailand 4.0 will potentially enable the tourism authority of thailand to employ more reliable ict and digital infrastructure to promote sustainable tourism growth and competitiveness in thai tourism (jones & pimdee, 2017). strategies should be devised to entice and direct foreign tourists towards visiting lesser-known tourism destinations that involve local communities in thailand. this will require a comprehensive and robust tourism information database that is easily accessible to tourists, before and during the trip, and a higher profile for local tourism enterprises in retail, restaurants, entertainment, and tours, which currently have a low online presence that is also only available in thai (roland berger, 2017). according to adipat, phongwitthayanukit, siributr, phetnil, and sudkangwan (2019), the “village broadband internet project” (net pracharat) is a recent flagship digital infrastructure development project of thailand that is expanding high-speed internet network to all villages in the country. local people living in remote areas will soon be able to access useful information and services, thereby boosting employment, income, and business opportunities in local communities (adipat et al., 2019). to develop the sustainability of cbt, it is, therefore, important for the communities to be equipped with digital infrastructure including ict hardware and software and the necessary training for ict and social media application. if this is successfully implemented, developed, and maintained, the communicative gap between the locals and foreign tourists can be narrowed. aseas 13(1) | 73 s. nomnian, a.trupp, w. niyomthong, p. tangcharoensathaporn, & a. charoenkongka conclusion this study explored the challenges that confront two remote communities in thailand’s second-tier destinations, specifically in relation to their english needs for cbt. the findings show that the communities’ linguistic heritage was neglected by all stakeholders in the cbt context. although the participants from baan pha-mee in chiang rai and baan kok muang in buriram were native speakers of their indigenous languages (i.e., akha, and e-sarn, respectively), they did not utilize them with foreign tourists at all. instead, english served as a communication medium and as a lingua franca in cbt. since most of the village community members do not speak english or the language of international visitors, external stakeholders such as urban-based tour guides and cultural brokers were the ones who acted as liaisons and translators on behalf of the communities. tourists perceived the community members’ linguistic and sociocultural identities through the eyes of the tour guides, who could have misinterpreted aspects and delivered inaccurate interpretations. individual tourists at both villages showed greater interest in engaging with local community members, but this was limited as they usually visited the village without the services of a guide to facilitate communication and translation. while it is possible to create meaning and establish a relationship in a tourism encounter without a common linguistic foundation (dolezal, 2015), the lack of ‘direct’ self-expression and representation perpetuates unequal power relations in thai tourism. the findings show that english is not only a means of international communication, but it also represents a source of power through which competent language users such as tour guides, interpreters, and translators have become important representatives and actors who are valued by other cbt participants, whose lack of english capital denies them such influence. communicating in english thus enhances economic, social, and symbolic capital. as bourdieu’s (1991) concepts set out, language users employ various accumulated sociolinguistic resources to serve and meet their needs within particular, situated contexts underpinned by their intricate socioeconomic, political, and cultural status. although cbt communities need to value their own local languages, they must also negotiate their sociolinguistic identities with english to suit the demands of both society and the market in so far as they pertain to the tourism industry. considering the current covid-19 global health crisis, the future of tourism might even lead to an increased cbt demand from domestic tourists, which would potentially demand the use of more local languages again. to meet sdgs 4 and 8, the development of communicative english skills and ict initiatives offer positive 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(2017). problem-based learning methods for training staff for tourism and hospitality clusters. eurasian journal of analytical chemistry, 12(5), 803-812. zahedpisheh, n., bakar, a., zulqarnain, b., & saffari, n. (2017). english for tourism and hospitality purposes (etp). english language teaching, 10(9), 86-94. about the authors singhanat nomnian is an associate professor and the deputy director for organizational communication and academic services at research institute for languages and cultures of asia, mahidol university, thailand, and editor of journal of language and culture and thaitesol journal. his research interests include english language education, intercultural communication, and applied linguistics. he is the author of synergizing transcultural learning of global englishes: voices of chinese exchange students in a thai university (2018, elt education). he is the principal investigator of this research project and the corresponding author of this paper. ► contact: snomnian@hotmail.com alexander trupp is an associate professor at the school of hospitality, sunway university, malaysia, and editor of the austrian journal of south-east asian studies (aseas). he previously worked for the university of the south pacific, mahidol university, and university of vienna. his research interests include tourism microbusinesses, mobilities, asian tourism, and sustainable tourism, with a regional focus on the asia-pacific. alexander is the author of migration, micro-business and tourism in thailand (2016, routledge) and co-editor of tourism and development in south-east asia (2020, routledge). ► contact: atrupp@sunway.edu.my; alexander.trupp@univie.ac.at wilawan niyomthong is a research assistant and postgraduate student in an ma (language and intercultural communication, language teaching major) program at the research institute for languages and cultures of asia, mahidol university, thailand. ► contact: wihearty@gmail.com prakaimook tangcharoensathaporn is a research assistant and postgraduate student in an ma (language and intercultural communication, language teaching major) program at the research institute for languages and cultures of asia, mahidol university, thailand. ► contact: k.kaimook@live.com anan charoenkongka is a research assistant and postgraduate student in an ma (language and intercultural communication, language teaching major) program at the research institute for languages and cultures of asia, mahidol university, thailand. ► contact: lekok_11@hotmail.com aseas 13(1) | 79 s. nomnian, a.trupp, w. niyomthong, p. tangcharoensathaporn, & a. charoenkongka acknowledgements this project was partially supported by airasia (thailand) and globish academia (thailand). researchers would like to thank community leaders and villagers of baan pha-mee and baan kok muang for their participation during the data collection of this research project. 80 | aseas 13(1) new social media and politics in thailand: the emergence of fascist vigilante groups on facebook new social media and politics in thailand: the emergence of fascist vigilante groups on facebook wolfram schaffar ► schaffar, w. (2016). new social media and politics in thailand: the emergence of fascist vigilante groups on facebook. aseas – austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 9(2), 215-234. since 2010, facebook has become a battleground between competing political camps in thailand. facebook groups like the social sanction group, tellingly abbreviated as ss, and the rubbish collector organization, which was founded in 2014 and has attracted more than 200,000 members, have played a crucial role in the process of political radicalization. the aim of these groups is to expose political opponents by accusing them of lèse-majesté, which can result in a prison sentence of 15 years or more. the groups also serve as fora for hate speech and are increasingly used as a tool of mobilization for state-sponsored mass events by the authoritarian regime that came to power with the coup d’état of may 2014. contrary to its popular perception as a tool for democratization, facebook has been successfully used by political groups reminiscent of fascist vigilante groups. this paper analyses the genesis of these groups and discusses the phenomenon in a broader political and historical context. keywords: facebook; fascism; rubbish collector organization; thailand; vigilante groups  introduction in may 2015, a red shirt activist who identifies herself on facebook as tananun buranasiri was targeted by a facebook mob. during the campaign against her she was accused of having posted comments that were disrespectful of the monarchy and was threatened with accusations of lèse-majesté under article 112 of the thai criminal code – a charge that can result in a prison sentence of 15 years. the facebook mob even disclosed personal information about tananun and her family, including the name of the shopping mall where she worked. when people started appearing in front of the particular shop, she was fired by her employer (“red shirt sacked”, 2015). the campaign against tananun buranasiri was organized by a facebook group called the rubbish collector organization (rco), which had more than 200,000 members in summer 2015. judging by the daily number of likes and comments, the group was highly active between april 2014, when it was launched, and late 2015, when its founder, rienthong nanna, officially withdrew from it. the stated aim of the rco was to “clean” thailand of “social rubbish” – people, according to their definition, who were not loyal to the monarchy or who opposed the military coup d’état of may 2014 (“doctor sick of all”, 2014). aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 16 .2 -3 216 wolfram schaffar  aseas 9(2) the rco has published lists of people who were subsequently targeted by both online as well as offline mob campaigns, such as the one against tananun buranasiri. the post about buranasiri’s dismissal alone drew more than 4,480 likes by august 2015, and followers of the group posted numerous comments insulting her and exchanging fantasies about how to “get rid” of her. the most serious incident that has been connected with such a campaign is the shooting of kamol duangphasuk, a well known writer and poet who took the side of the red shirts in his work. although it has never been solved, kamol’s assassination coincided suspiciously with the founding of the rco, which had launched one of its first campaigns against him and whose members applauded his assassination (human rights watch, 2014). apart from bullying individuals, rco’s facebook group also served as a forum in which members publicly displayed their loyalty to the monarchy by means of, for example, photos of public performances of the royal anthem or joining public events in honor of the king or queen. iconic examples include the campaigns “bike for mom” and “bike for dad”, through which the heir to the throne, who meanwhile has become king himself, called on thai citizens to join a biking tour around the city to express their loyalty and gratitude on the occasions of the queen’s and the king’s birthdays. mobilizing for and documenting mass events like this was the second major function of the rco facebook group. the peculiar mixture of violence against political opponents and mass mobilization is reminiscent of political processes and strategies typical of the ascent of fascism in the 1920s and 1930s in europe. in those times, ultra-nationalist vigilante groups mobilized to intimidate left-wing political opponents and create political chaos, with the ultimate aim of abolishing parliamentarian regimes. mass events then mobilized popular support for authoritarian regimes to be set up. it was hardly by accident that the predecessor of the rco on facebook was a group called social sanction, abbreviated as ss. figure 1. screenshot, taken from the timeline of rco facebook group, may 2015, showing the campaign against tananun buranasiri. in english: if no complaint has yet been filed against tananun buransiri, i and my team will do so beginning of next week. i beg you to be patient. be sensible. general rienthong nanna, 10 may 2015. (figure by the author). 217new social media and politics in thailand the establishment and success of the rco is a disturbing example of how social media is being used in contemporary thailand in times of deepening political conflict. contrary to its popular perception as a tool for democratization, facebook has been successfully used by political groups in a way reminiscent of fascist vigilante groups. the aim of this paper is to present an analysis of the genesis of social-media based vigilante groups as a first case study. the problem, however, seems to have a wider significance which goes beyond the scope of this paper, but will be touched upon in the final remarks. facebook facebook was founded in 2004 as a social networking platform at harvard university, based on the university’s printed yearbooks or “facebooks” (marichal, 2012, p. 3). after expanding to other us universities and colleges in 2005, it was opened to the broader public in 2006 and experienced explosive growth in the following years. by july 2010, facebook had amassed 500 million users (marichal, 2012, p. 4) and surpassed one billion in the third quarter of 2012. facebook has kept growing, due especially to its expansion into new geographic areas and sectors of society. between 2013 and 2016, the biggest growth rates in terms of monthly active users (maus) was achieved not in the us and canada or europe, but in the asia-pacific region and in what facebook statistics refer to as the “rest of the world” (constine, 2016). by april 2016, facebook counted over 1.65 billion maus, which means that the network enjoyed a steady growth rate of 15% per year (zephoria, 2016). in 2015, social media had become the most important driver of all website referral traffic (demers, 2015), accounting for more than 31%. facebook had a share of 25% and has left behind all major competitors (demers, 2015), including blogs, google+, and also networks relying on mobile internet, such as whatsapp or instagram. facebook, as the biggest social network site, has at the time of writing, effectively become a synonym for the internet as such. the enormous growth of facebook has attracted many researchers and there has been steep growth in social science research into the phenomenon (wilson, gosling, & graham, 2012). despite the high output of scientific papers, however, it is safe to say that facebook is still an underresearched phenomenon. this is due to the fact that the company does not disclose its data, unlike twitter, for example, that gives all tweets to the library of congress and has thus attracted a huge number of researchers. due to its personal character as well as the company’s business interests, facebook data are not public and are difficult to extract. other factors complicate empirical research further. facebook is continuously developing its technical applications, which often leads to fundamental changes. the site also keeps changing its privacy policy, which makes it difficult even for the user to keep track of which content is visible to whom. hence why empirical social science research has to rely on conventional methods of data collection. the study presented here relies on an analysis of screenshots of postings found in the rco facebook group in summer 2015. in order to access the postings, the author and a research assistant registered as members of the group. in addition to this, single informal interviews were conducted via the chat application of facebook with selected group members. however, the motivation for and an important background to this 218 wolfram schaffar  aseas 9(2) study are interviews and informal talks with thai friends and colleagues who were threatened or targeted by violent attacks connected with facebook. the social and political impact of facebook that the internet has triggered tremendous changes in social interaction worldwide is a commonplace observation. when the uprising in the arab world in 2011 was dubbed a ‘facebook revolution’, the moniker expressed that even pivotal political developments may be traced back to the impact of specific communication technologies. this utopist-decisionist view of the internet can most adequately be described as a technical modernization theory: due to a technical innovation, entire societies undergo fundamental change in spheres including social relations, forms of production, and political regimes. the expectation is that the internet creates a new public sphere (castells, 2008) where, due to the technical specification of the new communication channels, citizens can meet on more equal terms, civil society can organize better, and deliberation can be more inclusive and more effective. many expectations regarding the spread of the internet have not come to pass. singapore is an example where the government has supported 100% broadband internet access in the city but has at the same time kept the authoritarian regime in power. george (2007) and lee (2010), drawing on the foucauldian concept of governmentality, have analyzed how the government of singapore used the technical specifications of blogs, tailored legislation, and calibrated coercion to trigger self-censorship and even broaden the surveillance of their population. with its successful policy of containment, singapore has served as a laboratory for the design of authoritarian governance techniques that have subsequently been adopted and adapted by other governments, most prominently in china and thailand. moreover, it has been shown that existing inequalities concerning gender, race, and class are often reproduced and even enhanced on the internet. the same holds true for global inequalities (chang, himelboim, & dong, 2009; graham, de sabbata, & zook, 2015). some scholars hoped that the spread of social media and social networking services would finally fulfill the promise of the internet, which had not been realized by classic internet applications. in contrast to the old model of setting-up and maintaining static homepages, facebook allows for a truly reciprocal exchange of data and opinions. the classic gap between sender and receiver is absent, and sharing has become the keyword for data exchange and facebook (van dijk, 2013). moreover, early versions of facebook which allowed users to change names and maintain several profiles made it possible to practice anonymity and fluid identities. on this basis, scholars saw in it the advent of a true network society (castells, 2008; shirky, 2009). many analyses of facebook have, however, pointed in another direction. in contrast to the utopist-decisionist view, and as a reaction to the disillusionment with empirical evidence, some analyses have posed their focus less on technical solutions and more on the ‘technology in use’. these constructivist approaches stress that technical applications are embedded in and shaped by social and political processes. the amount of information available on the internet, for example, seems to exceed the capacity of internet users to process it – to discern its quality, reflect on it, or use it for 219new social media and politics in thailand meaningful deliberation (marichal, 2012, p. 19). rather than using the abundance of shared high-quality information, users are distracted by twitter posts and facebook status updates. as early as 2010, a pew report found that young people’s use of the internet showed a tendency to move away from content-sharing sites like youtube and blogs and toward sites focused on social networking (lenhart, purcell, smith, & zickuhr, 2010). in addition to this cloud of banality, the internet and social media in general display a tendency toward fragmentation. instead of making use of the possibility of exchanging views with people from all strands of life, users are linking up with those they already know or with whom they agree politically. quantitative research into political blogs has shown that the exchange of opinions among bloggers largely remains within homogeneous groups. references to blogs expressing rival opinions are far less common than references to blogs that express the same opinion. the blogosphere thus mirrors the political divides within society. moreover, in referring to pieces that express the same opinions, these groupings function as echo chambers, radicalizing the positions and arguably exacerbating political polarization (adamic & glance, 2005; lawrence, sides, & farell, 2010; sunstein, 2004, 2009). this tendency, also known as selectivity bias, is also evident in facebook networks (boyd, 2010). as for the situation in thailand, the tendency of facebook groups to act as echo chambers, whereby people exchange and discuss their views with those of a similar opinion, is clearly borne out (grömping, 2014). another critical question is how far facebook supports or furthers political engagement. indeed, analyses have shown that facebook users are more politically active than average (hampton, goulet, rainie, & purcell, 2010; kahne, middaugh, & allen, 2014). a closer look into what kind of political activity is supported by facebook reveals that, like other internet-based platforms, it leads not to engagement in the sense of a physical presence, but to what morozov (2011) and gladwell (2010) respectively termed slacktivism. online activism – so it seems – substitutes low-cost, low-benefit political behavior for meaningful political engagement (gladwell, 2010; marichal, 2012; morozov, 2011). another dilemma facing social science research into the political effects of facebook appears with respect to right-wing or fascist groups. with the rise of right-wing and fascist groups in many different countries, research has been conducted into how these groups use the internet (caiani & kröll, 2015; caiani & parenti, 2013; froio & gattinara, 2015; tateo, 2005). it has been shown that right-wing groups are making good use of the opportunities offered by internet-based communication – circumventing national legislation banning fascist activities and using the internet for ingroup organization as well as outreach. whereas the possibilities of the internet are perceived as positive opportunities when used by democratic social movements in authoritarian contexts (etling, faris, & palfrey, 2010; laer & aelst, 2010), the same features appear dangerous when it comes to fascist mobilization. political confrontation in thailand the current political divide between the red and yellow camps in thailand started as an intra-elite conflict when thaksin shinawatra became prime minister in 2001 220 wolfram schaffar  aseas 9(2) (kasian, 2016; montesano, pavin, & aekapol, 2012; pasuk & baker, 2008, 2009; pavin, 2014). the two factions that confront each other can be characterized as follows: on the one side are the red shirts – a coalition of party followers and business partners of thaksin. the grassroots followers are mainly lower middle-class people and politicized farmers from the north and northeast who have profited from thaksin’s infrastructure and social security programs (walker, 2012). a growing group of supporters are also drawn from social movements for democracy, consisting of newly politicized citizens opposed to the involvement of the military in politics and the unconstitutional maneuvers through which the yellow shirts and their parliamentary arm, the democrat party, monopolize power (mccargo & naruemon, 2011; montesano et al., 2012). on the other side are the old bangkok elites – also a broad coalition of social forces that have been dubbed yellow shirts: royalist conservative circles and business people connected to the crown property bureau, with exclusive access to the judiciary and military and supported by bangkok’s upper middle class (pye & schaffar, 2008). the most important ideological focus for this group is a growing nationalism that puts the nation, the monarchy, and religion at its center and demands unwavering loyalty. the appeal to these principles, moreover, to a higher morality based on these principles, legitimizes their claim to political leadership. the numeric majority of the red shirts, however, is explained by populism, vote-buying, and corruption (kasian, 2016; thongchai, 2008, 2016). the general trend, which has become more pronounced over the course of the years, was that the red shirts managed to win a vast majority in every free election with great ease. the yellow shirts, claiming that the electoral majority had been won through vote-buying or populism, challenged the government and managed to oust it by means of their privileged access to the judiciary and military (pavin, 2014). this led to a stalemate between the two antagonistic camps – a constellation of power which was also typical of the situation in europe in the 1920s and 1930s, at the advent of fascist regimes. fascism in thailand it is difficult to use the term fascism as an analytic concept. the notion is strongly associated with a specific period in european history between the 1920s and 1940s, when ultra-nationalistic parties in italy took over the government and transformed the entire society (bosworth, 2009). the term fascism is derived from a term for italian vigilante groups – fasci italiani di combattimento (fic) – that were supported by capitalists in northern italy, with the aim of fighting the increasing influence of organized labor and communist groups in factories and among rural laborers. under mussolini’s leadership, these vigilante groups grew strong enough to abolish the parliamentarian system and establish an authoritarian regime based on violence. whether there is any central ideology behind fascism that can be defined like other political ideologies such as liberalism or socialism is contested. roger griffin (2003) argues that “generic fascism” can be pinned down by a single formula: fascism is a “political ideology whose mythic core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultra-nationalism”1. among 1 palingenetic means the idea of ‘national rebirth’. 221new social media and politics in thailand historians, however, this definition is met with considerable skepticism. regimes in the europe of the 1920s and 1930s varied considerably in their ideological orientations and, furthermore, many historians reject the idea of abstracting from historical cases to create an analytically meaningful concept of fascism. it is doubtful that such a concept can be translated to cases outside europe and to different historical periods. for thailand, however, griffin’s concept seems to fit strikingly. during the course of the increasing antagonism between the red and yellow shirts, the latter have focused their ideology increasingly on nationalistic concepts. in the present context, their morally charged appeal regarding nation, monarchy, and religion plays an increasingly central role. a fuzzy, morally charged code of ‘thai-ness’ is posited as an antidote to the perceived decline of society. this thai-ness serves as point of reference for the rebirth of the thai nation, which is pressed on all sides by globalization, capitalism, and modernization (thongchai, 2016). even more illuminating for an analysis of the current political situation in thailand is the strand of research on fascism that focuses on the role of vigilante groups. not only in italy but in most other european countries vigilante groups were instrumental to the rise of fascism. in austria, for example, there was the heimwehr – diverse groups and remnants of the imperial army in rural areas, supported by clericalconservative elites and acting to counter the successful organization of the social democrats, communists, and organized labor (tálos, 2013). instead of focusing on ideology, bonapartist theories of fascism put class constellations and the role of vigilante groups at the center of analysis (saage, 2007). at the time of the rise of fascism, various european countries’ political landscapes were characterized by a stalemate between two antagonistic blocks. on one side were socialist parties and organized workers who successfully used the young parliamentarian system to gain influence, but were unable to take political power completely. on the other side, conservative capitalist elites were entrenched in political institutions and held on to power. in this stalemate, and under the specter of a world economic crisis, the middle classes/bourgeoisie sided with monarchic-conservative elites (borworth, 2009; tálos, 2013). vigilante groups were employed to intimidate organized labor and create chaos, thereby legitimizing the dissolution of the parliamentarian system and the establishment of an authoritarian regime. the bourgeois sectors of society thus opted to give up their political and democratic rights in order to keep their socially and economically privileged position. vigilante groups in thailand working in the above-mentioned ways are not a new phenomenon. paramilitary groups founded and supported by conservative and rightwing forces in thailand have a long history going back to the times of when thailand played a crucial role in the geopolitical strategy of the usa to contain communism in southeast asia. as a bulwark against a spill-over of communist movements in indochina, thai authorities spread a strictly anti-communist propaganda and fought the thai communist party, which retreated to waging a guerrilla war in the northeast. accompanying the four cuts anti-insurgency policy, the royal thai army’s internal security operations command (isoc) founded scouting and paramilitary groups as a rural defense against communism and all kinds of opposition forces. village scouts and red gaurs played an infamous role in a 1976 massacre when the military staged a 222 wolfram schaffar  aseas 9(2) coup d’état closing the brief window of democracy which opened in 1973. the groups were brought to the capital and were instrumental to the atrocities carried out in downtown bangkok, eradicating all resistance and intimidating any opposition (“steady rise of fascism”, 2014; zimmerman, 1978). fascist groups in thailand on facebook the emergence of vigilante groups on the internet has grown out of specific historic circumstances: political developments and a deepening political divide; legal provisions in thailand; and the rise of facebook as the dominant social network. following the coup d’état of 2006, the military government began to introduce new mechanisms of internet censorship. the military junta proclaimed a state of emergency and the institution of martial law, with the stated aim of uprooting ‘political undercurrents’ – a euphemism for the strong support for thaksin in many parts of the country. because of the self-censorship of the traditional media, anti-coup groups had to resort to internet-based channels to organize. the censorship that was put in place to fight these new forms of organization was modeled after singaporean laws and comprises tightened criminal provisions regarding lèse-majesté and new internet-specific laws. the tightening of article 112, which punishes lèse-majesté with up to 15 years in prison, has made it into a catch-all to intimidate whomever is deemed a political enemy. a steep increase in cases shows that this section has been used almost arbitrarily to fight political opponents. until 2005, there were about five cases of lèse-majesté per year. in 2007, however, military and royal conservatives started using the law systematically to silence political opponents. the number of cases exploded, with 478 in the year 2010 alone. the law was also considerably broadened in the course of political struggle. originally, it was interpreted as covering the reigning king, but in 2013 a court ruling found a person guilty of defaming past kings, even those from distant history, as well as the pet dog of the king (“thai man faces jail”, 2015). sentences have also been continuously increased. in august 2015, pongsak sriboonpeng was sentenced by the bangkok military court to 60 years – later reduced to 30 years – in jail for six alleged lèse-majesté facebook postings (“man jailed for 30 years”, 2015). in 2007, the computer crime act was enacted by the military government. a censorship authority was created within the ministry of the interior which issues frequent bans against single websites. during the government of prime minister abhisit, no less than 45,357 sites were blocked, 39,115 of which on the grounds of lèsemajesté (saksith, 2014). after continuous criticism from various human rights and other political organizations, the number of lèse-majesté cases, as well as the circumstances of the accusations, alerted even the united nations security council and led to criticism in the universal periodic review process (human rights watch, 2016). in addition to criminalizing a number of computer-specific acts, the law introduced the stipulation that the internet provider or owner of a website is liable for any content, including hyperlinks, comments, blogs, etc. with these provisions, and by means of applying the tightened article 112 to internet fora, the military government managed to close down or impose tight controls over most websites where political discussions were organized. popular pages like midnight university or prachatai were 223new social media and politics in thailand either shut down or, following the singaporean model, targeted by spectacular court cases in which the providers or editors were held responsible for content allegedly insulting the monarchy. this functions as a means of creating insecurity or a ‘chilling effect’, triggering far-reaching self-censorship by the common user. however, the computer crime act only served this political purpose in the short term. its limitations became clear when more and more videos and clips insulting the king appeared on youtube as a means of protest. the government tried to hold youtube responsible yet, after banning the site for some months, it reached an agreement with google (the owner of youtube) and the filter was lifted. today, youtube is flooded with dissident material about the monarchy. facebook too has become an arena where individuals have been able to found groups and create fora that are out of the reach of authorities. recently, the military government has intensified its efforts to trace and prosecute facebook users (“‘facebook 8’ case shows”, 2016). however, from 2010 on, social media like facebook have become the main battlefield of political struggle. it was here that the first group showing fascist vigilante features appeared: social sanction, tellingly abbreviated as ss. early vigilante groups: social sanction or ss this group was established against the background of the 2010 demonstrations of the red shirts, who showed a strong and impressive capacity to mobilize. not only their numbers, but also the strength and persistence with which they struggled for their demand to hold snap elections, surprised the royalist-conservative government of prime minister abhisit and political analysts alike. using class terminology from feudal times to frame their battle as phrai (commoners/slaves) against amat (feudal lords) drew the question of the monarchy more into focus then at any other previous demonstrations (montesano et al., 2012; schaffar, 2010). already in 2009, there were single incidents of “cyber witch hunts” (thai netizen network, 2012, p. 59). the first internet forum where people were publically accused of lèse-majesté was a facebook group with the title rally bangkokians to oppose evil red shirts (thai netizen network, 2012, pp. 63, 77). however, the first group to operate systematically and with a broader impact was the facebook group called social sanction (ss), founded in march 2010 (thai netizen network, 2012, p. 63). the organizers of the group remained anonymous but declared in their facebook description that their aim was to “unite thais to expose crooks and defend the monarch by social sanction” (thai netizen network, 2012, p. 66). the group operated for three years until it finally disappeared in july 2013 (thai netizen network, 2014, p. 136). in the course of this time, about 40 people were publicly “exposed” (thai netizen network, 2014, p. 135). the main activity through which people were targeted were postings, in which they were portrayed as disloyal to the monarchy and accused of lèse-majesté. if the accused answered to such postings, the campaign went into the next round – re-posting screenshots of such reactions with more defamatory comments. the main issue was not so much to present legally sound evidence of lèse-majesté, but to attack individuals with the more general accusation of being ‘un-thai’. “thai-ness under absolute monarchy” was the main ideological point of reference, as illustrated by postings like: “[w]hoever questions, criticizes or does not express love toward the monarch is considered alien, ungrateful, and evil” (thai netizens network, 2014, p. 224 wolfram schaffar  aseas 9(2) 67). supporters of the exiled prime minister thaksin were insulted with terms common among yellow shirts, like ‘red buffalo’. they were also called ungrateful, ‘traitor’, or ‘dead wood’. comments publicly suggested that they should be lynched. in addition to this core activity, the page also served as a forum for exchanging political opinions by posting and commenting on news. the exchanges, however, followed the same logic as the defamations of individuals and reproduced the discourse of “thai-ness under absolute monarchy” (thai netizen network, 2014, pp. 67-68). thus, the ss group can be characterized as a mixture of echo chamber and slacktivism. defaming comments reproduced and amplified a nationalist-royalist discourse about thai-ness. attacking individuals through facebook posts and calling, or supporting a call, for action against them was framed as political activism or a social sanction. the difference in the forms of slacktivism was, however, that the accusation of lèse-majesté, launched by a simple click on the internet, was and is a dangerous weapon and can have serious consequences under thai legislation. the cyber-mobbing led by groups like ss, which used the draconian article 112 as a threat against political opponents, and various counter-campaigns using fake online profiles to equally expose opponents to article 112 prosecution, led to a veritable cyber guerilla war which only eased up with the election of yingluck shinawatra and the stabilization of politics (thai netizens network, 2014, p. 135). ss was dissolved, however, as a consequence of a flawed campaign and public outcry against it: in july 2012, it launched a campaign against a lt. col. sopa but, lacking a photo, used a picture found on the internet. when it became clear that the image was of the wrong person, it led to an outrage in the internet community and ss was closed down (thai netizens network, 2014, p. 138). professionalization and state-supported vigilante groups: cyber scouts the process through which a new generation of facebook-based vigilante groups emerged in 2014 cannot be understood without the government’s cyber scouts program, which was launched in december 2010 by the royalist-conservative government of abhisit vajjajiva and under the leadership of the ministry for information and communication technology (mict). in seminars at universities and schools, pupils and students were recruited to join a now state-organized group to search the internet for cases of lèse-majesté and other offences (farelli, 2010; rook, 2011). volunteers could register on a website and, as part of their one-day training, received ideological instructions on the history and importance of the monarchy as well as on facebook’s technical specifications. the scouts’ work included incognito methods such as befriending suspects on facebook and starting conversations about sensitive issues. in the case of a breach of lèse-majesté laws, the scout would then warn the person or hand over the case to the authorities. the name cyber scouts clearly alludes to the vigilante groups of the 1970s when village scouts and red gaurs were mobilized against the student movement (farelli, 2010; saksith, 2010; “steady rise of fascism”, 2014). these early programs of state-supported internet-based spying groups were phased out when the government of yingluck shinawatra took office in 2011 but were relaunched after the coup d’état of summer 2014 – this time in an even 225new social media and politics in thailand more comprehensive way and with more financial support from the mict (saksith, 2014). we have not been able to pin down whether people taking part in the cyber scout programs have later taken an active role in the facebook-based vigilante groups. arguably, the program in 2010, however, had a more general effect beyond the immediate results of the cyber scouts scanning activities. the very existence of such a program and the fact that it was initiated by the state administration put activities like the ones performed by ss in a different light. instead of political guerilla campaigns, launched by a sectarian group of radical yellow shirts, it now appeared as state-sponsored, morally valuable political activity serving the nation. the rubbish collector organization a new round of mobilization of vigilante groups was launched in late 2013 when yingluck shinawatra was prime minister (2011-2014). despite the fact that yingluck had won the 2011 elections with the support of the red shirts, her administration was characterized as low profile and reluctant as far as pressing political issues for the red shirts were concerned. this was often interpreted as a strategy not to create any pretext for the yellow shirt camp to mobilize against her. especially with regard to the tightened lèse-majesté laws and the legal investigation into the violent crackdown against the red shirts in 2010, yingluck remained largely silent. despite this, the yellow camp started mobilizing for demonstrations in bangkok to oust the government in late 2013. in january 2014, yellow shirt demonstrators pushed a campaign with the slogan “shut down bangkok – restart thailand” and blocked the central traffic hubs of downtown bangkok. giant screens at the central protest stages and nationwide broadcasting via television channels and printed media, which are close to the royal conservative camp, were a clear sign of the financial and logistical support of influential elite circles. on stage, the speakers demanded that elections be abolished and the parliament be replaced by an appointed reform committee. this situation – the middle-class plus elite mobilization against a popularly supported government, the demand for the abolition of the parliamentary system in favor of a corporate system of representation, and the legitimization in the name of ultra-nationalist salvation of the country – comes very close to the situation in several countries of europe at the advent of fascism, especially austria in the 1930s and portugal in the late 1920s (tálos, 2013). in this constellation of power, vigilante groups re-emerged and played a crucial role in the political struggle of the yellow shirts against the government and its supporters, the red shirts. they were instrumental in paving the way to the coup d’état in may 2014 and the establishment of the authoritarian regime under prayuth chan-o-cha. during the demonstrations, armed security groups who started using violence against political opponents were formed around the stages. for example, groups of security guards formed motorcycle convoys and started ‘visiting’ government politicians at their houses amid a climate of rising violence. when yingluck shinawatra called for snap elections, these guards attacked citizens who wanted to register for voting. on facebook too, a new vigilante group was established which appeared more professional and with a tighter organizational backbone: the rubbish collector organization (rco). 226 wolfram schaffar  aseas 9(2) from the very beginning, the rco used a strategy that was considerably different from that of the ss. the rco combined the established forms of guerilla/mobbing activism with a professional military organization structure, which was made public by a well-designed offline narrative. moreover, in contrast to ss, which operated as a small and anonymous group of radical yellow activists, the rco styled itself as comprising common people from the streets who had come together due to the spur of indignation – a movement rather than a small, radical group. instrumental to this new narrative was the public figure of the group’s founder, rienthong nanna, who became the face of the group and embodied its specific features. rienthong nanna is 55 years old and runs the family-owned mongkhut wattana general hospital in central bangkok. before he took over the hospital in 2007, he worked in the army medical department and held the rank of a major general. the establishment of the rco was portrayed as rienthong’s personal initiative. when the rco was launched on facebook, rienthong held a meeting in his hospital. the meeting, covered by the mainstream media, showcased him and his motivation. a central part of the narrative was that rienthong is non-political, with no connection to any parties or political networks (“call the stop”, 2014). despite his lack of interest in politics, he had been drawn into that sphere by his indignation over the violence he presumed had been committed against yellow shirt members. out of a deeply felt sense of injustice, he started joining the yellow shirt demonstrations more regularly in 2008 and eventually became an ardent supporter who also appeared at the protest staged during the 2013/2014 campaign (“army’s job to defend”, 2014). rienthong combines the features of a wutbürger (enraged citizen) with the determination and ruthlessness of a soldier. at the founding meeting of the group at his hospital, 30 former high-ranking army leaders were present (“monarchists vote to”, 2014). rienthong claimed that he was working on the establishment of a “people’s army to protect the monarchy” (“monarchists vote to”, 2014), and that the rco was under the special protection of the army, which was promptly denied by army leaders (“army’s job to defend”, 2014). the military structure behind the organization is, however, obvious. the group is organized in different units, among which is a “top secret surveillance command center” (“doctor sick of all”, 2014). the exact structure of the group, which served the administrative requirements of its 200,000 members and steered online activities, was kept secret (“doctor sick of all”, 2014). however, our analysis of online communications in july 2015 shows that, despite the large number of several hundred comments connected to one post, each comment was answered from rienthong’s personal account – a clear sign that there is a professional staff behind this account. also in stark contrast to the image of the ‘common man of the streets’ is the militancy and violence that was apparent in the language of the rco’s official proclamations and facebook posts. rienthong defined the aim of the group as to clean up thailand’s “social rubbish” and to “eradicate lèse-majesté offenders completely” within two years, where the word eradicate is the same thai word previously used in slogans about “eradicating communism” (“steady rise of fascism”, 2014). metaphors like: “when you first sweep the floor, the dust will be blown all over the place – but later the floor will look cleaner” (rienthong in an interview with the bangkok post, “doctor sick of all”, 2014) resemble a german proverb that was popular in the fascist 227new social media and politics in thailand period and was used to excuse the killing of people as ‘collateral damage’ for the sake of reaching a higher end.2 rienthong also compared himself with van helsing (“doctor sick of all”, 2014) – the character fighting dracula in fantasy films. like the ss, as its core activity, the rco pursued campaigns to expose breaches of lèse-majesté, which were then notified to the police. however, the rco went beyond this and systematically combined online and offline activism. as mentioned in the introduction to this article, tananun buranasiri lost her job when a mob started appearing in front of the shop where she worked. another spectacular case is the systematic mobbing of chatwadee amorpat, also known as rose, who works as a hair stylist in london and has become known as a red shirt activist and critic of the monarchy. rose was named on rco’s ‘most wanted’ list along with several other prominent dissidents, many of whom are now living in exile. after her private address was revealed by the rco, she was targeted by mobbing attacks in london. incited by the rco campaigns, thai tourists as well as thais living in europe uploaded video clips showing how they had gone to rose’s house and sprayed slogans on her door or left 2 “wo gehobelt wird, fallen späne”, in english “where there is planing, shavings will fall”, is said to have been the favored proverb of hermann göring. this only roughly corresponds to the english “you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs”. figure 2. screenshot, taken from the timeline of rco facebook group, may 2016, illustrating the campaign against rose. (figure by the author). 228 wolfram schaffar  aseas 9(2) bags of excrement in her mailbox. the mobbing against her went so far that her parents felt pressured to file a case of lèse-majesté against their own daughter (gazeau, 2014). another example of offline action is the boycott against the thai unhcr. the impetus for this campaign was the case of tang achiwa, also known as ekapop – a red shirt activist who was accused of lèse-majesté, managed to flee to cambodia and, with the help of the unhcr, was granted asylum in new zealand. the rco published, as a fake cover of a unhcr report, a selfie showing tang achiwa and his partner holding new travel documents from new zealand. apart form the usual hate comments against tang achiwa, rco members boasted of having canceled their donations to the unhcr and openly threatened the institution: “i'll go and destroy the [unhcr] donation booths and slap the staff. f*** unhcr thailand”. after numerous internet attacks, the thai unhcr branch had to shut down its facebook page (“thai royalists condemn”, 2015; “thai royalists threaten”, 2015). the logic of these campaigns is similar to that of campaigns on the ss page. cases were set upon the basis of pictures and reports added to the group’s facebook timeline. this served as a crystallization point for the ordinary group members’ figure 3. screenshot, taken from the timeline of rco facebook group, may 2016, illustrating the campaign against the thai unhcr. (figure by the author). 229new social media and politics in thailand comments, which triggered an echo chamber effect that eventually swelled into hate speech. within this cycle, rienthong would take the role of a fatherly leader who calls for moderation among his followers, albeit without preventing the posting of calls for or documentation of violence. the ritual performance of indignation, followed by hate speech and the documentation of actions, under the guidance of a fatherly but uncompromising and rigorous leader, was increasingly combined with calls for and documentation of mass mobilization of members ‘performing’ their loyalty to the monarchy. in this respect too, the rco page constitutes a new development compared to the ss page. whereas older facebook pages served as fora for the documentation of private initiatives, the rco’s, with its prominent individual members and its mass membership, triggered a new effect. state-organized mass events were advertised on rco, with an almost coercive effect on members to, at the very least, click the like button or post greetings like the ritual “long live the king”. one example is the campaigns “bike for mom” and “bike for dad”, which aimed to promote the heir to the throne, crown prince vajiralongkorn, as dutiful son and legitimate successor. for this reason, vajiralongkorn invited thai citizens to join a public cycling event in bangkok and other provincial capitals on the occasion of his mother, the queen’s, 83rd birthday. uniformed in merchandise such as light blue t-shirts and flags, the cyclists were formed into three groups according to their social and political status and cycled along a course. vajiralongkorn led block a with the highest representatives of the state, including the supreme commander of the royal thai army, the prime minister, and the president of the supreme court. block b, with representatives of the private sector, ngos, and high representatives of the bureaucracy, was headed by the princess bajrakitiyabha, daughter of the crown prince. commoners cycled in block c. this mobilization, organized along feudal lines representing the corporatist order of society favored by the royalist-conservative elites, was covered live on public tv channels and on the websites of the mainstream media (“crown prince leads”, 2015). apart from various offline channels, participants were also mobilized through facebook groups such as the rco, where both events constitute the main activity since mid-2015. this event (as well as its subsequent “bike for dad” counterpart, which followed the same choreography) performed a mass mobilization in corporatist formations that strikingly resembled fascist mobilizations in europe in the 1920s and 1930s. back then, coerced mobilization served to organize support for authoritarian regimes. in germany, this process slipped into the totalitarian system of national socialism where the distinction between private and public was dissolved in order to exert total control over the individual. conclusion in thailand, we can observe how vigilante groups emerged on facebook. ideologically, these groups come close to griffin’s (2003) definition of palingenetic populist ultra-nationalism, and thus qualify as fascist groups. their role in a specific constellation of power, as it is analyzed in bonapartist theories of fascism, is even more striking. vigilante groups such as the ss or the rco perform public witch hunts against 230 wolfram schaffar  aseas 9(2) people whom they accuse of being disrespectful of the monarchy. the intimidation of political opponents and the creation of a climate of fear was instrumental in bringing about a perceived state of emergency, which helped to discredit and abolish the parliamentary system in favor of the current corporatist, authoritarian regime. later, after the takeover of the military, groups like the rco shifted their focus and helped to organize mass events where loyalty to the monarchy and the corporatist order of society is performed. the vigilante groups have grown out of specific historic circumstances: the deepening political divide, specific legal provisions in thailand, and the rise of facebook as the dominant social network site. it has been shown that all these circumstances were equally important and equally constitutive for the groups. in this respect, the present approach differs from studies cited above where fascist groups in italy, spain, or other countries are seen as a phenomenon of offline politics, as groups who – in addition to their offline activities – use the communication, organization, and mobilization opportunities of social media. further studies on similar groups will be needed to get a more complete picture of the recent rise of vigilante groups on the internet. a crucial question to ask will be in how far the specific features of facebook, the general trend toward political polarization, and more or less dormant legacies of fascist vigilantism 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(2012). thailand’s political peasants: power in the modern rural economy. madison: university of wisconsin press. wilson, r. e., gosling, s. d., & graham, l. t. (2012). a review of facebook research in the social sciences. perspectives on psychological science, 7(3), 203-220. zephoria digital marketing. (2016). the top 20 valuable facebook statistics – updated april 2016. retrieved from https://zephoria.com/top-15-valuable-facebook-statistics/ zimmerman, r. f., (1978). reflections on the collapse of democracy in thailand. occasional paper series no. 50. singapore: institute of southeast asian studies. about the author wolfram schaffar is professor for political science and development studies at the department of development studies, university of vienna. his focus of research is on social movements, democratization, authoritarianism, and on the state and state theory of the global south. he has been working at the university of bonn, as well as at academic institutions in thailand and myanmar. ► contact: wolfram.schaffar@univie.ac.at acknowledgements i would like to thank two research assistants who have helped compiling the data for this study. their names have to remain anonymous due to the danger of getting attacked on facebook or prosecuted in thailand. aseas 13(1) | 1 tourism and the sustainable development goals in southeast asia alexander truppa & claudia dolezalb a sunway university, malaysia; b university of westminster, uk ► trupp, a., & dolezal, c. (2020). tourism and the sustainable development goals in southeast asia. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 13(1), 1-16. the sustainable development goals (sdgs), a set of 17 goals adopted in 2015, are aimed at reconciling economic, social, and ecological progress at a global level – ensuring a sustainable future for developed and developing countries alike. tourism in southeast asia is particularly thought to make an important contribution – given its substantial economic role – to the sdgs. while the united nations initially only linked three sdgs to tourism, it bears often underused potential to contribute to the entire set of goals. yet, the relationship between tourism and sustainable development is regarded as ambiguous – an industry strongly characterized by an overdependence on international tourists and foreign investment, showing a patchy track record of negative impacts and conflicts. in addition, in times of covid-19, tourism has become a dormant industry, leaving behind substantial economic gaps, particularly in southeast asia. with regards to the sdgs, little research exists to date that investigates whether and how tourism can contribute to reaching the goals’ targets to achieve a more sustainable development. this article thus outlines the current situation for tourism for development in southeast asia, and discusses the links between tourism and the sdgs, particularly at a time when the region – and the industry at large – have been strongly impacted. keywords: covid-19; southeast asia; sustainable development; sustainable development goals; tourism and development  introduction with the adoption of the united nations sustainable development goals (sdgs) in 2015, succeeding the millennium development goals (mdgs), the world has seen a decisive shift in the way the development agenda is framed, setting a global development paradigm up to the year 2030. development is now seen as more multidimensional than ever before, spanning not just across the spheres of planet, people, and prosperity (unwto & undp, 2017), but also across both the global south and the global north. divided into 17 goals with 169 targets, the sdgs cover the various dimensions of development, including economic, socio-cultural, political, and environmental components. while this more global and holistic approach towards development has received positive appraisals (death & gabay, 2015; hajer et al., 2015), the framework has also been criticized for prioritizing economic growth over ecological integrity (eisenmenger, 2020), introduction w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 26 2 | aseas 13(1) tourism and the sustainable development goals in southeast asia and pursuing – once again – a western-centered development model, which over-(if not mis-)uses the word ‘sustainability’ (liverman, 2018). indeed, the sdgs are not the only way to understand progress towards sustainable development. just like their predecessors, the mdgs, there is a danger that the sdgs “could turn real development successes into imaginary failures” (clemens & moss, 2005, p. 3) given their focus on indicators, attempting to measure areas of social life that are often difficult, if not impossible, to measure (attaran, 2006). each goal has specific targets to be achieved, to which tourism has the potential to make substantial contributions. while the un explicitly links tourism to goals number 8, 12, and 14 (see table 1), it has the power to contribute to the targets of the entire set of 17 goals, moving beyond economic empowerment towards health, environmental conservation, climate change efforts, education, gender equality, and more (unwto, 2017). at the same time, however, tourism can be regarded as a double-edged sword, an industry that, in addition to its most obvious benefits, often creates a range of problems and impacts, particularly of an environmental and socio-cultural nature. these include the degradation of ecosystems as a result of overtourism (koh & fakfare, 2019), dependency on tourism as the sole source of income (lasso & dahles, 2020), the touristification of material culture (husa, 2020), and the marginalization of indigenous communities and ethnic groups (tham, ruhanen, & raciti, 2020). table 1. sdgs, targets, and indicators directly addressing tourism source: un, n.d. despite tourism being mentioned only in a limited range of sdgs – the entire set of sdgs demonstrates more than ever that sustainable development concerns us all, going far beyond just aid in developing countries, including also issues of over-consumption and more sustainable development in the highly ‘overdeveloped’ aseas 13(1) | 3 alexander trupp & claudia dolezal regions of the world. particularly in times of the current health crisis, it becomes more obvious than ever that the world cannot be easily divided into two halves – that is, the industrialized, capitalist north, and the less-developed south, as the world order (wrongly) established itself in the past decades. covid-19 has affected all countries around the planet, particularly the global north, with europe as the epicenter. now, indeed, a more global effort is required – one that unites us all despite the sudden importance of borders and nation states in the light of containment and mitigation measures (niewiadomski, 2020). hope has therefore been created that covid-19 will lead to a kind of development that “fits all of humanity and nature” (taylor, 2020). nevertheless, the tourism industry has come to a complete halt as a result of the crisis, impacting significantly on destinations. while economic inequalities, as well as visa and immigration regimes, resulted in differing levels of travel freedom amongst travelers prior to the pandemic (bianchi & stephenson, 2014; bui & trupp, 2020), now all ‘classes’ of tourists face a yet unseen situation when it comes to international immobility. as of 20 april 2020, the unwto (2020a) reported that 100% of countries had covid-19 related travel restrictions in place – a key point in history of global (im)mobility. the sudden drop in tourist arrivals has, of course, considerably affected destinations, particularly those that not only rely heavily on tourism as an income generator but where alternative livelihoods for residents might be sparse, including southeast asia and the asia-pacific region more broadly. a range of questions emerge thereof, driving our present discussion while also laying the groundwork for a future research agenda on tourism and development in southeast asia: what role does tourism really play in development – a sector that seems to have vanished during covid-19, or at least one that will essentially change its face? how is the region of southeast asia looking towards the future of achieving the sdgs with the help of tourism? and lastly, what does the overall future for tourism hold? this introduction to the special issue therefore starts off by discussing the role tourism plays for (sustainable) development in southeast asia, followed by a literature review on the state of the art on tourism and the sdgs to then critique agenda 2030’s “leaving no one behind” tagline, and finally concludes by setting a new research agenda for tourism and the sdgs in times of unprecedented immobility. tourism and development in southeast asia: current perspectives when it comes to the current health crisis, the asia-pacific region has been the region hit hardest, not just by the crisis itself but by the second, induced, crisis that was caused by the sudden drop in tourist arrivals. in march 2020, tourist arrivals in the region had decreased by 64%, affecting the lives of millions of people reliant on the tourist dollar (unwto, 2020b). in the years prior to the crisis, however, southeast asia had become known as a thriving tourism region with 128.7 million international tourist arrivals in 2018, generating eur 121 billion tourism receipts (unwto, 2019), contributing 12.6% to the southeast asian economy, and employing 38.1 million people (12.2% of total employment) (wttc, 2019). while southeast asian countries feature diverse socioeconomic and political developments, all have – to different 4 | aseas 13(1) tourism and the sustainable development goals in southeast asia extents – embraced tourism as a vehicle for income generation and job creation (dolezal & trupp, 2015). simultaneously, however, different forms of (mass) tourism development have led to an unequal distribution of economic benefits, overexploitation of resources, and uncontrolled tourism development (dolezal, trupp, & bui, 2020a). tourist arrivals have spread unevenly across the region and within individual countries, concentrating on only a few centers, both in terms of market distribution and space (trupp, dolezal, & bui, 2020). thailand and malaysia, where international tourism quickly developed from the 1960s onward, receive more than half of all international tourist arrivals in the region. tourism in indonesia experienced steady growth in recent years due to its ecological and cultural resource abundance, and its growing accessibility linked to the development of low-cost carriers in the region. however, tourism development is overly focused on the island of bali, and vulnerable to natural disasters and terrorism (hampton & clifton, 2017). the philippines were relatively isolated from airline connections for many years, but experienced tourism growth as access options improved (trupp, dolezal, & bui, 2020). other countries in the region, such as cambodia, laos, and vietnam, opened their gates for international tourism only in the 1990s. in myanmar, ethical concerns over travel to the country continue. while, until 2011, travel boycott options were debated regarding the country’s military junta, more recent concerns have been raised over the ongoing violence against the ethnic minority of rohingya (stange, sakdaplorak, sasiwongsaroj, & kourek, 2019). yet, tourism in myanmar is growing faster than ever (kraas, zin nwe myint, & häusler, 2020). tourism development is often limited to only a few main areas within a country, as the case of cambodia shows where tourism activities are mainly focused around the area of angkor wat/siem reap and the capital city phnom penh. winter (2008) demonstrates how the vast tourism development in siem reap transformed the city into “an enclave of imbalanced wealth and development, and a micro-economy beyond which lies sustained rural poverty” (p. 537). rather than establishing economic linkages between the center and the rural hinterland, tourism can further enhance such regional disparities. while the scale and scope of tourism development differ across southeast asia, growing awareness of a more sustainable tourism exists, particularly of the value of grassroots tourism projects that are led by local communities (dolezal & burns, 2014). trupp, dolezal, & bui (2020) analyzed the topical distribution of tourism and development research amongst academic works through a systematic quantitative literature review, searching the scopus research journal article database for the years 2000–2019. results show that most tourism and development research centers around the keyword ‘sustainability’. however, this term has also become an inflationary catchphrase, a buzzword just like ‘participation’ and ‘empowerment’ (cornwall & eade, 2010). the analysis of scopus articles also showed that no research in the sample was published on either the mdgs or sdgs. the sdgs still constitute a rather novel terrain, hence there is a need for research to urgently examine the linkages between tourism development and the sdgs, either by focusing on one particular sdg or the overall sdg framework (dolezal, trupp, & bui, 2020b), not least because asean claims to actively work towards the sdgs (imf, 2018; lu, 2019). aseas 13(1) | 5 alexander trupp & claudia dolezal tourism and the sdgs in southeast asia particularly in times of covid-19, the united nations (2020a) argue that the goals are more pressing than ever, given that “the primary cost of the pandemic as seen in the loss of human lives is distressing, but the secondary effects on the global economy, on livelihoods and on sustainable development prospects are even more alarming”, with the pandemic having “utterly exposed fundamental weaknesses in our global system. it has shown beyond doubt how the prevalence of poverty, weak health systems, lack of education, and above all sub-optimal global cooperation, is exacerbating the crisis” (n.p.). the pandemic hit at a time where the sdgs supposedly were making – at least partly – positive progress, leading the un to plead for continued actions towards reaching these goals, linking humanitarian action more clearly than before to the individual targets (un, 2020b). however, when it comes to progress in achieving the sdgs in the asia-pacific region, a recent un report (un, 2019) has warned that none of the goals will be achieved at the current pace. countries in southeast asia, overall, have made progress towards quality education (sdg 4); affordable and clean energy (sdg 7); and building industry, innovation, and infrastructure (sdg 9). however, regression has been reported regarding decent work and economic growth (sdg 8); climate action (sdg 13); and peace, justice, and strong institutions (sdg 16) (lu, 2019; un, 2019). as shown above, tourism plays a significant economic role in the region of southeast asia and has the potential to contribute considerably to the sdgs. needless to say, the unwto has also put considerable efforts into demonstrating this link – after all, tourism bears often undiscovered and under-utilized potential to contribute to all of the sdgs. indeed, tourism in southeast asia has the potential to develop more direct links with the 17 sdgs. table 2 emerged from a literature review and presents an overview of those academic works that ‘directly’ link tourism to one (or all) of these sdgs to date (without, however, claims of completeness), including the contributions to the present special issue (in italic font). however, with tourism having come to a complete halt in this period, the industry’s power to achieve these targets suddenly seems rather limited. tourism has turned into a dormant industry, particularly international travel, which the sdgs’ progress is so reliant on. the return of the traveler, therefore, becomes particularly important due to tourism’s role in the achievement of all the sdgs, even though it is, at times, difficult to look beyond its economic role. that tourism is a number-one income generator and creator of employment, particularly in countries with vast cultural and natural assets, is without doubt. nevertheless, it remains challenging to not only show the relevance of tourism for wider development, but also to establish this link on the ground. how tourism links with and contributes to other sdgs is more difficult to grasp, given that the role of tourism in the past has not necessarily been of a humanitarian nature, with health, educational or gender empowerment often seen as mere ‘byproducts’ of tourism interventions. first efforts are emerging, though, that seek to make this link clear, such as academic publications linking tourism to specific sdgs, including sdg 1 (no poverty) (scheyvens & hughes, 2019), sdg 5 (gender equality) (alarcón & cole, 2019), or sdg 8 (decent work and economic growth) (robinson, martins, solnet, & baum, 2019) (see table 2 for more complete information). however, such research is yet to be applied to a southeast asian context specifically (dolezal, trupp, & bui, 2020b). 6 | aseas 13(1) tourism and the sustainable development goals in southeast asia a ca d em ic l it er at u re w it h sp ec ifi c l in k s to th e sd g s (i n cl u d in g p re se n t sp ec ia l i ss u e) d ah le s, p ra ba w a, & k on in g, 2 0 20 ; s ch ey ve n s & h u gh es , 2 0 19 sc h ey ve n s & l ae is , 2 0 18 b ol u k, c av al ie re , & d u ff y, 2 0 19 ; d ol ez al & m ie ze ly te , 20 20 ; n om ni an , t ru pp , n iy om th on g, t an gc ha ro en sa th ap or n, & c ha ro en ko ng ka , 2 0 20 a la rc ón & c ol e, 2 0 19 ; k h oo -l at ti m or e, y an g, & je , 2 0 19 m u ga gg a & n ab aa sa , 2 0 16 d ah le s, p ra ba w a, & k on in g, 2 0 20 ; d ol ez al & m ie ze ly te , 20 20 ; r ob in so n , m ar ti n s, s ol n et , & b au m , 20 19 ; m ül le r, h uc k, & m ar ko va , 2 0 20 ; w in ch en ba ch , h an n a & m il le r, 2 0 19 t o u ri sm l in k s • jo b cr ea ti on a t lo ca l c om m u n it y le ve l • m ic ro -e n tr ep re n eu rs h ip • p ro -p oo r to u ri sm • a li gn m en t w it h n at io n al p ov er ty r ed u ct io n p ro gr am s • p ro m ot io n o f lo ca l p ro d u ce in t ou ri sm d es ti n at io n s • fa rm -t ota bl e co n ce pt s • a gr ito u ri sm • r ein ve st m en t of t ou ri sm e ar n in gs i n h ea lt h i n fr as tr u ctu re • p ro fe ss io n al t ra in in g an d d ev el op m en t in t ou ri sm jo bs • h os t co m m u n it y in vo lv em en t • l an gu ag e ex ch an ge a n d p ra ct ic e • d iv er si ty m an ag em en t an d n on -d is cr im in at io n a t w or kpl ac e • fe m al e en tr ep re n eu rs h ip • e ffi ci en t w at er • p ol lu ti on c on tr ol • st an d ar d s an d c er ti fi ca ti on s • e ffi ci en t en er gy u se • st an d ar d s an d c er ti fi ca ti on s • t ra in in g fo r pr of es si on al d ev el op m en t • d iv er si ty m an ag em en t • c or po ra te s oc ia l r es po n si bi li ty • c om m u n it y in vo lv em en t • e co -f ri en d ly d es ig n • r en ew ab le e n er gy • r ec yc li n g • st aff t ra in in g an d a w ar en es s sd g s sd g 1 – e n d p ov er ty in a ll it s fo rm s ev er yw h er e sd g 2 – e n d h u n ge r, a ch ie ve f oo d s ec u ri ty a n d n u tr it io n , pr om ot e su st ai n ab le a gr ic u lt u re sd g 3 – e n su re h ea lt h y li ve s an d p ro m ot e w el lbe in g fo r al l at a ll ag es sd g 4 – e n su re i n cl u si ve a n d e qu it ab le q u al it y ed u ca ti on an d p ro m ot e li fe lo n g le ar n in g fo r al l sd g 5 – a ch ie ve g en d er e qu al it y an d e m po w er a ll w om en an d g ir ls sd g 6 e n su re a va il ab il it y an d s u st ai n ab le m an ag em en t of w at er a n d s an it at io n fo r al l sd g 7 – e n su re a cc es s to a ff or d ab le , re li ab le , su st ai n ab le , an d m od er n e n er gy fo r al l sd g 8 – p ro m ot e su st ai n ed , i n cl u si ve , a n d s u st ai n ab le e co n om ic g ro w th , e m pl oy m en t, a n d d ec en t w or k fo r al l sd g 9 – b u il d r es il ie n t i n fr as tr u ct u re , p ro m ot e in cl u si ve a n d su st ai n ab le in d u st ri al iz at io n , a n d fo st er in n ov at io n t ab le 2 . t o u ri sm l in k s w it h t h e sd g s aseas 13(1) | 7 alexander trupp & claudia dolezal a gb oe ze & n w an kw o, 2 0 18 ; s te ph en so n & d ob so n, 2 0 20 h ig gi n sd es bi ol le s & w ije si n gh e, 2 0 19 ; s ch ey ve n s & l ae is , 20 18 sc h ey ve n s & l ae is , 2 0 18 l yo n & h u n te rjo n es , 2 0 19 h ay w oo d , f u n ke , a u d ou in , m u sv ot o, & n ah m an , 2 0 19 b ol u k, c av al ie re , & h ig gi n sd es bi ol le s, 2 0 19 ; g ös sl in g & h al l, 20 19 ; h al l, 20 19 ; h ig h am & m il le r, 2 0 18 ; h u gh es & s ch ey ve n s, 2 0 16 ; s tu m pf & c h es h ir e, 2 0 19 ; s ia kw ah , m u sa ve n ga n e, & l eo n ar d , 2 0 19 ; s pe n ce r & m cb ea n , 2 0 20 • d iv er si ty m an ag em en t • l oc al in ve st m en t an d r es po n si bl e pu rc h as in g • c om m u n it y in vo lv em en t • c er ti fi ca ti on s • p ar tn er sh ip s • c u lt u re a n d h er it ag e fo cu s • p ro m ot io n o f et h n ic d iv er si ty • r es ou rc e effi ci en cy • e ffi ci en cy fo r te ch n ol og y an d w at er • p ol lu ti on r ed u ct io n • l oc al p u rc h as in g • st an d ar d s an d c er ti fi ca ti on • e co -d es ig n • r ed u ct io n o f u n n ec es sa ry t ra n sp or t • o ff se tt in g • w il d li fe a n d e co sy st em s pr ot ec ti on • p ol lu ti on a n d w as te r ed u ct io n • g re en p u rc h as in g • in fo rm at io n fo r cu st om er s an d s ta ff • w il d li fe a n d e co sy st em s pr ot ec ti on • p ol lu ti on a n d w as te r ed u ct io n • g re en p u rc h as in g • in fo rm at io n fo r cu st om er s an d s ta ff • m u lt icu lt u ra l u n d er st an d in g • h os tco m m u n it y in vo lv em en t • c ro ss -s ec to ra l n at u re • p ar tn er sh ip s an d s ta ke h ol d er c ol la bo ra ti on c ri ti ca l e n ga ge m en ts w it h t h e ge n er ic r ol e th at t ou ri sm pl ay s in a ch ie vi n g th e sd g s, t h ro u gh , f or e xa m pl e, t h e es ta bl is h m en t of c on ce pt u al f ra m ew or ks . sd g 1 0 – r ed u ce in eq u al it y w it h in a n d a m on g co u n tr ie s sd g 1 1 – m ak e ci ti es a n d h u m an s et tl em en ts in cl u si ve , s af e, re si li en t, a n d s u st ai n ab le sd g 1 2 – e n su re s u st ai n ab le c on su m pt io n a n d p ro d u ct io n pa tt er n s sd g 1 3 – t ak e u rg en t ac ti on t o co m ba t cl im at e ch an ge a n d it s im pa ct s sd g 1 4 – c on se rv e an d s u st ai n ab ly u se t h e oc ea n s, s ea s, an d m ar in e re so u rc es fo r su st ai n ab le d ev el op m en t sd g 1 5 – p ro te ct , r es to re , a n d p ro m ot e su st ai n ab le u se o f te rr es tr ia l e co sy st em s an d h al t bi od iv er si ty lo ss sd g 1 6 – p ro m ot e pe ac ef u l a n d in cl u si ve s oc ie ti es , p ro vi d e ac ce ss t o ju st ic e fo r al l, an d b u il d in cl u si ve in st it u ti on s sd g 1 7 – s tr en gt h en t h e m ea n s of im pl em en ta ti on a n d r evi ta li ze t h e gl ob al p ar tn er sh ip fo r su st ai n ab le d ev el op m en t o ve ra ll fr am ew or k so u rc e: c ol u m n s 1 an d 2 a d ap te d f ro m u n w t o , 2 0 17 ; 2 0 18 8 | aseas 13(1) tourism and the sustainable development goals in southeast asia critiquing tourism and the sdgs despite the current time of ‘temporary de-globalization’ and immobility (niewiadomski, 2020), both practitioners and academics alike do not doubt the industry’s resilience and the return of the traveler – even if they might only be domestic to start with following the crisis. indeed, the asian region already shows first signs of travelling resuming, with china as the first ‘mobile’ country that the world is looking towards now (wen, kozak, yang, & liu, 2020), while southeast asia still remains largely immobile as of may 2020. nevertheless, first signs of domestic tourism are emerging here too, with vietnam serving as a best practice example as a country that has contained the pandemic quickly, and now stimulates its own domestic tourism industry (scott, 2020). destinations such as hoi an, which has previously been well-known amongst international tourists, are now turning into domestic tourism hotspots, adding vietnamese dishes back to their menus (scott, 2020). here, a program titled vietnamese people travel in vietnam has been launched to stimulate domestic tourism and help people travel in these ‘new normal’ times (minh, 2020). in malaysia, air asia launched the unlimited pass cuti-cuti malaysia, priced at rm 399 net (eur 83), allowing malaysia-based airline program members unlimited domestic air travel between 16 destinations from 25 june, 2020 until 31 march, 2021 (“new airasia unlimited pass”, 2020). such initiatives might be regarded as a positive development in times where places have suddenly been left “with an economic structure tailored to capture mobile consumer demand without mobile consumption to capture” (lapointe, 2020, p. 3). as lapointe (2020) argues, it is paramount now to pursue “a transformation of the tourism economy . . . reconnecting tourism services to some of the local needs” (p. 3). it is time to finally put residents’ priorities first – those tourism stakeholders that are often not consulted when it comes to tourism development, and therefore largely left out of the equation. finally, taking the unwto’s (and, overall, the un’s) tagline of “leaving no one behind” (unwto, 2017, p. 7) serious is long overdue. after all, agenda 2030 strongly propounds a development ethos that is based on greater inclusiveness than what development intervention has seen in the past (un, 2015). supposedly, the sdgs are targeted specifically at the “most vulnerable” to achieve “inclusive societies” and “a just, equitable, tolerant, open and socially inclusive world in which the needs of the most vulnerable are met” (un, 2015, p. 4). they are aimed at the empowerment of those in need that are often marginalized, including, above all, women, but also “children, youth, persons with disabilities . . . people living with hiv/aids, older persons, indigenous peoples, refugees and internally displaced persons and migrants” (un, 2015, p. 7). two contributions in this current issue – although not directly linked to the sdgs – study the representation and experiences of thai migrant groups in singapore. chan (2020) examines how singaporeans have socially constructed the idea of ‘little thailand’ along the urban development of postcolonial singapore and through their own cognitive, racial categories. exploring the trajectory of singapore-based thai transsexual (male to female) sex workers, ocha (2020) analyses the role of brokers as well as the experiences of transsexual sex workers in global sex tourism. both of these contributions focus on marginalized groups of society in the region, which the sdgs are aiming to target specifically. also, the contribution by duile (2020) puts a focus aseas 13(1) | 9 alexander trupp & claudia dolezal on marginalized communities by analyzing current relations between indigenous peoples and the state in indonesia. indeed, indigenous peoples, ethnic minority groups, and their ‘exotized’ cultural practices have been promoted for tourism purposes throughout southeast asia (cohen, 2016; trupp, 2014). local communities involved in ethnic and indigenous tourism often face the dilemma of maintaining self-development and adoption of different lifestyles, while remaining ‘authentic’ and thus attractive to tourists (fan, chang, & ng, 2020). however, an analysis of the sdgs discourse shows that local residents and communities are often placed at the recipient end of aid and development intervention, and that the un does not define the ambiguous notion of ‘empowerment’. as monshausen and rutherford (2017) argue: civil society is also mentioned as an important partner, but at no place are the structural difficulties of social movements, citizens’ groups and organisations and ngos being equal participants in policy and decision making processes highlighted. in addition, the power imbalances between private sector actors and civil society are not addressed. (p. 110) the private sector in tourism therefore remains key; however, it is strongly dominated by western, transnational companies (scheyvens & hughes, 2019), and sustainability is still “strongly positioned as an economic or competitive value rather than an ethical or environmental one” (hall, 2019, p. 1050). dahles, prabawa, and koning (2020) in this issue explore ways in which small, more local, tourism-based silver workshop enterprises in yogyakarta, indonesia, can offer a crisis-resilient pathway to sustainable development, and ask to what extent such businesses can become agents of the sdgs. by employing local people and integrating them in the value chain by means of subcontracting, this form of micro-entrepreneurship contributes to poverty alleviation (sdg1) and decent work (sdg8). simultaneously, the tourism-based silver trade links the affluent urban area of yogyakarta with the socioeconomically less developed rural hinterland, thus promoting the reduction of the urban-rural divide as suggested in sdg10. further focusing on economic impacts of tourism aligned with sdg8, müller, huck, and markova (2020) compare the willingness to pay (wtp) of domestic travelers, expatriates, and international travelers for products and services offered by community-based tourism (cbt) sites in cambodia. their study found that expatriates display significantly higher willingness to pay than international tourists. expatriates can form an important niche market, which allows the cbt sites to grow organically without reaching carrying capacity limits too soon. dolezal and miezelyte (2020) turn the discussion towards understanding whether voluntourists in bali could be regarded as ‘agents of change’ in achieving the sdgs. in their paper, the authors relate volunteers’ perceptions of their developmental impact to the sdgs, particularly to see how volunteer tourism is placed to contribute to the sdgs more broadly, but also more specifically to sdg4 (quality education) and sdg8 (decent work and economic growth). this contribution demonstrates that, again, voluntourism does not focus on the marginalized, and that, while voluntourists have high hopes of becoming ‘agents of change’, reality turns them into redundant, pleasure-seeking 10 | aseas 13(1) tourism and the sustainable development goals in southeast asia holidaymakers that are not sufficiently empowered to make a long-lasting sustainable change in line with the sdgs. voluntourism therefore still creates “encounters that are characterized by neo-colonial othering” (dolezal & miezelyte, 2020, p. 40) with the industry turning heavily towards the international traveler as agent of (at least economical, if not sometimes humanitarian) change. also, in times of covid-19, the over-dependence on foreign help is accentuated, based on the argument that this idea that bali will die without tourists comes uncomfortably close to a white savior narrative, implying that local people have no choice but to hunker down and endure this crisis until foreigners start showing up again to rescue them. such framing strips indonesians of their agency in rising to meet this challenge, something they are quite capable of doing and have done many times before. (guild, 2020, n.p.) nomnian, trupp, niyomthong, tangcharoensathaporn, and charoenkongka (2020) in the present issue continue the discussion of tourism’s hegemonic power structures by exploring the linkages between language and tourism by assessing english language needs of remote, second-tier village communities involved in cbt projects in northern and northeastern thailand. despite the hegemonic lingua franca status of english throughout the region, multilingual competence among cbt professionals and community members should be promoted to facilitate communication and more independence from external translators and cultural brokers. sdg4 (quality education), in the form of acquiring language competence, is linked to the importance of a skilled workforce, which is needed for a prosperous tourism sector and a more meaningful intercultural encounter between hosts and guests. less research so far has focused on sdg 11 (sustainable cities and communities), which emphasizes the need to make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable. based on three asean case studies located in myanmar (yangon), lao pdr (vientiane), and thailand (phuket city), stephenson and dobson (2020) in this issue discuss the alignment between the conceptualization of ‘smart cities’ on one hand and the objectives shared within sdg 11 on the other. this is one of the sdgs, along with others highlighted in table 2, which have seen less academic attention from a tourism perspective and therefore deserve more research in the future. particularly, smart tourism and smart cities are becoming increasingly important in covid-19 times, where “financing sustainable development policy should reap the potential benefit of transformative digital technologies and countries should invest more in this area” to achieve the sdgs (subhanij & hasannudin, 2020, n.p.). the singapore tourism board, for example, has taken this advice and launched a set of initiatives, including sharing data, web-based training, and webinars in order to help tourism businesses recover more quickly from the current crisis (sagar, 2020). tourism and the sdgs: quo vadis? what, therefore, does the future of tourism and its role in achieving the sdgs hold? without doubt, the current times are times of action, times where nations, regions, and businesses alike need to start rethinking their priorities, their ways of operating, aseas 13(1) | 11 alexander trupp & claudia dolezal as well as their future outlooks. the un economic and social commission for asia and the pacific, in one of their latest press releases, calls for urgent change, too, but above all in the form of greater solidarity: this year marks the start of the decade of action. although the covid-19 crisis undoubtedly brings extraordinary challenges to the achievement of the sdgs, it also brings extraordinary opportunities for solidarity. multilateral actors and countries should come together to rebuild a better world and ensure healthy economic, social and financial well-being for all. (subhanij & hasannudin, 2020, n.p.) hope, therefore, remains that the current times are also times that instigate change – a change in thinking how tourism is done, who benefits from both tourism and development intervention, and what role the industry really plays in achieving the sdgs. maybe the current health crisis is a time to finally “seek a radical break from what has come before” (higgins-desbiolles, 2020, p. 7) to ultimately achieve greater social justice in tourism. a more local, home-grown development, including stronger domestic tourism, or ideas of de-growth and human happiness (cheer, 2020) could foster this break from western capitalism, a link that the sdgs are also often criticized for. after all, some argue that sustainable development in times of the sdgs remains embedded in capitalism, utilizing market forces to ensure future economic growth – or at least without questioning the notion of growth itself. it remains unclear, thereby, in how far more alternative paradigms, such as degrowth or postgrowth, fit with the sdgs’ private-sector orientated philosophy. particularly in times of covid-19, the world seems to have arrived at a turning point of rethinking consumption, mobility, and how we do business – hoping to recalibrate humankind’s pathway for a more sustainable future for both society and the planet (ateljevic, 2020; higgins-desbiolles, 2020), and to finally acknowledge residents’ agency in the equation. the questions that therefore need further addressing are: what does a shift in thinking signify for the conceptualization of development, most importantly the sdgs? also, what role does tourism play therein, particularly in the current times of immobility? and lastly, a question that aquino (2020) poses in the present issue in his review of “tourism and development in southeast asia” (dolezal, trupp, & bui, 2020a): is tourism really the right solution to some of the problems in the developing world – as well as in the achievement of the sdgs? while the present issue, including our discussion here, has attempted to create space for this debate, it will by far not be able to answer all these questions. a new research agenda is required, one that views tourism as the powerful but at the same time volatile sector that it really is. one that also starts to ask important questions on how tourism cannot just be more beneficial for local residents and destinations, but also how the industry can essentially be restructured and re-imagined to put those that are marginalized (dolezal & lapointe, 2020), as well as local residents and domestic travelers first. after all, as argued by tomassini & cavagnaro (2020), “while the global dimension seems more broken than ever, the urgency of belonging to the local is more and more evident” (p. 1), also given that those who were already vulnerable and/ or marginalized have been hit hardest by the crisis (un, 2020b). 12 | aseas 13(1) tourism and the sustainable development goals in southeast asia while finding more anchoring in the local, this new research agenda also needs to urgently acknowledge the industry’s ambiguous contribution to the sdgs, particularly in times of crisis. at the same time, while it is imperative to remain critical of the sdg framework, which is often regarded as normative, anchored in capitalism and prioritizing economic growth over ecological integrity (eisenmenger et al., 2020), the role that tourism plays for sustainable development, particularly in the region of southeast asia, remains more crucial than ever: although this situation makes tourism highly vulnerable, the sector is also in a unique position to contribute to broader and just recovery plans and actions. . . . this makes the support of the global tourism sector even more indispensable both in this moment of crisis and when societies will enter the recovery phase. . . . if responsibly managed, tourism, which is generally linked to only some of the indicators and related targets, can emerge from the current crisis as an even more critical contribution to the sdgs, supporting livelihoods and creating new opportunities for people around the world. (development of unesco natural and cultural assets, 2020, n.p.) without doubt, the current times have led to a rethinking of tourism and development within the academic community, but also for practitioners and supranational organizations. high up on the agenda are a re-valuing of the domestic traveler (scott, 2020), the re-adaptation of infrastructures for local needs (lapointe, 2020), and a move away from neo-liberalism towards ideas of de-growth and human flourishing (cheer, 2020). however, as cheer (2020) argues, “whether on balance, this whole episode bequeaths tourism communities with a stronger hand will remain unknown for the foreseeable future” (p. 9). whether we will truly see “sustainability as the new normal”, as the unwto (2020c, n.p.) sees their tourism vision for the future, will thus remain entirely dependent not just on nation states, businesses, and the consumer, but overall on our ability to redefine sustainable development – the groundwork that nourishes the entire conceptualization of the sdgs.  references agboeze, m. u., & nwankwo, e. a. 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(2019). travel & tourism economic impact 2019: southeast asia. london: world travel and tourism council. about the authors alexander trupp is an associate professor at the school of hospitality, sunway university, malaysia, and editor-in-chief of the austrian journal of south-east asian studies (aseas). he previously worked for the university of the south pacific, mahidol university, and university of vienna. his research interests include tourism microbusinesses, mobilities, asian tourism, and sustainable tourism, with a regional focus on the asia-pacific. alexander is the author of migration, micro-business and tourism in thailand (2016, routledge) and co-editor of tourism and development in south-east asia (2020, routledge). ► contact: atrupp@sunway.edu.my; alexander.trupp@univie.ac.at claudia dolezal is a senior lecturer in tourism and sustainable development at the university of westminster in london, uk. she has a background in tourism, international development, and social anthropology, with a geographical focus on the region of southeast asia (thailand and bali), and most recently latin america and london. claudia’s research interests focus on tourism and social inequalities, tourism and sustainable development, community-based tourism, residents’ empowerment, and the anthropology of tourism. she is editor of aseas, and co-editor of tourism and development in south-east asia (2020, routledge) and the handbook of niche tourism (forthcoming, edward elgar). ► contact: c.dolezal@westminster.ac.uk aseas 14(2) | 195 participatory engagement for sustainable innovation in karen communities jitjayang yamabhaia, riemer knoopb & patoo cusripitucka a mahidol university, thailand; b gordion cultureel advies, the netherlands ► yamabhai, j., knoop, r., & cusripituck, p. (2021). participatory engagement for sustainable innovation in karen communities. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 14(2), 195-212. this paper reports on heritage fieldwork by the mahidol cultural anthropology museum, carried out from 2019 to 2020, with a group of four karen villages in doi si than, or ‘four creeks mountain’, a valley in the remote northwest of thailand. the research aimed to find and introduce sustainable business models in karen ethnic communities using essential heritage products and intangible practices. additionally, the community offers an example of thai integrated farming, which we analyzed as a case of innovative, intergenerational heritage practice, and that we helped turn into a more sustainable economic mainstay of the community. the method used throughout the process was participatory action research blended with social design, as well as building on a long-term engagement. as a theoretical framework, we adapted design thinking to paulo freire’s education of liberation model to create an eclectic ‘four creek mountain’ approach in order to do justice to local circumstances and establish a shared set of explicit social values. we compared the results with de varine’s concept of the ecomuseum to find a suitable action perspective. the findings show that local heritage practices can successfully be used to re-engage communities with today’s broader society on the condition they are embedded in intergenerational co-operation based on trust, and with social designers (urban curators) acting as connectors, thus ensuring the community’s ownership of the process. keywords: ecomuseum; heritage; karen; social design; sustainable engagement  introduction iculture is the name of a working group within the research institute for languages and cultures of asia (rilca) at mahidol university (nakhon pathom, salaya campus, bangkok). using the collection and databases of its in-campus cultural anthropology museum, iculture has developed and now operates a mobile museum for social engagement based on the philosophy of rilca as an academic institution committed to sustainable social development across thailand. as part of a university institution, iculture aims at using a cultural approach for the benefit of mankind in the fields of rural development, museum studies, and social engagement. iculture started this integrative endeavor by carrying out anthropological research in the doi si than area, phrao district, in the northeast of chiang mai province in northern thailand. from 2009 onwards, aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 62 196 | aseas 14(2) participatory engagement for sustainable innovation in karen communities we have visited this particular region five times, together with some 60 students in total in the course of our yearly fieldwork training. in addition, we defined the research subject to include social inequality, which is of high concern in the area, caused by a dwindling agricultural sustainability of the community. this is one of the major challenges in thai society and considered by many the main obstacle to sustainable development. iculture has integrated its academic research and learning mission through ethnic community development projects, creating what we called an ecomuseum community, and by carrying out participatory action research for and with a karen ethnic group that call themselves pgaz k 'nyau (s’gaw or skaw in written english). this participatory action research is an example of optimum participation (mikkelsen, 1995), which means the people involved became partners in the research on an equal footing. according to britha mikkelsen (1995), participants at this level are both “self-mobilizing” and “catalyzing change” (pp. 58-61). to us researchers, this meant we had to act as much as possible in symmetric relations. our research participants acted as free agents in analyzing their issues and exercising ownership of the solutions.  we only helped in conceptualizing problems and proposing appropriate conceptual frameworks to share in an intergenerational way. in iculture, we applied de varine’s and riva’s (2017) elements of the ecomuseum concept, developed since the 1970s as part of the new museology, to a thai context. the basic idea is to use museums and museal tools for community development, whether rural or urban. in addition, the word 'development' is taken here in the definition of nederveen pieterse (2010), namely as a form of collective learning. in that sense, development does not mean the transfer of knowledge and/or technology from experts to a (lay) community, but rather describes the very process of creating knowledge. instead of a finite, modernist project in a transactional sense, it is an ongoing process geared towards enduring social impact. from such a developmental perspective, this research project can be considered a pedagogical practice regarding the cultural heritage of the members of an ethnic community. since we operate within the freirerian educational framework of the pedagogy of the oppressed (freire, 2014), the participants are invited to freely act and reflect in order to find solutions to their problems. this process of knowledge co-creation jack mezirow called transformative learning (mezirow & taylor, 2009). we strive to enhance the capacities of the people in the area towards full competency and ability to perform the ‘design’ of a new way of life and live their lives in a consciously valued manner. doi si than (four creeks mountain) is the name of a karen cultural district in phrao district, chiang mai. karen people settled there in the 1960s, in a group of four villages dispersed along four creeks. nowadays, the people living in the area are facing severe socio-cultural disruptions. they indicated at the start of this research project that the need for increased cash income is slowly destroying their cultural assets. one of the factors exacerbating this process is what may be regarded as ‘cultural passivity’, consisting of only little-developed 21st-century skills such as critical and creative thinking and problem-solving abilities. their absence hinders innovations and contributes to a silent cultural disruption. iculture endeavored to counter this situation by creating conditions for the development of critical thinking and creativity skills, aseas 14(2) | 197 jitjayang yamabhai, riemer knoop & patoo cusripituck with a view to enabling the karen villagers to find solutions for their families’ and community’s daily problems. we found that what works for the people involved in this situation is to create a community platform as well as learning tools with which to develop a better quality of life. for this reason, we proposed an ecomuseum approach as a platform for cultural innovation. we worked on the assumption that the karen villagers have a potential to find ways based on these sustainable transformations to more successfully live their lives. theoretical framework the direct goal of this project was to find ways to contribute to the emancipation of the karen villagers who find themselves in a state of social/economical oppression, deriving from a lack of choices in the realms of being and doing, and who are facing restrictive living conditions not under their own control. adopting an ecomuseum approach, we focused on the idea of a museum as a learning platform for and with the community. therefore, educational programs became the main tools. the idea of a freireian school, developed in the 1970s (freire, 2014), fitted the context because of its educational aim of liberating people. in it, problem-oriented education is used for letting participants acquire the competence to solve their own problems. nowadays, design thinking is the approach for communal problem solving. design thinking processes encourage teams of creators together with clients to discover their problem on the go and to learn and share in an integrative way. it is in this conceptual framework that we tried to combine and, wherever possible, to integrate paulo freire’s vision on education of liberation with design thinking (d school, 2020). our innovation is that, together with the karen villagers, we developed a fusion by applying this framework to dealing with heritage (objects, place making, economy) – a sort of action research, which schwarz (2016), and schwarz & elffers (2010) call sustainist heritage enhancement. more practically, in our approach we discerned three stages of pedagogical heritage practice, which echo both freireian pedagogy and design thinking. combining these two, we tried to encourage our participants to take back control of their conditions starting with their own heritage practices (see figure 1). this involved a process of action and reflection. we made sure our spokespersons first identified key-elements in the tangible and intangible cultures that link with urgent economic issues for their community. subsequently, we asked them to select which of these they considered essential for their identity and way of life, and then to work on them going through the following set of steps. first of all, the design thinking concept was brought in for solving the problem at hand. we invited the participants to find alternatives to the actions they had selected. this was part of the empathizing stage, aimed at trying to understand deeply. then, villagers had to come up with new ways to preserve cultural heritage. this we may call conscientization1 (freire, 2014), referring to the use of critical and creative thinking. this is the stage of defining problems and ideating a way to solve them that 1 conscientization  is a translation of the portuguese term conscientização, which is also translated as consciousness raising and critical consciousness. the term was popularized by brazilian educator, activist, and theorist paulo freire in his 1968 work pedagogy of the oppressed. 198 | aseas 14(2) participatory engagement for sustainable innovation in karen communities urges the villagers to think about what they want to do in order to re-include cultural heritage into their daily lives. after that, villagers created quick prototypes based on eye-opening alternatives. as a means of working with villagers who best learn by first doing and then reflecting, freireian techniques are well suited. the focus was on the possibility to develop products based on karen traditional heritage knowhow and then to create a prototype for real-life products and services in the community. we made sure all possibilities of economic value enhancement were present. for the last step, testing the prototypes, much attention was paid to underscoring the heritage value of the activities and products. user experience processes were launched several times in order to determine whether the respective product and service were satisfying. the cyclic character of our doi si than approach both reflected the ethically progressive nature of the freire educational model and used the potential for solving concrete local situations that is so prominent in the design thinking method. the result may be considered sociocultural innovation. figure 1. conceptual framework for participatory research in the karen community. (figure by the authors). aseas 14(2) | 199 jitjayang yamabhai, riemer knoop & patoo cusripituck co-creating activities with the community the following section describes the activities that were organized with the karen community at doi si than from 2019 to 2020 – that is, exploring essential heritage practices and objects suitable for addressing key community concerns and prototyping them to the next level. we also report and analyze how, in doing so, an ecomuseum-like environment was created by curating cultural objects, stimulating placemaking, and empowering sufficiency farming, all contributing to a new, sustainable economic model. before this, however, it is necessary to briefly sketch the background and physical context of the karen location and our relationship with it. the karen community in doi si than the villagers of doi si than, at the northern end of srilanna national park between chiang mai and chiang rai, belong to the s’gaw karen ethnic group, who speak a tibeto-burma language established some 2,000 years ago. of the around half million karen people in thailand, around 300,000 are s’gaw karen, living in the northern part of the country along the myanmar border. in the villages of our research, rice crops are the subsistence staple. yet, most of their income derives from commercial agriculture such as corn, vegetables, and fruits. middle-aged villagers and teenagers also work in big cities, for example chiang mai and chiang rai. household expenses run to around thb 150 per day, or thb 55,000 per year. against a median yearly family income of thb 100,000 to 120,000, this means not more than one child can get proper education, as schooling fees run between thb 30,000 to 50,000 per person a year. through education, children are expected to emancipate themselves from agriculture and advance to higher levels of income, preferably in the city. that poses a challenge. previous research (ichikawa, 2019) points out that karen people in this area strongly believe in traditional culture. in the beginning of the research, we had a conversation with participants about the present situation of karen life, which showed that most karen are thai citizens, which means they have access to formal education, primary health care services, and infrastructure for basic needs. as one of their defining virtues, karen people indicate the freedom to follow their own beliefs and values. their former self-subsistence mode of agricultural production has been transformed through inclusive government projects, by which most karen have been assimilated into thai society. in that wider context, they face social inequity and poverty, and have to work hard at high risk, low income, and comparatively high levels of uncertainty. since there are not many alternative choices, many have had to migrate to the city even though common labor wages are low there. due to the economics of scale, the village agriculture has turned to monocrops based on the predominant use of chemicals, which are also detrimental to the environment, especially forests. the yield from agricultural produce has been uncertain, causing the villagers to additionally buy food and life necessities. our research intervention was aimed at restoring economic resilience through a cultural approach. in response to our invitation to articulate which aspects of local culture they appreciate most, research participants showed themselves proud of a whole range of cultural objects and practices connected to ways of living that 200 | aseas 14(2) participatory engagement for sustainable innovation in karen communities harmonize with the natural environment: spirit drink,2 food preparation, bamboo handicraft, natural dye, and weaving. they agreed that they wished to transmit cultural knowledge but were also willing to transform it to have it better suit the next generations and the sustainability of their lives. they expressed the belief that preserving cultural roots will help their offspring to better live their lives in a transforming society. they made us conclude that the way to conserve intangible heritage is to develop a whole range of objects that, though new, will remain related to the current physical karen context, thus affording meaning sharing with future generations. for this, we adopted a pedagogical heritage practice on the cultural platform of an ecomuseum – as we shall now show. after we had been working with the karen ethnic community at doi si than for over a decade, in 2019, a thailand research fund grant enabled us to expand our experiences. it was entitled 'developing ethnic groups through an ecomuseum approach', our choice of words indicating we were developing, in a co-creating process, a learning place that would rely on and be about the natural, cultural, and economic living environment of the community. we closely adhered to the three pillars of ecomuseology: territory, or sense of place; broad participatory governance, or community involvement; and opening up the heritage discourse to global contexts in a flexible way – the three being connected on a process basis, not through any given project (davis, 2011, p. 134; de varine, 2017, p.194). we shall deal with this point in more detail below. prototyping an ecomuseum the main result of this pedagogical heritage practice is that participants created an innovative cultural heritage preservation method using the ecomuseum concept. we developed a learning route through three of the four villages involved. a map (see figure 2) with a strong visual design articulated the idea of the doi si than territory. in it, each village has its own engagement (learning) center for both tangible and intangible heritage through participatory workshops. outside visitors were expected to and did learn about local heritage practices using multiple sensory approaches, whilst creating their own meaning of the experience(s) they underwent. the tangible and intangible cultural heritage aspects most valued in the karen communities we dealt with can be analyzed under three headings: objects (material culture), placemaking, and economic practice. during conversations, discussions and participatory observations, we found aspects of material culture – the first category – especially significant to the people of the community to be the mortar for producing mue sa to (karen chili paste), home-made bracelets and necklaces. taken together, the villagers said these three categories of objects well represented their life. at the same time, these items seemed to easily lend themselves to receiving added value and up-marketing. if supported by local branding, we assumed it would not be difficult to have them function within a successful, creative local economy. the second category, placemaking, here means a way of creating a learning place. it consisted 2 cultural drink: in karen culture, spirits play an important role in every ritual, therefore, drinking is a cultural practice. aseas 14(2) | 201 jitjayang yamabhai, riemer knoop & patoo cusripituck of converting a private house into a public platform for engagement with local values through distilling a local cultural drink. lastly, as an example of cultural practice, we found one family of participants in the village that had created their own sufficiency farm. below, we explain in detail what it is, how it works, and why we think it is successful. objects: from object to cultural product of the tangible cultural objects, mortar and pestle are an everyday household article. old-style mortars used to be hand-made from teak wood, and some families in the village still possess one of these although most are now made from bamboo. mortar stands for the karen way of food preparation, in particular mue sa to, which is made by pounding chili and mixing it with other ingredients. given the predominance of eating together, the mortar is a key household object in every karen family. the pestle used for pounding ingredients in the bamboo mortar is made from an even harder kind of wood. mue sa to is the signature karen chili paste (see figure 3) included in almost every meal and food combination. there are two kinds of mue sa to, wet and dry. karen chili has become popular with a degree of spiciness. the chili is mixed with garlic, salt, and ma-kan, a local pepper. to prepare it, grilled chili and grilled garlic are mixed and pounded in the mortar. after other ingredients are added, together with almost any kind of meat or vegetable, it is pounded and served. mue sa to comes in seasonal varieties, figure 2. map of doi si than ecomuseum. it covers four villages (bann lom, bann mae pa kee, bann pang bua, bann kee mha fah)3 with an indication of intangible and tangible heritage aspects in each of them. (drawing by the authors). 3 (1) bann lom has a check-in spot for visitors, from which to join workshops for making natural dyes, or brewing cultural drink, while conversing with local karens or visiting the site (rice field, temple, coffee plantation). (2) bann mae pa kee has an exhibition ground and hall. karen kitchen and coffee house offer cooking and tasting experiences. through a check point community, forests, and orchards can be visited. (3) bann pang bau offers an exhibition on rice processing and karen crafts (weaving, bamboo). karen lifestyle can be undergone at a fireplace in a traditional home. (4) bann kee mah fah offers learning opportunities of sufficiency economy farming (orchards). 202 | aseas 14(2) participatory engagement for sustainable innovation in karen communities depending on typical ingredients, leading to various types the year round. it is safe to say mue sa to represents the essence of karen food culture. during this research, the karen of doi si than modified the meaning of the mortar and mue sa to to serve as cultural products that could be marketed and sold to the public. bracelets and necklaces are traditional karen handicraft products. there are different kinds of bracelets and necklaces, the older ones having beads made from the seeds of local trees. in our research project, we invited women to co-create stylish accessories. as a result, after four interventions over the course of one season, half a dozen village women were able to revive their almost forgotten knowhow, and created accessories in new forms (see figures 4 and 5). we found that this process helped villagers to put their memories to use in the present world. the process showed how the women engaging in this handicraft were able to build on their own art, expanding it into different designs, shapes, and sizes. these bracelets and necklaces have become popular gifts for karen and lua ethnic groups in other villages in chiang mai, too. they are displayed in our mobile vivid ethnicity museum caravan and shop. placemaking from consumption to place a highly praised s’gaw karen heritage practice is the preparation of a local alcoholic cultural drink used in numerous rituals. every family makes their own for different occasions, such as praying to the nature spirits before sowing and harvesting, welcome and leave-taking rituals, and in wedding and funeral ceremonies. all of our participants agreed that, over time, the cultural drink had become the most figure 3. mue sa to, signature karen chili paste in a bamboo container made by a villager. a version based on local recipe, with logo and packaging designed by iculture, is sold on facebook and in icraft, the museum shop of rilca’s vivid ethnicity museum caravan. (photo by the authors). aseas 14(2) | 203 jitjayang yamabhai, riemer knoop & patoo cusripituck significant feature of the group’s heritage, representing the core of their ethnic identity. in order to tease out some storytelling, we created a learning workshop about the karen cultural drink by turning a private home into a cultural place. in the living room, a check-in point was created for visitors to learn about the process of cultural drink distilling, overseen by women. visitors were invited to experience the distilling process on their own. during the lengthy boiling stages of the process, they could wander around in the village and learn about karen horticulture, visit a village temple, or play a game with kids. on returning to the cultural drink check-in point, they could take a sip of the fluid just made. we gathered information on how visitors had learned from the hands-on experiences, participating in the making of the drink and the conversations accompanying it. we also observed how they engaged in spontaneous conversations with the karen people. we found that they enjoyed, appreciated, and were impressed by these interactions. cultural practice: sufficiency economy3 while conducting the ecomuseum research project, at the margin of one of the villages, we came across a family that practiced farming on the basis of sufficiency economy.4 the family concerned, consisting of five members, had chosen to live away from the village and had transformed their former mono-crop fields into something based on a different model. the family owns nine buffalos, and plants different kinds of edible trees and vegetables. they breed three kinds of fish in different ponds and 4 sufficiency economy is a philosophy based on the fundamental principle of thai culture. it is a method of development based on moderation, prudence, and social immunity, one that uses knowledge and virtue as guidelines in living. significantly, there must be intelligence and perseverance, which will lead to real happiness in leading one’s life. figure 4 (left). different styles of handmade bracelets designed by women in the village. (photo by the authors). figure 5 (right). a karen woman who re-created karen necklaces in new forms. (photo by the authors). 204 | aseas 14(2) participatory engagement for sustainable innovation in karen communities raise a handful of pigs and a score of chicken.5 as a result, they spend very little on daily food, except for feasts. all members of the family help to create such integrated farming,6 commonly referred to as an aspect of sufficiency economies (office of the national economic and social development board, 2007). the son had graduated from a vocational school in chiang mai, but allegedly was not happy with living in the city and, atypically, had decided to come back to his home village to start experimenting in ecological agriculture. it was he who reintroduced the rotating crop and the mixed, diversified ecology, in co-creation and on an equal footing with his father.7 their project had started two years previously and both had been aware it was a long-term undertaking, professing to be familiar with and admirers of the concept of sufficiency economy. engaging in conversations4567 from numerous dialogues we had with the villagers,8 we were able to get an idea how they conducted heritage activities in the past. “this one i made when i was a child … i can do this”, said one woman who had fashioned traditional karen bracelets (doi si than, 19 october 2019). over the course of three months, she created a range of new designs, mixing multicolored beads in a process we think she just experienced as a fun play. reminding her of her childhood and connecting her to enjoyable experiences, the work with the objects, or so we understood, enabled her to add value to them and share her creations with other people. process is an important notion here. during the making of the chili paste mue sa to, many things are happening. the father of one family told us that, during the process, he sings a mue sa to song of his own creation. he added: mue sa to is the heart of food for karen people. we are happy to make this. every house will always have it in most of their meals. it is us. the most important part is that we, as a family, will be together and eat together at each meal. many conversations will take place during the meal. (doi si than, 14 september 2019) when we talked to the woman who ran the cultural drink distillery in the village, she explained that: being karen, you need to use the cultural drink in all rituals . . . as long as you are able to make the liquor, the rituals will survive. most important is that cultural transmission takes place in the village. if we do not do it, the younger 5 karen people count only big chickens, and small ones are left out. 6 integrated farming means working on the basis of a broad diversity of livestock, vegetables, and fruits as a condition for sustainability through risk diversification. 7 the equal footing is important. in other families, we found a hierarchy among generations. mostly, the father would be master of the house and in charge of all and everything. in this case, father (age 50) and son (age 23) worked together on something they both believed in, trying to learn from their experience. 8 we took notes during and after unstructured conversations; songs we occasionally recorded on videotape. both were used with the consent of the persons involved. aseas 14(2) | 205 jitjayang yamabhai, riemer knoop & patoo cusripituck generations will not know about the process of making this cultural drink. it will fade away. (doi si than, 7 december 2019) these two examples illustrate our broader deduction that, for the karen, one of the key values of food lies in its social quality of bringing people together. the dialogues offered points that led to a new business model. we found that when the karen villagers in our project were seen to be trying to preserve their own culture and at the same time to encourage outsiders to come and visit their ecomuseum. the most important part was marketing: how to reach an audience and get them to visit the village? here, a new way of thinking about existing and novel business models is key. in the beginning, we assumed we could rely on younger generations in the villages to take care of connecting to new audiences, but most of them had already left for the city. it was we, therefore, who had to serve as their platform to reach a wider public.98 lastly, from the many conversations over the entire duration of our project, we came to understand that karen people prefer to live somewhat removed from the competitive, argumentative mainstream of today’s society in thailand. we feel this spirit of karenness needs to be recognized in our vivid ethnicity presentation of it. the karen stressed the importance of living with nature and relying on natural resources within an ecological system that is in balance with itself. in communicating with outside visitors to the ecomuseum, they often expressed their wish to communicate this specific aspect of the karen way of life. building blocks for an ecomuseum in the next part, we provide an interpretation reflecting on the following three points: pedagogical heritage practice, cultural transformation, and culture as social design. pedagogical heritage practice iculture has brought what we call pedagogical heritage practice as an intervention for community development. since the project was aimed at helping ethnic groups develop themselves through an ecomuseum approach, the museum aspects we introduced were primarily meant as learning tools. as to development, we worked at getting a transformative learning process under way. the intended impact of this is increased human capacity in the field of economic self-determination. such capacity would consist of the power for self-transformation, the ability to design one’s own life, and the freedom to live a life of one’s own choosing. this ecomuseum project, therefore, is a true human development project. the way the karen communities have dealt with their heritage issues is not confined to knowledge or knowhow transmission from one generation to the next. it is rather a process of knowledge co-creation for social impact. what mattered were 9 ecomuseums need audiences. in order to have audiences, we needed to promote the village, tell stories of ethnic groups, and have them engage in the value of the place. covid-19 made us postpone our plans in 2020 to create a digital platform, similar to a mobile application for reservations and payments for the community business. 206 | aseas 14(2) participatory engagement for sustainable innovation in karen communities innovation and branding of traditional products, and opening up of private spaces to the public, all with an eye to social change. intergenerational learning was key in co-creating this knowledge and knowhow. in addition, we found that, in this process, conversation and dialogue are important, as opposed to more formal instruction. as this is a transformative learning project, a logical question would be what form is best suited for transformation. that is the area of cultural transformation. cultural transformation9 the participatory action research we undertook has offered karen participants the opportunity to truly make a difference. we may say that it brought about social innovation in the community at three levels, as follows. the process was one of innovating material culture starting from tradition. as ecomuseum expert hugues de varine (2017) aptly said: “it’s not about valuing a heritage by giving it an economic dimension, but to diversify and to grow the local economy by building on heritage”10 (p. 194 ; emphasis added). in addition, it can create even more value in today’s global world, with participants being able to substantially enhance their income from a renewed daily life practice.1110 in the project, we had been building not only a public cultural place but also a platform to communicate and share karen values of being together. participants showed pride in their tangible and intangible heritage. there occurred a transcultural learning between producer and customer, mediated by first-hand user experiences. another finding is a change of the modes of production. we observed a process of cultural transformation, from subsistence farming to mixed cash crop farming, and then work according to the philosophy of sufficiency economy agriculture. this process is not so much about transferring knowledge or cultural heritage as rather involving the skills of unlearning and intergenerational co-creating. culture as social design with the iculture ideas of engagement approach, focus on people, and low-threshold tools such as a caravan, we acted as social designers (urban curators) in communities we had known and worked with already for a decade, and with whom we had a chance to develop meaningful relationships. the community involved and the iculture team are partners, with iculture gaining crucial trust from the community. the karen participants have come to know us as friends and believe we will bring them something good, a sentiment of faith that is underpinned by the awareness of rilca’s mission to use its resources, while conducting research, to help them develop. receiving trust from the community enabled us to develop our research project, which they were willing to participate in. our role has been to encourage our karen 10 authors’ translation, original quote: “il ne s’agit plus de valoriser un patrimoine en lui donnant une dimension économique, mais de diversifier et de faire croître l’économie locale en s’appuyant sur le patrimoine” (de varine, 2017, p. 194). 11 during the prototype testing phase, we sold cultural products at the museum of cultural anthropology’s shop, mahidol university, worth thb 150,000. aseas 14(2) | 207 jitjayang yamabhai, riemer knoop & patoo cusripituck partners, work with them, and fully involve them in thinking, deciding, and acting out the potential for changes that presented themselves. we have been a catalyst for them starting to think about their cultural heritage, to deal with it and take next steps. the results are deemed satisfactory according to the pre-set criteria of expected changes in the mindset and new ways for the karen to sustainably deal with their cultural assets. participants in the community have shown to transform attitudes and actions with regard to the value of their cultural heritage. they have added value to handicraft products, while the application of traditional knowhow (local wisdom) has changed their perspective. on this basis, and after we checked with the villagers during evaluations, we found it safe to conclude that iculture worked as an instrument to convince communities to think and act in a way that fits better with their local contexts. we are confident and have confirmed that they are better equipped now to find their own way of living. synthesis when trying to analyze what made the initiatives we just described successful, we noted that the three categories (objects, place making, and practice) are quite different, yet have something in common. all objects singled out as significant are important because the process of making them turns out to be socially meaningful. key is not the finished product, an object, but the qualities of the process of making it, in this case food, as a process of intangible heritage. the importance of the preparation of cultural drinks demonstrates this as the essence of karen life. it signifies the prime place of belief and ritual in the wider culture. learning about the cultural drink is incorporated into the participatory action workshops. participants learn through multi-sensory experiences and have a chance to shape individual meanings from them. lastly, integrated farming that follows the philosophy of sufficiency economy is a true sustainist practice because it is an exercise of sharing in the family and community, providing a living from local resources while connecting with a broader context (schwarz, 2016; schwarz & krabbendam, 2013). theoretical reflection when a scholar intervenes in a community for the purpose of both unravelling particular socio-cultural issues and effecting social change, she follows a long-standing practice in sociology. whilst the former is no more than participatory observation to formulate and then test a hypothesis about the – often alien – social reality that is being encountered through study (geertz, 1973), the latter resides in the realm of social design, which is increasingly being applied by urban curators. introducing artistic networks, knowhow, and new practices into underprivileged or otherwise challenged areas (communities, neighborhoods), urban curators are catalysts in developments that are characterized by being grassroots, participatory, and localized, and based on principles of reciprocity, connectedness (inclusion), and scale (schwarz, 2016). at the same time, these initiatives are neither nostalgic, romantic, nor regressive. what we clearly see nowadays – at least up until the covid breakout 208 | aseas 14(2) participatory engagement for sustainable innovation in karen communities – are indicators of a movement, massive and stretching across the globe, in placemaking and social design.1211 in museums worldwide, this long-term development appears in two shapes. emanating from the romance languages area, the idea of an écomusée has taken hold, now for half a century, as a countermovement. deriving from a post-world-war-ii revolutionary wave that made itself felt in all parts of european society, a democratic turn also spread over museums, part of a nouvelle muséologie that went hand in hand with the rise of community museums (corsane et al., 2008; desvallées & mairesse, 2010; de varine, 2017; riva, 2017; potter, 2017). born in france, the ecomuseum took a radical step away from universal museums as symbols of the power of the status quo – which we would now call colonial – and proposed instead an idea about museums as local platforms about culture (heritage), nature, economy, and the people constituting it in the territory, the community in fact embodying the very museum and being mirrored in it. not confined to but especially taking root in the spanish and portuguese speaking parts of the world (in french and italian areas it remained largely national), it later found footholds in japan, china, korea, and isolated other places (riva, 2017). the second shape of this topographic turn, as it were, and separated by surprisingly strict linguistic boundaries, is shown in anglophone parts of the world. with an often much weaker formal position of government and administration in cultural affairs, museum democratization there developed along different lines and, perhaps, also with some retardation. with precursors in the 1960s, a landslide change was reached relatively late, most visible in the work of californian museum activist nina simon in the early years of this millennium. she brought precisely the requirements and ownership of local communities to the fore that had been already explored by ecomuseum experiences elsewhere (simon, 2010, 2016). it is perhaps no coincidence that at about the same time, in 2012, an international association for critical heritage studies came into being, heavily relying on critical theory and borne mainly by anglo-saxon and scandinavian museum and heritage theorists.1312 though use of the term écomusée and its derivatives have proliferated over the decades to the point of becoming a meaningless all-purpose word, it is clear that the present intervention-research into the karen communities of northern thailand has enough characteristics to qualify as an ecomuseum development. central to any such process is finding a new balance between society and its environment, or, in the words of the movement’s founder de varine (2017, p. 33): the primary meaning of the prefix ‘eco’ in the term ‘eco-museum’ as opposed to its use in such general terms of reference as ‘economy’ and ‘ecology’, is one that connotes a balanced system between society and the environment: people are central to the existence of social groupings or societies, as they are to human livelihoods and any consequent progress. this was the original meaning of the concept of the ecomuseum as invented in the 1970s. 12 for an introduction to placemaking, see: https://youtu.be/fmkh7lxt4hq. for an introduction to social design, see: https://www.dieangewandte.at/socialdesign_en 13 see: https://www.criticalheritagestudies.org/. amongst the founders are laurajane smith (australian national university, canberra), cornelius holtorp (linnaeus university, sweden), and rodney harrison (ucl, london). aseas 14(2) | 209 jitjayang yamabhai, riemer knoop & patoo cusripituck these basic notions are echoed in the ecomuseum charter, adopted during the 2016 international council of museums (icom) general assembly, which underlines – despite countless local, cultural, and managerial variations – that ecomuseums consider themselves participatory processes that recognize, manage, and protect the local heritage in order to facilitate sustainable social, environmental, and economic development (davis, 2011; su, 2008, p. 29-39). it is easy to mistake this for just preservation efforts on a new, now participatory basis. a stern admonition is therefore required that turns the management into an active mode that at the same time is non-exploitative but rather conducive to integrating it into a new, sustainable socio-economic fabric.1314 but there is perhaps more to it than just analyzing the doi si than project in terms of recognized ecomuseum developments and ticking various boxes to prove so. analyzing placemaking initiatives across the world14 has made it clear that (1) the act of making things by yourself is a condition for ownership and significance and (2) heritage-making is part and parcel of participatory, inclusive processes geared at creating sustainable living environments for all (knoop & schwarz, 2017). requiring awareness of a sense of place then is just another way of acknowledging the role and potential of heritage – not as any external given but as an emergent quality of a participatory meaning-making process. things do not have meanings by themselves, they acquire them in human interaction processes.15 social designers then function as catalysts for engagement and connections, initially providing platforms (sometimes maintaining them durably) for new narratives to be performed on. community members act as experts of their own knowledge and knowhow production and of their own tangible and intangible heritage practices, being engaged in co-creating processes as a base activity. this trend has been recognized as a socialization of heritage (janssen, 2014). the result, it appeared unequivocally, is characterized by a very long trajectory, often as long as a decade, of engagement, commitment, and building of trust – leading to the recognition of the platforms as safe places (knoop & schwarz, 2017). the platform, in this case the iculture caravan vivid ethnicity, was in fact spontaneously referred to, both by the karen villagers and educational visitors in the city, with precisely that term. conclusions this research concerned a project of local community development. our aim was and is to help people to have more choices of lifestyle, which will increase a community’s sustainability in line with the united nations sustainable development goals. the researchers engaged with villagers at doi si than in order to enable them to investigate and identify problems, then create and find solutions based on their own heritage. in the end, the villagers did create ideas and prototypes. these regarded new cultural objects, places, and new ways to perform and share cultural practices. we claim this to be sociocultural innovation, with which to improve the quality of life, through sustainably shifting life conditions from a survival to a sufficiency mode. in both the pedagogy for freedom and the design thinking that we applied, 14 see for example: https://www.dieangewandte.at/socialdesign_en and https://opensource.com/ business/10/8/openideo-new-experiment-open-innovation. 15 for a similar rethinking of meaning, see russell and winkworth (2009). 210 | aseas 14(2) participatory engagement for sustainable innovation in karen communities critical thinking played an important role. the participants actualized their ‘pain points’ and scrutinized them in a critical reflection of the reasons why these may have occurred. a major cause was found in the inability of their own culture to adapt to a contemporary context. they felt this needed to be acted upon. participants tried to design and execute a new way of life by creating objects and engaging in placemaking and new cultural practices. for many, transforming their traditional heritage-making in this way offers a remedy to problems they experience. critical thinking is here, therefore, seen as helping them to open up tradition and rituals to the future. we researchers acted as facilitators who both co-created with the local community and encouraged their members to do so. we acted as mediators to connect to a broader public. the entire village became a place for the new cultural practices, turning into an ecomuseum. the villagers’ acting and reflecting in the research can be interpreted as balanced and sustainable self-determination. among the many things we learned there are some that others may pick up and adapt elsewhere. we phrase them below as recommendations. 1. a social-design intervention is about the future, not the past. using 21st-century skills is therefore key, especially problem solving, and creative and critical thinking. 2. engaging with communities requires long-term (10 years) and step-by-step strategies for growing authentic relations based on mutual trust. 3. communities are not to be told what to do, but rather pointed in a general direction on the basis of trust. if the core target is to have people regain autonomy, they have to be able to decide for themselves and set their own pace. 4. the ecomuseum is a means, not an end. the trick is that context is part of the subject, the margin becomes the center. the critical success factor consisted of creating affordances that induce villagers to develop themselves and live in a more sustainable way by using their heritage and knowhow to create new services and products not only for their own community but also benefitting the outside world. 5. curatorial skills are needed to keep the community alert. for the ecomuseum to work as a strategy for self-development, an actor is required to run the museum and to connect public audiences and villagers. facilitators guide processes with a view to the longer term. 6. narratives should be kept open for continuous meaning making (branding, heritage, signification) and by diverse storytellers. our own position is that we wish to put our institution, network, knowledge(s) and knowhow to the benefit of a sustainable development of mankind, driven by our passion – as exemplified by our iculture team in the vivid ethnicity caravan – and based upon the idea of doing, thus connecting to an activist maker culture that we see growing around us all over the world. the karen groups we have connected to and that now work with us teach us how we can live more sustainably with nature. in reverse, we assist them to gain respect and to exercise their human rights by providing a platform and interface for sharing knowledge, knowhow, and insights, thereby contributing to their becoming less unequal. aseas 14(2) | 211 jitjayang yamabhai, riemer knoop & patoo cusripituck  references corsane, g., davis, p., & murtas, d. (2008). place, local distinctiveness and local identity: ecomuseum approaches in europe and asia. in m. anico, & e. peralta (eds.), heritage and identity (pp. 47-62). routledge. d school. (2020). bootcamp bootleg: institute of design at stanford. https://dschool.stanford.edu/ resources/the-bootcamp-bootleg. davis, p. (2011). ecomuseums: a sense of place (2nd ed.). continuum. de varine, h. (2017). l’écomusée singulier et pluriel. un témoignage sur cinquante ans de muséologie communautaire dans le monde. l’harmattan. desvallées, a., & mairesse, f. (eds.). (2010). key concepts of museology. armand colin. freire, p. (2014). the pedagogy of the oppressed. bloomsbury academic. geertz, c. (1973). the interpretation of culture. basic book. ichikawa, m. (2019). the relationship between s’gaw karen people and the supernatural. ma thesis, cultural studies, mahidol university. janssen, j., luiten, e., rouwendal, j., & renes, h. (2014). character sketches. national heritage and spatial development research agenda. cultural heritage agency of the netherlands. knoop, r., & schwarz, m. (2017). straatwaarden: in het nieuwe speelveld van maatschappelijke erfgoedpraktijken. reinwardt academy ahk. mezirow, j., & taylor, e. w. (2009). transformative learning in practice: insights from community, workplace, and higher education. jossey-bass. mikkelsen, b. (1995). methods for development work and research. sage. nederveen pieterse, j. (2010). development theory. sage. office of the national economic and social development board. (2007). sufficiency economy. implications and applications. sufficiency economy movement sub-committee, office of the national economic and social development board. potter, h. (2017). ecomuseum beginning: hughes de varine, gorge henri riviere and peter davis. https:// ecomuseums.com/ecomuseum-beginnings-hughes-de-varine-georges-henri-riviere-and-peter-davis/ riva, r. (2017). ecomuseums and cultural landscapes. state of the art and future prospects. maggioli. russell, r., & winkworth, k. (2009). significance 2.0. a guide to assessing the significance of collections. collections council of australia. https://www.arts.gov.au/sites/default/files/significance-2.0.pdf?acsf_ files_redirect schwarz, m., & elffers, j. (2010.) sustainism is the new modernism: a cultural manifesto for the sustainist era. distributed art publishers. schwarz, m., & krabbendam, d. (2013). sustainist design guide. bis publishers. schwarz, m. (2016). a sustainist lexicon. seven entries to recast the future: rethinking design and heritage. architectura & natura press. simon, n. (2010). the participatory museum. museum 2.0. simon, n. (2016). the art of relevance. museum 2.0. su, d. (2008). the concept of the ecomuseum and its practice in china. museum international, 60, 29-39. about the authors jitjayang yamabhai is assistant professor and lecturer in the cultural studies program at the research institute for languages and cultures of asia, mahidol university, thailand. he serves as head of the mahidol social engagement cluster. his research interests include 212 | aseas 14(2) participatory engagement for sustainable innovation in karen communities rural development, ethnicity, and sociology of education. his current research focuses on the four creeks mountain ecomuseum and ethnic community development in chiang mai, thailand. ► contact: jitjayang@gmail.com riemer knoop is a classicist and archaeologist. he obtained his ph.d. in etruscology and held several positions in the dutch heritage industry, before he founded gordion cultureel advies (1998) that advises institutions and governments on cultural policy. he was professor in cultural heritage at the amsterdam university of arts and has been a visiting professor in italy, thailand, egypt, russia, columbia, and china. his research focuses on heritage theory and social sustainability. ► contact: r.knoop@chello.nl patoo cusripituck (corresponding author) is a lecturer in museum studies in the cultural studies program at the research institute for languages and cultures of asia (rilca), mahidol university, thailand. she serves as chair of the iculture group that runs the museum of cultural anthropology and the vivid ethnicity caravan exhibition at rilca, and conducts museum training projects for museum practitioners. she holds a position as board member of the thailand museum association and consultant for various museums in thailand. her current research focuses on the four creeks mountain ecomuseum and community development in chiang mai, thailand. her areas of interest include museum education, museum and community engagement, ethnicity, and visual anthropology. ► contact: patoocu@gmail.com aseas 14(1) | 1 editorial timo duilea & dayana lengauerb a university of bonn, germany; b austrian academy of science, austria ► duile, t., & lengauer, d. (2021). editorial. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 14(1), 1-3. uncertainty has become a popular term to describe current conditions and ongoing processes across the world, including southeast asia. the prevailing coronavirus pandemic challenges societies and governments, and states in the region have dealt with this challenge to different degrees of success. whereas some countries in mainland southeast asia, such as thailand or vietnam, have been portrayed as exemplary in dealing with ensuing states of emergency, others, particularly in insular southeast asia (such as the philippines and indonesia), have faced severe repercussions. besides uncertainties with regard to health, the pandemic appears to lead to new state-centrism among the asean states (rüland, 2021) – a phenomenon that coincides with another factor of uncertainty in the region, namely, authoritarian tendencies, and the largescale protests in response to these political shifts. most notably, in thailand, and recently in myanmar, hundreds of thousands of young people went on the streets to express their disaffection pertaining to contemporary political crises. military coups, however, are only one facet of authoritarian tendencies in the region (einzenberger & schaffar, 2018; morgenbesser, 2020); and thailand and myanmar are not the only two countries to face massive protests. in indonesia, for instance, a broad coalition of laborers, environmental and indigenous activists, among others, denounced the so-called omnibus law on job creation that was eventually passed on 5 october 2020 by president joko widodo. demonstrations carried out throughout the year 2020 criticized the law for lowering standards with regard to working conditions and environmental impact (mahy, 2021; sembiring et al., 2020). in all cases, social media played an unprecedented role in shaping public discontent. southeast asia is among the regions with the fastest growth in social media users, and a number of contributions to this issue recognize the urgency of analyzing ongoing developments by taking a closer look at the dynamics evolving in and beyond social media. in a current research article, wolfram schaffar investigates the transnational online movement evolving under the hashtag #milkteaalliance in the wake of china’s striving for hegemony in the region. his meticulous analysis outlines how a new generation of politically active young people connect to respond to the authoritarian tendencies in thailand and beyond. in an interview with scholar-activist pavin chachavalpongpun, who runs the satirical facebook group royalist marketplace, schaffar further illuminates the shift towards a new form of political communication involving elements of transnational pop culture and fandom. self-ironic tiktok videos and editorial w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 51 2 | aseas 14(1) editorial sarcastic memes inform the new satirical style in which young activists in the region challenge authoritarian practices in their countries. social media are also in the focus of the current research article by huang linh dang who provides a regional overview of how governments in southeast asia have used and restricted social media in terms of their measures against the pandemic. this contribution exemplifies the challenge of compounding regional dynamics directly linked to social media and related legislations, particularly in times where popular concepts such as information and disinformation require a critical approach. also in the context of social media use during the coronavirus pandemic, gerhard berka’s network southeast asia contribution investigates the rise of an austria-based facebook group in the wake of malaysia’s pandemic management. berka interprets the activities in this group as a heightened interest in information that can be characterized as trustworthy. just as the majority of southeast asians draw on social media for news and information, also marginalized minorities employ social media in their efforts to build and sustain marginalized socialities. timo duile’s research workshop contribution sheds light on how social media depict an entry point in research on atheist life in indonesia. in his contemplations of how social media has served – but also directed – his ongoing research, duile raises important ethical questions with regard to dealing with virtually any information deriving from online-only encounters, and makes a valuable contribution to social media-based research among marginalized groups. uncertainty has different faces, and despite the rapid growth characterizing regional economies, or the speed with which new technologies are adopted in everyday practices, inequality runs deep throughout the region (the asean post, 2018). migrant workers are among the groups who substantially contribute to the region’s economic growth but who seldomly benefit from it. choo chin low’s current research article analyses ongoing legal reforms in malaysia and their impact on migrant laborers’ welfare. his detailed investigation presents an example of how legal amendments have been enforced in reaction to timely hazards, but have not managed to address some of the most vulnerable labor groups – undocumented migrant workers. malaysian indians form another minority group in malaysia who originally came to the country as migrant laborers. in her current research article, sue ann teo presents rich ethnographic material deriving from her dissertation research among malaysian indians, illuminating their social and political situation and agential responses through the case of temple demolition in penang. women are another group facing economic marginalization in the region, especially due to their unpaid domestic labor, and gender-based discrimination on job markets. in her current research article, thi kim phung dang investigates poor women’s livelihoods in ca mau province in vietnam, highlighting interlinkages with broader socioeconomic contexts – among others, the failure of rural development policies and poverty reduction programs to create employment for women. finally, in her book review of the edited volume appropriating kartini (bijl & chin, 2020), vissia ita yulianto emphasizes how the figure of kartini – a javanese woman and a national heroine – has been appropriated in various western contexts in ways that often obscured and reproduced structural inequalities. aseas 14(1) | 3 timo duile & dayana lengauer  references bijl, p., & grace, c. (eds). (2020). appropriating kartini. colonial, national and transnational memories of an indonesian icon. iseas – yusof ishak institute. einzenberger, r., & schaffar, w. (2018). the political economy of new authoritarianism in southeast asia. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 11(1), 1-12. mahy, p. (2021). indonesia’s omnibus law on job creation: reducing labour protection in a time of covid-19. labour, equality, and human rights research group, working paper no. 23. https://doi. org/10.13140/rg.2.2.25951.28329 morgenbesser, l. (2020). the rise of sophisticated authoritarianism in southeast asia. cambridge university press. rüland, j. (2021). covid-19 and asean: strengthening state-centrism, eroding inclusiveness, testing cohesion. the international spectator. https://doi.org/10.1080/03932729.2021.1893058 sembiring, r., fatima, i., & widyaningsih, g. a. (2020). indonesia’s omnibus bill on job creation: a setback for environmental law? chinese journal of envirnmental law, 4, 97-109. the asean post. (2018, july 17). southeast asia’s widening inequalities. https://theaseanpost.com/article/ southeast-asias-widening-inequalities 4 | aseas 14(1) aseas 14(2) | 173 the ideological stance of multilingualism in education in malaysia in the press 2000-2020 stefanie pillaia, surinderpal kaura, & meng huat chaua a universiti malaya, malaysia ► pillai, s., kaur, s., & chau, m. h. (2021). the ideological stance of multilingualism in education in malaysia in the press 2000-2020. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 14(2), 173-193. the past 20 years have witnessed major shifts in language and education policy in malaysia. this reflects a range of social, economic, and political forces that influence and shape the policymaking in this multi-ethnic and multicultural country. past research has suggested that language and education policies in malaysia tend to have two main stances and are generally related to malay (the national language), english, mandarin, and tamil. one stance is related to issues of globalization and employability, and the other is related to national and ethnic identities. in view of these stances, this paper seeks to contribute to the discussion and debates on these issues by empirically investigating inherent ideological positions in official statements published in two newspapers in the past 20 years. specifically, it adopts concepts from critical discourse studies, and uses methods from computational linguistics to examine official statements from a total of 30,508 malaysian newspaper articles published between 2000 and 2020. the findings indicate that the role of malay and national ideology, and the global positioning of english continue to be central concerns in the discussion of language and education in malaysia. in addition, the importance of learning mandarin is also emphasized. however, indigenous and minority languages are largely absent in the discourses on education policies in the country. the effects of this exclusion are already apparent in the shift to languages like malay, mandarin, and english as a first language, and the increasing number of languages considered to be under threat in malaysia. keywords: education policy; indigenous and minority languages; language policy; malaysia; multilingualism  introduction as a multi-ethnic and multilingual country, malaysia is a rich site for the study of language and education issues. the malays make up more than half of the population in malaysia, followed by the chinese and indians who make up about 25% and 7% of the population, respectively (nagaraj et al., 2015). malaysia also has many indigenous groups. in east malaysia, the ibans are the largest indigenous group in sarawak, accounting for about 25% of the population in this state, while in sabah, the main indigenous groups are the kadazandusun comprising about 30% of the state’s population (department of statistics malaysia, 2011). the indigenous groups in peninsular malaysia, also known as aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 58 174 | aseas 14(2) the ideological stance of multilingualism in education in malaysia in the press 2000-2020 the orang asli, only comprise about 0.7% of the malaysian population, which is a similar percentage to those classified as others. the latter generally includes those who do not fall into any of the officially listed racial categories such as malaysians of portuguese descent. given the diversity of the population in malaysia, it is therefore not surprising that there are almost 137 living languages spoken in the country (eberhard et al., 2020). these include bahasa melayu, or the malay language, which is the national and official language in malaysia, and other malay dialects spoken in the various states in malaysia such as penang, kelantan and sarawak malay. the indigenous languages, which comprise almost 89% of the languages in malaysia, include those spoken in sabah and sarawak, such as bajau, bidayuh, iban, kadazan, murut and penan, and those spoken in peninsular malaysia. the latter include jakun, semai, mah meri, temiar, and temuan, and like most of the indigenous languages in malaysia, are under threat of disappearing (coluzzi, 2017; eberhard et al., 2020). other languages in malaysia include chinese languages like cantonese, hakka, hokkien, and mandarin, and indian languages like malayalam, punjabi, tamil, and telugu. there are also homegrown languages due to language contact, such as the three creole languages, baba malay, chitty malay, and melaka portuguese, as well as the colloquial variety of english (austin & pillai, 2020). despite this linguistic diversity, four languages are dominant in education: malay, english, mandarin, and tamil. malay is the main medium of instruction in public education. there are also chinese1 and tamil medium2 primary schools. this includes provisions that have resulted in an increasing number of private and international schools, where the main medium of instruction is english. in fact, the past 20 years have witnessed major shifts in language and education policies in this country. this reflects a range of social, economic, and political forces that influence and shape the policymaking. past studies have suggested that language and education policies in malaysia tend to have two main stances and are generally related to these languages. one stance is related to issues of globalization and employability, and the other is related to national and ethnic identities. indigenous and minority3 languages are, however, largely ignored in official discourses surrounding language and education (e.g., albury & aye, 2016; puteh, 2006). this paper seeks to contribute to the discussion and debates on these issues by empirically investigating inherent ideological positions in the official statements published in two newspapers in the past 20 years. many of these statements were made by politicians and government officers while others by leaders in communities or non-governmental organizations (ngos). while they in no way represent the whole official discourse on language and education, these statements indicate important views and beliefs publicly expressed in the newspaper. at the same time, they also have the potential to shape and influence public opinion, perceptions and/ 1 in malaysia, chinese-medium schools refer to those where mandarin is the main medium of instruction. 2 tamil is the mother tongue of the majority indian ethnic group in malaysia, the tamils from south india and sri lanka. 3 the minority languages are those spoken by a small segment of the population and include chinese dialects and indian languages (apart from tamil), and creoles. aseas 14(2) | 175 stefanie pillai, surinderpal kaur, & meng huat chau or the actions of policymakers. using methods from computational linguistics alongside critical discourse studies to identify and examine official statements from a total of 30,508 malaysian newspaper articles published between 2000 and 2020, we explore the intrinsic interplay between language choice and the associated ideological positions. language and education policies in malaysia malaysia has witnessed a few major changes and shifts in policymaking concerning language and education over the past 63 years. the first defining decision regarding language was the institutionalization of malay as the national language upon independence in 1957 as stated in article 152 (§1) of the federal constitution4. this was done with the aim of promoting and creating a common national identity. however, the same act also states that “no person shall be prohibited or prevented from using (otherwise than for official purposes), or from teaching or learning, any other language” (federal const. art. 152, §1a). given the country’s british colonial history, english was to be used for legislative matters and legal proceedings. english could also be used in parliament and state assemblies. the use of english was to be allowed for ten years after independence day in 1957 “and thereafter until parliament otherwise provides” (federal const. art. 152, §2, 6). subsequently, the national language acts (1963/1967)5 declared that malay was now to be the official language throughout malaysia except in the two new states on the island of borneo: sabah and sarawak. however, the act gave power to the king to permit the continued use of english for official purposes. similarly, english could still be used in parliament state assemblies and the courts with permission. the latitude given to english in the act caused a considerable amount of dissatisfaction in the malay community and malay language groups (mohd rus & sharif adam, 2008; roff, 1967). in relation to education, a common national curriculum was introduced upon independence in a bid to inculcate national values and a national identity (report of the education committee, 1956, also known as the razak report). however, as previously mentioned, in terms of language, there were essentially four mediums of instruction: malay in the national schools, and english-, chinese-, and tamilmedium national-type schools. while the latter two were allowed to continue at the primary level, by the late 1960s english-medium schools began to be phased out, with the conversion fully completed by 1983 (puteh, 2006). the 1961 education act also resulted in 55 chinese-medium secondary schools making the choice to turn into national schools in return for government funding (tan & teoh, 2015). the remaining schools became independent (private) chinese secondary schools. the status of malay as the main medium of instruction in all educational institutions, except for national-type schools, was further reiterated in the national education act 1996. 4 https://www.jac.gov.my/spk/images/stories/10_akta/perlembagaan_persekutuan/federal_ constitution.pdf 5 http://www.agc.gov.my/agcportal/uploads/files/publications/lom/en/act%2032.pdf 176 | aseas 14(2) the ideological stance of multilingualism in education in malaysia in the press 2000-2020 shifts in language and education policy emphasis on the use of english in the education sector increased in the 1990s when malaysia was responding to globalization and aiming to be an education hub for the region (economic planning unit, 1993). english started to be used as the medium of instruction in the increasing number of private colleges in the country (gill, 2002; omar, 1996). then, in view of the increasing importance of english as a language of science and technology, the malaysian government introduced the teaching of science and mathematics in english in 2003. this was considered as ‘a near-reversal’ of the initial national language policy by some (e.g., kaur & shapii, 2018). the policy was implemented in stages at both primary and secondary education levels. the policy was not popular among language associations, and it was reported that students were performing badly in the two subjects because they failed to understand the content that was being taught in english (hashim, 2009; rashid et al., 2017). thus, in july 2009, the minister of education announced that the policy would be gradually phased out. this involved a switch back to the use of the malay language, as well as mandarin and tamil to teach these subjects. in 2012, a new policy known as mbmmbi, the malay acronym for upholding the malay language and strengthening the english language, was introduced in a bid to create proficient bilingual speakers. this initiative was part of the malaysia education blueprint (meb) 2013-2025 (ministry of education malaysia, 2013). to support this policy, roadmaps for both malay and english language education were formed with time-based strategies and action plans: pelan hala tuju pendidikan bahasa melayu 2016-2025 (ministry of education malaysia, 2017) and english language education reform in malaysia: the roadmap 2015-2025 (ministry of education malaysia, 2015). this meb also called for the acquisition of a third language. at present, more than 300 day-schools and fully residential public schools in malaysia offer languages such as arabic, japanese, french, german, korean, and mandarin (ministry of education malaysia, 2018). the list of elective language subjects that upper-secondary school students can take from 2020 includes three indigenous languages (ministry of education malaysia, 2019), although these are likely to be limited to the areas where these languages are used, and by the availability of teaching and learning resources. these languages are iban, kadazanduzun, and semai. apart from semai, which thus far has only been available at the primary level, the other two languages have been taught in primary and secondary schools in two states for more than 25 years now: iban in sarawak and kadazandusun in sabah. in 2016, two further programs related to language education were introduced: the highly immersive programme and the dual language programme (dlp). these two programs can be viewed as extensions of the mbmmbi policy. the highly immersive programme supports students by providing more opportunities for the use of english within and outside the english language classroom, which was among the aims of mbmmbi. the dlp policy offers a choice to schools to use malay or english for the teaching of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (kaur & shapii, 2018; pillai & ong, 2018). from january 2020, the state of sarawak began teaching science and mathematics in english to year one students in all national primary schools, except for chinese-medium schools. it should also be noted that, as part of the policy aseas 14(2) | 177 stefanie pillai, surinderpal kaur, & meng huat chau to make malaysia a regional hub for education, there has been a sharp increase in the number of international schools and institutes of higher education. more than half of the students in international schools, where english is the main medium of instruction, are malaysians (nasa & pilay, 2017). this does bring into question the original aim of having a common curriculum with fully malay-medium public education at the secondary school level. ideologies in language and education policy a nation’s language policy-making is often the result of several factors. spolsky (2004), for example, highlighted four: national ideology, the role of english in the globalization era, the nation’s sociolinguistic situation, and an interest in linguistic minority rights. gill (2014), on the other hand, identified the following reasons in her analysis of the observed shifts in malaysian language and education policy: globalization, international economic competitiveness, the need for access to science and technology, and employability. indeed, these factors mentioned by spolsky (2004) and gill (2014) exemplify some of the ideologies inherent in malaysian language policies. as mentioned previously, by giving malay the status of the sole national language in the country, the government promoted the national language as a strong identity marker of all malaysians, replacing the role that english had occupied during the colonial period. the role of malay as the official national language is not open to dispute as it is enshrined in the constitution. over the years, this, and the fact that malay is represented as the main linguistic resource for national integration, have been constantly reinforced by both the governing (which have been predominantly malay-based) and non-governing political parties. however, the interaction between english as a global language, and malay as the national language, has been an intrinsic and complex one in malaysia (e.g., zhou & wang, 2017). on the one hand, english is important given its role in asean as its de facto working language alongside its use in asean in a wide variety of domains (low & hashim, 2012), its global position, and its value in international trade and commerce. on the other hand, nation building requires a common language to help form a national identity, and malay, as a language spoken by the largest ethnic group in malaysia, naturally becomes the language choice (kementerian perpaduan negara, 2021). as albury and aye (2016, p. 78) summarize: the malaysian government seems to see itself between a rock and a hard place linguistically as it operates a staunchly malay-oriented nation-building agenda which affords primacy to bahasa melayu [malay] while operating nonetheless a highly internationalised economy which demands effective english language proficiency amongst malaysians. the main shifts in language education policies in malaysia observed over the past 20 years reflect and capture this tension and competition between english and malay in the country. the present study, as noted earlier, seeks to explore and understand the inherent ideological positions of language and education issues captured in official statements of these past 20 years, as reported in two malaysian newspapers (the star and malaysiakini) from 2000 to september 2020. 178 | aseas 14(2) the ideological stance of multilingualism in education in malaysia in the press 2000-2020 analytical framework the analysis of the data is based upon concepts adopted from critical discourse studies (cds), namely, the notions of ideology, power, and access. van dijk (1998) refers to ideology as a set of belief systems, social representations, and social practices that are shared by group members. ideologies are expressed in various structures of text and talk, and often influence the ways in which social attitudes are expressed in various texts, such as in media and policy, among others. critical discourse analysts argue that all media texts are inherently ideological as the mass media has ideological power that translates into the direct or indirect articulation of ideological stances on specific issues and phenomena (fairclough, 2012). connected to ideology are the notions of power and access. bourdieu (1993) argues that power takes the shape of ‘cultural capital’, where the power of dominant groups is likely to be legalized through laws, traditions, culture, and consensus. hegemonic power, then, exhibits itself once it becomes entrenched in tradition and culture, as well as habits and norms. this is significant because hegemonic power can control access to resources (often in terms of knowledge or material things). hegemonic power also enables specific ideological stances to be exhibited in different forms of discourse where access to the control of a particular type of discourse (in this case the discourse of language and education issues) points to the powerbase of a significant ideology. the notions of power, ideology, and access have often been used by critical discourse analysts to gain deeper insights into how texts are articulated and how power operates within them. for instance, woolside-jiron (2011) employed cds to explain the ways in which reading policies are taken up in california, arguing that these policies socialize us into accepting certain values and goals while rejecting others. similarly, cds enables us to reveal the workings of ideology and ideological stances in media and policy texts on education in malaysia. these texts would necessarily point the way for people to accept certain ways of thinking about education in malaysia, and in the process, position people, and language and education issues in very specific ideological ways. the analysis itself is based upon five analytical categories derived from the data, which signify the arguments or reasons by which the support of or objection to a particular language, or to specific language policies is articulated. these categories (which are explained further below) are (1) employability, (2) national identity, (3) ethnic and cultural reasons, (4) globalization, and (5) economic or commercial value. methods the study considered all the articles published in the press in malaysia from 2000 until september 2020 for official statements that highlighted reasons for language choice and education policy in the country. initially, the focus was on three main english language newspapers in malaysia: the new straits times, the star, and malaysiakini. however, only articles from the star and malaysiakini were fully searchable online from january 2000 to september 2020, while the articles from the new straits times were only available from 2013 to 2020. we therefore focused on these two newspapers to identify official statements on language and education issues. aseas 14(2) | 179 stefanie pillai, surinderpal kaur, & meng huat chau methodologically, we employed computational linguistic tools to first identify the related articles, then the prominent categories of analysis. finally, we embedded ideological concepts from critical discourse studies into the analysis and discussion. data collection to identify related articles, the following search terms from the star and malaysiakini were used: chinese/chinese language, malay/malay language, english/english language, tamil/ tamil language, mandarin, bahasa, minority language, iban, dusun, kadazan. a web crawler program was developed based on pyspider, a spider system in python, to download and gather all these articles in a folder, including details such as url and date of publication. based on this method, a total of 30,508 related articles were identified. all these articles were later coded according to the label pattern, year-newspaper+number. for example, the coding 2011-ts00028 indicates that it is an article published in 2011 and that it is the 28th article in the collection of articles from 2000-2020 appearing in the star (ts). the coding 2016-mk00862, on the other hand, indicates that it is an article published in 2016 and that it is the 862nd article in the collection of articles from 2000-2020 appearing in malaysiakini (mk). as this study focuses on official statements in the discussion of language and education issues, the challenge was then to identify and extract relevant statements from all these 30,508 articles. to this end, the search was restricted to those articles that discussed language and education issues based on the word education. further, the computer capacities were exploited where the official statement sentence pattern, official label + express label + language label + others, was created and pattern matching was achieved through python regular expression. here, official label refers to and includes such keywords as minister, director, ministry, bureau, association and ngo. express label, on the other hand, refers to expressive verbs (i.e., say, tell, express, claim, state, point out, mention, issue, stress, assert, report, declare, and announce) and single/double quotation marks. language label comprises terms such as english language, mandarin, malay, malay language, bahasa, tamil, tamil language, chinese, chinese language, iban, dusun, kadazan, and minority language. only sentences that meet all these three requirements at the same time were extracted. it must also be noted that all these terms were constantly refined in the light of close reading of relevant articles. for example, it was observed that the pronouns he or she occurred quite frequently in quoted official statements to refer to a particular minister or director in the government sector. therefore, these two pronouns were eventually included in the official label to achieve a more accurate identification of all relevant statements in the newspaper articles. this close, interactive analysis involving both automatic computer search and human observation yielded a total of 2,914 instances of related official statements. this interactive analysis for data refinement also applied to the identification of official statements associated with ideological positions. initially, the official statement search was restricted to articles discussing such reasons as standards, 180 | aseas 14(2) the ideological stance of multilingualism in education in malaysia in the press 2000-2020 employability, and national and ethnic identities. upon close reading of some relevant articles in this initial phase, the search was expanded to include such frequently occurring notions as culture and globalization. this generated a larger number of articles containing the official statements relevant to the current study. another round of random but close reading of articles in this collection suggested additional, important notions such as economic and commercial values. the resulting list of categories of reasons for the debates and discussion of language and education issues in the official statements comprises the following: a) employability b) national identity c) ethnic and cultural reasons d) globalization e) economic or commercial value. with these categories identified, the sentence pattern for computer processing mentioned before was then revised as official label + express label + language label + reason label + others. based on this revision, a total of 381 relevant official statements were identified. for the benefit of future replication studies, here is the full list of search items used in this study based on the procedures previously described: a) employability: job / employ / career / hire b) national identity: national identit / patrio / national unity c) ethnic and cultural reasons: culture / ethnic / root / mother tongue / extinct / indigen d) globalization: global / international / worldwide e) economic or commercial value: econom / financ / commerc / business since the automatic analysis of the corpus is restricted to superficial linguistic features (sinclair, 1991), the search results of 381 statements were manually checked. each official statement was checked and examined by two members of the research team against the original article in which the statement was found. this also involved reassigning official statements to the relevant categories upon the agreement of both readers. through this labor-intensive process, a final total of 131 official statements were identified for the analysis and discussion of this study. findings the 131 official statements were, as noted earlier, based on five categories of arguments or reasons that were used in the statements as arguments in support of or against the promotion of a language or language policy. they are: (1) employability, (2) national identity, (3) ethnic and cultural reasons, (4) globalization, and (5) economic or commercial value. a comparison of the focus of arguments for the promotion of each language is particularly revealing of the ideological stance in the discussion of language and education issues in malaysia. aseas 14(2) | 181 stefanie pillai, surinderpal kaur, & meng huat chau arguments for language choice table 1 presents the results of the analysis of arguments in support of particular languages in the official statements in the two newspapers considered in this study. there were noticeable differences for reasons of language choice in the debates and discussion of language use and policymaking as reported in the newspapers. the importance of employability, for example, is often cited in support of an emphasis on english (82%) (1) and mandarin (18%) (2): 1) mohamed khaled [higher education minister datuk seri mohamed khaled nordin] said students entering universities should first have excellent communication skills and a good command of the english language, adding that such students have better employment prospects, particularly in big companies. (2013-ts00851). 2) earlier, dr. fong, who is human resources minister, said employees in the private and government sectors were encouraged to learn mandarin, as it would help them enter the chinese market. (2004-ts00252). english (68%), and, increasingly, mandarin (30%), have also become the focus of emphasis in the country due to their global value: 3) being a global language, young people should make sure that they are proficient in the english language, said deputy education minister ii p. kamalanathan. (2013-ts00124). 4) “having mastery of the english language prepares students for the rapidly changing globalised world”, said eon bank bhd senior executive vice president and group business and investment banking head peter y c chow. (2011-ts00806). 5) najib [prime minister datuk seri najib tun razak] said mandarin is important in linking malaysians to the global community. (2011-ts00021). 6) “tomorrow’s global language is mandarin, so we must move towards this in collaboration with all these industries and foundries”, he [human resources minister m. kulasegaran] said after a working visit to the iti here yesterday. (2018-ts00234). table 1. reasons for language choice in the newspapers (2000-2020). (own compilation). total employability national identity ethnic and cultural reasons globalization economic or commercial value freq % freq % freq % freq % freq % freq % malay 26 20 0 0 18 82 7 32 0 0 1 3 english 50 38 9 82 1 5 0 0 32 68 8 28 mandarin 46 35 2 18 2 9 8 36 14 30 20 69 tamil 6 5 0 0 1 5 4 18 1 2 0 0 minority languages 3 2 0 0 0 0 3 14 0 0 0 0 totals 131 100 11 100 22 100 22 100 47 100 29 100 182 | aseas 14(2) the ideological stance of multilingualism in education in malaysia in the press 2000-2020 similarly, these two languages have been the primary languages named to offer economic or commercial value, with mandarin accounting for 69% of the total official statements and english 28%: 7) “like it or not, english and mandarin have commercial value and language skills are important for a country like malaysia, whose export industries play a vital role to its economic growth”, said party president datuk seri dr chua soi lek after attending a chinese new year celebration organised by taman soga mca branch here on saturday. (2013-ts00099). 8) dr chua [mca president datuk seri dr chua soi lek] said languages such as mandarin and english have commercial value, and a good command of both languages would enhance one’s competitive edge. (2013-ts00087). as expected, national identity is predominantly used as an argument for a focus on the malay language, accounting for 82% of the total official statements in this category: 9) “proficiency in bahasa malaysia will help us carry our national identity to enable malaysians to communicate and integrate with other communities in this country”, najib [prime minister datuk seri najib tun razak] said when opening the new school block of sjk chung hua no. (2017-ts00198). 10) he [information, communications, culture and arts minister datuk seri dr rais yatim] also said that championing bahasa malaysia as the national language should not only be the responsibility of the malays, but the other races as well. “our national language can be the vehicle for racial unity and communication to facilitate the realisation of 1malaysia involving all the communities in the country.” (2009-ts02008). further, ethnic and cultural reasons were put forward as arguments for a focus on mandarin (36%), malay (32%), tamil (18%), and minority languages (14%): 11) “the national language and english are important but other languages such as mandarin and tamil should also be learnt.” muhyiddin [deputy prime minister tan sri muhyiddin yassin] said by understanding the languages, malaysians could better appreciate the way of life, values and cultures of the country’s various races. (2010-ts00050). 12) earlier, maszlee [education minister] had said that the creation of the standard malay language framework developed by national language experts would be a big boost to the speakers of the malay language in the context of culture and language aspirations. (2018-mk01398). 13) “it is about the soul, culture and heritage of the community”, said pathi [tamil educationist sp pathi], a lawyer who is also editorial advisor to tamil monthly. (2003-mk01136). 14) gobind [communication and multimedia minister gobind singh] said he was very happy with the celebration themed ‘bejalai betungkatka adat, tinduk bepanggalka pengigat’ (know your culture and roots in the iban language), which also saw the participation from the dayak community of west kalimantan, indonesia. (2019-mk01331). aseas 14(2) | 183 stefanie pillai, surinderpal kaur, & meng huat chau reasons for the promotion of particular languages when the data for reasons for each language choice were examined, several interesting insights were obtained. table 2 presents an overview of the reasons. we first turn to figure 1 for the results of the analysis of reasons for the promotion of the malay language. as can be seen from figure 1, national identity was the dominant reason in the discussion of the promotion of the malay language, accounting for 69% of all official statements associated with it: total malay english mandarin tamil minority languages freq % freq % freq % freq % freq % freq % employability 11 8 0 0 9 18 2 4 0 0 0 0 national identity 22 17 18 69 1 2 2 4 1 17 0 0 ethnic and cultural reasons 22 17 7 27 0 0 8 17 4 67 3 100 globalization 47 36 0 0 32 64 14 30 1 17 0 0 economic or commercial value 29 22 1 4 8 16 20 43 0 0 0 0 total 131 100 26 100 50 100 46 100 6 100 3 100 table 2. reasons for the promotion of particular languages in the newspapers (2000-2020). (own compilation). figure 1. reasons highlighted in official statements for the promotion of the malay language. (own compilation). 184 | aseas 14(2) the ideological stance of multilingualism in education in malaysia in the press 2000-2020 15) “proficiency in bahasa malaysia will help us carry our national identity to enable malaysians to communicate and integrate with other communities in this country”, najib [prime minister datuk seri najib tun razak] said when opening the new school block of sjk chung hua no. (2017ts00198). 16) he [chief secretary to the government ali hamsa] added that the government was making various efforts to empower bahasa malaysia without marginalising english. (2013-mk01487). ethnic and cultural reasons are also used in support of the malay language: 17) “english is important for knowledge and international communication while bahasa malaysia is important for national identity, culture and heritage”, she [dr nik safiah, a guest researcher at malay studies academy] says, stressing that problems arise only when one language is judged to be superior over another. (2011-ts00800). 18) dr rais [arts, culture and heritage minister datuk seri dr rais yatim] said that his ministry would embark on several language culture education programs to revive and protect bahasa melayu as the nation’s heritage. (2004-ts02066). turning now to english, we find that globalization accounts for more than half (64%) of the reasons expressed in all the official statements associated with it. this reflects the global language position of english (see figure 2): 19) in his [prime education ministry deputy director-general datuk dr amin senin] speech, dr amin said that in this modern era, the english language is an international language and malaysian students need to improve their english in order to compete on an international level. (2013-ts00856). 20) “english is used internationally, and it enables us to communicate easily with people from other countries”, said orando holdings managing director datuk dr eng wei figure 2. reasons highlighted in official statements for the promotion of the english language. (own compilation). aseas 14(2) | 185 stefanie pillai, surinderpal kaur, & meng huat chau chun as he stressed the importance of the english language. (2014-ts01093). 21) prime minister abdullah ahmad badawi today urged malaysians to master the english language as it is vital for success in a globalised world. (2004-mk00699). in addition, malaysians were urged to master english to make themselves more competitive in the job market and to drive the economic growth of the country, citing reasons of employability (18%) (22) and economic or commercial value (16%) (23): 22) he [sarawak yang dipertua negeri abdul taib mahmud] expressed the fear that more than 20,000 fresh graduates from sarawak would have difficulty getting employed due to their inability to master the english language. (2016-mk00862). 23) british trade and investment director tony collingridge said competency in the english language is essential in malaysia’s drive to be an innovative, high income and high value-added economy. (2013-ts00907). mandarin, on the other hand, has been promoted for three main reasons. it is emphasized for its economic and commercial value (44%) (24), for its increasingly important role in a globalized world (31%) (25), and for its ethnic and cultural value (17%) (26) (see figure 3): 24) citing the mandarin language as an example, he [lembah pantai mp nurul izzah anwar] says mandarin is not only the language for the chinese ethnic group, but also an important economic language in this globalised world. (2013-mk00372). 25) najib [prime minister datuk seri najib tun razak] said mandarin is important in linking malaysians to the global community. (2011-ts00021). 26) “the national language and english are important but other languages such as mandarin and tamil should also be learnt.” muhyiddin [deputy prime minister tan sri muhyiddin yassin] said by understanding the languages, malaysians could figure 3. reasons highlighted in official statements for the promotion of mandarin. (own compilation). 186 | aseas 14(2) the ideological stance of multilingualism in education in malaysia in the press 2000-2020 better appreciate the way of life, values and cultures of the country’s various races. (2010-ts00050). from the newspaper articles analyzed, it was found that only a small number of official statements were made in this period related to the promotion of the tamil language (figure 4) and minority languages. a frequently cited emphasis on tamil (67%) is for ethnic and cultural reasons (27). this same argument is the only reason found in the data in support of the minority languages (28): 27) kulasegaran [dap national vice-chair m kulasegaran] said indians should demonstrate support for tamil education because the language is a repository of their culture. (2014-mk00321). 28) gobind [communication and multimedia minister gobind singh] said he was very happy with the celebration themed ‘bejalai betungkatka adat, tinduk bepanggalka pengigat’ (know your culture and roots in the iban language), which also saw the participation from the dayak community of west kalimantan, indonesia. (2019-mk01331). discussion the results from the analysis of the official statements in the newspapers published from 2000 to 2020 suggest that english and mandarin have often been represented ideologically as two major languages enjoying a global prominence with economic and commercial value. having a good command of english has further been highlighted as offering the additional advantage as far as employability is concerned. the discursive connections between employability and the two languages of english and mandarin appear to stem from current socio-economic practices that prioritize the ideologically-loaded language privilege of english and mandarin. mandarin is privileged specifically in terms of the figure 4. reasons highlighted in official statements for the promotion of the tamil language. (own compilation). aseas 14(2) | 187 stefanie pillai, surinderpal kaur, & meng huat chau affordances it presents with access to the economic market of china, which, in turn, promotes economic power for individuals. the high value accorded to mandarin has also been reported in other southeast asian countries such as singapore (starr & kapoor, 2021) and indonesia (hoon & kuntjara, 2019). while mandarin is not a lingua franca in malaysia or in any of the other southeast asian countries, it is already perceived to hold a substantial amount of symbolic power in terms of knowledge-based socio-economic development in connection to china, one of the largest markets in the world. english, on the other hand, is privileged because of the power it holds within global contexts as a lingua franca. ideologically, english holds a significantly powerful position socio-politically as a shared language across the world. the symbolic power of socio-economic development that english wields has cemented its position as a business lingua franca, where english forms the frame of reference for communication and knowledge sharing in the global business world, and in the development of a knowledge-based society. such a stance is also evident in singapore and the philippines (tupas, 2018). the tension between policies that highlight english language education or even english as a medium of instruction is not peculiar to malaysia (kirkpatrick, 2012). the tensions in malaysia emerge from the dissenting voices of malay, mandarin, and to a lesser extent, tamil language educationists. they can also be heard from parents, with those of the urban middle-class more likely to be pro-english medium instruction (yap, 2015). these voices can be powerful enough to force language education policies to shift, as with the end of the teaching of science and mathematics in english policy and the introduction of the dual language policy in malaysia. it is interesting to note that, despite the predominant role of english in relation to the growing power of asean (e.g., hashim & leitner, 2020; kirkpatrick, 2012; low & ao, 2018), there was no indication of this emphasis in our media data. what was emphasized in the media texts instead was an apparent competition between english and mandarin in terms of the privilege granted to both these languages. we can see here that not only are english and mandarin given prominence in terms of employability; they are also privileged in terms of being global and international languages, thereby affording access to the global world. the achievement of economic and knowledge-based power for malaysians is premised upon the value of the access that proficiency in english and mandarin provides for malaysians. fairclough (2012) argues that knowledge drives economic and social processes, and that “the generation, circulation, and operationalisation of knowledges in economic and social processes” (p. 3), in turn, drive change in society. we argue that the prominence of both english and mandarin in our findings stems from the ideologically laden perception that both languages are seen as drivers for the generation, circulation and operationalisation of knowledge, and, thus, afford access and opportunities for individuals to become members of a knowledge society. malay, on the other hand, is predominantly the language choice emphasized for reasons of national identity for the country. this is perhaps unsurprising given the status of malay as the national language. the significance of national identity in relation to malay is a socio-political representation of national unity in malaysia. this is common in many countries as part of the decolonization process, and, as tupas (2018) points out, “southeast asian social policies have largely been anchored in the desire to promote and perpetuate particular forms of nationalism” (p. 154). 188 | aseas 14(2) the ideological stance of multilingualism in education in malaysia in the press 2000-2020 at the international level, however, there is very little discussion about the value of malay' for a global community or in global trade and demand. while there are some official statements from the newspapers that suggest plans and efforts by the malaysian government to develop the malay language into an international language, malay is represented primarily in terms of its value to national identity. legitimizing malay as a crucial element of national identity is an ideological stance precisely because linguistic identity is intrinsically tied to the notion of a nation-state and belonging to that nation-state. while there are also occasional voices found in our corpus of official statements, which consider the four major languages in malaysia to be ‘part and parcel’ of the national identity in the country, by large malay is the language that is given prominence in the construction of the malaysian national identity. as noted earlier, nation building has always been a focus in the discussion of language choices and education policies in malaysia. in this sense, malay has always had a symbolic function in the country, being the mother tongue of the malays who are the largest population of malaysia (kaur & shapii, 2018). the emotional attachment to language is real and is often the result of a language being intrinsic to the culture and ethnic identity of a particular group of people. as shown in this study, ethnic and cultural reasons are often used in support of malay, mandarin, and tamil. in fact, this was the only reason identified in this study for the promotion of minority languages. in this regard, albury and aye (2016, p. 71) argue: the domestic sociolinguistic situation only influences policy in so far as malaysia’s response to its ethnolinguistic minorities is limited to minimal linguistic rights in the education system. this limited acceptance of linguistic diversity continues a tradition of protecting what malaysian law sees as the supremacy of malay culture and language. while language and education in malaysia have always been closely linked to issues of ethnicity, one interesting observation is that the promotion of mandarin has increasingly been disassociated from an ethnic-based argument, and emphasis on the language is instead placed in light of the rise of china as a super economic power. the findings indicate that there exists a perceived competition between language choices and emphasis in education policy in multi-ethnic and multicultural malaysia. this is particularly evident in the case of english and malay, and english and mandarin, as discussed earlier. a final important observation in the analysis of the official statements is the increasing emphasis on producing multilingual malaysians instead of focusing on one language at the expense of others in the country: that is, malaysians have been urged to be proficient in several languages to be able to compete globally and to help the nation to achieve the status of a developed country. this stance has been consistently represented in the media, and points once again to the access to power that multilingualism can offer individuals, both educationally and economically. the future challenge for the country, it seems to us, is how to move away from a monolingual lens in policymaking to a multilingual and multicultural perspective (e.g., smidt et al., 2021; tham et al., 2020) in line with the final observation made above. that is to say, the education system in malaysia is still largely monolingual aseas 14(2) | 189 stefanie pillai, surinderpal kaur, & meng huat chau in both conceptualization and practice, reflecting what tan (2005, p. 49) has called ‘linguistic segregation’ as far as individual schools are concerned: whereas education through different languages is widely accepted in malaysia, each individual school is mainly seen as operating through one medium and is thus a monolingual school except that other languages may be taught as subjects. therefore, particular schools are labelled as malayor chineseor tamil-medium schools. in fact, in one of official statements from our data, dong jiao zong (djz), the umbrella body for the management of chinese schools in malaysia, was quoted to have commented that the initial plan of language policy of the country in 1957 was with a multicultural and multilateral focus: 29) djz contended that the education system is intended to be based on multi-culturalism and multi-lateralism. it backed this by quoting the education ordinance 1957: ‘the educational policy of the federation is to establish a national system of education acceptable to the people as a whole which will satisfy their needs and promote their cultural, social, economic and political development as a nation, with the intention of making the malay language the national language of the country whilst preserving and sustaining the growth of the language and culture of people other than malays living in the country’. djz said the 1960 rahman talib report and the education act 1961 have ‘twisted and changed the multi-cultural and multi-lateral education system into a unilateral one’ that was now in practice, under the education act as amended in 1996. (2011-mk01537). the idea of an education system based on a multilingual and multicultural perspective is, however, a complex one and requires an informed approach to its conceptualization and implementation. as garcía and tupas (2019) point out, many schools have been rather successful in “teaching for monolingualism, even when on the surface bilingualism is the goal” (p. 402). it is beyond the scope of the current paper to discuss this issue in detail. interested readers may gain insights into what we mean by a multilingual and multicultural perspective by referring to nieto (2010), garcía and li (2014), cook and li (2016), de houwer and ortega (2019), and tham et al. (2020). we do, however, acknowledge that the findings we have reported have their limitations. first, as previously mentioned, this study focused only on two newspapers to identify official statements on language and education issues: the star and malaysiakini. future research might explore the extent to which the observations reported here based on the two newspapers hold true more widely. second, while this is beyond the scope of the present study, we note that it is always useful to have further insights into the issues discussed in this paper through, for example, interviews with different stakeholders. this would allow an exploration of how ideologies are shaped as a result of various socioeconomic and political factors. in addition, official documents by the government may be examined to ascertain the extent to which certain ideologies projected in the media are in line with what was officially published, conveyed and constructed by the relevant, responsible government bodies. this would contribute to a better understanding of the ideological stance of multilingualism in education in the country. 190 | aseas 14(2) the ideological stance of multilingualism in education in malaysia in the press 2000-2020 conclusion a consideration of the language and education issues in malaysia over the past 20 years, seen through the official statements in the two newspapers considered in the present study, suggests an emphasis on the strengthening of the status of malay as the national language. at the same time, the impact of globalization, economy, and employment opportunities contribute to a continued emphasis on english and a renewed interest in mandarin in the country. language policymaking appears to be centering upon the relationship between english and malay, largely neglecting the requirements of other languages, which are marginalized due to their minority status. the languages and cultures of minorities, such as malaysian indians and the indigenous people, are broadly excluded from the discussion. all these seem to aggravate the problem in seeking uniformity due to economic globalization and nationalism (cf., watson, 2007), rather than preservation and celebration of local knowledge and culture through multilingual education. while there is a token acknowledgement of the need to preserve minority languages and culture, this is not framed in concrete processes, leading to a deepening gap between the privileging of english, mandarin, and malay at the expense of other minority languages (ariffin, 2021). while past research has also suggested that national ideology and the international role of english have been central concerns in language policy development in malaysia (e.g., albury & aye, 2016), our study further shows that the discussion and debates have now extended to acknowledge the importance of learning mandarin in and for malaysia, with china emerging as an economic and political superpower in the world, and the advantage of developing multilingual capacities. an implication that emerges from this finding is that policymakers need to think about how this multilingual focus can be strengthened, realized, and promoted in making the education system more inclusive and diverse. this, we believe, will be an important agenda for the country to ensure that the focus on malay, english, and mandarin is not at the detriment of other languages. in fact, the findings indicate that there need to be more conversations surrounding minority and indigenous languages in malaysia, addressing in particular the type of support that can be provided to encourage their use and maintenance. at the same time, a true understanding of what multilingual capacities entail is warranted.  references albury, n. j., & aye, k. k. 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(2015, august 9). turning a new page. the borneo post online. https://www.theborneopost. com/2015/08/09/turning-a-new-page/ zhou, m., & wang, x. (2017). introduction: understanding language management and multilingualism in malaysia. international journal of the sociology of language, 2017(244), 1-16. about the authors stefanie pillai is a professor at the faculty of languages and linguistics, universiti malaya in malaysia. her areas of research interest include language use and language policies in multilingual contexts, and varieties of english. she also works on language documentation and revitalization with a particular focus on melaka portuguese, an endangered language spoken in malaysia. ► contact: stefanie@um.edu.my aseas 14(2) | 193 stefanie pillai, surinderpal kaur, & meng huat chau surinderpal kaur is an associate professor at universiti malaya. her core areas of research focus on critical discourse studies and multimodality. her research interests include social media discourses, terrorism, far-right discourses, gender, and sexuality. her more recent research explores islamophobia, hate speech and extremist discourse. ► contact: surinder@um.edu.my meng huat chau is senior lecturer at universiti malaya where he teaches and supervises research in applied linguistics. his areas of research interest span corpus linguistics and educational linguistics, with a particular focus on learner corpus research, language and writing development, multilingualism, global englishes and issues of agency and engagement in language education. his more recent research and writing consider the contribution of applied linguistics towards a sustainable world. ► contact: chaumenghuat@um.edu.my giving trends in myanmar: more than merit making aseas 10(2) | 205 giving trends in myanmar: more than merit making cavelle dove ► dove, c. (2017). giving trends in myanmar: more than merit making. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 10(2), 205-222. myanmar, with a human development index ranking of 145 out of 188 countries (undp, 2016), has been given the prestigious title as the number one giving nation in the world for three years running (2014-2016) by charities aid foundation, challenging the notion that giving is tied to wealth. explanations for why this is the case tend to focus on the religious practices of theravada buddhism and merit-making. this explanation is only part of the picture, however, and does not account for the similarly high rates of giving by other religious groups in myanmar or for the failing of other buddhist nations to equal myanmar’s generosity. i will argue that the low levels of state investment in basic human welfare and the widespread deprivation in the country due to the long years of military rule, coupled with the lack of effective institutions to provide basic social welfare services, are equally strong motivators for charity. at the same time, i will demonstrate that giving trends in myanmar—even those motivated by compassion or religious duty—are a response to immediate needs that are unmet by government or institutional support. for the vast majority of people, reliance on your neighbor is the only available insurance. such charitable giving rarely extends to philanthropic giving, which addresses systemic and root causes of poverty rather than targeting symptoms. i provide explanations for the high level of charitable giving in myanmar, looking at everyday examples of giving in myanmar from both individuals and local businesses and considering the humanitarian disaster of cyclone nargis in 2008 as a case example. keywords: charity; cyclone nargis; giving trends; merit-making; myanmar  introduction myanmar has a reputation for generosity. according to the world giving index, myanmar has topped the list as the number one giving country in the world for the past three years. developed by charities aid foundation, this index creates a picture of generosity by measuring people’s behavior in terms of charitable action, with a special focus on how frequently people help a stranger, donate money, and volunteer their time for charity. in addition to placing first for donating money to charity from 2014-2016, myanmar placed first also for volunteering time and donating money in 2015, the first country to be placed at the top for two of the three ways of giving since 2010 (charities aid foundation, 2015, p. 5). in the 2016 report they increased their overall score as a result of an increase in both volunteering time and helping a stranger (charities aid foundation, 2016, p. 21). myanmar’s achievement as the number one giving country in the world is all the more surprising in that myanmar is one of asia’s poorest countries. the fact aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 17 .2 -5 206 | aseas 10(2) giving trends in myanmar: more than merit making that myanmar, while ranking as one of the least developed countries in the world, can demonstrate such strong generosity and is, in fact, the leader of the world giving index, confounds conventional wisdom that assumes that people practice generosity out of their abundance. according to data from the charities aid foundation giving report 2016, 91% of the people in myanmar donated money during the survey month, yet the asian development bank research suggests that one quarter of the population remains below the poverty line (undp, 2015). in other words, whether rich or poor, young or old, and across religious and ethnic lines, myanmar people give money more regularly than anywhere else in the world. similarly, myanmar’s excellence in giving is not shared by other asean or buddhist countries. apart from indonesia, there is neither any other asean nor buddhist country on this list. additionally, the gap between myanmar and the closest competitors for the title of most generous nation is wide. countries ranked from number two through to number ten are within nine points of each other, whereas myanmar is 16 points ahead of the nearest competitor, the muslim nation of indonesia. this data suggests that myanmar generosity cannot be simply explained as an ‘asian’ or ‘buddhist’ practice. ironically, only five of the g20 countries are in the top-ten list of countries in the 2016 world giving index (charities aid foundation, 2016). motivations for charitable giving brown & wong (2009) provide a review of the economics literature and summarize two differing explanations for the motivations underlying charitable giving. the ‘public goods’ model is exemplified by giving based on an anticipated private return to some form of public good, where everyone can benefit (sugden, 1984; warr, 1982). in contrast, the ‘private consumption’ model arises when donors derive utility from the act of giving, often because the public approves of such giving, which may benefit the donor (arrow, 1972). for example, conspicuous donations or the “look at me” motivation (dawson, 1988; guy & patton, 1989) may signal wealth, thereby enabling donors to interact with people in higher socioeconomic strata, as such networks are advantageous (glazer & konrad, 1996). however, andreoni (1990) notes that donors may also receive a “warm glow” (p. 464) from making charitable contributions if the well-being of others enters their own utility functions, even when there are no social benefits (andreoni, 2015; makoto & kotani, 2011) to donors, and when the beneficiaries of charitable giving are not known to the donors. research by guy and patton (1989) and dawson (1988) found that individuals donate because of intrinsic reasons such as to enhance their self-esteem, to reap public gratification, and to gain satisfaction and fulfilment through meetings one’s obligation to others. rose-ackerman (1982, 1996) proposes that people derive utility from charity only if they personally donate. complementary research in this area suggests that the utility gains from donating depend critically on the behavior of others. for example, duncan (2004) argues that many individuals make charitable gifts only if their donations represent large proportions of the total received by a given charity, as a form of “heroism”. by contrast, sugden (1984) suggests that individuals are averse to “freeriding” and hence donate if others in their peer group have also given, even if the amounts involved are very small. brown and minty (2008) reviewed giving in the aseas 10(2) | 207 cavelle dove united states after the december 2004 indian ocean tsunami and concluded that most donors were motivated neither by conspicuous giving for social recognition nor by opportunities to partake in ‘impact philanthropy’. instead, they argue people donated to relief efforts precisely because so many others were also giving to the relief efforts, so they wanted to join the group giving movement and not lose face alongside their peers. brown and wong (2009) examined the relationships between news coverage of a major natural disaster and charitable giving for disaster relief, and found a positive relationship (the media factor) between event-driven news stories and levels of giving. finally, tax incentives for giving can also provide institutional support and convenience for charitable giving. the limitations of the research summarized above are clear: it is primarily focused on north america and does not consider the specific religious, historical, and community context in myanmar, where these theories of motivation are only partially relevant. we can expect that the ‘warm glow’ from meeting obligations to others is a universal motivation and relevant to myanmar, along with the theory of “group think”, as giving is a unifying characteristic of people in myanmar. but more research is needed to understand the interconnectedness between theories and giving behavior. media theories and concepts of utility, networking, face saving, and tax avoidance are not sufficient to explain the vast majority of givers in myanmar. the question remains as to why are myanmar people such generous givers. charity versus philanthropy wealth is not new. neither is charity. but the idea of using private wealth imaginatively, constructively, and systematically to attack the fundamental problems of mankind is new – john gardner (pistell, 2014) before we can answer the question about myanmar’s generosity, we must first define the difference between charity and philanthropy. those who practice philanthropy or charity often share the same motivation: a sense of compassion and a desire to use their resources to help others in need. yet the method that philanthropic entities and charitable entities use to reach that outcome is different. charity refers to the direct relief of suffering and social problems, while ‘philanthropy’ systematically seeks out root causes of these issues and endeavors to find a solution (pistell, 2014). charity is often the direct relief of immediate needs, such as food, shelter, and health care; demonstrates a compassionate response to dire circumstances; and tends to increase during natural disasters and emergency situations (charities aid foundation, 2016). in contrast, philanthropy is private initiative for public good that focuses on the root cause of the suffering and seeks to find a solution that is not partisan, self-serving, or for private profit, although philanthropists may receive tax-deductible status for making donations. as john rockefeller said, “the best philanthropy is constantly in search of the finalities – a search for a cause, an attempt to cure evils at their source” (pistell, 2014). a useful analogy is to consider charity as providing someone a fish, while philanthropy teaches someone how to fish. however, charity and philanthropy should be considered as two sides to the same coin. one is not better than the other: it would be inhuman not to feed hungry children while working out a solution for 208 | aseas 10(2) giving trends in myanmar: more than merit making world hunger. both charity and philanthropy are overlapping strategies that come from the same motivation and sense of compassion and that share the same goal. philanthropy is not an excuse to avoid paying taxes or employing responsible business practices, so that you can ‘win your way to heaven’. while this paper examines both charity and philanthropy in the myanmar context, the primary expression of generosity in myanmar is in the form of charity. a buddhist nation and impact on charitable giving the essence of true charity is to give something without expecting anything in return for the gift. if a person expects some material benefit to arise from his gift, he is only performing an act of bartering and not charity . . . the act of true charity is wholesome, has no strings attached, and leaves both the giver and the recipient free (venerable k. sri. dhammananda maha thera, kt care foundation) myanmar’s strong giving has often been associated with the importance of religion in the country. according to the 2014 census data, 87.9% of the population practice theravada buddhism, which drives high levels of giving through the practice of sangha dana or charity, with christians making up 6.2%, muslims 4.3%, animists 0.8%, and hindus 0.5% (ministry of labor, immigration and population, 2014). however, it would be relevant to note that while the 2014 census was the first meaningful census in 30 years, the process managed to omit ethnicity statistics and large segments of people living in remote areas, and did not include the large rohingya population (callahan, 2017b). charity is praised by the buddha in many ways, and seen as “the stairway to celestial realm” (ministry of religious affairs, n.d.). the daily practice of charitable deeds is part of the teachings of buddhism, in which food, water, and flowers are offered at the monastery and to buddhist images, and which includes material support, charity, and spiritual guidance to those in need. according to the ministry of religious affairs, every pious buddhist carries out the meritorious deeds of dispensing charity, observing morality, and practicing mediation. the motivation for giving to others is as important as what is given. many buddhists in myanmar believe that in doing good they will receive good luck or merit. donating or committing good deeds on one’s day of birth, or on the day of the week that one was born, is considered auspicious. for example, the kt care foundation, which was established by the kyaw thaung family, who successfully run the largest grocery store chain in myanmar, created a small grants program that provides donations ten times a month in honor of each family member on their respective birthdays (kt care foundation, n.d.). depending on their means, buddhists will also make other donations, such as inviting the monks to their home and offering food, training their young sons as novice monks, special giving on birthdays and anniversaries to monasteries or private interests such as children’s homes or animal shelters, and donating materials to the monastery. while the amounts given may be small, they still have significant religious meaning and many people give daily, regardless of income level. monks also collect daily food-alms by going house to house each morning in procession. aseas 10(2) | 209 cavelle dove indeed, monks in myanmar are interconnected with the plight of the poor, and fulfil an important societal role by providing education, food, shelter, medical services, and comfort to the people. for example, monastic schools have been in existence in myanmar since the 11th century. using the same curriculum as the government schools but operating under the ministry of religious affairs, these schools fill a significant gap in the education system by providing basic education and religious activities for children from needy families and orphans. many operate as boarding schools for children from remote areas without access to schooling. the monastic schools are viable through heavy reliance on donations, community support, and a small amount of income generation and parental contributions. in the 2013-2014 academic year there were more than 1,400 monastic schools, providing primary and secondary education to more than 150,000 myanmar children (burnet institute and monastic education development group, 2014, p. 12). by supporting the monasteries that provide education to children, the community members are able to live by the important buddhist notion of parahita, which involves giving for the benefit or welfare of others. in recent years, monks have also been more directly involved in political action. in a 2007 event widely publicized in the foreign media as the ‘saffron revolution’, thousands of monks took to the streets in non-violent resistance to protest the government’s draconian decision to remove fuel subsidies. the monks turned their alms bowls upside down and refused alms from burmese military generals, thus symbolically refusing to give the buddha’s blessings to them and making a strong political statement in a religiously devout nation. the military cracked down violently on the demonstrations, resulting in injuries and deaths as well as imprisonments and torture (welford & zieger, 2013). more recently, buddhist nationalism and anti-muslim hate speech have been promoted through radical monastic groups, with the ma ba tha, who came to prominence in 2015 by rallying for laws that widely limit religious freedoms, such as requiring women to seek permission from township officials if they wish to change their religion. the leader of the group, ashin wirathu, has also incited violence against muslims, and has a wide following among the majority buddhist people. while these intolerant and violent views are at odds with the key tenants of buddhism, the group enjoys widespread appeal in part because of their broader agenda to protect buddhism against external threats and the propagation of buddhist faith and institutions through organized religious and social activities in communities throughout myanmar (walton, 2017). clearly buddhist religious practices are a contributing factor to myanmar giving trends, but they still do not answer why myanmar outscores neighboring buddhist countries in such a dramatic fashion. faith and giving: everyday examples of giving between 2016 and 2017, i collected the following stories through first-hand interviews with 32 people living in yangon, shan state, chin state, and kayin state. additional information was obtained from research reports, websites, and newspaper articles. these anecdotes, while not exhaustive, can provide insight into the motivation behind giving in myanmar. the stories that follow give examples of how everyday people practice charity in daily life. in all cases, names have been changed to protect confidentiality. 210 | aseas 10(2) giving trends in myanmar: more than merit making ma thida tun is a 53-year-old woman from mandalay who is married with two grown children. both she and her husband trained as medical doctors but left medicine in the early 1990s to open a business. money was tight, but her husband found success in the early 2000s and their economic situation improved over time. for this family, regardless of what they had, they practiced many acts of charity. these included giving alms to monks every day, donations to monastic schools, and celebrating significant events such as birthdays and other auspicious occasions by making donations. as the family has prospered, their giving has increased. they have built several new monasteries and supported the upkeep of other monastic buildings, as well as building preschools, elder care facilities, and a hospice for people living with hiv/aids. ma thida tun notes that while her husband’s family has always given alms to monasteries, it was her own mother’s example of giving to social causes outside the monastery, such as providing food and school supplies to children, which also inspired her to give. she notes that, even as a young university student, she would save money out of her meager resources to buy eggs for a local children’s home. her reasons are intrinsic – to share her own resources and meet obligations to others (ma thida tun, 20 october 2016). aye myat thanda is a 40-year-old woman who runs her own business in tourism in yangon. her father died when she was young, leaving her mother to provide for the family. times were tough, but the changes in myanmar and the growth of the tourism sector more recently have resulted in new opportunities for her. every week, ma thanda gives money to monks on their alms collection. she also buys flowers to adorn her small buddhist shrine in her apartment, and volunteers on saturdays as an english teacher at a local monastic school. on auspicious occasions, she makes additional donations at monastic schools of both food and robes for the monks. the practice of giving is part of her daily life and culture. she speaks of her motivation to pay forward her opportunities, so others can also have a chance to make a better life for themselves (aye myat thanda, 17 february 2017) one cultural practice i recorded frequently was the tradition of celebrating birthdays by providing a special gift for others. one ten-year-old child attending an international school in yangon received an end of year award for ‘most charitable behavior’ for celebrating her birthday by providing a special meal to the children in a monastic school. yet she was puzzled by the recognition, as she notes this is common practice among her myanmar peers. another young office worker took vacation leave on her birthday to bring animal supplies to a local animal shelter. within the workplace, i have observed that on staff birthdays, the ‘birthday holder’ will often purchase special treats or lunch for the office. such is the example of a tradition that includes young and old as well as rich and poor.. care for orphans is another theme that emerged through everyday stories. one forty-year-old woman shared that while she was an only child, her parents took in seven other children who were orphans. as she was the eldest child, once her studies were finished, she supported the seven adopted siblings for their school and university costs. many of those interviewed had similar stories of taking care of children left orphaned by disease or disaster, either through directly adopting or through donations to monasteries for the care of children. in many of these cases, their response was inspired by compassion to respond to the needs of these children and to share resources. aseas 10(2) | 211 cavelle dove the christian pop singer daw chit thu wai, who is also a doctor, volunteered to help people in need following cyclone nargis, although she would not provide the details of her activities. according to my christian beliefs, it is said that ‘when you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.’ that’s why i will not tell anything about it because we are not used to bragging about what we do for charity (sandy, 2011). interviews in kayin state with a group of kayin christians and with a christian pastor from chin state discussed their community practice of religious tithing on their income to the church, which then uses those funds for the social welfare needs of the people. both spoke of providing financial and social support to the elderly, widows and orphans, and also supporting youth programs, as motivated by compassion but also in obedience to the teachings of the church. other religious minority groups in myanmar, such as muslims, also have a strong tradition of generosity known as zakat. this is a form of alms-giving taught as a religious obligation, and is at least 2.5% of income, with followers encouraged to give as they are able (see also fauzia in this issue). as one of the five pillars of islam, zakat is distinguished from charity in that it is taught as a religious obligation and not simply a voluntary gesture. while no data currently exists on zakat in myanmar, it is understood to be significant by local people. for example, the displaced rohingya population in rakhine state has received food, shelter, water, and sanitation through zakat giving from local muslims and private donors from the middle east and malaysia.1 interviews with four muslim believers in yangon shared stories of giving to the mosque and religious institutions. islamic teaching includes almsgiving as a private obligation and seeking credit on earth would diminish from any credit obtained in heaven or in the next life. asking for information on the effectiveness or impact of that gift then goes against the benevolence of the giver, as it is the individuals’ responsibility to give but ultimately allah will determine the results. based on research in indonesia, parvanova & fauzia (2013) argues that islamic giving will never be fully formalized or regulated, because of its origin in the “altruistic and reciprocal nature of people” and collective awareness and “concern for the welfare of others”, as expressed through the traditional practices of muslims motivated mainly by their faith (parvanova & fauzia, 2013, p. 201). the practice of zakat contrasts with an institutional approach to philanthropy, in which large sums are given, a foundation is established, and a methodology is established to determine whether funds are achieving the stated purpose. the true amount of zakat giving globally will likely never be tracked in such a public display, as it would amount to the giver receiving his/her just award on earth and not in heaven. individual acts of charity have also led to collective action. in yangon, a volunteer group, noble heart, provides free ambulance services for those affected by road accidents in the city. in 2015, a group of villagers set up a volunteer patrol on part of 1 there is evidence of giving to religious organizations to support the rohingya, but no data is available on the amount that reaches them directly in myanmar. 212 | aseas 10(2) giving trends in myanmar: more than merit making what is known as the ‘death highway’, a stretch of highway from yangon to mandalay which saw more than 450 accidents in 2015, and has been the scene of more than 400 deaths since 2013 (“conquering the road safety challenge”, 2016). funded by private donations and with no government support, the goal is to find medical help for these victims of accidents, and decrease the number of unnecessary deaths on myanmar’s poorly maintained roads. providing emergency ambulance services to prevent unnecessary death and injuries was described as the mission for this service. the free funeral service society (ffss) was set up in 2001, and has grown from a handful of volunteers to 17 hearses and 340 volunteers–including 40 doctors–as well as 50 paid employees. they have supported more than 100,000 funerals since their inception. the thukha clinic provides free medical care to about 500 patients a day with a staff consisting of 50 specialists who volunteer (thein, 2011). notably, in 2006 the director of ffss, the well-known actor u kyaw thu, was arrested for indirectly highlighting the problem of poverty in burma by helping the poor to perform last rites and bury their dead (mcdowell, 2009, p. 5). after this crackdown, however, the ffss has flourished and has continued to expand their reach of services. the motivation is to give respect and dignity to the dead, and to ensure the giving of last rites as part of the person’s spiritual journey. similarly, in 1937 the muslim free hospital was established in the colonial city of rangoon as a small dispensary to care for the poor of rangoon who had no other access to medical care, with the initial investment provided entirely by other muslims. from the beginning, the hospital did not discriminate based on religion, ethnicity, or income, and today it is a 160-bed hospital, reaching 500 outpatients a day, and providing in-patient medical care, including surgery, psychiatric services, maternal services, and eye care (thein, 2011). muslims in myanmar donate usd 400,000 a year to run the hospital, and patients pay what they can. if patients do not have money, they pay nothing. according to tin myo win, a department head at the hospital who is himself buddhist, the muslim practice of zakat, or donating some of their income to charitable causes, is an important source of income for the hospital, along with paid-for treatments and international donations (macnamara, 2013). interestingly, this example demonstrates how donors can derive utility from the act of giving, as it is part of a good public strategy to demonstrate how the minority populations also bring benefits to the majority buddhist population. another muslim businessman reported how he also attends and contributes to buddhist ceremonies and community events in his town, as it is good public relations to be seen as contributing to majority interests and also to have good relations with the leaders of the monastery, who have considerable social and political capital in his small town. in a small, remote village in north-western shan state, a group of men have started a new ambulance service to transport sick patients to hospitals in wellequipped centers, thus decreasing avoidable deaths in the community due to the lack of medical care. they pooled their resources to purchase a van and fuel, and set up a mobile number for community referrals. there is no medical staff connected with the service, but volunteer drivers take sick patients to hospital in rotation. when asked, the group advised that even hospitals call them directly for transportation on a regular basis, which the group provides for free. there is no thought that this type of service should be reimbursed or even provided by the hospitals or aseas 10(2) | 213 cavelle dove through some type of government funding, yet the group argues that by providing this service free of charge, they are making merit. to accept money or to have a formal arrangement with the hospitals would detract from the service mentality of the group (thorfinn, 2015). these collective initiatives are a direct response from volunteers who make up for the deficiencies in social services, which are chronically underfunded by the government. this same response is true for citizens of many countries, yet the scale and extent of daily response to the needs of the poor in myanmar is striking, as is a lack of expectation that government will assist. in contrast to other developed and developing nations, where emergency services are common and medical care is accessible and available, even to the poor, myanmar citizens charitably fill in the gap left by the lack of basic government services. giving in times of crisis: the example of cyclone nargis the inadequacy of government services became apparent to the world in 2008, when a cyclone hit myanmar, leaving over 140,000 documented dead, two million homeless, and significant human suffering. cyclone nargis was the worst natural disaster to hit asia since 1991 (unicef, 2009). the ineffective government response has been well publicized and contrasted to the international tsunami of 2004, when governments and international aid agencies quickly responded. the autocratic government delayed the arrival of international emergency services and supplies for several weeks, resulting in unnecessary human suffering (selth, 2008). rescue workers reportedly faced harassment by government officials and some parts of the country remained accessible only by boat (preston, 2008). in some cases, relief supplies were re-packaged bearing government labels, leaving charitable organizations to question whether they were helping to bolster support of the military junta (brown & minty, 2008, p. 6). the government treated aid as a tactic of the west in pursuit of its political agenda. these suspicions were amplified by efforts to use the humanitarian situation in myanmar as part of the justification for un security council action. however, the post-nargis joint assessment (2008) notes that the gravity of the situation brought the best out of the myanmar people, who shared their wealth and whatever little they possessed. given the late arrival and limited reach of relief agencies, local civil society organizations provided emergency support to cyclone victims. in the early weeks, aid that kept survivors alive was provided almost entirely by civil society organizations and private citizens, while local authorities often turned a blind eye to such unauthorized relief efforts. people gave generously, and buddhist monks and other religious leaders made substantial contributions. the burmese diaspora also gave generously. many returned home to help in ways large and small. the recorded contributions reached usd 11.86 million, but since many donations were made anonymously and were not officially recorded, it is impossible to put a precise value on the amounts (tripartite core group, 2008, p. 60). the above example is consistent with the private consumption motivation for charitable giving suggested by arrow (1972) and steinberg (1987). we can infer that the average donation was relatively modest and that many members of the community gave, rather than just one or two large donors giving large amounts. finally, 214 | aseas 10(2) giving trends in myanmar: more than merit making many donations were made without fanfare, suggesting that donors were motivated more by the ‘warm glow” and perhaps the desire to do ‘the right thing’, rather than for socioeconomic recognition associated with publicly visible giving (glazer & konrad, 1996). ultimately the burmese army (tatmadaw) also provided essential aid and services through the mobilization of servicemen for search and rescue operations, evacuations, camp construction, road clearance, and distribution of relief assistance. the business community also contributed substantially in both cash and kind and provided assistance in their areas of competence, such as the building support offered by large construction and engineering firms. the total value of their inputs was usd 68.13 million (tripartite core group, 2008). some companies received lucrative trade concessions from the junta in exchange for donations to the relief effort. while the military government of that period regularly used overwhelming force to control the population, they were unable to exert complete control over the nargis response, partly due to lack of ability or interest to perceived threat from particular segments of the population, and unenthusiastic compliance by the enforcers of regulations (mcdowell, 2009). in fact, contributing to relieve the suffering of fellow citizens could be considered an act of civil disobedience, and could also be perceived as a way of demonstrating that the military does not have complete control. throughout this period, faith-based charitable organizations continued to operate and large numbers of community-based organizations (cbos) sprang up to deal with less political sectors, such as health and education. well known political dissidents such as ma thida and khin zaw win gave up involvement in explicitly political activities after nargis to focus on humanitarian causes. the military government saw that local and international ngos, as well as concerned citizens, could play a role in delivering services to a country chronically underserved by government; space was created for community organizations to spring to life and take action instead of waiting for government permission. the impact of the “nargis moment” the impact of the nargis moment was mixed. the five-year post-cyclone assessment by the world bank (world bank, 2014) studied how cyclone nargis, the subsequent aid efforts, and the evolving economic conditions affected social capital, the capacity for collective action, intra and inter-village relations, and relations between villagers and their leaders. better-off families that sponsored religious activities before nargis were no longer able to afford them, depriving villagers of an important venue through which to strengthen social cohesion between community members. increased migration among villagers of working age and the need to work longer hours also left villagers with less time to socialize with their neighbors. the report noted the remarkable social strength of delta villages as they responded to the emergency by helping each other through sharing food, shelter, and labor, building homes, and contributing to rebuilding village infrastructure such as water ponds, roads, and bridges. aid was critically important in the aftermath of the cyclone, both to save lives and to provide people with a sense that they did not have to face the enormous challenges of recovering from the disaster alone. much of the initial aid was local, civil society-driven, aseas 10(2) | 215 cavelle dove and was highly beneficial to the affected villages. in about one-quarter of the villages, however, social relations were poor five years after nargis due in part to the aid effort. in these villages, there was a noticeable lack of social cohesion. the participation of villagers in activities that had been traditionally communal, such as religious and village development activities, including renovation of roads, monasteries, and ponds, declined. while these activities continued, they were undertaken by smaller groups rather than the community as a whole (world bank, 2014, p. 30). there are a number of reasons for the initial strength in social capital. first, development resources from higher levels are scarce. this accentuates the importance of working together at the community level and of carefully prioritizing resources for public goods. second, in the absence of a state or employer safety net, community members help each other in times of need, which was particularly evident in their response to nargis. traditions of reciprocity, evident across myanmar and across the world, encourage people to help their community members. this distinction cuts across different ethnicities and religions, between genders, between the young and old, and between different income and livelihood type groups (tripartite core group, 2008, p. 2) the role of government trends in government revenue and expenditures the myanmar government revenue collection provides inadequate resources for the public sector. the budget of myanmar is financed by funds from four primary sources: taxation, revenues from natural gas, transfer of surpluses from state economic enterprises (sees) and other non-tax revenue (various government fees and charges). myanmar tax revenue netted, until recently, 6-7% of gdp, compared to neighboring countries that collected a minimum 15% of gdp. vietnam for example had revenues consistently in excess of 25% of gdp (myanmar development research institute/center for economic and social development & crawford school of public policy, 2015). public tax revenue could be higher if military sponsored corruption did not skim off potential tax revenue earned from the lucrative extractive industries. there is well-documented evidence of lost revenues from a resource curse. the estimated value of the jade business in 2014 was usd 31 billion, of which only one billion in revenue went through legal channels (dapice, 2016). this figure is half of the entire country’s gdp, yet the local population sees little benefit (global witness, 2015). myanmar, iraq, nigeria, and venezuela are all examples of countries that encounter additional difficulties in equitable development as a result of rich natural resources. jones (2014) and dapice (2016) explain from a political economy perspective that the elite who control the natural resources become rich with little additional effort, since companies can be hired to drill and export, creating extreme wealth for the elite but little positive impact for the local community. those with access to this wealth can ignore the rest of the population, creating intense and violent competition for control of mineral revenues and, therefore, power and wealth. poorly taxed resource extraction has led to significant gaps in government services. 216 | aseas 10(2) giving trends in myanmar: more than merit making self-reliance in the absence of a welfare system what tax revenue did come in was poorly spent. myanmar’s culture of self-reliance is a legacy of the military’s indifference to the basic social welfare needs of the population, further reinforced by the current state counsellor’s recent speeches that citizens should “muster courage and self-confidence” to take personal responsibility for their own and the nation’s solutions and not expect government solutions (callahan, 2017a). while data obtained from the world bank (2013) demonstrates that the government is increasing spending on social welfare, defense spending still dominates the national budget, both as a percentage of gdp and as a percentage of total expenditure. according to world bank figures, health spending rose from 0.2% to just over 1% of gdp from 2009 to 2013, with the increase largely targeting needed staff salary rather than improved services. in contrast, 4.3% of gdp went to the military (escap, 2012). these findings demonstrate that people used their own resources to provide essential services to those in need. chronic underfunding of healthcare, education, welfare, and social services have left many gaps that are filled by volunteers giving charitably to meet immediate needs. government spending on the social sectors is strikingly low by international standards and the lowest in asean. philanthropic giving, to address the root causes of these issues, is not yet significant. a giving culture among local businesses myanmar as an emerging market provides many new opportunities for businesses to enter and engage in markets, and in philanthropic endeavors, creating both new job opportunities and a middle class. research conducted by welford and zieger (2013) highlights that corporate social responsibility (csr) is mainly understood as a philanthropic and fashionable concept, but there is little understanding of csr in terms of strategic alignment. for example, the myanmar investment commission (mic), formed under the myanmar investment law as a government-appointed body to approve foreign business investment in the country, places little emphasis on creating tax measures, disclosure and reporting requirements, the inclusion of social and environmental criteria, and public recognition incentives. this is despite the mic stated objective to “deeply emphasize on social impact” for companies looking to invest in myanmar. widger (2015) identifies csr in myanmar as a strategy of ‘schoolbooks and spectacles’, with a focus on the immediacy of the gift but rarely on the causes of poverty. companies give gifts of schoolbooks, meal to orphanages or homes for the elderly, and medical equipment or glasses for those who cannot afford them. by doing so, companies participate in the redistributive economy, where the spoils of corporate success are shared with those less fortunate. new domestic foundations have begun to proliferate in myanmar. several large myanmar companies have established their own foundations within the company brand. the kanbawza (kbz) group was established in 1994 and controls two airlines, the country’s largest private bank, and lucrative jade and gem mining concessions. in 2008, they created the kbz foundation which focuses on providing clean water, sanitation, education, and youth development. according to their website, the kbz aseas 10(2) | 217 cavelle dove brighter future foundation has spent more than usd 105 million over the past twenty years on charitable giving, although critics note that this is a small amount compared to the vast amount of money kbz has received through illicit trade in gems and jade. charitable donations may be part of the new quest for legitimacy in myanmar. another large corporate, capital diamond star group, began work in the 1960s as a small trading outfit and now is an international company spanning multiple sectors with more than 7,000 staff. nevcan coban, senior manager, group strategy and business development, while presenting at the asian forum on corporate social responsibility conference, 2016, in naypyidaw, stated that the company has the desire to “give back, with less emphasis on charity and the writing of cheques and more on shared value creation through active engagement in projects that benefit both local farmers and businesses”. their community website lists examples, such as a high school built in mandalay; health clinics and donated medicines; rural development supported through building roads and providing water wells; contributions to monasteries and the operation of several contract farming initiatives with local farmers (capital diamond star group, n.d.). they see business opportunities behind social problems, and see themselves using their business acumen and resources to innovate and find business solutions to poverty (asian forum on corporate social responsibility, 2016). serge pun, chairman, spa group, myanmar, and his brother, martin pun, head of corporate social responsibility, yoma strategic holdings, are considered standard bearers of responsible business practices in myanmar. they described their approach to philanthropy at the asian forum on corporate social responsibility, 2016, as “a rights-based approach, in which we create innovative programs, prototypes and can achieve scale, with a responsible business model that pays living wages, taxes and provides work with dignity.” they emphasize a ‘triple bottom line’ for business that includes impact on their people/staff, the environment, and profit. their csr programs respond to emergency response situations with relief supplies, champion inclusive approaches for working with clients who are hiv positive, and provide responsible business workshops and practical support. mr. serge pun has hired 185 burmese repatriates in his business, who returned to myanmar motivated by a desire to be part of the recent changes and to help the country advance. anecdotal evidence suggests that spa’s experience is similar to others. across all sectors, there are repatriates returning to work in myanmar, often with a pay cut, bringing back with them education and work experience from abroad as well as cultural and language knowledge (asian forum on corporate social responsibility, 2016). while there is a lack of research in this area, it would be interesting to track the giving habits of burmese expatriates, including remittances to myanmar and their giving habits in their host countries, in order to understand the factors that influence their generosity. the kt company was formed in 1950 and the family began the kt care foundation in 2008, in response to cyclone nargis. the foundation began with handouts but has now moved from individual donations to supporting specific causes, such as health and education services, and emergency preparedness and relief services. they also run a grants program for community based organizations providing social services. dr. hannah kyaw thaung, who is the daughter of the founder of the kt company, notes that the foundation is an expression of the family’s priority on education, and over time has shifted from solely looking at the benefits to the community to looking at 218 | aseas 10(2) giving trends in myanmar: more than merit making mutual benefits of doing business, such as job creation and economic growth. with local language and cultural knowledge, connections with local and international networks, and their understanding of best practices from around the world, the kt care foundation sees itself as an expression of their family values, with a long-term vision and increased credibility in the community through giving back. their culture of giving permeates both business and personal relations, as they use their wealth to respond to the institutional failure in myanmar. this type of family-led foundation approach comprises 21% of all philanthropic giving in asia and is growing (mahmood, 2013). the practice of ‘crony capitalism’ has resulted in the wealth of the country being in the hands of fewer than twenty families, who became rich with help from the military dictatorship (ford, gillan, & thein, 2016). these families are trying to rehabilitate their images, quietly bringing sons and daughters into the business and consolidating a second-generation elite, creating a ‘crony capitalism turned philanthropist’ situation. for example, tay za, considered one of the regime’s top cronies because of his favor with the military government, controls an empire spanning oil and gas, minerals, drugs, timber, and guns. yet his son pye phyo tayza claims that “everything is different for [tay za] now. he is doing a lot of foundation work, and more contributions for society. less greed” (szep, 2012). such statements may represent a change in strategy in an attempt to whitewash ‘black’ money, rehabilitate his public image, and retain influence and legitimacy. one way of looking at these business examples is to consider how much is motivated by the reasons discussed earlier, or whether it is driven by profit. more work needs to be done to compare the giving patterns of responsible businesses and crony businesses and the motivations for each type of giving. risks of private sector-led philanthropy while giving by the people is exemplary, the weak myanmar state has not developed processes and accountability. as elsewhere, myanmar must build trustworthy institutions, good regulations, open and transparent organizations, and strong governance so that people can continue to give easily and with confidence that their donations are being used for the maximum benefit. it is this task – building strong state institutions and removing the drudgery of life – which is the challenge for government. similarly, there is the possibility that those who give the most have the greatest influence and the ability to write public policy, as in corporate america. we must ask whether these individuals are most suited for this task, and whether they are motivated by the cause or by other factors. there is a risk that private funders may determine the future of health care, education, and vocational skills training in myanmar and become an agent of civic inequality, in which more voice is given to those with power (callahan, 2014). with the increase in ‘high net-worth individuals’ in asia (and myanmar), when will a bill gates appear in myanmar, and will he/she be concerned with political, business, or social interests? philanthropy cannot be an excuse for tax evasion, or a rationale for not following responsible businesses practices that respect human dignity and basic rights. likewise, the burmese government is not used to working in partnership – it operates on the principle that people obey what it says. old habits, including a military culture, are still ingrained in the new government, as the 2008 constitution guarantees 25% of all seats in parliament to the military. how aseas 10(2) | 219 cavelle dove can the focus be on inclusive growth and making good choices that do not impinge on the rights of others? this cannot be accomplished through self-regulation. the state is the trustee of public good, and strong institutions for social good and inclusive growth are needed. conclusion the ‘urge to give’ is a universal human trait and people in myanmar, like their fellows across the globe, have multiple motivations to give. they are motivated by their religious convictions; the urge to give back to the community; to pay it forward in return for advantages that they have received, and simply from compassion to help those in need. in the absence of any government safety net, people in myanmar rely on community connections and relationships to do their best for one another and respond to basic needs in difficult times, redistributing wealth. with such a weak tax base and major demands on limited resources, there is no doubt that myanmar will continue to rely on volunteering, charitable giving, and increased philanthropic giving by individuals and businesses. as the economy develops and wealth increases, it will be interesting to see whether the strength of giving in myanmar will remain consistent. as the state increases its revenues through taxation, and is expected to provide more basic services, will the current sense of responsibility and compassion be replaced by an expectation that government will take on more responsibility? or will people give even more as their wealth and income increases? the state can support this social transformation through regulations that recognize traditional forms of giving and create an environment where charities can demonstrate their effectiveness. myanmar needs peace, development, and democracy, all at the same time. the compassion of the myanmar people toward their own people is unparalleled and, as the most generous country in the world, more research is needed to understand the factors, both religious and otherwise, which contribute to their shared sense of humanity, in order not to simply do better and give more, but to change the roots of poverty and inequality in communities all across myanmar – one gift at a time.  references andreoni, j. 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(2014). another nargis strikes every day: post nargis social impacts monitoring five years on. washington dc: world bank. retrieved from http://reliefweb.int/report/myanmar/another-nargisstrikes-every-day-post-nargis-social-impacts-monitoring-five-years 222 | aseas 10(2) giving trends in myanmar: more than merit making about the author cavelle dove holds a bsw from memorial university in st. john’s, newfoundland, and completed graduate work in social work at the university of british columbia in vancouver, and in human rights and peace studies at mahidol university, thailand. cavelle has been active in community development on three continents. from a post-apartheid social worker in south africa, to community development and child protection work in canada, through to women’s economic development and social enterprise in southeast asia, cavelle has extensive field work in communities impacted by poverty, natural disaster, and conflict. for more than ten years, cavelle managed a regional fund for the embassy of canada covering thailand and myanmar and facilitated grants to 250+ community-based organizations. she is the co-founder of a social business in myanmar (www.yangonbakehouse.com) and currently works for the mennonite economic development associates as the country project manager for a large-scale women's economic development and private sector development project in myanmar. ► contact: cdove@meda.org aseas 15(2) | 325 book review: fresnoza-flot, a., & liu-farrer, g. (eds.). (2022). tangled mobilities: places, affects, and personhood across social spheres in asian migration berghahn books. isbn: 978-1-80073-567-5. 278 pages. cai chena* auniversité libre de bruxelles, belgium *corresponding author: cai.chen@ulb.be received: 6 september 2022 / accepted: 5 december 2022 / published: 23 december 2022 ► chen, c. (2022). book review: fresnoza-flot, a., & liu-farrer, g. (eds.). (2022). tangled mobilities: places, affects, and personhood across social spheres in asian migration. advances in southeast asian studies, 15(2), 325-328. the edited volume tangled mobilities is a long-overdue call to carry out a comprehensive analysis of the multifaceted lived experiences of migrants from, into, and within asia. this continent has traditionally been a migrant-sending area and is now witnessing dynamic mobilities with diversified socio-economic profiles of people on the move, new migration regimes and pathways, as well as a “complex logic of migration” (liu-farrer & yeoh, 2018, p. 9). veering away from theories developed from euro-american experiences, the editors propose the analytical framework of “tangled mobilities” to capture local specificities of asian migration while building bridges with existing scholarship on (im)mobilities and migration. this framework conceptualizes mobility as a dynamic, tangled social process in which different strands constantly intersect and interact. these strands are conceived by editors as “different elements (animate and inanimate), components (ideas, representations, practices, imaginaries, and affects), and forms of mobility (spatial, social, temporal, intimate, and temporal)” (p. 4). each of these strands constitutes a tanglement itself and they become entwined with each other in an unfolding process that leads to multidimensional movement or stasis of individuals. taking the study by marilla (chapter 3) for example, we observe how the mobility of home objects (inanimate elements) is related to the mobility of belgian-vietnamese couples (animate elements) over time and across space. furthermore, marilla demonstrates one the one hand how the multi-scalar spatial mobility (within the home, from private to public space, and crossing national borders) of objects reveals couples’ home-making processes, migration trajectories, personal experiences, affects, and life aspirations (components); and on the other hand, how entwined geographic and social mobilities of book reviews w w w .s ea s. at 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 83 http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5348-8263 mailto:cai.chen%40ulb.be?subject= 326 | aseas 15(2) book review: fresnoza-flot, a., & liu-farrer, g. (eds.). (2022). tangled mobilities. belgian-vietnamese couples are interconnected with the spatial mobility of objects (forms of mobility). likewise, many other forms of mobility are discussed and analyzed in different ways in other chapters of the volume, for instance, economic mobility (chapters 5 and 9), sexual or intimate mobility (chapters 1 and 8), legal mobility (chapters 2, 7, and 10), and temporal mobility (chapters 4 and 6). the tangled nature of mobilities constitutes the core of all chapters in the present volume, which illuminate collectively the intricate link between mobility and personhood, the value of an affective lens of analysis, the relational mobility and stasis, and interweaving social spheres that individuals inhabit and traverse. for instance, the study by kudo (chapter 6) explores the transnational family-making trajectories of japanese-pakistani couples and their children through a generational lens. first, she reveals how the geographic mobilities of these transnational families are shaped by japanese state regulation of binational marriages along with religion-shaped and gendered social norms. as kudo puts it, japanese-pakistani binational union is “tangled with law, economy, and religion” (p. 137), which has a subsequent impact on their personhood and social incorporation. kudo explains in her chapter that many japanese women became “paper muslims” (p. 140) to fulfill the marital requirements imposed by state policy to register their marriage in japan so that their pakistani spouses could obtain a legal migratory status. some of them even became practicing muslims at later stages of their lives, through which they could earn the acceptance of their family-in-law. second, kudo illustrates how gender, religion, migratory status, and other intersecting power relations influence the way in which japanese-pakistani families arrange transnational caregiving and mobilities (education or career) for their next generation, such as relocating to pakistan or other countries, becoming transnationally split families, and organizing short-term visits of an extended kin. last, kudo argues that the entanglement of different forms of mobility transforms the personhood of the children of binational couples. she describes that experiences of transnational home-making and marital breakup of parents trigger the dynamic self-making process of the next generation of japanese-pakistani couples and inform how they perceive, navigate, and negotiate their multiple aspirations in intimate and familial realms. the case studies presented in this volume offer rich insights into the increasing complexity of asian migration, “characterized by the entanglements of diverse migration paths, places, personhood, and affects” (p. 7). empirically, this volume assembles a wide variety of case studies covering multiple subregions of asia, addressing distinct migration flows from, into, or within asia, and involving diverse actors from different socio-economic backgrounds (gender, social class, sexual orientation, nationality, ethnicity, age, generation, marital status, education, etc.). while these studies are conducted from either an anthropological perspective or a sociological viewpoint, their strength lies in detailed and vivid accounts of the lived experience of (im)mobile individuals and interdependent lives, as well as their aspirations and emotions over time and across space. methodologically, this volume demonstrates the advantages of an ethnographic approach in researching migration and migrants’ multifaceted lived experiences. although the geographical focus of this volume is asia, life stories of migrants presented by contributors and their theoretical reflections have relevance to global human movement phenomena and broader transnational migration studies. aseas 15(2) | 327 cai chen critically built on recent mobility scholarship and informed by asian migration experiences, this volume advances a holistic and grounded conceptualization of mobilities and migration studies, revealing the interconnectedness, codependency, and interactivity of mobilities and mobile persons from a processual approach. this conceptualization is interdisciplinary in nature and draws on intersectionality, transnationalism, and other perspectives. the analytical framework of “tangled mobilities” is not reserved for asian migration studies, as all phenomena of/related to (im)mobility presented in this book are not exclusive to the asian continent. by contrast, it serves as a springboard for scholars from/in other geographical contexts to revisit recent mobility scholarship and turn their attention to the theoretical and conceptual contributions that asian migration brought to the thriving global studies of migration and mobilities. practically, this refreshing analytical framework finds resonances in what castles (2007) proposed as “a critical but socially engaged sociology of migration” (p. 362). it overcomes methodological nationalism (wimmer & glick schiller, 2002) and builds bridges between social science research and state policy, paying attention to the interplay between social structure and human agency across nation-state borders as well as multi-scalar (local, national, and international) social transformation resulting in an individual’s movement or stasis. moreover, the additional discussion of policy implications and covid-19 influences at the end of this volume makes it a timely and practical book for both scholarly and non-scholarly audiences, especially for engaged citizens, professionals, and policymakers who are interested or involved in transnational migration. in conclusion, tangled mobilities constitutes an original contribution both theoretically and empirically to the bourgeoning (im)mobilities scholarship (schewel, 2020; sheller & urry, 2006). moreover, empirical cases in this volume provide a compelling argument that future research employing the framework of “tangled mobilities” should engage the emotional and temporal dimensions of mobility (cwerner, 2001; groes & fernandez, 2018). however, this volume leaves an unsolved problem for researchers to rethink precise data gathering techniques through which we could capture the complexities of mobilities while disentangling tangled mobilities (wyss & dahinden, 2022). the book will drive further scholarly discussions and pave the way for new research on yet understudied human mobilities.  references castles, s. (2007). twenty-first-century migration as a challenge to sociology. journal of ethnic and migration studies, 33(3), 351–371. cwerner, s. b. (2001). the times of migration. journal of ethnic and migration studies, 27(1), 7–36. groes, c., & fernandez, n. t. (2018). intimate mobilities: sexual economies, marriage and migration in a disparate world. berghahn books. liu-farrer, g., & yeoh, b. s. a. (eds.). (2018). routledge handbook of asian migrations. routledge. schewel, k. (2020). understanding immobility: moving beyond the mobility bias in migration studies. international migration review, 54(2), 328–355. sheller, m., & urry, j. (2006). the new mobilities paradigm. environment and planning a: economy and space, 38(2), 207–226. 328 | aseas 15(2) book review: fresnoza-flot, a., & liu-farrer, g. (eds.). (2022). tangled mobilities. wimmer, a., & glick schiller, n. (2002). methodological nationalism and beyond: nation-state building, migration and the social sciences. global networks, 2(4), 301–334. wyss, a., & dahinden, j. (2022). disentangling entangled mobilities: reflections on forms of knowledge production within migration studies. comparative migration studies, 10, 33. https://doi.org/10.1186/ s40878-022-00309-w about the author cai chen is a phd researcher at the laboratory of anthropology of contemporary worlds (lamc) at the université libre de bruxelles (ulb, belgium), where he has been conducting research on everyday ethno-racial power dynamics within chinese-congolese couples living in d. r. congo. he holds an erasmus mundus joint master's degree in transnational migrations (mitra) and previously worked on migration trajectories and lived experiences of chinese gay students in france. ► contact: cai.chen@ulb.be mailto:cai.chen%40ulb.be?subject= aseas 15(2) | 195 transgender kathoey socially imagining relationships with western men in thailand: aspirations for gender affirmation, upward social mobility, and family acceptance sarah scuzzarelloa* & paul stathama auniversity of sussex, uk *corresponding author: s.scuzzarello@sussex.ac.uk received: 15 february 2022 / accepted: 12 september 2022 / published: 23 december 2022 ► scuzzarello, s. & statham, p. (2022). transgender kathoey socially imagining relationships with western men in thailand: aspirations for gender affirmation, upward social mobility, and family acceptance. advances in southeast asian studies, 15(2), 195-212. this article studies the aspirations and experiences of kathoey (thai male-to-female trans* people) from poor rural isan in enduring cross-border relationships with western men. drawing from biographical life stories, we try to unpack the cultural script through which partnering a western man is seen as a plausible pathway for a better kathoey life in thailand. we study the opportunities such partnering presents for achieving goals of gender affirmation, social advancement, and re-gaining merit within family relations. in the face of significant discriminatory barriers, kathoey in our study managed to build lives that they saw as self-validating, materially successful, and significantly conferring gender recognition. they understood their relationships as socially and personally much more than access to financial resources and drew important sources of emotional support, especially for gender validation from them. western men were seen as more dedicated to partnering, caring, and being publicly seen in social settings (including family), compared to thai. keywords: cross-border relationships; gender affirmation; kathoey; thailand; transgender  introduction a significant research field on thai-foreigner partnerships studies how and why thai women (mia farang) are motivated to search for wealthier foreign men, often initially (sex) tourists, as a route out of poverty and their subsequent transformative life experiences (e.g., angeles & sunanta, 2009; jongwilaiwan & thompson, 2013; lapanun, 2019; statham, 2020, 2021; statham et al., 2020). although nonheteronormative thai-foreigner relationships are commonplace and thailand is marketed as a tourists’ “gay paradise” (sanders, 2002), there is surprisingly little discussion of lgbtq+ relationships within cross-border current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 74 mailto:thithimadee.art%40mahidol.ac.th?subject= https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4229-4230 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1281-8742 196 | aseas 15(2) transgender kathoey socially imagining relationships with western men in thailand relationships research. instead, the topic is mostly addressed through the valuable queer studies lens (jackson, 2011), or as sex-tourism (ocha, 2020). here we study thai male-to-female trans* kathoey who have enduring relationships with western1 men in thailand, examining their aspirations and experiences that carried them on this life-trajectory. we use the term kathoey as a thai-specific category for people born with a male sexual physiology, and a feminine gender identity. historically, thai society has a tripartite gender/sex system: masculine men, feminine women, and kathoey (morris, 1994). kathoey does not equate directly with the western “trans-”. it is broader, including a range of male-to-female gender identifications: some take hormones or undergo sex reassignment and cosmetic surgery to live fully as women; some dress in feminine styles, but only in specific settings/ times; while others live as visibly effeminate men. participants often used “kathoey” self-referentially. this is partly problematic, because kathoey is used socially with stigmatizing meaning. still, we use kathoey as an analytic category that is in and of thai society, while acknowledging the terminological challenges. we see potential added-value in drawing insights from the cross-border marriage field (constable, 2005) to study kathoey, because our focus is on their aspirations, some of which have parallels to the experiences of mia farang, for whom the “cultural script” (jongwilaiwan & thompson, 2013) to partner a wealthy foreigner motivates many women to migrate to tourist zones in search of a better life (lapanun, 2019). today, many women seeking foreign partners come from a range of social classes and backgrounds, and the same is true for kathoey; however, rural poverty has traditionally been and still remains a core driver of this phenomenon. most research covers women from the poor, rural northeastern region of isan. similarly, five of the six kathoey in our study were born in isan, aged between 30-40 years. they are a generation, who as in classic mia farang narratives, migrated within thailand leaving poor rural households in isan to find work, often in (sex) tourist cities. however, we know little of their specific aspirations and life-journeys to achieve social advancement and gender affirmation while facing transphobic discrimination from heteronormative thai society. what does the cultural script for a kathoey isan person to partner a western man look like? and how do those who made this life-journey view their efforts to realize goals for gender affirmation, upward social mobility, and family acceptance through this lens? our study does not claim representativeness. it is explorative, aiming to provide insight into the relatively undiscussed topic of nonheteronormative relationships between kathoey from poor, rural backgrounds and western men. of course, there are limits to the parallel with mia farang. kathoey have their own specific experiences of discrimination in trying to find a social space for gender recognition within the dominant sexual mores, values, and family and social relations within thai society. also, thai law requires kathoey to keep the male gender on their official documentation, while same-sex marriage is not permitted. this means kathoey are not able to gain access to property rights and social welfare from their partner through legal marriage, an important resource for mia farang empowerment (see statham, 2020). likewise, this documentation problem makes it difficult for kathoey to move abroad 1 western covers people from europe, north america, australia, and new zealand. aseas 15(2) | 197 sarah scuzzarello & paul statham with their partners, so that most kathoey-westerner relations remain located in thailand, with the western partner often visiting for months at a time. by unpacking some kathoeys’ aspirations and understandings of their cross-border partnerships, we hope to allow space for their voices, and move beyond limiting stereotypes that depict these relationships as sex work or paid companionship (pravattiyagul, 2021). we aim to establish that emotions, (non-sexual) intimacy, and aspirations to overcome stigma and rejection from thai society are important factors, and crucial for sustaining relationships over the long-term, even if they stand alongside financial motivations. kathoey in the ‘gay paradise’ thailand is tolerant towards sexual minorities compared to other asian societies: the state decriminalized homosexuality in 1956, buddhist teachings do not declare homosexuality immoral, and homophobic violence is low (jackson, 1999). in the 1960s, thailand was a pioneer for gay tourism and today neighborhoods of bangkok and tourist cities are significant global venues (jackson, 2011), purpose-built for foreign tastes. like their heterosexual counterparts, these venues are premised on the availability of sexual encounters, provided by low-income thais, and questionable, but state-sponsored, stereotypes of ‘exotic’ thai people as sensual, caring, and sexually open (sunanta, 2020). kathoey are core to this fetishized exotic commodification of thai-ness marketed to wealthy male tourists. as jackson argues, “kathoey is the iconic face of queer thailand” (2011, p. 35). a distinctively thai phenomenon, which the state tourist board markets to attract tourists to ladyboy cabarets and bars, kathoey are celebrated as a spectacle: e.g., their beauty pageants feature on national television, but they also face ridicule, prejudice, and significant transphobic discrimination. the state enacted basic rights for lgbtq+ communities against discrimination and hate speech only in 2015. people who have undergone sex-change surgery cannot apply for legal recognition of their gender change. this importantly restricts their chances in all domains of social life where documentation is required, including employment, contractual transactions, and international travel. this prevents kathoey from marrying partners, and potentially gaining access to rights (e.g., property, inheritance) available to women in heterosexual cross-border marriages. transphobic prejudice and discrimination are well documented in education, the workplace, and by families (usaid, 2014). although lgbtq+ activism has mobilized over the last decades, kathoey still often live on the margins, unable to fully express their gender identity without repercussions. marginalization is especially acute for kathoey from poor, rural backgrounds in isan. within the rigid class and status hierarchies of thai society, isan people are looked down upon socially by urban middle classes and considered backward, darker-skinned peasants who speak a lao dialect (angeles & sunanta, 2009; keyes, 2014). kathoey from isan face high barriers of double discrimination from gender and class/status to build a life. this is why many move to tourist zones with ladyboy scenes. such neighborhoods are highly limited geographical spaces that transgress mainstream thai norms because they are explicitly constructed to cater for foreign tourists’ (sexual) fantasies and tastes. but from a kathoey perspective, tourist zones 198 | aseas 15(2) transgender kathoey socially imagining relationships with western men in thailand can provide new opportunities for work (albeit often sex work), affirming gender identities, and experimenting in ways of being kathoey and being part of a kathoey peer community, and as a potential route out of poverty by partnering wealthy foreigners (statham & scuzzarello, 2021). a cultural script for a better kathoey life: partnering western men notwithstanding clear differences that kathoeys’ specific forms of gender identification bring, relevant insights can still be drawn from thai women’s experiences documented in heterosexual marriage migration research (angeles & sunanta, 2009; lapanun, 2019; statham, 2020; 2021). cross-border relationship studies have importantly shifted from explanations of economic motivations, to emphasize intimacy, emotions, and culture, as reasons why women might seek and engage in relationships with foreign men (constable, 2005; yang & lu, 2010). typically, these examinations of “global marriage-scapes” (constable, 2005) study first the gendered power, material, emotional, intimate, and care exchanges between individual women and men in a partnership, relative to the intersecting inequalities in which each is socially embedded; and, second, the lived experiences, wellbeing, and socio-economic outcomes for the partner from the economically poorer background, usually in the global south. jongwilaiwan & thompson’s (2013) study discusses relationships between mia farang and singaporean men as negotiated exchanges, emphasizing that partners make an implicit bargain, whereby the underlying asymmetric power structure is an exchange of material and financial support (by men) for emotional, intimacy and care support (by women). however, within this overall complex package, emotional care and material support can flow in both directions, and the balance can shift over time (see also statham, 2020). this highlights the blurred lines between the emotional/intimacy and material/financial dimensions of everyday negotiations within cross-border partnerships, and that we should be cautious about pre-defining a partner’s role within a rigid single framework of sex work, domestic work, care-giving, or love. jongwilaiwan & thompson (2013) also argue that these negotiated relationships between partners are the cutting edge where agency transforms transnational patriarchal relations. similarly, we think kathoey-westerner relationships are an important field where agency can socially redefine what it is to be kathoey, and transform social understandings of being kathoey, relative to dominant gender, heterosexual, and family relations norms, both in thailand and the west. important in this respect are the resonant cultural scripts (jongwilaiwan & thompson, 2013, p. 370), i.e., socially constructed kathoey narratives that generate aspirations for individuals to follow this specific transformative life-trajectory. our subjects are embedded in a globalized social world that makes relationships with western men seem possible and plausible ways to gain access to resources that are ‘blocked’ to them due to discrimination, a lack of enforceable rights, and financial and family pressures. at the same time, the emotional, caring, and intimate components of thai-western relationships can provide warmth, security and sometimes a sense of family for kathoey, and an opportunity to strive for self-validation, social self-realization, and recognition of gender identity. aseas 15(2) | 199 sarah scuzzarello & paul statham here we aim to explore this cultural script through which a generation of kathoey from poor rural isan understand their aspirations (past and present) and life-stories as socially embedded in relationships with western men. we present a snapshot of subjects’ understandings of their agency, lived experiences, and outcomes, across four intersecting dimensions of their shared cultural script: social imaginaries of western men; needs for gender affirmation; goals for upwards social mobility; and desires for family acceptance. taken together, these dimensions give insight to the perceived narrative, i.e., cultural script, real or imagined, through which kathoey aspire and act to partner western men in their search for a better life. whether fantasy or factually-based, a cultural script makes this social pathway seem the most realizable way to achieve gender recognition and a route out of poverty. the power of a cultural script  is that it carries a social force as a self-fulfilling prophecy, generating more aspirations and agency among other kathoey looking for a way out of transphobia and discrimination. it shapes the way kathoey see their negotiated relationships with their western partners. social imaginaries of western men the way kathoey perceive and socially imagine a future life with western men through ideas of gender, sexuality, and modernity shapes their agency towards that goal. kathoey can be likely to see western men through rose-tinted glasses as modern, good family men, and reliable providers (ten brummelhuis, 1999; winter, 2011), given harsh experiences of discrimination, family rejection, and bad treatment by thai men. they see western men as more likely to accept and be sexually attracted to their female gender identification compared to thai men, who are less willing to be in open relationships, or use intimate relationships with kathoey for financial gain through ‘pimping’. there are parallels to aspirant female marriage migrants, who see opportunities to achieve wealth, move abroad, and gain greater personal freedoms away from rigid gender roles and social constrictions of mundane village life (lapanun, 2019). generally, relationships with foreigners confer status and economic benefits for poor rural people (lapanun, 2012). imaginaries do not transfer easily into realities, however, and can be based on misperceptions. gender affirmation affirmation of kathoeys’ felt and expressed gender is pivotal for their wellbeing and ability to have a satisfactory life (see also sevelius, 2013). research underlines their strong desire to be accepted physically and socially as female (ten brummelhuis, 1999; thongkrajai, this issue). to bridge the discrepancy between their physiognomy and their identity, some kathoey develop strategies to perform the ‘perfect’ woman – from controlling their voice to changing their body language. attempts to conceal masculine sexual attributes in public can be very stressful for kathoey, as ten brummelhuis’ interviewee stated, “we are phu-ying (female), but since we are not real, we have to do everything better” (1999, p. 127). faced by harassment and pervasive stigma, gender affirmation is vital for kathoey self-validation, to be seen for who they are and treated accordingly. tourist zones can be places where dominant thai heteronormative 200 | aseas 15(2) transgender kathoey socially imagining relationships with western men in thailand social norms are transgressed in a way that supports spaces for living as kathoey, albeit sometimes through sex work (statham & scuzzarello, 2021). some kathoey “choose to pay the price of being stigmatized by engaging in sex work to be able to live some form of the idealized thai gay/kathoey lifestyle” (jackson, 2011, p. 202). possibilities for relationships with westerners can be seen as a chance to be a “treated like ‘real’ women” in a heterosexual family (pravattiyagul, 2021, p. 92). upward social mobility kathoey from poor peasant backgrounds face high class/status barriers on top of transphobic prejudice. these can be formidable barriers to upward social mobility. lgbtq+ workers face significant institutional discrimination throughout the employment cycle (ilo/suriyasarn, 2014, pp. 51-64). for example, kathoey applicants are often given psychological tests, asked about sexuality in interviews, and unfairly denied positions. their chances to earn a living commensurate with education and abilities are highly restricted. this work discrimination makes it hard to be part of society: “long-term unemployment reduces self-reliance and any capacity to contribute to the welfare of parents, grandparents, or younger siblings. it drags down self-esteem and drives many into sex work, including in specialized ‘ladyboy’ bars” (winter, 2011, p. 261). confronted by blocked opportunities for social advancement, kathoeys’ aspirations for upwards social mobility become channeled into a narrow set of available pathways located in tourist zones where they can exert agency (statham & scuzzarello, 2021). in this context, aspirations for upwards social mobility become strongly tied to aspirations for establishing a long-term relationship with a wealthy westerner. family acceptance family is the definitive social and economic unit in thailand. filial piety norms strongly shape family relationships, whereby children face significant expectations to provide financial and emotional care for ageing parents. this includes trying to be a ‘good child’ and preserve the family’s social face publicly (morris, 1994), given that having a kathoey child can generate social rejection. for kathoey, acceptance or rejection by family members significantly influences how they fare over the lifecourse. jackson (2011, p. 31) follows isaraporn (2009), arguing that family is essential to understanding thai gay identities as “formed through a negotiation of familial expectations in which the autonomy to live a non-heteronormative life is legitimated by a demonstrated capacity to care for one’s parents (which) may not necessarily be felt as a burden.” this explains why kathoey exert agency to be included and recognized within their family, and why family shapes their aspirations, including the goal of a western benefactor. notwithstanding childhood experiences of rejection, kathoey seldom break with family. remittances to family can be an important source of self-esteem and lead to family recognition: “personal wealth can be used to ‘buy’ a space for queer sexual autonomy within a heteronormative culture wherein family ties remain central to queer identity and a sense of self-worth” (jackson, 2011, p. 202). aseas 15(2) | 201 sarah scuzzarello & paul statham data and methods we draw on biographical interviews with kathoey in enduring relationships with western men. interviews were conducted in thai, by thai researchers, between august 2016 and november 2017. the interviews lasted at least one hour, were recorded, transcribed, and professionally translated to english. participants were recruited using researchers’ contacts and links via lgbtq+ ngos. semi-structured interviews enabled participants to recount their life-stories, discussing their aspirations, experiences and outcomes regarding gender identity, sexuality, partnering, work, and family relations. to analyze the interview material, first we read the full transcripts several times. we then applied a narrative frame analysis approach: a frame is a “schemata of interpretation” (goffman,  1974, p. 21) that guides cognitive perceptions of reality. we interpreted how interviewees framed the four analytic dimensions (social imaginaries; gender affirmation; social mobility aspirations; family acceptance) of the cultural script in their respective life-stories. kathoey come from different classes, generations, places, and backgrounds that importantly shape their specific life experiences. our sample is small (n6) and not representative. we do not aim to speak of a general kathoey perspective. instead, our focus is primarily on the cultural script of a specific cohort of kathoey, now aged between 30 and 40, who grew up in poverty in rural isan. isan people migrated en masse to cities and abroad as an important driving force of thailand’s rapid social and su bject in terview ee a ge at in terview p lace o f o rigin c u rren t lo catio n t im e in relatio n sh ip w ith w estern er w estern er p artn er age years yo u n ger th an w estern p artn er r eceives fi n an cial in co m e fro m w estern er e m plo ym en t (o u tsid e care-w o rk fo r p artn er) h o m e o w n ersh ip in h o m eto w n f in an cial rem ittan ces to fam ily a 30 loei (isan) pattaya 7 years 64 34 yes, on request none yes yes, occasionally b 40 khorat (isan) phuket 6-7 years 70 30 thb 27k per month owns a health business no thb 15k per month c 33 surin (isan) pattaya 2 years 65 32 thb 40k per month owns a bar with western partner no thb 15k per month d 32 sisaket (isan) pattaya 6 years 81 49 thb 20k per month works at bar on “scene” no thb 3-5k per month e 35 khon kaen (isan) pattaya 7-8 years 78 43 thb 10k per month works at ngo (lgbt+ rights) yes thb 4k per month f 22 samut prakan (central) bangkok 10 months 47 25 occasional gifts university student. freelance modelling & design no no table 1. interviewee sample 202 | aseas 15(2) transgender kathoey socially imagining relationships with western men in thailand economic transformation over the last decades but continue to face stigmatization and limited opportunities (keyes, 2014). primarily, we look at kathoey who established relationships with western men, starting out from an unpromising background of class/status disadvantage, to see how their aspirations and experiences were shaped. five of our six interviewees fit this profile, the other is a younger generation kathoey, a student from the outskirts of bangkok, whose relationship is less established, and who is not a migrant. this contrasting case helped to define the distinctiveness of the others’ cultural script and is cited once only in relation to imaginaries of western men. table 1 documents some basic sample characteristics regarding background, location, age, education, relationship, and family remittances. it also provides letters (e.g., a) that link quotes to interviewees. for the five isan interviewees, it is notable that they are significantly younger than their western partners (37.6 years mean), who are elders (71.6 years mean), and receive/have received substantial financial support, and provide some support to families. socially imagining western men participants recall ‘success stories’ of mia farang, who gained status and relative wealth through their relationships with western men. these resonant success stories were a stimulus for participants to seek out western men to achieve their goals: i wanted to have a farang2 husband. the inspiration came from my friend […] she said a foreign husband takes good care and gives her a lot of money thousands a day. […] i just wanted to have a foreign husband to take care of me, i wanted to have a house like the others […] i wanted to have what others had […] to have a comfortable life, a house, a car, golden jewelry, and everything that others don’t [have]. i just wished i had everything as from [the perspective of] the person who had nothing before, looking at others who were wealthy so that they won’t be able to look down on me. (e) [ i wanted to have a foreign boyfriend] since i was a child as i found other older people having foreign boyfriends […] they were both kathoey and women who were observably wealthy. (c) mobility to find employment and then on to possibly meet a foreign partner was a common pathway through which participants ended up in tourist cities. one participant’s experience is illustrative: when i finished school, i came to work in bangkok […] i worked in a cosmetic manufacturing factory […] after [breaking up with her boyfriend] i went to pattaya. […] in the second year of vocational school i trained at familymart [supermarket] in na kluea [area of pattaya]. i thought of working in familymart, but once i was there, it didn’t work out, it’s not me. before starting work, i took a ride around town, looking around. […] i saw some people who were uglier than me and they had a foreign boyfriend. then why can’t i also have a foreign 2 farang is a thai colloquial word for westerners. aseas 15(2) | 203 sarah scuzzarello & paul statham boyfriend? my friend at the old bar told me about going out with customers and getting 5,000 baht, 6,000 baht. why is it so easy? i wanted to have money like them. if i was lucky, i would have money like them. (a) a person who felt she was “a girl born in the wrong body” since childhood, the participant underlines the importance of striving for potential material improvement as a key motivation in her desire to meet a foreign man. however, the social imaginaries about western men that prompt kathoey to take this path are not just economic motivations. first, participants express imaginings about western male values and modernity that they believe would make it more likely to find acceptance for their gender identity with a foreign man. they describe western men as more tolerant because they are “taught to love each other with respect, regardless of sexuality” (b). thai men instead are described as financially irresponsible, exploitative (“just looking for someone who can support him” [d]), treating kathoey as a “minor wife” (c), and prejudiced believing that kathoey are “not normal” (b). relationships between thai men and kathoey are not easily accepted within heteronormative social circles, a point made by the youngest 22-year-old participant: “we’re a lady boy, so we must have a foreign boyfriend” (f). older ones recounted how, when younger, they were forced to break up with their thai boyfriends to not bring shame on the families. the strong social exclusionary pressures of society push kathoey towards investing belief in assumed tolerant characteristics of a western partner. for example, a 40-year-old person who had full gender reassignment surgery at 23, claims that western men see a kathoey as an individual in her own rights, a ‘lover’, not defined by a stigmatizing idea of her gender identity: “in thai culture, transsexuality is clearly stigmatized […] we are not viewed as kathoey by foreigners. they see us as their lovers” (b). the quotation reflects the participant’s romanticized view of western men, which nevertheless is part of the cultural script that stimulates fantasies of possibilities for a different type of life being kathoey. seeking gender affirmation participants see relationships with western men as an important potential vehicle to affirm their gender. they talk about how their partners, who identify as heterosexuals, are attracted by their femininity and that they can affirm their gender through this relationship without being questioned: “he liked me as a lady. he liked that i dressed up beautifully and that i was looking cute. he knew i’m a ladyboy, but he was able to accept it and always complimented me that i looked beautiful” (e). some recount how their western partner encouraged them to explicitly express their femininity as a core element of their relationship. for example, one person’s austrian partner paid for her breast implants and she is encouraged to spend time on her looks when he is in pattaya: “if i have an appointment with [partner] at 8 pm, at 5 pm i’ll start to shower and wash my hair. i have to spend time with makeup and trying on clothes and drying my hair” (a). a relationship with a western man can create a space for gender affirmation and this emotional and psychological support can have positive effects on a kathoey’s self-identity and wellbeing. it can allow kathoey to “live like a common couple” (d). it 204 | aseas 15(2) transgender kathoey socially imagining relationships with western men in thailand is interesting to note that a number of the relationships in our sample were monogamous and without sexual activity. this can be attributed partly to western men being much older, but also indicates that the relationship is built emotionally on more than sex, despite being largely viewed as sex work by the outside world. in some cases, relationships with westerners can also serve as cover for long-term intimate relationships with a thai man, relatively concealed from the scrutiny of mainstream society. this is possible logistically because western partners are often away for long periods. one participant (c), a 33-year-old kathoey, has been in an intimate relationship with a thai man for 11 years. they live together in pattaya when the participant’s western partner is in new zealand. the participant actively negotiates multiple relations to sustain this arrangement that allows for a double gender affirmation. the new zealander believes that the thais are friends living as “brothers” (c), who work together to launch a bar he bought in pattaya. the participant organized a traditional wedding with the new zealander back in the home village of surin and plans to “take care of him” (c) when he retires permanently to thailand. the participant has also married the thai partner in a traditional wedding ceremony, but he has to “accept and go along with” (c) the arrangements in exchange for security and the prospect of a future together: q: how does your thai boyfriend feel about you having a foreign boyfriend? a: he’s ok with it. we have agreed that we will not leave each other behind. we will stay together and improve our lives (c). aspiring to upwards social mobility aspirations for long-term security and climbing the social ladder is a core driver underpinning participants’ relationships with westerners. four participants receive a monthly allowance ranging between thb 10,000-40,000 (ca. € 250-1,000). at the higher end, this is just less than one-and-a-half times the national average monthly income per household (thb 26,900 as of 2016) (national statistics office, no date). in addition, two participants have their rent and bills paid for, and the participants recount receiving gifts, money, and even support to set up their own businesses. all report having a better quality of life since being with their western partner: i now have my own house to live in when i go back home, unlike before when i used to live in a small hut with my aunt in the farm or at the small hut with my mother […] now i have a proper house to live, a private bedroom, a kitchen and i don’t have to depend on my relatives. (e) participants are clear that such life-chances would be impossible with a thai man, for whom they would be a source of money: “money is an important factor for a thai man to be with a kathoey” (b). however, allowances and gifts from westerners also come with strings attached and elements of social control when their spending is checked. one person recalls having to prove money was spent as agreed: “he got me the first gold chain that weighed one ounce, then i took a picture of it and sent it aseas 15(2) | 205 sarah scuzzarello & paul statham to him as a proof ” (e). kathoey seem largely willing to put up with these controlling practices for the bigger good of a better life. this is made easier because the western men are away much of the time. kathoey seek not only immediate material gains but also future financial security from a relationship. as legal same-sex marriage is impossible in thailand, some push to become beneficiaries of their partner’s will, to have legal rights to their partner’s assets, and secure a future after his death. subjects have relatively little agency in this decision because it depends on their partner’s wealth, own family, and commitment to the relationship. while one participant was included in the westerner’s will, others mobilized alternative strategies to gain long-term access to his wealth, for example, by having property or a business legally in their name. some partners had only limited means, however, and could provide only immediate financial support, meaning that some participants developed other ways to save up for the future: “i should do lots of savings to take care of myself when i get older because i will not have my own children to take care of myself as others” (d). d, a 32-year-old kathoey who had feminine appearances until 26 years old, describes managing such a relationship in her relationship with an 81-year-old australian. they are “living happily together” (d) when he is in thailand three times a year. this person (d) receives a monthly allowance that is enough to pay for living expenses and to support parents, but cannot save enough to set up a small business that is a dream, and still occasionally prostitutes to supplement income and aspirations. beyond the material trappings and wealth, it is clear that having a western partner adds value and some degree of social acceptance to being kathoey, according to the participants. some report being looked up to by others because of their relationship to a western man: “one of the pros is that when i go out, i feel proud that i have a foreign boyfriend. it looks good in society. it’s accepted” (a). “it’s about the social factor. it looks better when you have a foreign husband” (e). they also report becoming role models for younger kathoey: the young kathoey in my hometown, they ask me “ma’m’ how do we get a foreign husband? i want to have a foreign husband like you” […] most of the younger kathoey in pattaya call me ‘ma’m’, they call me ‘madam’ because i have [partner] who supports me. i have a car and things. (a) while western partners raise status among peers in the tourist zone, it is harder to transfer this status to mainstream society, which stigmatizes these types of relationships. also, new-found wealth can be a source of envy and exploitation, because it transforms relations with friends. one person, a 30-year-old kathoey living in pattaya, has experienced increased pressure to provide for her friends, something that she had to learn how to manage: before, i used to party. i thought about it. if i party a lot with my friends, friends will think of me as “madam”. “madam, buy us beer.” everywhere i go, i have to pay every day. it’s not right. if i go out, i just lose – lose my health, lose my money. if i don’t treat my friends, i also lose my friends. (a) 206 | aseas 15(2) transgender kathoey socially imagining relationships with western men in thailand her natal family also expects to benefit financially from the relationship, which is why she negotiates a balancing act between her sister’s requests for money and worries that her western partner will see her as a money-grabber. she loves her austrian partner and does not want to come across as if she is only after his money: if she [sister] has a problem, she calls me. i told her that if she wants to talk about money, she has to tell me in advance. not call me today and want the money right away. i told her that if she has financial problems, she has to call me a week in advance because i need time to talk to [partner]. i have to explain the reason to [partner]. when she calls, i can’t explain to [partner] right way and get the money right away. it doesn’t work like that… the money is not with me. i have to explain to [partner] for him to agree. i can’t tell him that i want the money now. give it to me. give it to me. then he will think that i only want his money. i don’t want foreigners to think that i only want their money. i also have good feelings and love for him. we take care of each other. (a) respondents are aware that their acceptance from thai society is limited to specific social spaces and places, the nonheteronormative enclaves or ‘scenes’ in tourist-zones. such places become a “second home” (d), with networks and communities of people like them. yet, even in these places, they sometimes face stigmatization from thais, which again underpins the strong heteronormative constraints of thai society. one person in a relationship with a 70-year-old swiss medical doctor, recounts her experience of going out in phuket with her partner: if we want to eat out [in phuket], we will go to good restaurant with qualified waiters. they may look at us but they will not talk or behave negatively about us, at least while we are there. differently to some places, we can be looked down and i can see lots of questions into their eyes such as what career i do and how we met. […] it is difficult for people in other cities to accept who we are. even in phuket, we still need to go to good places in order to avoid being judged about our relationship by people around there. let’s say, if we go together at bangla3, i will be looked down as they thought i got the big fish as referred to my boyfriend. this is how most of thai people view us. (b) she feels that “most thai people” look down on her and assume she is a prostitute out with a client. her story illustrates the participants’ persistently liminal position and precarious conditional status in thai society, even after attaining material goals. seeking family recognition and acceptance participants express a genuine desire to find acceptance and recognition for their gender identity within their family. to this end, some have developed strategies to buy back materially and morally into the family, a core motivation for partnering a western man in the first place. monthly remittances are important in this respect and those who received regular support from their partners made significant remittances 3 bangla road, known as patong walking street, is the centre of phuket’s nightlife scene catering for foreigners. aseas 15(2) | 207 sarah scuzzarello & paul statham (see table 1), ranging from thb 3,000 to 15,000 per month (ca €77-390). at the higher end, this is close to the average monthly household income for the northeastern region (ca thb 21,000 as of 2016) (national statistics office, no date). they enable their natal family to have “a fair life” (d) while demonstrating filial piety, and gaining status as dutiful children: if i have a comfortable life, my parents should also have a comfortable life. i don’t want to be the wife of a foreigner and forget my roots. don’t let other people put a mask on you. you have to be yourself. you should make your family comfortable. (a) if a western partner is willing to recognize a kathoey’s obligations to natal family and support them, this can importantly impact on acceptance by the family and home village. a person in a relationship for seven years with her austrian partner describes how they are now accepted as a genuine couple in her hometown: he’s an easy-going person. he can eat northeastern food. […] when he goes to my hometown, i cook for him and take him out to different places in our province. i show him around. in the morning, we drink coffee at my friend’s shop. i invite my mom to walk along the mekong river. in the evening, i buy groceries to cook at home. (a) her partner’s regular support to her family has meant that he is fully accepted by them: yes, they accept him. when we go back home, my parents tie holy thread on our wrists. it’s thai tradition. he is deeply impressed and touched. when my grandfather was still alive, we were about to drive back, my grandfather found holy thread in the house and ran out to knock on the car window. he told us to extend our arms out and he tied our wrists with holy thread. five minutes after we drove out, [partner] cried. he was deeply touched. he said that when he was married to his thai wife, her family never did this for him. they only asked for money. they only talked about money. he said that my family never talked about money with him. he felt overwhelmed. (a) a traditional marriage ceremony can be symbolically important in this respect. another person’s family blessed the union with the western partner after he agreed to pay “thb 50,000 in cash and two bhat gold4” (c) to the parents in a dowry. the traditional wedding publicly validated the relationship and importantly the participant’s gender identity in the village: “at the beginning i was not accepted by the neighbors. yet, after my relatives participated in the wedding ceremony and understood our relationship, they are happy to see us happy” (c). participants are sometimes not able to live up to local people’s high financial expectations about having a western partner. when their allowance is modest and they can only remit amounts that cover basic expenses, they receive less acceptance 4 one bhat gold weighs ca 15g. 208 | aseas 15(2) transgender kathoey socially imagining relationships with western men in thailand and can be seen in a bad light by people in the village. for example, one person in this situation recounts how the family’s neighbors have been gossiping negatively: “some people didn’t understand why i am still not having a luxurious life even though i have a foreign boyfriend. they see my mother still living in the same house” (d). westerners do not always accept the thai notion of filial duty, applying instead western individualist values and norms. this can create tensions. one participant, who lives mostly as an effeminate man, says that the 78-year-old british partner “loves me but doesn’t take my family well” (e). nonetheless, this person still makes remittances to family every month, concealed from the partner, which demonstrates the strength of the internalized social pressures to meet expectations of filial piety that have been raised by knowledge of the relationship: i already told my family that i had a boyfriend, but you know how the villagers are, right? so when they saw him, they got excited. i had already thought that i would not allow myself to feel embarrassed so when i went home, i got my relatives some money from the little savings that i had. the little savings were from the small change he used to give me to buy some stuff. but i can’t let him know when i give money to my relatives as he doesn’t take things well and wouldn’t be happy about it otherwise. it’s hard for me to send back home as well with my mom alone is also very difficult. he only takes good care of me for everything i want to have, i want to eat etc. so when i go home, i give money to my mother and to my relatives without him knowing about it. even after we had a party at home, when i buy snacks for the kids, he would say something that the money he gave me is for myself and not for my family. he is very difficult with my family and doesn’t take anyone except me. (e) this indicates the degree to which recognition within the family and social acceptance from the village is conditional, and dependent on expectations for provision, that are driven and significantly raised by being in relationship with a foreigner. concluding thoughts here we have tried to present a snapshot of the cultural script through which a generation of kathoey from poor rural backgrounds in isan aspired to make a social space for living a kathoey life by establishing an enduring relationship with a significantly older western man. on one side, relationships with western men (in contrast to thai men) were seen as opening up chances for gender affirmation and love, and thereby legitimated and made possible a nonheteronormative lifestyle, albeit one sometimes confined to tourist-zone scenes. on the other, relationships with western men stigmatized kathoey as prostitutes (notwithstanding sex often not being a component of the emotional bond), thereby creating barriers to social acceptance within thai society, not least in the home-town village where acceptance was strongly dependent on familial provision. facing a hostile, discriminatory environment from mainstream heteronormative society, people in our sample were able to achieve an important degree of gender recognition and social advancement, according to their own evaluations. of course, they were selected as people in established relationships, so we should not raise their aseas 15(2) | 209 sarah scuzzarello & paul statham experiences to a general level. there are most likely kathoey from the same origin and cohort who were unable to achieve similar goals, although they most likely aspired to the same cultural script. indeed, the resonance of this cultural script can in part be attributed to the highly limited opportunities for kathoey from this cohort to achieve aspirations by other means, due to the high levels of transphobic and class/status discrimination. even among a sample of success stories, the high challenges of balancing acts at the interface between the partnership with a foreign man, peers in the tourist zone, and family back in the village, demanded resourceful and continued hard work by kathoey to keep their ambitions afloat. although their relationships with western men are structurally underpinned by economic support, it is clear they stand socially for much more. subjects viewed their negotiated exchanges with their western partners through a lens of opportunities, but their aspirations within the relationship strongly included needs for intimacy and emotional support from a caring and loving bond. this desire for affection and wellbeing was mostly achieved and not based on sexual relations, which in most cases had ceased. also, the public visibility of being kathoey in an enduring relationship with a western man provided a degree of gender validation in the face of mainstream heteronormative society that was seen as unrealizable from relationships with thai men in thai society. even the opportunity to gain merit by ‘buying back’ into the family by financial remittances has a strong emotional component in that it required family recognition and acceptance of a kathoey-foreigner relationship, something parents were in some cases willing to embrace and ratify in the local community through wedding rituals. this is transformative of local understandings and norms for socially acceptable relationships, even if one takes the cynical view that acceptance is based on financial contributions. we think there is a more subtle process of social change taking place, whereby kathoey agency, empowered through their relationships, challenges and transforms established norms and values. ultimately though, even materially successful kathoey remain in a liminal, precarious position within thai society. especially at the beginning of a relationship, the asymmetric power balance leaves kathoey in a position of dependency on their partners, who could leave them at any moment, with few strings attached. they remain in a weaker position than mia farang, because of their relative lack of access to rights through legal marriage in thailand: same-sex marriage is barred and so is changing gender from that attributed at birth. this is perhaps why kathoey invest so deeply emotionally into westerner relationships to build lasting bonds while also trying to materialize tangible assets through gifts and property ownership. in some cases, this high emotional investment can be a self-fulfilling prophecy that constitutes a caring and loving partnership. but it can also explain why some kathoey accept social controlling behavior by their western partners, while keeping alive their aspirations for gender realization and buying back morally and financially into their families. it needs noting that the ‘cultural script’ we have unpacked is specific to the class/ status background of a generation of kathoey from isan. the exception in our sample, a younger student from a middle-class background on the bangkok periphery, aspired to different social and gender affirmation goals: to migrate and marry her canadian partner in canada, where civil partnerships are legally binding, which would provide significant access to individual rights and resources through the partnership. while 210 | aseas 15(2) transgender kathoey socially imagining relationships with western men in thailand the cultural script we discuss holds for the sizeable generation of isan kathoey who moved to tourist cities in search of western men, clearly younger generations from wealthier backgrounds aspire to cultural scripts that are beyond what the people central to our research considered realizable. overall, our research on enduring relationships shows that, despite power asymmetries within couples and a structural underpinning of economic motives in seeking a relationship with a foreigner, aspirations for a life with affection, (non-sexual) intimacy, and gender affirmation matter a great deal in shaping these kathoey lives. we think that depictions of kathoey-foreigner relationships as sex-work or ‘sugar-daddying’ – stereotypes that resonate in the social world, but that have also informed sociological approaches – fail to do justice to the subject matter and lives they represent. here we have tried modestly to provide some sociological insight into the way some kathoey view the social world of which they are part. by basing our study on an interpretation of their expressed aspirations and views of their negotiated exchanges with their partners, we hope to have demonstrated that emotions are a central component of this kathoey cultural script. we think that it is important, if challenging, to try and find ways to study these special types of cross-border relationships produced by globalization and increasing mobility within structured north/south inequalities within their own terms rather than through a reductive lens of economic determinism.  references angeles, l. c., & sunanta, s. (2009). demanding daughter duty: gender, community, village transformation, and transnational marriages in northeast thailand. critical asian studies, 41(4), 549-574. constable, n. (ed.). (2005). cross-border marriages. gender and mobility in transnational asia. university of pennsylvania press. goffman, e. (1974). frame analysis: an essay on the organization of experience. harper and row. ilo/ suriyasarn, b. (2014). gender identity and sexual orientation in thailand. ilo country office for thailand, cambodia and lao people’s democratic republic isaraporn, p. (2009). thailand in australian fiction. phd dissertation, department of english, university of sydney. jackson, p.a. (1999). tolerant but unaccepting: the myth of a thai “gay paradise”. in jackson, p.a. and cook, n. (eds.) gender and sexualities in modern thailand (pp. 226-242). silkworm books. jackson, p.a. (2011). capitalism, lgbt activism and queer autonomy in thailand. in jackson, p.a. (ed.) queer bangkok.21st century markets, media, and rights (pp. 195-204). silkworm books. jongwilaiwan, r. & thompson, e. (2013). thai wives in singapore and transnational patriarchy. gender, place and culture, 20(3), 363–381 keyes, c. (2014). finding their voice. northeastern villagers and the thai state. silkworm books lapanun, p. (2012). it’s not just about money: transnational marriages of isan women. journal of mekong societies, 8(3), 1-28. lapanun, p. (2019). love, money and obligation. transnational marriage in a northeastern thai village. nus press. morris, r. 1994. three sexes and four sexualities. redressing the discourse on gender and sexuality in contemporary thailand. positions 2(1): 15-43 national statistical office. no date. average monthly income per household by region and province: 2002 – 2019. statbbi.nso.go.th/staticreport/page/sector/en/08.aspx aseas 15(2) | 211 sarah scuzzarello & paul statham ocha, w. (2020). gold rush abroad: the trajectory of singapore-based thai transsexual (male to female) sex workers in global sex tourism. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 13(1), 123-141. pravattiyagul, j. (2021). thai transgender women in europe: migration, gender and binational relationships. asian and pacific migration journal, 30(1), 79–101. sanders, d. (2002). “some say thailand is a gay paradise”. in s. clift, m. luongo, and c. callister (eds.), gay tourism: culture, identity and sex (pp. 42-62). continuum. sevelius, j. (2013). gender affirmation: a framework for conceptualizing risk behavior among transgender women of color. sex roles, 68, 675–689. statham, p., & scuzzarello, s. (2021). transgender kathoey and gay men using tourist-zone scenes as ‘social opportunities’ for nonheteronormative living in thailand, gender, place & culture, doi: 10.1080/0966 369x.2021.1997937 statham, p. (2020). living the long-term consequences of thai-western marriage migration: the radical life-course transformations of women who partner older westerners, journal of ethnic and migration studies, 46(8), 1562-1587. statham, p. (2021). ‘unintended transnationalism’: the challenging lives of thai women who partner western men. population, space and place 27(5), e2407. doi: 10.1002/psp.2407 statham, p., scuzzarello, s., sunanta, s., & trupp, a. (2020). “globalising thailand through gendered ‘both-ways’ migration pathways with ‘the west’: cross-border connections between people, states, and places”, journal of ethnic and migration studies, 46(8), 1513-1542. sunanta, s. (2020). globalising the thai ‘high-touch’ industry: exports of care and body work and gendered mobilities to and from thailand. journal of ethnic and migration studies, 46(8),1543-1561. ten brummelhuis, h. (1999). transformations of transgender: the case of thai kathoey. in jackson, p.a. & sullivan, g. (eds.) ladyboys, tom boys, rent boys. male and female homsexualities in contemporary thailand (pp. 117-136). silkworm books. usaid. (2014). being lgbt in asia: thailand country report. bangkok. winter, s. (2011). transpeople (khon kham-phet) in thailand: transprejudice, exclusion, and the presumption of mental illness. in jackson, p.a. (ed.), queer bangkok. 21st century markets, media, and rights (pp.251-267). silkworm books. yang, w., & lu, m. c (eds). (2010). asian cross-border marriage migration. demographic patterns and social issues. amsterdam university press. about the authors sarah scuzzarello is senior lecturer at the department of geography and researcher at the sussex centre for migration research (scmr), university of sussex (uk). her research focuses on how transnational migrations and intergroup relations are affected and shaped by gender relations, and on how institutional discourses shape migrants’ collective identification and life chances. more recently, her work has focused on queer migrations. her research has been published widely in international peer-reviewed journals and academic presses. she is the associate editor of the journal of ethnic and migration studies and the founding co-coordinator of the imiscoe’s standing committee on gender and sexuality in migration research (gensem). ► contact: s.scuzzarello@sussex.ac.uk paul statham is professor of migration and director of the sussex centre for migration research (scmr) in the school of global studies at the university of sussex, uk. he is editorin-chief of the journal of ethnic and migration studies (jems). paul has written a number of collaborative monographs and edited volumes, and has more than 70 articles in refereed journals and as book chapters. his earlier research focused on cross-national comparative approaches to migration, ethnic relations and citizenship, islam in europe, and the emergence of a transnational european public sphere. his current research focuses on ‘transnational living’ that mailto:s.scuzzarello@sussex.ac.uk 212 | aseas 15(2) transgender kathoey socially imagining relationships with western men in thailand results from migration, mobility and exchanges between europe and thailand with a focus on marriage, wellbeing and life-course. this collaborative research programme focuses on the impacts of transnationalism between thailand and the west on the life-chances of thai people. ► contact: paul.statham@sussex.ac.uk disclosure the authors declare no conflict of interest. mailto:paul.statham@sussex.ac.uk aseas 16(1) | 1 indonesian international students in australia during the covid-19-pandemic: coming out stronger? antje missbacha* & jemma purdeyb abielefeld university, germany bmonash university, australia *corresponding author: antje.missbach@uni-bielefeld.de received: 13 june 2022 / accepted: 11 october 2022 / published: 1 may 2023 ► missbach, a., & purdey, j. (2023). indonesian international students in australia during the covid-19-pandemic: coming out stronger? advances in southeast asian studies, 16(1). advance online publication. australia is a sought-after destination for international students, including from countries of the global south such as indonesia. prior to the pandemic, the tertiary education of international students was its second largest export. at the onset of the pandemic, australia’s prime minister told international students they should return home immediately, warning them that they would not be supported by the government if they chose to stay. throughout 2020 and 2021, australian media outlets offered shocking reports and images of international students who had lost their homes and were queuing at soup kitchens. experts feared that these images and the overall treatment of international students would do long-lasting damage not only to the education sector but also to australia’s people-to-people relations overseas. in this article, we explore the destinies of postgraduate students from indonesia during the pandemic in australia. as indonesia’s closest neighbor, australia is the preferred destination for indonesian students studying abroad and australia has targeted indonesia as a growth market in recent years. based on qualitative interview data, we offer a picture of how this cohort of international students “muddled through” the pandemic. we ask what damage may have been done by the australian government’s closure of its international borders and strict pandemic restrictions to its reputation as a welcoming country and center of educational excellence. what consequences might there be for this vital indonesia–australia relationship, in particular, and for the future of student and broader university engagement between the two countries? our findings show a much more optimistic outlook than expected. keywords: covid-19; international students; people-to-people relations; scholarships; soft power  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 85 mailto:thithimadee.art%40mahidol.ac.th?subject= http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1378-146x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3388-7299 mailto:antje.missbach%40uni-bielefeld.de?subject= 2 | aseas 16(1) indonesian international students in australia during the covid-19-pandemic introduction “as much as it’s lovely to have visitors to australia in good times, at times like this, if you are a visitor in this country, it is time … to make your way home.” prime minister scott morrison, abc news, 3 april 2020 (gibson & moran, 2020) “international education is a vital part of australian society. it brings many economic, cultural and social benefits to our people and businesses.” (department of education, skills and employment, 2021) prior to the covid-19 pandemic, australia was the third most popular international education destination in the world. over the last four decades, the tertiary education sector grew to become australia’s second largest export earner after mining. the story of educating international students in australia is often heralded as a success, building on more than seventy years of educational movement into the country, particularly from the asia–pacific region. since the beginning, this educational exchange has had both a commercial and transactional dimension, as well as a geopolitical imperative in relation to australia’s place in the world. a key focus of this paper is to try to understand the ways in which the covid-19 pandemic and pandemic-related restrictions impacted on international students’ day-to-day lives, and, beyond that focus, to investigate the potential for damage to australia’s reputation as an attractive destination for international students. any potential loss in australia’s “attractiveness” is not only associated with inevitable financial losses, but also with losses in australia’s soft power in the asia-pacific region. as we explain in more detail below, special focus is directed to postgraduate students from indonesia, which australia has targeted as a growth market in recent years. in the late 1940s and 1950s, australia began welcoming both privately funded and scholarship students to australia, mostly from southeast asia and south asia, many of whom were awarded scholarships funded by the colombo plan (gomes, 2022; oakman, 2004; purdey, 2015). the colombo plan was a regional economic and social development initiative from a group of commonwealth nations to provide assistance to developing countries, both in the transfer of physical capital and technology and in developing skills by training students. as historians have revealed, for australia, the early emphasis in this exchange was closely connected to an aid and development imperative arising from a diplomatic focus on ensuring stability within the region (oakman, 2004). beneficiaries of such government-funded programs were then, and are still today, expected to return to their home countries after their studies to assist in economic, infrastructure, and social development. as purdey (2015, p. 115) has written elsewhere, australia’s first program of educational assistance for indonesians included a small number of fellowships first offered in late 1948, following a goodwill mission to meet the leaders of the republican movement. the first fellows arrived in december the following year. as david lowe (2003) has described, indonesia’s strategic importance in the region and this existing relationship meant it was immediately designated a key participant in the colombo plan, even though aseas 16(1) | 3 antje missbach & jemma purdey it was not a member of the commonwealth. in the first decade of the program in australia, indonesians made up one of the largest cohorts, peaking in 1955/1956 with an intake of 220 students out of a total of 675 colombo plan arrivals (auletta, 2000). we argue that this special relationship first established in the post-war years lasts until today, carried through in australia’s present-day scholarships program, the australia awards. whilst these government-funded programs now account for a tiny portion of australia’s international student enrolments, they remain important instruments for bilateral diplomacy with its regional partners, including indonesia, which will be described in more detail below. in the decades since the early student arrivals, various factors ushered in significant changes in the approaches of australia’s higher education sector and of the government towards international students. these factors include geopolitical shifts, economic development in students’ countries of origin, and, most significantly perhaps, deregulation of australia’s higher education sector in the late 1980s (croucher, 2015). as successive governments reduced the public contribution to the sector, universities became increasingly dependent on international students’ fees. in the years prior to the pandemic, overseas student fees were the largest source of revenue growth for australian universities, growing as a proportion of total revenue from 17.5% in 2010 to 27.3% in 2019 (ferguson & spinks, 2021). by the time the pandemic hit, education had developed into a very strong export market that was highly professionalized and deeply embedded within australia’s domestic economy. from 2010 to 2019, overseas student enrolment across all levels in australia grew at an average rate of 10% year on year (department of education, skills and employment, 2020). despite this massive growth, critical voices regarding the poor treatment of international students grew louder, too, as not enough was being done to ensure international students were receiving a quality experience (arkoudis et al., 2019). ignorant of such criticism, by the end of 2019 and just before the pandemic hit, 440,000 international students, mostly from china, india, nepal, vietnam, malaysia, pakistan, and indonesia, were enrolled in australian universities (ferguson & spinks, 2021). in that year, education services to full-fee-paying international students and their related expenses brought in aud 40.3 billion (gomes, 2022; marshman & larkins, 2021). as one expert has pointed out, this dependency meant that after two years of the pandemic and huge associated losses to the market, “there’s no other way to fill the gap” (peter hurley, quoted in kelly, 2022). the importance of international students to australia goes beyond their financial contributions to the nation’s universities; it also derives from their potential as people who will one day be the leading thinkers and social, business, and political leaders and decision-makers in their home countries, and, as such, the shapers of peopleto-people relations with australia for generations to come. it is, therefore, crucial to understand how australia’s covid-19 pandemic lockdowns and border closures impacted the cohort of international students who lived through it and their outlook on australia, not only to better comprehend the outcomes for these individuals, but also for the future of the international education sector and australia’s reputation more broadly. 4 | aseas 16(1) indonesian international students in australia during the covid-19-pandemic covid-19 disruptions covid-19 arrived in australia in february 2020, just as the academic year was about to commence. on 1 february, australia placed restrictions on arrivals from china, which severely affected international students from china and hong kong, many of whom had not yet returned to australia from chinese new year holidays at home. with these students no longer permitted to enter the country, australian universities and other educational institutions were forced to turn to online teaching and learning to deliver their courses to students stranded overseas (amelia et al., 2021). as scholars have pointed out, for students in china this was not a simple shift, with many facing considerable difficulty in accessing their online courses because of china’s great firewall (hope & sullivan, 2020). as covid-19 spread and was declared a pandemic, australia closed its international borders on 19 march 2020 to all non-citizens and non-residents. universities halted their onsite operations entirely as the country entered a nationwide ‘stay at home’ lockdown. for international students in australia, the lockdowns meant that many who were reliant on income from casual and part-time employment in hospitality and retail were now in a precarious position. in early april 2020, prime minister scott morrison told international students and other visitors to return to their home countries, as his government needed to focus its attention on its own citizens and residents (gibson & moran, 2020). only those temporary visa holders with critical skills in assisting with the pandemic, such as doctors and nurses, were offered exemptions. international students who had lost the casual work on which they relied to earn enough to cover rent and household expenses, including food, faced severe problems. media images of long queues of international students outside city food banks during the initial six-week long national lockdown made their precarity highly visible (carey & carlson, 2022). unable to cover their rent, some international students faced eviction, and the cancellation of international flights meant that some literally had nowhere to go (power, 2021). according to andrew hughes, a marketing lecturer at anu’s research school of management, such images were causing significant damage to “brand australia” (quoted in sas, 2022). after the national lockdown was lifted in late may 2020, the situation for students for the remainder of that year and into 2021 differed greatly, depending on which australian state they were living and studying in. between june 2020 and november 2021, the severity and duration of ‘stay at home’ orders varied from state to state and between urban and regional areas with each state. during these 18 months, victoria’s capital melbourne experienced more and longer lockdowns than other states (approximately 38 weeks in total), followed by new south wales (approximately 26 weeks in total). for the other states and territories with significant numbers of international students, lockdowns were minimal in queensland and the australian capital territory, while in western australia they were hardly used at all in 2021. given that melbourne and sydney host the largest numbers of international students in the country, it is not surprising that the overall reaction of international students was extremely negative. *** aseas 16(1) | 5 antje missbach & jemma purdey in our study we sought to survey a range of indonesian postgraduate students from across different australian states and universities, including those who experienced long periods in lockdown. our findings from in-depth interviews with indonesian students revealed a much more positive outlook on student resilience than media reports and initial research have indicated. we have structured our analysis around the examination of students’ financial situation, issues arising from the closure of the international borders, student–supervisor relations, resilience, and expected longterm impacts of the pandemic and lockdowns. as will be shown, while all students admitted that the pandemic caused a massive disruption in their lives, depending on their class background, their scholarship conditions, their family situation, and their overall embeddedness within the indonesian community in australia, some students faced the pandemic with much more resilience than others. while this finding does not undermine general criticism of how poorly some international students were treated in australia during the pandemic, it urges us and future research endeavors to pay more attention to intersectional positions, as not all international students were affected by the pandemic in the same way. more than export dollars when researching the impacts of the pandemic on international students in australia, our interest is twofold: it is focused first at the micro level, of impacts on the personal and the intimate, and second at the macro level, of impacts on australia’s regional and global reputational standing. given the position and status of the cohort of students chosen for this study, we will argue that these two foci are intrinsically connected. firstly, we sought to understand the impacts (financial, emotional, and social) at the individual level on indonesian postgraduate students who either stayed in australia or returned to (or remained in) their home country for 2020 and 2021. to do this, we engaged in 15 in-depth qualitative interviews with students to examine their motives for studying abroad and the impacts of the pandemic on their studies and general wellbeing. the second broader aim of this study was to test the proposition that australia’s higher education industry has not only provided a boon to its domestic economy in export earnings, but also to its standing internationally. over the past decade, in various reports and white papers issued by the department of foreign affairs and trade (2016; 2017; 2022a,b), the australian government has consistently pointed to and sought to leverage the soft-power dividend of this growing cohort of alumni of australian higher education institutions (purdey, 2015). through our qualitative sample of in-depth interviews, we aim to understand the potential impact of the covid-19 related ruptures to this soft-power dividend and the potential reputational damage to “brand australia” in both the short and longer term. the focus for this study is on postgraduate students from australia’s closest neighbor, indonesia. while students from indonesia do not form the largest nationality cohort of international students in australia, it is their primary overseas destination, with 20,000 indonesians studying in australian institutions in 2019 (australian embassy indonesia, 2020), of which over 13,000 were in tertiary education (department of education, skills and employment, 2020). of significance for 6 | aseas 16(1) indonesian international students in australia during the covid-19-pandemic the focus of this study, more postgraduate students from indonesia currently hold scholarships under the australian government’s australia awards program than students from any other country. also, australia is the second most popular destination after the uk for recipients of the indonesian government’s premier scholarship program, indonesian endowment fund for education (lembaga pengelola dana pendidikan, lpdp). recipients of these scholarships are marked out as already highachieving individuals and future leaders in their respective fields in academia, policy, and business in indonesia. indonesia-australia relations our study of indonesian students in australia is directly connected to our broader interest in questions of australia’s place in its region and the world and in peopleto-people linkages as a soft-power dividend (missbach & purdey, 2015). australia’s relationship with indonesia is frequently described by australian politicians and diplomats as the most important of its bilateral relationships – a priority friendship in the indo-pacific region (morrison, 2020). for many decades before the recent signing of the bilateral comprehensive economic partnership agreement (ia-cepa 2020), people-to-people links forged through the presence of indonesian students in australia and of australian tourists in indonesia have been vital, in part because of the absence of any significant trade relationship (lindsey & mcrae, 2018). in recent years, as indonesia’s middle classes have expanded with its improving economic status, the number of young people seeking enrolment in foreign universities as full-fee-paying students has increased, as has the number on government-funded scholarships. australia’s long and close educational connections with indonesia, combined with the high international ranking of many of its universities have driven demand, as has its geographical proximity to indonesia. although there are currently fewer students from indonesia studying in australia than the much larger cohorts from china and india, the relative youth of indonesia’s population and that nation’s growing demand for a skilled workforce signal a significant potential demand for higher education in the coming decade. as australia’s higher education sector looks to lessen the risk of over-exposure to china’s massive market, the sector itself and the australian government anticipate that the momentum generated by the ia-cepa will make indonesia a vital market for australian universities (austrade, 2020; austrade & australian unlimited, 2019). our study focuses on postgraduate students, recognizing their particular status within indonesia’s higher education and public service sectors (both current and future), and their roles as influencers of policy and preferences related to australia as both an education destination and more generally for ongoing people-to-people connections. by concentrating on indonesian postgraduate students, we hope to make some preliminary observations about any consequences of the covid-19 pandemic for this vital bilateral relationship and for the future of student and broader university engagement between the two countries. aseas 16(1) | 7 antje missbach & jemma purdey scholarships and soft power in the region while the origins of australia’s international education industry reach back to the influx of students under the colombo plan scholarships program, today full-feepaying students make up the large majority of those coming to australia. however, students coming to australia for postgraduate study from countries such as indonesia and other asia-pacific countries, particularly those undertaking phds, are most likely to do so with a scholarship provided by their own government or by the australian government. in a very small number of cases, scholarships may be offered by philanthropic programs or by the universities themselves. most indonesian postgraduate students in australia are recipients of a scholarship from either the australian or indonesian government, from competitive and highly sought-after programs, such as the australia awards and indonesia’s lpdp. the lpdp was established in 2012 to create the nation’s future leaders and professionals in various fields and to invest in strategic research and human resources to support indonesia’s development. applicants must include an essay on how they will contribute to indonesia once they have completed their studies. priority fields include engineering, science, agriculture, law, economics, finance, medicine, religious affairs, and socio-culture, and awardees are able to choose from a limited selection of universities in several countries around the world, including australia.1 since they were established, eligible universities in australia have made distinct efforts to target students with lpdp scholarships, including tailoring their postgraduate offerings to match the priorities of the award.2 australia has been the second most popular overseas destination for lpdp awardees, with 386 enrolled in its institutions as of 31 december 2020 (lembaga pengelola dana pendidikan, 2020). the australia awards scholarships for postgraduate study in an australian tertiary or higher education institution are administered by the department of foreign affairs and trade (dfat) as part of its development assistance, with a focus on countries in the indo-pacific and in line with the particular partner country’s needs (department of foreign affairs and trade, 2022a). as of october 2021, the australia awards program reported 211 indonesians undertaking postgraduate study in its universities (approximately 24% for doctoral degrees) (department of foreign affairs and trade, 2021a).3 both the indonesian and the australian postgraduate scholarship programs cover tuition and a stipend, although recipients frequently report that the lpdp stipend is less generous than that provided by australia awards. this is especially the case for those accompanied by family members, who 1 the decree of the minister of finance (kmk) no. 18/kmk.05/2012, dated 30 january 2012, designated lpdp as a government agency and its scholarships program commenced in 2013 (https://lpdp.kemenkeu. go.id/en/tentang/visi-misi/). 2 australian universities on the lpdp eligibility list are very proactive in tailoring their offerings for prospective students (e.g., https://www.monash.edu/international/global-partnerships/internationalsponsor-relations/lpdp-priority-areas-and-monash-courses; https://www.rmit.edu.au/study-with-us/ international-students/apply-to-rmit-international-students/fees-and-scholarships/scholarships/ lpdp-rmit-scholarship). 3 with the suspension for new arrivals into the australia awards program during the pandemic, in february 2022 australia awards reported the current number was 156 students currently in australia, with 30% doctoral students (department of foreign affairs and trade, 2022a). 8 | aseas 16(1) indonesian international students in australia during the covid-19-pandemic usually need to rely on income from casual work to support their needs. although selection criteria and procedures differ for lpdp and australian award awardees, both scholarship programs make it mandatory for recipients to return to their home country after graduation, at least for a number of years, in order to avoid ‘brain drain’.4 successful awardees are, needless to say, high achievers, and in indonesia’s case, the vast majority are employed within either the higher education sector with the status of public servant, or in other sections of the public service (saputra, 2018). as previous studies have shown, once they return home, graduates of these scholarship programs play significant roles in their institutions (purdey et al., 2015). as alumni of their universities and scholarship programs, they also play ongoing roles in promoting australia’s reputation as a “world class education” provider and as a desirable country to study and live in (anggoro, 2022). these long-standing educational connections between the two countries are frequently noted and drawn on by representatives of both countries when they refer to the depth of the bilateral relationship (department of foreign affairs and trade, 2022a). in december 2020, at the australia awards alumni presentation, the australian ambassador to indonesia, gary quinlan, acknowledged the importance of this cohort: “australian alumni in indonesia make a significant contribution to indonesia’s development and help our two countries to understand each other better … alumni play a crucial role in deepening cooperation between indonesia and australia” (australian embassy indonesia, 2020). similarly, in his address to the australian joint houses of parliament in february 2020, president joko widodo referenced the long-standing bilateral links in educational exchange, noting: “our youths today are the leaders of tomorrow. investing in the young generation will further strengthen the indonesia-australia partnership” (cabinet secretariat of the republic of indonesia, 2020; widodo, 2020). our study sought to test such positive viewpoints, and to examine how covid-19 may have altered these assumptions among a cohort of indonesian students who studied and lived in australia during the pandemic. methodology from january until february 2022, we conducted 15 semi-structured in-depth interviews with indonesian postgraduate students who were enrolled in an australian higher education institution during the pandemic (2020–2022) either as phd candidates (71%) or as master’s by coursework students (29%). they were either currently studying or had recently completed their studies. the students were based in various australian states and also in indonesia. while we conducted most interviews online, we were also able to meet some interlocutors in person. we issued a call for participants through an australia–indonesia youth network, but the majority of interviewees were found through snowballing, with one interviewee suggesting others. this has meant that our sample is composed of clusters of students from a 4 for most programs, it appears that a graduate is required to live and work in indonesia for two years for every year on an overseas scholarship plus one. aseas 16(1) | 9 antje missbach & jemma purdey particular university, or from a particular discipline.5 when this became apparent, we actively sought out additional participants from different institutions and disciplines where possible. there is some gender bias in our sample towards women (71%).6 the interviews attempted to undertake a “whole-of-life” approach, wherein we sought to learn not only about the students’ experience of the pandemic, but also to understand their motivation for undertaking postgraduate study overseas, their family background, and employment commitments at home and in australia (purdey, 2015).7 preliminary findings in contrast to media reports focused largely on the difficult situations for many international students in australia during the pandemic, our study revealed a somewhat positive picture of how indonesian students dealt with the challenges they encountered in this period. we do not see our findings as a corrective to the overall negative media reportage, but rather as adding nuance to the critical discourse on the situation of international students in australia and to demand a more refined approach to understanding the needs, characteristics, and coping strategies of international students. in this paper, we offer a preliminary general overview. in general, a number of co-created/co-selected themes emerged across the series of interviews with the students: income, borders, student–supervisor relationships, support networks, and family. the two main variables that appeared to have influenced the experiences of our participants during the pandemic are based on: a. family status (married, children; accompanied to australia or not). students who were accompanied by family felt more settled, secure, and less anxious than those who were single or whose immediate family members were in indonesia. b. progression in degree prior to pandemic (that is, the number of years they had been studying before march 2020). students who were preparing to begin fieldwork when lockdowns were imposed and borders closed and those who had just arrived to start their studies experienced the most disruption and anxiety. they faced the need to pivot and adjust within a rapidly changing environment, including shifting their research focus online. 5 these universities and discipline areas also reflect the data in relation to current australia awards scholarship recipients (department of foreign affairs and trade, 2021a). our sample includes students from various universities, including the three universities with the most australia awards scholarship holders – university of queensland, university of melbourne, and australian national university. 6 this bias towards women awardees mirrors the australia awards distribution in 2020 and 2021 (56% female) (department of foreign affairs and trade, 2021a; 2022a,b). 7 sample questions included: where are you from?; why did you want to study abroad?; why choose to study in australia?; what did you know about australia before enrolling in your course?; how did you support yourself during lockdowns?; what resources did you have access to?; if you returned to indonesia before completing your studies, what have been the challenges/ benefits?; has your view of australia/ australians changed? 10 | aseas 16(1) indonesian international students in australia during the covid-19-pandemic finding 1. scholarships shielded from significant financial hardship during the lockdowns, none of our respondents who held scholarships during the pandemic reported significant additional financial hardship8, with one exception relating to the need to seek assistance on a short-term basis to cover some medical costs. in this case, the situation was rectified once the student understood how to access relevant benefits available to her as part of her award. whilst some students took advantage of university offers of food parcels and similar handouts, none admitted to relying on them to get by. on the contrary, some students provided help to others, and a reduction in their living expenses during lockdowns meant that some were able to add to their savings. the sense of community among indonesian students was generally high, often expressed through sharing meals and other offers of help. the partners of students who were accompanied by a spouse sought some kind of casual or part-time work both before and during the pandemic. some students also worked in casual employment to earn extra income. generally, this work was not greatly inhibited during the lockdowns, as most were employed in sectors deemed ‘essential work’, such as cleaning and delivery services, rather than in hospitality, retail, and tourism, which were the hardest hit sectors. the casual nature of this work, however, meant that most were ineligible for government assistance offered during the first national lockdown. of note here is the fact that, whilst most spouses are also professionals, most do not seek to work in their own fields while living in australia, preferring to work in jobs with flexible hours to give them the time they need to care for their families. for a few spouses, the pandemic-induced shift to virtual workspaces meant that they could continue to work in their jobs ‘in’ indonesia and contribute to the family income (see finding 2b below). universities were supportive and offered students assistance when needed, including counselling, which some informants made use of. students mentioned receiving vouchers (for books and coffee) and hampers during the pandemic, and, whilst they appreciated this gesture from their universities, our respondents did not deem it essential. some acknowledged that their particular situation was not the norm for all international students, for example: i think i would have to acknowledge again my privilege for getting the scholarship and being stable regarding income ... but for a lot of my friends who were not australia awards scholarship awardees, they had to struggle. finding 2. the border closure had different impacts the sudden closure of international borders had varying impacts on the personal lives of our respondents, with an individual’s family status and situation having the 8 here, we would note that for some years prior to the pandemic, international students in australia – including scholarships awardees – have noted coming under significant financial stress to cover rising cost of living expenses, especially related to accommodation costs. these pressures vary depending on the city in which students are living and have changed over the course of 2020-2021. for example, melbourne and sydney saw huge reductions in rental costs during this period, especially in locations in which international students lived, whilst in the regions and smaller cities, such as canberra, these costs have continued to rise. aseas 16(1) | 11 antje missbach & jemma purdey most significant bearing. the two main impacts were that it either kept families apart or allowed families to remain together. a. kept families apart only one of our sample of participants was separated for any length of time from their immediate family. in this case, the student had originally intended to return to indonesia from time-to-time for long periods to carry out fieldwork in indonesia, rather than relocating the entire family to australia. when the borders closed and this plan was no longer possible, the student reported heightened anxiety and stress and a profound negative impact on their mental health and wellbeing. in the end, a special and rare dispensation was sought from the university and granted, allowing the student to return to indonesia and continue their studies online. most interlocutors expressed sadness at having been disconnected from their parents and their extended kin networks during the pandemic, particularly when any of these people fell sick or passed away while they were in australia. social media, particularly video calls, allowed for intense exchange and communication. a high number of our respondents reported deaths of family members during this period, particularly during indonesia’s devastating covid-19 delta wave in july–august 2021. not being able to attend funerals and conduct religious rites in indonesia was seen as a significant personal loss. b. allowed families to remain together (“blessing in disguise”) in an unexpected finding, a number of respondents described how, for their specific family configuration, the closure of borders was a “blessing in disguise”, because it meant that their visiting spouses were “trapped” with them in australia and did not return to indonesia as initially intended. as noted above, when many workplaces shifted online in 2020, spouses were able to continue to work in indonesia from their australian homes, particularly if they were academics or had their own businesses in indonesia. it became a blessing for us because everything was online … including in indonesia. that’s why until now my husband is still here. this student also reported being able to concentrate more on her career and studies as their spouses were there to help with the children and household and provide emotional support. not being separated from their immediate family members at this time greatly assisted with mental health wellbeing. significantly, for those with family and ongoing commitments outside of their studies, such as home schooling and additional income generation, it also allowed for flexible work schedules: we want to make the best of it. respondents reported that they adopted better time management practices during the lockdowns, resulting in high levels of productivity for some. 12 | aseas 16(1) indonesian international students in australia during the covid-19-pandemic i could join an international conference in europe … i even collaborate with a european researcher, and we are working together on a paper. it is more productive. some made a greater effort to prioritize and free up time for self-care, meditation, and friendships: during the pandemic … there were times when i was very low … i’ve tried yoga, it has been working … walking religiously … a lot of zooming with friends in jakarta … that’s how i survived the lockdown. finding 3. shift to online learning resulted in different challenges and impacts participants spoke about experiencing anxiety, largely due to uncertainties in relation to their research/study planning in the early stages of the pandemic. fieldwork and data collection were particularly complex issues for our interlocutors, most of whom are doctoral students in humanities and social sciences (hass) completing a large research project on an indonesian case study relevant to their field. as the seriousness and longevity of the pandemic emerged, it became increasingly unlikely that students enrolled in australian universities would be permitted to carry out fieldwork overseas (including those who were citizens of the country that was the site of the fieldwork). after an initial period of uncertainty and accompanying levels of significant anxiety, during which they needed to redesign their methodological approaches to make online data collection (surveys, targeted interviews) viable and to adjust ethics applications, students opted for very pragmatic approaches and were highly functional and efficient. in most cases, the students drew on their existing networks, knowledge, local connections, and language capacity. for those who had to break into new areas involving qualitative research, not being there in person meant they needed more time to forge personal connections via social media to elicit useful data. some introductions were facilitated by local assistance in the field, but frequent follow-up was deemed essential to build and keep good rapport with informants. once you have a good relationship with a person you can whatsapp them anytime … but you need to meet them first. whilst they acknowledged that there were negatives associated with “missing something” that they might have been observed because they were not “on the ground” or “in the room”, all our indonesian phd student informants were working on indonesia-related research and admitted to having good insights from their previous experiences in working, researching, and studying in the general fields they were investigating. the methodological adjustments made necessary by the restrictions on travel for fieldwork research offered room for reflection, which became an even more important aseas 16(1) | 13 antje missbach & jemma purdey part of the dissertation; in some cases, it led to the publication of short pieces (blogs, op-eds). moreover, some students reported finding a clearer focus for their dissertation by making their research covid-19-relevant, which made their contribution timely and positioned it well for impact. those seeking to undertake research using archival or textual materials located in indonesia experienced more difficulties. the extent to which such resources are available in digital formats online remains limited. several of these students, and those collecting qualitative data for which there was no online option, engaged local researchers to gather the material. their universities offered specific funding to cover these costs. of those students who still had time remaining in their degree programs, some expressed the hope that they might yet undertake in-country fieldwork before completion. finding 4. a key relationship for doctoral/higher degree research students continues to be with their supervisor(s). unlike undergraduate students or those doing a master’s by coursework, research students have a unique and close connection to university academic staff and their networks. the supervisor performs not only research guidance and teaching roles, but also mentoring, both personal and professional, and acts as a gateway to university services. in longitudinal studies of doctoral students (such as purdey et al., 2015), the relationship between the supervisor and doctoral student is highlighted as often the most significant connection the overseas student forms during their time in australia and is most likely to continue after they return home. given the challenges facing not only students, but also their supervisors and other support staff in the universities during the pandemic, this relationship was more important than ever for international students. one respondent described feeling a sense of solidarity between student and supervisor as “we are all in this together” and an awareness of the shared limitations brought by the pandemic. for a few of our respondents, changes to supervisors were another source of anxiety, although this was not necessarily due to the particular impacts of the pandemic. students reported some difficulties meeting with supervisors and getting to know colleagues in person, but this was largely short-lived and occurred in the early stages of transition to online learning practice. on the whole, we heard from students that the online environment allowed for frequent and regularly scheduled contact with supervisors. finding 5. resilience generally speaking, resilience refers to both the process and the outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences. being resilient does not mean the avoidance of stress, but rather the capability to make use of a diversified arsenal of successful coping strategies that enable a person to work through difficulties and stress. the participants in our study are all high achievers and have undergone many rounds of competitive selection processes to be granted prestigious scholarships. this success has provided them with a special kind of ambition, which we argue contributes to their resilience and the way they struggled through 14 | aseas 16(1) indonesian international students in australia during the covid-19-pandemic the pandemic. with so much at stake, they were also driven to “not lose face”, which meant that failure – aborting their tertiary studies at their australian university prematurely – was not an option for them. our interviews revealed that their resilience also had many other additional sources. most students were well-connected either through religious groups (for muslims, pengajian, and for christians, church), which were a source of great support, especially in dealing with homesickness and during religious celebrations such as ramadan/iftar, when some students set up food exchange chains and online religious activities, such as sermons, prayers, and singing. additional networks mentioned by our interlocutors included indonesian student associations (perhimpunan pelajar indonesia australia, ppia) and the scholarships programs themselves (lpdp or australia awards), as well as university-specific graduate student associations. some students referred to these networks in kinship terms (“our new family”). while most students we interviewed were very much drawn to indonesian friendship circles – many had indonesian housemates – for support and comfort, a few specifically sought to make friends with non-indonesian peers, either other international or australian students. these networks and the personal drive of the individual students meant they were highly resourceful, accessing support and taking advantage of programs offered by their universities and scholarships program, as well as government and community organizations in their local area. as briefly mentioned above, many were also a source of such support to and for others, volunteering to provide food packs and offering emotional and financial assistance to others in various ways. i managed by volunteering a lot. i would go to church and volunteer … i kept myself busy. beyond their immediate environment, all our respondents also spoke of providing emotional support, public health advice, and financial aid to family members at home in indonesia. sometimes they [family in indonesia] shared hoax information and i countered them with news from credible sources. finding 6. inconsistency in australian government messaging over borders led to confusion and anxiety although inconsistency in australian government messaging relating to border closures led to confusion and anxiety, in general our participants agreed that the strict rules were necessary: “it keeps us safe”. they pointed out that exemptions to the strict rules were possible for some businesspeople and visiting celebrities, and some of them expressed a wish that specific exemptions for international students might have been granted so that they could leave australia and return after short family visits in indonesia, particularly in cases where family members had passed away. some observed that international students had been largely neglected in the national conversation, despite repeated reference to their importance to the education sector. aseas 16(1) | 15 antje missbach & jemma purdey at the time when international students can’t enter australia, last year the australian open was still organized, right? for me and for other students it was unfair … i have many friends who can’t go back and who are separated between families and it’s not easy for us … we don’t have a problem with the restrictions because it keeps us safe, but the problem we, my friends in brisbane, have is that it is inconsistent and it’s neglecting the needs and necessities of the international students. i actually agree with the australian government for the restriction because it keeps us safe, and it keeps us going. but we know that we lost many people, our loved ones, and we can’t go back. nonetheless, in discussion on this issue, students also referenced the indonesian context, explaining that they felt safer being in australia than in indonesia and weighed the risks of returning to indonesia. of course, i’m homesick, but we think more practically because is it possible to come back if we go to indonesia? so, we calculate any possibility and i think the wise option is just to keep here until i can at least finish important stages, important chapters. all were vaccinated and grateful for australia’s free vaccination programs and that they were permitted to access this at the same time as australians. they noted that australians were also disadvantaged by the border control and mobility restrictions (“everybody experienced it”). as one respondent put it, covid? i don’t know what the worry about it is. just a pandemic. we are not living in a war … we have our health. we can get through it. despite the many upheavals caused by covid-19, the specific cohort under study here appears to have got through the pandemic relatively well, despite early anxieties, a number of personal sacrifices, and the need to keep adapting their studies in what was a rapidly changing environment. our interlocutors found studying in australia challenging, noting the need to apply a high level of critical thinking to reach supervisors’ expectations. however, many of the academic difficulties they cited were not related to the pandemic impacts in particular and are consistent with the experiences of previous cohorts. compared to alarming reports of students suffering significant financial hardships during the pandemic, the cohort under study here was financially much more secure and not reliant on casual and part-time work in sectors impacted by lockdowns. the relative financial security of this cohort appears to have been an important difference in comparison to that of more precarious, self-funded international students who remained in australia during this period. in the two years of the pandemic, students accompanied by their family had far more settled and stable experiences than those who were alone or apart from family at this time. in addition, responsive and supportive universities, high levels of pastoral care from supervisors and other staff who adopted a flexible approach to the constantly shifting conditions, were also key to 16 | aseas 16(1) indonesian international students in australia during the covid-19-pandemic positive outcomes for our research-only cohort. in general, we would argue that all our interlocutors managed to emerge from their experiences of the past two years in a position of strength and with positive sentiments towards their institutions and australia. *** whilst the experiences of this cohort of higher degree students enrolled in australian universities during the pandemic would indicate minimal to no reputational damage to australia in practical terms, the higher education sector is concerned about what it will take to reinvigorate these connections into the region after a gap of two years with no new arrivals. during this period, the australia awards program and lpdp were suspended, and in-country recruitment efforts were not possible. there was a well-founded concern within the higher education sector that prospective students would choose to take up opportunities elsewhere (arora, 2021). our study shows that australia was not always our interlocutors’ first choice for their studies. all agreed, however, that it was the most pragmatic choice in terms of length of program, distance to indonesia, quality of education, and safe environment. we would argue that as international mobility returns to pre-pandemic levels and scholarship programs and recruitment resume, the same pull factors will take effect, perhaps with some added emphasis. all our respondents reported that, if asked, they would encourage their colleagues, family, and friends to undertake their studies in australia. as leaders in their respective fields, be it in the academy, policy, or business, this alumni cohort will be of significant importance in rebuilding the connections lost between these indonesian institutions and australian universities over the past two years. a continuing dependency problem? those closely observing australian universities’ growing dependence on international students for some time had already been critical of what they believed to be a highly risky business model. the pandemic exposed and aggravated the risks of this model many times more than predicted. in september 2021, the australian government’s provider registration and international student management system (prisms) database showed that commencing international student enrolments for 2021 fell by 24% compared to 2020 and by 41% compared to 2019. for all international enrolments, numbers fell by 13% compared to 2020 and by 17% compared to 2019 (austrade, 2020; marshman & larkins, 2021). with more dropouts and fewer new enrolments, many university managers feared that the pandemic might have damaged the business model beyond repair (dite, 2021). in 2020, australian universities lost 5.1% of 2019 revenue (duffy, 2021). without replenishing the number of new incoming international students, universities are expected to lose between aud 16 billion and aud 19 billion by 2023. moreover, with australia’s main market competitors – the uk, canada, and the united states – opening to international students as early as june/july 2020, the higher education sector feared significant losses to their market share (hurley & hildebrandt, 2021). on 15 december 2021, after months of mixed messaging, australia’s border was finally opened to international students and some workers subject to quarantining aseas 16(1) | 17 antje missbach & jemma purdey and vaccination requirements. within weeks, however, as australia became overwhelmed by the covid-19 omicron variant and infection rates not seen at any time during the first two years of the pandemic, significant shortages within a stretched workforce and pressure on vital supply chains led to yet another shift in the government’s rhetoric about international students. in an attempt to help those industries facing worker shortages, in january 2022 the australian government announced a visa fee rebate of aud 600 to students and backpackers entering australia in the following two to three months (hitch, 2022). this policy targeted approximately 150,000 students and 23,500 working holidaymakers holding visas to enter australia, but who had remained outside the country. the federal government also removed the restriction on student visa holders that limited the number of hours they worked to 20 hours (boscaini et al., 2022). while welcomed by business operators and some students, academics and student associations criticized this policy, arguing that the main focus of getting students back into the country should be on their studies rather than on filling shortages in australia’s casual workforce. will covid-19 prove to be a turning point for australia’s international education sector? or will this opportunity to learn lessons from the experiences of students and institutions pass unnoticed, with stakeholders returning to their pre-pandemic focus on expansion and growth? catriona jackson, ceo of universities australia, is among those who are hopeful that a simple reset might yet be possible for the australian market and that “the fundamental appeal of an australian education remain[s] as strong as ever: excellent universities, high vaccination rates and an enviable lifestyle” (quoted in kelly, 2022). when students began to return to campuses in february 2022, for some of them it was for the first time in two years. the centers of australia’s major cities, devastated during the long lockdowns, are once again enlivened by the return of many international students. in the short term, universities are quietly optimistic that numbers will return to near normal levels in the second half of 2022. this all remains to be seen, as do the mediumto longer-term implications of australia’s long border closures and restrictions on migration for its once dominant and thriving international education sector. conclusion this paper has shed light on the challenges faced by international students in australia during the ongoing covid-19 pandemic. given that international students are a very diverse cohort and a highly socially stratified group of people, we have sought to offer a targeted examination of a particular cohort: postgraduate students from indonesia. most of them were holders of government-funded scholarships and, as such, occupy positions of influence within the crucial bilateral relationship between australia and indonesia. while the scholarship holders might be only a small fraction of australia’s international student cohort, they are part of the drive within its universities and government to build important connections with indonesia, including with its future academic and political leaders. while the media and some scholars studying international students in australia (and in many other western countries) have presented justifiably alarming reports 18 | aseas 16(1) indonesian international students in australia during the covid-19-pandemic about the poor treatment of international students, our findings, albeit from a very specific sub-group of international students, have offered a different picture. we do not see this as a contrast to these reports, but rather as a complement to the experiences they represent. instead of offering a representative sample, which would require more research funding for data collection, our sample is rather an indicative exploration and an initial mapping of a very specific sub-group of international students. we argue that it is important to take into account the often highly individual reasons and motivations behind students’ decisions to study in australia and the difficulties in generalizing the impacts of the pandemic experience on this very important group of temporary migrants to australia. while our analysis offered a surprisingly positive picture, we are aware that these findings must be related to the overall scenario faced by the australian education sector, which currently faces many challenges in creating sustainable models for its financial future while also meeting the fundamental educational expectations of preparing domestic and international students for the future. while it may be tempting for australian universities to simply go back to their old model of living off the fees brought in by international students, this moment in time (the ending of the pandemic’s acute phase in some countries) could provide a crucial opportunity to create institutions of higher education that do not depend to the same extent on fees from international students. our findings reveal that, whilst financial security was the single most important factor in protecting our respondents during this period, also critical was the comfort and support provided by family, community networks, and the pastoral care and professional support offered by their universities. we would argue that, in combination, these elements provided our students with a high degree of resilience in the face of significant challenges. whilst it is not possible to replicate these conditions for all international, or indeed domestic students, financial precarity is a concern that predates the pandemic and will most likely continue beyond it. this study, however, contributes to existing evidence (kent, 2021) 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(2021, november 26). australian strategy for international education, 2021–2030. https://www.dese.gov.au/australian-strategy-internationaleducation-2021-2030 department of foreign affairs and trade. (2016, may). public diplomacy strategy, 2014–16. https://www. dfat.gov.au/sites/default/files/public-diplomacy-strategy-2014-16.pdf department of foreign affairs and trade. (2021a, july). indonesia: australia’s international education sector. https://www.dfat.gov.au/about-us/publications/trade-investment/business-envoy/july-2021/ indonesia-australias-international-education-sector department of foreign affairs and trade. (2021b, october 6). information brief: australia awards. department of foreign affairs and trade. (2022a, february 2). information brief: australia awards. department of foreign affairs and trade. (2022b). australia awards scholarships. https://www.dfat.gov. au/people-to-people/australia-awards/australia-awards-scholarships duffy, c. (2021, december 2). australia’s university sector has winners, losers and big losers. but will 2022 turn things around? abc news. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-03/australian-universityinternational-students-revenue/100665752 ferguson, h., & spinks, h. (2021, april 23). overseas students in australian higher education: a quick guide. research paper series, 2020-2021. parliamentary library. https://www.aph.gov.au/about_parliament/ parliamentary_departments/parliamentary_library/pubs/rp/rp2021/quick_guides/overseasstudents gibson, j., & moran, a. (2020, april 3). as coronavirus spreads, “it’s time to go home” scott morrison tells visitors and international students. abc news. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-03/coronaviruspm-tells-international-students-time-to-go-to-home/12119568 gomes, c. (2022). parallel societies of international students in australia: connections, disconnections, and a global pandemic. routledge. hitch, g. (2022, january 19). visa fee refund offered to entice students, backpackers to fill covid worker shortage. abc news. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-01-19/backpackers-internatonal-studentsvisa-fee-rebate-covid-workers/100765716 hope, z. (2020, february 7). australia’s push to remove online firewalls for trapped chinese students. the sydney morning herald. https://www.smh.com.au/national/australia-s-push-to-remove-onlinefirewalls-for-trapped-chinese-students-20200207-p53yvg.html 20 | aseas 16(1) indonesian international students in australia during the covid-19-pandemic hurley, p., & hildebrandt, m. (2021, december 13). international student numbers hit record highs in canada, uk and us as falls continue in australia and nz. the conversation. https://theconversation. com/international-student-numbers-hit-record-highs-in-canada-uk-and-us-as-falls-continue-inaustralia-and-nz-173493 kelly, c. (2022b, january 29). ‘looking down the barrel’: australian universities face nervous future postcovid. the guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/jan/30/looking-down-thebarrel-australian-universities-face-nervous-future-post-covid kent, a. (2021, november 30). resilient communities: history of international education in australia. insights. https://www.ieaa.org.au/insights/resilient-communities-history-of-international-educationin-australia lembaga pengelola dana pendidikan. (2020). the resilience of scholarship services and research funding in the midst of the covid-19 pandemic: annual report 2020. https://lpdp.kemenkeu.go.id/storage/ information/report/file/yearly/yearly_report_1637836488.pdf lindsey, t., & mcrae, d. (2018). strangers next door? indonesia and australia in the asian century. bloomsbury publishing. lowe, d. (2013, november 29). sponsored scholarships and people-to-people connections: reflections on the context of australian-indonesian relations. unpublished paper, university of indonesia. marshman, i., & larkins, f. (2021, december 8) after 2 years of covid, how bad has it really been for university finances and staff? the conversation. https://theconversation.com/after-2-years-of-covidhow-bad-has-it-really-been-for-university-finances-and-staff-172405 missbach, a., & purdey, j. (eds.) (2015). linking people: connections and encounters between australians and indonesians. regiospectra. morrison, s. (2020, february 10). speech before the address by the president of indonesia [to the australian parliament on 10 february 2020]. https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlinfo/search/display/display.w3p;quer y=id%3a%22chamber%2fhansardr%2fbe8a2537-4a84-4dc2-b27b-28f392b06329%2f0003%22 oakman, d. (2004). facing asia: a history of the colombo plan. pandanus books. power, j. (2021, october 7). homeless non-residents were given emergency housing during lockdown. that ends monday. the sydney morning herald. https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/homeless-nonresidents-were-given-emergency-housing-during-lockdown-that-ends-monday-20210928-p58vhn.html purdey, j. (2015). investing in good will: australia’s scholarships programs for indonesian tertiary students, 1950s–2010. in a, missbach & j. purdey (eds.), linking people: connections and encounters between australians and indonesians (pp. 111-132). regiospectra. purdey, j., lowe, d., & ritchie, j. (2015). scholarships and connections: australia, indonesia and papua new guinea, 1960–2010. sas, n. (2022, february 9). as “fortress australia” opens after two years of covid-19 border closures, will backpackers and tourists come back? abc news. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-01-31/covidaustralia-border-closures-backpackers-tourists-return/100782424 saputra, m. b. (2018, october 4). who wants to be an indonesian civil servant? almost everyone. the diplomat. https://thediplomat.com/2018/10/who-wants-to-be-an-indonesian-civil-servant-almosteveryone/ widodo, p. j. (2020, february 10). as friends, australia and indonesia must stand together. australian financial review. https://www.afr.com/world/asia/as-friends-we-must-stand-together-says-jokowi20200210-p53zh5 about the authors antje missbach is professor of sociology at bielefeld university, germany, specializing in global and transnational migration and mobility. she is the author of troubled transit: asylum seekers stuck in indonesia (iseas, 2015) and the criminalisation of people smuggling in indonesia and australia: asylum out of reach (routledge, 2022). ► contact: antje.missbach@uni-bielefeld.de mailto:antje.missbach%40uni-bielefeld.de?subject= aseas 16(1) | 21 antje missbach & jemma purdey jemma purdey is adjunct fellow at the australia-indonesia centre, monash university. she researches and writes on indonesian politics and the australia-indonesia relationship. she is co-author with antje missbach and dave mcrae of state and society in indonesia (lynne rienner, boulder co., 2020). ► contact: jemma.purdey@monash.edu disclosure the authors declare no conflict of interest. mailto:jemma.purdey%40monash.edu?subject= addressing unfortunate wayfarer: islamic philanthropy and indonesian migrant workers in hong kong aseas 10(2) | 237 addressing unfortunate wayfarer: islamic philanthropy and indonesian migrant workers in hong kong hilman latief ► latief, h. (2017). addressing unfortunate wayfarer: islamic philanthropy and indonesian migrant workers in hong kong. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 10 (2), 237-255. this article analyses how islamic philanthropy is translated and reiterated in contemporary indonesia and contextualized in the international arena. it examines the experience of an islamic philanthropic organization, dompet dhuafa (dd), in defining and addressing types of zakat beneficiaries by, among other things, addressing unfortunate indonesian migrant workers residing in hong kong. the effort of dd to expand the types of zakat recipients reflects a new development of islamic philanthropy activism in indonesia. there is a substantial change in how zakat is formulated and practiced among indonesian muslims in general, and in particular indonesian migrant workers overseas. islamic philanthropic organizations, such as dd, have functioned not only as intermediaries between benefactors in indonesia and indonesian migrant workers overseas but also as energizers to encourage the zakat practice among fortunate migrant workers to help their unfortunate fellows overseas. keywords: dompet dhuafa; indonesia; islamic philanthropy; migrant workers; relief  introduction over decades, indonesian muslims have practiced zakat (almsgiving or mandatory giving). this involves paying 2.5% to 10% of their income, and channeling their sedekah or sadaqah (voluntary giving) to semi-permanent or ad hoc zakat collectors established in the communities, who are referred to as ‘amil (from arabic: the alms collector). the collected funds are mainly disbursed among deserving beneficiaries in the neighborhood, such as the poor and the needy. therefore, zakat and charity practices in indonesia and many other countries are very local in character, taking place as a sort of community-based self-help or communal support (ali & hatta, 2014; weiss, 2002). however, there has been a substantial change in zakat practice where a new form of islamic philanthropic organizations arose in urban areas, emerging as well-organized organizations with regard to management, competencies, and institutional capacity (alawiyah, 2010; latief, 2010; lessy, 2013) that can formulate and adopt new and ‘modern’ concepts of ‘development’ by engaging not only a ‘service approach’ but also an entrepreneurial approach as well as innovation in finding solutions and measuring impact (anheir & leat, 2006, p. 90; payton & moody, 2008). islamic philanthropic organizations in indonesia have also formulated ideas and activities that align with the framework of the united nation’s millennium development goals (mdgs) and now sustainable development goals (sdgs) (noor & pickup, 2017). aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 17 .2 -7 238 | aseas 10(2) addressing unfortunate wayfarer: islamic philanthropy and indonesian migrant workers in hong kong hence, muslim understanding of philanthropy in indonesia has also changed over time as islamic philanthropic organizations seek a new interpretation of who zakat beneficiaries are and why they deserve assistance from philanthropic organizations. it is unsurprising that muslim philanthropic organizations in indonesia have played pivotal roles not only in relieving the poor in neighborhoods, but also in operating humanitarian missions and relief projects in disaster-affected spots in indonesia and overseas, notably where muslims and muslim countries are affected (bush, 2015; latief, 2013, 2016). some islamic philanthropic organizations also focus on community-based economic empowerment, entrepreneurship, income-generating activities, and other types of development-oriented projects. this means that some portions of zakat and sadaqah funds collected by islamic philanthropic organizations have been used to address not only the symptoms but also the roots of the problems, thus providing a long-term impact. the expansion of the scope of philanthropic practices in indonesia indicate that there has been a process of professionalization and the increase of the organizational capacity of islamic philanthropic organizations as a response to the government regulation as well as a fulfillment of people’s demand for accountability. this suggests that muslim philanthropic organizations have been underpinned and equipped with specialized human resources, state regulation, and various methods of financial resource mobilization. beyond that, there has been an effort to reinterpret some quranic concepts about the eight types of zakat beneficiaries, partly because challenges faced in recent times are more complicated than those in the past. the categories of those in need in today’s world have changed in line with the complexity of the root of poverty. according to the oxford poverty and human development initiative (ophi), the nature of poverty is multidimensional. it does not only relate to the fulfillment of basic needs such as food and housing, but also other needs such as sanitation, clean water, education, healthcare, and the opportunity to obtain proper jobs (ophi, 2017). according to the qur’an (at-taubah: 60), zakat fund should and can be disbursed to particular types of beneficiaries: the needy (fakir), the poor (miskin), the alms collector (amil), in the path of god (fi sabilillah), people burdened with debt (gharimum), wayfarer or traveler (ibn sabil), people in bondage or slavery (riqab), and those who have inclined toward islam (muallaf). muslim scholars hold different views as to whether zakat funds should be equally distributed to the eight types of beneficiaries or whether they should only be dispensed to certain categories found in the neighborhood, notably the poor and the needy. in practice, two types of zakat beneficiaries which are rarely included in islamic philanthropic organizations are ‘the travelers’ and ‘people in bondage’. this is because there is lack of new interpretation among muslim scholars (ulama) about the travelers and people in bondage in modern times, and, thus, zakat fund, for the most part, only addresses poverty problems in the communities. ulama and zakat collectors have mainly paid attention to the poor and the needy visible in the neighborhood while the travelers and people in bondage are hardly found in daily life.1 1 some muslim scholars have attempted to translate and interpret the meaning of ibn sabil and riqab in modern context. literally, ibn sabil means the traveler or those who face shortage during their travel, and therefore deserve aid from zakat fund. masdar farid mas’udi is one of the leading muslim scholars in indonesia and active in the nahdlatul ulama who have attempted to provide new insight into the definition of these two types of zakat recipients. aseas 10(2) | 239 hilman latief in muslim literature, riqab is often associated with the slaves in early islamic history, and now most of muslim countries do not recognize the concept of slavery. this article addresses the role of dompet dhuafa in linking indonesian benefactors and zakat recipients with migrant workers, as well in organizing and stimulating philanthropy among migrant workers. this article is based on my broader research on islamic philanthropy in indonesia and particularly on my field research in indonesia and hong kong in 2008 and 2010 where dompet dhuafa set up branch offices. in hong kong, i visited some shelters in kowloon and causeway bay as well as met and interviewed people with different backgrounds, such as migrant workers, ngo activists, clerics, and staff of islamic philanthropic organizations. this article argues that there has been a new interpretation of zakat categories introduced by philanthropic organizations. indonesian migrant workers for many years, indonesia has been renowned for its supply of migrant workers overseas, notably to gulf countries (saudi arabia, kuwait, qatar, emirates) as well as to hong kong, taiwan, korea, singapore, and malaysia. indonesia is one of the largest suppliers of women migrant workers to saudi arabia and hong kong (ananta, kartowibowo, wiyono, & chotib, 1998; constable, 2007; hugo, 2002; silvey, 2004). the migration of indonesian domestic workers to hong kong began in the early 1990s (rahman & fee, 2009). changing demographics, the asian financial crisis of the late 1990s, and the political-economic context prompted the indonesian government to promote the export of female labor to hong kong and other economies in asia and the middle east (constable, 2009). the indonesian statistic bureau (bps) and national agency for the protection and placement of international  migrant workers  (bnp2tki) have reported that the number of migrant workers from indonesia from 1996 until 2014, both male and female, fluctuated but the number and population of indonesian migrant in hong kong remain high (see table 1). in 2001 and 2003, the indonesian government strengthened the policy and implemented stricter requirement for year number of migrant workers female (%) male (%) 1996 517, 169 288,832 (66%) 228,337 (44%) 2000 435,222 297,273 (68%) 137,949 (32%) 2004 380,690 296,615 (78%) 84,075 (22%) 2007 696,746 543,859 (78%) 152,887 (22%) 2010 575,804 451,120 (78%) 124,684 (22%) 2011 586,802 376,686 (64%) 210,116 (36%) 2012 494,609 279,784 (57% ) 214,825 (43%) 2013 586,802 276,998 (54% ) 235,170 (46%) 2014 429,872 243,629 (57% ) 186,243 (43%) (sources: bnp2tki & bps, ilo; own compilation) table 1. indonesian migrant workers in hong kong 1996–2014 240 | aseas 10(2) addressing unfortunate wayfarer: islamic philanthropy and indonesian migrant workers in hong kong migrant worker agencies, the number of migrant workers sent in 2004 decreased to compare with those who were sent from 2007 until 2014. indonesian female migrant workers have surpassed the number of men since the mid-1980s (hugo, 2002). economic instability and limited access to jobs caused unemployed women in some regions of indonesia in west java, east java, nusa tenggara barat, nusa tenggara timur, and others to seek jobs overseas. for particular groups of people with limited skills and low levels of education, working as maids or domestic helpers in foreign countries seems the ‘best’ and most ‘promising’ – but at the same time – uncertain option, which may risk their lives. as the acute poverty-related problems cannot always be effectively resolved, either by the government or civil society organizations, women in rural areas are still interested in working abroad to secure a better life. there are three categories of migrant workers who have left indonesia to seek employment abroad (constable, 2007; rahman & fee, 2009). the first are highly-skilled workers whose considerable expertise is very rare and needed by large companies in developed countries. the second are semi-skilled workers whose practical skills are rather common, and yet needed in both developed and developing countries, and who just require short-term training. the last are low-skilled workers who are mostly assigned to the informal or domestic sector (constable, 2007; jones, 2000; loveband, 2007). women migrant workers (tenaga kerja wanita, or tkw) from indonesia, who are also termed ‘domestic workers’ or ‘domestic helpers’, are predominately lower-skilled and lower-educated compared with those from other asian countries, such as the philippines and thailand, because most indonesian workers, based on a research survey conducted by iom (2010, p. 75), have merely primary education (elementary schools and junior high schools) and only a few have college diplomas. indonesian migrant workers who are mainly working as housemaids are paid less (rahman, 2005, p. 90). men who are willing to work abroad are mainly appointed as laborers in various kinds of ‘dirty, dangerous, and difficult jobs’ (3-d jobs) in the industrial and construction sector, while women are mainly employed in the informal sector. women migrant workers’ vulnerability lies mainly in the uncertainty of gaining adequate protection from the state, not only during recruitment by private agencies in indonesia but also during their work overseas (ilo, 2015). it has often been reported in the mass media and in reports that some domestic workers from indonesia working in such countries as malaysia, singapore, and saudi arabia have had horrifying experiences, often suffering sexual and physical abuse, and at the same time receiving no adequate protection from the indonesian authorities (rudnyckyj, 2004; setyawati, 2013). in hong kong, domestic workers have a minimum wage stipulated in their contracts (constable, 2009). however, rahman and fee (2009) found that the mean earning of indonesian domestic workers in hong kong was hkd 3,333.82 per month suggesting the presence of illegal wage underpayment. it can be summarized that indonesian migrant domestic workers form “a marginalised group along the intersecting categories of gender, economic class and migrant status/citizenship” (rother, 2017, p. 964). the plight of domestic workers working as housemaids overseas continues (bnp2tki, 2017). at the same time, human trafficking and the dispatch of women migrant labor to work as housemaids overseas have increasingly become the concerns of ngos (marcoes, 2002; silvey, 2004). muslim philanthropic organizations aseas 10(2) | 241 hilman latief started formulating strategies on how to cope with problems faced by migrant workers, among other strategies by expanding the scope of types of zakat beneficiaries (latief, 2017). in recent times, the enrichment of muslim discourse and praxis on islamic philanthropy in general, and in particular categories of zakat beneficiaries, signifies vibrant engagement of muslim philanthropic organizations in response to the hardship in the communities. more specifically, the poor prospects faced by indonesian women migrant workers have stimulated islamic associations to speak up for them and show their dissatisfaction towards insufficient government policies. for example, in 2000, the indonesian ulama council (mui) enacted islamic legal opinions (fatwas), according to which the plight of indonesian women workers overseas was considered ‘illicit’ (haram) and as something to be avoided by any individual or institution. this fatwa also insisted that the ministry of manpower should stop sending indonesian women to work overseas, unless the government can ensure the safety of female migrants and protect their honor and dignity (see mui’s fatwa no. 7/munas vi/mui/2000). similar calls were made by some islamic associations that urged the government to issue a regulation that could prevent female migrant workers leaving, notably to saudi arabia.2 contextualizing muslim philanthropy in indonesia i started conducting research on islamic philanthropy in indonesia more than ten years ago. i found that there were some islamic organizations that specifically worked on poverty relief by providing direct aid, basic health care, scholarship, and income-generating projects for low-income families. these philanthropic organizations attempted to participate in increasing the equality in life of the community by utilizing fund collected from the communities. unlike zakat agencies established in many mosques throughout indonesia, this new form of muslim philanthropic organizations is more publicly visible. muslim philanthropic organizations rent houses or stores in strategic areas where the middle-class families would see their offices and advertisement. banners to attract muslim middle-class to channel their zakat and sadaqah as well as to participate in various types of social entrepreneurship, including financing poverty alleviation projects, could be seen in many places, such as main roads, boulevards, crossroads, shopping malls, airports, and business centers (meij, 2009). likewise, advertisements of islamic philanthropic projects appeared on radio, billboard, television, and newspaper. this suggests that the nature of islamic philanthropy has transformed from its modest form into a new pattern (retsikas, 2014).3 2 it should be noted that in 2000, mui also enacted fatwa no. 7/munas vi/mui/2000 that puts emphasis on the negative impact faced by female workers when they are sent for work overseas without being accompanied by muhram (somebody/relatives whom a woman is never allowed to marry because of their close blood relationship). the issuance of this fatwa was to protect women migrant workers overseas as well as to remind the government to provide best protection system. some leaders of women muslim organizations such as siti noorjannah djohantini of aisyiyah, titin suprihatin of persatuan islam istri (persistri), valina singka subekti of wanita syarikat islam raised similar voices, urging the government to halt the dispatch of women migrant workers overseas (ruslan, 2010). 3 in the past, zakat collectors or philanthropic organizations only operated during the ramadan month and were run by small and ad hoc committees. those organizations set up charity programs in the communities by distributing zakat and sadaqa fund without any vision to create development-oriented projects. 242 | aseas 10(2) addressing unfortunate wayfarer: islamic philanthropy and indonesian migrant workers in hong kong people working in philanthropic organizations, such as dd, rumah zakat (house of zakat), and lazismu (muhammadiyah zakat agency) are not only part-time workers but also fulltime workers. the directors and ceos of philanthropic organizations wear coats and ties while their staff dress in stylish uniforms to indicate discipline and professionalism. the educational background of the advocates (directors and managers) of islamic philanthropic organizations varies. some graduated from top universities in indonesia holding a bachelor or master’s degree in medical sciences, economics, management, social sciences, or religious studies. they can communicate with directors and managers from national and international companies and create strategic development projects proposed to donors from affluent families and upper muslim middle-class. therefore, islamic philanthropic organizations in indonesia that have emerged over the past 20 years are no longer the small community groups with weak management that they used to be. instead, they appear in public as professional organizations that uphold principles of professionalism and promote modern corporate culture. the programs provided by muslim philanthropic organizations are almost similar to those offered by other development and religiously-affiliated ngos. these phenomena can be seen in urban areas, especially in the major cities such as jakarta, bandung, and surabaya. dompet dhuafa (dd) is one of the largest islamic philanthropic organizations that was established during the ‘new order’ era. it was founded in 1993 by some muslim journalists working in the republika daily news. dd started changing public perception of the nature of islamic philanthropy or zakat collection in indonesia. zakat is promoted as a tool to strengthen the communities, alleviate poverty, and increase people’s quality of life. with other newly founded zakat collectors in the 1990s, dd contextualized the meaning of zakat for the communities by operating projects in both urban and rural areas. improving skills and knowledge of farmers in villages, sailors in coastal areas, and low-income urban families to run a micro business were among the popular projects organized by dd. likewise, in the aftermath of the disaster in some regions of indonesia, dd actively engaged by sending volunteers and aid for disaster victims while at the same time attracting donors to channel their money through dd (alawiyah, 2010). apart from dd, there were some other organizations with similar visions that also worked with and gained support from the communities, such as rumah zakat and daarut tauhid in bandung, pkpu and lazismu in jakarta, or al-falah foundation and rumah yatim in surabaya. in short, muslim philanthropic organizations vibrantly developed in the main cities of indonesia, especially in java. although similarities can be seen within islamic philanthropic organizations in indonesia in running charity programs, there are also particularities and differences in formulating the issues and addressing the problems. some pay much attention to basic health services, while others are more interested in supporting education for low-income families. some organizations work specifically on income-generating projects, while others dedicate their aid to dakwah activities. as mentioned previously, the uniqueness of dd became evident when it started operating its organization the zakat committees were usually dismissed soon after idul fitri or the end of ramadan month. aseas 10(2) | 243 hilman latief branches overseas, such as in japan, australia, malaysia, and hong kong. thus, dd was able to convince supporters in indonesian communities abroad and started to run development programs in indonesia and other countries where many indonesian workers reside. in 2004 dd established a branch office in hong kong, one of the largest and most cosmopolitan cities in asia, and home to approximately 150,000 indonesian migrant workers (asian migrant centre, 2017). the dd branch office has cooperated with some indonesian migrant associations.4 various reasons, mainly humanitarian and religious ones, have been given by dd to explain its presence in a city such as hong kong. humanitarian issues relate to the actual conditions and prospects of migrant workers who have been placed in inopportune and weak positions, especially in facing conflicts between themselves and their employers. a variety of problems have marked the lives of many female migrant workers, including sexual abuse and the inappropriate breaking of the terms of the contract by both employers or job providers.5 at the same time, the employees, predominantly women, are in a weak position due to their status as migrant workers or ‘foreigners’, regardless of their legal status as residents. the second set of reasons given by dd, pertaining to religion, is also instrumental in shaping the typical social activities carried out by dd in hong kong. unlike indonesian female migrant workers in middle eastern countries, who are close to ‘the cradle of islam’, the migrant workers’ religious life in hong kong, as far as dd officials are concerned, has become the target of christian missionary activities. this indicates that as an islamic organization, dd attempted to assist muslim migrant workers to prevent them from the influence of other religions. it is unsurprising that dd frequently organized islamic study gathering (pengajian) for muslim migrant workers. apart from this, some indonesian female migrant workers fall into the trap of becoming commercial sex workers in hong kong.6 the third factor is the political openness in hong kong, which makes it possible for the ngo sector to develop; unlike in other countries such as saudi arabia and malaysia, two muslim countries that are quite resistant to the ngo sector (ford, 2006; hugo, 1993). in fact, in these two muslim countries, saudi arabia and malaysia, the situation of indonesian domestic workers appears to be considerably worse than that in hong kong (ford, 2006). although migrant workers still experience violent abuse, termination of employment, problems with the employer, unpaid salary, and sexual harassment in hong kong, avenues to resolve the problem and regain the migrants’ rights through the courts are relatively open. there has been a lot of public concern over women’s poverty, trafficking, and the plight of migrant workers. like other development ngos, dd has extended its social 4 it is worth emphasizing that the establishment of dd’s branches overseas was also stimulated by the fact that there have been many success stories of indonesian migrants who can be regarded as prospective benefactors of dd. so far, dd’s overseas branches have been set up in places such as hong kong, china, japan, and australia, and these countries are quite distinct from one another in terms of culture, politics, and economics. 5 this information is based on my interview and discussion with some women migrant workers and ngo activists in hong kong in 2008 and 2010. the migrant care, an indonesian ngo working on advocacy for indonesian migrants overseas, especially in evaluating and fostering government regulation has provided information on how indonesian women migrants are vulnerable to any abuse and unfair policies (ignacio & mejia, 2008). 6 the experience of one ex-migrant worker in hong kong has been penned, published, and filmed in indonesia (susanti, 2007). 244 | aseas 10(2) addressing unfortunate wayfarer: islamic philanthropy and indonesian migrant workers in hong kong programs to deal with poverty issues in general, and in particular women’s empowerment. in fact, dd as a growing islamic philanthropic organization has so far operated both relief and development-oriented projects in the national and international arenas. for this islamic charitable association, underprivileged female migrant workers, especially those who are not paid appropriately or who experience abuse, can be regarded as one type of zakat beneficiary who needs assistance from islamic organizations. there are a variety of expressions in indonesian that can be used to refer to female migrant workers. the most popular of which are tenaga kerja indonesia (indonesian workers, tki), tenaga kerja wanita (indonesian women workers, tkw), buruh migran indonesia (indonesian migrant labors, bmi), or even pembantu rumah tangga (domestic servants, prt). while these terms are perceived in indonesian society as referring to occupations that are of an ‘inferior status’, ‘less respectable’, and are even associated with a ‘subordinate’ occupation, dd has endeavored to employ the more neutral term perantau (migrant). efforts to link ibn sabil (wayfarer, traveler) and riqab to perantau or migrant workers by dd are appropriate, and we have not so far seen such an understanding formulated by muslim scholars at mui, thus dd’s interpretation of zakat beneficiaries at that time was sensible and signifying a progressive understanding of zakat and its beneficiaries. dd has been able to respond to the current challenges and problems of transnational migration. if we take a closer look at fatwa (legal opinions) issued by religious authorities or islamic organizations, such as mui, muhammadiyah, nahdlatul ulama, and persatuan islam in indonesia, we may see that, for the most part, fatwa issued by those organizations relate to the issues of zakat collection, percentage of zakat, mechanism of zakat distribution, and wealth subjected to zakat in modern times. however, discussion and debates over the new meaning of zakat beneficiaries are hard to find. muhammad hasby ash-shiddieqy, a prominent muslim scholar, and professor from syariah faculty, iain (the state institute of islamic studies) sunan kalijaga who wrote extensive works on islamic jurisprudence and history, including fiqh of zakat, explains that ibn sabil can be interpreted in various meanings. ibn sabil can mean “those who are away from their hometown and cannot afford travel expenses and children abandoned by their parents” (ash-shiddieqy, 2009, p. 168). meanwhile, according to haji malik karim amrullah, the first chairman of mui, ibn sabil can mean “affluent families who are disconnected from their wealth and, thus, cannot afford their life or those who are expelled from a certain muslim country due to political turmoil and reside in another muslim country” (amrullah, 2015, p. 138; author's translation). amrullah’s view shares a similarity with masdar f. masudi’s (2005) understanding which mentions that ibn sabil in modern times can be associated with homelessness, street children, and refugees. unlike islamic scholars mentioned above, dd’s activists link the concept ibn sabil to the concept of perantau. the term perantau in the indonesian context is a term mainly used by people from west sumatra who migrated to other parts of indonesia to run businesses, notably restaurants, and to build their careers. despite its ‘neutral’ connotations, which avoids disgracing women migrant domestic workers, the term perantau in islamic literature can also be translated into, and associated with, one of the zakat beneficiaries called ibn sabil (wayfarer, traveler). the concept of perantau, in aseas 10(2) | 245 hilman latief this respect, can mean those who are struggling to make a living overseas. it is also worth bearing in mind that, in practice, ibn sabil is an entity that is rarely included as a zakat beneficiary. the existence of the concept of ibn sabil and riqab are even commonly put aside in the whole discussion of du’afa or mustad’afun (those who are oppressed).7 arifin purwakananta, the program director of dd, for example, suggests that dd aims to act as a ‘small general consulate’ of indonesia, an association that may support migrants by giving them both, social and legal assistance. he considers the disadvantaged migrants as representing mustad’afin (oppressed entities) that need not only short-term service, but more particularly, long-term political and legal aid (arifin purwakananta, 25 january 2009). dompet dhuafa and ‘unfortunate’ migrant workers dd has created a variety of activities relevant to the migrants’ needs, ranging from providing shelters for homeless migrants who have been driven from their dwellings to facilitating the establishment of migrant associations and supporting their activities. to facilitate the establishment of shelters (to rent an apartment for unfortunate migrants) and support four existing shelters used by indonesian migrant communities, dd receives funds from donors in indonesia and hong kong. migrant women, especially, are in need of support and assistance, not only from the government, who may provide a legal umbrella for the protection of migrants, but also from other parties like ngos, who may offer practical and psychological assistance. for example, there are some ‘shelters’ for indonesian migrants in hong kong and macao that have been managed by various indonesian associations. ‘shelter’ in this respect means an apartment rented out by ngos or associations to temporarily accommodate migrant workers who are facing difficulties, such as losing their jobs, something that automatically causes them to become ‘homeless’ during their stay in hong kong. religious institutions, notably muslim and christian ones (i.e., christian action), are among the most active agencies assisting female migrant workers in hong kong. some shelters, therefore, have been sponsored by christian congregations, others by islamic associations (pdt. johan kusmanto, 8 june 2010). migrants in hong kong who cannot find a new job within three weeks after being fired by their employers have to return to their home countries. it is in this critical period that they usually stay in a shelter while contacting different agencies to seek a new job. the shelter located in kowloon, co-supported by the hong kong coalition of indonesian migrant workers organizations (kotkiho) and dd, for example, accommodates about 20 domestic workers from indonesia, whose ages range from 20 to 30 years, with various problems, mainly contract termination by the employers. this shelter is, of course, far from sufficient to accommodate all these unfortunate domestic workers. it is run by a lady who has been living in hong kong for more than 30 7 the experience of zakat agencies suggests that there are a lot of people who label themselves as travelers and who, having run out of supplies or money, seek assistance from agency offices. they usually ask for a certain amount of cash. despite the willingness of zakat agencies that support these travelers, a tighter procedure has been applied by zakat agencies, as there have been many instances of ‘fake travelers’ abusing the trust of zakat agencies. so far, zakat agencies have made partnerships with transportation agencies, notably bus companies, and thus only provide a small amount of cash for travelers seeking funds. 246 | aseas 10(2) addressing unfortunate wayfarer: islamic philanthropy and indonesian migrant workers in hong kong years. she came to hong kong as a domestic worker, and while there she became active in ngos, such kotkiho and the coalition for migrants’ rights (cmr). she has often acted as a ‘spokesperson’ in court, for the police, or even in public when indonesian migrant workers have problems. most of the workers staying in this shelter were looking for new jobs, while others were waiting for the result of court processes. another shelter is located in the causeway bay area. this shelter also functions as an office of dd, sponsoring various philanthropic and development-oriented activities for domestic workers. there were three dd staff working in this shelter, and during the weekends, 20-30 women migrant volunteers helped dd to introduce zakat to migrants and distribute funds to those in need through some kinds of skill-development program and providing assistance in hong kong. often, some domestic workers visit this shelter, either to meet their friends or to become dd volunteers. in the month of ramadan, shelters established or supported by dd and other muslim associations become more active as religious gatherings are intensified during this period. on certain occasions, migrants, sponsored by zakat agencies like dd, even invite famous preachers from indonesia, from whom indonesian migrants may learn new insights on current issues involving islam in indonesia.8 dd in hong kong has several objectives. first of all, it attempts to help solving the problems faced by migrant workers. although dd has targeted migrant women as their charitable beneficiaries, there is no active discourse on issues such as gender equality and feminism within dd. instead, dd mainly focuses on protecting and empowering women migrants who work as housemaids. abdul ghofur (5 june 2010), head of dd’s branch in hong kong explains: for the time being, we are dealing with the symptom or fateful result of the problem of poverty in our country (indonesia). but in our recent programs we have started to address the ‘cause’ and the ‘symptom’; our mission is to create the agents of social change [among female migrant workers or female ex-migrant workers] when they come back to their hometown.9 secondly, dd acts as an islamic philanthropic institution that collects and distributes zakat and charity from and for migrant workers; and thirdly, it plays a role as a solidarity-creating and da’wah (mission) association that assists muslim migrants who seek islamic knowledge. as briefly discussed earlier, strengthening religious identity among female migrants is one of the main issues addressed by zakat agencies and muslim community associations. moreover, religious study groups have functioned not only as a way in which zakat agencies and muslim community associations can 8 it is very common for indonesian communities abroad to invite preachers (ustadz) or islamic scholars (‘ulama) during ramadan month, either sponsored by an embassy of the republic of indonesia or indonesian community associations, to assist and give sermons for the whole month in mosques, dwellings belonging to indonesians, and the office of the indonesian embassy. 9 at the time i interviewed the director of dd in hong kong, there was a knock on the door. a young lady came to this office, crying while carrying a big piece of luggage containing her clothes and other kind of belongings. dd’s director approached her and asked about what was going on. she replied: “i’ve just been fired and my employer did not tell me why”. she then dropped her belongings in dd’s shelter and after taking a rest for a while, she went out to see an employment agency office in another region of hong kong that might find her a new family that might need her skills as a housekeeper. aseas 10(2) | 247 hilman latief set up religious patronage for migrants but also as a way in which migrant women can overcome their financial and social problems during their time working in hong kong. these study groups also aim to strengthen female migrants’ objective to work in hong kong, which is primarily to earn money to support left-behind families in indonesia. religious knowledge, therefore, becomes guidance for those workers to stick to authorized occupations and to avoid illicit and ‘dishonest’ jobs and to prepare for their futures after coming back to their hometowns in indonesia. therefore, it can be suggested that as part of da’wah, the intention of dd’s branch in hong kong is also to strengthen muslim workers’ religious commitment to islam. as minority people who live far from their hometowns, social cohesion and solidarity among migrant workers is relatively strong. migrant workers try to forge solid relationships, as they want to share similar – both sweet and bitter – experiences. hence, the establishment of indonesian migrant associations inevitably takes place in many countries; hong kong is not an exception. in hong kong, there are many other indonesian associations with various religious, social, and cultural backgrounds and they have made partnerships with dd branch office in organizing various activities such as public discussion, lectures, entrepreneurship training, seminars, workshop, etc. dd has functioned as both a zakat collector and provider. as a zakat collector, dd has organized giving practice among indonesian migrants, whose donations are used for wide-ranging projects. within one year, dd could collect approximately figure 1. a leaflet created by dompet dhuafa to mobilise zakat funds from, and to organize social and religious activities among muslim migrant workers in hong kong (source: author’s collection). 248 | aseas 10(2) addressing unfortunate wayfarer: islamic philanthropy and indonesian migrant workers in hong kong hkd 150,000 to hkd 200,000 (usd 26,000) in donations from migrant workers themselves. dd branch office in hong kong has received subsidy from dd office in jakarta for its operational cost and program in hong kong.10 in the event of a crisis such as a natural disaster back home, indonesian migrants overseas in hong kong, as in many other countries, usually assist by sending money through humanitarian ngos. in that situation, dd could function an intermediary between migrants in hong kong and disaster victims in indonesia. however, in a normal situation, the main objective of dd in hong kong is to collect funds from ‘fortunate’ migrant workers, or what can be referred to as ‘migrant philanthropy’ to support unfortunate fellow migrants in hong kong. this objective is different from the establishment of dd’s branch offices in australia and japan, for example, which, in fact, is intended specifically to organize ‘diaspora philanthropy' (anand,  2004; brinkerhoff, 2013) to support social projects in indonesia. this is because indonesian workers in developed countries such as australia can usually expect better social, economic and legal conditions and they can contribute to resolve problems faced by indonesians back home (arifin purwakananta, 25 february 2009). dd strategies: mutual help, solidarity, and religious gatherings like other islamic philanthropic associations in indonesia, religious study groups seem to have become one appealing way to disseminate islamic messages on the necessity of building solidarity and social cohesion among migrants, and in turn, these messages are gradually translated into more concrete actions. to run its branch office in hong kong, dd has appointed staff knowledgeable about islam and acquainted with development-oriented projects. the staff recruited were trained on how to raise funds as well as how to create development and training projects for migrants. building solidarity among migrants has become the priority of the dd program, under which social and moral awareness among migrants are a necessity for helping each other evolve. of course, dd is not the only islamic association in hong kong. there are some long-established migrant associations whose concerns deal primarily with the welfare of indonesian migrants. therefore, the way in which dd engages in the public sphere of indonesian communities’ workers in hong kong has been expressed through building partnerships with other indonesian workers’ associations. this is partly because indonesian migrants reside in various areas of hong kong, including other cities, such as macao, and partly because other associations are already more familiar with the work and typical problems faced by migrant workers. like other zakat agencies that keep a low profile and refrain from political criticism, dd portrays itself as a religiously-motivated philanthropic association. to be able to engage in social and economic enterprises, dd has set up three main 10 i have not found a comprehensive financial report from dd in hong kong. but according to dds june 2014 report, the dd office in hong kong spends hkd 37, 800 (usd 4,800) for office operational cost per month while receiving a subsidy of hkd 27, 500 (usd 3,522) from jakarta. for the whole expenses (office and program) in may and june 2014, dd received hkd 118,859.30 (usd 15,224) and spent hkd 184,728.88 (usd 23,661). it should be noted that in the first years of its operation, almost 100 percent of the money came from dd office in jakarta, and then starting from 2006, dd operation in hong kong could be mainly financed locally and just received small portion of subsidies from jakarta. aseas 10(2) | 249 hilman latief programs in hong kong that relate mainly to life-skills training and development. the first program is ‘self-reliance for migrants’ (migran usaha mandiri), under which dd attempts to cultivate and fortify the entrepreneurship mentality of migrants who may return to their hometowns and start new lives as entrepreneurs. the second is the ‘migrant institute’ that offers english and mandarin courses, computer training, as well as sewing and cooking education. the third program is ‘blessed house’ (rumah berkah), in which migrants may practice their knowledge and skills in cooking, sewing, and managing businesses. the migrants usually come to dd’s offices and shelters to participate in dd’s activities or attend a religious study group during a weekend or holyday, which is also known as a ‘migrant day’ (hari perantau). to translate and implement dd’s vision of social entrepreneurship, dd and a long-established migrant association called perantau indonesia (peri) have embarked on a joint venture by setting up an indonesian restaurant that also functions as a ‘social-entrepreneur laboratory’. this restaurant mainly targets the hong kong middle class and indonesians. the aim of this project, besides promoting innovation in doing business and fulfilling the need of indonesian migrants for halal foods, is to teach migrants how to run a business in an ‘islamic way’, and more importantly to facilitate successful and economically established indonesian migrants in hong kong who can express their ‘social piety’ by supporting and becoming involved in social entrepreneurship for empowering indonesian women migrants who work as housemaids. thus, it is worth bearing in mind that dd as a zakat agency has endeavored to bridge the gap, at least socially, between indonesian migrants who have successfully run a good business in hong kong, and those women migrants who are in temporary work as housemaids in hong kong. no less important is the fact that connecting charitable works with entrepreneurship, as carried out by dd and indonesian migrant associations, in part, represents their efforts to translate figure 2. migrant workers raise their voices and aspirations in a demonstration held in hong kong. (source: author’s collection) 250 | aseas 10(2) addressing unfortunate wayfarer: islamic philanthropy and indonesian migrant workers in hong kong the notion of social enterprise into innovative action for social and economic development. dd seems to realize that women migrants are temporary workers who, within a few years, in accordance with their contracts, will return to indonesia. as the migrants will then start new lives, dd prefers giving the migrants assistance in preparing to face new environments and by providing them with various kinds of life-skills training. some migrants who returned to indonesia and in turn joined the dd project called institut kemandirian (self-governing institute), a program that offers skill training, have been able to run a small business (rustanti & zuhri, 2016). indeed, while this project is worthwhile, this does not mean that the project is sustained and can reach the expected goals. moreover, there are a wide-range of small or micro businesses run by ex-migrant workers in indonesia, such as car rentals, travel agencies, a sewing factory, restaurants, local food production, etc. making partnerships with social movement ngos in the case of hong kong, indonesian housemaids can raise their voices and protest against exploitation and mistreatment by employers, exploitative agencies, and weak indonesian government policies, by setting up a migrant association (blackburn, 2004, p. 191; indarti, 2007). one of the indonesian ngos in hong kong that has come to the fore and plays a pivotal role in creating solidarity is the indonesian migrant workers union (imwu), an advocacy ngo organized directly by indonesian migrant workers in hong kong. having cooperated with other national and international ngos based in hong kong whose overarching concern relates to migrant workers and women’s empowerment, imwu seems to have a different approach to overcoming migrant problems compared with islamic philanthropic associations as for instance dd. this can be seen in the way in which the imwu addresses the issues, makes its voice heard, and expresses its social and political concerns (constable, 2009). to the imwu, indonesian workers abroad face many problems in the workplace due to many reasons. the main cause relates to the government’s inability to provide an adequate welfare system in the home country, stimulating disadvantaged groups in society to survive by working abroad. their conditions have deteriorated with the weakness of regulation in indonesia, enabling unprofessional and irresponsible agencies to act illegally, and in turn, have caused female migrant workers overseas to suffer. in many cases, the activists of the imwu also believe that the indonesian government, including its representation abroad (the indonesian embassy), seems reluctant to intervene on behalf of female indonesian migrant workers when there are problems. all volunteers who work for imwu do so part-time and are migrant activists. they can work for imwu during weekends only, either on saturdays or sundays.11 despite gaining support from others, this ngo empowers itself by revitalizing contributions from members. every month, workers or helpers voluntarily contribute a certain amount of money to the organization. a pamphlet installed in front of the door of the imwu office to remind imwu members, mentions: “a true workers’ union is a 11 in hong kong, according to local regulations, domestic workers or helpers should have one day off per week, either saturday or sunday. it is very common for helpers from indonesia to have gatherings in victoria park. thousands of helpers come to the victoria park to find funds, to meet friends, to take english courses and computer training, and to attend religious gatherings. aseas 10(2) | 251 hilman latief union funded by its members” (serikat buruh sejati ialah serikat yang dibiayai oleh anggotanya sendiri). some other pamphlets and badges used by imwu volunteers voiced their concerns in ways that are redolent of labor movement slogans around the world: “reject outsourcing” and “give us holidays and rest days”. in short, the imwu, which was established in 1998, is actively part of the global labor and transnational women’s solidarity movement, whose concerns include the minimum wage, exploitation, labor rights, and the protection of female migrant workers from abuse (sweider, 2006, p. 126). the imwu often engages with other labor unions such as kotkiho, the asian domestic workers union (adwu), the filipino migrant workers union (fmwu) coalition, and oxfam, enabling the imwu to enrich its insight and reinforce its views on resolving migrant workers’ problems. in building awareness among migrants to organize demonstrations, the imwu has also engaged other hong kong-based advocacy ngos and pro-democracy movement to echo their aspirations, addressed either to the labor department in hong kong, to the public and employers, or even to the indonesian embassy as a representative of the government of indonesia. active participation in the imwu conference on labor affairs organized by the international labor organization (ilo) in various countries indicates the commitment of indonesian migrant workers to fostering migrant workers’ rights. although philanthropic organizations such as dd and other ‘movement ngos’ such as imwu have different concerns and types of activities, they can work together to sponsor migrant activities. dd can work with ngos, such as imwu as they share a similar concern about the protection of migrant workers. for example, dd together with other ngos in hong kong assisted female migrant workers whose contracts were terminated and therefore needed lawyers to resolve their problems, and shelters for temporary housing. the intensified interaction between dd and other ngos figure 3. imwu slogans promoting female migrants’ rights. (source: author’s collection) 252 | aseas 10(2) addressing unfortunate wayfarer: islamic philanthropy and indonesian migrant workers in hong kong indicates that ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ ngos have shared an interest in addressing the same issues, which is the protection of migrant workers. the phenomenon can also be seen in indonesia, where dd and other muslim philanthropic organizations have established a partnership for humanitarian missions in disaster-affected areas. compared to islamic associations, it appears that secular workers’ movements such as the imwu are more progressive in building awareness of how to represent workers’ interests. these workers’ movement can voice aspirations and rights by engaging other workers’ movements in hong kong. slogans used by the imwu to carry their message to the authorities (both those in hong kong and the indonesian government) are also stronger than those voiced by islamic associations. while islamic charitable associations and movement ngos have their own way of overcoming domestic workers’ problems, cooperation between charitable associations and ‘movement ngos’ has taken place, characterizing the dynamic relationships between these two types of associations. in the ramadan month of 2011, dompet dhuafa, the imwu, liga pekerja migrant indonesia (indonesian migrant workers league), and others organized a seminar entitled: dengan semangat ramadan melawan perbudakan modern untuk mewujudkan perlindungan sejati bagi bmi (with the spirit of ramadan [we] fight against modern slavery in order to provide a comprehensive protection for indonesian domestic workers). conclusion this article argues that effort to contextualize zakat practices among indonesian muslims has become increasingly dynamic overseas, energized by the increasing social and economic problems of migrants abroad. the increase in number of the dispatch of indonesian women to the domestic sector overseas has stimulated islamic philanthropic organizations such as dd to reinterpret the basic concept of zakat beneficiaries. innovation in interpreting the meaning of ibn sabil by dd activists indicates that the social concern of social activists in indonesia in proposing new concepts of zakat beneficiaries has surpassed religious authorities in the country. as a matter of fact, religious authorities, including mui pays less attention to the current issues. dd has utilized the ‘language of religion’ as a discursive center in constructing notions of empowering migrant workers. the use of religious language to address social issues and to envisage a better community is a common phenomenon within islamic associations. by using religious symbols and narratives which cope with individual piety, community, and islamic solidarity, as well as by providing healthcare, shelters, and education, dd believes that a better quality of life for the oppressed (mutad’afin), in this case female migrant workers, can be created, although with very limited results, and the aggravation of the social, cultural, and economic conditions of the oppressed can be prevented. it should also be noted that as a philanthropic organization, dd has been able to establish partnerships with ngos and groups of indonesian people in hong kong in addressing various problems. it has functioned not only as a welfare provider and aid giver for those ‘unfortunate’ migrant workers but has also increased the participation of ‘fortunate’ migrant workers to aid social entrepreneurship and charity activities for migrant workers. dd’s sustainability in hong kong and migrant volunteers’ enthusiastic supports to dd activities indicate that the organization has gained reception aseas 10(2) | 253 hilman latief from indonesian migrants overseas as indicated by vibrant engagement and active participation of migrant workers in dd activities in the shelter (office) as well as by the willingness of migrants to donate. the increase in funds collected by dd every year in hong kong, which in turn is dispensed to finance migrant activities, also suggests that what is to be called ‘diaspora philanthropy’ among indonesian migrant workers, works well. the increasing participation of migrant workers in islamic philanthropy indicates that islamization in many respects has taken place in hong kong and at the same time shows that many migrants benefited economically from their presence in hong kong. solidarity in the form of sending money to their home country can be seen among migrants to supports social, religious, and educational activities in indonesia. this means that reinterpretation of zakat has had a profound impact on the pattern of islamic philanthropy, especially among migrant workers as they have participated in resolving problems in their home country.  references alawiyah, t. 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(2017). marketising piety through charitable work: islamic charities and the islamisation of middle-class families in indonesia. in d. rudnyckyj & f. osella (eds.), religion and the morality of the market (pp. 196-216). cambridge: cambridge university press. latief, h. (2016). philanthropy and muslim citizenship in post-suharto indonesia. southeast asian studies, 5(2), 269-286. latief, h. (2013). islam and humanitarian affairs: the middle class and new patterns of social activism. in k. van dijk & j. burhanuddin (eds.), islam in indonesia: contrasting images and interpretations (pp. 173194). amsterdam: amsterdam university press. latief, h. (2010). health provision for the poor: islamic aid and the rise of charitable clinics in indonesia. journal of southeast asia research, 18(3), 503-553. lessy, z. (2013). philanthropic zakat for empowering indonesia’s poor: a qualitative study of recipient experiences at rumah zakat. phd dissertation, indiana university, bloomington. loveband, a. (2007). positioning the product: indonesian migrant women workers in taiwan. journal of contemporary asia, 34(3), 336-348. marcoes, l. (2002). women’s grassroots movements in indonesia: a case study of pkk and islamic women’s organisations, in k. robinson & s. bessell (eds.), women in indonesia: gender, equity, and development (pp. 187-197). singapore: institute of southeast asian studies. masudi, m. f. (2005). pajak itu zakat: uang allah untuk kemaslahatan rakyat [tax is zakat: god’s money for the welfare of society]. bandung: mizan. meij, d van der. (2009). evoking greater support for islamic philanthropy: the spanduk and other visual signs of modern indonesian islam. kultur: the indonesian journal for muslim cultures, 4(1), 89-106. noor, z., & pickup, f. (2017). peran zakat dalam mendukung tujuan dalam ppmbangunan berkelanjutan [the role of zakat in supporting sustainable development goals (sdgs)]. jakarta: baznas & undp. ophi oxford poverty & human development initiative. (2017). multidimensional poverty. retrieved from http://www.ophi.org.uk/research/multidimensional-poverty/ payton, r.l., & moody, m. p. (2008). understanding philanthropy: its meaning and mission. bloomington: indiana university press. rahman, n. a. (2005). shaping the migrant institution: the agency of indonesian domestic workers in singapore. in l. parker (ed.), the agency of women in asia (pp. 182-216). singapore: marshall cavendish academic. rahman, m. m., & fee, l. k. (2009). gender and the remittance process: indonesian domestic workers in hong kong, singapore and malaysia. asian population studies, 5(2), 103-125. retsikas, k. (2014). re-conceptualizing zakat in indonesia: worship, philanthropy and rights. indonesia and the malay world, 42(124), 337-357. rother, s. (2017). indonesian migrant domestic workers in transnational political spaces: agency, gender roles and social class formation. journal of ethnic and migration studies, 43(6), 956-973. rudnyckyj, d. (2004).  technologies of servitude: governmentality and indonesian transnational labor migration. anthropological quarterly, 77(3), 407-434. aseas 10(2) | 255 hilman latief ruslan, h. (2010). apa hukum mengirim tkw ke luar negeri menurut islam? [what is the legal status of sending female migrant workers according to islam]. retrieved from http://www.republika.co.id/berita/ ensiklopedia-islam/fatwa/10/11/30/149592-apa-hukum-mengirim-tkw-ke-luar-negeri-menurut-islamrustanti, q., & zuhri, d. (2016). dompet dhufa berdayakan perempuan mantan tki di sragen. retrieved from http://khazanah.republika.co.id/berita/dunia-islam/wakaf/16/04/12/o5hr0e301-dompet-dhufaberdayakan-perempuan-mantan-tki-di-sragen setyawati, d. (2013). assets or commodities? comparing regulations of placement and protection of migrant workers in indonesia and the philippines. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 6(2), 264-280. silvey, r. (2004). transnational domestication: state power and indonesian migrant women in saudi arabia. political geography, 23(3), 245-264. susanti, a. e. (2007). once upon time in hong kong: kisah nyata perjuangan seorang tkw hong kong agar dapat mengenyam bangku kuliah [a true story of the struggle of female migrant worker in hong kong to achieve higher education]. jakarta: afra publishing. sweider, s. (2006). working women of the world unite? labor organizing and transnational gender solidarity among domestic workers in hong kong. in m. m. ferry & a. m. tripp (eds.), global feminism: transnational women’s activism, organizing and human rights (pp. 110-140). new york: new york university press. weiss, h. (2002). reorganizing social welfare among muslims: islamic voluntarism and other forms of communal support in northern ghana. journal of religion in africa, 32(1), 83-109. about the author hilman latief obtained a phd from utrecht university in the netherlands in 2012. he was a research fellow at kitlv (the royal netherlands institute of southeast asian and caribbean studies/koninklijk instituut voor taal-, landen volkenkunde) in 2013. he is a lecturer at the faculty of islamic studies at universitas muhammadiyah yogyakarta (umy). ► contact: h_latief@umy.ac.id acknowledgements i would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments as well as the the interviewed migrant workers in hong kong and lily dorianty purba from the asian migrant center for their valuable information and help during my research in hong kong. aseas 16(1) | 171 book review: ullah, akm. a., & chattoraj, d. (2022). covid-19 pandemic and the migrant population in southeast asia: vaccine, diplomacy and disparity world scientific. isbn: 978-981-1253-64-5. 364 pages. amrita dattaa* auniversity of siegen, germany *corresponding author: amrita.csss@gmail.com received: 31 may 2023 / accepted: 16 june 2023 / published: 28 june 2023 ► datta, a. (2023). book review: ullah, akm. a., & chattoraj, d. (2022). covid-19 pandemic and the migrant population in southeast asia: vaccine, diplomacy and disparity. advances in southeast asian studies, 16(1), 171-174. the book co-authored by akm ahsan ullah and diotima chattoraj “covid-19 pandemic and the migrant population in southeast asia” is undoubtedly one of the most significant ones in the series of publications witnessed during and after the coronavirus pandemic period. as correctly pointed out by the authors in the preface, this volume is one of the few to address the impact of covid-19 on migrant workers in southeast asia. the authors have anchored the book in empiricism. consequently, located in the larger political economy of the pandemic, this volume offers crucial insights into how migrant workers negotiated the crises, how the precarity of work and living conditions informed their health and social vulnerability, and how the inoculation scape remained distant, conflicted, and highly skewed for the migrant workers in the southeast asian region, specifically malaysia, singapore, and brunei. this makes it a useful read for policymakers and practitioners aiming to learn from this pandemic and prepare for the next. the book has six chapters, following an order of events that, in the words of the authors, start with the covid-19 pandemic, and then move on to address how migrants were implicated in the pandemic in general and as a category offering “labour” in particular. notwithstanding the level of skill and status of migrants, the authors observe that they always remained at risk – starting with the possibilities of quarantine and isolation, to accessing vaccines. chapter 1, “the covid-19 pandemic: shaker and shaper of the world”, encapsulates the overall spirit of the volume so that the readers know what to expect in the next five chapters. it mainly tackles the subject of the coronavirus pandemic at large and its several impacts on a global scale. in the second chapter, “contextualizing the pandemic in the migration domain”, the authors offer detailed accounts of how the pandemic impacted book reviews w w w .s ea s. at 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 91 mailto:thithimadee.art%40mahidol.ac.th?subject= https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0542-8853 mailto:amrita.csss@gmail.com 172 | aseas 16(1) book review: ullah, akm. a., & chattoraj, d. (2022). covid-19 pandemic and the migrant population migrant workers in southeast asian countries like malaysia, singapore, and brunei. it also addresses crucial topics like the poor work conditions of the migrant workers that led to limited possibilities of physical distancing. this chapter also engages with the question of which migrant workers could afford to quarantine and who could not. a related topic in this context is mobility restrictions and the privilege of immobility, which most of the migrant workers trapped in low-wage, blue-collar jobs could not practice. this chapter is significant in discussing some of the themes of what later came to be known in academic parlance as a shadow pandemic – the hazardous work and living situations of the migrant workers in wealthy countries like singapore that the host countries usually hide from the rest of the world. this is followed by a description of how the pandemic exacerbated existing inequalities – the discourse presented in chapter 3 is titled “covid-19: an amplifier of existing inequalities”. the authors mention various locales of inequality – social, economic, political, and health-related. this chapter draws our attention to how the pandemic affected both the migrant workers in the host countries and their families in the home countries, as the former could send fewer remittances home than otherwise. setting the case of southeast asia on a global platform, the authors argue that the coronavirus pandemic left socially disadvantaged categories, including “disabled women, pregnant women, indigenous communities, persons living in geographically inaccessible locations, orphans, lgbtqi people, children, people who are part of dwd (discrimination based on work/ancestry) communities, and so on” (p. 103), far more scarred than others. in addition, the authors also point to the existence of two types of disparities – the existing forms of inequalities that are exhibiting further cleavages due to the pandemic and concomitant crises, and the new inequalities that emerged specifically due to the pandemic. the next chapter, “vaccine diplomacy and the covid-19 pandemic”, engages with one of the most avidly discussed issues in the world in recent times – how to battle the arrogance of big pharma in the face of global discrepancy in vaccine availability, vaccine literacy, and vaccine hesitancy. one of the hallmarks of this chapter in specific, and the book in general is the question posed here: what about immunization of undocumented migrants? this also points to the title of the chapter that deliberately uses the term “diplomacy” to emphasize the importance of cross-border tensions among nation-states especially during the pandemic. since the pandemic forced countries to abruptly cut each other off from all sorts of mobilities among people, access to vaccination emerged as a contested terrain for proving one’s citizenship and residence rights in the host country. consequently, those without papers were the most likely to be left behind. also, diplomacy and hegemony are relevant topics for understanding the discourse of vaccine legitimacy and vaccine approval. did southeast asia buy most of its vaccines from china or the usa? which country approved which vaccine? another set of concerns arises from the way states like singapore exercised vaccine authoritarianism ensuring that each of its citizens was compulsorily vaccinated. but does that ensure full immunity from a pandemic? the last two chapters, “the pandemic, disparity and southeast asia” and “are we in the endgame? lessons learned”, envisage a future beyond the pandemic and locate the broader discussion of pandemic and migration in the context of human rights and global disparity. chapter 5 addresses the major issues of how the pandemic aseas 16(1) | 173 amrita datta affects and impacts the economy of southeast asia. the authors argue that because countries like thailand and malaysia rely heavily on tourism and export, the global lockdown and slow rate of human mobility later jeopardized their economies. this in turn could affect the rate of remittances to the home countries sent by the migrants. this chapter tries to drive home the point that the impact of the pandemic on migrant workers has consequences not just for the countries of immigration (southeast asia in this context) but the home countries too. however, the book ends with the hope that a post-pandemic future would enable migrants to “return to normal” (p. 258) and continue contributing to the global circulation of remittances. ullah and chattoraj’s volume reminds me of leronzo guadagno’s (2020) “migrants and the covid-19 pandemic: an initial analysis”, published as a part of the migration research series curated by the international organization for migration (iom). while guadagno addressed the pandemic-migration interface from a much broader platform and could only share insights from the initial phase of the global health crisis, ullah and chattoraj are able to present a nuanced analysis using empirical data and observation, specifically focusing on southeast asia. however, the book does not include all countries of southeast asia but focuses mainly on singapore, malaysia, and brunei, with some discussions on thailand, indonesia, and the philippines. while from an area studies point of view this book remains significant for both researchers and practitioners, it misses out on the larger context of pandemic and mobility for locating a specific discussion on covid-19 and migrant workers. the coronavirus pandemic was not the first and will perhaps not be the last pandemic that the world will witness. from that standpoint, any attempt at learning from experiences, especially for policymakers, ought to embed the various facets of the crisis within a large spectrum of debates and insights. while this book does not claim to take any historical positioning, it perhaps is still useful to foreground the discussion on past pandemics and migration rather than migration networks. historicizing the pandemic-migration debate could also enable a deliberate avoidance of terms like “return to normal”. while it must be acknowledged that the imagination and romanticization of the “normal” remained one of the guiding forces for most people all over the world during the entire period of the pandemic, a generalization of this term would be unfair. normal cannot be a monolithic category for all migrants. it is crucial we ask, whose normal are we talking about, and what are the parameters of the normal considered here. for example, “normal” for the migrant workers in factories in singapore was dingy life conditions even before the pandemic whose stories would never come out had it not been for covid-19. is a return to that normal romantic? also, for several categories of migrants, refugees, and displaced people, for example the african students in china, the nigerian refugees in the european union, or the inter-state labourers in india who walked miles to reach home, a return to normal may never be possible. lastly, although the book briefly addresses the vulnerability of non-male migrants, mostly categorizing them as women migrant workers, the feminization of the pandemic (yavorsky et al., 2021) among non-male migrants in southeast asia remains an important subject of investigation and in need of further attention.  174 | aseas 16(1) book review: ullah, akm. a., & chattoraj, d. (2022). covid-19 pandemic and the migrant population references guadagno, l. (2020). migrants and the covid-19 pandemic: an initial analysis. https://publications.iom. int/books/mrs-no-60-migrants-and-covid-19-pandemic-initial-analysis yavorsky, j.e., qian, y., & sargent, a.c. (2021). the gendered pandemic: the implications of covid-19 for work and family. sociology compass, 15(6), e12881. about the author amrita datta is a marie sklodowska-curie fellow at the department of sociology, university of siegen. she is the author of “stories of the indian immigrant communities in germany: why move?” (palgrave macmillan, forthcoming). she is a migration scholar focusing on highly skilled immigrants from south asia to the european union. ► contact: amrita.csss@gmail.com mailto:amrita.csss@gmail.com aseas 14(2) | 155 ethnic content integration and local curriculum in myanmar anuia & thithimadee arphattananonaa a mahidol university, thailand ► anui, & arphattananon, t. (2021). ethnic content integration and local curriculum in myanmar. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 14(2), 155-172. myanmar is home to over 54.8 million people, consisting of over 100 ethnolinguistic groups with distinct linguistic, cultural, and historical backgrounds. since myanmar gained independence from great britain, education has been used as the main political tool for bamar national assimilation, neglecting this rich ethnic and cultural diversity. myanmar opted for the assimilationist approach in which non-dominant ethnolinguistic nationalities are vanquished through the use of educational instruction, materials, and teachers’ education, all of which are ‘bamarcentric’, centered around a single ethnolinguistic identity and language in myanmar, bamar. other, non-dominant ethnolinguistic groups in myanmar have long desired to incorporate their own languages, cultures, and histories into the educational system. in this vein, the national education law (nel), which took effect in 2014, provides the integration of non-dominant ethnic languages and cultural identities into the mainstream curriculum. from this, a modified curriculum framework concerning the integration of indigenous ethnic content was produced in order to promote multicultural coexistence. the present study explores the implementation of the local curriculum and integration of non-dominant ethnic content into the curriculum in primary schools through the analysis of the curriculum development process and the integration of non-dominant ethnic content such as local literature, cultural perspectives, and indigenous worldviews. the study was conducted in kachin, kayah, karen, and mon states and the yangon region, where a variety of ethnolinguistic groups reside. using a qualitative approach, the study drew on findings from interviews with 63 participants, four classroom observations, and document analysis from four states and one region. the study revealed that the implementation of the local curriculum promotes multiculturalism and social cohesion. keywords: ethnic content integration; local curriculum; multicultural education; multiculturalism; myanmar  introduction myanmar is home to 135 ethnic groups, each with its own language, culture, and sociopolitical structure. although there is controversy surrounding this number, these 135 groups have been designated by the myanmar government as ‘national races’ (clarke, et al., 2019; lwin, 2011, p. 2). despite the country’s cultural and linguistic diversity, one language and culture, that of the bamar people, has dominated and has been legitimized in the educational system without recognizing other indigenous groups (lwin, 2011, p. 4). although many groups taught aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 60 156 | aseas 14(2) ethnic content integration and local curriculum in myanmar their language and culture both formally in schools and by traditional means during british colonial rule, the teaching of languages and cultures other than burmese was gradually prohibited starting in 1962 when general ne win seized power over the country (lwin, 2011, p. 2). recently, however, educational reform in myanmar has generated momentum towards a new curriculum framework with respect to multicultural education, allowing for integration of local, non-dominant ethnic content. promoting non-dominant ethnic content in the mainstream educational system thus appears to be a significant historical change. the political landscape started to change after the 2010 general elections, albeit under the 2008 constitution (designed and implemented by the military). after the elections, the government began to promote various sectors. education was one of the sectors put on the agenda for the promotion of state development. the national education law (nel) that was approved in 2014 encourages a wide range of reform across the national educational system (ministry of education [moe], 2014). in the national education law, ‘national education’ is defined as “education that values, preserves, and develops the language, literature, culture, art, traditions, and historical heritage of all the ethnic groups in the nation” (moe, 2014, art. 2g). it is designated as “free and compulsory education” (moe, 2014, art. 2w), so that the national and regional governments at all levels provide full support as mandated, so that all schoolage children can complete basic education.1 furthermore, article 44 ensures that the regional governments can exercise authority regarding the teaching of ethnic languages and literature starting at the primary level and gradually expanding to higher grades. the national curriculum framework (ncf) emerged in 2015, based on article 39(g) of the nel as well as a comprehensive education sector review (moe, 2015). the ncf encourages that the local curriculum should not be alloted more than 20% of the school day in government schools. non-dominant ethnic languages, cultures, historical heritages, and regional knowledge, including environmental topics, are to be taught during the local curriculum period. the local curriculum is designed and taught in accordance with the needs of each state and region by law (moe, 2014, p. 44). from late 2012, unicef began a nation-wide project on language education and peace-building, titled language, education and social cohesion (lesc), designed by australian consultant professor lo bianco (2016). the language policy review that was undertaken across the country by conducting significant dialogues with the non-dominant ethnic communities and government bodies resulted in the development of the “nay pyi taw principles”, which stipulates broad terms such as “unity, diversity, cohesion, education employment, service delivery, international relation, inclusion communication, and ethnic rights” (lo bianco, 2016, p. 17). with the amendment of the national education law in 2014, the curriculum framework was adapted in 2015 (moe, 2015). consequently, the government launched the national education strategic plan (nesp 2016-2021) and went through with plans to implement a local curriculum (moe, 2016). 1 the national education law, article 16. (a) basic education is divided into the following three levels, aiming to have 12 years of education after the completion of kindergarten: i. primary education ii. middle school education iii. high school education (b) kindergarten will be regarded as the base level of primary education (c) in order to complete one of the levels of education listed in sub-paragraph (a) educational competence shall be assessed. aseas 14(2) | 157 anui & thithimadee arphattananon as such, the present study aims to explore the integration of local non-dominant ethnic content and implementation of the local curriculum in the mainstream educational system. the current study looks at four states and one region with 24 non-dominant ethnic groups that have started to implement the local curriculum in grades 1, 2 and 3. some states and regions have not yet begun to implement the local curriculum because of various challenges, including the presence of many dialects for one language, lack of awareness about the local curriculum development, and a lack of budget. the local curriculum was developed in kachin, kayah, karen, chin, and mon states, with technical support from unicef and coordinated by the respective state governments – under supervision of the ministry of education, ministry of social affairs, and ministry of ethnic affairs in each state. particularly, the local curriculum for the west po karen and sgaw karen groups who live in yangon, tenasserim, pegu, and irrawaddy regions were developed under the supervision of the yangon region karen literature and culture committee. even though the study did not consider the entire educational system, looking at the local curriculum as part of the system can be helpful as a first step in the process of establishing multicultural education. multicultural education – theoretical issues this study sought to identify the trend of multiculturalism in myanmar by analyzing the local curriculum development process and considering the integration of non-dominant ethnolinguilistic groups’ values, literatures, cultures, and worldviews. multicultural education theories were adapted for the myanmar context in order to analyze research findings. multicultural curriculum reform approaches – contribution, additive, transformation, and social action (banks, 1989) – were used to analyze the characteristics of the local curriculum. moreover, theories of multiculturalism in terms of ideological tendencies, such as conservative multiculturalism (banks, 2006, 2010; gay, 2000; glazer, 1974; gorski, 2009; hopkins-gillispie, 2011; jaramillo, 1975; jenks et al., 2001; williams, 1975), are discussed. these theories shape the scope of the present study, discussing in-depth the concept of the integration and implementation of non-dominant ethnic content. according to banks (2008), a key goal of multicultural education is “to help individuals gain greater self-understanding by viewing themselves from the perspectives of other cultures” (p. 2). multicultural education is meant to provide students with cultural content and analytical skills in order to reflect on the sociocultural issues of the surrounding community. banks argues that a curriculum needs to be reformed in accordance with its sociocultural context since the mainstream-centric (dominant or majority) curriculum often has a negative impact on not only non-dominant ethnic children, but also children whose background is that of the dominant language and culture (or mainstream/majority language and culture) because they have no chance to learn about other worlds (banks, 2010, p. 234). however, multicultural education is often questioned during the reform process due to ideological and “political resistance” (banks, 2010, p. 244-245). assimilationists such as glazer (1974) and williams (1975) think that emphasizing ethnic cultures is harmful as it creates division and separation among members of society, which they 158 | aseas 14(2) ethnic content integration and local curriculum in myanmar call ‘balkanization’ (banks, 2006, p. 118; glazer, 1974; williams, 1975). conservatives are profoundly interested in a fixed transmission of knowledge based on the social order (banks & banks, 2007). hence, the conservatives are frightened by their imaginations as they think that promoting a culturally plural society is harmful (hopkins-gillispie, 2011, p. 2). liberalists argue that ethnic cultural identities should be promoted in schools, but jaramillo (1975) thinks that only ‘visible minorities’ should be included. this is primarily based on the demographic statistical categories in relation to the employment act in the united states. the theory of liberal multiculturalism suggests that teachers should integrate other cultural content and be aware of students’ backgrounds. this perspective opposes conservative multiculturalism, since it tries to be dynamic and flexible (banks, 2010; gay, 2000). sometimes, liberal multiculturalism becomes superficial by “celebrating the differences” (jenks et al., 2001, p. 92) instead of critically analyzing the issues of inequality among cultural groups. gorski (2009) also argues that the liberal multiculturalists “support diversity programs,” “but only in ways that ignore the access implications of difference” (p. 311). critical multiculturalists emphasize structural change. they believe that ethnic groups have their own unique learning styles (banks, 2006, p. 117). cultural pluralists suggest that the cultures of non-dominant ethnic minorities should not be ignored in teaching and learning, and that educators should be encouraged to use the materials produced by these groups (carmichael & hamilton, 1967; novak, 1975). mclaren (2003) argues that educators should focus on pedagogic steps, social relations, and democratic initiatives in schools. in this approach, teachers are required to transform themselves (freire, 1998). this means that critical multiculturalists demand not only “recognition of cultural differences” (taylor, 2011) by celebrating festivals or integrating cultures into a mainstream education, but, also, require a change of style, meaning, and strategy in order to transform the curriculum into one reflecting democratic values. thus, many critical multicultural education advocates criticise contributive and additive approaches to curriculum reform, saying that they do not make social change, but only provide a sign of recognition. torre (1996) stated that the additive approach does not motivate students in learning, creating social change or generating critical thinking skills to enable them to raise their voices in the face of discrimination and inequalities in society. bishop (1997) also commented that respective ethnic people’s involvement in literature selection is much more important in curriculum reform. it is necessary to note that the situation of cultural diversity is not the same everywhere in the world. for instance, the united states and many countries in europe have increased diversity due to global migration, while many countries in southeast asia, such as myanmar and thailand, are home to many national ethnic minorities (tilaar, 2004). thus, this paper argues that in myanmar multicultural theories and practices may not be applicable in the same ways as they are in the west. particularly in myanmar, throughout the state-formation process, ethnic nationalities have fought against bamar nationalism and claim for self-determination. modern myanmar is a combination of many nations that were independent in pre-colonial times (myint-u, 2004; sakhong, 2012; williams & sakhong, 2005). even during british colonial rule, the frontiers were administered differently. there were, for example, the chin hills regulation aseas 14(2) | 159 anui & thithimadee arphattananon promulgated in 1896, the kachin hills regulation in 1895, the 1919 act of federated shan states in 1920, and the 1935 burma act in 1937 (williams & sakhong, 2005, p. 11). sakhong described that “the 1935 burma act was applied to the area of the pre-colonial myanmar/burman kingdom, which included the former arakan and mon kingdoms as well as delta areas of karen country” (williams & sakhong, 2005, p. 11). since myanmar gained independence from great britain in 1948, burmanisation has taken root and there is a bamarcentric approach in all aspects of society, including education. monolingualism and monoculturalism were the only approaches used in every level of school, and teachers have been used as political tools for many years where they served in a state-building role under the instruction of a one language, one culture and one race ideology, instead of promoting unity through diversity by using ethnic languages and cultures in the school. myanmar continues to face political conflict with non-dominant ethnic nationalities – the so-called ‘natives’ (myint-u, 2004) – that has a significant effect on state-building, as the adoption of multicultural education is about integration of non-dominant ethnic groups’ cultures and identities. thein lwin (2002) stated that education has been used “as a political tool preventing children from learning how to think” (p. 1). lwin also noted that “many schools in the ethnic nationality areas do not want to use the curriculum written by the military regime” (p. 3). he argues that the curriculum developed by military government leads to burmanisation. curriculum reform is directly associated with the teachers’ roles. teachers are the leaders in policy implementation (vernon-dotson & floyd, 2012). therefore, it is crucially important that the teacher be aware of policy changes. the literature reveals that most teachers seemed to face a dilemma when the new policy was enacted because they lacked understanding of it (wallace & fleit, 2005). jackson (1992) states that this was because of the “lack of clarity concerning changes in skill, resources, and motivation” (p. 206). currently, there are 22 teacher education colleges and two universities of education in myanmar (moe, 2015), and 47,363 basic education schools with approximately 9.26 million students (moe, 2016). han tin (2008) found that teachers in myanmar are “highly conservative and traditionalist, and tend to resist change” (p. 114). han tin (2008) argues that, although teachers are provided with capacity-building and attend the new teaching methodology orientation training, they still return to the classroom with old, traditional methods after completing training. methods the research method was determined according to the goal of the study. the aim of the research was to understand the integration of ethnic content and the implementation of the local curriculum. therefore, a qualitative research approach was utilized, using in-depth interviews, document analysis, and classroom observations. the interviews were conducted with 63 participants – 24 interviews were done with indigenous, ethnic focal persons who were in charge of developing the local curriculum, and 39 participants were teaching assistants (ta) who taught the local curriculum in grade-1 classes (lower primary classes with students aged six or higher) in primary schools. conducting interviews with those participants was 160 | aseas 14(2) ethnic content integration and local curriculum in myanmar very important because they were practically implementing the curriculum reform process. the document analysis included the national curriculum framework (moe, 2015), local curriculum implementation protocol (moe, 2017) and local curriculum textbooks. four classroom observations were held in kachin state and kayah state. data was collected over the period of four months (october 2019 to january 2020). all participants were purposefully selected for in-depth interviews, as the researcher believed that they could reference their experiences about how they created the local curriculum and what they expected from it. the process of data analysis was carried out using thematic analysis (clarke & braun, 2017), which “is a method for systematically identifying, organizing, and offering insight into patterns of meaning (themes) within qualitative data” (p. 297). coding, categorizing data, sorting the data into key headings, and listing the topics within each key heading were all performed. then, the categories that arose in the previous steps were compiled into groups – avoiding overlap, making comments on the groups or results in the previous stage and reviewing their messages and evaluating the findings. results and discussions the local curriculum is intended to reflect ‘local needs’2. there are 120 hours out of 840 hours per year allotted to the local curriculum for the lower primary level curriculum. the local curriculum is allotted 14.2% of the curriculum, while 86% of teaching hours are for other subjects. there is also some flexibility in the curriculum according to local needs. the specific content of the local curriculum is determined based on the respective region and culture and the language of instruction that is spoken in the area. in order to implement the local curriculum, the ministry of education established the local curriculum implementation protocol (lcip) in 2017, based on article 44 of the 2014 national education law (nel), which provides guidelines for forming implementation committees. according to the analysis of the protocol, local curriculum implementation committees were established in each state. these committees were formed with government officials from organizations such as the minister of social affairs, minister of ethnic affairs, and state education office, as well as retired education officers, university professors, and instructors from teacher colleges. thus, they were unfamiliar with non-dominant ethnic cultures. the literature and culture committees of ethnic groups, who work with language and the education of ethnic minorities, and who are experts regarding their respective languages and cultures, were not mentioned by name, although such a broad term ‘language experts’ is used in the protocol to act as representatives from each respective ethnic group. the extent to which each member was engaged with the development of the curriculum varies from state to state. for example, some top-level government officers have been actively involved throughout the process of developing the local curriculum, while others were present only for short periods. in one case, the state 2 emphasizing ethnic language, culture and history, persons that are admirable in the regions, natural resources, local business, and basic computer skills to be included in the local curriculum content accordingly. this is defined in the national curriculum framework (2015) and the local curriculum implementation protocol (2017). aseas 14(2) | 161 anui & thithimadee arphattananon education officer was involved in all aspects of implementation, while in another case the state government provided only financial support. although ethnic literature and culture committees (lccs) were not mentioned by name in the protocol, they took on the role of language experts in the development of the local curriculum, providing cultural and linguistic information. each ethnic group has its own literature and culture committee. as such, local lccs are the primary resource for all aspects of culture, including language, values, traditions and history. the aforementioned protocol also elaborates what the local curriculum framework will look like based on the 2015 national curriculum framework, dividing the local curriculum into two main tracks: ethnic languages, namely ethnic language teaching (elt), and other social studies, namely local knowledge (lk), as shown in the following table. the protocol also stipulates that there is to be one local knowledge book per state, written in burmese. although each state is named after a particular language group (e.g., kayah state for the kayah people), there are many different indigenous language groups in each state. as such, there is not enough time or space in the textbook to include each group’s (from the respective state) local knowledge content. this proved a challenge in negotiating among the different groups as to which content should be included in the curriculum. furthermore, the language experts responsible for providing local knowledge for the curriculum found it difficult to translate terminology related to their culture and traditions into burmese. since local teachers must speak to children in their language rather than in burmese, this could create difficulties. the study revealed that there were also members of the committees responsible for developing the local knowledge curriculum associated with the government who had considerable influence on deciding what to include in the curriculum. the content for the local knowledge portion was collected by the literature and culture committees, passed to the local knowledge development team (lkdt), and approved by the local curriculum implementation committee (lcic), which was comprised of elites – not community representatives. on the other hand, the local curriculum grades 1, 2, and 3 40 minutes in a teaching period, 5 periods in a week, 120 teaching hours in a year ethnic language teaching local knowledge 3 periods per week 2 periods per week 40 minutes per period 40 minutes per period in respective ethnic languages in the burmese language content local ethnic language -ethnic history and cultures -regional economic situation -agricultural and other relevant content table 1. local curriculum learning areas and time allocation in primary school. (developed based on findings). 162 | aseas 14(2) ethnic content integration and local curriculum in myanmar ethnic literature and culture committees faced much controversy among themselves regarding the inclusion of local heroes. some ethnic literature and culture committees wanted to include the heroes who sacrificed their lives for their nation but some did not want to add them. for example, the historic hero saw ba u gyi, who is an iconic hero for the karen people and who sacrificed his life in 1950,3 was not included. one interview regarding the inclusion of heroes in the local knowledge is quoted as follows: some may think saw ba u gyi should be included in the school curriculum; of course he was a great leader for the karen people, but not for this nation. (not) like mann ba khaing, who was assassinated with bo gyoke aung san. he is one who worked for the nation. we must be aware of this. and this curriculum is not for one particular ethnic group, but knu (karen national union) schools might be teaching saw ba u gyi as their leader because he was a karen leader, but not for the whole burma. (secretary of the yangon literature and culture committee, personal communication, 29 january 2020) saw ba u gyi was a great leader for the karen people, but some criticized saw ba u gyi as championing only karen people, not karen state. in fact, today's karen state was created in 1952, two years after the death of saw ba u gyi, and is just a small area that excludes many karen-inhabited areas (undp, 2014, p. 16). the karen inhabited areas includes “tenasserim division including toungoo district, irrawaddy division, hanthawaddy division, insein district, nyaunglebin sub-district” (dun, 1980, p. 82-83). even the name “karen state” was renamed to “kayin state” by the military regime in 1989 (clarke et al., 2019, p. 98; undp, 2014, p. 23). karen leaders demanded a separate state (myint-u, 2006). the people in the local knowledge development team may not be aware of the history of karen state or they may have a narrow view that the curriculum is to teach about content pertinent to the states of myanmar. symbolically, non-dominant ethnic clothes and instruments were added to the curriculum, which may not be sufficient or generate further analytical skills. inclusion of notable historical figures (heroes) of non-dominant ethnic peoples, special days and the celebration of non-dominant ethnic cultures in the local knowledge are superficial because the content is written in a bamar (mainstream or majority) perspective, instead of the non-dominant perspectives. those figures who prominently served the burmese government were included, but not those who fought for non-dominant ethnic groups’ rights and freedoms. in addition, the local knowledge content does not reflect on conflict resolution at all. it does not support children in developing critical thinking or reflection on real-life circumstances. though the superficial inclusion of diversity allows students to gain limited general, surface-level knowledge, as they learn about the simple, visible characteristics of other ethnic groups, they do not learn their perspectives or underlying worldviews. students have no chance to learn about differences or to understand different cultures. this is another way of stereotyping through education and promoting superficial practices, and can be harmful to children as they might not understand the facts of history. 3 observed as “martyrs’ day” in knu areas. aseas 14(2) | 163 anui & thithimadee arphattananon on the other hand, the local knowledge textbook analysis showed that there is no effective teaching methodology applied in the teaching of the local knowledge portion of the curriculum, but that teachers will teach the developed syllabi in a traditional way, focusing on rote memorization instead of promoting critical thinking. critical thinking means that students can analyze the socio-political inequality in society and the fact that burmese society is comprised of different characters and power dynamics among the bamar and other ethnic groups, as well as the oppression faced by those ethnic groups. the national curriculum framework stipulates that the local curriculum is to promote peaceful coexistence and to ensure sociocultural diversity in order to solve political conflicts. however, the local curriculum, particularly the local knowledge portion, fails to include such issues because of the fear that the government would not implement it fully. in an interview with the karen state focal person, she expressed that “there is no other thing that can kill someone. we’re not putting in content that would violate the law and [lead someone to] commit murder. we only need our freedom to promote our history through education” (karen state local curriculum development ethnic focal person, personal communication, october 24, 2019). in part because of the many issues involved, local knowledge was not ready to be taught in school in the 2019-2020 school year. as for the ethnic language teaching (elt) portion, the curriculum was developed for only kachin, kayah, karen, and mon states and not in chin state. there are over 504 (salem-gervais & lian, 2020) languages spoken indigenously in chin state and no agreement could be reached as to which or how many languages should be included in the curriculum.5 altogether, 24 language groups developed their own elt textbook. these books were made by revising existing learning resources, making them more relevant and employing appropriate language teaching pedagogy, as well as creating new resources that are properly sequenced according to the children’s levels of language proficiency. the results of the study revealed that ethnic literature and culture committees were responsible for the elt portion of the curriculum, including topics based on their respective ‘cultural calendar’. a cultural calendar includes various cultural components including food, games, clothes, events, work, tools, history, famous leaders, and the group’s flag. grades 1 to 3 were systematically arranged so that children first develop oral proficiency and then basic literacy skills, introducing all the sounds and symbols of the language. the elt portion was also developed in a way that the students learn both how to accurately produce language as well as understand that language has meaning and can be used to communicate novel ideas, using primarily stories from the community. the grade 1 elt books were launched in the 2019-2020 school year. thus far, lccs have taken responsibility to contact school principals and township, state, or national education departments as necessary in order to ensure local ethnic teachers are posted to each school to teach the curriculum, as well as for publishing the elt books and teaching materials. 4 chin language groups are under discussion; the government lists out 53 as chin sub-groups, which is not accurate. obviously, ‘chin’ itself is also listed as one of the subgroups, and many such as naga, tangkhul, malin, anun, lhinbu, and meitei have never been considered as chin groups (see also salemgervais and lian, 2020). historically, tangkhul, malin, and anun have been considered as naga people. 5 the author was able to talk with four of the chin state local curriculum implementation committee members for one hour. 164 | aseas 14(2) ethnic content integration and local curriculum in myanmar regarding this, a focal person revealed in an interview as follows: so, whatever we do with moe is not fully trustable at last. still not producing the materials and teacher employment which they did up-side-down is visible. we have no materials, like big books and cards. the director of the moe said that there isn’t any budget left. (focal person of gebah from kayah state, personal communication, 27 october 2019) the focal person of shan ethnic groups stressed that “yes, our work is sometimes like ‘sin lee khway hmyaw’,6 which cannot be possible” (focal person of shan ethnic groups from kachin state, personal communication, november 10, 2019), and the focal person of jinghpaw also expressed that “the lcc recruited and supported tas, and when they were promoted to be permanent teachers, they became hpaya pyi nyan phyat”7 (focal person of jinghpaw from kachin state, personal communication, 11 november 2019). the implementation of the elt portion of the curriculum varied from school to school and depended on the school principal. many school principals were not aware of the local curriculum or that it was allotted a time period in the school day. some were also reluctant to include elt during school hours as they were under the impression that local ethnic languages were not to be taught at school during school hours. some of the teachers appointed to teach the local curriculum were posted as part-time teaching assistants (tas) and language teachers (lts). tas and lts are constantly taken advantage of by the permanent teachers because they are part-time teachers. being teaching assistants, tas are overloaded with administration work. sometimes, permanent full-time teachers take the time allotted for language instruction and teach other subjects, leaving the tas to teach the elt after school hours. during interviews, most of the participants used words like ‘bothersome’, ‘overloaded’, and ‘discriminated’ in regards to their work. the teaching assistants who teach the local curriculum were insulted by the permanent teachers by using ofensive words. they are given a heavy workload, including cleaning the school campus and doing paperwork, which are not supposed to be done by teaching assistants, and, at times, they are told to teach other subjects apart from the local curriculum. focal persons from kachin state said that they used to relay these problems to the district education officer (deo) but neither the school head nor the teachers received a response, although the deo said something would be done. regarding the issues, i met with deo many times to complain. it's not really a complaint but an exchange of understanding. otherwise, our teachers will have no opportunity to teach. i am aware that most other language groups face that kind of problem. (focal person of shan ethnic groups in kachin state, personal communication, 10 november 2019) 6 ‘sin lee khway hmyaw’ is a burmese saying that means one is hoping for an impossible goal. 7 hpaya pyi nyan phyat is a burmese idiom that means the scaffolding is cleared out after finishing the construction of the pagoda. the meaning is that after completing local curriculum development, no other issues are considered. aseas 14(2) | 165 anui & thithimadee arphattananon the timetable should be made so that we can teach grade 1, 2, 3 without conflicting with other classes. a proper timetable is needed for language teaching. we asked the school headmaster for a time to be specified and he wanted to have a set schedule as well but he did not receive instructions from his superiors so he said that he couldn’t. (focal person of tai lae literature and culture committee in kachin state, personal communication, 10 november 2019) in cases like these, the local lcc negotiated with the principal and discussed how to include the local curriculum in the school day. in some places, however, the parttime tas were very much appreciated and helped in teaching other classes as well as helping with administrative work in the office. some tas were able to adjust their teaching schedules with the headmaster and other regular teachers. one ta from kachin state said: i got to negotiate at school with the other teachers and the head of school. i am happy because this curriculum is taught during school hours. i am given the last period of the day. so, the students feel bored at that time. the head of the school is jinghpaw. (teaching assistant from kachin state, personal communication, 11 november 2019) as it was stated by wallace and fleit (2005) and jackson (1992), teachers often face a dilemma in implementation because of a lack of understanding the new policy. the study found that the newly stipulated laws and policies were not properly made known to teachers and education administrators at all levels. lccs recruited tas after testing their language skills and they were posted by the government after having received training on language teaching methods and how to use the teaching materials. in some instances, the government did not post a relevant local teacher (e.g., the teacher did not speak the language of the students). there were several challenges in the posting of tas, as the implementation of local curriculum is a new mechanism. despite these difficulties, the findings from the classroom observations reveal that the elt component of the curriculum aids in ensuring active participation from the students and that they understand the lessons. in contrast, previously, when the children’s languages were excluded in school and they did not have the opportunity to participate in learning, the children faced many difficulties. now, the elt portion aids in student comprehension and in building healthy learning habits, as both the language and content are familiar to them. moreover, children from different language groups enjoyed the elt portion even when there was not a teacher who spoke the language of each of the ethno-linguistic groups represented in the classroom. it was found that children enjoy the local curriculum, based on their own culture. integrating local ethnic content in the curriculum encourages social cohesion by promoting multiculturalism from the time children start school. based on the findings of this study, multicultural education policy can be described as shown in the chart. the following mep model can be used as a model of curriculum reform in myanmar. 166 | aseas 14(2) ethnic content integration and local curriculum in myanmar in the mep model in table 3, the educational system aims for children to function well within their respective local ethnic culture, and employs teachers who share the same language and culture as the students. it is noteworthy to look at the phenomenon of local curriculum implementation amid the curriculum reform process as it occurs in the midst of political transition and social change and in a multicultural context. however, as the lk component of the local curriculum does not make use of the local ethnic languages, students will not learn the content well and overall achievement and social change may not be as evident as the elt portion. the elt portion has the potential to generate remarkable transformation as local content is presented in the language students understand, ensuring that the children can actively participate in class and learn what is being taught. in a multicultural society, curriculum reform is necessarily a social reform process and governments often choose to start at the lowest level of content integration approach (banks, 2006). however, the case of myanmar is different, as the lk represents a contribution approach, while the elt is at the transformation approach level, as shown in curriculum contents teachers educational aims principles • use indigenous ethnic language • use respective ethnic materials • use multiethnic integrated materials • employ multi-strategy method (msm) that is culturally relevant teaching style • aim to help the child to learn how to function effectively within society, his or her ethnic culture, and other ethnic cultures. • cultural heritage • food • heroes • history (person & process) • identity • environment and location • animals • natural resources • agriculture • students need skilled teachers who are very knowledgeable about and sensitive to their ethnic cultures and cognitive styles • multicultural competency is required • teachers are knowledgeable in language and culture of the students • equity teaching pedagogy • help students learn diversity • create effective learning • promote cultural pluralism • no total integration • not restricted to other cultures • open society biculturalism • promote peaceful coexistence and democracy • majority & minority emphasis • group rights are primary • common ancestry and heritage unify • marginalized groups have unique learning styles table 2. multicultural education policy (mep) model. (developed based on findings). aseas 14(2) | 167 anui & thithimadee arphattananon figure 1. the time allotment and schedule for the curriculum for the entire school year has been changed. there are 120 hours in a year given for the local curriculum, much like a core learning area. the elt content guides children in learning about sociocultural diversity and problems that often arise in a multicultural society and children are encouraged to engage in problem solving. in classroom observations, it was found that elt lessons are prepared such that a class writes and talks about their own experiences, or they participate in role play that the teacher has prepared according to the lesson’s theme. then, the teacher facilitates the class in discussion regarding their experiences and the story text so that students gain more knowledge and develop thinking and analytical skills. respective socio-political markers of different ethno-linguistic groups are taught in elt lessons, such as the flag, anthem and history of the monarchy and ruling system, intended to help children develop their thinking skills. this can also help children in comparing present life and the past of their people. however, elt content at the primary level is basic; it does not achieve the aims of the social action approach. in higher grades, as the study reveals, ethnic groups expect to create more advanced lessons about why and how the people of non-dominant ethno-linguistic groups are marginalized. the students are not taught social action skills to balance the power with the dominant group because the curriculum framework was developed so that it focuses on peaceful coexistence rather dissent, rebellion, and tribalism. the current implementation process and lessons learned should be taken into consideration when implementing the local curriculum for upper levels and for other ethno-linguistic groups in other states. the framework for implementation is comprised of four essential parts, all inextricably intertwined and requiring careful attention, as shown in figure 2 below. in the midst of writing this paper, the political situation has tremendously changed in myanmar. the military seized power from the civilian-led government on 1 february 2021. in response to the coup d'état, a civil strike, called ‘spring revolution’ figure 1. local curriculum approach level. (developed based on findings). 168 | aseas 14(2) ethnic content integration and local curriculum in myanmar has been taking place across the country, with the situation worsening daily (jordt et al., 2021, p. 23). consequently, the national league for democracy (nld) politicians who were elected in the 8 november 2020 general elections established the committee representing pyidaungdsu hluttaw (crph) on 5 february 2021 (human rights council, 2021; acaps, 2021). subsequently, crph formed the national unity government (nug) on 16 april 2021 (lilly, 2021) and claimed to be the legitimate government and promised to establish a federal democratic state and to implement federal education. a civil disobedience movement (cdm) launched across the country, boycotting all government services that the state administrative council (sac) plans to implement (karen human rights group, 2021). in this situation, it is uncertain whether this local curriculum implementation can be carried on or not. the state administrative council (sac) announced after the coup that they will continue the implementation of the curriculum without any problems. however, civilians continuously protest against sac, as the cdm campaign calls on citizens to boycott government schools. thus, obviously, this sudden political change affects all sectors and will negatively impact all socioeconomic development. now, the civil strike is shifting toward civil war as the nug formed a people’s defense force (pdf). the authors believe that the schools in central myanmar face more hardship at this time and schools in ethnic-dominated areas might be able to continue to sustain their school programs because they have been experiencing this kind of conflict for 70 years, so it is not much different for them. however, this political change is a great turning point that has the potential to enact great changes in myanmar. the impact of the coup can lead to “balkanization” (glazer, 1974) wherein ethnic territories, which seem to be the rump states, controlling some part of their territories for many years could legitimately become autonomous states. figure 2. suggested local curriculum implementation framework. aseas 14(2) | 169 anui & thithimadee arphattananon conclusion and recommendations studying the local curriculum development and implementation process illustrates the opportunities and challenges in implementing a larger multicultural education policy. through this study, the challenges in integrating local ethnic content came to light. many lessons can be drawn from these challenges and will be helpful in setting  up  a multicultural educational policy in  myanmar. this study also shows the process of local curriculum development and the integration of local ethnic content into the curriculum and how the curriculum, along with the mep model, can be adapted for the purpose of social cohesion. the findings from the research conducted in some ethnic communities concerning the local curriculum development process provide practical insight through lived experience in integrating local ethnic content into the curriculum. thus, relevant government ministries and ethnic leaders or lccs could benefit from lessons learned thus far in how to take the next steps in developing a curriculum for higher levels and for other ethno-linguistic communities. conducting research on integrating ethnic content in the local curriculum is of great value to both ethno-linguistic communities and governments, since multicultural educational policy has been more formally applied. ethnic languages have been allocated as a subject in the curriculum since the 2014 curriculum reform, but not all the ethnic communities were informed and have not developed instructional material. the author believes that the characteristics of curriculum reform approaches depend on the sociopolitical situation of the country. historically, ethnic groups in myanmar have employed their own culture, traditions, heritage, and literature in the respective school systems. presently, implementation of the local curriculum in the formal educational system by employing the literature of ethnic minorities gives hope for sustaining and promoting multiculturalism as the cultural aspects of each ethnic group are fully installed in the lessons in the ethnic language teaching portion. recommendations 1. ethnic content integration implementation should be carried out with full participation of local lccs because they are most responsible and accountable for providing resources, as found in this research. they know what is most relevant to their communities and their children. lccs should be officially designated as members of the implementation committee prescribed in the protocol. as they play an important role in developing the local curriculum, their technical abilities and capacity should be strengthened. 2. rather than dividing the local curriculum in two parts, one in burmese and one in the respective local language, the entire local curriculum should be in the children’s first language. in this way, children can learn the content sufficiently and effectively. 3. the legality of teaching the local curriculum in the mainstream curriculum should be well-communicated to local schools, as it is prescribed in the national curriculum framework. the policy regarding ethnic language 170 | aseas 14(2) ethnic content integration and local curriculum in myanmar teaching during school hours should also be communicated to every level of related educational departments. if this is done, the posted language teachers can teach their classes with full confidence while school principals can manage the logistics of teaching the local curriculum in their schools. 4. as there are many ethnolinguistic groups in myanmar, implementing multicultural education through the local curriculum can aid in the development of education. the implementation of the local curriculum is a turning point in myanmar and a 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(2012). building leadership capacity via school partnerships and teacher teams. the clearing house: a journal of educational strategies, issues and ideas, 85(1), 38-49. wallace, j., & fleit, j. (2005). change dilemmas for curriculum leaders: dealing with mandated change in school. australia, 20(3), 188-213. williams, d. c., & sakhong, l. h. (2005). designing federalism in burma. unld press. williams, r. l. (1975). moderator variables as bias in testing black children. the journal of afro-american issues, 3, 77-90. 172 | aseas 14(2) ethnic content integration and local curriculum in myanmar about the authors anui (corresponding author) is a ph.d. candidate at the research institute for languages and cultures of asia, mahidol university, thailand. his research focuses on the curriculum reform process in myanmar and educational policy in a multilingual, multicultural society and its implications for building social cohesion and equity. he has been working on education and literacy projects since 2009, working with indigenous communities. he developed the lainong naga writing system and has produced various reading materials in lainong. in 2020, myanmar’s general election, he contested for the senate seat from naga self-administered zone representing the naga national party. he is also a co-founder of myanmar indigenous community partners (micp). ► contact: anuisainyiu@gmail.com dr. thithimadee arphattananon is an associate professor at the research institute for languages and cultures of asia, mahidol university, thailand. her research focuses on how education and instructional practices in schools can go beyond the recognition of cultural differences and achieve the goal of equality for students from diverse social and cultural backgrounds. until present, she has conducted research that examined multicultural education policies in thailand and the practices in schools that enrolled students from diverse cultures. ► contact: thithimadee.art@mahidol.ac.th acknowledgements i would like to express my special thanks to all ethnic group leaders and all research participants for their valuable time and views contributing to this research. i also thank the reviewers and editors for their patience, reviews, and comments that helped to strengthen my arguments in this article. i gratefully acknowledge my colleagues for their support during the research writing. the article was written before the military coup of 2021. aseas 15(2) | 295 festivals and the theory of inclusive development in malaysia: perspectives from a festival organizer yi sheng goha* & pek yen teha asunway university, malaysia *corresponding author: yishengg@sunway.edu.my received: 4 april 2022 / accepted: 6 december 2022 / published: 23 december 2022 ► goh, y. s., & teh, p. y. (2022). festivals and the theory of inclusive development in malaysia: perspectives from a festival organizer. advances in southeast asian studies, 15(2), 295-307. festivals play a vital role in catalyzing inclusive development through their ability to increase social capital. they can enhance social ties through creating shared knowledge, building trust, and forming networks. in the malaysian context, few studies have been done on how festivals promote inclusive development. hence, this paper seeks to present a case study on pangkor island festival (pif), which is a malaysian arts and culture festival, concerning the process, opportunities, and challenges of inclusive development from the perspectives of the festival organizer. in-depth interviews with the festival organizer and curator and field observations were conducted. findings show that festivals promote inclusive development through a five-phase process, from establishing relationships with residents and exploring local assets to the sustainability of pif and inclusive development. this study also suggests three-fold opportunities that include community cohesiveness, revitalization, and cultural value restoration as well as challenges of securing suitable stakeholders. keywords: festivals; inclusive development; malaysia; participation typology; salad bowl theory  introduction festivals are defined as “the celebration of a specific theme to which the public is invited for a limited period of time” (grappi & montanari, 2011, p. 1129) and consist of various planned activities for the general public with predefined objectives, themes, and programs within a clearly defined period at a specific location (kwiatkowski et al., 2020). through festivals, social ties within a community are strengthened via shared knowledge, building of trust, and forming of networks and social cohesion (bakas et al., 2019). in addition, festivals serve their host communities by preserving traditions and cultures that shape community identity (conservation), recontextualizing tradition and habits to suit contemporary times (reinvention), promoting local assets to both locals and visitors (manifestation), attracting tourists to the area (attraction), diversifying research workshop w w w .s ea s. at 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 81 mailto:thithimadee.art%40mahidol.ac.th?subject= http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1424-1991 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8177-8636 mailto:yishengg%40sunway.edu.my?subject= 296 | aseas 15(2) festivals and the theory of inclusive development in malaysia local culture with new values and revolutionizing local businesses (transformation), and creating cohesion among community members (consolidation) (kwiatkowski et al., 2020). festivals can thus empower and revitalize communities and places (mchenry, 2011), making them a vital catalyst for inclusive development by increasing social capital (bakas et al., 2019). extensive studies have been done on festivals and social inclusiveness (bakas et al., 2019; finkel, 2010; kwiatkowski et al., 2020; mchenry, 2011), but such aspects have yet to be explored more widely within the malaysian context. to date, malaysian festivals have been studied from the perspective of the visitors’ experiences and consumption behavior (ishak, 2010; shuib et al., 2013; ting et al., 2017), and governance (ng & rahman, 2021). utilizing the theory of inclusive development (gupta et al., 2015), which empowers the marginalized community into place development, and drawing on the salad bowl theory (berray, 2019; othman et al., 2014), which explains cultural integration, this study seeks to: 1) explore the process of inclusive development among various stakeholders; 2) identify the opportunities for inclusive development; and 3) investigate the challenges towards inclusive development in the context of pangkor island festival (pif) in malaysia. conceptual foundation inclusive development inclusive development is “development that includes marginalized people, sectors, and countries in social, political, and economic processes for increased human well-being, social, and environmental sustainability, and empowerment” (gupta et al., 2015, p. 546). its aim goes beyond individual economic performance and wealth, as in inclusive growth (harberger, 1998), to social and ecological aspects of sustainable development (gupta et al., 2015). in this context, inclusive development is related to the participatory approach found in the tourism development process (gupta & vegelin, 2016; musavengane, 2019; tosun, 1999, 2006) that takes into consideration the knowledge and aspirations of a community to empower local people in the decision-making process. through empowerment, people gain self-esteem and confidence that they can, either individually or collectively, bring about changes in governance, society, economy, and individual wellbeing, creating new opportunities and benefits for the community (gupta et al., 2015; israel et al., 1994). a community’s participation in the development process is thus seen as a bottom-up approach (tosun, 1999; van den bergh, 2022). regional context and study setting the malaysian context from a salad bowl perspective malaysia is, to a certain extent, a salad bowl (othman et al., 2014) of several cultures and ethnicities, with its population consisting of 69.6% bumiputera1, 22.6% chinese, 1 bumiputera includes malays and indigenous people called orang asli. aseas 15(2) | 297 yi sheng goh & pek yen teh 6.8% indians, and 1% others (current population estimates, malaysia, 2020). as such, the salad bowl theory has been used to explain the integration of different cultures, stating that in the integration process the individuality and independence of each ethnic group are retained alongside dominant cultures; the theory also considers selective integration of ethnic groups in host societies (berray, 2019). at the micro level, each ethnicity retains its unique cultural traditions, as is seen in the retainment of the mother tongue among various ethnic groups (e.g., the chinese retaining the chinese language as their mother tongue). at the macro level, malaysia is a melting pot of various cultures that assimilates individualities into a common lifestyle (advani & reich, 2015). for instance, yamcha (to hang out over drinks), tapao (to take away food), and syok (superlatively good) are some malaysian words derived from the mother tongues of various ethnicities. in consideration of the complexity of the malaysian context based on the salad bowl and melting pot perspectives, this study focuses on a unique setting in malaysia that constitutes this salad bowl, which is a small chinese fishing village located in pangkor island. the study aims to illustrate how inclusive development within this community can be done through an arts and culture festival. regional context – pangkor island the regional context of this study is pangkor island in malaysia. it is located in the straits of malacca, and is reached by traveling three hours by car from the capital city of kuala lumpur, followed by a 30-minute ferry ride. the total area of the island is approximately 2,200 ha (tanzizi, 2020) and is inhabited by 11,500 islanders (abdullah, 2021), consisting mainly of bumiputeras, followed by chinese, indians, and non-citizens2, who form many small villages. fishing is the major industry in pangkor. immigrants from the coastal provinces of china (e.g., hainan), who were mostly fishermen, brought along traditional fishing techniques to pangkor when they settled on the island in the late 19th century. the 1950s to 60s saw a major growth in pangkor fisheries due to technological advancements, and these remain as a major pillar in the economic structure of pangkor. besides fisheries, pangkor is also a tourist destination due to its scenic beaches and has been since it was a british colony in the early 20th century. in recent decades, pangkor has been experiencing out-migration of the younger generation, particularly in chinese villages such as sungai pinang kecil village. these villages were not developed into tourist destinations, relying mainly on fishing as the main economic activity. the community structure in these chinese villages focuses strongly on clan associations, which, along with their respective buildings (i.e., centers, temples, and ancestral shrines), acted as a social structure that provided a diverse range of services to immigrants from their respective provinces of china and served as a social setting for people from the same hometown. the services provided include temporary accommodation, job placement, and even places for holding wake services and funerals. these associations remain as significant social institutions on the island today, albeit weaker when compared to that of the past. 2 non-citizens include foreign workers and immigrants. 298 | aseas 15(2) festivals and the theory of inclusive development in malaysia inhabitants in these villages have unique ties within the community where almost everyone knows each other. however, each family places greater emphasis on the household rather than the community. thus, social cohesion is low. residents hold a rather passive and reserved attitude towards changes for the common good of the village. the mindset of volunteering for the benefit of the community as a whole is weak. hence, there is a need for a catalyst to bring the inhabitants together to address the challenges faced by the community. to this end, a successful pangkorian businessman commissioned a seasoned art director, who has a strong background in community art festivals, to organize pangkor island festival (pif) as a means of promoting inclusive development. study setting – pangkor island festival (pif) pif is the first island-based chinese community arts and culture festival in malaysia, and was first held in 2013. since then, it was held annually for three years before being held biennially. the goal of pif is to encourage and foster interactions among the residents themselves as well as between the residents and artists via arts and culture (pangkor island festival, 2022), with the hope of setting an example for other places in malaysia to emulate. pif is held in sungai pinang kecil village, with various activities including performances, exhibitions, forums, workshops, tours, bazaars, parades, film screenings, beach cleaning, etc., surrounding culture, arts, and the environment, targeting a malaysian and international audience. methodology this case study is part of an ongoing project by the authors called “the place making of fishing villages in malaysia”. data was collected from interviews and site observations. two separate, two-hour, in-depth interviews were conducted virtually in 2021 with two key interviewees who were the pif organizer and curator, both of whom played vital roles in the pif. for confidential reasons, both interviewees are anonymously tagged as respondent 1 (r1) and respondent 2 (r2) in the quotations that appear in the findings section. content analysis was carried out independently by the two authors and findings were then cross-checked to ensure validity and consistency. transcripts and findings were then sent to the respective participants for validation, and to raise research ethics concerns, if there were any. furthermore, observations on the pif were conducted by one of the authors in 2019 as a participant throughout the three-days festival. additionally, site visitations, hand-note recordings and short stays were carried out since 2018 in various fishing villages to gain a better understanding of the local contexts (e.g., culture, lifestyle, beliefs, etc.). the entire data collection procedure was conducted using the common dialects of the local community, namely hokkien, mandarin, and cantonese. the credibility of the researchers is ensured, as they are qualitative researchers who are experts in the field of social sciences, and are capable of communicating in the mentioned dialects. aseas 15(2) | 299 yi sheng goh & pek yen teh findings the preliminary findings are organized based on three main themes, highlighting the festival organizers’ perspectives on the process of inclusive development, opportunities, and challenges. process of inclusive development the following section explores the process of inclusive development within the community through pif across the years. based on the research findings, the process can be broken down into five phases, beginning from inception and ending with sustainability. phase 1: establishing relationships with residents and exploring local assets understanding the local power structure helps to facilitate relationship building with the locals (i.e., villagers, clan associations). the pif committees visited each clan association to explain the idea of the festival and to solicit collaboration through emphasizing that they are much needed. gift giving is relatively important in enhancing the relationship between the organizer and residents, particularly in cultural festivals. frequent casual meetings with the clan associations are also another way to strengthen bonding. these relationship-building activities took place when r1 visited the village every month prior to pif. before you enter a place, you need to know the power structure. when we first entered pangkor, there was no village head. clan associations were the most powerful institutions. we had to visit each of them and tell them what we want to do and tell them what they could assist. i kept telling them that this is our (pangkor’s and my team’s) festival and we do this together. during festivals like ghost festival, we send gifts and visit each other to show our support. (r1) besides establishing relationships with the residents, exploration of local assets (i.e., cultural assets such as history and myths) is also an important first step. festivals can play the role of promoting rural assets, habits, and myths (kwiatkowski et al., 2020). for instance, an old well and archway with jawi writing were found by the organizer during the festival planning, both of which were neglected by locals far before the festival was held. the organizer thus had the opportunity to re-present and promote the values and history of these artefacts through storytelling in the festival programme. these sites would then eventually receive favorable traction from residents and tourists, as explained by r1: we explored many historic sites, like the hundred years old well. at the beginning the locals didn’t think this well has any value. through pif, we introduced stories behind the well; how it had benefited the immigrants who came from hainan, and showed its relationship with the hainanese homestay beside it and the archway that is written in jawi. many tourists will go to visit and then 300 | aseas 15(2) festivals and the theory of inclusive development in malaysia the locals realized the value of preserving their historic sites because outsiders appreciate them. (r1) phase 2: involving residents in art creation and performances phase 2 is the transitional phase where residents became co-creators of artworks. art can serve as a means for social and civic participation, which contributes to community empowerment (mchenry, 2009). at the beginning of the pif preparations, the locals behaved as bystanders. after a period of observation, they started to offer suggestions to the organizer and artists through hands-on demonstrations on how things could be done better based on their experiences. this empowered them to be involved in the creation, as well as to take pride in and have a sense of ownership of the artwork. for instance, there were a few, huge art pieces that were supposed to be destroyed after pif, but were instead eventually kept in one of the homestays after much pleading from the residents. according to r1: you know… the residents, they went to beg the fish farm owner to keep the puff fish [installation artwork]. however, the size is too big to keep. because they spent two months of hard work to create the piece… at the end, there was no choice but to destroy a few big artworks. the creators of these artwork were crying while destroying it. finally, a homestay owner agreed to keep the puff fish, so the creators were so happy that they shouted to me “someone keeps my fish!” the stage show was another way of involving villagers in pif. according to the organizer, watching television dramas and singing karaoke every evening is part of the villagers’ lifestyle, indicating a hidden desire to perform. capitalizing on this, pif provides a stage for them to show off their talents in stage shows. this direct involvement in stage performances increased the sense of ownership of the festival: it is a progress, the villagers started from seeing what you are doing, to knowing what you are doing, and thinking they can do better than you, then they get involved in doing it. at the end, they feel the resulted artwork is theirs. (r1) phase 3: promoting understanding between disparate groups pif brought together artists from outside pangkor via their artist-in-residence program, utilizing art as a means for facilitating understanding between disparate groups (mchenry, 2011). they brought in artists from west malaysia, east malaysia, and even other asian countries. the interactions and exchanges of arts and cultural experiences bring about a sense of connection to other parts of the world. the differences brought forward through these disparate groups shed light on the uniqueness of local culture, and the appreciation from outsiders towards the local cultural heritage in turn helps cultivate appreciation of cultural heritage among locals. the interviewee (r1) mentioned that an indigenous group from sarawak was invited to join the pif and was thus brought in to pangkor island. r1 further elaborated that when two aseas 15(2) | 301 yi sheng goh & pek yen teh distinct cultural groups meet, it helps in enhancing understanding between the two groups in terms of social, cultural, and spiritual aspects. furthermore, through interactions with a different cultural group, residents feel connected to another part of the country that they may not have been familiar with prior to meeting this group: i invited five 75-year-old kelabit (an indigenous tribe from the sarawak highlands in east malaysia) artists to pif. it was their first time to travel out of their village, and to the senior villagers in pangkor, it was also their first time to see a performance by elongated earlobes tribe. it opened up both parties’ minds. to some extent, this is cultural exchange. so, the residents don’t feel they live on this island alone… they can get in touch with others. (r1) phase 4: cultivating awareness of social issues pif extended its focus from culture and heritage to social issues, further exemplifying inclusiveness of the locals’ needs. through art performances, local issues such as ocean waste and environmental hygiene were brought into the spotlight, with hopes of raising awareness and motivating change towards better living conditions: through the artist’s sharing session, the villagers were shocked to see that the ocean has three islands made up of rubbish. we had to keep telling them not to throw rubbish into the sea anymore. (r1) besides issues of trash laying around, pif also sparked initiatives from the residents to create their own festival based on their cultural assets. “a group of residents started mazu festival in recent years. since the hainan association worships mazu, goddess of the ocean, they decided to come up with this festival. fishermen supported them,” said r2. this shows that, from the experiences gained surrounding pif, residents have learned of the power that festivals hold. such experiences, paired with the heightened awareness of their cultural assets due to pif, have encouraged them to start their own festival celebrating their goddess. phase 5: sustainability of pif and inclusive development pif started locally before expanding to an international network in 2019, forming an alliance with taiwan, japan, korea, and macao. the alliance aims to foster collaboration among its members in order to ensure the sustainability of pif and develop its potentials (including social inclusion and sustainability of heritage and traditional skills): we formed an island alliance with mokpo-si (korea), okinawa (japan), taiwan, and macao. through art and cultural exchange, we want to discuss, for example, how we can sustain our traditional wooden boat building technology. (r1) young generations came back to start café business because of pif. now, they have evolved. their business no longer depends on pif… have developed into something i would say more ‘local’, which can sustain itself in pangkor. we also 302 | aseas 15(2) festivals and the theory of inclusive development in malaysia have a ‘hello pangkor’ organization focusing on environmental preservation, run by this young generation. (r2) as can be seen from the quotations above, the aspect of sustainability extends beyond the longevity of the festival itself. the organizer allied with other island-countries to elevate the content showcased and presented in the festival so as to further enhance cultural preservation. social inclusion also further extends to the returning young villagers who moved back from big cities to start their businesses. these young villagers even started a non-governmental organization (ngo) that focuses on environmental preservation such as beach cleaning. the opportunities of inclusive development this section explains the impacts of pif to the community, which include three social inclusiveness potentials as observed by the festival organizer across the years. community cohesiveness and sense of belonging festivals are able to foster community identity and togetherness from a social capital point of view (finkel, 2010; richards et al., 2013). this study further discusses social inclusiveness to develop community cohesiveness and a sense of belonging within the community. despite the festival being initially initiated by an outsider (festival organizer), it eventually brought the locals to work together, such that they became active participants (e.g., performers) and not mere bystanders (as described in phase 2). according to r1, one of the social inclusiveness potentials of pif is the cultivation of a sense of belonging. to illustrate this, taking the ocean waste issue mentioned in phase 4 as an example, this issue, despite being prevalent, had always been ignored by the villagers, such that daily trash and plastic waste were not well managed via a proper sewage system, contributing to sea pollution. moreover, throwing trash into the sea had also been a daily practice. wanting to bring about awareness to the issue, an artist in pif waded down into the sea to clean up the floating trash. according to r1, the sheer amount of trash gathered had shocked the residents, which caused them to be enlightened on the severity of this socio-environmental issue. since then, the villagers have gradually improved their daily habits. more importantly, r2 emphasized that residents have started to feel that the island belongs to them and it is their responsibility to protect and preserve the place. for instance, the locals initiated a project called ‘hello pangkor’ to conserve the environment and protect sea turtles post-pif. according to r1, the key for success in the pifs is in getting the right people, which leads to the next point concerning attracting young villagers to move back to pangkor island. revitalization of the island another impact of pif is in its ability to attract young villagers to move back to the island. since the festival first started in 2013, the island has gradually revived in terms aseas 15(2) | 303 yi sheng goh & pek yen teh of its social structure and local economy, which addresses the community’s concern that one of the reasons for young villagers leaving the island was due to the island’s stagnant development. the snowball effects of this reverse brain drain are not only in the revitalization of social structure (rejuvenation of the aging community), but also the diversification of the local economy (from the singular fishing industry to other businesses). these returning young villagers bring in novel and innovative ideas from outside the island to the local community, such as homestays and bakery shops; some have even been involved in the festival, which has been helpful for tourism development, and subsequently in increasing the quality of life of the community, giving rise to a livelier society. restoration of cultural values social inclusiveness, fostered by pif, also promotes restoration of socio-cultural values that the island’s inhabitants hold. through the festival, locals are made aware of the importance of the island’s historical values and now gradually present them as tourist attractions. for instance, an old well, which had been long abandoned by the locals, is now being re-presented to tourists with stories of its past and how the place evolved: in the past few years, i have discovered some historical spots on the island, for examples an old well that was being abandoned by the locals because they found it not important at all! once i made the locals understand the value of it, they voluntarily told me about the history of the spots or artefacts. and then i re-presented all the stories in the festival to let visitors understand the past of this place. (r1) in short, the findings have demonstrated the importance of social inclusiveness on the development of a place. without the collaboration of both parties (i.e., residents and organizers), the restoration work may not have been realized. festivals thus play an important role in serving as platforms to showcase various cultures to the public. the challenges of inclusive development the major challenge in conducting pif at the initial stage was the lack of interest from the local community, which was due to two factors: first, a sense of belonging and cohesion within the community, which might be related to the aging society of the community. as mentioned, most young villagers have relocated to urban areas for career opportunities. furthermore, at the start of the festival planning, there was an absence of a village council or officer that could be approached by the organizer. second, the top-down participation approach – the event is initiated by the pif organizer, who is perceived as an outsider by the community at the initial stage; locals were thus seen as mere bystanders. these factors could be largely associated to rural-urban interaction gaps, such as the movement of people, telecommunications, and commodities (thompson, 2015). cultural and communication differences 304 | aseas 15(2) festivals and the theory of inclusive development in malaysia between pangkor islanders and outsiders, such as between the local community members and the pif organizer, may have resulted from many factors. these include the malaysian context of a salad bowl and pangkor’s geography (its distance from the mainland) and history (the rise of the island as a popular tourist destination and its subsequent fall, where it was ‘replaced’ by other emerging destinations in the late 20th century (tan, 2010). however, the community’s input, decision-making, and provision of equal opportunities for participation are important components of inclusive development (gupta et al., 2015). to ensure a community’s active involvement in a festival, approaching the right stakeholders is important. in this study, two critical stakeholders were found – the clan associations and the community of returning young villagers. interestingly, instead of official authorities, chinese clan associations are the right stakeholders to approach in encouraging the locals to participate in the festival. as mentioned earlier, associations serve as the symbol of unity between chinese migrants and their descendants (yan et al., 2020). over time, this symbol remained crucial in most rural areas. in this island context, these trusted associations serve as the medium to facilitate acceptance of the festival organizer (the outsider) by the local community (the insider). hence, associations are important for persuading the insiders to open their ‘doors’ to welcome the outsiders in organizing the festival together. as such, the pif organizer was able to establish a good rapport with the locals after almost a decade: the successfulness of a community festival is mainly because of these local authorities [temples and clan associations]. it took me seven to eight years to approach the right authorities and then to be accepted by the community. besides the associations, the community of returning young villagers is also a vital stakeholder in the pif. they catalyzed the inclusiveness developmental process, which gradually influenced the elderly in their families to get involved in the festival, forming a cohesiveness within the community. one significant example of such involvement can be seen in the 2019 pif, where the elderly performed a short play (see figure 1). needless to say, the returning young villagers might have been more convincing than outsiders when it came to persuading the elderly to be a part of the festival. conclusion this study explored the socially inclusive development of a chinese fishing community in malaysia from the perspective of a festival organizer. the findings show that through a 5-phase process, festivals help to strengthen community cohesiveness, revitalize economy, and restore cultural values while preserving the unique identities of the community, as described in the salad bowl perspective. notably, the group of returning young villagers had played a vital role in the inclusiveness process; their innovative business ideas and incorporation of these ideas into the pif have expanded the community’s economic structure to include tourism-related income. this bottom-up participation has been shown to facilitate an inclusive development process, in spite of the top-down participation challenges that came up during the aseas 15(2) | 305 yi sheng goh & pek yen teh initial stages of the festival. to sustain inclusive development, participation of the local community should be spontaneous, with autonomy given to handle problems and implement solutions (tosun, 1999). without this level of participation, the sustainability of inclusive development could be a challenge. as a limitation, this study looked at inclusive development from only the perspective of the festival organizer; findings should therefore be treated as preliminary. pif, as presented in this research workshop paper, is one of the case studies of the place making of fishing villages in malaysia project. further fieldwork with key stakeholders from other fishing villages will be conducted. future studies are needed to investigate the local community’s perspectives on the needs and benefits of inclusive development.  references abdullah, m. s. 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(2015). rural transformation. in m. l. weiss (ed.), routledge handbook of contemporary malaysia (pp. 236-248). routledge. ting, h., mering, m. w., adruce, s. a. z., & memon, m. a. (2017). intention to attend the rainforest world music festival: local visitor perspectives. tourism culture & communication, 17(2), 119-129. tosun, c. (1999). towards a typology of community participation in the tourism development process. anatolia, 10(2), 113-134. tosun, c. (2006). expected nature of community participation in tourism development. tourism management, 27(3), 493-504. aseas 15(2) | 307 yi sheng goh & pek yen teh van den bergh, l. (2022). little willies as community-building heritage: a bottom-up approach to the european capital of culture initiative. journal of european studies. https://doi.org/10.1177/00472441221115570 yan, y., dean, k., feng, c.-c., hue, g. t., koh, k., kong, l., ong, c. w., tay, a., wang, y., & xue, y. (2020). chinese temple networks in southeast asia: a webgis digital humanities platform for the collaborative study of the chinese diaspora in southeast asia. religions, 11(7), 334. about the authors yi sheng goh is a senior lecturer in the school of arts at sunway university. she is a design researcher who has broad interests in creating solutions for a better society, among which include community sustainability, place making, healthy ageing, and consumer and aesthetics research. her works are published in the journal of product and brand management, wacana seni journal of arts discourse, and international journal of cultural and creative industries among others. she is currently working on the place making of fishing villages in malaysia project and other projects related to urban resiliency. ► contact: yishengg@sunway.edu.my pek yen teh is a senior lecturer in the school of hospitality and service management, sunway university. her main research interest area is sustainable tourism studies. she focuses on a few cultural conservation projects in malaysia. she also researches film studies tourism among muslim travelers, particular on the korean wave in south korea. ► contact: pekyent@sunway.edu.my disclosure the authors declare no conflict of interest. mailto:yishengg%40sunway.edu.my?subject= mailto:pekyent%40sunway.edu.my?subject= 308 | aseas 15(2) aseas 11(1) | 99 thai doctoral students’ layers of identity options through social acculturation in australia singhanat nomnian ► nomnian, s. (2018). thai doctoral students’ layers of identity options through social acculturation in australia. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 11(1), 99-116. an increasing number of international students in australian higher education have inevitably increased linguistic and cultural diversity in the academic and social landscapes. drawing upon bronfenbrenner’s (1979) bio-ecological systems theory and pavlenko and blackledge’s (2004) identities in multilingual contexts, this study explores how thai doctoral students adopt certain identity options during their societal acculturation while studying and living in australia. based on a group of nine thai doctoral students’ interview transcripts, the findings reveal three intricate and complex layers of their identity options, namely, assumed identity as asian people, imposed identity as ‘non-native-english’ speakers (nnes), and negotiable identity as thai ethnic people. this study potentially sheds some light for future empirical and longitudinal research regarding nnes international students’ social acculturation in different multilingual settings in order to support nnes students’ academic, linguistic, psychological, and sociocultural adaptations. keywords: australia; identity options; higher education; social acculturation; thai doctoral students  introduction language, culture, and identity are key aspects in language use and mobility. in terms of situated locations, language users who move to various places will encounter different sociocultural practices; and thus, they construct and negotiate themselves in particular interactive contexts (pennycook, 2012). international higher education mobility continues to rise as the degrees and cross-cultural experiences obtained while living and studying abroad can strategically and competitively fulfill career goals and future employment expectations (beech, 2015). due to the socioeconomic benefits that an increasing number of international students bring to australian universities, it is imperative that they obtain high quality education experiences. one of the contributing elements to educational quality is how well they transit from their home country to the australian higher education system (phakiti, hirsh, & woodrow, 2013). menzies and baron (2014) report that smooth international postgraduate transition is not only influenced by appropriate university support, but also by student-based support through student societies where friendship and interactions can be promoted. effective social transition and acculturation can positively assist them in making a successful academic adaptation. außerhalb des schwerpunktes  out of focus w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 18 .1 -6 100 | aseas 11(1) thai doctoral students’ layers of identity options through social acculturation in australia previous studies, however, report a number of difficulties and challenges for international students, particularly in english-speaking countries (e.g., benson, barkhuizen, bodycott, & brown, 2013; elliot, baumfield, & reid, 2016; fotovatian, 2012; fotovatian & miller, 2014; mcmahon, 2018; nomnian, 2017a; zhang & mi, 2010). these include lack of awareness of university policies and practices, implicit academic expectations of lecturers, and incompetent communicative english skills. australia, in particular, is considered as the most multicultural among developed nations thanks to migration and international student mobility (guillen & ji, 2011). australia, as a result, comprises a mixed multicultural and multilingual population who speak ‘localized’ versions of their own variety of english, which may not meet the expectations of international students who would like to immerse themselves with ‘native-english-speakers’ (nes) (kirkpatrick, 2007, p. 187). phakiti et al. (2013), nevertheless, claim that english proficiency is not the only factor, and that other personal variables including self-efficacy, personal values, academic difficulty, motivation, and self-regulation, lead to academic and social success of international students. studies regarding thai postgraduate students’ identities in australian universities have been documented over the past years (arkoudis & tran, 2007; kettle, 2005; koehne, 2005; nomnian, 2017b, 2017c; pimpa, 2005; srikatanyoo & juergen, 2005). nomnian’s study (2017b) highlights identity narratives of a thai mature doctoral student, who was a former politician which were related to the academic and social contexts that impacted on his personal and academic growth and satisfaction. thai doctoral students’ academic practices were underpinned by the implicit power of their supervisors, which required culturally sensitive supervision and academic and sociocultural orientations in order to meet university norms and supervisors’ expectations (nomnian, 2017c). these studies revealed the complexities involved in thai students’ academic adaptation to disciplinary discourse and the implications for teaching and learning in australian higher education. they explored thai students’ academic experiences as they constructed and negotiated their identities to meet the respective disciplinary requirements of their courses. international students’ overseas higher education mobility is not only for instrumental purposes, but also builds and demonstrates personal characteristics as international students are required to adapt themselves physically, mentally, and linguistically to the new sociocultural lifestyle (bista, 2018). they need to establish social networks, develop english language proficiency, and enhance intercultural communication skills that can satisfy their prospective employers (beech, 2015). although australia is a multilingual and multicultural country, few studies have been conducted regarding how ‘non-native-english-speaking’ (nnes) international students acculturate and integrate in terms of their identity construction and negotiation in relation to their discursive practices in this linguistically and culturally diverse society. i argue that thai students in australia represent an ideal case for an investigation of such identity construction. this study aims to suggest how and in what ways thai doctoral students’ identity options play an essential role in their discursive practices, and how interactions with local people can potentially affect their social acculturation while they are studying and living in australia. aseas 11(1) | 101 singhanat nomnian bio-ecological systems and identities in multilingual contexts this study employs bronfenbrenner’s (1979) bio-ecological systems theory with the extended study of international doctoral students’ enculturation and acculturation perspectives proposed by elliot et al. (2016), and pavlenko and blackledge’s (2004) identities in multilingual contexts, which will be discussed in detail. the bio-ecological systems introduced by bronfenbrenner (1979) is a way of holistically understanding the notion of human development focusing on how an individual’s unique and active interactions within layered multi-systems, including the micro-, meso-, exo-, macro-, and chronosystems, crucially influence one’s growth and development. the individual is located at the core of the microsystem where close and direct interactions with one’s surroundings such as family, university, and workplace initially take place; the mesosystem is later formed from the constituents within the microsystem. the outward growth and development continues to emerge through one’s workplace, social network, and community. these situated sociocultural contexts are located within the exosystem and extend towards the macrosystem of the wider culture and subculture dealing with one’s beliefs, bodies of knowledge, material resources, customs, lifestyles, opportunities, risks, and life trajectory. embedded within each of these broader systems, the individual’s cultural knowledge and beliefs are mainly responsible for his/her identity construction (bronfenbrenner, 1979). regarding the chronosystem, bronfenbrenner (1979) values temporal milestones such as changes in the family structure, marital status, and employment as important steps in human development. it is, thus, interesting to explore these different layers which interact and interconnect within and among sociocultural, historical, political, and professional contexts, to illustrate the complexity of the individual’s unique development through the course of his/her actions and interactions in a particular time and space. extending bronfenbrenner’s concept (1979), elliot et al. (2016) claim that international students’ time abroad disrupts their own multi-level ecological system that was the accepted norm prior to contact with a new ecological system through an alteration of sociocultural conventions, norms, practices, and social support. bronfenbrenner’s bio-ecological systems highlights the transition of international doctoral students in this study via complex incidences as they temporarily move to an environment with different societal, cultural, academic systems, language(s), and daily interactions. elliot et al. (2016) address two key concepts, enculturation and acculturation, with regard to international education, which can potentially cause challenges for students whose overseas study involves learning in different sociocultural settings and where there are different academic norms. enculturation refers to thoughts, language, and common practices acquired through initial exposure to the original ecological system of the home culture over a number of years, which is imprinted in the student’s psychological frame of reference. acculturation, on the other hand, is often a cause of tension as the student needs to conform to the new ecological system that requires personal introspection to learn, unlearn, and/or re-learn new ideas, thoughts and behaviors in order to survive, thrive, and flourish in the new academic and sociocultural contexts (elliot et al., 2016). for instance, regarding international students’ acculturation experiences, smith and khawaja (2011) identified 102 | aseas 11(1) thai doctoral students’ layers of identity options through social acculturation in australia main stressors including language barriers, educational difficulties, loneliness, discrimination, and changing environments. these could be mitigated by social support and coping strategies dealing with psychological and sociocultural adaptation. asian students in english-speaking countries in particular might find it difficult to make friends with locals compared to their european counterparts because asian cultures are typically collectivistic, interdependent, and relationship-oriented, whereas the western cultures are individualistic, assertive, and independent (smith & khawaja, 2011). this study, however, employed the concept of acculturation as it focused on the thai students’ transition and adaptation from thai to australian sociocultural contexts. to scrutinize how thai students construct and negotiate their identities as legitimate speakers of english in sydney, which is considered one of the world’s most multilingual cities, it is crucial to understand how language users’ identities in multilingual contexts are constructed and negotiated, which can be explained by pavlenko and blackledge’s (2004) conceptual framework. they claim that, in multilingual contexts, there is a conflict between linguistic ideologies and identities in terms of language choice and its varieties influenced by particular groups of people in certain contexts. language choice and attitudes are, therefore, associated with political arrangements, power relations, language ideologies, and interlocutors’ perceptions of their own and others’ identities (pavlenko & blackledge, 2004). in other words, the way thai students in australia speak english could indicate what ‘types’ of persons they are. this not only depends upon what ‘types’ of persons their interlocutors are, but is also determined by the implicit variables including power relations and linguistic ideologies existing at a particular time and in a particular context. pavlenko and blackledge’s (2004) characteristics of identities in multilingual contexts are useful for this study because they suggest a variety of factors that can affect thai students’ identity construction and negotiation in multilingual contexts in australia. there are five characteristics: (1) the interplay between linguistic ideologies and individuals’ use of linguistic resources to indicate their identities; (2) the fact that these identities are embedded within local and global power relations; (3) identities can be multiple, fragmented, and hybrid due to the influence of different variables, such as, age, gender, ethnicity, language, and social status; (4) identities can involve a process of imagination to create new identities, and finally; (5) identities can be represented through individuals’ narratives (pavlenko & blackledge, 2004). identity options, which are assumed, imposed, and negotiable, have a significant impact on each individual to take up various positions under certain sociocultural circumstances (pavlenko & blackledge, 2004). assumed identity is contextually constructed, valued, and legitimized by the imposing authoritative persons or institutions. imposed identity is constructed when individuals are not able to negotiate, resist, or challenge imposing authoritative persons or institutions at any particular point in time. negotiable identity, on the other hand, is constructed when individuals feel imposed upon, devalued, or misunderstood by particular persons or institutions and, thus, they contest and resist the imposing persons, groups, or institutions. although each identity option is categorized, these three identity options in multilingual contexts require an analytical lens through which to decipher how dynamic, complex, and fragmented identities aseas 11(1) | 103 singhanat nomnian can be. individuals, therefore, contextually construct, (re)negotiate, and take up their desirable identity options depending on their personal background, interpersonal relationships, and interactions with their interlocutors and surrounding sociocultural environment (nomnian, 2017a). individuals who do not share cultural assumptions or values are likely to (re)negotiate their relations and identities in such multilingual settings because they have different ideologies and frames of reference when interacting with each other (wei & hua, 2013). nomnian (2017a), for instance, suggests that thai postgraduate students’ participation or withdrawal from particular interactive situations was due to their perceptions of their spoken english and that of others, as well as, due to power relations existing within and outside classrooms. this consequently affected their positioning when they communicated with others in multilingual contexts. they were caught in a web of complexity regarding the way they tried to strike the balanced identity positions that could allow them to construct and represent themselves as legitimate speakers of english (nomnian, 2017a). this study focuses on thai doctoral students’ layers of identity options resulting from different degrees of identity construction and negotiation depending on their exposure to diverse interactions and experiences in particular social settings. the importance of sociocultural contexts is associated with language users’ sociological and psychological strategies regarding their language use in a particular linguistic ecology (haugen, 1972). these three identity options are, therefore, changeable, shifting, and fluctuating. it is, however, important to note that a particular identity option legitimized by one group in a particular circumstance may not necessarily be accepted by another group or even the same group at a different point in time and space because of the shifting and fluctuating characteristics of identities. research methodology research setting and participants a case study approach was employed in this study because, according to cohen, manion, and morrison (2017) and yin (2017), it can serve as an empirical enquiry to explore a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context of an individual unit which can be a person, a class, or a community. located within a qualitative, interpretive research paradigm, a case study can be viewed as personal and subjective, which potentially demonstrates a complex and dynamic reality of individual experiences (denscombe, 2014; holliday, 2016). the research setting was an australian university located in one of the most multicultural and multilingual cities in australia. the selection of the australian university in question was for practical reasons as it was the host university of the researcher, who at that time was granted the endeavour postdoctoral fellowship by the australian government. this australian university is one of australia’s top young research universities not only with strong academic and research collaborations with a number of universities in thailand, but is also well-known among thai students and scholars in science and technology disciplines. this study thus highlights various interconnected factors underpinning the complexities of the particular evolving 104 | aseas 11(1) thai doctoral students’ layers of identity options through social acculturation in australia sociocultural circumstances that thai doctoral students encounter. it requires the researcher to be more process-oriented, flexible, and adaptable to changes and challenges. it is important for researchers to understand, engage with, and reflect upon their study in order to read the data from different interpretive perspectives through the use of interviews that provide insights into the participants’ on-going life trajectories (denscombe, 2009; mason, 2018). the following table offers a brief summary of the thai doctoral research participants in this study. name gender age (years old) ielts overall band/ toefl previous job in thailand funding type previous education degree(s) from a thai/foreign university current degree(s) at an australian university years of living and studying in australia nathan m 36 6.5 university lecturer thai government bsc (computer science) thai university msc (it) phd (it) 7 years alex m 43 5.5 university lecturer thai government bsc (computer science) msc (it) thai university phd (it) more than 3 years bob m 43 6.0 university lecturer thai government bsc (it) msc (it) thai university phd (it) 4 years kim f 37 6.0 university lecturer thai government bsc (computer engineering) msc (computer engineering) thai university phd (it) 5 years bee f 35 6.0 university lecturer thai government bsc (applied statistics) msc (applied statistics) thai university phd (applied statistics) more than 1 year peach f 37 5.5 university lecturer thai government bsc (maths) msc (maths) thai university phd (maths) more than 2 years rain f 34 5.5 university lecturer thai government bsc (nursing and midwifery) msc (nursing and midwifery) thai university phd (midwifery) more than 1 year amy f 38 n/a university lecturer thai university ba (accountancy) thai university ma (accountancy) us university phd (accountant) 4 years charlie m 32 99/120 scientist australian university bsc (biology) ma (museum studies) australian university phd (environmental science) 2 years table 1. a summary table of thai doctoral research participants. (nomnian, 2017c, p. 34). aseas 11(1) | 105 singhanat nomnian according to table 1, a group of nine thai doctoral students, five females and four males, 30-45 years old, from academic disciplines comprising engineering, it, midwifery, mathematics, applied statistics, accounting, and environmental science voluntarily participated in this study. all of them had graduated with a bachelor’s degree from a thai university, previously worked at a thai university, and received grant. seven students were funded by the royal thai government. another one received funding from her thai university whereas the last one was granted by the australian university in question. the length of their study period at the university varied from one semester to four academic years. based on the interpretive and qualitative research paradigm, the participants’ construction of meanings in their complex sociocultural contexts is understood via interpretation rather than generalization, prediction, and control (flick, 2014). the thai doctoral students’ construction and negotiation of identities in societal acculturation while living and studying in australia were, therefore, determined and qualitatively interpreted without generalizing the findings in comparison to other cases. data collection and analysis this study employed semi-structured interviews because it allowed the personalized adaptation of main questions to the participants’ view. in accordance with seale, gobo, gubrium, and silverman (2004), there is no need for researchers to adhere to their prepared interview structure and thus can ask additional probing questions to follow-up on the participants’ particular responses to gain deeper perspectives and understanding. in this study, the main interview questions concerned the respondents’ personal background including education, careers, and current degree qualifications, as well as reasons for studying at an australian university. the respondents’ expectations, their perceived academic and conversational english proficiency, and attitudes towards their use of english with ‘native’ and ‘non-native’ speakers of english were then explored. the interview questions also addressed thai students’ views on social activities, characteristics, sociocultural adjustments, and culture shock, impressions of the linguistic and cultural diversity, and main challenges they faced living in sydney. these questions were designed to gain an insight into the students’ thoughts, emotions, plans, motives, and expectations leading to recognition of each individual’s construction and negotiation of identities during the societal acculturation. identities in this study could be analyzed from the interview transcripts. according to davies and harré (1990, p. 62), identities can be represented in talk and through talk between an interviewer and an interviewee as they engage in dialogic exchanges. each participant agreed to be interviewed for an hour at their chosen location. the interview was conducted in thai or english depending on the preference of each participant, and digitally audio-recorded. all the interviews were transcribed and translated by the researcher. both thai and english transcripts were later returned to the participants for validation prior to data analysis. to comply with institutional research ethics standards required by both thai and australian universities, the participants’ data was kept highly confidential; and pseudonyms were used for all participants. 106 | aseas 11(1) thai doctoral students’ layers of identity options through social acculturation in australia this present study adopted thematic analysis to enable the researcher to identify, analyze, and report patterns within the data. there are six steps to thematic analysis: familiarizing oneself with data, generating initial codes, searching for themes, reviewing themes, defining and naming themes, and producing the report (braun & clarke, 2006; clarke & braun, 2013). based on pavlenko and blackledge’s identity options (2004), three main identity types with key aspects were identified and presented in the findings. findings according to bronfenbrenner’s (1979) multi-layered systems, elliot et al.'s (2016) acculturation process, and pavlenko and blackledge’s (2004) identity options in multilingual contexts, the findings expose the layers and complexity of the social acculturation process and reveal the three main identity options available to this group of thai doctoral students (see figure 1). figure 1. three main identity options of thai doctoral students. (figure by nomnian). the findings reveal three main identity options, namely assumed, imposed, and negotiable identities, which were constructed on different layers from the outer and inner circles to the core, respectively. each identity option was contextually constructed and negotiated under situated discursive practices depending on where and with whom the interactions of each thai student took place. each identity option will be presented as follows. assumed identity as asian people the thai doctoral students’ assumed identities were contextually dependent. they felt comfortable living in sydney since their identities were valued and legitimized by the prominent asian community, which enabled them to become more aware of different asian ethnicities including chinese, korean, japanese, indian, and thai. this led to their increased recognition of an asian identity. bee, for instance, viewed sydney’s central business district (cbd) as an asian community where the majority of asian people were encouraged through their languages used in public and through their physical appearance, especially their black hair. aseas 11(1) | 107 singhanat nomnian in the cbd, there is a mixture of chinese, indian, korean, and japanese. there are many people with black hair like me, and that makes me feel comfortable. (bee) amy considered sydney as a mixture of different ingredients rather than a melting pot because each asian ethnic group and nationality still retained their own collective sociocultural identity. yet, she positively felt that people there were sociable, relaxed, and easy to be friends with. sydney is very linguistically and culturally diverse. some people consider sydney as a melting pot, but i disagree with that. the diversity doesn’t melt together in the same pot. there is a mixture of different ingredients because the same nationalities, such as chinese and thai, stick together. but i think it’s somehow easy to tune in to one another. people here are easy-going. (amy) likewise, alex also felt happy living in sydney as an asian city where he could engage with thai and other asian cultures, enjoy thai traditions and chinese new year, even if australian culture was not always on display, except on television. i live in sydney, where asian culture is quite prominent. there are thai traditional festivals in which i can engage, like the homage ceremony for the late king, loy krathong, thai temples, and merit making. i think it’s good. it’s like killing two birds with one stone. you can learn about other cultures in the same location. however, i don’t see much of australian culture in my daily life. i only learn it by watching news on tv. (alex) feeling homesick at the beginning, bob gradually acculturated, immersed himself into australian society, and became accustomed to life in sydney; as a result, he considered himself a local now. at the beginning, i felt homesick. nowadays, i am used to living here. i think to myself that i have already become the local. i have gradually adjusted my eating, living, learning, and communicating. (bob) initially, despite being nervous about living in sydney, peach felt that she had to be flexible in terms of adapting to the new culture where an asian community facilitated her acculturation. sydney is truly multicultural. there are arab, chinese, and thai people. i can learn about diversity. i have gained more experience living among people from different nationalities. i need to be flexible and adapt myself to different cultures to live together. if i live in a country where there is a strong local culture with fewer asians, i may need to adjust myself a lot more than i do in sydney. (peach) rain voluntarily took the ‘risk’ of living with an australian host family as she wanted to gain first-hand experience of australian culture. she chose to adapt to their ‘house rules’ such as having dinner on time, watching television for an hour 108 | aseas 11(1) thai doctoral students’ layers of identity options through social acculturation in australia after dinner, and joining in the family’s religious activities at easter and christmas as a way to acculturate herself to a ‘typical’ australian family. my host family is a retired italian couple who have lived in australia for more than 50 years. i have to rush to get home as i have to have dinner with my host family. if they don’t understand my english, they will correct me. i can learn australian culture and slang which i sometimes don’t understand. after dinner, i watch tv with them for an hour. sometimes they ask me what’s on the tv. they will also tell me about australian history. they celebrate easter by hiding chocolate. they let me join christmas with their family. if i want to learn more about australian history, they advise me watch crocodile dundee. we also watch australian channels. (rain) interestingly, charlie suggested that new students leave their ego behind, or any exaggerated sense of self-importance for that matter, as it was seen as an obstruction to their learning and could disrupt the acculturation process in the new academic and sociocultural environment. as a biologist and environmentalist, he believes that it is important to encourage thai students to take risks by leaving their comfort zone and experimenting with new lifestyles in order to become more tolerant and mature. i think we all should get rid of our ego. one thing that biologists believe is that diversity is good for biological systems and that should be celebrated. we should not try to be the same as other people. i want new students coming here to be open-minded and stepping away from their comfort zone in order to learn about life besides reading books. life can be risky but it’s worth experiencing. (charlie) regarding assumed identity, thai doctoral students were satisfied and comfortable with their asian ethnicity because they could, to some extent, easily blend in with the asian-dominant population in sydney due to their similar physical appearance; and thus, they did not have to challenge, contest or resist interacting with others. by adopting an assumed identity, the students in this study became comfortable living and learning in this asian multicultural society where they could not only express their own thai identity, but could also socialize with other asian cultures. however, to acculturate into the sydney lifestyles and cultures slowly and flexibly, they had to adapt their ways of life and adjust their viewpoints to be more tolerant and openminded to differences. imposed identity as ‘non-native-english’ speakers an imposed identity is constructed when the thai students are unable to negotiate, resist, contest, or challenge imposing linguistic ideologies of nnes international students at any point in time and space while living and learning in sydney. despite their competent communicative english proficiency, thai students experienced similar linguistic challenges and communicative difficulties in their daily social interactions. they encountered english with an australian accent and slang, as well as a variety of english accents used by locals, which they found difficult to understand. aseas 11(1) | 109 singhanat nomnian nevertheless, they managed to develop intercultural communicative strategies and linguistic awareness that helped them to overcome such difficulties. at first, i wasn’t familiar with their accents and vocabulary, so i misunderstood them. i still speak english with a thai accent. sometimes i don’t understand the accents of indian and malaysian speakers. however, you don’t need to speak english to survive here as there is thai language in shops and restaurants. if you don’t know what to order on the menu, just say the number. (alex) in spite of being unfamiliar with other varieties of english, alex’s exposure to various english accents such as australian, indian, and malaysian raised his awareness of his thai accented spoken english. however, he noticed that it was not necessary to be able to speak much english to survive in sydney as he could use thai in his daily life. he could order food in english by number and picture on the menu. kim also experienced similar challenges with the australian accent. i don’t understand what the locals say. the australian accent is very hard to comprehend. although i have to say ‘pardon’ many times, i can communicate with them because we use body language. commonwealth bank has chinese staff whose english is also good. they will try to understand us. in sydney, there are a lot of asian people. they learn to adapt to asian people by speaking slowly and clearly and using simple english. it is easy for us to understand. we don’t need to adjust ourselves much. sometimes there are chinese clients and the staff speak chinese with them. (kim) kim adopted suitable body language to overcome communication obstacles. she noted that australian-born chinese, also called ‘abc’, tried to accommodate and facilitate other asians’ linguistic needs by modifying their speed, pronunciation, and word choice or even code-switching to chinese. bob, in contrast, enjoyed talking with speakers with different english accents because he believed that it would be useful for him in understanding academic presentations at international conferences. i am happy to talk with people whose accents are different although i do not understand them perfectly. at least, i am exposed to these varieties. when i attend seminars or present papers at international conferences, i will be more familiar with various spoken englishes. (bob) amy, however, was more concerned with plural forms regarding the ‘s’ and ‘es’ used in a formal academic writing rather than her use of english in social settings. but in an academic context, i am aware that i have to develop my communicative english a lot because thai people do not articulate the ‘s’ or ‘es’ ending for plural nouns, and use the wrong past tense. but local people do understand me if i don’t speak correctly. (amy) 110 | aseas 11(1) thai doctoral students’ layers of identity options through social acculturation in australia despite the local varieties of english spoken in sydney, rain and charlie came to recognize the importance of consonant sounds and stress and the fact that they could cause miscommunication if not properly pronounced. both of them tried to find various communicative strategies such as listening to public announcements and lip reading to enhance their pronunciation. thai people speak english with clear pronunciation of every vowel and consonant. when i pronounced ‘cappuccino’ as /kæp/ /pu/ /tʃiː/ /no/, the barista didn’t understand. later i learned that i could just say ‘cap’ instead. (rain) i have a very strong thai accent. i don’t pronounce the final consonant sounds like /s/ /t/ /d/. i stress every word the same without considering major and minor stresses. for example, i pronounce ‘marketing’ as /ma:/ /get/ /tiŋ/. i need to listen to the news a lot so that my english accent can be acquired naturally. i also read lips to understand everything. (charlie) besides pronunciation, nathan and bee encountered australian slang, such as ‘arvo’ and ‘mozzies’, which mean ‘afternoon’ and ‘mosquitoes’ respectively. in addition, the acronym ‘byo’ stands for ‘bring your own’ (drinks) used in restaurants. these australian slang and acronym were confusing for thai students as they struggled with comprehension. i don’t have any problems, except when they use australian slang; especially during the first few years i encountered it. for example, my friend asked me if i wanted to have coffee together in the ‘arvo’. i didn’t know what ‘arvo’ was. (nathan) i couldn’t understand when customers said ‘byo,’ which stands for ‘bring your own’ drinks. i was not familiar with this term and didn’t know that customers could bring their own drinks to restaurants. another funny australian slang term they use is ‘mozzies’, which means mosquitoes. (bee) peach’s construction of her nnes identity was influenced by her spoken english with a thai accent; thus, her thai identity was explicitly addressed by another thai male speaker who greeted her ‘sawatdee krab’ in thai meaning ‘hello’ in english. as a non-native english speaker, i need to go through a thinking process of what and how to say it in terms of grammar, accent, and pronunciation. when i listen, i know if they are a native or non-native speaker of english. i was greeted in thai ‘sawatdee krab’ in a shop because of my accent. although i look asian, my way of speaking and accent can identify me as a thai. when i speak, people will know that i am not a native speaker. however, australian-born chinese are considered as native english speakers. (peach) peach’s experience suggests that her true thai-speaking identity could not be disguised and mistaken by other thai speakers. although she might share her asian look with australian-born chinese, who are considered a dominant group, the way she aseas 11(1) | 111 singhanat nomnian spoke revealed the distinct grammar, accent, and pronunciation features of her thai mother tongue. in this study, thai doctoral students positioned their sociolinguistic identity as nnes according to the strong features of their spoken english including grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. in addition, they had to be cautious of other english accents and varieties, including australian slang that forced some of them to develop individual strategies for effective communication. however, imposed identity became problematic as they had to overcome linguistic challenges as english was not their first language. they not only had to recognize other varieties of english, but also deal with the australian accent and slang used in social settings. negotiable identity as thai ethnic people thai doctoral students’ identity negotiation takes place when they encounter ‘culture shock’, which leads them to feel imposed upon, devalued, or misunderstood by particular persons or groups. thus, they challenge, contest, and resist the imposing persons or groups. living with australian host families, rain and peach experienced culture shock with two different consequences. rain’s culture shock was positive because she had an opportunity to communicate and share her cultural background with her host family. peach, however, was not informed about her transgression of cultural norms until she had left the house. because of her religion and being a female, rain was not comfortable drying her underwear in public as it was considered inappropriate for a thai woman to do so. she hung them instead on a lower rack that usually got knocked down by the wind and her host had to pick them up every time it happened. in addition, she could not walk under the clothes line as she wore a buddha amulet. her host family, however, viewed rain’s ‘drying dilemma’ from a practical perspective and told her precisely what she should do. rain responded by explaining her religious beliefs and the position of women in thai society, which made her host family more aware, and thereby accepting rain’s cultural quirks. australian people are not like thai people in that thai people are more emotionally bonded. they are very direct with me and i am not used to that. as a thai woman, i hung my underwear on a lower rack that could not be publically seen. my host family asked me why i did that. i told them that i could not walk underneath the clothes line as i wore a buddha amulet. my host family does not mind what i do now as they are aware of my religious beliefs. they used to have students from indonesia and japan. i was also shocked to see her grandchild putting his feet on his grandmother’s face, which is a serious taboo in thailand. (rain) rain also experienced other thai cultural taboos regarding the inappropriate use of one’s feet to touch another person’s face, which is considered rude and disrespectful for thai people. rain’s acculturation required two-way communication and tolerance for her to understand and accept different practices. peach, on the other hand, experienced implicit culture shock as she was not aware that wearing pajamas for dinner with her host family was not culturally appropriate. 112 | aseas 11(1) thai doctoral students’ layers of identity options through social acculturation in australia instead of having an open communication, her host family decided to inform her on the last day of her stay, and that disappointed her since she had obviously not intended to upset her host family during the time she was staying with them. i wore pajamas for dinner with my host, who didn’t say anything until i was about to move out from the house. she told me that it was not polite to wear pajamas to dinner. i wonder why she didn’t tell me earlier. if she had told me earlier, i wouldn’t have done that. (peach) based on these two incidences, it is clear that being a host family for international students requires cultural sensitivity and awareness in order to avoid misunderstandings about cross-cultural taboos and inappropriateness. this type of support would help to develop and create positive and rewarding experiences for both parties instead of leaving both with negative feelings and experiences. two-way communication seems to be an effective tool for alleviating some misunderstandings and promoting better intercultural awareness. occasional cultural faux-pas in everyday interactions are inevitable, but for rain, ‘culture shock’ came in the form of local social values related to independence that discouraged her from offering help to others – especially the elderly and children – for fear of being seen as patronizing. she came to see herself as unkind and selfish in australia, which she saw as contrary to normal thai practices. people here do not take care of one another. on the bus, no one gives up their seat for the elderly and children. in thailand, it is normal to do that. in australia, i have learned that i do not have to offer help unless asked; otherwise, they may think that i’m undermining their capabilities or consider them as disabled. (rain) considering sydney to be an ostensibly asian city, alex was shocked to see asian people kissing in public as he thought he shared their cultural norms. he was not bothered, however, by the affection expressed in public by europeans and australians as that was part of western culture. kissing in public was a shock for me at first. western people kiss in public and it’s considered acceptable. however, i can’t accept asian people kissing in public. (alex) despite generally celebrating sydney’s cultural diversity, nathan also experienced cultural frustration regarding muslim women’s dress code, which was so ‘strange’ that he purposefully started to learn more about muslim culture for him to understand and accept such differences. living in sydney with its many people from diverse backgrounds and cultures is a good thing. i have many chinese and saudi arabian friends who gave me an opportunity to learn some words in their language. i also get to know their cultures and events related to their religion – like muslim [sic!]. we need to aseas 11(1) | 113 singhanat nomnian respect each other. there is a large muslim population around sydney. i felt a bit strange seeing women covered from head to toe including arms, legs, ankles, neck, and sometimes their face. i wonder how they eat or swim or deal with hot summer months. i just try to understand the history and reasons why the cultural differences exist. (nathan) once culturally aware and informed, it is important for thai students to respect other cultures in order to create a peaceful society. bob felt strongly that respect was essentially reciprocal and required mutual understanding from both parties. i strongly believe that people should respect one another in order to live happily. buddhism teaches us to live a moderate life. if we respect others, others will respect us. we should not do things that are against their culture. if you invite your chinese friends to dinner, you should not put the chopsticks in their rice bowls because it means that you are worshiping their ancestors. but some thai restaurants here do like that. (bob) bob also noticed that some thai restaurants in sydney did not seem to respect other cultures such as sticking chopsticks into a bowl of rice, which symbolizes the worship of the dead in chinese culture. comparing cross-cultural encounters in thailand and australia, this study shared a balanced view regarding the pros and cons of living in sydney. on the one hand, it broadened thai doctoral students’ worldview with respect to cultural similarities and differences. on the other hand, they had to accept and be open-minded to the views of others who were not culturally sensitized through the process of social acculturation. their negotiated identities caused by culture shock were based on their religious beliefs, personal expectations, attitudes, practices, cultural knowledge, awareness, and intercultural communication experiences. they, however, developed cross-cultural awareness and positive attitudes towards such differences in order to acculturate and integrate themselves into a linguistically and culturally diverse society. discussion drawing upon figure 1, the findings of this study portray the outer layer (macrosystem) through the representation of thai students’ membership of asian ethnic identity based on their physical, geographical, and ethnic similarities to other prominent asian residents of sydney. the inner layer (mesosystem), however, exhibits thai students as nnes, whose english was perceived as ‘non-standard’ and ‘illegitimate’; and, thus, they had to develop communicative strategies and become aware of sociolinguistics varieties of english and local slang used in australia. considered as the most important and sensitive part, the core (microsystem) represents thai students’ positioning as thai people whose thai cultural practices are so prominent and strong that they have to challenge, contest, resist, and question whether certain practices in australia were culturally appropriate or acceptable for thai people. in line with wei and hua (2013), tensions and conflicts between individuals’ ways of being and belonging can happen in different social spaces through multilingual interactions. 114 | aseas 11(1) thai doctoral students’ layers of identity options through social acculturation in australia in this study, although the three layers of identity options of thai doctoral students are depicted as mutually exclusive, their boundaries are rather complex, ambiguous, overlapping, and interconnected. individuals could simultaneously construct or negotiate these three identity options depending on the ‘situated’ discursive practices they encountered. for instance, living with a host family, rain felt comfortable talking with her non-buddhist chinese housemate as they shared asian ethnicity and similar nnes proficiency, even if not the same religion. rain, however, had to negotiate her buddhist and thai female identities with her host family as her religion’s norms prevented her from drying her underwear in public or walking underneath it. she had to employ all her available identity options with her host family, which can be considered a multilingual and multicultural interactive space where she had to cross layers back and forth or in-between. rain’s situation reflects the multiplicity, hybridity, and liquidity of identities characterized by pavlenko and blackledge (2004). an individual’s senses of being and belonging in transnational practices are formed by integrating their actions and the kind of identities that their actions signify to demonstrate their historical and sociocultural heritage identities. these identities are enhanced by one’s transnational experiences and interactions (wei & hua, 2013). domestic academic staff and students may expect their asian counterparts to be aware of linguistic and sociocultural differences of the host culture (smith & khawaja, 2011). thai doctoral students in this study, however, preferred to maintain their traditional sociocultural beliefs, values, and practices; and thus, following smith and khawaja (2011), social support from either co-nationals or fellow international students appears to serve as a significant buffer against acculturative stress or conflict, which can potentially enhance their psychological and sociocultural adaptations to improve their social inclusion and tolerance in the midst of linguistic and cultural diversity. conclusion this paper focuses on a group of nine thai doctoral students’ social acculturation yielding insights into understanding not only their experiences of linguistic and sociocultural adjustment, but also their identity construction and negotiation in relation to their senses of being, belonging, social interactions, and community networks in multilingual settings in australia. these multiple layers of three identity options include assumed identity as asian people, imposed identity as nnes, and negotiable identity as thai people. these identity options were constructed and layered from the outer and inner circles and to the core, which were based on thai students’ senses of asian community membership, english language ownership, and thai ethnicity, respectively. this study views these identity options as essential to formulating a better understanding of how thai doctoral students constructed and negotiated their identities in different multilingual and multicultural settings during the course of their education at an australian university. different layers of identity options allow deeper insights into the complexity of the thai students’ constructed and negotiated identities that impact on various communicative practices in australian society. social interactions and networks outside the classroom play important roles in assisting them to overcome sociocultural and linguistic challenges and familiarize themselves with and adapt to living and learning in australia. aseas 11(1) | 115 singhanat nomnian  references arkoudis, s., & tran, l. t. 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(2010). another look at the language difficulties of international students. journal of studies in international education, 14(4), 371-388. about the author singhanat nomnian (ed.d. tesol and applied linguistics) is associate professor and chair of the ma program language and intercultural communication at the research institute for languages and cultures of asia, mahidol university, thailand. ► contact: snomnian@hotmail.com acknowledgements this paper is part of the main study entitled international students’ identities in multilingual contexts: a case study of thai students in an australian university, which was funded by australia award – endeavour postdoctoral fellowship. i would like to thank distinguished professor alastair pennycook for his constructive suggestions and critical insights throughout this study. aseas 15(1) | 125 “smart is not equal to technology”: an interview with suhono harso supangkat on the emergence and development of smart cities in indonesia arif budy pratamaa a university of bonn, germany received: 27 january 2021 / accepted: 24 october 2021 / published: 13 december 2021 ► pratama, a. b. (2022). “smart is not equal to technology”: an interview with suhono harso supangkat on the emergence and development of smart cities in indonesia. advances in southeast asian studies, 15(1), 125-132. in 2017, the indonesian government launched the ‘100 smart cities’ initiative to mark the rise of smart city concepts in urban development. rather than replicating what has been done by developed countries, indonesia has experienced somewhat different pathways in developing its smart cities. this piece records an expert interview with suhono harso supangkat, a professor of information technology at the bandung institute of technology (itb) and one of the pioneers of indonesia’s smart cities program. he leads the smart city and community innovation center (sccic), which facilitates cities’ implementations of smart solutions to urban problems. he advises and assists many government agencies and industries, especially on information technology regulations and governance. he has also developed the indonesian smart city rating (rkci), which aims to survey and map indonesian smart city development; it has been published every two years since 2015. this interview was conducted in indonesian on 10 september 2020 via telephone call. for the purposes of this paper, the interview transcript was translated by the author. the interview relates to the emergence, prospects, and challenges of indonesian smart cities and their development. keywords: indonesia; information technology; smart cities; urban development; urban governance  arif budy pratama: thank you, professor supangkat, for giving me this opportunity to interview you. in your perspective, how do you see smart cities as an urban development concept in indonesia? suhono harso supangkat: in essence, whatever it is, the main objective is to improve the quality of life for citizens. today should be better than yesterday; tomorrow should be better than today. that is the principle. a city should become better over time. in general, we cannot enjoy cities in indonesia. maybe it will be different if you have experienced western cities, in europe, bonn, your place in dialogue w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 55 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7321-6916 “smart is not equal to technology” 126 | aseas 15(1) of residence, for instance. urbanization1 in indonesia has resulted in social transformation and population shifts. for example, due to education purposes, people may need to travel from sleman to yogya[karta] city and then move on again to bandung. in the 1960s, only 30% of people lived in the cities; now it is closer to 60%. while urbanization is continuing, the capacity of cities cannot follow the pace of urbanization. as a result, the quality of life in cities has been diminishing. the primary needs of urban areas, such as energy, food, health, education facilities, and employment, should be addressed by local governments. in the last 15 years, or say, since the 2000s, it has become uncomfortable (living) in bandung or jakarta due to traffic congestion.2 well, we need to govern the cities in better ways. technologies are needed to help us, especially city surveillance, which would help mayors and regents oversee their cities more accurately and rapidly. in 2005, many local politicians did blusukan3 to accommodate citizens’ aspirations – an average of eight hours per day. can you imagine how many places they visited? say eight sites per day. in reality, there are hundreds or even thousands of problems in the city that cannot be understood through blusukan. in short, there are likely to be as many problems as there are people living there and infrastructures therein. well, technologies like artificial intelligence, big data, the internet of things, and so forth are needed. pratama: could you please elaborate: how does technology play a role in urban development? supangkat: how do mayors or regents grasp these urban problems? this is where technologies take part. as muslims, we know iqra’,4 which means ‘to read or understand problems’. we must understand existing problems: hospitals, urban poor, schools, agriculture, industries, security, waste, etc. mayors are assisted by office heads, aren’t they? since city governance includes many actors, including civil servants, community members, industry leaders, and the private sector, technology is necessary to facilitate interactions between differing actors and other components. 1 indonesia faces a high rate of urbanization, as many people move from rural or sub-urban to urban areas. the latest data from statistics indonesia projects urbanization rates as follows: 53% (2015), 55% (2018), 66.6% (2035), 67% (2045), and 70% (2050) with average growth of 2.3% per annum (statistics indonesia, 2018). 2 bandung and jakarta are popular destinations due to their employment potential, and are regarded as the economic epicenters of indonesia (farda & balijepalli, 2018). this has caused their populations to grow rapidly. in jakarta alone, the national development planning agency (badan perencanaan pembangunan nasional, bappenas) estimates that economic loss due to traffic congestion has reached more than idr 65 trillion (the jakarta post, 2019). this number reaches idr 100 trillion if the value of lost time is included (tempo.co, 2019). 3 blusukan is a javanese word derived from the root blusuk, which means ‘roaming into’. in the political realm, it refers to politicians door-to-door and direct visits with citizens. this concept was popularized by president joko widodo, also known as jokowi, during his time as mayor of surakarta. in the literature, blusukan is sometimes translated as ‘street visits’ (tapsell, 2020), ‘impromptu visits’ (juwono & cindra, 2020), or ‘two-way direct communication with citizens’ (zulham, 2020). there is a debate regarding whether blusukan is aimed for political image-making, or an effective means of accommodating citizens’ aspirations. 4 iqra’ is a word of arabic origin meaning ‘to read’. it refers not only to the shallow interpretation of a text or narrative, but also to the ability to understand them in context. arif budy pratama aseas 15(1) | 127 take command centers5 as instruments for city surveillance through which city governments can monitor the condition of the city. they use technology. here, technology is regarded as enabling smart city projects, but not their main objectives. pratama: the relationship between technology and urban development seems to follow a simple linear logic. how do you find it to work in your real-world experience? supangkat: there is a misperception regarding this. many mayors and regents assume that, if they buy the technology, they buy the smart city. as such, we have worked to monitor the progress of smart city development in indonesia. smart cities are not simply cities with sophisticated technological applications, but ones that can manage their resources efficiently and effectively by harnessing smart solutions. once more, smart is not equal to technology. technology must be utilized to improve residents’ quality of life and environment sustainably. pratama: if we compare [smart cities in indonesia] with smart cities in developed countries, what is the main difference? supangkat: according to our surveys, there is no real smart city in indonesia, i would say. some mayors have been mocked by their citizens, told that their smart cities are just self-aggrandization. to be more objective, there should be a standard measurement. what makes [smart cities in indonesia] different from smart cities in developed countries may be the education level and city space. in singapore, for instance, singaporeans are disciplined; here, people are far from disciplined, aren’t they? it depends on how people behave as well. in this regard, people and processes are very important. especially processes related to culture. pratama: could you please tell us how the smart city initiative emerged in indonesia? supangkat: well, in the beginning – according to my research – the smart city concept was developed within an indonesian context around 2003. i was a special staff member for the minister of communication and informatics from 2007 to 2009. in 2010, i returned to itb. the preliminary concept was e-government, in which information technology was used in government activities. while the concept of e-government leans on back-office features, the concept of a smart city is different, broader, as cities are at its crux.6 since 2013, we have rated smart city development in indonesia, 5 a command center is an integrative instrument (usually a room with information technology applications) that facilitates data-driven decision-making processes. many cities in indonesia, such as surabaya, jakarta, bandung, and makassar, have used command centers in their decision-making processes (kompas, 2018). 6 one recent smart city project is ‘bandung smart food’, which has been designed to achieve sustainable development goals 3 and 12 (zero hunger; responsible consumption and production) by integrating food supply/ distribution and waste management. bandung produces more than 1,300 tons of waste every day, 45% of which is organic waste and left-over food (prasetyo et al., 2019). to reduce food waste, an online platform called badami has been developed in accordance with bandung’s smart city program and covid-19 response. collaborating with small-and-medium enterprises (smes), this mobile application offers a marketplace for fresh, surplus, and waste foods (badami, 2021). its main feature is ‘food rescue’, “smart is not equal to technology” 128 | aseas 15(1) and we have published our findings every two years. later, in 2017, the ministry of communication and informatics made a move by launching the ‘100 smart cities’ initiative.7 in this regard, the indonesian ministry of communication and informatics followed our initiatives. conceptually, we developed the garuda smart city model8 as an academic and practical reference for smart city development. the garuda smart city model tries to break down detailed dimensions and indicators of how cities develop smart projects and incorporate them in their urban development agendas. recently, the ministry developed another model, one that includes smart branding as a substitute for smart mobility. in my opinion, branding is not a main dimension of smart cities. pratama: how does your institute deal with smart city development in indonesia? supangkat: we facilitate cities in developing their master plans and implementing these plans sustainably. as i told you before, no city in indonesia has reached 80 points, the threshold for being identified as a smart city.9 they get 60 to 70 on average, which indicates that they are becoming smart, but not yet smart, i would say. which facilitates food sharing among city inhabitants, allowing those who have excess food to deliver food to those who need it. another project related to waste management is the massive kang pisman movement. the project, deriving its name from an abbreviation for kurangi (‘reduce’), pisahkan (‘separate’), and manfaatkan (‘utilize’), has created 143 zero-waste regions where communities apply – aided by information and communication technology – integrated waste management. organic waste is further processed and integrated into urban agriculture, such as gardening, fisheries, and farming in bandung. both badami and kang pisman were showcased by the milan urban food policy pact (mufpp) and received the milan pact award 2020 (mufpp secretariat, 2021). 7 this program was supported by the central government through the ministry of communication and informatics, ministry of interior, ministry of public works and housing, ministry of national development planning, and the presidential office (ministry of communication and informatics, 2018). its main activity is providing technical assistance and facilitating smart city development in indonesia’s cities and regencies. as of late 2019, 93 cities in indonesia have received smart city status (davy, 2019). 8 the garuda smart city framework was initially developed by the smart city and community innovation center (sccic), bandung institute of technology, to assess smart city development (supangkat, 2015). it comprises three characteristics (economic, social, and environmental), three enablers (people, governance, and technology), and twelve factors (economy, industry, education, natural resources, disaster mitigation, health, transport, public services, socio-digital, energy, environment, and spatial planning). these three characteristics, consisting of twelve factors, are service domains delivered to citizens. in doing so, cities need to enhance their local resources – such as natural resources, local governments, private sector actors, academics, non-government organizations, city buildings/infrastructures, information technology, and city inhabitants – and transform them into the main beneficiaries. the enablers, characteristics, and factors in the framework are all interrelated, and used to achieve a locally-adapted ecosystem that delivers smart services to citizens. recently, the garuda smart city framework was revised into the garuda smart city model, which consists of three layers: (1) resources, (2) enablers, and (3) services. this revision was made to emphasize cities’ tangible and intangible resources as baselines of urban development, and transform them into enablers. another change can be seen in the service domains, which also include service clusters and items – the end product of smart cities (supangkat et al., 2018; tay et al., 2018). 9 the grading scale was developed by rating kota cerdas indonesia (rating smart cities indonesia, or rkci). it focuses on measuring different components of smart city maturity, including smart and innovative services; quality of life; citizen perceptions; resource utilization, management, integration, and sustainability; digital government; and city management strategies and plans. the scale recognizes five levels of smart city implementation: ad hoc (0-20), initial (20-40), scattered (40-60), integrated (60-80), and smart (80-100). to be classified as smart, a city should score 80 points or higher (supangkat et al., 2018); most indonesian cities, however, are still at the scattered or integrated level. arif budy pratama aseas 15(1) | 129 take, for instance, the city of magelang. we helped it formulate its master plan in 2016. as you can see, good progress has been made in many aspects of development. we have also assisted other cities, including semarang, bandung, and surabaya. pratama: talking about smart cities, one of the most interesting aspects is the question of who really initiates smart city initiatives. according to your research and practical experience, who are the main actors in smart city development in indonesia? supangkat: the main actors are the local government (the mayor/regent and his administration).10 recently, supporting actors have emerged, for instance industrialists and youths. in the field, a new segment – the so-called millennial generation – acts as a prime mover in smart city projects.11 as you know, the older people in the bureaucracy and in society cannot follow recent technological developments. pratama: how do you see the prospects of smart city development in indonesia? supangkat: regardless of whether or not the ministry of communication and informatics will continue the smart city project, many indonesian cities will still experiment and try to implement suitable projects for their cities. this means that cities are not dependent on the central government program in developing smart cities. for instance, we have assisted and provided technical assistance to the city of semarang to help them deal with urban challenges using a smart solutions perspective, and, eventually, they are still trying to find the best solution, in accordance with their local context. pratama: is there any role model for developing smart cities in indonesia? if yes, which city/cities? supangkat: we cannot talk about role models, especially those from abroad. yes, we can find ideas about developing smart cities, but we have many differences in terms of our urban characteristics and our resources in urban development. what 10 the crucial role of local government (city and regency) has been reported in previous studies since it acts as the spearhead of urban development in the implementation of decentralization policy adopted by indonesian public administration system (offenhuber, 2019; pratama & imawan, 2020). the local autonomy system, as a manifestation of decentralization policy, has shifted local planning from the central government to local authorities. it is through this framework that certain cities and regencies have initiated their smart city programs. additionally, charismatic local leaders play an important role in developing smart cities. the cases of jakarta and bandung demonstrate how the development of smart cities is strongly driven by local leaders who act as policy entrepreneurs (pilsudski et al., 2018). 11 youths – or, more specifically, the millennial generations – are often identified as ‘digital natives’ to designate their familiarity and savvy with technology (hargittai, 2010). according to utomo & noormega (2020), there are 63.5 million indonesian millennials. in smart city projects, in which technology plays an important role, youth engagement contributes relevantly to the operationalization and application of smart projects in urban development. several youth communities have emerged at the national and local levels. rumah millennials (house of millennials, rumahmillenials.com), for instance, has helped millennials with social networking and a learning hub platform; some of these activities have been related to smart city programs. a local-level example is kelompok harmonis digital (digital harmony group) based in kota batu, east java, which has become actively engaged in regional budget and financial monitoring practices by applying information technology (prasetyo, 2019). “smart is not equal to technology” 130 | aseas 15(1) we call locality is still evident, which affects how we develop unique smart cities suited to the indonesian condition or, let’s say, the indonesian way. some of the literature may recognize the north american or west european smart city models. for instance, barcelona can be used as the role model, but this may not be appropriate in an indonesian setting. although the technology may be the same, or at least similar, the people and the processes are diverse. i emphasize that, by technology, i refer not only to information technology; any technologies, especially locally-adapted technologies suited to specific localities, can be harnessed to facilitate smart city development. pratama: now we are nearly at the end of interview. what will be the challenges of smart city development in indonesia in the future? supangkat: i would note at least two aspects, namely people and processes (or governance). let’s say we are about to start digitalization in the cities: are all people ready for it? i mean, the local governments, legislative bodies, and citizens in the broader scope. the people aspect includes leadership (from the mayor), and how he/she integrates and synchronizes resources. it also deals with how citizens are educated to attain what we call smart citizenship. in short, the challenge is managing people, processes, and technologies, thereby integrating the components shaping smart cities. in reality, technological determinism is still present, resulting in misconceptions of how policymakers interpret smart cities as technological intervention.  references badami. (2021). badami food sharing. https://smartfood.badami.id/ davy, j. (2019). what lies ahead of indonesia’s 100 smart cities movement? https://www.thejakartapost. com/life/2019/12/05/what-lies-ahead-of-indonesias-100-smart-cities-movement.html farda, m., & balijepalli, c. (2018). exploring the effectiveness of demand management policy in reducing traffic congestion and environmental pollution: car-free day and odd-even plate measures for bandung city in indonesia. case studies on transport policy, 6(4), 577-590. hargittai, e. (2010). digital na(t)ives? variation in internet skills and uses among members of the “net generation”. sociological inquiry, 80(1), 92-113. juwono, v., & cindra, e. s. (2020). the politics of advancing governance reform and curbing corruption in the metropolitan city. in k. hartley, g. kuecker, m. waschack, j. ji woo, & c. c. r. pua (eds.), governing cities (pp. 46-63). routledge. kompas. (2018). “command center”, langkah awal menuju kota pintar [command center, the first step towards smart city]. https://properti.kompas.com/read/2018/11/13/115111221/command-centerlangkah-awal-menuju-kota-pintar?page=all ministry of communication and informatics. (2018). langkah menuju “100 smart city” [steps towards 100 smart city]. https://kominfo.go.id/content/detail/11656/langkah-menuju-100-smart-city/0/ sorotan_media mufpp secretariat. (2021). milan pact awards 2020. https://www.milanurbanfoodpolicypact.org/milanpact-awards/milan-pact-awards-2020/b offenhuber, d. (2019). the platform and the bricoleur—improvisation and smart city initiatives in indonesia. environment and planning b: urban analytics and city science, 46(8), 1565-1580. arif budy pratama aseas 15(1) | 131 pilsudski, t., tan, s. y., tunas, d., clavier, f., stokols, a., & taeihagh, a. (2018). the shift towards smart cities in southeast asian cities: the role of urban governance. paper presented at the 55th international society of city and regional planners world planning congress jakarta-bogor, indonesia. https:// www.isocarp-institute.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/gov_the-shift-towards-smart-cities-insoutheast-asian-cities.pdf prasetyo, p. s., gunawan, t., rachmawati, t., hermawan, d., & gunawan, e. (2019). bandung food smart city: responsible production and comsumption for the sustainability of the earth. faculty of social and political sciences, parahyangan university. prasetyo, w. (2019). society 5.0 milenial generation: digital talents formula of global open government and smart cities. jurnal riset akuntansi dan bisnis airlangga, 4(2), 623-643. pratama, a. b., & imawan, s. a. (2020). bureaucratic readiness for smart city inititiaves: a mini study in yogyakarta city, indonesia. in y. joo & t. tan (eds.), smart cities in asia governing development in the era of hyper-connectivity (pp. 148-161). edward elgar publishing limited. statistics indonesia. (2018). proyeksi penduduk indonesia 2015-2045 hasil supas 2015-2045. no. publikasi: 33710.1904. jakarta. supangkat, s. h. (2015). smart city development in indonesia and asian-african nations. iece, 78. https:// www.ieice.org/eng/activities/ieice_global_plaza/2015/78.html supangkat, s. h., arman, a. a., nugraha, r. a., & fatimah, y. a. (2018). the implementation of garuda smart city framework for smart city readiness mapping in indonesia. journal of asia-pacific studies, 32(4), 169-176. tapsell, r. (2020). social media and elections in southeast asia: the emergence of subversive, underground campaigning. asian studies review, 45(1), 117-134. tay, k., supangkat, s. h., cornelius, g., & arman, a. a. (2018). the smart initiative and the garuda smart city framework for the development of smart cities. in 2018 international conference on ict for smart society (iciss) (pp. 1-10). ieee. https://doi.org/10.1109/ictss.2018.8549961 tempo.co. (2019). traffic jam in greater jakarta costs rp100tn: jutpi. https://en.tempo.co/read/1264081/ traffic-jam-in-greater-jakarta-costs-rp100tn-jutpi the jakarta post. (2019). we cannot continue like this: jokowi on jakarta’s traffic. https://www. thejakartapost.com/news/2019/01/09/we-cannot-continue-like-this-jokowi-on-jakartas-traffic.html utomo, w. p., & noormega, r. (2020). indonesia millennial report. idn research institute (vol. 01). https:// www.idntimes.com/indonesiamillennialreport2019 zulham, a. f. (2020). political strategy of joko widodo in overcoming oligarchy politics in indonesia. in y. w. santoso, f. s. azzahra, & e. n. toreh (eds.), indonesia’s path toward middlepowership (pp. 259-271). airlangga university press. about the author arif budy pratama is currently a junior researcher at the center for development research (zentrum für entwicklungsforschung, zef), university of bonn, germany. he is also a lecturer at the public administration program, faculty of social and political sciences, universitas tidar, indonesia. his research interests include smart cities, development policy, urban development, and governance. recently, he has been conducting fieldwork on the dynamics of smart city development projects in the city of magelang, indonesia, for his doctoral thesis. ► contact: arif.pratama@uni-bonn.de acknowledgements this interview was part of my fieldwork for my ph.d. thesis. i would like to thank my supervisor, prof. dr. christoph antweiler, from the department of southeast asian studies, university of “smart is not equal to technology” 132 | aseas 15(1) bonn, and my advisor, dr. wolfram laube, from the center for development research (zef), for their exceptional support. this fieldwork was financed by german academic exchange service (daad). aseas 13(2) | 211 thai baan methodology and transdisciplinarity as collaborative research practices. common ground and divergent directions alexandra heisa & chayan vaddhanaphutib a university of vienna, austria; b chiang mai university, thailand ► heis, a., & chayan, v. (2020). thai baan methodology and transdisciplinarity as collaborative research practices. common ground and divergent directions. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 13(2), 211-228. thai baan research was developed in the late 1990s as a counter-hegemonic, emancipatory means of knowledge production. originally developed in the context of protests against a hydropower project, it aims at empowering socially and economically marginalized actors to create and represent their own knowledge and to regain authority in social struggles. this decolonial methodology, conceptualized by thai academics in collaboration with non-academic actors, has remained largely unnoticed by northern collaborative or transdisciplinary debates. transdisciplinary research, although engaged in collaborative research designs, often remains silent on issues of power imbalances as constitutive of research processes. criticizing the compartmentalization and limitation of academic knowledge production, transdisciplinarity realigns the scientific system of knowledge production to deal with ‘real-world problems’. during the last three decades, transdisciplinarity has unfolded into a collaborative and integrative methodology implemented in a number of fields, such as sustainability, public health, and development planning. this article systematically introduces thai baan and transdisciplinarity as two approaches to collaborative research practice. it introduces the context of their emergence, sheds light on the respective notions of knowledge and science, and discusses their respective methodological designs. it is argued that both would benefit from a stronger epistemological foundation in decolonizing, liberating philosophies of science to enhance collaborative action, overcome north-south divisions, and foster global dialogues in emancipatory knowledge production. keywords: collaboration; critical research methodology; sustainable development; thai baan; transdisciplinarity  introduction the question of whether and how we can know the world is probably as old as humanity itself. positions regarding this question are many and contested among thinkers and intellectuals from different schools, based not only in contrary epistemological foundations but also in divergent ontologies. thai baan, a counter-hegemonic methodology (chayan, n.d.), and transdisciplinarity, a collaborative framework based on co-leadership of science and practice (scholz & aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 40 212 | aseas 13(2) thai baan methodology and transdisciplinarity as collaborative research practices steiner, 2015, p. 654), seem in many respects similar. their imaginaries and visions are quite alike, for example the ethical foundations, on which they stand, or the better handling of socio-ecological challenges, for which they call. during the knots (fostering multi-lateral knowledge networks of transdisciplinary studies to tackle global challenges) project (dannecker, 2020, this issue) the authors participated in several activities in which students, scientists, and professionals worked together to develop didactic methods to teach transdisciplinarity in higher education institutions. thailand’s chiang mai university, which hosted one of the annual regional foci within the project, has sound expertise on, and well-developed collaborative relations with non-academic actors, local groups, and activists in the region. furthermore, chayan vaddhanaphuti, a member of the knots consortium, has co-developed and enrooted thai baan in southeast asia. during the knots summer school and field trips, colleagues from chiang mai and others raised the question of why this eu project is needed to develop a research practice, which is already well established there. the question of whether thai baan and transdisciplinarity are the same, or whether transdisciplinarity is yet another colonizing paradigm excluding local knowledges, fueled several discussions during the project lifetime. as a result, this article problematizes specific objectives of both approaches and tries to link them to other recent innovations in participatory and transformative research. both work towards a convergence of science and practice, with thai baan taking ecological expertise of everyday life-experience as a starting point and transdisciplinarity starting from a conceptual perspective of ‘wicked problems’1. the one is born out of direct experience of marginalization and subjugation, while the other from the experience of deficiency of ‘pure science’. while their starting points might differ, their problem awareness points in the same direction. both, for example, feature the concept of ‘local knowledge’. in thai baan methodology, local knowledge is embedded in the real political struggle of actors who oppose powerful, political and economic interests (chainarong, n.d.; chayan, n.d.). transdisciplinarity combines academic expertise with non-academic ergo local knowledge to learn about different and conflicting stakes in the problems at hand. it stresses the mutual understanding derived through science and practice, but “science remains independent” (scholz & steiner, 2015, p. 655). in thai baan, science is not independent but always socially engaged (chayan, 2003). transdisciplinarity and thai baan thus both focus on collaborative processes, although they are conceptualized differently. while transdisciplinarity maintains the dualism between science (non-spatial) and practice (local), thai baan methodology produces local knowledge by supporting local actors to take the lead in the research process. these contrasts create different understandings of collaboration and participation. nevertheless, both knowledge frameworks claim to be better-equipped to represent complex realities and different perspectives. the first section of this paper gives a short description of the origins and specific contexts of thai baan and transdisciplinarity. the second part investigates the concept of knowledge as linked to collaboration. the third part looks at the concrete 1 the notion of ‘wicked problems’ was introduced by the urban planners and designers horst rittel and melvin webber (rittel & webber, 1984) to describe problems that, could be solved only through cooperation of affected social actors. aseas 13(2) | 213 alexandra heis & chayan vaddhanaphuti methodologies of thai baan and transdisciplinarity and in conclusion traces their divergent directions. thai baan and transdisciplinarity: origins of two contemporary frameworks of collaborative research practice the decolonial methodology of villagers’ research thai baan research originated in the concrete protests against the pak mun hydro-power dam construction and respective governance strategies. the pak mun dam, completed in 1994, is one among many hydro-power dams built in southeast asia from the 1960s onward (amornsakchai et al., 2000). it was projected to cover daily peaks in electricity demand and to support development in northeast thailand, where it is located (chayan, n.d.). from the beginning of the planning activities in the late 1970s, pak mun opponents demanded to be part of planning and decision-making processes regarding the use of wetland ecosystems, access to land and water rights, and environmental protection. they demanded a broader discussion of the concept of development in which water management and hydro-power have been identified as central issues in tackling poverty by national and international development actors (blake & buapun, 2010; missingham, 2002). contrary to trickle-down calculations of development economists, the benefits of the dam construction were not delivered to pak mun residents, nor were the estimated revenues ever reached (baird, manorom, phenow, & gaja-svasti, 2020). opponents wanted the dam decommissioned, and claimed that massive societal, cultural, and natural losses were incurred. livelihoods were damaged and income in fishery decreased, while considerable parts of the population were resettled. this has negatively affected communal, reciprocal relations, wetland forests, and access to communal land and resources (amornsakchai et al., 2000). throughout the 1990s, the protests against the pak mun dam became the rallying-point for other nationwide movements against ecologically and socially harmful development projects in thailand, which became known collectively as the assembly of the poor (aop).2 pushed forward by a coalition of activists, academics, civilian supporters, and affected residents, the broad alliance of social movements eventually made inroads. after six years of negotiation, the government agreed to open the dam gates between june 2001 and november 2002 to examine whether the effects would justify decommissioning the dam. the government and the electricity authority both assigned different university departments to assess the economic, social, and environmental impacts of the opening (blake & rattaphon, 2006; chayan, n.d.). prior to this, studies on the social impact of the dam had already been conducted. the world commission on dams (wcd) report (amornsakchai et al., 2000), for instance, used participatory research methods as one tool for collecting data, but the participative research was criticized for ignoring aspects of the pak mun eco-system, especially the social dimensions of fishing, or the status of the river as part of the 2 aop is a loose, nationwide assembly of local and regional social movements, in which less secure, and small-scale farmers and fishers pursued a relatively successful mass agitation of public spaces, raising awareness for failed development intervention (baker, 2000). 214 | aseas 13(2) thai baan methodology and transdisciplinarity as collaborative research practices spiritual and communal identity of the people. pak mun opponents claimed that the report did not reflect the local knowledge appropriately. they objected that negative effects caused by hydropower production were not adequately represented in the wcd report, nor in any other evaluation carried out by the government or its agencies (amornsakchai et al., 2000; chayan, n.d.). this frustration with flawed results of participatory research led chayan vaddhanaphuti and colleagues to encourage the dam opponents to conduct their own research when the gates reopened. ngan wijai thai baan (short thai baan) has been widely translated as “villagers’ research” (blake & rattaphon, 2006; chayan, n.d.; myint, 2016), but could also be translated as “independent village research” or even “independent local research”. thai baan was inspired by the ideas of paulo freire’s “pedagogy of the oppressed” (freire, macedo, & shor, 2018), and the experience that participation did not guarantee sufficient independence, liberation, or transformation. thai baan is therefore an unwavering effort to challenge the hegemonic paradigm of hydro-power development. the villager-researchers collected data that they found important from their perspective and used their own terminology according to their interests and experiences. a dedicated group of those directly affected by the dam, who were well-acquainted with the river, was assisted and supported by volunteering students, ngo professionals, and other university staff. the aop and the southeast asia rivers network3 (searin) provided institutional support, organizational experience, scientific know-how, and helped with the systematization of findings. it is necessary to mention that villagers as a category in the context of thai baan – much like the category of the poor in the aop – needs to be understood in the context of social struggle and contested modernities in thailand. it is a self-empowering re-appropriation of a term originally imposed by an urban elite for whom the ‘village’ and its residents are met with suspicion. the ‘villagers’ and the ‘village’ in thai baan are not primarily social or socio-spatial categories based on stereotypical traits and characteristics of village residents. rather, they are political terms of resistance and reclaiming. in the context of popular thai modernization discourse, chao baan (villager) has a judgmental connotation and derogative meaning, indicating a person’s backwardness and their lack of classiness and sophistication (rigg, 2019, p. 30). villagers in the context of thai baan are those living with and off the river and riverine ecosystems on a small-scale, subsistence basis. because of their livelihoods, they are often excluded from knowledge production. thai baan researchers are those who want to change their position and visibility in the dominant development narrative. in order to achieve this, they must commit to a ‘david versus goliath’ battle, as thai baan is very time consuming, emotionally exhausting work that requires many hours of discussion, workshops, and travelling. moreover, the prospects of success and the potential for change are rather small. integrating thai baan research in academic and ngo structures has helped to translate the methodology into other local struggles on wetland ecosystems and other socio-ecological challenges and allowed it to become a significant strategy for academic 3 searin, today living river siam association, is involved in research and analysis of dam projects on lives of indigenous people. it was established in 1999 and is closely linked to thai baan research. its objective is supporting and promoting local knowledge and local rights to water resources, as well as the rights of rivers and riverine ecosystems (living river siam association, n.d.). aseas 13(2) | 215 alexandra heis & chayan vaddhanaphuti activism, civil resistance, and emancipatory pedagogy on the southeast asian mainland (blake & buapun, 2010; chayan & amporn, 2011; lamb et al., 2019). to articulate specific local claims of marginalized actors to challenge dominant knowledge frameworks in political negotiations is a merit worth mentioning. the language of the study reflects the local terminology of fish occurrence and its socio-economic uses, river topography, seasonal changes and migration patterns, processing and production diversity, mythology, beliefs and folklore and thus represents the understanding of wetlands ecosystems of local fishers, and other people who life off the rivers (blake & rattaphon, 2006; chainarong, n.d.; chayan, n.d.; mekong watch, 2004). promoting sustainability through transdisciplinarity rather than taking sides in social struggles, transdisciplinarity originates in theoretical debates about how science could better respond to societal problems. the first generation of scholars promoting transdisciplinarity, such as jean piaget (1972), among others, called for crossing boundaries between scientific disciplines, developing shared and unified axioms, and a new system of science. in recent years, transdisciplinarity aimed at enhancing sustainable futures by strengthening scientific integration of non-academic knowledge (klein, 2009). shortly before thai baan research was launched in the pak mun villages, a consortium of swiss scientific and research organizations hosted the international transdisciplinarity conference in zurich in february 2000 (klein et al., 2001; lawrence, 2015). the participants questioned how science might improve at solving persistent, ‘real-world problems’ in a sustainable way. subsequently, the transdisciplinary lab at the eth zürich, as well as the network for transdisciplinary research of the swiss academy of science, became two major hubs for developing transdisciplinarity as a new scientific program, along with guidelines and criteria for collaborative research practices (lawrence, 2015; padmanabhan, 2018). transdisciplinarity is closely related to sustainable development theories and the concept of participation, which emerged as a new, alternative model in international development and address primarily disempowered actors (chambers, 1994; jacob, 1994). thai baan and transdisciplinarity are thus closely linked to transformative tendencies in development research and practice (hadorn et al., 2008). contrary to earlier, universalist tendencies, present approaches to transdisciplinarity stress heterogeneity, complexity, and difference at the theoretical and ontological level (klein, 2013; pohl, 2011; see also bärnthaler, 2020, this issue). yet, while transdisciplinarity sets out to deal with socially relevant matters, the stimulus for transdisciplinary research remains mainly within academia (pohl, 2010). maasen, lengwiler and guggenheim (2006, p. 395) classify four, and pohl (2010, 2011) three slightly overlapping types of transdisciplinary collaboration. only two of these seven types take transdisciplinarity initiated from outside of academia into account. thus, while transdisciplinarity stresses the need for collaboration, it reproduces the traditional labor divisions in knowledge production, with roles and responsibilities clearly distinguished. thai baan also addresses the complexities of social and political movements for which there are no clear-cut distinctions between responsibilities, tasks, or professional identities. rather, it is the collective identity of participants that make social movements and their research strong and sustainable (chesters & welsh, 216 | aseas 13(2) thai baan methodology and transdisciplinarity as collaborative research practices 2005, p. 190). however, in contrast to transdisciplinarity, the collective identity of social movement activists and the complex nature of movements make it difficult to distinguish between such categories as ‘academic’, ‘activist’, ‘villager’, or ‘ngo professional’ (ibid.). throughout the knots project, we struggled with the conceptual distinction between non-academic and academic actors in transdisciplinarity (dannecker, 2020, this issue). knowledge production and the concept of knowledge transdisciplinarity and thai baan operate within slightly different concepts of knowledge. thai baan produces local, situated knowledge (chayan, n.d.; haraway, 1988), while transdisciplinarity emphasizes applied knowledge (klein, 2020). thai baan sees knowledge as constituted through social and material relations, and stresses epistemologies of locality and difference. in the case of transdisciplinarity, epistemology has shifted towards notions privileging relationality and complexity, too, but knowledge is primarily target-oriented. managing complexity and divisions of labor early theorists of transdisciplinarity wanted to establish unified, shared axioms for a set of disciplines (bernstein, 2015; klein, 2020; piaget, 1972). their focus was exclusively the theoretical openings between academic disciplines. basarab nicolescu (2010), an important transdisciplinary theorist, based his analysis on recent findings in quantum physics. he argued for considering transdisciplinary knowledge as an open unity linking different levels of reality as well as different levels of perception. this unity in complexity constitutes a “third space”, a space defined by contradiction, plurality, and simultaneity (nicolescu, 2010). grounding transdisciplinarity within social science, the sphere of society shifts its focus from merely theoretical thoughts towards social actors, practices, and their different experiences. as the integration of technical, planning knowledge and social science and society increased, the fields of sustainability and transdisciplinary studies grew closer, both subsequently opening to more collaborative conceptualizations of knowledge. gradually, the unity in complexity (nicolescu, 2000) was operationalized into “stakeholders and community input” (klein, 2009; nowotny, 2006). the question guiding transdisciplinary endeavors became “where are the people in our knowledge?” (klein et al., 2001, p. 5, own emphasis). in contrast, thai baan asks about the knowledge of the people, which is a substantially different positioning. shaking the conventional, scientific principle of expertise in its own right, transdisciplinarity acknowledges the “unstructured” nature of problems characterized by complex cause-effect relationships (hadorn et al., 2008, p. 25). transdisciplinarity engages the critique of science and has benefited from including mode 2 knowledge production and the concept of socially robust knowledge (gibbons et al., 1994, p. 33). mode 2 and socially robust knowledge specify research that is application-oriented and practical (hadorn et al., 2008, p. 25; nowotny, 2006). mode 1 is exemplified by disciplinary closure, epistemological monocultures and institutional hierarchies. mode 2, in contrast, is organized around problems of everyday life, identified in a aseas 13(2) | 217 alexandra heis & chayan vaddhanaphuti multi-stakeholder process by multiand interdisciplinary teams, characterized by flat hierarchies and multi-directional chains of command. because it is socially accountable and reflexive, it produces socially robust knowledge (gibbons et al., 1994; nowotny, scott, & gibbons, 2003). this corresponds to other decolonizing and emancipatory research paradigms. however, the dismantling of hierarchies in transdisciplinary teams be it between scientific actors or between science and practice is a very demanding and lengthy challenge. it is particularly so in transnational teams, in which gendered, professional, and racialized hierarchies are complicated by the north-south divide, and postcolonial axes of domination and marginalization (rosendahl, zanella, rist, & weigelt, 2015; schmidt & neuburger, 2017; see also dannecker, 2020, this issue). a successful reorganization of knowledge production under transdisciplinarity will crucially depend on whether the team is able to become a collaborative team. the technical understanding of the research process in transdisciplinarity is outlined in pohl and hadorn’s (2008) classification of generated knowledges: system knowledge, target knowledge, and transformation knowledge (pp. 114-118). system knowledge shows the origin of a problem, and interrelations between its elements. target knowledge is essentially normative, as it identifies anticipated goals and outcomes of the research and reflects the values and attitudes of relevant actors on what should be changed and how. transdisciplinarity, pohl and hadorn (2008) write, is committed to fostering the ”common good” (p. 117). just what the common good is, and how to identify it, is a very delicate question not explored in transdisciplinary writing. while the common good is seen as being at the core of democratic societies and the basis of sustainability, others will argue that notions of common good are fiercely contested (della porta, 2013; offe, 2012). finally, transformation knowledge specifies what needs to be changed in order to achieve the targeted goals. transformation knowledge should be applied and practice-oriented, examining technical, cultural, social, or legal instruments to attain transformation. all three forms of knowledge are part of each transdisciplinary research process. diverging interests and conflicts among different parties within different phases of transdisciplinary research, as well as lack of commitment or other resources, are too rarely considered in methodologies and models of transdisciplinarity (nowotny, 2006; pohl & hirsch hadorn, 2008). but knowledge is not an innocent thing – it can be an instrument of emancipation as well as domination, as has been noted by many theorists from different disciplines (collins, 2000; cornwall, 2004; foucault & gordon, 1980; santos, 2007; spivak, 1985). the complicit relation between knowledge and power has been particularly well-analyzed by post-colonial and decolonial authors, who describe the alliance and legacy of colonial subjugation through knowledge production as epistemic violence (smith, 2013; spivak, 1985). in thailand, sulak sivaraksa (1975) was one early critic of how knowledge on thailand was embedded in wider geopolitical strategies of the cold war, as well as in internal colonization and nation-building. a dominant understanding of national development in a hierarchical international order has, in thailand as in other parts of the world, encouraged methodological nationalism, modernization, and technocratic normativity in academia and politics (bärnthaler, 2020, this issue). under this logic, participation becomes little more than an extractive practice in knowledge production (chayan, 2003, n.d.). 218 | aseas 13(2) thai baan methodology and transdisciplinarity as collaborative research practices situating knowledge as counter-hegemonic methodology knowledge about life and livelihood in rural areas of thailand is often biased and inadequate. on the one hand, a nostalgic imaginary of bangkok-based elites pictures peasants as living romantic lives, pure and unspoiled by modern necessities. on the other hand, customs, languages, and subsistence practices of small-scale farmers and people living in villages are represented as ignorant, engaged in conspicuous consumption, and indebted (rigg, 1994). it is particularly indigenous people and their practices that are branded as resistant to modernization and whose practices are deemed irrational (clarke, 2001; erni, 2009). the nexus of knowledge production, development policy, and powerful economic interests is strongly reflected in the realms of agro-industrial production, forestry, and rural development (lohmann, 1995). diversity of economic practices, including cooperatives, solidarity economies, and labor exchanges, has been consistently ignored in research and policies on rural development (heis, 2015; sato, 2003). the rural is a highly dynamic space, defined by its multiple relations to other spaces and scales of governance, mobilities, and solidarity relations (rigg, 2019). space, place, and local knowledge are important concepts in the contestation of dominant discourses. environmental impact assessments (eias) are central instruments in formal decision-making processes on large-scale development projects, and have been compulsory since the early 1980s (tongcumpou & harvey, 1994). however, eias often privilege the ‘national’ as a scale of relevance with regard to effects, gains, and implications of dam construction, but ignore the local4 as a scale at which the highest costs are borne (lamb, 2014). researching back (chilisa, 2012) with thai baan methodology results from the awareness of the inferior position of the rural local in the construction of official ‘national’ knowledge, corresponding to the unequal distribution of benefits and losses caused by the dam. the concept of the local as a valuable site for theorizing diversity and pluralism (gibson-graham, 2004; mckinnon, gibson, & malam, 2008) speaks to other power-sensitive epistemologies and methodologies. the monopolizing effects of modern, positivist science have also been criticized by post-colonial theory (said, 1979; spivak, 2010), as well as more recent developments of decolonizing methodologies and indigenous research paradigms (chilisa, 2012; santos, 2008; smith, 2013). from a feminist perspective, haraway’s (1988) situated knowledge, massey’s (1993) locality studies, or harding’s (1993) strong objectivity5 have defined emplaced research as counter-hegemonic academic practice. thai baan becomes a counter-hegemonic practice by producing 4 whether the local as locus of abstraction and theorisation, or merely an anecdotal specificity is a lengthy debate (massey, 1991, 1993). in the case of national versus local scale, we witness a shift in importance between one local site, here bangkok as representing the ‘national’, and the diminishing of importance of the other local site, namely the villages of pak mun. if theory is implicitly global and excludes the local as a relevant site of theorization, it reproduces the meaning and relevance of dominant centres (santos, 2007). 5 situated knowledge (haraway, 1988) argues against the naïve objectivity of positivist science, which, by disclosing its positionality objectifies the privileged experiences of those who produce it. a strong objectivity is a transparent partiality (harding, 1993), supporting knowledges from marginalised positions and their claims for an emancipatory knowledge. massey (1993) argues for local knowledge as equally legitimate to allegedly a-spatial knowledge. all knowledge is local in the sense that it is situated in concrete, physical experiences of speakers. aseas 13(2) | 219 alexandra heis & chayan vaddhanaphuti knowledge that is embodied, emplaced, and formulated from the margins (chayan, n.d.). situated knowledges do not conceal their partiality but make it explicit and open for collaborations and alliances (chilisa, 2012). situated knowledges allow the subaltern to speak (spivak, 2010). as a local knowledge methodology based on fieldwork as commitment (gibsongraham, 2004), thai baan creates space for articulating and including mythology and elements of folklore, which define nature and society relations. for example, the concept of animism assigns agency to natural elements and phenomena. thus, a river stops being an object of exploitation or research and becomes a matter of co-existence. the results of thai baan do engage with the language and logics of positivist natural sciences but go beyond their mere descriptive, empirical nature. linking data to changes in every-day lives, embedding their relevance in social, cultural, and spiritual phenomena, and specifying future imaginaries substantially challenges the reductionist accounts of conventional, natural and economic science research. with santos (2007), we could say that thai baan opens a road to an epistemology of seeing by representing what is at the margins of an excessively narrowed-down frame of relevance. thai baan thus aims at reconstructing indigenous agency in representation and interpretation of social realities. furthermore, thai baan seeks to restore almost-lost narrations, understandings, beliefs, and practices by validating the relevance they have in the everyday lives of thai baan researchers in order to restore self-esteem and respect for the different, the non-hegemonic, the supposedly non-relevant, and the often overlooked (chilisa, 2012). understanding of collaboration attempts to include experiential knowledge in development planning are not new. in development cooperation, the inclusion of practical knowledge of local actors through participatory rural appraisal (pra) was expected to increase the success of development projects and research (chambers, 1994). however, participatory methods were soon criticized for being extractive and increasing social inequality among the participants (cornwall, 2004; kothari, 2001). in practice, participatory research proved to be structurally inhibitive, and less powerful participants were co-opted by dominant actors (cooke & kothari, 2001). a modification of participation, the participatory action research, originates in social movements and combines the focus on marginalized groups with explicit political action. action research, as an example from feminist struggles, is deeply embedded in the science/experience interface and oriented towards emancipation (gatenby & humphries, 2000). participatory action research envisions academics as parts of society and as social actors constructing ‘knowledge’ and ‘reality’ (whyte, 1991). on these grounds, thai baan (chayan, n.d.) understands collaboration as action research, in which protest is accompanied and articulated through research. transdisciplinarity integrating non-academic actors is often referred to as participatory transdisciplinarity, without engaging with the critical debates on the pitfalls of participation (pohl, 2010). in this section we want to discuss how collaboration is understood in both research frameworks, how it relates to the above understandings of knowledge, what the implications for the ownership of the knowledge produced are, and how it effects the underlying objectives. 220 | aseas 13(2) thai baan methodology and transdisciplinarity as collaborative research practices ownership and empowerment through action the first step in carrying out research under the collaborative scheme in thai baan is the constitution of a focus group. the research activity in thai baan is an additional task for the (non-professional) researchers, not their primary occupation. it must be carried out in addition to daily tasks, which means that leisure and reproductive time must be sacrificed for research activities. the contribution of the non-academics here is the essential, constitutive part of the research, and requires commitment of the villagers, and recognition of professionals. the process includes first the collection of data on natural, social, and cultural phenomena as well as their meanings. the villagers collect and classify the data, academics support the documentation of the process. after the relevant conditions are described, discussions, opinion building, and exchange within the focus groups, and subsequently with others who are not part of the research, follow. thai baan are supported and accompanied by academic ngos or other civil associations, research and dissemination activities are (lamb et al., 2019). as indicated above, thai baan integrates both conventional as well as unconventional aspects at different levels of research (blake & pitakthepsombut, 2006). data that could challenge dominant theories on the benefits of hydro-power need to be first collected, recorded, and systematically classified in order to be accepted as scientifically sound. collecting empirical evidence is therefore a necessary part in any empowering research practice. the unconventional nature of collaboration in thai baan lies in the fact that, in order for synthesis to become possible, the conventional scientific activity is under the leadership of the non-professional researchers. in the context of river and riverine ecosystem research, this is mainly the fishers and other villagers who are living off fishing and the rivers. thai baan has become established as a model for action research in these contexts mainly, but not exclusively. it is also used in collaborative research designs with indigenous groups to prove the innocuousness of slash and burn agriculture in the hills of northern thailand. recollecting, recovering and documenting local concepts of topography, animal and plant life, processing methods, and exchange relations is the first step to restore intellectual ownership over experiences, spaces, and places. the complete reversal of roles within the research process and the rejection of the rationalized and technocratic language of science and policy fundamentally challenge the colonizing, national narrative of exploitation of nature for the sake of modernization and progress (blake & buapun, 2010; chayan, n.d.). stories, songs, and myths are not treated as material to be analyzed and critically interrogated, but as part of local cultural diversity and as means of dissemination and communication. the collaborative nature of the research shows also in the acceptance of these alterities to remain constitutive parts of the research. as thai baan was adopted to new settings and areas, for example the lower songkran basin (blake & rattaphon, 2006; lamb et al., 2019), the basic steps in thai baan research were systematized and generalized to provide guidelines to other groups. blake and pitakthepsombut (2006) have published a 13-step summary of the most important points of thai baan research, including preparation, introduction, and the foundation of ownership. the first phase is identifying a research interest, drafting a timetable, and assigning tasks and responsibilities as well as organizing workshops and reporting. the second phase of research comprises in-depth research aseas 13(2) | 221 alexandra heis & chayan vaddhanaphuti on agreed topics, and organization of related activities – for example, awareness raising, innovative practices, etc. the third phase is mainly presentation and dissemination of findings and results as well as discussion of next steps for management and preservation activities (blake & rattaphon, 2006, p. 9). so far, this standardized process of thai baan is very similar to research guidelines on transdisciplinarity research that also usually consist of three phases. however, the core of thai baan is to make non-scientists and non-academics the central agents of a research process. methods of participation and action research and a wide range of qualitative research methods emphasize not only the collective, but also bodily, material, and natural characteristics of knowledge. while personal differences, rivalries, or conflicts are part of all collective actions, the main questions remain: what is the overall aim? in thai baan sucess is collective action, effectively challenging the hegemonic ideas on national development and small-scale rural livelihoods. transdisciplinary research too engages in areas in which societal decision making and economic interest resulted in harmful or ‘wicked’ problems (pohl, truffer, & hirsch hadorn, 2017). thai baan, however, combines the widespread concerns over such problems with political action. collaboration in thai baan serves the legitimation of local concerns in national decision-making processes. the academic and ngo research partners use their relative power and position to support local struggles. the reallocation of responsibilities and reversal of conventional research procedures are primarily symbolic acts. nevertheless, they affect practices and how people perform their roles. communication, translation, and negotiation activities are particularly labor-intensive and emotionally demanding. therefore, the main resources needed in thai baan research are time, friendship, and commitment (amornsakchai et al., 2000; blake & rattaphon, 2006; chayan, n.d.). transdisciplinarity lacks this explicitly political objective and does not make a priority of emancipative liberating agendas. it aims explicitly at repairing development implementations gone wrong. it sees collaboration as assignment of tasks according to expertise and hence as efficient labor division, thus maintaining the dualism between science and practice. the blind spots of ideal-type collaboration there are a variety of collaborative study designs inducing different forms of transdisciplinarity (mobjörk, 2010; pohl, 2011). some are more theoretical in nature (mobjörk, 2010, p. 867), while others explicitly address inclusion of non-academic actors in environmental, societal, and planning-related problem-solving. pohl and hadorn (2010), and others (bergmann et al., 2012; lang et al., 2012) provide for integration of nonacademic actors in all three steps of the research process – problem definition, data collection, and dissemination. firstly, non-academic actors should be included in the problem definition and the outline of respective research questions. secondly, nonacademic partners should be engaged in participatory data collection and included in data analysis. thirdly, dissemination and fruition of research result should take place according to respective needs. bergmann et al. (2012, p. 83) have drafted a broad and user-friendly framework for grouping interests, actors, and activities to guide collaboration throughout the research process. bammer (2016, p. 41) offers a toolkit 222 | aseas 13(2) thai baan methodology and transdisciplinarity as collaborative research practices to help scientists undertaking transdisciplinary research and suggests guiding questions (“for what and for whom”, “how”, and “context”), as well as a how to ask these questions. many publications seem to offer some kind of application instructions for participative social science research (gaziulusoy & boyle, 2013; polk, 2015). in their evaluation of transdisciplinary projects, rosendahl et al. (2015) examine the practice of collaboration and relations on equal footing across power imbalances from a critical, feminist perspective. they argue for a refined distinction of the different steps, which, they say, will enable researchers to pay more attention to different perspectives and power imbalances throughout the project and hence increase the likelihood of strong objectivity in the research outcomes. contextualization through communication and translation (nowotny, 2006) and what rose (1997) has termed reflexive positionality6 are stressed as necessary preconditions to identify and formulate shared problems. however, rosendahl et al. (2015) claim that this often remains at the level of lip service. in a relationship that is characterized by power imbalance, the establishment of formal equality seems to be not enough. dealing with challenges in a way that is power-sensitive and attends to social or other inequalities should be considered more strongly in transdisciplinary endeavors. researchers may need to reverse power relations first in order to establish equality at some later point in time. the main difficulty that we have encountered with transdisciplinary methodologies throughout the knots project (dannecker, 2020, this issue) is the fact that it addresses conventional academic researchers as the main agents of transdisciplinarity. scientists are not naturally endowed with the social skills required to navigate through such an undertaking. rather, throughout our careers we are trained to develop leadership and authority and to defend our scientific findings and positions in rigorous assessment and review processes. in addition, transdisciplinary research projects of the last two decades have been subject to a strict and tight project-management logic, rationalizing and objectifying components of the research, and making teambuilding a ‘work package’ instead of a process of building epistemic friendships (nguyen, nastasi, mejia, stanger, & madden, 2016). specifically, the ‘stakeholder’ terminology is revealing. in many transdisciplinarity studies, ‘stakeholders’ are almost exclusively non-academic actors, while academics and scientists are outside that category. such classification is dangerous as it reflects the supposedly neutral and detached self-understanding claimed by positivist science, which have been criticized by those advocating for more collaborative methodologies. conclusion the opening of science to society by stepping down from the ivory tower has been part of an overall transformation in science. in the social sciences specifically, the trend has moved from dialogue to collaboration (lieven & maasen, 2007). collaborative study designs and methodologies are said to be generally transformative, and therefore one would expect these designs pay special attention to how power imbalances 6 reflexive positionality (rose, 1997) tries to come to terms with the impossibility of knowing one’s positionality always and in any situation. regarding research and collaborative activities, we can position ourselves only to a certain degree on our own; rather, the positionalities of all actors in a collaborative undertaking are relational, not independent of each other and hence subject to constant negotiations. aseas 13(2) | 223 alexandra heis & chayan vaddhanaphuti are negotiated and how difference and inequality impact on collaborating actors (lieven & maasen, 2007; mobjörk, 2010; rosendahl et al., 2015). experience shows that collaborations between very heterogeneous actors, which promise to open academia, are difficult to pursue due to persistent, powerful standards and norms of a ‘purely’ academic operationalization of knowledge (felt, igelsböck, schikowitz, & völker, 2016, p. 32; see also dannecker, 2020 this issue). collaborative practices in such settings face severe limitations to the breaking-up of old boundaries, and the deconstruction of dominant knowledge hierarchies. within science, as well as beyond, conventional divisions are being reproduced throughout the process. in addition, structural conditions of higher education and respective policies in which transdisciplinarity is tightly embedded run contrary to its very aspirations. transdisciplinary or not, funding agencies often require hierarchical structures for reasons of efficacy, accountability, and responsibility and hence reinforce traditional labor divisions in research projects. there is a shared understanding that our present, complex societal systems require interaction and synthesis of the perspectives of diverse societal actors (hadorn et al., 2010; mobjörk, 2010; novy et al., 2008), and a bridging of researchers’ and practitioners’ knowledge production (angelstam et al., 2013). transdisciplinarity and thai baan aspire to change and transform persistent problems in a way that is inclusive and collaborative and avoids top-down action. they draw on different traditions, such as practice-oriented stakeholder participation (christinck & kaufmann, 2018) or more scholarly-based, participatory action research methodology. transdisciplinarity provides procedures, frameworks, and models to advise junior scientists, on how to formulate their research questions to relate to societal problems “out there” (pohl et al., 2017). for technical professionals and administrative authorities, it is important to learn how to listen and include the needs and wants of those affected by any given development intervention, not only the interests and ideas of the contracting parties. participatory, collaborative models are difficult to carry out in practice. the general assumption that scientists and experts are trained, expected, and paid to find solutions and to have answers is very dominant. critical theories and emancipatory pedagogies are still marginal in academic curricula and academia’s participation in the power/knowledge nexus is seldom problematized in higher education programs. they do not provide sufficient “tools that could dismantle the master’s house” (lorde, 1984), nor do they teach methodology and theory as acts of friendship (nguyen et al., 2016) or solidarity (mohanty, 2013). a collaborative and integrative design, which is unable to give up control and ignores the possibility of coalitionary engagement and solidarity is likely to reproduce non-academic actors as science’s other (said, 1979).  references amornsakchai, s., annez, p., vongvisessomjai, s., choowaew, s., thailand development research institute, kunurat, p., nippanon, j., schouten, r., sripapatrparasite, p., vaddhanaphuti, c., vidthayanon, c., wirojanagud, w., & watana, e. 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(1991). participatory action research. newbury park: sage publications. 228 | aseas 13(2) thai baan methodology and transdisciplinarity as collaborative research practices about the authors alexandra heis is a phd candidate at the department of development studies, university of vienna. her research interests include social science methodology, transdisciplinarity, collaborative research, rural development, urban studies, critical migration research, and intersectionality. ► contact: alexandra.heis@univie.ac.at chayan vaddhanaphuti serves as the director for the regional center for social science and sustainable development (rcsd) and the center for ethnic studies and development (cesd), faculty of social sciences, chiang mai university. he is a renowned thai scholar and activist and co-developed thai baan research in the early 2000s. his fields of interests include development studies, multiculturalism, ethnic relation, ethnic identity, cross-border issues, knowledge and power, health social science, resource management, and regionalization of development in the mekong sub-region. ► contact: ethnet@loxinfo.co.th aseas 15(2) | 309 social networks and organization of thai migrants in europe: an interview with chongcharoen sornkaew grimsmann, president (2019-2022) of thai women network in europe sirijit sunantaa* & asuncion fresnoza-flotb amahidol university, thailand; buniversité libre de bruxelles, belgium *corresponding author: sirijit.sun@mahidol.edu received: 17 november 2022 / accepted: 6 december 2022 / published: 23 december 2022 ► sunanta, s., & fresnoza-flot, a. (2022). social networks and organization of thai migrants in europe: an interview with chongcharoen sornkaew grimsmann, president (2019-2022) of thai women network in europe. advances in southeast asian studies, 15(2), 309-315. the interview with mrs. chongcharoen sornkaew grimsmann, a long-term member and former president of thai women network in europe (twne), was originally conducted in english over email by sirijit sunanta and asuncion fresnoza-flot in july 2022. it was supplemented by an online interview (via webex) in thai by sirijit sunanta in november 2022. mrs. grimsmann served as the president of twne from 2019 to 2022. twne is well-established and one of the most active organizations of thai migrant women with individual and organizational members in 16 european countries, the us, and thailand. twne seeks to collaborate with governmental and non-governmental organizations, both in thailand and the destination countries, to improve the welfare of thai migrant women. they organize annual general meetings to discuss topics relevant to thai migrant women’s lives in destination countries and publish an annual newsletter sarn satree (สารสตร)ี to circulate information. mrs. grimsmann has extensive experience of providing community service as a social volunteer and working with international organizations, particularly in the area of women and children’s welfare. she is now based in france and thailand. keywords: europe; migrants’ social network; migrants’ social organization; thai migrant women; transnational social organization  introduction fresnoza-flot: could you tell us the history of twne? grimsmann: twne is an association of thai social volunteers for thai women and people living in europe. it's overall goal is to promote smooth integration of thai societies abroad through partnership and collaboration with member organizations and individuals. the formation of twne took three and a half years in dialogue w w w .s ea s. at 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 82 mailto:thithimadee.art%40mahidol.ac.th?subject= http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3447-4648 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4865-9686 mailto:sirijit.sun%40mahidol.edu?subject= 310 | aseas 15(2) social networks and organization of thai migrants in europe from late-2000 to mid-2004. the founding period comprises of four key events. first was the working group meeting in 2000 to assess the needs and problems of thai women in europe and roles of key volunteer groups. second was the meeting in 2003 to set up thai network for women in europe and asia, followed by the third meeting in the same year to refine the network objectives and to change its name to thai women network abroad (twna). fourth was the meeting to sign a joint statement on collaboration and guidelines to assist women and children who are victims of trafficking and other problems in europe with the thai government agencies1. the network’s name was then changed for the last time to thai women network in europe, to be in line with the joint statement. over the past 20 years, twne has maintained a prominent position in the thai social work scene in europe thanks to strong, dedicated and charismatic leadership and also because of competent and active members and partners. on 12 november 2015, twne was recognized as an overseas thai public benefit organization, according to article 34 of the royal act of thailand on the promotion of social services b.e. 2546. twne celebrated its 20th anniversary in september 2021 in caserta, italy. its annual magazine sarn satree 2021: parcourir-enrichir-agrandir documents its 20 years of journey (in thai language) and can be downloaded from the twne website. much of the recount in this dialogue came from this magazine. fresnoza-flot: can you tell us about the driving forces of the network? grimsmann: dr. pattaya ruenkaew (germany) was the network pioneer. other founding members or driving forces include but are not limited to ms. pathummas maanyan (denmark), ms. panithane taburel (france), ms. srismorn meyer and ms. nonglak trepp (switzerland), ms. sermsee boonsoot and mr. saha sarapunt (the netherlands), ms. payungsri kulawong (then-adam), and ms. prapairat mix (germany). what drove dr. pattaya to start forming the group was the inpouring of thai women to germany and other european countries in the early 2000s and the problems the women faced in their living and working conditions. furthermore, there was a lack of information about social support for thai women in destination countries. sunanta: what are the problems that thai migrant women have faced? have the problems changed over time? grimsmann: the most important problem that thai migrant women have faced, now as well as in the early days, is the lack of language skills. they do not have enough language skills to cope with the situation they are facing or to communicate with their partners. language is a big challenge for most thai migrant women, even for myself. it took me seven years to master the language. another problem is the underestimation of the risks, the lack of preparedness, and the attitude that bad things will not happen to them. some thai women think that relatives in the destination country will help them out if something happens to them or believe that their partners will always be good. as for legal issues, sometimes thai women arrive in the destination 1 ministry of social development and human security and ministry of foreign affairs. https://twne.eu/ebooks/#sansatri 211 https://twne.eu/ebooks/#sansatri 211 aseas 15(2) | 311 sirijit sunanta & asuncion fresnoza-flot country with a visa type that does not match their travel purposes. for example, some work while on a tourist visa or get married while on a visiting visa. moreover, many thais do not report to the thai embassy when they arrive in the destination country. thus, we do not have a good record of where thai people are. in terms of family relations, there have been cases of verbal and emotional violence either to the wives, husbands, or children. sometimes, because of some forms of violence they have acted, thai women lose custody over their children and they do not understand why. next is the emotional difficulty. migration is a very emotionally challenging process for thai women and it induces depression. a friend of mine said that the emotional problem of thai migrant women is like the elephant in the room. you think that you will overcome it but each step is very challenging – the weather, the unavailability of thai food. when going out with the husband and you cannot communicate with anybody, it is like you are there but not heard or seen. you lose your sense of self and this leads to depression. some do not even realize they are depressed. we train our volunteers to recognize and respond to depression and suicidal signs. in addition, there are ad hoc problems, such as the impacts of the covid-19 pandemic on thai migrant women, as some have lost their loved ones, both in thailand and their destination countries. fresnoza-flot: what are the purposes and objectives of twne? what does the network do to reach the objectives? grimsmann: twne works to improve the social welfare and resolve social problems faced by thai people, especially women and children living in europe. we focus on providing information and sharing it among member associations and on cooperation and mutual aid between members and governmental and non-governmental organizations, both in thailand and the destination countries. we want to ease the adjustment and improve the well-being of thai migrants. we hope to show the host society that thai migrants have potential. they do not just wait to receive social benefits but they also contribute to the society. we conduct field studies in member countries in europe to better understand situations and needs at the country level and conduct workshops and training sessions to strengthen the capacity of twne members and partners. we expand our membership base and partner groups in more countries and mobilize funds from international organizations and thai authorities. we also organize annual meetings and seminars to report progress, exchange experiences and lessons-learned, analyse problems faced by member organizations and their target groups, and identify ways to resolve these problems and move forward. in addition, we publicize our work in the annual newsletter sarn satree and through our social media, website, and other channels. fresnoza-flot: who are the members of twne: their general profile and main countries of residence? grimsmann: twne members come from all walks of life. they are homemakers, retirees, social workers, tour operators, students, teachers, accountants, civil servants, 312 | aseas 15(2) social networks and organization of thai migrants in europe nurses and health workers, medical doctors, interpreters/translators, ngo workers, employees, business owners, entrepreneurs (particularly in restaurants and massage/ spa sectors), to name a few. over a half of the members are middle-aged and are wellestablished in their work or life. this explains why they could devote their time, efforts, and resources to the network. as of august 2022, twne has 87 individual members and 25 association members. all but five individual members are women. the five male members are from germany, italy, switzerland, thailand, and the netherlands. members are spread across 16 european countries (austria, belgium, denmark, finland, france, germany, greece, italy, monaco, the netherlands, norway, slovenia, spain, sweden, switzerland, and the uk), plus thailand and the united states. the largest individual membership is in germany and the largest association membership is in switzerland. members empathize with fellow thai women who face hardship in destination countries. twne refers cases across countries when necessary. fresnoza-flot: as an international network and association with members from different european countries, how does the twne function? grimsmann: while twne is a national association registered in france, its scope of work is indeed international. twne annual general meetings (agms) take place in different major cities in europe each year, and country partners take turns in hosting the events. the annual general meeting strengthens membership and partnership and acts as the final decision-making body. every three years, a team of executive committee is elected, comprising a president, two vice-presidents, a secretary and a treasurer. two auditors are elected every two years from among the members. in each member country, there is a country representative (committee member or coordinator) who assists the executive committee in country-level affairs and in communicating with members on matters related to twne. main tasks of the executive committee are partly managerial (membership, finance, publications, reporting) and partly case assistance, collaboration, and public relations. twne’s main source of income is from membership fees (30€/person/year, 50€/organization/year) and occasionally from donations or projects. twne annual meetings are an important venue for members to meet and exchange ideas and experiences. the annual gathering broadens members’ knowledge, reinforces their sense of belonging to the network and builds comradeship between members from different countries. moreover, it is fun (sanuk) to be with friends and meet new people, making the agms a special and must-go event. each year, twne organizes a seminar on a selected theme that is of interest and relevant for members. the list of thematic seminars can be found in our milestones. fresnoza-flot: how does twne address existing social stereotypes about thai migrant women in europe? grimsmann: twne addresses social stereotypes through dialogues, empowerment and knowledge sharing among its individual and association members. much of twne’s strengths lie in the work of members in each country who handle integration issues faced by thai women through educational, language, social, cultural, and legal aseas 15(2) | 313 sirijit sunanta & asuncion fresnoza-flot interventions. one social stereotype is that thai women marrying westerners must support their families in thailand at all costs, which puts a lot of pressure on migrant women. twne works with thai government and academic partners in thailand to prepare women before their departure and to strengthen social volunteers in areas of case counselling. however, there should be more efforts to empower women’s natal families regarding economic and employment opportunities so that they do not need to depend solely or largely on their daughters in europe. another social stereotype is how thai women regard one another in the labour market. those who do hard labour or cleaning jobs are perceived as less accomplished than those who own businesses or hold high-income positions. this is a thai social norm that does not sit well in the west, where all jobs are considered decent and dignified. women in so-called low-ranking jobs may experience shame or a ‘loss of face’ if their thai peers or families know what they are doing. however, this has improved over the years after more and more thai people understand the employment structure in the west better. sunanta: what are the main obstacles/challenges for twne in achieving its goals? how does the organization overcome them?  grimsmann: during the 22-year period, many thai personalities have helped manage and forward the network. the evolution was not an easy one. there were managerial disagreements and clashes in personalities as could be expected in most organizational and social settings. thanks to strong leadership and a clear vision of key persons at that time, twne survived difficult periods by focusing on its mission. another challenge is to respond to the needs of migrant women. why? firstly, because women in trouble often wait for too long before they ask for help, so problems become too complicated and time-consuming to resolve. secondly, the number of thai women moving overseas keeps increasing. thirdly, the twne membership base has not grown much in the last 15 years; thus the number of competent volunteers remains just a handful. twne overcomes this challenge by engaging new volunteers through social media and other platforms, broadening its civil society partners, and arranging more case referrals to state and other organizations. another challenge is that being volunteers demands a sacrifice of personal time and resources, often jeopardizing work-life-family balance. it is therefore difficult to find competent persons who could assume management responsibility of the association on a long-term basis. sunanta: how do you imagine the future of twne? what new developments are underway? grimsmann: twne will go on for many more years because it still has much to offer to thai women and people. also, twne holds a symbolic meaning for its members in all countries who perceive the network as ‘one family’. one of the new developments will be to help members and thai women to overcome a drastic change in communication technology so that they are not left behind in the world that is increasingly digitized. the way in which volunteers had functioned in the past has completely changed. encounters with those needing help are becoming less and less face-toface but more and more online, thanks to the new normal created by the covid-19 314 | aseas 15(2) social networks and organization of thai migrants in europe epidemic. in addition, in the second half of 2022, twne is implementing a project to develop a model of support for thai widows and capacity building for social volunteers working on this issue. in 2023, twne will organize an annual seminar on diversity of work and occupations of thai women in europe. sunanta: what role do you think the thai and european destination country’s governments should play in supporting thai migrant women and their organization(s)? grimsmann: governments in destination countries should prioritize a migrantsensitive and friendly approach in their administrative procedures and system. i am talking about having instructions available in thai language (or khmer or laotian, for that matter) so that new coming migrants can easily handle online or offline transactions, such as residence cards, visa extensions, health insurance, social security, pension payment, and driving licenses. this would be an important step toward migrant empowerment. as for thai government agencies, more focus should be placed on enhancing everyday survival skills and handling paperwork for thai people wanting to move abroad. it is time for the state to see migration and integration as a hard and hands-on science and offer practical training courses rather than orientation courses. migrants must be able to take control of their lives and master their own paperwork because only with the right knowledge and practices they can integrate into the new society smoothly. sunanta: please share with us some recent highlights of the network’s activities. grimsmann: twne’s most recent annual general meeting was organized on the topic “alone but not lonely”. it deals with thai women who undergo the loss of european partners and face emotional, legal, and economic difficulties. death of partner is the most challenging time for thai women. it is a loss of a loved one who is also the key person of the family. many thai women struggle through this period, especially those who do not have legal marital contracts with their european partners. twne received funding from the thai ministry of social development and human security to carry out a project on this topic. we aim to train volunteers to provide support to thai women in this situation. sunanta: thank you very much for your insights. they are very helpful. we hope to collaborate with you again in the future.  about the authors sirijit sunanta is associate professor in the phd program in multicultural studies, research institute for languages and cultures of asia, mahidol university, thailand. she is a member of the sussex-mahidol migration partnership. she has published widely in leading journals in migration studies, gender studies, asian studies, and tourism studies. her research interests include gender and migration, globalization and food cultures, and the politics of diversity aseas 15(2) | 315 sirijit sunanta & asuncion fresnoza-flot in thailand. her current research projects focus on care transnationalization and gendered labour in thai health and well-being tourism. ► contact: sirijit.sun@mahidol.edu asuncion fresnoza-flot is tenured research associate (chercheure qualifiée) of the belgian fund for scientific research (f.r.s.–fnrs) and senior lecturer (maîtresse d’enseignement) at the université libre de bruxelles in belgium. her publications deal with transnational family dynamics, conjugal mixedness, and intergenerational transmission, as well as marriage and divorce involving filipino and thai migrants. her ongoing research focuses on the contextual mobility of belgian-asian couples within their cross-border social spaces. ► contact: asuncion.fresnoza@ulb.be disclosure the authors declare no conflict of interest. mailto:sirijit.sun%40mahidol.edu?subject= mailto:asuncion.fresnoza%40ulb.be?subject= 316 | aseas 15(2) aseas 12(1) | 49 the third wave of indonesia’s food markets: practices at small community markets in yogyakarta dodi widiyanto ► widiyanto, d. (2019). the third wave of indonesia’s food markets. practices at small community markets in yogyakarta. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 12(1), 49-67. there is growing awareness among people living in developing countries of the importance of healthy lifestyles. farmers’ markets (fms) are a rather new type of market in indonesia, succeeding traditional and modern markets. they began to appear in 2006 in bali and were established in yogyakarta in the early 2010s. this article contributes to limited research in this area by presenting a qualitative analysis of market participants with three main aims: to explore the meanings of local and healthy food from the vendors’/ managers’ perspective, to identify the vendors’/managers’ motives for using fms, and to examine the mechanisms underpinning the performance of fms. i found no consensus regarding the meanings of local and healthy food. instead, market participants have a geographically wide concept of ‘local’ that includes perceived high-quality (and healthy) raw materials from all over the indonesian archipelago. to assure the quality of food from such distant sources, formal and informal market mechanisms are used in greater yogyakarta fms, as evidenced by the unique practices designed by the markets’ vendors and managers. keywords: community markets; farmers’ markets; food and health; indonesia; market practices  introduction in indonesia, there are several types of food markets that can broadly be classified into traditional and modern (dyck, woolverton, & rangkuti, 2012). the modern type includes hypermarkets, supermarkets, mini-marts, and other similar modern retailers, whereas warung1, semi-permanent stands, traditional wet markets, and peddlers represent the traditional type. traditional markets (commonly called pasar in indonesian) have served people’s daily needs in indonesia for centuries (tumbuan, kawet, & shiratake, 2006), and the government has developed traditional markets in both rural and urban areas (shepherd & schalke, 1995). in these markets, consumers can buy fresh food such as vegetables and fruits and other items to meet their daily needs (tumbuan et al., 2006). these traditional markets sell local food with its characteristic “food quality and freshness” (ostrom, 2006, p. 66). in addition, modern supermarkets have served indonesian customers since the 1970s (chowdury, gulati, & gumbira-sa’id, 1 a warung is a “small store, usually 25–50 square meters, one story, sometimes built in front of residential houses, sometimes in ‘shopping areas/streets’” (rahtz & sidik, 2006, p. 277). aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 13 50 | aseas 12(1) the third wave of indonesia’s food markets 2005; dyck et al., 2012; suryadarma et al., 2010), as have hypermarkets since the end of the 1990s (dyck et al., 2012). a third market type – and the focus of this article – is the small community farmers’ market (fm). this rather new market could be defined as a third wave2 of indonesian market styles, with the traditional markets being the first wave, and the modern superand hypermarkets being the second. fms in indonesia3 can further be classified into two types, depending on their initiators: 1) fms initiated by the government (handayani, 2014), also known as pasar tani and 2) small community markets or fms initiated at the grassroots level. the second type is the focus of this article. the first fm was most likely initiated on 16 december 2006 in bali (ubud organic market, n.d.). according to my interviewees (m1, v8), the second group of small community market initiatives started in yogyakarta in 2012, and another community market was established in bandung about two years later (dwiartama, tresnadi, furqon, & pratama, 2017). in 2016, a market, pasar papringan, was set up in the rural community of temanggung (“lokomotif gerakan membangun desa”, 2017). fms are located in urban areas such as jakarta, bogor, bandung, yogyakarta, and surabaya, and sometimes in more rural areas, such as in temanggung and bali, where they are related mainly to tourism. this article aims to describe the meaning of local and healthy food from the perspective of the vendors and managers at the fms, to analyze the practices and mechanisms by which fms guarantee the localness and healthfulness of their products, and to discuss the significance of alternative food markets in the context of a developing country or urbanizing society by focusing on the production and supply side. fms are still small-scale activities in indonesia, and a better understanding of their context should help to fill the urgent need for research on fms in developing countries (chiffoleau, 2009). previous research on fms has concentrated mostly on consumers or producers/vendors (hinrichs, gillespie, & feenstra, 2004; schmitt, dominique, & six, 2018). this study thus focuses on the supply-side perspective of the vendors and managers who operate the fms. specifically, this article explores: (1) the meaning of localness of the products sold at the fms in the greater yogyakarta (gy) area, especially as it is interrelated with quality, health, and food, (2) the vendors’/managers’ motives for using fms, and (3) the mechanisms that underpin the fms, paying particular attention to the practices of vendors/managers as the principal actors in these communities. the article first reviews the relevant literature and conceptual framework of local food initiatives and fms and then explains the methods used. it then presents an overview of yogyakarta’s fms and discusses the interview results, particularly as they relate to proximity, relationships, vendor/manager motivation, and market mechanisms. 2 this third wave can also be seen as a kind of revival of traditional markets, with their focus on face-toface interactions between producers and sellers. 3 these markets are also called alternative, healthy, and community markets. the interviewees in this study used the term “farmers’ market”, which i also deploy in this article. aseas 12(1) | 51 dodi widiyanto local food initiatives and farmers’ markets le heron (2016) categorized agrifood into three main themes, namely “global commodity chains (gcc), food regimes (fr), and alternative food movement and networks (afmn)” (p. 57). the last one is the main focus of this study. constance, friedland, renard, and rivera-ferre (2014, p. 5) discuss alternative agrifood movements, focusing on “local and regional food systems”; they include fms as part of their case studies. also, barbera and dagnes (2016) identified the importance of proximity, health, and safety as they relate to agrifood products and networks. local food initiatives and farmers’ markets local food is increasingly seen as an alternative to global food (heis, 2015; jung & pearson, 2014; kimura & nishiyama, 2008; lehtinen, 2012; yokoyama & sakurai, 2009). worldwide, local food initiatives began to spring up in the 1970s (lehtinen, 2012). examples include chisan-chisho (locally produced, locally consumed) in japan, food miles in the united kingdom, slow food in italy, shintobuli (body-soil inseparable) in south korea, community supported agriculture (csa) in the united states, and rural regeneration programs run by the jia-nan cultural association in taiwan (cheng, 2016; jung & pearson, 2014; kimura & nishiyama, 2008; yokoyama & sakurai, 2009). many studies have discussed the connections between fms and local food initiatives. for example, a study of more than 120 community food projects in ontario, canada, includes fms as an example of local food initiatives (mount et al., 2013). fms act as an alternative food space (bosco & joassart-marcelli, 2018) and play a role as outlets for local and healthy food (engelseth, 2016; hammer, vallianatos, nykiforuk, & nieuwendyk, 2015; printezis & grebitus, 2018). inspired by european agrarian markets, fms were first established in the usa, specifically in boston in 1634 (robinson & hartenfeld, 2007, p. 35). from 1960 to 1970, modern fms were re-introduced with the spirit of “healthfulness and freshness of foods” (gillespie, hilchey, hinrichs, & feenstra, 2007, p. 65). basil (2012) explains the development of canada’s fms and how they regained popularity in the 1970s, largely owing to environmental concerns. in the uk, the first fms emerged in bath in 1997 (kirwan, 2006; spiller, 2012; youngs, 2003). in developing countries, however, markets developed differently from developed countries. in many places, some type of traditional market, such as a wet market, still retains the essential food-supply role for city and village dwellers on the basis of food supply chains involving local farmers, not only as product distributors but also as retailers. the influence of the western lifestyle and a rising middle class in asian cities have, however, changed people’s buying habits (de jong et al., 2017). food safety concerns related to traceability, accountability, and quality are reasons why asian customers increasingly prefer to buy food at modern-type retail stores, which are viewed as being more hygienic (chowdury et al., 2005; dyck et al., 2012; ehlert & voßemer, 2015). at the same time, in larger cities and metropolitan areas, an alternative type of fm, seemingly similar to those in western developed countries, is beginning to emerge. 52 | aseas 12(1) the third wave of indonesia’s food markets local and healthy food at farmers’ markets regardless of the different definitions of local food held by different food protagonists, there is clearly at least an informal association between the concepts of local and healthy at fms. eriksen (2013) argued that “there is no consistent definition of ‘local food’” (p. 49), but defined local food on the basis of three types of proximity: geography, social relations, and values. other definitions have been offered by granvik, joosse, hunt, and hallberg (2017) in sweden, and by tchoukaleyska (2013), who examined these concepts in france’s fms. connell, smithers, and joseph (2008) discussed how “good food” meant various things to their interviewees from fms in british columbia, canada, but the meanings shared two basic aspects: a local theme and health-related issues. several scholars have defined fms and their relationship to health issues. for example, sadler (2016) defined fms as “ideal sites for nutrition and food security programming because they primarily offer healthy foods”, pointing out that “interpersonal relationships with vendors offer the opportunity to learn more about the food being purchased casually” (p. 120). hammer et al. (2015) explained that fms are places where consumers obtain local and healthy food, and granvik et al. (2017) noted in their review that “local food is fresher and healthier than conventional food” (p. 2). motivations and mechanisms of vendors and managers underpinning fms there are two motivations for vendors to participate in fms: social and economic (feagan, morris, & krug, 2004; hinrichs, 2000). according to migliore, caracciolo, lombardi, schifani, and cembalo (2014), farmers participate in civic agriculture or fms because of (social) embeddedness. the concept of embeddedness was first introduced by karl polanyi (1957/2001) and later adopted by several scholars (block, 2001). granovetter (1985) found that there was an “impact of such change on the social relations in which economic life is embedded” (p. 507). fred block (1990) expanded on granovetter’s work, explaining social relations with the terms “instrumentalism” and “marketness” (p. 53). higher instrumentalism shows that an actor tends to maximize economic goals, whereas higher marketness shows that price is the critical factor (block, 1990; galt, 2013; hinrichs, 2000). in a study of community supported agriculture, galt (2013) stated that both low instrumentalism and marketness are evidenced in customer behaviors. consumers paid attention to neither price nor economic motives; rather, they emphasized social embeddedness or a sense of “moral economy” (p. 348). bloom and hinrichs (2011) explained the role of social relations and trust in social embeddedness. in short, they said that it was the interrelationship of the three concepts of embeddedness, instrumentalism, and marketness that drives farmers to participate in fms (hinrichs, 2000). moreover, bloom and hinrichs (2011) explained how interorganizational coordination mechanisms (formal and informal) can be explained by social embeddedness, particularly as it relates to social relations and trust. trust and social interaction drive social embeddedness (classens, 2015; trupp, 2017), with face-to-face interactions leading to trust (milestad, bartelkratochvil, leitner, & axmann, 2010). aseas 12(1) | 53 dodi widiyanto methods the study was conducted in yogyakarta, a city in java, indonesia. the area is well known for tourism, educational institutions, and its multicultural characteristics (zudianto, 2010). administratively, yogyakarta special province consists of four regencies (sleman, gunungkidul, bantul, and kulonprogo) and one municipality (yogyakarta). in 2017, the population of the province was 3,762,167 and that of the capital city, yogyakarta, was 422,732 (badan pusat statistik provinsi daerah istimewa yogyakarta [bps diy], 2018). the development of yogyakarta’s urban areas during the last decade has created a metropolitan area known as kawasan perkotaan yogyakarta (aglomerasi perkotaan yogyakarta) which is the second-fastest-growing metropolitan area in indonesia after the greater jakarta metropolitan area (legates & hudalah, 2014; pemerintah provinsi daerah istimewa yogyakarta, 2010). yogyakarta is the second most popular international tourist destination in indonesia after bali (hampton, 2003). the data for this study were obtained from in-depth unstructured interviews, combining “informal and ethnographic interviews” (bernard, wutich, & ryan, 2017, pp. 74-76) with 12 fm vendors and managers from the 6 fms that i visited (table 1). of the 17 people contacted, 14 people agreed to meet, and 12 agreed to be interviewed. they included 8 vendors, 3 vendor/managers, and 1 manager. they were intentionally sampled based on the snowball-sampling method (bernard, 2006). the interviews were conducted between september and november 2017. two main questions guided the interviews: (1) could you explain your experience (individually) as a vendor or manager or both? and (2) could you tell me what the farmers’ market is? the questions that followed were related to thematic issues such as proximity, motivations, prospects, challenges, historical stories, and interactions with other actors such as producers and traders. sometimes, the informants no code role at the fm date of interview fms 1 v1 vendor november 21, 2017 fm1 2 v2 vendor november 17, 2017 fm2 3 v3 vendor & manager november 22, 2017 fm2 4 v4 vendor november 25, 2017 fm6 5 v5 vendor october 3, 2017 fm2, fm3, fm4, fm6 6 v6 vendor november 14, 2017 fm1 7 v7 vendor september 23, 2017 fm4 8 v8 vendor & manager september 7 + 28, 2017 fm5, fm6 9 v9 vendor & manager november 14, 2017 fm1 10 v10 vendor november 15, 2017 fm3, fm5, fm6 11 v11 vendor september 9, 2017 fm3, fm4 12 m1 manager november 22, 2017 fm3 table 1. informants’ details (own compilation). 54 | aseas 12(1) the third wave of indonesia’s food markets told related stories about their businesses and the fms themselves, even though i had not directly asked about them. i would then raise questions related to their stories. the conversations were conducted in indonesian and sometimes javanese languages, lasting from about 15 to 120 minutes. the interviews were digitally recorded, later transcribed into written text with the interviewees’ permission and finally translated into english. not all parts of the conversations were transcribed because some parts (such as general chatting) were unrelated to the research focus. at the end of the interview, i asked the informants for permission to observe them at their respective fms and to inform others about my presence. to analyze the transcribed text, i also was guided by phillips and hardy’s (2002) work on discourse analysis. with this strategy information (e.g., the meaning of local food) derived from the interviews, the story-based data can be analyzed qualitatively by developing and examining codes and categories (phillips & hardy, 2002). for this article, i present results from the analyzed and coded textual data. the first result (figure 1) contains information reconstructing the food supply chains, and helps to describe and analyze where the raw materials originated. i classified the areas into three spatial scales (marston, jones, & woodward, 2005; taylor, 1982, p. 24), namely greater yogyakarta (gy), the province, and out of the province. i also describe where the original raw materials come from by adopting the supply chain diagram of ilbery and maye (2005). i also analyzed the transcribed interview texts (bernard, 2006) as the second result to show what the informants’ discourses are by intentionally selecting typical examples. results and discussion this section is divided into five sub-sections. first, the overall structure of the fms is presented. then, the meaning of local and healthy food as expressed by the practices of the vendors and managers is evaluated. next, the concept of proximity is explored, particularly as it relates to supply chains. the fourth sub-section examines the motives of the vendors and managers, and the fifth looks at how non-local food is perceived to be local through the concept of health. finally, the mechanisms underpinning the fms are described. the landscape of greater yogyakarta fms i summarize the history of the fms based on my conversations with the interviewees. the first fm in yogyakarta was established in 2012. the second and third fms were set up in 2014, and these were followed by the establishment of four more fms in 2016 and three more in 2017. by 2017, a total of 10 fms were established in gy. each fm is autonomous; so although there was once an fm association in yogyakarta, it was no longer in operation at the time of the interviews. each fm has its own management style; for example, fms can employ a communal system or group-based management, but some are managed by a single manager or leader. my observations indicate that the fms have a hybrid physical appearance that combines aspects of traditional and modern markets. two commonly used spaces for the markets are restaurants and houses. the prices of products at fms are fixed, so there is no apparent bargaining system. customers can choose to pay some vendors aseas 12(1) | 55 dodi widiyanto in cash or by an e-payment or other type of digital payment. these transactions are therefore similar to those used in a modern supermarket. human interaction is a common characteristic of all of the fms because the face-to-face interaction between sellers and customers is desired. most of the commodities sold in the fms are advertised as local and are promoted as being healthy. the products are presented in various types of packaging; the packaging used for artisanal products is particularly attractive. each fm has a different vision and mission, but in general they aim to educate people (producers and consumers) about food (v8), particularly about healthy food and sustainable food systems. one informant (v8) said that one of their big dreams was to achieve food sovereignty in indonesia, whereas another stressed that he wanted to provide organic, healthy, fresh local products. the goal proposed by the informant is similar to the emerging food sovereignty activities in today’s southeast asia (voßemer, ehlert, proyer, & guth, 2015). another informant (v7) told me that the market should provide responsible products, use fair practices, and be accountable to achieve the vendors’ vision and mission. the fms open variously twice a week, once a week, twice a month, or once a month, each with its own market day(s) and in general operate three to four hours. yogyakarta’s fms are also characterized by selling two kinds of products: “wet” products and durable products (v8). the gy fm community defines “wet” products as fresh food, ready-to-eat food, snacks, fruits, and vegetables. durable products refer to foods that can be kept for a relatively long time, such as soybean sauces, coconut oil, and fermented drinks or beverages. there are several types of actors participating in yogyakarta’s fms. the first are the vendors. on average, there are 10 to 25 vendors at each fm. according to stephenson, lev, and brewer (2008), fms consisting of fewer than 30 vendors are categorized as small fms. a vendor can be a farmer, a producer, or a trader of food products. lyson (2004) defined three types of vendors in their case study: (1) “traditional full-time farmers”; (2) “part-time growers and market gardeners”; and (3) “local artisans, craftspeople, and other entrepreneurs” (pp. 92-93). my fieldwork showed, however, that the vendors at yogyakarta’s fms are dominated by the third type: local artisans and craftspeople, and food processors or food entrepreneurs – but very rarely farmers. the vendors categorized as food processors usually buy raw materials and process these into finished products such as traditional foods and beverages, bread, and other healthy foods to sell at the fms. some of the vendors also produce or process artisanal food. the second type of actor includes the managers or leaders. a manager or leader can be an initiator of the fm or a representative selected by the vendors. the manager may operate her/his stall during the market days or execute management tasks without working in a stall. the third type of actor is the host, who is usually the owner of the space where the fms are regularly held. the host may be a third party who does not sell commodities, but he or she often has a good understanding of the fms’ activities. the fourth type includes the producers and suppliers who regularly support the vendors’ needs, and the final actors are the consumers. during my observation, i identified that the consumers are local residents, domestic as well as international tourists. 56 | aseas 12(1) the third wave of indonesia’s food markets the meanings of local and healthy food proximity and the supply chain are two ideas that permeate the local food literature (eriksen, 2013; giampietri, finco, & giudice, 2016). similar to the findings of previous research (eriksen, 2013), i found no apparent consensus among the vendors and managers regarding the meanings of local and healthy food. each vendor has a good knowledge of local geography; such knowledge is essential to their understanding relating their materials (chang & lim, 2004). one vendor (v3) explained where their raw materials came from and noted, for example, that a particular vegetable was from upland magelang (not too far from yogyakarta) and that some raw materials such as flour and tea originated in java. a geographically wide but limited context is also important in understanding the idea of ‘local’. this critical point was supported by two informants (v3, v8) who explained that, although their raw materials come from java, they were still considered to be local. other informants explained that the term ‘local’ also applies to locally grown commodities that were not originally grown in java: “like broccoli, these are not vegetables from java. but they can still be considered natural because they have become naturalized in this area and have been grown here with no problem (m1)”. finally, nostalgic food ("indian flavours are my identity", 2019) – for example, food that close family members have traditionally eaten – is also considered to be local. one informant (v8) mentioned ‘nostalgic food’ talking with a pedicab driver who said that the food (containing kimpul and canthel/ sorghum) the vendor sold was “like his grandparents’ food”. several points were identified as related to the concept of health: (1) clarity in the specifications of the raw materials and processes (v5), (2) chemical free (v9, v10, v11), (3) supporting a healthy lifestyle (v2), and (4) similar to ancestral food (v8). a vendor who provides dairy products explained his belief that clarity in the specification of raw materials and processes contributes to health as follows: we, and our friends in the organic market of the natural food market community, have two principles: specification of raw materials and transparency of processes. if we want organic, sometimes it’s difficult. there are so many requirements: you want natural? that’s more difficult than organic. (v5) several informants paid attention to the idea of ‘chemical-free’ when defining their products as healthy. when i asked one of them to explain, she said: the best food is what we plant. we know what we use for production in the garden, i mean, what we use for cultivation. we give the best: the best is natural and doesn’t contain drugs or chemical elements; the consequences of unhealthy farming practices will return to us and to what we eat. (v11) one informant responded to my question regarding what is healthy food by saying that “we have never said that our menu is a diet menu. these foods are healthy and balanced for those people who are concerned with having a healthy life” (v2). another informant told me that healthy food is the food his ancestors ate: “we just interpret it as: what we eat has been consumed by our grandparents” (v8). aseas 12(1) | 57 dodi widiyanto defining proximity for material supply chains in the previous section, the informants expressed their perceived meanings of local and healthy food. it is clear that these respondents paid attention to where the raw materials come from. in this section, the local concept will be explored through eriksen’s (2013) three types of proximity: geography, social relations, and values. in this quote, one informant explained the origin of his materials by describing the various distances of the source from yogyakarta. i bought tea from kendal . . . that is the farthest . . . however, for the fruits, i bought them all from my friends, who supply them. for cinnamon and spices, i have suppliers from menoreh, but sometimes they are not always ready to supply them . . . moreover, the vegetables are from merbabu north of jogja, the chilis are from my friends in jogja, and a lot of the other food is also supplied from jogja. the dragonfruit comes from here, from jakal an area in jogja4. there is a dragonfruit garden there, but because it is seasonal, i sometimes . . . go to the market trader. for other products, i still use imported products. (v7) another informant explained the distance of the raw material from the market and defined a specific distance to be local: “as far as i know, the standard of ‘local’ is 100 km from the node where the source is available, in other words, within a circle of 100 km” (m1). the same informant described the role of friends in explaining relational proximity: “they bought materials from their friends. their supply comes from their friends, and the food sellers provide lunch for their friends” (m1). the informants mentioned many values in addition to health, including those related to local food. this informant, for example, described his value perceptions and prioritizes the values: for me, to educate them [consumers] i should be patient and we must progress step by step . . . for us in indonesia, mostly halal is the first priority, then health, environmentally friendly, and organic. we must patiently educate them [consumers] one by one about the products. (v1) another informant explained relational and value proximity in this way: for the new vendor(s) that i try to look for and accommodate . . . i persuade my friends to join. when there is a friend(s) who has a good product and can be responsible, we invite them to join. consumers need variation, and we also need more vendors. if many vendors come, the market will not shrink. (v7) generally, local food correlates with a geographically short food supply chain or a short distance from the source materials (giampietri et al., 2016). however, according to my fieldwork in yogyakarta’s fms, examples of short geographic distances indicating ‘local’ were given only by two vendors (v2 & v7). most of the sources were outside 4 the informant explained jogja refers to yogyakarta special province. 58 | aseas 12(1) the third wave of indonesia’s food markets gy (either within the province or outside of the province; see figure 1). some vendors reported that some of their materials were obtained from traditional markets or were even imported, but they did not give any information regarding the specific geographic locations of such sources. overall, the second and third parts of eriksen’s elements of proximity (relationships and values) were demonstrated by the vendors in gy fms. figure 1 shows where the interviewed vendors buy their raw materials, process them, and sell the finished products (i.e., the fms). there are three geographic scale-based groups of raw material sources. the first is the inter-supporting local groups of vendors (v2, v7, and others) who sell at the fms. the second is at the within-province-scale and includes ten locations as the origins of raw materials. the last is from outside the province; most of the raw materials originate in this outer area. the network of relationships is also depicted: for example, v7 à fm4 indicates that v7 (vendor number 7) sells in fm4 (farmers’ market 4) and v7-1 (another vendor in fm4) supplies raw material to v7. the farmers who supply products to the vendors are also shown. for example, fa7-5 (a farmer/producer) who lives in the province and fa7-4 from outside the province both supply raw materials to v7. non-local food perceived as local through the concept of health at the fms, non-local food is transformed into local food through the concept of health. a concept critical to understanding the idea of localness at the fms is the previously discussed concept of proximity and its components. as figure 1 shows, most figure 1. fm food supply chains in gy fms (own compilation). figure 1. fm food supply chains in gy fms (own compilation). aseas 12(1) | 59 dodi widiyanto of the vendors collect raw materials from outside gy. this raises the question of why they use raw materials that are not locally sourced (i.e., in geographical proximity). according to the informants, there are three main reasons for using these products: (1) they sell a variety of products, and sometimes specific ingredients or materials are needed; (2) some materials are not available in gy, or even in the province; and (3) even if the materials can be found within gy or the province, out-of-season high prices sometimes make the vendors reluctant to buy them. therefore, the vendors often try to look for appropriate raw materials, regardless of the distance from gy to maintain their products’ high quality. even in this expanded context of local, healthy food is not necessarily synonymous with local food. how, then, do the vendors try to embody these two concepts: local and healthy in the food products they provide? according to the vendors and managers, there are two types of attitudes toward practices related to healthy and local food. the first type can be thought of as a trade-off model, whereby the vendors must decide where to place their priority – healthy or local. in general, the overall sentiment for this trade-off was expressed by one vendor, who said: “providing excellent products for customers is our main priority” (v5). as a result, some of the food sold at the market may be from the gy area, some from outside the gy area, and some may even be imported from other countries. the second type of attitude attempts to satisfy both ideas, at least conceptually under the notion that local food is healthy food. to provide what they perceive as excellent food, the vendors look for high-quality materials from a variety of places, ranging from farmers, friends, and traditional markets, both within and outside the province. how do they treat this geographically non-local food as being local and therefore healthy food? the idea of localness is essential to conveying the quality of healthiness in food sold at these fms, but most vendors prefer healthy products over local ones, so they must extend the meaning of local and widen its geographic scale. previously, gupta and makov (2017) examined “the degree of localness” by observing where a material comes from as an approach to explain what is local/non local food from the physical and economical viewpoint (p. 620). further discussion is still needed to determine how to approach the local concept from a proximity perspective (o’neill, 2014). o’neill (2014) also discussed the places where products are marketed and attempted to conceptualize localness by first identifying the meaning of local food through a scale approach. in my interviews, an informant (v7) who is an artisan said that he collaborates with another organization involved in tourism and craft programs. they attempted to conserve and add value to a food product from outside java. he said that during their collaboration they conducted a survey and identified a commodity – a fruit grown in one particular area – that may have become extinct. they hoped that they could increase the value – both of the product and for the community – by introducing this fruit widely and educating others about its sustainable use. the goal was to first sell the product in the local community before sharing the product more widely. this story is an example of how one artisan attempted to develop his brand by ‘importing’ a raw material that originated outside yogyakarta but was then processed in yogyakarta and became a local product. as noted earlier, the practices of the vendors/managers regarding the concept of the ‘local’ can be explained by using eriksen’s notion of relational proximity (eriksen, 60 | aseas 12(1) the third wave of indonesia’s food markets 2013). in particular, relational proximity at yogyakarta fms can be seen from the vendors’/managers’ practical ways of looking for the materials from their friends or trusted suppliers. for example, one informant said: “the raw materials i got from my friends, so i guarantee the process” (v7). vendor/manager motives as a whole, vendors have two reasons for participating in the fms: economic and social reasons. two quotes are presented as examples of economic motives. in the first, a vendor notes that selling their healthy products is the reason for participating in the market: “my reason is to run this business. before i started this business in jogja, if we looked for a place to sell healthy food, the options were limited” (v2). in the second quote, however, a vendor said that if the primary reason for providing healthy food at the market was to gain profit, the vendor would not participate: “as an example of the joys and sorrows of the business, say with regard to money, i would have given up from the beginning. it is difficult for marketing (to make a profit). i face frequent losses” (v1). most of the informants share such strong non-economic motives. they often expressed their pleasure at providing alternative spaces where customers could obtain healthy, high-quality food. an example of this point of view was expressed as follows: we do not work here for . . . economic reasons. i think my friends are committed to their ideas. most of them point out that commerce is the second or third priority; the first priority is to create excellent products. (v5) one vendor’s reason for providing fresh and healthy food was in line with the notion of “good food” (connell et al., 2008, p. 181). based on the fms' customers perceptions in british columbia, canada, connell et al. (2008) state that “organic is good, family-scale farming is good, local is good, natural is good, and shopping at farmers’ markets is good” (p. 181). in particular, this vendor was concerned with providing fresh products: “i don’t intend to compete with other fms . . . however, it [my participation] would extend or enlarge a place where people could obtain fresh and local products” (v3). other motives were also cited; for example, “helping others” (v1) was noted as a reason to participate. these social ties between producers and consumers probably reflect a mixture of economic and non-economic motives. social ties can be thought of as being embedded in the economic relationships of the fms' activities (block, 1990). formal and informal mechanisms to ensure local and healthy food at the fms in general, there are two types of mechanisms in any social system: formal and informal (bloom & hinrichs, 2011). a formal mechanism might include the use of certificates or other ‘official’ sanctions, whereas informal mechanisms are more relationship driven. a formal mechanism in the fm context might be the use of a aseas 12(1) | 61 dodi widiyanto third-party certificate as proof of quality products. one vendor, when discussing farmers who supply raw materials, said: “yes, previously we have been willing to cooperate with farmers because they have shown us their certificates” (v6). in practice, however, few, if any, vendors/managers at yogyakarta’s fms rely on certificates from third-party institutions. instead, they have initiated the use of informal mechanisms that are expected to provide assurance of the quality of the products sold at the fms. darby and karni (1973) coined the term “credence” for the relationship developed between vendors and customers and said that “credence qualities are those which, although worthwhile, cannot be evaluated in normal use” (p. 68-69). most of the informants described informal mechanisms to ensure the quality of their products. for example, one of the fms pays particular attention to the vendors’ homemade products as a primary requirement when joining that market: so, for the new members or vendors, i say ‘do you make the products yourself or not?’ that way, when the consumers want to buy a product, they can ask many questions, and the vendors could answer those questions. it this communication leads to trust between the producers and the consumers. (v3) another informal mechanism is the use of quality control (v9) or curator (v7) teams that are informally organized in some fms. a team or committee is made of vendors who are selected by the fm community. a primary task is to ensure that the products sold in the fm are of high quality and healthy. this team also plays an important role when the fm acquires a new vendor, and it usually examines the quality of the products of prospective vendors before they can join the market. new vendors have to personally assure the quality of their products; this is another informal mechanism stipulated by the particular fms. however, this mechanism also sometimes enforces efforts to build trust, particularly with new vendors. one vendor (v1), for example, mentioned that he is happy to explain the quality of his products, regardless of whether she/he makes a sale. another explained that it takes time, and a process, to sell products. trust-building occurs in face-to-face interactions between vendors and buyers at the fms (penker, 2006). one informant (v3) said that after trust has been established between the vendor and the consumer, the consumer also begins to trust the quality of the products. nevertheless, one informant points out that gaps in knowledge can sometimes occur between a vendor and new consumers. some mechanisms that are practiced to address trust are exemplified in this informant’s statement: there are precise requirements: the origins of the products should be clear; and the origin means the geographical region’s name, the identity of the producers, and the process of how crops are converted into products. usually for vendors joining a healthy market community, if their products are rice and vegetables, typically the products are requested to be organic, healthy, natural, and environmentally friendly. (v1) trust is an essential component of the market, and the market participants have worked hard to build trust. this quote illustrates the experiences of one vendor: 62 | aseas 12(1) the third wave of indonesia’s food markets in the group, we have had this process for a long time, maybe almost nine years. so, positive interaction with generous intention can be seen . . . we have proved that our process gives benefit to the community so they will provide support . . . trust is developed from a remarkable friendship. (v11) when i asked a manager to describe any challenges related to community interactions he first explained the importance of the relationship between vendors and customers and emphasized trust as a critical element: we need to develop confidence and to trust each other. that is our aim . . . because if there is distrust between the vendors and consumers, the vendors will lose out . . . they [the vendors] do indeed need consumers. (m1) hinrichs et al. (2004) argued that fms are an example of “an embedded or embedding institution” through their role in supporting “material and social resources” (p. 36). moreover, fms are “social institutions mediating economic activity” (hinrichs et al., 2004, p. 37). clear evidence exists of the markets’ material role: “these activities are their, the vendors’, occupation and also their business development” (m1). the previously discussed informal mechanisms and relations among vendors, managers, and consumers, highlight the social relations that shaped trust and improved economic opportunity. the informants stressed the importance of friendship and trust and how they contributed to the shaping of the fms. this was particularly true when the fms were first being established, and the close relationships that existed between friends helped to assure product quality. one vendor described the role of friendship as follows: i started with my closest friends because i knew what kinds (of products they made), the quality of their products, and the extent of their story regarding their products, so most of them, suppliers and vendors, are my closest friends. (v3) conclusion previous research showed that there is limited research about alternative food practices in developing countries (chiffoleau, 2009). this article has discussed gy fms as an example of this rather new practice in indonesia which co-exists with traditional and modern markets. first, this article has identified the importance of local and healthy attributes of the products offered by the vendors and managers at the gy fms. however, the understanding of local is not limited to geographic proximity, but rather can be understood from a variety of interpretations of what can be considered to be proximate. second, findings highlighted the social relationships between sellers and consumers and the gy fms’ mission to inform and educate the latter. social embeddedness within vendors and fm structures based on trust also plays an important role in order to gain entry into gys fms. this article contributes to agrifood market studies, specifically elucidating why and how fms co-exist with other market types in urban metropolitan areas of aseas 12(1) | 63 dodi widiyanto developing countries. although the role of small community markets as discussed in this article in supplying food and produce for city dwellers may be minor in quantitative terms, these markets are becoming more common as an alternative food space to provide localness and healthy food as a means to provide quality products to customers who are interested in a healthy lifestyle. vendors and microentrepreneurs at these markets thus meet needs that are not being met in more conventional outlets, including traditional markets and modern supermarkets. this article further shows how vendors and managers at gy fms are operating based on informal market mechanisms which mostly depend on trust as a foundation of social capital. this mechanism is closely related to the vendors’ motivation and their social and economic entrepreneurship. the vendors and managers at the gy’s fms have both economic and social motives. the vendors are businesspeople trying to both sell products and scale-up their businesses, but the prices at the fms are fixed, and the participants themselves report that the economic component is not their primary reason for joining the market. essential social components of the markets are friendship and trust, which shape social embeddedness. although geographical proximity is an important part of the markets’ local nature, relational proximity creates the social ties that bind the relationships among the actors. despite providing important insights on alternative food practices in developing countries, this article has limitations. first, the discussion mainly focuses on fms, whereas other market types which co-exist with these fms are not analyzed. it would be useful to compare the social and economic mechanisms of the different market types within gy. secondly, this article employed a rather small sample since it pursued an explorative qualitative research approach. third, this article focused on the vendors and managers’ perspectives and thus neglected the demand and consumer perspective. fourth, this article discussed fms within one single metropolitan area, gy. a comparison to other indonesian cities would be useful. further research is needed to determine whether these yogyakarta fms can be said to be part of a larger community-based food movement and whether similar phenomena can be seen in other places in indonesia. in particular, more detailed examinations of the mechanisms underlying the fms, as well as the inclusion of consumers’ perspectives, are needed. overall, it is essential to examine comprehensively why and how the different actors become involved in fms in developing countries and how their small businesses can succeed. finally, the use of a more comprehensive qualitative method, such as grounded theory, to build or develop theory, and the integration of quantitative methods to determine economic impacts should also be considered in future studies.  references badan pusat statistik provinsi daerah istimewa yogyakarta [bps diy]. 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(2017). migration, micro-business and tourism in thailand: highlanders in the city. london: routledge. tumbuan, w. a., kawet, l., & shiratake, y. (2006). significance of traditional market and supermarket functions for local farmers and consumers: a case study on marketing of vegetables in manado, north sulawesi, indonesia. bulletin of the faculty of agriculture saga university, 92, 79-94. ubud organic market. (n.d.). about the market. retrieved from http://www.ubudorganicmarket.com/ about-us voßemer, c., ehlert, j., proyer, m., & guth, r. (2015). editorial: sovereignties of food: political struggle and life-world encounters in southeast asia. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 8(1), 1-6. aseas 12(1) | 67 dodi widiyanto yokoyama, s., & sakurai, s. (2009). social capital and the local food movement in japan: the case of the chiba prefecture. asian journal of agriculture and development, 6(1), 29-48. youngs, j. (2003). consumer direct initiatives in north west england farmers’ markets. british food journal, 105(8), 498-530. zudianto, h. (2010). yogyakarta: management of multiculturalism. paper presented at the 3rd uclg aspac congress 2010 hamamatsu, hamamatsu, japan. retrieved from https://www.city.hamamatsu. shizuoka.jp/foreign/english/intercity_cooperation/pdf/congre_06.pdf about the author dodi widiyanto is a phd student in geography at the department of social and human environment at the graduate school of environmental studies, nagoya university, japan. he is an assistant professor at the faculty of geography, universitas gadjah mada, indonesia. his research interests are geography of food, regional development, society and space, and behavioral geography. ► contact: dodi.widiyanto@ugm.ac.id acknowledgements the author is grateful to all informants for their voluntary participation and their sharing of stories and information. he wishes to thank all vendors and managers at yogyakarta’s fms for their hospitality. he is also grateful to makoto takahashi, masaya iga, and masashi tachikawa for their valuable inputs, feedback, comments, and guidance. he thanks the indonesian ministry of research, technology and higher education and indonesia endowment fund for education (lpdp) the ministry of finance of the republic of indonesia for the budi-ln scholarship (grant number: prj-3873 /lpdp.3/2016). finally, he wishes to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers of aseas for their valuable inputs, comments, and corrections for this article. 68 | aseas 12(1) 404 not found legacies of cultural philanthropy in asia aseas 10(2) | 165 legacies of cultural philanthropy in asia mary s. zurbuchen ► zurbuchen, m. s. (2017). legacies of cultural philanthropy in asia. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 10(2), 165-184. during the second half of the 20th century the ford foundation – at the time the world’s largest private philanthropy – made a significant commitment to issues of cultural heritage as part of its international work in asia. across countries in south and southeast asia, in particular, foundation grants were made to governments, private institutions, and individuals engaged in a wide range of fields in the arts, humanities, and applied sciences such as archaeology. the foundation’s culture programs embraced tangible heritage as well as a range of living traditions and cultural expression. such rubrics served as important labels locating culture within the broad portfolio of the foundation’s grant-making, as well as touchstones employed to justify philanthropy’s attention to culture in contrast to the dominant emphasis of international aid on economic development and modernization. this paper will look at how one of the world’s most important international philanthropies built a rationale for activism in cultural fields in asia, how a decentralized format for local decision-making enabled sustained support for building capacity and knowledge in the arts and humanities, and, ultimately, how the ‘culture lens’ has gradually been displaced – or perhaps redefined – in the foundation’s current international work. keywords: art; asia; culture; ford foundation; philanthropy  introduction there is little doubt that american philanthropy, including activities in developing countries, is experiencing fundamental shifts. philanthropy – often understood as using private wealth for public good – has been practiced in the united states for more than a century within a particular framework shaped by american laws, which made it possible for philanthropists to minimize their tax burden by giving away wealth for what are defined as ‘charitable purposes’. primarily as a result of new technologies created by large and successful corporations, there is now a group of tremendously wealthy entrepreneurs and investors seeking to redefine the purposes and methods of philanthropic practice. often called “philanthrocapitalists” (edwards, 2008; wilby, 2010), these entrepreneurs assert that being successful in business gives them the know-how to solve large-scale problems of poverty and deprivation. their philanthropic organizations promote “business-like ways of working, business-like efficiency, and market-driven solutions to social problems” (feinstein, 2011, p. 88). instead of the ‘bottom line’ of corporate profit, they promise a ‘bottom line’ of social impact. along with bottom-line thinking comes an emphasis on measuring aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 17 .2 -3 166 | aseas 10(2) legacies of cultural philanthropy in asia outcomes and tangible results. the language of metrics, benchmarks, risk-reward ratios, and scaling up now pervades the discourse of new philanthropies, making staff and their boards even more eager to see results quickly. in his new book david callahan scrutinizes major living donors, who he argues are forming a “heterogeneous new power elite” (callahan, 2017, p. 8). he describes activist mega donors who want to be celebrated for carrying out their philanthropic mission and who maintain close personal control over their foundations, noting how in many cases donors are determined to give away all their wealth for specific purposes during their lifetimes, rather than leaving behind foundations that could evolve and chart new directions in perpetuity. the proponents of what is nowadays termed “venture philanthropy” (frumkin, 2003) do appear more activist than earlier generations of foundation executives. venture philanthropists craft social media messages to explain their goals, and have created a celebrity culture of giving away wealth. like the rock star bono, they want to personalize their giving, and to be seen among african villagers or indian slum dwellers directly carrying out their philanthropic mission. the people changing philanthropy paradigms today using vast personal wealth come from all political backgrounds, including progressives such as george soros and the ultra-conservative koch brothers. when the founder of facebook, mark zuckerberg, and his wife, priscilla chan, recently announced the creation of a limited liability company for “advancing human potential and promoting equality” and pledged to give away 99% of their facebook shares, public reaction to the chan zuckerberg initiative was mixed (soskis, 2015). would this be a breathtaking example of private largess addressing major world problems, or another instance of a mega-philanthropy promising to cure social ills while promoting its own business brand? undoubtedly, philanthropy has grown, both in total assets and numbers of private foundations. according to the foundation center’s database, in 2014 the united states had more than 86,700 grant making foundations, with total assets of over usd 865 billion. some 30,000 new private foundations were created since 2000. u.s. foundations made more than usd 60 billion in grants in 2014, both within the u.s. and abroad (foundation center, 2017). increased public attention is drawn to new philanthropists pledging to ‘change the world’. the tech entrepreneurs shaping new philanthropy “believe their charitable giving is bolder, bigger and more data-driven than anywhere else” (stanley, 2015). yet as some critics have argued, we need to challenge venture philanthropy’s assumption that business logic is the same as the logic underlying complex social processes.1 we might ask whether an emphasis on short-term results is leaving out more open-ended kinds of grant making that train community organizers, build institutions, or take risks through new kinds of social change experiments. we could consider whether an overarching concern with the bottom line and metrics “can drive grant making out of types of work whose results can be difficult to gauge, such as leadership development, work on race relations, [and] human rights education” (berresford, 1999). in addition, we need to examine the notion that the most important philanthropy resonates with the urgency of today’s media headlines. 1 see edwards (2008) on the limits of philanthrocapitalism’s promise to produce far-reaching change. aseas 10(2) | 167 mary s. zurbuchen outside the united states, the manner in which concentrated wealth is employed in top-down ways in development projects – often determining local non-profit agendas and skewing public policy priorities – needs to be more carefully analyzed (massing, 2016). it is not that concern for persistent poverty or disease in the world is misplaced. the problem is that promoting solutions that are designed in foundation headquarters to be implemented in distant communities, or that are expressed in terms of precise technical inputs to be measured, removes the need to “consider the cultural, humanistic, and political sides of the equation” (anft, 2015). this paper considers whether culture itself is important, especially in non-western contexts, as the ‘new philanthropy’ paradigm becomes dominant. at first glance, the prospects do not look promising. the philanthrocapitalist’s emphasis on technical solutions and measurable results is not especially compatible with intangible subjects like the vitality of oral traditions, or for example the ways an ethnographic museum can build appreciation for a society’s ethnic diversity. a tech entrepreneur may look at a multitude of world languages to be learned and taught and imagine inventing a universal translation tool, instead of less cutting edge approaches – such as endowing under-funded language departments of public universities. and in a world rife with injustice and inequalities, private philanthropy and governments alike tend to see cultural pursuits – including disciplines in the arts and humanities – as secondary priorities, if they count at all. my aim here is to reflect on the record and the motivations of a leading global private foundation that for decades was active in cultural philanthropy across asia. i will review the overall trajectory of the ford foundation’s culture-focused philanthropy in its offices in south and southeast asia from the late 1970s into the 21st century. tracing the various rationales underlying cultural grants leads us to a more complete view of the paradigms of engagement ford employed in ‘developing’ countries. it also reveals clear distinctions between field office grants and ford’s domestic arts agenda, as well as intersections between cultural programs and other foundation priorities. given both notable changes in the field of philanthropy in recent years, as well as changes in ford’s emphases and ways of working, it is important to ask whether arts and culture are still relevant to its priorities, and what turns cultural grant making in asia has taken. early support for arts and culture first, we must evoke the background of an institution that for many years was the world’s wealthiest foundation, once described as “a large body of money completely surrounded by people who want some” (macdonald, 1989, p. 3). today, when the bill and melinda gates foundation looms over the philanthropic landscape with assets of more than usd 60 billion, one forgets a time when it was ford that regularly made major headlines in american discussions of private foundations. this prominence began in around 1950, when the foundation was endowed with 90% of the stock of the ford motor company.2 by 1960 it had a corpus of over usd 3 billion, along 2 eventually the foundation divested from its ford motor co. holdings, and the ford family disassociated itself from the expanded global foundation. 168 | aseas 10(2) legacies of cultural philanthropy in asia with an annual budget much larger than that of the united nations and its specialized agencies combined.3 within the legal environment for american philanthropy, it is important to note that during this period the more valuable the ford motor company became, the more the foundation’s dividends increased, making it necessary to increase its grant making in order to preserve its tax-exempt status.4 yet it was not the sheer scale of its resources that commanded attention when, in 1949, the foundation announced its intention to address issues of global importance such as peace, democracy, and human welfare – it was the startling breadth and loftiness of its vision. from its beginnings in the 1930s as a small local family foundation that had supported the communities of auto factory workers around dearborn, michigan, ford set out to become a major presence on the national and international stage. the founding text for its expanded mandate was a weighty document called the gaither report, which came out of a process involving multiple task forces and more than 1000 people charged to consider “the ways in which the ford foundation can most effectively and intelligently put its resources to work for human welfare” (gaither, 1950, p. 13). the gaither report provided the conceptual scaffolding for the international edifice ford would build through its network of overseas field offices, a key part of its expansive mission to solve the world’s problems. and this brings us to new delhi, yangon (rangoon), and jakarta, where the first field offices in asia were launched. let us imagine a scene in burma in 1953, not long after the ford foundation opened a field office in rangoon as part of an expanding presence in asia. departing from its pattern of funding projects in public administration and agriculture, the foundation decided to support a request from the burmese government for the creation of an international institute of advanced buddhist studies, which would foster activities in pāli scholarship and organize the sixth great buddhist council. the council was to convene for two years between the full moons of may 1954 and 1956, gathering 15,000 buddhist monks and scholars from all over asia. according to its proponents, the institute was “expected to become the spiritual center of southeast asia, radiating … irresistible and overpowering rays of wisdom, truth, and righteousness” (macdonald, 1989, pp. 66-69).5 this intriguing gesture to burma’s heritage was just the first in a record of grants supporting cultural heritage in numerous asian countries for more than 50 years. cultural interests first emerged for ford in a systematic way in india, where its first overseas office had opened in new delhi in 1952. in 1955, for example, the foundation established the southern languages book trust to publish great works of literature and philosophy in the four major languages of south india. the following year, the foundation purchased from the museum of modern art in new york a thousand copies 3 at the end of 2014, the foundation had usd 14.4 billion in assets; it gave away some usd 518 million during that year. 4 the united states congress established rules for foundations, including the requirement to use a certain percentage of their assets annually for what are defined as ‘charitable activities’. 5 see macdonald (1989, pp. 66-69) for more details on foundation grant 05400155. its budget of that time of usd 327,000 would be the equivalent of usd 2.9 million in 2015 – an extraordinary amount for an initial commitment even today, and evidence of the foundation’s relative wealth. at this early point, ford’s annual grant budget was about four times as large as that of second biggest u.s. foundation (rockefeller foundation). aseas 10(2) | 169 mary s. zurbuchen of books and multiple film prints, products of an exhibition moma had organized on indian handloom textiles and crafts (gandhi, 2002, p. 4). while the ostensible aim of this grant was to reintroduce ‘principles of good design’ to indian cottage industry, it also clearly acknowledged the immense creative wealth of india’s artisan communities. i cite these examples of early cultural grants to note how the ford foundation’s stance within the post-colonial asian dynamic of continuity and change included an inclination toward the arts and humanities. the gaither report lauded the importance of scientific investigation and “professional experts generating objective knowledge” (francis x. sutton, in macdonald, 1989, p. xv)6 and for some years the foundation was guided by this ‘heady prospectus’ in setting its priorities. arts and culture were not among those priorities initially, but thinking changed and with its resources growing rapidly – thus making it a necessity to disperse many more dollars each year – in 1957 the foundation looked seriously at the needs of american creative artists and the potential for providing support to projects of ‘national significance’. the arts and culture program launched in the united states in 1962 aimed to raise the arts to new levels of achievement and fiscal stability through long-term support to a group of promising institutions. the enormous impact of the usd 400 million spent in the 1980s can still be seen in the worlds of dance, regional theater, symphony orchestras, and arts management throughout the united states. ford’s support for the arts both stimulated u.s. private and corporate gifts to arts institutions and influenced the creation of the national endowments for the arts and humanities. the creative force behind this landmark initiative was w. mcneil lowry, who saw the arts and humanities as an important counterbalance to the foundation’s focus on social sciences and research. cultural programming emerged very differently in the asian settings where ford worked. field offices produced culture grants in a decentralized way, depending on local contexts, inclinations of foundation staff, and direct encouragement from country directors, called representatives. the 1950s and 60s were years when issues of nation-building and economic development dominated international relations and western states were fixed on the ideological competition with soviet and chinese communist spheres.7 in india, with its flagship field office, ford worked with the government to find ways to improve rural life. in response to the invitation of prime minister nehru, the foundation supported modernization and reorganization of village industries, which led to increased attention to traditional handloom and handicraft producers, thus raising the possibility of culture as a focus for development efforts. the foundation helped start the national institute of design in 1961, urging “the cooperation of ethnologists, art historians, and village teachers with a feeling for the true cultural past” (gandhi, 2002, p. 5). 6 macdonald (1989) labels the gaither report’s language “foundationese”, as in the following: “the problems of mankind must be solved, if they are to be solved at all, by a combined use of all those types of knowledge by which human affairs may be influenced” (p. 139). 7 the foundation’s initial cultural efforts were focused mainly in europe, reflecting the conviction that exchange of ideas and cultural achievements could help promote peace in the wake of world war ii’s “devastating effect on the european intellectual community … american observers feared that marxism and communism would exert a growing appeal among these disaffected intellectuals…” (mccarthy, 1987, p. 94). the foundation’s first president, paul hoffman, had served as administrator of the marshall program in europe, and firmly believed in nongovernmental cultural diplomacy. 170 | aseas 10(2) legacies of cultural philanthropy in asia at the same time, efforts in language development and publishing such as the southern languages book trust, along with bilingual education and english language training, reflected the importance of india’s multilingual and multicultural environment. the trust also reflected the geopolitics of the cold war,8 as the soviet union was supporting a steady stream of cheap books in indian vernaculars at the time. in newly independent burma, competing east/ west ideologies, along with the need to unite an ethnically diverse people, were clear factors in the creation of the international institute for advanced buddhist studies mentioned above. the suggestion that ford foundation might support the institute – which was called the pāli project – was made in writing by a u.s. aid mission official, who cited premier u nu’s opinion that “the popular belief that americans work solely for the benefit of themselves or others is one of the strongest weapons in the hands of communist propagandists in southeast asia” (macdonald, 1989, p. 67). the rationale that intergroup unity and democratic values would greatly assist the nation-building process became linked to concern for culture, as reflected in ford foundation program guidelines for the 1960s: the successful development of new nations includes, and in part depends on, cultural and intellectual factors. new nations seek to ‘discover’ their own cultures, and to achieve greater clarity concerning their national purposes…it is proposed that overseas development support carefully selected projects designed to further these less tangible but important purposes of developing nations. (ford foundation, 1960s) an equally significant justification for foundation involvement with india’s culture was articulated in the mid-1960s by a ford consultant, arthur isenberg, who argued that india’s classical past and its ‘folk culture’ were threatened by urbanization and rapid change. by this time the rangoon field office had closed, as the foundation was ordered to leave burma after the military takeover of 1962. in 1969 a small grant for heritage preservation created an opening for new programming; this was reinforced by positive signals from the foundation’s trustees.9 a contraction in foundation assets through the 1970s (due to a broad u.s. economic downturn) meant “the foundation’s enthusiastic conversion to the idea of conserving india’s cultural past had to be curbed” (gandhi, 2002, p. 10). by 1978, however, the foundation approved a comprehensive program centered on preservation for india. this program would grow and evolve, sparking grants in india and other asia offices for more than two decades. 8 much has been made of the degree to which ford and other private foundations were linked to the cold war policies of the u.s. government, particularly the central intelligence agency, through entities such as the congress for cultural freedom. the debate over these activities is peripheral to this essay, but relevant discussion can be found in saunders (2000), epstein (1967), mccarthy (1987), and a variety of other sources. coming from another direction, the foundation was also targeted as “leftist” in the press for its work on civil liberties and racial discrimination, which led to a series of congressional investigations in the 1950s and 1960s (macdonald, 1989, pp. 27-35; rosenfield, 2015, pp. 7, 23). and when henry ford ii resigned from the board of trustees in 1976, severing the last ford family ties with the foundation, he criticized the organization “for attacking the capitalist economic system that had created it” (rosenfield, 2015, p. 24). 9 chairman of the board alexander heard wrote in 1970 that “to interpret and make visible the cultural heritage of many a developing nation ought to contribute to a sense of national pride and to the much discussed sense of identity that everyone seems to want these days” (zurbuchen, 1994, p.15). aseas 10(2) | 171 mary s. zurbuchen key programming themes the geography and modality of the foundation’s support for arts and humanities in asia looks different from one vantage point to another. at various times the foundation made grants in the arts and humanities in bangladesh, bhutan, burma, china, india, indonesia, japan, malaysia, nepal, pakistan, the philippines, sri lanka, thailand, and vietnam. the history of this support is highly variable, with no fixed template determining which kinds of grants should be approved. there were scant policy guidelines for officers interested in working on cultural topics, and no specific annual budget allocation for such grants. on occasion, grants were conceived opportunistically without a longer-term strategic framework. some culture programs were sparsely staffed, with field offices often relying on part-timers or consultants for this work. officers whose actual assignments were in other fields such as education, social sciences, or human rights might have managed culture grants. those staff members frequently responded in a more or less ad hoc way to opportunities to support cultural activities within the constraints of time and budgets imposed by their primary program responsibilities. in the following discussion, i will focus on the larger, sustained programs in arts and culture in countries where officers were assigned to develop clearly articulated visions. those offices are new delhi (which made grants in india, nepal and sri lanka) and indonesia (which also managed activities in thailand, the philippines, and vietnam, at different periods). it is vexingly hard to be precise in tracking how much the foundation spent on culture outside of the united states, because the structure of ford’s program division and its accounting codes changed over the years. for the most part, culture programs in asia fell under larger categories such as education, media, arts and culture, and received small slices of annual field office budgets. between 1984 and 1994, for example, the largest expenditures in all overseas offices went to grants under the categories of rural poverty and resources, international affairs, and education. during this same period, cultural preservation and interpretation accounted for about 13% of all grant dollars in india, and 18% in indonesia (zurbuchen, 1994, appendix tables 2 and 4). these amounts were probably the highest among all overseas offices, since culture grants tended to be fewer in ford’s latin america and africa offices. budgets for culture never approached the scale of arts expenditures in the u.s. program. in the 1984-1994 period, culture-related grants in asia totaled roughly usd 21.5 million dollars, a mere 8% of total asia grant expenditures. in general, it seems that field office representatives could feel confident in recommending annual culture program budgets as long as these remained subsidiaries to their major ‘developing country’ agenda. addressing poverty, illness, and injustice would claim the major portion of field office resources even as robust cultural programs grew. taking a closer look at how country programs responded to opportunities to engage with culture, we turn to sites receiving the largest commitment to the arts and humanities in asia: india, indonesia and (on a smaller scale) thailand, the philippines, and vietnam. while the specifics of each field office’s grants differed widely, several key themes stand out across the region and over nearly thirty years. 172 | aseas 10(2) legacies of cultural philanthropy in asia heritage conservation the foundation initially addressed cultural issues as a matter of material heritage – the cultural property that manifests history and identity in tangible form. national governments were often open to outside technical assistance for preservation of monuments, archaeological sites, and movable property such as ethnographic collections or hand-written documents. thus, the india office worked with institutions such as the archaeological survey of india, deccan college in pune, the new delhi school of architecture, the cities of jaipur and ahmedabad, and public and private manuscript collections to support training, research, and improved technologies in the fields of archaeology, urban conservation planning, and manuscript documentation. similar grants for archaeological training and research were made in sri lanka, and bhutan’s national museum received assistance in managing national art and manuscript collections. in indonesia, conservation of monuments, advanced training for archaeologists and museologists, and manuscript preservation for endangered collections in the palaces of central java and the national library were all supported. in thailand, foundation funds helped launch an important program to conserve the wealth of mural paintings in buddhist temples, in partnership with the government’s fine arts department. all this heritage work opened up deeper challenges and questions about the validity of culture grant making. identifying heritage conservation as a goal is hardly helpful, one foundation staffer observed, in deciding what to preserve. material remains of the past can be appropriated by power centers to legitimize dominant ideologies, as when india’s babri masjid was claimed as a hindu site, or when archaeological evidence of ancient tamil settlement in sri lanka conflicted with the politics of national history. the conservation of the past might sharpen conflicts when, say, excavation activity threatens local settlement or livelihoods. involvement of a foreign institution with cultural property can aggravate local or nationalistic sensitivities. and even when a project is successful – such as the microfilm documentation of thousands of pages of frail manuscripts – there remain questions of public or scholarly interest, interpretation, and survival of that written heritage in its new format. still, the record of ford’s cultural grants produced many compelling arguments for attention to material heritage. learning from history and appreciating links with the past tend to be viewed as significant in most societies – a reality that needs recognition in wealthier countries where the existence of archives, libraries, museums, and other cultural resources is often taken for granted. on the local level, culture grants drew attention and appreciation from government and private institutions. by means of its sustained culture program the foundation earned credibility among governments, artists, and scholars for supporting activities other major donors would not consider. on the international level, ford’s attention to cultural heritage reinforced the major investments it was making in the 1960s and 1970s to build international and area studies in u.s. universities. as benedict anderson notes, post-ww ii u.s. government agencies put priority on expanding much-needed international scholarship, “but very large private institutions, especially the rockefeller and ford foundations, also played an important role, partly offsetting the ‘policy’ focus of the state. senior officials in these foundations … were more liberal in their outlook than state functionaries, and somewhat less obsessed with combating ‘world communism’” (anderson, 2016, p. 34). aseas 10(2) | 173 mary s. zurbuchen in some measure, then, the foundation’s contributions to capacity-building in archaeology, museology, and conservation sciences resulted in benefits for asian institutions and communities who would, it was argued by foundation officers, be better able to interpret and utilize the past for the common good. cultural transmission it is not very far from conservation of tangible heritage, of course, to the intangible dimensions of culture. core issues here involve change and vitality of cultural forms over time, and processes through which meaning is conveyed to audiences and across generations within the larger social, environmental, and religious settings of particular groups. the passing of skills and practice from older to younger, the dissemination of art forms to new audiences, and the formation of new relations between patrons, practitioners, and consumers are all part of the ‘transmission’ idea. living traditions are always in a state of change; tradition is neither fixed nor static. as the foundation saw it by the 1980s, many arts genres in asia faced qualitative changes of such magnitude that their survival was threatened.10 minority groups under the hegemony of strong national centers and with new languages and educational systems to master found their inherited arts ignored, undervalued or otherwise marginalized. changes in how an art form is transmitted, for instance from oral to written media, or in relations between artists and traditional sources of patronage, disrupt continuity. formal education, the politics of language, and modern media all have profound effects on cultural transmission. the foundation put considerable effort into assisting arts practitioners to sustain and convey older forms of expression. in india, funds helped classical musicians and dance masters document their traditions and adapt older systems of pedagogy to new social and economic conditions. folk culture studies became a major program for the new delhi office, with goals of strengthening field research as well as the role of expressive arts in social development and communications. in indonesia, meanwhile, cultural transmission required paying attention to ethnic diversity, oral traditions and performance genres across a large archipelago where heavy-handed bureaucracies were seeking to ‘guide’ and ‘improve’ local religious and cultural expression. indonesian arts were also being disrupted by adaptation to modern education, as masters of performance traditions were increasingly expected to become credentialed instructors in the government’s conservatories and arts academies. while in india folk culture studies provided a strong interdisciplinary focus for traditional arts, in indonesia the field of world music or ethnomusicology became a key organizing principle, embracing both arts of the traditional aristocracy as well as diverse village-based performance genres. foundation staff worked with arts academies and field researchers as they developed new humanities curricula and practitioner networks. independent national organizations such as the society for indonesian performing arts and the oral traditions association took shape. in the philippines, ford supported ethnomusicology in the academy and archiving of 10 one document attributed the threats to a “rush toward economic growth and social modernization” and “changes in public values”, suggesting “the task, then, is to help national elites be more comfortable with their own pasts” (ford foundation, 1978, p. 20). 174 | aseas 10(2) legacies of cultural philanthropy in asia field recording collections developed by josé maceda of the philippines, whose pioneering research illustrated commonalities among performance genres throughout southeast asia. one conceptual challenge in arts grant making involves finding a balance between scholarly and activist approaches. it was important to move beyond the academic atmosphere of arts institutes to direct engagement with living traditions in the communities that keep them vital. thus, in thailand a unique oral history project gathered stories of life and culture from displaced khmer refugees in camps along the border. in indonesia in the 1990s, ford sponsored a major recording project involving the smithsonian institution and the society for indonesian performing arts, which over ten years documented musical styles in 23 provinces, resulting in a landmark 20-cd series with the folkways records label.11 in vietnam, support went for a competition providing small grants to community-based arts groups to record, document or research their own arts, generating materials on ritual, crafts, performing arts, and languages among 30 ethnic minority communities across 39 provinces.12 foundation culture programs also tried to take account of interlinked processes of economic and social change, and of the impact of contemporary media and communications revolutions. issues of cultural transmission involve not only changes in the arts but also the survival of entire ways of life. as struggles over control of forest land intensified across southeast asia, community resource use patterns, material culture, and local identities all became threatened by larger political and economic forces. culture programs thus intersected with the foundation’s concerns to reduce poverty and address issues to do with rights and governance. creative expression over time, the emphasis of ford’s culture grants in asia shifted from ‘cultural preservation and interpretation’– one of the frequent categories found in the documents – to include concerns for vitality and diversity. program officers were interested in encouraging innovative, experimental, critical work in a variety of media. they felt an emphasis on creative expression would help incorporate the experiences of underrepresented groups into national life; support the emergence of new idioms in traditional arts; develop stronger capacities, new audiences, and channels for cultural expression; and, clarify the links between contemporary expression and its context, including traditional forms. what are the multiple stances toward modernity and tradition that artists attempt? what is the role of the artist in a post-traditional, heavily state-controlled environment? would improving the infrastructure for arts organizations result in better conditions for creative work? field offices supported creativity in varied ways. in india, a theater laboratory project supported contemporary theater directors in experimental work drawing on local and folk genres, and also helped promising theater groups to develop new methodologies and share innovations. indonesian arts and literary groups organized 11 the music of indonesia project is described in detail in ford foundation (2003, p. 194). 12 the folk arts and culture fund — administered by the center for educational exchange with vietnam — has supported some 170 local projects to date (nguyen thi thanh binh, personal communication, 09 march 2016). aseas 10(2) | 175 mary s. zurbuchen national celebrations of local arts, oral tradition, and regional languages. the hanoi office provided training abroad for young vietnamese filmmakers and helped them showcase their productions, while a new supporting organization was created in indonesia to help arts organizations in management, strategic planning, and funding strategies. both offices in india and indonesia provided resources for exploring the outreach and public service potential of broadcast media, including community radio and the expanding television spectrum. the explosive growth of digital media and the internet in the first years of the 21st century prompted grants for studying new media access, analysis of emerging creative and copyright issues and innovations in documentary film. again, principles of selection were an issue. the foundation did not stipulate global policies to help in the choice of which artistic or expressive field to encourage. program staff needed to consult widely to understand the conditions that support, limit, and channel creativity within a particular field. they looked to expression of local needs, selecting points of entry through cooperation with consultants and expert committees, and through stimulation of dialogues among key actors in a particular field. culture and identities in the 1950s and 60s, important changes were taking hold in post-colonial asian states, and the consolidation of national identities was a ubiquitous project. the ‘unity in diversity’ motto was heard in calls for integration and assimilation, both political and cultural. national unity was inscribed on material heritage, too, as historic sites and artifacts were seen as defining a people’s shared identity. if that identity was strong, it was argued, people could be resilient in the face of the manifold pressures of modernization. even in thailand, which had escaped direct european colonization, destabilization brought by conflicts in indochina meant that “thai cultural identity was … subject to severe pressures of an accelerated westernization and modernization process” (klausner, 1991). a surge of thefts of valuable images from buddhist temples, and the embarrassing disappearance of hundreds of objects from the collection of the national museum, prompted leaders of cultural institutions to look for ways of “inculcating in the thai public a sense of pride in their rich cultural heritage” (w. klausner, personal communication, 24 february 2016). the foundation’s support for research and training in both archaeology and mural painting conservation emerged in part from such locally-expressed concerns, which included anxiety over the impact of a large american military presence on thailand’s social norms. of course, even when nation-building ideologies were dominant, and as cold war-related conflicts led to vietnam’s american war and the indonesian annexation of east timor, counter-narratives to the national unity theme have been regularly voiced. in the last years of the twentieth century most areas of ford’s work, including governance, livelihoods, and human rights, became linked in one way or another to the acceptance and expression of distinct identities within the national fabric. working with the cultural sector in vietnam, for example, a portfolio of grants expanded effective arts management, to “create space for artists to reflect on issues of identity in the context of rapid socio-economic change” (stern, 2003, p. 42). 176 | aseas 10(2) legacies of cultural philanthropy in asia emphasizing diversity13 through cultural grants both underscored and contributed to each of the other program themes in field office settings. there is resonance between india’s folk culture institutions and advocates working for rights of the dalit and tribal groups of the country. local artists recording oral epics in uplands vietnam raise the profile of minority ethnic communities whose access to forest land is being undermined by national policy. a research project on traditional arts and the islamic heritage of java can address a growing rhetoric of discrimination and exclusion that would seek to suppress the performing arts on grounds of religious orthodoxy. shaping a commitment there were, of course, other actors in the culture field in asia during the years i am discussing here. most of these were bilateral or multilateral agencies representing a government, as with germany’s goethe institute, or groups of governments, like unesco, which has long promoted heritage sites of global importance and whose intangible cultural heritage program was defined in its 2003 convention. embassies – including those of former colonizers – benefit from the ‘soft diplomacy’ of sponsoring a museum exhibition or donating to a restoration project. nonetheless, among u.s. private charitable groups it is rare for foundations to take more than sporadic interest in international cultural matters.14 for most of its history, for example, the rockefeller foundation focused on medicine and agriculture in its developing country philanthropy.15 organizations that focus on tangible heritage include the j. paul getty trust, which is most active in europe and the mediterranean. however, getty is an operating foundation, meaning that it implements its own projects, in contrast to a grant making foundation like ford, which funds independent groups. japanese foundations have been active in sponsoring cultural projects in southeast asian countries, but this interest has been relatively recent and primarily involves academic research and collaborations (the japan and nippon foundations are good examples), or restoration of particular historic sites or shrines (as some east asian trusts have done in hoi an, the historic trade port of central vietnam). the aga khan trust for culture, based in geneva, works across the muslim world (including malaysia, pakistan, india, and bangladesh) on conservation of historic cities, musical heritage, and architecture and urban design. still, it is clear that ford’s role in support of a wide range of cultural activities was for decades unique among donors working in asia. by the late 1990s, professional staff with assignments in what was by then called education, media, arts and culture (emac) were located in jakarta, hanoi, new delhi, and beijing; together with new 13 it is notable that the foundation took diversity seriously both internally and in grant making. through the 1980s and 1990s, both presidents franklin thomas and susan berresford stressed that racial and gender representation were important for the composition of the board of trustees as well as in staffing. 14 important exceptions here are the henry r. luce foundation and a rockefeller offshoot, the asian cultural council; both are based in new york and are much smaller philanthropies than ford. while acc has had small offices in east asia, its grants primarily support individual artists from the u.s. or asia. the luce foundation’s emphasis is to strengthen knowledge of asia among americans and it has no field offices. 15 from 2001-2007, rockefeller’s innovative program in the greater mekong subregion recognized transnational cultural dynamics and included grants in arts and humanities; see sciortino (2016). aseas 10(2) | 177 mary s. zurbuchen emac appointments in cairo, lagos, nairobi, and moscow, ford’s global ‘footprint’ in culture reached a high point. a number of prominent initiatives in asia from the early 1990s reflected this broadening commitment. ford provided significant support for the festival of indonesia in 1990-91, an 18-month series of museum exhibitions, performances, film showings, conferences, folklife celebrations, and other events that provided many americans with their first glimpse of indonesia’s rich cultural heritage. at about the same time, ford made an endowment grant to establish the india foundation for the arts, now one of india’s leading independent foundations, with programs encouraging new forms of creativity and arts education across the country. what factors have been critical to the longevity and sustained focus of ford’s programs? doubtless ford’s commitment to having offices in the countries where it works was an essential condition enabling culture grant making. philanthropy based in field offices made it possible for the foundation to develop long-term relationships with local individuals and institutions; to work more closely with grantees on development and implementation of projects; and, to generate ground-level experience and insights important for senior management and the foundation as a whole. even though asian field offices have opened and closed at different moments in line with emerging opportunities or internal policy, most of ford’s culture grants were made within field offices with a well-established local presence such as in bangkok, new delhi, jakarta or dhaka. the foundation’s overseas offices have generally not functioned as branches of headquarters, but have typically stressed local context and settings in shaping grant programs. ford’s representatives in asia tended to enjoy a high level of autonomy in exploring and setting local office grant making priorities, working within the broad guidelines set every few years by the foundation’s trustees and the biennial grant budgets allocated by new york. grant approvals up to a certain level are delegated to local representatives,16 who also play a key role in selecting field office professional staff. the foundation looks for program officers with local experience and relevant language and intercultural skills to serve terms of roughly three to six years; often, staff have often been recruited from university faculty, research institutes or international non-profit groups. in building a program of grants under a theme such as “cultural preservation, vitality and interpretation”, the foundation looked for people with humanities backgrounds who could articulate a vision linking one set of grants to others in the portfolio. deep local knowledge and professional experience were critical to working with potential grantees in responsive, creative, and flexible ways. in turn, strategic thinking implied longer-term commitment to working with a group of grantee organizations, avoiding a random succession of unrelated grants. at the same time, staff were expected to look for special opportunities or new openings to work with talented people, young organizations, or to build new constituencies to address persistent issues. this emphasis on long-term commitment, along with local autonomy and flexibility in identifying grantees, meant that foundation staff could build relationships 16 as of 2000, for example, any field office grant with a budget up to usd 100,000 was approved by the representative. this kind of delegated authority is not typical of most international philanthropy. 178 | aseas 10(2) legacies of cultural philanthropy in asia over time through travel to different regions of a country, through broad consultations, and through bringing together different skill sets or points of view in addressing important issues. for example, when the bangkok office decided to help the thai government with its mural painting conservation program, companion grants were made to the international centre for the study of preservation and restoration of cultural property in rome (iccrom), which provided important technical assistance.17 when the jakarta office developed a program aimed at promoting appreciation of cultural diversity through private radio and television outlets, broadcasters and programmers from all over indonesia were brought together to share ideas (ford foundation, 2003, p. 219). this kind of ‘convening power’ often led to important and unexpected connections in grant making, and is the kind of role ford could play by virtue of local offices open to different kinds of people, institutions, and ideas. employing staff responsible for cultural grant making, the foundation built its own capacity for awareness of local priorities, values, and issues beyond the mainstream technocratic focus on development followed by major donors. within the field office, staff assigned to different programs often worked as a team, consulting each other and sometimes jointly developing grants. one grant in indonesia funded environmental conservation and oral traditions research in the kayan mentarang tropical rainforest reserve in kalimantan, and involved program officers working on both community resource management and cultural vitality who shared goals of strengthening the ability of forest-dwelling peoples to preserve their ways of life. the culture program officer thus served as an example of the kind of ‘engaged expertise’ that views heritage as something represented by whole communities and environments (salemink, 2016). at the same time, ford was cautious about claiming credit for the results of particular projects; its philosophy tended to carefully distinguish the foundation’s profile as the grantor – sharing ideas and providing funds – from the grantee’s role in carrying out projects. a heritage worth sustaining having worked as a foundation officer during more than two decades in asian settings, i have wondered what place cultural interests have in american philanthropy. is there a 21st century relevance in the ford foundation’s perspectives on creativity, transmission, and identities discussed above? the emergence of ‘new philanthropy’, with its emphasis on business-like practice and measurable outcomes, has not been accompanied by a new wave of grant making in cultural fields. one reason arts and culture may be less compelling for philanthropy today is that studying foreign countries has suffered significant retrenchment in america’s academic realms. over the past two decades, the multidisciplinary area studies model for learning about the world, prominent since world war ii, has been discounted as orientalist and eurocentric (gibsongraham, 2004). while alternative models – subaltern studies, post-modernism and cultural studies – have emerged, much social science research has turned to the study of large data sets and away from close study of cultural context. in the united states, 17 not incidentally, through its work with thai conservators iccrom developed new techniques for restoration of mural painting in tropical conditions – expertise that could be used in other places and contribute to building global knowledge. aseas 10(2) | 179 mary s. zurbuchen basic government funding for area and international studies has been drastically reduced. the ford foundation’s domestic program in area studies was cut back in the 1980s, thus undermining the salience once fostered between domestic programs – promoting knowledge of the world among americans – and international cultural grant making. the technology revolution itself may well have helped to dim the allure of international studies. with the internet at our fingertips and social media linking anyone anywhere, much of the world now appears accessible and ‘knowable’ through web surfing and cyberworld networking. further, we have seen widespread erosion of support for the humanities in u.s. schools and universities, supplanted by a belief that only the stem disciplines (science, technology, engineering, math) can produce market-ready citizens with skills for the 21st century workplace.18 arguments that “humanities enhance our culture” or transmit “the best that has been thought and said” are no longer effective, says critic stanley fish, arguing that university administrators have shirked their duty to aggressively defend the humanities as an essential part of what a university should be doing (fish, 2010). in this environment, it might well seem counter-intuitive or retrograde to promote the arts and culture as important for philanthropy. yet the new president of the ford foundation seems to be keeping the arts within view, at least for domestic grant making purposes. after taking the helm in 2013, darren walker announced in 2015 that all foundation grant making would be organized and streamlined around the concept of inequality. one of the seven thematic areas now featured on ford’s website is creativity and free expression, which “play a central role in weaving the fabric of a just society – a society in which exclusion and inequality can never stand unchallenged” (ford foundation, 2017). as the foundation invests in organizations “that are pivotal in fighting inequality and making meaningful progress in creativity and free expression”, it will further focus grant making under two sub-themes: “social justice storytelling” and “21st century arts infrastructure” (ford foundation, 2017). walker has spoken eloquently on how the arts “create economies of empathy” in building social movements. if there is crisis in the arts world, it is in part because “we have raised market-oriented thinking above all other kinds and categories of human understanding” (walker, 2015). he argues that the united states’ greatness is revealed through its arts, and that america currently suffers from a poverty “of heart and mind, of spirit and soul, of civic imagination” which can be addressed through sustained funding for the arts (walker, 2017). some of the foundation’s recent domestic grants reflect this orientation. for example, a grant of usd 10 million to united states artists will build an endowment for that group to continue providing grants to individual artists in a range of fields and genres. the ‘storytelling strategy’ in the u.s. embraces ford’s justfilms documentary initiative, and arts infrastructure builds on what ford has already been doing in the u.s. for some years under the rubric of supporting diverse arts spaces. in 2015, the foundation made a total of 141 grants totaling usd 44.5 million under the freedom of expression theme (now superseded); over half of this support went for arts 18 while there is no space here for detailed discussion, it seems clear that a decline in public support for tertiary education, and the fact that humanities subjects do not bring major research dollars to universities, has contributed to shifting priorities. 180 | aseas 10(2) legacies of cultural philanthropy in asia spaces, while most of the rest of the grants supported media access and the justfilms initiative. there were also grants to a number of mainstream new york cultural institutions (metropolitan opera association, new york shakespeare festival, new york public library, vivian beaumont theater, etc.), suggesting that ford intends to maintain a place among the city’s prominent arts patrons. this all sounds reassuring for culture in the united states, but the picture does not appear as bright when we look at the foundation’s overseas activities. in ford’s field offices, in fact, culture programs were curtailed under walker’s predecessor.19 while walker himself served as vice president for education, media, arts and culture, at the same time, a focus on public service media and internet access was enlarged. program officers assigned to work on cultural vitality and interpretation disappeared around 2007, and today it is not clear whether any field office staff have specific roles under creativity and free expression.20 the 2015 grants database includes a handful of grants under diverse arts spaces from the cairo and mexico city field offices; there are none from asia offices. in 2016 some 171 grants related to creativity and free expression were made worldwide for a total of usd 69.3 million; in asia, there were only seven grants (two in china and five in indonesia). while it may still be too early to fully define new directions in cultural programming, the relative absence of culture among current asia field office priorities is not encouraging. there are other reasons to wonder how ford will treat cultural issues and problems in future, and whether new philanthropy perspectives and models have perhaps taken root more deeply during its program realignment. for example, the foundation for many years used a succinct media tag for acknowledgment on television and radio: “ford foundation: a resource for innovative people and institutions worldwide”. today, however, the foundation sees itself as “working with visionaries on the frontlines of social change worldwide, to address inequality in all its forms”. the new tag posits an activist stance, putting the donor right alongside, if not leading, grantees in the social justice struggle. one wonders whether those who might hesitate to claim the status of visionaries can still get a hearing from the foundation, and whether support for individual artists and scholars has been eclipsed by a focus on institution-building. the way ford now describes creativity and free expression stresses utility and purpose: art as instrument for something else. the arts do not exist in and of themselves; they “address inequality” and “contribute to a fairer and more just society” (ford foundation, 2017). there is no doubt that storytelling exists in a myriad of contexts around the world, responding to varied social, educational or communitarian needs. however, for the foundation it necessarily “addresses issues of justice” and “fuels change” (ford foundation, 2017). there is more than a hint of agenda-setting here; how will this lexicon be translated, literally and figuratively, outside the united states? who decides which projects will “transform attitudes that perpetuate injustice” (supporting the most innovative, 2016)21 and how will results in terms of 19 luis ubiñas was ford’s president from 2007-2013. 20 staffing and assignments are still shifting in the wake of president walker’s realignment around inequality. my comments reflect current information available at www.fordfoundation.org, as well as discussions with several field office observers. 21 from a description on ford’s website of a recent foundation grant in partnership with the skoll and aseas 10(2) | 181 mary s. zurbuchen attitudes and more justice be assessed? a recent profile of darren walker in the new yorker described ongoing debates about the implications of addressing inequality: “ford believed in supporting art as a means of disrupting dominant narrative”, notes the author, “but art didn’t always do what you wanted it to” (macfarquhar, 2016). because the foundation has long played a leading role in drawing attention to issues of cultural vitality and interpretation in asia, eliminating cultural programs is certain to have an impact on the larger field. there is data suggesting that ford’s turn away from culture in its international work is already having an effect. according to the foundation center,22 in 2002 ford provided by far the largest share of grants for arts and culture to recipients outside the united states, making 138 grants (39% of the number of grants made in this category) with a total value of usd 20.1 million (equal to 42% of the amount of resources all us foundations provided for arts and culture outside the united states). as of 2012, ford still made the largest number of arts and culture grants (61, or 21% of the total), but provided only usd 12.2 million in overseas grants (just 20% of the total grant amounts). further, while in 2002 there were eleven asian grantee organizations on the foundation center’s list of the top 50 recipients of arts and culture grants outside the us, by 2012 there were only two asian grantees on that list. global philanthropy has been transformed by many factors, not least among them the electronic information revolution that enables instantaneous contact between staff in field offices and headquarters. this means that ways of working have changed, and so have the interactions among staff in field offices and headquarters. whereas field office communications with new york once took place primarily through weekly airmail pouches, today it is not uncommon for foundation staff in asia to stay up late at night for regular teleconferences. grants processing, meeting agendas, budgeting and accounting, personnel, and other operations are increasingly uniform, digitized and centralized in the hands of managers based at headquarters. ford’s global structure entails reaching the right balance between operational efficiency and field office creativity and autonomy. running field offices with international staff is an expensive business that demands attention to maintaining an institutional profile in local contexts, to nurturing extensive networks, and to making sure that new york staff includes people who understand the complexity and nuance of overseas work. some experienced hands have wondered if ford’s ‘back-office’ functions could more easily be centralized entirely in new york, which would mean even smaller staff levels overseas. indeed, few philanthropies these days see utility in keeping in-country staff on the ground, preferring an approach that flies out teams of consultants and evaluators instead. this may be effective for donors who design programs at a distance and then ‘contract out’ to appropriate governments or non-profits for implementation. however, it might not be as productive an approach for ford’s traditionally more engaged philanthropy. in a recent speech accepting an award from the studio museum in harlem in new york city, president walker noted that the arts are a powerful tool for challenging britdoc foundations that will provide second-stage funding for joint projects by social entrepreneurs and filmmakers 22 see www.data.foundationcenter.org for relevant lists and tables. 182 | aseas 10(2) legacies of cultural philanthropy in asia “persistent stereotypes and cultural narratives that undermine fairness, tolerance and inclusion”. such narratives persist outside the boundaries of the united states, and are troubling in the asian settings of ford’s field offices. in india, for instance, exclusionary social structures persist alongside a rampant, growing religious nationalism that is leading to oppression of minority communities and growing censorship in the arts, literature, and the teaching of history. many ethnic minority peoples of china, especially in the tibetan and uighur regions, face relentless pressure on their languages, religions, and lifeways. in indonesia, religious intolerance is expanding into both cultural and political spheres in alarming ways. the foundation has accumulated significant experience in these countries with local activists who promote historical interpretation, appreciation of ethnic diversity, creative expression, and the vitality of living traditions – experience that could be translated into changing contexts to address current challenges. in the end, what matters for ford’s international philanthropy is not only how aspirational it might be in promoting disruption of the drivers of inequality. what will also matter is whether it uses the unique leverage of its offices around the world to sustain grant making that is informed by local insight, in the hands of creative and engaged staff who can implement its realigned mandate in grounded, relevant ways. i have suggested that a focus on culture and humanities embeds credibility, empathy, and deeper awareness within the foundation. such focus has made the foundation an exceptional donor during the rich history of its grant making in asia. as an organization that tries to place people’s real-world experience, dreams, identities, and vulnerabilities foremost, the ford foundation has from the beginning of its work in asia seen a role for attention to cultural vitality and creative interpretation of human experience. that is a unique and immeasurable part of ford’s own heritage – and one that its leaders should be proud to sustain.  references anderson, b. (2016). a life beyond boundaries: a memoir. new york: verso. anft, m. (2015, november 4). of billionaires and hunger. the chronicle of philanthropy. retrieved from https://www.philanthropy.com/article/of-billionaireshunger-/234054 berresford, s. (1999, may). american philanthropic values and the future of philanthropy. remarks at the new york regional association of grantmakers annual meeting, 11 may, new york. callahan, d. (2017). the givers: wealth, power and philanthropy in a new gilded age. new york: alfred a. knopf. edwards, m. (2008). just another emperor? the myths and realities of philanthrocapitalism. new york: demos & the young foundation. epstein, j. (1967, april 20). the cia and the intellectuals. new york review of books. retrieved from http:// www.nybooks.com/articles/1967/04/20/the-cia-and-the-intellectuals/ feinstein, a. (2012). international philanthropy in southeast asia: case studies from indonesia and the philippines. in understanding confluences and contestations, continuities and changes: towards transforming society and empowering people. the work of the 2009/2010 api fellows. bangkok: api. retrieved from http://www.api-fellowships.org/body/international_ws_proceedings/09/p3-alan.pdf fish, s. (2010, october 11). the crisis of the humanities officially arrives. the new york times. retrieved from https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/11/the-crisis-of-the-humanities-officially-arrives/ aseas 10(2) | 183 mary s. zurbuchen ford foundation. (1960s). program guidelines. ford foundation. (1978). the foundation and asia. unpublished paper. ford foundation. (2003). celebrating indonesia: fifty years with the ford foundation 1953-2003. jakarta: equinox publishing. ford foundation. (2017). creativity and free expression. retrieved from https://www.fordfoundation.org/ work/challenging-inequality/creativity-and-free-expression/ foundation center. (2017). foundation stats. retrieved from http://data.foundationcenter.org frumkin, p. (2003). inside venture philanthropy. society, 40(4), 7-15. gaither, h. r. (1950). report of the study for the ford foundation on policy and program. detroit: the ford foundation. gandhi, l. (2002). arts and culture: from heritage to folklore. new delhi: ford foundation (50th anniversary report series). gibson-graham, j. k. (2004). area studies after poststructuralism. environment and planning a, 36(3), 405419. klausner, w. (1991). cultural programming. ford foundation inter-office memorandum, 4 december. macdonald, d. (1989/1955). the ford foundation: the men and the millions. with a new introduction by francis x. sutton. new jersey: transaction publishers. macfarquhar, l. (2016, january 4). what money can buy. the new yorker. retrieved from https://www. newyorker.com/magazine/2016/01/04/what-money-can-buy-profiles-larissa-macfarquhar. massing, m. (2016, january 14). how to cover the one percent. the new york review of books. retrieved from http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/01/14/how-to-cover-the-one-percent/ mccarthy, k. (1987). from cold war to cultural development: the international cultural activities of the ford foundation, 1950-1980. daedalus, 116(winter), 93-117. reich, r. (2013, march 1). what are foundations for? boston review. retrieved from http://bostonreview. net/forum/foundations-philanthropy-democracy rosenfield, p. (2015). the ford foundation: themes, 1936-2001. with rachel wimpee. report of the ford foundation history project. new york: rockefeller archive center. salemink, o. (2016). scholarship, expertise, and the regional politics of heritage. in o. salemink (ed.), scholarship and engagement in mainland southeast asia (pp. 167-196). bangkok: silkworm books. saunders, f. s. (2000). the cultural cold war: the cia and the world of arts and letters. new york: the new press. sciortino, r. (2016). learning across boundaries: grantmaking activism in the greater mekong subregion. in o. salemink, (ed), scholarship and engagement in mainland southeast asia (pp. 141-166). bangkok: silkworm books. soskis, b. (2015, december 11). time for the public to weigh good and bad of the zuckerberg-chan gift. the chronicle of philanthropy. retrieved from https://www.philanthropy.com/article/opinion-timefor-the-public/234584 stanley, a. (2015, october 31). silicon valley’s new philanthropy. the new york times. retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/opinion/siliconvalleys-new-philanthropy.html supporting the most innovative (2016). docsociety. retrieved from https://docsociety.org/flex/ walker, d. (2015, january 26). open and free: on arts, democracy, and inequality. address to the annual meeting of the association of art museum directors, mexico city. walker, d. (2017, march 20). the art of democracy: creative expression and american greatness. the nancy hanks lecture on arts and public policy, john f. kennedy center for the performing arts, washington. wilby, p. (2010, august 5). the rich want a better world? try paying fair wages and tax. the guardian. retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/aug/05/philanthropydoes-not-pay-taxes zurbuchen, m. (1994). a review of the ford foundation’s cultural grantmaking in asia, with alan feinstein and ruth mayleas. unpublished report. 184 | aseas 10(2) legacies of cultural philanthropy in asia about the author mary s. zurbuchen served as a ford foundation program officer and regional representative between 1983-2000, working in countries across southand southeast asia. she is now an independent scholar and consultant based in california. ► contact: mzurbuchen@yahoo.com acknowledgements ideas for this paper were first developed for the 2016 conference on heritage as aid and diplomacy hosted by the international institute of asian studies, leiden. the author thanks william klausner, nguyen thi thanh binh, minh kauffman, rachel cooper, michael digregorio, and oscar salemink for helpful conversations in preparing this publication. aseas 14(1) | 139 malaysia-news eine facebook-gruppe: ein erfahrungsbericht in social media nutzung gerhard berkaa a austrian-malaysian society, austria ► berka, g. (2021). malaysia-news – eine facebook gruppe: ein erfahrungsbericht in social media nutzung. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 14(1), 139-143. this paper deals with a facebook-group named malaysia-news. this group was founded in august 2019 and saw a rapid increase in members, especially in southeast asia. the analysis of the development of this group is based on data from facebook and concerns the expansion of membership and the motivation to join. it shows that membership increased significantly after incisive events took place in malaysia in early 2020 and that users are primarily looking for trustworthy information. keywords: facebook; malaysia; movement control order; online-forschung; social media  fragestellung und methodik am 10. august 2019 entschloss sich der autor dieses berichts im rahmen der internet-plattform facebook eine gruppe unter den namen malaysia-news zu gründen.1 die news-gruppe sollte informationen über malaysia an interessierte österreicherinnen und österreicher vermitteln und war als service der österreichisch-malaysischen gesellschaft gedacht. tatsächlich entwickelte sie sich zu einer der führenden facebook-gruppen über malaysia und erreichte am 1. juni 2020 den stand von 22.000 mitgliedern. diese untersuchung stellt eine explorative studie dar und beabsichtigt, mögliche ursachen für das wachstum dieser facebook-gruppe zu finden. methodisch beruht diese untersuchung auf die zugänglichen daten von facebook und dem vergleich mit parallel stattgefundenen online-studien (chin, 2020; ika & nuurianti, 2020). diese studie ist kein geplantes forschungsprojekt, sondern entstand aus der laufenden beobachtung der gruppe. die methode beruht auf der idee des „bastelnden denkens“ (humer, 2020). struktur und dynamik von malaysia-news die malaysia-news-gruppe startete am 10. august 2019 mit 7 mitgliedern und erreichte mit 1. juni 2020 22.000 mitglieder. das ist ungewöhnlich, denn es wurde vom administrator keine werbung betrieben. der mitgliederzuwachs entwickelte sich wie folgt: 1 die gruppe ist für jede person offen. netzwerk südostasien  network southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 50 140 | aseas 14(1) malaysia-news eine facebook-gruppe vom gründungsdatum der gruppe im august 2019 bis mitte märz 2020 zeigt sich ein gleichmäßiger, sanfter anstieg. mit dem beginn der movement control order (mco)2 am 18. märz bis zu den ersten lockerungen ende april ist ein starker anstieg der beitritte zu sehen. ab diesem zeitpunkt beginnt die kurve weiter abzuflachen. die entwicklung in der ersten phase bis zum erlass der mco lässt sich durch die empfehlungspolitik von facebook erklären, das heißt, facebook schlägt regelmäßig jedem nutzer gruppen vor, die für ihn oder sie von interesse sein könnten. dabei wird ein spezieller algorithmus verwendet. des weiteren verfügen die nutzerinnen und nutzer selbst über die option, freunde aus ihrer liste in eine gruppe einzuladen. diese beiden funktionen führten dazu, dass durch das schlagwort „malaysia“ im algorithmus eine gewichtung der mitglieder in richtung asien durchgeführt wurde. da die ursprüngliche zielgruppe – interessierte österreicherinnen und österreicher – für den facebook-algorithmus nur geringe vernetzungsaktivitäten im sinne des gruppenthemas zeigten, wurden sie vom algorithmus nicht bemerkt. dies konterkarierte die ursprüngliche intention einer informationsgruppe für europäische nutzerinnen und nutzer und verschob bildlich gesprochen mitgliedermäßig die gruppe von europa nach asien. mit dem ausbruch der corona-krise mitte märz 2020 stieg das informationsinteresse in südostasien massiv an, wodurch die beitrittsrate stark anstieg. es ist anzunehmen, dass in dieser phase die nutzerinnen aktiv die suchfunktion von facebook nutzten und diese gruppe fanden. ebenso wurde die gruppe von mitgliedern intensiv weiterempfohlen. erst mit den ersten lockerungen der mco beginnt die beitrittskurve langsam wieder abzuflachen. bezüglich der aktivitäten zeigt es sich, dass im schnitt bis zum beginn des mco am 19. märz nur ein viertel bis zu einem drittel der mitglieder pro tag die gruppenseite abriefen. ab dem mco stieg dieser wert auf die hälfte der mitglieder an. mit ende märz stabilisierte sich der aktivitätsanteil wieder auf rund 25% (siehe figure 2). im vergleich kam es nach einer studie von the centre vom april 2020 im märz 2020 zu drei signifikanten spitzen im malaysischen internet-traffic, nämlich am 29. februar (vor der angelobung vom neuen ministerpräsidenten tan sri muhyddin yasin), am 12. märz (die bekanntgabe des tabligh-covid-clusters) und am 19. märz (tag nach 2 am 18. märz 2020 von der malaysischen regierung erlassenen ausgangsbeschränkungen. figure 1. mitgliederentwicklung. (own compilation). aseas 14(1) | 141 gerhard berka der einführung der movement control order) (chin, 2020). die stichwortsuche in der suchmaschine google entspricht diesen spitzen. die suche mit den stichworten „muhyddin yassin“ und ähnliche erreichte am 29. februar einen spitzenwert, ebenso die stichwortsuche „tabligh“ am 12. märz. einzig die stichwortsuche „mco“ stieg ab dem 18. märz kontinuierlich an, um am 24. märz einen höhepunkt zu erreichen. tatsächlich zeigt sich in der aktivitätskurve von malaysia-news einige kleine zeitliche verzögerungen. während es um den 29. februar zur einen spitze mit 1.194 aktiven mitgliedern kam, ereignete sich diese beim tabligh-cluster erst zwei tage später mit 1.374 nachfragen. den großen sprung gab es nach dem 19. märz. die informationszugriffe stiegen in den nachfolgenden tagen um das dreifache. hier zeigt sich eine übereinstimmung mit den ergebnissen in der google-stichwortauswertung. während man die ersten beiden ereignisse als momentereignisse bezeichnen kann, nach denen die aufmerksamkeit rasch abflachte, entstand zum thema mco stetig und dauerhaft ein informationsinteresse, welches sich im raschen wachstum des mitgliederstandes von malaysia-news äußerte. neben dem lesen der postings halten sich die sonstigen aktivitäten der user in der gruppe im rahmen. nur 10 bis 20% der user, die auf postings zugreifen, reagieren mit einem like, kommentar oder teilen das posting (siehe figure 3). konkret verfügt man in facebook über die möglichkeit des simplen lesens, des liken eines postings (eventuell unter verwendung von emojis), des hinzufügens eines kommentars sowie das teilen des postings in anderen seiten oder gruppen. anhand dieser möglichkeiten wurden sechs spitzenpostings im beobachtungszeitraum april 2020, in die gruppen „information“ und „kontroversiell“ geteilt und verglichen.3 gemessen an den reaktionen ergibt sich folgendes bild (jeweilige durchschnittswerte): gesehen likes comments shares informationspostings 4,900 158 21 78.3 kontroverse postings 3,300 55.3 35 11 3 die drei informationspostings betreffen airasia und mco-regelungen. die drei kontroversiellen postings betreffen rohingya-flüchtlinge. figure 2. mitgliederaktivität. (own compilation). table 1. spitzenpostings und aktivität. (own compilation). 142 | aseas 14(1) malaysia-news eine facebook-gruppe informationspostings werden öfters gelesen, dreimal mehr geliked und siebenmal mehr geteilt. einzig bei der anzahl der kommentare liegen die kontroversen postings vorne. es ist daraus zu schließen, dass sich die user von der malaysia-news-gruppe informationen erwarten, die sie auch weiterleiten können. die diskussion wird hingegen nicht aktiv gesucht. diskussion bisherige studien zu facebook und twitter beruhen auf inhaltsanalyse und netzwerkanalyse (esau et al., 2019, kneidinger, 2010), ähnliches ist in der onlineforschung in südostasien zu beobachten (rahman et al., 2017). für diese spontane studie wurden nur quantitative facebook-daten herangezogen. vergleicht man die ergebnisse aus dieser studie mit forschungsergebnissen von studien, die twitter als datenbasis nutzten (chin, 2020; ika & nuurianti, 2020), zeigt sich ein differenziertes bild. während twitter eher als diskussionsmedium gesehen wird, tritt bei facebook der informationsaspekt in den vordergrund. das erinnert daran, dass facebook in südostasien nach wie vor dazu genutzt wird, nachrichten abzurufen und zu lesen, und dass dieses soziale medium für viele als ein vertrauenswürdiges nachrichtenmedium zur verwendung kommt (vgl. einzenberger, 2016; tapsell, 2020). man kann die hypothese formulieren, das in südostasien ein signifikantes informationsbedürfnis aus vertrauenswürdigen quellen besteht. das vertrauen bildet ein bewertungsfaktor für social media gruppen in anbetracht der bestehenden kontrollgesetzgebung in malaysia (rahim & pawanteh, 2011). die gruppenmitglieder zeigen ein hohes vertrauen in die facebook-gruppe auf, indem sie die beiträge lesen (liken und teilen) und die gruppe weiterempfehlen. worauf dieses vertrauen basiert kann hingegen nicht allein aus der analyse quantitativer daten ergründet werden. der faktor vertrauen (“trust”) findet in der social-media-forschung zu südostasien noch wenig aufmerksamkeit. jon chamberlain (2020) betont beispielsweise die notwendigkeit von aufbau von vertrauen in plattformen sozialer medien, es fehlt allerdings entsprechende forschung. hier bietet sich für die medienwirkungsforschung für südostasien ein weites forschungsfeld.  figure 2. reaktionen der user. (own compilation). aseas 14(1) | 143 gerhard berka references chamberlain, j. (2020, may 12). coronavirus has revealed the power of social networks in a crisis. https:// theconversation.com/coronavirus-has-revealed-the-power-of-social-networks-in-a-crisis-136431 chin, e. s. m. (2020, april 4). think tank: xenophobia, racism rampant on social media amid global covid-19 lockdowns, malaysia included. https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2020/04/04/think-tankxenophobia-racism-rampant-on-social-media-amid-global-covid-19-l/1853502 einzenberger, r. (2016). “if it’s on the internet it must be right”: an interview with myanmar ict for development organisation on the use of the internet and social media in myanmar. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 9(2), 301-310. esau, k., frieß, d., & eilders, c. (2019). online-partizipation jenseits klassischer deliberation. eine analyse zum verhältnis unterschiedlicher deliberationskonzepte in nutzerkommentaren auf facebook-nachrichtenseiten und beteiligungsplattformen. in i. engelmann, m. legrand, & h. marzinkowski (eds.), politische partizipation im medienwandel (s. 221-245). https://doi.org/10.17174/dcr.v6.0 humer, s. (2020). internetsoziologie. theorie und methodik einer neuen wissenschaft. de gruyter. ika, k. i., & nuurianti, j. (2020, april 28). how blaming others dominates indonesian and malaysian twitterspheres during covid-19 pandemic. https://theconversation.com/how-blaming-othersdominates-indonesian-and-malaysian-twitterspheres-during-covid-19-pandemic-136193 kneidinger, b. (2010). facebook und co. eine soziologische analyse von interaktionsformen in online social networks. springer. rahim, s. a., & pawanteh, l. (2011). democratization of information in malaysia: a responce to globalization. asian social science, 7(2), 3-11. rahman, n. a. a., hassan, m. s. h., osman, m. n., & waleed, m. (2017). research on the state of social media studies in malaysia: 2004-2015. malaysian journal of communication, 33(4), 38-55. tapsell, r. (2020). deepening the understanding of social media’s impact in southeast asia. iseas trends, 4. https://www.iseas.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/trs4_20.pdf about the author gerhard berka is president of the austrian-malaysian society in vienna, austria. he has a ph.d. in sociology and economics and has lectured at the university of economics in vienna. he carries out research in the fields of innovation, international scientific cooperation and management, organic production, and renewable energy. ► contact: gerhard.berka@gmail.com 144 | aseas 14(1) aseas 15(2) | 253 coming home: thai-dutch couples’ spatial trajectories at the intersection of mobility capital, gender, and ageing panitee browna* athammasat university, thailand *corresponding author: spanitee@hotmail.com received: 24 march 2022 / accepted: 9 november 2022 / published: 23 december 2022 ► brown, p. (2022). coming home: thai-dutch couples’ spatial trajectories at the intersection of mobility capital, gender, and ageing. advances in southeast asian studies, 15(2), 253-271. this paper applies the notions of mobility, mobility capital, gender, and ageing to analyze marriage migration and the trajectories of geographical and social mobility of thai-dutch couples moving from the netherlands to thailand. it is based on in-depth interviews with 12 thai-dutch couples who moved from the netherlands to thailand and resided in thailand for between three and twelve years. the study explores the key role of mobility capital in stimulating thai-dutch couples’ imaginations, their perceptions, and their potential for movement. in terms of their ‘mobility turn’, i argue that their trajectories of mobility and relocation to thailand should not be understood as a linear and permanent movement from the netherlands to thailand. rather, this mobility is fluid, complicated, and sometimes fragmented. it is marked by the practices of waiting, hesitation to move, imagining their return, preparing to move, having actually returned, and travelling back and forth between thailand and the netherlands. it also encompasses local spatial movement in daily life. keywords: ageing; gender; marriage migration; mobility; mobility capital  introduction when my husband was 62 years old, he had a health problem. he wished to take an early retirement. in the beginning, i didn’t really want to move back to thailand yet. i was 42 years old at that time and i had been living in the netherlands for 15 years already. i worked formally as an office cleaner and received a permanent contract. i also built up good relations with many thai female close friends. finally, we decided to move to thailand in 2016 as it would be good for my husband. it would be a great opportunity for me to care for my elderly mother too. (pear, 46 years old, interview, 20 july 2020) since the late 1970s, migration from thailand to europe has been facilitated by globalization, capital flows, the advent of information technology and the current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 80 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3416-6936 mailto:spanitee%40hotmail.com?subject= 254 | aseas 15(2) coming home: thai-dutch couples’ spatial trajectories expansion of international transport and tourism. a significant feature of this migration is the incidence of cross-cultural marriages between thai women and european men. in fact, as a result of these cross-border marriages, these women constitute the majority of thai migrants in europe (lapanun, 2019; mix & piper, 2003; ruenkaew, 1999; statham, 2020). however, in recent years, there has been an ever-increasing reversal of this migration flow with thai women and their western husbands moving from europe back to thailand (kanchanachitra & chuenglertsiri, 2020; maher & lafferty, 2014; sunanta & jaisuekun, 2022). currently, these men make up the predominant group of europeans in thailand much like their thai wives did in europe. therefore, these “both-ways” migration pathways are highly gendered: approximately 80%-90% of thai migrants to europe and north america are women, and 80%-90% of westerners settling in thailand are men (statham et al., 2020, p. 1515). studies on marriage migration have strongly emphasized migrants’ border crossing, particularly that of women, from the less developed global south to the more developed regions of the global north (ishii, 2016). in the case of thai-european marriages, the flow of thai women from thailand to europe, the changes in conditions under which they could earn a living in the receiving country, the thai community in europe, and the maintenance of transnational links with their family members left behind have all been thoroughly analyzed (butratana & trupp, 2011; fresnozaflot & merla, 2018; lapanun, 2019; suksomboon, 2008; sunanta & angeles, 2013; tosakul, 2010). however, limited research has focused on westerners’ migration and their subsequent experiences as partners of thai woman in thailand in general (howard, 2008; lafferty & maher, 2020; scuzzarello, 2020). likewise, there are few studies on the reverse flow of thai women and their spouses from europe to thailand in particular (kanchanachitra & chuenglertsiri, 2020; statham, 2020). however, the limitations of these studies are threefold. first, they are likely to portray the linear movement of the migrants’ international border crossing, the sedentary state of their settlement, and the readjustment of the couples’ filial and gendered power relations after their return. second, the thai-european couples’ experiences of marriage migration are often presented as two distinct scenarios: either residing in europe or returning to thailand. finally, much of the research has overemphasized the marriage migration and transnational relationships of the thai migrant women from poorly educated, lower socio-economic backgrounds such as those from rural thailand, especially the north-eastern region (lapanun, 2019; sunanta & angeles, 2013; tosakul, 2010). in contrast, there is a paucity of research focusing on diversity within the lived realities of transnational marriage experienced by their more highly educated female compatriots who come from more elevated socio-economic backgrounds (e.g., butratana & trupp, 2021). the aforementioned portrayals tend to replicate negative stereotypes and stigma with regard to their transnational partners and their families in the country of origin. hence, and in accordance with the aim of this special issue, this paper’s objective is to fill some of the gaps and to challenge such stereotypes in the case of europe-thailand transnational migration. conceptually, this paper applies the perspectives of mobility, gender, and ageing to analyze thai-dutch couples’ social and geographical trajectories of mobility from the netherlands to thailand. the intersection of these concepts contributes to the recognition that their mobility and relocation to thailand are not only a linear aseas 15(2) | 255 panitee brown movement from one place to another. rather, they are related to the women’s previous marriage migration to the netherlands and are interwoven with gender and ageing phenomena. this paper also explores the important role of mobility capital, which refers to the abilities and resources that migrants mobilize and accumulate during their trajectories of migration and mobility (kaufmann et al., 2004; kou & bailey, 2014), in facilitating thai-dutch couples’ imaginations, perceptions, and possibilities for their relocation to thailand. methodologically, this paper presents the interview data of thai women from a range of socio-economic backgrounds, which goes some way to deconstructing the negative stereotypes associated with thai-european transnational marriages and presents a more nuanced understanding of these couples’ mobility and lived trajectories. perspectives on mobility the mobilities paradigm or the so-called mobility turn has emerged to critique the limitations of previous migration studies, which applied a sedentarism view to delineate stability as normal and mobility as abnormal (faist, 2013; sheller, 2014). such perspectives on sedentarism locate bounded places, regions or nations as the fundamental basis of human identity and experience, as well as constituting the basic units of social research (sheller & urry, 2006, pp. 208-209). in such approaches, migration is often perceived as problematic and immigrants are treated as the ‘other’, who must be controlled through migration policies and integration processes (cresswell, 2006). moreover, migration in most cases is not a linear geographical movement from one country to another (cresswell, 2010; faist, 2013; rangkla, 2019). research on transnationalism highlights migrants’ maintenance of socio-economic, political and familial linkages across nation states (schiller et al., 1992; yeoh, 2021). however, migrants’ physical and socio-economic movement in daily life, their accumulation of mobility capital to be mobile both spatially and socially, and their imagination of potential movement are somewhat overlooked in existing research. finally, there are limitations with the classification of types of (international) migration and mobility such as immigration, emigration, return migration, retirement migration, long-stay tourism and lifestyle migration, which increasingly overlap and intertwine (butratana et al., 2022; cassarino, 2004; de hass et al., 2015; hunter, 2011). the mobilities paradigm can lend a more subtle understanding of migration and transnationalism. the concept of mobility encompasses both the large-scale movement of people, objects and capital across the globe, as well as the more local processes of daily transportation, movements in public spaces within everyday life and activities that occur while on the move (hannam et al., 2006, p. 1; sheller & urry, 2006). it also encompasses digital and communicative mobilities, infrastructures, and systems of governance that enable or disable movement (sheller, 2014, p. 789). however, recent studies also criticize a mobility bias in migration research by suggesting that structural and personal forces increasingly restrict migratory movements and individual mobility (schewel, 2020). nation-state border controls and visa and immigration regimes based on citizenship led to differing levels freedom of travel (bianchi et al., 2020; bui & trupp, 2020). at the same time, migrants build up mobility capital that they have accumulated for 256 | aseas 15(2) coming home: thai-dutch couples’ spatial trajectories years through past experiences of crossing borders (moret, 2020). mobility capital provides some people with opportunities for border crossing, increases their likelihood of engaging in activities in different places, and opens up the possibility of their moving back and forth across borders. notably, having the ability to decide not to move is also a part of mobility capital (moret, 2020, p. 236). it should also be noted that mobility and gender are interwoven as they relate to the unequal and gendered power of ideologies and practices in facilitating or hindering mobility (silvey, 2004). feminist geographers were critical of nomadic theorists’ assumptions about migration and mobility that were grounded in masculine subjectivities and privileged access to freedom of movement, while ignoring the gendered, sexualized, and racialized production of space (sheller, 2014, p. 795; silvey, 2004). this feminist critique intersects with the new mobilities paradigm in calling for attention to be given to unequal power relations, the politics of discourses and the practices of mobility in creating both movement and stasis (cresswell, 2010; hannam et al., 2006; sheller & urry, 2006, p. 211). these studies also question how (im)mobilities are (re) defined, practiced, and represented in relation to gender, class, race, age, ethnicities, and religious groups (langevang & gough, 2009; lutz & amelina, 2021; sheller, 2014). thus, the intersection of feminism and mobility studies yields a fruitful conceptual basis for migration and mobility research ranging from gender ideologies of personal mobility, gender and racial inequalities related to choice, and cases of (im)mobility. these are shaped by local and global processes, temporal and spatial encounters related to (im)mobility among migrants as well as by gender and power dynamics that shape movement across a range of geographic contexts (anthias, 2012; conlon, 2011; silvey, 2004; vaiou, 2012). in this study, i utilize the perspectives of mobility and mobility capital in examining the mobility trajectories and accumulation of mobility capital of thai-dutch couples moving from the netherlands to thailand. the concept of mobility provides more subtle insights in the sense that the thai-dutch couples’ spatial movement should not be viewed as merely a linear border crossing from one country to another that precedes a new, sedentary phase of their lives. rather, this concept allows for a further exploration of their imagining of, and preparation for, their future mobility, and much that occurs both before and after their actual move that includes their physical and socio-economic movement in daily life. the perspective of mobility capital is also enlightening in this study because it underlines the continuous and dynamic process of (im)mobility. in other words, it demonstrates that mobility capital has already been cultivated even before the actual movement to, and after relocation in, thailand. furthermore, the notion of mobility capital is utilized to explore its interchangeability and interrelation with other forms of capital (bourdieu, 1986), whether it acts to trigger or constrain transnational partners’ (im)mobility, socio-economic mobility, daily living conditions, and future plans for negotiating care. finally, i combine a gender and ageing perspective with concepts of mobility and mobility capital to analyze their interconnectedness to shaping thai-dutch couples’ motivations, imaginings, and practices of relocation to thailand. specifically, i consider gender and ageing through cultural notions of the family, which can differ markedly between transnational spouses. all these analytical perspectives provide a better understanding of diverse motivations for moving, of the influence of gender aseas 15(2) | 257 panitee brown relations and ageing on decisions on (im)mobility, as well as how gender, ageing, and socio-economic status affect the accumulation of mobility capital. method this paper forms part of a qualitative research project entitled lived experiences and mobilities of thai women from the netherlands to thailand. my data draws primarily on in-depth and open-ended interviews with 12 thai women and six of their respective dutch male partners who moved from the netherlands to thailand and currently reside there. specifically, half of the 12 women were previously interviewed for my master’s thesis (suksomboon, 2004) and ph.d. dissertation (suksomboon, 2009) while i lived in the netherlands between 2002 to 2009. after returning to thailand, i still kept in touch with them via social media and met with them sometimes when they holidayed in thailand. over time, some of the thai women and their dutch partners returned to thailand and i contacted them to conduct interviews for this research. the other six women were introduced through social networks of thai migrant women who recently lived either in the netherlands or in thailand. my position as a thai woman who used to study in the netherlands and who had developed friendships with some of the thai women interviewed over several years acted to facilitate access and rapport. on the other hand, my status as a scholar, asking personal questions about family relations, their pensions, health insurance, and the like, initially caused some hesitancy in thai-dutch couples, particularly those who only knew me via introductions from their thai, female friends. however, i earned their trust through sharing my previous experiences of residing in the netherlands and the benefit of repeated contact. all 12 interviews were conducted in thai or in english between february and december 2020 in thailand. as a way of diversifying the pool of informants, i considered attributes such as age, (past) marital status, educational level, socio-economic status, duration of stay in the netherlands, and duration of residing in thailand. to protect the identity of the respondents, all names in this paper are fictitious. the interview data were coded and analyzed in relation to its conceptual foundations, consisting of mobility, gender, ageing, and mobility capital. furthermore, the similarities and differences of the thai-dutch spouses’ socio-economic backgrounds, such as age, economic status, educational attainment, family relations, and the duration of their residence in thailand in shaping their motivation to relocate to thailand, as well as their continuous accumulation of mobility capital are taken into account for the data analysis. extracts of the life histories of thai-dutch transnational partners and quotations from their interviews are presented to support the data analysis and discussion. at the time of the interviews, the 12 thai women ranged in age from 39 to 77 years old. five women were single before migrating to the netherlands and the remaining seven were either divorced or separated from a thai partner. four of the seven women who were in relationships with thai men before emigrating had children. three of the 12 women had completed their primary education, three had attended a secondary or vocational school, two had acquired a bachelor’s degree at a university in thailand and the remaining four had received a master’s degree or doctoral degree 258 | aseas 15(2) coming home: thai-dutch couples’ spatial trajectories in the usa, england, or the netherlands. the women originally came from diverse regions including northern, north-eastern, central, and southern thailand. seven of the 12 women met their dutch partner while he was on a holiday or business trip in thailand, four met their dutch spouses visiting family members or friends residing in the netherlands, and only one met her dutch husband through an internet website. the ages of the dutch partners ranged from 56 to 77 years old. their past marital statuses varied: six of the 12 men had never been married and the rest had been married to dutch women and were fathers to children born to former partners. the occupations of their dutch husbands while they worked in the netherlands varied from factory manager to engineer, government official, owner of a small business, journalist and factory worker. motivations to return: the interplay between mobility, gender, and ageing the gendered phenomenon of thai-dutch transnational marriages and bothways migration pathways is briefly presented. mainstream thai migration to the netherlands is a relatively recent phenomenon, having started in the late 1970s (ten brummelhuis & stengs, 2007). this contemporary flow predominantly involved thai women marrying dutch men. it was largely the result of globalization, mass tourism in thailand, economic difficulties in the agricultural sector at home, and an increased demand for labor in the service sector in urban thailand (lapanun, 2019; statham, 2020; suksomboon, 2009; tosakul, 2010). recently, the reverse flow of these thai-dutch partners moving back to thailand has become apparent. it is difficult to know the exact number of dutch migrants in thailand due to blurry and problematic boundaries when categorizing between a tourist, an expat, and a migrant. however, data acquired through staff working at the dutch embassy in bangkok estimated the numbers of the dutch migrants in thailand to have been around 20,000 in 2020. census surveys show that 192,000 western foreigners resided in thailand in 2002, numbers that increased to 260,000 in 2010, with 75% of them being male (husa et al., 2014; lafferty & maher, 2020, p. 1635). based on my interview data, all 12 women had migrated and resided with their dutch spouses in the netherlands for periods of between five and 31 years before moving back to thailand. currently, the women and their dutch husbands have been living in thailand from between three and 12 years. their residences are scattered around thailand, including places such as chiang mai, nakhon ratchasima, bangkok, nakhon pathom, rayong, chanta buri, and krabi. the thai-dutch spouses’ motivations to move back to thailand are explored in the following sections. reaching the life transition through ageing is one of the most important forces driving the transnational partners to relocate to thailand. prior to their move to thailand, six dutch husbands decided to take early retirement, while only one had met retirement age as regulated by the dutch pension system. a warm climate, having sunlight year-round, a convenient lifestyle, as well as cheaper taxes were all factors taken into account when the thai-dutch partners made the decision to move to thailand. thai government policies have underwritten a new direction in the thai tourist industry by promoting thailand as a global medical hub as well as a favored aseas 15(2) | 259 panitee brown destination for long stay tourism (sunanta & jaisuekun, 2022) and have enhanced the popularity of thai tourism, leading to a scattering of foreign enclaves in many parts of thailand. in turn, these new enclaves have boosted many local businesses who respond to foreigners’ needs. the dutch husbands felt that this atmosphere allowed them to indulge in both local thai and international lifestyles. additionally, the amount of their pensions after deducting wage tax ranged from around eur 1,000 to 3,000 per month1 (together with their own savings), and can allow the couples to have decent, comfortable lifestyles in thailand, which would be difficult if they remained in the netherlands. recently, however, these dutch husbands noticed that the cost of living in thailand has gradually increased. this was the case with arjan (73 years old) and nang (49 years old) who returned and have lived in thailand for 11 years. nang graduated from secondary school, originates from nakhon ratchasima, and has one 22-year-old daughter from her previous marriage with a thai man. arjan was previously married to a dutch woman, has three adult children (now with their own children), and later divorced. arjan and nang first met each other in belgium in 2003, when nang travelled there under a tourist visa. after marriage and migration to the netherlands, nang was a housewife and arjan worked as a government official in the military. when nang had resided in the netherlands for five years and arjan was 62 years old they moved to thailand: i should have retired at the age of 65 in accordance with the dutch pension regulations at that time. i searched for the pension information and found out that i could retire earlier. even though i wouldn’t receive the full amount of the pension payment if i retired early, the amount that i obtained is enough for us to enjoy our life in thailand. i love warm weather, friendliness of thais, and vibrant lifestyles. we bought a plot of land right next to nang’s mother in nakhon ratchasima many years ago and built our house two years ago before moving back to thailand. (arjan, interview, 20 february 2020) the distinctive age gap within most of these cross-cultural marriages has significant impact on the thai-dutch couples’ individual preferences regarding their mobility to thailand. although the thai women do plan for their future return, many of them were hesitant to return so soon in the face of their dutch husband’s strong determination to move to thailand. the ages of their dutch husbands when they first arrived in thailand were between 57 and 70 years old, while the women’s ages were between 1 the dutch pension system constitutes three pillars: the universal old age state pension (aow), the work-related pension, and the private commercial pension provision. the basic state pension (first pillar) is provided to all dutch citizens at the age of 65 in the form of a flat-rate pension benefit, which in principle guarantees 70% of the net minimum wage. although there is no obligation for employers to make pension commitments to their employees, the vast majority of those employed in the netherlands (over 90%) participate in an occupational pension scheme. if the collective labor agreement lasts for 35 to 40 years, the total pension benefit will be around 70% of the final salary, including the first pillar benefit. the third pillar of the dutch pension system consists of the individual pension provisions. these are obtained from insurance companies offering schemes for individual pension provisions. they can be obtained through annuity or endowment insurance (suksomboon, 2009). the amount of pension that interviewed dutch husbands received varied by the wage tax of the pension, the duration of living and working in the netherlands, and their living arrangement (living alone, living with others, or living outside the netherlands). for more information, see https://www.svb.nl/en/aow-pension (sociale verzekeringsbank, 2022). 260 | aseas 15(2) coming home: thai-dutch couples’ spatial trajectories their late thirties and early fifties. having lived in the netherlands from between five and 31 years, these thai women had become familiar with the dutch way of life, had built up their careers, and cultivated strong social networks with thai female friends and acquaintances. given these circumstances, electing immobility by remaining in the netherlands for the time being appeared to be the more favored option for most (10 of 12) interviewed women rather than realizing actual mobility by returning to thailand. research on trans-border marriages illuminates the influence of gender roles in determining who will move (anthias, 2012; lu chia-wen, 2005; statham, 2020). in other words, the women, as wives, are expected to be the person to migrate and follow their husband to his country of origin. the cases of the thai-dutch both-ways migration pathways are not an exemption to this pattern. initially, all the women experienced marriage migration to the netherlands in order to build a transnational partnership with their dutch husbands and experience socio-economic mobility. later, their husbands wished to move to thailand. despite their initial hesitations, 11 of the interviewed women felt that they, as dutiful wives, should fulfill their husband’s wish to migrate. as a result, these women finally agreed with their spouse to move back to thailand. while nearly all of the women ‘fulfilled’ their gender role as wives by following their partner to thailand, only one interviewed woman who experienced marital separation decided to move to thailand on her own. taking the cultural notion of the family in dutch society into account, the distinctive family relationships are reflected in two different terms: gezin and familie. the former denotes the conjugal family, which consists of spouses and minor children, whereas the latter is composed of extended relatives (consanguineal). the gezin is the first priority of a married couple (brown, 2016; ganesh, 2005). due to this family norm, the women’s frequent sociality with their thai-dutch adult children, who married and had their own children, gradually decreased. when the woman became old-aged and widowhood with the lack of daily support from their adult children, their spatial movement to thailand was deemed to be a reasonable alternative. it should be additionally noted that in this case none of the adult children, either the thai-dutch or those born from the women’s previous marriages and had followed their mother to the netherlands, had returned to thailand with their parents. this pattern is exemplified by jib who graduated secondary school, is currently 61 years old, and returned to thailand for six years. after she married and migrated to the netherlands in 1985, she had many jobs including domestic work, sales, and waitressing. in 2004, she started her own business by running a thai restaurant in amsterdam with her husband’s investment: our restaurant was very popular, and we got a lot of customers. running the business together created marital tensions for years and finally led to our divorce. my daughter has three children and lives in the netherlands. i had nothing to worry about her. i decided to sell the thai restaurant that i had run for 11 years. i lived there for 35 years. it is my second home. i was heart-broken to leave the netherlands. i felt like i was leaving home (the netherlands) and i was coming home (thailand) at the same time. anyhow, i think it is like a new beginning for me to move back to thailand. (jib, interview, 12 august 2020) aseas 15(2) | 261 panitee brown after returning, jib gradually invested some of her savings in buying some properties in thailand. she bought a house in the same neighborhood as her brother in a suburb of bangkok. she also bought a unit in a condominium in sukhumvit, located in the central business district of bangkok, and rented the room to expats to earn some extra monthly income. she travelled back and forth between bangkok and nakhon sawan in central thailand to provide care for her 85-year-old mother. therefore, marriage migration provided her with opportunities to accumulate mobility capital in terms of savings over the years. in the later stage of her life, she could activate this mobility capital for her actual return to thailand and engage in local investments. these savings have also been transformed into mobility capital, which funds her translocal mobilities within thailand to fulfill her gender role as a dutiful daughter. in contrast to the women aged between their late thirties and early fifties, those in their early sixties were less reluctant to engage in mobility to return home. however, they also felt some initial regret about leaving the netherlands. these women and their dutch husbands both became older at a similar time and recognized the uncertainty of their late life course. if the thai women remained in the netherlands, it would be very difficult for them, as older migrants, trying to overcome grief and deal with all official documents in dutch by themselves should their husbands pass away before them. in addition, an asymmetrical reciprocity and morality of bun-khun relations, the children’s gratitude to the parents, are imposed heavily on daughters in thai society (brown, 2016). the women’s obligation to take care of their parents’ well-being is one of the motivations that once drove their marriage migration to the netherlands. in the later phase of the women’s life cycle, this gender role of being a dutiful daughter also propels them to return to thailand to care for their aged parents. therefore, returning to thailand with their dutch spouse allows them to some extent to be reliant on their relatives in times of calamity and also fulfill their lifelong familial obligation of being a dutiful daughter, as described by aoi below. aoi (recently 61 years old) completed primary school and later married a thai man. however, they divorced after 10 years and had no children. in 1995, her female thai friend who lived in the netherlands invited her for a three-month holiday to the netherlands and introduced her to henk who worked as an engineer. he had been married to a dutch woman, had two children, and later separated. after a year-long relationship, aoi married henk and migrated to the netherlands in 1996. after residing in the netherlands for 20 years, they returned to thailand and have been residing in nakhon pathom for five years: i stayed in the netherlands for 20 years. i had a major role in assisting the thai community to arrange many buddhist ceremonies at the thai temple in waalwijk for many years. i knew and maintained good relations with many thai female friends. i felt very sad to leave the netherlands. it is a good choice for us to move back though. henk is now 67 years old. in case he died, it would be very difficult for me to live alone there. after returning to thailand for two years, i made a short trip to surin (the northeastern thailand) and stayed there six months with my mother who had chronic sickness and gave her daily care until the end of her life. i felt very proud of myself to always be a dutiful daughter. (aoi, interview, 27 july 2020) 262 | aseas 15(2) coming home: thai-dutch couples’ spatial trajectories economic motivation is highlighted as one of the main factors encouraging migrants to migrate from the less-developed global south to the more-developed regions of the global north. in contrast, return migration to some degree involves the reverse flow of migrants from the global north to the global south, and is likely to be portrayed as the later-life spatial movement of retired, ageing migrants (cassarino, 2004; de hass et al., 2015; hunter, 2011). my findings question such stereotypes by revealing that some thai-dutch couples moved from the netherlands (regarded as a relatively affluent western country) to thailand (regarded as a developing nation), in their quest for economic advancement and other kinds of new opportunities that were available to them (see also similar findings in botterill, 2017; husa et al., 2014). this study also stresses that some transnational spouses who opted for mobility from the netherlands to thailand are not necessarily retired pensioners. rather, their ages range from their mid-thirties to early fifties when returned. uneven and ever-changing political and economic forces across the globe have shaped migrants’ diverse practices of (im)mobilities. the economic crisis in europe between 2008 and 2012 has been the most severe economic recession since the great depression. this crisis was affected by increasing private debt accumulated in current account deficits and in mortgage credits, houseprice inflation, and an overheated financial market. regions that were flourishing before the crisis were then hit in more than one way: relatively well-paid work in construction-related sectors disappeared, middle class households were left in negative equity, and white-collar workers lost their jobs (crescenzia et al., 2016, p. 15). because of the lasting impacts of the economic recession and the high unemployment rate in the netherlands, some thai women and their dutch partners, aged between their mid-thirties and early fifties, became unemployed during this period. as there appeared to be a tendency for gradually growing labor demands in the asian market, these couples envisioned more job opportunities for them if they enacted their mobility to asia. prominently, transnational marriage plays a significant role in the selection of thailand as the relocation destination since thailand is the women’s motherland and the place where the women already have familial and social networks. the dutch husbands are to some degree familiar with living conditions in thailand due to their previous regular holidays to thailand. from their points of view, moving back to thailand thus seems to be the most logical pathway. the life history of nok is an example. nok (39 years old) and her dutch husband jaap (57 years old) have been married for 12 years and have two daughters aged five and seven years respectively. they have been living in thailand for three years. she migrated to the netherlands to pursue her master’s degree in hotel management in 2007 and met jaap there. after five years in the netherlands, nok and her two daughters followed jaap to india since he was offered work as an engineer in the petroleum industry there: after we lived in india for four years, we returned to the netherlands. because of the economic recession, many employees in the company were laid off and jaap was unfortunately one of them. he was finally hired as a freelance consultant and made trips sometimes to asia. we thought that moving to thailand is more convenient for him to do business trips to malaysia and brunei. we aseas 15(2) | 263 panitee brown were worried about our daughters’ adjustment and their education at first, but kids can adjust easily wherever they live. then, we chose to reside in krabi, my home province. as krabi is a well-known tourist site for foreigners, i applied my experience in hotel management and took cooking courses in bangkok. then, i opened a restaurant to sell western foods and drinks. (nok, interview, 27 december 2020) continuous accumulation of mobility capital the women and their dutch husbands’ relocation to thailand became possible as a result of the women’s prior marriage migration to the netherlands and their accumulation of mobility capital while residing there. mobility scholars draw on bourdieu’s (1986) ideas to highlight the convertible attribute of different forms of capital. these migrants have accumulated diverse mobility experiences and skills that they can capitalize on by converting their cross-border practices into other types of capital and vice versa (moret, 2020, p. 239). remarkably, while residing in the netherlands, many thai women, especially from rural and lower socio-economic backgrounds, worked very hard to earn their own income as much as possible, reflecting their attempts to build up economic capital. they felt that they could count on this economic capital, combined with their husband’s pension, when they returned to thailand in the future. nearly all of the women interviewed had broadened their knowledge and also put a lot of effort into meeting the required criteria of the integration regimes (such as passing the specified compulsory levels of dutch language and the integration examination) in order to be granted dutch citizenship and to obtain a dutch passport. to some extent, this legal capital can secure the women’s legal residency in the netherlands, offering them some old-aged pension according to the duration of residence and work that they have built up; it also affords them temporal cross-border mobility to many countries without a tourist visa. mobility capital had also been continuously accumulated by these migrants across transnational social fields. all of the thai women interviewed, especially those less educated ones from rural backgrounds, uphold their filial obligations by providing for their families in thailand via regular remittances, which range from eur 100 to 700 per month. for many years, their family’s well-being had been improving, reflecting the convertibility of economic capital into the advancement of the natal family’s social mobility. the accumulation of economic, legal, and social capital across borders therefore leads to mobility capital, which enables the transnational partners to gain access to and support for their actual movement to thailand as well as other forms of temporal mobilities such as short holiday trips in thailand and overseas. although marriage migration narrows the socio-economic disparity among thai migrant women, access to and the accumulation of mobility capital among them is uneven. specifically, while residing in the netherlands, some less-educated women with rural origins are obliged to send regular remittances to their family members in thailand for many years, affecting the cumulative amount of their own savings for the future. with limits on their finances, the women and their dutch spouses are likely to reside near the women’s family in their hometowns after their relocation to thailand. the price of land and the cost of house construction in rural areas 264 | aseas 15(2) coming home: thai-dutch couples’ spatial trajectories are relatively lower than those in the tourist cities. locating their residence in the women’s hometown also suits their preference for a rural way of life and their interdependence on reciprocal familial relations. although many women from rural and less-educated backgrounds were unable to accumulate a large amount of savings, they felt that their marriage migration, pension, and mobility capital that they had amassed did enable them to have a decent lifestyle after moving back to thailand. their experience and knowledge of living overseas for many years and their improved english and dutch language fluency also enhanced their confidence and self-esteem. these benefits and opportunities could not be achieved if they had not experienced marriage migration and had remained in thailand. these factors are evident in the life story of sai (46 years old). sai met jasper (56 years old) when he vacationed in thailand in 2001. they first met at an internet café in bangkok, where sai worked as a cashier. in 2003, sai married jasper and migrated to the netherlands with her son from a previous marriage with a thai man. sai and jasper ran their own business providing booth rentals for exhibitions in the netherlands: while i was residing in the netherlands, i gradually bought a plot of land near my hometown in nakorn rachasima and finally owned 10 rai (around 3.9 ac) in total. the economic recession in the netherlands (starting in 2008) had an impact on our business. jasper would like to move to thailand. we started to build two houses and to grow fruit trees on the pieces of land we bought in thailand under the supervision of my brother in thailand (in 2010). we moved to thailand in 2012. i only graduated vocational school. if i would have remained in thailand, i don’t think i would have been able to improve my family’s well-being. as jasper didn’t receive the old age pension yet, i earned an income from being an informal property agent and selling fruit from our own farm. (sai, interview, 24 july 2020) the thai migrant women with higher educational qualifications encountered difficulties in securing highly skilled work when they first arrived in the netherlands. nevertheless, they attempted to improve their skills and knowledge by attending dutch language and job training courses regularly. some of them were later recruited to work in airline ticketing, bank managing, and thai language teaching. as their socio-economic status was originally middle class, they remitted money to their parents irregularly. after moving back to thailand, they were likely to buy a dwelling through a property development company in tourist cities such as hua hin, rayong, and chiang mai. compared to the women with rural origins, women with middle class backgrounds are not only the main financial support for their elderly parents. their siblings share medical and long-term care expenses for their parents. as a result, women like pan were able to achieve a relatively comfortable lifestyle in thailand. pan (68 years old) graduated with a master’s degree in education in the u.s.a. and used to work as a government officer at the ministry of education. she married theo (67 years old) and moved to the netherlands in 1990. after attending a compulsory dutch language course and several other training courses over four years, pan was able to be a thai language teacher and thai-dutch translator. theo, a freelance journalist, received a job offer to make documentaries in south-east asia for a dutch television company, so they decided to move to thailand in 2008: aseas 15(2) | 265 panitee brown my parents own a big piece of land in sukhumvit (bangkok). after theo and i returned to thailand, my mother asked me to build my own house in the same compound as her house, like my younger sister did. i refused to do so as it would be more convenient for theo to have privacy. we decided to buy a house from a house development project in hua hin. property is more expensive in a touristic city. with the money we gained from selling our house in the netherlands, we can afford it though. as my father worked as a government officer, he received a pension and medical payments when ill. my brother worked as a flight manager in the airlines. i didn’t need to send regular remittances to my parents and family when i was in the netherlands. without any regular financial burden with the family, l was able to save. anyway, as a dutiful daughter, i have to provide daily care to my parents. i sometimes travel from hua hin to bangkok on the weekends to spend time and care for my parents. (pan, interview, 11 july 2020) the trajectories of mobilities occur not only when migrants undertake actual geographical movement, but also when they imagine and plan for their future mobility while they are currently immobile. returning to thailand is not a sudden life event; the thai-dutch spouses instead envisage this future mobility through waiting, arranging many activities, and investing resources in making their plan come to fruition. while earning their living in the netherlands, they had spent time, ranging from one to six years, to prepare for their actual relocation to thailand. for example, when they had holidays in thailand every year, they spent time looking for land or visiting the housing property sites that might be their residence after moving back. for the women who bought large, vacant plots of land nearby their family’s residence, their close kin would supervise their house construction and the planting of a fruit farm. these thai-dutch couples visited once or twice a year to check on the progress of their house construction. after the construction was completed, they would stay in their own house when they came on holidays to thailand and later they resided there after moving back to thailand. of the 12 thai-dutch couples interviewed, only two spouses still kept both dwellings, one in the netherlands and one in thailand. those who sold their house or terminated their house/apartment rental contract argued that it is very costly and requires maintenance to keep both residences in thailand and the netherlands. findings from my study demonstrate that thai-dutch couples’ relocation to thailand should not be regarded as merely a unidirectional movement from the netherlands to thailand during a supposed sedentary stage. instead, my research challenges the existing stereotype of sedentariness in thai-european marriage migration. in other words, the return to the homes of these women does not signify the ending of their mobility and permanent settlement. rather, their trajectories of mobilities also encompass the continued moving back and forth between thailand and the netherlands as well as the local process of daily spatial movement, which are shaped by the gender roles of being a wife and a daughter. for instance, after noi (55 years old) had lived in the netherlands for 20 years, she and johan (75 years old) moved to thailand for six years. when she was in the netherlands, she worked at a bank. in 2012, she was unemployed when she agreed to johan’s wish to move to thailand. however, their mobility increased even further: 266 | aseas 15(2) coming home: thai-dutch couples’ spatial trajectories i got a job offer at the bank in singapore in 2013 and i decided to move there, while johan lived in a unit of the condominium near the beach in rayong [a province in the coastline of the thai gulf]. when the year contract ended, i was recruited to work as a financial product development manager for the international market at the bank’s head office located in the central business district of bangkok. i rented a room in an apartment with a walking distance to my office and i lived there during the week. every friday evening, i drove from bangkok to rayong to spend some time with johan. i returned on sunday afternoon and visited my mother in nonthaburi [in a suburb of bangkok]. (noi, interview, 8 february 2020) choices and control over their mobility and immobility in the ageing stage of the life cycle among the thai-dutch couples varied unequally according to their accumulated mobility capital, their marital relations, the spouse’s relationship with thai family members, and potential resources for taking care of their elders. the thaidutch couples who earned a good income from their skilled occupations during their time in the netherlands received a generous pension and had enough savings for the potential for more alternatives in their mobility, immobility, and provision of aged care. for instance, johan (75 years old) worked as a shoe designer and noi (55 years old) worked at the bank in the netherlands and they had accumulated a decent amount in terms of pensions and savings. they were able to buy a spacious condominium unit in rayong, thailand and kept their house in the netherlands: i like to keep our house in the netherlands as well. if you buy health insurance in the netherlands, you are required to have your name under a house registration in the netherlands. health insurance in thailand is expensive for aged foreigners. there are many exemptions in the coverage too. health insurance in the netherlands is more reliable in terms of claims. i make a trip to the netherlands every year and have stayed there for one to two months to organize documents, tax payments, and house maintenance. if it is possible, i prefer to remain in thailand and hire a live-in maid to provide me with daily care under the supervision of noi in the last stage of my life. (johan, interview, 8 february 2020) seven dutch husbands in this study have resided in thailand without health insurance. they used to have health insurance when they initially migrated to thailand. however, the thai insurance companies had many claim exemptions, and international insurance companies were very expensive depending on their age, health conditions, and coverage. without health insurance, if they have a minor illness, they can visit a private hospital or a clinic. however, dutch husbands with less pension and savings would visit the government hospital in the case of severe sickness. significantly, all the dutch men interviewed expected to rely on their thai wives for care in their old age. none of them mentioned their adult children or relatives in the netherlands as potential resources for support as they aged; this illuminates their experiences of precarity in terms of their access to medical services and elderly care in thailand (botterill, 2017; jaisuekun & sunanta, 2016; lafferty & maher, 2020). as demonstrated by arjan’s account: aseas 15(2) | 267 panitee brown you can see that many male foreigners are likely to be much older than their thai wives. when i get older, i expect my wife [nang] to care for me. if nang would pass aways before me, my daughter-in-law and nang’s relatives, who live not far from us, might come to take care of me. anyhow, if i needed intensive daily care for many years, i am not sure if i could rely on them. if it is possible, my preference is to die before nang. i want to live the rest of my life and die in thailand. i reserved my grave-to-be in the cemetery at one church in nakorn rachasima. (arjan, interview, 20 february 2020) conclusion this paper utilizes the notions of mobility, mobility capital, gender, and ageing to shed light on the interrelationship between migrants’ marriage migration and their subsequent experiences of return migration. i illustrate this dynamic through the cases of thai-dutch transnational marriages and their movements from the netherlands to thailand. these examples underline the interplay between gender, ageing, and the unequal socio-economic, global forces that shape the transnational spouses’ perceptions and practices of the mobility of return. the thai women aged between their late thirties and the early fifties were initially reluctant to return to thailand, while their dutch husbands who had reached the age of retirement wished to do so. in contrast, the women in their sixties or above agreed with their ageing husband to return home, as they took their later life stage into account and their possible dependency on their natal kin in times of crisis. however, the most significant factor in determining the women’s ultimate decision to move back to thailand was the expected gender roles: as a wife who should follow her husband, and as a dutiful daughter who has a responsibility to care for her elderly parents. moreover, migration and relocation are widely perceived to be the movement of retired, old-aged pensioners from the socioeconomically more developed global north to the less developed global south in their pursuit of better and convenient lifestyles (green, 2015; howard, 2008; husa et al., 2014). this study illuminates the greater complexity of this phenomenon by highlighting the geographical mobility from the netherlands to thailand of younger thai-dutch couples (some of them relocated to thailand with their little children) as they seek to acquire better economic opportunities in thailand and asia, as shaped by uneven and changing global economic influences. relocation to thailand involves not only the migrants’ spatial and social mobilities, but also the continuity of their accumulation of mobility capital across transnational fields. thai-dutch partners have both intentionally and unintentionally accumulated mobility experiences, skills, and resources, such as economic, social, and legal capital over the years and converted them into access to a broad range of potential and actual mobilities to thailand. the resources and capital that the ageing couples have continuously accumulated across borders will probably provide them with the ability not to have to move and therefore die in thailand. thus, mobility capital is also associated with the migrant’s ability to remain immobile (moret, 2020) – in other words, not to move voluntarily. it should be noted that this mobility capital has been unequally accessible, and shaped by the migrants’ socio-economic backgrounds and their changing marital and familial relations. 268 | aseas 15(2) coming home: thai-dutch couples’ spatial trajectories the concepts of mobility and mobility capital are useful because they improve our understanding of the complex interconnections between marriage migration and relocation to thailand by thai women and their european husbands. the practices of waiting, hesitation to move, imagining the return, preparing to move, having actually returned, travelling back and forth between thailand and the netherlands, as well as having local spatial movement in daily life signify the fluid, complicated and sometimes fragmented characteristics of the thai-dutch spouses’ trajectories of mobility. the women’s paradoxical sentiments about their return ̶ that they felt as if they were “leaving home (the netherlands) and coming home (thailand) at the same time” ̶ is well reflected in their trajectories of (im)mobility. significantly, this paper explored a gender perspective and the mobilities paradigm to shed light on the crucial role played by a dynamic range of factors: unequal global, socio-economic and geographical power, gender ideology, cultural notions of the family, ageing, and mobility capital. all these elements shape the transnational partners’ perceptions and practices of mobility and stasis both in global, local, and day-to-day contexts (cresswell, 2010; hannam et al., 2006; sheller & urry, 2006, p. 211). the lived experiences of thai-european marriage couples who relocated to thailand and are over 80 years old, which is considered to be at the latest ageing stage of the life-cycle, have been largely overlooked by existing research (e.g., sunanta & jaisuekun, 2022). future research can further explore the consequences of demographic ageing of thai-european couples, particularly in terms of examining their (im)mobility and their access to care at this frailer stage of life.  references anthias, f. 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(2010). cross-border marriages: experiences of village women from northeast thailand with western men. in wen-shan yang & m. chia-wen lu (eds.), asian cross-border marriage migration: demographic patterns and social issues (pp. 179-199). amsterdam university press. vaiou, d. (2012). gendered mobilities and border-crossings: from elbasan to athens. gender, place and culture, 19(2), 249-262. yeoh, b. s. (2021). conceptual contours of migration studies in and from asia. international migration, 59(6), 225-233. aseas 15(2) | 271 panitee brown about the author panitee brown is an assistant professor in the faculty of sociology and anthropology, thammasat university, thailand. she is interested in marriage migration, elderly care, family relations, and gender issues. her current research focuses on the impacts of the covid-19 pandemic on women’s intimate labor in bangkok, thailand. ► contact: spanitee@hotmail.com acknowledgements i am grateful for the financial support of this research granted by thammasat university research fund (contract no. tugr 2/6/2562). i also thank the two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions. disclosure the author declares no conflict of interest. mailto:spanitee@hotmail.com 272 | aseas 15(2) aseas 14(1) | 129 “i am not here for fun”: the satirical facebook group royalists marketplace, queer tiktoking, and the new democracy movement in thailand: an interview with pavin chachavalpongpun wolfram schaffara a university of tübingen, germany ► schaffar, w. (2020). “i am not here for fun”: the satirical facebook group royalist marketplace, queer tiktoking, and the new democracy movement in thailand: an interview with pavin chachavalpongpun. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 14(1), 129-137. pavin chachavalpongpun is an associate professor at the center for southeast asian studies at kyoto university. he has published extensively on thailand and southeast asian politics. he is also politically active and does not shy away from discussing and criticizing the monarchy, which for a long time was taboo – in academia as well as in political campaigns. in april 2020, prof. pavin chachavalpongpun founded the facebook group royalists marketplace (รอยัลลิสต์มาร์เก็ตเพลส). the name alludes to other facebook groups, like the chulalongkorn marketplace or thammasat marketplace, which were set up by former students of those universities as platforms for selling and purchasing items, and socializing in times of the covid-19 lockdown. pavin’s group, however, is a persiflage of these initiatives. he developed a unique style of political communication, with a distinct mixture of memes, tiktok and youtube videos, together with serious academic debates, which made his facebook group the leading platform for criticism of the monarchy. this interview took place via zoom between kyoto and cologne at the end of august 2020. information on the dynamic developments that have unfolded since then has been added. keywords: facebook; queer/lgbtiq; students’ movement; thai monarchy; tiktok  background the success of the royalists marketplace1 was unprecedented: the group became the fastest growing facebook group in thailand ever, and within only a few months attracted more than two million members, making it one of the largest facebook groups in the world by the end of october 2020. when the new round of pro-democracy protests, organized by a students’ movement, started across thailand mid-july 2020, banners with the logo of the royalists marketplace were seen in bangkok, chiangmai, ubon ratchathani, and other places. 1 see royalists marketplace facebook group site at https://www.facebook.com/ groups/634791290746287. for an early account on the project by its founder see pavin (2020a). im dialog  in dialogue w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 39 “i am not here for fun” 130 | aseas 14(1) on 24 august 2020, however, facebook bowed to the order of the thai government and switched off access to the group within thailand. as a reaction to the international outcry that followed, facebook announced that they would take legal action against the censorship order of the thai government (beech, 2020; pavin, 2020b). pavin reacted by founding a new group, which attracted even more members within a few days. the spectacular success of the royalists marketplace, its ban in thailand, and the reaction of facebook are watershed events in the development of social media in southeast asia, and globally. these incidents also mark a turning point in the power relation between the de-facto social media monopolist of facebook, the new authoritarian governments that have spread around the world (einzenberger & schaffar, 2018), and social movements contesting these regimes in the wake of the covid-19 crisis. figure 1 (left). a banner with logo of the royalists marketplace at a democracy demonstration in ubon ratchathani on 19 july 2020. (photo taken from the facebook account of pavin chachavalpongpun). figure 2 (right). a photo of pavin chachavalpongpun on his personal facebook account. the banner on the t-shirt reads: royalists marketplace. the line in the post says: i am not here for fun! (photo by pavin chachavalpongpun). interview wolfram schaffar: professor pavin, in thailand, the majority of the people do not have a university degree, they come from rural areas in the north or the north-east, and many are farmers or workers. a highly sophisticated academic vocabulary is often being used by the elite to exclude these people from the political discourse. i have the impression that, with your communication style on facebook, you are reaching both ends of the social hierarchy. wolfram schaffar aseas 14(1) | 131 pavin chachavalpongpun: i think i was born with this ability to communicate with different types of people. and you are right: the other day, the japanese police came in order to update the situation about my security. they also asked about the royalists marketplace: “we checked this facebook group and we were told that there is not a lot of substance in it – basically you just make fun and joke around.” i got a bit angry because there actually is a lot of substance in there, and the entertaining side of it is very intentional. we have over one million members,2 and not everyone is educated and understands politics like academics do. for that reason, i have to cater for different appetites, and i think i’m the person who can do it. sometimes i pick up a political conversation and i turn it into a tiktok clip – something that might be too difficult in isolation, but once it has been digested through tiktok in this mode of entertainment, everyone can understand it better. schaffar: since facebook took ground in thailand in 2006/2007, it has been dominated by royalist and conservative groups and movements – among others by private vigilante groups like the rubbish collector organization3. with your group of more than 1,5 million members, you have effectively shifted the balance of power on facebook. how do you explain this success? pavin: i don’t know whether i would conclude that facebook has been a domain for royalists like the rubbish collector organization and three or four other groups of this kind. it was more a constant contest between each other. maybe, the nasty tactics used by rienthong nanna, the founder of the rubbish collector organization, like organizing violent mobs that bullied and attacked people, and the fact that facebook did not want to do anything about it, made those groups prominent. but i want to be fair with facebook. there has always been some space for us as well. for example, my personal facebook account had long been there, and i have been very vocal. yet, there has not been any attempt from anyone to close it down. moving on to your question on the reasons for the success of the royalists marketplace. i think it’s the combination of many factors. covid-19 might be one reason and maybe the most important one. people stayed home and got bored, and actually that’s exactly how i got the idea to set up the group. i surfed around and looked at chulalongkorn and thammasat marketplaces and i thought: “why can’t i just do another marketplace – a royalists marketplace?” the first week was most hilarious. we saw someone offering the teak bed where king ananda was shot.4 this is something i would not have forecast. i just laughed out loud. then someone wanted to sell a blue diamond; there is a rumor that the queen 2 at the time of the interview, the royalists marketplace counted roughly 1,4 million members. by the end of october, the number passed two million. 3 the rubbish collector organization (องค์กรเก็บขยะแผ่นดิน) is a right-wing, royalist vigilante group on facebook, founded by rienthong nanna, who defined the aim of the group as to clean thailand from social rubbish. the strategy is to screen social media, especially facebook, and report cases of lèse-majesté to the police (schaffar, 2016). 4 in june 1946, king ananda mahidol was found shot dead in his bed in the grand palace in bangkok. the circumstances surrounding his death stayed mysterious and have been the subject of much controversy. “i am not here for fun” 132 | aseas 14(1) has it.5 this story is a big issue among royalists. i offered a haircut for a dog.6 and someone offered a mansion dismantling service. you know, because after koi, the mistress of the present king, fell from grace, she was put in jail and her mansion was dismantled.7 first, i did not pay much attention, but as time went by, i saw a good number of people coming in. maybe people were bored or curious, and they might have found it entertaining at the beginning. but when the number was growing, i brought in very serious discussions. schaffar: but you still published tiktok videos in between, no? pavin: in between, yes. again, first of all, i became part of that stupid trend that everyone had to do tiktok. so, the first of my tiktok videos was just about dancing and being camp.8 then people liked it every time i did it and that’s when i turned it into politics. i called it political tiktoking, and this became an element of the royalists marketplace, too. schaffar: but with that you are part of a wider trend, as we saw at the occasion of donald trump’s electoral campaign in tulsa. he boasted about the high number of participants who registered despite of covid-19 warnings, but then large parts of the upper ranks in the hall stayed empty. analysts later claimed that trump was tricked by tiktokers and k-pop fans, who reserved tickets for his rally with no intention of going. the parallelism between your and the us-american political tiktoking is in the style. the us tiktokers, too, did not so much publish serious appeals to mobilize people, but used the macarena dance to spread the word of their campaign in an indirect, funny, and very ironic way.9 pavin: i have to admit, i did not know about this incident. on my part, the political tiktoking developed very organically and the parallel is unintentional and maybe coincidental. but concerning the style, tiktok basically compels you to be camp. you have only one minute. if i want to open tiktok and talk to people about militarization of thai politics? no, this doesn’t work. tiktok encourages you to be queer, and it worked perfectly with my personality, too. let me illustrate a little bit my writing skills and communication strategy on the 5 the blue diamond affair refers to a stunning case of theft and a chain of killings, which developed into a still unresolved diplomatic conflict between thailand and saudi arabia. a thai servant to the palace in saudi arabia stole a large amount of jewelry, including a blue diamond, and brought it to thailand. although he was caught, most of the precious gems seem to have gone lost, and several special investigators from saudi arabia, who were sent to thailand, were killed under mysterious circumstances. 6 this refers to foofoo, the poodle of king vajiralongkorn. the fact that the pet was bestowed the military rank of air chief marshal was commented on in serious newspapers and left political analysts bewildered. 7 the bestowal of the rank and title as royal consort to sineenat wongvajirapakdi, called koi, her fall from grace and the most recent reinstatement, attracted worldwide attention and led to incredulous amazement. 8 camp is an aesthetic style, related to kitsch, which regards something as appealing because of its ironic value and bad taste. the way pavin uses the term here draws on the american writer susan sontag’s essay, “notes on ‘camp’” (1964), where she discussed the relation to homosexuality and emphasized its key elements as artifice, frivolity, naïve middle-class pretentiousness, and shocking excess. 9 some examples of this campaign are published on youtube, see, for example, https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=utertzrld2y&feature=youtu.be. wolfram schaffar aseas 14(1) | 133 royalists marketplace. in the morning, i write something serious, always about one page, as part of a longer series. in the past, i came up with four different series. i wrote a series about the collapse of the russian absolute monarchy, and then i wrote about how queen victoria of england ruined her family. the third one was on thai politics and the monarchy, of which i wrote about 30 parts. in the evening, i write another chapter of what i called likay luang (ลิเกหลวง) or royal likay. likay is a thai popular folk theater, where they dress up all over the top, with gold and diamonds and loud kitsch music, which goes like “chingchingchingching”. so, the term likay also carries a connotation of being over the top, being surreal, being just not like in the real world. i take real stories, but rewrite them in a likay style, and i have already written about 50 episodes. for example, i wrote one episode on how king rama x locked up his previous wife. in the episode, i pretend to be the wife and start like this: oh my god, i cannot believe it! even though i love him so much, this is what he’s doing to me! he has another wife and i got so angry. that’s why i went to munich, and when i saw them, i slapped her in the face and that’s why my husband got mad at me and put me in jail. it goes on like this, and i even use the real names. these days, i do tiktok less, because i think it started to get a little bit out of fashion and i don’t want to be the one to hang on to it. that’s also another tactic: don’t hang on to things that are going to be obsolete. but yesterday, i did one more tiktok: koi, the mistress of king rama x, who fell from grace, was released from prison and is now being reinstalled in munich. so, i picked an old camp song in thai with the line “i am returning”, in order to accompany the likay luang of “koi, returning as mistress”. and as usual, i performed with an inch of eyelashes as i sing, “i’m returning to you, please baby . . .” (see figure 3). i actually invest a lot of time in the royalists marketplace. schaffar: let us briefly touch upon the social base of the royalists marketplace. in the case of the new students’ movement, there has been the criticism that they are mainly from urban, higher-middle-class families, who grew up with a specific pop culture – harry potter and ham-taro10 – which they are now using as repertoire for the demonstrations. 10 ham-taro is a character of a children’s manga series from japan, which is highly popular in thailand, albeit mostly in urban, middle-class families. ham-taro depicts a little hamster. for the demonstrations, the students danced around the democracy monument in bangkok adopted ham-taro’s song, singing: “the most delicious food is taxpayers’ money”, and “dissolve the parliament! dissolve the parliament! dissolve the parliament!”. figure 3. screenshot taken from the tiktok “i return”, performed by pavin chachavalpongpun. (photo by pavin chachavalpongpun). “i am not here for fun” 134 | aseas 14(1) pavin: i would say that this is a mis-analysis. i have a good oversight, because i’m the only administrator, so everything has to go through me. that’s why i know exactly that, first, the majority are young people. second, they come from all across the nation, not just urban areas. many think that it is cool to become a member of the royalists marketplace – and they want to show that they are cool by posting photos of their activities. as admin, i have to approve them – which i am doing mostly, even though sometimes they are doing something silly, like posting a photo taken by the mekong river. i am getting these photos from everywhere. i am approving it, because i want to give them a sense of belonging. but i don’t just approve; i also go to see the profiles. quite a lot of times, these people surprise me: they are sending me very intelligent statements, and then i find out that they come from rural places, like nong khai, and on their profile i find pictures of their families living in poor conditions. i’m so touched, and this is something i have to encourage. the students’ movement, though, has its own dynamics. they took up the issue of the monarchy independently. they did not discuss it with me; they just informed me. however, the royalists marketplace did play a part, because it came before the student protests. in many ways, the royalists marketplace set up a stage for the young to reinterpret the information and the idea about the monarchy. it has set up a new environment of like-minded people, which is very important, when you think about taboo issues. if you work on them on your own, it is scary. but if you walk into the room and you look around and see: “wow, there’s one million people who think like that”, then people get what i call an immunity. that’s why they are brave, and that’s why the students want to push forward. schaffar: talking about being brave on the streets: at the first demonstrations on 19 july 2020, some people proclaimed you “queen of thailand” – they were holding up a picture of you with your dog in a golden frame, and then prostrating in front of it (see figure 4). first, i thought that this might trigger a direct violent answer by the police or the military. i also heard from people watching it from abroad that this might endanger the entire movement. a couple of weeks later, the development seems to prove that your strategy was right, though. pavin: maybe because i myself am quite radical, and maybe because i have been in this business for quite some time, i tell you: when talking about social movements, you can’t expect everyone to agree with you. when those overseas ask whether the students have gone too far, holding up a picture like that, i take it as a different idea. to say, “i don’t care”, might be a bit too strong, but if you cannot propose or suggest anything better, darling, maybe you should just stay home and watch absolutely fabulous.11 the next point is the incident at thammasat university: i was asked to give a speech for a gathering at thammasat via video telephony, but i was not aware that it would turn out that big. that’s why i recorded on my handphone only for five minutes, in which i didn’t really say anything. this time, i just went around the bush, 11 british sitcom absolutely fabulous is an iconic example of camp and highly popular among queer and lgbt people worldwide. in allusion to it, pavin uses “absolutely fabulous” as subtitle of his personal facebook page. wolfram schaffar aseas 14(1) | 135 because i did not want to take the attention away from the substance of what the students wanted to say. it is important to let the students say something substantial. as for this “queen of thailand” image – it was not my intention at all. but then it happened, and they started the projection.12 finally, to put up the photo at the demonstration in july was someone’s individual decision. it was not from the movement – i can guarantee that. certainly, they think that i am camp and that i could be an icon. but more importantly, what they wanted was basically to bring down the level of reverence of the monarchy, and this is such a right way to do so – by parody, by sarcasm. schaffar: is there more about this aspect of being camp and queer? i’m asking because the current democracy demonstrations were preceded mid-april by a campaign on twitter – a so-called memes’ war (see schaffar & praphakorn, 2021, this issue). a young crowd from thailand, hong kong, and taiwan used memes to discuss about authoritarianism and the monarchy, and the central hashtag #milkteaalliance trended globally with billions of clicks. the interesting thing is that this started in the fandom of a thai homoerotic boy love tv series “2gether – the series” (เพราะเราคู่กัน). pavin: yes, there are commonalities with the milkteaalliance. it was led by young people more or less with the same agenda. young people are trying to bring down conservative, traditional elites. in hong kong, it was against the ancien regime in 12 during a demonstration at thammasat university, protestors projected pictures of the exiled historian somsak jeamteerasakul, and pavin chachavalpongpun, with a banner mockingly saying: “to your highest majesty with rice, bbq pork, and soup. long live the king.” (see figure 5; patpicha & johnson, 2020) figure 4 (left). demonstration in chiangmai on 19 july 2020. demonstrators holding up the photo of pavin chachavalpongpun. (photo taken from the facebook account of pavin chachavalpongpun). figure 5 (right). projection of somsak jeamteerasakul, and pavin chachavalpongpun at a demonstration at thammasat university on 10 august 2020. (photo taken from the facebook account of pavin chachavalpongpun). “i am not here for fun” 136 | aseas 14(1) beijing. in thailand, it is about bringing down the political elites and challenging the monarchy. but when it comes to concrete action, it takes a national form, in the sense that the hong kong movement has hong kong ways to do it, and the thai have thai ways to do it. that’s why in bangkok, we see this lgbt fashion show. we see drag on the streets. last week, at the democracy monument, they even had a mini fashion show on the street during the protest, performed by lgbtiq people, with an lgbt queen with no hair but dressed in an evening gown. so glamorous. using the rainbow flag and using the democracy monument as a catwalk. we also see other pop culture elements, like harry potter or the ham-taro. the younger generation is bringing new color and a fresh sensation to political activism, but at the same time, they are being very serious. they have done a brilliant job keeping the connection with other young people, networking, and mobilizing by using the element of pop culture. and they teach each other best practices, in exchange with people in hong kong and people in taipei. schaffar: let us talk about this transnational networking, taking the example of the milkteaalliance. in june 2020, the democracy activist netiwit chotiphatphaisal delivered milktea flavored cookies in front of the chinese embassy at the day of the commemoration of the tiananmen massacre. home-baked cookies, which came in the shape of the beijing gate of heavenly peace and also in shape of the bangkok democracy monument. the milkteaalliance seemed to develop into a new kind of transnational or internationalist solidarity network. but recently, the hashtag milkteaalliance is not being used much. do you think that there is a real and substantial transnational solidarity network, or was the milkteaalliance a single and isolated event? pavin: the question is whether you really want to use a hashtag to give an answer to everything. right now, other, equally interesting hashtags are trending. not necessarily #milkteaalliance. hashtags are an indication of what is important for the day. but it doesn’t mean that the milkteaalliance has gone down. i believe that the partnership is still there, but it happens that things in hong kong have become really quiet. you can’t force these things. but in taipei, thais living in taiwan already organized two big events. i got involved because the students asked me to send a message to the protesters there. when i followed this event, i realized that there is a large number of thai students in taipei and they are well connected with the hong kong movement and also with the students’ association of taipei. even certain mps of the taiwan parliament participated when they occupied the place in front of the townhall. schaffar: as a final question, how can people from europe, from germany or austria, support the democracy movement? pavin: when i gave a talk in the foreign correspondent club here in japan, nhk, the national broadcasting company, covered it. among the ten topics that i discussed, nhk only took one topic and made it headline, and it happened to be so good and exactly the right thing. they wrote: “pavin calls for international support for thai students.” wolfram schaffar aseas 14(1) | 137 western governments have to give support to the students, at least for two reasons. first, to set a sign that their requests are legitimate. secondly, and equally important: international support builds up protection for the students. the thai government must know that they can’t simply use force. the thai government needs to know that whatever they do, there are eyes out there watching them.  references beech, h. (2020). facebook plans legal action after thailand tells it to mute critics. the new york times, august 25, 2020. retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/25/world/asia/thailand-facebookmonarchy.html einzenberger, r., & schaffar, w. (2018). the political economy of new authoritarianism in southeast asia. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 11(1), 1-12. patpicha tanakasempipat, & johnson, k. (2020). “illegal thoughts”: how some exiled critics of thai king are fueling a revolt. reuters, august 10, 2020. retrieved from https://cn.reuters.com/article/usthailand-protests-exiles/illegal-thoughts-how-some-exiled-critics-of-thai-king-are-fuelling-a-revoltiduskbn2603hs pavin chachavalpongpun. (2020a). the royalists marketplace: the supply and demand for dissent in thailand. new mandala, may 4, 2020. retrieved from https://www.newmandala.org/the-royalistsmarketplace-the-supply-and-demand-for-dissent-in-thailand/ pavin chachavalpongpun. (2020b). an entire generation in thailand is counting on facebook to do the right thing. the washington post, august 28, 2020. retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/ opinions/2020/08/28/an-entire-generation-thailand-is-counting-facebook-do-right-thing/ schaffar, w. (2016). new social media and politics in thailand: the emergence of fascist vigilante groups on facebook. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 9(2), 215-234. schaffar, w., & praphakorn wongratanawin. (2021). the #milkteaalliance: a new transnational prodemocracy movement against chinese-centered globalization?. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 14(1), 5-35. sontag, s. (1964). notes on “camp”. partisan review, 31(4), 515-530. about the author wolfram schaffar is professor for development politics at the university of passau, germany. prior to this position, schaffar has been working as professor for japanese studies at the university of tübingen and as professor for development studies and political science at the university of vienna, with visits as guest researcher at the chulalongkorn university in bangkok, the yangon university in myanmar, and at the international institute for asian studies (iias) in leiden. his fields of interest are social media and political movements, new constitutionalism and democratization processes, as well as new authoritarianism. ► contact: wolfram.schaffar@gmx.de 138 | aseas 14(1) aseas 13(2) | 267 vaccine hesitancy and the cultural politics of trust in the dengvaxia controversy: a critical discourse-ethnographic study of online news content, producers, and audiences karl patrick r. mendozaa a university of canterbury, new zealand ► mendoza, k. p. r. (2020). vaccine hesitancy and the cultural politics of trust in the dengvaxia controversy: a critical discourse-ethnographic study of online news content, producers, and audiences. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 13(2), 267-274. vaccine hesitancy refers to the delay in acceptance or refusal of vaccination despite vaccine availability. at its very core lies the problem of trust. yet, there is very little research on the role of trust in vaccine hesitancy, particularly concerning its ideological dimension. this research aims to describe and explore how the online news discourse on the dengvaxia vaccine controversy legitimizes a particular trust culture in philippine society. for this purpose, the research adopts the theory of social trust propounded by the polish sociologist piotr sztompka and links it to the study of news media using critical discourse analysis. this research is an interdisciplinary project that adopts various concepts and lenses from sociology, linguistics, media studies, and public health. keywords: critical discourse analysis; dengvaxia controversy; philippines; trust; vaccine hesitancy  introduction the dengvaxia controversy is a public health controversy in the philippines concerning the use of the dengvaxia vaccine for dengue that was produced by the french pharmaceutical company, sanofi pasteur. after reports circulated alleging that several children had died because of the vaccine, the philippines department of health (doh) suspended the school-based vaccination program in late november, 2017. following this, the company stated that its vaccine posed a greater risk to people who had not yet contracted dengue (grady & thomas, 2017). in the succeeding years, the public attorney’s office (pao), led by its chief attorney persida acosta, continued to rally against what they saw as a corrupt medical establishment with close ties to the government, who, by use of their positions, prevented justice from being served to parents who had lost their children to the vaccine. there is still no available evidence suggesting a causal link between the vaccine and children’s deaths but pao continues to conduct autopsies of children’s bodies to discredit expert claims delinking children’s deaths from forschungswerkstatt  research workshop w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 37 268 | aseas 13(2) vaccine hesitancy and the cultural politics of trust in the dengvaxia controversy the vaccines.1 nonetheless, it has been shown that the controversy resulted in growing “vaccine hesitancy” at the community level, most especially among filipino parents (larson, hartigan-go, & de figueiredo, 2019; valido, laksanawati, & utarini, 2018). vaccine hesitancy refers to the “delay in acceptance or refusal of vaccination despite availability of vaccination services” (macdonald, 2015, p. 4163). vaccinehesitant individuals are those people who reside somewhere in the middle of a continuum between complete vaccine rejection and complete vaccine acceptance (larson, jarrett, eckersberger, smith, & paterson, 2014). in short, vaccine-hesitant individuals are vaccine doubters. a key issue in vaccine hesitancy then is trust – in vaccine efficacy and safety, the vaccination system that delivers it, and the motivations of policymakers who make vaccine-related decisions (macdonald, 2015). a relatively neglected area in the vaccine hesitancy literature is its ideological dimension.2 since most studies examining the role of media in vaccine hesitancy have taken-off from a transmission view of communication, the focus has been on the behavioral effects of exposure to health-related messages through everyday media use or strategic media use for health promotion and education (viswanath, 2008). questions about the ideological aspects of communication that emphasize the social construction of realities in and through the media are put aside in favor of concerns about information transmission and social control. to argue for the centrality of trust in vaccine hesitancy, while also emphasizing the ideological aspects of health communication, my research aims to describe and explore how a particular trust culture in philippine society is legitimized through the news discourse on the dengvaxia controversy. in support of this, the research will be guided by the following objectives: • document and describe the linguistic and visual semiotic resources used in representing social actors and their actions in online news reports;3 • interpret how online journalists and vaccine-hesitant parents view these representations relative to their contexts; and, • explain the broader implications of the news discourse on dengvaxia to the normative rules for trust granting and trust reciprocating in the philippine setting. framework and methodology the theoretical framework adopted in this research is anchored on the theory of social trust propounded by sztompka (1998, 1999, 2003) with a particular emphasis on “trust culture”, which he defined both as a resource and a system of normative rules for trust granting/reciprocating in a given society. trust granting refers to the 1 this is although a group of medical experts have called on pao in 2018 to stop conducting autopsies since only competent forensic pathologists are capable of determining the cause of death of a person. 2 by ideological, i mean those modes of communication (i.e., rationalization, universalization, narrativization) through language or other semiotic resources that are used to perpetuate unequal social arrangements. 3 semiotic resources are the various textual selections and combinations in written language and visual images (e.g., words, clauses, pose, gaze, angle, composition, background, foreground, etc.). aseas 13(2) | 269 karl patrick r. mendoza bestowal of trust to another person/entity by a trustor, whereas trust reciprocating pertains to efforts to become trustworthy by a trustee. the present research applies the concept of trust culture to the description, interpretation, and explanation of trust granting and trust reciprocating patterns between and among producers and receivers of news discourse on dengvaxia to understand vaccine hesitancy from a critical lens. trust is a cultural category mediated through processes of conscious strategic communication (candlin & crichton, 2013). however, the media is rarely theorized within the trust studies literature as trust research has mostly focused on the structuring of trust culture or “system trust” at the macrosocial level (giddens, 1990; luhmann, 1979; misztal, 1996) and the micro-level construction of trust relationships between trustors and trustees across various domains such as business, management, democratic governance, healthcare, and law, among others (barber, 1983; lewis & weigert, 1985; mollering, 2006; seligman, 1997; sztompka, 1999). meanwhile, although trust figured more prominently within media studies, particularly in research on public and economic spheres (bakir & barlow, 2007), not much has been said about it beyond the confines of organizational and institutional settings. the crux of the matter is that trust needs to be problematized per se as a phenomenon occurring in concrete social contexts. vital here is the establishment of a meso-level (middle range) linkage between the macro and microstructures of a trust culture. in response, the conceptual framework that i devised for the research employs critical discourse analysis to encompass the micro, meso, and macro levels of a trust culture.4 in line with this, the following levels of the conceptual framework (see, figure 1) will be operationalized with a critical discourse-ethnographic methodology: 1. texts – online news reports that i semiotically describe in terms of their representations of social actors and their actions. 2. discursive practice – the production and reception practices of online journalists and news audiences, which i interpret in terms of how both engage with the representations in (1). 3. social practice – where i trace and relate to society the consequences of the dengvaxia controversy. by critical discourse-ethnographic methodology (cf. wodak & savski, 2018), i mean a critical discourse analysis approach that is complemented by a mini-ethnographic case study of news producers and audiences to provide greater contextual depth and richer knowledge about the texts to be analyzed (fusch, fusch, & ness, 2017). i view ethnography here as an “orientation to the field” that acquaints one with the local context of the subjects, rather than as a rigid method requiring one to do fieldwork in extended periods, often using participant-observation and in-depth interviews. 4 adopted primarily from richardson’s (2006) critical discourse analysis approach to newspapers but modified using the ideas of candlin and chrichton (2013), machin and mayr (2012), and thompson (1990). 270 | aseas 13(2) vaccine hesitancy and the cultural politics of trust in the dengvaxia controversy figure 1. the conceptual framework of the study. methods this research employs three methods for data collection: (1) content analysis, (2) semi-structured interviews, and (3) focus group discussions. among the three levels of the conceptual framework, only the textual and discursive practice levels require empirical data. the level of social practice does not require empirical data because, compared to the other two, it seeks to validate whether the overall structural context of a culture is defined by trust or distrust. such validation refers back to the findings from the textual and discursive practice levels. firstly, content analysis will be used to answer the question: what are the linguistic and visual semiotic resources used in representing social actors and their actions in online news reports? this question redounds to the analysis of the textual level of the conceptual framework. content analysis is “a research technique for making replicable and valid inferences from texts (or other meaningful matter) to the contexts of their use” (krippendorff, 2018, p. 23). that being said, the deployment of content analysis in this research relies upon the use of a coding scheme or “data language” that sets the analytical categories to be recorded/coded from online news reports.5 the categories of the data language that i devised for the study were basically 5 this data language will be applied to the 58 online news reports from three local newspaper websites in the philippines that i already collected as of writing. aseas 13(2) | 271 karl patrick r. mendoza drawn from the systemic functional linguistics (sfl) transitivity system, which is concerned with the examination of who does what to whom and to what effect (o’donnell, 2011). the starting categories were labelled as actor, process, and goal. these categories slightly vary depending on the processes they represent and whether they are part of a visual image or written language. nonetheless, they both allow us to understand how social actors and their actions were represented multimodally. secondly, semi-structured interviews will be used to gain information about online journalists’ trust-granting and trust-reciprocating behaviors as social actors who are embedded within the institutional context of philippine journalism, and how this is reflected in their coverage of public affairs and health topics.6 a semi-structured interview is a qualitative method wherein the researcher asks participants a series of pre-determined but open-ended questions (ayres, 2008). the interview guides to be designed for this research shall focus on three, broad, conceptual headings: journalistic roles, journalistic ethics, and journalists’ trust (hanitzsch, hanusch, ramaprasad, & de beer, 2019). while trust is the focus of this research, it is assumed that this concept has significant overlap with how journalists perceive their roles and ethical viewpoints in practice. the interpretation of news production practices will be based on online semi-structured interviews of 30 online journalists working for local newspaper websites in the philippines. third and lastly, focus group discussions will be used to collect information regarding how vaccine-hesitant parents (as news audiences) shape and were shaped in some way by the news discourse on dengvaxia controversy. focus group discussion (fgd) is a research method that is “useful when seeking to understand participants’ meanings and ways of understanding” in socially-situated contexts (lunt & livingstone, 1996, p. 79). to be more precise, focus groups will be utilized to probe for vaccine-hesitant parents’ trust granting/reciprocating behaviors relative to pre-existing sets of cultural rules and resources at their disposal. one group composed of 12 participants each will be recruited from six barangays (communities) in quezon city, philippines, for a total of 72 participants all in all. vaccine-hesitant parents are defined as those parents who have modified the routine immunization schedule prescribed by the doh. “modified” means delaying some/all of the vaccines for their child/children by 30 days or more from the scheduled date. similarly, modified would also mean refusing some but not all of the prescribed immunizations. complete vaccine rejectors are automatically excluded because the study focuses on vaccine hesitancy. conclusion the current paper highlights the significance of a critical discourse-ethnographic methodology in studying the legitimization of a trust culture through the dengvaxia news discourse. through the framework introduced here, the research responds to the need to operationalize sztompka’s (1999) theory of social trust in media studies by combining the use of critical discourse analysis with a micro-ethnographic 6 i am still waiting for approval on my human ethics application for interviewing online journalists. on the other hand, i shall file a separate application for the focus groups. 272 | aseas 13(2) vaccine hesitancy and the cultural politics of trust in the dengvaxia controversy case study. as an ongoing study, however, the research is still expected to evolve theoretically and methodologically, most especially now that the world is facing the covid-19 pandemic. given that some governments, including the philippines and indonesia, were lagging behind their regional counterparts with regards to pandemic response, a covid vaccine may be the last ray of hope for their citizens. in such situations, the proper starting point may not be vaccine hesitancy at all but vaccine ambivalence – a situation of mixed hopes and doubts or of wanting a vaccine while also suspecting it. also, methodologically, it is not unlikely that i might reconsider my plan of conducting face-to-face focus groups if the situation in the philippines worsens or remains unchanged from the time of writing. notwithstanding these concerns, the research has the potential to contribute to the growing literature on vaccine hesitancy, stimulate critical inquires in health communication, and extend and validate the interpretive research agenda within trust studies (mollering, 2006). however, the success of the study depends on the following theoretical and methodological issues, among others, being addressed later on in the research. first of these is the justification for selecting online news as the medium to be analyzed. what is the theoretical and methodological significance of choosing this medium? this question is important given that not all societies have the same media preference at any given point in time. historical, social, and political economic factors may be at play in determining the present contours of the local media landscape. the second issue is about the identification of themes apart from trust that are also relevant to the news discourse on vaccine hesitancy. although important to society, trust is not the only basis of social order (luhmann, 1979). the discourse of trust may be co-present with other analytical categories such as expertise, responsibility, credibility, and risk, among others, in certain domains of practice (candlin & crichton, 2013). therefore, the research framework must be applied in such a way that the discovery of other analytical categories apart from trust are not precluded. the final issue is the description of the macro-structural features of a filipino trust/distrust culture. the existence of a trust culture is a theoretical assumption that can neither be proven or disproven but only described as it manifests textually and behaviorally in particular contexts. the macro-structural features of a filipino trust culture broadly refer to its manifestations in a democratic system, which relates to the extent to which people trust/distrust the social and political institutions governing their lives.  references ayres, l. (2008). semi-structured interview. in l. m. given (ed.), the sage encyclopedia of qualitative research methods (vol. 1 & 2, pp. 810-811). london, uk: sage publications. bakir, v., & barlow, d. m. (2007). exploring relationships between trust studies and media studies. in v. bakir & d. m. barlow (eds.), communication in the age of suspicion (pp. 9-23). new york, ny: palgrave macmillan. aseas 13(2) | 273 karl patrick r. mendoza barber, b. (1983). the logic and limits of trust. new brunswick, nj: rutgers university press. candlin, c. n., & crichton, j. (2013). from ontology to methodology: exploring the discursive landscape of trust. in discourses of trust (pp. 1-18). new york, ny: springer. fusch, p. i., fusch, g. e., & ness, l. r. (2017). how to conduct a mini-ethnographic case study: a guide for novice researchers. the qualitative report, 22(3), 923. giddens, a. (1990). the consequences of modernity. stanford, ca: stanford university press. grady, d., & thomas, k. (2017, december 17). drug company under fire after revealing dengue vaccine may harm some. new york times. retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/17/health/sanofidengue-vaccine-philippines.html hanitzsch, t., hanusch, f., ramaprasad, j., & de beer, a. s. (2019). worlds of journalism: journalistic cultures around the globe. new york, ny: columbia university press. krippendorff, k. (2018). content analysis: an introduction to its methodology. new york, ny: sage publications. larson, h. j., hartigan-go, k., & de figueiredo, a. (2019). vaccine confidence plummets in the philippines following dengue vaccine scare: why it matters to pandemic preparedness. human vaccines & immunotherapeutics, 15(3), 625-627. larson, h. j., jarrett, c., eckersberger, e., smith, d. m., & paterson, p. (2014). understanding vaccine hesitancy around vaccines and vaccination from a global perspective: a systematic review of published literature, 2007-2012. vaccine, 32(19), 2150-2159. lewis, j. d., & weigert, a. (1985). trust as a social reality. social forces, 63(4), 967-985. luhmann, n. (1979). trust and power. london, uk: john wiley & sons. lunt, p., & livingstone, s. (1996). rethinking the focus group in media and communications research. journal of communication, 46(2), 79-98. macdonald, n. e. (2015). vaccine hesitancy: definition, scope and determinants. vaccine, 33(34), 41614164. machin, d., & mayr, a. (2012). how to do critical discourse analysis: a multimodal approach. london, uk: sage. misztal, b. a. (1996). trust in modern societies. cambridge, uk: polity press. mollering, g. (2006). trust: reason, routine, reflexivity. bingley, uk: emerald group publishing. o’donnell, m. (2011). week 3: transitivity and construal analysis. retrieved from https://www.coursehero. com/file/28887122/lfc-2011-week3-transitivitypdf/ richardson, j. (2006). analysing newspapers: an approach from critical discourse analysis. new york, ny: palgrave macmillan. seligman, a. b. (1997). the problem of trust. new jersey, nj: princeton university press. sztompka, p. (2003). trust: a cultural resource. the annals of the international institute of sociology, 9, 4766. sztompka, p. (1999). trust: a sociological theory. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. sztompka, p. (1998). trust, distrust and two paradoxes of democracy. european journal of social theory, 1(1), 19-32. thompson, j. (1990). ideology and modern culture: critical social theory in the era of mass communication. stanford, ca: stanford university press. valido, e. m., laksanawati, i. s., & utarini, a. (2018). acceptability of the dengue vaccination among parents in urban poor communities of quezon city, philippines before and after vaccine suspension. bmc research notes, 11(1), 661. viswanath, k. (2008). health communication. in w. donsbach (ed.), the international encyclopedia of communication (pp. 1-16). malden, ma: blackwell pub. wodak, r., & savski, k. (2018). critical discourse–ethnographic approaches to language policy. in j. w. tollefson & m. perez-milans (eds.), the oxford handbook of language policy and planning (pp. 93-114). oxford, uk: oxford university press. 274 | aseas 13(2) vaccine hesitancy and the cultural politics of trust in the dengvaxia controversy about the author karl patrick r. mendoza is a ph.d. candidate in media and communication at the university of canterbury in christchurch, new zealand. his work centers on the role of trust, legitimacy, and populism in health and science-related issues such as vaccination, antibiotic resistance, disasters, and climate change as these are represented in the media. he is a former senior high school teacher and college lecturer in the philippines. ► contact: karl.mendoza@pg.canterbury.ac.nz aseas 13(2) | 261 ethics and the role of humanities in transdisciplinary research? a short reflection on the knots project barbora novákováa & marta lopatkováa a charles university, czech republic ► nováková, b., & lopatková, m. (2020). ethics and the role of humanities in transdisciplinary research? a short reflection on the knots project. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 13(2), 261-266. in this paper, we reflect upon our role as researchers embedded in humanities in the knots project. in the course of the project, we noticed various misapprehensions among both staff and students stemming, among others, from different cultural, political, and educational backgrounds. while a diversity of inputs and perspectives is considered an advantage for transdisciplinary projects, cooperation among actors with various backgrounds can also be challenging. based on our observations and previous experience living and working in vietnam, we created a session focusing on ethics for the last summer school in ho chi minh city. we decided to bring participants’ attention to research ethics and issues of cross-cultural communication, and suggested reflection and discussion as a coping strategy. in the course of a three years long mutual learning process, we realized that striving to create a common understanding of research ethics and cross-cultural awareness is an indispensable element of teaching and doing transdisciplinary research in a multicultural environment. keywords: cross-cultural awareness; ethics; humanities; reflection; transdisciplinarity  introduction: transdisciplinarity and power transdisciplinarity as a new framework of knowledge production and a way of solving ‘real world problems’ has gained popularity over the last decades. notwithstanding contestations regarding its exact meaning, the term is widely used nowadays. a transdisciplinary approach is increasingly applied in development studies. while, given their focus on ‘real-world impact’, natural sciences and social sciences are well represented in transdisciplinary research (from here on, tdr), the role of humanities might be less obvious. the aim of this paper is to reflect on how we as members of the charles university (cuni) knots project team, who are embedded in humanities, searched for our place in the knots project (dannecker, 2020, this issue). our role in the project included project management and quality management, but we also took part in other tasks, such as teaching at summer schools and field trips, and contributing to the teaching manual. in the course of the project, we realized the necessity to reflect and negotiate even the basic principles of scientific work, including our ethical assumptions. forschungswerkstatt  research workshop w w w .s ea s. at 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 43 262 | aseas 13(2) ethics and the role of humanities in transdisciplinary research? searching for our place in a tdr project both authors come from an old, reputable, and rather conservative central european university. having degrees in ethnology and vietnamese studies, we spent most of the time learning vietnamese language, history, literature, and culture, and basic principles of anthropology in the course of our studies. it is important to say that czech oriental studies were, for historical reasons, influenced by a soviet orientalist tradition – one where language, culture, and history are considered inseparable to acquire a deep understanding and insight of a place and society. therefore, area studies, including vietnamese studies at our faculty, fall into humanities rather than social sciences.1 in an effort to reach a comprehensive knowledge of an ‘oriental’ culture, students at our faculty often find themselves lost and not sufficiently prepared in the areas requiring more theoretical and methodological thinking. we both experienced this as well. it was not until our participation in the knots project, that the oftentimes blurred borderline between humanities and social sciences became apparent to us. we realized that, while our training was embedded in humanities, our research practice often took place in the field of social sciences. in fact, we experience this transgression of academic boundaries as stimulating and beneficial. from the very first moment of reading the proposal, the knots project was an exciting challenge for both us. we had rather hazy ideas about eu erasmus+ capacity building in higher education projects, networking projects, and the transdisciplinary approach itself. during the first sessions, kick-off and other meetings with the partners from europe and southeast asia, our role, except the administrative one mentioned above, was not very clear to us (seemann & antweiler, 2020, this issue). preparing for the first summer school in vietnam, we were still not sure how to contribute to the teaching sessions, since our experience with regards to the project’s three major topics of migration, environment, and social inequality was rather limited. however, we gradually realized that our academic background and experience of living, studying, and conducting research in vietnam had its place in the project. since a transdisciplinary approach is based on cooperation among actors with various backgrounds (academic, cultural, social, political, etc.), a diversity of inputs and perspectives is considered an advantage for transdisciplinary projects. however, the plurality within the team can also bring many unexpected situations, challenges, misunderstandings, and sometimes even conflicts (dannecker, 2020, this issue; dannecker & heis, 2020, this issue). in the course of the project, we noticed various misapprehensions among both students and staff during various activities. while this is common in teamwork, in the case of international cooperation and work in various types of environments, however, it can be even more salient. some of these misunderstandings were quite innocent, such as our inability to agree on what temperature to set the a/c in conference rooms and classrooms. this could be ascribed to multiple causes. one of them might be culture-specific notions of thermal comfort. another issue was the different understandings of what is a 1 we understand humanities as focusing on the study of cultural factors of mankind and how people process and document human experience. social sciences focus more on various aspects of human society and the relationships of humans within communities. social sciences emphasize and require empirical research, a theoretical framework, and a robust standardized methodology. aseas 13(2) | 263 barbora nováková & marta lopatková formal or an informal occasion and the suitable attire for it. from the european point of view, the summer school was a rather casual event. as back in europe, european students usually do not wear suits in school, they chose rather casual and light outfits given the tropical climate, which was inappropriate for the airconditioned indoors. on the other hand, in the asian academic environments, students usually wear formal dress, which is comparatively warmer. yet another issue at play is that the use of a/c became widespread among middle-class urbanites in southeast asia and could therefore be perceived as a marker of class status (hansen, nielsen & wilhite, 2016; hitchings & shu jun lee, 2008). in addition, setting the a/c on a low temperature might suggest that the guests are respected and treated well. other misunderstandings were more substantial, such as challenges resulting from different political systems of the partner countries. for example, we were not able to agree on who were the non-academic actors during the first summer school. while some of us imagined non-academic actors primarily as politically independent ngos, others had state-related agencies in mind due to specific political contexts. some situations might have even been slightly shocking, for example, in the case of translating the neutral vietnamese phrase “hai dòng máu” into english as “biracial” when speaking about children born from transnational marriages in taiwan – something that was perceived as very problematic by some. there were also debates that arose from the different education cultures. while in some educational environments, group discussions and teamwork are trained and encouraged, in others, more conservative methods of frontal lectures prevail. this created a disproportional environment where some were always vocal and some were always quiet. thus, there were also different ideas about how to organize a summer school – on one hand, the idea of a content heavy series of lectures, on the other hand, the preference for a workshop format based on student participation. we had to negotiate what the final form would be. the plurality of approaches and attitudes derived from various strands including, among others, culture, language, and diverse academic and political environments/cultures. ethics and cultural awareness during the first two summer schools and field trips – the first in vietnam and the second in thailand – we also noticed different understandings of ethics and research ethics among both staff and students. occasionally, certain situations and unwitting behavior were perceived as ethically problematic. ethical questions surfaced concerning relationships towards research participants, as well as within our team. when is it okay to take pictures of other people or film them? should our research participants in the field be rewarded for taking part? and if so, how/in what way? how do we handle our field notes? is it appropriate to share them with others? and to what purposes? is it fine to pursue our own agendas during the joint work of field trip groups? what kinds of questions are too intrusive? how to work in specific political conditions? such questions were posed from time to time in the course of summer schools and field trips, but it took us some time to take them up for a wider and more systematic discussion. we all seemed to have taken for granted to some degree our own ethical approaches, based on our disciplines and academic cultures, and it became clear that 264 | aseas 13(2) ethics and the role of humanities in transdisciplinary research? we had different ideas about what is and what is not appropriate. moreover, it turned out that many of the students were not sufficiently aware of the fact that the way people communicate is culturally specific. this did not seem to be linked to factors such as gender, age, or ethnicity, but rather inexperience in cross-cultural communication. based on our observations and experience from the first two summer schools and field trips, we suggested creating a session on ethics for the last summer school in ho chi minh city. the session consisted of a part devoted to the specifics of conducting research in vietnam and creating basic cross-cultural awareness, while another focused more on research ethics required for the upcoming field trip in the mekong delta. with regards to the specifics of conducting research in vietnam, we realized that, with our academic background, we could offer the team our experience of living and working in vietnam and our knowledge of the country’s culture and language. in contrast to our partners and students from vietnam, who were as insiders immersed in their culture, we had the advantage of being in the position of cultural brokers (jezewski, 1990) or the “knowledgeable outsiders” (berry, poortinga, & pandey, 1997) and were, therefore, able to bring forward some important points/insights. for example, we brought everyone’s attention to a common challenge encountered in communication by foreigners in vietnam, which is the perceived hesitation of vietnamese to answer questions negatively. saying “no” or “not possible”, and admitting not to know something, might be perceived as impolite and as a threat to the person’s social face (tran, 2018). another example is that, while the gesture of a straight look in the eyes of another person is considered a proof of straightforwardness in many western countries, it is perceived as rude in vietnam. also, the public display of intergender affection is regarded indecent. the awareness or possible unawareness of such specifics naturally brings about important consequences for conducting fieldwork in vietnam. the vietnamese participants were surprised that we brought such issues up, but much appreciated the opportunity to reflect on some of the ingrained and unconscious traits of vietnamese communication and behavior from a new perspective. we did not strive to answer all the ethical questions we encountered, but tried to bring participants’ awareness to them, so that they could try to negotiate them in their respective field trip groups. with regard to research ethics, we realized during the project that some of us conceived of them in a rather narrow sense of academic integrity and publication ethics. therefore, we opted to give examples of existing ethical guidelines and discuss the basic principle of do no harm and its implications in field work. we also focused on the power structures linked to gender, ethnicity, political environment, or social status affecting research, and we suggested reflexivity of positionally as an essential coping strategy. we tried to emphasize that research is a dynamic process during which unexpected situations may and, indeed, do occur. it is therefore indispensable to continuously reflect and adjust the research process and make compromises (palmer, fam, smith, & kilham, 2014). also, we underlined that many ethical challenges do not have easy and clear solutions. the students’ feedback on these sessions was positive and we felt that creating a shared understanding of ethics, and research ethics specifically, helped field trip groups in their work. based on the above-mentioned experiences, we prepared a session concerning ethics for the teaching manual for transdisciplinary research (knots, n.d.), which is one of the outputs of the knots project. aseas 13(2) | 265 barbora nováková & marta lopatková conclusion in conclusion, perhaps trying to figure out the role of humanities in tdr in general was a misguided effort. every tdr project is unique and, by definition, adapted to specific goals and the ‘real-world problems’ it aims to tackle, including the decision of which actors and disciplines to involve. therefore, there is no universal role of humanities in tdr projects. with regards to the knots project, we gradually figured out that our role in the project would be that of the “knowledgeable outsiders” who have a professional and academic insight into southeast asian cultures but are not involved in development studies. in the course of a three-year long mutual learning process, we realized that striving to create a common understanding of research ethics and cross-cultural awareness is an indispensable element of teaching and doing tdr in multicultural environments, since it facilitates team work and reduces various tensions. tdr teams need to develop strategies to deal with unexpected situations and create a safe space to discuss ethical issues. our project was not a fullfledged tdr project, but a project teaching about tdr within the scope of summer schools. within the limited amount of time, we decided to (only) bring participants’ attention to research ethics and issues of cross-cultural communication, and suggested reflection and discussion as coping strategies. this room for reflection and mutual exchange eventually benefited both european and southeast asian project members and consolidated our place in the project.  references berry, j., poortinga, y., & pandey, j. (1997). handbook of cross-cultural psychology. boston, ma: allyn and bacon. dannecker, p. (2020). transdisciplinarity ‘meets’ power structures: challenges and experiences of a capacity building project on transdisciplinarity. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 13(2), 175-192. dannecker, p., & heis, a. (2020). ‘transdisciplinarity’: a framework of knowledge production in northsouth partnerships? austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 13(2), 165-174. hansen, a., nielsen, k., & wilhite, h. (2016). staying cool, looking good, moving around: consumption, sustainability and the ‘rise of the south’. forum for development studies, 43(1), 5-25. hitchings, r., & shu jun lee. (2008). air conditioning and the material culture of routine human encasement. journal of material culture, 13(3), 251-265. jezewski, m. a. (1990). culture brokering in migrant farmworker health care. western journal of nursing research, 12(4), 497-513. knots. (n.d.). fostering multi-lateral knowledge networks of transdisciplinary studies to tackle global challenges. retrieved from https://www.knots-eu.com palmer, j., fam, d., smith, t., & kilham, s. (2014). ethics in fieldwork: reflections on the unexpected. qualitative report, 9, 1-13. seemann, f., & antweiler, c. (2020). linking european and southeast asian transdisciplinary knowledge production: lessons learned by doing evaluation. austrian journal of southeast asian studies, 13(2), 243-259. tran, t. (2018). cultural differences in vietnam: differences in work-related values between western and vietnamese culture and cultural awareness at higher education. phd dissertation, leiden university, netherlands. 266 | aseas 13(2) ethics and the role of humanities in transdisciplinary research? about the authors barbora nováková is a lecturer at the institute of asian studies at charles university in prague, czech republic. her research interests include precolonial vietnamese history and religious beliefs, as well as the vietnamese community in czechia and its history. ► contact: bara.jirkova@gmail.com marta lopatková is a lecturer at the institute of asian studies at charles university in prague, czech republic. her focus lies on history, colonialism, and intellectual and social life in french indochina, with an emphasis on gender and modernity. she also explores the vietnamese community in czechia specifying on gender and equality issues. ► contact: marta.lopatkova@ff.cuni.cz aseas 15(2) | 231 multiform transmission and belonging: buddhist social spaces of thai migrant women in belgium asuncion fresnoza-flota* auniversité libre de bruxelles *corresponding author: asuncion.fresnoza@ulb.be received: 12 february 2022 / accepted: 4 october 2022 / published: 23 december 2022 ► fresnoza-flot, a. (2022). multiform transmission and belonging: buddhist social spaces of thai migrant women in belgium. advances in southeast asian studies, 15(2), 231-251. the thai migration to belgium is numerically a woman-led phenomenon, which has captured social attention for the last decades. this attention entails stereotypes about thai migrant women as ‘workers’ in the intimate industry and/or ‘exotic wives’ of belgian men. to challenge these stereotypes, the present paper explores the often-ignored dimension of thai women’s sociality. specifically, it examines the transmission dynamics occurring in their buddhist social spaces, which shape and reinforce their sense of belonging. to do so, it draws from ethnographic fieldwork with thai migrant women and key social actors within the thai population in the country. data analysis unveils that these women engage in multiform modes of transmission in their buddhist social spaces. first, they transmit good deeds from the material world to the spiritual realm through merit-making practices and by seeking spiritual guidance in the temple. second, they pass their socio-cultural ways of belonging to their children by engaging in different socializing activities. and third, they involve themselves in sharing religious faith, material symbols, and tastes described as part of thai culture. through this multiform transmission, thai migrant women confront in subtle ways the common-held views about them at the intersection of their various identities as spouses, mothers, citizens, and buddhist devotees. keywords: belgium; buddhist social spaces; multiform transmission; thai buddhist temples; thai migrant women  introduction for my qualitative study of ethnically mixed families involving thai migrants in belgium, i frequented these migrants’ social spaces, such as theravada buddhist temples (wat) in the country. “social spaces” in this context are understood as networked relations in lefebvre’s (1991) sense. they are “the means”, “the outcome”, and “the medium of social and cultural activity” (knott, 2005, p. 34). in two of the temples i regularly visited in belgium, i found the altar a fascinating, vibrant social space occupied by sacred buddhist figures, images, and objects current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 79 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4865-9686 mailto:asuncion.fresnoza%40ulb.be?subject= 232 | aseas 15(2) multiform transmission and belonging (jars, flower vases, candle holders, etc.) in lively colors (see figure 1). most of these sacred things had crossed state borders, notably traveling from thailand to belgium. the flowers, burning incense, candles, water in wine glasses, and food offerings in front of the altar reflected the active spiritual engagement of thai migrants. this engagement brings to the fore the transmission dynamics across borders (spiritual, spatial, temporal), raising the question of how thai buddhist social spaces such as wat shape and reinforce thai migrants’ sense of belonging. the focus of this paper on thai buddhist social spaces originates from the observation that studies about these spaces in europe remain so far scarce (except baumann, 1995; plank, 2015; webster, 2016; xiu, 2015). in belgium, the existence of theravada buddhist temples (de backer, 2002) suggests that thai migrants’ sociality goes beyond the domestic and labor market spheres, which may produce or reinforce different senses of belonging. to find out the role of buddhist social spaces in shaping these migrants’ belonging, i investigate the case of thai migrant women in the present study. these women quantitatively dominate the thai population in belgium, making up 86% of the 3,862 thais present in the country (statbel, 2022). most of them enter the country through family reunification as fiancées or spouses of belgian nationals. thai migrant women generally reside in the brussels capital and flanders, the flemish-speaking region of the country. they usually find employment in the restaurant sector, dry goods stores, supermarkets, and domestic service sector, working as cleaners and nannies. figure 1. a vibrant altar in a thai theravada buddhist temple in belgium (photo by fresnozaflot, 2014) aseas 15(2) | 233 asuncion fresnoza-flot before unveiling the transmission dynamics in which thai migrant women are engaged in their buddhist social spaces, i present the analytical framework of my study that builds upon the concept of transmission while adopting an intersectionality stance. i also define in this section the key terms and concepts i mobilize in my paper. after this section, i revisit the corpus of works on migrants’ religiosity and the question of belonging in the context of migration. this literature review aims to identify the forms of transmission in migrants’ religious spaces, which may help explore thai migrant women’s buddhist social spaces in belgium. following this state-of-the-art section, i provide a background context in which i unveil the social situation of thai migrant women in belgium at the intersection of various categories of difference. in a separate section, i describe my methodology and ethnographic fieldwork. the central part of the paper presents three forms of transmission occurring in wat and within the realm of the home of my research informants: transcendental, transgenerational, and transnational. understanding belonging through transmission and intersectionality the focus in the present paper on belonging brings to the fore this concept’s signification and how it can be understood. it is important to clarify its operational meaning and explain two possible ways to approach it within the context of migration. belonging is a polysemic concept, which reflects its complexity as a subjective experience and an empirical phenomenon. yuval-davis (2006) defines it as an “emotional attachment, about feeling ‘at home’” (p. 197), or in the words of may (2011), “a sense of ease with oneself and one’s surroundings” (p. 368). home and surroundings can mean different things to individuals or collectives. in a migration setting, they most often refer to one’s group, society, or nation of origin, which suggests that belonging has something to do with identification and affiliation. however, knott (2017) argues that “belonging” is “an ongoing and performed act” (p. 223), which therefore goes beyond the notions of membership (i.e., being part of a specific group or organization) and identity (i.e., subjective definition of oneself based on specific characteristics). these notions generally suggest fixedness rather than fluidity. nonetheless, the notion of “membership” has become more and more fluid over the years (grothe-hammer & la cour, 2020). in contrast, the notion of “identity” has become increasingly associated with the term identification that is more process-oriented (hall, 1997). like the term “identification”, belonging is a process entailing the performance of certain identities through different practices. in order to grasp belonging, the lens of “transmission” – a process of passing something to someone (treps, 2000) – appears useful because of its broad scope encompassing other social processes, such as the phenomenon of transnationalism in the context of migration. basch et al. (1994) define “transnationalism” as the maintenance by migrants of various forms of social ties linking their society of origin and destination. this process entails constant passing and receiving or, in other words, transfer of information, symbols, values, and objects across borders of nation-states. another related process that the concept of transmission can analytically capture is what social and cultural psychology scholars call “transgenerational transmission” 234 | aseas 15(2) multiform transmission and belonging (fornaro, 2019). in the migration setting, this topic has attracted scholarly interests in different disciplines, focusing mostly on vertical (parent to children), horizontal (sibling to sibling), and reverse (children to parent) transfer of what fornaro (2019) enumerates as “themes, ideologies, normative values, relational and emotional traits of one’s own culture of belonging” (p. 308). among these elements, the transmission of socio-cultural “ways of belonging” (levitt & schiller, 2004) occupies the central stage. these ways are “practices that signal or enact identity which demonstrates a conscious connection to a particular group” (p. 1010). finally, the concept of transmission can illuminate what individual migrants intend to transmit from the material world to the spiritual realm through their religious practices. through the conceptual lens of transmission, the present paper investigates the key role of buddhist social spaces such as wat in thai migrants’ life in belgium, specifically the enactment of their sense of belonging. this enactment process may involve individual characteristics or categories of difference based on factors such as gender, social class, and ethnicity. gender is the socially constructed difference between men and women, signifying power relations (scott, 1986). drawing from a marxist perspective on economic inequalities and bourdieu’s institutionalized form of cultural capital, such as educational diploma (bourdieu, 1997; bottero, 2014; van hear, 2014), the concept of social class in this paper encompasses both economic resources and education attainment. ethnicity, on the other hand, is defined here as a marker of otherness used to describe differences among socio-cultural groups (pieterse, 2003). in heterogeneous countries like thailand with several regions, languages, and religions (cohen, 1991; kitiarsa, 2005; luangthongkum, 2007), the term “internal ethnicity” (light et al., 1993) appears useful for this paper to make sense of thai migrants’ enactment of belonging at the local level. the term “global ethnicity” (light et al., 1992) refers to national belonging and appears effective in identifying thai migrant women’s link to the thai nation. to understand the influence of gender, social class, and ethnicity (internal or global) in thai women’s enactment of belonging, intersectionality (crenshaw, 1989) appears an effective analytical approach to be adopted. it focuses on the simultaneous interaction at a given place and time of various factors or categories of difference, which (re)produces the social subordination and marginality of minority women. it is originally applied to the case of black women in the united states of america (ibid.) but has increasingly been adopted in recent years to study other cases of minority women in the context of migration (butratana & trupp, 2021; fathi, 2017; fresnoza-flot, 2022; lévy, 2022). aligned with the theme of the special issue that the present paper is part of, i borrow this approach of intersectionality to understand thai migrant women’s belonging through multiform transmission practices in their buddhist social spaces. migration, religion, and belonging the literature on religion in the context of migration shows the plural role of this social institution in the lives of migrants in their receiving countries and, more recently, in their social spaces traversing the borders of nation-states (levitt, 2003; 2004). one of the important functions of religion identified in this literature is its facilitating and reinforcing role of migrants’ sense of belonging. aseas 15(2) | 235 asuncion fresnoza-flot migrants manifest and affirm their sense of belonging through ritual performances during key life-course events (births, marriages, funerals) and through material, symbolic, and spatial consumption while demonstrating their religion-based moral values. these “ways of belonging” (levitt & schiller, 2004) demonstrate individuals’ various memberships to a faith-based population, an immigrant community, and one or several nations. they also point to religion’s crucial role in the life of migrants: as an “expression of identity”, “community formation”, “refuge from oppression”, and “site of resistance and activism” (bonifacio & angeles, 2010, p. 10). moreover, belonging appears anchored in geographic places. migrants in their receiving countries usually congregate in their places of worship that fulfill a socializing function. these places provide different opportunities for migrants in terms of housing, economic possibilities, and access to socio-legal information (fresnozaflot, 2010). religious activities such as pilgrimages and organized prayers create and perpetuate social spaces (liebelt, 2010; skrbis, 2007), producing a collective feeling of being part of a larger community at the intersection of social differences. these activities connect migrants with their countries of origin (bava & capone, 2010; mcalistar, 2002; socorro flores tondo, 2010), facilitate their incorporation into their receiving country (bastenier & dassetto, 1985), and link them to other migrants of the same faith in other countries (mcauliffe, 2016). places of worship also facilitate the reproduction of linguistic and other socio-cultural traditions among migrants and their descendants (maliepaard & lubbers, 2013). at the same time, migrants reinforce their faith and spiritual connections by frequenting these places and other sites socially considered sacred, which allows them to become and/ or portray themselves as good, enlightened, or respectable individuals (ambrosini et al., 2021; pande, 2017). overall, it is evident that migrants’ religious social spaces are venues of transmission of faith, socio-cultural traditions, and material objects across national, generational, and spiritual borders. the present paper investigates the dynamics of this multiform transmission in thai migrant women’s buddhist social spaces in belgium. doing so provides fresh insights about these migrants’ religious sociality and agency. the objective here is not to replace common-held views about them with religion-shaped perspectives but to reveal their silenced identities and multifaceted social lives, which can question essentializing views about them in their receiving country. thai migrant women at intersecting categories of difference in belgium at the time of the study, thai migrant women, like other migrants in mixed couples in belgium, were experiencing social and political scrutiny, notably concerning the authenticity of their relationship with belgian citizens. this situation unveils how thai women are viewed in belgium, and the intersecting categories of difference that (re)produce stereotypes1 about them. 1 this term refers to “social perception” about individuals based on supposed or imagined attributes, which generates generalizing “impression” (lippman, 1922, as cited in tao & chen, 2017, p. 22). 236 | aseas 15(2) multiform transmission and belonging during my fieldwork, some thai women criticized the reality television series called exotische liefde (exotic love) broadcasted on the vt4 channel in flanders (the dutch-speaking region of the country) for its portrayal of thai women as being ‘only after money’. the word “exotic” in the title of the series implies, on the one hand, a foreign country geographically far from belgium, and on the other hand, someone who is stereotypically imagined as different from the belgian population in socio-cultural terms. thai migrant women in the aforementioned television series were portrayed as exotic wives or partners of belgian men. in this exoticism of thai women in belgium, religiosity appears not highlighted; rather, these women’s feminine qualities are viewed as part of the encompassing category of asian women. one belgian man married to a thai woman remarked to me during an interview, “there is an image, a phantasm, this kind of phantasm of the asian woman, attentive, submissive”. this remark corroborates the stereotype about asian women that heyse (2010) observed in her study of russian-speaking marriage migrant women in belgium. her informants distanced themselves from “thai and philippine women, who are not highly educated and are used to ‘serving their husband, being docile and obedient’” (pp. 76-77). although studies show that exoticism entails the notions of religiosity or spirituality (hélie-lucas, 2001; shields, 2010), thai women in belgium appear mainly viewed as “asian women” with feminine qualities suited for couple or family formation. aside from gender stereotypes, sexual and ethnic stereotypes about thai migrant women abound in belgian society, as can be observed in several online commercials about thai massage parlors, often featuring sexy photographs of women presented as thais. at the beginning of the study in 2012, there were 75 thai massage parlors in brussels alone, and these parlors were mostly offering erotic or body-to-body massages (serve the city, 2010). as our fieldwork among thai migrant women progressed, it became clearer that these women’s bodies were most often genderized, sexualized, and ethnicized in commercial advertisements to attract clients. this stereotyping occurred against the backdrop of the belgian state’s control and regulations of binational marriages due to the rising cases of marriage of convenience in the country. the belgian state examines the “authenticity” of binational relationships through the lens of romantic love (mascia & odasso, 2015; maskens, 2015). since most thai migrant women are much younger than their belgian partners, their union often attracts the belgian society’s critical gaze. in short, at the time of fieldwork for the present study, the stereotypes about thai migrant women in belgium were exotic wives or partners of belgian men who were ‘only after money’ and/or workers in the intimate industry. as we will see, the thai women interviewed in this study revealed other aspects of their lives beyond common-held stereotypes. data-gathering methods and persons interviewed the present paper draws from my three-year research (2012-2015) on children of ethnically mixed families in belgium, specifically from my case study of thai-belgian families. my ethnographic fieldwork for the research mentioned above took place in the three regions of the country: wallonia, flanders, and brussels-capital. i adopted aseas 15(2) | 237 asuncion fresnoza-flot qualitative data-gathering methods such as interviews, observations, and informal conversations. aside from ethnographic fieldnotes, my fieldwork generated more than a hundred interviews, including 19 interviews with thai migrant women and 12 interviews with key social actors2 within the thai immigrant population (i.e., two temple abbots, two thai embassy officials, three thai language teachers, and five association leaders). as table 1 shows, the women interviewed were mostly in their 40s, and many had lived in belgium for over 20 years. most of them had migrated to belgium for or by marriage. only two had no children, and six informants had offspring from previous relationships with thai men. although many were married to belgian men, the informants did not become completely economically dependent on their belgian husbands. they mostly engaged in the labor market but none in the massage industry at the time of my interview: for example, as home cleaners, language teachers, and entrepreneurs. all but seven of the interviewed women had tertiary-level education: two with vocational degrees, nine with bachelor’s diplomas, and one with postgraduate education. the high number of informants residing in belgium for a long time and with tertiary-level education might be the effect of the snowballing approach i adopted, as i met some of the women interviewed through the referrals of a thai association leader who introduced me to her thai friends as a researcher. to vary 2 social actors in this context refer to individuals who fulfill specific roles within the thai immigrant population in belgium and have regular contact with their fellow migrants. they are involved “in processes and in carrying out initiatives” (sénécal, 2012, p. 37). informants (pseudonyms) age duration of immigration (in years) education level profession children phailin 60 25 none retired dressmaker 1 prisana 43 20 bachelor translator 1 malisa 43 18 bachelor factory worker 1 daw 43 24 elementary office cleaner 1 ruang 43 14 bachelor cook in a restaurant 0 malee 49 17 bachelor home cleaner 2 farung 46 10 postgraduate thai teacher/entrepreneur 1 nin 44 10 vocational housewife 1 piti 50 20 vocational caregiver 1 nom 37 12 bachelor home cleaner 1 pim 45 30 secondary shop manager 4 solada 57 34 elementary entrepreneur 3 siriporn 47 25 elementary home cleaner 3 mai 43 13 bachelor housewife 2 kanya 43 25 elementary housewife 4 pailin 62 25 elementary home cleaner/entrepreneur 1 siri 49 26 bachelor housewife 3 dao 50 22 bachelor housewife 0 som 53 15 bachelor office worker/language teacher 0 table 1. thai women interviewed in belgium 238 | aseas 15(2) multiform transmission and belonging my sample in terms of educational attainment and economic situation, i frequented thai buddhist temples the main social spaces of thai migrants in belgium. in these spaces, i presented myself as part of a ‘mixed’ family and as a mother of ethnically mixed children. this way of self-presentation allowed me to attract thai informants with modest social class backgrounds. with the informants’ consent, i recorded my interviews with them. these interviews and my informal conversations with them were carried out either in french or in english, which represents a limitation of my study. to gain some contextual information about thai migrants in general (e.g., history of immigration, estimated population, associations founded, places most frequented, and common challenges encountered), i did not only interview key social actors within the thai immigrant population, but also drew from scholarly literature and available statistical data on thai migration in belgium. except in a few cases in which friendship blossomed during fieldwork, my relationship with the thai women informants can be generally described as a typical researcher-informant relation, characterized by reciprocal exchanges of symbolic gestures (e.g., sharing foods and drinks) and personal information about our family and immigrant lives. during my fieldwork, i identified four temples: one in wallonia, that is, wat thai dhammaram, and three wat in flanders, namely wat dhammapateep, buddharama temple, and wat phra dhammakaya. i carried out fieldwork almost every weekend at wat thai dhammaram and wat dhammapateep, which attracted many thai migrants and belgians. these temples are located in a european-style house or building, unlike thai buddhist temples in other destination countries of thai migrants, such as the one in wimbledon in the united kingdom (see chuenglertsiri, 2020). based on my observation, the main room of these temples, where one can find the buddhist altar, can only accommodate about 15 to 20 people. nonetheless, both temples have spacious surroundings, where outdoor activities such as flea markets and festivals can be organized. compared to the temple in wallonia, the wat dhammapateep in flanders was at that time located far from the city center.3 this temple was not easy to reach due to the limited number of public buses passing in its location. it was not surprising that thai migrants i met in this temple usually came by car. for the present paper, i draw from my fieldnotes and interviews to unveil the transmission dynamics in thai migrant women’s buddhist social spaces, notably temples. the names of my informants that appear in this text are pseudonyms to protect their privacy. multiform transmission and belonging the wat and other thai buddhist social spaces, specifically home altars, are transmission sites for thai migrants. i observed during fieldwork that this transmission has several dimensions, namely transcendental, transgenerational, and transnational. these dimensions are related to other aspects of thai migrants’ buddhist social spaces in belgium. 3 before the temple moved to a new location in the same region, it took about 15 minutes to reach it by public bus from the main station in the nearest city. aseas 15(2) | 239 asuncion fresnoza-flot transcendental transmission: offerings for and guide from the spiritual realm the question of transmission goes beyond the mundane world for thai migrant women in the present study. these women’s buddhist social spaces, notably the wat, unveil the transcendental transmission they actively engage in, transforming good deeds into merits by transferring them from the material world to the spiritual realm. the boundary between these spheres is the “most important boundary” and not the one “between men and women” (plank 2015, p. 208). offerings are the most common practice for transcending the spiritual realm. many thai migrant women regularly visit a temple to pray alone or with their family members. during this visit, most of them offer thanks in different forms: giving to the monk mineral water, clothes, vegetables, and financial donation, among others (fieldnotes, 5 march 2015). such offering is widely observed among buddhists in thailand and also in migrant populations of different religious backgrounds in their receiving countries (bonifacio & angeles, 2010; levitt, 2003), which attests to the role of religious sites such as temples and churches as spaces of socialization. for thai migrants, a wat is an ideal place to pray and meditate. in fact, meditation sessions are available in wat for thais and non-thais. most thai women participate in these sessions without their belgian husbands, thereby demonstrating their religious subjectivity detached from their husbands, who are mostly non-practicing christians. coming alone or with their young children to the temple allows these women to highlight their other global ethnic, religious, and gender identifications as theravada buddhist thai women and mothers. thai informants continue their praying and meditation practices in their homes, where one can generally find a small buddhist altar. this altar is a micro-social space that attracts visitors’ gaze when showcased in ‘public’ spaces such as a living room or on the side of the stairway in the informants’ home. thai informants told me during my interviews or informal conversations that they were responsible for arranging and decorating their homes, including where to put their buddha images and/or small altar. this role at home partly reflects the gender division of domestic labor in these women’s families, where they usually accomplish the reproductive work from cleaning to cooking. in many cases, the buddhist altar is accompanied by an image of the king of thailand (figure 2 below) and decorations such as elephants. the type of materials of the sacred decorations (wood or stone), from where they were brought (in thailand or in belgium), and the way they are positioned at home (sporadically or in a specific place) partly suggest the social class belonging of thai informants. hence, the specific place in the thai informants’ home, where the buddhist altar and other sacred images/objects are positioned, stems from the intersection of these women’s gender, social class, and global ethnicity. interestingly, informants with traumatic difficulties in the past, such as problematic divorce, loss of investments, and near-death experiences, seem to devote a lot of time and energy to expressing their faith. one interviewed woman i call solada (57 years old), who maintained an altar, invited me to see it in her bedroom. while standing in front of the altar, she narrated to me her near-death experience and encounter with floating lights or souls trying to enter her lifeless body. she also shared with me her spiritual understanding about her reincarnation and sufferings in 240 | aseas 15(2) multiform transmission and belonging this life due to what she did in her past life. like other informants, solada emphasized the uselessness of paying attention to the past on the one hand and the importance of focusing on the present on the other hand. what i do wrong, what i don’t do wrong, i don’t forget, but i don’t put [them] in my mind anymore. i don’t want to live in the past, i want [to] live now. yes, that is important. otherwise, you [are] not happy, never, you cannot. […] you have to accept what you have. you have to when something happen(s). try to pray [to] forget our problem, but not sit like that, like a dog. (interview transcripts, 28 april 2014) the “present” means being a good human being and praying for the future. to have a hint about their future and prepare for it, some women go to the temple and seek advice from the monk to find solutions to their problems. they also resort to fortune-telling using fortune sticks (seam si). in one temple, i met an informant named pai (43 years old), who showed me how they glimpsed the future. she and other women inside the temple first prayed before the buddhist altar. after that, they went to the corner of the temple and shook a bottle filled with thin, red-colored wooden sticks. each stick was numbered. after shaking the bottle, they made one stick fall and opened the corresponding paper that contained a message written in thai, english, and chinese about their lives. one example of such a message in english is reproduced below: just like a flower, blooming under the angry sun, but managers [sic] to look fresh. like a little bird learning to fly a strong wind, falls down [sic] to the figure 2. an altar in the living room of an informant’s home (photo by fresnoza-flot, 2014) aseas 15(2) | 241 asuncion fresnoza-flot ground. life would be enjoyable in the future. patient recovering. not likely to find a good mate at this stage. legal case not favorable. some good luck exists [sic]. despite some hardships at present, it would be better not too long. (fieldnotes, 4 may 2014) pai was happy to see the message she got from her stick. fortune sticks offered her a sense of hope in her complicated life (being in a third relationship and trying to be a mother to children with different biological fathers and residing in three distinct countries). women with difficulties (economic and/or familial), such as pai, find a way to come to grips with their future in wat. turning to wat for moral and spiritual support seems to result from the interaction of these women’s social class (in economic terms) and gender roles as wives and mothers. during songkran (new year) celebrations, thai migrants, their families, and friends congregate in wat, offer gifts to the monks, and eat together to obtain additional blessings and merits. in one wat during the songkran celebration in 2014, thai migrants hung colorful small gifts on a wishing tree next to a house transformed into a temple. next to this tree was a table filled with ready-made offerings as figure 3 shows: wrapped gifts with bottles of mineral water, instant noodles, canned goods, and small plastic bags of rice. visitors could buy these offerings for the monks (fieldwork photos, 27 april 2014). the social class background of thai devotees can be observed in the way they dress (formal or informal clothes, traditional thai clothes or european-style clothing) to present themselves before the sacred. merit-making activities, offerings, and seeking spiritual guidance in the temple reflect the transmission dynamics in which thai migrant women are implicated in this world towards figure 3. offerings for the monks during songkran celebration (photo by fresnoza-flot, 2014) 242 | aseas 15(2) multiform transmission and belonging the spiritual, sacred realm. this transmission that allows them to underline their religious and global ethnic belonging at the intersection of gender, social class, and global ethnicity also has a transgenerational dimension. transgenerational transmission of socio-cultural ways of belonging from mother to children during my fieldwork in a thai buddhist temple in flanders, a young belgian-thai boy with his thai mother participated in the song nam phra (water bathing ceremony). the thai woman taught her son how to behave before the monks and perform the nonverbal greeting called wai.4 during large ceremonies such as song nam phra and songkran, one can see and meet many thai-belgian families with their children in the temple. during these events, one can also witness the religious transmission from thai mothers to their children. like other places of worship, such as christian churches (fresnoza-flot, 2020; maliepaard & lubbers, 2013), wat plays a key role in transgenerational transmission in migrants’ families. thai mothers bring their children to the temples to celebrate different key moments of life. practices around these moments are ways of belonging that perpetuate the practices they learned in their country of origin. for instance, i once witnessed a ceremony of hair cutting of a thai-belgian baby in a thai buddhist temple in flanders. during the ceremony, money was attached around the wrist of the baby, and a small quantity of the baby’s hair was cut and buried at the foot of a large tree in the vicinity of the temple. after the ceremony, the thai kin of the mother celebrated through commensality. they brought food to the temple and shared it with other temple visitors. commensality is one of the venues for transgenerational transmission (bailey, 2017), which can be observed in wat. one young thai woman i call pat, who visited a temple in flanders with her thai mother, told me that “every lunchtime, women and other people in the temple sit … around the monks” and the “monks give some information and pray” (fieldnotes, 5 march 2014). pat was among the few young adult children of thai migrants who visited the temple from time to time. during my fieldwork, i observed that most children of thai migrants who regularly frequent the temples in flanders and wallonia were minors of very young age. their thai mothers rarely came to the temple with their belgian husbands. the mother-child dyad appears to be a salient figure in thai buddhist temples, which challenges the stereotypical social image of thai women in belgium as “spouses” of belgian men and not as “mothers”. temples are also places where the thai language and traditional cultural practices are transmitted. for example, one thai temple in flanders provides thai language and traditional thai dance classes for children of thai migrants during weekends, whereas the temple in wallonia offers classes on traditional thai musical instruments (fresnoza-flot, 2019). it is thai mothers who introduce their children to these activities. ruang, for example, explained below the importance of transgenerational transmission of the thai language from her to her daughter. 4 this gesture involves “bringing open palms together and synchronizing with a dip of the head or a bow (low, lower, or lowest, depending upon the level of veneration to be shown toward the person or object being addressed)” (welty, 2009, p. xi). aseas 15(2) | 243 asuncion fresnoza-flot if we go to the temple, we speak thai. i say that ‘now, you have to speak thai. you have to know the thai way. you have to know the thai [language]. you have to learn everything, how to speak, how to write, everything’, and when you go back [to thailand], they [will]? say ‘ah your mother teaches [you] good, your father teaches you good’ [something] like that. (interview transcripts, 7 april 2014) this narrative conveys how thai migrant mothers such as ruang are influenced transnationally by their country’s conception of thai-ness based on the mastery of the thai language and what they call ‘thai culture’. interestingly, thai mothers reinforce their internal ethnicity during their interactions in the thai temples, thereby transmitting such affiliation to their children. during my fieldwork in a thai temple in flanders, pat remarked that most thais frequenting the temple originated from the northeast region (isan) of thailand, that these migrants communicated with one another using their local language, and that the foods prepared in the temple were mainly isan food5 (fieldnotes, 28 june 2014). many of these migrants brought their young children to the temple, where they were exposed to these socio-cultural ways of communication and commensality. in this case, gender and internal ethnicity intersect, producing a nuanced intergenerational transmission. nonetheless, the classes organized for children in wat is the thai national language, and outside of the class, children used to communicate with one another using the dutch language. one informant named farung, who regularly brings her child to the temple every weekend, confided me her frustration: actually, i have to go to the temple, almost whole day […] i cook in the morning. i prepare the food, and then around lunch, i go to the temple, and i eat there. and one o’clock (is) the class, the children’s (thai) class, but sometimes, i bring bryan [his son] you know from (the) beginning, but now i know he got more forward (progress). he got better than (before), but the good thing is he can talk to other kids, but they talk in dutch, yeah, together. […] so, i’m not really pleased with that. (interview transcripts, 14 july 2014) social class-based groupings or identifications were also salient in thai buddhist social spaces. most thai association leaders i interviewed were university-educated. one of them confided the difficulty that association leaders encounter in belgium when trying to obtain the cooperation and active involvement of thai migrant women of working-class background (mostly from isan) in their activities. the transmission of social class belonging from thai mothers to their children takes place against the backdrop of a class divide, which most often has an internal ethnic dimension. during my fieldwork, thai women who talked to me referred to themselves as “thai” (khon thai), their global ethnicity of being born in thailand. this self-presentation usually occurred the first time we met when they mistook me for a thai woman and asked me if i was thai. after several interactions, some of them emphasized their internal 5 many thai migrants i met during fieldwork in flanders and wallonia mentioned glutinous rice and papaya salad as typical isan foods. 244 | aseas 15(2) multiform transmission and belonging ethnicity as someone coming from isan and speaking the lao isan language. during conversations with them, thai informants distinguished themselves from other thai migrants not only in terms of internal ethnicity (i.e., local origin and regional language spoken) but also in terms of social class belonging (specifically education attainment or previous employment in thailand) and the motivation behind their mixed marriage, as nom with university education explained below: they (other thai women) have a different meaning, i think. for me, i married with love, […] i think the women who (have) high, different mentality for education, if high education, i think, they would love to go with men that they can talk to, that can build together, that can side by side share, share something like that (with them). but for women who (have) low education, i think a little different, to have a better life, yes, i think. (interview transcripts, 8 june 2014) by stressing the romantic aspect of her relationship with her belgian partner and highlighting her social class belonging, nom appears to challenge the stereotype about thai women in belgium as exotic wives who are only after money. her case is representative of other informants’ cases showing how stereotypes about thai women in belgium shape their narratives of belonging. frequenting the temple with their children and engaging in religious practices of praying, offering presents, and meditation allow thai women like nom to make visible and transmit to their offspring their valorizing identities at the intersection of gender, religious affiliation, social class, and global and/or internal ethnicity. thus, thai buddhist temples as a place of socialization (butratana & trupp, 2011; plank, 2015; webster & careta, 2016) address thai mothers’ needs and assist them in transmitting ‘thai culture’ or, for those from the northeast region, their internal ethnicity to their children. however, as i explained elsewhere (fresnoza-flot, 2021), this changes when children grow up, engage in several activities with their peers, integrate into the labor market, and refuse to frequent their thai mothers’ spaces of socialization. after learning their thai mothers’ socio-cultural ways of belonging, these grown-up children immerse themselves deeply outside their mothers’ social spaces to experience different subjectivities. transnational transmission: faith, material symbols, and tastes on 24 may 2014, a famous thai nun from thailand visited one of the thai buddhist temples in flanders. many thai women arrived in this temple dressed in white to listen to her on that day. this event suggests that the temple can be a transmission site, linking one country to another and forming “transnational social spaces” (faist, 1998). such a transmission crossing national borders entails geographical movements of people and objects carrying, transferring, and sharing faith, material symbols, and tastes. the visit of the thai nun in belgium was not the sole transnational practice we can observe in thai buddhist temples. there are monks from thailand and other european countries who visit a thai buddhist temple and stay there in belgium. thai migrants from neighboring european countries arrive in belgium in a rented aseas 15(2) | 245 asuncion fresnoza-flot bus for their pilgrimage to a thai buddhist temple and to visit renowned touristic places. in one case, a group of thai migrants, together with the abbot of the thai buddhist temple they frequent in switzerland, first proceeded to the netherlands to see tulip gardens before coming to belgium and visiting one of the thai temples in flanders (fieldnotes, 5 march 2014). pilgrimages such as those observed among thais in europe appear widespread among migrant populations worldwide (e.g., liebelt, 2010; skrbis, 2007). during these pilgrimages, religious faith is celebrated, shared, and reinforced among visiting migrants and those welcoming them in their place of worship. belonging not only to the theravada buddhist institution but also to the thai nation as its (former) citizens, thai migrants’ religious affiliation intersects with their global ethnicity in this regard. aside from pilgrimages, thai migrant women visit thai buddhist temples outside of their country of residence for other purposes. for example, after a recorded interview with me in her home, pim (45 years old) showed me on her mobile phone a photo of her and a thai friend wearing traditional thai clothes during the songkran celebration in a thai buddhist temple in france (fieldnotes, 14 april 2014). i met a few thai women residing in the netherlands who visited thai wat in belgium to donate things to thai monks. one of them is mai whom i met for the first time in a thai buddhist temple in flanders during a songkran celebration. she told me that there were thai temples in the netherlands, but she liked the thai abbot in the temple where we met. in one event in the thai temple in wallonia, i was surprised to meet mai again. this time she came with her friends from the netherlands to offer sacks of potatoes, onions, tomatoes, and pots of flowers to the abbot of the temple (fieldnotes, 4 may 2014). women with good economic resources like mai most often engage in such a transnational practice, in which social class belonging intersects with their religiosity. visits and offerings in a thai buddhist temple in another country appear here as an enactment of multiple belonging to a privileged social class and to a complex theravada buddhist transnational community in which religious hybridization is taking place as in thailand (jackson, 2020; kitiarsa, 2005): for example, occult practices such as using fortune sticks to get a hint of the future (see the section on transcendental transmission). temples also act as transnational transmitters to thailand of the remains of deceased thai buddhist migrants, specifically of those with no economic resources and no family members in belgium. the intersection of women’s social class and family situation results in this situation. ruang explained to me what she observed in one temple she regularly frequented: sometimes they (thai women) stay here (in belgium) and kill themselves because they have so much problem, and nobody knows. […] (someone) bring(s) the ash to the temple and bring (it) back to thailand because no people […] can bring (it) because they have no family here. (interview transcripts, 7 april 2014) in addition, material symbols from thailand can be easily spotted in thai buddhist temples. for example, during the flea market organized every first sunday of the month in the temple in wallonia, even the decorations in the temple and the materials used for activities, such as traditional music classes for children, originated 246 | aseas 15(2) multiform transmission and belonging from the country. likewise, the tools used in fruit-carving classes in one of the thai temples in flanders and in soap-carving sessions during a thai cultural festival in the region were brought from thailand.6 as figure 4 illustrates below, at a monthly flea market in a thai buddhist temple, one can find a variety of thai specialties being sold, which accentuates the thai sellers’ global ethnicity (i.e., being part of the thai nation) and their identity as ‘workers’ not in the intimate industry but in the socio-cultural sector. foods sold are prepared using ingredients and utensils mostly brought from thailand. indeed, as plank (2015) remarks, “religion can also be translocative as it links the diaspora to their homeland in different ways through time and space – often through symbolic links” (p. 220). hence, thai buddhist temples in belgium may be small in terms of their physical dimensions but appear truly global and cross-border in terms of their social breadth. as social institutions, they are nodal points, or in naidu’s (2012) terms, “central nodal actor(s)” (p. 297), as they connect thai migrants not only in belgium but also in europe as well as between europe and thailand. indeed, thai buddhist temples serve as social hubs for thai migrants (webster, 2016), offering a feeling of home, a sense of emotional security, and economic opportunities (e.g., for selling thai specialties). 6 thai temples of thai diasporic populations are often affiliated with other temples in thailand and sometimes receive financial support from the country. in belgium, one example is the wat thai dhammaram in wallonia; it obtained support from the thai government and the sangha supreme council in thailand (see https://www.buddhism.be/fr/10-associations/29-wat-thai-dhammaram). figure 4. a section of the flea market behind a thai temple (photo by fresnoza-flot, 2014) aseas 15(2) | 247 asuncion fresnoza-flot discussion and conclusion the present paper unveils how thai buddhist social spaces, specifically wat, shape and reinforce thai migrant women’s sense of belonging by serving as sites of transcendental, transgenerational, and transnational forms of transmission. this finding points to how thai women’s sociality is anchored in the sacred in the context of migration and the intersecting categories of difference that shape their multiform transmission practices. through ritual performances, sacred practices, and gift-giving, thai migrant women transform their good deeds into merits and transfer them from the material world into the spiritual one. they transmit their socio-cultural ways of belonging across generations (from parents to children) and nation-state borders (from thailand to belgium). these forms of transmission highlight their multifarious belongings at various scales: to a faith community, to an ethno-regional group, to a social class, to their family, and to the thai nation. therefore, thai buddhist social spaces are a global platform where both the confluence and the affirmation of social differences and identities take place, enabling thai women’s sense-making in their receiving country. the religious sociality of these women reveals the other face of their subjectivity, one that showcases their moral self, reputable and spiritually guided. thai migrant women’s religion-shaped subjectivity challenges the essentializing stereotypes about them as solely exotic wives and/or workers in the intimate industry in belgium, stereotypes that confine them within the reproductive and productive spheres of social life and silence their multiple identities. thai migrant women navigate the common-held views about them in subtle ways at the intersection of their various identities as spouses, mothers, citizens, and buddhist devotees. the case explored in the present paper reconfirms that migrant women have multifaceted roles in their receiving and origin countries (cole, 2014; piper & roces, 2004) and that places of worship play a significant role in their self-(re)construction (werbner & johnson, 2010). what differentiates this paper from previous studies on religion in migration settings is its simultaneous focus on the various forms of transmission in religious social spaces, which uncovers the nuances of migrant women’s belonging. this paper also reveals that gender, social class, and (internal/global) ethnicity are the main intersecting categories of difference that influence thai migrant women’s various transmission practices. sexuality is not salient in these women’s buddhist social spaces, unlike in the outside secular world, where its intersection with gender and ethnicity produces stereotypes of thai migrant women as ‘workers’ in the intimate industry and as ‘exotic wives’ or partners of belgian men. the present paper, albeit methodologically limited, offers a starting point for future studies of transmission dynamics in thai buddhist social spaces. it suggests several possible themes for these future studies. first, the religious dimension of how thai migrant women are exoticized in their receiving country will be worth exploring, notably how these migrants’ religiosity reinforces certain stereotypes about them. second, it would be worth exploring what is lost and passed on from thai mothers to their children, from one space to another, and from the mundane world to the spiritual ones. studies on this theme will be more insightful if the role of buddhist social spaces on the ethnic identifications of young people is taken into account. and 248 | aseas 15(2) multiform transmission and belonging third, although it may pose methodological challenges, a study on how thai mothers, their husbands, and children negotiate, manage, and navigate religious socialization is urgent to gain multiple perspectives on transmission dynamics in thai migrants’ families.  references ambrosini, m., bonizzoni, p., & molli, s. d. 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(2015). european-asian cross-referencing landscape. a case study in sweden. in d. bruns, o. kühne, a. schönwald, & s. theile (eds.), landscape culture-culturing landscapes. the differentiated construction of landscapes (pp. 199-206). springer vs. yuval-davis, n. (2006). belonging and the politics of belonging. patterns of prejudice, 40(3), 197-214. about the author asuncion fresnoza-flot is a tenured research associate of the fonds de la recherche scientifique (f.r.s.-fnrs in belgium and senior lecturer (maîtresse d’enseignement) at the laboratory of anthropology of contemporary worlds (lamc) of the université libre de bruxelles (ulb). her ongoing study examines the contextual mobility of belgian-asian couples in their cross-border social spaces. ► contact: asuncion.fresnoza@ulb.be aseas 15(2) | 251 asuncion fresnoza-flot acknowledgements this work was supported by the fonds de la recherche scientifique (f.r.s.-fnrs) under a postdoctoral fellowship (2012-2015) at the catholic university of louvain (uclouvain) in belgium. the author thanks all her informants for entrusting her their stories, which made this study possible. she is grateful for the opportunity to present the previous versions of her paper during two events: 6th french network for asian studies international conference in 2017 in sciences-po (paris, france) and the international workshop europe-thailand transnational migration: intimacy, sexuality and gender in 2021 in ulb (brussels, belgium). she is also thankful to the anonymous reviewers of the earlier version of her paper and to the editors of advances in southeast asian studies journal for their constructive comments and suggestions disclosure the author declares no conflict of interest. 252 | aseas 15(2) aseas 14(1) | 37 social media, fake news, and the covid-19 pandemic: sketching the case of southeast asia hoang linh danga a diplomatic academy of vietnam, vietnam ► dang, h. l. (2021). social media, fake news, and the covid-19 pandemic: sketching the case of southeast asia. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 14(1), 37-57. as a result of lockdowns across southeast asia, the use of all types of social media has reached high records in the whole region. yet, the rapid social media response manifested in the form of an infodemic – an overabundance of false and misleading information. concurrently, the region has also witnessed a significant rise in various governmental measures targeting social media actors. in the name of combating fake news, various legal enactments, including enhanced censorship and sanctions, have been pursued by southeast asian authorities. these, however, are often deemed unjustified and aggressively restricting of freedom of speech and expression, especially at a time when asean member states have gained notoriety for their lack of civil liberties. this article aims to reveal connections between the infodemic and legal responses in southeast asia on the basis of a qualitative literature review and content analysis. it looks at the term infodemic along with the proliferation of different forms of fake news in the context of southeast asia’s social media use. it also highlights discrepancies between legal responses and the impacts of fake news during the early days of the pandemic. keywords: covid-19 pandemic; emergency laws and regulations; infodemic; social media; southeast asia  introduction from the start of the coronavirus outbreak, large-scale examples of false and misleading information campaigns were found to be prevalent on social media, ranging from scurrilous rumors and inaccurate allegations to harmful medical hoaxes and conspiracy theories. fake news “spreads faster and more easily than this virus” and “we are not just fighting an epidemic; we are fighting an infodemic”, were the words of tedros adhanom ghebreyesus, the directorgeneral of the world health organisation (who).1 the covid-19 outbreak was not the first major infectious disease to occur in the era of social media.2 many studies delved into the substantial role of social 1 delivered at a gathering of foreign policy and security experts in munich, germany, in midfebruary 2020. retrieved from https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/munich-security-conference 2 since the era of social media is considered to start around 2008 with the emergence of youtube and facebook (ortiz-ospina, 2019), the first major infectious disease that occurred in this era is the 2009 swine flu. aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 54 38 | aseas 14(1) social media, fake news, and the covid-19 pandemic media during previous disease outbreaks. real-time data collected from social media posts have been considered valuable in detecting, monitoring, and mapping the spread of these diseases (chunara et al., 2012; lampos & cristianini, 2012). today, social media has matured significantly, and yet, it is getting more difficult to identify accurate and useful information, to communicate fairly, and to build trust. prior to the outbreak of covid-19, researchers raised concerns about the prevalence of false information on social media. analyzing facebook posts and videos circulated within a week during the 2016 zika outbreak, sharma et al. (2017) discovered a surprising prevalence of misleading posts that far outnumbered those containing accurate information about the disease in the us. in recent years, southeast asia has witnessed constrictions of internet freedom (freedom house, 2020). it is also deemed the most dynamic region with regard to legislation on anti-fake news during the time of the covid-19 outbreak. this article seeks to reveal connections between the dissemination of fake news on social media and legal responses in the region. particularly, the article focuses on three sets of questions: (1) what is fake news and what is the role of social media in the context of southeast asia; (2) how can we classify covid-19 related fake news and what are considered the harmful impacts of the covid-19 infodemic; and (3) how do southeast asian governments respond to the infodemic and how are their measures perceived? to answer these questions, a qualitative literature review and content analysis have been carried out during mainly the first months of the pandemic, from march 2020 to june 2020. information has been collected from various online sources, of which #coronavirusfacts alliance3 serves as the main data source for illustration of the situation of covid-19 in southeast asia. led by the international fact-checking network (ifcn) at the poynter institute in florida, usa, the #coronavirusfacts alliance unites more than 100 fact-checkers around the globe in publishing, sharing, and translating facts surrounding the coronavirus. launched in january 2020, the alliance is presented as the largest collaborative project ever launched in the fact-checking world. the article is structured along the three key thematics. the following section provides an overview on fake news and related concepts, such as infodemic, and on the use of social media in southeast asia. this is followed by an overview of the proliferation of different fake news reports in social media during the outbreak of the pandemic, and the socio-economic impacts of the infodemic in southeast asia. finally, different governments’ responses are reviewed and assessed. the article ends with several observations and recommendations. fake news and social media in southeast asia: an overview the term fake news has a different meaning for each person and each community, and varies, with different shades of meaning, depending on the context. a review of 34 academic articles between 2003 and 2017 showed that the term fake news took on different operationalizations, including news satire, news parody, fabrication, 3 #coronavirusfacts allience is a project led by the international fact-checking network at poynter institute. for further information, see https://www.poynter.org/coronavirusfactsalliance/ aseas 14(1) | 39 hoang linh dang manipulation, advertising, and propaganda, classified according to levels of facticity and deception (tandoc et al., 2017, p. 1). klein and wueller (2017, p. 6), and allcott and gentzkow (2017, p. 51) characterize fake news as fabricated, completely untrue, and having no factual basis. besides this status of falsity, the underlying intention of the publishers, such as the deception of the audience, the infliction of harm, or the pursuit of self-interest – such as popularity or financial gain – is also considered in definitions of fake news. some researchers note that fake news does not necessarily refer to completely false or fabricated claims alone. some statements can be “misleading”, containing “significant omissions”, especially taking claims out of context in ways that undermine truth (dentith, 2017, p. 66) or tend to “mix deliberate falsehoods with well-known truths” (gelfert, 2018, p. 100). other forms of content, namely brazen hoaxes, pranks, satires, or parodies, might be included in fake news, but “they need not be slurs on the truth” (mackenzie & bhatt, 2018, p. 11). wardle and derakhshan (2017) argue that several items of content, such as hate speech, harassment, memes, and satire, cannot even be described as ‘news’. they indicate that fake news is only part of a broader and underlying issue – an information disorder. information disorder is constituted of three main elements: misinformation, disinformation, and mal-information (see figure 1). the first type, misinformation, is used to designate false connections and misleading content that is not intentionally created or disseminated to cause harm. the second type, disinformation, refers to false information harbored and disseminated deliberately for personal benefit or to cause harm to another party. the third notion, mal-information, indicates content containing a connotation of facts but intentionally used to detrimentally target a person, an organization, or a figure 1. constitution of information disorder. (wardle & derakhshan, 2017). 40 | aseas 14(1) social media, fake news, and the covid-19 pandemic country.4 accordingly, a statement is assessed based on two factors – its falsity and the actual intention/motivation of the originator. fake news mostly falls into the conflation of the first and second notions. it is noticeable that the term fake news has been overused and misused in political debate. it is a term often repurposed by politicians and public figures to counter social criticism against them or to describe dissenting or unflattering reports that, indeed, might well be factually true and accurately represent reality (gelfert, 2018; klein & wueller, 2017; mackenzie & bhatt, 2018). however, in the context of crisis and information asymmetries, while it is relatively easy to examine and check certain pieces of information through verifiable sources, it is often a considerable challenge to interrogate actual motives without access to concrete and open evidence and clarification. amid the covid-19 pandemic, the who (2020a) launched the term infodemic as “an overabundance of information – some accurate and some not – that makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when they need it” (p. 2). infodemic is a blend of the words info(rmation) and (epi)demic and is not a new term. it was coined in 2003 by david rothkopf (2003) in the washington post amid the sars outbreak: what exactly do i mean by the ‘infodemic’? a few facts, mixed with fear, speculation and rumor, amplified and relayed swiftly worldwide by modern information technologies, have affected national and international economies, politics and even security in ways that are utterly disproportionate with the root realities. infodemic, in rothkopf ’s definition, is a mixture of a few facts (accurate information) with uncertain or doubtful truth and sentiments that spread far and wide. rothkopf also intended the word infodemic to have a broader application, not only occurring in responses to global health scares but also to terrorism and shark sightings (rothkopf, 2003). meanwhile, the who has brought out a more contemporary interpretation of the problem arising in the midst of the disease outbreak by emphasizing the massive amount of related information that is overwhelming and a mixture of both accurate and completely inaccurate. public interest in the term has also risen tremendously. before the covid-19 pandemic, search traffic on the term shows it re-appeared regularly during the 2006 avian flu, 2009 swine flu, and 2014 ebola outbreak.5 it was also geographically concentrated in only some areas, such as the us, india, and the uk (see figure 2). however, with the arrival of the current coronavirus pandemic, people’s search for the term infodemic has peaked worldwide. this is not without the influence or impact of social media on online information traffic. 4 examples of mal-information are someone using a picture of a dead person (with no context) to flare up hatred against a specific ethnic community, or moving private information into the public sphere, such as secrets or private images. 5 search traffic, presented by google trends analytics, reflects what people are curious about or how frequently a given search term is entered into google’s search engine relative to the site’s total search volume over a given period of time. aseas 14(1) | 41 hoang linh dang social media is a key pathway to news. they are seen as one of the cheapest and fastest ways to access news, regardless of format and types of content, or whether it is from individuals, organizations, or governments. most of the online content consumed by southeast asian millennials is on social networking and video platforms6, amounting to 80% and 76% respectively, followed by messaging platforms with 38%. traditional information channels, such as news platforms, corporate websites, magazines, and podcasts, have lost popularity with under 20% each (asean post, 2019). country social media penetration (%) time per day using internet (hours) daily time using social media (hours) philippines 67 9.45 3.53 thailand 75 9.01 3.55 indonesia 59 7.59 3.26 malaysia 81 7.57 2.45 world average 49 6.43 2.24 vietnam 67 6.30 2.22 singapore 79 6.48 2.08 6 video platforms are exclusively for creating, streaming, sharing, and hosting videos – for example, youtube. in contrast, social networking platforms refer in this article to social media platforms, such as facebook and twitter, that focus on building community/contacts-based relationships, and disseminate various formats of information, such as texts or infographics. figure 2. global search trending of ‘infodemic’ before and after the outbreak of covid-19, as of 28 october 2020. (google trend analytics). table 1. social media penetration, time spent online, and social media in some asean countries, as of january 2020. (we are social & hootsuite, 2020a). 42 | aseas 14(1) social media, fake news, and the covid-19 pandemic according to we are social and hootsuite (2020a), southeast asia, home of some 655 million people, boasts the highest social network usage worldwide and an internet penetration of 66% (more than 400 million), outnumbering the global average of 59% as of january 2020. about 63% of the southeast asian population use social media compared to 49% globally, with a year-over-year growth of 7.7%. daily, they spend more time on the internet than the global average, and use around one-third of their time online accessing social media. in particular, filipinos spend 9.45 hours online daily and 3.53 hours on social media – the highest number in the world. regionally, indonesians (7.59 and 3.26 hours) come close in second, followed by thais (9.01 and 2.55 hours). country facebook youtube instagramm whatsapp facebook massenger thailand 75 72 50 17 55 singapore 70 71 44 73 42 malaysia 70 69 49 68 47 vietnam 61 59 32 47 indonesia 41 43 38 40 24 philippines 57 56 36 15 49 table 2. most active social media platforms (% of population) in some asean countries. (we are social & hootsuite, 2018).7 varied types of messenger apps, as well as social media platforms, have been used across southeast asia. facebook is the most prevalent social media platform, with 360 million active social media users, followed by youtube and instagram. accordingly, facebook messenger and whatsapp are the most popular messenger apps. southeast asians’ concern with covid-19 has become evident in their search trends. in some countries, google searches relating to covid-19 witnessed the first major rise relative to all search traffic towards the beginning of march 2020, when the number of covid-19 positive cases in the region started to soar. covid-19 saw 7 in average, about 55% of southeast asia’s total population (11 countries) are active facebook users (~360 million). figure 3. search trending during coronavirus pandemic in southeast asia, as of 28 october 2020. (google trend analytics). aseas 14(1) | 43 hoang linh dang its highest levels of search traffic from mid-march until the end of april 2020, especially in singapore, which witnessed the largest numbers of covid-19 cases in the region. social distancing measures and governments’ encouragement to stay at home disrupted many people’s lifestyles. they relied on social media to share news, stay in touch with friends and family, as well as access entertainment. this triggered a sharp increase in the use of all social networking sites and their features, such as video calls and messaging. online traffic directed to publishers of news relating to the coronavirus and the pandemic also reached record highs. the philippines and singapore witnessed the largest surge with 64% and 39% of users spending more time on social media during the pandemic, according to a report by we are social and hootsuite (2020b). the philippines’ number was the highest worldwide. southeast asia also experienced a 60% surge in mobile streaming through a wide variety of products. the curfew and closure of retail shops boosted thai merchants’ facebook live social sales by 216% from february 2020, something that is predicted to continue after the pandemic (leesa-nguansuk, 2020). social media praised the joint attempts of scientists, doctors, celebrities, and media influencers, who raised public awareness as well as urging people to stay alert and follow regulations. the hand washing song known as ghen co vy, performed by several vietnamese artists, went viral and gained media attention worldwide. the song and its dance routine, which aimed to promote good hygiene practice and cleanliness, was supported by international and national organizations. there are various motives behind the creation and dissemination of fabricated news on social media, from straightforward profit to a vast array of political interests from which advantage can be gained during the current pandemic. as covid-19 became a trending topic, every item of news related to it had a greater opportunity to go viral, especially when information is scarce and opportunists, who are willing to trade on chaos and fear, exist in large numbers. curtis (2020) showed that viral content can bring financial profit for fake news publishers through gaining additional traffic, growing an audience base, and/or generating ‘clickbait’ that translates into increasing financial value via their social media profiles. the higher the potential benefit generated from surging traffic on social media, the higher the temptation is for people to forward fake news, which requires little investment and carries a very low risk of attracting any penalty. infodemic in southeast asia and the covid-19 pandemic covid-19 infodemic: observations from southeast asia since the beginning of the era of social media, southeast asia is said to be facing its first ‘true’ social media infodemic (cf. hao & basu, 2020). before covid-19 turned into a pandemic, fake news was already a significant concern for southeast asians. according to a survey of international communications consultants ruder finn in 2019, false information was the biggest concern of 60% of respondents across all social media and messaging channels (asean post, 2019). meanwhile, about half of the respondents expressed their concern about dishonest content and 39% were worried about inappropriate or biased content. 44 | aseas 14(1) social media, fake news, and the covid-19 pandemic during the covid-19 pandemic, the complex multilayer networks lab (2020) developed the covid-19 infodemics observatory to monitor the spread of fake news related to the pandemic based on twitter data. based on their infodemic risk index, singapore is ranked first out of 83 countries for the most reliable and accurate information shared on twitter. the risk indexes of malaysia and the philippines also remain relatively low for most of the observed periods. these three countries demonstrate the highest news reliability calculated with respect to messages in the country’s native language. meanwhile, the rest of the countries, especially indonesia and vietnam, face a much higher risk of unreliable and low-quality information, while demonstrating the lowest news reliability concerning messages written in local languages. misand disinformation about covid-19 is usually replicated and mutated across multiple social media platforms and in multiple languages before being condemned. it varies in format, theme, scope, and reach. key themes of online false information relating to the coronavirus and the pandemic in southeast asia are (1) origins; (2) symptoms, diagnosis, prevention, and treatment measures; (3) false and misleading statistics; (4) socio, environmental, economic, and health impacts; (5) governmental actions and regulation; (6) targeting political, religious/ethnic groups; (7) content driven by fraudulent financial gain designed to steal people’s private data; and (8) targeting public figures/influencers. disinformation about covid-19 has harnessed three main formats, namely (1) emotive narrative constructs and memes; (2) images and videos created or modified fraudulently; (3) fake company or government websites with false sources and polluted datasets. country number of verified news main social media platforms thailand 46 facebook, twitter, messaging app line and youtube indonesia 115 facebook, tiktok, youtube and instagram philippines 208 facebook, youtube and instagram malaysia 9 facebook, twitter, youtube myanmar 56 facebook singapore 12 facebook total 446 in southeast asia, false information related to symptoms, diagnosis, prevention, and treatment measures of covid-19, and governments’ responses to it, went viral on social media platforms, mainly on facebook. they are followed by false and misleading reports and contents targeting political, religious, and ethnic groups. inaccurate advice on the prevention and treatment methods of the infection is considered the most harmful content. in the philippines, a false health graphic found in hundreds of posts encouraged people to gargle salt with water to cure the disease. videos of a filipino netizen that accumulated 2.5 million views and more than 135,000 shares insisted on killing the virus by drinking warm salt water (vera files, 2020). figure 3. information disorder in southeast asia, as of 25 may 2020. (author’s compilation; coronavirusfacts alliance, 2020). aseas 14(1) | 45 hoang linh dang table 4. content classification of information disorder in southeast asia, as of 25 may 2020. the total can exceed 100 as some content can be categorized under more than one category. (author’s compilation; coronavirusfacts alliance, 2020).8 likewise, in indonesia, ubiquitous posts on social media claimed that covid-19 could be treated by an herbal combination of curcumin, ginger, and other ingredients, which, coincidently, are also the main ingredients of a jamu drink (wijaya, 2020).9 some facebook posts found in thailand and indonesia claimed that smoking could protect people from the virus. meanwhile, in the philippines, a screenshot showing a photo of a cannabis plant with the headline “breaking news: weed kills coronavirus” circulated on facebook with 12,500 shares, more than 3,700 reactions, and 723 comments, as of 18 february (coronavirusfacts alliance, 2020). nutrition scammers or unscrupulous pharmaceutical companies cash in on such online promotions proclaiming the benefits of certain products in preventing or curing covid-19. the stock of companies producing or trading in such products could rise accordingly in value. in the philippines, an advertisement for a vitamin supplement named honey-c was published on facebook on 31 march 2020 and became widely shared. the supplement was advertised as an immunity-boosting 8 table 3 and 4 are aggregated from https://www.poynter.org/ifcn-covid-19-misinformation/. they do not reflect the amount of fake news in each country, but the amount of fake news that has been detected and checked by the coronavirusfacts alliance. 9 this jamu drink is a turmenic ginger refreshment drink promoted as a traditional immunity booster. 46 | aseas 14(1) social media, fake news, and the covid-19 pandemic agent against covid-19, complemented with an approval from the philippine food and drug administration. however, this product was later confirmed as unregistered and the accompanying ad deemed deceptive marketing related to covid-19. the manufacturers of the product were requested by the regulatory agency to remove the misleading advertisements, on the penalty of sanctions (afp philippines, 2020). a number of false information is linked to official authorities’ actions against the diffusion of the disease. for example, while there was no law issued on mandatory facemask wearing in public in thailand as of march 2020, a statement that said police in thailand can charge anyone who does not follow the rule was repeatedly shared on facebook, twitter, and line messenger (coronavirusfacts alliance, 2020). another claim shared more than 10,000 times in various facebook posts stated that thailand ranked number one in the fight against covid-19, based on an international health security index, and that the country had the lowest number of infected cases at that time. the reality, however, is that thailand did not have the lowest number of positive cases, neither in asia nor worldwide, and the index cited was in fact published months before the pandemic (afp thailand, 2020). other pieces of information spread false statements and messages from politicians, public figures, and influencers. in early april 2020, multiple posts on facebook shared a message from myanmar’s health minister that a vaccine had been discovered. it was later confirmed to be fabricated content with embedded sexual links (fact crescendo, 2020). fake news targeting specific political, religious, and ethnic groups was rampant. especially in indonesia, videos viewed several thousands of times on facebook, twitter, and youtube showed chinese citizens converting to islam as a result of the pandemic. those videos displayed events that had taken place long before the pandemic (coronavirusfacts alliance, 2020). similarly, false statements that spread hatred towards chinese people were found in the philippines. in malaysia, most of the racist comments detected between 27 february and 27 march 2020 aimed at islam/malay, chinese, and indians. islamophobia also cropped up since march, when tabligh groups were insulted by social media users after a mass gathering held by tabligh missionary groups was said to have caused the biggest single-day jump of covid-19 cases in malaysia (chin & santa, 2020). research from the new york times found that malicious websites with covid-19 information were fabricated by hackers with digital traps set up to steal personal data or break into readers’ devices (frenkel et al., 2020). social media is also an ideal place for organized criminal elements, from making threats, bullying, and harassing to fraud and selling counterfeit products, as well as conspiracy theorists and anarchist groups capitalizing on the proliferation of disinformation. the excessive demand for medical masks and equipment supplies triggered the emergence of fake social media accounts that claimed to offer these items. after transferring money to scammers, victims would either receive counterfeit products or nothing at all. in malaysia, online scams involving facemask sales during the movement control order were reported to cause a loss of about myr 5.5 million (as of 4 june 2020) (redzuan, 2020). facemasks scams have also emerged in other countries, such as vietnam, the philippines, and indonesia (chan et al., 2020; trong dat, 2020). the anti-fake news centre of thailand detected a series of fabricated and imposter domain names that aseas 14(1) | 47 hoang linh dang used the name of the government’s thai chana platform10 to phish for shoppers’ personal information via the downloading of malware applications amid the covid-19 crisis (bangkok post, 2020b). socio-economic and other impacts of the infodemic in the fight against the covid-19 pandemic, while accurate and helpful information plays a significant role in improving public safety, an infodemic was found advance severe public health and socio-economic consequences as well as dampen attempts to protect public health and security. several studies have examined the mental and psychological health consequences of misinformation and disinformation amid the covid-19 outbreak (barua et al., 2020; mukhtar, 2020; shigemura et al., 2020; tasnim et al., 2020; who, 2020b). information quality and information sharing are among key factors driving human emotion, perception, and behavior, including individual decision making and problem solving when facing an infectious disease (browne et al., 2017; lee & jung, 2019). a study by islam et al. (2020) shows that about 800 people across 87 countries died and nearly 5,900 others were hospitalized after following fake cures of covid-19 spread on social media between 21 january 2020 and 5 april 2020. research also indicated that false information might cause unwanted effects on public behavioral patterns, which makes it harder to control the spread of the virus and exacerbates the negative effects of the pandemic on public health and security (leitner, 2020; tuccori et al., 2020). claims that underestimate the potential damage of the virus and the pandemic could also increase the level of public complacency. unproven statements related to the prevention and treatment of coronavirus, such as taking a vitamin supplement or an herbal drink, might not directly take away people’s lives, but might result in a false sense of security and public ignorance when complying with health protocols (purba, 2020). in indonesia, where the government has failed to deliver a consistent message about the coronavirus and the pandemic, social media influencers and self-styled experts spread false information with quack remedies. an online questionnaire implemented by nasir et al. (2020) between 4 and 11 april 2020 in indonesia shows that 13.2% of the respondents believed that indonesia’s warm climate can halt the spread of covid-19 and 19.6% believed that the coronavirus can be killed by gargling with salt water or vinegar. when indonesia had more than 108,000 cases with more than 5,130 deaths (end of july 2020), the majority of people still went out without masks, often ignored keeping a safe social distance, and crowded into shops, markets, or busy cafes and restaurants, even in the most affected provinces (paddock, 2020; purba, 2020). conspiracy theories targeting china and local ethnic chinese have amplified a wave of panic, provoking racism towards indonesian chinese communities and, thus, posing a risk of social unrest (sibarani et al., 2020). not only local chinese indonesians but also indonesians returning from china were victims of misinformation during the covid-19 outbreak. many of the 238 indonesians evacuated 10 a tracking application developed to monitor the density of people on the premises and alert people if a coronavirus patient is found in a place they visited. 48 | aseas 14(1) social media, fake news, and the covid-19 pandemic from wuhan, china were faced with suspicion by the locals (savitri & syakriah, 2020). hate messages blaming people of a specific origin for diffusing covid-19 exacerbate societal and racial discrimination, especially when the outbreak worsens, but little efforts are made on countering hate crime. information disorder related to governmental regulations, disease prevention, and treatment on social media triggers panic buying, unnecessary stockpiles, escalating prices, and opportunities for scams. an analysis of iseas teams in april 2020 showed that social media in several asean countries witnessed a spike of the keyword ‘panic buying’ before critical events (temby & hu, 2020). a considerable number of tweets amplified a sense of goods scarcity, thus, multiplying commodity hoarding and panic purchasing. in indonesia, people were feverishly searching for jamu, which was rumored by social media users as a covid-19 remedy after the announcement of the first covid-19 cases in early march. this caused an escalation in the prices of jamu ingredients. in singapore, after the raising of the dorscon (disease outbreak response system condition) level, posts with images of long queues and emptied shelves in stores and supermarkets became viral on social media channels (cf. temby & hu, 2020). similarly, when covid-19 began to spread, growing anxiety and uncertainty about the infection caused a surge in the demand for facemasks. social media posts about police punishment for not wearing facemasks in public places or about the shortage of medical facemasks worsened panic buying and caused an overprice of this item in physical stores and on e-commerce websites. when governments attempted to control facemask prices in these two retail channels, social media platforms, especially facebook, became an extraordinarily lucrative marketplace for swindlers. profiteering also occurred as sellers sought to exploit people’s fears by raising prices exorbitantly, far beyond the government-enforced limit. the price of facemasks jumped by 1900% in thailand and 827% in indonesia (hicks, 2020; temby & hu, 2020). the abundance of fake news poses a serious challenge to business, as it becomes increasingly difficult to effectively filter accurate and crucial information required to sustain business operations at a time when restrictive measures on economic activities are implemented across the world. southeast asian governments’ controversial legal responses fake news in southeast asia’s legislations prior to covid-19 recent years have witnessed the emergence of laws and government task forces against fake news across southeast asia. countries like singapore and thailand have enacted fake-news laws that impose specific sanctions on the creation and dissemination of false information. to remove impugned content from the internet and social networking sites, government task forces (indonesia, thailand), directive teams (cambodia), and site-tracking (myanmar, indonesia) were also established. in malaysia, although the anti-fake news act enacted in april 2018 under the barisan nasional regime was repealed by the new pakatan harapan regime in october 2019, fake news on social media is still addressed under existing laws, such as the penal code and the 1998 communications and multimedia act. in thailand, the 2017 aseas 14(1) | 49 hoang linh dang computer-related crime act was adopted by the government to clamp down on any information that is deemed false. despite legal enactments and practices already in place, the term fake news still remains either absent of proper official definition in most of southeast asian countries, or vaguely defined and elaborated. in singapore, a false statement is defined as “false or misleading, whether wholly or in part, and whether on its own or in the context in which it appears” under the protection from online falsehoods and manipulation act (2019, general interpretation, 2b). within its scope, only false or misleading statements of fact are taken into account, whereas opinion, criticism, parodies, and satire are excluded. the act, however, has been criticized for the lack of an explicit prescription for determining the falsity of a statement and for ambiguous definitions of public interest (ives & zhong, 2019). furthermore, existing related legislation does not stipulate thresholds or criteria to determine what is deemed false or fake and provides no distinction between purposive disinformation and non-malicious and unintentional misinformation. on the basis of this shortage of proper definitions and strong legal action in recent years, southeast asian governments are often criticized by human rights advocates for overusing and abusing wide-ranging powers. this is not surprising, since they are not only in charge of judicial interpretation, but also solely responsible for decisions on falsehood, what constitutes the public interest, and evaluating the impact of a false statement on the public interest, not to mention societal stability, and perhaps most crucially, national security. southeast asian governments’ responses to the infodemic amid the outbreak various measures have been deployed by governments, organizations, and tech companies to crack down on inaccurate content circulating online during the pandemic. malaysia, singapore, indonesia, and myanmar utilized previously established laws, such as criminal defamation laws, telecommunications laws, and the penal code, while brunei and laos pursued widespread self-censorship (gomez & ramcharan, 2020b). aside from the increased use of previously established anti-fake news laws, there was a rise in emergency laws in the remaining countries with tougher legal action by governments. in the philippines, the emergency law bayanihan to heal as one act was enacted in march 2020, temporarily giving authorities special emergency powers to deal with the pandemic and the dissemination of fake news. individuals or groups could be summoned if they were found to be “creating, perpetrating or spreading false information about covid-19 crisis on social media and other platforms” (philippines department of health, n.d., section 6f, p.13). if found guilty, lawbreakers could be sentenced to jail for two months and/or charged up to usd 19,500. on 26 march 2020, the thai government declared an emergency decree giving it powers to prevent the escalation of the pandemic, including prohibiting false and misleading media content. the violators would be issued warnings, and in cases of triggering severe impacts, they would face penalties of up to usd 1,200 or a maximum of two years in jail (bangkok post, 2020a). in april 2020, the vietnamese government enforced the 15/2020/decree, which replaces the 174/2013/decree and specifically targets the proliferation of fake news. accordingly, outlaws may be charged between usd 430 50 | aseas 14(1) social media, fake news, and the covid-19 pandemic and usd 860, equivalent to around three to six months of basic salary in vietnam (tuoi tre news, 2020). similarly, cambodia’s parliament approved an emergency legislation on 10 april 2020 that allows the government to “control media and social media, prohibit or restrict distribution of information that could generate public fear or unrest, or that could damage national security” (prak chan thul, 2020). southeast asian governments’ sanction measures towards the proliferation of fake news during the outbreak, especially in countries using criminal laws, such as thailand, indonesia, and cambodia, have been widely condemned by human rights groups. they have raised alarm over the key articles targeting the dispersion of false and misleading information in issued emergency legislations. suspicion stems from the vague or overly broad provisions made in these legislations, which could be exploited by the respective governments to bolster existing censorship beyond the pretext of covid-19 and to quash dissents and choke off free speech deemed unfavorable to them (amnesty international, 2020a; bachelet, 2020; glahan, 2020; gomez & ramcharan, 2020a; human rights watch, 2020b; lee 2020). in vietnam, for example, the new 15/2020/decree is put under critique as it extends far beyond tackling fake news on social media and cements government surveillance tools already heightened by the cybersecurity law enacted in 2019 (nguyen & pearson, 2020). southeast asian governments are also criticized for heavily sanctioning not only fake news but also hate speech and harassment (sochua, 2020). in the philippines, among the individuals suspected of spreading false information were also those “merely airing their grievances online” (amnesty international, 2020b). censorship is another tool that has long been used by southeast asian governments to restrict online content. there are several criteria to evaluate the justification of censorship (jansen, 1991; sen, 2014). transparency, for example, plays a crucial role, given that censorship is only regarded as justified “when its groundings are open to public scrutiny” (jansen, 1991, pp. 24-25). non-discriminatory is a further criterion emphasized by the united nations (united nations, 2020, p. 4). except for the philippines, southeast asian governments’ restrictions on the internet and digital content are generally described as non-transparent and lacking judicial oversight and an independent appeal process, according to the evaluation of freedom house (2020). governments also periodically or routinely require websites and social media platforms to remove what they consider negative content. practice during the pandemic shows that southeast asian anti-fake news laws do not require published evaluation on the impact of individual statements on the public interest. in myanmar, 67 websites were blocked after deemed as spreading fake news. there was neither an explanation of what exactly constituted false news or information nor was the complete list of these websites made available for public access (ifj asia-pacific, 2020; kyaw et al., 2020). although preventing the spread of fake news was claimed by the government to be the main reason for this censorship, ethnic media outlets are assumed to be amongst these censored sites. indonesia was criticized for problematic pandemic management, particularly the inability to deliver a consistent message and to provide data transparency and access to information to combat covid-19 (daraini, 2020; human rights watch, 2020a). the central government struggled with limited data and a significant data discrepancy between local administrations and the health ministry’s statistics. even though aseas 14(1) | 51 hoang linh dang an official website (www.covid19.go.id) was later launched to provide official information on covid-19, a survey conducted by pramiyanti et al. (2020) showed that only about one-fifth of all respondents used the website often, and most of them had never or rarely used it. instead, more people relied on information obtained from news outlets and the mass media (pramiyanti et al., 2020; suherlina, 2020). another survey conducted by laporcovid-19 (2020) revealed that government officials fell behind medical doctors/health experts and religious leaders in the ranking of the most trusted sources of covid-19 information. despite criticisms by human rights advocates, allegations are mostly dismissed by the governments and media censorship measurements are likely to remain in place. in thailand, legal enactments targeting social media posts have continued to be tightened in recent years and during the pandemic. this is reflected by the establishment of the anti-fake news center in 2019 and the extension of emergency decrees amid the pandemic. this extension is viewed as having no legitimate basis, being arbitrary and disproportionate (human rights watch, 2020b). beside governments’ actions, major social networks and tech companies have cooperated to combat false and misleading information circulated online. tech companies have also taken stricter rules for ads and limited monetization as almost all social networks have banned advertisements that mention the covid-19 infection. southeast asian authorities, such as thailand, indonesia, and the philippines, are provided ad credits to run covid-19 education campaigns (o’reilly, 2020). twitter prioritized authoritative health information on their platform via expanding search prompt features for #coronavirus in many countries, including those in southeast asia, such as malaysia, the philippines, singapore, thailand, and vietnam. there is also close cooperation between researchers and fact-checker teams to monitor the infodemic, track and verify false claims, and provide corrected information. examples are the covid-19 infodemics observatory developed by the complex multilayer networks lab, and the coronavirusfacts alliance led by the international fact-checking network (ifcn) at the poynter institute, which was also used for data collection in this article. there are several factors catalyzing the ubiquitous proliferation of false information. firstly, in a social media age, people are able to access information in near-real time. however, social media platforms, which are financially driven by clicks, promote a rapid proliferation of news far beyond the time required for adequate verification. using the zika virus as a case study, sommariva et al. (2018) found that rumors on social networking sites gained three times more shares than verified information. similarly, vosoughi et al. (2018, p. 1146) concluded that “falsehood diffused farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth in all categories of information”. other factors include the initial scarcity of information about covid-19, a low digital media literacy, the inadequacy of media gatekeepers, and legal loopholes in certain countries. in spite of an increasing number of online media outlets, cambodia’s current press law still excludes digital media. it is deemed not only outdated but also poorly and ambiguously drafted (ifj asia-pacific, 2019). yet, as shown above, even where legal measures and censorship are encouraged and well in place, their lack of adequacy and transparency additionally hamper trust in government measurements and decisions. 52 | aseas 14(1) social media, fake news, and the covid-19 pandemic conclusions southeast asia features the highest social network usage and internet penetration worldwide. it also witnessed an unprecedented rise in social media use during the covid-19 outbreak in 2020. as the novel coronavirus experienced a dramatic rise worldwide and became a matter of great public concern both in online and offline social networks, many individuals tried to cash in on its popularity by creating and propagating disinformation on social media channels. combined with misinformation, harassment, and hate-speech, the information disorder fuels an infodemic considered almost as dangerous as the virus itself. while fake news on social media platforms in southeast asia can be broadly categorized into eight themes, the most common ones refer to disease symptoms, prevention, and treatment measures, as well as to governmental bodies’ responses to the diffusion of the disease, including incorrect reporting of incidence and mortality rates. in several countries, fabricated and misleading contents targeting specific political, religious, and ethnic group are rampant. social media have also proved an ideal place for organized scammers and hackers with malicious content set up to steal personal data. among different categories of fake news, those related to prevention and treatment measures are considered particularly harmful since they might directly cause fatalities. panic buying is also fueled by false and misleading information about prevention and treatment measures as well as governmental regulations. meanwhile, hate crime, misleading content, and online hoaxes with conspiracy theories cause mistrust in the government, deepen social divides and heighten political, ethnic, and racial tensions. in response to the infodemic, southeast asian authorities have pursued strong legal enactment and sanctions. yet, their measures, especially censorship, are often criticized for being draconian and politically biased. the concern of human rights advocates is not unwarranted. it stems from the shortage of proper descriptions of fake news in legislations while governments’ actions, in the name of tackling fake news, are still lacking transparency and independent appeal processes. fact-checking coalitions have been helpful in monitoring the infodemic, while tech companies have taken restriction policies for ads relating to covid-19 infection and limited monetization on communication platforms. yet, any attempt to legislate against fake news falls short if not raising the general questions of how fake news is identified, who decides on its falsity, harmfulness, and the underlying intentions behind the creation and dissemination of it, and whether the legal actions against it are justified or not. even if restriction measures are reasonable and justified, false and misleading information on messaging channels, such as whatsapp and facebook messenger, is almost impossible to monitor while protecting privacy. according to donovan (2020), instead of being a source where fake news thrives, social media could play a significant role in ensuring global users receive timely, reliable, and accurate information. government authorities can currently switch on emergency alert protocols across cellphones, tv channels, and radio to promptly reach out to the public, a feature that, however, is not available for social media. social media companies could be included in these emergency systems to enable the timely transmission of reliable information. their massive online advertising infrastructure aseas 14(1) | 53 hoang linh dang could be utilized for this purpose. finally, it is important to acknowledge that no communication system is perfect and that, in the epic battle against covid-19 falsehoods – as in the fight against the virus itself – responsibility rests not solely with governments, but also with the joint efforts of social actors, from civil organizations to businesses and citizens themselves.  references afp philippines. 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(2020). world bank east asia and pacific economic update, april 2020: east asia and pacific in the time of covid-19. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/33477 about the author hoang linh dang is an associate professor of international economics, and since 2019 dean of the faculty of international economics, diplomatic academy of vietnam. his research interests include international economic-political relations and regional co-operation, globalization, and interdisciplinarity of international and regional issues. his regional focus is southeast asia. ► contact: hoanglinh@dav.edu.vn 58 | aseas 14(1) aseas 12(1) | 91 the new politics of debt in the transition economy of vietnam hong-kong t. nguyen, viet-ha t. nguyen, thu-trang vuong, manh-tung ho, & quan-hoang vuong ► nguyen, h-k. t., nguyen, v-h. t., vuong, t-t., ho, m-t., & vuong, q-h. (2019). the new politics of debt in the transition economy of vietnam. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 12(1), 91-110. this study reviews the rising household debt and nonfinancial corporation debt in vietnam, a socialist-oriented, lower middle-income emerging economy. vietnam has made huge strides in economic growth within three decades of reforms, lifting millions of people out of poverty thanks to better access to credit. at the same time, there are lending and borrowing practices that signal troubles ahead. based on a thorough examination of the theoretical literature on indebtedness, the study sets out to identify the drivers of borrowing and over-borrowing in vietnam in recent years. particularly, the abundant financial and physical resources have given rise to consumerism and the boom of the super-rich. these are two of the four factors that have shifted vietnamese culture from one that traditionally condemned debt as a vice to one that now tolerates indebtedness. the other two factors can be found at the corporate level where there is an over-reliance on debt financing and rampant rent-seeking. here, a kind of ‘resource curse’ threatens sustainable corporate growth – businesses rely too much on borrowing to fuel their operations, but in fact are overlooking the innovation factor. the new politics of debt, we suggest, have created a toxically pro-consumption, debt-tolerant society. keywords: consumerism; corporate debt; culture of indebtedness; emerging market; household debt; vietnam  introduction from as early as the 1990s, economists began to note the shift in attitudes towards debt that had taken place in the course of the 20th century, such that debt was no longer abhorred but had gained acceptance as part of a modern consumer society, laying ground for the growing “culture of indebtedness” (lea, webley, & levine, 1993; lea, webley, & walker, 1995). the level of indebtedness is an important measure of economic health, whether that be for an individual consumer, a household, a business, or a whole nation. a chronically indebted household, especially those with low income or limited financial literacy, can become trapped in long-run poverty (barbier, lópez, & hochard, 2016). the problem of financial debt is more acute at the macro level in developing countries: the financial crises in, for example, nicaragua, morocco, pakistan, and india, were linked to the uncontrolled expansion of microfinance (chen, rasmussen, & reille, 2010; lascelles, mendelson, & rozas, 2012). given its severity, numerous aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 15 92 | aseas 12(1) the new politics of debt in the transition economy of vietnam studies have sought to explicate the causes and challenges of debt, particularly at the microfinancing level, in developing economies, such as in thailand and vietnam (chichaibelu & waibel, 2017, 2018), cambodia (liv, 2013), nepal (risal, 2018), bangladesh (godquin, 2004), south africa (meniago, mukuddem-petersen, petersen, & mongale, 2013), and ghana (schicks, 2013b). in most cases, over-indebtedness is found to be accompanied by poor economic and social conditions, a high incidence of poverty, multiple borrowing, and low financial literacy (grohmann, 2018; gutiérreznieto, serrano-cinca, & de la cuesta gonzález, 2017; lea et al., 1993; schicks, 2013a). in an attempt to explain both the causes and consequences of over-indebtedness in spain, gutiérrez-nieto et al. (2017) applied a comprehensive explanatory model that takes into account both the borrower aspects, such as propensity to indebtedness and financial illiteracy, and the borrower circumstances, such as adverse external shocks, borrower’s sudden job loss, and pressure from financial institutions. this holistic framework allows for an integration of psychological, behavioral, and economic theories in tracing the roots of excessive borrowing. driven by the need to understand the lending and borrowing habits in vietnam, this study uses a similarly combined framework to make sense of this emerging economy where more than half of its population still lives in rural areas, are yet to rely on formal financial channels, but have a huge demand for credit. as borrowing and lending behaviors vary across sectors, this study focuses on debt problems in a sectoral manner, systematically separating consumer debt from nonfinancial corporate debt. the inquiry starts with the question of how just three decades after vietnam began transitioning to a market economy taking out loans became so easy and popular. the first explanation is the country’s stable and strong macroeconomic performance during this transition in comparison to that of most economies in eastern europe and of the former soviet union (dollar, 1994). the decades of reforms have allowed the southeast asian country to overcome its triple-digit inflation rate (over 400% in 1988), brought in double-digit annual export growth, and revived the banking system from “the brink of collapse”, in which it found itself in the early 1990s (nguyen, 2008). thanks to economic reforms, nearly 30 million vietnamese people have escaped poverty since 1990, evidenced by the rise in gdp per capita from usd 100 in 1990 to usd 2,300 in 2015 (oxfam, 2017; vuong, 2019). in the past three decades, vietnam’s economic growth averaged 5% to 6% per year, with an average rate of 6.4% during the 2000s. along with economic growth, though, came unbridled consumerism (vuong, 2010, 2019; vuong & tran, 2011). while in economic terms, borrowing is a normal act for allowing an individual or institution to improve self-finance and support investment, to borrow past one’s disposable income and become trapped in perpetual debt in a society like vietnam nonetheless raises eyebrows. in vietnamese culture, as in other confucian cultures around the world, being in debt is considered a vice, and one ought to get out of debt as quickly as possible (hansen, 2016; kang, matusik, & barclay, 2017; roiland, 2016; tsai, 2006). this raises the question as to how vietnamese people started to become more comfortable with debt. as previous studies have suggested, to give a fuller account of the behaviors of vietnamese people, one should investigate the psychological and cultural dimensions (vuong et al., 2018; vuong & napier, 2015; vuong & tran, 2009). what has changed so significantly that the culture, which has predominantly morally condemned being in financial debt aseas 12(1) | 93 hong-kong t. nguyen, viet-ha t. nguyen, thu-trang vuong, manh-tung ho, & quan-hoang vuong and praised frugality, could bring about a mindset tolerating exactly the opposite? to answer this question, the article investigates the volume of rising debt in vietnam at the household and corporate levels. by contextualizing the lending and borrowing practices in this transition economy in the theoretical literature the study is able to identify the drivers of borrowing and the risks of over-borrowing in vietnam. the article is structured as follows. we first present a brief overview of vietnam’s financial system. after that we review the scholarship on the economic and psychological theories that help explain debt and over-indebtedness. this section serves as the foundation for an in-depth examination of personal and nonfinancial corporate debt in vietnam. the qualitative approach aims to shed light on the attitudes towards and practices of borrowing and lending, offering insights for other emerging economies at risk of over-borrowing and falling into over-indebtedness. overview of the vietnamese financial system like most developing countries, vietnam marks the co-existence of the formal and informal sectors, plus a semi-formal sector comprising lenders that do not exactly fit into the first two groups, as summarized in figure 1. this is in line with the literature on credit markets in the developing world (hoff & stiglitz, 1993, p. 33). figure 1: an overview of the vietnamese financial system (pham & lensink, 2007, 2008). 94 | aseas 12(1) the new politics of debt in the transition economy of vietnam the informal sector increases credit accessibility for the rural population in vietnam, which accounts for about 66% of the total population of over 93 million (general statistics office of vietnam, 2017). rural households, however, obtain credit through both formal and informal lenders, drawing on the former allegedly for production and asset accumulation and the latter for consumption (barslund & tarp, 2008). informal lenders dominate the rural credit market due to their low requirements for collateral (pham & lensink, 2007; ruddle, 2011). while the size of the black credit or shadow banking market is not known, estimations have put this at between 22% and 30% of the total credit provided by commercial banks, equivalent to about usd 50 billion, a very high figure by international standards (le phu loc et al., 2016; nguyen, 2016). the accessibility of borrowing from informal lenders is most evident in the ubiquity of pawn shops in cities as well as in the prevalence of money lending advertisements on almost every power pole. students, low-income earners, or those in need of quick cash can go to pawn shops to get a fast loan, putting up one of their belongings, such as a motorbike, car, laptop, mobile phone, or an id card, as collateral (barslund & tarp, 2008; hoang, 2018). as in other emerging economies, vietnamese businesses finance their operations either through external debt or internally retained earnings (hoang, biger, & nguyen, 2007; nguyen, diaz-rainey, & gregoriou, 2012). for external debt, two options exist: a firm can take out loans by contacting the formal and semi-formal sectors or by issuing bonds. though corporate bonds have long been a popular type of debt finance around the world, they appeared in vietnam only in the early 1990s and were not widely discussed in academic circles and under-utilized by the business sector (vuong, 2000; vuong & tran, 2011). in their research, vuong and tran (2009) pointed out that the government not only intervenes in the bond markets with its budget and policies but also competes directly with enterprises. there were only 12 ‘corporate’ bond issuances between 1992 and 2003 that were considered notable in terms of size and socioeconomic effect. until 2017, this number remained modest (noonan, 2017). since late 2017, the vietnamese have become more interested in the debt market as the government announced a 2030 vision to enhance the bond market by strengthening the legal framework and improving transparency in the market. from a macroeconomic viewpoint, vietnam has nonetheless witnessed a dramatic surge in credit over the years of reforms. the credit supply multiplied a factor of 13.7 between 2000 and 2010, while the gdp doubled during the same period (vuong & napier, 2014). figure 2 shows the rising loans to the private sector with respect to gdp. the line was not continuous in 1994 because there was no data (by world bank) for that year. domestic credit to the private sector peaked in 2010, with the rate reaching 114.72% of gdp before dropping down to 94.83% in 2012 and rebounding to 123.81% in 2016. the economics and psychology of indebtedness the extensive literature on the economic and psycho-social factors associated with indebtedness serves as the foundation for this article to examine the drivers of borrowing and over-borrowing in vietnam in recent years. aseas 12(1) | 95 hong-kong t. nguyen, viet-ha t. nguyen, thu-trang vuong, manh-tung ho, & quan-hoang vuong in terms of economic theories, the amount of actual debt observed is the result of both demand and supply factors, both of which affect consumers’ decisions to enter the debt market (chen & chivakul, 2008; schicks, 2013a). on the demand side, the probability of joining the credit market is determined by the consumers’ desire to borrow. on the supply side, the lender decides whether and how much to lend upon considering the consumers’ capacity to repay the loans. credit constraint happens when the consumer is unable to obtain the desired loan, either due to credit rationing or the high price of borrowing, whether that be costly collateral or high interest rates (chen & chivakul, 2008). borrowing is eased when such barriers are removed, which would help consumers to meet their credit demand, but also drive up consumption, and potentially threaten individuals’ financial sustainability in the long run if easy borrowing persists. in a study on the implications of credit constraints for risk behavior in less developed countries, assuming that individuals are risk-averse, kotwal and eswaran (1990) showed that those with access to more credit will have greater capacity “to absorb random shocks in income” (p. 480). from a theoretical perspective, studies on household debt and credit constraints often start with the life-cycle model of modigliani (1986), ando and modigliani (1963), and friedman’s (1957) permanent income hypothesis. the models analyze the spending and saving habits of people over the course of their lives, assuming that individuals value stable lifestyles. the assumption of the basic life cycle model is that in a perfect capital market, households will be able to borrow to their desire to smooth their consumption. as such, current consumption is independent of current income (chen & chivakul, 2008). put differently, indebtedness is the result of a planned and rational decision as it supports the inter-temporal redistribution of consumption (ando & modigliani, 1963). by comparison, the behavioral life-cycle theory of shefrin and thaler (1988) has three additional important behavioral features that are often absent in economic analyses: self-control, mental accounting, and framing. through the lens of behavioral figure 2: domestic credit to the private sector in percentage to gdp (world bank). 96 | aseas 12(1) the new politics of debt in the transition economy of vietnam economics, mental accounting, as opposed to discount rates, takes central stage in an individual’s decisions about whether to spend and borrow (shefrin & thaler, 1988). it is worth noting that there is a lack of a comprehensive framework uniting the fields of economics, sociology, and psychology in the study of over-indebtedness and its causes, possibly because there is no universal definition of personal over-indebtedness (schicks, 2013a). while over-indebtedness is clearly an undesirable consequence for both the borrower and lender and should not exist in perfect markets, there are outside influences such as external shocks, personal shocks, and the behavior of both lender and borrower that ultimately result in hazardous lending and borrowing practices (schicks, 2013a). in terms of the external factors, meniago et al. (2013) confirmed that rising household debt was heavily affected by positive changes in the consumer price index, gdp, and household consumption. negative changes in income also affected household borrowing (meniago et al., 2013). in sum, most cases of severe indebtedness mark the coexistence of poor socio-economic conditions, vulnerability to destitution, multiple borrowing, financial illiteracy (grohmann, 2018; gutiérreznieto et al., 2017; schicks, 2013a), lack of home ownership, and having more children or being single parents (lea et al., 1993). additionally, the demand for debt, especially in developing-country settings, may be driven by household income, the age of household head, and level of education (chen & chivakul, 2008), poor health conditions, gender, and ethnicity (godquin, 2004). in reviewing the literature on the cognitive and psychological biases that can lead to over-borrowing, schicks (2013a) listed bounded rationality, financial illiteracy, overconfidence bias, and habit persistence as some major causes of over-consumption and underestimation of indebtedness risk. gutiérrez-nieto et al. (2017) agreed that the propensity to indebtedness concerns the borrower’s financial attitudes, which could be explained through behavioral economics and psychology. for instance, the prospect theory of kahneman and tversky (1979), which argues that people are risk-averse in gains and risk-takers in losses, may explain the pursuit of a highly materialistic lifestyle as well as over-borrowing. several studies have provided evidence for the association of materialism with lack of financial well-being and personal debt (garðarsdóttir & dittmar, 2012; nepomuceno & laroche, 2015), in addition to a positive association between the lack of self-control and self-reported excessive financial burdens of debt (gathergood, 2012; strömbäck, lind, skagerlund, västfjäll, & tinghög, 2017). as part of the theory of economic socialization (lunt & furnham, 1996), when looking at the social support for debt, lea et al. (1993, 1995) found a crucial predictor of debt status was whether an individual knew other people around them who were indebted. similarly, the attitude of debt tolerance could arise from social comparisons – one may compare oneself to other people who have more economic resources, and, thus, want to have the same goods and services enjoyed by others, risking overspending one’s income (lunt & livingstone, 1991). debt, debt, more debt on the basis of the economics and social-psychology of indebtedness, this section delves into (a) the severity of the debt problem at the household and corporate levels in vietnam and (b) the underlying causes of these problems. aseas 12(1) | 97 hong-kong t. nguyen, viet-ha t. nguyen, thu-trang vuong, manh-tung ho, & quan-hoang vuong rising personal debt this section first looks at vietnam’s rising personal debt, which includes household and consumer debt. according to le et al. (2016), vietnam does not have official household debt statistics in line with oecd definition – which covers “all liabilities that require payment or payments of interest or principal by household to the creditor at a date or dates in the future” (oecd, 2018). the available data from the banking system only allow us to evaluate household debt through the outstanding loans to individuals and outstanding loans to production and business households. despite the limitation in unifying the data, we note the rapid growth in household debt in vietnam between 2000 and 2016. debt grew by an average of 28.58% per year, a 51-fold surge from vnd 41.3 trillion in 2000 to vnd 2,116.2 trillion in 2016 (le et al., 2016). in terms of household debt-to-gdp ratio, the figure hovered around 12% from 2000 to 2006, but rose sharply to 30.2% by 2011, then hit 47% in 2016 (le et al., 2016). this is significantly higher than the median household debt-to-gdp ratio in emerging market economies, which was 21% in 2016 (international monetary fund, 2017). economists have cautioned that if this figure surpasses 65% it could jeopardize the financial stability of both the households and the nation (alter, feng, & valckx, 2018; international monetary fund, 2017). given the rapid surge of the household debt-to-gdp ratio in recent years and the well-documented incidence of multiple borrowing and over-indebtedness among microcredit borrowers in developing countries (chichaibelu & waibel, 2018), the risk of over-borrowing is of legitimate concern. when looking at household indebtedness in rural vietnam, one study has noted a high incidence of indebtedness in the period between 2007 and 2011 such that up to 76% of vietnamese households had taken out at least one loan, and the trend of taking out multiple loans rose steadily and peaked in 2011 (chichaibelu & waibel, 2018). however, household over-indebtedness in rural vietnam, which is counted in terms of a household’s ratio of debt service to income (above 50%), was found to be a less persistent problem than in rural thailand due to the social monitoring of debt status and repayment by the rural communities (chichaibelu & waibel, 2018; okae, 2009). as discussed in the literature on over-indebtedness, unexpected shocks to income and expenses are seen to be important causes of over-borrowing in vietnam, although its effects, whether transitory or long-term, depend on community support and social ties (chichaibelu & waibel, 2018). a potential explanation for why indebtedness in rural vietnam is not yet problematic is the recent development of rural credit, which means rural financial institutions still rely on customary norms and peer pressure within local communities to facilitate loan repayment (chichaibelu & waibel, 2018). in most cases, the high transaction costs and complex procedures at formal credit institutions would drive low-income vietnamese consumers toward informal sources, such as họ/hụi, a rotating savings and credit association (rosca), to meet their financial needs (vietnam microfinance working group, 2014). while microfinance is often hailed as an alternative channel that improves credit accessibility for low-income clients (vietnam microfinance working group, 2014, p. 101), two problems remain: (a) low-interest rate loans are not available to everyone because semi-formal lenders tend to seek out borrowers who meet their criteria (pham & lensink, 2008, p. 243), and (b) the lack of effect on the income components of ethnic 98 | aseas 12(1) the new politics of debt in the transition economy of vietnam minorities and households with less favorable economic conditions (do & bauer, 2016). even worse, schicks (2013a) has argued that microfinance, whose initial goal is to promote poverty reduction rather than consumption smoothening, actually risks pushing borrowers further into poverty as they may have no choice but to borrow continuously from microfinance institutions for both consumption and repayment purposes. in the larger picture, particularly concerning consumer loans, which were equivalent to 22.4% of gdp as of the first half of 2018 (stoxplus, 2018), studies have noted the locals’ large appetite for shopping, whether for household goods or luxury goods, which means there are consumer finance providers working to meet the demand of low to average income earners (breu, salsberg, & tu, 2010; iwase, 2011; nguyen, özçaglar-toulouse, & kjeldgaard, 2018). given that 48% of the vietnamese population is either unbanked or has a low income (stoxplus, 2018), they will not be able to meet the banks’ stringent requirements for collateral, such as land use certificates or house ownership certificates. it is arguable that the high consumption in vietnam is backed by the consistently high expenditure-to-income per capita ratio, at 70% and above between 2002 and 2016, as figure 3 shows. a debt-tolerant pro-consumption society as much of the literature has noted, among the psycho-social factors driving over-borrowing are pressures from consumer society and materialism as well as widening inequality and social comparison (lunt & livingstone, 1991; schicks, 2013a). figure 3: the monthly average income and expenditure per capita in vietnam 1999-2016; unit: vnd (general statistics office of vietnam). aseas 12(1) | 99 hong-kong t. nguyen, viet-ha t. nguyen, thu-trang vuong, manh-tung ho, & quan-hoang vuong various sources have pointed out the rising economic inequality in the country in the past two decades, evidenced in the gap between the incomes of the highest-earning and the lowest-earning groups. for example, an individual working in the agricultural sector earns an average of vnd 2.63 million (usd 125) a month, while another working in the banking-finance-insurance sector earns 2.5 times as much, at vnd 7.23 million (usd 344) a month (oxfam, 2017). by comparison, agricultural wages in the european union are lower by less than half of the average wages in all other economic sectors (european union, 2018, p. 15). moreover, in 2014, data showed that vietnam had 210 ultra-high-net-worth individuals (uhnwi), which are defined as persons worth usd 30 million or more, with a combined asset value of usd 20 billion, equivalent to 12% of vietnam’s gdp, or half of the gdp of the country’s southern economic hub of ho chi minh city (oxfam, 2017). the middle-class population in vietnam, defined as those earning enough to cover basic daily needs, being able to save, and spending over usd 5.5 a day per capita, has also been growing at a remarkable rate. from 2012 to 2016, the number of people meeting the above criteria rose by 20% to approximately 75 million people, creating a class of emerging consumers (“vn middle class booms”, 2018). even by more conservative estimations, the boston consulting group in 2016 projected vietnam’s “middle and affluent class” to double to 33 million people by 2020 (“vietnam’s growing middle class”, 2016). such a rapid surge in private wealth, especially in urban prosperity, has undoubtedly helped the country’s transition toward a more robust consumer society. in observing the patterns of vietnamese consumers switching to higher quality products just because others are using them, unilever vietnam’s chairman, marijn van tiggelen, has used the word “leapfrog” to describe this behavior (breu et al., 2010). in a recent study on young vietnamese consumers, nguyen et al. (2018) revealed a link between everyday consumption practices and a rejection of the communist identity – a kind of “individualization through self-emancipation, self-enrichment, and self-actualization” (p. 490). from a theoretical approach, the contributors to an edited volume by nguyen-marshall, welch, and bélanger (2012) have suggested not to define the “middle class” in terms of income or political liberalism but instead in terms of consumption, social distinction, and modernity. the underlying reason is a changing attitude towards consumer behaviors in the market reform period. while marxism condemns bourgeois consumption, which is measured in terms of ‘needs’, contemporary vietnamese society, despite its socialist propaganda, is moralizing middle-class consumption as “modern, civilized, and patriotic” (nguyen-marshall et al., 2012, p. 21). yet, the act of depoliticizing and normalizing consumption in vietnam is nonetheless political as its goal is to ensure the economic needs of the citizens, thereby, preserving political stability (vann, 2012). this casts the nascent middle class as “modern citizens” who are both economically successful and partly aligned with the socialist state’s definition of progress: “wealthy people; strong country; democratic, just, and civilized society” (le, 2016). as a pro-consumption society becomes ever more normalized people will increasingly find it normal to borrow past their income and be indebted so long as everyone around them is also indebted. according to the social support theory of debt (lea et al., 1993, 1995), indebted vietnamese consumers are less likely to think that their 100 | aseas 12(1) the new politics of debt in the transition economy of vietnam acquaintances or relatives would disapprove if they knew these other people were also in debt. a debt tolerant attitude may arise out of social comparison, as lunt and livingstone (1991) showed: one may end up overspending one’s income and over-borrowing because of the desire to have the same goods and services enjoyed by others. although researchers have noted the social monitoring of debt in vietnam (chichaibelu & waibel, 2018), one must take into account that in most industrialized countries there is a tendency for community and familial ties to wither (harari, 2014; miguel, gertler, & levine, 2003; wellman, 2018). this study calls for increased attention to the expansion of consumer lending, the ease to borrowing, and the ever-rising costs of pursuing “middle class and affluent” lifestyles, for these factors may push debts to spiral out of control. corporate debt and rent-seeking the corporate sector also contributes to the rising debt in the country due to a combination of rampant rent-seeking and inefficient corporate governance. studies on capital structure in vietnamese corporations have noted some key elements to firms’ borrowing behavior such as cash flow, fixed capital intensity, business risk, leverage, and firm size (phan & phan, 2013); or asset growth, ratio of sales to tangible assets, profit, liquidity (vo, 2017). for instance, in examining data of public listed firms on the ho chi minh city stock exchange (hose) from between 2006 and 2015, vo (2017) noted a tendency among larger, profitable firms to take out long-term loans and among smaller firms to opt for short-term loans to finance their investments. most studies also noted how the capital structure of vietnamese firms is still dominated by the use figure 4a: the changes in debt and equity in vietnam’s state-owned enterprises (soes), private domestic firms, and foreign-invested enterprises (fies) 2000-2015 (unit: billion vnd); (general statistics office of vietnam). aseas 12(1) | 101 hong-kong t. nguyen, viet-ha t. nguyen, thu-trang vuong, manh-tung ho, & quan-hoang vuong of short-term financing sources (nguyen et al., 2012; vo, 2017). with regard to the debtto-assets ratio, many vietnamese firms have a rate above 0.5, even though economists suggest keeping the ratio below 0.5 to prevent financial distress (vo & ellis, 2017). a better illustration of firm financing via debt is the rise in the debt-to-equity ratio (a firm’s total debt divided by its total equity) in all three corporate sectors in vietnam, as figures 4a and 4b show. while the optimal debt-to-equity ratio for any corporation is 1.0, the data show that in vietnam, not only were the ratios for all three types of enterprises, namely state-owned, privately-owned, and foreign-invested, above 1.0 during the 2000 to 2015 period, they also increased over the years. state-owned enterprises (soes) have the highest debt-to-equity ratio, which increased from under 2.5 in 2000 to nearly 3.3 in 2015. this is about 1.7 times higher than that of private firms and foreign-invested enterprises (fies). in terms of the absolute number (figure 4a), the drastic surge in both debt and equity in the private domestic sector is attributable to the increase in the number of new businesses during the 2000 to 2015 period. yet, by contrast, although the number of soes actually fell to 2,836 in 2015 from 5,591 in 2000 (general statistics office vietnam, 2017), the debt-to-equity ratio in the state-run sector remained the highest, signaling inefficient restructuring as well as inadequate corporate governance.1 1 while increased use of debt financing is found in both developed and developing countries during the period of the financial crisis (qureshi, ahsan, & azid, 2017), the continual dependence on debt in vietnam during normal economic periods signals serious corporate debt vulnerability. to put this in perspective, the average debt-to-equity ratio in the five countries that went through the asian crisis in 1997, namely indonesia, malaysia, philippines, south korea, and thailand, was close to 1.45, whereas the average for emerging markets was 0.8 (alfaro, asis, chari, & panizza, 2017). figure 4b: the changes in the debt-to-equity ratio in vietnam’s soes, private domestic firms, and fies 2000-2015 (general statistics office of vietnam). 102 | aseas 12(1) the new politics of debt in the transition economy of vietnam one of the reasons for the higher cost of borrowing is widespread rent-seeking in the economy (beeson & pham, 2012; ngo & tarko, 2018; ngo, 2016; wong, 2011). interest groups (vuong, 2014) or powerful business/political elites (wong, 2011) heavily influence the creation and allocation of rents. this feature, combined with the liberalization of the financial market in vietnam, has contributed to the increase of debts nationwide. the close relations between soes and state-owned commercial banks (socbs), which enable the former to borrow capital for state-led development projects, have worsened the debt situation. by official data, soes contribute 30% of the economic output (tung, 2017) but also hold over half of the whole banking system’s loans (tran, ong, & weldon, 2015). socbs owned approximately 90% of soes debts in the construction and transportation sectors (beeson & pham, 2012). a study done by nguyen and freeman (2009) on the effects of soes on private companies in 42 out of 64 provinces finds that indeed state-owned companies are more favored in accessing bank loans and lands. the problem of heavy indebtedness and borrowing extends to the real estate sector. a study by nguyen, nguyen, and dang (2017) on the capital structure of real estate companies listed on the ho chi minh stock exchange from 2010 to 2015 showed that companies tend to use debt to finance their projects. moreover, since 2012, the credit growth in the real estate sector has been steadily over 10% (do, nguyen, & le, 2017). in the most recent report, the total outstanding loans of credit institutions in real estate have reached vnd 471 trillion (usd 20.72 billion), and lending to this sector for some major banks is higher than 10% of their total outstanding loans; in some cases, such as for sacombank and techcombank, the figure is 17.6% and 12.6% respectively (“real estate loans remain”, 2018). many experts have raised concerns over this rising figure, fearing another housing bubble similar to the one that burst in 2011 (cameron, 2018). to prevent this gloomy scenario, the government has issued two circulars that aim to reign in the excessive growth of credit in this risky market. specifically, the central banks’ circular no. 6 from 2016 adjusted the risk weighting of real estate loans to 200%, while its supplemented circular no. 19 from 2017 lowered the banks’ proportion of short-term capital to be used for mediumand long-term lending in 2018 from 50% to 45%, and to 40% in 2019 (cameron, 2018). the ‘resource curse’ a question worth asking, then, is whether corporate financing via debt has been efficient or turned into a kind of resource curse – an excessive reliance on physical and financial resources that is detrimental to long-term productivity and creativity. to evaluate the severity of the debt problems in vietnam’s corporate sector, researchers have suggested looking at the value of the capital being used by the sector, whether the huge resources helped to finance growth or was used inefficiently (fforde, 2017; pham, 2018; tran, 2013; vuong & napier, 2014). one of the important indicators is the incremental capital-output ratio (icor), which is the increase in capital needed to produce higher output. researchers have noted a sharp increase in vietnam’s icor from about 2 in the late 1980s to between 4 and 5 in the period 1997 to 2006, after which the figure kept increasing to 6 or higher (fforde, 2017; tran, 2013). pham (2018) aseas 12(1) | 103 hong-kong t. nguyen, viet-ha t. nguyen, thu-trang vuong, manh-tung ho, & quan-hoang vuong noted vietnam’s icor fluctuated at around 5.5 during the period 2013 to 2017. and when compared with other developing countries such as china, india, and other southeast asian economies, vietnam’s figure is substantially higher, which suggested that there was a propensity to over-investment and economic inefficiency (pham, 2018; tran, 2013; vuong, 2016). another indicator that has been proposed is the ‘investment-to-gdp’ ratio – the higher the ratio, the less efficient the output productivity of the economy becomes. figure 5 illustrates the fluctuation in the capital investment-to-gdp ratio of vietnam from the reform era of 1986 to 2017. the investment-to-gdp ratio climbed steadily from 25% in 1993 to its peak at 39.56% in 2007 before falling to 29.75% in the crisis year of 2011. the figures hint at the country’s continuous use of scarce resources to finance and support its growth. two recent empirical studies have confirmed the heavy reliance of vietnamese companies on physical and capital assets in lieu of using creative processes, especially in times of turmoil (vuong, 2016; vuong & napier, 2014). this tendency is counter to the “creative destruction” that schumpeter (1942) describes – a process in which firms continuously destroy old economic structures from within and create new ones, resulting in innovations. in the case of vietnam, however, there appears to be a kind of corporate ‘destructive creation’ instead, that is, companies appear to use abundant resources to fuel their operations, but, in fact, have neglected innovation, thus, missing the chance to improve productivity. such behavior is especially dangerous when firms face increasing economic complexities in the age of computational entrepreneurship (vuong, 2019). a vicious circle of multiple borrowing may arise out of the corporate sector’s addiction to resources – poor performance would call for figure 5: total capital investment as percentage (%) of gdp in vietnam 1986-2017 (world bank). 104 | aseas 12(1) the new politics of debt in the transition economy of vietnam consumption of more resources, including financial resources, which do not necessarily bring about better performance if no new values are created. the absence of innovation at the corporate level, driven by an over-reliance on debt financing, in a transitioning economy like vietnam is worthy of concern for it risks a misallocation of resources and threatens sustainable growth. conclusion this review article has brought attention to the rising personal and corporate debt in vietnam, one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. contrary to the traditional culture that condemns being in debt and highly values frugality, this article has discussed the transformation into a more debt-tolerant society, which is fueled by the rise of consumerism and the emergence of the super-rich. this transformation has entailed a sharp increase in the household debt-to-gdp ratio from 12% in the 2000s to 47% in 2016, which is four times as much as the median of emerging market economies. many experts have warned that this trend, if it persists, will jeopardize the financial stability of both households and the country. in terms of corporate debt, the article has highlighted the predominance of short-term financing in the capital structure of vietnamese firms, in addition to a high debt-to-assets ratio as a cause for concern. similarly, the data show that the debt-to-equity ratio of vietnamese firms, whether state-owned, privately-owned, or foreign-invested, has hovered well above the optimal 1.0 ratio and continued to increase during the 2000 to 2015 period. empirical studies on the association between debt and the creative performance of vietnamese firms point to the potentially negative effect of an over-reliance on equity and debt capital to promote growth, which amounts to a resource curse, rather than also seeking innovation to produce new value. in the well-known folk story in vietnam, (“nợ như chúa chổm [in debt like lord chom]”, n.d.), a man was so indebted and insolvent that all his creditors could not do anything but continue to let him have his way – to eat on credit. while it is true that borrowing is not necessarily a negative thing, borrowing one’s way into the resource curse dynamic is the kind of behavior individuals, firms, and nations alike would be wise to avoid.  references alfaro, l., asis, g., chari, a., & panizza, u. 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(2018). the (ir)rational consideration of the cost of science in transition economies. nature human behaviour, 2(1), 5. vuong, q. h. (2019). the financial economy of viet nam in an age of reform, 1986–2016. in m. volz & yoshino (eds.), routledge handbook of banking and finance in asia (pp. 201-222). london: routledge. vuong, q. h. (2019). computational entrepreneurship: from economic complexities to interdisciplinary research. problems and perspectives in management, 17(1), 117-129. vuong, q. h., & napier, n. k. (2014). resource curse or destructive creation in transition: evidence from vietnam’s corporate sector. management research review, 37(7), 642-657. vuong, q. h., & napier, n. k. (2015). acculturation and global mindsponge: an emerging market perspective. international journal of intercultural relations, 49, 354-367. vuong, q. h., & tran, t. d. (2009). the cultural dimensions of the vietnamese private entrepreneurship. the iup journal of entrepreneurship and development, vi(3&4), 54-78. vuong, q. h., & tran, t. d. (2011). vietnam’s corporate bond market, 1990-2010: some reflections. journal of economic policy and research, 6(1), 1-47. wellman, b. (2018). the network community: an introduction. in b. wellman (ed.), networks in the global village: life in contemporary communities (pp. 1-47). london: routledge. wong, c.-y. (2011). rent-seeking, industrial policies and national innovation systems in southeast asian economies. technology in society, 33(3-4), 231-243. about the authors hong-kong to nguyen holds a ba in philosophy and political science from columbia university and is currently pursuing an ma in international relations at ritsumeikan asia pacific university in beppu, japan. she is also a japanese government (mext) scholar and an active member of the vietnam chapter of the european association of science editors. she is interested in research on social sciences and humanities concerning vietnam, especially research methodology that changes qualitative information into quantitative data. ► contact: hkt.nguyen@pxu.edu.vn viet-ha to nguyen holds a ba in economics from the university of new hampshire and is an ma candidate at the national economics university in hanoi, vietnam. he has worked on a number of research papers on vietnamese social sciences database. as the deputy director of the private media monitoring company vietnam panorama, he also seeks to expand his research to vietnam’s political economy. thu-trang vuong is a ba student at the european campus of dijon, sciences po paris. she has worked on a varied range of topics, including entrepreneurship in emerging countries, public health, education, political analyses of culture and religion, with the aim of providing insights for policy-making. manh-tung ho is affiliated with the centre for interdisciplinary social research, phenikaa university, vietnam and the institute of philosophy, vietnam academy of social sciences. he is an ma candidate in society and culture at ritsumeikan asia pacific university in beppu, japan. he has published articles on scientometrics, public health, cultural studies, and politics, aiming to inform policy-making as well as to facilitate meaningful interdisciplinary dialogue. quan-hoang vuong is a professor directing the centre for interdisciplinary social research, phenikaa university in hanoi, vietnam. he is chairman of the vietnam chapter of the european association of science editors. currently, his main interests are the applications of 110 | aseas 12(1) the new politics of debt in the transition economy of vietnam probability/statistics in economics/management and social medicine, as well as the science of logic in social ethics/paradoxes, sociocultural systems, and the philosophy of science. he has published nearly 100 academic papers and books with many leading academic publishers. acknowledgements the authors thank the research staff at the workshop “ai for social data lab” and vuong & associates for their excellent support, particularly dam thu ha. the authors also thank nguyen pham muoi of vietnam panorama media monitoring for his continuing support. aseas 12(2) | 225 religious discourse and gender security in southern thailand amporn marddent ► marddent, a. (2019). religious discourse and gender security in southern thailand. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 12(2), 225-247. this article describes the complexity of applying human security through the notion of gender equality in southern thailand where violent conflict has been prevalent for nearly half a century in a malay-muslim-dominated society. it explores how the concepts of gender and security have been interpreted in malay-muslim leaders’ outlooks. to define security more broadly, the article surveys the various notions of peacebuilding dealing with comprehensive human security and any security threat, thus not limited to state of war or physical violence only. in the prolonged armed violence and conflict, like that faced in thailand’s deep south, women’s security and their role in peacebuilding emerge as pertinent concerns. the discontinuities within the narratives of women and security highlight a divergence connected to personal-political imaginations of conflict whereby subtle variations in violent conflict can be seen as the products of different policy prescriptions, local cultural norms, and the project outcomes of women groups supported by governmental organizations and national and international donors. thus, in order to reflect upon how contemporary security notions are framed, gendered security perceptions ought to be considered as they signify the exercise of peacebuilding programs in the local context. persistent advocacy of gender equality is about cultural change, which eventually becomes a modality for non-violent society. keywords: cultural change; deep south of thailand; gender security; malay-muslim women; peacebuilding;  introduction members of civil society organizations in pattani1, thailand, have been critical of the government’s attempts to generate peace as it only translated within the goal of defeating the insurgency. in such peacebuilding scenarios, women, who are not part of the insurgency, are entirely ignored. nevertheless, studies underscore that violence in the region affects women both directly and indirectly. they have been killed, injured, traumatized, sexually harassed, and have experienced emotional and economic suffering as the conflict persisted (abuza, 2011; international crisis group, 2012; marddent, 2006). parallel to the challenge of the implementation process and policy on gender equality and women’s empowerment by state and international agencies, especially within the framework of the women, peace and security (wps) agenda, this paper shows that there is an 1 in this study, i use both patani and pattani. the former term is chosen to refer to the region, while the latter is used as the name of a province in the south of thailand. aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 23 226 | aseas 12(2) religious discourse and gender security in southern thailand attempt to promote a bottom-up peacebuilding perspective in conflict ridden areas of south thailand as women and members of civil society organizations interviewed for this paper described the experiences and knowledge they value. according to the gendered aspects of the wps agenda (pratt & richter-devroe, 2011), civil society organizations, especially women’s groups, are the main strategic actors to push for the discussion of women’s experiences in armed conflict. the wps agenda addresses three main themes: (1) women and girls in war and armed conflict demand to be protected from sexual and gender-based violence; (2) women must have a role in the prevention and resolution of conflicts and peacebuilding; (3) local actors, member states, and the united nations (un) system need to adopt a gender perspective in peace operations, negotiations, and agreements. in the region, women’s movements are traditional actors or grassroots peace activists, who are critical of military solutions (deep south watch, 2014; tissamana, 2017, pp. 102-115) which have been adopted through a state-centric security approach. their involvement in the peacebuilding movement has a long history. several groups of muslim women in the south have become involved in political reform to ensure peacebuilding after the uprising against the military dictatorship on 14 october 1973 and the massacre of the student movement on 6 october 1976. this paper accordingly explores the discourses of violence and the peacebuilding perspectives of locals in thailand’s deep south in order to understand women’s participation in peacebuilding and how they position the violence they experience and potential solutions. this paper aims to draw attention to the effort of local peacebuilding amidst the complexity of policy formulations from international gender-sensitive peacebuilding and development programs. the subjects in this study are not only confronted with violent conflict, but they are also tackling discriminatory gender norms within their own culture. thus, while international agencies need to pay close attention to their perspectives on what is causing violence and how it can be addressed, this paper highlights the degree to which malay-muslim women are also trying to work with their own communities to lessen the impact that strict islamic teaching has on their ability to live in a peaceful society. this ethnographic study employs a qualitative research framework for data collection and analysis. the method involves extensive fieldwork among women’s groups and local communities in the research area – pattani, yala, and narathiwat provinces – through participant observation. this method facilitated my immersion in how these women perceive their culture. sixty-two informants participated in interviews, conversations, and focus group discussions; this includes 5 women who have been the victims of violence, 16 women who tackle sexual and gender-based violence in the muslim community, 11 male and female religious leaders, 8 government staff, 2 professional peacebuilders, 2 human rights defenders and analysts, 2 scholars, and 16 male and female youth. before detailing women’s efforts and perspective on human security as a means of conflict resolution in the impacted regions, i will first briefly describe the conflict in thailand’s deep south and then describe the various international agendas as peacebuilding discourses that have been implemented in the regions. a brief history of the conflict and the terminology problem the southern region of thailand has had a long history of political contestations. aseas 12(2) | 227 amporn marddent it was once home to the sovereign kingdom of patani, which was internationally recognized, for instance, in diplomatic and trade missions to china in the 16th century (teeuw & wyatt, 1970, p. 1). tributary relationship between thailand, formerly known as siam, and patani lasted from the mid-13th century to the late 18th century. according to aphornsuvan (2007, p.16), patani leaders enjoyed greater freedom to rule the kingdom during the time when siamese rulers were preoccupied with other security issues, such as the wars with burma in the 15th century and cambodia in the 14th century. during these periods of subordination, whenever the siamese royal government was weakened, patani’s rulers revolted by refusing to send tribute. by the mid-17th century, the siamese kingdom was in political chaos and later defeated by the neighboring konbaung dynasty of burma in 1767. in such a delicate security situation, general taksin managed to regroup the followers, built a new political center at thonburi, and was crowned as king of siam in december 1767. king rama i later on marked a period of the nation’s golden era with strong central government, during which siam’s trade advanced and stability was imposed through military control. in 1785, king rama i asserted renewed sovereignty over patani. siam’s troops attacked patani and destroyed the sultan’s palace (keyes, 2009, pp. 19-42). the tributary system was ended during the reign of king rama ii, who divided patani into seven malay principalities, which included patani, saiburi, yala, yaring, raman, ra-ngae, and nong chick. of these, only nong chick had a buddhist ruler. since the 1900s, the leaders of siam united the south into the provinces of pattani, yala, and narathiwat – divisions that exist until today. during the 19th century, with the arrival of the french and british colonial powers, bangkok, again, tightened its control over patani. throughout the century, the political status of the malay peninsula sultanates, including patani, became increasingly squeezed between an expanding british colonial rule and a rapidly modernizing siam (baker & phongpaichit, 2009, pp. 69-70). in 1909, through the anglo-siamese treaty between siam and britain, patani was annexed to be governed directly under thai hegemony. this resulted in the official incorporation of the southern patani border into the thai state. this border arrangement, which still exists as the current borders of the thai modern state, has since then been disputed by the local malay aristocracy who objected to the thai government’s control of the southern region (bunnag, 1977). tensions worsened when the thai central government enacted the national culture act in 1939, which contained detailed codes of behavior (aphornsuvan, 2007, p. 35) intended to ‘civilize’ thais by forming a unified national culture for those dwelling within the thai state’s border. with the implementation of the act, the thai state aimed to spread central thai cultural traits and theravada buddhism throughout the whole country as a policy of assimilation. consequently, despite the fact that over 70% of the population in the deep south are malay muslims, patani people were forced to adopt buddhist culture which had been introduced by bangkok’s buddhistcentric government (bajunid, 1992; scupin, 1998, p. 229). the forced imposition of thai culture on malay muslims led to violent separatist insurgencies in which those who envision themselves to be part of the patani people fight for independence from thailand (von feigenblatt, 2009). 228 | aseas 12(2) religious discourse and gender security in southern thailand following the second world war, violence in the patani region increased dramatically. the islamic scholar and the first president of the provincial islamic council of pattani, haji sulong, started the first major independence movement in the 1940s and early 1950s (aphornsuvan, 2004; lamey, 2013, p. 3). he called on the patani people to engage in civil disobedience and a petition campaign. haji sulong authored the seven-point demand of malay muslims that was presented to a commission of inquiry convened by the central government to investigate the circumstances of the locals at a time of growing malay-muslim nationalism and resistance to central government authority in the region.2 his arrest and imprisonment in 1948 led to a series of violent eruptions before he was made to disappear by security forces in 1954 (aphornsuvan, 2007, pp. 52-53; ockey, 2011, pp. 112-117). since the 1950s, the tension in the region has been characterized by continuous armed violence, whereby thai security forces’ counter-reaction has alienated the malay-muslim community and conversely led some local muslims to engage in militancy (dorairajoo, 2009). in january 2004, the violence in thailand’s deep south took a new turn when malay-muslim insurgents raided a military camp in narathiwat and drew on an ethno-regionalist narrative to perpetuate a new wave of violent conflict in the south of thailand (liow & pathan, 2010). their claim to religious justification marks a new form of separatist movement in which religious rhetoric increasingly plays a central role in violent insurgencies’ political discourse (mccargo, 2009). the entanglement between religious solidarity and violence becomes even more complex since the collective memory of the military atrocities, particularly of those that took place at krue ze mosque and the following tak bai tragedy, against muslim civilians is well alive among the locals. in april 2004, the military raided pattani’s historic krue ze mosque to arrest a group of militant malay muslims who were suspected to have attacked the police station. the raid resulted in the death of 32 men, with one civilian victim who happened to be in the mosque. the tak bai incident followed when a crowd of 2,000 protestors gathered at the police station in tak bai district, narathiwat, to seek the release of six people arrested on suspicion of having stolen guns from defense volunteers. police and military forces used fire trucks and live ammunition to control the situation, in the course of which more than 80 malay men were killed as a result of ill treatment (harish & liow, 2007, pp. 161-184). these series of conflicts involving the deaths of muslim civilians have generated long-lasting traumatic memories among the malay muslims in the region until today.3 2 the demands were: (1) the government of siam should have a person of high rank possessing full power to govern the four provinces of patani, yala, narathiwat, and satul, and this person should be a muslim born within one of the provinces and elected by the populace. the person in this position should be retained without being replaced; (2) all of the taxes obtained within the four provinces should be spent only within the provinces; (3) the government should support education in the malay medium up to the fourth grade in parish schools within the four provinces; (4) 80% of the government officials within the four provinces should be muslims born within the provinces; (5) the government should use the malay language within government offices alongside the siamese language; (6) the government should allow the islamic council to establish laws pertaining to the customs and ceremonies of islam with the agreement of the high official; (7) the government should separate the religious court from the civil court in the four provinces, with full authority to conduct cases (syukri, 2005, pp. 89-90). 3 interview with several women and several youths who are members of families of the victims; pattani, yala, and narathiwat, 12-13 september 2018, 10-12 may 2010, and 24-26 december 2004. aseas 12(2) | 229 amporn marddent the historical tensions in thai-patani relations between the central government and the deep south and the reluctance to recognize the region as a sovereign state have created a situation of chronic controversy concerning nation-state issues in the region, which winichakul (1994) calls the “geo-body problem” of the nation. he asserts that the melayu patani, or the ethnic malays and the malay-speaking muslims, struggle over the notion of “thai-ness” (kwaampenthai) because of the conceptions of thai chauvinism and geo-body that emerged from a homogenous conception of national culture based on a unitary nation-state (winichakul, 1994, pp. 3-5).4 such tensions lead to enduring violence since the state relies on military force to secure order. this is evident from how the state has organized the machinery of occupation between the government and the military in these provinces, where the government machinery of the occupying power is divided between the government and military through security agencies and military forces. accordingly, in assessing the notion of security in the region, the state is applying military terminologies by classifying the conflict as “unrest” and “insurgency” (buranajaroenkij, 2017, p. 19). “unrest” is a key term that the government uses to point to the risk it faces in the region along with the region’s social instability. as it creates a division of ‘us-versus-them’, the state’s evocation of the term has been criticized by human rights activists in the region. women activists have been rejecting the term as it can only be applied in respect to a paternalistic central control policy, and therefore does not address all conflict-affected dimensions, including the comprehensive notion of human security, which locals and women have to endure (international committee of the red cross, 2008; paulus & vashakmadze, 2009). women and human rights activists contend that the term “unrest” is a simplification of the depicted situation since violence in the region has become more complex and affected larger concerns, including women’s well-being, domestic violence, child marriage, discrimination against widows, and enduring sexual and gender-based violence. accordingly, beyond the scope of the military’s understanding focused on a binary situation of stability and unrest, “unrest” has significant consequences for those living within it. for example, armed violence as a product of masculinity (bjarnegård & melander, 2011) often leads to other forms of violence such as against women and children (ezard, 2014), and thus any security notion should set its concerns on human security (tripp, 2013) as the product of a non-violent ecology rather than simply exercising armed or political security. a report from the southern border provinces administration centre (sbpac)5 shows a staggering number of women who were victimized in unarmed conflict conditions from 2004 to 2017, with 513 killed and 1,704 injured as a result of shootings or bombings (buranajaroenkij, 2019, pp. 6780). the national human rights 4 to add to the complexity, the patani region remains, until today, a poor region with substantially less economic development than other parts of thailand’s south (bank of thailand, 2006; world bank, 2019). 5 sbpac was established in 1981 to monitor the work of civilian government agencies, implement policy, train and discipline the officials posted to the region, and coordinate with security forces in thailand’s deep south. these include the office of the national security council (nsc) and the internal security operations command (isoc). sbpac, nsc, and isoc, which are responsible for devising and implementing policy in the region, are led formally by the prime minister. in practice, however, the prime minister exercises little direct oversight (international crisis group, 2012). 230 | aseas 12(2) religious discourse and gender security in southern thailand commission of thailand (2018) reports that in some rape cases, the victims were even forced to marry the perpetrators of sexual assault as mediation process to settle the suit. at the same time, since separatists have mainstreamed religious discourse into everyday life, religious conservatism has dominated the region, and a recent report from the southern women network overcoming violence (2018) shows that the stories and numbers of violent incidents against women have largely gone unreported due to stigma and social pressure, although the number of incidents of domestic violence is annually increasing in the muslim community. because of perceived cultural norms, less particular concern has addressed gender-based violence. studies on and programs for women in conflict situations in this region tend to have a limited focus on the quantitative and visible involvement of women in peacebuilding as part of grassroots training and programming by foreign actors as well as actors from thailand’s central region (asia foundation, 2012; buranajaroenkij, 2017, 2019; undp, 2016; un women, 2012, 2018). programs for civil society and communities in this region leave religious and socially sensitive issues to the religious leaders’ accountabilities; although in many cases the religious scholars are indeed sensitive to gender issues. therefore, when issues of gender-based violence are addressed, the state and civil society actors associate them primarily with the predominant culture of the muslim community and religious interpretation, which, they contend, marginalized women. public outcry for muslim religious authorities to address such issues has nevertheless met a dead end. such approaches fail because, on the one hand, they fail to account for the complexities of violence that women in this area face as part of the ongoing conflict, while on the other hand they offer simplistic solutions to how the violence could be addressed by disentangling it from the larger conflict situation and connecting it to gender as well as values of a conservative muslim society. several operating global peacebuilding discourses it was not only once or twice during my field research (2004-2007, 2009-2010, and 2014-2019) in thailand’s deep south that the locals expressed their complaints about the top-down approach that characterizes policies meant to address the conflict, particularly the martial law order and the 2005 emergency (international commission of jurists, 2010). at this time, the locals had recognized the prolonged violent situation as an armed conflict was the outcome of utsahakam kwam mankong (security industry). because of the top down, security-based machinery of the state, people in patani criticized that the cost of the violent conflict had emerged as a profitable benefit for several sectors, especially the thai belligerents and the aristocracies on both sides. moreover, many local people felt they were living within utsahakam kwam mankong, whereby their voices were being marginalized and they were being victimized as ‘others’ in the wake of conflict. the feeling of otherness is prominent among malay muslims who constitute a non-buddhist minority as well as among those who embrace a non-thai culture. “the others” is used among the malay muslims to define their own identity in relation to others. in this regard, they are referring to the dominant thai social, cultural, and other kinds of identity constructions. to note, since 2004 there has also aseas 12(2) | 231 amporn marddent been a nostalgic revival of thai nationalism, which includes propaganda songs and cultural performances to show that the state still plays a decisive role in the policy of assimilation (jory, 2007, pp. 129-146). such a sense of otherness, when entangled with such expressions of a sense of belonging and nationalism, could hinder local participation in the peacebuilding project. the structural othering could also be seen in the dispute of regional naming. while the state addresses the region as ‘pattani’, the insurgency movement uses ‘pattani’ to describe the narrative of its origins and individuality, and to show how it is not dependent on a center in bangkok. according to satha-anand (1992, pp. 1-38), the term “pattani” actually best reflects a specific political and cultural territory. the state’s deliberate word selection is, however, also not without a reason. it shows the historical control of the central government since it has been using the term ‘pattani’ as a unit of administration since 1906 (chonlaworn, 2014, pp. 527-546). such disagreement shows how the state disregards the agency of local malay patani people in constructing their own identity. panjor (2015) argues that, beyond its administrative function, region naming is a form of state’s centralistic control of local political identity that defies or contains local political aspirations. consequently, the term has political and cultural connotations. among local women, the problem of identity is also related to how their “women-ness” is defined through various global discourses. there are currently four discourses of peacebuilding that accommodate women’s participation in the process: the united nations security council resolution (unscr) 1325 and its women, peace and security agenda (wps), the convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women (cedaw), and the united nations sustainable development goals. among these discourses, the wps agenda has become today’s main source and tool to advanced women’s participation in the peacebuilding process in thailand’s deep south. the wps was initiated as part of the unscr 1325 on 31 october 2000 (chinkin, 1994, pp. 326-341). as a un-based resolution, wps is a global normative order on security discourse. unscr 1325 and wps impose a global political agenda on policy support for gender equality. on the global level, its mainstreaming centers on four pillars, namely (1) women’s participation in conflict resolution and peace processes; (2) gender mainstreaming in conflict-prevention initiatives; (3) the protection of women’s rights and bodies in times of peace and war; and (4) relief and recovery, especially for survivors of sexual violence. at the national level, unscr 1325 provides guidelines to governments and non-governmental actors that outline their responsibilities in order to comply with the wps agenda (george, 2016, pp. 376-377). the un believes, as supported by a study by krause, krause, & bränfors, 2018, that when women participate in peace negotiations, there will be an increase in the durability and the quality of peace. research on the wps has invigorated the agenda extensively, such as issues on policy prescription and redefinition of the idea of peace, conflict, gender, and security. these studies investigate how the implementation of peace resolutions could relate to certain gender norms. for example, goldstein (2001) discusses how the gendering of war has been constructed, emphasizing the degree to which men have been socialized with hierarchies, such as in the armies, more extensively than women in wartime. thus, men are trained with hierarchical power through wars, while women actively oppose war. several studies, however, criticize the wps agenda for 232 | aseas 12(2) religious discourse and gender security in southern thailand its simplicity. ní aoláin (2016, pp. 275-292) highlights the applicability of the wps agenda in an era of a new pattern of war in which security strategies have focused specifically on counterterrorism and extremism, where women are only marginal actors and their voices of peacebuilding play a role only in marginal spaces. jauhola’s work (2016) contributes to the marginalized subjects of women, peace, and security by exploring the ways in which the wps is predicated on the construct of the ‘good woman’. the realities of war and conflict in the global south also deliver a further criticism to the unscr 1325 and the wps agenda. basu (2016, pp. 362-374) criticizes the implementation of both, contending that un’s discourses on peacebuilding and conflict resolution have been primarily developed based on values of the global north. thus, she calls for the contributions of the global south to be brought into consideration in both the implementation and non-implementation of the wps resolutions. by doing so, she argues that the unscr 1325 needs to invite actors from the global south to also write the implementation guidance document as follow-up resolutions and to further broaden the discourse on women, peace, and security. the thai government has signed the international agenda, but it does not yet have a national action plan (nap) to steward the unscr 1325 implementation. regardless of such a limitation, there are already some local efforts to incorporate a wps agenda in the establishment of meetings with grassroots women’s organizations. through various interviews, my interlocutors, who are members of women’s ngos in the conflict areas and civil society leaders, expressed that the steps in the wps agenda have led to pragmatic actions in their efforts to craft the country’s policies on gender and security. on the practical level, to deepen the application of the wps, the thai government has relied on women’s groups comprised of those whose husbands have been killed or are missing in the region. at the same time, several international non-governmental organizations (ingos) have joined forces with women’s non-governmental organizations (ngos) in thailand to persuade the government to also advocate the older, already-existing peace discourses to further support the wps agenda, such as the 1979 cedaw and the 1995 beijing un women’s conference platform for action.6 in thailand, the wps agenda was adopted in collaboration between the thai ministry of social development and human security and un women (government prioritizes un policy, 2015; un women asia and the pacific, 2016). since it was adopted, some women leaders, including those from un women, the national human rights commission of thailand (nhrct), the sbpac, the ministry of foreign affairs, and the office of women’s affairs and family development (owafd) under the ministry of social development and human security, have been pushing for the unscr 1325 to be implemented in domestic activities. on the other hand, the practitioners, international observers, diplomats, and activists that i have interviewed, all view that unlike the unsrc 1325, the wps actually offers strategies on the prevention of violence and protection issues that are already effective for peacebuilders to apply in the field. thus, the wps has been proven to be able to be used as the core tool of peace processes while helping the state to better advance international humanitarian law and thailand’s internal security act (isa). for example, 6 see, true’s (2016) discussion paper on women’s inclusion in the peace process. the foundation for women has provided training and training manuals to educate women in conflict areas to understand and apply cedaw and unscr on wps to advance gender equality since 2008 (sakrobanek, 2008). aseas 12(2) | 233 amporn marddent government and international actors, especially the asean commission and key stakeholders, can restore people’s confidence in peacebuilding by undertaking concrete steps, such as annual budgeting programs to support women’s forums that are likely to result in increased confidence among key groups to agree upon action points and ways in accelerating the implementation of wps agenda. these practical engagements, apart from the absence of a nap, have turned women and their organizations into recognized actors whose agency has an impact on building a stronger comprehensive set of peacebuilding implementation steps. for example, the thai government has implemented conflict resolution by establishing security goals based on a national political blueprint strategy, in which it has initiated a program of monetary compensation and rehabilitation processes as one of the initial steps in the peacebuilding process. beyond financial means, such steps are symbolically pivotal since they raise the issue of recognition, whereby the impact the conflict has had on women is taken into consideration. to date, most women who are conflict-related victims have been compensated by the government (international crisis group, 2012). the local malay-muslim women, who were direct victims, have also taken a greater role as peacemakers by becoming leaders of local women’s groups. their agency is being recognized by the state and ingos. for example, they have travelled more frequently from their villages to the cities to attend workshops and meetings and to participate in dialogue forums. they have taken on leading roles in conflict prevention and peacemaking, although, again, thailand does not have a national action plan for the implementation of unscr 1325.7 this is where complications emerge. women leaders in the networks of civil societies in thailand’s deep south understand this global agenda as an imposed, top-down agenda through which the state is attempting to implement a certain standard on women groups. some civil society members in pattani province also believe, however, that the isa, although it has adopted some notions of an international legal framework, is often used to empower executive authority and security forces, which undermine the rights of citizens. at the same time, the government has actually attempted to avoid any internationalization of the conflict in the deep south of thailand, which explains the absence of a nap. as the thai government has classified the conflict as unrest in the context of riot and insurgency, it primarily centers the wps agenda only in a larger discourse of national security. the state tends to recognize conflict situations in the region as internal disturbances and tensions; in this discourse, violence is explained as isolated, sporadic acts, and a matter of domestic politics (lamey, 2013). when the state developed a plan to address security, a woman human rights defender, angkhana neelapaijit, criticized the government and local leaders’ handling of the situation in the region without a gender dimension.8 she expressed that the state should close the gap between commitment and action in the form of non-violence policies. such policies to security, however, will consequently withdraw any abundant presence of armed forces in the region. angkhana further noted that the lack of 7 see also, peace women (2018). additionally, while thailand’s nap includes wps implementation frameworks, thailand has not established actions to be implemented in cooperation with civil society. the thai military government, on the other hand, establishes its own security goals based on the 20-year national political blueprint strategy (the national blueprint strategy, 2018). 8 interview, nakhon si thammarat, 8 august 2018, and pattani, 6 december 2019. 234 | aseas 12(2) religious discourse and gender security in southern thailand political will to actually implement a change through a nap supporting the unscr 1325 remains a key issue to advance the goals of the peace process. on the other hand, according to group discussions i attended in october 2018 on state agencies’ monitoring of the wps, unscr 1325 is currently not being upheld by the central government as it has implemented another new security policy for the region that does not accommodate the non-violence values of unscr 1325. women officials from both the office of women’s affairs and family development (owafd) under thailand’s ministry of social development and human security and sbpac representatives admitted the lapse. such discrepancy between policy and action arises because unscr 1325 is a legally binding resolution for un charter signatory states (initiative on quiet diplomacy, 2010, pp. 36-37) and is not an organic product of all involved actors. apart from wps, these women activists also have implemented several other related resolutions, which address matters on the individual level or in the private sphere (kirby & shepherd, 2016, pp. 249-254). in 2015, for example, the international community endorsed another normative framework, the 2030 agenda for sustainable development, commonly known as the sustainable development goals (sdgs). this global instrument formally recognizes gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls as a distinct development goal. the sdgs number 5 and 16 (further, sdg 5 and sdg 16)9 in particular aim at achieving gender equality and empowering of all women and girls, including a call to end all forms of discrimination and violence against women and girls in the public and private spheres, to eliminate harmful practices, to value domestic work, and to ensure women’s political and economic participation as well as sexual and reproductive health respectively (lee & pollitzer, 2016). i attended several small women peacebuilding forums on the overlapping forms of gender justice and protection mechanisms for women’s rights (in pattani, narathiwat, and bangkok in march, august, and december 2018). the present local and international scholars, ingo professionals, thai, and malay-muslim women’s rights activists and a national human rights commissioner, who have been working on women’s right protection with civil society and women groups in the deep south of thailand, criticized the government’s policy tool as being incapable of achieving the state’s goal of a gender-based justice arrangement. the problem is that, although the state has ratified the agreement, the current government has attempted to merely uphold their accountability to the sdgs by crafting a 20-year governmental strategic plan rather than implementing all mechanisms to enact a gender-inclusive security policy, particularly those outlined in unscr 1325. dealing with two discourses, the unscr 1325 and the sdgs, the thai government, through its representative state agencies like the owafd and the sub-committee on women, peace and security, has discussed in various international forums in bangkok, which i attended, to consolidate the efforts of integrating these global gender perspectives through learning from local women’s best-practices. members of the civil society network who work on peacebuilding issues with several organizations have, hence, attempted to create another space and provide the resources to push for larger engagement of muslim women’s group. 9 sdg 5 aims at achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls, while sdg 16 promotes peaceful and sustainable societies for sustainable development; access to justice for all; and effective, accountable and inclusive institutions for all (united nations general assembly, 2015). aseas 12(2) | 235 amporn marddent one of the greatest challenges to craft a nap and for supporting the consolidation of women’s activism is, however, the synchronicity between elements of the state themselves. my interlocutors stated that such a problem persists because the state is unwilling to accommodate the resolution into a nap.10 as previously mentioned, the representation of the state in the deep south has been divided into civilian government, on the one hand, and military control, on the other hand. such unwillingness seems to be rooted in a complex set of interrelated issues, particularly in terms of the permanent state of emergency under martial law (e.g., jitpiromrsi & mccargo, 2008; the asian human rights commission, 2009). thus, while the civilian government actively supports a discourse on the consolidation of efforts, the military government does not prioritize citizen protection or any from-below initiatives due to the martial law in the deep south that was imposed following the 2014 military coup.11 moreover, reports from international organizations contend that the military government, the national council for peace and order (ncpo), is failing to promote human rights in general (human rights watch, 2017; international crisis group, 2016). this situation shows how different understandings of the notion of security could lead to a deadlock. such a deadlock can become a potential blowback to any peacebuilding effort since it prolongs the status quo on security (see also, liow, 2006; von feigenblatt, 2011). responding to such an incoherent plan, and to strengthen the implementation of unscr 1325, sdg 5, and sdg 16, women’s groups have demanded that the thai government deconstruct the notion of security – as part of a larger notion of non-violent society – and go beyond its current focus on state security (thailand universal periodic review, 2017; universal periodic review info, 2017). the goal is that, by incorporating grassroots women’s voices on security, which could be directly applied within the community, the thai government could effectively implement the wps resolution. such efforts have been fruitful since several national forums commenced in 2015 and 2016, organized in bangkok and songkhla, respectively. in these initiatives, along with scholars and state officers of the ministry of social development and human security, a large number of women from different networks were invited, including the leaders from islamic communities, such as the peace agenda of women (paow), a network of 23 women’s organizations. through these forums, the thai government also aims to endow grassroots women with a basic knowledge of scr 1325 (government prioritizes un policy, 2015). apart from the bureaucratic complexity, this development on various international discourses on wps that are currently taking place in the deep south show that there is a national recognition of the added value that women can bring to peace implementation in partnership with the un and state agencies, even though women do not understand all the technical matters in relation to a dominant strategic plan for scr 1325.12 10 the thai government announced the finalization of the national action plan (nap) for women, peace and security. however, no timeline or budget has specifically been allocated to the nap (peace women, 2018). 11 thailand’s recent general election results in may 2019 entail that the ncpo continues to maintain their power over an elected parliament since the military coup in 2014 (mccargo, 2019, pp. 153-222). 12 interviews with two scholars from the prince of songkla university, pattani campus, who attended the forum as observers, pattani, 10 december 2016. 236 | aseas 12(2) religious discourse and gender security in southern thailand peacebuilding from below: salafi discourse and women’s consolidation to tackle the bureaucratic complexities and the limitation of the state’s notion of security, women’s rights activists, practitioners, and academics aim to broaden the security framework for women in the deep south. they have sought to conceptualize more holistic notions of peacekeeping, particularly notions that members of grassroots organizations could acknowledge and practice. a leader of the southern women network overcoming violence, rosidah pusu, has complained to sbpac that the government needs to work on female violence in order to gain larger support from the local community. in this call for a broader framework of security that goes beyond ending the insurgency, malay-muslim women have found themselves actively involved in civil society activities as representatives of sensitive and women’s issues. local muslim women have consolidated the peacebuilding effort through the council of muslim women’s organization cooperation for peace (cmcp) – a network of 21 muslim women’s organizations which was established in 2011.13 as more local – and specifically women – actors have become involved in the peacebuilding process, my research indicates that a new notion of security has gained a foothold in the region, this is peace which draws on the islamic traditional framework. applying the theological approach of salafism, cmcp aims to apply a purified belief and practices to strengthen a peaceful society in patani region. it holds a multaqa muslimah (muslim women congress) as an annual activity. cmcp claims that for peacebuilding goals to succeed in the region, a campaign for structural reform is necessary to secure women’s presence in the peacebuilding process and to generate social recognition of women’s roles in the traditional islamic patriarchal society. they do not dismiss religious discourse in this matter. instead, they attempt to find an alternative path to build peace in society by using their professional platform as religious intellectuals. hamidah adae, the group’s leader and one of my main interlocutors, has played a significant role as an advisor for the network of the southern muslim women’s association (smwa). hamidah became deeply involved with the women’s network after her retirement from the college of islamic studies of prince of songkhla university in 2011. she often delivers speeches and shares her religious knowledge of islamic peace concepts with students and villagers. since the group emerged, a more religious model, based on the islamic culture of peace and non-violence, has gained prominence. as a halaqah, an islamic study circle, the group differs from those sponsored by the state or international ngos. cmcp’s members gather in houses or university meeting rooms in which they establish their own space. hamidah and other group leaders, such as maraim ‘kak yae’ samoh14, act as the consultant of each halaqah. through group intervention specifically targeted at healing the mental wounds of conflict through the adoption of a spiritual approach, they personally coach the members in dealing with their trauma. this spiritual approach as a healing method is important since women in conflict 13 their local cleric is dr. ismail lutfi chapakiya, the rector of fatoni university, who published a book to promote peacebuilding from a religious perspective entitled islam sassanha haeng santiphap (islam the religion of peace (2011). 14 maraim ‘kak yae’ samoh is active in the social action party (phak kit sangkhom) since 1976. aseas 12(2) | 237 amporn marddent areas revealed that many people have been drawn into the insurgency, neither for the liberation of the region nor for religious reasons, but in a quest for personal revenge after their family members were arrested, tortured, and stereotyped as murderous malays by security forces. accordingly, alongside the political steps towards conflict resolution– such as the wps agenda and unscr 1325 – as operable methods to overcome political grievance, the spiritual narrative of peacebuilding should also be recognized as an effective approach in the peacebuilding process. it provides a normative justification for peace that could change the actors’ worldview. the halaqah group applies the pedagogy of persuasion to establish a peaceful space for women, students, and lecturers. this approach also aims at the attainment of inner peace. in their halaqah, participants assert the importance of reciting the qur’anic verses regarding inner and outer peace (chapter 60, verse 7) and non-violence (chapter 4, verse 29). they also repeatedly brought the historical example of ethical and strategic acts of non-violence, such as the treaty of hudabiyya, which is seen to exemplify concessions on the part of the prophet in order to secure peace.15 seventeen cmcp members also attribute the act of non-violence to the avoidance of confrontation and quest for a peaceful co-existence by referencing the time when the prophet muhammad sent muslims to the christian king in ethiopia to seek asylum from persecution by the meccans.16 while the ethical subjects and the prophet’s exemplary decisions are taken as ideological references, members of cmcp also undergo a transitional phase through different dimensions by reflecting on their own lives and traumatic narratives. for example, they have to learn the notion of peace within the context of sulh, or peaceful resolution, in oneself. they refer to sulh in ibn qayyim’s interpretation, in which the term appears as the key concept of peace and reconciliation and the opposite of conflict and war.17 in this notion of reconciliation, cmcp members also mention the idea of patience (sabr) as a tool for succeeding in finding inner peace and for supporting conflict transformation processes, where the internal struggle with oneself as the ‘greater jihad’ is important as the main narrative of self-transformation. these applications of islamic narratives of peace are crucial, according to my interlocutor, to end the personal and emotional impulse of revenge. as one of the pressing issues to be addressed in peacebuilding is to break down the entanglement between the various conceptualizations of peacebuilding and reconciliation to practical implementation, cmcp also urges their members to be actively involved in promoting women’s participation in peacebuilding in cooperation with other grassroots women and the state. this includes urging their members to take membership in women’s organizations that can play an important role in maintaining the social and political fabric of their communities, such as the above-mentioned southern women network overcoming violence and peace agenda of women 15 a peace treaty was signed between the muslims of medinah and the quraysh tribe as the mecca opposition in 628. the treaty came about as the quraysh did not grant muslims access to the holy site in mecca. in order to make peace and decrease tensions between the two cities, the treaty enabled the muslim community to perform their pilgrimage the following years (armstrong, 2007, pp. 175-181). 16 interview with two women scholars in pattani, 8 december 2018. 17 ibn qayyim employs the salafi hermeneutic and follows ibn taymiyya’s exegesis on different issues (moustafa, 2017, pp. 1-43). 238 | aseas 12(2) religious discourse and gender security in southern thailand (paow). paow was established by local women leaders with the assistance of both national and international donors and has gathered different groups from the chinese and malay ethnic communities. as an interethnic and interreligious organization, paow has a significant role as the link between current peace negotiations and the current women’s peace network. one of paow’s achievements, as my interviews with its leaders reveal, was the implementation of safety zones in 2005, which were agreed upon by the thai military government and the mara patani (majlis syura patani, the patani consultative council), a coalition of several patani malay separatist groups.18 today, poaw’s concept of safety zone is still the most referenced strategy on the issue of women’s participation in peace processes from the thai government, the mara patani, local human rights activists, and groups of academics (peace survey, 2019). buranajaroenkij’s (2017, p. 12) study finds that paow has been influential in the conflict area in promoting the idea of resistance against violence while urging women to take a social role as “peacemakers”. the paow advocates that those who have limited access to justice should increase women’s public representation by mobilizing women in the public arena. it was able to deliver tangible results and increase women’s representation at the peace negotiation table. in my observation, today, paow has become the most preferable representative of actors in civil society to advocate women’s involvement in peacebuilding, particularly as a middleperson who can invite various conflicting parties to a dialog forum. because of its effective civil society organization and strategic integration of women into public affairs, various parties in the conflict area consider members of paow as influential actors in the peacebuilding process. regardless of its success, paow is facing numerous challenges. abdulsomad’s (2017) study on women’s participation in the pattani peace process finds that one of the obstacles to paow’s gender-inclusive participation is a lack of political literacy. thus, she argues, the meaningful participation of women at the negotiating table, which is one of the most fundamental components of the wps agenda, is largely unattainable. to this, my interlocutors responded that cultural gender practices have caused the difficulties to attain political literacy. my paow interlocutors explained that political knowledge and skills in politics are still largely men’s domain. at the same time, meaningful participation in the ceasefire negotiation is often still regarded as the sphere of (male) security actors.19 it is understood as the responsibility of men from different parties on the battlefield. 18 in 2013, the first formal peace talk was initiated by yingluck shinawatra’s government. it acknowledged the need for a political solution to the conflict. dialog parties involved only the thai government and the most powerful separatist group, barisan revolusi nasional (brn, national revolutionary front). the second round in 2015 was followed by the military. this time, talks were held with mara patani as a new actor but without brn at the table (pathan, 2019). scholars argue that talks that do not include the brn are meaningless because the people who are able to control the fighters are not at the negotiating table. the brn refuses to join the peace talks unless some conditions are fulfilled. these include the release of political prisoners, amnesty for the brn delegation, and an impartial international third party to mediate the talks (international crisis group, 2016). the government has been avoiding the internationalization of the conflict which could lead to foreign involvement (mcdermott, 2013). 19 the call for safety zones has been adopted by women representatives as a security notion in the deep south to promote peace. the panel that represents malay-muslim separatist leaders in exile had proposed to launch a limited ceasefire in the conflict area to enhance the peaceful resolution (international crisis group, 2016). aseas 12(2) | 239 amporn marddent there is also an inherent stereotype of women’s security within certain spaces. for example, groups of women’s rights advocates and members of civil society, with whom i have cooperated for advancing gender equality in muslim dominated areas, express that paow’s suggested safety zones agreement and the peacebuilding efforts in patani are actually less gender-sensitive than expected. the safety zone concept with its focus on removing the conflict from certain spaces, such as markets, places of worship, and schools, has not raised gender security in larger public spaces.20 the choices to secure these spaces are based on the common stereotype of where women conduct their activities, and are hardly about ensuring human security in general. with such a lack of comprehensiveness in implementing the wps agenda, the proposed idea of women as peacemakers continues to position the role of women in the peacebuilding process as supporting an agenda developed by men. paow has also been criticized by other women’s groups because they have been neglecting other important issues, especially ending torture, extrajudicial killings, and sexual as well as gender-based violence (women’s forum in narathiwat, 24 march 2017). furthermore, women leaders in paow, such as soraya jamjuree and patimoh poh-etae-da-o, who are acknowledged by the state and international agencies such as owafd and un women as representatives of the women’s group to become the driving force for women participation in the peace process, have raised two key normative issues in our several interviews. first, mainstreaming salafi peace discourse is challenging because salafism has often been blamed for religious fundamentalism that has deepened the conflict. the term salafi is a sensitive tin in thailand since it is related to religious fundamentalism and rebellious movements against a secular state; although this is not the case in southern thailand. followers and leaders of the salafi movement, thus, rather prefer to identify themselves as ahli sunnah wal jammah. salafism as one of the islamic reformist movements has urged muslims to return to and strictly follow the sacred sources and to purify islamic ideas and practices from later innovations (bid‘ah). such fundamentalist views have often been assessed as exclusively religious and incompatible with the spirit of democratic dialog. thailand’s salafi movement, however, has advocated peace for social change through tarbiyyah (education) by working within the thai constitutional framework. in pattani, salafi women’s groups are highly influenced by the teachings of the well-known traditionalist orthodox religious leader ismail lutfi chapakia who is the founding rector of fatoni university and an avid promoter of peacebuilding. as a local, he is also the most respected contemporary religious leader of the saudi style of salafism in thailand to provide a religious narrative of peace (liow, 2011, pp. 29-58; yahprung, 2014). women’s activism requires a reconstruction of the practiced norms of women’s position in the islamic society and their roles within the household. hence, although paow was successful in bringing various actors to peace negotiations, it has since 20 i am the main author of a joint cedaw shadow report entitled “the situation of the rights of malaymuslim women in southern thailand”. it was submitted to the cedaw committee and written by the patani working group for monitoring of international mechanisms (2017). the working group is mainly comprised of local advocates, members of civil society, academics, human rights activists, and lawyers from a collective of 14 organizations and networks. the report focuses primarily on the issues faced by muslim women in thailand’s deep south in general, but also on security issues they face in public spaces. 240 | aseas 12(2) religious discourse and gender security in southern thailand been prevented, if not excluded, from participating in the formal peace dialog because women in general are not viewed as representatives in the traditionally patriarchal islamic society. due to the tendency of women to be favorable towards the peace project, women’s groups have taken on new tasks and responsibilities. they are key partners on the ground to support and advocate peace policies and their related strategies. accordingly, in this context, wps should be understood as a part of the peacekeeping process in which the formal participation of women and their representation are highlighted. women’s groups have an important role to play not only in preserving existing social norms but also in changing traditional social roles during a time of conflict. in many forums i have attended, the contention was raised that the enduring conflict has changed traditional roles, and particularly how it has opened new spaces for women to redefine social norms and gender relations. when malay-muslim women acquire new social status through new responsibilities, it challenges existing social norms about women’s roles in civil society. for example, as their husbands had died because of the armed conflict, many women became the sole recognized caregiver of the family replacing male dominance. yet, the voices of these women-victims are not united in public affairs because there is an absence of a unifying forum. accordingly, as a collective, women’s groups lack the legitimacy to participate in peacebuilding discussions and are undermined by their male counterparts. this situation hinders their advancement towards increased participation. disagreement also emerges between activists. although both share a common goal on delivering a gender equality narrative to the public, paow leaders like soraya and patimoh do not share the same strategy and trajectory in advancing the gender discourse. soraya expressed that malay-muslim women are expected to firstly finish household chores and receive permission from their husbands before they leave their homes to engage in public affairs. thus, she views that women’s activism as peacebuilding engagement without completing these requirements could evoke a rupture in tradition. patimoh, the director of the women’s advocacy group we peace, by contrast, tends to focus on changing the gender norms in which soraya operates. patimoh and her team urge for greater women’s participation in the political sphere. women should not have to ask for permission as they have already earned a seat at the negotiating table. in her argument, household tasks need to be shared with male family members because women are now sharing the role of peace keepers. patimoh highlights her activities on gender-based violence, women’s human rights, and their inclusion in politics. she chooses to adopt the tool of changing social norms rather than playing by them. by working with the government and receiving funds from national and international donors, her group’s activities frequently include both men and women. she has been criticized by women in the network and local religious leaders for risking malay-muslim women’s religiosity as they work in a mixed-sex context. an ideal situation would be if local men could also recognize the importance of their wives’ activism. for example, in the case of kak yae, her candidacy for the social action party right after her graduation from a university in malaysia was encouraged by her husband and male local malay politicians (marddent, 2017, pp. 229-246). aseas 12(2) | 241 amporn marddent future challenge: making gender norms work women’s groups and deep south civil society organizations have been studying the peace process in neighboring countries, such as in mindanao, the philippines, and in aceh, indonesia. they found that the wps agenda and related tools have been successfully applied and implemented, particularly through naps for those areas.21 therefore, women’s groups and a few other activists in patani are trying to apply the models of peace resolution from those two areas as a means to encourage the mainstreaming of gender equality norms as an intermediate step for the peace process.22 the question is then: which gender norms could be applied – or which are even suitable – in the context of the conflict in thailand’s deep south? although gender relations vary depending on culture and other aspects, it is accepted among theorists that gender is a set of discourses that represent and construct the social meaning of being a woman or a man (connell, 1990). gender discourses also affect how men and women are positioned in conflict areas, as configurations of gender security are also operationalized in the local context. here, the work of yaliwe clarke (2013), who has intensively researched a range of civil society organizations in military societies with a state-centric approach to security in the south of africa, is essential. she develops analytic perspectives around the meaning of gendered security for women, and therefore argues that security should be focused on “collective security” through which women are also ascribed the right to being “secure”. she proposes that legislation simply does not change norms; norms would likely change through dialog and learning spaces as well as through arguments and agreements that would encourage the change (björnberg, 2012). clarke’s (2013, p. 89) perspective on gender and security traces the debates concerning women’s situated knowledge and the essential aspect of peaceful femininities. in conflict areas, she underscores the role of militarized patriarchal gender identities and the place of subservient masculinities and femininities as root causes of war. in her analysis, the ways in which the complex relationship between gendered capitalist processes and militarism has impacted women are particularly important (clarke, 2013, pp. 88-90). consequently, security in the feminist security framework has expanded beyond state security to human security. to reconceptualize violence from the perspective of feminist scholarship, violence at home and in war ought to be considered equal violations of human – particularly women’s – security. thus, if we follow clarke’s approach, gender norms in the security narrative of thailand’s deep south need to be viewed from the two main subject positions of women: (1) as victims of conflict-related sexual and gender-based violence; and (2) as agents of change. this paper has exemplified how local women leaders have attempted to catalyze a security discourse that is akin to what clarke (2013) identifies as being essential for a gender-sensitive concept of security. in relation to the comprehensive concept of collective human security, women have already proposed extending the scope of the agenda to create peace and stability for individuals and society. they also put 21 countries that have adopted a nap in support of unscr 1325 are currently on the list of women’s international league for peace and freedom (2019). 22 discussion with two human rights analysts and human rights defenders, bangkok, 6 july and 10 september 2018. 242 | aseas 12(2) religious discourse and gender security in southern thailand high consideration on the designs offered by the state and the un while also having attempted to navigate these powerful sets of permissible and reproducible hierarchical ordering policies with pragmatic peacebuilding steps. in this endeavor they have used salafism as a peacebuilding narrative and have shown how a fundamentalist religious narrative could support a peacebuilding effort in a secular state. the complexity arises, then, not only from the dimension of participation, but the contestation of norms as they are negotiated with their religious and traditional values as well as the tools the state makes available to them in their attempts to create an alternative setting for peacebuilding. for example, from the critical point of view of women activists in the region, the wps agenda might be the step needed for including more women from grassroots levels, but the state’s implementation of the agenda, specifically its failure to include it in a nap, fails to be transformative. thus, women leaders have to navigate both the patriarchal culture and the structural setting of religious society and the state’s failure to consider their voices in their policies to address what they term “unrest”. they further criticize the state’s implementation of the wps agenda as it does not aim at structural change in the region but supports gender inequality. thus, women’s meaningful participation in peace processes has become stuck or entangled not only within state agendas and global bureaucracy of norms, but also on the ladder of existing local social norms. to breakdown traditional structures and the militarization of society, local women peacebuilders confront the obstacle of inequalities with socio-cultural spaces that attempt to address the difficulties women face in trying to obtain a seat at the negotiating table. the masculine ‘heroes’, the thai military government, and the current opposition party, mara patani, have been officially ascribed a peacekeeping role. this is intimately connected to the traditionally gendered norms that promote the power of men over women. proposals made by women are only seen as symbolic, as women cannot be a part of the formal decision-making process. moreover, the collective forms of development remain in managing the existing situation of women in conflict areas. nevertheless, women are busy working on the ground. their time is occupied not only by taking care of family members but also by running projects and mobilizing women in the communities to get engaged – no matter how limited – in peace forums. during the ongoing conflict in the southernmost provinces of thailand, consideration of gender and contextual aspects are fundamental dimensions that all stakeholders should address to reach a gendered solution to both war and peace. in relation to the wps agenda, it still has a clear aspiration towards deconstructing patriarchal gender orders in favor of equality. social norms enable gender discrimination, and this, in turn, limits women’s abilities to engage in the formal level of peace processes. if significant steps forward are to be made in taking a gender-based approach to the issue of security, the notion of equality and meaningful participation of women in human and social security are crucial matters that need to be addressed in the relationship between gender and security. conclusion in order to address gender-sensitivity in peace processes, local women are pushing for a public discourse on women’s peace policy, including the unscr 1325 aseas 12(2) | 243 amporn marddent and subsequent resolutions23, the cedaw, sdg 5, and sdg 16 in particular. they accordingly hope to join negotiations as part of the state’s top-down peacebuilding policy and carve out a space for more bottom-up and gender-sensitive peacebuilding processes while also reconceptualizing local norms in order to formally guarantee more gender freedom. the wps agenda, unscr 1325, and its related mechanisms will not be able to deliver greater peacebuilding success if these are only interpreted as a means to fit women into the current peace and security paradigm, rather than as opportunities for assessing and redefining peace and security through a gender perspective. in thailand’s deep south, the meaningful participation of women in peace processes has been wedged between the state’s top-down agenda and the hierarchy of local social norms that often put women in marginalized positions: on one hand, men’s dominant military notion of security and, on the other hand, religious and traditional discourses about the role of women in society. thus, in order to create a collective notion of security, it is necessary to address the sources of inequality and to identify the decision-making institutions in conflict resolution. efforts to strengthen women’s participation in conflict resolution should go beyond the evaluation of participation rates; they should also recognize their role as agents in delivering both formal and informal peacemaking policies. accordingly, evaluating women’s participation in the peacebuilding process should also pay attention to the implementation of the wps agenda as well as other related mechanisms, and look at how they are consequently contested. this paper provides examples of how women actors’ sense of ownership in the peacebuilding agendas is also diverse. women belong to different agencies, and this means that they are associated with different groups and networks. moreover, as the differences between the paow, cmcp, soraya’s, and patimoh’s circles show, they have various means and strategies to achieve their conceptualization of peace. there is, therefore, no one-size fits all policy for engaging women in the peacebuilding process. conflict resolution in patani is challenging; there are multiple points of view, and when certain policies and local norms are inconsistent in providing a space for women, they place women on a lower step in the hierarchy than men. this is primarily the result of how women are positioned in a specific context, this is the home.  references abdulsomad, f. r. 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(2014). islamic reform and revivalism in southern thailand: a critical study of salafi reform movement of shaykh dr. islamil lutfi chapakia al-fatoni (from 1986-2010). phd dissertation, international islamic university. about the author amporn marddent is the chair of the center of excellence on women and social security and a lecturer at the school of liberal arts, walailak university, thailand. ► contact: mamporn@gmail.com acknowledgements this paper is part of the studies women, security and peace building in asia, which was funded by thai research fund, and women networks increase accountability of religious and governmental institutions to reduce violence against women in the deep south of thailand, which was funded by oxfam. the draft for this paper was written during my fellowship at the collaborative research center 1095 “discourses of weakness and resource regimes”, goethe university frankfurt, germany, funded by the german research foundation (deutsche forschungsgemeinschaft). i would like to thank ario seto for his suggestions throughout this paper. aseas 13(1) | 35 volunteer tourists and the sdgs in bali: agents of development or redundant holiday-makers? claudia dolezala & dominyka miezelytea a university of westminster, uk ► dolezal, c. & miezelyte, d. (2020). volunteer tourists and the sdgs in bali: agents of development or redundant holiday-makers? austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 13(1), 35-55. volunteer tourism is an ever-growing phenomenon and a multi-million-pounds industry, particularly in developing countries. despite the manifold criticism for its neo-colonial nature – self-centered volunteers who romanticize the global south as ‘poor but happy’ and short-term projects that create dependency rather than local capacity – it can, at the same time, be seen as a key engine for socio-economic development. the privatization and neo-liberalization of development has led to governments and development agencies increasingly delegating responsibilities to the volunteer, who takes on the role of an agent of development – continuing in times of the sdgs-driven agenda 2030. however, little research to date tries to understand volunteers’ perceived developmental impact to link it with the un sustainable development goals (sdgs) that characterize the current development agenda. this paper, therefore, offers one of the first attempts to bridge the gap between volunteers’ experiences, their felt impact, and the sdgs by drawing on ethnographic data gathered in a volunteer project teaching english in the north of bali. its aim is to start a discussion as to whether and under which conditions volunteer tourism can be a viable instrument in line with agenda 2030. findings identify a range of obstacles for volunteer tourism in the balinese context to be in line with the sdgs. these include a lack of needed skills and feeling of uselessness on volunteers’ part, expectations that are set too high through marketing, a lack of coordination, and the fact that projects don’t focus on the marginalized. however, there are also indications that volunteer tourism holds strong potential to put the sdgs’ universality into practice, and hence dissolve some of the binaries between north and south, and rich and poor – thereby creating true reciprocal partnerships, rather than encounters that are characterized by neo-colonial othering. keywords: bali; sdgs; sustainable development; volunteer tourism; voluntourism  introduction volunteer tourism is a steadily growing trend and a more than 173-billion-dollar industry with a ‘make a difference’ tagline, particularly in developing countries (pariyar, 2017). many have attempted to define volunteer tourism, but the most commonly used definition was established by wearing (2001), who suggests that the generic term ‘volunteer tourism’ applies to those tourists who, for various reasons, volunteer in an organized way to undertake holidays that might aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 28 36 | aseas 13(1) volunteer tourists and the sdgs in bali involve aiding or alleviating poverty of some groups in society, the restoration of certain environments or research into aspects of society or environment. (p. 1) in other words, voluntourism is an increasingly popular activity, in which people combine travel, leisure, and recreation with voluntary work. butcher and smith (2010) suggest that the growth in volunteerism is associated with young adults, who constitute the majority of the voluntourism market, seeking to make a difference in the world while searching for their identity. volunteer tourism’s increased popularity and constant growth, particularly in the asia-pacific region (milne, thorburn, hermann, hopkins, & moscoso, 2018), have attracted society’s attention, which makes it a widely researched phenomenon. the most researched aspects are volunteers’ motivation to engage in programs, with early studies focusing on altruism and egoism as the two main, though opposing, motivations (lepp, 2008; tomazos & butler, 2010). however, research has gradually shifted towards more critical investigations, particularly the impacts of volunteer tourism on host societies (loiseau et al., 2016; raymond & hall, 2008), and volunteer tourism’s developmental role (butcher & smith, 2015). volunteer tourism is, indeed, a phenomenon that “combine(s) the hedonism of tourism with the altruism of development work” (simpson, 2004, p. 681) and thus deserves closer investigation from a development perspective. some argue that the steady rise in volunteering has emerged out of the privatization and neo-liberalization of development, with governments and development agencies delegating responsibilities to the volunteer, who increasingly takes on the role of an agent of development (howard & burns, 2015; luh sin, oakes, & mostafanezhad, 2015; melles, 2018). others have begun to relate volunteer tourism to the achievement of the sdgs, which have been agreed on in 2015, addressing global challenges humanity faces, including those related to poverty, hunger, inequality, climate, environmental degradation, prosperity, peace, and justice (unwto, 2017). in order to move from commitment to actions and results, all stakeholders need to engage and actively participate, “leaving no one behind” (unwto, 2017, p. 7). these goals have been linked to volunteer tourism, for example, through an attempt to bridge the gap between national and international volunteering agendas within the new global context that is set by the sdgs (devereux, paul, hawkes, & georgeou, 2017), and through the questioning of post-colonial power structures in the achievement of overcoming the north-south divide – an essential idea characterizing agenda 2030 (howard & burns, 2015). in this context, the voluntourist again emerges as a main ‘agent of change’ (un, 2015) in the achievement of the sdgs on the ground (scheinert, gufer, polak, & bruder, 2019). while much research has focused on volunteers’ motivations to engage in volunteer tourism (lepp, 2008; tomazos & butler, 2010), only little research so far has attempted to understand the perceived impact volunteers have on the locality (coghlan, 2007; palacios, 2010). even less research to date has related volunteers’ perception of their developmental impact to the sdgs, particularly to see how volunteer tourism is placed to contribute to the sdgs more broadly, but also specific goals and indicators. hence, this paper offers one of the first attempts in bridging the gap between volunteers’ experiences, their felt impact, and the sdgs in the regional context of southeast asia. in an educational voluntourism context, such as in the present study, volunteering could particularly contribute to goals 4 (quality education) and aseas 13(1) | 37 claudia dolezal & dominyka miezelyte 8 (decent work and economic growth). more specifically, targets 4.1 4.7, 4.c, and 8.9 could directly be addressed through volunteer tourism – all of which will be discussed later on in this paper. bali has been chosen as the case study for this research, given its popularity as a tourism – but specifically also as a voluntourism – destination in southeast asia (mostafanezhad, 2014). bali, an island highly dependent on the tourist dollar, partly in the form of foreign investors but also as an important source of local income, has been well known as the gateway to indonesia for tourists (nuryanti, 2001; pickelchevalier, 2017). indonesia currently occupies place number 111 out of 189 in the human development index ranking (undp, 2019), turning bali into an island where leisure often meets humanitarian work (onda, 2011). nevertheless, bali faces increasing problems due to an overdevelopment of tourism (now, however, interrupted by the covid-19 pandemic), often marginalizing local residents and compromising environmental sustainability (macrae, 2010). to foster a more sustainable development, the indonesian government has adopted the “indonesia sdgs roadmap,” for a smoother implementation of the sdgs, showing that the country works actively towards these goals (ministry of national development planning indonesia, n.d.). this paper’s aim is therefore to investigate volunteers’ perceived impacts as development agents in the island of bali and relate this to the sdgs to start a discussion as to whether volunteer tourism can be a viable instrument in line with agenda 2030. this paper therefore is part of the wider debate on tourism’s contribution to the sdgs, which deserves closer attention (boluk, cavaliere, & higgins-desbiolles 2019). literature review impacts of volunteer tourism volunteer tourism has experienced much criticism, both from academics and the industry alike. criticism relates particularly to the nature of volunteer tourism projects, which are often short-term placements that generate concerns about their negative impacts and the lack of benefit to local people (tourism concern, 2014). one of the key criticisms focuses on volunteer tourism being seen as a form of neoimperialism, where unskilled and inexperienced teenagers from wealthier western countries travel to developing countries to perform oftentimes unsatisfactory work due to volunteers’ lack of skills (laurie & baillie smith, 2017). oftentimes, volunteers are driven merely by self-centered motivations, such as, cultural immersion, experiencing a new country, or simply improving their cvs (mcgloin & georgeou, 2016). despite these frequently selfish motives, brown and morrison (2003) argue that the only ‘skill’ required by most volunteer tourism organizations is the desire to help others. this, nonetheless, often results in cases where local residents have to rebuild houses constructed by volunteers, or where children gain very little educational advantage – despite an entertaining time spent with the volunteer (pycroft, 2016). guttentag (2009) points out that many volunteer tourism projects, especially those that are short-term, actually bring little benefit to the host communities. when volunteer tourists leave, locals have to cope with their everyday lives again without any help, which in turn creates a dependency relationship. for instance, 38 | aseas 13(1) volunteer tourists and the sdgs in bali some authors suggest that building local capacity, as well as engaging in longer-term projects, would be more useful and avoid the dependency relationship many projects create (devereux et al., 2017; howard & burns, 2015). volunteer organizations could provide tools, training, and instructions to residents (e.g., for construction work), which would contribute to community development and could create jobs, instead of sending a group of inexperienced teenagers to do the job. however, as howard & burns (2005) argue, volunteer tourism often tends to “privilege… the professional development of workers from the north” (p. 9). overall, the industry has been strongly criticized in that agencies charge volunteers thousands of dollars, whilst only contributing small portions of that money to residents, allowing the agencies themselves to thrive (brightsmith, stronza, & holle, 2008). pariyar (2017) claims that an average agency charges about usd 1,000 for a month of volunteering, of which only half reaches partner organizations in developing countries due to advertising costs, staff salary, and other organizational costs. from the remaining usd 500 that the partner organization receives, again only half of the amount goes to the project on the ground, which is what should ideally make the difference in local communities. however, as discussed above, oftentimes the support that residents receive does not even reach those areas where help is really needed (howard & burns, 2015). instead, particularly “as the trip length decreases, the volunteering placements are designed more for the convenience of the volunteer rather than to support local community needs” (howard & burns, 2015, p. 9). financial transparency, therefore, remains a key criticism and problem of volunteer tourism (melles, 2018). in addition to the above, one of the main arguments against volunteer tourism is the contentious interactions it generates with children. the media (particularly social media and photographic material) reinforces a “consistent representation of a hegemonic narrative regarding the relationship between children from the global south as in need of care by young people from the global north” (mostafanezhad, 2014, p. 115), which stimulates charitable giving by volunteers. at times, volunteer tourism can even lead to the trafficking of children (punaks & feit, 2014). voluntourism is a billion-pound industry, and the majority of organizations that send volunteers abroad are for-profit travel agencies that charge high fees to customers. this leads to some orphanages being set up by corrupt ‘entrepreneurs,’ who treat children as commodities, and whose main motive is profit, not the well-being of the children. it is estimated that anywhere between 50-90% of ‘orphan’ children worldwide have at least one living parent (mathews, 2020). furthermore, the cost of some programs – for example, two weeks’ teaching in cambodia at a minimum of gbp 1,145 (excluding visa or flights costs) – would be enough to pay a local teacher for more than a year (purvis & kennedy, 2016). mustonen (2007) particularly criticizes short-term voluntourism and points out that volunteering at schools and orphanages can be harmful to children, as they get attached to their caregivers easily. as a result, losses experienced by young children may leave them vulnerable and even put them at risk of mental health problems, which is likely to affect their long-term well-being. yet, it is particularly the child of the global south that forms the “object of compassion,” as mostafanezhad (2013, p. 320) calls it when critiquing volunteer tourism as the expansion of neoliberalism into ‘aidland’. points of critique against volunteer tourism, however, do not just center on its impacts on the host population, but also on the tourists themselves. there is a chance aseas 13(1) | 39 claudia dolezal & dominyka miezelyte that volunteer tourists might end up feeling disillusioned through their experience, essentially believing that they engaged in a selfish act by volunteering (sinervo, 2011). this is often the case when work with children is involved, turning the volunteer tourism industry into “a moral economy because all actors struggle with the moral implications of marketing ‘experiences with poor children’ as a commodity, to be bought and sold” (sinervo, 2011, p. 17). in addition, research has noted that even if voluntourists may have positive experiences while being abroad, they might struggle re-integrating into their daily lives back home due to a reverse culture shock (grabowski, 2013). on the other hand, despite the criticisms of volunteer tourism, there are certain benefits to both host communities and individual volunteers. one of the key benefits, as discussed by mcmillon, cutchins, and geissinger (2006), is that volunteer tourism can be an eye-opening, life-changing, and transformational experience that affects young individuals in deep and long-lasting ways, making them also more aware of pressing issues and poverty in developing countries. mcintosh & zahra’s (2007) research on volunteer tourists revealed that, after their programs, volunteers gained three kinds of experiences: those relating to the self; those relating to the destination’s culture; and those relating to interactions with local residents. these experiences contribute to volunteers’ later changes of behavior, perceptions of society, self-identities, or values, and often makes an individual more interested in contributing to solving some of society’s issues or even motivate others to do so (scheinert et al., 2019). secondly, according to holmes and smith (2009), further positive outcomes of voluntourism on local communities are social development, improvements in education and health, and a general improvement in lifestyle. volunteers from developed countries aim to share their knowledge and help improve local residents’ living conditions in different ways, to make locals’ lives easier. although volunteer tourism is said to be a key reinforcement of the “demonstration effect” – which, according to simpson (2004), happens when western volunteer tourists are being seen as modelling a way of living to the local residents that the latter then aspire to – this may indeed have a positive impact. volunteers with higher standards of living can often contribute to locals working towards better health, lower crime rates, improved educational performance, and greater life satisfaction (press association, 2004). on the other hand, this effect is criticized and blamed for eroding local cultures and changing local residents’ habits and behaviors, leaving them unsatisfied with their lives and in search of a very western-centric development path (guttentag, 2009). this leads into a wider debate on the role of volunteers and volunteer tourism for development – also in relation to the sdgs. the two sdgs that are particularly worth looking at in the present context of an educational voluntourism program are goals number 4 (quality education) and 8 (decent work and economic growth). volunteer tourism for development and the sdgs despite the range of negative impacts that volunteer tourism is known for, research has shown that volunteers are not necessarily aware of these impacts (milne et al., 2018). in fact, volunteers’ expectations of the impacts they are, or will be making, are oftentimes unrealistic (palacios, 2010). coghlan (2007) argues that 40 | aseas 13(1) volunteer tourists and the sdgs in bali organizations’ promotional material highly influences volunteers’ expectations, and points out that unrealistic images and goals on the websites often create a mismatch between volunteers’ experiences and expectations, which leads to decreased satisfaction levels and lowered volunteer motivation and commitment later on in the project. in addition, raymond and hall (2008) notice that if volunteer tourism programs are not carefully managed, they might be reinforcing cultural stereotypes and lead to cross-cultural misunderstanding. organizations present volunteering opportunities as exotic and people as ‘other’, which is appealing to individuals looking for alternative cultural experiences and escape from their routine (henry, 2016). according to simpson (2004), voluntourism thus often creates stereotypes of residents in developing countries, portraying them as poor and incapable of development. despite volunteer tourists’ lack of experience and absence of relevant skills as discussed above, they often hold the belief – driven by great enthusiasm and willingness to travel and discover the world – that they can be more helpful to developing countries than local people (georgeou & haas, 2019). interestingly, volunteer tourists may also feel that they can only make a true impact in developing countries, rather than their home country (mostafanezhad, 2013). this puts volunteer tourists into a seemingly elevated position as agents of development, raising volunteers’ expectations of the actual contribution they will be making, which makes their role in sustainable development questionable. some argue that volunteering, particularly long-term and requiring specialist skills, may be seen as an essential part of development work and beneficial to host communities (unv 2018; milne et al., 2018). indeed, a range of authors recognize the developmental role of volunteer tourism, taking the shape of development assistance with a commercial component (schech, 2017; scheinert et al., 2019). in many countries in southeast asia (such as in thailand and cambodia), volunteer tourism was seen by the private sector and governments as a more sustainable form of tourism for development, particularly in its early beginnings (mostafanezhad, 2014). an increasing number of authors views volunteer tourism as a main contributor to the sdgs (devereux et al., 2017; howard & burns, 2015), which currently shape the development agenda up to 2030. tourists hereby are one of the key stakeholders or “agents of change” as the unv (united nations volunteers) (2015) call them, needed to actively participate in order to “leav[e] no one behind” (unwto, 2017, p. 7). franco and shahrokh (2015) even argue that long-term volunteering encourages the integration of the volunteer into the local community, minimizing the negative impact of the ‘foreigner’ and strengthening a sense of partnership rather than the simple transferring of expertise, which is one of the aims of the sdgs. others confirm the positive role that volunteer tourism can play in the achievement of the sdgs. the german programme weltwärts, for example, can be regarded as one of the best examples of companies that align conceptually with the contents and principles of the sdgs and promote education in line with goal 4 (scheinert et al., 2019). research shows that returning weltwärts volunteers show greater ability to empathize with people from the host country, improve language acquisition, and promote inclusivity (scheinert et al., 2019). furthermore, the un volunteers annual report (unv, 2018) reveals a range of ways volunteers have contributed to the sdgs in 2018. these include, for example, aseas 13(1) | 41 claudia dolezal & dominyka miezelyte environmental initiatives such as encouraging people to protect local ecosystems, volunteers with specialized experience in sustainable energy solutions contributing to goals for the planet (goals 7, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15), training and capacity building to fight unemployment and contribute to goals for prosperity (goals 8, 9, 10), and healthcare and women’s training programs, thereby, contributing to goals for the people (goals 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) (unv, 2018). two sdgs that are particularly relevant in the educational voluntourism program – in the present context – are goals 4 (quality education) and 8 (decent work and economic growth). more specifically, targets 4.1 to 4.6 (all of which broadly center around the equal access to education and training), 4.7 (ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development), 4.c (increase the supply of qualified teachers in developing countries, also through train-the-trainers programs), and 8.9 (devise and implement policies to advocate sustainable tourism that creates jobs and promotes local culture and products) could directly be addressed through volunteer tourism. case study context: volunteer tourism in bali bali is one of the world’s most visited islands, and the leading tourism destination in indonesia. before the current pandemic, it was expected to attract over 18.2 million visitors in 2020 with its magnificent nature and enchanting culture (woods, 2018). however, due to the current covid-19 crisis, balinese tourism has also come to a sudden halt. tourism and the creative economy are the main vehicles helping to increase economic growth and the welfare of the people (pratiwi, sulatra, & candra, 2019). bali’s key tourist attractions are its culture, nature, surfing scene, and beaches; however, volunteer tourists are particularly attracted beyond the glitzy tourism centers by the rural areas, which are often characterized by certain levels of poverty. just like in the asia-pacific region as a whole, volunteer tourism in bali has therefore been on a steady rise. research has shown that the asia-pacific region is a particularly popular region for volunteer programs, with over 250 organizations across 21 countries (milne et al., 2018). with thailand on the top of the list (with 104 organizations), indonesia has a total of 36 volunteer tourism organizations (milne et al., 2018). the present research has been conducted with one of the organizations1 on the island of bali, offering educational, leisure, and environmental conservation programs. the organization itself says very little about what they understand about community engagement, though – with no clear information about the impact they are making or transparency in regard to where the money goes. sustainability has no mention on the organization’s website – although the indonesian government communicates a clear vision on the importance of sustainable development to protect the natural and cultural resources (ilo, 2012).  sustainable tourism – including volunteer tourism programs in bali – if well planned and managed, can make a direct and positive contribution to indonesia’s achievement of the sdgs, inclusive of poverty reduction, rural development, preservation of culture and society, gender equity, and environmental protection (ilo, 2012). 1 the organization’s name is kept anonymous here. 42 | aseas 13(1) volunteer tourists and the sdgs in bali the program that is part of the present research is an english teaching program taking place at a local school on the northern coast of bali. volunteers received a ‘pre-departure’ guide, emailed to all the volunteers prior to their departure, stating that it is entirely up to a volunteer what one decides to teach, with a general syllabus to follow, but that no previous teaching experience is required. upon arrival, none of the additional information about the program was given, except that volunteer coordinators showed participants where to find the materials for teaching and all the tools needed to prepare for their lessons. methodology this research uses qualitative methods and an interpretive approach, which enables an understanding of the multiple realities of research participants (jennings, 2001). the main focus of this research is on the feelings, experiences, and personal impacts of volunteer tourists in bali, with the findings being based on the interpretations of behavior and conversations with participants, as well as on a reflection of one researcher’s (the second author of this paper) own personal experience of being involved in this project. this research adopts a qualitative approach to data collection, which relies on words, images, and sounds (veal, 2011), and helps to interpret the personal experiences, meanings, attitudes, and volunteer tourists’ behavior in bali. more specifically, this study draws on empirical research in bali conducted by one of the authors, consisting of ethnographic methods, particularly participant observations of the social settings through interviews as well as conversations (brewer, 2000). whilst volunteering in bali, the researcher collecting the data was a participant and an observer for four weeks (one week in a cultural program, two weeks spent volunteering, and one week in a leisure program), keeping a personal diary with observations of people and the environment, taking notes and recording conversations. according to silverman (2016), when engaging in participant observations, the researcher joins a group of people and their activities, and at the same time, becomes a part of the group and the phenomenon being studied. in this case, the researcher was participating in a volunteering program while living in a house with other volunteers, observing their actions, and recording their feelings in formal and informal conversations, and interviews over a duration of two weeks. interviews with volunteers were semi-structured, which means that there was a rough guideline but room for flexibility. it gave volunteers the opportunity to express themselves, their feelings, and opinions, which enhanced the richness of data and gave the researcher a broader understanding of the topic. conversations in the field were held with around 20 volunteers, and three additional volunteers were interviewed via skype after their return in order to get an even richer account of the phenomenon under study. both interviews and conversations were conducted in english, given that the research focus was on international volunteers rather than local residents. interviews (both in person and via skype) were recorded and then transcribed to serve purposes of data analysis. conversations were recorded whenever suitable or kept note of in a field diary. direct quotes in the text therefore often stemmed from formal interviews, while informal conversations with other volunteers were paraphrased. aseas 13(1) | 43 claudia dolezal & dominyka miezelyte in addition to conversations, interviews, and observations, the researcher who collected the empirical data engaged in self-reflection while on fieldwork. given that she was a part of the social world under study by being a volunteer herself, it was worthwhile reflecting on her personal experience and beliefs when it comes to the volunteering project. this involved keeping a personal diary with detailed description of feelings, emotions, thoughts, experiences, and interactions with other volunteers, local residents, and the environment. it also meant recording thoughts and reflecting while teaching english at the local school, which in turn supported the research with an in-depth analysis of on-the-ground volunteer experiences. self-reflection was therefore used in order to “make oneself the object of one’s own observation, in an attempt to bring to the fore the assumptions embedded in our perspectives and descriptions of the world” (feighery, 2006, p. 269), which is also why parts of the findings were written up in first person. by taking time to record significant moments while volunteering, the researcher gained a better understanding of her own emotions and experience as a volunteer, which fostered a comprehensive and critical discussion of the personal experience (dolezal, trupp, & leepreecha, 2020; holliday, 2016). the data analysis consisted mainly of thematic analysis of the interviews and diary to help recognize patterns and make sense of the large quantity of research material (patton, 2002). thematic analysis has been applied to both the researcher’s diary as well as the transcripts of in-depth interviews to present findings of volunteers’ feelings and experiences while volunteering in bali. findings volunteers’ role in local development: what is the whole point? overall, a feeling of being useless emerged as one of the strongest themes in the research. most volunteers, including myself, shared the feeling of being of little use to the destination, and generally lacking a bigger purpose beyond the tasks they were completing. at the beginning of the project, i was assigned to volunteer with two young women who had already been volunteering for one month. they had their own teaching schedules and techniques, spoke basic indonesian (bahasa indonesia) with the children, and had tasks prepared for the classes already. due to the large number of volunteers, i had to join these women’s class, even though they did not need any help. i circulated in the class, although the children were coping well with the assigned tasks. i felt like my presence was not needed and i was not benefitting anyone, which i reflected on in my personal diary: i felt useless walking around the class, smiling at kids, and not being able to communicate with them. i know i am new and inexperienced, but all of us want to make an impact. both of them [the two more experienced volunteers] had some techniques of teaching, they were close to the children already and i felt a bit awkward. i felt like i was not needed there at all. my feelings were quite strong in that i was doubting the usefulness of my presence and even the possibility of making a change, which was one of my main motivations 44 | aseas 13(1) volunteer tourists and the sdgs in bali to join the program. i had booked my volunteering trip through an organization whose promotional material used words that created an expectation that one would make a truly positive change in the destination. expecting to ‘make a change’ and feel important, it was truly upsetting to be walking around and feeling completely redundant. as coghlan (2007) points out, a mismatch between volunteer’s expectations, created by the promotional material of the organization, and the actual experiences, often leads to decreased volunteer motivation and commitment (coren & gray, 2012), which i experienced first-hand. jacob (26 years old, portugal), who was involved in the teaching program as well, admitted feeling similarly: “the people who did teaching and construction programs felt like there was not any main goal. there was not a big purpose, a plan or a project to work on. that is what we were all lacking.” bigger disappointments, however, came from the group of volunteers engaging in construction work. many of the volunteers had booked their trip through another organization, which advertised the construction program using words that pointed towards the important role that volunteers would play in the renovation and infrastructure of the local community, thereby setting high expectations of the contributions volunteers would make. having created these expectations, all of the volunteers i have spoken to were truly disappointed with their experience. the reality was, that they were sent to the local school to scrub the paint off a perfectly fine-looking wall and repaint it after. volunteers therefore felt like they were completing tasks that were not important or useful to the community at all. this is how isaac (20 years old, uk) referred to the program: “i felt that the work we were doing was not having an impact on the local community and that the [organization] was just finding something to fill our time,” which demonstrates the disappointment and feelings of uselessness that volunteers shared. this has been noted also in previous research, such as in womack’s (2012) study on the efficacy of voluntourism in latin america, emphasizing the ineffective nature of volunteer tourism organizations who often tend to mismatch supply and demand. according to tomazos (2010), volunteer tourism organizations successfully create and shape the demand of volunteer tourists through purposefully designed marketing, ensuring that volunteers are portrayed as a new kind of tourists who have empathy to help the ones in need. therefore, many volunteers in the project under study had high expectations of programs and their personal impacts. however, due to a high demand for volunteers, there was not much left to do in the school. the reality of voluntary work can be very different from prior expectations, with tasks that are not directly connected to the main aims of a project, therefore leaving volunteers feeling disappointed or detached from the communities they are trying to help (tourism concern, 2014). relating to volunteers’ frustrations about being useless, an interesting observation could be made: some took their own initiative in order to feel like they were making an impact. an excellent example for this is ignacio (24 years old, panama), who had spent the whole summer teaching english with the organization in the north of bali. being truly driven by his altruistic intentions, he felt like he was not making an impact or benefiting the local community in any way. therefore, he decided to go beyond the program and help his newly made local friend rebuild and refurbish aseas 13(1) | 45 claudia dolezal & dominyka miezelyte his house. by offering his free time and covering all necessary expenses, ignacio thus made a positive impact on one local family. given that the family did not have enough money to purchase items they needed to renew their house, ignacio offered his help. his story illustrates how strong his willingness to benefit the local community was. he noticed the issues with the volunteer program, saw another opportunity to make an impact, and invested his resources and energy into the right places. he seemed to turn into a true ‘agent of change’ (un, 2015), going beyond the space of development action that the organization creates, thus demonstrating his obvious dissatisfaction with the commercialized and somewhat superficial nature of volunteer tourism. although volunteer tourism tends to “perpetuate… a popular humanitarian gaze that reframes contemporary humanitarianism as an empathetic gesture of commoditized concern” (mostafanezhad, 2014, p. 111), the present organization’s project did not seem enough for ignacio to feel the compassion that the industry tries to create. taking into consideration ignacio’s story and the feelings of being useless that many volunteers experienced, the question that emerged amongst many of us was, how many local families could we have truly helped, creating long-term benefits and working together, if we had used the money we paid to the organization to instead contribute directly? this raises another issue, which is that of the money lost through intermediary organizations. for instance, ian breckenridge-jackson, one of the volunteers who helped to rebuild houses after hurricane katrina in new orleans, calculated that if the usd 1.1 billion spent on volunteer travel costs – such as getting volunteers to new orleans, feeding and accommodating them – would have instead been used for rebuilding houses, 10,576 houses could have been built instead of 2,039, a five times greater impact (tedx talks, 2013). many of the volunteers working with the present organization had similar concerns about the amount of money they had paid and how much of it reached the community: “i would like to see where that money is going. there were not many employees at the [organization] that i saw, probably around ten and few of them were not even balinese” (sarah, 22 years old, usa). isaac expressed similar concerns: i am fine with paying that usd 940, as long as the money goes to the local community. many locals need to refurbish their houses and they need materials and furniture. that is the real issue; this would be more helpful for them. and now, most of that usd 940 i have paid goes to the organization. maybe it even makes sense for the volunteer tourism organizations to give us projects like wall scrubbing because paint does not cost much, does it? these quotes evidence the concerns volunteers had about the economic side of the project, with most of them wondering whether their money was used effectively. it is definitely not unusual for voluntourists to feel ambivalent about the financial benefit that really reaches the local community, which has also been noted in previous research, as in coren & gray’s (2012) study on voluntourism in thailand. most tourists in the present study paid between usd 800 and usd 1500 for the volunteering programs, although none knew what percentage of that sum went to the local communities. the organization had no reports or data about it either. as paris (2014) points out, those volunteer tourism organizations that openly state the least about 46 | aseas 13(1) volunteer tourists and the sdgs in bali being responsible are the ones that cost the most, as they tend to hide the origins of their costs, which may also hide excessive profit margins. assuming that the project costs in bali were minimal – with paint, tools for painting, pencils, coloring pens, paper and such being rather cheap, and accommodation being rather basic (we did not always have warm water in the showers and slept with six other people in one room) – it can be estimated that the majority of the money volunteers paid went to the organization as well as international partner organizations. volunteers’ challenges in becoming agents for development several challenges could be noticed for volunteers in their hopes for making a lasting change to the location and residents. one challenge that strongly emerged from the findings was the lack of relevant skills volunteers had for performing their assigned work. this was particularly an issue for those volunteers teaching english. surprisingly, none of the organizations have mentioned the importance of being able to communicate in both languages (i.e., english and the local language) when teaching english (also see: nomnian, trupp, niyomthong, tangcharoensathaporn, & charoenkonka, 2020). according to guttentag (2009), the fact that many voluntourism projects have minimal or non-existent requirements regarding the skillsets needed to participate is one of the reasons why the volunteer tourism sector has expanded and grown so rapidly. therefore, some authors question the benefits of short-term volunteers, who are not familiar with the local culture or language, and stay for a very short period of time (callanan & thomas, 2005; simpson, 2004). the duration of the program under study was only two weeks and i, personally, had been so driven by my willingness to experience volunteering, that i had not even thought of the importance of speaking both languages when teaching: i have no idea how it did not occur to me before that in order to teach a language, in order to be a good teacher you should be able to speak both languages well. how am i supposed to help someone if i cannot understand what they need help with? how can i answer the question if i cannot understand it? knowledge of both languages is very important. it really strengthens the connection between you and the children. (personal diary) again, i felt frustrated that i did not have the necessary skills to perform the best work i could have, which again links back to feeling useless and unnecessary in the project. jacob and sarah faced the same challenge relating to the language barrier: “later on it got easier. although at the beginning i could see that they did not understand many things i was trying to explain to them” (jacob). sarah expressed similar concerns about the situation: i was teaching them about health, hygiene, brushing your teeth, and washing your hands. so in a way, i was teaching them those things but in english, so they did not fully understand and take it all in. also, it was hard to fully communicate the message because of my incapability to communicate in their language. (sarah) aseas 13(1) | 47 claudia dolezal & dominyka miezelyte again, these quotes demonstrate that volunteers were struggling to perform their work based on a lack of the right skills. pycroft (2016) points out that unskilled volunteers, when teaching languages, can make children’s time fun but not necessarily beneficial. this was the case with jacob and sarah as well as with the other volunteers teaching english with the organization: “i don’t think teaching them english was the most positive impact i personally made. just to be with the kids, playing with them, and teaching personal hygiene is important” (sarah). i had similar feelings during my time there, which i expressed in my diary: am i actually bringing any skills in here apart from my fluent english as it is written on my cv and my good energy? yes, i can give them love and i can give them my time and attention. i know little about children's psychology, i do not think i have ever taught a class full of kids before. almost all the 'teachers' (volunteers) are not native english speakers. almost half of them kept making mistakes whilst having a simple conversation with me. (personal diary) this demonstrates that, in addition to a lack of local language skills, volunteers felt that they also lacked english skills to an extent, but even more than that, general skills and knowledge in dealing with children or teaching them. volunteers were trying their best to pass on the knowledge, but it was hard to understand the impact on kids or know if they actually understood what we volunteers were saying, especially with some children not speaking english at all and thus not understanding volunteers. the present organization and other voluntourism organizations advertise programs as an easy way to make a change and become an empowered volunteer, but do not equip volunteers with the understanding and the skills necessary to deal with difficulties or even just to do a good job (butcher, 2003). in the case here, the volunteer group entered bali’s community for a short period of time, with little or no understanding of the locals’ history, culture, or ways of life, teaching them english, and having little consideration towards their language (wall & mathieson, 2006). in regard to teaching, the primary research also showed that most of the volunteers teaching english were concerned about the lack of consistency and organization in the teaching program. no structure or lesson plan was implemented, and volunteers were allowed to choose topics and teach whatever they wanted. this freedom volunteers had was mainly due to the fact that most of the volunteers teaching english were short-term, meaning that every two or three weeks teachers changed. thus, children had various teachers – however, one should not forget that in order to truly learn a language, there is a need to follow a structure. in my personal diary i reflected on how shocked i was in regard to the lack of planning: “there was no structure. you can basically come and teach whatever you want.” other volunteers had similar viewpoints, such as jacob, who said that “in terms of a program, it was not as well organized as it should be. i could teach anything that i want, they did not keep any record.” isaac also argued that, “i was not impressed with the lack of structure behind the teaching curriculum. it seemed that every volunteer could teach what they wanted and that there was no continuity to the lessons being provided.” the key question that emerges here is, if the main goal is to teach english to balinese children, how do you monitor/understand whether it was reached or not? 48 | aseas 13(1) volunteer tourists and the sdgs in bali it is important to keep track of children’s progress and make sure that there is a systematic lesson plan, however, reality looks very different. meanwhile, the children remain at the same level of english, learning about colors or body parts over and over again with different volunteers. interviews with isaac and jacob illustrate volunteers’ concerns about the lack of improvement in children’s level of english: a teacher may teach body parts and countries one week, and then the next week when the next teacher joins, they teach the same thing. i feel that there needed to be some sort of system where volunteers record what they have taught so lessons are not being repeated. (isaac) jacob added that “if i am going to the class and teaching colors without knowing that they have learnt the colors already two weeks ago, they keep repeating that over and over again and lose their interest.” furthermore, not only does the rotation of short-term volunteers create a lack of consistency and organization in teaching programs, but also do children get attached to their caregivers. some volunteers, who were volunteering for a month, teared up when their program finished, showing how strong the attachment and bond was they have created with the children. seeing this suggested that children may potentially feel the same about their teachers going away. this was also well-recorded in the literature, with mustonen (2007), for example, arguing that short-term volunteering brings a great risk of leaving children vulnerable, creating certain trust issues, or even putting them at risk of mental problems. making a lasting change? volunteers’ expectations versus realities according to simpson (2004), volunteer tourism programs aim to “combine hedonism of travelling with the altruism of developing work” (p. 681). surprisingly, however, i observed that while some volunteers were really concerned about the contribution they were making (as discussed above), others were not interested in either making a change or personal development. they came to bali just to get the certificate for volunteering because it was compulsory for their studies. moreover, some argued that the reason for choosing bali was because it was a great opportunity to complete voluntary work, but at the same time, an ideal holiday destination. thus, many saw volunteering in the tropical island of bali as a perfect escape from “boring voluntary work” as they described it. this relates closely to mostafanezhad’s (2013) research on volunteer tourism in thailand, which showed that tourists picked thailand particularly because it did not seem like a developing country (although it was) and was pleasant to live in, while most saw africa, for example, as a destination for more experienced volunteers. part of the present research focused particularly on understanding volunteers’ motivation to participate in the program versus their view of the impact they were making in the end. interestingly, it emerged that most volunteers went on the program either to make a positive change, “spread goodwill” (jacob) or to experience bali from a different perspective, such as, for example, sarah who aseas 13(1) | 49 claudia dolezal & dominyka miezelyte wanted to do something other than just sightseeing and the places that i went to in the first weeks of being in bali were very touristy. i was seeing how all the tourists are kind of destroying their local culture and their communities. i did not want to contribute to the negative impacts i saw around me and i wanted to make a positive change. this shows, again, that while volunteers are often driven by a desire to make a developmental impact, the holiday aspect is indeed important for them. it seems like volunteer tourism is still seen as a more sustainable and alternative form of tourism in consumers’ eyes and that the humanitarian side comes second. when completing the program, volunteers mainly argued that although “it was a great time” (sarah), many “believed [they] made a positive impact but not of the magnitude that [they] would have hoped” (isaac). of course, everybody wanted to make a positive change, however, the research overall showed that long-term volunteers (like jacob and ignacio) were more focused on volunteering and benefiting the local community, whilst short-term volunteers were more geared towards experiences and self-realization. moreover, none of the volunteers stated that the personal impact made was beneficial to local communities. the volunteering experience was truly ‘life-changing’ for many, contributing to self-realization and personal growth, but nobody felt like they were truly ‘making a positive change’ in local’s lives, due to the reasons discussed above. the question that arises is whether it is possible at all to make a change within two weeks. volunteer tourism organizations tend to spread the message that there are quick fixes for big social issues, reinforcing the idea that having good intentions is enough for change to happen overnight (jesionka, 2015), and that the consumer has a role to play when it comes to sustainability and development. the sdgs feature a separate goal focusing on “sustainable consumption and production patterns” (goal 12), demonstrating the increasing responsibility we carry as consumers and as tourists (un, 2019). however, as the findings above have demonstrated, reality looks somewhat different. maybe it is, indeed, the time to stop advertising these programs using phrases like ‘make a sustainable impact,’ ‘play a crucial role,’ or ‘make a difference’ – all of which feed the humanitarian gaze of tourists further, without effectively making them agents for sustainable development. discussion: bali’s volunteer tourists and their contribution to the sdgs the insights discussed above have pointed towards a range of challenges when it comes to making volunteer tourists true agents of change and contributors to the sdgs. from the experiences discussed in this paper, it seems that volunteer tourism will have a tough time meeting the sdgs, particularly if it is of a commercial and short-term nature. while volunteers may have benefited from a pleasant time away from home, it became obvious that their feelings of being useless and redundant in the communities they visited became quite unsettling. thus, this issue must become one of pressing concerns to the industry. one would think that volunteer tourism would particularly contribute to quality education (goal 4), and decent work and economic growth (goal 8), but the volunteers in the current program had a range of doubts about any kind of positive impact 50 | aseas 13(1) volunteer tourists and the sdgs in bali the program had. key problems identified were a lack of skills, expectations that were set too high through marketing, and a lack of coordination, particularly when it came to making projects fit local needs. in addition, in its very nature, the kind of volunteering presented here is not in line with the “leave no one behind” tagline of the sdgs, and hence breaks its key inclusivity clause. the sdgs are meant to focus specifically on the poorest and most marginalized – however, the present research showed that tourists are generally from wealthier social backgrounds to afford their trip in the first place. others have argued that volunteer tourism neither tends to include the marginalized in destination communities – while it may contribute to education, it does not benefit those that cannot even send their kids to school in the first place (howard & burns, 2015). as a consequence, it seems that volunteer tourism in the present context does not contribute very well to any of the targets set out in this paper. targets 4.1 to 4.6 (centering around the equal access to quality education and training) are hard to fulfill on volunteers’ side, given the inequality in who can access programs, but also on recipients’ side – mainly due to the lack of organizational coherence and true quality education. the problem with target 4.7 (ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development) seems to lie mainly in the lack of useful sustainable development learning on either side of the equation – although we can assume that volunteers do seem to have gained at least some degree of knowledge of global issues and problems pertinent to the global south, in turn (hopefully) making them more critical life-long learners in the future. target 4.c (increase the supply of qualified teachers in developing countries) is hardly applicable to the present program given the lack of local capacity building of teachers through, for example, train the trainers programs, fostering a dependency relationship rather than creating independence. lastly, target 8.9 (devise and implement policies to promote sustainable tourism that creates jobs and promotes local culture and products) partly applies here in that the present program does at least create jobs and economic benefit through volunteers travelling in the destination; however, how far these create true local empowerment is questionable. the authors assume a high percentage of leakage of the income the organization generates, as well as that very few jobs are locally created through the volunteer programs. in the future, volunteer tourism can only meet the sdgs if it is in line with these local needs and values and, more importantly, if it recognizes the dissolving of binaries as propounded by the sdgs. the sdgs framework is characterized by the universality of the goals, which “may help to remind us that development can no longer be seen as a north to south process, and neither should volunteering” (howard & burns, 2015, p. 11). it means that there is an increasing need to recognize, “that there is poverty and marginalization within the richer nations as well as in the poorer ones, and that solutions are interconnected” (ibid, p. 14). this might lead the industry to de-colonize and co-create knowledge in volunteer tourism in order to, “unsettle this geography of volunteering and development other” (laurie & smith, 2017, p. 99), and create true reciprocal partnerships, as propounded by the sdgs (lough, 2016), rather than encounters that are characterized by neo-colonial othering. aseas 13(1) | 51 claudia dolezal & dominyka miezelyte conclusions this paper has offered one of the first attempts in bridging the gap between volunteers’ experiences, their felt impact, and the sdgs. it did so by conducting ethnographic research in a volunteer project teaching english at the northern coast of bali, based on both volunteers’ responses and self-reflection by one of the authors. it created a discussion as to whether volunteer tourism is a viable instrument in line with agenda 2030. several obstacles were identified that keep voluntourism in the balinese context from aligning more strongly with the sdgs, including a lack of skills and feelings of uselessness on volunteers’ part, expectations that are set too high through marketing, as well as a lack of coordination and the fact that projects do not focus on the marginalized (in line with the sdgs “leave no one behind” tagline). volunteers are regularly taking on the role of those that are expected, and indeed expecting, to make a long-lasting change through their actions; however, this paper showed that they are not empowered to do so with the right skill-sets and training, and that self-realization and leisure still remain at the top of their priorities, rather than a sustainable change in the destination. with tourism overall having come to a complete halt this spring 2020, due to covid-19, so too has volunteer tourism. nevertheless, it is foreseen that this kind of travel is not going to vanish or disappear in the future. although most companies have postponed their operations and trips to autumn 2020 for now, there are no indicators pointing towards a decline for volunteer tourism’s future, particularly not of the bigger and hence economically more resilient companies. it is expected that with austerity and cutbacks in public spending, volunteer tourism will keep forming a key part of development intervention. more efforts are needed to make it a more sustainable form of tourism though, in line with the current sdgs, particularly if the bigger, more privatelyand foreign-owned organizations that so often demonstrate a patchy record of positive impact, are the ones to survive this crisis. more clarity is particularly demanded when it comes to the sdgs setting out standards of what knowledge, for example, needs to be learned to achieve goal 4, so that organizations can work on aligning their objectives more clearly with agenda 2030 (scheinert et al., 2019), or how they can use volunteers to create more capacity and jobs locally, to also contribute to goal 8. again, as with the millennium development goals (mdgs) and much of the past documented efforts on sustainable development (sachs, 2005), it seems that one of the key challenges here is the translation of these goals to make them meaningful on the ground. more research therefore need to focus on creating a clearer framework that shows how volunteer tourism organizations can and should be contributing towards specific goals and targets in the future – both to assist the industry in understanding how to clean up its patchy past of ‘missed successes’ but also in regards to enabling a more mutually beneficial experience both for tourists and residents alike. given that the resident perspective lies beyond the scope of the present research, future research must focus specifically on understanding the sdgs from the point of view of those that are meant to be benefitting from tourism and humanitarian initiatives. in addition, the limited scope of this research and the micro-perspective it adopted, meant that it focused only on one specific organization and project. future research 52 | aseas 13(1) volunteer tourists and the sdgs in bali therefore could adopt a wider perspective, studying a plethora of organizations that operate in bali or indonesia at large, for example by matching actions on the ground clearly with the sdgs indicators set by the indonesia roadmap (see, ministry of national development planning indonesia, n.d.). overall, this research created one of the first discussions of voluntourism and the sdgs, creating hope that volunteer tourism can lead to true reciprocal partnerships, rather than encounters that are characterized by neo-colonial othering. the universality of the sdgs can make an essential start in terms of challenging power imbalances and the idea of the ‘south’ as in need of outside help delivered by the volunteer as perceived agent of change – a discourse that has nurtured volunteer tourism for a long time. it is not only the marketing and photographic material that needs to represent a more realistic view of the global south, but also the learning from locals’ existing knowledge as well as the co-creation of future capacity, which will make volunteer tourism a much more empowering and enabling endeavor, not just for those travelling but also for those living in the destination.  references boluk, k. a., cavaliere, c. t., & higgins-desbiolles, f. 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(2011). research methods for leisure and tourism: a practical guide (4th ed.). harlow, england: prentice hall. wall, g., & mathieson, a. (2006). tourism: change, impacts and opportunities. pearson prentice hall: toronto. wearing, s. (2001). volunteer tourism: experiences that make a difference. oxon: cabi publishing. womack, l. j. (2012). the efficacy of international volunteerism in peru and ecuador: a qualitative review. senior scholar thesis, texas a&m university. woods, r. (2018, august 28). short-term forecasts of visitor arrivals to bali, 2018-2020. his. retrieved from http://hotelinvestmentstrategies.com/short-term-forecasts-of-visitor-arrivals-to-bali-2018-2020/ about the authors claudia dolezal is a senior lecturer in tourism and sustainable development at the university of westminster in london, uk. she has a background in tourism, international development and social anthropology with a geographical focus on the region of southeast asia (thailand and bali) and most recently latin america and london. claudia’s research interests focus on tourism and social inequalities, tourism and sustainable development, community-based tourism, residents’ empowerment and the anthropology of tourism. she is editor of aseas and co-editor of tourism and development in south-east asia (2020, routledge) and the handbook of niche tourism (forthcoming, edward elgar). ► contact: c.dolezal@westminster.ac.uk dominyka miezelyte is a graduate from the university of westminster ba tourism and events management programme, who has spent time abroad volunteering in bali during her degree. she is passionate about making the volunteer tourism industry more responsible in the future, delivering a more sustainable impact. dominyka now works as a language teacher and freelance translator. ► contact: dominyka.miezelyte@gmail.com 56 | aseas 13(1) aseas 13(2) | 243 linking european and southeast asian transdisciplinary knowledge production: lessons learned by doing evaluation frank seemann & christoph antweilera a university of bonn, germany ► seemann, f., & antweiler, c. (2020). linking european and southeast asian transdisciplinary knowledge production: lessons learned by doing evaluation. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 13(2), 243-259. this article aims to explore knowledge co-production through a critical (and self-critical) reflection of experiences with doing evaluation within the fostering multi-lateral knowledge networks of transdisciplinary studies to tackle global challenges (knots) project. knots started as a collaborative project to explore the possibilities and increase the expertise of seven institutions from europe and southeast asia in teaching a transdisciplinary approach at their higher education institutions. planned as a capacity-building tool for higher education, its main objectives were to create a teaching manual and to establish sustainable networks and knowledge hubs in this field of knowledge production. this was to be achieved mainly by means of summer schools and fieldtrips in southeast asia, which would enable learning through practical application of the knowledge developed. the realization of this ambitious conceptual formulation turned out to be pretty complex and this holds for the very process of evaluation itself as well. we discuss and illustrate the specific problems of a strict evaluation in such a complex transdisciplinary project. the notorious complexity of interdisciplinary and the more transdisciplinary projects was further increased by the intercultural, respective, transcultural dimension involved. topics discussed include structurally immanent difficulties, unintended effects of financial and political constraints, complications caused by hierarchies and language, and effects of cultural differences, especially different university science cultures. in the form of lessons learned during the evaluation process, we give some hints for the development and implementation of the transdisciplinary approach as a new tool for reaching socially relevant knowledge, especially in cross-cultural settings. keywords: capacity building; cultures of science; evaluation; knowledge co-production; transdisciplinarity  knots as a hybrid project the core idea of transdisciplinary research (tdr) is to conduct real-world research and teaching for people and, explicitly, together with these people. in this paper, we consider tdr as a fundamental approach to do research and not as a method in itself. even as a project incorporating only social sciences and humanities, we regard knots – in its practical implementation attempts – as transdisciplinary, since tdr as an approach does not automatically require a broad interdisciplinarity in the sense of integrating technical and natural aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 45 244 | aseas 13(2) linking european and southeast asian transdisciplinary knowledge production sciences (“big interdisciplinarity”; bath & wedl, 2013, applying this concept to critical gender studies). the project itself was funded by the european parliament’s erasmus+ program for capacity building in higher education institutes (hei) – a program line that is not specifically oriented to a region, country, or topic (see dannecker, 2020, this issue). the focus on tdr and on the five universities in thailand and vietnam was part of the individual project design of the university of vienna, which applied for funding. knots aimed at transdisciplinary approaches in general, and specifically at co-operation between institutions of the higher education sector and non-academic actors. the practical goal (our ‘product’) was to jointly develop a teaching manual for transdisciplinary research by organizing summer schools that included, among other things, application tests of transdisciplinary working methods. it was hybrid in the sense that it focused on capacity-building and teaching, but implemented this within the framework of a people-oriented, research-based approach. this article aims to explore knowledge co-production through a critical (and self-critical) reflection of experiences while doing evaluation within knots. we will do that by referring to some essential aspects of transdisciplinary and transcultural research in the relevant literature. in a descriptive part, we will present crucial challenges and obstacles in the course of the project, and then make them accessible in a structured, tabular overview. finally, we will summarize our most important experiences. coordinated by the university of vienna, this project brought together partners from five countries (austria, germany, czech republic, thailand, and vietnam) to strengthen the academic capacity to meet “new challenges in a rapidly changing world” (eacea, 2015). in terms of content, the focus was on three main topics, all of which relate to current problems: (a) social inequality, (b) climate change, and (c) migration. thus, three global issues were to be approached by using the example of southeast asia in an explicitly problem-oriented manner. an important point that is relevant for the following assessment of evaluating activities is the fact that knots was decidedly not a research project, but an attempt to learn collaboratively and to establish an exchange between very different stakeholders on how to create a teaching manual for transdisciplinary research that should be used in the training of trainers (train the trainer), and then in the training of students. activities within the knots project included joint teaching activities, several summer schools and short fieldtrips, as well an international conference. in-built tensions: evaluation within a transdisciplinary and transcultural structure as a project in the erasmus+ capacity building scheme, knots was implemented by a consortium of nine universities. the hierarchical structure of erasmus + projects bears some risks with regard to reproducing global north-south hierarchies, as the consortium needs a specific ratio of program countries (eu) and partner countries (non-eu)1. in addition, the scheme is set up in a way that directs project 1 cf. presentation at grant holders' meeting, brussels, 25-26 january 2017: erasmus+ capacity building projects in the field of higher education call 2016, financial management of the grant, p. 31. aseas 13(2) | 245 frank seemann & christoph antweiler management tasks to program countries, which then makes the implementation of project activities primarily the partner countries’ tasks. apart from deep-rooted north-south inequities, there were power differences based on gender, seniority, or the epistemic background within and between participating higher education institutions, which intersected with the latent bias in the erasmus+ scheme. at the same time, the discussion and shared elaboration of the idea of transdisciplinarity (as a capacity for implementation at partner universities) included the demand for a partnership and cooperative approach (see bärnthaler, 2020, this issue). for this reason, the authors and the qm team expected that the combination of an intended partnership with hierarchical relations within a hybrid project construction would bring along very specific complications. however, a glance at the literature makes it clear that many of the experiences we made are “common dilemmas in participation and cross-cultural partnership” (angeles & gurstein, 2000, p. 31), even in capacity-building projects.2 dependencies on external funding, north-south power asymmetries, pre-defined hierarchy patterns, communication problems, and time pressure, both in the academic routine and vis-à-vis the sponsor (binder, absenger-helmi, & schilling, 2015; schmidt & neuburger, 2017), seem to be more the rule rather than the exception. for example, angeles & gurstein (2000) problematize the overall concept of “partnership” and speak of “the dilemmas of partnership and participation” (p. 40). thus, they ask: can there be equal partnerships between unequals? are partnerships almost always a form of limited and negotiated relationship, and therefore rarely equal? our language and use of this seemingly egalitarian word tends to mask inequalities in resources, capabilities, and accountability of governments, funding agencies and ngos between and within the north and south, as it obscures who takes the initiative in setting agendas. (angeles & gurstein, 2000, p. 40). from our experience, this is true also if we add higher education institutes (hei) to the sentence. in our case, these kinds of dilemmas occurred, although especially the european project members were particularly aware of these problems and tried to avoid them as far as possible. hierarchical structures seem to be so ‘normalized’ as well as multi-faceted that they are hard to erode. an outstanding headline in a related article reads: “digging deeper: old roles reproduced” (schmidt & neuburger, 2017, p. 63). the same authors point out that: the concept of itr [interand transdisciplinary research] itself, developed in the north . . . applied to “problems” in the south, demonstrates such hegemonies that likewise characterise the dichotomy between the praised diversity of voices in futures studies and the western control and domination in the scientific discourses when designing, publishing, and citing such futures (sardar, 1993).3 2 in the context of this article, we will limit ourselves to a few selected articles on this topic, which argue from a broad database and thus provide a fairly comprehensive picture of the state of research. 3 in recent publications, the definition of transdisciplinarity is contested (there are conceptual deviations and semantic slippings). depending on the field of application and discipline, similar concepts are termed and abbreviated differently (see e.g. hirsch hadorn et al., 2008; padmanabhan, 2018). 246 | aseas 13(2) linking european and southeast asian transdisciplinary knowledge production this proved to be particularly relevant within the knots project, as the thai partners have a longstanding expertise with their own participatory research format, which was developed in thailand: thai baan (“villagers' research”), aiming at a transformative research focused on local needs and local competences and using qualitative methods allowing participation (chainarong, n.d.; chayan, n.d.; heis & chayan, 2020, this issue). despite many years of experience, thai baan tended to be subsumed in knots as a form of transdisciplinary research approach. in contrast to these similar findings on social and structural aspects of transdisciplinary projects, we had to realize that the existing, not very extensive and partly inconsistent literature on quality management in transdisciplinary research could only be used to a limited extent. this was due to the status of the project between capacity building on the one hand, and teaching, learning, and exercising of transdisciplinary approaches on the other. thus, an external expert recommended the very detailed and practice-oriented criteria catalog of the institute for social-ecological research (isoe) during the quality management workshop later in the project (bergmann et al., 2005). indeed, this could have been a good orientation if knots had been an explicitly research-oriented tdr project. however, most of the required criteria turned out not to be really appropriate, applicable, or answerable, as the project was not primarily a research project, and practice of transdisciplinarity and relevant research methods were only briefly examined during the fieldtrips. eu-quality management (qm) guidelines and requirements also proved to be of little help for the reflective and formative part of evaluation, as most of them were very formalized and focused on descriptions of the activities carried out and on the specific and measurable performance indicators – mainly in boxes of predefined tables with a limited number of characters. apparently, what angeles & gurstein (2000, p. 31) wrote in their report on three participatory, transcultural research projects still applies to the transdisciplinary approach, namely the experience of: how little things change when new orientations (e.g. capacity development, participatory development) and operating principles (e.g. gender-sensitivity, participatory approaches) are introduced within bureaucracies-as-institutions that are historically and socially constructed frameworks for devising behavioral rules of conduct based on technical knowledge, rational planning, routine, standardization, regularity, and predictability (goetz, 1997; staudt, 1997). this quote confirms the experiences of the vietnamese project partners described by doi (2020, this issue). several authors consistently follow an “output-outcome-impact” concept for evaluation – a concept coming from project management (binder et al., 2015, p. 547; schuck-zöller, jakob, & cortekar, 2018, p. 31). other authors point out that “quality standards in transdisciplinary research are . . . not as clear-cut as it might be in case in other academic fields” (lang et al., 2011, p. 38). one reason might be that, following pettibone et al. (2018, p. 224): more than other forms of research, tdr itself needs to be understood as a normative instrument, that means as part of an explicitly transformative political aseas 13(2) | 247 frank seemann & christoph antweiler agenda. normativity therefore extends beyond epistemological issues of good scientific practice into the moral and political arena. especially for our hybrid format (capacity building in higher education in and through the use of tdr), the differentiation between product-related outputs and process-related outputs (binder et al., 2015, p. 547) seemed to be helpful: process-related outputs are intangible and largely experiential, including (1) methodological, (2) organizational, and (3) social experiences. methodological experience captures how actors from different backgrounds become familiar with each other’s way of working, including problem definition, language, methods, and working culture . . . . organizational experience relates to the practical experience gained by planning, managing, structuring, and executing the project . . . and involves analyzing during or after the project whether or not the project plan matched the actual process. social experience is defined as the interaction with other actors, entities, or institutions. positive interactions build trust (as an impact of the social experience) while negative ones reduce it. taking into account the central aims of (1) developing a teaching manual for tdr, (2) introducing tdr at the partner heis, and (3) forming tdr-oriented sustainable knowledge networks, the project objective of knots was more educationthan research-focused. “choosing appropriate criteria may thus depend on the project’s objectives and its normative orientations (e.g., policy-, education, or science-focused)” (pettibone et al., 2018, p. 224). for this reason, it seemed to be most crucial for the qm team to focus on the evaluation of the above-mentioned intangible outputs. we also found confirmation for this approach in angeles & gurstein (2000, p. 51), who wrote that: [it] is the need in these projects to design and manage clearer capacity-building indicators developed by project participants that “focus more on process and behavioral change” (morgan 1997, p. iv) than on the conventional “inputs-outputs-outcomes-impact” schema used in results-based management (rbm). such indicators have greater diagnostic value in providing project participants better information and motivation in their work. also schuck-zöller et al. (2018, p. 34) point out that, in order to do justice to the complexity in transdisciplinary processes, qualitative procedures are often required. it is precisely this qualitative approach that leads many of the mentioned authors to the conclusion that transdisciplinary approaches and participatory methods are viewed quite critically from a conventional perspective. these authors point out that “transdisciplinary research and similar collaborative approaches are not uncontested outside transdisciplinary research communities” (lang et al., 2012, p. 27) and claim that “experience-based guidelines that build upon demonstrated success (and failures) and satisfy all parties involved in transdisciplinary research are needed” (lang et al., 2012, p. 27). with the following description of our experiences, we aim to contribute to that need, explicitly focusing on challenges, obstacles, failures, and gains of the knots project. 248 | aseas 13(2) linking european and southeast asian transdisciplinary knowledge production an evaluation of evaluation within a transdisciplinary project experiences in doing evaluation during knots measures for quality management (qm) provided for in the project description included quantitative and scheduling tasks as well as qualitative reviews of the project progress and its main end products. the more quantitative data (participants, dates, deadlines, financing, etc.) were reviewed by the project management of the department of development studies, university of vienna (from now on unvie), while the qualitative evaluation mainly of the summer schools and fieldtrips – which is the focus of this article – was carried out by the department of southeast asian studies, institute of oriental and asian studies, university of bonn (from now on ubo), and the authors of the present paper. additionally, two external peer reviews, a detailed mid-term, and a final report were added as internal qm measures. while preparing for the task of quality management, we had been dealing with the necessity of an evaluation through the lens of an explicitly transdisciplinary, planned project. but knots was also an intercultural (or transcultural) project, since universities of different nations, and students with different language backgrounds were involved. in accordance with our literature review, this led to the insight that conventional methods of disciplinary evaluation would not be appropriate. they cannot simply be transferred and applied directly to a transcultural tdr project, due to the multiple forms of co-operation, scientific, cultural, and political backgrounds, methods, and theories involved. this applies all the more to the very special mix of transdisciplinary research and the focus on capacity-building of knots. for that reason, we decided for a more or less discursive and formative evaluation. rather than purely summarizing an inventory of project results and outputs, this initiated learning processes via questionnaires and regular feedback loops during project meetings. for the following part, we mainly use our experiences resulting from (a) our function as responsible for quality management, and (b) our role as participant observers of three summer schools and accompanying fieldtrips. after participation, we reflected on these observations during project meetings with our knots partners. furthermore, we used formal questionnaire sheets (closed questions) and evaluation via qualitative questionnaires (open questions). in addition, we draw on informal conversations with students and participating staff, and discussions among staff during the organizational meetings. kick-off meeting in vienna – intercultural experiences the official start of the project was in october 2016, but a kick-off meeting and the joint project work could only begin in march 2017, as contracts with the eu were only available at that time. the fact is worth mentioning, as the project was not extended by these missing five months. this led to considerable time pressure already at the beginning of the project phase, and also affected the establishment of the quality assurance activities within the project. as the review of literature showed, time pressure is considered by several authors as a major cause for asymmetries and communication problems in such transdisciplinary and transcultural projects (binder aseas 13(2) | 249 frank seemann & christoph antweiler et al., 2015; schmidt & neuburger, 2017), affecting teamand trust-building activities and the agreement on a common understanding of key concepts and vocabulary and common language (angeles & gurstein, 2000; lang et al., 2011; see also bärnthaler, 2020, this issue). in order to meet the project schedule, preparations for the first summer school and fieldtrip had to start immediately, while, at the same time, the necessary organizational structures for the overall project had to be created. another time-related decision was to organize a summer school and a fieldtrip in one block, one right after the other, and to combine them into two weeks instead of calculating two weeks for each at different times. none of the university staff could imagine to leaving work for four consecutive weeks due to their academic duties. for ecological reasons, air travel could also be reduced this way. for evaluation, however, this decision had an unintended effect, since both events had to be evaluated immediately, one after the other, without the possibility of transferring the experiences from one onto the other. furthermore, none of the consortium members was an expert in qm. more time for content preparation and arrangements on the meaning, extent, and form of qm would have led to a better common understanding of evaluation measures and subsequent adjustments. for that reason, for instance, it proved necessary to organize a qm workshop at mid-time of the project – with reasonable results, but definitely too late for major changes in attitude and implementation. another revealing experience during the kick-off meeting was the moderators’ explicitly non-hierarchical working method. the intention was not only to rectify the hierarchical structures implied by the erasmus+ scheme, to avoid any neo-colonial structures and top down governance within the project, but also to ensure an open, brain-storming and inclusive atmosphere to all participants. the actual effect, however, was that existing power relations and cultural differences concerning hierarchy and working style between asian and european partners remained inadvertently unadressed. while the erasmus + capacity building in higher education framework that envisages european colleagues ‘teaching’ partner countries from the global south was openly addressed and circumvented, other unchangeable, structural hierarchies (e.g., financial and workflow control by univie, as well as seniority hierarchies, age, gender, and epistemic background) remained tacitly in place. similar situations arose several times during the project, for example, with regards to terms of reference, conceptions, and project tasks such as dissemination or the role of quality management. this use of less hierarchical working methods was well-intended, but in effect problematical. for example, although it was obvious that unvie had the lead, was therefore organizing the project in general and had the lead of the kick-off event, several simple cooperation tasks (like brainstorming on possible non-academic stakeholders) were carried out in laborious, time-consuming participatory small group work instead of giving participants binding tasks for the meeting in advance. in the end, this led to time pressure and a lack of reflective space for reaching a common understanding of important issues, for instance, to discuss what and how evaluation should be conducted. furthermore, this attempt at a hard, anti-hierarchical approach led to some irritations not only amongst the asian colleagues. if one were to compare the knots project with a typical transdisciplinary project, these restrictions in time hampered the ideal-typical phase a (framing the topic 250 | aseas 13(2) linking european and southeast asian transdisciplinary knowledge production and building a collaborative team), as described in many models (lang et al., 2012, p. 28). this initial time pressure was transferred to the following phases; other typical qm strengthening formats, such as reflexive meetings and discussion forums to prevent conflicts and build up common understanding also became affected. first round trip – cultures of science interacting the first round trip aimed to visit all the partner universities in thailand and vietnam, identify non-academic stakeholders, and organize a stakeholder conference in bangkok. this brought to light new constraints in the preparation and implementation of qm measures. the team of ubo had prepared questionnaires for evaluation of these events on a discursive basis with a focus on open questions. the idea was to learn from strengths and structural weaknesses, as well as from mistakes and failures made, and from unintended effects of some measures. it turned out that the survey worked relatively well among the present partners at the same academic level – even though academic colleagues from vietnam, in particular, showed that they were less familiar with a cooperative working environment. beyond that, feedback from stakeholders at the conference was hard to assess due to language problems and problems of understanding. in retrospect, one could have expected that similar problems will occur with students at the first summer school in hanoi. unfortunately, due to a lack of experience at vietnamese universities, the qm-team stuck with the chosen approach and instruments. during our trips and meetings in thailand and vietnam not only cultural differences in terms of participation and hierarchy became apparent. different science cultures sometimes made it hard to find common views on conceptual issues (such as transdisciplinarity) and concrete processes (e.g., knowledge transfer and its evaluation). while the thai colleagues, for instance, came from a department that was leading in qualitative social science research, working at the margins between academia and activism (heis & chayan, 2020, this issue), the approach of our vietnamese partners proved to be strongly quantitative and statistically oriented (see doi, 2020, this issue). accordingly – and strengthened by the requirements of the eu – ideas about qm measures varied from pure counting methods (participants, stakeholders, events, page), on the one hand, and the description of processes and the creation of feedback loops on the other. different ways of communication made it even more complicated: far from the assumption that there is a clear definition of transdisciplinarity, at least the authors and several european partners believed that a common understanding had been reached at the kick-off event. however, during the trip the discussions on transdisciplinarity blazed up again and the topic was discussed controversially again. some of us had missed the simple fact that open arguments, which are commonplace in west-european countries are simply not customary in southeast asian universities. to raise objection directly is possible in informal settings, but less common in formal meetings or open discussion rounds. in effect, a “yes or “ok” does not necessarily mean agreement or consensus. angeles & gurstein (2000, pp. 52-53) report similar experiences with participatory approaches branded as “new” or “foreign imports” from a vietnamese project. due to this fact, problems already thought to aseas 13(2) | 251 frank seemann & christoph antweiler be overcome reappeared in practical implementation and had to be worked on again theoretically (bärnthaler, 2020, this issue). this also applied to answers in evaluation questionnaires. for example, a positive answer regarding the degree of progress of the common understanding of transdisciplinarity did not mean that later – during practical implementation – theoretical rejections did not reappear, with the effect that some participants felt ‘thrown back’ to the beginning of the project. however, our joint progress consisted in the fact that, by the end of a project, the participants became increasingly aware of these hurdles and learned to overcome them more productively – something that cannot be overestimated, even though it can hardly be measured by conventional qm means. even at this early state, we became aware of the enormous bureaucratic workload caused by eu-requirements, which were quite opaque to the asian partners with their different bureaucratic background. often, these restrictions dominated the project management meetings as they were perceived as ‘hard’ tasks compared to the ‘soft’ ones, such as qm. this influenced not least the ability and willingness to return questionnaires on time and thoroughly filled out. corresponding measures required frequent reminders and inquiries during the entire project and, thus, reinforcing management-related hierarchies of the north/south nexus, which the consortium struggled to minimize in academic interaction. this corresponds to experiences schmidt & neuburger (2017, pp. 61-63) made with the key position of german project members and their irritation and helplessness about this “intermediary position between the funder and his hardly negotiable demands and on the other hand the hard(ly) approachable . . . partners. . . .the historically loaded power-relations within the team thereby seemed to silence open debates on situations of conflict” (2017, p. 63). summer school in hanoi – socio-political contexts matter the first summer school and fieldtrips near hanoi brought together university teachers from asia and europe as well as students from the thai and vietnamese partner universities. the first parts of the teaching manual for tdr had to be presented and tested during the summer school, while fieldtrips would enable practical testing. in addition to the difficulties mentioned above, some students were overloaded with participatory approaches and language problems, both due to quite different scientific and institutional contexts. there were significant differences in english skills, depending on the program in which they were enrolled. the vietnam academy of social sciences in hanoi (vass) and its southern institute in ho cho minh city (siss)4 run programs in vietnamese only, while the chulalongkorn university and chiang mai university have international study programs in english language, which attract also students from vietnam. as important as the language difficulties, were the different educational backgrounds of participating students and teachers. for these reasons, many of the ideas, concepts and methodological approaches could only be discussed in a very rudimentary way, under the time pressure the project faced. 4 at this point there was a major restructuring at the operative level of the open university (ou) in hcmc, which is why students from ouhcmc did not participate in the summer school and field trip in hanoi. 252 | aseas 13(2) linking european and southeast asian transdisciplinary knowledge production the same applies to answers in the evaluation forms. in addition to the difficulties of open criticism, some answers showed that the questions were not really understood. more time – instead of distributing of the questionnaires at the very end of the summer school – and an explicit explanation of the questions would have prevented this. in addition, the agreed continuity of attendance for all participants in the overall event was unfortunately not guaranteed. due to other commitments, some teachers and students could not participate in the fieldtrip following the summer school and were replaced by other people who had no idea about the summer school. in such cases, a reasonable evaluation was not possible, as both events could not be assessed in their interaction. at the same time, student feedback, particularly of those students from vietnam, who were not so often exposed to international cooperation, showed a big interest in the unfamiliar, ‘foreign’ ways of teaching and researching and in the underlying theoretical constructs. the authors observed that by working in a diverse, international team with open discussions and theoretical arguments, the participants of the event in general benefited from a new perspective on academic cultures and practices elsewhere. the more democratic, respective, liberal forces in the vietnamese science community seemed to be enabled to discuss topics usually not openly discussed or to try methods off the official scientific agenda. from our perspective, such impacts as the acquirement of some kind of ‘global citizenship’ are of great (also political) interest and could be valued more within the evaluation criteria of the erasmus+ funding scheme, even if these learning experiences are difficult to document and are not explicitly mentioned in the project application. taking this into account, further questions for an evaluation of the project success arise: (1) how to evaluate positive project results that were originally not intended? (2) how to evaluate results that can only be communicated subliminally or that should not be explicitly mentioned at all? in the end, the official evaluation feedback lacks information on these important results. the final evaluation and discussion of the qm had made it clear that further adjustments and changes in the structure and composition of the elements of teaching and practice of research methodologies at the next event seem necessary. one of the consequences was to examine the possibility of including students from european partner institutes during the next summer school in thailand; a second was to assign ubo as co-organizer for that event. in order to further increase the participative teaching approach and the mutual learning effect between participating staff and students form different regions, concrete tasks for co-design, documentation, and evaluation (also part of a research seminar in their home university at unvie) were already assigned to all students before the summer school. summer school in chiang mai – challenges of a hybrid project these adjustments proved fruitful, as observations of the intensity and degree of participation in the discussion groups and during exercises made clear. in informal discussions and separate evaluation rounds at their home universities, students later mentioned the benefit of direct contact and exchange between colleagues from different universities, particularly the exchange between asian and european aseas 13(2) | 253 frank seemann & christoph antweiler colleagues. however, two new issues came up in chiang mai: hierarchies between asian and european students and differences in sensitivity on gender topics, such as the amount of active participation of female versus male students, sometimes mixed with the question of unequal participation of asian, respectively, european students. especially students from the european partner universities showed a high degree of sensitivity and willingness to discuss both topics openly. since we had decided to collect the qm questionnaires from the students at the end of the summer school, and to consult the knots staff via email later on, it became possible to gather reactions on these surprisingly-openly addressed hierarchy and gender topics in their forms. remarkably – subliminally also present in the consortium – this was the first time that the topics of hierarchy (related to structural power and alleged expertise) and gender were openly mentioned and questioned among the project partners. although there was considerable feedback at that point and several discussions followed in later joint meetings, the topics were more or less limited to the students’ interactions, rather than the situation among the project members. even though it might have influenced the subliminal awareness of the whole group, there was no room for an explicit discussion of such an unreflected reproduction of power asymmetries, as requested in the following feedback from a lecturer: all of these hierarchies and separations appear to be rather “natural”: no one of us can escape problematic identities forged in dominative social relations. therefore, i believe they are unavoidable – there is nothing that could be done about it except to deal with them explicitly, for example, to address and discuss them (but that’s already a cultural bias), because they are and remain problematic as such. (respondent anonymized) closely related to the issue of hierarchy were further difficulties in evaluating the results. the answers of asian and european students differed in scope, detail, and understanding, and were often difficult to relate to each other. that was especially true for open questions. here, the reasons already discussed (language, conversational culture, and discontinuity of presence) certainly played a significant role. however, the student questionnaires also revealed unexpected side-effects pertaining to understandings of international cooperation, or aid: the experiences of both, asian and european students in southeast asia and with tdr had a positive influence on their own academic attitudes and expertise at home. this also applies to the participating departments where transdisciplinary ideas were increasingly discussed and implemented within teaching. such reverse capacity building in the european institutions contradicted the underlying erasmus+ logic that european project partners guide asian institutions in capacity building. in our case, this did not correspond to reality, as some of the asian academic partners (e.g., at chulalongkorn or chiang mai university) had a deeper expertise in transdisciplinary work at the level of research. “whose capacities are we building” is a question that angeles & gurstein (2000, p. 57) define as a starting point of capacity building projects. for us, too, this question became increasingly important during the course of the project and was also given greater consideration in later evaluation runs. 254 | aseas 13(2) linking european and southeast asian transdisciplinary knowledge production the essentially hybrid character of the project always remained an obstacle during evaluation processes. because of the overlapping roles and personal union of scientists, project managers, quality managers, and teachers, again and again the point had to be stressed that this is not a research project. the main point was to create and develop a teaching manual in traineeship and practice rather than to apply the transdisciplinary approach to real research situations, which the project design could not accomplish either in terms of time or structure. nevertheless, it was precisely this lack of practical implementation that was repeatedly criticized in the feedbacks of students (and also of staff sometimes), which distorted the overall view of the project’s success. as a consequence of the greater involvement of students from different partner universities through special assignments – sometimes overlapping with quality management tasks (e.g., interviews, documentation, etc.) – the diversity of results led to an abundance of information that was difficult to summarize and often not compatible5. this information overflow, and the difficulty to evaluate answers to open/ qualitative questions of the forms used, was intensively discussed during the 2nd round trip, and a project and quality management meeting in europe. as a consequence, ubo brought in the center for evaluation and methods (zem) – a central facility for quality assurance at the university of bonn to co-design and statistically and graphically evaluate the questionnaires. this made them more self-explanatory for participants and reviewers. another consequence, after the good experiences with a dissemination workshop for all consortium members, was to organize a quality management workshop with external experts during the following meeting in europe. although this was actually scheduled too late in the course of the project, the workshop confirmed the discursive evaluation methods that had been chosen for a transdisciplinary project, especially with regard to its additional transcultural character. learning co-production via trial-and-error summer school in ho chi minh city and final conference in bangkok after the third summer school, the new questionnaires, which could be evaluated statistically and graphically, made it easier to communicate the evaluation results, although it must be noted self-critically that no suitable format was found for many observations in quality management, for example, for the completely different atmosphere during the summer school and fieldtrips in ho chi minh city (hcmc) compared to hanoi. it could not be discussed – mainly for political reasons – whether the greater theoretical openness and freedom in the practical implementation during the fieldtrip were effects of (1) the increased trust and shared experience during the project, (2) the different attitude to the exchange of ideas in the southern part of vietnam, or (3) the fact that this time the event was organized by a private university with strong ties to the government instead of a research institution directly under the government of vietnam. 5 for a structured analysis of knowledge production and transfer during the summer school in chiang mai see braunhuber, goisauf, and reinisch (2019). aseas 13(2) | 255 frank seemann & christoph antweiler before our last meeting in bangkok, the final feedback and evaluation process of the draft of the teaching manual began. this revealed another unresolved problem: the unspecified role of the evaluators and their institutions. for some consortium members, the qm task was limited to the preparation of feedback materials and the collection and processing of the corresponding responses, while, for others, critical reflection on the materials resulting from the course of the project was also part of the qm. this, in turn, was seen by the former as a transgression of competence, even though critique was meant as constructive feedback. through intensive discussions and an increased involvement in the train the trainer sessions at the final conference in bangkok, this conflict was finally resolved for everyone. overall, the consortium members painted a much more positive picture of the success of the project in the evaluation questionnaires of the final conference than in previous evaluations. this may be related to greater confidence in the project, but also to the improved questionnaires. however, it also fits in very well with the positive assessments we received from the external evaluators. some of the structural deficiencies were still criticized, but the overall evaluation was very positive, not least because of the many unintended positive spin-off effects and the perspective of sustainable cooperation between the partner universities, which builds on the mutual trust that had grown. summary of main conditions and contexts on the one hand, we consider the project to be successful, as it has achieved most of its formal objectives (teaching manual, implementation of tdr at the participating heis, establishment of knowledge hubs on tdr and of sustainable cooperation). at the same time, it has not been less successful on the ‘soft skills’ side, precisely because we learned so much from our mistakes, limitations, obstacles, and differences. the following list is therefore not intended to focus on the difficulties or to question the success of the project. rather, we would like to recommend it as a list of circumstances that future transdisciplinary and transcultural projects – possibly with eu funding again – should pay attention to in order to avoid some of the detours and failures we have experienced. from a self-reflective perspective, we conclude that we could have achieved even better results within and through quality management if we had been aware of the complexity and the stumbling blocks of this particular transdisciplinary and transcultural project from the very beginning. coda: evaluating evaluation in co-productive projects it would go beyond the scope of this paper to discuss all the above-mentioned circumstances in detail once again. see table 1 for a summative overview of main obstacles. we would like to take a closer look at just a few of the facts that seem particularly important to us. first, there is the late start of the project due to contractual problems: if we imagine these five missing months would have been at our disposal, how much preparation (not only of the quality management process), confidence-, and expertise-building could have been done during this time? our experience shows that the time ‘saved’ comes as a pyrrhic victory and a complication for the actual 256 | aseas 13(2) linking european and southeast asian transdisciplinary knowledge production figure 1. main conditions and contexts of the knots project (authors' compilation) constraints through the euformat logic of an eu-erasmus+ project, especially the pretended knowledge/ capacity gap, which did not meet the real situation factual power hierarchies between the partner universities via control of finances and schedules bureaucratic overload due to eu-requirements, often not fitting the project design delayed start of the project with no compensation, causing stress and shortage of time and insufficient preparation of, e.g., quality management financial arrangements and restrictions, like lack of funding for essential parts of a transdisciplinary project (financed participation of non-academic stakeholders) gap of financing between asian universities and european partners (equipment vs. travelling) internal constraints content structural different scientific backgrounds: development studies vs. area studies, here southeast asian studies vs. vietnamese language studies different science cultures: more natural science-oriented vs. more social scienceoriented and vs. humanities-oriented hybrid nature of the project (between educational capacity building and research) all members came from social sciences or humanities, which is unrealistic for a real tdr-project and limited the benefits for the non-academic stakeholders combination of summer school and fieldtrip due to time and ecological impact deficiencies in continuity of the participants unexplained role of quality management real and underlying hierarchies within the project that influence evaluation: lead university vs. other partner universities, european vs. southeast asian universities, thai vs. vietnamese universities, big vs. small departments, state lead institutions vs. private institutions; europe vs. asia (post-/neo-colonial gap) on staff and student level; students vs. university teachers; (gender ratio; age (even more important in southeast asia) unexpected and surprising changes and necessary adjustments dominance of hard topics (financing, scheduling, planning the next event) vs. soft topics (evaluation, reflection) during the rare meetings time restriction of all participating members as part of a university body cultural differences concerning participation and hierarchy different ways of communication (lo. hierarchy) miscommunication on basic terms and tasks (due to cultural differences) language: english, thai, vietnamese, (karen, lao,….) between staff, students, stakeholders/people concerned political (within countries) freedom of research (vietnam), hierarchies within the political landscape (vietnam), restricted expression of opinion (vietnam and thailand) positive results and progress that can only be subliminally communicated other limitations difficulties in interpreting open questions (due to cultural, hierarchical and language reasons) sufficient documentation of observations made unintended positive effects capacity building also in european universities (staff and students) better understanding of political, social, educational and scientific situation at the participating universities and in the countries tdr activities at european universities support of democratic, respective liberal groups, bringing unorthodox ideas and methods into the discussion, strengthening forces in civil society aseas 13(2) | 257 frank seemann & christoph antweiler project work. sufficient time for preparation and common agreements before the project starts seem absolutely necessary to us. this would allow for brainstorming, sighting, and open discussion of possible problems and restrictions as well as a discussion of the project design itself, instead of a mere presentation of the framework conditions and schedule of the project, as we had to do due to time pressure. this lead time could also have included important workshops to build up common expertise (e.g., in dissemination or quality management). a jointly discussed and thus shared attitude on the role of (not only) quality management in general and the position of responsible persons would have fostered the attitude that evaluation (like dissemination) is not only something we had to do for the eu-officers – as it sometimes seemed – but something that is essential for our own learning process through the project and for achieving the objectives of our project in general. this would have meant, for example, giving (or, self-critically, demanding) much more space and relevance to the exchange of evaluation results during the project meetings. in reality, hard facts such as finances and planning of further activities often came to the fore, while feedback results communicated via email or cloud folders often received apparently little attention. the same applies to the role of the quality managers. in our opinion, reducing their activities to the mere collection, documentation, and dissemination of feedback from participants limits the possibilities of quality management as a collegial questioner and regulator. like project management, quality management should also be explicitly assigned a reflective role in such projects. presumably, more lead time would have included also a more comprehensive investigation of the transcultural aspects. with the southeast asia department in bonn and the department for vietnamese language in prague, experienced experts to identify cultural constraints in advance were on board, which would have enabled at least european partners a better understanding of many situations. beyond the transcultural aspects, the partners and stakeholders involved had quite different backgrounds, experiences, and expectations. in terms of area-knowledge, less experienced partners have been involved in the case of (a) docents and students from europe not experienced in southeast asia, and (b) students from vietnam and thailand having neither experience in the respective other southeast asian country nor with european science culture. this is also true for most of the stakeholders at the political and administrative levels as well as for those involved at the local level during our fieldtrips, including peasants and local workers. the language barrier contributed to a less intense involvement of these partners than projected. beside a financing problem, there was also the lack of time on our side as well as on the side of the mostly busy local interlocutors. hierarchical relations and shyness also played a role. the overall rare feedback they gave was difficult to interpret, since most of them – contrary to the transdisciplinary approach – had no insight into the project and mainly expected concrete help in difficult situations – something that the project, which was neither real research nor involved natural-science colleagues, could not achieve. on the other hand, by implementing this project and especially quality management measures, we experienced several unexpected outcomes and positive spin-off effects hard to document and to evaluate. one was the quite dynamic interaction of 258 | aseas 13(2) linking european and southeast asian transdisciplinary knowledge production students via social media, also expressing commendation and criticism of the knotsproject. for example, after a hefty critical remark during the chiang mai summer school posted by a european university staff member to a limited social media group, stating that some fieldtrips might develop into a mere tourism activity, several participants were frustrated and provoked comments on why this critique had not been made offline to the whole group, which would have allowed an open debate. another revealing positive spin-off effect was the comparative view of similar topics and learning processes in higher education, but in different countries and different university institutions and scientific cultures. this also included seeing different student audiences during the fieldtrips. all this gave us opportunities to learn about processes of knowledge creation beyond the specific project objectives in particular. much of this was based on participant observation and, for us, one of the major gaps in the quality management process was that we did not find an adequate evaluation format for such observations. it would be worthwhile to work out solutions before further projects. we would like to conclude with one of the most positive academic effects for us: the sheer experience of transdisciplinary research and transcultural teams working together in real-time/real-space contexts. especially from the evaluators’ point of view, we succeeded in going beyond purely programmatic statements that can be found in most usor european literature on tdr. seen in this light, the multiple limits of transdisciplinary research, especially in transcultural contexts, can themselves serve as an empirical window to transcultural reality.  references angeles, l., & gurstein, p. (2000). planning for participatory capacity development: the challenges of participation in north-south partnership in capacity building projects. canadian journal of development studies, 21 (special issue), 31-62. bath, c., & wedl, j. (2013). (große) interdisziplinarität. braunschweig: braunschweiger zentrum für gender studies. retrieved from https://www.fg-gender.de/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/fg2013_foruminterdisziplinaritat_paper-protokoll.pdf bärnthaler, r. (2020). conflict, controversy, compromise, and compression: the pragmatics of transdisciplinary (development) projects. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 13(2), 193-210. bergmann, m., brohmann, b., hoffmann, e., loibl, m. c., rehaag, r., schramm, e., & voss, j.-p. (2005). quality criteria of transdisciplinary research. a guide for the formative evaluation of research projects. isoe-studientexte, no. 13 (english version), institute for social-ecological research (isoe), frankfurt am main, germany. binder, c. r., absenger-helmi, i., & schilling, t. (2015). the reality of transdisciplinarity: a frameworkbased self-reflection from science and practice leaders. sustainability science, 10(4), 545-562. braunhuber, b., goisauf, t., & rinisch, j. (2019). the (re)production and transfer of knowledge in the context of the ‘knots summer school’ in chiang mai 2018 a critical approach. working paper no. 8. university of vienna, vienna, austria. retrieved from https://ie.univie.ac.at/fileadmin/user_upload/p_ ie/institut/publikationen/ie_publications/ieworkingpaper/ie.wp8_braunhuber_2019-12.pdf chainarong, s. (n.d.). case study for empowerment and democratisation high level panel. thai baan research (villagers’ research): local wisdom for resources management. living river siam association. retrieved from http://www.livingriversiam.org/2work/tb/tb_a7.html aseas 13(2) | 259 frank seemann & christoph antweiler chayan, v. (n.d.). thai baan research: an overview. retrieved from https://www.iucn.org/downloads/ thai_baan_research_an_overview_1.pdf dannecker, p. (2020). transdisciplinarity ‘meets’ power structures: challenges and experiences of a capacity building project on transdisciplinarity. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 13(2), 175-192. doi, n. m. (2020). institutional prospects and challenges to transdisciplinary approach in the knowledge production system of vietnam: reflections on a north-south partnership project. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 13(2), 229-242. eacea (european commission). (2015). call for proposal eac/a04/2015, development & global studies: fostering multi-lateral knowledge networks of transdisciplinary studies to tackle global challenges (knots), detailed description of the project (unpublished project document). heis, a., & chayan, v. (2020). thai baan methodology and transdisciplinarity as collaborative research practices. common ground and divergent directions. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 13(2), 211-228. hirsch hadorn, g., biber-klemm, s., grossenbacher-mansuy, w., hoffmann-riem, h., joye, d., pohl, c., ... & zemp, e. (2008). the emergence of transdisciplinarity as a form of research. in g. hirsch hadorn, h. hoffmann-riem, s. biber-klemm, w. grossenbacher-mansuy, d. joye, c. pohl, ... & e. zemp (eds.), handbook of transdisciplinary research (pp. 19-39). dordrecht: springer netherlands. lang, d. j., wiek, a., bergmann, m., staufacher, m., martens, p., moll, p., & thomas, c. j. (2012). transdisciplinary research in sustainability science: practice, principles, and challenges. sustainability science, 7(supplement 1), 25-43. padmanabhan, m. (2018). introduction: transdisciplinarity for sustainability. in m. padmanabhan (ed.), transdisciplinary research and sustainability. collaboration, innovation and transformation (pp. 1-32). abingdon: routhledge pettibone, l., blättel-mink, b., balázs, b., di giulio, a., göbel, c., heubach, k., . . . & wyborn, c. (2018). transdisciplinary sustainability research and citizen science: options for mutual learning. gaia, 27(2), 222-225. schmidt, l., & neuburger, m. (2017). trapped between privileges and precariousness: tracing transdisciplinary research in a postcolonial setting. futures, 93, 54-67. schuck-zöller, s., cortekar, j., & jakob, d. (2018). evaluation transdisziplinärer forschung und deren rahmenbedingungen vorüberlegungen zur nutzung im bereich von klimaservice. journal for research and technology policy evaluation, 45, 28-37. about the authors frank seemann (m.a. comparative religion) is a lecturer and scientific assistant at the department for southeast asian studies at the university of bonn. he was the organizational director of the knots project at the department in bonn and was responsible for quality assurance and evaluation within the project. his main areas of interest are buddhism in mainland southeast asia, ethnic minorities in southeast asia, and ecological issues related to the region. ► contact: frank.seemann@uni-bonn.de christoph antweiler (dr. phil. cultural anthropology) is a professor of southeast asian studies at the university of bonn. he was a member of the knots project and worked within the quality assurance and evaluation within the project. his main areas of interest are development, ethnicity, and political ecology in insular southeast asia, and urban culture, provincial identity, and cosmopolitanism in urban indonesia. ► contact: christoph.antweiler@uni-bonn.de aseas 13(2) | 175 transdisciplinarity ‘meets’ power structures: challenges and experiences of a capacity building project on transdisciplinarity petra danneckera a university of vienna, austria ► dannecker, p. (2020). transdisciplinarity ‘meets’ power structures: challenges and experiences of a capacity building project on transdisciplinarity. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 13(2), 175-192. the aim of the paper is to discuss and to reflect on the experiences and challenges encountered during the north-south capacity building project on transdisciplinarity, knots (fostering multi-lateral knowledge networks of transdisciplinary studies to tackle global challenges), which was financed by the eu through the erasmus+ capacity building in higher education program. despite the large body of literature on transdisciplinary approaches and projects, not many studies exist that discuss both the political and the power dimensions within transdisciplinary endeavors, especially not from a social science perspective. based on the experiences, challenges, and progress over the course of the project, i will analyze how power relations influenced and structured knots. i argue that the success of transdisciplinary north-south collaborations depends very much on awareness of power hierarchies, reflexivity, and positionality as well as different understandings of knowledge. although differences will be highlighted regarding, for example, the aims of transdisciplinarity or the role of different understandings of science and knowledge, the paper does not aim to increase skepticism regarding transdisciplinarity. instead, the intent of the reflections is to increase awareness of the influences of power structures and relations in transdisciplinarity projects, especially north-south collaboration projects. keywords: collaboration; knowledge; north-south; power structures; transdisciplinarity  introduction: transdisciplinarity and power for more than three decades, transdisciplinarity has been discussed in academia and in science policy debates as a promising approach to solve complex societal problems. transdisciplinary approaches and frameworks have been presented as ways to effectively produce and use scientific research to contribute to societal problem solving and have been promoted as avenues for generating transformative and/or applicable knowledge (polk, 2015) – knowledge, as stated by rosendahl, zanella, rist, and weigelt (2015), which is “able to question existing power structures and alter the status quo” (p. 19). for darian-smith and mccarty (2016, p. 1), a transdisciplinary framework or approach has the potential not only to produce transformative knowledge but can foster inclusive and relevant scholarship and knowledge especially by opening western scholarship aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 42 176 | aseas 13(2) transdisciplinarity ‘meets’ power structures to non-western modes of thinking. it is the positive relationship between transdisciplinarity and societal problem solving that characterizes not only the literature on transdisciplinarity but also the policy debates around it, even though different conceptions and ideas are connected to the term. this positive relationship is explained through the problem focus of transdisciplinarity, namely that research should originate and be contextualized in ‘real world problems’ and be collaborative (e.g., bernstein, 2015; kockelmans, 1979; nicolescu, 2002). non-linear and reflexive knowledge production, the transcending of disciplinary boundaries, and the integration of non-academic actors and their knowledge are defined as the most important pillars for generating different types of transformative knowledge (e.g., klein, 2004; nowotny, scott, & gibbons, 2001). structural conditions that may influence or hamper transdisciplinary projects and, thus, knowledge production as well as political and power dimensions are rarely addressed in the scientific discourse. regarding the implementation of transdisciplinary research projects, there are of course quite a number of studies and evaluations mentioning the problems and challenges that accompanied transdisciplinary projects or research processes. collaborative problem framing, the participation of non-active actors, or applying integrative research methods are just a few of them that are widely discussed (e.g., lang et al., 2012; polk, 2015). however, an analysis of power dynamics or power structures that explains the experiences made or challenges faced in such projects is often missing (messing, adelman, & durfee, 2012, p. 646). against this backdrop, challenges faced in the implementation of the fostering multi-lateral knowledge networks of transdisciplinary studies to tackle global challenges (knots)1 project, which focused on transdisciplinary capacity building in research and teaching within and between universities in the so-called global south and global north, will be analyzed and reflected, guided by feminist and postcolonial arguments and perspectives, especially those perspectives that focus on the entanglement of social relations of power in knowledge production. this includes feminist scholars like haraway (1988) who argued that knowledge is always situated; or rose (1997) who called for reflexivity of the researcher’s positionality in the production of knowledge (harding, 2005). given the fact that the object of analysis is a northsouth project, postcolonial perspectives are also relevant to understand and explain experiences, especially those explicitly relating to the relations between ‘western’ and ‘southern’ societies and how these relations have structured the agency, voice, and knowledge of the colonized and the post-colonized not only, but particularly regarding knowledge production and education systems (e.g., bhambra, 2007; chakrabarty, 2000). these perspectives, as will be shown, constitute fruitful areas of focus for transdisciplinarity, concerning the theoretical as well as the more practically oriented discussions and strategies (rosendahl et al., 2015). the article proceeds as follows: first, the knots project, its aims, activities, and the methodology of the presented analysis will be briefly discussed. in the following analysis, it will be shown that power and power relations structured and influenced the development and implementation of the project and its activities. power structures that are inscribed in the funding scheme and related to the positionality of the 1 for more information on knots, see https://www.knots-eu.com. aseas 13(2) | 177 petra dannecker initiators of the project, in addition to power relations between and within the participating actors and actors’ groups and their different understanding of knowledge and the relation between science and society, do reflect global knowledge asymmetries. the knots project and methodological reflections the knots project, an erasmus+ capacity building in higher education project financed by the european union, aimed to introduce, build, and develop capacities in research and teaching on transdisciplinarity in the participating universities, institutes, and their interested scientific staff. the project was implemented between 2016 and 2019. all participating institutes from southeast asia (thailand and vietnam) as well as europe (germany, the czech republic, and austria),2 and, thus, the involved academic actors, had a social science background – some working at interdisciplinary institutes, especially in the fields of development or areas studies, while others being occupied in disciplinary environments. all participants had done research on and in southeast asia, thus, the project also aimed to intensify already existing working relations and build new ones. development was identified as the comprehensive topic all academic actors involved were working on, although on different subtopics, from different perspectives, on different levels, and with different understandings of ‘development’. the main aim of the project was to work together on a new framework of knowledge production by discussing and further developing transdisciplinarity in the transnational space. the main activities to reach the formulated project goal included developing capacities for transdisciplinary research and teaching through and in the context of summer schools and field research, and the development of a teaching manual. the key argument thereby was that global problems are multidimensional and cannot be studied from one scientific discipline with its specific approaches and methodological strands exclusively (hirsch hadorn, bradley, pohl, rist, & wiesmann, 2006). transdisciplinarity, as a framework for knowledge production, allows the inclusion of different actors in and outside academia with their respective knowledge, which is crucial since global challenges require not only new but also regionally contextualized knowledge (e.g., bernstein, 2015; brown, harris, & russel, 2010). another aim was to build transdisciplinary knowledge networks to define and develop research and teaching methodologies on global and development related issues. the focus was on the broad and interrelated topics of social inequality, migration, and environmental resources – topics in which all partners have expertise, or that are part of their research agendas. the guiding principle was to engage in a multilateral learning process instead of a knowledge transfer from the north to the south. the reflections and discussions presented in this paper are the result of my involvement in the knots project. observations, informal talks with participants and colleagues from the different universities during the different activities, like summer schools and field trips, consortium meetings, round trips, as well as train-the-trainer 2 i will refrain from specifying which universities, institutes, and colleagues in the different countries participated in the project for anonymity reasons. 178 | aseas 13(2) transdisciplinarity ‘meets’ power structures sessions as part of the development of a teaching manual on transdisciplinarity constitute the empirical material on which the following analysis is based. this material also includes empirical research on the implementation of transdisciplinarity in teaching and research conducted by students during one summer school and field trip3 (cf., braunhuber, goisauf, & reinisch, 2019; semmler, 2019). thereby, it is important to mention that my experiences and observations are of course highly influenced by my position as an initiator and coordinator of the project. my colleagues and i from the department of development studies at the university of vienna coordinated the application process as well as the project implementation. we communicated with the eu, answered questions and decided when funds to the partner universities in vietnam, thailand, germany, and the czech republic were transferred. thus, power structures primarily, but not only, along postcolonial legacies accompanied the development and the implementation of the project. in the following, i will contextualize and interpret the observations and experiences, which i have written down in a ‘project diary’. it is important to further highlight that i had a special position in this project not only as a coordinator but also as a female professor from a european university. additionally, as mentioned already, the participants had different disciplinary backgrounds and epistemological perspectives, which means that not all colleagues shared my constructivist sociologist belief that knowledge is socially constructed. being part of the project meant being both frustrated and very satisfied with the cooperation and the activities that we implemented. it also meant realizing how difficult it is to understand each other, to find a common language, to be open and tolerant about other perspectives, and to formulate common goals. this paper is, thus, not only concerned with critical reflections of power dynamics on different levels but also with knowledge production and knowledge co-production as a social process. whose project and whose interest? it is important to describe the process of developing and writing the project proposal because challenges that accompanied us during the project’s lifetime had to do with power structures, and differences in expectations, language, understandings, and logics, which were inscribed already at this stage and structured and influenced the project activities in different ways. the vienna group read the call, got engaged, asked colleagues to join, and wrote the proposal. based on our experiences in teaching, research, and critical reflection on ‘development’ as a vision, discourse, and practice, we perceived such a project as a possibility for us as well as for the participating colleagues from the partner universities to redefine and reexamine our roles in providing knowledge and innovation for and about ‘development’ and to change power relations in knowledge production. against this background, we assumed and argued in the project proposal that transdisciplinarity could be the framework to produce new forms of integral knowledge. the main argument for the proposed north-south cooperation was the fact that most literature on and about 3 the author of the paper was in charge of the research seminar in which these studies were conceptualized. aseas 13(2) | 179 petra dannecker transdisciplinarity and transdisciplinary projects is produced and takes place in the global north and had not yet been applied in the global south.4 in the process of writing the proposal, we formulated questions and aims and circulated several draft versions asking for comments and ideas; however, we only received a few responses. since the timeframe between the call and the deadline for handing in the proposal was very short5, there was definitely not enough time to discuss the aims, activities, and distribution of work packages with our partners. due to the pressure to be ready in time, we were not pushing for more participation but assumed that the formulated aim to develop transdisciplinarity as a new framework of knowledge production would be a shared common venture. our focus on transdisciplinarity set the tone and led us to overlook other integrative concepts of knowledge production, which of course do exist in the global south. one example of such a framework is thai baan research.6 thai baan research is research that is undertaken by villagers in northern thailand and supported by academics from chiang mai university.7 the research processes and aims of this counter-hegemonic methodology have been adopted and replicated in different parts in southeast asia. thai baan differs from transdisciplinarity research but also shares some similarities, which will not be discussed here in detail (for a detailed discussion, see heis & chayan, 2020, this issue; myint, 2016). important in the context of this paper is that this approach was not introduced or included while writing the project proposal, even though academic actors who have accompanied the thai baan research process in northern thailand were part of the knots project. it was only later that this approach entered the project activities and was discussed. it can be argued that we, as initiators of the project, asked the wrong questions when communicating with the partners in the process of proposal writing and did not look for alternative knowledge but instead formulated the development of alternative knowledge as the aim of the project, thereby focusing exclusively on transdisciplinarity. by doing so, we made ourselves the prime agents of the project since we did not question the proposed transdisciplinary framework, nor did we look for alternative frameworks in our partner countries or beyond. we reproduced north-south power relations that then structured the expectations and the implementation of the project. 4 even though the main challenge of transdisciplinarity is, according to mcgregor (2017, p. 1), to address the complexity of the world and thereby respecting the individual and collective diversities, most of the philosophical, theoretical, and conceptual perspectives discussing and developing transdisciplinarity further neither include nor refer to diversities and inequalities between and within the global north and the global south, nor discuss explicitly how transdisciplinarity could enhance or overcome inequalities regarding knowledge production or the inclusion of non-western knowledge or worldviews. exceptions are papers by schmidt and pröpper (2017) or schmidt and neuburger (2017), for example, discussing how postcolonial power imbalances between the global north and the global south influence transdisciplinarity and transdisciplinary projects. 5 the call came out in november 2015 and the proposal had to be submitted in february the following year. thus, altogether there were four months to finalize a proposal. 6 other concepts of knowledge production are, for example, approaches connecting paulo freire’s dialogue approach with transdisciplinarity (cf., novy, 2012; vilsmaier, faschingeder, & mercón, 2020), or connecting african philosophy and transdisciplinarity (du plessis, sehume, & martin, 2013). 7 for more information, see the website of the living river siam association (http://www.livingriversiam. org/en-tbr.htm), or “thai baan research: an overview” by chayan (n.d.). 180 | aseas 13(2) transdisciplinarity ‘meets’ power structures we also did not question the logic of the funding scheme. felt, igelsböck, schikowitz, and völker (2015) argue that “transdisciplinary research programs reflect proponents’ specific cultural and institutional framing of the research and, more broadly, of science-society relationships” (p. 4). the eu capacity building program reflects the cultural and institutional understanding of the european union of what capacity in higher education means and how it should take place, namely through a transfer of capacities from the global north to the global south. this mirrors how the role of european higher education organizations is understood and perceived, namely, as exemplars of ‘modernity’ whereas the ‘others’ are seen as still lagging behind. thus, the knots project’s embeddedness in specific structures and procedures, such as the funding scheme, the time frame for handing in the proposal, and eu’s strategies and priorities, contributed to power asymmetries, which became apparent already in the writing process of the knots proposal (cf., schmidt & neuburger, 2017, p. 64). hegemonic structures between the global north and the global south, expressed through the funding scheme with us as initiators and coordinators of the project, ensured the privileged positioning of the vienna group within institutional, organizational, and individual power relations. although we theoretically recognized ‘difference’ and were aware of our hegemonic position through our reading and critical attitude towards development and knowledge production, it did not make a difference to our self-understanding and practice when writing the proposal or using this specific funding scheme. as bhambra (2007) argues, a theoretical engagement with postcolonial theories and approaches does not, also not in our case, imply a critical engagement with funding schemes or an in-depth confrontation of our positionalities. even though the aim was to further develop transdisciplinarity together with the partners in the global south, thereby reducing hierarchies, and to introduce new opportunities and a more equal framework of knowledge production in order to change the status quo regarding, for example, knowledge hierarchies or the persistence of uneven power relations in north-south research partnerships (basile & baud, 2019, p. 17), we did not question transferring transdisciplinarity as an approach from the global north to the global south. nor did we actively look for alternative possibilities for knowledge production (like thai baan) or adequately reflect on the power structures that we, as academics from the global north, embody through our organizational and social positions. the process described above explains why the aim formulated in the proposal did not correspond with the aims of all partners involved. some of the partners, especially, but not only, from the global south, were expecting that, in the project, the partners who are more familiar with transdisciplinarity would introduce and teach methodologies which could be applied for collaborative research. for them, transdisciplinarity is primarily a methodology of collaborative research with applicable outcomes. whereas for us, as initiators, and as written in the proposal, transdisciplinarity is connected with the negotiation and creation of new forms of integral knowledge production and the development of methodologies making this possible. already during the kick-off workshop in vienna, these different perceptions became apparent. however, it took several activities, discussions, and conflicts before we could discuss and formulate our different expectations and understandings, and aseas 13(2) | 181 petra dannecker before it became clear that we could not ‘deliver’ such a methodology, but that such a methodology can only be an outcome of the project. thus, whereas we expected active participation, the willingness to participate and invest time under these conditions lessened, especially among those colleagues in leading positions. the latter expected to get familiar with a ‘new’ methodology – a methodology that could be an important asset to compete on the ‘global research market’. north-south projects, independent of whether they focus explicitly on research or capacity building, are embedded in the global hierarchy of higher education marked by global inequalities concerning the production and circulation of organized knowledge (connell, pearse, collyer, maia, & morell, 2017, p. 429). asia, for example, as qi (2015) argues, is “marginalized on the global science map” (p. 30). for decades, scientific concepts, knowledge, as well as practices in teaching and education have been transferred from the north to the south – another postcolonial continuity – and scientific ‘quality’ has been judged according to so-called global standards (marginson & wende, 2007). knowledge generated in the north still serves as the foundation of these standards and, thus, has a far superior status to knowledge produced in the south (girvan, 2007). this is, as langthaler, witjes, and slezak argue (2012, p. 237), also true for the use of knowledge in institutions as well as its epistemic recognition. north-south research partnerships can, thus, be seen as a possibility to assess and increase global competitiveness of national research institutes and capacities, especially in countries that have gone through economic transformations. david (2007) shows that economic growth, especially in countries of the global south, leads to an increase in higher education organizations and in competition between institutions within and between countries. what this implies for vietnam, for example, is elaborated by doi (2020) in this issue. to compete in national, regional, and global higher education sectors still means an orientation to and dependency on the institutions, scientific concepts, methodologies, and techniques of the global north (connell et al., 2017, p. 42). thus, for some colleagues, the knots project was seen as an opportunity for their higher education organizations and institutes to raise their profile, which is a very rational strategy given the global hierarchy in the higher education sector. in the context of the project, this can explain the different aims that accompanied the activities as well as some of the frustrations on the side of those partners who felt that the way the activities were conceptualized and implemented could not deliver the assumed outcome. one example here is the development of the teaching manual.8 whereas the vienna group, as coordinators of the project, planned that the teaching manual would be developed together and would initiate a mutual learning process, others expected that the coordinators of the project would prepare the necessary material. therefore, discussing or critically commenting on the prepared material, or providing context specific examples, hardly took place during the three workshops. it turned out very difficult to motivate some of the colleagues to participate, especially those in higher positions. some younger colleagues who participated throughout the project, however, became very engaged. especially during the last 8 the teaching manual can be accessed on the project’s open access platform (see https://www.knots-eu. com/the-teaching-manual). 182 | aseas 13(2) transdisciplinarity ‘meets’ power structures summer school, they used the material and changed it according to the assumed needs of their colleagues and students in very innovative ways, like using technological tools that most of the european partners have never implemented in teaching. it is difficult to predict whether their engagement will lead to the use of the manual in teaching and research. the hierarchical structures in some of the participating universities are expected to have an impact on whether or not and in how far the manual will be utilized in teaching and research (see doi, 2020, this issue). another example for the different aims and frustrations mentioned above are the three clusters of joint research and teaching activities during the summer schools and field research. each year, transdisciplinary approaches and methodologies were discussed, developed further, practiced, and implemented during summer schools and field research, each with a specific thematic and geographical focus. students and staff from all universities participated in these activities, non-academic actors were especially involved in the field research. all summer schools and field researches had to be organized by the partners in the global south and had to take place there9 according to the funding guideline for the erasmus+ capacity building projects. through this guideline, the partners in the global south become merely ‘case studies’, which baber (2003) describes as typical for north-south projects. to avoid this allocation of roles, the coordinators tried to communicate to the global south partners that ‘we’ do not perceive ourselves as being in the role of organizers, conceptualizers, or agenda setters in the course of these activities but that we hope that they will take over the responsibility for the summer schools and field trips. however, this changing of roles and responsibilities was only partly successful. it can be concluded that we, especially the vienna group, tried to “de-scribe” the funding scheme in a particular way by attempting to redefine or partly reject the “script”, as felt et al. (2015, p. 4) describe drawing on akrich’s (1992) approach. however, some of the partners remained in their rigid roles as either recipients or pure providers. the partners who felt primarily responsible for the organization, as foreseen by the funding guideline, did a great job. the tasks of agenda setting or taking over responsibilities, for example, for the field trips, were shifted to colleagues from the global north, who often actively took over despite not being familiar with the local setting or the non-academic actors. this pattern strongly resembled the mainstream organizational structure of north-south research projects, also transdisciplinary ones (schmidt & neuburger, 2017, p. 63). the ‘reluctance’ of the colleagues who organized the activities can be interpreted as a lack of ownership since we allocated these work packages to them according to the eu guidelines and/or an expression of their interest to learn a new approach that would allow them to position themselves in the global and national science arena, the latter especially in the case of the vietnamese partners. to put it more generally, it can be seen as a reaction to the decade’s long experiences of scientists and intellectuals in the global south who, as the study by connell et al. (2017) shows, have been treated as a workforce in the periphery by knowledge institutions and scientists from the global north who predominantly hold epistemic and institutional authority, or ‘function’ as spokespersons for voices or approaches from the global south (basile & baud, 2019, p. 17). thus, attempting 9 in 2016 and 2018, the activities took place in vietnam, and 2017 in thailand. aseas 13(2) | 183 petra dannecker to change these historical asymmetries and structures ‘just’ by re-interpreting the script was certainly ‘naïve’. however, it is also important to stress at this point that the categorization and differentiation between ‘we’ and the ‘others’ as employed in the last paragraphs is, of course, a difficult one, since none of the constructed groups is a homogeneous unit. this is necessary to indicate since also the expectations and the self-understandings within the groups varied. north-south power asymmetries definitely played out from the beginning. however, intersections with gender, age, and language as much as the self-understanding of the involved scientists, positionalities, and understandings of knowledge, also structured not only the activities in the frame of the knots project but also collaborative capacity building and research activities in general (bärnthaler, 2020, this issue). the activities of the knots project reveal that, for some, it was difficult to reflect upon power structures and privileges, be it because of having been trained in the global north or because of gender, university position, or age or the intersection of these social positions. for others, especially those familiar with feminist or postcolonial theories, it was a challenge to turn their reflections into practice given the workload prescribed by the ‘script’ and the responsibility perceived towards the funder. it must be concluded that the aim of the knots project to create a space for mutual learning and a critical reflection of knowledge production has only partly been achieved. what became obvious is that reflecting on existing power structures is essential, like in all transdisciplinary research (schmidt & neuburger, 2017, p. 55). however, the project demonstrated that this is extremely difficult in practice, which is in concrete situations and interactions. it would imply a conscious effort of the scientists involved, be it professors, students, or academic staff, to question not only power structures and privileges but also habitual modes of thought and practice emerging from specific historical and social contexts and in communication with others (turino & lea, 2004). this questioning and reflexivity could be selectively observed in the work of smaller groups that comprised members from different academic positions (students, scientific staff, and professors) and countries during the summer school or field trips, as braunhuber et al. (2019) reveal in their empirical study. as vilsmaier et al. (2015) show in their paper, working on a single case in a small group seems to allow for mutual learning and, thus, reflexivity to take place. in bigger workshops and conferences, gendered, ethnic, or national identities of the involved actors and, thus, various power asymmetries are reinforced by the actors themselves or by others in these social situations. to question or challenge statements or approaches put forward by, for example, european colleagues or colleagues in higher positions, to bring in different viewpoints, or to share experiences from one’s own research endeavors, seldomly took place during bigger knots meetings or activities. different university cultures as well as language doubtlessly played an important role here. especially some of the younger colleagues from universities in southeast asia did not feel comfortable communicating in english, as the evaluations reveal, especially not in front of their supervisors or professors from the global north (see doi, 2020; seemann & antweiler, 2020, this issue). transdisciplinary collaborative endeavors need to be designed to enable a process of mutual learning and knowledge generation, a postulation that is articulated in 184 | aseas 13(2) transdisciplinarity ‘meets’ power structures many academic papers on transdisciplinarity (ison, 2008; mobjörk, 2010, pohl, 2011; schmidt et al., 2013). the questions of what is needed to enable such processes, what hinders such processes, or what role power structures play, as discussed above, are just beginning to enter the debates. there are, of course, different strategies discussed and put forward in the literature of how to conceptualize and implement successful collaborations between different actors in transdisciplinary endeavors. there are debates about the various degrees of stakeholder involvement and the ‘best’ number of involved stakeholders (e.g., brandt et al., 2013; lang et al., 2012; pohl, krütli, & stauffacher, 2017; polk, 2015) as well as discussions about what kind of participation is needed and how participation can best be implemented. furthermore, reflections about participation, setups, or strategies are part of the discourse (e.g., elzinga, 2008; padmanabhan, 2018; schmidt et al., 2013). important themes are often put forward in papers by authors representing the school of thought that aims to develop methodologies for collaborative solutions, especially in sustainability or health studies. these discussions show what wiesmann et al. already stated in 2008, which is that “participation is often one of the major stumbling blocks in transdisciplinary practice” (p. 437) because most of the debates and evaluations do not critically reflect on power structures and relations. this has important implications not only for participation but also for the transformative potential of transdisciplinary knowledge production (rosendahl et al., 2015). furthermore, the discussions focus almost exclusively on the collaboration between academic actors and non-academic actors, and not between academic actors alone (djenontin & meadow, 2018, p. 886). this section emphasized that the knots project has shown that complex and diverse power relations between academic actors influence transdisciplinary endeavors. the same holds true for different understandings of knowledge, as will be shown in the following section. science, knowledge, and political contexts different expectations were related to different understandings of transdisciplinarity, of science, of the role of science and scientists, and of the relation between science and the public. these factors structured and influenced the discussions and activities in the knots project. the main challenge was to realize and recognize the different understandings and expectations regarding transdisciplinarity and their embeddedness in different understandings of knowledge and science, science and politics, as well as in power relations between disciplines and between the different actors representing different university cultures and relations. as mentioned, there were different understandings of transdisciplinarity that reflect the two versions or schools of thought that are also discussed in the literature (augsburg & henry, 2016). one school of thought perceives transdisciplinarity as a new framework of knowledge production. the methodology should develop during the research process and should be reflective as well as responsive to particular questions, settings, and actions (cf., bergman et al., 2012; klein, 2004, 2013; pohl, 2011; pohl & hirsch hardon, 2008; wickson, carew, & russell, 2006). this understanding, focusing primarily on the development of transformative knowledge, mirrored the understanding and, thus, position of the coordinators and some colleagues from thailand, for example. whereas for other colleagues, especially but not exclusively those from vietnam, a aseas 13(2) | 185 petra dannecker new transdisciplinary methodology should be the main outcome of the project – a methodology that advances neutral, universal, and objective knowledge about a phenomenon. this understanding reflects the second version of transdisciplinarity which is concerned primarily with problem solving through a transdisciplinary methodology. even though all partners had a social science background, the discussions about transdisciplinarity revealed that different paradigmatic views came together, which also influenced the understanding of transdisciplinarity and led to misunderstandings and irritations. for some colleagues, science had to be analytical and objective, while others criticized this dominating knowledge paradigm as ‘western’ (cf., studley, 1998) and advocated postcolonial or feminist approaches and perspectives. thus, space and time was needed to discuss different epistemologies, which were perceived by some as competing. whereas north-south hierarchies in the global education sector were addressed above, the debates and conflicts around the ‘modern’ knowledge paradigm showed another dimension, namely, how successfully the still dominant understanding of science and knowledge as objective and universal was, as chakrabarty (2000) argues, transferred from the so-called core towards the so-called peripheral countries. this “continued hegemony of positivism” (chhachhi, hutter, damodaran, & baud, 2019, p. 304) in science generally and the hierarchies between different worldviews also made conversations about knowledge difficult in the context of the project (see bärnthaler, 2020, this issue). additionally, not only, but primarily male colleagues from the partner universities showed a certain resistance to the discussion of the situatedness of knowledge (haraway, 1988) or to the reflection of the taken-for-granted categories in scientific endeavors, like ethnicity or women, even when criticizing the dominant knowledge paradigm. of course, not all participants subscribed to all assumptions of the dominant knowledge paradigm, nor was the north-south divide as clear cut as summarized, especially when feminist or postcolonial approaches were brought into the debates to address science and knowledge production as relations of power and domination. here, gender and age structured the positions taken during discussions. the experiences of the knots project revealed that positionalities are an important element that influences collaborative and mutual learning processes. however, the experiences also revealed that an openness and willingness to reflect one’s positionality is embedded in a certain understanding of knowledge and of the role of science. reflexivity needs more time than the activities, which suffered from permanent time constrains, allowed. thus, even those who were theoretically aware of how important it is to make one’s own positionality transparent were not always able to live up to their own claims and expectations. the discourses among project participants during the implementation of the activities have further shown that different understandings of science and knowledge were the main challenge to overcome, not disciplinary knowledge as such. this is not to say that disciplinary knowledge production and disciplinary identities were unimportant, but that the experiences support darian-smith and mccarty’s (2016, p. 7) argumentation that, in practice, disciplinary boundaries have been blurried for quite some time, despite the inclusion and sharing of, for example, themes, theories, and approaches to varying degrees. it was the general understanding of the role of science and knowledge for society as well as the different epistemological stances that 186 | aseas 13(2) transdisciplinarity ‘meets’ power structures influenced the expectations and visions concerning ‘new’ approaches and methods for organizing knowledge. thus, a thorough reflection on the role of science and knowledge10 – as, for example, done by augsburg and henry (2016), or carp (2001) – is a precondition for the development of transdisciplinary frameworks, even if context-bound or case-based (vilsmaier et al., 2015). during the capacity building project knots, the discussions of the role of science and knowledge for society, especially regarding the topics of focus (i.e., migration, social inequality, and environment), revealed another challenge transdisciplinary endeavors may face. in some interactions (between professors, scientific staff, and students from the different universities), the discussions endorsed reflections on the participants’ understanding of science and knowledge. this helped to explicate perspectives or categories that are often taken for granted, allowing an alternative framing of the respective topics. in other interactions, yet, there was a lack of willingness to reflect on so-called objectified categories, and it was therefore not possible to discuss whether ethnicity or class, for example, are really relevant categories to start with. connected to this point is yet another, namely, how to handle the pre-framing of phenomena and problems that transdisciplinary research projects are planning to tackle. although it is outside the scope of this paper to discuss this aspect in detail, the experiences and observations in the context of this project have shown that the context-based topics used as cases for ‘practicing’ transdisciplinarity were pre-framed. this often occurred unconsciously, either due to theoretical perspectives or the respective political contexts influencing science cultures. a scientific pre-framing, for example, could be observed in the case of social inequality when only economic structures were put forward at the expense of engagement with questions of gender or cultural difference; or when universalist templates of development and theoretical categories based on european experience were proposed without reflecting the historical and social structures that pervade them. regarding this point, there was no observable north-south divide. rather, disciplinary, gendered, or ideological positions were at stake. political pre-framing occurred especially by those scientists coming from societies where the universities and, thus, knowledge production are controlled and influenced by political actors and their interests (and where knowledge is perceived, e.g., as merely a means to power or economic advantages). in the case of migration, for example, this implied that ‘only’ climate change was made responsible for rural-urban migration by some, whereas other aspects, like the modernization or the capitalization of the agriculture sector, were not even ‘allowed’ to be discussed due to the political strategies and aims of the respective government. thus, while the topics we took up were inquiry-driven, as put forward in the transdisciplinary scholarship, they were also pre-framed. johnston (2008) argues that transdisciplinarity can and should “create mindscapes that are unfettered by traditional patterns and procedures” (p. 223). how thinking and acting in traditional scientific patterns and procedures can be overcome is however not discussed by johnston (2008). here, the question arises of why, for example, feminist or 10 i argue that this reflection is necessary before discussing the three forms of knowledge that pohl and hirsch hadorn (2008) have defined as relevant for transdisciplinarity, namely, system knowledge as knowledge of the current status, target knowledge as knowledge about a target status, and transformation knowledge as knowledge about how to make the transition from the current to the target status. aseas 13(2) | 187 petra dannecker postcolonial theories have not been adopted for transdisciplinarity, as put forward by leavy (2011), or schmidt and neuberger (2017). transdisciplinary scholarship and practice could benefit from postcolonial and feminist traditions as both seek to integrate different disciplinary perspectives including their insights regarding reflexivity and positionality – reflexivity concerning not only transdisciplinary research processes and power structures but also personal and biographical dispositions, social relations, and epistemological perspectives, which are all preconditions for mutual learning. thus, these theories could pave the way for integrating reflexivity as a practice – a practice needed in all phases of transdisciplinary endeavors. the different understandings of science and knowledge as well as the pre-framing of the topics also influenced and structured debates and discussions about which non-academic actors should be integrated, whose knowledge they represent, how they should be integrated, and how their knowledge should be respected. as mentioned, the aim of the project was not to conduct complex, transdisciplinary research projects but to build capacities. a possible integration of non-academic actors and their knowledge during field research was very controversially discussed in the preparation and during the two summer schools in vietnam. klein (2013) argues that complex problems necessarily need the involvement of various non-academic actors from a range of organizations. however, whom and whose knowledge these actors represent is not considered; neither is the difference in interests of the scientific participants, namely, whether such knowledge should serve science, serve the existing social and power relationships, or challenge the status quo, discussed (cf., augsburg & henry, 2016, p. 101). the conflicts that became apparent in the context of the project serve as an example of these different interests. the inclusion of critical ngos or activists working on the focus topics was suggested by those aiming at challenging power structures and the status quo, whereas the inclusion of government agencies was demanded by those colleagues who did not want to criticize, for example, the government’s migration or environmental policies but aimed to integrate the interests of these actors in future transdisciplinary research activities. whether non-academic actors are perceived as knowledge producers also depends on the respective understanding of science and knowledge. those who were postulating that science and knowledge are and should be objective and universal (see discussion above) argued that only science can produce knowledge, hold expertise, and represent the authority to explain. this implies that scientists are assumed to be objective observers, whereas non-academic actors can never be more than research subjects or informants, because their knowledge is situated, contextual, cultural, and inherently social. defining scientific knowledge as outside of society or culture is not new and is one reason behind the interest in transdisciplinarity (see dannecker & heis, 2020, this issue). but even if the need and the relevance of integrating experience-based, local, or cultural forms of knowledge in a participatory way is accepted, a conceptional framework for this integration and participation is difficult to develop, as the scholarship on transdisciplinarity reveals. exemplary for the analyzed shortcomings is the term stakeholder, which is used not only, but especially in transdisciplinary literature discussing methodologies, strategies, and techniques for knowledge integration (e.g., bracken, bulkeley, & whitman, 2014; polk, 2015). in the knots project, too, the term was broadly used by the 188 | aseas 13(2) transdisciplinarity ‘meets’ power structures scientific participants independently of their views on science and knowledge. this very instrumental and technological term, which is also used in development cooperation (e.g., cooke & kothari, 2001), reduces non-academic actors to representatives of interests and, as augsburg and henry (2016, p.110) state, moves away from the important question of what constitutes non-academic knowledge production. conclusion the promise of transdisciplinarity and especially, as messing et al. (2012, p. 645) argue, the promise of dis-entrenching forms of, for example, postcolonial inequality and resulting disparities in knowledge production and problem solving, is inspiring. this was also the motivation for initiating the knots project. however, the different expectations, discussions, and conflicts during capacity building efforts and activities have shown that differing understandings of science and knowledge, and power structures between the involved actors due to gender, age, country of origin, or university position, as well as socio-political constellations influence transdisciplinary endeavors and, thus, have implications for the transformative potential of the knowledge produced. especially more positivist understandings of knowledge and science do not support the re-configuration of academic actors or their approaches and perspectives in partnerships with colleagues or non-academic actors. additionally, political structures influence university cultures and knowledge production and, thus, constrain directly or indirectly the collaboration of the involved academic actors (see bärnthaler, 2020, this issue). the knots project has shown that more time and space would have been needed already during the writing process of the proposal to understand and discuss what impact these differences have on future activities and capacity building – time, which most funding schemes and their output-oriented logic do not foresee. nonetheless, the project opened up a space for controversies, explorations, and discussions on knowledge and science. this was very constructive since it broadened the perspectives of the participants, and revealed political and power dimensions that are often not explicitly discussed in transdisciplinary research – although transdisciplinarity is regularly suggested as an avenue for generating transformative knowledge (rosendahl et al., 2015, p. 19) and initiating problem solving. if attributes such as critical thinking, creativity, and innovation can only be developed in environments that challenge pre-conceived assumptions and push individuals to consider new perspectives, then the project was definitely successful, even if not all scientific colleagues actively participated, and despite the fact that the pooling of multiple knowledge and expertise did not bring the expected synergies to develop a common epistemological basis leading to alternative methodologies (cf., chhachhi et al., 2019, p. 304). only time will show how the transdisciplinary capacities discussed and developed during the project will be used in teaching and research. the experiences showed that, also in transdisciplinary endeavors, a primary methodological focus on problem solving leaves many issues and questions untouched. these include issues such as power asymmetries and questions of how to integrate different understandings of science and knowledge and different actors, what constitutes knowledge, and what participation means in practice. aseas 13(2) | 189 petra dannecker schmidt and neuburger (2017) articulate the concern that transdisciplinarity can become just “another academic instrument . . . [of] marginalizing non-western cultures” (p. 55). the knots project also showed this tendency. however, and despite the north-south power structures, the partners in the global south challenged the transfer and the priorities set, for example, by questioning our understanding of transdisciplinarity or our understanding and framing of the topics that focused on, namely, social inequalities, migration, and climate change. not only topics were framed differently, but also the power manifested in administrative rules was challenged, for example, by not fulfilling them, or the resources and their distribution, as foreseen by the funder were questioned. thus, implicitly, the developmental nature of the capacity building in higher education program by the eu (european union, 2016) was challenged. i, as the coordinator, sometimes frustrated with the administrative role, however recognized the “wealth of knowledge in the global south” (connell et al., 2017, p. 56) and integrative frameworks of knowledge production like thai baan. thus, in this regard, the project was successful, at least from my perspective.  references akrich, m. 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(2015). case-based mutual learning sessions: knowledge integration and transfer in transdisciplinary processes. sustainable science, 10(4), 563-580. vilsmaier, u., faschingeder, g., & mercón, j. (2020, in press). methods for interand transdisciplinary research and learning based on paulo freire. journal of development studies, 37(2/3). wickson, f., carew, a. l., & russell, a. w. (2006). transdisciplinary research: characteristics, quandaries, and quality. futures, 38(9), 1046-1059. wiesmann, u., hirsch hadorn, g., hoffmann-riem, h., biber-klemm, s., grossenbacher, w., joye, d., & zemp, e. (2008). enhancing transdisciplinary research: a synthesis in fifteen propositions. in g. hirsch hadorn, h. hoffmann-riem, s. biber-klemm, w. grossenbacher-mansuy, d. joye, c. pohl, . . . & e. zemp (eds.), handbook of transdisciplinary research (pp. 433-441). dordrecht, netherlands: springer netherlands. about the author petra dannecker is professor of development sociology and, since 2011, head of the department of development studies at the university of vienna. before coming to vienna, she was assistant professor at the department of sociology at bielefeld university, germany, and senior research fellow at the german development institute in bonn. her research interests include development politics, globalization and migration processes, transnationalism and gender, and migration and development. her regional focus is south and southeast asia. ► contact: petra.dannecker@univie.ac.at aseas 14(2) | 213 teaching migrant students from myanmar: professional development program to facilitate multicultural competence for teachers thithimadee arphattananona a mahidol university, thailand ► arphattananon, t. (2021). teaching migrant students from myanmar: professional development program to facilitate multicultural competence for teachers. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 14(2), 213-226. in recent years, the migration of people from myanmar into thailand has increased tremendously. since 2005, when the thai government officially allowed migrant children to enroll in thai government schools, there has been a steady increase in the number of migrant students. in such a context, it is imperative that teachers develop multicultural competence, or the knowledge, skills, and attitudes required to work with culturally diverse students. however, teachers in thailand reported that they have not been trained in the knowledge and skills to teach in multicultural classrooms. the study has two main objectives. firstly, it attempts to design a multicultural education training program that incorporates modules that will lead to building and strengthening teachers’ multicultural competence. secondly, it implements the training program, and measures the level of multicultural competence of teachers who received the training by comparing them to those who do not receive the training. results revealed that teachers appraised the module about cultures of migrant students and the module about the rules and regulations in enrolling and graduating migrant students as the most useful. results from an independent-samples t-test showed that the overall multicultural competence level of teachers who participated in the program was significantly different from those who did not participate; teachers who took part in the training demonstrated a higher level of multicultural competence compared to those who did not participate. keywords: cultural diversity; migrant students; multicultural competence; myanmar; professional development  introduction in recent years, migration of people into thailand has increased tremendously. in 2018, the number of non-thai residents was around 4.9 million, increasing from 3.7 million in 2014 (united nations thematic working group on migration in thailand, 2019). among these, the number of labor migrants from neighboring southeast asian countries, namely myanmar, lao pdr and cambodia, accounted for 3.9 million, or 80% (harkins, 2019). these newly arrived migrants add to the country’s ethnically diverse population, making thailand one of the most culturally diverse countries in the region. aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 59 214 | aseas 14(2) teaching migrant students from myanmar the migration of people into thailand poses a challenge in many areas, especially in education. since 2005, when the government officially allowed migrant children to enroll in thai government schools, there has been a steady increase in the number of migrant students in schools (figure 1; office of basic education commission, 2018). in 2011, approximately 58,000 migrant students from myanmar, lao pdr and cambodia were enrolled in thai government schools. in 2018, this number increased to 96,207 (office of basic education commission, 2018). among these, migrant students from myanmar constitute the majority. according to the academic year 2018 data, schools in chiang mai enrolled the largest number of migrant students, followed by those in tak, kanchanaburi, chiang rai, and samut sakhon, respectively. in thailand, public attitudes towards migrant workers are not favorable. reports of migrant students and migrant workers, especially those from myanmar, being the target of ridicule and racism have circulated in mass media and the academic world. for example, studies on the opinions of thai people towards migrants from myanmar reveal that thais regard migrant workers from myanmar as disease carriers, threats to their lives and property, and competition for jobs and resources (sunpuwan & niyomsilpa, 2012; see also, hall, 2011). these negative attitudes towards migrant workers from myanmar were exacerbated by the surge of covid-19 cases in samut sakhon province in the late december of 2020 (reuters & bangkok post, 2020).. in schools as well, migrant students bring with them linguistic and cultural diversity that teachers and school personnel are not used to (von feigenblatt et al., 2010). it is revealed that teachers’ negative attitudes and low expectations of minority students, curriculum content produced from the perspective of the majority, and instructional practices that are insensitive to students’ cultures all affect equality in the education of ethnic minority students (banks, 2009; nieto, 2004; sleeter & grant, 2003). in such a context, it is imperative that teachers have knowledge about students’ cultures as well as the implications of cultural diversity on education. teachers should develop skills to formulate a culturally relevant curriculum and teach in a figure 1. number of migrant students in thai schools (2011-2018). (https://portal.bopp-obec. info/obec60/lison). aseas 14(2) | 215 thithimadee arphattananon culturally responsive way. they also have to demonstrate positive attitudes towards students from other cultures since it will directly affect students’ self-esteem and academic performance (battle, 2017; yuan, 2017). all of these constitute multicultural competence, or the knowledge, skills and attitudes required to live and work in a multicultural society (banks, 2009; bennett, 2001; hladik, 2016). although multicultural competence is instrumental for those who work in multicultural settings, teachers in thailand reported that they have not been trained in the knowledge and skills to teach in multicultural classrooms (nawarat, 2018; yanyongkasemsuk, 2017; yongyuan et al., 2010). many schools that enrolled migrant students have resorted to a business-as-usual approach without adjusting the pedagogy or curriculum content to match with the cultures of the students. most schools, citing the rationale of neutrality, report that they use the same curriculum – the basic education core curriculum – formulated by the ministry of education for thai and migrant students, as it does not favor the culture of one group over the other (arphattananon, 2012). up until present, professional development for teachers of migrant students in thailand has been provided in a haphazard manner either by academics from universities or social workers from non-profit organizations. the thai government, while stipulating a policy aimed at access and budget allocation, left all the decisions on instruction to schools. without receiving systematic training, teachers are left on their own to try to understand the cultural differences that migrant students bring into their classrooms, including ways to integrate them into their teaching. instructional techniques thus vary depending on the experiences, beliefs, and backgrounds of each individual teacher. their understanding of the rights of migrant students to access public education also varies. this affects their practices, including admission of migrant students into schools, follow-up, and provision of support for migrant students and parents. recognizing that professional development in multicultural education is necessary but still lacking in thailand, this study aims at developing a model of professional development that promotes multicultural competence for teachers who teach in schools that enroll migrant students. the study has two main objectives. firstly, it attempts to design a multicultural education training course that incorporates modules that will lead to building and strengthening teachers’ multicultural knowledge, skills, and attitude. secondly, it measures the level of multicultural competence of teachers who received the training by comparing them to those who did not receive the training. results from the study can be used as a guideline for developing and improving multicultural education professional development for teachers. literature review multicultural competence: multicultural knowledge, multicultural skills, and multicultural attitudes scholars in the field of multicultural education emphasize the importance of multicultural competence and have proposed that multicultural competence be taught as one of the basic skills in schools in a world that is becoming more diverse (bennett, 2001). multicultural competence, used interchangeably with intercultural competence, is 216 | aseas 14(2) teaching migrant students from myanmar defined as the ability to interact and understand people who are ethnically, racially, and culturally different from oneself (banks, 2009; bennett, 2001). people with multicultural competence are open-minded and without cultural or racial prejudice. being aware that one’s worldview is not universal, people with multicultural competence refrain from using solely their own worldview to judge the behaviors and practices of people from different cultures. multiculturally competent persons know or are eager to know about the ways of life of diverse cultural groups as well as the distinctive characteristics within those groups. they possess the ability to interpret communication, both verbal and nonverbal, as well as the cultural cues given off by different cultural groups (byram et al., 2002; fatini & tirmizi, 2006). multicultural competence consists of behavioral and cognitive skills that people demonstrate when interacting with people from diverse cultural backgrounds (byram et al., 2002; fatini & tirmizi, 2006; hladik, 2016; van der zee & van oudenhoven, 2000). multicultural knowledge refers to knowledge of other cultures such as history, values and customs as well as knowledge of one’s own culture (association of american college and universities, n.d.). knowledge about one’s own culture includes cultural self-awareness where individuals identify rules and biases that their culture creates. knowledge about other cultures includes an understanding of elements such as history, values, politics, communication styles, economy, beliefs, and practices that are important to its members. teachers need to know how to create a supportive school and classroom environment where students’ cultural identities are valued (nieto, 2004). hladik (2016) stresses the importance of knowledge about how racism, prejudice, and ethnocentrism are generated and affect students. teachers also need to have knowledge about children’s rights, as well as government policies and regulations on the admission of migrant students into schools. however, because one’s pool of knowledge about other cultures is limited, byram et al. (2002) point out that skills and eagerness to seek out knowledge about other cultures are as important as the knowledge itself. the second component of multicultural competence is skills to live and work in a culturally diverse environment. skills are generally divided into empathy and communication – both verbal and non-verbal. empathy means the ability to interpret experiences when being in contact with other cultures from multiple perspectives, as well as the ability to sympathize with the feelings and experiences of people from other cultural groups. skills in verbal and non-verbal communication range from a minimal understanding of verbal and non-verbal languages of other cultures to a complex understanding of the cultural codes that underpin the communication. besides these skills, teachers need to know how to integrate information and examples from students’ cultures into subject areas and classroom teaching (banks, 1995; sleeter & grant, 2003). teachers should be able teach in ways that help students develop positive intercultural attitudes and promote academic achievement in students from diverse ethnic and cultural groups. byram et al. (2002) stated that multicultural attitudes are the foundation of multicultural competence. multicultural attitudes include curiosity about other cultures and open-mindedness, which means the ability to suspend prejudice when encountering people from other cultures whose beliefs, values, and behaviors are different from one’s own. individuals who possess a multicultural attitude are able aseas 14(2) | 217 thithimadee arphattananon to “decenter and relativize” (byram et al., 2002, p. 7) their values and beliefs when encountering other sets of cultural beliefs, values, and behaviors. teachers who teach students whose cultures are different from their own should have positive attitudes and high expectations for students, as it will affect students’ academic performance and self-concept (banks, 2008). not only do they have to possess a multicultural attitude themselves, teachers should also cultivate positive attitudes among students from diverse racial, ethnic, religious, and cultural groups (banks, 2008; stephen & stephen, 2004). professional development for multicultural competence parkhouse et al. (2019) reviewed 48 publications on the effectiveness of multicultural professional development and concluded that in order to have long-lasting impacts on student achievement and to change the practices of teachers, the training program has to incorporate the following characteristics. first, the duration of the program needs to be substantial and extended. multicultural education professional development programs should have a clear focus on specific subject matters and target specific groups of students. second, the training agenda should be in line with educational policies at the district, state, or national levels. third, teachers should be actively involved in the training process. collective participation that emphasizes a learning community, rather than individualized learning, is likely to be more effective, especially when enacted as a part of a total school reform process. one of the challenges that most multicultural education professional development programs face is to get teachers to develop consciousness and be aware of stereotypes and prejudices against those from different racial, religious, and cultural backgrounds. upon reviewing 28 studies on professional development in teaching, kennedy (2016) found that program design – such as program duration, topics, and activities – is less likely to link to program effectiveness compared to the pedagogies employed in the program. pedagogies that are geared towards active learning have proven to be more effective than lectures. effective professional development programs tend to use facilitators who have long experience working with teachers and are familiar with the issues that they face. while it is important that professional development programs provide information about the cultures of ethnic minority students, they risk stereotyping or essentializing ethnic cultures as static. scholars suggest that instead of focusing on cultures as static artifacts, professional development programs should also focus on the struggles and resistance of the groups against racism, discrimination, and unfair treatment (leistyna, 2001). moreover, members of the ethnic groups should be invited to facilitate the training (parkhouse et al., 2019). conceptual framework multicultural competence, which comprises multicultural knowledge, multicultural skills, and multicultural attitudes, as well as the research on effective professional development for multicultural education reviewed in the previous section, serve as a conceptual framework for this study. the researcher used the qualities of these three components of multicultural competence as a guideline to develop a training 218 | aseas 14(2) teaching migrant students from myanmar program for teachers and formulate questionnaire items to measure their multicultural competence after the training. guided by the research on effective professional development (kennedy, 2016; leistyna, 2001; parkhouse et al., 2019), the training program was divided into four modules, namely: 1) rights to education of migrant children; 2) cultures of migrant students from myanmar; 3) prejudice and stereotype reduction; and 4) pedagogic approaches to teaching migrant students (figure 2). module 1, rights to education of migrant children, aims to develop knowledge regarding the rights of children to receive education and related laws, rules, and regulations. module 2, culture of migrant students from myanmar, as the name suggests, aims to develop teachers’ knowledge of the cultures of migrant students and families from myanmar. module 3, prejudice and stereotype reduction, explains the meaning and causes of prejudice and stereotypes as well as classroom activities and lesson plans to develop positive attitudes among migrants and thai students. activities to help teachers reflect on their own stereotypes and prejudices were also included in this module. module 4, pedagogic approaches to teaching migrant students, introduces culturally relevant instructional methods and provides a chance for teachers to practice formulating lesson plans that integrate information about the students’ cultures. research methodology the study was divided into two phases: 1) developing multicultural competence through a training program; and 2) evaluating teachers’ multicultural competence level after the training. samut sakhon province, located in bangkok, was selected as the research site because it has the second largest number of migrant workers from myanmar in the country. due to resources, time, and accessibility, five government schools with the highest number of migrant students from myanmar in the province were purposively selected as target schools. all of the teachers and principals from the five schools were called on to participate. in total, 80 people, comprising 78 teachers and two principals from the five schools, participated in the research. in the first phase, the researcher used a training program to develop multicultural competence for teachers. the four-day training program, spanning over the period of three weeks, included the four modules described above (figure 2). the format of the training included lectures by the researcher and invited speakers, group discussions to share experiences and opinions regarding the issues of migrant student dropout, placement of migrant students in appropriate classes and the necessity of culturally relevant teaching, as well as hands-on activities that asked teachers to plan the lessons that incorporated students’ cultures. the data from all the activities was video-recorded. experts in curriculum development from the provincial education office and academics who specialized in the ethnic cultures of myanmar were invited as facilitators. a former migrant student from myanmar was invited as a guest speaker to share her experience studying in a thai school. officers from the provincial education office were invited to explain the rules and regulations for enrolling migrant students. due to restrictions on teachers’ work, training was conducted at the weekends. during the small-group activities, the researcher deliberately arranged the groups so that they comprised members from different schools so that teachers could exchange experiences with colleagues from other schools. aseas 14(2) | 219 thithimadee arphattananon in the second phase, the post-intervention-only design was used to measure the multicultural competence of participating teachers at the end of the training. seventy completed questionnaires (87.5%) were obtained from 80 participants. the multicultural competence mean scores of the participant group were compared to those of the comparison group. in order to assure internal validity that the differences in mean scores were due to the training, five schools in samut sakhon province that have similar characteristics as the participant group were selected as the comparison group. the number of migrant students, number of teachers, age distribution, and teachers’ experiences working in multicultural schools served as criteria in selecting the comparison group. after the comparison group was identified, the same questionnaire was distributed by postal mail to teachers in the comparison group. seventy-seven questionnaires were returned. however, after eliminating those with missing data, 65 completed questionnaires were analyzed. an independent-samples t-test was conducted to compare the level of multicultural competence of teachers who had participated in the training with that of teachers in the comparison group. one weakness of the study is that the researcher did not examine the relationship between the independent variables – characteristics of teachers such as their age, educational backgrounds, grade level taught, and experiences teaching in multicultural schools – and the dependent variable, which is their level of multicultural competence. future research can examine whether the attributes of teachers such as their teaching experiences, or the subjects and grade levels that they teach affect their level of multicultural competence. figure 2. conceptual framework of the training program. (author's compilation). 220 | aseas 14(2) teaching migrant students from myanmar data collection instrument guided by the three components of multicultural competence and drawing from items in the cultural diversity awareness inventory (henry, 1986), the researcher designed a questionnaire to measure the multicultural competence of teachers who participated in the training. the questionnaire is divided into three parts. the first part asked for demographic data, that is, age, years of teaching in multicultural schools, level of education, and grade level taught. the second part of the questionnaire, which measured levels of multicultural competence, comprised 35 items: 15 items to assess multicultural knowledge; 9 items to assess multicultural skills; and 11 items to assess multicultural attitudes . teachers were asked to rank their level of multicultural competence based on the five-point likert scales of strongly agree (5), agree (4), neutral (3), disagree (2) and strongly disagree (1). the third part of the questionnaire contained open-ended questions asking respondents to freely add their opinions or comments. three academics from a thai university who specialized in multicultural education were asked to evaluate the items listed in the questionnaire for content validity and objective congruence using the item-objective congruence (ioc) index. only the questionnaire items that recieved a score higher than 0.5 were used. the revised questionnaire was tested with 30 teachers who were not participants in this study. cronbach’s alpha, as a coefficient of the questionnaire’s reliability, measured 0.915. the cronbach’s alpha for each sub-scale are as follows: 0.812 for multicultural knowledge; 0.797 for multicultural skills; and 0.844 for multicultural attitudes. ethical consideration prior to collecting data, the study was approved by the university’s institution review board1. the study was conducted according to ethical guidelines for research with human subjects in social science. participants’ autonomy and privacy were protected; participants signed an informed consent to indicate their willingness to participate. any identifiable data was not collected. research findings results of the study are divided into two parts: 1) the demographics of the participant and comparison groups; 2) the level of multicultural competence of the teachers who participated in the training compared to those who did not participate. demographic information of participant and comparison groups table 1 shows the demographic data of teachers who received the training and those in the comparison group. both groups were similar in terms of age distribution, educational backgrounds, and prior experiences in multicultural education training. 1 ipsr-irb certificate of approval no.2020/05-215. aseas 14(2) | 221 thithimadee arphattananon teachers who participated in the training teachers who did not attend the training (comparison group) variable sample (n=70) variable sample (n=65) gender gender female 59 (84.3%) female 53 (81.5%) male 11 (15.7%) male 12 (18.5%) position position teacher 68 (97.1%) teacher 63 (96.8%) principals 2 (2.9%) principals 2 (3.2%) age age below 30 30 (42.9%) below 30 37 (56.9%) 31-40 30 (42.9%) 31-40 11 (16.9%) 41-50 7 (10%) 41-50 11 (16.9%) above 50 3 (4.2%) above 50 6 (9.3%) received multicultural education training in the past 5 years received multicultural education training in the past 5 years yes 8 (11.4%) yes 4 (6.2%) no 62 (88.6%) no 61 (93.8%) education education lower than b.a. 3 (4.3%) lower than b.a. 2 (3.1%) b.a. 54 (77.1%) b.a. 51 (78.4%) m.a. 11 (15.7%) m.a. 12 (18.5%) higher than m.a. 2 (2.9%) higher than m.a. 0 experience teaching in multicultural schools experience teaching in multicultural schools 0-5 years 48 (68.6%) 0-5 years 41 (63.1%) 6-10 years 13 (18.6%) 6-10 years 9 (13.8%) 11-20 years 8(11.4%) 11-20 years 8 (12.3%) more than 20 years 1 (1.4%) more than 20 years 7 (10.8%) grade level taught grade level taught kindergarten 16 (22.9%) kindergarten 10 (15.4%) grade 1-3 23 (32.9%) grade 1-3 24 (36.9%) grade 4-6 22 (31.4%) grade 4-6 27 (41.5%) grade 7-9 7 (10%) grade 7-9 4 (6.2%) not teaching 2 (2.8) table 1. demographic information of participant and comparison group. 222 | aseas 14(2) teaching migrant students from myanmar multicultural competence of teachers who participated in the training as compared to those who did not participate multicultural components group mean sd t df sig mean diff. multicultural knowledge participant (n=70) 3.847 .409 2.326 117.696 .022* .19436 comparison (n=65) 3.652 .548 multicultural skills participant (n=70) 3.859 .442 1.349 133 .180 .11343 comparison (n=65) 3.745 .533 multicultural attitudes participant (n=70) 4.035 .730 3.525 123.631 .001* .49800 comparison (n=65) 3.537 .896 overall multicultural competence participant (n=70) 3.909 .382 3.647 133 .000* .26898 comparison (n=65) 3.640 .472 *p<0.05 in table 2, the participant and comparison groups’ levels of multicultural competence are presented. using statistical package for social science (spss), the mean scores of the second part were calculated and interpreted as follows: 4.01-5.00 = excellent; 3.01-4.00 = good; 2.01-3.00 = average; 1.01-2.00 = poor; and 0.01-1.00 = very poor. the mean scores indicated that the level of multicultural competence of the teachers who participated in the training and those who did not participate were both at the level of good. after breaking up into individual components, the mean score of “multicultural knowledge” and “multicultural skills” of the participant group were at the level of good, while “multicultural attitudes” was at the level of excellent. for the comparison group, the mean score of all components were at the level of good. at 95% confidence level, there were statistical differences between the overall multicultural competence levels of teachers who participated in the training and those who did not participate. teachers and principals who took part in the training demonstrated a higher level of multicultural competence (m = 3.909, sd = .382) compared to those who did not participate (m = 3.640, sd = .472). breaking this down to each multicultural component, there were also statistical differences between the level of multicultural knowledge and multicultural attitudes of the teachers who underwent the training and those who did not (p < 0.05). teachers who participated in the training had a higher level of multicultural knowledge and more positive multicultural attitudes compared to those who did not participate in the training. for multicultural skills, although teachers who took part in the training showed higher mean scores (m = 3.859, sd = .442) compared to those who did not participate (m = 3.745, sd = .533), the difference was not statistically significant. discussion findings show that teachers who participated in the training had higher levels of multicultural competence compared to those who did not participate. the study table 2. independent sample t-test of the multicultural competence levels of participant and comparison groups. (author's compilation). aseas 14(2) | 223 thithimadee arphattananon carefully selected a comparison group that had similar characteristics as the group that received the training. thus, the effect of the training is undeniable. teachers who participated in the training program highly rated the program’s interactive pedagogy. this is congruent with what scholars who studied effective professional development have recommended (kennedy, 2016). among the three components, multicultural knowledge was the area that teachers needed to be trained on most. according to teachers, knowledge of rules and regulations in enrolling and graduating migrant students is the most necessary since they are very complicated and constantly changing. misconduct in this area would affect migrant students’ opportunities to continue their education or to apply for citizenship. it is important that officers who are knowledgeable about this issue serve as facilitators or speakers in this module. teachers also revealed that they found the training module about the cultures of migrants from myanmar very helpful in designing and formulating lesson plans and learning activities. most teachers rarely knew about the migrant families’ ways of life, especially how they valued education of their children. knowledge in this area would help teachers deal with dropouts and provide advice on students’ future courses. teachers who participated in the training suggested that the training program should include a half-day visit to learning centers2 or migrant communities. during the training, teachers had a chance to listen to the experiences of migrant students, including the racism that they faced inside and outside of school. this helped increase their awareness of how discrimination and racism worked against migrant students. however, as stated in previous research, multicultural attitudes cannot be changed overnight (aboud, 2009; banks, 2008; byram et al., 2002). therefore, the sustainability of the training to develop teachers’ attitudes is questionable. the literature about effective professional development emphasizes that the training program should occur for extended periods (parkhouse et al., 2019). however, with their tremendous workload, teachers voiced that they preferred a 12-to-15-hour weekend training. to maximize the effect of the training program without causing extra burden on the teachers, this study recommends that professional development for multicultural education should be embedded in the school policy and built into the action plans of schools, so that it weaves into the everyday practices. conclusion in today’s globalized world, the transnational flow of people will continue. the situation where migrant students study together with thai students will continue. the cultural diversity that students bring with them will challenge the monocultural teaching that teachers are used to (von feigenblatt et al., 2010). it is necessary that teachers know their students’ cultures, have the skills to incorporate students’ cultures in their teaching and possess positive attitudes for students who come from diverse cultural backgrounds. this is the basis of multicultural education, which respects cultural diversity and equality for all students. teachers need to be prepared to teach students from a diverse range of ethnic and cultural backgrounds. classroom interventions 2 “learning centers” are found by civil society organizations to provide education for migrant children. most learning centers are not officially accredited by the thai government. 224 | aseas 14(2) teaching migrant students from myanmar such as cooperative learning, which requires group members to work towards the same goal, can help reduce prejudice and stereotypes (sleeter & grant, 2003). teachers play a key role in educating students to have multicultural competence. professional development that prepares teachers to teach in culturally diverse contexts is indispensable (alismail, 2016; lander, 2014). currently, there is no organized professional development for teachers who teach migrant students in thailand. each school and each individual teacher has to seek opportunities for professional development. as seen from the results of this study, professional development had positive effects on the multicultural competence of teachers. therefore, it is strongly recommended that the ministry of education or responsible authorities provide systematic and continuous professional development for teachers who teach migrant students throughout the country. this study focuses on migrant students from myanmar in samut sakhon province. future research should expand the findings from this study to migrant students from other nationalities who study in other provinces. the questionnaire developed in this study can be used to study the multicultural competence of teachers who teach students from diverse cultural backgrounds elesewhere in thailand.  references aboud, f. e. (2009). modifying children’s racial attitudes. in j. a. banks (ed.), the routledge international companion to multicultural education (pp. 199-209). routledge. alismail, h. a. (2016). multicultural education: teachers’ perceptions and preparation. journal of education and practice, 7(11), 139-146. arphattananon, t. (2012). education that leads to nowhere. international journal of multicultural education, 14(1), 1-15. association of american college and universities. (n.d.). intercultural knowledge and competence value rubric. https://www.aacu.org/value/rubrics/intercultural-knowledge banks, j. a. (2009). multicultural education: dimensions and paradigms. in j. a. banks (ed.), the routledge international companion to multicultural education (pp. 9-32). routledge. banks, j. a. (2008). an introduction to multicultural education (2nd ed.). pearson. banks, j. a. (1995). multicultural education: historical development, dimensions and practice. in j. a. banks, & c. a. m. banks (eds.), handbook of research on multicultural education (pp. 3-24). macmillan. battle, s. (2017). white teachers’ reactions to racial treatment of middle-school black boys. iafor journal of education, 5(2), 197-217. bennett, c. (2001). genres of research in multicultural education. review of educational research, 71(2), 171-218. byram, m., gribkova, b., & starkey, h. (2002). developing the intercultural dimension in language teaching: a practical introduction for teachers. language policy division, directorate of school, out-of-school and higher education, council of europe. fatini, a., & tirmizi, a. (2006). exploring and assessing intercultural competence. world learning governmentations. http://digitalcollections.sit.edu/worldlearning_governmentations/1 hall, a. (2011). migration and thailand: policy, perspectives and challenges. in j. w. huguet & a. chamratrithirong (eds.), thailand migration report 2011 (pp. 17-37). iom thailand. harkins, b. (2019). thailand migration report 2019. united nations thematic working group on migration in thailand. henry, g. b. (1986). cultural diversity awareness inventory. mainstreaming outreach project, hampton university. aseas 14(2) | 225 thithimadee arphattananon hladik, j. (2016). assessing multicultural competence of helping-profession students. multicultural perspectives, 18(1), 42-27. kennedy, m. (2016). how does professional development improve teaching? review of educational research, 86(4), 945-980. lander, v. (2014). initial teacher education: the practices of whiteness. in r. race & v. lander (eds.), advancing race and ethnicity in education (pp. 93-110). palgrave macmillan. leistyna, p. (2001). extending the possibilities of multicultural professional development in public schools. journal of curriculum and supervision, 16(4), 282-304. nawarat, n. (2018). multicultural education: critical perspectives and praxis in schooling (3rd ed.). wanida publishing. nieto, s. (2004). affirming diversity: the sociopolitical context of multicultural education (4th ed.). allyn and bacon. office of basic education commission. (2018). number of students enrolled in thai schools (by nationalities). https://portal.bopp-obec.info/obec59/governmentstat/report parkhouse, h., lu, c. y., & massaro, v. r. (2019). multicultural education professional development: a review of literature. review of educational research, 89(3), 416-458. reuters, & bangkok post. (2020, december 25). anti-myanmar hate speech flares over virus. bangkok post. https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/2040767/anti-myanmar-hate-speech-flares-overvirus sleeter, c. e., & grant, c. a. (2003). making choices for multicultural education: five approaches to race, class and gender. john wiley& sons. stephen, w. g., & stephen, c. w. (2004). intergroup relations in multicultural education programs. in j. a. banks & c. a. mcgee banks (eds.), handbook of research on multicultural education (2nd ed., pp. 782-798). jossey-bass. sunpuwan, m., & niyomilpa, s. (2012). perception and misperception: thai government opinions on refugees and migrants from myanmar. journal of population and social studies, 21(1), 47-58. united nations thematic working group on migration in thailand. (2019). thailand migration report 2019. ainergy studio. van der zee, k. i., & van oudenhoven, j. p. (2000). the multicultural personality questionnaire: a multidimensional instrument of multicultural effectiveness. european journal of personality, 14(4), 291-309. von feigenblatt, o. f., sutthichujit, v., shuib, m. s., keling, m. f., & ajis, m. n. (2010). weapons of mass assimilation: a critical analysis of the use of education in thailand. journal of asia pacific studies, 1(2), 292-311. yanyongkasemsuk, r. (2017). schooling of migrant children at educational institution in chonburi province. asia paridarsana, 38(1), 71-100. yongyuan, b., thanasetkorn, p., & chumchua, v. (2010). development of multicultural education model in primary school. ministry of culture, thailand. yuan, h. (2017). respond to diversity: graduate minority students’ perceptions on their learning experiences in an american university. iafor journal of education, 5(1), 33-45. about the author thithimadee arphattananon is an associate professor at the research institute for languages and cultures of asia, mahidol university, thailand. her research focuses on how education and instructional practices in schools can go beyond the recognition of cultural differences and achieve the goal of equality for students from diverse social and cultural backgrounds. until present, she has conducted research that examined multicultural education policies in thailand and the practices in schools that enrolled students from diverse cultures. ► contact: thithimadee.art@mahidol.ac.th 226 | aseas 14(2) teaching migrant students from myanmar acknowledgements the study was supported by the national research council of thailand (nrct). aseas 15(2) | 159 transnational intimacies and marriages: gender and social class complexities in two northeastern thai villages patacharin lapanuna* akhon kaen university, thailand *corresponding author: lapanun@gmail.com received: 11 february 2022 / accepted: 5 september 2022 / published: 23 december 2022 ► lapanun, p. (2022). transnational intimacies and marriages: gender and social class complexities in two northeastern thai villages. advances in southeast asian studies, 15(2), 159-175. studies of transnational intimacies and marriages thus far reveal how these relationships are stimulated and constrained by global and local circumstances, cultures, ideas, and practices relating to gender, marriage, and family as well as class and ethnicity. this paper provides insights into the other side of the global process by exploring how these intimate relations generate tensions and challenge cultural ideas and practices regarding gender and social class at the ‘local end’ of the transnational connections. drawing on three ethnographic studies in two northeastern thai villages, my research argues that these marital relationships present a form of women’s agency and bring new challenges to masculine identities and subjectivities that place local men in vulnerable positions. women with western partners also constitute a new class determined by both their consumption and their lifestyle – which set them apart from other villagers – and their increased ownership of both farm and residential land. thus, these women form a new class in both bourdieusian and marxist senses, although land in this case has less to do with production but rather wellbeing, security, and prosperity. in this light, transnational marriages/ intimacies induce the reconfiguring of gender and class in women’s natal villages. keywords: gender; social class; thailand; transnational intimacy, transnational marriage  introduction since the 1990s, transnational intimacies and marriages have become more common in many asian countries, yet intimate liaisons and marriages between people of different countries or ethnicities have a long history (andaya, 1998). the investigations in the contexts of southeast asia reveal the dynamic perspectives in conceptualizing these relationships, moving from structural explanations – explaining these intimacies in relation to international politics/ relations and trade, militarization, and transnational tourism (cohen, 2003; enloe, 2000) – toward agency approaches focusing on individual choices and agency (brennan, 2004; faier, 2009). this transformation also reflects the changing contexts in which such intimacies have been embedded (lapanun, current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 73 mailto:thithimadee.art%40mahidol.ac.th?subject= http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1300-9659 160 | aseas 15(2) transnational intimacies and marriages. 2018). interracial unions between people of french indochina and the netherlands indies revealed, for example, the connections between sexuality, gender, and race with rules and politics of colonialism, which influenced individuals and their family lives (stoler, 1992). in militarization contexts, sexual desires and interracial relations were stimulated through gender imaginations and fantasies regarding traditional roles of women as ideal wives and mothers who embraced traditional familial values (constable, 2011). others draw on the notion of orientalism that has inspired the desires of transnational encounters and facilitated transnational tourism (said, 1978). asia is often depicted as a reflection of western men’s sexual fantasies; this representation has drawn western male tourists to asia to consume the eroticized orient (dahles, 2009; manderson & jolly, 1997). recent works have explored how these intimate relationships are stimulated and constrained by the global and local circumstances, cultures and practices relating to gender, marriage and family; as well as how women and men from different parts of the world have materialized their desire to meet and maintain the relationships (constable, 2011; ishii, 2016; lapanun, 2019). some studies explore encounters in the contact zones – either physical sites like the transnational tourist towns of sosua in the dominican republic (brennan, 2004) and pattaya in thailand (garrick, 2005) or online spaces (pananakhonsab, 2016) – where the transnational relationships were initiated and developed. thus far, most studies on transnational intimacies discuss how these relationships are shaped by gender, class, local constraints and global opportunities and how women and men under these associations manage and negotiate their relationships (cabezas, 2009; cheng, 2010; faier, 2009; spanger, 2013). the present paper takes the opposite approach and discusses how transnational marriages between thai women and western men have affected and shaped gender power relations and class divisions in rural communities in thailand where these intimacies are embedded. the discussions contribute to insights on the complexity and reconfiguration of gender relations and class divisions at the local end of the transnational connections generated by transnational marriages. the paper draws on three research studies conducted during 2008-2018 in two isan (northeast thailand) villages that are home to large numbers of mia farang (thai wives of western men). in exploring gender complexity, i focus on experiences of both thai women and men who are either engaged in or are affected by transnational marriages as they live in the same transnational social field (basch et al., 2003). i examine the shifts in gender power relations through discussing the discourse of a desired marriage partner constructed in the villages and local men’s anxiety over being seen as unqualified marriage partners. it appears that gender dynamics are connected to the improved economic and social status of women in transnational marriages. thus, i also discuss class complexity through exploring the increased ownership of land among mia farang and how it has complicated class division in the village. this analysis adds another layer to the existing studies on transnational marriage and class that have conceptualized class in relation to consumption and lifestyle (lapanun, 2019; sunanta, 2013). overall, this paper highlights both gender and class complexities in relation to transnational marriages. aseas 15(2) | 161 patacharin lapanun gender, class, and transnational intimate relations literature on transnational intimacies/marriages addresses gender and class in two different ways: first, the influences of gender/class on these intimate relationships and, second, the dynamics of gender/class resulting from these intimacies. these two-way relationships emphasize strong connections between these intimate relations with gender and class, which are discussed at length below. the influences of gender/class on transnational intimate relationships studies in this group focus on how gender/class – apart from constraints at home, global opportunities and the restrictive state migration regimes – have shaped motivations, desires, and practices of women and men involved in or seeking transnational intimacies (constable, 2011; ishii, 2016; statham et al., 2021). the images of women in asia as being more traditional, embracing traditional familial values, and less modern than women in the west have motivated western men to look for asian spouses (constable, 2011; enloe, 2000). for asian women, the gender norms of dutiful daughter and good mother as well as poverty at home and opportunities abroad are among the key factors encouraging them to engage in transnational marriages (angeles & sunanta, 2009; bélanger et al., 2014; cheng, 2010). these diverse motivations combine and constitute the logics of desire, shaping marriage choices and practices of women and men under transnational marriages (lapanun, 2019). some researchers view these marriages in connection with the commodification of women’s reproductive labor in which the brides depart from less-developed countries to sustain social reproduction in middle-class families and uphold economic competitiveness in wealthier societies (lauser, 2008). in such contexts, women actively use different economic and socio-cultural situations across transnational space to redefine themselves and enhance opportunities for crafting their better future (ishii, 2016; lauser, 2008). in the binational unions between filipino women and french men, for example, gender and class have shaped the way migrant filipinas maintained transnational ties with their natal families. gender norms in the philippines compel women to support their parents and/or children; yet, this obligation is carried out in different ways. women of modest social classes whose children from previous relationships were left under the care of their natal families feel obliged to conform to this obligation, whereas women of privileged classes neither feel compelled nor do they ask to do so (fresnoza-flot, 2017). the ways in which gender and class become the key elements shaping the social location of women, which in turn, influences their practices as well as social relations and ties to their natal families are elaborated in other studies (for example butratana & trupp, 2021). class background is also an important factor in coping with the negative stereotype of mia farang1 living in the united states. through the processes of intraethnic othering, the class-privileged mia farang distance themselves from less-privileged 1 this negative stereotype drew on the associations between local women working in the sex and entertainment businesses and american servicemen that occurred during the vietnam war. such associations are reinforced by the routes some women take to enter transnational marriages, though the channels through which they make this transnational connection are quite varied. 162 | aseas 15(2) transnational intimacies and marriages. ones. in such contexts, women’s coping strategies present the intersection of class, gender, race, and ethnicity in deflecting the negative stereotypes, while at the same time perpetuating such stereotypes (suppatkul, 2020). in addition, the relationships between young thai women and older western men living in thailand reveal a form of negotiated exchanges through which women obtain significant material gains while experiencing pressure to adapt to their husbands’ cultural needs. these women feel distant from their natal families emotionally, socially, and culturally, as they have experienced imported assimilationism (statham, 2020). these studies show how gender, class, and race have shaped the lives of women and men under transnational intimate relationships. in the destination countries where women live with their partners and where their gender and class backgrounds pressured them into a subordinated position, women turn love and the intimate dimensions of their relationships into a source of power for negotiation in daily lives. filipina entertainer liaisons with u.s. soldiers in south korea, for example, drew on the rhetoric of love in negotiating the stereotype of victims of sex trafficking and in constructing a better future (cheng, 2010). also, filipina working in the hostess bars in rural japan constructed and nourished new identities and gender subjectivities through performing emotional labor – a practice of affection, caretaking, and careful attention to convince male customers that they care for them. whereas this practice is vulnerable to coercive labor conditions, it illuminates the agency exercised by these women (parreñas, 2011), which enables them to craft their lives and selves both in japan and the philippines (faier, 2009). female thai migrants working in the sex industry in denmark also performed multiple subject positions as sex workers, wives, and female migrants. these women enacted and negotiated love by destabilizing binary categories of sex work and love. love is articulated with emotions, money, gifts, care, and the notions of the good husband (spanger, 2013). the women’s experiences challenge the idea of clear boundaries between sex work and intimate relationships (cabezas, 2009; cohen, 1996). these studies highlight not only women’s agency, but also how women’s tactics and strategies in transnational contexts are predicated on ambivalent conditions. the studies on men/masculinities and transnational marriages also present how gender has shaped these relationships even though the factors influencing these intimacies are diverse. singaporean men who have married vietnamese women are portrayed as failures in local marriage markets (cheng, 2012). in negotiating such images, singaporean men emphasize their role as providers for both their own and their wife’s native family, which allows them to sustain their masculine subjectivity and validate their self-identity as real men (cheng et al., 2014). western men who settled with their thai wives in isan also perform hegemonic masculinity by conforming to the cultural ideals of breadwinning. drawing on their provider roles and neocolonial imaginary, these men position themselves as real white men, a place-bound identity within thailand that is subject to contradiction in the long term. financial and social obstacles limit their ability to return home, except for those with ties to transnational capital (maher & lafferty, 2014). another study reveals that retired western men married to thai wives enjoy their privilege by securing a good life in thailand. these men practice a form of new-found masculinity and sexuality with their self-gratification and perception of being morally superior to local people aseas 15(2) | 163 patacharin lapanun (husa et al., 2014; scuzzarello, 2020). scholars also suggest that men’s subjective experiences of masculinity are different from masculine identities, which are socially constructed, economically-politically facilitated, and culturally shared. the changing of subjective experiences of the individual (transient subjectivity) is not evidence of shifting masculine identities at a society level (thompson et al., 2016). while most studies explored experiences of men engaged in transnational intimacies, this paper focuses on local men who are not engaged in, but are involved with or affected by such relationships. the dynamics of gender/class resulting from transnational intimate relationships compared to the strand of literature discussed above, there is much less literature exploring the dynamics of gender/class by transnational intimacies even though studies on labor migration and its effects on gender alteration are substantial. exploring marriages of vietnamese women married to men from south korea, bélanger et al. (2014) reveal that such relationships led to the reconfiguration of gender power relations in women’s natal families and communities. remittances significantly increase women’s status and power in their natal households. though living overseas, these women are involved in family decision-making and control over the use of remittances. transnational marriages also enhanced women’s upward socio-economic mobility and bargaining power in local marriage markets. by contrast, these marriages resulted in negative changes for young men. yet, it could be argued that women’s strong commitment to their natal families manifested through regular remittances reproduce gender inequalities and women’s subordination. bélanger and her colleagues focus on women’s involvement in decision making and control over resources as a source of power in altering gender relations. this paper explores the shift of gender power relations through the discourse of a desired marriage partner that has legitimated women’s involvement in transnational marriage and led to masculine anxiety. changes in lifestyle, living conditions, and material possessions among women in transnational marriages and their natal families can be easily observed. yet, mia farang, especially those from poor rural backgrounds, are perceived as materialist women in the thai nationalist discourse of immoral materialism (sunanta, 2013) or as nouveaux riches considering their highly visible forms of consumption (lapanun, 2019). despite the moral criticism, these authors point out that economic advancement and the more comfortable life these women enjoy impose tensions onto the existing class divisions in women’s natal villages and convey a sense of unease for many in the urban, middle class. in this light, these studies reveal the dynamics of class in women’s native societies resulting from transnational intimacies, ideally or virtually. yet, class is conceptualized in relation to consumption practices and lifestyles, drawing on bourdieu’s notion of class distinction (bourdieu, 1984). this paper approaches class by focussing on rights of land ownership. in marxist analysis, class is defined in relation to ownership of means of production – land in this case (wright, 2005). thus, the paper discusses how the increased ownership of land among mia farang has complicated class divisions in the village, in addition to the distinctive lifestyles of mia farang that i argued in the earlier work (lapanun, 2019). 164 | aseas 15(2) transnational intimacies and marriages. research methods this paper draws on three studies conducted in two rural isan villages over a decade. in 2008-2009, i did extensive fieldwork in na dokmai village, udon thani province, that involved 86 informants: 25 men and 61 women (including 26 mia farang and 11 farang, foreign partners). this research explored experiences and negotiations of women under transnational marriage relations and it complicates conventional views about materiality and intimacy in these settings (lapanun, 2019). in 2018, i again gathered data in na dokmai for a project exploring migration and women’s land tenure rights and security, funded by the food and agriculture organization (fao). this study includes 50 respondents as representatives of their households, consisting of households of mia farang, international labor migrant households, domestic labor migrant households, and non-migrant households. in 2016-2017, i conducted research in na charoen village, khon kaen province to explore perceptions, experiences, and reactions of local men regarding the ongoing changes resulting from transnational marriages of village women. this study includes 25 informants, 13 males (age 20-63), and 12 females (age 23-57). all informants lived in the village during the fieldwork period; those who left the village for work and study were not included. the studies on transnational marriages and local men’s experiences in relation to such marriages employed the ethnographic approach of using interviews and observations as the major data collecting methods. interviews were open but semi-structured in a way that allowed informants to recount their experiences, perceptions, daily lives and social relations. the migration and women’s land rights research applied both surveys and interviews. the survey provides background information about the respondents’ households and such quantified data as land holding size, land inheritance system, remittances, and consumption. interviews were arranged to obtain in-depth information with some respondents and to make sense of data from the survey. each study applied data triangulation by crisscrossing the interviews with different key informants along with secondary sources of information. data analysis used the descriptive approach following the theoretical concepts applied in each study. in this paper, i focus on how transnational intimacies have complicated gender relations and class structure in women’s natal villages. research settings na dokmai and na cheroen are located in udon thani and khon kaen provinces – the top provinces in northeast thailand in terms of numbers of mia farang. na dokmai encompasses five muban2 with a population of 3,539 (920 households). na charoen includes two muban with a population of 1,378 (298 households). the female-to-male ratio in both villages is nearly equal. 63% of residents in na dokmai and 50% of those in na charoen completed four to six years of schooling depending on their age.3 these villages are relatively well-developed, though the infrastructure 2 muban is the smallest unit in the local administration system. 3 most women older than 45 had four years of schooling while those younger had six years or more. thailand applied a four-year compulsory education in the 1930s. this was raised to six years in 1977. aseas 15(2) | 165 patacharin lapanun and house conditions in na dokmai are better than those of na charoen. in both communities, there are large, new houses designed in an urban-style architecture, distinctive from other houses. such houses belong to women with farang husbands. most households in these two villages are engaged in farming; some carry out nonfarm activities. yet, many families rely on remittances from children engaged in wage work elsewhere or daughters living overseas with their husbands. international labor migration in na dokmai is quite common, whereas residents of na charoen engage in domestic migration. from my observations, na dokmai is considered better than na charoen in terms of economic status and consumption power. transnational marriages in both villages came to a peak in the early 2000s, but the facilitating agents of this phenomenon are different. in na dokmai, the key agents were local schoolteachers who provided match-making services and a village man who ran a recruiting business, taking women to work at bars in pattaya. in na charoen, interest in contacting western men was facilitated by a village woman and her german husband who ran a match-making service that had facilitated transnational marriages of some women. in addition to this facilitating mechanism, women in both villages also materialized their desire to enter into transnational marriages through internet connections, networks of relatives and friends who are in such relationships as well as through working in the entertainment and sex industry. challenging gender power relations: the discourse of desired marriage partner thus far, studies on the impacts of transnational marriage on gender relations explored women’s involvement in decision-making and control over resources in the family and community contexts (bélanger et al., 2014). taking a different approach, this section discusses how the process by which women materialized their desire for transnational marriage has challenged gender power relations in the women’s natal villages. in 2008-2009, there were 159 women in na dokmai married to men from 21 countries. of these men 81% were european and the rest were from the united states, australia, and asia. the majority of women had married local men before engaging in transnational unions; many of these women had children from that previous relationship. marriage and family crises often came up in the life stories of mia farang as a part of the complex set of factors motivating them to seek connections with foreign men. nisa (33),4 a divorced mother who lives with her danish partner answered my question, what kind of man she was looking for: i want a good man who is generous and warm-hearted, who is responsible for his family, accepts and supports my children and cares for my parents as well. my previous relationship [with a local man] taught me how life would be if the man doesn’t take his family seriously (also cited in: lapanun, 2019, p. 82). 4 the figure after a person’s name indicates her/his age at the time of the interviews. i first met nisa on 16 february 2008 at her house in na dokmai and interviewed her several times from february to may 2008. 166 | aseas 15(2) transnational intimacies and marriages. nisa’s answer is based on her experience with her thai ex-partner whom she lived with while working in bangkok. with a vocational education, nisa headed to bangkok and worked at a textile factory; there she met a mechanic, the father of her daughter who she had lived with for five years until she found out that he was seeing another woman. while she became pregnant, he did not take care of her, thus she left him and her job and returned to the village to live with her parents. nisa struggled and brought up her daughter without any support from her partner. he failed to fulfil the role of family provider, and his promiscuity was intolerable to her. nisa’s account of having a partner while being away from home and going through a difficult time in her marriage and eventually breaking up was shared by many village women5. some women blamed their marital crises on their husbands’ gambling and alcohol addictions. more often than not, the women have to raise their children without support from the father. these women’s experiences conveyed an image of irresponsible local men who do not take their family seriously. it is this image that the discourse of desired marriage partner has drawn and rooted in the minds of local people. this discourse highlights characteristics of a desirable marriage partner who is a reliable provider and good family man who allows a woman to fulfil filial obligations as a dutiful daughter through supporting their parents. such characteristics imply a dismissal of local men as unfit, therefore legitimating women’s engagement in transnational intimacy. the discourse of a desired marriage partner is a powerful one. it has motivated both women who directly experienced marriage crises and young single women to opt for marrying western partners. in addition, it has also stimulated women’s parents to manage and support their daughters to engage in transnational marriage. bua (58), a woman in na dokmai, is a case in point; she searched for a match-making agent and paid thb 120,000 (usd 4,000) to get nuan (34), her divorced daughter with a son, to marry a german man. nuan separated from her ex-husband who had been seeing another woman. the man wanted to maintain relationships with both women, but nuan could not accept this idea and ended the relationship. bua believed that if her daughter married a thai man, she would face family problems and suffer again. then, bua persuaded nuan to marry a farang man, hoping for a better future for her daughter and grandson. bua was successful, as nuan departed for germany in 2003 and now lives there with her husband. having a job with regular income, nuan managed for her son to join her in germany, and she also conformed with female filial obligations by sending remittances to her parents regularly. drawing on this discourse, some village women took the route of connecting with western men by engaging in the entertainment and sex industry, especially in transnational tourist destinations. while this practice is stigmatized, it allows women to materialize their desire to opt for transnational marriage and to manage their own lives, as i discussed in detail with examples in my book (lapanun, 2019). these women’s practices reveal their agency and highlight the dynamic of gender power relations, which at the same time put local men in a vulnerable position. 5 in the study, i interviewed 26 mia farang; more than half of them related accounts similar to that of nisa. aseas 15(2) | 167 patacharin lapanun masculine anxieties and practices local men’s experiences of anxiety from being seen as unsuitable marriage partners is another aspect of the dynamic of gender power relations in the villages. although these men did not engage in transnational marriages, they were affected by such relationships. in exploring masculinity, the cultural ideal of breadwinner/provider has served as the key concept. breadwinning is a practice that arises from specific gender relations and is enmeshed in historical processes and economic structures. it “serves as a powerful ideological device in forming individuals’ self-identity and in producing and reproducing gender behavior and activities in everyday life” (zuo, 2004, p. 814). the breadwinner concept emerged in industrial societies with a clear division of tasks between men and women regarding production and reproduction. this gender division of labor is common in isan agrarian and matrilocal society where men, after marriage, move into the house of their wife’s parents and take responsibility in household production, although women also engage in production activities while they take major roles in reproduction work (lapanun, 2019; mills, 1999). this practice represents men’s breadwinner role, though it is not the man alone who provides economic support to his family. breadwinning roles are central to the concept of hegemonic masculinity. hegemonic masculinity embodied the “most honored way of being a man, it required all other men to position themselves to it, and it ideologically legitimated the global subordination of women to men” (connell & messerschmidt, 2005, p. 832). hegemonic masculinity can be constructed in specific social contexts and may not correspond closely to the lives of any actual men, but this cultural ideal expresses desires and fantasies that men, in all societies, have negotiated and articulated in sustaining their masculine identity (connell, 1995). connell’s (1995) hegemonic masculinity concept is criticized for its eurocentric tendency, and its singularity, homogeneity, and inability to incorporate other hegemonic forms of masculinity. thus, some scholars reject this concept (osella & osella, 2006). others do not dismiss it but seek to elaborate and expand the analysis of hegemonic masculinity. yet, overall, this concept is extremely influential in studying men and masculinities (ford & lyons, 2012). my work reveals that it is the breadwinning ideal that village men have articulated and negotiated, yet it is not the sole factor contributing to women’s motivation to seek transnational marriage. in real life, breadwinning is complex and often intertwined with masculine culture practices that are reinforced through gender cultures and norms in thai society including such activities as drinking alcohol, getting together, visiting entertainment sites, gambling, and seeking out sexual experiences and prostitutes. kitiarsa’s study (2008) provides a good example of breadwinning roles entangled with the practices of masculine culture in the daily life of thai migrants in singapore. thai migrant workers – many of whom are isan villagers – engaged in sexual encounters as a strategic way of negotiating their intimate identity and subjectivity in their transient life away from home. such sexual acts are a major part of temporary life in a foreign land. my data from na dokmai show that many village men who left their wives and children behind at home could or would not fulfil their provider responsibility, leaving the wives to take on the household burden alone. experiencing stress 168 | aseas 15(2) transnational intimacies and marriages. and loneliness in overseas countries, some men spent their earnings for their own pleasure; others became involved in relationships with other women. situations like these tend to paint local men as irresponsible family heads. in addition, the narratives of women in the studied villages repeatedly reveal involvement of local men in gambling, drinking alcohol, and promiscuity. other studies also disclose such local behaviors (jongwiliawan & thompson, 2013; ten brummelhuis, 1994). these stories have reinforced the image of irresponsible local men who do not care for their family. drawing on my fieldwork in na charoen, i discuss local men’s anxieties and how they have articulated and negotiated the on-going changes resulting from the transnational marriages. during my fieldwork in na charoen, i often saw groups of young men getting together in front of a game shop that also sells drinks and snacks. these men were in their twenties and early thirties. in the afternoon of 9 may 2016, i joined the group of five young men: two daily wage laborers, a laid-off man, a high school student and dan (29), the owner of the game shop. the conversations reflected the experiences and stresses of these men in relation to opportunities and constraints in their lives. tom (25), a daily wage worker, recounted that he neither has a regular job nor earns enough to make ends meet. it is difficult to get a job with good pay for those like him and his friends who have only limited education and work experience. he had a job only when his employer needed more labor and he earned a minimum daily wage. however, tom and his friends met at dan’s shop almost every day; they chatted, drank and sometimes went to restaurants or cafés in town. tom said, “it’s good to meet and talk to friends who are in a similar situation [insecure/no job].” like tom, young village men often talked about their experiences of having no or insecure jobs and their practice of going out, seeking thrills and drinking, which they considered common as it is a part of masculine culture even though they were aware that such behavior would make them unqualified as potential marriage partners. these young men’s perceptions and experiences are different from those of older men in their fifties and sixties, who engaged in agriculture, or non-agricultural paid labor in the neighborhoods and urban centers to fulfil breadwinner responsibilities. realizing the differences between their generation and later ones, the older village men did not appreciate the young men’s financial irresponsibility, involvement in gambling, and propensity to overindulge in alcohol6. dan, the owner of the game shop who had also struggled to embrace his breadwinner role in the past, agreed that such young men images are common in na charoen. he admitted that he had engaged in masculine culture activities in his teenage life. dan is from a relatively well-to-do family and after marriage he sold his car and motorbike to invest in a game shop that has generated enough income to support his wife and son. dan said, my life changed totally; now i have a different lifestyle than most of young men in the village who enjoy going out, drinking, gambling, and philandering. they think that nothing is wrong, these are men’s things, they just enjoy life… finding a job is difficult; running a business is not easy and involves risk of failure; 6 the experiences and opinions of village men of different generations regarding transnational marriage are discussed in further detail elsewhere (lapanun & thompson, 2018b). aseas 15(2) | 169 patacharin lapanun farming is hard work. young men don’t want to think about these things as they make them feel stressed. i understand them; in the past i thought the same and i did enjoy going out with friends very much… i changed, if i hadn’t, i would not have a future; my wife and my son would have no future neither7. dan was aware of the breadwinner ideal and embraced it. he changed his lifestyle. other young men, like tom and other friends, often cited the limited economic opportunities as the root of their inability to make ends meet and embrace breadwinner masculinity, thereby limiting their possibilities of marriage. these men claimed that masculine culture practices provide them a space in coping with the anxieties stemming from limited economic opportunities, which make them seen as unsuitable partners. for these local men, it is hard to compete with the greater financial capital that farang men tend to be able to provide. interestingly, while men related their limited marriage possibilities to financial responsibility, women and their parents, like nisa, bua, and others in na charoen, considered practices like promiscuity, hard drinking, and gambling as criteria for not choosing a partner, apart from economic dimensions. indeed, local men are aware of the shift in gender power relations and their vulnerable position posed by transnational marriage. frequently, this awareness results in anxieties and profound pressure. however, most village men cannot change their practices. the disjuncture between anxiety – resulting from the emergence of mia farang as a new social class and its implications for gender power relations – and action shares with zuo’s suggestion that the alteration of breadwinner ideology does not necessarily lead to behavioral changes. zuo relates this disconnection to the contradictions between egalitarian beliefs and non-egalitarian behavior (zuo, 2004). in an earlier work, my colleague and i (lapanun & thompson, 2018a) also argue that the discontinuations between the awareness and practices as manifested in na charoen have evolved around the dissonance between breadwinner roles and the ‘praise-orientation’ status of men in matrilineal society, which is different from the ‘status-oriented’ masculinity in patrilineal society (bao, 1998). this disconnection underlines masculine practices and identities that isan men have had to articulate and negotiate. this on-going process contributes to the dynamic of gender power relations in isan villages. class complexity i argued elsewhere that mia farang make up a new ‘class’ determined by their consumption patterns (lapanun, 2019), drawing on pierre bourdieu’s notion of class distinction (bourdieu, 1984). here i further discuss the issue of class through exploring women’s land ownership. thus, this section conceptualizes class in both bourdieuian and marxist senses. in na dokmai and na charoen lifestyles and consumption patterns, symbolizing middle-class ideals are amply manifested in the living standards of mia farang 7 i met dan on 9 may 2016 at his house in na charoen and we had a few conversations during may june 2016. 170 | aseas 15(2) transnational intimacies and marriages. and their families. these women own new, urban-style houses; some regularly go to town for shopping and dining. they also travel to different tourist destinations in thailand and overseas. their houses are equipped with expensive furniture, a living room with a sofa set, and a modern kitchen with a dining-table set. however, such furniture and spaces were rarely used. one woman said that the dining table and modern kitchen were used by her husband during his stay. she usually cooked in an old kitchen outside the house. such enhanced material consumption is oftentimes perceived as conspicuous consumption. for bourdieu, consumption as the manifestation of taste is a cultural and symbolic marker for class; he noted: [taste] functions as a sort of social orientation, a ‘sense of one’s place’, guiding the occupants of a given place in social space towards the social positions adjusted to their properties, and towards practices or goods which befit the occupants of that position (bourdieu, 1984, p. 466). following bourdieu’s analysis, urban-style houses, luxurious furniture, and distinctive lifestyles serve to indicate the status of the women and their households and symbolize the distinction from other families. thus, such consumption constitutes an index of class mobility8 (lapanun, 2019). apart from examining class in relation to consumption, data from fao research reveals how transnational marriages enable women to acquire land and secure women’s rights over land. the data in table 1 present patterns of remittance use of three types of households: households with women under transnational marriage (tmh), households with international labor migrant (imh), and households with domestic labor migrant (dmh). for all households, remittances were an important source of daily expense. about half of tmh and imh were able to purchase land and only 15% of dmh earned enough to buy land. interestingly, the number of tmh invested in building/renovating houses is more than twice higher than those of imh and dmh. there are also such expenses as buying a car or fertilizer, and paying debt, which dmh could not afford due to their relatively lower earnings. tmh (11 households) imh (13 households) dmh (13 households) daily expense 11 (100%) 13 (100%) 13 (100%) buying farm land 6 (55%) 7 (53%) 2 (15%) building/renovating houses 8 (72%) 3 (23%) 4 (31%) buying a motorbike 10 (91%) 11 (85%) 2 (15%) buying a car 7 (63%) 8 (61%) 0 buying fertilizer 0 4 (31 %) 0 repaying debt 2 (18%) 4 (31 %) 0 8 for more in-depth analysis on this emerging new class and its consequence on the village hierarchical structure, please see lapanun (2019). table 1. patterns of remittance use aseas 15(2) | 171 patacharin lapanun despite the limited samples, the in-depth interviews elaborate the data in table 1. in na dokmai, it is common and the foremost choice for tmh to build/renovate houses; mia farang explained that they wanted to improve the living conditions of their natal families. some planned to resettle in the village after retirement; thus they invested in a house for their future. moreover, new, urban-style houses are a symbol of ‘being successful’ and an important marker in claiming social status and prestige. the interviews with women in na dokmai also elaborate the connections between transnational marriage and land acquisition; pang and amphai’s sister are cases in point. pang (53), a woman selling cooked foods and drinks who has lived with a belgian man, recounted that her partner invested in building a two-story house where they have lived and where pang has operated her food trade. pang acquired the piece of land where the house was built by her late partner, an english man who was relatively well-off. he bought three pieces of residential land in the village and a house where pang’s son (from a local father) and his family live. without support from her partners, it would not have been possible for pang to own land and houses as she was born to a poor, landless family. also, amphai (51), the sister of two women married to german husbands who resettled in germany, recounted that a few years after marriage, one of her sisters purchased a 10 rai of sugarcane field9; later she also bought a 10 rai of rubber plot where ampai’s and her family has lived. the sister and her german partner have visited na dokmai regularly, but they have not yet decided whether they will return and resettle in thailand after retirement. yet, in 2017 she bought an eight rai of paddy field. amphai and her family work on her sister’s land, and income is shared between the two sisters. with an uncertain future, amphai does not know why her sister kept buying land. due to the fact that the perception of land as capital ensuring future security and prosperity was prevalent in na dokmai, it is possible that amphai’s sister had bought land based on this idea. boon’s family presents a successful migrant household able to acquire land from remittances. boon (59), a village headman with two grown-up sons, recounted that his older son had worked in israel for five years (2005-2010). after paying for the migration contract, boon and his wife managed to buy a five rai of paddy field from his remittances with a portion of the parents’ savings. boon put his son’s name on the land document as a large portion of the money was from him. his younger, divorced son with two children has worked in korea for two years. he regularly sends money to care for his daughter and son left in the village under the care of boon and his wife. boon’s wife, who managed family resources, wanted to save remittances from her younger son for education of his children, instead of buying land as she planned to give a portion of her farmland to him. overseas labor migration, like transnational marriage, allows successful migrants to acquire land. yet, these two types of migration present different patterns of gender corresponding to land ownership. in transnational marriage cases, women’s names were put on the land documents; thus the women are the legal owners of the land. by law, foreigners are not allowed to own land in thailand. foreign men can purchase and build a house in cooperation with their spouses, but the property has to be in the women’s family name. this signifies legal rights of women over the property. but in 9 1 acre = 2.5 rai 172 | aseas 15(2) transnational intimacies and marriages. most labor migration cases, male names are on land documents, as men are the ones who earned income and dominated overseas migration, although women are also involved in these activities. if remittances are from women, their names are on the documents. having one’s name on land documents not only secures one’s legal rights over land, but it is also a source of social power for women that allows them to be relatively independent of their farang partners in case of failed marriages. one may ask why mia farangs are more advantaged than women (and men) engaged in international labor migration. to answer this question, it is important to note that, although labor migration and marriage migration are a part of the same global processes, the social relations that women as wives and workers encounter are different. migrant wives have been supported by their husbands, economically and socially, both during migration processes and while living in the destination countries. most mai farang received financial support from their husband for traveling, housing and living costs, apart from other benefits. by contrast, male and female labor migrants have to take care of all migration costs themselves. migrant workers often struggle with high costs of migration contracts, international travel and brokerage in some cases. such differences relate to the social relations that mia farang and migrant workers have been involved in, which have affected their lives and ability to own land. in any case, the complex ways in which types of migration, gender and land ownership are related reveal that transnational marriages allow women to own land and women’s land rights are secure. in a marxist sense, holding more land means increased ownership of means of production. however, land in this case has less to do with productive relations as in marxist analysis; rather it ensures future security, prosperity, and women’s status. for bourdieu, land as economic capital can be converted to cultural capital, and it influences consumption patterns. in this light, women with western husbands make up a new class in both a bourdieusian and a marxist sense as these women do not solely change their consumption patterns (lapanun, 2019), but also own more land – a means of production – although how their land is actually producing added value needs further investigation. the dynamics of land ownership and consumption contribute to the emergence of mia farang as a new social class. this development has imposed tensions on the existing class divisions in the village, causing the village elites to increasingly experience a decline or a perceived decline in their prominence and impact. conclusion the analysis of how transnational marriages/intimacies shape gender and class at the “local end” of these transnational connections demonstrates the dynamics of gender power relations and the emergence of a new class defined by both an increase in land ownership and distinct consumption patterns. in fact, the complexity of class resulting from transnational marriages, its influence on the existing class structure in rural villages and the alarm it instills in the urban, middle-class are documented (lapanun, 2019; sunanta, 2013). conceptualizing class in relation to land ownership rights, this paper shows that transnational marriages allow mia farang to acquire land, thereby generating even more tension within the village and in thai society in aseas 15(2) | 173 patacharin lapanun general. this on-going change is a part of a social transformation that thai people have to deal with. apart from class complexities, transnational marriages can be a powerful element in altering gender power relations in the women’s natal communities. yet, living in intimate proximity with a foreign partner can create psychological stress for women as they face pressure to accommodate their husbands’ cultural needs (statham, 2020). gender relations in the contexts of these unions become more complex when considering local men’s experiences. while local men are aware of the shift in gender power relations, their practices of masculine culture and their incompetence in embracing breadwinner roles reproduce patriarchal gender privilege. one may wonder whether these marriages are a liberating choice for mia farang. the answer may not be simple; we need to look at how gender, class, and race intersect and influence life choices and practices of women and men in specific contexts of their lives. as important as such intersections are, the phenomenon has to be explored in ways that do not lose sight of how women and men in these relationships make sense of their lives on their own terms. i have demonstrated that focusing on gender and class dynamics resulting from transnational marriages allows us to better understand subtle and profound changes that such relationships have on local communities apart from material improvements. since this paper draws on studies conducted before the covid pandemic, the questions of how the pandemic shaped these transnational relationships as well as gender and class complexities could be the focal point of future studies.  references andaya, b. w. 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(2021). globalising thailand through gendered ‘both-ways’ migration pathways with ‘the west’: cross-border connections between people, states, and places. journal of ethnic and migration studies, 46(8), 1513–1542. statham, p. (2020). ‘unintended transnationalism’: the challenging lives of thai women who partner western men. population, space and place, 27(5), e2407. stoler, a. (1992). sexual affronts and racial frontiers: european identities and the cultural politics of exclusion in colonial southeast asia. comparative study of society and history, 34(3), 514-551. sunanta, s. (2013). gendered nation and classed modernity: the perceptions of mia farang (foreigner’s wives) in thai society. in t. bunnell, d. parthasarathy, & e. c. thompson (eds.), cleavage, connection and conflict in rural, urban and contemporary asia (pp.183-199). springer asia series 3. suppatkul, p. (2020). intraethnic othering among thai wives of white american men: an intersectionality approach. journal of mekong societies, 16(3), 24-43. ten brummelhuis, h. (1994). merchant, courtier and diplomat: a history of the contacts between the netherlands and thailand. uitgeversmaatschappij de tijdstroom. thompson, e. c., kitiarsa, p., & smutkupt, s. (2016). from sex tourist to son-in-law: emergent masculinities and transient subjectivities of farang men in thailand. current anthropology, 57(1), 53-71. wright, e. o., (2005). social class. in g. ritzer (ed.), encyclopedia of social theory, (pp 717-724). sage publications. zuo, j. (2004). shifting the breadwinning boundary: the role of men’s breadwinner status and their gender ideologies. journal of family issues, 25(6), 881-832. about the author patcharin lapanun holds a phd in anthropology from vrije university amsterdam, and is with the faculty of humanities and social sciences, khon kaen university, thailand. she is the author of the book love, money and obligation: transnational marriage in a northeastern thai village (2019), national university of singapore press, which was selected as one of the five best books in the social sciences by the icas book prize 2019. her research interests include gender, transnationalism and migration, transnational marriage and intimacy, global care regime, intersectionality, multiculturalism and development studies. ► contact: lapanun@gmail.com acknowledgements this paper was supported by the center for research on plurality in the mekong region (cepr), faculty of humanities and social sciences, khon kaen university, thailand. disclosure the author declares no conflict of interest. mailto:lapanun@gmail.com 176 | aseas 15(2) aseas 15(1) | 23 the impact of conditional cash transfers on low-income individuals in indonesia agus heruanto hadnaa* & media wahyudi askara a universitas gadjah mada, indonesia *corresponding author: hadna@ugm.ac.id received: 23 june 2021 / accepted: 24 may 2022 / published: 30 june 2022 ► hadna, a. h., & askar, m. (2022). the impact of conditional cash transfers on low-income individuals in indonesia. advances in southeast asian studies, 15(1), 23-41. most governments claim that conditional cash transfer (cct) programs benefit poor people. this study aims to analyze the impact of conditional cash transfers on lowincome individuals in indonesia. this study used consumption expenditures as a poverty measure and found that the program keluarga harapan (pkh) has significant impact on an individual's consumption. however, households in the lowest wealth quantile were found to not take advantage of those benefits due to the current cct design. moreover, the heterogeneity of the cct can generate substantial inequality, as household incomes in the lowest quantile fall. therefore, governments should be more generous to households in the lowest wealth quantile, and carefully manage the program based on the needs of cct beneficiaries. keywords: conditional cash transfer; indonesia; inequality; lowest wealth quantile; program keluarga harapan  introduction in 2015, the state of social safety nets, a world bank study, concluded that the coverage of social safety net policies in developing countries represents only one-third of the total poorest quantile. as a result, many anti-poverty programs cannot lift people out of poverty and fail to result in more inclusive societies (dollar & kraay, 2002; filmer, 1999; honjo et al., 1997; squire, 1993). ravallion (2016) noted that anti-poverty policies in many countries, especially in developing countries, have been ineffective because program interventions are not directly targeted. one of the preferred programs for reducing poverty is the conditional cash transfer (cct). some studies found that cct improves the welfare of the poor. in indonesia, research conducted by tim nasional percepatan penanggulangan kemiskinan (tnp2k) in 2018 showed that the cct program keluarga harapan (pkh) positively impacted per capita expenditures (pce) in indonesia by 4.8% current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 67 mailto:hadna%40ugm.ac.id?subject= http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8716-1901 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3635-0961 24 | aseas 15(1) the impact of conditional cash transfers on low-income individuals in indonesia per month. the same indonesian program raised pce by 3% per month compared to the cct program in the philippines (pantawid pamilyang pilipino program; chaudhury et al., 2013; tutor, 2014). in nicaragua, the effect of the red de proteccion was quite significant at 18% (maluccio & flores, 2005). meanwhile, in colombia, pce grew by 15% through familias de accion (attanasio & mesnard, 2006). research on the impact of cct also yields positive conclusions on reducing inequality. a study conducted by soares et al. (2009) concluded that ccts helped governments in brazil, mexico, and chile reduce inequality in welfare from the mid1990s to the mid-2000s. they found ccts reduced inequality by 21% in brazil and mexico, and by 15% in chile (soares et al., 2009). lagarda et al. (2017) implied that institutional weaknesses caused inequality in latin american countries. comparing stunting between rich and poor groups of children in indonesia, rizal and van doorslaer (2019) found that pkh decreased the total rate of inequality among people with stunting. almost all research examining the effects of cct has revolved around issues in education, such as school enrolment (behrman et al., 2005; de janvry et al., 2006; schultz, 2004), class attendance (de janvry et al., 2006; hadna & kartika, 2017; world bank, 2015), inequality of educational opportunities (ham, 2014), student cognitive capacities (ponce & bedi, 2010), and academic outcomes (juan et al., 2012; schultz, 2004). studies on the effects of cct in improving health outcomes also exist. cct programs have positively affected infant health, for example, in mexico (fernald et al., 2008; millán et al., 2019), latin american countries (owusu-addo & cross, 2014), zimbabwe (robertson et al., 2013), and other sub-saharan countries (garoma et al., 2017). cct has also reduced chronic malnutrition (farrington & slater, 2006) and stunting prevalence in the philippines (kandpal et al., 2016) and indonesia (cahyadi et al., 2018). in terms of gender issues, cct affected neither intra-household gender relations nor the relative position of women within households in indonesia (arif et al., 2013) and latin america (franzoni & voorend, 2012; molyneux & thomson, 2011). cct also relates to social inclusion (rawlings, 2006) and equality between rural and urban populations (krishnakumar & juárez, 2012). despite those successes, there have been many criticisms of cct programs, such as the argument that they are paternalistic, and of the ways low-income families spend the transfers (ravallion, 2016). in addition, many fundamental questions remain unanswered about cct effectiveness, including long-term welfare impacts, synergies between program components, trade-offs between transfer sizes and beneficiaries, and the balance between short-term transfer objectives and long-term human development objectives (rawlings & rubio, 2005). to date, research has not examined the impact of ccts on the distribution of consumption expenditures among the poor (kamakura & mazzon, 2014), especially among each quantile of low-income groups targeted by cct. this issue needs to be investigated more deeply because studies show that cash transfers, including cct, do not automatically reduce poverty (golan et al., 2017). critics of cct claim that most poor households spend cash transfers on overconsumption, encouraging new, unsustainable lifestyles (kamakura & mazzon, 2014). consumption expenditure as a welfare indicator was mainly pioneered by the welfarist (utility) movement in economics, which measures the welfare of the people through their buying and selling aseas 15(1) | 25 agus heruanto hadna & media wahyudi askar behaviors on the market (ravallion, 2016). however, a working paper published by the national bureau of economic research in 2018 on pkh in indonesia could not decisively measure the extent to which the program affects consumption expenditures. in conclusion, the objective of the cct program remains to direct the spending of low-income families to be more focused on education and health, as a way to break the chain of family poverty (cahyadi et al., 2018). based on this research gap, this paper addresses the following question: what is the impact of pkh on the distribution of consumption expenditures among each quantile of lower-income groups? first, this question focuses on identifying and comparing the impact(s) of pkh on the distribution of consumption expenditures among the highest and lowest quantiles of poverty groups. this paper also discusses the weaknesses of pkh in indonesia, primarily in reducing inequality among low-income individuals. the pkh impact indicator of this study is consumption expenditure among the poor because it is easier to describe the welfare levels of those elements, and the results are more valid in terms of size. in addition, some experts have previously warned that poorly managed anti-poverty programs can disproportionately impact clients and lead to greater inequality (aghion et al., 1999; beaudoin, 2006; bergh & nilsson, 2014; ravallion, 1995, 1997, 2016). hence, research on poverty should look more closely at what happens among the poor when they partake in the program. in this case, however, conducting impact assessment studies by grouping the poor into quantiles with similar problems and characteristics can be problematic because the poor also have relatively sharp social and economic stratifications. furthermore, this research assumes that households in the lowest wealth quantile may have the most difficulty obtaining consumption expenditure than the next higher quantile. this inability occurs because the cct program does not fit all, nor do program materials and solutions that do not address the unique problems of the poorest groups. consequently, cct inadvertently maintains inequality of consumption expenditure among the poor. this study offers two significant contributions. first, substantially limited studies have sufficiently analyzed the impact of cct on each quantile of recipients. failure to capture this aspect may lead to bias as the models estimate only the conditional means of the responses. second, most studies have evaluated the impact of cct using ordinary least square, average treatment effect, or attempted to address endogeneity using the instrumental variable approach. while this paper follows the latter approach, we adopted an instrumental variable quantile regression (ivqr) approach because it is more suitable when capturing and comparing the consumption expenditure impacts of cct on different quantiles. this paper closely examines the efficacy of pkh in indonesia through a case study from 2019 in yogyakarta. the poverty data is alarming because this province is the most impoverished region on java island. in 2019, the data from the indonesian statistics bureau showed that the poverty rate was 10.62%. moreover, the gross regional domestic product (grdp) in yogyakarta has always ranged in the lowest category on java island. likewise, the level of inequality measured by the yogyakarta gini ratio in 2019 shows the highest inequality at 0.42 points. 26 | aseas 15(1) the impact of conditional cash transfers on low-income individuals in indonesia theoretical framework experts often compare the effectiveness of cct with unconditional cash transfer (uct) (baird et al., 2014; schubert & slater, 2006). they posit that it is easier to implement uct than cct (haushofer & shapiro, 2016): uct does not reduce recipients’ work motivation (banerjee et al., 2017). also, uct has a positive impact on the consumption behavior of beneficiaries, focusing on food consumption, health, and education rather than spending on luxury goods (haushofer & shapiro, 2016). uct was found to not increase cigarette and alcohol consumption (evans & popova, 2014). however, long-term evidence showed that the impact of cct on sustainable human development is more significant than that of uct (baird et al., 2014). past research showed that a dollar unit spent on cct is eight times more effective than a dollar unit spent on uct (de janvry et al., 2006). compared to in-kind assistance, both models of cash transfer are more effective. studies conclude that cash transfers provide more opportunities for parents to allocate money for their children's health and welfare (kamakura & mazzon, 2014 ; miller & neanidis, 2015). this study aims to examine cct because it is considered the most prominent poverty alleviation program. the basic idea of cct is that incentives given to households are to keep their children in school and diligently check their health (ravallion, 2016). however, this strict requirement is seen by critics as a form of paternalism because it ignores poor people’s ability to identify the real needs of their families. on the other hand, cct proponents believe that households remain poor because parents do not give children the right to obtain an adequate education. instead, they prioritize helping their families meet life’s necessities (ravallion, 2016). studies on the effectiveness of cct show a weakness in targeting or directed marketing. initially, targeting suppressed program leakage due to incorrectly focused target groups (ravallion, 2016). however, targeting has weaknesses, such as biases in determining target groups which is more profitable by local elites, and in determining poverty lines to choose the target groups. mirrlees (1971) highlighted these weaknesses regarding trade-offs between equity and efficiency of administrative capacity (ravallion, 2016). equity refers to the right of all poor people to fulfill their needs. in contrast, efficiency refers to the government strategy that prioritizes target groups due to limited resources. the paternalistic nature of cct can be studied by comparing its impact across the distribution of consumption expenditures. the comparisons indicate how poor individuals can use the incentives to increase their consumption expenditures. the assumption is that spending on the education and health sectors is the most effective. however, there may also be more effective consumption expenditures outside those sectors. this raises the question of to what extent the poor use cct incentives. the targeting issue is also valuable to study when comparing cct use by different quantiles. the analysis technique measures the correlation of cct use with consumption expenditure per quantile. the assumption is that the poorest low-income individuals should benefit the same as or more than those in the higher quantiles. ravallion (2016) explicitly encourages the avoidance of paternalism in poverty alleviation programs. instead, programs must be straightforward about various low-income people’s characteristics and understand the data limitations (one size does not fit all). aseas 15(1) | 27 agus heruanto hadna & media wahyudi askar several approaches to measuring the level of people’s prosperity include welfare, utilities, abilities, and opportunities. the welfare approach essentially measures people’s interests through their ability to buy or sell goods in the market. this approach assesses their perceptions of several well-being indicators, such as fulfilling good nutrition. the question of the people's perceptions of fulfilling good nutrition are what can be achieved, what benefits them, and whatever people maximize in their own choices (ravallion, 2016; slesnick, 1996; stutzer & frey, 2004). the utility approach considers people as rational beings who seek to maximize profits for themselves (ravallion, 2016). according to this approach, people will only choose to address those needs that fit their budgets and uses. sen (1981; 1985) proposed the capabilities approach, considering the varying capacities of people to access available resources. rather than commodities, he emphasized the minimum standard of living, such as life expectancy, nutrition, education, and health. the opportunity approach adds that unequal outcomes are not problems, as long as equal efforts are considered. efforts are only possible if the circumstances support them (ravallion, 2016). this study uses a welfare approach, which measures welfare with consumption expenditure by looking at income and consumption-based practices. the consumption-based method has been widely used, especially in developing countries (cutler & katz, 1992; ravallion, 1992; sen, 1981; slesnick, 1996; stutzer & frey, 2004). theoretically, consumption expenditure is assumed to be a suitable poverty measure because it captures individual living standards via the consumption of goods and services. in addition, some researchers reported a more significant correlation between consumption expenditures and subjective well-being than income and subjective well-being (meyer & sullivan, 2011). consumption expenditures are also more accurate than income when examining the living standards of the poor in the lowest wealth quantile (meyer & sullivan, 2011). this consideration is due to the nature of consumption expenditure questions, which appear to be less sensitive for the poor than income questions. moreover, developing countries rely on the informal sector, often attempting to under-report income as tax avoidance (schneider & enste, 2000). finally, money is not the salary for people who depend primarily on agriculture; instead, agricultural goods are the salary, though turning these goods into cash can be problematic (coudouel et al., 2013). regarding aggregation, measuring welfare should be at the individual level. however, numerous studies attempt to explain how every individual within a household is likely to have different conditions (duflo, 2003; quisumbing et al., 1995). therefore, the actual consumption of the individual is a better indicator of living standards, than the consumption of households, mainly because poor individuals can be part of wealthy households and vice versa (falkingham & namazie, 2002). in addition, household-based poverty measures may fail to capture individual living standards when financial shocks hit. for instance, sickness and job displacement may lead to substantial reductions in the well-being of individuals, even when they do not bring reductions in household welfare. when it comes to methodological issues, the endogeneity of the cct must obtain robust estimates. as discussed in zuluaga et al. (2020), the conventional econometrics model to estimate the impact of cct cannot set aside issues of selectivity, endogeneity, and optimization. 28 | aseas 15(1) the impact of conditional cash transfers on low-income individuals in indonesia where 𝐶𝑇� is assumed to be exogenous, refers to a vector of instrumental variable that is related to 𝐶𝑇� , and uncorrelated to poverty, 𝑙𝑛𝑌� . furthermore, 𝑋� 𝛽 refers to control variables, and 𝜀 is the error term. this study identifies the impact of poverty on different quantiles of our variable interest to estimate the effect of pkh on poverty level. as in the least square regression, conventional techniques are no longer helpful. they only allow us to calculate the link between our explanatory variables and the conditional means of the dependent variable poverty. on the other hand, quantile regression is an alternative approach that allows us to identify the link between explanatory variables and specific quantiles of dependent variables. in this study, we can estimate the impact(s) of pkh on particular groups of individuals, such as the lowest or highest consumption expenditure groups. as explained by koenker and hallock (2001), conventional ordinary least square techniques allow us to estimate ∝, which refers to the impact of variables x on the conditional mean of y. a quantile regression offers an estimation of beta by calculating ∝(τ) for any quantile (τ)ε, (0,1), which reflects the impact of variables x on certain quantiles the distribution of y. however, it is essential to note that the ivqr should be chosen when endogeneity is the issue. as hansen (2005) described, ivqr can obtain robust estimates by addressing endogeneity issues. it provides an estimate for any quantiles of the distribution of a dependent variable. thus, this research goes one step further by calculating an alternative approach, namely the ivqte. this technique can obtain robust estimates under endogeneity and, at the same time, provide an estimation of quantile treatment effect without functional assumptions. data and methodology data the sources for this study were derived from research on poverty in yogyakarta conducted by the center for population and policy studies (cpps) at universitas gadjah mada in 2019. the dataset was collected by individuals who assessed respondent characteristics, financial activities, education, employment, and regional infrastructure. this study used this dataset to cover the most comprehensive pkh program, providing specific trends at the indonesian regional level. there were 3,933 responses used in the research that focused only on low-income individuals. nine sub-districts out of four districts selected as samples were chosen from the local government's policy for yogyakarta, which determined the sub-districts as the poorest in yogyakarta. the nine sub-districts include rural areas, namely girisubo, playen, semin, nglipar, samigaluh, girimulyo, lendah, pajangan, and tempel. these areas have these characteristics in common: populations that rely on the agricultural sector, low education levels, geographic constraints, inadequate infrastructure, and many residents who became labor migrants. aseas 15(1) | 29 agus heruanto hadna & media wahyudi askar the selection of the low-income individuals as samples in each sub-district was based on the integrated database (basis data terpadu [bdt]) issued by the indonesian ministry of social affairs. the use of the bdt as a sampling frame guarantees that the entire population in the bdt consisted of low-income individuals. the number of samples per sub-district was 450 with random techniques, and the total number of respondents obtained from random results was 4,050. this amount is approximately 20% of the total of low-income individuals that met the criteria as pkh recipients in the nine sub-districts. after conducting interviews according to a structured questionnaire, the total number of interviewed respondents was 3,933. the number of respondents decreased because some had moved residences, provided incorrect target group data, or died. in addition, some of the low-income people were already in more prosperous categories. as a result, almost 55% of the successfully interviewed respondents were pkh recipients, while the rest were still waiting for pkh assistance. fifty-five percent of the group received the treatment for this category; the remaining 45% was the control group. this research used a set of variables that informed the socioeconomic inequality of low-income individuals. the first variables included head of the household, age, gender (milazzo & van de walle, 2015; ravallion, 2016; rosenhouse, 1994), and marital status (ravallion, 2016). the second group of variables was the capacity of the household head, namely, the level of education (abuya et al., 2011; beal et al., 2018). others were the number of dependent family members (geberselassie et al., 2018; mahmudiono et al., 2017; olinto et al., 2013; ravallion, 2016) and the employment of the household head (handayani et al., 2017). finally, the third group of variables was the behavior, namely the effort (gans, 1995), of the household head and ownership of health insurance. methodology this study investigates the relationship between pkh on poverty on specific, low-income individual quantiles, which allows us to identify the impact of pkh among the lowest quintile of poverty groups compared to the highest using instrumental variable quintile treatment effect. the model was based on the conventional potential (latent) framework. as hansen and chernozhukov (2005) discussed, a possible outcomes estimate influenced by variation of observation units is calculated against potential treatment called t ε, (0,1) and represented as y�. the potential outcomes of y� are latent, which reflects the chosen treatment t. thus, the estimated values of potential outcomes for every observational unit reflect only the impact of possible treatment. y = y� this research estimates the potential outcome of specific quantiles called τ-th under potential treatment t, conditional on some observed characteristics x, and can be described as follows: 𝑞(𝑡, 𝑋, 𝜏) thus, the effect of quantile treatment is as follows: 𝑞(1, 𝑋, 𝜏) − 𝑞(0, 𝑋, 𝜏) 30 | aseas 15(1) the impact of conditional cash transfers on low-income individuals in indonesia this formula represents the difference in the impact of treatment on each quantile of potential outcomes. as the treatment in this study is potentially endogenous, an iv identification strategy is employed to obtain robust estimates. instrumental variable z is to define potential treatment called 𝑇z under which the model can estimate the potential outcomes via the nonlinear conditional moment restrictions of quantile regression: 𝑃(𝑌 ≤ 𝑞(𝑡, 𝑋, 𝜏) ∥ 𝑋, 𝑍 ∥= 𝜏 z reflects an instrument that is related to t but uncorrelated to potential outcomes y. this study estimates exogenous variations in cct programs in indonesia. z refers to an instrument that is rural municipality officials. arguably, rural municipalities’ officials, who place higher engagement levels on their citizens, may increase the chances of individuals receiving cash under conditional transfer programs. thus, the variable correlates with ccts but is mainly beyond the respondents’ control and is exogenous to their activities and economic outcomes. results table 1 describes the variables included in the model specification and reports the summary statistics. the data suggest that approximately 55% of low-income respondents received cct programs. some 43% of the respondents were male, and 17% were single. most respondents had small families of less than three members. only 10% of the respondents were gainfully employed. the education level of the sample was relatively low, with most respondents being elementary school graduates and only 1% being university graduates. however, the ownership of healthcare accounts was very high in the sample, with most respondents claiming healthcare program membership. the ivqtr allowed us to obtain information on how the effects of pkh differed at various quantiles of the consumption expenditure distribution (see table 2). the findings suggest that the treatment group tended to have a higher consumption expenditure than the control group, meaning a positive effect at every percentile of the distribution—the coefficient increased from the lowest to the highest quantile of the distribution regarding consumption expenditure. at the bottom quantile of consumption expenditure, the size of the effect was the smallest (1.596). it is not significant at the 1% level, indicating that pkh did not impact wealthier people. the impact for the highest quantile doubled the impact corresponding to the lowest quantiles. in other words, these results indicated that the poor with lower-level consumption expenditure were likely to obtain fewer benefits from the pkh initiatives. as a result, the poorest people have less chance of improving their quality of life than the wealthiest. furthermore, the results indicated that, despite being insignificant at the 1% level, individuals categorized as having paid work, high levels of education (university), and access to healthcare are likely to have high consumption expenditures. aseas 15(1) | 31 agus heruanto hadna & media wahyudi askar variable obs mean std. dev. min max poverty 3933 10.32 9.94 0 100 cct 3933 0.55 0.50 0 1 effort 3933 0.36 0.48 0 1 age 3933 52.44 79.24 17 98 gender 3933 0.43 0.49 0 1 family members 3933 2.16 1.30 1 10 marital status 3933 0.17 0.91 0 1 paid work 3933 0.10 0.30 0 1 unemployed 3933 0.60 0.49 0 1 diffable 3933 0.09 0.28 0 1 retired 3933 0.01 0.09 0 1 student 3933 0.00 0.04 0 1 housekeeping 3933 0.05 0.22 0 1 no school 3933 0.29 0.46 0 1 elementary school 3933 0.34 0.47 0 1 junior high school 3933 0.18 0.39 0 1 senior high school 3933 0.17 0.38 0 1 university 3933 0.01 0.09 0 1 healthcare 3933 0.97 0.18 0 1 variables q10 q20 q30 q40 q50 q60 q70 q80 q90 (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) cct 1.596 2.245* 2.839** 2.713** 2.761** 2.832** 3.297** 4.332** 5.951 (1.309) (1.255) (1.130) (1.143) (1.254) (1.260) (1.636) (2.149) (4.608) effort -0.255 0.193 0.651 1.237 1.612 2.165 2.336 3.039 4.894 (1.267) (1.284) (1.318) (1.341) (1.585) (1.516) (1.876) (2.732) (3.492) age -0.000 -0.000 -0.000 -0.000 -0.000 -0.000** -0.00** -0.000 -0.000 (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) gender -0.042 -0.368 -0.324 -0.753 -0.883 -0.793 -0.842 -0.311 -0.790 (1.159) (1.136) (1.164) (1.211) (1.288) (1.354) (1.772) (2.368) (3.766) family members 0.855 1.031 1.107 1.285* 1.401** 1.496*** 1.522* 1.892 2.556 (0.698) (0.635) (0.775) (0.757) (0.712) (0.520) (0.860) (1.151) (1.565) marital status -0.236 -0.293 -0.518 -0.722 -0.963 -1.243* -1.542* -1.844* -2.874* (0.692) (0.572) (0.571) (0.561) (0.651) (0.639) (0.852) (1.071) (1.516) paid work -1.928 -2.281 -2.197 -1.698 -1.194 -1.089 -1.255 -1.458 0.442 (2.687) (2.343) (2.365) (2.629) (2.825) (3.026) (3.749) (4.743) (7.562) unemployed -0.401 -0.158 0.144 0.354 0.536 0.768 0.565 0.599 2.559 (2.169) (1.864) (1.819) (2.036) (2.112) (2.462) (3.084) (4.125) (4.827) diffable -2.804 -2.660 -2.670 -2.915 -2.625 -2.784 -3.172 -3.742 -3.377 (2.254) (1.881) (1.808) (1.966) (2.164) (2.420) (3.019) (4.262) (4.548) table 1. descriptive statistics. (compilation by the authors) 32 | aseas 15(1) the impact of conditional cash transfers on low-income individuals in indonesia retired -2.826 -2.940 -3.441 -4.302 -3.907 -4.227 -5.236 -6.986 -7.787 (4.174) (4.294) (3.332) (3.922) (5.206) (4.703) (5.177) (5.630) (8.318) student 10.615** 8.692** 7.594* 6.638 5.434 4.127 1.705 -2.858 5.554 (4.362) (3.802) (3.984) (4.125) (4.159) (4.495) (5.808) (6.080) (11.916) housekeeping 2.999 3.055 3.326 3.426 3.878 4.826 5.116 2.881 -0.122 (11.514) (14.068) (13.871) (13.687) (21.956) (19.000) (12.526) (14.966) (11.774) elementary school -0.145 -0.248 -0.478 -0.608 -0.597 -0.446 -0.734 -1.065 -0.430 (1.356) (1.396) (1.448) (1.446) (1.477) (1.620) (2.007) (2.532) (3.761) junior high school 0.206 0.549 0.430 0.332 0.704 0.738 0.538 0.227 -0.065 (1.572) (1.660) (1.695) (1.639) (1.653) (1.703) (2.299) (2.728) (4.720) senior high school 1.402 1.364 1.151 1.153 1.528 1.793 2.350 4.408 5.686 (2.100) (2.044) (2.164) (2.296) (2.414) (2.444) (3.563) (5.447) (11.377) university 5.077 3.801 2.568 1.475 -0.088 2.134 1.105 -0.026 -2.842 (16.656) (13.355) (13.619) (18.399) (17.048) (42.215) (51.145) (55.378) (44.248) healthcare 1.202 1.577 2.131 2.560 2.572 2.364 2.582 3.109 4.326 (1.749) (1.533) (1.553) (1.675) (1.782) (2.184) (2.669) (3.072) (5.463) observations 3924 3924 3924 3924 3924 3924 3924 3924 3924 notes: a constant is included in regressions but not reported. figures in parentheses are robust standard errors; *, ** and *** represent statistical significance at 10%, 5%, and 1%, respectively. table 3 reports ivqte for the distribution of selected consumption expenditures, further identifying the effects of pkh on the consumption expenditures share. even though the program’s impact on main food is not statistically significant for all the quantiles of main food expenditure, the results suggested that the transfer was spent mainly on vegetables, except for the first (lowest) quantile. the program did not significantly affect the first (lowest) quantile of vegetable expenditure. however, the results turned out to be significant for the second through the ninth quantiles, suggesting that pkh increased the distribution of spending on vegetables. the initial impact on vegetables ranged from 2.857% to 9.897% for the highest quantiles. however, the effects are not statistically significant on fruit expenditures. although the data suggested an insignificant relationship between pkh and expenditures on vegetables and fruits, those in the lowest decile group did not necessarily have low consumption of vegetables or fruit. overall, these group can provide at least two meals a day. however, they usually did not spend money on vegetables and fruits. thus, the availability of vegetables and fruits, both self-grown and wild vegetables, is still enough to be consumed. nonetheless, it is essential to note that the land-use change tendency, which reduces agriculture and forest areas, has threatened the food supplies of the most impoverished communities. next, table 3 shows that the program’s impact on education expenditure varied. while the effect is not significant for the first to the third quantiles, the program substantially increased education expenditure from the fourth quantile. the program statistically increased education expenditure from 0.682 to 2.094 percentage points for the second-highest quantile. again, many of the impacts were quite large and table 2. instrumental variable quintile treatment effect on the distribution of total consumption expenditure. (compilation by the authors) aseas 15(1) | 33 agus heruanto hadna & media wahyudi askar significant at the mean quantiles, suggesting that the program had more influence on individuals at the mean distribution in terms of education spending. variable dependent variables q10 q20 q30 q40 q50 q60 q70 q80 q90 (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) main food cct 0.572 0.463 0.494 0.787 1.136 1.384 1.481 0.746 0.297 (0.739) (0.990) (0.521) (0.629) (0.919) (1.013) (1.312) (1.106) (1.247) fruits cct 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 -0.000 1.153 1.750 2.544* (0.005) (0.011) (0.016) (0.021) (0.028) (0.100) (1.092) (1.071) (1.453) vegetables cct 2.204 2.857* 3.577*** 3.879*** 4.303** 5.150*** 5.611*** 7.562*** 9.897*** (1.378) (1.490) (1.385) (1.383) (1.996) (1.709) (1.946) (2.150) (3.775) cigarettes cct 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 -0.769 -1.419 -3.229 -5.894 -9.617* (0.022) (0.039) (0.056) (0.074) (0.763) (1.153) (2.649) (4.092) (5.177) education cct 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.682* 1.012** 1.303** 1.614* 2.094* 2.624* (0.058) (0.080) (0.373) (0.409) (0.493) (0.664) (0.948) (1.131) (1.832) health cct 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 -0.000 -0.000 -0.079 -0.543 -3.138 (0.012) (0.018) (0.025) (0.033) (0.162) (0.188) (0.234) (0.993) (4.048) housing cct -0.077 -0.117 -0.178 -0.312 -0.540 -0.666 -0.832 -0.639 -0.791 (0.168) (0.204) (0.257) (0.328) (0.382) (0.483) (0.634) (0.902) (1.013) social activities cct 0.000 0.042 0.063 0.133 0.250 0.098 0.373 0.290 -0.073 (0.020) (0.253) (0.344) (0.419) (0.648) (0.825) (1.096) (0.994) (1.619) communication cct 0.000 1.285 2.309* 3.028** 3.514*** 4.243*** 6.003*** 7.325*** 11.539*** (0.083) (1.334) (1.260) (1.266) (1.301) (1.628) (1.935) (2.207) (4.316) religion cct 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.762* (0.002) (0.004) (0.007) (0.009) (0.013) (0.016) (0.022) (0.082) (0.456) 34 | aseas 15(1) the impact of conditional cash transfers on low-income individuals in indonesia transportation cct 0.000 0.002 1.155 1.386 1.782 2.379* 2.947 5.199 6.909** (0.047) (0.486) (1.035) (0.970) (1.256) (1.406) (1.967) (3.191) (3.053) total expenditure cct 1.535 2.055 2.435* 2.399* 2.271 2.308 2.291 2.128 3.182 (1.741) (1.583) (1.420) (1.412) (1.468) (1.445) (1.636) (2.346) (4.327) notes: a constant is included in regressions but not reported. figures in parentheses are robust standard errors; *, ** and *** represent statistical significance at 10%, 5%, and 1%, respectively. all regression includes controls for effort, age, gender, family members, marital status, type of jobs, education, and health care. the data from the indonesian statistics bureau in 2019 showed that only 14% of household members have not gone to school. this statistic indicates that the burden of low-income people for education expenditures, especially those in the lowest quantile, is minimal. the interpretation of the small percentage of spending on education is that the poorest people, namely those in the lowest quantile, do not have adequate education for their children. despite government efforts to eliminate primary and secondary education costs, some additional charges attached to children’s education, such as school uniforms, transportation, and learning aids, are still not included in the assistance, preventing the poorest group from accessing education. even though health is a priority for the intervention of pkh in indonesia, the program impacts on health expenditure were not statistically significant for all quantiles. the interpretation of the small percentage of health expenditure is that the lowest quantile had inadequate access to a health facility for their children or their pregnant wives. in addition, this study explored the impacts of pkh on the distribution of communication expenditure. interestingly, the results significantly affected each quantile, except the first and the second-lowest quantile. the program’s impact on communication expenditure was statistically significant and ranged from about 2.309 percentage points for the third quantiles to 11.539 percentage points for the highest quantile. in 2018, the data from the indonesian statistics bureau showed that the number of internet users in rural areas was 55.45% of the total population. this number was not significantly different from the people who do not own and use cell phones. here non-internet users were the most disadvantaged group with little or no spending on communication. regarding the program’s impact on transportation expenditure, the effect varied and was only significant for the sixth and the highest quantiles. it is also important to note that the program impacted selected expenditures such as cigarettes, housing, social activities, and religion; these were not statistically significant. overall, this study showed that the pkh program increased consumption expenditure. however, there were heterogeneous impacts of the pkh program. the results indicated that the program’s impact was not significant for the poor at the lowest level of expenditures. table 3. instrumental variable quintile treatment effect on the distribution of selected consumption expenditure. (compilation by the authors) aseas 15(1) | 35 agus heruanto hadna & media wahyudi askar discussion the findings of this study make two main contributions to the current literature. first, this study implies re-evaluating methods of identifying the ‘poor.’ second, it suggests the existing poverty lines are ill-suited, as they force us to segregate the population into poor and non-poor groups. currently, the essential criteria for determining eligibility and registering beneficiaries rely on the regional poverty line and other additional measures (e.g., elderly, number of children, or a combination of categories). then, the cct program will be provided with the same amount to beneficiaries regardless of everyone’s levels of wealth. this approach may hinder cct’s targeting efficiency by delivering the money to the poor households in the highest quantile of total wealth. this problem is related to the determination of poverty lines (ravallion, 2016), which is often an obstacle in measuring poverty because it carries significant implications for the beneficiary group. hence, there needs to be a better targeting process in cct distribution to avoid inequality of cct beneficiaries if the program’s criteria and characteristics depend on wealth levels among beneficiaries. extra effort is needed, especially in this setting, by grouping the poor by wealth. by grouping the recipients (e.g., the lowest, middle, and highest quantiles), we can assign the different level priorities of the program, from the poorest to the wealthiest groups. second, this research also implies the need to make cct programs more agile and based on the needs for different types and forms of poverty. for example, an impoverished household with low levels of education, which includes women and elderly, and has little money left should receive more cash to improve their survival strategy. furthermore, the data showed that as many as 43.6% of the heads of these low-income households are elementary school graduates. it is also important to note that yogyakarta had its highest percentage of elderly in indonesia in 2018 (18.76%). the number of poor people in yogyakarta over 64 years old (elderly) is 16%. this group can no longer generate substantial income and needs extra cash to fulfill its needs. thus, households in the lowest wealth quantile may need to receive payments quickly. education investments can be the second priority behind eating well for this group. as shown above, the cct does not improve the share of expenditure on education among impoverished households. besides, households in the lowest wealth quantile may never expect business to change their lives. those in the top quantile may quickly expand their business and earn money, but households at the bottom of the quantile choose not to do so. this research suggests that cct beneficiaries should not all receive the same amounts of cash. low-income individuals in the highest wealth quantiles may receive less money than those in the lowest. other incentives, such as training vouchers, education vouchers, and transportation incentives may be more suitable for these groups. although they still need some support to avoid further income decline, they are no longer vulnerable to food insecurity. this finding is related to the view of ravallion (2016) that the cct program design is highly paternalistic. this outlook places the poor as a cct object because it cannot understand their needs. the cct should provide an excellent opportunity for the poor to determine their own family’s needs. 36 | aseas 15(1) the impact of conditional cash transfers on low-income individuals in indonesia this research finding also suggested that we need a new strategy for assisting the poor. assistance programs for the poorest beneficiaries may focus on improving access to health, education, sanitation, housing facilities, and abilities to optimize financial management. in terms of food security, it is more appropriate to develop programs that are not providing cash and emergency food aid. assistance for the poorest beneficiaries is an excellent program because the poorest group spends a large share of their income on food. the data showed that the consumption of the food expenditure per capita of the lowest 10% of the population was the lowest on average (idr 210,000). however, it was the highest in terms of the proportion of expenditures on food (65.4 %). also, the value of per capita non-food spending in the lowest quantile was only idr 111,000 or approximately 34.6%, compared to the non-food expenditure per capita in the highest quantile, which was idr 3,350,000 or approximately 76.3%. furthermore, evaluating the program’s effectiveness for the poorest beneficiaries should also be carried out in shorter periods of three to six months, given their limited abilities to optimize their minimal resources. on the other hand, for cct beneficiaries in the highest wealth quantile, the cct mentoring scheme may raise productivity and employment capacity. moreover, these cct beneficiaries can use technology to apply long-term outcome evaluation and mentoring activities. third, this research showed an interesting trend in consumption patterns. the target group of the cct program is comprised of vulnerable communities, with the hope of a substantial impact on school enrollment. indeed, this study showed an increase in the share of education. still, some extra spending also increased (e.g., communication and transportation), especially among households in the highest wealth quantile. this study indicated that the probability of wasting money from the cct program is relatively higher among the upper poor quantile. this data demonstrated that cct is likely to contribute to increased inequality among low-income individuals. thus, it is essential to note that the cct should not pursue the number of cct beneficiaries, but rather strengthen assistance to the extremely poor groups, and at the same time, increase the amount of funding. a smaller and more precise targeting scheme can potentially increase the effectiveness of cct. together, the evidence presented in this study suggests the significance of cct programs similar to those described in previous studies (attanasio & mesnard, 2006; lagarda et al., 2017; maluccio & flores, 2005; rizal & van doorslaer, 2019). however, this study shines a new light on these debates by highlighting the different impacts among cct beneficiaries. for example, poor people in the lowest wealth quantile may receive fewer benefits than those in the highest, potentially increasing inequality. hence, improving targeting mechanisms used by ccts should be the main priority for policymakers. this improvement requires political will and revolutionary change in the existing tool. unfortunately, political will has often failed to emerge due to limited scientific evidence on this issue. this study reminds governments that the poor have problems with their welfare levels. therefore, governments must serve the poor, especially in developing countries, who often experience limited social spending. in this regard, governments should be more generous to households in the lowest wealth quantile, and carefully manage the program based on the needs of cct beneficiaries. aseas 15(1) | 37 agus heruanto hadna & media wahyudi askar conclusion this study fills the gap in the literature by providing an empirical analysis of the nexus of cct and inequality in indonesia. estimations using the ivqtr ensure the robustness of the findings. the analysis showed that cct has a positive and statistically significant impact on an individual’s consumption. cct has indeed increased the consumption expenditure of low-income individuals. however, it is essential to note that the coefficient is substantially higher among the highest quantile of the distribution. the lowest quantile of low-income individuals is the slowest to respond to these changes. this means that the program is less effective for relatively more impoverished individuals. the finding of the impact of cct on inequality among the poor provides a similar picture of policies at the macro level, which impacts the high gini ratio in yogyakarta. the more prosperous groups have a higher rate of change than those below them in this region. in the end, the novelty of this study is that the current cct design provides opportunities for gaps between the poor themselves. if the most destitute benefit less from the program and are left behind, the inequalities already experienced will exacerbate. given the vital role of cct in improving an individual’s economic welfare, the policy alternative to solving this problem would be readjusting the amount of cash, with the poorest receiving more money than the wealthier recipients. the cct should not pursue the number of cct beneficiaries but rather strengthen assistance to the extremely poor groups. the government of indonesia may also need to develop 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(2011). cash transfers, gender equity and women's empowerment in peru, ecuador and bolivia. gender & development, 19(2), 195–212. 40 | aseas 15(1) the impact of conditional cash transfers on low-income individuals in indonesia olinto, p., beegle, k., sobrado, c., & uematsu, h. (2013). the state of the poor: where are the poor, where is extreme poverty harder to end, and what is the current profile of the world's poor? world bank economic premise, 125, 1–8. owusu-addo, e., & cross, r. (2014). the impact of conditional cash transfers on child health in lowand middle-income countries: a systematic review. international journal of public health, 59(4), 609–618. schultz, p. t. (2004). school subsidies for the poor: evaluating the mexican progresa poverty program. journal of development economics, 74(1), 199–250. ponce, j., & bedi, a. s. 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(2009). conditional cash transfers in brazil, chile and mexico: impacts upon inequality. estudios economicos, 16 (1), 207–224. squire, l. (1993). fighting poverty. the american economic review, 83(2), 377–382. stutzer, a., & frey, b. (2004). reported subjective well-being: a challenge for economic theory and economic policy. journal of applied social science studies, 124(2), 191–231. tutor, m. v. (2014). the impact of the philippines' conditional cash transfer program on consumption. the phillipine review economics, 51(1), 117–161. world bank. (2015). the state of social safety nets 2015. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/ handle/10986/22101 aseas 15(1) | 41 agus heruanto hadna & media wahyudi askar zuluaga, b., castellanos, d., & borda, c. (2020). conditional cash transfers and gender constructions: a unique dataset on women in buenaventura, colombia. data in brief, 32, 106-290. about the authors agus heruanto hadna is an associate professor at universitas gadjah mada. currently, he serves as the head of the doctoral program of leadership and policy innovation, universitas gadjah mada, indonesia. hadna is also a lecturer at the department of management and public policy, faculty of social and political sciences, and a senior researcher at the center for population and policy studies at the same university. he received his phd in public administration from the university of duisburg-essen, germany, in 2007. his study and research interests are poverty, policy innovation, leadership, and public service. ► contact: hadna@ugm.ac.id media wahyudi askar is a lecturer at universitas gadjah mada. he completed his undergraduate degree at universitas gadjah mada, indonesia and holds a master’s and a doctoral degree from the university of manchester, united kingdom. his professional expertise varies in financial development, poverty, digital economy, small medium enterprises, and economic inequality. most of his research sees fiscal justice as key to the fight against extreme economic inequality. ► contact: media.askar@ugm.ac.id acknowledgements the authors are grateful for the data provided by the center for population and policy studies, universitas gadjah mada. disclosure the authors declare no conflict of interest. 42 | aseas 15(1) aseas 15(2) | 317 book review: lapanun, p. (2019). love, money and obligation: transnational marriage in a northeastern thai village nus press. isbn: 978-981-4722-91-9. 190 pages. mimy keomanichanha* auniversité libre de bruxelles, belgium *corresponding author: mimy.keomanichanh@ulb.be received: 25 march 2022 / accepted: 17 august 2022 / published: 23 december 2022 ► keomanichanh, m. (2022). book review: lapanun, p. (2019). love, money and obligation: transnational marriage in a northeastern thai village. advances in southeast asian studies, 15(2), 317-320. transnational marriage between women from thailand’s rural northeastern region (isan) and the so-called farang (western man) is a remarkable social phenomenon in contemporary thailand, which patcharin lapanun explores in detail in her book. an original aspect of this book is the analysis of how transnational marriages transform the local thai village into a “transnational village”, and how they shape the lives of married women and their community. conducting her ethnographic fieldwork in a village in isan, lapanun spent four months there in 2008 and undertook follow-up fieldwork multiple times between 2012 and 2014. she did observations in public spaces where the couples are visible, as well as in their domestic spaces. she also conducted interviews with different actors: the western husbands, the women married to farang, their parents and siblings, the villagers (including the local men) and representatives of the local government. furthermore, lapanun chose the city of pattaya as the second main site for her ethnography to bring out the trajectory of transnational marriages. the thai community in the netherlands is her supplementary fieldwork. in chapter one, the author points out that intimate relations between thai women and western men have started to emerge after the start of the vietnam war. around the mid-1960s, us military camps set up in the isan region, which included many entertainment sites for soldiers for “rest and recreation” (r&r). the relationships between us soldiers and local women took place under the mia chao agreement (literally translated as ‘rented wife’), which means these relationships happened outside of the marriage. the emergence of sex tourism in thailand in the 1980s generated a second wave of intimate relationships between local women and western men. those relationships became an important trajectory in these women’s lives, but also caused the stigma that links these marriages to sex work. in chapter four, lapanun mentions a different perception of transnational marriages in contemporary thai society. the government as well as the public media on a national level communicate about the negative dynamics book reviews w w w .s ea s. at 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 72 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2942-4774 mailto:mimy.keomanichanh@ulb.be 318 | aseas 15(2) book review: lapanun, p. (2019). love, money and obligation. related to these relationships. they associate them with human trafficking and the diminishing importance of the local family institution as well as traditional practices. on the other hand, perspectives on a more local level consider these marriages as a social prestige and see in them an opportunity to boost the economic development of the village as well as increase financial contributions to the community. in chapter three, the book analyzes the complex motivations and desires of thai women and western men to engage in a transnational marriage. their motivations have multiple dimensions: economy, gender, sexuality, and class. the author highlights that the motivations of these women depend on their “social location”, a notion defined by mahler and pessar (2001). the women from a lower class feel a desire to escape poverty. women who are single and educated belong to the middle or upper class; their motivations are more related to the gender limitation norm in their community. the majority of the women married to farang had a relationship with local men in the past. according to local sexuality and gender norms, these women become “less desirable” for local men. they feel more accepted by farang men to be remarried. furthermore, the common desire among the women in different social positions is to find a “responsible man” to be their husband and the father of their children. this is defined by the way that the man can fulfill the thai gender ideology referring to the sexual division of labor within the household. the husband is expected to be the main provider to the family and to share monogamy ideas. western men are recognized as “responsible men” because they can better fulfill these desired gender norms compared to local men. the book focuses on the motivation of thai women. in regard to western men, the author only underlines the gender dimension related to the feminist movement in western societies, which enhances the equality of gender roles within the household. western men who valorize the traditional gender roles tend to look at the asian matrimonial market (including thailand) to find a spouse. based on the “special money” concept of zelizer (1989), lapanun discusses in chapter five the stereotypes of transnational marriage regarding the feeling of love versus money. she analyzes the cultural and social signification of money in thai society and their impact on transnational marriage. interpreting the different meanings of money among thai-western couples can reveal certain tensions. for example, the thai cultural practice of sinsot (bride price) aims at evaluating the financial capabilities of the groom and his ability as a husband to be the family’s provider and to show gratitude to the bride’s parents. western men perceive this practice as purchasing a wife. the thai notion of “bunkhun” (p. 122) explains the reason why the women should provide the financial support to their parents and their need to be supported by their western husband. moreover, most of the women married to farang are single mothers. they have children to be taken care of with less support from their thai father. the thai kinship cultural norm as “dutiful daughters” (p. 140) and single mother generate pressure on these women. the support of the western partner has helped the thai partner to fulfill these roles. lapanun notes that thai spouses define love by “care”, “responsibility”, and “reciprocal support” including financial support from their western husband (p. 134). the author analyzes the trajectory of transnational marriages and the women’s strategies to get in relationships with western men in chapter four. many thai rural women feel inspired by the success stories showing how the life of local women can aseas 15(2) | 319 mimy keomanichanh improve in case of a mixed marriage. the city of pattaya is known as a sex tourism destination in thailand. lapanun describes it as the “space of opportunity and hope” (p. 96) because it is the main way for rural thai women to find a western husband. the women start by working in the sex industry and plan to develop a long-term relationship with their western clients. being a sex worker, they launch some strategies in order for men to desire them. they develop a worker-client relation by offering services to their western clients that go beyond money and sex: for example, to accompany them as a local tourist guide, going shopping together and so forth. these activities are akin to dating during which women see if the western man is the right person to commit to. thai women also practice their spiritual beliefs by praying at local sacred places in order to find the ‘right’ western husband. the author also highlights the “agency” of the ones “left behind” in the process of a transnational marriage (p. 149). the women’s parents are likewise important actors who support and help their daughter to get in this relationship. in chapter six, the book discusses the transformation of local practice by transnational marriage. in terms of economy, the community witnesses the emergence of businesses related to transnational marriage like internet shops, english and western culture courses and so forth. regarding the gender dimension, lapanun reveals the “vulnerability” (p. 145) of the local men by explaining that transnational marriages would reduce their power over thai women. in the kinship relation, parents have less decisional power regarding their daughter’s marital choice and couple life. once their life improves on an economic basis, the thai spouses become the main provider for their parents. this gives them power over their natal family. relating to social class dynamics, lapanun refers to bourdieu’s concept of “class distinction” (1984) to analyze the way that transnational marriage transforms the social hierarchy in the village. she highlights the “emergent class” (p. 155) that consists of women married to western men. their marriage enables them to move up from a lower to middle class position in society. it also enables them to make financial and material contributions to their community and offers them social prestige. nonetheless, they would still be facing discrimination based on their original social position in the lower class and as a sex worker. being thai herself and familiar to the isan region helped the author to conduct a rich ethnography. on the other side, the author has focused less on the perspectives of western men. it might be interesting to incorporate these views in order to understand their interpretations of participating in the social transformation of their thai partner's community. note that the author mainly highlights successful transnational married couples that receive the social prestige within their community. it would also be interesting to know more about conjugal dynamics and to question how a successful marriage has been achieved. how is conjugal failure perceived in the local community? before closing this review, let us keep the book’s main subject in mind, which is the impact of transnational marriages on local communities. i highly recommend this book to postgraduate students and researchers interested in transnational marriage, migration, gender, and asian studies. the book has a clear structure and contributes to understanding the dynamics of transnational relationships on a micro scale known as the sending community. 320 | aseas 15(2) book review: lapanun, p. (2019). love, money and obligation.  references bourdieu, p. (1984). distinction: a social critique of the judgment of taste. routledge. mahler, s. j., & pessar, p. r. (2001). gendered geographies of power: analyzing gender across transnational spaces. identities, 7(4), 441-459. zelizer, v. (1989). the social meaning of money: ‘special moneys’. the american journal of sociology, 95(2), 342-377. about the author mimy keomanichanh is a phd candidate in anthropology at the laboratory of anthropology of contemporary worlds (lamc) at the université libre de bruxelles in belgium. her research focuses on conjugal mixedness and emotion work among lao-belgian couples living in belgium and laos. ► contact: mimy.keomanichanh@ulb.be mailto:mimy.keomanichanh@ulb.be aseas 16(1) | 157 impeded migration as adaptation: covid-19 and its implications for translocal strategies of environmental risk management1 gunnar stangea,b* , raffaella pagognaa , harald sterlya , patrick sakdapolraka , marion borderona , benjamin schravenc & diogo andreola serragliod auniversity of vienna bprivate university college of education burgenland, austria cgerman institute of development and sustainability (idos), germany dpotsdam institute for climate impact research (pik), germany *corresponding author: gunnar.stange@univie.ac.at received: 15 may 2023 / accepted: 16 june 2023 / published: 28 june 2023 ► stange, g., pagogna, r., sterly, h., sakdapolrak, p., borderon, m., schraven, b., & serraglio, d. a. (2023). impeded migration as adaptation: covid-19 and its implications for translocal strategies of environmental risk management. advances in southeast asian studies, 16(1), 157-169. in the debates over environmental impacts on migration, migration as adaptation has been acknowledged as a potential risk management strategy based on risk spreading and mutual insurance of people living spatially apart: migrants and family members that are left behind stay connected through a combination of financial and social remittances, joint decision-making, and mutual commitment. conceptualizing migration as adaptation through the lens of translocal livelihood systems enables us to identify the differentiated vulnerabilities of households and communities. covid-19 and the restrictions on public life and mobility imposed by governments worldwide constituted a complex set of challenges for translocal systems and strategies, especially in the global south. focusing on examples, we highlight two points: first, the covid-19 crisis shows the limits of migration and translocal livelihoods for coping with, and adapting to, climate and environmental risks. second, as these restrictions hit on a systemic level and affect places of destination as well as origin, the crisis reveals specific vulnerabilities of the translocal livelihood systems themselves. based on the translocal livelihoods approach, we formulate insights and recommendations for policies that move beyond the narrow, short-term focus on the support of migrant populations alone and address the longer-term root causes of the vulnerabilities in translocal livelihoods systems. keywords: covid-19; environmental risk management; immobility; migration; translocal livelihoods 1 this article is an updated and revised version of a blog contribution to the international organization for migration’s (iom) environmental migration portal (https:// environmentalmigration.iom.int/ blogs/impeded-migration-adaptation-covid-19-and-itsimplications-translocal-strategies-environmental-risk-management). research workshop w w w .s ea s. at 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 93 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6625-6963 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9742-1412 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8819-1638 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7137-1552 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1449-3665 158 | aseas 16(1) impeded migration as adaptation introduction: understanding “migration as adaptation” against environmental risks through the lens of translocal resilience in recent years, many migrants and their household members in places of origin have been exposed to a double crisis: the ongoing climate emergency and the covid-19 pandemic. these two crises are interrelated in several ways and can pose significant challenges to the well-being, livelihoods and resilience of these households and their communities. to better understand these interconnections and their implications for policy, we propose a translocal social resilience perspective. while (forced) migration can be the result of in-situ adaptation failure, in many cases migration might be an active strategy (mcleman & smit, 2006; vinke et al., 2020) adopted by individuals and households to decrease vulnerability and to better deal with environmental and climate risks (black et al., 2011). migrants who live and work away from home stay connected with households and communities in their place of origin through various means, such as sending financial and social remittances, engaging in joint decision-making and strategizing, or social networking. this translocal connectedness (peth et al., 2018; peth & sakdapolrak, 2020; porst & sakdapolrak, 2020) enables households and communities to spread risks across different locations and sectors: remittances from tourism, industry or service sectors from migrants’ places of destination can, for example, counter the environmentally induced failure of harvests in rural areas. as such, translocal connectedness has the potential to enhance the ability of households and communities to respond to climatic risks and sustain their livelihoods and wellbeing. as they heavily impeded this connectedness, the effects of the covid-19 pandemic and the respective containment and mitigation measures were systemic and felt by global, national, and local systems alike. and they became manifest simultaneously in migrants’ places of origin and destination, stretching strategies of migration as adaptation to their limits (sakdapolrak et al., 2023). we propose to investigate the mechanisms of this process and the implications of the covid-19 crisis on migration as adaptation through a translocal social resilience perspective. we will begin by introducing the conceptual framework of translocal social resilience, which highlights the interplay between migration and social resilience in different locations. drawing on news media reports, we will then present examples south, east, and southeast asia of how the pandemic and related mitigation measures have affected translocal livelihood systems, and how this has impacted households’ ability to cope with environmental and climate risks. finally, we will discuss the policy implications of our findings, arguing that a translocal social resilience perspective can provide a valuable framework for designing effective and equitable policies to support vulnerable populations in times of crisis. conceptualising translocal social resilience, and understanding the effects of the covid-19 crisis a translocal social resilience approach shifts the focus away from single-sided views of either migrants or households in the place origin, of either rural or urban places and issues: instead, migrants (households) in places of destination and family aseas 16(1) | 159 gunnar stange, harald sterly, raffaella pagogna, patrick sakdapolrak, marion borderon, benjamin schraven & diogo andreola serraglio figure 1. translocal livelihoods. (figure by the authors, based on: greiner & sakdapolrak, 2013). or household members in the place of origin are understood as a single, functional social unit (greiner & sakdapolrak, 2013). the concept of translocality emphasizes the multi-dimensional and continuing links and connections between migrants and their places of origin and the resulting socio-spatial interdependencies (etzold & sakdapolrak, 2016; see figure 1). it is important to understand that migration (and, from a functional perspective, translocal livelihoods) is one out of several possible strategies of households to deal with a broad range of risks. however, as environmental and climate risks such as floods or droughts often affect whole communities or regions, strategies such as migration that allow for the spreading of risks and livelihood opportunities across locations and sectors are especially important when dealing with such risks (burnham & ma, 2016; wiederkehr et al., 2018). a translocal perspective provides us with a comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms through which migration can serve as an adaptive strategy. this includes an examination of how individual capabilities and aspirations influence the decision to migrate (porst & sakdapolrak, 2018), as well as an exploration of the legal, employment, and housing conditions in the destination country and how these factors relate to remittance sending. furthermore, this perspective considers the ability of households in the places of origin to transform financial and social remittances into adaptive and transformative actions in response to environmental, economic, social, and political changes. additionally, it explores the capacity of both migrants and their family members in the places of origin to engage in self-organization and collective action at the community level and beyond. the covid-19 crisis influences the core mechanisms for translocal resilience building in at least two ways: first, the covid-19 pandemic has impacted the maintenance of livelihoods in both the places of origin and destination due to several factors, including the illness of migrants due to exposure, mobility restrictions, 160 | aseas 16(1) impeded migration as adaptation and the resulting economic downturn. these factors severely undermine the ability of households to diversify risks through translocal embeddedness and access to livelihood opportunities, especially in the informal economies of the global south (suhardiman et al., 2021). second, the covid-19 pandemic has severely weakened and disrupted translocal connectedness, which encompasses the transfer of both tangible and intangible resources between migrants and their households, as well as translocal mobilities. the pandemic has had wide-ranging impacts on various aspects of translocal connectedness, including the ability to send and receive remittances, maintain translocal ties through visits, and utilize migration, including seasonal migration, as a coping or adaptation strategy for environmental risks (phillips et al., 2020). to comprehensively analyze the impeded potential of migration as adaptation, it is essential to focus initially on the vulnerability of translocal livelihood systems, which comprises migrants residing in places of destination and their household and family members in places of origin. consequently, in the following section we will examine three critical aspects that render translocal livelihood systems vulnerable to the adverse impacts of the covid-19 pandemic: i) their exposure to external stressors; ii) their sensitivity; and iii) the adaptive strategies of the actors involved. with regard to the (i) exposure, we need to acknowledge the multiple stresses and perturbations that especially migrants, including refugees and internally displaced persons (idps), but also their households and family members in places of origin, face. this includes the following non-exhaustive list: a) covid-19 infection; b) mobility restrictions and forced immobility; c) forced mobility; d) quarantine; e) business closure and economic downturn; f) criminalization and stigmatization; g) violence and conflict; h) media portrayal and defamation; i) legal and social discrimination. furthermore, we need to consider the full range of characteristics that shape the (ii) sensitivity of translocal livelihoods, and thus of migrants and their household members in places of origin: a) health status; b) livelihoods, poverty and food insecurity; c) housing and shelter; d) social embedding and status; e) legal rights and welfare provision; f) mobility and immobility; g) (insecure) legal status; h) unsafe work/housing conditions. moreover, (iii) there needs to be an understanding of how the actors within the translocal livelihood systems, migrants and their household members in places of origin, are actively coping and adapting to the effects of the covid-19 pandemic, from whom they get support (government, non-governmental organizations, international organizations, private sector, civil society, family and friends), and in which areas (basic needs, financial, legal, social-psychological). lastly, the effects of the covid-19 pandemic also extend beyond the household level: migrants’ places of destination are affected, for example, by lack of labor, as returned migrants are missing or cannot fill seasonal jobs due to border closures, and the communities in places of origin are affected by decreased remittance flows, competition over resources, or social and political tensions arising from the return of large numbers of migrants. aseas 16(1) | 161 gunnar stange, harald sterly, raffaella pagogna, patrick sakdapolrak, marion borderon, benjamin schraven & diogo andreola serraglio the impact of covid-19 on translocal livelihoods, and the ensuing decreased resilience against environmental risks in order to better understand the multidimensional ways in which covid-19 mitigation measures affect translocal livelihoods, a database2 has been set up at the university of vienna. the database collects and systematizes global online media coverage regarding the impacts of covid-19 and the related containment and mitigation measures on migrants and their translocal livelihood systems. it is searchable in the categories outlined in the previous section and thus allows a global as well as country-specific understanding of ongoing processes. as of march 2022, the database includes 5779 news headlines from 224 countries and territories. the following examples provide an overview of different thematic areas derived from the cases collected in the database (see figure 2): impact of mobility restrictions on translocal livelihoods the restriction of everyday mobility and access to public spaces is a widely applied covid-19 containment measure. however, these measures have had significant impacts on the livelihoods of migrants and small-scale entrepreneurs, who were unable to reach their places of work (e.g., factories) or conduct self-employment activities (e.g., selling goods in public spaces). these impacts were felt in migrants’ places of origin and destination, thereby simultaneously stressing both sides of the translocal livelihoods systems. two examples highlight these impacts: foremost, a hat manufacturer and retailer in nantong, china, was only able to resume production at 80% capacity in february 2020 after the government-ordered factory closure. this was because hundreds of foremost’s (migrant) employees, who lived outside nantong (but not in their home villages), were unable to return to work due to travel restrictions (lee, 2020). this resulted in de facto joblessness, making it impossible for these migrant workers to remit money home. 2 see https://covid-migration.univie.ac.at/ figure 2. impact dimensions of covid-19 measures on translocal livelihoods. (figure by the authors). 162 | aseas 16(1) impeded migration as adaptation in the indian state of madhya pradesh, mobility restrictions severely impacted the lives of rural populations in places of origin. the “janta curfew” in april 2020 (vishwakarma, 2020) prevented farmers, laborers, and small-time traders from attending to their work, leading to food and supply shortages and price increases. farmers also experienced labor shortages, as most farm laborers are migrant workers from other states who were unable to move due to the curfew. economic downturn, market disruptions, return migration, and conflicts the covid-19 crisis has had severe economic impacts, causing market disruptions, unemployment, and food price hikes, particularly affecting migrant workers. the united nations’ food and agriculture organization (fao) warned of a “looming food crisis” in early april 2020 (cremer, 2020). evidence for the intertwined stressors for migrants can be observed in the case of india: tens of thousands of internal migrant workers tried to return to their places of origin as they lost their jobs due to factory closures (vishwakarma, 2020), and the (public) transportation system ceased to operate. in several cases, people walked thousands of kilometers to make it back home to their families, many of them dying on their way (pandey, 2020). in many cases, migrant workers did not have the choice to wait out the end of curfews, because not only joblessness but also food price hikes up to 50 percent made survival in delhi impossible for migrants from uttar pradesh, bihar, and jharkhand. although the government provided food and shelter in schools to stranded migrant workers, the report finds that public assistance did not meet the high demand of support caused by the multiple crises. returning migrant workers have increased the supply of labor and demand for resources in their localities of origin and might lead to fierce competition over scarce jobs, which has on occasions resulted in property disputes triggered in their home villages (sharma & jain, 2020). drying up of financial remittances as early as april 2020, the world bank estimated an overall decline of remittance flows to lowand middle-income countries by around 20% for 2020 (usd 445 billion) as compared to 2019 (usd 554 billion). however, analyses from 2021 show that the overall decline was only 1.6% in 2020 (knomad, 2021, p. x). the causes for this include the shift from informal to formal channels for money transfer, the influence of exchange rates, as well as the use of savings and the restriction of personal consumption. despite this overall stability, the official and aggregated data only provide a partial view since informal flows and domestic transfers are not accounted for, and regional differences are obscured. the ability to transfer money is affected by residency status, gender, and access to social security systems at the destination. for example, studies reveal that while working migrants in singapore with secure employment can continue to remit money home, irregular foreign workers in thailand who lack income security due to job loss are unable to transfer remittances and often have to return to their home countries (suhardiman et al., 2021). the philippines is particularly vulnerable to the decline in remittances, as financial remittances sent to the country represent nearly 10% of its gdp. as of may 2020, nearly 90,000 overseas aseas 16(1) | 163 gunnar stange, harald sterly, raffaella pagogna, patrick sakdapolrak, marion borderon, benjamin schraven & diogo andreola serraglio migrant workers in the philippines were either displaced or had no income due to covid-19 containment and mitigation measures, severely affecting the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people who depend on these remittances. disruption of (mutual) visits and mobility migrant workers involved in translocal livelihood systems often spend extended periods away from home in their places of destination (peth et al., 2018), making periodic visits to their families vital for maintaining social relations and promoting mental health. visits mostly take place on the occasions of important religious feasts such as the end of ramadan. with the world's largest muslim population, indonesia had been grappling with one of the most severe covid-19 outbreaks in southeast asia. during the ramadan period in may 2020, the indonesian government imposed a ban on all holiday travel as part of its covid-19 mitigation strategy (jamaluddin et al., 2020). consequently, the government advised tens of thousands of migrant workers in singapore and malaysia to avoid traveling home to indonesia to celebrate idul fitri, the end of ramadan, with their families (pinandita, 2020). impacts on migration translocal livelihood systems are not only well-established worldwide but are being established every day. however, since the outbreak of covid-19 the world experienced unprecedented global travel bans, immigration restrictions and business closures. these measures had far-reaching implications, especially for individuals who had planned to work outside their places of origin. for example, nepalese migrant workers were among those impacted, with many experiencing wage losses along with the loss in investments already made on work permits, travel documents and tickets due to restrictions on leaving for their work destinations (coronavirus travel bans hit, 2020). as of mid-march 2020, nepalese overseas recruitment agencies stopped issuing labor permits in response to immigration bans implemented by most countries of destination. prior to the ban, an average of 1,500 nepali migrant workers left for the middle east, malaysia, and south korea to work as domestic workers and in the construction industry. unfortunately, for most of the affected migrant workers, there were no alternative job opportunities available in nepal. understanding these mechanisms of translocal social resilience (and its potential failure) is important to understand the reasons why, to what degree, and in which circumstances the covid-19 pandemic is bringing migration as adaptation to its limits. in bangladesh, for example, even modest amounts of remittances from domestic migration form an important part of many rural households’ livelihood strategies to cope with environmental risks. in 2020, the combination of exceptionally intense flooding with the lack of income due to closed garment factories made the situation especially dire for many domestic migrants and their rural households (kelly, 2020). in nepal, the lack of remittances from international migrants, many of whom were forced to return to their home villages due to visa cancellations, made it difficult for households and communities to cope with landslides caused by intense rainfalls (tsering, 2020). and in the horn of africa, the decline of remittances in combination 164 | aseas 16(1) impeded migration as adaptation with the locust invasion has driven food prices and threatened food security, especially of children in poor rural households (save the children, 2020). these situations pose different threats and stresses to translocal social livelihoods, they prompt different strategies by the migrants and their (rural) households in places of origin, and thus require different forms of political action for support or relief. implications for policy making the covid-19 pandemic has resulted – at least temporarily – in more restrictive immigration processes, disrupted translocality, and related hardships. these consequences actually should have required a multi-level policy response with short-term measures aimed at establishing social protection programs addressing income and food insecurity and improving access to health services, sanitary measures and primary care – in particular for migrants, refugees, internally displaced persons, ‘trapped’ populations, and those who are highly vulnerable to environmental risks. however, there is little to suggest that national governments’ shortand mediumterm responses to the covid-19 pandemic have had a particular focus on these groups. one of the few exceptions is the accelerated disbursement of unemployment insurance and extension to migrant workers by the chinese government (imf, 2021). nonetheless, we still need a better understanding of the lessons learned so far; systematic surveys and evaluations of impacts but also good practices are necessary to help prepare for future pandemics. importantly, long-term impacts of covid-19 policy responses on migration as adaptation to environmental change in different country contexts need to be further examined to inform social security interventions in anticipation of future global crises. moreover, further trust in, and capacity building of, local authorities, implementing agencies, and disease surveillance systems is certainly needed. however, one important future lesson is obvious: long-term oriented, broadened, and integrated social, economic, and environmental policies aimed at translocal resilience of livelihoods are needed. specifically, in locations with both high migration flows and exposure to environmental hazards, policy responses need to be better targeted in terms of social and health protection mechanisms, labor market interventions, or rural and urban development programs. translocal livelihoods could be supported through direct employment in public sector projects aimed at conservation and restoration of degrading land and forest ecosystems (in both areas of origin and destination), hence delivering a “triple dividend” by contributing to local social, economic, and ecological resilience. these policies should be interlocked with several community-based measures such as capacity building workshops to raise awareness about migration and environmental risks to translocal livelihoods among (local) decision makers. such initiatives could also help to identify how migrants and their families can best be supported through policy interventions or practical measures. financial training measures for households and individuals might enable migrants and households to make the most of financial remittances by promoting financial literacy and strengthening financial planning and risk management skills. establishing local migration funds could enhance the potential benefits among community members. strengthening capacities of return migrants by supporting communities in accessing finance services and aseas 16(1) | 165 gunnar stange, harald sterly, raffaella pagogna, patrick sakdapolrak, marion borderon, benjamin schraven & diogo andreola serraglio adopting climate-smart agricultural or non-farm business models may strengthen community resilience to the adverse effects of environmental and climate change. preparation and mentoring for future migrants and their relatives give the latter the opportunity to reflect on potential migration-related challenges and goals. a major policy challenge is related to priorities and attitude: the positive news here is that migration in the context of climate change and environmental degradation is fully back on the agenda – even if covid-19 has led to disrupted processes and a lower priority for issues of migration and displacement by governments, international organizations, and development cooperation agencies. to date, a heterogeneous and polycentric policy landscape addressing various issues of climate change and human mobility has emerged. numerous actors, such as the international organization for migration (iom), the un refugee agency (unhcr), regional organizations such as the european union (eu) or the east african intergovernmental authority on development (igad), the platform on disaster displacement (pdd), the un climate secretariat unfccc, and development cooperation institutions are just a few of the central “elements” of this landscape. related activities cut across different policy and action fields ranging from climate change, environmental degradation, migration, forced displacement, disaster risk reduction, development, and human rights, to conflict resolution and peacebuilding. this diversity of policy fields involved is important because the starting point for more integrated and “pro-translocality” related policy actions, as described above, would at least raise awareness of, and at best create a joint attitude on, migration at all levels and in different relevant policy fields – not only in the specific context of the discourse on the migration-climate change nexus. an ideal-type policy makers’ attitude should be characterized by the willingness to overcome a sedentary bias, which is still very influential in many policy fields, and to foster a policy approach that seeks to promote the potential of translocal livelihood systems. however, such a joint attitude does not yet exist. furthermore, the focus of activities targeting the climate mobility nexus so far is rather more on data generation/empirical evidence, awareness raising, and fostering policy dialogues than on “concrete action on the ground”. the covid-19 pandemic has probably increased the acceptance of radical changes. so, there might be a chance to prioritize the human mobility, climate change, and health nexus in the future. as climate change is expected to result in a higher frequency of climate-related disasters and increasing livelihoods risks, it is expected that population movements will continue to rise. instead of curtailing mobility even further through nationalism, enhanced collaboration among international actors would allow for continued advancement measures to deal with human mobility in the context of environmental changes (see also, paoletti & vinke, 2020). conclusion the covid-19 pandemic and the measures to contain it hit migrants especially hard; however, the impact goes far beyond the migrants themselves, also including their household and family members in places of origin. these effects are multidimensional, including the domains of health, economics, mobility, legal status, discrimination, housing, and others. a translocal social resilience perspective can help to understand 166 | aseas 16(1) impeded migration as adaptation the mechanisms of these impacts: migrants and their family or household members in places of origin are thereby seen as a single functional and social unit, yet with distinct characteristics and vulnerabilities. such a perspective enables us to disentangle the multiple social and spatial dimensions and scales through which these translocal livelihood systems are affected. a number of conclusions can be drawn from this, and from the insights of emerging field and media reports. first, the impacts of covid-19 and related containment measures on translocal livelihoods are systemic, area-wide, and happen simultaneously across places: whereas migration and translocal livelihoods can well-enhance resilience against (environmental, market, health, etc.) risks at either origin or destination, the pandemic affects both origins and destinations, often disrupting the very mechanisms connecting places. thus, covid-19 brings the resilience of translocal livelihood systems to its limits. second, the translocal social resilience perspective also allows for a closer look at the mechanisms of impacts, which are often specific and not evenly distributed for all countries, sectors, migration types, or social groups. such a perspective can thus also help to guide more specific and targeted policies to alleviate the impacts of covid-19 on migrants and their translocal households, and to maintain their resilience against environmental risks. third, there is still little detailed empirical knowledge about the different ways in which the pandemic affects translocal social livelihood systems around the world, albeit there is growing evidence that it does so. a combined effort would be needed to gather relevant 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(2018). environmental change, adaptation strategies and the relevance of migration in sub-saharan drylands. environmental research letters, 13(11), 113003. 168 | aseas 16(1) impeded migration as adaptation about the authors gunnar stange is a lecturer and researcher at the department of geography and regional research at the university of vienna and at the private university college of education burgenland, austria. in his work, he focuses on migration, development, and conflict transformation themes, mainly in southeast asia. outside of academia, he is also a psychosocial counselor working with refugees. ► contact: gunnar.stange@univie.ac.at raffaella pagogna is a phd student and lecturer at the population geography and demography working group in the department of geography and regional research at the university of vienna, austria. her research primarily centers around migration infrastructures, governance, and decision-making processes. with a keen interest in comprehending the spatial and social implications of migration, she has conducted fieldwork in ethiopia and thailand. ► contact: raffaella.pagogna@univie.ac.at harald sterly is a research associate at the population geography and demography working group in the department of geography and regional research, university of vienna, austria. he focuses on the spatial and social aspects of migration, urbanization, and technological change, with a specific interest on how the use of information and communication technology (ict) changes vulnerable groups’ scope for agency and their vulnerability and resilience. ► contact: harald.sterly@univie.ac.at patrick sakdapolrak is professor of population geography and demography at the department of geography and regional research, university of vienna, austria. his research field is at the interface of population dynamics, environmental change, and development processes, with a focus on the topics of migration and displacement as well as health and disease, mainly in southand southeast asia and east africa. ► contact: patrick.sakdapolrak@univie.ac.at marion borderon is assistant professor of geography in the population geography and demography working group at the department of geography and regional research, university of vienna, austria. her research interests concern population and development studies. much of her work focuses on contributing to the development of concepts and methods for the spatial assessment of vulnerability and risk in the context of environmental change in sub-saharan africa. ► contact: marion.borderon@univie.ac.at benjamin schraven is an associate research fellow at the german institute of development and sustainability (idos). his work focuses mainly on the relationship between environmental change and human mobility and potential policies addressing “climate migration”. furthermore, he also works on migration governance (with a particular focus on west africa) and the discourse on migration and development. ► contact: benj.schraven@gmail.com mailto:gunnar.stange%40univie.ac.at?subject= mailto:raffaella.pagogna%40univie.ac.at?subject= mailto:harald.sterly%40univie.ac.at?subject= mailto:patrick.sakdapolrak%40univie.ac.at?subject= mailto:marion.borderon%40univie.ac.at?subject= mailto:benj.schraven%40gmail.com?subject= aseas 16(1) | 169 gunnar stange, harald sterly, raffaella pagogna, patrick sakdapolrak, marion borderon, benjamin schraven & diogo andreola serraglio diogo andreola serraglio is a researcher at the potsdam institute for climate impact research (pik). his research concentrates mainly on the legal aspects of human mobility in the context of climate change, with a particular focus on latin america and the caribbean. ► contact: diogo.serraglio@pik-potsdam.de disclosure the authors declare no conflict of interest. mailto:diogo.serraglio%40pik-potsdam.de?subject= aseas 11(1) | 53 the institutions of authoritarian neoliberalism in malaysia: a critical review of the development agendas under the regimes of mahathir, abdullah, and najib bonn juego ► juego, b. (2018). the institutions of authoritarian neoliberalism in malaysia: a critical review of the development agendas under the regimes of mahathir, abdullah, and najib. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 11(1), 53-79. after toppling the 61-year dominant barisan nasional through a historic election victory in may 2018, expectations are high for the new ruling government led by mahathir mohamad and the pakatan harapan to fulfil their promises for socio-economic reforms and regime change in malaysia. but what have been the institutions of the prevailing regime that need to be reformed and changed? this article offers a critical review of the evolving development agendas since the 1990s of the successive governments of mahathir mohamad, abdullah badawi, and najib razak, each couched in different catchphrases: wawasan 2020, islam hadhari, and 1malaysia. a close reading of these programs suggests that their substance articulates two persistent logics: the ruling elite’s constant requirement for political stability enforced by a strong state; and, the need to adapt to the demands and opportunities of accumulation in specific phases of malaysia’s capitalist development in the context of globalization. the analysis reveals the attempts at maintaining authoritarian neoliberalism, or a neoliberal economy embedded in an authoritarian polity, as the de facto social regime in contemporary malaysia. by examining policy documents, speeches, and news reports, the article discloses how this regime had been enunciated or reified in public discourses, policies, and actions of the respective administrations. keywords: abdullah badawi; authoritarian neoliberalism; mahathir mohamad; malaysia; najib razak  introduction malaysia’s 14th general election (ge14) on 9 may 2018 was a historical turning point in the country’s politics. it marked the end of the uninterrupted electoral dominance of the barisan nasional (bn, or the national front) coalition – particularly its major party, the united malays national organisation (umno) – which had governed the country since independence from britain in 1957. it also paved the way for mahathir mohamad to return to premiership at the age of 92 after his first long stint as prime minister in 1981-2003. in a surreal political moment, mahathir emerged as the leader of the opposition coalition pakatan harapan (ph, or alliance of hope) in partnership with his old critics and enemies, notably anwar ibrahim and lim kit siang. he challenged his former friends and allies in the umno/bn coalition led by his protégé, then incumbent premier, najib razak. eventually, the mahathir-led opposition pulled off an electoral upset on a aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 18 .1 -4 54 | aseas 11(1) the institutions of authoritarian neoliberalism in malaysia campaign platform that promised institutional reforms, anti-corruption, democracy, rule of law, and a range of populist economic policies (including the revival of fuel subsidies, increase in minimum wage, and the abolition of the controversial goods and services tax). yet, any reform efforts by the new ruling government will have to proceed from the existing structures and institutions in malaysia’s socio-economic environment that have been adapted and forged by umno/bn in the last 60 years. the purpose of this article is to take stock of the historical trajectory of malaysia’s contemporary development policies. in doing so, the article reveals a compelling institutional pattern in the structure of the country’s political economy in which ethnic and other social relations are embedded. this is important to understand in the current context when the new government under mahathir enjoys a popular mandate to undertake comprehensive reforms. the prevailing institutions in malaysia’s political economy that are unpacked in this article can be considered: firstly, as a structural reflection of the ‘initial conditions’ where reform initiatives begin; secondly, as a ‘normative indicator’ of the specific policies and practices that must be reformed; and thirdly, as a ‘benchmark’ against which the processes towards the objective for regime change are to be monitored and evaluated. historically, the political-economic attributes of malaysia have been a mesh of a strong state and a relatively open market economy since the colonial period (de micheaux, 2017; tajuddin, 2012). politically, malaysia has had strong features of authoritarianism where the general citizenry has been deprived of at least the procedural requirements of fair elections, equal privileges before the law, and a modicum of civil liberties and human rights (case, 1993; gomez & jomo, 1997; zakaria, 1989). economically, malaysia’s open economy is manifested in its pragmatic – rather than theoretical – adaptation of trademark neoliberal policies of privatization, liberalization and deregulation, as well as in its active production, trade, and financial activities in the world market. even though laissez faire economic policies in malaysia became more prominent since independence, the british state had already set in train in colonial malaya the rudiments of the capitalist institutions that structured the unequal relations between classes and ethnicities (nonini, 2015; stubbs, 2004). the new economic policy (nep) of 1971-1991 combined state intervention for the reduction of inter-ethnic disparity with the empowerment of private sector activity in the development process. by the 1980s, intensified privatization and deregulation initiatives and other structural adjustments through the malaysia incorporated policy were undertaken (gomez & jomo, 1997). this article examines the evolution of malaysia’s political economy through an analysis of the post-nep development strategies undertaken by successive governments since the 1990s, namely: mahathir mohamad’s wawasan 2020, abdullah badawi’s islam hadhari, and najib razak’s 1malaysia. the analysis is done through an inductive approach derived from examining, as well as making extensive references to official policy documents, the speeches of the prime ministers, and news reports. the article suggests that the changing slogans from administration to administration are essentially articulations of two persistent and interdependent logics. the first logic is the incessant need of the ruling elites for a strong state to safeguard social and political stability. the second logic is the consistent stance of the elites in government to adapt to the evolving accumulation demands and opportunities aseas 11(1) | 55 bonn juego at particular periods in malaysia’s capitalist development. this is manifested by the series of adjustments in the country’s development plans in accordance with the shift in neoliberalism’s policy emphasis. in general, neoliberal development strategies have shifted from the so-called washington consensus during the 1980s-1990s to the post-washington consensus by the mid-1990s. the washington consensus had a rather limited focus on open market economy through macro-economic programs of privatization and liberalization. the post-washington consensus has a broader and more comprehensive set of policies focused on competitive capitalism through deepseated institutional reforms and behavioral changes – lodged in the agendas on good governance, competition cultures, labor market flexibility, human capital, and social capital (cammack, 2006; fine, 2001a, 2001b). against the background of globalization, malaysia’s national development policies have been adapted to specific phases of neoliberalism and the changes in the geopolitical economy, in particular: 1. mahathir-style neoliberalization-with-industrialization during the 1980s-1990s, in between the paradigm shift from a declining keynesian developmentalism and an emergent washington consensus; 2. abdullah’s agenda for a ‘moderate’ islamic capitalism in the aftermaths of the 1997 asian financial crisis and the 9/11 terror attacks; and 3. najib’s strategy for competitiveness as a response to the 2008-2009 global economic recession, the decline of oil prices in the world market in 2014, and the new scramble for capital from the rise of china. the article’s analysis reveals the apparent attempts of the governing elites at maintaining a peculiar form of regime which can be referred to as authoritarian neoliberalism – that is, a neoliberal economy embedded in an authoritarian polity. as the de facto social regime in malaysia, the aims and strategies of authoritarian neoliberalism across the tenures of mahathir, abdullah, and najib had remained roughly consistent: (1) operating a strong state; (2) managing social conflicts; and (3) perpetuating a type of neoliberalism that expands the economy in a changing global context while enriching entrenched local elites. by charting the discursive mutations of malaysia’s authoritarian neoliberalism, the article puts forward an interpretation which has implications for a number of important contributions from regime studies and transitions literature. in regime studies, the debate whether to categorize malaysia as a ‘developmental state’ depends on how this concept is defined (stubbs, 2009). some analysts have classified malaysia as a developmental state (embong, 2008; jomo, 1997, 2001) or a semi-developmental state (rhodes & higgott, 2000) mainly due to its state intervention in the economy through conscious policy planning of the nation’s industrialization strategies. however, malaysia’s long history of corruption and wasteful rent-seeking activities (gomez & jomo, 1997; jomo & gomez, 2000) are indications that it has not embodied the key institutions and mechanisms that are noted in more developed asian capitalist developmental states/cities of japan, south korea, taiwan, hong kong, and singapore. specifically, each of these developed economies has a weberian ‘rational’ bureaucracy, which is autonomous from particular vested interests, and which has a strong sense of corporate coherence built around a concrete set of social ties that 56 | aseas 11(1) the institutions of authoritarian neoliberalism in malaysia have been forged through negotiations of collective goals (evans, 1995; gomez, 2009; johnson, 1987, 1999). the end of umno’s hegemony and the recent electoral success of longtime opposition groups from the reformasi movement that formed the ph coalition have significant implications for transitions literature on malaysia’s ‘democratization processes’, particularly those studies on protest actions and other forms of contestations (loh & khoo, 2002; shamsul, 2002; weiss, 2006). thus far, the literature on malaysian politics has offered valid accounts and arguments about both the country’s democratization processes and its resilient authoritarianism. the outcome of ge14 calls for a note of caution against tendencies in political analysis to either underestimate democratization or overestimate authoritarianism. in light of this, the analytical focus of the article is on the project of the then-dominant umno/bn elites to consolidate malaysia’s neoliberal capitalism within an authoritarian political framework. knowledge of this has empirical and normative ramifications for current and future reform processes in malaysia under the new government of mahathir and the ph. mahathir’s wawasan 2020 the first tenure of mahathir as prime minister (1981-2003) was associated with his development program called wawasan 2020, or vision 2020. within the framework of the national development policy (ndp) of 1991, and complemented by the malaysia boleh! (malaysia can!) campaign, wawasan 2020 was packaged with a populist message to revitalize the growth and redistributive objectives of the nep. the ndp’s 30-year plan proclaimed the vision for social justice, political democracy, and competitive capitalism (malaysia, 1991a). however, the legacy of mahathir’s 22-year regime exhibited a distinct mix of authoritarianism, crony capitalism, and neoliberalism (gomez, 2009; gomez & jomo, 1997; khoo, 1995). the fifth malaysia plan 1985-1990 (5mp) was a precursor to wawasan 2020. it embodied mahathir’s restructuring policies for both the government and the economy. these programs were expressed in the concepts: looking east, malaysia incorporated, privatization, and leadership by example. the 5mp was the first development plan drafted under mahathir to implement the last phase of nep. arguably, it was also the first articulation of the mahathir regime’s authoritarian neoliberalism. its objective was to further malaysia’s entanglement with global capitalist processes, consistent with neoliberalism’s private sector-led growth strategy. moreover, the 5mp made a policy shift from ‘growth with equity’ to ‘growth with stability’ aimed at securing market mechanisms through disciplinary state power. amid threats to his leadership in the run-up to the 1987 party elections and the worsening recession, mahathir resorted to authoritarian responses in both the political and economic spheres: through the internal security act (isa) to stifle his critics even those within umno; and through the imposition of the premier’s power over the bureaucracy under the guise of government streamlining for market reforms (khoo, 1992; khoo, 1995; milne & mauzy, 1999; munro-kua, 1996). having won this election, mahathir carried on with the same peculiar methods of patronage politics, authoritarianism, and economic restructuring. powerful executive institutions continued to encroach on the bureaucracy and the economy. aseas 11(1) | 57 bonn juego wawasan 2020 was introduced at the end of the cold war and signaled mahathir’s embrace of neoliberal globalization. it served as a “state-class ideology” in which cross-ethnic alliances were based on a particular class interest (hilley, 2001). but since repression had limitations as a political strategy, mahathir opted for consensusbuilding to consolidate a power bloc around vision 2020 (hilley, 2001; munro-kua, 1996). as john hilley (2001) has aptly described, the umno/bn under mahathir’s leadership was able to forge a hegemonic network that “[extended] outwards and beyond conventional party arrangements, with chains of influence ranging from corporate elites to the bn media, from party affiliates to islamic fora, voluntary bodies and a panoply of ngos” (pp. 117-118). at the heart of the regime’s politics of consociationalism was the practice of a fluid, interactive, and accommodating art of “hegemonic networking”, which tried to balance the protection of “particular sectoral interests” with their “shared outlook on the maintenance of the broader power structure” (hilley, 2001, p. 118). this network was constantly engaged in the reproduction of “dominant ideas and interests through diverse processes of political, corporate and ideological exchange” and was receptive to “the incorporation of new interest groups and alliances” (hilley, 2001, p. 118). economic heterodoxy unlike other developing countries such as the philippines and parts of latin america which embarked on neoliberalism without specialization in the manufacturing industry, the kind of neoliberalization in malaysia was pursued with a national industrialization strategy oriented towards exports to the world market (juego, 2013, 2015). yet, this neoliberal industrialization project for the economy was anchored to the politics of authoritarianism and the discourse of nationalism. authoritarianism was conducive to the industrialization project not as part of the official development plan, but as a proactive realization of the governing elites on the advantages of repressive state measures for their stability (crouch, 1994). the “mahathirist programme” pursued a blend of capitalism and nationalism for socio-economic development – that is, “a nationalist project driven by capitalist impulses or a capitalist project imbued with nationalist aspirations” (khoo, 2003a, p. 5). the anchoring of the economic project for neoliberal industrialization to the politics of authoritarianism and nationalism served a three-pronged purpose for the regime, notably: (1) to expand profitable opportunities for the local capitalist class in a diversified manufacturing sector, (2) while meeting the security requirements of the ruling elites in business and government, and likewise (3) gaining a substantial degree of social legitimacy. it is suggested here that mahathir adopted a ‘heterodox’ economic policy which was different from the orthodox prospectus of neoliberalism under the washington consensus. this is revealed through a scrutiny of the political imperatives behind the regime’s economic reform initiatives in the policies of liberalization, austerity, deregulation, and privatization. first, mahathir had a calibrated perspective on trade and industrial policies. on the one hand, he appreciated the benefits of gradual liberalization; on the other, he understood the necessity of protectionism in the industrialization process. in his own words: 58 | aseas 11(1) the institutions of authoritarian neoliberalism in malaysia we should take into the fullest consideration malaysia’s capacity to undertake liberalization. we should not dismiss the infant industry argument, but we should not bow to illegitimate pressure. (mahathir, 1991) he argued that “it is important for [malaysia] that free trade is maintained” due to its very small domestic market; at the same time, he claimed to adhere to a principle in international relations where “the emphasis should be less on politics and ideology but more on economic imperatives” (mahathir, 1991). in a blog post entitled “protectionism”, then-private citizen mahathir (2011) decried g20’s double standard and noted that while malaysia believes in competition it is important to have protection in its domestic economy because it is “up against countries which protect their industries against foreign products”. secondly, mahathir’s agenda on austerity had both economic and political rationales. managing inflation was intended for stabilization of the economy and the regime. the bottom line of belt-tightening measures was that the citizenry had to bear the brunt of an economy undergoing the process of neoliberalization, absorb the consequences of market failures, and be subjected to disciplinary whipping from the state. mahathir (1991) minced no words: the public must understand what causes inflation and must be disciplined enough to combat it. in some countries when inflation rates go up to thousands of per cent per year, governments have been changed again and again without inflation being contained. the reason is that the people are not disciplined and prepared to restrain themselves. no government can put a stop to inflation unless the people are prepared to accept the discomfort of austerity. thirdly, wawasan 2020 adopted the policy of deregulation while insisting on the need for regulation. its logic equated the economic policy of regulation with the politics of ‘order’. mahathir (1991) argued: the process of deregulation will continue. there can be no doubt that regulations are an essential part of the governance of society, of which the economy is a part. a state without laws and regulations is a state flirting with anarchy. without order, there can be little business and no development. what is not required is over regulation although it may not be easy to decide when the government is over regulating. here, it is implied that the source of strength of the market order and elite hegemony had to be state regulation and repression. this dynamic interdependence for survival between the market, elites, and state became more pronounced in times of crises. the observations have been that mahathir’s government acted even more authoritarian over both the public and the economic spheres during the 1997-1998 asian crisis and its aftermath than during periods of relative stability (pant, 2002; pepinsky, 2009). to a large extent, the 9/11 event also provided the government the legitimacy to implement repressive laws, to suppress public protests, and to pass new electoral laws conducive to gerrymandering – all of which were hostile to the opposition. aseas 11(1) | 59 bonn juego lastly, the malaysian privatization experience had been an inherently political process. the mahathir administration’s privatization program was shaped by the intractable political economy of rent-seeking in the regime’s state-class relations. implementation of the privatization master plan (pmp) in the 1990s was plagued with the same failures as in the early privatization projects in the 1980s. the pmp failed to meet its foremost objective to restructure ownership of public assets to encourage competitive private sector activity. instead, the privatization of public wealth, assets, and services had enlarged umno’s patron-client network, encouraged the proliferation of rentier activities, escalated corruption, politicized business, and institutionalized money politics (gomez, 1997; jomo, 1995; tan, 2008). in terms of policy implementation, notable reasons for failures were the absence of transparency in the selection process, weak regulation, and the lack of complete divestiture. a comprehensive study by jeff tan (2008) shows the ‘ex ante’ and ‘ex post’ failures of the state in the major privatization projects from 1983 to 2000.1 ex ante failures were flaws in project planning, including wrong choice of industries and bidders, regulatory capture, and contract provisions disadvantageous to the state. ex post failures were deficiencies in the government’s capacity in project management, including issues on resolute state regulation for the general public. the privatization experience under the mahathir regime suggests that politicalbusiness elites, as well as domestic and foreign capital, dominated the conflict-ridden scramble for rents. it also tells that the process entailed both state and market failures. yet, the drive for private appropriation tried to avoid any public responsibility and resulted in the deprivation of the general population of their collective resources. but how did the mahathir regime’s ethnic cronyism and state-orchestrated redistribution policy relate to its adoption of neoliberal policies based on pro-market ideology? this seemingly contradictory nature of the political economy of authoritarian neoliberalism was likewise one of its most compelling features for the ruling elites. the state had sanctioned accumulation activities of its cronies in an enlarging market space opened up by selective privatization and liberalization policies (gomez, 2009). in the process of neoliberalization, the state had allowed entrenched cronies to exploit bigger market spaces and use broader market means, purportedly to attain the developmental goals of an ethnically defined and biased redistribution policy. for instance, in the bidding of projects associated with policies of liberalization and privatization, business cronies had first-mover advantages in the competition due to their political connections and access to state decision-makers (juego, 2013, 2015). apparently, such scheme did not necessarily result in regime stability, but rather it had been ridden with corruption, ethnicized divisions, and social conflicts. mahathir’s perspective on economic development may be a strange mix of nationalism, protectionism, and neoliberalism; but it was by all means capitalist and elitist. the ndp was forthright in its call on the citizens to accept the fundamental nature of unequal social relations. it posited that inequality between human beings and uneven development across spaces are intuitive and normal. the second outline perspective plan, 1991-2000 affirmed that “uneven development is characteristic of most market 1 the case studies in jeff tan’s (2008) book covered the four largest privatization projects, namely, indah water konsortium (the operator of the national sewerage system), kuala lumpur’s light rail transit, malaysia airlines (the national airline), and proton (the national car company). 60 | aseas 11(1) the institutions of authoritarian neoliberalism in malaysia economies” (malaysia, 1991a). mahathir (1991) also clarified that, under wawasan 2020, the principle of “individual income equality” does not mean that “all malaysians will have the same income”. his argument was premised on an individualistic ontology, contending that “by sheer dint of our own individual effort, our own individual upbringing and our individual preferences, we all have different economic worth, and will be financially rewarded differently” (mahathir, 1991). he then went on to assert that “an equality of individual income as propounded by socialists and communists is not only not possible, it is not desirable and is a formula for disaster” (mahathir, 1991). anti-democracy even though mahathir spoke of malaysia’s variant of ‘democracy’ in some occasions, he believed that the political regime of authoritarianism was the most conducive to wawasan 2020 to flourish. in his classic the malay dilemma (1970), mahathir’s ethnicity-based analysis of backwardness and prescription of cultural conditioning for attaining modernization defeats the principle of liberal freedoms. in “the new malay dilemma”, which was one of his last speeches before he resigned as prime minister, mahathir (2002) discussed the two new dilemmas of the ethnic malays and the society of malaysia, namely, affirmative action and democratization. as regards the first of the new dilemma, mahathir (2002) asked whether malays “should or should not do away with the crutches [i.e., affirmative action] that they have gotten used to, which in fact they have become proud of ”. the second new dilemma that mahathir (2002) identified was framed in the question: “can we take a leaf from their [i.e., most liberal democracies] book and risk condemnation for not being democratic?”. he asserted that “malaysia is committed to democracy”, which he conceptually reduced to its “most important element” – that is, the mere conduct of elections, or the act of ensuring the voters’ “right to elect” for the party they want to represent them in government. as one of the staunchest proponents of asian values, specifically the idea to prioritize economic development over political democracy, mahathir’s (2002) polemics was straightforward and warned against democratization in the context of a developing malaysian economy: “the dilemma that the malays and the peoples of malaysia face is whether we should in the name of democracy allow the country to be destroyed, or we ensure that people are not subjected to manipulations to the point where they will use democracy to destroy democracy”. furthermore, during the mahathir regime, harassment of the opposition and social movements was accompanied by legislative regulations and repressive practices to discipline the media (munro-kua, 1996; tapsell, 2013). in 1999, the committee to protect journalists (cpj) (2000) included mahathir in the list of “ten worst enemies of the press” and described him as “a master puppeteer, … [pulling] the strings of the major media, mostly owned or controlled by his ruling coalition, to perpetuate his power”. mahathir (2002) also censured the nurturing of politically conscious (malay) students who “don’t seem to appreciate the opportunities they got” but instead “become more interested in other things, politics in particular, to the detriment of their studies”. this implies that the banner of wawasan 2020’s goal of attaining a fully developed economy with ‘productive’ workforce had to co-exist with a strategy for the de-politicization of the youth and students. all these authoritarian means aseas 11(1) | 61 bonn juego signified the bold assertion of mahathir and his umno/bn allies to protect their monopoly not only on politics and public discourse but also on the wealth of material resources that come with the control of state power and social institutions. mahathir officially left the premier’s office after 22 years in power. yet, wawasan 2020 has remained, in principle, the development vision of malaysia. succeeding governments of abdullah and najib had expressed their commitments to it. having been functionaries themselves during mahathir’s regime, abdullah and najib were conscious of the deepened and widened system of patronage in malaysia’s power relations. true to form, they had consistently envisioned a society governed within the general framework of a capitalist economy resting upon elite interests and guarded by an authoritarian state. abdullah’s islam hadhari upon taking over the government from mahathir and having been part of the hegemonic network that forged and promoted wawasan 2020, abdullah badawi (2003-2009) declared that “my vision for malaysia is vision 2020” (wain, 2009, p. 307; see also abdullah, 2006a, 2006b). in line with this affirmation, and hence the resolve to pursue the nep and ndp objectives, in 2004 abdullah’s government introduced the concept of islam hadhari (civilizational islam) as “a comprehensive and universal development framework for the nation” that balances “between physical and spiritual development” – meaning, the “imperative for the people” to have economic “progress” and civilizational “advancement” that is “firmly rooted in the universal values and injunctions of islam” (malaysia, 2005, p. 9). even though “the tenets of islam” would be the basis of the development framework, its proponents claimed that it should benefit all people regardless of religion, race, and other identities in the multiethnic society of malaysia. in theory and practice, islam hadhari was made to ground in the regime of authoritarian neoliberalism. with hindsight, the discursive appeal of linking islam hadhari to wawasan 2020 served some important political, electoral, and economic objectives for abdullah, the umno/bn coalition, and malaysia’s neoliberalism. firstly, it attempted to sustain support of the elites and masses across classes and ethnicities who continued to believe in mahathir’s leadership and the modernization project. secondly, it had enlarged umno/bn bailiwick coming from moderate muslim constituencies. and thirdly, especially in a post-9/11 moment, it was designed to attract foreign capital and investments from both the muslim world and ‘western’ economies. mahathir later turned out to be the most vehement critic of abdullah’s leadership, and he denounced islam hadhari, which he argued to be as a misnomer since islam itself as well as being a muslim is compatible with living a balanced life and with the belief in progress. but the nub of the conflict between mahathir and abdullah was more due to political and personal reasons than based on ideological differences (wain, 2009). both of them adhered to the idea of capitalist market-oriented development and to a critique of democracy. the impressive victory of the bn coalition in the 2004 general elections, winning an overwhelming majority of votes and securing 199 of 219 parliament seats, was often credited to abdullah’s charisma, his well-received attempts at ‘de-mahathirization’ or 62 | aseas 11(1) the institutions of authoritarian neoliberalism in malaysia not living in the shadow of mahathir, and the drawing power of the islam hadhari slogan (chong, 2006; khoo, 2003b). however, beyond personality-based analysis of election success, the fact was that abdullah and umno were the greatest electoral beneficiaries of the regime of authoritarian neoliberalism that mahathir and his power clique had long instituted. decades of umno dominance of money politics made possible the consolidation of a wealthy and powerful electoral machinery, the control of mainstream media, and the crippling of dissenters (loh, 2005). the modernization project of the mahathir regime’s power bloc also built the foundations for: the promotion of the image of a moderate islam especially after 9/11; the normalization of the perception of the conduciveness of neoliberal policies to economic growth and long-term social development; and the popularization of the asian values discourse that conceptually separates or detaches development from democratization. capitalism with islamic characteristics with a fresh mandate from party mates and the electorate, abdullah launched the national mission in 2005, the midpoint between the introduction and termination of vision 2020. as a policy framework for a 15-year period, the national mission recognized that while “malaysia is now an open trading economy participating in an extremely competitive and fast-moving global marketplace”, there persist “considerable income and wealth inequalities”, uneven rural-urban development, and “racial polarization” (malaysia, 2005, pp. 3-4). it expressed the usual development rhetoric of the previous regime: “a resilient and competitive economy” based on the goals of “equity” and inclusive growth (malaysia, 2005, p. 4). guided by the principle of islam hadhari, the national mission wanted to avoid the “danger of … possessing first-class infrastructure but third-class mentality” by fortifying “moral and ethical foundations” and changing “mindset and attitudes” to be able to compete globally “through meaningful participation … in the competitive and productive growth process” (malaysia, 2005, p. 4). to this end, the abdullah administration expanded free-trade agreements with the us, india, chile, pakistan, and the asia pacific region including australia and new zealand to complement mahathir’s earlier negotiations with japan and china (wain, 2009). the ninth malaysia plan (9mp) detailed the strategies and budgetary allocations to realize the national mission. its program for continued macroeconomic reforms were buttressed by a new discursive thrust at the turn of the 21st century (abdullah, 2006a; malaysia, 2005). the discourse of ‘ownership’ was emphasized to instill a sense of responsibility among stakeholders from the private and public sectors to civil society in the accumulation regime. the objective of ‘human capital development’ aimed at capability building and skills upgrading, as well as the conditioning of values and mentalities of the population attuned to the capitalist ethos. the idea of ‘transborder development’ meant restructuring the geography of capital accumulation where competing centers are clustered as productive corridors for the market. in sum, the national mission’s agenda was indicative of the twofold feature in malaysia’s envisioned modernization process. the first was the country’s struggle with the intractable problems of economic poverty, social inequalities, and political-cultural conflicts. the second was the country’s alignment with the evolving aseas 11(1) | 63 bonn juego discourse in global development whereby neoliberalism has moved away from a narrow concern on macro-economic adjustments to a broader project for competitiveness through institutional and human behavioral change. overall, abdullah’s islam hadhari project was illustrative of the contradictions of the regime of authoritarian neoliberalism in conceptual, pragmatic, and empirical terms. despite the principle’s ambiguity, its particularly capitalist, racist, and nondemocratic orientations were revealing of the class, ethnic, and political interests behind the ideology. conceptually, islam hadhari defines a vision of creating a civilization of malaysian capitalism with islamic characteristics. there are ideological or religious debates about the compatibility of islam with capitalism, or islamic economics with modern capitalism, and the extent to which capitalist penetration impacts on the rise and decline of civilizations. however, the history of both the islamic civilization and global capitalism has shown how the encroachment of capital on cultures and religions, particularly through imperialist wars, can appropriate surplus from them and can become an influential force in their evolution (atasoy, 2009; bayat, 1992; kadri, 2016; karim, 2011; rodinson, 1973). theoretically and historically, capitalism and islam can accommodate each other but in ways that necessarily induce ideological contestations and social conflicts. what the islam hadhari experiment desired to prove was the case that islam could flourish on a capitalist system. abdullah’s (2006a) program in “building a civilization to elevate the nation’s dignity” was aimed at unleashing the capitalist spirit from muslim and non-muslim citizens of malaysia. this was evident in the objectives and strategies delineated in the national mission and the 9mp, where islamic values would be a thin icing on a largely neoliberal capitalist cake. the crux of the logic of changing behaviors and mindsets – that is, towards a ‘first-class mentality’ – is for culture to adapt to and facilitate the requirements of economic productivity and competitiveness. in essence, the development approach of islam hadhari was to strengthen the materiality of capitalism within which the ideology of islam is to be imbued. failed political reforms pragmatically, islam hadhari had served as an ideological façade of the interests of ethnic islam and umno. this became more pronounced in an issue in early 2006, when nine non-malay ministers submitted a memorandum to abdullah calling for a review of laws affecting rights of non-muslims (chow & loh, 2006). umno took offense of this initiative, which was eventually withdrawn through the usual politics of consociation, notwithstanding its legitimacy. further, the executive and the parliament had systematically ignored the advocacy and work of the civil society and suhakam (the human rights commission of malaysia) that proposed reforms and investigations on human rights cases, which also implicated some umno officers (rodan, 2009). while abdullah appointed a royal commission for police reform, his administration did not act upon its report on issues such as police payoffs and extrajudicial killings, as well as their recommendations which included the establishment of the independent police complaints and misconduct commission and a possible repeal of the isa (tikamdas, 2005). this 64 | aseas 11(1) the institutions of authoritarian neoliberalism in malaysia inaction was telling of the regime’s unwillingness to restructure the coercive apparatuses of the state according to human rights principles. empirically, the attempts at governance reforms under the rubric of the islam hadhari principle were not only thwarted by the established structures of patronage, impunity, and corruption, abdullah himself was also accused of nepotism and cronyism. despite gaining a very popular mandate and a generally positive international media perception as malaysia started off a post-mahathir era, abdullah’s anticorruption campaign and anti-cronyism promises to ensure some sense of integrity in government contracts for a supposedly liberal economy soon faltered. the investigative journalist barry wain (2009) observed that: “while abdullah deserved the sobriquet mr. clean in the sense that he had not enriched himself, his family and friends had benefited from the system of patronage he was supposed to be dismantling” (p. 312). in his book malaysian maverick: mahathir mohamad in turbulent times, wain (2009) also revealed features of authoritarian neoliberalism under the abdullah government. these were evident in a number of the abdullah administration’s parochial decisions and anti-democratic actions that specifically privileged familyand crony-based interests of executive dominance over the competitiveness ideology of a neoliberal economy. firstly, one of the most controversial issues was the reported favors granted to abdullah’s brother in the catering business servicing the armed forces and the national airlines (wain, 2009).2 secondly, media remained in the hands of the political and business cronies of umno leaders as abdullah loyalists and trusted allies were appointed to key media posts, including the management of tv3 and the national news agency bernama (brown, 2005; wain, 2009). thirdly, there was growing perception from local and international human rights organizations that the malaysian anti-corruption commission (macc) – supposedly abdullah’s reform legacy – turned out to be an instrument of the incumbent government to selectively prosecute the political opposition.3 lastly, institutions for the strengthening of democratization, especially the election commission to guarantee free, fair, and credible elections and the macc (the restructured anti-corruption agency) to ensure government integrity and end the culture of impunity, were within the prime minister’s department itself. if there was any strong indication of the general shortcomings of the islam hadhari project, it had to be the dismal electoral performance of the abdullah-led bn in the 2008 general elections that caused the ruling coalition the loss of the key states of selangor, penang, kelantan, and kedah to the political opposition pakatan rakyat. while there might be several contributing factors to the project’s failure, it is instructive to point out three important explanations. the first was the apparent disappointment of the electorate on the inability of abdullah to deliver on his reform promises. the second was the fragile discursive construction of the islam hadhari concept that was framed along conflict-inducing religious and ethnic undercurrents – which was unlike mahathir’s wawasan 2020 that used a ‘more inclusive’ language 2 the corruption allegations implicating abdullah and family were issues related to: a 15-year contract for canteens in the armed forces when abdullah was defense minister, and the awarding of a nine-year guaranteed return with the privatization of the catering service of the national airlines (see wain, 2009). 3 this was amplified as a result of the suspicious death of teoh beng hock from the then opposition democratic action party while under custody of macc for corruption allegations. aseas 11(1) | 65 bonn juego for a multiethnic society and was built on a more solid hegemonic network. the third was the precariousness of the regime of authoritarian neoliberalism whose hegemony had been challenged by different social forces with respective visions for alternative futures. in particular, this signified that a counter-hegemonic movement of the opposition had arisen to contest the hegemony of umno. in 2009, even though bn still had a slim parliamentary majority, abdullah resigned and officially handed on the government leadership to his deputy. najib’s 1malaysia najib razak (2009-2018) took over the premiership from abdullah with: the party mandate to regain umno’s dominance; the ethnic islam and malay interest to keep their socio-economic privileges; the capitalist development objective to overcome the impact of the 2008 global recession; and a personal ambition to craft his own legacy. as a strategic step to address these aims and demands, najib (2009a) launched the program 1malaysia, or “1malaysia: people first, performance now”, as a key pillar of his administration’s agenda for national transformation. the articulation and execution of 1malaysia evoked the earlier observed modus operandi of authoritarian neoliberalism – that is, attuned to the incumbent government’s interests in the maintenance of the status quo and to the exigencies of the global and domestic economies. it was presented as a perpetuation of umno’s historical hegemony. as najib (2009b) asserted: 1malaysia does not reject our past in order to secure our future. rather it is a clear reaffirmation of the ‘documents of destiny’ that have shaped this great nation and bound it together since our independence – the federal constitution, the rukun negara, the guiding principles of the nep, wawasan 2020 and the national mission. spanning nine years and two terms, the najib administration’s economic vision for competitiveness was carried out through policies for further liberalization, privatization, fiscal discipline, and market reforms. these were formulated in the context of the effects on the domestic economy of the 2008 global economic crisis, the 2014 oil crash, and the re-emergence of china as an economic superpower. at the same time, repression of civil and political rights persisted (case, 2017). in essence, najib’s 1malaysia would be best understood as: an electoral campaign and political agenda; a socio-economic development strategy; and a crisis response. political doublespeak on democracy as an electoral campaign and political agenda, the 1malaysia slogan made a populist appeal while the regime continued on repressive measures against dissenters. on the one hand, it promoted the discourses of national unity, socio-economic reforms, and political democracy to muster a broad inter-ethnic support. on the other hand, the discourse was buttressed by the government’s harassment of critics and opposition. examine, for example, the contradictions in najib’s pronouncements about democracy 66 | aseas 11(1) the institutions of authoritarian neoliberalism in malaysia under existing power relations and the announcement about the repeal of the draconian isa. in a speech where he outlined his administration’s media relations policy, najib (2009c) spoke of the “need to renew [malaysia’s] democracy” by establishing a “new national discourse on the principles of transparency and accountability; service to all, not just the few; and respect and fairness in the public dialogue”. he then proclaimed a version of democracy based on the principles of consensus, social equality, and interactivity that can be qualified as ‘radical’ given the historically institutionalized stratification in the society: “a constructive civilized consensus – across all people, races, parties and media – that engages the nation in the political process” (najib, 2009c). yet, even at the discursive level, the 1malaysia concept’s allusion to a certain kind of ‘inclusive’ politics was contested not only by sections of the chinese and indian communities, but also by some factions within the umno social bloc and their grassroots constituencies. the latter groups strongly believed in preserving the privileges of malays and islam in government policies and social institutions. indeed, najib’s rhetoric on ‘democratic’ governance was faced with disparate communal interests from ethno-religious groups and with the often competing political-business interests within the umno network. in its strategy to keep the opposition at bay, the najib regime had also denied civil liberties through violent dispersal of peaceful protests such as the bersih 2.0 demonstrations for electoral reforms, arrests of opposition politicians, and the clamp down on free press including threats to imprison critical bloggers. all of these were done in the name of unity, order, and stability under the 1malaysia banner. on 15 september 2011, the eve of malaysia day, najib announced the abolition of the isa whose detention-without-trial provision had been a serious human rights concern since 1960 (munro-kua, 1996). a careful examination of his speech for this occasion would reveal his political doublespeak on democratization where he made a distinction between the aspirations of the people for democracy and the imperative of the state for social order. speaking with a lincolnian rhetoric, najib (2011) claimed to have been “feeling the pulse, agitation and aspiration of the [people] … for a more open and dynamic democracy, where the opinions, ideas and concerns of the masses are given due attention”. he then emphasized his aim for malaysia “to be at par with other democratic systems in the world which are underscored by the universal principle from the people, by the people and for the people”. however, this rhetorical aspiration for democracy had to be sidelined by the post-9/11 security concerns and subsumed under the doctrine of the protection of authority as the raison d’état. najib (2011) justified the legitimacy of the authoritarian disposition by arguing it is a “global truth” because the objective of national security “unavoidably … demands special measures [such as preventive detention] which sometimes are outside the democratic norms”. he substantiated this argument with “islamic law” by highlighting the principle of usul fiqah on “the need to prevent a wrongdoing from occurring” and the belief “that the decision of the ruler is a trust which must be implemented for the people being governed for their general benefit” (najib, 2011). then he framed tough state security enforcement as a normal empirical reality that is “not something strange, unusual or alien” because in the 9/11 aftermath “it has been proven that developed democratic countries such as the united states of america and the united kingdom had also enacted special legislative framework to deal with terrorist threats” (najib, 2011). aseas 11(1) | 67 bonn juego after the isa was formally repealed in 2011, sosma (the security offences special measures act of 2012) was enacted (malaysia, 2012). sosma has been complemented by the prevention of terrorism act of 2015 and the national security council act of 2016 (malaysia, 2015a, 2016). akin to the isa, these expanded national security laws are not aligned with international human rights standards. they continue to give special powers in terms of legal rules and discretionary authority to the prime minister and the whole state apparatus, especially the police and public prosecutors over issues of preventive detention without judicial review, arbitrary arrests, surveillance, and access to sensitive information. global competitiveness, large-scale corruption, and megaprojects as a socio-economic development strategy, 1malaysia was designed for the continuity of neoliberalization. its immediate economic agenda was to overcome the global recession which posed difficulties on the malaysian economy, especially the slowdown of the exports industry. the 1malaysia program was the first of the “four pillars of national transformation” of the najib administration which enjoined the government to act as a “competitive corporation” with market-friendly policies in pursuit of global competitiveness (najib, 2010a, 2010b). it was envisioned to work with the other pillars: government transformation programme (gtp), economic transformation programme (etp), and the tenth malaysia plan (10mp). central to gtp are good governance (to fight corruption) and social order (to reduce crimes) with a view to making state institutions responsive to the requirements of local and foreign capital for security and calculability. as najib (2008) remarked at the malaysian capital market summit: “stability, predictability and certainty … have been the corner-stones of our economic development, prosperity and progress as a nation. we have built prosperity for malaysia and malaysians because we have a government which is stable, united, liberal and pro-business.” the highlight of the etp was the new economic model (nem), which charted the strategies to escape the “middle-income trap” by upgrading productivity and enhancing national competitiveness in the real economy and engaging in huge financial investments (najib, 2010a, 2010d; neac, 2010a, 2010b). at the inaugural of the national economic advisory council (neac), which drafted the nem, najib (2009d) pronounced the continuation of economic reforms en route to neoliberal convergence by “realigning … economic strategy to accommodate today’s competitive environment”; by accelerating liberalization efforts; and by continuing post-1997 crisis plans of action that “fostered the transformation of malaysia into a free market economy”. he then instructed neac “to review the importance of traditional relationships and responsibilities in the economic sphere”, so as to “create a new relationship of public/private partnership”, where the government “manages the economy and ensure[s] an economic environment that is conducive to long term, stable growth”, and where the private sector “provides a strong engine for growth, as it is able to react almost immediately to changes in market conditions, much faster than any government” (najib, 2009d). the 1malaysia development berhad (1mdb) was established in 2009 to carry out etp’s strategizing activities and meet funding requirements. it turned into a sovereign wealth fund with diversified interests in key economic areas identified under the 68 | aseas 11(1) the institutions of authoritarian neoliberalism in malaysia etp such as oil and energy, financial and business services, and communications and infrastructure. the government of malaysia was 1mdb’s only shareholder, ensuring “a unified public-private sector approach and policy alignment towards a competitive malaysia” (1mdb, n.d.). the sovereign wealth fund (swf) institute characterized 1mdb as an enterprise “funded by debt guaranteed by the malaysian federal government” (swf institute, 2012). early on, critics were wary of najib’s intention in creating 1mdb on suspicion that its funds could be used as electoral capital for bn’s money politics and as a business machine to enrich or bail out umno cronies (zahiid, 2011). soon after, corruption allegations and financial scandals surrounding the mismanagement of the 1mdb immensely contributed to the dismal electoral showing and eventual defeat of najib and bn during the 2013 and 2018 general elections. the najib government tried to contain local media news on the 1mdb controversy through censorship of critical online media outlets, like the malaysian insider news site. nonetheless, international news agencies, particularly the wall street journal and the new york times, have followed the controversy and regularly published reports on the 1mdb scandal since july 2015, including the exposé that some usd 1 billion from the state investment fund had been deposited to najib’s personal bank account (hope, paige, welch, murray, & canipe, 2016). the 1mdb scandal elicited a motley crew of discontents with najib even within the umno, not least the sustained criticism from mahathir who unequivocally demanded najib’s removal and finally resigned from the party in february 2016 (murad, 2016). on his part, in 2015, najib sacked cabinet officials over the 1mdb controversies, notably his deputy minister muhyiddin yassin and attorney-general abdul gani patail (teoh, 2015). muhyiddin was openly critical of the government’s handling of the 1mdb case, and abdul gani led a high-level investigation of the alleged money trail of the 1mdb funds ending up in najib’s bank accounts. in 2016, the najib government classified the auditor-general’s report on the financial transactions and accounting of assets of the 1mdb under the officials secrets act. but within a week after najib had lost the 2018 general elections, the new government under mahathir made this report public. the auditor-general’s report basically confirms previous news and longstanding criticisms on 1mdb’s poor corporate governance and illicit transactions – including the claim that, between 2009 and 2014, the company had accumulated debt and inherited loans totaling myr 42 billion (usd 10.6 billion) (the edge singapore, 2018). the u.s. department of justice (usdoj), together with the federal bureau of investigation and the internal revenue service, also launched an investigation into alleged fund misappropriations of the 1mdb. in june 2017, the usdoj filed “civil forfeiture complaints” under its kleptocracy asset recovery initiative, seeking to recover nearly usd 1.7 billion worth of assets that might have been laundered through financial institutions in the united states (hui, 2018; paddock, 2017; usdoj, 2017). the 10mp provided the details of growth targets, budgetary allocations, and implementation of 1malaysia, gtp, and etp-nem for 2011-2015 (malaysia, 2010). it maintained the development objectives of previous administrations, with emphasis on continuous financial and institutional support for the bumiputera commercial and industrial community and affirmative actions for bumiputeras in equity ownership restructuring efforts (najib, 2010a). yet, it was especially intended to deal with the impacts of the global economic crisis on the domestic economy. najib (2009d) had aseas 11(1) | 69 bonn juego outlined state-market relations in malaysia’s neoliberalism during crisis moments: “when the dynamic private sector retreats, the government must step in and increase its investments to fill the void.” this, as najib (2009d) pointed out, had been the case since the 1997 asian crisis which made it difficult to realize private sector-led growth and market-led development as envisaged in vision 2020. the nem and the 10mp defined the “strategies for a more focused role for the government as an enabler, regulator and catalyst” and emphasized the “shift [of] the onus now for the private sector to step up its role as the true engine of growth” (najib, 2010c). to stimulate participation of the private sector, which “has not been playing its part” since the 1997 crisis (najib, 2009d), the government had planned to venture into massive investments in megaprojects and allotted a facilitation fund of myr 20 billion (usd 5 billion) for public-private partnerships (najib, 2010a, 2010d). 1malaysia was also the development program for the last leg of the journey to vision 2020 as laid out in the eleventh malaysia plan (11mp) for 2016-2020. the malaysian national development strategy (mynds) is the guiding action plan for the 11mp. mynds enjoins market-based solutions to attain the goals of social inclusion and environmental sustainability through increasing high impact labor productivity and technological innovation at low cost for the government. thus, what the 11mp’s theme of “anchoring growth on people” means is that its real centerpiece is the advancement of the “capital economy” (gdp growth, big businesses, mega investment projects, and financial markets) under which the “people economy” (workers, smalland-medium enterprises, families, and communities) is subsumed (malaysia, 2015b). neoliberal crisis responses as a crisis response, 1malaysia undertook several key institutional measures, of which six of them were notable. these economic policies and strategies were aimed at weathering the impact of the 2008 global economic crisis and the effects of the sharp drop in oil prices in the world market that followed. their goal was to restore growth in the export-oriented industries. the first of these measures was the expression of the najib regime’s interests in the stability of the global capitalist system. as he was about to assume the premiership, najib (2008) called for the reform of the global financial architecture and urged governments to draw on the lessons of the malaysian ‘successful’ experience of capital and exchange controls in dealing with the 1997 asian financial crisis. he appealed to the g8 countries to “come to grips with the seriousness of the global financial turmoil, so that the capitalistic system as we know it do not break down or collapse amidst rising bank failures, bankruptcies and market meltdown” (najib, 2008). then, at the 2009 world capital markets symposium, he proposed for a “regulatory laissez faire” in the financial system where “regulatory oversight should take precedence over the pursuit of private profit through the manipulation of unfettered capital” (najib, 2009e). the second measure was for the restoration of political order, immediately following the 2008 general elections. najib (2008) claimed that “predictability, stability and certainty in [malaysia’s] system of governance” have been the linchpin of the country’s capitalist development, as these conditions are needed for market security and profitability. this particular crisis response signified a couple of important 70 | aseas 11(1) the institutions of authoritarian neoliberalism in malaysia features in the regime of authoritarian neoliberalism under najib: (1) democracy is limited to the electoral exercise; and (2) the objective of securing market order entails an anti-politics attitude towards the opposition where “[there] is no time for politicking or to score points politically” (najib, 2008). the third of these measures were the two economic stimulus packages (esps) roughly amounting to myr 67 billion (usd 16.5 billion), or 9% of gdp, to inject spending into the domestic economy with the hope of recovery of the private sector and the economy as a whole during the 2009-2011 period (goh & lim, 2009; mahani & rasiah, 2009; najib, 2009f). esp 1 was allotted for infrastructure, transportation, education, banking, and finance. esp 2 took the forms of bank guarantees, tax incentives, and allocations to the national sovereign fund. these packages were appropriated mostly for private sector assistance and infrastructure, and the rest for social protection programs and subsidies for food, toll, fuel, and low-cost housing. the fourth measure had to do with further liberalization. at the 13th malaysian banking summit, najib (2009g) commented that “to make 1malaysia a reality … the government needs to partner actively with the business community”. accordingly, najib (2009g), as concurrent finance minister, announced the liberalization of the financial sector “as a key enabler and catalyst of economic growth”. this was earlier complemented by the liberalization of the services sub-sectors and related efforts to “continue to modify or eliminate policies that inhibit growth” (najib, 2009f). other reforms that najib (2009e, 2009f) announced include: removing 30% bumiputera equity requirements for listed companies; liberalizing the capital market growth agenda by attracting international firms in broking and islamic finance; deregulating the foreign investment committee guidelines; and restructuring government-linked companies to be globally competitive. these liberalization schemes were connected to the ambition for kuala lumpur to become a “global financial center” through a megaproject of the 1mdb in partnership with abu dhabi’s mubadala development company to construct the kuala lumpur international financial district – a 34-hectare real-estate development amounting to around myr 26 billion (usd 6.5 billion) (najib, 2010e). renamed as the tun razak exchange (trx) after najib’s father, the construction of this megaproject only began in 2013 and the plan expanded to 70 hectares. but the najib government was soon compelled to de-link the trx from the 1mdb state fund and the money laundering controversies surrounding it. all these liberalization agendas, however, cannot be construed as the malaysian state’s unqualified embrace of orthodox neoliberalism. as najib (2009b) categorically declared: we welcome others into malaysia, while maintaining our own special identity and protecting our economic interests … [w]e are not liberalising to conform to some new economic orthodoxy … our objective is clear: to ensure that malaysians – our people and our companies … benefit from the competitive dynamics that are shaping the global marketplace. the fifth measure was fiscal discipline, mostly imposed during najib’s second term (2013-2018), through austerity programs that cut subsidies and funds for welfare, health, and education. the government implemented a series of major tax and fiscal aseas 11(1) | 71 bonn juego reforms to replace long-running populist economic policies to address the challenges of budget deficit, the fall in global oil prices, and the depreciation of the ringgit. firstly, the najib administration removed blanket subsidy for fuel in 2014 and then proposed to cut electricity subsidy in 2017. energy subsidies, especially on electricity and transport fuel, have existed since the 1980s to protect low-income households and stimulate economic activity. the rolling back of this state-subsidized fuel consumption is in line with the neoliberal principle of getting prices ‘right’ by letting the market set the ‘real’ costs of energy usage. secondly, the government implemented the gst (goods and services tax) at the standard rate of 6% in april 2015. the gst was intended to increase revenue to offset decades-long fiscal deficits. from 1988 to 2017, the government budget deficit of malaysia averaged 2.97% of gdp (trading economics, 2018). during the 2009 global recession, the deficit further ballooned to its highest level equal to 6.7% of gdp due to stimulus packages and subsidies for the domestic economy. it was also hoped that the income generated from gst would reduce government’s dependence on oil and natural gas revenues, especially from the state-owned petronas. the gst was a broad-based tax on most consumptions and imports made in malaysia. but the exports of goods and services from malaysia were generally gst-free; thus giving incentives to an export-oriented production system to encourage gdp growth. the gst was implemented when the ringgit was depreciating, when currencies of commodity exporting countries like malaysia were negatively affected by oil price fluctuations since 2014. the combined effects of gst and the weakening ringgit on rising prices and living costs have been mostly felt by poor households, ordinary workers, and the middle class (cf. ng, 2015). china policy the sixth crisis response measure was the strategy to look to or emulate china’s economic strategy and integrate chinese capital into malaysia’s accumulation regime. this was in line with the overall plan to attract more foreign direct investment (fdi) and portfolio investments from emerging economies that form part of the brics (especially china, india, and brazil) while continuously engaging with traditional partners us, eu, japan, south korea, australia, and the asean. najib (2009b) candidly justified that his first official visit to a non-asean country was made to china upon the invitation of the former chinese premiere wen jiabao because malaysia’s relationship with china is “fundamental to our national interests” and “there are many mutual lessons to be learnt and shared between our countries”. firstly, najib (2009b) had expressed malaysia’s interest in getting a market share of chinese capital in recognition of the fact that “china has enormous foreign exchange reserves which amount to larger than the combined reserves of all the g7 countries added together”. at the business forum organized by the government of malaysia in beijing, najib (2009h) regarded china as a “strategic partner”, and thus laid down his economic agenda for expansion with his state counterpart and china’s business community (see also fmprc, 2011; najib, 2010f). secondly, najib (2009b) highlighted one of the important lessons from the chinese development experience: “the realization that for china, like malaysia, an 72 | aseas 11(1) the institutions of authoritarian neoliberalism in malaysia open door economic policy has brought extraordinary economic progress”. at the 2010 world chinese economic forum in kuala lumpur, held exactly a year after the former chinese president hu jintao visited malaysia, najib (2010f) announced that “malaysia has become china’s largest trading partner among asean countries”. najib (2010f) then went on to declare: “the lessons that can be learned from china, and from the rise of asia as a whole, is that free trade, open markets, and openness to investment are the way to prosperity”. since 2009, china has been malaysia’s largest trading partner. between 2009 and 2017, chinese exports to malaysia amounted to usd 41.7 billion (i.e., 10.8% year-over-year increase), and malaysian exports to china amounted to usd 54.3 billion (i.e., 10.2% year-over-year increase) (liu, 2018). in terms of investments, chinese fdi in malaysia were relatively small until 2012. but both chinese fdi in, and trade volume with, malaysia skyrocketed during najib’s second term starting in 2013, at the time when chinese president xi jinping assumed power and china’s belt and road initiative (bri) was launched. within the bri framework, chinese fdi into malaysia during 2013-2017 grew nearly 350%, totaling usd 2.36 billion – which is a 20.2% contribution to fdi growth (liu, 2018). big investments from china got increasing public attention since the late 2015 when the 1mdb sold its entire assets in the power sector under the edra global energy berhad to china general nuclear power corporation for myr 9.83 billion (usd 2.3 billion) cash (chin, 2015). then, in 2016, najib made another official visit to china to formalize dozens of agreements between malaysian and chinese companies worth around myr 144 billion (usd 36.1 billion), covering diverse sectors such as infrastructure, manufacturing, and real estate (“m’sian, chinese firms sign”, 2016). eleven high-profile deals between china and malaysia totaling usd 134 billion had been reported, including the controversial east coast rail link (liu, 2018). the malaysian government guaranteed the loans to finance the high-risk megaprojects. with these agreements, the najib regime had tied malaysian society and economy to the chinese government and business interests for decades ahead. these deals generated political opposition, and became a critical issue against the najib administration during the 2018 elections. the increasing presence of chinese workers and enterprises in malaysia is also creating social tension among the local population (tham, 2018). indeed, malaysia under najib had economic interests in china’s capital reservoir. but it may also be the case that the najib government looked to china as an exemplar of an authoritarian-neoliberal regime with a strong state that is capable of managing a capitalist production system and its social consequences. in his bid for re-election in 2018, najib campaigned for continuity of 1malaysia’s purported accomplishments and its transformation program towards a high-income and equal country. but najib and the umno/bn suffered a stunning defeat from the mahathir-led coalition pakatan harapan, which campaigned on the message of change and criticized the actual political, societal, and economic achievements of the 1malaysia vision – particularly the authoritarianism, neoliberalism, and corruption of the najib regime. aseas 11(1) | 73 bonn juego concluding remarks the ge14 put an end to 61 years of umno/bn dominance. it also culminated the two decades of the reformasi movement’s electoral opposition. among other things, the outcome of the historic election signifies a loud ‘protest vote’ against the more advanced version of the regime of authoritarian neoliberalism under najib and the large-scale corruption that came with it. the new ruling government under mahathir promises an ambitious agenda for ‘regime change’, encompassing the spheres of governance, ethnic relations, and economy. this article has attempted to reveal the operating principles and institutions of the enduring regime of authoritarian neoliberalism in malaysia – which must be the targets of reform initiatives, and against which the extent of the promised social change shall be evaluated. authoritarian neoliberalism has been the de facto social regime in malaysia where the neoliberal economy was being made to operate within a strong state. it evolved through the administrations of mahathir, abdullah, and najib. the politicalbusiness interests of the ruling elites largely shaped the priorities and tendencies of this regime. since the official termination of the nep in 1991, the discursive mutations in malaysia’s development agendas have conformed to the discernible shift in specific phases of the global political economy of capitalism. however, as this article has shown, the malaysian state’s policy choices cannot be reduced to some overarching ideology of orthodox neoliberalism, or process of neoliberalization, according to the templates of the washington consensus and post-washington consensus. formal compliance to the evolving global discourse on capitalist development might have been based on the calculations of the state elites on the benefits of adopting neoliberalism in their domestic laws, external agreements, and policy pronouncements – thereby, avoiding the cost of being excluded from the expanded market share and accumulation opportunities under conditions of globalization (tabb, 2004). arguably, malaysia’s governing elites and their cronies were motivated by their selfinterests, rather than pure ideology, in yielding to neoliberal discourses and policies. mahathir’s 22-year premiership hammered out and nurtured the foundations of authoritarian neoliberalism. his administration laid out the wawasan 2020 development framework upon which the subsequent programs of islam hadhari and 1malaysia were built. wawasan 2020 was: constructed by a hegemonic network that cut across classes and ethnicities; operated by a political-business alliance within the umno power bloc; characterized by a calibrated neoliberalism with a national industrialization strategy; and orchestrated by an authoritarian state. it tried to ensure political stability through state’s anti-democratic, coercive means. in addition, it sought to manage the economic accumulation process through active state intervention in favor of its cronies and of what it perceived to be ‘the national interest’. abdullah’s islam hadhari envisioned a state-managed capitalist development with ethnic malay and religious islam undertones. it was presented as a socio-political and economic program for a moderate islam in the aftermaths of the 1997 asian financial crisis and the 9/11 global war on terror. it initially succeeded as an electoral campaign to win over a larger malay constituency but later failed to sustain the confidence of both the electorate and the umno network. abdullah failed to deliver on his reform 74 | aseas 11(1) the institutions of authoritarian neoliberalism in malaysia promises. his anti-corruption initiatives were thwarted by entrenched vested interests including from his own family. the 1malaysia agenda of najib built on the neoliberalization process started off by mahathir with a view to more open real economy and financial sector towards global competitiveness. amid the stagnating effect of the 2008-2009 global economic recession on malaysia’s export industry, the competitiveness project to venture out into high value-added production system was coupled with investments in megaprojects and an ambitious scheme to make kuala lumpur a global financial center. central to this drive for competitiveness were najib government’s conscious efforts in emulating as well as making lucrative business deals and high-risk investments with the rising china. during its second term, the najib administration also resorted to government austerity and other fiscal disciplinary measures to supposedly address budget deficits, fall in oil prices, and the depreciation of the ringgit. embroiled in massive corruption scandals and crime allegations, najib’s rhetoric involved a doublespeak, especially about democratization, but his anti-democratic actions spoke for themselves. the najib regime saw authoritarianism as the most viable political system on which intensified capital accumulation and the maintenance of umno/bn hegemony were to be embedded. the reform programs of mahathir’s new government will be closely scrutinized by the now opposition umno/bn and the vibrant new media. most crucially, mahathir will be held accountable by his current political supporters from pakatan harapan, originally belonging to the reformasi movement, who once faulted him for much of what ails contemporary malaysia in terms of a culture of impunity, corruption, and other institutional malaises. this article’s exposition of the enduring institutions of authoritarian neoliberalism in malaysia points to where and why reforms for genuine democracy, social justice, economic development, and wealth 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(1989). malaysia: quasi-democracy in a divided society. in l. diamond, j. j. linz, & s. m. lipset (eds.), democracy in developing countries (pp. 347-381). boulder: lynne rienner. about the author bonn juego is postdoctoral researcher at the department of social sciences and philosophy, university of jyväskylä, finland. his research endeavors, teaching responsibilities, and outreach activities are at the intersection between the areas of political economy, development studies, and international relations with a geographical focus on east and southeast asia, the global south, and nordic-asia relations. ► contact: bonn.juego@jyu.fi acknowledgements i thank the anonymous referees and journal editors, especially rainer einzenberger and wolfram schaffar, for their insightful suggestions and reviews on earlier drafts of this article. i am grateful to johannes dragsbaek schmidt, peter wad, jacques hersh, barry gills, and jane parpart for their thoughtful comments on the first versions of this study’s argumentation which formed part as sections of a chapter in my dissertation. their feedback are most valued, as well as the critical discussions with gareth richards, paul cammack, wolfgang drechsler, erik reinert, and butch montes. aseas 16(1) | 39 access to education for refugee children in indonesia during the covid-19 pandemic: challenges and adaptation strategies r. a. rizka fiani prabaningtyasa* , tri nuke pudjiastutia , athiqah nur alamia , faudzan farhanaa & arfanb aresearch centre for politics, national research and innovation agency, indonesia bsultan thaha saifuddin state islamic university jambi, indonesia *corresponding author: prabaningtyas.rizka@gmail.com received: 24 november 2022 / accepted: 05 march 2023 / published: 28 june 2023 ► prabaningtyas, r.a.r.f., pudjiastuti, t.n., alami, a.n., farhana, f., & arfan (2023). access to education for refugee children in indonesia during the covid-19 pandemic. advances in southeast asian studies, 16(1), 39-61. the protracted refugee situation in indonesia during the covid-19 pandemic has increased refugee children's vulnerability due to the non-fulfillment of their fundamental rights, including the right to education. drawing on data collected through interviews and observation of refugee children during fieldwork in the cities of batam and makassar, this paper aims to investigate how and why their access to education has changed during the pandemic. this study finds that, shortly before the pandemic, the indonesian government provided access to education for refugee children through the issuance of the circular letter from the secretary general of the ministry of education, culture, research and technology number 752553/a.a4/hk/2019 dated on 10 july 2019. however, the pandemic complicated the accessibility of education for refugee children suggested by the circular letter due to lockdown policy and mobility restrictions. the complication is apparent in four aspects of accessibility, namely: access to information, activities in the learning process, environmental support, and the motivation of refugee children. notwithstanding, this study also finds that the pandemic has induced developments of adaptation strategies through the adoption of online learning among refugee communities to enable wider access to education for refugee children. therefore, the pandemic may have revealed the urgency for a more rights-based policy on refugee treatment in indonesia. keywords: accessibility; covid-19 pandemic; refugee children; indonesia; rights to education  introduction indonesia is one of the refugee transit countries in southeast asia. as of february 2022, indonesia hosted 13,174 refugees; 27% of them are children, primarily from afghanistan, somalia, myanmar, iraq, and sudan.1 as many as 97 children are 1 in this paper, the term ‘refugee children’ refers to children of refugees and asylum seekers in current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 89 mailto:thithimadee.art%40mahidol.ac.th?subject= https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3624-9823 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0647-8040 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5156-9593 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2277-124x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3183-8856 mailto:prabaningtyas.rizka%40gmail.com?subject= 40 | aseas 16(1) access to education for refugee children in indonesia during the covid-19 pandemic unaccompanied minors, which means that they have arrived in indonesia alone or were separated from their families (unhcr, 2022). the protracted refugee situation in indonesia has increased refugee children's vulnerability due to the non-fulfillment of their fundamental rights, including rights to education (brown, 2018, p. 166; lau, 2021). education for refugee children needs crucial attention as an inseparable part of children’s rights. sustainable access to education is vital to reducing their vulnerabilities and reaching their full potential despite their precarious situation (dryden-peterson, 2017). under the situation, some researchers have indicated that education is necessary for restoring social and emotional wellbeing (eisenbruch, 1988; huyck & fields, 1981; sinclair, 2001). contrarily, failure to provide access to education in the transit period will cause a 'lost learning' situation where refugee children's level of education is far behind their age because of long periods out of school (mason & orcutt, 2018; cardinal, 2020). this situation might cause more problems in the future, such as low qualifications to enter the labor market. recently, researchers have started giving greater attention to pre-resettlement educational experiences, focusing on the role of multi-stake holders, including education provided by refugees themselves (brown, 2018; sinandang et al, 2021), education while in immigration detention (suyoto, 2021) and countries of first asylum (drydenpeterson, 2016), protection from a legal and normative perspective (adhi et. al. 2021; asti & rahayu, 2019; shalihah & putri, 2020), and education in emergencies or crises such as conflicts, disaster and pandemic (jones et. al., 2022; menashy & zakharia, 2022; sinclair, 2002; shohel, 2022). rohingyas refugees, including children who are living temporarily in camps in bangladesh, for example, face barriers such as shortage of schools and learning materials to access education (shohel, 2022). in times of the covid-19 pandemic, syrian refugee children in lebanon also could not attend remote schooling and had a lack of access to the internet (azba, 2022; menashy & zakharia, 2022). other studies revealed the challenges faced by countries in europe, latin america, and the caribbean in adjusting their educational system in the midst of crisis while also facilitating refugees’ right to education. the challenges range from structural barriers, gaps in educational outcomes, different policies and practices, increasing security threats, or mental health conditions affected by the crisis (caarls, et.al 2021; özgür keysan, 2022; parker & alfaro, 2022; saischeck, 2022). although it is acknowledged that access to education, especially in a transitory displacement and emergency context, can give a sense of normalcy and stability during an uncertain lengthy period of waiting time for resettlement (mosselson et al., 2017, p. 15; kristin & dewi, 2021), these above previous studies have underlined the limitation on access to education among refugee children. there is limited access to education for refugee children in a transitory context and times of crisis, yet, there have not been many studies focusing on educational experiences of refugee children in transit countries such as indonesia during the covid-19 pandemic and through the lens of accessibility. to address these gaps, drawing from greco (2018) and ribot & peluso (2003), we present a conceptual framework of accessibility to understand indonesia, who may have arrived with their families or were born during the transit period, as well as those children who are unaccompanied or were separated from their families. aseas 16(1) | 41 r. a. rizka fiani prabaningtyas, tri nuke pudjiastuti, athiqah nur alami, faudzan farhana & arfan the complexities of access to education during the pandemic through four aspects, namely: access to information, activities in learning process, environmental support, and motivation and resilience. this paper scrutinizes the situation and problems of access to education for refugee children in indonesia throughout the pandemic, highlighting the early progress of implementation of the circular letter from the secretary general of the ministry of education, culture, research and technology number 752553/a.a4/hk/2019 dated on 10 july 2019 (hereinafter referred to as circular letter) and changes in national education policy due to the pandemic. the circular letter primarily indicates that refugee children can attend formal education in indonesia if their enrolment meets the terms and conditions outlined in the letter, such as not burdening state and regional budgets, prioritizing indonesian school-age children, possessing a refugee card from the united nations high commissioner for refugees (unhcr), receiving a referral from an immigration detention center, and obtaining a letter of financial guarantee from a sponsoring institution. prior to the issuance of the circular letter, refugees’ right to enroll in indonesian schools had not been appropriately regulated, thus many schools were reluctant to accept refugee children. some practices in enrolling refugees at schools were mostly on a humanitarian basis (pudjiastuti & putera, 2021). however, the covid-19 pandemic hindered the implementation of the circular letter. regulations on mobility restrictions to prevent the spread of virus, including lockdowns and school closures, further complicated access to education for refugee children. self-isolation is extremely challenging for refugees in the midst of poor hygiene, crowd housings, and limited access to health facilities (sadjad, 2020). this paper consists of four sections. following the introduction, the second section provides the methodology of this research. the third section reviews relevant literature on education as a child's human right and provides the notion of accessibility as a lens to analyze the access to education for refugee children. the fourth section discusses the main findings, including exploring refugee children's situation in batam and makassar and analyzing their access to education during the pandemic in indonesia. lastly, the conclusion reiterates the complexities of providing education for refugee children and sheds light on the crucial role of relevant actors in ensuring indonesia’s commitment to provide education for all, including refugee children. methodology this qualitative study focuses on access to formal education in public and private schools in the cities of batam (in the province of riau archipelago) and makassar (in the province of south sulawesi) to seek more sustainable and qualified educational options for refugees in a transitory context. the informal education provided by the refugee-led initiatives will only be discussed in the context of adaptation strategy during the pandemic, but not as the main focus of research. in 2021, batam and makassar had a substantial population of refugee children who had enrolled in formal education under the auspices of the international organization for migration/ iom (2021). afghans constitute the largest refugee population in batam and makassar, followed by a smaller group of refugees from somalia, sudan, iran, and pakistan. in makassar, particularly, myanmar's refugees were the second largest group. 42 | aseas 16(1) access to education for refugee children in indonesia during the covid-19 pandemic we collected primary data through observations and in-depth interviews in june 2022. to do so, we visited community houses for refugee families at the hotel kolekta (batam) as well as community house wisma msm and dkhanza (makassar). we also visited schools2 that have refugee students enrolled to observe their daily educational activities and interview the headmasters and teachers. during our visit, we interviewed 6 refugee parents from different national origin (afghanistan, sudan, sri lanka, and somalia) who have been living in indonesia for 5-10 years and 5 refugee children3 who were enrolled in primary and secondary schools4 during the fieldwork phase of study. we also conducted interviews with government officials at local and national levels, including immigration officers at immigration detention centers, city education office heads, and the local task forces for handling refugees – in batam, officers from the national and political unity agency (badan kesatuan bangsa dan politik/bakesbangpol) and the head of the social affairs office in makassar. we also interviewed the mayor of makassar city and the acting director of special education and services in the ministry of education, culture, research, and technology. in addition, we interviewed representatives of the unhcr and iom. this research is subject to several limitations. first, our access to the refugee community was mainly facilitated by the directorate general of immigration, indonesia’s ministry of law and human rights, education offices, and the heads of schools. consequently, it may not represent the whole refugee communities in batam and makassar. second, the short time period for the fieldwork hindered our capability to conduct a longer observation with all relevant stakeholders at the local and national level. however, we tried to optimize in-depth interviews with as many actors as possible. we also used online meetings to interview informants that were unavailable during the fieldwork. third, there were language barriers, particularly in making communication and interacting with refugee parents and children. while some refugees who had lived more than ten years in indonesia spoke bahasa indonesia well, not all of our research participants were fluent in indonesian or english to a point enabling a comfortable conversation during the observation and interviews. we addressed the language difficulties by asking help from refugees who spoke fluent english or bahasa indonesia to be interpreters. 2 other than the schools of our refugee children’s participants, we also interviewed headmasters and teachers in sdn btn unggulan pemda, state junior high school (sekolah menengah pertama negeri or smpn) 41 batam and smpn 48 makassar. 3 we acknowledged the sensitivities of conducting research involving refugees, particularly children from vulnerable communities. the ethical process includes dual consent from refugee children and refugee parents/caregivers/guardians. furthermore, the involvement of refugee children below 10 years old is limited to observation of their activities in schools and short conversation instead of in-depth interviews. ethical approval for this study was obtained from the ethical committee for social sciences and humanities, national research and innovation agency (badan riset dan inovasi nasional/brin), indonesia (approval number: 025/ke.01/sk/4/2022). 4 three children were enrolled in lubuk baja 5 and lubuk baja 2 state elementary schools (sekolah dasar negeri or sdn) in batam; two children were enrolled in senior high school (sekolah menengah atas or sma) frater makassar. aseas 16(1) | 43 r. a. rizka fiani prabaningtyas, tri nuke pudjiastuti, athiqah nur alami, faudzan farhana & arfan children’s right as human rights according to the convention on the rights of the child (crc) of 1989 article 2, refugee children should enjoy their rights as children irrespective of their legal status. crc (1989) also states that children are not just adults in training or objects that belong to their parents and for whom decisions are made. instead, they are human beings and individuals with their own rights. the crc (1989, article 1) asserts that childhood is separate from adulthood and it lasts until the age of 185. within this time, fulfilling the right to education during childhood and under any circumstances is essential for transforming children’s lives. in relation to the fulfillment of children’s rights, hannah arendt’s concept of "the right to have rights" is a useful framework for analysis (arendt, 1973; azar, 2019; lundberg, 2018; walters, 2021). arendt argues that refugees lack citizenship and human rights and naturally lose their fundamental rights, such as access to health, education, and livelihoods (lundberg, 2018, pp. 71-72). arendt herself, as we note above, expressed grave concerns about whether being human was, in practice, enough to enable anyone to enjoy rights without also being a citizen of a nationstate. degooyer (2018, p. 41) offers interpretation of the notion "to have rights" as to “participate in staging, creating, and sustaining (through protest, legislation, collective action, or institution building) a common political world where the ability to legitimately claim and demand rights becomes a possibility for everyone". however, in reality, refugee rights’ protection remains dependent on third countries’ regulations and policies, as no international organizations could provide sustainable conditions to uphold human rights only the nation-state (boehm, 2015). drawing upon arendt’s concept and interpretations as well as indonesia’s obligations under international law, indonesia is the primary duty-bearer to accommodate and facilitate the fulfillment of children’s rights, including education. accessibility to education the concept of accessibility can be used to understand the fulfillment of refugees’ rights to education. greco (2016) argued that accessibility can be interpreted as a proactive principle for the achievement of human rights. in the context of a nation-state, it is necessary for the state as the duty bearer to specify access as an essential condition for satisfying the fulfillment of human rights for any person under its jurisdiction (greco, 2016, p. 11; broderick, 2020). further, in the context of education, greco (2018, 2019) also called for a systematic approach to the practice(s) of teaching and learning accessibility in which it accommodates the essential parts of accessibility, including: acknowledgment of human diversity, active participation to create an inclusive social environment, universal account of access, and user-centered approaches. access refers to all the ways a person can get benefit, including access to information. accessibility and availability depend on approach, action, and organization. ribot and peluso (2003, 153-154) state that access is defined as "the ability to benefit 5 the issue of accurate age estimation to determine children status in a refugee context is still subject to discussion, concerning that refugee children may be under circumstances in which it is difficult to determine their true age or level of education (benson & william, 2008). 44 | aseas 16(1) access to education for refugee children in indonesia during the covid-19 pandemic from things," expanding on the traditional definition of property as "the right to benefit from things." capability to access rights concerns the actual capacity of access seekers to enjoy access rights through various means inherent in the system. the combination of rights and abilities requires that accessibility concerns three dimensions: availability to all without legal or other discrimination, easy access without physical barriers, and no economic conditions that limit or deny enjoyment or benefits (ribot & peluso, 2003; dio, 2016). building on these dimensions, access can also be interpreted as the ability to access, which can arise or affect social relationships that limit or allow for the benefits of resources. accessibility is also the process of obtaining a benefit either directly or through any individual, organization or group of individuals and maintaining that influence over time to benefit from resources or services (ribot & peluso, 2003). accessibility can be obtained through regulating the availability of information to enroll in public schools, affirmative regulation, and a supportive environment. drawing from these thoughts on accessibility, this paper develops a framework of accessibility to education for refugee children in indonesia particularly during pandemic times, consisting of four essential elements: access to information, educational activities and learning processes, environmental support, and motivation. access to information the availability of information is fundamental to providing education for refugee children. information must be delivered through accessible channels for refugees and easily understood by refugees. okai (2019) emphasizes theory of justice and equality that information should be available to all users. the information available in the context of refugees is not only to ensure that there is information, but the refugees must also understand the information. due to their socio-cultural vulnerability, refugees are prone to language and cultural barriers (mavhura et al., 2017). differences in values, norms, and practices between the refugee-origin areas and their new host communities can cause different interpretations of information. they may lead to discrimination and exclusion from participation in social and community life. this phenomenon can also cause refugee parents and children to be reluctant to access education despite the available access. educational activities and learning processes teaching methods can make the learning environment more accessible to all refugee children students, who have a wide range of physical, cognitive, emotional, and psychological abilities (tyrer & fazel, 2014). during the covid-19 pandemic, it was important for educators to innovate the learning environment to engage students in educational activity and give them many opportunities to demonstrate their learning. inclusive pedagogy, developed at the university of chicago, indicates there are at least three processes to make education accessible to refugee children (the university of chicago, n.d). first, provide lessons in different means of representation. based on the premise that learners access information differently, this principle encourages flexible ways to present information. second, facilitate students to actively aseas 16(1) | 45 r. a. rizka fiani prabaningtyas, tri nuke pudjiastuti, athiqah nur alami, faudzan farhana & arfan demonstrate their understanding in different ways. third, enable students to connect with content and problem processes, and actively engage in group work. environmental support for education lauria (2017) indicates that transforming the environment (material and social) towards human capacity affects individual behavior. environmental accessibility is a collective resource that can increase the social capital of a community to provide value to the members of the community. it is not only limited to products, services, and environments that can be accessed and used but includes the role of policies, structures, technology, and production and distribution processes (undesa, 2013). it means support from surroundings including family and the refugee community, schools, international agencies, and government in terms of material aspects such regulation, educational facilities, financial support for transport and other costs, as well as immaterial aspects such as encouragement and social receptiveness. therefore, the environment is not a neutral space but always affects and is influenced by involved actors. motivation to pursue education the ability of social adaptation may affect the refugees' views and perception of what is happening around them and what matters to them, including the urgency and importance of taking education for their children. refugees often find it hard to adapt socially to new environments, which may affect their motivation to access education. the adaptation process depends on how the 'social pocket' containing the original culture, habitus, and belief system can be practiced in a new location (bailey, 2017; obiezu, 2019). it also relies on how refugees perceive the attitude of receiving communities, which may be reluctant (wong-rieger & quintana, 1987) or more open and receptive (birman et al., 2005) towards the presence of refugee communities. in addition, reinhardt et al. (2021) identified that the individual motivations of refugee children greatly affect their survival. language ability, cognitive function, and sociodemographic factors such as gender and country of residence affect the retention of refugee students during online studies. the situation of education access for refugee children in batam and makassar good practices to provide formal education for refugee children in makassar and batam existed prior to the pandemic. in makassar, some formal schools have provided education access for refugees even before the issuance of the circular letter. the education of refugee children in formal schools has been carried out and became one of the points in the memorandum of understanding (mou) between iom and the makassar city government on 21 september 2015 (syahrul, 2019). following this mou, several formal schools were ready to accept refugee students at the elementary level, whose studies would be funded by iom (gabiella & putri, 2018). meanwhile, the first intake of refugee children to formal schools in batam was in january 2020. the 46 | aseas 16(1) access to education for refugee children in indonesia during the covid-19 pandemic head of the batam city education office (interviewed on 14 june 2022) stated that the circular letter legitimizes their cooperation with iom, which had previously asked public schools in batam to accept refugee children with no success. international agencies such as unhcr and iom have given financial assistance and initiated programs to ensure refugee children's access to education. however, unhcr indonesia has limited capabilities in educational assistance for refugees, which then gives iom space, with greater financial support, to carry out this assistance (interview with unhcr staff in tanjung pinang and makassar, 23-24 june 2022). therefore, in both cities, we found that most refugee children attending formal schools were receiving iom assistance. based on an interview with the iom coordinator for the eastern indonesia region in makassar (23 june 2022), iom provided special staff and funding to support the provision of access to education for refugee children. refugee dependency on international agencies is unavoidable since refugees in indonesia have limited access to economic opportunities and resources to become more self-sufficient. the iom plays an important role for refugee students, schools and government officials alike. based on several interviews with refugee parents in both cities, they rely on iom to start the school search process, negotiate administrative requirements and costs with schools, find alternative funding and finance school needs, buy school supplies, discuss educational developments and resolve problems if children have difficulties in school. meanwhile, schools rely on iom as a bridge between schools, parents, and students with language barriers and other access limitations due to their refugee status (interviews with headmasters and teachers at schools, 13-24 june 2022). from interviews with the heads of city education offices in batam and makassar (14 and 22 june 2022), they rely on iom to obtain up-to-date data on the profile of refugee children and actively involve iom in developing appropriate educational programs for refugee children. previously, iom has also cooperated with a local non-governmental organization in makassar to prepare educational program curricula for refugee children aged 6 to 18 and organize non-formal language courses by bringing in on-call teachers from outside or from among refugees who have mastered bahasa indonesia at the community housing facilities (interview with iom coordinator for indonesian eastern region, 22 june 2022; syahrul, 2019). however, the practice of enrolling refugee children in schools continues to face obstacles, such as limited financial support, language proficiency, unclear mechanism for class placement, the absence of a formal certificate after study completion, and lack of support from family (interviews with refugee parents and headmaster of schools, 15-24 june 2022). the official declaration of covid-19 as a pandemic in mid-march 2020 added to existing obstacles, as it saw in-school learning shift to remote learning. according to our interviews with iom staff in batam (18 june 2022), covid-19 is one of the determining factors causing refugee children to stop accessing formal education. other factors are (1) parents and refugee unreadiness due to lacking proficiency in bahasa indonesia; (2) a prevailing mindset that their stay in indonesia is temporary; (3) availability of informal classes, including those provided by iom and from the refugee-led initiatives; and (4) political factors, including that refugee children were sometimes involved with their parents’ demonstrations during school time. aseas 16(1) | 47 r. a. rizka fiani prabaningtyas, tri nuke pudjiastuti, athiqah nur alami, faudzan farhana & arfan during the pandemic, batam and makassar still conducted learning for all students, including refugee children scattered in many places within the two cities. the national and political unity agency of batam city (15 june 2022) reported that until november 2021, there had been 484 refugees from eight countries living in the area, mainly from afghanistan. the head of the batam education office (14 june 2022) stated that the overall number of school-age refugee children (3 to 18 years) is 97. meanwhile, data from the iom as of june 2022 confirms that 43 children are enrolled in batam’s public schools (see table 1). following up on the issuance of the circular letter, shortly before the pandemic, the batam city government assigned primary and secondary schools near their residential areas to accept refugee children as students (interview with the head of the batam city education office, 14 june 2022). they were enrolled from january 2020 in four assigned public schools: (1) anggrek ii early childhood education center, (2) state elementary school (sekolah dasar negeri/ sdn) lubuk baja 2, (3) sdn lubuk baja 5 and (4) state special schools. it should be noted that until june 2022, three refugee children were enrolled in state junior high school (sekolah menengah pertama negeri/ smpn) 41 batam. however, the headmaster disclosed their absence during the learning period (interviewed on 14 june 2022). later, iom confirmed that two of them had moved to another city as part of the resettlement process to a third country and some lost their motivation to go to school due to language barriers (personal communication on 14 june 2022). as of april 2022, there were 1,536 refugees consisting of 1,181 men and 355 women who lived in more than 20 refugee shelters throughout makassar (iom makassar, 2022), a city of some 1.5 million people (statistics of makassar city, 2021). iom makassar (2022) stated there are 173 children in makassar, which consists of 72 children in early childhood and kindergarten, 73 in elementary schools, 18 in junior high schools, and 10 in senior high school. according to iom data, schools that have enrolled most refugee students in makassar are private schools, namely cornerstone (preschool and elementary school) and senior high school (sekolah menengah atas/ sma) frater. in addition, the incumbent mayor of makassar (interviewed on 21 june 2022) even initiated a discussion with universities in makassar to explore the opportunity for local universities to open their access to refugee children (see also missbach et. al, 2018). table 1. profile of refugee children active enrollment in formal education in batam and makassar (own data compilation) profile batam makassar total number of enrollments 45 173 country of origin sudan, afghanistan, somalia, ethiopia, iraq afghanistan, myanmar, somalia, sudan level of education • paud 28 72 • primary school 17 73 • secondary school (junior and senior high school) 28 48 | aseas 16(1) access to education for refugee children in indonesia during the covid-19 pandemic access to education for refugee children in batam and makassar during the covid-19 pandemic due to the world health organization (who)'s declaration of covid-19 as a global pandemic in march 2020, the indonesian government made several adjustments regarding educational activities (see figure 1). the ministry of education issued the regulation on the large-scale social restriction (pembatasan sosial berskala besar-psbb) under government regulation number 21/2020. through this policy, the government stipulated several restrictions for activities in public places and facilities, including the closure of schools and workplaces. the derivative regulation issued by the regulation of the minister of health (peraturan menteri kesehatan-pmk) number 9/2020 also regulated school closure (article 13). according to the regulation, school closure entails substituting in-school teaching and learning processes with home-based education using the most effective media, either through their laptop or handphone as the main devices to access education (giatman et al, 2020; huwaidi et al, 2021; qibthiyah 2021; sparrow et al, 2020). the provision of school closure was strengthened by the issuance of the ministry of education circular letter number 4/2020. this letter outlined several educational policies during the pandemic, including distance learning, the cancellation of national and final exams, and the relaxation of school operational funds (bantuan operasional sekolah bos) utilization6. since then, most school-aged children in indonesia have conducted distance learning activities (pembelajaran jarak jauh-pjj) from home. the regulation of distance learning also applies to refugee children enrolled in formal education. 6 bos was taken from the state budget (anggaran pendapatan dan belanja negara apbn) and initially aimed to support expenses related to operationalization of education programs. during the pandemic, the ministry of education provided flexibility for schools to use the fund for supporting the needs for distance learning such as to buy internet credit, hygiene equipment (hand sanitizers, disinfectants, masks) or to pay honorary teachers (mudjisusatyo et al, 2022). figure 1. timeline of school closure and reopening in indonesia during the covid-19 pandemic (own data compilation) aseas 16(1) | 49 r. a. rizka fiani prabaningtyas, tri nuke pudjiastuti, athiqah nur alami, faudzan farhana & arfan the accessibility of education for refugee children during the pandemic has become more complicated in four aspects: information availability, learning activities, environmental support, and perception of refugees. insufficient availability of information the circular letter on access to education for refugee children is essential as a technical guideline on enrollment procedures and specific conditions for stakeholders delivering education services for refugee children. according to the head of batam city education office (interviewed on 14 june 2022), the circular letter helped schools to better understand the national requirements for accepting refugee children since the education office and schools previously depended on iom directives. our online interview with iom staff in batam (18 june 2022) confirmed the significance of the circular letter to providing information on enrolling refugee children in public schools to officials: before the circular letter, we felt that the public schools with school operational funds could only be accessed by indonesian citizens, so we looked for private schools for them [refugee children]. after the presence of a circular letter, there is an opportunity for refugee children to enroll in public schools, and the process is quite fast.7 the process of educating authorities about the circular letter greatly improved information availability and thus education access for refugee children. previously, local education offices and schools were unsure whether to accept refugee children due to administrative barriers such as the absence of recognized identity documents and diplomas from previous education levels and concerns over accepting financial support from international agencies (interview with the headmaster of smpn 48 makassar, 23 june 2022). during the pandemic, online methods were the principal adaptation strategy for the indirect distribution of information to education service providers. relevant stakeholders remained committed to maintaining the availability of information on refugee children's access to education. provision of information to stakeholders regarding education access for refugee children was conducted either by fully online mode or through hybrid meetings, facilitating both offline and online participants. for example, the recent hybrid special coordination meeting was held on 29 june-1 july 2022 by the coordinating ministry for political, legal, and security affairs in collaboration with iom on ‘improving education access, productivity, and protection for foreign refugees’. iom also worked closely with the municipal education department to conduct workshops for best practice sharing among teachers, as held in mid-june 2022 in makassar. local authorities have, however, continued to rely on international organizations to bridge communication with and provide information to the refugee community, rather than provide such information directly. unhcr indonesia provides essential information on its website about the available education services for refugees in 7 in this paper, the authors have translated all interview quotations from indonesian into english. 50 | aseas 16(1) access to education for refugee children in indonesia during the covid-19 pandemic indonesia and contact information for further inquiries. however, the information remains jakarta-centric, as it does not include educational access for refugees living outside jakarta and its surrounding regions (unhcr indonesia, n.d). the availability of educational information for refugee children in batam and makassar therefore relies on iom. iom delivers information to refugee children and their parents regarding options to enroll in formal education. iom staff in makassar (interviewed on 21 june 2022) explained that: we provide the refugee children with school readiness program (srp). … those who have passed srp will get recommendation grade, and also we will make a letter to the disdik kota makassar with the grade recommendation and school recommendation based on location. disdik will make the recommendation letter. but, … these [the school recommendation] only our recommendation, so if the parents choose to move or select another school, they are free to do that but of course with certain consequences, such as longer distance. limited mechanisms remain for local offices or schools to provide outreach to refugee communities without iom help to deliver information about accessing education. the circular letter does not require schools to proactively deliver information about education access to refugee children in their areas. consequently, schools do not see it as their responsibility to increase the enrollment rate of refugee students. moreover, there is a hesitance to make direct communication with refugees, primarily due to language barriers (interview with the head of smpn 41 batam, 15 june 2022). despite the fact that there are some refugees who have resided in indonesia for long periods and have learned bahasa indonesia, most of our informants from government offices and schools have highlighted the difficulties in communicating with refugees. many indonesian officials do not speak english, a language refugees have tended to focus on learning. given this situation, a communication gap emerged during the pandemic since iom had limited capacity to make regular in-person communication with refugee communities. at the same time, schools and teachers depend on iom to gain information about their refugee students. limited educational activities and learning processes another aspect that heightened complexities in children's access to education during the pandemic were changes to learning activities. face-to-face learning activity was changed to distance learning, meaning classes were conducted via virtual online meetings and teachers assigned students to independently work on exercises in their textbooks. after completing the assignment, students would submit it by sending a photo of the assignment to the teacher, who then graded it based on the submitted assignment. using the group function on the whatsapp instant messaging application, the school facilitated the dissemination of information and submitting homework. through the whatsapp group, teachers and guardians/parents of students could also communicate regarding learning activities. in addition to the assignment system, distance learning was carried out with meeting applications such as zoom, microsoft teams, and google meets. through aseas 16(1) | 51 r. a. rizka fiani prabaningtyas, tri nuke pudjiastuti, athiqah nur alami, faudzan farhana & arfan these applications, students interacted virtually with teachers and fellow students. the teacher also explained the learning material directly or through presentation materials prepared beforehand. however, online meetings require greater internet quota, technology support and devices such as laptops, tablets, or smartphones, which may not be available in all schools and for every student. since schools did not facilitate the device for online learning, refugee children were required to provide it for themselves. in the case of refugee students, including those in batam and makassar, additional technology needs for online schooling depend on which system was implemented by the school. in batam, public schools mostly used an assignment system (interview with head of batam city education office, 14 june 2022); therefore, refugees only required smartphones to participate in the learning process. meanwhile, refugees experiencing education in private schools in makassar need to have more technological support due to active virtual online meetings (interview with headmaster of sma frater, 23 june 2022). in practice, both distance learning systems still presented several obstacles, not only for students and parents but also for teachers and schools. one of the obstacles is language barriers, which have hindered refugee children from participating in educational activities prior to and during the pandemic. the iom offices in batam and makassar have tried to address this language issue by providing a mentor or on-call teacher under the school readiness program (srp) for refugee children. the mentor helps children study after school to improve their indonesian language skills and help them do their homework. srp in batam provides indonesian language classes at hotel kolekta for pre-school and school-age children. in addition, other schools, such as the sma frater in makassar, attempted to overcome language barriers by trying to explain lessons in english since refugee children better understand it. the headmaster of sma frater (intervewed on 23 june 2022) explained that “during the teacher’s forum we informed that there will be refugee students, so all students and teachers should adapt too… because not all teachers here are fluent in english, so they have to learn.” otherwise, students and teachers in batam communicate through mediators, such as fellow refugee students, more fluent in indonesian. however, these efforts to overcome language barriers could not be applied during the pandemic due to the limitation of online learning methods. online learning tends to limit direct student-student and student-teacher interaction, whereas refugee students require more direct assistance in adjusting to the indonesian education system. consequently, some refugee children in sdn 5 lubuk baja could not follow lessons or complete assignments despite the availability of an internet connection at their home. many found it challenging to comprehend the assignments since their indonesian language foundation had not been formed yet. moreover, several lessons, such as writing traditional poems, were very localized to the point that not even their mentors could help them (interview with iom staff in batam, 18 june 2022). the low compliance in submitting these assignments ultimately had implications for providing final assessments to children at the end of the school year. some refugee parents inquired about their child's school assessment results, even though the child did not submit assignments. therefore, the school made an affirmative policy by allowing refugee students to submit only one assignment to get their final assessment results (interview with headmaster of sdn 5 lubuk baja, 15 june 2022). 52 | aseas 16(1) access to education for refugee children in indonesia during the covid-19 pandemic the conduct of virtual meetings also has its challenges. headmasters of the sdn btn unggulan and sma frater in makassar (interviewed on 23 june 2022) stated that, while refugee students were often actively involved in online learning, some had trouble with internet availability. unlike indonesian students, refugee students did not receive internet quota assistance from the government because they were not registered within the basic education data system (data pokok pendidikan/ dapodik). the limited funds received by refugee parents and the resulting limited access to the internet were the main obstacles to distance learning during school closures. in dealing with the problem, the schools usually communicated with the iom officer responsible for providing for the needs of refugees, including providing internet quotas for online learning. since january 2022, the government, through the revised joint decision of four ministries regarding learning activities during the pandemic, has decided to reopen schools with the limited or partial offline learning (pembelajaran tatap muka ptm) method (see figure 1).8 batam and makassar are two regions that implemented the school reopening policy, including the schools that accommodate refugee children. when complete face-to-face learning (ptm 100%) was implemented, teachers reported that refugee children had mingled well with local children, for example, in sports activities at school. refugee children also began to be involved in performing arts activities organized by schools. however, it turned out that only a few refugee children fluent in bahasa indonesia were coming back to school. some other refugee children remained discouraged from continuing their education due to difficulties following lessons during distance learning activities (online interview with iom staff in batam, 18 june 2022). complex environment support fieldwork in batam and makassar revealed that fulfilling education rights for refugee children in pandemic situations required support from numerous related actors, including parents, refugee communities, teachers/schools, government, and international organizations. 1) state support: education policy for refugee children indonesia still lacks a comprehensive and long-term regulatory framework to act as a guideline for ensuring refugees' rights, including education rights. presidential regulation number 125/2016 concerning the handling of foreign refugees is the latest refugee regulation which provides normative framework and coordinative guideline to manage the presence of refugees from abroad in indonesia’s territory. however, rights to education have not been clearly expressed in this regulation. the ministry of education revised the 2019 circular letter into letter number 30546/ a.a5/ hk.01.00/2022 on 12 may 2022. the revision contains positive progress such as permission for schools receiving refugee children to accept financial support from international agencies and elimination of the requirement for refugee children 8 this policy only applies in particular regions in indonesia that are already in ppkm level 1(low) and 2 (moderate) status, while fully online learning continues to apply in other regions with ppkm level 3 (high) and 4 (very high) status. aseas 16(1) | 53 r. a. rizka fiani prabaningtyas, tri nuke pudjiastuti, athiqah nur alami, faudzan farhana & arfan to obtain permission from the detention center for accessing education. however, it does not specifically address difficulties faced by refugee children to access education during the pandemic, such as additional costs and adaptation challenges related to the changes of learning methods. the absence of a detailed mechanism reflects that central and local governments in indonesia do not see themselves as responsible for refugees. therefore, in practice, the education of refugee children is highly dependent on international organizations. meanwhile, drawing from arendt’s (1973) argument on “a right to have rights”, these children should have the right to belong to some kind of organized political community. in the context of a nation-state, refugee children should have a right to civil rights such as citizenship (boehm, 2015). however, granting citizenship for refugees is beyond indonesia’s responsibility as a transit country and non-signatory of the refugee convention. nevertheless, indonesia can grant access to provide the fulfillment of rights for every person living in its jurisdiction in accordance with its international commitment under international human rights instruments, including crc. ideally, the inclusion process of refugee children in formal schools necessitates proactive roles from multi-stakeholders (sinandang et al, 2021) including the ministry of education, schools, local education offices, and international organizations with state authorities as the leading actor. therefore, there should be a legal umbrella that can be used as a reference for responsibility sharing amongst stakeholders to cooperate in providing educational services for refugee children. 2) role of refugee families and local communities in supporting their children to access education in addition to the barriers to enrolment in indonesian schools, there is a lack of support from some refugee parents to send their children to the assigned schools. refugee parents often lack the appropriate internet connection and technological resources to support and engage with online education successfully. refugee care organizations have not provided the required technical equipment. in some cases, language barriers among parents of refugee children have also been an obstacle in supporting the learning process, as they cannot assist their children with schoolwork. a teacher at sdn btn unggulan in makassar said, "the children can speak bahasa indonesia, but their parents could not. so, usually the older brother helped translate the questions from the teacher." these circumstances limit parental involvement in refugee children's education. our observation confirmed the findings of previous studies that parental support positively affected refugee and immigrant students in the united states (bacakova, 2011; hamilton, 2003; portes and & rumbaut, 2001). besides parents, support from teachers and schools is also needed to ensure refugee children's access to education. teachers at schools accepting refugee children in batam and makassar showed their support to ensure access to education through online learning during the school closure and in-person learning after the school reopening. the presence of a school whatsapp group enables interaction between refugees and local parents. including refugee parents in those whatsapp groups can also be seen as a measure of inclusiveness by local school parents towards the inclusion of refugee children in their local school. however, refugee parents rarely respond through these whatsapp groups. consequently, schools preferred to report any problems directly to 54 | aseas 16(1) access to education for refugee children in indonesia during the covid-19 pandemic iom (interview with headmaster of smpn 41 batam, 15 june 2022). interestingly, we found that during the pandemic, the refugee community attempted to adapt to online modality by designing and offering online informal lessons for refugee children. for example, refugee-led learning initiatives in makassar provided online learning classes. these virtual classes were even attended by refugee children in batam, thus widening the scope of participation. it is a breakthrough in learning methods for refugees because, previously, refugee learning centers had not been established in all regions with refugee communities in indonesia and thus the activity of refugee learning centers could only be accessed by refugees living near the learning centers (brown, 2018). 3) support from international organizations: limitation on iom support the pandemic highlighted iom’s limited capacity for service provision to refugees in indonesia. according to iom global strategic preparedness and response plan (iom, 2020), iom needs to increase human resources and funding to address refugee issues during the pandemic. this is reflected in the limited services and assistance that can be provided to refugees. as a refugee in makassar expressed: before, they (iom and unhcr) called it an emergency situation so they gave us life support. but today we got reduced, the (amount) is down, down, and down. for education, before when the kids are not ready for school, iom and unhcr pushed us. they make some program, activities to integrate us with the locals and release our stress. but today, it went down, down, and down. (mm, interviewed on 22 june 2022) when we talked to iom staff in makassar, they admitted that they lowered the amount of activities due to the pandemic restriction. however, iom attempted to maintain the progress to encourage education for refugees as: most of the activities are still running but we change the modalities, so the classes are running, even some training, education…., we tried to maintain the communication. for phone, they have it, they can afford it by themselves, we don’t provide that. some people can afford laptops. for education we provide internet data. (iom makassar’s staff, 21 june 2022) despite these efforts, some refugee parents remained hesitant to send their children to schools because additional expenses for supporting children to go to schools, including transport costs, could not be covered by existing monthly allowances from the iom. they expressed that: everything is becoming more expensive, but the allowance is the same and we cannot work. moreover, prior to the pandemic, it used to be that kids over 19 years old would get adult allowance with the same amount as their parents (around rp.1.250.000, -/ usd 79). but, now (in 2021) kids over 19 years old still get children allowance (around rp.500.000, -/ usd 32), only their babah and mamah get rp.1.250.000. (aj, interviewed on 22 june 2022). aseas 16(1) | 55 r. a. rizka fiani prabaningtyas, tri nuke pudjiastuti, athiqah nur alami, faudzan farhana & arfan while this decreasing allowance is the impact of australian government budget cuts to iom (misbach, 2018), the pandemic has made the reduction in aid even more pronounced for refugees with school-aged children. fluctuate motivation motivation of refugee children to continue accessing education is vital in guaranteeing the completion of their studies. two crucial factors affect refugee children's motivation: local students' receptiveness and school teachers' language ability. both factors must be present in the child's learning to ensure the stability of the refugee children's motivation. otherwise, refugee children are prone to experience demotivation, leading them to stop accessing education. several success stories prove the importance of both factors. in batam, a somali girl named serene (pseudonym) was one of 14 children enrolled by iom to sdn 2 lubuk baja at the beginning of 2020. however, she was the only refugee child who remained to join the learning activities and managed to advance to the next grade in 2022. initially, serene's parents did not support her in going to school over fears local children would not accept her due to racial differences. nevertheless, serene's persistence and the fact that her local friends were helping her with school matters convinced them to support her education (interview with serene's parents, 15 june 2022). unlike many other refugee children, serene is fluent in bahasa indonesia. based on short conservation during observation (15 june 2022), serene reports that her school friends were kind and helped her learn bahasa indonesia and understand lessons at school. in makassar, an afghan boy named jamal (pseudonym) was one of eight refugee children currently enrolled in sma frater. jamal and his father were previously denied by three to four schools due to unclear mechanisms for accepting refugees before eventually being accepted at sma frater. jamal still wants to study there, although it is about 30 minutes on foot from his accommodation (interview with jamal, 23 june 2022). in the first term of his school, jamal experienced online learning. however, he found it easier to quickly adapt to the learning method with the help of his friends. his friends also said they were encouraged to help because jamal actively asked questions in english and bahasa indonesia. when offline learning was in place, jamal flourished as he joined the school's futsal team, which won the futsal competition between high schools in makassar. the teacher even wanted to register him for a science competition but could not do so because of jamal's status as a refugee. meanwhile, shila (pseudonym), a bangladeshi refugee who also enrolled in sma frater high school with jamal, did not experience the same thing. her "lost learning" period in indonesia had made it difficult for her to follow lessons at sma frater. moreover, she had problems asking for help with her lessons because she found that her questions were too many and irritated her classmates. she felt deadlocked as her teachers also told her to ask her friends for assistance. as a result, shila found it challenging to make friends. ultimately, she failed the class because her language ability was insufficient to continue to a higher class. when shila was asked about what kind of education she thought more suitable for her, she replied: 56 | aseas 16(1) access to education for refugee children in indonesia during the covid-19 pandemic i am almost 18 years old now, so something practical will be helpful rather than normal classes. if i want to study, i have to start from the basics, and i don’t have any basics, [after] almost 10 years here [(in indonesia]) i have none. but, practical, i can understand. something like nursing courses, it is good. or photography. i will be grateful for something like working classes for my future job so if i go to another country, i can apply for a job like that. (interview in 22 june 2022) the different experiences between jamal and shila show that the motivation of refugee children to stay in school is not the same across children. motivation can fluctuate, and strong impulses on continuing education can be weakened when refugee children have language difficulties and problems blending in with their schoolmates. conclusion this study has scrutinized indonesia’s commitment to providing access to education for refugee children before and during the covid-19 pandemic. while formal education was for many years not clearly regulated for refugee children, unexpectedly during the pandemic (when most schools were heavily affected by the lockdowns and the requirement for online teaching), the indonesian government became more receptive to granting refugee children access to formal education. this progress is possible due to the issuance of a circular letter in 2019 that provides common grounds among local authorities to formally accommodate refugee children in schools. however, by examining practices of refugee children's education in batam and makassar, this study has demonstrated that the pandemic has compounded challenges for realizing access to education for refugee children. these challenges can be seen through the four elements of accessibility that constitute a prerequisite for the fulfillment of children's educational rights: information availability, learning process, environmental support, and refugee children’s motivation. despite the existing challenges, the pandemic has also led to new adaptation strategies for refugee children by utilizing technology to enable access to education. despite initial problems with the implementation of these changes and the ongoing dependency on international agencies for refugee children education, this provision of access to education may potentially signal a wider change in refugee treatment in indonesia, affecting rights provisions other than education. the analysis of these elements also has shown the importance of cooperation among stakeholders involved in providing education services for refugee children. this cooperation enables the continuance of enrolling refugee children in formal education despite the existing limitations. more comprehensive access to education for refugee children necessitates the role of four actors with appropriate actions. first, refugee children and their communities should be empowered to socially adapt to the existing situation while proactively seeking for educational access. second, the receiving community, primarily local schools, should express positive receptiveness to ensure inclusive education for refugee children despite the difficulties of dealing with changing education practices during the pandemic. third, the national and local governments must provide a regulatory framework to enable refugee children’s aseas 16(1) | 57 r. a. rizka fiani prabaningtyas, tri nuke pudjiastuti, athiqah nur alami, faudzan farhana & arfan access to educational services so that it aligns with indonesia's national interest and global commitment. fourth, international organizations should maintain their partnership with the indonesian government in facilitating communication with the refugees while also assisting with the operational requirements of the refugees.  references adhi, p. n., agung, i. g. p. agung, & gitareja, b. 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(2001). education in emergencies. in j. crisp, c. talbot, & d. b. cipollone (eds.), learning for a future: refugee education in developing countries (pp. 1–84). united nations publications. sinclair, m. (2002). planning education in and after emergencies. unesco. sparrow, r., dartanto, t., & hartwig, r. (2020). indonesia under the new normal: challenges and the way ahead. bulletin of indonesian economic studies, 56(3), 269-299. 60 | aseas 16(1) access to education for refugee children in indonesia during the covid-19 pandemic statistics of makassar city (2021). population by subdistrict and sex in makassar municipality (people), 2019-2021. https://makassarkota.bps.go.id/indicator/12/72/1/jumlah-penduduk-menurut-kecamatandan-jenis-kelamin-di-kota-makassar.html suyoto, s. (2021). the implementation of education and instruction rights for children with criminal law issues who are being detained in correctional facilities and state detention centers. proceedings of academic international conference on literacy and novelty, 5(7), 170-180. syahrul. (2019). internalisasi pendidikan multikultural dan inklusif pada anak pengungsi internasional di kota makassar. jurnal pancasila dan kewarganegaraan, 4(3), 25-34. https://doi.org/10.24269/jpk. v4.n3.2019.pp25-34 the circular letter of the ministry of education number 4/2020 on implementation of education policy amidst covid-19 outbreak the circular letter of the secretary general of the ministry of education, culture, research and technology, number 75253/a.a4/hk/2019, 10 july 2019 regarding the education of refugee children, revised into number 30546/ a.a5/ hk.01 .00/2022, 12 may 2022. the government regulation number 21/2020 on the large-scale social restriction (pembatasan sosial berskala besar-psbb) the united nations convention on the rights of child (crc). 1989. the university of chicago (n.d). promote accessible learning space. retrieved 27 october from https:// inclusivepedagogy.uchicago.edu/advanced-strategies/promote-accessible-learning-spaces. tyrer, r. a., & fazel, m. (2014). school and community-based interventions for refugee and asylum-seeking children: a systematic review. plos one, 9(2), e89359. erratum in: plos one, 9(5), e97977. https://doi. org/10.1371/journal.pone.0097977.s002 united nations department of economic and social affairs (undesa). (2013, june). accessibility and development: environmental accessibility and its implications for inclusive, sustainable and equitable development for all. https://www.un.org/disabilities/documents/accessibility_and_development_june2013.pdf united nations high commissioner for refugees (unhcr) indonesia. (n.d). education assistance. retrieved november 3, 2022, from https://help.unhcr.org/indonesia/services/education/ unhcr. (2022). indonesia fact sheet. https://www.unhcr.org/id/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/2022/04/ indonesia-fact-sheet-february-2022-final.pdf walters, j. d. t. (2021). on the right to have rights. human rights quarterly, 43(2), 398-403. wong-rieger, d., & quintana, d. (1987). comparative acculturation of southeast asian and hispanic immigrants and sojourners. journal of cross-cultural psychology, 18(3), 345–362. about the authors r. a. rizka fiani prabaningtyas is a researcher at the research centre for politics, national research and innovation agency (badan riset dan inovasi nasional/brin), indonesia. she graduated from the gadjah mada university, indonesia, with a bachelor’s degree in international relations. she obtained her master’s in international relations (advanced) from the australian national university in 2018. her research interests are indonesia’s diplomacy and foreign policy, international refugee studies, and forced migration. ► contact: prabaningtyas.rizka@gmail.com faudzan farhana is a researcher at the research centre for politics, national research and innovation agency (badan riset dan inovasi nasional/brin), indonesia. she got her bachelor’s of law from hasanuddin university, indonesia in 2011 and ll.m in international maritime law from swansea university, uk in 2019. in brin, she is a member of two research teams, namely asean research group and forced migration studies. her research interests are mailto:prabaningtyas.rizka%40gmail.com?subject= aseas 16(1) | 61 r. a. rizka fiani prabaningtyas, tri nuke pudjiastuti, athiqah nur alami, faudzan farhana & arfan international law, specifically on international organization and law of the sea, as well as strategic issues in asean. ► contact: faud001@brin.go.id tri nuke pudjiastuti is a research professor at the research center for politics, national research and innovation agency (brin), indonesia, focusing on forced migration, asean and border studies in southeast asia. she graduated with a master’s degree in international migration from the department of human geography and environment, adelaide university, south australia. she obtained her doctor’s degree in forced migration from the department of criminology, the university of indonesia in 2014. since 2015, she is the co-convenor of the asian dialogue on forced migration (adfm), which is a track ii meeting of the bali process. ► contact: trin001@brin.go.id athiqah nur alami is a researcher at the research center for politics, the national research and innovation agency (badan riset dan inovasi nasional-brin), indonesia. her main interests are on gender and indonesia's labor migration and indonesian foreign policy. she just completed her ph.d from the department of southeast asian studies, national university of singapore with her dissertation on infrastructural governance of labor migration. ► contact: athi001@brin.go.id arfan completed his undergraduate education at the ushuluddin faculty of the state islamic institute sulthan thaha saifuddin jambi in 2002. his master's and doctoral degrees were completed in the anthropology-sociology department at the national university of malaysia, faculty of humanities and social sciences, in 2015. he has worked as a researcher on several projects with religious themes, plantation communities and social change. apart from being a lecturer at islamic state university of sulthan thaha saifuddin jambi, he is also involved in this research on the education of child refugee migrants. ► contact: arfan_rv@yahoo.com acknowledgements the authors would like to thank institute of social sciences and humanities (or-ipsh), and the national research and innovation agency (brin) indonesia for funding the research entitled “situation and problems of fulfilling rights to education for children affected by forced migration in the context of indonesia’s interest” from 2022-2023. this research project was also supported by sultan thaha saifuddin state islamic university jambi, indonesia. we would also like to deliver appreciation to all the interviewees and those who participated in this research as key informants. we also extend sincere thanks to prof. susan kneebone for her additional support and max walden for his diligent proofreading of this paper. all authors have contributed equally to this work and assume responsibility for the content. disclosure the authors declare no conflict of interest. mailto:faud001%40brin.go.id?subject= mailto:trin001%40brin.go.id?subject= mailto:athi001%40brin.go.id?subject= mailto:arfan_rv%40yahoo.com?subject= aseas 16(1) | 79 the effects of covid-19 on refugees in peninsular malaysia: surveillance, securitization, and eviction aslam abd jalila* & gerhard hoffstaedterb auniversiti malaya, malaysia buniversity of queensland, australia *corresponding author: aslamaj@um.edu.my received: 9 september 2022 / accepted: 5 march 2023 / published: 28 june 2023 ► abd jalil, a., & hoffstaedter, g. (2023). the effects of covid-19 on refugees in peninsular malaysia: surveillance, securitization and eviction. advances in southeast asian studies, 16(1), 79-99. this paper focuses on the largest group of refugees in malaysia, the rohingya. many rohingya have made malaysia their home, even though they have no legal status in the country. when covid-19 was detected in malaysia, the government followed a strategy of suppression, with targeted lockdowns in areas of covid-19 outbreaks. as most refugees work to survive, they hold important front-line jobs and were exposed to covid-19 at higher rates of infection than malaysians. in this paper, we trace the way the malaysian government, malaysian people, and refugees encountered covid-19, and how refugees became the subject of enhanced securitization and surveillance based on prejudice. we show how the state enacted securitization first at the borders, before it inverted this process and focused on domestic border work wherein neighborhoods, mosques and markets became central places of immigration control and exclusion for refugees. based on data collected during ethnographic fieldwork in peninsular malaysia between 2020 and 2021, we argue that the securitization of refugees, their surveillance and even expulsion and eviction demonstrates continued and heightened scapegoating of refugees for all of malaysia’s ills. these actions reinforced the stigma and stereotype of refugees being legally undocumented and therefore outside of and too often unwelcome in the malaysian body politic. keywords: covid-19; malaysia; refugees; rohingya; securitization; surveillance  prologue it is another humid day on the outskirts of malaysia’s largest city kuala lumpur. the malaysian government has closed most businesses due to the outbreak of covid-19 clusters across the country. most roads are deserted due to strict lockdowns, but the wholesale fruit and vegetable market here is still open for business. inside the market compound, workers wear color-coded shirts to indicate what they sell: green for vegetables, red for fruit, and blue for fish. traders are rushing around to purchase food for their restaurants and shops, many of current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 88 mailto:thithimadee.art%40mahidol.ac.th?subject= https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4057-5397 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6083-3141 mailto:aslamaj%40um.edu.my?subject= 80 | aseas 16(1) the effects of covid-19 on refugees in peninsular malaysia which remain open for takeaway and delivery orders. one thing missing here today is the usually large contingent of migrant and refugee workers, predominantly rohingya and myanmar muslims. mohamad, a rohingya refugee who usually works there, looks over to the market from his apartment. he cannot work and therefore will not earn any money, because local authorities put up restrictions on foreigners working at the market. ostensibly, such restrictions are implemented for health and safety as well as national security reasons, but mohamad guesses that it is prejudice against refugees, and rohingya in particular, that is driving these restrictions, which now means he and his family will go hungry. introduction: refugees and covid-19 malaysia is a non-signatory country to the united nations refugee convention, which means refugees have no formal status or rights in the country. by 2022, around 185,000 refugees, the vast majority of which are rohingya from myanmar, have been registered by the united nations high commissioner for refugees (unhcr) with many thousands more living in malaysia unregistered (unhcr, 2022). in the absence of a domestic refugee policy, the unhcr is the only agency that conducts the refugee status determination process and issues identity cards as well as manages the eventual return or resettlement to safe third countries. there is also a tacit acknowledgement of this substantial refugee presence by the malaysian government through the national security council directive no. 23, which classifies them as pendatang asing tanpa izin (pati), or foreigners without permission. this directive, which was signed in 2009, outlines freedom of movement for refugees within peninsular malaysia and permits self-employment for self-sustenance. however, the immigration and police authorities often do not respect this directive; this was especially the case during the covid-19 lockdowns, as we explore in detail in this paper. refugees in malaysia must be self-sufficient as they do not receive support from the state or the unhcr. thus, they must work to sustain themselves and their communities. refugees are widely tolerated as workers and form an integral part of malaysia’s shadow economy that covers much of the hospitality industry, general services, construction, and agriculture, but they are treated as undocumented migrants by the law (muniandy, 2020). they can become subject to extortion, rent-seeking, and other discrimination as their lack of legal status usually means they have no recourse through the courts or via the police if they are maltreated or become victims of crime. the covid-19 pandemic exacerbated these vulnerabilities and the general precarity of refugees (missbach & stange, 2021; nungsari et al., 2020). when covid-19 was detected in malaysia, the government followed a strategy of suppression with targeted lockdowns in areas of covid-19 outbreaks internally (tang, 2022), whilst closing its borders externally. the first malaysian movement control order was imposed on 18 march 2020 under the prevention and control of infectious diseases act 1988 and the police act 1967 (nst, 2020). this restrictive order included a national ban on sporting, cultural and religious mass gatherings. from 11 january until 1 august 2021, a state of emergency was declared by the king on the advice of prime minister muhyiddin yassin. according to the prime minister, one of the justifications for suspending the parliament was to provide power to the military, aseas 16(1) | 81 aslam abd jalil & gerhard hoffstaedter in addition to immigration and the police, in securing the national borders against undocumented foreigners, including refugees (yassin, 2020). this reinforced the stigmatization and public view that refugees posed a national threat. many refugees hold important front-line jobs in wholesale markets, construction, restaurants, and garbage collection, for example. as a result, they were exposed to covid-19 and infected at higher rates. the government closed entire neighborhoods frequented by migrant workers and refugees, in some cases physically separating them from the rest of the malaysian body politic. such securitization of an entire populace swept the country, with ordinances targeting refugees and migrant workers for expulsion and eviction. in this paper, we trace the way the malaysian government, malaysian people, and refugees encountered covid-19 and how refugees, especially, became the subject of enhanced securitization and surveillance based on prejudice. this paper will demonstrate how the state enacted securitization first at the borders, the external edges of the nation-state, before it inverted this process and focused on domestic border work, wherein neighborhoods, mosques, and markets became central places of immigration control and exclusion for refugees, especially rohingya. these actions reinforced the stigma and many stereotypes of refugees as outside the law and therefore unwelcome to the malaysian body politic. this paper also seeks to interrogate the logic used by the state to operationalize these harsh policies towards migrants and refugees during the pandemic. methods for this paper, ethnographic fieldwork was carried out between 2020 and 2021 with a range of refugee groups, but with a focus on the rohingya, who live in urban and semi-urban areas in peninsular malaysia. this was part of one of the authors’ phd fieldwork, engaging with seventy interview participants consisting of refugees and various stakeholders such as state officials, policymakers, and activists. data collection involved participant observation, interviews, and visits to workplaces, people’s homes, and public places, mostly in the klang valley. rohingya form the largest refugee group in malaysia by far and therefore this paper focuses on their experiences. many rohingya speak malay, which allowed for easy communication and data collection. since the rohingya community is patriarchal and both authors are men, the majority of the 31 rohingya refugee respondents were men, with only 5 women interviewed. besides participant observation and interviews, the covid-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns in malaysia necessitated extensive online ethnography, including on social media and via messaging applications such as facebook and whatsapp in both malay and english. these tools necessarily include some limitations around access, as using them privileges the views of those engaged in online social media and who possess mobiles with access to these sites. however, in our experience, most rohingya have access to mobile phones and at least one messaging application or were able to be contacted via mobile phone to speak to them during lockdown periods. we were also able to gage the perspectives of local malaysians about refugees through their postings and discussions on facebook. besides social media, we collected data from media reports the malaysian authorities publicized, for example on their immigration operations. refugees and activists also provided 82 | aseas 16(1) the effects of covid-19 on refugees in peninsular malaysia information from the ground via online platforms. consent was obtained from participants either verbally or in writing except for publicly available information online. nevertheless, all sensitive data was anonymized in line with the ‘do no harm’ principle. this research follows the university of queensland human research ethics guidelines (approval number: 2019002148). rohingya refugees in malaysia rohingya are a stateless group of people hailing from rakhine state, in myanmar. since the 1982 burma citizenship law only recognized 135 ethnic groups as citizens, excluding rohingya (brett & hlaing, 2020), they have subsequently been denied basic rights such as owning property, access to education and healthcare. it is estimated that there are 850,000 rohingya living under apartheid-like conditions in myanmar, 1.6 million live in bangladesh and over 1.24 million in other countries such as saudi arabia, pakistan, india, and malaysia (alam, 2019). rohingya have been coming to malaysia since the 1970s (kassim, 2015) and the 1980s (letchamanan, 2013), mostly by boat via thailand or directly to malaysian waters. the communal violence against rohingya since 2012 caused large-scale displacements and irregular movement culminating in the 2015 andaman boat crisis (amnesty international, 2015). in the first quarter of 2015, around 25,000 mostly rohingya people left the bay of bengal and 8,000 of them were left stranded on boats (bbc, 2015) that created a ‘human pingpong’ between thailand, indonesia, and malaysia as no country was willing to take them in (murdoch, 2015). as the persecution against rohingya in myanmar intensified and the future in refugee camps in bangladesh is bleak, rohingya are forced to keep taking the perilous boat journeys to malaysia. this trend continued even when malaysia reinforced its borders as part of the measures to contain covid-19. as of september 2022, 105,870 or 58% out of 183,430 unhcr-registered asylum seekers and refugees in malaysia are rohingya. activists on the ground estimate that the rohingya population residing in malaysia is almost double if unregistered ones are included. many rohingya see malaysia as a destination country because of its affluent muslim majority country status and the extensive existing rohingya community networks. to date, there are up to four generations who live in stateless limbo as refugees in malaysia (fieldwork interviews 2020). although rohingya often quickly assimilate into the dominant malay society by speaking the malay language and practicing malay culture, they still face racism due to their physical attributes (hoffstaedter, 2017b) and lack of education (azis, 2014). in the absence of the right to work and denial of access to education in malaysia, most rohingya work informally as “temporary, unskilled, and low wage workers” in a range of sectors (wahab, 2017, p. 102), including as market helpers, grass cutters, petty traders, recycling collectors, and construction workers. as informal workers with often daily wages paid in cash, they were badly affected during the covid-19 lockdowns by the loss of jobs or reduced hours of work. many malaysians see refugees as the other (hoffstaedter, 2017a) or even dangerous other (ansems de vries, 2016). as malaysia continues to grapple with its domestic ethnic relations, refugees and migrants have become convenient scapegoats to deflect attention from often fraught domestic politics. refugees have become the target for electoral gain when politicians and authorities may offer empathetic or threatening aseas 16(1) | 83 aslam abd jalil & gerhard hoffstaedter rhetoric at the same time whilst enforcing immigration controls including deportations for political gain (walden, 2022). covid-19 has exacerbated this often xenophobic sentiment in malaysia, which has become more harmful than the virus itself (tan, 2020). the malaysia racial discrimination report 2021 revealed that out of 53 incidents investigated, 13% were attributed to xenophobia, with rohingya singled out as primary targets (pusat komas, 2022). one example was a media report that stated local residents believed that rohingya refugees were unhygienic, brought crime and drugs to the neighborhood, and posed unfair competition to the job markets. surveillance and securitization at the border surveillance theories and concepts can be categorized into three phases. the first phase encompasses physical and spatial surveillance, typified by the panopticon. the second phase entails networked surveillance using digital technologies. the third phase combines the first two phases by monitoring physical and digital spaces, including corporate and governmental control as well as technologies of the self and self-surveillance (galič et al., 2017). this paper focuses on how refugees are being surveilled physically and spatially since the malaysian authorities (still) lack digital data on most refugee bodies. this crude method to surveil a populace during the covid-19 pandemic led to most nation-state borders being shut. in the malaysian case this happened most strikingly, when several rohingya boats were pushed back in the name of public health. in this context it must be noted that the border and its bordering regimes “do not simply respond to existing nationalism or racism. rather, they activate and mobilize them in the face of a nest of economic and political problems” (brown, 2014, p. 93), which may be expanded to health emergencies such as the pandemic. thus, the border and its concomitant discourses of the nation often respond to and interact with other discourses around perceived threats, such as foreigners. in line with the strict border control measures imposed, the malaysian authorities turned the refugee boats away, even though they were already in malaysian waters. in april 2020, malaysia turned away at least 596 rohingya (amnesty international, 2020) and 300 rohingya in june 2020 (yildiz, 2020). in the first five months of 2020, malaysian authorities turned away 22 boats carrying rohingya trying to seek refuge (bbc, 2020). it is unknown what exactly happened to all the boats after being pushed back to sea, because thailand, indonesia, and bangladesh, like malaysia, used public health measures to close their borders. such measures proved to be fatal when unhcr reported that 2020 became the “deadliest” year for sea journeys for rohingya with 218 dying or having gone missing (unhcr, 2021a). to discourage additional boat arrivals, the national task force on strengthening malaysia’s borders circulated a poster depicting security forces with guns stating: “ethnic rohingya migrants, your arrival is not welcome” (amnesty international, 2021). those who managed to reach the malaysian shore were charged with unlawful entry and detained (afp, 2021), despite an earlier court decision overturning the punishment of rohingya who arrived by boat, citing the international protection accorded to them (azmi, 2020). however, some refugees continued to arrive in malaysia via the land border with thailand by paying people smugglers and traffickers. in interviews, refugees told us about the harrowing realities of their journeys. for example, rahman is a 84 | aseas 16(1) the effects of covid-19 on refugees in peninsular malaysia 30-year-old rohingya man who left for malaysia alone in 2017. his wife was arrested by the authorities in myanmar and therefore he had to take care of his two children, who had been living with their mother. his eight-year-old daughter and nine-year-old son undertook a boat journey from myanmar to thailand in 2021. they were kept hostage there by traffickers and finally released to enter malaysia in december 2021 after rahman paid them rm 30,000 (usd 6,700). to secure such an amount of money, he had to travel across the country in order to borrow from friends living across peninsular malaysia. this cost him even more when he was dismissed from his job because he had missed too many days travelling and trying to source the ransom monies. this shows the compound effect of hardened borders that push displaced and vulnerable people to their limits. surveillance and securitization of domestic spaces – policing clusters refugees are subject to a range of surveillance techniques and infrastructures of control by the malaysian state, the unhcr and sometimes their own refugee community organizations (hoffstaedter, 2019). refugees in malaysia are predominately urban refugees — there are no refugee camps in malaysia — living with and amongst the malaysian population mainly in urban centers of penang, johor, and the klang valley, including kuala lumpur (hoffstaedter, 2015). whilst most refugees in malaysia are there undocumented, the malaysian government knows where they live and its immigration and police forces are keenly aware of the presence of refugees in these urban centers, with many local police offices and special branches being in direct contact with refugee representatives and refugee community organizations. however, unlike neighboring countries like singapore, where migrant workers were confined to their workplaces, refugees in malaysia are much more spread out and not easily confined to specific locations, except for those who have been detained in immigration detention.1 this became a national issue for rohingya refugees because an early covid cluster was detected as part of an islamic missionary group tablighi jamaat mass gathering, which many rohingya from across peninsular malaysia had attended.2 the gathering at sri petaling mosque in kuala lumpur from 27 february until 1 march 2020 involved 16,000 attendees comprising malaysians, visitors from 27 countries, as well as migrants and refugees residing in malaysia, and quickly became the country’s largest covid-19 infection cluster (malaysiakini, 2020). because the gathering involved thousands of attendees travelling from many countries, it posed an extremely high risk; however, rohingya were quickly singled out by the media and the authorities 1 malaysia has 21 immigration detention centers throughout the country, which the human rights commission of malaysia (suhakam) has declared overcrowded and understaffed (bernama, 2022c). currently, there are 17,500 people including over 1,500 children at these facilities (tan, 2022). the overcrowded and poor conditions caused at least three covid-19 clusters (david & lee, 2020). 2 the transnational tabligh movement, which was founded in 1927 in india and reached malaysia in the 1950s, aims to bring muslims back to the core teachings of the prophet muhammad through short term preaching and outreach activities (sharep, 2018). they often gather at a local mosque for at least three days and up to four months doing various islamic activities including prayers, sermons, and preaching to the local community. aseas 16(1) | 85 aslam abd jalil & gerhard hoffstaedter as most uncooperative. during contact tracing, the malaysian authorities started to track down around 2,000 rohingya attendees (das & ananthalakshmi, 2020), a figure disputed by the former president of the rohingya society in malaysia, who believed it was only around 600 with the remainder being myanmar muslims and other groups (fieldwork interview, ampang, 7 june 2020). mercy malaysia and other humanitarian organizations collaborated with the unhcr and the malaysian ministry of health to conduct screening for rohingya attendees, who feared attending screenings because of the risk of getting arrested and not being able to provide for themselves and their families during the quarantine period (bernama, 2020). the tablighi cluster sparked false allegations that went viral on social media about refugees and migrants refusing to get tested for covid-19 (afp malaysia, 2020). these allegations further catalyzed xenophobia and reinforced prejudices against rohingya and the refugee community in general, who were accused of not adhering to local rules. a recent survey found that almost 50% of rohingya respondents reported that they experienced racism during the covid-19 pandemic in the forms of abusive language and hate campaigns on social media (mixed migration centre, 2020). the tablighi cluster fomented in the malaysian public a certain view of rohingya and refugees more broadly as a danger. the material effects of such profiling and othering are best described by what happened next in terms of the government’s response. to combat the rise of covid infections, the malaysian authorities classified areas according to different color codes to indicate the number of cases. red zones referred to areas with high numbers of cases and were put under enhanced movement control order (emco). people who lived in red zones could not leave their homes or compounds, with barricades and barbed wire going up around apartment blocks and even entire neighborhoods. these were patrolled by the malaysian security forces, including the army. the color-coded classification was helpful to mitigate risks, but it also became a target when immigration raids were conducted in red zones (sukumaran & jaipragas, 2020). residents were only informed through a press conference and circulated press statements on the government’s social media accounts and websites. the patrolling authorities also made public announcements over loudspeaker in the affected areas, but only in malay, which posed a significant language barrier for some refugees. in one case, several hours after the lockdown rules were lifted, hundreds of migrants and refugees, including children, were arrested by the authorities. these sorts of incursions, and one may argue overreach, by authorities created a climate of fear as they focused on immigration offences, but in effect undermined public health efforts to contain the virus infection, which did not discriminate based on someone’s immigration status. many sick individuals reconsidered coming forward to get tested because of their immigration status, even though they had unhcr documents. the risk that sick, undocumented individuals in malaysia face is not new because the preexisting circular of the director-general of health no. 10/2001: guidelines for reporting illegal immigrants obtaining medical services at clinics and hospitals requires all healthcare workers per the immigration act 1959/1963 to report to immigration and police the presence of undocumented persons, including children, who seek treatment at public healthcare facilities (nambiar, 2020). this circular, issued in 2001, effectively restricts access to healthcare, in addition to the overpriced foreigner rates being charged at public clinics and hospitals for all non-citizens. 86 | aseas 16(1) the effects of covid-19 on refugees in peninsular malaysia the presence of security personnel, barbed wires, and barricades in the neighborhoods where refugees live also aggravated some refugees’ mental health conditions, such as post-traumatic stress disorder. during the lockdowns, the only mental health service provider to refugees, health equity initiative, reported that their patients experienced heightened rates of anxiety and depression, mainly because of loss of employment, their inability to pay rent, their inability to get basic necessities such as food, their risk of arrest and detention and risk of deportation (verghis et al., 2021). but effects on men and women were different, especially for very patriarchal societies such as the rohingya. for many rohingya women, the presence of the military and security forces on the streets triggered pre-existing trauma of being targeted for their rohingya ethnicity and being women in myanmar and bangladeshi refugee camps. fatimah, a rohingya woman activist, recounted: “in myanmar, rohingya women have risks of arrest, kidnapping and rape. in malaysia, rohingya women are still terrified when they see the police. it reminds them of the situation in myanmar” (fieldwork phone interview, 10 april 2021). most married rohingya women were housewives working at home during the lockdowns, so constant surveillance created a traumatic atmosphere for them. furthermore, the loss of livelihoods for most — as men or household earners could not leave to go to work — lead to an increase in domestic violence, adding even more suffering to their already marginalized lives (fieldwork phone interview, 29 april 2020). targeting rohingya as a scapegoat at the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic in april 2020, several other incidents contributed to an unprecedented backlash against the rohingya community. the tablighi cluster, another major covid-19 cluster in selayang, an area known to house many rohingya (karim, 2020), and the irregular boat arrivals in malaysian waters created the perception among the malaysian public that the refugee community in general, and rohingya in particular, was not adhering to the covid-19 measures and that this could jeopardize their public health (badd, 2020). during emco, everyone was expected to stay at home to contain the virus spread unless they had a permission letter from the authorities to leave home for work. being informal and undocumented workers, refugees had no access to this exemption letter and therefore they could be arrested by the authorities or harassed by civilians for leaving their homes. a four-minute video clip went viral on social media detailing a rohingya grasscutter getting harassed by malaysians for not staying at home during the strict emco (fmt reporters, 2020). he was also quizzed about his islamic knowledge as a muslim, probably as it was during the holy month of ramadan. many rohingya considered this a direct attack on the rohingya community, who have always seen malaysia as a muslim country with a strong muslim brotherhood, and subsequently as a haven. senior minister ismail sabri yaakob continued the effort to arrest and deport undocumented migrants per the immigration act via a police operation specifically targeting undocumented foreigners, and saw these actions in line with other countries’ practices during the pandemic (the star, 2020). however, refugees were most surveilled and targeted by the authorities because they (along with migrants aseas 16(1) | 87 aslam abd jalil & gerhard hoffstaedter more generally) have for a long time been deemed a high risk and danger for the spread of communicable diseases (kassim, 2017). such fears and prejudices became material for social media, especially facebook and whatsapp, where netizens shared old videos, pictures, and their personal experiences of refugees and what they considered ‘unacceptable’ behavior and culture (bala & lumayag, 2021). some photos of dirty areas and small garbage tips around a well-known rohingya neighborhood were circulated to portray refugees as a public nuisance and a national burden. the backlash against rohingya urged the refugee community to perform ‘grateful politics’ on social media to counter the xenophobic sentiment (nursyazwani & abd jalil, 2023). using facebook, some rohingya shared their stories of escaping genocide in myanmar and being hosted by malaysia with hashtags #gratefulrohingya #thankyoumalaysia. even national leaders got involved in these online discussions. the former prime minister najib razak was once a champion for the rohingya cause; for example, by organizing a massive rally in kuala lumpur in 2017 against the rohingya genocide. faced by the public outcry against refugees, especially rohingya who had become the face of refugees in malaysia by then, he backtracked his support by stressing the burden that malaysia already carried by hosting rohingya. on 24 april 2020, najib razak figure 1. a facebook public post screenshot states “entering selayang market area full of rohingya is akin to entering a garbage area. dirty and smelly... is this ethnic group dirty? i can’t imagine rearing a cow there”. (screenshot by the authors). 88 | aseas 16(1) the effects of covid-19 on refugees in peninsular malaysia posted on his facebook page to counter the criticisms by amnesty international regarding the boat turn backs (razak, 2020): firstly, i am not a hypocrite. bn [barisan nasional] government during my time has helped the rohingya a lot (…) we did not hold a rally to tell all the rohingya refugees to come to malaysia. (…) secondly, my [facebook] post today wants to reprimand rohingya ethnics in the country to respect malaysian laws and be sensitive to the sentiment and concerns of the [malaysian] people during the covid crisis (…) thirdly, we cannot allow the two boats to land in malaysia because we do not want another tragedy to happen. if the news spread widely that the two ships landed successfully and were accepted by malaysia, then it is not impossible that tens or hundreds more boats will try to escape to malaysia. the public anger reached its zenith in april 2020 when zafar ahmad, the president of myanmar ethnic rohingya human rights organization malaysia (merhrom)3, was falsely accused on social media of demanding malaysian citizenship be granted to rohingya refugees. this sparked a backlash on social media by some malaysians. according to one special branch officer of the royal malaysian police we talked to informally, the harsh reaction was compounded by the financial, physical, and mental effects of the covid-19 pandemic faced by some malaysians (fieldwork interviews 2020). he believed that some netizens had too much “free time” staying at home during the lockdowns, which allowed them to target rohingya on social media. on the platform change.org alone, our records show that there were 27 petitions launched in april 2020 with 454,742 signatures gathered in total urging the government to take stern actions against rohingya and even asking for the deportation of rohingya from malaysia. in contrast, there was only one petition, ‘#hormatnyawa: save lives at sea’ with just over 28,000 signatures calling for the malaysian government to rescue rohingya boats at sea and allow their disembarkation according to the covid-19 health protocols (refugee action for change, 2020). despite formal complaints by concerned advocate groups and individuals being made against the petitions and all petitions being taken down, this unprecedented public backlash prompted the government to issue an official statement re-asserting its stance not to recognize refugee status or any refugee-based organizations in malaysia (zainudin, 2020). so far, we have discussed how the malaysian public seized on refugees as potential threats and spreaders of disease during the pandemic and how malaysian authorities responded to a perceived threat by closing entire neighborhoods. what started out as surveillance and measures of containment quickly turned to a full-scale securitization of refugees, migrants and foreigners living in prescribed areas of concerns to the authorities. we use securitization following the copenhagen school (buzan et al., 1998) and biao xiang’s recent framing as the “state-led intervention in individual mobility to minimize perceived public threats” whilst maintaining “the established social order” (xiang, 2022). the aim of such securitization is to enable the continued mobility for goods, capital, and people the state wants or needs to move, whilst containing and securitizing those it does not want to move. thus, the malaysian state used its powers to 3 merhrom was founded by zafar ahmad in 1998. the organization is made up of only himself and although he has been a vocal activist for some time, he does not enjoy much support from the rohingya community (fieldwork interviews 2021). aseas 16(1) | 89 aslam abd jalil & gerhard hoffstaedter limit the mobility of people it knows it can treat in the harshest of ways without repercussions. indeed, such a myopic securitization of a particular populace demonstrated the government’s aim to politicize the presence of refugees and migrants in malaysia. mosques malaysia’s perception as a modern muslim nation has attracted rohingya to come and rebuild their lives there for a long time. within peninsular malaysia, rohingya have much more freedom of movement compared to being confined to refugee camps in bangladesh or their villages or internally displaced camps in myanmar. nursyazwani (2020) argues that rohingya in malaysia should be termed “mobile refugees” to describe their relative mobility and imaginary citizenship their unhcr card provides them. in myanmar, rohingya are deprived of their basic human rights, including the right to practice their religion – mosques are being targeted by the authorities and local mobs. malaysia represents a haven for many in the community as they can embrace an outward islamic lifestyle. in many places, rohingya are welcome to attend local mosques together with malaysians or set up their own prayer spaces. the covid-19 pandemic interrupted this when non-citizens were restricted from attending religious spaces. the prohibition of foreigners to enter mosques and surau4 varied from state to state since religious affairs are under the purview of each state or the federal territory. notifications were posted outside suraus and mosques that sometimes directly addressed rohingya. in front of surau kampung plentong baru in johor, for example, a banner stated: “we are not welcoming rohingya… 4 a prayer space smaller than a mosque that usually does not conduct friday prayers. figure 2. “sign outside a mosque declaring rohingya are not welcome, johor, 2021.” (photo by the authors). 90 | aseas 16(1) the effects of covid-19 on refugees in peninsular malaysia we do not need you here”. the ban was imposed in different phases beginning in 2020. in the federal territories of kuala lumpur, putrajaya, and labuan (an island in east malaysia) a guideline on 18 march 2021 still prohibited the entrance of foreigners (kumar, 2021), which was only lifted in november 2021 (ahmad, 2021), much later than in other states. two muftis from two states justified the policy as a public health measure and one of them even recommended the government relocate refugees who posed economic and socio-cultural threats to designated areas to limit their interaction with locals (thomas & nambiar, 2020). in a press statement, the religious affairs minister apologized for the ban, citing that it was necessary under the standard operation procedures, but emphasized that the rude behavior towards non-citizens was inexcusable (al-bakri, 2020). others were more accommodating throughout the ban. after the ban was imposed, some mosques continued to allow foreigners to enter and join the prayers. for example, a mosque in klang allowed the rohingya community to join adilfitri5 prayers in 2020, commemorating the end of ramadan together. refugees, who are mostly concentrated in urban areas such as kuala lumpur, felt this discrimination most once the ban had been lifted as they continued to be surveilled by locals as a potential danger.6 indeed their very presence in urban localities became a politicized issue when the home affairs minister on his official facebook page declared eleven locations throughout peninsular malaysia ‘foreigner hotspots’ (zainudin, 2021). he thanked netizens for the collective effort to provide information about the presence of foreigners in those locations and assured the public that the authorities would monitor them closely to ensure public safety. this shows how an exclusionary policy can normalize discriminatory behavior within a society even after it has been abolished. a recent iom survey (n=420) of refugees in malaysia during the covid-19 pandemic reported that 43% of refugees were stopped by the authorities for documentation checks with some being extorted and arrested (iom, 2021). some refugees were unable to renew their unhcr documents due to the lockdowns and containment strategies that locked down their neighborhoods. therefore, unhcr issued and updated letters on its website to be presented to the malaysian authorities explaining this situation (unhcr, 2021b). however, this was not respected by the authorities who continued to arrest refugees with expired cards or those without unhcr cards (fieldwork interviews 2021). the arrested refugees and asylum seekers could be deported or detained in immigration detention centers indefinitely, because since august 2018 unhcr has had no access to them to assess asylum claims. such exclusionary politics were further played out in places where many refugees work, for example wet markets across the country. 5 aidilfitri is a religious celebration that marks the end of ramadan, the holiest month in the islamic calendar. 6 such citizen surveillance has been used globally and was instrumental in the post 9/11 global war on terror where citizen-detectives surveilled ‘others’ (vaughan-williams, 2008) and new legal and political arrangements expanded border and immigration controls (walsh, 2014). malaysia has a long history of such vigilante immigration control because they deploy the large people’s volunteer corps malaysia (ikatan relawan rakyat malaysia) regularly for raids, to run immigration detention centers and, since 2020, to help enforce the emco, even though many human rights abuses have been documented (see e.g. chin, 2008). aseas 16(1) | 91 aslam abd jalil & gerhard hoffstaedter markets as key sites of racialized exclusion selayang is an urban area that straddles both the federal territory of kuala lumpur and the state of selangor in peninsular malaysia. the area has become an ethnic enclave for refugees and migrants who mostly work in two wholesale markets, namely selayang daily market and kuala lumpur wholesale market. the proximity of the two markets made selayang a migrant and refugee enclave that attracted the public attention. a prominent covid-19 cluster at kl wholesale market was linked to the tablighi cluster (palansamy, 2020b) and consequently was put under emco. a few weeks after emco was declared in the area, the authorities arrested 1,368 undocumented migrants, including 261 women and 98 children (dzulkifly, 2020). as most refugees live in cramped apartments, physical distancing was extremely difficult or simply impossible. the high infection rates caught the attention of the public and authorities, blaming the significant presence of refugee and migrant communities in selayang for the outbreak. the public backlash prompted the authorities to act by enforcing the relevant laws to evict foreigners from the market compound. foreigners like mohamad from the prologue were no longer allowed to enter or work on the market compound, because local malaysian workers should be prioritized for market jobs as imposed by the kl city council (dbkl). this has only recently been strictly enforced at kl wholesale market. after all foreigners were expelled from working in the market complex, employers had a hard time recruiting local workers to replace them. this disrupted most business operations, because for the past 20 years foreigners have been the backbone of the market, working under precarious working conditions and for low wages, often below the malaysian minimum wage (muniandy, 2020). therefore, finding locals to replace foreigners was complicated, especially as the work is hard and the wages low. in addition, local workers demand access to workers’ rights that are usually denied to refugee workers. consequently, the traders were struggling to operate at full capacity due to their heavy dependence on refugee and migrant laborers (soo, 2020). besides banning non-citizens from entering the market, the enforcement agencies gave stern warnings or revoked the trading licenses of those business operators who still hired foreigners. the malaysian public, meanwhile, chimed in alongside the authorities voicing concerns that the foreign traders were ‘dirty’ and offered cheaper prices that jeopardized the local traders (bernama, 2022d). despite the efforts by the authorities, during a visit in october 2021 we found that refugees and migrants were only evicted from the kl wholesale market compound, not the selayang daily market or surrounding shops and businesses. outside of the fenced compound there were many rohingya and myanmar muslim refugees working as porters at the shop lots. we also interviewed zubair, a rohingya man in his 50s who had been working as a sweeper in the market compound for the past eight years. the sub-contracting practice for the cleaning services opened a loophole for zubair to still be employed even though he had been banned officially. nevertheless, dbkl claimed that in 2020 they managed to evict more than 1,500 non-malaysian traders and workers in line with the wholesale market by-laws (federal territory of kuala lumpur) 2002 (bernama, 2022a). 92 | aseas 16(1) the effects of covid-19 on refugees in peninsular malaysia in meru, klang, a 30-minute drive west of kuala lumpur, there is a wet market complex in which the rohingya community has formed their own enclave, working and living in the shophouse units. many live in shophouses that are around 100 meters away from the main sections of the market. in klang, there was also a ruling that prohibited undocumented workers to be employed in the market complex. we met a representative of the klang stall holders’ association, who showed us a copy of the association chairman’s letter dated 15 december 2020 sent to the klang municipal council that detailed the issues market employers had trying to find local employees and why they relied on foreign labor. the letter emphasized their effort to find local workers by following the procedures stipulated by the government. the efforts included advertising vacancies on an online job portal for a minimum of one month. the klang local council (mpk) finally allowed the stall holders to hire refugees until april 2021 because they admitted that it was difficult for the traders to hire local workers. after the deadline passed, many rohingya refugees continued to work there as usual because they had become indispensable for the market operations. thus, since most market workers are rohingya refugees, enforcing immigration rules strictly is not an option because it would disrupt the market operations for both the traders and customers. this was an instance where economic considerations outweighed enforcement and securitization concerns. it was simply too costly to evict the rohingya workers completely as they provide cheap labor that is much needed in the post-covid-19 economic recovery phase. securitization and exclusion in the peri-urban and urban spaces we have detailed refugees and the urban poor share similar struggles and denials of their rights, such as the vulnerability to eviction, be it from their workplace, home, or informal settlements (sanyal, 2012). exclusion policies as we have described have only exacerbated refugees’ vulnerabilities, including worsening their socioeconomic situation and living conditions (kikano et al., 2021). the public perception in malaysia is often that refugees are given daily allowances and accommodation, when in fact they must sustain themselves. during the covid-19 pandemic, the tzu-chi foundation was one of the few non-governmental organizations willing and able to support refugees deprived of income during lockdowns and evictions from workplaces. they provided one-off cash assistance between rm 180 and rm 600 to refugee families based on their vulnerability and family size. the amount was still far from enough as the loss of income meant that refugees were struggling to pay their rent and food. at that time, a local ngo reported that 95% of 100 rohingya interviewed did not get their salary for the month (verghis et al., 2021). in a survey involving 400 respondents conducted by the refugee coalition of malaysia, over 95% reported that they had lost their jobs. ninety percent of them lived in rented accommodation with 60% paying between rm 500 (usd 100) to rm 1,000 (usd 200) monthly rent. seventy five percent of them were only able to pay rent until april 2020 and 40% of them were threatened with eviction. on 10 june 2020, the immigration department of malaysia sent letters to landlords in kuala lumpur and selangor to warn them against renting their properties to undocumented foreigners, including refugees. the letter cited the specific aseas 16(1) | 93 aslam abd jalil & gerhard hoffstaedter punishments outlined under the immigration act 1959/63, including a fine of up to rm 30,000 (usd 6,700) and potential imprisonment of maximum 12 years, or both, for each undocumented foreigner housed. besides mailed letters, they also put-up banners to warn landlords or landowners not to rent out their properties to undocumented persons. this resulted in housing evictions for some refugees because their landlords were worried about the legal repercussions they might face. this aggravated the precarity for refugees who were unable to pay their monthly rent due to the loss of income during lockdowns. the media reported that over 100 unhcr cardholder tenants faced eviction from their homes due to this ruling (razak, 2020). responding to this matter, the federal territories minister expressed his shock and then clarified that unhcr cardholders were exempted from this ruling after much pressure from refugee rights activists (palansamy, 2020a). despite this verbal clarification, there was still some confusion on the ground because of the issuance of a reminder letter to landlords by the immigration department earlier. during our fieldwork, community members seeking assistance raised the issue of a family being asked to vacate their apartment with us. we suggested they show a news article to the landlord to defy the eviction. as a result, the property agent allowed them to remain. this eviction issue stems from the non-recognition of refugees who are lumped together into a catch-all category of ‘undocumented migrant/foreigner’ under the national laws and regulations. these evictions were the beginning of a process of removing people the malaysian government sees as hazardous in terms of the health of the nation. this, in effect, spelt out the way refugees and other undocumented migrants in malaysia are seen by the state: as ‘matter out of place’ that simultaneously creates boundaries and presents a purified version of the malaysian body politic (cf. douglas, 2005). subsequently, on 23 february 2021, the malaysian government deported around 1,200 individuals to figure 3. viral photo circulating on facebook that shows a banner reminding house owners and landlords not to rent out their premises to pati or face punishments with a logo of the immigration department. 94 | aseas 16(1) the effects of covid-19 on refugees in peninsular malaysia myanmar. nearly 100 of them were asylum-seekers (reuters, 2021). the deportation included three people registered with unhcr and 17 children who had at least one parent in malaysia, in clear defiance of a court order to halt the deportation amidst the military coup in myanmar (ananthalakshmi & latiff, 2021). the court ruling had little effect to stop more deportations. from april until october 2022, malaysia deported over 2,000 myanmar nationals, including military defectors who had not been assessed by the unhcr yet (hrw, 2022). such refoulment actions are against international laws and norms and reveal malaysia’s ongoing contradictions in how it deals with refugees on the often invoked ‘humanitarian grounds’ or ‘humanitarian exception’ (abd jalil, 2021; lego, 2012). conclusions this paper demonstrates that the covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated existing vulnerabilities of refugees, especially regarding their migratory status, loss of livelihoods and the general public’s negative perception of them. it also highlights the logic used by the state to operationalize its harsh policies towards non-citizens, particularly migrants and refugees, in the name of public health. deploying a range of surveillance, securitization, eviction and deportation measures, the malaysian government has weaponized undocumented foreigners, including refugees. rohingya refugees became the focus of xenophobic sentiment during the pandemic for several reasons: firstly, rohingya were accused of not following the lockdown rules. secondly, a fabricated message of a rohingya activist demanding malaysian citizenship went viral. thirdly, the arrival of some boats carrying rohingya refugees in malaysian waters during the lockdowns was seen as a threat to public health and national sovereignty. as a result, refugees, and migrant workers more broadly, and rohingya in particular, have been othered into categories that the public should be aware of, afraid of, and inform on. the malaysian state, alongside vigilante citizens, engaged in domestic borderwork, where neighborhoods, mosques, and markets became central places of immigration control and exclusion for refugees. in this paper, we showed how heightened and even frenzied securitization exacerbated existing vulnerabilities and further marginalized refugees in malaysia. we have argued that this securitization of refugees and migrant workers, their surveillance, and even expulsion and eviction 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(2017). bentham, deleuze and beyond: an overview of surveillance theories from the panopticon to participation. philosophy & technology, 30(1), 9-37. hoffstaedter, g. (2019). arrested refugee mobilities: optics as bordering techniques in malaysia. sojourn: journal of social issues in southeast asia, 34(3), 521-546. hoffstaedter, g. (2017a). dominant discourses of refugees, recognition, and othering in malaysia. situations: cultural studies in the asian context, 10(2), 27-44. hoffstaedter, g. (2017b). refugees, islam, and the state: the role of religion in providing sanctuary in malaysia. journal of immigrant & refugee studies, 15(3), 287-304. hoffstaedter, g. (2015). urban refugees and the unhcr in kuala lumpur: dependency, assistance and survival. in k. koizumi & g. hoffstaedter (eds.), urban refugees: challenges in protection, services and policy (pp. 187-205). routledge. human rights watch (hrw). 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(2020, may 1). coronavirus: hundreds arrested as malaysia cracks down on migrants in covid-19 red zones. south china morning post. https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/ article/3082529/coronavirus-hundreds-arrested-malaysia-cracks-down-migrants?module=perpetual_ scroll_0&pgtype=article&campaign=3082529 tan, r. (2022, october 24). human rights watch warns malaysia against deporting myanmar refugees to face execution, torture. malay mail. https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2022/10/24/humanrights-watch-warns-malaysia-against-deporting-myanmar-refugees-to-face-execution-torture/35288 tan, z. h. (2020). xenophobic malaysia, truly asia: metonym for the invisible. inter-asia cultural studies, 21(4), 601-613. tang, k. h. d. (2022). movement control as an effective measure against covid-19 spread in malaysia: an overview. zeitschrift für gesundheitswissenschaften, 30(3), 583-586. the star. 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(2021). covid-19 and refugees in malaysia: an ngo response. intervention 19(1), 15-20. wahab, a. (2017). rethinking refugees as economically isolated: the rohingyas participation in informal economy in klang valley, malaysia. journal of asean studies, 5(1), 100-118. walden, m. (2022). refugees may become victims of malaysia’s electoral politics. https://www.lowyinstitute. org/the-interpreter/refugees-may-become-victims-malaysia-s-electoral-politics walsh, j. p. (2014). watchful citizens: immigration control, surveillance and societal participation. social & legal studies, 23(2), 237-259. xiang, b. (2022). the securitization of mobility. molab inventory of mobilities and socioeconomic changes. max planck institute for social anthropology. https://www.eth.mpg.de/6037498/xiangbiao_securitization-of-mobility_molab_1767.pdf yassin, m. (2020, january 12). teks ucapan pengumuman khas darurat oleh pm. berita harian. https:// www.bharian.com.my/ berita/nasional/2021/01/775260/teks-ucapan-pengumuman-khas-daruratoleh-pm yildiz, o. f. (2020, june 12). malaysia turns away boat carrying around 300 rohingya. anadolu agency. https:// www.aa.com.tr/en/asia-pacific/malaysia-turns-away-boat-carrying-around-300-rohingya/1874122 zainudin, h. (2021, 16 june). lokasi 'hotspot' warga asing [facebook]. https://www.facebook.com/ hamzahzainudinofficial/posts/332449525172441 zainudin, h. (2020). status "pelarian" rohingya di malaysia [facebook]. https://zh-cn.facebook.com/ imigresen/posts/kenyataan-media-kementerian-dalam-negeri-mengenai-status-pelarian-rohingya-dima/3060037664062668/ aseas 16(1) | 99 aslam abd jalil & gerhard hoffstaedter about the authors aslam abd jalil is a fellow at the international institute of public policy & management (inpuma), universiti malaya. he has a background in anthropology, public policy and business studies and is combining these three fields in researching the issues of refugee work rights and labour migration in malaysia. ► contact: aslamaj@um.edu.my dr gerhard hoffstaedter is associate professor in anthropology in the school of social science at the university of queensland. he conducts research with refugees in southeast asia, on refugee and immigration policy and on religion and the state. his first book entitled modern muslim identities: negotiating religion and ethnicity in malaysia was published by nias press. a co-edited volume urban refugees: challenges in protection, services and policy was published with routledge in 2015. he is course director for the social anthropology massive open online course world101x: the anthropology of current world issues that has taught tens of thousands of students how to think more anthropologically. ► contact: g.hoffstaedter@uq.edu.au acknowledgements we would like to thank the refugee communities for their generous and valuable input in our research. disclosure the authors declare no conflict of interest. mailto:aslamaj%40um.edu.my?subject= mailto:g.hoffstaedter%40uq.edu.au?subject= aseas 14(1) | 59 legal reforms in protecting migrant workers’ welfare in malaysia: labor law and social security choo chin lowa a universiti sains malaysia, malaysia ► low, c. c. (2021). legal reforms in protecting migrant workers’ welfare in malaysia: labor law and social security. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 14(1), 59-80. this article examines how malaysia has sought to improve migrant workers’ welfare through the revision of its labor laws. migrant workers’ welfare in malaysia has been hindered by the absence of social security frameworks, outdated labor laws, multiple dependence on labor intermediaries, and employers’ lack of accountability. in 2019, two labor laws were amended based on international labor organization standards: the workers’ minimum standard of housing and amenities act (1990) and the employees’ social security act (1969). the amendments have equalized the statutory protection between national and migrant workers, increased employers’ accountability for their migrant workers’ welfare, and addressed forced labor. with this legal framework, malaysia’s migration management has been associated with better social security protection for migrant workers, which was previously absent from foreign worker policies. the legal reforms indicate the government’s attempt in solving the tension in malaysia’s migration management, by ensuring balance between migrants’ welfare, labor market needs, and immigration control. these observations and analysis draw upon legislations, federal government gazettes, hansard records, official reports of intergovernmental organizations, press statements of civil society actors, online newspapers, and secondary literature. keywords: forced labor; labor law; migrant worker; social security; worker accommodation  introduction this paper examines two legal reforms implemented by malaysia since 2019 to improve social security protection of migrant workers, ensure employers’ accountability, increase workplace enforcement, and address forced labor practices. amendments to the workers’ minimum standard of housing and amenities act (act 446) and the employees’ social security act (act 4) are important because the inadequate regulatory framework has been considered the main barrier to migrant workers’ protection. prior to the amendment, the standards for housing conditions provided by employers varied due to ineffective enforcement, resulting in overcrowding and a lack of basic amenities (world bank, 2013, p. 106). the poor living conditions in workers’ accommodation affected migrant workers’ health, well-being, and safety. sub-standard living conditions are one of the 11 indicators of forced labor identified by the international labor organization (ilo, 2012; ilo, 2018a). in terms of social aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 48 60 | aseas 14(1) legal reforms in protecting migrant workers’ welfare in malaysia security protection, migrant workers’ insurance coverage was limited and much lower compared to malaysian workers, despite the fact that the country recorded a high number of migrant fatalities and occupational injuries (ilo, 2016; rasiah, 2019). the overcrowded living conditions and limited social security coverage are closely associated with unhealthy business practices – the “race to the bottom” – in order to decrease labor costs (ang, murugasu, & chai, 2018, p. 8). this research attempts to answer three research questions: what are the major factors underpinning migrants’ welfare negligence in present-day malaysia? what is the role of legal reform in protecting migrant workers’ welfare? what are the impacts of the reform? legal and institutional labor reforms are much needed as there are inadequate national legal frameworks for safeguarding foreign workers’ rights and the existing labor laws are outdated. without a comprehensive national foreign worker policy overhaul, labor exploitation and human trafficking would continue to flourish. workers’ rights groups and non-governmental organizations urged the malaysian government for a comprehensive labor migration reform based on the ilo conventions and fundamental human rights principles (civil society organizations, 2018). according to tenaganita, a human rights group, foreign workers are trafficked and placed in forced labor conditions because the country has not sufficiently addressed workers’ protection and living conditions. the foreign worker policy, according to tenaganita, “has been driven by the corporate world, and that is the commodification of migrant workers” (pillai, 2018). a comprehensive reform of labor laws in malaysia has been long overdue. labor laws in malaysia introduced in the 1950s and 1960s are archaic, and have been outdated for 60 years. they are no longer appropriate for the current employment landscape in terms of recognition of human dignity, human values, and workers’ rights. in 2018, the ministry of human resources (mohr) proposed a series of labor law reforms to ensure that employers provide secure accommodations for their migrant workers. this was followed by another announcement in september 2018, which provided social security protection to migrant workers through an amendment to the employees’ social security act 1969 (annuar, 2019; varughese, 2018). there was an urgent need to update domestic legislation in line with international treaties on labor standards for the benefit of workers, employers, and foreign investors. during the national labor advisory council meeting in january 2019, human resources minister m. kulasegaran recognized that “many labor laws are terribly outdated with the changing employment situation around the world. we need to be abreast with the situation” (ramasamy, 2019). the labor law reforms in 2019 provided the legal framework to bring about positive changes in malaysia in three aspects. they addressed the inequality in treatment between national and foreign workers in terms of social security protection, increased employers’ accountability for their migrant workers’ welfare, and protected fundamental labor rights. this paper suggests that the recent labor law reforms could be regarded as an attempt to balance security and labor market needs with better workers’ welfare protection. it should be noted that malaysia’s migration policies in the past had not been situated within the context of migrants’ welfare. the foreign worker management, prior to the reform, was aimed to regulate the inflow of foreign workers, to reduce irregular immigration, and to protect malaysian workers in the local labor market, aseas 14(1) | 61 choo chin low without sufficient attention to foreign workers’ conditions of labor, their welfare, or their role to the nation’s development (harkins, 2016, p. 24; nesadurai, 2013, p. 103; world bank, 2013, p. 114). since 2015, there has been a fundamental shift in malaysia’s foreign worker policies, which witnessed new initiatives taken to address labor rights. the 11th malaysia plan (2016–2020) envisaged a comprehensive migration reform that takes into account migrants’ welfare and the industrial needs. the mohr is tasked with policy-making for foreign worker management, including monitoring migrant workers’ welfare. as for the employers, a strict liability principle was introduced, making them directly responsible for the recruitment and welfare of their foreign workers (malaysia, economic planning unit, 2015, chap. 5). in addition, the government obliged employers to sign a pledge called the employers’ undertaking (previously known as employer mandatory commitment) effective since 1 february 2017. the pledge outlined 11 mandatory commitments of employers, including providing accommodation and basic amenities in accordance with the workers’ minimum standard of housing and amenities act 1990, settling all medical bills if their foreign workers are unable to do so, and abiding by all the government requirements on the employment of migrant workers. failure to comply with the requirements of the pledge would subject the employers to legal actions and to administrative sanctions, including being blacklisted from hiring foreign workers (federation of malaysian manufacturers, 2017; ilo, 2018a). these initiatives of ensuring employers’ accountability were further enhanced with labor law reforms, which improved social security protection and the living conditions for foreign workers. this article examines how malaysia has reformed and implemented the amended labor laws to address the limitations in its migration policy. first, it examines the social security framework at international, regional, and national levels. then, it surveys migrant rights and forced labor in the malaysian context. this is followed by a discussion of two labor law reforms: the workers’ minimum standard of housing and amenities act (1990) and the employees’ social security act (1969). next, it looks at the enforcement of the amended acts in ensuring employers’ compliance. finally, it analyzes the impacts of the reforms. this paper is based on an analysis of legislations, federal government gazettes, parliamentary debates, official reports of intergovernmental organizations, press statements of civil society actors, online newspapers, and secondary literature. conceptual framework the importance of building social security systems is reflected in the 2030 agenda for sustainable development. the united nations general assembly adopted the sustainable development goals (sdgs) in 2015. sdg 1.3 highlights the importance of social protection for sustainable development in reducing and preventing poverty. it calls for the implementation of nationally appropriate social protection floors that guarantee a basic level of social security to all. social protection (also known as social security) is a human right. the united nations’ efforts reaffirmed the ilo social protection floors recommendation of 2012 (also known as ilo recommendation no. 202) (ilo, 2017a, p. 1). migrant workers have limited access to social security benefits in the receiving states because access is unequally distributed between national 62 | aseas 14(1) legal reforms in protecting migrant workers’ welfare in malaysia workers and migrant workers. some social security schemes are only available to citizens or permanent residents, excluding the majority of migrant workers who often lack proper documentation. undocumented workers are excluded from social security because of their immigration status (cuddy et al., 2006, pp. 17-18; nguyen & simoes da cunha, 2019, pp. 49-50). the social protection of migrant workers and their families among asean member states is generally poor due to weak provisions in national legal frameworks on immigration, labor, and social security, and the absence of bilateral arrangements. this is the case from both a labor and especially a social security rights perspective. compared to the national workers in a state, migrant workers “enjoy much less protection in social security law and in practice than their national counterparts” (olivier, 2018, p. 1). legal reforms are important because legal barriers are the main barrier faced by migrant workers. restrictive national legislations and nationality discrimination provisions in social security have undermined migrant workers’ rights. migrant workers are either not covered for social security coverage and entitlements or covered with lower benefits compared with national workers. the barriers to the extension of coverage to migrant workers are greater in precarious employment in the informal economy when workers are not covered by labor laws and social protection schemes (ilo, 2017a, pp. 63, 65). asean countries have stepped up their efforts in safeguarding the rights of migrant workers. member states of asean adopted the asean declaration on the protection and promotion of the rights of migrant workers during the 12th asean summit in 2007 in cebu, philippines. the cebu declaration outlined the receiving states’ obligations, such as promoting fair and appropriate employment protection, payment of wages, and adequate access to decent working and living conditions for migrant workers (asean, 2007). in 2018, asean member states adopted a framework for cooperation on migrant workers through the asean consensus on the protection and promotion of the rights of migrant workers, while recognizing the contributions of migrant workers in both receiving and sending states of asean. the asean consensus outlined migrant workers’ specific rights, such as the right to access employment-related information, to be issued an employment contract, to fair treatment in the workplace, to adequate accommodation, to fair and appropriate remuneration and benefits, to retain benefits from their employment upon leaving the receiving states, to transfer their savings, to file a complaint relating to labor dispute, and to join trade unions (asean, 2018, chap. 4). in the area of social protection, asean collaborative efforts are visible through the asean declaration on strengthening social protection adopted during the 23rd asean summit in brunei darussalam in 2013. member states recognized that social protection is a human right and everyone, especially vulnerable groups, is entitled to have equitable access to social protection based on a rights-based or needs-based approach (art. 1, asean, 2013). in 2015, asean member states developed the regional framework and action plan to implement the asean declaration on strengthening social protection. the framework served as a move towards the equitable and sustainable development of the target groups, which included poor, at-risk, and vulnerable groups (asean, 2015). migrant workers in malaysia were excluded from social security schemes due to (1) inadequate regulatory instruments in terms of workplace protection, (2) multiple aseas 14(1) | 63 choo chin low dependence on labor intermediaries, and (3) employers’ lack of accountability (devadason & chan, 2014; world bank, 2013, 2015). prior to malaysia’s social security reform in 2019, migrant workers were administered under separate and less advantageous schemes for health services and workplace compensation, compared to the national scheme enjoyed by local workers. the two categories of workers were covered under different schemes beginning in 1993. malaysian workers were protected under the employees’ social security act 1969 scheme provided under the social security organization (socso), while migrant workers were covered under an insurance scheme called the workmen’s compensation act (wca). the foreign workers compensation scheme (fwcs) provided under the wca offered lower protection in case of permanent disability or death. this differentiated treatment resulted in many foreign workers being uninsured or under-insured and led to unpaid medical bills by employers (world bank, 2013, pp. 107-108). between january and october 2017, the department of occupational safety and health recorded 1,645 workplace accidents resulting in permanent or temporary disability. though migrant workers contributed to the country’s economic growth, they were denied equal treatment in workplace compensation. according to a five-year simulation done by the ilo (1 january 2010 – 31 december 2014), in the case of a permanent injury, a national worker was entitled to periodic payments of myr 425,000 under the socso scheme, while a migrant worker was entitled to a lump sum payment of myr 23,000 under the wca. the entitlement gap in workplace compensation was very wide, as migrant workers were only entitled to 5.4% of the entitlement granted to national workers (ilo, 2018b; ilo, 2017b, p. 84). second, multiple dependence on labor brokers and intermediaries under the outsourcing system has negatively affected foreign workers’ welfare. in principle, the outsourcing company is responsible for overseeing the welfare of workers, including providing accommodations, transportation, and medical benefits. in practice, the welfare of the workers is not adequately protected due to ineffective monitoring by the department of labor and various malpractices by agents causing working and living conditions to be substandard, workers not being paid the minimum wage, and not having secure employment. under this so-called labor contract system, the management and accountability of foreign workers is transferred from the employer to the outsourcing company, leading to labor abuse by recruiting agents. employers are not held accountable for the legal status of employees, working conditions, or workplace violations (abella & martin, 2016, pp. 108-110; verité, 2014, p. 93; world bank, 2015, p. 56). outsourcing practices have thus negatively affected the occupational safety and health of both local and foreign workers. many cases occur in factories or workplaces in which workers who are disabled cannot be cared for because there is no insurance coverage and no benefits can be claimed through socso. the reason for this is because the employers did not contribute to socso (see the following section on employees’ social security act 1969 for more detail). the situation is aggravated when factories hire workers through outsourcing companies, and these workers are not considered factory workers. as a result, they have no socso coverage through the factory in the event of workplace accidents (malaysia, 2018, p. 39). third, employers’ lack of accountability has resulted in the negligence of the welfare and interests of migrant workers. foreignand locally-owned companies 64 | aseas 14(1) legal reforms in protecting migrant workers’ welfare in malaysia have outsourced their work in order to avoid paying socso or any other insurance scheme. sometimes, in the event of an accident, there is no party willing to admit that they are the employer of the worker involved in the accident. some employers change workers’ working status from permanent to contract work in order to avoid contributing to socso. unfortunately, the country has no law that prevents employers from operating in this manner (malaysia, 2004, p. 71). workplace accidents happen to foreign workers who no longer have legal documents (even when they entered with documents all in order). when employers fail to renew workers’ temporary work permits upon expiry and allow them to continue working, the employers compromise their workers’ safety and welfare in malaysia. these workers are afraid of enforcement operations, living in fear or searching for places to hide. the department of labor’s inaction against employers who do not protect the welfare and safety of their workers has resulted in major labor exploitations (malaysia, 2019a, p. 149), which will be presented in the following. migrant rights and protection in malaysia malaysia is a destination country for low-skilled migrant workers, and the migrant labor workforce is a crucial contributor to malaysia’s economic development. the majority of migrant workers fill important workforce gaps in low-skilled jobs, as educated malaysians work in high-skilled jobs. low-skilled workers are mostly involved in labor-intensive sectors and in 3d occupations (dirty, dangerous, and difficult) (world bank, 2015, p. 29). out of the total workforce in malaysia, migrant workers comprised 14.1% (2010), 13.8% (2011), 14.2% (2012), 15.7% (2013), 15.2% (2014), 15.1% (2015), 15.6% (2016) and 15.5% (2017) (khazanah research institute, 2018, p. 120). in 2017, migrant workers constituted 51% of the workforce in low-skilled jobs, 17.3% in semi-skilled jobs, and 2.7% in skilled jobs. thus, migrant workers complement rather than compete with local workers. in 2017, the migrant worker workforce was 2.3 million compared to the malaysian workforce at 12.7 million (khazanah research institute, 2018, pp. 124-125). the majority of migrant workers fill in the employment gaps in the agricultural, construction, and manufacturing sectors, which have inherently higher risks of workplace injury and accidents. the nature of the work is hazardous due to poor working conditions, occupational stress, lack of adequate medical care, and the inequitable social security scheme for migrant workers. while migrant workers face higher risks of workplace injury, there is unequal access to the social security scheme that would provide insurance coverage and compensation for workplace accidents (harkins, 2016, pp. 20-21). migrant workers also experience disparities under the labor regulations, such as the absence of employment contracts, denial of collective bargaining under the outsourcing system, prohibition of joining trade unions, discouragement from contributing to the national social security, inferior insurance benefits for workplace accidents, non-payment of wages, unfair dismissal, wrongful deductions from wages, and substandard living conditions (devadason & chan, 2014, pp. 29-30). they work in unconducive working conditions under long, overtime hours and are paid under the minimum wage. disparity in protection between migrant workers and malaysian workers still exists, when poor migrant workers, trapped in situations of aseas 14(1) | 65 choo chin low debt bondage, are at “the mercy of their employers” (suhakam, 2018, pp. 128-129). human rights and labor rights violations are closely related to forced labor. there are 11 indicators of forced labor identified by the ilo: abuse of vulnerability, deception, restriction of movement, isolation, physical and sexual violence, intimidation and threats, retention of identity documents, withholding of wages, debt bondage, abusive working and living conditions, and excessive overtime. in some cases, a single indicator may suggest the existence of forced labor, while in other cases, there are several indicators of a forced labor situation (ilo, 2012). a joint report prepared by the malaysian employers federation and the international labor organization identified the factors that contributed to forced labor practices in malaysia among employers and workers. among the factors related to employers are the lack of awareness of forced labor, lack of knowledge about policies, fear of workers’ abscondment, acceptance of forced labor practices as being the industrial norm, and deliberate acts by errant employers. for workers, the factors included misleading information provided to them, misguiding by recruitment agents, isolated location of employment, lack of enforcement, limited number of prosecutions of forced labor offences, and limited access to grievance mechanisms (mef & ilo, 2019, p. 8). one of the major causes of rights violations is the power imbalance between the employers and workers. migrant workers are often faced with various exploitation in terms of forced labor, when employers control the renewal of their work permit. if the employer fails or refuses to renew their permits, migrant workers become undocumented (ilo, 2018a, p. 2). malaysian visa and work permit policies tie the legal status of migrant workers to their employers. this situation results in their “multiple vulnerability” to dismissal, denunciation, and deportation if they question a work arrangement, fail to satisfy the work expectations, or do not follow instructions (verité, 2014, pp. 163, 181). malaysia’s sponsorship-based immigration system makes foreign workers dependent on the continued support of their employers to have their immigration passes renewed. employers exercise delegated state power over migrant workers’ legal status and non-compliance resulting in the cancellation of immigration passes (nah, 2012, pp. 498-499). due to their precarious legal position, any conflicts with their employers or outsourcing agents could cause the workers to become undocumented. a study conducted by the centre for research on multinational corporations (somo, 2013) found that: “migrant workers have a weak rights position in malaysia and are often faced with repressive anti-migrant policies and practices” (p. 6). malaysia recorded a high number of migrant fatalities due to weak migrant protection. between 2003 and 2017, there were 3,800 nepali migrant workers’ deaths, the major reasons being cardiac arrest and heart attack. other causes included workplace accidents, road accidents, suicide, physical assaults, and chronic disease. nepali rights groups questioned the reliability of reports released by malaysian hospitals. they believed that heart attack and cardiac arrest were reported as the major causes of death because malaysian employers are not obligated to pay compensation and insurance claims if the death is not caused by a workplace accident. according to amnesty international and human rights watch, many nepali workers worked in hazardous conditions (“after 3,800 deaths in malaysia”, 2017). human rights and migrant rights groups doubted the actual cause of death; they believed 66 | aseas 14(1) legal reforms in protecting migrant workers’ welfare in malaysia that employers and agents were avoiding insurance claims. poor working conditions, workplace safety, stress, overwork, and dehydration may have contributed to these deaths. official statistics recorded the number of nepali worker deaths as follows: 361 (2014), 425 (2015), and 386 (2016), indicating a statistical average of one nepali worker death per day (“report: 386 nepalese migrant workers”, 2017). a report by ilo (2016, p. 11) on nepali migrant workers’ occupational safety in gulf cooperation council countries and malaysia recorded a total of 1,562 deaths in seven years (2008–2015) out of 908,156 nepali workers in malaysia, revealing a death rate of 1.72 per 1,000 migrant workers. fatalities from cardiac arrest were listed as the major cause of death followed by heart attack, natural causes, unidentified cause, traffic accidents, suicide, workplace accidents, and murder (ilo, 2016, p. 13). bangladeshi migrant workers have a higher fatality rate in the country – two deaths per day and 96 deaths in january 2019. this high rate made malaysia the ‘killing fields’ for many young workers ranging between 18 and 32 years of age, who had been certified as medically fit prior to their employment. the government was called upon to investigate the actual cause, as the major reasons being strokes and heart attacks was highly suspicious. other contributing factors, such as poor living conditions, led to infections and delays in seeking medical treatment because of the high costs. debt bondage and modern-day slavery are directly linked to these deaths. bangladeshi workers incurred heavy debt in order to pay myr 20,000 recruitment costs to migrate to malaysia. exploitation by agents, such as contract substitution, unexplained salary deductions, and short-changing overtime payments make it difficult to settle the debt incurred in their home country (rasiah, 2019). the embassy of nepal in malaysia recorded 2,945 deaths of nepalese workers between 2005 and 2014. in 2015 alone, there were 461 deaths reported. about 70% of nepalese workers’ fatalities were attributed to massive heart attack or sudden cardiac arrest, while 30% were due to workplace accidents, alcohol consumption, and suicide for monetary reasons. sudden cardiac arrest was attributed to working long hours in hot conditions, causing fatigue and eventual death while sleeping. many nepalese workers worked more than 12 hours per day to settle debts owed to their agents in nepal. the employment act 1955 stipulated that workers are allowed to work only eight hours daily. in fact, migrant workers often asked for overtime work as the only solution to repaying their debt (“most deaths of nepalese workers”, 2016). as for indonesian migrant workers, there were about 120 deaths of indonesians in malaysia from 2016 to 2018. partly due to the high cost and complexity of legal migration, indonesians were vulnerable to human trafficking syndicates and worked in the country without documents. rights groups such as migrant care advocated for cheaper and safer migration processes to prevent modern-day slavery and workers’ exploitation (barker, 2018). since 2019, the malaysian government has taken positive measures to ensure employers’ accountability for their workers’ welfare. the government required employers to 1) contribute to the employment injury scheme for their migrant workers under the employees’ social security act 1969 and 2) to guarantee their basic rights to decent living conditions under the workers’ minimum standards of housing and amenities (amendment) act 2019. aseas 14(1) | 67 choo chin low workers’ minimum standards of housing and amenities (amendment) act 2019 a major reform in the malaysian state’s labor law is the amendment to the workers’ minimum standard of housing and amenities act (1990). amendments to act 466 widened the coverage of the existing act to all industrial sectors, such as plantation, construction, and manufacturing. the amendments aimed to ensure compliance with international standards for developing countries, while promoting sustainable economic growth and attracting foreign investment. amendments to act 466 came into force on 1 june 2020. worker accommodations had to fulfil basic aspects: a minimum space requirement, basic facilities, safety, comfort, and cleanliness standards. employers were given a three-month grace period to improve the living conditions of their workers and the enforcement of act 446 came on 1 september 2020. companies that failed to provide proper housing could be fined myr 50,000 per worker. employers are considered responsible for taking measures to contain the spread of any infectious disease and to segregate workers suffering from an infectious disease. under the amended act, penalties for the failure to provide the necessary medical arrangement and treatment for workers suffering from an infectious disease increased from a maximum fine of myr 2,000 to myr 50,000 (carvalho & tan, 2019; thomas, 2020). prior to the amendment, the statutory regulation on accommodation facilities was not standardized for all industries. the act was only applicable to workers in the estate, plantation, and mining industries. for those in other industries, employers had to provide minimum housing benefits according to the standards set by the local authorities, and local councils were responsible for overseeing the implementation (world bank, 2013, p. 106). as there was no standard housing regulation for workers employed in urban areas, such as in service sectors, the accommodations provided were unhygienic and overcrowded, affecting migrant workers’ health, well-being, safety, and right to privacy (ilo, 2018a, pp. 19-20). a survey among migrant workers in the malaysian electronics industry by verité (2014) indicated that the major issues faced by foreign workers were bad living conditions, lack of a secure place to store their belongings, crowded living quarters with more than eight people sharing a room, and unsafe neighborhoods. the study found that 92% of the respondents stayed in housing provided by employers or brokers. they had no bargaining power regarding living conditions, as foreign workers were highly dependent on their employers or brokers for housing (verité, 2014, pp. 131-132). the workers’ minimum standards of housing and amenities (amendment) bill 2019 was passed by the lower house on 15 july 2019. during the second and third reading of the bill, the government recognized that it was time to amend act 446 to enhance and extend the protection of working-class welfare in terms of housing and related facilities. the amendment would also make act 446 consistent with the development of international labor standards, and, in particular, in compliance with international standards r115 ilo – workers’ housing recommendations of 1961. in general, the bill to amend act 446 was aimed to achieve several purposes – first, to bolster the statutory benefits in act 446 to ensure that workers in all sectors enjoy better housing, basic amenities, and secure health and safety. employers were 68 | aseas 14(1) legal reforms in protecting migrant workers’ welfare in malaysia given the choice of building, renting, or relocating their employees in centralized accommodations. the second purpose was to adhere to international labor standards regarding the provision of housing to workers, which would facilitate trade between malaysia and other countries. this monitoring also allows malaysia to enter into free trade agreements and prevents malaysian companies from being subject to trade restrictions. third, the amendment purposed to fulfil the pakatan harapan government’s promise to ensure the protection of workers’ rights, to improve the dignity of the working class, and to guarantee their rights in accordance with international standards. another purpose was to uphold the speech pronounced by yang di-pertuan agong (malaysia’s constitutional monarch) during the opening of parliament on 11 march 2019. the monarch stated that the government would reform its labor laws to ensure that they comply with international standards while improving aspects of protection for workers (malaysia, 2019a, pp. 139-140). the workers’ minimum standards of housing and amenities (amendment) bill 2019 is significant in several ways. the act applies to employees who are working at places other than on an estate (malaysia, 2019b, section 24a).1 accommodation provided to an employee must possess a certificate for accommodation, failure of which will result in the employer or the centralized accommodation provider being charged with an offence. the employer is liable for a fine not exceeding myr 50,000, while the centralized accommodation provider is liable for the same fine or imprisonment for a term not exceeding one year or both (malaysia, 2019b, section 24d). it is the obligation of an employer and a centralized accommodation provider to ensure that all accommodations provided are in compliance with the minimum standards specified under act 446 (malaysia, 2019b, section 24f). the increased penalties imposed on employers who fail to comply with act 446 serve as a precautionary measure to demonstrate the government’s decisiveness in addressing the issue of housing that does not meet the minimum standards set. this is taken seriously by the international community, as workers’ housing is often associated with forced labor and human rights violations (malaysia, 2019a, p. 193). in drafting the amendment to act 446, the mohr convened a comprehensive governance session with stakeholders, especially trade unions, employers’ associations, and relevant government agencies (malaysia, 2019a, p. 139). nevertheless, there are several weaknesses in the amended act, the most obvious being the provision stating that it is not compulsory for employers to provide workers’ accommodations. if an employer agrees to provide housing, it must comply with the minimum standards set out under this act. however, the government does not intend to compel employers to provide accommodations. a parliamentarian questioned the strength of the law, as this provision may be abused by irresponsible parties in order to save their operating costs (malaysia, 2019a, p. 163). it is also questionable with regard to implementation. although the penang state government initiated its workers’ dormitory project, there are problems with the implementation, as there are no specific laws – state or federal – requiring workers to stay in the hostel. there is no legal provision requiring local or foreign workers to stay in the dormitory. therefore, foreign 1 the bill is applicable in peninsular malaysia and labuan only. equivalent provisions were later included in the sabah labor ordinance and the sarawak labor ordinance, subject to approval of their respective state governments (see section on law enforcement). aseas 14(1) | 69 choo chin low workers continue to live in low-cost housing meant for the locals (malaysia, 2019a, pp. 160-161). another weakness lies in the lack of civic awareness among malaysian employers of their workers’ rights. in the case of workers’ welfare, the international standardized act may not be meaningful when employers and others still discriminate against foreign workers and treat them as secondor third-class citizens. the government’s efforts to create a sense of respect for the rights of both foreign and local workers were queried. complaints from employers are anticipated as they now have to spend money to protect workers’ welfare. one example shows that housing is misused by putting more than 10 to 20 foreign workers in a space with the capacity to accommodate only five or six people (malaysia, 2019a, p. 154). workplace inspections were inadequately carried out by the labor department and the occupational safety and health department as stipulated under ilo’s labor inspection convention, 1947 (no. 81). the living conditions were deplorable, with foreign workers staying in cramped and dirty conditions at workers’ quarters at construction sites or rented apartments (ram, 2020). foreign workers in restaurants and construction sites are commonly housed in shop lots. in cyberjaya, many shop lots were used by employers as worker dormitories. the sepang municipal council disallowed shop lots being used as dormitories after receiving public complaints on workers’ living conditions and rubbish disposal. the council found that shop lots housed around 30 workers without partitions to separate sleeping accommodations from living areas (chen, 2019). effective 1 july 2021, the government made the certificate of accommodation as a pre-requisite in hiring new foreign workers in its effort to enforce act 446. employers must obtain the certificate from the mohr prior to the issuance of a visa by the immigration department. without fulfilling the pre-requisite, their foreign workers would be regarded as irregular migrants (“accommodation for more”, 2020). in order to facilitate the implementation of the amended act, the ministry of human resources set two new regulations titled: 1) employees’ minimum standards of housing, accommodations and amenities (accommodation and centralized accommodation) regulations 2020, and 2) employees’ minimum standards of housing, accommodations and amenities (maximum rental or charges for accommodation) regulations 2020. the first regulations required all employers and centralized accommodation providers to offer basic items that shall not be shared: a single bed with a measurement of no less than 1.7 m2 (the space between the two beds shall not be less than 0.7 m if a double decker bed is provided), a mattress of not less than 4 inches (including a pillow and a blanket), and a locked cupboard (of not less than 0.35 m length, 0.35 m width, and 0.9 m height) (malaysia, 2020a, section 4 of the regulations). the size of sleeping area in a dormitory shall not be less than 3.0 m2 for each worker and the size of a bedroom in a non-dormitory shall not be less than 3.6 m2 for each worker (malaysia, 2020a, section 5 of the regulations). the second regulations set myr 100 as the maximum rental charges that may be collected by an employer from a worker in respect of any accommodation provided by the employer or any centralized accommodation provider under section 24g of act 446. act 446 allowed employers to make deductions from the workers’ wages for accommodation charges (malaysia, 2020b, section 2 of the regulations). both regulations, which took effect from 1 september 2020, were important because the congested 70 | aseas 14(1) legal reforms in protecting migrant workers’ welfare in malaysia living conditions increased the risk of covid-19 among foreign workers, identified as one of the high-risk groups (lim, 2020). employees’ social security act 1969 and employment injury scheme the next reform in foreign workers’ welfare is the extension of national social security protection to foreign workers. beginning 1 january 2019, employers hiring foreign workers (excluding domestic maids) must register their workers with malaysia’s social security organization (socso). the new ruling makes it compulsory for employers to contribute to the employment injury scheme (ei) for their foreign workers under the employees’ social security act 1969. the contribution rate of 1.25% of the insured monthly wages is payable by the employers. this policy of registering with socso is applicable to new foreign workers entering malaysia on or after 1 january 2019. for existing foreign workers who were still covered under the previous foreign workers compensation scheme (fwcs), their employers have to register them with socso after expiration of the fwcs on 31 december 2019 (socso, 2020). prior to the reform in 2019, foreign workers’ insurance coverage under the fwcs was limited. since the establishment of socso in 1971, the organization provided insurance coverage for foreign workers in the event of workplace accidents. the socso scheme provided periodic payments to workers of industrial accidents and the issuing periodic payments to foreign workers after their return was administratively burdensome. beginning 1 april 1993, foreign workers’ insurance coverage was transferred to the fwcs under the workmen’s compensation act (wca). the fwcs scheme offered only a lump sum payment at lower amounts for cases of permanent disability or death. the transfer of foreign workers’ protection from the socso scheme to the wca in 1993 created inequalities of treatment between national and non-national workers (harkins, 2016, p. 21). with the new policy in place, it is mandatory for employers to register all foreign workers with the socso scheme beginning 1 january 2019. the equal protection policy came about after the ilo sent a direct contact mission in 2018 to ascertain malaysia’s adherence to convention 19 (c19), following complaints received by the ilo regarding the plight of millions of migrant workers with limited workplace compensation coverage. the three-day mission examined the access to healthcare in case of occupational injuries and assisted the government in implementing c19 – equality of treatment in accident compensation for national and foreign workers (“migrant workers to be fully socso-insured”, 2019). consequently, socso took over the accident compensations for foreign workers (socso, 2018). the move was in line with ilo standards: the equality of treatment (accident compensation) convention, 1925 (no.19), and the conference committee on the application of standards under the ilo (abas, 2018). under the new policy, the government has an efficient protection control system with better data for tracking the numbers and profiles of foreign workers, including their employers’ information. employers’ failure to contribute to socso would lead to necessary enforcement action. foreign workers are eligible to be registered with socso if they possess valid working permits. their existing insurance coverage under the fwcs would continue to be valid until the expiry date in 2019 (dermawan, 2018; “kula: workmen’s compensation act”, 2018). aseas 14(1) | 71 choo chin low the scheme would also benefit employers in reducing the medical costs of their foreign workers involved in workplace accidents (“deputy minister: foreign workers”, 2019).2 from 1 october 2019, employers are eligible to claim repatriation costs for the remains of their foreign workers in non-workplace death cases if they registered with socso. the maximum payment claimable by employers is myr 4,500. the employers must comply with the following conditions: a) the foreign worker is a legal foreign worker and is registered with socso; b) the death of the foreign worker occurred in malaysia and was confirmed through a death certificate issued by the authorities; c) there is information related to the death of the foreign worker by the employer if the foreign worker is still working with the employer; and d) the death of the foreign worker occurred on or after 1 october 2019. this benefit is not applicable if the foreign worker is already covered under the existing social security scheme of the country of origin for the repatriation of remains (socso, 2019). in 2020, socso also provided subsidized screening tests for registered foreign workers when the government implemented the compulsory covid-19 screening test for foreign workers. beginning 1 december 2020, all foreign workers in all sectors were required to take covid-19 screening following increased positive cases at factories and construction sites. the first phase of covid-19 screening involved six red zone states (selangor, kuala lumpur, penang, labuan, sabah, and negeri sembilan). only foreign workers registered with socso were eligible for the subsidized covid19 test. the cost of the covid-19 test kit (myr 60) was borne by socso, while the screening costs were borne by their employers (chan, 2020; perimbanayagam & arumugam, 2020). the mohr then extended the scope of the covid-19 screening program for foreign workers to the rest of the country beginning 2 february 2021. with the additional allocation of myr 54 million, socso bore the cost of the test kit and employers paid the service charge imposed by the clinic. employers must bear the total screening cost for foreign workers who are not socso contributors (ministry of human resources, 2021). domestic workers had been excluded from the social security reform under the employees’ social security act 1969 (act 4). in april 2021, the government announced the extension of a similar social security protection to domestic workers, expected to be implemented on 1 june 2021. a total of 89,400 foreign domestic workers, as well as 15,000 local domestic workers, would be protected by the employment injury scheme under act 4. the extension is meant to benefit those working in the informal economy, such as maids, drivers, gardeners, and babysitters (tang, 2021). law enforcement and employers’ compliance the legal reforms on the workers’ minimum standards of housing and amenities (amendment) act 2019 (act 446) and the employees’ social security act 1969 (act 4) were followed with stricter enforcement operations. swift enforcement of act 446 was necessary because many employers did not take the issue of accommodation 2 though the government announced its implementation in january 2019, the new policy only took effect in 2020 due to the existing insurance policies under the fwcs. as of september 2019, only 1.01 million of the 2.1 million documented foreign workers were registered under the employment injury scheme – a rather unsatisfactory rate. 72 | aseas 14(1) legal reforms in protecting migrant workers’ welfare in malaysia seriously. the crowded and unsanitary living conditions of migrant workers in malaysia are a violation of the ilo standards. many countries use the ilo indicators as a benchmark to prevent forced labor. failure to address the issue of the treatment of migrant workers, including their living conditions, would have negative consequences for malaysian companies in international trade. the us authorities blocked the products of two malaysian companies – top glove and wrp asia – to prevent forced labor (mef & ilo, 2019, pp. 20-21; ram, 2020). in july 2020, us customs and border protection (cbp) barred imports from two of top glove’s subsidiaries due to the presence of forced labor practices. the ban was extended to all disposable gloves produced by top glove factories in malaysia in march 2021. the cbp took enforcement actions and directed the seizure of products from the company (“us customs determines forced labour”, 2021). the mohr stepped up its enforcement operations nationwide to ensure employers’ compliance with act 446 following the rising number of covid-19 cases involving foreign workers in workplaces, such as construction sites and factories (dermawan, 2021). since the enforcement of the act on 1 september 2020 until 31 october 2020, the government only received applications for certificate of accommodation for 8.89% out of the 1.6 million foreign workers in the country. this indicated that the accommodation for 91.1% or 1.4 million foreign workers in the country did not comply with act 446. although act 446 is applicable to both local and foreign workers, the emphasis during the covid-19 pandemic was on foreign workers (“accommodation for more”, 2020). during raids conducted at foreign workers’ dormitories, the department of labor peninsular malaysia opened investigation papers under act 447 against companies that failed to provide proper accommodation. the offenses included failure to obtain an accommodation certificate, to ensure the beds are spaced 0.7 meters apart, to provide lockers for the workers, to provide 4-inch thick mattresses to each worker, and to provide sanitary living conditions (mat arif, 2021). in march 2021, the glove manufacturer top glove was charged by the sessions court in the state of perak for not meeting the minimum housing and amenities standards. ten of their worker accommodations in perak did not receive accommodation certification (“malaysia’s top glove charged”, 2021). in order to increase compliance during the covid-19 pandemic, act 446 was gazetted as part of the emergency ordinance on 17 february 2021. the emergency ordinance (workers’ minimum standards of housing and amenities) 2021 widened the scope of the act and the power of the labor department. the application of act 446 was extended to sabah and sarawak. the director-general of the labor department had the authority to order the owners to replace, alter, or upgrade the facilities. the penalty for non-compliance was increased to myr 200,000 or imprisonment of three years or both (nik anis, 2021). the director-general had the power to immediately transfer the workers from “overcrowded and uninhabitable” accommodation to temporary accommodation (thomas, 2021). employers must bear all the cost associated with the temporary stay and transport (thomas, 2021). under the emergency ordinance, employers must report their undocumented foreign workers so that they are also included under the covid-19 vaccination program. the amendments, which were effective throughout the emergency period until august 2021, empowered the mohr to direct any department or agency to enforce act 446 (perimbanayagam, 2021). aseas 14(1) | 73 choo chin low at the same time, the employees’ social security act 1969 (act 4) was also enforced on employers hiring foreign workers. to track down errant employers who failed to register their companies and workers with socso, an enforcement operation called ops kesan has been initiated since 2009. the 11th ops kesan (launched in april 2019) extended to legal foreign workers in the country, following the new mandatory ruling for employers to make socso contributions for foreign workers beginning 1 january 2019 (yong, 2019). the operations conducted in 2019 concentrated on industrial areas where most of the companies employed foreign workers, such as nilai 3 industrial area in the state of negeri sembilan. errant employers violating the act were liable to a fine of up to myr 10,000 or imprisonment of up to two years or both. ops kesan operations focused on sections 4 and 5 of the act (“no excuse for employers”, 2019). employers who failed to register their companies with socso violated section 4, which stated that every industry shall be registered with socso. employers who failed to register their workers with socso violated section 5 of the act, which stated that all employees in industries to which the act applies shall be insured in the manner provided by the act.3 as of march 2020, only 1.42 million of 2.7 million foreign workers in the country were registered by employers, while the rest failed to be registered with socso. enforcement operations were further carried out through the 12th ops kesan (launched in march 2020) to track down employers who failed to register their businesses and workers. however, many employers caught claimed that they were not aware of the new ruling of registering foreign workers, or of small businesses having to be registered, or of the need to register contract workers or new workers. despite ops kesan being carried out for 12 continuous years, there is still an unacceptable lack of compliance by employers (landau, 2020; nawawi, 2020). discussion and analysis: the impacts of the legal reforms reforming malaysia’s legal system on foreign workers’ welfare has three implications. first, the set of welfare policy changes indicates the government’s attempts in solving the tension in malaysia’s migration policy, by ensuring a balance between migrants’ welfare, labor market needs, and immigration control. since the 1980s, the implementation of a consistent policy on foreign workers has been undermined by the tension between fulfilling the labor market demands and imposing immigration control on undocumented migrants. immigration enforcement exercises were governed by the national security framework; yet, malaysia’s economic dependency on foreign workers frustrated any enforcement operations (nesadurai, 2013, p. 103). the state creates and sustains the temporariness of migrant workers through immigration control, which deports them during economic crises and welcomes them during economic development. their temporary status contributes to reducing social security costs while preventing their incorporation into malaysian society (garcés‐mascareñas, 2012, pp. 81-82). with the labor law amendments in 2019, the government is more committed to incorporating migrants’ welfare in its policy reform, rather than viewing labor migration solely as an economic issue and a security concern. second, labor law reforms witnessed a shift in migration control from intensified 3 the act is applicable to all industries having one or more employees (section 3). 74 | aseas 14(1) legal reforms in protecting migrant workers’ welfare in malaysia raid operations to a legal-institutional reform approach. the new approach demonstrates a change from criminalizing migrants to protecting them. by instituting a legal framework for equal social security protection and standardized accommodation facilities, the government implemented a rights-based approach in protecting migrants’ welfare. this can certainly be seen as a positive step, considering that malaysia’s immigration control strategy since the 1980s had been centered on a hardline approach, including raids, detention, and deportation. on-going operation campaigns called ops nyah i (get rid operation i) and ops nyah ii (get rid operation ii) had been carried out since 1992 to reduce the number of undocumented migrants. ops nyah i was initiated to curb illegal entry at the borders, while ops nyah ii aimed to arrest and deport the undocumented migrants in the country. migrants arrested under both enforcement operations were sent to a detention center and subsequently deported once the sentences were served, which included fines, imprisonment, and, in some circumstances, whipping (kassim & mat zin, 2011, p. 22). over the years, the government’s large-scale crackdowns on undocumented migrants have been intensified through ops tegas (2005), ops 6p bersepadu (2013), ops mega (july 2017), ops mega 2.0 (february 2018), and ops mega 3.0 (july 2018). the conducted raid operations often involved human rights violations as in the case of large-scale public arrests on city streets and of warrantless raids on private dwellings (amnesty international malaysia, 2018; loh et al. 2019, pp. 23-24; low, 2017, pp. 113-114). past crackdowns have not addressed the problem of why migrant workers become undocumented in malaysia. migrant rights groups criticized the government for its failure to provide redress mechanisms for human rights violations resulting from human trafficking, debt bondage, contract violations, and labor exploitation. for migrant rights groups, the crackdowns have been “definitely a step-back and violation of any human right” (tenaganita, 2018). third, while the labor law reforms address the welfare of legal migrant workers, they still leave undocumented workers behind. as the socso coverage is only extended to documented migrants, there were concerns about the fate of millions of undocumented migrants in malaysia. the malaysian trades union congress urged the government to legalize these undocumented migrants and to include them in national social protection. without legal status, undocumented workers are vulnerable and excluded from any healthcare and workplace accident coverage (“socso must cover all”, 2019). recognition of the rights of undocumented workers employed in malaysia was deliberated in the independent committee on migrant workers set up in august 2018. ngos participating in dialogues with the committee reiterated that recognition of undocumented workers under the law is important for these workers to be eligible for protection and legal redress mechanisms (syed jaymal zahiid, 2018). the malaysian bar called for human rights protection of migrants regardless of their immigration status, in line with the international convention on the protection of the rights of all migrant workers and members of their families and the 2030 agenda for sustainable development. together, they underline that all migrant workers, regardless of their migration status, have contributed to the development of malaysia and their home countries (abdul gafoor, 2019). aseas 14(1) | 75 choo chin low conclusion this final section provides possible answers to the research questions: what are the major factors underpinning migrants’ welfare negligence? what is the role of legal reform in protecting migrant workers’ welfare? what are the impacts of the reform? the discussions above showed that legal barriers, outdated labor laws, dependence on labor intermediaries, and employers’ lack of accountability are the major factors that create conditions of vulnerability among migrant workers. legal barriers are the most important barrier that prevents workers from accessing similar social security benefits as local workers. the two legal reforms implemented in 2019, the workers’ minimum standards of housing and amenities act 1990 (act 446) and the employees’ social security act 1969 (act 4), have attempted to lift legal barriers. both amendments were made to ensure equality between local and foreign workers in terms of living conditions and employment injury coverage. these reforms, together with the swift enforcement of the amended laws, have targeted the accountability of employers in upholding migrant workers’ welfare. both amendments are aligned with ilo standards: workers’ housing recommendations of 1961 (no.115) and the equality of treatment (accident compensation) convention of 1925 (no.19) and united nations’ sustainable development goals, particularly sdg 1.3 of universal social protection. these reforms are significant as malaysia’s foreign worker policy is now situated within the context of welfare protection. migrant labor management in the past was conceptualized in terms of security and economic concerns. since 2015, there has been a major shift in the government’s policymaking, which has included the protection of migrants’ welfare and the commitments of employers. the shift has been gradually implemented through the 11th malaysia plan, the strict liability principle, and the employers’ undertaking, acknowledging employers’ business responsibility in preventing forced labor. the reform of labor laws can be seen as an affirmation of the state’s attempt in solving the tension in malaysia’s migration policy, by ensuring balance between migrants’ welfare, labor market needs, and immigration control. however, the legislative frameworks for malaysia’s labor law protection would only serve their purposes under the premise of documented migration. undocumented migrants still lack legal protection due to their immigration status. without formal immigration status, migrant workers are subject to labor exploitations by their employers and to raids, detention, and deportation by the authorities. with the legal frameworks in place, preventing migrants from becoming undocumented and from losing their documented status is important in strengthening labor protection.  references abas, a. 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(2018). social protection for migrant workers in asean: developments, challenges, and prospects. ilo regional office for asia and the pacific. https://www.social-protection.org/gimi/ressourcepdf. action?id=55654 perimbanayagam, k., & arumugam, t. (2020, november 27). mandatory covid-19 screening for all foreign workers beginning dec 1. new straits times. https://www.nst.com.my/news/government-publicpolicy/2020/11/644890/mandatory-covid-19-screening-all-foreign-workers perimbanayagam, k. (2021, february 18). amendments to act 446 allows for better enforcement, says minister. new straits times. https://www.nst.com.my/news/nation/2021/02/666873/amendments-act446-allows-better-enforcement-says-minister pillai, v. (2018, december 18). send foreign workers home if you cannot protect them, putrajaya told. free malaysia today. https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2018/12/18/send-foreignworkers-home-if-you-cannot-protect-them-putrajaya-told/ ramasamy, m. 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(2020). employment injury scheme for foreign worker. https://www.perkeso.gov.my/en/our-services/protection/employees-social-security-act-1969-act-4/ employment-injury-scheme-for-foreign-worker.html syed jaymal zahiid. (2018, december 10). committee on migrants to push for protection of undocumented workers, refugees. malay mail online. https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2018/12/10/ committee-on-migrants-to-push-for-protection-of-undocumented-workers-refuge/1701671 tang, a. (2021, april 21). domestic helpers to be covered under social security plan. star online. https://www. thestar.com.my/news/nation/2021/04/21/domestic-helpers-to-be-covered-under-social-security-plan tenaganita. (2018, july 13). uphold the rights of migrants in malaysia! stop the ops mega 3.0. http://www. tenaganita.net/news-and-press-releases/press-releases/uphold-the-rights-of-migrants-in-malaysiastop-the-ops-mega-30/ thomas, j. (2020, november 25). govt to enforce minimum housing standards for workers from tomorrow. free malaysia today. https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2020/11/25/govt-toenforce-minimum-housing-standards-for-workers-from-tomorrow/ thomas, j. (2021, february 18). housing standard for workers now covers sabah, sarawak too. free malaysia today. https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2021/02/18/housing-standard-forworkers-now-covers-sabah-sarawak-too/ 80 | aseas 14(1) legal reforms in protecting migrant workers’ welfare in malaysia us customs determines forced labour at malaysia’s top glove, to seize gloves. (2021, march 30). channel news asia. https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asia/us-customs-malaysia-top-glove-forcedlabour-abuses-covid-19-14522046 varughese, g. (2018, december 18). implement measures to uphold rights of migrants. malay mail online. https://www.malaymail.com/news/what-you-think/2018/12/18/implement-measures-to-upholdrights-of-migrants-george-varughese/1704281 verité. (2014). forced labor in the production of electronic goods in malaysia: a comprehensive study of scope and characteristics. https://verite.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/ veriteforcedlabor malaysianelectronics2014.pdf. world bank. (2013). immigration in malaysia: assessment of its economic effects and a review of the policy and system. http://psu.um.edu.my/images/psu/doc/recommended%20reading/immigration%20 in%20malaysia.pdf world bank. (2015). malaysia economic monitor: immigrant labour. world bank group. http://documents. worldbank.org/curated/en/753511468197095162/malaysia-economic-monitor-immigrant-labor yong, y. (2019, february 26). socso grants grace period to bosses. socso grants grace period to bosses. star online. https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2019/02/26/socso-grants-grace-period-to-bossesthey-must-register-companies-by-march-31/ about the author low choo chin is a senior lecturer in the history section, school of distance education, universiti sains malaysia (usm), penang. she holds a phd from the university of melbourne. her research interests include comparative citizenship, migration, and diaspora studies. her recent publications appeared in journal of international migration and integration, southeast asian studies, citizenship studies, diaspora studies, journal of current southeast asian affairs, regions & cohesion, journal of historical sociology, europe-asia studies, and journal of southeast asian studies. she serves as a country expert for the global citizenship observatory. ► contact: lowc@usm.my acknowledgements the author is grateful to dayana lengauer as the editor-in-chief of aseas and the anonymous reviewers for their invaluable insights and constructive critiques on the earlier version of the paper. their comments are tremendously helpful in improving the overall structure, hypothetical inquiry, analysis, and research findings. this research was supported by universiti sains malaysia [bridging funds (304.pjjauh.6316524)]. aseas 12(2) | 249 forced migration in southeast asia – a brief overview of current research gunnar stange, patrick sakdapolrak, kwanchit sasiwongsaroj, & matthias kourek ► stange, g., sakdapolrak, p., sasiwongsaroj, k., & kourek, m. (2019). forced migration in southeast asia – a brief overview of current research. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 12(2), 249-265. southeast asian countries host significant numbers of forcibly displaced populations, both within countries and across borders. this brief review paper provides a basic overview on recent forced migration research in southeast asia for the period 2013 to 2018. to this end, a keyword search with two predefined sets of search terms was carried out in the web of science database in september 2018. the identified research literature corpus was then analyzed regarding persons of concern, study site(s) (country/ies) as well as main drivers of migration. the results show that the major part of studies focuses on refugees and asylum seekers in the region’s main host countries, namely thailand, malaysia, and indonesia. this correspondence between current research trends and the distribution of refugees and asylum seekers in southeast asia could, however, not be identified for internally displaced persons (idps). although southeast asian countries account for a substantial share of worldwide idps, only a very limited number of identified studies focus on this group of persons of concern. keywords: current research; forced migration; persons of concern; southeast asia  introduction southeast asia is currently facing its second largest refugee crisis since the so-called boat people crisis in indochina from the mid 1970s until the mid 1990s (pugh, 2004). the united nations high commissioner for refugees (unhcr) estimates that since august 2017 more than 723,000 people belonging to the religious and ethnic minority of the rohingya have been forcibly displaced by systematic violence committed by state and non-state actors to neighboring bangladesh alone (unhcr, 2018a). another, related recent crisis was the so-called ‘bay of bengal and andaman sea crisis’. from 2013 to 2015, an estimated 1,800 people from myanmar and bangladesh died at sea trying to reach malaysia or indonesia by boat (unhcr, 2016). in 2017, southeast asia hosted 3.37 million “persons of concern”1, of which approximately 1.46 million were refugees, 74,416 asylum seekers, 1.17 million stateless, and 665,051 internally displaced persons (idps) (unhcr, 2018c, p. 69). however, only two countries (myanmar and the philippines) officially reported numbers on idps to the unhcr. the internal 1 persons of concern to the unhcr include asylum seekers, internally displaced persons, refugees, and stateless persons (unhcr, 2018b). forschungswerkstatt  research workshop w w w .s ea s. at 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 24 250 | aseas 12(2) forced migration in southeast asia displacement monitoring center (idmc) has estimated the number of idps due to armed conflicts and natural disasters at 5,863,894 for 2017 (idmc, 2018). most of the member states of the association of southeast asian nations (asean) have not signed the 1951 geneva convention and its 1967 protocol. only cambodia, the philippines, and timor-leste, a soon to become asean member state, are signatory parties. hence, most of southeast asia is, in fact, not part of the international refugee regime. according to the asean human rights declaration “every person has the right to seek and receive asylum in another state in accordance with the laws of such state and applicable international agreements” (asean, 2013, p. 6). yet, the reference to the legal frameworks – or rather non-existing protection frameworks – of the member states renders this right largely meaningless. thus far, the member states’ way to address the issue of forced migration has been rather unilateral. this is mainly due to asean’s very strong norms of cooperation, namely respect of state sovereignty, non-interference in the international affairs of member states, consultation, and consensus (amer, 2009). at this point, it is rather unlikely that asean, and the region as such, will decide to adopt a joint regional framework on forced migration any time soon (petcharamesree, 2016). as southeast asian countries host considerable and growing numbers of forcibly displaced persons, there is also an increased number of research contributions on southeast asia from the emerging field of forced migration studies (mcconnachie, 2014). however, thus far, no systematic attempt to identify current research trends in the field has been undertaken. this contribution addresses this research gap by providing a brief overview of findings from a scientific literature review that aims at identifying recent contributions in forced migration research in southeast asia from 2013 to 2018. the article proceeds as follows. firstly, we will discuss how we framed the concept of forced migration for the literature review. secondly, we will outline the conduct of the literature search as well as the inclusion and exclusion criteria applied to define the review literature corpus (see appendix). thirdly, we will discuss the identified research literature corpus according to persons of concern, study site(s) (country/ies), and main drivers of migration. the paper intends to offer a brief overview and a bibliography of recent research developments in the field of forced migration studies in southeast asia for researchers and practitioners (see appendix). conceptualizing forced migration (studies) in its latest global trends in forced displacement report, the unhcr (2019, p. 2) concluded that with 70.8 million people, the global forcibly displaced population remained again at a record high, with numbers constantly rising since 2011. against this backdrop of an ever-increasing number of people that are forcibly displaced worldwide, forced migration studies constitute a rapidly growing field of research that is shaped by a multitude of disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives. albeit refugee and forced migration studies only began to emerge as a distinct field of research in the 1980s, research in the humanities and social sciences goes back much further in its endeavor to decipher the complex nature and needs of forcibly displaced populations. however, as pointed out by fiddian-qasmiyeh, loescher, long, & sigona (2014, p. 2), what distinguishes early research on forced migration aseas 12(2) | 251 gunnar stange, patrick sakdapolrak, kwanchit sasiwongsaroj, & matthias kourek movements, for example in the post-second world war period, and research undertaken from the 1970s onwards was the frank way in which researchers started to be critical in their analyses of states and intergovernmental agencies. at the same time, growing numbers of refugees and asylum seekers in europe, the us, and canada as well as the increase in protracted refugee situations from southeast asia to central america led to increased scholarly as well as political interest. this resulted in the establishment of new (research) institutions dedicated to the study of forced migration and an increased availability of respective research funding accordingly (fiddian-qasmiyeh et al., 2014, p. 3). in his influential working paper conceptualising forced migration david turton (2003) reminds the reader that, on the one hand, there are compelling reasons for separating out forced migrants “because they pose a problem for us of response: how do we respond to the stranger in distress?” (p. 16). on the other hand, turton (2003) warns of the dangers of lumping “people together into categories according to the degree or amount of choice open to them” (p. 16) as this categorization rather victimizes people and turns a blind eye to the agency by which they navigate their lives under highly restrained circumstances. although the conceptualization and categorization of forced migration remains highly problematic and politically laden, the authors of this paper consider people that must flee their homes due to conflicts, persecution, torture, other human rights violation, poverty, disasters etc. as forced migrants. furthermore, the authors are convinced that the distinction between voluntary and forced migration continues to be of relevance. it still constitutes an essential element in the distinction of asylum and immigration policy and the persons they respectively concern. migration as a general phenomenon relates to a variety of situations engaging forced and voluntary decisions. elements of choice and coercion can be overlapping but in the case of refugees and other displaced persons, compelling factors are decisive. (unesco, 2008, p. 30) as most research contributions in the field of forced migration studies follow the categorizations of persons of concern used by the unhcr (2018b), this scientific literature review includes studies that are explicitly concerned with refugees and asylum seekers, internally displaced persons (idps) as well as stateless persons. furthermore, the research also includes studies on human trafficking as it is highly prevalent in southeast asia (renshaw, 2015; ullah & hossain, 2011) and oftentimes involves compelling elements of force (marinova, 2017). method the scientific articles retrieved for this literature review were identified by a keyword search in the web of science database2 using two sets of key terms.3 the first set com2 see, http://www.webofknowledge.com 3 we only used the web of science database as its coverage of peer-reviewed journal publications is similar to that of scopus (https://www.scopus.com/home.uri) (harzing & alakangas, 2015, p. 801). 252 | aseas 12(2) forced migration in southeast asia prised “southeast asia” and all countries in the region (brunei, cambodia, indonesia, laos, malaysia, myanmar, singapore, philippines, thailand, timor leste/east timor, and vietnam). the second set included “persons of concern” (asylum seekers, internally displaced persons (idp), stateless, refugees), the research field in question “forced migration” and “human trafficking”. for the database search, each key term in the first set was combined with each key term in the second set. the database search focused on scientific research papers published from january 2013 until september 2018. the chosen time frame reflects our attempt to provide a brief overview of recent research publications in the field. only peer-reviewed publications in english language were included, as english language publications are the most widely accessible in the international scientific community. the database research identified a total of 217 studies for the above-mentioned period (see appendix: scientific review literature corpus). the identified research literature corpus was then analyzed regarding the criteria persons of concern, study site(s) (country/ies), and main drivers of migration. results the published research on forced migration in southeast asia shows a quantitative upward trend (see figure 1).4 the number of publications has increased continuously from 20 papers in 2013 to 67 papers in 2017. as the literature search process ended in september 2018, not all publications of 2018 (46) could be included in the literature review. more than half of all publications (134) focus on refugees and asylum seekers. forty-seven papers deal with stateless people and 40 papers with human trafficking and or smuggling. despite the above-mentioned significantly high share of southeast asia’s idps in the overall number of worldwide idps, only 14 publications focus on this group of persons of concern. 4 please note that figures 1 to 3 include multiple counts as a number of studies focused on more than one group of persons of concern, had multiple country foci, and identified more than one main driver of migration. figure 1. number of publications by persons of concern. own calculation based on web of science database research results. aseas 12(2) | 253 gunnar stange, patrick sakdapolrak, kwanchit sasiwongsaroj, & matthias kourek figure 2 illustrates the country focus of the research papers by persons of concern. by far, most of the papers (90) discuss research that had been carried out in thailand with a clear focus on refugees and asylum seekers. forty-three papers focus on developments in malaysia and 35 papers on indonesia accordingly. also, here, the majority of studies focused on refugees and asylum seekers. the distribution of research on refugees and asylum seekers in the three countries corresponds with the fact that thailand, malaysia, and indonesia host the highest numbers of refugees and asylum seekers in southeast asia. only five publications in the literature corpus referred to southeast asia as an analytical unit. this reflects the lacking regional cooperation in the field of forced migration, as discussed in the introduction. none of the publications under scrutiny addressed forced migration issues in brunei, despite the fact that there are more than 20,000 people under the unhcr’s statelessness mandate in the country (unhcr, 2019, p. 65). although australia, bangladesh, and china are not part of southeast asia, they were included in the country segregation list as their important role for transnational forced migration movements (bangladesh and china) as well the regional (forced) migration regime (australia) was reflected in the identified body of literature. figure 3 illustrates the main drivers of migration in the research papers by year of publication. here, we only included those studies in which the author(s) clearly identified drivers of migration for the context of their investigation and clustered them into the three categories conflict, disaster, and development. between 2013 and 2018, studies that focused on populations that were forcibly displaced by conflict dynamics feature most prominently. figure 2. number of publications by country focus and persons of concern. own calculation based on web of science database research results. 254 | aseas 12(2) forced migration in southeast asia all in all, 110 publications identified conflict as the main cause for displacement. disasters and development (projects) were identified as major causes of displacement in 18 studies each. this contrasts with the fact that disasters are by far the main drivers of forced migration in southeast asia. for example, between 2013 and 2017, the philippines reported more than 20 million new displacements due to natural disasters. (internal displacement monitoring center, 2018) conclusion research on forced migration in southeast asia has clearly increased from 2013 to 2017. this corresponds with the rising number of forcibly displaced populations in the region. the results show that the major part of studies under review focuses on refugees and asylum seekers in southeast asia’s main host countries, namely thailand, malaysia, and indonesia. this correspondence between current research developments and the distribution of refugees and asylum seekers in southeast asia could, however, not be identified for the significantly high numbers of internally displaced persons (idps) and stateless persons in the region. this is especially true for idps. although southeast asian countries account for a substantial share of worldwide idps, only a very limited number of the identified studies focus on this group of persons of concern. this might be explained by the fact that most internal displacement in the region is caused by natural disasters and are oftentimes of only short duration (black et al., 2011). nevertheless, future research should put more focus on idps in order to deepen the understanding of their specific conditions and needs for recovery and rehabilitation.  figure 3. number of publications by main driver of migration. own calculation based on web of science database research results. aseas 12(2) | 255 gunnar stange, patrick sakdapolrak, kwanchit sasiwongsaroj, & matthias kourek references amer, r. 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(2016). impact of interventions on malaria in internally displaced persons along the china-myanmar border: 2011-2014. malaria journal, 15(1), 471-480. about the authors gunnar stange currently holds a position as post-doctoral researcher in the research group population geography and demography at the department of geography and regional research, university of vienna, austria. his research interests include peace and conflict studies, development studies, and forced migration studies. his regional focus is on southeast asia. ► contact: gunnar.stange@univie.ac.at patrick sakdapolrak is professor of population geography and demography at the department of geography and regional research, university of vienna, austria. his research field is at the interface of population dynamics, environmental change, and development processes, with a focus on the topics of migration and displacement as well as health and disease, mainly in southand southeast asia and east africa. ► contact: patrick.sakdapolrak@univie.ac.at kwanchit sasiwongsaroj is associate professor at the research institute for languages and cultures of asia (rilca), mahidol university, thailand. her research interests include cross-cultural studies focusing on cultural differences between majority and minority ethnic groups, including migrants, and their consequences for their health and well-being. ► contact: kwan7chit@yahoo.com, kwanchit.sai@mahidol.ac.th matthias kourek holds a ba in geography from the department of geography and regional research, university of vienna, austria, where he is currently pursuing his ma studies in geography and working as a student assistant in the working group population geography and demography. ► contact: matthias.kourek@univie.ac.at aseas 12(2) | 265 gunnar stange, patrick sakdapolrak, kwanchit sasiwongsaroj, & matthias kourek acknowledgements the authors would like to thank the editorial board of aseas for their fruitful comments on this contribution. we are also grateful to asea-uninet for its financial support of researchers exchange mobilities between the department of geography and regional research at the university of vienna, austria, and the research institute for language and cultures of asia at mahidol university, thailand. aseas 16(1) | 145 mobilizing the (im)mobile museum through hybrid curation: a story of hybrid curation of cultural practice during the covid-19 pandemic patoo cusripitucka* & jitjayang yamabhaia amahidol university, thailand *corresponding author: jitjayang@gmail.com received: 31 march 2023 / accepted: 2 may 2023 / published: 28 june 2023 ► cusripituck, p., & yamabhai, j. (2023). mobilizing the (im)mobile museum through hybrid curation: a story of hybrid curation of cultural practice during the covid-19 pandemic. advances in southeast asian studies, 16(1), 145-155. this narrative research report summarizes the experiences of vivid ethnicity, a mobile anthropological museum of the museum of cultural anthropology at mahidol university, thailand, during the lockdowns caused by the covid-19 pandemic in 2020-2022. although vivid ethnicity was rendered immobile and forced to stop travelling during the pandemic, it developed a hybrid curatorial method to stay connected and engaged with its audiences and research partners in two ethnic villages in chiang mai province. a key lesson of this experience is that hands-on information and communication technologies can help maintain a certain proximity with the audiences and research partners in times of physical absence. we also learned that an empathetic mindset on the part of everyone involved in the project, along with a human-centric design, are crucial components of what we call the hybrid curation of cultural practice. keywords: covid-19 pandemic; good health; hybrid curatorial practice; mobile ethnography; mobile museum  covid-19 in thailand and narrative research thailand was the first country after china to report a confirmed covid-19 case, on 12 january 2020 (the national economic and social development council, 2022). the thai government announced a lockdown in march 2020. this had a significant impact on the economy and resulted in widespread job losses and economic hardship, particularly for low-wage workers and small businesses. from a macro-view, the bank of thailand forecasted that the largest contraction would be 8.1% in 2020. the thai economy was already slowing, with growth dropping from 4.2% in 2018 to 2.4% in 2019. the international labour organisation estimated that as many as 3.7 million people (including the informal sector) would research workshop w w w .s ea s. at 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 86 mailto:thithimadee.art%40mahidol.ac.th?subject= http://orcid.org/0009-0004-3211-8625 https://orcid.org/0009-0005-3450-2927 mailto:jitjayang%40gmail.com?subject= 146 | aseas 16(1) mobilizing the (im)mobile museum through hybrid curation be unemployed by the second quarter of 2020.1 the hospitality and service sectors, such as hotels, wellness spas, restaurants, and entertainment facilities were hit particularly hard. estimates of the impact saw tourism revenue fall by 70% in 2020. more than 50% of those employed in tourism were informal, with over 70% of tourism employment being in the food and beverage subsector. this subsector was hit particularly badly due to closures (the national economic and social development council, 2022). this macro-view matched the micro-outlook witnessed in the field of our work – ecomuseum doi si than in phrao district, chiang mai. in our case, more than 10 employees had to go back to their hometown because of unemployment, fear of covid-19, and the lockdowns. this report is an effort to tell the story of the mobile museum vivid ethnicity and to answer two questions: how did vivid ethnicity operate during the covid-19 pandemic, and what role did ict play in keeping us – the researchers – connected with people in remote areas who used to work with us onsite? creswell (2018) describes narrative research as a qualitative research approach focusing on telling the story of individual experience. under this definition, this account is a story constructed by the researchers as well as an example of auto-ethnography and mobile ethnography. muskat et al. (2017) explain that mobile ethnography is a means of conducting research by using a mobile device to collect data. mobile ethnography allows the capture and exploration of mobilities as well as the interpretation of boundaries in less dynamic settings. vivid ethnicity was designed to serve as a platform for cultural transformation, which is cultural transmission that modifies or changes cultural practice along with contemporary society. it started to operate in late 2019 and continues until today. for almost two years, vivid ethnicity had been planning a long trip to the north of thailand in december 2020 and january 2021. but everything was put on a hold as the covid19 pandemic in thailand started in january 2020 and its peak came during the second wave, which led to a second lockdown in december 2020. although vivid ethnicity had been rendered immobile, multiple other projects had to continue. we hence decided to investigate solutions based on information and communication technologies (ict) for working with the karen and lua ethnic groups ‘in’ their communities. this report narrates our experiences with ict in curating cultural practice. by presenting the lessons we learned, we aim to open a space for a broader discussion around our and similar human-centric approaches. vivid ethnicity vivid ethnicity, a special mobile exhibition, travels around all regions in thailand to promote the key message of cultural diversity, understanding, and respect through creative conversation2 and hands-on activities. our target groups are students at schools and universities, and in local communities. the aim of vivid ethnicity is to initiate critical and creative thinking through multiple sensory media, such as an ethnic food cooking workshop, a dripping coffee workshop, an ethnic accessories and costume 1 thailand’s workforce in 2019 was 37.6 million. 2 creative conversation here denotes non-hateful speech, free of bullying and discrimination. aseas 16(1) | 147 patoo cusripituck & jitjayang yamabhai workshop and drawing (yamabhai et al., 2021). vivid ethnicity exhibits mundane life objects donated from ethnic groups in thailand. ethnic group members play an important role in co-curating and co-creating the exhibition. the exhibition is presented in a caravan characterized by a cozy living room-like atmosphere. there are both printed and electronic books specializing on the ethnic groups of thailand. visitors are invited to handle the objects as social objects3 (simon, 2010). as curators and researchers, we encourage visitors to share their experiences with the objects through conversations. the exhibition usually becomes quite lively and allows the audiences to construct their own meaning through conversation and hands-on experience. the exhibition also comprises a museum shop and a coffee shop, which exhibits materials and products collected during our fieldwork research, mostly in ethnic villages such as karen and lua/lawa. all products offered at the museum shop come from the ethnic communities we have been engaging with over the years. hence, vivid ethnicity acts as a platform, creating a meeting point between various ethnic groups and the public. generally, vivid ethnicity is very flexible in its way of displaying cultural objects and activities. it can curate new stories, exhibitions, educational programs, and activities to suit the audience and place, depending on where the exhibition is traveling to, and the events planned in situ. vivid ethnicity during the pandemic the containment and mitigation measures related to the covid-19 pandemic also resulted in the cessation of the mobile exhibition activities. thus, we had to explore other channels to engage with our audiences. during the pandemic, the 3 according to simon (2010, pp. 129-133), social objects are objects that provoke a good conversation between two persons and allow for sharing experiences. figure 1. vivid ethnicity outside and inside. pictures of the vivid ethnicity mobile exhibition containing mundane life objects, hands-on activities, educational programs, books, a museum shop, and a coffee shop. (photo by the authors). 148 | aseas 16(1) mobilizing the (im)mobile museum through hybrid curation thai government, through the ministry of public health, created the so called dmhtt procedure – distancing, mask wearing, hand washing, testing, and thai cha na, the medical online covid-19 registration and information system (bureau of mental health service administration, 2021). government institutions campaigned and advertised for the public to follow the dmhtt rules (department of disease control, 2021; the red cross society, 2021). as the dmhtt acronym became omnipresent, we decided to use it for a new curatorial practice. we created the so-called dmhtt service innovation for our vivid ethnicity mobile exhibition. here, d stands for drive-through, m for museum-ness, h for happiness, t for toy or trunk, and the second t for takeaway. our dmhtt service innovation offers a ‘vivid’ box that consists of a story book about ethnic groups created by our volunteers, a teddy bear with a d-i-y ethnic dress (the audience can choose the size of the bear), ethnic coffee or ethnic popcorn (the audience can choose either), and a facebook messenger channel for the visitors to share their experiences with ethnic groups with us. the vivid box is provided to anyone at the vivid ethnicity booth situated at mahidol university: people can drive through (d) and enjoy museum-ness (m) with happiness (h) by getting the box as a toy (t) to take away (t) and play with at home. if the audience is not able to drive through, the vivid box can also be mailed to them. through this service, we tried to create an authentic experience that enables people to learn about ethnic groups in thailand through action, smell, touch, and even taste. we used the idea of multiple sensory activities to allow the audience to learn about ethnic groups at different experiential levels. one example of the feedback we received is: who knew that museum-ness can be delivered at home! my kids were so excited to receive a vivid box and be able to learn more about karen, lawa, hmong, black thai, lisu. we got the ethnic popcorn to taste the essence of ethnic group. my kid asked why don’t we get the pork or chicken from the story telling book included in the box. we also got the teddy bear with a d-i-y costume challenging our hands-on skills, let’s try it! (a participant who received vivid box by mail) another example comes from the manager of a museum who drove through and picked the vivid box: it is an amazing and interesting way of connecting with the audiences. thank you for the package. it’s a great example. i will have to develop something like this for my museum as well. (a museum manager who got the vivid box by driving through) when we became unable to get mobile and reach others physically, we had to think creatively and think the other way around: we can also have the audience travel to us safely by using our dmhtt service innovation. hence, we learned to think ‘in, through, and outside the box’ to find solutions. aseas 16(1) | 149 patoo cusripituck & jitjayang yamabhai a story from a karen village before covid-19, vivid ethnicity served as a means for helping build and establish the ecomuseum doi si than in a karen community in chiang mai province. we have since created a digital archive for collecting cultural heritage data for future use. however, due to the pandemic, we were not able to take our mobile museum to the community and had to rely on our mobile phones to communicate with our research partners in the community and with our participants. we also worked closely with children – always under supervision and with their parents’ informed consent. over the years, we became like family members for them. before the covid-19, when we visited the village, we always brought gifts for them on special occasions, such as birthdays or new year. it was like celebrating with our own family. the children always drew pictures to welcome us. during the pandemic, we missed seeing each other very much. we used messenger video to maintain contact and check in with them every now and then. the children still showed us the pictures they had drawn for us. since it was of utmost importance to continue working on our ecomuseum and to see what was going on in the field, we proposed that the children participants photograph and record a video story of their everyday life and send it to us through messenger. that way we could stay up to date with their lives and collect some data. in return, we offered them some small gifts, such as a radio-controlled car, a football, a robot, or an inflatable swimming pool, which we would have given them on other occasions anyway. the children liked the idea and started sending pictures and videos to us. but interaction went far beyond daily routines. as one of the kids who had been participating in our ecomuseum project had a skateboard accident, we contacted him using video call to wish him a quick recovery. we phoned him every week to see if he was getting better. after three months, he had fully recovered. later, another boy figure 2. dmhtt service innovation vivid box. a hands-on experience and an educational box with multiple sensory objects. (photo by the authors). 150 | aseas 16(1) mobilizing the (im)mobile museum through hybrid curation participating in our research project got involved in a car accident. we made sure to video call him to cheer him up every week, and soon he was getting better. digital technology helped us to stay in close contact with our research participants. the mobile ethnography (muskat et al., 2017) approach that complements traditional ethnographic methods with the use of mobile devices proved an important means of keeping in touch with the community that we had been working with. we found the mobile ethnography method useful as it worked well for maintaining contact with the children every week, to cheer them up and to ask questions about how they were doing. we collected and documented photographs, drawings, and videos about their everyday life and are currently curating an online exhibition on the google arts & culture platform.4 the story from a lua village the lua/lawa are considered the first people of chiang mai province (kunstadter, 1966). this ethnic group lives throughout the thanon thongchai mountain range, a border area between the mae chaem and hod districts in chiang mai and the maesarieng and mae la noi districts in mae hong son province. in january 2021, the ethnic group network was planning to inaugurate their own lua festival to showcase the strength of the group and encourage the new generation to learn about and be proud of their ethnic identity. the first lua festival was held at 4 google arts & culture: discover the life of karen community at doi si than ecomuseum. https:// artsandculture.google.com/incognito/story/gqwhqsbmtrgudw figure 3. mobile ethnography with children at ecomuseum doi si than. a picture of photos and videos created by children in the community, sent through the facebook messenger platform. (photo by the authors). aseas 16(1) | 151 patoo cusripituck & jitjayang yamabhai bann hao, mae chaem district in chiang mai province, which was the field research site of one of our researchers during his doctoral degree research. the head of the village, who had been in contact with the researcher for almost twenty years, asked the researcher to be part of the event as an academic representative for the village. since the pandemic was still rampant at that time, it was very challenging to plan the event under such unpredictable conditions, as we did not know if it would be possible to hold the festival onsite or not. the village was closed to outsiders, and even we were not able to travel to the village. to avoid great loss, we agreed to create an exhibition that could be experienced online or offline, depending on the situation, on 29 april 2022, the date that had been set for the festival. during the preparations for the festival, we convened online meetings with the community. lua people were familiar with online meetings. yet, the main issue we encountered was a poor internet connection for those team members who joined the session from the village, which is situated in a remote area in the mountains. against all odds, after these meetings, the researchers and the lua participants were confident that the festival was going to happen. they named the festival “the first national lua day”. for the lua ethnic group, this was an enormous step forward for their cultural movement. eventually, the festival was held as scheduled in the village of hao. the temporary exhibition we had prepared was printed and mailed to the village in advance as we did not know whether or not we would be able to attend the event. yet, on the day of the festival, we did manage to attend in person and set up the exhibition. however, the most important aspect for us was that the lua people had successfully managed to co-curate the exhibition by using ict as a tool. beside stories describing their lives, figure 4. photos sent by lua people in the community via messenger. photos of lua people showing how lua people helped co-curate the festival by sending us their photos for the exhibition. (photo by the authors). 152 | aseas 16(1) mobilizing the (im)mobile museum through hybrid curation they displayed everyday artifacts and objects as well as fresh fruits and herbs, corn, and rice from the harvest. traditional lua dresses were worn by members of the community. next to the exhibition, various other cultural practices were performed, such as a ceremony for a new house, local plays, local cultural performances, and so on. lua people from ten villages, totaling more than 500 people, attended the festival. it would not have been possible to organize this festival without the prior use of ict. lessons learnt the vivid ethnicity mobile museum was, to some extent, able to function without actually being mobile. it did so by connecting to people in remote areas by using ict to exchange information, photos, videos, and drawings through affordable online applications such as messenger, line, and other social media platforms. our experiences showed that ict tools proved useful in connecting to parties who had been cut off in terms of access and travelling, even though ict had not been considered a solution to communication problems in research and co-creation processes. mobile ethnography helped us collect data from the field despite the pandemic having suspended all onsite activities related to the ecomuseum project. in response to the circumstances, we resolved to create solutions for vivid ethnicity through a threefold cope-adapt-transform strategy. figure 5. lua ban hao exhibition at the first lua festival in ban hao, mae chaem, chiangmai. exhibition co-curated and co-created with lua ban hao. (photo by the authors). aseas 16(1) | 153 patoo cusripituck & jitjayang yamabhai our dmhtt service innovation vivid box was a solution for coping in such a situation as the box allowed the audience to learn about ethnic groups individually, at home, through multiple sensory experiences. continuously working with our ethnic group partners in remote areas with the help of mobile devices and strongly empathizing with them constituted an adaptation process. we maintained our links and relationships by remaining close – even at a distance – and learning about their needs as well as the community’s capacities. after we had found ways to cope with and adapt to the pandemic, we finally transformed our way of working with the communities by using mobile ethnography as a tool to collect everyday life stories and store the data online either for online access or to exhibit onsite. this transformative stage meant that we had to think carefully about how to develop a human-centric research design5 (roumani & both, 2020) despite the absence of face-to-face encounters with our research partners. we transformed our roles from ‘distant’ researchers to becoming a part of the community, and this way we could maintain relationships of trust. we learnt to be more flexible and broadly concerned about issues, not just pertaining to our project but also relevant to our participants themselves. being with them (even through mobile devices) as family members encouraged us to take a human-centric and a less academic approach to our work. as a result, we became hybrid curators of an exhibition that transcends the content presented and actively integrates into and merges with our research partners’ everyday lives. this became possible through engagement with the community and by showing that museums are not only there to exhibit things and activities, but also to support them, even in challenging circumstances. vivid ethnicity is hence a hybrid curation model that showcases a mobile museum working with a disconnected community.  5 a human-centric design is a concept deriving from design thinking. it is action-oriented, deeply human, and experimental. to understand people’s needs is significant to design critical and creative solutions to their problems. figure 5. hybrid curation model: cope-adapt-transform. 154 | aseas 16(1) mobilizing the (im)mobile museum through hybrid curation references bureua of mental health service administration. 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(2020). unlocking the power of design for the social sector. https://dschool. stanford.edu/news-events/unlocking-the-power-of-design-for-the-social-sector-a-human-centeredsystems-minded-and-strategy-aligned-design-approach-for-social-sector-leaders simon, n. (2010). the participatory museum. museum 2.0, santa cruz, california. the national economic and social development council. (2022). socio-economic impact assessment of covid-19 in thailand. https://thailand.un.org/sites/default/files/2021-02/un%20thailand%20socioeconomic%20impact%20assessment%20of%20covid-19%20in%20thailand-en-low%20res.pdf the red cross society. (2021). d-m-h-t-t. https://redcross.or.th/news/information/12793/ world bank group. (2022). thailand economic monitor. https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/ en/456171593190431246/pdf/thailand-economic-monitor-thailand-in-the-time-of-covid-19.pdf yamabhai, j., knoop, r., & cusripituck, p. (2021). participatory engagement for sustainable innovation in karen communities. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 14(2), 195-212. about the authors patoo cusripituck is assistant professor and lecturer in museum studies at the cultural studies program, at the research institute for languages and cultures of asia (rilca), mahidol university, thailand. she serves as chair of the iculture group that runs the museum of cultural anthropology and the vivid ethnicity mobile exhibition at rilca. she holds a position as board member and consultant for various museums in thailand. her areas of interest include museum education, museum and community engagement, ethnicity, and visual anthropology. her current research project is a play-learn-earn outreach educational program for policy advocacy. ► contact: patoocu@gmail.com jitjayang yamabhai is assistant professor and lecturer at the cultural studies program, at the research institute for languages and cultures of asia, mahidol university, thailand. his research interests include rural development, ethnicity, and sociology of education. his current research project is a play-learn-earn outreach educational program for policy advocacy. ► contact: jitjayang@gmail.com mailto:patoocu%40gmail.com?subject= mailto:jitjayang%40gmail.com?subject= aseas 16(1) | 155 patoo cusripituck & jitjayang yamabhai disclosure the authors declare no conflict of interest. aseas 13(1) | 81 sustainable community-based tourism in cambodia and tourists’ willingness to pay sabine müllera, lukas hucka, & jitka markovab a lucerne university of applied sciences and arts, switzerland; b conscious tourism international, cambodia ► müller, s., huck, l., & markova, j. (2020). sustainable community-based tourism in cambodia and tourists’ willingness to pay. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 13(1), 81-101. community-based tourism (cbt) sites are often seen as a tool for poverty alleviation and eradication, especially in least developed countries like cambodia. cbt as a development tool has been critically examined in recent years in a development cooperation context, but also in academic literature. two of the major discussion points are the approaches used both to establish, and ensure the financial sustainability cbt sites. this paper seeks to contribute to these discussions by examining the viability of the classical top-down cbt model in comparison to the bottom up approach to promote sustainable tourism development in cambodia in consideration of the sustainable development goals. the often-missing financial sustainability frequently happens due to a lack of management skills and a lack of knowledge of pricing in the communities. based on this notion, this paper also contributes to the discussion by examining the willingness to pay of different target groups (i.e., locals, expatriates, and international tourists), and presents two arguments in support of a stronger emphasis of the local and, especially, the expatriate market. firstly, expatriates display significantly higher willingness to pay than international tourists, and, secondly, expatriate support allows cbt sites to build an understanding of potential customers’ needs, thereby supporting a more organic and sustainable growth. keywords: cambodia; community-based tourism; sdgs; sustainable tourism; willingness to pay  introduction with the goal of achieving peace and prosperity for people and the planet, the 17 sustainable development goals (sdgs) are an urgent call for action in a global partnership by all countries. tourism has been identified as one of the tools to foster economic benefits in least developed countries (sdg target 14.7.), with particular importance for the tourism industry being sdgs number 8 and 12. these advocate for the promotion of sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment, and decent work for all as well as ensuring sustainable consumption and production patterns (world tourism organization, 2017). however, tourism endeavors, while often leading to economic growth in least developed countries (ldcs), can also cause substantial aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 30 82 | aseas 13(1) sustainable community-based tourism in cambodia and tourists’ willingness to pay negative impact, such as an unequal distribution of revenue (alam & paramati, 2016), low-skilled employment (davidson & sahli, 2015), and a low degree of residents’ empowerment (hatipoglu, alvarez, & ertuna, 2016), amongst others. when it comes to tourism, some argue that the eradication of poverty will require the use of community-based tourism (cbt) approaches in order for economic growth to be fully sustainable and realized (bramwell, 2010; choi & murray, 2010). cbt often comes with locally-developed tourism products, public-private cooperation, and sustainable tourism measurements, which are increasingly recognized as means to achieve economic growth, reduce inequalities, improve livelihoods in developing countries (hence, contribute to goal 8), and alleviate negative environmental and sociocultural impacts (khan, bibi, lorenzo, lyu, & babar, 2020). specifically relevant for the present paper is target 8.9, which emphasizes the importance of sustainable tourism: “by 2030, devise and implement policies to promote sustainable tourism that create jobs and promotes local culture and products” (united nations, 2017). furthermore, the relevance of sustainable tourism is also highlighted in sdg target 12.b, with the goal to “develop and implement tools to monitor sustainable development impact for sustainable tourism that creates jobs and promotes local culture and products” (world tourism organization, 2017). the latter is of particular significance for ldcs, as the goal advocates the implementation of sustainable tourism, which creates a variety of jobs locally while respecting the local culture and the promotion of local produce (switch asia, 2015). however, studies have also shown that cbt projects do not necessarily provide a mechanism for an equitable flow of benefits to all tourism stakeholders (e.g., dixey, 2008). a model that receives particular critique is the classical top-down cbt model that is often applied in cambodia (mueller, markova, & ponnapureddy, 2020). top-down models are usually created by external actors, which leads to a strong dependency on the support of these actors (garrod, 2003). this study is based on this critique of the classical top-down cbt model and contributes to the discussion on how cbt sites can achieve financial stability by targeting domestic and regional markets, thereby increasing socio-economic benefits in the communities without being dependent on external factors (e.g., funding, donors, and distributors). in particular, this paper seeks to contribute to the understanding of different tourist-segments’ willingness to pay (wtp), thereby providing a groundwork to support the notion that targeting domestic markets is financially reasonable as well. it does so on the assumption that the tourists’ wtp differs across the following groups: local residents (cambodian citizens), international residents (expatriates), and international tourists visiting cambodia. this a priori segmentation is based on the premise that international tourists on short-term visits are known to display different traits from expatriates living and working abroad over longer periods (bruner, kessy, jesse, james, & jorge, 2015). empirical evidence also shows different behavior in domestic and international visitors (dutt, harvey, & shaw, 2018; jones, yang, & yamamoto, 2016; michael, armstrong, badran, & king, 2011; valek, 2017). therefore, the segments in this paper are specifically divided into the following tourist groups: (1) cambodians, (2) expatriates, and (3) international tourists. it is important to note that the overall price of consumption consists of several components that contribute to the overall cbt experience (morrison, 2013), which is aseas 13(1) | 83 sabine müller, lukas huck, & jitka markova why this study considers the various service components – such as lodging, food, and activities – separately. two main research questions drive this study: (1) what are visitors to cbt sites in cambodia willing to pay for? (2) are there significant differences between locals, expatriates, and tourists regarding their wtp? to answer these questions, this paper sets out the theoretical framework, looking first at cbt approaches and their implementations, followed by the construct of willingness to pay, and adopts a quantitative methodology for data collection. literature review sustainable community-based tourism development approaches cbt is widely recognized for its ability to improve local economies because it often improves the quality of infrastructures, which benefits the residents’ quality of life (dodds, ali, & galaski, 2018; kayat, ramli, mat-kasim, & abdul-razak, 2014). it also can offer opportunities for residents to appreciate and respect the local socio-ecosystem (brunt & courtney, 1999; ruiz-ballesteros, 2011). overall, successfully implemented cbt projects can help alleviate poverty because they contribute to community development, thereby putting the sdgs in practice. however, many of the cbt sites around the world often struggle to achieve financial stability and thereby fail to provide the socio-economic benefits cbts are credited for, as their governance and pricing structure are not agile enough to respond to the free market supply and demand (kiss, 2004; mueller et al., 2020). this includes monetary aspects (e.g., communities do not have the financial power to develop tourism sites), funding aspects (e.g., government, donor organization, or ngos support), and the lack of know-how amongst community members (e.g., how to offer attractive prices to receive more visitors). in particular, the reduction of governmental and donor support is potentially devastating to such cbt sites because facilities cannot be maintained appropriately without financial support (hall, 2007; kunjuraman & hussin, 2017). hence, research also shows that a lack of financial resources and capital are the main challenges faced by cbt sites (aref, 2011; kunjuraman & hussin, 2017). as shown in figure 1, most cbt sites are based on either a top-down or bottom-up approach. most top-down cbt sites are created by external actors, focused on international markets, and strongly dependent on the support of mediator organizations, such as ngos, consultancies or donor organizations. the literature demonstrates that the government-community (top-down) approach to tourism planning and management is mostly ineffective in the long term (garrod, 2003), and also more bureaucratic (boukas & ziakas, 2016). furthermore, the planning process is often centralized and starts at the government level by dictating strategic policies for tourism development (boukas & ziakas, 2016). as a result, the top-down approach fails to provide opportunities and/or incentives to the local communities to further develop cbt projects (kubickova & campbell, 2020). the bottom-up approach, on the contrary, follows the principle by which local communities set their own goals and make decisions about their resources in the future. this also includes the preservation of cultural heritage, the development of buildings, parks, open spaces, and landscapes, as well as other protection or development activities. 84 | aseas 13(1) sustainable community-based tourism in cambodia and tourists’ willingness to pay the decision-making process is thereby initiated by local groups (theerapappisit, 2012), ideally, without having derived or made their ideas dependent on local, regional, central or international government agencies. initiatives that follow this process ought to reflect and construct a vision of future developments that match the local values (howitt, 2002, p. 18). edwards (1989) suggests that this process initiated from the ground up leads to an appreciation of indigenous knowledge systems and promotes participation towards various future scenarios centered on people and the environment (theerapappisit, 2012). in cambodia, government policies as originated from the grassroots have not been a preferred choice for policymakers and therefore most of the cbt sites emerged from the top-down approach. it has been further noted that, without the ongoing support of external organizations, top-down-driven cbt sites often fail to translate into the local context and struggle to succeed in connecting with local tourism chains (harrison & schipani, 2007). conversely, the bottom-up approach, born and funded by local people with an initial focus on the national market, can be a vehicle to encourage a more sustainable development. this focus on domestic and regional markets makes it easier for cbt members to understand the needs of the consumers, to identify investment opportunities, and to design and develop tailored, competitive products that can be marketed domestically and to neighboring countries (zapata, hall, lindo, & vanderschaeghe, 2011). implementation approaches for community-based tourism research confirms the positive socioeconomic benefits and potential linkages of cbt for the local economy in countries with high dependency on low-return manufacturing, rural industries, and those recovering from political unrest (beeton, 2006; figure 1. top-down and bottom-up approach for cbt development. (theerapappisit, 2012) aseas 13(1) | 85 sabine müller, lukas huck, & jitka markova lapeyre, 2010; yanes, zielinski, diaz cano, & kim, 2019). as cbt is highly localized, it can help reduce poverty as a result of bringing direct benefits to its communities by integrating low-skilled workers into the workforce in remote areas. tourism and cbt are therefore often seen as tools to improve development opportunities, particularly in rural areas (harrison & schipani, 2007; hummel, gujadhur, & ritsma, 2013; jiang, delacy, mkiramweni, & harrison, 2011; scheyvens & momsen, 2008; zapata et al., 2011). community-based ecotourism (cbet), in particular, promises potential for economic and social development in less-developed countries due to a direct link between harnessing environmental assets for tourism as a means for both conservation and financial returns (george & henthorne, 2007; mvula, 2001). it is optimistically assumed that increased wealth will lead to the trickling-down effects of economic benefits that can lead to a higher standard of living (gössling, 2002; rogerson, 2007). while ecotourism is regarded as one of the most common manifestations of sustainable tourism development, there are other common approaches promoted to achieve sustainability. these include pro-poor tourism (ppt), community-based tourism (cbt), or community-based ecotourism (cbet). in particular, cbt is regarded as the form of tourism that helps local communities generate additional income. thus, cbt – usually with the support of another organization (government or ngo) – focuses on the community and the adoption of tourism into the community in an appropriate way. nevertheless, the involvement of thirdparty organizations raises criticism because it often fosters a reliance on western ideas of development with little attention being paid to local views and knowledge (dodds et al., 2018; goodwin & font, 2014; kiss, 2004). this raises incongruent objectives and unachievable expectations for local socio-economic growth and leads to a dependency on third-party donor organizations (buccus, hemson, hicks, & piper, 2008; manyara & jones, 2007). if cbt is implemented to maximize the benefits for the local communities, all three pillars of sustainable tourism development – i.e., economic efficiency, social value, and environmental sustainability – have to be respected so the community gains control of tourism from early planning stages onward. it is not surprising then, that it was found that this is best achieved when communities receive constructive insight into sustainable management (mbaiwa, 2004; muhanna, 2007). certain cases provide evidence that these efforts in promoting sustainable tourism development lead to greater awareness of environmental issues among communities and that there are significant livelihood gains for cbet members and the community as a whole (lonn, mizoue, ota, kajisa, & yoshida, 2018; reimer & walter, 2013). however, in some cases where cbt project members receive direct financial benefits it has led to jealousy and division (dolezal, 2015). as a result, stakeholders are often concerned with the ongoing financial viability and future business sustainability of the projects (pawson, d'arcy, & richardson, 2017; reimer & walter, 2013). the question of financial sustainability is frequently raised in existing cbt literature (colomer matutano, 2012; o’reilly, 2014; spenceley, 2010), highlighting the point that communities need clear guidelines on how to develop and successfully manage a tourism product, and on how they should devise marketing and visitor management strategies (stoeckl, 2008). such strategies need to be tailored to the different types of tourism markets who experience tourism in different ways. it is assumed, for example, that knowledge regarding country and culture amongst international travelers versus 86 | aseas 13(1) sustainable community-based tourism in cambodia and tourists’ willingness to pay national tourists and expatriates differs, hence leading to different expectations. these possible negative experiences of international travelers consequently have a more negative impact on the success of cbt sites (e.g., bad ratings on tripadvisor might lead to avoidance of visiting the cbt site among other potential international visitors). willingness to pay theoretically, the concept of willingness to pay (wtp) is often used to indicate the maximum amount that consumers intend to pay for a specific service or product. wtp is determined by the economic value and the utility the product has to the consumer. it also includes a subjective component because the same product might be of different utility and value to different consumers leading to differences in their wtp (carlsson & johansson-stenman, 2000; garroud & fyall, 2000; kyle, graefe, & manning, 2005; reynisdottir, song, & agrusa, 2008). in the context of ecotourism, wtp-studies show to which extent consumers are willing to compensate for their involvement in eco-friendly travel destinations (cheung & jim, 2014; hultman, kazeminia, & ghasemi, 2015; meleddu & pulina, 2016). the studies display how the demand for variation in eco-friendly tourist destinations, as well as the desire for unique destinations, influences willingness to spend more on these types of products (amendah & park, 2008; lee, lee, kim, & mjelde, 2010; morey, buchanan, & waldman, 2002). however, top-down managed cbt sites’ focus on international markets remains often unchallenged, with a lack of studies that look into the wtp of different market segments of ecotourism. a visitor segment often neglected in wtp studies are expatriates or individuals who live and/or work in a foreign country for an extended period of time (isakovic & forseth whitman, 2013), even though it has been found that expatriates move abroad not only for work reasons but that part of their key motivations are also tourism-related (lauring, selmer, & jacobsen, 2014; vielhaber, husa, jöstl, veress, & wieser, 2014). due to globalization and increased travel (at least prior to covid-19), numbers are growing, which would suggest that further consideration needs to be given towards this market to facilitate a more comprehensive review and acknowledge any potential differences between domestic travelers, international visitors, and expatriates (dutt et al., 2018). few studies are available that examine expatriates’ role in the delivery of tourism products (e.g. dutt et al., 2018; valek, 2017). jones et al. (2016), for example, found that in a tourism context, expatriates display different expenditure patterns than domestic residents, a point that is worth exploring further. regional context the kingdom of cambodia is located at the gulf of thailand with neighboring countries thailand, laos, and vietnam. cambodia has a population of 16 million people, of which approximately 80-95% are khmer, turning cambodia into the most ethnically homogenous country in southeast asia. cambodia is rich in natural resources and its potential for tourism has been recognized by the royal government of cambodia (rgc). in cambodia, tourism is regarded as one of the country’s key industry sectors, as acknowledged in the government’s rectangular strategy for growth, employment, aseas 13(1) | 87 sabine müller, lukas huck, & jitka markova equity, and efficiency (royal government of cambodia, 2013). in 2019, the contribution of travel and tourism to the country’s gdp was usd 7,110.2 million (26.4% of the total economy) (wttc, 2020). as shown in table 1, cambodia recorded 6.2 million tourist arrivals in 2018 and is aiming to double this figure by 2025 (not taking into consideration the impacts of covid-19) (see table 1). the country of cambodia is still overly dependent on its most popular tourism site angkor wat and the capital city phnom penh, which means that, historically, the government has mostly neglected the development of tourism (including ecotourism) around other points of interest in the country. following global initiatives, the royal government of cambodia strives to increasingly develop and promote sustainable and inclusive ecotourism development. certain cases provide evidence that these efforts in promoting sustainable tourism development lead to a greater awareness of environmental issues among communities, and that there are significant livelihood gains for cbet members and the community as a whole (lonn et al., 2018; reimer & walter, 2013). the ministry of tourism in cambodia (mot) has identified tourism zones with high potential for eco-tourism development, and the department of ecotourism within the ministry of environment (moe) in cambodia also strives to develop and promote sustainable and inclusive ecotourism development. multistakeholder collaboration mechanisms, ecotourism linkages, and connectivity between the 49 protected areas (pas) and ecotourism knowledge management systems and platforms are supported. for the most part, ecotourism in cambodia is still small-scale and community-based, and holds a limited share of total tourism visits. figure 2 (next page) shows the location of cb(e)t sites in cambodia. the latest numbers from the mot have shown that cb(e)t projects in cambodia received 10,185 international visitors in february 2019. to date, however, very little knowledge exists regarding the number of national tourists to cbt sites in cambodia. however, obtaining reliable statistical data proves difficult because most of the knowledge regarding cbt in cambodia remains compiled through case studies (carter, thok, o’rourke, & pearce, 2015; lonn et al., 2018; pawson et al., 2017; reimer & walter, 2013; ven, 2016; walter & reimer, 2012). results tend to be limited to an analysis of one or more cbt sites, their tourism offerings and infrastructure, but with little differentiation found in terms of products offered by cambodia’s cbt sites. this is mainly the result of most cbt projects being located in protected areas or within close proximity to sites of outstanding natural beauty. furthermore, it is found that the vast majority of cbt sites in cambodia lack clear pricing structures table 1. foreign visitor arrivals to the regions in january november 2018. (ministry of tourism, 2018) 88 | aseas 13(1) sustainable community-based tourism in cambodia and tourists’ willingness to pay and focus on short-term gains, which in turn leads to an insufficient understanding of relevant target groups and appropriate pricing that would sustain and grow visitor numbers in the long-term. while most cbt sites are aware of cultural differences of their target markets, they are not always able to transfer the knowledge into tangible tourism products. community members often lack understanding of the travel motivations and expectations of their visitors and do not know how to gain access to international markets to attract foreign visitors. this also holds true for the value their guests assign to the products and services offered. in general, visitors are willing to commit to slightly inflated fees on the premise that additional funds are used to improve the living conditions of the local community, such as to provide education for disadvantaged children, and improve facilities (kazeminia, hultman, & mostaghel, 2016). at the same time, cbt sites need to follow a clear and transparent pricing strategy, which is market-driven yet respects the guests’ willingness to pay a premium. in order to implement a pricing figure 2: map of cb(e)t projects in cambodia. (https://impactexplorer.asia/) aseas 13(1) | 89 sabine müller, lukas huck, & jitka markova strategy that respects both aspects, tourism administrators need a reliable estimation of visitors’ wtp (hultman et al., 2015). the wtp is generally defined as the maximum price consumers are willing to pay for a certain product (kalish & nelson, 1991). the present research therefore is designed to gather knowledge about the wtp for certain cbt services by different customer segments. in addition, it is also an attempt to investigate whether local market potential exists for new cbt sites entering the market. methodology sample and data collection data was collected through structured face-to-face interviews as well as online surveys (using google forms) among expatriates, cambodians, and international tourists in cambodia (i.e., the three main visitor segments). the collection took place during the months of september and october 2018 in phnom penh. the research respondents were selected across a range of those three main visitor segments based on the current profile of visitors provided by the cbt projects. currently, no official data on the profile of cbt visitors in cambodia exists, as both the cambodian government and the cbt projects do not have the capacity or technical expertise to collect and aggregate this kind of data. through in-person qualitative interviews with five cbt project coordinators/ community leaders, the three subsegments of cbt visitors were identified for the study. both those who have and have not been visitors to the cbt site were selected for the study, as the main focus was on those who would consider or were willing to include a cbt visit or experiences as part of their holidays. due to the high diversity in respondents, with a range of language abilities, access to internet, and a varied ability to complete the online questionnaire, both options of online survey and structured face-to-face interviews were offered using english language. this enabled us to engage with visitors from the asean region and some european countries whose first language often is not english. while many non-native speakers have a high level of spoken english and listening skills, it is known from experience working and delivering tourism products that many might struggle with reading and writing. because many cbt sites are not easily accessible and the presence of visits at the site was not guaranteed, the researchers decided not to collect data from cbt sites through personal interviews due to budget and time constraints. thus, the respondents were not required to have visited a cbt site previously. the questionnaire followed a direct approach and was designed to provide insights into the wtp on cbt services among the targeted visitor segments. a total of 14 questions were presented, with fixed alternatives to choose from, aiming at pricing of accommodation services, f&b services, and extra services. the fixed alternative price categories were chosen based on the current pricing structure of cbt services. for the low-value products and services, a narrow price range was selected, as even a $1 increase in the wtp for these services could deliver up to 50% in increased revenue for the local community. for the higher-value services, the range brackets were widened to provide more logical and practical options for the correspondents to choose from. the use of fixed alternative options and basic language also enabled easier 90 | aseas 13(1) sustainable community-based tourism in cambodia and tourists’ willingness to pay understanding of the research questions by non-native speakers who might have otherwise struggled with more complex research questions seeking more qualitative data. this would have led to less reliable data being collected by the researchers. this seemingly complex system allowed for the primary data set to be used for this study but also enabled the researchers to provide information to individual cbt projects looking to increase the price of their services. in addition, the last question was designed as an open-ended question to allow for subjective opinions and to solicit additional suggestions. demographic characteristics (gender, age, and country of origin) were included at the end of the questionnaire. table 2 shows the number of responses per visitor segment. the largest number of respondents is represented by international tourists, accounting for 60% of all respondents. answers of all 266 respondents were kept for analysis purposes, although a few alterations were made; for example, a single african country was grouped in the ‘african’ label for country of origin to create a more coherent sample group. the data was analyzed through descriptive statistics, such as frequencies or cross tabulations. data analysis due to the survey design, priority was given to the analysis of quantitative data. the data was analyzed using ibm spss 24 software. the procedure consisted of two steps. first, descriptive statistics were used to describe the demographic information of the respondents. secondly, the respondents’ wtp for different services was compared across cambodians, expatriates, and international visitors. the indicated wtp was compared using chi-square tests and we did not control for any confounding effects. the hypotheses were tested at a significance level of 0.05. results demographics table 3 presents the demographic characteristics of the respondents. the variables show that the majority of cambodian and expatriates were female, whereas the vast majority of international travelers were male. all three visitor segments were mainly between the age groups of 21 to 40 years. roughly, 30% of all expatriates were over the age of 41 years. on the contrary, only about 10% of cambodians and international travelers were older than 41 years. the majority of expatriates (60.7%) as well as tourists (49.1%) were from europe. table 2. distribution of visitor segments. (authors’ survey) aseas 13(1) | 91 sabine müller, lukas huck, & jitka markova willingness to pay (wtp) in the following subsections, the respondents’ willingness to pay for tourism services was compared across the three different visitor segments. wtp for accommodation respondents were asked how much they would be willing to pay for a private room in a homestay setting, which is offered as part of the cbt project. table 4 shows the mean values of respondents’ wtp compared across cambodians, expatriates, and international tourists. a significant difference between all three visitor segments can be noticed in regards to wtp for a private room. 40% of all expatriates were willing to pay usd 7-10, whereas only 18% of cambodians were willing to pay within the same price range. the majority of tourists were willing to pay usd 5-6. table 4. willingness to pay accommodation. (authors’ survey) table 3. demographics. (authors’ survey) 92 | aseas 13(1) sustainable community-based tourism in cambodia and tourists’ willingness to pay wtp for food and beverage while staying in the village, visitors have the opportunity to taste locally-made traditional food. meals usually consist of cambodian curries and fresh vegetable dishes. the dishes are prepared using traditional cooking methods with locally-grown ingredients. sharing a meal with the host family provides visitors the ideal opportunity to share stories and learn more about each other’s cultures in a relaxed and friendly atmosphere. most meals are provided by the same homestay family. however, some projects have a sharing scheme where meals are provided by a different family to ensure an equal share of revenue within the village. respondents were asked how much they would be willing to pay for breakfast, lunch, and dinner separately. as shown in table 5, all respondents were willing to pay the highest amount for dinner and the lowest amount for breakfast. however, there were differences across the three visitor segments. in the case of breakfast and lunch, the majority of all visitors were willing to pay usd 2. however, in comparison to cambodians and tourists, a higher share of expatriates were willing to pay usd 3 for breakfast (12%) or usd 4 lunch (11%). in the case of dinner, the majority of cambodians (56%) were willing to pay usd 2, whereas the majority of tourists (57%) were willing to pay usd 3. roughly half of all expatriates (39%) would pay usd 3 for dinner and 11% would pay usd 5, which is the highest share of all segments. wtp for guiding services there is neither a clear definition nor guidelines on how community guiding services should be offered. this means that in practice, there is a wide range of services labeled as ‘local guiding services’ being offered by cbt projects with inconsistent levels table 5. willingness to pay – food and beverages. (authors’ survey) aseas 13(1) | 93 sabine müller, lukas huck, & jitka markova of quality. a mixed ability of spoken english, levels of experience, or understanding of what might be of interest to the visitors can be noticed, often resulting in no ‘real’ benefit to the visitors. as a result, anecdotal evidence showed that visitors have a mixed interest in paying for these services. furthermore, due to the limited scope of this research, the authors were not able to examine the determining factors that would motivate potential visitors to purchase these services; instead, the authors focused on the amount respondents wished to pay for the tour guiding services. respondents were asked, “if you are 1-2 people, how much would you be willing to pay in total for a local english-speaking tour guide per day?” the reason why this very specific question was chosen is because, for the vast majority of the cbt projects in cambodia, the cost for tour guiding is charged per group rather than per individual. this means that for those travelers in larger groups, the cost of tour guiding is minimal if divided between all the members of the group. however, if the same service is purchased by only one or two people, the cost of tour guiding can easily become significant compared to the cost of the rest of the cbt services. this framing of the question implies that the costs being presented below are not payment being made per visitor, but the total cost for a local, english-speaking tour guide for a full day of work. 133 respondents (50%) indicated that they thought the price range for a full day services of a local tour guide should be within the usd 6-10 range. 16% were willing to pay usd 11-16 and only 20% were willing to pay more than usd 15. table 6 compares the wtp of the three visitor segments. discussion and conclusion theoretical implications regarding cbt planning approaches zapata et al. (2011) identified the bottom-up and top-down models as the two main cbt planning approaches – with each representing different characteristics. as discussed earlier in this article, the top-down model is often implemented by external organizations, poorly translated or adapted to the cultural context, and focusing on international markets (boukas & ziakas, 2016). meanwhile, the bottom-up model focuses on the domestic and regional market and is born and funded by locals (theerapappisit, 2012). zapata et al. (2011) also argue that the project formulation and development of tourism ideally is based on the local communities’ networks, table 6. willingness to pay – guiding services. (authors’ survey) 94 | aseas 13(1) sustainable community-based tourism in cambodia and tourists’ willingness to pay with a natural tendency to focus on the local market as its closest supplier. based on this notion, this article examined the wtp of domestic travelers and expatriates as well as the international travelers for products and services offered by cbt sites in cambodia. at the moment, the pricing for cbt services is being set by the local communities – who mostly copy what other cbt projects are doing in terms of setting the same pricing levels, without taking in consideration the quality or services, location, or awareness of the site, as well as not being at all responsive to the different tourism segments and the current market drivers. there are no lowand high-season prices or domestic visitors’ discounts that would stimulate the growth of local tourism. in addition, the external donor organizations and the cambodian government primarily focus on long-haul markets. this, in turn, often transfers the main pricing decision-making power to the hands of tour operators, who capture most of the tourism revenue. in this context, the potential socioeconomic impacts of cbt are likely to remain limited and therefore serve sdg 1 and 8 only to a limited extent. theoretical implications regarding traveler segments for cbt sites the inclusion of expatriates in this discussion of potential target markets has demonstrated that an expatriate’s wtp is significantly higher than that of international travelers, thus making it an attractive target group from a financial point of view, but also from a knowledge perspective. expatriates have considerably more knowledge about the respective country, which can help to overcome communication hurdles. the community can use expatriates as a source of information, assisting in compiling knowledge about different cultures and travel requirements. this can help to develop cbt products before selling them to international tourists. yet, the results do not explain why expatriates express a higher wtp than the other two segments. it might be explained by the fact that expatriates have higher income levels, yet equally low living costs as locals, resulting in a higher purchasing power. furthermore, it is assumed that expatriates are better connected with the host country, and therefore more aware of the residents’ living conditions than international travelers. all of these factors may lead to a higher willingness to support the local rural population, and thus a higher willingness to pay. despite their growing number, tourism research primarily uses the same characteristics to describe expatriates as the overall pool of residents. in some specific contexts, such as destination perception, expatriates are completely ignored (dutt et al., 2018). this study thus provides further evidence that expatriates show different traits to other traveler segments, which highlights the need to examine expatriates as potential tourists and as a heterogeneous group of residents. to what extent expatriates display a similar behavior should be the focus of further research. nevertheless, residents are a reasonable target market for cbt sites because they are sensitive to the meaning and values of local communities. practical implications and linkages to sdgs evidence from the field shows that for cbts in cambodia the provision of accommodation generates the lowest revenue stream. other sources of income, such as food and beverages and tour guiding, provide higher economic benefits to cambodian aseas 13(1) | 95 sabine müller, lukas huck, & jitka markova cbt sites. this finding has implications regarding the planning of future cbt sites if economic growth and employment opportunities (sdg 8) are the underlying goals for the development of rural areas. currently, cbt products in cambodia are marketed as “homestay” accommodation. in the future, a shift in marketing may be necessary towards a more experience-based marketing. when redesigning and developing sustainable tourism experiences, stakeholders will benefit by considering the community’s strengths and their needs, as well as the markets’ needs, while concurrently facilitating and rewarding a memorable experience for the visitors. tourism businesses also will need to design attractive experiential offerings targeted to local and national markets, suggesting they focus on rediscovering local cultural and natural heritage. at the country level, an issue of the ‘dollarization of the cambodian economy’ can be noticed – i.e., the process whereby a country recognizes the u.s. dollar as a medium of exchange alongside, and often in place of, its domestic currency, in this case the cambodian riel. this has a negative impact on low-cost services, as the difference between usd 1 and usd 1.5 is very small for an international visitor – only 50c, which in monetary terms has no value for most international visitors. however, for a local rural community member, i.e. someone who provides this low-cost service, the difference signifies a 50% increase in income. even though the local currency exists, the vast majority of private sector providers and businesses use u.s. dollars as the main business currency. this system is also used by the hospitality industry and cbt projects, and, as result, communities could be deprived of potential additional revenue and remain in poverty (sdg1). this loss is mainly due to the fact that the minimal usd note in use in cambodia is the 1 usd note (no usd coins are in circulation). thus, prices are regularly rounded to the whole dollar – mostly down rather than up. since one price set is used for local and international visitors, rounding costs up leads to services being too expensive/ unexpectable for local cambodian visitors. therefore, dollarization prevents a wider range of prices that could be used if the local riel was the only currency. extreme poverty – defined as living below the monetary threshold of usd 1.90 per person/ day – is still very high in rural areas of cambodia (independent group of scientists appointed by the secretary-general, 2019). in order to use cbt as a tool for poverty alleviation, more informed data (based on supply and demand) on the pricing of cbt services is needed to maximize the socio-economic benefit and impact of cbt initiatives on the poverty levels of those involved in these initiatives. nevertheless, economic activity should be seen not as an end in itself, but rather as a means for sustainably advancing human capabilities. in addition, from a practical point of view, this study also provides implications for managers and policy makers of cambodian cbt sites. currently, cbt sites in cambodia focus on the international tourism market, which comes with high investment and marketing costs. analyzing the results obtained in this research, it has been shown that expatriates are willing to pay the highest prices for most tourism services in comparison to international travelers and cambodians. consequently, from an economic viewpoint, cbt sites should target segments with a higher wtp. a particular benefit stems from the fact that expatriates are presumably a niche market, which allows the cbt sites to grow organically without reaching their carrying capacity 96 | aseas 13(1) sustainable community-based tourism in cambodia and tourists’ willingness to pay too soon. in addition, further benefits that could arise from a bottom-up approach might also support a greater uptake of sustainable environmental practices by the cbt. the organic and therefore slower growth of the site provides the opportunity for the government and other partners to raise awareness of the principles of sustainable consumption and production (scp) (sdg 12) among the community members before the site reaches its capacity limits (mueller et al., 2020). so far, in cambodia, scp played a role in several industry sectors, such as energy (jong, 2016). waste management has been addressed as a cross cutting issue (e.g., reducing plastic bag waste in major cities), however, so far, scp principles are neither discussed nor promoted with respect to cbt or ecotourism. an additional point worth making is that, until now, no impact measurement system exists in cambodia to evaluate the environmental and economic impact of cbt sites on the local communities and the local biodiversity. in practice, this means that there is no empirical evidence or evidence-based framework used to ensure that existing initiatives, both at local and national level, have contributed towards the implementation of the sdgs at the national level in cambodia. even though some ngos working locally have started to look at the mechanism for measuring the social and environmental impact of cbt, there is very little collective consensus within the sector or the government to see this issue as a major priority. limitations and further research first and foremost, caution should be applied when generalizing the research results. the wtp approach allows us to attribute an economic value, which in turn can be used as an economic policy; nevertheless, this approach fails to capture other choice factors. as a matter of fact, it remains unclear what additional variables might also influence a tourists’ needs and behavior. this study is subject to several limitations. firstly, with a sample size of 266, the possibility for complex statistical analysis is limited. secondly, the respondents were not required to have visited any cbt sites in cambodia. this means that, even though consumers are able to imagine the maximum price (breidert, 2006; kalish & nelson, 1991), it is questionable whether travelers in phnom penh have a clear understanding of products and services offered in cbt sites. lastly, the paper does not consider confining factors (e.g., income) when analyzing the respondents’ wtp. this research investigated the wtp for basic tourism services in cbts in cambodia. yet, this study did not consider other factors that may play a role in determining visitors’ wtp. thus, the results need to be interpreted and applied with caution. nevertheless, this study creates a basis for subsequent research, for example investigating the wtp by applying an indirect approach using a contingent valuation method. additionally, this study contributes to the limited amount of research that is available on expatriates as a niche target market. as was hypothesized in the beginning, significant differences were found between the a priori market segmentation. it would be interesting to know if expatriates also show different traits to international travelers and domestic visitors in terms of their travel behavior and needs in terms of offered activities and amenities. aseas 13(1) | 97 sabine müller, lukas huck, & jitka markova subsequently, in order to address the challenges of cbt (e.g., product development), further research would be necessary to gather more knowledge regarding expectations and needs of potential tourists. both national and international visitors are of interest here, given that most cbt projects do not have access to international market research and therefore do not know how to establish market linkages and successful cooperation. with regards to already existing research in the field of cbt, most studies adopt a qualitative approach, arguing that cbts are unique entities and data collection (among the community members) proves to be difficult. nevertheless, quantitative research in a similar but potentially more complex way – as it was applied in the present study – could be helpful to further our understanding of cbt on the ground and thus maximize its potential to contribute to the un sdgs.  references alam, m. s., & paramati, s. r. 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(2011). can community-based tourism contribute to development and poverty alleviation? lessons from nicaragua. current issues in tourism, 14(8), 725–749. about the authors sabine müller, dr., is lecturer and project manager at the institute of tourism at lucerne university of applied sciences and arts in switzerland. her main areas of expertise include: community-based tourism, destination competitiveness, and sustainable tourism development. sabine is involved in teaching and leading consulting projects in a variety of topics with tourism businesses and political institutions. prior to her work at the institute of tourism in lucerne, sabine has worked for the german development cooperation in asia. ► contact: sabine.mueller@hslu.ch aseas 13(1) | 101 sabine müller, lukas huck, & jitka markova lukas huck, ma, is a research associate at the institute of tourism at lucerne university of applied sciences and arts in switzerland. his consultancy and research work focuses on destination management and sustainable tourism development. prior to his engagement at the institute of tourism in lucerne, lukas has worked for destination management organizations such as switzerland tourism where he was responsible for international marketing activities. ► contact: lukas.huck@hslu.ch jitka markova is the cambodian country director for conscious tourism international, a ukbased ngo that uses community-based tourism as a tool for the implementation of sustainable development goals (sdgs) and un 2030 agenda. her main areas of expertise include community-based tourism, sustainable practices in tourism development, women-run social enterprises, financial modelling, and diversity. she is also a co-founder of impact explorer, an online marketplace for community-based tourism projects that bridges the gap between rural communities and independent travelers. ► contact: jitka@camconscious.org 102 | aseas 13(1) aseas 13(1) | 103 the golden mile complex: the idea of little thailand in singapore ying-kit chana a leiden university, the netherlands ► chan, y. (2020). the golden mile complex: the idea of little thailand in singapore. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 13(1), 103-121. the golden mile complex is one of singapore’s first shopping malls, built as part of the postcolonial government’s plan to expand and redevelop the urban center. barely a decade into its existence, thai eateries, shops, and remittance centers sprang up at the complex, which became known as ‘little thailand’ among singaporeans. for some singaporeans, little thailand suggests the ‘exotic’ or ‘mysterious’; for others, it is simply dirty, dangerous, and disorderly – a likely result of unflattering descriptions in official statements, press reports, and opinion pieces. this article proposes to examine little thailand as an idea and social construction. it explores how singaporeans have seen little thailand and how they have distinguished themselves from the oriental ‘other’ through their own cognitive, racial categories. little thailand expresses the experiences and values of singaporeans more than it expresses those of thais. by treating little thailand as an idea and a social construction rather than as a physical location (i.e., the golden mile complex), the article uncovers a broader relationship between place, racial discourse, and public perceptions in postcolonial singapore. keywords: golden mile complex; place; race; singapore; thailand  introduction completed in 1973, the golden mile complex is one of singapore’s first shopping malls. built as part of the postcolonial singaporean government’s plan to expand and redevelop the urban center, the complex houses both commercial and residential units. serving as a transportation hub from which long-haul coaches and tour buses depart for malaysia and thailand, the golden mile complex hosts numerous thai eateries, shops, and remittance centers, and has become the ‘little thailand’ of singapore. this article suggests that little thailand is a social construction “with a cultural history and a tradition of imagery and institutional practice that has given it a cognitive and material reality” (anderson, 1987, p. 581). many businesses at the complex are owned by thais catering to thais, and what they do, see, or experience, as well as how they use distance, movement, residence, space, and territory to “build up collective representations which have communicative value” (suttles, 1972, p. 7), could certainly reveal their sense of place and active role in shaping the functions and transformations of the complex and their aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 31 104 | aseas 13(1) the golden mile complex own consciousness of being thai. nevertheless, regardless of how thais define themselves and one another, whether by age, language, or place of birth in thailand, little thailand is considered by singaporean society through singapore’s own cognitive categories. without requiring the acceptance or acknowledgement of thai migrants and residents in singapore, singaporeans enact in their own minds a boundary between their territory and the ‘exotic,’ foreign domain that is little thailand. therefore, rather than present empirical fieldwork (be it through interviews or ethnographic data), this article identifies the themes or, as described by tan (2014), dominant images and stereotypes that have come to be the unavoidable lenses through which [singaporean newspaper readers] view, interpret, and generalize their world – largely through the exaggeration of otherness – and through which they justify their actions so that they might be normatively acceptable to themselves and to others. (p. 160) little thailand, this article argues, is an unintended product of colonial racial categories – chinese, malay, and indian – that the postcolonial state has inherited to govern its citizenry. by preserving the colonial ethnic precincts – chinatown for the chinese, kampong glam for the malays, and the serangoon road area (little india) for the indians – for domestic and global consumption of racial heterogeneity (kong & yeoh, 2003), the state remains mentally colonized, having internalized and “reproduced orientalist tropes in the popular and quotidian singaporean view of [southeast asia] as mysterious, sensual, backward, dangerous, and exotic” (yew, 2014, pp. 31-32). at the asian civilizations museum curated by the state, orientalist ethnography is in full display. in its southeast asian gallery, chinese, malay, and indian communities are simplistically categorized for visitors to uncritically associate them with the region. the museum performs two main functions through orientalist logic: (1) the touristic, in which it self-orientalizes to pander to tourists’ expectations; and (2) nation-building, in which it reinforces singaporeans’ impression of their ethnic identities and civilizational origins (yew, 2014, p. 34). the museum is also an example of how singapore orientalizes other southeast asian nations that, despite having possessed their own civilizations, are now perceived to be less ‘developed’ and lack the resources that singapore can muster to speak for and represent themselves as a region. this article applies geographer kay j. anderson’s insights into the power of placemaking on the formation of arbitrarily defined racial categories to interpret articles from english-language newspapers as an alternative way of understanding the construction of thais at the golden mile complex. anthropologists, architects, geographers, and sociologists have studied the complex in some detail, addressing the relationship between its architectural design and nation-building in singapore, thai migrants’ engagement with affective placemaking (guan, 2020; wee, 2019; zhang, 2005), the renegotiation of gender identities by thai men in an emasculating environment (pattana, 2013), the submission of thai women to confucian patriarchy through marriage migration (jongwilaiwan & thompson, 2013), and the gendered division of labor of thai migrants (platt, baey, yeoh, & lam, 2017; yeoh & huang, 1998). but almost all existing studies have conflated thai migrants’ identity with their aseas 13(1) | 105 ying-kit chan nationality and little thailand with the golden mile complex without distilling the idea from the concrete or physical. they also tend to focus more on thai migrants’ placemaking and coping strategies than on singaporeans and their attitudes toward thai migrants. rather than assuming the thai population as a fixed, given category of foreign nationals who frequent the businesses of the golden mile complex, this article examines how the policing of thais at the complex by state institutions – according to modern regimes of crime prevention and public health – as well as the reporting of news media both shape and reflect singaporeans’ association of the complex with the idea of thainess. it also suggests that the activities and operations taking place at the complex, as reported in the news media, constitute a repertoire of images and meanings for singaporeans to form negative, stereotypical impressions that exacerbate the complex’s aesthetical and functional decline into an ‘eyesore’ in singapore’s choreographed modernist landscape (guan, 2020; wee, 2019; zhang, 2005). for singaporeans, the golden mile complex is a lived museum of mobile exhibits that offer an experiential or interactive experience of otherness. their trips to the golden mile complex, undertaken either mentally through reading the newspaper or physically through visiting the structure itself, assume the form of ethnic tourism, in which singaporeans encounter an alien culture and identify thais and their practices as objects of interest (cf. trupp, 2014, p. 346; wood, 1984, p. 361). an analysis of accounts in english-language newspapers – a mutually intelligible platform allowing singaporeans of all the legally prescribed races to articulate their views – has provided longitudinal data with which to examine public perceptions and hence the social construction of little thailand, which resides outside the racial geographies defined by the state and those widely accepted by the citizens. this article is the result of an interpretive content analysis of newspaper articles, editorials, and opinion pieces of english-language papers in singapore. non-english newspapers were not included in the sample because they do not report on thais or on the golden mile complex as frequently as english-language ones; and when they do, they offer little in terms of new or alternative content. more importantly, although english is only one of the four official languages in singapore (along with malay, mandarin, and tamil), it has been the dominant or hegemonic language in business, government, and schools since independence. since 1965, the state has promoted english, an occidental language, as one that unifies the different races in communication and expression. as sociologist beng-huat chua (2011) suggests, english also affords ready access to the language of individualism, “reinforced by the ideology of meritocracy which justifies subjective rights, desires, and demands” (p. 17), so abstract values such as the highly personal opinions of ‘the other’ are primarily expressed in english. english-language newspapers are thus the preferred medium to understand elite or more privileged singaporeans’ sense of superiority over thai migrants in singapore. newspaper articles were examined from the period of the late 1960s, when plans for constructing the complex were unveiled, to the present. articles were pulled from the newspapers’ online source and physical copies, and the keywords ‘thais and golden mile complex’ were used to locate items. hundreds of editorials, opinion pieces, and news reports were read in chronological order. through this method, it 106 | aseas 13(1) the golden mile complex became clear that a history of the idea of thainess among singaporeans provided an alternative way to interpret the disposition, policymaking, and public discourse on the complex. mainstream newspapers such as the straits times uphold current hegemony, including hegemonic gender and immigration regimes (artz & murphy, 2000). the interpretive analysis of their articles not only confirmed this argument but also suggested that the racial regime affects thai migrants as much as singaporean citizens and longer-term residents. in other words, this article is interested in uncovering symbolic meanings attached to the manifest content. it considers the newspapers more as an object of knowledge than as a source of facts. by adding a racial dimension to the existing literature on affective placemaking by thais and other migrants in singapore, the article suggests that some of the latent content is racialized, even when ‘ethnicity,’ ‘race,’ or similar words do not appear in the text. as a singaporean who can speak basic thai, i can corroborate what i read in the newspapers with my own on-site observations and casual, unstructured conservations with proprietors of thai origin at the complex, which i visited almost every month from the late 1990s to the early 2010s. this article also draws from sources available at the national library and the national archives of singapore, and reports released by the parliament of singapore. beginning with an outline of various concepts of space, the article sketches the history of the construction and intended functions of the golden mile complex. it then discusses the conceptualization of little thailand as an urban migrant landscape and explores the shifting images and recent developments of the golden mile complex in singapore, all the while mindful of how race is intertwined with space to create singaporeans’ stereotypical images of thais at the complex. social and translocal spaces little thailand has never been courted by the state for its perceived ‘thainess’ under the aegis of multiculturalism. it is an “arbitrary classification of space” (anderson, 1987, p. 583) that assumes the physical form of the golden mile complex. a social space by both mental construction and material design, it is predicated on the postcolonial ethos of modernization, capitalist-industrial skills, and what sociologist eric c. thompson (2006) calls “economic-developmentalism” (p. 185), which has been a key tenet of state policies since independence. cognitively, singaporeans adopt the criteria of development and industrialization to assess the characteristics of their own nation and those of other southeast asian countries. according to a survey conducted from 2003 to 2005, singaporean university students considered singapore more developed than, and, hence, different from, the rest of southeast asia (thompson, 2006). their idea of singaporean exceptionalism is the result of both a comprehensive structure of cultural knowledge and formal education, and the wider mass-mediated environment in which they have grown up (thompson, 2006, p. 186). given that the ruling elite of singapore has successfully legitimated its rule by claiming to be a competent and talented body that has made singapore an exception among its neighbors, or “an exemplar of success and progress in a sea of mediocrity” (barr, 2016, p. 1), the survey findings are perhaps unsurprising. independence and rapid economic growth during the early postcolonial period, as aseas 13(1) | 107 ying-kit chan in india and other former colonies, connected singapore with the nationalist vision of modernist planning and linked the project of nation-building with democratization and development, which were often presented as signaling a break with colonial government, even if the continuities were stronger than implied (mcfarlane, 2008, p. 486). therefore, although the postcolonial state and citizens have agreed that singapore needs to stay cosmopolitan and global for economic progress, they have also distinguished their educated and skilled selves from the contract migrant workers from so-called less developed countries such as thailand in the construction, manufacturing, and domestic services sectors. singapore’s foreign labor policies are thus bifurcated, providing skilled entrepreneurs, investors, and technocrats with incentives to entice them to stay, while denying contract workers job security and opportunities for advancement to segregate them from society (yeoh, 2006). the split labor-immigration regime has caused the bifurcation of public spaces. places patronized by globally mobile and marketable expatriates are considered high-end and sophisticated, while those frequented by transient laborers are regarded as dangerous and dirty – a perceived manifestation of their undesirable qualities. seen through such bifurcation, little thailand could hardly be a desirable space. singapore’s little thailand calls for comparison with other similarly marginalized spaces both within and outside the country. political scientist leong yew (2014), through the singaporean architect william lim (2005), has proposed seeing little thailand, ‘little indonesia’ (city plaza), ‘little myanmar’ (peninsula plaza), ‘little philippines’ (lucky plaza), and the like as “spaces of indeterminacy,” which are “revivified spaces that have emerged out of ‘properties’ assumed to be defunct, such as buildings on the verge of ‘demolition and reconstruction’” (p. 24). chungking mansions, likewise a dilapidated commercial and residential building in downtown hong kong, is characterized by anthropologist gordon matthews (2011) as a ghetto, in the sense that the minority groups who stay there (all but the whites and hong kong chinese) are to at least some extent economically blocked from hong kong as a whole and are socially discriminated against through racism or fear of the developing-world unknown. (p. 15) however, because many singaporeans also eat, shop, and mingle at the golden mile complex, the complex might more closely approximate what sociologist mark abrahamson (1996) calls an urban enclave, or a “concentration of residents who do not have the same ethnic or minority status in the conventional sense, but who share a significant commonality based on wealth, lifestyle, or a combination of these attributes” (pp. 1-2). a ghetto is an ethnic residential area without an internal, functional economic system controlled by the ethnic group, whereas an urban, or ethnic, enclave operates as an economic and social complex within its own boundaries (li, 2006, p. 12). and yet, another concentration of thai consumers and retail operators, found during the weekends, defies a neat classification of the golden mile complex – where singaporeans reside ‘permanently’ at the upper levels and thais gather ‘temporarily’ in the commercial or retail block – as either a ghetto or an urban enclave. the concept of spaces of indeterminacy does not capture entirely the rhythm and movement of thai migrants 108 | aseas 13(1) the golden mile complex and their activities at the complex either. in conclusion, the golden mile complex might be most accurately regarded as a translocal space, “composed of multi-layered social fields that are anchored at different localities and constituted by the networks of actors and their embedding in societal structures” (peth, sterly, & sakdapolrak, 2018, p. 457). a space more relational than discrete, little thailand is more than a symbol of class and an “alien island of the developing world” (matthews, 2011, p. 15). drawing on geographer kay j. anderson’s insights into vancouver’s chinatown (1987) as a productive framework to study the construction of thainess among singaporeans in singapore, this article does not rely upon a discrete thainess as an implicit explanatory principle for two key reasons. first, not only thais, whether by choice or constraint, patronize the golden mile complex; singaporeans and foreigners, seeking ‘real’ thais, also visit it to buy products of thailand and experience an ‘authentic’ taste of thailand. second, the term ‘thai,’ like ‘chinese’ and others, tends to express an uncritical classification of attributes defined arbitrarily as biological or cultural (anderson, 1987, p. 581). historian thongchai winichakul’s (1994) canonical work on thainess and, more broadly, on the discourse of nationhood, explains that thainess, or any kind of national essence, is almost certainly imagined rather than real. thainess is never clearly defined and is subject to interpretations not only by thais who are born and raised in the geo-body of thailand but also by non-thais who claim the scholarly and even legitimate authority to represent thainess by living among thais or in thailand itself. as a result, many thais and non-thais ‘feel’ rather than explain thainess, assuming it to be a given reality rather than ascertaining its veracity (thongchai winichakul, 1994). thongchai notes that thainess operates on the principle of negative identification, which allows thais to define the domain of non-thai in order to confirm their own identity as fellow nationals. by the same token, non-thais – in this case, singaporeans – can refer to thais as the foreign other, however broadly defined it may be. in his treatise on orientalism, edward said (1978) has suggested that discourses on foreign others are more a manifestation of power relations that reinforce the superiority of ‘us’ over ‘them’ than an accurate documentation of the other. for him, orientalism involves an element of prejudice against others. but as anderson (1987) suggests, “it is not prejudice that has explanatory value but the racial ideology that informs it” (p. 581). the prejudice of singaporeans against thais in general, and thais in singapore in particular, has both social and economic roots. at the macro level, thailand is viewed as being on a lower rung of development than singapore. neoliberal market logics, by which thailand supplies low-paid workers to fuel singapore’s developed economy, has reinforced this perception. singapore’s migration regime has created gendered streams of labor among the lower-skilled occupations of thais, most of whom are men working in the construction sector. at the micro level, thai construction workmen are not only burdened with debt after paying for their passage to singapore but are also denied the statutory rights enjoyed by citizens and longer-term residents. removed from their usual social support networks, they are dependent on the grace of their singaporean employers and are vulnerable to exploitation. as for the smaller number of thai women, present either as wives and putative maids to singaporean men, or as sex workers serving both singaporean and thai men, they are dependent on their husbands or male patrons for either income aseas 13(1) | 109 ying-kit chan or residency. they must thus contend with both singaporean and thai gender expectations in their familial and professional roles (jongwilaiwan & thompson, 2013; pattana, 2014, pp. 75-90; platt et al., 2017). most of the thais whom singaporeans encounter in everyday life are construction workers, foreign wives, and sex workers, who are not held in high esteem in singapore’s capitalist-consumerist society where income is equated with status. moving beyond an analysis of gendered, immigration, and labor regimes, this article continues the discussion on unequal power dynamics and their social consequences by examining singaporeans’ impressions of thai migrants at the golden mile complex. by racializing placemaking, it explores the construction and spatialization of a foreign other and uncovers the broader relationship between public opinion, racial discourse, and urban space in postcolonial singapore. a new complex in a new nation in the wake of singapore’s independence from malaysia in 1965, its leaders tried to develop the economy by boosting export-oriented manufacturing. thanks to its educated workforce, political stability, and strategic location, singapore managed to attract multinational corporations (mncs) of the developed world to invest in the manufacturing and financial services sector. the central business district (cbd), where major banks and regional headquarters of the mncs are situated, developed out of the colonial city center, relegating old buildings and shophouses to a secondary heritage role. modernist planners embraced a ‘slum psychology’ to demolish structures deemed lacking in either commercial or historical value and those associated with poor hygiene and high crime rate, however they were defined (guan, 2020; wee, 2019). singapore’s rapid economic growth soon outpaced the capacity of the city center, and the surrounding areas, which shared the housing, industries, and infrastructure of the urban core, were redeveloped to meet the cbd’s demand for land. recognizing the market’s need for more retail and residential space, the government decided to build the golden mile complex near the downtown district. the 16-story shopping complex would have an entertainment deck, offices, luxurious flats, and penthouses. in the end, a total of 409 squatter families, 74 small factories, 17 motor workshops, 26 shopkeepers, and 81 warehouses and stores were displaced for the proposed complex, approved for construction in 1970 as part of the government’s long-term plan to release more nationalized “state lands” for “private development to meet a wide range of high-quality development” (all figures are cited from parliament report [hereafter pr], 1967b; 1968). but the construction suffered from a lack of tenders due to the huge capital required, estimated at sgd 10 to 15 million (pr, 1967a). singapura developments, a privately owned real estate company, eventually took on the construction. founded in 1967, design partnership (dp; later renamed dp architects) won the bid to design the golden mile complex. its founders and chief architects were to contribute in their own ways to the singaporean nation (koh, 2012, p. 13). they programmed the complex as a self-contained ‘vertical city’ with residential communities situated above a commercial center and a sky garden terrace for recreation and socializing. the architecture “responded to site conditions, climate, view and sun orientation, and 110 | aseas 13(1) the golden mile complex circulation” (anderson, 2012, p. 26). the complex became the first mixed-use building in singapore, “fundamental in setting standards for the nation’s modern architectural movement and the design of civic spaces” (anderson, 2012, p. 26). completed in 1973 and spread over beach road and nicoll highway, both of which led to the cbd, the golden mile complex offered residents a panoramic view of the seafront (pr, 1971). its design included stepped-back terraces to increase ventilation and natural light. comprised of 360 units, which included shops, kiosks, department stores, a supermarket, and coffee and snack bars, the complex was meant to resemble a vault to provide full visibility from different floor levels of the merchandise on display (mok, 1970). as both singaporean and foreign architects suggest, the golden mile complex was intended for people to live, work, and play without having to leave it. the complex was a collective form that propagated japanese metabolist ideas of high-density usage and diversity. the brutalist-style vertical neighborhood stood in contrast to homogenized cities where functional zoning restrained almost all signs of vitality. conceived as a prototypical environment of life and lights, the complex was where high-intensity asian urbanism and the linear city model converged. with offices, shops, and two-story maisonette penthouses, the complex was a communal concourse supporting the idea of a revitalized city (wong, 2005, p. 162-165). on its 10th anniversary in 1984, the golden mile complex was hailed as an achievement of city planning and renewal by the urban redevelopment authority (ura) (“success has not been”, 1984, p. 13). in the heyday of the golden mile complex from the 1970s to the mid-1980s, air travel remained expensive for most singaporeans, who preferred to spend short vacations and weekend getaways in nearby countries such as malaysia and thailand. the complex was a terminal for buses plying the singapore–hat yai (in southern thailand) route, which served mostly singaporean tourists and thai workers. operated by both singaporean and thai proprietors, travel agencies specializing in tours to thailand sprang up. some diversified their businesses to include restaurants and stalls selling thai delights to passengers and vacationers who lingered at the complex waiting to depart on buses and taxis (zhang, 2005, pp. 118-122). the first batch of thai workers, approximately 500 of them, arrived in singapore in 1978 to work in its new electronics and textile factories. the import of semiskilled and unskilled workers continued into the 1990s, which helped sustain the construction industry boom and public housing program in singapore (pattana, 2014, p. 12). initially, strict controls on the import of thai workers were relaxed as industrialization went into full swing, resulting in large numbers of unskilled thai laborers in the construction and manufacturing sectors (yeoh, 2006, p. 27). singapore has never disclosed the number of thai migrant workers in the country, and the statistics reported by the thai ministry of labor affairs are too broad to establish the exact number of thai workers present in singapore at any given time. but according to sources and rough estimates, since the 1980s, singapore has maintained the highest degree of continuity in southeast asia for hiring thai laborers. by the first half of the 2000s, approximately 50,000 thai migrants were working in singapore (pattana, 2014, p. 13-14). in tandem with this labor flow was the emergence in singapore of a middle class interested in exploring thailand on site or experiencing thailand at home, and a variety aseas 13(1) | 111 ying-kit chan of businesses catered to this new trend at the golden mile complex. singaporeans thus came to associate the complex with thailand and thais. by the 1980s, when most singaporeans had achieved middle-class status in terms of how they could earn and consume, the golden mile complex had developed a reputation for offering authentic thai food, “like a street corner in haadyai [hat yai]” (“like a street corner”, 1986). the restaurants hung photographs of the thai king and queen, and their menus were written in thai on blackboards; no english translation was available. proprietors also sold assorted thai goods, from food ingredients to magazines and newspapers. a trading company was founded and became the exclusive distributor of thailand’s popular singha beer. on sundays and public holidays, hundreds of thais would gather at the complex, drinking beer, reading thai-language publications, listening to thai music on cassette tapes, and sitting around chatting (wong, 1985). along the corridors and the concourse, chairs and tables were scattered in front of eateries and food stalls, as if a food court had moved into the complex. the informal and haphazard arrangement allowed thais to develop a sense of home – an unintended consequence of the architectural design (chan, 1988; “like a street corner”, 1986). in no small measure, the golden mile complex helped popularize thai cuisine in singapore. singaporean businessmen set up thai stalls at food centers across singapore, but unlike the food establishments at the golden mile complex, the quality of the renditions at those thai food stalls was low. most of them were not helmed by thai chefs, their menu was limited, and they lacked, as one journalist described, “the ambience, tinkling music, and gracious satin-clad waitresses” of the golden mile complex (chan, 1988). this same journalist elaborated on this in her feature article: “for the real taste, and the atmosphere, one must go to golden mile complex [where] food is unabashedly spicy even if the stallholder obligingly tones down the chili when he notices the singaporean customer” (chan, 1988). a magnet of comradeship, observed other journalists, drew thai workers to the complex, where they could visit remittance companies, enjoy thai delights, use card phones to call home, and socialize with one another; a new subculture had formed around the thais at the complex (tan & leong, 1989). like other semiskilled and unskilled foreign workers, thai laborers in the construction and manufacturing sectors were on short-term work permits, were not allowed to emigrate to singapore legally, and were not allowed to bring their families. the great gender imbalance made it impossible for the predominantly male thai transient-worker population to create self-perpetuating communities in singapore. but as with many minority groups elsewhere in the world, when the number of thais in singapore reached a critical mass, businesses and professional services catering to them, such as restaurants, grocery stores, remittance counters, and travel agencies, became available. as thais became more visible and thai-related businesses prospered at the golden mile complex, it attracted newly arrived thais as well as singaporeans craving an ‘authentic’ feel of thailand at home (li, 2006, p. 14; pattana, 2014; yeoh, 2006; yeoh & huang, 1998). thai retailers, whom geographer wei li (2006, p. 19) calls “ethnic entrepreneurs,” added thai flavors and signatures to their products and services and transformed the golden mile complex into an ethnically specific commercial entity. by the late 1980s, journalists and many singaporeans alike had begun to regard it as little thailand (ahmad, 1989). 112 | aseas 13(1) the golden mile complex the emergence of the idea of little thailand indicated that thais had become a culturally distinct and ethnically visible minority in singapore. thais brought with them particular traditions that shaped their activities at the golden mile complex. they drank thai beers, hummed thai tunes, and “had plastic bags of bamboo shoots or raw papaya” (supara, 2002). they celebrated and put up decorations for their own holidays such as songkran (the thai new year; pattana, 2014, p. 28). at the same time, as anthropologist pattana kitiarsa observes, the boundaries of the golden mile complex were fluid and expansive, with thai workers occupying much of the available space at the complex during peak business hours on weekends. footpaths and small vacant spots in front of the complex were used as meeting points. corridors on the ground floor and the parking lot, as well as the void decks of public housing flats opposite the complex on crowded weekends, were sites of leisurely activities. the nearby kallang riverside park was yet another popular spot among thai workers for relaxation and recreation. as pattana (2014) suggests, most thai workers held balanced views of the golden mile complex on their “labor migration map” (p. 54). on the one hand, the complex was the only public space in singapore where they could feel at home. on the other hand, it was there where their attempts to reconnect with thailand (or, specifically, the isan region in northeastern thailand where most of them came from) were simplistically construed as ‘thai’ in ethnoculturally pluralized singapore (pattana, 2014, p. 56). the categorization and depiction of ‘thais’ at the golden mile complex in print reinforced the image of thailand as part of singapore’s orient as much as immigrant policies and law enforcement did. little thailand was thus an essentially artificial, imposed form of segregation. residents, visitors, and their shared characteristics became “distinctive earmarks which the residents, outsiders, and external organizations seize upon to sort one another out for selective treatment and the extension of already defined policies” (suttles, 1972, pp. 15-16). intended as a contrived community by a handful of architects, bureaucrats, and developers with a limited set of objectives in mind (suttles, 1972, p. 106), the golden mile complex grew out of its functions to become a translocal space that drew thai ‘outsiders’ into the mix. officials planned and built the golden mile complex, and journalists created and propagated the idea of little thailand. institutional practices and public opinion unwittingly endowed the golden mile complex with a bad reputation that it did not entirely deserve, to which we shall now turn. sanitary, moral, and aesthetical dimensions of little thailand which came first, a dilapidated golden mile complex or its popularity among thai migrant workers in singapore? it might be difficult to answer this question conclusively, but what is of interest here is how the complex came to symbolize thailand and an orientalist terrain that was “mysterious, sensual, backward, dangerous, and exotic” (yew, 2014, pp. 31-32) and how negative descriptions of it became intertwined with ethnonational stereotypes of thais. in the early 1980s, the golden mile complex housed 719 units, 69 of which were residential, while offices and shops made up the rest (chia, 1984). the management of the complex had incurred a large deficit, and the utilities board had threatened to disconnect water and electricity supplies if an sgd 110,000 deposit was not paid. aseas 13(1) | 113 ying-kit chan low maintenance charges had resulted in the deficit; income failed to cover expenses by sgd 25,000 a month. the insulation of pipes carrying cool air, as required by building regulations, also ran up to sgd 250,000. the developer, singapura developments, had transferred the responsibility of maintaining the basement carpark and swimming pool to the managers, compounding the latter’s financial woes. when the complex was under construction, defective floor tiles were used and had to be replaced at the cost of sgd 216,000 (ang, 1983). tenants complained about water supply breakdowns and the lack of general upkeep. ceiling boards had rotted away, and corridor lights were either missing or dysfunctional (ang, 1983). dissatisfied with the managers, many sub-proprietors refused to pay any fees, leaving the management even shorter on funds (chia, 1984). then, as the golden mile complex slipped in maintenance and appearance, even its positive reputation as a haven for lovers of thai food came into question. health officials, as cited in the news media, claimed that its vendors were “indifferent to hygiene standards” in preparing and serving their food (pr, 1989). the “toilets of shame” at the complex fell in the “roll of dishonor” (goh, 1988). for deviating from official standards of cleanliness, the complex had become “beach road’s darker side” (“beach road’s darker side”, 1999). singaporeans identified littering and overcrowding as problems, urging the authorities to improve conditions at the complex (rahim, 2002). sociologist k. e. y. low interviewed some singaporeans who thought that, while thai food was pleasant, the strong smell of thai spices was barely tolerable if not utterly repulsive (low, 2009, p. 107). those singaporeans’ unflattering ‘pluri-sensorial’ description of the complex not only illustrated that this comprehension of place resulted from the “simultaneous workings of the senses of smell, sight, and hearing,” but also revealed that sensory judgment of the complex carried a negative if not racist connotation (low, 2009, p. 107). complaints and letters of concern in the press offered health officials the pretext to monitor the operators and tenants. although no food poisoning or outbreak of disease had ever occurred, messages or announcements broadcast in thai – clearly intended for thai customers – requested that they not, amongst other things, smoke in the air-conditioned complex, litter the floor, or urinate on the stairs (pattana, 2014, footnote 8, p. 146). the mutually reinforcing ideas of place and race gave little thailand its “coherence as a discrete place in the social consciousness of its representers” (anderson, 1987, p. 589), even though at a deeper or more analytical level, it was an idea that arose from the encounter between singaporeans and thais and the perceived asymmetry between an unknowing occident and an imagined orient. matters of hygiene were often only part of the vocabulary out of which ideas of the exotic or orient transpired; equally significant and perhaps more effective were moral associations and dimensions (anderson, 1987, p. 589). besides being perceived as unsanitary, little thailand was for many singaporeans a lawless, ungovernable spot on the fringes of the financial center. gang fights and illegal assemblies had taken place at the complex (“man jailed”, 1986; “thai dies”, 1986; “thai worker charged”, 1986; “thai worker dies”, 1988). shopkeepers reported that heavy drinking and brawls among thai construction workers were common on weekends and public holidays – many went unreported to the police and by the press. some singaporeans began to blame foreign workers, many of whom were thai, for the general rise in crime 114 | aseas 13(1) the golden mile complex rates and for a host of social problems in singapore (“rise in crime rates”, 1989). in response, law enforcers and immigration officers intensified their crackdown on undocumented thai immigrants and detained thais suspected of illegal entry into singapore, overstaying, or holding forged work permits, whom they believed were the ultimate troublemakers at the golden mile complex (lim, 1989). patrol and security officers subjected thai workers to greater scrutiny and harassment. occasionally, after a series of raids and repatriations, the authorities would triumphantly declare that the complex was “no longer a trouble spot” (ahmad, 1989). policemen also exhibited few qualms about firing warning shots to break up fights at the complex, though they were loath to use their guns elsewhere in singapore for fear of having to justify their actions in lengthy reports and investigations, and of causing undue panic and casualties (“police fire warning shots”, 1995; “policemen fire warning shots”, 1994). the discriminatory and repressive measures painted a grim picture of chaos, crime, and violence at the complex, which officials called a “congregation area [of lawlessness]” (lee, 2014). lawlessness became a metaphor for ‘the other.’ finally, aesthetically, little thailand gave city planners and grassroots organizations “a minor headache” (rahim, 2002). as more and more thai contract workers flocked to the area around the golden mile complex, the ‘surplus’ visitors began to crowd the corridors and five-foot-wide walkways in the surrounding housing development board (hdb) estates. as littering and overcrowding became a problem, some residents in the area petitioned the authorities to encourage thai workers to adopt alternative meeting places (rahim, 2002). in response, the little thailand working group, a local volunteer group founded in 2001, assumed the responsibility of patrolling the beach road neighborhood every week and advising the workers to relocate to kallang riverside park. the little thailand working group was comprised of representatives from singaporean ministries; no thais were involved. by working to divert the human traffic away from the complex, officials hoped to appease singaporeans who were bothered by the presence of thais (rahim, 2002). but thai workers were reluctant because the complex had become a “second home” to them (rahim, 2002). to some singaporeans, the complex was becoming a “vertical slum” and “national disgrace,” as nominated member of parliament (nmp) ivan png suggested. for him, its appearance “must create a terrible impression on foreign visitors”: each individual owner acts selfishly, adding extensions, zinc sheets, patched floors, glass, all without any regard for other owners and without regard for the national welfare. the result is market failure. unless we take resolute measures, other strata buildings will go that way. (pr, 2006, march 6) other members of parliament (mps) echoed his sentiments either by highlighting the deplorable conditions of the complex and its bus terminal or by giving owners of the complex their blessings to plan an en bloc sale of the property (leong, 2007). but not all proprietors and tenants appreciated a heavy-handed approach to the complex. some feared losing their business if thais were discouraged from coming or were made to feel unwelcome. for them, media reports on fights among thai workers exaggerated their frequency and intensity. they vouched that their customers were “generally well-behaved” (“sellers: rosy days”, 1989). they credited thai aseas 13(1) | 115 ying-kit chan migrant workers for having “revitalized the shopping complex,” which had been close to becoming a ghost town years before they arrived (“four favorite haunts”, 1989). they also defended those who had overstayed and become illegal immigrants, attributing such behavior to exploitation by employers and a general lack of information. a particular thai worker, for instance, was working 18 hours a day and 7 days a week, and he did not know that he should have gone through a recruitment agency and registered at the immigration center before seeking employment in singapore (“shock at police station”, 1989). for proprietors more receptive toward the presence of thais, renovations and financial support from the state, rather than legislation and infrastructure neglect, could help improve the state of affairs at the complex. some singaporean architects, including those from dp architects, who had been involved with designing the complex, expressed regret over the proposed sale of the property because they considered it an iconic building in the nation’s past. they argued that the complex was built when ura restrictions had yet to be fixed, and its ‘ugly’ yet organic balconies and interlocking residential units made it unique in the architectural history of singapore. as one of them suggested, “such artistic flourishes have all but disappeared these days in the face of strict rules” (“farm: the art”, 2006). their reactions reflected a “growing disenchantment with the modernizing state and prospects of urban opportunity and justice” (mcfarlane, 2008, p. 481). they suggested that the government should instead consider ways to preserve historic and iconic buildings, develop public appreciation and respect for such buildings, and educate people about “how hard it was to build something [in the wake of singapore’s independence]” (“farm: the art”, 2006). for them, the golden mile complex was not a vertical slum because it not only symbolized a milestone in architectural history, but also presented a teachable moment for the nation-building project. in anticipation of the complex’s demise, some architects organized ‘architours,’ which would make architecture accessible to the public by guiding visitors on a tour of buildings constructed after independence, which included the golden mile complex (martin, 2007). that the golden mile complex seemed dirty, dangerous, and disorderly set it apart from the rest of singapore – save for the ethnic enclaves and so-called congregation areas. little thailand became a counter-idea to which qualities thought to be in opposition to the singaporean ingroup were attached (anderson, 1987, p. 589). the complex, while culturally and socially vibrant on its own merits, was many singaporeans’ sole or perceived window onto thailand, especially for those who had not visited thailand, the imagined source of the complex’s ‘authenticity.’ for officials eager to discipline citizens and champion the successes of national development, little thailand provided an example of how things could go awry without effective planning and policing. slowly but surely, the officials began to attribute the dilapidated conditions to “individual owners” (pr, 2006, march 6), and deemphasized the role the state had played and should now play in maintaining the complex. brawls, gang fights, and the odoriferous toilets and exotic spices provided damning evidence against the state’s logic of order and progress. journalists and writers of complaint letters and opinion pieces were opinion makers, commanding an audience sympathetic to residents who had to suffer the inconveniences of living with foreign others. violence and unsanitary conditions were certainly present at the golden mile complex. but the point is that little thailand was a ‘shared characterization’ 116 | aseas 13(1) the golden mile complex constructed and distributed by singaporeans, who arbitrarily conferred outsider status on thais at the complex. in doing so, they were “affirming their own identity and privilege” (anderson, 1987, p. 594). a question remains – what was the context in singapore that had led to the racialization and spatialization of this outsider status? race and space in singapore in postcolonial singapore, preexisting racial categories became connected to state discourse. race can arise from practice; “racializing” suggests ongoing, everyday processes in which both the state and people are actively involved in race making (low, 2009, p. 86). while it is more a translocal space than an ethnic enclave, the golden mile complex, or what has occurred at the complex, reveals the creation of racial boundaries mediated by processes of inclusion and exclusion and the cleavage of locals from foreigners in singapore. for singaporeans, only the chinese, malays, and indians are ‘local’ races, as defined by colonial administrators of the past and the postcolonial state of the present. this racial paradigm pervades everyday life via compulsory education, the allocation of units in public housing estates, and food varieties at food centers and wet markets. many singaporeans thus refer uncritically to the labels of chinese, malay, and indian when defining and relating themselves to others (low, 2009, pp. 89-90). spatial boundaries are an extended metaphor for racial identities. by claiming that the golden mile complex is smelly, singaporeans contribute their readings of foreign others to the racial discourse. spatial boundaries are reconfigured based on the polarities of locals versus foreigners, where smellscapes differentiate the in-group from foreign others (low, 2009, p. 111). in other words, sensory perceptions and semi-informed judgments such as those expressed in the newspapers transformed places into sites of inclusion and exclusion through everyday practice. as low (2009) suggests, “the foreign other is routinely eschewed, owing to the heightening of us-versus-them dynamics within physical landscapes like racial enclaves” (p. 119). conceptions of space and social others are seldom separate from issues of class, nationality, and race. because boundaries are often challenged or transgressed, the golden mile complex has remained a translocal space where identities are fluid, unless cogently defined and enforced. in many ways, the state has become a victim of its own successes. having reinforced the racial paradigm over time, officials have found themselves pressured to reduce the increased public dissent that has followed the creation of translocal spaces, which are located within established residential communities in land-scarce singapore. the translocal spaces expand with the continuous influx of foreign workers and are maintained because officials have to isolate those workers from self-avowed ‘clean’ and ‘sanitized’ locals and contain them. that the workers thrive only at the margins, geographer leo van grunsven (2011) writes, implies “systematic exclusion from access to social facilities linked to their transience” (p. 77). and that residents of nearby neighborhoods consider foreign workers’ use of translocal spaces an ‘invasion’ renders such exclusion understandable. attitudes advocating the segregation of foreign workers are “powerful ways in which processes of ‘othering’ become written into space” (ye, 2013, p. 148). measures to keep foreign workers within tightly controlled spaces widen aseas 13(1) | 117 ying-kit chan the landscapes of exclusion against them, which heightens the constraints in mobility experienced by those workers in their everyday lives (ye, 2013, p. 148). this explains why thais continue to frequent the golden mile complex, which provides them with most of the social facilities they need, despite the bad press and poor public opinion. golden mile complex in recent years in august 2018, more than 80% of unit owners at the golden mile complex signed the agreement to launch an en bloc sale because they no longer considered it to be economically profitable. within weeks, architects and architecture enthusiasts lobbied the government to consider conserving the building for national heritage. in response, officials promised to facilitate conservation (“golden mile complex”, 2018). the en bloc tender marked the first time in singapore that a building being studied for possible conservation was simultaneously listed for collective sale. both officials and architects agree that the complex is “important to the public memory of singapore” and that its iconic design can “bring value to the sense of place and identity of development” (“golden mile complex”, 2018). but throughout their discussions, little was mentioned about its unique function as an enclave of thais who have contributed to the singaporean economy or as a translocal space of interactions between singaporeans and thais. for singaporeans, value in the complex lies more squarely with its heritage than with its translocality (“golden mile complex”, 2018). the ura has set a list of regulations to which potential buyers and developers must adhere when taking over the golden mile complex. its planning advice for the site states that the building is subject to conservation, which means that it cannot be demolished and that its exterior must be left intact. the conservation clause makes the complex a tough sell, and two tenders have closed without a buyer (wong, 2019). despite official efforts to preserve the complex, some architects and singaporeans who like it the way it is claim that it will not be the same even if the exterior is kept. as the construction workforce has begun to rely less on thai nationals and taken in cheaper workers from bangladesh, india, and vietnam, the thai crowd at the complex has declined in size. as a tenant suggests, “you can’t create another ‘little thailand’. it must come from the people’s culture. . . . it’s built over time” (lim, 2019). this gradual unfolding of events suggests the incompatibility of heritage conservation and asset or financial value in postcolonial singapore. heritage is mapped onto landscapes, which are manipulated by the state as spatial expressions of ideological objectives. heritage is thus partial and deemphasizes aspects that are not aligned with dominant or national narratives (muzaini, 2013, p. 26). but the falling number of thai migrant workers has not led to a complete loss of translocal moorings and local structures such as the golden mile complex. retailers have already responded to the changing migration flows. the thai supermarket has begun to stock more vietnamese products as more and more vietnamese workers join the labor market, although they have yet to make the complex their gathering spot. shops and restaurants have also adjusted well to the reduced number of thais as they have successfully retained the singaporean clientele. but small remittance firms specialized in sending money to thailand are closing down; only the large, transnational ones have been able to adapt (peth et al., 2018, p. 469). 118 | aseas 13(1) the golden mile complex conclusion the transformation of the golden mile complex into little thailand is intimately linked to the urban development of postcolonial singapore. the expansion of the city center gave rise to the complex on its outskirts, but it was the organization of hdb estates into precincts, divided from one another by roads, which actually turned the complex into a translocal space. the urban layout allowed the state to spatially contain any insurrection and create controllable urban populations (guan, 2020, p. 56), but affective placemaking by thai migrants has disrupted the narratives and temporalities of state planning. the unintended consequences of the golden mile complex’s financial difficulties and poor maintenance were lower prices and costs of business operations, which allowed thai migrants to occupy and use it as a “partial, fragmentary space” among the neat roads and high-rise housing blocks of hdb estates (guan, 2020, p. 55). and while migratory movements have created translocal spaces and moorings, it is quotidian mobility and the rhythms of everyday practices that influence their persistence and decay (peth et al., 2018, p. 469), and determine whether the complex will transform into ‘little vietnam.’ like other translocal spaces in singapore, such as city plaza (little indonesia), peninsula plaza (little myanmar), and lucky plaza (little philippines), the golden mile complex experienced a decline in function and aesthetic appeal due to bad press, low tenancy, and poor maintenance. it became trapped in a cycle of deterioration and lacked the funds for makeovers, renovations, or structural improvements. but the complex’s crisis created opportunities for businesses seeking to profit from its being a transport hub serving singapore–thailand routes, which could operate more cheaply than elsewhere in the city and cater to a stable flow of thai customers. the complex then sprang back to life as ‘little thailand’. however, being little thailand created a similar set of problems, which, in no small measure, reflected and resulted from singaporeans’ prejudice against thai migrants. by an ironic twist of fate, the complex has been spared from demolition for bearing an iconic architectural design that symbolizes nation-building. unlike the other translocal spaces, then, the golden mile complex is not only subject to the issue of race and the logic of market competition in its decline; the idea of little thailand also sits uncomfortably with the concept of nationhood, creating diverse groups of singaporeans ranging from enthusiasts of thai culture and proprietors benefiting from the thai clientele to residents concerned about bad migrants and citizens perceiving migrants as perpetual outsiders of the nation. most importantly, little thailand is an idea of race signifying traits that distinguish thais from singaporeans – their so-called unsanitary and morally aberrant ways, flavorful food, exotic spices and smells, and so on. it embodies singaporeans’ value systems and sense of difference that separates them from their orient. that singaporeans reaffirm their own identity and privilege through the idea of little thailand attests to “the importance of place in 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(2005). ethnic boundaries redefined: the emergence of the “permanent outsiders” in singapore. ma thesis, department of sociology, national university of singapore. about the author ying-kit chan is a research fellow at the international institute for asian studies (iias), leiden university. he received his phd in east asian studies from princeton university. his papers on modern singapore have appeared in journals such as asian studies review, asian survey, south east asia research, and southeast asian studies. ► contact: y.k.chan@iias.nl acknowledgements the research for this article is financed by the empowering network for international thai and asean studies (enitas) research scholarship. i am grateful to the institute of thai studies, chulalongkorn university, for the scholarship. i would also like to thank the editors and reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions. 122 | aseas 13(1) aseas 14(2) | 227 teachers’ perceptions of cultural content in english language textbooks used in multicultural classrooms at a thai primary school kulthida saemeea & jaewon jane raa a mahidol university, thailand ► saemee, k., & ra, j. j. (2021). teacher’s perceptions of cultural content in english language textbooks used in multicultural classrooms at a thai primary school. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 14(2), 227-241. textbooks have always played a significant role in the field of english language teaching (elt). they are the main source that conveys cultural values and information in the language classroom. however, compared to the increasing number of migrants in thailand, and particularly migrant children in thai public schools, elt textbooks have yet to properly take into consideration the reality of the multicultural thai context. english is currently the most widely used lingua franca in the world, which means that it is shaped by a large number of non-native speakers in various multilingual and multicultural settings and local contexts. thus, it is no longer sensible for elt to be solely associated with anglophone cultures. this study is based on observations in classrooms and semi-structured interviews with three thai teachers of english at a government primary school in samut sakhon province in thailand. findings demonstrate that there is a strong need for more cultural content related to asean countries in english textbooks, especially in multicultural schools. furthermore, this study addresses implications for future elt practices and materials for thai primary schools in light of the continuously growing diversity within thai society. keywords: english language teaching; intercultural awareness; intercultural communicative competence; multiculturalism; thai english textbooks  introduction there has been an increasing number of migrants from asean countries coming to thailand and several issues concerning these migrant children in thai schools have been raised. one of the main concerns is that there have not been appropriate cultural representations reflecting the reality of the multicultural thai context in school textbooks. recent studies have demonstrated that the curricula, textbooks, and other educational materials are generally not relevant to the cultures of migrant children, and in the case of english language textbooks, the majority of the content displays native speaker cultures, disregarding multiculturalism in thailand and other asia-pacific nations (syahri & susanti, 2016, thumvichit, 2018; yamada, 2010; yuen, 2011). however, at present, the english language is extensively used as a global lingua franca for aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 61 228 | aseas 14(2) teachers’ perceptions of cultural content in english language textbooks intercultural communication and, in reality, it is rarely associated with native speaker cultures but embraces diverse cultures of speakers from different backgrounds (canagarajah, 2009, 2011; jenkins, 2015; pennycook, 2010). therefore, the aim of this study is to understand how local teachers perceive and convey cultural content in english language textbooks, and to what extent this promotes intercultural awareness (ica) and intercultural communicative competence (icc) in multicultural classrooms. this study is part of a larger project that aims to investigate cultural representations both in written and visual forms in english language textbooks used in a primary school located in samut sakhon province where there is a mix of thai and migrant students from asean countries. this article includes semi-structured interviews of thai teachers of english as well as classroom observations conducted over one academic semester at a government primary school in samut sakhon province. qualitative content analysis has been employed and findings suggest that elt textbooks used by public schools in thailand lack cultural diversity, which ought to be considered a crucial aspect in the language learning classroom, particularly in multicultural contexts. furthermore, this study addresses implications for future elt materials and practices in thai primary schools in light of the continuously growing diversity within thai society. the role of culture in elt culture is a concept too broad and vague to define in simple terms. in general, the most commonly accepted idea of culture perceives it as something that people have in common and that can be differentiated across different groups. people see culture as a set of beliefs, values, and rules that affect how people behave and are useful to understand different dimensions of human behavior (scollon et al., 2012). however, such conceptions are problematic and create boundaries between people from different groups and disregard “the negotiated, contested, changeable and situated nature of culture” (baker, 2015, p. 38). moreover, scollon et al. (2012) argue that culture should not be highlighted as a thing that distinguishes people from different groups but should be perceived as a heuristic “tool for thinking” (p. 3) when it comes to intercultural communication. from kramsch’s (1998, 2009) perspective, culture represents membership in a discourse community and the members of this type of community not only share daily practices, histories, values, and beliefs, but are also aware of how to interact within the community. in line with kramsch, holliday (2013) believes that discourse is the unique way of communicating in particular groups. through specialized discourse, insiders of the community can easily distinguish themselves from outsiders. in addition to the sociocultural aspect of culture, kramsch (1998) proposes cultural imagination. she claims that this common imagining, which is negotiated by language, is an essential phenomenon that influences the way cultural reality is formed in discourse communities. this cultural reality is what controls one’s judgement and behavior. in this sense, language and culture are intricately fused and, thus, it is difficult to separate the two without either losing its significance. at present, the status of culture has progressed to be more hybrid, fragmented, and globalized, owing to the fluid boundaries between lived cultures and the cultures represented through the aseas 14(2) | 229 kulthida saemee & jaewon jane ra internet (kramsch, 2015; sifakis & sougari, 2003). thus, solely introducing sociocultural norms of anglophone countries (for exapmple from the uk or the us) in elt has become obsolete and irrelevant for global uses of english. furthermore, when it comes to language learning, textbooks are considered the main source of culture (zu & kong, 2009). in other words, it is through textbooks that students encounter cultural information presented by visuals, dialogue, audio, descriptive texts, vocabulary, and so forth. thus, textbooks are powerful tools that can deliver certain cultural values and meaning to language learners. consequently, cultural diversity should be vigorously presented in english textbooks so that cultural understanding can be aligned with linguistic skills. in this fashion, elt would become more appropriate if it was adapted to the sociocultural context of the respective country. in the past few decades, cultural awareness (ca) has been considered a crucial skill for second language (l2) users when communicating with people from different linguacultural backgrounds (byram, 2012). although the notion of ca has provided its usefulness in relation to cultural aspects of language use and teaching, it is still associated with boundaries and distinctive nations. hence, ca has become questionable when english is now flexibly and fluidly used as a global lingua franca. accordingly, the notion of intercultural awareness (ica), which further develops from ca and takes a more dynamic intercultural framework, has been proposed as an approach to conceptualizing the cultural dimension for elt (baker, 2011, 2012). ica derives from the idea of intercultural communicative competence (icc), which refers to “the ability to interact with people from another country and culture in a foreign language” (byram, 1997, p. 71). thus, someone who has developed icc is able to “build relationships while speaking in the foreign language; communicates effectively; mediates interactions between people of different backgrounds and develops their own communicative skills” (byram, 1997, p. 71). baker (2011) takes an ica perspective and discusses how a cultural dimension that reflects global realities can be incorporated into the elt classroom. he argues that elt practitioners need to realize the global status of english and its links to diverse sociocultural contexts and, in order to do this, they need “to approach culture in a non-essentialist and dynamic manner” (baker, 2011, p. 3). not only language but also culture should be viewed as “an emergent, negotiated resource in communication” (baker, 2011, p. 3). baker (2011) provides further recommendations for implementing ica in language classrooms, which include “investigating the relationships between culture, language and communication through: exploring local cultures; exploring language learning materials; exploring the media and arts both online and through more traditional mediums; making use of cultural informants; and engaging in intercultural communication both face-to-face and online-based communication” (p. 7). english teachers, especially in non-anglophone, multicultural classrooms, can consider the above recommendations for a more appropriate elt in a globalized world. cultural diversity in english textbooks many schools in thailand have been using english textbooks written by native speakers, and these are considered one of the main sources of cultural representation (greil, 2004). thumvichit (2018) investigated cultural representations in thai 230 | aseas 14(2) teachers’ perceptions of cultural content in english language textbooks secondary school english coursebooks. the findings reveal that, although thai secondary teachers understand the importance of including intercultural aspects in elt, anglophone cultures are primarily represented in all of the coursebooks. thai cultures in general are absent in the reading-focused activities and only a few pictures related to thailand were identified. ziaei (2012) examined an efl (english as a foreign language) book series used in many language institutions in iran and found out that the books mostly present american and british cultures, excluding any type of iranian content. yuen (2011) examined english textbooks at hong kong secondary schools to see whether they reflect the current global status of english; the study showed that cultures of anglophone countries were saliently shown compared to other cultures. in japan, yamada (2010) discovered that english textbooks used at a junior high school contain cultural diversity but mainly in the context of japanese habitants living in anglophone countries. syahri and susanti’s study (2016) shows a different result. they explored nine english textbooks used at a high school in indonesia and found that five books showed at least some examples of local cultures, while the rest still focused on target cultures (i.e., british, american, etc.). likewise, nomnian (2013) investigated the extent to which thai cultural contents are included in english textbooks published in the uk and used at a thai secondary school. results showed that thai cultures are somewhat represented in the textbooks written by a native english speaker. consequently, nomnian (2013) refers to thailand’s english language basic education core curriculum 2008 and emphasizes the importance of equivalently including thai, regional, and international cultures in english textbooks so that learners would be prepared to use the global language more relevantly to their context. more studies such as these are needed to understand to what extent english textbooks used in thai or asean schools demonstrate the diversity of cultures relevant to thai learners in order to improve their intercultural communication skills (laopongharn & sercombe, 2009; nomnian, 2013). thai teachers’ perceptions of cultural contents in the classroom and english textbooks if elt ought to reflect cultural diversity, teachers certainly play an important role in developing learners’ intercultural skills. messekher (2014) states that, regardless of what cultural dimensions are represented in textbooks, their effectiveness relies upon how they are taught. likewise, mahmud (2019) points out that language teachers should integrate local cultures into english language classrooms. the incorporation of local and asean regional cultures in multicultural classrooms is thus a vital aspect that is increasingly taken into consideration. fungchomchoei and kardkarnklai (2016) looked at thai secondary school teachers’ perception of intercultural competence and to what extent they included this in their elt practices. their study reveals that, although teachers acknowledge the importance of developing intercultural skills in the classroom, they do not have enough experience in culturally diverse environments to teach this themselves. furthermore, the term icc appears to be relatively unknown to most teachers, making it difficult to implement appropriate methods for teaching intercultural competencies in the classroom. cheewasukthaworn and suwanarak (2017) explored how thai efl aseas 14(2) | 231 kulthida saemee & jaewon jane ra teachers at a private university perceive icc, and how this is integrated into their teaching practices. in this study, the teachers seem to have a good understanding of icc on a surface level; however, they are not fully aware of how to implement an intercultural approach to language teaching. furthermore, teachers believe that icc only indirectly helps students with their english communication skills. jantadej and charubusp (2018) interrogated thai secondary school teachers on their perceptions and implementation of intercultural teaching in english language classrooms. according to the results, the efl teachers place importance on providing intercultural competence training but lack the means to assess students’ attitudes and behavior towards developing their skills in this area. according to the above-mentioned studies, it appears that thai elt teachers in general stress the importance of understanding different cultures and icc in the elt classroom, but they are unaware of how to effectively implement this in concrete classroom practices. in conclusion, culture and language are interrelated and, thus, in the era of globalization, elt classrooms (including practices, textbooks, and materials) need to provide different cultural perspectives so that learners can understand the use of english in intercultural contexts. it is firstly important that elt teachers are able to critically evaluate textbooks and materials that are used in the classroom and make judgements on the level of relevancy to both local and global issues, so that they can adapt their classes. therefore, this article aims to provide an understanding of how thai teachers at a multicultural primary school perceive and convey cultural contents presented in their school’s english textbooks. method research setting and participants the research setting of this study is a government primary school located in samut sakhon province in thailand. the province has the second largest number of migrant workers in thailand, coming from mainly three countries – myanmar, cambodia, and laos – with the total number of 257,559 migrant workers in 2019 (ministry of labor, 2019, p. 13). thus, the research setting of this study had migrant students in every grade (grade 1 to grade 6). there is a total of 45 migrant students in this school and the majority of them are from myanmar (22 students), followed by laos (9 students), cambodia (8 students), and other ethnic groups (6 students). three teachers (two female, one male) have been teaching english at this school and all of them agreed to take part in the research. all of the teachers were thai and from the local area of samut sakhon province. below is a table that portrays each participant in more detail (pseudonyms have been used). interviews before having separate interviews with the three participants, non-participant observations were conducted by one of researchers in the language learning classrooms. the researcher observed six different classrooms from grade 1 to grade 6. at the time of the fieldwork, helen taught grades 1 and 3; jack taught grade 2; and rose taught 232 | aseas 14(2) teachers’ perceptions of cultural content in english language textbooks grades 4, 5 and 6. each observation lasted 50 minutes and focused on factors such as the lesson topic, teaching methods, use of textbooks, types of classroom activities and exercises, teacher-student interactions and student interactions. data collections involved semi-structured interviews and observations of teaching and learning in classrooms. semi-structured interviews were conducted to investigate teachers’ perceptions towards representations of culture in english textbooks used in this research context. harrell and bradley (2009) indicate that “semi-structured interviews are often used when the researcher wants to delve deeply into a topic and to understand thoroughly the answers provided” (p. 27). the interview is the most widely used method in qualitative research (dörnyei, 2007). interviews are used to elicit the participants’ attitudes, perceptions, feelings, motivations, and behavioral connotations, which are difficult to discover solely through observations (brewer, 2000; richards, 2003). flexible interviews can be more appropriate for qualitative inquiries because they provide more in-depth information about the participant and more elaboration on their stories (dörnyei, 2007; silverman, 2011). in addition, non-participant observations were conducted by one of the researchers in the language learning classrooms. the researcher observed six different classrooms from grade 1 to grade 6. at the time of the fieldwork, helen taught grades 1 and 3; jack taught grade 2; and rose taught grades 4, 5 and 6. each observation lasted pseudonym age gender education degree(s) teaching experiences international travel experiences helen 28 female bed english she has been teaching for two months at the school. she teaches grade 1 and 3 students. she taught english at a secondary school for four years. she has been to laos when she was a pre-service teacher. it was a short field trip to study and exchange cultures with laos universities. jack 25 male bed english he has been at the school for three months. he teaches grade 2 students. he taught english at a different primary school for a year. he has been to laos when he was an undergraduate student. he traveled there with his thai friends. rose 28 female bed english she has been teaching english at the school for five years. she teaches grade 4-6 students. she has been to laos, malaysia, and japan. she traveled to laos when she was a pre-service teacher. table 1. participant information. (author’s compilation). aseas 14(2) | 233 kulthida saemee & jaewon jane ra 50 minutes and focused on factors such as the lesson topic, teaching methods, use of textbooks, types of classroom activities and exercises, teacher-student interactions, and student interactions. this article demonstrates how thai teachers perceive, teach, and convey cultural diversity represented in the school’s english textbooks at a multicultural primary school in thailand. by conducting interviews and observations, the researchers were able to explore how participants interpret a situation or an issue in a way that cannot be achieved solely through observation (merriam, 2009). in this study, a digital voice recorder was used during interviews and the language used was a mix of thai and english. the thai transcript was translated by one of the researchers. the process of constructing interview questions was as follows: 1. the researchers reviewed the role of textbooks in elt, the role of culture in english textbooks, and adapted a conceptual framework for textbook analysis; 2. the researchers reviewed and analyzed the school’s english textbooks (used for each grade) with the focus on cultural implications (another part of the larger study); 3. the researchers outlined interview questions based on 1) and 2); 4. the interview questions were presented at and approved by the ethical review board, institute for population and social research at mahidol university. the english textbooks used at this school (see table 3) were a six-level series of american english language coursebooks for primary school students called super magic american english, written by mariagrazia bertarini, martha huber, and paolo lotti and published in 2015 by aimphan publisher, thailand. analytical framework this study employed qualitative content analysis based on an adapted analytical framework. the framework used two concepts as follows: 1) five categories of 1. were you able to select your own english textbook(s)? if yes, please explain the criteria used to select the textbook(s). 2. how did/do you plan to use the textbooks for each lesson? 3. do you always rely on the textbooks? why? why not? 4. do you have difficulties using the textbooks? if yes, please explain. 5. what do you think about the cultures represented in the textbooks? 6. how do you present cultural contents in the textbooks? 7. do you have difficulties understanding cultural contents or images presented in the textbooks? if yes, please give an example. 8. what cultural aspects presented in the textbooks are related to the cultural context of your students? 9. do you have any suggestions to improve and develop the textbooks? if yes, please specify. table 2. guided interview questions. (author’s compilation). 234 | aseas 14(2) teachers’ perceptions of cultural content in english language textbooks culture: products, perspectives, practices, persons, and places (yuen, 2011); 2) sources of cultural contents adapted from cortazzi & jin’s (1999) model. the adapted model used in this study contains six layers of sources of cultural contents: 1) source cultures (c1), 2) asean regional cultures (c2), 3) asian regional cultures (c3), 4) target cultures (c4), 5) international cultures (c5), and 6) global cultures (c6) (see figure 1). findings based on interview data, the findings are divided into two themes: 1) the reliability of selected english textbooks, and 2) teachers’ perceptions towards cultural contents presented in the english textbooks. the reliability of selected english textbooks helen and jack were newly transferred teachers when the fieldwork started and, thus, rose was the only teacher who was present for taking part in textbook selection. she explains the process of textbook selection at the school (extract 1). jack still gives some of his own criteria when selecting textbooks in case he has to make a decision later on (extract 2). it appears that jack trusts the criteria listed by the government for textbook selection. all participants state that they mostly rely on the topics presented in the textbooks (extract 3, 4, 5) to create their lesson plans for each class. all participants explain that they have to add more exercises and activities in their lessons. it seems that rose tries to prepare cultural contents related to the students’ contexts separate from the textbooks (extract 5). this might be due to the fact that the textbooks in general lack cultural contents from asean contexts (see saemee & nomnian 2021a, 2021b). helen mentions that she has to create new exercises and activities by herself based on her own knowledge (extract 6). on the other hand, jack and rose also include exercises and activities from other sources, such as online websites (extract 7 & 8). figure 1. sources of cultural contents used in this study. (figure by the author). aseas 14(2) | 235 kulthida saemee & jaewon jane ra extract 1 interviewer: were you able to select textbooks for your teaching? if so, please explain the criteria used to select them. rose: yes. i remember that school officers gave us three sets of textbooks with a list of prices and publishers who had already contacted them. the publishers provided textbook previews. at that time, i was the only english language teacher in this school. so, i had to make a decision. i chose these selected textbooks because they are colorful. they also provide lots of actual things expressed through illustrations. i didn’t select the other textbooks because they were not colorful and they contained lots of texts. i think that they would not have been able to draw students’ attention. also, i think that the price was an essential factor when selecting the textbooks. extract 2 interviewer: what are your criteria for selecting english language textbooks? jack: if i can choose a textbook, i would adopt the standard criteria laid out by the ministry of education. extract 3 interviewer: do you always rely on the textbooks? why or why not? helen: yes. the lesson plans are based on the topics that are presented in the textbooks. i think that contents are not too difficult for our students in this context. extract 4 interviewer: do you always rely on textbooks? why or why not? jack: i mainly use textbooks. sometimes, i add more exercises and activities. i think that the textbooks are quite reliable because they have already been assessed. extract 5 interviewer: do you always rely on textbooks? why or why not? rose: i use textbooks as a primary source. however, i also try to add some new exercises which relate to upcoming events and festivals, such as loi kratong; things that you could observe in the classroom. extract 6 helen: i tried to add some activities in my classrooms because the grade 1-3 textbooks mostly present just vocabulary. so, i have to create extra exercises and activities. extract 7 jack: i think that each unit provides only a few contents. so, i usually have to find out some more information on the internet. extract 8 rose: i try to provide more exercises for my students. apart from using the textbooks, i often download worksheets from the isl collective website and give them to my students. 236 | aseas 14(2) teachers’ perceptions of cultural content in english language textbooks teachers’ perceptions towards cultural content presented in the english textbooks based on the adopted analytical framework (assuming five categories of culture, i.e. products, practices, perspectives, persons, places), the participants predominantly addressed cultural contents related to products and practices (extract 9, 10, 11). the participants address that the cultural contents in their textbooks are inadequate (extract 10 & 11). consequently, they try to provide some more cultural contents in their classrooms. the participants indicate that the cultural sources represented in the textbooks mostly involve target cultures (i.e., cultures of native speakers of english), such as halloween and christmas traditions (extract 9). the rest of cultural sources – source cultures, asean regional cultures, asian regional cultures, international cultures, and global cultures – are rarely mentioned in the textbooks (see saemee & nomnian, 2021a, 2021b). however, they suggest that the textbooks should contain various cultural aspects from different sources (extract 12). thus, every participant considers that cultural diversity is an important element that should be included more in english textbooks. rose also talks about migrant students’ cultures and asean regional cultures (extract 13). although jack does not mention migrant students’ cultures, he discusses that thai culture should be included in english textbooks (extract 14). extract 9 helen: mostly, they provide cultural contents in terms of festivals, such as christmas and halloween, which in the thai context people may not pay much attention to. i think that those festivals are international traditions that students should know. also, food and drinks, and school life of students who have different backgrounds should be represented. extract 10 jack: there is not much cultural content. sometimes, i try to adapt other sources. i think that the cultural topics represented in the textbooks involve general topics, such as greetings. extract 11 rose: the textbooks do not provide many cultural contents. i think the textbooks provide different cartoon characters, including molly, jenny, eddy, and nick. they have different skin and hair colors. i think that eddy represents african american students. i told my students that we can be friends although we are of different races. extract 12 helen: i think cultural diversity should be added in the textbooks. they should represent different cultural contexts because english language is regarded as an international language that people use throughout the world. extract 13 rose: i think we should provide asean regional cultures in our classrooms so that the migrant students will be glad that their friends will get to know their cultures. it’s beneficial for every student. they can learn about other cultural identities and their own cultural identity as well. aseas 14(2) | 237 kulthida saemee & jaewon jane ra extract 14 jack: i think that thai cultures should be included in the textbooks, such as the famous traditions in thailand – loi krathong and songkran festivals. jack says that he is not familiar with some of the target cultures presented in the textbooks (extract 15). he gives an example of when he had to do research about a certain cultural topic in the textbook in advance so that he can explain it better during his class. helen mentions that the teachers sometimes have to skip some exercises and activities in the textbooks because they have to be done using audio cds, which are not provided (extract 16). thus, the teachers have to organize exercises and activities by themselves instead. during this part of the interview, a contradiction has been noticed by helen. helen describes that it would be better if students could practice their pronunciation by listening to native speakers’ accents (extract 16), although she is aware of the global status of english and believes that it is important to include cultural diversity in the textbooks (extract 12). extract 15 jack: sometimes, i find some cultural traditions i am not familiar with, such as easter. i have to find more information and try to understand the background of that culture beforehand. extract 16 helen: normally, we have a tv and cd player that we can use in our classrooms, but we do not have audio cds. there are lots of exercises and activities from the textbooks that require using audio cds. we don’t have them, so we have to skip it. normally, students have to practice pronunciation with a thai accent. i think that it would be better if we had audio cds. students will have a chance to learn directly from the original accent. the findings reveal that textbooks are significant factors in elt because teachers rely on them as a primary source. in summary, every participant points out that the cultural elements represented in the textbooks are inadequate and believes that the textbooks should include more cultural diversity. they suggest that textbooks should provide more cultural content and various cultural sources, such as thai and asean regional cultures. according to rose, the migrant student’s cultures – myanmar, laos, and cambodian cultures – are not presented sufficiently in the textbooks, which should be the opposite case. discussion and conclusion three thai elt teachers mainly discussed cultural content referring to products (e.g., food and drinks) and practices (e.g., greetings and traditions) when asked about the usefulness of the school’s english textbooks. the other categories of culture — perspectives, persons and places – were rarely addressed. based on the sources of cultural content, the participants pointed out that target cultures are extensively represented in the textbooks. the other sources – source cultures, asean regional cultures, asian regional cultures, international cultures, and global cultures – were rarely brought up during the interviews. furthermore, every participant suggests 238 | aseas 14(2) teachers’ perceptions of cultural content in english language textbooks that thai cultures should be integrated more into the english textbooks. one participant (rose) also emphasized the importance of including migrant students’ cultures and asean regional cultures in english textbooks, as they are used in multicultural classrooms. although the two other participants did not mention migrant students’ cultures and asean regional cultures, they believe that the textbooks should contain a variety of cultural content. hence, it appears that every participant considers cultural diversity an important element that should be incorporated into english textbooks, which would be a good start for teachers to develop their ica while also raising awareness in the elt classroom. however, when it comes to critically evaluating textbooks, the participants do not seem to have cultural diversity as a main factor in mind for selection. in other words, while they discuss the importance of including diverse cultures in english textbooks, they do not have ideas of icc and ica embedded in their criteria for textbook selection (cheewasuktahworn & suwanarak, 2017; fungchomchoei & kardkarnklai, 2016; jantadej & charuhusp, 2018). jack appears to have full confidence in the government’s criteria for his decision-making process, regardless of whether or not they contain a category related to cultural content, while rose has taken part in textbook selection mainly based on how appealing (based on colors and intensity of texts) they would be for young learners. furthermore, helen believes that it is more advantageous for students to be exposed to native speaker accents for practicing pronunciation skills. english is currently the most widely used lingua franca in the world, which means that it is shaped by a large number of non-native speakers in various multilingual and multicultural settings and local contexts (canagarajah, 2009; 2011; jenkins, 2015; pennycook, 2010). thus, it is no longer sensible for elt to be solely associated with american and british cultures. however, many english textbooks used in both private and public educational sectors in asean nations still predominately represent such anglophone cultures (e.g., syahri & susanti, 2016, thumvichit, 2018; yamada, 2010; yuen, 2011), and the english textbooks used at the school of this study were also american english coursebooks published in the us (cf. greil, 2004). this study demonstrates how elt teachers have the right to take part in modernizing teaching practices and are aware of how to adapt their lessons to make them more relevant. their role is vital in creating a culturally aware classroom environment, for enhancing students’ intercultural skills needed in the era of globalization (nomnian, 2013). although, in many cases, textbooks are used as a primary source for elt, teachers can approach them in a critical manner. teachers (and even students) should have the opportunity to evaluate and compare cultural content presented in textbooks with their own context (baker, 2011). moreover, more studies investigating cultures in english textbooks and teachers’ perceptions in asean contexts can gradually help stakeholders of elt understand the real role of english in a globalized world. modernizing and internationalizing elt in the asean region has been long overdue and it is crucial that more and more integration of local and regional cultures are taken into consideration, particularly in multicultural elt classrooms. while this study focused on teachers and their views of elt textbooks in relation to their local context, the sampling of the study was rather small and it did not take into account the development of students’ ica or their ideas pertaining to their language learning materials. thus, it would be worthwhile to continue this research aseas 14(2) | 239 kulthida saemee & jaewon jane ra with students’ perceptions of elt textbooks and possibly compare different schools and areas around the country.  references baker, w. (2011). from cultural awareness to intercultural awareness: culture in elt. elt journal, 62–70. baker, w. (2012). from cultural awareness to intercultural awareness: culture in elt. elt journal, 66(1), 62-70. baker, w. (2015). culture and complexity through english as a lingua franca: rethinking competences and pedagogy in elt. journal of english as a lingua franca, 4(1), 9-30. brewer, j. d. (2000). ethnography. open university press. byram, m. (1997). teaching and assessing intercultural communicative competence. multilingual matters. byram, m. (2012). language awareness and (critical) cultural awareness–relationships, comparisons and contrasts. language awareness, 21(1-2), 5-13. canagarajah, s. (2009). the plurilingual tradition and the english language in south asia. aila review, 22(1), 5-22. canagarajah, s. (2011). codemeshing in academic writing: identifying teachable strategies of translanguaging. the modern language journal, 95(3), 401-417. cheewasukthaworn, k., & suwanarak, h. (2017). exploring thai efl teachers’ perceptions of how intercultural communicative competence is important for their students. pasaa, 54, 177-204. cortazzi, m., & jin, l. x. (1999). cultural mirrors: materials and methods in the efl classroom. in e. hinkel (ed.), culture in second language teaching and learning (pp. 196-219). cambridge university press. dörnyei, z. (2007). research methods in applied linguistics: quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methodologies. oxford university press. fungchomchoei, s., & kardkarnklai, u. m. (2016). exploring the intercultural competence of thai secondary education teachers and its implications in english language teaching. procedia-social and behavioral sciences, 236, 240-247. greil, t. (2004). cultural representations and references in english textbooks used at secondary school in thailand: a quantitative analysis. pasaa, 35, 35-50. harrell, m. c., & bradley, m. a. 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(2019). statistics of migrant workers in thailand. https://www.doe.go.th/prd/assets/ upload/files/alien_th/52dab4165bbb5c8b3f92ad6c1fc3321d.pdf nomnian, s. (2013). thai cultural aspects in english language textbooks in a thai secondary school. veridian e-journal, 6(7), 13-30. pennycook, a. (2010). language as a local practice. routledge. richards, k. (2003). qualitative inquiry in tesol. palgrave macmillan. saemee, k., & nomnian, s. (2021a). cultural representations in elt textbooks used in a multicultural school. reflections, 2(1), 107-120. saemee, k., & nomnian, s. (2021b). diversity of cultural sources in elt activity books: a case study of a multicultural primary school in thailand. pasaa: journal of language teaching and learning in thailand, 61, 61-86. scollon, r., scollon, s. w., & jones, r. h. (2012). intercultural communication: a discourse approach (3rd ed.). wiley-blackwell. sifakis, n. c., & sougari, a. m. (2003). facing the globalisation challenge in the realm of english language teaching. language and education, 17(1), 59-71. silverman, d. (2011). interpreting qualitative data: a guide to the principles of qualitative research. sage. syahri, i., & susanti, r. (2016). an analysis of local and target culture integration in the english textbooks for senior high school in palembang. journal of education and human development, 5(2), 97-102. thumvichit, a. (2018). cultural presentation in thai secondary school elt coursebooks: an analysis from intercultural perspectives. journal of education and training studies, 6(11), 99-112. unesco institute for statistics. (2019). sdg 4 data book: global education indicators. quebec: unesco. yamada, m. (2010). english as a multicultural language: implications from a study of japan’s junior high schools’ english language textbooks. journal of multilingual and multicultural development, 31(5), 491-506. yuen, k.-m. (2011). the representation of foreign cultures in english textbooks. elt journal, 65(4), 458-466. ziaei, s. (2012). examining cross-cultural clues as to globalization and iran’s culture in an international efl book series – american english file. mediterranean journal of social science, 3(1), 141-148. zu, l., & kong, z. (2009). a study on the approaches to culture introduction in english textbooks. english language teaching, 2(1), 112-118. about the authors kulthida saemee holds a master’s degree in language and intercultural communication from the research institute for languages and cultures of asia, mahidol university. her research interests include multicultural education, english as a lingua franca, and english language teaching (elt) materials used in current elt classrooms. ► contact: kulthidasm@outlook.co.th jaewon jane ra teaches english for specific purposes /english for academic purposes at business schools in paris, france. before this, she was a lecturer in language teaching at the research institute for languages and cultures of asia, mahidol university, thailand. she holds a phd degree in applied linguistics from the university of southampton, uk, and an master’s degree in teaching english as a second language/teaching english as a foreign language from the university of birmingham, uk. her research interests include global englishes, english language teacher, english medium instruction, intercultural communiaseas 14(2) | 241 kulthida saemee & jaewon jane ra cation, internationalization of higher education, intercultural citizenship, interculturality, and translanguaging. ► contact: jaewon.ra@gmail.com aseas 12(2) | 135 durable violence in southeast asia: machinery and scale ario seto, gunnar stange, & susanne schröter ► seto, a., stange, g., & schröter, s. (2019). durable violence in southeast asia: machinery and scale. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 12(2), 135-148. on 9 october 2013, the member states of the association of southeast asian nations (asean) signed the declaration, “on the elimination of violence against women and elimination of violence against children in asean”, which was followed by a regional plan of action (rpa) issued in february 2016. the action’s very first step is to “develop asean guidelines on non-violent approaches to the nurture, care, and development of children in all settings” (asean, 2017, p. 20). the prevention program is crafted as a framework for asean nations to support the implementation of one of the united nations’ sustainable development goals which “promises to strive for a better world that is just, equitable and inclusive” (asean, 2017, p. 20). such norms have gained urgency as, despite their progress in the development of institutional democratic practices as a means to provide security, southeast asian nations are struggling to counter the cycle of violence. a year before the rpa’s publication, for example, the indonesia ulama council (majelis ulama indonesia) expressed its concern that the indonesian government has failed to ensure non-violent content even in its high-school education programs, citing an example of a textbook, “religious teaching and personality”, which justifies muslims killing the “unbeliever” (susanto, 2015). another alarming example relates to gender-based violence (gbv) with “14 percent of all women between the ages of 15 and 49 reported being raped” (the asia foundation, 2017, p. 3) in timor-leste. true (2017) finds that gbv in asia has become a persistent form of violence because of its entanglement with “the national or subnational context,” whereby structural gender inequality is embedded in the “inequality of access to resources or to public space and voice, legal discrimination in civil and family status, and societal attitudes that condone violence against women” (p. 221). this conflicting illustration marks a call to investigate the durability of rampant violence in southeast asia, where violence has become a mundane reality (arendt, 1970) of everyday life. to view violence as a prolonged and intergenerational reality that goes beyond a single disruption or some narrow temporality provides another method to observe the cycle of violence and how it emerges as a common practice. the normalcy or banality of violence could lead to a “crisis of chronicity” (vigh, 2008), which endorses asymmetrical social relationships, orders, and power, and denies every notion of democratic life (see also arendt, 1970). against this background, everyday violence hinders the realization of asean’s (2017), above-referenced goal to create a “just, equitable and inclusive” (p. 20) world. one of the weaknesses in explaining such chronicity is, as the expert on security in southeast asia, sidney jones, observes in the editorial w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 18 136 | aseas 12(2) editorial: durable violence in southeast asia context of indonesia, that activists, academics, and politicians deliver “time frames [of observation which] are too short” (stange, 2019, p. 270). responding to the shreds of evidence of chronic violence in southeast asia, this issue aims to survey how violence becomes self-generating or autopoietic. to look at how such mundane violence could be addressed, we invited scholars who have been continuously studying the durability of violence in their area of regional expertise to contribute to this issue. the six research articles and one interview article in this issue represent extensive discussions of lingering violence in southeast asia. peter kreuzer’s (2019) study on the deadly use of violence by the police in the philippines shows that although the act has taken the spotlight under president duterte’s war on drugs campaign, it is not a new phenomenon since criminal enforcement in the country has a long history of extrajudicial (deadly) use of violence by the police. helle rydstrom (2019) presents a study of chronic violence against women in vietnam, which has endured for generations to the point that members of society have begun to consider such abuse “normal”. observing islamic fundamentalist social media influencers in indonesia, ario seto (2019) argues that violent behavior is not simply sparked by discontent but is fostered by online and offline sociability of othering and bigotry. lúcio sousa’s (2019) study on the emergence of lia-na’in (master of words) as peacemakers in timor-leste describes how the state has turned to tradition and spirituality to mitigate centuries of violence while sourcing legitimacy to incite security and stability. amporn marddent’s (2019) work highlights how muslim women in thailand’s deep south have become peacemakers, while they nonetheless face the challenge of recognition, as, first, their salafi belief has been stereotyped as being inherently violent, and, second, as women’s voices are not considered to be representative in a patriarchal society. in the research workshop section, gunnar stange, patrick sakdapolrak, kwanchit sasiwongsaroj, and matthias kourek (2019) report an imbalance in academic research in the field of forced migration studies in southeast asia that could signify indifference towards how internally displaced populations are treated and further victimized in structural violence. the issue, furthermore, features an interview by gunnar stange (2019) with the jakarta based political analyst, sidney jones, on violence, religious extremism, and conflict dynamics in contemporary indonesia. as a long-term observer of indonesian politics, she warns of the dangers of “intolerant above-ground, non-clandestine organizations” (stange, 2019, p. 270) for indonesian democracy. although all the presented cases of violence are rooted in the region’s heterogeneous colonial history, the contributors to this issue highlight how contemporary violence is augmented and amplified by post-independence socio-political dynamics. by doing so, the articles reveal that historically prolonged violence, or what we call the durability of rampant violence, is subdued by the dimensions of machinery and scale. the machinery could be “actors” (kreuzer, 2019; rydstrom, 2019; seto, 2019; sousa, 2019) or “the autopoietic of violence”, which hinder peace or keep non-violent struggles from emerging (marddent, 2019; rydstrom, 2019; sousa, 2019). the articles provide a common argument that violence becomes durable because the machinery is able to preserve it at different scales and in different arenas: across national and subnational geography (kreuzer, 2019; marddent, 2019; seto 2019; sousa, 2019), in private and public sphere (marddent, 2019; rydstrom, 2019; seto, 2019), and in legal aseas 12(2) | 137 ario seto, gunnar stange, & susanne schröter and illegal practices (kreuzer, 2019; marddent, 2019). in articulating how its machinery and scale operate, this issue discusses violence in four constellations of practices and discourses: (1) when violent actors operate beyond the state’s governmentality; (2) when violence is framed within an institutionalizing discourse; (3) when violence functions to delineate, or, on the contrary, strengthen, borders, and legitimizes respective claims; and (4) when violence hinders the establishment of non-violent discourses. besides these four constellations, some articles in this issue also advise that the media has played a role in influencing both the scale of violence and how violence is observed. before we discuss how the machinery and scale of violence operate corresponding with these constellations, we will look at the importance and the current need for deeper analysis of violence in southeast asia in the next section. normalcy and chronicity of violence even democratic states with their established legal arms to steward order are not violence-proof. della porta’s (1995) rigorous study of social movements in italy and germany in the 1960s shows that violence is part of a repertoire of political action and cannot be isolated to a certain ideology; actors socialized in non-violent environments can still fall into violence. violence emerges in expressions that also advocate equal rights and peace, including left-wing movements. she contends that radical groups took advantage of the available resources in their environment to strengthen or reinforce their militancy, their decision to emphasize violence can be considered a rational choice. […] but the choice of radicalization was also a contingent development, for it depended on the supply of resources available to each particular movement’s organization: not surprisingly, the organizations that became most violent were those that lacked resources giving them access to the system (della porta, 1995, p. 198). she has also recently warned that “the availability (or lack) of material and symbolic resources affects the choice of radical repertoire” (della porta, 2018, p. 464). her work in connecting violence as radical acts to resource tapping and repertoire is helpful in invigorating observations of how violence becomes a durable problem and takes place in precipitating events and endures from time to time, including in various democratic realities. the six articles in this issue correspondingly deliver similar observations about how the problem of resources and repertoires provides the texture of the violence currently enduring in southeast asia. however, we would like to extend the thesis. we propose that in some conditions, rather than sealing off the emergence of violence, the opening to democracy and the emerging economic stability have offered new arenas of resource tapping and have allowed engineered violent confrontations to manifest out of cleavages that were tempered by previous authoritarian rule (e.g., stange & patock, 2010). in this context, resources play a role not because of their scarcity, but because of their availability. the growth of ethnocentric paramilitary groups and radical islamists in southeast asia (hadiz, 2016; wilson, 2010) are two fitting examples of such violence, particularly when violence has become a common 138 | aseas 12(2) editorial: durable violence in southeast asia repertoire of action, which both the state and non-state actors engage to secure their political power as a means to accrue available resources. in this setting, evolving violence cannot be confined simply by empowering the state’s agency of policing to maintain order, since, in some cases, the state and state actors are part of the competing groups seeking to secure the resource (e.g., böhmelt, bove, & gleditsch, 2019; unhcr, 2018). the normalcy and chronicity of violence are sustained by the emerging ideology of development, through which the state regularly imposes indisputable security to maintain order to create political stability. located between china and india, southeast asia is home to the world’s fastest-growing economies, such as cambodia, vietnam, laos, the philippines, and indonesia (oecd, 2019). a consequence of such economic development has been the introduction of cultural policies that are imagined to ensure national security and productivity, such as vietnam’s đổi mới (renovation) policy, indonesia’s pembangunan (development) credo, and thailand’s national culture act. in these policies, economic development has become a prominent orientation, if not an ideology, for state actors to incite expeditious stability rather than creating a laborious public sphere. the cultural program therefore often asserts nationalist sentiments and unity as the moral resources of stability and the nation’s betterment. this is where violence as a repertoire comes into play, as the state enacts strong policing to maintain order. in nonaggressive circumstances, power organizes people to internalize certain norms, such as how to be submissive to the government in the name of national unity, which is also enforced by the law and institutions of justice. any dissatisfaction, then, is suppressed within normalcy or, as foucault (1978) describes it, “a normalizing society is the historical outcome of a technology of power centered on life” (p. 144). such developments provide a new opportunity to investigate the ‘old’ violence beyond its colonial history (e.g., van klinken, 2007; scheper-hughes & bourgois, 2004). we believe that most cases of violence discussed in the articles of this issue render a postcolonial problem. however, we would like to add complexity by arguing that these nation-states have the agency to come to terms with their colonial pasts, practices, and repertoires of violence. take the philippines as an example: boyce (1993, p. 131) examines that development strategies crafted during the marcos era were unsustainable and created larger social gaps, such as landlordism as a product of problematic land rights, which are prone to armed violence conducted by local entrepreneurs. in indonesia, suharto’s developmentalist regime imposed a military approach to suppress discontent in aceh, papua, and east timor (mcgibbon, 2004). investigating the state’s relation and response to durable violence, then, involves a deeper view of how these policies influence the local historical contexts and current political contestation or discontent. van klinken (2007) argues that such examinations not only require continuous observation of political dynamics, but also cultural changes. assessing the communal violence in the moluccas in the early 2000s, he exemplifies that violence and conflicts in the global south appear to be different than their counterparts in the global north where the presence of the state and policing mechanism is more pronounced. van klinken (2007, pp. 9-10) warns that violence is not simply ideologically driven, but that contesting actors are entangled in “a struggle for power in a political system structured along lines of personal relationships rather aseas 12(2) | 139 ario seto, gunnar stange, & susanne schröter than formal rules” (p. 136). they are entangled in a historical patron-client loyalty rather than emancipatory expression, where they act opportunistically, rely on rumors rather than verified news, and have – to some degree – a relationship with state institutions. in such settings, violence becomes a lateral common reality for fostering state-building, as violence remains a powerful repertoire, both as the language of contestation and as that of the traditional relationships that configure social relations between actors and interest groups in southeast asian countries. accordingly, violence transcends the emergence of the modern state. these actors also understand the notion of crisis differently than those in western states. as van klinken (2007) describes, “even in the midst of such security crises, many people were still conducting politics as usual, albeit in crisis mode and of a kind considered patently abnormal in the west” (p. 10). veena das (2004) shares a similar observation in her study on the indian state and extraordinary events, such as periods of communal violence. she finds that although violence as an event has ceased, the language of violence transcends the episode into the quotidian everyday life, while on the other hand, everyday life encounters provide the texture of violence. das (2004), therefore, calls attention to the normalcy of violence as a durable reality. the presence of violence in everyday life is not simply a matter of practice, but also a subject of institutionalization. based on their research on hindu-muslim violence and riots in a slum in mumbai, chatterji, and mehta (2007) argue that the experience of violence as a “normalcy” is formed through patterns of state and institutional governance. this includes, among other practices, establishing government commissions to investigate the riots, the documentation of the riots in official narratives, the remaking of slum spaces, crafting redevelopment programs, and inviting other non-governmental actors, such as ngos and civil society organization, to participate in these processes. with the rising complexity of rehabilitating everyday life, members of the community eventually lose their agency, which leads to another form of structural violence. while strong administrative states, such as those in the global north, are trained to confine violence, asean states’ historical approach to violence appears to be rather one of indifference in the six cases presented here. thus, when violence becomes an intergenerational reality, the question remains: how do southeast asians manage to live with it? violent actors and the state the conditions of abnormality and normalcy have been important dimensions for discussions of violence since they have been related to how the state, regime, or authoritative class governs or controls the population. while modern states are expected to regulate the control of law and order, it is never the case that it has the full control of order (e.g., tilly, 2003) and engenders a situation where the state confines its power to governmentality or to the authoritative legitimation of control (foucault, 1991). foucault (1991) asserts that, through its government, the administrative state takes on a posture of “apparatuses of security” (p. 102), which control social and political institutions to establish order and to avoid violence. yet, the rise of democracy and the administrative state does not eliminate violence. on the other hand, mbembe (2003) and rojas-perez (2017) underscore that the reign of governmentality 140 | aseas 12(2) editorial: durable violence in southeast asia has consolidated power, which shapes “necropolitics” – the use of social and political power to dictate how some people may live and how some must die (mbembe, 2003) – where the state dominates individuals’ legitimate decision-making. in a totalitarian state, the state’s control of its citizens’ lives is utterly decisive, whereby those deemed to threaten the state’s policy or ideology will be systematically incarcerated and their living conditions reduced to “bare life” (agamben, 2005). in other state formations, state control takes shape in the state’s power to cancel a person’s citizenship, and, thus, their administrative identity, to marginalize minorities to those deemed to be unfit for the majority, such as lgbtq+ groups in many countries. at large, bourdieu (1992) contends that, when violence is suspended, the relationship between the state and its citizens, or between the ruling class and the commons, remains volatile since the latter is organized within a cultural arrangement – “pact of symbolic nonaggression” (p. 145) – or dominated and legitimized by the first through “symbolic violence” (pp. 145, 167). the contributions to this special issue provide evidence that extend these mentioned studies, showing how violence is durable because of its scaling ability to transcend the state-citizen boundary through which the actors involved have the capacity to operate beyond the state or the state’s legal system. there are some patterns in how this could be observed. the first relates to cases in which the actors represent the state, or are part of the state machinery, and obtain the legal justification to define the action as the “zone of exception” (agamben 2003). an exemplary case in this regard is kreuzer’s (2019) article, which depicts how the armed forces of the philippines (afp) and the philippine national police (pnp) have the authority to shoot and kill suspected drug dealers and users as well as other crime suspects. although the state has denounced extrajudicial killings, president duterte’s drug war campaign and the 2016 davao city bombing created the opportunity for the president to issue proclamation no. 55 and memorandum order no. 3 released on 7 september 2016 on “violence suppression” leading to the legal approval of the use of deadly force in cases of suspected crime (kerrigan, 2017, p. 423). the availability of legal sources to prevent, or, on the contrary, to endure violence is decisive in shaping the actions of violent actors in the zone of exception. marddent (2019) provides a case where violence endures in thailand’s deep south because the non-violence values of the united nations security council resolution (unscr) 1325, which are being practiced by various actors including the state itself, is not accommodated in the new security policy. although the state recognizes the role of unscr 1325 as a guideline to enforce peacebuilding, the military – as an element of the state – seems to be indifferent, upholding its own prescription of security, which centers on the use of force and, ultimately, the use of violence as a means of conflict management. the second pattern of beyondness appears when attempts to counter violence are problematic because the actions are considered social practices and the violent situation is not recognized as an abnormality. rydstrom’s (2019) work, for example, problematizes how violence against women in vietnam is a chronic practice that is justified by a cultural understanding of men’s “hot temper”, even though the state has clearly stated its intent to eradicate the “social evil”. similarly, seto (2019) concludes that online hate speech and othering messages produced by indonesian islamic fundamentalists are difficult to counter since the prosecution of religiously justified aseas 12(2) | 141 ario seto, gunnar stange, & susanne schröter expressions such as those would be considered “anti-islam” by the masses. one of the consequences of the conditions in which violence could operate beyond the state is that the state has lost, to some degree, its legitimacy to govern. with the enduring rampant violence and public distrust of the state apparatus in timor-leste, sousa (2019) exemplifies that, instead of applying formal legal procedures, customary law might help to foster the emergence of a non-violent environment. in such an example, the state apparatus does not have the power to follow up the legal case, for example against a cattle thief, as his ethnographic description shows. even when the state is present and equipped with institutions to counter violence, violence might emerge as unintended consequences beyond its control. the contribution of stange et al. (2019) highlights that, although internal displacement represents by far a larger challenge than cross-border displacement in southeast asia, scholarly attention in the past five years has mainly focused on the latter. protracted crises as well as reoccurring natural disasters in the region, and their oftentimes short-lived repeated presence in the media, might just be another example of how structural violence can become a “normalcy”. the cases in this issue do not imply that violent actors are above the law, but problematize how state action is bounded by normative orders beyond the state’s authority to govern. in this context, although the work of foucault (1991) and mbembe (2003) are helpful in identifying how the state responds to violence, the contributions exemplify that there are practices, or enduring mechanisms, such as the public acceptance of violence or discrepancy in terms of how victims are treated, that operate beyond the state. sousa’s (2019) work in this issue provides a critical case whereby the state, incapable of establishing an effective politics of reconciliation, has turned to the ritual of the sacred world to achieve legitimacy for its peacebuilding. violence framed within an institutionalizing discourse the aforementioned enduring mechanism is related to how violence can become an everyday life normalcy, if not ritualized. kreuzer (2019) shows that police officers’ deadly use of force in election years seems to decline because they are busy preventing election violence. ironically, it is through these elections that politicians who support, or are reluctant to end, the use of deadly force are elected. the relationship between violence and political cycles also emerges in sousa’s (2019) work. his case shows an example of how, after centuries of violence and obscure frictions between political factions, the legal discourse of peacebuilding might disappear from the repertoire of peacebuilding entirely. the difficulty associated with fostering non-violence is, in some cases, the result of the embeddedness of violence in the regularizing practice. rydstrom (2019) describes that even vietnamese women, who are within the same cohort group of the victims, do not perceive male violence against women as an anomaly. rydstrom’s (2019) interlocutors explained that physical abuse against women is normalized within the male-female cosmology where women are expected to show feminine qualities of calm and indulgence to the adversity. expressing an objection to domestic abuse could lead to a condition where society, even the same gender group, blames the victim. in one case, she exemplifies the experience of a victim who is blamed by 142 | aseas 12(2) editorial: durable violence in southeast asia other women for inciting marital violence, as she had complained about her husband and was thereby perceived to have provoked him. similarly, seto (2019) shows that islamic-fundamentalist violence in public space is a stick-and-carrot action to solicit religious obedience from fellow muslims, who are rather relaxed in practicing islam. in thailand, marddent (2019) depicts that bureaucratic complexity has been unable to change the military understanding of security. in this notion of physical and armed “security”, peace has been confined to the presence and absence of gunshots, instead of order and non-violence. on the other hand, from the perspective of the dissidents, the regularizing practice of violence is embedded in the actualization of identity, as violence is perceived to be a necessary performance to counter the buddhist central government’s oppressive assimilation policy. scheper-hughes (2008) suggests that these cycles of violence represent a “continuum of violence”, which denotes the interconnectedness of all forms of violence and can also lead to the emergence of “extraordinary violence that is authorized, public, visible, and rewarded” (p. 81). in this continuum, the affected societies understand the normalcy of violence within a register of institutionalizing discourses: violence is placed within rudimentary notions of security (marddent, 2019), armed encounters (kreuzer, 2019), displacement (stange et.al, 2019), forces of cosmology (dương-âm, yang and yin in chinese, rydstrom, 2019), and within the religious discipline necessary to prevent evil (seto, 2019). accordingly, the emergence of a new order that could establish non-violent values would first need to contest these discourses. marddent (2019) exemplifies that while the state has failed in securing the ecology of non-violence, grassroots women’s movements rely on salafi discourses to provide applicable methods of peace. yet, they remain at the periphery of peacebuilding efforts since salafism is generally viewed as a violent discourse. her case is therefore indicative of a stuck-in-the moment episode, in which peacebuilding actors struggle to gain recognition of their value in the negotiations. this presents a double-edged problem. first, the common perspective is that islamic communities in thailand’s deep south, which includes the peacebuilding actors, are the usual suspects in the region’s uprising. the recognition of salafi actors as peacemakers will tarnish this common knowledge and alter the historical record that the thai muslim community is a violent rebellious group – a political stance that is problematic for the thai government and its military, whose memory glorifies the fallen soldiers in the region. moreover, international ngos in the region would also need to shift their understanding beyond global notions of salafism as a threat to democracy if salafi actors are to be welcomed into the peacebuilding discourse. second, if muslim women’s voices are to be included, they would first need to be accepted within the patriarchal society. an exemplary disruptive method to end the cycle of violence emerges from sousa’s (2019) work in timor-leste. since the nation has been in a constant state of violence stemming from 400 years of portuguese colonialization, 25 years of indonesian occupation, and early-independence civil conflicts, political elites have partly delegitimized politicians’ historical accounts and have turned towards ruralbased narratives. in this peacebuilding endeavor, the traditional leader lia na`in plays the role as the personification of peacebuilding to deliver an oral history of the young nation. in that way, the political elites are also able to present a party that is less aseas 12(2) | 143 ario seto, gunnar stange, & susanne schröter entangled with the nation’s violent history. yet, he posits this new development carefully against the background of concerns about whether the lia na`in’s presence in state ceremonies has become a performative ritual (spiritual discourse), rather than an institutionalization of reconciliation. borders and claims the two previous constellations, namely the matters of beyondness and institutionalizing discourse, are related to the borders of social boundaries. as mentioned earlier, democratic opening and economic growth are often viewed as factors that help to secure development. as economic growth persists regardless of the lingering violence, there is no urgency from the state to provide comprehensive non-violent solutions to overcome discontent. this problem is well annunciated in the articles where violence takes place between those juxtaposed in social boundaries, such as the relationship between center and periphery (marddent, 2019), against a minority or marginalized group (marddent, 2019; rydstrom, 2019), and political groups (kreuzer, 2019; seto, 2019; sousa, 2019). in these boundaries, violence takes place because a group of actors can initiate claims to denounce the recognition toward others. claims are important to frame the act of violence. seto’s (2019) article shows that declarations of war could be enacted by fundamentalist muslims upholding a physical “jihad” ideology, which is perceived as their operable definition of war against fellow citizens who deviate from scriptural religious norms. the insurgencies in thailand’s deep south also exemplify similar patterns; while the locals view their actions as political expressions of social justice and identity, the center views the actions as violent contestations of national integrity. even in a country where its political geography and ethnic diversity are relatively small, such as timor-leste, violence could emerge among groups with virtual rather than actual distinctions as sousa (2019) exemplifies with the conflicts between east timorese westerners and east timorese easterners. every state-building project offers an arena for the struggle of recognition. accordingly, any democratic opening provides the affordance for the ontological problem of conflict. anthony giddens (1987) examines the nation-state as a “bordered power container”, the boundaries of which mark not only administrative provisions but also entails the authority to govern power which includes the capacity for waging war, extracting resources, policing deviance, maintaining legitimacy, and pacifying the state. such a view of power is, however, a slippery slope since the nation is a topdown bracket of diversity. thus, the nation has an enduring tension between identity and discontent. in this setting, claims of justified violence are used to enact identity with which the declaration of conflict or war, as a claim of defending something rightful, has become a legal justification rather than an action of total control which exerts power as giddens (1987) had hoped. such conflicts also render the tensions between the center and the periphery. this can range from the belief that the central government is failing to recognize the periphery’s needs or to ensure the equal distribution of wealth or power, as the contributions by marddent (2019) and sousa (2019) show. it is often the case that the center simply views violence as a problem of identity, rather than of social justice. in 144 | aseas 12(2) editorial: durable violence in southeast asia such cases, the center only appraises social issues under the guise of whether they might hamper economic development. to note, although not discussed in this issue, such chronic violence also can be found in indonesia’s papua provinces and in the case of the rohingya in myanmar. prolonged conflicts preserve contentious politics where the conflicts also show how violence can become a currency (e.g., liow, 2016; mccargo, 2014). while the centers urge national stability to create an environment conducive to economic development, resistance and liberation movements in the periphery view that it is only from severe violence that they can create leverage for their demands. the reaction to this is often a military solution that will only increase the severity of violence (marddent, 2019). when claims of a right to violence cannot be broken, it risks prolonging the act of violence in other forms of violence. kreuzer’s (2019) research finds that the lethality levels of police departments’ use of deadly force were evident during the pre-duterte period as well as during his presidency. yet, through his rhetoric on the war on drugs, duterte has gained a certain political spotlight, which helped him win the campaign (curato, 2017). from her interviews, marddent (2019) found that local malay muslims view armed violence as a “security industry.” this is exemplified in this issue’s interview with sidney jones (stange, 2019) and her criticism of the indonesian government’s single-sided development approach to conflict management in papua, which she contends has led to a deep entrenchment of structural violence in the region. such settings provide violent actors with the possibility to control the scale and spatiality of violence. the risk, then, is a rollback of the pro-democratic progress that can be observed in southeast asia in recent years. at the same time, such processes of accumulation have convoluted the goal of enacting violence. along the course of prolonged violence, actions follow various trajectories and goals are adjusted. in such settings, violence becomes a practice rather than deviant behavior, posing the risk of becoming a collective mundane experience as previously discussed. this view is an invitation to contest riches’ (1986) argument, which laments that violent actors always have choices, as they have chosen the conduct for they have calculated that it would be advantageous in dealing with the opponent. emerging nation-states have been pacified by the opening of democracy. yet, there are practices that are retained within their political regularities that prevent the total emergence of a non-violent environment. peacebuilding and its discourses of origin the durability of violence impacts the creation of non-violent initiatives. when the state and its legal system displays its weakness in delivering non-violent spaces, non-violent spaces might emerge unexpectedly from below as the contributions by rydstrom (2019), marddent (2019), and sousa (2019) show. rydstrom (2019) underlines that there is a connection between the effective local movement of “say no to violence” (nói không với bạo lực) in vietnam to the larger global initiative of “say no – unite to end violence against women” sponsored by the un. in the case of peacebuilding in thailand’s deep south, marddent (2019) depicts that salafism, as a global religious discourse, has played a role in inciting one of the most effective approaches to peacebuilding. she acknowledges that salafi actors have initiated education circles aseas 12(2) | 145 ario seto, gunnar stange, & susanne schröter to teach “spiritual healing” in mainstreaming life-security discourses. spirituality also appears in sousa’s (2019) work. while the timorese doubt the state’s historical narrative because of its victors’ bias, it turns to the lia-na’in, the guardian of the sacred houses in the mountains, as a source of legitimacy in recounting the history of the nation, even though the latter hardly appeared as an authority on the national scale in the history of timor-leste. these three anthropological works advise that peacebuilding requires a convincing discourse of origin. in marddent’s (2019) and sousa’s (2019) cases, spirituality becomes convincing because the people have witnessed that the “rational” governmental approach to violence has not been working for decades. and when it does work, it simply delivers the status quo. marddent’s (2019) interlocutors believe that the islamic notion of patience (sabr) provides a practice that is helpful for ending the cycle of violence because it is a practice to find inner peace. in timor-leste, lia na`in’s blessing is viewed as a spiritual union of the nation and its ancestors and “represents a unity between the people and the politicians as the personification of the state in the post-conflict nation” (sousa, 2019 p. 218). in these cases, the spirit overcomes political differences. while malay muslims in thailand and the timorese seek out non-violent practices through their cosmologies, vietnamese women did the opposite as their cosmology normalizes violence against women. in search of security, they sourced their narrative from global awareness movements. the effort to end violence against women became a convincing public discourse not simply because local women had demanded it, but because it found support in massive efforts from local organizations and ngos along with the global #metoo movement to recognize the problem (rydstrom, 2019). different from the previously mentioned discourses of peacebuilding, the work of stange et al. (2019) shows that those who are displaced by natural disasters often only gain national, and not international, attention because natural disasters are often considered a national problem with the victims ‘only’ internally displaced. by contrast, refugees classified as asylum seekers and stateless persons gain more academic attention because their mobility concerns at least two states. media most of the articles in this issue address the role that media has played in the creation of violence and non-violent initiatives. as mentioned earlier, the national awareness to end abuse against women in vietnam has seized on the crucial momentum of the #metoo movement (rydstrom, 2019). sousa (2019) also notes that media has a certain interest in covering official ceremonies, such as with dada ikas (withdrawing the oath) and loke dalan (opening the way), when lia na`in are present. on the contrary, seto (2019) presents a case that digital media becomes a useful scape for indonesian islamic fundamentalists to encroach on public space and to gain new followers. it is exactly because of the circulation of problematic online content, such as bigotry and hate speech, that the islamists could defeat the christian incumbent in jakarta’s gubernatorial election, even though the latter was predicted to win. the outstanding work of kreuzer (2019) in this issue demonstrates that the role of media is not confined to the representation of actors, but as the source of verifiable 146 | aseas 12(2) editorial: durable violence in southeast asia quantitative data. since the state does not provide credible data, he mined reports of the use of deadly force by police from various news sites. with such a rich data set, he imposes that violence should be measured to observe its intensity and its lethality. in one of his findings, he exemplifies that “given a large number of armed encounters, the absence or extraordinarily low numbers of killed or wounded police-officers, signals [actually] excessive violence” (kreuzer, 2019, p. 153). conclusion throughout the articles in this issue, we seek to reconstruct the current contours of violence in southeast asia. the articles in these issues advise that durable violence operates through machinery, may that be through the state apparatus (kreuzer, 2019; marddent, 2019), (legal) discourse (kreuzer, 2019; marddent, 2019; stange et al., 2019), cultural praxis (rydstrom, 2019), or unresolved frictions of civil groups (seto, 2019; sousa, 2019). these machineries operate in certain constellations through which violence could be reproduced as repertoires and a problem of resources. thus, violence could be studied through inquiries that focus on: (1) questions of how violence creates new opportunities in institutionalizing movements and networks; (2) how violence is institutionalized; (3) the transferability of ideologies and violent discourses across spatial and temporal boundaries; (4) the weakness of civil society; (5) the ambiguous role of the state; and (6) the precarious transformations that transpire when political orders are being contested. it is against the background of durability that questions about the scale and transferability of violence emerges, which requires investigations of the stewardship of local culture, institution, and power. this issue, therefore, seeks to initiate a discussion of how violence operates on different scales through possible machinery. violence in this context is not simply an outcome of tension but a mechanism that actors and organizations deploy to stabilize their struggles, which eventually makes peacebuilding or democratic projects volatile.  references agamben, g. 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(2018). rohingya emergency. retrieved from http:// www.unhcr.org/rohingya-emergency.html van klinken, g. (2007). communal violence and democratization in indonesia: small town wars. abingdon: routledge. vigh, h. (2008). crisis and chronicity: anthropological perspectives on continuous conflict and decline. ethnos, 73(1), 5-24. wilson,  i. (2010). the rise and fall of political gangsters in indonesian democracy. in e. aspinall, & m. mietzner (eds.), problems of democratization in indonesia: elections, institutions and society (pp. 199–218). singapore: iseas-yusof ishak institute.  about the authors ario seto is a postdoctoral researcher and media anthropologist at the collaborative research center “discourses of weakness and resource regimes,” goethe university frankfurt, germany. his recent book netizenship: activism and online community transformation in indonesia (palgrave macmillan, 2017) details the disciplining practices and ethics in shaping militant netizens. ► contact: seto@em.uni-frankfurt.de gunnar stange is a post-doctoral researcher in the research group population geography and demography at the department of geography and regional research, university of vienna, austria. his research interests include peace and conflict studies, development studies, and forced migration studies. his regional focus is on southeast asia. ► contact: gunnar.stange@univie.ac.at susanne schröter is a professor at the department of social and cultural anthropology at the goethe university frankfurt, germany, and founder as well as director of the frankfurt research center on global islam. she is also a principal investigator at the cluster of excellence “the formation of normative orders”. her research interests include political islam, islamic extremism, the transformation of gender orders, and religious, political, and ethnic conflicts. ► contact: s.schroeter@em.uni-frankfurt.de acknowledgements this issue was funded by the german research foundation (deutsche forschungsgemeinschaft) as part of the funding for the collaborative research center 1095 “discourses of weakness and resource regimes”, goethe university frankfurt, germany. the editors would like to thank macario lacbawan jr., janine murphy, katja rieck, karl valent, the editorial board of aseas as well as the anonymous reviewers for their highly valuable contributions to this issue. aseas 15(1) | 1 editorial dayana lengauera , alexander truppb & richard s. aquinoc a austrian academy of sciences, austria; b sunway university, malaysia; c university of canterbury, new zealand ► lengauer, d., trupp, a., & aquino, r. s. (2022). editorial. advances in southeast asian studies, 15(1), 1-4. aseas 15(1) launches the first issue of the journal under its new title, advances in southeast asian studies. since its inaugural issue, which was published 15 years ago in 2008, aseas has promoted the emancipation of knowledge and thematic pluralism in southeast asian studies through an open-access and free of paywalls publishing system (gerstl & schweitzer, 2008). issued by the society for south-east asian studies (seas), based in vienna, aseas initially published in german (and english), and primarily attracted submissions from germanspeaking scholars based in austria and germany who worked on southeast asia from different disciplinary angles. over the years, the authorship and readership of aseas has transformed significantly and now represents a truly global audience. indexed in scopus under the general social sciences since 2015, aseas is now ranked in additional subject categories, reflecting the journal’s interdisciplinary orientation within the social sciences (table 1). aseas continues to critically discuss and examine a variety of issues in the fields of cultural and social anthropology, communication, development, geography, cultural studies, regional studies, politics, and tourism, from both historical and contemporary perspectives. we thus believe that the new journal name advances in southeast asian studies provides a more apt description of the contributions in aseas. category rank percentile social sciences – anthropology #67/443 84th social sciences – communication #135/467 71st social sciences – general social science #80/264 69th social sciences – development #111/287 61st social sciences – geography, planning and development #295/747 60th business, management and accounting – tourism, leisure and hospitality management #80/137 41st aseas 15(1) features a thematically open collection of contributions covering legal issues, historical discourses, and contemporary developments in the region. drawn from various perspectives, the contributions scrutinize legal regulations, such as on the placement and protection of indonesian migrant workers and on editorial w w w .s ea s. at 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 70 table 1. aseas scopus citescore categories and ranking 2021. (https://www.scopus.com/ sourceid/21100405571) https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0731-5975 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6189-9078 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1093-2824 https://www.scopus.com/sourceid/21100405571 https://www.scopus.com/sourceid/21100405571 2 | aseas 15(1) editorial agricultural land appropriation in vietnam, provide gendered analysis on knowledge production, and examine prospects of poverty alleviation of low-income households in indonesia and remote fishing communities in the philippines. annisa ayuningtyas and mailinda eka yuniza investigate the constitutional justification of the latest law on the protection of indonesian migrant workers, law 18/2017. this legislation allows the state to intervene in the management of indonesian migrant workers’ remittances. while emphasizing that the indonesian constitution is an economic constitution, the authors indicate that there is insufficient constitutional basis for the state intervention in the allocation of human resources. hence, their main argument is that government intervention in the management of remittances is not constitutionally justified. as the authors indicate, additional tension arises in relation to the private nature of migrant workers’ remittances and their significance as a component of national income. by making constitutional and administrative laws their main object of discussion, the authors not only evade general skepticism regarding the justification of the government’s intervention, but also contribute to other studies of migrant workers’ remittances by employing a constitutional and administrative legal perspective. the strength of the paper lies in the analysis and interpretation of different legal documents on the placement and protection of indonesian migrant workers abroad. in the background of numerous studies pointing at the positive effects of conditional cash transfers (ccts), agus heruanto hadna and media wahyudi askar analyze the impact of ccts on low-income households in indonesia through a case study based on some of the poorest districts of yogyakarta. they focus on the family hope program (program keluarga harapan [pkh]), which had been shown to positively impact per capita expenditures. by assessing households’ consumption expenditures, the authors discover that the current cct design in indonesia benefits recipients disproportionally resulting in further inequality among households situated in the lowest section of the wealth ladder. their examination of the distribution of consumption expenditures casts new insights into why ccts do not automatically reduce poverty. in response to studies that point at gender disparities in terms of knowledge production in the disciplinary fields of political sciences and international relations in western contexts, ella prihatini and wendy prajuli scrutinize the publication and authorship patterns in international relations journals published in indonesia, exploring similar tendencies in a non-western context. in indonesia, as the authors indicate, the space of women’s professorship in the discipline of international relations is marginal, with only two women holding a professorship in about 70 international relations departments in 2021. by analyzing bibliographic data of 783 published journal articles, the authors find that men outnumber women in terms of publishing. they also discover a certain level of gender bias in co-authorship, which additionally limits women’s performance. indonesian women scholars share with their male colleagues a high interest in themes such as security, military, and governance, which indicates that certain sub-fields of the discipline would stimulate a mixed-gendered co-authorship, but also render existing competition stronger. in the last current research contribution with a focus on indonesia, muhammad yuanda zara takes us back to the foundation of the indonesian state, more concretely aseas 15(1) | 3 dayana lengauer, alexander trupp & richard s. aquino to the period between 1945 and 1947, and the incorporation of indo-europeans as ‘new citizens’ into an ‘indigenous state’. by employing a historical discourse analysis, zara explores how indonesian nationalists publicly imagined, framed, and persuaded indo-europeans of their place in the emerging nation. the author shows a systematic attempt to ‘attract’ indo-europeans to become part of an indonesian multicultural nation, which stands in stark contrast to earlier studies emphasizing acts of violence by the native militia towards indo-europeans during the dutch-indonesian war. the author interprets the attempt of indonesian nationalists to integrate indo-europeans in the new state in the light of their aspirations to construct an indonesian identity that spans the multi-ethnic archipelago. convincing support for this argument comes from the extensive review of public documents, including newspaper articles and opinions, but also propaganda booklets, such as the one issued by one of indonesia’s founding leaders and first prime minister, sutan sjahrir. still in archipelagic southeast asia, brooke a. porter, mark b. orams, michael lück and enrico maria andreini present a qualitative exploration of gleaning by-products in tourism supply chains in remote filipino fishing communities. combining their respective expertise in conservation, development, and tourism, the authors indicate potential opportunities for small-scale revenues from the sale of discarded shells in four remote fishing communities sharing certain levels of poverty. by adopting supply chain theory and qualitative interviews as a method of inquiry, the authors investigate the post-consumption use of shells and discover gaps in the supply chain that impede the transition of ‘waste’ shells into souvenir products that have become part of consumptive tourism in many coastal destinations. in line with earlier publications focusing on community-based tourism, local businesses, and sustainable development (trupp & dolezal, 2020), this article discusses its findings in the light of tourism development and poverty alleviation through souvenir production. moving to mainland southeast asia, tran tuan nguyen and gábor hegedűs scrutinize land appropriation in vietnam under the land law 2013 by investigating the project of vsip, situated in the province of nghe an, through a survey of officials and affected land users. a review of the legal system of land laws in vietnam since 1986 is complemented with farmers’ opinions in one particular commune. the authors, hence, juxtapose legal regulations on agricultural land appropriation and their implementation to acquire agricultural land-use rights from the perspective of the affected households, showing that it is mostly the indirectly affected households that utter a dissatisfaction with the procedures of land acquisition. the government, however, has no satisfying compensation for households with adjacent farmland, leaving conditions of inequality between directly and indirectly affected families unsettled. in an interview with suhono harso supangkat – professor of information technologies at the bandung institute of technology (itb) and leader of the smart city and community innovation center – arif budy pratama questions the notion of the ‘smart city’ and its apparent equivalence with the operation of information technologies to solve urban problems. being involved in the indonesian government’s project to develop smart cities since 2007, supangkat explains top-down propensity towards information technologies while stressing the importance of ‘smart’ resource management to improve urban quality of life and sustainability. 4 | aseas 15(1) editorial in the last section of this issue, william n. holden contributes a timely review of vicente l. rafael’s recently published monograph, the sovereign trickster: death and laughter in the age of duterte (2022), as the philippines sees the exit of president rodrigo r. duterte as this editorial is being written. in his critical review, holden points to the strength of rafael’s work in his explanation of duterte’s war on drugs by looking at the relationship between life and death – two concepts that run as a red thread throughout the book. finally, the aseas editorial board would like to express their gratitude to vissia ita yulianto, muhadi sugiono, and hakimul ikhwan for their editorial assistance, and universitas gadjah mada, indonesia for the financial support in this issue. the editorial board also thank the contributors, anonymous reviewers, and readers for continuously supporting the journal.  references gerstl, a., & schweitzer, e. (2008). südostasienwissenschaften publizieren: open-access, thematischer pluralismus, internationalität. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 1(1), 1–3. trupp, a., & dolezal, c. (2020). tourism and the sustainable development goals in southeast asia. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 13(1), 1–16. aseas 14(2) | 243 stakeholders’ insights into migrant students’ experiences in a thai public school: a linguistic ecological perspective chutiwan rueangdeja & singhanat nomniana a mahidol university, thailand ► rueangdej, c., & nomnian, s. (2021). stakeholders’ insights into migrant students’ experiences in a thai public school: a linguistic ecological perspective. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 14(2), 243-266. migrant students have been increasing in thai public schools due to their parents’ labor mobility within the asean community. there are, however, gaps concerning roles and responsibilities of educational stakeholders and migrant parents who are key to the migrant students’ access and equity in schools. this case study aims to explore stakeholders’ insights into learning experiences of migrant students from lao pdr, myanmar, and cambodia in language classes at one thai government primary school in samut sakhon province. drawing upon a lens of linguistic ecology, the results reveal that these key stakeholders were interrelated and influential to the migrant students’ learning experience in this linguistically and culturally diverse school. the school administrators and teachers were instrumental in promoting a positive language learning experience for migrant students, who contributed cultural and linguistic diversity to the school environment although they had poor academic performance due to their limited thai proficiency. communications between the school and migrant parents were not effective because of parents’ language barriers. professional learning communities (plc) and school-family-community (sfc) partnerships should be established in order to provide better language teaching and learning experiences for the migrant students and create an inclusive and equitable education for all. these partnerships can be strengthened through the promotion of recognition and awareness raising of linguistic and cultural diversity. this study can potentially address the significant collaboration and engagement from relevant stakeholders, communities, and policymakers to promote harmony, inclusivity, and quality education for migrant students in public schools in thailand. keywords: linguistic ecology; migrant students; professional learning community (plc); school-family-community (sfc) partnership; thai public school  introduction due to the rise of linguistic and cultural diversity in educational contexts in thailand, migrant students in thai public schools have increasingly encountered academic and social challenges (nomnian, 2009a; 2009b; nomnian & arphattananon, 2018a, 2018b). thai schools have recently become linguistically and culturally diverse as a result of the labor mobility and migration of the asean economic community (aec). thailand has played a major role in the aec by promoting long-term socioeconomic development and protection of aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 57 244 | aseas 14(2) stakeholders’ insights into migrant students’ experiences in a thai public school human rights of foreign laborers, particularly those from neighboring, least-developed countries including laos, cambodia, and myanmar, whose labor forces have been rising in various sectors and industries (kampan & tanielien, 2017; phumpho & nomnian, 2019). according to olivier (2018), thailand has a range of bilateral labor agreements/mous that allow four-year employment with a 30-day interim period for cambodian, lao, myanmar, and vietnamese workers who are predominantly employed in low-skilled jobs, such as fishing, agriculture, construction, manufacturing, domestic work, and other services. as a result of the increasing number of migrant workers in thailand, there has been an increasing number of migrant children attending thai public schools (petchot, 2014). as of july 2005, the thai government’s educational policy permits migrant children to study in thai public schools for free (arphattananon, 2012). despite the inclusion of migrant children in the thai government’s “education for all” policy, the statistical data regarding the proportion of these children enrolled in schools and their educational attainments are still unclear and questionable (nawarat, 2019). according to michael and trines (2018), inequity and inequality of access in thai education are linked to socio-economic factors; in particular, those in poor, remote areas, linguistic and ethnic minorities, and migrant communities have markedly lower enrollment and graduation rates (particularly at the upper secondary level) compared to the population as a whole. education gaps exist between urban/large and rural/small schools, especially as the latter are ones that may suffer from the lack of fundamental infrastructure, budget allocation, preparation, and support from the ministry of education (moe) (haruthaithanasan, 2018; nomnian & arphattananon, 2018a, 2018b). drawing upon the “proposals for the second decade of education reform (2009– 2018)” provided by thailand’s office of the education council (2009), one of the figure 1. number of permitted migrant workers in thailand (2011-2020). (national statistical office, retrieved 10 august 2021 from http://statbbi.nso.go.th/staticreport/page/sector/th/02.aspx). aseas 14(2) | 245 chutiwan rueangdej & singhanat nomnian government’s measures is to promote the development of education and learning at all levels. despite the fact that thailand has gradually made progress by promoting children’s access to primary and secondary schools through a large allocation for increasing the quality of basic education, inequities still exist in terms of the inaccessibility of disadvantaged groups including ethnic minorities (nomnian et al., 2020). school policies and practices, as well as the roles of educational stakeholders in response to linguistically and culturally diverse families and students, are often under-examined (coady, 2019). in addition, gaps in knowledge concerning the implementation of educational policy, objectives, and services for migrant children still exist, requiring stakeholders’ engagement to enhance migrant children’s rights to education (tuangratananon et al., 2019). the present study investigates the insights of school administrators, teachers of thai and english, and thai and migrant parents who can potentially enhance the language learning experiences of migrant students in a thai primary school in samut sakhon province through a linguistic ecological perspective. this study sheds light on professional learning communities and school-family-community partnerships, and raises recognition and awareness of linguistic and cultural diversity. it will help to uphold educational equity and inclusivity of migrant students and their parents to inform educational policies and practices of language teaching and learning in thailand. literature review linguistic ecology and education the conceptual framework of this study is underpinned by the linguistic ecological perspective pioneered by haugen (1972). linguistic ecology (also known as language ecology or ecolinguistics) is the study of languages employed in interactions between language users, who employ various psychological and social factors situated in any given environment to communicate and create relationships leading to the association between humans and their surroundings (haugen, 1972). the concept of language ecology has been employed in language education research to address issues regarding linguistic rights, legitimacy, diversity, ideology, and identities of language users in response to situated sociocultural, educational, and geopolitical contexts (nomnian, 2017). according to hornberger (2003), linguistic ecology not only examines classroom interactions, but also explores the interrelationships among the languages, their speakers, and other sociocultural factors in the environment. in this study, the metaphor of language ecology can explain and address the complex interactional factors and functions between languages, speakers, and social practices embedded within a particular environment (mühlhäusler, 1996). van lier (2010), for example, employs the ecological perspective in school settings to examine the nature of classroom interaction and educational experience. wang (2019), for instance, employs an ecolinguistic view to explore the language teaching and learning process as a micro-ecological system with regard to the various elements regarding learners, teachers, language learning environments, teaching objectives, content, and materials. 246 | aseas 14(2) stakeholders’ insights into migrant students’ experiences in a thai public school drawing upon the complex relationship of language ecology with regard to diverse languages and dialects in thai history, education, culture, and religion, thai people perceive standard thai as the uncontested national language, as it is spoken by members of the higher levels of society (smalley, 1994). in the thai educational system, however, the roles of education and language ecology are concerned with thai nation-state building. compulsory schools and national curricula reinforce the use of central thai as a standard/official medium of instruction throughout the country in order to integrate students of diversified ethnic backgrounds to become thai (leepreecha, 2007). based on a unicef and mahidol university (2018) study, inequities in the thai educational system remain considerably critical not only due to the access of education among disadvantaged groups of children, but also learning outcomes that are dependent on children’s geographic, linguistic, and socioeconomic contexts. children in thailand who do not use thai as their first language are positioned as peripheral, excluded, and as underachievers academically and socially. there are still persisting needs among disadvantaged groups who live in remote areas with poor educational services, and who do not understand the language of instruction (h. r. h. princess sirindhorn, 2018). in addition, indigenous languages in thailand have gradually been marginalized and some have become extinct due to the fact that younger generations of ethnic minority groups do not use their home/ mother-tongue languages and prefer to use thai as the official and national language in their daily lives, education, and work (morton, 2016; srichampa et al., 2018). ungsitipoonporn et al. (2021) claim that “the promotion of thai as the official and national language and its use as medium of instruction in a formal school system puts small languages under threat” (p. 268). haruthaithanasan (2018) also asserts that thailand’s current education reforms were poorly implemented with a focus on quantity rather than quality, which could be due to the lack of support from the moe and its educational agencies for adequately enabling school administrators and teachers to aptly handle educational challenges. according to keawsomnuk (2017), the education management for ethnic groups and educational institutes depends on interrelated stakeholders who have played various roles and have had different responsibilities; thus, the basic education policy for thai ethnic groups should be established and contextualized from the locality. the following sections address key stakeholders, including school administrators, teachers, and parents, and the intricate roles and responsibilities they have in facilitating migrant students’ experiences in thai educational contexts. school administrators school administrators play an important role in leading, supervising, and supporting teachers’ instruction, and students’ learning in order to optimize school performance. school administrators should appropriately implement educational innovations and policies that serve both the national curriculum and needs of local contexts. the office of the basic education commission (obec) provides a national core curriculum for foreign languages, aiming primarily at english, while other foreign languages, such as french, german, chinese, japanese, arabic, pali, and languages of neighboring countries, such as lao, myanmar, khmer, and malay depend on individual aseas 14(2) | 247 chutiwan rueangdej & singhanat nomnian educational contexts to decide which courses are contextually and locally appropriate (inphoo & nomnian, 2019). primary school students should be able to apply “foreign languages in various situations, both in the classroom and the outside community and in the global society, forming a basic tool for further education, livelihood and exchange of learning with the global society” (obec, 2008, p. 253). obec’s standards are geared towards developing the learner’s acquisition of a favorable attitude towards foreign languages, the ability to use foreign languages for communicating in various situations, seeking knowledge, engaging in a livelihood, and pursuing further education at higher levels (nomnian, 2013a). instructional leadership among thai school administrators is necessary in order to promote more pre-service and in-service training programs in curriculum and instructional design, and academic affairs management, while also engaging them in consistent school curriculum assessment and development, and instructional supervision. student achievement should not be measured only by standardized test (o-net) scores, but in combination with other evaluations (such as performance tests, portfolios, projects), with emphasis on critical thinking and problem-solving skills assessments. research and development on the proper assessment of student achievement should be compulsory for long-term positive effects (kaur et al., 2016; lunrasri & gajaseni, 2014). teachers teachers’ roles are correlated with their performance in effective instruction and vice versa; thus, the quality of their instruction needs to be promoted and supported for sustainable student achievement. students will then have the knowledge and understanding of the stories and cultural diversity of the world community, and will be able to creatively convey thai concepts and culture to the global society (obec, 2008). to promote effective classroom instruction, there are three principles of curriculum design for ethnic minority students: first, the values and goals of the ethnic minority community should be taken into account by the moe when designing a curriculum and academic development program; second, step-by-step language learning and literacy processes should start with learners’ mother tongues and gradually move to thai language, with the four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing developed and practiced simultaneously; and, third, learners’ sociocultural identities should be preserved (premsrirat, 2018; premsrirat & person, 2018). hedtke and zimenkova (2013) suggest that the educational management of schools can potentially enable policy makers and stakeholders to identify the actual problems, leading to the establishment of more specialized and contextualized programs in particular educational institutes that may not be implementing a completely centralized approach according to the national educational management. parents parents should be partnered with schools, and vice versa, to address issues related to young learners’ developmental needs in order to maximize their learning experiences, particularly for those from linguistically and culturally diverse backgrounds (beauregard et al., 2014; paik et al., 2019; vazquez-nuttall et al., 2006). according to 248 | aseas 14(2) stakeholders’ insights into migrant students’ experiences in a thai public school gary and witherspoon (2011), family-school partnerships with parents, communities, and stakeholders are essential for maximizing the potential of students from lowincome and minority groups, whose roles should be included in decision making and school governance in order for schools to succeed. yet, these groups are so unfortunately overburdened and socioeconomically deprived that they are unlikely to engage with school activities and their children’s achievement (gary & witherspoon, 2011). ratliffe and ponte (2018), for instance, state that, although family-school partnerships lead to academic achievement and positive social outcomes for migrant students in hawai’i, their parents would like to know their children’s learning experiences at school, and request school principals to create partnerships and manage cultural mismatches with educators in order to avoid linguistic and sociocultural barriers for their engagement. because of students’ increasing racial, linguistic, and socioeconomic diversity in schools, it has become imperative for educators to re-conceptualize and problematize family-school engagement and partnership creation (buchanan & buchanan, 2017). key actors suggested as policy drivers and mechanisms to promote basic education for ethnic groups may include primary education service area offices, local communities, scholars, civil society organizations, and schools or educational institutes. in summary, the educational stakeholders – namely, school administrators, teachers, and parents – in this study are agents of change whose social practices, performed in a particular public school, can create positive learning experiences for migrant children in order to promote linguistically responsive policies and practices that can support migrant students and their families. research methodology research setting and participants this research was conducted through an ethnographic lens based on a case study. according to merriam (1998), case studies explore how individuals naturally behave and participate in their educational settings, such as the culture within a classroom, which can deepen our understandings and interpretations of the meanings for those involved. case studies are generalizable in a way that they are related to other human beings and their interactions in a certain place and time (jocuns et al., 2020). this study can be compared to other similar cases where teachers, learners, and parents play roles and are involved in the school’s contexts and stakeholders’ interactions and relationships in similar ways. the case study of this research setting was a public primary school situated in nadee district in samut sakhon province. it was chosen because one of the researchers has been working as an english teacher there for more than six years and wanted to explore issues related to migrant students whose presence played a significant role in administration and teaching. this school is located in a geographical area where approximately 260,000 migrant laborers, mainly from myanmar, cambodia, and laos, resided (ministry of labor, 2019, p. 13). in 2017, there were more than 2,590 migrant and stateless children, the majority (1,620) of whom were from myanmar. seven hundred were stateless and admitted to public schools in samut sakhon education service area office (esao) (unicef, 2018, p. 27). aseas 14(2) | 249 chutiwan rueangdej & singhanat nomnian this study includes 419 students in total – 145 and 274 at the kindergarten and primary school levels, respectively. there were 29 registered migrant students from grades one to six, as shown in table 1. data collection drawing upon merriam (1998), an ethnographic case study explores the relationship between society and culture by not only observing practices and behaviors, but also uncovering and describing beliefs, values, and attitudes of those involved within a particular group or context. ethnographic methods are beneficial for researching complex educational settings where teachers and students interact with one another (lazar et al., 2017). the data collection process was carried out solely by the first author who has been a teacher of english for more than six years and has recently been appointed as head of academic administration at the school. the nine-month ethnographic study was conducted from december 2019 to august 2020. to accomplish the validity of this study, the triangulation of research tools was used as follows: classroom observation, participant observation, and semi-structured interviews (maxwell, 2013). firstly, only four classroom observations were conducted between 12 december 2019 and 7 february 2020 due to the spread of covid-19 in samut sakhon; thus, the levels lao myanmar cambodian other nationalities grade 1 1 1 1 unidentifiable 1 grade 2 3 1 african 1 grade 3 1 3 tai 1 grade 4 1 3 1 grade 5 1 3 1 grade 6 5 total 4 18 4 3 table 1. nationalities of migrant students at a primary school level. (own compilation). education levels subjects topics duration student number migrant students grade 1 english language animals 13.30-14.30 25 1 lao 1 cambodian 1 myanmar 1 unidentified grade 2 english language food 13.30-14.30 27 1 myanmar 1 cambodian 1 african grade 3 thai language thai consonants 10.30-11.30 38 3 myanmar 1 lao grade 6 thai language debate 8.30-9.30 20 3 myanmar table 2. classroom observation schedule. (own compilation). 250 | aseas 14(2) stakeholders’ insights into migrant students’ experiences in a thai public school school was ordered to close for a while. the researcher, however, managed to contact four teachers who had migrant students in their classes. these included two thai language teachers and two english language teachers. these teachers volunteered to join the project as they wished to improve their language teaching with migrant students. they provided lesson plans to the researcher prior to classroom observation. the researcher was then allowed to attend the class according to the date and time suggested by each teacher. the researcher sat at the back of the language classes and silently observed the whole class without intervention. the researcher was able to see and learn not only how language teachers of thai and english taught, used materials, communicated with students, and managed the class, but also how migrant students behaved and interacted with their peers and their teachers in natural classroom settings. the following table displays the observation schedule for each class. classroom observation is a means of assessing teaching practices and learning behaviors taking place within natural classroom settings (frey, 2018; parra & hernández, 2019). classroom observation is believed to enable researchers to realize teachers’ beliefs and actual practices, which can be juxtaposed with interviews in order to gain greater validity in the findings (schoenfeld, 2013). secondly, participant observation was considered appropriate for this study because it enabled the researcher to see how migrant students behaved naturally in their school settings, such as the school gate, cafeteria, school hall, and forecourt (see table 3). having been an english teacher at this school for more than six years, the researcher participated and observed on-going activities and behaviors of migrant students, thai students, and teachers within a particular setting, which could provide in-depth understanding of migrant students’ language learning experiences in the school. participant observation is a qualitative research inquiry into understanding a group whose identities, beliefs, and practices are commonly shared at a particular sociocultural and political context by directly experiencing, closely observing, and carefully taking field notes regarding things happening in their natural settings (allen, 2017; jhaiyanuntana & nomnian, 2020; kawulich, 2005; suebwongsuwan & nomnian, 2020). the total time of observation was 220 minutes per school day. table 3 showcases the regular observation schedule on a daily basis. lastly, semi-structured interviews were conducted following the classroom and participant observation sessions. upon the approval from a school principal, activities locations duration time welcome students school gate 6.00-8.00 120 minutes school assembly national anthem ceremony morning prayer meditation daily announcement the forecourt of the flagpole 8.00-8.30 30 minutes lunch cafeteria 11.30-12.30 60 minutes evening prayer multipurpose hall 15.30-15.40 10 minutes total 220 minutes table 3. daily observation schedule. (own compilation). aseas 14(2) | 251 chutiwan rueangdej & singhanat nomnian participants were contacted and informed about the research project. a purposive sampling was employed with 22 key participants, namely, school administrators, teachers, and parents, as shown in table 4. these participants were contacted by the researcher who explained the research objectives and contributions they could offer. once they agreed to take part in the interview, they were given a written, informed consent form and notified of research ethics prior to the interview. school personnel were invited to the interview session in a meeting room. it is noteworthy to point out that both thai and migrant parents were familiar with the researcher, who they knew as their children’s teacher. they were then confident and comfortable to be interviewed. the interview sessions with the parents took place at a common area in the school where parents could meet the teachers for consultations about their children. each interview was conducted between 30 and 60 minutes, and digitally recorded with the permission from all participants. thai was used in the interviews. the migrant parents could speak thai to some extent as they had been working in thailand for a while. the recorded interviews were transcribed verbatim and then translated from thai to english. the transcripts were cross-checked by the researchers to ensure their validity, and prepared for analysis. this study was approved by institutional review board for population and social research, mahidol university (coa.no.2019/11-448). data analysis thematic analysis was employed to explore emerging key issues arising from interview transcripts and classroom and school observation field notes. the thematic analysis followed clearly defined steps in accordance with braun and clarke’s (2006) six steps assuring validity and rigor. the analytical procedures of this study were participants number school administrators school director head of general administration 1 1 teachers english thai math science social studies, religion and culture arts and music health and physical education occupation and technology 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 parents thai migrant 5 5 total 22 table 4. number of participants. (own compilation). 252 | aseas 14(2) stakeholders’ insights into migrant students’ experiences in a thai public school familiarizing with collected data, generating initial codes, searching for themes, reviewing, defining and naming themes, and writing up the report. the data from classroom observation field notes, school observation field notes, and interview transcripts were gathered, read thoroughly, and coded manually to examine issues regarding the roles of three key stakeholders stated in the literature. they were then coded and collated into the main themes, namely, school administrators, teachers, and parents. findings drawing upon qualitative data based on school and classroom observation field notes and semi-structured interviews, the findings of this study reveal three key stakeholders – school administrators, teachers, and parents – whose roles impacted on the migrant students’ learning experience in this linguistically and culturally diverse school. school administrators’ roles school administrators in this study were the school director and head of general administration. the school director strictly followed the moe policies and implemented equal opportunities for all students regardless of their nationalities. i am aware of and obliged to the national education act, in which the state provides foreign children with equal access to education and opportunities to study in government schools without charge like thai children. both thai and migrant students are recruited and admitted to study in this school equally. (school director, 25 december 2019) despite the school’s obligation to the requirements of the obec curriculum, the promotion of cultural diversity was limited as there were few activities concerning migrant students. the school has not yet established guidelines to promote coexistence in a multicultural society in a very concrete way. the school adheres to the basic education core curriculum 2008 (revised 2017) without adapting the school curriculum to the cultural context. with regard to organizing events during the school year, there is only asean day on which migrant students can perform their ethnic identities. (head of general administration, 25 december 2019) the school administrators were, however, aware of the presence of the migrant students who should be engaged within the school environment and society. yet, one of the obvious constraints the migrant students encountered was thai language as it is the medium of instruction used in all required subjects in thai basic education. if migrant students request to transfer to grades 5 and 6, they should have thai language skills. if they are unable to listen, speak, read, or write thai, they will have poor achievement results at the ordinary national education test aseas 14(2) | 253 chutiwan rueangdej & singhanat nomnian (o-net). because thai language is the basic language used in the test, in both thai language subjects and other subjects, such as mathematics and science. (head of general administration, 25 december 2019) without thai language competence, communication misunderstandings between teachers and migrant students as well as parents emerged. language affects the communication not only between teachers and students, but also between school personnel and parents. there are some communication struggles caused by language differences. (head of general administration, 25 december 2019) although language was key for learning and communicating, the migrant students in this school were diligent, well-behaved, and self-disciplined, as they were more mature than other thai students. most migrant children in this school are of good character, kind, and often volunteer to help teachers and at schoolwork. in terms of academic achievement, they tend to study well, because of their diligence, determination, and responsibility. because most of them are older than the criteria of average thai students, they are more mature than thai students in the same class. (head of general administration, 25 december 2019) drawing upon school observation fieldnotes, the school setting is an emerging theme, as it provides another perspective related to migrant students who played a significant role in the school landscape where teachers and students interacted with each other, developed a sense of belonging, and constructed identities of personal and social selves. the school ecology seemed common to all thai people, as it portrayed a generic view of public schools in thailand with morning rituals including singing the national anthem and praying. in the morning, school administrators, teachers, and students sang the national anthem, chanted, and worshiped the buddha, dharma, and sangha. muslim students sat quietly and did not need to pray to the buddha. (school observation field note, 20 december 2019) there were, however, muslim students – a religious minority group – who were allowed to sit in silence without chanting and worshipping the buddha. this demonstrated that buddhism is a default religion authorized by school policy and accepted by teachers and students without question. in addition, all students were required to make a vow to be good citizens and well-behaved people. then the students made a vow: “we are thai people, grateful for the nation, religion, and the king. we, the students, must behave within the school discipline. be honest with ourselves and others. we, the students, must not hurt ourselves and others.” (school observation field note, 20 december 2019) 254 | aseas 14(2) stakeholders’ insights into migrant students’ experiences in a thai public school one practical solution to language difficulties is to learn the first language of migrant students via a teacher exchange program with other teachers who were able to speak and teach such ethnic languages. the school will benefit if teachers and school personnel learn myanmar, lao, and cambodian languages from these migrant students. teachers and school staff can also build good relationships with parents and the communities around the school. (school director, 25 december 2019) migrant students’ first languages were so essential that learning their languages could provide keys to unlock their hidden problems, establish closer relationships between teachers and students, and create better understanding of their learning experiences at school and in society. the school will encourage teachers to learn the national language of the students being taught. they may also organize a program to exchange thai teachers with myanmar teachers teaching myanmar children at schools located in the temple area not far from the school. (school director, 25 december 2019) in addition, the head of general administration suggested that activities regarding language and culture exchange should be created, and that intercultural and cross-cultural understanding between migrant and thai students would be appreciated. the school should add activities that allow students from diverse backgrounds to exchange cultural knowledge with each other. the activities may be organized in myanmar, lao, and cambodian languages along with thai and english language activities. (head of general administration, 25 december 2019) although cultural activities might not accommodate migrant students, the school administrators recognized migrant students’ existence and valued their diverse cultures as resources and assets that could create mutual understanding for all. in the school’s basic educational establishment committee, the ministry of education requires representatives of parents, teachers, communities, representatives of the local government organizations, alumni representatives, representatives of local religious organizations, experts, and the school director. in our case, the school is a multicultural school, representatives of parents of other nationalities may be required to participate as part of the school’s basic education institution committee. (school director, 25 december 2019) regular parental meetings were also considered important as they enabled a better understanding of school policies and practices that would directly affect their children. closer school-parent collaboration and effective communication could be created and strengthened. it was, nevertheless, understandable that migrant parents did not have permanent jobs and constantly moved to work in other areas, and, thus, had to take their children out of school and transfer them to other schools. aseas 14(2) | 255 chutiwan rueangdej & singhanat nomnian migrant parents are always in [sic] mobile for job seeking. consequently, migrant students are unable to study continuously as their parents request for transferring the students to other areas and schools throughout the academic year. (school director, 25 december 2019) migrant parents, however, did not inform the school with regard to the official document required for the school transfer. migrant parents take the student back to the country without notifying the school. initially, it is the duty of the school to monitor why students are absent from school consecutively and try to contact the parents in order to solve problems to a certain extent. the school has to deal with the paper work and procedures to bring students back to school, as the parents do not come to deal with students’ school transfer procedures. (school director, 25 december 2019) to summarize, the school administrators strongly agreed that multiculturalism existed in this school. they recognized their roles of policy implementation conforming to the ministry’s requirement. they were, nevertheless, challenged by migrant students’ linguistic barriers that had to be overcome by raising the awareness of migrant students’ languages and culture. it is, thus, important for school administrators to recognize the linguistic and cultural diversity of migrant students in order to implement inclusive educational policies for all, rather than a standardized curriculum that assumes the homogeneity of students. another issue was the ineffective communication between the parents and the school. this might be due to the less known rules and regulations of the school that were often too complicated for parents to comprehend or follow. it may, therefore, be advisable for the school to engage migrant parents on a school board in order to create cultural space where problems can be shared and solved. it is, thus, imperative for the school director and head of general administration to establish the collaboration between thai and migrant parents. teachers’ roles thai teachers played an essential role in clarifying why learning thai language was important for migrant students who encountered communicative challenges in education and social contexts. communicative language teaching methods were employed to promote students’ communication and participation. thai language was used as a medium of instruction. i explained to the students that the words we use in thai may not be original thai words. sometimes, it might come from other languages because people are constantly communicating with each other, not just with people of the same nation. there is a cultural exchange. we learn each other’s languages to understand each other, and it will be easier to become friends. (grade 3 teacher of thai language, 8 january 2020) 256 | aseas 14(2) stakeholders’ insights into migrant students’ experiences in a thai public school migrant students’ classroom participation depended on individual learners’ learning styles and abilities. two male students from myanmar and laos were active and outspoken, while a cambodian female student was a slow learner and needed help from the teacher. a myanmar boy is talkative, participative, and assertive while thai students are afraid to speak and do not dare to answer. he always answers and finishes the work first. (grade 3 teacher of thai language, 8 january 2020) a lao boy always raised his hand to answer. the teacher called for answers and complimented him, but tried to spread it out to other students to have the opportunity to answer as well. (classroom observation english class, 19 december 2019) a lao girl is a slow learner and has problems with spelling and reading. while friends write down on the board, i will ask her to practice spelling one on one. as for thai students, there will be no problems with spelling and reading aloud. (grade 3 teacher of thai language, 8 january 2020) the extracts above suggest that the teachers paid attention to migrant students by providing opportunities to answer and join classroom activities, like other thai students. communicative language teaching methods enhanced students’ interactions so that everyone could be part of the classroom environment. teachers could facilitate conversations between thai and migrant students talking about cultural knowledge and experience, which potentially synergized a better understanding of cross-cultural tradition and practices. the extracts suggest that the teacher paid attention to thai and migrant students and attempted to give them equal opportunities to be part of the classroom learning environment without feeling discriminated against. students volunteered to answer questions and their friends listened to them attentively. the teacher gave them positive feedback and praised them for their participation. (classroom observation of english class grade 1, 19 december 2019) there was also paired and group work that enabled both thai and migrant students to interact with one another. working in pairs, students were collaborative and helpful. they not only had to accomplish academic tasks, but they also motivated each other. this work in pairs seemed to be an effective teaching method for multicultural classrooms. the seating arrangement in the classroom is a pairing arrangement. migrant students are prevented from sitting separately. students can help, nudge, warn, and encourage their buddies to write and answer questions without considering their nationalities. (classroom observation of english class grade 1, 19 december 2019) teachers played a significant role in facilitating students’ learning, managing their discipline, and developing a positive attitude towards cultural diversity through various classroom activities. debating is one classroom teaching method that enabled aseas 14(2) | 257 chutiwan rueangdej & singhanat nomnian students to work together. students had to negotiate and decide on their positions regarding the topic “korean music versus thai folk songs”, which was not conflictual or provocative, and so they learned to develop cultural sensitivity and appreciation. the teacher explained how to debate, then had the students divided into groups, randomly. they helped each other to think about debating, researching and preparing in the final period. the teacher allowed them to choose any topic, except for national, religious, and political matters that are sensitive and can cause violent conflicts. (classroom observation of thai class grade 6, 7 february 2020) as the topic of music was suitable for a debate and matched students’ interests, all students could take part in the discussion and share ideas without feeling offended and being judgmental. the teacher could moderate students’ participation, facilitate their talk, and summarize their ideas for the effective learning outcomes. the debate topic was korean pops [sic] versus thai folk songs, which was about cultural differences. i concluded that music was a matter of personal preference. we had the right to choose music according to our own preferences. and in terms of music culture or whatever culture, we could not conclude whose culture is better because each person has their own identity. (grade 6 teacher of thai language, 8 january 2020) debate on cultural topics could be viewed as a platform for learning and sharing ideas without definite answers, but rather being open-minded and supportive with one another. all students vowed, not only in the morning but also before lunch, to pay respect to the farmers’ goodness, and value the students’ fortune to have food available for them. the students vowed before having lunch that “every rice is valuable. the farmer is very tired. in this world, there are still people living in poverty and having nothing to eat”. then the students began to eat. after eating, they lifted the food tray to the food scraps and placed the tray on the stand. (school observation field note, 23 december 2019) these extracts suggest that the students were constantly trained by their teachers to follow social rules, develop self-discipline, and value themselves and others in order to live in harmony. thus, the students could recognize how fortunate they were by being given opportunities to live and learn in this school and society. teachers were instrumental in shaping and constructing supportive and convivial classroom settings through paired and group work for both thai and migrant students, who each brought their own cultural baggage, and shared with and learned from one another. classroom practices in this study were underpinned by various implicit factors regarding teachers’ attitudes and cultural knowledge, as well as teaching methods, materials, assessment, and rapport with students. teachers were required to develop cultural sensitivity, awareness, and tolerance of diverse students’ ideas and backgrounds. 258 | aseas 14(2) stakeholders’ insights into migrant students’ experiences in a thai public school parents’ roles parents in this study were categorized into thai and migrant parents. they could share thoughts on their children’s learning experiences in school. thai parents were satisfied with the school administration despite the presence of migrant students, as they were familiar with migrant colleagues whose children also studied in this school. i have a lot of migrant colleagues at the factory. they are good friends. they speak thai very well. their belief is buddhism and they go to temples like us. when they had problems with the school application form for their kids, i helped them out as i wanted their children to learn at this school as well. their children can gain access to education. (thai parent 1, 10 january 2020) another thai parent was optimistic regarding the presence of migrant students at the school as they could help thai students to embrace differences as valuable lessons from both thai and migrant students. the school was also appraised for accepting all students who lived in the area. i think it is a good opportunity for my children to learn with migrant students so that they can learn to live in a diverse society and respect one another. i think the school provides equal opportunities for all children to gain access to education. (thai parent 3, 14 january 2020) a muslim parent also felt satisfied with the school administration in terms of tolerance and acceptance of students’ religions. the school was considered a safe space where parents and students could assume their religious identities. my child is muslim but getting on well with buddhist and migrant classmates. there is no discrimination. my child can be excused from buddhism activities. i think the school respects all religions and takes care of all students very well. (thai parent 2, 13 january 2020) it is clear that the school was a sanctuary for migrant parents who needed a school for their children to receive education. the children were also fortunate to be taken care of by their teachers very well. because migrant parents did not have an educational background in thai schools or know thai language, they could not help their children with assignments. the school permits migrant children to study like other thai children. i think, it is very good. at first, i was worried about which school i should send my kid to. the teachers are very caring and helpful with all documents. i do not have high education so i can help my kid with homework only a little. my children have to help each other to do homework. (cambodian parent, 27 january 2020) my child joined this school from grade 1 without attending a nursery. at first, he could not read or write thai like his classmates. i do not know how to teach aseas 14(2) | 259 chutiwan rueangdej & singhanat nomnian him. but the teachers here were so kind that they tutored him for free before the school starts, at lunch, and in the evening after school. now, he can catch up with his classmates. (myanmar parent, 21 january 2020) similarly, a lao parent noticed that her child could easily adapt to the school culture and participate in all school activities. my child has no problem with adjusting to the school and gets along with her thai classmates. she attends all school activities like other students. (lao parent, 23 january 2020) one myanmar parent expressed the wish that his child should acquire myanmar language skills that would be useful once his family returns home. it is interesting to note that the migrant student’s first language is still perceived as valuable because the parents could not teach as they worked in thailand. some myanmar parents also decided to live and work in thailand temporarily. i would like my kid to learn myanmar language when he finishes grade 6 because it is the language used in myanmar. i would like him to know many languages. i am not sure if he will continue studying in thailand as i plan to live in thailand no more than 10 years. i will return to myanmar. (myanmar parent, 23 july 2020) a key issue both thai and migrant parents encountered was communication with the school through traditional public relations channels and through new media like a line social media group. there are some communication problems between the school and both thai and migrant parents. in the line group, parents often have questions about the school activities. (thai parent 3, 14 january 2020) yet, migrant parents needed language support as they could not read thai very well; thus, they often asked for assistance from thai parents to help with translation. it is, therefore, important for the school to fill in this linguistic gap to serve the needs of migrant parents. consequently, the school landscape would become multilingual and a valuable asset for all to embrace linguistic diversity. i would like the school’s public relations to have other languages, like myanmar and lao, to translate announcement, signs, boards, and document, so that we could understand them without having to ask thai parents to help us with translation. . . . if there are multilingual public relations, there would be more migrant students in the school. (myanmar parent, 27 july 2020) thai and migrant parents in this study were content with the school administration and teachers with regard to academic support, extra-curricular activities, and recognition of language and cultural differences. communication between the school 260 | aseas 14(2) stakeholders’ insights into migrant students’ experiences in a thai public school and the parents, however, needed some amendments in terms of clear information and translation of public notifications that was deemed necessary to migrant parents. the school should recognize the opportunities to be gained from migrant parents whose involvement could strengthen rapport between teachers and parents, lead to students’ positive learning experiences, and result in effective school-parent partnerships. discussion and implications of this study drawing upon the findings of this study, the discussion and implications suggest three key issues regarding establishing a professional learning community (plc), strengthening school-family-community (sfc) partnerships, and promoting recognition and raising awareness of linguistic and cultural diversity in these partnerships. a professional learning community (plc) can be viewed as a group of educators who are committed to continuous, collective and collaborative endeavors by undertaking various initiatives to improve their professions, and students’ performance through reflective dialogue, practices, and a shared sense of purpose (chua et al., 2020). this concept has recently been promoted as an educational policy initiative in thailand (kitrungraung et al., 2018; office of the education council, 2017). the plc in one school requires school networks and community partnership in order to connect with other plcs and learning sources, and to enhance teacher and student development. school administrators are instrumental in promoting a positive school culture and effective professional learning communities for teachers, whose impact may lead to school improvement (carpenter, 2015; maitreephun et al., 2020). effectively facilitated plcs can establish mutual professional values and promote cultures of learning that warrant culturally and linguistically diverse students’ educational equity and access (slack, 2019). nevertheless, the school practices and curricula prescribed by thailand’s basic educational policy are not suitable for migrant students’ sociocultural and linguistic circumstances; and thus, migrant students are unlikely to continue to higher levels of education (arphattananon, 2012). it is, therefore, important for school administrators and teachers to recognize the presence of migrant students in schools, as they play important roles in creating linguistic and cultural diversity within the school. comprehensive teacher training and professional development would be one of the key factors in improving the whole educational system and students’ learning outcomes, as well as their school experience (inpeng & nomnian, 2020). with regard to culturally diverse educational contexts, employing a critical, multicultural perspective towards professional development should emphasize justice, teacher support, and reciprocal understanding among students, families, and communities (szelei et al., 2020). secondly, connections and partnerships between schools, families, and communities (sfc) can address issues of school diversity and improve diverse student populations’ achievements (arphattananon, 2021; bekerman & geisen, 2012; boethel, 2003; creese & blackledge, 2011). sfc partnerships can positively impact students’ academic achievements, social integration, and personal growth and well-being at all education levels (willemse et al., 2018). however, the thai government neither has a policy to promote or to persuade migrant parents to bring their aseas 14(2) | 261 chutiwan rueangdej & singhanat nomnian children to schools, nor a policy to follow up on migrant students who leave schools (arphattananon, 2012). school administrators and teachers are instrumental in implementing policies, allocating budgets, planning activities, administering curricula and educational processes, promoting school learning environments, supervising teachers, monitoring school outcomes, and communicating with parents, communities, and relevant sectors in order to meet moe’s requirements and society expectations (nomnian & arphattananon, 2018a, 2018b). nomnian and arphattananon (2018a) suggest that a synergy between the government’s efforts and all stakeholders’ roles and responsibilities can help develop thai education at all levels to narrow down inequity gaps and promote quality education for all. parents are also key in promoting students’ academic achievement (nomnian & thawornpat, 2015). driessen et al. (2010), however, claim that, on the one hand, ethnic minority parents encounter challenges including incompetent use of the national language, low level of education, and unfamiliarity with the educational system in the receiving country. teachers, on the other hand, do not possess intercultural communication skills to deal with parents from ethnic minorities; and thus, it is recommended that teachers are equipped with knowledge regarding the linguistic and cultural diversity of students and their parents (driessen et al., 2010). last but not least, recognition and awareness of linguistic and cultural diversity in schools, families, and communities is vital for strengthening and harmonizing plc and sfc partnerships. building reciprocal relationships between schools, multilingual families and nearby communities is essential for educational stakeholders who can create meaningful partnerships and relational trust is underpinned by families’ sociolinguistic and cultural background (coady, 2019). these collaborations have been suggested by thai educational policy to promote all groups of thai and migrant students, regardless of their diversity in terms of socioeconomic, linguistic and cultural backgrounds, to be treated the same. although migrant children are allowed to enter public education in thailand, the moe has neither a policy to encourage parents to bring their children to schools, nor the curricula and courses that are appropriate for their socioeconomic, cultural, and linguistic circumstances (keawsomnuk, 2017). thailand’s moe policies have authorized school administrators to implement their own rules, regulations, curricula, and teaching materials to accommodate students from diverse sociocultural background (nomnian, 2013a, 2013b; saemee & nomnian, 2021a, 2021b). nevertheless, unequal power relations between thai and migrant students in thai schools still exist and require further examinations in other school contexts (arphattananon, 2018). paik et al. (2019), for instance, address the barriers of sfc partnerships, such as cultural differences, roles of parents and teachers, and language difficulties, which can be overcome by key stakeholders, such as teachers, school leaders, parents, and community members. sfc mutual appreciation, trust, respect, and linguistic and sociocultural knowledge should be valued and brought into classroom teaching and school settings in order to improve students’ academic and non-academic outcomes (paik et al., 2019; wiriyachittra & nomnian, 2016). hélot (2017) suggests the acknowledgment of migrant students’ multilingual repertoires and their linguistic, cultural, and identity capital as resources for learning, by promoting the emergence of a new linguistic culture in primary schools in order to transform and empower minority speaking 262 | aseas 14(2) stakeholders’ insights into migrant students’ experiences in a thai public school students’ schooling experiences. a mutual cooperation between parents, teachers, and administrators can enhance positive student outcomes and learning experiences in multilingual and multicultural schools and society (norris & collier, 2018). conclusion this study explored migrant students’ learning experiences in a thai public primary school in samut sakhon province through a linguistic ecological perspective. drawing upon an ethnographically informed case study, school and classroom observation field notes and semi-structured interview transcripts were employed. the results unveil three key stakeholders, including school administrators, teachers of thai and english, and thai and migrant parents, who play essential roles in migrant students’ personal, academic, and social development in the school environment. school administrators and teachers were considered as second parents to migrant students, as they not only incubated knowledge and skills for students, but also monitored students’ personal growth and behaviors. teachers and students participated in social practices such as morning assembly, lunch, and cultural activities, which required mutual engagement, collaboration, and interaction taking place within school environment. the study also reveals a mixture of positive and negative incidents that migrant parents addressed in both language classroom and school contexts. they felt that the school provided an opportunity for their children to gain knowledge and life experience, and also appreciated teachers’ support and care for their children. they, however, would like the school to translate key messages in their own languages, such as myanmar or lao, to ease their understanding of school announcements and activities and so that they could fully participate in order to facilitate their children’s adjustment and integration into the school environment. through these social practices, all agents were actively involved to meet particular communicative functions through the interplay of language and culture that was beneficial for all. professional learning communities (plc) can potentially enhance inclusivity in education by taking migrant students’ language learning experiences into account in terms of pedagogy and language support. school-family-community (sfc) partnerships can potentially address quality, equality, and equity of education among migrant students in this linguistically and culturally diverse school. promoting recognition and raising awareness of linguistic and cultural diversity between these partnerships is vital in sustaining people of different sociocultural and linguistic backgrounds to live and learn together harmoniously. these key stakeholders, as change agents, could promote social cohesion and tolerance by living and learning together, which would eventually create harmony in this diverse school setting. underpinned by a linguistic ecological perspective, this study unveils the intricate interrelationship between educational and social domains, including school administration, classroom instruction, cultural activities, language barriers, and parents’ roles in migrant students’ language use and learning experiences in thai public schools. linguistically and culturally responsive school policies and teaching practices can enhance both thai and migrant students’ personal growth, academic attainments, sense of belonging, and self-esteem that can enable them to become part of the wider sociocultural and linguistic contexts while living and studying in thailand. aseas 14(2) | 263 chutiwan rueangdej & singhanat nomnian  references allen, m. 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(2016). ways to create culture of english language learning through stakeholders’ engagement of teachers, learners, school administrators, families, and communities. printery. about the authors chutiwan rueangdej is a graduate student in an ma (language and intercultural communication, language teaching major) program at the research institute for languages and cultures of asia, mahidol university, thailand. she is currently an english teacher at a government primary school in thailand. her research interests include english language education, materials development, and teaching english to young learners. ► contact: chutiwanrueangdej@gmail.com dr. singhanat nomnian (corresponding author) is an associate professor at research institute for languages and cultures of asia, mahidol university, thailand.  he obtained his edd in tesol and applied linguistics, university of leicester, uk. he was also awarded endeavour postdoctoral fellowship by the australian government and conducted his postdoctoral research at the university of technology sydney, australia, under the supervision of emeritus professor alastair pennycook.  his research interests include english as an international language, intercultural communication, language teacher education, professional development, and multilingual and multicultural education.  he is currently the president of thailand tesol association and editor-in-chief of thaitesol journal. ► contact: singhanat.non@mahidol.ac.th aseas 16(1) | 63 coup, conflict, and the covid-19 pandemic: burmese peoples moving in times of isolation miriam jaehna* acenter for southeast asian studies, kyoto university *corresponding author: miriam.jaehn@cseas.kyoto-u.ac.jp received: 12 september 2022 / accepted: 2 april 2023 / published: 28 june 2023 ► jaehn, m. (2023). coup, conflict, and the covid-19 pandemic: burmese peoples moving in times of isolation. advances in southeast asian studies, 16(1), 63-78. this paper focuses on the political crises shaping burmese1 peoples’ im-mobilities during the covid-19 pandemic. as governments around the world urged people to stay at home to be protected from infection and transmission, throughout 2021 many burmese people protested the military coup of 1 february and fled myanmar for safety. i problematize these movements of the burmese peoples through the complex interplay between the triple c of (ethnic) conflict, covid-19, and coup. i contend that, in myanmar, adhering to covid-19 measures emphasizing (self-)isolation and immobility was impossible as they served the military to suppress peoples’ critique and protests regarding the government’s coup and its mismanagement of the covid-19 pandemic. as such, burmese peoples’ physical movements and political mobilisation were necessitated to fight against an ensuing political disempowerment of the people. in other words, the unfolding of the covid-19 pandemic in correlation with long-standing ‘ethnic’ conflicts and a military coup required the burmese peoples to carefully contest an internationally propagated so-called ‘new norm’ of self-isolation at home and other social distancing measures, which bore the risk of suppression and of renewing political isolation experienced since the country’s first military government. keywords: conflict; covid-19; military coup; movement; political protest  introduction a core question that emerged during the covid-19 pandemic is who adheres to social distancing measures and who does not. this has been associated with the question of who believes in the novel coronavirus being a threat to society (pedersen & favero, 2020). while non-compliers of social, or physical distancing measures are usually believed to be those who deny covid-19 being an issue to the public health sector and humans, in myanmar noncompliance with social 1 ‘burmese’ is used to encompass all peoples living in myanmar whether bamar or not, citizens or stateless. this article, however, uses myanmar to name the country as it is the country’s internationally recognized name. current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 90 mailto:miriam.jaehn%40cseas.kyoto-u.ac.jp?subject= 64 | aseas 16(1) coup, conflict, and the covid-19 pandemic distancing measures has been at the heart of protesting a regime that has weaponized the covid-19 crisis for its own benefit, and which has shown a history of using disasters and crises to punish its dissidents (passeri, 2022). as such, in myanmar the question is less who believes in the covid-19 virus being a threat, but more a question of who can afford to, and who is able to, adhere to government-imposed restrictions. considering this context, i will look at how the latest social distancing measures and their violation – from the burmese peoples and the state – have been used to push against and for political isolation. i argue that it is the conjuncture of the 3cs – ‘ethnic’ conflict, covid-19, and coup (simpson, 2021; transnational institute, 2021), and its handling by the government that has shaped the public’s initial violations against measures of selfisolation and which has led to accelerated mobilities during the covid-19 pandemic. the military coup of 1 february 2021 has not only revived and intensified conflict between the military and the burmese peoples, but also reinforced the covid-19 crisis. in effect, the coup constituted a more immediate crisis to be solved than the covid-19 pandemic. violating certain covid-19 measures, therefore, constituted a “responsible disobedience” (drechsler, 2021, p. 577). key to these dynamics has been the fear of losing a hard(ly) won political empowerment over the last decade. the last decade has brought reforms under the presidency of thein sein and saw a seeming transition in the political regime towards democracy under the leadership of aung san suu kyi. these political changes set forth an economic opening of the country (fumagalli, 2022; jones, 2014). but with the 2021 coup, the bamar majority, who had benefited most from this transitioning, feared falling back into political disempowerment and experiencing a new wave of political and economic isolation, while for ethnic minorities the crises created a situation in which it might be possible to negotiate a new social contract towards federalism (south, 2021) despite its sufferings. in effect, the coup mobilized a diversity of burmese peoples to organize and march in initially carnivalesque and peaceful protests, establish a widespread civil disobedience movement (cdm), and reinforce armed resistance to the military’s violence. these movements appeared in solidarity with each other while not entirely dispensing with ethnic and class tensions and cleavages. this article is based on a comprehensive literature review based on burma studies experts’ reactions and writing on the coup, pandemic, and its consequences. i used keywords such as coup, civil disobedience movement and covid-19 in myanmar on google scholar and university databases as well as the burma studies facebook group page to find recent and relevant articles on the issue. i further followed seajunction’s #whatshappeninginmyanmar series. this series was a weekly and then monthly zoom meeting session, updating listeners on the coup and its resistance situation in myanmar by invited experts. when taking information from these sessions, i cite the invited speakers and experts’ names.2 i am aware of the constraints that such research carries with it, and i acknowledge that the micropolitics and details of events on the ground can as such only be included in this analysis to a limited extent. in my analysis, i will proceed as follows: first, i will discuss the issue of so-called ethnic conflicts in myanmar. second, i will give a brief analysis of the handling of the covid-19 crisis before the coup. i then turn towards the coup and its aftermath. 2 the sessions are publicly available on sea-junction’s youtube channel. https://www.youtube.com/@ seajunction4587 https://www.youtube.com/@seajunction4587 https://www.youtube.com/@seajunction4587 aseas 16(1) | 65 miriam jaehn it is the coup’s aftermath with its protests, cdm, and flight towards ethnic minority areas and across borders that receive most of my attention. in my analysis, i will elaborate the dynamics between the weaponization of covid-19 by the military and the peoples’ (non-)adherence to its measures and regulations. i conclude that during the covid-19 pandemic, the burmese peoples have (been) moved to find solidarity and contest their disempowerment and the country’s return to political isolation. while mobilising against the military coup, the peoples have deliberately violated some covid-19 regulations. yet, they did not take the crisis lightly. in contrast, they acted against the measures to protect themselves from the military and the covid19 health crisis, which had aggravated due to the military’s response. ‘ethnic’ conflict myanmar is a country that has long been in a state of conflict – not with its neighbouring countries, but with its own peoples. since the country’s independence in 1948, myanmar has been riddled with inter-ethnic cleavages, especially between the bamar majority, the military government in the centre and ethnic minorities at the country’s borderlands who demanded more autonomy, federalism, and if necessary, secession (south, 2021). the panglong conference of 1947 gave way to hopes for a federal solution, but with the implementation of the 1947 constitution of the union of burma, these hopes were soon buried. as south (2021) argues, the constitution did not provide federalist structures but basically declared the centralization of myanmar and initiated the political marginalization and isolation of ethnic minorities. the marginalization of ethnic minorities was fast-forwarded through processes of “bamari-zation” driven by the bamar majority military government (taylor, 2005, p. 280), which aimed at the establishment of an ethnocratic state (smith, 2007). even though over the decades the concept of taingyintha (‘national races’) gained importance in defining citizenship, which seemed to allow for ethnic diversity encompassed in 135 ethnic identities considered to belong to the myanmar nation, the military government continued to emphasize and prioritize buddhist bamar identity as the benchmark of belonging to myanmar (cheesman, 2017). but ethnic minorities did not accept their marginalization based on their peripheral location at myanmar’s borders. in contrast, the forceful unionisation of myanmar has led to a long-term state of armed conflict inside the country, leading to insurgency and counterinsurgencies, to forced internal displacement and flight across borders (south, 2021; tangseefa, 2006). it is also from these borderlands that political mobilisation against the central government of myanmar has strived through the establishment of ethnic organizations and ethnic armed groups (loong, 2023; south, 2021) which have also worked towards a better provision of social services, such as healthcare and education, to civilians of the same minorities (like the shan, karen, and mon). these often have only limited access to such services provided by the central government (davis & jolliffe, 2016; jolliffe & speers mears, 2014). official refugee camps that have existed for decades along the thailand-myanmar and bangladesh-myanmar border, with hundreds of thousands displaced people, remain a constant reminder of their ongoing fight against a repressive and exclusionary regime. 66 | aseas 16(1) coup, conflict, and the covid-19 pandemic the repressive military regime of general ne win, which started in 1962, and the conflict it triggered also led to myanmar’s political isolation globally. the us and european nations demanded boycotts of military-owned products and companies and executed arms embargoes (ardeth maung thawnghmung & sarno, 2006). however, as ardeth maung thawnghmung and sarno (2006) further elaborate, myanmar’s asian neighbours preferred to engage with the military government for strategic and economic reasons. moreover, european countries had not entirely stopped providing humanitarian aid, investing in, and trading with myanmar produced goods. as such, boycotts were neither coherently nor uniformly executed and the military government could survive and strengthen its role as the country’s dominant power and authority. yet, the rhetoric and partial practices of boycott of the authoritarian military government led to a semi-isolated status of myanmar. this only began to change with the perception of the country’s slow transitioning towards democracy with the presidency of thein sein in 2011 – a transitioning that was initiated and led by the military itself. his government’s reforms led to some liberalisation and the economy was revived. foreign donors, organizations, and countries brought new development projects to the country (fumagalli, 2022; jones, 2014). however, throughout, it was still the military generals who mostly profited from the country’s perceived democratic transition without needing to make any concessions to their power inside the country (jordt et al., 2023). with the 2008 constitution, the military has made sure to hold on to power by holding a quarter of seats in all legislatures, a veto power on constitutional changes, and no less a prerogative to take control in emergency situations (ardeth maung thawnghmung & khun noah, 2021). further, despite a proclaimed democratic transition in the 2010s, there was little change to the situation of ethnic minorities at myanmar’s borderlands. they remained marginalized, discriminated against, and in conflict with the civilianmilitary government. rather than working towards a reconciliation with ethnic minorities, the national league for democracy (nld) government widely tolerated the military’s violence, especially, but not exclusively, in its western borderlands against the rohingya. the rohingya are an ethnic minority that is not recognized as taingyintha and that has been demonized as ‘illegal immigrants’ and ‘bengalis’ (cheesman, 2017). their violent persecution by the myanmar military in 2017 led to hundreds of thousands fleeing across the border to bangladesh, setting forth a factfinding mission on allegations of genocide by the military on the rohingya people (“aung san suu kyi defends myanmar”, 2019; o’brien & hoffstaedter, 2020). aung san suu kyi, who is a nobel peace prize laureate and has been living under house arrest for many years before becoming the state counsellor after elections in 2015 (ardeth maung thawnghmung & saw eh htoo, 2022), even went to the hague unapologetically to defend the military’s persecution of the rohingya in front of the international court of justice (icj), claiming the military did not commit genocide (“aung san suu kyi defends myanmar”, 2019). in effect, hopes for democracy, freedom, and an opening of myanmar under the newly elected nld government did not lead to a transitioning towards peace and political emancipation for many ethnic minorities in myanmar’s borderlands (of which the rohingya are but one example). in contrast, conflict continued as myanmar’s democratization process focused on myanmar’s centre and a reconciliation between the nld and the military, dismissing aseas 16(1) | 67 miriam jaehn ethnic minorities’ concerns and the legitimacy of its representative organizations and groups (ardeth maung thawnghmung & saw eh htoo, 2022; south, 2021). as such, the bamar majority – safely located in the centre and being the dominating ethnicity – believed in the transition as much as western states and donors who stopped sanctions against myanmar and returned to investing in the country (fumagalli, 2022). the bamar people believed that with the elected nld government in place, they could overcome the political and economic isolation and become politically empowered. but this illusion of transition only lasted a decade. in the end it became visible that “myanmar’s transition in 2010 [was] less as a transition to democracy than to a diarchy with competing forms of government” (jordt et al., 2023, p. 3). instead of giving more power to the people, it “prolonged a principle of sovereignty that depended on the personal power of military strongmen” (jordt et al., 2023, p. 3). as such, myanmar’s transitioning led towards the establishment of an ineffective twoheaded government that did not work for its many peoples but for a selected few – mostly for military officials and to some degree for the bamar people. while the government portrayed an image of a united and democratized country to its own peoples and the outside world, ethnic minorities continued to suffer under the diarchy that seemed to support majoritarian rule by bamar interests. while ethnic minority parties formed more than half of the parties registered in elections, they only won a minority of seats in parliament and lacked political representation (ardeth maung thawnghmung & khun noah, 2021). as a result, ethnic minorities’ interests remained underrepresented and cleavages with the government and military persisted. they remained the losers in a proclaimed political transition of the country. covid-19 before the coup in their article, myo minn oo et al. (2020, p. 1) claim that the myanmar government’s response to covid-19 was “timely and bold”. in contrast, grundy-warr and lin (2020) argue that the myanmar government was silent on the possibility of covid-19 in myanmar for the first three months after the initial outbreak in neighbouring china. the authors support their argument by showing that re-elected state counsellor aung san suu kyi still proclaimed on 16 march that in myanmar nobody is infected with covid-19. only at the end of march, the first covid-19 case was admitted by the government. the government’s subsequent response to an ensuing spread of the virus was supported by china delivering masks, test-kits, personal protective equipment, and support for building a testing laboratory (grundy-warr & lin, 2020). overall, the government hoped to control the spread of the virus with the help of a joint civilian-military, the emergency response committee. it proposed a range of containment measures, but remained hesitant on issuing stricter lockdowns and neglected ethnic minority regions in its response (kyaw san wai, 2020; myo minn oo et al., 2020; passeri, 2022). the government’s joint initial denial of the virus’ possible presence in myanmar does not mean that it did not take the threat of the covid-19 virus on myanmar and its fragile public health system seriously. the government immediately initiated measures that pertained to restricting the gathering of large crowds, as public meetings were postponed and new year celebrations (which fell on 13-16 april according to 68 | aseas 16(1) coup, conflict, and the covid-19 pandemic the buddhist calendar) cancelled. yet, the public was supposed to be kept in the dark about an ensuing crisis, enforcing a veil of silence on it. first, the government drafted and abolished a prevention and control of communicable diseases bill, containing a section that prohibited authorized departments and individuals to break news on the spread of infectious diseases if these could cause the public to panic (grundy-warr & lin, 2020). as grundy-warr and lin (2020) argue, the new bill intended to delay appropriate and necessary information during the covid-19 pandemic. second, the government closed more than 200 websites from independent media houses and ethnic minority organizations, caused internet blackouts, increased military presence in ethnic minority zones, and enforced lockdowns (passeri, 2022; transnational institute, 2021). in consequence, the public was strategically isolated and disempowered through increased military presence, restricted movement, and disinformation campaigns led by the government. in the end, the global call and joint action for public health measures that restrict movements and interaction of people to contain the spread of the covid-19 virus served as a welcome opportunity for the military to strengthen its repressive actions towards its political opponents already before the coup. the coup and civil disobedience the days following the coup, a video went viral: a woman does her aerobic routine in naypyidaw while a military convoy rushes past behind her. the woman apparently does not take notice of the commotion and its meaning but keeps on exercising energetically while wearing a surgical mask. being a fitness instructor, khing hnin wa had recorded the video and uploaded it to her facebook page the same day (“myanmar fitness instructor accidentally”, 2021). the video captures one of the military raids in the capital of naypyidaw and yangon, myanmar’s biggest city, arresting members of the newly elected government and political opponents. despite the military’s open dissatisfaction about the national election of november 2020, in which aung san suu kyi’s party won with a land-slide victory, the military coup of 1 february 2021 came somewhat as a surprise to the burmese people. yet, the military had chosen the date of the coup strategically. 1 february 2021 was the day the new parliament should have been sworn in (simpson, 2021). this made it easy for the military to arrest more than 100 political leaders, install a ‘caretaker government’, and declare a one-year state of emergency in a sleight of hand. the military justified its actions by claiming election fraud in november 2020 and an insufficient response to the covid-19 pandemic by the nld government (passeri, 2022). however, the public did not perceive any of the justifications by the military as legitimate. almost immediately after the coup, non-violent protests erupted across the country. the people mobilized against their political disempowerment and the return of a military junta. while government opposition was previously led by ethnic minorities, this time it was first the bamar people who went to the streets in protest against the illegitimate coup and for their right to a democratically elected government. the initial protests were spearheaded by the generation z (generation born between 1997-2012) who knew how to instrumentalize social media to spread news on the recent developments in myanmar, trying to mobilize more people and catching the aseas 16(1) | 69 miriam jaehn attention of the international community (jordt et al., 2023). several hashtags were invented to share information on protests and the coup worldwide; especially, the hashtag #whatshappeninginmyanmar continues to be used to spread news on developments in myanmar in burmese and english. using the hashtags helps to inform about the ongoing atrocities, mobilize protest, and draw attention to the movement even beyond myanmar. further, only two days after the coup a civil disobedience movement (cdm) was called to life by health workers across the country. their strikes and street demonstrations were soon joined by workers and trade unionists from various sectors (jordt et al., 2023). the leading role and participation of civil servants in the movement speak of the urgency of political action against a government and coup that are perceived as illegitimate (shepherd, 2021). protesting and striking was an act of responsibility to underline the severity of the coup’s violation of the people’s will and health, prioritizing the military’s own political interests. in this sense, non-compliance towards covid-19 regulations was not an act of ignorance towards possible infection with the covid-19 virus; it was an act conscious of its risks and the urgency to act against a military that mobilizes crises to tighten its grip on power. the civil disobedience movement was an act in protest of the abuse of the military to reclaim power in an emergency perpetuated and aggravated by the military. instead of staying at home in fear of the pandemic and the military, people were moving and mobilized to protect the little political empowerment they had won, demanding the military to respect the results of the democratic elections held in november 2020. jordt et al. (2023, p. 12) describe the atmosphere of the early protests as “festival-like”. the protests “create[d] a space for riotous performances of the silly, half-serious, transgressional and irreverent condemnation of the military takeover” (jordt et al. 2023, p. 14). they showed not only ingenuity in employing cultural and religious references to scare and fight off the military but also in drawing on pop culture to create allegiances with regional democratic, anti-authoritarian movements. many protest signs were written in english rather than burmese, using democratic ideals and appealing to a global audience to understand their demands and dissatisfaction with the coup (jordt et al., 2023). in a time of increased restrictions on human movements and border crossings, the burmese peoples referred to connection beyond borders. in translating their struggle for political empowerment to audiences beyond myanmar, they tried to evoke a sense of transregional and global solidarity. the burmese peoples understood themselves as part of a common fight against repressive regimes that threaten peoples’ desires for democracy and who need each other’s support, especially in times of multiple crises. military crackdown and the weaponization of covid-19 however, these peaceful protests were violently suppressed by the military. civilians and protesters were arrested, imprisoned, and even shot on the streets. the generation z protester ma kyal sin, or “angel”, became a symbol of the military’s violence after she was shot in the head by an unidentified security force. as her image spread around the world raising outrage, the military tried to cover up its responsibility for her death (“body of 'everything will be ok'”, 2021). according to passeri (2022), in the first six months following the coup, more than 1,000 people died. even online 70 | aseas 16(1) coup, conflict, and the covid-19 pandemic activism did not provide a safe outlet to protest the coup. although online activism and protest is often accused of being performative and secondary to offline engagement, this is not the case in myanmar’s latest opposition to the coup (wood, 2021). online activism has been central to the mobilization of the peoples and thus has not been safer for those providing and distributing critical information about the coup and its protests. to stop the political mobilization against the coup, the military has operated internet cuts, surveyed social media accounts, and targeted journalists. with the growing military violence and surveillance against peaceful protesters and journalists, an atmosphere of fear spread across the country. people felt increasingly insecure inside the country, risking their lives on the streets and on the job. they began to flee to the borderlands or across borders to seek safety from retaliation by the military government (aung zaw, 2021a, 2021b; wood, 2021). with the cdm unfolding, health care workers on strike were no less under risk of arrest and murder by the military and many had to flee and hide from the military. in their hide-outs, they were cut off from receiving and providing public (health) services while the military’s actions deepened the crisis. the military shut numerous private healthcare clinics whose employees had participated in the cdm during the ongoing pandemic (krishna & howard, 2021). it further arrested the head of myanmar’s vaccination program, channelled medical resources towards military hospitals, closed pharmacies, blocked people from accessing oxygen donations, and disrupted non-governmental healthcare programs in ethnic areas, excluding minorities from the provision of public and private healthcare services (bociaga, 2021; khin ohmar, 2021c; passeri, 2022; transnational institute, 2021). rather than letting their political opponents help the people in other health care facilities, the military willingly created greater (health) precarity for its people to hold on to its power. yet, it was the military that accused striking healthcare workers of genocide. krishna and howard (2021, p. 1) quote military spokesperson major general zaw min tun: “they are killing people in cold blood. if this is not genocide, what shall i call it?” for years, the military had denied its act of genocide against the rohingya people but now grabbed an abstruse and obscene opportunity to accuse its political opponents of such actions. though, it was effectively the military that disabled striking civil servants to provide health services to the public, they shifted blame over the ensuing crisis, trying to weaponize the pandemic and claiming medical inaction by professionals as a genocidal act, whereas it was they who killed people in the streets, gave a belated and insufficient response to the pandemic, and actively disabled access to health care. using the accusation of genocide on striking healthcare workers is based on a shallow pretence that the military cares and tries to protect the people all the while it continued to attack, kill, arrest, and imprison them. the weaponization of the covid-19 pandemic by the military went even further as conditions in myanmar prisons have been far from abiding to public health measures in light of the pandemic. according to stothard (2022), more political prisoners than ever have been incarcerated in the first year of the coup. in total, around 12,000 political prisoners were taken, whereby the military seemed to use imprisonment of political opponents to not only punish them, but also to potentially harm their health. activists who have been imprisoned reported a lack of space, sanitation, and medical treatment among others (a. a. & gaborit, 2021; krishna & howard, 2021). by aseas 16(1) | 71 miriam jaehn not providing adequate protection from infection and healthcare services in prisons, the military government increased the likelihood that imprisoned political opponents might fall sick and die. the spokesperson for aung san suu kyi, nyan win, had contracted covid-19 and died in prison in july 2021 after being arrested during the coup on 1 february 2021 (peck, 2021). nyan win’s death is but one indicator that the military instrumentalized the contagiousness of the covid-19 virus not only to grab on power and suppress protests, but also to immobilize its political opponents indefinitely. the policy briefing by the transnational institute summarizes the effect of the coup on covid-19 and myanmar society as the following: myanmar’s fragile health system collapsed following the sac coup. health workers were targeted for their role in the pro-democracy protests. hospitals were raided, over 43,000 staff in the ministry of health and sports joined the cdm, over 500 health workers and medical students have been detained or gone into hiding, and 29 killed. civil society and non-governmental organisations running covid-19 and other humanitarian programmes have also faced harassment, and in many of the conflict-zones the health care activities of local ethnic and community-based groups are severely disrupted. (transnational institute, 2021, p. 2) this is not a government that expresses interest or care for its peoples’ survival and protection amid a political and medical crisis. in contrast, the covid-19 pandemic served as a backdrop for the military to roll out a “collective punishment scheme” (khin ohmar, 2021a) and continue its “politicide” (thein-lemelson, 2021, p. 3) by targeting and eliminating its political opponents systematically. while thein-lemelson (2021) seems to suggest that these opponents represented a somewhat unified community with distinct rituals and a shared and common identity (centered around the nld), prasse-freeman and kabya (2021) argue that political opposition in myanmar has always been and remains to be fluid and fragmented. as such, the military targeted in its politicide not a united community, but it fought and continues to do so against a multitude of oppositional fronts who have their own goals and interests in defying the military. as such, the covid-19 pandemic represented itself as a convenient weapon for the military to target its different opponents collectively, and without distinction. ensuing solidarity yet, despite the military’s attempts of instrumentalizing the covid-19 pandemic to immobilize the people and push its political ambitions of consolidating power, the military’s opponents sought out solutions to fight back and provide healthcare services to the country’s peoples outside the infrastructures and resources of the state. deeply distrusting the military government, ethnic armed organizations (eaos) had already established their own prevention campaigns to the covid-19 pandemic before the coup (passeri, 2022). this was only possible as eaos and local ngos had created a coalition in developing a parallel healthcare system that provisioned ethnic minorities, especially in the southeast of myanmar. over the years, the development of this alternative healthcare system also received support from international donors, 72 | aseas 16(1) coup, conflict, and the covid-19 pandemic and since 2011 and 2012 cooperation between governmental and eaos healthcare systems ensued after the signing of ceasefire treaties (davis & jolliffe, 2016). after the coup, the newly formed national unity government (nug)3 could build on these earlier efforts to initiate a covid-19 taskforce in coordination with health organizations administered by ethnic minorities and their eaos. with their joint effort, they hoped to vaccinate those people who so far rejected vaccination out of rebellion and mistrust towards the military-administered vaccination programs. the military supposedly conducted a secret vaccination program for its own personnel with covaxin – a covid-19 vaccine produced in and imported from india, which was yet to undergo clinical trials and approval for safe use. after the initial doses were given to military personnel, covaxin was also administered to civilians in april 2021, according to an official of the food and drug administration (“covid-19 vaccine was tested”, 2021). hence, rather than providing only vaccines that had undergone all required tests and trials, the military seemed to have adopted the stance to make use of any vaccine available to them. in contrast, the nld had acquired and used the approved covishield vaccine in its vaccination program before its suspension (“covid-19 vaccine was tested”, 2021). further, the nug and ethnic minorities had acquired six million doses of vaccines, which were to be administered by eaos and by un agencies (krishna & howard, 2021). overall, the cdm operated on grassroots activism and underground communication structures, such as building neighbourhood watches and alarm systems and selecting their own representatives while ousting those aligned with the military (jordt et al., 2023). this kind of grassroots activism and its structures were first established in 1988 when student protesters had to flee to ethnic minority areas for protection (brooten, 2021). in 2021 protesters and civil servants participating in the cdm once again fled to ethnic minority areas to seek protection from the military (david et al., 2022). while previously dormant and somewhat forgotten, with a re-emergence of violence against burmese people, centre-periphery relations and connections were remembered and revived. they were now utilized to build a more unified resistance against the military, laying the groundwork for a possible solidarity across ethnic and class differences (loong, 2023; prasse-freeman & kabya, 2021). this cross-ethnic, and to some extent cross-class, solidarity appeared as a new phenomenon in myanmar. not only was it a joint effort in combating the covid-19 pandemic and the coup, but the protest movement as such appeared to have changed significantly – in distinction to the 1988 student protests and the 2007 saffron revolution4. as jordt et al. (2023, p. 21) write, in the protests against the latest coup “[m]ore robust democratic political demands gathered broad support for abolishing the 2008 constitution and establishing a federal democratic polity”, drawing less on 3 the nug formed in opposition to the military coup on 16 april 2021 and claims legitimacy as the burmese peoples’ government. its members include many national league for democracy (nld) politicians, but it also includes representatives from ethnic nationalities (moe thuzar & htet myet min tun, 2022). 4 the saffron revolution of 2007 was a series of protests against a sharp rise in the rice and oil price induced by the military. the protests are called the ‘saffron revolution’ because members of the sangha (buddhist clergy/community) joined the protests and decided to excommunicate the military after the military’s violent retaliation against its members (jordt et al., 2023). aseas 16(1) | 73 miriam jaehn bamar buddhist majority ideals and concepts but rather on global ideas of democracy and solidarity. prasse-freeman and kabya (2021) also emphasize that demands for democracy are not limited to the reinstalment of the nld government that had won the november 2020 elections, but include a reassessment of the past (prasse-freeman & kabya, 2021, p. 2). it partially addresses the exclusions, inequalities, and injustices perpetrated, also in times of myanmar’s so-called democratic transition. rather than continuing a politics of centralization for the unionization of myanmar, discussions about a federal future of myanmar gained another momentum, in which ethnic armed groups appeared as a necessary force against the military and the foundation of a future federal army (david et al., 2022). the discussions also laid the groundwork for a potential bridging of cleavages between the former national league for democracy, whose members now form a significant part of the new national unity government (nug), and ethnic minorities and their eaos (south, 2021). however, while the opposition in the centre and the peripheries have the joint goal of superseding the state administration council (sac) junta and have expressed intentions to solidarize, cleavages among the protesters and minorities over a future common government and administration of state persist. for example, despite a joint response to covid-19 with eaos and eaos proving to possess quite some support from ethnic populations, these eaos have not been sufficiently recognized as actors in a future government, whereas the nug claims legitimate authority for leading the country (south, 2021). as loong (2023) argues, this also explains the long silence of some ethnic minorities and their armed organizations at the beginning of the protests. the problem is that lasting centre-periphery (majority-minority) tensions may slow advances in consolidating solidarity and finding common solutions to fight the junta and establish a new government and possible political system. the relations between bamar civilians and ethnic minorities will decide if their protest and fight against the coup will be successful and long-lasting (ardeth maung thawnghmung & khun noah, 2021; loong, 2023). nevertheless, the aftermath of the coup forced some nld members and protesters to rethink their attitude and statements towards ethnic minorities and their interests, most notably to the rohingya. suddenly, protesters and politicians issued apology statements for having looked the other way or supported the violent actions taken against the rohingya in the past (jordt et al., 2023; prasse-freeman & kabya, 2021). such apologies are a significant step, according to debbie stothard (2022), and may symbolize a paradigm shift in the treatment of the rohingya in myanmar. while the rohingya’s persecution was previously justified and legitimated as ‘anti-terrorist’ operations and an internal affair by the military, the nld government, and large parts of the public, the violence of the military towards the coup protesters (of often bamar ethnicity) has shifted their perspective. acknowledging the past and current violence committed against the rohingya through their apology statements, anti-coup protesters and members of the civilian government demonstrate that they are in dialogue with an international audience that has raised serious human rights abuses and genocide against the rohingya during myanmar’s so-called democratic transition. before the coup, this kind of concession would not have been possible. however, with the coup and the protests’ violent suppression, some members of the former government and bamar people suddenly learnt to understand the military’s violence as overboard 74 | aseas 16(1) coup, conflict, and the covid-19 pandemic and illegitimate, and no longer subject solely to internal political affairs. in contrast, it required international attention and intervention (david et al., 2022; simpson, 2021). further expressions of solidarity with rohingya were linked to creating the hashtag #black4rohingya used on social media and donning black clothes in solidarity with them, organising a women’s march, and staging a silent protest on rohingya genocide remembrance day in 2021 (khin ohmar, 2021b; simpson, 2021). however, it is yet to be assessed how far the newfound empathy and solidarity for the rohingya is lasting and where it is leading (ardeth maung thawnghmung & khun noah 2021). although the nug has started to cooperate with the international court of justice on the rohingya issue and finally acknowledges the atrocities committed against them (moe thuzar & htet myet min tun, 2022), apologies towards the rohingya and solidarity actions with them are mostly led and issued by the younger generation of burmese peoples, whereas, the older generation largely remains silent (khin ohmar, 2021b). further, many burmese people still venerate aung san suu kyi, who the rohingya no longer can trust after her civilian government not only let their persecution happen but even defended it. as such, aung san suu kyi’s role after the coup as a leading politician might be essential in forwarding or holding back reconciliation with the rohingya people. so far, despite emerging actions in solidarity with the rohingya, the situation for rohingya has not improved. from january 2020 to june 2021, 3,046 rohingya tried to cross the andaman sea in search of better protection and died on their perilous journeys (unhcr, 2021). yet, neighbouring nation-states felt entitled to refuse newly arriving rohingya and other refugees and migrants amidst fears of a spread of the covid-19 virus (fumagalli, 2022; khanna, 2020). rohingya have been turned away and left drifting at sea or outsourced to bhasan char – an island designated by the bangladesh government to contain rohingya refugees (grundy-warr & lin, 2020; khanna, 2020). hence, if the military remains in power, the situation for the rohingya is unlikely to improve and will prevent rohingya abroad from returning to myanmar (khin ohmar, 2021c). but rohingya have not been the only ones fleeing their homes and camps during the covid-19 pandemic. other ethnic minorities and bamar protesters and political opponents also crossed borders, especially into india and thailand, to seek refuge amidst continued and revived conflict in ethnic minority areas (fumagalli, 2022; loong, 2023). many people live on the run, trying to escape the military’s grip. on their flight to marginalized and rural areas or overcrowded refugee camps, they are exposed to a higher risk of infection with covid-19 as they live with a notable lack of access to hygiene and public healthcare (banik et al., 2020; kobayashi et al., 2021). yet, seeking refuge in ethnic minority areas has been noted by brooten (2021), as well as loong (2023), as an important phase and factor to the formation of solidarity on which to establish political transition and reconciliation between the different parties. while in the past, the military was to some extent able to claim working for the protection of the union of myanmar in fighting ethnic minority armies, this claim becomes questionable if bamar civilian protesters indeed find refuge in ethnic minority areas under the protection of their armed groups (loong, 2023). thus, in the wake of covid-19 and the coup, it is flight that might solve divergences between the bamar and ethnic minorities in the long term. flight from the centre to the borderlands might appear as a necessary tool to not only free the borderlands’ ethnic minorities aseas 16(1) | 75 miriam jaehn from their long-lasting political isolation since the establishment of a military government and throughout myanmar’s acclaimed transition towards democracy, but it might also become the centre from which to fight the military’s attempts of permanently disempowering and politically isolating the country’s population. conclusion while the world was caught in conflict over solving the covid-19 issue by exercising social distancing, isolation, and immobility, the burmese peoples were unable to adhere to some of these measures due to the falling together of the 3cs – conflict, covid-19, and coup. in a situation in which the military government weaponised the covid-19 pandemic to re-establish its power monopoly, the burmese peoples had no choice but to disobey specific protective health measures in defiance of the military’s illegitimate grab on power. adhering to all popular covid-19 measures would have meant for the peoples to submit into an ensuing long-term political disempowerment of the people. in effect, burmese peoples did not have a choice but to disregard some covid-19 measures temporarily to protect their rights and mobilize in solidarity against a repressive military regime that made access to healthcare increasingly inefficient and unequal to control its peoples and eliminate its political opponents. yet, the burmese population did not disregard the covid-19 pandemic as a major health crisis. in contrast, in their protests, they criticised the military not only for the coup but also for the mismanagement of the covid-19 crisis, and its instrumentalization to grab onto power rather than granting safe and equal access to healthcare services for all (such as proper vaccination). the civil disobedience movement served to protect the burmese peoples, and not to harm them. contrary to the military’s claim, striking health care workers did not commit genocide on the people, but it was the military who tried to instrumentalize covid-19 and public health resources to punish political opponents and force people into line with the military government, taking peoples’ unnecessary death into consideration. healthcare workers, however, did not stop providing help despite dropping out of government facilities and protesting on the streets. instead, they shifted their attention to private and township hospitals to lead a two-front war: against the military and against the spread of the virus. their protest and noncompliance were not in denial of covid-19, but in respect and consideration of it. they risked their lives in facing the military and the coronavirus by doing their job despite an ongoing political crisis that was claiming their lives. to conclude, throughout the covid-19 pandemic, myanmar remained a country on the move – politically, socially, and physically. the burmese peoples marched on the streets as much as they moved their protests online to distribute the news of the coup, its protest, and repression, as far and wide as possible. they also moved ideologically towards solidarity with ostracized and marginalized communities and renewed discussions on a federal future of myanmar. as such, in myanmar, the triple crisis seems to have softened the antagonism between the bamar people and ethnic minorities. although ethnic minorities and eaos appear to have reacted belatedly to the coup, they slowly began to forge ties of solidarity in fighting not only the covid-19 pandemic but also the military’s coup, providing refuge to those fleeing the military. in times of global immobility, the peoples of myanmar moved more than 76 | aseas 16(1) coup, conflict, and the covid-19 pandemic ever. at the time of writing, their movements in protest against an illegitimate and irresponsible military government have not dissipated. however, the military’s attempt of consolidating its coup is still lasting, leading the country and its people continuously back into a state of political isolation and disempowerment. while the burmese peoples do not despair, their peaceful protests are increasingly accompanied by armed conflict led by eaos but also newly formed people’s defence forces (pdfs) of young burmese to defend their and their family’s lives (khin ohmar, 2021b; moe thuzar & htet myet min tun, 2022). remembering ma kyal sin lying on the floor to protect herself from the bullets of the military and wearing a 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(social)mediascapes carved in blood: digital performance and myanmar’s spring revolution. journal of visual and media anthropology, 6(1), 31-38. about the author miriam jaehn is a postdoctoral research fellow at the center for southeast asian studies, kyoto university under the humboldt foundation and the japan society for the promotion of science (jsps) program. she received her phd degree in comparative asian studies from the national university of singapore in 2022. her primary interest of research is the experiences of rohingya refugees in south and southeast asia, most notably their refugee journeys and the reconstitution of their community into new diasporas. ► contact: miriam.jaehn@cseas.kyoto-u.ac.jp acknowledgements i would like to thank prof. antje missbach, who offered me the opportunity to contribute to this special issue, as well as everyone involved in the thorough review process (from the editors to the two anonymous reviewers) to improve this article. disclosure the author declares no conflict of interest. mailto:miriam.jaehn%40cseas.kyoto-u.ac.jp?subject= aseas 15(2) | 213 thai immigrant service-based entrepreneurship in the uk: mixed embeddedness, superdiversity, and combined ethnic and non-ethnic capital sirijit sunantaa* amahidol university, thailand *corresponding author: sirijit.sun@mahidol.edu received: 21 february 2022 / accepted: 08 november 2022 / published: 23 december 2022 ► sunanta, s. (2022). thai immigrant service-based entrepreneurship in the uk: mixed embeddedness, superdiversity, and combined ethnic and non-ethnic capital. advances in southeast asian studies, 15(2), 213-230. this paper examines thai immigrant entrepreneurship in the uk, drawing on 17 interviews with thai migrants in brighton, east sussex. it explores how thai immigrants from different socioeconomic backgrounds and migration pathways mobilize ethnic and non-ethnic forms of capital in their entrepreneurial activities.  thai immigrants constitute a relatively new, small, but internally diverse migrant population in the uk, with female marriage migrants dominating the thai migrant population in the past two decades. the findings of this study reveal that thai migrants tend to own small-scale businesses or provide personal services in three sectors: cleaning and care work, beauty and massage, and food and catering. in their interaction with opportunity structures in the uk, thai restaurant and massage entrepreneurs mobilize the exotic notion of “thai-ness” to add value to their services catering to local british customers. keywords: forms of capital; immigrant entrepreneurship; mixed embeddedness; service-based entrepreneurship; thai migrants  introduction this paper explores thai businesses in brighton, uk, through the lens of immigrant entrepreneurship. the literature on immigrant entrepreneurship often examines factors that shape migrants’ entrepreneurial activities, especially the dynamics between macro-level structures in the host country and migrants’ human agency (kloosterman, 2010; ram et al., 2008). in the uk, the thai migrant population is a relatively new and small migrant group with a distinctive demographic pattern. thai migration to the uk has been dominated by female marriage migration. current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 78 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3447-4648 mailto:sirijit.sun%40mahidol.edu?subject= 214 | aseas 15(2) thai immigrant service-based entrepreneurship in the uk while ethnic social capital has been emphasized in studies of immigrant entrepreneurship, being married to british citizens or residents plays an important role in thai migrants’ entrepreneurial projects. internal diversity among thai migrants in the uk in terms of social class standing, educational attainment, time of arrival, and migration pathways contributes to the complex ways in which different forms of capital – financial, social, and human-cultural capital (nee & sanders, 2001) – have been mobilized among thai migrant entrepreneurs. this paper pays particular attention to the combined mobilization of ethnic and non-ethnic forms of social capital among thai immigrant entrepreneurs. the current study adopts a qualitative approach using semi-structured, in-depth interviews and ethnography as methods to examine thai immigrant entrepreneurship in brighton. a total of 17 face-to-face interviews were conducted along with on-site observations of thai immigrants’ business venues. leaning on kloosterman’s (2010) mixed embeddedness framework, this paper seeks to identify the migration context and socio-economic environment that shape thai immigrant entrepreneurship in brighton and to analyze entrepreneurial practices in which ethnic and non-ethnic forms of social capital are mobilized among migrants of diverse backgrounds and migration trajectories. thai immigrants’ businesses in brighton concentrate in the feminized ‘high-touch’ sectors of food, massage, and cleaning, catering to the mainstream non-ethnic market. two groups of thai migrants who mobilize non-ethnic forms of social capital to gain access to mainstream resources that add advantage to their enterprises are those with high educational attainment and those who are married to british citizens and residents. this paper contributes to the study of thai migration to europe by highlighting migrants’ incorporation in the host country’s economy, challenging the prevalent stereotype of thai migrants in europe as economically dependent foreign wives or sex workers. conceptual framework: forms of capital and mixed embeddedness in immigrant entrepreneurship this paper draws on the literature of immigrant entrepreneurship, generally understood as the undertaking of entrepreneurial activities by immigrants (dabic et al., 2020), especially those who move from developing countries to advanced economies (kloosterman, 2010). studies of immigrant entrepreneurship have shown shifting interrelations between migrants’ agency and structural constraints in the host society. the concept of “mixed-embeddedness” by kloosterman (2010) pays particular attention to the ways in which the business environment in the destination country shapes business activities and prospects of immigrant entrepreneurs. kloosterman (2010) argues that immigrants’ entrepreneurial projects are embedded in specific temporal and spatial frames and that immigrant entrepreneurs operate within specific legal and socio-economic contexts (at the national, city, and neighborhood levels) that create differential opportunity structures. conversely, earlier studies of immigrant and ethnic minority enterprise have focused on migrants’ strategic resource management, especially the mobilization of ethnic social networks, in setting up and operating businesses in host societies (e.g., flap et al., 2000; janjuha-jivraj, 2003; nee & sanders, 2001). since its conceptualization more than two decades ago, the mixed embeddedness framework aseas 15(2) | 215 sirijit sunanta continues to be influential in the studies of immigrant entrepreneurship. intersecting with scholarly work on business and migration, this framework has been used along with other important concepts in migration studies, such as superdiversity (barberis & solano, 2018; kloosterman et al., 2016; ram et al., 2011; sepulveda et al., 2011) and transnationality (solano et al., 2022; yamamura & lasalle, 2020; you & zhou, 2019). migrants’ entrepreneurial activities have been analyzed against socio-cultural dimensions, such as gender (wahlbeck, 2018; you & zhou, 2021; vershinina et al., 2019) and generation (selcuk & suwala, 2020; vershinina et al., 2011). this study of thai immigrant entrepreneurship in brighton contributes to this literature illustrating how the feminization of migration caused by gendered global entanglements between sending and receiving countries, and gendered stereotypes of thai migrants constitute a context in which thai immigrant entrepreneurship has evolved. the “forms of capital” concept was originally developed by pierre bourdieu (1986) as he proposed that individuals and groups invest in, accumulate, and gain profits not only in the form of economic capital but also in more disguised forms of capital, such as 1) social capital – a membership in a group or network; and 2) cultural capital – embodied in forms such as language skills and institutionalized in the form of academic credentials. central to bourdieu’s “forms of capital” is the dynamic in which one form of capital can be converted to another and vice versa, and the fact that individuals are not equal players in the economic field due to differential access to and accumulation of different forms of capital. in other words, bourdieu stresses both human agency in mobilizing/converting forms of capital and structural constraints in which these forms of capital are not equally available to individuals and groups, leading to the reproduction of inequality. bourdieu’s concept has been adopted in different fields of research. in studying thailand’s informal tourism sector, çakmak (2019) illustrates how enterprises of different sizes and stages of development mobilize different forms of capital. trupp (2015) applies the concept of mixed embeddedness and social capital in studying akha ethnic minority street vendors in thailand’s tourist areas. in the field of migration studies, nee and sanders (2001) proposed the ‘forms of capital’ model to study immigrant incorporation into the host country’s economy. they contend that the forms of capital immigrants arrive with and subsequently accumulate shape the split of immigrants into different labor market trajectories. nee and sanders’ (2001) forms of capital consist of financial capital, social capital, and human-cultural capital. social capital usually refers to individuals’ personal empowerment and capacity to gain access to scarce resources by virtue of their membership in social networks or institutions (nederveen pieterse, 2003, p. 31; ram et al., 2008, p. 429). nee and sanders (2001) pay particular attention to the social capital embodied in the family. they observed that “newly arrived immigrants rely on social capital to reduce the costs involved in settling in a new country. they often turn to their extended family and ethnic group to get general information about hiring practices and labor market conditions” (nee & sanders, 2001, p. 390). social capital in the literature of immigrant entrepreneurship tends to emphasize family and ethnic networks as an important source of resources when access to mainstream resources is limited (flap et al., 2000; janjuha-jivraj, 2003; nee & sanders, 2001). following putnam (2000), social capital in studies of immigrant economic performance can be divided into two types – bonding and bridging social capital. capital 216 | aseas 15(2) thai immigrant service-based entrepreneurship in the uk gained by reaching within a closed, tight-knit group (family and ethnic community) is referred to as bonding social capital, while capital drawn from cross-cutting ties across identity and status groups is described as bridging social capital (lancee, 2010). being part of a new migrant group in the uk, thai immigrant entrepreneurs challenge assumptions about the role of immigrants’ families in the development of immigrant entrepreneurship. mixed marriage rather than co-ethnic marriage is the norm among thai migrants in the uk, with a high proportion of female marriage migrants who migrate to join their british citizen husbands. for many thai entrepreneurs in the uk, family support does not necessarily signify bonding social capital within the thai ethnic community. on the contrary, support from british husbands constitutes bridging social capital as well as access to non-ethnic financial and cultural capital. entrepreneurial practices of many thai immigrants thus represent inter-cultural enterprises as described by nederveen pieterse (2003), mobilizing both ethnic and non-ethnic forms of capital. immigrant entrepreneurship in the uk’s context of superdiversity there has been a growing research interest on immigrant entrepreneurship in the uk in the context of “superdiversity” and the lightly-regulated business environment. coined by steven vertovec (2007), superdiversity refers to the new complexity of migration in key destinations, such as the uk, with arrivals of “new, small and scattered multiple-origins, transnationally connected, socio-economically differentiated and legally stratified immigrants” (vertovec, 2007, p. 1024). sepulveda et al. (2011) posit that the lightly-regulated business environment in the uk is favorable for the arrival and development of immigrant entrepreneurship, particularly as migrant populations have become more diverse. jones et al. (2014), however, argue that although migrant populations in the uk are more diverse, they are still concentrated in traditional migrant business sectors, or what kloosterman (2010) categorizes as “vacancy chain” and “personal services” in the post-industrial society. these sectors are characterized by low value, labor intensiveness, and high competition, and thus have limited opportunities for mobility. this line of research points out that the neoliberal market and the lightly-regulated business environment in the uk encourage quantity rather than quality of migrant businesses (barrett et al., 2003; jones et al., 2014). for many of the recent arrivals, the nature of their entrepreneurial activity will be acutely conditioned by political-economic factors such as immigration status, labor market experiences, relations with the local community, and the need to compete with longer-established entrepreneurial minorities (ram et al., 2008, p. 428). internal diversity among migrants from the same country of origin contributes to differential opportunity structures and access to resources in entrepreneurial projects (fresnozaflot & pécoud, 2007; vershinina et al., 2011). given the distinctive characteristic of thai migration to the uk – highly feminized and dominated by marriage migration, and yet internally diverse – this study explores the constraints and opportunities faced by thai migrant entrepreneurs from different socio-economic backgrounds and with different migration pathways. the findings reveal that although thai migrants come from different socio-economic backgrounds in thailand, they face similar constraints in the uk labor market and aseas 15(2) | 217 sirijit sunanta are subject to the same negative gendered and ethnic stereotypes. migrants with high education and professional skills in thailand experience downward mobility in their occupational opportunities in the uk. migration to the uk brings thais from different socio-economic backgrounds on the same level in terms of occupation opportunities – being self-employed, working part-time, working in low-skilled occupations, or engaging in the same kinds of thai businesses in the uk, particularly in the food and massage businesses. many thai businesses cater to non-thai mainstream customers by capitalizing on the image of thai-ness that western people are exposed to through the tourism industry (sunanta, 2020). selling thainess is most prominent in the thai food and massage sectors where authentic thai culture and tradition are invoked to attract non-thai customers. these thai business niches capitalize on and perpetuate gendered and ethnic stereotypes of thais as being good at ‘touch’ and ‘taste’. although engaging in the same thai business niches, thai migrants with different socio-economic backgrounds and migration pathways mobilize different forms of capital to gain access to resources for their entrepreneurial projects. this article will focus on the use of ethnic and non-ethnic social capital among thai migrant entrepreneurs and its implications. to many thai immigrant entrepreneurs, ethnic networks are helpful for hiring, funding, and providing knowledge about business possibilities. in addition, non-ethnic social capital is notably mobilized by two groups of thai migrants: those who are married to british citizens or residents and those who have high levels of education. the data show that non-ethnic social capital benefits thai migrant entrepreneurs. as illustrated by ram et al. (2003), operating within the very limited enclosure of bonding social capital is to put a brake on entrepreneurial growth and diversification. internal exclusiveness can actually exclude entrepreneurs from external possibilities (ram et al., 2008, p. 430). on the other hand, as will be demonstrated in the findings of this study, bridging social capital grants access to mainstream resources – finance, knowledge of local business regulations and marketing strategies, and a larger and more diverse labor pool. specific characteristics of thai migration to the uk should be taken into consideration when analyzing thai immigrant entrepreneurship. the following section will describe the history of mobilities from thailand to the uk and how these developments contribute to a feminized and heterogenous thai migrant community. thai migration to the uk: feminization and heterogeneity the formation of the thai migrant community in the uk is a relatively new development. the size of the thai migrant population in the uk is small compared to migrant groups from countries with a longer history of migration to the uk, such as those in south asia and the african caribbean. the migration flow from thailand to the uk has distinctive characteristics: it is highly feminized with 72% of the 16,256 thaiborn population in the uk being female according to the 2001 census (sims, 2008). between 2001 to 2006, the majority of thai nationals naturalized as uk citizens were marriage migrants, and only one-third of citizenship grants occurred through residence (sims, 2008). the feminization of thai migration and the high proportion of thai marriage migrants in the uk are part of the cross-cultural marriages between 218 | aseas 15(2) thai immigrant service-based entrepreneurship in the uk thai women and western men from europe, australia, and north america that started in the 1970s and reached its peak in the 2000s. the western-thai transnational marriage phenomenon has its root in the cold war geopolitics and the development of thailand into a destination for international sex tourism since the 1960s (angeles & sunanta, 2009; lapanun, 2019; statham et al., 2020). according to research on thai woman-western man cross-cultural marriage and migration, thai women from working class, rural backgrounds in the impoverished isan region overrepresent thai marriage migrants in western countries (angeles & sunanta, 2009; lapanun, 2019; ruenkaew, 2009; sunanta & angeles, 2013). this is particularly true for the older generation of thai wives in europe. more recent research found that younger generations of thai female marriage migrants in europe tend to have professional backgrounds and higher education compared to those who arrived 20-30 years ago (butratana & trupp, 2021; chuenglertsiri, 2020; sinsuwan, 2018). the shift could be attributed to more restricted migration regulations in the receiving countries1 as well as changes in the thai demography, with younger generations receiving more education than their parents. even with higher education, many thais experience blocked opportunities in thailand, and migration to higher-income countries represents better life chances (kitcharoen, 2007; statham et al., 2020). in light of the restricted migration regime in the uk2, marriage is a more accessible – if not the only – migration path for many thais (chuenglertsiri, 2020). thai society is highly stratified, with a wide income gap between the rich and the poor. since the 20th century, the uk has been a destination for the thai elite and privileged classes who seek western/international education. traveling to and residing in the uk was once a privilege for a few upper-class thais. since the 1990s, however, thai migration to the uk has been dominated by marriage migration of thai women, many of whom come from modest backgrounds in thailand. the history of migration from thailand to the uk is intertwined with ingrained social status hierarchies in thailand that have created a heterogenous thai migrant population in the uk – a diverse group whose members do not necessarily identify with each other in terms of class and social standing. even among thai marriage migrants who have settled down in the uk, there have been social cleavages. a study of thai women married to white american men in the us by supatkul (2020) reveals a process of intra-ethnic othering in which class-privileged thai wives express contempt towards and disassociate themselves from rural and lower-class background, co-ethnic marriage migrants. thai women in cross-cultural, intimate relationships with white, western men face negative gendered and classed stereotypes in both their home and destination countries. in thailand, women from rural backgrounds who are in intimate partnerships with white, western men are colloquially called mia farang, a term that conjures the quasi-prostitute identity of isan rental wives of american military men during the vietnam war (sunanta, 2013). the growth of the marriage migration trend in the 1990s and the 2000s takes place alongside more traditional mobilities of upper-class thais to the uk for educational 1 the promulgation of language and citizenship test requirements makes it more difficult for foreign nationals to migrate through marriage and become british citizens. 2 since april 2016, employment-based migration for non-eu citizens to the uk is restricted to ‘highskilled’ labor defined by an annual salary of at least gbp 35,000. aseas 15(2) | 219 sirijit sunanta purposes. among english speaking countries, the uk has been the top destination for higher education for thai students. according to the british council thailand, there were 6,880 thai students in uk universities in the year 2018/2019 (uk still popular among uni students, 2021). some of the upper-class thai students changed their status to permanent residents through marriage or employment. employment-based migrants only constitute a minority of the thai migrant population in the uk, particularly after april 2016 when employment-based migration from non-eu countries was only possible for high-skilled labor categories with a minimum annual salary of gbp 35,000. a relatively small migrant group with high internal diversity, thai migrants in the uk contribute to what vertovec (2007) describes as superdiversity. migration patterns of thai migrants in the uk shape thai migrant entrepreneurship in the destination country. given the prominence of family reunification, particularly cross-national marriage with british citizens/residents, as the basis of migration, the majority of thai migrants did not arrive in the uk with the primary intention to set up a business. self-employment and entrepreneurship are the livelihood choice thai migrants make as they settle down in the uk to form/join a family. arriving as marriage/family reunification migrants implies that migrants are geographically dispersed. they are not always part of an ethnic enclave, living in proximity with other thais – a setting that would normally maximize ethnic social capital in immigrant entrepreneurship. being married to british citizens/residents constitutes a different kind of social capital not found in entrepreneurship in other migrant groups. this paper will explore how internal diversity among thai migrants – educational and social class backgrounds, having or not having a british citizen spouse – influences immigrant entrepreneurship. methodology the study is based on in-depth interviews with 17 thai entrepreneurs in brighton, a seaside city in the southeast of england with a population of 273,369 people according to the 2011 census (brighton & hope city council, n.d.). brighton was chosen as the research site because of existing networks the researcher has with the thai community in the city. although the thai community in brighton is not as large and diverse as in london, most of its members know each other, forming a sense of community. brighton is the business center for smaller towns in the region and a bustling tourism destination as a seaside resort only 76 km from london. in terms of diversity, brighton and hove3 has a higher percentage of white population (both british and non-british) at 89.1% compared to the england average of 85.5%. asians constitute 4.1% of the brighton and hove population compared to the england average of 7.8%. the thai immigrants are a part of the 11,280 asian population in the city (becoming an anti-racist city, 2022). recruitment criteria were set to include people who were born in thailand, own or used to own a business in the uk, or are self-employed. access to informants was gained with the help of local gate keepers in the thai community and through personal networks. the snowball method was used to reach more informants. the researcher 3 brighton and its adjacent city, hove, form a single jurisdiction under the council of brighton and hove. 220 | aseas 15(2) thai immigrant service-based entrepreneurship in the uk spent approximately six months in brighton between 2016 to 2019 and participated in the thai community’s activities in the city. she knows some informants personally and participated in social activities such as dinners, house visits, and going to thai temples with them. most of the interviews were conducted in the summer of 2019. the interviews were conducted in thai and were recorded with the permission of the informants. the interviews were then transcribed and translated into english. the names of the informants were changed to protect their identities. although the sampling size was not large, saturated qualitative data were reached and patterns of entrepreneurial practices among thai migrants established. an ethnography of thai restaurants and massage salons was also conducted, where the overall atmosphere, the ways in which food and services were delivered, and the interactions between servers and customers as well as among servers were observed and recorded in the form of fieldnotes. most studies on immigrant entrepreneurship focus on businesses that are in operation (e.g., fresnoza-flot & pécoud, 2007; ram et al., 2008; vershinina et al., 2011; webster & haandrikman, 2017). in this study, i also included participants who used to own businesses but no longer do so. this method sheds light on the challenges faced by thai immigrant entrepreneurs and their decisions to stop their businesses. this strategy offers a more complete picture of immigrants’ entrepreneurial experiences. informants were asked for their biographical and migration history, post-migration experience in the uk, and entrepreneurial activities. semi-structured, in-depth interviews were chosen to encourage informants to construct their own narratives (denzin & lincoln, 2011). the study follows the interpretivist approach in which themes are induced from the interview narratives (klag & langley, 2013). what emerged from the interview data are the feminization of thai migration in the uk through the domination of marriage migration, the concentration of thai migrants’ businesses in food, massage, and cleaning, the diverse socio-economic backgrounds and migration channels among thai migrants, and the ways these socio-economic factors and migration statuses shape migrants’ mobilization of ethnic and non-ethnic capitals in their entrepreneurial projects. informants’ demographic information the biographical backgrounds and migration trajectories of the research subjects were compatible with the overall picture of thai migration to the uk, reflecting feminization, the domination of marriage migration, and internal diversity. informants’ age ranged from 33 to 70. time spent in the uk ranged from 10 to 31 years. out of 17 informants, 10 came to the uk through marriage, four arrived as students, two were on employment-based visas, and one arrived as a minor child of a marriage migrant mother. three informants who first arrived as students changed their status to marriage migrants (see table 1). research respondents were predominantly female (14 out of 17). both of the employment-based principal migrants were male; they later brought their thai wives as dependents. in terms of skills and educational backgrounds, five of the informants had only completed primary education. nine obtained secondary education or vocational certificates. three of the informants have graduate and postgraduate degrees, one of whom obtained a british mba. aseas 15(2) | 221 sirijit sunanta according to the findings, thai businesses in brighton fall into three categories: food and catering (8), massage (4), cleaning (2), and others (3). the latter includes a multi-level marketing sales representative, a trader in the french market, and a hair dresser. selling thai-ness and mixed embeddedness of thai immigrant entrepreneurship in brighton, uk the findings of this study reveal that most thai enterprises and forms of selfemployment are service-based, in line with kloosterman’s (2010) description of the entrepreneurial sector of“post-industrial, low-skilled migrants” that is flourishing in the context of economically rich, time-poor post-industrial urban cities across the oecd countries. feminist sociologists observe the same phenomenon in the growing trend of the marketization of care and reproductive work in developed economies and the relegation of this work to immigrants from poorer countries (ehrenreich & hochschild, 2004; hochschild, 2003). thai service-based immigrant name gender business age education migration channels time in the uk (years) sombat m thai kitchen in a pub 55 vocational student, marriage (same sex) 25 oi f direct sale/multi level marketing 61 secondary marriage 25 nuan f thai massage 45 primary marriage 10 pim f thai massage 50 primary marriage 28 panni f thai massage 48 secondary marriage 13 tum f french market trader 42 primary marriage 11 sonram m thai kitchen in a pub 36 secondary, uk minor child of a marriage migrant 22 tan f thai kitchen in a pub 45 vocational student 21 wan f thai restaurant 39 ma from the uk student 19 su f thai restaurant 35 ma from thailand student 10 sak m asian grocery store/noodle bar 61 primary employment 31 ploy f thai restaurant 42 vocational dependent wife of employment-based migrant 17 nok f cleaning 42 secondary marriage 11 loi f cleaning 40 primary marriage 15 dao f hair dresser 33 vocational marriage 11 dara f thai restaurant 70 marriage 18 ann f thai massage 41 ba from thailand student, marriage 13 table 1. informants’ demographic information (author’s compilation). 222 | aseas 15(2) thai immigrant service-based entrepreneurship in the uk entrepreneurship in brighton responds to these opportunities, mobilizing thai-ness to add value to their services catering to non-thai, mainstream customers. contrary to migrant ethnic enterprises catering to a co-ethnic/migrant community, many thai businesses in the uk are labeled as thai to cater to the non-thai, mainstream population. according to the thai business owners interviewed, about 80-90% of the customers of thai restaurants and thai massage salons are british/ european. thai migrant entrepreneurs report that the customers already have knowledge and pre-conceptions about thailand, thai food, and thai massage through the media or travel to thailand. thai migrant entrepreneurs capitalize on the image of thai-ness in the eyes of westerners to promote their businesses in the uk. thai restaurants and massage salons are decorated in thai themes, using thai decorative items, such as thai cloths, wood carvings, and the map and images of thailand to produce a thai atmosphere. dishes on the menu of thai restaurants are sometimes given exotic and sensual names. a thai chef in brighton names the thai dish sai-ua (lanna style sausage) “one night stand in chiangmai”. these thai businesses are built on and reify the feminized and sensualized images of thailand and thai-ness promoted by the tourism industry. in the tourism discourse, thai-ness is represented as sensual, warm, gentle, and rich in touch and taste (sunanta, 2020). in addition, thai immigrant entrepreneurs deploy cross-cultural knowledge obtained over time in the business to modify thai services to suit british customers’ taste and preference. a cook in the thai kitchen in a local brighton pub explains that british customers like their dishes a bit sweet and their curries thick and creamy. thai curries from her kitchen are thus thicker and creamier than they would normally be in thailand. she explains that the british had been familiar with thick and creamy indian curries before they experienced thai food. similarly, thai massage entrepreneurs learned that most british customers prefer relaxation massage over heavy, deep tissue massage preferred by thai customers, and manage their business accordingly. as thai businesses cater mainly to british customers, cross-cultural knowledge constitutes an important resource in thai migrant entrepreneurship. thai immigrant entrepreneurs’ conversion of cultural capital – knowledge about local customers’ preference and westerners’ attraction to the exotic notion of thai-ness – into a business advantage is conditioned by a structural context. faced with a limited access to professional positions in the local labor market, thai migrants with higher education from thailand are drawn to low-skilled, service-based businesses, such as restaurants and massage salons. a thai woman who is married to a greek-british citizen started a thai massage salon in brighton. she has a bachelor’s degree in communication from a prestigious thai university and had worked for thailand’s top media company for many years before she migrated to join her husband in the uk. settling down with her husband, she found that she is not qualified to pursue her media profession. in thailand, i wrote scoops and commercial spots in thai language with no efforts. how can i do that in the uk? even though you are good and you know how to use the sound mixer, you don’t have language skills to work with the british media. (ann, 41 years old) aseas 15(2) | 223 sirijit sunanta selling thai-ness is the way in which thai immigrant entrepreneurs interact with opportunity structures in the uk. first, they reach out beyond the ethnic market for a better business opportunity given the small size of the thai migrant community in the receiving country. second, they capitalize on the orientalized image of thai-ness to add value to personal services – a growing business sector in post-industrial economies. however, some drawbacks are inherent in this strategy. the smallscale service-based business sector is labor-intensive. because of the sensualized stereotype of thais, thai female workers in thai service-based businesses often experience forms of sexual harassment by customers (kitcharoen, 2007; sunanta, 2020). thai migrant service-based entrepreneurship in brighton demonstrates that macro-level structures and migrants’ agency are not mutually exclusive. forms of capital are used and converted within certain opportunity structures and socio-economic contexts. ethnic and non-ethnic social capital in thai immigrant entrepreneurship this section will explore how thai immigrants with different socio-economic backgrounds and migration trajectories mobilize different forms of capital in their entrepreneurial activities. the mix of ethnic and non-ethnic social capital will be analyzed among two groups of thai immigrant entrepreneurs: 1) highly educated thai immigrants and 2) thai immigrants who are married to a british citizen/ resident. it should be noted that these two groups are not mutually exclusive. one of the thai entrepreneurs interviewed in this study has received higher education and is married to a british citizen. highly educated thai immigrant entrepreneurs according to the findings, three of the research participants obtained graduate and post-graduate degrees either in thailand or the uk and are currently running restaurant and massage businesses in brighton. the three highly-educated thai entrepreneurs share a distinctive tendency in their entrepreneurial practice. compared to their co-ethnic entrepreneurs with lower educational attainment, thai migrants with university degrees are more willing to expand beyond ethnic resources in recruiting staff. they are more confident in their english language competency and in engaging with non-thai people. su, 37, has a master’s degree from a leading thai university and was employed as an office staff member for a company in bangkok. she dated a man at work who also had a master’s degree from the same university. after some years of working for the company, her boyfriend wanted to come to the uk where his uncle ran a thai restaurant. he arrived as a student, helped his uncle with the restaurant, and decided to stay. su joined him. they got married and bought a thai restaurant business from a leaving owner. the couple received some financial help from their family in thailand to start their business. running a thai restaurant, su and her husband hire thai staff for kitchen work and european staff for table services. she points out that she cannot choose to hire only thai workers because there are not many thais in the city. 224 | aseas 15(2) thai immigrant service-based entrepreneurship in the uk according to su, understanding working styles of staff from different cultural backgrounds is important in retaining employees: “european staff members are very strict with time. they start work, take breaks, and leave for home strictly on time”, which is different from thais, who are more flexible with working hours. ann, 41, has a ba in communication from thailand and is now running a thai massage business in brighton. she hires both thai and non-thai staff in her massage salon. the reception staff and some of the masseuses in her salon are europeans. although ann prefers hiring thai masseuses, there are not enough thai workers for her to fill the positions. worker shortage is one of the most challenging problems for thai enterprises, especially if the owner hires thai staff only. because employment-based visas for low-skilled workers are not available, thai businesses have to hire locally, but the pool of thai population in the uk is limited. less dependent on ethnic networks, highly-educated thai migrant entrepreneurs are more likely to expand their businesses. by hiring non-thai staff, ann is not restrained by the limited pool of thai workers in the area, making it possible for her to open a second branch of her massage salon. thai entrepreneurs in mixed marriages with british citizens loi, 40 years old, joined her british husband in the uk as a marriage migrant in 2004. loi came from a modest family in rural thailand and only completed primary education. once she arrived in the uk, loi started working as a cleaner while her husband worked as a truck driver. in 2016, her british husband decided to set up a cleaning company providing professional cleaning services. i interviewed her while she was waiting in her company’s van for her hired cleaners, two black women, to finish their job at a private building. the company was set up mainly by her husband who takes care of the official and legal aspects of the business. loi is able to move from being a cleaner to owning a business together with her husband and hiring other migrant workers to work for her. this would not have been possible if she was not married to a british man who has better access to mainstream resources – funding, business and marketing knowledge, and language competency. loi does not need any thai ethnic social capital in running her business. ann, the owner of a thai massage salon introduced in the previous section, also has her british husband as a business partner. ann started by working as an independent masseuse providing services in the living room of her own flat. she gradually expanded her business, hiring a thai student as a part-time assistant, and finally renting a premise and hiring other thai masseuses to work for her. as her thai massage business became successful, earning more income than her husband’s salary, he quit his job and became her business partner. with the help of her husband and his training background in finance and business, ann further expanded her business, moving to a prime location in the city center and opening a second branch. in the past few decades, thai migration to the uk and other european countries has been dominated by marriage migration. this migration pattern affects thai immigrant entrepreneurship. the findings of this study reveal the important role of having a british husband/partner in the business performance of thai migrant entrepreneurs. in the swedish context, webster and haandrikman (2017) aseas 15(2) | 225 sirijit sunanta found that thai migrant women with swedish husbands are more likely to own a business compared to swedish-born women and thai women without swedish husbands. the authors contend that swedish husbands constitute important social networks for thai migrant women, helping with legal aspects of running a business in sweden or providing material resources, such as the land on which women grow food for their business. in this study, having a british husband/partner is vital to thai entrepreneurs in the uk. first, a british husband with a high income reduces the pressure on the thai migrant woman to start a business for economic survival. she can thus choose to work or start a business to earn her own income and gain a sense of self-esteem. more importantly, in cases such as loi and ann, the british spouses have also become their business partners. they provide or acquire financial resources, take care of legal aspects such as settling lease contracts or acquiring insurance plans, and contribute their knowledge and familiarity with the local market and business operation. access to mainstream resources through their british husbands reduces thai immigrant entrepreneurs’ reliance on ethnic social networks and potentially benefits their enterprises. the capital poor and business failure different from other studies on immigrant entrepreneurship, i interviewed people who failed at setting up their own businesses in the uk. nuan (45) is one example. she is a part-time masseuse at a thai massage salon who once attempted but failed to set up her own massage salon. nuan comes from a farmers’ family in the impoverished region of isan in thailand. she only completed primary education when she went to work in bangkok at the age of 13. she had worked as a factory worker, housemaid, waitress, and hired laborer in a recycling warehouse. she tried to start her own recycling business in thailand but it was not successful. she came to the uk in 2007 as the wife of a british man whom she met through an online dating agency. once arrived in the uk, she joined him working as a keeper of a football stadium. her part-time salary was paid to her husband’s account because he refused to help her open her own individual bank account. he later met another thai woman during his trip to thailand and nuan separated from him after a year of marriage. she had no home and no job and found help from a thai woman who ran a food catering business. nuan later found a job as a masseuse in brighton through the thai migrant network. she worked part-time at two thai massage salons, which accounted for six days of work per week. she developed muscle strains from overworking. she eventually had to reduce her working hours, which resulted in a reduced income. nuan once started her own massage business by jointly renting a building with an indian hairdresser. the business was not successful. she did not make enough to pay the rent and was evicted from the building. in retrospect, she thinks that the business failed because she was on her own. she could not manage the phone calls, paperwork, and marketing all by herself. she is a single woman with low social, cultural, and economic capital both in thailand and the uk, and this eventually hampered her entrepreneurship opportunities. 226 | aseas 15(2) thai immigrant service-based entrepreneurship in the uk conclusion the relatively new, small, but highly feminized and internally diverse thai migrant community in the uk is an interesting case study for immigrant entrepreneurship. empirical findings from this study confirm kloosterman’s (2010) observation that immigrant entrepreneurs often cater everyday services to the economically rich, timepoor destination countries in the global north. thai immigrant entrepreneurships in brighton are mainly focused on food, massage, and cleaning services. thai restaurant and massage salon owners mobilize thai-ness as a brand to attract non-thai local customers. in the context of the lightly-regulated business environment in the uk (sepulveda et al., 2011), the feminized and geographically dispersed thai migrant population participates in the old ethnic business niches – food, body care, and cleaning – with increasing flexibility. i observed the fluidity and the move between employment, selfemployment, and business ownership within the same business sector among thai migrants in brighton. the fact that thai immigrant entrepreneurs remain in the lowskilled, ‘high-touch’ sectors confirms jones et al.’s (2014) and barrett et al.’s (2003) argument that the uk’s lightly-regulated business environment encourages quantity rather than quality of ethnic enterprises. i follow ram et al. (2008) and vershinina et al. (2011) in seeing structure and agency as mutually constitutive in the development of thai immigrant entrepreneurship in brighton. limited access to professional occupations in the local labor market is a structural condition that attracts thai migrants into self-employment and entrepreneurship. in this study, university educated thai migrants venture into the food and massage businesses – a labor-intensive work that is below their skill level. however, they do not join the cleaning work that thai migrants with lower education level take up. agency and opportunities of thai migrant entrepreneurs are conditioned by macro-level structures. adopting a tourism discourse that promotes thai culture as being rich in the visceral pleasures of touch and taste reproduces ethnic stereotypes that westerners hold for thais. these stereotypes limit other occupational opportunities and contain thai migrants within the ‘high touch’ business of interactive service work, which requires the management of the worker’s body and emotions (sunanta, 2020). in addition, the sensualized image of thais encourages sexual harassment and stigmatization. the emerging thai massage businesses in western countries are sometimes viewed as a disguise for prostitution. in the context of south-to-north marriage migration from thailand to germany, sinsuwan’s (2018) research on the occupational choices of thai female migrants reveals that economic capital earned in the stigmatized sector of massage services decreases migrants’ symbolic capital and lowers their social standing. thai migrants from different socio-economic backgrounds and migration pathways have differential access to resources for their entrepreneurial projects. migrants with graduate and post-graduate degrees are less reliant on hiring from the limited pool of ethnic workers, making growth and expansion easier. migrants who have accumulated cultural capital in the form of knowledge of the local market and customers’ preferences aseas 15(2) | 227 sirijit sunanta are able to convert it to their economic advantage. lastly, thai marriage migrants who have a british spouse as a business partner have access to mainstream, non-ethnic economic, cultural, and social capital that are beneficial for their entrepreneurial projects. however, this advantage is accompanied by a risk of overreliance on the british spouse and compromising thai migrant business’s sustainability in the event of divorce or relationship breakdown. thai immigrant entrepreneurship challenges assumptions about the role of immigrants’ family and ethnic social capital in the studies of immigrant entrepreneurship. nee and sanders’ (2001) discussion of the mobilization of different forms of capital was based on the understanding that immigrants migrate as a family consisting of co-ethnic members. the prevalence of mixed marriages among thai immigrants demonstrates the importance of non-ethnic social capital as marriages to a british spouse reduce immigrants’ reliance on ethnic networks for resources. the deployment of different forms of capital in thai immigrant entrepreneurship challenges a simple understanding of immigrant entrepreneurship. businesses labeled as thai and run by thai migrants in brighton are not purely ethnic enterprises; they represent inter-cultural enterprises as described by nederveen pieterse (2003), mobilizing both ethnic and non-ethnic forms of capital. the small sampling size and relatively short time of observation are the limitations of this study. a longitudinal study will provide a better view of the development and dynamics of thai immigrant entrepreneurship in this locality. thai immigrants’ businesses in brighton are not representative of the overall thai immigrant entrepreneurship in the uk. the study leans on the mixed embeddedness framework in locating thai immigrant entrepreneurship in a specific time and place. a study of thai immigrant entrepreneurship in other cities in the uk might yield different results due to locally specific legal and socio-economic contexts and the make-up of the thai migrant population that create different opportunity structures and business environments.  references angeles, l. c., & sunanta, s. 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(2021). gender and transnational dynamics in immigrant entrepreneurship: a case study of chinese-owned nail salons in new york city. journal of chinese overseas, 17, 239-264. about the author sirijit sunanta  is associate professor in the phd program in multicultural studies, research institute for languages and cultures of asia, mahidol university, thailand. her research inter230 | aseas 15(2) thai immigrant service-based entrepreneurship in the uk ests include gender and migration, globalization and food cultures, and the politics of diversity in thailand. sirijit’s current research projects focus on care transnationalization and gendered labour in thai health and well-being tourism. ► contact: sirijit.sun@mahidol.edu acknowledgements this study is funded by the british academy and thailand research fund under the newton advanced fellowship program (2018). the author thanks thai entrepreneurs in briton, uk, for their trust and for sharing their stories. disclosure the author declares no conflict of interest. aseas 16(1) | 1 the covid-19 pandemic, (im)mobilities, and migration in southeast asia antje missbacha* & gunnar stangeb* abielefeld university, germany buniversity of vienna & private university college of education burgenland, austria *corresponding authors: antje.missbach@uni-bielefeld.de & gunnar.stange@univie.ac.at received: 31 january 2023 / accepted: 4 june 2023 / published: 28 june 2023 ► missbach, a., & stange, g. (2023). the covid-19 pandemic, (im)mobilities, and migration in southeast asia. advances in southeast asian studies, 16(1), 1-16. rarely has a single subject seen such extensive participation in debate across numerous disciplines within international academic publishing as the covid-19 pandemic. considering its enduring nature and global impact, covid-19 has transcended its initial health crisis and evolved into a multi-faceted crisis. according to ali (2021), covid-19 manifested as an economic, social, emotional/psychological, and political pandemic. since its first detection in late 2019, covid-19 profoundly affected the world’s political, legal, social, economic, moral, and cultural systems, necessitating responses on multiple scales. this multiple crisis has demanded scientific explanations and technocratic solutions, while also prompting philosophical sense-making and even speculation about what lies ahead. due to the frequent use of metaphors likening the covid-19 pandemic to warfare or invasion (avalos & moussawi, 2023), it is hardly surprising that defensive introspection and inward-looking perspectives were propelled by the pandemic. the swift and extensive arrival of the pandemic, along with its vast scope, immediately redirected attention to local living environments. consequently, analyses focused on cities, provinces, and nation-states became readily available and were highly sought after, surpassing interest in developments elsewhere. developments outside of immediate contexts were further complicated by the virus’s diverse dynamics and its rapid mutations, resulting in constantly evolving landscapes of contagion. the scope of the pandemic was simply overpowering and (academic) capacities were overwhelmed (early exemptions include muhammad & zanker, 2021). throughout the pandemic, the prevailing tendency was towards inward-looking approaches, as vaccine nationalism took precedence over universal distribution schemes. international solidarity and transnational cooperation took a back seat, giving rise to a resurgence of nationalism. according to christoph horn (2020), the initial national responses to covid-19 undermined significant progress achieved within supranational institutional frameworks responsible editorial w w w .s ea s. at 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 92 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1378-146x https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6625-6963 mailto:antje.missbach%40uni-bielefeld.de?subject= mailto:gunnar.stange%40univie.ac.at%20?subject= 2 | aseas 16(1) the covid-19 pandemic, (im)mobilities, and migration in southeast asia for global governance in health, conflict, and migration, which had been established over the previous five decades. now, more than three years since the world health organization (who) declared the covid-19 outbreak a global pandemic, it is essential to reflect and shift our focus from immediate news announcements within our surroundings to broader, trans-regional, and long-term developments. in this special issue, we emphasize the nexus between migration and covid-19 to capture some of the significant shifts initiated or catalyzed by the pandemic. even in non-pandemic times, migration presents numerous challenges for researchers and politicians alike. depending on various individual factors such as aspirations, gender, class, age, legal status, and access to national migration systems, as well as broader structural conditions like political instability, forced displacement, and macroeconomic trends, migration flows and outcomes are often mixed at best. given that covid-19 infections spread through people’s movements and ultimately rendered hundreds of millions immobile, the contributions in this collection concentrate on highly mobile people, including internally displaced people (jaehn, 2023, this issue), refugees (abd jalil & hoffstaedter, 2023, and prabaningtyas et al., 2023, this issue), and international students (missbach & purdey, 2023, this issue), as well as researchers and labor migrants (cusripituck & yamabhai, 2023, this issue). recognizing the covid-19 pandemic as an opportunity to study disruptions in migration and mobility, this special issue explores topics and trends that have been insufficiently addressed thus far. while the contributions in this collection primarily examine the limitations, restrictions, and challenges brought about by the pandemic and the responses to it, some also highlight new possibilities and opportunities (see cusripituck & yamabhai, 2023, and stange et al., 2023, this issue). when studying the migration-covid-19 nexus in specific locations, southeast asia invites such engagement for various reasons. southeast asian societies exhibit high levels of both domestic (mainly rural-to-urban) and international mobility (mostly from ‘poor’ to ‘rich’ countries). for many southeast asians, short-term and long-lasting migration has become an integral part of life, if not a way of life itself. southeast asia plays a crucial role as a major exporter of temporary migrant labor, particularly to the middle east and other parts of asia such as korea, taiwan, and japan (foley & piper, 2021; palmer, 2016). even intra-regional labor migration, such as from indonesia to malaysia or from the philippines and thailand to singapore, holds significant importance. without the influx of international labor migrants and rural-to-urban migrants, who are willing to take up 3-d (difficult, dangerous, and demeaning) jobs at low pay, southeast asian metropoles would be smaller and less vibrant. moreover, many essential sectors like hospitality, healthcare, construction, retail, and agriculture would suffer from labor shortages. prior to the covid-19 outbreak, southeast asian countries hosted approximately 10 million international migrants, nearly half of whom were women, working outside their countries of birth (ilo, 2020a; ullah, 2022). the recruitment of labor migrants and the facilitation of their movement have become substantial sources of revenue for states and their associates,1 not to mention the remittances sent back by migrants to their families 1 moreover, the migration industry relies largely on private agencies and their brokerage services for recruitment, facilitation of migration, and surveillance of labour migrants. aseas 16(1) | 3 antje missbach & gunnar stange and communities in their countries of origin. unlike migration linked to long-term integration or settlement in liberal democratic states of the global north, a significant portion of low-skilled migration in southeast asia is limited to temporary employment, with little to no pathways to full and permanent integration (yeoh, 2022). the inherent transience of labor and other forms of migration became the weak point of these migration systems once covid-19 disrupted the usual dynamics of migration and mobility, a topic extensively discussed by the contributors of this issue. beside vibrant labor migration, southeast asia has one of the highest rates of internal displacement globally, not only due to natural and human-induced environmental disasters (miller & douglas, 2018), but also due to ethnic, religious, and social conflict. the exodus of close to one million rohingya, an ethnic-religious minority from myanmar, to bangladesh in 2017 and their subsequent secondary movements to malaysia, thailand, and indonesia is the most crucial forced displacement in the region, but by far not the only one. despite open conflict, ongoing tensions, and political instability, some southeast asian countries have also become hosts for other extra-regional forced migrants, for example from afghanistan, somalia, and the middle east. in particular, malaysia and thailand have been accommodating tens of thousands of refugees, asylum seekers, and also undocumented (forced) migrants, often living under precarious circumstances for protracted periods of time (koizumi & hoffstaedter, 2015; missbach, 2015; stange et al., 2019). given the lasting unwillingness to become signatories to the 1951 international refugee convention and its 1967 protocol, as well as the disregard for protection claims issued by asylum seekers, those people are often just categorized as ‘irregular/illegal’ migrants by the receiving states (kneebone et al., forthcoming). keeping in mind southeast asia’s heterogeneous migrant population in terms of ethnic-religious affiliations, educational and skills levels, earning capacities, and general needs, it is important to acknowledge the range of their legal statuses, social acceptance, and (trans-)local embeddedness. in handling covid-19 infections, treatment and prevention have been closely intertwined with these three factors. it was hardly surprising to see that the virus succeeded in hurting mostly those who were already vulnerable, as they carried the wrong legal label, lacked strong social contacts, and lived at the margins of the host society (schmidt-sane et al., 2020). considering the many ruptures brought by the pandemic, it is necessary to explore and analyze from various perspectives the intersections between covid-19 and migrants in or from southeast asia, as well as the midto long-term transformations of the norms, practices, and experiences of migration and mobility within southeast asia and beyond. aside from those migration-related factors that make southeast asia a productive site for the study of the migration-covid-19 nexus, it is important not to lose track of other crucial developmental features that impacted the progression and handling of the pandemic. southeast asian countries occupy various positions along the development spectrum. the ‘poorer’ ones are known to have been struggling prior to the pandemic in terms of economic disparities and inadequate infrastructures, such as limited access to healthcare and education, clean water, and electricity, in addition to large-scale unemployment and poverty. the enormous discrepancies in the public and private healthcare systems are undeniable. the underfunding of the public healthcare sector has had many negative repercussions for large segments 4 | aseas 16(1) the covid-19 pandemic, (im)mobilities, and migration in southeast asia of the population throughout the early stages of the pandemic when denial of the existence of the pandemic and underreporting of infections and death rates were particularly widespread. to some extent, even the more affluent countries with better public provisions have been weathered by various earlier crises, including the 1997 asian financial crisis, the 2004 indian ocean tsunami, and the 2008 global financial crisis. previous crisis encounters may have shaped the way some southeast asian governments dealt with the covid-19 pandemic. covid-19 was not the only “frightening enemy” (grundy-warr & li, 2020, p. 499), but the pandemic was used as justification by the authoritarian government in myanmar to claim extraordinary powers (jaehn, 2023, this issue), to legitimize an increasingly securitized response to immigration in malaysia (abd jalil & hoffstaedter, 2023, this issue; khanna, 2020), and to bust union activists in cambodia (hwr, 2022). in some cases, perhaps, the state’s anti-covid-19 measures proved to be more fatal than the actual infection by the virus. lessons learned so far a general tenor across the social sciences is that the covid-19 pandemic has further aggravated pre-existing injustices, prejudices, and inequalities, including (im)mobility inequalities (avalos & moussawi, 2023; de genova, 2021; jensen, 2021; mezzadra & neilson, 2022; muhammad & zanker, 2021; velasco, 2021; ye, 2021). covid-19 attested that both “mobility but also immobility can be used as a kind of capital (in the bourdieuan sense), a right and resource that not everyone enjoys and has access to” (salazar, 2021, p. 12). based on our systematic yet highly selective readings of publications covering covid-19 and issues of migration and mobility, we delineated the following sub-themes and observations that support this notion of amplification of global inequalities due to the pandemic, and which are also highly relevant for our more specific deliberations on the impacts of covid-19 on migration and mobility in southeast asia, featured in this special issue. re-bordering confronted with the rapid spread of a viral disease, governments worldwide implemented various migration management measures, such as border closures, travel restrictions, and lockdowns to prevent or mitigate the spread of the virus. as of 23 march, 2022, at least 174 countries had implemented travel bans, border closures, and other mobility restrictions (iom, 2020). these stern mobility restrictions at subnational, national, and international levels led to a process of re-bordering, where previously diminished or relaxed borders reemerged and became more rigid, and borders that were already heavily guarded before the pandemic became further militarized (suhardiman et al., 2021). the global sense of emergency, rooted in the labeling of cross-border movements as a health risk, gave rise to new forms of migration governance, manifested in unprecedented global lockdowns. flights were grounded, people stayed at home, and freedom of movement came to an abrupt halt, at least for very many individuals. aseas 16(1) | 5 antje missbach & gunnar stange while most observers noted the “great immobility” brought about by covid-19, the significant rush of individuals returning home triggered by the pandemic should not be overlooked. xiang biao introduced the concept of “shock mobilities” early on, referring to “sudden human movements in response to acute disruptions” (xiang, 2021, p. 1). some global north countries spared no expenses or efforts to evacuate and rescue their citizens stranded in holiday destinations or work placements abroad. meanwhile, many labor migrants from the global south had to fend for themselves (stange et al., 2023, this issue). some individuals walked or cycled hundreds of kilometers just to reach their homes, with many of them dying on their way (pandey, 2020). between late march 2020, after the indian government announced a nationwide lockdown, and late may 2020, 7.5 million domestic indian migrants flocked back to their homes (xiang, 2021). shock mobility encompasses degrees of forced migration but typically lasts only briefly. however, there have been cases where shock mobility resulted into more protracted forced migration. news reports revealed that an indonesian crew was forced to stay at sea for 13 months and continue fishing before being allowed to disembark in south korea (carvalho, 2020). during this extended voyage, four crew members died, with three of them being dumped overboard without any official report or investigation into the cause of their deaths. the surviving crew members were repatriated to indonesia and left waiting for unpaid wages. they were unable to seek compensation for their outstanding wages, despite international laws that, at least in theory, stipulate the right of migrant workers to receive unpaid wages. this extreme case illustrates the common treatment of deported or repatriated migrant workers, which was further exacerbated during the pandemic. globally, between 150,000 and 200,000 seafarers were trapped on board ships as of june 2020 due to port closures (ilo, 2020b). while border closures were justified as being in the interest of everyone and held the promise of future freedom (heller, 2021), the reality was that borders were not as impenetrable as often portrayed by politicians and decision-makers. only “essential” border crossings were allowed to uphold basic services such as healthcare and food production, as well as crucial sectors like agriculture and transport (guild, 2020). the sudden and, in many cases, complete closure of national and sub-national borders due to covid-19 had severe consequences for migrants who play vital roles in essential services such as healthcare, social care, and food supply chains (anderson et al., 2021). while the interests of the host society and its citizens took precedence, and specific exemptions were granted for border crossings, there was lesser attention given to the fragility of migrant livelihoods and the disruption to their careers and income-generating mechanisms, resulting in what could be described as enforced impoverishment. the indifference towards migrants’ lives in comparison to the privileges enjoyed by citizens was striking and manifested in various forms. fassin (2020) interpreted the differential treatment of migrants and citizens in emergency measures as indicative of a broader moral hierarchy that positions migrants at the bottom. pathologizing mobility and associating migrants with disease has influenced immigration control for centuries (boris, 2022; cresswell, 2021). the stigmatization of migrants, particularly those seen as unruly, culminated in accusations of being ‘superspreaders’. as migration and mobility became increasingly politicized across states and regions, it seemed ‘natural’ for state responses to covid-19 to adopt 6 | aseas 16(1) the covid-19 pandemic, (im)mobilities, and migration in southeast asia further security measures and restrictions on cross-border movements. aradau and tazzioli (2021) observed that “covid-19 has not only become coterminous with borders and bordering, but it has entrenched their acceptability as techniques of governing” (p. 3). yet, for those such as refugees, for whom mobility was not just essential but even existential (salazar, 2021), border closures created risks that, in some cases, became life-threatening (reidy, 2021). discriminatory practices arising from emergency measures turned “those at risk into a risk” in the name of health and safety (mezzadra & stierl, 2020). during the early stages of the pandemic, there was not only an increase in diverse bordering mechanisms, but, more importantly, the enforcement of these more restrictive border management practices was often uneven. this was not a coincidence, but rather reflected pre-existing b/ordering techniques and socio-political boundarymaking. even during the strictest border closures, there were exemptions, and the preferences for who was allowed to enter and who needed to stay out perpetuated enduring class-based asymmetries and racialized inequalities. elites and politicians often set poor examples, seeking special concessions for their own transgressions (as was prominently exemplified by the “partygate” affair that evolved around boris johnson, the former prime minister of the united kingdom (allegretti, 2023)), thus exacerbating existing mistrust in elected leaders and state institutions. while none of the bordering measures proved successful in halting the spread of the virus, primarily due to its uncontrollable nature, these measures were eventually relaxed and lifted, albeit not uniformly or for everyone to the same extent (heller, 2021). in the context of vaccine nationalism and immuno-privileges, crossing international borders required not only passports and visas, but also an internationally recognized proof of up-to-date immunization, commonly referred to as covid passports. in the years ahead, migration scholars must strive to better comprehend why the emergency-governance nexus unfolded during the covid-19 pandemic and uncover any remnants of bordering mechanisms that may persist in the post-pandemic era. intensifying rejection of those seeking asylum long before covid-19 struck, several scholars had bemoaned the “politics of rejection” (heyman, 2012), the “death of asylum” (mountz, 2020), and the fact that the chances to find refuge had shifted “beyond reach” (fitzgerald, 2019) because the global system that was supposed to guarantee protection to persecuted people was no longer functioning. mountz (2020) shed light on the global chain of remote detention centers used by states of the global north to confine people fleeing violence and poverty and thereby preventing them from accessing the national territories from where they could launch asylum applications. fitzgerald (2019) analyzed additional, non-territorial measures of exclusion adopted by the rich democracies to systematically shut down legal paths to safety and protection. the onset of the pandemic that saw abrupt border closures, therefore, provided most useful justifications to intensifying the politics of rejections towards refugees, as they were immediately associated with the deadly disease. the prohibitions to disembark migrants rescued in the mediterranean sea, introduced by italy and malta, clearly illustrate these politics of rejection in the name of preventing covid-19 from spreading (tazzioli & stierl, 2021). aseas 16(1) | 7 antje missbach & gunnar stange the hostile rejections did not only play out in the borderlands around the global north, but also along migration corridors in the global south, where potential transit and destination countries implemented disembarkation bans. one notorious example for ramping up border protection and enforcing rejections is malaysia, which according to malaysian authorities had blocked at least 22 refugee boats in the first half of 2022 alone (hrw, 2020). in public statements, the malaysian authorities made no secret of their motivations and justified their action by claiming that boat passengers would otherwise bring covid-19 into the country (royal malaysian airforce, 2020). the fear of contagion was utilized to cover up deep-seated xenophobia and anti-immigrant sentiments that have prevailed for decades (see also abd jalil & hoffstaedter, 2023, this issue). instead of blaming refugees for being potential criminals or threats to the host society pre-emptively, this time around they were blamed as potential carriers of disease. despite protest from several un agencies that were concerned with protection of maritime refugees in distress, including the united nations high commissioner for refugees (unhcr), the international organization for migration (iom), and the united nations office on drugs and crime (unodc), malaysia and indonesia continued their pushbacks throughout the pandemic widely unhindered (khanna, 2020). while covid-19 reactions are commonly associated with a standstill and deceleration of mobility, it is important to recognize that pushbacks and other refoulement practices have resulted in (en)forced mobilities (de genova, 2022; xiang, 2021). in the united states, the covid-19 crisis provided the trump administration with an opportunity to use health justifications to expel individuals arriving at the border, even if they were being returned to life-threatening circumstances (adey et al., 2021). reports of fast-track deportations to myanmar also emerged from malaysia. despite the relaxation of bordering measures related to covid-19, there is reason to believe that the intensified politics of rejection and other forms of necropolitical cruelties may persist beyond the pandemic. tazzioli and stierl (2021) argue that the seemingly temporary responses to an unprecedented health crisis do in fact have a long afterlife. not least, as the pandemic “has been seized as an opportunity to strengthen existing deterrence measures and hamper migrants’ access to asylum through biopolitical and spatial tactics that aim to restructure the border regime” (p. 539). confinement and segregation responses to covid-19 have given rise to a continuum of confinement rooted in an underlying hygienic-sanitary logic (aradau & tazzioli, 2021). whether embraced voluntarily or not, measures such as social and physical distancing, lockdowns, quarantine, or self-isolation were initially seen as a means to prevent or slow down infections. while the retreat into private spaces for well-to-do citizens may have constituted an unexpected and novel experience of isolation, their confinement can still be seen as a privilege, especially for those who received financial compensation for staying at or working from home. however, for others who could not afford to stay home but were still obligated to do so, confinement was not just uncomfortable but rather a punitive experience and a severe disruption of their income strategies. the affective rule of the pandemic hailed from the implementation of lockdowns, which in turn revitalized segregation patterns between those who belong and those who 8 | aseas 16(1) the covid-19 pandemic, (im)mobilities, and migration in southeast asia seemingly do not belong to the nation, thereby seeking to legitimize the treatment of migrants differently from the rest of society. as land-based confinement spaces such as vacant hotels and unoccupied barracks became fully occupied during the pandemic, floating spaces such as quarantine ships referred to as “floating hotspots” in the mediterranean sea were utilized to confine migrants (giacomelli & walker, 2022). having already pointed out to the “racialized confinement” along the borders separating the global north from the global south (tazzioli & stierl, 2021, p. 539), confinement measures also accentuated segregation within by reinforcing the topographies of separation between citizens and non-citizens. in some cases, they exposed the “bare viscerality of biopolitics already in place prior to the pandemic” (ye, 2021, p. 1895). confinements in various spaces not only temporarily prevented conviviality but also manifested difference through place-based diversification that was heavily policed. the pandemic notably amplified forms of ‘citizens-first’ chauvinism and antiimmigrant sentiments, particularly in relation to accessing medical care. assuming that migrants are problematic and difficult-to-manage subjects, for example, lowwage labor migrants in singapore were confined to their dormitories, and afghan refugees in indonesia to their shelters (mixed migration centre, 2020; ye, 2021). this risked exacerbating covid-19 health risks through densely packed forms of collective confinement. over 1.2 million rohingya refugees were confined to camps along the bangladesh-myanmar border. public risk assessments fluctuated between the need to protect camp inhabitants from sick members of the surrounding host society and the need to protect the host society from sick refugees in the camps. regardless, their confinement often meant limited access to fresh food, medical services, vaccinations, and other essentials. in other words, confinements undertaken for precaution and safety became “the formula which encapsulates the politics of containment in covid times” (tazzioli & stierl, 2021, p. 550), ultimately forcing refugees to share cramped spaces instead of being protected from exposure to the virus. from this perspective, the confined were effectively “displaced in place” (crawley & nyahuye, 2022, p. 25). heller (2021) spoke of “sanitary apartheid” (p. 113) to capture the attempts to separate populations designated as at risk of covid-19 infection from those designated as covid-free, which clearly echoes the earlier perception of “global apartheid” (richmond & valtonen, 1994) that uses citizenship and visa restrictions to police the differential access to mobility founded on race and class. also, in other regions, confinement and containment measures were justified to support the safety of both migrants as well as the broader host society, but often required exceptional authoritarian backing in order to be enforced. yet, in reality it was not always clear who needed to be protected from whom or who was seen as riskier transmitters of covid-19. the vagueness supported measures that saw migrants being pitted against poor citizens, not least as those confined in crowded dormitories, camps, and shelters were simultaneously blamed for constituting a breeding ground for the virus. poor people, rather than the enabling political conditions of poverty, were blamed for their own vulnerability and higher mortality rates as well as the spread of the virus (mudhoffir & hadiz, 2021). given that many of those assigned spaces were contested by those confined there and living in enclaves was resisted, states had to monitor their pandemic regulations and pastoral practices with different technologies of mass surveillance. as observed by molland (2021), the focus of de-territorial governance shifts from keeping people aseas 16(1) | 9 antje missbach & gunnar stange in fixed locations to tracking individuals as they traverse through territory. this resulted in the introduction of new mobile applications designed to monitor the spread of infections by tracking people’s movements. additionally, individuals were required to scan qr codes when accessing public spaces as a means to monitor their mobility. instead of confining people to their homes and limiting their mobility, these measures allowed for increased agility, but at the cost of constant surveillance and the tracing of encounters with others. permissible mobility was contingent on up-to-date information regarding individuals’ past infections, vaccination status, and current test results. those found to be in violation of the rules could face reprimands, fines, or even arrest. in singapore, there were reports of labor migrants who breached social distancing and confinement rules having their work permits revoked (ye, 2021). waiting in stasis next to spatially separating people from each other and confining them to specific spaces, pandemic confinement also entailed specific temporal dimensions. covid-19 mandates produced mobility regimes with distinctly slow or decelerated temporalities (avalos & moussawi, 2023), which, however, played out very differently for different people, following suit with the long-established hierarchies of inequality. although the outcomes of such measures negatively affected all people concerned by them, from an intersectional perspective the impacts varied tremendously according to the fault lines of gender, class, and age, but also residency status and socio-economic inequalities. covid-19 became associated not only with deceleration of public life but particularly with waiting. the fewer privileges people had during the pandemic, the longer their waiting and the more hindered their mobilities. social scientists have studied particularly the temporality-anxiety nexus that resulted from many covid-19 public health measures. resulting from their research in macau, zuev & hannam (2021) developed the notion of ‘anxious immobilities’ to capture the midand long-term experiences of waiting associated with covid-19 related lockdowns. according to them, anxious immobility is “characterized by a total disruption of everyday rhythms and anxious waiting for a return to normalization of activity” (zuev & hannam, 2021, p. 35). waiting for life to resume or continue the way people knew it was not just a natural outcome of the pandemic. but waiting was in fact produced and intensified through the creation of ever more legal, administrative, and infrastructural measures that intensified the experience of individual and collective acts of waiting. over the last decade, migration scholars have interrogated the connections between time and temporality in regard to movement, migration governance, and immobilization (de genova, 2022; jacobsen et al., 2021). prolonged periods of waiting and stasis increasingly characterize the lives of refugees, asylum seekers, and other irregular(ized) migrants. a core element of people’s experiences navigating immigration institutions is the act of waiting (torres et al., 2022). chronic and cumulated waiting for being able to register as an asylum seeker, to conduct status determination interviews and await the outcome, or to be chosen for resettlement or any other assistance program while being excluded from geographic and social mobility can exhaust people far in excess. 10 | aseas 16(1) the covid-19 pandemic, (im)mobilities, and migration in southeast asia while waiting, people are to remain in protracted uncertainty until their cases are resolved. but the waiting they have to face proceeds unevenly, often arbitrarily, and more often defies legal transparency. the temporal suspension of mobility goes hand in hand with spatial uncertainties in regard to when, where, and how people can stage their legal claims. this became particularly visible in the us-mexico context and along the migration corridors in southern and central america where thousands of asylum-seekers had gotten stuck. in a way, their lockdown began long before the covid-19 pandemic, yet for these immobilized people the covid-19 related lockdown measures then provided the final blow to their immobilization (torres et al., 2022). welander (2021) has coined the notion of “politics of exhaustion”, by which she refers to the “raft of (micro) practices and methods strategically aimed to deter, control, and exclude certain groups of people on the move who have been profiled as ‘undesirable,’ with a detrimental (un)intended impact on [their] lives” (p. 29). the fact that many countries suspended asylum registration and resettlement at the start of the pandemic shows how waiting was made deliberately indefinite, and how those countries failed in properly protecting those under their mandate. exploitation, (hyper)precarity and detouring covid-19 restrictions have widely exacerbated pre-existing conditions of lived precarity and social inequality for many documented low-wage migrants who have already been living under perilous conditions prior to the pandemic. their precarity was founded in and exacerbated by migrants’ limited knowledge about their workplace rights, language barriers, and the limited interaction with local society that increases the isolation and active exclusion they often face. fueled by public responses to mitigate covid-19, they, more than others, faced unjust wage-reductions and unlawful deductions for food, accommodation, and other expenses. those defined to constitute ‘essential’ workers during the pandemic also faced increased health risks when conducting risky transmissions in lowly paid sectors such as health service, food industry and retail. their lack of privilege to stay at home and live on wage continuation or special covid-19 related hardship-allowances meant that they were not only ‘essential’ but indeed ‘sacrificial’ workers in light of the insufficient safety measures provided, which in the worst of cases turned them into ‘disposable’ workers who were not granted basic rights as they could be replaced with ease. in this regard, mezzadra and neilson (2022) speak of the ‘capitalist virus’, thus stressing “how the pandemic has intensified capitalist forms of extraction and exploitation” (p. 2). it comes as no surprise that migrant workers died at a higher rate than non-migrants during the first phases of the pandemic. loss of jobs and income during the pandemic have further increased instability and precarity, not just for the migrants themselves but also for their families back home. unemployment and unpaid salaries meant that those families lost remittances, a lifeline to about one billion people worldwide. foley and piper (2021) reported the widespread nonor underpayment of wages for essential but widely undervalued work provided by southeast asian migrant workers in the middle east during the pandemic. those with temporary working contracts are usually excluded from national social protection provisions. if they lost their jobs, they were often forced to accept less aseas 16(1) | 11 antje missbach & gunnar stange beneficial salaries and conditions of employment, while others faced termination of their work permit and possible deportation. more than two million labor migrants in southeast asia lost their jobs and had to return to their home countries (asean, 2022). while risks of abuse and exploitation for documented labor migrants intensified enormously during the pandemic, for undocumented and, thus, illegal(ized) migrants heightened precarity became catastrophic. having already pointed out the exclusionary practices directed at those who were deemed not to belong to national populations during the pandemic, some had no other choice but to withdraw even more from society and try to live clandestine lives to avoid any contact with authorities and circumventing control measures such as vaccine passports and covid-19 tests. illegal(ized) and undocumented forms of migration and residence translated into unregulated livelihood pathways that further intensified migrant exclusions and the pressure to take even higher risks (suhardiman et al., 2021). the appeal to stay home was particularly overwhelming for those who did not have a proper home, as the pandemic had made them homeless. for example, many live-in domestic workers who had been taking care of children at their employers’ house, found themselves roaming streets at the onset of the pandemic (pandey et al., 2021). this hyper-precarity results from destroyed livelihoods on the one hand and “the limited choice, or even complete absence, of any substitute strategies for generating an income on the other hand that would allow them to meet the costs of living in a lawful manner” (missbach, 2022, p. 109). while the negative impacts on migrants and refugees during the pandemic were in many regards disastrous, it needs to be acknowledged that “even against the considerable forces aligned to immobilize their movement, or to subject them to the stringent and exclusionary rules and constrictions of asylum, the subjective autonomy of human mobility remains an incorrigible force” (de genova, 2022, p. 143). according to aradau and tazzioli (2021), covid-19 did not entirely put on hold nor substantially decelerate migrants’ movements for long, but rather redirected their routes and flows. for example, arrivals from libya to italy (central mediterranean route) have intensified, while those from turkey to greece (eastern mediterranean route) decreased. a similar shift can be noticed in regard to rohingya movements across the andaman sea as well as the land routes (khanna, 2020). concomitantly, the need for unsanctioned mobility and migration triggered a need for facilitators. sarrica et al. (2020), who studied the effects of covid-19 on irregular(ized) migrants, including those who had been trafficked or smuggled into host countries in the global north, found that the number of irregular arrivals in europe and the usa decreased only temporarily. the authors expected that the covid-19 pandemic is likely to make smuggling of migrants riskier and more expensive, especially for people fleeing persecution, violence, and conflict. subsequent studies detected an increasing reliance on the service of smugglers as well as the emergence of new, more dangerous routes, with key areas of concern including transit camps in niger, at the border with libya and algeria (maple et al., 2022). redefining normalcy the implications of covid-19 presented here may not have fully become visible in all their facets and intricacies, but it is safe to assume that the consequences of the 12 | aseas 16(1) the covid-19 pandemic, (im)mobilities, and migration in southeast asia pandemic will determine our future lives in one way or another. assuming that the virus will not disappear but mutate and continue to strike again, a better understanding and adjustment to the pandemic ruptures in migration and of mobility might help cope with related problems for the years to come. or in other words, “tomorrow’s normalcy will grow out of today’s disruption” (xiang, 2021, p. 6). concomitant with the need to define the ‘new normal’, however, runs the risk that “normalising ‘exceptional’ policies that restrict freedoms and rights in the name of crisis and public safety” (mezzadra & stierl, 2020) might cement mobility injustices for the long term. national governments, rather than supranational organizations, have acted as main protagonists in the contrivance and implementation of covid-19 responses, reserving their hegemonic power to censor and control people’s behaviors. rather than the institutionalizing of a new ‘immobility regime’, this literature review has demonstrated the majority of scholars seem to agree on two principal findings: a) that the covid-19 pandemic has shown the unsustainability of the contemporary migration and mobility schemes; and b) that the current pandemic has given rise to the “extremes of heavy-handed authoritarian biopolitical overreach and reckless necropolitical negligence” (de genova, 2022, p. 142). although some argue that the outbreak of covid-19 did not necessarily constitute a watershed moment in the perpetuation of border, asylum, and mobility regimes, as the pandemic was merely an accelerator of changes that were already meant to be implemented, some of which will presumably remain in place in the foreseeable future (tazzioli & stierl, 2021), others expect more transformative shifts to emerge from the pandemic that influence not only the way we understand migration and mobility but that might potentially also stimulate key reconfigurations of people’s mobility rights. so, while scholars have detected similar findings, their predictions and prescriptions seemed to differ substantially. conformist proposals include careful (minor) adjustments. yeoh (2022), for example, argues in favor of longer work contracts and selective residency pathways for temporary labor migrants to encourage employer responsibility and prevent the exclusion of labor migrants from national health and welfare provisions. more secure employment, better working conditions, upskilling and more social awareness are also part and parcel of the recommendations by suhadirman et al. (2020) and sariputta (2022). more radical observers demand more encompassing change. they are basically asking for a fundamental readjustment between mobility rights and global equality. after all, “going back to the ‘normality’ of mass air travel for the privileged is no more desirable than the perpetuation of the planetary apartheid for the othered and dispossessed” (heller, 2021, p. 124). no matter where on the political spectrum one positions oneself, a key challenge of defining a ‘new normal’ will be the ability to incorporate a sufficient degree of uncertainty, where living with risk and uncertainty is an acceptable quotidian experience. from this point of view, covid-19 has brought the intrinsic “dilemma of futuring” (müller-mahn & kioko, 2021) to the fore. yet, instead of relying on forwardlooking visions, reliable forecasts and more delicate politics of anticipation and ever more complex scales of preparedness in order to gain control over the future, this would require a greater openness towards living with contingencies and uncertainties, a vision that is politically unpalatable for most. but neither can we ‘future-proof ’ southeast asia, nor any other part of the world. in relation to an ongoing presence aseas 16(1) | 13 antje missbach & gunnar stange of covid-19 as well as other future global pandemics that may befall the planet and spur additional multi-scalar crises, new meanings of ‘risk’, ‘uncertainty’ and ‘freedom’ will need to be coined and embraced.  references abd jalil, a., & hoffstaedter, g. 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(2022). boxed: exploring containment and resilience in times of crisis. feminist encounters: a journal of critical studies in culture and politics, 6(2), 24, 1-19. cresswell, t. (2021). valuing mobility in a post covid-19 world. mobilities, 16(1), 51-65. cusripituck, p., & yamabhai, j. (2023). mobilizing the (im)mobile museum through hybrid curation: a story of hybrid curation of cultural practice during the covid-19 pandemic. advances in southeast asian studies, 16(1), 145-155. de genova, n. (2022). viral borders: migration, deceleration, and the re-bordering of mobility during the covid-19 pandemic. communication, culture and critique, 15(2), 139-156. de genova, n. (2021). life versus capital: the covid-19 pandemic and the politics of life. cultural dynamics, 33(3), 238-245. fassin, d. (2020). hazardous confinement during the covid-19 pandemic: the fate of migrants detained yet nondeportable. journal of human rights, 19(5), 613-623. fitzgerald, d. (2019). refuge beyond reach: how rich democracies repel asylum seekers. oxford university press. foley, l., & piper, n. (2021). returning home empty handed: examining how covid-19 exacerbates the non-payment of temporary migrant workers’ wages. global social policy, 21(3), 468-489. giacomelli, e., & walker,  s. (2022). on board the quarantine-ship as “floating hotspot”: creeping externalization practices in the mediterranean sea. ethnography, https://doi.org/10.1177/1466138122110053 grundy-warr, c., & lin, s. (2020). covid-19 geopolitics: silence and erasure in cambodia and myanmar in times of pandemic. eurasian geography and economics, 61(4-5), 493-510. guild,  e. (2020). covid-19 using border controls to fight a pandemic? reflections from the european union. frontiers in human dynamics, 2, 606299. 14 | aseas 16(1) the covid-19 pandemic, (im)mobilities, and migration in southeast asia heller, c. (2021). de-confining borders: towards a politics of freedom of movement in the time of the pandemic. mobilities, 16(1), 113-133. heyman, j. (2012). capitalism and us policy at the mexican border. dialectical anthropology, 36, 263-277. horn,  c. (2020). essays on the post-covid-19 world: nationalism and transnationalism in times of the coronavirus pandemic. university-based institutes for advanced study. http://www.ubias.net/essayscovid19 human rights watch (hrw). (2022). cambodia: covid-19 pandemic used for union busting. https://www. hrw.org/news/2022/11/21/cambodia-covid-19-pandemic-used-union-busting human rights watch (hwr). (2020). malaysia/thailand: allow rohingya refugees ashore: end pushbacks, grant access to aid and asylum. https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/06/12/malaysia/thailand-allowrohingya-refugees-ashore international labour organization (ilo). (2020a). labour migration in asia and the pacific. https://www.ilo. org/asia/areas/labour-migration/ wcms_634559/lang--en/index.htm international labour organization (ilo). (2020b). more than 150,000 seafarers trapped on board ships due to covid-19. https://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/ wcms_374809/lang--en/index.htm international organization for migration (iom). (2020). covid-19 analytical snapshot #3: travel restrictions & mobility. https://www.iom.int/sites/g/files/tmzbdl486/files/documents/ covid-19_ analytical_snapshot_3_-_travel_restrictions_and_mobility.pdf jacobsen, c. m., karlsen, m.-a., & khosravi,  s. (eds.). (2021). waiting and the temporalities of irregular migration. routledge taylor & francis group. jaehn, m. (2023). coup, conflict, and the covid-19 pandemic: burmese peoples moving in times of isolation. advances in southeast asian studies, 16(1), 63-78. jensen, o. b. (2021). pandemic disruption, extended bodies, and elastic situations reflections on covid-19 and mobilities. mobilities, 16(1), 66-80. khanna, t. (2020). addressing covid-ified maritime migration in the bay of bengal: the case of stateless rohingya boat people. australian journal of maritime & ocean affairs, 12(3), 181-186. kneebone, s., missbach, a., marinas, r., & walden, m. (forthcoming). refugee protection in southeast asia: between humanitarianism and sovereignty. koizumi, k., & hoffstaedter, g. (2015). urban refugees. routledge. maple, n., walker, r., & vearey, j. (2022). migration and global health in africa: experiences from covid-19. http://comparativeimmigrationlaw.org/wp-content/uploads/formidable/1/africa_globalhealth_ working-draft.pdf mezzadra, s., & neilson, b. (2022). the capitalist virus. politics, https://doi.org/10.1177/02633957221131754 mezzadra, s., & stierl, m. (2020). what happens to freedom of movement during a pandemic? https://www. opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/what-happens-freedom-movement-during-pandemic/ miller, m. a., & douglass, m. (2018). crossing borders: governing the globalising urban matrix of compound disasters in asia and the pacific. in m. a. miller, m. douglass, & m. garschagen (eds.), crossing borders (pp. 1–17). springer singapore. missbach, a. (2022). the criminalisation of people smuggling in indonesia and australia: asylum out of reach. routledge. missbach, a. (2015). troubled transit: asylum seekers stuck in indonesia. iseas publishing. missbach, a., & purdey, j. (2023). indonesian international students in australia during the covid-19-pandemic: coming out stronger? advances in southeast asian studies, 16(1), 17-37. mixed migration centre (mmc). (2020). the impacts of covid-19 on afghans in india and indonesia: access to healthcare, livelihoods and support. https://mixedmigration.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/122_ covid_snapshot_asia.pdf molland, s. (2021). anchoring and tracing during covid: two modalities of mobility governance. molab inventory of mobilities and socioeconomic changes. https://www.eth.mpg.de/molab-inventory/ securitizing-mobilities/anchoring-and-tracing-during-covid-two-modalities-of-mobility-governance mountz,  a. (2020). the death of asylum: hidden geographies of the enforcement archipelago. university of minnesota press. aseas 16(1) | 15 antje missbach & gunnar stange mudhoffir, a.m., & hadiz, v.r. (2021). social resilience against covid-19 masks indonesian class divide. georgetown journal of international affairs, 22(1), 45-52. müller-mahn, d., & kioko, e. (2021). rethinking african futures after covid-19. africa spectrum, 56(2), 216-227. muhammad, d., & zanker, f. (2021). pandemic (im)mobility: covid-19 and migrant communities in the global south. arnold bergstraesser institute. https://www.arnold-bergstraesser.de/en/projects/ pandemic-immobility-covid-19-and-migrant-communities-in-the-global-south palmer, w. (2016). indonesia’s overseas labour migration programme, 1969-2010. brill. pandey, k., parreñas, r.s., & sabio, g.s. (2021). essential and expendable: migrant domestic workers and the covid-19 pandemic. american behavioral scientist, 65(10), 1287-1301. pandey, v. (2020, may 20). coronavirus lockdown: the indian migrants dying to get home. bbc news. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-52672764 prabaningtyas, r.a.r.f., pudjiastuti, t.n., alami, a.n., farhana, f., & arfan (2023). access to education for refugee children in indonesia during the covid-19 pandemic. advances in southeast asian studies, 16(1), 39-61. reidy,  e. (2021, march 10). one year on: how the pandemic has affected refugees, asylum seekers, and migration. the new humanitarian. https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/analysis/2021/3/10/ one-year-how-pandemic-has-affected-refugees-asylum-migration richmond, a. h., & valtonen, k. (1994). global apartheid: refugees, racism, and the new world order. refuge: canada's journal on refugees, 14(6), 25-28. royal malaysian air force foils bid by 200 rohingya in boat to enter malaysia (2020, april 17). malay mail. https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2020/04/17/royal-malaysian-air-force-foils-bid-by200-rohingya-in-boat-to-enter-malays/1857482 salazar,  n.  b. (2021). existential vs. essential mobilities: insights from before, during and after a crisis. mobilities, 16(1), 20-34. sariputta,  t. (2022, november 3). post-pandemic recovery and the plight of asean’s migrant workers. the diplomat. https://thediplomat.com/2022/11/post-pandemic-recovery-and-the-plight-of-asean s-migrant-workers/ sarrica,  f., healy,  c., serio,  g., & samson,  j. (2020). how covid-19 restrictions and the economic consequences are likely to impact migrant smuggling and cross-border trafficking in persons to europe and north america. un office on drugs and crime. https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/covid/ covid-related-impact-on-som-tip-web3.pdf schmidt-sane, m., ripoll, s., & wilkinson, a. (2020). key considerations for covid-19 management in marginalised populations in southeast asia: transnational migrants, informal workers, and people living in informal settlements. https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/20.500.12413/15324 stange, g., pagogna, r., sterly, h., sakdapolrak,  p., borderon, m., schraven, b., &  serraglio, d.a. (2023). impeded migration as adaptation: covid-19 and its implications for translocal strategies of environmental risk management. advances in southeast asian studies, 16(1), 157-169. stange,  g., sakdapolrak,  p., sasiwongsaroj,  k., & kourek,  m. (2019). forced migration in southeast asia. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 12(2), 249-265. suhardiman,  d., rigg,  j., bandur,  m., marschke,  m., miller,  m.  a., pheuangsavanh,  n., sayatham,  m., & taylor, d. (2021). on the coattails of globalization: migration, migrants and covid-19 in asia. journal of ethnic and migration studies, 47(1), 88-109. tazzioli, m., & stierl, m. (2021). “we closed the ports to protect refugees.” hygienic borders and deterrence humanitarianism during covid-19. international political sociology, 15(4), 539-558. torres,  r.  m., glockner,  v., niño-vega,  n., garcía-figueroa,  g., faria,  c., danze,  a., borzacchiello,  e., & slack,  j. (2022). lockdown and the list: mexican refugees, asylum denial, and the feminist geopolitics of esperar (waiting/hoping). environment and planning c: politics and space, https://doi.org/10.1177/23996544221118906 ullah, a. (2022). introduction to themed issue: the impact of covid-19 on migrant communities in asia pacific. international journal of asia pacific studies, 18(2), 1-8. 16 | aseas 16(1) the covid-19 pandemic, (im)mobilities, and migration in southeast asia velasco, s. á. (2021). mobility, control, and the pandemic across the americas: first findings of a transnational collective project. journal of latin american geography, 20(1), 11-48. welander,  m. (2021). the politics of exhaustion and the externalization of british border control. an articulation of a strategy designed to deter, control and exclude. international migration, 59(3), 29-46. xiang, b. (2021). shock mobility: convulsions in human migration are having large impacts. molab inventory of mobilities and socioeconomic changes. max planck institute for social anthropology. https://www. eth.mpg.de/5783407/xiang-biao_shock-mobility_molab_3577.pdf ye, j. (2021). ordering diversity: co-producing the pandemic and the migrant in singapore during covid-19. antipode, 53(6), 1895-1920. yeoh, b. s. a. (2022). is the temporary migration regime in asia future-ready? asian population studies, 18(1), 1-5. zuev, d., & hannam, k. (2021). anxious immobilities: an ethnography of coping with contagion (covid-19) in macau. mobilities, 16(1), 35-50. about the authors antje missbach is professor of sociology at bielefeld university, germany, specializing in global and transnational migration and mobility. she is the author of troubled transit: asylum seekers stuck in indonesia (iseas, 2015) and the criminalisation of people smuggling in indonesia and australia: asylum out of reach (routledge, 2022). ► contact: antje.missbach@uni-bielefeld.de gunnar stange is a lecturer and researcher at the department of geography and regional research at the university of vienna and at the private university college of education burgenland, austria. in his work, he focuses on migration, development, and conflict transformation themes, mainly in southeast asia. outside of academia, he is also a psychosocial counselor working with refugees. ► contact: gunnar.stange@univie.ac.at disclosure the authors declare no conflict of interest. mailto:antje.missbach%40uni-bielefeld.d?subject= mailto:gunnar.stange%40univie.ac.at?subject= aseas 15(2) | 321 book review: yamahata, c., & anderson, b. (2022). demystifying myanmar’s transition and political crisis palgrave macmillan. isbn: 978-981-16-6674-2. 344 pages. rainer einzenbergera* auniversity of vienna, austria *corresponding author: rainer.einzenberger@univie.ac.at received: 13 september 2022 / accepted: 27 october 2022 / published: 23 december 2022 ► einzenberger, r. (2022). book review: yamahata, c., & anderson, b. (2022). demystifying myanmar’s transition and political crisis. advances in southeast asian studies, 15(2), 321-324. the edited volume by chosein yamahata and bobby anderson stands in the tradition of edited volumes on contemporary issues in myanmar emerging from academic conferences, such as the “myanmar/burma update” series hosted by australian national university (anu) in the wake of myanmar’s transition since the early 2000s (cheesman, 2012; cheesman et al., 2010, 2014; reynolds et al., 2000; skidmore & wilson, 2007, 2008; wilson, 2006) and others (egreteau & robinne, 2015).1 similar to these volumes, the present book demystifying myanmar’s transition and political crisis aims at introducing an interested (not necessarily purely academic) public to the current socioeconomic and political developments in myanmar, covering a broad range of issues. the volume is based on the “burma review and challenges international forum” (bracif) – masterminded and organized by chosein yamahata, a professor of global and area studies at the graduate school of policy studies, aichi gakuin university, japan – held in 2009 and 2018.2 what makes this volume particularly relevant and remarkable is the fact that it is one of the first of its kind as it was published shortly after the coup of 1 february 2021, triggering the so-called spring revolution. however, not all articles refer to the coup and some were obviously completed long before. the declared aim of the book is to “demystify the complexities of the derailed transition, the coup, and what both could inform about the future of myanmar” (p. 18). it consists of 16 chapters organized in the two parts “transition and the periphery” and “from challenges to unity”. given the limited space available, this review cannot discuss each chapter in detail but will highlight some of those chapters that seem most relevant for the declared aim of the book mentioned above. 1 for a complete list of the volumes emerging from the “myanmar update” conference series, see https://myanmar.anu.edu.au/myanmar-update/2015-myanmarburma-update. 2 the book is also part of a series of books under the academic diplomacy project (https://www. academicdiplomacyproject.org). book reviews w w w .s ea s. at 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 71 mailto:rainer.einzenberger%40univie.ac.at?subject= 322 | aseas 15(2) book review: demystifying myanmar’s transition and political crisis in the opening chapter, the editors – yamahata and anderson – themselves look at the recent transition in myanmar, comparing how different “criteria of democratization” were “satisfied under different governments” in burma/myanmar (p. 5). according to yamahata and anderson, “people generally enjoyed more civic freedoms, political rights, and stable democratic institutions under the national league for democracy (nld) administration [from 2016-2021], although it still fell short of the parliamentary democracy of the 1950s” (p. 4). the recent coup turned “the union from a budding democracy into a killing field” (p. 3). for the authors, it was the military’s reasoning that a coup could be the “last chance” to stop the further consolidation of myanmar’s democratic transition. the military had also miscalculated that the nld lost support. another reason for the current crisis, identified by the authors, was a “messianic understanding of politics” in myanmar, which accorded “unquestioning faith” in aung san suu kyi and the nld (p. 7). the second chapter, by michal lubina, continues with the analysis of the role of aung san suu kyi (assk) in myanmar’s transition (see also, lubina, 2021) and the election turnout in 2020, which brought a landslide win for the nld to the dismay of the military. while, as lubina argues, suu kyi tried at the beginning not to provoke the military in order to avoid a coup following the 2020 elections, she did not try anymore to soothe the fears of the military that “everything would remain the old way” (p. 39). as a result, the military “overreacted and staged another (fourth) coup”, which, according to lubina, throws myanmar “now back to 1988 or at best around 2003, after the depayin massacre” (p. 40). the following five chapters provide “perspectives from the periphery” by looking at developments and transformations in the regions and states outside myanmar’s political and economic centers. for instance, in chapter three takeda and yamahata discuss human security challenges in myanmar. based on the example of the mon women’s organization, they show how ethnic women’s organizations (ewos) are fulfilling an important role of civil society by promoting human security at the grassroots and, thereby, alleviating insecurity. in another case study, khen suan kai (chapter four) looks at the delivery of basic education in chin state, one of the most marginalized of the ethnic states. according to khai, the reasons for the low quality of basic education in the state include insecurity, inadequate infrastructure and learning environment, insufficient and inadequately trained teachers as well as a lack of decision-making power by the state government. coming back to the national scale, chapter eight by lidauer provides a detailed account of the 2020 elections. he argues that there was no apparent tempering with the election results, despite some shortcomings. according to lidauer, the statements by the myanmar military that rejected the election process and used it as a pretext for the coup were implausible. in the second part of the volume, the editors (together with saw chit thet thun) in chapter ten critically examine myanmar’s ill-fated peace process and ceasefire monitoring by highlighting its shortcomings with the aim to draw lessons for a better future. their core criticism is that the most powerful non-state armed groups were excluded from the process, most pressing issues were avoided, and the civilian government lacked the authority to negotiate. they sternly conclude that “the ‘panglong 21’ process, prior to its likely demise as a result of the coup, could not lead to any meaningful conflict nor political transformation in myanmar” (p. 187). taking a broader aseas 15(2) | 323 rainer einzenberger international perspective, jittipat poonkam, in chapter 11, looks at myanmar’s current crisis in the international political context by taking an international relations perspective. according to the author, under the current crisis of international order and the “nascent bipolar system with sino-us geopolitical competition”, humanitarian intervention in myanmar is impossible (p. 224). furthermore, he claims that sanctions and economic pressure are unlikely to force the military into retreat, since they are not followed by all countries. in addition, his article criticizes the insufficient diplomatic approach by asean. a core contribution to this volume that takes the aim of ‘demystifying’ the recent developments in burma/myanmar seriously is chapter 12 by patrick meehan. it contextualizes burma’s/myanmar’s recent developments within larger development discourses, including development theory and practice. he shows how burma/ myanmar became a “new frontier for development interventions” following the lifting of international sanctions, “which led to myanmar becoming the worlds’ third largest recipient of aid” within a few years (p. 233-234). meehan argues that, due to the rush to engage in myanmar, a large gap remained between critical development studies scholarship and development practice. rather than reflecting on the disruptive nature of development, entrenched power structures and questions of distribution, a “market-plus” (p. 238) development narrative remained dominant in burma/myanmar, which served to depoliticize development. as a case in point, meehan shows how myanmar’s agricultural development strategy, which implicitly favors large-scale agribusiness and ignores the experiences of rural populations, negatively effects upland communities. he argues for a relational framework that “allows researchers to consider how forms of poverty and vulnerability can become embedded in the kinds of economic development promoted by governments and donors” (p. 250). the last chapter of the volume, by editor yamahata, is focusing again on the coup of february 2021, which has “pushed myanmar towards a ‘point of no return’” (p. 232). he compares the coup to previous coups (including thailand and indonesia) and argues that, by the definition of the fragile state index, myanmar has already become a failed state, with a declining economy, increasing poverty rates, lack of territorial control, and the military junta committing crimes against humanity. however, he makes clear that the myanmar people did not ‘fail’ their state since they resist the junta with everything they have, most importantly through the civil disobedience movement (cdm) and armed resistance. thus, the spring revolution marks a watershed moment in the country’s history. consequently, yamahata demands democratic forces outside of myanmar to support and “empower” the forces fighting for their country and democracy (p. 324). “therefore”, he adds, “recommendations from external players that neglect the people’s grievances, inspirations, struggles and determinations to deal with the junta are ‘out of question’ to the people of myanmar”. they “simply refuse to have their freedoms and hopes stolen by the military once again” (p. 323). although thematically diverse and lacking a particular focus, this volume is a welcome and timely contribution to the field of burma/myanmar studies and also southeast asian area studies as it raises some important questions. concerning its ambitious claim to “demystify myanmar’s transition and political crisis” made in the introduction, it certainly critically reflects some earlier misconceptions of myanmar’s transition and issues that were possibly overlooked or ignored by many outside 324 | aseas 15(2) book review: demystifying myanmar’s transition and political crisis observers. (although many of the issues were a topic among critical civil society actors in the country and continue to be.) this holds specifically true for lubina’s discussion of the role of assk and the editors’ introduction to part two of the volume highlighting the limiting factors of the peace process, which from some quarters might have been assessed too positively. also, meehan’s chapter might resonate well with former development workers and other people engaged in the development field. particularly strong is yamahata’s analysis of the coup and spring revolution, which for him marks a breaking point in the country’s history, and to some extent questions lubina’s assessment that the country has been thrown back to 1988. overall, this edited volume is a valuable and diverse resource for social scientists and other interested scholars as well as students and a broader public that try to decipher the current developments in myanmar and their potential future implications.  references cheesman, n. (ed.). (2012). myanmar’s transition: openings, obstacles, and opportunities. institute of southeast asian studies. cheesman, n., farrelly, n., & wilson, t. (eds.). (2014). debating democratization in myanmar. institute of southeast asian studies. cheesman, n., skidmore, m., & wilson, t. (eds.). (2010). ruling myanmar: from cyclone nargis to national elections. institute of southeast asian studies. egreteau, r., & robinne, f. (2015). metamorphosis: studies in social and political change in myanmar. nus press. lubina, m. (2021). a political biography of aung san suu kyi: a hybrid politician. routledge. reynolds, c. j., callahan, m. p., malik, m., pedersen, m. b., steinberg, d. i., & rudland, e. (eds.). (2000). burma myanmar: strong regime, weak state? crawford house publishing. skidmore, m., & wilson, t. (eds.). (2008). dictatorship, disorder and decline in myanmar. anu press. skidmore, m., & wilson, t. (eds.). (2007). myanmar: the state, community and the environment (1st ed.). anu press. wilson, t. (ed.). (2006). myanmar’s long road to national reconciliation. institute of southeast asian studies, asia pacific press, australian national university. about the author rainer einzenberger worked as a university assistant at the department of development studies, university of vienna from 2015-2019 and as a lecturer since 2014. he received his doctoral degree from the department of development studies in 2020, where he focused his research on land and resource politics, critical geography, and indigenous movements with a special focus on myanmar. since 2019 he works as a programme coordinator for austria's agency for education and internationalisation (oead). ► contact: rainer.einzenberger@univie.ac.at mailto:rainer.einzenberger%40univie.ac.at?subject= aseas 16(1) | 121 yaoi media consumption and travel motivation: evidence from filipino viewers of thai boys’ love series jean paolo lacapa* acity college of angeles, philippines *corresponding author: jpglacap@gmail.com received: 11 april 2022 / accepted: 09 april 2023 / published: 28 june 2023 ► lacap, j. p. (2023). yaoi media consumption and travel motivation: evidence from filipino viewers of thai boys’ love series. advances in southeast asian studies, 16(1), 121-143. the thai yaoi culture is getting a lot of attention in several parts of the world. numerous thai boy’s love (bl) series are a huge hit in thailand and other countries. despite the notable success of thai yaoi and bl culture, there is less attention given to this topic in past studies and literature. moreover, no study has investigated how yaoi culture may affect travel motivation. hence, the present study examines the effect of yaoi media consumption on travel motivation of filipino viewers of thai boys’ love series. a prediction approach was employed, and partial least squares (pls) path modelling was used to measure the hypothesized relationships. the study reveals that all dimensions of cultural proximity significantly affect thai yaoi media consumption, and thai yaoi media consumption was found to have an influence on emotional involvement and travel motivation. emotional involvement was also found to significantly affect travel motivation, and, at the same time, act as a mediator between thai yaoi media consumption and travel motivation. the current research offers novel theoretical insights about media consumption and its relation to travel motivation in the context of thai pop-cultural boys’ love series. keywords: cultural proximity; emotional involvement; thai bl series; travel motivation; yaoi media  introduction tourism relies heavily on the various projections of favorable images to attract people to visit a destination (pan, 2011). there are myriads of factors that affect the level of motivation of tourists when choosing a destination to visit. different media platforms massively influence the tourism industry as they affect tourism destination images (chang, 2015). several studies have identified that media platforms have an impact in shaping destination images and the level of motivation among tourists (chang, 2015; damanik et al., 2019). visual media such as television and movies, which are considered part of the daily lives of people, shape favorable and unfavorable images toward a destination (hahm & tasci, 2019; xu et al., 2020). current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 87 mailto:thithimadee.art%40mahidol.ac.th?subject= https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4152-9061 mailto:jpglacap%40gmail.com?subject= 122 | aseas 16(1) yaoi media consumption and travel motivation one factor that has an influence in shaping destination image and tourists’ motivation is popular culture (pop culture). pop culture of a country has been utilized in promoting tourism destinations (iwashita, 2008). the different representations in a country’s pop culture have been used as media for entertainment, as a knowledge source, and for appreciating the world (chang, 2015). television has been considered a potent medium in transmitting pop culture to various audiences. through production of tv drama series and movies, the pop culture of a country is easily conveyed to mass audiences (kim & richardson, 2003). when viewers watch tv drama series and movies, their exposure to these programs transforms their viewership to traveling to places (gjorgievski & trpkova, 2012). with this, film-induced tourism has been getting more attention because of the influence of films in the development of tourism (ng & chan, 2020). the growth of the audio-visual sector, the emergence of new media platforms, and the rise of tv and video consumption on mobile phones have contributed a lot in the formation of opportunities in the tourism industry (vila et al., 2021). television series, employing popular celebrities and directors, and embedding attractive and unique shooting locations, have reached wider audiences (rajaguru, 2013; vila et al., 2021; yen & croy, 2016) and have generated strong connections with audiences because of extended and repetitive viewing (schmidt et al., 2019). many locations of tv drama series have experienced growth as manifested in the number of visits among tourists (ng & chan, 2020). aside from the massive impact of korean pop culture around the world, thai pop culture is also currently attaining curiosity in different parts of the globe. thai tv dramas, commonly known as lakorn, are getting attention among viewers, and thailand is now considered a new player in media circulation in asia (jirattikorn, 2018). with the upsurge of lakorn also comes the rise of the yaoi phenomenon in thailand (prasannam, 2019), which involves media genres portraying romantic love between two men. in thailand, yaoi tv drama series are popularly known as “y (wai) series,” short for yaoi series, and in other countries this genre is commonly called boys’ love (bl) series (baudinette, 2019; prasanman, 2019). it has been noted from past studies that pop culture, such as tv drama series and movies, influences travel motivation (chang, 2015; damanik et al., 2019; ng & chan, 2020; rajaguru, 2013; vila et al., 2021). furthermore, tv drama series and movies have the propensity to arouse emotional engagement among viewers. the formation of attitudes and personal emotions towards a tv series or movie has been argued by prior film-induced tourism studies (chang, 2015; kim, 2012; lee et al., 2008). furthermore cultural proximity plays an important factor in the travel motivation process (chang, 2015). many of the prior studies on the factors affecting travel motivation are in the context of korean pop culture or the hallyu (chang, 2015; gong & tung, 2017; kim et al., 2008; kim et al., 2012; rittichainuwat & rattanaphinanchai, 2015). there is a scarcity of studies addressing the rising popularity of lakorn, and, in particular, of thai bl series and how yaoi culture affects travel motivation. with the increasing popularity of thai bl series and the growing fandom of thai bl culture in several countries (baudinette, 2019; carreon, 2020; koaysomboon, 2020; yukari, 2020; yuqiao, 2020), the need to investigate the yaoi phenomenon in relation to travel aseas 16(1) | 123 jean paolo lacap motivation is not only timely and relevant but also will provide a different way of examining film-induced tourism. based on the literature review, there is no single study that investigates how lakorn, especially thai bl series, affects travel motivation. therefore, the present study addresses this gap by exploring how cultural proximity influences yaoi media consumption towards thai bl series, which in turn affects travel motivation. additionally, since it has been noted in the past literature that emotional involvement towards tv drama series affects travel motivation, the present study also scrutinizes the mediating effect of emotional involvement on the link between yaoi media consumption and travel motivation. based on the primary aim of the study, the following are the research questions: 1. how does cultural proximity influence the thai yaoi media consumption of the participants? 2. how do thai yaoi media consumption and emotional involvement, directly and indirectly, influence the travel motivation of the participants? research framework and hypothesis development film-induced tourism film-induced tourism is a type of tourism where visitors discover the location or destination that appeared in a movie, tv drama, or drama series (hudson & ritchie, 2006). shooting locations of movies and tv dramas are now considered powerful tools in attracting and arousing the interest of viewers to visit a particular tourism destination (kim & kim, 2018). more and more researchers and practitioners have been interested in how films affect tourism destinations (kim & kim, 2018; kim et al., 2019; teng & chen, 2020). it has been noted by prior studies that film-induced tourism is formed due to the increasing relationship between tourism and popular media (gammack, 2005; hudson & ritchie, 2006; ng & chan, 2020). for instance, watching a tv drama provides a similar escapism attribute (carl et al., 2007) and unique experience (gjorgievski & trpkova, 2012). moreover, according to huang (2009), tv dramas have the capacity to empower individuals to better understand other tourism destinations outside their normal territory. beeton (2010) and zeng et al. (2015) even argued that these tv dramas provide viewers an experience of the depicted location that may induce them to visit those destinations. yaoi media consumption and the thai bl series phenomenon the explosion of japanese media, such as anime and manga, led to the fame of the yaoi subgenre around the globe. yaoi is a japanese term that refers to media (e.g., anime, artwork, short stories, and comics) created by fans where the theme is concentrated on homoerotic romantic love between two men (mizoguchi, 2003; zsila et al., 2018). this yaoi phenomenon that started in japan is now part of the popular culture of thailand. the earliest account of thai yaoi culture was in the 1990s in the cartoon phuchai that was translated into thai language (nainapat, 2017). in 2007, “love of siam,” 124 | aseas 16(1) yaoi media consumption and travel motivation an acclaimed gay romance movie, was a blockbuster film. the movie was considered the first bl film (lertwichayaroj, 2017; vespada, 2017) that attracted a lot of yaoi fans (lertwichyaroj, 2017). in 2014, “lovesick the series,” a thai drama series depicting male-male romantic relationship was broadcast on satellite tv by the mass communication organization of thailand (mcot) and brought a lot of viewership. the popularity of “lovesick the series” among thai viewers broke the tradition of male-female romance in a typical thai tv drama (also called lakorn). after the success of the said series, bl culture became a staple in the media landscape of thailand (baudinette, 2019; vespada, 2017). with the rising admiration for yaoi culture from across the region, it has been identified that thai bl series could be a primary source of entertainment export (koaysomboon, 2020). thai bl series have penetrated the markets of some countries including china (yuqiao, 2020), indonesia (nugroho, 2020), the philippines (carreon, 2020), and other parts of world (watson & jirik, 2018). despite the malemale romance being portrayed in thai bl series, the target audience of the yaoi genre is not only the lgbt community, but also, mostly young, women (babal, 2019; watson & jirik, 2018). for instance, in the philippines most of the filipino avid followers of thai bl series are young women. the plot of thai bl series does not only revolve on homoerotic male-male relationships, but it also incorporates romance, love, and to some extent, homophobia (babal, 2019). with the advent of the thai yaoi genre, an exact opposite of the conventional male-female relationships in filipino tv dramas, more and more filipino viewers are consuming the thai bl culture through yaoi tv series (carreon, 2020). the thai bl phenomenon is now an integral component of thai pop culture. looking at the context of yaoi culture, viewers consume thai bl series because these tv dramas are characterized by pro-gay attitudes and romantic love without gender. these thai bl series allow viewers to understand themselves better and provide them the opportunity to self-analyze and understand sexual dilemmas in a much better sense. the entertainment value, emotional elements and the aesthetic appeal add more to the propensity of viewers to consume more thai bl series (zsila et al., 2018). with all identified reasons and motives, this is how thai yaoi media consumption is operationally defined in the present study. cultural proximity culture is regarded as a factor that influences the behavior of consumers, and, in particular, of tourist behavior (li et al., 2015). prior studies even identified authentic culture and cultural proximity as factors in visiting a tourism destination (chang, 2015; lu et al., 2019; su et al., 2011). as a result, the cultural proximity theory is often utilized in the field of media consumption. it espouses that viewers would look for media products that are similar or proximate to their background (lu et al., 2019; straubhaar, 1991). cultural proximity is about identity sharing and the feeling of belongingness to certain groups, sharing cultural similarities such as geography, history, ethnicity, values, language, and religion, among others (la pastina & straubhaar, 2005; lu et al., 2019; su et al., 2011). in the context of media studies, cultural proximity constitutes preferences of viewers in terms of social, cultural, political, economic, historical, aseas 16(1) | 125 jean paolo lacap and linguistic aspects of a tv program (singhal & svenkerud, 1994). like many other countries, thailand and the philippines share similarities in geography, values, and a concept of collectivism. cultural connections between thais and filipinos are evident in several aspects including being service-minded, belief in the existence of spiritual beings, a happy-go-lucky personality, and superstitions (bohwongprasert, 2013). geographic proximity refers to physical distance between two players (howells, 2002), and, in the case of the present study, between two countries (chang, 2015) – the philippines and thailand. values, on the other hand, are the enduring beliefs that guide actions and judgments of individuals or groups in different situations and circumstances. they are the utmost manifestation of culture that can affect the behaviors of an individual (hofstede & hofstede, 2005; li et al., 2015). collectivism, in the context of the present study, refers to similarities of two nations in terms of attitudes towards group members, individuals and society, harmony within groups, and interpersonal conflict (su et al., 2011). as emphasized in the theory of cultural proximity, viewers consider consuming media products that are proximate to their cultural background (lu et al., 2019). furthermore, cultural proximity is a vital factor in understanding why viewers accept or reject a particular tv program (straubhaar, 1991). since media, including tv dramas, are expressions of everyday life, consumption of media products by viewers is likely to be affected by how the media portrays similarities of cultural characteristics (delorme & reid, 1999). in a specific study, anh (2016) argued that the reason why vietnamese viewers consume tv dramas of thailand and the philippines is due to cultural proximity. therefore, it is hypothesized that: h1a. geographic proximity significantly influences thai yaoi media consumption. h1b. values significantly influence thai yaoi media consumption. h1c. collectivism significantly influences thai yaoi media consumption. emotional involvement media viewers may form a bond with the characters of a tv drama. the level of audience involvement has been regarded as a construct of media use (kim, 2012). audience involvement is grounded on the parasocial theory that suggests that an audience may build a connection with the characters portrayed in media (giles, 2002). it has been highlighted by past studies that the involvement of audiences may come from vicarious, emphatic, and emotional responses (kim & kim, 2017; kim & kim, 2018; reijnders, 2010). for example, tv drama viewers’ emotional involvement is contended to be a result of their identification and assimilation to the consumed tv drama (kim & kim 2017; kim & kim, 2018). thus, in the present study, emotional involvement is defined as the connection formed between the viewers and the characters in thai bl series. audience involvement can be based on emotions. emotion has been considered to affect the decision of a viewer (murphy et al., 2011). prior studies have suggested that tv viewers are often faced with emotionalized presentations (angelini et al., 2012; mutz & gerke, 2018). when they consume media products such as tv dramas, the 126 | aseas 16(1) yaoi media consumption and travel motivation emotional involvement of viewers may come from the drama’s plot and characters, sequence of narratives, special effects, music, and other unique features. the overall emotional experience establishes the connection of a viewer to a tv drama (chang, 2015; liu & pratt, 2019). the level of affinity to the characters of a tv drama intensifies the level of emotional connection of viewers. furthermore, tv drama series enhance the connection between the viewer and characters (connell, 2005). hence, it is hypothesized that: h 2a . thai yaoi media consumption significantly influences emotional involvement. travel motivation travel motivation is considered a vital force that affects the decision of an individual to travel (chang, 2015; li & cai, 2012). in film-induced tourism studies, the success of portrayal of a location or a destination in a film attracts viewers to visit those places (gjorgievski & trpkova, 2012; macionis, 2004). moreover, tv dramas provide an opportunity for viewers to experience a destination, and, thus, induce them to visit the featured place (beeton, 2010; zeng et al., 2015). it has been noted that tv dramas are now considered an integral factor in arousing the interest of viewers to travel (iwashita, 2008). viewers of tv drama series are now more exposed to the plot and characters of the story. their exposure augments their internal motivation to visit a destination (chang, 2015; vila et al., 2021). tv drama series allow viewers to have deeper connections with the series itself. since the exposure of viewers to tv drama series tends to be longer, it permits the formation of intimacy with the locations featured in the program. accordingly, the pattern of viewing and the travel behavior of the audience may be affected by these tv drama series (chang, 2015; kim & long, 2012). the consumption of media products considerably affects the level of travel motivation of viewers, as in the case of korean tv dramas (chang, 2015; ng & chan, 2020). hence, it is postulated that: h 2b . thai yaoi media consumption significantly influences travel motivation. media products that portray romance (riley & van doren, 1992) motivate audiences to visit a destination (o’neill et al., 2005). media products are consumed by viewers because they can relive the emotions they have felt in a film, such as in tv dramas (beeton, 2010). the level of influence of media products on viewers’ motivation to visit a place largely depends on their emotional connection to these films (kim, 2012). despite the fact that the viewers have the capacity to differentiate fiction and nonfiction in media products, films, such as tv dramas, allow audiences to momentarily escape into fantasy and nostalgia, and re-experience another dimension of their loved films (kim, 2012; lin & tong, 2009). there are specific film tourists, or those who seek destinations that they have seen in tv dramas, who travel to places to attain self-actualization or to relive the tv dramas’ fantasy or romance (beeton, 2010; ryan et al., 2009). when specific film tourists visit the featured destination in a tv drama, they show attachment with the aseas 16(1) | 127 jean paolo lacap program by taking photos of shooting locations and re-enacting the performances of the characters. all these experiences are considered by these tourists as personal (kim, 2010). thus, it is hypothesized that: h 3 . emotional involvement significantly influences travel motivation. the popularity of thai yaoi culture among filipino audiences (carreon, 2020) is evident with the number of thai bl series available in online stream applications in the philippines (smith, 2020). the attention given by the filipino viewers to thai bl series is significantly increasing. thai yaoi media consumption is seen to influence filipino travel motivation because of the plot and characters (chang 2015; vila et al., 2021) of thai bl series. it can be noted that tv drama viewers may form deeper connections to the series itself (chang 2015; kim & long, 2012). furthermore, it has been established that media consumption may affect the emotional involvement of tv drama series viewers. parasocial theory establishes this relationship (giles, 2002). due to the possible bond between viewers and tv drama characters (kim & kim, 2017; kim & kim, 2018), emotional involvement may affect audiences’ travel motivation. the emotions and the emotional connection developed between the viewer and the tv drama may induce these individuals to visit a destination (kim, 2012). the experience of reliving the performance of the characters of a tv drama, or simply photographing the shooting location of a film induces viewers to visit a destination (kim, 2010). consequently, the present study addresses the gap on how emotional involvement may act as a mediator on the link between thai yaoi media consumption and travel motivation. hence, it is postulated that: h 4 . emotional involvement mediates the relationship between thai yaoi media consumption and travel motivation. based on the theoretical underpinnings and the postulated hypotheses, the conceptual framework of the present study is established (see figure 1). in the conceptual framework, the study examines how cultural proximity measured in three dimensions – geographic, values, and collectivism – influences thai yaoi media table 1. conceptual framework (own compilation) 128 | aseas 16(1) yaoi media consumption and travel motivation consumption (h 1a , h 1b , and h 1c ). it also explores how thai yaoi media consumption affects travel motivation (h 2b ) and emotional involvement (h 2a ). furthermore, emotional involvement was also tested on how it affects travel motivation (h 3 ). finally, it scrutinizes the intervening effect of emotional involvement on the relationship between thai yaoi media consumption and travel motivation (h 4 ). methods respondents of the study since the present study examines thai yaoi media consumption and its impact on travel motivations of filipino viewers of thai bl series, the participants were identified using a snowball sampling technique. the respondents were filipino viewers and fans of thai bl series. in the data collection phase, google forms was used. the respondents were recruited through referral since the population is unknown. the online survey questionnaire was posted in social media and initial respondents were asked to identify other potential participants. moreover, initial participants likewise referred bl fan groups where the online survey can be posted. several philippines-based, fan-made facebook groups supporting thai bl series and thai bl series actors were asked permission to post the self-administered online survey in their respective online groups. four thai bl series facebook groups (with approximately 19,000 to 83,000 members) responded positively to the request. out of 525 retrieved responses, 494 adequately answered all required items in the instrument, a completion rate of 94%. the online survey contains the consent form where information about the aim of study, the potential risks and hazards associated with the undertaking, the duration of the respondent’s participation, contact details and information about myself as the researcher and my institutional affiliation, and a statement of voluntary participation in the study. moreover, an ethical clearance was secured from the ethics review committee of my affiliated higher education institution. the online dissemination of the instrument started on august 1, 2020 and ended on august 20, 2020. to measure whether the sample size is sufficient to support the results of the hypothesis testing, inverse square root and gamma-exponential methods (kock & hadaya, 2018) were applied. using a minimum absolute beta coefficient of 0.129, significant level of 0.05, and power level of 0.80, the minimum sample size based on inverse square root method is 372, while the gamma-exponential method reflected minimum sample size of 358. hence, the sample size of 494 is robust enough to support the results of the hypothesis testing. table 1 shows the characteristics of the respondents. out of 494 respondents, 29.8% were heterosexual female, 27.5% were gays, 24.1% were bisexuals, 6.9% were heterosexual male, 0.8% were transgenders, 0.6% were lesbians, 8.1% prefer not to say, and 2.2% were classified as others. in terms of age, more than half of the total participants were in the age group 18 to 20 (53.8%) and 21 to 25 (26.9%) years old. they were also asked regarding the number of thai bl series they have watched, and 72.7% of the total respondents watched at least 10 thai yaoi series. the findings also show that 53.4% started watching thai bl series in 2020 and video-sharing platforms such as youtube and dailymotion were the most frequently used mode for accessing the said series. aseas 16(1) | 129 jean paolo lacap research instrument and measures the research instrument used in the study was an online survey via google forms. the said instrument was divided into two major parts – the characteristics and profile of the respondents (see table 1) and the constructs used in the study. as for the constructs utilized in the study, thai yaoi media consumption was measured using five dimensions, namely: a) love without gender and pro-gay attitude (4 items); b) identification/self-analysis (3 items); c) melodramatic/emotional elements (3 items); d) arts and aesthetics (3 items); and e) pure entertainment (3 items). characteristics of the participants n % sexual orientation / gender identity heterosexual male 34 6.9 heterosexual female 147 29.8 lesbian 3 .6 gay 136 27.5 bisexual 119 24.1 transgender 4 .8 prefer not to say 40 8.1 others 11 2.2 age 18 – 20 266 53.8 21 – 25 133 26.9 26 – 30 61 12.3 31 – 35 21 4.3 36 – above 13 2.6 number of thai bl series watched 1 – 3 37 7.5 4 – 6 49 9.9 7 – 9 49 9.9 more than 9 359 72.7 year started watching thai bl series 2013 – 2015 34 6.9 2016 41 8.3 2017 44 8.9 2018 52 10.5 2019 59 11.9 2020 264 53.4 most frequently used mode of watching thai bl series video-sharing platform (e.g., youtube, dailymotion) 372 75.3 paid streaming services (e.g., netflix, viu) 23 4.7 local streaming services (e.g., iwanttfc) 11 2.2 online sites / blogs 24 4.9 social media sites (e.g., facebook pages, groups) 62 12.6 others 2 .4 table 1. respondents’ characteristics (own compilation) 130 | aseas 16(1) yaoi media consumption and travel motivation this construct and its dimensions were adopted from the study of zsila et al. (2018). cultural proximity was gauged using three aspects, namely: a) geographic (3 items); b) values (4 items); and c) collectivism (4 items). this construct with the three dimensions was adopted from the study of su et al. (2011). on the other hand, emotional involvement was measured using six items that were taken from the research of kim and kim (2017). for travel motivation, eight items were adopted from the work of li and cai (2012), and these items were refined in the study of chang (2015). all items in all the constructs used in the study were measured using a 5-point likert scale where 1 means strongly disagree and 5 means strongly agree. a 5-point likert scale was used in the present study as this is less confusing, it increases response rate (babakus & mangold, 1992; devlin et al., 1993), and results in better data quality especially for agree-disagreement scales (revilla et al., 2014). data analysis the study employed a prediction approach to examine the direct and indirect relationships identified in the hypotheses. moreover, partial least squares (pls) path modelling using warppls 7.0 (kock, 2020) was used as the statistical approach. this technique is appropriate in the study because the research involves the measurement of the direct and mediating effects, includes first-order and higher-order constructs, and gauges reflective and formative variables (hair et al., 2019). results the present study utilized pls path modelling to measure the hypothesized relationships. in pls path modelling, the first phase is to evaluate the measurement model, also called the outer model analysis. the second phase is to evaluate the structural model, also called the inner model analysis (hair et al., 2019). measurement model evaluation the first stage of pls path modeling is the evaluation of the validity and reliability of the constructs used in the present study. table 2 presents the results of the reliability of the constructs using composite reliability. to say that the constructs exhibit internal consistency, the composite reliability should be equal to or higher than 0.70 (kock, 2014). as shown in table 2, all latent constructs have composite reliability coefficients of more than 0.70; hence, they exhibit internal consistency. part of the assessment of construct validity is convergent validity. item loadings and average variance extracted (aves) were assessed to measure the convergent validity of the first-order reflective constructs. according to kock (2014), to say that a latent variable exhibits convergent validity, each item loading must have a value of at least 0.50 and each factor loading must be significant (p > 0.05). moreover, each latent construct must possess ave equal to or higher than 0.50. as shown in table 2, all first-order reflective constructs possess convergent validity. aseas 16(1) | 131 jean paolo lacap construct / item (reflective – first order) item loading thai yaoi media consumption i watch thai boys’ love series because… love without gender & pro-gay attitude – ave = 0.531; cr = 0.819 …there are no gender differences in it. 0.762 …feelings have priority over gender in it. 0.662 …gay men have equal rights in it. 0.786 …this genre portrays a positive picture of gay men. 0.698 identification/ self-analysis – ave = 0.753; cr = 0.901 …it helps me better understand my life events. 0.841 … it gives me an opportunity to better understand my feelings. 0.885 … it provides me with a guide to better understand my sexual dilemmas. 0.877 melodramatic/ emotional elements – ave = 0.641; cr = 0.843 …it portrays intense feelings. 0.768 … it has a stronger emotional impact on me than other stories. 0.813 … it evokes deep emotions in me. 0.821 arts and aesthetics – ave = 0.552; cr = 0.787 … it as an aesthetic appeal. 0.747 ... erotica is artistically portrayed in it. 0.772 … i like its graphics. 0.708 pure entertainment – ave = 0.689; cr = 0.869 … it is entertaining. 0.815 … it fills my free time. 0.842 … it is relaxing to me. 0.832 cultural proximity geographic proximity – ave = 0.696; cr = 0.872 thailand is geographically not far away from the philippines. 0.758 the convenient transportation makes it easy to travel to thailand. 0.862 the geographical proximity makes it easy to travel to thailand. 0.877 values – ave = 0.654; cr = 0.883 thais’ attitudes toward family values are similar to those of the philippines 0.780 thais’ attitudes toward cultural traditions are similar to those of the filipinos. 0.742 thais’ attitude toward filial piety (respect to parents, elders) is similar to that of the filipinos. 0.865 thais’ attitude toward the elderly is similar to that of the filipinos. 0.843 collectivism – ave = 0.589; cr = 0.850 thais’ attitude toward the member of groups is similar of that of the filipinos. 0.779 thais’ attitude toward the individual and society is similar to that of the filipinos 0.853 thais’ attitude toward harmony within a group is similar to that of the filipinos. 0.595 thais’ attitude toward interpersonal conflict is similar to that of the filipinos. 0.817 emotional involvement – ave = 0.571; cr = 0.888 i feel that thai bl series and my favorite character(s) /actor(s) keep me company. 0.822 i like hearing the voice(s) of my favorite character(s)/actor(s). 0.795 i feel comfortable when watching thai bl series as if the character(s)/actor(s) were my friends. 0.743 i really miss thai bl series and my favorite character(s)/actor(s) whenever i am unable to watch them. 0.725 my favorite characters/actors in thai bl series are like old friends. 0.732 when watching thai bl series, i feel that i am a part of the story. 0.710 travel motivation – ave = 0.505; cr = 0.890 after watching thai bl series, i plan to visit thailand… to let others know that i have been to the place(s) shown in the series. 0.628 to taste authentic thai food. 0.572 to visit a thai destination that many people are talking about. 0.626 to help fantasize myself being a part of the bl series. 0.735 to experience the location(s) appeared in the series. 0.767 to see the scenery and landscape shown in thai bl series in real life. 0.789 to feel the romance and emotions represented by the character(s)/actor(s) in the bl series. 0.770 to relive the storyline of my favorite bl series. 0.766 notes: all item loadings are significant, p < .05. ave-average variance extracted; cr-composite reliability. table 2. convergent validity and reliability of first-order reflective constructs (own compilation) 132 | aseas 16(1) yaoi media consumption and travel motivation discriminant validity using the fornell-larcker criterion was gauged by identifying the correlations among latent variables and square roots of aves as shown by the diagonal values (highlighted coefficients) in table 3. when the diagonal values are greater than the off-diagonal coefficients, constructs are said to exhibit discriminant validity (fornell & larcker, 1981). based on the results in table 3, all latent constructs passed the discriminant validity test. discriminant validity was also identified by gauging the heterotrait-monotrait (htmt) ratio of correlations. to say that the reflective constructs exhibit discriminant validity, the htmt ratio of correlations in table 4 must be lower than 0.85 (henseler et al., 2015). the results in table 4 confirm that the latent constructs in the present study possess discriminant validity. lw sa melo aa pe gp val col ei tm lw 0.729 sa 0.405 0.868 melo 0.446 0.496 0.801 aa 0.325 0.287 0.439 0.743 pe 0.411 0.318 0.459 0.442 0.830 gp 0.308 0.199 0.275 0.215 0.323 0.834 val 0.306 0.206 0.218 0.204 0.298 0.327 0.809 col 0.262 0.224 0.181 0.266 0.269 0.204 0.571 0.768 ei 0.459 0.455 0.500 0.473 0.507 0.246 0.258 0.258 0.756 tm 0.309 0.337 0.347 0.439 0.380 0.168 0.210 0.286 0.579 0.711 notes: lw-love without gender & pro-gay attitude; sa-identification/self-analysis; melo-melodramatic/emotional elements; aa-arts and aesthetics; pe-pure entertainment; gp-geographic proximity; val-values; col-collectivism; ei-emotional involvement; tm-travel motivation. table 3. discriminant validity test of first-order reflective constructs using fornell-larcker criterion (own compilation) lw sa melo aa pe gp val col ei tm lw sa 0.526 melo 0.628 0.638 aa 0.500 0.408 0.647 pe 0.560 0.396 0.616 0.655 gp 0.416 0.247 0.368 0.313 0.419 val 0.408 0.250 0.283 0.294 0.372 0.406 col 0.361 0.281 0.242 0.398 0.354 0.263 0.722 ei 0.590 0.541 0.640 0.670 0.622 0.304 0.310 0.324 tm 0.389 0.392 0.434 0.609 0.462 0.211 0.256 0.360 0.669 notes: lw-love without gender & pro-gay attitude; sa-identification/self-analysis; melo-melodramatic/emotional elements; aa-arts and aesthetics; pe-pure entertainment; gp-geographic proximity; val-values; col-collectivism; ei-emotional involvement; tm-travel motivation. table 4. discriminant validity test of first-order reflective constructs using htmt ratios (own compilation) aseas 16(1) | 133 jean paolo lacap in the present study, thai yaoi media consumption as a variable was treated as a higher-order construct. using a disjoint two-stage approach (becker et al., 2012), thai yaoi media consumption (formative) was evaluated with the following dimensions: love without gender and pro-gay attitude; identification or self-analysis; melodramatic or emotional elements; arts and aesthetics; and pure entertainment. the measurement model assessment of a higher-order construct includes scrutiny of weights of the indicators and their corresponding p-values, variance inflation factors (vifs), and full-collinearity vif. the collinearity test was performed by assessing all indicator weights. the five dimensions of thai yaoi media consumption must be significant, meaning the p-value of each indicator must be < .05 (ramayah et al., 2018). moreover, the vif of each indicator must satisfy the threshold of 3.30 (diamantopoulos & siguaw, 2006). based on the results in table 5, all indicators of thai yaoi media consumption are within the acceptable thresholds for indicator weights and significance, and vifs. full collinearity vif for the higher-order construct thai yaoi media consumption was also evaluated to measure its discriminant validity (rasoolimanesh et al., 2017). to say that the higher-order construct has discriminant validity, full collinearity vif coefficient must be at most 3.30 (kock, 2015). based on the results, the full collinearity vif of thai yaoi media consumption is equal to 2.070; hence, this higher-order construct exhibits discriminant validity. structural model evaluation the evaluation of a structural model, as shown in figure 2 and table 6, involves the assessment of the path coefficients of the hypothesized relationships. analysis of the data shows that the dimensions of cultural proximity – geographic proximity (β = 0.269, p < 0.001), values (β = 0.129, p = 0.002), and collectivism (β = 0.219, p < 0.001) – significantly and positively influence thai yaoi media consumption with small effect sizes (gp à yaoi: f2 = 0.102; val à yaoi: f2 = 0.046; collect à yaoi: f2 = 0.081). therefore, h1a, h1b, and h1c are supported. the results also reveal that the higher-order construct thai yaoi media consumption is significantly and positively related to emotional involvement (β = 0.665, p < 0.001) and to travel motivation (β = 0.216, p < 0.001). additionally, the findings show that yaoi à ei exhibits large effect size (f2 = 0.443) and small effect size for yaoi à tm (f2 = 0.108). hence, h2a and h2b are supported. higher order construct indicator weight p vif full collinearity vif thai yaoi media consumption 2.070 love without gender & pro-gay attitude 0.273 <0.001 1.412 identification/ self-analysis 0.263 <0.001 1.412 melodramatic/ emotional elements 0.305 <0.001 1.695 arts and aesthetics 0.260 <0.001 1.376 pure entertainment 0.278 <0.001 1.470 table 5. measurement model assessment of the formative higher order construct (own compilation) 134 | aseas 16(1) yaoi media consumption and travel motivation the influence of emotional involvement on travel motivation was also evaluated, and the result indicates that ei and tm are significantly and positively related (β = 0.440, p < 0.001) with a medium effect size (f2 = 0.255). therefore, h3 is supported. the mediation analysis shows that emotional involvement indirectly affects the relationship between thai yaoi media consumption and travel motivation (β = 0.293, p < 0.001) with a small effect size (f2 = 0.147). this signifies that thai yaoi media consumption significantly affects emotional involvement, which, in turn, influences travel motivation. therefore, h4 is supported. predictive relevance using the stone-geisser q2 test and the coefficient of determination or r2 were also gauged as part of the assessment of the structural model. the coefficient of q2 must be greater than zero to say that the structural model adequately predicts each endogenous latent variable’s indicators (kock, 2020). the q2 coefficients of 0.443 (emotional involvement), 0.364 (travel motivation), and 0.227 (thai yaoi media consumption) reflect substantial predictive relevance (hair et al., 2017); thus, the model passed the predictive relevance test. figure 2. structural model and the corresponding beta coefficients (own compilation) hypothesis path coefficient p se effect size decision direct effects h1a. gp ? yaoi 0.269 <0.001 0.044 0.102 supported h1b. val ? yaoi 0.129 0.002 0.044 0.046 supported h1c. collect ? yaoi 0.219 <0.001 0.044 0.081 supported h2a. yaoi ? ei 0.665 <0.001 0.041 0.443 supported h2b. yaoi ? tm 0.216 <0.001 0.044 0.108 supported h3. ei ? tm 0.440 <0.001 0.043 0.255 supported indirect effect h4. yaoi ? ei ? tm 0.293 <0.001 0.031 0.147 supported notes: effect sizes follows cohen’s (1988) criterion: 0.02 = small, 0.15 = medium, 0.35 = large. se = standard error; β = standardized path coefficient. gp-geographic proximity; val-values; collect-collectivism; yaoithai yaoi media consumption; ei-emotional involvement; tm-travel motivation. table 6. direct and mediating effects (own compilation) aseas 16(1) | 135 jean paolo lacap as for the coefficient of determination, an r2 value of < .02 shows that the effect is too weak to be included as vital from a practical point of view (kock, 2014). the r2 coefficients of 0.443 (emotional involvement), 0.364 (travel motivation), and 0.228 (thai yaoi media consumption) reflect weak to moderate prediction effects (chin, 1998). to check whether lateral and vertical collinearities exist in the model, a common method bias test was performed (kock & gaskin, 2014). in the test of common method bias, full collinearity vif of each construct must not exceed to 3.30 (kock, 2015). as shown in table 7, all latent constructs in the study passed this requirement. discussion the present study showcases interesting results. first all dimensions of cultural proximity – geographic, values, and collectivism – were found to significantly and positively influence thai yaoi media consumption. the result indicates that filipino viewers find thailand as a country that is geographically near to the philippines; therefore, filipino viewers find it easy to travel to thailand. moreover, the findings also suggest that the filipino audience of thai bl series finds similarities in terms of thais’ attitude toward family values, traditions, members of the group, society, and interpersonal conflict. therefore, when filipino viewers consume thai bl series, they see similarities in cultural backgrounds between the philippines and thailand. looking at the cultural proximity theory, the study confirms that consumption of media products is related to the proximity that viewers experience when it comes to cultural background shown in a tv drama (lu et al., 2019). anh (2016) even contended that cultural proximity is a vital factor in why viewers consume tv dramas of other nations. second, the study also found that thai yaoi media consumption significantly and directly affects emotional involvement. this result suggests that consumption of thai bl series leads to connections between the viewers and the characters and story of a tv drama. the yaoi phenomenon is an important aspect of the pop culture of thailand today. thai bl series are tv dramas that do not only portray homoerotic and romantic love between two men (babal, 2019), but also incorporate positive attitude towards gay and gay relationships and allow viewers to better understand themselves and the society in general (zsila et al., 2018). aside from the entertainment value and aesthetic appeal of most thai yaoi media, thai bl series permit viewers to see sexual dilemmas in a better perspective. hence, when viewers consume thai bl series, the emotional connections with the characters and drama itself (connell, 2005) are evident. this is also aligned with parasocial theory and past studies that indicate that tv construct full collinearity vif r2 q2 geographic proximity 1.222 values 1.621 collectivism 1.566 emotional involvement 2.087 0.443 0.443 travel motivation 1.595 0.364 0.364 thai yaoi media consumption 2.070 0.228 0.227 table 7. common method bias test, r2, and q2 (own compilation) 136 | aseas 16(1) yaoi media consumption and travel motivation dramas evoke emotional connection between the viewers and the characters of the media products (chang, 2015; liu & pratt, 2019). third, the results of the study also revealed that thai yaoi media consumption and travel motivation are significantly and positively related. this finding suggests that the exposure of filipino viewers on thai bl series affects their decision to travel to a particular destination. as viewers watch more thai bl series, they become more attracted and have better motives to visit the location featured in a thai bl series, or to visit thailand as a tourism destination. this is in consonance with the findings of past studies that argued that tv dramas provide an avenue for viewers to experience a destination, which, in turn, induces them to visit the place (beeton, 2010; zeng et al., 2015). it was also noted that tv dramas are powerful devices to arouse the viewers to travel (iwashita, 2008). fourth, emotional involvement was found to be significantly and positively related to travel motivation. this finding means that the exposure of viewers to the plot and characters of thai bl series augments the level of motivation of the viewers to visit a destination. chang (2015) and kim and long (2012) even maintained that travel behavior of viewers is shaped by several factors including their exposure to tv drama series. tv dramas allow audiences to be deeply and emotionally involved with the characters and the series itself, increasing their intimacy with the tv drama (chang, 2015; vila et al., 2021). lastly, emotional involvement was found to mediate the link between thai yaoi media consumption and travel motivation. this result signifies that emotional involvement strengthens the relationship between thai yaoi media consumption and travel motivation. in short, thai yaoi media consumption influences emotional involvement, which, in turn, affects travel motivation. with the popularity of thai yaoi culture among filipino viewers (carreon, 2020), travel motivation among filipino viewers to visit thailand is heightened. this increased level of travel motivation among filipino viewers is affected by their emotional connection with the characters and the thai bl series they have watched. since emotional involvement allows viewers to establish deep connections with the characters or plot of a tv drama, audiences become motivated to relive the experience they have felt from the program they have watched, in this case, the thai bl series. implications of the study the current study highlights how pop culture can be an instrument to attract film tourists and presents how a pop-cultural product of one country can be a source of competitive advantage of another nation, as in the case of thai  yaoi  culture. it has been noted that the yaoi phenomenon started in japan (mizoguchi, 2003; zsila et al., 2018), and now thailand has embraced this boys’ love phenomenon and became part of its pop culture. this cultural extension is evident in thai yaoi films (tv dramas and movies) and now favorably affects thailand as a tourism destination. the presence of thai yaoi fandoms and thai pop cultural products (e.g., thai celebrities and artists, lakorn, and thai bl series) in several countries (baudinette, 2019; carreon, 2020; koaysomboon, 2020; yukari, 2020; yuqiao, 2020) is a manifestation of thai popcultural success.  aseas 16(1) | 137 jean paolo lacap the explosion of korean wave or hallyu is a clear evidence that pop culture is a powerful travel motivation tool. many of the studies in the past only examine korean pop culture in relation to travel motivation (chang, 2015; gong & tung, 2017; kim et al., 2008; kim et al., 2012; rittichainuwat & rattanaphinanchai, 2015). the present study provides a novel direction by exploring the context of thai pop culture, particularly of thai yaoi culture, and its link to travel motivation. it is interesting to highlight that thai pop culture, especially thai bl series, is getting the attention of a wider market outside thailand. more and more viewers, especially in the philippines, are now embracing the thai yaoi culture through consumption of thai bl series (carreon, 2020). hence, the research at hand offers significant implications. one of the relevant implications of the present study is that the exploration of thai yaoi culture in the context of film tourism addresses the gap in the literature. many of the past studies related to film-induced tourism focus on dramas or movies with male-female lead roles. as with thai bl series, where male-male leads are the primary emphasis of the story, the current undertaking fills the underexplored areas in film tourism scholarship. cultural proximity is an important factor when it comes to media consumption. in the present study, the cultural proximity of thailand and the philippines affects thai yaoi media consumption of the filipino viewers. similarities of the two mentioned countries in terms of geography, values, and the concept of collectivism are reasons why filipino viewers consume thai yaoi media, particularly thai bl series. additionally, the emotional connection that is formed between filipino viewers and the thai bl series and its characters induces the audience to visit thailand. from this, it can be argued that devices such as the use of cultural factors and emotions are important aspects that need to be considered when utilizing tv dramas to motivate people to visit a destination. thus, the study implies that film tourism practitioners, such as film producers and tourism marketers, may work collaboratively to come up with relevant strategies in promoting a destination through films. film makers and tourism practitioners may take advantage of the popularity of yaoi culture in producing film products that center on romances between men while highlighting tourism destinations. the acceptance of viewers to yaoi media products and the rise of fandoms of bl actors are indictors of massive successes of the bl genre as a unique selling point in the entertainment industry. yaoi media products appeal not only to the lgbt community, but also to young women (babal, 2019; watson & jirik, 2018). this is also true to the filipino followers of thai bl series (carreon, 2020). the present study proves that thai yaoi media products, such as thai bl series, have a huge potential to attract travelers to visit thailand. film-induced tourists, who seek to relive the experience they have felt from the thai yaoi dramas they have watched and to have the opportunity to personally be involved in thai culture, location, and destinations, show that thai yaoi media consumption can greatly influence their decision to visit thailand. therefore, mainstreaming the yaoi genre in tv dramas, or any other media products, may positively affect travel motivation of viewers. though considered a niche market, the lgbt community and young women’s acceptance of thai yaoi media can be a source of competitive advantage to thailand’s tourism sector. 138 | aseas 16(1) yaoi media consumption and travel motivation the present study offers new insights about media consumption and its relation to travel motivation. film-induced tourism studies focusing on thai pop culture are considered underexplored, or to large extent, unexplored. the present study is possibly the first study to investigate media consumption and travel motivation in the context of the thai pop culture of boys’ love series. moreover, it is also the first study to test the relationship between thai yaoi media consumption and travel motivation with filipino viewers as respondents. interestingly, even though the philippines is known to be a gay-friendly country (manalastas et al., 2017), media contents portraying male-to-male relationships are limited. one of the primary reasons for this is that most filipinos are catholics, and homosexuality is considered a sin. with the limited media content on male-to-male relationships, the younger filipino viewers today embrace pop cultural products such as the thai bl series. thus, the present study offers a way of looking at film-induced tourism, where male-to-male relationship media contents result in travel motivation, which drives tourism. limitations, and future research directions though it offers novel findings, the present research also has limitations. given that the respondents were filipino viewers, and they were selected non-randomly, it may yield different results if this study were tested in different contexts and if a random sampling technique was employed. second, thai bl series are considered a new genre to filipino audience. therefore, future researchers may find interest in exploring yaoi media consumption and travel motivation in a different asian context to confirm or to negate the claims of the present study. moreover, other researchers may also investigate comparison between filipino viewers of lakorn, where the leads are usually male and female actors, and of thai bl series, in relation to travel motivation. the results may offer another new insight into how filipino viewers perceive both lakorn and thai bl series in relation to travel motivation. third, since the online survey was distributed to select online thai bl series facebook fan groups, this may pose a limitation due to their stronger opinions on the topic of the present study. hence, it is recommended that future researchers may expand the current research by including a broader set of participants. fourth, most of the respondents were from the lgbt community. it would be interesting to recommend to future researchers to explore how yaoi media consumption and travel motivation differ between heterosexual and non-heterosexual participants. and fifth, since the present study utilized predictive research design, other researchers may conduct similar studies using other designs, such as qualitative or mixed methods.  references angelini, j. r., billings, a. c., & macarthur, p. j. 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(2015). south korea's destination image: comparing perceptions of film and nonfilm chinese tourists. social behavior and personality: an international journal, 43(9), 1453-1462. zsila, á., pagliassotti, d., urbán, r., orosz, g., király, o., & demetrovics, z. (2018). loving the love of boys: motives for consuming yaoi media. plos one, 13(6), 1-17. about the author dr. jean paolo g. lacap holds two doctorate degrees, a doctor of philosophy in business administration (phd ba) from the university of the visayas, cebu city, philippines and a doctor in business management (dbm) from the philippine women’s university, manila, philippines. he is currently affiliated with the city college of angeles, angeles city, philippines, as the vice president for research, extension, and quality assurance. his research interests include film tourism, tourism and hospitality marketing, organizational behavior, marketing, and entrepreneurship education. ► contact: jpglacap@gmail.com mailto:jpglacap%40gmail.com?subject= aseas 16(1) | 143 jean paolo lacap acknowledgements i would like to express my sincerest gratitude to the administrators of the following facebook groups – until we meet again (ohmfluke-team philippines); 2gether the series fans ph; 2gether the series/still2gether philippines (sarawat & tine); and bl fan group ph – for allowing me to post the online questionnaire that i used in this research paper. special thanks are accorded to mr. isaac faith burgonio-arreola runes and ms. emy caingat for their generosity in facilitating the dissemination of the online survey. disclosure the author declares no conflict of interest. aseas 15(1) | 61 attracting and educating ‘new citizens’: indonesian public discourse on the integration of indo-europeans into indonesian society during the dutch-indonesian war (1945-1947) muhammad yuanda zaraa a yogyakarta state university, indonesia received: 25 september 2021 / accepted: 1 november 2021 / published: 28 february 2022 ► zara, m. y. (2022). attracting and educating ‘new citizens’: indonesian public discourse on the integration of indo-europeans into indonesian society during the dutch-indonesian war (1945-1947). advances in southeast asian studies, 15(1), 61-85. so far, the study of indigenous people’s attitudes towards indo-europeans in the era of decolonization, especially in indonesia, has focused on native militia violence against indo-europeans. serious studies on the desire of the indigenous people to persuade indoeuropeans to become part of indonesian society have been neglected. by employing the historical method, this study examines how indonesian nationalists publicly imagined, framed, and convinced indo-europeans of their place as the most recent members of the nation during the dutch-indonesian war (1945-1947). the newly-born nation essentially consisted of indigenous ethnic groups, which in colonial times were socially inferior to indo-europeans. this study shows that there was a systematic attempt from the indonesian side to define indo-europeans as ‘new citizens’ of indonesia and as siblings of native indonesians rather than a threat to indonesian nationalism. indonesian nationalists took various approaches to attract and educate indo-europeans. this article demonstrates that the relationship between the birth of the indonesian nation-state and ethnic minorities is not only marked by violence, as it has been understood so far, but also by indonesian public discussions about what mixed-race people mean for a multicultural indonesian society, on how indo-europeans influenced the perspective of indonesian nationalists on the new racial landscape in indonesia, and on discourse about identity, nation, state and citizenship in the context of the end of european colonialism and the birth of an indigenous state in southeast asia. keywords: citizenship; ethnicity; nationalism; race; postcolonial indonesia  introduction in the social landscape of indonesian multicultural society in the first half of the 20th century, the indo-europeans or eurasians (also known as the ‘indo’ among indonesians) were a group that, although small in number, had an important historical role. the indo-europeans had very diverse ethnic backgrounds, but in general the term refers to groups whose fathers were europeans (usually dutchmen, but also from other european nations), while their mothers were from current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 63 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9278-9410 62 | aseas 15(1) attracting and educating ‘new citizens’ asia, especially from indigenous ethnic groups in indonesia, as well as china or other asian nations (van der veur, 1968b). the indo-europeans were not only distinctive because of their mixed blood, but also their social characteristics, such as the christian religion they professed, the european culture they practiced, the dutch language they spoke, and their choice to distance themselves from the natives because they considered their socio-economic position to be higher than that of natives (hoogervorst & nordholt, 2017, pp. 453-454, 456; sjaardema, 1946). however, a few studies emphasize that colonial society was not rigidly divided into two major blocs (ruler and ruled), but ran dynamically, even in defining ‘europeanness’. in colonial times, indo-europeans were legally classified as european, but in practice some of them were found in the lower class (a position that pure europeans in the colony despised), had darker skin than pure europeans, tended to be ostracized by the european community, interacted more intensively with indonesians, and had to work very hard to reach important positions in the colonial bureaucracy (luttikhuis, 2014; stoler, 1989). studies on the existence of indo-europeans in indonesia in the first half of the 20th century are divided into three historical periods. first, are studies of the origins and dynamics of the social life of the indo-europeans in the colonial period, including the birth of the indo-europeans and their problematic place in the society of colonial indonesia from the 16th to the mid-20th century (breman, 2020; henley, 1995; sjaardema, 1946; taylor, 2009; van der kroef, 1953a,b, 1955a, 1972; van der veur, 1958, 1968a,b; wertheim, 1947). second, are studies of the experience of the indoeuropeans during the japanese occupation, which was marked by the exclusion of indo-europeans from the indonesian public sphere at the beginning of the japanese occupation, followed by the inclusion of indo-europeans into indonesian society when japan began to lose the war (touwen-bouwsma, 1996). third, are studies of the indoeuropeans in the postcolonial era, especially in the 1950s and 60s, when indonesia was fully sovereign and the indo-europeans had to decide their political affiliations. these decisions led to the adoption of citizenship (either indonesian or dutch), and were followed by an uneasy assimilation of the indo-europeans in indonesian and dutch society for generations (captain, 2014; goss, 2000; oostindie, 2010, p. 229; rodgers, 2005; tajuddin & stern, 2015; van der kroef, 1954a,b, 1955a,b; van der veur, 1960). in addition to the three periods mentioned above, another period has also received much attention from scholars in relation to the existence of the indo-europeans in indonesia, namely the dutch-indonesian war, also known as the indonesian revolution (1945-1949). the early months of the indonesian revolution, particularly between september 1945 and early 1946, were known especially among the dutch and the indo-europeans as the bersiap (‘be prepared’) period, while indonesian nationalists considered that during this period indonesia was an independent and sovereign state. this was a time when the japanese had already lost, and control of security in the cities was taken over by armed indonesians, one of the consequences of which was the occurrence of large-scale violence at the expense of thousands of dutch people and indo-europeans who had just come out of japanese camps (jacobson, 2018, pp. 51 & 126; touwen-bouwsma, 1996; van der kroef, 1950; van der veur, 1968a, p. 207). armed indonesians considered that they were disrupting security and hindering indonesia’s independence. as might be expected, academic studies regarding the early period, or aseas 15(1) | 63 muhammad yuanda zara more generally during the indonesian revolution, focus on the politics of hatred and acts of violence perpetrated by armed indonesian youths against indo-europeans, who were considered to be associated with the dutch and to support the return of dutch colonialism in indonesia as well as to oppose the existence of an indonesian state (cribb, 2008; frederick, 2014; tajuddin & stern, 2015, p. 357). w.f. wertheim even noticed that the indo-europeans were the group of people who likely suffered the most from the acts of what he described as "terrorism" in the initial phase of the indonesian revolution (wertheim, 1947, p. 297). among the many studies about the origins and lives of indo-european people in indonesia during the colonial period, and especially the suffering they experienced during the revolution due to the violence exercised by diverse indonesian ethnicities, scholars have ignored the thoughts, discourses and actions of indonesian nationalists in framing indo-europeans as close friends and even brothers of indigenous ethnic groups, especially in indonesia’s formative years. this study fills this gap in the literature. in this article, i argue that the history of the indo-europeans in the indonesian revolution was not only dominated by the violence of the natives against the indo-europeans as so far understood, but also by the endeavors to approach and understand each other, in a process that intended to make the indo-europeans part of the indonesian nation. violence committed by the natives against the indoeuropeans during the revolutionary period has been well documented. however, the attempts of the indonesian government and nationalists to promote indonesian nationalism among the indo-europeans and their positive response to these efforts have been neglected. in fact, apart from being tainted by violence, the relations between the indoeuropeans and the indonesian nationalists during the revolution were also marked by the efforts of indo-european intellectuals and indonesian nationalists to approach each other in order to achieve a common goal, namely supporting indonesian independence and making the indo-europeans a part of a new, egalitarian indonesian society. indications of this have been made in passing by a few scholars (earle, 1948; van der kroef, 1953b, pp. 489-490, 1955, p. 460). in fact, efforts to unite indonesians with indo-europeans had been carried out organizationally during the colonial period, as shown in the birth of the multiracial indische partij (party of the indies) in 1912, whose leaders were two javanese and an indo-european. one of its founders, soewardi soerjaningrat, wrote a famous pamphlet entitled als ik eens nederlander was (if i were a dutchman), in which he criticized the colonial government’s plan to gather donations from europeans, indo-europeans and even natives for the centenary celebrations of dutch liberation from french rule. this pamphlet, according to benedict anderson, encouraged the ‘imaginary transformation’ of natives into europeans and europeans into natives (anderson, 2006, pp. 119-120). however, apart from a cursory mention in some of these writings – which were generally pessimistic about the potential integration of indo-europeans into indonesian society – to my knowledge there has been no serious study of efforts made by indonesian nationalist fighters and the indo-european community to collaborate side-by-side in order to convince the indo-europeans to be part of the indonesian nation and to ensure that indigenous indonesians accepted the indo-europeans as new members in indonesian society. 64 | aseas 15(1) attracting and educating ‘new citizens’ a few studies have attempted to pinpoint the formation of a close relationship between the indo-europeans and indonesian nationalists. some suggest it did not happen until march 1947, when e. f. e. douwes dekker, the figure of emancipation for the indo-europeans, who in the 1920s advocated for the unity of indo-europeans and indigenous people, was appointed as a member of the indonesian semi-parliamentary body komite nasional indonesia pusat (central indonesian national committee, or knip) (van der veur, 1958, p. 565). others argue it happened when indonesian sovereignty was recognized by the dutch in 1949, and the indonesian community development project could finally be started without dutch interference (tajuddin & stern, 2015, p. 357; van der veur, 1960). however, in the following period, the relations between indonesians and indo-europeans deteriorated. with the recognition of indonesian sovereignty by the netherlands in late 1949, the dutch and indo-european communities were obliged to choose between indonesian or dutch citizenship. very few of them chose to become indonesian citizens. the situation worsened for europeans and indo-europeans with the nationalization of the indonesian economy in the 1950s, which forced tens of thousands of dutch people and indo-europeans to leave indonesia for the netherlands (bosma in menjívar, 2019, p. 79). the main overarching question in this paper is why did the indonesian nationalists try to persuade and educate the indo-europeans to become part of the indonesian nation during the critical years of the dutch-indonesian war of 1945-1947? the subquestions will address three relevant aspects, which also serve to structure the study into separate sections, namely: 1) how did the indonesian nationalists see the position of the indo-europeans in the newly born indonesia, especially in relation to the project to form the ‘indonesian nation’? 2) how did the indonesian government formulate the concept of citizenship when facilitating the integration of indo-europeans into indonesian society? 3) what were the strategies used by the indonesian nationalists to persuade and educate the indo-europeans to encourage them to become part of the indonesian nation? i have reviewed various publications from the indonesian government, print media and indonesian political figures published in 1945-1947 discussing the position of indo-europeans in an independent indonesia. primary sources, available in indonesia and the netherlands, include propaganda booklets from the indonesian ministry of information calling indo-europeans to become indonesian citizens, and an anti-xenophobic propaganda booklet published in october 1945 by a prominent indonesian socialist figure who one month later was appointed indonesia’s first prime minister, sutan sjahrir. primary sources also include news articles, opinions and photos, which appealed to indo-europeans, published by indonesian nationalist print media in indonesian and dutch, especially de pionier (the pioneer), het inzicht (the insight), and merdeka (independent), and others.1 while indo-european circles actually had their own publications, one of them being the onze stem (our voice) magazine published by indo-europeesch verbond (iev, indo-european association) between 1919-1956, this study does not rely on such sources but rather focuses on propaganda from the indonesian side. 1 the translations of indonesian and dutch texts are mine, unless otherwise stated. the insertions in square brackets are also mine. aseas 15(1) | 65 muhammad yuanda zara while relying almost exclusively on indonesian nationalist primary sources may give the impression of being one-sided (e.g., the lack of an explanation of counter-propaganda from the dutch side), there is a larger context to consider here. this study focuses on indonesian propaganda and sources representing the ideas and actions of indonesian nationalists. the strong indonesian perspective here is an innovative contribution to the historiography of indo-europeans, which has been dominated by the dutch and, to a lesser extent, indo-european viewpoints. unfortunately, it is very difficult to measure the reach of magazines, newspapers and propaganda booklets that indonesian nationalists used to persuade indo-europeans. data on readership and circulation for the print media and booklets that i examined was not available. in rare cases, this reach can be ascertained by searching for information in other newspapers, for example the planned distribution of de pionier newspaper to camps inhabited by indo-europeans can be obtained from the nationalist newspaper, merdeka. i employ the term ‘indo-europeans’, an academic term, throughout this article except in direct quotations by indonesian nationalists and where i discuss such quotations. here, i use the popular word ‘indo/indos’, given that it was usually employed by indonesian nationalists as a positive umbrella term – equal to other native ethnic groups, such as javanese and sundanese – to describe the indo-europeans of the period, as primary sources show and despite the derogatory character some europeans and indo-europeans themselves have attributed to it. for this reason, the main method i use in approaching these sources is to use the keyword ‘indo’, instead of other keywords that are more commonly used in the academic world, such as ‘indo-europeans’ and ‘eurasians’. i chose 1945 as my starting point because it was in august of that year that indonesian independence was proclaimed, and in the first months after independence nationalist leaders began to publicly discuss the concept of the ‘indonesian nation’, including the possibility of the indo-europeans as an integral part of it. i chose 1947 as the final year because the efforts of the government and nationalists to convince indo-europeans to become indonesian citizens reached their peak, as shown by various persuasive gestures such as the publication of het inzicht magazine and the de pionier newspaper (in 1946), and the appointment of a pro-indonesian indo-european figure, e.f.e. douwes dekker, as a minister of state in may 1947. for the indonesian state, this move became the greatest evidence that they not only recognized the existence of the indo-europeans, but also granted them important political positions in the new republic. this study also shows that the campaign of the indonesian nationalists was also directed at the indonesian natives, with the aim of convincing them to admit the indoeuropeans as new members of the indonesian society and nation. this study will be useful to assist us in understanding the contribution and cooperation of indonesian nationalists and indo-europeans in constructing the idea of an indonesian nation, which is not only multiethnic, but also multiracial, in a time that has been almost always perceived as a time of conflict between the two. this study illustrates that the indonesian public sphere in the period 1945-1947 was filled by discussions of all-inclusive multiculturalism and equal rights for citizens amidst the most important war in indonesia in the 20th century. 66 | aseas 15(1) attracting and educating ‘new citizens’ indonesian independence and the new relations among indo-europeans and indonesians the proclamation of indonesian independence on 17 august 1945 by soekarno and hatta (later appointed as president and vice president of indonesia, respectively) was followed by the efforts of indonesian nationalists to run the new government. various government institutions were established in jakarta and other regions in indonesia, and this helped to raise confidence among indonesians that they were capable of administering the former dutch indies territory. in addition to the running of the government, the development carried out by the indonesian nationalists was also aimed at establishing one of the most important elements in this young country: an indonesian nation. this was not an easy task, considering that at that time indonesia consisted of a huge variety of different ethnic groups with different traditions and languages, with a history of conflicts. building harmonious inter-ethnic and inter-religious relations in a country that was tens of times the size of the netherlands was a significant as well as daunting task. more importantly, the indonesian government also needed to ensure that the loyalty of all ethnicities in indonesian-held territory would only be towards the indonesian government. this task was made even more difficult considering the fact that, during the colonial period, a few ethnic groups in the dutch east indies had a strong association with the dutch due to religious, educational and occupational ties. moreover, in september 1945, the allied forces, which were later followed by dutch troops, began landing on java and enforced their authority. the hopes of some ethnic groups for the continuation of dutch rule – as a guarantee of the return of their privileges over the natives as in colonial times – made the task of building ethnic loyalties to the indonesian government even harder. moreover, some indigenous ethnic groups, who were known to be close to the dutch during the colonial period and received semi-european status (bosma & raben, 2008, pp. 173-176), for example the christianized ambonese and menado, in the early days of independence had not firmly determined their political stance. likewise, totok (full blood) and peranakan (mixed descent) foreigners, who in the colonial period were at the top level of society, for example the chinese, the dutch and the indo-europeans, were not clear enough in showing their political orientation in the early days of the revolution. in the view of the indonesian nationalists, they were more oriented towards their homeland and preferred to wait for the re-establishment of dutch rule rather than show support for the indonesian republic. the birth of an independent indonesia, run by the natives, triggered negative sentiments towards the ethnic groups who in the colonial period benefited from colonialism, ethnic groups which at the beginning of the revolution did not immediately show a pro-republican stance. a certain proportion of dutch and indo-europeans who had just been released from the japanese camps, as well as the ambonese, were recruited by the dutch as soldiers in order to support the return of dutch colonialism in the already independent indonesia. this negative sentiment hardened into hatred, which later led to violence perpetrated by armed indigenous nationalists against minorities of foreign descent, including the indo-europeans. in the midst of the violence that befell the indo-europeans, the republican government did not remain silent. they took numerous measures to get minorities, aseas 15(1) | 67 muhammad yuanda zara especially those known to be close to the dutch, to recognize indonesian independence and support the indonesian government. one way to do this was by enacting democratic citizenship laws that no longer adopted racially-based social hierarchies as in colonial times. the republican authority campaigned that in independent indonesia there was only one nation that existed, namely the indonesian nation. there were no more social class division based on race. the indonesian nation in question included both indigenous ethnic groups and indonesian-born foreigners, such as people of chinese, arab or indian descent (“oendang2 dasar negara”, 1945). another group deemed fit to be part of the indonesian nation were the indoeuropeans, who were labeled by indonesian nationalists as ‘new citizens’. a key point advocated by indonesian nationalists in the first weeks after indonesian independence was that indonesia was neither anti-foreigner nor antiwhite. president soekarno rejected accusations that indonesia was an anti-white nation in an interview with two australian journalists on 20 september 1945 in jakarta. soekarno was initially asked whether indonesia’s independence was approved by japanese authority. he replied that the japanese did not give a firm answer about the news that japan had surrendered to the allies, and therefore he emphasized that the indonesian nationalist leaders took the initiative to proclaim indonesia’s independence. that implied indonesia’s rejection of foreign colonialism. however, for soekarno, the indonesian nation was not an anti-white movement given that what indonesia was doing was just defending its independence (“indonesia merdeka adalah tjiptaan”, 1945). the indo-europeans were not specifically mentioned here, but considering that half of the blood of the indo-europeans was european, we can interpret sukarno’s understanding of ‘white people’ such as europeans, as well as the peranakan of foreign origin, as including the indo-europeans. the emphasis on indonesia’s anti-xenophobic attitude was strengthened by vice president mohamad hatta’s statement on 1 november 1945, which was broadcast by the official government media, berita repoeblik indonesia. hatta again stressed to the indonesian people that the world’s eyes were on indonesia before deciding whether to accept it as a new nation. so, said hatta, violence should not be used as an arbitrary tool targeting foreigners. hatta said, “we do not hate foreign nations, nor do we hate the dutch, let alone indo, ambon or menado people who are actually also our nation” (“makloemat pemerintah repoeblik indonesia”, 1945). the phrase “who are actually also our nation” (jang sebenarnja bangsa kita djoega) here first refers to the ambonese and menado people, two ethnic minorities in indonesia who, during the colonial period, because of their religious ties, education and bureaucracy, were known to be affiliated with the colonial government. however, it was clear that hatta also felt that the indo-european people had indonesian blood. for this reason, he placed the indoeuropeans between the totok dutch and indonesian indigenous ethnicities, as a sign that the indo-european group was a mixed group that had an indigenous indonesian element. this seems to be an implicit call for the indo-european group to feel closer to their indonesian heritage than to their dutch. hatta also showed a practical and visionary mind in seeing the need for a friendly attitude with foreigners, including the indo-europeans, who in hatta’s perspective looked more like half-strangers than complete foreigners (such as totok dutch). as semi-foreigners who were also highly educated, worked in middle-level jobs, and had 68 | aseas 15(1) attracting and educating ‘new citizens’ strong financial capabilities – achievements that were rarely obtained by the majority of natives – indo-europeans occupied a special position in the view of the government, especially in the possibility of helping indonesia carry out development that required professional manpower (“makloemat pemerintah repoeblik indonesia”, 1945). hatta knew very well that as a new ex-colony, indonesia faced a major problem: a serious lack of educated and skilled personnel. thus, hatta emphasized that even though indonesia was rich in natural resources, this young country still needed foreigners, especially professionals from the more advanced western countries. in this regard, indonesia would try to become a member of the united nations. for this reason, the country also needed to ensure security, safety and the participation of people of foreign descent. hatta said, “in this country we will exercise the sovereignty of our people with the rules of citizenship which will quickly make all indo[,] asian and european groups become true indonesians, become patriots and indonesian democrats” (“makloemat pemerintah repoeblik indonesia”, 1945). there is another anti-xenophobia view among indonesian leaders worth mentioning here. a few importants point were delivered by sutan sjahrir. known as an anti-fascist, nationalist activist, sjahrir was an opponent of collaboration with japan (mrázek, 1994). at the end of october 1945, he published perdjoeangan kita (our struggle), a booklet that, according to historians, had a profound impact on indonesian political thought because of his efforts to cleanse the remnants of japanese influence on the indonesian nationalists (bayly & harper, 2007, p. 183; kahin, 2003, pp. 164-165; legge, 2010, p. 159; turner, 2018, p. 63). however, a section in the booklet actually discusses the right place for foreign-blood minorities, especially the indo-europeans, in an independent indonesia. sjahrir criticized the long-lasting influence of japanese propaganda among indonesian youth, especially for hating foreign nations who were considered enemies of japan, such as the allies, the dutch, the “indos”, and the chinese. when referring to the indo-europeans in his booklet, he added in brackets that the “indos” were “our own people” (bangsa kita sendiri) (sjahrir, 1945, p. 4). here, sjahrir declares and advocates that the indoeuropeans were part of indonesian society, just like other indigenous ethnic groups, such as javanese, sundanese, madurese, and minangkabau. as a consequence, the indo-europeans should not be hated, let alone be the targets of acts of violence by indonesian youth. sjahrir’s idea also sent a strong message that indonesian youths who hated indo-europeans, and even committed violence against them, were actually still under the guise of japanese propaganda. in the booklet, sjahrir (1945) explains that it was difficult to accept the cruelty and killings that occurred against “the indos, ambonese and menadonese, who are also our own nation” (p. 10). he even reminded indonesians that hatred towards the indos, ambonese and menadonese would jeopardize the country’s reputation abroad because the international community might consider “national consciousness among the people proven to be very thin or non-existing at all” (p. 10). sjahir clearly believed that maintaining security and ensuring the loyalty of the indo people to the indonesian state were goals that had to be achieved in order for the international legitimacy of the indonesian government. this international support was crucial according to sjahrir because at that time indonesia’s fate depended on the victors of the war, britain and the united states (sjahrir, 1945, p. 15). these two aseas 15(1) | 69 muhammad yuanda zara countries monitored what was happening in indonesia, and it was clear to sjahrir that ensuring the safety of the indos, as people of european origin, was one factor that could shape british and the united states’ perceptions of indonesia. sjahrir (1945) rejected the politics of hatred against minorities, and he urged that population affairs in indonesia be regulated democratically and based on the “spirit of humanity and society” (p. 29). sjahrir even included a special section in his booklet about people of foreign descent, entitled “pembentjian bangsa asing” (hatred of foreigners). he claimed that, until then, there had not been a “satisfactory” attitude or political stance from the indonesian side towards a “somewhat alienated group among the population of our country” (including the indos). what was worse, he continued, was that there were things that were “wrong and destructive to our popular struggle”, which seems to refer to the politics of hatred and violence against minorities including the indos. the politics of hatred against foreign descendants was very dangerous, he said, because “it will end up facing with the rest of the world and humanity”, which would actually be detrimental to the indonesian struggle. for sjahrir, xenophobia was not a form of love for the country (sjahrir, 1945, pp. 31-32). in line with sjahrir’s urge for indonesians to be friendly with indo-europeans and other minority groups, in the second half of 1945, the ministry of information published a propaganda booklet in indonesian – primarily aimed at indonesians, but also to malay-speaking dutch and indo-europeans – emphasizing the same points. the title is apakah negara itoe? (what is a state?). the nine-page booklet basically explained the definition of a country, the conditions for the establishment of a country that can be recognized by the world, and examples of modern countries in the globe. major emphasis here were that the state in the modern era was different from a feudal kingdom, and that the state must fulfill four conditions in order to be recognized internationally, namely 1) having a population, 2) having territory, 3) having a government, and 4) having internationally recognized authority (indonesian ministry of information, 1945). the first point was crucial. here, a question that possibly existed in the minds of many indonesians was discussed: what is the difference between the people and the nation in a country? the ministry explained that the people of a country were usually referred to as the nation of that country. and, more importantly, the ministry emphasized its point by giving an example that “if we name the swiss nation it does not mean that the swiss people descended from one lineage or come from one place only” (indonesian ministry of information, 1945). therefore, according to the ministry, heredity was not a factor that determined a nation; the determining factor was “the history or fate shared by those who live in that society” (indonesian ministry of information, 1945). there was no specific mention here of the indo-europeans, but the tone of this explanation was clear, namely convincing indonesians that what was referred to as the ‘indonesian nation’ was not only those who come from indigenous ethnic groups, but also people of foreign descent in indonesia who met legal requirements to become indonesian citizens. attempts to define ‘indonesian society’ had been made since the early weeks after indonesian independence. one of them can be found in a pro-republic newspaper published by young nationalists who came from ika daigaku, a japanese medical 70 | aseas 15(1) attracting and educating ‘new citizens’ school in jakarta, berita indonesia (“surat kabar indonesia pada”, 1978, p. 131). in an english-language manifesto, the editor of this newspaper explained what he saw as indonesian society. for him, racial or ethnic equality was not the basis for the formation of indonesian society. there was a stronger element in the construction of a nation, which facilitated the participation of foreign descendants in indonesian society. for the editor, the indonesian people were communities of the same origin who shared the same concepts, language, culture, interests and aspirations (“for the sake of ”, 1945). in october 1945, there were many killings that befell the indo-europeans in surabaya, east java (frederick, 2014, pp. 135-140). feeling of resentment and accusations that the indo-europeans supported the dutch had instigated violence perpetrated by armed indonesian youths against the indo-europeans, including arrests, torture and murder. violence against the indo-europeans continued and even spread beyond surabaya, including as early as 1946. the perpetrators varied from youth groups to indonesian soldiers. the indonesian government did not stand by the violence that was inflicted upon indo-europeans. instead, it tried to deescalate the situation by urging the indonesian people to avoid violence against minorities, including indo-europeans, and foreigners, in this case the totok dutch. this was evident in an edict issued by president soekarno where he highlighted two major goals for the new republic: recognition from the international community and the creation of an indonesian society based on social justice. for the first, the country would need to guarantee the security of the population in indonesia. soekarno acknowledged that the indonesian people had committed acts of violence against the dutch and the indos, for example by arresting them for being accused of “berdosa” (sinning) against indonesia. soekarno understood the reasons behind this action, which according to him occurred as a response to the atrocities committed by nica (netherlands indies civil administration) troops against the indonesian people. but he then emphasized that taking the law into one’s own hands was wrong and could lead to anarchy. therefore, he urged that the task of punishing those deemed guilty should be handed over to the state (“makloemat pemerintah repoeblik indonesia kepada”, 1945). here, of course, he was also referring to the indo-europeans, whom he still considered “foreigners” yet worthy of protection as exemplified in this quote: “the safety of the dutch, indo and other groups in our society must be guaranteed, as long as they do not threaten the safety of the republic of indonesia” (“makloemat pemerintah repoeblik indonesia kepada”, 1945). in fact, the indo-europeans had also been asked by the pro-indonesian regional authority to take part in maintaining security and public order. this can be seen from the efforts made by the yogyakarta sultan, sri sultan hamengkubuwono ix, who a few days after the proclamation of independence met with a number of social groups in yogyakarta. he met first with the city’s youth groups and with other community groups, for example masyumi (representing muslims), hwa chiao chung hui (representing the chinese) and delegates from what was known as the badan peranakan indo-belanda (an organization for peranakan indo-dutch) in yogyakarta. the sultan asked them to help maintain the security of the city, and, according to reports, they expressed their support for the sultan’s request (“daerah istimewa djokjakarta”, 1946). the indonesian government was trying to end unjustified violence against aseas 15(1) | 71 muhammad yuanda zara minorities. in an appeal at the beginning of april 1946, minister of home affairs soedarsono received news about the frequent, unilateral, punitive actions against “foreigners” such as chinese and arabs, as well as to “their own brothers”, in this case the ambonese and menadonese (“seroean menteri dalam negeri”, 1946). they were considered accomplices of the enemy and therefore deserved punishment. however, for soedarsono, the act of arbitrary punishment was wrong because it could destroy unity in society and weaken the struggle. he even mentioned that there were also javanese who worked with the enemy. the minister asked that these violent acts be stopped and submitted the matter of punishment to the judiciary body formed by the government. there was no specific mention of the indo-europeans, but it is implicit in what was meant by foreigners. constructing the concept that indo-europeans were ‘new citizens’ the indonesian government felt the need to explain the concept of indonesian citizenship to minorities of foreign descent in indonesia who had not yet made their choice of citizenship, whether to be foreign citizens based on the origins of a parent (usually the father), or indonesian citizens. this was particularly aimed at the three minority groups of foreign descent, namely european (the indo-europeans), chinese and arab. other groups of foreign descent were also considered (for example, tamil), but because they were not as numerous as the three groups mentioned earlier, they were not specified and were only included in the section “etc.”. the indonesian government, through its propaganda machine, the ministry of information, issued a special booklet to explain the indonesian concept of citizenship to minorities of european, chinese and arabic descent, and even call them to eventually become indonesian citizens by emphasizing the opportunities that they might obtain if they adopted indonesian citizenship. this was evident in a booklet issued by the ministry in jakarta in april 1946, entitled bagaimana? apa artinja saja djadi warga negara indonesia? dan pendoedoek indonesia? (how? what does it mean that i am an indonesian citizen? and residents of indonesia?; see indonesian ministry of information, 1946a). a subtitle indicated that it was intended “for the indos, chinese, arabs and others”. this was related to the stipulation of the law on citizens and residents of the republic of indonesia by the president of the republic of indonesia on 10 april 1946. this booklet was an explanation of the law, as well as an effort at persuasion to minorities of foreign descent. the indonesian government stated that the definition of ‘citizen’ in the law was very broad. not only that, the law was also said to have received a warm response among groups of foreign descent, who, although not of 100% indigenous blood, were born and lived on indonesian soil, and felt that they were an integral part of the indonesian nation and saw indonesia as their homeland (indonesian ministry of information, 1946a). the indonesian government felt the need to define and campaign for a concept of an inclusive nation and hoped that indo-europeans, as well as people of chinese and arab descent, by seeing indonesia as their homeland and country, could help build a democratic, all-embracing society in indonesia: 72 | aseas 15(1) attracting and educating ‘new citizens’ the chinese, arabs, indos and other groups that are persuaded by this understanding will be able to work together with the native indonesian nation, as a nation and indonesian citizens, to build a republic that guarantees democratic association and life in a shared social justice, in the social environment with other states and nations on the basis of equality of rights, sitting low and standing tall together, independence and freedom of self-determination. let’s do it! (indonesian ministry of information, 1946a) using the voices of highly respected pro-indonesian indo-europeans was another method used by the indonesian government to convince the indo-europeans that indonesia, and not the netherlands, was their homeland, which they must defend. this can be seen in another booklet issued by the indonesian ministry of information a month after the above-mentioned booklet. this booklet specifically aimed at indo people in indonesia, in contrast to the above booklet, which still addressed various minority groups of foreign descent. the title was ‘open brief aan het indo-comité “vrij-indonesië”’ (an open letter to the ‘free indonesia’ commmittee). this was a letter received by a pro-republic indo committee, indonesia merdeka (free indonesia). the sender was an important figure, w. ch. a. doeve, who was known as a key leader in the iev. founded in 1919, iev was an indo-european organization loyal to the colonial government, which believed in the colonial system (demonstrated in one way through membership in the volksraad, a people’s council formed by the colonial government) and had no alliance with indonesian nationalists (in contrast to other indo-european-run organizations, such as indische partij, which was close to the indigenous nationalists) (cribb & kahin, 2004, pp. 184-185; post et al., 2010, p. 514). iev was disbanded when japan occupied indonesia, but its influence remained even in the early years of indonesian independence. the proof was the above-mentioned letter. doeve himself was known as an important figure in the eurasian league, which in the 1930s sought a mixture of the dutch (including indo-europeans) and the natives, by calling on intellectuals in the dutch east indies, both dutch and non-dutch, who considered themselves sons of the indies, to unite to form a new nationality, the citizenship of the dutch east indies (bosma, 2004, p. 680). this letter opened with a firm statement in support of the integration of indoeuropeans with indonesian – rather than with dutch – society from someone who several decades earlier rejected affiliations between indo-europeans and indigenous ethnic groups, a change of mind that was clearly a relief for the republic in its project of integrating indo-europeans as indonesian citizens. it says, “following the establishment of your committee, i am quick to inform you that i can fully agree with the goal you have set and that i will gladly support you as far as i can” (indonesian ministry of information, 1946b). doeve emphasized that in the new era there was little the dutch could do with the indo-europeans. he even confidently said that for indo-europeans in indonesia, they did not want to be repatriated to the netherlands “want nederland is niet hun vaderland” (because the netherlands is not their fatherland) (indonesian ministry of information, 1946b). doeve sent a strong message to indo-europeans in indonesia, those who were members of the indonesia merdeka committee, but also those who belonged to other aseas 15(1) | 73 muhammad yuanda zara indo-european circles, especially those who were still hesitant to choose between returning to the netherlands and becoming dutch citizens, or staying in indonesia and becoming indonesian citizens. this message was also deemed important for indo-european circles in the netherlands. indo-europeans in indonesia must forget the netherlands as their past and be part of indonesia as their future. doeve wrote: despite all the pitiful hassle of the colonial reaction in the netherlands, the indonesians will eventually become the boss of their own house. that is now in line with evolution. the indos who want to live and die in indonesia (because there is their homeland) will have to accept the new situation and adapt. even if they do not like it, the indos must understand this as soon as possible. they must become loyal subjects of the republic of indonesia if they do not wish to be regarded as an unwanted minority. (indonesian ministry of information, 1946b) what was also interesting is the government of indonesia’s efforts to speak directly and engage the indo-europeans in the language they understood best: dutch. a narrative was built, that the indos were not a new element in the social landscape of the indonesian nation, and that the seeds of indonesian nationalism among indoeuropeans had been present at a relatively similar time as the birth of indonesian nationalism among other ethnic groups in indonesia. the creation and spread of this idea was done by the government through a channel with which indo-europeans were familiar from the colonial time: print media. the indonesian government published a dutch-language magazine to promote indonesian independence to those who understood dutch, in this case the dutch themselves and the indo-europeans. it was a weekly magazine, het inzicht. the publication order for this magazine was issued by the prime minister sutan sjahrir. the leadership of the magazine was given to his followers, namely soedjatmoko (later becoming indonesia’s leading intellectual), soedarpo (who in november 1947 was one of the negotiators between indonesia and the netherlands in the linggajati agreement) and sanjoto. other editorial staff were i. nasution and m. wiranatakoesoema. the editorial address was cikini 70 in jakarta, but this magazine also had an editorial post at the indonesian ministry of information on jalan cilacap 4 in jakarta (“weekblad ‘het inzicht’”, 1947). the purpose of publishing this magazine was to have an open exchange of ideas with the dutch in the midst of the deteriorating situation between the two countries (anwar in sastromihardjo, 1999, p. xiii). this magazine was published as counterpropaganda for the publication by the dutch information service, regering voorlichtings dienst (rvd), het uitzicht (the outlook). the name was made similar to the dutch publication. het inzicht’s birth date (16 january 1946) was only a week after the rvd published het uitzicht. so, the presence of this magazine was indeed part of the indonesian-dutch opinion war. the name het inzicht was given by a dutchman who was also a close friend of sjahrir, jacques de kadt (interned in bandung during the japanese period). de kadt himself later became a correspondent for the dutch newspaper het parool in indonesia (anwar in sastromihardjo, 1999, p. xii). de kadt was also a member of the editorial staff, thus explaining the magazine’s use of dutch language and rhetoric, as well as its 74 | aseas 15(1) attracting and educating ‘new citizens’ focus on issues relevant to dutch-indonesian relations, including the question of the place of indo-europeans in the era of independent indonesia. soedjatmoko and soedarpo were employees of the indonesian ministry of information, and that meant that through this magazine they voiced the interests of the indonesian government. het inzicht was not only distributed in indonesia, but also sent abroad. if the committee of indonesian nationalists in australia received more than one copy of this magazine, they sent it to committees of indonesian nationalists in other countries in europe, united states and africa (bondan, 2011, p. 151), indicating that this magazine was undeniably aimed at influencing international public opinion, especially for the dutch-speaking people, to support indonesia’s existence and reject dutch authority. one of its key contents was an article containing the most elaborative explanation from the indonesian press about what indonesian citizenship was and a call for indo people to become indonesian citizens, as well as ideas about how indo-europeans might adapt to indonesia’s sociocultural life. the article, entitled ‘een idee-fixe’ (a fixed idea), consisted of two pages, including two photos. this particular space, quite large for a 12-page magazine, reflected the importance of the indo-europeans. the article and photos were a kind of civic education for indo-europeans. the original author was unknown (only the initials h.t. were provided). the article opened with a problem existing among the indonesian people regarding indonesian citizenship. the author stated that, in public discussions as well as on radio and in the press, there were misunderstandings about the indonesian citizenship law. this problem was concerned with “indonesian citizens”, particularly the “indo-problem”, especially from a cultural-sociological aspect (“een idee-fixe”, 1947). among the peranakan group there was a view that likened the indonesian citizenship law as “een poging tot ‘gleichschaltung’ van de minderheden” (an attempt to carry out ‘gleichschaltung’ of the minorities). readers of this magazine who were knowledgeable about geopolitical developments in europe, would certainly understand the term gleichschaltung, which was introduced and used by nazi germany during its reign. according to robert michael and karin doerr, the term means “all of the german volk’s social, political, and cultural organizations to be controlled and run according to nazi ideology and policy” and “all opposition to be eliminated” (michael & doerr, 2002, p. 192). so, here in the public sphere in indonesia, particularly among indo-europeans, there seemed to be a fear that the indonesian state would become an authoritarian, fascist state where minorities were oppressed and were forced to join indonesian society while their aspirations were ignored. the writer then cited an ideal example of a person of european-indonesian descent who could be a role model for the indo-europeans during the revolution: e. f. e. douwes dekker. born in east java in 1879, douwes dekker received dutch blood from his father and german-javanese blood from his mother. he was known as a journalist and activist, who often criticized dutch colonialism for its cruel treatment of the natives and encouraged the emancipation of the natives who were colonized by the dutch and the indo-europeans, who were not fully accepted either among the totok dutch or among the indigenous population. its most influential activity was to form a nationalist party open to everyone, signaling a new chapter in the birth of indonesia’s national consciousness due to its inclusiveness. the party, indische aseas 15(1) | 75 muhammad yuanda zara partij (1912), which he founded together with two prominent indigenous nationalists, tjipto mangoenkoesoemo and soewardi soerjaningrat, had the aim of bringing about indonesian independence. however, this fast-paced party only existed a year. their anti-colonial stance, and especially suwardi’s harsh anti-colonial pamphlet, ‘als ik een nederlander was’ (if i were a dutchman), resulted in the dissolution of the party while its leaders, including douwes dekker, were exiled to the netherlands. after being exiled in the netherlands, he took a few different jobs, but his movement was still monitored by the colonial government, which again arrested and exiled him, this time to suriname, before the japanese entered indonesia. he returned to indonesia after the end of the pacific war and on 1 may 1947 was appointed as minister of state by prime minister sjahrir. in this article in het inzicht, douwes dekker was framed as a living icon of a patriotic indo-european that should be followed by other indos. he was constructed as an indo-european figure who has tried to sow an awareness of the new citizens among the indo-europeans since the previous decades. here the indo-europeans were called “nieuwe staatsburgers” (new citizens). it was explained that the indonesians realized that there were indo-europeans who had tried to absorb indigenous culture in their attempt to assimilate with the majority of indonesian society. the methods included “publicly renouncing the family name they have had for centuries, sometimes even putting on a sarong, putting on a pitji [muslim cap]”. however, although appreciating these efforts, the indonesian side felt that these were just artificial measures. the author emphasized that the president and vice president of indonesia had a firm stance about the inclusion of indo-europeans as indonesian citizens, namely that they were welcome to continue using and preserving their distinctive culture: the president stated months ago that transition to indonesian citizenship does not entail a change in name or religion. in the recent jogja conference of the ‘peranakan belanda’, dr. douwes dekker, however, stressed the need for the indos to change their names. when asked, the vice president has said emphatically that name change is not a necessary thing. “it is not the change in the name that we want, but the change in the mind,” said dr. mohamad hatta. the indos, as well as chinese arab descendants that accept citizenship may keep their names, even if they sound so exotic and un-indonesian. and as for spiritual liberty, no power in the republic could compel these people to steal this precious possession from them. this is guaranteed in the constitution of the republic, in the political manifesto 1 november 1945 and in the linggajati agreement. (“een idee-fixe”, 1947) the indonesian side regretted if the indo-europeans in indonesia felt that they were superior to the native indonesians. the idea of indo-europeans’ superiority over the native was evident at the pangkalpinang conference (1-12 october 1946, initiated by the dutch to listen to the aspirations of minorities and to form pro-dutch federal states), including the idea that minorities, especially indo-europeans in indonesia, should carry out a mass migration to “het verre en vreemde” (far and strange) brazil – an idea that, according to the author, was a “kinderlijk naiviteit” (childish nativity), given the enormous cost, even if allowed by the brazilian government (“een idee-fixe”, 1947; “emigrasi ke brasilia”, 1946). the indonesians were said to have discouraged 76 | aseas 15(1) attracting and educating ‘new citizens’ this mass exodus; this proposal was deemed to be put forward by the defeatists as the only way for the minority to survive. to show that minorities in indonesia disagreed with the idea of exodus, the author gave an example from the chinese descendants who rejected it, an attitude that “zijn nuchterder schijnt te zijn” (seemed to be more sober) (“een idee-fixe”, 1947). in addition to the various feelings of dissatisfaction or worry among indoeuropeans about indonesian citizenship, the author stated that there was optimism that the indo-europeans will gradully understand that indonesia was not as cruel as the indo-europeans imagined, and that the indonesian government was very open to welcoming indo-europeans as part of indonesian society: fortunately, over time, however, common sense is also beginning to penetrate in broad layers among the indo group, and people come to realize that the republic is “not as extremist after all” as was previously thought. confidence in the democracy of the republic will grow all the more soon if they keep their eyes open to the future, and start to consider the situation in the republic more sensitively, free from all kinds of delusions and free from any fixed-idea. (“een idee-fixe”, 1947) in order to reinforce the message above, two relevant and touching photos were displayed. the first was a photo of e.f.e. douwes dekker, who wore culturally hybrid clothing (a white shirt with a black tie plus a black muslim cap). the next photo was of a number of indo-europeans, the majority of whom were women, who had obtained indonesian citizenship. they were seen sitting in a room and listening to a lecture given by president soekarno. dressed in urban clothing typical of european ladies in the dutch east indies in the pre-war era, they seemed to be looking ahead with full attention, a sign of their serious desire to hear soekarno (“een idee-fixe”, 1947). this photo provided visual evidence that a number of indo-europeans were already adopting indonesian citizenship and that they were being treated with great respect by the indonesian government. the inclusion of douwes dekker in sjahrir’s cabinet shows the republican government’s recognition of the existence of the indo-europeans and their political aspirations. most importantly, it was the republican government’s way of attracting the attention and participation of the indo-europeans in order to prove that the indo-europeans also had a place in the indonesian political stage, not only as citizens, but also as decision makers, even though douwes dekker’s ministry seat was not a strategic one. as indicated by george mcturnan kahin, the composition of the third sjahrir cabinet suggested the most diverse backgrounds up to that time when considering the parties, ideologies, religions, gender, and communities represented (kahin, 2003, pp. 194-195). with regard to minority communities, sjahrir proved his anti-xenophobic rhetoric he expressed a few months earlier when he appointed representatives from diverse minority groups in the cabinet, such as a.r. baswedan (vice-minister of information, representing the arab community), tan po gwan (minister of state, representing the chinese community) and douwes dekker (written in his indonesian name: setiabuddhi) as state ministers representing the indo-european community. aseas 15(1) | 77 muhammad yuanda zara de pionier: a special newspaper for educating ‘new citizens’ close to the pangkalpinang conference (1-12 october 1946), the indonesian government was worried that the dutch could not only gain sympathy, support and cooperation from indigenous local elites in areas outside java-sumatra, but also from groups of foreign descent, in this case the chinese, arabs, and indo-europeans. the indonesian government persuaded the indo-europeans to refuse dutch propaganda and to consider supporting indonesia, which rejected the conference because of its divisive nature. the indonesian government created another propaganda attempt that specifically targeted the indo-europeans. this task was given to the indonesian ministry of information. the ministry used a method that suited the abilities and needs of the indo-europeans, namely using a dutch-language newspaper named de pionier. in order to make indonesians and especially the indo-europeans know about the publication, the ministry promoted this newspaper publicly. this can be seen in a column in the newspaper merdeka, which stated that the newspaper de pionier “is for the new citizens (indo group) who do not really understand indonesian, with the intention of making them more aware of our struggle and more aware of the republic” (“soerat kabar ‘de pionier’”, 1946). this newspaper was published three times per week, and in the early stages it was to be managed by the ministry and then stand alone when it was sufficiently established. in addition to selling it to general readers, the ministry even took further steps to ensure that the majority of indo-europeans read the newspaper by sending it to camps where a number of indo-europeans were still staying (“soerat kabar ‘de pionier’”, 1946). the slogan of this newspaper was “van allen, voor allen” (of all, for all). however, the editorial composition of this yogyakarta-based newspaper was not known because the newspaper itself did not mention its editorial members. the first edition (and the only edition i could get) was two pages long. one may wonder how that name orginated. why was this newspaper named de pionier? the reasons were: well, the indos who stay inside [indonesia] and feel like citizens of the republic, who live and work within the republic [area], and who give all their strength to build this country – our fatherland – must be considered without a doubt as “pioneers”, as those who, by their example and their industry and labor, pave the way along which many indos still living in the occupied territories will soon return—hopefully in a short time—for finding a place of work and bread in our independent country. since this paper is compiled by these pioneers, mainly for the other pioneers, it was therefore considered proper to give it the name that appears above, namely, de pionier. (“een woord vooraf ”, 1946) this newspaper attempted to provide indo-europeans with information about the latest events in indonesia – of course from the perspective of the republic – as well as the latest news from abroad. this newspaper emphasized its importance as a “liaison officer” between the indonesian government and the indo-europeans. and that meant, wrote the editor of this newspaper, that this newspaper also had a role “to inform the [indonesian] government about everything that lives in the minds of the indos, of their wishes and desires” (“een woord vooraf ”, 1946). in this way, this 78 | aseas 15(1) attracting and educating ‘new citizens’ newspaper wanted to show that the indonesian government was a democratic government, which was willing to listen to the aspirations of minority groups. one of the interesting things was the news quoted by this newspaper from the dutch news agency, aneta. while at that time the dutch and the indo-europeans considered evacuating themselves to the netherlands because they were worried about security issues in indonesia, the news posted on de pionier’s first page actually showed the opposite impression. in a brief report, it was stated that the ship weltevreden, at the end of november 1946, would sail from the netherlands to the dutch east indies with 990 men, women and children, who went to the netherlands for safety (perhaps shortly before the japanese occupation) and now “naar indonesia wensen terug te keren” (wish to return to indonesia) (“korte berichten”, 1946). their ethnic backgrounds were mentioned, namely 300 indonesians and 600 dutch and indo people who were born in indonesia (it was not explained what ethnicity the rest of the 90 passengers were). these huge numbers gave the impression to indoeuropean readers that, at least in november 1946, under the indonesian government, the situation in indonesian was peaceful, serene, and even evoked memories of good, past times, for which people optimistically returned to from faraway netherlands. in other words, the purpose of presenting this narrative was to convince indoeuropeans that there was no need to repatriate to the netherlands, let alone find a new safe place to live, such as brazil. as might be expected, the news presented in it gave more space to the progress achieved by the republic and, as far as possible, minimized the presence let alone the achievements of the dutch in indonesia. parts of the news were taken from the official indonesian news agency, which was strongly pro-republican and anti-dutch, antara. the use of money is a case in point. a widely-used money in a time of war was a symbol of legitimacy for a government, and in this context de pionier reported that the money that had just been issued by the indonesian government on 26 october 1946, oeang repoeblik indonesia (ori), was widely accepted, and that people were using it instead of nica (netherlands indies civil administration) money to buy and sell in jakarta (“de koers van het”, 1946). this news was clearly an attempt to persuade the indo-europeans to use indonesian money, which was illustrated as stronger in value than nica money. other news gave a strong impression to the indo-europeans about the legitimacy of the indonesian government in the eyes of the international community in the hopes of strengthening the trust of indo-europeans in the indonesian government. this was evident from the news about the visit of k. l. punjabi, a delegation of the indian government, at the end of october 1946, at a number of ports to be used to deliver rice from java to india (“k.l. punjabi van zijn tournee”, 1946). in april 1946, prime minister sjahrir offered 500,000 tons of rice to india, and in return india would send textiles to indonesia. the dutch clearly rejected the indonesian offer because they judged that there was not much rice available in indonesia and there were still many starving people there, but the republic went ahead with its plan and india itself welcomed the offer, one of which was followed by the punjabi visit above (zara, 2020). this news was clearly an important matter that the republican side needed to pose to the indo-europeans to show that the indonesian government had received recognition, albeit informally, from a foreign country, and more importantly, that indonesia aseas 15(1) | 79 muhammad yuanda zara had contributed to solving post-war world problems, especially among fellow colonized countries in asia. also crucial in this first edition was the view of an anonymous author (possibly the editorial staff of de pionier, which was affiliated with the ministry of information, because its content reflected the perspective of the indonesian government) placed on the first page at the top side of the page; this placement signified its importance to the readers. this was a long elaboration on a number of big questions and dilemmas the indo-europeans faced in thinking about being indonesian citizens: what was an indonesian citizen? can an indo become an indonesian citizen? how did indo people become citizens of indonesia? and, the most important thing, whether indo people must completely remove their long-held identities (tradition, religion, culture, and language) in order to be accepted as part of the indonesian nation (“wat betekent het ‘indonesisch’”, 1946) the answers to these fundamental questions about identity began by conveying two views in the public at that time regarding indonesian citizenship, namely those who did not know and did not understand the concept of indonesian citizenship and those who knew but were suspicious of the idea. the author explained that the requirements for becoming an indonesian citizen were clear in the indonesian citizenship law, namely that a person who was born in indonesia and lived in indonesia for the last five consecutive years was eligible and would automatically become an indonesian citizen. the important part here was that indo-europeans could also automatically become indonesian citizens if they met the above requirements. only if a person had accepted another nationality did he need to make an application to become an indonesian citizen. the status of which nationality a person had is of paramount importance, wrote the authors, especially when one was looking for work, an important issue in those difficult times. even if someone had good qualifications, the employer tended to give a job to someone with the same nationality. and, the author continued, it was possible that people could simply answer that they were “citizens”, but the employer needed written documents that proved that the job applicant was a citizen of a certain country. therefore, a message was conveyed to the indo-europeans who read the newspaper and wanted to obtain indonesian citizenship: “now, to get such a piece of paper, you can turn to the police office in yogyakarta, who will be happy to help you” (“wat betekent het ‘indonesisch’”, 1946). then, the author posed an important question, a question that must have been on the minds of every indo-european who was repeatedly persuaded to become an indonesian citizen: what were the consequences, rights and obligations of becoming an indonesian? the answer, first of all, wrote the author, was “[o]nly this, that you recognize indonesia as your homeland, [and] the government of the republic as the legal government of this country” (“wat betekent het ‘indonesisch’”, 1946). in addition, indo-europeans who become indonesian citizens also had the same rights and obligations as those of “autochtone indonesiers” (native indonesians). obligations, according to the author, were not too difficult at that time: paying taxes or participating in maintaining security. as for the rights of indonesian citizens, they were innumerable, “vele en velerlei” (many and varied), for example “buy, sell, rent and rent land and estates”. in short, “kies u maar uit” (take your pick) said the author. the few obligations and the many rights above illustrated how easy it was to become an 80 | aseas 15(1) attracting and educating ‘new citizens’ indonesian citizen, with very few obligations and so many benefits and opportunities, which were almost unlimited, and thus indo people had the freedom to choose. this was followed by another important question that would have been on the minds of indo-europeans: did they have to change their religion, culture, or name if they become indonesians? the answer was: “do you need to change your religion? no. do you need to change costumes? no. should you adopt another name? no. do you need to speak another language? no. short and correct, “you don’t have to do anything that you don’t feel like doing” (“wat betekent het ‘indonesisch’”, 1946). the last part above was written in italics in the original text, so it emphasized the general freedom that was obtained by indo-europeans who wanted to become indonesian citizens. the concluding part of this persuasive article should also be noted. the author understood that for the indo-europeans half of their blood was dutch. this meant that they also had strong ties with the netherlands. so, then the question arose, did being an indonesian citizen (which meant choosing to be part of their indonesian heritage) mean hating the dutch (which meant hating the other half of their heritage?). the writer explained that they did not need to hate the dutch, because indonesians did not hate the dutch. what indonesians hated, wrote the author, were those who were among the dutch, or from any country, “die geen onafhankelijk indonesia wensen” (who do not want an independent indonesia). the author conveyed a sentence that symbolized the steadfastness of indonesia’s principles to defend its independence as well as its virtue not to use the politics of hate: “indonesia fights only against all who threaten its independence, but without hatred and without bitterness” (“wat betekent het ‘indonesisch’”, 1946). he even convinced the indo-europeans that in the netherlands itself there were many people who sympathized with indonesian independence so that for indonesians there was no reason to be in antipathy with the dutch people. the writer hoped that what he said could influence and ultimately convince the indo-europeans to choose to become indonesian citizens. by becoming an indonesian citizen, it was hoped that indo people could also support the ideals of other indonesian ethnic groups, namely to support indonesian independence and the existence of the indonesian government. unity between indigenous indonesians and indo-europeans was desirable. the writer wrote, “samen met de indonesiers worden tot een groot, vrij en geeerd volk” (together with the indonesians, you will become a great, free and honored people) (“wat betekent het ‘indonesisch’”, 1946). conclusion for indonesian nationalists, the indo-europeans occupied an important position in the socio-cultural landscape of the indonesian nation whose independence was proclaimed on 17 august 1945. indonesian blood that flowed in the body of the indoeuropeans was considered a link between the indo-europeans and other indigenous ethnic groups. indonesian nationalists, including the indonesian government, political figures and the mass media, actively participated in constructing several main ideas in relation to the indo-europeans. first, it was always emphasized to the indoeuropeans that, considering that half of their blood was indonesian, their homeland should be indonesia. secondly, the indonesian nationalists highlighted that the aseas 15(1) | 81 muhammad yuanda zara indonesian society they built would abolish the segregation of society based on race, as in the colonial era, by adopting democracy, inclusiveness and free choice, values compatible with the post-war world. thirdly, indonesian nationalists convinced the indo-europeans that, by becoming indonesian citizens, they could get many benefits. the discourse on indo-europeans was not only aimed at the indo-europeans themselves. the campaign carried out by indonesian nationalists was also directed at the indigenous indonesian ethnicities, with whom the indo-europeans would interact and hopefully be absorbed. there were particular themes constructed by the nationalist leaders as well as the indonesian mass media for indonesian society in general, and especially for armed indonesian youth – who in various cases used violence to punish the indo-europeans. the government was trying to build a sense of security among the indo-europeans so that they wanted to settle in indonesia, and eliminate their desire to migrate to other safer countries. the indonesian government hoped the international community knew that it could control the domestic situation, including protecting minorities of foreign descent. indonesian leaders, such as soekarno, hatta and sjahrir called on the indonesian people to refrain from committing arbitrary violence and tried to convince them that the indos were actually a legitimate part of the indonesian nation and that they should not be made targets of violence. the mass media played a crucial role in disseminating discourse about the indoeuropeans during the indonesian revolution. the supply of paper at that time was limited, but the indonesian government believed that print campaign was indispensable, so it published two print media in dutch, one of which was specifically aimed at the indo-europeans. this showed the strong commitment of the indonesian nationalists to the efforts to persuade indo-europeans to support indonesia’s existence, to become indonesian citizens, and at the same time to reject the dutch presence in indonesia and its recolonisation projects. despite so many obstacles, including the rarity of paper, the limited reach of the media, the lack of facilities, and security-related issues, this print media provided a substantive space to discuss the dynamics of the indo-europeans at that time. photographs were used to emphasize the written ideas as well as to highlight the visual evidence of the pioneering role of the indoeuropeans in adopting and progressing indonesian nationalism. it is also crucial to note here the important role of the ministry of information. print media do have advantages in terms of the diversity of information that can be conveyed in one publication, but there are also disadvantages in such medium, namely the lack of depth in the news or opinions published. a booklet may fill this gap, given that it consists of more pages to elaborate concepts of citizenship in more depth. with its booklets, the ministry had the opportunity to explain more basic concepts, for example on the question of who was a citizen, what were the conditions for becoming citizens, whether foreigners can become indonesian citizens, and the importance of cooperation between indo-europeans and indonesian ethnicities to create a democratic and egalitarian indonesian society and for the benefits of both parties. this study sheds light on how the indo-europeans influenced the ways the indonesian nationalists redefined the meaning of the indonesian nation at a time when the dutch-indonesian war occurred. it elaborates on the history of how indonesian identity, which is in essence very closely related to the rise of indigenous 82 | aseas 15(1) attracting and educating ‘new citizens’ ethnic groups to the historical stage, was constructed, debated, and compromised in order to form a broader sociocultural landscape, by involving – and seeking legitimacy for that involvement – people of foreign ancestry. this study almost exclusively discusses the ideas, media and propaganda techniques of the indonesian side to the indo-europeans. therefore, it does not specifically look at the impact of the discourse on indo-europeans’ decision-making to be part of indonesian society or on indonesia’s reputation internationally, as detailed examination of these is beyond its scope. finally, this study elucidates how indonesia promoted its adoption of democracy and egalitarianism in the development of its identity amidst critical political situations when minorities were vulnerable to being targets of violence. this is the history of indonesian multiculturalism in the formative phase and one of the most deciding periods in modern indonesian history. in contrast to most studies on indo-europeans during the indonesian revolution, which almost exclusively focus on indo-europeans as victims of indigenous people’s violence, i explain the experiences of how indonesian nationalists indonesianized the indo-europeans, and how the indo-europeans chose to become indonesians. these two aspects have been nearly forgotten in the historiography. the struggle of indonesian nationalists to realize an all-inclusive, egalitarian and democratic concept of indonesian nationalism for minorities was in line with postwar expectations where racially-based citizenship under the banner of 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(1968a). the eurasians of indonesia: a problem and challenge in colonial history. journal of southeast asian history, 9(2), 191-207. van der veur, p. w. (1968b). cultural aspects of the eurasian community in indonesian colonial society. indonesia, 6, 38-53. wat betekent het ‘indonesisch staatsburgerchap’ [what does ‘indonesian citizenship’ mean]. (1946, november 1). de pionier. weekblad ‘het inzicht’ [het inzicht weekly magazine]. (1947, april 16). het inzicht, 61. wertheim, w. f. (1947). the indo-european problem in indonesia. pacific affairs, 20(3), 290-298. zara, m. y. (2020). demi kemanusiaan dan persaudaraan: propaganda indonesia mengampanyekan bantuan beras untuk india tahun 1946 [for the sake of humanity and brotherhood: indonesian propaganda and rice help for india, 1946]. gadjah mada university press. aseas 15(1) | 85 muhammad yuanda zara about the author muhammad yuanda zara (born in padang, west sumatra, indonesia, in 1985) is a lecturer in the history study program, faculty of social sciences, yogyakarta state university, indonesia. he obtained his bachelor’s degree from gadjah mada university (2007) and his ma from leiden university (2010). in 2010-2014 he was a phd researcher at the niod institute for war, holocaust and genocide studies in amsterdam. he received his phd from the university of amsterdam in 2016. recently his research interests focus on colonialism and occupation in indonesia, the indonesian revolution, media and propaganda, and islam in twentieth-century indonesia. his latest works have been published in journals such as southeast asian studies, bmgn-low countries historical review, tijdschrift voor geschiedenis, bijdragen tot de taal-, landen volkenkunde, and journal of indonesian islam. ► contact: m.yuanda@uny.ac.id acknowledgements i wish to express my gratitude to two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and constructive suggestions on the original version of this paper. 86 | aseas 15(1) aseas 15(2) | 177 femininity in transition: sex, gender, and sexuality experiences of thai transgender migrants in europe cheera thongkrajaia* akhon kaen university, thailand *corresponding author: cheera@kku.ac.th received: 15 february 2022 / accepted: 8 november 2022 / published: 23 december 2022 ► thongkrajai, c. (2022). femininity in transition: sex, gender, and sexuality experiences of thai transgender migrants in europe. advances in southeast asian studies, 15(2), 177-194. many queer foreigners perceive thailand as a gay paradise. they have an image of the country as having a tolerant attitude towards lgbtiq+. however, for thai lgbtiq+, western countries evoke wealth, progress, and acceptance where people with a different gender identity or sexual orientation can fully enjoy their rights. thai lgbtiq+, like men and women, strive to go abroad seeking a life they dream of. this article aims to give an account of one of these marginalized groups’ experience that is often neglected by both thai and western transnational scholars. based on an ethnographic study in four european countries with 26 thai transgender informants, this article argues that migration needs to be considered as a search for one’s well-being, not only in terms of economic aspects, but also in terms of sentimental or emotional needs – that is, the possibility of living their gender and being socially and legally accepted. in this transcultural context, not only do people move across borders, but they also export with them perceptions and understandings about sex, gender, and sexuality from their home country. these aspects are renegotiated and rearticulated in the new socio-cultural milieu of the host countries in order to maximize these new conditions for their own interest. they may or may not reveal their transgender identity, depending on contexts, social interactions, and whom they are dealing with. their transgender identity can offer them advantages, particularly in the realm of sex. keywords: kathoey and migration; queer migration; sexual migration; thai migration in europe; thai transgender  introduction according to thai social representation, western countries evoke visions of wealth, development, and modernity (kitiarsa, 2010). going abroad becomes one of the ultimate goals for many thai people, men, women, and kathoeys – or thai transgender male-to-female (mtf) persons – as well. kathoeys strive to go abroad where, they believe, people with a non-normative gender identity or sexual orientation can fully enjoy their rights and regain social recognition (pravattiyagul, 2021, p. 85). this image of western countries has been current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 77 mailto:thithimadee.art%40mahidol.ac.th?subject= http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2736-9292 mailto:cheera%40kku.ac.th?subject= 178 | aseas 15(2) femininity in transition maintained and reactivated constantly throughout many mythical and fairy-tale-like stories disseminated by the media as well as by word of mouth among peers, families, and communities. this kind of image still nourishes the thai imagery of western countries and their desire to look for possibilities to migrate (lapanun, 2019, p. 14-15). for many decades, thai-western transcultural studies (butratana & trupp, 2021; cohen, 2003; sunanta & angeles, 2013) have been dominated by the theme of mia farang, literally thai wives, transcultural marriages and relationships between thai women and western partners. these studies had contributed greatly in terms of theoretical perspective changes and understanding of transnational intimacy in an era of globalization. yet, the non-heteronormative population had never been integrated in this mainstream thought. this article is part of the pioneer studies that investigated thai queer migration in the european-thai transnational and transcultural context (see also scuzzarello & statham, 2022, this issue), with the aim of challenging these common stereotypes and taking into account experiences of those who were left behind.1 after the september 11 attacks in 2001, migration policy was restricted and more regulated in many western countries. at the same time, many european states had started to legalize same-sex marriage or introduced civil partnership laws, which opened up more possibilities to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual/transgender, intersexual, queer + (lgbtiq+) population to migrate via their union with a european partner. the netherlands legalized same-sex partnership in 1998, and same-sex marriage in 2001 (steenhof & harmsen, n.d.). in france, le pacs (pacte civil de solidarité) was voted for in 1999, and marriage for all in 2013 (borrillo, 2017). in germany, eingetragene lebenspartnerschaft was legalized in 2001 and same-sex marriage in 2017 (lauderback, 2018). thailand still does not have any legal recognition for lgbtiq+ rights despite its appearance as an lgbtiq+ friendly country. consequently, migration via marriage union has become a new way to migrate favored by the new generation of migrants who are looking for “love” and “rights” (thongkrajai, 2014, p. 83). this anthropological research was conducted in four european countries: france, germany, the netherlands, and switzerland. it aimed to give an account of thai kathoey migrants’ conditions of adaption and settlement. drawn from interviews, participant observations, and ethnographic fieldnotes, this study considered a kathoey’s migration processes as a search for well-being and a life that they long for, not only for achieving their economic goals, but also to fulfill sentimental and emotional needs, such as the possibilities of living as a woman, having a relationship with a partner, or changing their legal status. kathoey migrants utilized different strategies, such as identity camouflage or mobilizing their potential gendered and sexual resources in their new social environment, in order to fulfill their quest for “a better life”. this article will address, firstly, some essential literature that had contributed to construct the conceptual framework and the scope of the study. then, it will describe methodology and key informants’ profiles. it will present, thirdly, the research findings according to three themes: motivation, femininity in migration, and gender negotiation in intimacy. and, lastly, it will conclude relevant points and discuss future trends of related issues. 1 this study is based on the author’s phd. research and the fieldwork took place during 2008 – 2011. this phd research was under the supervision of professor laurence hérault, institut d'ethnologie méditerranéenne, européenne et comparative. aix-marseille university, france. aseas 15(2) | 179 cheera thongkrajai revisiting thai queer in transnational/cultural contexts the definition of the term kathoey posed some research challenges in a transnational context as it can be interpreted in different ways and refer to many groups of people or sexual/gender identities. according to matzner (2001), kathoey does not only mean mtf transgender. in everyday use, the word can be used to refer to a gay man or an effeminate man, depending on contexts. this multiplicity and interchangeability of the term raised the question how to identify kathoey and limit the scope of research, resulting in an explorative phase in fieldwork, as well as in literature. the researcher began with interviewing five people who were born male and identified as kathoey: two who had a masculine appearance with an effeminate manner, two who cross-dressed sometimes, and one who lived as a female and had already had sex reassignment surgery. those who had a feminine appearance and always cross-dressed mentioned difficulties on how they were perceived and treated socially as female in a european context, but drastically placed in a vulnerable position when their legal identity as ‘male’ had to be verified (e.g., in the situation of passport control). their masculine-looking counterparts who did not undertake the transition did not seem to have the same problem. in fact, many studies have shown that thai male-to-female transgenders must face much discrimination due to their cross-gendered characteristics and the mismatch between their gender performance and legal status in everyday life. many failed to get a decent job despite their qualifications due to the lack of legal gender recognition (suriyasarn, 2014). social and legal discrimination as well as sexism in the homeland are push factors for their migration (pravattiyagul, 2021, p. 99). focusing on this particularity and due to the lack of existing research, this research focused only on those kathoey who were discriminated as sao praphet song (second-class women), who had feminine appearance regardless of whether or not they had already undergone sex reassignment surgery, but who were still considered as male in the eye of the law. such fluidity of the kathoey category finds its origin in the thai conception of sex and gender or phet. morris (1994) affirms that the thai phet was a ternary system rather than a binary of male and female, in which kathoey constitutes an intermediary element between femininity and masculinity. kathoeys can go back and forth between these two polarizations and readapt their gender performances and social roles in order to live socially integrated in different social spheres (thongkrajai, 2010, p. 170). the malleability of kathoey identity shows the contextual sensitivity of phet; as van esterik (2000) summarizes, the thai conception of “gender is best theorized as a context sensitive process, constructed through interactions with others. gender surfaces are carefully and aesthetically presented in public to communicate how one expects to be treated” (p. 203). rather than being static or fixed, the thai notion of gender identity is body-based and constructed through what butler (1990) called a styled repetition of acts, which must be understood as a series of performative and interactive acts: “bodily gestures, movements and styles of various kinds constitute the illusion of an abiding gendered self ” (p. 140). such performative self-display, by which a sense of being is generated, can only make sense in social interaction with other actors as it is a means through which to enter the social world. regardless of being a man, a woman, or a kathoey, it is necessary that one is socially recognized as such (thongkrajai, 2010). 180 | aseas 15(2) femininity in transition however, interestingly, such gender fluidity and performance seemed not to bother kathoey migrants as much as they were concerned about how to survive their migration experience. queer migration has invited us to take a deeper look at transnational migrations with a queer lens. from this view, not only do people move across the border, but they also transport with them conceptions about identities, sex, gender, and sexuality from their origins and relocate them in the new social settings. such translocation implies not only movements across different levels of geographic space, but also the back-and-forth relationships and negotiations within the local and the global forces in readjustments of embodied identity, sexuality, and desire of queer lives (carrillo, 2017, pp. 23-24). in such a framework, kathoey migrants lived, moved, and navigated within two or more different social settings where heteroand cis-normative regimes, or the structure of power and ideologies where heterosexuality and cisgenderism2 are privileged, as well as other social and sexual politics from both the society of origin and societies of settlement can interweave simultaneously. gendered geography of power (mahler & pessar, 2001), intertwining with heteroand cis-normativity and hierarchies, forces migrants to readjust, adapt, and renegotiate themselves and may create a possibility of escaping, renegotiating, or empowering as well as relocating them in subordination situations. this research is situated in this research line of the co-presence (diminescu, 2002; nedelcu, 2010), an interconnection between the host country and the home country where multiple and transcultural regimes of sex, gender, and sexuality can interplay and shape the migration process and vice versa. sexual migration points out that migration can be aligned with a coming out process for those who identify themselves as lgbtiq or non-normative minority groups. according to hector carrillo (2004) sexual migration is: international migration that is motivated, fully or partially, by the sexuality of those who migrate, including motivations connected to sexual desires and pleasures, the pursuit of romantic relations with foreign partners, the exploration of new self-definitions of sexual identity, the need to distance oneself from experiences of discrimination or oppression caused by sexual difference, or the search for greater sexual equality and rights. (p. 59) however, the passage from a developing country such as thailand to developed countries in europe should not be understood, somewhat mistakenly, as a passage from tradition to progression or from oppression to liberation without grasping all the nuances. carrillo (2017, p. 5) reminded us in his recent work to go beyond a common assumption that such transnational movement is an attempt to escape an oppressive world in the global south towards a sexual freedom space in the global north. manalansan’s (2005) work disclosed how filipino gay migrants in new york 2 cisgenderism can be defined as an ideology that denies, denigrates, or pathologizes non-normative gender identities that do not align with assigned sex and gender at birth as well as those behaviors and gender expressions that do not conform to the binary system of masculinity and femininity. cisgender identities and expression are to be valued more than transgender identities and other non-normative expression. individuals who do not conform to the cisgender regime are seen as deviant, abnormal, immoral, and even threatening. they can face gender-bias prejudice, discrimination, and even violence (lennon & mistler, 2014). aseas 15(2) | 181 cheera thongkrajai had to identify themselves as bakla, a tagalog term that connotes cross-dressing, hermaphroditism, transgenderism, and homosexuality, to survive their exclusion from the mainstream american gay scene. recuperation of such homeland-rooted identity “became a tool to negotiate [one’s] cultural discomfort” (manalansan, 2005, p. 156) when facing the intersecting gender, sexual, and racial regimes in the new social setting of migration and resulting in a daily bricolage of identities, bodily performances, and negotiations. in mia-farang studies, the roles of gender and sexuality were also brought to light. for example, the works of lapanan (2019) and suksomboon (2011) show how sexual fantasies and gender stereotypes of both thai women and western men shape thai women’s decision, by engaging in sexscape and romantic encounters with western men, to look for the opportunity to marry and enter transnational migration. the image of sweet, submissive, traditional as well as exotic and sexually desirable asian women push european men as well to look for asian/thai female partners who can fulfill these roles better than western women (lapanan, 2019; suksomboon, 2011). in return, thai women as well as kathoey migrants make use of these stereotypes of a ‘good woman’ to maintain and stabilize their relationships with western men and ensure their survival in migration. such practice reflects their margin of power to carefully manipulate their sexuality, gendered self and sexual roles, and finally their agency in order to survive and succeed in their migrations (pravattiyagul, 2021, p. 97). situated in these directions, this study takes into account the various roles of sex, gender sexuality, and their imbrications in the migration process. the objective is to take into consideration cultural-specific elements in both the host societies and homeland context with the aim to bring to light such fluidity of the kathoeys’ gender and sexuality, and to show how hetero, and cis-normativity in co-presence were understood and reflected socially in practices and in the negotiation processes of kathoey migrants. considering the kathoeys’ migration as a quest for self or for well-being, this must be understood as an intertwined combination of economic, social, emotional, and sexual-driven processes to attain a state of well-being and a life that they long for. the kathoeys’ migration may not exactly be about coming out of the closet but rather about finding the way to fit in or conform their femininity translocally in transition and being fully recognized as a woman of the ‘first class world’. as brummelhuis (1999) explained: kathoeys show pride when acquiring a foreign passport that describes them as ‘female’. lek explained that it was her ambition to get a danish passport, and she gave an intriguing explanation, ‘it has higher percentage’ [i.e., status] (mi persen mak kwa). she then would not need a visa to travel to italy or france, which she wanted to visit because she ‘liked old things’. it is fascinating to observe how in her case the reality of changing gender went together with the expectation of becoming a higher-class world citizen. (p. 133) this article will attempt to answer the following question: how do kathoey migrants make use of their transgender identity, an embodied self with such gender and sexual fluidity in between femininity and masculinity, and put into practice different strategies of negotiation to achieve their quest for self in migration? 182 | aseas 15(2) femininity in transition methodology this research was conducted by using qualitative methods consisting of in-depth interviews, participant observations, and open discussions to gain access to the kathoeys’ life narratives of their experiences in the society of origin and the society of settlement. the fieldwork had started out in france where the researcher lived, then expanded to neighboring countries (germany, netherlands, and switzerland) due to the difficulties of finding a sufficient number of participants. different methods were adapted to the context of different fieldworks. in france, the researcher was able to spend more time with each informant; therefore, the relationships between the researcher and informants were more personal. in this context, participant observations and field notes were favored. in contrast, in other countries that the researcher travelled to several times, the fieldwork duration was limited. recorded interviews and discussions were preferred. the researcher used the snowball sampling methods as well as personal networks (peers and entourage networks) to find voluntary informants. each interview lasted at least two hours on average. all interviews were transcribed and codified, using a narrative analytic approach to be able to access an overall view of the kathoey migrants’ experiences and identify different steps of their lives, meanings, and relations. participant observations and ethnographic field notes were also analyzed using an inductive approach. these methods allowed research to discover progressively different aspects of the process of kathoeys’ migration – for example, life conditions in thailand, motivations to migrate, negotiations during migration, struggle to success, relationships with partners/husbands, economical-sexual-emotions continuum in intimate relations’ negotiation, gender performance adaptions, and usage of sexuality. participant observations, fieldnotes, and unrecorded discussions were also very helpful to enable data rechecking and validations of the recorded data. all codified materials were read fully many times to establish relevant themes. coding and themes were presented and discussed with the researcher’s supervisors to ensure accuracy. this study gathered data from 26 participants, 25 to 65 years old, who come from different social backgrounds3 (see table 1). among the 26 participants, six persons did not undergo any gender reassignment surgeries, but lived their lives as women. there was only one person who did not undergo surgery and cross-dressed from time to time. all of them identified themselves as kathoey or transwomen, except one person, who defined her/himself as a bisexual man. they came from different professional backgrounds. not all of them were engaged in sex work at the time of the research, but more than half of the participants revealed their previous experiences in prostitution either in thailand or in their countries of settlement. the participants had different marital statuses. the majority were in an official relationship, such as marriage or civil partnership, with a male partner. eleven of them were single. 3 ten people were from rural areas and 16 people from urban areas. six participants only had primary education, four of them had finished a secondary school. nine of them had an associate’s degree, six had a bachelor’s degree and only one person had a master’s degree. cheera thongkrajai aseas 15(2) | 183 pseudonyms age social background education profession marital status country of settlement pim 32 urban middle class master’s degree ph.d. student in a relationship france linda 44 rural poor primary housekeeper and occasionally engaged in sex work in a relationship (pacs)* france tina 36 urban rich associate’s degree restaurant owner (ex sex worker) in an open relationship france kim 41 urban middle class associate’s degree housewife in a relationship (pacs)* france yumi 40 urban poor primary sex worker single france nou 33 rural poor associate’s degree restaurant owner (ex sex worker) single france ploy 30 rural middle class bachelor’s degree cook (ex sex worker) in a relationship (pacs)* france pai 38 urban middle class secondary cook (ex sex worker) in a relationship (pacs)* france maya 25 rural middle class secondary housewife in a relationship (pacs)* france ning 42 urban middle class bachelor’s degree waitress in a relationship (pacs)* france lila 44 rural poor primary cook single france lee 52 urban poor associate’s degree housewife (ex sex worker) in a relationship (civil union) germany farah 36 rural middle class associate’s degree sex worker in a relationship (civil union) germany paula 35 urban poor associate’s degree sex worker single germany katty 50 urban rich bachelor’s degree waitress in her brother’s restaurant single germany ming 65 urban poor primary sex worker single germany kanya 42 urban poor associate’s degree direct selling entrepreneur (ex sex worker) in a relationship (civil union) germany nid 42 rural middle class bachelor’s degree housewife in a relationship (civil union) switzerland amy 65 urban rich secondary ex sex worker single switzerland kate 38 rural poor secondary waitress (ex sex worker in thailand) in a relationship (civil union) switzerland noy 46 urban middle class associate’s degree sex worker in a relationship (civil union) switzerland tik 55 rural poor primary sex worker single switzerland nathalie 39 urban middle class bachelor’s degree sales and marketing in an open relationship netherlands sophie 45 urban poor primary bar owner (ex sex worker) single netherlands nook 46 rural middle class associate’s degree waitress (ex sex worker) single netherlands tip 52 urban middle class bachelor’s degree entrepreneur (ex sex worker) single netherlands table 1. list of participants *cohabitation of two unmarried people recognized by the french state 184 | aseas 15(2) femininity in transition findings this section will present key findings that are divided in three parts: the motivations to migrate, the negotiation of femininity in migration, and (trans)gender negotiation in intimate relationships. from thailand to europe, motivation to migration pai muang nok can be translated literally to mean “going abroad”. however, muang nok (abroad) does not mean all foreign countries. it connotes the land of wealth, modernity, and progress and western countries seem to embody these ideas. the kathoey informants evoked the same expectation that inspired them to go abroad. for some participants, this had started since a very young age. linda4 explained: since i was little, i went to the outdoor cinema where they showed the films of muang nok. that made me want to go abroad. i wanted to live like in the cinema, having a big house, beautiful cars, having a happy life with all luxury things. (personal communication, 9 january 2009, paris) the imaginary representation of western countries was shared by many kathoeys, regardless of their social and economic backgrounds.5 for those who came from poor families, pai muang nok represented the preferable choice in order to get out of their distress. migrating to a western destination, the land of promise, was absolutely the way out to improve their lives and ensuring social and economic mobility. farah described how she decided to go to germany: “i saw other kathoeys, the senior ones, who had already gone to switzerland or germany, they all came back so glamorous. why did i need to be scared? going abroad, we would be absolutely successful” (personal communication, 31 march 2009, berlin).6 those who came from rich families explained their motivation by their conception of muang nok as ‘civilized’, ‘tolerant’, and ‘egalitarian’. these reputations even became part of the criteria for selecting the country of destination. nathalie, who quit her job and abandoned her bright future in a press company, explained her reason for choosing to go to the netherlands as follows: at that time, i still dressed like a man . . . but everyone knew that i was a kathoey. the work conditions were okay, but some people . . . worked less than me, but they gained more than me. . . . i thought this was not right. they were maybe ‘anti-kathoey’. . . . at the end of 1991, i quit my job and i came here to holland. i had done my research. i knew that holland was the country where they accepted the third sex like me the most. my goal was fixed to here, the only country that i wished to come to. i really had thought so hard before quitting my job. (personal communication, 15 may 2010, amsterdam) 4 all the names of participants in this article are pseudonyms. 5 this research distinguishes three groups of social and economic backgrounds based on how the participants described themselves. eleven people said that they came from financially poor families, twelve were from a middle-class income group, and three came from rich and upper-class families. 6 farah was living in munich at that time. she came to berlin to visit a friend, lee. aseas 15(2) | 185 cheera thongkrajai in spite of their economic and social background, these examples show how the image of western countries was nourished and perpetuated in the thai culture of migration as the best alternative to earn incomes and to improve one’s livelihood (rungmanee, 2021). the culture of migration was transmitted from one generation to another, within families and among relatives, and especially among trans peer networks and communities. the examples of those who had returned home successfully inspired the younger generations who put their effort into imitating the same pattern of migration. in this sense, the departure cannot be considered separately from the return in their reality as well as in the imaginary. the decision to leave can only make sense if the return is hopefully significant (briquet, 2003, p. 139). returning home as a successful person (dai di) was a compulsory passage of pai muang nok. although kathoey migrants’ motivations were quite similar, their modes of migration were slightly different from each other. we can distinguish two main groups, the older generation who arrived in europe before 2000 and those who arrived after 2000. the main factor that differentiated these two generations came from policy changes within european countries. for the older generation, kathoey informants affirmed that coming to europe was easier than nowadays. they could come to work as entertainers, dancers, and later on became involved in sex work, with temporary work permit visas that they could obtain easily. the kathoey migrants often relied on their peer networks to legalize their status. the senior kathoeys who were already well settled in europe usually played the role of intermediary and proposed their services, helping the younger ones to get a job, providing financial guarantees, and finding a partner to arrange a marriage of convenience. these services were not for free. they had to pay the price, or ended up with a large amount of debt to be paid in installments. most of the kathoeys in this situation decided to migrate with the aim of engaging in prostitution. for the younger generation, a new wave of migration via same-sex union was more and more popular, due to legalization of same-sex marriage or civil union in european countries. from our participants, all of those who came to europe after 2000 arrived in european territory via marriage or visitor visa supported by their partners. the differences exist between different social backgrounds as well. those from an economically poor social background and with low education attainment tended to explain their reason for migration mainly because of their financial and material needs. however, those from middle-class income or higher social backgrounds with a higher education level shared some other ideas related to transgender identity. katty arrived in germany through a work permit visa, as her brother owned many thai restaurants in germany. coming from a very rich family, she proclaimed that her life had never been deprived. she always got everything she wanted as the youngest child of the family. but she still wanted to go abroad. she explained: at first, i just wanted to come. it was easy for me and my family could support me, so i came here. just in case i find someone, find my german husband to whom i can marry. and if he is rich too (laugh). everyone thinks like that and me too. (personal communication, 6 april 2009, postdam) 186 | aseas 15(2) femininity in transition many of our informants assumed that the future for kathoeys in thailand was not very bright. lacking same-sex marriage laws as well as gender recognition laws, thai transwomen are legally male. this situation has created social stigma and discriminations in everyday life throughout their life cycle starting from school until adult age. kathoey informants faced job discrimination and discrimination in workplaces, and they were often denied access to protections and social welfare due to their transgender identity, as there is no legal recognition for transgender in thailand.7 ploy explained that her motivation was that she did not want to go to the end of her life all alone: “what can we do next? in thailand, we cannot have a family” (fieldnote, april 2010, marseille). in thai social representation, a kathoey is considered as someone who will never be lucky in love. thai men will one day leave the kathoey, the ‘second-class woman’, for a ‘real’ (biological) woman. jackson (1997) suggested that this expression may have come from the sexual practices of young men with kathoeys. but, when these young men arrive at the age to get married, they are likely to choose a woman, not a kathoey, in order to keep on their masculine role. in this case, kathoeys are only an alternative or ‘a second choice’ for a temporary relationship. interestingly, kathoeys’ exclusion from the thai matrimonial market seems to be similar to some cases of thai migrant women who seek to marry a farang or a westerner. many of these women have already been divorced or separated from their thai husbands. being of a certain age and having children from their previous unions creates social stigmas and barriers that restrain them from finding new thai partners (suksomboon, 2011, p. 233). therefore, they are excluded from the thai matrimonial market much like kathoeys. hence, a farang husband seems to be the solution to have a stable and acceptable relationship and eventually start a new life, a new family. for formoso (2001), farang men are viewed as kindhearted men who can accept poor thai women, despite their family, their social conditions, and financial difficulties. influenced by this ideology of muang nok and farang man, kathoey migrants were also motivated by the hope of having a faithful relationship, building a family and being accepted as the female partner by a european partner and society. femininity in transition and negotiation living in a european context, all participants confirmed that they were able to live as women in everyday life without being labelled as kathoey. being called madame at the café or at the shopping mall made them feel more confident to live as females. as the asian male body usually has less body hair, less muscular and masculine characteristics than europeans, thai kathoey are also usually pretty small and can blend in among local european females. most of them had already begun their transition from a very young age. therefore, for the kathoey informants, a european eye could 7 for example, thai kathoeys tend to be denied when they apply for a job due to their second-class women status. hopeless, many try to look for salaried jobs in the informal sector or in the stereotypical jobs where they are more accepted, such as in entertainment as cabaret performers or beauty pageants, in the beauty industry such as make-up artists or sales persons in cosmetics (suriyasarn, 2014, p. 94). those who work in public sectors usually can’t wear female clothes or uniforms due to the lack of recognition of their female gender. they are forced to rebecome men by their superiors. (this data is based on the author’s recent research on gender and sexual diversity in civil services and government agencies in thailand, forthcoming). aseas 15(2) | 187 cheera thongkrajai hardly see or distinguish the physical differences between thai transgenders and biological females from the outside. according to the informants, their femininity and female gender performance pass for real in the european context. they can live their life in the female role without fear of being outed as they experienced in thailand. maya told us about her experience of being outed during her honeymoon trip in a restaurant in phuket, thailand: “two thai women approached my husband and whispered in his ear. they told him that i was a kathoey. but he knew it. he did not care. i was very angry” (fieldnote, august 2009, toulouse). in thailand, many kathoeys think that kathoey acceptance is just an illusion. they were still facing this kind of gender-based discrimination, even violence, in public spaces (suriyasarn, 2014, p. 41). kathoey informants had experienced being discriminated against when accessing hotels, restaurants, or bars because of their transgender identity. the context of migration allowed thai kathoeys to escape from these social constraints and fully enjoy their lives as females. however, when it came to situations where legal identity must be revealed, things got more complicated. a more welcoming social setting of the country of settlement did not necessarily mean total acceptance and zero prejudice. many kathoey migrants had bad experiences going through passport control and immigration check points when they travelled. some of them, who still carried thai passports with male legal status, were often detained for several hours to have their identity verified. some were mocked by the immigration officers in front of other passengers. tina recalled when she had to deal with bankers and accountants when she wanted to open her restaurant in paris: i went to see several banks; they were all looking at me. ah kathoey, they looked down on me. when i went to submit my project to get the credit loan, the banker said ‘ah, why monsieur?’, when he looked at my name, ‘ah, you are not a woman’, he said. it depends on places and people. some places, everything was fine but some places not . … i felt like they did not take me seriously. (personal communication, 22 october 2008, paris) the example of tina showed that there was still some social prejudice towards transgenders in the host country. she further explained that she was both kathoey and kariang8, which refers to an ethnic minority in thailand: we have two ka kathoey and kariang. here in france, the word kathoey doesn’t exist. those who are not blended in will be judged. it is because we are both thai and kathoey. we are transsexuals. here, there are some negative images of trans foreigners, like those who prostitute in the bois de boulogne. this is a barrier for us. in france, the papers, the laws, legal identity all matter and are important. we, who do not really conform to the system. we are judged as strange/odd.9 (personal communication, 22 october 2008, paris). 8 kariang is the thai word for karen, an ethnic minority group living in the border area of thailand and myanmar. 9 she used the word tua pralad in thai, which can be translated as freak as well. 188 | aseas 15(2) femininity in transition calling herself kariang is an act of self-depreciation; she identified herself as an inferior racial minority in the west, similarly to the kariang people in the eyes of the majority of thais in thailand. as a migrant and a gender minority, this double social stigma had shaped her experience and forced her to readapt her tactics of negotiation. when she had to deal with french administration, she tied up her long hair and adopted gender-neutral, unisex clothes, without make-up. an androgynous look could keep away unpleasant remarks. nou, for example, always kept her male identity photo in her purse to attest her previous identity as a male in case of inspection from the authorities (she showed her picture during the interview on 14 may 2009, paris). linda, who did not undergo any sex reassignment operations, chose to keep her masculine look during daytime to blend in at her workplace at a gay sauna. she cross-dressed when going out with friends and her partner at night. in the european setting, the kathoeys’ female identity was not accepted once and for all. it depended on the situation, interactions, and the power relations structure. navigating from one context to another, kathoey migrants may readapt their gender performances, opting for gender camouflage strategies in order to blend in and fit into the heteroand cis-normativity of settings and their regulations. power structures that were imposed on kathoeys could be local or national (for example, laws), linked to the social constraints of the society of settlement and from the thai structure. lee said she used to avoid or limit her social interactions with the thai community in berlin, as someone might out her or reveal her trans identity publicly. tactics of survival and negotiation depended largely on the capacity to manage social rapports in everyday life. farah explained the importance of being able to communicate effectively, meaning to be able to speak the local language: that is why i went to language classes. if you can talk to the police, when you get controlled by them, at least you can tell them something ‘i’m sorry i forgot my passport at home’. if you can speak their language, you can tell them a story and get out of the situation. (personal communication, 31 march 2009, berlin) kathoeys femininity was not something fixed and unmalleable in theses contexts of co-presence. rather, kathoeys anticipated reactions from other actors and social interaction to find the best way of presenting and modifying their self-display. many strategies were intentionally planned and put in place to escape from controls and constraints that might threaten their security and destabilize their well-being, as well as their migration project. trans identity and female gender performance could even be commodified in order to survive in the migration context. paula identified him/ herself as gay man and bisexual. paula revealed that he/she became kathoey, starting gender transition by taking hormones, changing appearance, and getting breast surgery, in order to work in the sex industry for a living: so, i did it, i started to take hormones, then injections. i also watched kathoey cabaret shows, learned how to talk, to walk like them. i practiced in my room in front of the mirror. now i’ve got used to it. but if you ask me deep inside me, it is not who i am. but i think if i can earn 10 million baht, i will become a man again. (personal communication, 25 june 2009, berlin). aseas 15(2) | 189 cheera thongkrajai paula’s story gave us some evidence about the role of sex, gender, and sexuality in the process of migration. a sexed body, gender performances, and usage of sexuality can be mobilized and invested to maximize their earning potential in order to respond to the necessity of survival in migration. kathoey migrants made use of themselves in these new conditions of co-presence for their own interest, in other words to make a success of their migration. sexuality as well as gender performances can become a resource or a tool in order to negotiate in a new social setting and to be able to survive their migration (lévy & lieber, 2009, p. 720). “to tell or not to tell, that’s the question”: self-exposure and gender negotiation when it came to more intimate social interaction, the kathoeys femininity was also at stake. many kathoeys were really concerned about how they would tell their partner about their transgender experience. living their lives daily as women in european society allowed them to enjoy new lives without worrying about kathoey social stigma. consequently, telling ‘the truth’ could disturb their lives as women, and could eventually lead to a rupture in their relationships. lee explained: it is the most horrible thing for a kathoey. the problem that we fear so much is to be accepted as who we are. and the most important thing when we live with someone is to tell him who we really are. (personal communication, 30 march 2009, berlin). some kathoeys preferred telling their partner right away at the very first time when they met or had a date. telling the truth avoids eventually any misunderstanding when it came to intimate moments and could lead to a more open and sincere relationship. ploy explained that she preferred to make it clear before starting a relationship: “we never know. we can accidentally have to deal with someone who is anti-kathoey. he could hurt or kill us” (fieldnote, may 2010, marseille). in some contexts, when the possibility to survive in migration was related to a stable relationship with a european man, kathoey migrants had to really think and figure out whether they would tell or not tell their partner about their transfemale identity, how, and when to tell it. lee recalled how she started the relationship with her partner and waited until three years later to tell him about her transgender identity during their new year trip in thailand: it was a wonderful day, but, it was a d-day for me. i told myself if he could accept it, everything would be fine but if he could not accept it, i would break up. . . . before this, i took care of him, i was gentle, sweet with him. housework, cooking, cleaning, i did it all for him. i had showed him who i really was, showing him that everything was going well with me. . . . and i told him ‘i was not like this, like i am now’. i don’t remember exactly what i said. ‘i was a little boy, you know’. he did not seem to be surprised. he said ‘what happened in the past, belonged to the past, i love you as who you are now’, oh my god!!! when i told my friends this story, they said you did not need to tell the man. they already know. only they don’t say it because they don’t really care about it. i was really relieved after that difficult moment. (personal communication, 30 march 2009, berlin). 190 | aseas 15(2) femininity in transition the example of lee showed us that transgender identity revelation to partners could be a long process. lee had put forward her female qualities, she tried to be a good wife, and the ‘right one’ for her partner. female roles as a devoted housewife, gentle and sweet spouse, or skillful sex partner, were invested and valued in the relationship with partners to negotiate and make acceptable their transgender experiences. these traditional and orientalist feminine roles that were perceived socially as stereotypes of asian females were utilized as strategies to negotiate their female transgender identity. revealing transgender identity or trans characteristics can be advantageous in some contexts. to be labelled as a non-operated ladyboy in sex advertisements in adult magazines was part of a process of ‘self-branding’, differentiating themselves in the sex market. many trans ex sex workers affirmed that non-operated transgender or ladyboy sex workers were more highly in demand among clients than post-operated kathoeys who had to compete within the female market. and these clients, the majority being male, sought passive sexual experiences. kathoeys with “a serpent” (i.e., with a penis) were better paid because they could perform an active role in sexual intercourse. paula said more than 90% of his/her clients were looking for this experience. and he/she could receive 5-6 clients per day, but sometimes the demands could be more than 20 persons per day. a hyperfeminine-look, active, and exotic sexual role play were his/her ‘signature’. again, gender and sexuality played an important role within intimacy interactions, whether it had to deal with permanent partners in a long-term relationship or in temporary ones like client-prostitute interactions. being feminine, appropriating feminine roles, and providing accessible sexual fantasy were efforts of kathoey migrants meant to maximize the possibility of being accepted and maintaining their status within the context of migration. kathoey migrants could access this status of female because of these gender and sexual negotiations. most of our participants affirmed that their western partners accepted them as women (there was only one person who said that her boyfriend could not accept it and they broke up). at the same time, these efforts and negotiations seemed to make the relationship between kathoeys and farang men possible in the european context. these couples appeared to be totally ordinary heteronormative couples, unlike the stereotype of kathoey and thai men in the thai context. sometimes, the negotiation of female identity could also become a couple’s or even a family-in-law’s affair. some european partners also worried about their wives’ ‘truth’. nid recalled how her husband told her to buy sanitary pads when she went shopping with his mother. this was their strategy to appear ‘normal’ and dissimulate her trans identity from his mother. tina also told us a similar story when her mother-in-law told her to put down the toilette seat every time when she finished using the bathroom, in case there were other guests in the house, so that they would not suspect her behavior and her gender identity. gender camouflage or identity readaptation strategies were now a family’s affair that involved other actors from the entourage. these examples showed that gender identity, far from being independent, individualist, or disconnected from other social aspects, is rather situated and intertwined within other social tissues. the imbrication of gender and sexual roles were put into practice and experienced differently by kathoey migrants throughout time and space and within different contexts. while being oneself was linked to being with others, aseas 15(2) | 191 cheera thongkrajai kathoey migrants’ subjectivity was constructed spatially and temporally in the everyday lived experiences of migration by employing different forms of agency and negotiations. sometimes male or female, sometimes trans, kathoeys reappropriated what was considered as normal, valued, or accepted in the co-presence of migrations. hence, the femininity of kathoey migrants was constantly in transition, navigating through processes of readaptation and relocation in these transcultural settings. conclusion this article aims to point out important roles of sex, gender, and sexuality in the process of migration. firstly, they were mobilized and strategized in kathoey migrants’ gender performance to be more feminine in one situation or more masculine in others. kathoey migrants were crossing borders not only between masculinity and femininity, but also across the borders of culture and multi-level social contexts of here and there, where different hegemonic power and both heteroand cis-normative regulations are at play. while moving back and forth in everyday situations, the juxtaposition of the co-presence structures moved, creating a margin of possibilities to escape and to relocate one’s self and renegotiate (well-)being. concurrently, these dynamic mobilities reshaped power structures and social constraints that could also create the risk of falling into new forms of oppression or social exclusion. from gender camouflage, female gender performances, reappropriation of heteronormative social norms, or playing the ‘queer’, as well as a usage of sexuality, kathoey migrants strategically adapted their way of being and presenting themselves, depending on different contexts and different actors that they were facing in order to fit in the new social environment where they now had to live and survive. identifying as women, transgender, thai ladyboy, male migrant, or disidentifying to such categories, their femininity in transition appeared to be a dynamic and multilayer process, showing the fluidity of the sexed and embodied self as well as the kathoey migrants’ agency. the kathoey migrants make use of the interactive roles of embodied sex, gender, and sexuality that can potentially represent a stigma in one situation, but also a resource for migration in others (chossière, 2021; see also scuzzarello & statham, 2022, this issue). thai kathoeys’ migration experiences showed that sex, gender, and sexuality are not necessarily and definitely fixed in place, but they have to be grasped in terms of material and structural aspects without ignoring the cultural and social particularities that play a role in the production of migration strategies (carrillo, 2017, pp. 259-260). the case of kathoey migrants can lead to further implications on sex, gender, and sexuality in the heterosexual relationships of mia-farang and farang men, especially the role of sexuality in the migration process. from this fieldwork, some complex and complicated thai-european heterosexual relations were encountered, such as the case of a thai wife who discovered sexual pleasure with a farang male partner, then realized that she had always been attracted to women. so, she decided to break up with him and now lives with a female partner. in another example, a thai woman was married to a german man but also maintained an intimate relationship with another thai woman who was a tom (or a butch, a masculine lesbian). in mia-farang studies, the question of sexual identity transformation of mia-farang as a consequence of the process of migrations is still overlooked, taking for granted that thai-westerner 192 | aseas 15(2) femininity in transition relationships conform steadily to a heteronormative model. this empirical visibility of kathoeys in migration can lead us to ‘queering’ or ‘sexualizing’ thai migration in a broader way. another limit of the research is that we have so little information about the western partners, how they also adapt and negotiate in such transcultural relationships. this study has brought to light some clues on the european partners’ participation in the kathoeys’ gender performance and negotiation. future research can potentially study this aspect in depth and expand these research questions. thai kathoey migrants, similarly to other queer migrants in europe, risked being doubly marginalized as they were ethnic minorities in the host countries and sexual minorities within both the host society and the home community (mole, 2021). however, their case seemed to be different from those transgender or queer asylum seekers from more conservative countries as they were not facing high or severe risk and danger back home or within thai communities. seen as a gay’s paradise, the motherland still does not warmly ensure their rights with open arms. recently, the thai constitutional court declared officially that lgbtiq+ people cannot be recognized as having the same rights as men and women by refusing the possibility of same sex marriage. this legal discrimination and political pressure can increase the recent tendency of kathoeys’ migration to developed countries (ocha, 2020, pp. 132-133). in addition, with the covid-19 crisis, and consequently the thai tourism business collapse, many transgender cabaret theaters and other night entertainment businesses were closed, including bars, night clubs, and massage parlors, where a lot of kathoeys worked. the young generation now has a hard time finding jobs, especially those who come from very poor social backgrounds. this prevailing phenomenon can push more and more young kathoeys to seek to go abroad and migrate. searching for a farang partner via social media and applications will possibly be an increasing phenomenon, deserving closer attention from academic scholars, since the kathoeys’ culture of migration might be intensified in the next couple of years.  references borrillo, d. 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(2000). materializing thailand. berg. about the author dr. cheera thongkrajai works at the department of sociology and anthropology in khon kaen university, thailand. she graduated from aix-marseilles university, france in 2014 with a ph.d. in anthropology. her research was on thai transgender migration experiences in europe. interested in lgbtiq issues, she has recently conducted several researches on transgender and lgbtiq rights in thailand, which has led to many publications, including an article entitled “thai law and binary of sex: case study of transgender teachers’ experiences” and a report on “gender and sexual diversity in civil services and government agencies in thailand.” dr. cheera defines herself as ciswoman ally of the lgbtiq community. she has participated in many academic conferences, as well as in activism in the thai queer movement. ► contact: cheera@kku.ac.th acknowledgements i would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor, laurence hérault, who guided me throughout this project and helped me finalize my thesis. thank you to all the interviewees, and those who participated in this research as key informants. thank you for your time and your generosity to make this project possible. i wish to acknowledge the effort of sirijit sunanta and asuncion fresnoza-flot for making this special issue possible, which will contribute greatly to advance the thai migration studies. this paper was supported by the center for research on plurality in the mekong region and the center of gender studies, faculty of humanity and social sciences, khon kaen university, thailand. disclosure the author declares no conflict of interest. aseas 15(2) | 273 communication, leadership, and community-based tourism empowerment in brunei darussalam wei lee china* & najib noorashida auniversiti brunei darussalam, brunei *corresponding author: weilee.chin@ubd.edu.bn received: 15 february 2022 / accepted: 12 september 2022 / published: 23 december 2022 ► chin, w. l., & noorashid, n. (2022). communication, leadership, and community-based tourism empowerment in brunei darussalam. advances in southeast asian studies, 15(2), 273-294. effective communication plays a part in the success and the sustainability of tourism and hospitality management, including community-based tourism (cbt). in brunei darussalam, communication barriers have affected the growth of the cbt industry at both local and national levels. by analysing responses from 16 local cbt operators, this investigation focuses on aspects of communication and its channels in securing sustainability and empowerment of the cbt industry. this study found that the cbt ventures in brunei include: (1) horizontal/lateral communication between cbt operators and surrounding communities; and (2) top-down communication and bottom-up accessibility between authorities, community leaders, and cbt owners. this paper further discusses how bureaucracy can impede the success of cbt operations, and how a collaborative approach between stakeholders has inspired the formulation of a new interactional model of leadership and empowerment among cbt stakeholders, which can be used to measure the efficacy of communication among stakeholders in the cbt industry. keywords: community-based tourism; communication; empowerment; leadership; sustainable tourism  introduction the growing literature on tourism and hospitality management has acknowledged the pivotal role of effective communication in supporting the development and success and securing the sustainability of the tourism industry (aas et al., 2005; dolezal, 2015; grenna et al., 2006; kokkranikal et al., 2011; tölkes, 2018). other studies have also recalled the significance of reviewing the efficacy of communication strategies between stakeholders to ensure an undisrupted process of sustainable leadership in the tourism and hospitality industry (freeman, 2010; mtapuri & giampiccoli, 2018; sène-harper & séye, 2019; zielinski et al., 2021), including those involving community-based tourism (cbt). ideally, it is essential for successful and sustainable tourism development to foster a communication strategy that can identify how factors such as information, awareness, advocacy, current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 75 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9297-283x https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7994-0721 274 | aseas 15(2) communication, leadership, and community-based tourism empowerment in brunei darussalam network building, conflict mitigation, and communication platforms can be supported (grenna et al., 2006). these factors remain relevant in studies focusing on cbt that normally include discussions of community control, leadership and empowerment, and their contribution to the equality, well-being, conservation, and development of the surrounding community (mtapuri & giampiccoli, 2014). according to asean community-based tourism standards, cbt refers to the “tourism economic sector dominated by small businesses that provide goods and services to a visiting tourist clientele…while fostering equitable and mutually beneficial host-guest interaction” (asean secretariat, 2016, p. 1-2). this paper refers to cbt as “a form of tourism run by local community members which specifically focused on offering products and services in small-scale industry and hospitality” (noorashid & chin, 2021, p. 2). the components of formation, power control and decision-making, mutual interactions, and partnership, as well as participation from relevant stakeholders, are crucial to maintain the success and the sustainability of cbt operations. despite the small amount of literature on tourism in brunei, previous studies have implied communication barriers as a hinderance to the growth of tourism in the country (ahmad, 2015; bhuiyan & haji abdul wahab, 2018; mohd. kassim, 2003; salleh, 2017). the brunei government has implemented various initiatives to boost the tourism sector, but the country still “appears to be left far behind in its tourism development and contribution, even by neighbouring countries such as cambodia, laos and myanmar” (ahmad, 2015, p. 210). whilst never proven at large, hierarchical and bureaucratic issues may be a major cause of the slow growth of the tourism and hospitality sector vis-a-vis the neighbouring countries. chin et al. (in press) provided evidence that the inefficacy of communication between tourism stakeholders has caused unequal distribution of equality and empowerment among community-based operators. this study argues for the need to have guidelines and frameworks to reduce such issues in the tourism industry in brunei as it has happened in other countries (dahles et al., 2020; nyakiba et al., 2018; sène-harper & séye, 2019; trupp & dolezal, 2020). in addition, this paper attempts to fill in the research gap by exploring the causal inter-relationship between communication towards empowerment and securing the sustainability of cbt by focusing on the following research questions: 1. why does communication play a pivotal role in securing the sustainability of the cbt industry? 2. how is empowerment channelled through communication between cbt stakeholders? 3. how do effective communication and equality secure the empowerment of cbt in brunei? by analysing responses from 16 local community-based tourism operators, this paper formulates an interactional model of communication and empowerment that can be used to overview and measure the efficacy of communication and relevant factors to be considered among stakeholders in the cbt industry, particularly in cases involving bureaucratic experiences. we believe that this model is highly relevant and applicable in other southeast asian and european contexts where further resolution is needed. aseas 15(2) | 275 wei lee chin & najib noorashid brunei darussalam, tourism and community-based tourism located on the northwest coast of borneo, brunei has an area of 5,769 square kilometres (2,227 square miles) and consists of four districts: brunei-muara, belait, tutong, and temburong (see figure 1). brunei has a population of 453,600, with 336,000 (74%) being local bruneians and the rest made up of permanent or temporary residents and expatriates (brunei’s department and economic planning, 2021). brunei adheres to its national philosophy melayu islam beraja (malay islamic monarchy or mib), which acts as the guidance and way of life for bruneians. brunei’s economy mainly relies on the production and exportation of crude oil and natural gas, which account for 90% of the national economy, but the country is committed to develop its tourism industry to detach itself from dependence on its main exportations (ahmad, 2015; salleh, 2017). in 2007, brunei joined the united nations world tourism organisation (unwto) to strengthen its profile as an international tourist destination (wassler & weber, 2014). based on the brunei tourism performance final report 2020, there was an increase in international visitor arrivals to brunei from 4,060,174 in 2015 to 4,521,336 in 2018, but the numbers decreased drastically to 1,070,614 in 2020 due to the pandemic (ministry of primary resources and tourism [mprt], 2021). brunei has recently shifted its focus to building its domestic tourism to overcome losses (abu bakar, 2020; chin & fatimahwati, 2021; noorashid & chin, 2021; pehin dato musa & chin 2022), such as developing campaigns in areas such as culinary experiences across bruneian regions and leveraging new infrastructure such as the temburong bridge, which connects the mainland to nature-based tourism products and services figure 1. map of brunei darussalam (authors’ copyright) 276 | aseas 15(2) communication, leadership, and community-based tourism empowerment in brunei darussalam (azney, 2020; mahmud, 2021). these efforts are strategized to promote tourism as a key sector for the brunei vision 2035, which is to position brunei as a knowledge and service-led economy (mprt, 2019). under the asean cbt standard, there has been an increase in the number of cbt establishments in brunei in recent years, even as the concept of cbt is still relatively new and stipulated. along with the rise of micro-small and medium enterprises (msmes) (csps, 2021a, 2021b; mahmud, 2021), cbt is now recognised as an alternative form of tourism contributing to the growth of the national economy. however, to date, there is no specific legal framework for cbt in brunei. based on the cbt case studies in brunei (adli & chin, 2021; janaji & ibrahim, 2019; noorashid & chin, 2021), there is no statistical evidence of cbt operations, as the capacity of cbt involvement is still new and undetermined. nevertheless, noorashid and chin (2021) have found over 40 cbt operations that are involved in small-scale, community-based tourism enterprises (cbtes), including cultural galleries/centres, lodges and homestays, and travel service providers/intermediaries. therefore, this paper tries to formulate an interactional model of communication and empowerment to measure the efficacy of communication and relevant factors to be considered among stakeholders in the cbt industry. this paper calls for further investigation on the formation of cbt in brunei, as this knowledge is still underdeveloped. the uniqueness of cbt in brunei and its correlation to power relations and equality distribution between stakeholders can be adapted to other countries with similar interests in using cbt as an alternative form of tourism to diversify their community and national economic growth targets. literature review there is an overlap between the roles of communication and empowerment in the tourism and hospitality industry (aas et al., 2015; kim et al., 2012; kokkranikal et al., 2011; tölkes, 2018), particularly in cbt and entrepreneurial activities (abukhalifeh & wondirad, 2019; dolezal & novelli, 2022; kontogeorgopoulos et al., 2014; sunuantari, 2017). despite its growing literature, there is still a necessity to assess theoretical foundations, impacts, and outcomes of effective communication in tourism (coles et al., 2013; tölkes, 2018; wehrli et al., 2017). through effective communication and platforms to benefit relevant stakeholders (bramwell & lane, 2000; freeman, 2010; sinh et al., 2016), cbt serves as a channel towards social justice and empowerment, equity of benefits and redistributive measures, holistic development of community, and reclaiming of ownership in the tourism industry today (dolezal, 2015; giampiccoli, 2020; giampiccoli & saayman, 2018; mayaka et al., 2019). in the hospitality industry, entrepreneurial success can be achieved by maintaining a sense of equality and inclusivity, while boosting community participation and sustainable development (giampicolli & mtapuri, 2017; nordin et al., 2014; zeppel, 2006). this is in line with one of the three major dimensions ensuring viable and successful tourism operations and fair distribution of socioeconomic benefits postulated by unwto, including stable employment, income earning opportunities, and social justice for communities (unwto, 2021). empowerment involves multi-dynamic and context-dependent processes of enabling local communities to initiate ventures/ aseas 15(2) | 277 wei lee chin & najib noorashid enterprises, and of owning power and control to manage, make decisions, mobilise resources and choose partnerships to achieve quality of life, socioeconomic well-being, and social justice (aghazamani & hunt, 2017; chin, 2017; khalid et al., 2019; nordin et al., 2014). in this case, providing equal access and equity in community participation also enhances empowerment in cbt industries (giampiccoli & saayman, 2018; heimerl et al., 2010). although cbt is a self-participatory initiative, many studies highlight the importance of achieving common goals and getting external support from stakeholders (asker et al., 2010; giampiccoli & saayman, 2018; matilainen et al., 2018). several global case studies further affirm the complexity of equality and empowerment between different stakeholders in achieving various levels of community empowerment (anuar & sood, 2017; asker et al., 2010; chin et al., 2017; chin & hampton, 2020). nevertheless, issues of inequality and lack of empowerment can be resolved by streamlining goals and policies as long-term interests between stakeholders through the effective use of communication (burgos & mertens, 2017; freeman, 2010; giampiccoli & mtapuri, 2021; stone, 2015; tosun, 2006). other studies reported that the sustainability of cbtes can be measured by an understanding of bonding social capital – the dynamic relationship between small groups within larger groups in cbt (dodds et al., 2016; matilainen et al., 2018; taylor, 2016). however, bureaucratic involvement and hierarchical communication have hindered the success of tourism activities especially involving cbt ventures (giampiccoli & saayman, 2018; mayaka et al., 2019; nguyen et al., 2021; salazar, 2012; taylor, 2017), further raising discussions over the need to reclaim the power of formation, control and decision making for the community with enough intervention from other stakeholders (fan et al., 2021; giampiccoli, 2020; giampiccoli, a., & saayman, 2018; tosun, 2000). communication has a significant role in supporting tourism and leadership (grenna et al., mishra et al., 2006; ruck & welch, 2012; tölkes, 2018). this can happen through community engagement in exchanging knowledge and skills to maintain and support stakeholders, realising local tourism programmes and policy implementations, and empowering stakeholders in their planning and decision making (abukhalifeh & wondirad, 2019; belz & peattie, 2012; freeman, 2010; hardeman et al., 2017). moreover, empowering cbt operations can foster high levels of confidence and motivation that will enable and ensure small-scale businesses to deliver their cbt products (asker et al., 2010). training of leadership styles and entrepreneurial skills is also important in cbt development and empowerment (kayat et al., 2016; ngo et al, 2018; zapata et al., 2011). previous scholarship also highlighted the necessity to develop communication skills among stakeholders to ensure effective performance of community tourism (aghazamani & hunt, 2017; raub & robert, 2012). the challenges of maintaining equality and empowerment in cbt are identified as lack of knowledge, interest, and skills, as well as the perception of the local community towards cbt (farrelly, 2011, mtapuri & giampiccoli, 2018; petrić, 2017; pusiran & xiao, 2013), due to lack of communication between relevant stakeholders (arasli et al., 2019; bianchi, 2003; ernawati et al., 2017). nomnian et al. (2020) found that effective communication – from authorities to operators and to consumers – can be fostered when all relevant stakeholders are able to comprehend mutual roles and dependency, communicative needs, and sociocultural and linguistic identities. 278 | aseas 15(2) communication, leadership, and community-based tourism empowerment in brunei darussalam other contributing factors to the success of cbte include the involvement of responsible community leaders, strong community-based associations, active participation among local, talented individuals, and effective communications (abukhalifeh & wondirad, 2019; boley & mcgehee, 2014; chili & ngxongo, 2017; kayat et al., 2016; kontogeorgopoulos et al., 2014). the tourism and hospitality sector should practice empowering leadership, such as leading by example, coaching, participative decision making, informing, and showing concern (hon & chan, 2012). brownell (2010) claims global hospitality organisations are influenced by relatable behaviours, personal characteristics, and manner, and that empowered leadership should involve fostering interdependency and creativity among stakeholders (giampiccoli et al., 2015; yildiz et al., 2014). in brunei, issues surrounding tourism and hospitality studies are not discussed at great length in academic literature, and only three studies have investigated cbt affairs in brunei (adli & chin, 2021; janaji & ibrahim, 2019; noorashid & chin, 2021). in short: janaji and ibrahim (2019) remarked on the economic empowerment of homestay owners as part of economic gain and development within community tourism; adli and chin (2021) explored the formation process of cbt products visà-vis mass tourism in brunei; and noorashid and chin (2021) reported on unequal access to resources amid cbt operators’ efforts in maintaining the resilience of their businesses during the covid-19 pandemic. whilst these studies have hinted at issues related to bureaucratic experiences in cbt, our current framework (see figure 2) further reviews the effects of communication and leadership and pivotal interrelationship between important stakeholders affecting issues of equality and empowerment within cbt operations in brunei. methodology this investigation used a qualitative approach and purposive sampling. the data was collected by interviewing 16 local owners of cbt operations (see table 1 for backgrounds of cbte owners). a few cbt operations were contacted through the list of cbt operators from the official webpage of the tourism development department brunei (tdd, 2021) under the ministry of primary resources and tourism (mprt) in brunei, while others were selected due to their successful experiences as widely-known cbt operators. the face-to-face interviews took an hour on average and were conducted between march and april 2021 at the owners’ cbt establishments. during this time, the country had almost no cases of covid-19 community transmission, thereby allowing data to be collected in a safe and secure environment. the semi-structured interviews were conducted to elicit the cbte owners’ experiences in managing cbtes through personal and/or collective approaches (with the community), as well as their beliefs and attitudes towards the sense of ownership, empowerment, and procedures in their cbtes. the interviews were conducted in either english or brunei malay language depending on the preference of the participants, where data in brunei malay were later translated for analysis. content analysis was used to determine themes based on the salient features in the responses. aseas 15(2) | 279 wei lee chin & najib noorashid these approaches contributed to the emergence of new discussions and a designated framework that can be expanded for future investigations. furthermore, these new findings can be reproduced in different contexts and settings. ethical consent agreement between the researchers and the cbte owners was made prior to the interviews. the participants also requested to remain anonymous in the writing of this paper. owners age gender cbt line of work district year established a 54 female lodge brunei muara 2015 b 52 female homestay brunei muara 2018 c 50 male homestay brunei muara 2009 d 46 male lodge brunei muara 2015 e 40 female homestay brunei muara 2012 f 52 male homestay/cultural village brunei muara 2015 g 36 female travel service provider brunei muara and tutong 2018 h 26 female cultural centre tutong 2012 i 64 male homestay/cultural centre tutong 2017 j 56 female homestay tutong 2010 k 40 female homestay temburong 2011 l 67 female guesthouse temburong 2006 m 59 male guesthouse temburong 2014 n 69 female guesthouse temburong 2001 o 25 male lodge temburong 2020 p 76 female homestay temburong 2007 we acknowledge the limitations of our study, as investigation of communication events in tourism should be raised involving many stakeholders, including particularly the government and authorities, in discussions surrounding bureaucratic experiences. however, due to the restrictions during the second wave of the pandemic in august 2021 onwards, we believe the current study on cbt owners/ operators can generate further discussions of the aspects of bureaucracy, communication, and participation from their perspectives. we further justify this limitation by highlighting the importance of cbte owners/operators’ perspectives as being part of the community, and community aspects are the most significant factors in any cbt discussions and formations (ramli et al., 2015; taylor, 2016). cbt operations should involve dynamic partnerships from various stakeholders, but the management of this industry is largely based at the community level (asean secretariat, 2016; yanes et al., 2019; zapata et al., 2011). table 1. cbte owners’ demographic backgrounds and cbt lines of work 280 | aseas 15(2) communication, leadership, and community-based tourism empowerment in brunei darussalam findings and discussion following our early observations and research findings, we further formulated the following theoretical framework (see figure 2) that shows the three important stakeholders of cbt management in leadership, empowerment, and communication, namely authorities, community leaders and cbt operators (abukhalifeh & wondirad, 2019; asker at al., 2010; kontogeorgopoulos et al., 2014; mtapuri & giampiccoli, 2014, 2018; grenna et al., 2006; noorashid & chin, 2021). more discussion about the newly formulated framework can be found towards the end of this section. based on our research findings, the formation of leadership and empowerment in cbt management in brunei strongly focusses on three aspects: (1) the relationship between cbt owner and subordinates, (2) the relationship between cbt owner and the local community, and (3) the relationship between cbt owner and authorities. all three aspects involve dynamic relationships, leadership and effective communication between tourism stakeholders affecting the prospects and the sustainability of cbt ventures that will be discussed in this section. open communicative leadership and community participation secure cbt sustainability as most cbt ventures operate as small-scale and family-owned enterprises, they are managed by the owners themselves or among senior family members. some cbtes (specifically c, d, e, f, h, k and o) are operating as structured organisations. for instance, owner e runs a homestay as part of a larger marine-tourism-based company, owner f manages a large-scaled community homestay and owner h operates a family-heritage cultural centre with multiple, traditional activities that cater to both local figure 2. interactional model of leadership and empowerment among cbt stakeholders (authors’ copyright) aseas 15(2) | 281 wei lee chin & najib noorashid and international tourists. these establishments tend to practise a more hierarchical structure and require more staff and hospitality workers to accommodate daily services and clients. thus, there is a need to hire workers from local communities. all cbte owners practise a centralised-style leadership where they have much control over the management, decision making and work delegation among family members and/or the local employees. these owners claim such practices have secured the flow of business management, as none have reported any issues within operations. there is also less formality and a high level of flexibility and tolerance between cbte owners and their employees, which is expected due to the nature of cbt. as part of the small-scale tourism industry, cbt is highly manageable and resilient to challenges vis-à-vis mass tourism (adam & alarifi, 2021; kampel, 2020; liguori & pittz, 2020; sobaih et al., 2021). cbt formation is often practised to empower the role of the operators and surrounding communities (dolezal, 2011, 2015; giampiccoli, 2020; mayaka et al., 2019). this is evident in our data, as all cbt owners claim to feel empowered from having control in internal management and decision making for their businesses while practising open, internal communication between the owners and their employees. yes! he [the husband] started off the business and we train the people and our staff. we’re quite flexible in what we do. sometimes we have our tour guide doing the job as a snorkel guy, and then he’s also looking after other things, amid also a boat captain. so, we are quite a flexible bunch and employees are happy having new roles depending on the demands of the market. in brunei, it is very hard to get fixated in one area of expertise or services because of the seasonality. so, it’s just not sustainable if we just focus on one thing. that’s why we also shift and expand our business according to season. obviously, there’s a little bit difficult [following regulations], but essentially, i think we do have a lot of autonomy to do what we want. (owner e) so, i am the manager in our team. i divide employees into different tasks. i usually ask them which area they prefer to get involved in, and then delegated the activities accordingly. but i will always tell them to be free to get involved in another activity to gain more experiences. yes, i have the full authority to manage and to decide how the cbt-based establishment runs. (owner h) fostering effective communication and leadership between cbte owners and operators with the local community has been reported to contribute to community participation and collaborative efforts (abukhalifeh & wondirad, 2019; cole, 2006; kontogeorgopoulos et al., 2014), which is also evident in the current study. these cbte owners empower local communities by creating jobs for the retired communities, single mothers, and people with special needs. according to the cbte owners, the decision to hire local people is their own, with no intervention from other stakeholders. moreover, employing a local workforce and volunteers from surrounding communities is seen as supporting the community and utilising the surrounding culture and natural resources. 282 | aseas 15(2) communication, leadership, and community-based tourism empowerment in brunei darussalam we provide many economic opportunities for our penambang [ferryman in kampung ayera cultural village]. since the opening of our new hiking trails nearby, we have provided several jobs as tour guides for local people and pensioners. we also provide opportunities for our people and other people from nearby villages to sell their products and crafts here at our homestays and cultural centre. besides, we also give opportunities for our young people to get involved in cultural activities and performances, and yes, they’re being paid too. (owner f) we’ve brought in many local staff. we also work with an-nur harapan [a local social enterprise providing vocational training for different abilities youth]. we work together for less able people. once, we gave a guy a chance to be an apprentice, so he worked with us for three days, and then we offered him a part time job for three days a week. he’s working with us now. we also accept a lot of interns as a way to develop our youth. we give them a little taste of what it’s like to work in a private industry. (owner e) …what i try to focus on my business is more on youth development. i want the youth that are involved here to sharpen their skills in terms of communication and gaining income. we encourage them to sell their own products here, for example food products. but at the same time, i am also open to other individuals, especially the low income or whoever is interested to get involved. (owner h) some cbte owners further bolster the sense of community participation by engaging in social activities with the surrounding community, such as organising inspirational talks about setting up cbtes, participating in family adoption schemes and accommodating international participants from the ship for southeast asian and japanese youth programme. these activities are a way for the owners to give back to their communities, while also promoting their businesses. we get to showcase our culture to other people. i had the chance to accommodate participating youth from the youth ship programme, i took some of them as guests. i showed them our local culture, lifestyle, and food. i taught them how to make ambuyat [a local dish made of tapioca starch] and kelupis [a local snack made of glutinous rice rolls]. i show them our bruneian culture. (owner j) it was actually in december last year that we held a youth camp in collaboration with majlis kesejahteraan masyarakat (brunei’s council on social welfare). it’s a non-government youth organisation for social welfare. i believe we have the same goal and mission. we want to help the community in brunei too. so, they did a three-day and two-night camping here and we partially sponsored them by reducing the cost of staying in here. we helped them to enhance their activities here in temburong. (owner o) in cbt, increasing community participation can strengthen the sense of empowerment and effective interactions in tourism activities (giampiccoli & saayman, 2018; nordin et al., 2014; scheyvens & russell, 2012). the charity-based accommodations provided by the cbte owners in brunei do not only operate as business ventures, but aseas 15(2) | 283 wei lee chin & najib noorashid they are also set up as charity drives to empower and provide economic opportunities for the surrounding communities. this has helped towards building a cooperative climate through effective communication between cbte owners and their surrounding communities. we’ve been active for around six years now, and our most recent charity programme was just last week. we handed out basic necessities to the needy families, so it’d be easy for them to prepare them for ramadan (fasting month). so yeah, we helped around 100 families in brunei muara, tutong and belait and we also provided assistance for 20 needy families here in temburong as well. (owner o) now i have rented out a block of my guesthouse for the charity department at the baitulmal [government sector]. i know i won’t get profits from it compared to renting them out normally. but i’m doing this for the sake of my late father’s last wish. it’s for his charity too…we charge less for the people in need of place to stay, especially the elderly. also, now i am also setting up business space around this guesthouse so local people nearby can start up their small businesses. it’ll be an attraction for the locals to come by. (owner k) janaji and ibrahim (2019), as well as lopes (2019), reported that most cbtes were set up due to passion and only a few were based on entrepreneurial and financial motivations apart from their aspirations to promote local products, services, culture, and lifestyle. in their study, cbt owners who provide homestay services in brunei felt empowered from the opportunities to operate their businesses by engaging local communities, while also promoting bruneian culture including the origins and makings of local food and lifestyle. the cbte owners in our study also reported on the success of continued initiatives fostering relationships, communication and cooperation with the surrounding community, as they continue to receive positive participation from the locals, either through partnerships and/or clients, that eventually generate profits and incomes to secure the sustainability of their cbt operations (arbulu et al., 2021; giampiccoli & mtapuri, 2021; haywood, 2020). hierarchical and bureaucratic communicative leadership and its impact on cbt empowerment there is a complex relationship between communication and leadership involving external agencies and stakeholders. in the interviews, there are reports of issues surrounding hierarchical and bureaucratic communication and involvement between cbte owners and authorities (government). this is also intertwined with the role of leadership across top-down channels of communication. the cbte owners remarked on the significant roles of the ketua kampung (head of a village) and penghulu (head of subdistrict or a group of villages) and their influence and decision making over cbtes. in brunei, the concept of the ketua kampung and penghulu is similar to that of community leaders in the general context of tourism (henceforth referred to as community leaders). as an important government agent, these community leaders are the “eyes, ears and mouths” and the middlemen for the country’s bureaucratic 284 | aseas 15(2) communication, leadership, and community-based tourism empowerment in brunei darussalam administration of the community. these community leaders also represent the government through the tourism development department (tdd) as stakeholders in the community-level tourism industry. some cbte owners remarked on the significance of their community leaders in supporting cbtes, while others expressed their doubts as to whether their involvement can contribute the success of cbt ventures. a key issue is the transmission of knowledge and directive orders from the government through community leaders. for instance, owners a and m commented on inadequate information, while owner j mentioned a lack of cooperation from community leaders. moreover, 14 out of 16 cbte owners claimed that they have never seen a cooperative climate and were never part of the community discussions, signalling their frustration and feeling unempowered as small-scale entrepreneurs and as part of the community. in contrast, the other two owners, who were members of the village consultative council, were able to voice their opinions and were kept updated with the cbt affairs in brunei. usually, only ketua kampungs and penghulus are being called to listen to seminars or workshops [about cbt]. but usually, this information was not relay to us (community), or the cbt operators. we hope they [relevant stakeholder] would come to us and communicate better. (owner m) yes, i am involved as a member of our village consultative council, also the association dealing with the culture, tourism, and hospitality sector in this village. yes, they do listen to my opinions. i will join any meetings and discuss on what should be done for our village. if i received any guests, i would inform our community leader. that’s how i manage my homestay. (owner c) i am actually the secretary of our village consultative council, so i have to be there with these community leaders around to discuss about the development of each village and any products that will be suitable to promote by each village. so, i have the chance to voice my opinions and discuss about arising matters. being around the community leaders also help because they should be the ones who know more about cbt. (owner f) in brunei, local community leaders are the agents of transmission for cbt owners, as they also support the community welfare and well-being (pang, 2018) and transmit the knowledge and standardisation of cbt as part of village consultative councils affairs (brudirect, 2019). in this case, active involvement of community leaders and open communication between them and the cbte owners are crucial to ensure the owners are being equipped with the current knowledge of cbt practices (abukhalifeh & wondirad, 2019; chilli & ngxongo, 2017) and necessary support to sustain their business (aghazamani & hunt, 2017; giampiccoli et al., 2015; kayat et al., 2016). however, this is yet to be achieved at large using top-down communication. adli and chin (2021) stated that “the lack of leadership [and] the lack of proper management system[s]” and licensing issues are unresolved problems in homestay operations in brunei (p. 23). similarly, the present study found that disengagement between authorities and cbt owners may have caused confusion amongst cbte aseas 15(2) | 285 wei lee chin & najib noorashid owners as to how to register and obtain licenses as official cbt operators. only three out of 16 cbt establishments are formally registered, while others reported either being registered under business license 16-17 and supported by their respective district offices or waiting for assessment or approval. some refused to register their businesses with the tdd, as they were unaware of the benefits of being registered, or their businesses were not able to meet the asean community-based tourism standards, or felt that the authorities did not understand their operations. we are aware of the registration process and cbt standards, and now we run our operations based on business license 16-17 and approval from the district office. we tried applying for cbt registration and license, but we couldn’t meet their standards, these are too high for us. we started off just as residential scheme and only came about to do cbt-based homestays recently. we didn’t initiate it as business. it was more natural for us to live here and offer homestay experience for people. yet again, we can’t meet the high cbt standards. (owner f) for some of these cbt operations, we should know who to refer to. there is nothing set on the paper. there is no guideline. i haven’t seen any guideline [specific for cbt operations in brunei]. i’ve only seen guidelines for lodges and the asean tourism. i told them i said the asean guidelines are good, no doubt, but not everybody can achieve that guideline. (owner a) actually, we did apply [for registration]. the last time i checked, it was still in process, but i don’t know what’s the update with them, because it’s so hard like for us to be fully certified. it’s not the license. it’s the standard operation procedure. (owner o) i don’t know [about the cbt guidelines and policies]. we run this place by ourselves. also, because we built this house not for the purpose of business, the idea only came after that, so probably it won’t get certified to some extent. we do acknowledge about safety precautions and all for our customers. (owner l) the dissatisfaction with bureaucratic experiences (adli & chin, 2021, p. 22) may be due to the abrupt changes of management and jurisdiction from the ministry of home affairs to the ministry of primary resources and tourism (mprt) in aligning interests to promote local products and services. the cbte owners in this study stated that the confusion and frustration over the inconsistencies of management made them feel reluctant to go through bureaucratic processes. some cbte owners did not have a mutual understanding with the tdd on how cbt operations should be undertaken, as they did not receive guidelines for their cbtes. furthermore, most of these cbt operations also started out of passion, where their establishments were modified from old houses to become cbt operation sites. some owners recalled this as contradictory to the standardised guidelines by the bureaucracy and appealed for authorities to revise the registration and licensing procedures for the local establishments. there is a clear misunderstanding between the government policies and the cbte owners’ aspirations and capabilities in running cbt operations. based on the interviews, the knowledge of being registered and owning a cbte license with the mprt is undervalued, therefore, these non-registered cbtes 286 | aseas 15(2) communication, leadership, and community-based tourism empowerment in brunei darussalam tend to run and develop their businesses independently with minimal support and guidance. most respondents also reported to be cautious about extending promotional activities and accommodating more clients, despite receiving overwhelming responses from them. in contrast, owners c, h and j are registered officially, they feel empowered to run their businesses without restrictions, and affirmed that they receive assistance such as free promotion and marketing and funding channelled by mprt to their businesses. the situation derived from ineffective communication and leadership has since affected the empowerment and raised issues of inequality for non-registered owners. while such issues have been discussed as a priority at the national level (salleh, 2017), fewer actions have been taken to improve these problems involving local cbt practices. yes, my homestay is registered with the tourism development department. i need to, i can’t set up this homestay without license. that’s how i get my clients too. sometimes they come from acknowledgement by the department. when we are registered, the department may be able to track our businesses, so when they need accommodation for certain guests or clients, they will call me first. that’s their standard of operation procedure, their guidelines. so, it helps with the promotion of my homestay too. (owner c) we are under ‘one village, one product’ a platform to promote authentic local products by village consultative councils overseen by ministry of home affairs. so, we’re presenting the village for ministry of home affairs. while for our cultural products, we work together with ministry of primary resources and tourism. so, with the diverse products that we have, it kind of supports us in terms of income in our lively hood. we also received a financial support for our jetty. it is funded by the ministry of primary resources and tourism, they’re going to start the construction soon. (owner h) as aforementioned, other studies have noted the importance of fostering consistent knowledge and principles of cbt among major stakeholders in tourism and hospitality sectors (dodds et al., 2016; giampiccoli & saayman, 2016; mayaka et al., 2019). inadequate information on cbt development and restricted access to relevant information may impede the prospects and sustainability of the cbt owners’ businesses in brunei. however, according to grenna et al. (2006, p. 1) all local stakeholders including cbte owners “must be able to access the information they need to understand their long-term interests, articulate their opinions, identify proposals, and network effectively with one another.” cbt can achieve sustainability by having open and effective communication and better leadership management between authorities, community leaders and cbte owners (asker et al., 2010; brownell, 2010; farrelly, 2011, petrić, 2017; pusiran & xiao, 2013). this paper has revealed some communication inefficacies within leadership in cbt management, particularly involving the relationships and exchange of crucial information in both top-down and bottom-up approaches. these issues have contributed to the emergence of unequal distribution of opportunities among local cbtes, prompting a call for policymaking and effective communication channels benefitting all stakeholders in brunei. such efforts can be realised by bolstering aseas 15(2) | 287 wei lee chin & najib noorashid mutual cooperation and partnership between stakeholders and strong political leadership to ensure wide participation and consensus building and achieve sustainable tourism (aref & ma’arof, 2009; asker et al., 2010; giampiccoli & saayman, 2018; unwto, 2021). in response to our research questions on (1) why does communication play a pivotal role in securing the sustainability of the cbt industry?; (2) how is empowerment channelled through communication between cbt stakeholders?; and (3) how do effective communication and equality secure the empowerment of cbt in brunei?, following our findings and discussion, effective communication flow from authorities to community leaders and further to the cbt operators can affect the sustainability of cbt operations. based on responses from the local cbt owners, this can be detected clearly through the access of knowledge and opportunities in tourism passed down to cbt operators, and these can further enhance their existence in the cbt industry in brunei. active community leaders and participation of cbt operators with the surrounding communities have bolstered more opportunities in collaboration between the cbt operators and the communities, and further secure their sustainability in the small-scale tourism industry in brunei. as a reflection on our research questions, table 2 shows some highlighted findings on the importance of leadership style and effective communication between stakeholders in the success of cbt operations, particularly involving distribution of equality and empowerment among cbtes in the tourism industry. formation, leadership and communication in cbte operations main findings internal leadership and communication 1) the relationship between cbte owner and subordinates: a. centralised leadership with high flexibility and less formality helps smoothen the delegation of work. b. open communication and less formality and bureaucracy become effective channel. 2) the relationship between cbte owner and the community: a. mutual partnership boosts cbt cooperation, benefits, and capacity. b. cbtes flourish from contributing back to the community by creating jobs and charity. external leadership and communication 1) the relationship between cbte owner and the community leader (the authority): a. effective top-down communication (from the authority) ensures transmission of knowledge and directives to cbt operators. b. effective bottom-up communication (from cbt operators) ensures access of knowledge and resources from the authority. this paper has shown that the interactional effects of leadership, communication and equality contributing to the empowerment of cbtes can be assessed vertically (top-down approach between cbte owners and subordinates; and bottom-up accessibility between cbte owners and authorities) and horizontally (between cbt owners and surrounding local communities). the responses from the cbte owners can be summarised using an interactional model, which justifies the importance of table 2. summary of findings 288 | aseas 15(2) communication, leadership, and community-based tourism empowerment in brunei darussalam communication and leadership to empowering cbt stakeholders in a bureaucratic environment as illustrated in figure 2 earlier. our newly-formulated interactional model (figure 2) suggests that the assessment of effective communication should involve a top-bottom approach of passing on information about cbt and directive orders from authorities through community leaders to the cbt operators (owners or managers), while also having mutual cooperation, agreement and partnership between the cbt operators and the surrounding communities. meanwhile, the bottom-up communication between cbt operators and authorities should involve continuous and fair access to knowledge about cbt, relevant resources, and opportunities (such as funding, skills, investment, etc.) through community leaders. in this case, the interactional model suggests a continuous flow of open communication – both upward and downward – with fair treatment and access for the benefit of all stakeholders – in both internal (within cbt operations) and external communication (involving different stakeholders). this will contribute to the distribution of equality in terms of knowledge, resources, rights and practices, which can empower cbt owners, encourage community participation, and secure sustainability of the cbt industry. this is imperative, as securing “empowerment can support the management trustworthiness, which is an essential element of organisational commitment” (kim et al., 2012, p. 10). conclusion in the bureaucratic environment of tourism and hospitality activities in brunei, the formation, management, equality, and empowerment of cbt ventures are affected via two means of communication: (1) horizontal/lateral communication between cbt operators and surrounding communities; and (2) top-down communication and bottom-up accessibility between authorities, community leaders, and cbte owners, as discussed in the previous section and further illustrated in figure 2. whilst there are no reported issues on the former, the lack of interactivity and open communication in the latter have caused confusion and shown unequal distribution of directives, resources and opportunities affecting the sustainability of cbt growth in brunei. this paper has shown that ineffective bureaucracy can impede the success of cbt operations. the experiences reported by the cbte owners call for a collaborative approach between stakeholders, particularly the government and community leaders, by analysing the importance of exchanging explicit directives and access to knowledge and resources. furthermore, these responses inspired the formulation of a new interactional model of leadership and empowerment among cbt stakeholders. due to its flexibility, we believe that this model can be further utilized in future investigations on other relevant factors contributing to the accessibility or interactional activities among stakeholders in cbt. focussing on the perspective of cbte owners and operators, particularly in discussions surrounding bureaucratic experiences, has limited our study, but we believe our findings and discussion raise further potential by incorporating a larger sampling of the cbt population and the involvement of important stakeholders such as the government and the community leaders. this paper recognises that the knowledge of cbt, directives, access to resources and opportunities are mostly affected in local aseas 15(2) | 289 wei lee chin & najib noorashid bureaucratic experiences. it is thus suggested to have a larger sampling involving multiple stakeholders to generate further discussion in other aspects – for instance the cooperation with other ngos and the larger community may have contributed to the survivability of small cbt operations during the pandemic. these recommendations for future studies are expected to raise more comprehensive discussion on the effects of bureaucracy and leadership that have impacted local and international cbt operations.  references aas, c., ladkin, a., & fletcher, j. 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(2021). factors that influence community-based tourism (cbt) in developing and developed countries. tourism geographies, 23(5-6), 1040-1072. about the authors wei lee chin is an assistant professor in the faculty of arts and social sciences, universiti brunei darussalam, specialising in destination competitiveness specifically in developing countries in asia. her research interest also includes small scale island tourism, tourism community development, smart tourism, socio economic sustainability as well as tourism impacts in asia. she has field experience in southeast asia and is also a recipient of several university grants. she has also published in international journals like current issues in tourism and tourism and hospitality management. ► contact: weilee.chin@ubd.edu.bn najib noorashid graduated with ph.d. in applied linguistics and has previously worked as news journalist for both malay and english national broadcasting at radio televisyen brunei. he currently focuses research and writing on issues involving linguistic diversity, culture and media studies and national education in brunei and has since published in cambridge university press, elsevier, springer, and palgrave macmillan, among others. he is currently working as a research assistant for a number of research projects in universiti brunei darussalam. ► contact: noorashid.najib@gmail.com disclosure the authors declare no conflict of interest. aseas 15(2) | 139 challenging stereotypes in europe-thailand transnational migration: non-conventional unions, mobilities, and (re)productive labor asuncion fresnoza-flota* & sirijit sunantab* auniversité libre de bruxelles, belgium; bmahidol university, thailand; *corresponding authors: asuncion.fresnoza@ulb.be & sirijit.sun@mahidol.edu received: 6 november 2022 / accepted: 4 december 2022 / published: 23 december 2022 ► fresnoza-flot, a., & sunanta, s. (2022). challenging stereotypes in europe-thailand transnational migration: non-conventional unions, mobilities, and (re)productive labor. advances in southeast asian studies, 15(2), 139-157. the migration flows connecting thailand and europe have constructed social spaces in which different stereotypes regarding thais and europeans emerge, perpetuate, and circulate, thereby affecting to various extents the lives of these individuals. to challenge these stereotypes, the present special issue takes into account the mechanisms of social categorization at transnational and local dimensions in three critical steps. first, it adopts an inclusive stance by not limiting itself to heterosexual relationships involving thais and europeans. second, it shifts the scholarly gaze from marriage and family issues to thai migrants’ mobilities in spatial, social, and intergenerational terms. and third, it highlights thai migrants’ engagement in the labor market as intimate workers and entrepreneurs to uncover the factors shaping their (re)productive labor and social incorporation in their receiving countries. using an intersectional approach, this special issue presents six empirically grounded case studies to unveil often-neglected dimensions and complexities of europe-thailand transnational migration. keywords: europe-thailand transnational migration; mobilities; non-conventional unions; (re)productive labor; stereotypes  introduction thai migration to europe1 has been generally composed of women, who most often play overlapping roles as wives, mothers, workers, and citizens (butratana & trupp, 2021; fresnoza-flot & merla, 2018; mix & piper, 2003; suksomboon, 2007; webster, 2017). in recent years, europe has become the destination of migrant kathoey (transgender women) (pravattiyagul, 2021; thongkrajai, 2012) 1 we refer here to europe as a geographic region comprising eastern, western, northern (including channel islands), and southern subregions (unsd, 2022). introduction w w w .s ea s. at 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s00 76 mailto:thithimadee.art%40mahidol.ac.th?subject= http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4865-9686 mailto:thithimadee.art%40mahidol.ac.th?subject= https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3447-4648 mailto:asuncion.fresnoza%40ulb.be?subject= mailto:sirijit.sun%40mahidol.edu?subject= 140 | aseas 15(2) introduction and thai seasonal workers (axelsson & hedberg, 2018). in addition, thai tourists (trupp & bui, 2015) and thai entrepreneurs (sunanta, 2021) add complexities to the emerging portraits of thai migration, notably in terms of gender, sexuality, and social class. at the same time, thailand has become a long-stay tourism and retirement destination for an increasing number of europeans (bottero, 2015; jaisuekun & sunanta, 2016; lapanun, 2019; roux, 2011; scuzzarello, 2020). european long-stayers in thailand are predominantly men, many of whom are in romantic/marital relationships with thai women and, less visibly, in same-sex partnerships with thai gay men. these “‘both-ways’ migration pathways” (statham et al., 2020, p. 1514) between europe and thailand represent “transnational social spaces” (faist, 2004, p. 331), in which various stereotypes regarding thais and europeans emerge, perpetuate, and circulate. these spaces are well connected to translocal2 ones where social categorization persists as one of the remnants of the past. in this special issue, “stereotype” is understood as the process of “othering”, during which imagined differences are socially (re)produced between the “us” and “them” (lister, 2004, p. 101) and the “categorization of persons” (dyer, 1999, paragraph 4) based on such differences takes place. as hall (1997) explains, “(s)tereotyping reduces people to a few simple, essential characteristics, which are represented as fixed by nature” (p. 257). this process affects individuals’ social incorporation and shapes their everyday lives. in the case of thais, othering stereotypes racialize, sexualize, class3, and/or genderize these individuals and sometimes their families, which most often leads to their social stigmatization, discrimination, or exclusion in one or both ends of migration (fresnoza-flot, 2019; pravattiyagul, 2018; sunanta, 2013). some of these stereotypes include the heteronormative views that thais (notably women) are “sex workers” (ten brummelhuis, 1994, as cited in lapanun, 2018) and “passive objects” (angeles & sunanta, 2007, p. 22), that they occupy the lower echelon in the social class hierarchy in their country of origin (sunanta, 2013), that they form heterosexual couples with foreign men to migrate abroad and improve their social class position (see below the section, “local theoretical lens of social categorizations”), and that they are economically dependent on their western4 partners (spanger, 2013). despite scholarly works contradicting these stereotypes (ruenkaew, 2009; sims, 2012; spanger, 2013; webster & haandrikman, 2014), such categorizing generalizations about thai migrants in europe and thais in couple with europeans and other westerners in thailand continue to thrive as recent studies suggest (limpriwatana, 2019; suphsert, 2021). aiming to challenge this social stereotyping, the present special issue borrows crenshaw’s intersectionality perspective (1989) that has originally been used to unveil the social oppression of black women in the united states of america (us) at the intersection of “categories” (p. 139) of difference, specifically the gender-race-social class trio. these categories may play a role not only in the (re)construction of stereotypes about 2 this term means the different scales present within a nation: family, community, village, city, and region, among others (greiner & sakdapolrak, 2013). 3 the word “class” as verb or noun is understood in this paper as referring to the category “social class” (bourdieu, 1997; in the sense of weber, see roth & wittich, 1978). 4 this adjective is used in this special issue to qualify people, objects, symbols, and ideas originating from the so-called ‘western countries’ in europe, north america, and oceania. aseas 15(2) | 141 asuncion fresnoza-flot & sirijit sunanta thais in europe-thailand transnational spaces but also in the way these individuals confront them or live with them. to grasp other factors beyond the gender-race-class trio, we follow mccall’s (2005) intercategorical approach to intersectionality, which pays attention to “existing analytical categories to document relationships of inequality among social groups and changing configurations of inequality along multiple and conflicting dimensions” (p. 1771). in this vein, we take into account the mechanisms of social categorization at both transnational and translocal dimensions, in three critical steps. firstly, this special issue adopts an inclusive stance by considering in the analysis both heterosexual and non-heterosexual relationships involving thais and europeans in thailand. secondly, it shifts the scholarly gaze from marriage and family issues to thai migrants’ mobilities in spatial, social, and intergenerational terms, which unveils other dimensions (e.g., religious, and entrepreneurial) of thai migration to this region. and thirdly, it highlights thai migrants’ engagement in the labor market as intimate workers and entrepreneurs, thereby uncovering the factors that shape and affect their (re)productive labor and social incorporation in their european receiving countries. these three steps correspond to the three overarching themes of the special issue: non-conventional unions, mobilities, and (re)productive labor. these three aspects help to uncover mechanisms of social categorization as they are made possible through and constructed around specific categories of difference, such as gender, age, and social class. the above themes will be illustrated by six case studies inscribed in different research fields: women migration studies, queer migration studies, and gender and sexuality studies. all of them adopt qualitative data-gathering and analytical methods, as well as propose research prospects for the study of thai migration to europe and european migration to thailand. in the following sections, we bring to the fore the original contributions of our special issue. first, to understand stereotypes, we revisit the literature on transnational migration (i.e., human spatial movements traversing nation-state borders) to identify the categories of difference that need to be considered to attain the objective of our special issue. second, we provide the contexts and origin of othering stereotypes in europe-thailand social spaces to understand their causes and development through time. third, we introduce a thai theoretical lens of social categorization to grasp the mechanism behind stereotyping and to put into question social5 assumptions regarding migrants in europe-thailand social spaces. fourth, we present the empirical papers in this special issue and discuss the intersectional ways of challenging stereotypes, which in the process contributes to their deconstruction. we conclude by suggesting some future directions in studying transnational migration linking europe and thailand. understanding stereotypes in the context of transnational migration the othering of individuals, groups, or populations in the context of transnational migration has been the object of scholarly investigations for the last decades. it 5 this qualifier in our special issue encompasses different dimensions, namely economic and sociocultural. 142 | aseas 15(2) introduction has been widely examined in its different dimensions in the so-called ‘south-north’ movements (de hart, 2019; pande, 2017; pérez & freier, 2022), ‘north-south’ mobilities (augusto, 2021; stoler, 2002), and more recently ‘south-south’ migrations (debonneville et al., 2019). in many studies, colonial and post-colonial representations (textual and visual), discourses (socio-legal, cultural, and historical), and individuals’ subjective experiences occupy the core of the analysis. such an approach unveils the factors that construct and reproduce othering stereotypes targeting specific group(s) of people in transnational migration settings. in stereotyping migrants, racialization based on their supposed phenotypical and/or socio-cultural characteristics different from the majority population has been documented in many migrant-receiving countries. this form of othering visibly affects migrants’ labor-market incorporation. for instance, “newly arrived migrants” most often experience “unemployment and underemployment” (liu, 2019, p. 175) in canada, where “it is the ‘colour’ of the skill associated with immigrants’ skin colour rather than the skill itself ” that matters (guo, 2015, p. 244). the coloring of skills involves the devaluation and denigration of their foreign credentials in the labor market and the framing of their foreign accents “as a lack of communication skills” (guo, 2015, p. 245). the stereotype that appears to come out from this process is that, regardless of their skills, migrants with socially undesirable skin color are less fitted to occupy high-status employment than insider citizens. such a stereotype also has a gender dimension: for example, muslim migrant women experience difficulties in finding employment in the netherlands, where they are socially assumed to be “victims of an oppressive system”, “deviant and deficient” (eijberts & roggeband, 2016, p. 133). the case of these women attests that stereotypes stem from intersecting racialization and genderization (based on common-held expectations regarding femininities and masculinities). these intersecting processes can also interact with migrants’ national origin and/ or ethnicity. some migrants originating from a specific country and belonging to a certain ethnic group are often categorized in their receiving country based on certain imagined qualities deemed important for specific sectors of the economy. for example, ethnicand gender-based stereotypes regarding filipino migrant women as “good with children” (anderson, 2001, p. 677), “active workers” (zontini, 2010, p. 29), and with “tlc” (tender loving care) (guevarra, 2014, p. 141) make them highly desirable in the domestic work, hospitality, and nursing sectors. these stereotypes may acquire a sexual dimension in a social context where some of these migrants perform jobs that transgress certain moral expectations. during the 1980s and 1990s, filipino migrant women in japan, regardless of their educational backgrounds and professions, were generally assumed to be japayuki (‘japan-bound’ entertainers in the intimate industry) (da-anoy-satake, 2000), which socially deemed them ‘victims’ of trafficking (parreñas, 2011). certain migrants undergo hyper-sexualization, which results in discrimination and criminalization: for example, the case of venezuelan migrant women in peru who are stereotyped as “attractive” and “easy” (pérez & freier, 2022, p. 3). stereotyping of migrants also occurs at the intersection of family situation, sexuality, and social class. migrant women in couple with an insider citizen are often stereotyped as “docile wives” (da-anoy-satake, 2000, p. 2), “mail-order brides” (sims, 2012, p. 169), a person with “bad sexual morality” (bally, 2005, p. 95), or “manipulative aseas 15(2) | 143 asuncion fresnoza-flot & sirijit sunanta opportunists who marry solely for money” (park, 2017, p. 120), as they are perceived to originate from economically developing countries and therefore ‘poor’ in money and moral character. their marriages are generally perceived to be hypergamic, implying that their natal country’s economic progress defines their social class belonging. this stereotype may take form alongside the exoticization of migrants, which can provide economic gains or pose social challenges to these individuals. for instance, wodaabe fulani migrant men from niger who are considered exotic in belgium easily find clients for their jewelry (loftsdóttir, 2018). another example are russian marriage migrant women who are socially viewed as “exotic creatures” alongside the stereotypes of being “mail-order brides” and “secret service agents”, which affects their adjustment in the us (shpeer & howe, 2020, p. 318). although the above review of the literature provides only a brief overview, it unveils the salient categories of difference influencing the construction of social stereotypes about migrants, namely ‘race’6, gender, nationality, ethnicity, sexuality, social class, and family situation. to challenge stereotypes, these categories may be useful to consider following mccall’s (2005) intercategorical approach, notably the counterimages they may produce during their intersections. context and origin of othering stereotypes in europe-thailand social spaces stereotypes of thai-european partnership in both thailand and european countries are entangled with europe-thailand gendered encounters from the colonial past to the post-colonial present. in a review article, lapanun (2018) shows that european man-thai woman liaisons can be traced back to the 16th century when european male traders who arrived in ayutthaya, an old siamese kingdom, took local women as wives. more recently, during and in the aftermath of world war ii (1939-1947), as many as 2,000 dutch prisoners of war who were present in thailand registered their marriages to thai women (ten brummelhuis, 1994, as cited in lapanun, 2018). after the war, some dutch men took their thai wives to the dutch east indies (indonesia), other countries in europe, and the netherlands. even back then, war brides in the netherlands struggled with the presumption among the dutch that thai women were associated with the sex industry (ten brummelhuis, 1994, as cited in lapanun, 2018). but most relevant to the stereotype of thai-european transnational marriages/partnerships today are the cold war militarism in the 1960s-1970s and the subsequent boom of thailand’s international sex tourism industry. during the us military actions in vietnam from 1964 to 1975, the thai military government allied with the us and allowed it to set up military bases in thailand and to use the country as the rest and recreation (r&r) destination for us servicemen. the entanglement between sex work and militarism is obvious in thailand, where night entertainment businesses were developed to serve us military men (truong, 1990). these facilities were later developed for the international sex tourism industry after the us military had left (bishop & robinson, 1998; truong, 1990). the image of thailand as a tourism 6 we put this category within inverted commas to emphasize that it does not biologically exist but rather is socially (re)produced. 144 | aseas 15(2) introduction destination has thus been associated with an affordable sexual playground for foreign men, particularly those from europe and japan (bishop & robinson, 1998; cohen, 1996). due to internal inequality and uneven development among different regions and economic sectors in thailand, women from rural and agricultural backgrounds from the northeast (isan) region have since the 1970s been overrepresented in tourist-oriented red-light districts in bangkok, pattaya, phuket, and koh samui, thailand’s popular tourism destinations. the current thai-european transnational marriage trend, which peaked in the 2000s, started with cold war and post-cold war international sex tourism as some thai bar girls/sex workers developed longterm relationships that led to marriage with their western customers (cohen, 1996). sex work and marriage were closely intertwined in the earlier days of thai women’s migration to europe in the 1970s. since 1975, thai women have increasingly migrated to germany as sex workers or wives of german nationals due to relaxed immigration regulations at that time and the legalization of prostitution (mix & piper, 2003; ruenkaew, 2014). it is no coincidence that german men rank among the top sex tourists to thailand and foreign husbands of thai women from the isan region (seepai & senerat, 2010). it is out of this historical context that the stereotype of thai wives in thaieuropean marriages as poorly educated sex workers from lower social strata has been formed. studies have pointed out that the focus on their (previous) engagement in sex work reduces the complexity of thai women in transnational partnerships, who are at the same time mothers, daughters, and sisters who take care of the well-being of their left-behind family members (angeles & sunanta, 2009; fresnoza-flot & merla, 2018; lapanun, 2022, this issue; suksomboon, 2008) and gain cosmopolitan awareness from their exposure to other countries’ ways of living (keyes, 2014; sunanta & angeles 2013; tosakul, 2010). the enduring image of thai wives in europe as sex workers from lower-class backgrounds also misrepresents the fact that recently thai wives in europe have come from more diverse socio-economic backgrounds (butratana & trupp, 2021; sinsuwan, 2018) and lead various social and economic lives in european destination countries (sinsuwan, 2018; sunanta, 2022, this issue). other aspects of their lives, such as their role in the formation of the thai diasporic community and the transmission of thai cultural heritage to their children (chuenglertsiri, 2020; fresnoza-flot, 2022, this issue), evade the understanding of mainstream society in the receiving countries because of the dominant gendered, classed, sexualized, and racialized stereotypes of thai wives in europe. in addition, the fixed stereotypical images gloss over the dynamics of european-thai couples who have aged over the decades and whose migration pathways are not linear, as they consider or decide to relocate to thailand in their old age (brown, 2022, this issue; scuzzarello & statham, 2022, this issue). local theoretical lens of social categorizations stereotypes of thai-european partnerships in thai society are equally degrading and embedded in the othering mechanism of the thai system of social categorization. scholars of thai studies have noted that in thai social categorization, social class, aseas 15(2) | 145 asuncion fresnoza-flot & sirijit sunanta ethnicity, and regional identities are intertwined. conceptualizing the ethno-spatial relations in the 19th century siamese state, winichakul (2000, p. 41) describes a system of social categorization in which one’s geographical and ‘civilizational’ distance from the central power in bangkok marks his/her place in the siamese/thai hierarchical social order. he posits that because of their simple ways of life and settlements in the periphery of the state power, the chaopa (wild people) and the chao bannok (the multi-ethnic peasant villagers) were considered “the others within” under the supremacy of the bangkok ruling elite. since the isan region is home to a high proportion of thai women and transgender people who are in partnership with europeans, understanding isan identity in thai society sheds light on the stereotype of thai-european transnational intimate partnerships. constituting one-third of the total population of thailand, inhabitants of today’s isan region are descendants of those who moved from the other side of the mekong river, in today’s laos pdr (people’s democratic republic), and inherited lao linguistic and cultural traits (keyes, 1967). while the urban economy in bangkok and eastern industrial zones grew rapidly during the decade of the thai economic boom from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, isan was the most economically marginalized region of thailand and has been the origin of rural-to-urban as well as transnational labor migration (curran et al., 2005; keyes, 2014; mills, 1999). in the eyes of many urban, middle-class thais in bangkok, isan people are perceived as working-class, rural people who are ethnically and culturally inferior (keyes, 1967; mccargo & hongladarom, 2004). the stereotype of isan mia farang (westerners’ wives from isan) as morally loose women who use their bodies and sexuality through an intimate partnership with western men to climb up the socio-economic ladder is prevalent among urban thais (sunanta, 2013). this gendered, classed, and ethnicized stereotype of isan women was publicly reiterated in 2019 in an opinion piece entitled “characters determine fate” by pensri phaolaungthong, a female columnist of matichon weekly, a prominent thai periodical. pensri phaolaungthong, a woman from an urban middle-class background, criticizes partnering with westerners for socio-economic mobility as a cultural characteristic of isan women who favor relying on others to improve their life chances rather than working hard through gaining higher education (phaoluangthong, 2019). without considering structural constraints faced by thai people in the lower social strata, pensri is critical of what she perceives as working-class, rural women’s choices to take an easy and undignified way out of poverty. this public stigmatization was, however, met with an outcry from many isan women who pointed out the author’s ignorance and social class bias; the author and publisher had to express formal apologies. farang, a casual thai term referring to white westerners from europe, north america, australia, and new zealand, has a special place in the thai social categorization. according to wanichakul (2000), the thai/siamese hierarchical social classification is measured by the group’s temporal and geographical distance to ‘civilization’: since its inception siam has always been a hierarchical domain, differentiated not only by class and status, but by ethno-geography as well. and given the implicit temporal implication of any anthropology, this chapter argues that this 146 | aseas 15(2) introduction siamese ethnography of siam was also a temporalizing practice, locating and juxtaposing peoples, including the elite themselves, in a new linear (progressive, temporal) cosmic order called civilization. (p. 41) according to this siamese concept of social categorization, farang occupy a superior place because of their power of knowledge in the forms of modern technology, architecture, and urban planning, as well as modern legal, educational, and administrative systems that the thai elite looked up to. the 19th-century thai ruling elite adopted western forms of etiquette, dress, habituation, patronage, and pageantry to express themselves as part of the cosmopolitan class in the international arena and legitimate ruling class in the newly bounded thai modern nation state at home (harrison, 2010; loos, 2006; peleggi, 2002). however, scholars also note the ambivalent views towards the west in the 19th-century thai nationalistic discourse, in which the west was depicted as the powerful but suspicious other (kitiarsa, 2010) who was materially advanced but spiritually less developed (winichakul, 2010). more recently, the asian economic crisis that started in thailand in 1997, leaving many thais to struggle for survival, reinforced the localist/nationalist notion that western consumerism has detrimental effects on thai society. farang’s moral decadence is most pronounced in the area of sexuality, with the dominant discourse in thailand that attributes homosexuality in thai society to a moral decline influenced by the adoption of western culture (jackson, 1997; sinnott, 2004). the arrival of us gis in the 1960s and the pursuant development of sex tourism in thailand for predominantly farang men further highlight the perceived sexual decadence of western people. a prevalent stereotype in thailand of farang men who are in partnership with lower-class thai women is that of farang khinok, which literally means ‘bird shit farang’, referring to low-quality westerners who are sex tourists and undesirable in their own countries (maher & lafferty, 2014; thompson et al., 2016). the partnership between farang men and thai women from a rural, working-class background, most notably from isan, is viewed negatively in the thai mainstream society because it involves two groups of morally dubious others—farang men and isan women. these transnational partnerships invoke classed, gendered, and racialized stereotypes, among others, that our special issue confronts. contributions: intersectional ways of challenging stereotypes the present special issue comprising six empirical papers pays attention to the intersectionality of not only the gender-‘race’-class trio but also sexuality and other categories of difference in forming the social milieux of europe-thailand transnational subjects. our important contribution is emphasizing the complexity and dynamics of social class, gender, and familial, marital and inter-generational relations in transnational contexts and over life courses. the papers in this special issue put into question specific social stereotypes about thais and their european partners through three intersectional ways: exposing diversity by looking at non-conventional unions, re-examining mobility assumptions, and unveiling the productive and reproductive labor dimensions. these ways provide nuances of how migration and (non) migrants in europe-thailand social spaces have been understood so far. aseas 15(2) | 147 asuncion fresnoza-flot & sirijit sunanta exposing diversity through non-conventional unions several stereotypes about thais in couple with or seeking western partners ‘sex workers’, ‘poor’, ‘only after money’, ‘submissive’, and ‘dependent’, among others take shape at the intersection of several categories of differences. the special issue challenges these stereotypes by exposing the diversity of non-conventional unions of heterosexual thai women (see brown, 2022; fresnoza-flot, 2022; lapanun, 2022; sunanta, 2022, this issue) and their transgender counterparts (kathoey) with western men (scuzzarello & statham, 2022; thongkrajai, 2022, this issue). this exposition nuances our understanding of the logic, emotions, and practices involved in the formation and/or dynamics of thai-european couples, and at the same time, unveils thais’ agency resulting from their intersecting identities and subjectivities. in her article, brown finds that thai women and their dutch husbands who relocate from the netherlands to thailand do not fit the stereotypical image of thai-western couples settling in thailand as old and retired. she observes that young couples relocate to the country for economic opportunities, not retirement. in fresnoza-flot’s article, a few thai women visit a thai buddhist temple with their belgian partners. these women’s behavior appears non-conventional, as thai women generally frequent thai buddhist spaces in belgium alone or with their younger children. another non-conventional heterosexual union that our special issue identifies is highlighted in lapanun’s article – isan women in couple with westerners who, through transnational marriage and migration, become landowners while living comfortably and supporting their natal family’s needs. these women, with their european partners and their natal families, do not fit the stereotype of being poor, as they constitute a new social class in rural places in northeast thailand, which makes the “village elites increasingly experience a decline or a perceived decline in their prominence and impact”. this social class dimension also appears salient among thai migrant entrepreneurs and their british partners in brighton in the united kingdom (uk). sunanta, in this issue, remarks that most thai entrepreneurs in her study are women marriage migrants, who, like their thai male counterparts, mobilize their ethnic and non-ethnic forms of capital. she demonstrates that these women are agentive individuals capable of incorporating themselves into their receiving country’s economy by capitalizing on the stereotypical “image of thai-ness in the eyes of westerners”, that is, “sensual, warm, gentle, and rich in touch and taste”. her study counters the stereotypes portraying thai women as economically dependent on their western partners and the latter as nonsupportive of thai women’s entrepreneurial projects. aside from heterosexual, non-conventional unions, our special issue brings to the fore the intimate unions of kathoey with western men. in thongkrajai’s article, kathoey or “transgender male-to-female (mtf) persons” and their european partners in europe fit the image of a heteronormative couple, unlike kathoey-thai man unions. this can be attributed to kathoey’s gender and sexual strategies: “(b)eing feminine, appropriating feminine roles and providing accessible sexual fantasy”. their european partners support their efforts of gender camouflage, making gender negotiations “a couple’s or even a family-in-law’s affair”. unsurprisingly, many kathoey in thailand aspire to be in a couple with a western partner, as scuzzarello and statham 148 | aseas 15(2) introduction observe in their study. kathoey seek long-lasting relationships with western partners through whom they can affirm their gender identity, access social class mobility, and gain family acceptance. the enduring relationships with western partners of interviewed kathoey in scuzzarello and statham’s article call into question the stereotype of kathoey-westerner unions as sex work or paid companionship. the special issue papers above uncover the salient categories that intersect in the lives of non-conventional thai-european couples: gender, social class, sexuality, age, and religion. interestingly, the categories that shape social stereotypes of thai-european marriages/partnerships in europe-thailand transnational spaces also provide possible ways to confront or navigate reductionist views about them. indeed, by paying attention to intersecting categories in the lives of minoritized individuals (crenshaw, 1989; mccall, 2005), we can grasp not only how their marginalization but also how possibilities to improve their situations are socially (re)produced (gaspar et al., 2022; milton & qureshi, 2020). re-examining mobility assumptions two of the salient stereotypes circulating in europe-thailand transnational spaces suggest that migration from thailand to europe is a single pathway and that thai migrants are economically poor. these stereotypes appear tightly linked to the question of mobility “a change of condition” (canzler et al., 2008) involving “affects, ideas, and discourses” (fresnoza-flot & liu-farrer, 2022, p. 3). our special issue interrogates such mobility-linked stereotypes by considering the intersectionality of spatial movements, social class mobility, and/or intergenerational transmission. brown’s article defies the assumption that migration is unidirectional from thailand to europe by focusing on the netherlands-to-thailand migration of thaidutch couples. she shows that migration flows between the two countries are circular and shaped by thai-dutch couples’ intersecting ageing, gender, and mobility capital. thai-dutch couples accumulate mobility as well as legal and social capital while residing in the netherlands. they move to thailand for overlapping reasons: the dutch husband’s (early) retirement as well as thai women’s gender role as wives and filial duty vis-à-vis their ageing parents. interestingly, some couples wishing for the economic betterment of their lives are younger than socially expected and are not in their retirement age. some lone thai women returned to thailand following conjugal separation or widowhood. in thailand, these lone returnees and thai-dutch couples mobilize their accumulated capital, allowing them to be mobile translocally. some of them decide at one point to move back to the netherlands. the question of mobility is also at the core of lapanun’s article in this special issue. lapanun challenges the assumption that thai women’s transnational marriages do not affect stay-behind thai men in rural areas. she remarks that men in isan viewed their limited marriage possibilities as linked to their weak financial capacity compared to farang men who are socially considered economically capable of providing for the needs of village thai women and their natal families. hence, thai men experience anxieties and social pressure alongside their awareness of the shift in local power relations in gender terms, as an increasing number of village thai women marry farang men and access social class mobility. aseas 15(2) | 149 asuncion fresnoza-flot & sirijit sunanta this latter form of mobility constitutes the assumption that kathoey enter into a relationship with westerners only for money. scuzzarello and statham’s paper refute this assumption by focusing on kathoey in long-term relationships with farang. they bring to the fore kathoey’s deep-seated wish to be socially accepted in thailand and enjoy an enduring union just like their heterosexual counterparts. social acceptance of who they are appears here as a form of social class mobility, which becomes possible when they move to more open, tolerant local spaces with a farang partner. likewise, thongkrajai’s article defies the assumption of economic and class mobility by unveiling the nuanced logic of kathoey’s migration to europe in terms of social class: kathoey with a workingclass background and low educational attainment migrate for economic needs, whereas their middle-class counterparts with high education achievement go to europe in search of “a faithful relationship” and to build a family with a european partner who can accept them as they are. the articles by scuzzarello and statham and by thongkrajai suggest that the intersecting categories of sexuality, gender, and social class influence kathoey’s translocal/transnational movements, their aspiration for long-lasting intimate unions with europeans, their wish for social and legal acceptance, and in the case of those with a working-class background, their hope for upward social class mobility. another mobility assumption that this special issue puts into question is the view that thais who moved to europe become economically dependent on their european partners. sunanta’s article shows the contrary as she examines thai migrant (wo) men’s entrepreneurship in brighton (uk). she demonstrates how thai migrant women transform their cultural capital into a business advantage, that is, by capitalizing on their knowledge regarding “local customers’ preference” and “attraction to the exotic notion of ‘thai-ness’”. by examining the case of self-employed thai migrants, sunanta challenges the generalizing stereotype that these migrants, notably women, are non-skilled, economically poor, and sex workers. finally, fresnoza-flot’s article tests the assumption that mobility only concerns spatial and social class movements in europe-thailand transnational migration. fresnoza-flot illuminates nuances of mobility by analyzing thai migrant women’s religious practices that allow them to transform good deeds in the mundane world and transmit these to spiritual worlds in the form of merits. mobility can also be observed in their transmission of religious beliefs, moral values, and a sense of thai-ness to their children. spatial mobility in fresnoza-flot’s paper goes beyond the geographical movements of people, as material objects, symbols, and beliefs travel from one country to another within europe and from thailand to europe. salient intersecting categories that shape transmission dynamics are gender, social class, and (internal/global) ethnicity. the challenged mobility assumptions discussed above constitute an important step to rethinking the reductionist views circulating in europe-thailand social spaces and shaping the lives of thai migrants and their families. this step will not be complete without revisiting the social stereotypes related to the (re)productive labor of thai (non-)migrants, an aspect that also intersects with their mobilities. unveiling (re)productive labor from the feminist perspectives on transnationalism and globalization, europethailand transnational mobilities are gendered and driven by the globalization of 150 | aseas 15(2) introduction care work7 and reproduction8. care is a gendered concept because care services are traditionally unpaid and given by women within the private household (england, 2005; razavi, 2007, p. 70). socially prescribed gender roles shape different expectations for women and men in care-giving and care-receiving situations in a particular society (ngueyen et al., 2017; serra-mingot, 2020). more recently, care and reproduction have been viewed as becoming increasingly transnationalized. the global care chains (ehrenreich & hochschild, 2004) and the international division of reproductive labour (parreñas, 2005) highlight the commodification and global transfer of care/reproductive labor from the global south to the global north, most notably in the form of paid domestic work, but also professional care work in institutional settings (yeates, 2012). studying transnational families9, baldassar and merla (2014) proposed the concept of care circulation to trace the exchange and reciprocity of informal care that underlies family making and familial solidarity across distance and over time. empirical studies in this special issue elucidate the forms of care and reproduction carried out by diverse transnational subjects that both challenge and reinforce traditional notions of care and global inequality. in the non-traditional partnership between western men and thai kathoey in scuzzarello and statham’s and in thongkrajai’s articles, thai kathoey strive to perform and embody ideal thai femininity. conscious of their second-class woman status, the kathoey put even greater efforts into adorning beautified feminine looks and taking great care of their western partners’ emotional, sexual, and personal needs. to their natal families in rural thailand, thai kathoey in scuzzarello and statham’s article share a similar sense of familial obligations to that of female mia farang in lapanun’s study. partnership with western men enables thai kathoey and mia farang from rural isan backgrounds to provide care to their natal families in the forms of financial support and improved general well-being, enabling stay-behind family members to achieve higher social status in the sending community (angeles & sunanta, 2009; statham, 2020). life course and age play an important role in western-thai partnerships and transnational mobilities. empirical studies in this special issue involve older people, both europeans and their thai partners, who choose to spend extended time in thailand in their old age. in scuzzarello and statham’s article, western men in advanced ages regularly visit and spend time with their much younger thai kathoey partners in thailand. in brown’s paper, thai women-dutch men couples and divorced/widowed thai marriage migrants relocate to thailand after having spent years in the netherlands. this trend suggests a global division of care and reproduction in which people choose to work and get paid in europe but to retire and get old in thailand, although there are exceptional cases (brown, 2022, this issue). the large age gap between western men and thai women/kathoey in both studies also suggests particular care exchange between partners, in which western men provide 7 we understood “care work” in this special issue as “providing service to people that helps to develop their capabilities” (england, 2005, p. 383). 8 reproduction encompasses processes involved in reproducing labor, physical human beings, and social identities while care work is a form of reproductive labor (kofman, 2012). 9 the members of this family experience physical separation due to migration but maintain a sense of solidarity across nation-state borders (bryceson & vuorela, 2002). aseas 15(2) | 151 asuncion fresnoza-flot & sirijit sunanta financial security in exchange for companionship and eldercare from thai women/ kathoey. in fresnoza-flot’s study, buddhist social spaces facilitate the reproduction of ethnic and social class identities among thai female marriage migrants and their children in belgium. with an intention for their children to learn about their thai roots, thai migrant women bring their young children to thai buddhist temples in belgium to participate in thai language and arts lessons, cultural activities, and to meet other thais. apart from performing religious/spiritual functions, thai temples in belgium provide a space for intergenerational cultural transmission and migrant socialization during which people, objects, and food from thailand create a thai space outside of thailand. fresnoza-flot notes that thai migrant women are conscious of social class, ethno-regional, and the rural-urban divides among themselves and that these differentiations are performed and reproduced in the thai buddhist spaces in belgium. studying thai immigrant entrepreneurship in brighton (uk), sunanta found that thai immigrant enterprises are concentrated in three sectors: food, massage, and cleaning. providing services that feed, relax, and keep places clean, thai immigrants take up paid reproductive work in a wealthier receiving society. in the thai food and massage businesses, catering to mainstream british customers, thai immigrant entrepreneurs capitalize on and thus reinforce the association of thai-ness with being good at touch and taste. the paper challenges the stereotype of thai migrants in europe as exotic and economically dependent wives by focusing on their economic activities and entrepreneurial practices as well as internal diversity in terms of social class backgrounds, educational attainment, and migration pathways. it is evident that various categories intersect in the lives of thai informants in this special issue, which shapes their (re)productive labor, notably care-giving and care-receiving practices. gender, social class, age, and family situation (married or divorced) particularly interact and reinforce in many cases traditional gender ideas of good natal family members, wives, partners, and citizens. the examples also challenge stereotypes by emphasizing the complexity and diversity of european – thai partnerships that go beyond traditional family formation through heteronormative marriages. to challenge the exotic wives stereotype, the articles in this special issue shed light on the multifaceted lives of thai wives in europe, highlighting thai migrant women’s religious, economic, and community building practices both in the home and destination countries. conclusion: towards further nuancing of europe-thailand transnational migration this special issue underlines the importance of re-adjusting the scholarly lens on europe-thailand transnational migration to challenge simplistic and reductionist assumptions about thai (non-)migrants, their partners, and other family members. this re-adjustment implies the adoption of an inclusive, mobility-focused, and (re) productive labor-sensitive approach with an intersectional orientation inspired by crenshaw (1989) and mccall (2005). by doing so, our special issue offers new observations and identifies future research directions. 152 | aseas 15(2) introduction revisiting the historical past of europe-thailand social, transnational spaces, this introductory paper outlines the larger context in which social stereotypes arise. we trace their origin in thailand’s encounters with the west, notably during the cold war militarism and the boom of the country’s (international) sex industry. within thailand, the stereotypical image of thai women in couple with foreign men as poorly educated sex workers from lower social strata specifically concerns isan women as they numerically dominate the country’s sex industry. this stereotype is hence gendered, classed, and ethnicized locally. across the empirical cases examined in this special issue, gender and social class are the most salient intersecting categories that affect the lives of thai (non-)migrants and their families. these categories are particularly salient in the case of thai (wo)men from isan where women’s transnational marriage has important repercussions on the lives of local men and on the elites in terms of social class (lapanun, 2022, this issue). the two categories most often interact with age/ageing for heterosexual thai migrant women (brown, 2022, this issue) and sexuality for thai transgender women (thongkrajai, 2022, this issue; scuzzarello & statham, 2022, this issue). they also intersect with religion and ethnicity (fresnoza-flot, 2022, this issue), cultural capital (sunanta, 2022, this issue), and mobility capital (brown, 2022, this issue). the intersections of different categories reflect the diversity of social situations in which thai (non-)migrants and their families live and the specificities of their respective receiving countries. moreover, this special issue nuances common-held understandings of migration and intimate unions within europe-thailand transnational spaces. first, we complexify the image of thai-european marriages and partnerships by focusing on non-conventional unions, such as non-heteronormative, mobile, thailand-based, and religion-oriented partnerships. second, we bring to the fore different forms of mobilities (spatial, social class, and spiritual, among others) that thai (non-)migrants experience or wish to attain through intimate unions and/or migration. third, we show the links between paid and unpaid, as well as formal and informal forms of reproductive and care labor of thai (non-)migrants, allowing us to challenge the binary representation of these individuals as either workers or spouses/partners of western (wo)men. the examination of mechanisms of othering at international and local levels represents the first step towards further nuancing europe-thailand transnational migration. other ways of doing so are inherent in the future directions we wish to suggest, encompassing three possible themes. the first one points to the understudied phenomenon of thai migrant contract workers, seasonal or nonseasonal, in specific economic sectors, for example, in the berry-picking and massage industries. the second theme focuses on the migration of students, business-persons, highly skilled individuals, and elites. the third theme worth exploring empirically is the role of religion and social media to understand thai migrant women’s self-representation through their own content creation in social media platforms. all three directions, if carried out, will provide varying voices and perspectives that can refute enduring stereotypes in europe-thailand transnational spaces.  aseas 15(2) | 153 asuncion fresnoza-flot & sirijit sunanta references angeles, l.c., & sunanta, s. 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(2010). transnational families, migration and gender: moroccan and filipino women in bologna and barcelona. berghahn books. about the authors asuncion fresnoza-flot is tenured research associate (chercheure qualifiée) of the belgian fund for scientific research (f.r.s.–fnrs) and senior lecturer (maîtresse d’enseignement) at the université libre de bruxelles in belgium. her publications deal with transnational family dynamics, conjugal mixedness, and intergenerational transmission, as well as marriage and divorce involving filipino and thai migrants. her ongoing research focuses on the contextual mobility of belgian-asian couples within their cross-border social spaces. ► contact: asuncion.fresnoza@ulb.be sirijit sunanta is associate professor in the phd program in multicultural studies, research institute for languages and cultures of asia, mahidol university, thailand. her research interests include gender and migration, globalization and food cultures, and the politics of diversity in thailand. sirijit’s current research projects focus on care transnationalization and gendered labour in thai health and well-being tourism. ► contact: sirijit.sun@mahidol.edu acknowledgements the present special issue originates from the international workshop “europe-thailand transnational migration: intimacy, sexuality and gender” organized online by the guest editors on 6 may 2021 with the support of prof. laura merla (catholic university of louvain, belgium) and with the assistance of the following young researchers: jenthe blockx, edouard degay, mimy keomanichanh, and angelie marilla. this workshop was supported by the fonds de la recherche scientifique – fnrs under grant no. 40004889 and the faculty of philosophy and social sciences of the université libre de bruxelles (ulb) in belgium. it paved the way to the signing of a memorandum of understanding between the faculty of philosophy and social sciences of ulb and the research institute for languages and cultures of asia of the mahidol university. disclosure the authors declare no conflict of interest. mailto:asuncion.fresnoza%40ulb.be?subject= mailto:sirijit.sun%40mahidol.edu?subject= 158 | aseas 15(2)